CRISIS IN COMPANY
There was not much talk of Diana between Lady Dunstane and her customary
visitor Tom Redworth now. She was shy in speaking of the love-stricken
woman, and more was in his mind for thought than for speech. She some
times wondered how much he might know, ending with the reflection
that little passing around was unknown to him. He had to shut his mind
against thought, against all meditation upon Mrs. Warwick; it was
based scientifically when speculating and calculating, on the material
element--a talisman. Men and women crossing the high seas of life he had
found most readable under that illuminating inquiry, as to their means.
An inspector of sea worthy ships proceeds in like manner. Whence would
the money come? He could not help the bent of his mind; but he could
avoid subjecting her to the talismanic touch. The girl at the Dublin
Ball, the woman at the fire-grate of The Crossways, both in one were his
Diana. Now and then, hearing an ugly whisper, his manful sympathy with
the mere woman in her imprisoned liberty, defended her desperately
from charges not distinctly formulated within him:--'She's not made of
stone.' That was a height of self-abnegation to shake the poor fellow
to his roots; but, then, he had no hopes of his own; and he stuck to it.
Her choice of a man like Dacier, too, of whom Redworth judged highly,
showed nobility. She irradiated the man; but no baseness could be in
such an alliance. If allied, they were bound together for good. The
tie--supposing a villain world not wrong--was only not the sacred tie
because of impediments. The tie!--he deliberated, and said stoutly--No.
Men of Redworth's nature go through sharp contests, though the duration
of them is short, and the tussle of his worship of this woman with the
materialistic turn of his mind was closed by the complete shutting up
of the latter under lock and bar; so that a man, very little of an
idealist, was able to sustain her in the pure imagination--where she did
almost belong to him. She was his, in a sense, because she might have
been his--but for an incredible extreme of folly. The dark ring of the
eclipse cast by some amazing foolishness round the shining crescent
perpetually in secret claimed the whole sphere of her, by what might
have been, while admitting her lost to him in fact. To Thomas Redworth's
mind the lack of perfect sanity in his conduct at any period of manhood,
was so entirely past belief that he flew at the circumstances confirming
the charge, and had wrestles with the angel of reality, who did but set
him dreaming backward, after flinging him.
He heard at Lady Wathin's that Mrs. Warwick was in town for the winter.
'Mr. Dacier is also in town,' Lady Wathin said, with an acid indication
of the needless mention of it. 'We have not seen him.' She invited
Redworth to meet a few friends at dinner. 'I think you admire Miss
Asper: in my idea a very saint among young women;--and you know what the
young women of our day are. She will be present. She is, you are aware,
England's greatest heiress. Only yesterday, hearing of that poor man
Mr. Warwick's desperate attack of illness--heart!--and of his having
no relative or friend to soothe his pillow,--he is lying in absolute
loneliness,--she offered to go and nurse him! Of course it could not
be done. It is not her place. The beauty of the character of a dear
innocent young girl, with every gratification at command, who could make
the offer, strikes me as unparalleled. She was perfectly sincere--she
is sincerity. She asked at once, Where is he? She wished me to accompany
her on a first visit. I saw a tear.'
Redworth had called at Lady Wathin's for information of the state of
Mr. Warwick, concerning which a rumour was abroad. No stranger to
the vagrant compassionateness of sentimentalists;--rich, idle,
conscience-pricked or praise-catching;--he was unmoved by the tale that
Miss Asper had proposed to go to Mr. Warwick's sick-bed in the uniform
of a Sister of Charity.--'Speaking French!' Lady Wathin exclaimed; and
his head rocked, as he said:
'An Englishman would not be likely to know better.'
'She speaks exquisite French--all European languages, Mr. Redworth. She
does not pretend to wit. To my thinking, depth of sentiment is a far
more feminine accomplishment. It assuredly will be found a greater
treasure.'
The modest man (modest in such matters) was led by degrees to fancy
himself sounded regarding Miss Asper: a piece of sculpture glacially
decorative of the domestic mansion in person, to his thinking; and as to
the nature of it--not a Diana, with all her faults!
If Diana had any faults, in a world and a position so heavily against
her! He laughed to himself, when alone, at the neatly implied bitter
reproach cast on the wife by the forsaken young lady, who proposed to
nurse the abandoned husband of the woman bereaving her of the man she
loved. Sentimentalists enjoy these tricks, the conceiving or the doing
of them--the former mainly, which are cheaper, and equally effective.
