CHAPTER VII
DIANA came next day, and with her, brought the atmosphere of gay irrepressibleness that belongs to extreme youth. Diana was seventeen. She wore her hair tied, as she expressed it, with a “cat-bow,” and something in the poise of her head, and the shining in her greenish eyes, recalled an alert, half-grown kitten.
She was no beauty, though she carried her head well, and in her slim body, straight as a reed, there was the promise of a figure that would not disgrace the goddess whose name she bore. She laughed a great deal, she chattered more; she was utterly irreverent, and Cecily was glad to have her in the silent house.
“How is Archie?” she inquired in a pause of the conversation carried on during the process of Diana’s unpacking. “Do you hear from him now? Where is he?”
“In Florida. Oh, yes, often; he’s a faithful hound, you know. Prides himself on it. How do you like this blouse?” She shook it out before her sister. “I look perfectly vile in it. But then, I’m such a hideous monkey. Have you noticed that I’m exactly like a monkey, Cis? Look at my monkey eyes!” She sat on the floor and gave a startling imitation of the animal in question.
“Yes, but Archie?” questioned Cecily again, when she had recovered her gravity. “Doesn’t he consider himself engaged to you?”
“He may,” returned Diana, calmly. “I don’t. Where are my silk stockings? I don’t like faithful hounds. And I don’t like matrimony—for women, you know. It’s all right for men. Fancy having to ‘manage’ them, and to pretend to think such an awful lot of them. It’sdegrading! I want to show you my sunshade. Isn’t it a sweet color?”
“Oh,” observed Cecily, “isthatwhere you are? Is it the higher education of man you demand?”
“No!” returned Diana, airily. “I don’t care twopence about their education, or whether they ever get any. I just don’t consider them at all.”
“What a counsel of perfection!” exclaimed Cecily. “Go on, Diana. I’m interested. You’re a philosopher. What is the conclusion of the whole matter?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Diana, absently wreathing a nightdress round her neck, while she tilted a hat over her eyes at an absurd angle before the glass. “There’s such a lot of things to do. You can play games, and read books, and go about and see jolly things abroad, and watch people, and see how funny they are. They are justmadlyfunny, aren’t they? There was a woman in the train who sat and looked like this at her husband because he’d tipped a porter too much.” Her face twisted into a ludicrous expression of contemptuous indignation, and resumed its normal contours in the space of a lightning flash. “Oh! and Uncle Henry gets funnier every day; like an infuriated blue-bottle. ‘’Pon my soul, you women! What you’d do without a sensible man in the house!Pom! pom! pom!’—you know.” She took two or three steps before the glass, strutting with puffed-out cheeks, and Uncle Henry rose before Cecily’s mental vision. “Well, there are always people, so it’s easy to be amused. Only you must never caretoo much about any one, because if you do, you can’t be amused at anything any more, and that’s silly.”
The laughter died out of Cecily’s eyes. “Where did you get that, Diana?” she asked. “It isn’t bad.”
But Diana’s versatile mind was off on a fresh tack. “I’m glad Dick’s coming,” she said. “He seems jolly, and Robert’s such a grumpus. Why do you let him grump, Cis? Just fancy, I was only twelve when Dick went away. What ages we’ve known him, haven’t we? How did we get to know him first? I forget.”
“Frank brought him to Carmarthen Terrace, you know. He was an Oxford friend of his. Yes, it was ages ago. I was only a little older than you when he first came.”
“Was he in love with you?” asked Diana, calmly. She had divested herself of the hat and nightdress by this time, and was beginning to brush her hair.
“Little girls shouldn’t ask impertinent questions,” returned Cecily, looking out of the window.
“Oh, then he was!” pursued Diana, quite unruffled. “How exciting for you! Of course you’ll put on your best frock thisevening, won’t you? People always do when their lovers come back after many years.”
“And what about Robert?” inquired Cecily, with a curious smile.
“Well, what’s the good of putting on a pretty frock for him?” Diana retorted. “He’s grown exactly like a very old grand-papa.” She put on an imaginary pair of spectacles, and peered about in a short-sighted way. “‘Frocks, my dear, what nonsense! I’m past all that sort of thing.’”
Cecily winced a little; then she laughed. “Robert will box your ears one of these days.”
“I wish he would. It would be a sign of life. What a pity it is,” she went on, tying the “cat-bow” reflectively, “that we can’t have five or six husbands, isn’t it, Cis? Oh, I don’t mean all at once, but one after the other, as the old ones get bored.”
“Do you scatter these views broadcast, may I ask?” Cecily observed, looking up from her chair near the dressing-table.
“They’re not views exactly,” returned Diana, airily. “They’re facts. The old onesdoget bored, don’t they? I’ve noticed that no husband goes on being a turtle-dove very long. Gets tired of the same dove, I suppose.”
“Our marriage laws make no provision for a change of doves, you see.”
