Chapter XIV: Not Told by Diana

Alford Court is one of the oldest places in England. It has not one but many histories, as even the most unpretentious, unromantic house is bound to have after standing a certain number of centuries. It has its venerable oaks, hundreds of years old, with sides riven and branches scathed by many a fierce storm; it has its big lake, full of carp, some of them as old, it is said, as the oaks; it has its grand old gateway, with the ball-room over, in which fair young forms once tripped gayly that are now but as few grains of dust. Inside the house are many silver and brass-bound oaken presses and cabinets; the carved mantel-pieces ascend to the ceilings, the brass dogs still stand, brightly burnished, on the hearths. There is a great store of china; huge bowls and jars filled with _pot-pourri_ as sweet now as when it was confectioned by the dainty fingers of some long-since dead _châtelaine_. There are long, oaken, picture-hung corridors with mullioned windows looking out over a sea of lawn, broken here and there by some grand old cedar. It is easy to see that emerald velvet turf has never been ruffled by croquet-hoops: only one donkey is ever allowed there, as the host says with grim facetiousness, and that is the leather-booted one which draws the mowing-machine. Sir Hector Montagu, the master of Alford Court and of many adjacent demesnes, has a rooted aversion for croquet,--the cause of more _mésalliances_, he avers, than any pastime ever invented.

"A parcel of silly women," quoth he, "glad of any excuse for idling away their time and making eyes at somebody,--if it's only the poor little whipper-snapper curate, and ready to pull caps even over him; then one fine day your daughter (thank God, my lady, you never blessed me with one), your daughter comes to you in hysterics and informs you she never can love anybody but the Reverend Jones, whose income if probably something under a hundred a year." So Sir Hector, though he has no daughter, still declines to encourage folly in those of other men; and, although no young lady ever comes to the place without exclaiming "What a heavenly lawn for croquet!" (this being in the days before it was superseded by lawn tennis and Badminton), Sir Hector's fiat having once gone forth was unalterable as the laws of the Medes and Persians.

The master of Alford Court was an autocrat: _de tout ce qu'il y a de plus autocr[oe]te_,--not even the Emperor of all the Russias could be more absolute than Sir Hector in his own domain. If he had been a Turkish pacha in the good old times, how he would have had his wretched subjects bowstrung and bastinadoed! if a Chinese potentate, what rows of grinning heads would have chronicled his attacks of liver! if a West Indian planter, what scourgings would have testified to the disagreeing of last night's banquet! Living in the highly civilized nineteenth century, when moral scourging and the laceration of our friends' hearts and our foes' feelings are the only cruelties tolerated in polite society, and being also one of the most highly cultivated and polished gentlemen of his time (in company), Sir Hector had still a victim whom he was wont habitually to bowstring and bastinado, to decapitate and to whip,--a victim perpetually at hand, too, a great convenience, and who was--need I say it?--his wife. Poor lady! what a time she had with her remorseless old tyrant! It was not alone her own shortcomings she suffered for, but for those of the whole household and neighborhood. Sons, butler, men-servants and maid-servants, grooms and gardeners, tenants and laborers, on the slim shoulders of poor Lady Montagu fell all the weight of their frequent misdoings. Was the soup too hot or too cold, a sarcastic compliment to my lady on her cook and her own housewifely proclivities testified to his displeasure; if Charlie got into debt, his mother of course was alone responsible; so from the most trivial to the greatest incident that vexed him, my lady was the fetish he banged and battered incessantly. Sir Hector affected the old school; his creed forbade him to bluster or bully: sarcasm was the weapon on which he transfixed the luckless ones who came under his sovereign displeasure, and, as a natural consequence, was the one he was himself totally unable to bear. Only one member of the household could and dared meet the autocrat upon his own ground,--his heir; and he rarely, but in defense of his mother or some other oppressed mortal. Before the world, Sir Hector had a grand, stately demeanor: it impressed strangers immensely. Towards women especially he comported himself with a delightful mixture of old-fashioned courtesy and bland protection: on first acquaintance they always pronounced him "a charming old man," though their enthusiasm generally abated on closer acquaintance. "Finish the prologue and draw up the curtain!" says the reader.

Tinkle goes the bell, up rolls the curtain and discloses--Sir Hector and Lady Montagu with their two sons seated at dinner, in a magnificent banqueting-hall, each with a gorgeous liveried servant behind his chair. This is one of Sir Hector's whims, and one that is a peculiar abomination to his sons. Sir Hector _will_ dine in state,--company or no company. There is a charming cosy little dining-room close by, perfection for a small party, where the other three members of the family would fain dine, waited on by one servant, or two at the most. Sir Hector wills it otherwise; he likes to dine in the vast hall,--the only concession to whose vastness is a great screen placed half-way across; and he likes to eat his dinner with ten watchful eyes obsequiously observant of every morsel that he transfers from his plate to his mouth. For if he and my lady are dining _tête-à-tête_ he will have the butler and four footmen in the room, though they do nothing but stand at attention in front of or at ease behind him all through dinner.

