The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 18

"Oh! my goodness," cried Diana, hiding her face--and then raising it, crimson. "The Miss Bertrams, too! Why, it's only six weeks since I first came to this place, and now I'm setting it by the ears!"

Her aspect of mingled mirth and dismay had in it something so childish and disarming that Mrs. Roughsedge could only wish the Vicar had been there to see. His heretical parishioner fell into meditation.

"What can I do? If I could only be sure that he would never say things like that to me again--"

"But he will!" said Captain Roughsedge. "Don't give in, Miss Mallory."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, as the door opened, "shall we ask Mr.

Marsham?"

Diana turned with a startled movement. It was evident that Marsham was not expected. But Mrs. Roughsedge also inferred from a shrewd observation of her hostess that he was not unwelcome. He had, in fact, looked in on his way home from hunting to give a message from his mother; that, at least, was the pretext. Hugh Roughsedge, reading him with a hostile eye, said to himself that if it hadn't been Lady Lucy it would have been something else. As it happened, he was quite as well aware as his mother that Marsham's visits to Beechcote of late had been far more frequent than mere neighborliness required.

Marsham was in hunting dress, and made his usual handsome and energetic impression. Diana treated him with great self-possession, asking after Mr. Ferrier, who had just returned to Tallyn for the last fortnight before the opening of Parliament, and betraying to the Roughsedges that she was already on intimate terms with Lady Lucy, who was lending her patterns for her embroidery, driving over once or twice a week, and advising her about various household affairs. Mrs. Roughsedge, who had been Diana's first protector, saw herself supplanted--not without a little natural chagrin.

The controversy of the moment was submitted to Marsham, who decided hotly against the Vicar, and implored Diana to stand firm. But somehow his intervention only hastened the compunction that had already begun to work in her. She followed the Roughsedges to the door when they departed.

"What must I do?" she said, sheepishly, to Mrs. Roughsedge. "Write to him?"

"The Vicar? Oh, dear Miss Mallory, the doctor will settle it. You _would_-change the books?"

"Mother!" cried Hugh Roughsedge, indignantly, "we're all bullied--you know we are--and now you want Miss Mallory bullied too."

"'Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow,'" laughed Marsham, in the background, as he stood toying with his tea beside Mrs. Colwood.

Diana shook her head.

"I can't be friends with him," she said, naively, "for a long long time.

But I'll rewrite my list. And _must_ I go and call on the Miss Bertrams to-morrow?"

Her mock and smiling submission, as she stood, slender and lovely, amid the shadows of the hall, seemed to Hugh Roughsedge, as he looked back upon her, the prettiest piece of acting. Then she turned, and he knew that she was going back to Marsham. At the same moment he saw Mrs.

Colwood's little figure disappearing up the main stairway. Frowning and silent, he followed his mother out of the house.

Diana looked round rather wistfully for Mrs. Colwood as she re-entered the room; but that lady had many letters to write.

Marsham noticed Mrs. Colwood's retreat with a thrill of pleasure. Yet even now he had no immediate declaration in his mind. The course that he had marked out for himself had been exactly followed. There had been no "hurrying it." Only in these weeks before Parliament, while matters of great moment to his own political future were going forward, and his partic.i.p.ation in them was not a whit less cool and keen than it had always been, he had still found abundant time for the wooing of Diana.

He had a.s.sumed a kind of guardian's att.i.tude in the matter of her relations to the Vavasours--who in business affairs had proved both greedy and muddle-headed; he had flattered her woman's vanity by the insight he had freely allowed her into the possibilities and the difficulties of his own Parliamentary position, and of his relations to Ferrier; and he had kept alive a kind of perpetual interest and flutter in her mind concerning him, by the challenge he was perpetually offering to the opinions and ideas in which she had been brought up--while yet combining it with a respect toward her father's memory, so courteous, and, in truth, sincere, that she was alternately roused and subdued.

On this February evening, it seemed to his exultant sense, as Diana sat chatting to him beside the fire, that his power with her had substantially advanced, that by a hundred subtle signs--quite involuntary on her part--she let him understand that his personality was pressing upon hers, penetrating her will, transforming her gay and fearless composure.

