CHAPTER XII

BETWEEN EMMA AND DIANA

Diana was in the arms of her friend at a late hour of the evening, and

Danvers breathed the amiable atmosphere of footmen once more, professing

herself perished. This maid of the world, who could endure hardships and

loss of society for the mistress to whom she was attached, no sooner saw

herself surrounded by the comforts befitting her station, than she

indulged in the luxury of a wailful dejectedness, the better to

appreciate them. She was unaffectedly astonished to find her outcries

against the cold and the journeyings to and fro interpreted as a

serving-woman's muffled comments on her mistress's behaviour. Lady

Dunstane's maid Bartlett, and Mrs. Bridges the housekeeper, and Foster

the butler, contrived to let her know that they could speak an if they

would; and they expressed their pity of her to assist her to begin the

speaking. She bowed in acceptance of Fosters offer of a glass of wine

after supper, but treated him and the other two immediately as though

they had been interrogating bigwigs.

'They wormed nothing out of me,' she said to her mistress at night,

undressing her. 'But what a set they are! They've got such comfortable

places, they've all their days and hours for talk of the doings of their

superiors. They read the vilest of those town papers, and they put their

two and two together of what is happening in and about. And not one of

the footmen thinks of staying, because it 's so dull; and they and the

maids object--did one ever hear?--to the three uppers retiring, when they

've done dining, to the private room to dessert.'

'That is the custom?' observed her mistress.

'Foster carries the decanter, ma'am, and Mrs. Bridges the biscuits, and

Bartlett the plate of fruit, and they march out in order.'

'The man at the head of the procession, probably.'

'Oh yes. And the others, though they have everything except the wine and

dessert, don't like it. When I was here last they were new, and hadn't a

word against it. Now they say it's invidious! Lady Dunstane will be left

without an under-servant at Copsley soon. I was asked about your boxes,

ma'am, and the moment I said they were at Dover, that instant all three

peeped. They let out a mouse to me. They do love to talk!'

Her mistress could have added, 'And you too, my good Danvers!'

trustworthy though she knew the creature to be in the main.

'Now go, and be sure you have bedclothes enough before you drop asleep,'

she said; and Danvers directed her steps to gossip with Bartlett.

Diana wrapped herself in a dressing-gown Lady Dunstane had sent her, and

sat by the fire, thinking of the powder of tattle stored in servants'

halls to explode beneath her: and but for her choice of roads she might

have been among strangers. The liking of strangers best is a curious

exemplification of innocence.

'Yes, I was in a muse,' she said, raising her head to Emma, whom she

expected and sat armed to meet, unaccountably iron-nerved. 'I was

questioning whether I could be quite as blameless as I fancy, if I sit

and shiver to be in England. You will tell me I have taken the right

road. I doubt it. But the road is taken, and here I am. But any road that

leads me to you is homeward, my darling!' She tried to melt, determining

to be at least open with her.

'I have not praised you enough for coming,' said Emma, when they had

embraced again.

'Praise a little your "truest friend of women." Your letter gave the tug.

I might have resisted it.'

'He came straight from heaven! But, cruel Tony where is your love?'

'It is unequal to yours, dear, I see. I could have wrestled with anything

abstract and distant, from being certain. But here I am.'

'But, my own dear girl, you never could have allowed this infamous charge

to be undefended?'

'I think so. I've an odd apathy as to my character; rather like death,

when one dreams of flying the soul. What does it matter? I should have

left the flies and wasps to worry a corpse. And then-good-bye gentility!

I should have worked for my bread. I had thoughts of America. I fancy I

can write; and Americans, one hears, are gentle to women.'

'Ah, Tony! there's the looking back. And, of all women, you!'

'Or else, dear-well, perhaps once on foreign soil, in a different air, I

might--might have looked back, and seen my whole self, not shattered, as

I feel it now, and come home again compassionate to the poor persecuted

animal to defend her. Perhaps that was what I was running away for. I

fled on the instinct, often a good thing to trust.'

'I saw you at The Crossways.'

'I remembered I had the dread that you would, though I did not imagine

you would reach me so swiftly. My going there was an instinct, too. I

suppose we are all instinct when we have the world at our heels. Forgive

me if I generalize without any longer the right to be included in the

common human sum. "Pariah" and "taboo" are words we borrow from barbarous

tribes; they stick to me.'

'My Tony, you look as bright as ever, and you speak despairingly.'

'Call me enigma. I am that to myself, Emmy.'

'You are not quite yourself to your friend.'

'Since the blow I have been bewildered; I see nothing upright. It came on

me suddenly; stunned me. A bolt out of a clear sky, as they say. He

spared me a scene: There had been threats, and yet the sky was clear, or

seemed. When we have a man for arbiter, he is our sky.'

Emma pressed her Tony's unresponsive hand, feeling strangely that her

friend ebbed from her.

'Has he . . . to mislead him?' she said, colouring at the breach in the

question.

'Proofs? He has the proofs he supposes.'

'Not to justify suspicion?'

'He broke open my desk and took my letters.'

'Horrible! But the letters?' Emma shook with a nervous revulsion.

'You might read them.'

'Basest of men! That is the unpardonable cowardice!', exclaimed Emma.

'The world will read them, dear,' said Diana, and struck herself to ice.

She broke from the bitter frigidity in fury. 'They are letters--none very

long--sometimes two short sentences--he wrote at any spare moment. On my

honour, as a woman, I feel for him most. The letters--I would bear any

accusation rather than that exposure. Letters of a man of his age to a

young woman he rates too highly!

