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

think of the criminal taint?--the risk to Oliver--and to Oliver's children?"

She made a sign of assent.

"Character--and the protection of character--is not that what we have to think of--above all--in this world of temptation? We can none of us afford to throw away the ordinary helps and safeguards. How can I possibly aid and abet Oliver's marriage with the daughter of a woman who first robbed her own young sister, in a peculiarly mean and cruel way, and then committed a deliberate and treacherous murder?"

"Wait a moment!" exclaimed Sir James, holding up his hand. "Those adjectives, believe me, are unjust."

"I know that you think so," was the animated reply. "But I remember the case; I have my own opinion."

"They are unjust," repeated Sir James, with emphasis. "Then it is really the horror of the thing itself--not so much its possible effect on social position and opinion, which decides you?"

"I ask myself--I must ask myself," said his companion, with equal emphasis, forcing the words: "can I help Oliver to marry the daughter--of a convicted murderess--and adulteress?"

"No!" said Sir James, holding up his hand again--"_No!"_

Lady Lucy fell back in her chair. Her unwonted color had disappeared, and the old hand lying in her lap--a hand thin to emaciation--shook a little.

"Is not this too painful for us both, Sir James?--can we continue it? I have my duty to think of; and yet--I cannot, naturally, speak to you with entire frankness. Nor can I possibly regard your view as an impartial one. Forgive me. I should not have dreamed of referring to the matter in any other circumstances."

"Certainly, I am not impartial," said Sir James, looking up. "You know that, of course, well enough."

He spoke in a strong full voice. Lady Lucy encountered a singular vivacity in the gray eyes, as though the whole power of the man's personality backed the words.

"Believe me," she said, with dignity, and not without kindness, "it is not I who would revive such memories."

Sir James nodded quietly.

"I am not impartial; but I am well informed. It was my view which affected the judge, and ultimately the Home Office. And since the trial--in quite recent years--I have received a strange confirmation of it which has never been made public. Did Oliver report this to you?"

"He told me certain facts," said Lady Lucy, unwillingly; "but I did not see that they made much difference."

"Perhaps he did not give them the right emphasis," said Sir James, calmly. "Will you allow _me_ to tell you the whole story?--as it appears to me."

Lady Lucy looked distressed.

"Is it worth while," she said, earnestly, "to give yourself so much pain? I cannot imagine that it could alter the view I take of my duty."

Sir James flushed, and sternly straightened himself. It was a well-known gesture, and ominous to many a prisoner in the dock.

"Worth while!" he said. "Worth while!--when your son's future may depend on the judgment you form."

The sharpness of his tone called the red also to Lady Lucy's cheek.

"Can anything that may be said now alter the irrevocable?" she asked, in protest.

"It cannot bring the dead to life; but if you are really more influenced in this matter by the heinousness of the crime itself, by the moral infection, so to speak--that may spring from any kinship with Juliet Sparling or inheritance from her--than by any dread of social disgrace or disadvantage--if that be true!--then for Oliver's sake--for that poor child's sake--you _ought_ to listen to me! There, I can meet you--there, I have much to say."

He looked at her earnestly. The slight, involuntary changes of expression in Lady Lucy, as he was speaking, made him say to himself: "She is _not_ indifferent to the social stigma--she deceives herself!" But he made no sign of his perception; he held her to her word.

She paused, in evident hesitation, saying at last, with some coldness:

"If you wish it, Sir James, of course I am quite ready to listen. I desire to do nothing harshly."

"I will not keep you long."

Bending forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes upon the ground, he thought a moment. When he began to speak, it was in a quiet and perfectly colorless tone.

"I knew Juliet Wentworth first--when she was seventeen. I was on the Midland Circuit, and went down to the Milchester Assizes. Her father was High Sheriff, and asked me, with other barristers of the Circuit, not only to his official dinner in the county town, but to luncheon at his house, a mile or two away. There I saw Miss Wentworth. She made a deep impression on me. After the Assizes were over, I stayed at her father's house and in the neighborhood. Within a month I proposed to her. She refused me. I merely mention these circumstances for the sake of reporting my first impressions of her character. She was very young, and of an extraordinarily nervous and sensitive organization. She used to remind me of Horace's image of the young fawn trembling and starting in the mountain paths at the rustling of a leaf or the movement of a lizard. I felt then that her life might very well be a tragedy, and I passionately desired to be able to protect and help her. However, she would have nothing to do with me, and after a little while I lost sight of her. I did happen to hear that her father, having lost his first wife, had married again, that the girl was not happy at home, and had gone off on a long visit to some friends in the United States. Then for years I heard nothing. One evening, about ten years after my first meeting with her, I read in the evening papers the accounts of a 'Supposed Murder at Brighton.' Next morning Riley & Bonner retained me for the defence. Mr. Riley came to see me, with Mr. Sparling, the husband of the incriminated lady, and it was in the course of my consultation with them that I learned who Mrs. Sparling was. I had to consider whether to take up the case or not; I saw at once it would be a fight for her life, and I accepted it."

