The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 52

But now she was eager to be gone--to be alone again with her best friend, in this breathing-s.p.a.ce that remained to them.

So Diana saw them off--the shabby, handsome man, with his lean, proud, sincere face, and the woman, so frail and white, yet so indomitable.

They carried various bags and parcels, mostly tied up with string, which represented all their luggage; they travelled with the peasants, fraternizing with them where they could; and it was useless, as Diana saw, to press luxuries on either of them. Many heads turned to look at them, in the streets or on the railway platform. There was something tragic in their aspect; yet not a trace of abjectness; nothing that asked for pity. When Diana last caught sight of them, Marion had a _contadino's_ child on her knee, in the corner of a third-cla.s.s carriage, and Frobisher opposite--he spoke a fluent Italian--was laughing and jesting with the father. Marion, smiling, waved her hand, and the train bore them away.

The others moved to Perugia, and the hours they spent together in the high and beautiful town were for all of them hours of well-being. Diana was the centre of the group. In the eyes of the three men her story invested her with a peculiar and touching interest. Their knowledge of it, and her silent acceptance of their knowledge, made a bond between her and them which showed itself in a hundred ways. Neither Ferrier, nor Chide, nor young Forbes could ever do too much for her, or think for her too loyally. And, on the other hand, it was her inevitable perception of their unspoken thoughts which gave her courage toward them--a kind of freedom which it is very difficult for women to feel or exercise in the ordinary circ.u.mstances of life. She gave them each--gratefully--a bit of her heart, in different ways.

Bobbie had adopted her as elder sister, having none of his own; and by now she knew all about his engagement, his distaste for the Foreign Office, his lack of prospects there, and his determination to change it for some less expensive and more remunerative calling. But Lady Niton was the dragon in the path. She had all sorts of ambitious projects for him, none of which, according to Forbes, ever came off, there being always some better fellow to be had. Diplomacy, in her eyes, was the natural sphere of a young man of parts and family, and as for the money, if he would only show the smallest signs of getting on, she would find it. But in the service of his country Bobbie showed no signs whatever of "getting on." He hinted uncomfortably, in his conversations with Diana, at the long list of his obligations to Lady Niton--money lent, influence exerted, services of many kinds--spread over four or five years, ever since, after a chance meeting in a country-house, she had appointed herself his earthly, providence, and he--an orphan of good family, with a small income and extravagant tastes--had weakly accepted her bounties.

"Now, of course, she insists on my marrying somebody with money. As if any chaperon would look at me! Two years ago I did make up to a nice girl--a real nice girl--and only a thousand a year!--nothing so tremendous, after all. But her mother twice carried her off, in the middle of a rattling ball, because she had engaged herself to me--just like sending a naughty child to bed! And the next time the mother made me take _her_ down to supper, and expounded to me her view of a chaperon's duties: 'My business, Mr. Forbes'--you should have seen her stony eye--'is to _mar_, not to make. The suitable marriages make themselves, or are made in heaven. I have nothing to do with them, except to keep a fair field. The unsuitable marriages have to be prevented, and will be prevented. You understand me?' 'Perfectly,' I said. 'I understand perfectly. To _mar_ is human, and to make divine?

Thank you. Have some more jelly? No? Shall I ask for your carriage?

Good-night.' But Lady Niton won't believe a word of it! She thinks I've only to ask and have. She'll be rude to Ettie, and I shall have to punch her head--metaphorically. And how can you punch a person's head when they've lent you money?"

Diana could only laugh, and commend him to his Ettie, who, to judge from her letters, was a girl of sense, and might be trusted to get him out of his sc.r.a.pe.

Meanwhile, Ferrier, the man of affairs, statesman, thinker, and pessimist, found in his new friends.h.i.+p with Diana at once that "agreement," that relaxation, which men of his sort can only find in the society of those women who, without competing with them, can yet by sympathy and native wit make their companions.h.i.+p abundantly worth while; and also, a means, as it were, of vicarious amends, which he very eagerly took.

He was, in fact, ashamed for Lady Lucy; humiliated, moreover, by his own small influence with her in a vital matter. And both shame and humiliation took the form of tender consideration for Lady Lucy's victim.

