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Charles Reade - "Christie Johnstone"

John Burroughs - "Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and Other Papers"

John Lyde Wilson - "The Code of Honor"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "Countess Kate"

Diana of the Crossways, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Diana of the Crossways, Complete




'Have you seen her?' she asked him.

His head shook dolefully. 'Mrs. Warwick is unwell; she has been working
too hard.'

'You also, I'm afraid.'

'No.' He could deny that, whatever the look of him.

'Come to me at Copsley soon,' said she, entering to Danvers in the
passage.

'My mistress is upstairs, my lady,' said Danvers. 'She is lying on her
bed.'

'She is ill?'

'She has been lying on her bed ever since.'

'Since what?' Lady Dunstane spoke sharply.

Danvers retrieved her indiscretion. 'Since she heard of the accident, my
lady.'

'Take my name to her. Or no: I can venture.'

'I am not allowed to go in and speak to her. You will find the room quite
dark, my lady, and very cold. It is her command. My mistress will not let
me light the fire; and she has not eaten or drunk of anything since . . .
She will die, if you do not persuade her to take nourishment: a little,
for a beginning. It wants the beginning.'

Emma went upstairs, thinking of the enigmatical maid, that she must be a
good soul after all. Diana's bedroom door was opened slowly.

'You will not be able to see at first, my lady,' Danvers whispered. 'The
bed is to the left, and a chair. I would bring in a candle, but it hurts
her eyes. She forbids it.'

Emma stepped in. The chill thick air of the unlighted London room was
cavernous. She almost forgot the beloved of her heart in the thought that
a living woman had been lying here more than two days and nights,
fasting. The proof of an uttermost misery revived the circumstances
within her to render her friend's presence in this desert of darkness
credible. She found the bed by touch, silently, and distinguished a dark
heap on the bed; she heard no breathing. She sat and listened; then she
stretched out her hand and met her Tony's. It lay open. It was the hand
of a drowned woman.

Shutters and curtains and the fireless grate gave the room an appalling
likeness to the vaults.

So like to the home of death it seemed, that in a few minutes the watcher
had lost count of time and kept but a wormy memory of the daylight. She
dared not speak, for some fear of startling; for the worse fear of never
getting answer. Tony's hand was lifeless. Her clasp of it struck no
warmth.

She stung herself with bitter reproaches for having let common mundane
sentiments, worthy of a Lady Wathin, bar her instant offer of her bosom
to the beloved who suffered in this depth of mortal agony. Tony's love of
a man, as she should have known, would be wrought of the elements of our
being: when other women named Happiness, she said Life; in division,
Death. Her body lying still upon the bed here was a soul borne onward by
the river of Death.

The darkness gave sight after a while, like a curtain lifting on a veil:
the dead light of the underworld. Tony lay with her face up, her underlip
dropped; straight from head to feet. The outline of her face, without hue
of it, could be seen: sign of the hapless women that have souls in love.
Hateful love of men! Emma thought, and was; moved to feel at the wrist
for her darling's pulse. He has, killed her! the thought flashed, as,
with pangs chilling her frame, the pressure at the wrist continued
insensible of the faintest beat. She clasped it, trembling, in pain to
stop an outcry.

'It is Emmy,' said the voice.

Emma's heart sprang to heaven on a rush of thanks.

'My Tony,' she breathed softly.

She hung for a further proof of life in the motionless body. 'Tony!' she
said.

The answer was at her hand, a thread-like return of her clasp.

'It is Emmy come to stay with you, never to leave you.'

The thin still answer was at her hand a moment; the fingers fell away. A
deep breath was taken twice to say:

'Don't talk to me.'

Emma retained the hand. She was warned not to press it by the deadness
following its effort to reply.

But Tony lived; she had given proof of life. Over this little wavering
taper in the vaults Emma cowered, cherishing the hand, silently hoping
for the voice.

It came: 'Winter.'

'It is a cold winter, Tony.'

'My dear will be cold.'

'I will light the fire.'

Emma lost no time in deciding to seek the match-box. The fire was lit and
it flamed; it seemed a revival in the room. Coming back to the bedside,
she discerned her Tony's lacklustre large dark eyes and her hollow
cheeks: her mouth open to air as to the drawing-in of a sword; rather as
to the releaser than the sustainer. Her feet were on the rug her maid had
placed to cover them. Emma leaned across the bed to put them to her
breast, beneath her fur mantle, and held them there despite the
half-animate tug of the limbs and the shaft of iciness they sent to her
very heart. When she had restored them to some warmth, she threw aside
her bonnet and lying beside Tony, took her in her arms, heaving now and
then a deep sigh.

