The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 55

unpardonable!

Her dark eyes flashed--and then clouded. She had walked home from the sermon in a heat of wrath, had straightway sought out some blue ribbon, and made Tory rosettes for herself and her dog. Muriel had laughed--had been delighted to see her doing it.

But the rosettes were put away now--thrown into the bottom of a drawer.

She would never wear them.

The Vicar, it seemed, was no friend of Oliver's--would not vote for him, and had been trying to induce the miners at Hartingfield to run a Labor man. On the other hand, she understood that the Ferrier party in the division were dissatisfied with him on quite other grounds: that they reproached him with a leaning to violent and extreme views, and with a far too lukewarm support of the leader of the party and the leader's policy. The local papers were full of grumbling letters to that effect.

Her brow knit over Oliver's difficulties. The day before, Mr. Lavery, meeting Muriel in the village street, had suggested that Miss Mallory might lend him the barn for a Socialist meeting--a meeting, in fact, for the hara.s.sing and heckling of Oliver.

Had he come now to urge the same plea again? A woman's politics were not, of course, worth remembering!

She moved on to a point where, still hidden, she could see the lawn. The Vicar was in full career; the harsh creaking voice came to her from the distance. What an awkward unhandsome figure, with his long, lank countenance, his large ears and spectacled eyes! Yet an apostle, she admitted, in his way--a whole-hearted, single-minded gentleman. But the barn he should not have.

She watched him depart, and then slowly emerged from her hiding-place.

Muriel, putting loving hands on her shoulders, looked at her with eyes that mocked a little--tenderly.

"Yes, I know," said Diana--"I know. I shirked. Did he want the barn?"

"Oh no. I convinced him, the other day, you were past praying for."

"Was he shocked? 'It is a serious thing for women to throw themselves across the path of progress,'" said Diana, in a queer voice.

Muriel looked at her, puzzled. Diana reddened, and kissed her.

"What did he want, then?"

"He came to ask whether you would take the visiting of Fetter Lane--and a cla.s.s in Sunday-school."

Diana gasped.

"What did you say?"

"Never mind. He went away quelled."

"No doubt he thought I ought to be glad to be set to work."

"Oh! they are all masterful--that sort."

Diana walked on.

"I suppose he gossiped about the election?"

"Yes. He has all sorts of stories--about the mines--and the Tallyn estates," said Muriel, unwillingly.

Diana's look flashed.

"Do you believe he has any power of collecting evidence fairly? I don't.

He sees what he wants to see."

Mrs. Colwood agreed; but did not feel called upon to confirm Diana's view by ill.u.s.trations. She 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 gra.s.s, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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."