NOT TOLD BY DIANA.
The pair stop dancing, but they are so surprised at Hector's
appearance that for a moment Captain Montagu still keeps his arm
round Diana's waist. Hector comes forward trying rather
unsuccessfully to cover his frown with a smile, and shakes hands
coldly with Diana.
"I did not know you were coming," he remarks, pointedly, to his
brother.
"Nor did I until yesterday morning. I sent a telegram; but I suppose
you had left before it arrived. I had no idea there was such an
agreeable surprise in store for me as finding Miss Carew here."
Hector looks aggressively disbelieving, and Diana, feeling a strange
unpleasant awkwardness, makes excuse that she will inquire after Lady
Montagu's headache. Hector opens the door for her with stiff
politeness, but his eyes seek her eagerly. She says "Thank you"
without looking at him. He closes the door, and returns to the
window where his brother is standing, his face working as though
moved by no pleasant emotion. Charlie is drumming imperturbably on
the window-pane. Hector stands for a moment looking at him,--the
expression in his eyes does not indicate much brotherly affection;
then he speaks in a constrained voice and with apparent effort.
"Is it a _fact_ you did not know before you came that Miss Carew was
staying here?"
"It is," returns the other, still playing the "Blue Danube" on the
glass with much apparent interest in his occupation.
"Oh!" replies Hector, shortly, and relapses into silence.
Charlie carefully finishes his tune, and then turns to confront his
brother. He is very good-tempered, he hates quarreling and argument;
but there is something so aggressive and dictatorial in his brother's
manner that he cannot well pass it over as if he had not remarked it.
Moreover, he has a guilty feeling of not having done quite the right
thing, and that feeling makes him doubly resentful of Hector's
behavior. There is just the least increase of color in his face as
he turns to him and says, deliberately,--
"I did not know Miss Carew was here; but, had I done so, I am not
aware that it would have been any reason for my staying away."
Hector is silent: in truth, Charlie's remark is not an easy one to
reply to.
"Are you engaged to Miss Carew?" he proceeds; "because, if not"
(warmly), "it strikes me, my dear fellow, you are giving yourself
airs of proprietorship that are rather absurd, and, to say the least,
uncalled-for."
Hector's dark brows almost meet, and he clutches angrily at a carved
chair-back.
"I know what you are," he exclaims: "you can no more let a woman
alone than" (somewhat at a loss for a simile)--"than a dog can help
chasing a rabbit. If I had been engaged to her ten times over, it
would not have hindered your making love to her the moment my back
was turned."
There is just sufficient truth in his remark to make it unpalatable
to his hearer.
"Well, but are you engaged to her?" he persists.
"No, I am not" (shortly); "but I dare say our mother has told you
that it is my dearest wish to marry her, and that I have only been
afraid of asking her for fear of frightening or repelling her by
being in too great a hurry."
"Oh," returns Charlie, coolly; "and when you have proposed and she
has accepted you, am I to understand that you expect me to keep me
away from Alford altogether? And am I to be the only victim? or do
you propose to keep every other man under sixty away from the house,
for fear of endangering your peace of mind? If so" (Charlie has
lashed himself into most unwonted bitterness), "I must say it betrays
a singular want of confidence in your own powers of pleasing, and the
future Mrs. Montagu seems likely to have rather a lively time of it."
Every word goes home, far more keenly than the speaker has any idea
or intention of. Hector turns fiercely away, and walks to the other
end of the room, and Captain Montagu resumes the "Blue Danube" where
he left off.
Hector is away some five minutes; to judge by his face, an intense
struggle is going on within him; then he comes slowly back to the
couch on which his brother has thrown himself full length. He takes
no notice of Hector: with his hands under his head, he is apparently
absorbed in contemplation of a fly that is making frantic efforts to
extricate itself from a spider's cunning web. Hector evidently wants
to say something, but cannot bring himself to the utterance: he
stands for a moment looking at his brother, then takes another hasty
turn. This time he plunges desperately into his subject.
"I have something to say to you," he begins, in a harsh tone.
Charlie brings his eyes slowly from the ceiling to his brother's
face, and Hector cannot but own in his heart, grudgingly though he
does it, what a handsome fellow he is.
"I dare say you know," he proceeds, in a voice quite hoarse from
strangled emotion, "that I have never been in love before in my life,
not really in love. I have never cared intensely for a woman, never
thought much of them except as toys to while away one's idle hours.
Well" (pausing, and finding the next words bitterly hard to say), "my
whole soul is in this. Of course I know what you think about me: you
think I'm a cold, hard sort of fellow without a grain of sentiment.
_I_ haven't frittered away my heart" (with some contempt), "and given
a thousand bits to a thousand different women; so, now" (dropping his
voice) "that I have come to love at last, it goes rather hard with
me. My life and soul are in it" (passionately); "if I thought I
should lose her, my God!" (wildly), "I don't know what would become
of me."
