CHAPTER VI

THE COUPLE

Six months a married woman, Diana came to Copsley to introduce her husband.  They had run over Italy:  ‘the Italian Peninsula,’ she quoted him in a letter to Lady Dunstane:  and were furnishing their London house.  Her first letters from Italy appeared to have a little bloom of sentiment.  Augustus was mentioned as liking this and that in the land of beauty.  He patronized Art, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak upon pictures and sculptures; he knew a great deal about them.  ‘He is an authority.’  Her humour soon began to play round the fortunate man, who did not seem, to the reader’s mind, to bear so well a sentimental clothing.  His pride was in being very English on the Continent, and Diana’s instances of his lofty appreciations of the garden of Art and Nature, and statuesque walk through it, would have been more amusing if her friend could have harmonized her idea of the couple.  A description of ’a bit of a wrangle between us’ at Lucca, where an Italian post-master on a journey of inspection, claimed a share of their carriage and audaciously attempted entry, was laughable, but jarred.  Would she some day lose her relish for ridicule, and see him at a distance?  He was generous, Diana, said she saw fine qualities in him.  It might be that he was lavish on his bridal tour.  She said he was unselfish, kind, affable with his equals; he was cordial to the acquaintances he met.  Perhaps his worst fault was an affected superciliousness before the foreigner, not uncommon in those days.  ’You are to know, dear Emmy, that we English are the aristocracy of Europeans.’  Lady Dunstane inclined to think we were; nevertheless, in the mouth of a ‘gentlemanly official’ the frigid arrogance added a stroke of caricature to his deportment.  On the other hand, the reports of him gleaned by Sir Lukin sounded favourable.  He was not taken to be preternaturally stiff, nor bright, but a goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character.  In short, the average Englishman, excelling as a cavalier, a slayer, and an orderly subject.  That was a somewhat elevated standard to the patriotic Emma.  Only she would never have stipulated for an average to espouse Diana.  Would he understand her, and value the best in her?  Another and unanswered question was, how could she have condescended to wed with an average?  There was transparently some secret not confided to her friend.

He appeared.  Lady Dunstane’s first impression of him recurred on his departure.  Her unanswered question drummed at her ears, though she remembered that Tony’s art in leading him out had moderated her rigidly judicial summary of the union during a greater part of the visit.  But his requiring to be led out, was against him.  Considering the subjects, his talk was passable.  The subjects treated of politics, pictures, Continental travel, our manufactures, our wealth and the reasons for it—­excellent reasons well-weighed.  He was handsome, as men go; rather tall, not too stout, precise in the modern fashion of his dress, and the pair of whiskers encasing a colourless depression up to a long, thin, straight nose, and closed lips indicating an aperture.  The contraction of his mouth expressed an intelligence in the attitude of the firmly negative.