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

/> "You are tired."

"It has been a miserable day."

"Shall I read to you? It would be wise, I think, to put it out of your mind for a while, and come back to it fresh."

"It will be difficult to attend." Her smile was faint and sad. "But I will do my best."

He took up a volume of Dean Church's sermons, and began to read. Presently, as always, his subtler self became conscious of the irony of the situation. He was endeavoring to soothe her trouble by applying to it some of the noblest religious thought of our day, expressed in the noblest language. Such an attempt implied some moral correspondence between the message and the listener. Yet all the time he was conscious himself of cowardice and hypocrisy. What part of the Christian message really applied to Lady Lucy this afternoon but the searching words: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

Yet he read on. The delicate ascetic face of his companion grew calmer; he himself felt a certain refreshment and rest. There was no one else in the world with whom he could sit like this, to whom he could speak or read of the inner life. Lucy Marsham had made him what he was, a childless bachelor, with certain memories in his past life of which he was ashamed--representing the revenge of a strong man's temperament and physical nature. But in the old age she had all but reached, and he was approaching, she was still the one dear and indispensable friend. If she must needs be harsh and tyrannical--well, he must try and mitigate the effects, for herself and others. But his utmost effort must restrain itself within certain limits. He was not at all sure that if offended in some mortal point, she might not do without him. But so long as they both lived, he could not do without her.

* * * * *

Early the following morning Alicia Drake appeared in Eaton Square, and by two o'clock Mrs. Fotheringham was also there. She had rushed up from Leeds by the first possible train, summoned by Alicia's letter. Lady Lucy and her daughter held conference, and Miss Drake was admitted to their counsels.

"Of course, mamma," said Isabel Fotheringham, "I don't at all agree with you in the matter. Nobody is responsible for their mothers and fathers. We make ourselves. But I shall not be sorry if the discovery frees Oliver from a marriage which would have been a rope round his neck. She is a foolish, arrogant, sentimental girl, brought up on the most wrong-headed principles, and she could _never_ have made a decent wife for him. She will, I hope, have the sense to see it--and he will be well out of it."

"Oliver, at present, is very determined," said Lady Lucy, in a tone of depression.

"Oh, well, of course, having just proposed to her, he must, of course, behave like a gentleman--and not like a cad. But she can't possibly hold him to it. You will write to her, mamma--and so shall I."

"We shall make him, I fear, very angry."

"Oliver? Well, there are moments in every family when it is no use shirking. We have to think of Oliver's career, and what he may do for his party, and for reform. You think he proposed to her in that walk on the hill?" said Mrs. Fotheringham, turning to her cousin Alicia.

Alicia woke up from a brown-study of her own. She was dressed with her usual perfection in a gray cloth, just suggesting the change of season. Her felt hat with its plume of feathers lay on her lap, and her hair, slightly loosened by the journey, captured the eye by its abundance and beauty. The violets on her breast perfumed the room, and the rings upon her hands flashed just as much as is permitted to an unmarried girl, and no more. As Mrs. Fotheringham looked at her, she said to herself: "Another Redfern! Really Alicia is too extravagant!"

On that head no one could have reproached herself. A cheap coat and skirt, much worn, a hat of no particular color or shape, frayed gloves and disreputable boots, proclaimed both the parsimony of her father's will and the independence of her opinions.

"Oh, of course he proposed on the hill," replied Alicia, thoughtfully. "And you say, Aunt Lucy, that _he_ guessed--and she knew nothing? Yes!--I was certain he guessed."

"But she knows now," said Lady Lucy; "and, of course, we must all be very sorry for her."

"Oh, of course!" said Isabel. "But she will soon get over it. You won't find it will do her any harm. People will make her a heroine."

"I should advise her not to go about with that cousin," said Alicia, softly.

"The girl who told you?"

"She was an outsider! She told me, evidently, to spite her cousin, who seemed not to have paid her enough attention, and then wanted me to swear secrecy."

"Well, if her mother was a sister of Juliet Sparling, you can't expect much, can you? What a mercy it has all come out so soon! The mess would have been infinitely greater if the engagement had gone on a few weeks."

"My dear," said her mother, gravely, "we must not reckon upon Oliver's yielding to our persuasions."

Isabel smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Oliver condemn himself to the simple life!--to the forfeiture of half a million of money--for the sake of the _beaux yeux_ of Diana Mallory! Oliver, who had never faced any hardship or gone without any luxury in his life!

