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

with itself; still, if it could mount up a little higher, it would be happy; if it could not gain that point, it would obtain all its desires; but yet at last, when it is got up to the very top of the peak of Teneriffe, it is in very great danger of breaking its neck downward, but in no possibility of ascending upward--into the seat of tranquillity about the moon."

The new Secretary of State threw himself back in his garden chair, his hands behind his head. Cowley wrote well; but the old fellow did not, after all, know much about it, in spite of his boasted experiences at that sham and musty court of St.-Germain's. Is it true that men who have climbed high are always thirsty to climb higher? No! "What is my feeling now? Simply a sense of _opportunity_. A man may be glad to have the chance of leaving his mark on England."

Thoughts rose in him which were not those of a pessimist--thoughts, however, which the wise man will express as little as possible, since talk profanes them. The concluding words of Peel's great Corn Law speech ran through his memory, and thrilled it. He was accused of indifference to the lot of the poor. It was not true. It never had been true.

"Hullo! who comes?"

Mrs. Colwood was running over the lawn, bringing apparently a letter, and a newspaper.

She came up, a little breathless.

"This letter has just come for you, Mr. Ferrier, by special messenger. And Miss Mallory asked me to bring you the newspaper."

Ferrier took the letter, which was bulky and addressed in the Premier's handwriting.

"Kindly ask the messenger to wait. I will come and speak to him."

He opened the letter and read it. Then, having put it deliberately in his pocket, he sat bending forward, staring at the grass. The newspaper caught his eye. It was the _Herald_ of that morning. He raised it from the ground, read the first leading article, and then a column "from a correspondent" on which the article was based.

As he came to the end of it a strange premonition took possession of him. He was still himself, but it seemed to him that the roar of some approaching cataract was in his ears. He mastered himself with difficulty, took a pencil from his pocket, and drew a wavering line beside a passage in the article contributed by the _Herald's_ correspondent. The newspaper slid from his knee to the ground.

Then, with a groping hand, he sought again for Broadstone's letter, drew it out of its envelope, and, with a mist before his eyes, felt for the last page which, he seemed to remember, was blank. On this he traced, with difficulty, a few lines, replaced the whole letter in the torn envelope and wrote an address upon it--uncertainly crossing out his own name.

Then, suddenly, he fell back. The letter followed the newspaper to the ground. Deadly weakness was creeping upon him, but as yet the brain was clear. Only his will struggled no more; everything had given way, but with the sense of utter catastrophe there mingled neither pain nor bitterness. Some of the Latin verse scattered over the essay he had been reading ran vaguely through his mind--then phrases from his last talk with the Prime Minister--then remembrances of the night at Assisi--and the face of the poet--

A piercing cry rang out close beside him--Diana's cry. His life made a last rally, and his eyes opened. They closed again, and he heard no more.

Sir James Chide stooped over Diana.

"Run for help!--brandy!--a doctor! I'll stay with him. Run!"

Diana ran. She met Mrs. Colwood hurrying, and sent her for brandy. She herself sped on blindly toward the village.

A few yards beyond the Beechcote gate she was overtaken by a carriage. There was an exclamation, the carriage pulled up sharp, and a man leaped from it.

"Miss Mallory!--what is the matter?"

She looked up, saw Oliver Marsham, and, in the carriage behind him, Lady Lucy, sitting stiff and pale, with astonished eyes.

"Mr. Ferrier is ill--very ill! Please go for the doctor! He is here--at my house."

The figure in the carriage rose hurriedly. Lady Lucy was beside her.

"What is the matter?" She laid an imperious hand on the girl's arm.

"I think--he is dying," said Diana, gasping. "Oh, come!--come back at once!"

Marsham was already in the carriage. The horse galloped forward. Diana and Lady Lucy ran toward the house.

"In the garden," said Diana, breathlessly; and, taking Lady Lucy's hand, she guided her.

Beside the dying man stood Sir James Chide, Muriel Colwood, and the old butler. Sir James looked up, started at the sight of Lady Lucy, and went to meet her.

"You are just in time," he said, tenderly; "but he is going fast. We have done all we could."

Ferrier was now lying on the grass, his head supported. Lady Lucy sank beside him.

"John!" she called, in a voice of anguish--"John--dear, dear friend!"

But the dying man made no sign. And as she lifted his hand to her lips--the love she had shown him so grudgingly in life speaking now undisguised through her tears and her despair--Sir James watched the gentle passage of the last breaths, and knew that all was done--the play over and the lights out.


CHAPTER XIX

A sad hurrying and murmuring filled the old rooms and passages of Beechcote. The village doctor had arrived, and under his direction the body of John Ferrier had been removed from the garden to the library of the house. There, amid Diana's books and pictures, Ferrier lay, shut-eyed and serene, that touch of the ugly and the ponderous which in life had mingled with the power and humanity of his aspect entirely lost and drowned in the dignity of death.

