The next day, when Diana looked out from her window, she saw a large and dreary park wrapped in scudding rain which promised evil things for the shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and plantations were kept to a nicety; not a twig was out of place. Enormous cost had been incurred in the planting of rare evergreens; full-grown trees had been transplanted wholesale from a distance, and still wore in many cases a sickly and invalided air; and elaborate contrasts in dark and light foliage had been arranged by the landscape-gardener employed. Dark plantations had a light border--light plantations a dark one. A lake or large pond, with concrete banks and two artificial islands, held the centre of the park, and on the monotonous stretches of immaculate grass there were deer to be seen wherever anybody could reasonably expect them.
Diana surveyed it all with a lively dislike. She pitied Lady Lucy and Mr. Marsham because they must live in such a place. Especially, surely, must it be hampering and disconcerting to a man, preaching the democratic gospel, and looking forward to the democratic millennium, to be burdened with a house and estate which could offer so few excuses for the wealth of which they made an arrogant and uninviting display. Immense possessions and lavish expenditure may be, as we all know, so softened by antiquity, or so masked by taste, as not to jar with ideals the most different or remote. But here "proputty! proputty!" was the cry of every ugly wood and tasteless shrubbery, whereas the prospective owner of them, according to his public utterances and career, was magnificently careless of property--was, in fact, in the eyes of the lovers of property, its enemy. The house again spoke loudly and aggressively of money; yet it was the home of a champion of the poor.
Well--a man cannot help it, if his father has suffered from stupidity and bad taste; and encumbrances of this kind are more easily created than got rid of. No doubt Oliver Marsham's democratic opinions had been partly bred in him by opposition and recoil. Diana seemed to get a good deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from this point of view.
Indeed, she thought over it persistently while she dressed. From the normal seven-hours' sleep of youth she had awakened with braced nerves. To remember her duel of the night before was no longer to thrill with an excitement inexplicable even to herself, and strangely mingled with a sense of loneliness or foreboding. Under the morning light she looked at things more sanely. Her natural vanity, which was the reflection of her wish to please, told her that she had not done badly. She felt a childish pleasure in the memory of Mr. Barton's discomfiture; and as to Mr. Marsham, it was she, and not her beliefs, not the great Imperial "cause" which had been beaten. How could she expect to hold her own with the professional politician when it came really to business? In her heart of hearts she knew that she would have despised Oliver Marsham if he had not been able to best her in argument. "If it had been papa," she thought, proudly, "that would have been another story!"
Nevertheless, as she sat meekly under the hands of her maid, smiles "went out and in," as she remembered the points where she had pressed him hard, had almost overcome him. An inclination to measure herself with him again danced within her. Will against will, mind against mind--her temperament, in its morning rally, delighted in the thought. And all the time there hovered before her the living man, with his agreeable, energetic, challenging presence. How much better she had liked him, even in his victory of the evening, than in the carping sarcastic mood of the afternoon!
In spite of gayety and expectation, however, she felt her courage fail her a little as she left her room and ventured out into the big populous house. Her solitary bringing-up had made her liable to fits of shyness amid her general expansiveness, and it was a relief to meet no one--least of all, Alicia Drake--on her way down-stairs. Mrs. Colwood, indeed, was waiting for her at the end of the passage, and Diana held her hand a little as they descended.
A male voice was speaking in the hall--Mr. Marsham giving the last directions for the day to the head keeper. The voice was sharp and peremptory--too peremptory, one might have thought, for democracy addressing a brother. But the keeper, a gray-haired, weather-beaten man of fifty, bowed himself out respectfully, and Marsham turned to greet Diana. Mrs. Colwood saw the kindling of his eyes as they fell on the girl's morning freshness. No sharpness in the voice now!--he was all eagerness to escort and serve his guests.
He led them to the breakfast-room, which seemed to be in an uproar, caused apparently by Bobbie Forbes and Lady Niton, who were talking at each other across the table.
"What is the matter?" asked Diana, as she slipped into a place to which Sir James Chide smilingly invited her--between himself and Mr. Bobbie.
Sir James, making a pretence of shutting his ears against the din, replied that he believed Mr. Forbes was protesting against the tyranny of Lady Niton in obliging him to go to church.
"She never enters a place of worship herself, but she insists that her young men friends shall go.--Mr. Bobbie is putting his foot down!"
"Miss Mallory, let me get you some fish," said Forbes, turning to her with a flushed and determined countenance. "I have now vindicated the rights of man, and am ready to attend--if you will allow me--to the wants of woman. Fish?--or bacon?"
