Diana of the Crossways, v4
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George Meredith >> Diana of the Crossways, v4
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She loved him. Full surely did she love him, or such a woman would never
have consented to brave the world; once in their project of flight, and
next, even more endearingly when contemplated, in the sacrifice of her
good name; not omitting that fervent memory of her pained submission,
but a palpitating submission, to his caress. She was in his arms again
at the thought of it. He had melted her, and won the confession of her
senses by a surprise, and he owned that never had woman been so
vigilantly self-guarded or so watchful to keep her lover amused and
aloof. Such a woman deserved long service. But then the long service
deserved its time of harvest. Her surging look of reproach in submission
pointed to the golden time, and as he was a man of honour, pledged to her
for life, he had no remorse, and no scruple in determining to exact her
dated promise, on this occasion deliberately. She was the woman to be
his wife; she was his mind's mate: they had hung apart in deference to
mere scruples too long. During the fierce battle of the Session she
would be his help, his fountain of counsel; and she would be the rosy
gauze-veiled more than cold helper and adviser, the being which would
spur her womanly intelligence to acknowledge, on this occasion
deliberately, the wisdom of the step. They had been so close to it!
She might call it madness then: now it was wisdom. Each had complete
experience of the other, and each vowed the step must be taken.
As to the secret communicated, he exulted in the pardonable cunning of
the impulse turning him back to her house after the guests had gone, and
the dexterous play of his bait on the line, tempting her to guess and
quit her queenly guard. Though it had not been distinctly schemed, the
review of it in that light added to the enjoyment. It had been dimly and
richly conjectured as a hoped result. Small favours from her were really
worth, thrice worth, the utmost from other women. They tasted the
sweeter for the winning of them artfully--an honourable thing in love.
Nature, rewarding the lover's ingenuity and enterprise, inspires him
with old Greek notions of right and wrong: and love is indeed a fluid
mercurial realm, continually shifting the principles of rectitude and
larceny. As long as he means nobly, what is there to condemn him? Not
she in her heart. She was the presiding divinity.
And she, his Tony, that splendid Diana, was the woman the world abused!
Whom will it not abuse?
The slough she would have to plunge in before he could make her his own
with the world's consent, was already up to her throat. She must, and
without further hesitation, be steeped, that he might drag her out,
washed of the imputed defilement, and radiant, as she was in character.
Reflection now said this; not impulse. Her words rang through him.
At every meeting she said things to confound his estimate of the wits of
women, or be remembered for some spirited ring they had: A high wind will
make a dead leaf fly like a bird. He murmured it and flew with her.
She quickened a vein of imagination that gave him entrance to a strangely
brilliant sphere, above his own, where, she sustaining, he too could
soar; and he did, scarce conscious of walking home, undressing, falling
asleep.
The act of waking was an instantaneous recovery of his emotional rapture
of the overnight; nor was it a bar to graver considerations. His Chief
had gone down to a house in the country; his personal business was to see
and sound the followers of their party--after another sight of his Tony.
She would be sure to counsel sagaciously; she always did. She had a
marvellous intuition of the natures of the men he worked with, solely
from his chance descriptions of them; it was as though he started the
bird and she transfixed it. And she should not have matter to rule her
smooth brows: that he swore to. She should sway him as she pleased, be
respected after her prescribed manner. The promise must be exacted;
nothing besides, promise.--You see, Tony, you cannot be less than Tony to
me now, he addressed the gentle phantom of her. Let me have your word,
and I am your servant till the Session ends.--Tony blushes her swarthy
crimson: Diana, fluttering, rebukes her; but Diana is the appeasable
Goddess; Tony is the woman, and she loves him. The glorious Goddess need
not cut them adrift; they can show her a book of honest pages.
Dacier could truthfully say he had worshipped, done knightly service to
the beloved woman, homage to the aureole encircling her. Those friends
of his, covertly congratulating him on her preference, doubtless thought
him more privileged than he was; but they did not know Diana; and they
were welcome, if they would only believe, to the knowledge that he was
at the feet of this most sovereign woman. He despised the particular
Satyr-world which, whatever the nature or station of the woman, crowns
the desecrator, and bestows the title of Fool on the worshipper. He
could have answered veraciously that she had kept him from folly.
Nevertheless the term to service must come. In the assurance of the
approaching term he stood braced against a blowing world; happy as men
are when their muscles are strung for a prize they pluck with the energy
and aim of their whole force.
