DIANA'S STORY.
The solemn rite of the day is over. Dinner is never a gregarious
meal at Alford, although to-day, thanks to Captain Montagu, it is far
more cheerful than usual. I am longing for it to be over, thinking,
with a certain guilty secret pleasure, of the stroll in the moonlight
that is to come presently. Daylight is almost gone; the faint
silvery light is rising behind the dark trees: in half an hour more
we shall be out together in the dewy fragrant night. A feeling
almost akin to fear comes over me: I tremble at what I am going to
do. Why, I wonder? If on any of the preceding evenings Hector had
asked me to go out with him, I should have gone at once, without the
shadow of an _arrière-pensée_; but to-night I feel as if I were about
to commit a great indiscretion. Nevertheless, I mean to commit it,
if the Fates are propitious. Captain Montagu, holding the door open
for us, whispers softly, as I pass, "Remember!"
"Remember!" As if there was the very smallest faintest chance of my
forgetting! I take a book into my favorite corner; but I cannot
read: every moment I glance nervously at the clock, which ticks so
slowly to night. Lady Montagu is unusually wakeful: she even takes a
book. I give myself up miserably to disappointment,--this half-hour
that I have longed for as I have never longed for anything in my life
before. Tears are rising in my eyes; I feel my mouth quivering. To
hide my face I put my book before it, and then I say dismally to
myself, "It is not to be!" A soft thud rouses me. I glance from
behind my screen. The book has fallen from Lady Montagu's hands; her
head is leaning gently back, her eyes are closed, and there is hope
again. It is twenty minutes since we left the dinner-table; the door
opens, and the gentlemen appear.
"I am not going to give you so easy a victory to-night, I promise
you," says Sir Hector, approaching me, for I am obliged to win a game
occasionally, in order not to betray my tactics.
I smile as pleasantly as I can, and make some answering remark, and
he goes to his accustomed chair.
Captain Montagu comes up to me and whispers,--
"I am going now. I will wait for you at the front door. Do not be
long."
He is gone, and I am holding my breath to listen to the first
incipient snore that is to bring my release. Oh, blessed
sound!--welcomer to-night than the sweetest melody ever composed by
Rossini or Mozart. If I had not my eyes fixed upon the clock, I
should believe half an hour had elapsed before my anxious ear caught
the sound; but when it comes, the dial shows it to be four minutes
exactly. I wait another minute, until it has settled into a regular
prolonged snore, and then, softly, tremblingly, on tiptoe I creep
towards the door, as Jack of the Beanstalk did when he went to carry
off the giant's harp. Once safely outside the door, I fly along the
corridor to the front door. I can hear the beats of my heart as I
stand looking out. A slow step crunches the gravel. In another
moment he sees me, and quickens his pace.
"But," he says, looking at me, "you must have something more on.
Remember it is only May, although it is so warm." And, coming in, he
takes his mother's black lace shawl from a peg and puts it round me.
He does it so gently, without ruffling a single hair, and I think to
myself, with a sort of pang, that he must have had plenty of practice.
"You don't mind my smoking, do you?" he asks.
As if I minded anything that gave him pleasure!
The moon is shining out full now, transmuting everything she looks
upon to silver: her fair face is mirrored in the dark water, and
lingeringly, Narcissus-like, she seems to dwell on her own loveliness.
"After all," says Captain Montagu, breaking silence at last, as we
pace together under the broad trees, through which the silver light
is trickling,--"after all, the country is very pleasant, especially"
(with a low laugh) "when one has a charming companion,--and a good
cigar. Under present circumstances, I think I could exist here a
long time."
I do not make any reply, for no appropriate answer occurs to me at
the moment.
"The worst of it is, it won't last very long," he continues, with an
accent of discontent. "Somehow, pleasant things never do. Hector
will be here to-morrow. Tell me" (stopping and looking down at me
inquisitively), "what did my father mean when he said that you were
Hector's property?"
"I do not know what he meant," I exclaim, the eager crimson mounting
to my cheek, "unless it was that he was the means of my being here,
which," I add, reluctantly, "of course he was."
"Come and sit down," he says, in a pleasantly authoritative voice,
pointing to a seat under a big tree; and I, nothing loath, obey.
"He will be very angry when he comes back to-morrow and finds me
here," he remarks, thoughtfully, as, leaning back, he brings the full
light of his handsome eyes upon my face, in which I am painfully
conscious the color is shifting uneasily. "He is as jealous as
Othello. But, upon my soul, I did not know you were here. If I had,
I do not think I should have come."
