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 becharacter.--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 towishto 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 theTimes. 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 theTimes, 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 every now and then he bent forward--listening--trying to catch her voice.
Presently the inspection was over. Diana turned and beckoned to Mrs. Colwood. The two ladies went toward the drawing-room, Mr. Ferrier showing the way.
When he returned to the hall, Sir James Chide, its sole occupant, was walking up and down.
"Who was that young lady?" said Sir James, turning abruptly.
"Isn't she charming? Her name is Mallory--and she has just settled at Beechcote, near here. That small fair lady was her companion. Oliver tells me she is an orphan--well off--with no kith or kin. She has just come to England, it seems, for the first time. Her father brought her up abroad away from everybody. She will have a success! But of all the little Jingoes!"
Mr. Ferrier's face expressed an amused recollection of some of Diana's speeches.
"Mallory?" said Sir James, under his breath--"Mallory?" He walked to the window, and stood looking out, his hands in his pockets.
Mr. Ferrier went up-stairs to write letters. In a few minutes the man at the window came slowly back toward the fire, staring at the ground.
"The look in the eyes!" he said to himself--"the mouth!--the voice!"
He stood by the vast and pompous fireplace--hanging over the blaze--the prey of some profound agitation, some flooding onset of memory. Servants passed and repassed through the hall; sounds loud and merry came from the drawing-room. Sir James neither saw nor heard.
Alicia Drake--a vision of pale pink--had just appeared in the long gallery at Tallyn, on her way to dinner. Her dress, her jewels, and all her minor appointments were of that quality and perfection to which only much thought and plentiful money can attain. She had not, in fact, been romancing in that account of her afternoon which has been already quoted. Dress was her weapon and her stock in trade; it was, she said, necessary to her "career." And on this plea she steadily exacted in its support a proportion of the family income which left but small pickings for the schooling of her younger brothers and the allowances of her two younger sisters. But so great were the indulgence and the pride of her parents--small Devonshire land-owners living on an impoverished estate--that Alicia's demands were conceded without a murmur. They themselves were insignificant folk, who had, in their own opinion, failed in life; and most of their children seemed to them to possess the same ineffective qualities--or the same absence of qualities--as themselves. But Alicia represented their one chance of something brilliant and interesting, something to lift them above their neighbors and break up the monotony of their later lives. Their devotion was a strange mixture of love and selfishness; at any rate, Alicia could always feel, and did always feel, that she was playing her family's game as well as her own.
Her own game, of course, came first. She was not a beauty, in the sense in which Diana Mallory was a beauty; and of that fact she had been perfectly aware after her first apparently careless glance at the new-comer of the afternoon. But she had points that never failed to attract notice: a free and rather insolent carriage, audaciously beautiful eyes, a general roundness and softness, and a grace--unfailing, deliberate, and provocative, even in actions, morally, the most graceless--that would have alone secured her the "career" on which she was bent.
Of her mental qualities, one of the most profitable was a very shrewd power of observation. As she swept slowly along the corridor, which overlooked the hall at Tallyn, none of the details of the house were lost upon her. Tallyn was vast, ugly--above all, rich. Henry Marsham, the deceased husband of Lady Lucy and father of Oliver and Mrs. Fotheringham, had made an enormous fortune in the Iron Trade of the north, retiring at sixty that he might enjoy some of those pleasures of life for which business had left him too little time. One of these pleasures was building. Henry Marsham had spent ten years in building Tallyn, and at the end of that time, feeling it impossible to live in the huge incoherent place he had created, he hired a small villa at Nice and went to die there in privacy and peace. Nevertheless, his will laid strict injunctions upon his widow to inhabit and keep up Tallyn; injunctions backed by considerable sanctions of a financial kind. His will, indeed, had been altogether a document of some eccentricity; though as eight years had now elapsed since his death, the knowledge of its provisions possessed by outsiders had had time to grow vague. Still, there were strong general impressions abroad, and as Alicia Drake surveyed the house which the old man had built to be the incubus of his descendants, some of them teased her mind. It was said, for instance, that Oliver Marsham and his sister only possessed pittances of about a thousand a year apiece, while Tallyn, together with the vast bulk of Henry Marsham's fortune, had been willed to Lady Lucy, and lay, moreover, at her absolute disposal. Was this so, or no? Miss Drake's curiosity, for some time past, would have been glad to be informed.