She kissed her cheek.

'It is Emmy.'

'Kiss her.'

'I have no strength.'

Emma laid her face on the lips. They were cold; even the breath between
them cold.

'Has Emmy been long . . . ?'

'Here, dear? I think so. I am with my darling.'

Tony moaned. The warmth and the love were bringing back her anguish.

She said: 'I have been happy. It is not hard to go.'

Emma strained to her. 'Tony will wait for her soul's own soul to go, the
two together.'

There was a faint convulsion in the body. 'If I cry, I shall go in pain.'

'You are in Emmy's arms, my beloved.'

Tony's eyes closed for forgetfulness under that sensation. A tear ran
down from her, but the pain was lag and neighboured sleep, like the
pleasure.

So passed the short winter day, little spoken.

Then Emma bethought her of a way of leading Tony to take food, and she
said: 'I shall stay with you; I shall send for clothes; I am rather
hungry. Don't stir, dear. I will be mistress of the house.'

She went below to the kitchen, where a few words in the ear of a
Frenchwoman were sufficient to waken immediate comprehension of what was
wanted, and smart service: within ten minutes an appetizing bouillon sent
its odour over the bedroom. Tony, days back, had said her last to the act
of eating; but Emma sipping at the spoon and expressing satisfaction, was
a pleasant picture. The bouillon smelt pleasantly.

'Your servants love you,' Emma said.

'Ah, poor good souls.'

'They crowded up to me to hear of you. Madame of course at the first word
was off to her pots. And we English have the habit of calling ourselves
the practical people!--This bouillon is consummate.--However, we have the
virtues of barbarians; we can love and serve for love. I never tasted
anything so good. I could become a glutton.'

'Do,' said Tony.

'I should be ashamed to "drain the bowl" all to myself: a solitary toper
is a horrid creature, unless he makes a song of it.'

'Emmy makes a song of it to me.'

'But "pledge me" is a noble saying, when you think of humanity's original
hunger for the whole. It is there that our civilizing commenced, and I am
particularly fond of hearing the call. It is grandly historic. So pledge
me, Tony. We two can feed from one spoon; it is a closer, bond than the
loving cup. I want you just to taste it and excuse my gluttony.'

Tony murmured, 'No.' The spoon was put to her mouth. She sighed to
resist. The stronger will compelled her to move her lips. Emma fed her as
a child, and nature sucked for life.

The first effect was a gush of tears.

Emma lay with her that night, when the patient was, the better sleeper.
But during the night at intervals she had the happiness of feeling Tony's
hand travelling to make sure of her.




CHAPTER XXXVII

AN EXHIBITION OF SOME CHAMPIONS OF THE STRICKEN LADY

Close upon the hour of ten every morning the fortuitous meeting of two
gentlemen at Mrs. Warwick's housedoor was a signal for punctiliously
stately greetings, the salutation of the raised hat and a bow of the head
from a position of military erectness, followed by the remark: 'I trust
you are well, sir': to which the reply: 'I am very well, sir, and trust
you are the same,' was deemed a complimentary fulfilment of their mutual
obligation in presence. Mr. Sullivan Smith's initiative imparted this
exercise of formal manners to Mr. Arthur Rhodes, whose renewed
appearance, at the minute of his own arrival, he viewed, as he did not
conceal, with a disappointed and a reproving eye. The inquiry after the
state of Mrs. Warwick's health having received its tolerably comforting
answer from the footman, they left their cards in turn, then descended
the doorsteps, faced for the performance of the salute, and departed
their contrary ways.

The pleasing intelligence refreshed them one morning, that they would be
welcomed by Lady Dunstane. Thereupon Mr. Sullivan Smith wheeled about to
Mr. Arthur Rhodes and observed to him: 'Sir, I might claim, by right of
seniority, to be the foremost of us two in offering my respects to the
lady, but the way is open to you.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Arthur Rhodes, 'permit me to defer to your many superior
titles to that distinction.'

'The honour, sir, lies rather in the bestowing than in the taking.'

'I venture to think, sir, that though I cannot speak pure Castilian, I
require no lesson from a Grandee of Spain in acknowledging the dues of my
betters.'

'I will avow myself conquered, sir, by your overpowering condescension;'
said Mr. Sullivan Smith; 'and I entreat you--to ascribe my acceptance of
your brief retirement to the urgent character of the business I have at
heart.'

He laid his fingers on the panting spot, and bowed.

Mr. Arthur Rhodes, likewise bowing, deferentially fell to rearward.

'If I mistake not,' said the Irish gentleman, 'I am indebted to Mr.
Rhodes; and we have been joint participators in the hospitality of Mrs.
Warwick's table.'

