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

he said to her:

"A fine prophecy! But I had a letter this morning from another Italian writer. It contains the following passage: 'The soul of this nation is dead. The old enthusiasms are gone. We have the most selfish, the most cynical _bourgeoisie_ in Europe. Happy the men of 1860! They had some illusions left--religion, monarchy, country. We too have men who _would give themselves_--if they could. But to what? No one wants them any more--_nessuno li vuole piu_!' Well, there are the two. Which will you believe?"

"The poet!" said Diana, in a low faltering voice. But it was no cry of triumphant faith. It was the typical cry of our generation before the closed door that openeth not.

* * * * *

"That was good," said Marion Vincent, as the last of the party disappeared through the terrace window, and she and Diana were left alone--"but this is better."

She drew Diana toward her, kissed her, and smiled at her. But the smile wrung Diana's heart.

"Why have you been so ill?--and I never knew!" She wrapped a shawl round her friend, and, holding her hands, gazed into her face.

"It was all so hurried--there was so little time to think or remember. But now there is time."

"Now you are going to rest?--and get well?"

Marion smiled again.

"I shall have holiday for a few months--then rest."

"You won't live any more in the East End? You'll come to me--in the country?" said Diana, eagerly.

"Perhaps! But I want to see all I can in my holiday--before I rest! All my life I have lived in London. There has been nothing to see--but squalor. Do you know that I have lived next door to a fried-fish shop for twelve years? But now--think!--I am in Italy--and we are going to the Alps--and we shall stay on Lake Como--and--and there is no end to our plans--if only my holiday is long enough."

What a ghost face!--and what shining eyes!

"Oh, but make it long enough!" pleaded Diana, laying one of the emaciated hands against her cheek, and smitten by a vague terror.

"That does not depend on me," said Marion, slowly.

"Marion," cried Diana, "tell me what you mean!"

Marion hesitated a moment, then said, quietly:

"Promise, dear, to take it quite simply--just as I tell it. I am so happy. There was an operation--six weeks ago. It was quite successful--I have no pain. The doctors give me seven or eight months. Then my enemy will come back--and my rest with him."

A cry escaped Diana as she buried her face in her friend's lap. Marion kissed and comforted her.

"If you only knew how happy I am!" she said, in a low voice. "Ever since I was a child I seem to have fought--fought hard for every step--every breath. I fought for bread first--and self-respect--for myself--then for others. One seemed to be hammering at shut gates or climbing precipices with loads that dragged one down. Such trouble always!" she murmured, with closed eyes--"such toil and anguish of body and brain! And now it is all over!"--she raised herself joyously--"I am already on the farther side. I am like St. Francis--waiting. And meanwhile I have a dear friend--who loves me. I can't let him marry me. Pain and disease and mutilation--of all those horrors, as far as I can, he shall know nothing. He shall not nurse me; he shall only love and lead me. But I have been thirsting for beautiful things all my life--and he is giving them to me. I have dreamed of Italy since I was a baby, and here I am! I have seen Rome and Florence. We go on to Venice. And next week there will be mountains--and snow-peaks--rivers--forests--flowers--"

Her voice sank and died away. Diana clung to her, weeping, in a speechless grief and reverence. At the same time her own murdered love cried out within her, and in the hot despair of youth she told herself that life was as much finished for her as for this tired saint--this woman of forty--who had borne since her babyhood the burdens of the poor.


CHAPTER XVII

The Whitsuntide recess passed--for the wanderers in Italy--in a glorious prodigality of sun, a rushing of bud and leaf to "feed in air," a twittering of birds, a splendor of warm nights, which for once indorsed the traditional rhapsodies of the poets. The little party of friends which had met at Assisi moved on together to Siena and Perugia, except for Marion Vincent and Frobisher. They quietly bade farewell, and went their way.

When Marion kissed Diana at parting, she said, with emphasis:

"Now, remember!--you are not to come to London! You are not to go to work in the East End. I forbid it! You are to go home--and look lovely--and be happy!"

Diana's eyes gazed wistfully into hers.

"I am afraid--I hadn't thought lately of coming to London," she murmured. "I suppose--I'm a coward. And just now I should be no good to anybody."

"All right. I don't care for your reasons--so long as you go home--and don't uproot."

Marion held her close. She had heard all the girl's story, had shown her the most tender sympathy. And on this strange wedding journey of hers she knew that she carried with her Diana's awed love and yearning remembrance.

But now she was eager to be gone--to be alone again with her best friend, in this breathing-space that remained to them.

