CHAPTER V

CONCERNING THE SCRUPULOUS GENTLEMAN WHO CAME TOO LATE

On the Saturday of his appointment Redworth arrived at Copsley, with a

shade deeper of the calculating look under his thick brows, habitual to

him latterly. He found Lady Dunstane at her desk, pen in hand, the paper

untouched; and there was an appearance of trouble about her somewhat

resembling his own, as he would have observed, had he been open-minded

enough to notice anything, except that she was writing a letter. He

begged her to continue it; he proposed to read a book till she was at

leisure.

'I have to write, and scarcely know how,' said she, clearing her face to

make the guest at home, and taking a chair by the fire, 'I would rather

chat for half an hour.'

She spoke of the weather, frosty, but tonic; bad for the last days of

hunting, good for the farmer and the country, let us hope.

Redworth nodded assent. It might be surmised that he was brooding over

those railways, in which he had embarked his fortune. Ah! those railways!

She was not long coming to the wailful exclamation upon them, both to

express her personal sorrow at the disfigurement of our dear England, and

lead to a little, modest, offering of a woman's counsel to the rash

adventurer; for thus could she serviceably put aside her perplexity

awhile. Those railways! When would there be peace in the land? Where one

single nook of shelter and escape from them! And the English, blunt as

their senses are to noise and hubbub, would be revelling in hisses,

shrieks, puffings and screeches, so that travelling would become an

intolerable affliction. 'I speak rather as an invalid,' she admitted; 'I

conjure up all sorts of horrors, the whistle in the night beneath one's

windows, and the smoke of trains defacing the landscape; hideous

accidents too. They will be wholesale and past help. Imagine a collision!

I have borne many changes with equanimity, I pretend to a certain degree

of philosophy, but this mania for cutting up the land does really cause

me to pity those who are to follow us. They will not see the England we

have seen. It will be patched and scored, disfigured . . . a sort of

barbarous Maori visage--England in a New Zealand mask. You may call it

the sentimental view. In this case, I am decidedly sentimental: I love my

country. I do love quiet, rural England. Well, and I love beauty, I love

simplicity. All that will be destroyed by the refuse of the towns

flooding the land--barring accidents, as Lukin says. There seems nothing

else to save us.'

Redworth acquiesced. 'Nothing.'

'And you do not regret it?' he was asked.

'Not a bit. We have already exchanged opinions on the subject. Simplicity

must go, and the townsman meet his equal in the countryman. As for

beauty, I would sacrifice that to circulate gumption. A bushelful of

nonsense is talked pro and con: it always is at an innovation. What we

are now doing, is to take a longer and a quicker stride, that is all.'

'And establishing a new field for the speculator.'

'Yes, and I am one, and this is the matter I wanted to discuss with you,

Lady Dunstane,' said Redworth, bending forward, the whole man devoted to

the point of business.

She declared she was complimented; she felt the compliment, and trusted

her advice might be useful, faintly remarking that she had a woman's

head: and 'not less' was implied as much as 'not more,' in order to give

strength to her prospective opposition.

All his money, she heard, was down on the railway table. He might within

a year have a tolerable fortune: and, of course, he might be ruined. He

did not expect it; still he fronted the risks. 'And now,' said he, 'I

come to you for counsel. I am not held among my acquaintances to be a

marrying man, as it's called.'

He paused. Lady Dunstane thought it an occasion to praise him for his

considerateness.

'You involve no one but yourself, you mean?' Her eyes shed approval.

'Still the day may come . . . I say only that it may: and the wish to

marry is a rosy colouring . . . equal to a flying chariot in conducting

us across difficulties and obstructions to the deed. And then one may

have to regret a previous rashness.'

These practical men are sometimes obtuse: she dwelt on that vision of the

future.

He listened, and resumed: 'My view of marriage is, that no man should ask

a woman to be his wife unless he is well able to support her in the

comforts, not to say luxuries, she is accustomed to.' His gaze had

wandered to the desk; it fixed there. 'That is Miss Merion's writing,' he

said.

'The letter?' said Lady Dunstane, and she stretched out her hand to press

down a leaf of it. 'Yes; it is from her.'

