BOOK VIII.—FRUIT AND SEED.

DANIEL DERONDA

By George Eliot

Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:

There, ’mid the throng of hurrying desires

That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,

Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible

As exhalations laden with slow death,

And o’er the fairest troop of captured joys

Breathes pallid pestilence.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.—THE SPOILED CHILD

„ II.—MEETING STREAMS

„ III.—MAIDENS CHOOSING

„ IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE

„ V.—MORDECAI

„ VI.—REVELATIONS

„ VII.—THE MOTHER AND THE SON

„ VIII.—FRUIT AND SEED

DANIEL DERONDA.

BOOK I.—THE SPOILED CHILD.

CHAPTER I.

Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even

science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe

unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his

sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate

grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle;

but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different

from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward,

divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought

really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us to

the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth,

it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our

story sets out.

Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or

expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good

or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why

was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was

the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which

the whole being consents?

She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda’s mind was occupied in

gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on

a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid

resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same

species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned

color and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy—forming a

suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the

highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere

in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.

It was near four o’clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was

well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by

a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an

occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from

an ingeniously constructed automaton. Round two long tables were

gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one having their

faces and attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a

melancholy little boy, with his knees and calves simply in their

natural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a

fancy dress. He alone had his face turned toward the doorway, and

fixing on it the blank gaze of a bedizened child stationed as a

masquerading advertisement on the platform of an itinerant show, stood

close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulette-table.

About this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many in the

outer rows, where there was occasionally a deposit of new-comers, being

mere spectators, only that one of them, usually a woman, might now and

then be observed putting down a five-franc with a simpering air, just

to see what the passion of gambling really was. Those who were taking

their pleasure at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed

very distant varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish,

Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and

English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human

equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very

near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist

to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt

face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair

which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else

would her ladyship have graciously consented to sit by that dry-lipped

feminine figure prematurely old, withered after short bloom like her

artificial flowers, holding a shabby velvet reticule before her, and

occasionally putting in her mouth the point with which she pricked her

card? There too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable London

tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his sleek hair scrupulously parted

behind and before, conscious of circulars addressed to the nobility and

gentry, whose distinguished patronage enabled him to take his holidays

fashionably, and to a certain extent in their distinguished company.

Not his the gambler’s passion that nullifies appetite, but a well-fed

leisure, which, in the intervals of winning money in business and

spending it showily, sees no better resource than winning money in play

and spending it yet more showily—reflecting always that Providence had

never manifested any disapprobation of his amusement, and dispassionate

enough to leave off if the sweetness of winning much and seeing others

lose had turned to the sourness of losing much and seeing others win.

For the vice of gambling lay in losing money at it. In his bearing

there might be something of the tradesman, but in his pleasures he was

fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing close to his

chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to

place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by

an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed

over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There

was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old

woman; but the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and—probably

secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of

chance—immediately prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of

an emaciated beau or worn-out libertine, who looked at life through one

eye-glass, and held out his hand tremulously when he asked for change.

It could surely be no severity of system, but rather some dream of

white crows, or the induction that the eighth of the month was lucky,

which inspired the fierce yet tottering impulsiveness of his play.

But, while every single player differed markedly from every other,

there was a certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the

effect of a mask—as if they had all eaten of some root that for the

time compelled the brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action.

Deronda’s first thought when his eyes fell on this scene of dull,

gas-poisoned absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish shepherd-boys

had seemed to him more enviable:—so far Rousseau might be justified in

maintaining that art and science had done a poor service to mankind.

But suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was

arrested by a young lady who, standing at an angle not far from him,

was the last to whom his eyes traveled. She was bending and speaking

English to a middle-aged lady seated at play beside her: but the next

instant she returned to her play, and showed the full height of a

graceful figure, with a face which might possibly be looked at without

admiration, but could hardly be passed with indifference.

The inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to his eyes a

growing expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from

the glow of mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one

moment they followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and

hands, as this problematic sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with

an air of firm choice; and the next they returned to the face which, at

present unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the game.

The sylph was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in

pale-gray, were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in

order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked round

her with a survey too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a

little of that nature which we call art concealing an inward exultation.

But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda’s, and instead of

averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly

conscious that they were arrested—how long? The darting sense that he

was measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of

different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself

in a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen

of a lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the

moment with conflict. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it

sent it away from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an

inward defiance, and without other sign of emotion than this

lip-paleness turned to her play. But Deronda’s gaze seemed to have acted

as an evil eye. Her stake was gone. No matter; she had been winning ever

since she took to roulette with a few napoleons at command, and had a

considerable reserve. She had begun to believe in her luck, others had

begun to believe in it: she had visions of being followed by a _cortège_

who would worship her as a goddess of luck and watch her play as a

directing augury. Such things had been known of male gamblers; why

should not a woman have a like supremacy? Her friend and chaperon who

had not wished her to play at first was beginning to approve, only

administering the prudent advice to stop at the right moment and carry

money back to England—advice to which Gwendolen had replied that she

cared for the excitement of play, not the winnings. On that supposition

the present moment ought to have made the flood-tide in her eager

experience of gambling. Yet, when her next stake was swept away, she

felt the orbits of her eyes getting hot, and the certainty she had

(without looking) of that man still watching her was something like a

pressure which begins to be torturing. The more reason to her why she

should not flinch, but go on playing as if she were indifferent to loss

or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and proposed that they should quit

the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was

in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond

the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity

of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. Since

she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose

strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or

hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now

watching her, but the sole observation she was conscious of was

Deronda’s, who, though she never looked toward him, she was sure had not

moved away. Such a drama takes no long while to play out: development

and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the

moment-hand. “Faites votre jeu, mesdames et messieurs,” said the

automatic voice of destiny from between the mustache and imperial of the

croupier: and Gwendolen’s arm was stretched to deposit her last poor

heap of napoleons. “Le jeu ne va plus,” said destiny. And in five

seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, but turned resolutely with her

face toward Deronda and looked at him. There was a smile of irony in his

eyes as their glances met; but it was at least better that he should

have kept his attention fixed on her than that he disregarded her as one

of an insect swarm who had no individual physiognomy. Besides, in spite

of his superciliousness and irony, it was difficult to believe that he

did not admire her spirit as well as her person: he was young, handsome,

distinguished in appearance—not one of these ridiculous and dowdy

Philistines who thought it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table

with a sour look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction

that we are admirable does not easily give way before a single negative;

rather when any of Vanity’s large family, male or female, find their

performance received coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more

of it will win over the unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen’s habits

of mind it had been taken for granted that she knew what was admirable

and that she herself was admired. This basis of her thinking had

received a disagreeable concussion, and reeled a little, but was not

easily to be overthrown.

In the evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, was brilliant

with gas and with the costumes of ladies who floated their trains along

it or were seated on the ottomans.

The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale

sea-green feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green

hat and light brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the

wing, or rather soared by the shoulder, of the lady who had sat by her

at the roulette-table; and with them was a gentleman with a white

mustache and clipped hair: solid-browed, stiff and German. They were

walking about or standing to chat with acquaintances, and Gwendolen was

much observed by the seated groups.

“A striking girl—that Miss Harleth—unlike others.”

“Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now—all green and

silver, and winds her neck about a little more than usual.”

“Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind

of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?”

“Very. A man might risk hanging for her—I mean a fool might.”

“You like a _nez retroussé_, then, and long narrow eyes?”

“When they go with such an _ensemble_.”

“The _ensemble du serpent_?”

“If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?”

“She is certainly very graceful; but she wants a tinge of color in her

cheeks. It is a sort of Lamia beauty she has.”

“On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. It is

a warm paleness; it looks thoroughly healthy. And that delicate nose

with its gradual little upward curve is distracting. And then her

mouth—there never was a prettier mouth, the lips curled backward so

finely, eh, Mackworth?”

“Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so

self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty—the curves are too

immovable. I like a mouth that trembles more.”

“For my part, I think her odious,” said a dowager. “It is wonderful

what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does

anybody know them?”

“They are quite _comme il faut_. I have dined with them several times

at the _Russie_. The baroness is English. Miss Harleth calls her

cousin. The girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as

possible.”

“Dear me! and the baron?”.

“A very good furniture picture.”

“Your baroness is always at the roulette-table,” said Mackworth. “I

fancy she has taught the girl to gamble.”

“Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece

here and there. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak.”

“I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich? Who knows?”

“Ah, who knows? Who knows that about anybody?” said Mr. Vandernoodt,

moving off to join the Langens.

The remark that Gwendolen wound her neck about more than usual this

evening was true. But it was not that she might carry out the serpent

idea more completely: it was that she watched for any chance of seeing

Deronda, so that she might inquire about this stranger, under whose

measuring gaze she was still wincing. At last her opportunity came.

“Mr. Vandernoodt, you know everybody,” said Gwendolen, not too eagerly,

rather with a certain languor of utterance which she sometimes gave to

her clear soprano. “Who is that near the door?”

“There are half a dozen near the door. Do you mean that old Adonis in

the George the Fourth wig?”

“No, no; the dark-haired young man on the right with the dreadful

expression.”

“Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly fine fellow.”

“But who is he?”

“He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger.”

“Sir Hugo Mallinger?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“No.” (Gwendolen colored slightly.) “He has a place near us, but he

never comes to it. What did you say was the name of that gentleman near

the door?”

“Deronda—Mr. Deronda.”

“What a delightful name! Is he an Englishman?”

“Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the baronet. You

are interested in him?”

“Yes. I think he is not like young men in general.”

“And you don’t admire young men in general?”

“Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can’t at all

guess what this Mr. Deronda would say. What _does_ he say?”

“Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for a good hour last night on

the terrace, and he never spoke—and was not smoking either. He looked

bored.”

“Another reason why I should like to know him. I am always bored.”

“I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction. Shall I

bring it about? Will you allow it, baroness?”

“Why not?—since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It is a new

_rôle_ of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored,” continued Madame von

Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved away. “Until now you have always

seemed eager about something from morning till night.”

“That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to leave off play I

must break my arm or my collar-bone. I must make something happen;

unless you will go into Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn.”

“Perhaps this Mr. Deronda’s acquaintance will do instead of the

Matterhorn.”

“Perhaps.”

But Gwendolen did not make Deronda’s acquaintance on this occasion. Mr.

Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing him up to her that evening, and

when she re-entered her own room she found a letter recalling her home.

CHAPTER II.

This man contrives a secret ’twixt us two,

That he may quell me with his meeting eyes

Like one who quells a lioness at bay.

This was the letter Gwendolen found on her table:

DEAREST CHILD.—I have been expecting to hear from you for a week. In

your last you said the Langens thought of leaving Leubronn and going

to Baden. How could you be so thoughtless as to leave me in

uncertainty about your address? I am in the greatest anxiety lest this

should not reach you. In any case, you were to come home at the end of

September, and I must now entreat you to return as quickly as

possible, for if you spent all your money it would be out of my power

to send you any more, and you must not borrow of the Langens, for I

could not repay them. This is the sad truth, my child—I wish I could

prepare you for it better—but a dreadful calamity has befallen us

all. You know nothing about business and will not understand it; but

Grapnell & Co. have failed for a million, and we are totally

ruined—your aunt Gascoigne as well as I, only that your uncle has his

benefice, so that by putting down their carriage and getting interest

for the boys, the family can go on. All the property our poor father

saved for us goes to pay the liabilities. There is nothing I can call

my own. It is better you should know this at once, though it rends my

heart to have to tell it you. Of course we cannot help thinking what a

pity it was that you went away just when you did. But I shall never

reproach you, my dear child; I would save you from all trouble if I

could. On your way home you will have time to prepare yourself for the

change you will find. We shall perhaps leave Offendene at once, for we

hope that Mr. Haynes, who wanted it before, may be ready to take it

off my hands. Of course we cannot go to the rectory—there is not a

corner there to spare. We must get some hut or other to shelter us,

and we must live on your uncle Gascoigne’s charity, until I see what

else can be done. I shall not be able to pay the debts to the

tradesmen besides the servants’ wages. Summon up your fortitude, my

dear child; we must resign ourselves to God’s will. But it is hard to

resign one’s self to Mr. Lassman’s wicked recklessness, which they say

was the cause of the failure. Your poor sisters can only cry with me

and give me no help. If you were once here, there might be a break in

the cloud—I always feel it impossible that you can have been meant

for poverty. If the Langens wish to remain abroad, perhaps you can put

yourself under some one else’s care for the journey. But come as soon

as you can to your afflicted and loving mamma,

FANNY DAVILOW.

The first effect of this letter on Gwendolen was half-stupefying. The

implicit confidence that her destiny must be one of luxurious ease,

where any trouble that occurred would be well clad and provided for,

had been stronger in her own mind than in her mamma’s, being fed there

by her youthful blood and that sense of superior claims which made a

large part of her consciousness. It was almost as difficult for her to

believe suddenly that her position had become one of poverty and of

humiliating dependence, as it would have been to get into the strong

current of her blooming life the chill sense that her death would

really come. She stood motionless for a few minutes, then tossed off

her hat and automatically looked in the glass. The coils of her smooth

light-brown hair were still in order perfect enough for a ball-room;

and as on other nights, Gwendolen might have looked lingeringly at

herself for pleasure (surely an allowable indulgence); but now she took

no conscious note of her reflected beauty, and simply stared right

before her as if she had been jarred by a hateful sound and was waiting

for any sign of its cause. By-and-by she threw herself in the corner of

the red velvet sofa, took up the letter again and read it twice

deliberately, letting it at last fall on the ground, while she rested

her clasped hands on her lap and sat perfectly still, shedding no

tears. Her impulse was to survey and resist the situation rather than

to wail over it. There was no inward exclamation of “Poor mamma!” Her

mamma had never seemed to get much enjoyment out of life, and if

Gwendolen had been at this moment disposed to feel pity she would have

bestowed it on herself—for was she not naturally and rightfully the

chief object of her mamma’s anxiety too? But it was anger, it was

resistance that possessed her; it was bitter vexation that she had lost

her gains at roulette, whereas if her luck had continued through this

one day she would have had a handsome sum to carry home, or she might

have gone on playing and won enough to support them all. Even now was

it not possible? She had only four napoleons left in her purse, but she

possessed some ornaments which she could sell: a practice so common in

stylish society at German baths that there was no need to be ashamed of

it; and even if she had not received her mamma’s letter, she would

probably have decided to get money for an Etruscan necklace which she

happened not to have been wearing since her arrival; nay, she might

have done so with an agreeable sense that she was living with some

intensity and escaping humdrum. With ten louis at her disposal and a

return of her former luck, which seemed probable, what could she do

better than go on playing for a few days? If her friends at home

disapproved of the way in which she got the money, as they certainly

would, still the money would be there. Gwendolen’s imagination dwelt on

this course and created agreeable consequences, but not with unbroken

confidence and rising certainty as it would have done if she had been

touched with the gambler’s mania. She had gone to the roulette-table

not because of passion, but in search of it: her mind was still sanely

capable of picturing balanced probabilities, and while the chance of

winning allured her, the chance of losing thrust itself on her with

alternate strength and made a vision from which her pride sank

sensitively. For she was resolved not to tell the Langens that any

misfortune had befallen her family, or to make herself in any way

indebted to their compassion; and if she were to part with her jewelry

to any observable extent, they would interfere by inquiries and

remonstrances. The course that held the least risk of intolerable

annoyance was to raise money on her necklace early in the morning, tell

the Langens that her mother desired her immediate return without giving

a reason, and take the train for Brussels that evening. She had no maid

with her, and the Langens might make difficulties about her returning

home, but her will was peremptory.

Instead of going to bed she made as brilliant a light as she could and

began to pack, working diligently, though all the while visited by the

scenes that might take place on the coming day—now by the tiresome

explanations and farewells, and the whirling journey toward a changed

home, now by the alternative of staying just another day and standing

again at the roulette-table. But always in this latter scene there was

the presence of that Deronda, watching her with exasperating irony,

and—the two keen experiences were inevitably revived

together—beholding her again forsaken by luck. This importunate image

certainly helped to sway her resolve on the side of immediate

departure, and to urge her packing to the point which would make a

change of mind inconvenient. It had struck twelve when she came into

her room, and by the time she was assuring herself that she had left

out only what was necessary, the faint dawn was stealing through the

white blinds and dulling her candles. What was the use of going to bed?

Her cold bath was refreshment enough, and she saw that a slight trace

of fatigue about the eyes only made her look the more interesting.

Before six o’clock she was completely equipped in her gray traveling

dress even to her felt hat, for she meant to walk out as soon as she

could count on seeing other ladies on their way to the springs. And

happening to be seated sideways before the long strip of mirror between

her two windows she turned to look at herself, leaning her elbow on the

back of the chair in an attitude that might have been chosen for her

portrait. It is possible to have a strong self-love without any

self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more

intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a

supreme care; but Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward strife. She had

a _naïve_ delight in her fortunate self, which any but the harshest

saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who had every day

seen a pleasant reflection of that self in her friends’ flattery as

well as in the looking-glass. And even in this beginning of troubles,

while for lack of anything else to do she sat gazing at her image in

the growing light, her face gathered a complacency gradual as the

cheerfulness of the morning. Her beautiful lips curled into a more and

more decided smile, till at last she took off her hat, leaned forward

and kissed the cold glass which had looked so warm. How could she

believe in sorrow? If it attacked her, she felt the force to crush it,

to defy it, or run away from it, as she had done already. Anything

seemed more possible than that she could go on bearing miseries, great

or small.

Madame von Langen never went out before breakfast, so that Gwendolen

could safely end her early walk by taking her way homeward through the

Obere Strasse in which was the needed shop, sure to be open after

seven. At that hour any observers whom she minded would be either on

their walks in the region of the springs, or would be still in their

bedrooms; but certainly there was one grand hotel, the _Czarina_ from

which eyes might follow her up to Mr. Wiener’s door. This was a chance

to be risked: might she not be going in to buy something which had

struck her fancy? This implicit falsehood passed through her mind as

she remembered that the _Czarina_ was Deronda’s hotel; but she was then

already far up the Obere Strasse, and she walked on with her usual

floating movement, every line in her figure and drapery falling in

gentle curves attractive to all eyes except those which discerned in

them too close a resemblance to the serpent, and objected to the

revival of serpent-worship. She looked neither to the right hand nor to

the left, and transacted her business in the shop with a coolness which

gave little Mr. Wiener nothing to remark except her proud grace of

manner, and the superior size and quality of the three central

turquoises in the necklace she offered him. They had belonged to a

chain once her father’s: but she had never known her father; and the

necklace was in all respects the ornament she could most conveniently

part with. Who supposes that it is an impossible contradiction to be

superstitious and rationalizing at the same time? Roulette encourages a

romantic superstition as to the chances of the game, and the most

prosaic rationalism as to human sentiments which stand in the way of

raising needful money. Gwendolen’s dominant regret was that after all

she had only nine louis to add to the four in her purse: these Jew

dealers were so unscrupulous in taking advantage of Christians

unfortunate at play! But she was the Langens’ guest in their hired

apartment, and had nothing to pay there: thirteen louis would do more

than take her home; even if she determined on risking three, the

remaining ten would more than suffice, since she meant to travel right

on, day and night. As she turned homeward, nay, entered and seated

herself in the _salon_ to await her friends and breakfast, she still

wavered as to her immediate departure, or rather she had concluded to

tell the Langens simply that she had had a letter from her mamma

desiring her return, and to leave it still undecided when she should

start. It was already the usual breakfast-time, and hearing some one

enter as she was leaning back rather tired and hungry with her eyes

shut, she rose expecting to see one or other of the Langens—the words

which might determine her lingering at least another day, ready-formed

to pass her lips. But it was the servant bringing in a small packet for

Miss Harleth, which had at that moment been left at the door. Gwendolen

took it in her hand and immediately hurried into her own room. She

looked paler and more agitated than when she had first read her mamma’s

letter. Something—she never quite knew what—revealed to her before

she opened the packet that it contained the necklace she had just

parted with. Underneath the paper it was wrapped in a cambric

handkerchief, and within this was a scrap of torn-off note-paper, on

which was written with a pencil, in clear but rapid handwriting—“_A

stranger who has found Miss Harleth’s necklace returns it to her with

the hope that she will not again risk the loss of it._”

Gwendolen reddened with the vexation of wounded pride. A large corner

of the handkerchief seemed to have been recklessly torn off to get rid

of a mark; but she at once believed in the first image of “the

stranger” that presented itself to her mind. It was Deronda; he must

have seen her go into the shop; he must have gone in immediately after

and repurchased the necklace. He had taken an unpardonable liberty, and

had dared to place her in a thoroughly hateful position. What could she

do?—Not, assuredly, act on her conviction that it was he who had sent

her the necklace and straightway send it back to him: that would be to

face the possibility that she had been mistaken; nay, even if the

“stranger” were he and no other, it would be something too gross for

her to let him know that she had divined this, and to meet him again

with that recognition in their minds. He knew very well that he was

entangling her in helpless humiliation: it was another way of smiling

at her ironically, and taking the air of a supercilious mentor.

Gwendolen felt the bitter tears of mortification rising and rolling

down her cheeks. No one had ever before dared to treat her with irony

and contempt. One thing was clear: she must carry out her resolution to

quit this place at once; it was impossible for her to reappear in the

public _salon_, still less stand at the gaming-table with the risk of

seeing Deronda. Now came an importunate knock at the door: breakfast

was ready. Gwendolen with a passionate movement thrust necklace,

cambric, scrap of paper, and all into her _nécessaire_, pressed her

handkerchief against her face, and after pausing a minute or two to

summon back her proud self-control, went to join her friends. Such

signs of tears and fatigue as were left seemed accordant enough with

the account she at once gave of her having sat up to do her packing,

instead of waiting for help from her friend’s maid. There was much

protestation, as she had expected, against her traveling alone, but she

persisted in refusing any arrangements for companionship. She would be

put into the ladies’ compartment and go right on. She could rest

exceedingly well in the train, and was afraid of nothing.

In this way it happened that Gwendolen never reappeared at the

roulette-table, but that Thursday evening left Leubronn for Brussels,

and on Saturday morning arrived at Offendene, the home to which she and

her family were soon to say a last good-bye.

CHAPTER III.

“Let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with

rosebuds before they be withered.”—BOOK OF WISDOM.

Pity that Offendene was not the home of Miss Harleth’s childhood, or

endeared to her by family memories! A human life, I think, should be

well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of

tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to,

for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that

early home a familiar unmistakable difference amid the future widening

of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be

inwrought with affection, and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors,

even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and

reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At five years old,

mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the world, to be stimulated

by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into impartiality; and that

prejudice in favor of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of

the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best

introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a

little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

But this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been

wanting in Gwendolen’s life. It was only a year before her recall from

Leubronn that Offendene had been chosen as her mamma’s home, simply for

its nearness to Pennicote Rectory, and that Mrs. Davilow, Gwendolen,

and her four half-sisters (the governess and the maid following in

another vehicle) had been driven along the avenue for the first time,

on a late October afternoon when the rooks were crawing loudly above

them, and the yellow elm-leaves were whirling.

The season suited the aspect of the old oblong red-brick house, rather

too anxiously ornamented with stone at every line, not excepting the

double row of narrow windows and the large square portico. The stone

encouraged a greenish lichen, the brick a powdery gray, so that though

the building was rigidly rectangular there was no harshness in the

physiognomy which it turned to the three avenues cut east, west and

south in the hundred yards’ breadth of old plantation encircling the

immediate grounds. One would have liked the house to have been lifted

on a knoll, so as to look beyond its own little domain to the long

thatched roofs of the distant villages, the church towers, the

scattered homesteads, the gradual rise of surging woods, and the green

breadths of undulating park which made the beautiful face of the earth

in that part of Wessex. But though standing thus behind a screen amid

flat pastures, it had on one side a glimpse of the wider world in the

lofty curves of the chalk downs, grand steadfast forms played over by

the changing days.

The house was but just large enough to be called a mansion, and was

moderately rented, having no manor attached to it, and being rather

difficult to let with its sombre furniture and faded upholstery. But

inside and outside it was what no beholder could suppose to be

inhabited by retired trades-people: a certainty which was worth many

conveniences to tenants who not only had the taste that shrinks from

new finery, but also were in that border-territory of rank where

annexation is a burning topic: and to take up her abode in a house

which had once sufficed for dowager countesses gave a perceptible tinge

to Mrs. Davilow’s satisfaction in having an establishment of her own.

This, rather mysteriously to Gwendolen, appeared suddenly possible on

the death of her step-father, Captain Davilow, who had for the last

nine years joined his family only in a brief and fitful manner, enough

to reconcile them to his long absences; but she cared much more for the

fact than for the explanation. All her prospects had become more

agreeable in consequence. She had disliked their former way of life,

roving from one foreign watering-place or Parisian apartment to

another, always feeling new antipathies to new suites of hired

furniture, and meeting new people under conditions which made her

appear of little importance; and the variation of having passed two

years at a showy school, where, on all occasions of display, she had

been put foremost, had only deepened her sense that so exceptional a

person as herself could hardly remain in ordinary circumstances or in a

social position less than advantageous. Any fear of this latter evil

was banished now that her mamma was to have an establishment; for on

the point of birth Gwendolen was quite easy. She had no notion how her

maternal grandfather got the fortune inherited by his two daughters;

but he had been a West Indian—which seemed to exclude further

question; and she knew that her father’s family was so high as to take

no notice of her mamma, who nevertheless preserved with much pride the

miniature of a Lady Molly in that connection. She would probably have

known much more about her father but for a little incident which

happened when she was twelve years old. Mrs. Davilow had brought out,

as she did only at wide intervals, various memorials of her first

husband, and while showing his miniature to Gwendolen recalled with a

fervor which seemed to count on a peculiar filial sympathy, the fact

that dear papa had died when his little daughter was in long clothes.

Gwendolen, immediately thinking of the unlovable step-father whom she

had been acquainted with the greater part of her life while her frocks

were short, said,

“Why did you marry again, mamma? It would have been nicer if you had

not.”

Mrs. Davilow colored deeply, a slight convulsive movement passed over

her face, and straightway shutting up the memorials she said, with a

violence quite unusual in her,

“You have no feeling, child!”

Gwendolen, who was fond of her mamma, felt hurt and ashamed, and had

never since dared to ask a question about her father.

This was not the only instance in which she had brought on herself the

pain of some filial compunction. It was always arranged, when possible,

that she should have a small bed in her mamma’s room; for Mrs.

Davilow’s motherly tenderness clung chiefly to her eldest girl, who had

been born in her happier time. One night under an attack of pain she

found that the specific regularly placed by her bedside had been

forgotten, and begged Gwendolen to get out of bed and reach it for her.

That healthy young lady, snug and warm as a rosy infant in her little

couch, objected to step out into the cold, and lying perfectly still,

grumbling a refusal. Mrs. Davilow went without the medicine and never

reproached her daughter; but the next day Gwendolen was keenly

conscious of what must be in her mamma’s mind, and tried to make amends

by caresses which cost her no effort. Having always been the pet and

pride of the household, waited on by mother, sisters, governess and

maids, as if she had been a princess in exile, she naturally found it

difficult to think her own pleasure less important than others made it,

and when it was positively thwarted felt an astonished resentment apt,

in her cruder days, to vent itself in one of those passionate acts

which look like a contradiction of habitual tendencies. Though never

even as a child thoughtlessly cruel, nay delighting to rescue drowning

insects and watch their recovery, there was a disagreeable silent

remembrance of her having strangled her sister’s canary-bird in a final

fit of exasperation at its shrill singing which had again and again

jarringly interrupted her own. She had taken pains to buy a white mouse

for her sister in retribution, and though inwardly excusing herself on

the ground of a peculiar sensitiveness which was a mark of her general

superiority, the thought of that infelonious murder had always made her

wince. Gwendolen’s nature was not remorseless, but she liked to make

her penances easy, and now that she was twenty and more, some of her

native force had turned into a self-control by which she guarded

herself from penitential humiliation. There was more show of fire and

will in her than ever, but there was more calculation underneath it.

On this day of arrival at Offendene, which not even Mrs. Davilow had

seen before—the place having been taken for her by her brother-in-law,

Mr. Gascoigne—when all had got down from the carriage, and were

standing under the porch in front of the open door, so that they could

have a general view of the place and a glimpse of the stone hall and

staircase hung with sombre pictures, but enlivened by a bright wood

fire, no one spoke; mamma, the four sisters and the governess all

looked at Gwendolen, as if their feelings depended entirely on her

decision. Of the girls, from Alice in her sixteenth year to Isabel in

her tenth, hardly anything could be said on a first view, but that they

were girlish, and that their black dresses were getting shabby. Miss

Merry was elderly and altogether neutral in expression. Mrs. Davilow’s

worn beauty seemed the more pathetic for the look of entire appeal

which she cast at Gwendolen, who was glancing round at the house, the

landscape and the entrance hall with an air of rapid judgment. Imagine

a young race-horse in the paddock among untrimmed ponies and patient

hacks.

“Well, dear, what do you think of the place,” said Mrs. Davilow at

last, in a gentle, deprecatory tone.

“I think it is charming,” said Gwendolen, quickly. “A romantic place;

anything delightful may happen in it; it would be a good background for

anything. No one need be ashamed of living here.”

“There is certainly nothing common about it.”

