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

kept Mr. Lavery's talk to herself.

Presently, as the evening fell, Diana sitting under the limes watching the shadows lengthen on the new-mown grass, wondered whether she had any mind--any opinions of her own at all. Her father; Oliver; Mr. Ferrier; Marion Vincent--she saw and felt with them all in turn. In the eyes of a Mrs. Fotheringham could anything be more despicable?

The sun was sinking when she stole out of the garden with some flowers and peaches for Betty Dyson. Her frequent visits to Betty's cottage were often the bright spots in her day. With her, almost alone among the poor people, Diana was conscious of no greedy curiosity behind the spoken words. Yet Betty was the living chronicle of the village, and what she did not know about its inhabitants was not worth knowing.

Diana found her white and suffering as usual, but so bubbling with news that she had no patience either with her own ailments or with the peaches. Waving both aside, she pounced imperiously upon her visitor, her queer yellowish eyes aglow with "eventful living."

"Did you hear of old Tom Murthly dropping dead in the medder last Thursday?"

Diana had just heard of the death of the eccentric old man who for fifty years--bachelor and miser--had inhabited a dilapidated house in the village.

"Well, he did. Yo may take it at that--yo may." (A mysterious phrase, equivalent, no doubt, to the masculine oath.) "'Ee 'ad a lot of money--Tom 'ad. Them two 'ouses was 'is what stands right be'ind Learoyds', down the village."

"Who will they go to now, Betty?"

Betty's round, shapeless countenance, furrowed and scarred by time, beamed with the joy of communication.

"_Chancery!_" she said, nodding. "Chancery'll 'ave 'em, in a twelvemonth's time from now, if Mrs. Jack Murthly's Tom--young Tom--don't claim 'em from South Africa--and the Lord knows where _ee_ is!"

Diana tried to follow, held captive by a tyrannical pair of eyes.

"And what relation is Mrs. Jack Murthly to the man who died?"

"Brother's wife!" said Betty, sharply. "I thought you'd ha' known that."

"But if nothing is heard of the son, Betty--of young Tom--Mrs. Murthly's two daughters will have the cottages, won't they?"

Betty's scorn made her rattle her stick on the flagged floor.

"They ain't daughters!--they're only 'alves."

"Halves?" said Diana, bewildered.

"Jack Murthly worn't their father!" A fresh shower of nods. "Yo may take it at that!"

"Well, then, who--?"

Betty bent hastily forward--Diana had placed herself on a stool before her--and, thrusting out her wrinkled lips, said, in a hoarse whisper:

"Two fathers!"

There was a silence.

"I don't understand, Betty," said Diana, softly.

"Jack was '_is_ father, all right--Tom's in South Africa. But he worn't _their_ father, Mrs. Jack bein' a widder--or said so. They're only 'alves--and 'alves ain't no good in law; so inter Chancery those 'ouses 'll go, come a twelvemonth--yo may take it at that!" Diana laughed--a young spontaneous laugh--the first since she had come home. She kept Betty gossiping for half an hour, and as the stream of the village life poured about her, in Betty's racy speech, it was as though some primitive virtue entered into her and cheered her--some bracing voice from the Earth-spirit--whose purpose is not missed

"If birth proceeds--if things subsist."

She rose at last, held Betty's hand tenderly, and went her way, conscious of a return of natural pleasure, such as Italy had never brought her, her heart opening afresh to England and the English life.

Perhaps she would find at home a letter from Mr. Ferrier--her dear, famous friend, who never forgot her, ignorant as she was of the great affairs in which he was plunged. But she meant to be ignorant no longer. No more brooding and dreaming! It was pleasant to remember that Sir James Chide had taken a furnished house--Lytchett Manor--only a few miles from Beechcote, and that Mr. Ferrier was to be his guest there as soon as politics allowed. For her, Diana, that was well, for if he were at Tallyn they could have met but seldom if at all.

She had made a round through a distant and sequestered lane in order to prolong her walk. Presently she came to a deep cutting in the chalk, where the road, embowered in wild roses and clematis, turned sharply at the foot of a hill. As she approached the turn she heard sounds--a man's voice. Her heart suddenly failed her. She looked to either side--no gate, no escape. Nothing for it but to go forward. She turned the corner.

Before her was a low pony carriage which Alicia Drake was driving. It was drawn up by the side of the road, and Alicia sat in it, laughing and talking, while Oliver Marsham gathered a bunch of wild roses from the road-side. As Diana appeared, and before either of them saw her, Marsham returned to the carriage, his hands full of flowers.

"Will that content you? I have torn myself to ribbons for you!"

"Oh, don't expect too much gratitude--_Oliver!_" The last word was low and hurried. Alicia gathered up the reins hastily, and Marsham looked round him--startled.

He saw a tall and slender girl coming toward them, accompanied by a Scotch collie. She bowed to him and to Alicia, and passed quickly on.

"Never mind any more roses," said Alicia. "We ought to get home."

