Copyright, Canada, 1918,
By Marie Corelli
THE YOUNG DIANA
THE YOUNG DIANA
CHAPTER I
Once upon a time, in earlier and less congested days of literary effort, an Author was accustomed to address the Public as “Gentle Reader.” It was a civil phrase, involving a pretty piece of flattery. It implied three things: first, that if the Reader were not “gentle,” the Author’s courtesy might persuade him or her to become so—secondly, that criticism, whether favourable or the reverse, might perhaps be generously postponed till the reading of the book was finished,—and thirdly, that the Author had no wish to irritate the Reader’s feelings, but rather sought to prepare and smooth the way to a friendly understanding. Now I am at one with my predecessors in all these delicate points of understanding, and as I am about to relate what every person of merely average intelligence is likely to regard as an incredible narrative, I think it as well to begin politely, in the old-fashioned “grand” manner of appeal, which is half apologetic, and half conciliatory. “Gentle Reader,” therefore, I pray you to be friends with me! Do not lose either patience or temper while following the strange adventures of a very strange woman,—though in case you should be disappointed in seeking for what you will not find, let me say at once that my story is not of the Sex Problem type. No! My heroine is not perverted from the paths of decency and order, or drawn to a bad end; in fact, I cannot bring her to an end at all, as she is still very much alive and doing uncommonly well for herself. Any end for Diana May would seem not only incongruous, but manifestly impossible.
Life, as we all know, is a curious business. It is like a stage mask with two faces,—the one comic, the other tragic. The way we look at it depends on the way it looks at us. Some of us have seen it on both sides, and are neither edified nor impressed.
Then, again—life is a series of “sensations.” We who live now are always describing life. They who lived long ago did the same. It seems that none of us have ever found, or can ever find, anything better to occupy ourselves withal. All through the ages the millions of human creatures who once were born and who are now dead, passed their time on this planet in experiencing “sensations,” and relating their experiences to one another, each telling his or her little “tale of woe” in a different way. So anxious were they, and so anxious are we, to explain the special and individual manner in which our mental and physical vibrations respond to the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves, that all systems of religion, government, science, art and philosophy have been, and are, evolved simply and solely out of the pains and pleasures of a mass of atoms who are “feeling” things and trying to express their feelings to each other. These feelings they designate by various lofty names, such as “faith,” “logic,” “reason,” “opinion,” “wisdom,” and so forth; and upon them they build temporary fabrics of Law and Order, vastly solid in appearance, yet collapsible as a house of cards, and crumbling at a touch, while every now and again there comes a sudden, unlooked-for interruption to their discussions and plans—a kind of dark pause and suggestion of chaos, such as a great war, a plague or other unwelcome “visitation of God,” wherein “feelings” almost cease, or else people are too frightened to talk about them. They are chilled into nervous silence and wait, afflicted by fear and discouragement, till the cloud passes and the air clears. Then the perpetual buzz of “feeling” begins again in the mixed bass and treble of complaint and rejoicing,—a kind of monotonous noise without harmony. External Nature has no part in it, for Man is the only creature that ever tries to explain the phenomena of existence. It is not in the least comprehensible why he alone should thus trouble and perplex himself,—or why his incessant consideration and analysis of his own emotions should be allowed to go on,—for, whatsoever education may do for us, we shall never be educated out of the sense of our own importance. Which is an odd fact, moving many thoughtful minds to never-ending wonder.
My heroine, Diana May, wondered. She was always wondering. She spent weeks, and months, and years, in a chronic state of wonder. She wondered about herself and several other people, because she thought both herself and those several other people so absurd. She found no use for herself in the general scheme of things, and tried, with much patient humility, to account for herself. But though she read books on science, books on psychology, books on natural and spiritual law, and studied complex problems of evolution and selection of species till her poor dim eyes grew dimmer, and the “lines from nose to chin” became ever longer and deeper, she could discover no way through the thick bog of her difficulties. She was an awkward numeral in a sum; she did not know why she came in or how she was to be got out.
Her father and mother were what are called “very well-to-do-people,” with a pleasantly suburban reputation for respectability and regular church attendance. Mr. James Polydore May,—this was his name in full, as engraved on his visiting card—was a small man in stature, but in self-complacency the biggest one alive. He had made a considerable fortune in a certain manufacturing business which need not here be specified, and he had speculated with it in a shrewd and careful manner which was not without a touch of genius, the happy result being that he had always gained and never lost. Now at the age of sixty, he was free from all financial care, and could rattle gold and silver in his trousers-pockets with a sense of pleasure in their clinking sound,—they had the sweetness of church-bells which proclaim the sure nearness of a prosperous town. He was not a bad-looking little veteran,—he had, as he was fond of saying of himself, “a good chest measurement,” and though his legs were short, they were not bandy. Inclined to corpulence, the two lower buttons of his waistcoat were generally left undone, that he might the more easily stretch himself after a full meal. His physiognomy was not so much intelligent as pugnacious—his bushy eyebrows, hair and moustache gave him at certain moments the look of an irascible old terrier. He had keen small eyes, coming close to the bridge of a rather pronounced Israelitish nose, and to these characteristics was added a generally assertive air,—an air which went before him like an advancing atmosphere, heralding his approach as a “somebody”—that sort of atmosphere which invariably accompanies nobodies. His admiration of the fair sex was open and not always discreet, and from his youth up he had believed himself capable of subjugating any and every woman. He had an agreeable “first manner” of his own on introduction,—a manner which was absolutely deceptive, giving no clue to the uglier side of his nature. His wife could have told whole stories about this “first manner” of his, had she not long ago given up the attempt to retain any hold on her own individuality. She had been a woman of average intelligence when she married him,—commonplace, certainly, but good-natured and willing to make the best of everything; needless to say that the illusions of youth vanished with the first years of wedded life (as they are apt to do), and she had gradually sunk into a flabby condition of resigned nonentity, seeing there was nothing else left for her. The dull, tame tenor of her days had once been interrupted by the birth of her only child Diana, who as long as she was small and young, and while she was being educated under the usual system of governesses and schools, was an object of delight, affection, amusement and interest, and who, when she grew up and “came out” at eighteen as a graceful, pretty girl of the freshest type of English beauty, gave her mother something to love and to live for,—but alas!