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

cried Diana. "What outrageous things he said!"

"He doesn't know much about India--or the Colonies. He hasn't travelled; he reads very little. He showed badly. But on his own subjects he is good enough. I have known him impress or convert the most unlikely people--by nothing but a bare sincerity. Just now--while the servants were handing champagne--he and I were standing a little way off under the gallery. His eyes are weak, and he can't bear the glare of all these lights. Suddenly he told me the story of his father's death."

She paused, and drew her hand across her eyes. Diana saw that they were wet. But although startled, the girl held herself a little aloof and erect, as though ready at a moment's notice to defend herself against a softening which might involve a treachery to glorious and sacred things.

"It so chanced"--Miss Vincent resumed--"that it had a bearing on experiences of my own--just now."

"You are living in the East End?"

"At present. I am trying to find out the causes of a great wave of poverty and unemployment in a particular district."--She named it.--"It is hard work--and not particularly good for the nerves."

She smiled, but at the same moment she turned extremely white, and as she fell back in her chair, Diana saw her clinch her hand as though in a strong effort for physical self-control.

Diana sprang up.

"Let me get you some water!"

"Don't go. Don't tell anybody. Just open that window." Diana obeyed, and the northwest wind, sweeping in, seemed to revive her pale companion almost at once.

"I am very sorry!" said Miss Vincent, after a few minutes, in her natural voice. "Now I am all right." She drank some water, and looked up.

"Shall I tell you the story he told me? It is very short, and it might change your view of him."

"If you feel able--if you are strong enough," said Diana, uncomfortably, wondering why it should matter to Miss Vincent or anybody else what view she might happen to take of Mr. Barton.

"He said he remembered his father (who was a house-painter--a very decent and hard-working man) having been out of work for eight weeks. He used to go out looking for work every day--and there was the usual story, of course, of pawning or selling all their possessions--odd jobs--increasing starvation--and so on. Meanwhile, _his_ only pleasure--he was ten--was to go with his sister after school to look at two shops in the East India Dock Road--one a draper's with a 'Christmas Bazaar'--the other a confectioner's. He declares it made him not more starved, but less, to look at the goodies and the cakes; they _imagined_ eating them; but they were both too sickly, he thinks, to be really hungry. As for the bazaar, with its dolls and toys, and its Father Christmas, and bright lights, they both thought it paradise. They used to flatten their noses against the glass; sometimes a shopman drove them away; but they came back and back. At last the iron shutters would come down--slowly. Then he and his sister would stoop--and stoop--to get a last look. Presently there would be only a foot of bliss left; then they both sank down flat on their stomachs on the pavement, and so stayed--greedily--till all was dark, and paradise had been swallowed up. Well, one night, the show had been specially gorgeous; they took hands afterward, and ran home. Their father had just come in. Mr. Barton can remember his staggering into the room. I'll give it in his words. 'Mother, have you got anything in the house?' 'Nothing, Tom.' And mother began to cry. 'Not a bit of bread, mother?' 'I gave the last bit to the children for their teas.' Father said nothing, but he lay down on the bed. Then he called me. 'Johnnie,' he said, 'I've got work--for next week--but I sha'n't never go to it--it's too late,' and then he asked me to hold his hand, and turned his face on the pillow. When my mother came to look, he was dead. 'Starvation and exhaustion'--the doctor said."

Marion Vincent paused.

"It's just like any other story of the kind--isn't it?" Her smile turned on Diana. "The charitable societies and missions send them out by scores in their appeals. But somehow as he told it just now, down-stairs, in that glaring hall, with the champagne going round--it seemed intolerable."

"And you mean also"--said Diana, slowly--"that a man with that history can't know or care very much about the Empire?"

"Our minds are all picture-books," said the woman beside her, in a low, dreamy voice: "it depends upon what the pictures are. To you the words 'England'--and the 'Empire'--represent one set of pictures--all bright and magnificent--like the Christmas Bazaar. To John Barton and me"--she smiled--"they represent another. We too have seen the lights, and the candles, and the toys; we have admired them, as you have; but we know the reality is not there. The reality is in the dark streets, where men tramp, looking for work; it is in the rooms where their wives and children live stifled and hungry--the rooms where our working folk die--without having lived."

Her eyes, above her pale cheeks, had opened to their fullest extent--the eyes of a seer. They held Diana. So did the voice, which was the voice of one in whom tragic passion and emotion are forever wearing away the physical frame, as the sea waves break down a crumbling shore.

Suddenly Diana bent over her, and took her hands.

"I wonder why you thought me worth talking to like this?" she said, impetuously.

"I liked you!" said Marion Vincent, simply. "I liked you as you talked last night. Only I wanted to add some more pictures to your picture-book. _Your_ set--the popular one--is called _The Glories of England_. There is another--I recommend it to you: _The Shames of England_."

