DIANA had been left a few days with Miss Sullivan. It was pleasant after the wide, rolling sea, dreary sometimes and lonely in its grandeur, to look quietly across the tranquil lawn upon a cultivated landscape, full of life and homes of seeming happy lives. Summer was ripening all along the gentle slopes—a pleasant, quiet summer for Diana and her hostess, and they spent the few days of Diana’s stay in closest confidence.
Mr. Belden did not call upon Diana at Miss Sullivan’s, but he discovered the day of her departure. A carefully considered chance made him a passenger on the same train. He did not appear until Miss Sullivan had taken leave of her former pupil. Diana had no fear of travelling alone. Railroad conductors are among the errant knights of modern chivalry; but I never heard that Diana needed protection. She could wither impertinence with a look. But though she did not need an escort, she did not hate one, and when Belden came up with the manner of his better self, she made place and accepted him as companion of dustyish hours.
[164]Diana was happy that day. Her talks with Miss Sullivan had cleared away much darkness from her mind. She was younger by many years than a week before. All the beautiful sights and scenes of her past fleeted before her in bright and changing pictures. She was thinking much of her free and huntress life in Texas. She could even forget the terrible death of her mother. The whole story of that dreadful event was no longer a dark secret with her and one other, and that other she no longer dreaded to meet—that other she need no longer exclude from her presence and her thoughts.
A few hours with Miss Sullivan had changed the current of her life. She was no longer drifting hopelessly toward maddening terrors, forever in dread of herself lest she should yield to a hope that she must deem sacrilege. She had called Miss Sullivan mother, and when that lady, studying her, perhaps by the light of some bitter experience of her own, had said, like a mother firm and wise, “My child! you are hiding something from me,” Diana flung herself into this mother’s arms, and with such agonised tears as you had not looked for in her clear and fearless eyes, told the secret that had been with her like a death—between her and God and hope and life and love.
And now that this, her mother, had shown her how her guiltless and natural terrors were only superstitions, and how she might blamelessly accept[165] an offered happiness, should it ever offer, there was no more vision of death between Diana and the beloved hopes of her soul.
Yet she did not wish to think of the future; therefore she was glad to be diverted in her journey by an agreeable companion. And to him, also, it was good to be with her. This radiant nature shone upon him, and if there was anywhere in his being a dwarfed and colourless germ of better emotion among the thickets of his daily thoughts, this now sprang up and seemed ready to flourish and blossom. Belden, the petted and successful man, did not with Diana promise himself his usual easy triumph. He was willing to win her by pains. But sometimes in this day, her manner was so transparently full of happiness, and to him was so frank and gracious, that he began to draw inferences rapidly favourable to himself.
You have, perhaps, my young gentleman reader of more or less purity of mind and ardent temperament, sat apart in a poisoned mental ambush watching the woman you loved, while some quite unworthy personage, quite vulpine or quite viperine, was pouring into her ears talk that made you feel like a fox-hound or a snake exterminator. It was not that the talk itself was poison—it was, perhaps, no more than easy clap-trap, shining and shallow, cleverish things, such as may suit a weekly newspaper, philosophy of a man-about-town, gossip from all the[166] courts from the Grand Lama to Brigham Young—the very subjects yourself would, like the cosmopolite you are, have descanted on, were it not that here you could only breathe phrases deep and devoted. It is not the talk that troubles you; it is that the talker, a man you know to be false and foul, should bring his presence so near your shrine of vestal purity. But pardon him, the viper, that he eloquently orates, and pardon her, the Loved One, that she answers gaily. Viper, under that good influence, has perhaps ceased to be venomous; and the Loved One is perhaps gay for remembering those meaning words uttered by you so tenderly before the serpent trailed in and you retired to discontented ambuscade under the fiery shelter of crimson curtains.
Belden, whether he deceived himself or not, was quite willing to think he had made a conquest of Diana. He was one of those who have been encouraged by vulgarish women, tending toward demirepdom, to think that, when he entered, “all fair, all rich—all won, all conquered stand.” Diana was guiltless of any willing coquetry. She was thinking of herself and did not concern herself as to what impression she made upon others. But unwittingly, by the gift of nature, she had all those slight fascinations and winning charms that self-made coquettes study for in laborious hours, and persuade themselves they have attained.
Mr. Belden was, no doubt, properly solicitous for[167] Diana’s baggage. This goddess was mundane enough to have made purchases beyond belief of Parisian dresses. “I dare do all that may become a man,” but to enter her boxes and describe their contents I dare not. Thinking of Diana, one thought not of the robes, but of the Mistress of the Robes. Belden was experienced in the small cares of society. It was part of his profession as a ladies’ man to recognise all properties of his escorted. She therefore arrived unimpaired at Newport. Clara Waddie, who met her at the boat, would hardly have given the escort so cordial a reception. Mr. Belden, probably, did not resemble any friend of hers.
Diana’s presence completed the charm of the Waddies’ house at Newport, and the house was a worthy temple for its two deities, for Clara had always been the mistress of its decorations, and her cultivation and intuitive judgment were everywhere apparent.
Clara and Diana! the A and B of this C, D, were Dunstan and Paulding, a pair of the best men. A noble thing is the friendship of two brothers in love. California began just as they left college together. They dashed off immediately. Being fellows who were up to anything, they got on wonderfully. They mined, drove coaches, were judges or counsel at the plentiful hangings of the day. Each of them shot a pillager or two and rescued a few Mexicans and Chinamen from pillage by escaped[168] Australians. In the starvation winter, they headed the party that relieved the involuntary cannibals of the Sierra Nevada. They bought a ranch, and finding on its edge among the hills a ready-money boulder of gold, quite an Ajax cast in fact, they opened dry diggings there and took out neat piles before the outsiders came in. Then they took a little run to San Francisco. Everyone who has had California—and what one brave and bold of those days is there that could have it and did not?—every Californian of the early times knows what two men drawing together, not indulging in hebdomadal big drunks or diurnal little drunks, and not beguiled in any sense by the sirens of the Bella union or other halls, what such a whole team could achieve. These two friends, living together, acting together, having common purse, common purposes for the future, when they had seen the lights and shadows of this phase of life, had gained each the other’s good qualities. When they were together in presence, you saw their marked difference of nature, marked as their differences of physique. When they were apart, each seemed the other’s counterpart. One sometimes sees this singular likeness in man and wife of some marriage of happy augury.
At San Francisco, they chanced to pick up one of the Mexicans whom they had protected and befriended in the mines. Through him they became interested in a land claim, which the poor fellow had[169] by inheritance. They carried it on in his behalf, and when he died they found themselves by his will owners of the claim. It was made good. They were selling it at the fabulous prices of that day when Paulding was recalled by his mother’s death. Dunstan remained to close the business. He was able to remit to his friend wealth for them both.
Dunstan returned home across the plains by New Mexico and Texas. In the up-country of Texas, he was detained some time by an accident. After some delay, he joined his friend in New York. Several years of toil and danger entitled them to brief repose. When action again became necessary to them, they essayed to revive at home the interest they had felt in constructive politics in California, but the ripeness of times had not yet come. The line was not yet drawn upon the great national question of America, which has since made the position of man and man inevitable according to character and education. Politics were not interesting.
Paulding observed his friend falling into melancholy. Since the trip across the plains and the accident in Texas, Dunstan had lost that ardent vigour and careless hopefulness which had made him the leader in their California adventures. Perhaps he had achieved success too early and was blasé. Paulding took his friend to Europe, where they remained knocking about and occasionally amusing themselves with making the aborigines stare with[170] some stupendous California extravagance, until they heard of Frémont’s nomination. ............