Diana made her choice, and the young man supplied her; then bristling with victory, and surrounded by samples of whatever food the breakfast-table afforded, he sat down to his own meal. "No!" he said, with energy, addressing Diana. "One must really draw the line. The last Sunday Lady Niton took me to church, the service lasted an hour and three-quarters. I am a High Churchman--I vow I am--an out-and-outer. I go in for snippets--and shortening things. The man here is a dreadful old Erastian--piles on everything you can pile on--so I just felt it necessary to give Lady Niton notice. To-morrow I have work for the department--at home!Take my advice, Miss Mallory--don't go."
"I'm not staying over Sunday," smiled Diana.
The young man expressed his regret. "I say," he said, with a quick look round, "you didn't think I was rude last night, did you?"
"Rude? When?"
"In not listening. I can't listen when people talk politics. I want to drown myself. Now, if it was poetry--or something reasonable. You know the only things worth looking at--in this beastly house"--he lowered his voice--"are the books in that glass bookcase. It was Lady Lucy's father--old Lord Merston--collected them. Lady Lucy never looks at them. Marsham does, I suppose--sometimes. Do you know Marsham well?"
"I made acquaintance with him and Lady Lucy on the Riviera."
Mr. Bobbie observed her with a shrewd eye. In spite of his inattention of the night before, the interest of Miss Mallory's appearance upon the scene at Tallyn had not been lost upon him, any more than upon other people. The rumor had preceded her arrival that Marsham had been very much "smitten" with her amid the pine woods of Portofino. Marsham's taste was good--emphatically good. At the same time it was clear that the lady was no mere facile and commonplace girl. It was Forbes's opinion, based on the scene of the previous evening, that there might be a good deal of wooing to be done.
"There are so many things I wanted to show you--and to talk about!" said Oliver Marsham, confidentially, to Diana, in the hall after breakfast--"but this horrid shoot will take up all the day! If the weather is not too bad, I think some of the ladies meant to join us at luncheon. Will you venture?"
His tone was earnest; his eyes indorsed it. Diana hoped it might be possible to come. Marsham lingered beside her to the last minute; but presently final orders had to be given to keepers, and country neighbors began to arrive.
"They do the thing here on an enormous scale," said Bobbie Forbes, lounging and smoking beside Diana; "it's almost the biggest shoot in the county. Amusing, isn't it?--in this Radical house. Do you see that man McEwart?"
Diana turned her attention upon the young member of Parliament who had arrived the night before--plain, sandy-haired, with a long flat-backed head, and a gentlemanly manner.
"I suspect a good deal's going on here behind the scenes," said Bobbie, dropping his voice. "That man Barton may be a fool to talk, but he's a great power in the House with the other Labor men. And McEwart has been hand and glove with Marsham all this Session. They're trying to force Ferrier's hand. Some Bill the Labor men want--and Ferrier won't hear of. A good many people say we shall see Marsham at the head of a Fourth Party of his own very soon,Se soumettre, ou se démettre!--well, it may come to that--for old Ferrier. But I'll back him to fight his way through."
"How can Mr. Marsham oppose him?" asked Diana, in wonder, and some indignation with her companion. "He is the Leader of the party, and besides--they are such friends!"
Forbes looked rather amused at her womanish view of things. "Friends? I should rather think so!"
By this time he and Diana were strolling up and down the winter garden opening out of the hall, which was now full of a merry crowd waiting for the departure of the shooters. Suddenly Forbes paused.
"Do you see that?"
Diana's eyes followed his till they perceived Lady Lucy sitting a little way off under a camellia-tree covered with red blossom. Her lap was heaped with the letters of the morning. Mr. Ferrier, with a cigarette in his mouth, stood beside her, reading the sheets of a letter which she handed to him as she herself finished them. Every now and then she spoke to him, and he replied. In the little scene, between the slender white-haired woman and the middle-aged man, there was something so intimate, so conjugal even, that Diana involuntarily turned away as though to watch it were an impertinence.
"Rather touching, isn't it?" said the youth, smiling benevolently. "Of course you know--there's a romance, or ratherwas--long ago. My mother knew all about it. Since old Marsham's death, Lady Lucy's never done a thing without Ferrier to advise her. Why she hasn't married him, that's the puzzle.--But she's a curious woman, is Lady Lucy. Looks so soft, but--" He pursed up his lips with an important air.
