"Thank Heaven!" Angelica e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed fervently. "I knew I was going to be something!"
She get up as she spoke, and walked out of the room with her head in the air, affecting a proud consciousness of having had greatness suddenly thrust upon her.
Lady Fulda looked helplessly, first at Father Ricardo, then at Mr. Ellis.
"Can"t you do something?" she said to the latter.
Mr. Ellis replied by an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. "We know better than to interfere when she"s in one of her bad-language tantrums," Diavolo explained.
When his grandfather left the table, he followed him uninvited on a tour of inspection around the castle and grounds, and, finally, retiring with him to the library, whither the old duke usually went to rest, read, or meditate sometime during the morning, he coiled himself up in an armchair, took a small book out of his pocket, and began to study it dilligently.
His grandfather glanced at him affectionately and with interest, from time to time. He was lonely in his old age, and liked to have the boy about. He had n.o.body left to him now who could touch his heart or take him out of himself as Diavolo did, for n.o.body else attached themselves to him in the same way, or showed such an unaffected preference for having him all to themselves,
"What are you reading, sir?" he asked him at last.
""Euripides," sir," Diavolo answered, glancing over the top of his book for a moment as he spoke. "I"m just where Hippolytus exclaims: "O Jove!
wherefore indeed didst thou place in the light of the sun that specious evil to men--woman?""
"Are you reading "Euripides" with a "Key"?" his grandfather asked sternly.
"No, I am reading a key to "Euripides,"" Diavolo answered,
"Don"t you know your Greek, sir?" his grandfather demanded.
"I"m just looking to see, sir," Diavolo rejoined, returning to his book.
When he had finished the page, he looked up at his grandfather, who was sitting with his hands folded upon a large volume he held open on his knee, meditating, apparently.
"Beastly bad tone about women in the Cla.s.sics," Diavolo remarked; "don"t you think so, sir?"
"Ah, my boy, you don"t know women yet!" the old duke responded.
"Then I"ve not made the most of my opportunities," Diavolo said with a grin, "for we meet with a fine variety in the houses about here! But what I object to in these cla.s.sical chaps," he resumed, "is the way they sneaked and snivelled about women"s faults, as if they had none of their own! and then their mean trick of going back upon the women, and reproaching them with their misfortunes."
"What do you mean by that?" his grandfather asked.
"Well, sir, I suppose you would call old age a misfortune to a pretty woman?" Diavolo answered. "And just look at the language in which that fellow Horace taunts Lydia and Lyce when they grow old, and after the sickening way he fawned upon them when they were young, too! And here again," he said, holding up his book, "is that fellow Hippolytus. Just because one woman has shocked him, he says "... Never shall I be satisfied in my hatred against women.... For in some way or other they are always bad." And a little further back, too"--he scuffed the leaves over--"he says that woman is a great evil _because_ men squander away the wealth of their houses upon them. If the men were such superior beings, why don"t they show it somehow? Horace was as spiteful himself as any old woman; we should have called him a cad nowadays. And all this abuse"--he shook his "Euripides"--"is beastly bad form whichever way you look at it."
He ruffled his thick tow-hair as he spoke, and yawned in conclusion.
"Then you are coming out as a champion of women?" said the duke.
"Oh, by Jove, no!" Diavolo exclaimed, straightening himself. "I haven"t the conceit to suppose they would accept such a champion, and besides, I think it"s the other way on now; _we_ shall want champions soon. You see, in the old days, women were so ignorant and subdued, they couldn"t retaliate or fight for themselves in any way; they never thought of such a thing. But, now, if you hit a woman, she"ll give you one back promptly,"
he a.s.severated, rubbing a b.u.mp on his head suspiciously. "She"ll put you in _Punch_, or revile you in the Dailies; Magazine you; write you down an a.s.s in a novel; blackguard you in choice language from a public platform; or paint a picture of you which will make you wish you had never been born. Ridicule!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, lowering his voice. "They ridicule you. That"s the worst of it. Now, there"s Ideala, she can make a fellow ridiculous without a word. When old Lord Groome came back from Malta the other day, he called, and began to jeer at Mrs. Churston"s feet for being big and ugly. Ideala let him finish; and then she just looked down at his own feet, and you could see in a minute that he wished himself an Eastern potentate with petticoats to hide them under; for they were ugly enough to be indecent."
The duke stretched out one of his own miniature models of feet upon this, and glanced at it complacently.
"Where do you get all these ideas?" he asked. "At your age I never had any; and if I had, I should have been ashamed to own it. You"ll be a prig, sir, if you don"t mind."
"_I_ don"t mind," Diavolo rejoined. "I"ve heard you say that ladies dearly love a prig, and therefore I rather think of cultivating that tone."
"You should have been sent to a public school," his grandfather said. "It would have made a man of you."
"Oh, time will do that just as well," Diavolo answered encouragingly.
At that moment the door opened, and Lady Fulda entered.
