The Testing of Diana Mallory, Mrs. Humphry Ward [e book reader online TXT] 📗

no fool, and you'll find it out, Isabel, if you try to argue her down--"

"I shouldn't dream of arguing with such a child!"

"Well, all I know is Ferrier seemed to admire her performance."

Mrs. Fotheringham paused a moment, then said, with harsh intensity:

"Men have not the same sense of responsibility."

"You mean their brains are befogged by a pretty face?"

"They don't put non-essentials aside, as we do. A girl like that, in love with what she calls 'glory' and 'prestige,' is a dangerous and demoralizing influence. That glorification of the Army is at the root of half our crimes!"

Mrs. Fotheringham's pale skin had flushed till it made one red with her red hair. Lady Niton looked at her with mingled amusement and irritation. She wondered why men married such women as Isabel Fotheringham. Certainly Ned Fotheringham himself--deceased some three years before this date--had paid heavily for his mistake; especially through the endless disputes which had arisen between his children and his second wife--partly on questions of religion, partly on this matter of the Army. Mrs. Fotheringham was an agnostic; her stepsons, the children of a devout mother, were churchmen. Influenced, moreover, by a small coterie, in which, to the dismay of her elderly husband, she had passed most of her early married years, she detested the Army as a brutal influence on the national life. Her youngest step-son, however, had insisted on becoming a soldier. She broke with him, and with his brothers who supported him. Now a childless widow, without ties and moderately rich, she was free to devote herself to her ideas. In former days she would have been a religious bigot of the first water; the bigotry was still there; only the subjects of it were changed.

Lady Niton delighted in attacking her; yet was not without a certain respect for her. Old sceptic that she was, ideals of any sort imposed upon her. How people came by them, she herself could never imagine.

On this particular morning, however, Mrs. Fotheringham did not allow herself as long a wrangle as usual with her old adversary. She went off, carrying an armful of letters with large enclosures, and Lady Niton understood that for the rest of the morning she would be as much absorbed by her correspondence--mostly on public questions--as the Leader of the Opposition himself, to whom the library was sacredly given up.

"When that woman takes a dislike," she thought to herself, "it sticks! She has taken a dislike to the Mallory girl. Well, if Oliver wants her, let him fight for her. I hope she won't drop into his mouth! Mallory! Mallory! I wonder where she comes from, and who her people are."

* * * * *

Meanwhile Diana was sitting among her letters, which mainly concerned the last details of the Beechcote furnishing. She and Mrs. Colwood were now "Muriel" and "Diana" to each other, and Mrs. Colwood had been admitted to a practical share in Diana's small anxieties.

Suddenly Diana, who had just opened a hitherto unread letter, exclaimed:

"Oh, but _how_ delightful!"

Mrs. Colwood looked up; Diana's aspect was one of sparkling pleasure and surprise.

"One of my Barbadoes' cousins is here--in London--actually in London--and I knew nothing of her coming. She writes to me.--Of course she must come to Beechcote--she must come at once!"

She sprang up, and went to a writing-table near, to look for a telegraph form. She wrote a message with eagerness, despatched it, and then explained as coherently as her evident emotion and excitement would allow.

"They are my only relations in the world--that I know of--that papa ever spoke to me about. Mamma's sister married Mr. Merton. He was a planter in Barbadoes. He died about three years ago, but his widow and daughters have lived on there. They were very poor and couldn't afford to come home. Fanny is the eldest--I think she must be about twenty."

Diana paced up and down, with her hands behind her, wondering when her telegram would reach her cousin, who was staying at a London boarding-house, when she might be expected at Beechcote, how long she could be persuaded to stay--speculations, in fact, innumerable. Her agitation was pathetic in Mrs. Colwood's eyes. It testified to the girl's secret sense of forlornness, to her natural hunger for the ties and relationships other girls possessed in such abundance.

Mrs. Colwood inquired if it was long since she had had news of her cousins.

"Oh, some years!" said Diana, vaguely. "I remember a letter coming--before we went to the East--and papa reading it. I know"--she hesitated--"I know he didn't like Mr. Merton."

She stood still a moment, thinking. The lights and shadows of reviving memory crossed her face, and presently her thought emerged, with very little hint to her companion of the course it had been taking out of sight.

"Papa always thought it a horrid life for them--Aunt Merton and the girls--especially after they gave up their estate and came to live in the town. But how could they help it? They must have been very poor. Fanny"--she took up the letter--"Fanny says she has come home to learn music and French--that she may earn money by teaching when she goes back. She doesn't write very well, does she?"

