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

worst."

She had thrown off her hat, and was patting and pulling the numerous puffs and bandeaux, in which her hair was arranged, with a nervous hand. Diana was aghast at her appearance. The dirty finery of her dress had sunk many degrees in the scale of decency and refinement since February. Her staring brunette color had grown patchy and unhealthy, her eyes had a furtive audacity, her lips a coarseness, which might have been always there; but in the winter, youth and high spirits had to some extent disguised them.

"Aren't you soon going home?" asked Diana, looking at her with a troubled brow.

"No, I'm--I'm engaged. I thought you might have known that!" The girl turned fiercely upon her.

"No--I hadn't heard--"

"Well, I don't know where you live all your time!" said Fanny, impatiently. "There's heaps of people at Dunscombe know that I've been engaged to Fred Birch for three months. I wasn't going to write to you, of course, because I--well!--I knew you thought I'd been rough on you--about that--you know."

"_Fred Birch!_" Diana's voice was faltering and amazed.

Fanny twisted her hat in her hands.

"He's all right," she said, angrily, "if his business hadn't been ruined by a lot of nasty crawling tale-tellers. If people'd only mind their own business! However, there it is--he's ruined--he hasn't got a penny piece--and, of course, he can't marry me, if--well, if somebody don't help us out."

Diana's face changed.

"Do you mean that I should help you out?"

"Well, there's no one else!" said Fanny, still, as it seemed, defying something or some one.

"I gave you--a thousand pounds."

"You gave it _mother I_ I got precious little of it. I've had to borrow, lately, from people in the boarding-house. And I can't get any more--there! I'm just broke--stony."

She was still looking straight before her, but her lip trembled.

Diana bent forward impetuously.

"Fanny!" she said, laying her hand on her cousin's, "_do_ go home!"

Fanny's lip continued to tremble.

"I tell you I'm engaged," she repeated, in a muffled voice.

"Don't marry him!" cried Diana, imploringly. "He's not--he's not a good man."

"What do you know about it? He's well enough, though I dare say he's not your sort. He'd be all right if somebody would just lend a hand--help him with the debts, and put him on his feet again. He suits me, anyway. I'm not so thin-skinned."

Diana stiffened. Fanny's manner--as of old--was almost incredible, considered as the manner of one in difficulties asking for help. The sneering insolence of it inevitably provoked the person addressed.

"Have you told Aunt Bertha?" she said, coldly--"asked her consent?"

"Mother? Oh, I've told her I'm engaged. She knows very well that I manage my own business."

Diana withdrew her chair a little.

"When are you going to be married? Are you still with those friends?"

Fanny laughed.

"Oh, Lord, no! I fell out with them long ago. They were a wretched lot! But I found a girl I knew, and we set up together. I've been in a blouse-shop earning thirty shillings a week--there! And if I hadn't, I'd have starved!"

Fanny raised her head. Their eyes met: Fanny's full of mingled bravado and misery; Diana's suddenly stricken with deep and remorseful distress.

"Fanny, I told you to write to me if there was anything wrong! Why didn't you?"

"You hated me!" said Fanny, sullenly.

"I didn't!" cried Diana, the tears rising to her eyes. "But--you hurt me so!" Then again she bent forward, laying her hand on her cousin's, speaking fast and low. "Fanny, I'm very sorry!--if I'd known you were in trouble I'd have come or written--I thought you were with friends, and I knew the money had been paid. But, Fanny, I _implore_ you!--give up Mr. Birch! Nobody speaks well of him! You'll be miserable!--you must be!"

"Too late to think of that!" said Fanny, doggedly.

Diana looked up in sudden terror. Fanny tried to brazen it out. But all the patchy color left her cheeks, and, dropping her head on her hands, she began to sob. Yet even the sobs were angry.

"I can go and drown myself!" she said, passionately, "and I suppose I'd better. Nobody cares whether I do or not! He's made a fool of me--I don't suppose mother'll take me home again. And if he doesn't marry me, I'll kill myself somehow--it don't matter how--before--I've got to!"

Diana had dropped on her knees beside her visitor. Unconsciously--pitifully--she breathed her cousin's name. Fanny looked up. She wrenched herself violently away.

"Oh, it's all very well!--but we can't all be such saints as you. It'd be all right if he married me directly--_directly_," she repeated, hurriedly.

Diana knelt still immovable. In her face was that agonized shock and recoil with which the young and pure, the tenderly cherished and guarded, receive the first withdrawal of the veil which hides from them the more brutal facts of life. But, as she knelt there, gazing at Fanny, another expression stole upon and effaced the first. Taking shape and body, as it were, from the experience of the moment, there rose into sight the new soul developed in her by this tragic year. Not for her--not for Juliet Sparling's daughter--the plea of cloistered innocence! By a sharp transition her youth had passed from the Chamber of Maiden Thought into the darkened Chamber of Experience. She had steeped her heart in the waters of sin and suffering; she put from her in an instant the mere maiden panic which had drawn her to her knees.

