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

pocket, and handed it to his friend. Sir James perused it, and handed it back with a sarcastic lip.

"He imagines you are going to accept that programme?"

"I don't know. But it is clear that the letter implies a threat if I don't."

"A threat of desertion? Let him."

"That letter wasn't written off his own bat. There is a good deal behind it. The plot, in fact, is thickening. From the letters of this morning I see that a regular press campaign is beginning."

He mentioned two party papers which had already gone over to the dissidents--one of some importance, the other of none.

"All right," said Chide; "so long as the _Herald_ and the _Flag_ do their duty. By-the-way, hasn't the _Herald_ got a new editor?"

"Yes; a man called Barrington--a friend of Oliver's."

"Ah!--a good deal sounder on many points than Oliver!" grumbled Sir James.

Ferrier did not reply.

Chide noticed the invariable way in which Marsham's name dropped between them whenever it was introduced in this connection.

As they neared the gate of the town they parted, Chide returning to the hotel, while Ferrier, the most indefatigable of sight-seers, hurried off toward San Pietro.

He spent a quiet hour on the Peruginos, deciding, however, with himself in the end that they gave him but a moderate pleasure; and then came out again into the glow of an incomparable evening. Something in the light and splendor of the scene, as he lingered on the high terrace, hanging over the plain, looking down as though from the battlements, the _flagrantia moenia_ of some celestial city, challenged the whole life and virility of the man.

"Yet what ails me?" he thought to himself, curiously, and quite without anxiety. "It is as though I were listening--for the approach of some person or event--as though a door were open--or about to open--"

What more natural?--in this pause before the fight? And yet politics seemed to have little to do with it. The expectancy seemed to lie deeper, in a region of the soul to which none were or ever had been admitted, except some friends of his Oxford youth--long since dead.

And, suddenly, the contest which lay before him appeared to him under a new aspect, bathed in a broad philosophic air; a light serene and transforming, like the light of the Umbrian evening. Was it not possibly true that he had no future place as the leader of English Liberalism? Forces were welling up in its midst, forces of violent and revolutionary change, with which it might well be he had no power to cope. He saw himself, in a waking dream, as one of the last defenders of a lost position. The day of Utopias was dawning; and what has the critical mind to do with Utopias? Yet if men desire to attempt them, who shall stay them?

Barton, McEwart, Lankester--with their boundless faith in the power of a few sessions and measures to remake this old, old England--with their impatiences, their readiness at any moment to fling some wild arrow from the string, amid the crowded long-descended growths of English life: he felt a strong intellectual contempt both for their optimisms and audacities--mingled, perhaps; with a certain envy.

Sadness and despondency returned. His hand sought in his pocket for the little volume of Leopardi which he had taken out with him. On that king of pessimists, that prince of all despairs, he had just spent half an hour among the olives. Could renunciation of life and contempt of the human destiny go further?

Well, Leopardi's case was not his. It was true, what he had said to Chide. With all drawbacks, he had enjoyed his life, had found it abundantly worth living.

And, after all, was not Leopardi himself a witness to the life he rejected, to the Nature he denounced. Ferrier recalled his cry to his brother: "Love me, Carlo, for God's sake! I need love, love, love!--fire, enthusiasm, life."

"_Fire, enthusiasm, life_." Does the human lot contain these things, or no? If it does, have the gods mocked us, after all?

Pondering these great words, Ferrier strolled homeward, while the outpouring of the evening splendor died from Perusia Augusta, and the mountains sank deeper into the gold and purple of the twilight.

As for love, he had missed it long ago. But existence was still rich, still full of savor, so long as a man's will held his grip on men and circumstance.

All action, he thought, is the climbing of a precipice, upheld above infinity by one slender sustaining rope. Call it what we like--will, faith, ambition, the wish to live--in the end it fails us all. And in that moment, when we begin to imagine how and when it may fail us, we hear, across the sea of time, the first phantom tolling of the funeral bell.

There were times now when he seemed to feel the cold approaching breath of such a moment. But they were still invariably succeeded by a passionate recoil of life and energy. By the time he reached the hotel he was once more plunged in all the preoccupations, the schemes, the pugnacities of the party leader.

* * * * *

A month later, on an evening toward the end of June, Dr. Roughsedge, lying reading in the shade of his little garden, saw his wife approaching. He raised himself with alacrity.

"You've seen her?"

"Yes."

With this monosyllabic answer Mrs. Roughsedge seated herself, and slowly untied her bonnet-strings.

"My dear, you seem discomposed."

"I hate _men_!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, vehemently.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "I apologize for my existence. But you might go so far as to explain."

Mrs. Roughsedge was silent.