"Thank you," I say, with some indignation.
"I do not, really," he repeats, in his most lazy, most caressing
tone, ignoring utterly my displeasure. "You know I never can be ten
minutes alone with a pretty woman without wanting to make love to
her. I feel it creeping over me now; and I don't think it would be
right towards Hector."
For the life of me, I cannot help laughing,--there is something so
naïve about his confession, and the way he makes it. "You shouldn't
laugh at a fellow when he is battling with his weakness and his
scruples," he utters, with an air of comic reproach. "You see, to me
it is an every-day occurrence to fall in love, but it's a tremendous
affair for Hector."
"I don't know what you mean," I exclaim, impatiently, feeling also a
little mortified, and rather inclined to wish I had not come out.
"Sir Hector will be waking up soon, and I must go and set the
chess-men."
"Do not go," he says, laying a detaining hand on my arm: "it is so
delicious here, and I should be so dull if you were to leave me. I
should begin to hate the country, and to wish I had not come
immediately." (Then, irrelevantly), "Always wear crimson flowers in
your hair: you can't think how well they become you."
There is a pause. He is silent, and I do not feel inclined to speak.
I am thinking with some bitterness how eagerly I looked forward to
this half-hour with him, and how little enjoyment I am deriving from
it. Presently he throws away the end of his cigar, and moves nearer
to me.
"I want to ask you a question," he says, softly. "I know I have no
right to: indeed, I think it is very bad taste on my part; but I am
an inquisitive fellow, and have been rather spoiled. Tell me"
(taking my hand, and fixing his eyes on mine), "is there any chance
of your ever becoming my sister? I always wanted a little sister
awfully. Don't look angry" (reading the indignant flush in my face).
"I know Hector is in love with you. I know he wants to marry you; my
mother told me as much; he will tell you himself very soon, if he has
not done so already; and what" (rather eagerly)--"what shall you say?"
An undefined sense of pain steals across me as I withdraw my hand
from his.
"Until he tells me so," I answer, drawing myself up coldly, "I think
it is quite superfluous for me or any one else to speculate on my
reply."
And, drawing my skirts away from him, I rise to go. He springs up
and stands in my path.
"No," he says, hurriedly, "upon my soul you shall not go away angry
with me."
He looks so handsome, standing before me with a slight flush on his
face and an eager look in his eyes,--who could be angry with him? I
smile.
"I am not angry," I say; "but I do not think you should have asked
me, on your brother's account even more than on mine. You are quite
mistaken. We are very good friends, but----"
"But what?"
"Nothing more."
"Nothing more?"
"Nor likely to be."
"Nor likely to be?"
"I wish," he begins, eagerly, then checks himself, and says, almost
coldly, "Hector is a good fellow; he is very fond of you, and Alford
is not a bad place to be mistress of, is it?"
The stable clock strikes ten.
"Oh," I cry, terrified, "what will Sir Hector say? Do, pray, come in
with me!"
"I had much better not, for your sake," he answers. "If we go in
together, they will know we have been out together. You may have
been in your own room,--anywhere. I suppose, tyrant as he is, he
cannot expect his guests to sit in the drawing-room all the evening
to listen to his snores."
I sneak in, feeling terribly guilty. After all, how little pleasure
I have had out of that stroll which I looked forward to with such
delight! For once Fortune favors me. Sir Hector is still asleep,
and only wakes up as I enter.
"Bless my soul!" he cries, jumping up with alacrity; "why, I am
twenty-two minutes over my time. Why did you not awake me?"
Ten minutes later, Captain Montagu walks in, looking radiantly
unconscious, and, sitting down beside his mother, begins a whispered
conversation.
"It is utterly impossible," says Sir Hector, irritably, "to
concentrate one's mind on the game whilst you and your son are
chattering like a couple of magpies, my lady."
"Let us go to your boudoir, mother," I hear Captain Montagu whisper;
and rising, they go out, leaving us at our dreary game. It requires
no great effort of genius on Sir Hector's part to checkmate me
to-night. He wins three games honestly in half an hour.
"Not at all your usual form," he remarks. "I suppose" (jocosely)
"your thoughts are a long way off to-night--eh?" and I feel vexed in
my soul.
The family have evidently apportioned me to Hector, and do not seem
for an instant to contemplate the possibility of my not acquiescing
in it.
