The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 13

CHAPTER V

The last covert had been shot, and as Marsham and his party, followed by scattered groups of beaters, turned homeward over the few fields that separated them from the park, figures appeared coming toward them in the rosy dusk--Mr. Ferrier and Diana in front, with most of the other guests of the house in their train. There was a merry fraternization between the two parties--a characteristic English scene, in a characteristic setting: the men in their tweed shooting-suits, some with their guns over their shoulders, for the most part young and tall, clean-limbed and clear-eyed, the well-to-do Englishman at his most English moment, and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the joy of life; the girls dressed in the same tweed stuffs, and with the same skilled and expensive simplicity, but wearing, some of them, over their cloth caps, bright veils, white or green or blue, which were tied under their chins, and framed faces aglow with exercise and health.

Marsham's eyes flew to Diana, who was in black, with a white veil. Some of the natural curls on her temples, which reminded him of a Vandyck picture, had been a little blown by the wind across her beautiful brow; he liked the touch of wildness that they gave; and he was charmed anew by the contrast between her frank young strength, and the wistful look, so full of _relation_ to all about it, as though seeking to understand and be one with it. He perceived too her childish pleasure in each fresh incident and experience of the English winter, which proved to her anew that she had come home; and he flattered himself, as he went straight to her side, that his coming had at least no dimming effect on the radiance that had been there before.

"I believe you are not pining for the Mediterranean!" he said, laughing, as they walked on together.

In a smiling silence she drew in a great breath of the frosty air while her eyes ranged along the chalk down, on the western edge of which they were walking, and then over the plain at their feet, the smoke wreaths that hung above the villages, the western sky filled stormily with the purples and grays and crimsons of the sunset, the woods that climbed the down, or ran in a dark rampart along its crest.

"No one can ever love it as much as I do!"--she said at last--"because I have been an exile. That will be my advantage always."

"Your compensation--perhaps."

"Mrs. Colwood puts it that way. Only I don't like having my grievance taken away."

"Against whom?"

"Ah! not against papa!" she said, hurriedly--"against Fate!"

"If you dislike being deprived of a grievance--so do I. You have returned me my Rossetti."

She laughed merrily.

"You made sure I should lose or keep it?"

"It is the first book that anybody has returned to me for years. I was quite resigned."

"To a damaging estimate of my character? Thank you very much!"

"I wonder"--he said, in another tone--"what sort of estimate you have of _my_ character--false, or true?"

"Well, there have been a great many surprises!" said Diana, raising her eyebrows.

"In the matter of my character?"

"Not altogether."

"My surroundings? You mean I talked Radicalism--or, as you would call it, Socialism--to you at Portofino, and here you find me in the character of a sporting Squire?"

"I hear"--she said, deliberately looking about her--"that this is the finest shoot in the county."

"It is. There is no denying it. But, in the first place, it's my mother's shoot, not mine--the estate is hers, not mine--and she wishes old customs to be kept up. In the next--well, of course, the truth is that I like it abominably!"

He had thrust his cap into his pocket, and was walking bareheaded. In the glow of the evening air his strong manhood seemed to gain an added force and vitality. He moved beside her, magnified and haloed, as it were, by the dusk and the sunset. Yet his effect upon her was no mere physical effect of good looks and a fine stature. It was rather the effect of a personality which strangely fitted with and evoked her own--of that congruity, indeed, from which all else springs.

She laughed at his confession.

"I hear also that you are the best shot in the neighborhood."

"Who has been talking to you about me?" he asked, with a slight knitting of the brows.

"Mr. Ferrier--a little."

He gave an impatient sigh, so disproportionate to the tone of their conversation, that Diana looked at him in sudden surprise.

"Haven't you often wondered how it is that the very people who know you best know you least?"

The question was impetuously delivered. Diana recalled Mr. Forbes's remarks as to dissensions behind the scenes. She stepped cautiously.

"I thought Mr. Ferrier knew everything!"

"I wish he knew something about his party--and the House of Commons!"

cried Marsham, as though a pa.s.sion within leaped to the surface.

The startled eyes beside him beguiled him further.

"I didn't mean to say anything indiscreet--or disloyal," he said, with a smile, recovering himself. "It is often the greatest men who cling to the old world--when the new is clamoring. But the new means to be heard all the same."

Diana's color flashed.

"I would rather be in that old world with Mr. Ferrier than in the new with Mr. Barton!"

"What is the use of talking of preferences? The world is what it is--and will be what it will be. Barton is our master--Ferrier's and mine. The point is to come to terms, and make the best of it."

"No!--the point is--to hold the gate!--and die on the threshold, if need be."

They had come to a stile. Marsham had crossed it, and Diana mounted. Her young form showed sharply against the west; he looked into her eyes, divided between laughter and feeling; she gave him her hand. The man's pulses leaped anew. He was naturally of a cool and self-possessed temperament--the life of the brain much stronger in him than the life of the senses. But at that moment he recognized--as perhaps, for the first time, the night before--that Nature and youth had him at last in grip.

At the same time the remembrance of a walk over the same ground that he had taken in the autumn With Alicia Drake flashed, unwelcomed, into his mind. It stirred a half-uneasy, half-laughing compunction. He could not flatter himself--yet--that his cousin had forgotten it.

"What gate?--and what threshold?" he asked Diana, as they moved on. "If you mean the gate of power--it is too late. Democracy is in the citadel--and has run up its own flag. Or to take another metaphor--the Whirlwind is in possession--the only question is who shall ride it!"

Diana declared that the Socialists would ride it to the abyss--with England on the crupper.

"Magnificent!" said Marsham, "but merely rhetorical. Besides--all that we ask, is that Ferrier should ride it. Let him only try the beast--and he will find it tame enough."

"And if he won't?--"

"Ah, if he won't--" said Marsham, uncertainly, and paused. In the growing darkness she could no longer see his face plainly. But presently he resumed, more earnestly and simply.

"Don't misunderstand me! Ferrier is our chief--my chief, above all--and one does not even discuss whether one is loyal to him. The party owes him an enormous debt. As for myself--" He drew a long breath, which was again a sigh.

Then with a change of manner, and in a lighter tone: "I seem to have given myself away--to an enemy!"

"Poor enemy!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The man's pulses leaped anew".]

He looked at her, half laughing, half anxious.