Diana of the Crossways, v5

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'Well, it's cheap, it ain't bad; it's cooling. But it ain't refreshing.'

'Just what I reckoned all that newfangle rubbish.'

Without a consultation, the conservatives in beverage filed with a smart
turn about, worthy of veterans at parade on the drill-ground, into a
public-house; and a dialogue chiefly remarkable for absence of point,
furnished matter to the politician's head of the hearer. Provided that
their beer was unadulterated! Beer they would have; and why not, in
weather like this? But how to make the publican honest! And he was not
the only trickster preying on the multitudinous poor copper crowd,
rightly to be protected by the silver and the golden. Revelations of the
arts practised to plump them with raw-earth and minerals in the guise of
nourishment, had recently knocked at the door of the general conscience
and obtained a civil reply from the footman. Repulsive as the thought
was to one still holding to Whiggish Liberalism, though flying various
Radical kites, he was caught by the decisive ultratorrent, and whirled
to amid the necessity for the interference of the State, to stop
the poisoning of the poor. Upper classes have never legislated
systematically in their interests; and quid . . . rabidae tradis ovile
lupae? says one of the multitude. We may be seeing fangs of wolves
where fleeces waxed. The State that makes it a vital principle to
concern itself with the helpless poor, meets instead of waiting for
Democracy; which is a perilous flood but when it is dammed. Or else, in
course of time, luxurious yachting, my friend, will encounter other reefs
and breakers than briny ocean's! Capital, whereat Diana Warwick aimed
her superbest sneer, has its instant duties. She theorized on the side
of poverty, and might do so: he had no right to be theorizing on the side
of riches. Across St. George's Channel, the cry for humanity in Capital
was an agony. He ought to be there, doing, not cogitating. The post of
Irish Secretary must be won by real service founded on absolute local
knowledge. Yes, and sympathy, if you like; but sympathy is for proving,
not prating . . . .

These were the meditations of a man in love; veins, arteries, headpiece
in love, and constantly brooding at a solitary height over the beautiful
coveted object; only too bewildered by her multifarious evanescent
feminine evasions, as of colours on a ruffle water, to think of pouncing
for he could do nothing to soften, nothing that seemed to please her: and
all the while, the motive of her mind impelled him in reflection beyond
practicable limits: even pointing him to apt quotations! Either he
thought within her thoughts, or his own were at her disposal. Nor was it
sufficient for him to be sensible of her influence, to restrain the
impetus he took from her. He had already wedded her morally, and much
that he did, as well as whatever he debated, came of Diana; more than if
they had been coupled, when his downright practical good sense could have
spoken. She held him suspended, swaying him in that posture; and he was
not a whit ashamed of it. The beloved woman was throned on the very
highest of the man.

Furthermore, not being encouraged, he had his peculiar reason for delay,
though now he could offer her wealth. She had once in his hearing
derided the unpleasant hiss of the ungainly English matron's title of
Mrs. There was no harm in the accustomed title, to his taste; but she
disliking it, he did the same, on her special behalf; and the prospect,
funereally draped, of a title sweeter-sounding to her ears, was above his
horizon. Bear in mind, that he underwent the reverse of encouragement.
Any small thing to please her was magnified, and the anticipation of it
nerved the modest hopes of one who deemed himself and any man alive
deeply her inferior.

Such was the mood of the lover condemned to hear another malignant
scandal defiling the name of the woman he worshipped. Sir Lukin
Dunstane, extremely hurried, bumped him on the lower step of the busy
Bank, and said:

'Pardon!' and 'Ha! Redwarth! making money?'

'Why, what are you up to down here?' he was asked, and he answered:
'Down to the Tower, to an officer quartered there. Not bad quarters,
but an infernal distance. Business.'

Having cloaked his expedition to the distance with the comprehensive
word, he repeated it; by which he feared he had rendered it too
significant, and he said: 'No, no; nothing particular'; and that caused
the secret he contained to swell in his breast rebelliously, informing
the candid creature of the fact of his hating to lie: whereupon thus he
poured himself out, in the quieter bustle of an alley, off the main
thoroughfare. 'You're a friend of hers. I 'm sure you care for her
reputation; you 're an old friend of hers, and she's my wife's dearest
friend; and I'm fond of her too; and I ought to be, and ought to know,
and do know:--pure? Strike off my fist if there's a spot on her
character! And a scoundrel like that fellow Wroxeter! Damnedest rage
I ever was in!--Swears . . . down at Lockton . . . when she was a
girl. Why, Redworth, I can tell you, when Diana Warwick was a girl!'

Redworth stopped him. 'Did he say it in your presence?'