Miss Asper might be deficient in wit; this was a form of practical wit,
occasionally exhibited by creatures acting on their instincts. Warwick
he pitied, and he put compulsion on himself to go and see the poor
fellow, the subject of so sublime a generosity. Mr. Warwick sat in an
arm-chair, his legs out straight on the heels, his jaw dragging hollow
cheeks, his hands loosely joined; improving in health, he said. A demure
woman of middle age was in attendance. He did not speak of his wife.
Three times he said disconnectedly, 'I hear reports,' and his eyelids
worked. Redworth talked of general affairs, without those consolatory
efforts, useless between men, which are neither medicine nor good honest
water:--he judged by personal feelings. In consequence, he left an
invalid the sourer for his visit.
Next day he received a briefly-worded summons from Mrs. Warwick.
Crossing the park on the line to Diana's house, he met Miss Paynham, who
grieved to say that Mrs. Warwick could not give her a sitting; and in a
still mournfuller tone, imagined he would find her at home, and alone by
this time. 'I left no one but Mr. Dacier there,' she observed.
'Mrs. Warwick will be disengaged to-morrow, no doubt,' he said
consolingly.
Her head performed the negative. 'They talk politics, and she becomes
animated, loses her pose. I will persevere, though I fear I have
undertaken a task too much for me.'
'I am deeply indebted to you for the attempt.' Redworth bowed to her and
set his face to the Abbey-towers, which wore a different aspect in the
smoked grey light since his two minutes of colloquy. He had previously
noticed that meetings with Miss Paynham produced a similar effect on
him, a not so very impressionable man. And how was it done? She told him
nothing he did not know or guess.
Diana was alone. Her manner, after the greeting, seemed feverish. She
had not to excuse herself for abruptness when he heard the nature of the
subject. Her counsellor and friend was informed, in feminine style, that
she had, requested him to call, for the purpose of consulting him with
regard to a matter she had decided upon; and it was, the sale of The
Crossways. She said that it would have gone to her heart once; she
supposed she had lost her affection for the place, or had got the better
of her superstitions. She spoke lamely as well as bluntly. The place
was hers, she said; her own property. Her husband could not interdict a
sale.
Redworth addressed himself to her smothered antagonism. 'Even if he had
rights, as they are termed... I think you might count on their not being
pressed.'
'I have been told of illness.' She tapped her foot on the floor.
'His present state of health is unequal to his ordinary duties.'
'Emma Dunstane is fully supplied with the latest intelligence, Mr.
Redworth. You know the source.'
'I mention it simply...'
'Yes, yes. What I have to protest is, that in this respect I am free.
The Law has me fast, but leaves me its legal view of my small property.
I have no authority over me. I can do as I please, in this, without
a collision, or the dread of one. It is the married woman's perpetual
dread when she ventures a step. Your Law originally presumed her a
China-footed animal. And more, I have a claim for maintenance.'
She crimsoned angrily.
Redworth showed a look of pleasure, hard to understand. 'The application
would be sufficient, I fancy,' he said.
'It should have been offered.'
'Did you not decline it?'
'I declined to apply for it. I thought--But, Mr. Redworth, another
thing, concerning us all: I want very much to hear your ideas of the
prospects of the League; because I know you have ideas. The leaders are
terrible men; they fascinate me. They appear to move with an army of
facts. They are certainly carrying the country. I am obliged to think
them sincere. Common agitators would not hold together, as they do. They
gather strength each year. If their statistics are not illusory--an army
of phantoms instead of one of facts; and they knock at my head without
admission, I have to confess; they must win.'
'Ultimately, it is quite calculable that they will win,' said Redworth;
and he was led to discourse of rates and duties and prohibitive tariffs
to a woman surprisingly athirst, curious for every scrap of intelligence
relating to the power, organization, and schemes of the League. 'Common
sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation,' he said.
'Rap it unremittingly on crowds of the thickest of human heads, and the
response comes at last to sweep all before it. You may reckon that the
country will beat the landlords--for that is our question. Is it one of
your political themes?'
'I am not presumptuous to such a degree:--a poor scholar,' Diana
replied. 'Women striving to lift their heads among men deserve the
sarcasm.'
