HER, TIME OF TRIUMPH
The shutting of her house-door closed for Dacier that woman's history in
connection with himself. He set his mind on the consequences of the act
of folly--the trusting a secret to a woman. All were possibly not so
bad: none should be trusted.
The air of the street fanned him agreeably as he revolved the horrible
project of confession to the man who had put faith in him. Particulars
might be asked. She would be unnamed, but an imagination of the effect
of naming her placarded a notorious woman in fresh paint: two members of
the same family her victims!
And last night, no later than last night, he had swung round at
this very corner of the street to give her the fullest proof of his
affection. He beheld a dupe trotting into a carefully-laid pitfall.
She had him by the generosity of his confidence in her. Moreover, the
recollection of her recent feeble phrasing, when she stood convicted
of the treachery, when a really clever woman would have developed her
resources, led him to doubt her being so finely gifted. She was just
clever enough to hoodwink. He attributed the dupery to a trick of
imposing the idea of her virtue upon men. Attracted by her good looks
and sparkle, they entered the circle of her charm, became delightfully
intimate, suffered a rebuff, and were from that time prepared to serve
her purpose. How many other wretched dupes had she dangling? He spied at
Westlake, spied at Redworth, at old Lord Larrian, at Lord Dannisburgh,
at Arthur Rhodes, dozens. Old and young were alike to her if she saw
an end to be gained by keeping them hooked. Tonans too, and Whitmonby.
Newspaper editors were especially serviceable. Perhaps 'a young Minister
of State' held the foremost rank in that respect: if completely duped
and squeezeable, he produced more substantial stuff.
The background of ice in Dacier's composition was brought to the front
by his righteous contempt of her treachery. No explanation of it would
have appeased him. She was guilty, and he condemned her. She stood
condemned by all the evil likely to ensue from her misdeed. Scarcely had
he left her house last night when she was away to betray him!--He
shook her from him without a pang. Crediting her with the one merit she
had--that of not imploring for mercy--he the more easily shook her off.
Treacherous, she had not proved theatrical. So there was no fuss in
putting out her light, and it was done. He was justified by the brute
facts. Honourable, courteous, kindly gentleman, highly civilized,
an excellent citizen and a patriot, he was icy at an outrage to his
principles, and in the dominion of Love a sultan of the bow-string
and chopper period, sovereignly endowed to stretch a finger for the
scimitared Mesrour to make the erring woman head and trunk with one
blow: and away with those remnants! This internally he did. Enough that
the brute facts justified him.
St. James's park was crossed, and the grass of the Green park, to avoid
inquisitive friends. He was obliged to walk; exercise, action of any
sort, was imperative, and but for some engagement he would have gone
to his fencing-rooms for a bout with the master. He remembered his
engagement and grew doubly embittered. He had absurdly pledged himself
to lunch with Quintin Manx; that was, to pretend to eat while submitting
to be questioned by a political dullard strong on his present right to
overhaul and rail at his superiors. The house was one of a block along
the North-Western line of Hyde park. He kicked at the subjection to go
there, but a promise was binding, though he gave it when stunned. He
could have silenced Mr. Manx with the posing interrogation: Why have
I so long consented to put myself at the mercy of a bore? For him, he
could not answer it, though Manx, as leader of the Shipping interest,
was influential. The man had to be endured, like other doses in
politics.
Dacier did not once think of the great ship-owner's niece till Miss
Constance Asper stepped into her drawing-room to welcome him. She was an
image of repose to his mind. The calm pure outline of her white features
refreshed him as the Alps the Londoner newly alighted at Berne; smoke,
wrangle, the wrestling city's wickedness, behind him.
'My uncle is very disturbed,' she said. 'Is the news--if I am not very
indiscreet in inquiring?'
'I have a practice of never paying attention to newspaper articles,'
Dacier replied.
'I am only affected by living with one who does,' Miss Asper observed,
and the lofty isolation of her head above politics gave her a moral
attractiveness in addition to physical beauty. Her water-colour sketches
were on her uncle's walls: the beautiful in nature claimed and absorbed
her. She dressed with a pretty rigour, a lovely simplicity, picturesque
of the nunnery. She looked indeed a high-born young lady-abbess.
'It's a dusty game for ladies,' Dacier said, abhorring the women defiled
by it.
And when one thinks of the desire of men to worship women, there is a
pathos in a man's discovery of the fair young creature undefiled by any
interest in public affairs, virginal amid her bower's environments.
The angelical beauty of a virgin mind and person captivated him, by
contrast. His natural taste was to admire it, shunning the lures and
tangles of the women on high seas, notably the married: who, by the way,
contrive to ensnare us through wonderment at a cleverness caught from
their traffic with the masculine world: often--if we did but know!--a
parrot-repetition of the last male visitor's remarks. But that which the
fair maiden speaks, though it may be simple, is her own.
She too is her own: or vowed but to one. She is on all sides impressive
in purity. The world worships her as its perfect pearl: and we are
brought refreshfully to acknowledge that the world is right.
