Olga Lermontof, her injured hand resting in a sling, chaffed her with some amusement.
"I suppose, at last, you're beginning to understand that your voice is really something out of the ordinary," she said. "Its effect on the audience this afternoon is a better criterion than all the notices in to-morrow's newspapers put together."
Diana laughed.
"Well, I hope it won't make a habit of producing that effect!" she said, pulling a little face of disgust at the recollection. "I don't know what would have happened if Mr. Errington hadn't come to my rescue."
Max smiled across at her.
"You'd have been torn to bits and the pieces distributed amongst the audience—like souvenir programmes—I imagine," he replied. Then, turning towards the accompanist, he continued: "How does your hand feel now, Miss Lermontof?"
There was a curious change in his voice as he addressed the Russian, and Diana, glancing quickly towards her, surprised a strangely wistful look in her eyes as they rested upon Errington's face.
"Oh, it is much better. I shall be able to play again in a few days. But it was fortunate you were at the concert to-day, and able to take my place."
"So you approve of me—for once?" he queried, with a rather twisted little smile.
Olga remained silent for a moment, her eyes searching his face. Then she said very deliberately:—
"I am glad you were able to play for Miss Quentin."
"But you won't commit yourself so far as to say that I have your approval—even once?"
Miss Lermontof leaned forward impetuously.
"How can I?" she said, in hurried tones, "It's all wrong—oh! you know that it's all wrong."
Errington shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm afraid we can never see eye to eye," he answered. "Let us, then, be philosophical over the matter and agree to differ."
Olga's green eyes flamed with sudden anger, but she abstained from making any reply, turning away from him abruptly.
Diana, whose attention had been claimed by the Rector, had not caught the quickly spoken sentences which had passed between the two, but she was puzzled over the oddly yearning look she had surprised in Olga's eyes. There had been a tenderness, a species of wistful longing in her gaze, as she had turned towards Max Errington, which tallied ill with the bitter incisiveness of the remarks she let fall at times concerning him.
"Well, my dear"—the Rector's voice recalled Diana's wandering thoughts—"Joan and I must be getting back to our hotel, if we are to be dressed in time for the dinner Miss de Gervais is giving in your honour to-night."
Diana glanced at the clock and nodded.
"Indeed you must, Pobs darling. And I will send away these other good people too. As we're all going to meet again at dinner we can bear to be separated for an hour or so—even Jerry and Joan, I suppose?" she added whimsically, in a lower tone.
"It's invidious to mention names," murmured Stair, "or I might—"
Diana laid her hand lightly across his mouth.
"No, you mightn't," she said firmly. "Put on your coat and that nice squashy hat of yours, and trot back to your hotel like a good Pobs."
Stair laughed, looking down at her with kind eyes.
"Very well, little autocrat." He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. "I've not congratulated you yet, my dear. It's a big thing you've done—captured London in a day. But it's a bigger thing you'll have to do."
"You mean Paris—Vienna?"
He shook his head, still with the kind smile in his eyes.
"No. I mean, keep me the little Diana I love—don't let me lose her in the public singer."
"Oh, Pobs!"—reproachfully. "As though I should ever change!"
"Not deliberately—not willingly, I'm sure. But—success is a difficult sea to swim."
He sighed, kissed her upturned face, and then, with twist of his shoulders, pulled on his overcoat and prepared to depart.
Success is exhilarating. It goes to the head like wine, and yet, as Diana lay in bed that night, staring with wide eyes into the darkness, the memory that stood out in vivid relief from amongst the crowded events of the day was not the triumph of the afternoon, nor the merry evening which succeeded it, when "the coming prima donna" had been toasted amid a fusillade of brilliant little speeches and light-hearted laughter, but the remembrance of a pair of passionate, demanding blue eyes and of a low, tense voice saying:—
"I swear I won't fail you. Let me 'stand by.'"
CHAPTER XIV
THE FLAME OF LOVE
Diana's gaze wandered idly over the blue stretch of water, as it lay beneath the blazing August sun, while the sea-gulls, like streaks of white light, wheeled through the shimmering haze of the atmosphere. Her hands were loosely clasped around her knees, and a little evanescent smile played about her lips. Behind her, the great red cliffs of Culver Point reared up against the sapphire of the sky, and she was thinking dreamily of that day, nearly eighteen months ago, when she had been sitting in the self-same place, leaning against the self-same rock, whilst a grey waste of water crept hungrily up to her very feet, threatening to claim her as its prey. And then Errington had come, and straightway all the danger was passed.
Looking back, it seemed as though that had always been the way of things. Some menace had arisen, either by land or sea—or even, as at her recital, out of the very intensity of feeling which her singing had inspired—and immediately Max had intervened and the danger had been averted.
She laid her hand caressingly on the sun-warmed surface of the rock. How many things had happened since she had last leaned against its uncomfortable excrescences! She felt quite affectionately towards it, as one who has journeyed far may feel towards some old landmark of his youth which he finds unaltered on his return, from wandering in strange lands. The immutability of things, as compared with the constant fluctuation of life and circumstance, struck her poignantly. Here was this rock—cast up from the bowels of the earth thousands of years ago and washed by the waves of a million tides—still unchanged and changeless, while, for her, the face of the whole world had altered in little more than a year!
From a young girl-student, one insignificant person among scores of others similarly insignificant, she had become a prominent personality, some one in whom even the great, busy, hurrying world paused to take an interest, and of whom the newspapers wrote eulogistic notices, heralding her as the coming English prima donna. She felt rather like a mole which has been working quietly in the dark, tunnelling a passage for itself, unseen and unsuspected, and which has suddenly emerged above the surface of the earth, much to its own—and every one else's—astonishment!
