Diana of the Crossways, v4
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George Meredith >> Diana of the Crossways, v4
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She was mistaken in imagining that her social vivacity, mixed with
comradeship of the active intellect, was the charm which kept Mr. Percy
Dacier temperate when he well knew her to distinguish him above her
courtiers. Her powers of dazzling kept him tame; they did not stamp her
mark on him. He was one of the order of highly polished men, ignorant of
women, who are impressed for long terms by temporary flashes, that hold
them bound until a fresh impression comes, to confirm or obliterate the
preceding. Affairs of the world he could treat competently; he had a
head for high politics and the management of men; the feminine half of
the world was a confusion and a vexation to his intelligence,
characterless; and one woman at last appearing decipherable, he fancied
it must be owing to her possession of character, a thing prized the more
in women because of his latent doubt of its existence. Character, that
was the mark he aimed at; that moved him to homage as neither sparkling
wit nor incomparable beauty, nor the unusual combination, did. To be
distinguished by a woman of character (beauty and wit for jewellery), was
his minor ambition in life, and if Fortune now gratified it, he owned to
the flattery. It really seemed by every test that she had the quality.
Since the day when he beheld her by the bedside of his dead uncle, and
that one on the French sea-sands, and again at Copsley, ghostly white out
of her wrestle with death, bleeding holy sweat of brow for her friend,
the print of her features had been on him as an index of depth of
character, imposing respect and admiration--a sentiment imperilled by her
consent to fly with him. Her subsequent reserve until they met--by an
accident that the lady at any rate was not responsible for, proved the
quality positively. And the nature of her character, at first suspected,
vanquished him more, by comparison, than her vivid intellect, which he
originally, and still lingeringly, appreciated in condescension, as a
singular accomplishment, thrilling at times, now and then assailably
feminine. But, after her consent to a proposal that caused him
retrospective worldly shudders, and her composed recognition of the
madness, a character capable of holding him in some awe was real majesty,
and it rose to the clear heights, with her mental attributes for
satellites. His tendency to despise women was wholesomely checked by
the experience to justify him in saying, Here is a worthy one! She was
health to him, as well as trusty counsel. Furthermore, where he
respected, he was a governed man, free of the common masculine craze to
scale fortresses for the sake of lowering flags. Whilst under his
impression of her character, he submitted honourably to the ascendancy
of a lady whose conduct suited him and whose preference flattered; whose
presence was very refreshing; whose letters were a stimulant. Her
letters were really running well-waters, not a lover's delusion of the
luminous mind of his lady. They sparkled in review and preserved their
integrity under critical analysis. The reading of them hurried him in
pursuit of her from house to house during the autumn; and as she did not
hint at the shadow his coming cast on her, his conscience was easy.
Regarding their future, his political anxieties were a mountainous
defile, curtaining the outlook. They met at Lockton, where he arrived
after a recent consultation with his Chief, of whom, and the murmurs of
the Cabinet, he spoke to Diana openly, in some dejection.
'They might see he has been breaking with his party for the last four
years,' she said. 'The plunge to be taken is tremendous.'
'But will he? He appears too despondent for a header.'
'We cannot dance on a quaking floor.'
'No; it 's exactly that quake of the floor which gives "much qualms," to
me as well,' said Dacier.
'A treble Neptune's power!' she rejoined, for his particular delectation.
'Enough if he hesitates. I forgive him his nausea. He awaits the
impetus, and it will reach him, and soon. He will not wait for the mob
at his heels, I am certain. A Minister who does that, is a post, and
goes down with the first bursting of the dam. He has tried compromise
and discovered that it does not appease the Fates; is not even a
makeshift-mending at this hour. He is a man of nerves, very sensitively
built; as quick--quicker than a woman, I could almost say, to feel the
tremble of the air-forerunner of imperative changes.'
Dacier brightened fondly. 'You positively describe him; paint him to the
life, without knowing him!'
'I have seen him; and if I paint, whose are the colours?'
'Sometimes I repeat you to him, and I get all the credit,' said Dacier.
'I glow with pride to think of speaking anything that you repeat,' said
Diana, and her eyes were proudly lustreful.