"Anyhow, she depends a lot on Ferrier. He's constantly here whenever he can be spared from London and Parliament. He got Oliver into Parliament--his first seat I mean--for Manchester. The Ferriers are very big people up there, and old Ferrier's recommendation of him just put him in straight--no trouble about it! Oh! and before that when he was at Eton--and Oxford too--Ferrier looked after him like a father.--Used to have him up for exeats--and talk to the Head--and keep his mother straight--like an old brick. Ferrier's a splendid chap!"
Diana warmly agreed.
"Perhaps you know," pursued the chatterbox, "that this place is all hers--Lady Lucy's. She can leave it and her money exactly as she pleases. It is to be hoped she won't leave much of it to Mrs. Fotheringham.Isn'tthat a woman! Ah! you don't know her yet. Hullo!--there's Marsham after me."
For Marsham was beckoning from the hall. They returned hurriedly.
"Who made Oliver that waistcoat?" said Lady Niton, putting on her spectacles.
"I did," said Alicia Drake, as she came up, with her arm round the younger of Lady Niton's nieces. "Isn't it becoming?"
"Hum!" said Lady Niton, in a gruff tone, "young ladies can always find new ways of wasting their time."
Marsham approached Diana.
"We're just off," he said, smiling. "The clouds are lifting. You'll come?"
"What, to lunch?" said Lady Niton, just behind. "Of course they will. What else is there for the women to do? Congratulate you on your waistcoat, Oliver."
"Isn't it superb?" he said, drawing himself up with mock majesty, so as to show it off. "I am Alicia's debtor for life."
Yet a careful ear might have detected something a little hollow in the tone.
Lady Niton looked at him, and then at Miss Drake, evidently restraining her sharp tongue for once, though with difficulty. Marsham lingered a moment making some last arrangements for the day with his sister. Diana noticed that he towered over the men among whom he stood; and she felt herself suddenly delighting in his height, in his voice which was remarkably refined and agreeable, in his whole capable and masterful presence. Bobbie Forbes standing beside him was dwarfed to insignificance, and he seemed to be conscious of it, for he rose on his toes a little, involuntarily copying Marsham's attitude, and looking up at him.
As the shooters departed, Forbes bringing up the rear, Lady Niton laid her wrinkled hand on his arm.
"Never mind, Bobbie, never mind!"--she smiled at him confidentially. "We can't all be six foot."
Bobbie stared at her--first fiercely--then exploded with laughter, shook off her hand and departed.
Lady Niton, evidently much pleased with herself, came back to the window where most of the other ladies stood watching the shooters with their line of beaters crossing the lawn toward the park beyond. "Ah!" she said, "I thought Alicia would see the last of them!"
For Miss Drake, in defiance of wind and spitting rain, was walking over the lawn the centre of a large group, with Marsham beside her. Her white serge dress and the blue shawl she had thrown over her fair head made a brilliant spot in the dark wavering line.
"Alicia is very picturesque," said Mrs. Fotheringham, turning away.
"Yes--and last summer Oliver seemed to be well aware of it," said Lady Niton, in her ear.
"Was he? He has always been very good friends with Alicia."
"He could have done without the waistcoat," said Lady Niton, sharply.
"Aren't you rather unkind? She began it last summer, and finished it yesterday. Then, of course, she presented it to him. I don't see why that should expose her to remarks."
"One can't help making remarks about Alicia," said Lady Niton, calmly, "and she can defend herself so well."
"Poor Alicia!"
"Confess you wouldn't like Oliver to marry her."
"Oliver never had any thought of it."
Lady Niton shook her queer gray head.
"Oliver paid her a good deal of attention last summer. Alicia must certainly have considered the matter. And she is a young lady not easily baffled."
"Baffled!" Mrs. Fotheringham laughed. "What can she do?"
"Well, it's true that Oliver seems to have got another idea in his head. What do you think of that pretty child who came yesterday--the Mallory girl?"
Mrs. Fotheringham hesitated, then said, coldly:
"I don't like discussing these things. Oliver has plenty of time before him."
"If he is turning his thoughts in that quarter," persisted Lady Niton, "I give him my blessing. Well bred, handsome, and well off--what's your objection?"
Mrs. Fotheringham laughed impatiently. "Really, Lady Niton, I made no objection."
"You don't like her!"
"I have only known her twenty-four hours. How can I have formed any opinion about her?"
"No--you don't like her! I suppose you thought she talked stuff last night?"
