CHAPTER V
The last covert had been shot, and as Marsham and his party, followed byscattered groups of beaters, turned homeward over the few fields thatseparated them from the park, figures appeared coming toward them in therosy dusk--Mr. Ferrier and Diana in front, with most of the other guestsof the house in their train. There was a merry fraternization betweenthe two parties--a characteristic English scene, in a characteristicsetting: the men in their tweed shooting-suits, some with their gunsover their shoulders, for the most part young and tall, clean-limbed andclear-eyed, the well-to-do Englishman at his most English moment, andbrimming with the joy of life; the girls dressed in the same tweedstuffs, and with the same skilled and expensive simplicity, but wearing,some of them, over their cloth caps, bright veils, white or green orblue, which were tied under their chins, and framed faces aglow withexercise and health.
Marsham's eyes flew to Diana, who was in black, with a white veil. Someof the natural curls on her temples, which reminded him of a Vandyckpicture, 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 anewby the contrast between her frank young strength, and the wistful look,so full of _relation_ to all about it, as though seeking to understandand be one with it. He perceived too her childish pleasure in eachfresh incident and experience of the English winter, which proved toher anew that she had come home; and he flattered himself, as he wentstraight to her side, that his coming had at least no dimming effect onthe 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 whileher eyes ranged along the chalk down, on the western edge of which theywere walking, and then over the plain at their feet, the smoke wreathsthat hung above the villages, the western sky filled stormily with thepurples and grays and crimsons of the sunset, the woods that climbed thedown, 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 Ihave 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 grievancetaken away."
"Against whom?"
"Ah! not against papa!" she said, hurriedly--"against Fate!"
"If you dislike being deprived of a grievance--so do I. You havereturned 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 wasquite resigned."
"To a damaging estimate of my character? Thank you very much!"
"I wonder"--he said, in another tone--"what sort of estimate you haveof _my_ character--false, or true?"
"Well, there have been a great many surprises!" said Diana, raising hereyebrows.
"In the matter of my character?"
"Not altogether."
"My surroundings? You mean I talked Radicalism--or, as you would callit, Socialism--to you at Portofino, and here you find me in thecharacter of a sporting Squire?"
"I hear"--she said, deliberately looking about her--"that this is thefinest shoot in the county."
"It is. There is no denying it. But, in the first place, it's mymother's shoot, not mine--the estate is hers, not mine--and she wishesold customs to be kept up. In the next--well, of course, the truth isthat I like it abominably!"
He had thrust his cap into his pocket, and was walking bareheaded. Inthe glow of the evening air his strong manhood seemed to gain an addedforce and vitality. He moved beside her, magnified and haloed, as itwere, by the dusk and the sunset. Yet his effect upon her was no merephysical effect of good looks and a fine stature. It was rather theeffect of a personality which strangely fitted with and evoked herown--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 knittingof the brows.
"Mr. Ferrier--a little."
He gave an impatient sigh, so disproportionate to the tone of theirconversation, that Diana looked at him in sudden surprise.
"Haven't you often wondered how it is that the very people who know youbest know you least?"
The question was impetuously delivered. Diana recalled Mr. Forbes'sremarks 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 asmile, recovering himself. "It is often the greatest men who cling tothe old world--when the new is clamoring. But the new means to be heardall the same."
Diana's color flashed.
"I would rather be in that old world with Mr. Ferrier than in the newwith Mr. Barton!"
"What is the use of talking of preferences? The world is what it is--andwill be what it will be. Barton is our master--Ferrier's and mine. Thepoint 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 needbe."
They had come to a stile. Marsham had crossed it, and Diana mounted. Heryoung form showed sharply against the west; he looked into her eyes,divided between laughter and feeling; she gave him her hand. The man'spulses leaped anew. He was naturally of a cool and self-possessedtemperament--the life of the brain much stronger in him than the life ofthe senses. But at that moment he recognized--as perhaps, for the firsttime, 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 hehad taken in the autumn With Alicia Drake flashed, unwelcomed, into hismind. It stirred a half-uneasy, half-laughing compunction. He could notflatter himself--yet--that his cousin had forgotten it.
