"The man's pulses leaped anew".
He looked at her, half laughing, half anxious.
"Tell me!--last night--you thought me intolerant--overbearing?"
"I disliked being beaten," said Diana, candidly; "especially as it was only my ignorance that was beaten--not my cause."
"Shall we begin again?"
Through his gayety, however, a male satisfaction in victory pierced very plainly. Diana winced a little.
"No, no! I must go back to Captain Roughsedge first and get some new arguments!"
"Roughsedge!" he said, in surprise. "Roughsedge? He never carried an argument through in his life!"
Diana defended her new friend to ears unsympathetic. Her defence, indeed, evoked from him a series of the same impatient, sarcastic remarks on the subject of the neighbors as had scandalized her the day before. She fired up, and they were soon in the midst of another battle-royal, partly on the merits of particular persons and partly on a more general theme--the advantage or disadvantage of an optimist view of your fellow-creatures.
Marsham was, before long, hard put to it in argument, and very delicately and discreetly convicted of arrogance or worse. They were entering the woods of the park when he suddenly stopped and said:
"Do you know that you have had a jolly good revenge--pressed down and running over?"
Diana smiled, and said nothing. She had delighted in the encounter; so, in spite of castigation, had he. There surged up in him a happy excited consciousness of quickened life and hurrying hours. He looked with distaste at the nearness of the house; and at the group of figures which had paused in front of them, waiting for them, on the farther edge of the broad lawn.
"You have convicted me of an odious, exclusive, bullying temper--or you think you have--and all you will allowmein the way of victory is that I got the best of it because Captain Roughsedge wasn't there!"
"Not at all. I respect your critical faculty!"
"You wish to hear me gush like Mrs. Minchin. It is simply astounding the number of people you like!"
Diana's laugh broke into a sigh.
"Perhaps it's like a hungry boy in a goody-shop. He wants to eat them all."
"Were you so very solitary as a child?" he asked her, gently, in a changed tone, which was itself an act of homage, almost a caress.
"Yes--I was very solitary," she said, after a pause. "And I am really gregarious--dreadfully fond of people!--and curious about them. And I think, oddly enough, papa was too."
A question rose naturally to his lips, but was checked unspoken. He well remembered Mr. Mallory at Portofino; a pleasant courteous man, evidently by nature a man of the world, interested in affairs and in literature, with all the signs on him of the English governing class. It was certainly curious that he should have spent all those years in exile with his child, in a remote villa on the Italian coast. Health, Marsham supposed, or finance--the two chief motives of life. For himself, the thought of Diana's childhood between the pine woods and the sea gave him pleasure; it added another to the poetical and romantic ideas which she suggested. There came back on him the plash of the waves beneath the Portofino headland, the murmur of the pines, the fragrance of the underwood. He felt the kindred between all these, and her maidenly energy, her unspoiled beauty.
"One moment!" he said, as they began to cross the lawn. "Has my sister attacked you yet?"
The smile with which the words were spoken could be heard though not seen. Diana laughed, a little awkwardly.
"I am afraid Mrs. Fotheringham thinks me a child of blood and thunder! I am so sorry!"
"If she presses you too hard, call me in. Isabel and I understand each other."
Diana murmured something polite.
Mr. Frobisher meanwhile came to meet them with a remark upon the beauty of the evening, and Alicia Drake followed.
"I expect you found it a horrid long way," she said to Diana. Diana disclaimed fatigue.
"You camesoslowly, we thought you must be tired."
Something in the drawling manner and the slightly insolent expression made the words sting. Diana hurried on to Marion Vincent's side. That lady was leaning on a stick, and for the first time Diana saw that she was slightly lame. She looked up with a pleasant smile and greeting; but before they could move on across the ample drive, Mr. Frobisher overtook them.
"Won't you take my arm?" he said, in a low voice.
Miss Vincent slipped her hand inside his arm, and rested on him. He supported her with what seemed to Diana a tender carefulness, his head bent to hers, while he talked and she replied.
Diana followed, her girl's heart kindling.
"Surely!--surely!--they are in love?--engaged?"
But no one else appeared to take any notice or made any remark.
Long did the memory of the evening which followed live warm in the heart of Diana. It was to her an evening of triumph--triumph innocent, harmless, and complete. Her charm, her personality had by now captured the whole party, save for an opposition of three--and the three realized that they had for the moment no chance of influencing the popular voice. The rugged face of Mr. Barton stiffened as she approached; it seemed to him that the night before he had been snubbed by a chit, and he was not the man to forget it easily. Alicia Drake was a little pale and a little silent during the evening, till, late in its course, she succeeded in carrying off a group of young men who had come for the shoot and were staying the night, and in establishing a noisy court among them Mrs. Fotheringham disapproved, by now, of almost everything that concerned Miss Mallory: of her taste in music or in books, of the touch of effusion in her manner, which was of course "affected" or "aristocratic"; of the enthusiasms she didnotpossess, no less than of those She did. On the sacred subject of the suffrage, for instance, which with Mrs. Fotheringham was a matter for propaganda everywhere and at all times, Diana was but a cracked cymbal, when struck she gave back either no sound at all, or a wavering one. Her beautiful eyes were blank or hostile; she would escape like a fawn from the hunter. As for other politics, no one but Mrs. Fotheringham dreamed of introducing them. She, however, would have discovered many ways of dragging them in, and of setting down Diana; but here her brother was on the watch, and time after time she found herself checked or warded off.
Diana, indeed, was well defended. The more ill-humored Mrs. Fotheringham grew, the more Lady Niton enjoyed the evening and her own "Nitonisms." It was she who after dinner suggested the clearing of the hall and an impromptu dance--on the ground that "girls must waltz for their living." And when Diana proved to be one of those in whom dancing is a natural and shining gift, so that even the gilded youths of the party, who were perhaps inclined to fight shy of Miss Mallory as "a girl who talked clever," even they came crowding about her, like flies about a milk-pail--it was Lady Niton who drew Isabel Fotheringham's attention to it loudly and repeatedly. It was she also who, at a pause in the dancing and at a hint from Mrs. Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to the grand piano which had been pushed into a corner of the hall. And when the singing, helped by the looks and personality of the singer, had added to the girl's success, Lady Niton sat fanning herself in reflected triumph, appealing to the spectators on all sides for applause. The topics that Diana fled from, Lady Niton took up; and when Mrs. Fotheringham, bewildered by an avalanche of words, would say--"Give me time, please, Lady Niton--I must think!"--Lady Niton would reply, coolly--"Not unless you're accustomed to it"; while she finally capped her misdeeds by insisting that it was no good to say Mr. Barton had a warm heart if he were without that much more useful possession--a narrow mind.