“Oh, it would do for fallen royalty or any sort of grand poverty. We

ought properly to have been living in splendor, and have come down to

this. It would have been as romantic as could be. But I thought my

uncle and aunt Gascoigne would be here to meet us, and my cousin Anna,”

added Gwendolen, her tone changed to sharp surprise.

“We are early,” said Mrs. Davilow, and entering the hall, she said to

the housekeeper who came forward, “You expect Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne?”

“Yes, madam; they were here yesterday to give particular orders about

the fires and the dinner. But as to fires, I’ve had ’em in all the

rooms for the last week, and everything is well aired. I could wish

some of the furniture paid better for all the cleaning it’s had, but I

_think_ you’ll see the brasses have been done justice to. I _think_

when Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne come, they’ll tell you nothing has been

neglected. They’ll be here at five, for certain.”

This satisfied Gwendolen, who was not prepared to have their arrival

treated with indifference; and after tripping a little way up the

matted stone staircase to take a survey there, she tripped down again,

and followed by all the girls looked into each of the rooms opening

from the hall—the dining-room all dark oak and worn red satin damask,

with a copy of snarling, worrying dogs from Snyders over the

side-board, and a Christ breaking bread over the mantel-piece; the

library with a general aspect and smell of old brown-leather; and

lastly, the drawing-room, which was entered through a small antechamber

crowded with venerable knick-knacks.

“Mamma, mamma, pray come here!” said Gwendolen, Mrs. Davilow having

followed slowly in talk with the housekeeper. “Here is an organ. I will

be Saint Cecilia: some one shall paint me as Saint Cecilia. Jocosa

(this was her name for Miss Merry), let down my hair. See, mamma?”

She had thrown off her hat and gloves, and seated herself before the

organ in an admirable pose, looking upward; while the submissive and

sad Jocosa took out the one comb which fastened the coil of hair, and

then shook out the mass till it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far

below its owner’s slim waist.

Mrs. Davilow smiled and said, “A charming picture, my dear!” not

indifferent to the display of her pet, even in the presence of a

housekeeper. Gwendolen rose and laughed with delight. All this seemed

quite to the purpose on entering a new house which was so excellent a

background.

“What a queer, quaint, picturesque room!” she went on, looking about

her. “I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the

wainscot, and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the

ribs—nothing but ribs and darkness—I should think that is Spanish,

mamma.”

“Oh, Gwendolen!” said the small Isabel, in a tone of astonishment,

while she held open a hinged panel of the wainscot at the other end of

the room.

Every one, Gwendolen first, went to look. The opened panel had

disclosed the picture of an upturned dead face, from which an obscure

figure seemed to be fleeing with outstretched arms. “How horrible!”

said Mrs. Davilow, with a look of mere disgust; but Gwendolen shuddered

silently, and Isabel, a plain and altogether inconvenient child with an

alarming memory, said,

“You will never stay in this room by yourself, Gwendolen.”

“How dare you open things which were meant to be shut up, you perverse

little creature?” said Gwendolen, in her angriest tone. Then snatching

the panel out of the hand of the culprit, she closed it hastily,

saying, “There is a lock—where is the key? Let the key be found, or

else let one be made, and let nobody open it again; or rather, let the

key be brought to me.”

At this command to everybody in general Gwendolen turned with a face

which was flushed in reaction from her chill shudder, and said, “Let us

go up to our own room, mamma.”

The housekeeper on searching found the key in the drawer of the cabinet

close by the panel, and presently handed it to Bugle, the lady’s-maid,

telling her significantly to give it to her Royal Highness.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Startin,” said Bugle, who had been

busy up-stairs during the scene in the drawing-room, and was rather

offended at this irony in a new servant.

“I mean the young lady that’s to command us all—and well worthy for

looks and figure,” replied Mrs. Startin in propitiation. “She’ll know

what key it is.”

“If you have laid out what we want, go and see to the others, Bugle,”

Gwendolen had said, when she and Mrs. Davilow entered their black and

yellow bedroom, where a pretty little white couch was prepared by the

side of the black and yellow catafalque known as the best bed. “I will

help mamma.”

But her first movement was to go to the tall mirror between the

windows, which reflected herself and the room completely, while her

mamma sat down and also looked at the reflection.

“That is a becoming glass, Gwendolen; or is it the black and gold color

that sets you off?” said Mrs. Davilow, as Gwendolen stood obliquely

with her three-quarter face turned toward the mirror, and her left hand

brushing back the stream of hair.

“I should make a tolerable St. Cecilia with some white roses on my

head,” said Gwendolen,—“only how about my nose, mamma? I think saint’s

noses never in the least turn up. I wish you had given me your

perfectly straight nose; it would have done for any sort of

character—a nose of all work. Mine is only a happy nose; it would not

do so well for tragedy.”

“Oh, my dear, any nose will do to be miserable with in this world,”

said Mrs. Davilow, with a deep, weary sigh, throwing her black bonnet

on the table, and resting her elbow near it.

“Now, mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a strongly remonstrant tone, turning

away from the glass with an air of vexation, “don’t begin to be dull

here. It spoils all my pleasure, and everything may be so happy now.

What have you to be gloomy about _now_?”

“Nothing, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, seeming to rouse herself, and

beginning to take off her dress. “It is always enough for me to see you

happy.”

“But you should be happy yourself,” said Gwendolen, still

discontentedly, though going to help her mamma with caressing touches.

“Can nobody be happy after they are quite young? You have made me feel

sometimes as if nothing were of any use. With the girls so troublesome,

and Jocosa so dreadfully wooden and ugly, and everything make-shift

about us, and you looking so dull—what was the use of my being

anything? But now you _might_ be happy.”

“So I shall, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, patting the cheek that was

bending near her.

“Yes, but really. Not with a sort of make-believe,” said Gwendolen,

with resolute perseverance. “See what a hand and arm!—much more

beautiful than mine. Any one can see you were altogether more

beautiful.”

“No, no, dear; I was always heavier. Never half so charming as you are.”

“Well, but what is the use of my being charming, if it is to end in my

being dull and not minding anything? Is that what marriage always comes

to?”

“No, child, certainly not. Marriage is the only happy state for a

woman, as I trust you will prove.”

“I will not put up with it if it is not a happy state. I am determined

to be happy—at least not to go on muddling away my life as other

people do, being and doing nothing remarkable. I have made up my mind

not to let other people interfere with me as they have done. Here is

some warm water ready for you, mamma,” Gwendolen ended, proceeding to

take off her own dress and then waiting to have her hair wound up by

her mamma.

There was silence for a minute or two, till Mrs. Davilow said, while

coiling the daughter’s hair, “I am sure I have never crossed you,

Gwendolen.”

“You often want me to do what I don’t like.”

“You mean, to give Alice lessons?”

“Yes. And I have done it because you asked me. But I don’t see why I

should, else. It bores me to death, she is so slow. She has no ear for

music, or language, or anything else. It would be much better for her

to be ignorant, mamma: it is her _rôle_, she would do it well.”

“That is a hard thing to say of your poor sister, Gwendolen, who is so

good to you, and waits on you hand and foot.”

“I don’t see why it is hard to call things by their right names, and

put them in their proper places. The hardship is for me to have to

waste my time on her. Now let me fasten up your hair, mamma.”

“We must make haste; your uncle and aunt will be here soon. For

heaven’s sake, don’t be scornful to _them_, my dear child! or to your

cousin Anna, whom you will always be going out with. Do promise me,

Gwendolen. You know, you can’t expect Anna to be equal to you.”

“I don’t want her to be equal,” said Gwendolen, with a toss of her head

and a smile, and the discussion ended there.

When Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne and their daughter came, Gwendolen, far

from being scornful, behaved as prettily as possible to them. She was

introducing herself anew to relatives who had not seen her since the

comparatively unfinished age of sixteen, and she was anxious—no, not

anxious, but resolved that they should admire her.

Mrs. Gascoigne bore a family likeness to her sister. But she was darker

and slighter, her face was unworn by grief, her movements were less

languid, her expression more alert and critical as that of a rector’s

wife bound to exert a beneficent authority. Their closest resemblance

lay in a non-resistant disposition, inclined to imitation and

obedience; but this, owing to the difference in their circumstances,

had led them to very different issues. The younger sister had been

indiscreet, or at least unfortunate in her marriages; the elder

believed herself the most enviable of wives, and her pliancy had ended

in her sometimes taking shapes of surprising definiteness. Many of her

opinions, such as those on church government and the character of

Archbishop Laud, seemed too decided under every alteration to have been

arrived at otherwise than by a wifely receptiveness. And there was much

to encourage trust in her husband’s authority. He had some agreeable

virtues, some striking advantages, and the failings that were imputed

to him all leaned toward the side of success.

One of his advantages was a fine person, which perhaps was even more

impressive at fifty-seven than it had been earlier in life. There were

no distinctively clerical lines in the face, no tricks of starchiness

or of affected ease: in his Inverness cape he could not have been

identified except as a gentleman with handsome dark features, a nose

which began with an intention to be aquiline but suddenly became

straight, and iron-gray hair. Perhaps he owed this freedom from the

sort of professional make-up which penetrates skin, tones and gestures

and defies all drapery, to the fact that he had once been Captain

Gaskin, having taken orders and a diphthong but shortly before his

engagement to Miss Armyn. If any one had objected that his preparation

for the clerical function was inadequate, his friends might have asked

who made a better figure in it, who preached better or had more

authority in his parish? He had a native gift for administration, being

tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to

overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious

feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did

not share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were

much in vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself,

he preferred following the history of a campaign, or divining from his

knowledge of Nesselrode’s motives what would have been his conduct if

our cabinet had taken a different course. Mr. Gascoigne’s tone of

thinking after some long-quieted fluctuations had become ecclesiastical

rather than theological; not the modern Anglican, but what he would

have called sound English, free from nonsense; such as became a man who

looked at a national religion by daylight, and saw it in its relation

to other things. No clerical magistrate had greater weight at sessions,

or less of mischievous impracticableness in relation to worldly

affairs. Indeed, the worst imputation thrown out against him was

worldliness: it could not be proved that he forsook the less fortunate,

but it was not to be denied that the friendships he cultivated were of

a kind likely to be useful to the father of six sons and two daughters;

and bitter observers—for in Wessex, say ten years ago, there were

persons whose bitterness may now seem incredible—remarked that the

color of his opinions had changed in consistency with this principle of

action. But cheerful, successful worldliness has a false air of being

more selfish than the acrid, unsuccessful kind, whose secret history is

summed up in the terrible words, “Sold, but not paid for.”

Gwendolen wondered that she had not better remembered how very fine a

man her uncle was; but at the age of sixteen she was a less capable and

more indifferent judge. At present it was a matter of extreme interest

to her that she was to have the near countenance of a dignified male

relative, and that the family life would cease to be entirely,

insipidly feminine. She did not intend that her uncle should control

her, but she saw at once that it would be altogether agreeable to her

that he should be proud of introducing her as his niece. And there was

every sign of his being likely to feel that pride. He certainly looked

at her with admiration as he said,

“You have outgrown Anna, my dear,” putting his arm tenderly round his

daughter, whose shy face was a tiny copy of his own, and drawing her

forward. “She is not so old as you by a year, but her growing days are

certainly over. I hope you will be excellent companions.”

He did give a comparing glance at his daughter, but if he saw her

inferiority, he might also see that Anna’s timid appearance and

miniature figure must appeal to a different taste from that which was

attracted by Gwendolen, and that the girls could hardly be rivals.

Gwendolen at least, was aware of this, and kissed her cousin with real

cordiality as well as grace, saying, “A companion is just what I want.

I am so glad we are come to live here. And mamma will be much happier

now she is near you, aunt.”

The aunt trusted indeed that it would be so, and felt it a blessing

that a suitable home had been vacant in their uncle’s parish. Then, of

course, notice had to be taken of the four other girls, whom Gwendolen

had always felt to be superfluous: all of a girlish average that made

four units utterly unimportant, and yet from her earliest days an

obtrusive influential fact in her life. She was conscious of having

been much kinder to them than could have been expected. And it was

evident to her that her uncle and aunt also felt it a pity there were

so many girls:—what rational person could feel otherwise, except poor

mamma, who never would see how Alice set up her shoulders and lifted

her eyebrows till she had no forehead left, how Bertha and Fanny

whispered and tittered together about everything, or how Isabel was

always listening and staring and forgetting where she was, and treading

on the toes of her suffering elders?

“You have brothers, Anna,” said Gwendolen, while the sisters were being

noticed. “I think you are enviable there.”

“Yes,” said Anna, simply. “I am very fond of them; but of course their

education is a great anxiety to papa. He used to say they made me a

tomboy. I really was a great romp with Rex. I think you will like Rex.

He will come home before Christmas.”

“I remember I used to think you rather wild and shy; but it is

difficult now to imagine you a romp,” said Gwendolen, smiling.

“Of course, I am altered now; I am come out, and all that. But in

reality I like to go blackberrying with Edwy and Lotta as well as ever.

I am not very fond of going out; but I dare say I shall like it better

now you will be often with me. I am not at all clever, and I never know

what to say. It seems so useless to say what everybody knows, and I can

think of nothing else, except what papa says.”

“I shall like going out with you very much,” said Gwendolen, well

disposed toward this _naïve_ cousin. “Are you fond of riding?”

“Yes, but we have only one Shetland pony amongst us. Papa says he can’t

afford more, besides the carriage-horses and his own nag; he has so

many expenses.”

“I intend to have a horse and ride a great deal now,” said Gwendolen,

in a tone of decision. “Is the society pleasant in this neighborhood?”

“Papa says it is, very. There are the clergymen all about, you know;

and the Quallons, and the Arrowpoints, and Lord Brackenshaw, and Sir

Hugo Mallinger’s place, where there is nobody—that’s very nice,

because we make picnics there—and two or three families at Wanchester:

oh, and old Mrs. Vulcany, at Nuttingwood, and—”

But Anna was relieved of this tax on her descriptive powers by the

announcement of dinner, and Gwendolen’s question was soon indirectly

answered by her uncle, who dwelt much on the advantages he had secured

for them in getting a place like Offendene. Except the rent, it

involved no more expense than an ordinary house at Wanchester would

have done.

“And it is always worth while to make a little sacrifice for a good

style of house,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in his easy, pleasantly confident

tone, which made the world in general seem a very manageable place of

residence: “especially where there is only a lady at the head. All the

best people will call upon you; and you need give no expensive dinners.

Of course, I have to spend a good deal in that way; it is a large item.

But then I get my house for nothing. If I had to pay three hundred a

year for my house I could not keep a table. My boys are too great a

drain on me. You are better off than we are, in proportion; there is no

great drain on you now, after your house and carriage.”

“I assure you, Fanny, now that the children are growing up, I am

obliged to cut and contrive,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. “I am not a good

manager by nature, but Henry has taught me. He is wonderful for making

the best of everything; he allows himself no extras, and gets his

curates for nothing. It is rather hard that he has not been made a

prebendary or something, as others have been, considering the friends

he has made and the need there is for men of moderate opinions in all

respects. If the Church is to keep its position, ability and character

ought to tell.”

“Oh, my dear Nancy, you forget the old story—thank Heaven, there are

three hundred as good as I. And ultimately, we shall have no reason to

complain, I am pretty sure. There could hardly be a more thorough

friend than Lord Brackenshaw—your landlord, you know, Fanny. Lady

Brackenshaw will call upon you. And I have spoken for Gwendolen to be a

member of our Archery Club—the Brackenshaw Archery Club—the most

select thing anywhere. That is, if she has no objection,” added Mr.

Gascoigne, looking at Gwendolen with pleasant irony.

“I should like it of all things,” said Gwendolen. “There is nothing I

enjoy more than taking aim—and hitting,” she ended, with a pretty nod

and smile.

“Our Anna, poor child, is too short-sighted for archery. But I consider

myself a first-rate shot, and you shall practice with me. I must make

you an accomplished archer before our great meeting in July. In fact,

as to neighborhood, you could hardly be better placed. There are the

Arrowpoints—they are some of our best people. Miss Arrowpoint is a

delightful girl—she has been presented at Court. They have a

magnificent place—Quetcham Hall—worth seeing in point of art; and

their parties, to which you are sure to be invited, are the best things

of the sort we have. The archdeacon is intimate there, and they have

always a good kind of people staying in the house. Mrs. Arrowpoint is

peculiar, certainly; something of a caricature, in fact; but

well-meaning. And Miss Arrowpoint is as nice as possible. It is not all

young ladies who have mothers as handsome and graceful as yours and

Anna’s.”

Mrs. Davilow smiled faintly at this little compliment, but the husband

and wife looked affectionately at each other, and Gwendolen thought,

“My uncle and aunt, at least, are happy: they are not dull and dismal.”

Altogether, she felt satisfied with her prospects at Offendene, as a

great improvement on anything she had known. Even the cheap curates,

she incidentally learned, were almost always young men of family, and

Mr. Middleton, the actual curate, was said to be quite an acquisition:

it was only a pity he was so soon to leave.

But there was one point which she was so anxious to gain that she could

not allow the evening to pass without taking her measures toward

securing it. Her mamma, she knew, intended to submit entirely to her

uncle’s judgment with regard to expenditure; and the submission was not

merely prudential, for Mrs. Davilow, conscious that she had always been

seen under a cloud as poor dear Fanny, who had made a sad blunder with

her second marriage, felt a hearty satisfaction in being frankly and

cordially identified with her sister’s family, and in having her

affairs canvassed and managed with an authority which presupposed a

genuine interest. Thus the question of a suitable saddle-horse, which

had been sufficiently discussed with mamma, had to be referred to Mr.

Gascoigne; and after Gwendolen had played on the piano, which had been

provided from Wanchester, had sung to her hearers’ admiration, and had

induced her uncle to join her in a duet—what more softening influence

than this on any uncle who would have sung finely if his time had not

been too much taken up by graver matters?—she seized the opportune

moment for saying, “Mamma, you have not spoken to my uncle about my

riding.”

“Gwendolen desires above all things to have a horse to ride—a pretty,

light, lady’s horse,” said Mrs. Davilow, looking at Mr. Gascoigne. “Do

you think we can manage it?”

Mr. Gascoigne projected his lower lip and lifted his handsome eyebrows

sarcastically at Gwendolen, who had seated herself with much grace on

the elbow of her mamma’s chair.

“We could lend her the pony sometimes,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, watching

her husband’s face, and feeling quite ready to disapprove if he did.

“That might be inconveniencing others, aunt, and would be no pleasure

to me. I cannot endure ponies,” said Gwendolen. “I would rather give up

some other indulgence and have a horse.” (Was there ever a young lady

or gentleman not ready to give up an unspecified indulgence for the

sake of the favorite one specified?)

“She rides so well. She has had lessons, and the riding-master said she

had so good a seat and hand she might be trusted with any mount,” said

Mrs. Davilow, who, even if she had not wished her darling to have the

horse, would not have dared to be lukewarm in trying to get it for her.

“There is the price of the horse—a good sixty with the best chance,

and then his keep,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in a tone which, though

demurring, betrayed the inward presence of something that favored the

demand. “There are the carriage-horses—already a heavy item. And

remember what you ladies cost in toilet now.”

“I really wear nothing but two black dresses,” said Mrs. Davilow,

hastily. “And the younger girls, of course, require no toilet at

present. Besides, Gwendolen will save me so much by giving her sisters

lessons.” Here Mrs. Davilow’s delicate cheek showed a rapid blush. “If

it were not for that, I must really have a more expensive governess,

and masters besides.”

Gwendolen felt some anger with her mamma, but carefully concealed it.

“That is good—that is decidedly good,” said Mr. Gascoigne, heartily,

looking at his wife. And Gwendolen, who, it must be owned, was a deep

young lady, suddenly moved away to the other end of the long

drawing-room, and busied herself with arranging pieces of music.

“The dear child has had no indulgences, no pleasures,” said Mrs.

Davilow, in a pleading undertone. “I feel the expense is rather

imprudent in this first year of our settling. But she really needs the

exercise—she needs cheering. And if you were to see her on horseback,

it is something splendid.”

“It is what we could not afford for Anna,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. “But

she, dear child, would ride Lotta’s donkey and think it good enough.”

(Anna was absorbed in a game with Isabel, who had hunted out an old

back-gammon-board, and had begged to sit up an extra hour.)

“Certainly, a fine woman never looks better than on horseback,” said

Mr. Gascoigne. “And Gwendolen has the figure for it. I don’t say the

thing should not be considered.”

“We might try it for a time, at all events. It can be given up, if

necessary,” said Mrs. Davilow.

“Well, I will consult Lord Brackenshaw’s head groom. He is my _fidus

Achates_ in the horsey way.”

“Thanks,” said Mrs. Davilow, much relieved. “You are very kind.”

“That he always is,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. And later that night, when

she and her husband were in private, she said,

“I thought you were almost too indulgent about the horse for Gwendolen.

She ought not to claim so much more than your own daughter would think

of. Especially before we see how Fanny manages on her income. And you

really have enough to do without taking all this trouble on yourself.”

“My dear Nancy, one must look at things from every point of view. This

girl is really worth some expense: you don’t often see her equal. She

ought to make a first-rate marriage, and I should not be doing my duty

if I spared my trouble in helping her forward. You know yourself she

has been under a disadvantage with such a father-in-law, and a second

family, keeping her always in the shade. I feel for the girl, And I

should like your sister and her family now to have the benefit of your

having married rather a better specimen of our kind than she did.”

“Rather better! I should think so. However, it is for me to be grateful

that you will take so much on your shoulders for the sake of my sister

and her children. I am sure I would not grudge anything to poor Fanny.

But there is one thing I have been thinking of, though you have never

mentioned it.”

“What is that?”

“The boys. I hope they will not be falling in love with Gwendolen.”

“Don’t presuppose anything of the kind, my dear, and there will be no

danger. Rex will never be at home for long together, and Warham is

going to India. It is the wiser plan to take it for granted that

cousins will not fall in love. If you begin with precautions, the

affair will come in spite of them. One must not undertake to act for

Providence in these matters, which can no more be held under the hand

than a brood of chickens. The boys will have nothing, and Gwendolen

will have nothing. They can’t marry. At the worst there would only be a

little crying, and you can’t save boys and girls from that.”

Mrs. Gascoigne’s mind was satisfied: if anything did happen, there was

the comfort of feeling that her husband would know what was to be done,

and would have the energy to do it.

CHAPTER IV.

“_Gorgibus._— * * * Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte

et sacrée: et que c’est faire en honnêtes gens, que de débuter par là.

“_Madelon._—Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, un

roman serait bientôt fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d’abord

Cyrus épousait Mandane, et qu’Aronce de plain-pied fût marié à Clélie!

* * * Laissez-nous faire à loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n’en

pressez pas tant la conclusion.”

MOLIÈRE. _Les Précieuses Ridicules._

It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote that in the

course of looking at things from every point of view, he looked at

Gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage. Why should he

be expected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter, and wish

his niece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would

approve as the best possible? It is rather to be set down to his credit

that his feelings on the subject were entirely good-natured. And in

considering the relation of means to ends, it would have been mere

folly to have been guided by the exceptional and idyllic—to have

recommended that Gwendolen should wear a gown as shabby as Griselda’s

in order that a marquis might fall in love with her, or to have

insisted that since a fair maiden was to be sought, she should keep

herself out of the way. Mr. Gascoigne’s calculations were of the kind

called rational, and he did not even think of getting a too frisky

horse in order that Gwendolen might be threatened with an accident and

be rescued by a man of property. He wished his niece well, and he meant

her to be seen to advantage in the best society of the neighborhood.

Her uncle’s intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen’s own wishes.

But let no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage

as the direct end of her witching the world with her grace on

horseback, or with any other accomplishment. That she was to be married

some time or other she would have felt obliged to admit; and that her

marriage would not be of a middling kind, such as most girls were

contented with, she felt quietly, unargumentatively sure. But her

thoughts never dwelt on marriage as the fulfillment of her ambition;

the dramas in which she imagined herself a heroine were not wrought up

to that close. To be very much sued or hopelessly sighed for as a bride

was indeed an indispensable and agreeable guarantee of womanly power;

but to become a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that

condition, was on the whole a vexatious necessity. Her observation of

matrimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state in which a

woman could not do what she liked, had more children than were

desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably immersed in

humdrum. Of course marriage was social promotion; she could not look

forward to a single life; but promotions have sometimes to be taken

with bitter herbs—a peerage will not quite do instead of leadership to

the man who meant to lead; and this delicate-limbed sylph of twenty

meant to lead. For such passions dwell in feminine breasts also. In

Gwendolen’s, however, they dwelt among strictly feminine furniture, and

had no disturbing reference to the advancement of learning or the

balance of the constitution; her knowledge being such as with no sort

of standing-room or length of lever could have been expected to move

the world. She meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking

manner; or rather, whatever she could do so as to strike others with

admiration and get in that reflected way a more ardent sense of living,

seemed pleasant to her fancy.

“Gwendolen will not rest without having the world at her feet,” said

Miss Merry, the meek governess: hyperbolical words which have long come

to carry the most moderate meanings; for who has not heard of private

persons having the world at their feet in the shape of some half-dozen

items of flattering regard generally known in a genteel suburb? And

words could hardly be too wide or vague to indicate the prospect that

made a hazy largeness about poor Gwendolen on the heights of her young

self-exultation. Other people allowed themselves to be made slaves of,

and to have their lives blown hither and thither like empty ships in

which no will was present. It was not to be so with her; she would no

longer be sacrificed to creatures worth less than herself, but would

make the very best of the chances that life offered her, and conquer

circumstances by her exceptional cleverness. Certainly, to be settled

at Offendene, with the notice of Lady Brackenshaw, the archery club,

and invitations to dine with the Arrowpoints, as the highest lights in

her scenery, was not a position that seemed to offer remarkable

chances; but Gwendolen’s confidence lay chiefly in herself. She felt

well equipped for the mastery of life. With regard to much in her lot

hitherto, she held herself rather hardly dealt with, but as to her

“education,” she would have admitted that it had left her under no

disadvantages. In the school-room her quick mind had taken readily that

strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnected facts which saves

ignorance from any painful sense of limpness; and what remained of all

things knowable, she was conscious of being sufficiently acquainted

with through novels, plays and poems. About her French and music, the

two justifying accomplishments of a young lady, she felt no ground for

uneasiness; and when to all these qualifications, negative and

positive, we add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy persons

are born with, so that any subject they turn their attention to

impresses them with their own power of forming a correct judgment on

it, who can wonder if Gwendolen felt ready to manage her own destiny?

There were many subjects in the world—perhaps the majority—in which

she felt no interest, because they were stupid; for subjects are apt to

appear stupid to the young as light seems dull to the old; but she

would not have felt at all helpless in relation to them if they had

turned up in conversation. It must be remembered that no one had

disputed her power or her general superiority. As on the arrival at

Offendene, so always, the first thought of those about her had been,

what will Gwendolen think?—if the footman trod heavily in creaking

boots, or if the laundress’s work was unsatisfactory, the maid said,

“This will never do for Miss Harleth”; if the wood smoked in the

bedroom fire-place, Mrs. Davilow, whose own weak eyes suffered much from

this inconvenience, spoke apologetically of it to Gwendolen. If, when

they were under the stress of traveling, she did not appear at the

breakfast table till every one else had finished, the only question

was, how Gwendolen’s coffee and toast should still be of the hottest

and crispest; and when she appeared with her freshly-brushed

light-brown hair streaming backward and awaiting her mamma’s hand to

coil it up, her large brown eyes glancing bright as a wave-washed onyx

from under their long lashes, it was always she herself who had to be

tolerant—to beg that Alice who sat waiting on her would not stick up

her shoulders in that frightful manner, and that Isabel, instead of

pushing up to her and asking questions, would go away to Miss Merry.

Always she was the princess in exile, who in time of famine was to have

her breakfast-roll made of the finest-bolted flour from the seven thin

ears of wheat, and in a general decampment was to have her silver fork

kept out of the baggage. How was this to be accounted for? The answer

may seem to lie quite on the surface:—in her beauty, a certain

unusualness about her, a decision of will which made itself felt in her

graceful movements and clear unhesitating tones, so that if she came

into the room on a rainy day when everybody else was flaccid and the

use of things in general was not apparent to them, there seemed to be a

sudden, sufficient reason for keeping up the forms of life; and even

the waiters at hotels showed the more alacrity in doing away with

crumbs and creases and dregs with struggling flies in them. This potent

charm, added to the fact that she was the eldest daughter, toward whom

her mamma had always been in an apologetic state of mind for the evils

brought on her by a step-father, may seem so full a reason for

Gwendolen’s domestic empire, that to look for any other would be to ask

the reason of daylight when the sun is shining. But beware of arriving

at conclusions without comparison. I remember having seen the same

assiduous, apologetic attention awarded to persons who were not at all

beautiful or unusual, whose firmness showed itself in no very graceful

or euphonious way, and who were not eldest daughters with a tender,

timid mother, compunctious at having subjected them to inconveniences.

