Chapter XXIV: Not Told by Diana

Diana is awake early next morning: indeed, she has not passed a very tranquil night. A great crisis in her life has come; but what lies beyond? She hardly dares to think: fain would she content herself with the present, but the thought of what is to follow will creep in. She had imagined for the minute, whilst the man she loved was at her side, that she could live for all time on that memory; and yet already she is hankering and longing to see him again, and thinking how blank and void to-day will be without him. She hears the sound of wheels, and springs out of bed. She can just catch a glimpse of the dog-cart, and the horse pawing and scraping the ground. A minute later she hears the sound of Captain Montagu's voice, and cranes her neck eagerly behind the blind to get one more glimpse of him. _His_ face is not pale nor haggard, as, somehow, she half expects to see it, as hers is, unless her mirror tells a false tale; he looks cheery and _debonnair_, and gives a pleasant farewell smile and nod to Simkins who comes out to wish him God-speed. His portmanteau and bag are in, he lights a cigar, takes the reins, jumps in, and--is gone. Gone! Diana feels acutely at this moment how much of pain one little four-lettered word can hold. She whispers it painfully to herself over and over again, Gone from her forever! Will he remember her? Will he think longingly, lingeringly, as she does, over last night's scene?--or is it only a repetition, with a trifling variation, of scenes that he has gone through many a time before? Why, why did he make that hateful speech?--why tell her he could never be alone with a woman without making love to her? And was it always the same,--the man in play, the woman in earnest? A passage from Madame de Staël will haunt her: "_L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes cest un épisode dans celle des hommes_." Over and over again it repeats itself as she plaits her long hair and dresses tardily for breakfast,--breakfast that was so cheery yesterday, that will be so dull, she thinks, sighing, to-day. It is a bright, warm day again: she wishes it were stormy and wet; she would rather hear the wind howling dismally in the wide chimney, and the rain pattering against the window-panes: it would be far more in consonance with her feelings.

"I cannot stay here any longer," she says to herself. "I will write to-day and tell papa that he _must_ send for me home."

Sir Hector is short and snappish with her this morning: evidently he is ill pleased at her defalcation the previous evening; but his son tries by every means in his power to make things pleasant.

"Will you ride this morning?" he asks her. "There is a charming ride for a sunny morning that I have not yet taken you,--all through shady lanes and a delicious wood."

Sha shivers a little at the last word, but tries to smile as she assents to his proposal. Yes, she will like to ride very much. Anything for a change; anything to take her out of herself. Hector feels, and is, quite another man this morning: the nightmare of his brother's presence being removed, he can smile and be genial again, and the ugly curves about his mouth shrink away to nothing. It is a morning to make any one blithe who has the faintest, smallest reason for being glad; it is a morning to break the heart of any one who has a secret sorrow gnawing at his breast. When nature is so passing fair and one is at discord with her, at discord with happiness, what is her loveliness but "sweet bells jangled out of tune"?

Is this grave silent maiden, who forces a little pale smile in answer when he speaks to her, the joyous laughing Diana of three days ago? so full of life and spirits that she would have let him make love to her had he willed it, out of sheer high spirits and the pleasure of life? He will be very patient with her, but as they ride along he falls to wondering what charm his brother possesses for winning smiles and gay glad words from every woman he comes across.

"I never in my life heard him say anything that was not utterly commonplace," he thinks. "Are women, even good women, really so shallow as to be caught by a merely handsome face and a trick of manner?"

"What did you do yesterday?" he asks, abruptly,--so abruptly that the quick color rushes uncontrollably through her fair face.

"How you startle one!" she says, with some pettishness.

"Did I?" he replies, penitently. "I am very sorry. I am afraid I am rather a bear."

"Not that," she says, recovering herself; "but you are silent for a long time, and then you burst out suddenly upon one in a way that takes one's breath away."

"Do I?" he exclaims, eagerly. "I am so sorry,--awfully sorry, as the correct phrase is now. But," returning to his former question, "what _did _you do yesterday?"

"I don't know" (carelessly): "nothing, I think,--pottered about the garden."

"Is that all?"

"Do you insist upon the minutest details?" she asks, with a look he does not quite comprehend.

"I don't insist on anything," he rejoins, with some coldness.

"After breakfast I sang for an hour; then we went into the garden and sat under a tree, and your brother caught three carp."

