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

tongue, as his mother instantly noticed, had been a question as to Miss Mallory. Was she still at Beechcote? Had his mother seen anything of her?

Yes, she was still at Beechcote. Mrs. Roughsedge, however, had seen her but seldom and slightly since her son's departure for London. If she had made one or two observations from a distance, with respect to the young lady, she withheld them. And like the discerning mother that she was, at the very first opportunity she proposed a call at Beechcote.

On their way thither, this February afternoon, they talked in a desultory way about some new War-Office reforms, which, as usual, the entire Army believed to be merely intended--wilfully and deliberately--for its destruction; about a recent gambling scandal in the regiment, or the peculiarities of Hugh's commanding officer. Meanwhile he held his peace on the subject of some letters he had received that morning. There was to be an expedition in Nigeria. Officers were wanted; and he had volunteered. The result of his application was not yet known. He had no intention whatever of upsetting his parents till it was known.

"I wonder how Miss Mallory liked Tallyn," said Mrs. Roughsedge, briskly.

She had already expressed the same wonder once or twice. But as neither she nor her son had any materials for deciding the point the remark hardly promoted conversation. She added to it another of more effect.

"The Miss Bertrams have already made up their minds that she is to marry Oliver Marsham."

"The deuce!" cried the startled Roughsedge. "Beg your pardon, mother, but how can those old cats possibly know?"

"They can't know," said Mrs. Roughsedge, placidly. "But as soon as you get a young woman like that into the neighborhood, of course everybody begins to speculate."

"They mumble any fresh person, like a dog with a bone," said Roughsedge, indignantly.

They were passing across the broad village street. On either hand were old timbered cottages, sun-mellowed and rain-beaten; a thatched roof showing here and there; or a bit of mean new building, breaking the time-worn line. To their left, keeping watch over the graves which encircled it, rose the fourteenth-century church; amid the trees around it rooks were cawing and wheeling; and close beneath it huddled other cottages, ivy-grown, about the village well. Afternoon school was just over, and the children were skipping and running about the streets. Through the cottage doors could be seen occasionally the gleam of a fire or a white cloth spread for tea. For the womenfolk, at least, tea was the great meal of the day in Beechcote. So that what with the flickering of the fires, and the sunset light on the windows, the skipping children, the dogs, the tea-tables, and the rooks, Beechcote wore a cheerful and idyllic air. But Mrs. Roughsedge knew too much about these cottages. In this one to the left a girl had just borne her second illegitimate child; in that one farther on were two mentally deficient children, the offspring of feeble-minded parents; in the next, an old woman, the victim of pernicious anaemia, was moaning her life away; in the last to the right the mother of five small children had just died in her sixth confinement. Mrs. Roughsedge gave a long sigh as she looked at it. The tragedy was but forty-eight hours old; she had sat up with the mother through her dying hours.

"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, suddenly--"here comes the Vicar. Do you know, it's so unlucky--and so strange!--but he has certainly taken a dislike to Miss Mallory--I believe it was because he had hoped some Christian Socialist friends of his would have taken Beechcote, and he was disappointed to find it let to some one with what he calls 'silly Tory notions' and no particular ideas about Church matters. Now there's a regular fuss--something about the Book Club. I don't understand--"

The Vicar advanced toward them. He came along at a great pace, his lean figure closely sheathed in his long clerical coat, his face a little frowning and set.

At the sight of Mrs. Roughsedge he drew up, and greeted the mother and son.

"May I have a few words with you?" he asked Mrs. Roughsedge, as he turned back with them toward the Beechcote lane. "I don't know whether you are acquainted, Mrs. Roughsedge, with what has just happened in the Book Club, to which we both belong?"

The Book Club was a village institution of some antiquity. It embraced some ten families, who drew up their Mudie lists in common and sent the books from house to house. The Vicar and Dr. Roughsedge had been till now mainly responsible for these lists--so far, at least, as "serious books" were concerned, the ladies being allowed the chief voice in the novels.

Mrs. Roughsedge, a little fluttered, asked for information.

"Miss Mallory has recommended two books which, in my opinion, should not be circulated among us," said the Vicar. "I have protested--in vain. Miss Mallory maintains her recommendation. I propose, therefore, to withdraw from the Club."

"Are they improper?" cried Mrs. Roughsedge, much distressed. Captain Roughsedge threw an angry look first at his mother and then at the Vicar.

"Not in the usual sense," said the Vicar, stiffly--"but highly improper for the reading of Christian people. One is by a Unitarian, and the other reproduces some of the worst speculations of an infidel German theology. I pointed out the nature of the books to Miss Mallory. She replied that they were both by authors whom her father liked. I regretted it. Then she fired up, refused to withdraw the names, and offered to resign. Miss Mallory's subscription to the Club is, however, much larger than mine. _I_ shall therefore resign--protesting, of course, against the reason which induces me to take this course."

