Chapter VI: Diana's Story

There is to be a dance to-night, and more visitors have arrived at the Hall. We are to dine an hour earlier, that we may be ready to dance when we are piped to. Now we are all sitting over five-o'clock tea. I begin to feel quite at home. Most of the men in the house have been introduced to and have talked to me; some have even invited me to dance,--rather a risky thing to do to a little country-girl who has never been out. Well, thanks and Curly be praised, I can dance, for Archdale's sisters, who are renowned waltzers, took his education in hand last summer, and he has extended his knowledge to me. Many a waltz have he and I had on the polished floor of our big bare drawing-room, whilst good-natured Miss Cross has played unweariedly for us on the old piano. Curly says I dance as well and better than Archdale's sisters; but I take that "with a grain of salt," as papa says. I have never danced with any one except my brother; but I cannot imagine anything more graceful or buoyant than his step; and, although he is two years my junior, he is half a head taller, and I am not short. I hear him now supplicating Lady Gwyneth to promise him a waltz.

"Don't promise him anything of the sort, Lady Gwyneth," says a good-looking young cornet who has come over from the neighboring town to dine and dance. "He will tear your dress, stamp on your toes, and probably throw you down. Boys are so lungeous."

The cornet is hanging over Lady Gwyneth's chair, and speaks in a lazy, good-natured, chaffing tone.

Curly looks at him for a moment with a stare of well-bred impertinence that startles me. Where on earth did he learn it?

"I shall be very happy to match my performance with yours either in the ball-room or the hunting-field," he remarks.

If I had been surprised at his look, his speech and the coolness with which he makes it nearly take my breath away.

There is a general shout from the bystanders. "Bravo, young un!" cries our host. "Spoken like a man!" And Lady Gwyneth, laughing, heartily says, "I'll give you two waltzes for that, Curly. I'm sure you would not swagger about a thing you could not do; and if you dance as well as you ride I should not mind waltzing all night with you."

"What a surprising infant it must be!" sneers the discomfited cornet. "Quite a phenomenon!"

"There's something I think I could surpass you in," says Curly, flushing a little.

"No doubt a hundred; but what might the particular one be?"

"Manners!" replies Curly, calmly, turning on his heel.

"What a dear boy that is!" cries Lady Gwyneth. "I declare I am positively in love with him."

"Are you?" I think, grimly. "I am very sorry to hear it."

The door is flung open, and Captain Montagu is announced. I look up expectantly to see the man whom Mrs. Huntingdon has pronounced "the handsomest in England."

"How are you, Charlie?" resounds on all sides; he is evidently popular. It is a minute or two before I can get a glimpse of him, surrounded as he is by people shaking hands and asking questions. I gather from the conversation that he has just come from a house where royalty was being entertained.

He is coming towards the fire. I can see him now. I suppose my nature must be rather a contradictory one, for when Mrs. Huntingdon praised him I made up my mind that I should not admire him. I was wrong. I do admire him with that profound love of beauty, in whatever form, that was born and I believe will die in me. Handsome! yes, handsome as my ideal heroes and fairy princes,--handsomer than anything real I believed possible. He is good to look at as he stands by the fireplace in a careless, easy posture, that becomes him admirably. I know nothing of the fashion of men's clothes, have always thought them hideous, but the traveling-suit he wears is faultless and looks as if it must have grown upon him. I need not stop to chronicle his features: they are engraven on my heart, and I dare say the outside world can do without an inventory of them.

I am sitting away from the light and fire, for my brisk walk in the winter air has made my cheeks all aglow, and I can feast my eyes unobserved, I think, upon this face whose contemplation gives me infinite pleasure.

I am mistaken, and acknowledge it with a violent start, as a low voice behind me says,--

"What is the result of your very minute investigation?"

I am reassured when I find my interlocutor is only Colonel Fane, and answer, simply, with that strong instinct of confidence with which he inspires me,--

"I never in my life saw any one so handsome before."

"Really!" and I fancy his voice sounds a little cold and disappointed. "I suppose he is a good-looking fellow: at least most women seem to think so."

"How could any one think otherwise?" I say, warmly. "Do you know" (with a confidence which I am not at the time aware displays great want of tact), "he is handsomer even than the ideal heroes of my youth."

"Is he?" (coldly). "You seem to set an enormous value on looks."

"I think I do" (reflectively). "I am sure I do" (positively). "You cannot think what pleasure it is to me to feast my eyes on anything that is good to look at."

"And I suppose you do not stop to consider whether there may be any sterling qualities behind the exterior that pleases you?"

"Well, you know," I reply, argumentatively, beginning with a favorite form of speech papa constantly finds fault with, "generally speaking if things are good-looking they are good.--for instance, a dog or a horse."