"What gate?--and what threshold?" he asked Diana, as they moved on. "Ifyou mean the gate of power--it is too late. Democracy is in thecitadel--and has run up its own flag. Or to take another metaphor--theWhirlwind is in possession--the only question is who shall ride it!"
Diana declared that the Socialists would ride it to the abyss--withEngland on the crupper.
"Magnificent!" said Marsham, "but merely rhetorical. Besides--all thatwe ask, is that Ferrier should ride it. Let him only try the beast--andhe will find it tame enough."
"And if he won't?--"
"Ah, if he won't--" said Marsham, uncertainly, and paused. In thegrowing darkness she could no longer see his face plainly. But presentlyhe resumed, more earnestly and simply.
"Don't misunderstand me! Ferrier is our chief--my chief, above all--andone does not even discuss whether one is loyal to him. The party oweshim an enormous debt. As for myself--" He drew a long breath, which wasagain a sigh.
Then with a change of manner, and in a lighter tone: "I seem to havegiven myself away--to an enemy!"
"Poor enemy!"
"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 wasonly my ignorance that was beaten--not my cause."
"Shall we begin again?"
Through his gayety, however, a male satisfaction in victory pierced veryplainly. Diana winced a little.
"No, no! I must go back to Captain Roughsedge first and get some newarguments!"
"Roughsedge!" he said, in surprise. "Roughsedge? He never carried anargument through in his life!"
Diana defended her new friend to ears unsympathetic. Her defence,indeed, evoked from him a series of the same impatient, sarcasticremarks on the s
ubject of the neighbors as had scandalized her the daybefore. She fired up, and they were soon in the midst of anotherbattle-royal, partly on the merits of particular persons and partly on amore general theme--the advantage or disadvantage of an optimist view ofyour fellow-creatures.
Marsham was, before long, hard put to it in argument, and verydelicately and discreetly convicted of arrogance or worse. They wereentering the woods of the park when he suddenly stopped and said:
"Do you know that you have had a jolly good revenge--pressed down andrunning 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 excitedconsciousness of quickened life and hurrying hours. He looked withdistaste at the nearness of the house; and at the group of figureswhich had paused in front of them, waiting for them, on the farther edgeof the broad lawn.
"You have convicted me of an odious, exclusive, bullying temper--or youthink you have--and all you will allow _me_ in the way of victory isthat 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 thenumber 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 themall."
"Were you so very solitary as a child?" he asked her, gently, in achanged tone, which was itself an act of homage, almost a caress.
"Yes--I was very solitary," she said, after a pause. "And I am reallygregarious--dreadfully fond of people!--and curious about them. And Ithink, oddly enough, papa was too."
A question rose naturally to his lips, but was checked unspoken. He wellremembered Mr. Mallory at Portofino; a pleasant courteous man, evidentlyby nature a man of the world, interested in affairs and in literature,with all the signs on him of the English governing class. It wascertainly curious that he should have spent all those years in exilewith his child, in a remote villa on the Italian coast. Health, Marshamsupposed, or finance--the two chief motives of life. For himself, thethought of Diana's childhood between the pine woods and the sea gave himpleasure; it added another to the poetical and romantic ideas which shesuggested. There came back on him the plash of the waves beneath thePortofino headland, the murmur of the pines, the fragrance of theunderwood. He felt the kindred between all these, and her maidenlyenergy, her unspoiled beauty.
"One moment!" he said, as they began to cross the lawn. "Has my sisterattacked you yet?"
The smile with which the words were spoken could be heard though notseen. Diana laughed, a little awkwardly.
"I am afraid Mrs. Fotheringham thinks me a child of blood and thunder! Iam so sorry!"
"If she presses you too hard, call me in. Isabel and I understand eachother."
Diana murmured something polite.
Mr. Frobisher meanwhile came to meet them with a remark upon the beautyof the evening, and Alicia Drake followed.
"I expect you found it a horrid long way," she said to Diana. Dianadisclaimed fatigue.
"You came _so_ slowly, we thought you must be tired."