Chide and the doctor were in low-voiced consultation at one end of the room; Lady Lucy sat beside the body, her face buried in her hands; Marsham stood behind her.

Brown, the butler, noiselessly entered the room, and approached Chide.

"Please sir, Lord Broadstone's messenger is here. He thinks you might wish him to take back a letter to his lordship."

Chide turned abruptly.

"Lord Broadstone's messenger?"

"He brought a letter for Mr. Ferrier, sir, half an hour ago."

Chide's face changed.

"Where is the letter?" He turned to the doctor, who shook his head.

"I saw nothing when we brought him in."

Marsham, who had overheard the conversation, came forward.

"Perhaps on the grass--"

Chide--pale, with drawn brows--looked at him a moment in silence.

Marsham hurried to the garden and to the spot under the yews, where the death had taken place. Round the garden chairs were signs of trampling feet--the feet of the gardeners who had carried the body. A medley of books, opened letters, and working-materials lay on the grass. Marsham looked through them; they all belonged to Diana or Mrs. Colwood. Then he noticed a cushion which had fallen beside the chair, and a corner of newspaper peeping from below it. He lifted it up.

Below lay Broadstone's open letter, in its envelope, addressed first in the Premier's well-known handwriting to "The Right Honble. John Ferrier, M.P."--and, secondly, in wavering pencil, to "Lady Lucy Marsham, Tallyn Hall."

Marsham turned the letter over, while thoughts hurried through his brain. Evidently Ferrier had had time to read it. Why that address to his mother?--and in that painful hand--written, it seemed, with the weakness of death already upon him?

The newspaper? Ah!--the _Herald_!--lying as though, after reading it, Ferrier had thrown it down and let the letter drop upon it, from a hand that had ceased to obey him. As Marsham saw it the color rushed into his cheeks. He stooped and raised it. Suddenly he noticed on the margin of the paper a pencilled line, faint and wavering, like the words written on the envelope. It ran beside a passage in the article "from a correspondent," and as he looked at it consciousness and pulse paused in dismay. There, under his eye, in that dim mark, was the last word and sign of John Ferrier.

He was still staring at it when a sound disturbed him. Lady Lucy came to him, feebly, across the grass. Marsham dropped the newspaper, retaining Broadstone's letter.

"Sir James wished me to leave him a little," she said, brokenly. "The ambulance will be here directly. They will take him to Lytchett. I thought it should have been Tallyn. But Sir James decided it."

"Mother!"--Marsham moved toward her, reluctantly--"here is a letter--no doubt of importance. And--it is addressed to you."

Lady Lucy gave a little cry. She looked at the pencilled address, with quivering lips; then she opened the envelope, and on the back of the closely written letter she saw at once Ferrier's last words to her.

Marsham, moved by a son's natural impulse, stooped and kissed her hair. He drew a chair forward, and she sank into it with the letter. While she was reading it he raised the _Herald_ again, unobserved, folded it up hurriedly, and put it in his pocket; then walked away a few steps, that he might leave his mother to her grief. Presently Lady Lucy called him.

"Oliver!" The voice was strong. He went back to her and she received him with sparkling eyes, her hand on Broadstone's letter.

"Oliver, this is what killed him! Lord Broadstone must bear the responsibility."

And hurriedly, incoherently, she explained that the letter from Lord Broadstone was an urgent appeal to Ferrier's patriotism and to his personal friendship for the writer; begging him for the sake of party unity, and for the sake of the country, to allow the Prime Minister to cancel the agreement of the day before; to accept a peerage and the War Office in lieu of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House. The Premier gave a full account of the insurmountable difficulties in the way of the completion of the Government, which had disclosed themselves during the course of the afternoon and evening following his interview with Ferrier. Refusals of the most unexpected kind, from the most unlikely quarters; letters and visits of protest from persons impossible to ignore--most of them, no doubt, engineered by Lord Philip; "finally the newspapers of this morning--especially the article in the _Herald_, which you will have seen before this reaches you--all these, taken together, convince me that if I cannot persuade you to see the matter in the same light as I do--and I know well that, whether you accept or refuse, you will put the public advantage first--I must at once inform her Majesty that my attempt to construct a Government has broken down."

Marsham followed her version of the letter as well as he could; and as she turned the last page, he too perceived the pencilled writing, which was not Broadstone's. This she did not offer to communicate; indeed, she covered it at once with her hand.

"Yes, I suppose it was the shock," he said, in a low voice. "But it was not Broadstone's fault. It was no one's fault."

Lady Lucy flushed and looked up.

"That man Barrington!" she said, vehemently. "Oh, if I had never had him in my house!"

Oliver made no reply. He sat beside her, staring at the grass. Suddenly Lady Lucy touched him on the knee.

"Oliver!"--her voice was gasping and difficult--"Oliver!--you had nothing to do with that?"

"With what, mother?"

"With the _Herald_ article. I read it this