Letters and morning papers were laid for him to peruse in his dressing-
room. He read his letters before the bath. Not much public news was
expected at the present season. While dressing, he turned over the
sheets of Whitmonby's journal. Dull comments on stale things. Foreign
news. Home news, with the leaders on them, identically dull. Behold the
effect of Journalism: a witty man, sparkling overnight, gets into his
pulpit and proses; because he must say something, and he really knows
nothing.
Journalists have an excessive overestimate of their influence. They
cannot, as Diana said, comparing them with men on the Parliamentary
platform, cannot feel they are aboard the big vessel; they can only
strive to raise a breeze, or find one to swell; and they cannot measure
the stoutness or the greatness of the good ship England. Dacier's
personal ambition was inferior to his desire to extend and strengthen his
England. Parliament was the field, Government the office. How many
conversations had passed between him and Diana on that patriotic dream!
She had often filled his drooping sails; he owned it proudly:--and while
the world, both the hoofed and the rectilinear portions, were biting at
her character! Had he fretted her self-respect? He blamed himself, but
a devoted service must have its term.
The paper of Mr. Tonans was reserved for perusal at breakfast. He
reserved it because Tonans was an opponent, tricksy and surprising now
and then, amusing too; unlikely to afford him serious reflections. The
recent endeavours of his journal to whip the Government-team to a right-
about-face were annoying, preposterous. Dacier had admitted to Diana
that Tonans merited the thanks of the country during 'the discreditable
Railway mania, when his articles had a fine exhortative and prophetic
twang, and had done marked good. Otherwise, as regarded the Ministry,
the veering gusts of Tonans were objectionable: he 'raised the breeze'
wantonly as well as disagreeably. Any one can whip up the populace if he
has the instruments; and Tonans frequently intruded on the Ministry's
prerogative to govern. The journalist was bidding against the statesman.
But such is the condition of a rapidly Radicalizing country! We must
take it as it is.
With a complacent, What now, Dacier fixed his indifferent eyes on the
first column of the leaders. He read, and his eyes grew horny. He
jerked back at each sentence, electrified, staring. The article was
shorter than usual. Total Repeal was named; the precise date when the
Minister intended calling Parliament together to propose it. The 'Total
Repeal' might be guess-work--an Editor's bold stroke; but the details,
the date, were significant of positive information. The Minister's
definite and immediate instructions were exactly stated.
Where could the fellow have got hold of that? Dacier asked the blank
ceiling.
He frowned at vacant corners of the room in an effort to conjure some
speculation indicative of the source.
Had his Chief confided the secret to another and a traitor? Had they
been overheard in his library when the project determined on was put in
plain speech?
The answer was no, impossible, to each question.
He glanced at Diana. She? But it was past midnight when he left her.
And she would never have betrayed him, never, never. To imagine it a
moment was an injury to her.
Where else could he look? It had been specially mentioned in the
communication as a secret by his Chief, who trusted him and no others.
Up to the consultation with the Cabinet, it was a thing to be guarded
like life itself. Not to a soul except Diana would Dacier have breathed
syllable of any secret--and one of this weight!
He ran down the article again. There were the facts; undeniable facts;
and they detonated with audible roaring and rounding echoes of them over
England. How did they come there? As well inquire how man came on the,
face of the earth.
He had to wipe his forehead perpetually. Think as he would in exaltation
of Diana to shelter himself, he was the accused. He might not be the
guilty, but he had opened his mouth; and though it was to her only, and
she, as Dunstane had sworn, true as steel, he could not escape
condemnation. He had virtually betrayed his master. Diana would never
betray her lover, but the thing was in the air as soon as uttered: and
off to the printing-press! Dacier's grotesque fancy under annoyance
pictured a stream of small printer's devils in flight from his babbling
lips.
He consumed bits of breakfast, with a sour confession that a newspaper-
article had hit him at last, and stunningly.
Hat and coat were called for. The state of aimlessness in hot perplexity
demands a show of action. Whither to go first was as obscure as what to
do. Diana said of the Englishman's hat and coat, that she supposed they
were to make him a walking presentment of the house he had shut up behind
him. A shot of the eye at the glass confirmed the likeness, but with a
ruefully wry-faced repudiation of it internally:--Not so shut up! the
reverse of that-a common babbler.
