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

before this date, in which Marsham himself had been returned; the Chief Whip wanted to assure himself that in case of need it would be repeated.

But for the first time in a conversation of this kind Marsham's reply was halting and uncertain. He would do his best, but he could not pledge himself. When the Chief Whip, disappointed and astonished, broke up their conference, Marsham walked into the House after him, in the morbid belief that a large part of his influence and prestige with his party was already gone. Let those fellows, he thought, who imagine that the popular party can be run without money, inform themselves, and not talk like asses!

* * * * *

In the afternoon, during an exciting debate on a subject Marsham had made to some extent his own, and in which he was expected to speak, two letters were brought to him. One was from Diana. He put it into his pocket, feeling an instinctive recoil--with his speech in sight--from the emotion it must needs express and arouse. The other was from the chairman of a Committee in Dunscombe, the chief town of his division. The town was, so far, without any proper hall for public meetings. It was proposed to build a new Liberal Club with a hall attached. The leading local supporter of the scheme wrote--with apologies--to ask Marsham what he was prepared to subscribe. It was early days to make the inquiry, but--in confidence--he might state that he was afraid local support for the scheme would mean more talk than money. Marsham pondered the letter gloomily. A week earlier he would have gone to his mother for a thousand pounds without any doubt of her reply.

It was just toward the close of the dinner-hour that Marsham caught the Speaker's eye. Perhaps the special effort that had been necessary to recall his thoughts to the point had given his nerves a stimulus. At any rate, he spoke unusually well, and sat down amid the cheers of his party, conscious that he had advanced his Parliamentary career. A good many congratulations reached him during the evening; he "drank delight of battle with his peers," for the division went well, and when he left the House at one o'clock in the morning it was in a mood of tingling exhilaration, and with a sense of heightened powers.

It was not till he reached his own room, in his mother's hushed and darkened house, that he opened Diana's letter.

The mere sight of it, as he drew it out of his pocket, jarred upon him strangely. It recalled to him the fears and discomforts, the sense of sudden misfortune and of ugly associations, which had been, for a time, obliterated in the stress and interest of politics. He opened it almost reluctantly, wondering at himself.

"MY DEAR OLIVER,--This letter from your mother reached me last night. I don't know what to say, though I have thought for many hours. I ought not to do you this great injury; that seems plain to me. Yet, then, I think of all you said to me, and I feel you must decide. You must do what is best for your future and your career; and I shall never blame you, _whatever_ you think right. I wish I had known, or realized, the whole truth about your mother when you were still here. It was my stupidity.

"I have no claim--none--against what is best for you. Just two words, Oliver!--and I think they _ought_ to be 'Good-bye.'

"Sir James Chide came after you left, and was most dear and kind. To-day I have my father's letter--and one from my mother--that she wrote for me--twenty years ago. I mustn't write any more. My eyes are so tired.

"Your grateful DIANA."

He laid down the blurred note, and turned to the enclosure. Then he read his mother's letter. And he had imagined, in his folly, that his mother's refinement would at least make use of some other weapon than the money! Why, it was _all_ money!--a blunderbuss of the crudest kind, held at Diana's head in the crudest way. This is how the saints behave--the people of delicacy--when it comes to a pinch! He saw his mother stripped of all her pretensions, her spiritual airs, and for the first time in his life--his life of unwilling subordination--he dared to despise her.

But neither contempt nor indignation helped him much. How was he to answer Diana? He paced up and down for an hour considering it, then sat down and wrote.

His letter ran as follows:

"DEAREST DIANA,--I asked you to be my wife, and I stand by my word. I did not like to say too much about my mother's state of mind when we were together yesterday, but I am afraid it is very true that she will withdraw her present allowance to me, and deprive me of the money which my father left. Most unjustly, as it has always seemed to me, she has complete control over it. Never mind. I must see what can be done. No doubt my political career will be, for a time, much affected. We must hope it will only be for a time.

"Ferrier and Sir James believe that my mother cannot maintain her present attitude. But I do not, alack! share their belief. I realize, as no one can who does not live in the same house with her, the strength and obstinacy of her will. She will, I suppose, leave my father's half-million to some of the charitable societies in which she believes, and we must try and behave as though it had never existed. I don't regret it for myself. But, of course, there are many public causes one would have liked to help.

"If I can, I will come down to Beechcote on Saturday again. Meanwhile, do let me urge you to take care of your health, and not to dwell too much on a past that nothing can alter. I understand, of course, how it must affect you; but I am sure it will be best--best, indeed, for us both--that you should now put it as much as possible out of your mind. It may not be possible to hide the sad truth. I fear it will not be. But I am sure that the less said--or even thought--about it, the better. You won't think me unkind, will you?

"You will see a report of my speech in the debate to-morrow. It certainly made an impression, and I must manage, if I can, to stick to Parliament. But we will consult when we meet.

"Your most loving OLIVER."

As he wrote it Marsham had been uncomfortably conscious of another self beside him--mocking, or critical.

"I don't regret it for myself." Pshaw! What was there to choose between him and his mother? There, on his writing-table, lay a number of recent bills, and some correspondence as to a Scotch moor he had persuaded his mother to take for the coming season. There was now to be an end, he supposed, to the expenditure which the bills represented, and an end to expensive moors. "I don't regret it for myself." Damned humbug! When did any man, brought up in wealth, make the cold descent to poverty and self-denial without caring? Yet he let the sentence stand. He was too sleepy, too inert, to rewrite it.

And how cold were all his references to the catastrophe! He groaned as he thought of Diana--as though he actually saw the vulture gnawing at the tender breast. Had she slept?--had the tears stopped? Let him tear up the beastly thing, and begin again!

No. His head fell forward on his arm. Some dull weight of character--of disillusion--interposed. He could do no better. He shut, stamped, and posted what he had written.

* * * * *

At mid-day, in her Brookshire village, Diana received the letter--with another from London, in a handwriting she did not know.

When she had read Marsham's it dropped from her hand. The color flooded her cheeks--as though the heart leaped beneath a fresh blow which it could not realize or measure. Was it so she would have written to Oliver if--

She was sitting at her writing-table in the drawing-room. Her eyes wandered through the mullioned window beside her to the hill-side and the woods. This was Wednesday. Four days since, among those trees, Oliver had spoken to her. During those four days it seemed to her that, in the old Hebrew phrase, she had gone down into the pit. All the nameless dreads and terrors of her youth, all the intensified fears of the last few weeks, had in a few minutes become real and verified--only in a shape infinitely more terrible than any fear among them all had ever dared to prophesy. The story of her mother--the more she knew of it, the more she realized it, the more sharply it bit into the tissues of life; the more it seemed to set Juliet Sparling and Juliet Sparling's child alone by themselves--in a dark world. Diana had never yet had the courage to venture out-of-doors since the news came to her; she feared to see even her old friends the Roughsedges, and had been invisible to them since the Saturday; she feared even the faces of the village children.

All through she seemed to have been clinging to Marsham's supporting hand as to the clew which might--when nature had had its way--lead her back out of this labyrinth of pain. But surely he would let her sorrow awhile!--would sorrow with her. Under the strange coldness and brevity of his letter, she felt like the children in the market-place of old--"We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."

Yet if her story was not to be a source of sorrow--of divine pity--it could only be a source of disgrace and shame. Tears might wash it out! But to hate and resent it--so