"Papa, may I speak to you now?" she asked, and Diavolo got up politely and lounged off to look for Angelica. He did not succeed in finding her, however, because she had driven into Morningquest to do some shopping with her Aunt Claudia and Ideala. She hated shopping as a rule, and could seldom be persuaded to do any; but that morning, after breakfast, she had gone to Lady Fulda"s room, where the three ladies were sitting, and after fidgeting them to death by wandering up and down, doing nothing, with a scowl on her face, and an ugly look of discontent in her fine dark eyes, she had burst out suddenly: "Aunt Fulda! I want some long dresses." Lady Fulda looked up at her in blank amazement; but Lady Claudia, who was all energy, rolled up her work on the instant, rang the bell, ordered the carriage, and answered: "Come, then, and get what you like."
And ten minutes afterward they had started.
Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to persuade Angelica to wear long dresses, and Lady Claudia felt that now, when she proposed it herself, it would never do to check the impulse; and accordingly, in less than a week from that day, Angelica, the tom-boy, was to all appearance no more, and Miss Hamilton-Wells astonished the neighbourhood.
She came down to the drawing room quite shyly in her first long dinner dress, with her dark hair coiled neatly high on her head. She had met Mr.
Kilroy on the stairs, and he had looked at her in a strange, startled way, but he said nothing; and neither did anybody else when she entered the room. Her grandfather, however, opened his eyes wide when he saw her, and smiled as if he were gratified. Lord Dawne gave her a second glance, and seemed a little sad; and Ideala went up to her and kissed her, and then looked into her face for a moment very gravely, making her feel as if she were on the eve of something momentous. But Diavolo would not look at her a second time. One glimpse had been enough for him, and during the whole of dinner he never raised his eyes.
His uncle Dawne saw what was wrong with the boy, and glanced at him from time to time sympathetically. He meant to talk to him when the ladies had left the table, but Diavolo escaped un.o.bserved before he could carry out his intention.
Mr. Ellis, however, had seen him go, and followed him. He found him in the schoolroom, crying as if his heart would break, his slender frame all shaken with great convulsive sobs, and the old books and playthings which had suddenly a.s.sumed for him the bitterly pathetic interest that attaches to once loved things when they are carelessly cast aside and forgotten, scattered about him. Mr. Ellis sat down beside, him, and touched his hand, and tried to comfort him, but the tutor was sad at heart himself.
Before very long, however, Angelica burst in upon them, with her hair down, and in the shortest and oldest dress she possessed. Her pa.s.sionate love for her brother had always been the great hopeful and redeeming point of her character, and if she did show it princ.i.p.ally by banging his head, she never meant to hurt him. Almost any other sister would have owed him a grudge for not admiring her in her first fine gown, and so spoiling her pleasure; but Angelica saw that he was thinking that the old days were over, and there had come a change now which would divide them, and she thought only of the pain he was suffering on that account. So, when she found that he was not going to join the ladies in the drawing room, she rushed upstairs to her own room, which her maid was arranging for the night, and relieved her feelings by tearing off her dinner dress, rolling it in a whisp, and throwing it at the woman. Her petticoats followed it, and then she kicked off her white satin shoes, one of which lit on the mantelpiece, the other on the dressing table; and, tearing out her hairpins, flung them about the floor in all directions.
"My old brown gown, Elizabeth," she demanded, stamping.
"What"s the matter, Miss--"
But Angelica had s.n.a.t.c.hed the gown from the wardrobe, put it on, and was halfway downstairs, b.u.t.toning it as she went, before the maid could finish the sentence.
When she entered the schoolroom, she threw herself on her knees beside Diavolo, and hugged him tight, as if she been going to lose him altogether, or he had just escaped from a great danger.
"I won"t wear long dresses if you don"t like them," she protested.
"Well, you can"t go about like that," he grumbled, recovering himself the moment he felt her close to him again, and struck by a sense of impropriety in her short skirt after the grown-up appearance she had presented in the long one. "You look like a beggar."
"Well, if I _do_ wear a long one," she declared, "it shall only be a disguise. I promise you I"ll be just as bad as ever in it," and she drew a handkerchief out of her pocket, which had been left there for months and was frowsy, and wiped her own eyes and Diavolo"s abruptly, "Your feelings are quite boggy, Diavolo," she said, giving a dry sob herself as she spoke. "You can"t touch them at all without coming to water. You cry when you laugh."
Mr. Ellis had stolen softly out of the room as soon as he could do so un.o.bserved, and now the twins were sitting together in their favourite position on the same chair, with their arms around each other, and Angelica"s dark head slanted so as to lean against Diavolo"s fair one.
He had rewarded her last remark with a melancholy grin; but the clouds had broken, and it now only required time for them to roll away.
"You"ll get a moustache in time," Angelica proceeded, in her most matter-of-fact tone. "I can see signs of it now in some lights, only it"s so fair it doesn"t show much."
"I"ll shave it to make it darker," he suggested.
"No, you mustn"t do that," she answered, "because that"ll make it coa.r.s.e, and I want you to have one like Uncle Dawne"s. But when it comes it will make you look as much grown up as my long dresses do me, and then we"ll study some art and practise it together, and not be separated all our lives."
"We will," said Diavolo.
"But I think we ought to begin at once," Angelica added thoughtfully.