Diana Tempest Volume Ii Part 9

"Yes," said John gently, "but that is a deep one, Di. It numbs the heart. He took it down with him to the grave. If it is true that we can carry nothing away with us out of the world, I hope he left his bitterness of spirit behind."

Di did not answer.

"That very unforgiveness and bitterness were in him only the seamy side of constancy," said John at last. "He really loved your mother."

"If he had really loved her, he would have forgiven her."

"Not necessarily. A n.o.bler nature would. But he had not a very n.o.ble nature. That is just the sad part of it."

There was a long silence. At last Di closed the case, and put it back in the drawer. She held the little slip of paper in her hand, and looked up at John rather wistfully.

He took it from her, and, walking down the gallery, dropped it into the wood fire burning at the further end. He came back and stood before her, and their grave eyes met. The growing intimacy between them seemed to have made a stride within the last half-hour, which left the conversation of yesterday miles behind.

"Thank you," she said.

CHAPTER VII.

"Oh, the little more, and how much it is!

And the little less, and what worlds away!"

R. BROWNING.

Miss Fane, John's aunt, was one of those large, soft, fleecy persons who act as tea-cosies to the domestic affections, and whom the perspicacity of the n.o.bler s.e.x rarely allows to remain unmarried. That by some inexplicable mischance she had so remained was, of course, a blessing to her orphaned nephew which it would be hard to overrate. John was supposed to be fortunate indeed to have such an aunt. He had been told so from a child. She had certainly been kind to him in her way, and perhaps he owed her more than he was fully aware of; for it is difficult to feel an exalted degree of grat.i.tude and affection towards a person who journeys through life with a snort and a plush reticule, who is ever seeking to eat some new thing, and who sleeps heavily in the morning over a lapful of magenta crochet-work.

On religious topics also little real sympathy existed between the aunt and nephew. Miss Fane was one of those fortunate individuals who can derive spiritual benefit and consolation from the conviction that they belong to a lost tribe, and that John Bull was originally the Bull of Bashan.

Very wonderful are the dispensations of Providence respecting the various forms in which religion appeals to different intellects. Miss Fane derived the same peace of mind and support from her bull, and what she called "its promises," as Madeleine did from the monster altar candles which she had just introduced into the church at her new home, candles which were really gas-burners--a pious fraud which it was to be hoped a Deity so partial to wax candles, especially in the daytime, would not detect.

Miss Fane had an uneasy feeling, as years went by, that, in spite of the floods of literature on the subject with which she kept him supplied, John appeared to make little real progress towards Anglo-Israelitism.

Even the pamphlet which she had read aloud to him when he was ill, which proved beyond a doubt that the unicorn of Ezekiel was the prototype of the individual of that genus which now supports the royal arms,--even that pamphlet, all-conclusive as it was, appeared to have made no lasting impression on his mind.

But if the desire to proselytize was her weak point, good nature was her strong one. She was always ready, as on this occasion, to go to Overleigh or to John's house in London, if her presence was required. If she slept heavily amid his guests, it was only because "it was her nature to."

She slept more heavily than usual on this particular evening, for it was chilly; and the ladies had congregated in the music-room after dinner, where there was a fire, and a fire always reduced Miss Fane to a state of coma.

Mrs. Courtenay was bored almost to extinction--had been bored all day, and all yesterday--but nevertheless her fine countenance expressed a courteous interest in the rheumatic pains and Jager underclothing of one of the elder ladies. She asked appropriate questions from time to time, bringing Miss Goodwin, who with her brother was dining at the Castle, into the conversation whenever she could.

Miss Goodwin, a gentle, placid woman of nine and twenty, clad in the violent colours betokening small means and the want of taste of richer relations, took but little part in the great Jager question. Her pale eyes under their white eyelashes followed Di rather wistfully as the latter rose and left the room to fetch Mrs. Courtenay some wool. Between women of the same cla.s.s, and even of the same age, there is sometimes an inequality as great as that between royalty and pauperism.

Soon afterwards the men came in. Miss Fane regained a precarious consciousness. The painter dropped into a low chair by Mrs. Courtenay, some one else into a seat by Mary Goodwin; Mr. Goodwin addressed himself indiscriminately to Miss Fane and the lady of the clandestine Jagers.

John, after a glance round the room, and a short sojourn on the hearthrug, which proved too hot for him, seated himself on a strictly neutral settee away from the fire, and took up _Punch_. Immediately afterwards Di came back.

She gave Mrs. Courtenay her wool, and then, instead of returning to her former seat by the fire, gathered up her work, crossed the room, and sat down on the settee by John.

