"You think poverty a disgrace?" murmured Diana, held by the glowing fanatical look of the speaker.
"_Our_ poverty is a disgrace--the life of our poor is a disgrace. What does the Empire matter--what do Afghan campaigns matter--while London is rotten? However" (she smiled again, and caressed Diana"s hand), "will you make friends with me?"
"Is it worth while for you?" said Diana, laughing. "I shall always prefer my picture-book to yours, I am afraid. And--I am not poor--and I don"t give all my money away."
Miss Vincent surveyed her gayly.
"Well, I come here," (she looked significantly round the luxurious room), "and I am very good friends with the Marshams. Oliver Marsham is one of the persons from whom I hope most."
"Not in pulling down wealth--and property!" cried Diana.
"Why not? Every revolution has its Philippe egalite Oh, it will come slowly--it will come slowly," said the other, quietly. "And of course there will be tragedy--there always is--in everything. But not, I hope, for you--never for you!" And once more her hand dropped softly on Diana"s.
"You were happy to-night?--you enjoyed the dance?"
The question, so put, with such a look, from another mouth, would have been an impertinence. Diana shrank, but could not resent it. Yet, against her will, she flushed deeply.
"Yes. It was delightful. I did not expect to enjoy it so much, but--"
"But you did! That"s well. That"s good!"
Marion Vincent rose feebly. And as she stood, leaning on the chair, she touched the folds of Diana"s white dress.
"When shall I see you again?--and that dress?"
"I shall be in London in May," said Diana, eagerly--May I come then? You must tell me where."
"Ah, you won"t come to Bethnal Green in that dress. What a pity!"
Diana helped her to her room, where they shook hands and parted. Then Diana came back to her own quarters. She had put out the electric light for Miss Vincent"s sake. The room was lit only by the fire. In the full-length mirror of the toilet-table Diana saw her own white reflection, and the ivy leaves in her hair. The absence of her mourning was first a pain; then the joy of the evening surged up again. Oh, was it wrong, was it wrong to be happy--in this world "where men sit and hear each other groan"? She clasped her hands to her soft breast, as though defending the warmth, the hope that were springing there, against any dark protesting force that might threaten to take them from her.
CHAPTER VI
"Henry," said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband, "I think it would do you good to walk to Beechcote."
"No, my dear, no! I have many proofs to get through before dinner. Take Hugh. Only--"
Dr. Roughsedge, smiling, held up a beckoning finger. His wife approached.
"Don"t let him fall in love with that young woman. It"s no good."
"Well, she must marry somebody, Henry."
"Big fishes mate with big fishes--minnows with minnows."
"Don"t run down your own son, sir. Who, pray, is too good for him?"
"The world is divided into wise men, fools, and mothers. The characters of the first two are mingled--disproportionately--in the last," said Dr.
Roughsedge, patiently enduring the kiss his wife inflicted on him.
"Don"t kiss me, Patricia--don"t tread on my proofs--go away--and tell Jane not to forget my tea because you have gone out."
Mrs. Roughsedge departed, and the doctor, who was devoted to her, sank at once into that disorderly welter of proofs and smoke which represented to him the best of the day. The morning he reserved for hard work, and during the course of it he smoked but one pipe. A quotation from Fuller which was often on his lips expressed his point of view: "Spill not the morning, which is the quintessence of the day, in recreation. For sleep itself is a recreation. And to open the morning thereto is to add sauce to sauce."
But in the afternoon he gave himself to all the delightful bye-tasks: the works of supererogation, the excursions into side paths, the niggling with proofs, the toying with style, the potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters. For five-and-twenty years he had been a busy Cambridge coach, tied year in and year out to the same strictness of hours, the same monotony of subjects, the same patient drumming on thick heads and dull brains. Now that was all over. A brother had left him a little money; he had saved the rest. At sixty he had begun to live. He was editing a series of reprints for the Cambridge University Press, and what mortal man could want more than a good wife and son, a cottage to live in, a fair cook, unlimited pipes, no debts, and the best of English literature to browse in? The rural afternoon, especially, when he smoked and grubbed and divagated as he pleased, was alone enough to make the five-and-twenty years of "swink" worth while.
Mrs. Roughsedge stayed to give very particular orders to the house-parlormaid about the doctor"s tea, to open a window in the tiny drawing-room, and to put up in brown paper a pair of bed-socks that she had just finished knitting for an old man in one of the parish-houses. Then she joined her son, who was already waiting for her--impatiently--in the garden.
