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

and I quarrelled with him all day long. He is the worst Radical I ever met, but--"

"But?--but agreeable?"

"Oh yes," said Diana, uncertainly, and Mrs. Colwood thought she colored--"oh yes--agreeable!"

"And he lives near here?"

"He is the member for the division. Such a crew as we shall meet there!" Diana laughed out. "I had better warn you. But they have been very kind. They called directly they knew I had taken the house. 'They' means Mr. Oliver Marsham and his mother. I _am_ glad I've found his book!" She went off embracing it.

Mrs. Colwood was left with two impressions--one sharp, the other vague. One was that Mr. Oliver Marsham might easily become a personage in the story of which she had just, as it were, turned the first leaf. The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box. Why did it haunt her? It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words--which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a far-off past.


CHAPTER II

During the days immediately following her arrival at Beechcote, Mrs. Colwood applied herself to a study of Miss Mallory and her surroundings--none the less penetrating because the student was modest and her method unperceived. She divined a nature unworldly, impulsive, steeped, moreover, for all its spiritual and intellectual force, which was considerable, in a kind of sensuous romance--much connected with concrete things and symbols, places, persons, emblems, or relics, any contact with which might at any time bring the color to the girl's cheeks and the tears to her eyes. _Honor_--personal or national--the word was to Diana like a spark to dry leaves. Her whole nature flamed to it, and there were moments when she walked visibly transfigured in the glow of it. Her mind was rich, moreover, in the delicate, inchoate lovers, the half-poetic, half-intellectual passions, the mystical yearnings and aspirations, which haunt a pure expanding youth. Such human beings, Mrs. Colwood reflected, are not generally made for happiness. But there were also in Diana signs both of practical ability and of a rare common-sense. Would this last avail to protect her from her enthusiasms? Mrs. Colwood remembered a famous Frenchwoman of whom it was said: "Her _judgment_ is infallible--her _conduct_ one long mistake!" The little companion was already sufficiently attached to Miss Mallory to hope that in this case a natural tact and balance might not be thrown away.

As to suitors and falling in love, the natural accompaniments of such a charming youth, Mrs. Colwood came across no traces of anything of the sort. During her journey with her father to India, Japan, and America, Miss Mallory had indeed for the first time seen something of society. But in the villa beside the Mediterranean it was evident that her life with her father had been one of complete seclusion. She and he had lived for each other. Books, sketching, long walks, a friendly interest in their peasant neighbors--these had filled their time.

It took, indeed, but a short time to discover in Miss Mallory a hunger for society which seemed to be the natural result of long starvation. With her neighbors the Roughsedges she was already on the friendliest terms. To Dr. Roughsedge, who was infirm, and often a prisoner to his library, she paid many small attentions which soon won the heart of an old student. She was in love with Mrs. Roughsedge's gray curls and motherly ways; and would consult her about servants and tradesmen with an eager humility. She liked the son, it seemed, for the parents' sake, nor was it long before he was allowed--at his own pressing request--to help in hanging pictures and arranging books at Beechcote. A girl's manner with young men is always a matter of interest to older women. Mrs. Colwood thought that Diana's manner to the young soldier could not have been easily bettered. It was frank and gay--with just that tinge of old-fashioned reserve which might be thought natural in a girl of gentle breeding, brought up alone by a fastidious father. With all her impetuosity, indeed, there was about her something markedly virginal and remote, which is commoner, perhaps, in Irish than English women. Mrs. Colwood watched the effect of it on Captain Roughsedge. After her third day of acquaintance with him, she said to herself: "He will fall in love with her!" But she said it with compassion, and without troubling to speculate on the lady. Whereas, with regard to the Marsham visit, she already--she could hardly have told why--found herself full of curiosity.

Meanwhile, in the few days which elapsed before that visit was due, Diana was much called on by the country-side. The girl restrained her restlessness, and sat at home, receiving everybody with a friendliness which might have been insipid but for its grace and spontaneity. She disliked no one, was bored by no one. The joy of her home-coming seemed to halo them all. Even the sour Miss Bertrams could not annoy her; she thought them sensible and clever; even the tiresome Mrs. Minchin of Minchin Hall, the "gusher" of the county, who "adored" all mankind and ill-treated her step-daughter, even she was dubbed "very kind," till Mrs. Roughsedge, next day, kindled a passion in the girl's eyes by some tales of the step-daughter. Mrs. Colwood wondered whether, indeed, she _could_ be bored, as Mrs. Minchin had not achieved it. Those who talk easily and well, like Diana, are less keenly aware, she thought, of the platitudes of their neighbors. They are not defenceless, like the shy and the silent.

