The vicar smiled the usual smile of polite agreement to everything which always gives a touch of sickliness to the most open countenance, and said no more. Diana was not present, so she did not hear that her mother considered she “had nothing else to do” but arrange flowers. Even if she had heard it, she would hardly have contradicted it; it was one of those things which she would not have thought worth while arguing about. The fact that she governed all the domestic working of the house so that it ran like a perfectly-going machine on silent and well-oiled wheels, required no emphasis,—at least, not in her opinion,—and though she knew that not one of the servants would have stayed in Mrs. May’s service or put up with her vague, fussy, and often sulky disposition, unless she, Diana, had “managed” them, she took no credit to herself for the comfortable and well-ordered condition of things under which her selfish old parents enjoyed their existence. That she “had nothing else to do but arrange flowers” was a sort of house tradition with “Pa” and “Ma” through which they found all manner of excuse for saddling her with as much work as they could possibly give her in the way of constant attendance on themselves. But she did not mind. She was obsessed by the “Duty” fetish, which too often makes prisoners and slaves of those who should be free. Like all virtues, devotion to duty can become a vice if carried to excess, and it is unquestionably a vice when it binds unselfish souls to unworthy and tyrannical taskmasters.
The summer moved on in shining weeks of sunlight and still air, and Rose Lea lost nothing of its charm for Diana, despite the taint of the commonplace with which the eating and sleeping silkworm-lives of her parents invested it. Now and then a few visitors came from London,—men and women of the usual dull type, bringing no entertainment in themselves, and whose stay only meant a little more expenditure and a more lavish display of food. One or two portly club friends of James Polydore came to play golf and drink whisky with him, and they condescended to converse with Diana at meals, because, perforce, they thought they must,—but meals being over, they gave her no further consideration, except to remark casually one to another: “Pity old Polydore couldn’t have got that daughter off his hands!” And the long, lovely month of August was nearly at its end when an incident happened which, like the small displacement of earth that loosens an avalanche, swept away all the old order of things, giving place to a new heaven and a new earth so far as Diana was concerned.
It had been an exceedingly warm day, and nightfall was more than usually welcome after the wide glare of the long, sunlit hours. Dinner was over, and Mr. and Mrs. Polydore May, fed to repletion and stimulated by two or three glasses of excellent champagne, were resting in a dolce-far-niente condition, each cushioned within a deep and luxurious arm-chair placed on either side of the open French windows of the drawing-room. The lawn in front of them was bathed in a lovely light reflected from the after-glow of the vanished sun and a pale glimmer from the risen half-moon, which hung in soft brilliance over the eastern half of the quiet sea. Diana had left her parents to their after-dinner somnolence, and was walking alone in the garden, up and down a grass path between two rose hedges. She was within call should she be wanted by either “Pa” or “Ma,” but they were not aware of her close proximity. Mr. May was smoking an exceptionally choice cigar,—he was in one of his “juvenile” moods, and for once was not inclined to take his usual “cat-nap” or waking doze. He had been to a tennis party that afternoon and had worn, with a “young man’s fancy” a young man’s flannels, happily unconscious of the weird appearance he presented in that unsuitable attire,—and, encouraged by the laughter and applause of the more youthful players, who looked upon him as the “comic man” of the piece, he had acquitted himself tolerably well. So that for the moment he had cast off the dignity and weight of years, and the very air with which he smoked his cigar, flicking off the burnt ash now and again in the affected style of a “young blood about town,” expressed the fact that he considered himself more than a merely “well-preserved” man, and that if justice were done him he would be admitted to be “a violet in the youth of primy nature.”
His better-half was not in quite such pleasant humour; she was self-complacent enough, but the heat of the day had caused her to feel stouter and more unwieldy than usual, and inclined to wish:
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and dissolve itself into a dew!”
When her husband lit his cigar, she had closed her eyes, thinking: “Now there will be a little peace!” knowing that a good cigar to an irritable man is like the bottle to a screaming baby. But Mr. May was disposed to talk, just as he was disposed to admire the contour of his little finger whenever he drew his cigar from his mouth or put it back again.
“There were some smart girls playing tennis to-day,” he presently remarked. “One of them I thought very pretty. She was about seventeen.”
His wife yawned expansively. She made no comment.
“She was my partner,” went on Mr. May. “As skittish as you please!”