DIANA'S STORY.
"I am afraid that is the signal for retiring," says Colonel Fane, as
we see Mrs. Warrington make a move. "You will be going to bed now."
"Yes," I answer, looking at the clock. "It is very late,--ten
minutes past eleven."
"Pray" (smiling), "what time do you go to bed at home?"
"Oh, generally between half-past nine and ten."
"Really! You must get a good deal of beauty sleep. I have heard it
is only to be obtained before twelve o'clock. Do you know that
saying?"
"Yes. Nurse always tells it me when I am late."
"Oh! you have a nurse, have you?" (looking amused). "By the way,
though, so had Juliet."
"And I am older than Juliet by three years," I add, slyly. "Must not
I be a baby to want a nurse at my age?"
"And yet," he says, musingly, replying to the first part of my
sentence, "I fancy Juliet must have been very much more of a woman
than you are."
I feel slightly offended. It is rather ignominious to be thought
young. I rise to wish him good-night.
"Good-night," he says, holding my hand rather longer than necessary.
The next day it pours in torrents. There is a meet three miles off,
and most of the party had intended hunting. A few adventurous
spirits appear in pink, but after they have stood a few minutes at
the window, dismally contemplating the project, having each and every
of them tapped the glass, and looked out at the hall-door, to observe
the weather from a fresh point of view, they for the most part make
up their minds that it is hopeless, and fifty to one against the
hounds meeting.
"Shall I go, or stay?" whispers Colonel Fane, who has found his way
to my side at the breakfast-table.
"You will get very wet if you go," I reply, demurely.
At this moment Lady Gwyneth enters, fully equipped.
"You don't mean to say you are going, Lady Gwyneth!" cry half a dozen
voices, in various accents of surprise.
"Isn't everybody going?" she asks, coolly taking her seat.
"Look at the weather!" "The hounds won't meet!" "What's the use of
getting wet through?" say voices, again.
"Oh, if you are afraid of a little rain, no doubt you are all better
at home," she retorts, contemptuously.
"I'll go if you do, Lady Gwyneth," cries Curly, flushing up, and
looking very eager.
"Oh, Curly!" I utter, involuntarily.
"Bravo!--so you shall," she answers, taking no notice of me. "And
you shall ride Mr. Desborough's mare. I think" (contemptuously) "I
can answer for his not being of the party."
Her husband looks up, not very well pleased, but too much afraid of
her to offer any but the mildest opposition.
"I am sure the earl, your father--" he begins.
"Pray leave the earl, my father, out of the question" (looking
daggers at him). "I am not always bringing up your father, the--dear
me, I am afraid I was going to say the draper!" (with a short and
very unpleasant laugh). "'Mais nous avons changé tout cela.'"
I do not think any one present thinks any the more of Lady Gwyneth
for this outrageous speech; indeed, I fancy she is rather ashamed of
it herself, for she says, hastily,--
"Come, Mr. Warrington, the weather won't keep you, I know. If the
hounds don't meet, we can turn tail and come back: at all events, we
shall have had a ride. I never take off my habit when I have once
put it on."
"All right, Lady Gwyn!" cries the jolly voice of our host, "I'm your
man.
"'If you will, you will, we may depend on 't,'
I suppose. How soon shall I order the horses?"
"Curly," I say, in a small voice, my anxiety overcoming my shyness,
"if Mr. Warrington is going, there is no necessity for you to go.
You know you have rather a cough."
"Oh, yes, stop at home, and put your feet in mustard-and-water, and
let your sister give you gruel," sneers Lady Gwyneth; and, I think
for the first time in his life, my brother darts an angry glance at
me.
"Pray mind your own business, Di," he says, crossly.
At this moment I hate Lady Gwyneth.
"My dear fellow," interposes Colonel Fane, quietly, "you ought to be
tremendously obliged to your sister for being so anxious about you.
You see" (with a little flash in his eyes), "it is a matter of utter
indifference to Lady Gwyneth whether you lay in consumption or a
cough for the winter, as long as you do her bidding when she wants
you."
"Thank you, Colonel Fane," says Lady Gwyneth, coloring a little.
"You give me a charming character."
"I shall be delighted if you prove that it is undeserved," he
answers, with a little smile.
"No one shall accuse me of helping to make a milksop of a boy," she
replies, defiantly. "Come, Mr. Carew, are you ready?"
Curly jumps up with flattered alacrity, and I feel discomfited.
"Never mind," says Colonel Fane, encouragingly, "I dare say he has
had many a good wetting before now; and I cannot say he looks at all
delicate."