Then, too, how utterly changed were her relations with Max Errington! At the beginning of their acquaintance he had held himself deliberately aloof, but since that evening at Adrienne de Gervais' house, when they had formed a compact of friendship, he had, apparently, completely blotted out from his mind the remembrance of the obstacle, whatever it might be, which he had contended must render any friendship between them out of the question.
And during these last few months Diana had gradually come to know the lofty strain of idealism which ran through the man's whole nature. Passionate, obstinate, unyielding—he could be each and all in turn, but, side by side with these exterior characteristics, there ran a streak of almost feminine delicacy of perception and ideality of purpose. Diana had once told him, laughingly, that he was of the stuff of which martyrs were made in the old days of persecution, and in this she had haphazard lit upon the fundamental force that shaped his actions. The burden which fate, or his own deeds, might lay upon his shoulders, that he would bear, be it what it might.
"Everything's got to be paid for," he had said one day. "It's inevitable. So what's the use of jibing at the price?"
Diana wondered whether the price of that mysterious something which lay in his past, and which not even intimate friendship had revealed to her, would mean that this comradeship must always remain only that—and never anything more?
A warm flush mounted to her face as the unbidden thought crept into her mind. Errington had been down at Crailing most of the summer, staying at Red Gables, and during the long, lazy days they had spent together, motoring, or sailing, or tramping over Dartmoor with the keen moorland air, like sparkling wine, in their nostrils, it seemed as though a deeper note had sounded than merely that of friendship.
And yet he had said nothing, although his eyes had spoken—those vivid blue eyes which sometimes blazed with a white heat of smouldering passion that set her heart racing madly within her.
She flinched shyly away from her own thoughts, pulling restlessly at the dried weed which clung about the surface of the rock. A little brown crab ran out from a crevice, and, terrified by the big human hand which he espied meddling with the clump of weed and threatening to interfere with the liberty of the subject, skedaddled sideways into the safety of another cranny.
The hurried rush of the little live thing roused Diana from her day-dreams, and looking up, she saw Max coming to her across the sands.
She watched the proud, free gait of the tall figure with appreciation in her eyes. There was something very individual and characteristic about Max's walk—a suggestion as of immense vitality held in check, together with a certain air of haughty resolution and command.
"I thought I might find you here," he said, when they had shaken hands.
"Did you want me?"
He looked at her with a curious expression in his eyes.
"I always want you, I think," he said simply.
"Well, you seem to have a faculty for always turning up when I want you," she replied. "I was just thinking how often you had appeared in the very nick of time. Seriously"—her voice took on a graver note—"I feel I can't ever repay you.—you've come to my help so often."
"There is a way," he said, very low, and then fell silent.
"Tell me," she urged him, smilingly. "I like to pay my debts."
He made no answer, and Diana, suddenly nervous and puzzled, continued a little breathlessly:—
"Have I—have I offended you? I—I thought"—her lips quivered—"we had agreed to be friends."
Max was silent a moment. Then he said slowly:—
"I can't keep that compact."
Diana's heart contracted with a sudden fear.
"Can't keep it?" she repeated dully. She could not picture her life—no—robbed of this friendship!
"No." His hands hung clenched at his sides, and he stood staring at her from beneath bent brows, his mouth set in a straight line. It was as though he were holding himself under a rigid restraint, against which something within him battled, striving for release.
All at once his control snapped.
"I love you! . . . God in heaven! Haven't you guessed it?"
The words broke from him like a bitter cry—the cry of a heart torn in twain by love and thwarted longing. Diana felt the urgency of its demand thrill through her whole being.
"Max . . ."
It was the merest whisper, reaching his ears like the touch of a butterfly's wing—hesitantly shy, and honey-sweet with the promise of summer.
The next instant his arms were round her and he was holding her as though he would never let her go, passionately kissing the soft mouth, so close beneath his own. He lifted her off her feet, crushing her to him, and Diana, the woman in her definitely, vividly aroused at last, clung to him yielding, but half-terrified by the tempest of emotion she had waked.
"My beloved! . . . My soul!"
His voice was vehement with the love and passion at length unleashed from bondage; his kisses hurt her. There was something torrential, overwhelming, in his imperious wooing. He held her with the fierce, possessive grip of primitive man claiming the chosen woman as his mate.
She struggled faintly against him.
"Ah! Max—Max . . . . Let me go. You're frightening me."
She heard him draw his breath hard, and then slowly, reluctantly, as though by a sheer effort of will, he set her down. He was white to the lips, and his eyes glowed like blue flame in their pallid setting.
"Frighten you!" he repeated hoarsely. "You don't know what love means—you English."
Diana stared at him.
"'You English!' What—what are you saying? Max, aren't you English after all?"
He threw back his head with a laugh.
"Oh, yes, I'm English. But I'm something else as well. . . . There's warmer blood in my veins, and I can't love like an Englishman. Oh, Diana, heart's beloved, let me teach you what love is!"
Impetuously he caught her in his arms again, and once more she felt the storm of his passion sweep over her as he rained fierce kisses on eyes and throat and lips. For a space it seemed as if the whole world were blotted out and there were only they two alone together—shaken to the very foundations of their being by the tremendous force of the whirlwind of love which had engulfed them.
When at length he released her, all her reserves were down.
"Max . . . Max . . . I love you!"
The confession fell from her lips with a timid, exquisite abandon. He was her mate and she recognised it. He had conquered her.
Presently he put her from him, very gently, but decisively.
"Diana, heart's dearest, there is something more—something I have not told you yet."
She looked at him with sudden apprehension in her eyes.
"Max! . . . Nothing—nothing that need come between us?"
Memories of the past, of all the incomprehensible episodes of their acquaintance—his refusal to recognise her, his reluctance to accept her friendship—came crowding in upon her, threatening the destruction of her new-found happiness.
"Not if you can be strong—not if you'll trust me." He looked at her searchingly.
