The Testing of Diana Mallory - Mrs. Humphry Ward (novels to read for beginners txt) 📗

you won't care whether you ever set eyes on any of us again. Oh! I know you've given us money--or you say you will. If I knew which side my bread was buttered, I suppose I should hold my tongue.--But when you treat me like the dirt under your feet--when you tell everything to that woman Mrs. Colwood, who's no relation, and nothing in the world to you--and leave me kicking my heels all alone, because I'm not the kind you want, and you wish to goodness I'd never come--when you show as plain as you can that I'm a common creature--not fit to pick up your gloves!--I tell you I just won't stand it. No one would--who knew what I know!"

The last words were flung in Diana's teeth with all the force that wounded pride and envious wrath could give them. Diana tottered a little. Her hand clung to the dressing-table behind her.

"What do you know?" she said. "Tell me at once--what you mean."

Fanny contemptuously shook her head. She walked to the door, and before Diana could stop her, she had rushed across to her own room and locked herself in.

There she walked up and down panting. She hardly understood her own rage, and she was quite conscious that, for her own interests, she had acted during the whole afternoon like a fool. First, stung by the pique excited in her by the talk of the luncheon-table, she had let herself be exploited and explored by Alicia Drake. She had not meant to tell her secret, but somehow she had told it, simply to give herself importance with this smart lady, and to feel her power over Diana. Then, it was no sooner told than she was quickly conscious that she had given away an advantage, which from a tactical point of view she had infinitely better have kept; and that the command of the situation might have passed from her to this girl whom Diana had supplanted. Furious with herself, she had tried to swear Miss Drake to silence, only to be politely but rather scornfully put aside.

Then the party had broken up. Mr. Birch had been offended by the absence of the hostess, and had vouchsafed but a careless good-bye to Miss Merton. The Roughsedges went off without asking her to visit them; and as for the Captain, he was an odious young man. Since their departure, Mrs. Colwood had neglected her, and now Diana's secret return, her long talk with Mrs. Colwood, had filled the girl's cup of bitterness. She had secured that day a thousand pounds for her family and herself; and at the end of it, she merely felt that the day had been an abject and intolerable failure! Did the fact that she so felt it bear strange witness to the truth that at the bottom of her anger and her cruelty there was a masked and distorted something which was not wholly vile--which was, in fact, the nature's tribute to something nobler than itself? That Diana shivered at and repulsed her was the hot-iron that burned and seared. And that she richly deserved it--and knew it--made its smart not a whit the less.

* * * * *

Fanny did not appear at dinner. Mrs. Colwood and Diana dined alone--Diana very white and silent. After dinner, Diana began slowly to climb the shallow old staircase. Mrs. Colwood followed her.

"Where are you going?" she said, trying to hold her back.

Diana looked at her. In the girl's eyes there was a sudden and tragic indignation.

"Do you all know?" she said, under her breath--"all--all of you?" And again she began to mount, with a resolute step.

Mrs. Colwood dared not follow her any farther. Diana went quickly up and along the gallery; she knocked at Fanny's door. After a moment Mrs. Colwood heard it opened, and a parley of voices--Fanny's short and sullen, Diana's very low. Then the door closed, and Mrs. Colwood knew that the cousins were together.

How the next twenty minutes passed, Mrs. Colwood could never remember. At the end of them she heard steps slowly coming down the stairs, and a cry--her own name--not in Diana's voice. She ran out into the hall.

At the top of the stairs, stood Fanny Merton, not daring to move farther. Her eyes were starting out of her head, her face flushed and distorted.

"You go to her!" She stooped, panting, over the balusters, addressing Mrs. Colwood. "She won't let me touch her."

Diana descended, groping. At the foot of the stairs she caught at Mrs. Colwood's hand, went swaying across the hall and into the drawing-room. There she closed the door, and looked into Mrs. Colwood's eyes. Muriel saw a face in which bloom and first youth were forever dead, though in its delicate features horror was still beautiful. She threw her arms round the girl, weeping. But Diana put her aside. She walked to a chair, and sat down. "My mother--" she said, looking up.

Her voice dropped. She moistened her dry lips, and began once more: "My mother--"

But the brain could maintain its flickering strength no longer. There was a low cry of "Oliver!" that stabbed the heart; then, suddenly, her limbs were loosened, and she sank back, unconscious, out of her friend's grasp and ken.


CHAPTER XI

"Her ladyship will be here directly, sir." Lady Lucy's immaculate butler opened the door of her drawing-room in Eaton Square, ushered in Sir James Chide, noiselessly crossed the room to see to the fire, and then as noiselessly withdrew.

