Chapter 26

"How is she?"

Mrs. Colwood shook her head sadly.

"Not well--and not happy."

The questioner was Hugh Roughsedge. The young soldier had walked up to Beechcote immediately after luncheon, finding it impossible to restrain his impatience longer. Diana had not expected him so soon, and had slipped out for her daily half-hour with Betty Dyson, who had had a slight stroke, and was failing fast. So that Mrs. Colwood was at Roughsedge's discretion. But he was not taking all the advantage of it that he might have done. The questions with which his mind was evidently teeming came out but slowly.

Little Mrs. Colwood surveyed him from time to time with sympathy and pleasure. Her round child-like eyes under their long lashes told her everything that as a woman she wanted to know. What an improvement in looks and manner--what indefinable gains in significance and self-possession! Danger, command, responsibility, those great tutors of men, had come in upon the solid yet malleable stuff of which the character was made, moulding and polishing, striking away defects, disengaging and accenting qualities. Who could ever have foreseen that Hugh might some day be described as "a man of the world"? Yet if that vague phrase were to be taken in its best sense, as describing a personality both tempered and refined by the play of the world's forces upon it, it might certainly be now used of the man before her.

He was handsomer than ever; bronzed by Nigerian sun, all the superfluous flesh marched off him; every muscle in his frame taut and vigorous. And at the same time a new self-confidence--apparently quite unconscious, and the inevitable result of a strong and testing experience--was enabling him to bring his powers to bear and into play, as he had never yet done.

She recalled, with some confusion, that she--and Diana?--had tacitly thought of him as good, but stupid. On the contrary, was she, perhaps, in the presence of some one destined to do great things for his country? to lay hold--without intending it, as it were, and by the left hand--oh high distinction? Were women, on the whole, bad judges of young men? She recalled a saying of Dr. Roughsedge, that "mothers never know how clever their sons are." Perhaps the blindness extends to other eyes than mothers?

Meanwhile, she got from him all the news she could. He had been, it seemed, concerned in the vast operation of bringing a new African Empire into being. She listened, dazzled, while in the very simplest, baldest phrases he described the curbing of slave-raiders, the winning of populations, the grappling with the desert, the opening out of river highways, whereof in his seven months he had been the fascinated beholder. As to his own exploits, he was ingeniously silent; but she knew them already. A military expedition against two revolted and slave-raiding emirs, holding strong positions on the great river; a few officers borrowed from home to stiffen a local militia; hot fighting against great odds; half a million of men released from a reign of hell; tyranny broken, and the British _pax_ extended over regions a third as large as India--smiling prosperity within its pale, bestial devastation and cruelty without--these things she knew, or had been able to imagine from the newspapers. According to him, it had been all the doing of other men. She knew better; but soon found it of no use to interrupt him.

Meanwhile she dared not ask him why he had come home. The campaign, indeed, was over; but he had been offered, it appeared, an administrative appointment.

"And you mean to go back?"

"Perhaps." He colored and looked restlessly out of the window.

Mrs. Colwood understood the look, and felt it was, indeed, hard upon him that he must put up with her so long. In reality, he too was conscious of new pleasure in an old acquaintance. He had forgotten what a dear little thing she was: how prettily round-faced, yet delicate--ethereal--in all her proportions, with the kindest eyes. She too had grown--by the mere contact with Diana's fate. Within her tiny frame the soul of her had risen to maternal heights, embracing and sustaining Diana.

He would have given the world to question her. But after her first answer to his first inquiry he had fallen tongue-tied on the subject of Diana, and Nigeria had absorbed conversation. She, on her side, wished him to know many things, but did not see how to begin upon them.

At last she attempted it.

"You have heard of our election? And what happened?"

He nodded. His mother had kept him informed. He understood Marsham had been badly hurt. Was it really so desperate?

In a cautious voice, watching the window, Muriel told what she knew. The recital was pitiful; but Hugh Roughsedge sat impassive, making no comments. She felt that in this quarter the young man was adamant.

"I suppose"--he turned his face from her--"Miss Mallory does not now go to Tallyn."

"No." She hesitated, looking at her companion, a score of feelings mingling in her mind. Then she broke out: "But she would like to!"

His startled look met hers; she was dismayed at what she had done. Yet, how not to give him warning?--this loyal young fellow, feeding himself on futile hopes!

"You mean--she still thinks--of Marsham?"

