Six months a married woman, Diana came to Copsley to introduce her
husband. They had run over Italy: 'the Italian Peninsula,' she quoted
him in a letter to Lady Dunstane: and were furnishing their London
house. Her first letters from Italy appeared to have a little bloom of
sentiment. Augustus was mentioned as liking this and that in the land of
beauty. He patronized Art, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak upon
pictures and sculptures; he knew a great deal about them. 'He is an
authority.' Her humour soon began to play round the fortunate man,
who did not seem, to the reader's mind, to bear so well a sentimental
clothing. His pride was in being very English on the Continent, and
Diana's instances of his lofty appreciations of the garden of Art and
Nature, and statuesque walk through it, would have been more amusing if
her friend could have harmonized her idea of the couple. A description
of 'a bit of a wrangle between us' at Lucca, where an Italian
post-master on a journey of inspection, claimed a share of their
carriage and audaciously attempted entry, was laughable, but jarred.
Would she some day lose her relish for ridicule, and see him at a
distance? He was generous, Diana, said she saw fine qualities in him.
It might be that he was lavish on his bridal tour. She said he was
unselfish, kind, affable with his equals; he was cordial to the
acquaintances he met. Perhaps his worst fault was an affected
superciliousness before the foreigner, not uncommon in those days.
'You are to know, dear Emmy, that we English are the aristocracy of
Europeans.' Lady Dunstane inclined to think we were; nevertheless,
in the mouth of a 'gentlemanly official' the frigid arrogance added a
stroke of caricature to his deportment. On the other hand, the reports
of him gleaned by Sir Lukin sounded favourable. He was not taken to be
preternaturally stiff, nor bright, but a goodish sort of fellow; good
horseman, good shot, good character. In short, the average Englishman,
excelling as a cavalier, a slayer, and an orderly subject. That was a
somewhat elevated standard to the patriotic Emma. Only she would never
have stipulated for an average to espouse Diana. Would he understand
her, and value the best in her? Another and unanswered question was,
how could she have condescended to wed with an average? There was
transparently some secret not confided to her friend.
He appeared. Lady Dunstane's first impression of him recurred on his
departure. Her unanswered question drummed at her ears, though she
remembered that Tony's art in leading him out had moderated her rigidly
judicial summary of the union during a greater part of the visit. But
his requiring to be led out, was against him. Considering the subjects,
his talk was passable. The subjects treated of politics, pictures,
Continental travel, our manufactures, our wealth and the reasons for
it--excellent reasons well-weighed. He was handsome, as men go; rather
tall, not too stout, precise in the modern fashion of his dress, and the
pair of whiskers encasing a colourless depression up to a long, thin,
straight nose, and closed lips indicating an aperture. The contraction
of his mouth expressed an intelligence in the attitude of the firmly
negative.
The lips opened to smile, the teeth were faultless; an effect was
produced, if a cold one--the colder for the unparticipating northern
eyes; eyes of that half cloud and blue, which make a kind of hueless
grey, and are chiefly striking in an authoritative stage. Without
contradicting, for he was exactly polite, his look signified a person
conscious of being born to command: in fine, an aristocrat among the
'aristocracy of Europeans.' His differences of opinion were prefaced by
a 'Pardon me,' and pausing smile of the teeth; then a succinctly worded
sentence or two, a perfect settlement of the dispute. He disliked
argumentation. He said so, and Diana remarked it of him, speaking as, a
wife who merely noted a characteristic. Inside his boundary, he had neat
phrases, opinions in packets. Beyond it, apparently the world was void
of any particular interest. Sir Lukin, whose boundary would have shown a
narrower limitation had it been defined, stood no chance with him. Tory
versus Whig, he tried a wrestle, and was thrown. They agreed on the
topic of Wine. Mr. Warwick had a fine taste in wine. Their after-dinner
sittings were devoted to this and the alliterative cognate theme,
equally dear to the gallant ex-dragoon, from which it resulted that Lady
Dunstane received satisfactory information in a man's judgement of him.
