Chapter IV: Diana's Story

Presently I am aware that the squeaky little voice of my other neighbor, Mr. Desborough, is addressing me. His conversation is by no means entertaining; it consists solely and entirely of the sayings and doings of the Upper Ten, with which the humblest village girl could not be less acquainted than myself. He gives me a considerable amount of information about various members of the aristocracy,--what the Duke of this said, how his father-in-law the earl did so and so, and a good deal about his sisters-in-law, Lady Bell, Lady Hyacinth, and Lady Audrey. I am quite ignorant of the ways of society, but it does not strike me as particularly well-bred to bore a person with pointless anecdotes about people they never saw or heard of, nor do I imagine a constant interlarding of the conversation with people's titles to be a proof of blue blood. Mr. Desborough's antecedents are unknown to me, but, whatever they may be, I think him a snob all the same. He has got to royalty now.

"The Prince of Wales was saying--" he begins, in his mean, swaggering voice.

"_Do you know the Prince of Wales?_" I interrupt, so astonished at the idea of his having acquaintance with royalty that I rather forget my own manners. For I am only a little country-girl, and in my rustic mind royalty is elevated on such a pedestal that to think of commonplace people being on speaking-terms with it takes my breath away.

In my surprise, I speak in rather a loud key. Unfortunately, at this moment there is a lull in the conversation, and my question is heard by every one at the table. There is a general titter. Lady Gwyneth laughs aloud, and her unfortunate little husband crimsons with mortification as he stammers,--

"Not exactly,--not personally."

I am quite as confused as he is. I hate making people uncomfortable, and feel dreadfully ashamed of my _gaucherie_. Mr. Desborough does not trouble me with any more of his conversation, and I believe from that moment hates me cordially. I hear him say something to his next neighbor in an aggressive voice about bread-and-butter school-girls, which of course is meant for me. I really am very sorry for him. I did not mean to hurt his feelings as I think he does mine.

"That was one for Desborough," remarks Major Huntingdon, in an amused undertone.

"What have I said?" I ask, hastily. "I am sure I am very sorry."

"It is worse than you think for," he whispers, laughing. "Three years ago his old father, who is the biggest snob out, gave a tremendous entertainment, and moved heaven and earth to get the Prince there; but he did not go. It was a dreadful mortification."

"How sorry I am!" I murmur, not a bit amused, and longing, if it would not be adding insult to injury, to apologize to Mr. Desborough.

"You need not be" (laughing): "he wants taking down, with his insufferable snobbish airs; he would not be tolerated but for Lady Gwyneth."

Here Major Huntingdon's attention is taken off by the arrival of a snipe, and I am left to continue my wistful stare at the clock's broad gold face, round which the hands appear to travel so slowly. We have already been an hour and five minutes at dinner, and it does not seem near its end yet.

"Good heavens!" I think, "do they have all these dishes every day, and can these people always eat and drink as they are doing to-night?"

I am getting very tired of watching them, for, though I have an excellent appetite, I cannot go on eating forever, and after soup, fish, and one _entrée_, I came to a stand-still. The room is getting warm, most faces are flushed, the mirth sounds rather boisterous in my unaccustomed ears, and I am longing devoutly for dinner to be over. I glance furtively at the _menu_. Macedoine de Fruit. Soufflé glace à l'Abricot. Ramequins, I read. What are ramequins, I wonder? And after that there will be dessert, I suppose, glancing at the pine, grapes, and various fruits and sweetmeats which decorate the table.

I wearily resume my contemplation of the company. Mrs. Huntingdon sits opposite, and next her is a young, fair, good-looking man, whom I hear people call Sir George. They have been whispering together all dinner-time: apparently they do not find it long. The scowl has gone from her handsome face, but I do not altogether admire the expression that has replaced it. I am young and ignorant, but I know that even I, who am so humble a personage compared with her, should feel indignant if any man looked at me in the way he does at her; and how can she have so little command over her eyes, with her husband sitting opposite. What is he made of? Does he not see? Is he not burning, raging with jealousy? I glance furtively at him. At this very moment his eyes, which are traveling round the table, rest on them, and pass on, evidently without seeing anything that causes him a moment's uneasiness. I begin to wonder whether there is anything wrong with my own mind.

At last dinner comes to an end. When the elaborate hands have laboriously worked themselves round to twenty minutes to ten, Mrs. Warrington inclines her head to Lady Gwyneth, and we are released. If I yielded to my natural impulse, I should jump up, probably oversetting my chair, and skip nimbly across the broad hall; but, as it is, I march demurely after Miss Gore, hoping she will think fit to take some little notice of me. But being engaged seems very preoccupying. She seats herself listlessly in a corner, and is soon buried in thought. (I suppose, of her soldier, whom she has not left two minutes.) So I betake myself to the conservatory at the farther end of the room, and luxuriate in the sight and smell of the sweet rare flowers. When I return to the fire, Mrs. Huntingdon and Lady Gwyneth are sitting on two low chairs, talking, Mrs. Warrington is indulging in a gentle doze, and Miss Gore still maintains her pensive attitude.