By contrast, the white radiation of Innocence distinguished Constance
Asper celestially. As he was well aware, she had long preferred him--the
reserved among many pleading pressing suitors. Her steady faithfulness
had fed on the poorest crumbs.
He ventured to express the hope that she was well.
'Yes,' she answered, with eyelids lifted softly to thank him for his
concern in so humble a person.
'You look a little pale,' he said.
She coloured like a sea-water shell. 'I am inclined to paleness by
nature.'
Her uncle disturbed them. Lunch was ready. He apologized for the absence
of Mrs. Markland, a maternal aunt of Constance, who kept house for them.
Quintin Manx fell upon the meats, and then upon the Minister. Dacier
found himself happily surprised by the accession of an appetite. He
mentioned it, to escape from the worrying of his host, as unusual with
him at midday: and Miss Asper, supporting him in that effort, said
benevolently: 'Gentlemen should eat; they have so many fatigues and
troubles.' She herself did not like to be seen eating in public. Her
lips opened to the morsels, as with a bird's bill, though with none of
the pecking eagerness we complacently observe in poultry.
'But now, I say, positively, how about that article?' said Quintin.
Dacier visibly winced, and Constance immediately said 'Oh! spare us
politics, dear uncle.'
Her intercession was without avail, but by contrast with the woman
implicated in the horrible article, it was a carol of the seraphs.
'Come, you can say whether there's anything in it,' Dacier's host pushed
him.
'I should not say it if I could,' he replied.
The mild sweetness of Miss Asper's look encouraged him.
He was touched to the quick by hearing her say: 'You ask for Cabinet
secrets, uncle. All secrets are holy, but secrets of State are under a
seal next to divine.'
Next to divine! She was the mouthpiece of his ruling principle.
'I 'm not, prying into secrets,' Quintin persisted; 'all I want to
know is, whether there 's any foundation for that article--all London's
boiling about it, I can tell you--or it's only newspaper's humbug.'
'Clearly the oracle for you is the Editor's office,' rejoined Dacier.
'A pretty sort of answer I should get.'
'It would at least be complimentary.'
'How do you mean?'
'The net was cast for you--and the sight of a fish in it!'
Miss Asper almost laughed. 'Have you heard the choir at St.
Catherine's?' she asked.
Dacier had not. He repented of his worldliness, and drinking persuasive
claret, said he would go to hear it next Sunday.
'Do,' she murmured.
'Well, you seem to be a pair against me,' her uncle grumbled. 'Anyhow
I think it's important. People have been talking for some time, and I
don't want to be taken unawares; I won't be a yoked ox, mind you.'
'Have you been sketching lately?' Dacier asked Miss Asper.
She generally filled a book in the autumn, she said.
'May I see it?'
'If you wish.'
They had a short tussle with her uncle and escaped. He was conducted
to a room midway upstairs: an heiress's conception of a saintly little
room; and more impresive in purity, indeed it was, than a saint's, with
the many crucifixes, gold and silver emblems, velvet prie-Dieu chairs,
jewel-clasped sacred volumes: every invitation to meditate in luxury on
an ascetic religiousness.
She depreciated her sketching powers. 'I am impatient with my
imperfections. I am therefore doomed not to advance.'
'On the contrary, that is the state guaranteeing ultimate excellence,'
he said, much disposed to drone about it.
She sighed: 'I fear not.'
He turned the leaves, comparing her modesty with the performance.
The third of the leaves was a subject instantly recognized by him. It
represented the place he had inherited from Lord Dannisburgh.
He named it.
She smiled: 'You are good enough to see a likeness? My aunt and I were
passing it last October, and I waited for a day, to sketch.'
'You have taken it from my favourite point of view.'
'I am glad.'
'How much I should like a copy!'
'If you will accept that?'
'I could not rob you.'
'I can make a duplicate.'
'The look of the place pleases you?'
'Oh! yes; the pines behind it; the sweet little village church; even
the appearance of the rustics;--it is all impressively old English. I
suppose you are very seldom there?'
'Does it look like a home to you?'
'No place more!'
'I feel the loneliness.'
'Where I live I feel no loneliness!'
'You have heavenly messengers near you.'
'They do not always come.'
'Would you consent to make the place less lonely to me?'
Her bosom rose. In deference to her maidenly understanding, she gazed
inquiringly.
'If you love it!' said he.
'The place?' she said, looking soft at the possessor.
'Constance!'
'Is it true?'
'As you yourself. Could it be other than true? This hand is mine?'
'Oh! Percy.'
Borrowing the world's poetry to describe them, the long prayed-for
Summer enveloped the melting snows.
So the recollection of Diana's watch beside his uncle's death-bed was
wiped out. Ay, and the hissing of her treachery silenced. This maidenly
hand put him at peace with the world, instead of his defying it for a
worthless woman--who could not do better than accept the shelter of her
husband's house, as she ought to be told, if her friends wished her to
save her reputation.