Sir Lukin was drawn-up by the harsh question. 'Well, no; not exactly.'
He tried to hesitate, but he was in the hot vein of a confidence and he
wanted advice. 'The cur said it to a woman--hang the woman! And she
hates Diana Warwick: I can't tell why--a regular snake's hate. By Jove!
how women carp hate!'

'Who is the woman?' said Redworth.

Sir Lukin complained of the mob at his elbows. 'I don't like mentioning
names here.'

A convenient open door of offices invited him to drag his receptacle, and
possible counsellor, into the passage, where immediately he bethought him
of a postponement of the distinct communication; but the vein was too
hot. 'I say, Redworth, I wish you'd dine with me. Let's drive up to my
Club.--Very well, two words. And I warn you, I shall call him out, and
make it appear it 's about another woman, who'll like nothing so much, if
I know the Jezebel. Some women are hussies, let 'em be handsome as
houris. And she's a fire-ship; by heaven, she is! Come, you're a friend
of my wife's, but you're a man of the world and my friend, and you know
how fellows are tempted, Tom Redworth.--Cur though he is, he's likely to
step out and receive a lesson.--Well, he's the favoured cavalier for the
present . . . h'm . . . Fryar-Gannett. Swears he told her,
circumstantially; and it was down at Lockton, when Diana Warwick was a
girl. Swears she'll spit her venom at her, so that Diana Warwick shan't
hold her head up in London Society, what with that cur Wroxeter, Old
Dannisburgh, and Dacier. And it does count a list, doesn't it? confound
the handsome hag! She's jealous of a dark rival. I've been down to
Colonel Hartswood at the Tower, and he thinks Wroxeter deserves
horsewhipping, and we may manage it. I know you 're dead against
duelling; and so am I, on my honour. But you see there are cases where
a lady must be protected; and anything new, left to circulate against a
lady who has been talked of twice--Oh, by Jove! it must be stopped. If
she has a male friend on earth, it must be stopped on the spot.'

Redworth eyed Sir Lukin curiously through his wrath.

'We'll drive up to your Club,' he said.

'Hartswood dines with me this evening, to confer,' rejoined Sir Lukin.
'Will you meet him?'

'I can't,' said Redworth, 'I have to see a lady, whose affairs I have
been attending to in the City; and I 'm engaged for the evening. You
perceive, my good fellow,' he resumed, as they rolled along, 'this is a
delicate business. You have to consider your wife. Mrs. Warwick's, name
won't come up, but another woman's will.'

'I meet Wroxeter at a gambling-house he frequents, and publicly call him
cheat--slap his face, if need be.'

'Sure to!' repeated Redworth. 'No stupid pretext will quash the woman's
name. Now, such a thing as a duel would give pain enough.'

'Of course; I understand,' Sir Lukin nodded his clear comprehension.
'But what is it you advise, to trounce the scoundrel, and silence him?'

'Leave it to me for a day. Let me have your word that you won't take a
step: positively--neither you nor Colonel Hartswood. I'll see you by
appointment at your Club.' Redworth looked up over the chimneys.
'We 're going to have a storm and a gale, I can tell you.'

'Gale and storm!' cried Sir Lukin; 'what has that got to do with it?'

'Think of something else for, a time.'

'And that brute of a woman--deuced handsome she is!--if you care for fair
women, Redworth:--she's a Venus, jumped slap out of the waves, and the
Devil for sire--that you learn: running about, sowing her lies. She's a
yellow witch. Oh! but she's a shameless minx. And a black-leg cur like
Wroxeter! Any woman intimate with a fellow like that, stamps herself.
I loathe her. Sort of woman who swears in the morning you're the only
man on earth; and next day--that evening-engaged!--fee to Polly Hopkins
--and it's a gentleman, a nobleman, my lord!--been going on behind your
back half the season!--and she isn't hissed when she abuses a lady, a
saint in comparison! You know the world, old fellow:--Brighton,
Richmond, visits to a friend as deep in the bog. How Fryar-Gunnett--
a man, after all--can stand it! And drives of an afternoon for an
airing-by heaven! You're out of that mess, Redworth: not much taste for
the sex; and you're right, you're lucky. Upon my word, the corruption of
society in the present day is awful; it's appalling.--I rattled at her:
and oh! dear me, perks on her hind heels and defies me to prove: and
she's no pretender, but hopes she's as good as any of my "chaste Dianas."
My dear old friend, it's when you come upon women of that kind you have a
sickener. And I'm bound by the best there is in a man-honour, gratitude,
all the' list--to defend Diana Warwick.'

