CHAPTER VII
DIANA SINGS
"I feel that we are very much indebted to you, Mr. Errington," said Stair, when he and Joan had listened to an account of the afternoon's proceedings—the major portion of them, that is. Certain details were not included in the veracious history. "You seem to have a happy knack of turning up just at the moment you are most needed," he added pleasantly.
"I think I must plead indebtedness to Miss Quentin for allowing me such unique opportunities of playing knight errant," replied Max, smiling. "Such chances are rare in this twentieth century of ours, and Miss Quentin always kindly arranges so that I run no serious risks—to life and limb, at least," he added, his mocking eyes challenging Diana's.
She flushed indignantly. Evidently he wished her to understand that that breathless moment in the car counted for nothing—must not be taken seriously. He had only been amusing himself with her—just as he had amused himself by chatting in the train—and again a wave of resentment against him, against the cool, dominating insolence of the man, surged through her.
"I hope you'll stay and join us at dinner," the Rector was saying—"unless it's hopelessly spoilt by waiting so long. Is it, Joan?"
"Oh, no. I think there'll be some surviving remnants," she assured him.
"Then if you'll overlook any discrepancies," pursued Stair, smiling at
Errington, "do stay."
"Say, rather, if you'll overlook discrepancies," answered Errington, smiling back—there was something infectious about Stair's geniality. "I'm afraid a boiled shirt is out of the question—unless I go home to fetch it!"
Diana stared at him. Was he really going to stay—to accept the invitation—after all that had occurred? If he did, she thought scornfully, it was only in keeping with that calm arrogance of his by which he allocated to himself the right to do precisely as he chose, irrespective of convention—or of other people's feelings.
Meanwhile Stair was twinkling humorously across at his visitor.
"If you can bear to eat your dinner without being encased in the regulation starch," he said, "I don't think I should advise risking what remains of it by any further delay."
"Then I accept with pleasure," replied Errington.
As he spoke, his eyes sought Diana's once again. It almost seemed as though they pleaded with her for understanding. The half-sad, half-bitter mouth smiled faintly, the smile accentuating that upward curve at the corners of the lips which lent such an unexpected sweetness to its stern lines.
Diana looked away quickly, refusing to endorse the Rector's invitation, and, escaping to her own room, she made a hasty toilet, slipping into a simple little black gown open at the throat. Meanwhile, she tortured herself with questioning as to why—if all that had passed meant nothing to him—he had chosen to stay. Once she hid her burning face in her hands as the memory of those kisses rushed over her afresh, sending little, new, delicious thrills coursing through her veins. Then once more the maddening doubt assailed her—were they but a bitter humiliation which she would remember for the rest of her life?
When she came downstairs again, Max Errington and Stair were conversing happily together, evidently on the best of terms with themselves and each other. Errington was speaking as she entered the room, but he stopped abruptly, biting his words off short, while his keen eyes swept over the slim, black-gowned figure hesitating in the doorway.
"Mr. Stair has been pledging your word during your absence," he said.
"He has promised that you'll sing to us after dinner."
"I? Oh"—nervously—"I don't think I want to sing this evening."
"Why not? Have the"—he made an infinitesimal pause, regarding her the while with quizzical eyes—"events of the afternoon robbed you of your voice?"
Diana gave him back his look defiantly. How dared he—oh, how dared he?—she thought indignantly.
"My adventures weren't serious enough for that," she replied composedly.
The ghost of a smile flickered across his face.
"Then you will sing?" he persisted.
"Yes, if you like."
He nodded contentedly, and as they went in to dinner he whispered:—
"I found the adventure—rather serious."
Dinner passed pleasantly enough. Errington and Stair contributed most of the conversation, the former proving himself a charming guest, and it was evident that the two men had taken a great liking to each other. It would have been a difficult subject indeed who did not feel attracted by Alan Stair; he was so unconventionally frank and sincere, brimming over with humour, and he regarded every man as his friend until he had proved him otherwise—and even then he was disposed to think that the fault must lie somewhere in himself.