“Oh, I know,” said Diana, cheerfully. “Men made them, so they’re sure to be silly. I wish you’d think of another way of doing my hair, Cis. I look like ‘Cheerful Caroline, or Good Temper Rewarded,’ with this imbecile bow. Aren’t you awfully dull all day, Cis, with Robert away at that stupid old British Museum?” The question, which followed hard on her foregoing remarks, was called forth involuntarily as she glanced at her sister.
“He’s not going any more. He’s finished all the research part for his novel, and now he’s going to work at home.”
“Perhaps it’s researching that’s made him so deadly dull lately,” observed Diana, with her habitual candor.
“On the contrary, it has been very interesting work,” Cecily returned, with an unmoved expression.
“Who’s the girl who’s coming to stay in the village?” Diana went on, as she fastened her simple white china silk blouse. “What’s her name? Philippa? Edward III, thirteen something or other, married Philippa of some place; she sounds like a history-book.”
“Sheisrather like a history-book, now you mention it,” returned Cecily, half smiling. “Contemporary history. I used to go to school with her. Robert met her the other day in town.”
“Oh, well, if she’s like a history-book she’ll get on with Robert. And then you and I and Dick can play together and have a good time.Doput on a nice frock, Cis, and make yourself look pretty. Your frocks aren’t half so nice as they used to be, and I think you ought to go away to the seaside or somewhere. It does one such a lot of good.Ilooked awful till I went to Folkestone this year. And now see how brown I am!”
Cecily rose. Taking Diana’s head between her hands, she kissed her babyish forehead with a laugh.
“I must go and change,” she said. “They’ll be here in a minute. They were to meet at Waterloo and come down together.”
Before the glass in her own room Cecily paused. “Make yourself look pretty,” Diana had said. She smiled a little bitterly at what the remark implied, and then with a shrug of the shoulders turned to her wardrobe. A gown she had worn at a recent wedding, and since put away, lay folded in its box on oneof the shelves. She took it out and laid it on the bed. Dick had always liked her frocks. “He won’t think much of me in them nowadays,” she reflected, with another glance at the mirror. Nevertheless she dressed carefully, and thanks to that very present help in the concerns of women, Mayne’s first thought, as he met her in the hall, was that Lady Wilmot had not increased in good-nature.
“Why, Dick,” she laughed, unconsciously echoing the lady who had occurred to his mind, “you’ve grown!”
She gave him her hand warmly. It was surprising how glad she felt to see Dick again, and quite surprising how the glance he bestowed upon her increased her pleasure in the meeting. The old admiration was in his eyes, and on a sudden some of her old self, the self she had thought long dead, stirred faintly. It was the first tribute of the sort she had received of late, and she was amazed to find it sweet. Dinner, thanks to Diana, was not lacking in sprightliness, and, as far as Cecily was concerned, in incident. As well as resentment for her sister in a situation which she recognized as unhappy, and for which she not unnaturally attributed the blame to her brother-in-law, Diana cherished against him a personalgrievance. In old childish days she had been a great favorite with Robert, who had teased and petted her in brotherly fashion. Now his “grumpiness,” growing, as Diana sharpened the arrows of her tongue, had extended to her, and her revenge was a perpetual system of teasing which was not without malice.
“Been a busy little lad to-day, Robert, I trust?” she began, as they sat down to table. “I’m told that the British Museum is a splendid schoolroom for little boys. I must sayIalways found it stuffy.”
“I don’t believe you’ve ever been near it,” he returned, with an attempt at lightness.
“How do we know you have, either?” she retorted. “All very well, isn’t it, Cis, to go up to town every day, with his good little earnest face, and his little school-books tucked under his arm? ‘Good-bye, dear wife! Only the desire to improve myself forces me to leave you,’” she mimicked, giving a rapid imitation of Robert’s manner, so apt, in spite of the ludicrous words, that Mayne choked over his soup. “I believe the moment he gets up to town, he takes his marbles out of his pockets, and his little toys and things, and begins to play!” She leaned towards him like a kind and tender parent. “Come, tell motherall about it,” she coaxed, “and then she won’t be angry with her little boy.”
Mayne and Cecily both laughed. Of the two Cecily seemed the more amused.
“Oh, stop fooling, there’s a good girl,” exclaimed Robert, passing his hand over his forehead. “Any one would think you were seven instead of seventeen. And I’ve got a headache.”
“Nothing but naughty temper because mother found you out!” declared Diana, irrepressibly.
“You’ve brought her up very badly,” said Mayne, turning to Cecily.
“Igaveher up long ago,” laughed Cecily. She began to talk amusingly, quite in her old fashion. A fantastic sense of the ludicrousness of life, of all situations that seem tragic, excited her to trembling laughter. Her sense of humor had been roused, bitterly roused, but it animated her as nothing else could have done, and for the rest of the evening Cecily was her most brilliant self. That Robert was not listening to her remarks was a circumstance which, at an early stage of the evening, Mayne noticed with some incomprehension and more resentment. As his visit lengthened, the incomprehension vanished.