Chapter XXV: Not Told by Diana

Hector, who is reading the "Times" in the library, with the door ajar, sees a slight form flit hurriedly by, and conjectures that his mother has fulfilled her mission. He throws aside the paper, for whose contents indeed he is not much the wiser, and goes with slow steps towards the small drawing-room; with slow steps, not because he is not eager, but because, full-grown man as he is, accredited with the coolest, most perfect self-control, his heart is beating loudly, and he is as nervous as a girl at her first "drawing-room." He pauses, with his hand upon the door, feeling positively sick with apprehension. His life seems to hang upon the fiat of this slim young girl. In another moment he has read his doom in his mother's eyes, even before she has had time to unclose her lips.

"I knew it,--I was quite sure of it," he utters, very calmly, standing in front of her. "Still, I should like to know what she said, what reason she gave."

"She said," replies his mother, slowly, turning over in her mind how best to soften the narration,--"she said she liked you very much as a friend, that she admired and respected you, but----"

"But," says Hector, finishing the sentence for her, "she could never care sufficiently for me to marry me. Was that it?"

"Yes" (reluctantly).

"Did she say" (faltering a little) "that she could not care for me because she--she loved some one else?"

"No, indeed," replies his mother, eagerly; "and I am afraid I have offended her by hinting about Charlie. She sprang up with such spirit,--I could not have fancied it was in her,--and told me that she had as little thought of one of you as the other; and then she rushed out of the room."

"I wish to God," says Hector, bitterly, turning away, "that I had never set eyes on her! Mother" (confronting her again sharply), "you are very good and religious,--do you really and honestly believe, in your heart of hearts, that there is some beneficent purpose in our being denied everything we want and care for here, or do you think it pleases the Almighty to torture us as a cat likes to play with a mouse?"

Then he turns on his heel and goes, before Lady Montagu, who looks deeply shocked, has time to utter a syllable.

Diana appears at dinner with a pale face, but perfectly composed. This is the last evening she will ever spend at Alford, and she musters the best grace she can to go through it. After all, they have meant kindly by her. But she feels dreadfully embarrassed at meeting both Hector and his mother, and devotes her conversation during the dreary ceremony for the most part to Sir Hector, who, unconscious of what has happened, and still looking upon her as his prospective daughter-in-law, is pleased to be very gracious. Little does the proud old autocrat dream that a chit like this, without a half-penny to her fortune, could have the presumption to refuse his heir. He does not even know that she contemplates leaving Alford next day.

"I am going to let you off to-night," he tells her, with a frosty smile. "I have business with my bailiff; so we must forego our game for once."

"For a long time, then, I fear," says Diana, quietly, "as I am going away to-morrow."

"Going to-morrow!" cries the old autocrat. "Pooh! pshaw! nonsense! impossible! not likely we are going to let you run away in such a hurry!" His tone is a curious compound of the imperative, benevolent, and patronizing.

"My father wants me," answers Diana.

"Tell him he must do without you a little longer. There are other people who have claims besides fathers, eh, Hector?" (with a facetious glance at his son).

Being behind the scenes, we may conjecture the agreeable effect produced by this speech upon the other members of the party. But Hector comes swiftly to the rescue.

"We shall all miss Miss Carew very much," he says, "but her father can perhaps spare her even less."

"Heyday!" cries the baronet, raising his eyebrows, "you young men take things very coolly in these days, it seems to me. It was not like that with our generation, eh, my lady?"

Hector looks significantly at his mother, and she, hastily gathering up her fan and scent-bottle, beats a hasty retreat.

Diana passes a dreary half-hour in the drawing-room, looking out of window at the bright moonlight, and wishing she were out in it. Then Hector comes in. He feels embarrassed, and knows that she is feeling the same; he does not want to add to it.

"Would you like to come out?" he asks, politely, seeing her wistful glance out of window; and then, as she hesitates, he adds, quickly, "Not unless you feel inclined."

"Yes," she answers; "let us go."

Since she must be alone with him, for Lady Montagu asleep counts as no one, as well out in the cool, pleasant night as in this warm room, and if he still has anything to say to her. why, let him say it once for all, and understand finally that she can be nothing more to him than a friend. But as they pace up and down the gravel walk together, he makes no sign, his conversation is perfectly commonplace. Suddenly he says,--

"Let us go into the wood and see the primroses you told me of by moonlight."

"No," she answers, resolutely. "There might be snakes," she adds, in answer to his inquiring glance. "I should like to go in the boat."

They take their way across the short green turf to the lake, and stand for a moment by its margin looking into it. Still and clear it lies like a vast burnished mirror, and in it are reflected the trees and tall shrubs; so bright it is they can see in its clear depths the pink May blossoms, the towering lilacs, and the gold showers of laburnum. No wonder the moon loves to see herself mirrored in it. Her pale face looks more radiantly bright there than where she rides aloft in the blue heavens; now and again a rustling little breeze comes rippling along and turns her into a flood of sparkling diamonds.

