CHAPTER XIV

GIVING GLIMPSES OF DIANA UNDER HER CLOUD BEFORE THE WORLD AND OF HER

FURTHER APPRENTICESHIP

As the day of her trial became more closely calculable, Diana's

anticipated alarms receded with the deadening of her heart to meet the

shock. She fancied she had put on proof-armour, unconscious that it was

the turning of the inward flutterer to steel, which supplied her cuirass

and shield. The necessity to brave society, in the character of honest

Defendant, caused but a momentary twitch of the nerves. Her heart beat

regularly, like a serviceable clock; none of her faculties abandoned her

save songfulness, and none belied her, excepting a disposition to

tartness almost venomous in the sarcastic shafts she let fly at friends

interceding with Mr. Warwick to spare his wife, when she had determined

to be tried. A strange fit of childishness overcame her powers of

thinking, and was betrayed in her manner of speaking, though--to herself

her dwindled humour allowed her to appear the towering Britomart. She

pouted contemptuously on hearing that a Mr. Sullivan Smith (a remotely

recollected figure) had besought Mr. Warwick for an interview, and gained

it, by stratagem, 'to bring the man to his senses': but an ultra-Irishman

did not compromise her battle-front, as the busybody supplications of a

personal friend like Mr. Redworth did; and that the latter, without

consulting her, should be 'one of the plaintive crew whining about the

heels of the Plaintiff for a mercy she disdained and rejected' was bitter

to her taste.

'He does not see that unless I go through the fire there is no

justification for this wretched character of mine!' she exclaimed. Truce,

treaty, withdrawal, signified publicly pardon, not exoneration by any

means; and now that she was in armour she had no dread of the public. So

she said. Redworth's being then engaged upon the canvass of a borough,

added to the absurdity of his meddling with the dilemmas of a woman.

'Dear me, Emma! think of stepping aside from the parliamentary road to

entreat a husband to relent, and arrange the domestic alliance of a

contrary couple! Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance.'

Lady Dunstane pleaded his friendship. She had to quit the field where

such darts were showering.

The first dinner-party was aristocratic, easy to encounter. Lord and Lady

Crane, Lady Pennon, Lord and Lady Esquart, Lord Larrian, Mr. and Mrs.

Montvert of Halford Manor, Lady Singleby, Sir Walter Capperston friends,

admirers of Diana; patrons, in the phrase of the time, of her father,

were the guests. Lady Pennon expected to be amused, and was gratified,

for Diana had only to open her mouth to set the great lady laughing. She

petitioned to have Mrs. Warwick at her table that day week, because the

marquis was dying to make her acquaintance, and begged to have all her

sayings repeated to him; vowed she must be salt in the desert. 'And

remember, I back you through thick and thin,' said Lady Pennon. To which

Diana replied: 'If I am salt in the desert, you are the spring'; and the

old lady protested she must put that down for her book. The witty Mrs.

Warwick, of whom wit was expected, had many incitements to be guilty of

cheap wit; and the beautiful Mrs. Warwick, being able to pass anything

she uttered, gave good and bad alike, under the impulsion to give out

something, that the stripped and shivering Mrs. Warwick might find a

cover in applause. She discovered the social uses of cheap wit; she laid

ambushes for anecdotes, a telling form of it among a people of no

conversational interlocution, especially in the circles depending for

dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal; which have plentiful

crops, yet not sufficient. The old dinner and supper tables at The

Crossways furnished her with an abundant store; and recollection failing,

she invented. Irish anecdotes are always popular in England, as

promoting, besides the wholesome shake of the sides, a kindly sense of

superiority. Anecdotes also are portable, unlike the lightning flash,

which will not go into the pocket; they can be carried home, they are

disbursable at other tables. These were Diana's weapons. She was perforce

the actress of her part.

In happier times, when light of heart and natural, her vogue had not been

so enrapturing. Doubtless Cleopatra in her simple Egyptian uniform would

hardly have won such plaudits as her stress of barbaric Oriental

splendours evoked for her on the swan and serpent Nile-barge--not from

posterity at least. It is a terrible decree, that all must act who would

prevail; and the more extended the audience, the greater need for the

mask and buskin.