Their love was nourished on these mutual flatteries. Thin food for
passion! The innocence of it sanctioned the meetings and the
appointments to meet. When separated they were interchanging letters,
formally worded in the apostrophe and the termination, but throbbingly
full: or Diana thought so of Percy's letters, with grateful justice; for
his manner of opening his heart in amatory correspondence was to confide
important, secret matters, up to which mark she sprang to reply in
counsel. He proved his affection by trusting her; his respect by his
tempered style: 'A Greenland style of writing,' she had said of an
unhappy gentleman's epistolary compositions resembling it; and now the
same official baldness was to her mind Italianly rich; it called forth
such volumes.
Flatteries that were thin food for passion appeared the simplest
exchanges of courtesy, and her meetings with her lover, judging by the
nature of the discourse they held, so, consequent to their joint interest
in the great crisis anticipated, as to rouse her indignant surprise and a
turn for downright rebellion when the Argus world signified the fact of
its having one eye, or more, wide open.
Debit and Credit, too, her buzzing familiars, insisted on an audience at
each ear, and at the house-door, on her return to London.
CHAPTER XXIX
SHOWS THE APPROACHES OF THE POLITICAL AND THE DOMESTIC CRISIS IN COMPANY
There was not much talk of Diana between Lady Dunstane and her customary
visitor Tom Redworth now. She was shy in speaking of the love-stricken
woman, and more was in his mind for thought than for speech. She some
times wondered how much he might know, ending with the reflection that
little passing around was unknown to him. He had to shut his mind
against thought, against all meditation upon Mrs. Warwick; it was based
scientifically when speculating and calculating, on the material element
--a talisman. Men and women crossing the high seas of life he had found
most readable under that illuminating inquiry, as to their means. An
inspector of sea worthy ships proceeds in like manner. Whence would the
money come? He could not help the bent of his mind; but he could avoid
subjecting her to the talismanic touch. The girl at the Dublin Ball,
the woman at the fire-grate of The Crossways, both in one were his Diana.
Now and then, hearing an ugly whisper, his manful sympathy with the mere
woman in her imprisoned liberty, defended her desperately from charges
not distinctly formulated within him:--'She's not made of stone.' That
was a height of self-abnegation to shake the poor fellow to his roots;
but, then, he had no hopes of his own; and he stuck to it. Her choice of
a man like Dacier, too, of whom Redworth judged highly, showed nobility.
She irradiated the man; but no baseness could be in such an alliance.
If allied, they were bound together for good. The tie-supposing a
villain world not wrong--was only not the sacred tie because of
impediments. The tie!--he deliberated, and said stoutly--No. Men of
Redworth's nature go through sharp contests, though the duration of them
is short, and the tussle of his worship of this woman with the
materialistic turn of his mind was closed by the complete shutting up of
the latter under lock and bar; so that a man, very little of an idealist,
was able to sustain her in the pure imagination--where she did almost
belong to him. She was his, in a sense, because she might have been his-
-but for an incredible extreme of folly. The dark ring of the eclipse
cast by some amazing foolishness round the shining crescent perpetually
in secret claimed the whole sphere of her, by what might have been, while
admitting her lost to him in fact. To Thomas Redworth's mind the lack of
perfect sanity in his conduct at any period of manhood, was so entirely
past belief that he flew at the circumstances confirming the charge, and
had wrestles with the angel of reality, who did but set him dreaming
backward, after flinging him.
He heard at Lady Wathin's that Mrs. Warwick was in town for the winter.
'Mr. Dacier is also in town,' Lady Wathin said, with an acid indication
of the needless mention of it. 'We have not seen him.' She invited
Redworth to meet a few friends at dinner. 'I think you admire Miss
Asper: in my idea a very saint among young women;--and you know what the
young women of our day are. She will be present. She is, you are aware,
England's greatest heiress. Only yesterday, hearing of that poor man Mr.
Warwick's desperate attack of illness--heart!--and of his having no
relative or friend to soothe his pillow,--he is lying in absolute
loneliness,--she offered to go and nurse him! Of course it could not
be done. It is not her place. The beauty of the character of a dear
innocent young girl, with every gratification at command, who could make
the offer, strikes me as unparalleled. She was perfectly sincere--she is
sincerity. She asked at once, Where is he? She wished me to accompany
her on a first visit. I saw a tear.'
Redworth had called at Lady Wathin's for information of the state of Mr.
