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

town," but was not heard. The table was engaged in watching the new-comer.

"May we congratulate you on the result?" said Mr. Ferrier, putting up his eye-glass.

"If you like," said Miss Drake, indifferently, still gently munching at her cake. Then suddenly she smiled--a glittering infectious smile, to which unconsciously all the faces near her responded. "I have been reading the book you lent me!" she said, addressing Mr. Ferrier.

"Well?"

"I'm too stupid--I can't understand it."

Mr. Ferrier laughed.

"I'm afraid that excuse won't do, Miss Alicia. You must find another."

She was silent a moment, finished her cake, then took some grapes, and began to play with them in the same conscious provocative way--till at last she turned upon her immediate neighbor, a young barrister with a broad boyish face.

"Well, I wonder whether _you'd_ mind?"

"Mind what?"

"If your father had done something shocking--forged--or murdered--or done something of that kind--supposing, of course, he were dead."

"Do you mean--if I suddenly found out?"

She nodded assent.

"Well!" he reflected; "it would be disagreeable!"

"Yes--but would it make you give up all the things you like?--golfing--and cards--and parties--and the girl you were engaged to--and take to slumming, and that kind of thing?"

The slight inflection of the last words drew smiles. Mr. Ferrier held up a finger.

"Miss Alicia, I shall lend you no more books."

"Why? Because I can't appreciate them?"

Mr. Ferrier laughed.

"I maintain that book is a book to melt the heart of a stone."

"Well, I tried to cry," said the girl, putting another grape into her mouth, and quietly nodding at her interlocutor--"I did--honor bright. But--really--what does it matter what your father did?"

"My _dear!_" said Lady Lucy, softly. Her singularly white and finely wrinkled face, framed in a delicate capote of old lace, looked coldly at the speaker.

"By-the-way," said Mr. Ferrier, "does not the question rather concern you in this neighborhood? I hear young Brenner has just come to live at West Hill. I don't now what sort of a youth he is, but if he's a decent fellow, I don't imagine anybody will boycott him on account of his father's misdoings."

He referred to one of the worst financial scandals of the preceding generation. Lady Lucy made no answer, but any one closely observing her might have noticed a sudden and sharp stiffening of the lips, which was in truth her reply.

"Oh, you can always ask a man like that to garden-parties!" said a shrill, distant voice. The group round the table turned. The remark was made by old Lady Niton, who sat enthroned in an arm-chair near the fire, sometimes knitting, and sometimes observing her neighbors with a malicious eye.

"Anything's good enough, isn't it, for garden-parties?" said Mrs. Fotheringham, with a little sneer.

Lady Niton's face kindled. "Let us be Radicals, my dear," she said, briskly, "but not hypocrites. Garden-parties are invaluable--for people you can't ask into the house. By-the-way, wasn't it you, Oliver, who scolded me last night, because I said somebody wasn't 'in Society'?"

"You said it of a particular hero of mine," laughed Marsham. "I naturally pitied Society."

"What is Society? Where is it?" said Sir James Chide, contemptuously. "I suppose Lady Palmerston knew."

The famous lawyer sat a little apart from the rest. Diana, who had only caught his name, and knew nothing else of him, looked with sudden interest at the man's great brow and haughty look. Lady Niton shook her head emphatically.

"We know quite as well as she did. Society is just as strong and just as exclusive as it ever was. But it is clever enough now to hide the fact from outsiders."

"I am afraid we must agree that standards have been much relaxed," said Lady Lucy.

"Not at all--not at all!" cried Lady Niton. "There were black sheep then; and there are black sheep now."

Lady Lucy held her own.

"I am sure that people take less care in their invitations," she said, with soft obstinacy. "I have often heard my mother speak of society in her young days,--how the dear Queen's example purified it--and how much less people bowed down to money then than now."

"Ah, that was before the Americans and the Jews," said Sir James Chide.

"People forget their responsibility," said Lady Lucy, turning to Diana, and speaking so as not to be heard by the whole table. "In old days it was birth; but now--now when we are all democratic--it should be _character_.--Don't you agree with me?"

"Other people's character?" asked Diana.

"Oh, we mustn't be unkind, of course. But when a thing is notorious. Take this young Brenner. His father's frauds ruined hundreds of poor people. How can I receive him here, as if nothing had happened? It ought not to be forgotten. He himself ought to _wish_ to live quietly!"

Diana gave a hesitating assent, adding: "But I'm sorry for Mr. Brenner!"

Mr. Ferrier, as she spoke, leaned slightly across the tea-table as though to listen to what she said. Lady Lucy moved away, and Mr. Ferrier, after spending a moment of quiet scrutiny on the young mistress of Beechcote, came to sit beside her.

Mrs. Fotheringham threw herself back in her chair with a little yawn. "Mamma is more difficult than the Almighty!" she said, in a loud aside to Sir James Chide. "One sin--or even somebody else's sin--and you are done for."

