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

of a face. She would never have mentioned her route unless she had meant "Come and say good-bye!"--unless she had longed for a parting look and word. And he--coward that he was--had shirked it--had denied her last mute petition.

Well!--after all--might it not simply have made matters worse?--for her no less than for him? The whole thing was his mother's responsibility. He might, no doubt, have pushed it all through, regardless of consequences; he might have accepted the Juliet Sparling heritage, thrown over his career, braved his mother, and carried off Diana by storm--if, that is, she would ever have allowed him to make the sacrifice as soon as she fully understood it. But it would have been one of the most quixotic things ever done. He had made his effort to do it; and--frankly--he had not been capable of it. He wondered how many men of his acquaintance would have been capable of it.

Nevertheless, he had fallen seriously in his own estimation. Nor was he unaware that he had lost a certain amount of consideration with the world at large. His courtship of Diana had been watched by a great many people: and at the same moment that it came to an end and she left England, the story of her parentage had become known in Brookshire. There had been a remarkable outburst of public sympathy and pity, testifying, no doubt, in a striking way, to the effect produced by the girl's personality, even in those few months of residence. And the fact that she was not there, that only the empty house that she had furnished with so much girlish pleasure remained to bear its mute testimony to her grief, made feeling all the hotter. Brookshire beheld her as a charming and innocent victim, and, not being able to tell her so, found relief in blaming and mocking at the man who had not stood by her. For it appeared there was to be no engagement, although all Brookshire had expected it. Instead of it, came the announcement of the tragic truth, the girl's hurried departure, and the passionate feeling on her behalf of people like the Roughsedges, or her quondam critic, the Vicar.

Marsham, thereupon, had become conscious of a wind of unpopularity blowing through his constituency. Some of the nice women of the neighborhood, with whom he had been always hitherto a welcome and desired guest, had begun to neglect him; men who would never have dreamed of allowing their own sons to marry a girl in Diana's position, greeted him with a shade less consideration than usual; and the Liberal agent in the division had suddenly ceased to clamor for his attendance and speeches at rural meetings. There could be no question that by some means or other the story had got abroad--no doubt in a most inaccurate and unjust form--and was doing harm.

Reflections of this kind were passing through his mind as he crossed Hyde Park Corner on his way to Eaton Square. Opposite St. George's Hospital he suddenly became aware of Sir James Chide on the other side of the road. At sight of him, Marsham waved his hand, quickening his pace that he might come up with him. Sir James, seeing him, gave him a perfunctory greeting, and suddenly turned aside to hail a hansom, into which he jumped, and was carried promptly out of sight.

Marsham was conscious of a sudden heat in the face. He had never yet been so sharply reminded of a changed relation. After Diana's departure he had himself written to Chide, defending his own share in the matter, speaking bitterly of the action taken by his mother and sister, and lamenting that Diana had not been willing to adopt the waiting and temporizing policy, which alone offered any hope of subduing his mother's opposition. Marsham declared--persuading himself, as he wrote, of the complete truth of the statement--that he had been quite willing to relinquish his father's inheritance for Diana's sake, and that it was her own action alone that had separated them. Sir James had rather coldly acknowledged the letter, with the remark that few words were best on a subject so painful; and since then there had been no intimacy between the two men. Marsham could only think with discomfort of the scene at Felton Park, when a man of passionate nature and romantic heart had allowed him access to the most sacred and tragic memories of his life. Sir James felt, he supposed, that he had been cheated out of his confidence--cheated out of his sympathy. Well!--it was unjust!

* * * * *

He reached Eaton Square in good time for dinner, and found his mother in the drawing-room.

"You look tired, Oliver," she said, as he kissed her.

"It's the east wind, I suppose--beastly day!"

Lady Lucy surveyed him, as he stood, moody and physically chilled, with his back to the fire.

"Was the debate interesting?"

"Ferrier made a very disappointing speech. All our fellows are getting restive."

Lady Lucy looked astonished.

"Surely they ought to trust his judgment! He has done so splendidly for the party."

Marsham shook his head.

"I wish you would use your influence," he said, slowly. "There is a regular revolt coming on. A large number of men on our side say they won't be led by him; that if we come in, he must go to the Lords."

Lady Lucy started.