The blood rushed to his face. Her quiet unconcerned manner stung him to the quick. She spoke to him, but he did not answer. Indeed, he did not hear what she said. A moment before he had been wondering what excuse he could make for getting up and going to her. He had been about to draw her attention to the cartoon in a two-days-old _Punch_, for persons in John's state of mind lose sight of the realities of life; and in the presence of half a dozen people, she could calmly make her way to him, and seat herself beside him, exactly as she might have done if he had been her brother. He felt himself becoming paler and paler. An entirely new idea was forcing itself upon him like a growing physical pain. But there was not time to think of it now. He wondered whether there was any noticeable difference in his face, and whether his voice would betray him to Di if he spoke. He need not have been afraid. Di did not know the meaning of a certain stolid look which John's countenance could occasionally take. She was perfectly unconscious of what was going on a couple of feet away from her, and picked up her st.i.tches in a cheerful silence. Mary Goodwin saw that he was vexed, and, not being versed in the intricacies of love in its early stages, or, indeed, in any stages, wondered why his face fell when his beautiful cousin came to sit by him.

"Don't you sing?" she said, turning to Di.

"I whisper a little sometimes with the soft pedal down," said Di. "But not in public. There is a painful discrepancy between me and my voice.

It is several sizes too small for me."

"Do whisper a little all the same," said the painter.

"John," said Di, "I am afraid you do not observe that I am being pressed to sing by two of your guests. Why don't you, in the language of the _Quiver_, conduct me to the instrument?"

The unreasoning, delighted pride with which John had until now listened to the smallest of Di's remarks, whether addressed to himself or others, had entirely left him.

"Do sing," he said, without looking at her; and he rose to light the candles on the piano.

And Di sang. John sat down by Mary, and actually allowed the painter to turn over.

It was a very small voice, low and clear, which, while it disarmed criticism, made one feel tenderly towards the singer. John, with his hand over his eyes, watched Di intently. She seemed to have suddenly receded from him to a great and impa.s.sable distance, at the very moment when he had thought they were drawing nearer to each other. He took new note of every line of form and feature. There was a growing tumult in his mind, a glimpse of breakers ahead. The atmosphere of peace and quietude of the familiar room, and the low voice singing in the listening silence, seemed to his newly awakened consciousness to veil some stern underlying reality, the features of which he could not see.

Mary Goodwin, who had the music in her which those who possess a lesser degree of it are often able more fluently to express, left John, and, going to the piano, began to turn over Di's music.

Presently she set up an old leather ma.n.u.script book before Di, who, after a moment's hesitation, began to sing--

"Oh, broken heart of mine, Death lays his lips to thine; His draught of deadly wine He proffereth to thee!

But listen! low and near, In thy close-shrouded ear, I whisper. Dost thou hear?

'Arise and work with me.'

"The death-weights on thine eyes Shut out G.o.d's patient skies.

Cast off thy shroud and rise!

What dost thou mid the dead?

Thine idle hands and cold Once more the plough must hold, Must labour as of old.

Come forth, and earn thy bread."

The voice ceased. The accompaniment echoed the stern sadness of the last words, and then was suddenly silent.

What is it in a voice that so mightily stirs the fibre of emotion in us?

It seemed to John that Di had taken his heart into the hollow of her slender hands.

"Thank you," said Mary Goodwin, after a pause; and one of the elder ladies felt it was an opportune moment to express her preference for cheerful songs.

Di had risen from the piano, and was gathering up her music.

Involuntarily John crossed the room, and came and stood beside her. He did not know he had done so till he found himself at her side. Mary Goodwin turned to Miss Fane to say "Good night."

Di slowly put one piece of music on another, absently turning them right side upwards. He saw what was pa.s.sing through her mind as clearly as if it had been reflected in a gla.s.s. He stood by her watching her bend over the piano. He was unable to speak to her or help her. Presently she looked slowly up at him. He had no conception until he tried how difficult it was to meet without flinching the quiet friendship of her eyes.

"John," she said, "my mother wrote that song. Do you remember what a happy, innocent kind of look the miniature had? She was seventeen then, and she was only four and twenty when she died. I don't know how to express it, but somehow the miniature seems a very long way off from the song. I am afraid there must have been a good deal of travelling between-whiles, and not over easy country."

John would have answered something, but the Goodwins were saying "Good night;" and shortly afterwards the others dispersed for the night. But John sat up late over the smoking-room fire, turning things over in his mind, and vainly endeavouring to nail shadows to the wall. It seemed to him as if, while straining towards a goal, he had suddenly discovered, by the merest accident, that he was walking in a circle.