"My election?" cried Marsham. Then he laughed. "I suppose he has been drawing the long bow, as usual. Am I impertinent?--or may I ask, how you came to know him?"
He looked at her smiling. Diana colored.
"My cousin f.a.n.n.y made acquaintance with him--in the train."
"I see. Here are our two cousins--coming to meet us. Will you introduce me?"
For f.a.n.n.y and Miss Drake were now returning slowly along the gravel path which led to the kitchen garden. The eyes of both girls were fixed on the pair advancing toward them. Alicia was no longer impa.s.sive or haughty. Like her companion, she appeared to have been engaged in an intimate and absorbing conversation. Diana could not help looking at her in a vague surprise as she paused in front of them. But she addressed herself to her cousin.
"f.a.n.n.y, I want to introduce Mr. Marsham to you."
f.a.n.n.y Merton held out her hand, staring a little oddly at the gentleman presented to her. Alicia meanwhile was looking at Diana, while she spoke--with emphasis--to Marsham.
"Could you order my horse, Oliver? I think we ought to be going back."
"Would you mind asking Sir James?" Marsham pointed to the upper terrace.
"I have something to see to in the garden."
Diana said hurriedly that Mrs. Colwood would send the order to the stables, and that she herself would not be long. Alicia took no notice of this remark. She still looked at Oliver.
"You"ll come back with us, won"t you?"
Marsham flushed. "I have only just arrived," he said, rather sharply.
"Please don"t wait for me.--Shall we go on?" he said, turning to Diana.
They walked on. As Diana paused at the iron gate which closed the long walk, she looked round her involuntarily, and saw that Alicia and f.a.n.n.y were now standing on the lower terrace, gazing after them. It struck her as strange and rude, and she felt the slight shock she had felt several times already, both in her intercourse with f.a.n.n.y and in her acquaintance with Miss Drake--as of one unceremoniously jostled or repulsed.
Marsham meanwhile was full of annoyance. That Alicia should still treat him in that domestic, possessive way--and in Diana"s presence--was really intolerable. It must be stopped.
He paused on the other side of the gate.
"After all, I am not in a mood to see Robins to-day. Look!--the light is going. Will you show me the path on to the hill? You spoke to me once of a path you were fond of."
She tried to laugh.
"You take Robins for granted?"
"I am quite indifferent to his virtues--even his vices! This chance--is too precious. I have so much to say to you."
She led the way in silence. The hand which held up her dress from the mire trembled a little unseen. But her sense of the impending crisis had given her more rather than less dignity. She bore her dark head finely, with that unconscious long-descended instinct of the woman, waiting to be sued.
They found a path beyond the garden, winding up through a leafless wood.
Marsham talked of indifferent things, and she answered him with spirit, feeling it all, so far, a queer piece of acting. Then they emerged on the side of the hill beside a little basin in the chalk, where a gnarled thorn or two, an overhanging beech, and a bed of withered heather, made a kind of intimate, furnished place, which appealed to the pa.s.ser-by.
"Here is the sunset," said Marsham, looking round him. "Are you afraid to sit a little?"
He took a light overcoat he had been carrying over his arm and spread it on the heather. She protested that it was winter, and coats were for wearing. He took no notice, and she tamely submitted. He placed her regally, with an old thorn for support and canopy; and then he stood a moment beside her gazing westward.
They looked over undulations of the chalk, bare stubble fields and climbing woods, bathed in the pale gold of a February sunset. The light was pure and wan--the resting earth shone through it gently yet austerely; only the great woods darkly ma.s.sed on the horizon gave an accent of mysterious power to a scene in which Nature otherwise showed herself the tamed and homely servant of men. Below were the trees of Beechcote, the gray walls, and the windows touched with a last festal gleam.
Suddenly Marsham dropped down beside her.
"I see it all with new eyes," he said, pa.s.sionately. "I have lived in this country from my childhood; and I never saw it before! Diana!--"
He raised her hand, which only faintly resisted; he looked into her eyes. She had grown very pale--enchantingly pale. There was in her the dim sense of a great fulfilment; the fulfilment of Nature"s promise to her; implicit in her woman"s lot from the beginning.
"Diana!--" the low voice searched her heart--"You know--what I have come to say? I meant to have waited a little longer--I was afraid!--but I couldn"t wait--it was beyond my strength. Diana!--come to me, darling!--be my wife!"
He kissed the hand he held. His eyes beseeched; and into hers, widely fixed upon him, had sprung tears--the tears of life"s supremest joy. Her lip trembled.
"I"m not worthy!" she said, in a whisper--"I"m not worthy!"
"Foolish Diana!--Darling, foolish Diana!--Give me my answer!"
And now he held both hands, and his confident smile dazzled her.
"I--" Her voice broke. She tried again, still in a whisper. "I will be everything to you--that a woman can."
At that he put his arm round her, and she let him take that first kiss, in which she gave him her youth, her life--all that she had and was.
Then she withdrew herself, and he saw her brow contract, and her mouth.
"I know!"--he said, tenderly--"I know! Dear, I think he would have been glad. He and I made friends from the first."
She plucked at the heather beside her, trying for composure. "He would have been so glad of a son--so glad--"
And then, by contrast with her own happiness, the piteous memory of her father overcame her; and she cried a little, hiding her eyes against Marsham"s shoulder.
"There!" she said, at last, withdrawing herself, and brushing the tears away. "That"s all--that"s done with--except in one"s heart. Did--did Lady Lucy know?"
She looked at him timidly. Her aspect had never been more lovely. Tears did not disfigure her, and as compared with his first remembrance of her, there was now a touching significance, an incomparable softness in all she said and did, which gave him a bewildering sense of treasures to come, of joys for the gathering.
Suddenly--involuntarily--there flashed through his mind the recollection of his first love-pa.s.sage with Alicia--how she had stung him on, teased, and excited him. He crushed it at once, angrily.
As to Lady Lucy, he smilingly declared that she had no doubt guessed something was in the wind.
"I have been "gey ill to live with" since we got up to town. And when the stupid meeting I had promised to speak at was put off, my mother thought I had gone off my head--from my behavior. "What are you going to the Feltons" for?--You never care a bit about them." So at last I brought her the map and made her look at it--"Felton Park to Brinton, 3 miles--Haylesford, 4 miles--Beechcote, 2 miles and 1/2--Beechcote Manor, half a mile--total, ten miles."--"Oliver!"--she got so red!--"you are going to propose to Miss Mallory!" "Well, mother!--and what have you got to say?" So then she smiled--and kissed me--and sent you messages--which I"ll give you when there"s time. My mother is a rather formidable person--no one who knew her would ever dream of taking her consent to anything for granted; but this time"--his laugh was merry--"I didn"t even think of asking it!"
"I shall love her--dearly," murmured Diana.
"Yes, because you won"t be afraid of her. Her standards are hardly made for this wicked world. But you"ll hold her--you"ll manage her. If you"d said "No" to me, she would have felt cheated of a daughter."
"I"m afraid Mrs. Fotheringham won"t like it," said Diana, ruefully, letting herself be gathered again into his arms.
"My sister? I don"t know what to say about Isabel, dearest--unless I parody an old saying. She and I have never agreed--except in opinion. We have been on the same side--and in hot opposition--since our childhood.
No--I dare say she will be th.o.r.n.y! Why did you fight me so well, little rebel?"
He looked down into her dark eyes, revelling in their sweetness, and in the bliss of her surrendered beauty. If this was not his first proposal, it was his first true pa.s.sion--of that he was certain.