Some of them were a very common sort of men. And the only point of

resemblance among them all was a strong determination to have what was

pleasant, with a total fearlessness in making themselves disagreeable

or dangerous when they did not get it. Who is so much cajoled and

served with trembling by the weak females of a household as the

unscrupulous male—capable, if he has not free way at home, of going

and doing worse elsewhere? Hence I am forced to doubt whether even

without her potent charm and peculiar filial position Gwendolen might

not still have played the queen in exile, if only she had kept her

inborn energy of egoistic desire, and her power of inspiring fear as to

what she might say or do. However, she had the charm, and those who

feared her were also fond of her; the fear and the fondness being

perhaps both heightened by what may be called the iridescence of her

character—the play of various, nay, contrary tendencies. For Macbeth’s

rhetoric about the impossibility of being many opposite things in the

same moment, referred to the clumsy necessities of action and not to

the subtler possibilities of feeling. We cannot speak a loyal word and

be meanly silent; we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; but a

moment is wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, for the outlash of

a murderous thought and the sharp backward stroke of repentance.

CHAPTER V.

“Her wit

Values itself so highly, that to her

All matter else seems weak.”

—_Much Ado About Nothing._

Gwendolen’s reception in the neighborhood fulfilled her uncle’s

expectations. From Brackenshaw Castle to the Firs at Wanchester, where

Mr. Quallon the banker kept a generous house, she was welcomed with

manifest admiration, and even those ladies who did not quite like her,

felt a comfort in having a new, striking girl to invite; for hostesses

who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up

their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking. Then, in order

to have Gwendolen as a guest, it was not necessary to ask any one who

was disagreeable, for Mrs. Davilow always made a quiet, picturesque

figure as a chaperon, and Mr. Gascoigne was everywhere in request for

his own sake.

Among the houses where Gwendolen was not quite liked, and yet invited,

was Quetcham Hall. One of her first invitations was to a large

dinner-party there, which made a sort of general introduction for her

to the society of the neighborhood; for in a select party of thirty and

of well-composed proportions as to age, few visitable families could be

entirely left out. No youthful figure there was comparable to

Gwendolen’s as she passed through the long suite of rooms adorned with

light and flowers, and, visible at first as a slim figure floating

along in white drapery, approached through one wide doorway after

another into fuller illumination and definiteness. She had never had

that sort of promenade before, and she felt exultingly that it befitted

her: any one looking at her for the first time might have supposed that

long galleries and lackeys had always been a matter of course in her

life; while her cousin Anna, who was really more familiar with these

things, felt almost as much embarrassed as a rabbit suddenly deposited

in that well-lit-space.

“Who is that with Gascoigne?” said the archdeacon, neglecting a

discussion of military manoeuvres on which, as a clergyman, he was

naturally appealed to. And his son, on the other side of the room—a

hopeful young scholar, who had already suggested some “not less elegant

than ingenious,” emendations of Greek texts—said nearly at the same

time, “By George! who is that girl with the awfully well-set head and

jolly figure?”

But to a mind of general benevolence, wishing everybody to look well,

it was rather exasperating to see how Gwendolen eclipsed others: how

even the handsome Miss Lawe, explained to be the daughter of Lady Lawe,

looked suddenly broad, heavy and inanimate; and how Miss Arrowpoint,

unfortunately also dressed in white, immediately resembled a

_carte-de-visite_ in which one would fancy the skirt alone to have been

charged for. Since Miss Arrowpoint was generally liked for the amiable

unpretending way in which she wore her fortunes, and made a softening

screen for the oddities of her mother, there seemed to be some

unfitness in Gwendolen’s looking so much more like a person of social

importance.

“She is not really so handsome if you come to examine her features,”

said Mrs. Arrowpoint, later in the evening, confidentially to Mrs.

Vulcany. “It is a certain style she has, which produces a great effect

at first, but afterward she is less agreeable.”

In fact, Gwendolen, not intending it, but intending the contrary, had

offended her hostess, who, though not a splenetic or vindictive woman,

had her susceptibilities. Several conditions had met in the Lady of

Quetcham which to the reasoners in that neighborhood seemed to have an

essential connection with each other. It was occasionally recalled that

she had been the heiress of a fortune gained by some moist or dry

business in the city, in order fully to account for her having a squat

figure, a harsh parrot-like voice, and a systematically high

head-dress; and since these points made her externally rather

ridiculous, it appeared to many only natural that she should have what

are called literary tendencies. A little comparison would have shown

that all these points are to be found apart; daughters of aldermen

being often well-grown and well-featured, pretty women having sometimes

harsh or husky voices, and the production of feeble literature being

found compatible with the most diverse forms of _physique_, masculine

as well as feminine.

Gwendolen, who had a keen sense of absurdity in others, but was kindly

disposed toward any one who could make life agreeable to her, meant to

win Mrs. Arrowpoint by giving her an interest and attention beyond what

others were probably inclined to show. But self-confidence is apt to

address itself to an imaginary dullness in others; as people who are

well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor, and those who are in the

prime of life raise their voice and talk artificially to seniors,

hastily conceiving them to be deaf and rather imbecile. Gwendolen, with

all her cleverness and purpose to be agreeable, could not escape that

form of stupidity: it followed in her mind, unreflectingly, that

because Mrs. Arrowpoint was ridiculous she was also likely to be

wanting in penetration, and she went through her little scenes without

suspicion that the various shades of her behavior were all noted.

“You are fond of books as well as of music, riding, and archery, I

hear,” Mrs. Arrowpoint said, going to her for a _tête-à-tête_ in the

drawing-room after dinner. “Catherine will be very glad to have so

sympathetic a neighbor.” This little speech might have seemed the most

graceful politeness, spoken in a low, melodious tone; but with a twang,

fatally loud, it gave Gwendolen a sense of exercising patronage when

she answered, gracefully:

“It is I who am fortunate. Miss Arrowpoint will teach me what good

music is. I shall be entirely a learner. I hear that she is a thorough

musician.”

“Catherine has certainly had every advantage. We have a first-rate

musician in the house now—Herr Klesmer; perhaps you know all his

compositions. You must allow me to introduce him to you. You sing, I

believe. Catherine plays three instruments, but she does not sing. I

hope you will let us hear you. I understand you are an accomplished

singer.”

“Oh, no!—‘die Kraft ist schwach, allein die Lust ist gross,’ as

Mephistopheles says.”

“Ah, you are a student of Goethe. Young ladies are so advanced now. I

suppose you have read everything.”

“No, really. I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I

have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but

there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell

musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How

delightful it must be to write books after one’s own taste instead of

reading other people’s! Home-made books must be so nice.”

For an instant Mrs. Arrowpoint’s glance was a little sharper, but the

perilous resemblance to satire in the last sentence took the hue of

girlish simplicity when Gwendolen added,

“I would give anything to write a book!”

“And why should you not?” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, encouragingly. “You

have but to begin as I did. Pen, ink, and paper are at everybody’s

command. But I will send you all I have written with pleasure.”

“Thanks. I shall be so glad to read your writings. Being acquainted

with authors must give a peculiar understanding of their books: one

would be able to tell then which parts were funny and which serious. I

am sure I often laugh in the wrong place.” Here Gwendolen herself

became aware of danger, and added quickly, “In Shakespeare, you know,

and other great writers that we can never see. But I always want to

know more than there is in the books.”

“If you are interested in any of my subjects I can lend you many extra

sheets in manuscript,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint—while Gwendolen felt

herself painfully in the position of the young lady who professed to

like potted sprats.

“These are things I dare say I shall publish eventually: several

friends have urged me to do so, and one doesn’t like to be obstinate.

My Tasso, for example—I could have made it twice the size.”

“I dote on Tasso,” said Gwendolen.

“Well, you shall have all my papers, if you like. So many, you know,

have written about Tasso; but they are all wrong. As to the particular

nature of his madness, and his feelings for Leonora, and the real cause

of his imprisonment, and the character of Leonora, who, in my opinion,

was a cold-hearted woman, else she would have married him in spite of

her brother—they are all wrong. I differ from everybody.”

“How very interesting!” said Gwendolen. “I like to differ from

everybody. I think it is so stupid to agree. That is the worst of

writing your opinions; you make people agree with you.” This speech

renewed a slight suspicion in Mrs. Arrowpoint, and again her glance

became for a moment examining. But Gwendolen looked very innocent, and

continued with a docile air:

“I know nothing of Tasso except the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, which we

read and learned by heart at school.”

“Ah, his life is more interesting than his poetry, I have constructed

the early part of his life as a sort of romance. When one thinks of his

father Bernardo, and so on, there is much that must be true.”

“Imagination is often truer than fact,” said Gwendolen, decisively,

though she could no more have explained these glib words than if they

had been Coptic or Etruscan. “I shall be so glad to learn all about

Tasso—and his madness especially. I suppose poets are always a little

mad.”

“To be sure—‘the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling’; and somebody

says of Marlowe,

‘For that fine madness still he did maintain,

Which always should possess the poet’s brain.’”

“But it was not always found out, was it?” said Gwendolen innocently.

“I suppose some of them rolled their eyes in private. Mad people are

often very cunning.”

Again a shade flitted over Mrs. Arrowpoint’s face; but the entrance of

the gentlemen prevented any immediate mischief between her and this too

quick young lady, who had over-acted her _naïveté_.

“Ah, here comes Herr Klesmer,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, rising; and

presently bringing him to Gwendolen, she left them to a dialogue which

was agreeable on both sides, Herr Klesmer being a felicitous

combination of the German, the Sclave and the Semite, with grand

features, brown hair floating in artistic fashion, and brown eyes in

spectacles. His English had little foreignness except its fluency; and

his alarming cleverness was made less formidable just then by a certain

softening air of silliness which will sometimes befall even Genius in

the desire of being agreeable to Beauty.

Music was soon begun. Miss Arrowpoint and Herr Klesmer played a

four-handed piece on two pianos, which convinced the company in general

that it was long, and Gwendolen in particular that the neutral,

placid-faced Miss Arrowpoint had a mastery of the instrument which put

her own execution out of question—though she was not discouraged as to

her often-praised touch and style. After this every one became anxious

to hear Gwendolen sing; especially Mr. Arrowpoint; as was natural in a

host and a perfect gentleman, of whom no one had anything to say but

that he married Miss Cuttler and imported the best cigars; and he led

her to the piano with easy politeness. Herr Klesmer closed the

instrument in readiness for her, and smiled with pleasure at her

approach; then placed himself at a distance of a few feet so that he

could see her as she sang.

Gwendolen was not nervous; what she undertook to do she did without

trembling, and singing was an enjoyment to her. Her voice was a

moderately powerful soprano (some one had told her it was like Jenny

Lind’s), her ear good, and she was able to keep in tune, so that her

singing gave pleasure to ordinary hearers, and she had been used to

unmingled applause. She had the rare advantage of looking almost

prettier when she was singing than at other times, and that Herr

Klesmer was in front of her seemed not disagreeable. Her song,

determined on beforehand, was a favorite aria of Belini’s, in which she

felt quite sure of herself.

“Charming!” said Mr. Arrowpoint, who had remained near, and the word

was echoed around without more insincerity than we recognize in a

brotherly way as human. But Herr Klesmer stood like a statue—if a

statue can be imagined in spectacles; at least, he was as mute as a

statue. Gwendolen was pressed to keep her seat and double the general

pleasure, and she did not wish to refuse; but before resolving to do

so, she moved a little toward Herr Klesmer, saying with a look of

smiling appeal, “It would be too cruel to a great musician. You cannot

like to hear poor amateur singing.”

“No, truly; but that makes nothing,” said Herr Klesmer, suddenly

speaking in an odious German fashion with staccato endings, quite

unobservable in him before, and apparently depending on a change of

mood, as Irishmen resume their strongest brogue when they are fervid or

quarrelsome. “That makes nothing. It is always acceptable to see you

sing.”

Was there ever so unexpected an assertion of superiority—at least

before the late Teutonic conquest? Gwendolen colored deeply, but, with

her usual presence of mind, did not show an ungraceful resentment by

moving away immediately; and Miss Arrowpoint, who had been near enough

to overhear (and also to observe that Herr Klesmer’s mode of looking at

Gwendolen was more conspicuously admiring than was quite consistent

with good taste), now with the utmost tact and kindness came close to

her and said,

“Imagine what I have to go through with this professor! He can hardly

tolerate anything we English do in music. We can only put up with his

severity, and make use of it to find out the worst that can be said of

us. It is a little comfort to know that; and one can bear it when every

one else is admiring.”

“I should be very much obliged to him for telling me the worst,” said

Gwendolen, recovering herself. “I dare say I have been extremely ill

taught, in addition to having no talent—only liking for music.” This

was very well expressed considering that it had never entered her mind

before.

“Yes, it is true: you have not been well taught,” said Herr Klesmer,

quietly. Woman was dear to him, but music was dearer. “Still, you are

not quite without gifts. You sing in tune, and you have a pretty fair

organ. But you produce your notes badly; and that music which you sing

is beneath you. It is a form of melody which expresses a puerile state

of culture—a dawdling, canting, see-saw kind of stuff—the passion and

thought of people without any breadth of horizon. There is a sort of

self-satisfied folly about every phrase of such melody; no cries of

deep, mysterious passion—no conflict—no sense of the universal. It

makes men small as they listen to it. Sing now something larger. And I

shall see.”

“Oh, not now—by-and-by,” said Gwendolen, with a sinking of heart at

the sudden width of horizon opened round her small musical performance.

For a lady desiring to lead, this first encounter in her campaign was

startling. But she was bent on not behaving foolishly, and Miss

Arrowpoint helped her by saying, “Yes, by-and-by. I always require half

an hour to get up my courage after being criticised by Herr Klesmer. We

will ask him to play to us now: he is bound to show us what is good

music.”

To be quite safe on this point Herr Klesmer played a composition of his

own, a fantasia called _Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedankenvoll_—an

extensive commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and

he certainly fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the

piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having

an imperious magic in his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill

through ivory key and wooden hammer, and compel the strings to make a

quivering lingering speech for him. Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded

egoism, had fullness of nature enough to feel the power of this

playing, and it gradually turned her inward sob of mortification into

an excitement which lifted her for the moment into a desperate

indifference about her own doings, or at least a determination to get a

superiority over them by laughing at them as if they belonged to

somebody else. Her eyes had become brighter, her cheeks slightly

flushed, and her tongue ready for any mischievous remarks.

“I wish you would sing to us again, Miss Harleth,” said young Clintock,

the archdeacon’s classical son, who had been so fortunate as to take

her to dinner, and came up to renew conversation as soon as Herr

Klesmer’s performance was ended, “That is the style of music for me. I

never can make anything of this tip-top playing. It is like a jar of

leeches, where you can never tell either beginnings or endings. I could

listen to your singing all day.”

“Yes, we should be glad of something popular now—another song from you

would be a relaxation,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, who had also come near

with polite intentions.

“That must be because you are in a puerile state of culture, and have

no breadth of horizon. I have just learned that. I have been taught how

bad my taste is, and am feeling growing pains. They are never

pleasant,” said Gwendolen, not taking any notice of Mrs. Arrowpoint,

and looking up with a bright smile at young Clintock.

Mrs. Arrowpoint was not insensible to this rudeness, but merely said,

“Well, we will not press anything disagreeably,” and as there was a

perceptible outburst of imprisoned conversation just then, and a

movement of guests seeking each other, she remained seated where she

was, and looked around her with the relief of a hostess at finding she

is not needed.

“I am glad you like this neighborhood,” said young Clintock,

well-pleased with his station in front of Gwendolen.

“Exceedingly. There seems to be a little of everything and not much of

anything.”

“That is rather equivocal praise.”

“Not with me. I like a little of everything; a little absurdity, for

example, is very amusing. I am thankful for a few queer people; but

much of them is a bore.”

(Mrs. Arrowpoint, who was hearing this dialogue, perceived quite a new

tone in Gwendolen’s speech, and felt a revival of doubt as to her

interest in Tasso’s madness.)

“I think there should be more croquet, for one thing,” said young Clintock;

“I am usually away, but if I were more here I should go in for a

croquet club. You are one of the archers, I think. But depend upon it

croquet is the game of the future. It wants writing up, though. One of

our best men has written a poem on it, in four cantos;—as good as

Pope. I want him to publish it—You never read anything better.”

“I shall study croquet to-morrow. I shall take to it instead of

singing.”

“No, no, not that; but do take to croquet. I will send you Jenning’s

poem if you like. I have a manuscript copy.”

“Is he a great friend of yours?”

“Well, rather.”

“Oh, if he is only rather, I think I will decline. Or, if you send it

to me, will you promise not to catechise me upon it and ask me which

part I like best? Because it is not so easy to know a poem without

reading it as to know a sermon without listening.”

“Decidedly,” Mrs. Arrowpoint thought, “this girl is double and

satirical. I shall be on my guard against her.”

But Gwendolen, nevertheless, continued to receive polite attentions

from the family at Quetcham, not merely because invitations have larger

grounds than those of personal liking, but because the trying little

scene at the piano had awakened a kindly solicitude toward her in the

gentle mind of Miss Arrowpoint, who managed all the invitations and

visits, her mother being otherwise occupied.

CHAPTER VI.

“Croyez-vous m’avoir humiliée pour m’avoir appris que la terre tourne

autour du soleil? Je vous jure que je ne m’en estime pas moins.”

—FONTENELLE: _Pluralité des Mondes_.

That lofty criticism had caused Gwendolen a new sort of pain. She would

not have chosen to confess how unfortunate she thought herself in not

having had Miss Arrowpoint’s musical advantages, so as to be able to

question Herr Klesmer’s taste with the confidence of thorough

knowledge; still less, to admit even to herself that Miss Arrowpoint

each time they met raised an unwonted feeling of jealousy in her: not

in the least because she was an heiress, but because it was really

provoking that a girl whose appearance you could not characterize

except by saying that her figure was slight and of middle stature, her

features small, her eyes tolerable, and her complexion sallow, had

nevertheless a certain mental superiority which could not be explained

away—an exasperating thoroughness in her musical accomplishment, a

fastidious discrimination in her general tastes, which made it

impossible to force her admiration and kept you in awe of her standard.

This insignificant-looking young lady of four-and-twenty, whom any

one’s eyes would have passed over negligently if she had not been Miss

Arrowpoint, might be suspected of a secret opinion that Miss Harleth’s

acquirements were rather of a common order, and such an opinion was not

made agreeable to think of by being always veiled under a perfect

kindness of manner.

But Gwendolen did not like to dwell on facts which threw an unfavorable

light on itself. The musical Magus who had so suddenly widened her

horizon was not always on the scene; and his being constantly backward

and forward between London and Quetcham soon began to be thought of as

offering opportunities for converting him to a more admiring state of

mind. Meanwhile, in the manifest pleasure her singing gave at

Brackenshaw Castle, the Firs, and elsewhere, she recovered her

equanimity, being disposed to think approval more trustworthy than

objection, and not being one of the exceptional persons who have a

parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps

it would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional

inwardly, or that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of

movement and bearing, and a certain daring which gave piquancy to a

very common egoistic ambition, such as exists under many clumsy

exteriors and is taken no notice of. For I suppose that the set of the

head does not really determine the hunger of the inner self for

supremacy: it only makes a difference sometimes as to the way in which

the supremacy is held attainable, and a little also to the degree in

which it can be attained; especially when the hungry one is a girl,

whose passion for doing what is remarkable has an ideal limit in

consistency with the highest breeding and perfect freedom from the

sordid need of income. Gwendolen was as inwardly rebellious against the

restraints of family conditions, and as ready to look through

obligations into her own fundamental want of feeling for them, as if

she had been sustained by the boldest speculations; but she really had

no such speculations, and would at once have marked herself off from

any sort of theoretical or practically reforming women by satirizing

them. She rejoiced to feel herself exceptional; but her horizon was

that of the genteel romance where the heroine’s soul poured out in her

journal is full of vague power, originality, and general rebellion,

while her life moves strictly in the sphere of fashion; and if she

wanders into a swamp, the pathos lies partly, so to speak, in her

having on her satin shoes. Here is a restraint which nature and society

have provided on the pursuit of striking adventure; so that a soul

burning with a sense of what the universe is not, and ready to take all

existence as fuel, is nevertheless held captive by the ordinary

wirework of social forms and does nothing particular.

This commonplace result was what Gwendolen found herself threatened

with even in the novelty of the first winter at Offendene. What she was

clear upon was, that she did not wish to lead the same sort of life as

ordinary young ladies did; but what she was not clear upon was, how she

should set about leading any other, and what were the particular acts

which she would assert her freedom by doing. Offendene remained a good

background, if anything would happen there; but on the whole the

neighborhood was in fault.

Beyond the effect of her beauty on a first presentation, there was not

much excitement to be got out of her earliest invitations, and she came

home after little sallies of satire and knowingness, such as had

offended Mrs. Arrowpoint, to fill the intervening days with the most

girlish devices. The strongest assertion she was able to make of her

individual claims was to leave out Alice’s lessons (on the principle

that Alice was more likely to excel in ignorance), and to employ her

with Miss Merry, and the maid who was understood to wait on all the

ladies, in helping to arrange various dramatic costumes which Gwendolen

pleased herself with having in readiness for some future occasions of

acting in charades or theatrical pieces, occasions which she meant to

bring about by force of will or contrivance. She had never acted—only

made a figure in _tableaux vivans_ at school; but she felt assured that

she could act well, and having been once or twice to the Théâtre

Français, and also heard her mamma speak of Rachel, her waking dreams

and cogitations as to how she would manage her destiny sometimes turned

on the question whether she would become an actress like Rachel, since

she was more beautiful than that thin Jewess. Meanwhile the wet days

before Christmas were passed pleasantly in the preparation of costumes,

Greek, Oriental, and Composite, in which Gwendolen attitudinized and

speechified before a domestic audience, including even the housekeeper,

who was once pressed into it that she might swell the notes of

applause; but having shown herself unworthy by observing that Miss

Harleth looked far more like a queen in her own dress than in that

baggy thing with her arms all bare, she was not invited a second time.

“Do I look as well as Rachel, mamma?” said Gwendolen, one day when she

had been showing herself in her Greek dress to Anna, and going through

scraps of scenes with much tragic intention.

“You have better arms than Rachel,” said Mrs. Davilow, “your arms would

do for anything, Gwen. But your voice is not so tragic as hers; it is

not so deep.”

“I can make it deeper, if I like,” said Gwendolen, provisionally; then

she added, with decision, “I think a higher voice is more tragic: it is

more feminine; and the more feminine a woman is, the more tragic it

seems when she does desperate actions.”

“There may be something in that,” said Mrs. Davilow, languidly. “But I

don’t know what good there is in making one’s blood creep. And if there

is anything horrible to be done, I should like it to be left to the

men.”

“Oh, mamma, you are so dreadfully prosaic! As if all the great poetic

criminals were not women! I think the men are poor cautious creatures.”

“Well, dear, and you—who are afraid to be alone in the night—I don’t

think you would be very bold in crime, thank God.”

“I am not talking about reality, mamma,” said Gwendolen, impatiently.

Then her mamma being called out of the room, she turned quickly to her

cousin, as if taking an opportunity, and said, “Anna, do ask my uncle

to let us get up some charades at the rectory. Mr. Middleton and Warham

could act with us—just for practice. Mamma says it will not do to have

Mr. Middleton consulting and rehearsing here. He is a stick, but we

could give him suitable parts. Do ask, or else I will.”

“Oh, not till Rex comes. He is so clever, and such a dear old thing,

and he will act Napoleon looking over the sea. He looks just like

Napoleon. Rex can do anything.”

“I don’t in the least believe in your Rex, Anna,” said Gwendolen,

laughing at her. “He will turn out to be like those wretched blue and

yellow water-colors of his which you hang up in your bedroom and

worship.”

“Very well, you will see,” said Anna. “It is not that I know what is

clever, but he has got a scholarship already, and papa says he will get

a fellowship, and nobody is better at games. He is cleverer than Mr.

Middleton, and everybody but you call Mr. Middleton clever.”

“So he may be in a dark-lantern sort of way. But he _is_ a stick. If he

had to say, ‘Perdition catch my soul, but I do love her,’ he would say

it in just the same tone as, ‘Here endeth the second lesson.’”

“Oh, Gwendolen!” said Anna, shocked at these promiscuous allusions.

“And it is very unkind of you to speak so of him, for he admires you

very much. I heard Warham say one day to mamma, ‘Middleton is regularly

spooney upon Gwendolen.’ She was very angry with him; but I know what

it means. It is what they say at college for being in love.”

“How can I help it?” said Gwendolen, rather contemptuously. “Perdition

catch my soul if I love _him_.”

“No, of course; papa, I think, would not wish it. And he is to go away

soon. But it makes me sorry when you ridicule him.”

“What shall you do to me when I ridicule Rex?” said Gwendolen, wickedly.

“Now, Gwendolen, dear, you _will not_?” said Anna, her eyes filling

with tears. “I could not bear it. But there really is nothing in him to

ridicule. Only you may find out things. For no one ever thought of

laughing at Mr. Middleton before you. Every one said he was

nice-looking, and his manners perfect. I am sure I have always been

frightened at him because of his learning and his square-cut coat, and

his being a nephew of the bishop’s, and all that. But you will not

ridicule Rex—promise me.” Anna ended with a beseeching look which

touched Gwendolen.

“You are a dear little coz,” she said, just touching the tip of Anna’s

chin with her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t ever want to do anything

that will vex you. Especially if Rex is to make everything come

off—charades and everything.”

And when at last Rex was there, the animation he brought into the life

of Offendene and the rectory, and his ready partnership in Gwendolen’s

plans, left her no inclination for any ridicule that was not of an open

and flattering kind, such as he himself enjoyed. He was a fine

open-hearted youth, with a handsome face strongly resembling his

father’s and Anna’s, but softer in expression than the one, and larger

in scale than the other: a bright, healthy, loving nature, enjoying

ordinary innocent things so much that vice had no temptation for him,

and what he knew of it lay too entirely in the outer courts and

little-visited chambers of his mind for him to think of it with great

repulsion. Vicious habits were with him “what some fellows

did”—“stupid stuff” which he liked to keep aloof from. He returned

Anna’s affection as fully as could be expected of a brother whose

pleasures apart from her were more than the sum total of hers; and he

had never known a stronger love.

The cousins were continually together at the one house or the

other—chiefly at Offendene, where there was more freedom, or rather

where there was a more complete sway for Gwendolen; and whatever she

wished became a ruling purpose for Rex. The charades came off according

to her plans; and also some other little scenes not contemplated by her

in which her acting was more impromptu. It was at Offendene that the

charades and _tableaux_ were rehearsed and presented, Mrs. Davilow

seeing no objection even to Mr. Middleton’s being invited to share in

them, now that Rex too was there—especially as his services were

indispensable: Warham, who was studying for India with a Wanchester

“coach,” having no time to spare, and being generally dismal under a

cram of everything except the answers needed at the forthcoming

examination, which might disclose the welfare of our Indian Empire to

be somehow connected with a quotable knowledge of Browne’s Pastorals.

Mr. Middleton was persuaded to play various grave parts, Gwendolen

having flattered him on his enviable immobility of countenance; and at

first a little pained and jealous at her comradeship with Rex, he

presently drew encouragement from the thought that this sort of

cousinly familiarity excluded any serious passion. Indeed, he

occasionally felt that her more formal treatment of himself was such a

sign of favor as to warrant his making advances before he left

Pennicote, though he had intended to keep his feelings in reserve until

his position should be more assured. Miss Gwendolen, quite aware that

she was adored by this unexceptionable young clergyman with pale

whiskers and square-cut collar, felt nothing more on the subject than

that she had no objection to being adored: she turned her eyes on him

with calm mercilessness and caused him many mildly agitating hopes by

seeming always to avoid dramatic contact with him—for all meanings, we

know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Some persons might have thought beforehand that a young man of Anglican

leanings, having a sense of sacredness much exercised on small things

as well as great, rarely laughing save from politeness, and in general

regarding the mention of spades by their naked names as rather coarse,

would not have seen a fitting bride for himself in a girl who was

daring in ridicule, and showed none of the special grace required in

the clergyman’s wife; or, that a young man informed by theological

reading would have reflected that he was not likely to meet the taste

of a lively, restless young lady like Miss Harleth. But are we always

obliged to explain why the facts are not what some persons thought

beforehand? The apology lies on their side, who had that erroneous way

of thinking.

As for Rex, who would possibly have been sorry for poor Middleton if he

had been aware of the excellent curate’s inward conflict, he was too

completely absorbed in a first passion to have observation for any

person or thing. He did not observe Gwendolen; he only felt what she

said or did, and the back of his head seemed to be a good organ of

information as to whether she was in the room or out. Before the end of

the first fortnight he was so deeply in love that it was impossible for

him to think of his life except as bound up with Gwendolen’s. He could

see no obstacles, poor boy; his own love seemed a guarantee of hers,

since it was one with the unperturbed delight in her image, so that he

could no more dream of her giving him pain than an Egyptian could dream

of snow. She sang and played to him whenever he liked, was always glad

of his companionship in riding, though his borrowed steeds were often

comic, was ready to join in any fun of his, and showed a right

appreciation of Anna. No mark of sympathy seemed absent. That because

Gwendolen was the most perfect creature in the world she was to make a

grand match, had not occurred to him. He had no conceit—at least not

more than goes to make up the necessary gum and consistence of a

substantial personality: it was only that in the young bliss of loving

he took Gwendolen’s perfection as part of that good which had seemed

one with life to him, being the outcome of a happy, well-embodied

nature.

One incident which happened in the course of their dramatic attempts

impressed Rex as a sign of her unusual sensibility. It showed an aspect

of her nature which could not have been preconceived by any one who,

like him, had only seen her habitual fearlessness in active exercises

and her high spirits in society.

