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

morning. But I laughed at it! John's letter arrived at the same moment--so happy, so full of plans--"

"Mother!--you don't imagine that a man in Ferrier's position can be upset by an article in a newspaper?"

"I don't know--the _Herald_ was so important--I have heard John say so. Oliver!"--her face worked painfully--"I know you talked with that man that night. You didn't--"

"I didn't say anything of which I am ashamed," he said, sharply, raising his head.

His mother looked at him in silence. Their eyes met in a flash of strange antagonism--as though each accused the other.

A sound behind them made Lady Lucy turn round. Brown was coming over the grass.

"A telegram, sir, for you. Your coachman stopped the boy and sent him here."

Marsham opened it hastily. As he read it his gray and haggard face flushed again heavily.

"Awful news just reached me. Deepest sympathy with you and yours. Should be grateful if I might see you to-day.

"BROADSTONE."

He handed it to his mother, but Lady Lucy scarcely took in the sense of it. When he left her to write his answer, she sat on in the July sun which had now reached the chairs, mechanically drawing her large country hat forward to shield her from its glare--a forlorn figure, with staring absent eyes; every detail of her sharp slenderness, her blanched and quivering face, the elegance of her black dress, the diamond fastening the black lace hat-strings tied under her pointed chin--set in the full and searching illumination of mid-day. It showed her an old woman--left alone.

Her whole being rebelled against what had happened to her. Life without John's letters, John's homage, John's sympathy--how was it to be endured? Disguises that shrouded her habitual feelings and instincts even from herself dropped away. That Oliver was left to her did not make up to her in the least for John's death.

The smart that held her in its grip was a new experience. She had never felt it at the death of the imperious husband, to whom she had been, nevertheless, decorously attached. Her thoughts clung to those last broken words under her hand, trying to wring from them something that might content and comfort her remorse:

"DEAR LUCY,--I feel ill--it may be nothing--Chide and you may read this letter. Broadstone couldn't help it. Tell him so. Bless you--Tell Oliver--Yours, J.F."

The greater part of the letter was all but illegible even by her--but the "bless you" and the "J.F." were more firmly written than the rest, as though the failing hand had made a last effort.

Her spiritual vanity was hungry and miserable. Surely, though she would not be his wife, she had been John's best friend!--his good angel. Her heart clamored for some warmer, gratefuller word--that might justify her to herself. And, instead, she realized for the first time the desert she had herself created, the loneliness she had herself imposed. And with prophetic terror she saw in front of her the daily self-reproach that her self-esteem might not be able to kill.

"_Tell Oliver_--"

Did it mean "if I die, tell Oliver"? But John never said anything futile or superfluous in his life. Was it not rather the beginning of some last word to Oliver that he could not finish? Oh, if her son had indeed contributed to his death!

She shivered under the thought; hurrying recollections of Mr. Barrington's visit, of the _Herald_ article of that morning, of Oliver's speeches and doings during the preceding month, rushing through her mind. She had already expressed her indignation about the _Herald_ article to Oliver that morning, on the drive which had been so tragically interrupted.

"Dear Lady Lucy!"

She looked up. Sir James Chide stood beside her.

The first thing he did was to draw her to her feet, and then to move her chair into the shade.

"You have lost more than any of us," he said, as she sank back into it, and, holding out his hand, he took hers into his warm compassionate clasp. He had never thought that she behaved well to Ferrier, and he knew that she had behaved vilely to Diana; but his heart melted within him at the sight of a woman--and a gray-haired woman--in grief.

"I hear you found Broadstone's letter?" He glanced at it on her lap. "I too have heard from him. The messenger, as soon as he knew I was here, produced a letter for me that he was to have taken on to Lytchett. It is a nice letter--a very nice letter, as far as that goes. Broadstone wanted me to use my influence--with John--described his difficulties--"

Chide's hand suddenly clinched on his knee.

"--If I could only get at that creature, Lord Philip!"

"You think it was the shock--killed him?" The hard slow tears had begun again to drop upon her dress.

"Oh! he has been an ill man since May," said Chide, evasively. "No doubt there has been heart mischief--unsuspected--for a long time. The doctors will know--presently. Poor Broadstone!--it will nearly kill him too."

She held out the letter to him.

"You are to read it;" and then, in broken tones, pointing: "look! he said so."

He started as he saw the writing on the back, and again his hand pressed hers kindly.

"He felt ill," she said, brokenly; "he foresaw it. Those are his last words--his precious last words."

She hid her face. As Chide gave it back to her, his brow and lip had settled into the look which made him so formidable in court. He looked round him abruptly.

"Where is the _Herald_? I hear Mrs. Colwood brought it out."

