Diana of the Crossways, v2
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George Meredith >> Diana of the Crossways, v2
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'My purse, dear Tony!' exclaimed Emma. 'My house! You will stay with
me? Why do you shake your head? With me you are safe.' She spied at
the shadows in her friend's face. 'Ever since your marriage, Tony, you
have been strange in your trick of refusing to stay with me. And you and
I made our friendship the pledge of a belief in eternity! We vowed it.
Come, I do talk sentimentally, but my heart is in it. I beg you--all the
reasons are with me--to make my house your home. You will. You know I
am rather lonely.'
Diana struggled to keep her resolution from being broken by tenderness.
And doubtless poor Sir Lukin had learnt his lesson; still, her defensive
instincts could never quite slumber under his roof; not because of any
further fear that they would have to be summoned; it was chiefly owing to
the consequences of his treacherous foolishness. For this half-home with
her friend thenceforward denied to her, she had accepted a protector,
called husband--rashly, past credence, in the retrospect; but it had been
her propelling motive; and the loathings roused by her marriage helped to
sicken her at the idea of a lengthened stay where she had suffered the
shock precipitating her to an act of insanity.
'I do not forget you were an heiress, Emmy, and I will come to you if I
need money to keep my head up. As for staying, two reasons are against
it. If I am to fight my battle, I must be seen; I must go about--
wherever I am received. So my field is London. That is obvious.
And I shall rest better in a house where my story is not known.'
Two or three questions ensued. Diana had to fortify her fictitious
objection by alluding to her maid's prattle of the household below;
and she excused the hapless, overfed, idle people of those regions.
To Emma it seemed a not unnatural sensitiveness. She came to a settled
resolve in her thoughts, as she said, 'They want a change. London is
their element.'
Feeling that she deceived this true heart, however lightly and
necessarily, Diana warmed to her, forgiving her at last for having netted
and dragged her back to front the enemy; an imposition of horrors, of
which the scene and the travelling with Redworth, the talking of her case
with her most intimate friend as well, had been a distempering foretaste.
They stood up and kissed, parting for the night.
An odd world, where for the sin we have not participated in we must fib
and continue fibbing, she reflected. She did not entirely cheat her
clearer mind, for she perceived that her step in flight had been urged
both by a weak despondency and a blind desperation; also that the world
of a fluid civilization is perforce artificial. But her mind was in the
background of her fevered senses, and when she looked in the glass and
mused on uttering the word, 'Liar!' to the lovely image, her senses were
refreshed, her mind somewhat relieved, the face appeared so sovereignly
defiant of abasement.
Thus did a nature distraught by pain obtain some short lull of repose.
Thus, moreover, by closely reading herself, whom she scourged to excess
that she might in justice be comforted, she gathered an increasing
knowledge of our human constitution, and stored matter for the brain.
CHAPTER XIII
TOUCHING THE FIRST DAYS OF HER PROBATION
The result of her sleeping was, that Diana's humour, locked up overnight,
insisted on an excursion, as she lay with half-buried head and open
eyelids, thinking of the firm of lawyers she had to see; and to whom,
and to the legal profession generally, she would be, under outward
courtesies, nothing other than 'the woman Warwick.' She pursued the
woman Warwick unmercifully through a series of interviews with her
decorous and crudely-minded defenders; accurately perusing them behind
their senior staidness. Her scorching sensitiveness sharpened her
intelligence in regard to the estimate of discarded wives entertained by
men of business and plain men of the world, and she drove the woman
Warwick down their ranks, amazed by the vision of a puppet so unlike to
herself in reality, though identical in situation. That woman, reciting
her side of the case, gained a gradual resemblance to Danvers; she spoke
primly; perpetually the creature aired her handkerchief; she was bent on
softening those sugarloaves, the hard business-men applying to her for
facts. Facts were treated as unworthy of her; mere stuff of the
dustheap, mutton-bones, old shoes; she swam above them in a cocoon of her
spinning, sylphidine, unseizable; and between perplexing and mollifying
the slaves of facts, she saw them at their heels, a tearful fry, abjectly
imitative of her melodramatic performances. The spectacle was presented
of a band of legal gentlemen vociferating mightily for swords and the
onset, like the Austrian empress's Magyars, to vindicate her just and
holy cause. Our Law-courts failing, they threatened Parliament, and for
a last resort, the country! We are not going to be the woman Warwick
without a stir, my brethren.
