The Testing of Diana Mallory by Mrs. Humphry Ward (dark books to read txt) 📕

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.


Part II

"_The soberest saints are more stiff-necked Than the hottest-headed of the wicked._"


CHAPTER VII

"I shall soon be back," said Diana--"very soon. I'll just take this book to Dr. Roughsedge. You don't mind?"

The question was addressed--in a deprecatory tone--to Mrs. Colwood, who stood beside her at the Beechcote front door.

Muriel Colwood smiled, and drew the furs closer round the girl's slim throat.

"I shall mind very much if you don't stay out a full hour and get a good walk."

Diana ran off, followed by her dog. There was something in the manner both of the dog and its mistress that seemed to show impetuous escape--and relief.

"She looks tired out!" said the little companion to herself, as she turned to enter the hall. "How on earth is she going to get through six weeks of it?--or six months!"

The house as she walked back through it made upon her the odd impression of having suddenly lost some of its charm. The peculiar sentiment--as of a warmly human, yet delicately ordered life, which it had breathed out so freely only twenty-four hours before, seemed to her quick feeling to have been somehow obscured or dissipated. All its defects, old or new--the patches in the panelling, the darkness of the passages--stood out.

And "all along of Eliza!" All because of Miss Fanny Merton! Mrs. Colwood recalled the morning--Miss Merton's late arrival at the breakfast-table, and the discovery from her talk that she was accustomed to breakfast in bed, waited upon by her younger sisters; her conversation at breakfast, partly about the prices of clothes and eatables, partly in boasting reminiscence of her winnings at cards, or in sweepstakes on the "run," on board the steamer. Diana had then devoted herself to the display of the house, and her maid had helped Miss Merton to unpack. The process had been diversified by raids made by Miss Fanny on Diana's own wardrobe, which she had inspected from end to end, to an accompaniment of critical remark. According to her, there was very little that was really "shick" in it, and Diana should change her dressmaker. The number of her own dresses was large; and as to their colors and make, Mrs. Colwood, who had helped to put away some of them, could only suppose that tropical surroundings made tropical tastes. At the same time the contrast between Miss Fanny's wardrobe, and what she herself reported, in every tone of grievance and disgust, of the family poverty, was surprising, though no doubt a great deal of the finery had been as cheaply bought as possible.

By luncheon-time Diana had shown some symptoms of fatigue, perhaps--Mrs. Colwood hoped!--of revolt. She had been already sharply questioned as to the number of servants she kept and the wages they received, as to the people in the neighborhood who gave parties, and the ages and incomes of such young or unmarried men as might be met with at these parties. Miss Merton had boasted already of two love-affairs--one the unsuccessful engagement in Barbadoes, the other--"a near thing"--which had enlivened the voyage to England; and she had extracted a promise from Diana to ask the young solicitor she had met with in the train--Mr. Fred Birch--to lunch, without delay. Meanwhile she had not--of her own initiative--said one word of those educational objects, in pursuit of which she was supposed to have come to England. Diana had proposed to her the names of certain teachers both of music and languages--names which she had obtained with much trouble. Miss Fanny had replied, rather carelessly, that she would think about it.

It was at this that the eager sweetness of Diana's manner to her cousin had shown its first cooling. And Mrs. Colwood had curiously observed that at the first sign of shrinking on her part, Miss Fanny's demeanor had instantly changed. It had become sugared and flattering to a degree. Everything in the house was "sweet"; the old silver used at table, with the Mallory crest, was praised extravagantly; the cooking no less. Yet still Diana's tired silence had grown; and the watching eyes of this amazing young woman had been, in Mrs. Colwood's belief, now insolently and now anxiously, aware of it.

Insolence!--that really, if one came to think of it, had been the note of Miss Merton's whole behavior from the beginning--an ill-concealed, hardly restrained insolence, toward the girl, two years older than herself, who had received her with such tender effusion, and was, moreover, in a position to help her so materially. What could it--what did it mean?

Mrs. Colwood stood at the foot of the stairs a moment, lost in a trance of wonderment. Her heart was really sore for Diana's disappointment, for the look in her face, as she left the house. How on earth could the visit be shortened and the young lady removed?

The striking of three o'clock reminded Muriel Colwood that she was to take the new-comer out for an hour. They had taken coffee in the morning-room up-stairs, Diana's own sitting-room, where she wrote her letters and followed out the lines of reading her father had laid down for her. Mrs. Colwood returned thither; found Miss Merton, as it seemed to her, in the act of examining the letters in Diana's blotting-book; and hastily proposed to her to take a turn in the garden.

Fanny Merton hesitated, looked at Mrs. Colwood a moment dubiously, and finally walked up to her.

"Oh, I don't care about going out, it's so cold and nasty. And, besides, I--I want to talk to you."

"Miss Mallory thought you might like to see the old gardens," said Mrs. Colwood. "But if you would rather not venture out, I'm afraid I must go and write some letters."

"Why, you were writing letters all the morning! My fingers would drop off if I was to go on at it like that. Do you like being a companion? I should think it was rather beastly--if you ask me. At home they did talk about it for me. But I said: 'No, thank you! My own mistress, if you please!'"

The speaker sat down by the fire, raised her skirt of purple cloth, and stretched a pair of shapely feet to the warmth. Her look was good-humored and lazy.

"I am very happy here," said Mrs. Colwood, quietly. "Miss Mallory is so charming and so kind."

Miss Fanny cleared her throat, poked the fire with the tip of her shoe, fidgeted with her dress, and finally said--abruptly:

"I say--have all the people about here called?"

The tone was so low and furtive that Mrs. Colwood, who had been putting away some embroidery silks which had been left on the table by Diana, turned in some astonishment. She found the girl's eyes fixed upon her--eager and hungry.

"Miss Mallory has had a great many visitors"--she tried to pitch her words in the lightest possible tone--"I am afraid it will take her a long time to return all her calls."

"Well, I'm glad it's all right about that!--anyway. As mamma said, you never know. People are so queer about these things, aren't they? As if it was Diana's fault!"

Through all her wrath, Muriel Colwood was conscious of a sudden pang of alarm--which was, in truth, the reawakening of something already vaguely felt or surmised. She looked rather sternly at her companion.

"I really don't know what you mean, Miss Merton. And I never discuss Miss Mallory's affairs. Perhaps you will kindly allow me to go to my letters."

She was moving away when the girl beside her laughed again--rather angrily--and Mrs. Colwood paused, touched again by instinctive fear.

"Oh, of course if I'm not to say a word about it--I'm not--that's all! Well, now, look here--Diana needn't suppose that I've come all this way just for fun. I had to say that about lessons, and that kind of thing--I didn't want to set her against me--but I've ... Well!--why should I be ashamed, I should like to know?"--she broke out, shrilly, sitting erect, her face flushing deeply, her eyes on fire. "If some one owes you something--why shouldn't you come and get it? Diana owes my mother _money!_--a lot of money!--and we can't afford to lose it. Mother's awfully sweet about Diana--she said, 'Oh no, it's unkind'--but I say it's unkind to _us_, not to speak, when we all want money so bad--and there are the boys to bring up--and--"

"Miss Merton--I'm very sorry--but really I cannot let you talk to me of Miss Mallory's private affairs. It