"Well, there can be no two opinions about that!" cried Mrs. Fotheringham. "Her father seems to have filled her head with all sorts of false Jingo notions, and I must say I wondered Oliver was so patient with her."
Lady Niton glanced at the thin fanatical face of the speaker.
"Oliver had great difficulty in holding his own. She is no fool, and you'll find it out, Isabel, if you try to argue her down--"
"I shouldn't dream of arguing with such a child!"
"Well, all I know is Ferrier seemed to admire her performance."
Mrs. Fotheringham paused a moment, then said, with harsh intensity:
"Men have not the same sense of responsibility."
"You mean their brains are befogged by a pretty face?"
"They don't put non-essentials aside, as we do. A girl like that, in love with what she calls 'glory' and 'prestige,' is a dangerous and demoralizing influence. That glorification of the Army is at the root of half our crimes!"
Mrs. Fotheringham's pale skin had flushed till it made one red with her red hair. Lady Niton looked at her with mingled amusement and irritation. She wondered why men married such women as Isabel Fotheringham. Certainly Ned Fotheringham himself--deceased some three years before this date--had paid heavily for his mistake; especially through the endless disputes which had arisen between his children and his second wife--partly on questions of religion, partly on this matter of the Army. Mrs. Fotheringham was an agnostic; her stepsons, the children of a devout mother, were churchmen. Influenced, moreover, by a small coterie, in which, to the dismay of her elderly husband, she had passed most of her early married years, she detested the Army as a brutal influence on the national life. Her youngest step-son, however, had insisted on becoming a soldier. She broke with him, and with his brothers who supported him. Now a childless widow, without ties and moderately rich, she was free to devote herself to her ideas. In former days she would have been a religious bigot of the first water; the bigotry was still there; only the subjects of it were changed.
Lady Niton delighted in attacking her; yet was not without a certain respect for her. Old sceptic that she was, ideals of any sort imposed upon her. How people came by them, she herself could never imagine.
On this particular morning, however, Mrs. Fotheringham did not allow herself as long a wrangle as usual with her old adversary. She went off, carrying an armful of letters with large enclosures, and Lady Niton understood that for the rest of the morning she would be as much absorbed by her correspondence--mostly on public questions--as the Leader of the Opposition himself, to whom the library was sacredly given up.
"When that woman takes a dislike," she thought to herself, "it sticks! She has taken a dislike to the Mallory girl. Well, if Oliver wants her, let him fight for her. I hope she won't drop into his mouth! Mallory! Mallory! I wonder where she comes from, and who her people are."
Meanwhile Diana was sitting among her letters, which mainly concerned the last details of the Beechcote furnishing. She and Mrs. Colwood were now "Muriel" and "Diana" to each other, and Mrs. Colwood had been admitted to a practical share in Diana's small anxieties.
Suddenly Diana, who had just opened a hitherto unread letter, exclaimed:
"Oh, buthowdelightful!"
Mrs. Colwood looked up; Diana's aspect was one of sparkling pleasure and surprise.
"One of my Barbadoes' cousins is here--in London--actually in London--and I knew nothing of her coming. She writes to me.--Of course she must come to Beechcote--she must come at once!"
She sprang up, and went to a writing-table near, to look for a telegraph form. She wrote a message with eagerness, despatched it, and then explained as coherently as her evident emotion and excitement would allow.
"They are my only relations in the world--that I know of--that papa ever spoke to me about. Mamma's sister married Mr. Merton. He was a planter in Barbadoes. He died about three years ago, but his widow and daughters have lived on there. They were very poor and couldn't afford to come home. Fanny is the eldest--I think she must be about twenty."
Diana paced up and down, with her hands behind her, wondering when her telegram would reach her cousin, who was staying at a London boarding-house, when she might be expected at Beechcote, how long she could be persuaded to stay--speculations, in fact, innumerable. Her agitation was pathetic in Mrs. Colwood's eyes. It testified to the girl's secret sense of forlornness, to her natural hunger for the ties and relationships other girls possessed in such abundance.
Mrs. Colwood inquired if it was long since she had had news of her cousins.
"Oh, some years!" said Diana, vaguely. "I remember a letter coming--before we went to the East--and papa reading it. I know"--she hesitated--"I know he didn't like Mr. Merton."
She stood still a moment, thinking. The lights and shadows of reviving memory crossed her face, and presently her thought emerged, with very little hint to her companion of the course it had been taking out of sight.