"Oliver!" she said, indignantly, "you know it would break his heart!"

And before both minds there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election--the Liberals in office--himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Commons--with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord Broadstone should die or retire--this indeed had been Ferrier's working understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of the Commons, with whatever compensations, could only mean to him, and to the world in general, the failure of his career.

"They would give him Foreign Affairs, of course," said Marsham, after a pause.

"Nothing that they could give him would make up!" said Lady Lucy, with energy. "You certainly, Oliver, could not lend yourself to any intrigue of the kind."

Marsham shrugged his shoulders.

"My position is not exactly agreeable! I don't agree with Ferrier, and I do agree with the malcontents. Moreover, when we come in, they will represent the strongest element in the party, with the future in their hands."

Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes.

"You can't desert him, Oliver!--not you!"

"Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "The game sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle."

Lady Lucy--alarmed--laid a hand on his.

"Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well as this year."

"Yes--up to two months ago."

His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver often allowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother and son were not thereby improved.

Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, Lady Lucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupied with when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashed through his mind one of those recollections that are only apparently incongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother had given the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed, prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less than moderately amused. The dinner had dragged; the guests had left early; and he had come back to the drawing-room after seeing off the last of them, stifled with yawns. Waste of food, waste of money, waste of time--waste of everything! He had suddenly been seized with a passionate sense of the dulness of his home life; with a wonder how long he could go on submitting to it. And as he recalled these feelings--as of dust in the mouth--there struck across them an image from a dream-world. Diana sat at the head of the long table; Diana in white, with her slender neck, and the blue eyes, with their dear short-sighted look, her smile, and the masses of her dark hair. The dull faces on either side faded away; the lights, the flowers were for her--for her alone!

He roused himself with an effort. His mother was putting up her knitting, which, indeed, she had only pretended to work at.

"We must go and dress, Oliver. Oh! I forgot to tell you--Alicia arrived an hour ago."

"Ah!" He raised his eyebrows indifferently. "I hope she's well?"

"Brilliantly well--and as handsome as ever."

"Any love-affairs?"

"Several, apparently--but nothing suitable," said Lady Lucy, with a smile, as she rose and gathered together her possessions.

"It's time, I think, that Alicia made up her mind. She has been out a good while."

It gave him a curious pleasure--he could hardly tell why--to say this slighting thing of Alicia. After all, he had no evidence that she had done anything unfriendly or malicious at the time of the crisis. Instinctively, he had ranged her then and since as an enemy--as a person who had worked against him. But, in truth, he knew nothing for certain. Perhaps, after the foolish passages between them a year ago, it was natural that she should dislike and be critical of Diana. As to her coming now, it was completely indifferent to him. It would be a good thing, no doubt, for his mother to have her companionship.

As he opened the door for Lady Lucy to leave the room, he noticed her gray and fragile look.

"I believe you have had enough of London, mother. You ought to be getting abroad."

"I am all right," said Lady Lucy, hastily. "Like you, I hate east winds. Oliver, I have had a charming letter from Mr. Heath."

Mr. Heath had been for some months Marsham's local correspondent on the subject of the new Liberal hall in the county town. Lady Lucy had recently sent a check to the Committee, which had set all their building anxieties at rest.

Oliver looked down rather moodily upon her.

"It's pretty easy to write charming letters when people send you money. It would have been more to the purpose, I think, if they had taken a little trouble to raise some themselves!"

Lady Lucy flushed.

"I don't suppose Dunscombe is a place with many rich people in it," she said, in a voice of protest, as she passed him. Her thoughts hurt her as she mounted the stairs. Oliver had not received her gift--for, after all, it was a gift to him--very graciously. And the same might have been said of various other things that she had tried to do for him during the preceding months.

As to Marsham, while he dressed, he too recalled other checks that had been recently paid for him, other anxious attempts that had been made to please him. Since Diana had vanished from the scene, no complaisance, no liberality had been too much for his mother's good-will. He had never been so conscious of an atmosphere of money--much money. And there were moments--what he himself would have described as morbid moments--when it seemed to him the price of blood; when he felt himself to be a mere, crude moral tale embodied and walking about. Yet how ridiculous! What reasonable man, knowing what money means, and the power of it, but