Chapter XXVII: Diana's Story

I suppose it would be utterly impossible to a bred-and-born dweller in cities faintly to conjecture the feelings of the country mouse who for the first time enters a big city, never having seen any larger agglomeration of houses and shops than her own little country town. I was as utterly bewildered the first few days of my stay in London as if I had been suddenly transplanted to another world. The noise, the tumult, the splendor, the misery, the countless crowds of people, the endless stream of carriages, vans, carts, cabs, omnibuses, filled me with a wonder that words are utterly inadequate to express. For the first week, I believe, my mouth never assumed any shape but one round O of astonishment. Mr. Warrington was delighted, and insisted upon taking me everywhere, and telling every one we met, rather to my confusion, what a treat it was to go about with a young lady who had never been in London before, and who was not _blasée_. The utter change certainly did my spirits good. I had no time to think in the day, and at night I was so tired out that the moment I put my head on the pillow I was asleep.

Before I left home, we heard that Sir Hector Montagu was dead, and that his eldest son had returned. I wrote to poor Lady Montagu. It was a difficult task, as it needs must be when one can truthfully say nothing good of the dead; but I did my best.

One day, when we were driving down St. James Street, we met Captain Montagu coming up. He smiled, bowed, and would have passed on, but Mrs. Warrington stopped the carriage. It was a moment of utter and intense happiness to me, after the first confusion, to hear his voice and meet his eyes once more.

Mrs. Warrington asked after his mother, and he looked grave as he answered that she was really ill, and took his poor father's death most grievously to heart. She had a cousin staying with her, and Hector was at home now.

Mrs. Warrington begged him to call, and to come some evening to dine in a friendly way. He replied that he was not going out at present, but would come some night when they were quite alone. Then he wished us good-by, and as we rolled on our way I felt radiant; everything seemed to take a rosy hue. The days roll by, and he has not called. Every afternoon I look eagerly over the array of cards. Sometimes a black-bordered one raises hope in my breast, but only to dash it to the ground on nearer inspection.

"Does he not care to see me?" I think, grieved in my very heart.

I meet many men, some of whom I like very much; most of them are kind and pleasant to me, but not one in my eyes can be compared with him. Colonel Fane is in town. I am always glad to see him: he seems, by the side of my new acquaintances, quite an old friend.

Nearly a fortnight has elapsed, when one morning Mrs. Warrington, amidst her numerous engagements, remembers that Captain Montagu has not called.

"I will write a line and ask him to dine with us on Sunday," she exclaims. "It is our only disengaged evening for a long time. By the way, Diana" (drawing a sheet of paper before her), "did I not hear that you had been staying at Alford?"

"I was there nearly a fortnight," I answer.

"Was Charlie at home?"

"Only for one day," I say, bending over my work.

"Hector of course was there?"

"Yes."

"And how did you get on with him?" (looking up at me).

"Oh, very well," I stammer.

"Do you like him?"

"Yes," I answer, indifferently.

"How came you to stay there?" Mrs. Warrington is evidently in a very questioning mood.

"Lady Montagu asked me."

"And Hector--Sir Hector now--asked his mother to invite you, I suppose. Ah, my dear, I have great hopes of seeing you Lady Montagu yet!"

I feel a little impatient. "That you never will," I say, briskly. "I do not mean to marry at all."

"Oh, indeed!" she rejoins, looking amused. "Well, time will show. But I thought it was only girls who could not marry the object of their affections who said that; and you have not had any opportunity yet of contracting a hopeless attachment." And she laughs good-humoredly.

Captain Montagu writes to say that he will dine on Sunday, and again my spirits rise. It is seven o'clock on Thursday evening when I hear the joyful intelligence: from that moment I count the hours until I shall see him. As the time draws near, an overpowering anxiety seizes me lest he should be prevented coming; if he is, I feel the disappointment will be greater than I can bear.

I am not called on to bear it. Sunday comes. I attend morning church with Mr. Warrington; we have visitors to lunch, visitors after lunch; we take a stroll in the Park, sit under the trees, greet many acquaintances, and the hours, however slowly they may drag themselves along, do pass somehow to make way for the hours that will gallop furiously as all hours do that are pleasant. And that they will be pleasant it never enters my mind to doubt.