"Trust you? But I do trust you. Should I have . . . Oh, Max!" the warm colour dyed her face from chin to brow—"Could I love you if I didn't trust you?"
There was a tender, almost compassionate expression in his eyes as he answered, rather sadly:—
"Ah, my dear, we don't know what 'trust' really means until we are called upon to give it. . . . And I want so much from you!"
Diana slipped her hand confidently into his.
"Tell me," she said, smiling at him. "I don't think I shall fail you."
He was silent for a while, wondering if the next words he spoke would set them as far apart as though the previous hour had never been. At last he spoke.
"Do you believe that husbands and wives should have no secrets from one another?" he asked abruptly.
Diana had never really given the matter consideration—never formulated such a question in her mind. But now, in the light of love's awakening; she instinctively knew the answer to it. Her opinion leaped into life fully formed; she was aware, without the shadow of a doubt, of her own feelings on the subject.
"Certainly they shouldn't," she answered promptly. "Why, Max, that would be breaking the very link that binds them together—their oneness each with the other. You think that, too, don't you? Why—why did you ask me?" A premonition of evil assailed her, and her voice trembled a little.
"I asked you because—because if you marry me you will have to face the fact that there is a secret in my life which I cannot share with you—something I can't tell you about." Then, as he saw the blank look on her face, he went on rapidly: "It will be the only thing, beloved. There shall be nothing else in life that will not be 'ours,' between us, shared by us both. I swear it! . . . Diana, I must make you understand. It was because of this—this secret—that I kept away from you. You couldn't understand—oh! I saw it in your face sometimes. You were hurt by what I did and said, and it tortured me to hurt you—to see your lip quiver, your eyes suddenly grow misty, and to know it was I who had wounded you, I, who would give the last drop of blood in my body to save you pain."
There was a curious stricken expression on the face Diana turned towards him.
"So that was it!"
"Yes, that was it. I tried to put you out of my life, for I'd no right to ask you into it. And I've failed! I can't do without you"—his voice gathered intensity—"I want you—body and soul I want you. And yet—a secret between husband and wife is a burden no man should ask a woman to bear."
When next Diana spoke it was in a curiously cold, collected voice. She felt stunned. A great wall seemed to be rising up betwixt herself and Max; all her golden visions for the future were falling about her in ruins.
"You are right," she said slowly. "No man should ask—that—of his wife."
Errington's face twisted with pain.
"I never meant to let you know I cared," he answered. "I fought down my love for you just because of that. And then—it grew too strong for me. . . . My God! If you knew what it's been like—to be near you, with you, constantly, and yet to feel that you were as far removed from me as the sun itself. Diana—beloved—can't you trust me over this one thing? Isn't your love strong enough for that?"
She turned on him passionately.
"Oh, you are unfair to me—cruelly unfair! You ask me to trust you!
And your very asking implies that you cannot trust me!"
There was bitter anger in her voice.
"I know it looks like that," he said wearily. "And I can't explain. I can only ask you to believe in me and trust me. I thought . . . perhaps . . . you loved me enough to do it." His mouth twitched with a little smile, half sad, half ironical. "My usual presumption, I suppose."
She made no answer, but after a moment asked abruptly:—
"Does this—this secret concern only you?"
"That I cannot tell you. I can't answer any questions. If—if you come to me, it must be in absolute blind trust." He paused, his eyes entreating her. "Is it . . . too much to ask?"
Diana was silent, looking away from him across the water. The sun slipped behind a cloud, and a grey shadow spread like a blight over the summer sea. It lay leaden and dull, tufted with little white crests of foam.
The man and woman stood side by side, motionless, unresponsive. It was as though a sword had suddenly descended, cleaving them asunder.
Presently she heard him mutter in a low tone of anguish:—
"So this—this, too—must be added to the price!"
The pain in his voice pulled at her heart. She stretched out her hands towards him.
"Max! Give me time!"
He wheeled round, and the tense look of misery in his face hurt her almost physically.
"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely.
"I must have time to think. Husband and wife ought to be one.
What—what happiness can there be if . . . if we marry . . . like this?"
He bent his head.
"None—unless you can have faith. There can be no happiness for us without that."
He took a sudden step towards her.
"Oh, my dear, my dear! I love you so!"
Diana began to cry softly—helpless, pathetic, weeping, like a child's.
"And—and I thought we were so happy," she sobbed. "Now it's all spoiled and broken. And you've spoilt it!"
"Don't!" he said unsteadily. "Don't cry like that. I can't stand it."
He made an instinctive movement to take her in his arms, but she slipped aside, turning on him in sudden, passionate reproach.
"Why did you try and make me love you when you knew . . . all this? I was quite happy before you came—oh, so happy!"—with a sudden yearning recollection of the days of unawakened girlhood. "If—if you had let me alone, I should have been happy still."
The unthinking selfishness of youth rang in her voice, asserting its infinite demand for the joy and pleasure of life.
"And I?" he said, very low. "Does my unhappiness count for nothing?
I'm paying too. God knows, I wish we had never met."
Never to have met! Not to have known all that those months of friendship and a single hour of love had held! The words brought a sudden awakening to Diana—a new, wonderful knowledge that, cost what they might in bitterness and future pain, she would rather bear the cost than know her life emptied of those memories.
She had ceased crying. After a few moments she spoke with a gentle, wistful composure.
"I was wrong, Max. You're not to blame—you couldn't help it any more than I could."
"I might have gone away—kept away from you," he said tonelessly.
A faint, wintry little smile curved her lips.
"I'm glad you didn't."
"Diana!" He sprang forward impetuously. "Do you mean that?"
She nodded slowly.
"Yes. Even if—if we can't ever marry, we've had . . . to-day."