From Lady Pennon's table Diana passed to Lady Crane's, Lady Esquart's,

Lady Singleby's, the Duchess of Raby's, warmly clad in the admiration she

excited. She appeared at Princess Therese Paryli's first ball of the

season, and had her circle, not of worshippers only. She did not dance.

The princess, a fair Austrian, benevolent to her sisterhood, an admirer

of Diana's contrasting complexion, would have had her dance once in a

quadrille of her forming, but yielded to the mute expression of the

refusal. Wherever Mrs. Warwick went, her arts of charming were addressed

to the women. Men may be counted on for falling bowled over by a handsome

face and pointed tongue; women require some wooing from their ensphered

and charioted sister, particularly if she is clouded; and old

women--excellent buttresses--must be suavely courted. Now, to woo the

swimming matron and court the settled dowager, she had to win forgiveness

for her beauty; and this was done, easily done, by forbearing to angle

with it in the press of nibblers. They ranged about her, individually

unnoticed. Seeming unaware of its effect where it kindled, she smote a

number of musical female chords, compassion among them. A general grave

affability of her eyes and smiles was taken for quiet pleasure in the

scene. Her fitful intentness of look when conversing with the older

ladies told of the mind within at work upon what they said, and she was

careful that plain dialogue should make her comprehensible to them.

Nature taught her these arts, through which her wit became extolled

entirely on the strength of her reputation, and her beauty did her

service by never taking aim abroad. They are the woman's arts of

self-defence, as legitimately and honourably hers as the manful use of

the fists with a coarser sex. If it had not been nature that taught her

the practice of them in extremity, the sagacious dowagers would have seen

brazenness rather than innocence--or an excuseable indiscretion--in the

part she was performing. They are not lightly duped by one of their sex.

Few tasks are more difficult than for a young woman under a cloud to

hoodwink old women of the world. They are the prey of financiers, but

Time has presented them a magic ancient glass to scan their sex in.

At Princess Paryli's Ball two young men of singular elegance were

observed by Diana, little though she concentered her attention on any

figures of the groups. She had the woman's faculty (transiently bestowed

by perfervid jealousy upon men) of distinguishing minutely in the calmest

of indifferent glances. She could see without looking; and when her eyes

were wide they had not to dwell to be detective. It did not escape her

that the Englishman of the two hurried for the chance of an introduction,

nor that he suddenly, after putting a question to a man beside him,

retired. She spoke of them to Emma as they drove home. 'The princess's

partner in the first quadrille . . . Hungarian, I suppose? He was like a

Tartar modelled by a Greek: supple as the Scythian's bow, braced as the

string! He has the air of a born horseman, and valses perfectly. I won't

say he was handsomer than a young Englishman there, but he had the

advantage of soldierly training. How different is that quick springy

figure from our young men's lounging style! It comes of military exercise

and discipline.'

'That was Count Jochany, a cousin of the princess, and a cavalry

officer,' said Emma. 'You don't know the other? I am sure the one you

mean must be Percy Dacier.'

His retiring was explained: the Hon. Percy Dacier was the nephew of Lord

Dannisburgh, often extolled to her as the promising youngster of his day,

with the reserve that he wasted his youth: for the young gentleman was

decorous and studious; ambitious, according to report; a politician

taking to politics much too seriously and exclusively to suit his uncle's

pattern for the early period of life. Uncle and nephew went their

separate ways, rarely meeting, though their exchange of esteem was

cordial.

Thinking over his abrupt retirement from the crowded semicircle, Diana

felt her position pinch her, she knew not why.

Lady Dunstane was as indefatigable by day as by night in the business of

acting goddess to her beloved Tony, whom she assured that the service,

instead of exhausting, gave her such healthfulness as she had imagined

herself to have lost for ever. The word was passed, and invitations

poured in to choice conversational breakfasts, private afternoon

concerts, all the humming season's assemblies. Mr. Warwick's treatment of

his wife was taken by implication for lunatic; wherever she was heard or

seen, he had no case; a jury of some hundreds of both sexes, ready to be

sworn, pronounced against him. Only the personal enemies of the lord in

the suit presumed to doubt, and they exercised the discretion of a

minority.