However, there was no doubt of Diana. First he would call on her. The
pleasantest dose in perturbations of the kind is instinctively taken
first. She would console, perhaps direct him to guess how the secret had
leaked. But so suddenly, immediately! It was inexplicable.
Sudden and immediate consequences were experienced. On the steps of his
house his way was blocked by the arrival of Mr. Quintin Manx, who jumped
out of a cab, bellowing interjections and interrogations in a breath.
Was there anything in that article? He had read it at breakfast, and it
had choked him. Dacier was due at a house and could not wait: he said,
rather sharply, he was not responsible for newspaper articles. Quintin
Manx, a senior gentleman and junior landowner, vowed that no Minister
intending to sell the country should treat him as a sheep. The shepherd
might go; he would not carry his flock with him. But was there a twinkle
of probability in the story? . . . that article! Dacier was unable
to inform him; he was very hurried, had to keep an appointment.
'If I let you go, will you come and lunch with me at two?' said Quintin.
To get rid of him, Dacier nodded and agreed.
'Two o'clock, mind!' was bawled at his heels as he walked off with his
long stride, unceremoniously leaving the pursy gentleman of sixty to
settle with his cabman far to the rear.
CHAPTER XXXIV
IN WHICH IT IS DARKLY SEEN HOW THE CRIMINAL'S JUDGE MAY BE LOVE'S
CRIMINAL
When we are losing balance on a precipice we do not think much of the
thing we have clutched for support. Our balance is restored and we have
not fallen; that is the comfortable reflection: we stand as others do,
and we will for the future be warned to avoid the dizzy stations which
cry for resources beyond a common equilibrium, and where a slip
precipitates us to ruin.
When, further, it is a woman planted in a burning blush, having to
idealize her feminine weakness, that she may not rebuke herself for
grovelling, the mean material acts by which she sustains a tottering
position are speedily swallowed in the one pervading flame. She sees
but an ashen curl of the path she has traversed to safety, if anything.
Knowing her lover was to come in the morning, Diana's thoughts dwelt
wholly upon the way to tell him, as tenderly as possible without danger
to herself, that her time for entertaining was over until she had
finished her book; indefinitely, therefore. The apprehension of his
complaining pricked the memory that she had something to forgive. He had
sunk her in her own esteem by compelling her to see her woman's softness.
But how high above all other men her experience of him could place him
notwithstanding! He had bowed to the figure of herself, dearer than
herself, that she set before him: and it was a true figure to the world;
a too fictitious to any but the most knightly of lovers. She forgave;
and a shudder seized her.--Snake! she rebuked the delicious run of fire
through her veins; for she vas not like the idol women of imperishable
type, who are never for a twinkle the prey of the blood: statues created
by man's common desire to impress upon the sex his possessing pattern of
them as domestic decorations.
When she entered the room to Dacier and they touched hands, she rejoiced
in her coolness, without any other feeling or perception active. Not to
be unkind, not too kind: this was her task. She waited for the passage
of commonplaces.
'You slept well, Percy?'
'Yes; and you?'
'I don't think I even dreamed.'
They sat. She noticed the cloud on him and waited for his allusion to
it, anxious concerning him simply.
Dacier flung the hair off his temples. Words of Titanic formation were
hurling in his head at journals and journalists. He muttered his disgust
of them.
'Is there anything to annoy you in the papers to-day?' she asked, and
thought how handsome his face was in anger.
The paper of Mr. Tonans was named by him. 'You have not seen it?
'I have not opened it yet.'
He sprang up. 'The truth is, those fellows can now afford to buy right
and left, corrupt every soul alive! There must have been a spy at the
keyhole. I'm pretty certain--I could swear it was not breathed to any
ear but mine; and there it is this morning in black and white.'
'What is?' cried Diana, turning to him on her chair.
'The thing I told you last night.'
Her lips worked, as if to spell the thing. 'Printed, do you say?' she
rose.
'Printed. In a leading article, loud as a trumpet; a hue and cry running
from end to end of the country. And my Chief has already had the
satisfaction of seeing the secret he confided to me yesterday roared in
all the thoroughfares this morning. They've got the facts: his decision
to propose it, and the date--the whole of it! But who could have
betrayed it?'
For the first time since her midnight expedition she felt a sensation of
the full weight of the deed. She heard thunder.
