CONTENTS
DIANA
CHAPTER I.
HERSELF.
Diana Trelawny was a great heiress in the ordinary sense of the word, though the term was one which she objected to strongly. She was rather a great proprietor and landowner, no longer looking forward to any inheritance, but in full possession of it. She had a fine estate, a fine old English house, and a great deal of money in all kinds of stocks and securities. Besides this, she was a handsome woman, quite sufficiently handsome in the light of her wealth to be called beautiful—not a girl, a beautiful woman of thirty, with some talents, a great deal of character, and a most enviable and desirable position. She was not, indeed, chairman of the quarter-sessions, as she might have been had she written herself Daniel instead of Diana, nor was she even on the commission of the peace. She did not, so far as I am aware, regret either of these disabilities; but these, and a few more of the same kind, were the chief things that distinguished her from the other great county magnates. She paid very little attention to these points of difference. A woman who is rich, and has a commanding position, has few but sentimental grievances to complain of. These sentimental grievances are often very disagreeable, and tell like personal insults by times; but they are practically inoperative in cases like that of Miss Trelawny. She had broken the bonds of youth, the only ones which, in her position, might have restrained her. She had no objections that all the country and all the world should know she was thirty; and being thirty, she claimed full independence, which was as fully accorded to her. She had no tastes or inclinations to make that independence unlovely; and no theory of emancipation which demanded exceptional boldness of fact to justify it—a thing which gets many women into trouble. Her house was as pleasant a house as could be found, her society courted, her character respected. She had all the advantages of a country gentleman, and she had other advantages inseparable from the fact that she was a lady and not a gentleman. A marriageable young squire of her age and good looks would no doubt have been an extremely popular and much-sought-after person; but Diana was more popular and more sought after than any young squire. For even if you take the very worst view of English society, and believe that managing mothers and daughters eager to be married are as abundant as blackberries, the fact still remains that certain reticences must be observed, and that the best women do not throw themselves at the hero’s head—or feet. Whereas, in Diana’s case, these reticences were scarcely necessary, for everybody paid undisguised court to the beautiful, wealthy, smiling, and gracious young woman, and the best men in the neighbourhood thought no shame to throw themselves at her head—or feet, as the case might be. She was more openly courted than any man, for it was more seemly and fit that she should be courted, and no disgrace to the noblest. The county was more proud of her, more devoted to her, than it would have been to any male potentate. It made a kind of queen of her, always in dutiful and loyal subordination to the real mistress of these realms; but Diana was the queen of the county. Thus her sex was nothing but an additional pedestal to this enviable person: for to be sure she did not much care, being as yet indifferently interested in politics, for the disadvantage of having no vote.
Diana, however, had not always been so fortunate and so great: she was not born the heiress of the Chase, and of all the good things involved in that. Old Lady Trelawny, its last ruler, was a Trelawny born, and princess of the name, as well as a Trelawny by marriage. She and her husband had united the two branches of the family, he having the title and she the property: and had intended in so doing to re-found and concentrate in their descendants the strength of the race, which had become straggling and weakly, running into wild offshoots of collaterals which sucked all the strength from the parent stem. But, alas! there is nothing more remarkable than the indifference of Providence to such arrangements, even in the most important families. In this case Heaven took no notice of the intention at all, but simply left this pair childless, as if their offspring had been of no consequence, confounding all their designs. They could not believe for a long time that such a neglect was possible; but they lived long enough to get over their surprise, and to form a great many new plans for their future heir, who had to be chosen within a certain circle of kinship. It may be supposed that this choice, which had to be made among them, fluttered the family of Trelawny beyond measure, and kept up for years a wonderful excitement in all its branches. Such a possibility hanging over one’s head is very bad for the character, and it is to be feared that the Trelawnys in general made exhibitions of their eagerness in a way which did not please the sharp-sighted old pair to whom the privilege of choice was given.
The only one of all the lineage who did not answer to the general call, and put in some claim more or less servilely to his chance of the inheritance, was a certain Captain John, who had disappeared from the surface of the family long before, and Lady Trelawny knew why. Up to the time when the old lady was seventy, it still seemed quite clear to her that Captain John kept out of the way because he could not bear to see her the wife of Sir John, though such had been her position for the last half-century.
The old pair were at Brighton when the husband’s last illness began; and looking from their windows, in the feebleness of their old age, they watched daily a certain procession of girls from one of the many girls’ schools (or should I not say establishments for young ladies?) in the place, which amused the old people much. It was an event in Sir John’s dull morning when they passed with their fresh faces, in charge of a handsome, stately young woman, who was the English governess. By degrees both Sir John and my lady became interested in this girl: and it may be supposed what a leap of additional warmth was given to the rising fancy when they found out that her name, too, was Trelawny. Trelawnys are not so plentiful as Browns: the old lady drove to Mrs. Seymour’s school to find out who she was, and sent her half-a-dozen invitations before Diana could be persuaded to go. “Why should I go? I would in a moment if I could do anything for them; but they are smothered in friends and doctors and servants,” said the proud young woman. Mrs. Seymour, who was a sensible person, coaxed and persuaded and half compelled the visit; and when it turned out that this stately Diana was the only child of Captain John, it may be supposed what excitement awoke among all the Trelawnys. It gave the old lady a great shock at first, for she had believed in Captain John as living on somewhere in mournful old bachelorhood, keeping out of sight and out of the world in order to escape the misery of seeing herself at seventy the wife of another, and her désillusionment cost her a pang. Afterwards, when she found out that Captain John had married late in life—he was older by ten years than she—a homely little clergyman’s daughter who had been kind to him in a little village in Wales where he fished and dreamed his life away, and had died there a dozen years before, her heart was touched more than ever; and it was Lady Trelawny’s tears that persuaded Diana, against her will, to leave her independent position and become the nurse and companion of the old people. Before Sir John died the decision was made, but it was the old lady who carried it out. Captain John had been the nearest in blood, first cousin to both husband and wife. His daughter was, of all the Trelawnys, the one most near to them, their natural heir.
A year afterwards Diana had become Miss Trelawny of the Chase, a very great lady, and had taken the county by storm at the first glance. Perhaps, indeed, their want of any previous familiarity with her had something to do with the position to which she rose immediately in her own right. The county had not seen her grow up, and did not know all her youthful faults and weaknesses, as was the case with most of her fellow-magnates. She came into it full-grown, full-blown, beautiful, stately, independent, neither to be snubbed nor patronised nor put down. The episode of the school, which might have sentenced a humbler woman to exclusion from the reigning caste, what did it matter in a Trelawny? Your princesses born can do anything, the humblest offices. She neither bragged of it nor was ashamed of it, but would mention it simply in her conversation when need was, in the most matter-of-fact way, as a princess ought to do. What did it matter to her one way or another? The humility and the greatness were immaterial to Diana. She was herself in all times and places, and had been herself before she became Miss Trelawny of the Chase; though the title (really a title in the circumstances) suited her admirably. Her neighbour, Mr. Biddulph, called her “the image that fell down from Jupiter.” Such was her position in the world, eminent, rich, remarkable in position, yet something more—something that had nothing to do with her position, which was simply her, and her alone.