Diana Tempest Volume I Part 6

To threaten to shake any one was Madeleine's sheet-anchor in the form of repartee. Di knit her white brows.

"And though the idea had never so much as crossed your mind till a few hours before, still you accepted him?" she asked.

"No," said Madeleine, withdrawing her hand with dignity; "of course I did not. I don't know what other girls feel about it, but with me there is something too solemn, too sacred, in an engagement of that kind to rush into it all in a moment. I told him so, and that I must think it over, and that I could not answer him anything at once."

"And how long did you think it over?"

"All that morning. I stayed by myself in my own room. I did not go out, though the others all went to a steeplechase on Lord Algy's drag, and I had a new gown on purpose. I suppose most girls would have gone, but I felt I could not. I can't take things lightly like some people. I dare say it is a mistake, but I always have felt anything of that kind very deeply."

"I suppose he did not go either?"

"N--no, he didn't."

"That would have been awkward if you had not intended to accept him."

Madeleine looked into the fire.

"It was a very painful time," she went on, after a pause. "And it was so embarra.s.sing at luncheon--only him and me, and that old General Hanbury.

Every one else had gone."

"Even your mother?"

"Yes; she was the chaperone of the party, as Mrs. Mildmay had a headache. But I did not want her to stay. She did not know till it was all settled. I could not have talked about it to her; mamma and I feel so differently. You know she always remembers how much she cared for poor papa. I was dreadfully perplexed what I ought to do, but"--in a lowered voice--"I took it where I take all my troubles, Di. I prayed over it; I laid it all before----"

Madeleine stopped short as Di suddenly hid her face in her hands. The white nape of her neck was crimson.

"And then?" she asked, after a moment's silence, with her face still hidden.

"Then it all seemed to become clear," murmured Madeleine, gratified by Di's evident envy. "And I saw it was _meant_. You know, Di, I believe those things are decided for one. And I felt quite peaceful, and I went out for a little bit in the garden, and the sun was setting--I always care so much for sunsets, they mean so much to me, and it was all so beautiful and calm; and--I suppose he had seen me go out--and----"

Di uttered a sound between a laugh and a sob, which resulted in something like a croak. Her fair face was red with--_was_ it envy?--as she raised her head. Two large tears stood in her indignant wistful eyes. She looked hard at Madeleine, and the latter avoided her direct glance.

"Madeleine," she said, "do you care for this man?"

Madeleine gave a little pout which would have appealed to a masculine heart, but which had no effect on Di.

"I was very much surprised when you wrote to tell me," continued Di, rather hurriedly. "I never should have thought--when I remember what he is--I can't believe that you can really care about him."

"I have a great influence over him--an influence for good," said Madeleine. "He would promise anything I asked; he has already about smoking. I know he has not been always---- But you know a woman's influence. I always mention him in my prayers, Di."

Madeleine had been long in the habit of presenting the names of her most eligible acquaintances of the opposite s.e.x to the favourable consideration of the Almighty, without whose co-operation she was aware that nothing matrimonially advantageous could be effected, and in whose powers as a chaperon she placed more confidence than in the feeble finite efforts of a kind but unworldly mother. She had never so far felt impelled to draw His attention to the spiritual needs of younger sons.

"Every woman has an enormous influence for the time over a man who is in love with her," said Di, who seemed to have frozen perceptibly. "It is nothing peculiar. It is one of the common stock feelings on such occasions. The question is, Do you really care for him?"

Madeleine shivered a little, and then suddenly burst into uncontrollable weeping. Di was touched to the quick. Loss of self-control sometimes moves reserved people profoundly. They know that only an overwhelming onslaught of emotion would be able to wrest their own self-control from them; and when they witness the loss of it in another, they think that it must have been caused by the same amount of suffering.

"I think you are very unkind, Di," Madeleine said, between her sobs.

"And I always thought you would be the one to sympathize with me when I was engaged. And I have chosen the bridesmaids' gowns on purpose to suit you, though I know Sir Henry's niece, that little fat Dalrymple with her waist under her arms, will look simply hideous in it. And I wrote to you the _very_ first! I think you are very unkind!"

"Am I?" said Di, gently, as if she were speaking to a child; and she knelt down by the little sobbing figure and put her arms round her.

"Never mind about the bridesmaids' gowns, dear. It was very nice of you to think how they would suit me. Never mind about anything but just this one thing: Do you think you will be happy if you marry Sir Henry Verelst?"

"Others do it," sobbed Madeleine. "Look at Maud Lister, and she hated Lord Lentham--and he was such a dreadful little man, with a mole, worse than---- But she got not to mind. And I've been out nine years. You are only twenty-one, Di. It's all very well for you to talk like that; I felt just the same when I was your age. But I shall be twenty-eight this year; and you don't know what it feels like to be getting on, and one's fringe not what it was; and always having to pretend to be glad when one is bridesmaid to girls younger than one's self, and seeing other girls have _trousseaux_, and thinking, perhaps, one will never have one at all. I don't know how I could bear to live if I was thirty and was not married!"