Meanwhile, here was the house--about which there was no mystery--least of all, as to its cost. Interminable broad corridors, carpeted with ugly Brussels and suggesting a railway hotel, branched out before Miss Drake's eyes in various directions; upon them opened not bedrooms but "suites," as Mr. Marsham père had loved to call them, of which the number was legion, while the bachelors' wing alone would have lodged a regiment. Every bedroom was like every other, except for such variations as Tottenham Court Road, rioting at will, could suggest. Copies in marble or bronze of well-known statues ranged along the corridors--a forlorn troupe of nude and shivering divinities. The immense hall below, with its violent frescos and its brand-new Turkey carpets, was panelled in oak, from which some device of stain or varnish had managed to abstract every particle of charm. A whole oak wood, indeed, had been lavished on the swathing and sheathing of the house, With the only result that the spectator beheld it steeped in a repellent yellow-brown from top to toe, against which no ornament, no piece of china, no picture, even did they possess some individual beauty, could possibly make it prevail.
And the drawing-room! As Alicia Drake advanced alone into its empty and blazing magnificence she could only laugh in its face--so eager and restless was the effort which it made, and so hopeless the defeat. Enormous mirrors, spread on white and gold walls; large copies from Italian pictures, collected by Henry Marsham in Rome; more facile statues holding innumerable lights; great pieces of modern china painted with realistic roses and poppies; crimson carpets, gilt furniture, and flaring cabinets--Miss Drake frowned as she looked at it. "Whatcouldbe done with it?" she said to herself, walking slowly up and down, and glancing from side to side--"Whatcouldbe done with it?"
A rustle in the hall announced another guest. Mrs. Fotheringham entered. Marsham's sister dressed with severity; and as she approached her cousin she put up her eye-glass for what was evidently a hostile inspection of the dazzling effect presented by the young lady. But Alicia was not afraid of Mrs. Fotheringham.
"How early we are!" she said, still quietly looking at the reflection of herself in the mirror over the mantel-piece and warming a slender foot at the fire. "Haven't some more people arrived, Cousin Isabel? I thought I heard a carriage while I was dressing."
"Yes; Miss Vincent and three men came by the late train."
"All Labor members?" asked Alicia, with a laugh.
Mrs. Fotheringham explained, with some tartness, that only one of the three was a Labor member--Mr. Barton. Of the other two, one was Edgar Frobisher, the other Mr. McEwart, a Liberal M.P., who had just won a hotly contested bye-election. At the name of Edgar Frobisher, Miss Drake's countenance showed some animation. She inquired if he had been doing anything madder than usual. Mrs. Fotheringham replied, without enthusiasm, that she knew nothing about his recent doings--nor about Mr. McEwart, who was said, however, to be of the right stuff. Mr. Barton, on the other hand, "is agreatfriend of mine--and a most remarkable man. Oliver has been very lucky to get him."
Alicia inquired whether he was likely to appear in dress clothes.
"Certainly not. He never does anything out of keeping with his class--and he knows that we lay no stress on that kind of thing." This, with another glance at the elegant Paris frock which adorned the person of Alicia--a frock, in Mrs. Fotheringham's opinion, far too expensive for the girl's circumstances. Alicia received the glance without flinching. It was one of her good points that she was never meek with the people who disliked her. She merely threw out another inquiry as to "Miss Vincent."
"One of mamma's acquaintances. She was a private secretary to some one mamma knows, and she is going to do some work for Oliver when the session begins.
"Didn't Oliver tell me she is a Socialist?"
Mrs. Fotheringham believed it might be said.
"How Miss Mallory will enjoy herself!" said Alicia, with a little laugh.
"Have you been talking to Oliver about her?" Mrs. Fotheringham stared rather hard at her cousin.
"Of course. Oliver likes her."
"Oliver likes a good many people."
"Oh no, Cousin Isabel! Oliver likes very few people--very, very few," said Miss Drake, decidedly, looking down into the fire.
"I don't know why you give Oliver such an unamiable character! In my opinion, he is often not so much on his guard as I should like to see him."
"Oh, well, we can't all be as critical as you, dear Cousin Isabel! But, anyway, Oliver admires Miss Mallory extremely. We can all see that."
The girl turned a steady face on her companion. Mrs. Fotheringham was conscious of a certain secret admiration. But her own point of view had nothing to do with Miss Drake's.