Something in the drawling manner and the slightly insolent expressionmade the words sting. Diana hurried on to Marion Vincent's side. Thatlady was leaning on a stick, and for the first time Diana saw that shewas slightly lame. She looked up with a pleasant smile and greeting; butbefore they could move on across the ample drive, Mr. Frobisherovertook 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. Hesupported her with what seemed to Diana a tender carefulness, his headbent 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 heartof Diana. It was to her an evening of triumph--triumph innocent,harmless, and complete. Her charm, her personality had by now capturedthe whole party, save for an opposition of three--and the three realizedthat they had for the moment no chance of influencing the popular voice.The rugged face of Mr. Barton stiffened as she approached; it seemed tohim that the night before he had been snubbed by a chit, and he was notthe man to forget it easily. Alicia Drake was a little pale and a littlesilent during the evening, till, late in its course, she succeeded incarrying off a group of young men who had come for the shoot and werestaying the night, and in establishing a noisy court among them Mrs.Fotheringham disapproved, by now, of almost everything that concernedMiss Mallory: of her taste in music or in books, of the touch ofeffusion in her manner, which was of course "affected" or"aristocratic"; of the enthusiasms she did _not_ possess, no less thanof those She did. On the sacred subject of the suffrage, for instance,which with Mrs. Fotheringham was a matter for propaganda everywhere andat all times, Diana was but a cracked cymbal, when struck she gave backeither no sound at all, or a wavering one. Her beautiful eyes were blankor hostile; she would escape like a fawn from the hunter. As for otherpolitics, no one but Mrs. Fotheringham dreamed of introducing them. She,however, would have discovered many ways of dragging them in, and ofsetting down Diana; but here her brother was on the watch, and timeafter time she found herself checked or warded off.
Diana, indeed, was well defended. The more ill-humored Mrs. Fotheringhamgrew, the more Lady Niton enjoyed the evening and her own "Nitonisms."It was she who after dinner suggested the clearing of the hall and animpromptu 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 naturaland shining gift, so that even the gilded youths of the party, who wereperhaps inclined to fight shy of Miss Mallory as "a girl who talkedclever," even they came crowding about her, like flies about amilk-pail--it was Lady Niton who drew Isabel Fotheringham's attention toit loudly and repeatedly. It was she also who, at a pause in the dancingand at a hint from Mrs. Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to thegrand piano which had been pushed into a corner of the hall. And whenthe singing, helped by the looks and personality of the singer, hadadded to the girl's success, Lady Niton sat fanning herself in reflectedtriumph, appealing to the spectators on all sides for applause. Thetopics that Diana fled from, Lady Niton took up; and when Mrs.Fotheringham, bewildered by an avalanche of words, would say--"Give metime, please, Lady Niton--I must think!"--Lady Niton would reply,coolly--"Not unless you're accustomed to it"; while she finally cappedher misdeeds by insisting that it was no good to say Mr. Barton had awarm heart if he were without that much more useful possession--anarrow mind.
Thus buttressed and befriended on almost all sides, Diana drank her cupof pleasure. Once in an interval between two dances, as she passed onOliver Marsham's arm, close to Lady Lucy, that lady put up her frail oldhand, and gently touched Diana's. "Do not overtire yourself, my dear!"she said, with effusion; and Oliver, looking down, knew very well whathis mother's rare effusion meant, if Diana did not. On severaloccasions Mr. Perrier sought her out, with every mark of flatteringattention, while it often seemed to Diana as if the protecting kindnessof Sir James Chide was never far away. In her white _ingenue's_ dressshe was an embodiment of youth, simplicity, and joy, such as perhaps ourgrandmothers knew more commonly than we, in our more hurried and complexday. And at the same time there floated round her something more thanyouth--something more thrilling and challenging than mere girlishdelight--an effluence, a passion, a "swell of soul," which made thisdawn of her life more bewitching even for its promise than for itsperformance.
