The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 63

"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 a.s.sented. 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 pa.s.sed it from a distance he saw the natural shudder run through her; and, by a.s.sociation, 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 pa.s.sage 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 embarra.s.sment. 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 gra.s.s--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 nothing of this intimate relation which had sprung up so rapidly between her and Ferrier. While he acknowledged its beauty and delicacy, the very thought of it, even at this moment, filled him with an irritable jealousy. The new bond had arisen out of the wreck of those he had himself broken; Ferrier had turned to her, and she to Ferrier, just as he, by his own acts, had lost them both; it might be right and natural; he winced under it--in a sense, resented it--none the less.

And all the time he never ceased to be conscious of the newspaper in his breast-pocket, and of that faint pencilled line that seemed to burn against his heart.

Would she shrink from him, finally and irrevocably, if she knew it? Once or twice he looked at her curiously, wondering at the power that women have of filling and softening a situation. Her broken talk of Ferrier was the only possible talk that could have arisen between them at that moment without awkwardness, without risk. To that last ground of friendship she could still admit him, and a wounded self-love suggested that she chose it for his sake as well as Ferrier's.

Of course, she had seen him with Alicia, and must have drawn her conclusions. Four months after the breach with her!--and such a breach!

As he walked beside her through the radiant scented garden, with its ma.s.sed roses and delphiniums, its tangle of poppy and lupin, he suddenly beheld himself as a kind of outcast--distrusted and disliked by an old friend like Chide, separated forever from the good opinion of this girl whom he had loved, suspected even by his mother, and finally crushed by this unexpected tragedy, and by the shock of Barrington's unpardonable behavior.

Then his whole being reacted in a fierce protesting irritation. He had been the victim of circ.u.mstance as much as she. His will hardened to a pa.s.sionate self-defence; he flung off, he held at bay, an anguish that must and should be conquered. He had to live his life. He would live it.

They pa.s.sed into the orchard, where, amid the old trees, covered with tiny green apples, some climbing roses were running at will, hanging their trails of blossom, crimson and pale pink, from branch to branch.

Linnets and blackbirds made a pleasant chatter; the gra.s.s beneath the trees was rich and soft, and through their tops, one saw white clouds hovering in a blazing blue.

Diana turned suddenly toward the house.

"I think we may go back now," she said, and her hand contracted and her lip, as though she realized that her dear dead friend had left her roof forever.

They hurried back, but there was still time for conversation.

"You knew him, of course, from a child?" she said to him, glancing at him with timid interrogation.

In reply he forced himself to play that part of Ferrier's intimate--almost son--which, indeed, she had given him, by implication, throughout her own talk. In this she had shown a tact, a kindness for which he owed her grat.i.tude. She must have heard the charges brought against him by the Ferrier party during the election, yet, n.o.ble creature that she was, she had not believed them. He could have thanked her aloud, till he remembered that marked newspaper in his pocket.

Once a straggling rose branch caught in her dress. He stooped to free it. Then for the first time he saw her shrink. The instinctive service had made them man and woman again--not mind and mind; and he perceived, with a miserable throb, that she could not be so unconscious of his ident.i.ty, his presence, their past, as she had seemed to be.

She had lost--he realized it--the bloom of first youth. How thin was the hand which gathered up her dress!--the hand once covered with his kisses. Yet she seemed to him lovelier than ever, and he divined her more woman than ever, more instinct with feeling, life, and pa.s.sion.

Sir James's messenger met them half-way. At the door the ambulance waited.

Chide, bareheaded, and a group of doctors, gardeners, and police stood beside it.

"I follow you," said Marsham to Sir James. "There is a great deal to do."

Chide a.s.sented coldly. "I have written to Broadstone, and I have sent a preliminary statement to the papers."

"I can take anything you want to town," said Marsham, hastily. "I must go up this evening."

He handed Broadstone's telegram to Sir James.

Chide read it and returned it in silence. Then he entered the ambulance, taking his seat beside the shrouded form within. Slowly it drove away, mounted police accompanying it. It took a back way from Beechcote, thus avoiding the crowd, which on the village side had gathered round the gates.

Diana, on the steps, saw it go, following it with her eyes; standing very white and still. Then Marsham lifted his hat to her, conscious through every nerve of the curiosity among the little group of people standing by. Suddenly, he thought, she too divined it. For she looked round her, bowed to him slightly, and disappeared with Mrs. Colwood.

He spent two or three hours at Lytchett, making the first arrangements for the funeral, with Sir James. It was to be at Tallyn, and the burial in the churchyard of the old Tallyn church. Sir James gave a slow and grudging a.s.sent to this; but in the end he did a.s.sent, after the relations between him and Marsham had become still more strained.

Further statements were drawn up for the newspapers. As the afternoon wore on the grounds and hall of Lytchett betrayed the presence of a number of reporters, hurriedly sent thither by the chief London and provincial papers. By now the news had travelled through England.

Marsham worked hard, saving Sir James all he could. Another messenger arrived from Lord Broadstone, with a pathetic letter for Sir James.

Chide's face darkened over it. "Broadstone must bear up," he said to Marsham, as they stood together in Chide's sanctum. "It was not his fault, and he has the country to think of. You tell him so. Now, are you off?"

Marsham replied that his fly had been announced.

"What'll they offer you?" said Chide, abruptly.

"Offer me? It doesn't much matter, does it?--on a day like this?"

Marsham's tone was equally curt. Then he added: "I shall be here again to-morrow."

Chide acquiesced. When Marsham had driven off, and as the sound of the wheels died away, Chide uttered a fierce inarticulate sound. His hot Irish heart swelled within him. He walked hurriedly to and fro, his hands in his pockets.