WOMEN
Pure disengagement of contemplativeness had selected. Percy Dacier as
the model of her YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE, Diana supposed. Could she
otherwise have dared to sketch him? She certainly would not have done it
now.
That was a reflection similar to what is entertained by one who has
dropped from a precipice to the midway ledge over the abyss,
where caution of the whole sensitive being is required for simple
self-preservation. How could she have been induced to study and portray
him! It seemed a form of dementia.
She thought this while imagining the world to be interrogating her.
When she interrogated herself, she flew to Lugano and her celestial
Salvatore, that she might be defended from a charge of the dreadful
weakness of her sex. Surely she there had proof of her capacity for pure
disengagement. Even in recollection the springs of spiritual happiness
renewed the bubbling crystal play. She believed that a divineness had
wakened in her there, to strengthen her to the end, ward her from any
complicity in her sex's culprit blushing.
Dacier's cry of her name was the cause, she chose to think, of the
excessive circumspection she must henceforth practise; precariously
footing, embracing hardest earth, the plainest rules, to get back
to safety. Not that she was personally endangered, or at least not
spiritually; she could always fly in soul to her heights. But she had
now to be on guard, constantly in the fencing attitude. And watchful of
herself as well. That was admitted with a ready frankness, to save
it from being a necessitated and painful confession: for the
voluntary-acquiescence, if it involved her in her sex, claimed an
individual exemption. 'Women are women, and I am a woman but I am I,
and unlike them: I see we are weak, and weakness tempts: in owning the
prudence of guarded steps, I am armed. It is by dissembling, feigning
immunity, that we are imperilled.' She would have phrased it so, with
some anger at her feminine nature as well as at the subjection forced on
her by circumstances.
Besides, her position and Percy Dacier's threw the fancied danger into
remoteness. The world was her stepmother, vigilant to become her judge;
and the world was his taskmaster, hopeful of him, yet able to strike him
down for an offence. She saw their situation as he did. The course of
folly must be bravely taken, if taken at all: Disguise degraded her to
the reptiles.
This was faced. Consequently there was no fear of it.
She had very easily proved that she had skill and self-possession to
keep him rational, and therefore they could continue to meet. A little
outburst of frenzy to a reputably handsome woman could be treated as the
froth of a passing wave. Men have the trick, infants their fevers.
Diana's days were spent in reasoning. Her nights were not so tuneable
to the superior mind. When asleep she was the sport of elves that danced
her into tangles too deliciously unravelled, and left new problems for
the wise-eyed and anxious morning. She solved them with the thought
that in sleep it was the mere ordinary woman who fell a prey to her
tormentors; awake, she dispersed the swarm, her sky was clear. Gradually
the persecution ceased, thanks to her active pen.
A letter from her legal adviser, old Mr. Braddock, informed her that no
grounds existed for apprehending marital annoyance, and late in May her
household had resumed its customary round.
She examined her accounts. The Debit and Credit sides presented much
of the appearance of male and female in our jog-trot civilization. They
matched middling well; with rather too marked a tendency to strain the
leash and run frolic on the part of friend Debit (the wanton male),
which deepened the blush of the comparison. Her father had noticed the
same funny thing in his effort to balance his tugging accounts: 'Now
then for a look at Man and Wife': except that he made Debit stand for
the portly frisky female, Credit the decorous and contracted other half,
a prim gentleman of a constitutionally lean habit of body, remonstrating
with her. 'You seem to forget that we are married, my dear, and must
walk in step or bundle into the Bench,' Dan Merion used to say.