"Of nothing else," she said, impetuously--"of nothing else!"

He frowned and winced.

She resumed: "It is like her--so like her!--isn't it?"

Her soft pitiful eyes, into which the tears had sprung, pressed the question on him.

"I thought there was a cousin--Miss Drake?" he said, roughly.

Mrs. Colwood hesitated.

"It is said that all that is broken off."

He was silent. But his watch was on the garden. And suddenly, on the long grass path, Diana appeared, side by side with the Vicar. Roughsedge sprang up. Muriel was arrested by Diana's face, and by something rigid in the carriage of the head. What had the Vicar been saying to her?--she asked herself, angrily. Never was there anything less discreet than the Vicar's handling of human nature!--female human nature, in particular.

Hugh Roughsedge opened the glass door, and went to meet them. Diana, at sight of him, gave a bewildered look, as though she scarcely knew him--then a perfunctory hand.

"Captain Roughsedge! They didn't tell me--"

"I want to speak to you," said the Vicar, peremptorily, to Mrs. Colwood; and he carried her off round the corner of the house.

Diana gazed after them, and Roughsedge thought he saw her totter.

"You look so ill!" he said, stooping over her. "Come and sit down."

His boyish nervousness and timidity left him. The strong man emerged and took command. He guided her to a garden seat, under a drooping lime. She sank upon the seat, quite unable to stand, beckoning him to stay by her. So he stood near, reluctantly waiting, his heart contracting at the sight of her.

At last she recovered herself and sat up.

"It was some bad news," she said, looking at him piteously, and holding out her hand again. "It is too bad of me to greet you like this."

He took her hand, and his own self-control broke down. He raised it to his lips with a stifled cry.

"Don't!--don't!" said Diana, helplessly. "Indeed--there is nothing the matter--I am only foolish. It is so--so good of you to care." She drew her hand from his, raised it to her brow, and, drawing a long breath, pushed back the hair from her face. She was like a person struggling against some torturing restraint, not knowing where to turn for help.

But at the word "care" he pulled himself together. He sat down beside her, and plunged straight into his declaration. He went at it with the same resolute simplicity that he was accustomed to throw into his military duty, nor could she stop him in the least. His unalterable affection; his changed and improved prospects; a staff appointment at home if she accepted him; the Nigerian post if she refused him--these things he put before her in the natural manly speech of a young Englishman sorely in love, yet quite incapable of "high flights," It was very evident that he had pondered what he was to say through the days and nights of his exile; that he was doing precisely what he had always planned to do, and with his whole heart in the business. She tried once or twice to interrupt him, but he did not mean to be interrupted, and she was forced to hear it out.

At the end she gave a little gasp.

"Oh, Hugh!" His name, given him for the first time, fell so forlornly--it was such a breathing out of trouble and pity and despair--that his heart took another and a final plunge downward. He had known all through that there was no hope for him; this tone, this aspect settled it. But she stretched out her hands to him, tenderly--appealing. "Hugh--I shall have to tell you--but I am ashamed."

He looked at her in silence a moment, then asked her why. The tears rose brimming in her eyes--her hands still in his.

"Hugh--I--I--have always loved Oliver Marsham--and I--cannot think of any one else. You know what has happened?"

He saw the sob swelling in her white throat.

"Yes!" he said, passionately. "It is horrible. But you cannot go to him--you cannot marry him. He was a coward when he should have stood by you. He cannot claim you now."

She withdrew her hands.

"No!" The passion in her voice matched his own. "But I would give the world if he could--and would!"

There was a pause. Steadily the woman gained upon her own weakness and beat it down. She resumed:

"I must tell you--because--it is the only way--for us two--to be real friends again--and I want a friend so much. The news of Oliver is--is terrible. The Vicar had just seen Mr. Lankester--who is staying there. He is nearly blind--and the pain!" Her hand clinched--she threw her head back. "Oh! I can't speak of it! And it may go on for years. The doctors seem to be all at sea. They say he _ought_ to recover--but they doubt whether he will. He has lost all heart--and hope--he can't help himself. He lies there like a log all day--despairing. And, please--what am _I_ doing here?" She turned upon him impetuously, her cheeks flaming. "They want help--there is no one. Mrs. Fotheringham hardly ever comes. They think Lady Lucy is in a critical state of health too. She won't admit it--she does everything as usual. But she is very frail and ill, and it depresses Oliver. And I am here!--useless--and helpless. Oh, why can't I go?--why can't I go?" She laid her face upon her arms, on the bench, hiding it from him; but he saw the convulsion of her whole frame.

