The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 9

Diana's cheeks flamed. Did Mr. Barton mean to regret that no more English lives had been lost?

Mr. Barton was of opinion that if the defeat had been a bit worse, bloodshed might have been saved in the end. A Jingo Viceroy and a Jingo press could only be stopped by disaster--

On the contrary, said Diana, we could not afford to be stopped by disaster. Disaster must be retrieved.

Mr. Barton asked her--why? Were we never to admit that we were in the wrong?

The Viceroy and his advisers, she declared, were not likely to be wrong.

And prestige had to be maintained.

At the word "prestige" the rugged face of the Labor member grew contemptuous and a little angry. He dealt with it as he was accustomed to deal with it in Socialist meetings or in Parliament. His touch in doing so was neither light nor conciliatory; the young lady, he thought, required plain speaking.

But so far from intimidating the young lady, he found in the course of a few more thrusts and parries that he had roused a by no means despicable antagonist. Diana was a mere mouth-piece; but she was the mouth-piece of eye-witnesses; whereas Barton was the mouth-piece of his daily newspaper and a handful of partisan books written to please the political section to which he belonged.

He began to stumble and to make mistakes--gross elementary mistakes in geography and fact--and there-with to lose his temper. Diana was upon him in a moment--very cool and graceful--controlling herself well; and it is probable that she would have won the day triumphantly but for the sudden intervention of her host.

Oliver Marsham had been watching her with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and admiration. The slender figure held defiantly erect, the hands close-locked on the knee, the curly head with the air of a Nike--he could almost _see_ the palm branch in the hand, the white dress and the silky hair, blown back by the blasts of victory!--appealed to a rhetorical element in his nature always closely combined both with his feelings and his ambitions. Headlong energy and partisanship--he was enchanted to find how beautiful they could be, and he threw himself into the discussion simply--at first--that he might prolong an emotion, might keep the red burning on her lip and cheek. That blundering fellow Barton should not have it all to himself!

But he was no sooner well in it than he too began to flounder. He rode off upon an inaccurate telegram in a morning paper; Diana fell upon it at once, tripped it up, exposed it, drove it from the field, while Mr.

Ferrier approved her from the background with a smiling eye and a quietly applauding hand. Then Marsham quoted a speech in the Indian Council.

Diana dismissed it with contempt, as the shaft of a _frondeur_ discredited by both parties. He fell back on Blue Books, and other ponderosities--Barton by this time silent, or playing a clumsy chorus.

But if Diana was not acquainted with these things in the ore, so to speak, she was more than a little acquainted with the missiles that could be forged from them. That very afternoon Hugh Roughsedge had pointed her to some of the best. She took them up--a little wildly now--for her coolness was departing--and for a time Marsham could hardly keep his footing.

A good many listeners were by now gathered round the disputants. Lady Niton, wielding some noisy knitting needles by the fireside, was enjoying the fray all the more that it seemed to be telling against Oliver. Mrs. Fotheringham, on the other hand, who came up occasionally to the circle, listened and went away again, was clearly seething with suppressed wrath, and had to be restrained once or twice by her brother from interfering, in a tone which would at once have put an end to a duel he himself only wished to prolong.

Mr. Ferrier perceived her annoyance, and smiled over it. In spite of his long friendship with the family, Isabel Fotheringham was no favorite with the great man. She had long seemed to him a type--a strange and modern type--of the feminine fanatic who allows political difference to interfere not only with private friendship but with the nearest and most sacred ties; and his philosopher's soul revolted. Let a woman talk politics, if she must, like this eager idealist girl--not with the venom and gall of the half-educated politician. "As if we hadn't enough of that already!"

Other spectators paid more frivolous visits to the scene. Bobbie Forbes and Alicia Drake, attracted by the sounds of war, looked in from the next room. Forbes listened a moment, shrugged his shoulders, made a whistling mouth, and then walked off to a gla.s.s bookcase--the one sign of civilization in the vast room--where he was soon absorbed in early editions of English poets, Lady Lucy's inheritance from a literary father. Alicia moved about, a little restless and scornful, now listening unwillingly, and now attempting diversions. But in these she found no one to second her, not even the two pink-and-white nieces of Lady Lucy, who did not understand a word of what was going on, but were none the less gazing open-mouthed at Diana.