Thus buttressed and befriended on almost all sides, Diana drank her cup of pleasure. Once in an interval between two dances, as she passed on Oliver Marsham's arm, close to Lady Lucy, that lady put up her frail old hand, and gently touched Diana's. "Do not overtire yourself, my dear!" she said, with effusion; and Oliver, looking down, knew very well what his mother's rare effusion meant, if Diana did not. On several occasions Mr. Perrier sought her out, with every mark of flattering attention, while it often seemed to Diana as if the protecting kindness of Sir James Chide was never far away. In her whiteingenue'sdress she was an embodiment of youth, simplicity, and joy, such as perhaps our grandmothers knew more commonly than we, in our more hurried and complex day. And at the same time there floated round her something more than youth--something more thrilling and challenging than mere girlish delight--an effluence, a passion, a "swell of soul," which made this dawn of her life more bewitching even for its promise than for its performance.
For Marsham, too, the hours flew. He was carried away, enchanted; he had eyes for no one, time for no one but Diana; and before the end of the evening the gossip among the Tallyn guests ran fast and free. When at last the dance broke up, many a curious eye watched the parting between Marsham and Diana; and in their bedroom on the top floor Lady Lucy's two nieces sat up till the small hours discussing, first, the situation--was Oliver really caught at last?--and then, Alicia's refusal to discuss it. She had said bluntly that she was dog-tired--and shut her door upon them.
On a hint from his mother, Marsham went to say good-night to her in her room. She threw her arms round his neck, whispering: "Dear Oliver!--dear Oliver!--I just wished you to know--if it is as I think--that you had my blessing."
He drew back, a little shrinking and reluctant--yet still flushed, as it were, with the last rays Diana's sun had shed upon him.
"Things mustn't be hurried, mother."
"No--no--they sha'n't. But you know how I have wished to see you happy--how ambitious I have been for you!"
"Yes, mother, I know. You have been always very good to me." He had recovered his composure, and stood holding her hand and smiling at her.
"What a charming creature, Oliver! It is a pity, of course, her father has indoctrinated her with those opinions, but--"
"Opinions!" he said, scornfully--"what do they matter!" But he could not discuss Diana. His blood was still too hot within him.
"Of course--of course!" said Lady Lucy, soothingly. "She is so young--she will develop. But what a wife, Oliver, she will make--how she might help a man on--with her talents and her beauty and her refinement. She has such dignity, too, for her years."
He made no reply, except to repeat:
"Don't hurry it, mother--don't hurry it."
"No--no"--she said, laughing--"I am not such a fool. There will be many natural opportunities of meeting."
"There are some difficulties with the Vavasours. They have been disagreeable about the gardens. Ferrier and I have promised to go over and advise her."
"Good!" said Lady Lucy, delighted that the Vavasours had been disagreeable. "Good-night, my son, good-night!"
A minute later Oliver stood meditating in his own room, where he had just donned his smoking-jacket. By one of the natural ironies of life, at a moment when he was more in love than he had ever been yet, he was, nevertheless, thinking eagerly of prospects and of money. Owing to his peculiar relation to his mother, and his father's estate, marriage would be to him no mere satisfaction of a personal passion. It would be a vital incident in a politician's career, to whom larger means and greater independence were now urgently necessary. To marry with his mother's full approval would at last bring about that provision for himself which his father's will had most unjustly postponed. He was monstrously dependent upon her. It had been one of the chief checks on a strong and concentrated ambition. But Lady Lucy had long made him understand that to marry according to her wishes would mean emancipation: a much larger income in the present, and the final settlement of her will in his favor. It was amazing how she had taken to Diana! Diana had only to accept him, and his future was secured.
But though thoughts of this kind passed in tumultuous procession through the grooves of consciousness, they were soon expelled by others. Marsham was no mere interested schemer. Diana should help him to his career; but above all and before all she was the adorable brown-eyed creature, whose looks had just been shining upon him, whose soft hand had just been lingering in his! As he stood alone and spellbound in the dark, yielding himself to the surging waves of feeling which broke over his mind, the thought, the dream, of holding Diana Mallory in his arms--of her head against his breast--came upon him with a sudden and stinging delight.
Yet the delight was under control--the control of a keen and practical intelligence. There rose in him a sharp sense of the unfathomed depths and possibilities in such a nature as Diana's. Once or twice that evening, through all her sweet forthcomingness, when he had forced the note a little, she had looked at him in sudden surprise or shrinking. No!--nothing premature! It seemed to him, as it had seemed to Bobbie Forbes, that she could only be won by the slow and gradual conquest of a rich personality. He set himself to the task.
Down-stairs Mr. Ferrier and Sir James Chide were sitting together in a remote corner of the hall. Mr. Ferrier, in great good-humor with the state of things, was discussing Oliver's chances, confidentially, with his old friend. Sir James sat smoking in silence. He listened to Ferrier's praises of Miss Mallory, to his generous appreciation of Marsham's future, to his speculations as to what Lady Lucy would do for her son, upon his marriage, or as to the part which a creature so brilliant and so winning as Diana might be expected to play in London and in political life.
Sir James said little or nothing. He knew Lady Lucy well, and had known her long. Presently he rose abruptly and went up-stairs to bed.
"Ought I to speak?" he asked himself, in an agony of doubt. "Perhaps a word to Ferrier?--"
No!--impossible!--impossible! Yet, as he mounted the stairs, over the house which had just seen the triumph of Diana, over that radiant figure itself, the second sight of the great lawyer perceived the brooding of a cloud of fate; nor could he do anything to avert or soften its downfall.
Meanwhile Diana's golden hour had found an unexpected epilogue. After her good-night to Marsham she was walking along the gallery corridor going toward her room, when she perceived Miss Vincent in front of her moving slowly and, as it seemed, with difficulty. A sudden impulse made Diana fly after her.
"Do let me help you!" she said, shyly.
Marion Vincent smiled, and put her hand in the girl's arm.
"How do people manage to live at all in these big houses, and with dinner-parties every night!" she said, laughing. "After a day in the East End I am never half so tired."
She was indeed so pale that Diana was rather frightened, and remembering that in the afternoon she had seen Miss Vincent descend from an upper floor, she offered a rest in her own room, which was close by, before the evidently lame woman attempted further stairs.
Marion Vincent hesitated a moment, then accepted. Diana hurried up a chair to the fire, installed her there, and herself sat on the floor watching her guest with some anxiety.
Yet, as she did so, she felt a certain antagonism. The face, of which the eyes were now closed, was nobly grave. The expression of its deeply marked lines appealed to her heart. But why this singularity--this eccentricity? Miss Vincent wore the same dress of dark woollen stuff, garnished with white frills, in which she had appeared the night before, and her morning attire, as Mr. Frobisher had foretold, had consisted of a precisely similar garment, adorned with a straight collar instead of frills. Surely a piece of acting!--of unnecessary self-assertion!
