“Hm-m-m!” growled her husband. “It would do you good to be worried a bit! Take down your weight! Of course, what can’t be cured must be endured but I’ve spoken the brutal truth, — Diana, at her age, and with her looks, and all her chances of marriage gone, is in the way. For instance, suppose I go to a new neighbour’s house, and I’m asked ‘Have you any family?’ — I reply: ‘Yes, one daughter.’ Then some fool of a woman says: ‘Oh, do bring your girl with you next time!’ Well, she’s not a ‘girl.’ I don’t wish to say she’s not, but if I do take her with me ‘next time,’ everybody is surprised. You see, when they look at me, they expect my daughter to be quite a young person.”
Mrs. May sank gradually back in her chair, as though she were slowly pushed by an invisible finger.
“Do they? “The query was almost inaudible.
“Of course they do! And upon my soul, it’s rather trying to a man! You ought to sympathize, but you don’t!”
“Well, I really can’t see what’s to be done!” she murmured, closing her eyes in sheer weariness. “Diana cannot help getting older, poor thing! — and she’s our child—”
“Don’t I know she’s our child?” he snapped out. “What do you keep on telling me that for?”
“Why, I mean that you can’t turn her out of the house, or say you don’t want her, or anything of that sort. But I’m sure” — here, the round, pale eyes opened appealingly over the buff-coloured cheeks—” I’m sure, James, that if you don’t wish to take her out with you she’d never dream of expecting you to do so. She’s very unselfish, — besides, she’s so happy with her books.”
“Books — books! — hang — books!” he exclaimed, irascibly. “There’s another drawback! If there’s one thing people object to more than another, it’s a bookish spinster! Any assumption of knowledge in a woman is quite enough to keep her out of society!”
His wife yawned.
“I daresay!” she admitted. “But I can’t help it.”
“You want to go to sleep, — that’s what you want!” said Mr. May, contemptuously. “Well, sleep! I’m going over to the Club.”
She murmured an inward “Thank God!” and settled down in her chair to her deferred and much desired doze. Mr. May “threw on his cap, — one of a jaunty shape, which he fondly imagined gave him the look of a dashing sportsman of some thirty summers — and stepped out on to the now fully moonlit lawn, crossing it at as “swinging” a pace as his little legs would allow him, and making for the high road just outside the garden gates.
Not till he had disappeared did the figure which had stayed statuesquely still between the two rose hedges show any sign of movement. Then it stirred, its dark grey draperies swaying like mist in a light wind. The bright moonlight fell on its uplifted face, — Diana’s face, pale always, but paler than ever in that ghostly radiance from the skies. She had heard all, — and there was a curious sense of tightening pain in her throat and round her heart, as if an overflow of tears or laughter struggled against repression. She had stood in such a motionless attitude of strained attention that her limbs felt cramped and stiff, so that when she began to walk it was almost with difficulty. She turned her back to the house and went towards the sea, noiselessly opening the little white gate that led to the shore. She was soon on the smooth soft sand where the little wet pools glittered like silver in the moon, and, going to the edge of the sea, she stood awhile, watching wave after wave glide up in small, fine lines and break at her feet in a delicate fringe of snowy foam. She was not conscious of any particularly keen grief or hurt feeling at the verdict of her general tiresomeness which her parents had passed upon her, — her thoughts were not in any way troubled; she only felt that the last thing she had clung to as giving value to life, — her affection and duty towards the old people, — was counted as valueless, — she was merely “in the way.” Watching the waves, she smiled, — a pitiful little smile.
“Poor old dears!” she said, tenderly, — and again: “Poor old dears!”
Then there arose within her another impulse, — a suggestion almost wildly beautiful, — the idea of freedom! No one wanted her, — not even her father or her mother. Then was she not at liberty? Could she not go where she liked? Surely! Just as a light globe of thistledown is blown by the wind to fall where it will, so she could drift with the movement of casual things anywhere, — so long as she troubled nobody by her existence.
“The world is wide!” she said, half-aloud, stretching her arms with an unconscious gesture of appeal towards the sea. “I have stayed too long in one small corner of it!”