"Gad!" says poor Charlie to his mother, "I don't know how you stand this sort of thing night after night, my poor dear Mater. Don't you long and pray for the old man's death?"

"Oh, Charlie dear, pray hush!" cries his mother, in a terrified whisper, looking over her shoulder. "Pray, pray don't say such dreadful things."

"Why, mother," laughs her scapegrace son, "you look as terrified as if you had the real old gentleman behind you. Don't be alarmed: his prototype is ten miles off at this moment, and there is no fear of that steady-going old cob of his doing anything indiscreet,--worse luck! But to return to our mutton, served up on the family plate with that old raven and his four paroquets staring down our throats as if they begrudged us every morsel. Gad! it takes every bit of my appetite away, and makes me so confoundedly nervous I spill something down the front of my shirt nearly every night. And all this swagger for a little trumpery country baronet!"

"Charlie! Charlie!" interposes his mother, quite shocked.

"Have as much state as you like when you are entertaining,--twenty servants, thirty, in all the colors of the rainbow; but, when we're alone, for Heaven's sake let's be comfortable. Why, when I was staying with Simplicitas, we had the Prince there, and nothing could have been more regal than the way everything was done; and the night they all left, the duke and duchess and I dined in a little nutshell of a room, with two maid-servants to wait upon us. I haven't told the governor that yet, but I will to-night."

"Now, my dear hoy, what is the use of vexing your father?" pleads Lady Montagu. "You know nothing will alter him."

"I hate the very sight of those long-legged cringing fools," pursues Captain Montagu, disgustedly. "I've done my best to make them enlist. I've tried to inspire them with a desire for martial glory. I've dimly hinted at the becomingness of a scarlet coat and its attractions in the eyes of the fair. I've tried to shame them out of their present ignoble life; but not a bit of it! The governor caught me at it one day.

"'And pray, sir,' he remarked, in that agreeable tone which he has made peculiarly his own,--'and pray, sir' (mimicking the baronet's pompous, sneering voice), 'what the devil do you mean by trying to corrupt my servants?'

"'Surely, sir,' I replied, meekly, 'you don't call it corruption to wish to make them defenders of their country. We're very badly off for recruits.'

"'Country be hanged, sir! and pray what the deuce are the old county families to do for footmen? Make them soldiers, indeed! A parcel of dissolute, lazy, good-for-nothing fellows,--that's what you Guardsmen are! I'll trouble you, sir, to seek recruits elsewhere, and not tamper with my household!'

"Poor little mother!" says Charlie, resuming his own lazy caressing tones and looking at his mother, "what a time you must have had of it all these years! Tell me" (confidentially), "what on earth made you marry the governor?"

Lady Montagu looks back in her son's face with that idolatrous expression with which mothers are wont to regard their handsome offspring. "I don't know, my dear: we have always got on very well together. It is only your father's way, and, besides" (smiling), "if I had not married him you would not be here now."

"And that would have been a great loss, little mother, wouldn't it?" he says, kissing her hand. "Thank Heaven,

Hector inherited all the governor's amiable qualities and left none for me. 'Pon my soul, mother, he'll be the old gentleman's very duplicate; and the next Lady Montagu, unless she has plenty of spirit, will share your fate."

"But, my dear, you see I have survived it," is the answer; and the pair stroll out together into the garden, Lady Montagu supremely happy as she leans on the arm of her handsome son. After all, there is compensation in almost everything.

But to come back from our wandering. It is the day of the two sons' return from Warrington Hall, and they are dining with their parents in the usual state. Dinner over, the conversation falls on their visit, and the party staying in the house.

"Mr. Carew's son and daughter were there," says Hector after having enumerated the rest of the company.

"Is it possible," remarks Lady Montagu, "that those children can be grown up? Why, it seems only the other day----"

"Everything seems only the other day with you, my lady," interrupts Sir Hector's cold snarl. "I should have thought your looking-glass might occasionally remind you of the flight of time."

"The boy is still at Eton," says Hector, "and Miss Carew is just eighteen, and a very charming girl," he adds, a slight flush deepening his bronzed cheek. "I think, mother, it would be kind of you to call upon her."

"Indeed I will," she responds, "if" (looking diffidently at her tyrant), "if your father----"

Sir Hector sips his port and pretends not to hear.

"I have heard that our family and the Carews were on the most intimate terms,--before their misfortunes," pursues Hector, in a tone that has some faint, though very faint, resemblance to his father's.

