LIFE has its crystal days, its rare hours of a stainless beauty, and a joy so pure that we may dare to call in the flowers to rejoice with us, and the language of the birds ceases to be an unknown tongue. Our real life as we look back seems to have been lived in those days that memory holds so tenderly. But it is not so in reality. Fortitude, steadfastness, the makings of character, come not of rainbow-dawns and quiet evenings, and the facile attainment of small desires. More frequently they are the outcome of "the sleepless nights that mould youth;" of hopes not dead, but run to seed; of the inadequate loves and friendships that embitter early life, and warn off the young soul from any more mistaking husks for bread.
John had had many heavy days, and, latterly, many days and long-drawn nights, when it had been uphill work to bear in silence, or bear at all, the lessons of that expensive teacher physical pain. And now pain was past and convalescence was past, and Fate smiled, and drew from out her knotted medley of bright and sombre colours one thread of pure untarnished gold for John, and worked it into the pattern of his life.
Di was at Overleigh. Tall lilies had been ranged in the hall to welcome her on her arrival. The dogs had been introduced to her at tea time. Lindo had allowed himself to be patted, and after sniffing her dress attentively with the air of a connoisseur, had retired with dignity to his chair. Fritz, on the contrary, the amber-eyed dachshund, all tail-wagging, and smiles, and saliva, had made himself cheap at once, and had even turned over on his back, inviting friction where he valued it most, before he had known Di five minutes.
Di was really at Overleigh. Each morning John woke up incredulous that such a thing could be, each morning listened for her light footfall on the stairs, and saw her come into the dining-hall, an active living presence, through the cedar and ebony doors. There were a few other people in the house, the sort of chance collection which poor relations, arriving with great expectations and their best clothes, consider to be a party. There were his aunt, Miss Fane, and a young painter who was making studies for an Elizabethan interior, and some one else—no, more than one, two or three others, John never clearly remembered afterwards who, or whether they were male or female. Perhaps they were friends of his aunt's. Anyhow, Mrs. Courtenay, who had proposed herself at her own time, was apparently quite content. Di seemed content also, with the light-hearted joyous content of a life that has in it no regret, no story, no past.
John often wondered in these days whether there had ever been a time when he had known what Di was like, what she looked like to other people. He tried to recall her as he had seen her first at the Speaker's; but that photograph of memory of a tall handsome girl was not the least like Di. Di had become Di to John, not like anything or anybody; Di in a shady hat sitting on the low wall of the bowling-green; or Di riding with him through the forest, and up and away across the opal moors; or, better still, Di singing ballads in the pictured music-room in the evening, in her low small voice, that was not considered good enough for general society, but which, in John's opinion, was good enough for heaven itself.
The painter used to leave the others in the gallery and stroll in on these occasions. He was a gentle, elegant person, with the pensive, regretful air often observable in an imaginative man who has married young. He made a little sketch of Di. He said it would not interfere, as John feared it might, with the prosecution of his larger work.
Presently a wet morning came, and John took Di on an expedition to the dungeons with torches, and afterwards over the castle. He showed her the chapel, with its rose window and high altar, where the daughters of the house had been married, where her namesake, Diana, had been wed to Vernon of the Red Hand. He showed her the state-rooms with their tapestried walls and painted ceilings. Di extorted a plaintive music from the old spinet in the garret gallery where John's nurseries were. Mitty came out to listen, and then it was her turn. She invited Di into the nursery, which, in these later days, was resplendent with John's gifts, the pride of Mitty's heart, the envy of the elect ladies of the village. There were richly bound Bibles and church-services, and Russia leather writing-cases, and inlaid tea-caddies, and china stands and book-slides, and satin-lined workboxes bristling with cutlery, and photograph frames and tea-sets—in fact, there was everything. There, also, John's prizes were kept, for Mitty had taken charge of them for him since the first holidays, when he had rushed up to the nursery to dazzle her with the slim red volume, which he had not thought of showing to his father; to which as time went on many others were added, and even great volumes of Stuart Mill in calf and gold during the Oxford days.
Mitty showed them to Di, showed her John's little high chair by the fire, and his Noah's ark. She gave Di full particulars of all his most unromantic illnesses, and produced photographs, taken at her own expense, of her lamb in every stage of bullet-headed childhood; from an open-mouthed face and two clutching hands set in a lather of white lace, to a sturdy, frowning little boy in a black velvet suit leaning on a bat.
"There's the last," said Mitty, pointing with pride to a large steel engraving of John in his heaviest expression, in a heavy gilt frame. "That was done for the tenantry when Master John come of age." And Mitty, in spite of a desperate attempt on John's part to divert the conversation to other topics, went on to expatiate on that event until John fairly bolted, leaving her in delighted possession of a new and sympathetic listener.
"And all the steps was covered with red cloth," continued Mitty to her visitor, "and the crowd, Miss Dinah, you could have walked on their heads. And Mr. John come down into the hall, and Mr. Goodwin was with him, and he turns round to us, for we was all in the hall drawn up in two rows, from Mrs. Alcock to the scullery-maid, and he says, 'Where is Mrs. Emson?' Those were his very words, Miss Tempest, my dear; and I says, 'Here, sir!' for I was along of Mrs. Alcock. And he says to Parker, 'Open both the doors, Parker,' and then he says, quite quiet, as if it was just every day, 'I have not many relations here,' for there was not a soul of his own family, miss, and he did not ask his mother's folk, 'but,' he says, 'I have my two best friends here, and that is enough. Goodwin,' he says, 'will you stand on my right, and you must stand on the other side, Mitty.'"