They drove toward Tallyn in silence. Alicia's startling hat of white muslin framed the red gold of her hair, and the brilliant color--assisted here and there by rouge--of her cheeks and lips. She said presently, in a sympathetic voice:

"How sorry one is for her!"

Marsham made no reply. They passed into the darkness of overarching trees, and there, veiled from him in the green twilight, Alicia no longer checked the dancing triumph in her eyes.


CHAPTER XVIII

One Saturday in early August, some weeks after the incident described in the last chapter, Bobbie Forbes, in the worst inn's worst fly, such being the stress and famine of election time, drove up to the Tallyn front door. It was the day after the polling, and Tallyn, with its open windows and empty rooms, had the look of a hive from which the bees have swarmed. According to the butler, only Lady Niton was at home, and the household was eagerly awaiting news of the declaration of the poll at Dunscombe Town Hall. Lady Niton, indeed, was knitting in the drawing-room.

"Capital!--to find you alone," said Bobbie, taking a seat beside her. "All the others at Dunscombe, I hear. And no news yet?"

Lady Niton, who had given him one inky finger--(a pile of letters just completed lay beside her)--shook her head, looking him critically up and down the while.

The critical eye, however, was more required in her own case. She was untidily dressed, as usual, in a shabby black gown; her brown "front" was a little displaced, and her cap awry; and her fingers had apparently been badly worsted in a struggle with her pen. Yet her diminutive figure in the drawing-room--such is the power of personality--made a social place of it at once.

"I obeyed your summons," Bobbie continued, "though I'm sure Lady Lucy didn't want to invite me with all this hubbub going on. Well, what do you prophesy? They told me at the station that the result would be out by two o'clock. I very nearly went to the Town Hall, but the fact is everybody's so nervous I funked it. If Oliver's kicked out, the fewer tears over spilled milk the better."

"He won't be kicked out."

"Don't make too sure! I have been hearing the most dismal reports. The Ferrierites hate him much worse than if he'd gone against them openly. And the fellows he really agrees with don't love him much better."

"All the same he will get in; and if he don't get office now he will in a few years."

"Oliver must be flattered that you believe in him so."

"I don't believe in him at all," said Lady Niton, sharply. "Every country has the politicians it deserves."

Bobbie grinned.

"I don't find you a democrat yet."

"I'm just as much of one as anybody in this house, for all their fine talk. Only they pretend to like being governed by their plumbers and gas-fitters, and I don't."

"I hear that Oliver's speeches have been extremely good."

"H'm--all about the poor," said Lady Niton, releasing her hand from the knitting-needles, and waving it scornfully at the room in which they sat. "Well, if Oliver were to tell me from now till doomsday that his heart bled for the poor, I shouldn't believe him. It doesn't bleed. He is as comfortable in his middle region as you or I."

Bobbie laughed.

"Now look here, I'm simply famished for gossip, and I must have it." Lady Niton's ball of wool fell on the floor. Bobbie pounced upon it, and put it in his pocket. "A hostage! Surrender--and talk to me! Do you belong to the Mallory faction--or don't you?"

"Give me my ball, sir--and don't dare to mention that girl's name in this house."

Bobbie opened his eyes.

"I say!--what did you mean by writing to me like that if you weren't on the right side?"

"What do you mean?"

"You can't have gone over to Lady Lucy and the Fotheringham woman!"

Lady Niton looked at him with a queer expression of contempt in her tanned and crumpled face.

"Is that the only reason you can imagine for my not permitting you to talk of Diana Mallory in this house?"

Bobbie, looked puzzled. Then a light broke.

"I see! You mean the house isn't good enough? Precisely! What's up. Alicia? _No_!"

Lady Niton laughed.

"He has been practically engaged to her for two years. He didn't know it, of course--he hadn't an idea of it. But Alicia knew it. Oh! she allowed him his amusements. The Mallory girl was one of them. If the Sparling story hadn't broken it off, something else would. I don't believe Alicia ever alarmed herself."

"Are they engaged?"

"Not formally. I dare say it won't be announced till the autumn," said his companion, indifferently. Then seeing that Bobbie's attention was diverted, she made a dash with one skinny hand at his coat-pocket, abstracted the ball of wool, and triumphantly returned to her knitting.

"Mean!" said Bobbie. "You caught me off guard. Well, I wish them joy. Of course, I've always liked Marsham, and I'm very sorry he's got himself into such a mess. But as for Alicia, there's no love lost between us. I hear Miss Mallory's at Beechcote."

Lady Niton replied that she had only been three days in the house, that she had asked--ostentatiously--for a carriage the day before to take her to call at Beechcote, and had been refused. Everything, it seemed, was wanted for election purposes. But she understood that Miss Mallory was quite well and not breaking her heart at all. At the present moment she was the most popular person in Brookshire, and would be the most petted, if she would allow it. But she and Mrs. Colwood lived a very quiet life, and were never to be seen at the tea and garden parties in which the neighborhood abounded.

"Plucky of her to come back here!" said Bobbie. "And how's Lady Lucy?"

Lady Niton moved impatiently.

"Lucy would be all right if her son wouldn't join a set of traitors in jockeying the man who put