The effect of a great success upon Diana, at her second literary
venture, was shown in the transparent sedateness of a letter she wrote
to Emma Dunstane, as much as in her immediate and complacent acceptance
of the magical change of her fortunes. She spoke one thing and acted
another, but did both with a lofty calm that deceived the admiring
friend who clearly saw the authoress behind her mask, and feared lest
she should be too confidently trusting to the powers of her pen to
support an establishment.
'If the public were a perfect instrument to strike on, I should be
tempted to take the wonderful success of my PRINCESS at her first
appearance for a proof of natural aptitude in composition, and might
think myself the genius. I know it to be as little a Stradivarius as
I am a Paganini. It is an eccentric machine, in tune with me for the
moment, because I happen to have hit it in the ringing spot. The book is
a new face appealing to a mirror of the common surface emotions; and the
kitchen rather than the dairy offers an analogy for the real value of
that “top-skim.” I have not seen what I consider good in the book once
mentioned among the laudatory notices--except by your dear hand,
my Emmy. Be sure I will stand on guard against the “vaporous
generalizations,” and other “tricks” you fear. Now that you are studying
Latin for an occupation--how good and wise it was of Mr. Redworth to
propose it!--I look upon you with awe as a classic authority and critic.
I wish I had leisure to study with you. What I do is nothing like so
solid and durable.
'THE PRINCESS EGERIA' originally (I must have written word of it to
you--I remember the evening off Palermo!) was conceived as a sketch; by
gradations she grew into a sort of semi-Scudery romance, and swelled to
her present portliness. That was done by a great deal of piecing, not to
say puffing, of her frame. She would be healthier and have a chance of
living longer if she were reduced by a reversal of the processes. But
how would the judicious clippings and prickings affect our “pensive
public”? Now that I have furnished a house and have a fixed address,
under the paws of creditors, I feel I am in the wizard-circle of my
popularity and subscribe to its laws or waken to incubus and the desert.
Have I been rash? You do not pronounce. If I have bound myself to pipe
as others please, it need not be entirely; and I can promise you it
shall not be; but still I am sensible when I lift my “little quill”
of having forced the note of a woodland wren into the popular
nightingale's--which may end in the daw's, from straining; or worse, a
toy-whistle.
'That is, in the field of literature. Otherwise, within me deep, I am
not aware of any transmutation of the celestial into coined gold.
I sound myself, and ring clear. Incessant writing is my refuge, my
solace--escape out of the personal net. I delight in it, as in my early
morning walks at Lugano, when I went threading the streets and by the
lake away to “the heavenly mount,” like a dim idea worming upward in a
sleepy head to bright wakefulness.
'My anonymous critic, of whom I told you, is intoxicating with eulogy.
The signature “Apollonius” appears to be of literary-middle indication.
He marks passages approved by you. I have also had a complimentary
letter from Mr. Dacier:
'For an instance of this delight I have in writing, so strong is it that
I can read pages I have written, and tear the stuff to strips (I did
yesterday), and resume, as if nothing had happened. The waves within are
ready for any displacement. That must be a good sign. I do not doubt
of excelling my PRINCESS; and if she received compliments, the next may
hope for more. Consider, too, the novel pleasure of earning money by
the labour we delight in. It is an answer to your question whether I am
happy. Yes, as the savage islander before the ship entered the bay with
the fire-water. My blood is wine, and I have the slumbers of an
infant. I dream, wake, forget my dream, barely dress before the pen is
galloping; barely breakfast; no toilette till noon. A savage in good
sooth! You see, my Emmy, I could not house with the “companionable
person” you hint at. The poles can never come together till the earth is
crushed. She would find my habits intolerable, and I hers contemptible,
though we might both be companionable persons. My dear, I could not even
live with myself. My blessed little quill, which helps me divinely to
live out of myself, is and must continue to be my one companion. It
is my mountain height, morning light, wings, cup from the springs, my
horse, my goal, my lancet and replenisher, my key of communication with
the highest, grandest, holiest between earth and heaven-the vital air
connecting them.
