NOT TOLD BY DIANA.
The _tête-à-tête_ dinner was not the most cheerful one imaginable,
though Colonel Montagu did the honors pleasantly, as he always did
everything, and Hector would fain have shaken off the constraint that
oppressed him. He wanted to feel kindly towards his brother, since
it was perhaps the last time they would ever dine together. Both
were glad when it was over, and they adjourned to the other room.
"Isn't it rather a shame to smoke here?" asked Hector, doubtfully, as
Charlie handed him the box of cigars.
Looking round at the delicate satin furniture, it seemed more than
rather a shame; but Colonel Montagu answered, carelessly, "It won't
hurt, once in a way!" He buried himself in one of the inviting
chairs by the fire, and motioned Hector to take the other. It was a
comfort to both that their cigars obviated the necessity of making
conversation: so Charlie drifted into his usual pleasant sense of
_bien-être_ before the warm blaze of the fire, surrounded on all
sides by the charm of beautiful objects, and Hector gave the sad and
morbid fancies rein to which he had of late become a slave.
Presently his eyes wandered to his brother's handsome, indolent face,
and thence to the costly toys with which he had been pleased, in
careless luxury, to strew his rooms. Then he pictured him to himself
master at Alford, gay, happy, surrounded by love and friendship,
utterly forgetful of the brother who had yielded up his birthright to
him and gone away to die in a foreign land. Why not? It was not for
his sake he was relinquishing a life that only seemed fair and
enviable to the outside world because they knew nothing of the
supreme agony of the canker-worm's tooth in the heart.
"O God!" he groaned to himself, "what have I done that thou shouldst
make this difference between us?--that he should have all the love,
all the desirable things of life, and I not even the husks?"
So heavy a sigh escaped him that his brother looked up.
"My good fellow," he said, laughing, "don't do that again, or you
will blow all the lights out. What the deuce is the matter with you?
_You_ haven't got any debts or anxieties, _you_ are not
nightmare-ridden with the thought of having to marry an heiress: why
on earth should _you_ sigh?"
"_Apropos!_" uttered Hector; "have you proposed to her yet?"
"What a cold-blooded fellow you are! You ask if the awful and
momentous question that is to doom me to a life of wretchedness has
been put, as you might ask if I had ordered dinner. No, I have not
proposed, and, upon my soul, I don't think I shall! Old Adolphus
Fitz-Rex is dying for her money, and, by Jove, he may have it for me!"
Hector made no reply. Presently he said, nerving himself to a great
effort,--
"I am going to ask you something that will very likely surprise you.
Give me a candid answer, if you can: don't be afraid! I'm not laying
a pitfall for you. Do you, did you ever, care anything about Diana
Carew? If she had had money, or you had been an elder instead of a
younger son, would you ever have thought of marrying her?"
To conceal his agitation Hector spoke in a hard, rasping voice, that,
despite his assurance to the contrary, made Charlie suspect a snare.
"I have kept my word to you faithfully," he answered, in rather an
injured voice. "I avoided her studiously when she was in town, and
at the Desboroughs', where I had no idea of meeting her until the day
she came. I never, by look or word, infringed the promise that you
wrung from me over our father's death-bed. And" (sighing as he
knocked the ash off his cigar) "it might have been an easy enough
task for you, but I would not go through it again to have my debts
paid twice over. You may be sure of one thing" (with unwonted
bitterness): "when she is Lady Montagu, you won't be troubled with
much of my company at Alford."
"Then you do care for her?" uttered Hector, in a deep, low voice.
"Care for her!" cried Charlie, springing up and striding down the
room. "Care for her! If I hadn't been such an infernal fool as to
make you that promise, I'd have reformed my bad habits and married
her before this, poor as I am!"
Hector suppressed a sigh. The old sentence returned forcibly to his
mind: "But anon came her own true love, and they were wed."
It was a most unusual thing to see his indolent brother so excited;
there could be no doubt about his sincerity. Although it was the
chief part of Hector's plan that he should love and marry Diana, a
bitter pang crossed his heart.
"I wonder," remarked the Guardsman, resuming his seat and his
composure, and feeling a little bit ashamed of the ebullition,--"I
wonder why you amused yourself by trotting me out on the subject? it
was not particularly magnanimous, when you've got all the
playing-cards in your own hand."