"Papa always thought it a horrid life for them--Aunt Merton and the girls--especially after they gave up their estate and came to live in the town. But how could they help it? They must have been very poor. Fanny"--she took up the letter--"Fanny says she has come home to learn music and French--that she may earn money by teaching when she goes back. She doesn't write very well, does she?"
She held out the sheet.
The handwriting, indeed, was remarkably illiterate, and Mrs. Colwood could only say that probably a girl of Miss Merton's circumstances had had few advantages.
"But then, you see, we'llgiveher advantages!" cried Diana, throwing herself down at Mrs. Colwood's feet, and beginning to plan aloud.--"You know if she will only stay with us, we can easily have people down from London for lessons. And she can have the green bedroom--over the dining-room--can't she?--and the library to practise in. It would be absurd that she should stay in London, at a horrid boarding-house, when there's Beechcote, wouldn't it?"
Mrs. Colwood agreed that Beechcote would probably be quite convenient for Miss Merton's plans. If she felt a little pang at the thought that her pleasanttête-à-têtewith her new charge was to be so soon interrupted, and for an indefinite period, by a young lady with the hand-writing of a scullery-maid, she kept it entirely hidden.
Diana talked herself into the most rose-colored plans for Fanny Merton's benefit--so voluminous, indeed, that Mrs. Colwood had to leave her in the middle of them that she might go up-stairs and mend a rent in her walking-dress. Diana was left alone in the drawing-room, still smiling and dreaming. In her impulsive generosity she saw herself as the earthly providence of her cousin, sharing with a dear kinswoman her own unjustly plentiful well-being.
Then she took up the letter again. It ran thus:
"My dear Diana,--You mustn't think it cheeky my calling you that, but I am your real cousin, and mother told me to write to you. I hope too you won't be ashamed of us though we are poor. Everybody knows us in Barbadoes, though of course that's not London. I am the eldest of the family, and I got very tired of living all in a pie, and so I've come home to England to better myself.--A year ago I was engaged to be married, but the young man behaved badly. A good riddance, all my friends told me--but it wasn't a pleasant experience. Anyway now I want to earn some money, and see the world a little. I have got rather a good voice, and I am considered handsome--at least smart-looking. If you are not too grand to invite me to your place, I should like to come and see you, but of course you must do as you please. I got your address from the bank Uncle Mallory used to send us checks on. I can tell you we have missed those checks pretty badly this last year. I hope you have now got over your great sorrow.--This boarding-house is horribly poky but cheap, which is the great thing. I arrived the night before last,"And I amYour affectionate cousinFANNY MERTON."
No, it really was not an attractive letter. On the second reading, Diana pushed it away from her, rather hastily. Then she reminded herself again, elaborately, of the Mertons' disadvantages in life, painting them in imagination as black as possible. And before she had gone far with this process all doubt and distaste were once more swept away by the rush of yearning, of an interest she could not subdue, in this being of her own flesh and blood, the child of her mother's sister. She sat with flushed cheeks, absorbed in a stream of thoughts and reminiscence.
"You look as though you had had good news," said Sir James Chide, as he paused beside her on his way through the drawing-room. He was not a sportsman; nor was Mr. Ferrier.
His eyes rested upon her with such a kind interest, his manner showed so plainly yet again that he desired to be her friend, that Diana responded at once.
"I have found a cousin!" she said, gayly, and told the story of her expected visitor.
Outwardly--perfunctorily--Sir James's aspect while she was speaking answered to hers. If she was pleased, he was pleased too. He congratulated her; he entered into her schemes for Miss Merton's amusement. Really, all the time, the man's aspect was singularly grave, he listened carefully to every word; he observed the speaker.
"The young lady's mother is your aunt?"
"She was my mother's sister."
"And they have been long in Barbadoes?"
"I think they migrated there just about the same time we went abroad--after my mother's death."
Sir James said little. He encouraged her to talk on; he listened to the phrases of memory or expectation which revealed her history--her solitary bringing-up--her reserved and scholarly father--the singular closeness, and yet as it seemed strangeness of her relation to him. It appeared, for instance, that it was only an accident, some years before, which had revealed to Diana the very existence of these cousins. Her father had never spoken of them spontaneously.
"I hope she will be everything that is charming and delightful," he said at last as he rose. "And remember--I am to come and see you!"
He stooped his gray head, and gently touched her hand with an old man's freedom.
Diana warmly renewed her invitation.