For Marsham, too, the hours flew. He was carried away, enchanted; he hadeyes for no one, time for no one but Diana; and before the end of theevening the gossip among the Tallyn guests ran fast and free. When atlast the dance broke up, many a curious eye watched the parting betweenMarsham and Diana; and in their bedroom on the top floor Lady Lucy's tw
onieces sat up till the small hours discussing, first, the situation--wasOliver really caught at last?--and then, Alicia's refusal to discuss it.She had said bluntly that she was dog-tired--and shut her doorupon them.
* * * * *
On a hint from his mother, Marsham went to say good-night to her in herroom. She threw her arms round his neck, whispering: "Dear Oliver!--dearOliver!--I just wished you to know--if it is as I think--that you had myblessing."
He drew back, a little shrinking and reluctant--yet still flushed, as itwere, 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 youhappy--how ambitious I have been for you!"
"Yes, mother, I know. You have been always very good to me." He hadrecovered his composure, and stood holding her hand and smiling at her.
"What a charming creature, Oliver! It is a pity, of course, her fatherhas indoctrinated her with those opinions, but--"
"Opinions!" he said, scornfully--"what do they matter!" But he could notdiscuss Diana. His blood was still too hot within him.
"Of course--of course!" said Lady Lucy, soothingly. "She is soyoung--she will develop. But what a wife, Oliver, she will make--how shemight 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 manynatural opportunities of meeting."
"There are some difficulties with the Vavasours. They have beendisagreeable about the gardens. Ferrier and I have promised to go overand advise her."
"Good!" said Lady Lucy, delighted that the Vavasours had beendisagreeable. "Good-night, my son, good-night!"
A minute later Oliver stood meditating in his own room, where he hadjust 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 hispeculiar relation to his mother, and his father's estate, marriage wouldbe to him no mere satisfaction of a personal passion. It would be avital incident in a politician's career, to whom larger means andgreater independence were now urgently necessary. To marry with hismother's full approval would at last bring about that provision forhimself which his father's will had most unjustly postponed. He wasmonstrously dependent upon her. It had been one of the chief checks on astrong and concentrated ambition. But Lady Lucy had long made himunderstand that to marry according to her wishes would meanemancipation: a much larger income in the present, and the finalsettlement of her will in his favor. It was amazing how she had taken toDiana! Diana had only to accept him, and his future was secured.
But though thoughts of this kind passed in tumultuous procession throughthe grooves of consciousness, they were soon expelled by others. Marshamwas no mere interested schemer. Diana should help him to his career; butabove all and before all she was the adorable brown-eyed creature, whoselooks had just been shining upon him, whose soft hand had just beenlingering in his! As he stood alone and spellbound in the dark, yieldinghimself to the surging waves of feeling which broke over his mind, thethought, the dream, of holding Diana Mallory in his arms--of her headagainst his breast--came upon him with a sudden and stinging delight.
Yet the delight was under control--the control of a keen and practicalintelligence. There rose in him a sharp sense of the unfathomed depthsand possibilities in such a nature as Diana's. Once or twice thatevening, through all her sweet forthcomingness, when he had forced thenote a little, she had looked at him in sudden surprise or shrinking.No!--nothing premature! It seemed to him, as it had seemed to BobbieForbes, that she could only be won by the slow and gradual conquest of arich personality. He set himself to the task.
* * * * *
Down-stairs Mr. Ferrier and Sir James Chide were sitting together in aremote corner of the hall. Mr. Ferrier, in great good-humor with thestate of things, was discussing Oliver's chances, confidentially, withhis old friend. Sir James sat smoking in silence. He listened toFerrier's praises of Miss Mallory, to his generous appreciation ofMarsham's future, to his speculations as to what Lady Lucy would do forher son, upon his marriage, or as to the part which a creature sobrilliant and so winning as Diana might be expected to play in Londonand in political life.
Sir James said little or nothing. He knew Lady Lucy well, and had knownher long. Presently he rose abruptly and went up-stairs to bed.