He denied that any sarcasm was intended, and the lesson continued. When
she had shaped in her mind some portion of his knowledge of the subject,
she reverted casually to her practical business. Would he undertake to
try to obtain a purchaser of The Crossways, at the price he might deem
reasonable? She left the price entirely to his judgement. And now she
had determined to part with the old place, the sooner the better! She
said that smiling; and Redworth smiled, outwardly and inwardly. Her talk
of her affairs was clearer to him than her curiosity for the mysteries
of the League. He gained kind looks besides warm thanks by the promise
to seek a purchaser; especially by his avoidance of prying queries. She
wanted just this excellent automaton fac-totum; and she referred him
to Mr. Braddock for the title-deeds, et caetera--the chirping phrase of
ladies happily washing their hands of the mean details of business.
'How of your last work?' he asked her.
Serenest equanimity rejoined: 'As I anticipated, it is not popular.
The critics are of one mind with the public. You may have noticed, they
rarely flower above that rocky surface. THE CANTATRICE sings them a
false note. My next will probably please them less.'
Her mobile lips and brows shot the faint upper-wreath of a smile
hovering. It was designed to display her philosophy.
'And what is the name of your next?' said he.
'I name it THE MAN OF TWO MINDS, if you can allow that to be in nature.'
'Contra-distinguished from the woman?'
'Oh! you must first believe the woman to have one.'
'You are working on it?'
'By fits. And I forgot, Mr. Redworth: I have mislaid my receipts, and
must ask you for the address of your wine-merchant;--or, will you?
Several dozen of the same wines. I can trust him to be in awe of you,
and the good repute of my table depends on his honesty.'
Redworth took the definite order for a large supply of wine.
She gave him her hand: a lost hand, dear to hold, needing to be guided,
he feared. For him, it was merely a hand, cut off from the wrist; and he
had performed that executive part! A wiser man would now have been the
lord of it.... So he felt, with his burning wish to protect and cherish
the beloved woman, while saying: 'If we find a speedy bidder for The
Crossways, you will have to thank our railways.'
'You!' said Diana, confident in his ability to do every-thing of the
practical kind.
Her ingenuousness tickled him. He missed her comic touches upon men and
things, but the fever shown by her manner accounted for it.
As soon as he left her, she was writing to the lover who had an hour
previously been hearing her voice; the note of her theme being Party;
and how to serve it, when to sacrifice it to the Country. She wrote,
carolling bars of the Puritani marches; and such will passion do,
that her choice of music was quite in harmony with her theme. The
martially-amorous melodies of Italian Opera in those days fostered a
passion challenged to intrepidity from the heart of softness; gliding
at the same time, and putting warm blood even into dull arithmetical
figures which might be important to her lover, her hero fronting battle.
She condensed Redworth's information skilfully, heartily giving it and
whatever she had imbibed, as her own, down to the remark: 'Common sense
in questions of justice, is a weapon that makes way into human heads and
wins the certain majority, if we strike with it incessantly.' Whether
anything she wrote was her own, mattered little: the savour of Percy's
praise, which none could share with her, made it instantly all her own.
Besides she wrote to strengthen him; she naturally laid her friends and
the world under contribution; and no other sort of writing was possible.
Percy had not a common interest in fiction; still less for high comedy.
He liked the broad laugh when he deigned to open books of that sort;
puns and strong flavours and harlequin surprises; and her work would not
admit of them, however great her willingness to force her hand for his
amusement: consequently her inventiveness deadened. She had to cease
whipping it. 'My poor old London cabhorse of a pen shall go to grass!'
she sighed, looking to the sale of The Crossways for money; looking no
farther.
Those marshalled battalions of Debit and Credit were in hostile order,
the weaker simply devoted to fighting for delay, when a winged
messenger bearing the form of old Mr. Braddock descended to her with
the reconciling news that a hermit bachelor, an acquaintance of Mr.
