The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 58

"What may that be?" he said, carelessly.

"You both find grat.i.tude inconvenient!"

Bobbie turned and bowed. "I do!" he said, "inconvenient, and intolerable! Hullo!--I hear the carriage. I beg you to remark that what I told you was confidential. It is not to be repeated in company."

Lady Niton had only time to give him a fierce look when the door opened, and Lady Lucy came wearily in.

Bobbie hastened to meet her.

"My dear Lady Lucy!--what news?"

"Oliver is in!"

"Hurrah!" Bobbie shook her hand vehemently. "I am glad!"

Lady Niton, controlling herself with difficulty, rose from her seat, and also offered a hand.

"There, you see, Lucy, you needn't have been so anxious."

Lady Lucy sank into a chair.

"What's the majority?" said Bobbie, astonished by her appearance and manner. "I say, you know, you've been working too hard."

"The majority is twenty-four," said Lady Lucy, coldly, as though she had rather not have been asked the question; and at the same time, leaning heavily back in her chair, she began feebly to untie the lace strings of her bonnet. Bobbie was shocked by her appearance. She had aged rapidly since he had last seen her, and, in particular, a gray shadow had overspread the pink-and-white complexion which had so long preserved her good looks.

On hearing the figures (the majority five years before had been fifteen hundred), Bobbie could not forbear an exclamation which produced another contraction of Lady Lucy's tired brow. Lady Niton gave a very audible "Whew!"--to which she hastened to add: "Well, Lucy, what does it matter?

Twenty-four is as good as two thousand."

Lady Lucy roused herself a little.

"Of course," she said, languidly, "it is disappointing. But we may be glad it is no worse. For a little while, during the counting, we thought Oliver was out. But the last bundles to be counted were all for him, and we just saved it." A pause, and then the speaker added, with emphasis: "It has been a _horrid_ election! Such ill-feeling--and violence--such unfair placards!--some of them, I am sure, were libellous. But I am told one can do nothing."

"Well, my dear, this is what Democracy comes to," said Lady Niton, taking up her knitting again with vehemence. "'_Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin_.' You Liberals have opened the gates--and now you grumble at the deluge."

"It has been the injustice shown him by his own side that Oliver minds."

The speaker's voice betrayed the bleeding of the inward wound. "Really, to hear some of our neighbors talk, you would think him a Communist.

And, on the other hand, he and Alicia only just escaped being badly hurt this morning at the collieries--when they were driving round. I implored them not to go. However, they would. There was an ugly crowd, and but for a few mounted police that came up, it might have been most unpleasant."

"I suppose Alicia has been careering about with him all day?" said Lady Niton.

"Alicia--and Roland Lankester--and the chairman of Oliver's committee.

Now they've gone off on the coach, to drive round some of the villages, and thank people." Lady Lucy rose as she spoke.

"Not much to thank for, according to you!" observed Lady Niton, grimly.

"Oh, well, he's in!" Lady Lucy drew a long breath. "But people have behaved so extraordinarily! That man--that clergyman--at Beechcote--Mr.

Lavery. He's been working night and day against Oliver. Really, I think parsons ought to leave politics alone."

"Lavery?" said Bobbie. "I thought he was a Radical. Weren't Oliver's speeches advanced enough to please him?"

"He has been denouncing Oliver as a humbug, because of what he is pleased to call the state of the mining villages. I'm sure they're a great, great deal better than they were twenty years ago!" Lady Lucy's voice was almost piteous. "However, he very nearly persuaded the miners to run a candidate of their own, and when that fell through, he advised them to abstain from voting. And they must have done so--in several villages. That's pulled down the majority."

"Abominable!" said Bobbie, who was comfortably conservative. "I always said that man was a firebrand."

"I don't know what he expects to get by it," said Lady Lucy, slowly, as she moved toward the door. Her tone was curiously helpless; she was still stately, but it was a ghostly and pallid stateliness.

"Get by it!" sneered Lady Niton. "After all, his friends are in. They say he's eloquent. His jacka.s.series will get him a bishopric in time--you'll see."