"Ought I to speak?" he asked himself, in an agony of doubt. "Perhaps aword to Ferrier?--"
No!--impossible!--impossible! Yet, as he mounted the stairs, over thehouse which had just seen the triumph of Diana, over that radiant figureitself, the second sight of the great lawyer perceived the brooding of acloud of fate; nor could he do anything to avert or soften its downfall.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Diana's golden hour had found an unexpected epilogue. Afterher good-night to Marsham she was walking along the gallery corridorgoing toward her room, when she perceived Miss Vincent in front of hermoving slowly and, as it seemed, with difficulty. A sudden impulse madeDiana 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 withdinner-parties every night!" she said, laughing. "After a day in theEast End I am never half so tired."
She was indeed so pale that Diana was rather frightened, and rememberingthat in the afternoon she had seen Miss Vincent descend from an upperfloor, she offered a rest in her own room, which was close by, beforethe evidently lame woman attempted further stairs.
Marion Vincent hesitated a moment, then accepted. Diana hurried up achair to the fire, installed her there, and herself sat on the floorwatching her guest with some anxiety.
Yet, as she did so, she felt a certain antagonism. The face, of whichthe eyes were now closed, was nobly grave. The expression of its deeplymarked lines appealed to her heart. But why this singularity--thiseccentricity? 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 ofa precisely similar garment, adorned with a straight collar instead offrills. Surely a piece of acting!--of unnecessary self-assertion!
Yet all through the day--and the evening--Diana had been conscious ofthis woman's presence, in a strange penetrating way, even when they hadhad least to do with each other. In the intervals of her own joyousprogress 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. Hesat astride upon a chair, in his respectable workman's clothes, his eyesunder their shaggy brows, his weather-beaten features and compressedlips expressing an ill-concealed contempt for the scene before him. Itwas rumored that he had wished to depart before dinner, having concludedhis consultation with Mr. Ferrier, but that Mrs. Fotheringham hadpersuaded him to remain for the night. His presence seemed to makedancing a misdemeanor, and the rich house, with its services andappurtenances, an organized crime. But if his personality was thestorm-point of the scene, charged with potential lightning, MarionVincent's was the still small voice, without threat or bitterness, whichevery now and then spoke to a quick imagination like Diana's its messagefrom a world of poverty and pain. And sometimes Diana had been startledby the perception that the message seemed to be specially for her. MissVincent's eyes followed her; whenever Diana passed near her, shesmiled--she admired. But always, as it seemed to Diana, with a meaningbehind the smile. Yet what that meaning might be the girl couldnot 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 totestify! Sometimes when he does that he is magnificent. He said somefine 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 withpoverty.
"The usual struggle. No more than thousands of others. Only in him it isvocal--he can reflect upon it.--You had an easy triumph over him lastnight," 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 isgood enough. I have known him impress or convert the most unlikelypeople--by nothing but a bare sincerity. Just now--while the servantswere handing champagne--he and I were standing a little way off underthe gallery. His eyes are weak, and he can't bear the glare of all theselights. Suddenly he told me the story of his father's death."
She paused, and drew her hand across her eyes. Diana saw that they werewet. But although startled, the girl held herself a little aloof anderect, as though ready at a moment's notice to defend herself against asoftening which might involve a treachery to glorious and sacred things.
"It so chanced"--Miss Vincent resumed--"that it had a bearing onexperiences 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 ofpoverty and unemployment in a particular district."--She named it.--"Itis hard work--and not particularly good for the nerves."
She smiled, but at the same moment she turned extremely white, and asshe fell back in her chair, Diana saw her clinch her hand as though ina 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, andthe northwest wind, sweeping in, seemed to revive her pale companionalmost at once.
"I am very sorry!" said Miss Vincent, after a few minutes, in hernatural voice. "Now I am all right." She drank some water, andlooked up.
"Shall I tell you the story he told me? It is very short, and it mightchange 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 viewshe might happen to take of Mr. Barton.