It did not at all diminish the value of his kindness, that--most humanly--it largely showed itself in what many people would have considered egotistical confessions to a charming girl. Diana found a constant distraction, a constant interest, in listening. Her solitary life with her scholar father had prepared her for such a friend. In the overthrow of love and feeling, she bravely tried to pick up the threads of the old intellectual pleasures. And both Ferrier and Chide, two of the ablest men of their generation, were never tired of helping her thus to recover herself. Chide was an admirable story-teller; and his mere daily life had stored him with tales, humorous and grim; while Ferrier talked history and poetry, as they strolled about Siena or Perugia; and, as he sat at night among the letters of the day, had a score of interesting or amusing comments to make upon the politics of the moment.

He reserved his "confessions," of course, for the _tete-a-tete_ of country walks. It was then that Diana seemed to be holding in her girlish hands something very complex and rare; a nature not easily to be understood by one so much younger. His extraordinary gifts, his disinterested temper, his astonis.h.i.+ng powers of work raised him in her eyes to heroic stature. And then some very human weakness, some natural vanity, such as wives love and foster in their husbands, but which, in his case appeared merely forlorn and eccentric--some deep note of loneliness--would touch her heart, and rouse her pity. He talked generally with an amazing confidence, not untouched perhaps with arrogance, of the political struggle before him; believed he should carry the country with him, and impose his policy on a divided party.

Yet again and again, amid the flow of hopeful speculation, Diana became aware, as on the first evening of a.s.sisi, of some hidden and tragic doubt, both of fate and of himself, some deep-rooted weariness, against which the energy of his talk seemed to be perpetually reacting and protesting. And the solitariness and meagreness of his life in all its personal and domestic aspects appalled her. She saw him often as a great man--a really great man--yet starved and shelterless--amid the storms that were beating up around him.

The friends.h.i.+p between him and Chide appeared to be very close, yet not a little surprising. They were old comrades in Parliament, and Chide was in the main a whole-hearted supporter of Ferrier's policy and views; resenting in particular, as Diana soon discovered, Marsham's change of att.i.tude. But the two men had hardly anything else in common. Ferrier was an enormous reader, most variously accomplished; while his political Whiggery was balanced by a restless scepticism in philosophy and religion. For the rest he was an ascetic, even in the stream of London life; he cared nothing for most of the ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts; he played a vile hand at whist (bridge had not yet dawned upon a waiting world); he drank no wine, and was contentedly ignorant both of sport and games.

Chide, on the other hand, was as innocent of books as Lord Palmerston.

All that was necessary for his career as a great advocate he could possess himself of in the twinkling of an eye; his natural judgment and acuteness were of the first order; his powers of eloquence among the most famous of his time; but it is doubtful whether Lady Niton would have found him much better informed about the politics of her youth than Barton himself; Sir James, too, was hazy about Louis Philippe, and could never remember, in the order of Prime Ministers, whether Canning or Lord Liverpool came first. With this, he was a simple and devout Catholic; loved on his holiday to serve the ma.s.s of some poor priest in a mountain valley; and had more than once been known to carry off some lax Catholic junior on his circuit to the performance of his Easter duties, w.i.l.l.y-nilly--by a mixture of magnetism and authority. For all games of chance he had a perfect pa.s.sion; would play whist all night, and conduct a case magnificently all day. And although he was no sportsman in the ordinary sense, having had no opportunities in a very penurious youth, he had an Irishman's love of horseflesh, and knew the Derby winners from the beginning with as much accuracy as Macaulay knew the Senior Wranglers.

Yet the two men loved, respected, and understood each other. Diana wondered secretly, indeed, whether Sir James could have explained to her the bond between Ferrier and Lady Lucy. That, to her inexperience, was a complete mystery! Almost every day Ferrier wrote to Tallyn, and twice a week at least, as the letters were delivered at _table d'hote,_ Diana could not help seeing the long pointed writing on the thin black-edged paper which had once been for her the signal of doom. She hardly suspected, indeed, how often she herself made the subject of the man's letters. Ferrier wrote of her persistently to Lady Lucy, being determined that so much punishment at least should be meted out to that lady. The mistress of Tallyn, on her side, never mentioned the name of Miss Mallory. All the pages in his letters which concerned her might never have been written, and he was well aware that not a word of them would ever reach Oliver. Diana's pale and saddened beauty; the dignity which grief, tragic grief, free from all sordid or ign.o.ble elements, can infuse into a personality; the affection she inspired, the universal sympathy that was felt for her: he dwelt on these things, till Lady Lucy, exasperated, could hardly bring herself to open the envelopes which contained his lucubrations. Could any subject, in correspondence with herself, be more unfitting or more futile?--and what difference could it all possibly make to the girl's shocking antecedents?