Emma, an early riser that morning, for the purpose of a private
consultation with Mr. Redworth, found her lying placidly wakeful, to
judge by appearances.
'You have not slept, my dear child?'
'Perfectly,' said Diana, giving her hand and offering the lips. 'I'm
only having a warm morning bath in bed,' she added, in explanation of a
chill moisture that the touch of her exposed skin betrayed; for whatever
the fun of the woman Warwick, there had been sympathetic feminine horrors
in the frame of the sentient woman.
Emma fancied she kissed a quiet sufferer. A few remarks very soon set
her wildly laughing. Both were laughing when Danvers entered the room,
rather guilty, being late; and the sight of the prim-visaged maid she had
been driving among the lawyers kindled Diana's comic imagination to such
a pitch that she ran riot in drolleries, carrying her friend headlong on
the tide.
'I have not laughed so much since you were married,' said Emma.
'Nor I, dear; proving that the bar to it was the ceremony,' said Diana.
She promised to remain at Copsley three days. 'Then for the campaign in
Mr. Redworth's metropolis. I wonder whether I may ask him to get me
lodgings: a sitting-room and two bedrooms. The Crossways has a board up
for letting. I should prefer to be my own tenant; only it would give me
a hundred pounds more to get a substitute's money. I should like to be
at work writing instantly. Ink is my opium, and the pen my nigger, and
he must dig up gold for me. It is written. Danvers, you can make ready
to dress me when I ring.'
Emma helped the beautiful woman to her dressing-gown and the step from
her bed. She had her thoughts, and went down to Redworth at the
breakfast-table, marvelling that any husband other than a madman could
cast such a jewel away. The material loveliness eclipses intellectual
qualities in such reflections.
'He must be mad,' she said, compelled to disburden herself in a congenial
atmosphere; which, however, she infrigidated by her overflow of
exclamatory wonderment--a curtain that shook voluminous folds, luring
Redworth to dreams of the treasure forfeited. He became rigidly
practical.
'Provision will have to be made for her. Lukin must see Mr. Warwick.
She will do wisely to stay with friends in town, mix in company. Women
are the best allies for such cases. Who are her solicitors?'
'They are mine: Braddock, Thorpe, and Simnel.'
'A good firm. She is in safe hands with them. I dare say they may come
to an arrangement.'
'I should wish it. She will never consent.'
Redworth shrugged. A woman's 'never' fell far short of outstripping the
sturdy pedestrian Time, to his mind.
Diana saw him drive off to catch the coach in the valley, regulated to
meet the train, and much though she liked him, she was not sorry that he
had gone. She felt the better clad for it. She would have rejoiced to
witness the departure on wings of all her friends, except Emma, to whom
her coldness overnight had bound her anew warmly in contrition. And yet
her friends were well-beloved by her; but her emotions were distraught.
Emma told her that Mr. Redworth had undertaken to hire a suite of
convenient rooms, and to these she looked forward, the nest among
strangers, where she could begin to write, earning bread: an idea that,
with the pride of independence, conjured the pleasant morning smell of a
bakery about her.
She passed three peaceable days at Copsley, at war only with the luxury
of the house. On the fourth, a letter to Lady Dunstane from Redworth
gave the address of the best lodgings he could find, and Diana started
for London.
