CHAPTER XV
HEN Diana left the playhouse on the Saturday, a heavy rain was falling through the grimy dark, and she muffled her head in her hood and stepped swiftly from the door into the chair, her little feet splashing in the puddled ill-lit gutter, the flambeaux dazzling in the rain. The men lowered the roof instantly and shut the door and set off at a swinging trot, eager no doubt to have done with the dirty night.
Her thoughts were strangely intermingled—the songs and laughter of the playhouse still echoed among them, the gay kindness of the good Duchess, the words of my Lady Fanny,—(“ ’Twas strange she should tell me, of all women, that story of his Grace’s marriage.”)—all these things mixt with a deep content that my Lord Baltimore had been absent this night and indeed many nights lately. ’Twas like a cool lotion to allay a burn—this absence! Sure it might mean he was weary of a pursuit that could bring only rebuffs and contempt, and if so she could deal with others, less to be dreaded.
The play had now been playing two months to crowded houses and still there was no slackening in the rage to see it. Money was turned away nightly, and the rows of chairs on the stage were three deep and some of the boxes run into each other to make more room. ’Twas raging like a fever in the provinces also and a whole regiment of pretty Pollys had sprung up to follow her lead, but none, none like the fair original, so swore men and women alike. A triumph to turn any girl’s head, and since the idol was but a girl, when all’s said and done, it might easily turn hers were it not for a stronger passion than vanity that swept over it and submerged it and left it forgotten.
Love. What was it to be the adored of the town when the one man on whom her own eyes waited knew her very triumph to involve disgrace? Supposing, even supposing, that her birth equalled his own, that he were less than a great Peer of England and she more than a poor lieutenant’s daughter, supposing she were lovely as the fabled Helen, with all the enchantments of Circe added, how could this or aught else rub out the blot that she was but a puppet at whom every rake might stare and form his loose conjectures? True, noblemen as great had condescended to the stage for their pleasures, but that served her nothing. There was a something in her heart that told her the man’s respect for her girlhood would close that door for ever, nor could she wish it otherwise. While, as for anything more, she trembled with shame that even a regret for a thing so impossible should cross her mind. O that she had never seen him but eyeing her on the stage with cold admiration as she played her Newgate part to the life. Alas for the Duchess’s mistaken favour that had taken her from her own humble sphere and set her in one in which however her own heart made her native, her circumstances made her but a tolerated intruder.
So far reason carried her, and then her thoughts were words no longer—but dreams, longings, griefs. Longings for a voice best forgot, for a face—better she had never seen it; for a friend high, gracious, endearing, that made all others as nothing to her and to whom she herself could be nothing but a passing thought. ’Tis the man should look up, not the woman. Before marriage, at least, hers is the throne, but here was this beggar-maid kneeling on the lowest step, her face hidden in her hands for shame, whilst King Cophetua gazed beyond her into regions she must never know.
And he himself so comfortless! There lay the sharpest sting. Suppose she could change places with the shining and lovely lady who had talked with her so condescending—Were she the Lady Fanny Armine—yet herself!—might there be more than a few words of praise? So in imagination she saw the proud eyes soften, the stern mouth relax,—the high courtesy break into the wonderment of passion. His arms—his lips—.