"Oh, my dear, you must not be afraid," she said. "We have to face the facts and not be afraid of them, but do our best, and see how we can arrest or alter the train of their consequences. It was he--Tom Lindfield."
Again she paused, and again continued, speaking quietly.
"I knew nothing of all this till a little over a year ago," she said; "for even as M. Dupre had wished to spare Diana shame and publicity, so, I suppose, he wished to spare us the knowledge of what Diana had done, and it was thus that neither you nor Daisy nor I knew anything of it. I think perhaps he ought to have told us--told you and me, anyhow. But he did not, and it is of no use to think what we should have done if he had. But rather more than a year ago Diana herself wrote to me--wrote me a pitiful, heart-breaking letter. I thought at first it must be some grim practical joke, though I could not imagine who had played so cruel a trick, or why the trick had been played at all. But it was Diana"s handwriting, and she enclosed a photograph of herself, which I have now. It was impossible to mistake that: nothing could mar her beauty; and then it was signed and dated in her own hand. She wrote to say that she had been ill, that she was getting rapidly worse--it was of consumption, perhaps you remember, that her mother died--and she wanted to know if I would come to her. She wanted to tell me everything, and, thank G.o.d, she wanted me. So it was there that I went when I left England last year.
"I stayed with her till she died in that little gilded flat. And during that month she told me everything. It--it was a long story, Alice, and it was all set to one shameful tune. And I was not shocked; that would have made my being with her quite useless, to begin with, but, also, I did not feel inclined to be shocked. She was so like a child--a child that has gone wrong, if you will, but still a child. Whether she was ashamed or not I hardly know, for after she had told me of it all we never once spoke of it again. Certainly she wished, as pa.s.sionately as she was capable in her poor dying state of wishing anything, that she should not bring shame or sorrow on others. Of all others that she wished to spare, most of all she wished to spare Daisy; and--a promise to a dying person is a very solemn thing--I promised that I would do all that lay in my power so that Daisy should not know. Till yesterday I thought that promise would never come up. But it has. Daisy must not conceivably marry him. Also, she must not know why. There is our crux.
"And one word more, in justice to him," she added. "I am convinced he does not to this day know who it was with whom he lived in Paris. He knew me, for instance, and liked me; and I am sure he would not have lived with her knowing who she was. Oh, but, Alice, the misery, the sorrow of it all! You don"t know. You weren"t with Diana at the end. And I loved her. And I think her--her going so utterly wrong like that made me love her more. The pity of it! The hopeless, helpless sorrow of it!
She did not want to die----"
Jeannie"s voice choked for a moment.
"She wanted life, she wanted love, poor child. She was like some beautiful wild thing, without law. She didn"t think. She never loved her husband, who adored her. She didn"t think. And she died frightened--frightened at what might be in front of her. As if the Infinite Tenderness was not in front of her! As if Jesus Christ, the Man of many sorrows, was not there! Oh, Alice, how can we judge?"
"Ah, my dear, we don"t judge," said she. "Anyhow, no judgment of ours has any effect. It is done with as far as she is concerned."
Jeannie"s face suddenly brightened into a semblance of a smile. It was veiled, but it was but the flesh that veiled it; at the core it was wholly loving.
"Then we are content to leave dear Diana in the hands of the Infinite Pity?" she said. "That must be certain before we can talk further."
"But with my whole heart," said Lady Nottingham.
Again there was silence; and in that Jeannie openly dried the tears that were on her face. She had been crying: there was no question about that.
"I had to tell you, dear Alice," she said at length. "I could not bear it alone. You see why it is impossible, beyond the bounds of speech, that Daisy should marry him. You see also why I thank Heaven that she does not love him. At all costs, also, Daisy must not know why it is impossible. That was my promise to Diana when she was dying. I would do anything within my power and the stretched-out limits of it to prevent her knowing. Diana, poor darling, wished for that. It was the last request she made. It is sacred to me, as sacred as my honour."
"Do you mean to tell him?" asked Alice.
"I hope not to. I want to keep poor Diana"s secret as close as can be. And I am not in the least certain, from what I know of him, that it would do any good. If he wants Daisy, do you think a man like that would let that stand in his way? No, we must do better than that.
Now, is he in love with her?"
"I can"t say. It is clear, however, that he wants to marry her. He has been in love so many times that one doubts if he has been in love at all. There was----"
"Oh, spare me the list of his conquests. He has been in love many times.
That is sufficient."
"Sufficient for what?"
"For the plan that has occurred to me as possible. I don"t say it is easy; I don"t say it is nice; but we want, above all things, to keep poor Diana"s dreadful secret, to let no one, if possible--and, above all, Daisy--know that it was her sister who lived those years in Paris, and in that manner."
Jeannie got up.
"Clearly the easiest way of arriving at what we want is to make Daisy think that he has only been flirting with her," she said--"that he is not serious. It will hurt the poor child, I know; but if she were in love with him, which you think she is not, it would hurt her far, far more. Therefore, we must waste no time. Any day, any moment, she may fall in love with him. He is extremely attractive."