Di was silent for a moment from sheer astonishment at a real declaration of feeling from one who felt, and lived, and talked, and dressed according to a social code fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians.

Her low voice had a certain tremor of repressed emotion in it as she said: "But think of Sir Henry. The bridegroom is part of the wedding, after all; think of what he is. What can you care for in him? Nothing. I don't see how you could. And he is twice your age. Be a brave girl, and break it off."

Di felt as she said the last words that the courage of being able to break off the engagement was as nothing to that of continuing to keep it. She did not realize that an entire lack of imagination wears, under certain circ.u.mstances, the appearance of the most stoical fort.i.tude.

The brave girl sobbed again, and pressed a little frilled square of cambric to her eyes.

"No," she gasped; "I can't--I can't! It has been in all the papers. Half my things are ordered; I have asked the bridesmaids. I can't go back now. It is wicked to break off an engagement. G.o.d would be very angry with me."

It is difficult to argue with any one who can make a Jorkins of the Almighty. Every word Madeleine spoke showed her friend how unavailing any further remonstrance would be. Di saw that she had gone through that common phase of imagination which a shallow nature feels to be prophetic. Madeleine had, in what stood proxy for her imagination, already regarded herself as a bride, as the recipient, not of diamonds in general, but of the Verelst diamonds in particular. Already in maiden meditation she had seen herself arrive at certain houses on bridal visits--had contemplated herself opening a county hunt ball as the bride of the year--until she looked upon the wedding as a settled event, the husband as a necessary adjunct, the _trousseaux_ as a certainty.

"And you must see my under-things when they come, because we have always been such friends," continued Madeleine, as Di remained silent. She dried her eyes with little dabs, for even in emotion she remembered the danger of wiping them, while she favoured Di with minute details respecting those complete sets of under-clothing which so mysteriously enhance and dignify the holy estate of matrimony in the feminine mind.

But Di was not listening. The image of Sir Henry, who had besought herself to marry him a year ago, reverted to her mind with a remembrance of her own repulsion towards the Moloch to which Madeleine was preparing to offer herself up.

"Madeleine," she said suddenly, "I am sure from what I have seen that marriage is too difficult if you don't care for your husband. The married people who did not marry for love tell one so by their faces. I am sure there are some hard times to be lived through even when you care very much. Nothing but a great love, granny says, will float one over some of the rocks ahead. But to marry without love is like undertaking to sew without a needle, or dig without a spade--attempting difficult work without the tool provided for it. Oh, Madeleine, don't do it! Break it off--break it off!"

Madeleine clung closer to the girl kneeling beside her. It almost seemed as if the urgent eager voice were not speaking in vain.

A tap came at the door.

Di, always shy of betraying emotion, was on her feet in a moment.

Madeleine drew the screen hastily between herself and the light as she said, "Come in."

It was the French maid, who explained that the dressmaker had sent the two rolls of brocade as she had promised, so that mademoiselle might judge of them in the piece. She brought them in with her, and spread them in artistic folds on two chairs.

Madeleine sat up and gave a little sigh.

"If she gives them up, she will give him up, too," thought Di. "This is the turning-point."

"Di," she said earnestly, "which would you advise, the mauve or the white and gold? I always think you have such taste."

Di started and turned a shade pale. She saw by that one sentence that the die had been thrown, though Madeleine was not herself aware of it.

The moments of our most important decisions are often precisely those in which nothing seems to have been decided; and only long afterwards, when we perceive with astonishment that the Rubicon has been crossed, do we realize that in that half-forgotten instant of hesitation as to some apparently unimportant side issue, in that unconscious movement that betrayed a feeling of which we were not aware, our choice was made. The crises of life come, like the Kingdom of Heaven, without observation.

Our characters, and not our deliberate actions, decide for us; and even when the moment of crisis is apprehended at the time by the troubling of the water, action is generally a little late. Character, as a rule, steps down first. It was so with Madeleine.

Sir Henry owed his bride to the exactly timed appearance of a mauve brocade sprinkled with silver _fleur-de-lys_. The maid turned it lightly, and the silver threads gleamed through the rich pale material.

"It is perfect," said Madeleine in a hushed voice; "absolutely perfect.

Don't you think so, Di? And she says she will do it for forty guineas, as she is making me other things. The front is to be a silver gauze over plain mauve satin to match, and the train of the brocade. The white and gold is nothing to it."

"It is very beautiful," said Di, looking at it with a kind of horror. It seemed to her at the moment as if every one had their price.

Madeleine smiled faintly. She felt that Di must envy her. It was of course only natural that she should do so. A thought strayed across her mind that in the future many gowns of this description, hitherto un.o.btainable and unsuitable, might sweeten existence; and she would be kind to Di. She would press an old one, before it was really old, on her occasionally.