The powers of harmony would seem to be tried to their shrewdest pitch
when Politics and Love are planted together in a human breast. This
apparently opposite couple can nevertheless chant a very sweet accord,
as was shown by Dacier on his homeward walk from Diana's house. Let Love
lead, the God will make music of any chamber-comrade. He was able to
think of affairs of State while feeling the satisfied thirst of the
lover whose pride, irritated by confidential wild eulogies of the
beautiful woman, had recently clamoured for proofs of his commandership.
The impression she stamped on him at Copsley remained, but it could not
occupy the foreground for ever. He did not object to play second to her
sprightly wits in converse, if he had some warm testimony to his mastery
over her blood. For the world had given her to him, enthusiastic friends
had congratulated him: she had exalted him for true knightliness; and
he considered the proofs well earned, though he did not value them low.
They were little by comparison. They lighted, instead of staining, her
unparalleled high character.
She loved him. Full surely did she love him, or such a woman would never
have consented to brave the world; once in their project of flight, and
next, even more endearingly when contemplated, in the sacrifice of her
good name; not omitting that fervent memory of her pained submission,
but a palpitating submission, to his caress. She was in his arms again
at the thought of it. He had melted her, and won the confession of
her senses by a surprise, and he owned that never had woman been so
vigilantly self-guarded or so watchful to keep her lover amused and
aloof. Such a woman deserved long service. But then the long service
deserved its time of harvest. Her surging look of reproach in submission
pointed to the golden time, and as he was a man of honour, pledged to
her for life, he had no remorse, and no scruple in determining to exact
her dated promise, on this occasion deliberately. She was the woman to
be his wife; she was his mind's mate: they had hung apart in deference
to mere scruples too long. During the fierce battle of the Session she
would be his help, his fountain of counsel; and she would be the rosy
gauze-veiled more than cold helper and adviser, the being which
would spur her womanly intelligence to acknowledge, on this occasion
deliberately, the wisdom of the step. They had been so close to it!
She might call it madness then: now it was wisdom. Each had complete
experience of the other, and each vowed the step must be taken. As to
the secret communicated, he exulted in the pardonable cunning of the
impulse turning him back to her house after the guests had gone, and the
dexterous play of his bait on the line, tempting her to guess and quit
her queenly guard. Though it had not been distinctly schemed, the review
of it in that light added to the enjoyment. It had been dimly and richly
conjectured as a hoped result. Small favours from her were really worth,
thrice worth, the utmost from other women. They tasted the sweeter
for the winning of them artfully--an honourable thing in love. Nature,
rewarding the lover's ingenuity and enterprise, inspires him with old
Greek notions of right and wrong: and love is indeed a fluid mercurial
realm, continually shifting the principles of rectitude and larceny.
As long as he means nobly, what is there to condemn him? Not she in her
heart. She was the presiding divinity.
And she, his Tony, that splendid Diana, was the woman the world abused!
Whom will it not abuse?
The slough she would have to plunge in before he could make her his own
with the world's consent, was already up to her throat. She must, and
without further hesitation, be steeped, that he might drag her out,
washed of the imputed defilement, and radiant, as she was in character.
Reflection now said this; not impulse. Her words rang through him. At
every meeting she said things to confound his estimate of the wits of
women, or be remembered for some spirited ring they had: A high wind
will make a dead leaf fly like a bird. He murmured it and flew with
her. She quickened a vein of imagination that gave him entrance to a
strangely brilliant sphere, above his own, where, she sustaining, he too
could soar; and he did, scarce conscious of walking home, undressing,
falling asleep.
The act of waking was an instantaneous recovery of his emotional rapture
of the overnight; nor was it a bar to graver considerations. His Chief
had gone down to a house in the country; his personal business was to
see and sound the followers of their party--after another sight of his
Tony. She would be sure to counsel sagaciously; she always did. She had
a marvellous intuition of the natures of the men he worked with, solely
from his chance descriptions of them; it was as though he started the
bird and she transfixed it. And she should not have matter to rule her
smooth brows: that he swore to. She should sway him as she pleased,
be respected after her prescribed manner. The promise must be exacted;
nothing besides, promise.--You see, Tony, you cannot be less than Tony
to me now, he addressed the gentle phantom of her. Let me have your
word, and I am your servant till the Session ends.--Tony blushes her
swarthy crimson: Diana, fluttering, rebukes her; but Diana is the
appeasable Goddess; Tony is the woman, and she loves him. The glorious
Goddess need not cut them adrift; they can show her a book of honest
pages.
Dacier could truthfully say he had worshipped, done knightly service to
the beloved woman, homage to the aureole encircling her. Those friends
of his, covertly congratulating him on her preference, doubtless thought
him more privileged than he was; but they did not know Diana; and they
were welcome, if they would only believe, to the knowledge that he was
at the feet of this most sovereign woman. He despised the particular
Satyr-world which, whatever the nature or station of the woman, crowns
the desecrator, and bestows the title of Fool on the worshipper. He
could have answered veraciously that she had kept him from folly.
Nevertheless the term to service must come. In the assurance of the
approaching term he stood braced against a blowing world; happy as men
are when their muscles are strung for a prize they pluck with the energy
and aim of their whole force.
