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

earned it; had scorned delights for it; and his powers were at their ripest.

Yet the intrigue, as he knew, was already launched that might, at the last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the mob--ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage and fair hope of victory.

But Lucy Marsham's son!--that defection, realized or threatened, was beginning now to hit him hard. Amid all their disagreements of the past year his pride had always refused to believe that Marsham could ultimately make common cause with the party dissenters. Ferrier had hardly been able to bring himself, indeed, to take the disagreements seriously. There was a secret impatience, perhaps even a secret arrogance, in his feeling. A young man whom he had watched from his babyhood, had put into Parliament, and led and trained there!--that he should take this hostile and harassing line, with threat of worse, was a matter too sore and intimate to be talked about. He did not mean to talk about it. To Lady Lucy he never spoke of Oliver's opinions, except in a half-jesting way; to other people he did not speak of them at all. Ferrier's affections were deep and silent. He had not found it possible to love the mother without loving the son--had played, indeed, a father's part to him since Henry Marsham's death. He knew the brilliant, flawed, unstable, attractive fellow through and through. But his knowledge left him still vulnerable. He thought little of Oliver's political capacity; and, for all his affection, had no great admiration for his character. Yet Oliver had power to cause him pain of a kind that no other of his Parliamentary associates possessed.

The letters of that morning had brought him news of an important meeting in Marsham's constituency, in which his leadership had been for the first time openly and vehemently attacked. Marsham had not been present at the meeting, and Lady Lucy had written, eagerly declaring that he could not have prevented it and had no responsibility. But could the thing have been done within his own borders without, at least, a tacit connivance on his part?

The incident had awakened a peculiarly strong feeling in the elder man, because during the early days of the recess he had written a series of letters to Marsham on the disputed matters that were dividing the party; letters intended not only to recall Marsham's own allegiance, but--through him--to reach two of the leading dissidents--Lankester and Barton--in particular, for whom he felt a strong personal respect and regard.

These letters were now a cause of anxiety to him. His procedure in writing them had been, of course, entirely correct. It is the business of a party leader to persuade. But he had warned Oliver from the beginning that only portions of them could or should be used in the informal negotiations they were meant to help. Ferrier had always been incorrigibly frank in his talk or correspondence with Marsham, ever since the days when as an Oxford undergraduate, bent on shining at the Union, Oliver had first shown an interest in politics, and had found in Ferrier, already in the front rank, the most stimulating of teachers. These remarkable letters accordingly contained a good deal of the caustic or humorous discussion of Parliamentary personalities, in which Ferrier--Ferrier at his ease--excelled; and many passages, besides, in connection with the measures desired by the Left Wing of the party, steeped in the political pessimism, whimsical or serious, in which Ferrier showed perhaps his most characteristic side at moments of leisure or intimacy; while the moods expressed in outbreaks of the kind had little or no effect on his pugnacity as a debater or his skill as a party strategist, in face of the enemy.

But, by George! if they were indiscreetly shown, or repeated, some of those things might blow up the party! Ferrier uncomfortably remembered one or two instances during the preceding year, in which it had occurred to him--as the merest fleeting impression--that Oliver had repeated a saying or had twisted an opinion of his unfairly--puzzling instances, in which, had it been any one else, Ferrier would have seen the desire to snatch a personal advantage at his, Ferrier's, expense. But how entertain such a notion in the case of Oliver! Ridiculous!

He would write no more letters, however. With the news of the Dunscombe meeting the relations between himself and Oliver entered upon a new phase. Toward Lucy's son he must bear himself--politically--henceforward, not as the intimate confiding friend or foster-father, but as the statesman with greater interests than his own to protect. This seemed to him clear; yet the effort to adjust his mind to the new conditions gave him deep and positive pain.

But what, after all, were his grievances compared with those of this soft-eyed girl? It pricked his conscience to remember how feebly he had fought her battle. She must know that he had done little or nothing for her; yet there was something peculiarly gentle, one might have thought pitiful, in her manner toward him. His pride winced under it.

* * * * *

Sir James, too, must have his private talk with Diana--when he took her to the farther extremity of the little terrace, and told her of the results and echoes which had followed the publication, in the _Times_, of Wing's dying statement.

Diana had given her sanction to the publication with trembling and a torn mind. Justice to her mother required it. There she had no doubt; and her will, therefore, hardened to the act, and to the publicity which it involved. But Sir Francis Wing's son was still living, and what for her was piety must be for him stain and dishonor. She did not shrink; but the compunctions she could not show she felt; and, through Sir James Chide, she had written a little letter which had done something to soften the blow, as it affected a dull yet not inequitable mind.