'Warwick is a clever fellow, and a thorough man of the world, I can tell
you, Emmy.' Sir Lukin further observed that he was a gentlemanly fellow.
'A gentlemanly official!' Diana's primary dash of portraiture stuck to
him, so true it was! As for her, she seemed to have forgotten it. Not
only did she strive to show him to advantage by leading him out;
she played second to him; subserviently, fondly; she quite submerged
herself, content to be dull if he might shine; and her talk of her
husband in her friend's blue-chamber boudoir of the golden stars, where
they had discussed the world and taken counsel in her maiden days,
implied admiration of his merits. He rode superbly: he knew Law: he was
prepared for any position: he could speak really eloquently; she had
heard him at a local meeting. And he loved the old Crossways almost as
much as she did. 'He has promised me he will never ask me to sell it,'
she said, with a simpleness that could hardly have been acted.
When she was gone, Lady Dunstane thought she had worn a mask, in the
natural manner of women trying to make the best of their choice; and
she excused her poor Tony for the artful presentation of him at her own
cost. But she could not excuse her for having married the man. Her first
and her final impression likened him to a house locked up and empty: a
London house conventionally furnished and decorated by the upholsterer,
and empty of inhabitants. How a brilliant and beautiful girl could have
committed this rashness, was the perplexing riddle: the knottier because
the man was idle: and Diana had ambition; she despised and dreaded
idleness in men. Empty of inhabitants even to the ghost! Both human and
spiritual were wanting. The mind contemplating him became reflectively
stagnant.
I must not be unjust! Lady Dunstane hastened to exclaim, at a whisper
that he had at least proved his appreciation of Tony; whom he preferred
to call Diana, as she gladly remembered: and the two were bound together
for a moment warmly by her recollection of her beloved Tony's touching
little petition: 'You will invite us again?' and then there had flashed
in Tony's dear dark eyes the look of their old love drowning. They were
not to be thought of separately. She admitted that the introduction to
a woman of her friend's husband is crucially trying to him: he may well
show worse than he is. Yet his appreciation of Tony in espousing her,
was rather marred by Sir Lukin's report of him as a desperate admirer of
beautiful woman. It might be for her beauty only, not for her spiritual
qualities! At present he did not seem aware of their existence. But, to
be entirely just, she had hardly exhibited them or a sign of them during
the first interview: and sitting with his hostess alone, he had seized
the occasion to say, that he was the happiest of men. He said it with
the nearest approach to fervour she had noticed. Perhaps the very fact
of his not producing a highly favourable impression, should be set to
plead on his behalf. Such as he was, he was himself, no simulator. She
longed for Mr. Redworth's report of him.
Her compassion for Redworth's feelings when beholding the woman he loved
another man's wife, did not soften the urgency of her injunction that he
should go speedily, and see as much of them as he could. 'Because,' she
gave her reason, 'I wish Diana to know she has not lost a single friend
through her marriage, and is only one the richer.'
Redworth buckled himself to the task. He belonged to the class of his
countrymen who have a dungeon-vault for feelings that should not be
suffered to cry abroad, and into this oubliette he cast them, letting
them feed as they might, or perish. It was his heart down below, and in
no voluntary musings did he listen to it, to sustain the thing. Grimly
lord of himself, he stood emotionless before the world. Some worthy
fellows resemble him, and they are called deep-hearted. He was
dungeon-deep. The prisoner underneath might clamour and leap; none heard
him or knew of him; nor did he ever view the day. Diana's frank:
'Ah, Mr. Redworth, how glad I am to see you!' was met by the calmest
formalism of the wish for her happiness. He became a guest at her London
house, and his report of the domesticity there, and notably of the lord
of the house, pleased Lady Dunstane more than her husband's. He saw the
kind of man accurately, as far as men are to be seen on the surface; and
she could say assentingly, without anxiety: 'Yes, yes,' to his remarks
upon Mr. Warwick, indicative of a man of capable head in worldly
affairs, commonplace beside his wife. The noble gentleman for Diana
was yet unborn, they tacitly agreed. Meantime one must not put a mortal
husband to the fiery ordeal of his wife's deserts, they agreed likewise.