A smouldering fire lit itself in the man's blue eyes. He had spoken but the bare truth when he had said that warmer blood ran in his veins than that of the cold northern peoples.
"Yes," he said, his voice tense. "We've had to-day."
Diana trembled a little. The memory of that fierce, wild love-making of his rushed over her once more, and the primitive woman in her longed to yield to its mastery. But the cooler characteristics of her nature bade her pause and weigh the full significance of marrying a man whose life was tinged with mystery, and who frankly acknowledged that he bore a secret which must remain hidden, even from his wife.
It would be taking a leap in the dark, and Diana shrank from it.
"I must have time to think," she repeated. "I can't decide to-day."
"No," he said, "you're right. I've known that all the time, only—only"—his voice shook—"the touch of you, the nearness of you, blinded me." He paused. "Don't keep me waiting for your answer longer than you can help, Diana," he added, with a quiet intensity.
"You'll go away from Crailing?" she asked nervously.
He smiled a little sadly.
"Yes, I'll go away. I'll leave you quite free to make your decision," he replied.
She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew that if he were to remain at Crailing, if they were to continue seeing each other almost daily, there could be but one end to the matter—her conviction that no happiness could result from such a marriage would go by the board. It could not stand against the breathless impetuosity of Max's love-making—not when her own heart was eager and aching to respond.
"Thank you, Max," she said simply, extending her hand.
He put it aside, drawing her into his embrace.
"Beloved," he said, and now there was no passion, no fierceness of desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. "Beloved, please God you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I think no man ever loved a woman so utterly as I love you. And oh! little white English rose of my heart, I'd never ask more than you could give. Love isn't all passion. It's tenderness and shielding and service, dear, as well as fire and flame. A man loves his wife in all the little ways of daily life as well as in the big ways of eternity."
He stooped his head, and a shaft of sunlight flickered across his bright hair. Diana watched it with a curious sense of detachment. Very gently he laid her hands against his lips, and the next moment he was swinging away from her across the stretch of yellow sand, leaving her alone once more with the sea and the sky and the wheeling gulls.
CHAPTER XV
DIANA'S DECISION
Max had been gone a week—a week of distress and miserable indecision for Diana, racked as she was between her love and her conviction that marriage under the only circumstances possible would inevitably bring unhappiness. Over and above this fear there was the instinctive recoil she felt from Errington's demand for such blind faith. Her pride rebelled against it. If he loved her and had confidence in her, why couldn't he trust her with his secret? It was treating her like a child, and it would be wrong—all wrong—she argued, to begin their married life with concealment and secrecy for its foundation.
One morning she even wrote to him, telling him definitely either that he must trust her altogether, or that they must part irrevocably. But the letter was torn up the same afternoon, and Diana went to bed that night with her decision still untaken.
For several nights she had slept but little, and once again she passed long hours tossing feverishly from side to side of the bed or pacing up and down her room, love and pride fighting a stubborn battle within her. Had Max remained at Crailing, love would have gained an easy victory, but, true to his promise, he had gone away, leaving her to make her decision free and untrammelled by his influence.
Diana's face was beginning to show signs of the mental struggle through which she was passing. Dark shadows lay beneath her eyes, and her cheeks, even in so short a time, had hollowed a little. She was irritable, too, and unlike herself, and at last Stair, whose watchful eyes had noted all these things, though he had refrained from comment, taxed her with keeping him outside her confidence.
"Can't I help, Di?" he asked, laying his hand on her shoulder, and twisting her round so that she faced him.
The quick colour flew into her cheeks. For a moment she hesitated, while Stair, releasing his hold of her, dropped into a chair and busied himself filling and lighting his pipe.
"Well?" he queried at last, smiling whimsically. "Won't you give me an old friend's right to ask impertinent questions?"
Impulsively she yielded.
"You needn't, Pobs. I'll tell you all about it."
When she had finished, a long silence ensued. Not that Stair was in any doubt as to what form his advice should take—idealist that he was, there did not seem to him to be any question in the matter. He only hesitated as to how he could best word his counsel.
At last he spoke, very gently, his eyes lit with that inner radiance which gave such an arresting charm of expression to his face.
"My dear," he said, "it seems to me that if you love him you needs must trust him. 'Perfect love casteth out fear.'"
Diana shook her head.
"Mightn't you reverse that, Pobs, and say that he would trust me—if he loves me?"
"No, not necessarily." Alan sucked at his pipe. "He knows what his secret is, and whether it is right or wrong for you to share it. You haven't that knowledge. And that's where your trust must come in. You have to believe in him enough to leave it to him to decide whether you ought to be told or not. Have you no confidence in his judgment?"
"I don't think husbands and wives should have secrets from one another," protested Diana obstinately.
"Does he propose to have any other than this one?"
"No."
"Then I don't see that you need complain. The present and the future are yours, but you've no right to demand the past as well. And this secret, whatever it may be, belongs to the past."
"As far as I can see it will be cropping up in the future as well," said Diana ruefully. "It seems to be a 'continued in our next' kind of mystery."
Stair laughed boyishly.
"It should add a zest to life if that's the case," he retorted.
Diana was silent a moment. Then she said suddenly:—
"Pobs, what am I to do?"
Instantly Stair became grave again.
"My dear, do you love him?"
Diana nodded, her eyes replying.
"Then nothing else matters a straw. If you love him enough to trust him with the whole of the rest of your life, you can surely trust him over a twopenny-halfpenny little secret which, after all, has nothing in the world to do with you. If you can't, do you know what it looks like?"
She regarded him questioningly.
"It looks as though you suspected the secret of being a disgraceful one—something of which Max is ashamed to tell you. Do you"—sharply—"think that?"
"Of course I don't!" she burst out indignantly.