'Is she quite well?'

'I suppose she is. She does not speak of her health.'

He looked pertinaciously in the direction of the letter, and it was not

rightly mannered. That letter, of all others, was covert and sacred to

the friend. It contained the weightiest of secrets.

'I have not written to her,' said Redworth.

He was astonishing: 'To whom? To Diana? You could very well have done so,

only I fancy she knows nothing, has never given a thought to railway

stocks and shares; she has a loathing for speculation.'

'And speculators too, I dare say!'

'It is extremely probable.' Lady Dunstane spoke with an emphasis, for the

man liked Diana, and would be moved by the idea of forfeiting her esteem.

'She might blame me if I did anything dishonourable!'

'She certainly would.'

'She will have no cause.'

Lady Dunstane began to look, as at a cloud charged with remote

explosions: and still for the moment she was unsuspecting. But it was a

flitting moment. When he went on, and very singularly droning to her ear:

'The more a man loves a woman, the more he should be positive, before

asking her, that she will not have to consent to a loss of position, and

I would rather lose her than fail to give her all--not be sure, as far as

a man can be sure, of giving her all I think she's worthy of': then the

cloud shot a lightning flash, and the doors of her understanding swung

wide to the entry of a great wonderment. A shock of pain succeeded it.

Her sympathy was roused so acutely that she slipped over the reflective

rebuke she would have addressed to her silly delusion concerning his

purpose in speaking of his affairs to a woman. Though he did not mention

Diana by name, Diana was clearly the person. And why had he delayed to

speak to her?--Because of this venture of his money to make him a

fortune, for the assurance of her future comfort! Here was the best of

men for the girl, not displeasing to her; a good, strong, trustworthy

man, pleasant to hear and to see, only erring in being a trifle too

scrupulous in love: and a fortnight back she would have imagined he had

no chance; and now she knew that the chance was excellent in those days,

with this revelation in Diana's letter, which said that all chance was

over.

'The courtship of a woman,' he droned away, 'is in my mind not fair to

her until a man has to the full enough to sanction his asking her to

marry him. And if he throws all he possesses on a stake . . . to win

her--give her what she has a right to claim, he ought . . . . Only at

present the prospect seems good . . . . He ought of course to wait. Well,

the value of the stock I hold has doubled, and it increases. I am a

careful watcher of the market. I have friends--brokers and railway

Directors. I can rely on them.'

'Pray,' interposed Lady Dunstane, 'specify--I am rather in a mist--the

exact point upon which you do me the honour to consult me.' She ridiculed

herself for having imagined that such a man would come to consult her

upon a point of business.

'It is,' he replied, 'this: whether, as affairs now stand with me--I have

an income from my office, and personal property . . . say between

thirteen and fourteen hundred a year to start with--whether you think me

justified in asking a lady to share my lot?'

'Why not? But will you name the lady?'

'Then I may write at once? In your judgement. . . . Yes, the lady. I have

not named her. I had no right. Besides, the general question first, in

fairness to the petitioner. You might reasonably stipulate for more for a

friend. She could make a match, as you have said . . .' he muttered of

'brilliant,' and 'the highest'; and his humbleness of the honest man

enamoured touched Lady Dunstane. She saw him now as the man of strength

that she would have selected from a thousand suitors to guide her dear

friend.

She caught at a straw: 'Tell me, it is not Diana?'

'Diana Merion!'

As soon as he had said it he perceived pity, and he drew himself tight

for the stroke. 'She's in love with some one?'

'She is engaged.'

He bore it well. He was a big-chested fellow, and that excruciating twist

within of the revolution of the wheels of the brain snapping their course

to grind the contrary to that of the heart, was revealed in one short

lift and gasp, a compression of the tremendous change he underwent.

'Why did you not speak before?' said Lady Dunstane. Her words were

tremulous.

'I should have had no justification!'

'You might have won her!' She could have wept; her sympathy and her

self-condolence under disappointment at Diana's conduct joined to swell

the feminine flood.

