CHAPTER XXIV

INDICATES A SOUL PREPARED FOR DESPERATION

The month was August, four days before the closing of Parliament, and

Diana fancied it good for Arthur Rhodes to run down with her to Copsley.

He came to her invitation joyfully, reminding her of Lady Dunstane's wish

to hear some chapters of THE CANTATRICE, and the MS. was packed. They

started, taking rail and fly, and winding up the distance on foot. August

is the month of sober maturity and majestic foliage, songless, but a

crowned and royal-robed queenly month; and the youngster's appreciation

of the homely scenery refreshed Diana; his delight in being with her was

also pleasant. She had no wish to exchange him for another; and that was

a strengthening thought.

At Copsley the arrival of their luggage had prepared the welcome. Warm

though it was, Diana perceived a change in Emma, an unwonted reserve, a

doubtfulness of her eyes, in spite of tenderness; and thus thrown back on

herself, thinking that if she had followed her own counsel (as she called

her impulse) in old days, there would have been no such present misery,

she at once, and unconsciously, assumed a guarded look. Based on her

knowledge of her honest footing, it was a little defiant. Secretly in her

bosom it was sharpened to a slight hostility by the knowledge that her

mind had been straying. The guilt and the innocence combined to clothe

her in mail, the innocence being positive, the guilt so vapoury. But she

was armed only if necessary, and there was no requirement for armour.

Emma did not question at all. She saw the alteration in her Tony: she was

too full of the tragic apprehensiveness, overmastering her to speak of

trifles. She had never confided to Tony the exact nature and the growth

of her malady, thinking it mortal, and fearing to alarm her dearest.

A portion of the manuscript was read out by Arthur Rhodes in the evening;

the remainder next morning. Redworth perceptibly was the model of the

English hero; and as to his person, no friend could complain of the

sketch; his clear-eyed heartiness, manliness, wholesomeness--a word of

Lady Dunstane's regarding him,--and his handsome braced figure, were well

painted. Emma forgave the: insistance on a certain bluntness of the nose,

in consideration of the fond limning of his honest and expressive eyes,

and the 'light on his temples,' which they had noticed together. She

could not so easily forgive the realistic picture of the man: an

exaggeration, she thought, of small foibles, that even if they existed,

should not have been stressed. The turn for 'calculating' was shown up

ridiculously; Mr. Cuthbert Dering was calculating in his impassioned

moods as well as in his cold. His head was a long division of ciphers. He

had statistics for spectacles, and beheld the world through them, and the

mistress he worshipped.

'I see,' said Emma, during a pause; 'he is a Saxon. You still affect to

have the race en grippe, Tony.'

'I give him every credit for what he is,' Diana replied. 'I admire the

finer qualities of the race as much as any one. You want to have them

presented to you in enamel, Emmy.'

But the worst was an indication that the mania for calculating in and out

of season would lead to the catastrophe destructive of his happiness.

Emma could not bear that. Without asking herself whether it could be

possible that Tony knew the secret, or whether she would have laid it

bare, her sympathy for Redworth revolted at the exposure. She was

chilled. She let it pass; she merely said: 'I like the writing.'

Diana understood that her story was condemned.

She put on her robes of philosophy to cloak discouragement. 'I am glad

the writing pleases you.'

'The characters are as true as life!' cried Arthur Rhodes. 'The

Cantatrice drinking porter from the pewter at the slips after harrowing

the hearts of her audience, is dearer to me than if she had tottered to a

sofa declining sustenance; and because her creatrix has infused such

blood of life into her that you accept naturally whatever she does. She

was exhausted, and required the porter, like a labourer in the

cornfield.'

Emma looked at him, and perceived the poet swamped by the admirer. Taken

in conjunction with Mr. Cuthbert Dering's frenzy for calculating, she

disliked the incident of the porter and the pewter.

'While the Cantatrice swallowed her draught, I suppose Mr. Dering counted

the cost?' she said.

'It really might be hinted,' said Diana.

The discussion closed with the accustomed pro and con upon the wart of

Cromwell's nose, Realism rejoicing in it, Idealism objecting.

Arthur Rhodes was bidden to stretch his legs on a walk along the heights

in the afternoon, and Emma was further vexed by hearing Tony complain of

Redworth's treatment of the lad, whom he would not assist to any of the

snug little posts he was notoriously able to dispense.

'He has talked of Mr. Rhodes to me,' said Emma. 'He thinks the profession

of literature a delusion, and doubts the wisdom of having poets for

clerks.'

'John-Bullish!' Diana exclaimed. 'He speaks contemptuously of the poor

boy.'

'Only inasmuch as the foolishness of the young man in throwing up the Law

provokes his practical mind to speak.'

'He might take my word for the "young man's" ability. I want him to have

the means of living, that he may write. He has genius.'

'He may have it. I like him, and have said so. If he were to go back to

his law-stool, I have no doubt that Redworth would manage to help him.'

'And make a worthy ancient Braddock of a youth of splendid promise! Have

I sketched him too Saxon?'

'It is the lens, and hot the tribe, Tony.'

THE CANTATRICE was not alluded to any more; but Emma's disapproval

blocked the current of composition, already subject to chokings in the

brain of the author. Diana stayed three days at Copsley, one longer than

she had intended, so that Arthur Rhodes might have his fill of country

air.

'I would keep him, but I should be no companion for him,' Emma said.