'You may be sure she is a constant friend,' Lady Dunstane said for
his comfort; and she reminded herself subsequently of a shade of
disappointment at his imperturbable rejoinder: 'I could calculate on
it.' For though not at all desiring to witness the sentimental fit, she
wished to see that he held an image of Diana:--surely a woman to
kindle poets and heroes, the princes of the race; and it was a curious
perversity that the two men she had moved were merely excellent,
emotionless, ordinary men, with heads for business. Elsewhere, out of
England, Diana would have been a woman for a place in song, exalted
to the skies. Here she had the destiny to inflame Mr. Redworth and Mr.
Warwick, two railway Directors, bent upon scoring the country to the
likeness of a child's lines of hop-scotch in a gravel-yard.
As with all invalids, the pleasure of living backward was haunted by the
tortures it evoked, and two years later she recalled this outcry against
the Fates. She would then have prayed for Diana to inflame none but such
men as those two. The original error was; of course, that rash and most
inexplicable marriage, a step never alluded to by the driven victim of
it. Lady Dunstane heard rumours of dissensions. Diana did not mention
them. She spoke of her husband as unlucky in railway ventures, and of a
household necessity for money, nothing further. One day she wrote of a
Government appointment her husband had received, ending the letter: 'So
there is the end of our troubles.' Her friend rejoiced, and afterward
looking back at her satisfaction, saw the dire beginning of them.
Lord Dannisburgh's name, as one of the admirers of Mrs. Warwick, was
dropped once or twice by Sir Lukin. He had dined with the Warwicks, and
met the eminent member of the Cabinet at their table. There is no harm
in admiration, especially on the part of one of a crowd observing a
star. No harm can be imputed when the husband of a beautiful woman
accepts an appointment from the potent Minister admiring her. So Lady
Dunstane thought, for she was sure of Diana to her inmost soul. But she
soon perceived in Sir Lukin that the old Dog-world was preparing to yelp
on a scent. He of his nature belonged to the hunting pack, and with a
cordial feeling for the quarry, he was quite with his world in expecting
to see her run, and readiness to join the chase. No great scandal had
occurred for several months. The world was in want of it; and he, too,
with a very cordial feeling for the quarry, piously hoping she would
escape, already had his nose to ground, collecting testimony in the
track of her. He said little to his wife, but his world was getting so
noisy that he could not help half pursing his lips, as with the soft
whistle of an innuendo at the heels of it. Redworth was in America,
engaged in carving up that hemisphere. She had no source of information
but her husband's chance gossip; and London was death to her; and Diana,
writing faithfully twice a week, kept silence as to Lord Dannisburgh,
except in naming him among her guests. She wrote this, which might have
a secret personal signification: 'We women are the verbs passive of the
alliance; we have to learn, and if we take to activity, with the best
intentions, we conjugate a frightful disturbance. We are to run
on lines, like the steam-trains, or we come to no station, dash to
fragments. I have the misfortune to know I was born an active. I take my
chance.'
Once she coupled the names of Lord Larrian and Lord Dannisburgh,
remarking that she had a fatal attraction for antiques.
The death of her husband's uncle and illness of his aunt withdrew her
to The Crossways, where she remained nursing for several months, reading
diligently, as her letters showed, and watching the approaches of the
destroyer. She wrote like her former self, subdued by meditation in the
presence of that inevitable. The world ceased barking. Lady Dunstane
could suppose Mr. Warwick to have now a reconciling experience of his
wife's noble qualities. He probably did value them more. He spoke of her
to Sir Lukin in London with commendation. 'She is an attentive nurse.'
