Diana of the Crossways, v1

G >> George Meredith >> Diana of the Crossways, v1

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Unable to awaken his hearing, Redworth jogged his arm, and the shake was
ineffective until it grew in force.

'I've no time to lose; have they told you the way?'

Andrew Hedger yielded his arm. He slowly withdrew his intent fond gaze
from the fair outstretched white carcase, and with drooping eyelids, he
said: 'Ah could eat hog a solid hower!'

He had forgotten to ask the way, intoxicated by the aspect of the pig;
and when he did ask it, he was hard of understanding, given wholly to his
last glimpses.

Redworth got the directions. He would have dismissed Mr. Andrew Hedger,
but there was no doing so. 'I'll show ye on to The Crossways House,' the
latter said, implying that he had already earned something by showing him
The Crossways post.

'Hog's my feed,' said Andrew Hedger. The gastric springs of eloquence
moved him to discourse, and he unburdened himself between succulent
pauses. 'They've killed him early. He 's fat; and he might ha' been
fatter. But he's fat. They've got their Christmas ready, that they
have. Lord! you should see the chitterlings, and--the sausages hung up
to and along the beams. That's a crown for any dwellin'! They runs 'em
round the top of the room--it's like a May-day wreath in old times.
Home-fed hog! They've a treat in store, they have. And snap your
fingers at the world for many a long day. And the hams! They cure their
own hams at that house. Old style! That's what I say of a hog. He's
good from end to end, and beats a Christian hollow. Everybody knows it
and owns it.'

Redworth was getting tired. In sympathy with current conversation, he
said a word for the railways: they would certainly make the flesh of
swine cheaper, bring a heap of hams into the market. But Andrew Hedger
remarked with contempt that he had not much opinion of foreign hams:
nobody, knew what they fed on. Hog, he said, would feed on anything,
where there was no choice they had wonderful stomachs for food. Only,
when they had a choice, they left the worst for last, and home-fed filled
them with stuff to make good meat and fat 'what we calls prime bacon.'
As it is not right to damp a native enthusiasm, Redworth let him dilate
on his theme, and mused on his boast to eat hog a solid hour, which
roused some distant classic recollection:--an odd jumble.

They crossed the wooden bridge of a flooded stream.

'Now ye have it,' said the hog-worshipper; 'that may be the house, I
reckon.'

A dark mass of building, with the moon behind it, shining in spires
through a mound of firs, met Redworth's gaze. The windows all were
blind, no smoke rose from the chimneys. He noted the dusky square of
green, and the finger-post signalling the centre of the four roads.
Andrew Hedger repeated that it was The Crossways house, ne'er a doubt.
Redworth paid him his expected fee, whereupon Andrew, shouldering off,
wished him a hearty good night, and forthwith departed at high pedestrian
pace, manifestly to have a concluding look at the beloved anatomy.

There stood the house. Absolutely empty! thought Redworth. The sound
of the gate-bell he rang was like an echo to him. The gate was unlocked.
He felt a return of his queer churchyard sensation when walking up the
garden-path, in the shadow of the house. Here she was born: here her
father died: and this was the station of her dreams, as a girl at school
near London and in Paris. Her heart was here. He looked at the windows
facing the Downs with dead eyes. The vivid idea of her was a phantom
presence, and cold, assuring him that the bodily Diana was absent. Had
Lady Dunstane guessed rightly, he might perhaps have been of service!

Anticipating the blank silence, he rang the house-bell. It seemed to set
wagging a weariful tongue in a corpse. The bell did its duty to the last
note, and one thin revival stroke, for a finish, as in days when it
responded livingly to the guest. He pulled, and had the reply, just
the same, with the faint terminal touch, resembling exactly a 'There!'
at the close of a voluble delivery in the negative. Absolutely empty.
He pulled and pulled. The bell wagged, wagged. This had been a house of
a witty host, a merry girl, junketting guests; a house of hilarious
thunders, lightnings of fun and fancy. Death never seemed more voiceful
than in that wagging of the bell.

For conscience' sake, as became a trusty emissary, he walked round to the
back of the house, to verify the total emptiness. His apprehensive
despondency had said that it was absolutely empty, but upon consideration
he supposed the house must have some guardian: likely enough, an old
gardener and his wife, lost in deafness double-shotted by sleep! There
was no sign of them. The night air waxed sensibly crisper. He thumped
the backdoors. Blank hollowness retorted on the blow. He banged and
kicked. The violent altercation with wood and wall lasted several
minutes, ending as it had begun.

Flesh may worry, but is sure to be worsted in such an argument.

'Well, my dear lady !'--Redworth addressed Lady Dunstane aloud, while
driving his hands into his pockets for warmth--'we've done what we could.
The next best thing is to go to bed and see what morning brings us.'