"It amuses him to talk to her," she said, sharply; "I am sure I hope it won't come to anything more. It would be very unsuitable."
"Why? Politics? Oh! that doesn't matter a bit."
"I beg your pardon. Oliver is becoming an important man, and it will never do for him to hamper himself with a wife who cannot sympathize with any of his enthusiasms and ideals."
Miss Drake shrugged her shoulders.
"He would convert her--and he likes triumphing. Oh! Cousin Isabel!--look at that lamp!"
An oil lamp in an inner drawing-room, placed to illuminate an easel portrait of Lady Lucy, was smoking atrociously. The two ladies' flew toward it, and were soon lost to sight and hearing amid a labyrinth of furniture and palms.
The place they left vacant was almost immediately filled by Oliver Marsham himself, who came in studying a pencilled paper, containing the names of the guests. He and his mother had not found the dinner very easy to arrange. Upon his heels followed Mr. Ferrier, who hurried to the fire, rubbing his hands and complaining of the cold.
"I never felt this house cold before. Has anything happened to yourcalorifère? These rooms are too big! By-the-way, Oliver"--Mr. Ferrier turned his back to the blaze, and looked round him--"when are you going to reform this one?"
Oliver surveyed it.
"Of course I should like nothing better than to make a bonfire of it all! But mother--"
"Of course--of course! Ah, well, perhaps when you marry, my dear boy! Another reason for making haste!"
The older man turned a laughing eye on his companion. Marsham merely smiled, a little vaguely, without reply. Ferrier observed him, then began abstractedly to study the carpet. After a moment he looked up--
"I like your little friend, Oliver--I like her particularly!"
"Miss Mallory? Yes, I saw you had been making acquaintance. Well?"
His voice affected a light indifference, but hardly succeeded.
"A very attractive personality!--fresh and womanly--no nonsense--heart enough for a dozen. But all the same the intellect is hungry, and wants feeding. No one will ever succeed with her, Oliver, who forgets she has a brain. Ah! here she is!"
For the door had been thrown open, and Diana entered, followed by Mrs. Colwood. She came in slowly, her brow slightly knit, and her black eyes touched with the intent seeking look which was natural to them. Her dress of the freshest simplest white fell about her in plain folds. It made the same young impression as the childish curls on the brow and temples, and both men watched her with delight, Marsham went to meet her.
"Will you sit on my left? I must take in Lady Niton."
Diana smiled and nodded.
"And who is to be my fate?"
"Mr. Edgar Frobisher. You will quarrel with him--and like him!"
"One of the 'Socialists'?"
"Ah--you must find out!"
He threw her a laughing backward glance as he went off to give directions to some of his other guests. The room filled up. Diana was aware of a tall young man, fair-haired, and evidently Scotch, whom she had not seen before, and then of a girl, whose appearance and dress riveted her attention. She was thin and small--handsome, but for a certain strained emaciated air, a lack of complexion and of bloom. But her blue eyes, black-lashed and black-browed, were superb; they made indeed the note, the distinction of the whole figure. The thick hair, cut short in the neck, was brushed back and held by a blue ribbon, the only trace of ornament in a singular costume, which consisted of a very simple morning dress, of some woollen material, nearly black, garnished at the throat and wrists by some plain white frills. The dress hung loosely on the girl's starved frame, the hands were long and thin, the face sallow. Yet such was the force of the eyes, the energy of the strong chin and mouth, the flashing freedom of her smile, as she stood talking to Lady Lucy, that all the ugly plainness of the dress seemed to Diana, as she watched her, merely to increase her strange effectiveness, to mark her out the more favorably from the glittering room, from Lady Lucy's satin and diamonds, or the shimmering elegance of Alicia Drake.
As she bowed to Mr. Frobisher, and took his arm amid the pairs moving toward the dining-room, Diana asked him eagerly who the lady in the dark dress might be.
"Oh! a great friend of mine," he said, pleasantly. "Isn't she splendid? Did you notice her evening dress?"
"Is it an evening dress?"
"It'sherevening dress. She possesses two costumes--both made of the same stuff, only the morning one has a straight collar, and the evening one has frills."
"She doesn't think it right to dress like other people?"
"Well--she has very little money, and what she has she can't afford to spend on dress. No--I suppose she doesn't think it right."
