Diana of the Crossways. Complete. George Meredith

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      ‘Can you tell me what the General laughed at?’

      The honest Englishman entered the trap with promptitude. ‘She said:—who is she, may I ask you?’

      Lady Dunstane mentioned her name.

      Daughter of the famous Dan Merion? The young lady merited examination for her father’s sake. But when reminded of her laughter-moving speech, Mr. Redworth bungled it; he owned he spoilt it, and candidly stated his inability to see the fun. ‘She said, St. George’s Channel in a gale ought to be called St. Patrick’s—something—I missed some point. That quadrille-tune, the Pastourelle, or something…’

      ‘She had experience of the Channel last night,’ Lady Dunstane pursued, and they both, while in seeming converse, caught snatches from their neighbours, during a pause of the dance.

      The sparkling Diana said to Lord Larrian, ‘You really decline to make any of us proud women by dancing to-night?’

      The General answered: ‘I might do it on two stilts; I can’t on one.’ He touched his veteran leg.

      ‘But surely,’ said she, ‘there’s always an inspiration coming to it from its partner in motion, if one of them takes the step.’

      He signified a woeful negative. ‘My dear young lady, you say dark things to grey hairs!’

      She rejoined: ‘If we were over in England, and you fixed on me the stigma of saying dark things, I should never speak without being thought obscure.’

      ‘It’s because you flash too brightly for them.’

      ‘I think it is rather the reminiscence of the tooth that received a stone when it expected candy.’

      Again the General laughed; he looked pleased and warmed. ‘Yes, that ‘s their way, that ‘s their way!’ and he repeated her words to himself, diminishing their importance as he stamped them on his memory, but so heartily admiring the lovely speaker, that he considered her wit an honour to the old country, and told her so. Irish prevailed up to boiling-point.

      Lady Dunstane, not less gratified, glanced up at Mr. Redworth, whose brows bore the knot of perplexity over a strong stare. He, too, stamped the words on his memory, to see subsequently whether they had a vestige of meaning. Terrifically precocious, he thought her. Lady Dunstane, in her quick sympathy with her friend, read the adverse mind in his face. And her reading of the mind was right, wrong altogether her deduction of the corresponding sentiment.

      Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers.

      They beheld a quaint spectacle: a gentleman, obviously an Englishman, approached, with the evident intention of reminding the Beauty of the night of her engagement to him, and claiming her, as it were, in the lion’s jaws. He advanced a foot, withdrew it, advanced, withdrew; eager for his prize, not over-enterprising; in awe of the illustrious General she entertained—presumeably quite unaware of the pretender’s presence; whereupon a voice was heard: ‘Oh! if it was minuetting you meant before the lady, I’d never have disputed your right to perform, sir.’ For it seemed that there were two claimants in the field, an Irishman and an Englishman; and the former, having a livelier sense of the situation, hung aloof in waiting for her eye; the latter directed himself to strike bluntly at his prey; and he continued minuetting, now rapidly blinking, flushed, angry, conscious of awkwardness and a tangle, incapable of extrication. He began to blink horribly under the raillery of his rival. The General observed him, but as an object remote and minute, a fly or gnat. The face of the brilliant Diana was entirely devoted to him she amused.

      Lady Dunstane had the faint lines of a decorous laugh on her lips, as she said: ‘How odd it is that our men show to such disadvantage in a Ball-room. I have seen them in danger, and there they shine first of any, and one is proud of them. They should always be facing the elements or in action.’ She glanced at the minuet, which had become a petrified figure, still palpitating, bent forward, an interrogative reminder.

      Mr. Redworth reserved his assent to the proclamation of any English disadvantage. A whiff of Celtic hostility in the atmosphere put him on his mettle. ‘Wherever the man is tried,’ he said.

      ‘My lady!’ the Irish gentleman bowed to Lady Dunstane. ‘I had the honour … Sullivan Smith… at the castle…’

      She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention between the English gentleman and himself, as to the possession of the loveliest of partners for this particular ensuing dance, and that they had simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his acquaintance with her eminent defunct father—one of the ever-radiating stars of his quenchless country.

      Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of his imaginative logic.

      ‘There will be dancing enough after supper,’ she said.

      ‘If I could score one dance with her, I’d go home supperless and feasted,’ said he. ‘And that’s not saying much among the hordes of hungry troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet. See, my lady, the gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up to da capo. Oh! but it’s a sheep trying to be wolf; he ‘s sheep-eyed and he ‘s wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous! Oh, now! who’d believe it!—the man has dared… I’d as soon think of committing sacrilege in a cathedral!’

      The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, ‘breaching the fortress,’ and pointing out to Diana Merion ‘her name on his dirty scrap of paper’: a shocking sight when the lady’s recollection was the sole point to be aimed at, and the only umpire. ‘As if all of us couldn’t have written that, and hadn’t done it!’ Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned disgusted. He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving ladies; and the bad manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the race; individual members of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing, honouring. So the man blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man. But his hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a fellow-countryman. His own were of the antecedent century, therefore venerable.

      Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows at her friend. Lady Dunstane motioned her fan, and Diana came, bending head.

      ‘Are you bound in honour?’

      ‘I don’t think I am. And I do want to go on talking with the General. He is so delightful and modest—my dream of a true soldier!—telling me of his last big battle, bit by bit, to my fishing.’

      ‘Put off this person for a square dance down the list, and take out Mr. Redworth—Miss Diana Merlon, Mr. Redworth: he will bring you back to the General, who must not totally absorb you, or he will forfeit his popularity.’

      Diana instantly struck a treaty with the pertinacious advocate of his claims, to whom, on his relinquishing her, Mr. Sullivan Smith remarked: ‘Oh! sir, the law of it, where a lady’s concerned! You’re one for evictions, I should guess, and the anti-human process. It’s that letter of the law that stands between you and me and mine and yours. But you’ve got your congee, and my blessing on ye!’

      ‘It was a positive engagement,’ said the enemy.

      Mr. Sullivan Smith derided him. ‘And a pretty partner you’ve pickled for yourself when she keeps her positive engagement!’

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