Marion Vincent meanwhile had drawn nearer to Diana. Her strong significant face wore a quiet smile; there was a friendly, even an admiring penetration in the look with which she watched the young prophetess of Empire and of War. As for Lady Lucy, she was silent, and rather grave. In her secret mind she thought that young girls should not be vehement or presumptuous. It was a misfortune that this pretty creature had not been more reasonably brought up; a mother's hand had been wanting. While not only Mr. Ferrier and Mrs. Colwood, sitting side by side in the background, but everybody else present, in some measure or degree, was aware of some play of feeling in the scene, beyond and behind the obvious, some hidden forces, or rather, perhaps, some emerging relation, which gave it significance and thrill. The duel was a duel of brains--unequal at that; what made it fascinating was the universal or typical element in the clash of the two personalities--the man using his whole strength, more and more tyrannously, more and more stubbornly--the girl resisting, flashing, appealing, fighting for dear life, now gaining, now retreating--and finally overborne.

For Marsham's staying powers, naturally, were the greater. He summoned finally all his nerve and all his knowledge. The air of the carpet-knight with which he had opened battle disappeared; he fought seriously and for victory. And suddenly Diana laughed--a little hysterically--and gave in. He had carried her into regions of history and politics where she could not follow. She dropped her head in her hands a moment--then fell back in her chair--silenced--her beautiful pa.s.sionate eyes fixed on Marsham, as his were on her.

"Brava! Brava!" cried Mr. Ferrier, clapping his hands. The room joined in laughter and applause.

A few minutes later the ladies streamed out into the hall on their way to bed. Marsham came to light a candle for Diana.

"Do you forgive me?" he said, as he gave it to her.

The tone was gay and apologetic.

She laughed unsteadily, without reply.

"When will you take your revenge?"

She shook her head, touched his hand for "good-night," and went up-stairs.

As Diana reached her room she drew Mrs. Colwood in with her--but not, it seemed, for purposes of conversation. She stood absently by the fire taking off her bracelets and necklace. Mrs. Colwood made a few remarks about the evening and the guests, with little response, and presently wondered why she was detained. At last Diana put up her hands, and smoothed back the hair from her temples with a long sigh. Then she laid a sudden grasp upon Mrs. Colwood, and looked earnestly and imploringly into her face.

"Will you--please--call me Diana? And--and--will you kiss me?"

She humbly stooped her head. Mrs. Colwood, much touched, threw her arms around her, and kissed her heartily. Then a few warm words fell from her--as to the scene of the evening. Diana withdrew herself at once, shivering a little.

"Oh, I want papa!" she said--"I want him so much!"

And she hid her eyes against the mantel-piece.

Mrs. Colwood soothed her affectionately, perhaps expecting some outburst of confidence, which, however, did not come. Diana said a quiet "good-night," and they parted.

But it was long before Mrs. Colwood could sleep. Was the emotion she had just witnessed--flinging itself geyserlike into sight, only to sink back as swiftly out of ken--was it an effect of the past or an omen of the future? The longing expressed in the girl's heart and voice, after the brave show she had made--had it overpowered her just because she felt herself alone, without natural protectors, on the brink of her woman's destiny?

CHAPTER IV

The next day, when Diana looked out from her window, she saw a large and dreary park wrapped in scudding rain which promised evil things for the shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and plantations were kept to a nicety; not a twig was out of place. Enormous cost had been incurred in the planting of rare evergreens; full-grown trees had been transplanted wholesale from a distance, and still wore in many cases a sickly and invalided air; and elaborate contrasts in dark and light foliage had been arranged by the landscape-gardener employed.

Dark plantations had a light border--light plantations a dark one. A lake or large pond, with concrete banks and two artificial islands, held the centre of the park, and on the monotonous stretches of immaculate gra.s.s there were deer to be seen wherever anybody could reasonably expect them.

Diana surveyed it all with a lively dislike. She pitied Lady Lucy and Mr. Marsham because they must live in such a place. Especially, surely, must it be hampering and disconcerting to a man, preaching the democratic gospel, and looking forward to the democratic millennium, to be burdened with a house and estate which could offer so few excuses for the wealth of which they made an arrogant and uninviting display.

