The little party, which was so shrunken out of its old dimensions, showed as curious a mixture of feelings as could well be seen, when it met that evening round Diana’s table. Mrs. Norton was subdued by the reality of the event to which she had been looking forward so long. Never till now had she thought of it as affecting herself. The little lady might be selfish for her Sophy, but she was not selfish in her own person; nor did she think of her own comfort as opposed to that of her niece. So that now, when Sophy was gone—she and her boxes and preparations, and her voice and her footstep, all gone—a sudden collapse ensued for poor Mrs. Norton. The sense of her loneliness came upon her all in a moment. She was happy now, she had said fervently; she had placed her child in the care of a good man, who would love and cherish her; and now, whatever happened to herself, Sophy would be safe. But even as she said the words the sense of her loneliness had seized upon the poor little woman, and brought up a sob into her throat. Sophy was provided for. Sophy had a husband and a coronet—the last an unhoped-for glory—but she, had she lost Sophy? She was brave, and choked back the sob, and upbraided herself for her selfishness, but still this constriction of the throat would come back. “I am rather worn out, that is the fact,” she said to Diana, unable to conceal the break in her voice, but laughing brokenly too; “we are so subject to our bodies. I never would allow I was tired, though S-Sophy warned me. If I b-break down, you know what it means, Diana—only t-tiredness and nerves—that is all.” And then she cried, and sat down to table, faltering and trembling, but trying to laugh, with the conviction that the sound, though far from mirthful, would make it apparent that she cried for joy.
As for the rector, he was full of the correctest sentiments, and kept his eye upon Diana and upon dear Bill to see what progress they were making. He made them little speeches as to the advantages of matrimony. “It is the one mistake I have made in my life,” said the rector. “It is true that my nephew, who is as good as a son to me, saves me, in some degree, from the loneliness. But I never should advise any one to follow my example. I hope my dear Bill will judge better,” Mr. Snodgrass added, with some solemnity. Diana was the only one who laughed, and this fact amused her still more than the primary cause of her merriment Mrs. Norton put her handkerchief to her eyes, while the curate sat in dumb worship with his eyes turned towards the object of his constant thoughts.
“Ah, Mr. Snodgrass, perhaps you will feel as I do. One would make any sacrifice for the happiness of one’s children, and then after, one suffers—not that I mean to complain. To see Sophy happy will be happiness enough for me, if her dear husband is spared to her. But I know what that is,” said poor little Mrs. Norton, subsiding into her handkerchief.
“We must not think of anything gloomy to-night,” said the rector. “I trust, indeed, that our dear friends the Pandolfinis will be long spared to each other, and that they will combine the good qualities of both nations. It will be a lesson indeed in Italian society to see the beauty of an English home. There is nothing like it, my dear Mrs. Norton. I have travelled as much as most men. I may say I am acquainted more or less with European circles: but an English home, and a marriage of true affection, as we have every reason to believe this is——”
“So was mine, Mr. Snodgrass,” said Mrs. Norton; “and oh, Providence was very kind to me. There are very, very few like my dear husband. The bishop always said there was no one he trusted in so much. He was adored in the parish. Rich and poor followed him to his grave. It was as if every family had lost a member. And what is life to those who are left? Forgive me, Diana. I know I am not so gay as I ought to be: but a wedding always, more or less, b-brings back the recollection of one’s d-desolation.”
“Quite true,” said the rector; “and to a solitary man like myself, the consideration that I have made one great mistake in life——”
“Then why don’t you——?” cried Diana, in whom this mutual lamentation roused the dormant sense of humour, delivering her from her own thoughts, which were not too gay. She could not complete her sentence, however, as she intended, feeling a real pity for the poor little lady opposite. “You, at least, Mr. Snodgrass,” she said, “why don’t you mend your mistake? There is time enough yet.” The rector smiled. He was pleased by the suggestion, though he did not mean to follow it. “No, no,” he said. “To be told by you, Miss Trelawny, that it is not too late, is a compliment indeed; but I give up in favour of Bill here, who is my representative. Dear Bill must mend my mistake, not an old man like me.”