Yet all through the day--and the evening--Diana had been conscious of this woman's presence, in a strange penetrating way, even when they had had least to do with each other. In the intervals of her own joyous progress she had been often aware of Miss Vincent sitting apart, sometimes with Mr. Frobisher, who was reading or talking to her, sometimes with Lady Lucy, and--during the dance--with John Barton. Barton might have been the Jeremiah or the Ezekiel of the occasion. He sat astride upon a chair, in his respectable workman's clothes, his eyes under their shaggy brows, his weather-beaten features and compressed lips expressing an ill-concealed contempt for the scene before him. It was rumored that he had wished to depart before dinner, having concluded his consultation with Mr. Ferrier, but that Mrs. Fotheringham had persuaded him to remain for the night. His presence seemed to make dancing a misdemeanor, and the rich house, with its services and appurtenances, an organized crime. But if his personality was the storm-point of the scene, charged with potential lightning, Marion Vincent's was the still small voice, without threat or bitterness, which every now and then spoke to a quick imagination like Diana's its message from a world of poverty and pain. And sometimes Diana had been startled by the perception that the message seemed to be specially for her. Miss Vincent's eyes followed her; whenever Diana passed near her, she smiled--she admired. But always, as it seemed to Diana, with a meaning behind the smile. Yet what that meaning might be the girl could not tell.
At last, as she watched her, Marion Vincent looked up.
"Mr. Barton would talk to me just now about the history of his own life. I suppose it was the dance and the supper excited him. He began to testify! Sometimes when he does that he is magnificent. He said some fine things to-night. But I am run down and couldn't stand it."
Diana asked if Mr. Barton had himself gone through a great struggle with poverty.
"The usual struggle. No more than thousands of others. Only in him it is vocal--he can reflect upon it.--You had an easy triumph over him last night," she added, with a smile, turning to her companion.
"Who wouldn't have?" cried Diana. "What outrageous things he said!"
"He doesn't know much about India--or the Colonies. He hasn't travelled; he reads very little. He showed badly. But on his own subjects he is good enough. I have known him impress or convert the most unlikely people--by nothing but a bare sincerity. Just now--while the servants were handing champagne--he and I were standing a little way off under the gallery. His eyes are weak, and he can't bear the glare of all these lights. Suddenly he told me the story of his father's death."
She paused, and drew her hand across her eyes. Diana saw that they were wet. But although startled, the girl held herself a little aloof and erect, as though ready at a moment's notice to defend herself against a softening which might involve a treachery to glorious and sacred things.
"It so chanced"--Miss Vincent resumed--"that it had a bearing on experiences of my own--just now."
"You are living in the East End?"
"At present. I am trying to find out the causes of a great wave of poverty and unemployment in a particular district."--She named it.--"It is hard work--and not particularly good for the nerves."
She smiled, but at the same moment she turned extremely white, and as she fell back in her chair, Diana saw her clinch her hand as though in a strong effort for physical self-control.
Diana sprang up.
"Let me get you some water!"
"Don't go. Don't tell anybody. Just open that window." Diana obeyed, and the northwest wind, sweeping in, seemed to revive her pale companion almost at once.
"I am very sorry!" said Miss Vincent, after a few minutes, in her natural voice. "Now I am all right." She drank some water, and looked up.
"Shall I tell you the story he told me? It is very short, and it might change your view of him."
"If you feel able--if you are strong enough," said Diana, uncomfortably, wondering why it should matter to Miss Vincent or anybody else what view she might happen to take of Mr. Barton.
"He said he remembered his father (who was a house-painter--a very decent and hard-working man) having been out of work for eight weeks. He used to go out looking for work every day--and there was the usual story, of course, of pawning or selling all their possessions--odd jobs--increasing starvation--and so on. Meanwhile,hisonly pleasure--he was ten--was to go with his sister after school to look at two shops in the East India Dock Road--one a draper's with a 'Christmas Bazaar'--the other a confectioner's. He declares it made him not more starved, but less, to look at the goodies and the cakes; theyimaginedeating them; but they were both too sickly, he thinks, to be really hungry. As for the bazaar, with its dolls and toys, and its Father Christmas, and bright lights, they both thought it paradise. They used to flatten their noses against the glass; sometimes a shopman drove them away; but they came back and back. At last the iron shutters would come down--slowly. Then he and his sister would stoop--and stoop--to get a last look. Presently there would be only a foot of bliss left; then they both sank down flat on their stomachs on the pavement, and so stayed--greedily--till all was dark, and paradise had been swallowed up. Well, one night, the show had been specially gorgeous; they took hands afterward, and ran home. Their father had just come in. Mr. Barton can remember his staggering into the room. I'll give it in his words. 'Mother, have you got anything in the house?' 'Nothing, Tom.' And mother began to cry. 'Not a bit of bread, mother?' 'I gave the last bit to the children for their teas.' Father said nothing, but he lay down on the bed. Then he called me. 'Johnnie,' he said, 'I've got work--for next week--but I sha'n't never go to it--it's too late,' and then he asked me to hold his hand, and turned his face on the pillow. When my mother came to look, he was dead. 'Starvation and exhaustion'--the doctor said."
Marion Vincent paused.
"It's just like any other story of the kind--isn't it?" Her smile turned on Diana. "The charitable societies and missions send them out by scores in their appeals. But somehow as he told it just now, down-stairs, in that glaring hall, with the champagne going round--it seemed intolerable."
"And you mean also"--said Diana, slowly--"that a man with that history can't know or care very much about the Empire?"
"Our minds are all picture-books," said the woman beside her, in a low, dreamy voice: "it depends upon what the pictures are. To you the words 'England'--and the 'Empire'--represent one set of pictures--all bright and magnificent--like the Christmas Bazaar. To John Barton and me"--she smiled--"they represent another. We too have seen the lights, and the candles, and the toys; we have admired them, as you have; but we know the reality is not there. The reality is in the dark streets, where men tramp, looking for work; it is in the rooms where their wives and children live stifled and hungry--the rooms where our working folk die--without having lived."
Her eyes, above her pale cheeks, had opened to their fullest extent--the eyes of a seer. They held Diana. So did the voice, which was the voice of one in whom tragic passion and emotion are forever wearing away the physical frame, as the sea waves break down a crumbling shore.
Suddenly Diana bent over her, and took her hands.
"I wonder why you thought me worth talking to like this?" she said, impetuously.
"I liked you!" said Marion Vincent, simply. "I liked you as you talked last night. Only I wanted to add some more pictures to your picture-book.Yourset--the popular one--is calledThe Glories of England. There is another--I recommend it to you:The Shames of England."
"You think poverty a disgrace?" murmured Diana, held by the glowing fanatical look of the speaker.
"Ourpoverty is a disgrace--the life of our poor is a disgrace. What does the Empire matter--what do Afghan campaigns matter--while London is rotten? However" (she smiled again, and caressed Diana's hand), "will you make friends with me?"
"Is it worth while for you?" said Diana, laughing. "I shall always prefer my picture-book to yours, I am afraid. And--I am not poor--and I don't give all my money away."
Miss Vincent surveyed her gayly.
"Well, I come here," (she looked significantly round the luxurious room), "and I am very good friends with the Marshams. Oliver Marsham is one of the persons from whom I hope most."
"Not in pulling down wealth--and property!" cried Diana.