For instance, he had been lending her books representing his own political and social opinions. To her they were anathema. Her father's soul in her regarded them as forces of the pit, rising in ugly clamor to drag down England from her ancient place. But to hate and shudder at them from afar had been comparatively easy. To battle with them at close quarters, as presented by this able and courteous antagonist, who pa.s.sed so easily and without presumption from the opponent into the teacher, was a more teasing matter. She had many small successes and side-victories, but they soon ceased to satisfy her, in presence of the knowledge and ability of a man who had been ten years in Parliament, and had made for himself--she began to understand--a considerable position there. She was hotly loyal to her own faiths; but she was conscious of what often seemed to her a dangerous and demoralizing interest in his! A demoralizing pleasure, too, in listening--in sometimes laying aside the watchful, hostile air, in showing herself sweet, yielding, receptive.

These melting moods, indeed, were rare. But no one watching the two on this February evening could have failed to see in Diana signs of happiness, of a joyous and growing dependence, of something that refused to know itself, that masqueraded now as this feeling, now as that, yet was all the time stealing upon the sources of life, bewitching blood and brain. Marsham lamented that in ten days he and his mother must be in town for the Parliamentary season. Diana clearly endeavored to show nothing more than a polite regret. But in the half-laughing, half-forlorn requests she made to him for advice in certain practical matters which must be decided in his absence she betrayed herself; and Marsham found it amazingly sweet that she should do so. He said eagerly that he and Lady Lucy must certainly come down to Tallyn every alternate Sunday, so that the various small matters he had made Diana intrust to him--the finding of a new gardener; negotiations with the Vavasours, connected with the cutting of certain trees--or the repairs of a ruinous gable of the house--should still be carried forward with all possible care and speed. Whereupon Diana inquired how such things could possibly engage the time and thought of a politician in the full stream of Parliament.

"They will be much more interesting to me," said Marsham, in a low steady voice, "than anything I shall be doing in Parliament."

Diana rose, in sudden vague terror--as though with the roar in her ears of rapids ahead--murmured some stammering thanks, walked across the room, lowered a lamp which was flaming, and recovered all her smiling self-possession. But she talked no more of her own affairs. She asked him, instead, for news of Miss Vincent.

Marsham answered, with difficulty. If there had been sudden alarm in her, there had been a sudden tumult of the blood in him. He had almost lost his hold upon himself; the great words had been almost spoken.

But when the conversation had been once more guided into normal channels, he felt that he had escaped a risk. No, no, not yet! One false step--one check--and he might still find himself groping in the dark.

Better let himself be missed a little!--than move too soon. As to Roughsedge--he had kept his eyes open. There was nothing there.

So he gave what news of Marion Vincent he had to give. She was still in Bethnal Green working at her inquiry, often very ill, but quite indomitable. As soon as Parliament began she had promised to do some secretarial work for Marsham on two or three mornings a week.

"I saw her last week," said Marsham. "She always asks after you."

"I am so glad! I fell in love with her. Surely"--Diana hesitated--"surely--some day--she will marry Mr. Frobisher?"

Marsham shook his head.

"I think she feels herself too frail."

Diana remembered that little scene of intimacy--of tenderness--and Marsham's words stirred about her, as it were, winds of sadness and renunciation. She shivered under them a little, feeling, almost guiltily, the glow of her own life, the pa.s.sion of her own hopes.

Marsham watched her as she sat on the other side of the fire, her beautiful head a little bent and pensive, the firelight playing on the oval of her cheek. How glad he was that he had not spoken!--that the barrier between them still held. A man may find heaven or h.e.l.l on the other side of it. But merely to have crossed it makes life the poorer.

One more of the great, the irrevocable moments spent and done--yielded to devouring time. He hugged the thought that it was still before him.

The very timidity and anxiety he felt were delightful to him; he had never felt them before. And once more--involuntarily, disagreeably--he thought of Alicia Drake, and of the pa.s.sages between them in the preceding summer.

Alicia was still at Tallyn, and her presence was, in truth, a constant embarra.s.sment to him. Lady Lucy, on the contrary, had a strong sense of family duty toward her young cousin, and liked to have her for long visits at Tallyn or in London. Marsham believed his mother knew nothing of the old flirtation between them. Alicia, indeed, rarely showed any special interest in him now. He admitted her general discretion. Yet occasionally she would put in a claim, a light word, now mocking, now caressing, which betrayed the old intimacy, and Marsham would wince under it. It was like a creeping touch in the dark. He had known what it was to feel both compunction and a kind of fear with regard to Alicia.

But, normally, he told himself that both feelings were ridiculous. He had done nothing to compromise either himself or her. He had certainly flirted with Alicia; but he could not honestly feel that the chief part in the matter had been his.

These thoughts pa.s.sed in a flash. The clock struck, and regretfully he got up to take his leave. Diana rose, too, with a kindling face.