She had during a couple of weeks, besides the first fresh exercising of
her pen, as well as the severe gratification of economy, a savage
exultation in passing through the streets on foot and unknown. Save for
the plunges into the office of her solicitors, she could seem to herself
a woman who had never submitted to the yoke. What a pleasure it was,
after finishing a number of pages, to start Eastward toward the lawyer-
regions, full of imaginary cropping incidents, and from that churchyard
Westward, against smoky sunsets, or in welcome fogs, an atom of the
crowd! She had an affection for the crowd. They clothed her. She
laughed at the gloomy forebodings of Danvers concerning the perils
environing ladies in the streets after dark alone. The lights in the
streets after dark and the quick running of her blood, combined to strike
sparks of fancy and inspirit the task of composition at night. This new,
strange, solitary life, cut off from her adulatory society, both by the
shock that made the abyss and by the utter foreignness, threw her in upon
her natural forces, recasting her, and thinning away her memory of her
past days, excepting girlhood, into the remote. She lived with her
girlhood as with a simple little sister. They were two in one, and she
corrected the dreams of the younger, protected and counselled her very
sagely, advising her to love Truth and look always to Reality for her
refreshment. She was ready to say, that no habitable spot on our planet
was healthier and pleasanter than London. As to the perils haunting the
head of Danvers, her experiences assured her of a perfect immunity from
them; and the maligned thoroughfares of a great city, she was ready to
affirm, contrasted favourably with certain hospitable halls.
The long-suffering Fates permitted her for a term to enjoy the generous
delusion. Subsequently a sweet surprise alleviated the shock she had
sustained. Emma Dunstane's carriage was at her door, and Emma entered
her sitting-room, to tell her of having hired a house in the
neighbourhood, looking on the park. She begged to have her for guest,
sorrowfully anticipating the refusal. At least they were to be near one
another.
'You really like this life in lodgings?' asked Emma, to whom the stiff
furniture and narrow apartments were a dreariness, the miserably small
fire of the sitting-room an aspect of cheerless winter.
'I do,' said Diana; 'yes,' she added with some reserve, and smiled at her
damped enthusiasm, 'I can eat when I like, walk, work--and I am working!
My legs and my pen demand it. Let me be independent! Besides, I begin
to learn something of the bigger world outside the one I know, and I
crush my mincing tastes. In return for that, I get a sense of strength
I had not when I was a drawing-room exotic. Much is repulsive. But I am
taken with a passion for reality.'
They spoke of the lawyers, and the calculated period of the trial; of the
husband too, in his inciting belief in the falseness of his wife. 'That
is his excuse,' Diana said, her closed mouth meditatively dimpling the
comers over thoughts of his grounds for fury. He had them, though none
for the incriminating charge. The Sphinx mouth of the married woman at
war and at bay must be left unriddled. She and the law differed in their
interpretation of the dues of wedlock.
But matters referring to her case were secondary with Diana beside the
importance of her storing impressions. Her mind required to hunger for
something, and this Reality which frequently she was forced to loathe,
she forced herself proudly to accept, despite her youthfulness. Her
philosophy swallowed it in the lump, as the great serpent his meal; she
hoped to digest it sleeping likewise. Her visits of curiosity to the Law
Courts, where she stood spying and listening behind a veil, gave her a
great deal of tough substance to digest. There she watched the process
of the tortures to be applied to herself, and hardened her senses for the
ordeal. She saw there the ribbed and shanked old skeleton world on which
our fair fleshly is moulded. After all, your Fool's Paradise is not a
garden to grow in. Charon's ferry-boat is not thicker with phantoms.
They do not live in mind or soul. Chiefly women people it: a certain
class of limp men; women for the most part: they are sown there. And put
their garden under the magnifying glass of intimacy, what do we behold?
A world not better than the world it curtains, only foolisher.
Her conversations with Lady Dunstane brought her at last to the point of
her damped enthusiasm. She related an incident or two occurring in her
career of independence, and they discussed our state of civilization
plainly and gravely, save for the laughing peals her phrases occasionally
provoked; as when she named the intruders and disturbers of solitarily-
faring ladies, 'Cupid's footpads.' Her humour was created to swim on
waters where a prescribed and cultivated prudery should pretend to be
drowning.