"Then why trouble? Possibly the matter concerns some one else besides himself, and he may not be at liberty to tell you anything—he might have a dozen different reasons for keeping his own counsel. And the woman who loves him and is ready to be his wife is the first to doubt and, distrust him! Diana, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. If my wife"—his voice shook a little—-"had ever doubted me—no matter how black things might have looked against me—I think it would have broken my heart."
Diana's head drooped lower and lower as he spoke, and presently her hand stole out, seeking his. In a moment it was taken and held in a close and kindly clasp.
"I'll—I'll marry him, Pobs," she whispered.
So it came about that when, two days later, Max took his way to 24 Brutton Square, the gods had better gifts in store for him than he had dared to hope.
He was pacing restlessly up and down her little sitting-room when she entered it, and she could see that his face bore traces of the last few days' anxiety. There were new lines about his mouth, and his eyes were so darkly shadowed as to seem almost sunken in their sockets.
"You have come back!" he said, stepping eagerly towards her.
"Diana"—there was a note of strain in his voice—"which is it?
Yes—or no?"
She held out her hands.
"It's—it's 'yes,' Max."
A stifled exclamation broke from him, almost like a sob. He folded her in his arms and laid his lips to hers.
"My beloved! . . . Oh, Diana, if you could guess the agony—the torture of the last ten days!" And he leaned his cheek against her hair, and stood silently for a little space.
Presently fear overcame him again—quick fear lest she should ever regret having given herself to him.
"Heart's dearest, have you realised that it will be very hard sometimes? You will ask me to explain things—and I shan't be able to. Is your trust big enough—great enough for this?"
Diana raised her head from his shoulder.
"I love you," she answered steadily.
"Do you forget the shadow? It is there still, dogging my steps. Not even your love can alter that."
For a moment Diana rose to the heights of her womanhood.
"If there must be a shadow," she said, "we will walk in it together."
"But—don't you see?—I shall know what it is. To you it will always be something unknown, hidden, mysterious. Child! Child! I wonder if I am right to let you join your life to mine!"
But Diana only repeated:—
"I love you."
And at last he flung all thoughts of warning and doubt aside, and secure in that reiterated "I love you!" yielded to the unutterable joy of the moment.
CHAPTER XVI
BARONI'S OPINION OF MATRIMONY
"Per Dio! What is this you tell me? That you are to be married? . . . My dear Mees Quentin, please put all such thoughts of foolishness out of your mind. You are consecrated to art. The young man must find another bride."
It was thus that Carlo Baroni received the news of Diana's engagement—at first with unmitigated horror, then sweeping it aside as though it were a matter of no consequence whatever.
Diana laughed, dimpling with amusement at the maestro's indignation. Now that she had given her faith, refusing to allow anything to stand between her and Max, she was so supremely happy that she felt she could afford to laugh at such relatively small obstacles as would be raised by her old singing-master.
"I'm afraid the 'young man' wouldn't agree to that," she returned gaily. "He would say you must find another pupil."
Baroni surveyed her with anxiety.
"You are not serious?" he queried at last.
"Indeed I am. I'm actually engaged—now, at this moment—and we propose to get married before Christmas."
"But it is impossible! Giusto Cielo! But impossible!" reiterated the old man. "Mees Quentin, you cannot haf understood. Perhaps, in my anxiety that you should strain every nerve to improve, I haf not praised you enough—and so you haf not understood. Leesten, then. You haf a voice than which there is not one so good in the whole of Europe. It is superb—marvellous—the voice of the century. With that voice you will haf the whole world at your feet; before long you will command almost fabulous fees, and more, far more than this, you can interpret the music of the great masters as they themselves would wish to hear it. Me, Baroni, I know it. And you would fling such possibilities, such a career, aside for mere matrimony! It is nonsense, I tell you, sheer nonsense!"
He paused for breath, and Diana laid her hand deprecatingly on his arm.
"Dear Maestro," she said, "it's good of you to tell me all this, and—and you mustn't think for one moment that I ever forget all you've done for me. It's you who've made my voice what it is. But there isn't the least reason why I should give up singing because I'm going to be married. I don't intend to, I assure you."
"I haf no doubt you mean well. But I haf heard other young singers say the same thing, and then the husband—the so English husband!—he objects to his wife's appearing in public, and presto! . . . Away goes the career! No singer should marry until she is well established in her profession. You are young. Marry in ten years' time and you shall haf my blessing."
"I shall want your blessing sooner than that," laughed Diana. "But I'm not marrying a 'so English husband'! He's only partly English, and he's quite willing for me to go on singing."
Baroni regarded her seriously.
"Is that so? Good! Then I will talk to the young man, so that he may realise that he is not marrying just Mees Diana Quentin, but a voice—a heaven-bestowed voice. What is his name?"
"You know him," she answered smilingly. "It's Max Errington."
She was utterly unprepared for the effect of her words. Baroni's face darkened like a stormy sky, and his eyes literally blazed at her from beneath their penthouse of shaggy brow.
"Max Errington! Donnerwetter! But that is the worst of all!"
Diana stared, at him in mute amazement, and, despite herself, her heart sank with a sudden desperate apprehension. What did it mean? Why should the mere mention of Max's name have roused the old maestro to such a fever of indignation?
Presently Baroni turned to her again, speaking more composedly, although little sparks of anger still flickered in his eyes ready to leap into flame at the slightest provocation.
"I haf met Mr. Errington. He is a charming man. But if you marry him, my dear Mees Quentin—good-bye to your career as a world-artiste, good-bye to the most marvellous voice that the good God has ever let me hear."
"I don't see why. Max thoroughly understands professional life."
"Nevertheless, believe me, there will—there must come a time when Max Errington's wife will not be able to appear before the world as a public singer. I who speak, I know."
Diana flashed round upon him suddenly.
"You—you know his secret?"
"I know it."