'So, you see, for your wife's sake, your name can't be hung on a woman of
that kind,' said Redworth. 'I'll call here the day after to-morrow at
three P.M.'

Sir Lukin descended and vainly pressed Redworth to run up into his Club
for refreshment. Said he roguishly:

'Who 's the lady?'

The tone threw Redworth on his frankness.

'The lady I 've been doing business for in the City, is Miss Paynham.'

'I saw her once at Copsley; good-looking. Cleverish?'

'She has ability.'

Entering his Club, Sir Lukin was accosted in the reading-room by a
cavalry officer, a Colonel Launay, an old Harrovian, who stood at the
window and asked him whether it was not Tom Redworth in the cab.
Another, of the same School, standing squared before a sheet of one of
the evening newspapers, heard the name and joined them, saying: 'Tom
Redworth is going to be married, some fellow told me.'

'He'll make a deuced good husband to any woman--if it's true,' said Sir
Lukin, with Miss Paynham ringing in his head. 'He's a cold-blooded old
boy, and likes women for their intellects.'

Colonel Launay hummed in meditative emphasis. He stared at vacancy with
a tranced eye, and turning a similar gaze on Sir Lukin, as if through
him, burst out: 'Oh, by George, I say, what a hugging that woman 'll
get!'

The cocking of ears and queries of Sir Lukin put him to the test of his
right to the remark; for it sounded of occult acquaintance with
interesting subterranean facts; and there was a communication, in brief
syllables and the dot language, crudely masculine. Immensely surprised,
Sir Lukin exclaimed: 'Of course! when fellows live quietly and are
careful of themselves. Ah! you may think you know a man for years, and
you don't: you don't know more than an inch or two of him. Why, of
course, Tom Redworth would be uxorious--the very man! And tell us what
has become of the Firefly now? One never sees her. Didn't complain?'

'Very much the contrary.'

Both gentlemen were grave, believing their knowledge in the subterranean
world of a wealthy city to give them a positive cognizance of female
humanity; and the substance of Colonel Launay's communication had its
impressiveness for them.

'Well, it's a turn right-about-face for me,' said Sir Lukin. 'What a
world we live in! I fancy I've hit on the woman he means to marry;--had
an idea of another woman once; but he's one of your friendly fellows with
women. That's how it was I took him for a fish. Great mistake, I admit.
But Tom Redworth 's a man of morals after all; and when those men do
break loose for a plunge--ha! Have you ever boxed with him? Well, he
keeps himself in training, I can tell you.'

Sir Lukin's round of visits drew him at night to Lady Singleby's, where
he sighted the identical young lady of his thoughts, Miss Paynham,
temporarily a guest of the house; and he talked to her of Redworth,
and had the satisfaction to spy a blush, a rageing blush: which avowal
presented her to his view as an exceedingly good-looking girl; so that
he began mentally to praise Redworth for a manly superiority to small
trifles and the world's tattle.

'You saw him to-day,' he said.

She answered: 'Yes. He goes down to Copsley tomorrow.'

'I think not,' said Sir Lukin.'

'I have it from him.' She closed her eyelids in speaking.

'He and I have some rather serious business in town.'

'Serious?'

'Don't be alarmed: not concerning him.'

'Whom, then? You have told me so much--I have a right to know.'

'Not an atom of danger, I assure you?'

'It concerns Mrs. Warwick!' said she.

Sir Lukin thought the guess extraordinary. He preserved an impenetrable
air. But he had spoken enough to set that giddy head spinning.

Nowhere during the night was Mrs. Fryar-Gannett visible. Earlier than
usual, she was riding next day in the Row, alone for perhaps two minutes,
and Sir Lukin passed her, formally saluting. He could not help the look
behind him, she sat so bewitchingly on horseback! He looked, and behold,
her riding-whip was raised erect from the elbow. It was his horse that
wheeled; compulsorily he was borne at a short canter to her side.

'Your commands?'

The handsome Amabel threw him a sombre glance from the corners of her
uplifted eyelids; and snakish he felt it; but her colour and the line of
her face went well with sullenness; and, her arts of fascination cast
aside, she fascinated him more in seeming homelier, girlish. If the
trial of her beauty of a woman in a temper can bear the strain, she has
attractive lures indeed; irresistible to the amorous idler: and when, in
addition, being the guilty person, she plays the injured, her show of
temper on the taking face pitches him into perplexity with his own
emotions, creating a desire to strike and be stricken, howl and set
howling, which is of the happiest augury for tender reconcilement,
on the terms of the gentleman on his kneecap.