Beside a passion so absolute and so piteous he felt, his own claim shrink into nothingness--impossible, even, to give it voice again. He straightened himself in silence; with an effort of the whole man, the lover put on the friend.

"But you can go," he said, a little hoarsely, "if you feel like that."

She raised herself suddenly.

"How do I know that he wants me?--how do I know that he would even see me?"

Once more her cheeks were crimson. She had shown him her love unveiled; now he was to see her doubt--the shame that tormented her. He felt that it was to heal him she had spoken, and he could do nothing to repay her. He could neither chide her for a quixotic self-sacrifice, which might never be admitted or allowed; nor protest, on Marsham's behalf, against it, for he knew, in truth, nothing of the man; least of all could he plead for himself. He could only sit, staring like a fool, tongue-tied; till Diana, mastering, for his sake, the emotion to which, partly also for his sake, she had given rein, gradually led the conversation back to safer and cooler ground. All the little involuntary arts came in by which a woman regains command of herself, and thereby of her companion. Her hat tired her head; she removed it, and the beautiful hair underneath, falling into confusion, must be put in its place by skilled instinctive fingers, every movement answering to a similar self-restraining effort in the mind within. She dried her tears; she drew closer the black scarf round the shoulders of her white dress; she straightened the violets at her belt--Muriel's mid-day gift--till he beheld her, white and suffering indeed, but lovely and composed--queen of herself.

She made him talk of his adventures, and he obeyed her, partly to help her in the struggle he perceived, partly because in the position--beneath and beyond all hope--to which she had reduced him, it was the only way by which he could save anything out of the wreck. And she bravely responded. She could and did lend him enough of her mind to make it worth his while. A friend should not come home to her from perils of land and sea, and find her ungrateful--a niggard of sympathy and praise.

So that when Dr. and Mrs. Roughsedge appeared, and Muriel returned with them, Mrs. Roughsedge, all on edge with anxiety, could make very little of what had--what must have--occurred. Diana, carved in white wax, but for the sensitive involuntary movements of lip and eyebrow, was listening to a description of an English embassy sent through the length and breadth of the most recently conquered province of Nigeria. The embassy took the news of peace and Imperial rule to a country devastated the year before by the most hideous of slave-raids. The road it marched by was strewn with the skeletons of slaves--had been so strewn probably for thousands of years. "One night my horse trod unawares on two skeletons--women--locked in each other's arms," said Hugh; "scores of others round them. In the evening we camped at a village where every able-bodied male had been killed the year before."

"Shot?" asked the doctor.

"Oh, dear, no! That would have been to waste ammunition. A limb was hacked off, and they bled to death."

His mother was looking at the speaker with all her eyes, but she did not hear a word he said. Was he pale or not?

Diana shuddered.

"And that is _stopped_--forever?" Her eyes were on the speaker.

"As long as our flag flies there," said the soldier, simply.

Her look kindled. For a moment she was the shadow, the beautiful shadow, of her old Imperialist self--the proud, disinterested lover of her country.

The doctor shook his head.

"Don't forget the gin, and the gin-traders on the other side, Master Hugh."

"They don't show their noses in the new provinces," said the young man, quietly; "we shall straighten that out too, in the long run--you'll see."

But Diana had ceased to listen. Mrs. Roughsedge, turning toward her, and with increasing foreboding, saw, as it were, the cloud of an inward agony, suddenly recalled, creep upon the fleeting brightness of her look, as the evening shade mounts upon and captures a sunlit hill-side. The mother, in spite of her native optimism, had never cherished any real hope of her son's success. But neither had she expected, on the other side, a certainty so immediate and so unqualified. She saw before her no settled or resigned grief. The Tallyn tragedy had transformed what had been almost a recovered serenity, a restored and patient equilibrium, into something violent, tumultuous, unstable--prophesying action. But what--poor child!--could the action be?

* * * * *

"Poor Hugh!" said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband on their return, as she stood beside him, in his study. Her voice was low, for Hugh had only just gone up-stairs, and the little house was thinly built.

The doctor rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and then looked round him for a cigarette.

"Yes," he said, slowly; "but he enjoyed his walk home."

"Henry!"