She does not tell him how; and he chooses to imagine, not being a fisherman, nor knowing the exceeding difficulty of catching those wily fish with fly or worm, that Captain Montagu angled for them in the usual manner, "a worm at one end of the rod, a fool at the other." He reflects to himself with inward satisfaction that fishing and love-making are two things that do not go very well together.

"And after that?"

"After that" (averting her face and pulling leaves off the low-hanging boughs within her reach), "oh, after that we strolled into the wood to look at the primroses and hyacinths. Have you seen them?--they are exquisite. I never saw so many together before."

"Will you show them to me?" he asks, bending a little towards her; but they have emerged into the open, and she puts her horse into a canter without answering. Go there with him! not for worlds! is it not sacred to a memory? Let no unhallowed feet profane its precincts.

When they reach home, Diana finds Lady Montagu in the drawing-room. Is it her fancy, or is the kiss my lady bestows upon her a shade less warm and her manner a little less affectionate than usual?

"She is angry with me because her favorite son has gone," Diana thinks, forlornly. "Why does she not blame the right person for sending him away?--am I not tenfold more grieved than she? As long as she lives, he will always be the same to her, and now" (tears rising at the thought) "he is never to be anything more to me." She takes her embroidery, and the two ladies work assiduously: very little conversation passes between them. After lunch they drive together, but still Diana feels painfully that she is under a cloud. The only thing that could have consoled her would be to hear Captain Montagu's mother speak of him, and she has never even so much as mentioned his name. Well, she will be back at the dear old home soon: why did she ever leave it? She has written to her father telling him that she is home-sick, and that she _will positively_ return home the next day but one following. He must write her by return of post summoning her back, but, if not, why, she will go without; but in any case _she will go home_. This is an unusual display of willfulness for Miss Diana; but then it is a very unusual occasion. All through the drive she is thinking how she will broach the subject to her hostess (the letter is safely on its way by now); at last she says, rushing at her subject,--

"I fear I must be leaving you very soon, Lady Montagu. I have had a--a delightful visit; but papa will be missing me sadly, and I quite expect a summons" (feeling guilty), "perhaps to-morrow or the next day."

"My dear, you must not think of it," answers my lady, with her old kind manner. "What should we do without you? I, for one, cannot spare you. Sir Hector will be quite lost without his chess; and as for Hector----"

"I think you could all do better without me than papa," interrupts Diana; "though it is very kind of you to say you will miss me."

"But, my dear," says Lady Montagu, with a pleasant smile, "your papa will have to spare you altogether some day; and it is better to accustom him to the idea by degrees."

"He will never have to spare me for long," answers Diana, heaving a great sigh, but speaking in a resolute tone so unusual to her that Lady Montagu looks askance at her.

"Young girls always talk like that," she says, but lets the subject drop. Later in the day she tells Hector what has passed. She has sent for him to her boudoir, and he has answered the summons in haste.

He looks bitterly pained.

"Oh, mother!" he says, at last, "why of all days should you have had a headache on that one unlucky day?"

"My dear," answers Lady Montagu, softly, "I think you take alarm too easily. I do not imagine Diana can be so foolish as to think anything of Charlie. I am sure she is too lady-like and right-minded to care for a man who has not given her any encouragement."

"_Encouragement_! Grant me patience!" mutters Hector, in a fierce _sotto voce_, turning sharply to the window.

"What did you say?" asks Lady Montagu, mildly, and he makes the answer that people generally do when they say and mean a good deal. "Nothing!"

"We know," proceeds my lady, gently, all unconscious of the daggers she is planting in the heart of her first-born, "that Charlie has a very winning manner; but no girl, I should hope, would be foolish enough to construe his pleasant little caressing ways into any serious intentions. He is the same to every woman, even to me" (smiling a little), "your father says."

"You remember the old fable of the boys and the frog, mother," Hector interrupts, roughly, unconsciously betraying the fear that he has been chary of acknowledging even to himself. "What is play to you is death to me."

"You do not think, really," says Lady Montagu, incredulously, "that Diana has taken a serious fancy to Charlie?"

"Fancy!" murmurs Hector to himself; "ay, that is a good word to apply to a woman's liking." Then, aloud,--

"I don't know what to think; my heart is so in this matter that I have not the least chance of judging impartially. Mother" (earnestly), "I have not courage to speak to her myself. I love her so much that I am actually afraid of her. Will you not" (pleadingly) "speak for me,--tell her how intensely I love her, and--and" (smiling rather doubtfully) "say the best you can of me, mother? I don't think I am the sort of fellow to take a girl's _fancy_,--that was the word you used,--and yet we seemed to get on very well before--before I went away. I had great hope of her that morning when she went to the station with me."