Hugh Roughsedge had only just returned from a month"s stay in London, made necessary by those new Army examinations which his soul detested.
By dint of strenuous coaching he had come off moderately victorious, and had now returned home for a week"s extra leave before rejoining his regiment. One of the first questions on his tongue, as his mother instantly noticed, had been a question as to Miss Mallory. Was she still at Beechcote? Had his mother seen anything of her?
Yes, she was still at Beechcote. Mrs. Roughsedge, however, had seen her but seldom and slightly since her son"s departure for London. If she had made one or two observations from a distance, with respect to the young lady, she withheld them. And like the discerning mother that she was, at the very first opportunity she proposed a call at Beechcote.
On their way thither, this February afternoon, they talked in a desultory way about some new War-Office reforms, which, as usual, the entire Army believed to be merely intended--wilfully and deliberately--for its destruction; about a recent gambling scandal in the regiment, or the peculiarities of Hugh"s commanding officer.
Meanwhile he held his peace on the subject of some letters he had received that morning. There was to be an expedition in Nigeria.
Officers were wanted; and he had volunteered. The result of his application was not yet known. He had no intention whatever of upsetting his parents till it was known.
"I wonder how Miss Mallory liked Tallyn," said Mrs. Roughsedge, briskly.
She had already expressed the same wonder once or twice. But as neither she nor her son had any materials for deciding the point the remark hardly promoted conversation. She added to it another of more effect.
"The Miss Bertrams have already made up their minds that she is to marry Oliver Marsham."
"The deuce!" cried the startled Roughsedge. "Beg your pardon, mother, but how can those old cats possibly know?"
"They can"t know," said Mrs. Roughsedge, placidly. "But as soon as you get a young woman like that into the neighborhood, of course everybody begins to speculate."
"They mumble any fresh person, like a dog with a bone," said Roughsedge, indignantly.
They were pa.s.sing across the broad village street. On either hand were old timbered cottages, sun-mellowed and rain-beaten; a thatched roof showing here and there; or a bit of mean new building, breaking the time-worn line. To their left, keeping watch over the graves which encircled it, rose the fourteenth-century church; amid the trees around it rooks were cawing and wheeling; and close beneath it huddled other cottages, ivy-grown, about the village well. Afternoon school was just over, and the children were skipping and running about the streets.
Through the cottage doors could be seen occasionally the gleam of a fire or a white cloth spread for tea. For the womenfolk, at least, tea was the great meal of the day in Beechcote. So that what with the flickering of the fires, and the sunset light on the windows, the skipping children, the dogs, the tea-tables, and the rooks, Beechcote wore a cheerful and idyllic air. But Mrs. Roughsedge knew too much about these cottages. In this one to the left a girl had just borne her second illegitimate child; in that one farther on were two mentally deficient children, the offspring of feeble-minded parents; in the next, an old woman, the victim of pernicious anaemia, was moaning her life away; in the last to the right the mother of five small children had just died in her sixth confinement. Mrs. Roughsedge gave a long sigh as she looked at it. The tragedy was but forty-eight hours old; she had sat up with the mother through her dying hours.
"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, suddenly--"here comes the Vicar. Do you know, it"s so unlucky--and so strange!--but he has certainly taken a dislike to Miss Mallory--I believe it was because he had hoped some Christian Socialist friends of his would have taken Beechcote, and he was disappointed to find it let to some one with what he calls "silly Tory notions" and no particular ideas about Church matters. Now there"s a regular fuss--something about the Book Club. I don"t understand--"
The Vicar advanced toward them. He came along at a great pace, his lean figure closely sheathed in his long clerical coat, his face a little frowning and set.
At the sight of Mrs. Roughsedge he drew up, and greeted the mother and son.
"May I have a few words with you?" he asked Mrs. Roughsedge, as he turned back with them toward the Beechcote lane. "I don"t know whether you are acquainted, Mrs. Roughsedge, with what has just happened in the Book Club, to which we both belong?"
The Book Club was a village inst.i.tution of some antiquity. It embraced some ten families, who drew up their Mudie lists in common and sent the books from house to house. The Vicar and Dr. Roughsedge had been till now mainly responsible for these lists--so far, at least, as "serious books" were concerned, the ladies being allowed the chief voice in the novels.
Mrs. Roughsedge, a little fluttered, asked for information.
"Miss Mallory has recommended two books which, in my opinion, should not be circulated among us," said the Vicar. "I have protested--in vain.
Miss Mallory maintains her recommendation. I propose, therefore, to withdraw from the Club."