Diana of the Crossways. Complete. George Meredith
had a woman’s inveterate admiration of the profession of aims. Mr. Redworth endeavoured to render practicable an opening in her mind to reason. He admitted the grandeur of the poetry of Homer. We are a few centuries in advance of Homer. We do not slay damsels for a sacrifice to propitiate celestial wrath; nor do we revel in details of slaughter. He reasoned with her; he repeated stories known to him of civilian heroes, and won her assent to the heroical title for their deeds, but it was languid, or not so bright as the deeds deserved—or as the young lady could look; and he insisted on the civilian hero, impelled by some unconscious motive to make her see the thing he thought, also the thing he was—his plain mind and matter-of-fact nature. Possibly she caught a glimpse of that. After a turn of fencing, in which he was impressed by the vibration of her tones when speaking of military heroes, she quitted the table, saying: ‘An argument between one at supper and another handing plates, is rather unequal if eloquence is needed. As Pat said to the constable, when his hands were tied, You beat me with the fists, but my spirit is towering and kicks freely.’—Eight hundred? a thousand a year, two thousand, are as nothing in the calculation of a householder who means that the mistress of the house shall have the choicest of the fruits and flowers of the Four Quarters; and Thomas Redworth had vowed at his first outlook on the world of women, that never should one of the sisterhood coming under his charge complain of not having them in profusion. Consequently he was a settled bachelor. In the character of disengaged and unaspiring philosophical bachelor, he reviewed the revelations of her character betrayed by the beautiful virgin devoted to the sanguine coat. The thrill of her voice in speaking of soldier-heroes shot him to the yonder side of a gulf. Not knowing why, for he had no scheme, desperate or other, in his head, the least affrighted of men was frightened by her tastes, and by her aplomb, her inoffensiveness in freedom of manner and self-sufficiency—sign of purest breeding: and by her easy, peerless vivacity, her proofs of descent from the blood of Dan Merion—a wildish blood. The candour of the look of her eyes in speaking, her power of looking forthright at men, and looking the thing she spoke, and the play of her voluble lips, the significant repose of her lips in silence, her weighing of the words he uttered, for a moment before the prompt apposite reply, down to her simple quotation of Pat, alarmed him; he did not ask himself why. His manly self was not intruded on his cogitations. A mere eight hundred or thousand per annum had no place in that midst. He beheld her quietly selecting the position of dignity to suit her: an eminent military man, or statesman, or wealthy nobleman: she had but to choose. A war would offer her the decorated soldier she wanted. A war! Such are women of this kind! The thought revolted him, and pricked his appetite for supper. He did service by Mrs. Pettigrew, to which lady Miss Merion, as she said, promoted him, at the table, and then began to refresh in person, standing.
‘Malkin! that’s the fellow’s name’ he heard close at his ear.
Mr. Sullivan Smith had drained a champagne-glass, bottle in hand, and was priming the successor to it. He cocked his eye at Mr. Redworth’s quick stare. ‘Malkin!’ And now we’ll see whether the interior of him is grey, or black, or tabby, or tortoise-shell, or any other colour of the Malkin breed.’
He explained to Mr. Redworth that he had summoned Mr. Malkin to answer to him as a gentleman for calling Miss Merion a jilt. ‘The man, sir, said in my hearing, she jilted him, and that’s to call the lady a jilt. There’s not a point of difference, not a shade. I overheard him. I happened by the blessing of Providence to be by when he named her publicly jilt. And it’s enough that she’s a lady to have me for her champion. The same if she had been an Esquimaux squaw. I’ll never live to hear a lady insulted.’
‘You don’t mean to say you’re the donkey to provoke a duel!’ Mr. Redworth burst out gruffly, through turkey and stuffing.
‘And an Irish lady, the young Beauty of Erin!’ Mr. Sullivan Smith was flowing on. He became frigid, he politely bowed: ‘Two, sir, if you haven’t the grace to withdraw the offensive term before it cools and can’t be obliterated.’