The world reads them. Do you hear it saying it could have excused her for

that fiddle-faddle with a younger--a young lover? And had I thought of a

lover! . . . I had no thought of loving or being loved. I confess I was

flattered. To you, Emma, I will confess . . . . You see the public

ridicule!--and half his age, he and I would have appeared a romantic

couple! Confess, I said. Well, dear, the stake is lighted for a trial of

its effect on me. It is this: he was never a dishonourable friend; but

men appear to be capable of friendship with women only for as long as we

keep out of pulling distance of that line where friendship ceases. They

may step on it; we must hold back a league. I have learnt it. You will

judge whether he disrespects me. As for him, he is a man; at his worst,

not one of the worst; at his best, better than very many. There, now,

Emma, you have me stripped and burning; there is my full confession.

Except for this--yes, one thing further--that I do rage at the ridicule,

and could choose, but for you, to have given the world cause to revile

me, or think me romantic. Something or somebody to suffer for would

really be agreeable. It is a singular fact, I have not known what this

love is, that they talk about. And behold me marched into

Smithfield!--society's heretic, if you please. I must own I think it

hard.'

Emma chafed her cold hand softly.

'It is hard; I understand it,' she murmured. 'And is your Sunday visit to

us in the list of offences?'

'An item.'

'You gave me a happy day.'

'Then it counts for me in heaven.'

'He set spies on you?'

'So we may presume.'

Emma went through a sphere of tenuious reflections in a flash.

'He will rue it. Perhaps now . . . he may now be regretting his wretched

frenzy. And Tony could pardon; she has the power of pardoning in her

heart.'

'Oh! certainly, dear. But tell me why it is you speak to-night rather

unlike the sedate, philosophical Emma; in a tone-well, tolerably

sentimental?'

'I am unaware of it,' said Emma, who could have retorted with a like

reproach. 'I am anxious, I will not say at present for your happiness,

for your peace; and I have a hope that possibly a timely word from some

friend--Lukin or another--might induce him to consider.'

'To pardon me, do you mean?' cried Diana, flushing sternly.

'Not pardon. Suppose a case of faults on both sides.'

'You address a faulty person, my dear. But do you know that you are

hinting at a reconcilement?'

'Might it not be?'

'Open your eyes to what it involves. I trust I can pardon. Let him go his

ways, do his darkest, or repent. But return to the roof of the "basest of

men," who was guilty of "the unpardonable cowardice"? You expect me to be

superhuman. When I consent to that, I shall be out of my woman's skin,

which he has branded. Go back to him!' She was taken with a shudder of

head and limbs. 'No; I really have the power of pardoning, and I am bound

to; for among my debts to him, this present exemption, that is like

liberty dragging a chain, or, say, an escaped felon wearing his manacles,

should count. I am sensible of my obligation. The price I pay for it is

an immovable patch-attractive to male idiots, I have heard, and a mark of

scorn to females. Between the two the remainder of my days will be

lively. "Out, out, damned spot!" But it will not. And not on the hand--on

the forehead! We'll talk of it no longer. I have sent a note, with an

enclosure, to my lawyers. I sell The Crossways, if I have the married

woman's right to any scrap of property, for money to scatter fees.'

'My purse, dear Tony!' exclaimed Emma. 'My house! You will stay with me?

Why do you shake your head? With me you are safe.' She spied at the

shadows in her friend's face. 'Ever since your marriage, Tony, you have

been strange in your trick of refusing to stay with me. And you and I

made our friendship the pledge of a belief in eternity! We vowed it.

Come, I do talk sentimentally, but my heart is in it. I beg you--all the

reasons are with me--to make my house your home. You will. You know I am

rather lonely.'

Diana struggled to keep her resolution from being broken by tenderness.

And doubtless poor Sir Lukin had learnt his lesson; still, her defensive

instincts could never quite slumber under his roof; not because of any

further fear that they would have to be summoned; it was chiefly owing to

the consequences of his treacherous foolishness. For this half-home with

her friend thenceforward denied to her, she had accepted a protector,

called husband--rashly, past credence, in the retrospect; but it had been

her propelling motive; and the loathings roused by her marriage helped to

sicken her at the idea of a lengthened stay where she had suffered the

shock precipitating her to an act of insanity.

'I do not forget you were an heiress, Emmy, and I will come to you if I

need money to keep my head up. As for staying, two reasons are against

it. If I am to fight my battle, I must be seen; I must go about--wherever

I am received. So my field is London. That is obvious. And I shall rest

better in a house where my story is not known.'

Two or three questions ensued. Diana had to fortify her fictitious

objection by alluding to her maid's prattle of the household below; and

she excused the hapless, overfed, idle people of those regions.

To Emma it seemed a not unnatural sensitiveness. She came to a settled

resolve in her thoughts, as she said, 'They want a change. London is

their element.'

Feeling that she deceived this true heart, however lightly and

necessarily, Diana warmed to her, forgiving her at last for having netted

and dragged her back to front the enemy; an imposition of horrors, of

which the scene and the travelling with Redworth, the talking of her case

with her most intimate friend as well, had been a distempering foretaste.

They stood up and kissed, parting for the night.

An odd world, where for the sin we have not participated in we must fib

and continue fibbing, she reflected. She did not entirely cheat her

clearer mind, for she perceived that her step in flight had been urged

both by a weak despondency and a blind desperation; also that the world

of a fluid civilization is perforce artificial. But her mind was in the

background of her fevered senses, and when she looked in the glass and

mused on uttering the word, 'Liar!' to the lovely image, her senses were

refreshed, her mind somewhat relieved, the face appeared so sovereignly

defiant of abasement.

Thus did a nature distraught by pain obtain some short lull of repose.

Thus, moreover, by closely reading herself, whom she scourged to excess

that she might in justice be comforted, she gathered an increasing

knowledge of our human constitution, and stored matter for the brain.