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

little basin in the chalk, where a gnarled thorn or two, an overhanging beech, and a bed of withered heather, made a kind of intimate, furnished place, which appealed to the passer-by.

"Here is the sunset," said Marsham, looking round him. "Are you afraid to sit a little?"

He took a light overcoat he had been carrying over his arm and spread it on the heather. She protested that it was winter, and coats were for wearing. He took no notice, and she tamely submitted. He placed her regally, with an old thorn for support and canopy; and then he stood a moment beside her gazing westward.

They looked over undulations of the chalk, bare stubble fields and climbing woods, bathed in the pale gold of a February sunset. The light was pure and wan--the resting earth shone through it gently yet austerely; only the great woods darkly massed on the horizon gave an accent of mysterious power to a scene in which Nature otherwise showed herself the tamed and homely servant of men. Below were the trees of Beechcote, the gray walls, and the windows touched with a last festal gleam.

Suddenly Marsham dropped down beside her.

"I see it all with new eyes," he said, passionately. "I have lived in this country from my childhood; and I never saw it before! Diana!--"

He raised her hand, which only faintly resisted; he looked into her eyes. She had grown very pale--enchantingly pale. There was in her the dim sense of a great fulfilment; the fulfilment of Nature's promise to her; implicit in her woman's lot from the beginning.

"Diana!--" the low voice searched her heart--"You know--what I have come to say? I meant to have waited a little longer--I was afraid!--but I couldn't wait--it was beyond my strength. Diana!--come to me, darling!--be my wife!"

He kissed the hand he held. His eyes beseeched; and into hers, widely fixed upon him, had sprung tears--the tears of life's supremest joy. Her lip trembled.

"I'm not worthy!" she said, in a whisper--"I'm not worthy!"

"Foolish Diana!--Darling, foolish Diana!--Give me my answer!"

And now he held both hands, and his confident smile dazzled her.

"I--" Her voice broke. She tried again, still in a whisper. "I will be everything to you--that a woman can."

At that he put his arm round her, and she let him take that first kiss, in which she gave him her youth, her life--all that she had and was. Then she withdrew herself, and he saw her brow contract, and her mouth.

"I know!"--he said, tenderly--"I know! Dear, I think he would have been glad. He and I made friends from the first."

She plucked at the heather beside her, trying for composure. "He would have been so glad of a son--so glad--"

And then, by contrast with her own happiness, the piteous memory of her father overcame her; and she cried a little, hiding her eyes against Marsham's shoulder.

"There!" she said, at last, withdrawing herself, and brushing the tears away. "That's all--that's done with--except in one's heart. Did--did Lady Lucy know?"

She looked at him timidly. Her aspect had never been more lovely. Tears did not disfigure her, and as compared with his first remembrance of her, there was now a touching significance, an incomparable softness in all she said and did, which gave him a bewildering sense of treasures to come, of joys for the gathering.

Suddenly--involuntarily--there flashed through his mind the recollection of his first love-passage with Alicia--how she had stung him on, teased, and excited him. He crushed it at once, angrily.

As to Lady Lucy, he smilingly declared that she had no doubt guessed something was in the wind.

"I have been 'gey ill to live with' since we got up to town. And when the stupid meeting I had promised to speak at was put off, my mother thought I had gone off my head--from my behavior. 'What are you going to the Feltons' for?--You never care a bit about them.' So at last I brought her the map and made her look at it--'Felton Park to Brinton, 3 miles--Haylesford, 4 miles--Beechcote, 2 miles and 1/2--Beechcote Manor, half a mile--total, ten miles.'--'Oliver!'--she got so red!--'you are going to propose to Miss Mallory!' 'Well, mother!--and what have you got to say?' So then she smiled--and kissed me--and sent you messages--which I'll give you when there's time. My mother is a rather formidable person--no one who knew her would ever dream of taking her consent to anything for granted; but this time"--his laugh was merry--"I didn't even think of asking it!"

"I shall love her--dearly," murmured Diana.

"Yes, because you won't be afraid of her. Her standards are hardly made for this wicked world. But you'll hold her--you'll manage her. If you'd said 'No' to me, she would have felt cheated of a daughter."

"I'm afraid Mrs. Fotheringham won't like it," said Diana, ruefully, letting herself be gathered again into his arms.

"My sister? I don't know what to say about Isabel, dearest--unless I parody an old saying. She and I have never agreed--except in opinion. We have been on the same side--and in hot opposition--since our childhood. No--I dare say she will be thorny! Why did you fight me so well, little rebel?"

He looked down into her dark eyes, revelling in their sweetness, and in the bliss of her surrendered beauty. If this was not his first proposal, it was his first true passion--of that he was certain.