Eight o'clock comes at last, and with it the guest. It seems happiness enough for the present to be in the same room with him, but I have a vague expectation that at some time in the evening he will find means to press my hand or whisper some kind word to me that will give my hungry heart food to live upon until I see him again. During dinner he laughs and talks much in his usual strain; perhaps he is a shade more subdued; now and then he addresses some pleasant remark to me, but there is nothing in his voice or glance that makes me feel as if I were anything more to him than an ordinary acquaintance. After dinner he asks me to sing, and we go together to the piano at the farther end of the room, while Mr. and Mrs. Warrington subside into a pleasant doze.

I feel my heart beating and my hands trembling as I turn over the music. Has he nothing to say to me in memory of that moonlight night in the woods with the silver primroses? Apparently nothing. I try to sing, but something in my throat chokes me,--tears, perhaps. He does not press me to continue, but talks about my visit to London, the sights I have seen, the balls I have been to, the acquaintances I have made.

"I am surprised," he says, laughing, "that you have not been to Madame Tussaud's and the Tower."

"I should like to see the Tower," I answer, "but I do not think Madame Tussaud's would amuse me."

"I will ask Mrs. Warrington to come and lunch with me at the Tower, and we will show you all the wonders, if you like. Mrs. Warrington, will you come? and afterwards you must have tea in my rooms: you have promised me dozens of times, but it has never come off yet."

Mrs. Warrington assents, the day is fixed, and presently Captain Montagu takes his leave. I rush away to my room; my heart feels ready to break; not by one little look or sign has he given me to understand that he even remembers that "golden day" at Alford. I try to pluck up my pride, to bring it to the rescue of my foolish love, but it will not be goaded or urged, however sharp the lash with which I scourge it. "I know--I always knew--I never could be anything to him, but he might have shown some little sign that he remembered," I keep on saying miserably to myself. I lose all hope. I do not even look forward to the luncheon-party at the Tower. "Perhaps," I say indignantly to myself, "he is afraid of my taking in serious earnest what passed that night in the wood, and wishes to convince me that it was only said in haste and repented at leisure. He might have trusted me," I think, bitterly.

"Remember," says Mrs. Warrington, playfully, "I am not going to have you fall in love with Charlie Montagu, both for your sake and his."

She does not dream how much too late her caution comes; that is one mercy to be thankful for. I have tried so hard to feel bitter and angry with him, and yet when he comes out to receive us, looking so handsome and so glad to see us, the little mountain of wrath I have labored to raise crumbles away to dust.

"We are to be a _parti carré_," he says, gayly, to Mrs. Warrington. "We cannot tax Miss Carew to do third to our flirtation, can we? And she would not do it well. It wants a great deal of experience to make a good third. So I have asked Seldon; you know him, I think."

"Slightly," Mrs. Warrington answers. Then she looks at me and whispers something to Captain Montagu, and they both laugh.

"Here he is," says the latter, as a hansom rattles up. "How are you, Seldon? You know Mrs. Warrington. Miss Carew. Lord Seldon."

The new-comer has a very bright, cheery face. He looks extremely young,--younger, I should think, than he is, or his education would hardly be completed; he is very fair, with light-blue eyes, a large nose, and a good-tempered mouth, shaded by the silkiest down; not handsome, certainly, but perhaps if he were not standing next to Captain Montagu he might be rather good-looking. He reminds me ever such a little bit of Curly. We get on famously together: he makes me laugh as every now and then his natural boyishness peeps through his assumption of manhood. He has brought the sweetest Collie dog with him, which he puts through a variety of performances for my benefit. We look out of window together, and are very much amused by an officer in a blue coat, who is superintending with evident anxiety the trying on of the men's new red coats.

"I wish I was a soldier!--by George I do!" cries my young lord, regretfully. "Isn't it an awful shame they wouldn't let me be one?"

"Why would they not?" I ask.

"My governor's so frightfully nervous; he thinks I should get killed; and I am, unfortunately, the only son. He can't even bear me to go out hunting. It's only a wonder I haven't broken my neck fifty times, for his worrying me makes me do things I shouldn't otherwise, just because I won't be made a molly-coddle of. Talking of hunting,--I suppose you hunt?"

"No," I answer.

"What do you do?" (curiously). "You don't" (looking at me doubtfully)--"surely you don't go about reading to old women and teaching the choir?"

"Why," I ask, laughing, "am I bound to do either one or the other?"