"Oh, no!" I answer, hastily, "not a bit! But one hears such stories,
you know; and papa and I are frightened to death if he ails the least
thing."
"What a devoted family you seem!"
"Yes," I answer, simply; "we all think there is no one like each
other."
The sentence is not a very well-turned one, but it expresses my
meaning, and he seems to understand it.
"Have you any brothers and sisters?" I ask.
"One sister. The only relation--the only near one, at least--I have
in the world. She is coming to-day."
"I am very glad," I say, taking it as a matter of course that I shall
like her. "Is she like you?"
"Why?--would you wish her to be?" (a little curiously).
"Yes," I say, frankly, for somehow I do not feel at all shy with him.
"No," he says, with a sigh, "she is not much like me, or rather I am
not much like her. I wish I were. She is, I verily believe, the
best woman in the world."
"Then I suppose she is not very young or pretty." I remark, with a
_naïveté_ of which I am unconscious for the moment.
"Don't the two go together?" he asks, smiling; then, looking
earnestly at me, "I am sure they do sometimes."
I blush, and am furiously angry with myself for doing so. Of course
it looks as though I take his speech to myself; and how on earth can
he know whether I am good or not? I, alas! know how far short I fall
of meriting that desirable adjective.
"She is not what you would call young," Colonel Fane proceeds. "I
believe" (with a smile) "young girls think every member of their own
sex over five-and-twenty uninterestingly old; and she is thirty; but
pretty she certainly is, if I am to believe the world's unanimous
verdict."
"I hope she will like me," I say, diffidently, "for I have not spoken
two words to any lady but Mrs. Warrington since I entered the house."
"Well," he says, smiling, "Miss Gore must be excused for being
preoccupied; and as for Lady Gwyneth and Mrs. Huntingdon, they never
think of speaking to one of their own sex as long as there is a man
present."
There is a general move.
"Can you play billiards?" he asks me.
I answer in the affirmative, being tolerably proficient from constant
practice.
"Then come into the billiard-room."
I shake my head.
"I had rather not."
"Why? Mrs. Huntingdon will keep you in countenance. She always goes
into the billiard-room after breakfast."
"Does she play?"
"No; but, as she says, she loathes doing needle-work with a parcel of
women in a boudoir. She never does anything, as far as I know, but
recline, magnificently dressed, in a lounging-chair, with her hands
in her lap, covered with diamonds--and--flirt," he adds.
I suppose I look rather surprised, for he says, quickly,--
"No doubt you think it rather strange for a married woman to flirt,
and it slipped out unawares" (looking rather vexed with himself);
"only you cannot very well be in the house very long with her and not
find it out."
"But her husband?" I say, opening my eyes: "does he not mind?"
"Not in the least, I think. I am not sure he is even aware of it."
"How dreadful!" I ejaculate, in so serious a voice that he laughs.
"Come," he says, "let us go into the billiard-room. How many will
you give me?"
The morning passes away very quickly and pleasantly. After billiards
we take to battledore and shuttlecock,--a game provocative of much
laughter when one is not very proficient, as neither Colonel Fane nor
I are. Mrs. Huntingdon perfectly carries out the programme allotted
to her.
"Di," says my brother through the keyhole, as I am arranging my
ruffled locks before luncheon,--"Di, open the door."
I comply, and, the door being opened, he gives me a hearty embrace.
"I'm awfully sorry I spoke so crossly to you this morning, dear old
Di!"
"I don't think you ever said a harsh word hardly to me in your life
before," I reply, the tears starting to my eyes; "and to think she
should be the cause!"
I suppose there is a ring of the contempt I feel in my voice, for he
says, quickly,--
"Don't abuse her, Di. She's an awfully kind, jolly little woman, and
she has asked me over there to stay; and, by jingo! can't she just
ride!"
My face falls,--I don't know why; but, independently of losing his
society, I hate the thought of his going to her. I feel a desire to
disparage her that I never felt for any one before; but then I have
hardly ever seen any of my own sex but the rector's wife and
daughters, and the doctor's sister.
"I suppose you think everything she does nice?" I say. "I suppose"
(raising my voice a little) "you think it was nice of her to say what
she did to her husband at breakfast?"
"No, I don't; but you have no idea" (earnestly) "what a miserable
life hers is. He is such a sickening little cad!"
My lip curls in scorn. My opinion of Lady Gwyneth is in no way
heightened by the thought that she has been confiding her troubles to
a boy of sixteen, whose acquaintance she has not had twenty-four
hours.
"Never mind," I say, kissing him, as the gong sounds. "At all
events, never let her make you unkind to me, dear." And we proceed
down-stairs together amicably.