'I was getting an exalted idea of English gentlemen, Emmy. "Rich and
rare were the gems she wore." I was ready to vow that one might traverse
the larger island similarly respected. I praised their chivalry.
I thought it a privilege to live in such a land. I cannot describe to
you how delightful it was to me to walk out and home generally protected.
I might have been seriously annoyed but that one of the clerks-
"articled," he called himself--of our lawyers happened to be by.
He offered to guard me, and was amusing with his modest tiptoe air.
No, I trust to the English common man more than ever. He is a man of
honour. I am convinced he is matchless in any other country, except
Ireland. The English gentleman trades on his reputation.'
He was condemned by an afflicted delicacy, the sharpest of critical
tribunals.
Emma bade her not to be too sweeping from a bad example.
'It is not a single one,' said Diana. 'What vexes me and frets me is,
that I must be a prisoner, or allow Danvers to mount guard. And I can't
see the end of it. And Danvers is no magician. She seems to know her
countrymen, though. She warded one of them off, by saying to me: "This
is the crossing, my lady." He fled.'
Lady Dunstane affixed the popular title to the latter kind of gentleman.
She was irritated on her friend's behalf, and against the worrying of her
sisterhood, thinking in her heart, nevertheless, that the passing of a
face and figure like Diana's might inspire honourable emotions, pitiable
for being hapless.
'If you were with me, dear, you would have none of these annoyances,' she
said, pleading forlornly.
Diana smiled to herself. 'No! I should relapse into softness. This
life exactly suits my present temper. My landlady is respectful and
attentive; the little housemaid is a willing slave; Danvers does not
despise them pugnaciously; they make a home for me, and I am learning
daily. Do you know, the less ignorant I become, the more considerate I
am for the ignorance of others--I love them for it.' She squeezed Emma's
hand with more meaning than her friend apprehended. 'So I win my
advantage from the trifles I have to endure. They are really trifles,
and I should once have thought them mountains!'
For the moment Diana stipulated that she might not have to encounter
friends or others at Lady Dunstane's dinner-table, and the season not
being favourable to those gatherings planned by Lady Dunstane in her
project of winning supporters, there was a respite, during which Sir
Lukin worked manfully at his three Clubs to vindicate Diana's name from
the hummers and hawers, gaining half a dozen hot adherents, and a body of
lukewarm, sufficiently stirred to be desirous to see the lady. He worked
with true champion zeal, although an interview granted him by the husband
settled his opinion as to any possibility of the two ever coming to
terms. Also it struck him that if he by misadventure had been a woman
and the wife of such a fellow, by Jove! . . .his apostrophe to the
father of the gods of pagandom signifying the amount of matter Warwick
would have had reason to complain of in earnest. By ricochet his
military mind rebounded from his knowledge of himself to an ardent, faith
in Mrs. Warwick's innocence; for, as there was no resemblance between
them, there must, he deduced, be a difference in their capacity for
enduring the perpetual company of a prig, a stick, a petrified poser.
Moreover, the novel act of advocacy, and the nature of the advocacy, had
effect on him. And then he recalled the scene in the winter beech-woods,
and Diana's wild-deer eyes; her, perfect generosity to a traitor and
fool. How could he have doubted her? Glimpses of the corrupting cause
for it partly penetrated his density: a conqueror of ladies, in mid-
career, doubts them all. Of course he had meant no harm, nothing worse
than some petty philandering with the loveliest woman of her time. And,
by Jove! it was worth the rebuff to behold the Beauty in her wrath.