Letters and morning papers were laid for him to peruse in his
dressing-room. He read his letters before the bath. Not much public news
was expected at the present season. While dressing, he turned over the
sheets of Whitmonby's journal. Dull comments on stale things. Foreign
news. Home news, with the leaders on them, identically dull. Behold the
effect of Journalism: a witty man, sparkling overnight, gets into his
pulpit and proses; because he must say something, and he really knows
nothing.
Journalists have an excessive overestimate of their influence. They
cannot, as Diana said, comparing them with men on the Parliamentary
platform, cannot feel they are aboard the big vessel; they can only
strive to raise a breeze, or find one to swell; and they cannot measure
the stoutness or the greatness of the good ship England. Dacier's
personal ambition was inferior to his desire to extend and strengthen
his England. Parliament was the field, Government the office. How many
conversations had passed between him and Diana on that patriotic dream!
She had often filled his drooping sails; he owned it proudly:--and while
the world, both the hoofed and the rectilinear portions, were biting at
her character! Had he fretted her self-respect? He blamed himself, but a
devoted service must have its term.
The paper of Mr. Tonans was reserved for perusal at breakfast. He
reserved it because Tonans was an opponent, tricksy and surprising now
and then, amusing too; unlikely to afford him serious reflections.
The recent endeavours of his journal to whip the Government-team to a
right-about-face were annoying, preposterous. Dacier had admitted
to Diana that Tonans merited the thanks of the country during 'the
discreditable Railway mania, when his articles had a fine exhortative
and prophetic twang, and had done marked good. Otherwise, as regarded
the Ministry, the veering gusts of Tonans were objectionable: he 'raised
the breeze' wantonly as well as disagreeably. Any one can whip up the
populace if he has the instruments; and Tonans frequently intruded on
the Ministry's prerogative to govern. The journalist was bidding against
the statesman. But such is the condition of a rapidly Radicalizing
country! We must take it as it is.
With a complacent, What now, Dacier fixed his indifferent eyes on the
first column of the leaders. He read, and his eyes grew horny. He jerked
back at each sentence, electrified, staring. The article was shorter
than usual. Total Repeal was named; the precise date when the Minister
intended calling Parliament together to propose it. The 'Total Repeal'
might be guess-work--an Editor's bold stroke; but the details, the date,
were significant of positive information. The Minister's definite and
immediate instructions were exactly stated.
Where could the fellow have got hold of that? Dacier asked the blank
ceiling.
He frowned at vacant corners of the room in an effort to conjure some
speculation indicative of the source.
Had his Chief confided the secret to another and a traitor? Had they
been overheard in his library when the project determined on was put in
plain speech?
The answer was no, impossible, to each question.
He glanced at Diana. She? But it was past midnight when he left her. And
she would never have betrayed him, never, never. To imagine it a moment
was an injury to her.
Where else could he look? It had been specially mentioned in the
communication as a secret by his Chief, who trusted him and no others.
Up to the consultation with the Cabinet, it was a thing to be guarded
like life itself. Not to a soul except Diana would Dacier have breathed
syllable of any secret--and one of this weight!
He ran down the article again. There were the facts; undeniable facts;
and they detonated with audible roaring and rounding echoes of them over
England. How did they come there? As well inquire how man came on the
face of the earth.
He had to wipe his forehead perpetually. Think as he would in exaltation
of Diana to shelter himself, he was the accused. He might not be the
guilty, but he had opened his mouth; and though it was to her only,
and she, as Dunstane had sworn, true as steel, he could not escape
condemnation. He had virtually betrayed his master. Diana would never
betray her lover, but the thing was in the air as soon as uttered: and
off to the printing-press! Dacier's grotesque fancy under annoyance
pictured a stream of small printer's devils in flight from his babbling
lips.
He consumed bits of breakfast, with a sour confession that a
newspaper-article had hit him at last, and stunningly.
Hat and coat were called for. The state of aimlessness in hot perplexity
demands a show of action. Whither to go first was as obscure as what to
do. Diana said of the Englishman's hat and coat, that she supposed
they were to make him a walking presentment of the house he had shut up
behind him. A shot of the eye at the glass confirmed the likeness, but
with a ruefully wry-faced repudiation of it internally:--Not so shut up!
the reverse of that-a common babbler.
However, there was no doubt of Diana. First he would call on her. The
pleasantest dose in perturbations of the kind is instinctively taken
first. She would console, perhaps direct him to guess how the secret had
leaked. But so suddenly, immediately! It was inexplicable.
Sudden and immediate consequences were experienced. On the steps of his
house his way was blocked by the arrival of Mr. Quintin Manx, who jumped
out of a cab, bellowing interjections and interrogations in a breath.
Was there anything in that article? He had read it at breakfast, and it
had choked him. Dacier was due at a house and could not wait: he said,
rather sharply, he was not responsible for newspaper articles. Quintin
Manx, a senior gentleman and junior landowner, vowed that no Minister
intending to sell the country should treat him as a sheep. The shepherd
might go; he would not carry his flock with him. But was there a twinkle
of probability in the story?... that article! Dacier was unable to
inform him; he was very hurried, had to keep an appointment.
'If I let you go, will you come and lunch with me at two?' said Quintin.
To get rid of him, Dacier nodded and agreed.
'Two o'clock, mind!' was bawled at his heels as he walked off with his
long stride, unceremoniously leaving the pursy gentleman of sixty to
settle with his cabman far to the rear.