Sir James, who was a Catholic, and scrupulous in speech, pursed his lips slightly, drummed on the table with his fingers, and finally rose without reply, and betook himself to the _Times_. Miss Drake meanwhile had been carried off to play billiards at the farther end of the hall by the young men of the party. It might have been noticed that, before she went, she had spent a few minutes of close though masked observation of her cousin Oliver's new friend. Also, that she tried to carry Oliver Marsham with her, but unsuccessfully. He had returned to Diana's neighborhood, and stood leaning over a chair beside her, listening to her conversation with Mr. Ferrier.

His sister, Mrs. Fotheringham, was not content to listen. Diana's impressions of the country-side, which presently caught her ear, evidently roused her pugnacity. She threw herself on all the girl's rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised. All the "locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish--bores, in fact, of the first water. And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham joined in. He showed himself possessed of a sharper and more caustic tongue than Diana had yet suspected. His sister's sallies only amused him, and sometimes he improved on them, with epithets or comments, shrewder than hers indeed, but quite as biting.

"His neighbors and constituents!" thought Diana, in a young astonishment. "The people who send him to Parliament!"

Mr. Ferrier seemed to become aware of her surprise and disapproval, for he once or twice threw in a satirical word or two, at the expense, not of the criticised, but of the critics. The well-known Leader of the Opposition was a stout man of middle height, with a round head and face, at first sight wholly undistinguished, an ample figure, and smooth, straight hair. But there was so much honesty and acuteness in the eyes, so much humor in the mouth, and so much kindness in the general aspect, that Diana felt herself at once attracted; and when the master of the house was summoned by his head gamekeeper to give directions for the shooting-party of the following day, and Mrs. Fotheringham had gone off to attend what seemed to be a vast correspondence, the politician and the young girl fell into a conversation which soon became agreeable and even absorbing to both. Mrs. Colwood, sitting on the other side of the hall, timidly discussing fancy work with the Miss Varleys, Lady Lucy's young nieces, saw that Diana was making a conquest; and it seemed to her, moreover, that Mr. Ferrier's scrutiny of his companion was somewhat more attentive and more close than was quite explained by the mere casual encounter of a man of middle-age with a young and charming girl. Was he--like herself--aware that matters of moment might be here at their beginning?

Meanwhile, if Mr. Ferrier was making discoveries, so was Diana. A man, it appeared, could be not only one of the busiest and most powerful politicians in England, but also a philosopher, and a reader, one whose secret tastes were as unworldly and romantic as her own. Books, music, art--he could handle these subjects no less skilfully than others political or personal. And, throughout, his deference to a young and pretty woman was never at fault. Diana was encouraged to talk, and then, without a word of flattery, given to understand that her talk pleased. Under this stimulus, her soft dark beauty was soon glowing at its best; innocence, intelligence, and youth, spread as it were their tendrils to the sun.

Meanwhile, Sir James Chide, a few yards off, was apparently absorbed partly in the _Times_, partly in the endeavor to make Lady Lucy's fox terrier go through its tricks.

Once Mr. Ferrier drew Diana's attention to her neighbor.

"You know him?"

"I never saw him before."

"You know who he is?"

"Ought I?--I am so sorry!"

"He is perhaps the greatest criminal advocate we have. And a very distinguished politician too.--Whenever our party comes in, he will be in the Cabinet.--You must make him talk this evening."

"I?" said Diana, laughing and blushing.

"You can!" smiled Mr. Ferrier. "Witness how you have been making me chatter! But I think I read you right? You do not mind if one chatters?--if one gives you information?"

"Mind!--How could I be anything but grateful? It puzzles me so--this--" she hesitated.

"This English life?--especially the political life? Well!--let me be your guide. I have been in it for a long while."

Diana thanked him, and rose.

"You want your room?" he asked her, kindly.--"Mrs. Fotheringham, I think, is in the drawing-room. Let me take you to her. But, first, look at two or three of these pictures as you go."

"These--pictures?" faltered Diana, looking round her, her tone changing.

"Oh, not those horrible frescos! Those were perpetrated by Marsham's father. They represent, as you see, the different processes of the Iron Trade. Old Henry Marsham liked them, because, as he said, they explained him, and the house. Oliver would like to whitewash them--but for filial piety. People might suppose him ashamed of his origin. No, no!--I mean those two or three old pictures at the end of the room. Come and look at them--they are on our way."

He led her to inspect them. They proved to be two Gainsboroughs and a Raeburn, representing ancestors on Lady Lucy's side. Mr. Ferrier's talk of them showed his intimate knowledge both of Varleys and Marshams, the knowledge rather of a kinsman than a friend. Diana perceived, indeed, how great must be the affection, the intimacy, between him and them.

Meanwhile, as the man of fifty and the slender girl in black passed before him, on their way to examine the pictures, Sir James Chide, casually looking up, was apparently struck by some rapid and powerful impression. It arrested the hand playing with the dog; it held and transformed the whole man. His eyes, open as though in astonishment or pain, followed every movement of Diana, scrutinized every look and gesture. His face had flushed slightly--his lips were parted. He had the aspect of one trying eagerly, passionately, to follow up some clew that would not unwind itself; and