She released herself--rosy--and still thinking of Mrs. Fotheringham. "Oliver!"--she laid her hand shyly on his--"neither she nor you will want me to stifle what I think--to deny what I do really believe? I dare say a woman's politics aren't worth much"--she laughed and sighed.

"I say!--don't take that line with Isabel!"

"Well, mine probably aren't worth much--but they are mine--and papa taught them me--and I can't give them up."

"What'll you do, darling?--canvass against me?" He kissed her hand again.

"No--but I _can't_ agree with you!"

"Of course you can't. Which of us, _I_ wonder, will shake the other? How do you know that I'm not in a blue fright for my principles?"

"You'll explain to me?--you'll not despise me?" she said, softly, bending toward him; "I'll always, always try and understand."

Who could resist an attitude so feminine, yet so loyal, at once so old and new? Marsham felt himself already attacked by the poison of Toryism, and Diana, with a happy start, envisaged horizons that her father never knew, and questions where she had everything to learn.

Hand in hand, trembling still under the thrill of the moment which had fused their lives, they fell into happy discursive talk: of the Tallyn visit--of her thoughts and his--of what Lady Lucy and Mr. Ferrier had said, or would say. In the midst of it the fall of temperature, which came with the sunset, touched them, and Marsham sprang up with the peremptoriness of a new relationship, insisting that he must take her home out of the chilly dusk. As they stood lingering in the hollow, unwilling to leave the gnarled thorns, the heather-carpet, and the glow of western light--symbols to them henceforth that they too, in their turn, amid the endless generations, had drunk the mystic cup, and shared the sacred feast--Diana perceived some movement far below, on the open space in front of Beechcote. A little peering through the twilight showed them two horses with their riders leaving the Beechcote door.

"Oh! your cousin--and Sir James!" cried Diana, in distress, "and I haven't said good-bye--"

"You will see them soon again. And I shall carry them the news to-night."

"Will you? Shall I allow it?"

Marsham laughed; he caught her hand again, slipped it possessively within his left arm, and held it there as they went slowly down the path. Diana could not think with any zest of Alicia and her reception of the news. A succession of trifles had shown her quite clearly that Alicia was not her friend; why, she did not know. She remembered many small advances on her own part.

But at the mention of Sir James Chide, her face lit up.

"He has been so kind to me!" she said, looking up into Marsham's face--"so very kind!"

Her eyes showed a touch of passion; the passion that some natures can throw into gratitude; whether for little or much. Marsham smiled.

"He fell in love with you! Yes--he is a dear old boy. One can well imagine that he has had a romance!"

"Has he?"

"It is always said that he was in love with a woman whom he defended on a charge of murder."

Diana exclaimed.

"He had met her when they were both very young, and lost his heart to her. Then she married and he lost sight of her. He accepted a brief in this murder case, ten years later, not knowing her identity, and they met for the first time when he went to see her with her solicitor in prison."

Diana breathlessly asked for the rest of the story.

"He defended her magnificently. It was a shocking case. The sentence was commuted, but she died almost immediately. They say Sir James has never got over it."

Diana pondered; her eyes dim.

"How one would like to do something for him!--to give him pleasure!"

Marsham caressed her hand.

"So you shall, darling. He shall be one of our best friends. But he mustn't make Ferrier jealous."

Diana smiled happily. She looked forward to all the new ties of kindred or friendship that Marsham was to bring her--modestly indeed, yet in the temper of one who feels herself spiritually rich and capable of giving.

"I shall love all your friends," she said, with a bright look. "I'm glad you have so many!"

"Does that mean that you've felt rather lonely sometimes? Poor darling!" he said, tenderly, "it must have been solitary often at Portofino."

"Oh no--I had papa." Then her truthfulness overcame her. "I don't mean to say I didn't often want friends of my own age--girl friends especially."

"You can't have them now!"--he said, passionately, as they paused at a wicket-gate, under a yew-tree. "I want you all--all--to myself." And in the shadow of the yew he put his arms round her again, and their hearts beat together.

But our nature moves within its own inexorable limits. In Diana, Marsham's touch, Marsham's embrace awakened that strange mingled happiness, that happiness reared and based on tragedy, which the pure and sensitive feel in the crowning moments of life. Love is tortured by its own intensity; and the thought of death strikes through the experience which means the life of the race. As her lips felt Marsham's kiss, she knew, as generations of women have known before her, that life could give her no more; and she also knew that it was transiency and parting that made it so intolerably sweet.

"Till death us do part," she said to herself. And in the intensity of her submission to the common lot she saw down the years the end of what had now begun--herself lying quiet and blessed, in the last sleep, her dead hand in Marsham's.

* * * * *

"Why must we go home?" he said, discontentedly, as he released her. "One turn more!--up the avenue! There is light enough yet!"

She yielded weakly; pacifying her social conscience by