"It was the unkindness--the ill-feeling--I minded," said Lady Lucy, in a low voice, leaning heavily upon her stick, and looking straight before her as though she inwardly recalled some of the incidents of the election. "I never knew anything like it before."

Lady Niton lifted her eyebrows--not finding a suitable response. Did Lucy really not understand what was the matter?--that her beloved Oliver had earned the reputation throughout the division of a man who can propose to a charming girl, and then desert her for money, at the moment when the tragic blow of her life had fallen upon her?--and she, that of the mercenary mother who had forced him into it. Precious lucky for Oliver to have got in at all!

The door closed on Lady Lucy. Forgetting for an instant what had happened before her hostess entered, Elizabeth Niton, bristling with remarks, turned impetuously toward Forbes. He had gone back to first editions, and was whistling vigorously as he worked. With a start, Lady Niton recollected herself. Her face reddened afresh; she rose, walked with as much majesty as her station admitted to the door, which she closed sharply behind her.

As soon as she was gone Bobbie stopped whistling. If she was really going to make a quarrel of it, it would certainly be a great bore--a hideous bore. His conscience p.r.i.c.ked him for the mean and unmanly dependence which had given the capricious and masterful little woman so much to say in his affairs. He must really find fresh work, pay his debts, those to Lady Niton first and foremost, and marry the girl who would make a decent fellow of him. But his heart smote him about his queer old Fairy Blackstick. No surrender!--but he would like to make peace.

It was past eight o'clock when the four-in-hand on which the new member had been touring the const.i.tuency drove up to the Tallyn door. Forbes hurried to the steps to greet the party.

"Hullo, Oliver! A thousand congratulations, old fellow! Never mind the figures. A win's a win! But I thought you would have been dining and junketing in Duns...o...b.. to-night. How on earth did you get them to let you off?"

Oliver's tired countenance smiled perfunctorily as he swung himself down from the coach. He allowed his hand to be shaken; his lips moved, but only a husky whisper emerged.

"Lost his voice," Roland Lankester explained. "And so done that we begged him off from the Duns...o...b.. dinner. He's only fit for bed."

And with a wave of the hand to the company, Marsham, weary and worn, mounted the steps, and, pa.s.sing rapidly through the hall, went up-stairs. Alicia Drake and Lankester followed, pausing in the hall to talk with Bobbie.

Alicia too looked tired out. She was dressed in a marvellous gown of white chiffon, adorned with a large rosette of Marsham's colors--red-and-yellow--and wore a hat entirely composed of red and yellow roses. The colors were not becoming to her, and she had no air of happy triumph. Rather, both in her and in Marsham there were strong signs of suppressed chagrin and indignation.

"Well, that's over!" said Miss Drake, throwing down her gloves on the billiard-table with a fierce gesture; "and I'm sure neither Oliver nor I would go through it again for a million of money. How _revolting_ the lower cla.s.ses are!"

Lankester looked at her curiously.

"You've worked awfully hard," he said. "I hope you're going to have a good rest."

"I wouldn't bother about rest if I could pay out some of the people here," said Alicia, pa.s.sionately. "I should like to see a few score of them hanged in chains, _pour encourager les autres_."

So saying, she gathered up her gloves and parasol, and swept up-stairs declaring that she was too dog-tired to talk.

Bobbie Forbes and Lankester looked at each other.

"It's been really a beastly business!" said Lankester, under his breath.

"Precious little politics in it, too, as far as I could see. The strong Ferrierites no doubt have held aloof on the score of Marsham's supposed disloyalty to the great man; though, as far as I can make out, he has been careful not to go beyond a certain line in his speeches. Anyway, they have done no work, and a good many of them have certainly abstained from voting. It is our vote that has gone down; the Tories have scarcely increased theirs at all. But the other side--and the Socialists--got hold of a lot of nasty little things about the estate and the collieries. The collieries are practically in rebellion, spoiling for a big strike next November, if not before. When Miss Drake and Marsham drove round there this morning they were very badly received. Her parasol was broken by a stone, and there was a good deal of mud-throwing."

Bobbie eyed his companion.

"Was any of the Opposition personal to _her_?"