"There is a house near you that I often go to--Sir William Felton's. I am to be there in a few weeks. Perhaps I shall even be able to make acquaintance with Miss Fanny!"
He walked away from her.
Diana could not see the instant change of countenance which accompanied the movement. Urbanity, gentleness, kind indulgence vanished. Sir James looked anxious and disturbed; and he seemed to be talking to himself.
The rest of the morning passed heavily. Diana wrote some letters, and devoutly hoped the rain would stop. In the intervals of her letter-writing, or her study of the clouds, she tried to make friends with Miss Drake and Mrs. Fotheringham. But neither effort came to good. Alicia, so expansive, so theatrical, so much the centre of the situation, when she chose, could be equally prickly, monosyllabic, and repellent when it suited her to be so. Diana talked timidly of dress, of London, and the Season. They were the subjects on which it seemed most natural to approach Miss Drake; Diana's attitude was inquiring and propitiatory. But Alicia could find none but careless or scanty replies till Madeleine Varley came up. Then Miss Drake's tongue was loosened. To her, as to an equal and intimate, she displayed her expert knowledge of shops andmodistes, of "people" and their stories. Diana sat snubbed and silent, a little provincial outsider, for whom "seasons" are not made. Nor was it any better with Mrs. Fotheringham. At twelve o'clock that lady brought the London papers into the drawing-room. Further information had been received from the Afghan frontier. The English loss in the engagement already reported was greater than had been at first supposed; and Diana found the name of an officer she had known in India among the dead. As she pondered the telegram, the tears in her eyes, she heard Mrs. Fotheringham describe the news as "on the whole very satisfactory." The nation required the lesson. Whereupon Diana's tongue was loosed and would not be quieted. She dwelt hotly on the "sniping," the treacheries, the midnight murders which had preceded the expedition, Mrs. Fotheringham listened to her with flashing looks, and suddenly she broke into a denunciation of war, the military spirit, and the ignorant and unscrupulous persons at home, especially women, who aid and abet politicians in violence and iniquity, the passion of which soon struck Diana dumb. Here was no honorable fight of equal minds. She was being punished for her advocacy of the night before, by an older woman of tyrannical temper, toward whom she stood in the relation of guest to host. It was in vain to look round for defenders. The only man present was Mr. Barton, who sat listening with ill-concealed smiles to what was going on, without taking part in it.
Diana extricated herself with as much dignity as she could muster, but she was too young to take the matter philosophically. She went up-stairs burning with anger, the tears of hurt feeling in her eyes. It seemed to her that Mrs. Fotheringham's attack implied a personal dislike; Mr. Marsham's sister had been glad to "take it out of her." To this young cherished creature it was almost her first experience of the kind.
On the way up-stairs she paused to look wistfully out of a staircase window. Still raining--alack! She thought with longing of the open fields, and the shooters. Was there to be no escape all day from the ugly oppressive house, and some of its inmates? Half shyly, yet with a quickening of the heart, she remembered Marsham's farewell to her of that morning, his look of the night before. Intellectually, she was comparatively mature; in other respects, as inexperienced and impressionable as any convent girl.
"I fear luncheon is impossible!" said Lady Lucy's voice.
Diana looked up and saw her descending the stairs.
"Such a pity! Oliver will be so disappointed."
She paused beside her guest--an attractive and distinguished figure. On her white hair she wore a lace cap which was tied very precisely under her delicate chin. Her dress, of black satin, was made in a full plain fashion of her own; she had long since ceased to allow her dressmaker any voice in it; and her still beautiful hands flashed with diamonds, not however in any vulgar profusion. Lady Lucy's mother had been of a Quaker family, and though Quakerism in her had been deeply alloyed with other metals, the moral and intellectual self-dependence of Quakerism, its fastidious reserves and discrimination were very strong in her. Discrimination indeed was the note of her being. For every Christian, some Christian precepts are obsolete. For Lady Lucy that which runs--"Judge Not!"--had never been alive.
Her emphatic reference to Marsham had brought the ready color to Diana's cheeks.
"Yes--there seems no chance!--" she said, shyly, and regretfully, as the rain beat on the window.
"Oh, dear me, yes!" said a voice behind them. "The glass is going up. It'll be a fine afternoon--and we'll go and meet them at Holme Copse. Sha'n't we, Lady Lucy?"