Nevertheless, it was clear that if Diana welcomed the neighbors with pleasure she often saw them go with relief. As soon as the house was clear of them, she would stand pensively by the fire, looking down into the blaze like one on whom a dream suddenly descends--then would often call her dog, and go out alone, into the winter twilight. From these rambles she would return grave--sometimes with reddened eyes. But at all times, as Mrs. Colwood soon began to realize, there was but a thin line of division between her gayety and some inexplicable sadness, some unspoken grief, which seemed to rise upon her and overshadow her, like a cloud tangled in the woods of spring. Mrs. Colwood could only suppose that these times of silence and eclipse were connected in some way with her father and her loss of him. But whenever they occurred, Mrs. Colwood found her own mind invincibly recalled to that name on the box of papers, which still haunted her, still brought with it a vague sense of something painful and harrowing--a breath of desolation, in strange harmony, it often seemed, with certain looks and moods of Diana. But Mrs. Colwood searched her memory in vain. And, indeed, after a little while, some imperious instinct even forbade her the search--so rapid and strong was the growth of sympathy with the young life which had called her to its aid.

* * * * *

The day of the Marsham visit arrived--a January afternoon clear and frosty. In the morning before they were to start, Diana seemed to be often closeted with her maid, and once in passing Miss Mallory's open door, her companion could not help seeing a consultation going on, and a snowy white dress, with black ribbons, lying on the bed. Heretofore Diana had only appeared in black, the strict black which French dressmakers understand, for it was little more than a year since her father's death. The thought of seeing her in white stirred Mrs. Colwood's expectations.

Tallyn Hall was eight miles from Beechcote. The ladies were to drive, but in order to show Mrs. Colwood something of the country, Diana decreed that they should walk up to the downs by a field path, meeting the carriage which bore their luggage at a convenient point on the main road.

The day was a day of beauty--the trees and grass lightly rimed, the air sparkling and translucent. Nature was held in the rest of winter; but beneath the outward stillness, one caught as it were the strong heart-beat of the mighty mother. Diana climbed the steep down without a pause, save when she turned round from time to time to help her companion. Her slight firm frame, the graceful decision of her movements, the absence of all stress and effort showed a creature accustomed to exercise and open air; Mrs. Colwood, the frail Anglo-Indian to whom walking was a task, tried to rival her in vain; and Diana was soon full of apologies and remorse for having tempted her to the climb.

"Please!--please!"--the little lady panted, as they reached the top--"wasn't this worth it?"

For they stood in one of the famous wood and common lands of Southern England--great beeches towering overhead--glades opening to right and left--ferny paths over green turf-tracks, and avenues of immemorial age, the highways of a vanished life--old earth-works, overgrown--lanes deep-sunk in the chalk where the pack-horses once made their way--gnarled thorns, bent with years, yet still white-mantled in the spring: a wild, enchanted no-man's country, owned it seemed by rabbits and birds, solitary, lovely, and barren--yet from its furthest edge, the high spectator, looking eastward, on a clear night, might see on the horizon the dim flare of London.

Diana's habitual joy broke out, as she stood gazing at the village below, the walls and woods of Beechcote, the church, the plough-lands, and the far-western plain, drawn in pale grays and purples under the declining sun.

"Isn't it heavenly!--the browns--the blues--the soberness, the delicacy of it all? Oh, so much better than any tiresome Mediterranean--any stupid Riviera!--Ah!" She stopped and turned, checked by a sound behind her.

Captain Roughsedge appeared, carrying his gun, his spaniel beside him. He greeted the ladies with what seemed to Mrs. Colwood a very evident start of pleasure, and turned to walk with them.

"You have been shooting?" said Diana.

He admitted it.

"That's what you enjoy?"

He flushed.

"More than anything in the world."

But he looked at his questioner a little askance, as though uncertain how she might take so gross a confession.

Diana laughed, and hoped he got as much as he desired. Then he was not like his father--who cared so much for books?

"Oh, books!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, the fact is, I--I don't often read if I can help it. But of course they make you do a lot of it--with these beastly examinations. They've about spoiled the army with them."

"You wouldn't do it for pleasure?"

"What--reading?" He shook his head decidedly. "Not while I could be doing anything else."

"Not history or poetry?"

He looked at her again nervously. But the girl's face was gay, and he ventured on the truth.

"Well, no, I can't say I do. My father reads a deal of poetry aloud."

"And it bores you?"

"Well, I don't understand it," he said, slowly and candidly.

"Don't you even read the papers?" asked Diana, wondering.

He started.

"Why, I should think I do!" he cried. "I should rather think I do! That's another thing altogether--that's not books."

"Then perhaps you read the debate last night?" She looked at him with a kindling eye.

"Of course I did--every word of it! Do you know what those Radical fellows are up to now? They'll never rest until we've lost the Khaibar--and then the Lord only knows what'll happen."

Diana flew into discussion--quick breath, red cheeks!