Hugh had walked back to the village with Mrs. Colwood, who had an errand there, and it was true that he had talked much to her out of earshot of his parents, and had taken a warm farewell of her at the end.

"Why am I to be 'Henry'-ed?"--inquired the doctor, beginning on his cigarette.

"Because you must know," said his wife, in an energetic whisper, "that Hugh had almost certainly proposed to Miss Mallory before we arrived, and she had refused him!"

The doctor meditated.

"I still say that Hugh enjoyed his walk," he repeated; "I trust he will have others of the same kind--with the same person."

"Henry, you are really incorrigible!" cried his wife. "How can you make jokes--on such a thing--with that girl's face before you!"

"Not at all," said the doctor, protesting. "I am not making jokes, Patricia. But what you women never will understand is, that it was not a woman but a man that wrote--

"'If she be not fair for me-- What care I--'"

"Henry!" and his wife, beside herself, tried to stop his mouth with her hand.

"All right, I won't finish," said the doctor, placidly, disengaging himself. "But let me assure you, Patricia, whether you like it or not, that that is a male sentiment. I quite agree that no nice woman could have written it. But, then, Hugh is not a nice woman--nor am I."

"I thought you were so fond of her!" said his wife, reproachfully.

"Miss Mallory? I adore her. But, to tell the truth, Patricia, I want a daughter-in-law--and--and grand-children," added the doctor, deliberately, stretching out his long limbs to the fire. "I admit that my remarks may be quite irrelevant and ridiculous--but I repeat that--in spite of everything--Hugh enjoyed his walk."

* * * * *

One October evening, a week later, Lady Lucy sat waiting for Sir James Chide at Tallyn Hall. Sir James had invited himself to dine and sleep, and Lady Lucy was expecting him in the up-stairs sitting-room, a medley of French clocks and china figures, where she generally sat now, in order to be within quick and easy reach of Oliver.

She was reading, or pretending to read, by the fire, listening all the time for the sound of the carriage outside. Meanwhile, the silence of the immense house oppressed her. It was broken only by the chiming of a carillon clock in the hall below. The little tune it played, fatuously gay, teased her more insistently each time she heard it. It must really be removed. She wondered Oliver had not already complained of it.

A number of household and estate worries oppressed her thoughts. How was she to cope with them? Capable as she was, "John" had always been there to advise her, in emergency--or Oliver. She suspected the house-steward of dishonesty. And the agent of the estate had brought her that morning complaints of the head gamekeeper that were most disquieting. What did they want with gamekeepers now? Who would ever shoot at Tallyn again? With impatience she felt herself entangled in the endless machinery of wealth and the pleasures of wealth, so easy to set in motion, and so difficult to stop, even when all the savor has gone out of it. She was a tired, broken woman, with an invalid son; and the management of her great property, in which her capacities and abilities had taken for so long an imperious and instinctive delight, had become a mere burden. She longed to creep into some quiet place, alone with Oliver, out of reach of this army of servants and dependents, these impassive and unresponsive faces.

The crunching of the carriage wheels on the gravel outside gave her a start of something like pleasure. Among the old friends there was no one now she cared so much to see as Sir James Chide. Sir James had lately left Parliament and politics, and had taken a judgeship. She understood that he had lost interest in politics after and in consequence of John Ferrier's death; and she knew, of course, that he had refused the Attorney-Generalship, on the ground of the treatment meted out to his old friend and chief. During the month of Oliver's second election, moreover, she had been very conscious of Sir James's hostility to her son. Intercourse between him and Tallyn had practically ceased.

Since the accident, however, he had been kind--very kind.

The door opened, and Sir James was announced. She greeted him with a tremulous and fluttering warmth that for a moment embarrassed her visitor, accustomed to the old excess of manner and dignity, wherewith she kept her little world in awe. He saw, too, that the havoc wrought by age and grief had gone forward rapidly since he had seen her last.

"I am afraid there is no better news of Oliver?" he said, gravely, as he sat down beside her.

She shook her head.

"We are in despair, Nothing touches the pain but morphia. And he has lost heart himself so much during the last fortnight."

"You have had any fresh opinion?"

"Yes. The last man told me he still believed the injury was curable, but that Oliver must do a great deal for himself. And that he seems incapable of doing. It is, of course, the shock to the nerves, and--the general--disappointment--"

Her voice shook. She stared into the fire.

"You mean--about politics?" said Sir James, after a pause.