So Diana saw them off--the shabby, handsome man, with his lean, proud, sincere face, and the woman, so frail and white, yet so indomitable. They carried various bags and parcels, mostly tied up with string, which represented all their luggage; they travelled with the peasants, fraternizing with them where they could; and it was useless, as Diana saw, to press luxuries on either of them. Many heads turned to look at them, in the streets or on the railway platform. There was something tragic in their aspect; yet not a trace of abjectness; nothing that asked for pity. When Diana last caught sight of them, Marion had a _contadino's_ child on her knee, in the corner of a third-class carriage, and Frobisher opposite--he spoke a fluent Italian--was laughing and jesting with the father. Marion, smiling, waved her hand, and the train bore them away.

* * * * *

The others moved to Perugia, and the hours they spent together in the high and beautiful town were for all of them hours of well-being. Diana was the centre of the group. In the eyes of the three men her story invested her with a peculiar and touching interest. Their knowledge of it, and her silent acceptance of their knowledge, made a bond between her and them which showed itself in a hundred ways. Neither Ferrier, nor Chide, nor young Forbes could ever do too much for her, or think for her too loyally. And, on the other hand, it was her inevitable perception of their unspoken thoughts which gave her courage toward them--a kind of freedom which it is very difficult for women to feel or exercise in the ordinary circumstances of life. She gave them each--gratefully--a bit of her heart, in different ways.

Bobbie had adopted her as elder sister, having none of his own; and by now she knew all about his engagement, his distaste for the Foreign Office, his lack of prospects there, and his determination to change it for some less expensive and more remunerative calling. But Lady Niton was the dragon in the path. She had all sorts of ambitious projects for him, none of which, according to Forbes, ever came off, there being always some better fellow to be had. Diplomacy, in her eyes, was the natural sphere of a young man of parts and family, and as for the money, if he would only show the smallest signs of getting on, she would find it. But in the service of his country Bobbie showed no signs whatever of "getting on." He hinted uncomfortably, in his conversations with Diana, at the long list of his obligations to Lady Niton--money lent, influence exerted, services of many kinds--spread over four or five years, ever since, after a chance meeting in a country-house, she had appointed herself his earthly, providence, and he--an orphan of good family, with a small income and extravagant tastes--had weakly accepted her bounties.

"Now, of course, she insists on my marrying somebody with money. As if any chaperon would look at me! Two years ago I did make up to a nice girl--a real nice girl--and only a thousand a year!--nothing so tremendous, after all. But her mother twice carried her off, in the middle of a rattling ball, because she had engaged herself to me--just like sending a naughty child to bed! And the next time the mother made me take _her_ down to supper, and expounded to me her view of a chaperon's duties: 'My business, Mr. Forbes'--you should have seen her stony eye--'is to _mar_, not to make. The suitable marriages make themselves, or are made in heaven. I have nothing to do with them, except to keep a fair field. The unsuitable marriages have to be prevented, and will be prevented. You understand me?' 'Perfectly,' I said. 'I understand perfectly. To _mar_ is human, and to make divine? Thank you. Have some more jelly? No? Shall I ask for your carriage? Good-night.' But Lady Niton won't believe a word of it! She thinks I've only to ask and have. She'll be rude to Ettie, and I shall have to punch her head--metaphorically. And how can you punch a person's head when they've lent you money?"

Diana could only laugh, and commend him to his Ettie, who, to judge from her letters, was a girl of sense, and might be trusted to get him out of his scrape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Ferrier, the man of affairs, statesman, thinker, and pessimist, found in his new friendship with Diana at once that "agreement," that relaxation, which men of his sort can only find in the society of those women who, without competing with them, can yet by sympathy and native wit make their companionship abundantly worth while; and also, a means, as it were, of vicarious amends, which he very eagerly took.

He was, in fact, ashamed for Lady Lucy; humiliated, moreover, by his own small influence with her in a vital matter. And both shame and humiliation took the form of tender consideration for Lady Lucy's victim.

It did not at all diminish the value of his kindness, that--most humanly--it largely showed itself in what many people would have considered egotistical confessions to a charming girl. Diana found a constant distraction, a constant interest, in listening. Her solitary life with her scholar father had prepared her for such a friend. In the overthrow of love and feeling, she bravely tried to pick up the threads of the old intellectual pleasures. And both Ferrier and Chide, two of the ablest men of their generation, were never tired of helping her thus to recover herself. Chide was an