Chapter XVII: Diana's Story

It is May, and I am at Alford. My visit, which was to have been made in January, had to be deferred in consequence of Lady Montagu's illness: she has had bronchitis, and is only just returned from Hastings. At Easter, papa, Curly and I spent a week with the Fanes. A wonderful event,--papa being beguiled from home: however, I think he enjoyed the change thoroughly, and it did him all the good in the world. I was glad he went; he seemed quite to come out of his shell, and was so bright, so genial and delightful, that I am sure if I had been any one but his daughter I should have fallen in love with him. He took an immense fancy to Claire, and, but that she is so dear and sweet and good, I could almost have found it in my heart to be jealous of her. It was a charming week. Colonel Fane was kinder than ever; we were the only visitors, and they made us thoroughly happy and at home. I have grown to like Hector Montagu, though I shall never quite get over my awe of him. All through the winter he used to come over frequently, always bringing me lovely flowers or books and music,--anything he thought I should like. Papa has taken wonderfully to Mr. Montagu, and seems to like to speak of him and always in his praise. I wonder if he would like--the other one. I am afraid he would think him frivolous. But, oh, I believe in my heart that he is capable of better things, and it is the useless idle life of pleasure he lives that makes him seem what he does: how could he Lave those kind pleasant ways if he were not really good at heart? How nice of him to send me all that money for my poor people! I took care to tell them it came from a good, kind gentleman, and they blessed him with tears in their eyes. Those blessings must do him some good: at all events, I like to think so.

Papa was most anxious about my visit to Alford. Here I am at last. They pressed him very hard to come, but he excused himself. So I arrived alone the day before yesterday Mr. Montagu was on the steps to receive me, and gave me such a hearty welcome that I felt at home at once. Then he carried me off to his mother's boudoir, and as I entered she rose, and, taking both my hands, kissed me, and said, so sweetly and kindly, how glad she was that I had come at last, and I fell in love with her on the spot. My eyes grew quite dim: for the first time in my life, I was conscious of the wish that I had a mother. Presently Sir Hector came in, and greeted me very kindly, and I thought to myself that he had been very unduly abused, but changed my mind no later than that very evening. It is a grand old place, but there is more state than comfort about it, except in Lady Montagu's boudoir, which is the essence of cosiness. Sir Hector said contemptuously that it was nothing but "a litter of untidy trash;" but I do not agree with him. I take care, though, to be very meek and modest with him, and not to venture an opinion unless I know it will be well received. I am terribly afraid of him: my awe of his son disappears completely in his presence, and I look upon him as a friendly power. I vexed him quite unintentionally the day I arrived. I can understand it now, though I did not then. It was soon after my arrival. Sir Hector, having had a little pleasant chat with me, asking kindly after papa, and regretting that he had not come, went out.

"How like you are to your father!" I remarked, innocently, thinking rather that I was paying him a compliment, for Sir Hector is a very fine old man.

The color flushed into his face, and he said, looking dreadfully hurt,--

"Do not you, of all people, say that!" Then, as I looked and felt horribly confused, he went on, trying to smile, "I dare say you think it rather a compliment now; but you will soon understand why I do not consider it one."

"Hector! my dear Hector!" cried his mother, reproachfully; but he laughed, and said,--

"My mother, like all good women, loves her tyrant, and hugs her chains. I dare say you would too" (looking at me keenly), "only let us hope a better fate is in store for you."

"You must not let my son give you any wrong impressions," says Lady Montagu, nervously: "indeed, he should not say such things. Sir Hector is----"

"I was wrong, mother," he answered. "I ought to have left Miss Carew to draw her own conclusions, unprejudiced. I should have done so if she had not greeted me with the remark that never fails to get a rise out of me, as Curly would say" (looking at me and laughing).

"I quite fell in love with your brother," utters Lady Montagu, gently, "he is so frank and open, and so handsome. He reminds me very much of what dear Charlie was at his age."

"Will you not like to see your room?" Hector breaks in, abruptly, much to my chagrin, just as the dear name I am longing to hear is uttered.

A tinge of pink comes into his mother's pale cheeks, and she darts a little nervous glance at him, evidently thinking she has been indiscreet.

"Yes, you will like to take your hat off, will you not? I ought to have asked you before. Hector, please ring the bell and tell them to send Ford to Miss Carew's room."

So I go, feeling a little bit indignant with Mr. Montagu.

"The second bell rings five minutes before dinner," he whispers: "be sure you are in the small drawing-room three minutes after it sounds. We live by clock-work here."

I do not fail to take his hint: to the moment indicated I make my appearance. Sir Hector is there, standing pompously in front of the fire; his son is reading the "Times" by the window. There is still faint daylight. Sir Hector nods approvingly at me as I enter.