One radiant afternoon, after a long day of sight-seeing, Diana and Mrs.

Colwood retreated to their rooms to write letters and to rest; Forbes was hotly engaged in bargaining for an Umbrian _primitif_, which he had just discovered in an old house in a back street, whither, no doubt, the skilful antiquario had that morning transported it from his shop; and Sir James had gone out for a stroll, on the splendid road which winds gradually down the hill on which Perugia stands, to the tomb of the Volumnii, on the edge of the plain, and so on to a.s.sisi and Foligno, in the blue distance.

Half-way down he met Ferrier, ascending from the tomb. Sir James turned, and they strolled back together. The Umbrian landscape girdling the superb town showed itself unveiled. Every gash on the torn white sides of the eastern Apennines, every tint of purple or porcelain-blue on the nearer hills, every plane of the smiling valley as it wound southward, lay bathed in a broad and searching light which yet was a light of beauty--of infinite illusion.

"I must say I have enjoyed my life," said Ferrier, abruptly, as they paused to look back, "though I don't put it altogether in the first cla.s.s!"

Sir James raised his eyebrows--smiled--and did not immediately reply.

"Chide, old fellow," Ferrier resumed, turning to him, "before I left England I signed my will. Do you object that I have named you one of the two executors?"

Sir James gave him a cordial glance.

"All right, I'll do my best--if need arises. I suppose, Johnnie, you're a rich man?"

The name "Johnnie," very rarely heard between them, went back to early days at the Bar, when Ferrier was for a time in the same chambers with the young Irishman who, within three years of being called, was making a large income; whereas Ferrier had very soon convinced himself that the Bar was not for him, nor he for the Bar, and being a man of means had "plumped" for politics.

"Yes, I'm not badly off," said Ferrier; "I'm almost the last of my family; and a lot of money has found its way to me first and last. It's been precious difficult to know what to do with it. If Oliver Marsham had stuck to that delightful girl I should have left it to him."

Sir James made a growling sound, more expressive than articulate.

"As it is," Ferrier resumed, "I have left half of it to my old Oxford college, and half to the University."

Chide nodded. Presently a slight flush rose in his very clear complexion, and he looked round on his companion with sparkling eyes.

"It is odd that you should have started this subject. I too have just signed a new will."

"Ah!" Ferrier's broad countenance showed a very human curiosity. "I believe you are scarcely more blessed with kindred than I?"

"No. In the main I could please myself. I have left the bulk of what I had to leave--to Miss Mallory."

"Excellent!" cried Ferrier. "She treats you already like a daughter."

"She is very kind to me," said Sir James, with a touch of ceremony that became him. "And there is no one in whom I feel a deeper interest."

"She must be made happy!" exclaimed Ferrier--"she _must_! Is there no one--besides Oliver?"

Sir James drew himself up. "I hope she has put all thought of Oliver out of her mind long since. Well!--I had a letter from Lady Felton last week--dear woman that!--all the love-affairs in the county come to roost in her mind. She talks of young Roughsedge. Perhaps you don't know anything of the gentleman?"

He explained, so far as his own knowledge went. Ferrier listened attentively. A soldier? Good. Handsome, modest, and capable?--better.

Had just distinguished himself in this Nigerian expedition--mentioned in despatches last week. Better still!--so long as he kept clear of the folly of allowing himself to be killed. But as to the feelings of the young lady?

Sir James sighed. "I sometimes see in her traces of--of inheritance--which make one anxious."

Ferrier's astonishment showed itself in mouth and eyes.

"What I mean is," said Sir James, hastily, "a dramatic, impa.s.sioned way of looking at things. It would never do if she were to get any d.a.m.ned nonsense about 'expiation,' or not being free to marry, into her head."

Ferrier agreed, but a little awkwardly, since the "d.a.m.ned nonsense" was Lady Lucy's nonsense, and both knew it.

They walked slowly back to a.s.sisi, first putting their elderly heads together a little further on the subject of Diana, and then pa.s.sing on to the politics of the moment--to the ever present subject of the party revolt, and its effect on the election.

"Pshaw!--let them attack you as they please!" said Chide, after they had talked awhile. "You are safe enough. There is no one else. You are like the hero in a novel, 'the indispensable.'"

Ferrier laughed.

"Don't be so sure. There is always a 'supplanter'--when the time is ripe."

"Where is he? Who is he?"

"I had a very curious letter from Lord Philip this morning," said Ferrier, thoughtfully.

Chide's expression changed.