Immense possessions and lavish expenditure may be, as we all know, so softened by antiquity, or so masked by taste, as not to jar with ideals the most different or remote. But here "proputty! proputty!" was the cry of every ugly wood and tasteless shrubbery, whereas the prospective owner of them, according to his public utterances and career, was magnificently careless of property--was, in fact, in the eyes of the lovers of property, its enemy. The house again spoke loudly and aggressively of money; yet it was the home of a champion of the poor.

Well--a man cannot help it, if his father has suffered from stupidity and bad taste; and enc.u.mbrances of this kind are more easily created than got rid of. No doubt Oliver Marsham's democratic opinions had been partly bred in him by opposition and recoil. Diana seemed to get a good deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from this point of view.

Indeed, she thought over it persistently while she dressed. From the normal seven-hours' sleep of youth she had awakened with braced nerves.

To remember her duel of the night before was no longer to thrill with an excitement inexplicable even to herself, and strangely mingled with a sense of loneliness or foreboding. Under the morning light she looked at things more sanely. Her natural vanity, which was the reflection of her wish to please, told her that she had not done badly. She felt a childish pleasure in the memory of Mr. Barton's discomfiture; and as to Mr. Marsham, it was she, and not her beliefs, not the great Imperial "cause" which had been beaten. How could she expect to hold her own with the professional politician when it came really to business? In her heart of hearts she knew that she would have despised Oliver Marsham if he had not been able to best her in argument. "If it had been papa," she thought, proudly, "that would have been another story!"

Nevertheless, as she sat meekly under the hands of her maid, smiles "went out and in," as she remembered the points where she had pressed him hard, had almost overcome him. An inclination to measure herself with him again danced within her. Will against will, mind against mind--her temperament, in its morning rally, delighted in the thought.

And all the time there hovered before her the living man, with his agreeable, energetic, challenging presence. How much better she had liked him, even in his victory of the evening, than in the carping sarcastic mood of the afternoon!

In spite of gayety and expectation, however, she felt her courage fail her a little as she left her room and ventured out into the big populous house. Her solitary bringing-up had made her liable to fits of shyness amid her general expansiveness, and it was a relief to meet no one--least of all, Alicia Drake--on her way down-stairs. Mrs. Colwood, indeed, was waiting for her at the end of the pa.s.sage, and Diana held her hand a little as they descended.

A male voice was speaking in the hall--Mr. Marsham giving the last directions for the day to the head keeper. The voice was sharp and peremptory--too peremptory, one might have thought, for democracy addressing a brother. But the keeper, a gray-haired, weather-beaten man of fifty, bowed himself out respectfully, and Marsham turned to greet Diana. Mrs. Colwood saw the kindling of his eyes as they fell on the girl's morning freshness. No sharpness in the voice now!--he was all eagerness to escort and serve his guests.

He led them to the breakfast-room, which seemed to be in an uproar, caused apparently by Bobbie Forbes and Lady Niton, who were talking at each other across the table.

"What is the matter?" asked Diana, as she slipped into a place to which Sir James Chide smilingly invited her--between himself and Mr. Bobbie.

Sir James, making a pretence of shutting his ears against the din, replied that he believed Mr. Forbes was protesting against the tyranny of Lady Niton in obliging him to go to church.

"She never enters a place of worship herself, but she insists that her young men friends shall go.--Mr. Bobbie is putting his foot down!"

"Miss Mallory, let me get you some fish," said Forbes, turning to her with a flushed and determined countenance. "I have now vindicated the rights of man, and am ready to attend--if you will allow me--to the wants of woman. Fish?--or bacon?"

Diana made her choice, and the young man supplied her; then bristling with victory, and surrounded by samples of whatever food the breakfast-table afforded, he sat down to his own meal. "No!" he said, with energy, addressing Diana. "One must really draw the line. The last Sunday Lady Niton took me to church, the service lasted an hour and three-quarters. I am a High Churchman--I vow I am--an out-and-outer. I go in for snippets--and shortening things. The man here is a dreadful old Erastian--piles on everything you can pile on--so I just felt it necessary to give Lady Niton notice. To-morrow I have work for the department--_at home!_ Take my advice, Miss Mallory--don't go."