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

Lucy believes it would injure you in Parliament?" faltered Diana.

"No, I don't believe she does. No sane person could."

"Then it's because--of the disgrace? Oliver!--perhaps--you ought to give me up?"

She breathed quick. It stabbed him to see the flush in her cheeks contending with the misery in her eyes. She could not pose, or play a part. What she could not hide from him was just the conflict between her love and her new-born shame. Before that scene on the hill there would have been her girlish dignity also to reckon with. But the greater had swallowed up the less; and from her own love--in innocent and simple faith--she imagined his.

So that when she spoke of his giving her up, it was not her pride that spoke, but only and truly her fear of doing him a hurt--by which she meant a hurt in public estimation or repute. The whole business side of the matter was unknown to her. She had never speculated on his circumstances, and she was constitutionally and rather proudly indifferent to questions of money. Vaguely, of course, she knew that the Marshams were rich and that Tallyn was Lady Lucy's. Beyond, she had never inquired.

This absence of all self-love in her attitude--together with her complete ignorance of the calculation in which she was involved--touched him sharply. It kept him silent about the money; it seemed impossible to speak of it. And yet all the time the thought of it clamored--perhaps increasingly--in his own mind.

He told her that they must stand firm--that she must be patient--that Ferrier would work for them--and Lady Lucy would come round. And she, loving him more and more with every word, seeing in him a god of consolation and of chivalry, trusted him wholly. It was characteristic of her that she did not attempt heroics for the heroics' sake; there was no idea of renouncing him with a flourish of trumpets. He said he loved her, and she believed him. But her heart went on its knees to him in a gratitude that doubled love, even in the midst of her aching bewilderment and pain.

* * * * *

He made her come out with him before luncheon; he talked with her of politics and their future; he did his best to scatter the nightmare in which she moved.

But after awhile he felt his efforts fail. The scenes that held her mind betrayed themselves in her recurrent pallor, the trembling of her hand in his, her piteous, sudden looks. She did not talk of her mother, but he could not presently rouse her to talk of anything else; she sat silent in her chair, gazing before her, her slender hands on her knee, dreaming and forlorn.

Then he remembered, and with involuntary relief, that he must get back to town, and to the House, for an important division. He told her, and she made no protest. Evidently she was already absorbed in the thought of Sir James Chide's visit. But when the time came for him to go she let herself be kissed, and then, as he was moving away, she caught his hand, and held it wildly to her lips.

"Oh, if you hadn't come!--if you hadn't come!" Her tears fell on the hand.

"But I did come!" he said, caressing her. "I was here last night--did Mrs. Colwood tell you? Afterward--in the dark--I walked up to the hill, only to look down upon this house, that held you."

"If I had known," she murmured, on his breast, "I should have slept."

He went--in exaltation; overwhelmed by her charm even in this eclipse of grief, and by the perception of her passion.

But before he was half-way to London he felt that he had been rather foolish and quixotic in not having told her simply and practically what his mother's opposition meant. She must learn it some day; better from him than others. His mother, indeed, might tell her in the letter she had threatened to write. But he thought not. Nobody was more loftily secret as to business affairs than Lady Lucy; money might not have existed for the rare mention she made of it. No; she would base her opposition on other grounds.

These reflections brought him back to earth, and to the gloomy pondering of the situation. Half a million!--because of the ill-doing of a poor neurotic woman--twenty years ago!

It filled him with a curious resentment against Juliet Sparling herself, which left him still more out of sympathy with Diana's horror and grief. It must really be understood, when they married, that Mrs. Sparling's name was never to be mentioned between them--that the whole grimy business was buried out of sight forever.

And with a great and morbid impatience he shook the recollection from him. The bustle of Whitehall, as he drove down it, was like wine in his veins; the crowd and the gossip of the Central Lobby, as he pressed his way through to the door of the House of Commons, had never been so full of stimulus or savor. In this agreeable, exciting world he knew his place; the relief was enormous; and, for a time, Marsham was himself again.