So, then, the secret which must be hidden from his wife was yet known to Carlo Baroni! Diana felt her former resentment surge up anew within her. It was unfair—shamefully unfair for Max to treat her in this way! It was making a mockery of their love.
Baroni's keen old eyes read the conflict of emotions in her face, and he laid his finger unerringly upon the sore spot. His one idea was to prevent Diana from marrying, to guard her—as he mentally phrased it—for the art he loved so well, and he was prepared to stick at nothing that might aid his cause.
"So he has not told you?" he said slowly. "Do you not think it strange of him?"
Diana's breast rose and fell tumultuously. Baroni was turning the knife in the wound with a vengeance.
"Maestro, tell me,"—her voice came unevenly—"tell me. Is it"—she turned her head away—"is it a . . . shameful . . . secret?"
Inwardly she loathed herself for asking such a thing, but the words seemed dragged from her without her own volition.
Baroni hesitated. All his hopes and ambitions centred round Diana and her marvellous voice. He had given of his best to train it to its present perfection, and now he saw the fruit of his labour about to be snatched from him. It was more than human nature could endure. Errington meant nothing to him, Diana and her voice everything; and he was prepared to sacrifice no matter whom to secure her career as an artiste. By implication he sacrificed Errington.
"It is not possible for me to say more. But be advised, my dear pupil.
Out of my great love for you I say it—let Max Errington go his way."
And with those words—sinister, warning—ringing in her ears, Diana returned to Brutton Square.
But Baroni was not content to let matters remain as they stood, trusting that his warning would do its work. He was determined to leave no stone unturned, and he forthwith sought out Errington in his own house and deliberately broached the subject of his engagement to Diana.
Max greeted him affectionately.
"It's a long while since you honoured me with a visit," he said, shaking hands. "I suppose"—laughingly—"you come to congratulate me?"
The old man shook his head.
"Far from it. I haf come to ask you to give her up."
"To give her up?" repeated Max, in undisguised amazement.
"Yes. Mees Quentin is not for marriage. She is dedicated to Art."
Max smiled indulgently.
"To Art? Yes. But she's for me, too, thank God! Dear old friend, you need not look so anxious and concerned. I've no wish to interfere with Diana's professional work. You shall have her voice"—smiling—"I'll be content to hold her heart."
But there was no answering smile on Baroni's lips.
"Does she know—everything?" he asked sternly.
Max shook his head.
"No. How could she? . . . You must realise the impossibility of that," he answered slowly.
"And you think it right to let her marry you in ignorance?"
Max hesitated. Then—
"She trusts me," he said at last.
"Pish! For how long? . . . When she sees daily under her eyes things that she cannot explain, unaccountable things, how long will she remain satisfied, I ask you? And then will begin unhappiness."
Errington stiffened.
"And what has our—supposititious—unhappiness to do with you, Signor
Baroni?" he asked haughtily.
"Your unhappiness? Nothing. It is the price you must pay—your inheritance. But hers? Everything. Tears, fretting, vexation—and that beautiful voice, that perfect organ, may be impaired. Think! Think what you are doing! Just for your own personal happiness you are risking the voice of the century, the voice that will give pleasure to tens of thousands—to millions. You are committing a crime against Art."
Max smiled in spite of himself.
"Truly, Maestro, I had not thought of it like that," he admitted. "But I think her faith in me will carry us through," he added confidently.
"Never! Never! Women are not made like that."
"And perhaps, later on, if things go well, I shall be able to tell her all."
"And much good that will do! Diavolo! When the time comes that things go well—if it ever does come—"
"It will. It shall," said Max firmly.
"Well, if it does—I ask you, can she then continue her life as an artiste?"
Max reflected.
"Yes, if I remain in England—which I hope to do. I counted on that when I asked her to marry me. I think I shall be able to arrange it."
"If! If! Are you going to hang your wife's happiness upon an 'if'?"
Baroni spoke with intense anger. "And 'if' you cannot remain in
England, if you haf to go back—there? Can your wife still appear as
a public singer?"
"No," acknowledged Max slowly. "I suppose not."
"No! Her career will be ruined. And all this is the price she will haf to pay for her—trust! Give it up, give it up—set her free."
Max flung himself into a chair, leaning his arms wearily on the table, and stared straight in front of him, his eyes dark with pain.
"I can't," he said, in a low voice. "Not now. I meant to—I tried to—but now she has promised and I can't let her go. Good God, Maestro!"—a sudden ring of passion in his tones—"Must I give up everything? Am I to have nothing in the world? Always to be a tool and never live an individual man's life of my own?"
Baroni's face softened a little.
"One cannot escape one's destiny," he said sadly. "Che sarà sarà. . . . But you can spare—her. Tell her the truth, and in common fairness let her judge for herself—not rush blindfold into such a web."
Max shook his head.
"You know I can't do that," he replied quietly.
Baroni threw out his arms in despair.
"I would tell her the whole truth myself—but for the memory of one who is dead." Sudden tears dimmed the fierce old eyes. "For the sake of that sainted martyr—martyr in life as well as in death—I will hold my peace."
A half-sad, half-humorous smile flashed across Errington's face.
"We're all of us martyrs—more or less," he observed drily.
"And you wish to add Mees Quentin to the list?" retorted Baroni. "Well, I warn you, I shall fight against it. I will do everything in my power to stop this marriage."
Max shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm sure you will," he said, smiling faintly. "But—forgive me, Maestro—I don't think you will succeed."
As soon as Baroni had taken his departure, Max called a taxi, and hurried off to see Adrienne de Gervais. He had arranged to talk over with her a certain scene in the play he was now writing for her, and which was to be produced early in the New Year.
Adrienne welcomed him good-humouredly.
"A little late," she observed, glancing at the clock. "But I suppose one must not expect punctuality when a man's in love."