The reflections of Lothario, however much tending tardily to do justice
to a particular lady, cannot terminate wholesomely. But he became a
gallant partisan. His portrayal of Mr. Warwick to his wife and his
friends was fine caricature. 'The fellow had his hand up at my first
word--stood like a sentinel under inspection. "Understand, Sir Lukin,
that I receive you simply as an acquaintance. As an intermediary,
permit me to state that you are taking superfluous trouble. The case
must proceed. It is final. She is at liberty, in the meantime, to draw
on my bankers for the provision she may need, at the rate of five hundred
pounds per annum." He spoke of "the lady now bearing my name." He was
within an inch of saying "dishonouring." I swear I heard the "dis,"
and he caught himself up. He "again declined any attempt towards
reconciliation." It could "only be founded on evasion of the truth to
be made patent on the day of trial." Half his talk was lawyers' lingo.
The fellow's teeth looked like frost. If Lot's wife had a brother, his
name's Warwick. How Diana Merion, who could have had the pick of the
best of us, ever came to marry a fellow like that, passes my
comprehension, queer creatures as women are! He can ride; that's about
all he can do. I told him Mrs. Warwick had no thought of reconciliation.
"Then, Sir Lukin, you will perceive that we have no standpoint for a
discussion." I told him the point was, for a man of honour not to drag
his wife before the public, as he had no case to stand on--less than
nothing. You should have seen the fellow's face. He shot a sneer up to
his eyelids, and flung his head back. So I said, "Good-day." He marches
me to the door, "with his compliments to Lady Dunstane." I could have
floored him for that. Bless my soul, what fellows the world is made of,
when here's a man, calling himself a gentleman, who, just because he
gets in a rage with his wife for one thing or another--and past all
competition the handsomest woman of her day, and the cleverest, the
nicest, the best of the whole boiling--has her out for a public
horsewhipping, and sets all the idiots of the kingdom against her!
I tried to reason with him. He made as if he were going to sleep
standing.'
Sir Lukin gratified Lady Dunstane by his honest championship of Diana.
And now, in his altered mood (the thrice indebted rogue was just cloudily
conscious of a desire to propitiate his dear wife by serving her friend),
he began a crusade against the scandal-newspapers, going with an Irish
military comrade straight to the editorial offices, and leaving his card
and a warning that the chastisement for print of the name of the lady in
their columns would be personal and condign. Captain Carew Mahony,
albeit unacquainted with Mrs. Warwick, had espoused her cause. She was
a woman, she was an Irishwoman, she was a beautiful woman. She had,
therefore, three positive claims on him as a soldier and a man. Other
Irish gentlemen, animated by the same swelling degrees, were awaking to
the intimation that they might be wanted. Some words were dropped here
and there by General Lord Larrian: he regretted his age and infirmities.
A goodly regiment for a bodyguard might have been selected to protect her
steps in the public streets; when it was bruited that the General had
sent her a present of his great Newfoundland dog, Leander, to attend on
her and impose a required respect. But as it chanced that her address
was unknown to the volunteer constabulary, they had to assuage their
ardour by thinking the dog luckier than they.
The report of the dog was a fact. He arrived one morning at Diana's
lodgings, with a soldier to lead him, and a card to introduce:--the
Hercules of dogs, a very ideal of the species, toweringly big,
benevolent, reputed a rescuer of lives, disdainful of dog-fighting,
devoted to his guardian's office, with a majestic paw to give and the
noblest satisfaction in receiving caresses ever expressed by mortal male
enfolded about the head, kissed, patted, hugged, snuggled, informed that
he was his new mistress's one love and darling.
She despatched a thrilling note of thanks to Lord Larrian, sure of her
touch upon an Irish heart.
The dog Leander soon responded to the attachment of a mistress enamoured
of him. 'He is my husband,' she said to Emma, and started a tear in the
eyes of her smiling friend; 'he promises to trust me, and never to have
the law of me, and to love my friends as his own; so we are certain to
agree.' In rain, snow, sunshine, through the parks and the streets, he
was the shadow of Diana, commanding, on the whole, apart from some
desperate attempts to make him serve as introducer, a civilized behaviour
in the legions of Cupid's footpads. But he helped, innocently enough, to
create an enemy.