The little waves plashed one upon the other with a musical whisper as though they agreed with her thought, — and yet — yet there was something appalling in the utter loneliness of her heart. No one loved her, — no one wanted her! She was “in the way” Smarting tears filled her eyes, — but they angered her by their confession of weakness, and she dashed them away with a quick, defiant hand. She began to consider her position coldly and critically. Her thoughts soon ranged themselves in order like obedient soldiers at drill under their commanding officer, — each in its place and ready for action. It was useless to expect help or sympathy from anyone, — she would not get it. She must stand alone. It is perhaps a little hard and difficult to stand alone when one is a woman; it used to be considered cruel and pitiful, but in these days it has become such a matter of course that no one thinks about it or cares. The nature and temperament of woman as God made her, have not altered; with all her “advancement,” she is just as amative, as credulous, as tender, as maternal as ever she was, longing for man’s love as her “right,” which it is, and becoming hardened and embittered when tins right is withheld from her, — but the rush of the time is too swift and precipitous for any display of masculine chivalry on her behalf; she has elected to be considered co-equal with man, and she is now, after a considerable tussle, to be given her “chance.” What she will make of the long-deferred privilege remains a matter of conjecture.
Slowly, and with a vague reluctance, Diana turned away from the moonlit sea; the murmur of the little waves followed her, like suggestive whispers. A curious change had taken place in her mentality during the last few minutes. She, who was accustomed to think only of others, now thought closely and consistently of herself, She moved quietly towards the house, gliding like a grey ghost across the lawn which showed almost white in the spreading radiance of the moon, — the drawing-room windows were still open, and Mrs. May was still comfortably ensconced in her arm-chair, sleeping soundly and snoring hideously. Her daughter came up and stood beside her, quite unobserved. Nothing could have been more unlovely than the aspect she presented, sunk among cushions, a mere adipose heap, with her fat cheeks, small nose and open mouth protruding above the folds of a grey woollen shawl which was her favourite evening wear, her resemblance to a pig being more striking than pleasing. But Diana’s watching face expressed nothing but the gentlest solicitude, “Poor mother!” she sighed to herself. “She’s tired! And — and of course, it’s natural she should be disappointed in me. I’ve not been a success! Poor dear mother! God bless her!”
She went out of the room noiselessly, and made her way upstairs. She met Grace Laurie.
“I’m going to bed, Grace,” she said. “I’ve got a tiresome headache, and shall be better lying down. If mother wants to know where I am, will you tell her?”
“Yes, miss. Can I do anything for you?” Grace asked, for, as she often said afterwards, she “thought Miss Diana looked a bit feverish.”
“No, thanks very much!” Diana answered in her sweet-voiced, pleasant manner. “Bed is the best place for me. Good-night!”
“Good-night, miss.” And Diana entering her own room, locked the door. She was eager to be alone. Her window was open, and she went to that and looked out. All was silent and calm; the night was beautiful. The sea spread itself out in gently heaving stretches of mingled light and shade, and above it bent a sky in which the moon’s increasing splendour swampe
d the sparkling of the stars. The air was very still, — not a leaf on any small branch of tree or plant stirred. The scent of roses and sweetbriar and honeysuckle floated upwards like incense from the flower altars of the earth.
“I am free!” murmured Diana to the hushed night. “Free!” —
And then, turning, she saw herself in the mirror, as she had already seen herself that day, — only with a greater sense of shock. The evening gown she wore, chosen to please her father’s taste, of dull, dowdy-grey chiffon, intensified her worn and “ageing” look; the colour of her hair was deadened by contrast with it, and in very truth she had at that moment a sad and deplorably jaded aspect.
“Free!” she repeated, in self-scorn. “And what is the use of freedom to me at my age! — and with my face and figure!”
She shrank from her own pitiful “double” in the glass, — it seemed asking her why she was ever born! Then, she put away all doleful thoughts that might weaken her or shake her already formed resolution:—” Nothing venture, nothing have!” she said. And, shutting her window, she drew the blinds and curtains close, so that no glimpse of light from her room might be seen by her father when he should cross the lawn on his return from the Club. She had plenty to do, and she began to do it. She had a clear plan in view, and as she said to herself, a trifle bitterly, she “was old enough” to carry it out. And when all her preparations were fully made and completed, she went to bed and slept peacefully till the first break of dawn.