"You said when you met me to-day that I was looking bad," replied
Hector, with apparent irrelevancy. "I have heard that remark _ad
nauseam_ lately. Well, it is true enough. Heaven knows I don't feel
much better than I look, and I have a sort of presentiment that I
shall not come back from the journey I am starting on to-morrow."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Colonel Montagu; "presentiments! If ever there
was a man above that sort of tomfoolery, I should have thought it was
you."
"I have a presentiment," repeated Hector, in a deep, low voice, and
with a haggard glance at his brother, "_that I shall never come back
from this journey_."
"Why, my dear old fellow," cried Charlie, kindly, "I shall begin to
think there is something very wrong with you, if you talk such stuff
as that. Why, what the deuce is there to kill you in a trumpery
little voyage to Naples and back? Baring's too good a judge to trust
himself in a yacht he does not know, or I'm much mistaken."
"It isn't that," Hector answered, with a troubled glance into the
fire.
"What is it, then? Do you translate _Vede Napoli e poi morir_ into
an obligation to die as soon as you have set eyes on it? What are
you afraid of? Roman fever, or brigands, or of being engulfed by a
new eruption of Vesuvius?"
"Never mind," answered Hector, wearily: "let me get to what I want to
say. _Suppose I do not return_: will you give me your word of honor
to marry Diana Carew?"
Charlie looked at his brother with serious anxiety. He began to
think his mind was unhinged, and said to himself it might be a good
plan to go to G---- next morning and hear what really was the matter
with him.
"Come," he said, rising, and giving Hector a friendly shake of the
shoulder, "pull yourself together, and don't give way to this sort of
humbug. You don't look very brilliant, certainly; but I don't see
anything to alarm yourself about. A couple of days at sea will set
you on your legs again. Come, cheer up!--this is unlike your usual
form."
Hector was silent for a moment; then he said, in a calm quiet voice
hat was habitual to him,---
"Talking of it won't kill me. I may come back, or I may not; and if
I do not, I want to be sure that Diana Carew will be Lady Montagu."
"What on earth am I to understand?" asked Colonel Montagu, looking
thoroughly mystified. "First by threats and promises you wring from
me an engagement neither by look nor word to endeavor to gain her
affection, and now you urge me under absurdly hypothetical conditions
to marry her. If you are in earnest, why not say at once, 'Go and
marry her, if she will have you'? You shall not have to speak twice,
I promise you."
"No, no!" cried Hector, harshly. "You are still bound by your
promise. My death alone can release you. Well, I may be mad,--think
so if you please, but humor me: tell me that if I do not return you
will marry her."
"All right; I promise," answered Colonel Montagu, thinking it better
to humor him.
"Give me your hand on it."
Charlie held out his hand. Hector grasped it with a feverish one
that convinced his brother still more forcibly there was something
wrong.
"One thing more. If I don't come back, look after the poor at home,
and do something for them. Hayter will show you the plans of all I
intended to do; and _she_ knows, she will see to it if you let her
have the money. Remember, I charge that upon you."
Colonel Montagu felt quite cut up about his brother. He did not
believe for an instant in the fulfillment of his presentiment, and he
most certainly did not desire it, for he was eminently kind-hearted
and not a bit envious. He was really shocked to see such unusual
weakness in his stern self-contained brother, and resolved not only
to see G----, but to write to Baring about him.
"It can't hurt you to promise me those two things," said Hector,
eagerly, "and I shall go away more satisfied."
"All right, then," answered Charlie, with an attempt at gayety; "I
promise both."
Hector rose to go.
"I'll walk with you as far as Limmer's," volunteered his brother,
feeling rather uncomfortable about him.
"Just as you like," answered Hector; then, forcing a smile, "you need
have no doubt as to my sanity. I am perfectly well able to take care
of myself."
"I shall see you to-morrow," said Charlie, as they were parting,
feeling an unwonted regret at bidding his brother good-by. "I'll run
down to Southampton with you, if you like."
"I have a hundred things to do: it's no use making any appointment;
and as for going down to Southampton, it's not to be thought of."
"Well, good-by if I don't see you again. A pleasant trip, and get
rid of your blue devils before you come back."
"Good-by." And the brothers clasped hands very kindly.
Colonel Montagu walked home thoughtfully. For a wonder, he neither
went to the club nor yet elsewhere, but betook himself straight to
his own rooms, lighted another cigar, and mused over the strange
events of the evening.