"I am glad to see you possess the virtue of punctuality," he says, looking at me over his big white neck-cloth with a patronizing smile. "Nothing to be done without it. It is the one thing I insist upon."

The clock chimes the half-hour: simultaneously the gong sounds; simultaneously the door opens, and the butler, entering, announces,--

"Dinner is served, Sir Hector."

My host extends his arm to me. I half hesitate; Lady Montagu is not there.

"_I never wait for any one_," says Sir Hector, sternly, and forthwith conveys me to the dining-hall.

On the way we meet Lady Montagu hastening to the drawing-room, and clasping a bracelet as she goes.

"I had no idea I was late," she says, nervously.

"Lady Montagu," says her husband, addressing me in a voice audible to the servants as well as to herself,--"Lady Montagu has brought unpunctuality to a science. She would undoubtedly have been one of the five foolish virgins of the parable. For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful! I only trust to-day" (speaking to me as he consults his menu) "that there may be something for which we may have cause to be grateful. Our cook, thanks to my lady, is anything but a _cordon bleu_. As usual" (tasting his soup), "the cayenne-box has been upset into the soup. Simkins, take it away" (addressing the butler savagely, and proceeding to write something on a porcelain slate with a pencil).

I quite understand now why he is not popular, and why Hector was vexed at my innocently-meant speech. I feel dreadfully uncomfortable. This is my first taste of the stalled ox with strife. Oh for my dinner of herbs! Presently I take courage to look round me. We four people are dining in a banqueting-room big enough for a hundred guests, and, although a long screen of gold-stamped leather divides it in half, it still feels out of all proportion to the party. It does not look bare, for it is magnificently decorated throughout. Our table is lighted by mediæval lamps from above; there is a great show of silver and gold plate, with many flowers, on the table and the grand old oaken side-board. Through the great mullioned windows opposite me I can see in the waning light a sea of velvet turf shaded by dark cedars, and the last red streaks of a gorgeous sunset. Inside there is so much to be seen that I can only at present get a confused general idea of all the beautiful things crowded together; but next morning I get Mr. Montagu, after breakfast, to show and explain everything to me. Then I am fairly astonished by all the treasures. The carved chimney-piece, a gem in itself, ascends to the ceiling. On either side of it are quaint brass sconces. Oak chests and cabinets, curious marqueterie cupboards abound, with antique side-boards and chiffoniers, covered with Nankin and Majolica ware, with Venice, Dutch, and German glass. Scarce an inch of the wall that is not covered with paintings, china plaques, vast round dishes, sconces, brass shields, brackets, carving. Dutch scenes here, old-fashioned portraits there, quaint carvings on wood, ivory, mother-of-pearl. There is a magnificent old Amsterdam clock, with sweet ringing chimes, that tells you all sorts of things about the sun, moon, stars, days, weeks, months, and I know not what. Mr. Montagu is greatly amused at my childish delight in pretty things, and does cicerone very pleasantly.

I am very glad when dinner is over; it has not been a cheerful meal; for, although Sir Hector has been all that is kind and polite to me, he has quite destroyed any pleasant impression he might have made by his frequent and savage invectives against the dinner and servants, and the sneers directed to his wife. Glad am I when Lady Montagu gives me the signal to retire.

"We shall not be long," says Mr. Montagu, smiling as I pass through the door which he holds open for us. I return his smile. I am not one whit afraid of him since I have seen his father. As I follow my hostess to the drawing-room, I am conscious of a hope that we are going to have some pleasant chat wherein I shall hear mention of her younger son; but it soon becomes evident to me that my lady is sleepily inclined. She indeed makes two or three attempts to talk, but I see her head begin to droop and her eyelids to close, and, that I may not interrupt her doze, I retire to a distant sofa with a book. She wakes up for a moment to decline the coffee that is brought her, and when her husband and son enter, but relapses again into a sweet and gentle slumber. Sir Hector comes up to me, asks blandly what my book is, passes a sweeping and comprehensive censure upon modern literature in general and lady novelists in particular, and then, retiring to an arm-chair near the fire, follows suit most audibly to my lady. Portentous snores issue from his aristocratic nose, but they have only the effect of lulling his wife into a sounder though soft-breathed slumber.

"We are rather a cheerful family of an evening," says Hector, sitting down beside me. "I have a sort of guilty feeling that I ought to have prepared you for this."

"I suppose you are not going to do the same," I answer, in a whisper.

