The Following of the Star Part 12

"Very well," said Diana. "Then that is settled. You have helped me with my first gift, Cousin David. Now you must advise and help me about the second. And, indeed, the possibility of offering the first depends almost entirely upon the advice you give me about the second. You know you said the frankincense meant our ideals--the high and holy things in our lives? Well, my ideals are in sore peril. I want you to advise me as to how to keep them. Listen! There was a codicil to Uncle Falcon's will--a private codicil known only to Mr. Inglestry and myself, and only to be made known a year after his death, to those whom, if I failed to fulfil its conditions, it might then concern. Riverscourt, and all this wealth, are mine, only on condition that I am married, within twelve months of Uncle Falcon's death. He has been dead, eleven."

Diana paused.

"Good G.o.d!" said David Rivers; and it was not a careless exclamation. It was a cry of protest from his very soul. "On condition that you are married!" he said. "And to whom?"

"No stipulation was made as to that," replied Diana. "But Uncle Falcon had three men in his mind, all of whom he liked, and each of whom considers himself in love with me: a famous doctor in London, a distinguished cleric in our cathedral town, and a distant cousin, Rupert Rivers, to whom the whole property is to go, if I fail to fulfil the condition."

David sat forward, with his elbows on his knees, and rumpled his hair with his hands. Horror and dismay were in his honest eyes.

"It is unbelievable!" he said. "That he should really care for you, and wish your happiness, and yet lay this burden upon you after his death.

His mind must have been affected when he made that codicil."

"So Mr. Inglestry says; but not sufficiently affected to enable us to dispute it. The idea of bending me to matrimony, and of forcing me to admit that it was the better part, had become a monomania with Uncle Falcon."

David sat with his head in his hands, his look bent upon the floor. Now that he knew of this cruel condition imposed upon the beautiful girl sitting opposite to him, he could not bring himself to lift his eyes to hers. She should be looked at only with admiration and wonder; and now a depth of pity would be in his eyes. Therefore he kept them lowered.

"So," said Diana, "you see how I am placed. If I refuse to fulfil the condition, on the anniversary of Uncle Falcon's death we must tell Rupert Rivers of the codicil; I shall have to hand over everything to him; leave my dear home, and go back to the life of running after omnibuses, and pretending to enjoy potted meat lunches! On the other hand, if--in order to keep my home, my income, all the luxuries I love, my position in the county, and the influence which I now for the first time begin to value for the true reason--I marry one of these men, or one of half a dozen others who would require only the slightest encouragement to propose to me at once, I fail to keep true to my own ideals; I practically barter myself and my liberty, in order to keep the place which is rightfully my own; I sink to the level of the women I have long despised, who marry for money."

"You must not do that," said David. "Nay, more; you _could_ not do that.

But is not your Cousin Rupert a man whom you might learn to love; a man you could marry for the real reasons?"

Diana laughed, bitterly.

"Cousin David," she said, "shortly before grandpapa died, I was engaged to Rupert Rivers for a fortnight. At the end of that time I loathed my own body. Young as I was, and scornfully opposed by my mother, I took matters into my own hands, and broke off the engagement."

David looked perplexed.

"It should not have had that effect upon you," he said, slowly. "I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that a man's love and worship should tend to make a woman reverence her own body, and regard her beauty in a new light, because of his delight in it. I remember--" a sudden flush suffused David's pale cheeks, but he brought forth his reminiscence bravely, for Diana's sake: "I remember kissing Amy's hand the evening before I first went to college, and she wrote and told me that for days afterwards that hand had seemed unlike the other, and whenever she looked at it she remembered that I had kissed it."

Diana's laughter was in her eyes. She did not admit it to her voice. She felt very much older, at that moment, than David Rivers.

"Oh, you dear boy!" she said. "What can you, with your Amy and your Africans, know of such men as Rupert, or the doctor, or even--even the church dignitary? _You_ would love a woman's soul, and cherish her body because it contained it. _They_ make one feel that nothing else matters much, so long as one is beautiful. And after having been looked at by them for a little while, one feels inclined to smash one's mirror."

David lifted quiet eyes to hers. They seemed deep wells of childlike purity; yet there was fire in their calm depths.

"When you _are_ so beautiful," he said, simply, "you can't blame a man for thinking so, when he looks at you."

Diana laughed, blushing. She was surfeited with compliments; yet this of David's, so unpremeditated, so impersonal, pleased her more than any compliment had ever pleased her.

But, in an instant, she was grave again. Momentous issues lay before her. Uncle Falcon had been dead eleven months.

"Then would you advise me to marry, and thus retain the property?" she suggested.

"G.o.d forbid!" cried David. "That you should be compelled to leave here, seems intolerable; but it would be infinitely more intolerable that you should make a loveless marriage. Give up all, if needs must, but--keep your ideals."

Diana glanced at him, from beneath half-lifted lids.

"That will mean, Cousin David, that you cannot have the money for your church, your school, your printing-press, and your steam-launch; nor the yearly income for current expenses."

Now, curiously enough, David had not thought of this. His mind had been completely taken up with the idea of Diana running after omnibuses and lunching cheaply on potted meat.

The great disappointment now struck him with full force; but he did not waver for an instant.

"How could I build the Church of the Holy Star on the proceeds of your lost ideals?" he said. "If my church is to be built, the money will be found in some other way."

"There _is_ another way," said Diana, suddenly.

David looked up, surprised at the forceful decision of her tone.

"What other way is there?" he asked.

Diana rose; walked over to the window and stood looking across the s.p.a.cious park, at the pale gold of the wintry sunset.

She was in full view, at last, of her high fence, and did not yet know what lay beyond it. She headed straight for it; but she rode on the curb.

She walked back to the fireplace, and stood confronting him; her superb young figure drawn up to its full height.

Her voice was very quiet; her manner, very deliberate, as she answered his question.

"I want _you_ to marry me, Cousin David," she said, "on the morning of the day on which you start for Central Africa."

CHAPTER X

DIANA'S HIGH FENCE

David Rivers sprang to his feet, and faced Diana.

"I cannot do that," he said.

Diana had expected this. She waited a moment, silently; while the atmosphere palpitated with David's intense surprise.

Then: "Why not, Cousin David?" she asked quietly.

And, as he still stood before her, speechless, "Sit down," she commanded, "and tell me. Why not?"

But David stood his ground, and Diana realised, for the first time, that he was slightly taller than herself.

"Why not?" he said. "Why not! Why because, even if I wished--I mean, even if you wished--even if we both wished for each other--in that way--Central Africa is no place for a woman. I would never take a woman there!"

Diana's face flushed. Her white teeth bit sharply into her lower lip.

Her hands clenched themselves suddenly at her sides. The fury of her eyes flashed full into the blank dismay of his.

Then, with a mighty effort, she mastered her imperious temper.