—Diana had proved the bitterest of all her disappointments. The “coming-out” business, the balls, the race-meetings and other matrimonial traps had been set in vain;—the training, the music, the dancing, the “toilettes”—had failed to attract,—and Diana had not married. She had fallen in love, as most girls do before they know much about men,—and she had engaged herself to an officer with “expectations” for whom, with a romantic devotion as out of date as the poems of Chaucer, she had waited for seven long years in a resigned condition of alarming constancy,—and then, when his “expectations” were realised, he had promptly thrown her over for a fairer and younger partner. By that time Diana was what is called “getting on.” All this had tried the temper of Mrs. James Polydore May considerably—and she took refuge from her many vexations in the pleasures of the table and the consolations of sleep. The result of this mode of procedure was that she became corpulent and unwieldy,—her original self was swallowed up in a sort of featherbed of adipose tissue, from which she peered out on the world with protruding, lustreless eyes, the tip of her small nose seeming to protest feebly against the injustice of being well-nigh walled from sight between the massive flabby cheeks on either side of its never classic and distinctly parsimonious proportions. With oversleep and over-eating she had matured into a stupid and somewhat obstinate woman, with a habit of saying unmeaningly nice or nasty things:—she would “gush” affectionately to all and sundry,—to the maid who fastened her shoes as ardently as to a friend of many years standing,—yet she would mock her own guests behind their backs, or unkindly criticise the physical and mental defects of the very man or woman she had flattered obsequiously five minutes before. So that she was not exactly a “safe” acquaintance,—you never knew where to have her. But,—as is often the case with these placidly smiling, obese ladies,—everyone seemed to be in a conspiracy to call her “sweet,” and “dear” and “kind,” whereas in very truth she was one of the most selfish souls extant. Her charities were always carefully considered and bestowed in quarters where she was likely to get most credit for them,—her profusely expressed sympathy for other people’s troubles exhausted itself in a few moments, and she would straightway forget what form of loss or misfortune she had just been commiserating,—while, despite her proverbial “dear” and “sweet” attributes, she had a sulky temper which would hold her in its grip for days, during which time she would neither speak nor be spoken to. Her chief interest and attention were centred on eatables, and she always made a point of going to breakfast in advance of her husband, so that she might select for herself the most succulent morsels out of the regulation dish of fried bacon, before he had a chance to look in. Husband and wife were always arguing with each other, and both were always wrong in each other’s opinion. Mrs. James Polydore May considered her worser half as something of a wayward and peevish child, and he in turn looked upon her as a useful domestic female—“perfectly simple and natural,” he was wont to say, a statement which, if true, would have been vastly convenient to him as he could then have deceived her more easily. But “deeper than ever plummet sounded” was the “simplicity” wherewith Mrs. James Polydore May was endowed, and the “natural” way in which she managed to secure her own comfort, convenience and ease while assuming to be the most guileless and unselfish of women; indeed there were times when she was fairly astonished at herself for having “arranged things so cleverly,” as she expressed it. Whenever a woman of her type admits to having “arranged things cleverly” you may be sure that the most astute lawyer alive could never surpass her in the height or the depth of duplicity.
Such, briefly outlined, were the characteristics of the couple who, in an absent-minded moment, had taken upon themselves the responsibility of bringing a woman into the world for whom apparently the world had no use. Woman, considered in the rough abstract, is only the pack-mule of man,—his goods, his chattels, created specially to be the “vessel” of his passion and humour,—and without his favour and support she is by universal consent set down as a lonely and wandering mistake. Such is the Law and the Prophets. Under these circumstances, which have recently shown signs of yielding to pressure, Diana, the rapidly ageing spinster daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Polydore May, was in pitiable plight. No man wanted her, not even to serve him as a pack-mule. No man sought to add her person to his goods and chattels, and at the time this true story opens, she was not fair or fascinating or young enough to serve him as a toy for his delight, a plaything of his pleasure. Life had been very monotonous for her since she had passed the turning-point of thirty years,—“nice” people, who always say nasty things, remarked “how passée she was getting,”—thereby helping the ageing process considerably. She, meanwhile, bore her lot with exemplary cheerfulness,—she neither grizzled nor complained, nor showed herself envious of youth or youthful loveliness. A comforting idea of “duty” took possession of her mind, and she devoted herself to the tenderest care of her fat mother and irritable father, waiting upon them like a slave, and saying her prayers for them night and morning as simply as a child, without the faintest suspicion that they were past praying for. The years went on, and she took pains to educate herself in all that might be useful,—she read much and thought more,—she mastered two or three languages, and spoke them with ease and fluency, and she was an admirable musician. She had an abundance of pretty light-brown hair, and all her movements were graceful, but alas!—the unmistakable look of growing old was stamped upon her once mobile features,—she had become angular and flat-chested, and the unbecoming straight line from waist to knee, which gave her figure a kind of pitiful masculinity, was developing with hard and bony relentlessness. One charm she had, which she herself recognised and took care to cultivate—“a low, sweet voice, an excellent thing in woman.” If one chanced to hear her speaking in an adjoining room, the effect was remarkable,—one felt that some exquisite creature of immortal youth and tenderness was expressing a heavenly thought in music.