* * * * *

Sir James Chide came in the late afternoon; and in her two hours with him, Diana learned, from lips that spared her all they could, the heart-breaking story of which Fanny had given her but the crudest outlines.

The full story, and its telling, taxed the courage both of hearer and speaker. Diana bore it, as it seemed to Sir James, with the piteous simplicity of one in whose nature grief had no pretences to overcome. The iron entered into her soul, and her quick imagination made her torment. But her father had taught her lessons of self-conquest, and in this first testing of her youth she did not fail. Sir James was astonished at the quiet she was able to maintain, and touched to the heart by the suffering she could not conceal.

Nothing was said of his own relation to her mother's case; but he saw that she understood it, and their hearts moved together. When he rose to take his leave she held his hand in hers with such a look in her eyes as a daughter might have worn; and he, with an emotion to which he gave little outward expression, vowed to himself that henceforward she should lack no fatherly help or counsel that he could give her.

He gathered, with relief, that the engagement persisted, and the perception led him to praise Marsham in a warm Irish way. But he could not find anything hopeful to say of Lady Lucy. "If you only hold to each other, my dear young lady, things will come right!" Diana flushed and shrank a little, and he felt--helplessly--that the battle was for their fighting, and not his.

Meanwhile, as he had seen Mr. Riley, he did his best to prepare her for the letters and enclosures, which had been for twenty years in the custody of the firm, and would reach her on the morrow.

But what he did not prepare her for was the letter from Lady Lucy Marsham which reached Beechcote by the evening post, after Sir James had left.

The letter lay awhile on Diana's knee, unopened. Muriel Colwood, glancing at her, went away with the tears in her eyes, and at last the stumbling fingers broke the seal.

"MY DEAR MISS MALLORY,--I want you to understand why it is that I must oppose your marriage with my son. You know well, I think, how gladly I should have welcomed you as a daughter but for this terrible revelation. As it is, I cannot consent to the engagement, and if it is carried out Oliver must renounce the inheritance of his father's fortune. I do not say this as any vulgar threat. It is simply that I cannot allow my husband's wealth to be used in furthering what he would never have permitted. He had--and so have I--the strongest feeling as to the sacredness of the family and its traditions. He held, as I do, that it ought to be founded in mutual respect and honor, and that children should have round about them the help that comes from the memory of unstained and God-fearing ancestors. Do you not also feel this? Is it not a great principle, to which personal happiness and gratification may justly be sacrificed? And would not such a sacrifice bring with it the highest happiness of all?

"Do not think that I am cruel or hard-hearted. I grieve for you with all my soul, and I have prayed for you earnestly, though, perhaps, you will consider this mere hypocrisy. But I must first think of my son--and of my husband. Very possibly you and Oliver may disregard what I say. But if so, I warn you that Oliver is not indifferent to money, simply because the full development of his career depends on it. He will regret what he has done, and your mutual happiness will be endangered. Moreover, he shrinks from all painful thoughts and associations; he seems to have no power to bear them; yet how can you protect him from them?

"I beg you to be counselled in time, to think of him rather than yourself--if, indeed, you care for him. And should you decide rightly, an old woman's love and gratitude will be yours as long as she lives.

"Believe me, dear Miss Mallory, very sincerely yours,

"LUCY MARSHAM."

Diana dragged herself up-stairs and locked her door. At ten o'clock Mrs. Colwood knocked, and heard a low voice asking to be left alone. She went away wondering, in her astonishment and terror, what new blow had fallen. No sound reached her during the night--except the bluster of a north wind rushing in great gusts upon the hill-side and the woods.


CHAPTER XIV

Late on Monday afternoon Lady Niton paid a call in Eaton Square. She and Lady Lucy were very old friends, and rarely passed a week when they were both in town without seeing each other.

Mr. Ferrier lunched with her on Monday, and casually remarked that Lady Lucy was not as well as usual. Lady Niton replied that she would look her up that afternoon; and