'You've been doing a pretty thing!' she said, and briefly she named her
house and half an hour, and flew. Sir Lukin was left to admire the
figure of the horsewoman. Really, her figure had an air of vindicating
her successfully, except for the poison she spat at Diana Warwick. And
what pretty thing had he been doing? He reviewed dozens of speculations
until the impossibility of seizing one determined him to go to Mrs.
Fryar-Gunnett at the end of the half-hour--'Just to see what these women
have to say for themselves.'

Some big advance drops of Redworth's thunderstorm drawing gloomily
overhead, warned him to be quick and get his horse into stables.
Dismounted, the sensational man was irresolute, suspecting a female trap.
But curiosity, combined with the instinctive turning of his nose in the
direction of the lady's house, led him thither, to an accompaniment of
celestial growls, which impressed him, judging by that naughty-girl face
of hers and the woman's tongue she had, as a likely prelude to the scene
to come below.

CHAPTER XLII

THE PENULTIMATE: SHOWING A FINAL STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY AND RUN INTO
HARNESS

The prophet of the storm had forgotten his prediction; which, however,
was of small concern to him, apart from the ducking he received midway
between the valley and the heights of Copsley; whither he was bound,
on a mission so serious that, according to his custom in such instances,
he chose to take counsel of his active legs: an adviseable course when
the brain wants clearing and the heart fortifying. Diana's face was
clearly before him through the deluge; now in ogle features, the dimple
running from her mouth, the dark bright eyes and cut of eyelids, and
nostrils alive under their lightning; now inkier whole radiant smile, or
musefully listening, nursing a thought. Or she was obscured, and he felt
the face. The individuality of it had him by the heart, beyond his
powers of visioning. On his arrival, he stood in the hall, adrip like
one of the trees of the lawn, laughing at Lady Dunstane's anxious
exclamations. His portmanteau had come and he was expected; she hurried
out at the first ringing of the bell, to greet and reproach him for
walking in such weather.

'Diana has left me,' she said, when he reappeared in dry clothing.
'We are neighbours; she has taken cottage-lodgings at Selshall, about an
hour's walk:--one of her wild dreams of independence. Are you
disappointed?'

'I am,' Redworth confessed.

Emma coloured. 'She requires an immense deal of humouring at present.
The fit will wear off; only we must wait for it. Any menace to her
precious liberty makes her prickly. She is passing the day with the
Pettigrews, who have taken a place near her village for a month. She
promised to dine and sleep here, if she returned in time. What is your
news?'

'Nothing; the world wags on.'

'You have nothing special to tell her?'

'Nothing'; he hummed; 'nothing, I fancy, that she does not know.'

'You said you were disappointed.'

'It's always a pleasure to see her.'

'Even in her worst moods, I find it so.'

'Oh! moods!' quoth Redworth.

'My friend, they are to be reckoned, with women.'

'Certainly; what I meant was, that I don't count them against women.'

'Good: but my meaning was . . . I think I remember your once comparing
them and the weather; and you spoke of the "one point more variable in
women." You may forestall your storms. There is no calculating the
effect of a few little words at a wrong season.'

'With women! I suppose not. I have no pretension to a knowledge of the
sex.'

Emma imagined she had spoken plainly enough, if he had immediate designs;
and she was not sure of that, and wished rather to shun his confidences
while Tony was in her young widowhood, revelling in her joy of liberty.
By and by, was her thought: perhaps next year. She dreaded Tony's
refusal of the yoke, and her iron-hardness to the dearest of men
proposing it; and moreover, her further to be apprehended holding to the
refusal, for the sake of consistency, if it was once uttered. For her
own sake, she shrank from hearing intentions, that distressing the good
man, she would have to discountenance. His candour in confessing
disappointment, and his open face, his excellent sense too, gave her some
assurance of his not being foolishly impetuous. After he had read to her
for an hour, as his habit was on evenings and wet days, their discussion
of this and that in the book lulled any doubts she had of his prudence,
enough to render it even a dubious point whether she might be speculating
upon a wealthy bachelor in the old-fashioned ultra-feminine manner; the
which she so abhorred that she rejected the idea. Consequently,
Redworth's proposal to walk down to the valley for Diana, and bring her
back, struck her as natural when a shaft of western sunshine from a
whitened edge of raincloud struck her windows. She let him go without an
intimated monition or a thought of one; thinking simply that her Tony
would be more likely to come, having him for escort. Those are silly
women who are always imagining designs and intrigues and future
palpitations in the commonest actions of either sex. Emma Dunstane
leaned to the contrast between herself and them.