'I suspect the gallant squire is only to be satisfied by landing me

safely,' said Diana, and that small remark grated, though Emma saw the

simple meaning. When they parted, she kissed her Tony many times. Tears

were in her eyes. It seemed to Diana that she was anxious to make amends

for the fit of alienation, and she was kissed in return warmly, quite

forgiven, notwithstanding the deadly blank she had caused in the

imagination of the writer for pay, distracted by the squabbles of Debit

and Credit.

Diana chatted spiritedly to young Rhodes on their drive to the train. She

was profoundly discouraged by Emma's disapproval of her work. It wanted

but that one drop to make a recurrence to the work impossible. There it

must lie! And what of the aspects of her household?--Perhaps, after all,

the Redworths of the world are right, and Literature as a profession is a

delusive pursuit. She did not assent to it without hostility to the

world's Redworths.--'They have no sensitiveness, we have too much. We are

made of bubbles that a wind will burst, and as the wind is always

blowing, your practical Redworths have their crow of us.'

She suggested advice to Arthur Rhodes upon the prudence of his resuming

the yoke of the Law.

He laughed at such a notion, saying that he had some expectations of

money to come.

'But I fear,' said he, 'that Lady Dunstane is very very ill. She begged

me to keep her informed of your address.'

Diana told him he was one of those who should know it whithersoever she

went. She spoke impulsively, her sentiments of friendliness for the youth

being temporarily brightened by the strangeness of Emma's conduct in

deputing it to him to fulfil a duty she had never omitted. 'What can she

think I am going to do!'

On her table at home lay, a letter from Mr. Warwick. She read it hastily

in the presence of Arthur Rhodes, having at a glance at the handwriting

anticipated the proposal it contained and the official phrasing.

Her gallant squire was invited to dine with her that evening, costume

excused.

They conversed of Literature as a profession, of poets dead and living,

of politics, which he abhorred and shied at, and of his prospects. He

wrote many rejected pages, enjoyed an income of eighty pounds per annum,

and eked out a subsistence upon the modest sum his pen procured him; a

sum extremely insignificant; but great Nature was his own, the world was

tributary to him, the future his bejewelled and expectant bride. Diana

envied his youthfulness. Nothing is more enviable, nothing richer to the

mind, than the aspect of a cheerful poverty. How much nobler it was,

contrasted with Redworth's amassing of wealth!

When alone, she went to her bedroom and tried to write, tried to sleep.

Mr. Warwick's letter was looked at. It seemed to indicate a threat; but

for the moment it did not disturb her so much as the review of her moral

prostration. She wrote some lines to her lawyers, quoting one of Mr.

Warwick's sentences. That done, his letter was dismissed. Her intolerable

languor became alternately a defeating drowsiness and a fever. She

succeeded in the effort to smother the absolute cause: it was not

suffered to show a front; at the cost of her knowledge of a practised

self-deception. 'I wonder whether the world is as bad as a certain class

of writers tell us!' she sighed in weariness, and mused on their

soundings and probings of poor humanity, which the world accepts for the

very bottom truth if their dredge brings up sheer refuse of the

abominable. The world imagines those to be at our nature's depths who are

impudent enough to expose its muddy shallows. She was in the mood for

such a kind of writing: she could have started on it at once but that the

theme was wanting; and it may count on popularity, a great repute for

penetration. It is true of its kind, though the dredging of nature is the

miry form of art. When it flourishes we may be assured we have been

overenamelling the higher forms. She felt, and shuddered to feel, that

she could draw from dark stores. Hitherto in her works it had been a

triumph of the good. They revealed a gaping deficiency of the subtle

insight she now possessed. 'Exhibit humanity as it is, wallowing,

sensual, wicked, behind the mask,' a voice called to her; she was allured

by the contemplation of the wide-mouthed old dragon Ego, whose portrait,

decently painted, establishes an instant touch of exchange between author

and public, the latter detected and confessing. Next to the pantomime of

Humour and Pathos, a cynical surgical knife at the human bosom seems the

surest talisman for this agreeable exchange; and she could cut. She gave

herself a taste of her powers. She cut at herself mercilessly, and had to

bandage the wound in a hurry to keep in life.

Metaphors were her refuge. Metaphorically she could allow her mind to

distinguish the struggle she was undergoing, sinking under it. The

banished of Eden had to put on metaphors, and the common use of them has

helped largely to civilize us. The sluggish in intellect detest them, but

our civilization is not much indebted to that major faction. Especially

are they needed by the pedestalled woman in her conflict with the

natural. Diana saw herself through the haze she conjured up. 'Am I worse

than other women?' was a piercing twithought. Worse, would be hideous

isolation. The not worse, abased her sex. She could afford to say that

the world was bad: not that women were.

Sinking deeper, an anguish of humiliation smote her to a sense of

drowning. For what of the poetic ecstasy on her Salvatore heights had not

been of origin divine? had sprung from other than spiritual founts? had

sprung from the reddened sources she was compelled to conceal? Could it

be? She would not believe it. But there was matter to clip her wings,

quench her light, in the doubt.

She fell asleep like the wrecked flung ashore.

Danvers entered her room at an early hour for London to inform her that

Mr. Percy Dacier was below, and begged permission to wait.

Diana gave orders for breakfast to be proposed to him. She lay staring at

the wall until it became too visibly a reflection of her mind.