CHAPTER XIV
GIVING GLIMPSES OF DIANA UNDER HER CLOUD BEFORE THE WORLD AND OF HER
FURTHER APPRENTICESHIP
As the day of her trial became more closely calculable, Diana's
anticipated alarms receded with the deadening of her heart to meet the
shock. She fancied she had put on proof-armour, unconscious that it was
the turning of the inward flutterer to steel, which supplied her cuirass
and shield. The necessity to brave society, in the character of honest
Defendant, caused but a momentary twitch of the nerves. Her heart beat
regularly, like a serviceable clock; none of her faculties abandoned her
save songfulness, and none belied her, excepting a disposition to
tartness almost venomous in the sarcastic shafts she let fly at friends
interceding with Mr. Warwick to spare his wife, when she had determined
to be tried. A strange fit of childishness overcame her powers of
thinking, and was betrayed in her manner of speaking, though--to herself
her dwindled humour allowed her to appear the towering Britomart. She
pouted contemptuously on hearing that a Mr. Sullivan Smith (a remotely
recollected figure) had besought Mr. Warwick for an interview, and gained
it, by stratagem, 'to bring the man to his senses': but an ultra-Irishman
did not compromise her battle-front, as the busybody supplications of a
personal friend like Mr. Redworth did; and that the latter, without
consulting her, should be 'one of the plaintive crew whining about the
heels of the Plaintiff for a mercy she disdained and rejected' was bitter
to her taste.
'He does not see that unless I go through the fire there is no
justification for this wretched character of mine!' she exclaimed.
Truce, treaty, withdrawal, signified publicly pardon, not exoneration by
any means; and now that she was in armour she had no dread of the public.
So she said. Redworth's being then engaged upon the canvass of a
borough, added to the absurdity of his meddling with the dilemmas of a
woman. 'Dear me, Emma! think of stepping aside from the parliamentary
road to entreat a husband to relent, and arrange the domestic alliance of
a contrary couple! Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance.'
Lady Dunstane pleaded his friendship. She had to quit the field where
such darts were showering.
The first dinner-party was aristocratic, easy to encounter. Lord and
Lady Crane, Lady Pennon, Lord and Lady Esquart, Lord Larrian, Mr. and
Mrs. Montvert of Halford Manor, Lady Singleby, Sir Walter Capperston
friends, admirers of Diana; patrons, in the phrase of the time, of her
father, were the guests. Lady Pennon expected to be amused, and was
gratified, for Diana had only to open her mouth to set the great lady
laughing. She petitioned to have Mrs. Warwick at her table that day
week, because the marquis was dying to make her acquaintance, and begged
to have all her sayings repeated to him; vowed she must be salt in the
desert. 'And remember, I back you through thick and thin,' said Lady
Pennon. To which Diana replied: 'If I am salt in the desert, you are the
spring'; and the old lady protested she must put that down for her book.
The witty Mrs. Warwick, of whom wit was expected, had many incitements to
be guilty of cheap wit; and the beautiful Mrs. Warwick, being able to
pass anything she uttered, gave good and bad alike, under the impulsion
to give out something, that the stripped and shivering Mrs. Warwick might
find a cover in applause. She discovered the social uses of cheap wit;
she laid ambushes for anecdotes, a telling form of it among a people of
no conversational interlocution, especially in the circles depending for
dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal; which have plentiful
crops, yet not sufficient. The old dinner and supper tables at The
Crossways furnished her with an abundant store; and recollection failing,
she invented. Irish anecdotes are always popular in England, as
promoting, besides the wholesome shake of the sides, a kindly sense of
superiority. Anecdotes also are portable, unlike the lightning flash,
which will not go into the pocket; they can be carried home, they are
disbursable at other tables. These were Diana's weapons. She was
perforce the actress of her part.
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