But there is an upper middle class below the aristocratic, boasting an

aristocracy of morals, and eminently persuasive of public opinion, if not

commanding it. Previous to the relaxation, by amendment, of a certain

legal process, this class was held to represent the austerity of the

country. At present a relaxed austerity is represented; and still the

bulk of the members are of fair repute, though not quite on the level of

their pretensions. They were then, while more sharply divided from the

titular superiors they are socially absorbing, very powerful to brand a

woman's character, whatever her rank might be; having innumerable

agencies and avenues for that high purpose, to say nothing of the

printing-press. Lady Dunstane's anxiety to draw them over to the cause of

her friend set her thinking of the influential Mrs. Cramborne Wathin,

with whom she was distantly connected; the wife of a potent

serjeant-at-law fast mounting to the Bench and knighthood; the centre of

a circle, and not strangely that, despite her deficiency in the arts and

graces, for she had wealth and a cook, a husband proud of his

wine-cellar, and the ambition to rule; all the rewards, together with the

expectations, of the virtuous. She was a lady of incisive features bound

in stale parchment. Complexion she had none, but she had spotlessness of

skin, and sons and daughters just resembling her, like cheaper editions

of a precious quarto of a perished type. You discerned the imitation of

the type, you acknowledged the inferior compositor. Mr. Cramborne Wathin

was by birth of a grade beneath his wife; he sprang (behind a curtain of

horror) from tradesmen. The Bench was in designation for him to wash out

the stain, but his children suffered in large hands and feet, short legs,

excess of bone, prominences misplaced. Their mother inspired them

carefully with the religion she opposed to the pretensions of a nobler

blood, while instilling into them that the blood they drew from her was

territorial, far above the vulgar. Her appearance and her principles

fitted her to stand for the Puritan rich of the period, emerging by the

aid of an extending wealth into luxurious worldliness, and retaining the

maxims of their forefathers for the discipline of the poor and erring.

Lady Dunstane called on her, ostensibly to let her know she had taken a

house in town for the season, and in the course of the chat Mrs.

Cramborne Wathin was invited to dinner. 'You will meet my dear friend,

Mrs. Warwick,' she said, and the reply was: 'Oh, I have heard of her.'

The formal consultation with Mr. Cramborne Wathin ended in an agreement

to accept Lady Dunstane's kind invitation.

Considering her husband's plenitude of old legal anecdotes, and her own

diligent perusal of the funny publications of the day, that she might be

on the level of the wits and celebrities she entertained, Mrs. Cramborne

Wathin had a right to expect the leading share in the conversation to

which she was accustomed. Every honour was paid to them; they met

aristocracy in the persons of Lord Larrian, of Lady Rockden, Colonel

Purlby, the Pettigrews, but neither of them held the table for a moment;

the topics flew, and were no sooner up than down; they were unable to get

a shot. They had to eat in silence, occasionally grinning, because a

woman labouring under a stigma would rattle-rattle, as if the laughter of

the company were her due, and decency beneath her notice. Some one

alluded to a dog of Mrs. Warwick's, whereupon she trips out a story of

her dog's amazing intelligence.

'And pray,' said Mrs. Cramborne Wathin across the table, merely to slip

in a word, 'what is the name of this wonderful dog?'

'His name is Leander,' said Diana.

'Oh, Leander. I don't think I hear myself calling to a dog in a name of

three syllables. Two at the most.'

No, so I call Hero! if I want him to come immediately,' said Diana, and

the gentlemen, to Mrs. Cramborne Wathin's astonishment, acclaimed it. Mr.

Redworth, at her elbow, explained the point, to her disgust. . .

That was Diana's offence.

If it should seem a small one, let it be remembered that a snub was

intended, and was foiled; and foiled with an apparent simplicity, enough

to exasperate, had there been no laughter of men to back the countering

stroke. A woman under a cloud, she talked, pushed to shine; she would be

heard, would be applauded. Her chronicler must likewise admit the error

of her giving way to a petty sentiment of antagonism on first beholding

Mrs. Cramborne Wathin, before whom she at once resolved to be herself,

for a holiday, instead of acting demurely to conciliate. Probably it was

an antagonism of race, the shrinking of the skin from the burr. But when

Tremendous Powers are invoked, we should treat any simple revulsion of

our blood as a vice. The Gods of this world's contests demand it of us,

in relation to them, that the mind, and not the instincts, shall be at

work. Otherwise the course of a prudent policy is never to invoke them,

but avoid.

