Chapter 422

The mention of that positive captaincy drowned Diana in morning colours. She was dominated, physically and morally, submissively too. What she craved, in the absence of the public whiteness which could have caused her to rejoice in herself as a noble gift, was the spring of enthusiasm. Emma touched a quivering chord of pride with her hint at the good augury, and foreshadowing of the larger Union, in the Irishwoman's bestowal of her hand on the open-minded Englishman she had learned to trust. The aureole glimmered transiently: she could neither think highly of the woman about to be wedded, nor poetically of the man; nor, therefore, rosily of the ceremony, nor other than vacuously of life. And yet, as she avowed to Emma, she had gathered the three rarest good things of life: a faithful friend, a faithful lover, a faithful servant: the two latter exposing an unimagined quality of emotion. Danvers, on the night of the great day for Redworth, had undressed her with trembling fingers, and her mistress was led to the knowledge that the maid had always been all eye; and on reflection to admit that it came of a sympathy she did not share.

But when Celtic brains are reflective on their emotional vessel they shoot direct as the arrow of logic. Diana's glance at the years behind lighted every moving figure to a shrewd transparency, herself among them. She was driven to the conclusion that the granting of any of her heart's wild wishes in those days would have lowered her--or frozen. Dacier was a coldly luminous image; still a tolling name; no longer conceivably her mate. Recollection rocked, not she. The politician and citizen was admired: she read the man;--more to her own discredit than to his, but she read him, and if that is done by the one of two lovers who was true to love, it is the God of the passion pronouncing a final release from the shadow of his chains.

Three days antecedent to her marriage, she went down the hill over her cottage chimneys with Redworth, after hearing him praise and cite to Emma Dunstane sentences of a morning's report of a speech delivered by Dacier to his constituents. She alluded to it, that she might air her power of speaking of the man coolly to him, or else for the sake of stirring afresh some sentiment he had roused; and he repeated his high opinion of the orator's political wisdom: whereby was revived in her memory a certain reprehensible view, belonging to her period of mock-girlish naughtiness--too vile!--as to his paternal benevolence, now to clear vision the loftiest manliness. What did she do? She was Irish; therefore intuitively decorous in amatory challenges and interchanges. But she was an impulsive woman, and foliage was thick around, only a few small birds and heaven seeing; and penitence and admiration sprang the impulse. It had to be this or a burst of weeping:--she put a kiss upon his arm.

She had omitted to think that she was dealing with a lover a man of smothered fire, who would be electrically alive to the act through a coat-sleeve. Redworth had his impulse. He kept it under,--she felt the big breath he drew in. Imagination began busily building a nest for him, and enthusiasm was not sluggish to make a home of it. The impulse of each had wedded; in expression and repression; her sensibility told her of the stronger.

She rose on the morning of her marriage day with his favourite Planxty Kelly at her lips, a natural bubble of the notes. Emma drove down to the cottage to breakfast and superintend her bride's adornment, as to which, Diana had spoken slightingly; as well as of the ceremony, and the institution, and this life itself:--she would be married out of her cottage, a widow, a cottager, a woman under a cloud; yes, a sober person taking at last a right practical step, to please her two best friends. The change was marked. She wished to hide it, wished to confide it. Emma was asked: 'How is he this morning?' and at the answer, describing his fresh and spirited looks, and his kind ways with Arthur Rhodes, and his fun with Sullivan Smith, and the satisfaction with the bridegroom declared by Lord Larrian (invalided from his Rock and unexpectingly informed of the wedding), Diana forgot that she had kissed her, and this time pressed her lips, in a manner to convey the secret bridally.

'He has a lovely day.'

'And bride,' said Emma.

'If you two think so! I should like to agree with my dear old lord and bless him for the prize he takes, though it feels itself at present rather like a Christmas bon-bon--a piece of sugar in the wrap of a rhymed motto. He is kind to Arthur, you say?'

'Like a cordial elder brother.'