The English gentleman replied: 'It was there that I first had the
pleasure of an acquaintance which is graven on my memory, as the words of
the wise king on tablets of gold and silver.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith gravely smiled at the unwonted match he had found in
ceremonious humour, in Saxonland, and saying: 'I shall not long detain
you, Mr. Rhodes,' he passed through the doorway.

Arthur waited for him, pacing up and down, for a quarter of an hour, when
a totally different man reappeared in the same person, and was the
Sullivan Smith of the rosy beaming features and princely heartiness. He
was accosted: 'Now, my dear boy, it's your turn to try if you have a
chance, and good luck go with ye. I've said what I could on your behalf,
for you're one of ten thousand in this country, you are.'

Mr. Sullivan Smith had solemnified himself to proffer a sober petition
within the walls of the newly widowed lady's house; namely, for nothing
less than that sweet lady's now unfettered hand: and it had therefore
been perfectly natural to him, until his performance ended with the
destruction of his hopes, to deliver himself in the high Castilian
manner. Quite unexpected, however, was the reciprocal loftiness of tone
spontaneously adopted by the young English squire, for whom, in
consequence, he conceived a cordial relish; and as he paced in the
footsteps of Arthur, anxious to quiet his curiosity by hearing how it had
fared with one whom he had to suppose the second applicant, he kept
ejaculating: 'Not a bit! The fellow can't be Saxon! And she had a liking
for him. She's nigh coming of the age when a woman takes to the chicks.
Better he than another, if it's to be any one. For he's got fun in him;
he carries his own condiments, instead of borrowing from the popular
castors, as is their way over here. But I might have known there 's
always sure to be salt and savour in the man she covers with her wing.
Excepting, if you please, my dear lady, a bad shot you made at a rascal
cur, no more worthy of you than Beelzebub of Paradise. No matter! The
daughters' of Erin must share the fate of their mother Isle, that their
tears may shine in the burst of sun to follow. For personal and patriotic
motives, I would have cheered her and been like a wild ass combed and
groomed and tamed by the adorable creature. But her friend says there 's
not a whisk of a chance for me, and I must roam the desert, kicking up,
and worshipping the star I hail brightest. They know me not, who think I
can't worship. Why, what were I without my star? At best a pickled
porker.'

Sullivan Smith became aware of a ravishing melodiousness in the
soliloquy, as well as a clean resemblance in the simile. He would
certainly have proceeded to improvize impassioned verse, if he had not
seen Arthur Rhodes on the pavement. 'So, here's the boy. Query, the face
he wears.'

'How kind of you to wait,' said Arthur.

'We'll call it sympathy, for convenience,' rejoined Sullivan Smith.
'Well, and what next?'

'You know as much as I do. Thank heaven, she is recovering.'

'Is that all?'

'Why, what more?'

Arthur was jealously, inspected.

'You look open-hearted, my dear boy.' Sullivan Smith blew the sound of a
reflected ahem. 'Excuse me for cornemusing in your company,' he said.
'But seriously, there was only one thing to pardon your hurrying to the
lady's door at such a season, when the wind tells tales to the world.
She's down with a cold, you know.'

'An influenza,' said Arthur.

The simplicity of the acquiescence was vexatious to a champion desirous
of hostilities, to vindicate the lady, in addition to his anxiety to
cloak her sad plight.

'She caught it from contact with one of the inhabitants of this country.
'Tis the fate of us Irish, and we're condemned to it for the sin of
getting tired of our own. I begin to sneeze when I land at Holyhead.
Unbutton a waistcoat here, in the hope of meeting a heart, and you're
lucky in escaping a pulmonary attack of no common severity, while the dog
that infected you scampers off, to celebrate his honeymoon mayhap. Ah,
but call at her house in shoals, the world 'll soon be saying it's worse
than a coughing cold. If you came to lead her out of it in triumph, the
laugh 'd be with you, and the lady well covered. D' ye understand?'

The allusion to the dog's honeymoon had put Arthur Rhodes on the track of
the darting cracker-metaphor.

'I think I do,' he said. 'She will soon be at Copsley--Lady Dunstane's
house, on the hills--and there we can see her.'

'And that's next to the happiness of consoling--if only it had been
granted! She's not an ordinary widow, to be caught when the tear of
lamentation has opened a practicable path or water-way to the poor
nightcapped jewel within. So, and you're a candid admirer, Mr. Rhodes!
Well, and I'll be one with you; for there's not a star in the firmament
more deserving of homage than that lady.'

'Let's walk in the park and talk of her,' said Arthur. 'There's no
sweeter subject to me.'