The upper class was gained by her intrepidity, her charm, and her

elsewhere offending wit, however the case might go. It is chivalrous, but

not, alas, inflammable in support of innocence. The class below it is

governed in estimates of character by accepted patterns of conduct; yet

where innocence under persecution is believed to exist, the members

animated by that belief can be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is a heaven-sent

steeplechaser, and takes a flying leap of the ordinary barriers; it is

more intrusive than chivalry, and has a passion to communicate its

ardour. Two letters from stranger ladies reached Diana, through her

lawyers and Lady Dunstane. Anonymous letters, not so welcome, being male

effusions, arrived at her lodgings, one of them comical almost over the

verge to pathos in its termination: 'To me you will ever be the Goddess

Diana--my faith in woman!'

He was unacquainted with her!

She had not the heart to think the writers donkeys. How they obtained her

address was a puzzle; they stole in to comfort her slightly. They

attached her to her position of Defendant by the thought of what would

have been the idea of her character if she had flown--a reflection

emanating from inexperience of the resources of sentimentalists.

If she had flown! She was borne along by the tide like a butterfly that a

fish may gobble unless a friendly hand shall intervene. And could it in

nature? She was past expectation of release. The attempt to imagine

living with any warmth of blood in her vindicated character, for the sake

of zealous friends, consigned her to a cold and empty house upon a

foreign earth. She had to set her mind upon the mysterious enshrouded

Twelve, with whom the verdict would soon be hanging, that she might

prompt her human combativeness to desire the vindication at such a price

as she would have to pay for it. When Emma Dunstane spoke to her of the

certainty of triumphing, she suggested a possible dissentient among the

fateful Twelve, merely to escape the drumming sound of that hollow big

word. The irreverent imp of her humour came to her relief by calling

forth the Twelve, in the tone of the clerk of the Court, and they

answered to their names of trades and crafts after the manner of

Titania's elves, and were questioned as to their fitness, by education,

habits, enlightenment, to pronounce decisively upon the case in dispute,

the case being plainly stated. They replied, that the long habit of

dealing with scales enabled them to weigh the value of evidence the most

delicate. Moreover, they were Englishmen, and anything short of downright

bullet facts went to favour the woman. For thus we light the balance of

legal injustice toward the sex: we conveniently wink, ma'am. A rough,

old-fashioned way for us! Is it a Breach of Promise?--She may reckon on

her damages: we have daughters of our own. Is it a suit for

Divorce?--Well, we have wives of our own, and we can lash, or we can

spare; that's as it may be; but we'll keep the couple tied, let 'em hate

as they like, if they can't furnish pork-butchers' reasons for sundering;

because the man makes the money in this country.--My goodness! what a

funny people, sir!--It 's our way of holding the balance, ma'am.--But

would it not be better to rectify the law and the social system, dear

sir?--Why, ma'am, we find it comfortabler to take cases as they come, in

the style of our fathers.--But don't you see, my good man, that you are

offering scapegoats for the comfort of the majority?--Well, ma'am, there

always were scapegoats, and always will be; we find it comes round pretty

square in the end.

'And I may be the scapegoat, Emmy! It is perfectly possible. The grocer,

the pork-butcher, drysalter, stationer, tea-merchant, et caetera--they

sit on me. I have studied the faces of the juries, and Mr. Braddock tells

me of their composition. And he admits that they do justice roughly--a

rough and tumble country! to quote him--though he says they are honest in

intention.'

'More shame to the man who drags you before them--if he persists!' Emma

rejoined.

'He will. I know him. I would not have him draw back now,' said Diana,

catching her breath. 'And, dearest, do not abuse him; for if you do, you

set me imagining guiltiness. Oh, heaven!--suppose me publicly pardoned!