"Does he forgive us?" she asked, in a low voice, turning her face toward the Umbrian plain, with its twinkling lights below, its stars above.

"He knows he must have done the same in our place," said Sir James.

After a minute he looked at her closely under the electric light which dominated the terrace.

"I am afraid you have been going through a great deal," he said, bending over her. "Put it from you when you can. You don't know how people feel for you"

She looked up with her quick smile.

"I don't always think of it--and oh! I am so thankful to _know_! I dream of them often--my father and mother--but not unhappily. They are _mine_--much, much more than they ever were."

She clasped her hands, and he felt rather than saw the exaltation, the tender fire in her look.

All very well! But this stage would pass--must pass. She had her own life to live. And if one man had behaved like a selfish coward, all the more reason to invoke, to hurry on the worthy and the perfect lover.

* * * * *

Presently Marion Vincent appeared, and with her Frobisher, and an unknown man with a magnificent brow, dark eyes of a remarkable vivacity, and a Southern eloquence both of speech and gesture. He proved to be a famous Italian, a poet well known to European fame, who, having married an English wife, had settled himself at Assisi for the study of St. Francis and the Franciscan literature. He became at once the centre of a circle which grouped itself on the terrace, while he pointed to spot after spot, dimly white on the shadows of the moon-lit plain, linking each with the Franciscan legend and the passion of Franciscan poetry. The slopes of San Damiano, the sites of Spello, Bevagna, Cannara; Rivo Torto, the hovering dome of the Portiuncula, the desolate uplands that lead to the Carceri; one after another, the scenes and images--grotesque or lovely--simple or profound--of the vast Franciscan story rose into life under his touch, till they generated in those listening the answer of the soul of to-day to the soul of the Poverello. Poverty, misery, and crime--still they haunt the Umbrian villages and the Assisan streets; the shadows of them, as the north knows them, lay deep and terrible in Marion Vincent's eyes. But as the poet spoke the eternal protest and battle-cry of Humanity swelled up against them--overflowed, engulfed them. The hearts of some of his listeners burned within them.

And finally he brought them back to the famous legend of the hidden church: deep, deep in the rock--below the two churches that we see to-day; where St. Francis waits--standing, with his arms raised to heaven, on fire with an eternal hope, an eternal ecstasy.

"Waits for what?" said Ferrier, under his breath, forgetting his audience a moment. "The death of Catholicism?"

Sir James Chide gave an uneasy cough. Ferrier, startled, looked round, threw his old friend a gesture of apology which Sir James mutely accepted. Then Sir James got up and strolled away, his hands in his pockets, toward the farther end of the terrace.

The poet meanwhile, ignorant of this little incident, and assuming the sympathy of his audience, raised his eyebrows, smiling, as he repeated Ferrier's words:

"The death of Catholicism! No, Signor!--its second birth." And with a Southern play of hand and feature--the nobility of brow and aspect turned now on this listener, now on that--he began to describe the revival of faith in Italy.

"Ten years ago there was not faith enough in this country to make a heresy! On the one side, a moribund organization, poisoned by a dead philosophy; on the other, negation, license, weariness--a dumb thirst for men knew not what. And now!--if St. Francis were here--in every olive garden--in each hill town--on the roads and the by-ways--on the mountains--in the plains--his heart would greet the swelling of a new tide drawing inward to this land--the breath of a new spring kindling the buds of life. He would hear preached again, in the language of a new day, his own religion of love, humility, and poverty. The new faith springs from the very heart of Catholicism, banned and persecuted as new faiths have always been; but every day it lives, it spreads! Knowledge and science walk hand in hand with it; the future is before it. It spreads in tales and poems, like the Franciscan message; it penetrates the priesthood; it passes like the risen body of the Lord through the walls of seminaries and episcopal palaces; through the bulwarks that surround the Vatican itself. Tenderly, yet with an absolute courage, it puts aside old abuses, old ignorances!--like St. Francis, it holds out its hand to a spiritual bride--and the name of that bride is Truth! And in his grave within the rock--on tiptoe--the Poverello listens--the Poverello smiles!"

The poet raised his hand and pointed to the convent pile, towering under the moonlight. Diana's eyes filled with tears. Sir James had come back to the group, his face, with its dignified and strenuous lines, bent--half perplexed, half frowning--on the speaker. And the magic of the Umbrian night stole upon each quickened pulse.

But presently, when the group had broken up and Ferrier was once more strolling beside Diana,