Miss Mallory

“ Colwood applied herself to a study of Miss Mallory and her surroundings--none the less penetrating because the student was modest and her method unperceived. She divined a nature unworldly, impulsive, steeped, moreover, for all its spiritual and intellectual force, which was considerable, in a kind of sensuous romance--much connected with concrete things and symbols, places, persons, emblems, or relics, any contact with which might at any time bring the color to the girl's cheeks and the tears to her eyes. Honor--personal or national--the word was to Diana like a spark to dry leaves. ”

“ A passion for the work of her race beyond these narrow seas--a passion of sympathy, which was also a passion of antagonism, since every phase of that work, according to Miss Mallory, had been dogged by the hate and calumny of base minds--expressed itself through her charming mouth, with a quite astonishing fluency. Mrs. Colwood's mind moved uneasily. She had expected an orphan girl, ignorant of the world, whom she might mother, and perhaps mould. She found a young Egeria, talking politics with raised color and a throbbing voice, as other girls might talk of lovers or chiffons. ”

“ Colwood a little behind the others. "We are all in love with her already. But she must be patient with us. We're very humdrum folk!"
Mrs. Colwood could only say that Miss Mallory seemed to be in love with everything--the house, the church, the village, and the neighbors. Mrs. Roughsedge shook her gray curls, smiling, as she replied that this was no doubt partly due to novelty. After her long residence abroad, Miss Mallory was--it was very evident--glad to come home. Poor thing--she must have known a great deal of trouble--an only child, and no mother! ”

“ But as far as I can make out, they are engaged?"
"Nothing is settled," said Lady Lucy, hastily; "and I need not say, Elizabeth, that if you have any affection for us--or any consideration for Miss Mallory--you will not breathe a word of this most sad business to anybody."
"Well, for Oliver's sake, if he doesn't intend to behave like a man, I do certainly hope it may be kept dark!" cried Lady Niton. "For if he does desert her, under such circumstances, I suppose you know that a great many people will be inclined to cut him? ”

“ Where was that fellow Marsham? Philandering with politics?--when there was this flower for the gathering!
Luncheon was half-way through when a rattling sound of horses' hoofs outside drew the attention of the table.
"Somebody else coming to lunch," said Mr. Birch. "Sorry for 'em, Miss Mallory. We haven't left 'em much. You've done us so uncommon well."
Diana herself looked in some alarm round the table.
"Plenty, my dear lady, plenty!" said the doctor, on her other hand. "Cold beef, and bread and cheese--what does any mortal want more? ”

“ But the unconscious fire in her glance, and the vigor of her carriage, did but add to her good looks. Captain Roughsedge, as he touched her hand, asked whether he should find her at home that afternoon if he called, and Diana absently said yes.
"What a strange impracticable man!" cried Miss Mallory hotly, as the ladies turned into the Beechcote drive. "It is really a misfortune to find a man of such opinions in this place." ”

“ He shook his head.
"No, you are not strong enough. Come back here. There is God's work to be done in this village, Miss Mallory. Come and put your hand to it. But not yet--not yet."
Then her weariness told him that he had said enough, and he went.
Late that night Diana tore herself from Muriel Colwood, went alone to her room, and locked her door. Then she drew back the curtains, and gazed once more on the same line of hills she had seen rise out of the wintry mists on Christmas morning. The moon was still behind the down, and a few stars showed among the clouds. ”

“ Not that Hugh Roughsedge made any such conscious analysis of his impressions. Yet the house appealed to him strangely. He thought Miss Mallory's taste marvellous; and it is one of the superiorities in women to which men submit most readily. ”

“ Altogether, an aspect of rich and glowing youth: no perfect beauty; but something arresting, ardent--charged, perhaps over-charged, with personality. Mrs. Colwood said to herself that life at Beechcote would be no stagnant pool.
While they lingered in the drawing-room before church, she kept Diana talking. It seemed that Miss Mallory had seen Egypt, India, and Canada, in the course of her last two years of life with her father. Their travels had spread over more than a year; and Diana had brought Mr. Mallory back to the Riviera, only, it appeared, to die, after some eight months of illness. ”