No, I have kinder feelings when we stand opposed. It is odd, and rather

frets my conscience, to think of the little resentment I feel. Hardly

any! He has not cause to like his wife. I can own it, and I am sorry for

him, heartily. No two have ever come together so naturally antagonistic

as we two. We walked a dozen steps in stupefied union, and hit upon

crossways. From that moment it was tug and tug; he me, I him. By

resisting, I made him a tyrant; and he, by insisting, made me a rebel.

And he was the maddest of tyrants--a weak one. My dear, he was also a

double-dealer. Or no, perhaps not in design. He was moved at one time by

his interests; at another by his idea of his honour. He took what I could

get for him, and then turned and drubbed me for getting it.'

'This is the creature you try to excuse!' exclaimed indignant Emma.

'Yes, because--but fancy all the smart things I said being called my

"sallies"!--can a woman live with it?--because I behaved . . . I despised

him too much, and I showed it. He is not a contemptible man before the

world; he is merely a very narrow one under close inspection. I could

not--or did not--conceal my feeling. I showed it not only to him, to my

friend. Husband grew to mean to me stifler, lung-contractor, iron mask,

inquisitor, everything anti-natural. He suffered under my "sallies": and

it was the worse for him when he did not perceive their drift. He is an

upright man; I have not seen marked meanness. One might build up a

respectable figure in negatives. I could add a row of noughts to the

single number he cherishes, enough to make a millionnaire of him; but

strike away the first, the rest are wind. Which signifies, that if you do

not take his estimate of himself, you will think little of his: negative

virtues. He is not eminently, that is to say, not saliently, selfish; not

rancorous, not obtrusive--tata-ta-ta. But dull!--dull as a woollen

nightcap over eyes and ears and mouth. Oh! an executioner's black cap to

me. Dull, and suddenly staring awake to the idea of his honour. I

"rendered" him ridiculous--I had caught a trick of "using men's phrases."

Dearest, now that the day of trial draws nigh--you have never questioned

me, and it was like you to spare me pain--but now I can speak of him and

myself.' Diana dropped her voice. Here was another confession. The

proximity of the trial acted like fire on her faded recollection of

incidents. It may be that partly the shame of alluding to them had

blocked her woman's memory. For one curious operation of the charge of

guiltiness upon the nearly guiltless is to make them paint themselves

pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots, until the whiteness being

acknowledged, or the ordeal imminent, the spots recur and press upon

their consciences. She resumed, in a rapid undertone: 'You know that a

certain degree of independence had been, if not granted by him, conquered

by me. I had the habit of it. Obedience with him is imprisonment--he is a

blind wall. He received a commission, greatly to his advantage, and was

absent. He seems to have received information of some sort. He returned

unexpectedly, at a late hour, and attacked me at once, middling violent.

My friend--and that he is! was coming from the House for a ten minutes'

talk, as usual, on his way home, to refresh him after the long sitting

and bear-baiting he had nightly to endure. Now let me confess: I grew

frightened; Mr. Warwick was "off his head," as they say-crazy, and I

could not bear the thought of those two meeting. While he raged I threw

open the window and put the lamp near it, to expose the whole

interior--cunning as a veteran intriguer: horrible, but it had to be done

to keep them apart. He asked me what madness possessed me, to sit by an

open window at midnight, in view of the public, with a damp wind blowing.

I complained of want of air and fanned my forehead. I heard the steps on

the pavement; I stung him to retort loudly, and I was relieved; the steps

passed on. So the trick succeeded--the trick! It was the worst I was

guilty of, but it was a trick, and it branded me trickster. It teaches me

to see myself with an abyss in my nature full of infernal possibilities.

I think I am hewn in black rock. A woman who can do as I did by instinct,

needs to have an angel always near her, if she has not a husband she

reveres.'

'We are none of us better than you, dear Tony; only some are more

fortunate, and many are cowards,' Emma said. 'You acted prudently in a

wretched situation, partly of your own making, partly of the

circumstances. But a nature like yours could not sit still and moan. That

marriage was to blame! The English notion of women seems to be that we

are born white sheep or black; circumstances have nothing to do with our

colour. They dread to grant distinctions, and to judge of us discerningly

is beyond them. Whether the fiction, that their homes are purer than

elsewhere, helps to establish the fact, I do not know: there is a class

that does live honestly; and at any rate it springs from a liking for

purity; but I am sure that their method of impressing it on women has the

dangers of things artificial. They narrow their understanding of human

nature, and that is not the way to improve the breed.'