Hector brings out the boat and lays the cushions in it; then he helps her in. There is some subtle influence in the gliding of a boat through still waters; it has a lulling, dream-compelling effect; one cannot feel actively miserable. Diana leans back among the cushions; she is not unhappy now; young blood runs in her veins, and she is keenly conscious of, and acted upon always by, Nature's beauty. As in a dream she floats along, seeing the dark fir-trees standing out against the clear sky, and the pointed tops of the tall shrubs, the glittering stars and the bright moon, and hearing almost unconsciously the nightingale,

"Shedding his song upon height, upon hollow,
From tawny body and small sweet mouth,
Feeding the heart of the night with fire."

Hector disturbs her by never a word. He has grown strangely humble; he is content that she shall _not be unhappy_ in his presence. And so they glide along together, this strangely silent couple,--the girl with her fair face and star-like eyes turned heavenwards, and the man's dark face shadowed by his hat bent down on her. She cannot see that he is looking at her,--she does not feel it to-night; she is dreamily content with the night's beauty and the pleasant gliding motion. The oars dip steadily in the water and come out flashing and shining with diamonds dropping from them. Hector goes on rowing unweariedly, only dreading the breaking of the spell. After a long time, Diana says, reluctantly,--

"Is it not getting very late?"

"Would you like to go in?" he asks.

"I suppose one ought to." And he rows her to the bank without another word. As she gets out, her foot slips. Hector catches her in his arms and strains her for a moment to his beating heart. She tears herself away from him, and stands trembling on the bank, feeling angry and repellent. He springs after her, and, drawing her unwilling hand through his arm, leads her a few paces to a bench under an old tree whose gnarled and twisted branches overhang the water. He had not meant to say one word to her of his love when he brought her out, but it is too strong for him.

"Can I do nothing to make you care for me?" he says, in a deep, tremulous voice.

Diana is very sorry for him, and she is tender-hearted; she would not willingly give pain to any living thing, much less a man who pays her the compliment of loving her.

"I do like you very much," she urges, softly. "Will you not be content with my friendship?"

"Friendship!" he says, with impatient scorn; "what is friendship? If a dozen men came to you to-morrow and asked for your friendship, you would accord it as kindly and politely as you do to me to-night. How am I, who love you with all my soul, the better for your friendship? Pshaw! it is a thing that cannot exist between men and women until they both have one foot in the grave."

"Oh, indeed it can," Diana answers, earnestly. "Friendship means a great deal: it is" (dropping her voice) "the next thing to love. You have been very kind to me, and I like you, and honor and respect you besides: how could I feel the same towards strangers of whom I know nothing?"

"Honor and respect!" he cries, impatiently, only answering one part of her little speech: "that is what one gives the aged, what one gives one's parents,--at least" (with a grim smile) "some of us do. What satisfaction do you think it can give a man who craves passionately for your love, for something as far removed from mere honor and respect as light is from darkness? Oh, child!" (bitterly), "pray God you may never ask for bread and be given a stone!"

Diana looks sorrowfully at him.

"You do not believe I would pain you willingly," she says; "but how is it possible to compel love? You say you love me: well" (earnestly), "if to-night some other woman came and besought you for your love, could you give it her?"

She speaks all unconscious that she is betraying herself.

"Are the cases analogous?" he says, sharply. "Is it because you have given your love elsewhere that you cannot give it to me?"

Seeing the pit which she has unwittingly digged for herself, and into which she has so untowardly fallen, Diana colors deeply and is silent.

"Is it so?" he asks, more sharply still.

"And if it is!" she says, looking up defiantly from the corner into which he has driven her.

"Then I have no more to say," he answers, feeling the grasp of an icy hand clutching at his heart.

There follows a short, unbroken silence; then he says, almost pathetically,--

"You are very young, child; you have not seen anything of life or the world. Just now you offered me your friendship. Well, let me make use of it this once to say something to you. I am not impartial, you may think and say: I know it; but I know, too, that any real friend would tell you the same. I am not going to mention any name: you need not be angry with me. Suppose you, who are very young and innocent and unworldly, come across a man who is none of the three,--at all events, not the two latter; suppose that he, with his eyes wide open, having no serious thought of you, makes protestations of love to you which you in your guileless heart may believe sincere, but which others know, which he knows himself, mean nothing but his own selfish desire to gratify a pleasant feeling: would your friend advise you to give your pure gold in exchange for his spurious coin?"

Diana is passionately indignant,--indignant as, in her eighteen years of life, she has never been before. Carried away by her anger, she makes him an answer that in her cooler moments she would not have made for all the world.

"You need mention no name!" she cries, passionately; "you are speaking of _your brother_. At all events, I never heard him breathe a syllable against you. It is very kind of you to try and humble me by saying that he had no thought of me, no intention but to gratify himself, but _you are quite wrong_. Captain Montagu _asked_ me to marry him, and for his own sake I _refused him_."

Hector stares stupidly at her.

"When, may I ask?" he says, in a low, smothered voice.

"The night before he went away."

"So," says Hector, between his teeth, "my _honorable_ brother, who went away to leave the field clear for me."

Diana is on her swift way to the house, but he does not attempt to follow her. For the moment his fierce wrath has swallowed up his love.