Redworth's--both of whom wore a gloomy hue in her mind immediately--had
offered a sum for the purchase of The Crossways. Considering the
out-of-the-way district, Mr. Braddock thought it an excellent price to
get. She thought the reverse, but confessed that double the sum would
not have altered her opinion. Double the sum scarcely counted for the
service she required of it for much more than a year. The money was
paid shortly after into her Bank, and then she enjoyed the contemptuous
felicity of tossing meat to her lions, tigers, wolves, and jackals,
who, but for the fortunate intervention, would have been feeding on
her. These menagerie beasts of prey were the lady's tradesmen, Debit's
hungry-brood. She had a rapid glimpse of a false position in regarding
that legitimate band so scornfully: another glimpse likewise of a day to
come when they might not be stopped at the door. She was running a race
with something; with what? It was unnamed; it ran in a shroud.
At times she surprised her heart violently beating when there had not
been a thought to set it in motion. She traced it once to the words,
'next year,' incidentally mentioned. 'Free,' was a word that checked her
throbs, as at a question of life or death. Her solitude, excepting
the hours of sleep, if then, was a time of irregular breathing. The
something unnamed, running beside her, became a dreadful familiar; the
race between them past contemplation for ghastliness. 'But this is your
Law!' she cried to the world, while blinding her eyes against a peep of
the shrouded features.
Singularly, she had but to abandon hope, and the shadowy figure
vanished, the tragic race was ended. How to live and think, and not to
hope: the slave of passion had this problem before her.
Other tasks were supportable, though one seemed hard at moments and
was not passive; it attacked her. The men and women of her circle
derisively, unanimously, disbelieved in an innocence that forfeited
reputation. Women were complimentarily assumed to be not such gaping
idiots. And as the weeks advanced, a change came over Percy. The
gentleman had grown restless at covert congratulations, hollow to his
knowledge, however much caressing vanity, and therefore secretly a wound
to it. One day, after sitting silent, he bluntly proposed to break 'this
foolish trifling'; just in his old manner, though not so honourably; not
very definitely either. Her hand was taken.
'I feared that dumbness!' Diana said, letting her hand go, but keeping
her composure. 'My friend Percy, I am not a lion-tamer, and if you are
of those animals, we break the chapter. Plainly you think that where
there appears to be a choice of fools, the woman is distinctly designed
for the person. Drop my hand, or I shall repeat the fable of the Goose
with the Golden Eggs.'
'Fables are applicable only in the school-room,' said he; and he
ventured on 'Tony!'
'I vowed an oath to my dear Emma--as good as to the heavens! and that
of itself would stay me from being insane again.' She released herself.
'Signor Percy, you teach me to suspect you of having an idle wish
to pluck your plaything to pieces:--to boast of it? Ah! my friend, I
fancied I was of more value to you. You must come less often; even to
not at all, if you are one of those idols with feet of clay which
leave the print of their steps in a room; or fall and crush the silly
idolizer.'
'But surely you know...' said he. 'We can't have to wait long.' He
looked full of hopeful meanings.
'A reason...!' She kept down her breath. A longdrawn sigh followed,
through parted lips. She had a sensation of horror. 'And I cannot
propose to nurse him--Emma will not hear of it,' she said. 'I dare not.
Hypocrite to that extreme? Oh, no! But I must hear nothing. As it is,
I am haunted. Now let this pass. Tony me no Tonies; I am stony to such
whimpering business now we are in the van of the struggle. All round us
it sounds like war. Last night I had Mr. Tonans dining here;--he wished
to meet you; and you must have a private meeting with Mr. Whitmonby: he
will be useful; others as well. You are wrong in affecting contempt of
the Press. It perches you on a rock; but the swimmer in politics knows
what draws the tides. Your own people, your set, your class, are a drag
to you, like inherited superstitions to the wakening brain. The greater
the glory! For you see the lead you take? You are saving your class.
They should lead, and will, if they prove worthy in the crisis. Their
curious error is to believe in the stability of a monumental position.'
'Perfectly true!' cried Dacier; and the next minute, heated by
approbation, was begging for her hand earnestly. She refused it.
'But you say things that catch me!' he pleaded. 'Remember, it was nearly
mine. It soon will be mine. I heard yesterday from Lady Wathin... well,
if it pains you!'
'Speak on,' said Diana, resigned to her thirsty ears.
'He is not expected to last through the autumn.'
'The calculation is hers?'
'Not exactly:--judging from the symptoms.'
Diana flashed a fiery eye into Dacier's, and rose. She was past danger
of melting, with her imagination darkened by the funeral image; but she
craved solitude, and had to act the callous, to dismiss him.