Whilst we are sitting at lunch, the clouds break, the sun comes out
in all his glory, and every one begins to make plans for spending the
afternoon out of doors. Mrs. Warrington invites Mrs. Huntingdon to
drive with her in the barouche, and that lady accedes. Then our
hostess, turning to me, kindly asks me to be of the party. I do not
want to go in the least, but, not knowing how to excuse myself, thank
her, and accept.
"Quite wrong, Miss Carew," says Colonel Fane, who is again next to
me: "it would do you ten times more good to go for a good walk."
"I like walking," I answer, eagerly.
"So do I. Let us make up a party: may we, Mrs. Warrington? Who is
for a walk?"
"We are," cries Miss Gore. Then, correcting herself, with a
blush,--"At least, I am."
"And I," says her soldier, tenderly.
No one else volunteers. Mr. Warrington is going to drive Lady
Gwyneth and two or three of the men on his coach, since it is too wet
to shoot.
"You will come too, Curly?" says Lady Gwyneth; and for the world I
cannot help an angry flash coming into my eyes at this increase of
intimacy.
Half an hour later we four are starting for our walk. The air is
delicious, the sun as bright and hot as it can be in January; such
birds as there are are singing, whistling, twittering; the bright
rain-drops stand on every leaf and twig, like unset diamonds; little
rivulets of rain run and sparkle;
"From the green rivage, many a fall
Of diamond rillets musical"
work on their way to the brook below. It is such a day as one
sometimes gets in midwinter, giving one a heavenly foretaste of the
spring.
"How glad I am you thought of a walk!" I say, joyously. "I hate
driving,--or, rather, being driven. But I wish we had some dogs to
take; that is half the fun of a walk."
"We had better get ahead of the other couple," he whispers.
"Why?"
"Why, because," he answers, laughing, "we should make a point of
following them religiously, which they would think a great nuisance;
and I don't suppose they will have the same scruples with regard to
us."
"I see; but really I do not know why lovers should require to be left
alone in such a public thing as a walk."
"My dear fellow," cries Colonel Fane, as, stepping out briskly, we
pass them, "what a snail's pace you are going! Miss Carew and I
cannot curb our impatient feet, so we will show you the way."
And on we go, nor ever cast a glance behind for a couple of miles,
when Colonel Fane looks over his shoulder, and says, with a laugh,--
"I thought as much. Miss Gore and her soldier are nowhere in sight."
I feel as if I had known my companion all my life, and talk away to
him about my father, Curly, home, and most things that concern us;
and he listens as if I were telling him the most amusing, interesting
stories in the world.
"Dear me," I say, with sudden compunction, as after a walk of about
an hour and a half we are drawing homewards again, "how I must have
been boring you all this time! I am nearly as bad as Mr. Desborough,
only in a different line."
"You cannot think how interested I have been," he answers, eagerly.
"I quite long to see you at home. I wonder if your father would
consider it a liberty if I were to call upon him?"
"Oh no," I begin, quickly, and then pause, remembering Papa's
aversion for any society.
"I shall ride over one day," he says, not remarking my hesitation:
"you know I live only eleven miles from you, and my father and your
grandfather used to know each other very well. After all you have
told me, I should like immensely to see Mr. Carew. I wish he were
here!"
"So do I," I respond, with a big sigh. "I do miss him so. I did not
want to come at all, but he insisted upon it."
"Quite right, too," says Colonel Fane, approvingly: "you ought to
leave him sometimes, to get him accustomed to it against the time
when you leave him altogether."
"You mean when I get married?" I say, not pretending to misunderstand
him.
"Exactly" (smiling).
"But," I return, triumphantly, "I shall not get married! I never see
a man."
"Thank you" (taking off his hat).
"This is the first time I have ever been out, and I do not suppose I
shall ever go anywhere again, unless Mrs. Warrington invites me next
year, if I behave properly this time."
"Then you don't look forward to getting married, as most girls do."
"No" (shaking my head), "not at all."
"Have you never" (very earnestly) "thought it would be pleasant to
have some one to love and care for you intensely, in a different way
from a father or mother?"
"Yes," I answer, reluctantly, blushing a little, "I have. I have
been desperately in love, too, with men in books; but" (smiling),
"after those heroes, I do not think I should find an ordinary man to
come up to my expectations. One would have to be so very fond of a
man to marry him, would not one?" (looking up earnestly at him).
"_Vide_ Lady Gwyneth and Mrs. Huntingdon," he says, laughing, but as
quickly becoming grave again.
"God forbid that you should ever marry except for love!" he adds,
locking at me very kindly.