Mr. Ferrier appeared, coming up from the library laden with papers. The three stood chatting together on the broad gallery which ran round the hall. The kindness of the two elders was so marked that Diana's spirits returned; she was not to be quite a pariah it seemed! As she walked away toward her room, Mr. Ferrier's eyes pursued her--the slim round figure, the young loveliness of her head and neck.
"Well!--what are you thinking about her?" he said, eagerly, turning to the mistress of the house.
Lady Lucy smiled.
"I should prefer it if she didn't talk politics," she said, with the slightest possible stiffness, "But she seems a very charming girl."
"She talks politics, my dear lady, because living alone with her father and with her books, she has had nothing else to talk about but politics and books. Would you rather she talked scandal--or Monte Carlo?"
The Quaker in Lady Lucy laughed.
"Of course if she married Oliver, she would subordinate her opinions to his."
"Would she!" said Mr. Ferrier--"I'm not so sure!"
Lady Lucy replied that if not, it would be calamitous. In which she spoke sincerely. For although now the ruler, and, if the truth were known, the somewhat despotic ruler of Tallyn, in her husband's lifetime she had known very well how to obey.
"I have asked various people about the Mallorys," she resumed. "But nobody seems to be able to tell me anything."
"I trace her to Sir Thomas of that ilk. Why not? It is a Welsh name!"
"I have no idea who her mother was," said Lady Lucy, musing. "Her father was very refined--quitea gentleman."
"She bears, I think, very respectable witness to her mother," laughed Ferrier. "Good stock on both sides; she carries it in her face."
"That's all I ask," said Lady Lucy, quietly.
"But that youdoask!" Her companion looked at her with an eye half affectionate, half ironic. "Most exclusive of women! I sometimes wish I might unveil your real opinions to the Radical fellows who come here."
Lady Lucy colored faintly.
"That has nothing to do with politics."
"Hasn't it? I can't imagine anything that has more to do with them."
"I was thinking of character--honorable tradition--not blood."
Ferrier shook his head.
"Won't do. Barton wouldn't pass you--'A man's a man for a' that'--and a woman too."
"Then I am a Tory!" said Lady Lucy, with a smile that shot pleasantly through her gray eyes.
"At last you confess it!" cried Ferrier, as he carried off his papers. But his gayety soon departed. He stood awhile at the window in his room, looking out upon the sodden park--a rather gray and sombre figure. Over his ugly impressiveness a veil of weariness had dropped. Politics and the strife of parties, the devices of enemies and the dissatisfaction of friends--his soul was tired of them. And the emergence of this possible love-affair--for the moment, ardent and deep as were the man's affections and sympathies, toward this Marsham household, it did but increase his sense of moral fatigue. If the flutter in the blood--and the long companionship of equal love--if these were the only things of real value in life--how hadhisbeen worth living?
The last covert had been shot, and as Marsham and his party, followed by scattered groups of beaters, turned homeward over the few fields that separated them from the park, figures appeared coming toward them in the rosy dusk--Mr. Ferrier and Diana in front, with most of the other guests of the house in their train. There was a merry fraternization between the two parties--a characteristic English scene, in a characteristic setting: the men in their tweed shooting-suits, some with their guns over their shoulders, for the most part young and tall, clean-limbed and clear-eyed, the well-to-do Englishman at his most English moment, and brimming with the joy of life; the girls dressed in the same tweed stuffs, and with the same skilled and expensive simplicity, but wearing, some of them, over their cloth caps, bright veils, white or green or blue, which were tied under their chins, and framed faces aglow with exercise and health.
Marsham's eyes flew to Diana, who was in black, with a white veil. Some of the natural curls on her temples, which reminded him of a Vandyck picture, had been a little blown by the wind across her beautiful brow; he liked the touch of wildness that they gave; and he was charmed anew by the contrast between her frank young strength, and the wistful look, so full ofrelationto all about it, as though seeking to understand and be one with it. He perceived too her childish pleasure in each fresh incident and experience of the English winter, which proved to her anew that she had come home; and he flattered himself, as he went straight to her side, that his coming had at least no dimming effect on the radiance that had been there before.
"I believe you are not pining for the Mediterranean!" he said, laughing, as they walked on together.
In a smiling silence she drew in a great breath of the frosty air while her eyes ranged along the chalk down, on the western edge of which they were walking, and then over the plain at their feet, the smoke wreaths that hung above the villages, the western sky filled stormily with the purples and grays and crimsons of the sunset, the woods that climbed the down, or ran in a dark rampart along its crest.
"No one can ever love it as much as I do!"--she said at last--"because I have been an exile. That will be my advantage always."