CHAPTER IV
WHEN morning came it brought with it intense heat and an almost overpowering glare of sunshine, and Mr. James Polydore May, stimulated by the warm atmosphere, went down to breakfast in a suit of white flannels. Why not? A sportive and youthful spirit had entered into him with his yesterday’s experience of tennis, and his “skittish-as-you-please” partner of seventeen; and, walking with a jaunty step, he felt that there was, and could be, no objection to the wearing of white, as far as he was concerned. But — had he not said on the previous day to his daughter, “Only very young people should wear white?” Ah, yes — his daughter, as a woman, was too old for it!... but he, — why, if the latest scientific dictum is correct, namely, that a man is only as old as his arteries, then he, James Polydore May, was convinced that arterially speaking, he was a mere boy! True, his figure was a little “gone” from its original slimness, — but plenty of golf and general “bracing-up” would soon put that all right, so that even the “skittish-as-you-please” young thing might not altogether despise his attentions. Whistling gaily the charming tune of “Believe me if all those endearing young charms,” he contemplated the well set out breakfast table with satisfaction. He was first in the field that morning, and his better half had not been at the fried bacon before him, selecting all the best bits as was her usual custom. He sat down to that toothsome dish and helped himself bountifully; then, missing the unobtrusive hand which generally placed his cup of tea beside him, he called to the parlour-maid:
“Where’s Miss Diana? Isn’t she up?”
“Oh, yes, sir. She was up very early — about six, I believe, — and she went down to the cove to bathe, so she told the kitchen-maid.”
“Not back yet?”
“No, sir,”
Mr. May pulled out his watch and glanced at it. It was half-past nine. At that moment his wife entered the room.
“Oh, you’re out of bed at last!” he said. “Well, now you can pour out my tea, and mind you don’t fill the cup too full. Diana hasn’t got back from her dip.”
Mrs. May was still rather sleepy, and, as usual, more or less inattentive to her husband’s remarks. She began turning over the letters the post had just brought for her, whereat Mr. May gave a sharp rap on the table with the handle of a fork.
“My tea!” he repealed. “D’ye hear? I want my tea!”
Mrs. May rolled her pale eyes at him protestingly as she lifted the teapot.
“I hear perfectly,” she answered with an assumption of dignity. “And please be civil! You can’t bully me as you bully Diana.”
“I bully Diana! I!” And Mr. May gave a short, scornful laugh.’ “Come, I like that! Why, the woman doesn’t know what bullying is! She’s had a path of roses all her life — roses, I tell you! Never a care, — never a worry, — no financial difficulties — always enough to eat, and a comfortable home to live in. What more can she want? Bully, indeed! If she had married that confounded officer for whom she wasted the best seven years of her life, then she’d have known something about bullying! Rather! And I daresay it ‘ud have done her good. Better than being an old maid, anyhow.”
Mrs. May handed him his tea across the table.
“I wonder where she is?” she questioned, plaintively. “I’ve never known her so late before.”
“Went out at six,” said Mr. May, with his mouth full of bacon. “The kitchen-maid saw her go.”
Mrs. May rang a small hand-bell at her side.
The parlour-maid answered it.
“Hasn’t Miss Diana come in?”
“No, ‘m.”
Mrs. May rubbed her small nose perplexedly.
“Who saw her go out?”
“The kitchen-maid, ‘m. She was cleaning the doorstep when Miss Diana came out, and said she was going for a sea bath. That was about six o’clock, ‘m.”
Again Mrs. May rubbed her nose.
“Send Grace here.”
“Yes, ‘m.”
Another minute, and Grace Laurie appeared.
“Grace, did you see Miss Diana go out this morning?”