"He said he remembered his father (who was a house-painter--a verydecent and hard-working man) having been out of work for eight weeks. Heused to go out looking for work every day--and there was the usualstory, of course, of pawning or selling all their possessions--oddjobs--increasing starvation--and so on. Meanwhile, _his_ onlypleasure--he was ten--was to go with his sister after school to look attwo shops in the East India Dock Road--one a draper's with a 'ChristmasBazaar'--the other a confectioner's. He declares it made him not morestarved, but less, to look at the goodies and the cakes; they _imagined_eating them; but they were both too sickly, he thinks, to be reallyhungry. As for the bazaar, with its dolls and toys, and its FatherChristmas, and bright lights, they both thought it paradise. They usedto flatten their noses against the glass; sometimes a shopman drovethem away; but they came back and back. At last the iron shutters wouldcome down--slowly. Then he and his sister would stoop--and stoop--to geta last look. Presently there would be only a foot of bliss left; thenthey both sank down flat on their stomachs on the pavement, and sostayed--greedily--till all was dark, and paradise had been swallowed up.Well, one night, the show had been specially gorgeous; they took handsafterward, and ran home. Their father had just come in. Mr. Barton canremember his staggering into the room. I'll give it in his words.'Mother, have you got anything in the house?' 'Nothing, Tom.' And motherbegan to cry. 'Not a bit of bread, mother?' 'I gave the last bit to thechildren for their teas.' Father said nothing, but he lay down on thebed. Then he called me. 'Johnnie,' he said, 'I've got work--for nextweek--but I sha'n't never go to it--it's too late,' and then he asked meto hold his hand, and turned his face on the pillow. When my mother cameto 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 turnedon Diana. "The charitable societies and missions send them out by scoresin their appeals. But somehow as he told it just now, down-stairs, inthat glaring hall, with the champagne going round--it seemedintolerable."
"And you mean also"--said Diana, slowly--"that a man with that historycan'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 brightand magnificent--like the Christmas Bazaar. To John Barton and me"--shesmiled--"they represent another. We too have seen the lights, and thecandles, and the toys; we have admired them, as you have; but we knowthe reality is not there. The reality is in the dark streets, where mentramp, looking for work; it is in the rooms where their wives andchildren live stifled and hungry--the rooms where our working folkdie--without having lived."
Her eyes, above her pale cheeks, had opened to their fullest extent--theeyes of a seer. They held Diana. So did the voice, which was the voiceof one in whom tragic passion and emotion are forever wearing away thephysical 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 talkedlast night. Only I wanted to add some more pictures to yourpicture-book. _Your_ set--the popular one--is called _The Glories ofEngland_. There is another--I recommend it to you: _The Shames ofEngland_."
"You think poverty a disgrace?" murmured Diana, held by the glowingfanatical look of the speaker.
"_Our_ poverty is a disgrace--the life of our poor is a disgrace. Whatdoes the Empire matter--what do Afghan campaigns matter--while London isrotten? However" (she smiled again, and caressed Diana's hand), "willyou make friends with me?"
"Is it worth while for you?" said Diana, laughing. "I shall alwaysprefer my picture-book to yours, I am afraid. And--I am not poor--and Idon't give all my money away."
Miss Vincent surveyed her gayly.
"Well, I come here," (she looked significantly round the luxuriousroom), "and I am very good friends with the Marshams. Oliver Marsham isone of the persons from whom I hope most."
"Not in pulling down wealth--and property!" cried Diana.
"Why not? Every revolution has its Philippe Egalite Oh, it will comeslowly--it will come slowly," said the other, quietly. "And of coursethere will be tragedy--there always is--in everything. But not, I hope,for you--never for you!" And once more her hand dropped softlyon Diana's.
"You were happy to-night?--you enjoyed the dance?"
The question, so put, with such a look, from another mouth, would havebeen 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, shetouched 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? Youmust 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. ThenDiana came back to her own quarters. She had put out the electric lightfor Miss Vincent's sake. The room was lit only by the fire. In thefull-length mirror of the toilet-table Diana saw her own whitereflection, and
the ivy leaves in her hair. The absence of her mourningwas first a pain; then the joy of the evening surged up again. Oh, wasit wrong, was it wrong to be happy--in this world "where men sit andhear each other groan"? She clasped her hands to her soft breast, asthough defending the warmth, the hope that were springing there, againstany dark protesting force that might threaten to take them from her.
The Testing of Diana Mallory Page 5