“ They escaped her whether she would or no--that at least was the impression; and Diana found it agreeable. So agreeable that before they had been ten minutes at table Miss Mallory, in response, was conscious on her own part of an unusually strong wish to please her new companion--to make a good effect. Diana, indeed, was naturally governed by the wish to please. She desired above all things to be liked--that is, if she could not be loved. Mrs. Colwood brought with her a warm and favoring atmosphere. Diana unfolded. ”

“ Can't the young people make up their minds? Do they want Lucy to make them up for them?"
Alicia looked at her companion a little under her brows, and did not reply. Lady Niton was so piqued by the girl's expression that she immediately threw herself on the mystery she divined--tearing and scratching at it, like a dog in a rabbit-hole. And very soon she had dragged it to the light. Miss Drake merely remarked that it was very sad, but it appeared that Miss Mallory was not really a Mallory at all, but the daughter of a certain Mrs. Sparling--Juliet Sparling, who--"
"Juliet Sparling!" ”

“ But he would go down to Beechcote, and he and Oliver between them would see that child through.
Meanwhile, Ferrier and Marsham were in anxious conclave. Ferrier counselled delay. "Let the thing sleep a little. Don't announce the engagement. You and Miss Mallory will, of course, understand each other. You will correspond. But don't hurry it. So much consideration, at least, is due to your mother's strong feeling."
Marsham assented, but despondently.
"You know my mother; time will make no difference." ”

“ Mallory writhed, but all he said was: "A soldier doesn't have to be a jackass. I know just enough about guns not to monkey with the wrong end of 'em."
"Coward!" she flung at him. He turned white, but Marjorie red, and made a leap at her, crying: "He's the bravest man in the world. You say a word, and I'll scratch your eyes out."
This reheartened Mallory a little, and he laughed nervously, as he restrained her. Kathleen retreated out of danger, with a parting shot: "Our engagement is off."
"Thanks," Mallory said, and put out his hand: "Will you return the bracelet?" ”

“ Mallory repeated the indictment: "You love a dog better than you love your husband."
"My what?" Marjorie laughed, then she spoke with lofty condescension: "Harry Mallory, if you're going to be jealous of that dog, I'll never marry you the longest day I live."
"So you'll let a dog come between us?" he demanded.
"I wouldn't give up Snoozleums for a hundred husbands," she retorted.
"I'm glad to know it in time," Mallory said. "You'd better give me back that wedding ring." ”

“ And as a man brought up in wealth, and himself potentially rich, he found it secretly agreeable that costly things became her. There should be no lack of them in the future.
They stepped out upon the terrace. At sight of them the Roughsedges approached, while Mr. Fred Birch lagged behind to inspect the sundial. After a few words' conversation, Marsham turned resolutely away.
"Miss Mallory wants to show me a new gardener."
The old doctor smiled at his wife. Hugh Roughsedge watched the departing figures. Excellently matched, he must needs admit, in aspect and in height. ”

“ She rounded on him like a panther: "Only a dog! He was worth a dozen men like you. You find the conductor at once, command him to stop this train—and back up! I don't care if he has to go back ten miles. Run, tell him at once. Now, you run!"
Mallory stared at her as if she had gone mad, but he set out to run somewhere, anywhere. Marjorie paced up and down distractedly, tearing her hair and moaning, "Snoozleums, Snoozleums! ”

“ The girl's last words were said in a tone of anguish and despair, and she buried her head in her hands once more.
"It is all that other girl!" she continued, after a moment's pause. "He thinks of no one but her! Oh, how I hate her! He is with her all the time; he asked her to join that society——"
"How—how on earth did you know?" gasped Texas.
"Do you think I am blind?" cried the girl, fiercely. "Do you suppose I cannot see what Mark Mallory is doing? It is all that Grace Fuller—all! ”

“ Mallory, firmly. 'Truth is a narrow line; beauty is a snare.'
"According to which method of reasoning, my dear David, I ought to have serious misgivings as [Pg 333] to whether your Christmas-eve sermon, which changed my whole outlook on life, was true—seeing that it most certainly was beautiful!
"Now listen to my little story.
"One morning, during this last autumn, Mrs. Mallory received a business letter at breakfast, necessitating an immediate journey to town, for a trying interview. After much weighing of pros and cons, she decided upon a train; and I sent her to the station in the motor. ”