"Why not? Every revolution has its Philippe Égalité Oh, it will come slowly--it will come slowly," said the other, quietly. "And of course there will be tragedy--there always is--in everything. But not, I hope, for you--never for you!" And once more her hand dropped softly on Diana's.
"You were happy to-night?--you enjoyed the dance?"
The question, so put, with such a look, from another mouth, would have been an impertinence. Diana shrank, but could not resent it. Yet, against her will, she flushed deeply.
"Yes. It was delightful. I did not expect to enjoy it so much, but--"
"But you did! That's well. That's good!"
Marion Vincent rose feebly. And as she stood, leaning on the chair, she touched the folds of Diana's white dress.
"When shall I see you again?--and that dress?"
"I shall be in London in May," said Diana, eagerly--May I come then? You must tell me where."
"Ah, you won't come to Bethnal Green in that dress. What a pity!"
Diana helped her to her room, where they shook hands and parted. Then Diana came back to her own quarters. She had put out the electric light for Miss Vincent's sake. The room was lit only by the fire. In the full-length mirror of the toilet-table Diana saw her own white reflection, and the ivy leaves in her hair. The absence of her mourning was first a pain; then the joy of the evening surged up again. Oh, was it wrong, was it wrong to be happy--in this world "where men sit and hear each other groan"? She clasped her hands to her soft breast, as though defending the warmth, the hope that were springing there, against any dark protesting force that might threaten to take them from her.
"Henry," said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband, "I think it would do you good to walk to Beechcote."
"No, my dear, no! I have many proofs to get through before dinner. Take Hugh. Only--"
Dr. Roughsedge, smiling, held up a beckoning finger. His wife approached.
"Don't let him fall in love with that young woman. It's no good."
"Well, she must marry somebody, Henry."
"Big fishes mate with big fishes--minnows with minnows."
"Don't run down your own son, sir. Who, pray, is too good for him?"
"The world is divided into wise men, fools, and mothers. The characters of the first two are mingled--disproportionately--in the last," said Dr. Roughsedge, patiently enduring the kiss his wife inflicted on him. "Don't kiss me, Patricia--don't tread on my proofs--go away--and tell Jane not to forget my tea because you have gone out."
Mrs. Roughsedge departed, and the doctor, who was devoted to her, sank at once into that disorderly welter of proofs and smoke which represented to him the best of the day. The morning he reserved for hard work, and during the course of it he smoked but one pipe. A quotation from Fuller which was often on his lips expressed his point of view: "Spill not the morning, which is the quintessence of the day, in recreation. For sleep itself is a recreation. And to open the morning thereto is to add sauce to sauce."
But in the afternoon he gave himself to all the delightful bye-tasks: the works of supererogation, the excursions into side paths, the niggling with proofs, the toying with style, the potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters. For five-and-twenty years he had been a busy Cambridge coach, tied year in and year out to the same strictness of hours, the same monotony of subjects, the same patient drumming on thick heads and dull brains. Now that was all over. A brother had left him a little money; he had saved the rest. At sixty he had begun to live. He was editing a series of reprints for the Cambridge University Press, and what mortal man could want more than a good wife and son, a cottage to live in, a fair cook, unlimited pipes, no debts, and the best of English literature to browse in? The rural afternoon, especially, when he smoked and grubbed and divagated as he pleased, was alone enough to make the five-and-twenty years of "swink" worth while.
Mrs. Roughsedge stayed to give very particular orders to the house-parlormaid about the doctor's tea, to open a window in the tiny drawing-room, and to put up in brown paper a pair of bed-socks that she had just finished knitting for an old man in one of the parish-houses. Then she joined her son, who was already waiting for her--impatiently--in the garden.
Hugh Roughsedge had only just returned from a month's stay in London, made necessary by those new Army examinations which his soul detested. By dint of strenuous coaching he had come off moderately victorious, and had now returned home for a week's extra leave before rejoining his regiment. One of the first questions on his tongue, as his mother instantly noticed, had been a question as to Miss Mallory. Was she still at Beechcote? Had his mother seen anything of her?
Yes, she was still at Beechcote. Mrs. Roughsedge, however, had seen her but seldom and slightly since her son's departure for London. If she had made one or two observations from a distance, with respect to the young lady, she withheld them. And like the discerning mother that she was, at the very first opportunity she proposed a call at Beechcote.
On their way thither, this February afternoon, they talked in a desultory way about some new War-Office reforms, which, as usual, the entire Army believed to be merely intended--wilfully and deliberately--for its destruction; about a recent gambling scandal in the regiment, or the peculiarities of Hugh's commanding officer. Meanwhile he held his peace on the subject of some letters he had received that morning. There was to be an expedition in Nigeria. Officers were wanted; and he had volunteered. The result of his application was not yet known. He had no intention whatever of upsetting his parents till it was known.
"I wonder how Miss Mallory liked Tallyn," said Mrs. Roughsedge, briskly.
She had already expressed the same wonder once or twice. But as neither she nor her son had any materials for deciding the point the remark hardly promoted conversation. She added to it another of more effect.
"The Miss Bertrams have already made up their minds that she is to marry Oliver Marsham."
"The deuce!" cried the startled Roughsedge. "Beg your pardon, mother, but how can those old cats possibly know?"
"They can't know," said Mrs. Roughsedge, placidly. "But as soon as you get a young woman like that into the neighborhood, of course everybody begins to speculate."
"They mumble any fresh person, like a dog with a bone," said Roughsedge, indignantly.
They were passing across the broad village street. On either hand were old timbered cottages, sun-mellowed and rain-beaten; a thatched roof showing here and there; or a bit of mean new building, breaking the time-worn line. To their left, keeping watch over the graves which encircled it, rose the fourteenth-century church; amid the trees around it rooks were cawing and wheeling; and close beneath it huddled other cottages, ivy-grown, about the village well. Afternoon school was just over, and the children were skipping and running about the streets. Through the cottage doors could be seen occasionally the gleam of a fire or a white cloth spread for tea. For the womenfolk, at least, tea was the great meal of the day in Beechcote. So that what with the flickering of the fires, and the sunset light on the windows, the skipping children, the dogs, the tea-tables, and the rooks, Beechcote wore a cheerful and idyllic air. But Mrs. Roughsedge knew too much about these cottages. In this one to the left a girl had just borne her second illegitimate child; in that one farther on were two mentally deficient children, the offspring of feeble-minded parents; in the next, an old woman, the victim of pernicious anæmia, was moaning her life away; in the last to the right the mother of five small children had just died in her sixth confinement. Mrs. Roughsedge gave a long sigh as she looked at it. The tragedy was but forty-eight hours old; she had sat up with the mother through her dying hours.
"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, suddenly--"here comes the Vicar. Do you know, it's so unlucky--and so strange!--but he has certainly taken a dislike to Miss Mallory--I believe it was because he had hoped some Christian Socialist friends of his would have taken Beechcote, and he was disappointed to find it let to some one with what he calls 'silly Tory notions' and no particular ideas about Church matters. Now there's a regular fuss--something about the Book Club. I don't understand--"
The Vicar advanced toward them. He came along at a great pace, his lean figure closely sheathed in his long clerical coat, his face a little frowning and set.