Diana had not so much to rebuke in Mr. Debit; or not at the first
reckoning. But his ways were curious. She grew distrustful of him,
after dismissing him with a quiet admonition and discovering a series
of ambush bills, which he must have been aware of when he was allowed to
pass as an honourable citizen. His answer to her reproaches pleaded the
necessitousness of his purchases and expenditure: a capital plea; and
Mrs. Credit was requested by him, in a courteous manner, to drive
her pen the faster, so that she might wax to a corresponding size and
satisfy the world's idea of fitness in couples. She would have costly
furniture, because it pleased her taste; and a French cook, for a like
reason, in justice to her guests; and trained servants; and her tribe of
pensioners; flowers she would have profuse and fresh at her windows
and over the rooms; and the pictures and engravings on the walls were
(always for the good reason mentioned) choice ones; and she had a love
of old lace, she loved colours as she loved cheerfulness, and silks,
and satin hangings, Indian ivory carvings, countless mirrors, Oriental
woods, chairs and desks with some feature or a flourish in them,
delicate tables with antelope legs, of approved workmanship in the
chronology of European upholstery, and marble clocks of cunning device
to symbol Time, mantelpiece decorations, illustrated editions of her
favourite authors; her bed-chambers, too, gave the nest for sleep a
dainty cosiness in aerial draperies. Hence, more or less directly, the
peccant bills. Credit was reduced to reckon to a nicety the amount she
could rely on positively: her fixed income from her investments and the
letting of The Crossways: the days of half-yearly payments that would
magnify her to some proportions beside the alarming growth of her
partner, who was proud of it, and referred her to the treasures
she could summon with her pen, at a murmur of dissatisfaction. His
compliments were sincere; they were seductive. He assured her that she
had struck a rich vein in an inexhaustible mine; by writing only a
very little faster she could double her income; counting a broader
popularity, treble it; and so on a tide of success down the widening
river to a sea sheer golden. Behold how it sparkles! Are we then to
stint our winged hours of youth for want of courage to realize the
riches we can command? Debit was eloquent, he was unanswerable.
Another calculator, an accustomed and lamentably-scrupulous
arithmetician, had been at work for some time upon a speculative summing
of the outlay of Diana's establishment, as to its chances of swamping
the income. Redworth could guess pretty closely the cost of a house
hold, if his care for the holder set him venturing on aver ages. He knew
nothing of her ten per cent. investment and considered her fixed income
a beggarly regiment to marshal against the invader. He fancied however,
in his ignorance of literary profits, that a popular writer, selling
several editions, had come to an El Dorado. There was the mine. It
required a diligent worker. Diana was often struck by hearing Redworth
ask her when her next book might be expected. He appeared to have an
eagerness in hurrying her to produce, and she had to say that she was
not a nimble writer. His flattering impatience was vexatious. He admired
her work, yet he did his utmost to render it little admirable. His
literary taste was not that of young Arthur Rhodes, to whom she could
read her chapters, appearing to take counsel upon them while drinking
the eulogies: she suspected him of prosaic ally wishing her to make
money, and though her exchequer was beginning to know the need of
it, the author's lofty mind disdained such sordidness: to be excused,
possibly, for a failing productive energy. She encountered obstacles to
imaginative composition. With the pen in her hand, she would fall into
heavy musings; break a sentence to muse, and not on the subject. She
slept unevenly at night, was drowsy by day, unless the open air was
about her, or animating friends. Redworth's urgency to get her to
publish was particularly annoying when she felt how greatly THE YOUNG
MINISTER OF STATE would have been improved had she retained the work
to brood over it, polish, re-write passages, perfect it. Her musings
embraced long dialogues of that work, never printed; they sprang up,
they passed from memory; leaving a distaste for her present work: THE
CANTATRICE: far more poetical than the preceding, in the opinion of
Arthur Rhodes; and the story was more romantic; modelled on a Prima
Donna she had met at the musical parties of Henry Wilmers, after hearing
Redworth tell of Charles Rainer's quaint passion for the woman, or the
idea of the woman. Diana had courted her, studied and liked her. The
picture she was drawing of the amiable and gifted Italian, of her
villain Roumanian husband, and of the eccentric, high-minded, devoted
Englishman, was good in a fashion; but considering the theme, she had
reasonable apprehension that her CANTATRICE would not repay her for the
time and labour bestowed on it. No clever transcripts of the dialogue
of the day occurred; no hair-breadth 'scapes, perils by sea and land,
heroisms of the hero, fine shrieks of the heroine; no set scenes
of catching pathos and humour; no distinguishable points of social
satire--equivalent to a smacking of the public on the chaps, which
excites it to grin with keen discernment of the author's intention. She
did not appeal to the senses nor to a superficial discernment. So she
had the anticipatory sense of its failure; and she wrote her best,
in perverseness; of course she wrote slowly; she wrote more and more
realistically of the characters and the downright human emotions, less
of the wooden supernumeraries of her story, labelled for broad guffaw
or deluge tears--the grappling natural links between our public and an
author. Her feelings were aloof. They flowed at a hint of a scene of THE
YOUNG MINISTER. She could not put them into THE CANTATRICE. And Arthur
Rhodes pronounced this work poetical beyond its predecessors, for the
reason that the chief characters were alive and the reader felt their
pulses. He meant to say, they were poetical inasmuch as they were
creations.