"Well, you know," he answers, explanatorily, "I have two sisters: one is rather--well, not exactly fast--lively, and she is never happy out of the saddle; and the other,--the other is religious, and is always taken up with what she calls parish-work. Parish-work!" he repeats, with an accent of disgust: "doesn't it sound the reverse of tempting? It's dreadful for me being between two fires!--my youngest sister is always making fun of the eldest, and the eldest tries to sit upon the youngest, and you know its rather a bore for me, because I like 'em both. By the way" (with a rapid change of subject), "have you ever seen polo? Of course you've seen polo?"

"Not yet," I say; "we are going one day, but I am not sure I shall like it. I have an idea that it must be cruel."

"Cruel!--not a bit of it!--the ponies love it as much as the men: on my honor they do. I've got the loveliest pony,--bought her of one of the 9th. I give you my word when I go into the stable and say, 'Polo day, old girl!' she pricks up her ears and neighs with delight."

"When you've quite done yarning, Seldon," calls Captain Montagu, "bring Miss Carew to lunch."

Everything goes off pleasantly: that is to say, every one laughs and talks and eats. After lunch, we go over the Tower, Captain Montagu remaining in strict attendance on Mrs. Warrington. It is quite evident he has resolved to have nothing more to say to me than to an ordinary acquaintance; and, however bitterly I may feel it, I am forced outwardly to acquiesce with a smile. My escort is exceedingly lively: he makes fun of everything, and I cannot help laughing at his sallies. It is not that they are very witty or have much point, but his gay spirits are infectious, and I am ready to laugh at anything, for I feel so near crying.

"Remember," says Captain Montagu, when we have seen everything and emerge again into the open air, "the tea-party is still before you. I have ordered it for half-past four. I will send for your carriage, and Seldon and I will follow in a hansom."

But Mrs. Warrington insists upon their accompanying us in the carriage.

How often have I thought about those rooms of which he once told me, and wondered what they were like, and tried to picture him at home in them.

"I feel quite a 'frisky matron,'" laughs good-natured Mrs. Warrington, as he lets us in with his latch-key and then precedes us up-stairs. "Diana, my dear, it is you who have led me into this."

"I wish," whispers young Seldon in my ear from behind, "you would persuade her to come and have tea or lunch in my rooms. They're rattling nice ones; though I don't mean to say for a moment they're furnished like these."

Captain Montagu throws the door open, and we pass in.

"This _is_ charming!" exclaims Mrs. Warrington. "I must really congratulate you. I have heard of your rooms before, but this quite surpasses my expectations."

"I am delighted with your approval," he answers, gayly. "Have I yours too, Miss Carew?" And, without waiting for my answer, he calls his servant and gives some orders in an under-tone. I look round me. The room is not large, but it would take hours, rather than minutes, to inventory all the treasures in it. They seem scattered about in careless profusion, but the carelessness is evidently the result of most artistic study. The furniture is of ebony, covered in richest satin, on which bloom roses embroidered in the land of roses; the luxurious carpet laid down in the centre of the room is of an exquisite shade of blue; the chandelier, sconces, mirror-frames, are of Venetian glass, with raised flowers of rose-color and blue. Every couch, every chair, every stool, is studiously luxurious; the walls are covered with charming pictures; there are bronzes, statuettes, groups of china, cabinets of rare wood, inlaid with Sèvres, and yet the thing that strikes me as the most strange is that the room looks as if it were lived in; there is even, however slight, the faintest _soupçon_ of cigar-smoke. Mrs. Warrington detects it at once.

"You do not mean to say," she says, in a horrified tone, "that you smoke here?"

"Not often," he answers. "Only when I am quite alone; but my smoking-room adjoins, and it will creep through, you know. Come and see my bedroom. I have one or two things I want to show you. I must not ask Miss Carew" (laughing). "Seldon, make yourself very entertaining till we come back."

"Do you think she would come if I asked her?" whispers the latter, indicating the retreating figure of Mrs. Warrington with a gesture of his head.

"I do not know," I answer.

"Do persuade her, some day after the Park. I should be so awfully proud and delighted if you would both lunch with me, and I'd ask Montagu too" (as if catching at a happy thought); "they seem to be so fond of each other. I didn't know" (irreverently) "that he had such a taste for old women."

I half laugh, half sigh, as I think to myself what is the object of all this attention towards my friend.

"Blankshire is your county, is it not?" inquires my _vis-à-vis_, in an interested tone, and I respond affirmatively.