"Your compensation--perhaps."
"Mrs. Colwood puts it that way. Only I don't like having my grievance taken away."
"Against whom?"
"Ah! not against papa!" she said, hurriedly--"against Fate!"
"If you dislike being deprived of a grievance--so do I. You have returned me my Rossetti."
She laughed merrily.
"You made sure I should lose or keep it?"
"It is the first book that anybody has returned to me for years. I was quite resigned."
"To a damaging estimate of my character? Thank you very much!"
"I wonder"--he said, in another tone--"what sort of estimate you have ofmycharacter--false, or true?"
"Well, there have been a great many surprises!" said Diana, raising her eyebrows.
"In the matter of my character?"
"Not altogether."
"My surroundings? You mean I talked Radicalism--or, as you would call it, Socialism--to you at Portofino, and here you find me in the character of a sporting Squire?"
"I hear"--she said, deliberately looking about her--"that this is the finest shoot in the county."
"It is. There is no denying it. But, in the first place, it's my mother's shoot, not mine--the estate is hers, not mine--and she wishes old customs to be kept up. In the next--well, of course, the truth is that I like it abominably!"
He had thrust his cap into his pocket, and was walking bareheaded. In the glow of the evening air his strong manhood seemed to gain an added force and vitality. He moved beside her, magnified and haloed, as it were, by the dusk and the sunset. Yet his effect upon her was no mere physical effect of good looks and a fine stature. It was rather the effect of a personality which strangely fitted with and evoked her own--of that congruity, indeed, from which all else springs.
She laughed at his confession.
"I hear also that you are the best shot in the neighborhood."
"Who has been talking to you about me?" he asked, with a slight knitting of the brows.
"Mr. Ferrier--a little."
He gave an impatient sigh, so disproportionate to the tone of their conversation, that Diana looked at him in sudden surprise.
"Haven't you often wondered how it is that the very people who know you best know you least?"
The question was impetuously delivered. Diana recalled Mr. Forbes's remarks as to dissensions behind the scenes. She stepped cautiously.
"I thought Mr. Ferrier knew everything!"
"I wish he knew something about his party--and the House of Commons!" cried Marsham, as though a passion within leaped to the surface.
The startled eyes beside him beguiled him further.
"I didn't mean to say anything indiscreet--or disloyal," he said, with a smile, recovering himself. "It is often the greatest men who cling to the old world--when the new is clamoring. But the new means to be heard all the same."
Diana's color flashed.
"I would rather be in that old world with Mr. Ferrier than in the new with Mr. Barton!"
"What is the use of talking of preferences? The world is what it is--and will be what it will be. Barton is our master--Ferrier's and mine. The point is to come to terms, and make the best of it."
"No!--the point is--to hold the gate!--and die on the threshold, if need be."
They had come to a stile. Marsham had crossed it, and Diana mounted. Her young form showed sharply against the west; he looked into her eyes, divided between laughter and feeling; she gave him her hand. The man's pulses leaped anew. He was naturally of a cool and self-possessed temperament--the life of the brain much stronger in him than the life of the senses. But at that moment he recognized--as perhaps, for the first time, the night before--that Nature and youth had him at last in grip. At the same time the remembrance of a walk over the same ground that he had taken in the autumn With Alicia Drake flashed, unwelcomed, into his mind. It stirred a half-uneasy, half-laughing compunction. He could not flatter himself--yet--that his cousin had forgotten it.
"What gate?--and what threshold?" he asked Diana, as they moved on. "If you mean the gate of power--it is too late. Democracy is in the citadel--and has run up its own flag. Or to take another metaphor--the Whirlwind is in possession--the only question is who shall ride it!"
Diana declared that the Socialists would ride it to the abyss--with England on the crupper.
"Magnificent!" said Marsham, "but merely rhetorical. Besides--all that we ask, is that Ferrier should ride it. Let him only try the beast--and he will find it tame enough."
"And if he won't?--"
"Ah, if he won't--" said Marsham, uncertainly, and paused. In the growing darkness she could no longer see his face plainly. But presently he resumed, more earnestly and simply.
"Don't misunderstand me! Ferrier is our chief--my chief, above all--and one does not even discuss whether one is loyal to him. The party owes him an enormous debt. As for myself--" He drew a long breath, which was again a sigh.
Then with a change of manner, and in a lighter tone: "I seem to have given myself away--to an enemy!"
"Poor enemy!"