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

for you tenfold more now!"

"It was I," said Diana, hurriedly--"I have done it. And, please, I would rather it were now all forgotten. Nobody else need know, need they, that he proposed?"

She stroked her friend's hand piteously. Mrs. Roughsedge, foreseeing the storm of gossip that would be sweeping in a day or two through the village and the neighborhood, could not command herself to speak. Her questions--her indignation--choked her. At the end of the conversation, when Diana had described such plans as she had, and the elder lady rose to go, she said, faltering:

"May Hugh come and say good-bye?"

Diana shrank a moment, and then assented. Mrs. Roughsedge folded the girl to her heart, and fairly broke down. Diana comforted her; but it seemed as if her own tears were now dry. When they were parting, she called her friend back a moment.

"I think," she said, steadily, "it would be best now that everybody here should know what my name was, and who I am. Will you tell the Vicar, and anybody else you think of? I shall come back to live here. I know everybody will be kind--" Her voice died away.

The March sun had set and the lamps were lit when Hugh Roughsedge entered the drawing-room where Diana sat writing letters, paying bills, absorbing herself in all the details of departure. The meeting between them was short. Diana was embarrassed, above all, by the tumult of suppressed feeling she divined in Roughsedge. For the first time she must perforce recognize what hitherto she had preferred not to see: what now she was determined not to know. The young soldier, on his side, was stifled by his own emotions--wrath--contempt--pity; and by a maddening desire to wrap this pale stricken creature in his arms, and so protect her from an abominable world. But something told him--to his despair--that she had been in Marsham's arms; had given her heart irrevocably; and that, Marsham's wife or no, all was done and over for him, Hugh Roughsedge.

Yet surely in time--in time! That was the inner clamor of the mind, as he bid her good-bye, after twenty minutes' disjointed talk, in which, finally, neither dared to go beyond commonplace. Only at the last, as he held her hand, he asked her:

"I may write to you from Nigeria?"

Rather shyly, she assented; adding, with a smile:

"But I am a bad letter-writer!"

"You are an angel!" he said, hoarsely, lifted her hand, kissed it, and rushed away.

She was shaken by the scene, and had hardly composed herself again to a weary grappling with business when the front door bell rang once more, and the butler appeared.

"Mr. Lavery wishes to know, miss, if you will see him."

The Vicar! Diana's heart sank. Must she? But some deep instinct--some yearning--interfered, and she bade him be admitted.

Then she stood waiting, dreading some onslaught on the secrets of her mind and heart--some presumption in the name of religion.

The tall form entered, in the close-buttoned coat, the gaunt oblong of the face poked forward, between the large protruding ears, the spectacled eyes blinking.

"May I come in? I will only keep you a few minutes."

She came forward and gave him her hand. The door shut behind him.

"Won't you sit down?"

"I think not. You must be very busy. I only came to say a few words. Miss Mallory!"

He still held her hand. Diana trembled, and looked up.

"--I fear you may have thought me harsh. _I_ blame myself in many respects. Will you forgive me? Mrs. Roughsedge has told me what you wished her to tell me. Before you go, will you still let me give you Christ's message?"

The tears rushed back to Diana's eyes; she looked at him silently.

"'Blessed are they that mourn,'" he said, gently, with a tender dignity, "'for they shall be comforted!'"

Their eyes met. From the man's face and manner everything had dropped but the passion of Christian charity, mingled with a touch of remorse--as though, in what had been revealed to him, the servant had realized some mysterious rebuke of his Lord.

"Remember that!" he went on. "Your mourning is your blessing. God's love will come to you through it--and the sense of fellowship with Christ. Don't cast it from you--don't put it away."

"I know," she said, brokenly. "It is agony, but it is sacred."

His eyes grew dim. She withdrew her hand, and they talked a little about her journey.

"But you will come back," he said to her, presently, with earnestness; "your friends here will think it an honor and a privilege to welcome you."

"Oh yes, I shall come back. Unless--I have some friends in London--East London. Perhaps I might work there."

He shook his head.

"No, you are not strong enough. Come back here. There is God's work to be done in this village, Miss Mallory. Come and put your hand to it. But not yet--not yet."