At the sight of Mrs. Roughsedge he drew up, and greeted the mother and son.
"May I have a few words with you?" he asked Mrs. Roughsedge, as he turned back with them toward the Beechcote lane. "I don't know whether you are acquainted, Mrs. Roughsedge, with what has just happened in the Book Club, to which we both belong?"
The Book Club was a village institution of some antiquity. It embraced some ten families, who drew up their Mudie lists in common and sent the books from house to house. The Vicar and Dr. Roughsedge had been till now mainly responsible for these lists--so far, at least, as "serious books" were concerned, the ladies being allowed the chief voice in the novels.
Mrs. Roughsedge, a little fluttered, asked for information.
"Miss Mallory has recommended two books which, in my opinion, should not be circulated among us," said the Vicar. "I have protested--in vain. Miss Mallory maintains her recommendation. I propose, therefore, to withdraw from the Club."
"Are they improper?" cried Mrs. Roughsedge, much distressed. Captain Roughsedge threw an angry look first at his mother and then at the Vicar.
"Not in the usual sense," said the Vicar, stiffly--"but highly improper for the reading of Christian people. One is by a Unitarian, and the other reproduces some of the worst speculations of an infidel German theology. I pointed out the nature of the books to Miss Mallory. She replied that they were both by authors whom her father liked. I regretted it. Then she fired up, refused to withdraw the names, and offered to resign. Miss Mallory's subscription to the Club is, however, much larger than mine.Ishall therefore resign--protesting, of course, against the reason which induces me to take this course."
"What's wrong with the books?" asked Hugh Roughsedge.
The Vicar drew himself up.
"I have given my reasons."
"Why, you see that kind of thing in every newspaper," said Roughsedge, bluntly.
"All the more reason why I should endeavor to keep my parish free from it," was the Vicar's resolute reply. "However, there is no more to be said. I wished Mrs. Roughsedge to understand what had happened--that is all."
He paused, and offered a limp hand in good-bye.
"Let me speak to Miss Mallory," said Mrs. Roughsedge, soothingly.
The Vicar shook his head.
"She is a young lady of strong will." And with a hasty nod of farewell to the Captain, whose hostility he divined, he walked away.
"And what about obstinate and pig-headed parsons!" said Roughsedge, hotly, addressing his remark, however, safely to the Vicar's back, and to his mother. "Who makes him a judge of what we shall read! I shall make a point of asking for both the books!"
"Oh, my dear Hugh!" cried his mother, in rather troubled protest. Then she happily reflected that if he asked for them, he was not in the least likely to read them. "I hope Miss Mallory is not really an unbeliever."
"Mother! Of course, what that poker in a wide-awake did was to say something uncivil about her father, and she wasn't going to stand that. Quite right, too."
"She did come to church on Christmas Day," said Mrs. Roughsedge, reflecting. "But, then, a great many people do that who don't believe anything. Anyway, she has always been quite charming to your father and me. And I think, besides, the Vicar might have been satisfied with your father's opinion--hemade no complaint about the books. Oh, now the Miss Bertrams are going to stop us! They'll of course know all about it!"
If Captain Roughsedge growled ugly words into his mustache, his mother was able to pretend not to hear them, in the gentle excitement of shaking hands with the Miss Bertrams. These middle-aged ladies, the daughters of a deceased doctor from the neighboring county town of Dunscombe, were, if possible, more plainly dressed than usual, and their manners more forbidding.
"You will have heard of this disagreeable incident which has occurred," said Miss Maria to Mrs. Roughsedge, with a pinched mouth. "My sister and I shall, of course, remove our names from the Club."
"I say--don't your subscribers order the books they like?" asked Roughsedge, half wroth and half laughing, surveying the lady with his hand on his side.
"There is a very clear understanding among us," said Miss Maria, sharply, "as to the character of the books to be ordered. No member of the Club has yet transgressed it."
"There must be give and take, mustn't there?" said Miss Elizabeth, in a deprecatory voice. She was the more amiable and the weaker of the two sisters. "Weshouldneverorder books that would be offensive to Miss Mallory."
"But if you haven't read the books?"
"The Vicar's word is quite enough," said Miss Maria, with her most determined air.
They all moved on together, Captain Roughsedge smoothing or tugging at his mustache with a restless hand.
But Miss Bertram, presently, dropping a little behind, drew Mrs. Roughsedge with her.
"There are all sorts of changes at the house," she said, confidentially. "The laundry maids are allowed to go out every evening, if they like--and Miss Mallory makes no attempt to influence the servants to come to church. The Vicar says the seats for the Beechcote servants have never been so empty."
"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Roughsedge.
"And money is improperly given away. Several people whom the Vicar thinks most unfit objects of charity have been assisted. And in a conversation with her last week Miss Mallory expressed herself in a very sad way about foreign missions. Her father's idea, again, no doubt--but it is all very distressing. The Vicar doubts"--Miss Maria spoke warily, bringing her face very close to the gray curls--"whether she has ever been confirmed."
This final stroke, however, fell flat. Mrs. Roughsedge showed no emotion. "Most of my aunts," she said, stoutly, "were never confirmed, and they were good Christians and communicants all their lives."
Miss Maria's expression showed that this reference to a preceding barbaric age of the Church had no relevance to the existing order of things.
"Of course," she added, hastily, "I do not wish to make myself troublesome or conspicuous in any way. I merely mention these things as explaining why the Vicar felt bound to make a stand. The Church feeling in this parish has been so strong it would, indeed, be a pity if anything occurred to weaken it."
Mrs. Roughsedge gave a doubtful assent. As to the Church feeling, she was not so clear as Miss Bertram. One of her chief friends was a secularist cobbler who lived under the very shadow of the church. The Miss Bertrams shuddered at his conversation. Mrs. Roughsedge found him racy company, and he presented to her aspects of village life and opinion with which the Miss Bertrams were not at all acquainted.
As the mother and son approached the old house in the sunset light, its aspect of mellow and intimate congruity with the woods and fields about it had never been more winning. The red, gray, and orange of its old brickwork played into the brown and purples of its engirdling trees, into the lilacs and golds and crimsons of the western sky behind it, into the cool and quiet tones of the meadows from which it rose. A spirit of beauty had been at work fusing man's perishable and passing work with Nature's eternal masterpiece; so that the old house had in it something immortal, and the light which played upon it something gently personal, relative, and fleeting. Winter was still dominant; a northeast wind blew. But on the grass under the spreading oaks which sheltered the eastern front a few snow-drops were out. And Diana was gathering them.
She came toward her visitors with alacrity. "Oh! what a long time since you have been to see me!"