Dacier made his way downstairs to Quintin Manx, by whom he was hotly
congratulated and informed of the extent of the young lady's fortune:
on the strength of which it was expected that he would certainly speak a
private word in elucidation of that newspaper article.
'I know nothing of it,' said Dacier, but promised to come and dine.
Alone in her happiness Constance Asper despatched various brief notes
under her gold-symbolled crest to sisterly friends; one to Lady Wathin,
containing the single line:
'Your prophesy is confirmed.'
Dacier was comfortably able to face his Club after the excitement of
a proposal, with a bride on his hands. He was assaulted concerning the
article, and he parried capitally. Say that her lips were rather cold:
at any rate, they invigorated him. Her character was guaranteed--not the
hazy idea of a dupe. And her fortune would be enormous: a speculation
merely due to worldly prudence and prospective ambition.
At the dinner-table of four, in the evening, conversation would have
seemed dull to him, by contrast, had it not, been for the presiding
grace of his bride, whose habitually eminent feminine air of superiority
to the repast was throned by her appreciative receptiveness of his looks
and utterances. Before leaving her, he won her consent to a very early
marriage; on the plea of a possibly approaching Session, and also
that they had waited long. The consent, notwithstanding the hurry of
preparations, it involved, besides the annihilation of her desire
to meditate on so solemn a change in her life and savour the
congratulations of her friends and have the choir of St. Catherine's
rigorously drilled in her favourite anthems was beautifully yielded to
the pressure of circumstances.
There lay on his table at night a letter; a bulky letter. No need to
tear it open for sight of the signature: the superscription was redolent
of that betraying woman. He tossed it unopened into the fire.
As it was thick, it burned sullenly, discolouring his name on the
address, as she had done, and still offering him a last chance of
viewing the contents. She fought on the consuming fire to have her
exculpation heard.
But was she not a shameless traitor? She had caught him by his love of
his country and hope to serve it. She had wound into his heart to bleed
him of all he knew and sell the secrets for money. A wonderful sort of
eloquence lay there, on those coals, no doubt. He felt a slight movement
of curiosity to glance at two or three random sentences: very slight.
And why read them now? They were valueless to him, mere outcries. He
judged her by the brute facts. She and her slowly-consuming letter were
of a common blackness. Moreover, to read them when he was plighted to
another woman would be senseless. In the discovery of her baseness, she
had made a poor figure. Doubtless during the afternoon she had trimmed
her intuitive Belial art of making 'the worse appear the better cause':
queer to peruse, and instructive in an unprofitable department of
knowledge-the tricks of the sex.
He said to himself, with little intuition of the popular taste: She
wouldn't be a bad heroine of Romance! He said it derisively of the
Romantic. But the right worshipful heroine of Romance was the front-face
female picture he had won for his walls. Poor Diana was the flecked
heroine of Reality: not always the same; not impeccable; not an
ignorant-innocent, nor a guileless: good under good leading; devoted to
the death in a grave crisis; often wrestling with her terrestrial nature
nobly; and a growing soul; but not one whose purity was carved in marble
for the assurance to an Englishman that his possession of the changeless
thing defies time and his fellows, is the pillar of his home and
universally enviable. Your fair one of Romance cannot suffer a mishap
without a plotting villain, perchance many of them; to wreak the dread
iniquity: she cannot move without him; she is the marble block, and if
she is to have a feature, he is the sculptor; she depends on him for
life, and her human history at least is married to him far more than
to the rescuing lover. No wonder, then, that men should find her thrice
cherishable featureless, or with the most moderate possible indication
of a countenance. Thousands of the excellent simple creatures do; and
every reader of her tale. On the contrary, the heroine of Reality is
that woman whom you have met or heard of once in your course of years,
and very probably despised for bearing in her composition the motive
principle; at best, you say, a singular mixture of good and bad;
anything but the feminine ideal of man. Feature to some excess, you
think, distinguishes her. Yet she furnishes not any of the sweet sensual
excitement pertaining to her spotless rival pursued by villany. She
knocks at the doors of the mind, and the mind must open to be interested
in her. Mind and heart must be wide open to excuse her sheer descent
from the pure ideal of man.
Dacier's wandering reflections all came back in crowds to the judicial
Bench of the Black Cap. He felt finely, apart from the treason, that her
want of money degraded her: him too, by contact. Money she might have
had to any extent: upon application for it, of course. How was he to
imagine that she wanted money! Smilingly as she welcomed him and his
friends, entertaining them royally, he was bound to think she had means.
A decent propriety bound him not to think of the matter at all.
He naturally supposed she was capable of conducting her affairs.
And--money! It soiled his memory: though the hour at Rovio was rather
pretty, and the scene at Copsley touching: other times also, short
glimpses of the woman, were taking. The flood of her treachery effaced
them. And why reflect? Constance called to him to look her way.
Diana's letter died hard. The corners were burnt to black tissue, with
an edge or two of discoloured paper. A small frayed central heap still
resisted, and in kindness to the necessity for privacy, he impressed the
fire-tongs to complete the execution. After which he went to his desk
and worked, under the presidency of Constance.