Chapter XX: 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."