The Splendid Folly Part 12

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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sed 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 gra.s.s, 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.