His boyish frankness rejoiced Sullivan Smith. 'As long as you like!--nor
to me!' he exclaimed. 'And that ever since I first beheld her on the
night of a Ball in Dublin: before I had listened to a word of her
speaking: and she bore her father's Irish name:--none of your Warwicks
and your . . . but let the cur go barking. He can't tell what he's lost;
perhaps he doesn't care. And after inflicting his hydrophobia on her
tender fame! Pooh, sir; you call it a civilized country, where you and I
and dozens of others are ready to start up as brothers of the lady, to
defend her, and are paralyzed by the Law. 'Tis a law they've instituted
for the protection of dirty dogs--their majority!'

'I owe more to Mrs. Warwick than to any soul I know,' said Arthur.

'Let 's hear,' quoth Sullivan Smith; proceeding: 'She's the Arabian
Nights in person, that's sure; and Shakespeare's Plays, tragic and comic;
and the Book of Celtic History; and Erin incarnate--down with a cold, no
matter where; but we know where it was caught. So there's a pretty
library for who's to own her now she's enfranchized by circumstances; and
a poetical figure too!'

He subsided for his companion to rhapsodize.

Arthur was overcharged with feeling, and could say only: 'It would be
another world to me if I lost her.'

'True; but what of the lady?'

'No praise of mine could do her justice.'

'That may be, but it's negative of yourself, and not a portrait of the
object. Hasn't she the brain of Socrates--or better, say Minerva, on the
bust of Venus, and the remainder of her finished off to an exact
resemblance of her patronymic Goddess of the bow and quiver?'

'She has a wise head and is beautiful.'

'And chaste.'

Arthur reddened: he was prepared to maintain it, could not speak it.

'She is to us in this London, what the run of water was to Theocritus in
Sicily: the nearest to the visibly divine,' he said, and was applauded.

'Good, and on you go. Top me a few superlatives on that, and I 'm your
echo, my friend. Isn't the seeing and listening to her like sitting under
the silvery canopy of a fountain in high Summer?'

'All the comparisons are yours,' Arthur said enviously.

'Mr. Rhodes, you are a poet, I believe, and all you require to loosen
your tongue is a drop of Bacchus, so if you will do me the extreme honour
to dine with me at my Club this evening, we'll resume the toast that
should never be uttered dry. You reprove me justly, my friend.'

Arthur laughed and accepted. The Club was named, and the hour, and some
items of the little dinner: the birds and the year of the wines.

It surprised him to meet Mr. Redworth at the table of his host. A greater
surprise was the partial thaw in Redworth's bearing toward him. But, as
it was partial, and he a youth and poor, not even the genial influences
of Bacchus could lift him to loosen his tongue under the repressing
presence of the man he knew to be his censor, though Sullivan Smith
encouraged him with praises and opportunities. He thought of the many
occasions when Mrs. Warwick's art of management had produced a tacit
harmony between them. She had no peer. The dinner failed of the pleasure
he had expected from it. Redworth's bluntness killed the flying
metaphors, and at the end of the entertainment he and Sullivan Smith were
drumming upon politics.

'Fancies he has the key of the Irish difficulty!' said the latter,
clapping hand on his shoulder, by way of blessing, as they parted at the
Club-steps.

Redworth asked Arthur Rhodes the way he was going, and walked beside him.

'I suppose you take exercise; don't get colds and that kind of thing,' he
remarked in the old bullying fashion; and changed it abruptly. 'I am glad
to have met you this evening. I hope you'll dine with me one day next
week. Have you seen Mrs. Warwick lately?'

'She is unwell; she has been working too hard,' said Arthur.

'Seriously unwell, do you mean?'

'Lady Dunstane is at her house, and speaks of her recovering.'

'Ah. You've not seen her?'

'Not yet.'

'Well, good-night.'

Redworth left him, and only when moved by gratitude to the lad for his
mention of Mrs. Warwick's 'working too hard,' as the cause of her
illness, recollected the promised dinner and the need for having his
address.

He had met Sullivan Smith accidentally in the morning and accepted the
invitation to meet young Rhodes, because these two, of all men living,
were for the moment dearest to him, as Diana Warwick's true and simple
champions; and he had intended a perfect cordiality toward them both; the
end being a semi-wrangle with the patriot, and a patronizing bluntness
with the boy; who, by the way, would hardly think him sincere in the
offer of a seat at his table. He owned himself incomplete. He never could
do the thing he meant, in the small matters not leading to fortune. But
they led to happiness! Redworth was guilty of a sigh: for now Diana
Warwick stood free; doubly free, he was reduced to reflect in a wavering
dubiousness. Her more than inclination for Dacier, witnessed by him, and
the shot of the world, flying randomly on the subject, had struck this
cuirassier, making light of his armour, without causing any change of his
habitual fresh countenance. As for the scandal, it had never shaken his
faith in her nature. He thought of the passion. His heart struck at
Diana's, and whatever might by chance be true in the scandal affected him
little, if but her heart were at liberty. That was the prize he coveted,
having long read the nature of the woman and wedded his spirit to it. She
would complete him.