By this time they were settled at table, and Diana, convinced that she had found one of the two Socialists promised her, looked round for the other. Ah! there he was, beside Mrs. Fotheringham--who was talking to him with an eagerness rarely vouchsafed to her acquaintances. A powerful, short-necked man, in the black Sunday coat of the workman, with sandy hair, blunt features, and a furrowed brow--he had none of the magnetism, the strange refinement of the lady in the frills. Diana drew a long breath.
"How odd it all is!" she said, as though to herself.
Her companion looked at her with amusement.
"What is odd? The combination of this house--with Barton--and Miss Vincent?"
"Why do they consent to come here?" she asked, wondering. "I suppose they despise the rich."
"Not at all! The poor things--the rich--can't help themselves--just yet.Wecome here--because we mean to use the rich."
"You!--you too?"
"A Fabian--" he said, smiling. "Which means that I am not in such a hurry as Barton."
"To ruin your country? You would only murder her by degrees?"--flashed Diana.
"Ah!--you throw down the glove?--so soon? Shall we postpone it for a course or two? I am no use till I have fed."
Diana laughed. They fell into a gossip about their neighbors. The plain young man, with a shock of fair hair, a merry eye, a short chin, and the spirits of a school-boy, sitting on Lady Niton's left, was, it seemed, the particular pet and protégé of that masterful old lady. Diana remembered to have seen him at tea-time in Miss Drake's train. Lady Niton, she was told, disliked her own sons, but was never tired of befriending two or three young men who took her fancy. Bobbie Forbes was a constant frequenter of her house on Campden Hill. "But he is no toady. He tells her a number of plain truths--and amuses her guests. In return she provides him with what she calls 'the best society'--and pushes his interests in season and out of season. He is in the Foreign Office, and she is at present manoeuvring to get him attached to the Special Mission which is going out to Constantinople."
Diana glanced across the table, and in doing so met the eyes of Mr. Bobbie Forbes, which laughed into hers--involuntarily--as much as to say--"You see my plight?--ridiculous, isn't it?"
For Lady Niton was keeping a greedy conversational hold on both Marsham and the young man, pouncing to right or left, as either showed a disposition to escape from it--so that Forbes was violently withheld from Alicia Drake, his rightful lady, and Marsham could engage in no consecutive conversation with Diana.
"No escape for you!" smiled Mr. Frobisher, presently, observing the position. "Lady Niton always devastates a dinner-party."
Diana protested that she was quite content. Might she assume, after the fourth course, that his hunger was at least scotched and conversation thrown open?
"I am fortified--thank you. Shall we go back to where we left off? You had just accused me of ruining the country?"
"By easy stages," said Diana. "Wasn't that where we had come to? But first--tell me, because it's all so puzzling!--do you and Mr. Marsham agree?"
"A good deal. But he thinkshecan useus--which is his mistake."
"And Mr. Ferrier?"
Mr. Frobisher shook his head good-humoredly.
"No, no!--Ferrier is a Whig--the Whig of to-day,bien entendu, who is a very different person from the Whig of yesterday--still, a Whig, an individualist, a moderate man. He leads the Liberal party--and it is changing all the time under his hand into something he dreads and detests. The party can't do without him now--but--"
He paused, smiling.
"It will shed him some day?"
"It must!"
"And where will Mr. Marsham be then?"
"On the winning side--I think."
The tone was innocent and careless; but the words offended her.
She drew herself up a little.
"He would never betray his friends!"
"Certainly not," said Mr. Frobisher, hastily; "I didn't mean that. But Marsham has a mind more open, more elastic, more modern than Ferrier--great man as he is."
Diana was silent. She seemed still to hear some of the phrases and inflections of Mr. Ferrier's talk of the afternoon. Mr. Frobisher's prophecy wounded some new-born sympathy in her. She turned the conversation.
With Oliver Marsham she talked when she could, as Lady Niton allowed her. She succeeded, at least, in learning something more of her right-hand neighbor and of Miss Vincent. Mr. Frobisher, it appeared, was a Fellow of Magdalen, and was at present lodging in Limehouse, near the docks, studying poverty and Trade-unionism, and living upon a pound a week. As for Miss Vincent, in her capacity of secretary to a well-known Radical member of Parliament, she had been employed, for his benefit, in gathering information first-hand, very often in the same fields where Mr. Frobisher was at work. This brought them often together--and they were the best of comrades, and allies.