"It is high time intimacy should cease when people forget their position and make infernal fools of themselves," says the baronet, agreeably. "However, it was Carew who dropped his friends in this case, as it happens, not they who dropped him."

"And is she pretty?" asks my lady, appealing to her younger son.

"Yes, she is," he replies, meditatively, "decidedly pretty, quite unformed, of course."

"_Fortunately_," interposes Hector, with emphasis.

"_C'est selon!_" retorts Captain Montagu; (then, mischievously) "it's quite on the cards, mother, that you may have the fair Diana for a daughter-in-law."

"What!" cries Sir Hector, whilst my lady looks from one to the other of her sons. Hector darts an angry glance at his brother, who, nothing daunted, proceeds, laughing, "He is of age: ask him; let him speak for himself."

"H'm!" says the baronet, "I thought you were speaking for _your_self. A man without a shilling but his debts generally selects a penniless bride. I am not at all afraid of Hector making an ass of himself."

There is a slight working of Hector's features as he remarks, very coldly,--

"It is taking a great liberty with Miss Carew's name to couple it with any man's at present. At the same time" (looking steadily at his father), "if I ever do marry, the last thing I shall look for in my wife will be a fortune."

"Do you already, then, fancy yourself in my shoes?" sneers Sir Hector.

"My income is quite sufficient to share with a woman who has not extravagant tastes," retorts Hector, in a cold, defiant tone.

"Oh, in that case, my lady," says the baronet, with bland sarcasm, "pray lose no time in calling on the young lady and introducing her as your successor."

Sir Hector has the best of it: his heir loses his temper, and, for fear of showing it, beats a hasty retreat.

"Were you really serious, Charlie?" asks his mother, anxiously.

"Yes,--no,--I don't know, I'm sure," he answers, yawning: "it's such a confounded bore to have to weigh every word. I think Mrs. Warrington was trying to work it."

"Very good of her, I'm sure!" says Sir Hector, dryly.

"I cannot think how people can be so officious," exclaims his wife, with more show of resentment than is habitual to her. "It is not kind of Mrs. Warrington."

"My dear mother, pray don't agitate yourself. Mrs. Warrington did nothing: what could she do?--what could any one do with Hector if he did not choose? Besides, the Carews are as good as we are, and she is quite a charming girl; but, _entre nous_, whatever Hector may feel for her, I do not fancy she reciprocates in the very least."

"Indeed, Charlie," says his mother, bridling a little, "I think Hector is not at all likely to meet with a rebuff in any quarter where he offered his attentions."

"I should be sorry for him to ask her on the chance of her refusing," snarls Sir Hector; and there the conversation drops.

The next morning Lady Montagu received a visit from her eldest son in her boudoir.

"Mother," he commenced, abruptly, "I was very much annoyed at what Charlie said last night about Miss Carew, but all the same I shall be very glad indeed if you will go and call on her; and, mother" (taking a turn up and down the room), "could you not ask her over here to stay?"

If Charlie is her favorite, Lady Montagu has a very sincere affection for her elder son; so she replies, looking anxiously at him,--

"Certainly, my dear; I will do anything you wish (if your father does not object). But have you really, seriously any idea of Miss Carew?"

"My dear mother" (impatiently), "why want to jump to conclusions? She is a very charming, unaffected, lady-like girl, and I should like to see more of her. Besides" (lowering his voice), "there are two parties to a contract, and though I might be ever so much in love with her, it does not follow that she should care for me; rather the other way. Mother" (stopping suddenly in his walk and confronting her), "I'm afraid I'm not a very taking sort of fellow: am I? I frighten people even when I want to be most kind; even you, poor mother" (taking her hand), "are not quite at ease with me. There's Charlie," he continues, dropping her hand gently, and resuming his walk up and down: "he has only to smile at you women in his sweet languid way" (with rising passion), "and you all adore him and would do anything for him, and we, we miserable dogs who haven't had the luck to be born with pretty faces and soft manners,--we who would lay down our lives for you and sacrifice anything on earth to make you happy,--we only inspire you with fear and shrinking! Poor mother!" (stopping suddenly, his voice subsiding from the harshness of violent emotion to extreme tenderness, as though he were talking to some little child); "why, I have quite scared you. You didn't think I was such a violent, blustering fellow: did you? Come; it's over now. I don't know what possessed me. Well, you will do as I ask you, won't you? And now I must go over to Willington about that stupid business of Cartwright's. Good-by, mother dear!" And he goes.

Lady Montagu sighs as the door closes; she has a vague feeling that she ought to understand her eldest son better,--that there is, after all, something behind that chill surface that a mother's heart ought to read; but the momentary intelligence soon slumbers again. It leaves one strong impression, though, and that is, that Miss Carew is something more to him than any other daughter of Eve has been before.