The temptation to glance at the wild divinings of dreamy-witted women
from the point of view of the practical man, was aided by the intense
frigidity of the atmosphere in leading him to criticize a sex not much
used to the exercise of brains. 'And they hate railways!' He associated
them, in the matter of intelligence, with Andrew Hedger and Company.
They sank to the level of the temperature in his esteem--as regarded
their intellects. He approved their warmth of heart. The nipping of
the victim's toes and finger-tips testified powerfully to that.

Round to the front of the house at a trot, he stood in moonlight. Then,
for involuntarily he now did everything running, with a dash up the steps
he seized the sullen pendant bell-handle, and worked it pumpwise, till he
perceived a smaller bell-knob beside the door, at which he worked piston-
wise. Pump and piston, the hurly-burly and the tinkler created an alarm
to scare cat and mouse and Cardinal spider, all that run or weave in
desolate houses, with the good result of a certain degree of heat to his
frame. He ceased, panting. No stir within, nor light. That white stare
of windows at the moon was undisturbed.

The Downs were like a wavy robe of shadowy grey silk. No wonder that she
had loved to look on them!

And it was no wonder that Andrew Hedger enjoyed prime bacon. Bacon
frizzling, fat rashers of real homefed on the fire-none of your foreign-
suggested a genial refreshment and resistance to antagonistic elements.
Nor was it, granting health, granting a sharp night--the temperature at
least fifteen below zero--an excessive boast for a man to say he could go
on eating for a solid hour.

These were notions darting through a half nourished gentleman nipped
in the frame by a severely frosty night. Truly a most beautiful night!
She would have delighted to see it here. The Downs were like floating
islands, like fairy-laden vapours; solid, as Andrew Hedger's hour of
eating; visionary, as too often his desire!

Redworth muttered to himself, after taking the picture of the house and
surrounding country from the sward, that he thought it about the sharpest
night he had ever encountered in England. He was cold, hungry,
dispirited, and astoundingly stricken with an incapacity to separate any
of his thoughts from old Andrew Hedger. Nature was at her pranks upon
him.

He left the garden briskly, as to the legs, and reluctantly. He would
have liked to know whether Diana had recently visited the house, or was
expected. It could be learnt in the morning; but his mission was urgent
and he on the wings of it. He was vexed and saddened.

Scarcely had he closed the garden-gate when the noise of an opening
window arrested him, and he called. The answer was in a feminine voice,
youngish, not disagreeable, though not Diana's.

He heard none of the words, but rejoined in a bawl: 'Mrs. Warwick!--Mr.
Redworth!'

That was loud enough for the deaf or the dead.

The window closed. He went to the door and waited. It swung wide to
him; and O marvel of a woman's divination of a woman! there stood Diana.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power
At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we can have
Beauty is rare; luckily is it rare
Between love grown old and indifference ageing to love
But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly
Charitable mercifulness; better than sentimental ointment
Dedicated to the putrid of the upper circle
Dreaded as a scourge, hailed as a refreshment (Scandalsheet)
Elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors
Favour can't help coming by rotation
Flashes bits of speech that catch men in their unguarded corner
For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too
Get back what we give
Goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character
Grossly unlike in likeness (portraits)
He had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration
He had neat phrases, opinions in packets
He was not a weaver of phrases in distress
He's good from end to end, and beats a Christian hollow (a hog)
Her final impression likened him to a house locked up and empty
Herself, content to be dull if he might shine
His gaze and one of his ears, if not the pair, were given
How immensely nature seems to prefer men to women!
Human nature to feel an interest in the dog that has bitten you
I have and hold--you shall hunger and covet
Idea is the only vital breath
If I'm struck, I strike back
Inclined to act hesitation in accepting the aid she sought
Lengthened term of peace bred maggots in the heads of the people
Loathing for speculation
Mare would do, and better than a dozen horses
Matter that is not nourishing to brains
Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers
Needed support of facts, and feared them
O self! self! self!
Or where you will, so that's in Ireland
Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to run
Perused it, and did not recognize herself in her language
Pride in being always myself
Procrastination and excessive scrupulousness
Read deep and not be baffled by inconsistencies
Service of watering the dry and drying the damp (Whiskey)
She had a fatal attraction for antiques
She marries, and it's the end of her sparkling
Smart remarks have their measured distances
Something of the hare in us when the hounds are full cry
Swell and illuminate citizen prose to a princely poetic
That is life--when we dare death to live!
That's the natural shamrock, after the artificial
The burlesque Irishman can't be caricatured
The well of true wit is truth itself
They create by stoppage a volcano
This love they rattle about and rave about
Tooth that received a stone when it expected candy
We live alone, and do not much feel it till we are visited
Weather and women have some resemblance they say
What a woman thinks of women, is the test of her nature
Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank
You are entreated to repress alarm
You beat me with the fists, but my spirit is towering

[The End]

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8