Danvers was at the house about sunset, reporting her mistress to be
on her way, with Mr. Redworth. The maid's tale of the dreadful state of
the lanes, accounted for their tardiness; and besides the sunset had been
magnificent. Diana knocked at Emma's bedroom door, to say, outside,
hurriedly in passing, how splendid the sunset had been, and beg for an
extra five minutes. Taking full fifteen, she swam into the drawing-room,
lively with kisses on Emma's cheeks, and excuses, referring her
misconduct in being late to the seductions of 'Sol' in his glory.
Redworth said he had rarely seen so wonderful a sunset. The result of
their unanimity stirred Emma's bosom to match-making regrets; and the
walk of the pair together, alone under the propitious laming heavens,
appeared to her now as an opportunity lost. From sisterly sympathy, she
fancied she could understand Tony's liberty-loving reluctance: she had no
comprehension of the backwardness of the man beholding the dear woman
handsomer than in her maiden or her married time: and sprightlier as
well. She chatted deliciously, and drew Redworth to talk his best on his
choicer subjects, playing over them like a fide-wisp, determined at once
to flounder him and to make him shine. Her tender esteem for the man was
transparent through it all; and Emma, whose evening had gone happily
between them, said to her, in their privacy, before parting: 'You seemed
to have been inspired by "Sol," my dear. You do like him, don't you?'

Diana vowed she adored him; and with a face of laughter in rosy
suffusion, put Sol for Redworth, Redworth for Sol; but, watchful of
Emma's visage, said finally: 'If you mean the mortal man, I think him up
to almost all your hyperboles--as far as men go; and he departed to his
night's rest, which I hope will be good, like a king. Not to admire him,
would argue me senseless, heartless. I do; I have reason to.'

'And you make him the butt of your ridicule, Tony.'

'No; I said "like a king"; and he is one. He has, to me, morally the
grandeur of your Sol sinking, Caesar stabbed, Cato on the sword-point.
He is Roman, Spartan, Imperial; English, if you like, the pick, of the
land. It is an honour to call him friend, and I do trust he will choose
the pick among us, to make her a happy woman--if she's for running in
harness. There, I can't say more.'

Emma had to be satisfied with it, for the present.

They were astonished at breakfast by seeing Sir Lukin ride past the
windows. He entered with the veritable appetite of a cavalier who had
ridden from London fasting; and why he had come at that early hour, he
was too hungry to explain. The ladies retired to read their letters by
the morning's post; whereupon Sir Lukin called to Redworth; 'I met that
woman in the park yesterday, and had to stand a volley. I went beating
about London for you all the afternoon and evening. She swears you rated
her like a scullery wench, and threatened to ruin Wroxeter. Did you see
him? She says, the story's true in one particular, that he did snatch a
kiss, and got mauled. Not so much to pay for it! But what a ruffian--
eh?'

'I saw him,' said Redworth. 'He 's one of the new set of noblemen who
take bribes to serve as baits for transactions in the City. They help to
the ruin of their order, or are signs of its decay. We won't judge it by
him. He favoured me with his "word of honour" that the thing you heard
was entirely a misstatement, and so forth:--apologized, I suppose. He
mumbled something.'

'A thorough cur!'

'He professed his readiness to fight, if either of us was not contented.'

'He spoke to the wrong man. I've half a mind to ride back and have him
out for that rascal "osculation" and the lady unwilling!--and she a young
one, a girl, under the protection of the house! By Jove! Redworth, when
you come to consider the scoundrels men can be, it stirs a fellow's bile.
There's a deal of that sort of villany going--and succeeding sometimes!
He deserves the whip or a bullet.'

'A sermon from Lukin Dunstane might punish him.'

'Oh! I'm a sinner, I know. But, go and tell one woman of another woman,
and that a lie! That's beyond me.'

'The gradations of the deeps are perhaps measurable to those who are in
them.'

'The sermon's at me--pop!' said Sir Lukin. 'By the way, I'm coming round
to think Diana Warwick was right when she used to jibe at me for throwing
up my commission. Idleness is the devil--or mother of him. I manage my
estates; but the truth is, it doesn't occupy my mind.'

'Your time.'

'My mind, I say.'

'Whichever you please.'

'You're crusty to-day, Redworth. Let me tell you, I think--and hard too,
when the fit's on me. However, you did right in stopping--I'll own--a
piece of folly, and shutting the mouths of those two; though it caused me
to come in for a regular drencher. But a pretty woman in a right-down
termagant passion is good theatre; because it can't last, at that pace;
and you're sure of your agreeable tableau. Not that I trust her ten
minutes out of sight--or any woman, except one or two; my wife and Diana
Warwick. Trust those you've tried, old boy. Diana Warwick ought to be
taught to thank you; though I don't know how it's to be done.'

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