After his third triumph Sir Hector is good enough to let me go. I
wish him good-night, and go slowly and not very cheerfully to my
room. Under any other circumstances I should have gone to her
boudoir to wish Lady Montagu good-night; but now I cannot. I do not
choose her son to think I am running after him. Lingeringly I pass
the door with a faint hope that it may open; but they are talking. I
catch the smothered sound of their voices; they do not hear me pass,
and I go on my lonely way.
"I wish he had not come," I say, petulantly, to myself, as I put my
candle down on the dressing-table and throw myself info the big
arm-chair beside it. "I was much happier before. This is the end of
my eager anticipation and delight in his coming! Of course I am
nothing to him; did I not tell myself so all along? And yet--and
yet" (unbidden tears rising)--"he need not have said that about
falling in love being an every-day occurrence with him, and about his
never being ten minutes alone with a woman without wanting to make
love to her. Is it possible" (and I blush to the very heart at the
bare thought) "that I have betrayed the pleasure I feel in his
society, and that he thought it necessary to give me a friendly
warning?" For a moment I almost hate him. Hector is not so
handsome, but he is much nicer, I say; but all the same though I
asseverate it strongly I do not believe myself. Then I begin to
think uneasily of what he has said about Hector wanting to marry me.
It is not true; I do not believe it; but if it were true he had no
right to speak to me about it. I marry Hector!--no, no, no! I cry to
myself, hotly. He is very kind and good--I admire and respect him;
but to marry him--Never!
I wake in the morning with the same sense of disappointment; it is
going to be a lovely day again, but somehow I do not feel the same
appreciation of its beauties that I did yesterday.
Sir Hector and I sit down to breakfast together. Of course I knew
perfectly well that Captain Montagu would not be down; so it is
rather unreasonable of me to feel so chagrined at seeing his empty
place. Breakfast is only half over, however, when the door opens,
and he comes in, looking as fresh, as crisp, as, clean as only an
Englishman can look (this is naturally an opinion derived from a
later experience).
"What?" says his father, laying down his knife and fork and looking
utterly amazed.
"Stood still to gaze,
And gazing blessed the scene,"
laughs Captain Montagu, shaking me by the hand, and walking to the
side-board to make a selection among the viands displayed. "This is
one of the 'queer things of the service,' eh, sir? my appearing in
the early dawn before the dew is off the grass. All owing to Miss
Carew's charms."
"Wait a bit; wait a bit," says the baronet, smiling grimly. "I doubt
very much whether you will turn up this time to-morrow morning."
"Make hay while the sun shines," remarks Captain Montagu, with a
twinkle in his blue eyes, as he comes and seats himself on my left
hand. "_Apropos_, sir, how do the hay crops promise this year?"
"Devilish bad! devilish bad!" growls Sir Hector. "This confounded
weather is burning it all up; we have hardly had a drop of rain these
two months."
I glance furtively at my neighbor from behind the big silver urn; he
is busy with his breakfast, and I can take in every detail of his
appearance without being detected. How handsome he is! Men always
say it is quite immaterial what a man is like, provided he looks like
a gentleman. I don't believe they think it, though: the good-looking
ones say so in order not to look conscious or conceited, and the
plain ones for reasons too obvious to need explanation. My eyes
linger on his short, crisp, gold-brown hair, that would curl if it
were long enough (I wish men had not such a mania for being cropped),
his white smooth forehead and sun-bronzed cheeks, the straight brows,
Greek nose, and curved lips shaded by a soft golden moustache.
Nothing escapes me,--not even the pattern of his shooting-coat, the
snowy shirt striped with blue, the thick gold rings on his shapely
hands, the exquisite perfection of his filbert nails. I dare say it
sounds very silly to chronicle such things, but these minutiæ _do_
make a difference in a woman's estimate of a man, however small it
may make one look to own it. Sir Hector has a little way of stalking
out from breakfast the very second he has finished, quite unmindful
of the state of progress to which any one else has arrived. Upon
this occasion I am rather disposed to bless that little way as the
door slams behind him.
"What a jolly thing it must be," says Captain Montagu, glancing at me
with eyes brimful of laughter, "to be untrammeled by any sense of
decency or civility! By Jove! I can't stand this any longer." And,
jumping up before I know what he is about, he lifts the gigantic urn
and moves it from between us. "Family plate is respectable"
(resuming his seat), "but in this instance decidedly in the way.
Now" (suiting the action to the word) "I can look at you. I like to
feast all my senses at once."