After a good deal of rehearsing it was resolved that a select party

should be invited to Offendene to witness the performances which went

with so much satisfaction to the actors. Anna had caused a pleasant

surprise; nothing could be neater than the way in which she played her

little parts; one would even have suspected her of hiding much sly

observation under her simplicity. And Mr. Middleton answered very well

by not trying to be comic. The main source of doubt and retardation had

been Gwendolen’s desire to appear in her Greek dress. No word for a

charade would occur to her either waking or dreaming that suited her

purpose of getting a statuesque pose in this favorite costume. To

choose a motive from Racine was of no use, since Rex and the others

could not declaim French verse, and improvised speeches would turn the

scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of

scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an

amusement which was fitting for every one else was unfitting for a

clergyman; but he would not in this matter overstep the line of decorum

as drawn in that part of Wessex, which did not exclude his sanction of

the young people’s acting charades in his sister-in-law’s house—a very

different affair from private theatricals in the full sense of the word.

Everybody of course was concerned to satisfy this wish of Gwendolen’s,

and Rex proposed that they should wind up with a tableau in which the

effect of her majesty would not be marred by any one’s speech. This

pleased her thoroughly, and the only question was the choice of the

tableau.

“Something pleasant, children, I beseech you,” said Mrs. Davilow; “I

can’t have any Greek wickedness.”

“It is no worse than Christian wickedness, mamma,” said Gwendolen,

whose mention of Rachelesque heroines had called forth that remark.

“And less scandalous,” said Rex. “Besides, one thinks of it as all gone

by and done with. What do you say to Briseis being led away? I would be

Achilles, and you would be looking round at me—after the print we have

at the rectory.”

“That would be a good attitude for me,” said Gwendolen, in a tone of

acceptance. But afterward she said with decision, “No. It will not do.

There must be three men in proper costume, else it will be ridiculous.”

“I have it,” said Rex, after a little reflection. “Hermione as the

statue in Winter’s Tale? I will be Leontes, and Miss Merry, Paulina,

one on each side. Our dress won’t signify,” he went on laughingly; “it

will be more Shakespearian and romantic if Leontes looks like Napoleon,

and Paulina like a modern spinster.”

And Hermione was chosen; all agreeing that age was of no consequence,

but Gwendolen urged that instead of the mere tableau there should be

just enough acting of the scene to introduce the striking up of the

music as a signal for her to step down and advance; when Leontes,

instead of embracing her, was to kneel and kiss the hem of her garment,

and so the curtain was to fall. The antechamber with folding doors lent

itself admirably to the purpose of a stage, and the whole of the

establishment, with the addition of Jarrett the village carpenter, was

absorbed in the preparations for an entertainment, which, considering

that it was an imitation of acting, was likely to be successful, since

we know from ancient fable that an imitation may have more chance of

success than the original.

Gwendolen was not without a special exultation in the prospect of this

occasion, for she knew that Herr Klesmer was again at Quetcham, and she

had taken care to include him among the invited.

Klesmer came. He was in one of his placid, silent moods, and sat in

serene contemplation, replying to all appeals in benignant-sounding

syllables more or less articulate—as taking up his cross meekly in a

world overgrown with amateurs, or as careful how he moved his lion paws

lest he should crush a rampant and vociferous mouse.

Everything indeed went off smoothly and according to expectation—all

that was improvised and accidental being of a probable sort—until the

incident occurred which showed Gwendolen in an unforeseen phase of

emotion. How it came about was at first a mystery.

The tableau of Hermione was doubly striking from its dissimilarity with

what had gone before: it was answering perfectly, and a murmur of

applause had been gradually suppressed while Leontes gave his

permission that Paulina should exercise her utmost art and make the

statue move.

Hermione, her arm resting on a pillar, was elevated by about six

inches, which she counted on as a means of showing her pretty foot and

instep, when at the given signal she should advance and descend.

“Music, awake her, strike!” said Paulina (Mrs. Davilow, who, by special

entreaty, had consented to take the part in a white burnous and hood).

Herr Klesmer, who had been good-natured enough to seat himself at the

piano, struck a thunderous chord—but in the same instant, and before

Hermione had put forth her foot, the movable panel, which was on a line

with the piano, flew open on the right opposite the stage and disclosed

the picture of the dead face and the fleeing figure, brought out in

pale definiteness by the position of the wax-lights. Everyone was

startled, but all eyes in the act of turning toward the open panel were

recalled by a piercing cry from Gwendolen, who stood without change of

attitude, but with a change of expression that was terrifying in its

terror. She looked like a statue into which a soul of Fear had entered:

her pallid lips were parted; her eyes, usually narrowed under their

long lashes, were dilated and fixed. Her mother, less surprised than

alarmed, rushed toward her, and Rex, too, could not help going to her

side. But the touch of her mother’s arm had the effect of an electric

charge; Gwendolen fell on her knees and put her hands before her face.

She was still trembling, but mute, and it seemed that she had

self-consciousness enough to aim at controlling her signs of terror,

for she presently allowed herself to be raised from her kneeling

posture and led away, while the company were relieving their minds by

explanation.

“A magnificent bit of _plastik_ that!” said Klesmer to Miss Arrowpoint.

And a quick fire of undertoned question and answer went round.

“Was it part of the play?”

“Oh, no, surely not. Miss Harleth was too much affected. A sensitive

creature!”

“Dear me! I was not aware that there was a painting behind that panel;

were you?”

“No; how should I? Some eccentricity in one of the Earl’s family long

ago, I suppose.”

“How very painful! Pray shut it up.”

“Was the door locked? It is very mysterious. It must be the spirits.”

“But there is no medium present.”

“How do you know that? We must conclude that there is, when such things

happen.”

“Oh, the door was not locked; it was probably the sudden vibration from

the piano that sent it open.”

This conclusion came from Mr. Gascoigne, who begged Miss Merry if

possible to get the key. But this readiness to explain the mystery was

thought by Mrs. Vulcany unbecoming in a clergyman, and she observed in

an undertone that Mr. Gascoigne was always a little too worldly for her

taste. However, the key was produced, and the rector turned it in the

lock with an emphasis rather offensively rationalizing—as who should

say, “it will not start open again”—putting the key in his pocket as a

security.

However, Gwendolen soon reappeared, showing her usual spirits, and

evidently determined to ignore as far as she could the striking change

she had made in the part of Hermione.

But when Klesmer said to her, “We have to thank you for devising a

perfect climax: you could not have chosen a finer bit of _plastik_,”

there was a flush of pleasure in her face. She liked to accept as a

belief what was really no more than delicate feigning. He divined that

the betrayal into a passion of fear had been mortifying to her, and

wished her to understand that he took it for good acting. Gwendolen

cherished the idea that now he was struck with her talent as well as

her beauty, and her uneasiness about his opinion was half turned to

complacency.

But too many were in the secret of what had been included in the

rehearsals, and what had not, and no one besides Klesmer took the

trouble to soothe Gwendolen’s imagined mortification. The general

sentiment was that the incident should be let drop.

There had really been a medium concerned in the starting open of the

panel: one who had quitted the room in haste and crept to bed in much

alarm of conscience. It was the small Isabel, whose intense curiosity,

unsatisfied by the brief glimpse she had had of the strange picture on

the day of arrival at Offendene, had kept her on the watch for an

opportunity of finding out where Gwendolen had put the key, of stealing

it from the discovered drawer when the rest of the family were out, and

getting on a stool to unlock the panel. While she was indulging her

thirst for knowledge in this way, a noise which she feared was an

approaching footstep alarmed her: she closed the door and attempted

hurriedly to lock it, but failing and not daring to linger, she

withdrew the key and trusted that the panel would stick, as it seemed

well inclined to do. In this confidence she had returned the key to its

former place, stilling any anxiety by the thought that if the door were

discovered to be unlocked nobody would know how the unlocking came

about. The inconvenient Isabel, like other offenders, did not foresee

her own impulse to confession, a fatality which came upon her the

morning after the party, when Gwendolen said at the breakfast-table, “I

know the door was locked before the housekeeper gave me the key, for I

tried it myself afterward. Some one must have been to my drawer and

taken the key.”

It seemed to Isabel that Gwendolen’s awful eyes had rested on her more

than on the other sisters, and without any time for resolve, she said,

with a trembling lip:

“Please forgive me, Gwendolen.”

The forgiveness was sooner bestowed than it would have been if

Gwendolen had not desired to dismiss from her own and every one else’s

memory any case in which she had shown her susceptibility to terror.

She wondered at herself in these occasional experiences, which seemed

like a brief remembered madness, an unexplained exception from her

normal life; and in this instance she felt a peculiar vexation that her

helpless fear had shown itself, not, as usual, in solitude, but in

well-lit company. Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in

braving dangers, both moral and physical; and though her practice fell

far behind her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the

pettiness of circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a

girl of twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a

lady, or as in any position which would lack the tribute of respect.

She had no permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more

spiritual restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to

her under the name of religion, in the same way that some people

dislike arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her,

no alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it had

not occurred to her any more than it had occurred to her to inquire

into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she

had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was

dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to

admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she

unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be

unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread,

though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into

connection with the religion taught her or with any human relations.

She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in

remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for

example, she was walking without companionship and there came some

rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her

with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in

the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself.

The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her

imagination at work in a way that made her tremble: but always when

some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in

which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world in which her

will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to

this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions

of awe than her uncle’s surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With

human ears and eyes about her, she had always hitherto recovered her

confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire.

To her mamma and others her fits of timidity or terror were

sufficiently accounted for by her “sensitiveness” or the “excitability

of her nature”; but these explanatory phrases required conciliation

with much that seemed to be blank indifference or rare self-mastery.

Heat is a great agent and a useful word, but considered as a means of

explaining the universe it requires an extensive knowledge of

differences; and as a means of explaining character “sensitiveness” is

in much the same predicament. But who, loving a creature like

Gwendolen, would not be inclined to regard every peculiarity in her as

a mark of pre-eminence? That was what Rex did. After the Hermione scene

he was more persuaded than ever that she must be instinct with all

feeling, and not only readier to respond to a worshipful love, but able

to love better than other girls. Rex felt the summer on his young wings

and soared happily.

CHAPTER VII.

“_Perigot_. As the bonny lasse passed by,

_Willie_. Hey, ho, bonnilasse!

_P_. She roode at me with glauncing eye,

_W_. As clear as the crystal glasse.

_P_. All as the sunny beame so bright,

_W_. Hey, ho, the sunnebeame!

_P_. Glaunceth from Phoebus’ face forthright,

_W_. So love into thy heart did streame.”

—SPENSER: _Shepard’s Calendar_.

“The kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish

state of youth; the nourisher and destroyer of hopeful wits; * * * the

servitude above freedom; the gentle mind’s religion; the liberal

superstition.”—CHARLES LAMB.

The first sign of the unimagined snow-storm was like the transparent

white cloud that seems to set off the blue. Anna was in the secret of

Rex’s feeling; though for the first time in their lives he had said

nothing to her about what he most thought of, and he only took it for

granted that she knew it. For the first time, too, Anna could not say

to Rex what was continually in her mind. Perhaps it might have been a

pain which she would have had to conceal, that he should so soon care

for some one else more than for herself, if such a feeling had not been

thoroughly neutralized by doubt and anxiety on his behalf. Anna admired

her cousin—would have said with simple sincerity, “Gwendolen is always

very good to me,” and held it in the order of things for herself to be

entirely subject to this cousin; but she looked at her with mingled

fear and distrust, with a puzzled contemplation as of some wondrous and

beautiful animal whose nature was a mystery, and who, for anything Anna

knew, might have an appetite for devouring all the small creatures that

were her own particular pets. And now Anna’s heart was sinking under

the heavy conviction which she dared not utter, that Gwendolen would

never care for Rex. What she herself held in tenderness and reverence

had constantly seemed indifferent to Gwendolen, and it was easier to

imagine her scorning Rex than returning any tenderness of his. Besides,

she was always thinking of being something extraordinary. And poor Rex!

Papa would be angry with him if he knew. And of course he was too young

to be in love in that way; and she, Anna had thought that it would be

years and years before any thing of that sort came, and that she would

be Rex’s housekeeper ever so long. But what a heart must that be which

did not return his love! Anna, in the prospect of his suffering, was

beginning to dislike her too fascinating cousin.

It seemed to her, as it did to Rex, that the weeks had been filled with

a tumultuous life evident to all observers: if he had been questioned

on the subject he would have said that he had no wish to conceal what

he hoped would be an engagement which he should immediately tell his

father of: and yet for the first time in his life he was reserved not

only about his feelings but—which was more remarkable to Anna—about

certain actions. She, on her side, was nervous each time her father or

mother began to speak to her in private lest they should say anything

about Rex and Gwendolen. But the elders were not in the least alive to

this agitating drama, which went forward chiefly in a sort of pantomime

extremely lucid in the minds thus expressing themselves, but easily

missed by spectators who were running their eyes over the _Guardian_ or

the _Clerical Gazette_, and regarded the trivialities of the young ones

with scarcely more interpretation than they gave to the action of

lively ants.

“Where are you going, Rex?” said Anna one gray morning when her father

had set off in his carriage to the sessions, Mrs. Gascoigne with him,

and she had observed that her brother had on his antigropelos, the

utmost approach he possessed to a hunting equipment.

“Going to see the hounds throw off at the Three Barns.”

“Are you going to take Gwendolen?” said Anna, timidly.

“She told you, did she?”

“No, but I thought—Does papa know you are going?”

“Not that I am aware of. I don’t suppose he would trouble himself about

the matter.”

“You are going to use his horse?”

“He knows I do that whenever I can.”

“Don’t let Gwendolen ride after the hounds, Rex,” said Anna, whose

fears gifted her with second-sight.

“Why not?” said Rex, smiling rather provokingly.

“Papa and mamma and aunt Davilow all wish her not to. They think it is

not right for her.”

“Why should you suppose she is going to do what is not right?”

“Gwendolen minds nobody sometimes,” said Anna getting bolder by dint of

a little anger.

“Then she would not mind me,” said Rex, perversely making a joke of

poor Anna’s anxiety.

“Oh Rex, I cannot bear it. You will make yourself very unhappy.” Here

Anna burst into tears.

“Nannie, Nannie, what on earth is the matter with you?” said Rex, a

little impatient at being kept in this way, hat on and whip in hand.

“She will not care for you one bit—I know she never will!” said the

poor child in a sobbing whisper. She had lost all control of herself.

Rex reddened and hurried away from her out of the hall door, leaving

her to the miserable consciousness of having made herself disagreeable

in vain.

He did think of her words as he rode along; they had the unwelcomeness

which all unfavorable fortune-telling has, even when laughed at; but he

quickly explained them as springing from little Anna’s tenderness, and

began to be sorry that he was obliged to come away without soothing

her. Every other feeling on the subject, however, was quickly merged in

a resistant belief to the contrary of hers, accompanied with a new

determination to prove that he was right. This sort of certainty had

just enough kinship to doubt and uneasiness to hurry on a confession

which an untouched security might have delayed.

Gwendolen was already mounted and riding up and down the avenue when

Rex appeared at the gate. She had provided herself against

disappointment in case he did not appear in time by having the groom

ready behind her, for she would not have waited beyond a reasonable

time. But now the groom was dismissed, and the two rode away in

delightful freedom. Gwendolen was in her highest spirits, and Rex

thought that she had never looked so lovely before; her figure, her

long white throat, and the curves of her cheek and chin were always set

off to perfection by the compact simplicity of her riding dress. He

could not conceive a more perfect girl; and to a youthful lover like

Rex it seems that the fundamental identity of the good, the true and

the beautiful, is already extant and manifest in the object of his

love. Most observers would have held it more than equally accountable

that a girl should have like impressions about Rex, for in his handsome

face there was nothing corresponding to the undefinable stinging

quality—as it were a trace of demon ancestry—which made some

beholders hesitate in their admiration of Gwendolen.

It was an exquisite January morning in which there was no threat of

rain, but a gray sky making the calmest background for the charms of a

mild winter scene—the grassy borders of the lanes, the hedgerows

sprinkled with red berries and haunted with low twitterings, the purple

bareness of the elms, the rich brown of the furrows. The horses’ hoofs

made a musical chime, accompanying their young voices. She was laughing

at his equipment, for he was the reverse of a dandy, and he was

enjoying her laughter; the freshness of the morning mingled with the

freshness of their youth; and every sound that came from their clear

throats, every glance they gave each other, was the bubbling outflow

from a spring of joy. It was all morning to them, within and without.

And thinking of them in these moments one is tempted to that futile

sort of wishing—if only things could have been a little otherwise

then, so as to have been greatly otherwise after—if only these two

beautiful young creatures could have pledged themselves to each other

then and there, and never through life have swerved from that pledge!

For some of the goodness which Rex believed in was there. Goodness is a

large, often a prospective word; like harvest, which at one stage when

we talk of it lies all underground, with an indeterminate future; is

the germ prospering in the darkness? at another, it has put forth

delicate green blades, and by-and-by the trembling blossoms are ready

to be dashed off by an hour of rough wind or rain. Each stage has its

peculiar blight, and may have the healthy life choked out of it by a

particular action of the foul land which rears or neighbors it, or by

damage brought from foulness afar.

“Anna had got it into her head that you would want to ride after the

hounds this morning,” said Rex, whose secret associations with Anna’s

words made this speech seem quite perilously near the most momentous of

subjects.

“Did she?” said Gwendolen, laughingly. “What a little clairvoyant she

is!”

“Shall you?” said Rex, who had not believed in her intending to do it

if the elders objected, but confided in her having good reasons.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell what I shall do till I get there.

Clairvoyants are often wrong: they foresee what is likely. I am not

fond of what is likely: it is always dull. I do what is unlikely.”

“Ah, there you tell me a secret. When once I knew what people in

general would be likely to do, I should know you would do the opposite.

So you would have come round to a likelihood of your own sort. I shall

be able to calculate on you. You couldn’t surprise me.”

“Yes, I could. I should turn round and do what was likely for people in

general,” said Gwendolen, with a musical laugh.

“You see you can’t escape some sort of likelihood. And

contradictoriness makes the strongest likelihood of all. You must give

up a plan.”

“No, I shall not. My plan is to do what pleases me.” (Here should any

young lady incline to imitate Gwendolen, let her consider the set of

her head and neck: if the angle there had been different, the chin

protrusive, and the cervical vertebrae a trifle more curved in their

position, ten to one Gwendolen’s words would have had a jar in them for

the sweet-natured Rex. But everything odd in her speech was humor and

pretty banter, which he was only anxious to turn toward one point.)

“Can you manage to feel only what pleases you?” said he.

“Of course not; that comes from what other people do. But if the world

were pleasanter, one would only feel what was pleasant. Girls’ lives

are so stupid: they never do what they like.”

“I thought that was more the case of the men. They are forced to do

hard things, and are often dreadfully bored, and knocked to pieces too.

And then, if we love a girl very dearly we want to do as she likes, so

after all you have your own way.”

“I don’t believe it. I never saw a married woman who had her own way.”

“What should you like to do?” said Rex, quite guilelessly, and in real

anxiety.

“Oh, I don’t know!—go to the North Pole, or ride steeple-chases, or go

to be a queen in the East like Lady Hester Stanhope,” said Gwendolen,

flightily. Her words were born on her lips, but she would have been at

a loss to give an answer of deeper origin.

“You don’t mean you would never be married?”

“No; I didn’t say that. Only when I married, I should not do as other

women do.”

“You might do just as you liked if you married a man who loved you more

dearly than anything else in the world,” said Rex, who, poor youth, was

moving in themes outside the curriculum in which he had promised to win

distinction. “I know one who does.”

“Don’t talk of Mr. Middleton, for heaven’s sake,” said Gwendolen,

hastily, a quick blush spreading over her face and neck; “that is

Anna’s chant. I hear the hounds. Let us go on.”

She put her chestnut to a canter, and Rex had no choice but to follow

her. Still he felt encouraged. Gwendolen was perfectly aware that her

cousin was in love with her; but she had no idea that the matter was of

any consequence, having never had the slightest visitation of painful

love herself. She wished the small romance of Rex’s devotion to fill up

the time of his stay at Pennicote, and to avoid explanations which

would bring it to an untimely end. Besides, she objected, with a sort

of physical repulsion, to being directly made love to. With all her

imaginative delight in being adored, there was a certain fierceness of

maidenhood in her.

But all other thoughts were soon lost for her in the excitement of the

scene at the Three Barns. Several gentlemen of the hunt knew her, and

she exchanged pleasant greetings. Rex could not get another word with

her. The color, the stir of the field had taken possession of Gwendolen

with a strength which was not due to habitual associations, for she had

never yet ridden after the hounds—only said she should like to do it,

and so drawn forth a prohibition; her mamma dreading the danger, and

her uncle declaring that for his part he held that kind of violent

exercise unseemly in a woman, and that whatever might be done in other

parts of the country, no lady of good position followed the Wessex

hunt: no one but Mrs. Gadsby, the yeomanry captain’s wife, who had been

a kitchenmaid and still spoke like one. This last argument had some

effect on Gwendolen, and had kept her halting between her desire to

assert her freedom and her horror of being classed with Mrs. Gadsby.

Some of the most unexceptionable women in the neighborhood occasionally

went to see the hounds throw off; but it happened that none of them

were present this morning to abstain from following, while Mrs. Gadsby,

with her doubtful antecedents, grammatical and otherwise, was not

visible to make following seem unbecoming. Thus Gwendolen felt no check

on the animal stimulus that came from the stir and tongue of the

hounds, the pawing of the horses, the varying voices of men, the

movement hither and thither of vivid color on the background of green

and gray stillness:—that utmost excitement of the coming chase which

consists in feeling something like a combination of dog and horse, with

the superadded thrill of social vanities and consciousness of

centaur-power which belongs to humankind.

Rex would have felt more of the same enjoyment if he could have kept

nearer to Gwendolen, and not seen her constantly occupied with

acquaintances, or looked at by would-be acquaintances, all on lively

horses which veered about and swept the surrounding space as

effectually as a revolving lever.

“Glad to see you here this fine morning, Miss Harleth,” said Lord

Brackenshaw, a middle-aged peer of aristocratic seediness in stained

pink, with easy-going manners which would have made the threatened

deluge seem of no consequence. “We shall have a first-rate run. A pity

you didn’t go with us. Have you ever tried your little chestnut at a

ditch? you wouldn’t be afraid, eh?”

“Not the least in the world,” said Gwendolen. And that was true: she

was never fearful in action and companionship. “I have often taken him

at some rails and a ditch too, near—”

“Ah, by Jove!” said his lordship, quietly, in notation that something

was happening which must break off the dialogue: and as he reined off

his horse, Rex was bringing his sober hackney up to Gwendolen’s side

when—the hounds gave tongue, and the whole field was in motion as if

the whirl of the earth were carrying it; Gwendolen along with

everything else; no word of notice to Rex, who without a second thought

followed too. Could he let Gwendolen go alone? under other

circumstances he would have enjoyed the run, but he was just now

perturbed by the check which had been put on the impetus to utter his

love, and get utterance in return, an impetus which could not at once

resolve itself into a totally different sort of chase, at least with

the consciousness of being on his father’s gray nag, a good horse

enough in his way, but of sober years and ecclesiastical habits.

Gwendolen on her spirited little chestnut was up with the best, and

felt as secure as an immortal goddess, having, if she had thought of

risk, a core of confidence that no ill luck would happen to her. But

she thought of no such thing, and certainly not of any risk there might

be for her cousin. If she had thought of him, it would have struck her

as a droll picture that he should be gradually falling behind, and

looking round in search of gates: a fine lithe youth, whose heart must

be panting with all the spirit of a beagle, stuck as if under a

wizard’s spell on a stiff clerical hackney, would have made her laugh

with a sense of fun much too strong for her to reflect on his

mortification. But Gwendolen was apt to think rather of those who saw

her than of those whom she could not see; and Rex was soon so far

behind that if she had looked she would not have seen him. For I grieve

to say that in the search for a gate, along a lane lately mended,

Primrose fell, broke his knees, and undesignedly threw Rex over his

head.

Fortunately a blacksmith’s son who also followed the hounds under

disadvantages, namely, on foot (a loose way of hunting which had struck

some even frivolous minds as immoral), was naturally also in the rear,

and happened to be within sight of Rex’s misfortune. He ran to give

help which was greatly needed, for Rex was a great deal stunned, and

the complete recovery of sensation came in the form of pain. Joel Dagge

on this occasion showed himself that most useful of personages, whose

knowledge is of a kind suited to the immediate occasion: he not only

knew perfectly well what was the matter with the horse, how far they

were both from the nearest public-house and from Pennicote Rectory, and

could certify to Rex that his shoulder was only a bit out of joint, but

also offered experienced surgical aid.

“Lord, sir, let me shove it in again for you! I’s seen Nash, the

bone-setter, do it, and done it myself for our little Sally twice over.

It’s all one and the same, shoulders is. If you’ll trusten to me and

tighten your mind up a bit, I’ll do it for you in no time.”

“Come then, old fellow,” said Rex, who could tighten his mind better

than his seat in the saddle. And Joel managed the operation, though not

without considerable expense of pain to his patient, who turned so

pitiably pale while tightening his mind, that Joel remarked, “Ah, sir,

you aren’t used to it, that’s how it is. I’s see lots and lots o’

joints out. I see a man with his eye pushed out once—that was a rum go

as ever I see. You can’t have a bit o’ fun wi’out such sort o’ things.

But it went in again. I’s swallowed three teeth mysen, as sure as I’m

alive. Now, sirrey” (this was addressed to Primrose), “come alonk—you

musn’t make believe as you can’t.”

Joel being clearly a low character, it is, happily, not necessary to

say more of him to the refined reader, than that he helped Rex to get

home with as little delay as possible. There was no alternative but to

get home, though all the while he was in anxiety about Gwendolen, and

more miserable in the thought that she, too, might have had an

accident, than in the pain of his own bruises and the annoyance he was

about to cause his father. He comforted himself about her by reflecting

that every one would be anxious to take care of her, and that some

acquaintance would be sure to conduct her home.

Mr. Gascoigne was already at home, and was writing letters in his

study, when he was interrupted by seeing poor Rex come in with a face

which was not the less handsome and ingratiating for being pale and a

little distressed. He was secretly the favorite son, and a young

portrait of the father; who, however, never treated him with any

partiality—rather, with an extra rigor. Mr. Gascoigne having inquired

of Anna, knew that Rex had gone with Gwendolen to the meet at the Three

Barns.

“What is the matter?” he said hastily, not laying down his pen.

“I’m very sorry, sir; Primrose has fallen down and broken his knees.”

“Where have you been with him?” said Mr. Gascoigne, with a touch of

severity. He rarely gave way to temper.

“To the Three Barns to see the hounds throw off.”

“And you were fool enough to follow?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t go at any fences, but the horse got his leg into a

hole.”

“And you got hurt yourself, I hope, eh!”

“I got my shoulder put out, but a young blacksmith put it in again for

me. I’m just a little battered, that’s all.”

“Well, sit down.”

“I’m very sorry about the horse, sir; I knew it would be a vexation to

you.”

“And what has become of Gwendolen?” said Mr. Gascoigne, abruptly. Rex,

who did not imagine that his father had made any inquiries about him,

answered at first with a blush, which was the more remarkable for his

previous paleness. Then he said, nervously,

“I am anxious to know—I should like to go or send at once to

Offendene—but she rides so well, and I think she would keep up—there

would most likely be many round her.”

“I suppose it was she who led you on, eh?” said Mr. Gascoigne, laying

down his pen, leaning back in his chair, and looking at Rex with more

marked examination.

“It was natural for her to want to go: she didn’t intend it

beforehand—she was led away by the spirit of the thing. And, of

course, I went when she went.”

Mr. Gascoigne left a brief interval of silence, and then said, with

quiet irony,—“But now you observe, young gentleman, that you are not

furnished with a horse which will enable you to play the squire to your

cousin. You must give up that amusement. You have spoiled my nag for

me, and that is enough mischief for one vacation. I shall beg you to

get ready to start for Southampton to-morrow and join Stilfox, till you

go up to Oxford with him. That will be good for your bruises as well as

your studies.”

Poor Rex felt his heart swelling and comporting itself as if it had

been no better than a girl’s.

“I hope you will not insist on my going immediately, sir.”

“Do you feel too ill?”

“No, not that—but—” here Rex bit his lips and felt the tears

starting, to his great vexation; then he rallied and tried to say more

firmly, “I want to go to Offendene, but I can go this evening.”

“I am going there myself. I can bring word about Gwendolen, if that is

what you want.”

Rex broke down. He thought he discerned an intention fatal to his

happiness, nay, his life. He was accustomed to believe in his father’s

penetration, and to expect firmness. “Father, I can’t go away without

telling her that I love her, and knowing that she loves me.”

Mr. Gascoigne was inwardly going through some self-rebuke for not being

more wary, and was now really sorry for the lad; but every

consideration was subordinate to that of using the wisest tactics in

the case. He had quickly made up his mind and to answer the more

quietly,

“My dear boy, you are too young to be taking momentous, decisive steps

of that sort. This is a fancy which you have got into your head during

an idle week or two: you must set to work at something and dismiss it.