"My cousin will be here directly!" she said, joyously.

"Shall I find her installed when I come next time?"

"I mean to keep her as long--as long--as ever I can!"

Marsham held her hand close and warm a moment, felt her look waver a second beneath his, and then, with a quick and resolute step, he went his way.

He was just putting on his coat in the outer hall when there was a sound of approaching wheels. A carriage stopped at the door, to which the butler hurried. As he opened it Marsham saw in the light of the porch lamp the face of a girl peering out of the carriage window. It was a little awkward. His own horse was held by a groom on the other side of the carriage. There was nothing to do but to wait till the young lady had pa.s.sed. He drew to one side.

Miss Merton descended. There was just time for Marsham to notice an extravagant hat, smothered in ostrich feathers, a large-featured, rather handsome face, framed in a tangled ma.s.s of black hair, a pair of sharp eyes that seemed to take in hungrily all they saw--the old hall, the butler, and himself, as he stood in the shadow. He heard the new guest speak to the butler about her luggage. Then the door of the inner hall opened, and he caught Diana's hurrying feet, and her cry--

"f.a.n.n.y!"

He pa.s.sed the lady and escaped. As he rode away into the darkness of the lanes he was conscious of an impression which had for the moment checked the happy flutter of blood and pulse. Was _that_ the long-expected cousin? Poor Diana! A common-looking, vulgar young woman--with a most unpleasant voice and accent. An unpleasant manner, too, to the servants--half arrogant, half familiar. What a hat!--and what a fringe!--worthy of some young "lidy" in the Old Kent Road! The thought of Diana sitting at table with such a person on equal terms p.r.i.c.ked him with annoyance; for he had all his mother's fastidiousness, though it showed itself in different forms. He blamed Mrs. Colwood--Diana ought to have been more cautiously guided. The thought of all the tender preparation made for the girl was both amusing and repellent.

Miss Merton, he understood, was Diana's cousin on the mother's side--the daughter of her mother's sister. A swarm of questions suddenly arose in his mind--questions not hitherto entertained. Had there been, in fact, a _mesalliance_--some disagreeable story--which accounted, perhaps, for the self-banishment of Mr. Mallory?--the seclusion in which Diana had been brought up? The idea was most unwelcome, but the sight of f.a.n.n.y Merton had inevitably provoked it. And it led on to a good many other ideas and speculations of a mingled sort connected, now with Diana, now with recollections, pleasant and unpleasant, of the eight or ten years which had preceded his first sight of her.

For Oliver Marsham was now thirty-six, and he had not reached that age without at least one serious attempt--quite apart from any pa.s.sages with Alicia Drake--to provide himself with a wife. Some two years before this date he had proposed to a pretty girl of great family and no money, with whom he supposed himself ardently in love. She, after some hesitation, had refused him, and Marsham had had some reason to believe that in spite of his mother's great fortune and his own expectations, his _provenance_ had not been regarded as sufficiently aristocratic by the girl's fond parents. Perhaps had he--and not Lady Lucy--been the owner of Tallyn and its 18,000 a year, things might have been different. As it was, Marsham had felt the affront, as a strong and self-confident man was likely to feel it; and it was perhaps in reaction from it that he had allowed himself those pa.s.sages with Alicia Drake which had, at least, soothed his self-love.

In this affair Marsham had acted on one of the convictions with which he had entered public life--that there is no greater help to a politician than a distinguished, clever, and, if possible, beautiful wife.

Distinction, Radical though he was, had once seemed to him a matter of family and "connection." But after the failure of his first attempt, "family," in the ordinary sense, had ceased to attract him. Personal breeding, intelligence, and charm--these, after all, are what the politician who is already provided with money, wants to secure in his wife; without, of course, any obvious disqualification in the way of family history. Diana, as he had first met her among the woods at Portofino, side by side with her dignified and gentlemanly father, had made upon him precisely that impression of personal distinction of which he was in search--upon his mother also.

The appearance and the accent, however, of the cousin had struck him with surprise; nor was it till he was nearing Tallyn that he succeeded in shaking off the impression. Absurd! Everybody has some relations that require to be masked--like the stables, or the back door--in a skilful arrangement of life. Diana, his beautiful, unapproachable Diana, would soon, no doubt, be relieved of this young lady, with whom she could have no possible interests in common. And, perhaps, on one of his week-end visits to Tallyn and Beechcote, he might get a few minutes' conversation with Mrs. Colwood which would throw some light on the new guest.