Diana's eyes betrayed her curiosity; she seemed to be asking for clews in a strange world. Marsham apparently felt that nothing could be more agreeable than to guide her. He began to describe for her the life of such a woman of the people as Marion Vincent. An orphan at fourteen, earning her own living from the first; self-dependent, self-protected; the friend, on perfectly equal terms, of a group of able men, interested in the same social ideals as herself; living alone, in contempt of all ordinary conventions, now in Kensington or Belgravia, and now in a back street of Stepney, or Poplar, and equally at home and her own mistress in both; exacting from a rich employer the full market value of the services she rendered him, and refusing to accept the smallest gift or favor beyond; a convinced Socialist and champion of the poor, who had within the past twelve months, to Marsham's knowledge, refused an offer of marriage from a man of large income, passionately devoted to her, whom she liked--mainly, it was believed, because his wealth was based on sweated labor: such was the character sketched by Marsham for his neighbor in the intermittent conversation, which was all that Lady Niton allowed him.
Diana listened silently, but inwardly her mind was full of critical reactions. Was this what Mr. Marsham most admired, his ideal of what a woman should be? Was he exalting, exaggerating it a little, by way of antithesis to those old-fashioned surroundings, that unreal atmosphere, as he would call it, in which, for instance, he had found her--Diana--at Rapallo--under her father's influence and bringing up? The notion spurred her pride as well as her loyalty to her father. She began to hold herself rather stiffly, to throw in a critical remark or two, to be a little flippant even, at Miss Vincent's expense. Homage so warm laid at the feet of one ideal was--she felt it--a disparagement of others; she stood for those others; and presently Marsham began to realize a hurtling of shafts in the air, an incipient battle between them.
He accepted it with delight. Still the same poetical, combative, impulsive creature, with the deep soft voice! She pleased his senses; she stirred his mind; and he would have thrown himself into one of the old Rapallo arguments with her then and there but for the gad-fly at his elbow.
Immediately after dinner Lady Niton possessed herself of Diana. "Come here, please, Miss Mallory! I wish to make your acquaintance," Thus commanded, the laughing but rebellious Diana allowed herself to be led to a corner of the over-illuminated drawing-room.
"Well!"--said Lady Niton, observing her--"so you have come to settle in these parts?"
Diana assented.
"What made you choose Brookshire?" The question was enforced by a pair of needle-sharp eyes. "There isn't a person worth talking to within a radius of twenty miles."
Diana declined to agree with her; whereupon Lady Niton impatiently exclaimed: "Tut--tut! One might as well milk he-goats as talk to the people here. Nothing to be got out of any of them. Do you like conversation?"
"Immensely!"
"Hum!--But mind you don't talk too much. Oliver talks a great deal more than is good for him. So you met Oliver in Italy? What do you think of him?"
Diana, keeping a grip on laughter, said something civil.
"Oh, Oliver's clever enough--andambitious!" Lady Niton threw up her hands. "But I'll tell you what stands in his way. He says too sharp things of people. Do you notice that?"
"He is very critical," said Diana, evasively.
"Oh, Lord, much worse than that!" said Lady Niton, coolly. "He makes himself very unpopular. You should tell him so."
"That would be hardly my place." said Diana, flushing a little.
Lady Niton stared at her a moment rather hard--then said: "But he's honey and balm itself compared to Isabel! The Marshams are old friends of mine, but I don't pretend to like Isabel Fotheringham at all. She calls herself a Radical, and there's no one insists more upon their birth and their advantages than she. Don't let her bully you--come to me if she does--I'll protect you."
Diana said vaguely that Mrs. Fotheringham had been very kind.
"You haven't had time to find out," said Lady Niton, grimly. She leaned back fanning herself, her queer white face and small black eyes alive with malice. "Did you ever see such a crew as we were at dinner? I reminded Oliver of the rhyme--'The animals went in two by two.'--It's always the way here. There's nosocietyin this house, because you can't take anything or any one for granted. One must always begin from the beginning. What can I have in common with that man Barton? The last time I talked to him, he thought Lord Grey--the Reform Bill Lord Grey--was a Tory--and had never heard of Louis Philippe. He knows nothing thatweknow--and what do I care about his Socialist stuff?--Well, now--Alicia"--her tone changed--"do you admire Alicia?"