"I know I'm late, but I can assure you"—with a grim smile—"love had little enough to do with it."
Adrienne looked up sharply, struck by the bitter note in his voice.
"Then what had?" she asked. "What has gone wrong, Max? You look fagged out."
"Baroni has been round to see me—to ask me to break off my engagement." He laughed shortly.
"He doesn't approve, I suppose?"
"That's a mild way of expressing his attitude."
Adrienne was silent a moment. Then she spoke, slowly, consideringly.
"I don't—approve—either. It isn't right, Max."
He bit his lip.
"So you—you, too, are against me?"
She stretched out her hand impulsively.
"Not against you, Max! Never that! How could I be? . . . But I don't think you're being quite fair to Diana. You ought to tell her the truth."
He wheeled round.
"No one knows better than you how impossible that is."
"Don't you trust her then—the woman you're asking to be your wife?"
The tinge of irony in her voice brought a sudden light of anger to his eyes.
"That's not very just of you, Adrienne," he said coldly. "I would trust her with my life. But I have no right to pledge the trust of others—and that's what I should be doing if I told her. We have our duty—you and I—and all this . . . is part of it."
Adrienne hesitated.
"Couldn't you—ask the others to release you?"
He shook his head.
"What right have I to ask them to trust an Englishwoman with their secret—just for my pleasure?"
"For your happiness," corrected Adrienne softly.
"Or for my happiness? My happiness doesn't count with them one straw."
"It does with me. I don't see why she shouldn't be told. Baroni knows, and Olga—you have to trust them."
"Baroni will be silent for the sake of the dead, and Olga out of her love—or fear"—with a bitter smile—"of me."
"And wouldn't Diana, too, be silent for your sake?"
"My dear Adrienne"—a little irritably—"Englishwomen are so frank—so indiscreetly trusting. That's where the difficulty lies, and I dare not risk it. There's too much at stake. But can you imagine any agent they may have put upon our track surprising her knowledge out of Olga?" He laughed contemptuously. "I fancy not! If Olga hadn't been a woman she'd have made her mark in the Diplomatic Service."
"Yet what is there to make her keep faith with us?" said Adrienne doubtfully. "She is poor—"
"Her own doing, that!"
"True, but the fact remains. And those others would pay a fortune for the information she could give. Besides, I believe she frankly hates me."
"Possibly. But she would never, I think, allow her personal feelings to override everything else. After all, she was one of us—is still, really, though she would gladly disown the connection."
"Well, when you've looked at every side of the matter, we only come back to the same point. I think you're acting wrongly. You're letting Diana pledge herself blindly, when you're not free to give her the confidence a man should give his wife—when you don't even know—yet—how it may all end."
Almost Baroni's very words! Max winced.
"No. I don't know how it will end, as you say. But surely there will come a time when I shall be free to live my own life?"
Adrienne smiled a trifle wistfully.
"If your conscience ever lets you," she said.
There was a long silence. Presently she resumed:—-
"I never thought, when you first told me about your engagement, that the position of affairs need make any difference. I was so pleased to think that you cared for each other! And now—where will it all end? How many lives are going to be darkened by the same shadow? Oh, it's terrible, Max, terrible!"
The tears filled her eyes.
"Don't!" said Max unsteadily. "Don't! I know it's bad enough. Perhaps you're right—I oughtn't to have spoken to Diana, I hoped things would right themselves eventually, but you and Baroni have put another complexion upon matters. It's all an inextricable tangle, whichever way one looks at it—come good luck or bad! . . . I suppose I was wrong—I ought to have waited. But now . . . now . . . Before God, Adrienne! I can't, give her up—not now!"
CHAPTER XVII
"WHOM GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER"
Max and Diana were married shortly before the following Christmas. The wedding took place very quietly at Crailing, only a few intimate friends being asked to it. For, as Max pointed out, either their invitations must be limited to a dozen or so, or else Diana must resign herself to a fashionable wedding in town, with all the world and his wife as guests at the subsequent reception. No middle course is possible when a well-known dramatist elects to marry the latest sensation in the musical world!
So it was in the tiny grey church overlooking the sea that Max and Diana were made one, with the distant murmur of the waves in their ears, and with Alan Stair to speak the solemn words that joined their lives together, and when the little intimate luncheon which followed the ceremony was over, they drove away in Max's car to the wild, beautiful coast of Cornwall, there to spend the first perfect days of their married life.
And they were perfect days! Afterwards, when clouds had dimmed the radiance of the sun, and doubts and ugly questionings were beating up on every side, Diana had always that radiant fortnight by the Cornish sea—she and Max alone together—to look back upon.
The woman whose married life holds sorrow, and who has no such golden memory stored away, is bereft indeed!
On their return to London, the Erringtons established themselves at Lilac Lodge, a charming old-fashioned house in Hampstead, where the creeper-clad walls and great bushes of lilac reminded Diana pleasantly of the old Rectory at Crailing. Jerry made one of the household—"resident secretary" as he proudly termed himself, and his cheery, good-humoured presence was invaluable whenever difficulties arose.
But at first there were few, indeed, of the latter to contend with. Owing to the illness of an important member of the cast, without whose services Adrienne declined to perform, the production of Max's new play, "Mrs. Fleming's Husband," was delayed until the autumn. This postponement left him free to devote much more of his time to his wife than would otherwise have been possible, and for the first few months after their marriage it seemed as though no shadow could ever fall athwart their happiness.
In this respect Baroni's prognostications of evil had failed to materialise, but his fears that marriage would interfere with Diana's musical career were better founded. Quite easily and naturally she slipped out of the professional life which had just been opening its doors to her. She felt no inclination to continue singing in public. Max filled her existence, and although she still persevered with her musical training under Baroni, she told him with a frank enjoyment of the situation that she was far too happy and enjoying herself far too much to have any desire at present to take up the arduous work of a public singer!