"What's wrong with the books?" asked Hugh Roughsedge.

The Vicar drew himself up.

"I have given my reasons."

"Why, you see that kind of thing in every newspaper," said Roughsedge, bluntly.

"All the more reason why I should endeavor to keep my parish free from it," was the Vicar's resolute reply. "However, there is no more to be said. I wished Mrs. Roughsedge to understand what had happened--that is all."

He paused, and offered a limp hand in good-bye.

"Let me speak to Miss Mallory," said Mrs. Roughsedge, soothingly.

The Vicar shook his head.

"She is a young lady of strong will." And with a hasty nod of farewell to the Captain, whose hostility he divined, he walked away.

"And what about obstinate and pig-headed parsons!" said Roughsedge, hotly, addressing his remark, however, safely to the Vicar's back, and to his mother. "Who makes him a judge of what we shall read! I shall make a point of asking for both the books!"

"Oh, my dear Hugh!" cried his mother, in rather troubled protest. Then she happily reflected that if he asked for them, he was not in the least likely to read them. "I hope Miss Mallory is not really an unbeliever."

"Mother! Of course, what that poker in a wide-awake did was to say something uncivil about her father, and she wasn't going to stand that. Quite right, too."

"She did come to church on Christmas Day," said Mrs. Roughsedge, reflecting. "But, then, a great many people do that who don't believe anything. Anyway, she has always been quite charming to your father and me. And I think, besides, the Vicar might have been satisfied with your father's opinion--_he_ made no complaint about the books. Oh, now the Miss Bertrams are going to stop us! They'll of course know all about it!"

If Captain Roughsedge growled ugly words into his mustache, his mother was able to pretend not to hear them, in the gentle excitement of shaking hands with the Miss Bertrams. These middle-aged ladies, the daughters of a deceased doctor from the neighboring county town of Dunscombe, were, if possible, more plainly dressed than usual, and their manners more forbidding.

"You will have heard of this disagreeable incident which has occurred," said Miss Maria to Mrs. Roughsedge, with a pinched mouth. "My sister and I shall, of course, remove our names from the Club."

"I say--don't your subscribers order the books they like?" asked Roughsedge, half wroth and half laughing, surveying the lady with his hand on his side.

"There is a very clear understanding among us," said Miss Maria, sharply, "as to the character of the books to be ordered. No member of the Club has yet transgressed it."

"There must be give and take, mustn't there?" said Miss Elizabeth, in a deprecatory voice. She was the more amiable and the weaker of the two sisters. "_We_ should _never_ order books that would be offensive to Miss Mallory."

"But if you haven't read the books?"

"The Vicar's word is quite enough," said Miss Maria, with her most determined air.

They all moved on together, Captain Roughsedge smoothing or tugging at his mustache with a restless hand.

But Miss Bertram, presently, dropping a little behind, drew Mrs. Roughsedge with her.

"There are all sorts of changes at the house," she said, confidentially. "The laundry maids are allowed to go out every evening, if they like--and Miss Mallory makes no attempt to influence the servants to come to church. The Vicar says the seats for the Beechcote servants have never been so empty."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Roughsedge.

"And money is improperly given away. Several people whom the Vicar thinks most unfit objects of charity have been assisted. And in a conversation with her last week Miss Mallory expressed herself in a very sad way about foreign missions. Her father's idea, again, no doubt--but it is all very distressing. The Vicar doubts"--Miss Maria spoke warily, bringing her face very close to the gray curls--"whether she has ever been confirmed."

This final stroke, however, fell flat. Mrs. Roughsedge showed no emotion. "Most of my aunts," she said, stoutly, "were never confirmed, and they were good Christians and communicants all their lives."

Miss Maria's expression showed that this reference to a preceding barbaric age of the Church had no relevance to the existing order of things.

"Of course," she added, hastily, "I do not wish to make myself troublesome or conspicuous in any way. I merely mention these things as explaining why the Vicar felt bound to make a stand. The Church feeling in this parish has been so strong it would, indeed, be a pity if anything occurred to weaken it."

Mrs. Roughsedge gave a doubtful assent. As to the Church feeling, she was not so clear as Miss Bertram. One of her chief friends was a secularist cobbler who lived under the very shadow of the church. The Miss Bertrams shuddered at his conversation. Mrs. Roughsedge found him racy company, and he presented to her aspects of village life and opinion with which the Miss Bertrams were not at all acquainted.

* * * * *

As the mother and son approached the old house in the sunset light, its aspect of mellow and intimate congruity with the woods and fields about it had never been more winning. The red, gray, and orange of its old brickwork played into the brown and purples of its engirdling trees, into the lilacs and golds and crimsons of the western sky behind it, into the cool and quiet tones of the meadows from which it rose. A spirit of beauty had been at work fusing man's perishable and