"Impossible that any one should be as respectable as that man looks!" thought Sir James, impatiently. He walked forward to the fire, warmed hands and feet chilled by a nipping east wind, and then, with his back to the warmth, he examined the room.

It was very characteristic of its mistress. At Tallyn Henry Marsham had worked his will; here, in this house taken since his death, it was the will and taste of his widow which had prevailed. A gray paper with a small gold sprig upon it, sofas and chairs not too luxurious, a Brussels carpet, dark and unobtrusive, and chintz curtains; on the walls, drawings by David Cox, Copley Fielding, and De Wint; a few books with Mudie labels; costly photographs of friends and relations, especially of the relations' babies; on one table, and under a glass case, a model in pith of Lincoln Cathedral, made by Lady Lucy's uncle, who had been a Canon of Lincoln; on another, a set of fine carved chessmen; such was the furniture of the room. It expressed--and with emphasis--the tastes and likings of that section of English society in which, firmly based as it is upon an ample supply of all material goods, a seemly and intelligent interest in things ideal and spiritual is also to be found. Everything in the room was in its place, and had been in its place for years. Sir James got no help from the contemplation of it.

The door opened, and Lady Lucy came quietly in. Sir James looked at her sharply as they shook hands. She had more color than usual; but the result was to make the face look older, and certain lines in it disagreeably prominent. Very likely she had been crying. He hoped she had.

"Oliver told you to expect me?"

She assented. Then, still standing, she looked at him steadily.

"This is a very terrible affair, Sir James."

"Yes. It must have been a great shock to you."

"Oh! that does not matter," she said, impatiently. "I must not think of myself. I must think of Oliver. Will you sit down?"

She motioned him, in her stately way, to a seat. He realized, as he faced her, that he beheld her in a new aspect. She was no longer the gracious and smiling hostess, as her familiar friends knew her, both at Tallyn and in London. Her manner threw a sudden light on certain features in her history: Marsham's continued dependence on his mother and inadequate allowance, the autocratic ability shown in the management of the Tallyn household and estates, management in which Marsham was allowed practically no share at all, and other traits and facts long known to him. The gentle, scrupulous, composed woman of every day had vanished in something far more vigorously drawn; he felt himself confronted by a personality as strong as, and probably more stubborn than his own.

Lady Lucy seated herself. She quietly arranged the folds of her black satin dress; she drew forward a stool, and rested her feet upon it. Sir James watched her, uncertain how to begin. But she saved him the decision.

"I have had a painful interview with my son" she said, quietly. "It could not be otherwise, and I can only hope that in a little while he will do me justice. Oliver will join us presently. And now--first, Sir James, let me ask you--you really believe that Miss Mallory has been till now in ignorance of her mother's history?"

Sir James started.

"Good Heavens, Lady Lucy! Can you--do you--suppose anything else?"

Lady Lucy paused before replying.

"I cannot suppose it--since both you and my son--and Mr. Ferrier--have so high an opinion of her. But it is a strange and mysterious thing that she should have remained in this complete ignorance all these years--and a cruel thing, of course--to everybody concerned."

Sir James nodded.

"I agree. It was a cruel thing, though it was done, no doubt, from the tenderest motives. The suffering was bound to be not less but more, sooner or later."

"Miss Mallory is very greatly to be pitied. But it is, of course, clear that my son proposed to her, not knowing what it was essential that he should know."

Sir James paused.

"We are old friends, Lady Lucy--you and I," he said at last, with deliberation; and as he spoke he bent forward and took her hand. "I am sure you will let me ask you a few questions."

Lady Lucy made no reply. Her hand--without any movement of withdrawal or rebuff--gently dropped from his.

"You have been, I think, much attracted by Miss Mallory herself?"

"Very much attracted. Up to this morning I thought that she would make an excellent wife for Oliver. But I have been acting, of course, throughout under a false impression."

"Is it your feeling that to marry her would injure Oliver's career?"

"Certainly. But that is not what weighs with me most heavily."

"I did not for a moment believe that it would. However, let us take the career first. This is how I look at it. If the marriage went forward, there would no doubt be some scandal and excitement at first, when the truth was known. But Oliver's personality and the girl's charm would soon live it down. In this strange world I am not at all sure it might not in the end help their future. Oliver would be thought to have done a generous and romantic thing, and his wife's goodness and beauty would be all the more appreciated for the background of tragedy."

Lady Lucy moved impatiently.

"Sir James--I am a plain person, with plain ideas. The case would present itself to me very differently; and I believe that my view would be that of the ordinary man and woman. However, I repeat, that is not what I think of first--by any means."

"You