'Dear love, I have it at heart that I was harsh upon Mary Paynham for her letter. She meant well--and I fear she suffers. And it may have been a bit my fault. Blind that I was! When you say "cordial elder brother," you make him appear beautiful to me. The worst of that is, one becomes aware of the inability to match him.'

'Read with his eyes when you meet him this morning, my Tony.'

The secret was being clearly perceived by Emma, whose pride in assisting to dress the beautiful creature for her marriage--with the man of men had a tinge from the hymenaeal brand, exulting over Dacier, and in the compensation coming to her beloved for her first luckless footing on this road.

'How does he go down to the church?' said Diana.

'He walks down. Lukin and his Chief drive. He walks, with your Arthur and Mr. Sullivan Smith. He is on his way now.'

Diana looked through the window in the direction of the hill. 'That is so like him, to walk to his wedding!'

Emma took the place of Danvers in the office of the robing, for the maid, as her mistress managed to hint, was too steeped 'in the colour of the occasion' to be exactly tasteful, and had the art, no doubt through sympathy, of charging permissible common words with explosive meanings:--she was in an amorous palpitation, of the reflected state. After several knockings and enterings of the bedchamber-door, she came hurriedly to say: 'And your pillow, ma'am? I had almost forgotten it!' A question that caused her mistress to drop the gaze of a moan on Emma, with patience trembling. Diana preferred a hard pillow, and usually carried her own about. 'Take it,' she had to reply.

The friends embraced before descending to step into the fateful carriage. 'And tell me,' Emma said, 'are not your views of life brighter to-day?'

'Too dazzled to know! It may be a lamp close to the eyes or a radiance of sun. I hope they are.'

'You are beginning to think hopefully again?'

'Who can really think, and not think hopefully? You were in my mind last night, and you brought a little boat to sail me past despondency of life and the fear of extinction. When we despair or discolour things, it is our senses in revolt, and they have made the sovereign brain their drudge. I heard you whisper; with your very breath in my ear: "There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by." That is Emma's history. With that I sail into the dark; it is my promise of the immortal: teaches me to see immortality for us. It comes from you, my Emmy.'

If not a great saying, it was in the heart of deep thoughts: proof to Emma that her Tony's mind had resumed its old clear high-aiming activity; therefore that her nature was working sanely, and that she accepted her happiness, and bore love for a dower to her husband. No blushing confession of the woman's love of the man would have told her so much as the return to mental harmony with the laws of life shown in her darling's pellucid little sentence.

She revolved it long after the day of the wedding. To Emma, constantly on the dark decline of the unillumined verge, between the two worlds, those words were a radiance and a nourishment. Had they waned she would have trimmed them to feed her during her soul-sister's absence. They shone to her of their vitality. She was lying along her sofa, facing her South-western window, one afternoon of late November, expecting Tony from her lengthened honeymoon trip, while a sunset in the van of frost, not without celestial musical reminders of Tony's husband, began to deepen; and as her friend was coming, she mused on the scenes of her friend's departure, and how Tony, issuing from her cottage porch had betrayed her feelings in the language of her sex by stooping to lift above her head and kiss the smallest of her landlady's children ranged up the garden-path to bid her farewell over their strewing of flowers;--and of her murmur to Tony, entering the churchyard, among the grave-mounds: 'Old Ireland won't repent it!' and Tony's rejoinder, at the sight of the bridegroom advancing, beaming: 'A singular transformation of Old England!'--and how, having numberless ready sources of laughter and tears down the run of their heart-in-heart intimacy, all spouting up for a word in the happy tremour of the moment, they had both bitten their lips and blinked on a moisture of the eyelids. Now the dear woman was really wedded, wedded and mated. Her letters breathed, in their own lively or thoughtful flow, of the perfect mating. Emma gazed into the depths of the waves of crimson, where brilliancy of colour came out of central heaven preternaturally near on earth, till one shade less brilliant seemed an ebbing away to boundless remoteness. Angelical and mortal mixed, making the glory overhead a sign of the close union of our human conditions with the ethereal and psychically divined. Thence it grew that one thought in her breast became a desire for such extension of days as would give her the blessedness to clasp in her lap--if those kind heavens would grant it!--a child of the marriage of the two noblest of human souls, one the dearest; and so have proof at heart that her country and our earth are fruitful in the good, for a glowing future. She was deeply a woman, dumbly a poet. True poets and true women have the native sense of the divineness of what the world deems gross material substance. Emma's exaltation in fervour had not subsided when she held her beloved in her arms under the dusk of the withdrawing redness. They sat embraced, with hands locked, in the unlighted room, and Tony spoke of the splendid sky. 'You watched it knowing I was on my way to you?'

