The Testing of Diana Mallory

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

He found Miss Mallory the centre of a circle of spectators and listeners, engaged apparently in a three-cornered and very hot discussion with Mr. Barton, the Socialist member, and Oliver Marsham. Diana had entirely forgotten herself, her shyness, the strange house, and all her alarms. If Lady Niton took nothing for granted at Tallyn, that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton. He, on the contrary, took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three English officers and some fifty men of a Sikh regiment had been lost. Mr. Barton, in taking up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the afternoon. It was, he thought, a pity the repulse had not been more decisive--so as to show all the world into what a hornet's nest the Government was going--"and a hornet's nest which will cost us half a million to take before we've done."

Diana's cheeks flamed. Did Mr. Barton mean to regret that no more English lives had been lost?

Mr. Barton was of opinion that if the defeat had been a bit worse, bloodshed might have been saved in the end. A Jingo Viceroy and a Jingo press could only be stopped by disaster--

On the contrary, said Diana, we could not afford to be stopped by disaster. Disaster must be retrieved.

Mr. Barton asked her--why? Were we never to admit that we were in the wrong?

The Viceroy and his advisers, she declared, were not likely to be wrong. And prestige had to be maintained.

At the word "prestige" the rugged face of the Labor member grew contemptuous and a little angry. He dealt with it as he was accustomed to deal with it in Socialist meetings or in Parliament. His touch in doing so was neither light nor conciliatory; the young lady, he thought, required plain speaking.

But so far from intimidating the young lady, he found in the course of a few more thrusts and parries that he had roused a by no means despicable antagonist. Diana was a mere mouth-piece; but she was the mouth-piece of eye-witnesses; whereas Barton was the mouth-piece of his daily newspaper and a handful of partisan books written to please the political section to which he belonged.

He began to stumble and to make mistakes--gross elementary mistakes in geography and fact--and there-with to lose his temper. Diana was upon him in a moment--very cool and graceful--controlling herself well; and it is probable that she would have won the day triumphantly but for the sudden intervention of her host.

Oliver Marsham had been watching her with mingled amusement and admiration. The slender figure held defiantly erect, the hands close-locked on the knee, the curly head with the air of a Niké--he could almost see the palm branch in the hand, the white dress and the silky hair, blown back by the blasts of victory!--appealed to a rhetorical element in his nature always closely combined both with his feelings and his ambitions. Headlong energy and partisanship--he was enchanted to find how beautiful they could be, and he threw himself into the discussion simply--at first--that he might prolong an emotion, might keep the red burning on her lip and cheek. That blundering fellow Barton should not have it all to himself!