"How is that child?" said the doctor, abruptly. "Come!--I am as fond of her as you are."

Mrs. Roughsedge raised her handkerchief.

"That any man with a heart--" she began, in a stifled voice.

"Why you should speculate on anything so abnormal!" cried the doctor, impatiently. "I suppose your remark applies to Oliver Marsham. Is she breaking her own heart?--that's all that signifies."

"She is extremely well and cheerful."

"Well, then, what's the matter?"

Mrs. Roughsedge looked out of the window, twisting her handkerchief.

"Nothing--only--everything seems done and finished."

"At twenty-two?" The doctor laughed, "And it's not quite four months yet since the poor thing discovered that her doll was stuffed with sawdust. Really, Patricia!"

Mrs. Roughsedge slowly shook her head.

"I suspect what it all means," said her husband, "is that she did not show as much interest as she ought in Hugh's performance."

"She was most kind, and asked me endless questions. She made me promise to bring her the press-cuttings and read her his letters. She could not possibly have shown more sympathy."

"H'm!--well, I give it up."

"Henry!"--his wife turned upon him--"I am convinced that poor child will never marry!"

"Give her time, my dear, and don't talk nonsense!"

"It isn't nonsense! I tell you I felt just as I did when I went to see Mary Theed, years ago--you remember that pretty cousin of mine who became a Carmelite nun?--for the first time after she had taken the veil. She spoke to one from another world--it gave one the shivers!--and was just as smiling and cheerful over it as Diana--and it was just as ghastly and unbearable and abominable--as this is."

"Well, then," said the doctor, after a pause, "I suppose she'll take to good works. I hope you can provide her with a lot of hopeless cases in the village. Did she mention Marsham at all?"

"Not exactly. But she asked about the election--"

"The writs are out," interrupted the doctor. "I see the first borough elections are fixed for three weeks hence; ours will be one of the last of the counties; six weeks to-day."

"I told her you thought he would get in."

"Yes--by the skin of his teeth. All his real popularity has vanished like smoke. But there's the big estate--and his mother's money--and the collieries."

"The Vicar tells me the colliers are discontented--all through the district--and there may be a big strike--"

"Yes, perhaps in the autumn, when the three years' agreement comes to an end--not yet. Marsham's vote will run down heavily in the mining villages, but it'll serve--this time. They won't put the other man in."

Mrs. Roughsedge rose to take off her things, remarking, as she moved away, that Marsham was said to be holding meetings nightly already, and that Lady Lucy and Miss Drake were both hard at work.

"Miss Drake?" said the doctor, looking up. "Handsome girl! I saw Marsham in a dog-cart with her yesterday afternoon."

Mrs. Roughsedge flushed an angry red, but she said nothing. She was encumbered with parcels, and her husband rose to open the door for her. He stooped and looked into her face.

"You didn't say anything about _that_, Patricia, I'll be bound!"

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Diana was wandering about the Beechcote garden, with her hands full of roses, just gathered. The garden glowed under the westering sun. In the field just below it the silvery lines of new-cut hay lay hot and fragrant in the quivering light. The woods on the hill-side were at the richest moment of their new life, the earth-forces swelling and rioting through every root and branch, wild roses climbing every hedge--the miracle of summer at its height.

Diana sat down upon a grass-bank, to look and dream. The flowers dropped beside her; she propped her face on her hands.

The home-coming had been hard. And perhaps the element in it she had felt most difficult to bear had been the universal sympathy with which she had been greeted. It spoke from the faces of the poor--the men and women, the lads and girls of the village; with their looks of curiosity, sometimes frank, sometimes furtive or embarrassed. It was more politely disguised in the manners and tones of the gentle people; but everywhere it was evident; and sometimes it was beyond her endurance.

She could not help imagining the talk about her in her absence; the discussion of the case in the country-houses or in the village. To the village people, unused to the fine discussions which turn on motive and environment, and slow to revise an old opinion, she was just the daughter--

She covered her eyes--one hideous word ringing brutally, involuntarily, through her brain. By a kind of miserable obsession the talk in the village public-houses shaped itself in her mind. "Ay, they didn't hang her because she was a lady. She got off, trust her! But if it had been you or me--"

She rose, trembling, trying to shake off the horror, walking vaguely through the garden into the fields, as though to escape it. But the horror pursued her, only in different forms. Among the educated people--people who liked dissecting "interesting" or "mysterious" crimes--there had been no doubt long discussions of Sir James Chide's letter to the _Times_, of Sir Francis Wing's confession. But through all the talk, rustic or refined, she heard the name of her mother bandied; forever soiled and dishonored; with no right to privacy or courtesy