'In justice let me add that I have not been troubled by hearing of
any of the mysterious legal claims, et caetera. I am sorry to hear bad
reports of health. I wish him entire felicity--no step taken to bridge
division! The thought of it makes me tigrish.
'A new pianist playing his own pieces (at Lady Singleby's concert) has
given me exquisite pleasure' and set me composing songs--not to his
music, which could be rendered only by sylphs moving to “soft recorders”
in the humour of wildness, languor, bewitching caprices, giving a new
sense to melody. How I wish you had been with me to hear him! It was
the most AEolian thing ever caught from a night-breeze by the soul of a
poet.
'But do not suppose me having headlong tendencies to the melting mood.
(The above, by the way, is a Pole settled in Paris, and he is to be
introduced to me at Lady Pennon's.)--What do you say to my being invited
by Mr. Whitmonby to aid him in writing leading articles for the paper he
is going to conduct! “write as you talk and it will do,” he says. I am
choosing my themes. To write--of politics--as I talk, seems to me like
an effort to jump away from my shadow. The black dog of consciousness
declines to be shaken off. If some one commanded me to talk as I write!
I suspect it would be a way of winding me up to a sharp critical pitch
rapidly.
'Not good news of Lord D. I have had messages. Mr. Dacier conceals
his alarm. The PRINCESS gave great gratification. She did me her best
service there. Is it not cruel that the interdict of the censor should
force me to depend for information upon such scraps as I get from a
gentleman passing my habitation on his way to the House? And he is not,
he never has been, sympathetic in that direction. He sees my grief, and
assumes an undertakerly air, with some notion of acting in concert, one
supposes little imagining how I revolt from that crape-hatband formalism
of sorrow!
'One word of her we call our inner I. I am not drawing upon her
resources for my daily needs; not wasting her at all, I trust; certainly
not walling her up, to deafen her voice. It would be to fall away from
you. She bids me sign myself, my beloved, ever, ever your Tony.'
The letter had every outward show of sincereness in expression, and was
endowed to wear that appearance by the writer's impulse to protest with
so resolute a vigour as to delude herself. Lady Dunstane heard of Mr.
Dacier's novel attendance at concerts. The world made a note of it; for
the gentleman was notoriously without ear for music.
Diana's comparison of her hours of incessant writing to her walks under
the dawn at Lugano, her boast of the similarity of her delight in
both, deluded her uncorrupted conscience to believe that she was now
spiritually as free: as in that fair season of the new spring in her
veins. She, was not an investigating physician, nor was Lady Dunstane,
otherwise they would have examined the material points of her
conduct--indicators of the spiritual secret always. What are the
patient's acts? The patient's, mind was projected too far beyond them to
see the fore finger they stretched at her; and the friend's was not that
of a prying doctor on the look out for betraying symptoms. Lady Dunstane
did ask herself why Tony should have incurred the burden of a costly
household--a very costly: Sir Lukin had been at one of Tony's little'
dinners: but her wish to meet the world on equal terms, after a long
dependency, accounted for it in seeming to excuse. The guests on the
occasion were Lady Pennon. Lady Singleby, Mr. Whitmonby, Mr. Percy
Dacier, Mr. Tonans;--'Some other woman,' Sir Lukin said, and himself.
He reported the cookery as matching the conversation, and that was
princely; the wines not less--an extraordinary fact to note of a woman.
But to hear Whitmonby and Diana Warwick! How he told a story, neat as
a postman's knock, and she tipped it with a remark and ran to a second,
drawing in Lady Pennon, and then Dacier, 'and me!' cried Sir Lukin;
'she made us all toss the ball from hand to hand, and all talk up to
the mark; and none of us noticed that we all went together to the
drawing-room, where we talked for another hour, and broke up fresher
than we began.'
'That break between the men and the women after dinner was Tony's
aversion, and I am glad she has instituted a change,' said Lady
Dunstane.