There is every reason against it. An engagement at your age would be

totally rash and unjustifiable; and moreover, alliances between first

cousins are undesirable. Make up your mind to a brief disappointment.

Life is full of them. We have all got to be broken in; and this is a

mild beginning for you.”

“No, not mild. I can’t bear it. I shall be good for nothing. I

shouldn’t mind anything, if it were settled between us. I could do

anything then,” said Rex, impetuously. “But it’s of no use to pretend

that I will obey you. I can’t do it. If I said I would, I should be

sure to break my word. I should see Gwendolen again.”

“Well, wait till to-morrow morning, that we may talk of the matter

again—you will promise me that,” said Mr. Gascoigne, quietly; and Rex

did not, could not refuse.

The rector did not even tell his wife that he had any other reason for

going to Offendene that evening than his desire to ascertain that

Gwendolen had got home safely. He found her more than safe—elated. Mr.

Quallon, who had won the brush, had delivered the trophy to her, and

she had brought it before her, fastened on the saddle; more than that,

Lord Brackenshaw had conducted her home, and had shown himself

delighted with her spirited riding. All this was told at once to her

uncle, that he might see how well justified she had been in acting

against his advice; and the prudential rector did feel himself in a

slight difficulty, for at that moment he was particularly sensible that

it was his niece’s serious interest to be well regarded by the

Brackenshaws, and their opinion as to her following the hounds really

touched the essence of his objection. However, he was not obliged to

say anything immediately, for Mrs. Davilow followed up Gwendolen’s

brief triumphant phrases with,

“Still, I do hope you will not do it again, Gwendolen. I should never

have a moment’s quiet. Her father died by an accident, you know.”

Here Mrs. Davilow had turned away from Gwendolen, and looked at Mr.

Gascoigne.

“Mamma, dear,” said Gwendolen, kissing her merrily, and passing over

the question of the fears which Mrs. Davilow had meant to account for,

“children don’t take after their parents in broken legs.”

Not one word had yet been said about Rex. In fact there had been no

anxiety about him at Offendene. Gwendolen had observed to her mamma,

“Oh, he must have been left far behind, and gone home in despair,” and

it could not be denied that this was fortunate so far as it made way

for Lord Brackenshaw’s bringing her home. But now Mr. Gascoigne said,

with some emphasis, looking at Gwendolen,

“Well, the exploit has ended better for you than for Rex.”

“Yes, I dare say he had to make a terrible round. You have not taught

Primrose to take the fences, uncle,” said Gwendolen, without the

faintest shade of alarm in her looks and tone.

“Rex has had a fall,” said Mr. Gascoigne, curtly, throwing himself into

an arm-chair resting his elbows and fitting his palms and fingers

together, while he closed his lips and looked at Gwendolen, who said,

“Oh, poor fellow! he is not hurt, I hope?” with a correct look of

anxiety such as elated mortals try to super-induce when their pulses

are all the while quick with triumph; and Mrs. Davilow, in the same

moment, uttered a low “Good heavens! There!”

Mr. Gascoigne went on: “He put his shoulder out, and got some bruises,

I believe.” Here he made another little pause of observation; but

Gwendolen, instead of any such symptoms as pallor and silence, had only

deepened the compassionateness of her brow and eyes, and said again,

“Oh, poor fellow! it is nothing serious, then?” and Mr. Gascoigne held

his diagnosis complete. But he wished to make assurance doubly sure,

and went on still with a purpose.

“He got his arm set again rather oddly. Some blacksmith—not a

parishioner of mine—was on the field—a loose fish, I suppose, but

handy, and set the arm for him immediately. So after all, I believe, I

and Primrose come off worst. The horse’s knees are cut to pieces. He

came down in a hole, it seems, and pitched Rex over his head.”

Gwendolen’s face had allowably become contented again, since Rex’s arm

had been reset; and now, at the descriptive suggestions in the latter

part of her uncle’s speech, her elated spirits made her features less

unmanageable than usual; the smiles broke forth, and finally a

descending scale of laughter.

“You are a pretty young lady—to laugh at other people’s calamities,”

said Mr. Gascoigne, with a milder sense of disapprobation than if he

had not had counteracting reasons to be glad that Gwendolen showed no

deep feeling on the occasion.

“Pray forgive me, uncle. Now Rex is safe, it is so droll to fancy the

figure he and Primrose would cut—in a lane all by themselves—only a

blacksmith running up. It would make a capital caricature of ‘Following

the Hounds.’”

Gwendolen rather valued herself on her superior freedom in laughing

where others might only see matter for seriousness. Indeed, the

laughter became her person so well that her opinion of its gracefulness

was often shared by others; and it even entered into her uncle’s course

of thought at this moment, that it was no wonder a boy should be

fascinated by this young witch—who, however, was more mischievous than

could be desired.

“How can you laugh at broken bones, child?” said Mrs. Davilow, still

under her dominant anxiety. “I wish we had never allowed you to have

the horse. You will see that we were wrong,” she added, looking with a

grave nod at Mr. Gascoigne—“at least I was, to encourage her in asking

for it.”

“Yes, seriously, Gwendolen,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in a judicious tone of

rational advice to a person understood to be altogether rational, “I

strongly recommend you—I shall ask you to oblige me so far—not to

repeat your adventure of to-day. Lord Brackenshaw is very kind, but I

feel sure that he would concur with me in what I say. To be spoken of

as ‘the young lady who hunts’ by way of exception, would give a tone to

the language about you which I am sure you would not like. Depend upon

it, his lordship would not choose that Lady Beatrice or Lady Maria

should hunt in this part of the country, if they were old enough to do

so. When you are married, it will be different: you may do whatever

your husband sanctions. But if you intend to hunt, you must marry a man

who can keep horses.”

“I don’t know why I should do anything so horrible as to marry without

_that_ prospect, at least,” said Gwendolen, pettishly. Her uncle’s

speech had given her annoyance, which she could not show more directly;

but she felt that she was committing herself, and after moving

carelessly to another part of the room, went out.

“She always speaks in that way about marriage,” said Mrs. Davilow; “but

it will be different when she has seen the right person.”

“Her heart has never been in the least touched, that you know of?” said

Mr. Gascoigne.

Mrs. Davilow shook her head silently. “It was only last night she said

to me, ‘Mamma, I wonder how girls manage to fall in love. It is easy to

make them do it in books. But men are too ridiculous.’”

Mr. Gascoigne laughed a little, and made no further remark on the

subject. The next morning at breakfast he said,

“How are your bruises, Rex?”

“Oh, not very mellow yet, sir; only beginning to turn a little.”

“You don’t feel quite ready for a journey to Southampton?”

“Not quite,” answered Rex, with his heart metaphorically in his mouth.

“Well, you can wait till to-morrow, and go to say good-bye to them at

Offendene.”

Mrs. Gascoigne, who now knew the whole affair, looked steadily at her

coffee lest she also should begin to cry, as Anna was doing already.

Mr. Gascoigne felt that he was applying a sharp remedy to poor Rex’s

acute attack, but he believed it to be in the end the kindest. To let

him know the hopelessness of his love from Gwendolen’s own lips might

be curative in more ways than one.

“I can only be thankful that she doesn’t care about him,” said Mrs.

Gascoigne, when she joined her husband in his study. “There are things

in Gwendolen I cannot reconcile myself to. My Anna is worth two of her,

with all her beauty and talent. It looks very ill in her that she will

not help in the schools with Anna—not even in the Sunday-school. What

you or I advise is of no consequence to her: and poor Fannie is

completely under her thumb. But I know you think better of her,” Mrs.

Gascoigne ended with a deferential hesitation.

“Oh, my dear, there is no harm in the girl. It is only that she has a

high spirit, and it will not do to hold the reins too tight. The point

is, to get her well married. She has a little too much fire in her for

her present life with her mother and sisters. It is natural and right

that she should be married soon—not to a poor man, but one who can

give her a fitting position.”

Presently Rex, with his arm in a sling, was on his two miles’ walk to

Offendene. He was rather puzzled by the unconditional permission to see

Gwendolen, but his father’s real ground of action could not enter into

his conjectures. If it had, he would first have thought it horribly

cold-blooded, and then have disbelieved in his father’s conclusions.

When he got to the house, everybody was there but Gwendolen. The four

girls, hearing him speak in the hall, rushed out of the library, which

was their school-room, and hung round him with compassionate inquiries

about his arm. Mrs. Davilow wanted to know exactly what had happened,

and where the blacksmith lived, that she might make him a present;

while Miss Merry, who took a subdued and melancholy part in all family

affairs, doubted whether it would not be giving too much encouragement

to that kind of character. Rex had never found the family troublesome

before, but just now he wished them all away and Gwendolen there, and

he was too uneasy for good-natured feigning. When at last he had said,

“Where is Gwendolen?” and Mrs. Davilow had told Alice to go and see if

her sister were come down, adding, “I sent up her breakfast this

morning. She needed a long rest.” Rex took the shortest way out of his

endurance by saying, almost impatiently, “Aunt, I want to speak to

Gwendolen—I want to see her alone.”

“Very well, dear; go into the drawing-room. I will send her there,”

said Mrs. Davilow, who had observed that he was fond of being with

Gwendolen, as was natural, but had not thought of this as having any

bearing on the realities of life: it seemed merely part of the

Christmas holidays which were spinning themselves out.

Rex for his part thought that the realities of life were all hanging on

this interview. He had to walk up and down the drawing-room in

expectation for nearly ten minutes—ample space for all imaginative

fluctuations; yet, strange to say, he was unvaryingly occupied in

thinking what and how much he could do, when Gwendolen had accepted

him, to satisfy his father that the engagement was the most prudent

thing in the world, since it inspired him with double energy for work.

He was to be a lawyer, and what reason was there why he should not rise

as high as Eldon did? He was forced to look at life in the light of his

father’s mind.

But when the door opened and she whose presence he was longing for

entered, there came over him suddenly and mysteriously a state of

tremor and distrust which he had never felt before. Miss Gwendolen,

simple as she stood there, in her black silk, cut square about the

round white pillar of her throat, a black band fastening her hair which

streamed backward in smooth silky abundance, seemed more queenly than

usual. Perhaps it was that there was none of the latent fun and

tricksiness which had always pierced in her greeting of Rex. How much

of this was due to her presentiment from what he had said yesterday

that he was going to talk of love? How much from her desire to show

regret about his accident? Something of both. But the wisdom of ages

has hinted that there is a side of the bed which has a malign influence

if you happen to get out on it; and this accident befalls some charming

persons rather frequently. Perhaps it had befallen Gwendolen this

morning. The hastening of her toilet, the way in which Bugle used the

brush, the quality of the shilling serial mistakenly written for her

amusement, the probabilities of the coming day, and, in short, social

institutions generally, were all objectionable to her. It was not that

she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands

of her fine organism.

However it might be, Rex saw an awful majesty about her as she entered

and put out her hand to him, without the least approach to a smile in

eyes or mouth. The fun which had moved her in the evening had quite

evaporated from the image of his accident, and the whole affair seemed

stupid to her. But she said with perfect propriety, “I hope you are not

much hurt, Rex; I deserve that you should reproach me for your

accident.”

“Not at all,” said Rex, feeling the soul within him spreading itself

like an attack of illness. “There is hardly any thing the matter with

me. I am so glad you had the pleasure: I would willingly pay for it by

a tumble, only I was sorry to break the horse’s knees.”

Gwendolen walked to the hearth and stood looking at the fire in the

most inconvenient way for conversation, so that he could only get a

side view of her face.

“My father wants me to go to Southampton for the rest of the vacation,”

said Rex, his baritone trembling a little.

“Southampton! That’s a stupid place to go to, isn’t it?” said

Gwendolen, chilly.

“It would be to me, because you would not be there.” Silence.

“Should you mind about me going away, Gwendolen?”

“Of course. Every one is of consequence in this dreary country,” said

Gwendolen, curtly. The perception that poor Rex wanted to be tender

made her curl up and harden like a sea-anemone at the touch of a finger.

“Are you angry with me, Gwendolen? Why do you treat me in this way all

at once?” said Rex, flushing, and with more spirit in his voice, as if

he too were capable of being angry.

Gwendolen looked round at him and smiled. “Treat you? Nonsense! I am

only rather cross. Why did you come so very early? You must expect to

find tempers in dishabille.”

“Be as cross with me as you like—only don’t treat me with

indifference,” said Rex, imploringly. “All the happiness of my life

depends on your loving me—if only a little—better than any one else.”

He tried to take her hand, but she hastily eluded his grasp and moved

to the other end of the hearth, facing him.

“Pray don’t make love to me! I hate it!” she looked at him fiercely.

Rex turned pale and was silent, but could not take his eyes off her,

and the impetus was not yet exhausted that made hers dart death at him.

Gwendolen herself could not have foreseen that she should feel in this

way. It was all a sudden, new experience to her. The day before she had

been quite aware that her cousin was in love with her; she did not mind

how much, so that he said nothing about it; and if any one had asked

her why she objected to love-making speeches, she would have said,

laughingly, “Oh I am tired of them all in the books.” But now the life

of passion had begun negatively in her. She felt passionately averse to

this volunteered love.

To Rex at twenty the joy of life seemed at an end more absolutely than

it can do to a man at forty. But before they had ceased to look at each

other, he did speak again.

“Is that last word you have to say to me, Gwendolen? Will it always be

so?”

She could not help seeing his wretchedness and feeling a little regret

for the old Rex who had not offended her. Decisively, but yet with some

return of kindness, she said,

“About making love? Yes. But I don’t dislike you for anything else.”

There was just a perceptible pause before he said a low “good-bye,” and

passed out of the room. Almost immediately after, she heard the heavy

hall door bang behind him.

Mrs. Davilow, too, had heard Rex’s hasty departure, and presently came

into the drawing-room, where she found Gwendolen seated on the low

couch, her face buried, and her hair falling over her figure like a

garment. She was sobbing bitterly. “My child, my child, what is it?”

cried the mother, who had never before seen her darling struck down in

this way, and felt something of the alarmed anguish that women, feel at

the sight of overpowering sorrow in a strong man; for this child had

been her ruler. Sitting down by her with circling arms, she pressed her

cheek against Gwendolen’s head, and then tried to draw it upward.

Gwendolen gave way, and letting her head rest against her mother, cried

out sobbingly, “Oh, mamma, what can become of my life? there is nothing

worth living for!”

“Why, dear?” said Mrs. Davilow. Usually she herself had been rebuked by

her daughter for involuntary signs of despair.

“I shall never love anybody. I can’t love people. I hate them.”

“The time will come, dear, the time will come.”

Gwendolen was more and more convulsed with sobbing; but putting her

arms round her mother’s neck with an almost painful clinging, she said

brokenly, “I can’t bear any one to be very near me but you.”

Then the mother began to sob, for this spoiled child had never shown

such dependence on her before: and so they clung to each other.

CHAPTER VIII.

What name doth Joy most borrow

When life is fair?

“To-morrow.”

What name doth best fit Sorrow

In young despair?

“To-morrow.”

There was a much more lasting trouble at the rectory. Rex arrived there

only to throw himself on his bed in a state of apparent apathy,

unbroken till the next day, when it began to be interrupted by more

positive signs of illness. Nothing could be said about his going to

Southampton: instead of that, the chief thought of his mother and Anna

was how to tend this patient who did not want to be well, and from

being the brightest, most grateful spirit in the household, was

metamorphosed into an irresponsive, dull-eyed creature who met all

affectionate attempts with a murmur of “Let me alone.” His father

looked beyond the crisis, and believed it to be the shortest way out of

an unlucky affair; but he was sorry for the inevitable suffering, and

went now and then to sit by him in silence for a few minutes, parting

with a gentle pressure of his hand on Rex’s blank brow, and a “God

bless you, my boy.” Warham and the younger children used to peep round

the edge of the door to see this incredible thing of their lively

brother being laid low; but fingers were immediately shaken at them to

drive them back. The guardian who was always there was Anna, and her

little hand was allowed to rest within her brother’s, though he never

gave it a welcoming pressure. Her soul was divided between anguish for

Rex and reproach of Gwendolen.

“Perhaps it is wicked of me, but I think I never _can_ love her again,”

came as the recurrent burden of poor little Anna’s inward monody. And

even Mrs. Gascoigne had an angry feeling toward her niece which she

could not refrain from expressing (apologetically) to her husband.

“I know of course it is better, and we ought to be thankful that she is

not in love with the poor boy; but really. Henry, I think she is hard;

she has the heart of a coquette. I can not help thinking that she must

have made him believe something, or the disappointment would not have

taken hold of him in that way. And some blame attaches to poor Fanny;

she is quite blind about that girl.”

Mr. Gascoigne answered imperatively: “The less said on that point the

better, Nancy. I ought to have been more awake myself. As to the boy,

be thankful if nothing worse ever happens to him. Let the thing die out

as quickly as possible; and especially with regard to Gwendolen—let it

be as if it had never been.”

The rector’s dominant feeling was that there had been a great escape.

Gwendolen in love with Rex in return would have made a much harder

problem, the solution of which might have been taken out of his hands.

But he had to go through some further difficulty.

One fine morning Rex asked for his bath, and made his toilet as usual.

Anna, full of excitement at this change, could do nothing but listen

for his coming down, and at last hearing his step, ran to the foot of

the stairs to meet him. For the first time he gave her a faint smile,

but it looked so melancholy on his pale face that she could hardly help

crying.

“Nannie!” he said gently, taking her hand and leading her slowly along

with him to the drawing-room. His mother was there, and when she came

to kiss him, he said: “What a plague I am!”

Then he sat still and looked out of the bow-window on the lawn and

shrubs covered with hoar-frost, across which the sun was sending faint

occasional gleams:—something like that sad smile on Rex’s face, Anna

thought. He felt as if he had had a resurrection into a new world, and

did not know what to do with himself there, the old interests being

left behind. Anna sat near him, pretending to work, but really watching

him with yearning looks. Beyond the garden hedge there was a road where

wagons and carts sometimes went on field-work: a railed opening was

made in the hedge, because the upland with its bordering wood and clump

of ash-trees against the sky was a pretty sight. Presently there came

along a wagon laden with timber; the horses were straining their grand

muscles, and the driver having cracked his whip, ran along anxiously to

guide the leader’s head, fearing a swerve. Rex seemed to be shaken into

attention, rose and looked till the last quivering trunk of the timber

had disappeared, and then walked once or twice along the room. Mrs.

Gascoigne was no longer there, and when he came to sit down again,

Anna, seeing a return of speech in her brother’s eyes, could not resist

the impulse to bring a little stool and seat herself against his knee,

looking up at him with an expression which seemed to say, “Do speak to

me.” And he spoke.

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking of, Nannie. I will go to Canada, or

somewhere of that sort.” (Rex had not studied the character of our

colonial possessions.)

“Oh, Rex, not for always!”

“Yes, to get my bread there. I should like to build a hut, and work

hard at clearing, and have everything wild about me, and a great wide

quiet.”

“And not take me with you?” said Anna, the big tears coming fast.

“How could I?”

“I should like it better than anything; and settlers go with their

families. I would sooner go there than stay here in England. I could

make the fires, and mend the clothes, and cook the food; and I could

learn how to make the bread before we went. It would be nicer than

anything—like playing at life over again, as we used to do when we

made our tent with the drugget, and had our little plates and dishes.”

“Father and mother would not let you go.”

“Yes, I think they would, when I explained everything. It would save

money; and papa would have more to bring up the boys with.”

There was further talk of the same practical kind at intervals, and it

ended in Rex’s being obliged to consent that Anna should go with him

when he spoke to his father on the subject.

Of course it was when the rector was alone in his study. Their mother

would become reconciled to whatever he decided on, but mentioned to her

first, the question would have distressed her.

“Well, my children!” said Mr. Gascoigne, cheerfully, as they entered.

It was a comfort to see Rex about again.

“May we sit down with you a little, papa?” said Anna. “Rex has

something to say.”

“With all my heart.”

It was a noticeable group that these three creatures made, each of them

with a face of the same structural type—the straight brow, the nose

suddenly straightened from an intention of being aquiline, the short

upper lip, the short but strong and well-hung chin: there was even the

same tone of complexion and set of the eye. The gray-haired father was

at once massive and keen-looking; there was a perpendicular line in his

brow which when he spoke with any force of interest deepened; and the

habit of ruling gave him an air of reserved authoritativeness. Rex

would have seemed a vision of his father’s youth, if it had been

possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne without distinct plans and without

command, smitten with a heart sorrow, and having no more notion of

concealment than a sick animal; and Anna was a tiny copy of Rex, with

hair drawn back and knotted, her face following his in its changes of

expression, as if they had one soul between them.

“You know all about what has upset me, father,” Rex began, and Mr.

Gascoigne nodded.

“I am quite done up for life in this part of the world. I am sure it

will be no use my going back to Oxford. I couldn’t do any reading. I

should fail, and cause you expense for nothing. I want to have your

consent to take another course, sir.”

Mr. Gascoigne nodded more slowly, the perpendicular line on his brow

deepened, and Anna’s trembling increased.

“If you would allow me a small outfit, I should like to go to the

colonies and work on the land there.” Rex thought the vagueness of the

phrase prudential; “the colonies” necessarily embracing more

advantages, and being less capable of being rebutted on a single ground

than any particular settlement.

“Oh, and with me, papa,” said Anna, not bearing to be left out from the

proposal even temporarily. “Rex would want some one to take care of

him, you know—some one to keep house. And we shall never, either of

us, be married. And I should cost nothing, and I should be so happy. I

know it would be hard to leave you and mamma; but there are all the

others to bring up, and we two should be no trouble to you any more.”

Anna had risen from her seat, and used the feminine argument of going

closer to her papa as she spoke. He did not smile, but he drew her on

his knee and held her there, as if to put her gently out of the

question while he spoke to Rex.

“You will admit that my experience gives me some power of judging for

you, and that I can probably guide you in practical matters better than

you can guide yourself?”

Rex was obliged to say, “Yes, sir.”

“And perhaps you will admit—though I don’t wish to press that

point—that you are bound in duty to consider my judgment and wishes?”

“I have never yet placed myself in opposition to you, sir.” Rex in his

secret soul could not feel that he was bound not to go to the colonies,

but to go to Oxford again—which was the point in question.

“But you will do so if you persist in setting your mind toward a rash

and foolish procedure, and deafening yourself to considerations which

my experience of life assures me of. You think, I suppose, that you

have had a shock which has changed all your inclinations, stupefied

your brains, unfitted you for anything but manual labor, and given you

a dislike to society? Is that what you believe?”

“Something like that. I shall never be up to the sort of work I must do

to live in this part of the world. I have not the spirit for it. I

shall never be the same again. And without any disrespect to you,

father, I think a young fellow should be allowed to choose his way of

life, if he does nobody any harm. There are plenty to stay at home, and

those who like might be allowed to go where there are empty places.”

“But suppose I am convinced on good evidence—as I am—that this state

of mind of yours is transient, and that if you went off as you propose,

you would by-and-by repent, and feel that you had let yourself slip

back from the point you have been gaining by your education till now?

Have you not strength of mind enough to see that you had better act on

my assurance for a time, and test it? In my opinion, so far from

agreeing with you that you should be free to turn yourself into a

colonist and work in your shirt-sleeves with spade and hatchet—in my

opinion you have no right whatever to expatriate yourself until you

have honestly endeavored to turn to account the education you have

received here. I say nothing of the grief to your mother and me.”

“I’m very sorry; but what can I do? I can’t study—that’s certain,”

said Rex.

“Not just now, perhaps. You will have to miss a term. I have made

arrangements for you—how you are to spend the next two months. But I

confess I am disappointed in you, Rex. I thought you had more sense

than to take up such ideas—to suppose that because you have fallen

into a very common trouble, such as most men have to go through, you

are loosened from all bonds of duty—just as if your brain had softened

and you were no longer a responsible being.”

What could Rex say? Inwardly he was in a state of rebellion, but he had

no arguments to meet his father’s; and while he was feeling, in spite

of any thing that might be said, that he should like to go off to “the

colonies” to-morrow, it lay in a deep fold of his consciousness that he

ought to feel—if he had been a better fellow he would have felt—more

about his old ties. This is the sort of faith we live by in our soul

sicknesses.

Rex got up from his seat, as if he held the conference to be at an end.

“You assent to my arrangement, then?” said Mr. Gascoigne, with that

distinct resolution of tone which seems to hold one in a vise.

There was a little pause before Rex answered, “I’ll try what I can do,

sir. I can’t promise.” His thought was, that trying would be of no use.

Her father kept Anna, holding her fast, though she wanted to follow

Rex. “Oh, papa,” she said, the tears coming with her words when the

door had closed; “it is very hard for him. Doesn’t he look ill?”

“Yes, but he will soon be better; it will all blow over. And now, Anna,

be as quiet as a mouse about it all. Never let it be mentioned when he

is gone.”

“No, papa. But I would not be like Gwendolen for any thing—to have

people fall in love with me so. It is very dreadful.”

Anna dared not say that she was disappointed at not being allowed to go

to the colonies with Rex; but that was her secret feeling, and she

often afterward went inwardly over the whole affair, saying to herself,

“I should have done with going out, and gloves, and crinoline, and

having to talk when I am taken to dinner—and all that!”

I like to mark the time, and connect the course of individual lives

with the historic stream, for all classes of thinkers. This was the

period when the broadening of gauge in crinolines seemed to demand an

agitation for the general enlargement of churches, ball-rooms, and

vehicles. But Anna Gascoigne’s figure would only allow the size of

skirt manufactured for young ladies of fourteen.

CHAPTER IX.

I’ll tell thee, Berthold, what men’s hopes are like:

A silly child that, quivering with joy,

Would cast its little mimic fishing-line

Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys

In the salt ocean.

Eight months after the arrival of the family at Offendene, that is to

say in the end of the following June, a rumor was spread in the

neighborhood which to many persons was matter of exciting interest. It

had no reference to the results of the American war, but it was one

which touched all classes within a certain circuit round Wanchester:

the corn-factors, the brewers, the horse-dealers, and saddlers, all

held it a laudable thing, and one which was to be rejoiced in on

abstract grounds, as showing the value of an aristocracy in a free

country like England; the blacksmith in the hamlet of Diplow felt that

a good time had come round; the wives of laboring men hoped their

nimble boys of ten or twelve would be taken into employ by the

gentlemen in livery; and the farmers about Diplow admitted, with a

tincture of bitterness and reserve, that a man might now again perhaps

have an easier market or exchange for a rick of old hay or a wagon-load

of straw. If such were the hopes of low persons not in society, it may

be easily inferred that their betters had better reasons for

satisfaction, probably connected with the pleasures of life rather than

its business. Marriage, however, must be considered as coming under

both heads; and just as when a visit of majesty is announced, the dream

of knighthood or a baronetcy is to be found under various municipal

nightcaps, so the news in question raised a floating indeterminate

vision of marriage in several well-bred imaginations.

The news was that Diplow Hall, Sir Hugo Mallinger’s place, which had

for a couple of years turned its white window-shutters in a painfully

wall-eyed manner on its fine elms and beeches, its lilied pool and

grassy acres specked with deer, was being prepared for a tenant, and

was for the rest of the summer and through the hunting season to be

inhabited in a fitting style both as to house and stable. But not by

Sir Hugo himself: by his nephew, Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt, who was

presumptive heir to the baronetcy, his uncle’s marriage having produced

nothing but girls. Nor was this the only contingency with which fortune

flattered young Grandcourt, as he was pleasantly called; for while the

chance of the baronetcy came through his father, his mother had given a

baronial streak to his blood, so that if certain intervening persons

slightly painted in the middle distance died, he would become a baron

and peer of this realm.

It is the uneven allotment of nature that the male bird alone has the

tuft, but we have not yet followed the advice of hasty philosophers who

would have us copy nature entirely in these matters; and if Mr.

Mallinger Grandcourt became a baronet or a peer, his wife would share

the title—which in addition to his actual fortune was certainly a

reason why that wife, being at present unchosen, should be thought of

by more than one person with a sympathetic interest as a woman sure to

be well provided for.

Some readers of this history will doubtless regard it as incredible

that people should construct matrimonial prospects on the mere report

that a bachelor of good fortune and possibilities was coming within

reach, and will reject the statement as a mere outflow of gall: they

will aver that neither they nor their first cousins have minds so

unbridled; and that in fact this is not human nature, which would know

that such speculations might turn out to be fallacious, and would

therefore not entertain them. But, let it be observed, nothing is here

narrated of human nature generally: the history in its present stage

concerns only a few people in a corner of Wessex—whose reputation,

however, was unimpeached, and who, I am in the proud position of being

able to state, were all on visiting terms with persons of rank.

There were the Arrowpoints, for example, in their beautiful place at

Quetcham: no one could attribute sordid views in relation to their

daughter’s marriage to parents who could leave her at least half a

million; but having affectionate anxieties about their Catherine’s

position (she having resolutely refused Lord Slogan, an unexceptionable

Irish peer, whose estate wanted nothing but drainage and population),

they wondered, perhaps from something more than a charitable impulse,

whether Mr. Grandcourt was good-looking, of sound constitution,

virtuous, or at least reformed, and if liberal-conservative, not too

liberal-conservative; and without wishing anybody to die, thought his

succession to the title an event to be desired.