Charlie has risen to a sitting posture, astonished, almost shocked,
at his brother's vehemence.
"My dear fellow----" he begins, but Hector cuts him short.
"What I want to say to you is this. She is nothing, can be nothing,
to you: you don't want to marry her, you could not if you did: for
heaven's sake do not come between us. I know you have some wonderful
influence over women, though" (roughly) "God knows what it is except
your good-looking face and soft voice; but I ask you, I entreat you,
the first favor I ever asked of you in my life, to go away until it
is all settled. Then" (hesitatingly), "if she does come to care for
me, I need not be afraid of you, nor" (smiling uneasily) "the whole
brigade of Guards at your back."
Charlie is very weak and very good-natured. He is vastly taken with
Diana; in the wood that morning he had felt himself on the verge of
falling in love with her; but now that his brother appeals to him so
earnestly, with the conviction also staring him in the face that any
idea of marrying her himself would be utterly, ridiculously
impossible, he behaves in the gracious pleasant way that is the key
to the charm he exercises over people.
"My dear old fellow," he says, holding out his hand, "I did not know
it was such a serious business. Of course she likes you; of course
she will have you; and if you think, though you greatly overrate my
powers, that I am likely to stand in your way, I'll be off to-morrow
by the first train. So now" (gayly) "set your mind at rest. I'll go
off and have a ride, and next time I see you both I hope to say,
'Bless you, my children!'"
Hector grasps his brother's hand with a warmer clasp than he has done
for many a long day; and so they part, Charlie for his ride, Hector
with a beating heart to look for Diana. He finds her presently in
the small drawing-room. She greets him with a cold, civil little
smile as he comes eagerly up to her. In her heart she is thinking
very unkindly of him for having spoiled her _tête-à-tête_ with his
brother.
"Have you seen my mother?--is she better?" he asks, sitting down in
front of her.
"Her head is better, but she wishes to keep very quiet, that she may
come down to dinner: so I did not see her."
"You are not going to stay in-doors all the afternoon, are you?" he
says. "Won't you come out for a drive?"
"Thanks" (coldly): "I do not care to drive to-day."
She fancies that he wants to take her away from his brother, and
resents it.
"I thought you were so fond of driving."
"So I am; but----"
"But what?"
"I do not care to be always driving" (pettishly).
"Come into the garden, then, or let me row you in the boat."
She assents to this, thinking Captain Montagu will join them.
As they cross towards the water, she catches sight of a mounted
figure, and her heart gives a little indignant throb.
"We might all have gone out riding," she says, in a tone whose regret
is extremely apparent.
"Why not now?" he answers, eagerly: "there is plenty of time. I will
go and order the horses."
She pauses, irresolute: her heart has gone after the solitary
horseman, but she feels it would be undignified to seem to run after
him.
"No," she says (shaking her head): "I do not care for it to-day: it
is too hot."
He helps her into the boat, ana rows her about untiringly. She is
vexedly conscious that his dark eyes are fixed upon her, and that he
scarcely ever averts them. Hector is beginning to love her
idolatrously: he feels as if he could never look too long at that
sweet face, with its clear soft color, its red, half-parted lips, its
lovely fringed eyelids. Anon his eyes travel to the pillar-like
throat, so creamily white, and the slender fingers that she holds
over the boat's side, that the cool water may trickle through them.
He cannot but see that she is a little perverse and pettish this
afternoon, but he loves her none the less for it, only it sends a
quick pang through his heart as he conjectures the cause. But when
_he_ is gone, he tells himself, she will be her own bright self
again, as she was yesterday (only yesterday! it seems a week), when
she wished him "good-by" at the station.
Captain Montagu is seen no more until dinner. Diana spends nearly an
hour in trying to look her fairest. She goes softly down-stairs ten
minutes before the bell rings, but has the drawing-room all to
herself. Captain Montagu does not join them until the gong has
sounded. At dinner he devotes himself to his mother, who is well
enough just to sit at the table; and Hector monopolizes Diana
entirely. She is miserable: she longs for only one kind glance, but
longs in vain. She looks wistfully across at him many a time, but he
seems studiously to avoid her.
"He will look at me when I pass him after dinner," she thinks; but,
though he rises from his seat, he leaves Hector to open the door.
Lady Montagu, after a few kind words, goes back to her bedroom, not
being sufficiently recovered to stay up longer, and Diana is left to
herself. The tears spring to her eyes: is this the end of "the
golden day"? Her poor little heart is quivering with the stabs of
Captain Montagu's indifference; she longs agonizingly for one of
those looks that he was prodigal enough of this morning. And for one
wild foolish moment in the wood she had fancied she might be
something to him. She has forgotten the friendly, pleasant liking
she had for Hector only yesterday; a passionate anger against him is
creeping into her heart; his love for her, which she is forced to
see, pleads no excuse for him in her indignant disappointment. She
thinks of last night,--of her walk in the moonlight with Captain
Montagu. She has forgotten how little pleasure it really gave her,
and magnifies the delight of it a thousandfold. She is feverish and
restless: she feels she cannot sit and talk to Hector; she will be
forced into saying something sharp or rude to him; and as for chess!
no, she cannot, will not undergo that torture to-night, let Sir
Hector think or say what he will. Let him be angry! her fear of him
is swallowed up by a much greater emotion. She will plead
indisposition and go to her room. But how will that be better? she
thinks, forlornly. She cannot sleep, and will have cut herself off
from all chance of seeing him. She goes to the window and looks out.