She heard also from Redworth of the unexampled concert of the guests at
Mrs. Warwick's dinner parties. He had met on one occasion the Esquarts,
the Pettigrews, Mr. Percy Dacier, and a Miss Paynham. Redworth had not
a word to say of the expensive household. Whatever Mrs. Warwick did was
evidently good to him. On another evening the party was composed of Lady
Pennon, Lord Larrian, Miss Paynham, a clever Mrs. Wollasley, Mr. Henry
Wilmers, and again Mr. Percy Dacier.
When Diana came to Copsley, Lady Dunstane remarked on the recurrence of
the name of Miss Paynham in the list of her guests.
'And Mr. Percy Dacier's too,' said Diana, smiling. 'They are invited
each for specific reasons. It pleases Lord Dannisburgh to hear that
a way has been found to enliven his nephew; and my little dinners are
effective, I think. He wakes. Yesterday evening he capped flying jests
with Mr. Sullivan Smith. But you speak of Miss. Paynham.' Diana lowered
her voice on half a dozen syllables, till the half-tones dropped into
her steady look. 'You approve, Emmy?'
The answer was: 'I do--true or not.'
'Between us two, dear, I fear!... In either case, she has been badly
used. Society is big engine enough to protect itself. I incline with
British juries to do rough justice to the victims. She has neither
father nor brother. I have had no confidences: but it wears the look of
a cowardly business. With two words in his ear, I could arm an Irishman
to do some work of chastisement: he would select the rascal's necktie
for a cause of quarrel and lords have to stand their ground as well as
commoners. They measure the same number of feet when stretched their
length. However, vengeance with the heavens! though they seem tardy.
Lady Pennon has been very kind about it; and the Esquarts invite her to
Lockton. Shoulder to shoulder, the tide may be stemmed.'
'She would have gone under, but for you, dear Tony!' said Emma' folding
arms round her darling's neck anal kissing her. 'Bring her here some
day.'
Diana did not promise it. She had her vision of Sir Lukin in his fit of
lunacy.
'I am too weak for London now,' Emma resumed. 'I should like to be
useful. Is she pleasant?'
'Sprightly by nature. She has worn herself with fretting.'
'Then bring her to stay with me, if I cannot keep you. She will talk of
you to me.'
'I will bring her for a couple of days,' Diana said. 'I am too busy to
remain longer. She paints portraits to amuse herself. She ought to be
pushed, wherever she is received about London, while the season is warm.
One season will suffice to establish her. She is pretty, near upon six
and twenty: foolish, of course:--she pays for having had a romantic
head. Heavy payment, Emmy! I drive at laws, but hers is an instance of
the creatures wanting simple human kindness.'
'The good law will come with a better civilization; but before society
can be civilized it has to be debarbarized,' Emma remarked, and Diana
sighed over the task and the truism.
I should have said in younger days, because it will not look plainly on
our nature and try to reconcile it with our conditions. But now I see
that the sin is cowardice. The more I know of the world the more clearly
I perceive that its top and bottom sin is cowardice, physically and
morally alike. Lord Larrian owns to there being few heroes in an army.
We must fawn in society. What is the meaning of that dread of one
example of tolerance? O my dear! let us give it the right name. Society
is the best thing we have, but it is a crazy vessel worked by a crew
that formerly practised piracy, and now, in expiation, professes piety,
fearful of a discovered Omnipotence, which is in the image of themselves
and captain. Their old habits are not quite abandoned, and their new one
is used as a lash to whip the exposed of us for a propitiation of the
capricious potentate whom they worship in the place of the true God.'
Lady Dunstane sniffed. 'I smell the leading article.'
Diana joined with her smile, 'No, the style is rather different.'
'Have you not got into a trick of composing in speaking, at times?'
Diana confessed, 'I think I have at times. Perhaps the daily writing of
all kinds and the nightly talking... I may be getting strained.'
'No, Tony; but longer visits in the country to me would refresh you. I
miss your lighter touches. London is a school, but, you know it, not a
school for comedy nor for philosophy; that is gathered on my hills,
with London distantly in view, and then occasional descents on it well
digested.'