Diana, in discomfort, glanced through the archway, leading to the inner drawing-room, which framed the sparkling figure of Miss Drake--and murmured a complimentary remark.
"No!"--said Lady Niton, with emphasis; "no--she's not handsome--though she makes people believe she is. You'll see--in five years. Of course the stupid men admire her, and she plays her cards very cleverly; but--my dear!"--suddenly the formidable old woman bent forward, and tapped Diana's arm with her fan--"let me give you a word of advice. Don't be too innocent here--or too amiable. Don't give yourself away--especially to Alicia!"
Diana had the disagreeable feeling of being looked through and through, physically and mentally; though at the same time she was only very vaguely conscious as to what there might be either for Lady Niton or Miss Drake to see.
"Thank you very much," she said, trying to laugh it off. "It is very kind of you to warn me--but really I don't think you need." She looked round her waveringly.
"May I introduce you to my friend? Mrs. Colwood--Lady Niton." For her glance of appeal had brought Mrs. Colwood to her aid, and between them they coped with thisenfant terribleamong dowagers till the gentlemen came in.
"Here is Sir James Childe," said Lady Niton, rising. "He wants to talk to you, and he don't like me. So I'll go."
Sir James, not without a sly smile, discharged arrow-like at the retreating enemy, took the seat she had vacated.
"This is your first visit to Tallyn, Miss Mallory?"
The voice speaking was thevoix d'orfamiliar to Englishmen in many a famous case, capable of any note, any inflection, to which sarcasm or wrath, shrewdness or pathos, might desire to tune it. In this case it was gentleness itself; and so was the countenance he turned upon Diana. Yet it was a countenance built rather for the sterner than the milder uses of life. A natural majesty expressed itself in the domed forehead, and in the fine head, lightly touched with gray; the eyes too were gray, the lips prominent and sensitive, the face long, and, in line, finely regular. A face of feeling and of power; the face of a Celt, disciplined by the stress and conflict of a non-Celtic world. Diana's young sympathies sprang to meet it, and they were soon in easy conversation.
Sir James questioned her kindly, but discreetly. This was really her first visit to Brookshire?
"To England!" said Diana; and then, on a little wooing, came out the girl's first impressions, natural, enthusiastic, gay. Sir James listened, with eyes half-closed, following every movement of her lips, every gesture of head and hand.
"Your parents took you abroad quite as a child?"
"I went with my father. My mother died when I was quite small."
Sir James did not speak for a moment. At last he said:
"But before you went abroad, you lived in London?"
"Yes--in Kensington Square."
Sir James made a sudden movement which displaced a book on a little table beside him. He stooped to pick it up.
"And your father was tired of England?"
Diana hesitated--
"I--I think he had gone through great trouble. He never got over mamma's death."
"Oh yes, I see," said Sir James, gently. Then, in another tone:
"So you settled on that beautiful coast? I wonder if that was the winter I first saw Italy?"
He named the year.
"Yes--that was the year," said Diana. "Had you never seen Italy before that?" She looked at him in a little surprise.
"Do I seem to you so old?" said Sir James, smiling. "I had been a very busy man, Miss Mallory, and my holidays had been generally spent in Ireland. But that year"--he paused a moment--"that year I had been ill, and the doctors sent me abroad--in October," he added, slowly and precisely. "I went first to Paris, and I was at Genoa in November."
"We must have been there--just about then! Mamma died in October. And I remember the winter was just beginning at Genoa--it was very cold--and I got bronchitis--I was only a little thing."
"And Oliver tells me you found a home at Portofino?"
Diana replied. He kept her talking; yet her impression was that he did not listen very much to what she said. At the same time she felt herselfstudied, in a way which made her self-conscious, which perhaps she might have resented in any man less polished and less courteous.
"Pardon me--" he said, abruptly, at a pause in the conversation. "Your name interests me particularly. It is Welsh, is it not? I knew two or three persons of that name; and they were Welsh."
Diana's look changed a little.
"Yes, it is Welsh," she said, in a hesitating, reserved voice; and then looked round her as though in search of a change of topic.
Sir James bent forward.
"May I come and see you some day at Beechcote?"
Diana flushed with surprise and pleasure.
"Oh! I should be so honored!"
"The honor would be mine," he said, with pleasant deference. "Now I think I see that Marsham is wroth with me for monopolizing you like this."