If the Arrowpoints had such ruminations, it is the less surprising that

they were stimulated in Mr. Gascoigne, who for being a clergyman was

not the less subject to the anxieties of a parent and guardian; and we

have seen how both he and Mrs. Gascoigne might by this time have come

to feel that he was overcharged with the management of young creatures

who were hardly to be held in with bit or bridle, or any sort of

metaphor that would stand for judicious advice.

Naturally, people did not tell each other all they felt and thought

about young Grandcourt’s advent: on no subject is this openness found

prudently practicable—not even on the generation of acids, or the

destination of the fixed stars: for either your contemporary with a

mind turned toward the same subjects may find your ideas ingenious and

forestall you in applying them, or he may have other views on acids and

fixed stars, and think ill of you in consequence. Mr. Gascoigne did not

ask Mr. Arrowpoint if he had any trustworthy source of information

about Grandcourt considered as a husband for a charming girl; nor did

Mrs. Arrowpoint observe to Mrs. Davilow that if the possible peer

sought a wife in the neighborhood of Diplow, the only reasonable

expectation was that he would offer his hand to Catherine, who,

however, would not accept him unless he were in all respects fitted to

secure her happiness. Indeed, even to his wife the rector was silent as

to the contemplation of any matrimonial result, from the probability

that Mr. Grandcourt would see Gwendolen at the next Archery Meeting;

though Mrs. Gascoigne’s mind was very likely still more active in the

same direction. She had said interjectionally to her sister, “It would

be a mercy, Fanny, if that girl were well married!” to which Mrs.

Davilow discerning some criticism of her darling in the fervor of that

wish, had not chosen to make any audible reply, though she had said

inwardly, “You will not get her to marry for your pleasure”; the mild

mother becoming rather saucy when she identified herself with her

daughter.

To her husband Mrs. Gascoigne said, “I hear Mr. Grandcourt has got two

places of his own, but he comes to Diplow for the hunting. It is to be

hoped he will set a good example in the neighborhood. Have you heard

what sort of a young man he is, Henry?”

Mr. Gascoigne had not heard; at least, if his male acquaintances had

gossiped in his hearing, he was not disposed to repeat their gossip, or

to give it any emphasis in his own mind. He held it futile, even if it

had been becoming, to show any curiosity as to the past of a young man

whose birth, wealth, and consequent leisure made many habits venial

which under other circumstances would have been inexcusable. Whatever

Grandcourt had done, he had not ruined himself; and it is well-known

that in gambling, for example, whether of the business or holiday sort,

a man who has the strength of mind to leave off when he has only ruined

others, is a reformed character. This is an illustration merely: Mr.

Gascoigne had not heard that Grandcourt had been a gambler; and we can

hardly pronounce him singular in feeling that a landed proprietor with

a mixture of noble blood in his veins was not to be an object of

suspicious inquiry like a reformed character who offers himself as your

butler or footman. Reformation, where a man can afford to do without

it, can hardly be other than genuine. Moreover, it was not certain on

any other showing hitherto, that Mr. Grandcourt had needed reformation

more than other young men in the ripe youth of five-and-thirty; and, at

any rate, the significance of what he had been must be determined by

what he actually was.

Mrs. Davilow, too, although she would not respond to her sister’s

pregnant remark, could not be inwardly indifferent to an advent that

might promise a brilliant lot for Gwendolen. A little speculation on

“what may be” comes naturally, without encouragement—comes inevitably

in the form of images, when unknown persons are mentioned; and Mr.

Grandcourt’s name raised in Mrs. Davilow’s mind first of all the

picture of a handsome, accomplished, excellent young man whom she would

be satisfied with as a husband for her daughter; but then came the

further speculation—would Gwendolen be satisfied with him? There was

no knowing what would meet that girl’s taste or touch her

affections—it might be something else than excellence; and thus the

image of the perfect suitor gave way before a fluctuating combination

of qualities that might be imagined to win Gwendolen’s heart. In the

difficulty of arriving at the particular combination which would insure

that result, the mother even said to herself, “It would not signify

about her being in love, if she would only accept the right person.”

For whatever marriage had been for herself, how could she the less

desire it for her daughter? The difference her own misfortunes made

was, that she never dared to dwell much to Gwendolen on the

desirableness of marriage, dreading an answer something like that of

the future Madame Roland, when her gentle mother urging the acceptance

of a suitor, said, “Tu seras heureuse, ma chère.” “Oui, maman, comme

toi.”

In relation to the problematic Mr. Grandcourt least of all would Mrs.

Davilow have willingly let fall a hint of the aerial castle-building

which she had the good taste to be ashamed of; for such a hint was

likely enough to give an adverse poise to Gwendolen’s own thought, and

make her detest the desirable husband beforehand. Since that scene

after poor Rex’s farewell visit, the mother had felt a new sense of

peril in touching the mystery of her child’s feeling, and in rashly

determining what was her welfare: only she could think of welfare in no

other shape than marriage.

The discussion of the dress that Gwendolen was to wear at the Archery

Meeting was a relevant topic, however; and when it had been decided

that as a touch of color on her white cashmere, nothing, for her

complexion, was comparable to pale green—a feather which she was

trying in her hat before the looking-glass having settled the

question—Mrs. Davilow felt her ears tingle when Gwendolen, suddenly

throwing herself into the attitude of drawing her bow, said with a look

of comic enjoyment,

“How I pity all the other girls at the Archery Meeting—all thinking of

Mr. Grandcourt! And they have not a shadow of a chance.”

Mrs. Davilow had not the presence of mind to answer immediately, and

Gwendolen turned round quickly toward her, saying, wickedly,

“Now you know they have not, mamma. You and my uncle and aunt—you all

intend him to fall in love with me.”

Mrs. Davilow, piqued into a little stratagem, said, “Oh, my dear, that

is not so certain. Miss Arrowpoint has charms which you have not.”

“I know, but they demand thought. My arrow will pierce him before he

has time for thought. He will declare himself my slave—I shall send

him round the world to bring me back the wedding ring of a happy

woman—in the meantime all the men who are between him and the title

will die of different diseases—he will come back Lord Grandcourt—but

without the ring—and fall at my feet. I shall laugh at him—he will

rise in resentment—I shall laugh more—he will call for his steed and

ride to Quetcham, where he will find Miss Arrowpoint just married to a

needy musician, Mrs. Arrowpoint tearing her cap off, and Mr. Arrowpoint

standing by. Exit Lord Grandcourt, who returns to Diplow, and, like M.

Jabot, _change de linge_.”

Was ever any young witch like this? You thought of hiding things from

her—sat upon your secret and looked innocent, and all the while she

knew by the corner of your eye that it was exactly five pounds ten you

were sitting on! As well turn the key to keep out the damp! It was

probable that by dint of divination she already knew more than any one

else did of Mr. Grandcourt. That idea in Mrs. Davilow’s mind prompted

the sort of question which often comes without any other apparent

reason than the faculty of speech and the not knowing what to do with

it.

“Why, what kind of a man do you imagine him to be, Gwendolen?”

“Let me see!” said the witch, putting her forefinger to her lips, with

a little frown, and then stretching out the finger with decision.

“Short—just above my shoulder—trying to make himself tall by turning

up his mustache and keeping his beard long—a glass in his right eye to

give him an air of distinction—a strong opinion about his waistcoat,

but uncertain and trimming about the weather, on which he will try to

draw me out. He will stare at me all the while, and the glass in his

eye will cause him to make horrible faces, especially when he smiles in

a flattering way. I shall cast down my eyes in consequence, and he will

perceive that I am not indifferent to his attentions. I shall dream

that night that I am looking at the extraordinary face of a magnified

insect—and the next morning he will make an offer of his hand; the

sequel as before.”

“That is a portrait of some one you have seen already, Gwen. Mr.

Grandcourt may be a delightful young man for what you know.”

“Oh, yes,” said Gwendolen, with a high note of careless admission,

taking off her best hat and turning it round on her hand

contemplatively. “I wonder what sort of behavior a delightful young man

would have? I know he would have hunters and racers, and a London house

and two country-houses—one with battlements and another with a

veranda. And I feel sure that with a little murdering he might get a

title.”

The irony of this speech was of the doubtful sort that has some genuine

belief mixed up with it. Poor Mrs. Davilow felt uncomfortable under it.

Her own meanings being usually literal and in intention innocent; and

she said with a distressed brow:

“Don’t talk in that way, child, for heaven’s sake! you do read such

books—they give you such ideas of everything. I declare when your aunt

and I were your age we knew nothing about wickedness. I think it was

better so.”

“Why did you not bring me up in that way, mamma?” said Gwendolen. But

immediately perceiving in the crushed look and rising sob that she had

given a deep wound, she tossed down her hat and knelt at her mother’s

feet crying,

“Mamma, mamma! I was only speaking in fun. I meant nothing.”

“How could I, Gwendolen?” said poor Mrs. Davilow, unable to hear the

retraction, and sobbing violently while she made the effort to speak.

“Your will was always too strong for me—if everything else had been

different.”

This disjoined logic was intelligible enough to the daughter. “Dear

mamma, I don’t find fault with you—I love you,” said Gwendolen, really

compunctious. “How can you help what I am? Besides, I am very charming.

Come, now.” Here Gwendolen with her handkerchief gently rubbed away her

mother’s tears. “Really—I am contented with myself. I like myself

better than I should have liked my aunt and you. How dreadfully dull

you must have been!”

Such tender cajolery served to quiet the mother, as it had often done

before after like collisions. Not that the collisions had often been

repeated at the same point; for in the memory of both they left an

association of dread with the particular topics which had occasioned

them: Gwendolen dreaded the unpleasant sense of compunction toward her

mother, which was the nearest approach to self-condemnation and

self-distrust that she had known; and Mrs. Davilow’s timid maternal

conscience dreaded whatever had brought on the slightest hint of

reproach. Hence, after this little scene, the two concurred in

excluding Mr. Grandcourt from their conversation.

When Mr. Gascoigne once or twice referred to him, Mrs. Davilow feared

least Gwendolen should betray some of her alarming keen-sightedness

about what was probably in her uncle’s mind; but the fear was not

justified. Gwendolen knew certain differences in the characters with

which she was concerned as birds know climate and weather; and for the

very reason that she was determined to evade her uncle’s control, she

was determined not to clash with him. The good understanding between

them was much fostered by their enjoyment of archery together: Mr.

Gascoigne, as one of the best bowmen in Wessex, was gratified to find

the elements of like skill in his niece; and Gwendolen was the more

careful not to lose the shelter of his fatherly indulgence, because

since the trouble with Rex both Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna had been unable

to hide what she felt to be a very unreasonable alienation from her.

Toward Anna she took some pains to behave with a regretful

affectionateness; but neither of them dared to mention Rex’s name, and

Anna, to whom the thought of him was part of the air she breathed, was

ill at ease with the lively cousin who had ruined his happiness. She

tried dutifully to repress any sign of her changed feeling; but who in

pain can imitate the glance and hand-touch of pleasure.

This unfair resentment had rather a hardening effect on Gwendolen, and

threw her into a more defiant temper. Her uncle too might be offended

if she refused the next person who fell in love with her; and one day

when that idea was in her mind she said,

“Mamma, I see now why girls are glad to be married—to escape being

expected to please everybody but themselves.”

Happily, Mr. Middleton was gone without having made any avowal; and

notwithstanding the admiration for the handsome Miss Harleth, extending

perhaps over thirty square miles in a part of Wessex well studded with

families whose numbers included several disengaged young men, each glad

to seat himself by the lively girl with whom it was so easy to get on

in conversation,—notwithstanding these grounds for arguing that

Gwendolen was likely to have other suitors more explicit than the

cautious curate, the fact was not so.

Care has been taken not only that the trees should not sweep the stars

down, but also that every man who admires a fair girl should not be

enamored of her, and even that every man who is enamored should not

necessarily declare himself. There are various refined shapes in which

the price of corn, known to be potent cause in their relation, might,

if inquired into, show why a young lady, perfect in person,

accomplishments, and costume, has not the trouble of rejecting many

offers; and nature’s order is certainly benignant in not obliging us

one and all to be desperately in love with the most admirable mortal we

have ever seen. Gwendolen, we know, was far from holding that supremacy

in the minds of all observers. Besides, it was but a poor eight months

since she had come to Offendene, and some inclinations become manifest

slowly, like the sunward creeping of plants.

In face of this fact that not one of the eligible young men already in

the neighborhood had made Gwendolen an offer, why should Mr. Grandcourt

be thought of as likely to do what they had left undone?

Perhaps because he was thought of as still more eligible; since a great

deal of what passes for likelihood in the world is simply the reflex of

a wish. Mr. and Mrs. Arrowpoint, for example, having no anxiety that

Miss Harleth should make a brilliant marriage, had quite a different

likelihood in their minds.

CHAPTER X.

_1st Gent._ What woman should be? Sir, consult the taste

Of marriageable men. This planet’s store

In iron, cotton, wool, or chemicals—

All matter rendered to our plastic skill,

Is wrought in shapes responsive to demand;

The market’s pulse makes index high or low,

By rule sublime. Our daughters must be wives,

And to the wives must be what men will choose;

Men’s taste is woman’s test. You mark the phrase?

’Tis good, I think?—the sense well-winged and poised

With t’s and s’s.

_2nd Gent._ Nay, but turn it round;

Give us the test of taste. A fine _menu_—

Is it to-day what Roman epicures

Insisted that a gentleman must eat

To earn the dignity of dining well?

Brackenshaw Park, where the archery meeting was held, looked out from

its gentle heights far over the neighboring valley to the outlying

eastern downs and the broad, slow rise of cultivated country, hanging

like a vast curtain toward the west. The castle which stood on the

highest platform of the clustered hills, was built of rough-hewn

limestone, full of lights and shadows made by the dark dust of lichens

and the washings of the rain. Masses of beech and fir sheltered it on

the north, and spread down here and there along the green slopes like

flocks seeking the water which gleamed below. The archery-ground was a

carefully-kept enclosure on a bit of table-land at the farthest end of

the park, protected toward the south-west by tall elms and a thick

screen of hollies, which kept the gravel walk and the bit of newly-mown

turf where the targets were placed in agreeable afternoon shade. The

Archery Hall with an arcade in front showed like a white temple against

the greenery on the north side.

What could make a better background for the flower-groups of ladies,

moving and bowing and turning their necks as it would become the

leisurely lilies to do if they took to locomotion. The sounds too were

very pleasant to hear, even when the military band from Wanchester

ceased to play: musical laughs in all the registers and a harmony of

happy, friendly speeches, now rising toward mild excitement, now

sinking to an agreeable murmur.

No open-air amusement could be much freer from those noisy, crowding

conditions which spoil most modern pleasures; no Archery Meeting could

be more select, the number of friends accompanying the members being

restricted by an award of tickets, so as to keep the maximum within the

limits of convenience for the dinner and ball to be held in the castle.

Within the enclosure no plebeian spectators were admitted except Lord

Brackenshaw’s tenants and their families, and of these it was chiefly

the feminine members who used the privilege, bringing their little boys

and girls or younger brothers and sisters. The males among them

relieved the insipidity of the entertainment by imaginative betting, in

which the stake was “anything you like,” on their favorite archers; but

the young maidens, having a different principle of discrimination, were

considering which of those sweetly-dressed ladies they would choose to

be, if the choice were allowed them. Probably the form these rural

souls would most have striven for as a tabernacle, was some other than

Gwendolen’s—one with more pink in her cheeks and hair of the most

fashionable yellow; but among the male judges in the ranks immediately

surrounding her there was unusual unanimity in pronouncing her the

finest girl present.

No wonder she enjoyed her existence on that July day. Pre-eminence is

sweet to those who love it, even under mediocre circumstances. Perhaps

it was not quite mythical that a slave has been proud to be bought

first; and probably a barn-door fowl on sale, though he may not have

understood himself to be called the best of a bad lot, may have a

self-informed consciousness of his relative importance, and strut

consoled. But for complete enjoyment the outward and the inward must

concur. And that concurrence was happening to Gwendolen.

Who can deny that bows and arrows are among the prettiest weapons in

the world for feminine forms to play with? They prompt attitudes full

of grace and power, where that fine concentration of energy seen in all

markmanship, is freed from associations of bloodshed. The time-honored

British resource of “killing something” is no longer carried on with

bow and quiver; bands defending their passes against an invading nation

fight under another sort of shade than a cloud of arrows; and poisoned

darts are harmless survivals either in rhetoric or in regions

comfortably remote. Archery has no ugly smell of brimstone; breaks

nobody’s shins, breeds no athletic monsters; its only danger is that of

failing, which for generous blood is enough to mould skilful action.

And among the Brackenshaw archers the prizes were all of the nobler

symbolic kind; not properly to be carried off in a parcel, degrading

honor into gain; but the gold arrow and the silver, the gold star and

the silver, to be worn for a long time in sign of achievement and then

transferred to the next who did excellently. These signs of

pre-eminence had the virtue of wreaths without their inconveniences,

which might have produced a melancholy effect in the heat of the

ball-room. Altogether the Brackenshaw Archery Club was an institution

framed with good taste, so as not to have by necessity any ridiculous

incidents.

And to-day all incalculable elements were in its favor. There was mild

warmth, and no wind to disturb either hair or drapery or the course of

the arrow; all skillful preparation had fair play, and when there was a

general march to extract the arrows, the promenade of joyous young

creatures in light speech and laughter, the graceful movement in common

toward a common object, was a show worth looking at. Here Gwendolen

seemed a Calypso among her nymphs. It was in her attitudes and

movements that every one was obliged to admit her surpassing charm.

“That girl is like a high-mettled racer,” said Lord Brackenshaw to

young Clintock, one of the invited spectators.

“First chop! tremendously pretty too,” said the elegant Grecian, who

had been paying her assiduous attention; “I never saw her look better.”

Perhaps she had never looked so well. Her face was beaming with young

pleasure in which there was no malign rays of discontent; for being

satisfied with her own chances, she felt kindly toward everybody and

was satisfied with the universe. Not to have the highest distinction in

rank, not to be marked out as an heiress, like Miss Arrowpoint, gave an

added triumph in eclipsing those advantages. For personal

recommendation she would not have cared to change the family group

accompanying her for any other: her mamma’s appearance would have

suited an amiable duchess; her uncle and aunt Gascoigne with Anna made

equally gratifying figures in their way; and Gwendolen was too full of

joyous belief in herself to feel in the least jealous though Miss

Arrowpoint was one of the best archeresses.

Even the reappearance of the formidable Herr Klesmer, which caused some

surprise in the rest of the company, seemed only to fall in with

Gwendolen’s inclination to be amused. Short of Apollo himself, what

great musical _maestro_ could make a good figure at an archery meeting?

There was a very satirical light in Gwendolen’s eyes as she looked

toward the Arrowpoint party on their first entrance, when the contrast

between Klesmer and the average group of English country people seemed

at its utmost intensity in the close neighborhood of his hosts—or

patrons, as Mrs. Arrowpoint would have liked to hear them called, that

she might deny the possibility of any longer patronizing genius, its

royalty being universally acknowledged. The contrast might have amused

a graver personage than Gwendolen. We English are a miscellaneous

people, and any chance fifty of us will present many varieties of

animal architecture or facial ornament; but it must be admitted that

our prevailing expression is not that of a lively, impassioned race,

preoccupied with the ideal and carrying the real as a mere make-weight.

The strong point of the English gentleman pure is the easy style of his

figure and clothing; he objects to marked ins and outs in his costume,

and he also objects to looking inspired.

Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that ordinary stamp of the

well-bred Englishman, watching the entrance of Herr Klesmer—his mane

of hair floating backward in massive inconsistency with the chimney-pot

hat, which had the look of having been put on for a joke above his

pronounced but well-modeled features and powerful clear-shaven mouth

and chin; his tall, thin figure clad in a way which, not being strictly

English, was all the worse for its apparent emphasis of intention.

Draped in a loose garment with a Florentine _berretta_ on his head, he

would have been fit to stand by the side of Leonardo de Vinci; but how

when he presented himself in trousers which were not what English

feeling demanded about the knees?—and when the fire that showed itself

in his glances and the movements of his head, as he looked round him

with curiosity, was turned into comedy by a hat which ruled that

mankind should have well-cropped hair and a staid demeanor, such, for

example, as Mr. Arrowsmith’s, whose nullity of face and perfect

tailoring might pass everywhere without ridicule? One feels why it is

often better for greatness to be dead, and to have got rid of the

outward man.

Many present knew Klesmer, or knew of him; but they had only seen him

on candle-light occasions when he appeared simply as a musician, and he

had not yet that supreme, world-wide celebrity which makes an artist

great to the most ordinary people by their knowledge of his great

expensiveness. It was literally a new light for them to see him

in—presented unexpectedly on this July afternoon in an exclusive

society: some were inclined to laugh, others felt a little disgust at

the want of judgment shown by the Arrowpoints in this use of an

introductory card.

“What extreme guys those artistic fellows usually are!” said young

Clintock to Gwendolen. “Do look at the figure he cuts, bowing with his

hand on his heart to Lady Brackenshaw—and Mrs. Arrowpoint’s feather

just reaching his shoulder.”

“You are one of the profane,” said Gwendolen. “You are blind to the

majesty of genius. Herr Klesmer smites me with awe; I feel crushed in

his presence; my courage all oozes from me.”

“Ah, you understand all about his music.”

“No, indeed,” said Gwendolen, with a light laugh; “it is he who

understands all about mine and thinks it pitiable.” Klesmer’s verdict

on her singing had been an easier joke to her since he had been struck

by her _plastik_.

“It is not addressed to the ears of the future, I suppose. I’m glad of

that: it suits mine.”

“Oh, you are very kind. But how remarkably well Miss Arrowpoint looks

to-day! She would make quite a fine picture in that gold-colored dress.”

“Too splendid, don’t you think?”

“Well, perhaps a little too symbolical—too much like the figure of

Wealth in an allegory.”

This speech of Gwendolen’s had rather a malicious sound, but it was not

really more than a bubble of fun. She did not wish Miss Arrowpoint or

any one else to be out of the way, believing in her own good fortune

even more than in her skill. The belief in both naturally grew stronger

as the shooting went on, for she promised to achieve one of the best

scores—a success which astonished every one in a new member; and to

Gwendolen’s temperament one success determined another. She trod on

air, and all things pleasant seemed possible. The hour was enough for

her, and she was not obliged to think what she should do next to keep

her life at the due pitch.

“How does the scoring stand, I wonder?” said Lady Brackenshaw, a

gracious personage who, adorned with two little girls and a boy of

stout make, sat as lady paramount. Her lord had come up to her in one

of the intervals of shooting. “It seems to me that Miss Harleth is

likely to win the gold arrow.”

“Gad, I think she will, if she carries it on! she is running Juliet

Fenn hard. It is wonderful for one in her first year. Catherine is not

up to her usual mark,” continued his lordship, turning to the heiress’s

mother who sat near. “But she got the gold arrow last time. And there’s

a luck even in these games of skill. That’s better. It gives the hinder

ones a chance.”

“Catherine will be very glad for others to win,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint,

“she is so magnanimous. It was entirely her considerateness that made

us bring Herr Klesmer instead of Canon Stopley, who had expressed a

wish to come. For her own pleasure, I am sure she would rather have

brought the Canon; but she is always thinking of others. I told her it

was not quite _en règle_ to bring one so far out of our own set; but

she said, ‘Genius itself is not _en règle_; it comes into the world to

make new rules.’ And one must admit that.”

“Ay, to be sure,” said Lord Brackenshaw, in a tone of careless

dismissal, adding quickly, “For my part, I am not magnanimous; I should

like to win. But, confound it! I never have the chance now. I’m getting

old and idle. The young ones beat me. As old Nestor says—the gods

don’t give us everything at one time: I was a young fellow once, and

now I am getting an old and wise one. Old, at any rate; which is a gift

that comes to everybody if they live long enough, so it raises no

jealousy.” The Earl smiled comfortably at his wife.

“Oh, my lord, people who have been neighbors twenty years must not talk

to each other about age,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “Years, as the Tuscans

say, are made for the letting of houses. But where is our new neighbor?

I thought Mr. Grandcourt was to be here to-day.”

“Ah, by the way, so he was. The time’s getting on too,” said his

lordship, looking at his watch. “But he only got to Diplow the other

day. He came to us on Tuesday and said he had been a little bothered.

He may have been pulled in another direction. Why, Gascoigne!”—the

rector was just then crossing at a little distance with Gwendolen on

his arm, and turned in compliance with the call—“this is a little too

bad; you not only beat us yourself, but you bring up your niece to beat

all the archeresses.”

“It _is_ rather scandalous in her to get the better of elder members,”

said Mr. Gascoigne, with much inward satisfaction curling his short

upper lip. “But it is not my doing, my lord. I only meant her to make a

tolerable figure, without surpassing any one.”

“It is not my fault, either,” said Gwendolen, with pretty archness. “If

I am to aim, I can’t help hitting.”

“Ay, ay, that may be a fatal business for some people,” said Lord

Brackenshaw, good-humoredly; then taking out his watch and looking at

Mrs. Arrowpoint again—“The time’s getting on, as you say. But

Grandcourt is always late. I notice in town he’s always late, and he’s

no bowman—understands nothing about it. But I told him he must come;

he would see the flower of the neighborhood here. He asked about

you—had seen Arrowpoint’s card. I think you had not made his

acquaintance in town. He has been a good deal abroad. People don’t know

him much.”

“No; we are strangers,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “But that is not what

might have been expected. For his uncle Sir Hugo Mallinger and I are

great friends when we meet.”

“I don’t know; uncles and nephews are not so likely to be seen together

as uncles and nieces,” said his lordship, smiling toward the rector.

“But just come with me one instant, Gascoigne, will you? I want to

speak a word about the clout-shooting.”

Gwendolen chose to go too and be deposited in the same group with her

mamma and aunt until she had to shoot again. That Mr. Grandcourt might

after all not appear on the archery-ground, had begun to enter into

Gwendolen’s thought as a possible deduction from the completeness of

her pleasure. Under all her saucy satire, provoked chiefly by her

divination that her friends thought of him as a desirable match for

her, she felt something very far from indifference as to the impression

she would make on him. True, he was not to have the slightest power

over her (for Gwendolen had not considered that the desire to conquer

is itself a sort of subjection); she had made up her mind that he was

to be one of those complimentary and assiduously admiring men of whom

even her narrow experience had shown her several with various-colored

beards and various styles of bearing; and the sense that her friends

would want her to think him delightful, gave her a resistant

inclination to presuppose him ridiculous. But that was no reason why

she could spare his presence: and even a passing prevision of trouble

in case she despised and refused him, raised not the shadow of a wish

that he should save her that trouble by showing no disposition to make

her an offer. Mr. Grandcourt taking hardly any notice of her, and

becoming shortly engaged to Miss Arrowpoint, was not a picture which

flattered her imagination.

Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw’s mode of

accounting for Grandcourt’s non-appearance; and when he did arrive, no

consciousness—not even Mrs. Arrowpoint’s or Mr. Gascoigne’s—was more

awake to the fact than hers, although she steadily avoided looking

toward any point where he was likely to be. There should be no

slightest shifting of angles to betray that it was of any consequence

to her whether the much-talked-of Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt presented

himself or not. She became again absorbed in the shooting, and so

resolutely abstained from looking round observantly that, even

supposing him to have taken a conspicuous place among the spectators,

it might be clear she was not aware of him. And all the while the

certainty that he was there made a distinct thread in her

consciousness. Perhaps her shooting was the better for it: at any rate,

it gained in precision, and she at last raised a delightful storm of

clapping and applause by three hits running in the gold—a feat which

among the Brackenshaw archers had not the vulgar reward of a shilling

poll-tax, but that of a special gold star to be worn on the breast.

That moment was not only a happy one to herself—it was just what her

mamma and her uncle would have chosen for her. There was a general

falling into ranks to give her space that she might advance

conspicuously to receive the gold star from the hands of Lady

Brackenshaw; and the perfect movement of her fine form was certainly a

pleasant thing to behold in the clear afternoon light when the shadows

were long and still. She was the central object of that pretty picture,

and every one present must gaze at her. That was enough: she herself

was determined to see nobody in particular, or to turn her eyes any way

except toward Lady Brackenshaw, but her thoughts undeniably turned in

other ways. It entered a little into her pleasure that Herr Klesmer

must be observing her at a moment when music was out of the question,

and his superiority very far in the background; for vanity is as ill

at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it

cannot return; and the unconquered Klesmer threw a trace of his malign

power even across her pleasant consciousness that Mr. Grandcourt was

seeing her to the utmost advantage, and was probably giving her an

admiration unmixed with criticism. She did not expect to admire _him_,

but that was not necessary to her peace of mind.

Gwendolen met Lady Brackenshaw’s gracious smile without blushing (which

only came to her when she was taken by surprise), but with a charming

gladness of expression, and then bent with easy grace to have the star

fixed near her shoulder. That little ceremony had been over long enough

for her to have exchanged playful speeches and received congratulations

as she moved among the groups who were now interesting themselves in

the results of the scoring; but it happened that she stood outside

examining the point of an arrow with rather an absent air when Lord

Brackenshaw came up to her and said,

“Miss Harleth, here is a gentleman who is not willing to wait any

longer for an introduction. He has been getting Mrs. Davilow to send me

with him. Will you allow me to introduce Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt?”

BOOK II.—MEETING STREAMS.

CHAPTER XI.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to

get a definite outline for our ignorance.