Alicia said nothing; but the alertness of her brilliant eyes showed the activity of the brain behind them. While Mrs. Fotheringham went off to committees, Miss Drake spent the rest of the day in ministering to Lady Lucy, who found her company, her gossip about Beechcote, her sympathetic yet restrained attitude toward the whole matter, quite invaluable. But, in spite of these aids, the hours of waiting and suspense passed heavily, and Alicia said to herself that Cousin Lucy was beginning to look frail.


CHAPTER XIII

Owing to the scantiness of Sunday trains, Marsham did not arrive at Beechcote village till between nine and ten at night. He left his bag at the village inn, tried to ignore the scarcely concealed astonishment with which the well-known master--or reputed master--of Tallyn was received within its extremely modest walls, and walked up to the manor-house. There he had a short conversation with Mrs. Colwood, who did not propose to tell Diana of his arrival till the morning.

"She does not know that I wrote to you," said the little lady, in her pale distress. "She wrote to you herself this evening. I hope I have not done wrong."

Marsham reassured her, and they had a melancholy consultation. Diana, it seemed, had insisted on getting up that day as usual. She had tottered across to her sitting-room and had spent the day there alone, writing a few letters, or sitting motionless in her chair for hours together. She had scarcely eaten, and Mrs. Colwood was sure she had not slept at all since the shock. It was to be hoped that out of sheer fatigue she might sleep, on this, the second night. But it was essential there should be no fresh excitement, such as the knowledge of Marsham's arrival would certainly arouse.

Mrs. Colwood could hardly bring herself to speak of Fanny Merton. She was, of course, still in the house--sulking--and inclined to blame everybody, her dead uncle in particular, rather than herself. But, mercifully, she was departing early on the Monday morning--to some friends in London.

"If you come after breakfast you will find Miss Mallory alone. I will tell her first thing that you are here."

Marsham assented, and got up to take his leave. Involuntarily he looked round the drawing-room where he had first seen Diana the day before. Then it was flooded by spring sunshine--not more radiant than her face. Now a solitary lamp made a faint spot of light amid the shadows of the panelled walls. He and Mrs. Colwood spoke almost in whispers. The old house, generally so winning and sympathetic, seemed to hold itself silent and aloof--as though in this touch of calamity the living were no longer its master and the dead generations woke. And, up-stairs, Diana lay perhaps in her white bed, miserable and alone, not knowing that he was there, within a few yards of her.

Mrs. Colwood noiselessly opened a garden door and so dismissed him. It was moonlight outside, and instead of returning to the inn he took the road up the hill to the crest of the encircling down. Diverging a little to the left, he found himself on the open hill-side, at a point commanding the village and Beechcote itself, ringed by its ancient woods. In the village two dim lights, far apart, were visible; lights, he thought, of sickness or of birth?--for the poor sleep early. One of the Beechcote windows shone with a dim illumination. Was she there, and sleepless? The sky was full of light; the blanched chalk down on which he stood ran northward in a shining curve, bare in the moon; but in the hollow below, and on the horizon, the dark huddled woods kept watch, guarding the secrets of night. The owls were calling in the trees behind him--some in faint prolonged cry, one in a sharp shrieking note. And at whiles a train rushed upon the ear, held it, and died away; or a breeze crept among the dead beech leaves at his feet. Otherwise not a sound or show of life; Marsham was alone with night and himself.

Twenty-four hours--little more--since on that same hill-side he had held Diana in his arms in the first rapture of love. What was it that had changed? How was it--for he was frank with himself--that the love which had been then the top and completion of his life, the angel of all good-fortune within and without, had become now, to some extent, a burden to be borne, an obligation to be met?

Certainly, he loved her well. But she came to him now, bringing as her marriage portion, not easy joy and success, the full years of prosperity and ambition, but poverty, effort, a certain measure of disgrace, and the perpetual presence of a ghastly and heart-breaking memory. He shrank from this last in a positive and sharp impatience. Why should Juliet Sparling's crime affect him?--depress the vigor and cheerfulness of his life?

As to the effort before him, he felt toward it as a man of weak unpractised muscle who endeavors with straining to raise a physical weight. He would make the effort, but it would tax his whole strength. As he strolled along the down, dismally smoking and pondering, he made himself contemplate the then and now--taking stock, as it were, of his life. In this truth-compelling darkness, apart from the stimulus of his mother's tyranny, he felt himself to be two men: one in love with Diana, the other in love with success and political ambition, and money as the agent and servant of both. He had never for one moment envisaged the first love--Diana--as the alternative to, or substitute for the second love--success. As he had conceived her up to twenty-four hours before, Diana was to be, indeed, one of the chief elements and ministers of