She tried to disperse the growing burden by an inward summons to contempt
of the journalistic profession, but nothing would come. She tried to
minimize it, and her brain succumbed. Her views of the deed last night
and now throttled reason in two contending clutches. The enormity
swelled its dimensions, taking shape, and pointing magnetically at her.
She stood absolutely, amazedly, bare before it.
'Is it of such very great importance?' she said, like one supplicating
him to lessen it.
'A secret of State? If you ask whether it is of great importance to me,
relatively it is of course. Nothing greater. Personally my conscience
is clear. I never mentioned it--couldn't have mentioned it--to any one
but you. I'm not the man to blab secrets. He spoke to me because he
knew he could trust me. To tell you the truth, I'm brought to a dead
stop. I can't make a guess.
I'm certain, from what he said, that he trusted me only with it:
perfectly certain. I know him well. He was in his library, speaking in
his usual conversational tone, deliberately, nor overloud. He stated
that it was a secret between us.'
'Will it affect him?'
'This article? Why, naturally it will. You ask strange questions. A
Minister coming to a determination like that! It affects him vitally.
The members of the Cabinet are not so devoted . . . . It affects us
all--the whole Party; may split it to pieces! There's no reckoning the
upset right and left. If it were false, it could be refuted; we could
despise it as a trick of journalism. It's true. There's the mischief.
Tonans did not happen to call here last night?--absurd! I left later
than twelve.'
'No, but let me hear,' Diana said hurriedly, for the sake of uttering the
veracious negative and to slur it over. 'Let me hear . . .' She could
not muster an idea.
Her delicious thrilling voice was a comfort to him. He lifted his breast
high and thumped it, trying to smile. 'After all, it's pleasant being
with you, Tony. Give me your hand--you may: I 'm bothered--confounded by
this morning surprise. It was like walking against the muzzle of a
loaded cannon suddenly unmasked. One can't fathom the mischief it will
do. And I shall be suspected, and can't quite protest myself the
spotless innocent. Not even to my heart's mistress! to the wife of the
bosom! I suppose I'm no Roman. You won't give me your hand? Tony, you
might, seeing I am rather . . .'
A rush of scalding tears flooded her eyes.
'Don't touch me,' she said, and forced her sight to look straight at him
through the fiery shower. 'I have done positive mischief?'
'You, my dear Tony?' He doated on her face. 'I don't blame you, I blame
myself. These things should never be breathed. Once in the air, the
devil has hold of them. Don't take it so much to heart. The thing's bad
enough to bear as it is. Tears! Let me have the hand. I came, on my
honour, with the most honest intention to submit to your orders: but if I
see you weeping in sympathy!'
'Oh! for heaven's sake,' she caught her hands away from him, 'don't be
generous. Whip me with scorpions. And don't touch me,' cried Diana.
'Do you understand? You did not name it as a secret. I did not imagine
it to be a secret of immense, immediate importance.'
'But--what?' shouted Dacier, stiffening.
He wanted her positive meaning, as she perceived, having hoped that it
was generally taken and current, and the shock to him over.
'I had . . . I had not a suspicion of doing harm, Percy.'
'But what harm have you done? No riddles!'
His features gave sign of the break in their common ground, the widening
gulf.
'I went . . . it was a curious giddiness: I can't account for it. I
thought . . .'
'Went? You went where?'
'Last night. I would speak intelligibly: my mind has gone. Ah! you
look. It is not so bad as my feeling.'
'But where did you go last night? What!--to Tonans?'
She drooped her head: she saw the track of her route cleaving the
darkness in a demoniacal zig-zag and herself in demon's grip.
'Yes,' she confronted him. 'I went to Mr. Tonans.'
'Why?'
'I went to him--'
'You went alone?'
'I took my maid.'
'Well?'
'It was late when you left me . . .'
'Speak plainly!'
'I am trying: I will tell you all.'
'At once, if you please.'
'I went to him--why? There is no accounting for it. He sneered
constantly at my stale information.'
'You gave him constant information?'
'No: in our ordinary talk. He railed at me for being "out of it." I
must be childish: I went to show him--oh! my vanity! I think I must have
been possessed.'
She watched the hardening of her lover's eyes. They penetrated, and
through them she read herself insufferably.
But it was with hesitation still that he said: 'Then you betrayed me?'
'Percy! I had not a suspicion of mischief.'
'You went straight to this man?'
'Not thinking . . .'
'You sold me to a journalist!'