Warwick, concerning which a rumour was abroad. No stranger to the
vagrant compassionateness of sentimentalists;--rich, idle, conscience-
pricked or praise-catching;--he was unmoved by the tale that Miss Asper
had proposed to go to Mr. Warwick's sick-bed in the uniform of a Sister
of Charity.--'Speaking French!' Lady Wathin exclaimed; and his head
rocked, as he said:
'An Englishman would not be likely to know better.'
'She speaks exquisite French--all European languages, Mr. Redworth.
She does not pretend to wit. To my thinking, depth of sentiment is
a far more feminine accomplishment. It assuredly will be found a
greater treasure.'
The modest man (modest in such matters) was led by degrees to fancy
himself sounded regarding Miss Asper: a piece of sculpture glacially
decorative of the domestic mansion in person, to his thinking; and as to
the nature of it--not a Diana, with all her faults!
If Diana had any faults, in a world and a position so heavily against
her! He laughed to himself, when alone, at the neatly implied bitter
reproach cast on the wife by the forsaken young lady, who proposed to
nurse the abandoned husband of the woman bereaving her of the man she
loved. Sentimentalists enjoy these tricks, the conceiving or the doing
of them--the former mainly, which are cheaper, and equally effective.
Miss Asper might be deficient in wit; this was a form of practical wit,
occasionally exhibited by creatures acting on their instincts. Warwick
he pitied, and he put compulsion on himself to go and see the poor
fellow, the subject of so sublime a generosity. Mr. Warwick sat in an
arm-chair, his legs out straight on the heels, his jaw dragging hollow
cheeks, his hands loosely joined; improving in health, he said. A demure
woman of middle age was in attendance. He did not speak of his wife.
Three times he said disconnectedly, 'I hear reports,' and his eyelids
worked. Redworth talked of general affairs, without those consolatory
efforts, useless between men, which are neither medicine nor good honest
water:--he judged by personal feelings. In consequence, he left an
invalid the sourer for his visit.
Next day he received a briefly-worded summons from Mrs. Warwick.
Crossing the park on the line to Diana's house, he met Miss Paynham, who
grieved to say that Mrs. Warwick could not give her a sitting; and in a
still mournfuller tone, imagined he would find her at home, and alone by
this time. 'I left no one but Mr. Dacier there,' she observed.
'Mrs. Warwick will be disengaged to-morrow, no doubt,' he said
consolingly.
Her head performed the negative. 'They talk politics, and she becomes
animated, loses her pose. I will persevere, though I fear I have
undertaken a task too much for me.'
'I am deeply indebted to you for the attempt.' Redworth bowed to her and
set his face to the Abbey-towers, which wore a different aspect in the
smoked grey light since his two minutes of colloquy. He had previously
noticed that meetings with Miss Paynham produced a similar effect on him,
a not so very impressionable man. And how was it done? She told him
nothing he did not know or guess.
Diana was alone. Her manner, after the greeting, seemed feverish. She
had not to excuse herself for abruptness when he heard the nature of the
subject. Her counsellor and friend was informed, in feminine style, that
she had, requested him to call, for the purpose of consulting him with
regard to a matter she had decided upon; and it was, the sale of The
Crossways. She said that it would have gone to her heart once; she
supposed she had lost her affection for the place, or had got the better
of her superstitions. She spoke lamely as well as bluntly. The place
was hers, she said; her own property. Her husband could not interdict a
sale.
Redworth addressed himself to her smothered antagonism. 'Even if he had
rights, as they are termed . . . I think you might count on their not
being pressed.'
'I have been told of illness.' She tapped her foot on the floor.
'His present state of health is unequal to his ordinary duties.'
'Emma Dunstane is fully supplied with the latest intelligence, Mr.
Redworth. You know the source.'
'I mention it simply . . .'
'Yes, yes. What I have to protest is, that in this respect I am free.
The Law has me fast, but leaves me its legal view of my small property.
I have no authority over me. I can do as I please, in this, without a
collision, or the dread of one. It is the married woman's perpetual
dread when she ventures a step. Your Law originally presumed her a
China-footed animal. And more, I have a claim for maintenance.'
She crimsoned angrily.
Redworth showed a look of pleasure, hard to understand. 'The application
would be sufficient, I fancy,' he said.
'It should have been offered.'
'Did you not decline it?'
'I declined to apply for it. I thought--But, Mr. Redworth, another
thing, concerning us all: I want very much to hear your ideas of the
prospects of the League; because I know you have ideas. The leaders are
terrible men; they fascinate me. They appear to move with an army of
facts. They are certainly carrying the country. I am obliged to think
them sincere. Common agitators would not hold together, as they do.