"Charlie Montagu is coming to-morrow," Mrs. Huntingdon is saying, in her cold, languid voice, as I approach. "Do you know him?"

"Brother of the man who is here?" asks Lady Gwyneth.

"Yes. Do you not know him?"

"No. What is he like?"

"The handsomest man in England."

"Really!" (indifferently). "I do not care for handsome men. What can he do?"

"Smoke, drink champagne, play écarté, and allow himself to be adored."

Lady Gwyneth utters an expression of contempt, in which I must say I concur.

"Doesn't he ride, or shoot, or do anything?"

"Oh, yes, he can, but I don't know that he distinguishes himself particularly in any sport. It is too much trouble. But when a man is so good to look at, he can dispense with accomplishments."

Lady Gwyneth takes no pains to repress the hearty scorn she feels at this remark.

"Why don't they show him about in a caravan?" she says. "I suppose he is poor, with expensive tastes, like most younger sons; and possibly women who expect nothing more of a man than that he should be good-looking would not mind paying their guineas for the pleasure of contemplating him. He might smoke and drink champagne, you know, at the same time."

Mrs. Huntingdon looks supremely indifferent to Lady Gwyneth's sneer.

"I wonder you never met him in London," she remarks.

"I never was in London for the season before my marriage last year."

"Really!" (elevating her eyebrows a little). "What a dreadful waste of life!"

"Rather what a dreadful waste of life to be there!" retorts Lady Gwyneth. "I never spent a stupider time in my life,--ambling up and down the Row, or driving one's ponies half a mile an hour down the drive in the afternoon. I cannot conceive what pleasure people find in it."

"I have no Amazon proclivities myself," says Mrs. Huntingdon, with a slight yawn; "and I think it the only place to live in. I merely exist out of it."

I am rather glad that at this juncture a man appears in the doorway. Neither of the ladies are looking very amiable, but at the sight of broadcloth their faces undergo a transformation. Mrs. Warrington wakes up briskly, and Miss Gore's eyes kindle with eager expectation as she looks towards the door through which all the black coats are entering, some briskly, some languidly, some as if they were glad to join the ladies, others as if they were sorry to leave the wine. Miss Gore is asked to sing, and her soldier bends tenderly over her while she executes rather an elaborate Italian song. I hope they won't ask me, in an agony of shyness; but no sooner has Mrs. Warrington thanked and complimented Miss Gore than she makes straight for me.

"Do you sing, Miss Carew? I am sure you do. Let me send for your music."

Here my anguish is so great that I do think I might have been tempted into telling a falsehood, had not Curly, whom I never felt so near hating in my life, interposed.

"Sing!--I should rather think she does. You must hear her, Mrs. Warrington." I dart an angry glance at him, to which he responds by the sweetest of smiles. I am led off like a lamb to the slaughter. The room swims before me, my hands shake as if I had the palsy, my teeth verily chatter in my head: how can one sing under such circumstances? I begin miserably, get from bad to worse, and come to a lame and impotent conclusion.

It may be very kind of the audience to applaud me so heartily, no doubt it is intended to be very reassuring, but it only makes me tenfold more ashamed of myself: indeed, I have not even courage to leave the piano, and long to turn myself, like Hezekiah, with my face to the wall.

"Why, Miss Carew," cries my host, in his jolly voice, "we had no idea we had such a star down here in the provinces." Star, indeed! he might have said sun, looking at my flaming face. I evidently was not meant for society; at home I do not blush once in six months, but since my arrival at Warrington I have done nothing else. Why was blushing invented, or why cannot it be properly controlled for suitable occasions, or left altogether to the mock modest who would set great value on the acquirement? To add to my pleasurable sensations, Curly comes up with a flushed, cross face.

"I say, Di, what an awful mess you made of it!" he ejaculates, reassuringly. "Do show them you can do something better than that!"

"Eh? What!" cries Mr. Warrington, catching him by the shoulder, and giving it a friendly shake. "You critical young jackanapes! What do you know about it, I should like to know? Stick to your football and cricket, and don't pretend to come the singing-master over us."

"Well, sir, I should just like you to hear what she _can_ do," responds Curly, who, I am glad to see, in spite of his acquaintance with society, hangs out the same tokens of distress in his cheeks that I do. Perhaps it runs in the family.

"Come, Di" (with a frown and a wink), "sing 'Old Robin Gray,' or one of those."

"Oh, do, do!" cry half a dozen voices.