"Hector's in a deuced bad way,--poor fellow! I never saw a man so
altered. I suppose it's all about her: he has asked her again, and
she won't have him. And yet he is the very last man in the world I
should have expected to see so out up about a woman. I can
understand a boy like Seldon taking it badly, but not a cool-headed,
unimpulsive fellow like Hector. It can't be all that. I've heard of
men getting frightful fits of the blues after coming suddenly into a
lot of money. I don't think it would affect me that way. Of course
nothing _will_ happen: presentiments are the greatest rot in the
world; not one in ten thousand ever comes true. When I rode that
steeple-chase three years ago, I had a presentiment I should break my
neck; and nothing came of it. My nerves were shaky at the time; I
had been drinking rather hard just before. That reminds me. I never
saw Hector drink so much in my life at one sitting as he did
to-night,--gulped it down, too, as if he did not care for it; and
there is no better in the cellars at home. I'm awfully glad he is
going for that cruise: nothing like it for bracing the nerves: he'll
be back in a couple of months quite himself again."
Then his thoughts turned to Diana.
"I wonder," he said to himself, "if she does care for me, or whether
it's only my own stupid conceit that makes me fancy so? I know she
did at Alford that golden day" (sighing). "What an infernal
scoundrel I was! But I did not really care for her then as I did
here, as I did at the Desboroughs'. How utterly glad I was when she
refused Seldon!--though, poor lad! I could not help feeling sorry
for him. And how I hated poor old Jack when she became friendly with
him! I would not go through that cursed time again for anything in
the world. How I endured it I don't know. To see her grieved,
indignant face, and to have to avoid her, and seem to seek the
society of that plain, common girl! Marry _her_! Not to save going
through the bankruptcy court to-morrow. Pah!" (with a gesture of
intensest disgust). "If I only had the chance of winning Diana now!
How she must despise me! What should she feel but contempt for me?
Not more than I do for myself, I'll answer. No, I know how it will
be: Hector has only got a morbid fancy, which he does not really
believe in himself, else he would say, 'Go and win her now if you
can.' He will come back all right again, and in the end she will
have him. _I_ have a presentiment of that; I had all along. Oh,
what a fool I was not to take her when I could have had her! I've
not got so much pleasure out of life lately: the same old round palls
upon one after a time, when one has lost the power of caring for
fresh faces, as I have" (sighing) "since I knew her. I wonder what
witchery there is about her that makes men so desperately bad about
losing her! She does not set herself up as being better than other
women, and yet there is something pure and sweet about her one can't
help reverencing. Even that wicked profligate, old Jack, confessed
that she made him want to be better. I suppose I must leave it now
until Hector comes back; and _then_, if she won't have him----"
Here the entrance of a friend cut short his soliloquy. The second
morning after, Hector was standing on the yacht's deck, taking a
silent farewell of the country he never meant to see again. The
voyage did him good in one way, but his mind grew steadily worse: the
monotony, the confinement to a narrow space, became unbearable. His
one idea had been to put a great distance between himself and Diana;
and, now that every hour took him farther away from her, he was
filled with an insane longing to see her once again. Anything would
have been better than this! Why had he not been content with her
friendship?--only to see her sometimes, to hear her sweet voice
speaking kindly to him, to meet the friendly glance of her beautiful
eyes,--surely that would have been some comfort to his misery, even
though she would never consent to be his. Sometimes he had a wild
thought that the moment they reached Naples he would travel back
overland as fast as steam and horses could take him, and get back
only just to see her once again. But he gave up that idea before he
set foot on shore.
The day after they arrived at Naples, and the four following ones,
there was a bitter northeast wind,--colder, more piercing, than any
he had ever encountered in his own country.
"Are these your sunny climes?" he laughed grimly to his friend. "Of
the two, I certainly prefer an east wind in England; at all events,
we know how to keep it _out_side the house."
"Too infernal!" answered the other, disgustedly, with chattering
teeth. "Upon my life, I wouldn't have believed it if any one else
had told me it of Naples."
They drove to Pompeii in an open carriage in whirlwinds of dust.
Hector was glad to do anything rather than remain quiet, but he was
disappointed in the place; the houses could not have been much bigger
than dolls' houses, he thought, and there was nothing to inspire him
with any ideas of by-gone luxury or splendor. Perhaps he was not in
a humor to be pleased or surprised by anything. He would have liked
to see Vesuvius vomiting flames and stones; but it lay tranquil, with
one tiny smoke-wreath that looked nothing but a little fleecy cloud
on its breast. Life seemed more abhorrent to him here, in the cold,
among the squalor, dirt, and wretchedness of Naples, than even it had
done at Alford; he wished a thousand times he had not left home. Why
not go back now, he thought, sometimes, and, forcing himself to
forget Diana, lead a life of usefulness? He had come here to die;
and yet how should he die so as to leave no suspicion that he had
died by his own hand? There was only one person in the world he
wished to be aware that he went out of life willingly; that was the
one for whose sake he meant to take the journey whence there is no
return.