"And do you think the same applies to the human animal?" (smiling).

"I do not know that I have ever seen any one very good-looking,--except papa and Curly."

"At all events, you are very faithful to them. Still" (after a moment's silence), "I should have thought you would have looked for a little more mind than Charlie Montagu's face indicates."

"I don't think I care for clever men," I say, with some shame. "My heroes were never particularly clever. They were brave as lions, and handsome as--as----" I pause for a metaphor.

"Beautiful, evil-hearted Paris," he suggests.

"Why will you have it a man cannot be good if he is handsome?" I say, rather vexed.

"Why did you conclude this morning," he asks, slyly, "that as my sister was good she could neither be young nor pretty?"

"Oh, that was different," I say, discomfited.

"I think it was deduced from the same kind of reasoning," he says, laughing; and I go away to dress.

On this evening Colonel Fane takes me in to dinner. Why should I not be delighted? I know and like him ten times better than any one else here. I wonder what sort of foolish vague unacknowledged hope that by a fortuitous concourse of atoms Captain Montagu might fall to my lot, or rather I to his, entered my foolish brain.

"I asked Mrs. Warrington to let me take you to dinner," says Colonel Fane, triumphantly, as we wend our way through the velvet-carpeted, antler- and banner-hung hall to the dining-room.

"Did you?" I respond, trying to look pleased.

"She was a little difficult at first, said she had destined you for some one else; but I persuaded her in the end."

"Who was it?--do you know?" I ask, looking into my soup and trying to speak naturally.

"Montagu," he replies, between two spoonfuls of soup.

The flame shoots from brow to neck; so hot the flush is, it brings the tears to my eyes. How thankful I am that my neighbor's head is bent over his plate! And yet I am not sure it escapes him, for he says, dryly, without looking up,--

"Not Charlie; his elder brother, who will have the title and the money. You prefer the younger one, perhaps?"

"Hyperion to a Satyr," I say, briefly.

"You seem well up in Shakspeare," he says, looking rather amused. "But why don't you like Hector?"

"He has a cold sarcastic manner that I dislike. I am afraid of him."

"He will have twelve thousand a year when his father dies."

"Does that make him any nicer?"

"It would in most women's eyes."

I glance down the table; between the ferns and gold plate I get a glimpse of the Greek head. At this moment it is bending towards Mrs. Huntingdon, who is employing the same blandishments upon him she used upon Sir George last night. He is on her other side, and evidently resents the diversion of her attention from him. I feel a slight pang of jealousy. Is it not too ridiculous! My memory supplies me with another quotation from my favorite Shakspeare:

"What am I to Hecuba, or what is Hecuba to me?"

What, indeed? and, thinking thus, I resolutely turn from contemplation of him.

"I wonder if it will be a pleasant dance to-night?" I say, forcibly diverting the channel of my thoughts.

"I should think it would for you" (kindly). "You have everything to make it pleasant."

"How so?" I ask.

"Youth and health to enjoy, good looks to get you partners, and, beyond all, the charm of novelty."

"Fancy!" I remark, thoughtfully; "I am eighteen years old, and I have never been to a dance!"

"Delightful!" he says. "I wish I was eighteen again, and an ensign; though, by the way, I don't think I was doing much dancing at that age."

"No?" (inquisitively). "What were you doing?"

"Spending my evenings very agreeably in the trenches."

"Were you in the Crimea? Did you fight? Were you wounded?" I ask, eagerly.

"I was not killed, at all events," he replies, smiling; "but, before it is too late, I want you to promise me a dance. May I have the first one?"

"That will be a square one," I say, with a freedom which surprises myself. "I suppose" (with a touch of pique) "you think I can't waltz?"

"On the contrary" (looking amused), "I would make a very heavy wager on your capabilities in that respect. But _I_ do not waltz."

"Do you not?" (rather disappointed). "Why not?"

"In the first place, I am getting old."

"Very," I remark, derisively.

"And in the second----"

"Yes, in the second?"

"Well" (looking hard at me), "I do not think I ever told any one but my sister the second reason."

I am silent, though curious.

"I don't mind telling you," he says, suddenly.

"Do!" I say, having the feminine (by the way, why feminine?) instinct of curiosity strongly developed.

"Five years ago" (balancing a fork on the edge of the table rather nervously) "I was engaged to be married."

"Yes."

"I am rather a jealous sort of fellow, and I hated to see any other man's arm round the waist of my intended wife."

"Did you?" I say, with reluctant disapproval.

"Yes, I did" (with a little flash of the eyes); "and I think I should do the same now."

"Should you?" I say, again, with more pronounced disapproval.

"I see you disagree with me" (a little impatiently): "most women would, I suppose. However, I promised her that if she would leave off dancing round dances, I would never dance one again."