Dear Bill did not say anything. He had fallen back into his normal condition, and only gazed at Diana with dull but faithful eyes. He had forgiven her the sharp and unexpected blow she had given him, but it had killed his little confidence, his sense that there was a secret understanding between them. He to be made happy by marrying a Sophy! how little she knew!
And yet how much better it would have been for him than for Pandolfini! Diana could not but think, with impatient regret, as she looked at them all, playing their little parts round the table, where they were never to sit again. Sophy would have made the curate a very good little wife. She would have led him insensibly down from those unattainable wishes which held him suspended between earth and heaven, and brought him back to the calm delights of the parish, which was his natural sphere and hers. They would have harmonised by infallible instinct and power of natural attraction, after perhaps a little interval of difficulty. But Pandolfini! what link could there be between the little English clergywoman who would have been so useful in a parish, and the grave Italian whose habits were as alien to hers as his race? Poor Pandolfini in these few weeks had ceased even to be an Anglomane. He had gone back upon his native habitudes, upon his old relations; he had turned even his English books, in temporary disgust, out of their places. Fortune had dealt with him hardly, turning his preferences—the tastes which he had cultivated with a certain pride—into weapons of his downfall. Diana did not know all this, as she allowed herself to fall back into a review of all that passed after her guests were gone on that last evening. She was going away alone as she had come. All that had happened since her arrival here had passed over her without touching her. As she had come, so she was going away. The lamps were burning low, the soft night air was blowing in gratefully at the windows. The great picture of the Count dei Sogni, which had hung over her so long, seemed to look mildly, regretfully, half reproachfully at her through the gloom. He, too, poor Pandolfini, was of the Sogni: and she herself, and all the chances of this strange mortal life, what were they but Sogni too? “We are such stuff as dreams are made of,” said Diana softly to herself, the tears coming to her eyes as she stood there alone in the great dim room, the curtains swaying softly behind her in the air of the night, and dim reflections showing all about like ghosts, repeating her tall white figure in the old dim mirrors. It had been nothing but a caprice on her part to come here—a mere fancy, without any seriousness or purpose in it. If she had but stayed at home—gone on upon her quiet round in her own sphere, where her duty was! Why was it that this whim; of hers should have brought a cloud upon the life of a good man? Life seemed to melt away and resolve itself into shadows, through those tears of visionary compunction that were in her eyes—a vain show, a phantasmagoria, momentary and delusive, strong gleams of light and rolling darknesses in which no meaning was. The vague whiteness that moved in spectral distance in the mirror far away from her at the end, of the room, far-off reflection of her own solitary figure, seemed to Diana as real as herself. What had they to do, the woman or the reflection, in this stately dwelling of the past?—brought here for a moment to pass across the surface of the mirror which had reflected so many things, to work unwitting and unwilling evil, and then to pass away—yet never to pass away having once been here. Diana hid her face in her hands, oppressed and bowed down by this visionary sense of intrusion, of harm, yet unreality. Not three months, not more than a moment in life: yet enough for so much to happen in, more important than many quiet years. So the great and the little mix and perplex each other, ever increasing the strange confusion of this world of shadow, till the brain turns round, and the heart grows sick.
She rose up quickly, and threw out her hands, as if throwing something away. “This must not be,” she said aloud to herself; “this must not be.” And she gathered up from the table all those little tokens of personal presence which change the aspect of a place of habitation, and make it into the likeness of its tenants,—took up a shawl which had been thrown upon a sofa, a book which lay on an old cabinet, a little basket of odds and ends already collected. With a certain reverence, as we collect the possessions of the lately dead, she carried them all away. The room was left, when she closed the door, as it had been when she came in to it—the faded old furniture all ranged in its place, the great portrait looking down from the dimness of the old wall. Was it the same? A sweetness breathed in upon the air that had not been there before, a glimpse of flowers through the window, a greenness of leaves,—and on the carpet one little sprig of myrtle with its feathery globe of blossom, which had come from Sophy’s marriage-wreath, and had fallen as she went out from Diana’s hand. No more—yet something still.