"You think poverty a disgrace?" murmured Diana, held by the glowing fanatical look of the speaker.

"_Our_ poverty is a disgrace--the life of our poor is a disgrace. What does the Empire matter--what do Afghan campaigns matter--while London is rotten? However" (she smiled again, and caressed Diana's hand), "will you make friends with me?"

"Is it worth while for you?" said Diana, laughing. "I shall always prefer my picture-book to yours, I am afraid. And--I am not poor--and I don't give all my money away."

Miss Vincent surveyed her gayly.

"Well, I come here," (she looked significantly round the luxurious room), "and I am very good friends with the Marshams. Oliver Marsham is one of the persons from whom I hope most."

"Not in pulling down wealth--and property!" cried Diana.

"Why not? Every revolution has its Philippe Egalite Oh, it will come slowly--it will come slowly," said the other, quietly. "And of course there will be tragedy--there always is--in everything. But not, I hope, for you--never for you!" And once more her hand dropped softly on Diana's.

"You were happy to-night?--you enjoyed the dance?"

The question, so put, with such a look, from another mouth, would have been an impertinence. Diana shrank, but could not resent it. Yet, against her will, she flushed deeply.

"Yes. It was delightful. I did not expect to enjoy it so much, but--"

"But you did! That's well. That's good!"

Marion Vincent rose feebly. And as she stood, leaning on the chair, she touched the folds of Diana's white dress.

"When shall I see you again?--and that dress?"

"I shall be in London in May," said Diana, eagerly--May I come then? You must tell me where."

"Ah, you won't come to Bethnal Green in that dress. What a pity!"

Diana helped her to her room, where they shook hands and parted. Then Diana came back to her own quarters. She had put out the electric light for Miss Vincent's sake. The room was lit only by the fire. In the full-length mirror of the toilet-table Diana saw her own white reflection, and the ivy leaves in her hair. The absence of her mourning was first a pain; then the joy of the evening surged up again. Oh, was it wrong, was it wrong to be happy--in this world "where men sit and hear each other groan"? She clasped her hands to her soft breast, as though defending the warmth, the hope that were springing there, against any dark protesting force that might threaten to take them from her.


CHAPTER VI

"Henry," said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband, "I think it would do you good to walk to Beechcote."

"No, my dear, no! I have many proofs to get through before dinner. Take Hugh. Only--"

Dr. Roughsedge, smiling, held up a beckoning finger. His wife approached.

"Don't let him fall in love with that young woman. It's no good."

"Well, she must marry somebody, Henry."

"Big fishes mate with big fishes--minnows with minnows."

"Don't run down your own son, sir. Who, pray, is too good for him?"

"The world is divided into wise men, fools, and mothers. The characters of the first two are mingled--disproportionately--in the last," said Dr. Roughsedge, patiently enduring the kiss his wife inflicted on him. "Don't kiss me, Patricia--don't tread on my proofs--go away--and tell Jane not to forget my tea because you have gone out."

Mrs. Roughsedge departed, and the doctor, who was devoted to her, sank at once into that disorderly welter of proofs and smoke which represented to him the best of the day. The morning he reserved for hard work, and during the course of it he smoked but one pipe. A quotation from Fuller which was often on his lips expressed his point of view: "Spill not the morning, which is the quintessence of the day, in recreation. For sleep itself is a recreation. And to open the morning thereto is to add sauce to sauce."

But in the afternoon he gave himself to all the delightful bye-tasks: the works of supererogation, the excursions into side paths, the niggling with proofs, the toying with style, the potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters. For five-and-twenty years he had been a busy Cambridge coach, tied year in and year out to the same strictness of hours, the same monotony of subjects, the same patient drumming on thick heads and dull brains. Now that was all over. A brother had left him a little money; he had saved the rest. At sixty he had begun to live. He was editing a series of reprints for the Cambridge University Press, and what mortal man could want more than a good wife and son, a cottage to live in, a fair cook, unlimited pipes, no debts, and the best of English literature to browse in? The rural afternoon, especially, when he smoked and grubbed and divagated as he pleased, was alone enough to make the five-and-twenty years of "swink" worth while.

Mrs. Roughsedge stayed to give very particular orders to the house-parlormaid about the doctor's tea, to open a window in the tiny drawing-room, and to put up in brown paper a pair of bed-socks that she had just finished knitting for an old man in one of the parish-houses. Then she joined her son, who was already waiting for her--impatiently--in the garden.

Hugh Roughsedge had only just returned from a month's stay in London, made necessary by those new Army examinations which his soul detested. By dint of strenuous coaching he had come off moderately victorious, and had now returned home for a week's extra leave before rejoining his regiment. One of the first questions on his