The slow progress of a work not driven by the author's feelings
necessitated frequent consultations between Debit and Credit, resulting
in altercations, recriminations, discord of the yoked and divergent
couple. To restore them to their proper trot in harness, Diana
reluctantly went to her publisher for an advance item of the sum she was
to receive, and the act increased her distaste. An idea came that she
would soon cease to be able to write at all. What then? Perhaps by
selling her invested money, and ultimately The Crossways, she would have
enough for her term upon earth. Necessarily she had to think that
short, in order to reckon it as nearly enough. 'I am sure,' she said to
herself, 'I shall not trouble the world very long.' A strange languor
beset her; scarcely melancholy, for she conceived the cheerfulness of
life and added to it in company; but a nervelessness, as though she had
been left by the stream on the banks, and saw beauty and pleasure sweep
along and away, while the sun that primed them dried her veins. At this
time she was gaining her widest reputation for brilliancy of wit. Only
to welcome guests were her evenings ever spent at home. She had no
intimate understanding of the deadly wrestle of the conventional woman
with her nature which she was undergoing below the surface. Perplexities
she acknowledged, and the prudence of guardedness. 'But as I am sure not
to live very long, we may as well meet.' Her meetings with Percy Dacier
were therefore hardly shunned; and his behaviour did not warn her to
discountenance them. It would have been cruel to exclude him from her
select little dinners of eight. Whitmonby, Westlake, Henry Wilmers and
the rest, she perhaps aiding, schooled him in the conversational
art. She heard it said of him, that the courted discarder of the sex,
hitherto a mere politician, was wonderfully humanized. Lady Pennon fell
to talking of him hopefully. She declared him to be one of the men who
unfold tardily, and only await the mastering passion. If the passion had
come, it was controlled. His command of himself melted Diana. How could
she forbid his entry to the houses she frequented? She was glad to see
him. He showed his pleasure in seeing her. Remembering his tentative
indiscretion on those foreign sands, she reflected that he had been
easily checked: and the like was not to be said of some others.
Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness that
contrasts touchingly with the self-restraint of a particular admirer.
Her 'impassioned Caledonian' was one of a host, to speak of whom and
their fits of lunacy even to her friend Emma, was repulsive. She bore
with them, foiled them, passed them, and recovered her equanimity; but
the contrast called to her to dwell on it, the self-restraint whispered
of a depth of passion....
She was shocked at herself for a singular tremble 'she experienced,
without any beating of the heart, on hearing one day that the marriage
of Percy Dacier and Miss Asper was at last definitely fixed. Mary
Paynham brought her the news. She had it from a lady who had come across
Miss Asper at Lady Wathin's assemblies, and considered the great heiress
extraordinarily handsome.
'A golden miracle,' Diana gave her words to say. 'Good looks and gold
together are rather superhuman. The report may be this time true.' Next
afternoon the card of Lady Wathin requested Mrs. Warwick to grant her a
private interview.
Lady Wathin, as one of the order of women who can do anything in a holy
cause, advanced toward Mrs. Warwick, unabashed by the burden of her
mission, and spinally prepared, behind benevolent smilings, to repay
dignity of mien with a similar erectness of dignity. They touched
fingers and sat. The preliminaries to the matter of the interview were
brief between ladies physically sensible of antagonism and mutually too
scornful of subterfuges in one another's presence to beat the bush.
Lady Wathin began. 'I am, you are aware, Mrs. Warwick, a cousin of your
friend Lady Dunstane.'
'You come to me on business?' Diana said.
'It may be so termed. I have no personal interest in it. I come to lay
certain facts before you which I think you should know. We think it
better that an acquaintance, and one of your sex, should state the case
to you, instead of having recourse to formal intermediaries, lawyers--'
'Lawyers?'
'Well, my husband is a lawyer, it is true. In the course of his
professional vocations he became acquainted with Mr. Warwick. We have
latterly seen a good deal of him. He is, I regret to say, seriously
unwell.'
'I have heard of it.'
'He has no female relations, it appears. He needs more care than he can
receive from hirelings.'
'Are you empowered by him, Lady Wathin?'
'I am, Mrs. Warwick. We will not waste time in apologies. He is most
anxious for a reconciliation. It seems to Sir Cramborne and to me the
most desireable thing for all parties concerned, if you can be induced
to regard it in that light. Mr. Warwick may or may not live; but the
estrangement is quite undoubtedly the cause of his illness. I touch
on nothing connected with it. I simply wish that you should not be in
ignorance of his proposal and his condition.'