He searched the grass in vain, and the chairs. Lady Lucy was silent. Presently she rose feebly.

"When--when will they take him away?"

"Directly. The ambulance is coming--I shall go with him. Take my arm." She leaned on him heavily, and as they approached the house they saw two figures step out of it--Marsham and Diana.

Diana came quickly, in her light white dress. Her eyes were red, but she was quite composed. Chide looked at her with tenderness. In the two hours which had passed since the tragedy she had been the help and the support of everybody, writing, giving directions, making arrangements, under his own guidance, while keeping herself entirely in the background. No parade of grief, no interference with himself or the doctors; but once, as he sat by the body in the darkened room, he was conscious of her coming in, of her kneeling for a little while at the dead man's side, of her soft, stifled weeping. He had not said a word to her, nor she to him. They understood each other.

And now she came, with this wistful face, to Lady Lucy. She stood between that lady and Marsham, in her own garden, without, as it seemed to Sir James, a thought of herself. As for him, in the midst of his own sharp grief, he could not help looking covertly from one to the other, remembering that February scene in Lady Lucy's drawing-room. And presently he was sure that Lady Lucy too remembered it. Diana timidly begged that she would take some food--some milk or wine--before her drive home. It was three hours--incredible as it seemed--since she had called to them in the road. Lady Lucy, looking at her, and evidently but half conscious--at first--of what was said, suddenly colored, and refused--courteously but decidedly.

"Thank you. I want nothing. I shall soon be home. Oliver!"

"I go to Lytchett with Sir James, mother. Miss Mallory begs that you will let Mrs. Colwood take you home."

"It is very kind, but I prefer to go alone. Is my carriage there?"

She spoke like the stately shadow of her normal self. The carriage was waiting. Lady Lucy approached Sir James, who was standing apart, and murmured something in his ear, to the effect that she would come to Lytchett that evening, and would bring flowers. "Let mine be the first," she said, inaudibly to the rest. Sir James assented. Such observances, he supposed, count for a great deal with women; especially with those who are conscious of having trifled a little with the weightier matters of the law.

Then Lady Lucy took her leave; Marsham saw her to her carriage. The two left behind watched the receding figures--the mother, bent and tottering, clinging to her son.

"She is terribly shaken," said Sir James; "but she will never give way."

Diana did not reply, and as he glanced at her, he saw that she was struggling for self-control, her eyes on the ground.

"And that woman might have had her for daughter!" he said to himself, divining in her the rebuff of some deep and tender instinct.

Marsham came back.

"The ambulance is just arriving."

Sir James nodded, and turned toward the house. Marsham detained him, dropping his voice.

"Let me go with him, and you take my fly."

Sir James frowned.

"That is all settled," he said, peremptorily. Then he looked at Diana. "I will see to everything in-doors. Will you take Miss Mallory into the garden?"

Diana submitted; though, for the first time, her face reddened faintly. She understood that Sir James wished her to be out of sight and hearing while they moved the dead.

That was a strange walk together for these two! Side by side, almost in silence, they followed the garden path which had taken them to the downs, on a certain February evening. The thought of it hovered, a ghost unlaid, in both their minds. Instinctively, Marsham guided her by this path, that they might avoid that spot on the farther lawn, where the scattered chairs, the trampled books and papers still showed where Death and Sleep had descended. Yet, as they passed it from a distance he saw the natural shudder run through her; and, by association, there flashed through him intolerably the memory of that moment of divine abandonment in their last interview, when he had comforted her, and she had clung to him. And now, how near she was to him--and yet how infinitely remote! She walked beside him, her step faltering now and then, her head thrown back, as though she craved for air and coolness on her brow and tear-stained eyes. He could not flatter himself that his presence disturbed her, that she was thinking at all about him. As for him, his mind, held as it still was in the grip of catastrophe, and stunned by new compunctions, was still susceptible from time to time of the most discordant and agitating recollections--memories glancing, lightning-quick, through the mind, unsummoned and shattering. Her face in the moonlight, her voice in the great words of her promise--"all that a woman can!"--that wretched evening in the House of Commons when he had finally deserted her--a certain passage with Alicia, in the Tallyn woods--these images quivered, as it were, through nerve and vein, disabling and silencing him.

But presently, to his astonishment, Diana began to talk, in her natural voice, without a trace of preoccupation or embarrassment. She poured out her latest recollections of Ferrier. She spoke, brushing away her tears sometimes, of his visit in the morning, and his talk as he lay beside them on the grass--his recent letters to her--her remembrance of him in Italy.

Marsham listened in silence. What she said was new to him, and often bitter. He had known