'I suppose we women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator;

human nature's fringes, mere finishing touches, not a part of the

texture,' said Diana; 'the pretty ornamentation. However, I fancy I

perceive some tolerance growing in the minds of the dominant sex. Our old

lawyer Mr. Braddock, who appears to have no distaste for conversations

with me, assures me he expects the day to come when women will be

encouraged to work at crafts and professions for their independence. That

is the secret of the opinion of us at present--our dependency. Give us

the means of independence, and we will gain it, and have a turn at

judging you, my lords! You shall behold a world reversed. Whenever I am

distracted by existing circumstances, I lay my finger on the material

conditions, and I touch the secret. Individually, it may be moral with

us; collectively, it is material-gross wrongs, gross hungers. I am a

married rebel, and thereof comes the social rebel. I was once a dancing

and singing girl: You remember the night of the Dublin Ball. A Channel

sea in uproar, stirred by witches, flows between.'

'You are as lovely as you were then--I could say, lovelier,' said Emma.

'I have unconquerable health, and I wish I could give you the half of it,

dear. I work late into the night, and I wake early and fresh in the

morning. I do not sing, that is all. A few days more, and my character

will be up before the Bull's Head to face him in the arena. The worst of

a position like mine is, that it causes me incessantly to think and talk

of myself. I believe I think less than I talk, but the subject is growing

stale; as those who are long dying feel, I dare say--if they do not take

it as the compensation for their departure.'

The Bull's Head, or British Jury of Twelve, with the wig on it, was faced

during the latter half of a week of good news. First, Mr. Thomas Redworth

was returned to Parliament by a stout majority for the Borough of

Orrybridge: the Hon. Percy Dacier delivered a brilliant speech in the

House of Commons, necessarily pleasing to his uncle: Lord Larrian

obtained the command of the Rock: the house of The Crossways was let to a

tenant approved by Mr. Braddock: Diana received the opening proof-sheets

of her little volume, and an instalment of the modest honorarium: and

finally, the Plaintiff in the suit involving her name was adjudged to

have not proved his charge.

She heard of it without a change of countenance.

She could not have wished it the reverse; she was exonerated. But she was

not free; far from that; and she revenged herself on the friends who made

much of her triumph and overlooked her plight, by showing no sign of

satisfaction. There was in her bosom a revolt at the legal consequences

of the verdict--or blunt acquiescence of the Law in the conditions

possibly to be imposed on her unless she went straight to the relieving

phial; and the burden of keeping it under, set her wildest humour alight,

somewhat as Redworth remembered of her on the journey from The Crossways

to Copsley. This ironic fury, coming of the contrast of the outer and the

inner, would have been indulged to the extent of permanent injury to her

disposition had not her beloved Emma, immediately after the tension of

the struggle ceased, required her tenderest aid. Lady Dunstane chanted

victory, and at night collapsed. By the advice of her physician she was

removed to Copsley, where Diana's labour of anxious nursing restored her

through love to a saner spirit. The hopefulness of life must bloom again

in the heart whose prayers are offered for a life dearer than its own to

be preserved. A little return of confidence in Sir Lukin also refreshed

her when she saw that the poor creature did honestly, in his shaggy rough

male fashion, reverence and cling to the flower of souls he named as his

wife. His piteous groans of self-accusation during the crisis haunted

her, and made the conduct and nature of men a bewilderment to her still

young understanding. Save for the knot of her sensations (hardly a mental

memory, but a sullen knot) which she did not disentangle to charge him

with his complicity in the blind rashness of her marriage, she might have

felt sisterly, as warmly as she compassionated him.

It was midwinter when Dame Gossip, who keeps the exotic world alive with

her fanning whispers, related that the lovely Mrs. Warwick had left

England on board the schooner-yacht Clarissa, with Lord and Lady Esquart,

for a voyage in the Mediterranean: and (behind her hand) that the reason

was urgent, inasmuch as she fled to escape the meshes of the terrific net

of the marital law brutally whirled to capture her by the man her

husband.