Mrs. Roughsedge explained that she had been entertaining some relations, and Hugh had been in London. She hoped that Miss Mallory had enjoyed her stay at Tallyn. It certainly seemed to both mother and son that the ingenuous young face colored a little as its owner replied--"Thank you--it was very amusing"--and then added, with a little hesitation--"Mr. Marsham has been kindly advising me since, about the gardens--and the Vavasours.Theywere to keep up the gardens, you know--and now they practically leave it to me--which isn't fair."
Mrs. Roughsedge secretly wondered whether this statement was meant to account for the frequent presence of Oliver Marsham at Beechcote. She had herself met him in the lane riding away from Beechcote no less than three times during the past fortnight.
"Please come in to tea!" said Diana; "I am just expecting my cousin--Miss Merton. Mrs. Colwood and I are so excited!--we have never had a visitor here before. I came out to try and find some snow-drops for her room. There is really nothing in the greenhouses--and I can't make the house look nice."
Certainly as they entered and passed through the panelled hall to the drawing-room Hugh Roughsedge saw no need for apology. Amid the warm dimness of the house he was aware of a few starry flowers, a few gleaming and beautiful stuffs, the white and black of an engraving, or the blurred golds and reds of an old Italian picture, humble school-work perhaps, collected at small cost by Diana's father, yet still breathing the magic of the Enchanted Land. The house was refined, pleading, eager--like its mistress. It made no display--but it admitted no vulgarity. "These things are not here for mere decoration's sake," it seemed to say. "Dear kind hands have touched them; dear silent voices have spoken of them. Love them a little, you also!--and be at home."
Not that Hugh Roughsedge made any such conscious analysis of his impressions. Yet the house appealed to him strangely. He thought Miss Mallory's taste marvellous; and it is one of the superiorities in women to which men submit most readily.
The drawing-room had especially a festive air. Mrs. Colwood was keeping tea-cakes hot, and building up a blazing fire with logs of beech-wood. When she had seated her guests, Diana put the snow-drops she had gathered into an empty vase, and looked round her happily, as though now she had put the last touch to all her preparations. She talked readily of her cousin's coming to Mrs. Roughsedge; and she inquired minutely of Hugh when the next meet was to be, that she might take her guest to see it.
"Fanny will be just as new to it all as I!" she said. "That's so nice, isn't it?" Then she offered Mrs. Roughsedge cake, and looked at her askance with a hanging head. "Have you heard--about the Vicar?"
Mrs. Roughsedge admitted it.
"I did lose my temper," said Diana, repentantly. "Butreally!--papa used to tell me it was a sign of weakness to say violent things you couldn't prove. Wasn't it Lord Shaftesbury that said some book he didn't like was 'vomited out of the jaws of hell'? Well, the Vicar said things very like that. He did indeed!"
"Oh no, my dear, no!" cried Mrs. Roughsedge, disturbed by the quotation, even, of such a remark. Hugh Roughsedge grinned. Diana, however, insisted.
"Of course, I would have given them up. Only I just happened to say that papa always read everything he could by those two men--and then"--she flushed--"Well, I don't exactly remember what Mr. Lavery said. But I know that when he'd said it I wouldn't have given up either of those books for the world!"
"I hope, Miss Mallory, you won't think of giving them up," said Hugh, with vigor. "It will be an excellent thing for Lavery."
Mrs. Roughsedge, as the habitual peacemaker of the village, said hastily that Dr. Roughsedge should talk to the Vicar. Of course, he must not be allowed to do anything so foolish as to withdraw from the Club, or the Miss Bertrams either."
"Oh! my goodness," cried Diana, hiding her face--and then raising it, crimson. "The Miss Bertrams, too! Why, it's only six weeks since I first came to this place, and now I'm setting it by the ears!"
Her aspect of mingled mirth and dismay had in it something so childish and disarming that Mrs. Roughsedge could only wish the Vicar had been there to see. His heretical parishioner fell into meditation.
"What can I do? If I could only be sure that he would never say things like that to me again--"
"But he will!" said Captain Roughsedge. "Don't give in, Miss Mallory."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, as the door opened, "shall we ask Mr. Marsham?"
Diana turned with a startled movement. It was evident that Marsham was not expected. But Mrs. Roughsedge also inferred from a shrewd observation of her hostess that he was not unwelcome. He had, in fact, looked in on his way home from hunting to give a message from his mother; that, at least, was the pretext. Hugh Roughsedge, reading him with a hostile eye, said to himself that if it hadn't been Lady Lucy it would have been something else. As it happened, he was quite as well aware as his mother that Marsham's visits to Beechcote of late had been far more frequent than mere neighborliness required.
Marsham was in hunting dress, and made his usual handsome and energetic impression. Diana treated him with great self-possession, asking after Mr. Ferrier, who had just returned to Tallyn for the last fortnight before the opening of Parliament, and betraying to the Roughsedges that she was already on intimate terms with Lady Lucy, who was lending her patterns for her embroidery, driving over once or twice a week, and advising her about various household affairs. Mrs. Roughsedge, who had been Diana's first protector, saw herself supplanted--not without a little natural chagrin.
The controversy of the moment was submitted to Marsham, who decided hotly against the Vicar, and implored Diana to stand firm. But somehow his intervention only hastened the compunction that had already begun to work in her. She followed the Roughsedges to the door when they departed.
"What must I do?" she said, sheepishly, to Mrs. Roughsedge. "Write to him?"
"The Vicar? Oh, dear Miss Mallory, the doctor will settle it. Youwould-change the books?"
"Mother!" cried Hugh Roughsedge, indignantly, "we're all bullied--you know we are--and now you want Miss Mallory bullied too."
"'Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow,'" laughed Marsham, in the background, as he stood toying with his tea beside Mrs. Colwood.
Diana shook her head.
"I can't be friends with him," she said, naively, "for a long long time. But I'll rewrite my list. AndmustI go and call on the Miss Bertrams to-morrow?"
Her mock and smiling submission, as she stood, slender and lovely, amid the shadows of the hall, seemed to Hugh Roughsedge, as he looked back upon her, the prettiest piece of acting. Then she turned, and he knew that she was going back to Marsham. At the same moment he saw Mrs. Colwood's little figure disappearing up the main stairway. Frowning and silent, he followed his mother out of the house.
Diana looked round rather wistfully for Mrs. Colwood as she re-entered the room; but that lady had many letters to write.
Marsham noticed Mrs. Colwood's retreat with a thrill of pleasure. Yet even now he had no immediate declaration in his mind. The course that he had marked out for himself had been exactly followed. There had been no "hurrying it." Only in these weeks before Parliament, while matters of great moment to his own political future were going forward, and his participation in them was not a whit less cool and keen than it had always been, he had still found abundant time for the wooing of Diana. He had assumed a kind of guardian's attitude in the matter of her relations to the Vavasours--who in business affairs had proved both greedy and muddle-headed; he had flattered her woman's vanity by the insight he had freely allowed her into the possibilities and the difficulties of his own Parliamentary position, and of his relations to Ferrier; and he had kept alive a kind of perpetual interest and flutter in her mind concerning him, by the challenge he was perpetually offering to the opinions and ideas in which she had been brought up--while yet combining it with a respect toward her father's memory, so courteous, and, in truth, sincere, that she was alternately roused and subdued.