'Praying, dear.'

'For me?'

'That I might live long enough to be a godmother.'

There was no reply: there was an involuntary little twitch of Tony's fingers.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird A kindly sense of superiority Accidents are the specific for averting the maladies of age Accounting for it, is not the same as excusing Assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we can have Avoid the position that enforces publishing Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness Beauty is rare; luckily is it rare Between love grown old and indifference ageing to love Beware the silent one of an assembly! Brittle is foredoomed But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly By resisting, I made him a tyrant Capacity for thinking should precede the act of writing Capricious potentate whom they worship Carry explosives and must particularly guard against sparks Charitable mercifulness; better than sentimental ointment Chaste are wattled in formalism and throned in sourness Circumstances may combine to make a whisper as deadly as a blow Common sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation Compared the governing of the Irish to the management of a horse Could have designed this gabbler for the mate Could the best of men be simply--a woman's friend? Debit was eloquent, he was unanswerable Dedicated to the putrid of the upper circle Depending for dialogue upon perpetual fresh supplies of scandal Dose he had taken was not of the sweetest Dreaded as a scourge, hailed as a refreshment (Scandalsheet) Elderly martyr for the advancement of his juniors Enthusiasm has the privilege of not knowing monotony Envy of the man of positive knowledge Expectations dupe us, not trust Explaining of things to a dull head Externally soft and polished, internally hard and relentless Favour can't help coming by rotation Fiddle harmonics on the sensual strings Flashes bits of speech that catch men in their unguarded corner For 'tis Ireland gives England her soldiers, her generals too Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two Get back what we give Goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character Grossly unlike in likeness (portraits) Happy in privation and suffering if simply we can accept beauty He was not a weaver of phrases in distress He had by nature a tarnishing eye that cast discolouration He gained much by claiming little He, by insisting, made me a rebel He had neat phrases, opinions in packets He was the maddest of tyrants--a weak one He's good from end to end, and beats a Christian hollow (a hog) Heart to keep guard and bury the bones you tossed him Her peculiar tenacity of the sense of injury Her feelings--trustier guides than her judgement in this crisis Her final impression likened him to a house locked up and empty Herself, content to be dull if he might shine His gaze and one of his ears, if not the pair, were given His ridiculous equanimity Holding to the refusal, for the sake of consistency How immensely nature seems to prefer men to women! Human nature to feel an interest in the dog that has bitten you I wanted a hero I do not see it, because I will not see it I never knew till this morning the force of No in earnest I have and hold--you shall hunger and covet I don't count them against women (moods) I'm in love with everything she wishes! I've got the habit Idea is the only vital breath If I'm struck, I strike back If he had valued you half a grain less, he might have won you Inclined to act hesitation in accepting the aid she sought Inducement to act the hypocrite before the hypocrite world Infatuated men argue likewise, and scandal does not move them Insistency upon there being two sides to a case--to every case Intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped would clash Irony that seemed to spring from aversion It is the best of signs when women take to her It is the devil's masterstroke to get us to accuse him Its glee at a catastrophe; its poor stock of mercy Keep passion sober, a trotter in harness Lengthened term of peace bred maggots in the heads of the people Let never Necessity draw the bow of our weakness Literature is a good stick and a bad horse Loathing for speculation Mare would do, and better than a dozen horses Material good reverses its benefits the more nearly we clasp it Matter that is not nourishing to brains Mistake of the world is to think happiness possible to the sense Mistaking of her desires for her reasons Money is of course a rough test of virtue Moral indignation is ever consolatory Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers Mutual deference Needed support of facts, and feared them Never fell far short of outstripping the sturdy pedestrian Time Nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by Nothing is a secret that has been spoken Now far from him under the failure of an effort to come near O self! self! self! Observation is the most, enduring of the pleasures of life Omnipotence, which is in the image of themselves One might build up a respectable figure in negatives Openly treated; all had an air of being on the surface Or where you will, so that's in Ireland Our weakness is the swiftest dog to hunt us Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to run Owner of such a woman, and to lose her! Paint themselves pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots Perused it, and did not recognize herself in her language Pride in being always myself Procrastination and excessive scrupulousness Question the gain of such an expenditure of energy Quixottry is agreeable reading, a silly performance Rare men of honour who can command their passion Read with his eyes when you meet him this morning Read deep and not be baffled by inconsistencies Real happiness is a state of dulness Reluctant to take the life of flowers for a whim Rewards, together with the expectations, of the virtuous Salt of earth, to whom their salt must serve for nourishment Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution Service of watering the dry and drying the damp (Whiskey) Sham spiritualism She had sunk her intelligence in her sensations She marries, and it's the end of her sparkling She herself did not like to be seen eating in public She had a fatal attraction for antiques Sleepless night Slightest taste for comic analysis that does not tumble to farce Smart remarks have their measured distances Smoky receptacle cherishing millions Something of the hare in us when the hounds are full cry Strain to see in the utter dark, and nothing can come of that Swell and illuminate citizen prose to a princely poetic Sympathy is for proving, not prating Tendency to polysyllabic phraseology Terrible decree, that all must act who would prevail That is life--when we dare death to live! That's the natural shamrock, after the artificial The man had to be endured, like other doses in politics The burlesque Irishman can't be caricatured The greed of gain is our volcano The debts we owe ourselves are the hardest to pay The well of true wit is truth itself The blindness of Fortune is her one merit They have no sensitiveness, we have too much They create by stoppage a volcano This love they rattle about and rave about Tooth that received a stone when it expected candy Top and bottom sin is cowardice Touch him with my hand, before he passed from our sight Trial of her beauty of a woman in a temper Vagrant compassionateness of sentimentalists Vowed never more to repeat that offence to his patience Was not one of the order whose Muse is the Public Taste We live alone, and do not much feel it till we are visited We never see peace but in the features of the dead We must fawn in society We don't know we are in halves We're a peaceful people, but 'ware who touches us Weather and women have some resemblance they say Weighty little word--woman's native watchdog and guardian (No!) What might have been What the world says, is what the wind says What a woman thinks of women, is the test of her nature When we despair or discolour things, it is our senses in revolt Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank Who can really think, and not think hopefully? Who venerate when they love Wife and no wife, a prisoner in liberty With that I sail into the dark Without those consolatory efforts, useless between men Women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator Women with brains, moreover, are all heartless World is ruthless, dear friends, because the world is hypocrite World prefers decorum to honesty Yawns coming alarmingly fast, in the place of ideas You beat me with the fists, but my spirit is towering You are entreated to repress alarm

ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS, Complete

By George Meredith

1897

CONTENTS:

BOOK 1. I. ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE II. THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE III. OLD VEUVE IV. THE SECOND BOTTLE V. THE LONDON WALK WESTWARD VI. NATALY VII. BETWEEN A GENERAL MAN OF THE WORLD AND A PROFESSIONAL VIII. SOME FAMILIAR GUESTS. IX. AN INSPECTION OF LAKELANDS X. SKEPSEY IN MOTION XI. WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE JUSTIFIED OF LOVE HAVING SIGHT OF THEIR SCOURGE