Mr. Grandcourt’s wish to be introduced had no suddenness for Gwendolen;

but when Lord Brackenshaw moved aside a little for the prefigured

stranger to come forward and she felt herself face to face with the

real man, there was a little shock which flushed her cheeks and

vexatiously deepened with her consciousness of it. The shock came from

the reversal of her expectations: Grandcourt could hardly have been

more unlike all her imaginary portraits of him. He was slightly taller

than herself, and their eyes seemed to be on a level; there was not the

faintest smile on his face as he looked at her, not a trace of

self-consciousness or anxiety in his bearing: when he raised his hat he

showed an extensive baldness surrounded with a mere fringe of

reddish-blonde hair, but he also showed a perfect hand; the line of

feature from brow to chin undisguised by beard was decidedly handsome,

with only moderate departures from the perpendicular, and the slight

whisker too was perpendicular. It was not possible for a human aspect

to be freer from grimace or solicitous wrigglings: also it was perhaps

not possible for a breathing man wide awake to look less animated. The

correct Englishman, drawing himself up from his bow into rigidity,

assenting severely, and seemed to be in a state of internal drill,

suggests a suppressed vivacity, and may be suspected of letting go with

some violence when he is released from parade; but Grandcourt’s bearing

had no rigidity, it inclined rather to the flaccid. His complexion had

a faded fairness resembling that of an actress when bare of the

artificial white and red; his long narrow gray eyes expressed nothing

but indifference. Attempts at description are stupid: who can all at

once describe a human being? Even when he is presented to us we only

begin that knowledge of his appearance which must be completed by

innumerable impressions under differing circumstances. We recognize the

alphabet; we are not sure of the language. I am only mentioning the

point that Gwendolen saw by the light of a prepared contrast in the

first minutes of her meeting with Grandcourt: they were summed up in

the words, “He is not ridiculous.” But forthwith Lord Brackenshaw was

gone, and what is called conversation had begun, the first and constant

element in it being that Grandcourt looked at Gwendolen persistently

with a slightly exploring gaze, but without change of expression, while

she only occasionally looked at him with a flash of observation a

little softened by coquetry. Also, after her answers there was a longer

or shorter pause before he spoke again.

“I used to think archery was a great bore,” Grandcourt began. He spoke

with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as of a

distinguished personage with a distinguished cold on his chest.

“Are you converted to-day?” said Gwendolen.

(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes of opinion

about herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.)

“Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one generally

sees people missing and simpering.”

“I suppose you are a first-rate shot with a rifle.”

(Pause, during which Gwendolen, having taken a rapid observation of

Grandcourt, made a brief graphic description of him to an indefinite

hearer.)

“I have left off shooting.”

“Oh, then, you are a formidable person. People who have done things once

and left them off make one feel very contemptible, as if one were using

cast-off fashions. I hope you have not left off all follies, because I

practice a great many.”

(Pause, during which Gwendolen made several interpretations of her own

speech.)

“What do you call follies?”

“Well, in general, I think, whatever is agreeable is called a folly. But

you have not left off hunting, I hear.”

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen recalled what she had heard about

Grandcourt’s position, and decided that he was the most

aristocratic-looking man she had ever seen.)

“One must do something.”

“And do you care about the turf?—or is that among the things you have

left off?”

(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely calm,

cold manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than other men,

and not likely to interfere with his wife’s preferences.)

“I run a horse now and then; but I don’t go in for the thing as some

men do. Are you fond of horses?”

“Yes, indeed; I never like my life so well as when I am on horseback,

having a great gallop. I think of nothing. I only feel myself strong

and happy.”

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen wondered whether Grandcourt would like what

she said, but assured herself that she was not going to disguise her

tastes.)

“Do you like danger?”

“I don’t know. When I am on horseback I never think of danger. It seems

to me that if I broke my bones I should not feel it. I should go at

anything that came in my way.”

(Pause during which Gwendolen had run through a whole hunting season

with two chosen hunters to ride at will.)

“You would perhaps like tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I saw some of

that for a season or two in the East. Everything here is poor stuff

after that.”

“_You_ are fond of danger, then?”

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen speculated on the probability that the men of

coldest manners were the most adventurous, and felt the strength of her

own insight, supposing the question had to be decided.)

“One must have something or other. But one gets used to it.”

“I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything is new to me:

it is only that I can’t get enough of it. I am not used to anything

except being dull, which I should like to leave off as you have left

off shooting.”

(Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man of cold and

distinguished manners might possibly be a dull companion; but on the

other hand she thought that most persons were dull, that she had not

observed husbands to be companions—and that after all she was not

going to accept Grandcourt.)

“Why are you dull?”

“This is a dreadful neighborhood. There is nothing to be done in it.

That is why I practiced my archery.”

(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an unmarried

woman who could not go about and had no command of anything must

necessarily be dull through all degrees of comparison as time went on.)

“You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry the first

prize.”

“I don’t know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe how well

Miss Arrowpoint shot?”

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been known to

choose some one else than the woman they most admired, and recalled

several experiences of that kind in novels.)

“Miss Arrowpoint. No—that is, yes.”

“Shall we go now and hear what the scoring says? Every one is going to

the other end now—shall we join them? I think my uncle is looking

toward me. He perhaps wants me.”

Gwendolen found a relief for herself by thus changing the situation:

not that the _tête-à-tête_ was quite disagreeable to her; but while it

lasted she apparently could not get rid of the unwonted flush in her

cheeks and the sense of surprise which made her feel less mistress of

herself than usual. And this Mr. Grandcourt, who seemed to feel his own

importance more than he did hers—a sort of unreasonableness few of us

can tolerate—must not take for granted that he was of great moment to

her, or that because others speculated on him as a desirable match she

held herself altogether at his beck. How Grandcourt had filled up the

pauses will be more evident hereafter.

“You have just missed the gold arrow, Gwendolen,” said Mr. Gascoigne.

“Miss Juliet Fenn scores eight above you.”

“I am very glad to hear it. I should have felt that I was making myself

too disagreeable—taking the best of everything,” said Gwendolen, quite

easily.

It was impossible to be jealous of Juliet Fenn, a girl as middling as

midday market in everything but her archery and plainness, in which

last she was noticeable like her father: underhung and with receding

brow resembling that of the more intelligent fishes. (Surely,

considering the importance which is given to such an accident in female

offspring, marriageable men, or what the new English calls “intending

bridegrooms,” should look at themselves dispassionately in the glass,

since their natural selection of a mate prettier than themselves is not

certain to bar the effect of their own ugliness.)

There was now a lively movement in the mingling groups, which carried

the talk along with it. Every one spoke to every one else by turns, and

Gwendolen, who chose to see what was going on around her now, observed

that Grandcourt was having Klesmer presented to him by some one unknown

to her—a middle-aged man, with dark, full face and fat hands, who

seemed to be on the easiest terms with both, and presently led the way

in joining the Arrowpoints, whose acquaintance had already been made by

both him and Grandcourt. Who this stranger was she did not care much to

know; but she wished to observe what was Grandcourt’s manner toward

others than herself. Precisely the same: except that he did not look

much at Miss Arrowpoint, but rather at Klesmer, who was speaking with

animation—now stretching out his long fingers horizontally, now

pointing downward with his forefinger, now folding his arms and

tossing his mane, while he addressed himself first to one and then to

the other, including Grandcourt, who listened with an impassive face

and narrow eyes, his left forefinger in his waistcoat-pocket, and his

right slightly touching his thin whisker.

“I wonder which style Miss Arrowpoint admires most,” was a thought that

glanced through Gwendolen’s mind, while her eyes and lips gathered

rather a mocking expression. But she would not indulge her sense of

amusement by watching, as if she were curious, and she gave all her

animation to those immediately around her, determined not to care

whether Mr. Grandcourt came near her again or not.

He did come, however, and at a moment when he could propose to

conduct Mrs. Davilow to her carriage, “Shall we meet again in the

ball-room?” she said as he raised his hat at parting. The “yes” in

reply had the usual slight drawl and perfect gravity.

“You were wrong for once, Gwendolen,” said Mrs. Davilow, during their

few minutes’ drive to the castle.

“In what, mamma?”

“About Mr. Grandcourt’s appearance and manners. You can’t find anything

ridiculous in him.”

“I suppose I could if I tried, but I don’t want to do it,” said

Gwendolen, rather pettishly; and her mother was afraid to say more.

It was the rule on these occasions for the ladies and gentlemen to dine

apart, so that the dinner might make a time of comparative ease and

rest for both. Indeed, the gentlemen had a set of archery stories about

the epicurism of the ladies, who had somehow been reported to show a

revolting masculine judgment in venison, even asking for the fat—a

proof of the frightful rate at which corruption might go on in women,

but for severe social restraint, and every year the amiable Lord

Brackenshaw, who was something of a _gourmet_, mentioned Byron’s

opinion that a woman should never be seen eating,—introducing it with

a confidential—“The fact is” as if he were for the first time

admitting his concurrence in that sentiment of the refined poet.

In the ladies’ dining-room it was evident that Gwendolen was not a

general favorite with her own sex: there were no beginnings of intimacy

between her and other girls, and in conversation they rather noticed

what she said than spoke to her in free exchange. Perhaps it was that

she was not much interested in them, and when left alone in their

company had a sense of empty benches. Mrs. Vulcany once remarked that

Miss Harleth was too fond of the gentlemen; but we know that she was

not in the least fond of them—she was only fond of their homage—and

women did not give her homage. The exception to this willing aloofness

from her was Miss Arrowpoint, who often managed unostentatiously to be

by her side, and talked to her with quiet friendliness.

“She knows, as I do, that our friends are ready to quarrel over a

husband for us,” thought Gwendolen, “and she is determined not to enter

into the quarrel.”

“I think Miss Arrowpoint has the best manners I ever saw,” said Mrs.

Davilow, when she and Gwendolen were in a dressing-room with Mrs.

Gascoigne and Anna, but at a distance where they could have their talk

apart.

“I wish I were like her,” said Gwendolen.

“Why? Are you getting discontented with yourself, Gwen?”

“No; but I am discontented with things. She seems contented.”

“I am sure you ought to be satisfied to-day. You must have enjoyed the

shooting. I saw you did.”

“Oh, that is over now, and I don’t know what will come next,” said

Gwendolen, stretching herself with a sort of moan and throwing up her

arms. They were bare now; it was the fashion to dance in the archery

dress, throwing off the jacket; and the simplicity of her white

cashmere with its border of pale green set off her form to the utmost.

A thin line of gold round her neck, and the gold star on her breast,

were her only ornaments. Her smooth soft hair piled up into a grand

crown made a clear line about her brow. Sir Joshua would have been glad

to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the

historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the

truth of change—only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

“The dancing will come next,” said Mrs. Davilow “You are sure to enjoy

that.”

“I shall only dance in the quadrille. I told Mr. Clintock so. I shall

not waltz or polk with any one.”

“Why in the world do you say that all on a sudden?”

“I can’t bear having ugly people so near me.”

“Whom do you mean by ugly people?”

“Oh, plenty.”

“Mr. Clintock, for example, is not ugly.” Mrs. Davilow dared not

mention Grandcourt.

“Well, I hate woolen cloth touching me.”

“Fancy!” said Mrs. Davilow to her sister who now came up from the other

end of the room. “Gwendolen says she will not waltz or polk.”

“She is rather given to whims, I think,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, gravely.

“It would be more becoming in her to behave as other young ladies do on

such an occasion as this; especially when she has had the advantage of

first-rate dancing lessons.”

“Why should I dance if I don’t like it, aunt? It is not in the

catechism.”

“My _dear_!” said Mrs. Gascoigne, in a tone of severe check, and Anna

looked frightened at Gwendolen’s daring. But they all passed on without

saying any more.

Apparently something had changed Gwendolen’s mood since the hour of

exulting enjoyment in the archery-ground. But she did not look the

worse under the chandeliers in the ball-room, where the soft splendor

of the scene and the pleasant odors from the conservatory could not but

be soothing to the temper, when accompanied with the consciousness of

being preeminently sought for. Hardly a dancing man but was anxious to

have her for a partner, and each whom she accepted was in a state of

melancholy remonstrance that she would not waltz or polk.

“Are you under a vow, Miss Harleth?”—“Why are you so cruel to us

all?”—“You waltzed with me in February.”—“And you who waltz so

perfectly!” were exclamations not without piquancy for her. The ladies

who waltzed naturally thought that Miss Harleth only wanted to make

herself particular; but her uncle when he overheard her refusal,

supported her by saying,

“Gwendolen has usually good reasons.” He thought she was certainly more

distinguished in not waltzing, and he wished her to be distinguished.

The archery ball was intended to be kept at the subdued pitch that

suited all dignities clerical and secular; it was not an escapement for

youthful high spirits, and he himself was of opinion that the

fashionable dances were too much of a romp.

Among the remonstrant dancing men, however, Mr. Grandcourt was not

numbered. After standing up for a quadrille with Miss Arrowpoint, it

seemed that he meant to ask for no other partner. Gwendolen observed

him frequently with the Arrowpoints, but he never took an opportunity

of approaching her. Mr. Gascoigne was sometimes speaking to him; but

Mr. Gascoigne was everywhere. It was in her mind now that she would

probably after all not have the least trouble about him: perhaps he had

looked at her without any particular admiration, and was too much used

to everything in the world to think of her as more than one of the

girls who were invited in that part of the country. Of course! It was

ridiculous of elders to entertain notions about what a man would do,

without having seen him even through a telescope. Probably he meant to

marry Miss Arrowpoint. Whatever might come, she, Gwendolen, was not

going to be disappointed: the affair was a joke whichever way it

turned, for she had never committed herself even by a silent confidence

in anything Mr. Grandcourt would do. Still, she noticed that he did

sometimes quietly and gradually change his position according to hers,

so that he could see her whenever she was dancing, and if he did not

admire her—so much the worse for him.

This movement for the sake of being in sight of her was more direct

than usual rather late in the evening, when Gwendolen had accepted

Klesmer as a partner; and that wide-glancing personage, who saw

everything and nothing by turns, said to her when they were walking,

“Mr. Grandcourt is a man of taste. He likes to see you dancing.”

“Perhaps he likes to look at what is against his taste,” said

Gwendolen, with a light laugh; she was quite courageous with Klesmer

now. “He may be so tired of admiring that he likes disgust for variety.”

“Those words are not suitable to your lips,” said Klesmer, quickly,

with one of his grand frowns, while he shook his hand as if to banish

the discordant sounds.

“Are you as critical of words as of music?”

“Certainly I am. I should require your words to be what your face and

form are—always among the meanings of a noble music.”

“That is a compliment as well as a correction. I am obliged for both.

But do you know I am bold enough to wish to correct _you_, and require

you to understand a joke?”

“One may understand jokes without liking them,” said the terrible

Klesmer. “I have had opera books sent me full of jokes; it was just

because I understood them that I did not like them. The comic people

are ready to challenge a man because he looks grave. ‘You don’t see the

witticism, sir?’ ‘No, sir, but I see what you meant.’ Then I am what we

call ticketed as a fellow without _esprit_. But, in fact,” said

Klesmer, suddenly dropping from his quick narrative to a reflective

tone, with an impressive frown, “I am very sensible to wit and humor.”

“I am glad you tell me that,” said Gwendolen, not without some

wickedness of intention. But Klesmer’s thoughts had flown off on the

wings of his own statement, as their habit was, and she had the

wickedness all to herself. “Pray, who is that standing near the

card-room door?” she went on, seeing there the same stranger with whom

Klesmer had been in animated talk on the archery ground. “He is a

friend of yours, I think.”

“No, no; an amateur I have seen in town; Lush, a Mr. Lush—too fond of

Meyerbeer and Scribe—too fond of the mechanical-dramatic.”

“Thanks. I wanted to know whether you thought his face and form

required that his words should be among the meanings of noble music?”

Klesmer was conquered, and flashed at her a delightful smile which made

them quite friendly until she begged to be deposited by the side of her

mamma.

Three minutes afterward her preparations for Grandcourt’s indifference

were all canceled. Turning her head after some remark to her mother,

she found that he had made his way up to her.

“May I ask if you are tired of dancing, Miss Harleth?” he began,

looking down with his former unperturbed expression.

“Not in the least.”

“Will you do me the honor—the next—or another quadrille?”

“I should have been very happy,” said Gwendolen looking at her card,

“but I am engaged for the next to Mr. Clintock—and indeed I perceive

that I am doomed for every quadrille; I have not one to dispose of.”

She was not sorry to punish Mr. Grandcourt’s tardiness, yet at the same

time she would have liked to dance with him. She gave him a charming

smile as she looked up to deliver her answer, and he stood still

looking down at her with no smile at all.

“I am unfortunate in being too late,” he said, after a moment’s pause.

“It seemed to me that you did not care for dancing,” said Gwendolen. “I

thought it might be one of the things you had left off.”

“Yes, but I have not begun to dance with you,” said Grandcourt. Always

there was the same pause before he took up his cue. “You make dancing a

new thing, as you make archery.”

“Is novelty always agreeable?”

“No, no—not always.”

“Then I don’t know whether to feel flattered or not. When you had once

danced with me there would be no more novelty in it.”

“On the contrary, there would probably be much more.”

“That is deep. I don’t understand.”

“It is difficult to make Miss Harleth understand her power?” Here

Grandcourt had turned to Mrs. Davilow, who, smiling gently at her

daughter, said,

“I think she does not generally strike people as slow to understand.”

“Mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a deprecating tone, “I am adorably stupid,

and want everything explained to me—when the meaning is pleasant.”

“If you are stupid, I admit that stupidity is adorable,” returned

Grandcourt, after the usual pause, and without change of tone. But

clearly he knew what to say.

“I begin to think that my cavalier has forgotten me,” Gwendolen

observed after a little while. “I see the quadrille is being formed.”

“He deserves to be renounced,” said Grandcourt.

“I think he is very pardonable,” said Gwendolen.

“There must have been some misunderstanding,” said Mrs. Davilow. “Mr.

Clintock was too anxious about the engagement to have forgotten it.”

But now Lady Brackenshaw came up and said, “Miss Harleth, Mr. Clintock

has charged me to express to you his deep regret that he was obliged to

leave without having the pleasure of dancing with you again. An express

came from his father, the archdeacon; something important; he was to

go. He was _au désespoir_.”

“Oh, he was very good to remember the engagement under the

circumstances,” said Gwendolen. “I am sorry he was called away.” It was

easy to be politely sorrowful on so felicitous an occasion.

“Then I can profit by Mr. Clintock’s misfortune?” said Grandcourt. “May

I hope that you will let me take his place?”

“I shall be very happy to dance the next quadrille with you.”

The appropriateness of the event seemed an augury, and as Gwendolen

stood up for the quadrille with Grandcourt, there was a revival in her

of the exultation—the sense of carrying everything before her, which

she had felt earlier in the day. No man could have walked through the

quadrille with more irreproachable ease than Grandcourt; and the

absence of all eagerness in his attention to her suited his partner’s

taste. She was now convinced that he meant to distinguish her, to mark

his admiration of her in a noticeable way; and it began to appear

probable that she would have it in her power to reject him, whence

there was a pleasure in reckoning up the advantages which would make

her rejection splendid, and in giving Mr. Grandcourt his utmost value.

It was also agreeable to divine that this exclusive selection of her to

dance with, from among all the unmarried ladies present, would attract

observation; though she studiously avoided seeing this, and at the end

of the quadrille walked away on Grandcourt’s arm as if she had been one

of the shortest sighted instead of the longest and widest sighted of

mortals. They encountered Miss Arrowpoint, who was standing with Lady

Brackenshaw and a group of gentlemen. The heiress looked at Gwendolen

invitingly and said, “I hope you will vote with us, Miss Harleth, and

Mr. Grandcourt too, though he is not an archer.” Gwendolen and

Grandcourt paused to join the group, and found that the voting turned

on the project of a picnic archery meeting to be held in Cardell Chase,

where the evening entertainment would be more poetic than a ball under

chandeliers—a feast of sunset lights along the glades and through the

branches and over the solemn tree-tops.

Gwendolen thought the scheme delightful—equal to playing Robin Hood

and Maid Marian: and Mr. Grandcourt, when appealed to a second time,

said it was a thing to be done; whereupon Mr. Lush, who stood behind

Lady Brackenshaw’s elbow, drew Gwendolen’s notice by saying with a

familiar look and tone to Grandcourt, “Diplow would be a good place for

the meeting, and more convenient: there’s a fine bit between the oaks

toward the north gate.”

Impossible to look more unconscious of being addressed than Grandcourt;

but Gwendolen took a new survey of the speaker, deciding, first, that

he must be on terms of intimacy with the tenant of Diplow, and,

secondly, that she would never, if she could help it, let him come

within a yard of her. She was subject to physical antipathies, and Mr.

Lush’s prominent eyes, fat though not clumsy figure, and strong black

gray-besprinkled hair of frizzy thickness, which, with the rest of his

prosperous person, was enviable to many, created one of the strongest

of her antipathies. To be safe from his looking at her, she murmured to

Grandcourt, “I should like to continue walking.”

He obeyed immediately; but when they were thus away from any audience,

he spoke no word for several minutes, and she, out of a half-amused,

half-serious inclination for experiment, would not speak first. They

turned into the large conservatory, beautifully lit up with Chinese

lamps. The other couples there were at a distance which would not have

interfered with any dialogue, but still they walked in silence until

they had reached the farther end where there was a flush of pink light,

and the second wide opening into the ball-room. Grandcourt, when they

had half turned round, paused and said languidly,

“Do you like this kind of thing?”

If the situation had been described to Gwendolen half an hour before,

she would have laughed heartily at it, and could only have imagined

herself returning a playful, satirical answer. But for some mysterious

reason—it was a mystery of which she had a faint wondering

consciousness—she dared not be satirical: she had begun to feel a wand

over her that made her afraid of offending Grandcourt.

“Yes,” she said, quietly, without considering what “kind of thing” was

meant—whether the flowers, the scents, the ball in general, or this

episode of walking with Mr. Grandcourt in particular. And they returned

along the conservatory without farther interpretation. She then

proposed to go and sit down in her old place, and they walked among

scattered couples preparing for the waltz to the spot where Mrs.

Davilow had been seated all the evening. As they approached it her seat

was vacant, but she was coming toward it again, and, to Gwendolen’s

shuddering annoyance, with Mr. Lush at her elbow. There was no avoiding

the confrontation: her mamma came close to her before they had reached

the seats, and, after a quiet greeting smile, said innocently,

“Gwendolen, dear, let me present Mr. Lush to you.” Having just made the

acquaintance of this personage, as an intimate and constant companion

of Mr. Grandcourt’s, Mrs. Davilow imagined it altogether desirable that

her daughter also should make the acquaintance.

It was hardly a bow that Gwendolen gave—rather, it was the slightest

forward sweep of the head away from the physiognomy that inclined

itself toward her, and she immediately moved toward her seat, saying,

“I want to put on my burnous.” No sooner had she reached it, than Mr.

Lush was there, and had the burnous in his hand: to annoy this

supercilious young lady, he would incur the offense of forestalling

Grandcourt; and, holding up the garment close to Gwendolen, he said,

“Pray, permit me?” But she, wheeling away from him as if he had been a

muddy hound, glided on to the ottoman, saying, “No, thank you.”

A man who forgave this would have much Christian feeling, supposing he

had intended to be agreeable to the young lady; but before he seized

the burnous Mr. Lush had ceased to have that intention. Grandcourt

quietly took the drapery from him, and Mr. Lush, with a slight bow,

moved away. “You had perhaps better put it on,” said Mr. Grandcourt,

looking down on her without change of expression.

“Thanks; perhaps it would be wise,” said Gwendolen, rising, and

submitting very gracefully to take the burnous on her shoulders.

After that, Mr. Grandcourt exchanged a few polite speeches with Mrs.

Davilow, and, in taking leave, asked permission to call at Offendene

the next day. He was evidently not offended by the insult directed

toward his friend. Certainly Gwendolen’s refusal of the burnous from

Mr. Lush was open to the interpretation that she wished to receive it

from Mr. Grandcourt. But she, poor child, had no design in this action,

and was simply following her antipathy and inclination, confiding in

them as she did in the more reflective judgments into which they

entered as sap into leafage. Gwendolen had no sense that these men were

dark enigmas to her, or that she needed any help in drawing conclusions

about them—Mr. Grandcourt at least. The chief question was, how far

his character and ways might answer her wishes; and unless she were

satisfied about that, she had said to herself that she would not accept

his offer.

Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history

than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of

the way in which she could make her life pleasant?—in a time, too,

when ideas were with fresh vigor making armies of themselves, and the

universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely; when women on the

other side of the world would not mourn for the husbands and sons who

died bravely in a common cause, and men stinted of bread on our side of

the world heard of that willing loss and were patient: a time when the

soul of man was walking to pulses which had for centuries been beating

in him unfelt, until their full sum made a new life of terror or of joy.

What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind

visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are

enduring and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward

through the ages the treasure of human affections.

CHAPTER XII.

“O gentlemen, the time of life is short;

To spend that shortness basely were too long,

If life did ride upon a dial’s point,

Still ending at the arrival of an hour.”

—SHAKESPEARE: _Henry IV_.

On the second day after the archery meeting, Mr. Henleigh Mallinger

Grandcourt was at his breakfast-table with Mr. Lush. Everything around

them was agreeable: the summer air through the open windows, at which

the dogs could walk in from the old green turf on the lawn; the soft,

purplish coloring of the park beyond, stretching toward a mass of

bordering wood; the still life in the room, which seemed the stiller

for its sober antiquated elegance, as if it kept a conscious, well-bred

silence, unlike the restlessness of vulgar furniture.

Whether the gentlemen were agreeable to each other was less evident.

Mr. Grandcourt had drawn his chair aside so as to face the lawn, and

with his left leg over another chair, and his right elbow on the table,

was smoking a large cigar, while his companion was still eating. The

dogs—half-a-dozen of various kinds were moving lazily in and out,

taking attitudes of brief attention—gave a vacillating preference

first to one gentleman, then to the other; being dogs in such good

circumstances that they could play at hunger, and liked to be served

with delicacies which they declined to put in their mouths; all except

Fetch, the beautiful liver-colored water-spaniel, which sat with its

forepaws firmly planted and its expressive brown face turned upward,

watching Grandcourt with unshaken constancy. He held in his lap a tiny

Maltese dog with a tiny silver collar and bell, and when he had a hand

unused by cigar or coffee-cup, it rested on this small parcel of animal

warmth. I fear that Fetch was jealous, and wounded that her master gave

her no word or look; at last it seemed that she could bear this neglect

no longer, and she gently put her large silky paw on her master’s leg.

Grandcourt looked at her with unchanged face for half a minute, and

then took the trouble to lay down his cigar while he lifted the

unimpassioned Fluff close to his chin and gave it caressing pats, all

the while gravely watching Fetch, who, poor thing, whimpered

interruptedly, as if trying to repress that sign of discontent, and at

last rested her head beside the appealing paw, looking up with piteous

beseeching. So, at least, a lover of dogs must have interpreted Fetch,

and Grandcourt kept so many dogs that he was reputed to love them; at

any rate, his impulse to act just in that way started from such an

interpretation. But when the amusing anguish burst forth in a howling

bark, Grandcourt pushed Fetch down without speaking, and, depositing

Fluff carelessly on the table (where his black nose predominated over a

salt-cellar), began to look to his cigar, and found, with some

annoyance against Fetch as the cause, that the brute of a cigar

required relighting. Fetch, having begun to wail, found, like others of

her sex, that it was not easy to leave off; indeed, the second howl was

a louder one, and the third was like unto it.

“Turn out that brute, will you?” said Grandcourt to Lush, without

raising his voice or looking at him—as if he counted on attention to

the smallest sign.

And Lush immediately rose, lifted Fetch, though she was rather heavy,

and he was not fond of stooping, and carried her out, disposing of her

in some way that took him a couple of minutes before he returned. He

then lit a cigar, placed himself at an angle where he could see

Grandcourt’s face without turning, and presently said,

“Shall you ride or drive to Quetcham to-day?”

“I am not going to Quetcham.”

“You did not go yesterday.”

Grandcourt smoked in silence for half a minute, and then said,

“I suppose you sent my card and inquiries.”

“I went myself at four, and said you were sure to be there shortly.

They would suppose some accident prevented you from fulfilling the

intention. Especially if you go to-day.”

Silence for a couple of minutes. Then Grandcourt said, “What men are

invited here with their wives?”

Lush drew out a note-book. “The Captain and Mrs. Torrington come next

week. Then there are Mr. Hollis and Lady Flora, and the Cushats and the

Gogoffs.”

“Rather a ragged lot,” remarked Grandcourt, after a while. “Why did you

ask the Gogoffs? When you write invitations in my name, be good enough

to give me a list, instead of bringing down a giantess on me without my

knowledge. She spoils the look of the room.”

“You invited the Gogoffs yourself when you met them in Paris.”

“What has my meeting them in Paris to do with it? I told you to give me

a list.”

Grandcourt, like many others, had two remarkably different voices.

Hitherto we have heard him speaking in a superficial interrupted drawl

suggestive chiefly of languor and _ennui_. But this last brief speech

was uttered in subdued inward, yet distinct, tones, which Lush had long

been used to recognize as the expression of a peremptory will.

“Are there any other couples you would like to invite?”