“ Mallory, your husband is the bravest man on earth."
"Oh, I know he is," Marjorie beamed, and added with a spasm of conscience: "but he isn't my husband!"
Mrs. Temple gasped in horror, but Marjorie dragged her close, and poured out the whole story, while the other passengers recovered their properties with as much joy as if they were all new gifts found on a bush.
Meanwhile, under Mallory's guidance, the porter fastened the outlaws together back to back with the straps of their own feed-bags. The porter was rejoicing that his harvest of tips was not blighted after all. ”

“ Mallory laughed. He had gotten the best of the bargain after all. At least there was no smog in the fifteenth century.
Who was he supposed to be? he wondered. Had his name gone down in history by any chance?
Abruptly he gasped. Was he the Sir Thomas Malory with estates in Northampshire and Warwickshire? Was he the Sir Thomas Malory who had compiled and translated and written Le Morte d'Arthur? Almost nothing about the man's life was known, and probably the little that was known had been assumed. He could have popped up from nowhere, made his fortune through foreknowledge, and been knighted. ”

“ The girl, very consciously unconscious of the admiration, moved demurely along, with eyes downcast, but at such an angle that she could take in the sensation she was creating; she went along picking up stares as if they were bouquets.
Her demeanor was a remarkable compromise between outrageous flirtation and perfect respectability. But she was looking back so intently that when she moved into the observation room she walked right into the newspaper Mallory was holding out before him. ”

“ Ferrier wrote of her persistently to Lady Lucy, being determined that so much punishment at least should be meted out to that lady. The mistress of Tallyn, on her side, never mentioned the name of Miss Mallory. All the pages in his letters which concerned her might never have been written, and he was well aware that not a word of them would ever reach Oliver. Diana's pale and saddened beauty; the dignity which grief, tragic grief, free from all sordid or ignoble elements, can infuse into a personality ”

“ She whispered to Mallory:
"They'll get the bracelet! They'll get the bracelet!" 294
And Mallory could have danced with glee. But Kathleen leaned coquettishly toward the masked stranger, and threw all her art into her tone as she murmured:
"I'm sure you're too brave to take my things. I've always admired men with the courage of Claude Duval."
The robber was taken a trifle aback, but he growled: "I don't know the party you speak of—but cough up!"
"Listen to her," Marjorie whispered in horror; "she's flirting with the train-robber."
"What won't some women flirt with!" Mallory exclaimed. ”

“ THE TRAIN BUTCHER Mallory was dragging out a miserable existence with a companion who was neither maid, wife, nor widow and to whom he was neither bachelor, husband, nor relict.
They were suffering brain-fag from their one topic of conversation, and heart-fag from rapture deferred. Marjorie had pretended to take a nap and Mallory had pretended that he would leave her for her own sake. Their contradictory chains were beginning to gall.
Mallory sat in the smoking room, and threw aside a half-finished cigar. Life was indeed nauseous when tobacco turned rank on his lips. ”

“ Mallory gazed at her with almost more wonderment than delight. This was another flashlight on her character. Most courtships are conducted under a rose-light in which wooer and wooed wear their best clothes or their best behavior; or in a starlit, 234 moonlit, or gaslit twilight where romance softens angles and wraps everything in velvet shadow. Then the two get married and begin to live together in the cold, gray daylight of realism, with undignified necessities and harrowing situations at every step, and disillusion begins its deadly work. ”

“ He was too fastidious, too critical, altogether too much master of himself. Few women caused him a single quickened heart-beat. But it is to such men as this that when at last love grips them, binding them slowly and secretly with its clinging tendrils, it comes as an irresistible force to be reckoned with throughout the remainder of their lives.
So it came about that as the weeks grew into months, Mallory perceived—dimly and with a quaint resignation to the inevitable—that Nan and Love were coming to him hand in hand. ”

“ As Mallory's entire plan of action was based on boldness, he spurned the shadows of the bordering oaks and beeches and encephalopathed the rohorse to keep to the center of the lane. He met no one, however, despite the earliness of the hour, nor had he really expected to. It was highly improbable that any freemen would be abroad after dark, and as for the knight-errants who happened to be in the neighborhood, it was highly improbable that any of them would be abroad after dark either. ”