The poor fellow's quick breathing and blinking reminded her of cruelty in

a retrospect. She generalized, to ease her spirit of regret, by hinting

it without hurting: 'Women really are not puppets. They are not so

excessively luxurious. It is good for young women in the early days of

marriage to rough it a little.' She found herself droning, as he had

done.

He had ears for nothing but the fact.

'Then I am too late!'

'I have heard it to-day.'

'She is engaged! Positively?'

Lady Dunstane glanced backward at the letter on her desk. She had to

answer the strangest of letters that had ever come to her, and it was

from her dear Tony, the baldest intimation of the weightiest piece of

intelligence which a woman can communicate to her heart's friend. The

task of answering it was now doubled. 'I fear so, I fancy so,' she said,

and she longed to cast eye over the letter again, to see if there might

possibly be a loophole behind the lines.

'Then I must make my mind up to it,' said Redworth. 'I think I'll take a

walk.'

She smiled kindly. 'It will be our secret.'

'I thank you with all my heart, Lady Dunstane.'

He was not a weaver of phrases in distress. His blunt reserve was

eloquent of it to her, and she liked him the better; could have thanked

him, too, for leaving her promptly.

When she was alone she took in the contents of the letter at a hasty

glimpse. It was of one paragraph, and fired its shot like a cannon with

the muzzle at her breast:--

'MY OWN EMMY,--I have been asked in marriage by Mr. Warwick, and

have accepted him. Signify your approval, for I have decided that

it is the wisest thing a waif can do. We are to live at The

Crossways for four months of the year, so I shall have Dada in his

best days and all my youngest dreams, my sunrise and morning dew,

surrounding me; my old home for my new one. I write in haste, to

you first, burning to hear from you. Send your blessing to yours in

life and death, through all transformations,

'TONY.'

That was all. Not a word of the lover about to be decorated with the

title of husband. No confession of love, nor a single supplicating word

to her friend, in excuse for the abrupt decision to so grave a step. Her

previous description of, him, as a 'gentlemanly official' in his

appearance, conjured him up most distastefully. True, she might have made

a more lamentable choice; a silly lordling, or a hero of scandals; but if

a gentlemanly official was of stabler mould, he failed to harmonize quite

so well with the idea of a creature like Tony. Perhaps Mr. Redworth also

failed in something. Where was the man fitly to mate her! Mr. Redworth,

however, was manly and trustworthy, of the finest Saxon type in build and

in character. He had great qualities, and his excess of scrupulousness

was most pitiable.

She read: 'The wisest thing a waif can do.' It bore a sound of

desperation. Avowedly Tony had accepted him without being in love. Or was

she masking the passion? No: had it been a case of love, she would have

written very differently to her friend.

Lady Dunstane controlled the pricking of the wound inflicted by Diana's

novel exercise in laconics where the fullest flow was due to tenderness,

and despatched felicitations upon the text of the initial line: 'Wonders

are always happening.' She wrote to hide vexation beneath surprise;

naturally betraying it. 'I must hope and pray that you have not been

precipitate.' Her curiosity to inspect the happiest of men, the most

genuine part of her letter, was expressed coldly.

When she had finished the composition she perused it, and did not

recognize herself in her language, though she had been so guarded to

cover the wound her Tony dealt their friendship--in some degree injuring

their sex. For it might now, after such an example, verily seem that

women are incapable of a translucent perfect confidence: their impulses,

caprices, desperations, tricks of concealment, trip a heart-whole

friendship. Well, to-morrow, if not to-day, the tripping may be expected!

Lady Dunstane resigned herself sadly to a lowered view of her Tony's

character. This was her unconscious act of reprisal. Her brilliant

beloved Tony, dazzling but in beauty and the gifted mind, stood as one

essentially with the common order of women. She wished to be settled, Mr.

Warwick proposed, and for the sake of living at The Crossways she

accepted him--she, the lofty scorner of loveless marriages! who had

said--how many times! that nothing save love excused it! She degraded

their mutual high standard of womankind. Diana was in eclipse, full three

parts. The bulk of the gentlemanly official she had chosen obscured her.