"You did not care for waltzing, I suppose?"

"On the contrary" (coldly), "I was passionately fond of it. She promised, but some time after that the marriage was broken off: she broke it off, and I dare say" (bitterly) "has danced to her heart's content ever since."

"But surely that absolved you also?" I say, in a surprised voice.

"I dare say. It was a Quixotic idea of mine, was it not? But, as I had given my word, I did not feel I could take it back again because she was untrue to hers; and, to tell the truth, I was

'In half disgust of life, love, all things,'

as Tennyson says. But you have not answered me yet. Will you dance the first dance with me?"

"Yes, with pleasure."

"And perhaps one or two more, if I don't bore you very much?"

"I can answer for your not doing that," I reply, heartily.

"Can you? I wish I could----"

"There is Mrs. Warrington making signals already," I interrupt. "Dinner has not been half so long to-night."

"I am sorry to contradict you, but, for my vanity's sake, I must tell you it has been exactly seven minutes longer."

I follow the trailing robes of the lady in front of me to the drawing-room, where Colonel Fane's sister at once comes up to me.

Looking back the years (they are not many, though they have been so full of joy and pain to me they seem many) since that evening, I can still distinctly remember the impression she made upon me. She was quite different from any other woman I had ever seen. She seemed of the world but yet not worldly; there was something so genial, so kind, and yet so dignified about her. She was almost the only good person I have ever known who, being really good, neither felt nor claimed superiority on that account, but I verily believe, in her true pure heart thought herself, what we all so often and glibly confess ourselves without even thinking of its meaning, a sinner. I never remember to have heard her condemn another human being. Many things were wrong, faulty, sinful in herself, but for others whose faults (as they mostly could not help but be) were a thousand times more glaring, more condemnable, there were always extenuating circumstances. She had indeed

"Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign
The summer calm of golden charity."

Handsome, spirited, full of life and gayety, she mixed freely in society, dressed well, talked well, was admired; her influence was not a compelling one, but something subtle, that made people in her presence instinctively desire to be and seem something better than they had been content to be and seem before.

I cannot help remarking even on this first evening that I meet her, as she stands by the fireplace drawing the conversation gradually to be a general one (which it had certainly never been before), how Lady Gwyneth and Mrs. Huntingdon seem pleasanter and less fast and rude (I confess to that having been my mental verdict on their manners) than before. She enters with great interest upon the subject of the dance, though she dances but little herself.

"I can't conceive why you don't dance round dances," Mrs. Huntingdon remarks, with more of affability in her tone than I imagined her capable of. "I suppose you think it wrong?"

"Not at all; it is a very nice, healthy amusement. Really, I hardly know why I do not. I don't think I should care much about it. And now I am getting too old,--I am thirty."

"I hope I shall look as well at thirty," says Mrs. Huntingdon, who I am sure looks years older than Miss Fane. "Tell me: how have you managed to preserve yourself so wonderfully?"

"A light heart, and not too much brains, I suppose," she returns, gayly.

"Come, my dear," says kind Mrs. Warrington, "I cannot have you disparaging yourself. You will get no one to agree with you. Come; it is time we adjourned to the ball-room."

"Will you come with me?" Miss Fane asks me; and I give a glad assent. I take an early opportunity of putting a question that has been on my mind ever since dinner.

"Colonel Fane was in the Crimea, was he not? Was he wounded? Did he distinguish himself?"

"Yes, both; but nothing will induce him to speak of his exploits. He was quite a boy; but he did some very gallant things, and I know we were all very proud of him. There is no one to be proud of him but me now," she says, rather sally: "he is the dearest, kindest fellow in the world."

At this moment there is a scraping of strings, a tuning of instruments, the trumpet sounds to battle, and Colonel Fane comes to bid me join the fray. My heart beats with excitement, my hand trembles violently upon his arm. I can scarcely hear the gay pleasant words he is whispering in my ear. The feet-inspiring music, the lights, the sight of other women airily, daintily dressed, the hum of voices and low laughter steal across my senses, and I feel fairly intoxicated with pleasure. I cannot restrain the smiles which will beam and broaden across my happy face. I dare not look at any one, for fear they should think I am laughing at them. Never, no, never in all my life have I felt so radiantly, excitedly happy as when the band strikes up, and I seem to swim across the waxed floor to meet another ethereal being who floats towards me. At this moment I catch sight of Curly's handsome face, flushed with pleasure, his eyes dancing with excitement, and I see Colonel Fane look from one to the other of us.

"You are envying us," I cry, joyously.

"No," he answers, smiling, "to envy is to wish to take something from another. I would not rob you of a tithe of your pleasure, either of you, for all the world."