'Good. Enough for the day. Now leave me, if you please. When we meet
again, stifle that raven's croak. I am not a “Sister of Charity,” but
neither am I a vulture hovering for the horse in the desert to die. A
poor simile!--when it is my own and not another's breath that I want.
Nothing in nature, only gruesome German stories will fetch comparisons
for the yoke of this Law of yours. It seems the nightmare dream
following an ogre's supper.'
She was not acting the shiver of her frame.
To-morrow was open to him, and prospect of better fortune, so he
departed, after squeezing the hand she ceremoniously extended.
But her woman's intuition warned her that she had not maintained the
sovereign impression which was her security. And hope had become a flame
in her bosom that would no longer take the common extinguisher. The race
she ran was with a shrouded figure no more, but with the figure of the
shroud; she had to summon paroxysms of a pity hard to feel, images
of sickness, helplessness, the vaults, the last human silence for the
stilling of her passionate heart. And when this was partly effected, the
question, Am I going to live? renewed her tragical struggle. Who was
it under the vaults, in the shroud, between the planks? and with human
sensibility to swell the horror! Passion whispered of a vaster sorrow
needed for herself; and the hope conjuring those frightful complexities
was needed to soothe her. She pitied the man, but she was an enamoured
woman. Often of late she had been sharply stung, relaxed as well, by the
observations of Danvers assisting at her toilette. Had she beauty
and charm, beauty and rich health in the young summer blooming of
her days?--and all doomed to waste? No insurgency of words arose in
denunciation of the wrong done to her nature. An undefined heavy feeling
of wrong there was, just perceptive enough to let her know, without
gravely shaming, that one or another must be slain for peace to come;
for it is the case in which the world of the Laws overloading her is
pitiless to women, deaf past ear-trumpets, past intercession; detesting
and reviling them for a feeble human cry, and for one apparent step of
revolt piling the pelted stones on them. It will not discriminate
shades of hue, it massacres all the shadowed. They are honoured, after
a fashion, at a certain elevation. Descending from it, and purely to
breathe common air (thus in her mind), they are scourged and outcast.
And alas! the very pleading for them excites a sort of ridicule in
their advocate. How? She was utterly, even desperately, nay personally,
earnest, and her humour closed her lips; though comical views of the
scourged and outcast coming from the opposite party--the huge bully
world--she would not have tolerated. Diana raged at a prevailing
strength on the part of that huge bully world, which seemed really to
embrace the atmosphere. Emma had said: 'The rules of Christian Society
are a blessed Government for us women. We owe it so much that there is
not a brick of the fabric we should not prop.' Emma's talk of obedience
to the Laws, being Laws, was repeated by the rebel, with an involuntary
unphrased comparison of the vessel in dock and the vessel at sea.
When Dacier next called to see Mrs. Warwick, he heard that she had gone
to Copsley for a couple of weeks. The lesson was emphasized by her not
writing:--and was it the tricky sex, or the splendid character of the
woman, which dealt him this punishment? Knowing how much Diana forfeited
for him, he was moved to some enthusiasm, despite his inclination to be
hurt.
She, on her return to London, gained a considerable increase of
knowledge as to her position in the eye of the world; and unlike the
result of her meditations derived from the clamouring tradesmen, whom
she could excuse, she was neither illuminated nor cautioned by that
dubious look; she conscientiously revolted. Lady Pennon hinted a word
for her Government. 'A good deal of what you so capitally call “Green
tea talk” is going on, my dear.' Diana replied, without pretending to
misunderstand.
'Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait for the death of the
creature it devours. They are welcome to my shadow, if the liberty I
claim casts one, and it feeds them.' To which the old lady rejoined:
'Oh! I am with you through thick and thin. I presented you at Court, and
I stand by you. Only, walk carefully. Women have to walk with a train.
You are too famous not to have your troops of watchers.'
'But I mean to prove,' said Diana, 'that a woman can walk with her train
independent of the common reserves and artifices.'
'Not on highways, my dear!'
Diana, praising the speaker, referred the whole truth in that to the
material element of her metaphor.
She was more astonished by Whitmonby's candid chiding; but with him she
could fence, and men are easily diverted. She had sent for him, to bring
him and Percy Dacier together to a conference. Unaware of the project,
he took the opportunity of their privacy to speak of the great station
open to her in London being imperilled; and he spoke of 'tongues,' and
ahem! A very little would have induced him to fill that empty vocable
with a name.