On this February evening, it seemed to his exultant sense, as Diana sat chatting to him beside the fire, that his power with her had substantially advanced, that by a hundred subtle signs--quite involuntary on her part--she let him understand that his personality was pressing upon hers, penetrating her will, transforming her gay and fearless composure.
For instance, he had been lending her books representing his own political and social opinions. To her they were anathema. Her father's soul in her regarded them as forces of the pit, rising in ugly clamor to drag down England from her ancient place. But to hate and shudder at them from afar had been comparatively easy. To battle with them at close quarters, as presented by this able and courteous antagonist, who passed so easily and without presumption from the opponent into the teacher, was a more teasing matter. She had many small successes and side-victories, but they soon ceased to satisfy her, in presence of the knowledge and ability of a man who had been ten years in Parliament, and had made for himself--she began to understand--a considerable position there. She was hotly loyal to her own faiths; but she was conscious of what often seemed to her a dangerous and demoralizing interest in his! A demoralizing pleasure, too, in listening--in sometimes laying aside the watchful, hostile air, in showing herself sweet, yielding, receptive.
These melting moods, indeed, were rare. But no one watching the two on this February evening could have failed to see in Diana signs of happiness, of a joyous and growing dependence, of something that refused to know itself, that masqueraded now as this feeling, now as that, yet was all the time stealing upon the sources of life, bewitching blood and brain. Marsham lamented that in ten days he and his mother must be in town for the Parliamentary season. Diana clearly endeavored to show nothing more than a polite regret. But in the half-laughing, half-forlorn requests she made to him for advice in certain practical matters which must be decided in his absence she betrayed herself; and Marsham found it amazingly sweet that she should do so. He said eagerly that he and Lady Lucy must certainly come down to Tallyn every alternate Sunday, so that the various small matters he had made Diana intrust to him--the finding of a new gardener; negotiations with the Vavasours, connected with the cutting of certain trees--or the repairs of a ruinous gable of the house--should still be carried forward with all possible care and speed. Whereupon Diana inquired how such things could possibly engage the time and thought of a politician in the full stream of Parliament.
"They will be much more interesting to me," said Marsham, in a low steady voice, "than anything I shall be doing in Parliament."
Diana rose, in sudden vague terror--as though with the roar in her ears of rapids ahead--murmured some stammering thanks, walked across the room, lowered a lamp which was flaming, and recovered all her smiling self-possession. But she talked no more of her own affairs. She asked him, instead, for news of Miss Vincent.
Marsham answered, with difficulty. If there had been sudden alarm in her, there had been a sudden tumult of the blood in him. He had almost lost his hold upon himself; the great words had been almost spoken.
But when the conversation had been once more guided into normal channels, he felt that he had escaped a risk. No, no, not yet! One false step--one check--and he might still find himself groping in the dark. Better let himself be missed a little!--than move too soon. As to Roughsedge--he had kept his eyes open. There was nothing there.
So he gave what news of Marion Vincent he had to give. She was still in Bethnal Green working at her inquiry, often very ill, but quite indomitable. As soon as Parliament began she had promised to do some secretarial work for Marsham on two or three mornings a week.
"I saw her last week," said Marsham. "She always asks after you."
"I am so glad! I fell in love with her. Surely"--Diana hesitated--"surely--some day--she will marry Mr. Frobisher?"
Marsham shook his head.
"I think she feels herself too frail."
Diana remembered that little scene of intimacy--of tenderness--and Marsham's words stirred about her, as it were, winds of sadness and renunciation. She shivered under them a little, feeling, almost guiltily, the glow of her own life, the passion of her own hopes.
Marsham watched her as she sat on the other side of the fire, her beautiful head a little bent and pensive, the firelight playing on the oval of her cheek. How glad he was that he had not spoken!--that the barrier between them still held. A man may find heaven or hell on the other side of it. But merely to have crossed it makes life the poorer. One more of the great, the irrevocable moments spent and done--yielded to devouring time. He hugged the thought that it was still before him. The very timidity and anxiety he felt were delightful to him; he had never felt them before. And once more--involuntarily, disagreeably--he thought of Alicia Drake, and of the passages between them in the preceding summer.
Alicia was still at Tallyn, and her presence was, in truth, a constant embarrassment to him. Lady Lucy, on the contrary, had a strong sense of family duty toward her young cousin, and liked to have her for long visits at Tallyn or in London. Marsham believed his mother knew nothing of the old flirtation between them. Alicia, indeed, rarely showed any special interest in him now. He admitted her general discretion. Yet occasionally she would put in a claim, a light word, now mocking, now caressing, which betrayed the old intimacy, and Marsham would wince under it. It was like a creeping touch in the dark. He had known what it was to feel both compunction and a kind of fear with regard to Alicia. But, normally, he told himself that both feelings were ridiculous. He had done nothing to compromise either himself or her. He had certainly flirted with Alicia; but he could not honestly feel that the chief part in the matter had been his.
These thoughts passed in a flash. The clock struck, and regretfully he got up to take his leave. Diana rose, too, with a kindling face.
"My cousin will be here directly!" she said, joyously.
"Shall I find her installed when I come next time?"
"I mean to keep her as long--as long--as ever I can!"
Marsham held her hand close and warm a moment, felt her look waver a second beneath his, and then, with a quick and resolute step, he went his way.
He was just putting on his coat in the outer hall when there was a sound of approaching wheels. A carriage stopped at the door, to which the butler hurried. As he opened it Marsham saw in the light of the porch lamp the face of a girl peering out of the carriage window. It was a little awkward. His own horse was held by a groom on the other side of the carriage. There was nothing to do but to wait till the young lady had passed. He drew to one side.
Miss Merton descended. There was just time for Marsham to notice an extravagant hat, smothered in ostrich feathers, a large-featured, rather handsome face, framed in a tangled mass of black hair, a pair of sharp eyes that seemed to take in hungrily all they saw--the old hall, the butler, and himself, as he stood in the shadow. He heard the new guest speak to the butler about her luggage. Then the door of the inner hall opened, and he caught Diana's hurrying feet, and her cry--
"Fanny!"
He passed the lady and escaped. As he rode away into the darkness of the lanes he was conscious of an impression which had for the moment checked the happy flutter of blood and pulse. Wasthatthe long-expected cousin? Poor Diana! A common-looking, vulgar young woman--with a most unpleasant voice and accent. An unpleasant manner, too, to the servants--half arrogant, half familiar. What a hat!--and what a fringe!--worthy of some young "lidy" in the Old Kent Road! The thought of Diana sitting at table with such a person on equal terms pricked him with annoyance; for he had all his mother's fastidiousness, though it showed itself in different forms. He blamed Mrs. Colwood--Diana ought to have been more cautiously guided. The thought of all the tender preparation made for the girl was both amusing and repellent.