If any one had told him his own story a year ago, told it of some
other man, he would have given his verdict at once, "The man was
mad." But it never occurred to him now that there was any madness in
what he contemplated. What is madness? The upsetting of the mental
balance, perhaps on one subject alone; the loss of the power to look
at things (one thing, perhaps) as the rest of the world looks at
them. There was no cowardice in the act he intended, he argued to
himself; he was not going to shake off life simply because he could
not face the pain of it, but for her sake, that she might be happy in
the future. He did not tell himself that he had not courage to see
her happy with another man, that the only thing which could reconcile
him to her happiness with another was that when it came he would be
"Out of the multitude of things,
Under the dust, beneath the grass,
Deep in dim death, where no thought stings,
No record clings.
No memory more of love or hate,
No trouble, nothing that aspires,
No sleepless labor thwarting fate,
And thwarted; where no travail tires,
Where no faith fires."
The cold winds had passed away; one could understand now the meaning
of Italian skies and seas; the flower-children were streaming about
the Chiaia, and choice bouquets were offered right and left to the
passer-by at fabulously small sums according to English ideas, taking
into consideration the time of year and the beauty of the flowers.
They were going a trip along the coast this lovely morning; there was
a fresh breeze, although it was hot enough for the dirty ill-clad
_lazzaroni_ to be lying about basking in the sun. Hector felt a
shade less miserable this morning; he was not thinking of death;
there was something in the warmth, coming after the bitter cold, in
the blue dancing waters, the azure skies, the scent and sight of
lovely flowers, that made even bare life an almost pleasant fact.
His friend, who had been sorely puzzled and pained about him,
remarked the change with genuine pleasure.
"Come, old fellow!" he cried, heartily, "I _am_ glad to see you have
shaken off the blues at last. Thrown 'em to the sea and the sky,
eh?" And he laughed cheerily at his own little joke.
The schooner cut smartly through the waves, with the wind in her
favor. Captain Baring had gone below. Hector was on deck, looking
through a glass at the lessening town. Suddenly he heard a cry and a
splash. Rushing to the side, he saw the cabin-boy beating the water
with his hands and shrieking for help. In a second he had torn off
his outer clothes, and, shouting "Man overboard!" jumped into the
sea. He had always been a good swimmer, and fond of it, from his
Eton days, and he knew the lad could swim but little, not enough even
to keep up until the boat came to his rescue. The schooner was going
such a pace that even before the boat could be lowered she would be a
good way off. As usual in such cases, there was some hitch in
getting it down, and before the men were in it she was nearly half a
mile off, and the wind dead against them.
"Don't catch hold of me, and I'll save you!" shouted Hector to the
boy, as he swam up to him. "Keep going as long as you can, and when
you're tired I'll hold you up. Don't lose your head: there's no
danger."
At this moment that death was so near him, Hector never thought of
it: he was battling for life with the instinct of a strong man: he
meant to save the boy and himself too. It was hard work, swimming
with one arm and holding the terrified, exhausted lad with the other:
the minutes whilst the men in the boat were straining every nerve to
get to them seemed hours. They are coming at last, thank God! He
cannot hold out much longer. Now they are within four
boat's-lengths. A sudden deadly agony seizes him: he leaves go the
lad with a great cry of anguish. When the boat comes up, there is
only the lad struggling alone in the water. Hector is nowhere to be
seen. The men look all around, and then in each other's faces, with
a stony horror. At last one uncloses his lips.
"Cramp!" he says, in a low voice. "My youngest brother went like
that."
And so Hector, with the strange irony of Fate, went out of life
fighting his hardest to keep it, when all these days and weeks past
he had been longing for death and not knowing how or where to find
it. Yet surely Fate was kind; for, if he needs must die, was it not
better to pass out of life gallantly rescuing one who loved and clung
to it, and with no stain on his name or on his own soul? And though
he "died in a foreign land," and remotely it might be said "for a
woman's sake," since but for her he would not have come there, he
died actually for the sake of a little friendless lad, who without
his aid would have been sucked down by the blue cruel waters. And
surely there is no nobler epitaph can be writ over a man's grave, be
it rudely carved on perishable wood or graven in letters of gold upon
stately marble, than this: "He gave his life for another."