He rose and walked away, just as Marsham brought up Mr. Barton to introduce him to Diana.
Sir James wandered on into a small drawing-room at the end of the long suite of rooms; in its seclusion he turned back to look at the group he had left behind. His face, always delicately pale, had grown strained and white.
"Is itpossible"--he said to himself--"that she knows nothing?--that that man was able to keep it all from her?"
He walked up and down a little by himself--pondering--the prey of the same emotion as had seized him in the afternoon; till at last his ear was caught by some hubbub, some agitation in the big drawing-room, especially by the sound of the girlish voice he had just been listening to, only speaking this time in quite another key. He returned to see what was the matter.
He found Miss Mallory the centre of a circle of spectators and listeners, engaged apparently in a three-cornered and very hot discussion with Mr. Barton, the Socialist member, and Oliver Marsham. Diana had entirely forgotten herself, her shyness, the strange house, and all her alarms. If Lady Niton took nothing for granted at Tallyn, that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton. He, on the contrary, took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three English officers and some fifty men of a Sikh regiment had been lost. Mr. Barton, in taking up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the afternoon. It was, he thought, a pity the repulse had not been more decisive--so as to show all the world into what a hornet's nest the Government was going--"and a hornet's nest which will cost us half a million to take before we've done."
Diana's cheeks flamed. Did Mr. Barton mean to regret that no more English lives had been lost?
Mr. Barton was of opinion that if the defeat had been a bit worse, bloodshed might have been saved in the end. A Jingo Viceroy and a Jingo press could only be stopped by disaster--
On the contrary, said Diana, we could not afford to be stopped by disaster. Disaster must be retrieved.
Mr. Barton asked her--why? Were we never to admit that we were in the wrong?
The Viceroy and his advisers, she declared, were not likely to be wrong. And prestige had to be maintained.
At the word "prestige" the rugged face of the Labor member grew contemptuous and a little angry. He dealt with it as he was accustomed to deal with it in Socialist meetings or in Parliament. His touch in doing so was neither light nor conciliatory; the young lady, he thought, required plain speaking.
But so far from intimidating the young lady, he found in the course of a few more thrusts and parries that he had roused a by no means despicable antagonist. Diana was a mere mouth-piece; but she was the mouth-piece of eye-witnesses; whereas Barton was the mouth-piece of his daily newspaper and a handful of partisan books written to please the political section to which he belonged.
He began to stumble and to make mistakes--gross elementary mistakes in geography and fact--and there-with to lose his temper. Diana was upon him in a moment--very cool and graceful--controlling herself well; and it is probable that she would have won the day triumphantly but for the sudden intervention of her host.
Oliver Marsham had been watching her with mingled amusement and admiration. The slender figure held defiantly erect, the hands close-locked on the knee, the curly head with the air of a Niké--he could almostseethe palm branch in the hand, the white dress and the silky hair, blown back by the blasts of victory!--appealed to a rhetorical element in his nature always closely combined both with his feelings and his ambitions. Headlong energy and partisanship--he was enchanted to find how beautiful they could be, and he threw himself into the discussion simply--at first--that he might prolong an emotion, might keep the red burning on her lip and cheek. That blundering fellow Barton should not have it all to himself!
But he was no sooner well in it than he too began to flounder. He rode off upon an inaccurate telegram in a morning paper; Diana fell upon it at once, tripped it up, exposed it, drove it from the field, while Mr. Ferrier approved her from the background with a smiling eye and a quietly applauding hand. Then Marsham quoted a speech in the Indian Council.
Diana dismissed it with contempt, as the shaft of afrondeurdiscredited by both parties. He fell back on Blue Books, and other ponderosities--Barton by this time silent, or playing a clumsy chorus. But if Diana was not acquainted with these things in the ore, so to speak, she was more than a little acquainted with the missiles that could be forged from them. That very afternoon Hugh Roughsedge had pointed her to some of the best. She took them up--a little wildly now--for her coolness was departing--and for a time Marsham could hardly keep his footing.
A good many listeners were by now gathered round the disputants. Lady Niton, wielding some noisy knitting needles by the fireside, was enjoying the fray all the more that it seemed to be telling against Oliver. Mrs. Fotheringham, on the other hand, who came up occasionally to the circle, listened and went away again, was clearly seething with suppressed wrath, and had to be restrained once or twice by her brother from interfering, in a tone which would at once have put an end to a duel he himself only wished to prolong.