Baroni was immeasurably disappointed, and not all Diana's assurances that in a year, or two at most, she would go back into harness once more sufficed to cheer him.
"A year—two years!" he exclaimed. "Two years lost at the critical time—just at the commencement of your career! Ah, my dear Mrs. Errington, you had better haf lost four years later on when you haf established yourself."
To Max himself the old maestro was short and to the point when chance gave him the opportunity of a few moments alone with him.
"You haf stolen her from me, Max Errington—you haf broken your promise that she should be free to sing."
Max responded good-humouredly:—
"She is free, Maestro, free to do exactly as she chooses. And she has chosen—to be my wife, to live for a time the pleasant, peaceful life that ordinary, everyday folk may live, who are not rushed hither and thither at the call of a career. Can you honestly say she hasn't chosen the better part?"
Baroni was silent.
"Don't grudge her a year or two of freedom," pursued Max. "You know, you old slave-driver, you,"—laughing—"that it is only because you want her for your beloved Art—because you want her voice! Otherwise you would rejoice in her happiness."
"And you—what is it you want?" retorted Baroni, unappeased. "You want her soul! Whereas I would give her soul wings that she might send it singing forth into an enraptured world."
But Baroni's words fell upon stony ground, and Max and Diana went their way, absorbed in one another and in the wonderful happiness which love had brought them.
Thus spring slipped away into summer, and the season was in full swing when fate tossed the first pebble into their unruffled pool of joy.
It was only a brief paragraph, sandwiched in between the musical notes of a morning paper, to which Olga Lermontof, who came daily to Lilac Lodge to practise with Diana, drew the latter's attention. The paragraph recalled the fact that it was just a year since Miss Quentin had made her debut, and then went on to comment lightly upon the brief and meteoric character of her professional appearances.
"Domesticity should not have claimed Miss Quentin"—so ran the actual words. "Hers was a voice the like of which we may not hear again, and the public grudges its withdrawal. A propos, we had always thought (until circumstances proved us hopelessly wrong) that the fortunate man, whose gain has been such a loss to the musical world, seemed born to write plays for a certain charming actress—and she to play the part which he assigned her."
Diana showed the paragraph to Max, who frowned as he read it, and finally tore the newspaper in which it had appeared across and across, flinging the pieces into the grate.
Then he turned and laid his hands on Diana's shoulders, gazing searchingly into her face.
"Have you felt—anything of what that paragraph suggests?" he demanded. "Am I taking too much from you, Diana? I love to keep you to myself—not to have to share you with the world, but I won't stand in your light, or hold you back if you wish to go—not even"—with a wry smile—"if it should mean your absence on a tour."
"Silly boy!" Diana patted his head reprovingly. "I don't want to sing in public—at least, not now, not yet. Later on, I dare say, I shall like to take it up again. And as for leaving you and going on tour"—laughingly—"the latter half of the paragraph should serve as a warning to me not to think of such a thing!"
To her surprise Max did not laugh with her. Instead, he answered coldly:—
"I hope you have more sense than to pay attention to what any damned newspaper may have to say about me—or about Miss de Gervais either."
"Why, Max,—Max—"
Diana stared at him in dismay, flushing a little. It was the first time he had spoken harshly to her since their marriage.
In an instant he had caught her in his arms, passionately repentant.
"Dearest, forgive me! It was only—only that you are bound to read such things, and it angered me for a moment. Miss de Gervais and I see too much of each other to escape all comment."
Diana withdrew herself slowly from his arms.
"And—and must you see so much of her now? Now that we are married?" she asked, rather wistfully.
"Why, of course. We have so many professional matters to discuss. You must be prepared for that, Diana. When we begin rehearsing 'Mrs. Fleming's Husband,' I shall be down at the theatre every day."
"Oh, yes, at the theatre. But—but you go to see Adrienne rather often now, don't you? And the rehearsals haven't begun yet."
Max hesitated a moment. Then he said quietly:—
"Dear, you must learn not to be jealous of my work. There are always—many things—that I have to discuss with Miss de Gervais."
And so, for the time being, the subject dropped. But the shadow had flitted for a moment across the face of the sun. A little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, had shown itself upon the horizon.
In July the Erringtons left town to spend a brief holiday at Crailing
Rectory, and on their return, the preparations for the production of
"Mrs. Fleming's Husband" went forward in good earnest.
They had not been back in town a week before Diana realised that, as the wife of a dramatist on the eve of the production of a play, she must be prepared to cede her prior right in her husband to the innumerable people who claimed his time on matters relating to the forthcoming production, and, above all, to the actress who was playing the leading part in it.
And it was in respect of this latter demand that Diana found the matrimonial shoe begin to pinch. To her, it seemed as though Adrienne were for ever 'phoning Max to come and see her, and invariably he set everything else aside—even Diana herself, if needs be—and obeyed her behest.
"I can't see why Adrienne wants to consult you so often," Diana protested one day. "She is perpetually ringing you up to go round to Somervell Street—or if it's not that, then she is writing to you."
Max laughed her protest aside.
"Well, there's a lot to consult about, you see," he said vaguely.
"So it seems. I shall be glad when it is all finished and I have you to myself again. When will the play be on?"
"About the middle of October," he replied, fidgeting restlessly with the papers that strewed his desk. They were talking in his own particular den, and Diana's eyes ruefully followed the restless gesture.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "you want me to go?"
"Well"—apologetically—"I have a lot to attend to this morning. Will you send Jerry to me—do you mind, dearest?"
"It wouldn't make much difference if I did," she responded grimly, as she went towards the door.
Max looked after her thoughtfully in silence. When she had gone, he leaned his head rather wearily upon his hand.
"It's better so," he muttered. "Better she should think it's only the play that binds me to Adrienne."