"Do you mean you will tell Daisy that he has only been flirting with her?" asked Alice.
"No, that would do no good. She would not believe it. Besides, any day also he may propose to her. No, it must be more convincing than that.
She must see that which convinces her that he is not in earnest. We must make him, if we can, under Daisy"s very nose, flirt with somebody else.
We must make him neglect her. I don"t know if it can be done, but we must try. At least, I can think of no other plan which will not involve telling Daisy all that we want to keep from her."
"But how--who?" asked Alice.
"He is coming to Bray--Lord Lindfield, I mean?"
"Yes; he is coming to-morrow evening with the others."
Jeannie paused in front of a mirror, looked long at herself, and spoke to her image there.
"Yes, pa.s.sable yet--just pa.s.sable yet," she said to herself.
Lady Nottingham got up and came across the room to her.
"Jeannie, what do you mean?" she asked. "What is it you mean?"
Jeannie turned round quickly.
"Ah! you guess," she said. "I don"t say it is nice; I shan"t like myself much, I can promise you. But it is not so long since he ran after me a good deal. Perhaps you remember the fact. He didn"t receive much encouragement then. Well, I mean that he shall do it again. This time he shall receive much more encouragement. I will make it very easy for him. I will help him a great deal now. I will flirt with him all the time at Bray. Flirt--yes. Oh, it is not a nice word, and flirts are not nice people, as we settled only yesterday. We settled they were not worth talking about. But I am going to be one now--and a bad one, too--under Daisy"s very nose. Perhaps I shan"t succeed, but I shall do my best; and if I don"t succeed, we must try to think of something else.
But I want Daisy to see how easily and readily he makes love to a woman.
I want her to see herself slighted and neglected. I want her to be hurt--and finally to be angry, to be furious, to see that he means nothing. Then, provided only she is not in love with him now, she will hate and despise him."
Jeannie spoke rapidly, excitedly, her face flushing.
"Or do you think it is a forlorn hope, Alice?" she said. "Am I but flattering myself that I am not quite _pa.s.see_ yet? Oh, it is a heavy handicap, I know, for a woman of my age to try to cut out a brilliant young girl, and one who is beautiful; and, as you have told me, he never, as far as you know, flirted with a girl. Well, that proves he likes women best."
"Ah! but you can"t do it, Jeannie," broke in Lady Nottingham. "Think of what you will appear to Daisy; think of your own self-respect; think of Victor. What will he make of it all? It is too dangerous."
"I have thought of all those things," said Jeannie. "I have weighed and balanced them; and they seem to me lighter than that promise I made to Diana. I may have to tell Victor; about that I don"t know, but I shall do my utmost not to. It may not be necessary, for, Alice, I think he trusts me as utterly as I trust him. I think that if I saw him running after some other woman I should feel there must be some explanation, and I hope I should not ask him for it, or think he was faithless to me.
And I believe he has that trust in me also. I don"t know. If he demands to know what it all means I shall tell him, because if you are asked anything in the name of love it is not possible to refuse. Heaven knows, this is a desperate measure! But show me any other that has a chance of success and will still keep Diana"s secret. This may fail; one cannot be sure of any plan going right. But show me any other plan at all, and from the bottom of my heart I will thank you."
Lady Nottingham shook her head.
"I can think of no other plan," she said; "but I can"t approve of this one. You are playing with serious things, Jeannie; you are playing with love and other people"s souls. Diana did not mean you to do anything like this in order to keep your promise to her."
"No, poor child! One does not easily see the consequences of one"s acts, or how they go on long after they are committed, bringing joy or sorrow to others. Oh, Alice, there is such a dreadful vitality about evil. Acts that one thinks are all over and dead have an awful power of coming to life again. What one has done never dies. It may be forgiven--Heaven grant it may be forgiven--but it exists still in the lives of others."
"But it is not as if she were alive," said the other, "or as if she could suffer for it."
Jeannie shook her head.
"Ah, my dear," she said, "to my mind that is a reason the more for keeping my promise. Living people can defend themselves to some extent, or you can appeal to them and make them see, perhaps, that such a promise involves more than it is reasonable to demand. But the dead, Alice! The dead are so defenceless!"
Lady Nottingham was silent, knowing that it is useless to argue over questions of feeling; for no amount of reasoning, however admirable, can affect a question about which the heart has taken sides. And after a moment Jeannie went on:--
"And it is not the dead alone," she said. "There is Daisy also to consider. Had I made no promise at all, I think I would do anything as distasteful and odious to me as that which I am going to do, for the sake of keeping that dreadful knowledge from her. Alice, think if you had had a sister like that! Could you ever get rid of the poison of it?
And it is an awful thing to let a young soul be poisoned. When we grow older, we get, I suppose, better digestions; poisons affect us less.
That is the worst of growing old."
Again she paused.