She held out the sheet.

The handwriting, indeed, was remarkably illiterate, and Mrs. Colwood could only say that probably a girl of Miss Merton's circumstances had had few advantages.

"But then, you see, we'll _give_ her advantages!" cried Diana, throwing herself down at Mrs. Colwood's feet, and beginning to plan aloud.--"You know if she will only stay with us, we can easily have people down from London for lessons. And she can have the green bedroom--over the dining-room--can't she?--and the library to practise in. It would be absurd that she should stay in London, at a horrid boarding-house, when there's Beechcote, wouldn't it?"

Mrs. Colwood agreed that Beechcote would probably be quite convenient for Miss Merton's plans. If she felt a little pang at the thought that her pleasant _tete-a-tete_ with her new charge was to be so soon interrupted, and for an indefinite period, by a young lady with the handwriting of a scullery-maid, she kept it entirely hidden.

Diana talked herself into the most rose-colored plans for Fanny Merton's benefit--so voluminous, indeed, that Mrs. Colwood had to leave her in the middle of them that she might go up-stairs and mend a rent in her walking-dress. Diana was left alone in the drawing-room, still smiling and dreaming. In her impulsive generosity she saw herself as the earthly providence of her cousin, sharing with a dear kinswoman her own unjustly plentiful well-being.

Then she took up the letter again. It ran thus:

"My dear Diana,--You mustn't think it cheeky my calling you that, but I am your real cousin, and mother told me to write to you. I hope too you won't be ashamed of us though we are poor. Everybody knows us in Barbadoes, though of course that's not London. I am the eldest of the family, and I got very tired of living all in a pie, and so I've come home to England to better myself.--A year ago I was engaged to be married, but the young man behaved badly. A good riddance, all my friends told me--but it wasn't a pleasant experience. Anyway now I want to earn some money, and see the world a little. I have got rather a good voice, and I am considered handsome--at least smart-looking. If you are not too grand to invite me to your place, I should like to come and see you, but of course you must do as you please. I got your address from the bank Uncle Mallory used to send us checks on. I can tell you we have missed those checks pretty badly this last year. I hope you have now got over your great sorrow.--This boarding-house is horribly poky but cheap, which is the great thing. I arrived the night before last,

"And I am Your affectionate cousin FANNY MERTON."

No, it really was not an attractive letter. On the second reading, Diana pushed it away from her, rather hastily. Then she reminded herself again, elaborately, of the Mertons' disadvantages in life, painting them in imagination as black as possible. And before she had gone far with this process all doubt and distaste were once more swept away by the rush of yearning, of an interest she could not subdue, in this being of her own flesh and blood, the child of her mother's sister. She sat with flushed cheeks, absorbed in a stream of thoughts and reminiscence.

"You look as though you had had good news," said Sir James Chide, as he paused beside her on his way through the drawing-room. He was not a sportsman; nor was Mr. Ferrier.

His eyes rested upon her with such a kind interest, his manner showed so plainly yet again that he desired to be her friend, that Diana responded at once.

"I have found a cousin!" she said, gayly, and told the story of her expected visitor.

Outwardly--perfunctorily--Sir James's aspect while she was speaking answered to hers. If she was pleased, he was pleased too. He congratulated her; he entered into her schemes for Miss Merton's amusement. Really, all the time, the man's aspect was singularly grave, he listened carefully to every word; he observed the speaker.

"The young lady's mother is your aunt?"

"She was my mother's sister."

"And they have been long in Barbadoes?"

"I think they migrated there just about the same time we went abroad--after my mother's death."

Sir James said little. He encouraged her to talk on; he listened to the phrases of memory or expectation which revealed her history--her solitary bringing-up--her reserved and scholarly father--the singular closeness, and yet as it seemed strangeness of her relation to him. It appeared, for instance, that it was only an accident, some years before, which had revealed to Diana the very existence of these cousins. Her father had never spoken of them spontaneously.

"I hope she will be everything that is charming and delightful," he said at last as he rose. "And remember--I am to come and see you!"

He stooped his gray head, and gently touched her hand with an old man's freedom.

Diana warmly renewed her invitation.

"There is a house near you that I often go to--Sir William Felton's. I am to be there in a few weeks. Perhaps I shall even be able to make acquaintance with Miss Fanny!"

He walked away from her.

Diana could not see the instant change of countenance which accompanied the movement. Urbanity, gentleness, kind indulgence vanished. Sir James looked anxious and disturbed; and he seemed to be talking