"Don't be afraid to speak out!" he remarks, laughing: "nothing short of an earthquake would rouse him for the next half-hour. My mother" (with a softer inflection of his voice) "sleeps so badly, I am always glad to see her dozing. Tell me," he goes on, speaking eagerly,--"I have been burning to ask you for the last hour,--do you still think me like my father?"

"Not a bit," I answer, emphatically; "not a little bit."

"But do you think," he proceeds, earnestly,--"do you think I have the making of what he is in me? I don't want you to flatter me; you are sincere, I know: tell me the honest truth. Do you think if I had a sweet amiable wife, who gave in to me as my poor mother has done to him all her life,--do you think I might end by becoming selfish and hard and tyrannical like he is? Sometimes I have a horrid misgiving about myself. I am oppressed with a sort of nightmare that I really am like him, and it makes me wretched."

"I will tell you what I think," I answer, with the candor for which he has asked with such apparent sincerity. "I don't think you are a bit like him really, but some--times--sometimes" (I hesitate).

"Well?" he says, eagerly, fixing his dark eyes on my face.

"I think," I proceed, timidly, "you try to make one afraid of you; you look rather stern and terrible. You did at Warrington. I used to feel rather in awe of you there."

"But you don't now?" he whispers, looking almost beseechingly at me. His eyes have a strange expression: if eyes could look fierce and yet soft at the same time (I know it sounds paradoxical), I should say his looked so.

"No," I answer, confidently, "not now."

"Promise me you never will again," he says, hurriedly. "I may have, I believe I have, a trick of looking stern and sneering. I don't care a straw what most people think of me, but _it would hurt me_ to know you could feel fear or repugnance towards me,--you who----"

He checks himself, seeing perhaps some wonder in my eyes. Why should he be concerned about my thoughts of him?

"Do you play chess?" he asks, with rather a rapid change of subject.

I answer in the affirmative.

"Then I must prepare you," he says, smiling. "My father will wake up in precisely twenty minutes: he will then ask you if you play chess. By the way, are you a good loser? does it vex you to be beaten?"

"Not in the very least," I answer, truthfully.

"Well, I must warn you, if you play indifferently, my father will make genial little sneers at you; if you play well and beat him, he will be furious, although he will endeavor not to vent his anger upon you; if you play well and he beats you, he will simply adore you, and be radiantly good-humored."

"Forewarned is forearmed," I whisper, laughing.

"I am afraid," he says, in a vexed tone, "you will conceive a most odious impression of us as a family. Confess, now, you will go to bed to-night with anything but pleasant thoughts of us: you will be longing for that happy home of yours, where you are all so bright and loving and unselfish. Do you know" (looking intently at me) "I feel a different being when I escape from the atmosphere of this place and get over to Carew Court? that is" (very softly) "why I longed to have your sweet presence here to bring sunshine. I feel like Pluto did when he carried off Proserpine, only that I should want to make you eat all the pomegranate."

What he has predicted of Sir Hector comes true to the letter: as the clock chimes half-past nine he awakes, and, turning his head in my direction, inquires if I play chess.

I make the proper answer under the circumstances:

"A little."

"Let us have a game!" he exclaims, rising briskly. "Hector, oblige me by getting the board."

"You play with white men, of course: ladies always do," he remarks, when we are seated,--which, being interpreted, means that he plays with red. I am a tolerable player: papa and I spend many an evening over the game; and I dare safely say that never yet did one of us take umbrage at the other winning. Mindful of Hector's warning, I play my best, but take care, after a protracted contest, to lose. The result is as he predicted; Sir Hector is radiant, and pays me a thousand compliments.

"Ah, my dear, you will win next time," he says, with cheerful patronage. "You play an excellent game. I have rarely, if ever, met so accomplished a chess-player at your age. Twenty minutes to eleven: you must be quite tired. Be good enough to ring for candles, Hector. Come, my lady, wake up. No wonder you cannot sleep at night."

Lady Montagu rouses herself.

"My dear," she says, kindly, as she bids me good-night, "I have been very rude. But I am a very stupid person in the evening. To-morrow I hope we shall have a nice long chat. Meantime, promise me to ask for everything you want. I do hope you will sleep well." She draws me to her and kisses me gently on the cheek. Again the thought comes across me that I should like to have a mother. I say as much to Hector as he walks beside me along the corridor.

"I wish my mother were yours," he says, softly.

"So do I," I answer, without any _arrière-pensée_.

"Do you?" he whispers. "I wonder if you wish it in the same way that I do."

A vexed blush mounts to my forehead.

"Good-night," I say, rather shortly, giving him my hand, without looking up.

"Good-night," he answers, lingeringly, holding it until I am forced to look at him. "Do not be vexed with me. I shall never offend you intentionally."