The moon is rising in all her splendor behind the dark trees; her
pure cold light is flooding garden, lawn, and lake with silver. A
sudden thought makes Diana's heart throb. She will go out, not with
any thought of meeting him,--she is too proud for that,--but out in
the clear soft stillness of the night she will not feel oppressed as
she does here. In a moment she has opened the door and is rushing
along the corridor. Many pairs of eyes look down upon her from the
carved oaken panels, but the lips that belong to them can tell no
tales. She snatches up the lace shawl with a pang, as she remembers
how tenderly he wrapped her in it last night, and then she flits
hurriedly away out into the hush of the radiant night.
Unpremeditatedly, unconsciously almost, she takes the path towards
the wood, not pausing until she comes to the gate that leads into it.
Stopping, she leans over it, her soul filled full of the bitter sweet
of memory. It was here they stopped and leaned together in the
morning of the golden day that was to have been. Golden morning,
leaden afternoon! she thinks, drearily. Diana has not a very
courageous soul, she is not used to lonely night-wanderings, but
to-night she feels no fear.
"I will go into the wood," she thinks, "and sit on the felled tree
where we sat this morning." And thither she goes.
If the pale primroses were fair in the gold sunshine, they are fairer
still steeped in the silver moonbeams, shining out white and virginal
from among the dark clumps of hyacinths, too dark to be irradiated by
the pure pale light. Diana tries to recall the memory of the
morning: closing her eyes, she sees him standing there before her,
with arms outstretched to her, his blue eyes looking down upon her
full of love.
"Ah! but he is used to look like that," she tells herself,
desolately. "Did he not own that he could not be ten minutes in the
company of a woman without wanting to make love to her?"
At this bitter thought, all courage and hope forsake her, and she
falls to weeping piteously. The distant click of the gate's latch
arouses her, and makes her heart beat with wild terror. Who can it
be? She is fain to fly, but remembers that she does not know her
way. If she goes towards the house, she must meet whoever it is. It
may be a poacher: he may murder her, she thinks, in an agony of fear.
Her quick, frightened ear catches the sound of a slow, measured
footfall: it does not sound like a poacher's tread: it may be Hector
come to look for her; but then he would be walking fast. It may
be--and her heart beats more wildly still--it may be his brother,
bound on the same errand as herself. Another minute solves the
doubt, as Captain Montagu, in evening dress, except the coat, which
he has exchanged for a shooting-jacket, bareheaded, cigar in mouth,
strolls leisurely into view. She jumps up in an ecstasy of mingled
joy and shame,--joy at being with him once more, shame at the
recollection of her tear-stained face. He sees her, and utters an
exclamation of strong surprise.
"Is it really you?" he says, coming quickly towards her. "Can I
believe my eyes?"
Diana smiles (it is not hard to smile, looking back into those
kindling eyes), and stammers a little lame excuse.
"It was such a lovely night, the room was warm, and--and I don't feel
equal to chess to-night."
He has thrown his cigar away, and is looking at her, thinking how
fair she is, knowing she has been crying about him, wishing he had
not made that promise to Hector. He had fully meant, he does mean,
to keep it: has he not come out here on purpose to leave the field
clear for his brother? Is he not going away to-morrow morning by the
first train (a most awful nuisance, too, getting up in the dead of
night) to oblige him?
But Charlie is very weak, especially about women, and Diana is very
fair: it is the old, old story.
"And I came out here on purpose to avoid you," he says. The words
are not flattering, but they are uttered in a tone which leaves Diana
nothing to resent.
"I can go in," she answers, making as if to leave him. He lets her
go three paces, and then cries,--
"Do not go."
She turns and stands there half reluctant.
"Let us sit down together where we did this morning," he whispers:
"it will be the last time we shall be together."
"The last time?" she echoes, with a startled look. "Why?"
"Because I am going away to-morrow by the first train."
Diana looks away; a great knot rises in her throat, the pale clear
primroses are a blurred confused mass of white; for all the shame of
it, for all her eager desire to repress them, two great shining tears
_will_ gather before her bright eyes, _will_ stand trembling like
diamonds on the sweet lids, _will_ fall with a little plash into her
lap, and, though her face is half averted, he sees it. Oh, what
utter irremediable mischief women's tears have worked since the
beginning of time!