"It"s _her_ evening dress. She possesses two costumes--both made of the same stuff, only the morning one has a straight collar, and the evening one has frills."
"She doesn"t think it right to dress like other people?"
"Well--she has very little money, and what she has she can"t afford to spend on dress. No--I suppose she doesn"t think it right."
By this time they were settled at table, and Diana, convinced that she had found one of the two Socialists promised her, looked round for the other. Ah! there he was, beside Mrs. Fotheringham--who was talking to him with an eagerness rarely vouchsafed to her acquaintances. A powerful, short-necked man, in the black Sunday coat of the workman, with sandy hair, blunt features, and a furrowed brow--he had none of the magnetism, the strange refinement of the lady in the frills. Diana drew a long breath.
"How odd it all is!" she said, as though to herself.
Her companion looked at her with amus.e.m.e.nt.
"What is odd? The combination of this house--with Barton--and Miss Vincent?"
"Why do they consent to come here?" she asked, wondering. "I suppose they despise the rich."
"Not at all! The poor things--the rich--can"t help themselves--just yet.
_We_ come here--because we mean to use the rich."
"You!--you too?"
"A Fabian--" he said, smiling. "Which means that I am not in such a hurry as Barton."
"To ruin your country? You would only murder her by degrees?"--flashed Diana.
"Ah!--you throw down the glove?--so soon? Shall we postpone it for a course or two? I am no use till I have fed."
Diana laughed. They fell into a gossip about their neighbors. The plain young man, with a shock of fair hair, a merry eye, a short chin, and the spirits of a school-boy, sitting on Lady Niton"s left, was, it seemed, the particular pet and protege of that masterful old lady. Diana remembered to have seen him at tea-time in Miss Drake"s train. Lady Niton, she was told, disliked her own sons, but was never tired of befriending two or three young men who took her fancy. Bobbie Forbes was a constant frequenter of her house on Campden Hill. "But he is no toady.
He tells her a number of plain truths--and amuses her guests. In return she provides him with what she calls "the best society"--and pushes his interests in season and out of season. He is in the Foreign Office, and she is at present manoeuvring to get him attached to the Special Mission which is going out to Constantinople."
Diana glanced across the table, and in doing so met the eyes of Mr.
Bobbie Forbes, which laughed into hers--involuntarily--as much as to say--"You see my plight?--ridiculous, isn"t it?"
For Lady Niton was keeping a greedy conversational hold on both Marsham and the young man, pouncing to right or left, as either showed a disposition to escape from it--so that Forbes was violently withheld from Alicia Drake, his rightful lady, and Marsham could engage in no consecutive conversation with Diana.
"No escape for you!" smiled Mr. Frobisher, presently, observing the position. "Lady Niton always devastates a dinner-party."
Diana protested that she was quite content. Might she a.s.sume, after the fourth course, that his hunger was at least scotched and conversation thrown open?
"I am fortified--thank you. Shall we go back to where we left off? You had just accused me of ruining the country?"
"By easy stages," said Diana. "Wasn"t that where we had come to? But first--tell me, because it"s all so puzzling!--do you and Mr.
Marsham agree?"
"A good deal. But he thinks _he_ can use _us_--which is his mistake."
"And Mr. Ferrier?"
Mr. Frobisher shook his head good-humoredly.
"No, no!--Ferrier is a Whig--the Whig of to-day, _bien entendu_, who is a very different person from the Whig of yesterday--still, a Whig, an individualist, a moderate man. He leads the Liberal party--and it is changing all the time under his hand into something he dreads and detests. The party can"t do without him now--but--"
He paused, smiling.
"It will shed him some day?"
"It must!"
"And where will Mr. Marsham be then?"
"On the winning side--I think."
The tone was innocent and careless; but the words offended her.
She drew herself up a little.
"He would never betray his friends!"
"Certainly not," said Mr. Frobisher, hastily; "I didn"t mean that. But Marsham has a mind more open, more elastic, more modern than Ferrier--great man as he is."