"I'm not surprised that your church was so full on Sunday," Errington told him, "now that I've met you. If the Church of England clergy, as a whole, were as human as you are, you would have fewer offshoots from your Established Church. I always think"—reminiscently—"that that is where the strength of the Roman Catholic padre lies—in his intense humanness."
The Sector looked up in surprise.
"Then you're not a member of our Church?" he asked.
For a moment Errington looked embarrassed, as though he had said more than he wished to.
"Oh, I was merely comparing the two," he replied evasively. "I have lived abroad a good bit, you know."
"Ah! That explains it, then," said Stair. "You've caught some little foreign turns of speech. Several times I've wondered if you were entirely English."
Errington's face, as he turned to reply, wore that politely blank expression which Diana had encountered more than once when conversing with him—always should she chance to touch on any subject the natural answer to which might have revealed something of the man's private life.
"Oh," he answered the Rector lightly, "I believe there's a dash of foreign blood in my veins, but I've a right to call myself an Englishman."
After dinner, while the two men had their smoke, Diana, heedless of Joan's common-sense remonstrance on the score of dew-drenched grass, flung on a cloak and wandered restlessly out into the moonlit garden. She felt that it would be an utter impossibility to sit still, waiting until the men came into the drawing-room, and she paced slowly backwards and forwards across the lawn, a slight, shadowy figure in the patch of silver light.
Presently she saw the French window of the dining-room open, and Max Errington step across the threshold and come swiftly over the lawn towards her.
"I see you are bent on courting rheumatic fever—to say nothing of a sore throat," he said quietly, "and I've come to take you indoors."
Diana was instantly filled with a perverse desire to remain where she was.
"I'm not in the least cold, thank you," she replied stiffly, "And—I like it out here."
"You may not be cold," he returned composedly. "But I'm quite sure your feet are damp. Come along."
He put his arm under hers, impelling her gently in the direction of the house, and, rather to her own surprise, she found herself accompanying him without further opposition.
Arrived at the house, he knelt down and, taking up her foot in his hand, deliberately removed the little pointed slipper.
"There," he said conclusively, exhibiting its sole, dank with dew. "Go up and put on a pair of dry shoes and then come down and sing to me."
And once again she found herself meekly obeying him.
By the time she had returned to the drawing-room, Pobs and Errington were choosing the songs they wanted her to sing, while Joan was laughingly protesting that they had selected all those with the most difficult accompaniments.
"However, I'll do my best, Di," she added, as she seated herself at the piano.
Joan's "best" as a pianist did not amount to very much at any time, and she altogether lacked that intuitive understanding and sympathy which is the sine qua non of a good accompanist. Diana, accustomed to the trained perfection of Olga Lermontof, found herself considerably handicapped, and her rendering of the song in question, Saint-Saens' Amour, viens aider, left a good deal to be desired in consequence—a fact of which no one was more conscious than she herself.
But the voice! As the full rich notes hung on the air, vibrant with that indescribably thrilling quality which seems the prerogative of the contralto, Errington recognised at once that here was a singer destined to make her mark. The slight surprise which he had evinced on first learning that she was a pupil of the great Baroni vanished instantly. No master could be better fitted to have the handling of such a voice—and certainly, he added mentally, Joan Stair was a ludicrously inadequate accompanist, only to be excused by her frank acknowledgment of the fact.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, Di," she said at the conclusion of the song. "But
I really can't manage the accompaniment."
Errington rose and crossed the room to the piano.
"Will you allow me to take your place?" he said pleasantly. "That is, if Miss Quentin permits? It is hard lines to be suddenly called upon to read accompaniments if you are not accustomed to it."
"Oh, do you play?" exclaimed Joan, vacating her seat gladly. "Then please do. I feel as if I were committing murder when I stumble through Diana's songs."
She joined the Rector at the far end of the room, adding with a smile:—
"I make a much better audience than performer."
"What shall it be?" said Errington, turning over the pile of songs.
"What you like," returned Diana indifferently. She was rather pale, and her hand shook a little as she fidgeted restlessly with a sheet of music. It almost seemed as though the projected change of accompanist were distasteful to her.
Max laid his own hand over hers an instant.
"Please let me play for you," he said simply.