He inherited a considerable increase of income when he and his wife were
the sole tenants of The Crossways, but disliking the house, for reasons
hard to explain by a man previously professing to share her attachment
to it, he wished to sell or let the place, and his wife would do
neither. She proposed to continue living in their small London
house rather than be cut off from The Crossways, which, he said, was
ludicrous: people should live up to their position; and he sneered at
the place, and slightly wounded her, for she was open to a wound when
the cold fire of a renewed attempt at warmth between them was crackling
and showing bits of flame, after she had given proof of her power to
serve. Service to himself and his relatives affected him. He deferred
to her craze for The Crossways, and they lived in a larger London house,
'up to their position,' which means ever a trifle beyond it, and gave
choice dinner-parties to the most eminent. His jealousy slumbered.
Having ideas of a seat in Parliament at this period, and preferment
superior to the post he held, Mr. Warwick deemed it sagacious to court
the potent patron Lord Dannisburgh could be; and his wife had his
interests at heart, the fork-tongued world said. The cry revived.
Stories of Lord D. and Mrs. W. whipped the hot pursuit. The moral repute
of the great Whig lord and the beauty of the lady composed inflammable
material.
'Are you altogether cautious?' Lady Dunstane wrote to Diana; and her
friend sent a copious reply: 'You have the fullest right to ask your
Tony anything, and I will answer as at the Judgement bar. You allude to
Lord Dannisburgh. He is near what Dada's age would have been, and is,
I think I can affirm, next to my dead father and my Emmy, my dearest
friend. I love him. I could say it in the streets without shame; and you
do not imagine me shameless. Whatever his character in his younger days,
he can be honestly a woman's friend, believe me. I see straight to his
heart; he has no disguise; and unless I am to suppose that marriage
is the end of me, I must keep him among my treasures. I see him almost
daily; it is not possible to think I can be deceived; and as long as he
does me the honour to esteem my poor portion of brains by coming to me
for what he is good enough to call my counsel, I shall let the world wag
its tongue. Between ourselves, I trust to be doing some good. I know I
am of use in various ways. No doubt there is a danger of a woman's head
being turned, when she reflects that a powerful Minister governing a
kingdom has not considered her too insignificant to advise him; and I
am sensible of it. I am, I assure you, dearest, on my guard against it.
That would not attach me to him, as his homely friendliness does. He is
the most amiable, cheerful, benignant of men; he has no feeling of an
enemy, though naturally his enemies are numerous and venomous. He is
full of observation and humour. How he would amuse you! In many respects
accord with you. And I should not have a spark of jealousy. Some day
I shall beg permission to bring him to Copsley. At present, during
the Session, he is too busy, as you know. Me--his “crystal spring of
wisdom”--he can favour with no more than an hour in the afternoon, or a
few minutes at night. Or I get a pencilled note from the benches of
the House, with an anecdote, or news of a Division. I am sure to be
enlivened.
'So I have written to you fully, simply, frankly. Have perfect faith in
your Tony, who would, she vows to heaven; die rather than disturb it and
her heart's beloved.'
The letter terminated with one of Lord Dannisburgh's anecdotes, exciting
to merriment in the season of its freshness;--and a postscript of
information: 'Augustus expects a mission--about a month; uncertain
whether I accompany him.'
Mr. Warwick departed on his mission. Diana remained in London. Lady
Dunstane wrote entreating her to pass the month--her favourite time of
the violet yielding to the cowslip--at Copsley. The invitation could not
be accepted, but the next day Diana sent word that she had a surprise
for the following Sunday, and would bring a friend to lunch, if Sir
Lukin would meet them at the corner of the road in the valley leading up
to the heights, at a stated hour.
Lady Dunstane gave the listless baronet his directions, observing: 'It's
odd, she never will come alone since her marriage.'
'Queer,' said he of the serenest absence of conscience; and that there
must be something not entirely right going on, he strongly inclined to
think.