'I thought it was a secret of a day. I don't think you--no, you did not
tell me to keep it secret. A word from you would have been enough. I
was in extremity.'
Dacier threw his hands up and broke away. He had an impulse to dash from
the room, to get a breath of different air. He stood at the window,
observing tradesmen's carts, housemaids, blank doors, dogs, a beggar
fifer. Her last words recurred to him. He turned: 'You were in
extremity, you said. What is the meaning of that? What extremity?'
Her large dark eyes flashed powerlessly; her shape appeared to have
narrowed; her tongue, too, was a feeble penitent.
'You ask a creature to recall her acts of insanity.'
'There must be some signification in your words, I suppose.'
'I will tell you as clearly as I can. You have the right to be my judge.
I was in extremity--that is, I saw no means . . . I could not write:
it was ruin coming.'
'Ah?--you took payment for playing spy?'
'I fancied I could retrieve . . . Now I see the folly, the baseness.
I was blind.'
'Then you sold me to a journalist for money?'
The intolerable scourge fetched a stifled scream from her and drove her
pacing, but there was no escape; she returned to meet it.
The room was a cage to both of them, and every word of either was a
sting.
'Percy, I did not imagine he would use it--make use of it as he has
done.'
'Not? And when he paid for it?'
'I fancied it would be merely of general service--if any.'
'Distributed; I see: not leading to the exposure of the communicant!'
'You are harsh; but I would not have you milder.'
The meekness of such a mischief-doer was revolting and called for the
lash.
'Do me the favour to name the sum. I am curious to learn what my
imbecility was counted worth.'
'No sum was named.'
'Have I been bought for a song?'
'It was a suggestion--no definite . . . nothing stipulated.'
'You were to receive money!'
'Leave me a bit of veiling! No, you shall behold me the thing I am.
Listen . . . I was poor . . .'
'You might have applied to me.'
'For money! That I could not do:
'Better than betraying me, believe me.'
'I had no thought of betraying. I hope I could have died rather than
consciously betray.'
'Money! My whole fortune was at your, disposal.'
'I was beset with debts, unable to write, and, last night when you left
me, abject. It seemed to me that you disrespected me . . .'
'Last night!' Dacier cried with lashing emphasis.
'It is evident to me that I have the reptile in me, Percy. Or else I am
subject to lose my reason. I went . . . I went like a bullet: I
cannot describe it; I was mad. I need a strong arm, I want help. I am
given to think that I do my best and can be independent; I break down.
I went blindly--now I see it--for the chance of recovering my position,
as the gambler casts; and he wins or loses. With me it is the soul that
is lost. No exact sum was named; thousands were hinted.'
'You are hardly practical on points of business.'
'I was insane.'
'I think you said you slept well after it,' Dacier remarked.
'I had so little the idea of having done evilly, that I slept without a
dream.'
He shrugged:--the consciences of women are such smooth deeps, or running
shallows.
'I have often wondered how your newspaper men got their information,' he
said, and muttered: 'Money-women!' adding: 'Idiots to prime them! And I
one of the leaky vessels! Well, we learn. I have been rather astonished
at times of late at the scraps of secret knowledge displayed by Tonans.
If he flourishes his thousands! The wonder is, he doesn't corrupt the
Ministers' wives. Perhaps he does. Marriage will become a danger-sign
to Parliamentary members. Foreign women do these tricks . . . women
of a well-known stamp. It is now a full year, I think, since I began to
speak to you of secret matters--and congratulated myself, I recollect,
on your thirst for them.'
'Percy, if you suspect that I have uttered one word before last night,
you are wrong. I cannot paint my temptation or my loss of sense last
night. Previously I was blameless. I thirsted, yes; but in the hope of
helping you.'
He looked at her. She perceived how glitteringly loveless his eyes had
grown. It was her punishment; and though the enamoured woman's heart
protested it excessive, she accepted it.
'I can never trust you again,' he said.
'I fear you will not,' she replied.
His coming back to her after the departure of the guests last night shone
on him in splendid colours of single-minded loverlike devotion. 'I came
to speak to my own heart. I thought it would give you pleasure; thought
I could trust you utterly. I had not the slightest conception I was
imperilling my honour . . . !'
He stopped. Her bloodless fixed features revealed an intensity of
anguish that checked him. Only her mouth, a little open for the sharp
breath, appeared dumbly beseeching. Her large eyes met his like steel to
steel, as of one who would die fronting the weapon.
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