Miss Merton, he understood, was Diana's cousin on the mother's side--the daughter of her mother's sister. A swarm of questions suddenly arose in his mind--questions not hitherto entertained. Had there been, in fact, amésalliance--some disagreeable story--which accounted, perhaps, for the self-banishment of Mr. Mallory?--the seclusion in which Diana had been brought up? The idea was most unwelcome, but the sight of Fanny Merton had inevitably provoked it. And it led on to a good many other ideas and speculations of a mingled sort connected, now with Diana, now with recollections, pleasant and unpleasant, of the eight or ten years which had preceded his first sight of her.
For Oliver Marsham was now thirty-six, and he had not reached that age without at least one serious attempt--quite apart from any passages with Alicia Drake--to provide himself with a wife. Some two years before this date he had proposed to a pretty girl of great family and no money, with whom he supposed himself ardently in love. She, after some hesitation, had refused him, and Marsham had had some reason to believe that in spite of his mother's great fortune and his own expectations, hisprovenancehad not been regarded as sufficiently aristocratic by the girl's fond parents. Perhaps had he--and not Lady Lucy--been the owner of Tallyn and its £18,000 a year, things might have been different. As it was, Marsham had felt the affront, as a strong and self-confident man was likely to feel it; and it was perhaps in reaction from it that he had allowed himself those passages with Alicia Drake which had, at least, soothed his self-love.
In this affair Marsham had acted on one of the convictions with which he had entered public life--that there is no greater help to a politician than a distinguished, clever, and, if possible, beautiful wife. Distinction, Radical though he was, had once seemed to him a matter of family and "connection." But after the failure of his first attempt, "family," in the ordinary sense, had ceased to attract him. Personal breeding, intelligence, and charm--these, after all, are what the politician who is already provided with money, wants to secure in his wife; without, of course, any obvious disqualification in the way of family history. Diana, as he had first met her among the woods at Portofino, side by side with her dignified and gentlemanly father, had made upon him precisely that impression of personal distinction of which he was in search--upon his mother also.
The appearance and the accent, however, of the cousin had struck him with surprise; nor was it till he was nearing Tallyn that he succeeded in shaking off the impression. Absurd! Everybody has some relations that require to be masked--like the stables, or the back door--in a skilful arrangement of life. Diana, his beautiful, unapproachable Diana, would soon, no doubt, be relieved of this young lady, with whom she could have no possible interests in common. And, perhaps, on one of his week-end visits to Tallyn and Beechcote, he might get a few minutes' conversation with Mrs. Colwood which would throw some light on the new guest.
Diana meanwhile, assisted by Mrs. Colwood, was hovering about her cousin. She and Miss Merton had kissed each other in the hall, and then Diana, seized with a sudden shyness, led her guest into the drawing-room and stood there speechless, a little; holding her by both hands and gazing at her; mastered by feeling and excitement.
"Well, youhavegot a queer old place!" said Fanny Merton, withdrawing herself. She turned and looked about her, at the room, the flowers, the wide hearth, with its blazing logs, at Mrs. Colwood, and finally at Diana.
"We are so fond of it already!" said Diana. "Come and get warm." She settled her guest in a chair by the fire, and took a stool beside her. "Did you like Devonshire?"
The girl made a little face.
"It was awfully quiet. Oh, my friends, of course, made a lot of fuss over me--and that kind of thing. But I wouldn't live there, not if you paid me."
"We're very quiet here," said Diana, timidly. She was examining the face beside her, with its bright crude color, its bold eyes, and sulky mouth, slightly underhung.
"Oh, well, you've got some good families about, I guess. I saw one or two awfully smart carriages waiting at the station."
"There are a good many nice people," murmured Diana. "But there is not much going on."
"I expect you could invite a good many here if you wanted," said the girl, once more looking round her. "Whatever made you take this place?"
"I like old things so much," laughed Diana. "Don't you?"
"Well, I don't know. I think there's more style about a new house. You can have electric light and all that sort of thing."
Diana admitted it, and changed the subject. "Had the journey been cold?"
Freezing, said Miss Merton. But a young man had lent her his fur coat to put over her knees, which had improved matters. She laughed--rather consciously.
"He lives near here. I told him I was sure you'd ask him to something, if he called."
"Who was he?"
With much rattling of the bangles on her wrists, Fanny produced a card from her hand-bag. Diana looked at it in dismay. It was the card of a young solicitor whom she had once met at a local tea-party, and decided to avoid thenceforward.
She said nothing, however, and plunged into inquiries as to her aunt and cousins.
"Oh! they're all right. Mother's worried out of her life about money; but, then, we've always been that poor you couldn't skin a cent off us, so that's nothing new."
Diana murmured sympathy. She knew vaguely that her father had done a good deal to subsidize these relations. She could only suppose that in his ignorance he had not done enough.
Meanwhile Fanny Merton had fixed her eyes upon Diana with a curious hostile look, almost a stare, which had entered them as she spoke of the family poverty, and persisted as they travelled from Diana's face and figure to the pretty and spacious room beyond. She examined everything, in a swift keen scrutiny, and then as the pouncing glance came back to her cousin, the girl suddenly exclaimed:
"Goodness! but you are like Aunt Sparling!"
Diana flushed crimson. She drew back and said, hurriedly, to Mrs. Colwood:
"Muriel, would you see if they have taken the luggage up-stairs?"
Mrs. Colwood went at once.
Fanny Merton had herself changed color, and looked a little embarrassed. She did not repeat her remark, but began to take her furs off, to smooth her hair deliberately, and settle her bracelets. Diana came nearer to her as soon as they were alone.
"Do you really think I am like mamma?" she said, tremulously, all her eyes fixed upon her cousin.
"Well, of course I never saw her!" said Miss Merton, looking down at the fire. "How could I? But mother has a picture of her, and you're as like as two peas."
"I never saw any picture of mamma," said Diana; "I don't know at all what she was like."
"Ah, well--" said Miss Merton, still looking down. Then she stopped, and said no more. She took out her handkerchief, and began to rub a spot of mud off her dress. It seemed to Diana that her manner was a little strange, and rather rude. But she had made up her mind there would be peculiarities in Fanny, and she did not mean to be repelled by them.
"Shall I take you to your room?" she said. "You must be tired, and we shall be dining directly."
Miss Merton allowed herself to be led up-stairs, looking curiously round her at every step.
"I say, you must be well off!" she burst out, as they came to the head of the stairs, "or you'd never be able to run a place like this!"
"Papa left me all his money," said Diana, coloring again. "I hope he wouldn't have thought it extravagant."
She passed on in front of her guest, holding a candle. Fanny Merton followed. At Diana's statement as to her father's money the girl's face had suddenly resumed its sly hostility. And as Diana walked before her, Miss Merton again examined the house, the furniture, the pictures; but this time, and unknown to Diana, with the air of one half jealous and half contemptuous of all she saw.