I think he has had the conversation chiefly to himself all the afternoon, but he seems quite equal to it.

"I don't know many people there, but I shall try and get some invitations this winter. By the way, I dare say Montagu would ask me; he lives not very far from you, doesn't he?"

"About fifteen miles," I say.

"Do you see much of him?"

"Nothing at all,--at least" (correcting myself) "very little."

"By George!" (opening his blue eyes), "I know if I lived within fifteen miles you'd see a good deal of me."

At this very barefaced compliment from my youthful companion I am so inordinately diverted that I laugh outright. He colors up, and begins to trace rather viciously with his stick a rose-blossom that looks as though it had fallen by some happy accident on the couch where it lies.

"That lovely rose," I cry, in terror of seeing the stick go through it: "pray don't spoil it!"

"Why did you laugh?" he asks, desisting as I beg him, but still looking slightly aggrieved.

"I hardly know," I say, trying to compose my features to gravity. "Perhaps because you reminded me rather of Curly."

"Who is Curly?--some very mirth-inspiring fellow?"

"Curly is my brother. By the way, I wonder if he was at Eton with you. I suppose you were at Eton?" (interrogatively).

"When did he go?"

"Three years last January."

Lord Seldon glances at me with rather a disgusted expression.

"Pray, how old do you take me for?" he says, lifting a dainty shell-like cup, wreathed with raised strawberries, and putting it down again with as little care as if it was a mug with "For a good boy" inscribed in gold letters upon it.

"I am a very bad hand at guessing ages," I reply. "Twenty?" (thinking I will give him the benefit of a year's doubt).

"Twenty!" (indignantly). "I came of age last September. I am very nearly twenty-two."

Here we are joined by the other members of the party.

"It is a good thing you have come," I say, trying to assume a gay manner. "Lord Seldon has been very nearly doing a mischief to some of your lovely things."

"No wonder," retorts my lord, with a shade of pique. "Such very young children are not to be trusted with pretty things."

"Come and have tea," interrupts Captain Montagu, "and see what nectar a wretched lonely bachelor can brew."

We follow him as he lifts a heavy portière and opens a door behind it.

"By George, Charlie!" exclaims his friend, in a tone that betrays a mixture of admiration and regret, "what a fellow you are to think of everything!"

The table is strewn with choice flowers; a great bowl of roses stands in the centre; big strawberries peep from exquisitely-shaped china dishes; grapes and flowers hang from Dresden baskets; every kind of fanciful and pretty sweetmeat is heaped in shells and horns, or in tiny baskets on the heads of Watteau-like shepherdesses. There is not a single ornament on the table that is not of some quaint elegant device; the chased silver service is a marvel of elegance, and the jeweled Sèvres, from which we drink our delicious tea, must represent a small fortune.

"You wicked, extravagant boy!" exclaims Mrs. Warrington, after having praised everything with enthusiasm; "how dare you have such a taste for splendor and luxury, with nothing to keep it up on but your younger son's allowance of good looks?"

"That's the worst of these fellows," joins in Lord Seldon, so plaintively that we all laugh: "they are so deuced good-looking and have such taste. They think of things that never enter our brains."

"I must certainly set to work at once to get you a rich wife," says Mrs. Warrington, little guessing what a dagger her playful words are planting in my breast.

"Do!" Captain Montagu says, smiling lazily, and looking as utterly unconscious as if he had never taken me in his arms and asked me to be his wife. "Lots of my friends are looking out. I am quite ready to be knocked down to the highest bidder." The others laugh: how can I join them, when I am suffering the acutest pain that has ever yet fallen to my lot?

"Your face is your fortune, eh, Charlie?" laughs Lord Seldon; then, with a gesture of disgust, "But what a horrid bore to marry a woman you didn't care for! What a horrid bore _not_ to marry the woman you love!"

"My dear fellow," returns Captain Montagu, subsiding from his mirth to unmistakable gravity, "if you marry the woman you love, yours will be a very happy fate, and a very _exceptional_ one."

Mrs. Warrington rises to go. As the young men bid us good-by at the carriage-door, she invites Lord Seldon to call upon her.

"Thanks; I shall be most delighted," he answers, beaming with smiles, and shaking us as cordially by the hand as if we were his oldest friends.

"That is on your account, Diana," says Mrs. Warrington, with a smile, as we drive off. "He is the Duke of Landermere's only son. The duke is a great invalid, and fabulously rich."