Diana was silent. She seemed still to hear some of the phrases and inflections of Mr. Ferrier"s talk of the afternoon. Mr. Frobisher"s prophecy wounded some new-born sympathy in her. She turned the conversation.
With Oliver Marsham she talked when she could, as Lady Niton allowed her. She succeeded, at least, in learning something more of her right-hand neighbor and of Miss Vincent. Mr. Frobisher, it appeared, was a Fellow of Magdalen, and was at present lodging in Limehouse, near the docks, studying poverty and Trade-unionism, and living upon a pound a week. As for Miss Vincent, in her capacity of secretary to a well-known Radical member of Parliament, she had been employed, for his benefit, in gathering information first-hand, very often in the same fields where Mr. Frobisher was at work. This brought them often together--and they were the best of comrades, and allies.
Diana"s eyes betrayed her curiosity; she seemed to be asking for clews in a strange world. Marsham apparently felt that nothing could be more agreeable than to guide her. He began to describe for her the life of such a woman of the people as Marion Vincent. An orphan at fourteen, earning her own living from the first; self-dependent, self-protected; the friend, on perfectly equal terms, of a group of able men, interested in the same social ideals as herself; living alone, in contempt of all ordinary conventions, now in Kensington or Belgravia, and now in a back street of Stepney, or Poplar, and equally at home and her own mistress in both; exacting from a rich employer the full market value of the services she rendered him, and refusing to accept the smallest gift or favor beyond; a convinced Socialist and champion of the poor, who had within the past twelve months, to Marsham"s knowledge, refused an offer of marriage from a man of large income, pa.s.sionately devoted to her, whom she liked--mainly, it was believed, because his wealth was based on sweated labor: such was the character sketched by Marsham for his neighbor in the intermittent conversation, which was all that Lady Niton allowed him.
Diana listened silently, but inwardly her mind was full of critical reactions. Was this what Mr. Marsham most admired, his ideal of what a woman should be? Was he exalting, exaggerating it a little, by way of ant.i.thesis to those old-fashioned surroundings, that unreal atmosphere, as he would call it, in which, for instance, he had found her--Diana--at Rapallo--under her father"s influence and bringing up? The notion spurred her pride as well as her loyalty to her father. She began to hold herself rather stiffly, to throw in a critical remark or two, to be a little flippant even, at Miss Vincent"s expense. Homage so warm laid at the feet of one ideal was--she felt it--a disparagement of others; she stood for those others; and presently Marsham began to realize a hurtling of shafts in the air, an incipient battle between them.
He accepted it with delight. Still the same poetical, combative, impulsive creature, with the deep soft voice! She pleased his senses; she stirred his mind; and he would have thrown himself into one of the old Rapallo arguments with her then and there but for the gad-fly at his elbow.
Immediately after dinner Lady Niton possessed herself of Diana. "Come here, please, Miss Mallory! I wish to make your acquaintance," Thus commanded, the laughing but rebellious Diana allowed herself to be led to a corner of the over-illuminated drawing-room.
"Well!"--said Lady Niton, observing her--"so you have come to settle in these parts?"
Diana a.s.sented.
"What made you choose Brookshire?" The question was enforced by a pair of needle-sharp eyes. "There isn"t a person worth talking to within a radius of twenty miles."
Diana declined to agree with her; whereupon Lady Niton impatiently exclaimed: "Tut--tut! One might as well milk he-goats as talk to the people here. Nothing to be got out of any of them. Do you like conversation?"
"Immensely!"
"Hum!--But mind you don"t talk too much. Oliver talks a great deal more than is good for him. So you met Oliver in Italy? What do you think of him?"
Diana, keeping a grip on laughter, said something civil.
"Oh, Oliver"s clever enough--and _ambitious!_" Lady Niton threw up her hands. "But I"ll tell you what stands in his way. He says too sharp things of people. Do you notice that?"