Diana bowed calmly. 'I grieve at his condition. His proposal has already
been made and replied to.'
'Oh, but, Mrs. Warwick, an immediate and decisive refusal of a proposal
so fraught with consequences...!'
'Ah, but, Lady Wathin, you are now outstepping the limits prescribed by
the office you have undertaken.'
'You will not lend ear to an intercession?'
'I will not.'
'Of course, Mrs. Warwick, it is not for me to hint at things that
lawyers could say on the subject.'
'Your forbearance is creditable, Lady Wathin.'
'Believe me, Mrs. Warwick, the step is--I speak in my husband's name as
well as my own--strongly to be advised.'
'If I hear one word more of it, I leave the country.'
'I should be sorry indeed at any piece of rashness depriving your
numerous friends of your society. We have recently become acquainted
with Mr. Redworth, and I know the loss you would be to them. I have not
attempted an appeal to your feelings, Mrs. Warwick.'
'I thank you warmly, Lady Wathin, for what you have not done.'
The aristocratic airs of Mrs. Warwick were annoying to Lady Wathin when
she considered that they were borrowed, and that a pattern morality
could regard the woman as ostracized: nor was it agreeable to be looked
at through eyelashes under partially lifted brows. She had come to
appeal to the feelings of the wife; at any rate, to discover if she had
some and was better than a wild adventuress.
'Our life below is short!' she said. To which Diana tacitly assented.
'We have our little term, Mrs. Warwick. It is soon over.'
'On the other hand, the platitudes concerning it are eternal.'
Lady Wathin closed her eyes, that the like effect might be produced on
her ears. 'Ah! they are the truths. But it is not my business to preach.
Permit me to say that I feel deeply for your husband.'
'I am glad of Mr. Warwick's having friends; and they are many, I hope.'
'They cannot behold him perishing, without an effort on his behalf.'
A chasm of silence intervened. Wifely pity was not sounded in it.
'He will question me, Mrs. Warwick.'
'You can report to him the heads of our conversation, Lady Wathin.'
'Would you--it is your husband's most earnest wish; and our house is
open to his wife and to him for the purpose; and it seems to us
that... indeed it might avert a catastrophe you would necessarily
deplore:--would you consent to meet him at my house?'
'It has already been asked, Lady Wathin, and refused.'
'But at my house-under our auspices!'
Diana glanced at the clock. 'Nowhere.'
'Is it not--pardon me--a wife's duty, Mrs. Warwick, at least to listen?'
'Lady Wathin, I have listened to you.'
'In the case of his extreme generosity so putting it, for the present,
Mrs. Warwick, that he asks only to be heard personally by his wife! It
may preclude so much.'
Diana felt a hot wind across her skin.
She smiled and said: 'Let me thank you for bringing to an end a mission
that must have been unpleasant to you.'
'But you will meditate on it, Mrs. Warwick, will you not? Give me that
assurance!'
'I shall not forget it,' said Diana.
Again the ladies touched fingers, with an interchange of the social
grimace of cordiality. A few words of compassion for poor Lady
Dunstane's invalided state covered Lady Wathin's retreat.
She left, it struck her ruffled sentiments, an icy libertine, whom any
husband caring for his dignity and comfort was well rid of; and if only
she could have contrived allusively to bring in the name of Mr. Percy
Dacier, just to show these arrant coquettes, or worse, that they were
not quite so privileged to pursue their intrigues obscurely as they
imagined, it would have soothed her exasperation.
She left a woman the prey of panic.
Diana thought of Emma and Redworth, and of their foolish interposition
to save her character and keep her bound. She might now have been free!
The struggle with her manacles reduced her to a state of rebelliousness,
from which issued vivid illuminations of the one means of certain
escape; an abhorrent hissing cavern, that led to a place named Liberty,
her refuge, but a hectic place.
Unable to write, hating the house which held her a fixed mark for these
attacks, she had an idea of flying straight to her beloved Lugano lake,
and there hiding, abandoning her friends, casting off the slave's name
she bore, and living free in spirit. She went so far as to reckon the
cost of a small household there, and justify the violent step by an
exposition of retrenchment upon her large London expenditure. She had
but to say farewell to Emma, no other tie to cut! One morning on
the Salvatore heights would wash her clear of the webs defacing and
entangling her.