"Yes. Whenever I speak cheerfully to him, he asks me what there is to live for. He has been driven out of politics--by a conspiracy--"

Sir James moved impatiently.

"With health he would soon recover everything," he said, rather shortly.

She made no reply, and her shrunken faded look--as of one with no energy for hope--again roused his pity.

"Tell me," he said, bending toward her--"I don't ask from idle curiosity--but--has there been any truth in the rumor of Oliver's engagement to Miss Drake?"

Lady Lucy raised her head sharply. The light came back to her eyes.

"She was engaged to him, and three weeks after his accident she threw him over."

Sir James made a sound of amazement. Lady Lucy went on:

"She left him and me, barely a fortnight afterward, to go to a big country-house party in the north. That will show you--what she's made of. Then she wrote--a hypocritical letter--putting it on _him_. _He_ must not be agitated, nor feel her any burden upon him; so, for _his_ sake, she broke it off. Of course, they were to be cousins and friends again just as before. She had arranged it all to her own satisfaction--and was meanwhile flirting desperately, as we heard from various people in the north, with Lord Philip Darcy. Oliver showed me her letter, and at last told me the whole story. I persuaded him not to answer it. A fortnight ago, she wrote again, proposing to come back here--to 'look after' us--poor things! This time, _I_ replied. She would like Tallyn, no doubt, as a place of retreat, should other plans fail; but it will not be open to her!"

It was not energy now--vindictive energy--that was lacking to the personality before him!

"An odious young woman" exclaimed Sir James, lifting hands and eyebrows. "I am afraid I always thought so, saving your presence, Lady Lucy. However, she will want a retreat; for her plans--in the quarter you name--have not a chance of success."

"I am delighted to hear it!" said Lady Lucy, still erect and flushed. "What do you know?"

"Simply that Lord Philip is not in the least likely to marry her, having, I imagine, views in quite other quarters--so I am told. But he is the least scrupulous of men--and no doubt if, at Eastham, she threw herself into his arms--'what mother's son,' et cetera. Only, if she imagined herself to have caught him--such an old and hardened stager!--in a week--her abilities are less than I supposed."

"Alicia's self-conceit was always her weak point."

But as she spoke the force imparted by resentment died away. Lady Lucy sank back in her chair.

"And Oliver felt it very much?" asked Sir James, after a pause, his shrewd eyes upon her.

"He was wounded, of course--he has been more depressed since; but I have never believed that he was in love with her."

Sir James did not pursue the subject, but the vivacity of the glance bent now on the fire, now on his companion, betrayed the marching thoughts behind.

"Will Oliver see me this evening?" he inquired, presently.

"I hope so. He promised me to make the effort."

A servant knocked at the door. It was Oliver's valet.

"Please, my lady, Mr. Marsham wished me to say he was afraid he would not be strong enough to see Sir James Chide to-night. He is very sorry--and would Sir James be kind enough to come and see him after breakfast to-morrow?"

Lady Lucy threw up her hands in a little gesture of despair, Then she rose, and went to speak to the servant in the doorway.

When she returned she looked whiter and more shrivelled than before.

"Is he worse to-night?" asked Sir James, gently.

"It is the pain," she said, in a muffled voice; "and we can't touch it--yet. He mustn't have any more morphia--yet."

She sat down once more. Sir James, the best of gossips, glided off into talk of London, and of old common friends, trying to amuse and distract her. But he realized that she scarcely listened to him, and that he was talking to a woman whose life was being ground away between a last affection and the torment it had power to cause her. A new Lady Lucy, indeed! Had any one ever dared to pity her before?

Meanwhile, five miles off, a girl whom he loved as a daughter was eating her heart out for sorrow over this mother and son--consumed, as he guessed, with the wild desire to offer them, in any sacrificial mode they pleased, her youth and her sweet self. In one way or another he had found out that Hugh Roughsedge had been sent about his business--of course, with all the usual softening formulæ.

And now there was a kind of mute conflict going on between himself and Mrs. Colwood on the one side, and Diana on the other side.

No, she should not spend and waste her youth in the vain attempt to mend this house of tragedy!--it was not to be tolerated--not to be thought of. She would suffer, but she would get over it; and Oliver would probably die. Sooner or later she would begin life afresh, if only he was able to stand between her and the madness in her heart.

But as he sat there, looking at Lady Lucy, he realized that it might have been better for his powers and efficacy as a counsellor if he, too, had held aloof from this house of pain.