There was a note of appeal in his voice—rather as if he were seeking to soften her resentment against him, and would regard the permission to accompany her as a token of forgiveness. She met his glance, wavered a moment, then bent her head in silence, and each of them was conscious that in some mysterious way, without the interchange of further words, an armistice had been declared between them.
With Errington at the piano the music took on a different aspect. He was an incomparable accompanist, and Diana, feeling herself supported, and upborne, sang with a beauty of interpretation, an intensity of feeling, that had been impossible before. And through it all she was acutely conscious of Max Errington's proximity—knew instinctively that the passion of the song was shaking him equally with herself. It was as though some intangible live wire were stretched between them so that each could sense the emotion of the other—as though the garment with which we so persistently conceal our souls from one another's eyes were suddenly stripped away.
There was a tense look in Max's face as the last note trembled into silence, and Diana, meeting his glance, flushed rosily.
"I can't sing any more," she said, her voice uneven.
"No."
He added nothing to the laconic negative, but his eyes held hers remorselessly.
Then Pobs' cheerful tones fell on their ears and the taut moment passed.
"Di, you amazing child!" he exclaimed delightfully. "Where did you find a voice like that? I realise now that we've been entertaining genius unawares all this time. Joan, my dear, henceforth two commonplace bodies like you and me must resign ourselves to taking a back seat."
"I don't mind," returned Joan philosophically. "I think I was born with a humdrum nature; a quiet life was always my idea of bliss."
"Sing something else, Di," begged Stair. But Diana shook her head.
"I'm too tired, Pobs," she said quietly. Turning abruptly to Errington she continued: "Will you play instead?"
Max hesitated a moment, then resumed his place at the piano, and, after a pause, the three grave notes with which Rachmaninoff's wonderful "Prelude" opens, broke the silence.
It was speedily evident that Errington was a musician of no mean order; indeed, many a professional reputation has been based on a less solid foundation. The Rachmaninoff was followed by Chopin, Tchaikowsky, Debussy, and others of the modern school, and when finally he dropped his hands from the piano, laughingly declaring that he must be thinking of taking his departure before he played them all to sleep, Joan burst out bluntly:—
"We understood you were a dramatist, Mr. Errington. It seems to me you have missed your vocation."
Every one laughed.
"Rather a two-edged compliment, I'm afraid, Joan," chuckled Stair delightfully.
Joan blushed, overcome with confusion, and remained depressed until
Errington, on the point of leaving, reassured her good-humouredly.
"Don't brood over your father's unkind references to two-edged compliments, Miss Stair. I entirely decline to see any but one meaning to your speech—and that a very pleasant one."
He shook hands with the Rector and Diana, holding the latter's hand an instant longer than was absolutely necessary, to ask, rather low:—
"Is it peace, then?"
But the softening spell of the music was broken, and Diana felt her resentment against him rise up anew.
Silently she withdrew her hand, refusing him an answer, defying him with a courage born of the near neighbourhood of the Rector and Joan, and a few minutes later the hum of his motor could be heard as it sped away down the drive.
Diana lay long awake that night, her thoughts centred round the man who had come so strangely into her life. It was as though he had been forced thither by a resistless fate which there was no eluding—for, on his own confession, he had deliberately sought to avoid meeting her again.
His whole attitude was utterly incomprehensible—a study of violently opposing contrasts. Diana felt bruised and shaken by the fierce contradictions of his moods, the temperamental heat and ice which he had meted out to her. It seemed as if he were fighting against the attraction she had for him, prepared to contest every inch of ground—discounting each look and word wrung from him in some moment of emotion by the mocking raillery with which he followed it up.
More than once he had hinted at some barrier, spoken of a shadow that dogged his steps, as if complete freedom of action were denied him. Could it be—was it conceivable, that he was already married? And at the thought Diana hid hot cheeks against her pillow, living over again that moment in the car—that moment which had suddenly called into being emotions before whose overmastering possibilities she trembled.
At length, mentally and physically weary, she dropped into an uneasy slumber, vaguely wondering what the morrow would bring forth.
It brought the unexpected news that the occupants of Red Gables had suddenly left for London by the morning train.