"Fanny, I'll help you!" she said, in a low voice, putting her arms round her cousin. "Don't cry--I'll help you."

Fanny raised her head. In Diana's face there was something which, for the first time, roused in the other a nascent sense of shame. The color came rushing into her cheeks; her eyes wavered painfully.

"You must come and stay here," said Diana, almost in a whisper. "And where is Mr. Birch? I must see him."

She rose as she spoke; her voice had a decision, a sternness, that Fanny for once did not resent. But she shook her head despairingly.

"I can't get at him. He sends my letters back. He'll not marry me unless he's paid to."

"When did you see him last?"

Gradually the whole story emerged. The man had behaved as the coarse and natural man face to face with temptation and opportunity is likely to behave. The girl had been the victim first and foremost of her own incredible folly. And Diana could not escape the idea that on Birch's side there had not been wanting from the first an element of sinister calculation. If her relations objected to the situation, it could, of course, be made worth his while to change it. All his recent sayings and doings, as Fanny reported them, clearly bore this interpretation.

As Diana sat, dismally pondering, an idea flashed upon her. Sir James Chide was to dine at Beechcote that night. He was expected early, would take in Beechcote, indeed, on his way from the train to Lytchett. Who else should advise her if not he? In a hundred ways, practical and tender, he had made her understand that, for her mother's sake and her own, she was to him as a daughter.

She mentioned him to Fanny.

"Of course"--she hurried over the words--"we need only say that you have been engaged. We must consult him, I suppose, about--about breach of promise of marriage."

The odious, hearsay phrase came out with difficulty. But Fanny's eyes glistened at the name of the great lawyer.

Her feelings toward the man who had betrayed her were clearly a medley of passion and of hatred. She loved him as she was able to love; and she wished, at the same time, to coerce and be revenged on him. The momentary sense of shame had altogether passed. It was Diana who, with burning cheeks, stipulated that while Fanny must not return to town, but must stay at Beechcote till matters were arranged, she should not appear during Sir James's visit; and it was Fanny who said, with vindictive triumph, as Diana left her in her room; "Sir James'll know well enough what sort of damages I could get!"

* * * * *

After dinner Diana and Sir James walked up and down the lime-walk in the August moonlight. His affection, as soon as he saw her, had been conscious of yet another strain upon her, but till she began to talk to him _tete-a-tete_ he got no clew to it; and even then what he guessed had very little to do with what she said. She told her cousin's story so far as she meant to tell it with complete self-possession. Her cousin was in love with this wretched man, and had got herself terribly talked about. She could not be persuaded to give him up, while he could only be induced to marry her by the prospect of money. Could Sir James see him and find out how much would content him, and whether any decent employment could be found for him?

Sir James held his peace, except for the "Yeses" and "Noes" that Diana's conversation demanded. He would certainly interview the young man; he was very sorry for her anxieties; he would see what could be done.

Meanwhile, he never communicated to her that he had travelled down to Beechcote in the same carriage with Lady Felton, the county gossip, and that in addition to other matters--of which more anon--the refreshment-room story had been discussed between them, with additions and ramifications leading to very definite conclusions in any rational mind as to the nature of the bond between Diana's cousin and the young Dunscombe solicitor. Lady Felton had expressed her concern for Miss Mallory. "Poor thing!--do you think she knows? Why on earth did she ever ask him to Beechcote! Alicia Drake told me she saw him there."

These things Sir James did not disclose. He played Diana's game with perfect discretion. He guessed, even that Fanny was in the house, but he said not a word. No need at all to question the young woman. If in such a case he could not get round a rascally solicitor, what could he do?--and what was the good of being the leader of the criminal Bar?

Only when Diana, at the end of their walk, shyly remarked that money was not to stand in the way; that she had plenty; that Beechcote was no doubt too expensive for her, but that the tenancy was only a yearly one, and she had but to give notice at Michaelmas, which she thought of doing--only then did Sir James allow himself a laugh.

"You think I am going to let this business turn you out of Beechcote--eh?--you preposterous little angel!"

"Not this business," stammered Diana; "but I am really living at too great a rate."

Sir James grinned, patted her ironically on the shoulder, told her to be a good girl, and departed.

* * * * *

Fanny stayed for a week at Beechcote, and at the end of that time Diana and Mrs. Colwood accompanied her on a Saturday to