I look round me, as I have seen my cat do in the yard when two or three strange dogs came in. If there were any way of escape, I would flee incontinently there and then; but there is not. So, with the courage of despair, I say to myself, I _will_ do better this time, and, thank Heaven, I do. And when I have got half-way through that fine old song, that, hackneyed as it is, will always be sweet and touching, I forget my audience, and sing it as I do to myself, feeling all the while just as heart-broken as if I were tied to Auld Robin and my Jamie had just taken his one kiss and torn himself away. There is no applause this time; people are regarding me curiously, and I am utterly surprised as I rise to see Lady Gwyneth sitting near me with tears in her eyes, and her small nose pink with suppressed emotion. Mr. Desborough is not old, I think to myself, but it occurs to me that there may perhaps be young Robins as well as old ones.

I sink shyly down on the nearest couch, and at this moment Mrs. Warrington comes up with my friend. Yes, I know he is going to be my friend by that inexplicable feeling of attraction that once or twice in a life-time draws two strangers together, before they have had time to know or even to speculate about each other.

"My dear, Colonel Fane wishes to be introduced to you. Miss Carew, Colonel Rochester Fane."

Having performed this ceremony, she goes, and he seats himself beside me.

"I want your advice, Miss Carew," he says, in an easy, off-hand manner, as though we had known each other for years.

"Mine?" I say, looking and feeling very much surprised.

"Yes. How is one to make sufficient distinction in one's voice when one desires to express extreme gratitude, or has to pronounce a mere formal compliment, when precisely the same words are given one to do it in?"

"I don't think I quite understand," I answer, regarding him doubtfully.

"For instance" (bending a little nearer, and speaking in a lower key), "Miss Gore's singing gave me no pleasure at all, but I was obliged to say, 'Thank you;' yours gave me the greatest pleasure I have had for a long time, and yet I can find nothing more to say for it than, 'Thank you.'"

"Oh," I answer, a little puzzled how to reply to what I imagine to be the polite jargon of society, "'Thank you' is quite enough; and I did not sing it very well. You know" (speaking with as much confidence as if I had known him for years instead of minutes) "I have never been out before, and I was so dreadfully nervous."

"And how do you like your first glimpse of the world?"

"I like Mrs. Warrington _immensely_!" I reply; "and the house is beautiful!"

He laughs.

"Is that all you can say?"

"The fact is" (apologetically), "I had never been to a dinner-party before, and dinner seemed so _very_ long. Is it always as long?"

"Sometimes longer," he answers, laughing. "We got through in pretty good time to-night, I thought. Why, we joined you at five minutes past ten."

"Two hours!" I exclaim. "What a waste of time!"

"You don't care about eating, I suppose," he continues, still with the same friendly, inquisitorial look in his handsome eyes. "What will you think of me when I tell you that I not only enjoy my dinner, but _look forward to it_?"

"Oh, so do I," I answer, not at all wishing to feign a delicate appetite, having a very healthy and excellent one. "Perhaps I should not have found it so long if I had had some one pleasant to talk to."

I stop awkwardly, thinking I have been impolitely frank.

"Why, you had Desborough" (with a smile); "was not his talk very entertaining and instructive? Did he not put you through your Catechism about the nobility and landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland?"

"Yes; but when he discovered my utter and total ignorance on the subject he desisted. I wonder what made Lady Gwyneth marry him?"

"I suppose you never heard of such a thing as a _mariage de convenance_?"

"Yes, I have,--in France," I cry, eagerly, wishing to show that I am not ignorant upon every subject.

He laughs his pleasant laugh again.

"You will be surprised, perhaps, if I tell you that they sometimes take place in our own country. Lady Gwyneth's was one. She had rank and--well, I won't say beauty, but a fair amount of good looks, and he had money. Do you know his antecedents?"

"No."

"His father was a draper, by the name of Puggins; he speculated as well, and made a tremendous fortune; changed his name to Desborough, christened his son Harold de Courcy, and sent him to Eton to get licked into shape. They did all they could for him there; but I dare say you know a homely proverb about a silk purse?"

I nod my head.

"A draper!" I say; for I am afraid in my ignorance I am far behind my age, and am imbued with rather a contempt for trade.

"Suppose I were to tell you," says Colonel Fane, gravely, remarking no doubt the expression of my countenance, "that my father was in the same line?"

"I should not believe you," I say, without a moment's hesitation.

"Well, if he had been," he says, laughing, "I hope I should not be so ashamed of him as poor little Desborough is of his. If any one breathes the word trade, he is ready to sink through the earth. I don't suppose he has got the yard-measure or the golden sheep in the quarterings of his splendid coat of arms."

"I think," I utter, reflectively, "that _I_ should feel rather ashamed if my father were a draper. Fancy papa a draper!" I say, laughing heartily at the bare notion.

"No, you would not," he answers, eagerly. "_Bon sang ne peut mentir!_"

"But in that case it probably would not be _bon sang_," I return. And then I laugh again to myself.

"Are you trying to fancy your father serving out a yard of ribbon?" he asks.

"Yes" (laughing still); "but" (presuming my gravity, as the proud blood rushes to my heart), "if I saw my father serving ribbon, or" (with great energy) "sweeping a crossing, he would still be the finest gentleman in the land to me!"