They gather strength each year. If their statistics are not illusory--
an army of phantoms instead of one of facts; and they knock at my head
without admission, I have to confess; they must win.'
'Ultimately, it is quite calculable that they will win,' said Redworth;
and he was led to discourse of rates and duties and prohibitive tariffs
to a woman surprisingly athirst, curious for every scrap of intelligence
relating to the power, organization, and schemes of the League. 'Common
sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation,' he said. 'Rap
it unremittingly on crowds of the thickest of human heads, and the
response comes at last to sweep all before it. You may reckon that the
country will beat the landlords--for that is our question. Is it one of
your political themes?'
'I am not presumptuous to such a degree:--a poor scholar,' Diana replied.
'Women striving to lift their heads among men deserve the sarcasm.'
He denied that any sarcasm was intended, and the lesson continued. When
she had shaped in her mind some portion of his knowledge of the subject,
she reverted casually to her practical business. Would he undertake to
try to obtain a purchaser of The Crossways, at the price he might deem
reasonable? She left the price entirely to his judgement. And now she
had determined to part with the old place, the sooner the better! She
said that smiling; and Redworth smiled, outwardly and inwardly. Her talk
of her affairs was clearer to him than her curiosity for the mysteries of
the League. He gained kind looks besides warm thanks by the promise to
seek a purchaser; especially by his avoidance of prying queries. She
wanted just this excellent automaton fac-totum; and she referred him to
Mr. Braddock for the title-deeds, et caetera--the chirping phrase of
ladies happily washing their hands of the mean details of business.
'How of your last work?' he asked her.
Serenest equanimity rejoined: 'As I anticipated, it is not popular. The
critics are of one mind with the public. You may have noticed, they
rarely flower above that rocky surface. THE CANTATRICE sings them a
false note. My next will probably please them less.'
Her mobile lips and brows shot the faint upper-wreath of a smile
hovering. It was designed to display her philosophy.
'And what is the name of your next?' said he.
'I name it THE MAN OF TWO MINDS, if you can allow that to be in nature.'
'Contra-distinguished from the woman?'
'Oh! you must first believe the woman to have one.'
'You are working on it?'
'By fits. And I forgot, Mr. Redworth: I have mislaid my receipts, and
must ask you for the address of your wine-merchant;--or, will you?
Several dozen of the same wines. I can trust him to be in awe of you,
and the good repute of my table depends on his honesty.'
Redworth took the definite order for a large supply of wine.
She gave him her hand: a lost hand, dear to hold, needing to be guided,
he feared. For him, it was merely a hand, cut off from the wrist; and he
had performed that executive part! A wiser man would now have been the
lord of it . . . . So he felt, with his burning wish to protect and
cherish the beloved woman, while saying: 'If we find a speedy bidder for
The Crossways, you will have to thank our railways.'
'You!' said Diana, confident in his ability to do every-thing of the
practical kind.
Her ingenuousness tickled him. He missed her comic touches upon men and
things, but the fever shown by her manner accounted for it.
As soon as he left her, she was writing to the lover who had an hour
previously been hearing her voice; the note of her theme being Party;
and how to serve it, when to sacrifice it to the Country. She wrote,
carolling bars of the Puritani marches; and such will passion do, that
her choice of music was quite in harmony with her theme. The martially-
amorous melodies of Italian Opera in those days fostered a passion
challenged to intrepidity from the heart of softness; gliding at the same
time, and putting warm blood even into dull arithmetical figures which
might be important to her lover, her hero fronting battle. She condensed
Redworth's information skilfully, heartily giving it and whatever she had
imbibed, as her own, down to the remark: 'Common sense in questions of
justice, is a weapon that makes way into human heads and wins the certain
majority, if we strike with it incessantly.' Whether anything she wrote
was her own, mattered little: the savour of Percy's praise, which none
could share with her, made it instantly all her own. Besides she wrote
to strengthen him; she naturally laid her friends and the world under
contribution; and no other sort of writing was possible. Percy had not a
common interest in fiction; still less for high comedy. He liked the
broad laugh when he deigned to open books of that sort; puns and strong
flavours and harlequin surprises; and her work would not admit of them,
however great her willingness to force her hand for his amusement:
consequently her inventiveness deadened. She had to cease whipping it.