She had to pardon the critic in him for an unpleasant review of her
hapless CANTATRICE; and as a means of evasion, she mentioned the poor
book and her slaughter of the heroine, that he had complained of.
'I killed her; I could not let her live. You were unjust in accusing the
authoress of heartlessness.'
'If I did, I retract,' said he. 'She steers too evidently from the
centre of the vessel. She has the organ in excess.'
'Proof that it is not squandered.'
'The point concerns direction.'
'Have I made so bad a choice of my friends?'
'It is the common error of the sprightly to suppose that in parrying a
thrust they blind our eyes.'
'The world sees always what it desires to see, Mr. Whitmonby.'
'The world, my dear Mrs. Warwick, is a blundering machine upon its own
affairs, but a cruel sleuth-hound to rouse in pursuit.'
'So now you have me chased by sight and scent. And if I take wing?'
'Shots! volleys!--You are lawful game. The choice you have made of your
friends, should oblige you to think of them.'
'I imagine I do. Have I offended any, or one?'
'I will not say that. You know the commotion in a French kitchen when
the guests of the house declined a particular dish furnished them by
command. The cook and his crew were loyal to their master, but, for
the love of their Art, they sent him notice. It is ill serving a mad
sovereign.'
Diana bowed to the compact little apologue.
'I will tell you another story, traditional in our family from my
great-grandmother, a Spanish woman,' she said. 'A cavalier serenaded
his mistress, and rascal mercenaries fell upon him before he could draw
sword. He battered his guitar on their pates till the lattice opened
with a cry, and startled them to flight. “Thrice blessed and beloved!”
he called to her above, in reference to the noise, “it was merely
a diversion of the accompaniment.” Now there was loyal service to a
sovereign!'
'You are certainly an angel!' exclaimed Whitmonby. 'I swallow the story,
and leave it to digestion to discover the appositeness. Whatever tuneful
instrument one of your friends possesses shall solace your slumbers or
batter the pate of your enemy. But discourage the habitual serenader.'
'The musician you must mean is due here now, by appointment to meet
you,' said Diana, and set him momentarily agape with the name of Mr.
Percy Dacier.
That was the origin of the alliance between the young statesman and
a newspaper editor. Whitmonby, accepting proposals which suited him,
quitted the house, after an hour of political talk, no longer inclined
to hint at the 'habitual serenader,' but very ready to fall foul of
those who did, as he proved when the numbers buzzed openly. Times were
masculine; the excitement on the eve of so great a crisis, and Diana's
comprehension of it and fine heading cry, put that weak matter aside.
Moreover, he was taught to suppose himself as welcome a guest as Dacier;
and the cook could stand criticism; the wines--wonderful to say of a
lady's table--were trusty; the talk, on the political evenings and the
social and anecdotal supper-nights, ran always in perfect accord with
his ideal of the conversational orchestra: an improvized harmony,
unmatched elsewhere. She did not, he considered, so perfectly assort her
dinner-guests; that was her one fault. She had therefore to strain her
adroitness to cover their deficiencies and fuse them. But what other
woman could have done it! She led superbly. If an Irishman was present,
she kept him from overflooding, managed to extract just the flavour
of him, the smack of salt. She did even, at Whitmonby's table, on a
red-letter Sunday evening, in concert with him and the Dean, bring down
that cataract, the Bodleian, to the levels of interchanging dialogue
by seasonable touches, inimitably done, and never done before. Sullivan
Smith, unbridled in the middle of dinner, was docile to her. 'Irishmen;'
she said, pleading on their behalf to Whitmonby, who pronounced the race
too raw for an Olympian feast, 'are invaluable if you hang them up to
smoke and cure'; and the master of social converse could not deny that
they were responsive to her magic. The supper-nights were mainly devoted
to Percy's friends. He brought as many as he pleased, and as often as it
pleased him; and it was her pride to provide Cleopatra banquets for the
lover whose anxieties were soothed by them, and to whom she sacrificed
her name willingly in return for a generosity that certain chance
whispers of her heart elevated to the pitch of measureless.
So they wore through the Session and the Autumn, clouds heavier, the
League drumming, the cry of Ireland 'ominously Banshee,' as she wrote to
Emma.