“No, ‘m. Last night I met her on the stairs, and she said she had a headache and was going to bed early. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Good heavens, Margaret, what a fuss you’re making!” here exclaimed Mr. May. “One would think she’d been carried off in an aeroplane! Surely she’s old enough to take care of herself! She’s probably gone for a walk after bathing, and forgotten the time.”
“That’s not like Miss Diana, sir,” ventured Grace, respectfully. “She never forgets anything.”
“Another cup of tea, Margaret, and look sharp!” interposed Mr. May, testily.
Mrs. May sighed, and poured hot water into the teapot. Then she addressed Grace in a low tone.
“Ask the kitchen-maid just what Miss Diana said.” Grace retired, and returned again quickly.
“Miss Diana came down at about six this morning,” she said. “And Jenny, the kitchen-maid, was the only one of ns up. She was cleaning the doorstep, and moved her pail for Miss Diana to pass. Miss Diana had on her navy blue serge and black straw sailor hat, and she carried what Jenny thought were her bathing things hanging over her arm. She was very bright and said; ‘Good-morning, Jenny! I’m going for a dip in the sea before the sun gets too hot.’ And so she went.”
“And so she went — Amen!” said Mr. May, biting a hard bit of toast noisily. “And so she’ll come back, and wonder what all the deuced fuss is about. As if a woman of her age couldn’t go for a bathe and a walk without being inquired after as if she were a two-year-old! Are you going to have your breakfast, Margaret? — or do you prefer to read your letters first?”
His wife made no reply. She was watching the boiling of an egg in a small, specially constructed vessel for the purpose, which Diana had added to the conveniences of the breakfast table. She was annoyed that Diana herself was not there to attend to it. Diana always knew when the egg was done to a turn. Grace still lingered in the room. Mrs. May, languidly raising her fish-like eyes, saw her.
“You can go, Grace.”
“Yes, ‘m. Shall I just run out to the shore and see if Miss Diana is coming?”
“Yes. And tell her to make haste back — I want her to do some shopping in the village for me.”
Grace left the room, closing the door behind her. A clock on the mantelpiece gave several little sharp ting-tings.
“What time is that?” asked Mrs. May.
“Ten o’clock,” replied her husband, unfolding the day
’s newspaper and beginning to read.
“Dear me i How very extraordinary of Diana to be out from six in the morning till now!” And with the aid of a spoon she carefully lifted the egg she had been watching as though it were the most precious object in life out of the boiling water, in mournful doubt as to whether, after all, it really was done perfectly. “It’s so unlike her.”
“Well, you may be pretty certain no one has run away with her,” said Mr. May, ironically. “She’s safe enough. The ‘dear child’ has not eloped!”
Mrs. May ignored both his words and his manner. She looked at him meditatively over the lid of the silver teapot and permitted herself to smile, — a small, fat, pursy smile.
“Those white flannels have got rather tight for you, haven’t they?” she suggested.
He flushed indignantly.
“Tight? Certainly not! Do they look tight?”
“Well — just a little! — but of course white always makes one appear stout —— —”
“Stout! You talk about stoutness? You! Why, I’m a paper-knife compared to you! — a positive paper-knife! I believe you actually grudge my wearing white flannels!”
His wife laughed.
“Indeed, no! “she declared. “It amuses me! I rather like it!”
“I should think you did!” he retorted. “Or, if you don’t, you ought to!”
She surveyed him pensively with round, lack-lustre eyes, “What a long time it is!” she said—” What a long, long time since you were thin! — really quite thin, James! Do you remember? When you proposed to me in father’s dining-room and the parlour-maid came in and lit the gas, just as you were going to—”
“You seem very reminiscent this morning,” interrupted her husband, sharply. “Do white flannels move you to sentiment?”
“Oh, no! — not at all — not now!” she replied, with a small giggle, “Only one cannot but think of the change between then and now — it’s almost humorous—”
“I should think it is!” he agreed. “It’s more than humorous! It’s comic! What d’ye expect? When I think of what you were! — a nice little pink and white thing with a small waist, — and see you now!” — here he snorted half contemptuously. “But there! — we can’t all remain young, and you’re quite comfortable looking — a sort of pillow of ease, — you might be worse—”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 837
