Diana of the Crossways | Page 4

may have served his turn; we

have no grounds for thinking him malignant. The death of his enemy
closes his allusions to Mrs. Warwick. He was growing ancient, and
gout narrowed the circle he whirled in. Had he known this 'handsome,
lively, witty' apparition as a woman having political and social views of
her own, he would not, one fancies, have been so stingless. Our
England exposes a sorry figure in his Reminiscences. He struck heavily,
round and about him, wherever he moved; he had by nature a tarnishing
eye that cast discolouration. His unadorned harsh substantive
statements, excluding the adjectives, give his Memoirs the appearance
of a body of facts, attractive to the historic Muse, which has learnt to
esteem those brawny sturdy giants marching club on shoulder,
independent of henchman, in preference to your panoplied knights with
their puffy squires, once her favourites, and wind-filling to her columns,
ultimately found indigestible.
His exhibition of his enemy Lord Dannisburgh, is of the class of noble
portraits we see swinging over inn-portals, grossly unlike in likeness.
The possibility of the man's doing or saying this and that adumbrates
the improbability: he had something of the character capable of it, too
much good sense for the performance. We would think so, and still the
shadow is round our thoughts. Lord Dannisburgh was a man of
ministerial tact, official ability, Pagan morality; an excellent general
manager, if no genius in statecraft. But he was careless of social
opinion, unbuttoned, and a laugher. We know that he could be
chivalrous toward women, notwithstanding the perplexities he brought
on them, and this the Dorset- Diary does not show.
His chronicle is less mischievous as regards Mrs. Warwick than the
paragraphs of Perry Wilkinson, a gossip presenting an image of
perpetual chatter, like the waxen-faced street advertizements of light
and easy dentistry. He has no belief, no disbelief; names the pro-party
and the con; recites the case, and discreetly, over-discreetly; and
pictures the trial, tells the list of witnesses, records the verdict: so the
case went, and some thought one thing, some another thing: only it is
reported for positive that a miniature of the incriminated lady was
cleverly smuggled over to the jury, and juries sitting upon these eases,
ever since their bedazzlement by Phryne, as you know . . . . And then

he relates an anecdote of the husband, said to have been not a bad
fellow before he married his Diana; and the naming of the Goddess
reminds him that the second person in the indictment is now
everywhere called 'The elderly shepherd';--but immediately after the
bridal bells this husband became sour and insupportable, and either she
had the trick of putting him publicly in the wrong, or he lost all shame
in playing the churlish domestic tyrant. The instances are incredible of
a gentleman. Perry Wilkinson gives us two or three; one on the
authority of a personal friend who witnessed the scene; at the Warwick
whist-table, where the fair Diana would let loose her silvery laugh in
the intervals. She was hardly out of her teens, and should have been
dancing instead of fastened to a table. A difference of fifteen years in
the ages of the wedded pair accounts poorly for the husband's conduct,
however solemn a business the game of whist. We read that he burst
out at last, with bitter mimicry, 'yang--yang--yang!' and killed the
bright laugh, shot it dead. She had outraged the decorum of the
square-table only while the cards were making. Perhaps her too-dead
ensuing silence, as of one striving to bring back the throbs to a slain
bird in her bosom, allowed the gap between the wedded pair to be
visible, for it was dated back to prophecy as soon as the trumpet
proclaimed it.
But a multiplication of similar instances, which can serve no other
purpose than that of an apology, is a miserable vindication of innocence.
The more we have of them the darker the inference. In delicate
situations the chatterer is noxious. Mrs. Warwick had numerous
apologists. Those trusting to her perfect rectitude were rarer. The
liberty she allowed herself in speech and action must have been trying
to her defenders in a land like ours; for here, and able to throw its
shadow on our giddy upper-circle, the rigour of the game of life,
relaxed though it may sometimes appear, would satisfy the staidest
whist-player. She did not wish it the reverse, even when claiming a
space for laughter: 'the breath of her soul,' as she called it, and as it may
be felt in the early youth of a lively nature. She, especially, with her
multitude of quick perceptions and imaginative avenues, her rapid
summaries, her sense of the comic, demanded this aerial freedom.

We have it from Perry Wilkinson