Mr. Ferrier perceived her annoyance, and smiled over it. In spite of his long friendship with the family, Isabel Fotheringham was no favorite with the great man. She had long seemed to him a type--a strange and modern type--of the feminine fanatic who allows political difference to interfere not only with private friendship but with the nearest and most sacred ties; and his philosopher's soul revolted. Let a woman talk politics, if she must, like this eager idealist girl--not with the venom and gall of the half-educated politician. "As if we hadn't enough of that already!"
Other spectators paid more frivolous visits to the scene. Bobbie Forbes and Alicia Drake, attracted by the sounds of war, looked in from the next room. Forbes listened a moment, shrugged his shoulders, made a whistling mouth, and then walked off to a glass bookcase--the one sign of civilization in the vast room--where he was soon absorbed in early editions of English poets, Lady Lucy's inheritance from a literary father. Alicia moved about, a little restless and scornful, now listening unwillingly, and now attempting diversions. But in these she found no one to second her, not even the two pink-and-white nieces of Lady Lucy, who did not understand a word of what was going on, but were none the less gazing open-mouthed at Diana.
Marion Vincent meanwhile had drawn nearer to Diana. Her strong significant face wore a quiet smile; there was a friendly, even an admiring penetration in the look with which she watched the young prophetess of Empire and of War. As for Lady Lucy, she was silent, and rather grave. In her secret mind she thought that young girls should not be vehement or presumptuous. It was a misfortune that this pretty creature had not been more reasonably brought up; a mother's hand had been wanting. While not only Mr. Ferrier and Mrs. Colwood, sitting side by side in the background, but everybody else present, in some measure or degree, was aware of some play of feeling in the scene, beyond and behind the obvious, some hidden forces, or rather, perhaps, some emerging relation, which gave it significance and thrill. The duel was a duel of brains--unequal at that; what made it fascinating was the universal or typical element in the clash of the two personalities--the man using his whole strength, more and more tyrannously, more and more stubbornly--the girl resisting, flashing, appealing, fighting for dear life, now gaining, now retreating--and finally overborne.
For Marsham's staying powers, naturally, were the greater. He summoned finally all his nerve and all his knowledge. The air of the carpet-knight with which he had opened battle disappeared; he fought seriously and for victory. And suddenly Diana laughed--a little hysterically--and gave in. He had carried her into regions of history and politics where she could not follow. She dropped her head in her hands a moment--then fell back in her chair--silenced--her beautiful passionate eyes fixed on Marsham, as his were on her.
"Brava! Brava!" cried Mr. Ferrier, clapping his hands. The room joined in laughter and applause.
A few minutes later the ladies streamed out into the hall on their way to bed. Marsham came to light a candle for Diana.
"Do you forgive me?" he said, as he gave it to her.
The tone was gay and apologetic.
She laughed unsteadily, without reply.
"When will you take your revenge?"
She shook her head, touched his hand for "good-night," and went up-stairs.
As Diana reached her room she drew Mrs. Colwood in with her--but not, it seemed, for purposes of conversation. She stood absently by the fire taking off her bracelets and necklace. Mrs. Colwood made a few remarks about the evening and the guests, with little response, and presently wondered why she was detained. At last Diana put up her hands, and smoothed back the hair from her temples with a long sigh. Then she laid a sudden grasp upon Mrs. Colwood, and looked earnestly and imploringly into her face.
"Will you--please--call me Diana? And--and--will you kiss me?"
She humbly stooped her head. Mrs. Colwood, much touched, threw her arms around her, and kissed her heartily. Then a few warm words fell from her--as to the scene of the evening. Diana withdrew herself at once, shivering a little.
"Oh, I want papa!" she said--"I want him so much!"
And she hid her eyes against the mantel-piece.
Mrs. Colwood soothed her affectionately, perhaps expecting some outburst of confidence, which, however, did not come. Diana said a quiet "good-night," and they parted.
But it was long before Mrs. Colwood could sleep. Was the emotion she had just witnessed--flinging itself geyserlike into sight, only to sink back as swiftly out of ken--was it an effect of the past or an omen of the future? The longing expressed in the girl's heart and voice, after the brave show she had made--had it overpowered her just because she felt herself alone, without natural protectors, on the brink of her woman's destiny?