Then her weariness told him that he had said enough, and he went.

* * * * *

Late that night Diana tore herself from Muriel Colwood, went alone to her room, and locked her door. Then she drew back the curtains, and gazed once more on the same line of hills she had seen rise out of the wintry mists on Christmas morning. The moon was still behind the down, and a few stars showed among the clouds.

She turned away, unlocked a drawer, and, falling upon her knees by the bed, she spread out before her the fragile and time-stained paper that held her mother's last words to her.

"MY LITTLE DIANA--my precious child,--It may be--it will be--years before this reaches you. I have made your father promise to let you grow up without any knowledge or reminder of me. It was difficult, but at last--he promised. Yet there must come a time when it will hurt you to think of your mother. When it does--listen, my darling. Your father knows that I loved him always! He knows--and he has forgiven. He knows too what I did--and how--so does Sir James. There is no place, no pardon for me on earth--but you may still love me, Diana--still love me--and pray for me. Oh, my little one!--they brought you in to kiss me a little while ago--and you looked at me with your blue deep eyes--and then you kissed me--so softly--a little strangely--with your cool lips--and now I have made the nurse lift me up that I may write. A few days--perhaps even a few hours--will bring me rest. I long for it. And yet it is sweet to be with your father, and to hear your little feet on the stairs. But most sweet, perhaps, because it must end so soon. Death makes these days possible, and for that I bless and welcome death. I seem to be slipping away on the great stream--so gently--tired--only your father's hand. Good-bye--my precious Diana--your dying--and very weary

"MOTHER."

The words sank into Diana's young heart. They dulled the smart of her crushed love; they awakened a sense of those forces ineffable and majestic, terrible and yet "to be entreated," which hold and stamp the human life. Oliver had forsaken her. His kiss was still on her lips. Yet he had forsaken her. She must stand alone. Only--in the spirit--she put out clinging hands; she drew her mother to her breast; she smiled into her father's eyes. One with them; and so one with all who suffer! She offered her life to those great Forces; to the hidden Will. And thus, after three days of torture, agony passed into a trance of ecstasy--of aspiration.

* * * * *

But these were the exaltations of night and silence. With the returning day, Diana was again the mere girl, struggling with misery and nervous shock. In the middle of the morning arrived a special messenger with a letter from Marsham. It contained arguments and protestations which in the living mouth might have had some power. That the living mouth was not there to make them was a fact more eloquent than any letter. For the first time Diana was conscious of impatience, of a natural indignation. She merely asked the messenger to say that "there was no answer."

Yet, as they crossed London her heart fluttered within her. One moment her eyes were at the window scanning the bustle of the streets; the next she would force herself to talk and smile with Muriel Colwood.

Mrs. Colwood insisted on dinner at the Charing Cross Hotel. Diana submitted. Afterward they made their way, along the departure platform, to the Dover-Calais train. They took their seats. Muriel Colwood knew--felt it indeed, through every nerve--that the girl with her was still watching, still hoping, still straining each bodily perception in a listening expectancy.

The train was very full, and the platform crowded with friends, luggage, and officials. Upon the tumult the great electric lamps threw their cold ugly light. The roar and whistling of the trains filled the vast station. Diana, meanwhile, sat motionless in her corner, looking out, one hand propping her face.

But no one came. The signal was given for departure. The train glided out. Diana's head slipped back and her eyes closed. Muriel, stifling her tears, dared not approach her.

* * * * *

Northward and eastward from Dover Harbor, sweep beyond sweep, rose the white cliffs that are to the arriving and departing Englishman the symbols of his country.

Diana, on deck, wrapped in veil and cloak, watched them disappear, in mists already touched by the moonrise. Six months before she had seen them for the first time, had fed her eyes upon the "dear, dear land," as cliffs and fields and houses flashed upon the sight, yearning toward it with the passion of a daughter and an exile.

In those six months she had lived out the first chapter of her youth. She stood between two shores of life, like the vessel from which she gazed; vanishing lights and shapes behind her; darkness in front.

"Where lies the land to which the ship must go?
Far, far ahead is all the seamen know!"


Part III

"_Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,