'I wonder whether it is affecting me!' said Diana, musing. 'A
metropolitan hack! and while thinking myself free, thrice harnessed; and
all my fun gone. Am I really as dull as a tract, my dear? I must be,
or I should be proving the contrary instead of asking. My pitfall is
to fancy I have powers equal to the first look-out of the eyes of the
morning. Enough of me. We talked of Mary Paynham. If only some right
good man would marry her!'
Lady Dunstane guessed at the right good man in Diana's mind. 'Do you
bring them together?'
Diana nodded, and then shook doleful negatives to signify no hope.
'None whatever--if we mean the same person,' said Lady Dunstane,
bethinking her, in the spirit of wrath she felt at such a scheme being
planned by Diana to snare the right good man, that instead of her own
true lover Redworth, it might be only Percy Dacier. So filmy of mere
sensations are these little ideas as they flit in converse, that she did
not reflect on her friend's ignorance of Redworth's love of her, or
on the unlikely choice of one in Dacier's high station to reinstate a
damsel.
They did not name the person.
'Passing the instance, which is cruel, I will be just to society thus
far,' said Diana. 'I was in a boat at Richmond last week, and Leander
was revelling along the mud-banks, and took it into his head to swim
out to me, and I was moved to take him on board. The ladies in the boat
objected, for he was not only wet but very muddy. I was forced to own
that their objections were reasonable. My sentimental humaneness had
no argument against muslin dresses, though my dear dog's eyes appealed
pathetically, and he would keep swimming after us. The analogy excuses
the world for protecting itself in extreme cases; nothing, nothing
excuses its insensibility to cases which may be pleaded. You see
the pirate crew turned pious-ferocious in sanctity.' She added, half
laughing: 'I am reminded by the boat, I have unveiled my anonymous
critic, and had a woeful disappointment. He wrote like a veteran; he is
not much more than a boy. I received a volume of verse, and a few lines
begging my acceptance. I fancied I knew the writing, and wrote asking
him whether I had not to thank him, and inviting him to call. He seems
a nice lad of about two and twenty, mad for literature; and he must have
talent. Arthur Rhodes by name. I may have a chance of helping him. He
was an articled clerk of Mr. Braddock's, the same who valiantly came to
my rescue once. He was with us in the boat.'
'Bring him to me some day,' said Lady Dunstane.
Miss Paynham's visit to Copsley was arranged, and it turned out a
failure. The poor young lady came in a flutter, thinking that the friend
of Mrs. Warwick would expect her to discourse cleverly. She attempted
it, to Diana's amazement. Lady Dunstane's opposingly corresponding
stillness provoked Miss Paynham to expatiate, for she had sprightliness
and some mental reserves of the common order. Clearly, Lady Dunstane
mused while listening amiably, Tony never could have designed this
gabbler for the mate of Thomas Redworth!
Percy Dacier seemed to her the more likely one, in that light, and she
thought so still, after Sir Lukin had introduced him at Copsley for a
couple of days of the hunting season. Tony's manner with him suggested
it; she had a dash of leadership. They were not intimate in look or
tongue.
But Percy Dacier also was too good for Miss Paynham, if that was Tony's
plan for him, Lady Dunstane thought, with the relentlessness of an
invalid and recluse's distaste. An aspect of penitence she had not
demanded, but the silly gabbier under a stigma she could not pardon.
Her opinion of Miss Paynham was diffused in her silence.
Speaking of Mr. Dacier, she remarked, 'As you say of him, Tony, he can
brighten, and when you give him a chance he is entertaining. He has fine
gifts. If I were a member of his family I should beat about for a match
for him. He strikes me as one of the young men who would do better
married.'
'He is doing very well, but the wonder is that he doesn't marry,' said
Diana. 'He ought to be engaged. Lady Esquart told me that he was. A Miss
Asper--great heiress; and the Daciers want money. However, there it is.'
Not many weeks later Diana could not have spoken of Mr. Percy Dacier
with this air of indifference without corruption of her inward guide.