"What a terrible--terrible--position!" murmured Lady Lucy, who was shading her eyes with her hand.

Sir James took no notice. His trained mind and sense were now wholly concerned with the presentation of his story.

"The main facts, as I see them, were these. Juliet Wentworth had married--four years before this date--a scholar and archaeologist whom she had met at Harvard during her American stay. Mr. Sparling was an Englishman, and a man of some means who was devoting himself to exploration in Asia Minor. The marriage was not really happy, though they were in love with each other. In both there was a temperament touched with melancholy, and a curious incapacity to accept the common facts of life. Both hated routine, and were always restless for new experience. Mrs. Sparling was brilliant in society. She was wonderfully handsome, in a small slight way; her face was not unlike Miss Curran's picture of Shelley--the same wildness and splendor in the eyes, the same delicacy of feature, the same slight excess of breadth across the cheek-bones, and curly mass of hair. She was odd, wayward, eccentric--yet always lovable and full of charm. He was a fine creature in many ways, but utterly unfit for practical life. His mind was always dreaming of buried treasure--the treasure of the archaeologist: tombs, vases, gold ornaments, papyri; he had the passion of the excavator and explorer.

"They came back to England from America shortly after their marriage, and their child was born. The little girl was three years old when Sparling went off to dig in a remote part of Asia Minor. His wife resented his going; but there is no doubt that she was still deeply in love with him. She herself took a little house at Brighton for the child's sake. Her small startling beauty soon made her remarked, and her acquaintances rapidly increased. She was too independent and unconventional to ask many questions about the people that amused her; she took them as they came--"

"Sir James!--dear Sir James." Lady Lucy raised a pair of imploring hands. "What good can it do that you should tell me all this? It shows that this poor creature had a wild, undisciplined character. Could any one ever doubt it?"

"Wild? undisciplined?" repeated Sir James. "Well, if you think that you have disposed of the mystery of it by those adjectives! For me--looking back--she was what life and temperament and heredity had made her. Up to this point it was an innocent wildness. She could lose herself in art or music; she did often the most romantic and generous things; she adored her child; and but for some strange kink in the tie that bound them, she would have adored her husband. Well!"--he shrugged his shoulders mournfully--"there it is: she was alone--she was beautiful--she had no doubt a sense of being neglected--she was thirsting for some deeper draught of life than had yet been hers--and by the hideous irony of fate she found it--in gambling!--and in the friendship which ruined her!"

Sir James paused. Rising from his chair, he began to pace the large room. The immaculate butler came in, made up the fire, and placed the tea: domestic and comfortable rites, in grim contrast with the story that held the minds of Lady Lucy and her guest. She sat motionless meanwhile; the butler withdrew, and the tea remained untouched.

"Sir Francis and Lady Wing--the two fiends who got possession of her--had been settled at Brighton for about a year. Their debts had obliged them to leave London, and they had not yet piled up a sufficient mountain of fresh ones to drive them out of Brighton. The man was the disreputable son of a rich and hard-working father who, in the usual way, had damned his son by removing all incentives to work, and turning him loose with a pile of money. He had married an adventuress--a girl with a music-hall history, some beauty, plenty of vicious ability, and no more conscience than a stone. They were the centre of a gambling and racing set; but Lady Wing was also a very fine musician, and it was through this talent of hers that she and Juliet Sparling became acquainted. They met, first, at a charity concert! Mrs. Sparling had a fine voice, Lady Wing accompanied her. The Wings flattered her, and professed to adore her. Her absent whimsical character prevented her from understanding what kind of people they were; and in her great ignorance of the world, combined with her love of the romantic and the extreme, she took the persons who haunted their house for Bohemians, when she should have known them--the majority of them--for scoundrels. You will remember that baccarat was then the rage. The Wings played it incessantly, and were very skilful in the decoying and plunder of young men. Juliet Sparling was soon seized by the excitement of the game, and her beauty, her evident good breeding and good faith, were of considerable use to the Wings' _menage_. Very soon she had lost all the money that her husband had left to her credit, and her bankers wrote to notify her that she was overdrawn. A sudden terror of Sparling's displeasure seized her; she sold a bracelet, and tried to win back what she had lost. The result was only fresh loss, and in a panic she played on and on, till one disastrous night she got up from