BOOK 2. XII. TREATS OF THE DUMBNESS POSSIBLE WITH MEMBERS OF A HOUSEHOLD HAVING ONE HEART XIII. THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN XIV. DISCLOSES A STAGE ON THE DRIVE TO PARIS XV. A PATRIOT ABROAD XVI. ACCOUNTS FOR SKEPSEY'S MISCONDUCT, SHOWING HOW IT AFFECTED NATALY XVII. CHIEFLY UPON THE THEME OF A YOUNG MAID'S IMAGININGS XVIII. SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA VICTORIA

BOOK 3. XIX. TREATS OF NATURE AND CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE DISSENSION BETWEEN THEM AND OF A SATIRIST'S MALIGNITY IN THE DIRECTION OF HIS COUNTRY XX. THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELAND XXI. DARTREY FENELLAN XXII. CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF JARNIMAN XXIII. TREATS OF THE LADIES' LAPDOG TASSO FOR AN INSTANCE OF MOMENTOUS EFFECTS PRODUCED BY VERY MINOR CAUSES XXIV. NESTA'S ENGAGEMENT

BOOK 4. XXV. NATALY IN ACTION XXVI. IN WHICH WE SEE A CONVENTIONAL GENTLE MAN ENDEAVOURING TO EXAMINE A SPECTRE OF HIMSELF XXVII. CONTAINS WHAT IS A SMALL THING OR A GREAT, AS THE SOUL OF THE CHIEF ACTOR MAY DECIDE XXVIII. MRS. MARSETT XXIX. SHOWS ONE OF THE SHADOWS OF THE WORLD CROSSING A VIRGIN'S MIND XXX. THE BURDEN UPON NESTA XXXI. SHOWS HOW THE SQUIRES IN A CONQUEROR'S SERVICE HAVE AT TIMES TO DO KNIGHTLY CONQUEST OF THEMSELVES XXXII. SHOWS HOW TEMPER MAY KINDLE TEMPER AND AN INDIGNANT WOMAN GET HER WEAPON XXXIII. A PAIR OF WOOERS XXXIV. CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS XXXV. IN WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING AN ABYSMAL DARKNESS

BOOK 5. XXXVI. NESTA AND HER FATHER XXXVII. THE MOTHER--THE DAUGHTER XXXVIII. NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN XXXIX. A CHAPTER IN THE SHADOW OF MRS. MARSETT XL. AN EXPIATION XLI. THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT UNDELIVERED SPEECH XLII. THE LAST

CHAPTER I

ACROSS LONDON BRIDGE

A gentleman, noteworthy for a lively countenance and a waistcoat to match it, crossing London Bridge at noon on a gusty April day, was almost magically detached from his conflict with the gale by some sly strip of slipperiness, abounding in that conduit of the markets, which had more or less adroitly performed the trick upon preceding passengers, and now laid this one flat amid the shuffle of feet, peaceful for the moment as the uncomplaining who have gone to Sabrina beneath the tides. He was unhurt, quite sound, merely astonished, he remarked, in reply to the inquiries of the first kind helper at his elbow; and it appeared an acceptable statement of his condition. He laughed, shook his coat-tails, smoothed the back of his head rather thoughtfully, thankfully received his runaway hat, nodded bright beams to right and left, and making light of the muddy stigmas imprinted by the pavement, he scattered another shower of his nods and smiles around, to signify, that as his good friends would wish, he thoroughly felt his legs and could walk unaided. And he was in the act of doing it, questioning his familiar behind the waistcoat amazedly, to tell him how such a misadventure could have occurred to him of all men, when a glance below his chin discomposed his outward face. 'Oh, confound the fellow!' he said, with simple frankness, and was humorously ruffled, having seen absurd blots of smutty knuckles distributed over the maiden waistcoat.