Of course, infatuated men argue likewise, and scandal does not move them.
At a glance, the lower instincts and the higher spirit appear equally to
have the philosophy of overlooking blemishes. The difference between
appetite and love is shown when a man, after years of service, can hear
and see, and admit the possible, and still desire in worship; knowing
that we of earth are begrimed and must be cleansed for presentation daily
on our passage through the miry ways, but that our souls, if flame of a
soul shall have come of the agony of flesh, are beyond the baser
mischances: partaking of them indeed, but sublimely. Now Redworth
believed in the soul of Diana. For him it burned, and it was a celestial
radiance about her, unquenched by her shifting fortunes, her wilfulnesses
and, it might be, errors. She was a woman and weak; that is, not trained
for strength. She was a soul; therefore perpetually pointing to growth in
purification. He felt it, and even discerned it of her, if he could not
have phrased it. The something sovereignty characteristic that aspired in
Diana enchained him. With her, or rather with his thought of her soul, he
understood the right union of women and men, from the roots to the
flowering heights of that rare graft. She gave him comprehension of the
meaning of love: a word in many mouths, not often explained. With her,
wound in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify a new start in our
existence, a finer shoot of the tree stoutly planted in good gross earth;
the senses running their live sap, and the minds companioned, and the
spirits made one by the whole-natured conjunction. In Booth, a happy
prospect for the sons and daughters of Earth, divinely indicating more
than happiness: the speeding of us, compact of what we are, between the
ascetic rocks and the sensual whirlpools, to the creation of certain
nobler races, now very dimly imagined.

Singularly enough, the man of these feelings was far from being a social
rebel. His Diana conjured them forth in relation to her, but was not on
his bosom to enlighten him generally. His notions of citizenship
tolerated the female Pharisees, as ladies offering us an excellent social
concrete where quicksands abound, and without quite justifying the Lady
Wathins and Constance Aspers of the world, whose virtues he could set
down to accident or to acid blood, he considered them supportable and
estimable where the Mrs. Fryar-Gunnetts were innumerable, threatening to
become a majority; as they will constantly do while the sisterhood of the
chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness.

Thoughts of Diana made phantoms of the reputable and their reverse alike.
He could not choose but think of her. She was free; and he too; and they
were as distant as the horizon sail and the aft-floating castaway. Her
passion for Dacier might have burnt out her heart. And at present he had
no claim to visit her, dared not intrude. He would have nothing to say,
if he went, save to answer questions upon points of business: as to
which, Lady Dunstane would certainly summon him when he was wanted.

Riding in the park on a frosty morning, he came upon Sir Lukin, who
looked gloomy and inquired for news of Diana Warwick, saying that his
wife had forbidden him to call at her house just yet. 'She's got a cold,
you know,' said Sir Lukin; adding, 'confoundedly hard on women!--eh?
Obliged to keep up a show. And I'd swear, by all that's holy, Diana
Warwick hasn't a spot, not a spot, to reproach herself with. I fancy I
ought to know women by this time. And look here, Redworth, last
night--that is, I mean yesterday evening, I broke with a woman--a lady of
my acquaintance, you know, because she would go on scandal-mongering
about Diana Warwick. I broke with her. I told her I'd have out any man
who abused Diana Warwick, and I broke with her. By Jove! Redworth, those
women can prove spitfires. They've bags of venom under their tongues,
barley-sugar though they look--and that's her colour. But I broke with
her for good. I doubt if I shall ever call on her again. And in point of
fact, I won't.'

Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett was described in the colouring of the lady.

Sir Lukin, after some further remarks, rode on, and Redworth mused on a
moral world that allows a woman of Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett's like to hang on
to it, and to cast a stone at Diana; forgetful, in his championship, that
Diana was not disallowed a similar licence.

When he saw Emma Dunstane, some days later, she was in her carriage
driving, as she said, to Lawyerland, for an interview with old Mr.
Braddock, on her friend's affairs. He took a seat beside her. 'No, Tony
is not well,' she replied to his question, under the veil of candour.
'She is recovering, but she--you can understand--suffered a shock. She is
not able to attend to business, and certain things have to be done.'