But I have written very carefully, thought Lady Dunstane, dropping her

answer into the post-bag. She had, indeed, been so care ful, that to

cloak her feelings, she had written as another person. Women with otiose

husbands have a task to preserve friendship.

Redworth carried his burden through the frosty air at a pace to melt

icicles in Greenland. He walked unthinkingly, right ahead, to the red

West, as he discovered when pausing to consult his watch. Time was left

to return at the same pace and dress for dinner; he swung round and

picked up remembrances of sensations he had strewn by the way. She knew

these woods; he was walking in her footprints; she was engaged to be

married. Yes, his principle, never to ask a woman to marry him, never to

court her, without bank-book assurance of his ability to support her in

cordial comfort, was right. He maintained it, and owned himself a donkey

for having stuck to it. Between him and his excellent principle there was

war, without the slightest division. Warned of the danger of losing her,

he would have done the same again, confessing himself donkey for his

pains. The principle was right, because it was due to the woman. His

rigid adherence to the principle set him belabouring his donkey-ribs, as

the proper due to himself. For he might have had a chance, all through

two Winters. The opportunities had been numberless. Here, in this beech

wood; near that thornbush; on the juniper slope; from the corner of chalk

and sand in junction, to the corner of clay and chalk; all the length of

the wooded ridge he had reminders of her presence and his priceless

chances: and still the standard of his conduct said No, while his heart

bled.

He felt that a chance had been. More sagacious than Lady Dunstane, from

his not nursing a wound, he divined in the abruptness of Diana's

resolution to accept a suitor, a sober reason, and a fitting one, for the

wish that she might be settled. And had he spoken!--If he had spoken to

her, she might have given her hand to him, to a dishonourable brute! A

blissful brute. But a worse than donkey. Yes, his principle was right,

and he lashed with it, and prodded with it, drove himself out into the

sour wilds where bachelordom crops noxious weeds without a hallowing

luminary, and clung to it, bruised and bleeding though he was.

The gentleness of Lady Dunstane soothed him during the term of a visit

that was rather like purgatory sweetened by angelical tears. He was glad

to go, wretched in having gone. She diverted the incessant conflict

between his insubordinate self and his castigating, but avowedly

sovereign, principle. Away from her, he was the victim of a flagellation

so dire that it almost drove him to revolt against the lord he served,

and somehow the many memories at Copsley kept him away. Sir Lukin, when

speaking of Diana's 'engagement to that fellow Warwick,' exalted her with

an extraordinary enthusiasm, exceedingly hard for the silly beast who had

lost her to bear. For the present the place dearest to Redworth of all

places on earth was unendurable.

Meanwhile the value of railway investments rose in the market, fast as

asparagus-heads for cutting: a circumstance that added stings to

reflection. Had he been only a little bolder, a little less the fanatical

devotee of his rule of masculine honour, less the slave to the letter of

success . . . . But why reflect at all? Here was a goodly income

approaching, perhaps a seat in Parliament; a station for the airing of

his opinions--and a social status for the wife now denied to him. The

wife was denied to him; he could conceive of no other. The tyrant-ridden,

reticent, tenacious creature had thoroughly wedded her in mind; her view

of things had a throne beside his own, even in their differences. He

perceived, agreeing or disagreeing, the motions of her brain, as he did

with none other of women; and this it is which stamps character on her,

divides her from them, upraises and enspheres. He declined to live with

any other of the sex.

Before he could hear of the sort of man Mr. Warwick was--a perpetual

object of his quest--the bridal bells had rung, and Diana Antonia Merion

lost her maiden name. She became the Mrs. Warwick of our footballing

world.

Why she married, she never told. Possibly, in amazement at herself

subsequently, she forgot the specific reason. That which weighs heavily

in youth, and commits us to desperate action, will be a trifle under

older eyes, to blunter senses, a more enlightened understanding. Her

friend Emma probed for the reason vainly. It was partly revealed to

Redworth, by guess-work and a putting together of pieces, yet quite

luminously, as it were by touch of tentacle-feelers--one evening that he

passed with Sir Lukin Dunstane, when the lachrymose ex-dragoon and son of

Idlesse, had rather more than dined.