"Of course, dear," Lady Montagu replies, nervously, "I will do anything to contribute to your happiness; but" (smiling up in his face) "I hardly think a mother is a good medium for a man's love-making,--in this country, at all events. Why not tell her yourself? Indeed it would come much better from you."

He shakes his head.

"I cannot; but you--at all events you can prepare her mind. Not to-night,--somehow, I do not think she would take it so well to-night,--but to-morrow. Don't refuse me, mother!"

His heart is in his voice, and so his mother consents so the unthankful task. On the following afternoon, when she and Diana have come in from their drive and are sitting together over their work, Lady Montagu, with a little ruffled uncomfortable sensation at her heart, broaches the theme.

"I shall be very lonely this time to-morrow," she says, gently, lifting her sweet gray eyes from the gorgeous silks with which she is embroidering a great damask rose; "that is, if you persist in leaving us."

"You are very, very kind," Diana replies, answering the look with one equally pleasant and affectionate; "and I shall miss you every bit as much,--perhaps more. You know" (most unwittingly giving the very cue that the other wants) "you are the first person who ever made me feel the want of a mother."

"Come and sit by me," says Lady Montagu, holding out her hand; and Diana, rising, crosses over and sits beside her on the sofa.

Lady Montagu takes one of her hands and strokes it softly.

"Let me be your mother in reality," she whispers, softly, looking in Diana's face with kind, humid eyes. "Let me plead my son's cause with you."

Diana's head droops: the tears are welling in her eyes too: what would she ask better than to be daughter to so kind and sweet a mother?--daughter, but not in the way she means. She is silent, but her silence may signify anything, and Lady Montagu takes heart of grace.

"Ever since Hector first saw you," she proceeds, still caressing the slim white hand, "he has loved you,--devotedly. I never thought it possible he could come to care so much for any one." In truth, his worship of Diana has caused his mother much secret wonder. "Let me give him good news: may I?" she urges. "I need not praise him to you; you have seen how good, how noble-minded he is, and I feel sure he would make you a devoted husband."

Diana looks up at last. She has been wanting all the time to stop her friend, but has not known how.

"Don't think me ungrateful," she says, in a low, constrained voice. "I feel deeply the--the honor and the kindness that you and--and Mr. Montagu do me, but indeed" (turning away her head) "it is impossible for me to think of him except as a friend."

"My love," cries Lady Montagu, feeling as if somehow she had fulfilled her mission badly, "do not be in haste to decide. You are such a child,--what are you? only eighteen,--he can afford to wait; and in time--in time, I hope, you will think differently. Only, pray, pray do not say positively that it is impossible: he would take it so to heart. I have been a little too sudden: it _is_ rather shocking to the feelings of a young girl to hear so solemn a subject broached hastily. I remember quite well" (a pink blush rising in her delicate face) "when there was first question of my marrying Sir Hector, I could not bring myself all at once to the idea. Let me tell him that you will think about it."

"No," Diana answers, in a low, firm voice; "it would only be deceiving him. I like, I respect Mr. Montagu very much, but _I_ could not ever care for him enough to be his wife."

Lady Montagu, glancing at her, sees that she is not to be moved. Ever so slight a feeling of anger at the rejection of her son creeps into her kind heart.

"I think," she says, "it would be hardly possible for you to be so decided in your refusal of my son unless there was some one else whom you preferred. Perhaps there is already some one of whom we have not heard, who----"

"No, no, no!" interrupts Diana, hastily, turning her head away to hide the hot blushes that are dyeing her cheek.

"My love," whispers Lady Montagu, urged by a sudden impulse, "I may be wrong--I hope I am, but I do trust" (very earnestly) "that you are not allowing any thought of--of my younger son to interfere with your happiness. It would be utterly impossible for him, with his extravagant habits, to marry any but a rich woman; and--forgive my saying so--that little manner of his which is so charming and caressing does not really mean anything."

Diana rises suddenly and walks to the window, and as suddenly returns and confronts Lady Montagu.

"I should be extremely sorry, Lady Montagu," she says, with great spirit, "for you to labor under any erroneous impressions with regard to my feelings for Captain Montagu. I have as little thought of marrying your younger as your elder son!" And, flying off to her room, she flings herself into a chair in a passion of tears.