‘Fiddle! and go to the deuce!’ Mr. Redworth cried.
‘Would a soft slap o’ the cheek persuade you, sir?’
‘Try it outside, and don’t bother me with nonsense of that sort at my supper. If I’m struck, I strike back. I keep my pistols for bandits and law-breakers. Here,’ said Mr. Redworth, better inspired as to the way of treating an ultra of the isle; ‘touch glasses: you’re a gentleman, and won’t disturb good company. By-and-by.’
The pleasing prospect of by-and-by renewed in Mr. Sullivan Smith his composure. They touched the foaming glasses: upon which, in a friendly manner, Mr. Sullivan Smith proposed that they should go outside as soon as Mr. Redworth had finished supper-quite finished supper: for the reason that the term ‘donkey’ affixed to him was like a minster cap of schooldays, ringing bells on his topknot, and also that it stuck in his gizzard.
Mr. Redworth declared the term to be simply hypothetical. ‘If you fight, you’re a donkey for doing it. But you won’t fight.’
‘But I will fight.’
‘He won’t fight.’
‘Then for the honour of your country you must. But I’d rather have him first, for I haven’t drunk with him, and it should be a case of necessity to put a bullet or a couple of inches of steel through the man you’ve drunk with. And what’s in your favour, she danced with ye. She seemed to take to ye, and the man she has the smallest sugar-melting for is sacred if he’s not sweet to me. If he retracts!’
‘Hypothetically, No.’
‘But supposititiously?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then we grasp hands on it. It’s Malkin or nothing!’ said Mr. Sullivan Smith, swinging his heel moodily to wander in search of the foe. How one sane man could name another a donkey for fighting to clear an innocent young lady’s reputation, passed his rational conception.
Sir Lukin hastened to Mr. Redworth to have a talk over old schooldays and fellows.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said the civilian, ‘There are Irishmen and Irishmen. I’ve met cool heads and long heads among them, and you and I knew Jack Derry, who was good at most things. But the burlesque Irishman can’t be caricatured. Nature strained herself in a ‘fit of absurdity to produce him, and all that Art can do is to copy.’
This was his prelude to an account of Mr. Sullivan Smith, whom, as a specimen, he rejoiced to have met.
‘There’s a chance of mischief,’ said Sir Lukin. ‘I know nothing of the man he calls Malkin. I’ll inquire presently.’
He talked of his prospects, and of the women. Fair ones, in his opinion, besides Miss Merion were parading; he sketched two or three of his partners with a broad brush of epithets.
‘It won’t do for Miss Merion’s name to be mixed up in a duel,’ said Redworth.
‘Not if she’s to make her fortune in England,’ said Sir Lukin. ‘It’s probably all smoke.’
The remark had hardly escaped him when a wreath of metaphorical smoke, and fire, and no mean report, startled the company of supping gentlemen. At the pitch of his voice, Mr. Sullivan Smith denounced Mr. Malkin in presence for a cur masquerading as a cat.
‘And that is not the scoundrel’s prime offence. For what d’ ye think? He trumps up an engagement to dance with a beautiful lady, and because she can’t remember, binds her to an oath for a dance to come, and then, holding her prisoner to ‘m, he sulks, the dirty dogcat goes and sulks, and he won’t dance and won’t do anything but screech up in corners that he’s jilted. He said the word. Dozens of gentlemen heard the word. And I demand an apology of Misterr Malkin—or…! And none of your guerrier nodding and bravado, Mister Malkin, at me, if you please. The case is for settlement between gentlemen.’
The harassed gentleman of the name of Malkin, driven to extremity by the worrying, stood in braced preparation for the English attitude of defence. His tormentor drew closer to him.
‘Mind, I give you warning, if you lay a finger on me I’ll knock you down,’ said he.
Most joyfully Mr. Sullivan Smith uttered a low