'My poor old London cabhorse of a pen shall go to grass!' she sighed,
looking to the sale of The Crossways for money; looking no farther.
Those marshalled battalions of Debit and Credit were in hostile order,
the weaker simply devoted to fighting for delay, when a winged messenger
bearing the form of old Mr. Braddock descended to her with the
reconciling news that a hermit bachelor, an acquaintance of Mr.
Redworth's--both of whom wore a gloomy hue in her mind immediately--had
offered a sum for the purchase of The Crossways. Considering the out-of-
the-way district, Mr. Braddock thought it an excellent price to get. She
thought the reverse, but confessed that double the sum would not have
altered her opinion. Double the sum scarcely counted for the service she
required of it for much more than a year. The money was paid shortly
after into her Bank, and then she enjoyed the contemptuous felicity of
tossing meat to her lions, tigers, wolves, and jackals, who, but for the
fortunate intervention, would have been feeding on her. These menagerie
beasts of prey were the lady's tradesmen, Debit's hungry-brood. She had
a rapid glimpse of a false position in regarding that legitimate band so
scornfully: another glimpse likewise of a day to come when they might not
be stopped at the door. She was running a race with something; with
what? It was unnamed; it ran in a shroud.
At times she surprised her heart violently beating when there had not
been a thought to set it in motion. She traced it once to the words,
'next year,' incidentally mentioned. 'Free,' was a word that checked her
throbs, as at a question of life or death. Her solitude, excepting the
hours of sleep, if then, was a time of irregular breathing. The
something unnamed, running beside her, became a dreadful familiar; the
race between them past contemplation for ghastliness. 'But this is your
Law!' she cried to the world, while blinding her eyes against a peep of
the shrouded features.
Singularly, she had but to abandon hope, and the shadowy figure vanished,
the tragic race was ended. How to live and think, and not to hope: the
slave of passion had this problem before her.
Other tasks were supportable, though one seemed hard at moments and was
not passive; it attacked her. The men and women of her circle
derisively, unanimously, disbelieved in an innocence that forfeited
reputation. Women were complimentarily assumed to be not such gaping
idiots. And as the weeks advanced, a change came over Percy. The
gentleman had grown restless at covert congratulations, hollow to his
knowledge, however much caressing vanity, and therefore secretly a wound
to it. One day, after sitting silent, he bluntly proposed to break 'this
foolish trifling'; just in his old manner, though not so honourably; not
very definitely either. Her hand was taken.
'I feared that dumbness!' Diana said, letting her hand go, but keeping
her composure. 'My friend Percy, I am not a lion-tamer, and if you are
of those animals, we break the chapter. Plainly you think that where
there appears to be a choice of fools, the woman is distinctly designed
for the person. Drop my hand, or I shall repeat the fable of the Goose
with the Golden Eggs.'
'Fables are applicable only in the school-room,' said he; and he ventured
on 'Tony!'
'I vowed an oath to my dear Emma--as good as to the heavens! and that
of itself would stay me from being insane again.' She released herself.
'Signor Percy, you teach me to suspect you of having an idle wish to
pluck your plaything to pieces:--to boast of it? Ah! my friend, I
fancied I was of more value to you. You must come less often; even to
not at all, if you are one of those idols with feet of clay which leave
the print of their steps in a room; or fall and crush the silly
idolizer.'
'But surely you know . . .' said he. 'We can't have to wait long.'
He looked full of hopeful meanings.
'A reason . . . !' She kept down her breath. A longdrawn sigh
followed, through parted lips. She had a sensation of horror.
'And I cannot propose to nurse him--Emma will not hear of it,' she said.
'I dare not. Hypocrite to that extreme? Oh, no! But I must hear
nothing. As it is, I am haunted. Now let this pass. Tony me no Tonies;
I am stony to such whimpering business now we are in the van of the
struggle. All round us it sounds like war. Last night I had Mr. Tonans
dining here;--he wished to meet you; and you must have a private meeting
with Mr. Whitmonby: he will be useful; others as well. You are wrong in
affecting contempt of the Press. It perches you on a rock; but the
swimmer in politics knows what draws the tides. Your own people, your
set, your class, are a drag to you, like inherited superstitions to the
wakening brain. The greater the glory! For you see the lead you take?
You are saving your class. They should lead, and will, if they prove
worthy in the crisis. Their curious error is to believe in the stability
of a monumental position.'
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