“Yes; think of some decent people, with a daughter or two. And one of

your damned musicians. But not a comic fellow.”

“I wonder if Klesmer would consent to come to us when he leaves

Quetcham. Nothing but first-class music will go down with Miss

Arrowpoint.”

Lush spoke carelessly, but he was really seizing an opportunity and

fixing an observant look on Grandcourt, who now for the first time,

turned his eyes toward his companion, but slowly and without speaking

until he had given two long luxuriant puffs, when he said, perhaps in a

lower tone than ever, but with a perceptible edge of contempt,

“What in the name of nonsense have I to do with Miss Arrowpoint and her

music?”

“Well, something,” said Lush, jocosely. “You need not give yourself

much trouble, perhaps. But some forms must be gone through before a man

can marry a million.”

“Very likely. But I am not going to marry a million.”

“That’s a pity—to fling away an opportunity of this sort, and knock

down your own plans.”

“_Your_ plans, I suppose you mean.”

“You have some debts, you know, and things may turn out inconveniently,

after all. The heirship is not _absolutely_ certain.”

Grandcourt did not answer, and Lush went on.

“It really is a fine opportunity. The father and mother ask for nothing

better, I can see, and the daughter’s looks and manners require no

allowances, any more than if she hadn’t a sixpence. She is not

beautiful; but equal to carrying any rank. And she is not likely to

refuse such prospects as you can offer her.”

“Perhaps not.”

“The father and mother would let you do anything you like with them.”

“But I should not like to do anything with them.”

Here it was Lush who made a little pause before speaking again, and

then he said in a deep voice of remonstrance, “Good God, Grandcourt!

after your experience, will you let a whim interfere with your

comfortable settlement in life?”

“Spare your oratory. I know what I am going to do.”

“What?” Lush put down his cigar and thrust his hands into his side

pockets, as if he had to face something exasperating, but meant to keep

his temper.

“I am going to marry the other girl.”

“Have you fallen in love?” This question carried a strong sneer.

“I am going to marry her.”

“You have made her an offer already, then?”

“No.”

“She is a young lady with a will of her own, I fancy. Extremely well

fitted to make a rumpus. She would know what she liked.”

“She doesn’t like you,” said Grandcourt, with the ghost of a smile.

“Perfectly true,” said Lush, adding again in a markedly sneering tone.

“However, if you and she are devoted to each other, that will be

enough.”

Grandcourt took no notice of this speech, but sipped his coffee, rose,

and strolled out on the lawn, all the dogs following him.

Lush glanced after him a moment, then resumed his cigar and lit it, but

smoked slowly, consulting his beard with inspecting eyes and fingers,

till he finally stroked it with an air of having arrived at some

conclusion, and said in a subdued voice,

“Check, old boy!”

Lush, being a man of some ability, had not known Grandcourt for fifteen

years without learning what sort of measures were useless with him,

though what sort might be useful remained often dubious. In the

beginning of his career he held a fellowship, and was near taking

orders for the sake of a college living, but, not being fond of that

prospect, accepted instead the office of traveling companion to a

marquess, and afterward to young Grandcourt, who had lost his father

early, and who found Lush so convenient that he had allowed him to

become prime minister in all his more personal affairs. The habit of

fifteen years had made Grandcourt more and more in need of Lush’s

handiness, and Lush more and more in need of the lazy luxury to which

his transactions on behalf of Grandcourt made no interruption worth

reckoning. I cannot say that the same lengthened habit had intensified

Grandcourt’s want of respect for his companion since that want had been

absolute from the beginning, but it had confirmed his sense that he

might kick Lush if he chose—only he never did choose to kick any

animal, because the act of kicking is a compromising attitude, and a

gentleman’s dogs should be kicked for him. He only said things which

might have exposed himself to be kicked if his confidant had been a man

of independent spirit. But what son of a vicar who has stinted his wife

and daughters of calico in order to send his male offspring to Oxford,

can keep an independent spirit when he is bent on dining with high

discrimination, riding good horses, living generally in the most

luxuriant honey-blossomed clover—and all without working? Mr. Lush had

passed for a scholar once, and had still a sense of scholarship when he

was not trying to remember much of it; but the bachelor’s and other

arts which soften manners are a time-honored preparation for sinecures;

and Lush’s present comfortable provision was as good a sinecure in not

requiring more than the odor of departed learning. He was not

unconscious of being held kickable, but he preferred counting that

estimate among the peculiarities of Grandcourt’s character, which made

one of his incalculable moods or judgments as good as another. Since in

his own opinion he had never done a bad action, it did not seem

necessary to consider whether he should be likely to commit one if his

love of ease required it. Lush’s love of ease was well-satisfied at

present, and if his puddings were rolled toward him in the dust, he

took the inside bits and found them relishing.

This morning, for example, though he had encountered more annoyance

than usual, he went to his private sitting-room and played a good hour

on the violoncello.

CHAPTER XIII.

“Philistia, be thou glad of me!”

Grandcourt having made up his mind to marry Miss Harleth, showed a

power of adapting means to ends. During the next fortnight there was

hardly a day on which by some arrangement or other he did not see her,

or prove by emphatic attentions that she occupied his thoughts. His

cousin, Mrs. Torrington, was now doing the honors of his house, so that

Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen could be invited to a large party at Diplow

in which there were many witnesses how the host distinguished the

dowerless beauty, and showed no solicitude about the heiress. The

world—I mean Mr. Gascoigne and all the families worth speaking of

within visiting distance of Pennicote—felt an assurance on the subject

which in the rector’s mind converted itself into a resolution to do his

duty by his niece and see that the settlements were adequate. Indeed

the wonder to him and Mrs. Davilow was that the offer for which so many

suitable occasions presented themselves had not been already made; and

in this wonder Grandcourt himself was not without a share. When he had

told his resolution to Lush he had thought that the affair would be

concluded more quickly, and to his own surprise he had repeatedly

promised himself in a morning that he would to-day give Gwendolen the

opportunity of accepting him, and had found in the evening that the

necessary formality was still unaccomplished. This remarkable fact

served to heighten his determination on another day. He had never

admitted to himself that Gwendolen might refuse him, but—heaven help

us all!—we are often unable to act on our certainties; our objection

to a contrary issue (were it possible) is so strong that it rises like

a spectral illusion between us and our certainty; we are rationally

sure that the blind worm can not bite us mortally, but it would be so

intolerable to be bitten, and the creature has a biting look—we

decline to handle it.

He had asked leave to have a beautiful horse of his brought for

Gwendolen to ride. Mrs. Davilow was to accompany her in the carriage,

and they were to go to Diplow to lunch, Grandcourt conducting them. It

was a fine mid-harvest time, not too warm for a noonday ride of five

miles to be delightful; the poppies glowed on the borders of the

fields, there was enough breeze to move gently like a social spirit

among the ears of uncut corn, and to wing the shadow of a cloud across

the soft gray downs; here the sheaves were standing, there the horses

were straining their muscles under the last load from a wide space of

stubble, but everywhere the green pasture made a broader setting for

the corn-fields, and the cattle took their rest under wide branches.

The road lay through a bit of country where the dairy-farms looked much

as they did in the days of our forefathers—where peace and permanence

seemed to find a home away from the busy change that sent the railway

train flying in the distance.

But the spirit of peace and permanence did not penetrate poor Mrs.

Davilow’s mind so as to overcome her habit of uneasy foreboding.

Gwendolen and Grandcourt cantering in front of her, and then slackening

their pace to a conversational walk till the carriage came up with them

again, made a gratifying sight; but it served chiefly to keep up the

conflict of hopes and fears about her daughter’s lot. Here was an

irresistible opportunity for a lover to speak and put an end to all

uncertainties, and Mrs. Davilow could only hope with trembling that

Gwendolen’s decision would be favorable. Certainly if Rex’s love had

been repugnant to her, Mr. Grandcourt had the advantage of being in

complete contrast with Rex; and that he had produced some quite novel

impression on her seemed evident in her marked abstinence from

satirical observations, nay, her total silence about his

characteristics, a silence which Mrs. Davilow did not dare to break.

“Is he a man she would be happy with?”—was a question that inevitably

arose in the mother’s mind. “Well, perhaps as happy as she would be

with any one else—or as most other women are”—was the answer with

which she tried to quiet herself; for she could not imagine Gwendolen

under the influence of any feeling which would make her satisfied in

what we traditionally call “mean circumstances.”

Grandcourt’s own thought was looking in the same direction: he wanted

to have done with the uncertainty that belonged to his not having

spoken. As to any further uncertainty—well, it was something without

any reasonable basis, some quality in the air which acted as an

irritant to his wishes.

Gwendolen enjoyed the riding, but her pleasure did not break forth in

girlish unpremeditated chat and laughter as it did on that morning with

Rex. She spoke a little, and even laughed, but with a lightness as of a

far-off echo: for her too there was some peculiar quality in the

air—not, she was sure, any subjugation of her will by Mr. Grandcourt,

and the splendid prospects he meant to offer her; for Gwendolen desired

every one, that dignified gentleman himself included, to understand

that she was going to do just as she liked, and that they had better

not calculate on her pleasing them. If she chose to take this husband,

she would have him know that she was not going to renounce her freedom,

or according to her favorite formula, “not going to do as other women

did.”

Grandcourt’s speeches this morning were, as usual, all of that brief

sort which never fails to make a conversational figure when the speaker

is held important in his circle. Stopping so soon, they give signs of a

suppressed and formidable ability so say more, and have also the

meritorious quality of allowing lengthiness to others.

“How do you like Criterion’s paces?” he said, after they had entered

the park and were slacking from a canter to a walk.

“He is delightful to ride. I should like to have a leap with him, if it

would not frighten mamma. There was a good wide channel we passed five

minutes ago. I should like to have a gallop back and take it.”

“Pray do. We can take it together.”

“No, thanks. Mamma is so timid—if she saw me it might make her ill.”

“Let me go and explain. Criterion would take it without fail.”

“No—indeed—you are very kind—but it would alarm her too much. I dare

take any leap when she is not by; but I do it and don’t tell her about

it.”

“We can let the carriage pass and then set off.”

“No, no, pray don’t think of it any more: I spoke quite randomly,” said

Gwendolen; she began to feel a new objection to carrying out her own

proposition.

“But Mrs. Davilow knows I shall take care of you.”

“Yes, but she would think of you as having to take care of my broken

neck.”

There was a considerable pause before Grandcourt said, looking toward

her, “I should like to have the right always to take care of you.”

Gwendolen did not turn her eyes on him; it seemed to her a long while

that she was first blushing, and then turning pale, but to Grandcourt’s

rate of judgment she answered soon enough, with the lightest flute-tone

and a careless movement of the head, “Oh, I am not sure that I want to

be taken care of: if I chose to risk breaking my neck, I should like to

be at liberty to do it.”

She checked her horse as she spoke, and turned in her saddle, looking

toward the advancing carriage. Her eyes swept across Grandcourt as she

made this movement, but there was no language in them to correct the

carelessness of her reply. At that very moment she was aware that she

was risking something—not her neck, but the possibility of finally

checking Grandcourt’s advances, and she did not feel contented with the

possibility.

“Damn her!” thought Grandcourt, as he too checked his horse. He was not

a wordy thinker, and this explosive phrase stood for mixed impressions

which eloquent interpreters might have expanded into some sentences

full of an irritated sense that he was being mystified, and a

determination that this girl should not make a fool of him. Did she

want him to throw himself at her feet and declare that he was dying for

her? It was not by that gate that she could enter on the privileges he

could give her. Or did she expect him to write his proposals? Equally a

delusion. He would not make his offer in any way that could place him

definitely in the position of being rejected. But as to her accepting

him, she had done it already in accepting his marked attentions: and

anything which happened to break them off would be understood to her

disadvantage. She was merely coquetting, then?

However, the carriage came up, and no further _tête-à-tête_ could well

occur before their arrival at the house, where there was abundant

company, to whom Gwendolen, clad in riding-dress, with her hat laid

aside, clad also in the repute of being chosen by Mr. Grandcourt, was

naturally a centre of observation; and since the objectionable Mr. Lush

was not there to look at her, this stimulus of admiring attention

heightened her spirits, and dispersed, for the time, the uneasy

consciousness of divided impulses which threatened her with repentance

of her own acts. Whether Grandcourt had been offended or not there was

no judging: his manners were unchanged, but Gwendolen’s acuteness had

not gone deeper than to discern that his manners were no clue for her,

and because these were unchanged she was not the less afraid of him.

She had not been at Diplow before except to dine; and since certain

points of view from the windows and the garden were worth showing, Lady

Flora Hollis proposed after luncheon, when some of the guests had

dispersed, and the sun was sloping toward four o’clock, that the

remaining party should make a little exploration. Here came frequent

opportunities when Grandcourt might have retained Gwendolen apart, and

have spoken to her unheard. But no! He indeed spoke to no one else, but

what he said was nothing more eager or intimate than it had been in

their first interview. He looked at her not less than usual; and some

of her defiant spirit having come back, she looked full at him in

return, not caring—rather preferring—that his eyes had no expression

in them.

But at last it seemed as if he entertained some contrivance. After they

had nearly made the tour of the grounds, the whole party stopped by the

pool to be amused with Fetch’s accomplishment of bringing a water lily

to the bank like Cowper’s spaniel Beau, and having been disappointed in

his first attempt insisted on his trying again.

Here Grandcourt, who stood with Gwendolen outside the group, turned

deliberately, and fixing his eyes on a knoll planted with American

shrubs, and having a winding path up it, said languidly,

“This is a bore. Shall we go up there?”

“Oh, certainly—since we are exploring,” said Gwendolen. She was rather

pleased, and yet afraid.

The path was too narrow for him to offer his arm, and they walked up in

silence. When they were on the bit of platform at the summit,

Grandcourt said,

“There is nothing to be seen here: the thing was not worth climbing.”

How was it that Gwendolen did not laugh? She was perfectly silent,

holding up the folds of her robe like a statue, and giving a harder

grasp to the handle of her whip, which she had snatched up

automatically with her hat when they had first set off.

“What sort of a place do you prefer?” said Grandcourt.

“Different places are agreeable in their way. On the whole, I think, I

prefer places that are open and cheerful. I am not fond of anything

sombre.”

“Your place of Offendene is too sombre....”.

“It is, rather.”

“You will not remain there long, I hope.”

“Oh, yes, I think so. Mamma likes to be near her sister.”

Silence for a short space.

“It is not to be supposed that _you_ will always live there, though

Mrs. Davilow may.”

“I don’t know. We women can’t go in search of adventures—to find out

the North-West Passage or the source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in

the East. We must stay where we grow, or where the gardeners like to

transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as pretty as

we can, and be dull without complaining. That is my notion about the

plants; they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them

have got poisonous. What do you think?” Gwendolen had run on rather

nervously, lightly whipping the rhododendron bush in front of her.

“I quite agree. Most things are bores,” said Grandcourt, his mind

having been pushed into an easy current, away from its intended track.

But, after a moment’s pause, he continued in his broken, refined drawl,

“But a woman can be married.”

“Some women can.”

“You, certainly, unless you are obstinately cruel.”

“I am not sure that I am not both cruel and obstinate.” Here Gwendolen

suddenly turned her head and looked full at Grandcourt, whose eyes she

had felt to be upon her throughout their conversation. She was

wondering what the effect of looking at him would be on herself rather

than on him.

He stood perfectly still, half a yard or more away from her; and it

flashed through her mind what a sort of lotus-eater’s stupor had begun

in him and was taking possession of her. Then he said,

“Are you as uncertain about yourself as you make others about you?”

“I am quite uncertain about myself; I don’t know how uncertain others

may be.”

“And you wish them to understand that you don’t care?” said Grandcourt,

with a touch of new hardness in his tone.

“I did not say that,” Gwendolen replied, hesitatingly, and turning her

eyes away whipped the rhododendron bush again. She wished she were on

horseback that she might set off on a canter. It was impossible to set

off running down the knoll.

“You do care, then,” said Grandcourt, not more quickly, but with a

softened drawl.

“Ha! my whip!” said Gwendolen, in a little scream of distress. She had

let it go—what could be more natural in a slight agitation?—and—but

this seemed less natural in a gold-handled whip which had been left

altogether to itself—it had gone with some force over the immediate

shrubs, and had lodged itself in the branches of an azalea half-way

down the knoll. She could run down now, laughing prettily, and

Grandcourt was obliged to follow; but she was beforehand with him in

rescuing the whip, and continued on her way to the level ground, when

she paused and looked at Grandcourt with an exasperating brightness in

her glance and a heightened color, as if she had carried a triumph, and

these indications were still noticeable to Mrs. Davilow when Gwendolen

and Grandcourt joined the rest of the party.

“It is all coquetting,” thought Grandcourt; “the next time I beckon she

will come down.”

It seemed to him likely that this final beckoning might happen the very

next day, when there was to be a picnic archery meeting in Cardell

Chase, according to the plan projected on the evening of the ball.

Even in Gwendolen’s mind that result was one of two likelihoods that

presented themselves alternately, one of two decisions toward which she

was being precipitated, as if they were two sides of a boundary-line,

and she did not know on which she should fall. This subjection to a

possible self, a self not to be absolutely predicted about, caused her

some astonishment and terror; her favorite key of life—doing as she

liked—seemed to fail her, and she could not foresee what at a given

moment she might like to do. The prospect of marrying Grandcourt really

seemed more attractive to her than she had believed beforehand that any

marriage could be: the dignities, the luxuries, the power of doing a

great deal of what she liked to do, which had now come close to her,

and within her choice to secure or to lose, took hold of her nature as

if it had been the strong odor of what she had only imagined and longed

for before. And Grandcourt himself? He seemed as little of a flaw in

his fortunes as a lover and husband could possibly be. Gwendolen wished

to mount the chariot and drive the plunging horses herself, with a

spouse by her side who would fold his arms and give her his countenance

without looking ridiculous. Certainly, with all her perspicacity, and

all the reading which seemed to her mamma dangerously instructive, her

judgment was consciously a little at fault before Grandcourt. He was

adorably quiet and free from absurdities—he would be a husband to suit

with the best appearance a woman could make. But what else was he? He

had been everywhere, and seen everything. _That_ was desirable, and

especially gratifying as a preamble to his supreme preference for

Gwendolen Harleth. He did not appear to enjoy anything much. That was

not necessary: and the less he had of particular tastes, or desires,

the more freedom his wife was likely to have in following hers.

Gwendolen conceived that after marriage she would most probably be able

to manage him thoroughly.

How was it that he caused her unusual constraint now?—that she was

less daring and playful in her talk with him than with any other

admirer she had known? That absence of demonstrativeness which she was

glad of, acted as a charm in more senses than one, and was slightly

benumbing. Grandcourt after all was formidable—a handsome lizard of a

hitherto unknown species, not of the lively, darting kind. But

Gwendolen knew hardly anything about lizards, and ignorance gives one a

large range of probabilities. This splendid specimen was probably

gentle, suitable as a boudoir pet: what may not a lizard be, if you

know nothing to the contrary? Her acquaintance with Grandcourt was such

that no accomplishment suddenly revealed in him would have surprised

her. And he was so little suggestive of drama, that it hardly occurred

to her to think with any detail how his life of thirty-six years had

been passed: in general, she imagined him always cold and dignified,

not likely ever to have committed himself. He had hunted the tiger—had

he ever been in love or made love? The one experience and the other

seemed alike remote in Gwendolen’s fancy from the Mr. Grandcourt who

had come to Diplow in order apparently to make a chief epoch in her

destiny—perhaps by introducing her to that state of marriage which she

had resolved to make a state of greater freedom than her girlhood. And

on the whole she wished to marry him; he suited her purpose; her

prevailing, deliberate intention was, to accept him.

But was she going to fulfill her deliberate intention? She began to be

afraid of herself, and to find out a certain difficulty in doing as she

liked. Already her assertion of independence in evading his advances

had been carried farther than was necessary, and she was thinking with

some anxiety what she might do on the next occasion.

Seated according to her habit with her back to the horses on their

drive homeward, she was completely under the observation of her mamma,

who took the excitement and changefulness in the expression of her

eyes, her unwonted absence of mind and total silence, as unmistakable

signs that something unprecedented had occurred between her and

Grandcourt. Mrs. Davilow’s uneasiness determined her to risk some

speech on the subject: the Gascoignes were to dine at Offendene, and in

what had occurred this morning there might be some reason for

consulting the rector; not that she expected him anymore than herself

to influence Gwendolen, but that her anxious mind wanted to be

disburdened.

“Something has happened, dear?” she began, in a tender tone of question.

Gwendolen looked round, and seeming to be roused to the consciousness

of her physical self, took off her gloves and then her hat, that the

soft breeze might blow on her head. They were in a retired bit of the

road, where the long afternoon shadows from the bordering trees fell

across it and no observers were within sight. Her eyes continued to

meet her mother’s, but she did not speak.

“Mr. Grandcourt has been saying something?—Tell me, dear.” The last

words were uttered beseechingly.

“What am I to tell you, mamma?” was the perverse answer.

“I am sure something has agitated you. You ought to confide in me,

Gwen. You ought not to leave me in doubt and anxiety.” Mrs. Davilow’s

eyes filled with tears.

“Mamma, dear, please don’t be miserable,” said Gwendolen, with pettish

remonstrance. “It only makes me more so. I am in doubt myself.”

“About Mr. Grandcourt’s intentions?” said Mrs. Davilow, gathering

determination from her alarms.

“No; not at all,” said Gwendolen, with some curtness, and a pretty

little toss of the head as she put on her hat again.

“About whether you will accept him, then?”

“Precisely.”

“Have you given him a doubtful answer?”

“I have given him no answer at all.”

“He _has_ spoken so that you could not misunderstand him?”

“As far as I would let him speak.”

“You expect him to persevere?” Mrs. Davilow put this question rather

anxiously, and receiving no answer, asked another: “You don’t consider

that you have discouraged him?”

“I dare say not.”

“I thought you liked him, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, timidly.

“So I do, mamma, as liking goes. There is less to dislike about him

than about most men. He is quiet and _distingué_.” Gwendolen so far

spoke with a pouting sort of gravity; but suddenly she recovered some

of her mischievousness, and her face broke into a smile as she

added—“Indeed he has all the qualities that would make a husband

tolerable—battlement, veranda, stable, etc., no grins and no glass in

his eye.”

“Do be serious with me for a moment, dear. Am I to understand that you

mean to accept him?”

“Oh, pray, mamma, leave me to myself,” said Gwendolen, with a pettish

distress in her voice.

And Mrs. Davilow said no more.

When they got home Gwendolen declared that she would not dine. She was

tired, and would come down in the evening after she had taken some

rest. The probability that her uncle would hear what had passed did not

trouble her. She was convinced that whatever he might say would be on

the side of her accepting Grandcourt, and she wished to accept him if

she could. At this moment she would willingly have had weights hung on

her own caprice.

Mr. Gascoigne did hear—not Gwendolen’s answers repeated verbatim, but

a softened generalized account of them. The mother conveyed as vaguely

as the keen rector’s questions would let her the impression that

Gwendolen was in some uncertainty about her own mind, but inclined on

the whole to acceptance. The result was that the uncle felt himself

called on to interfere; he did not conceive that he should do his duty

in witholding direction from his niece in a momentous crisis of this

kind. Mrs. Davilow ventured a hesitating opinion that perhaps it would

be safer to say nothing—Gwendolen was so sensitive (she did not like

to say willful). But the rector’s was a firm mind, grasping its first

judgments tenaciously and acting on them promptly, whence

counter-judgments were no more for him than shadows fleeting across the

solid ground to which he adjusted himself.

This match with Grandcourt presented itself to him as a sort of public

affair; perhaps there were ways in which it might even strengthen the

establishment. To the rector, whose father (nobody would have suspected

it, and nobody was told) had risen to be a provincial corn-dealer,

aristocratic heirship resembled regal heirship in excepting its

possessor from the ordinary standard of moral judgments, Grandcourt,

the almost certain baronet, the probable peer, was to be ranged with

public personages, and was a match to be accepted on broad general

grounds national and ecclesiastical. Such public personages, it is

true, are often in the nature of giants which an ancient community may

have felt pride and safety in possessing, though, regarded privately,

these born eminences must often have been inconvenient and even

noisome. But of the future husband personally Mr. Gascoigne was

disposed to think the best. Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from

the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing

but the bad taste of the smoker. But if Grandcourt had really made any

deeper or more unfortunate experiments in folly than were common in

young men of high prospects, he was of an age to have finished them.

All accounts can be suitably wound up when a man has not ruined

himself, and the expense may be taken as an insurance against future

error. This was the view of practical wisdom; with reference to higher

views, repentance had a supreme moral and religious value. There was

every reason to believe that a woman of well-regulated mind would be

happy with Grandcourt.

It was no surprise to Gwendolen on coming down to tea to be told that

her uncle wished to see her in the dining-room. He threw aside the

paper as she entered and greeted her with his usual kindness. As his

wife had remarked, he always “made much” of Gwendolen, and her

importance had risen of late. “My dear,” he said, in a fatherly way,

moving a chair for her as he held her hand, “I want to speak to you on

a subject which is more momentous than any other with regard to your

welfare. You will guess what I mean. But I shall speak to you with

perfect directness: in such matters I consider myself bound to act as

your father. You have no objection, I hope?”

“Oh dear, no, uncle. You have always been very kind to me,” said

Gwendolen, frankly. This evening she was willing, if it were possible,

to be a little fortified against her troublesome self, and her

resistant temper was in abeyance. The rector’s mode of speech always

conveyed a thrill of authority, as of a word of command: it seemed to

take for granted that there could be no wavering in the audience, and

that every one was going to be rationally obedient.

“It is naturally a satisfaction to me that the prospect of a marriage

for you—advantageous in the highest degree—has presented itself so

early. I do not know exactly what has passed between you and Mr.

Grandcourt, but I presume there can be little doubt, from the way in

which he has distinguished you, that he desires to make you his wife.”

Gwendolen did not speak immediately, and her uncle said with more

emphasis,

“Have you any doubt of that yourself, my dear?”

“I suppose that is what he has been thinking of. But he may have

changed his mind to-morrow,” said Gwendolen.

“Why to-morrow? Has he made advances which you have discouraged?”

“I think he meant—he began to make advances—but I did not encourage

them. I turned the conversation.”

“Will you confide in me so far as to tell me your reasons?”

“I am not sure that I had any reasons, uncle.” Gwendolen laughed rather

artificially.

“You are quite capable of reflecting, Gwendolen. You are aware that

this is not a trivial occasion, and it concerns your establishment for

life under circumstances which may not occur again. You have a duty

here both to yourself and your family. I wish to understand whether you

have any ground for hesitating as to your acceptance of Mr. Grandcourt.”

“I suppose I hesitate without grounds.” Gwendolen spoke rather

poutingly, and her uncle grew suspicious.

“Is he disagreeable to you personally?”

“No.”

“Have you heard anything of him which has affected you disagreeably?”

The rector thought it impossible that Gwendolen could have heard the

gossip he had heard, but in any case he must endeavor to put all things

in the right light for her.

“I have heard nothing about him except that he is a great match,” said

Gwendolen, with some sauciness; “and that affects me very agreeably.”

“Then, my dear Gwendolen, I have nothing further to say than this: you

hold your fortune in your own hands—a fortune such as rarely happens

to a girl in your circumstances—a fortune in fact which almost takes

the question out of the range of mere personal feeling, and makes your

acceptance of it a duty. If Providence offers you power and

position—especially when unclogged by any conditions that are

repugnant to you—your course is one of responsibility, into which

caprice must not enter. A man does not like to have his attachment

trifled with: he may not be at once repelled—these things are matters

of individual disposition. But the trifling may be carried too far. And

I must point out to you that in case Mr. Grandcourt were repelled

without your having refused him—without your having intended

ultimately to refuse him, your situation would be a humiliating and

painful one. I, for my part, should regard you with severe

disapprobation, as the victim of nothing else than your own coquetry

and folly.”

Gwendolen became pallid as she listened to this admonitory speech. The

ideas it raised had the force of sensations. Her resistant courage

would not help her here, because her uncle was not urging her against

her own resolve; he was pressing upon her the motives of dread which

she already felt; he was making her more conscious of the risks that

lay within herself. She was silent, and the rector observed that he had

produced some strong effect.

“I mean this in kindness, my dear.” His tone had softened.

“I am aware of that, uncle,” said Gwendolen, rising and shaking her

head back, as if to rouse herself out of painful passivity. “I am not

foolish. I know that I must be married some time—before it is too

late. And I don’t see how I could do better than marry Mr. Grandcourt.

I mean to accept him, if possible.” She felt as if she were reinforcing

herself by speaking with this decisiveness to her uncle.

But the rector was a little startled by so bare a version of his own

meaning from those young lips. He wished that in her mind his advice

should be taken in an infusion of sentiments proper to a girl, and such

as are presupposed in the advice of a clergyman, although he may not

consider them always appropriate to be put forward. He wished his niece

parks, carriages, a title—everything that would make this world a

pleasant abode; but he wished her not to be cynical—to be, on the

contrary, religiously dutiful, and have warm domestic affections.

“My dear Gwendolen,” he said, rising also, and speaking with benignant

gravity, “I trust that you will find in marriage a new fountain of duty

and affection. Marriage is the only true and satisfactory sphere of a

woman, and if your marriage with Mr. Grandcourt should be happily

decided upon, you will have, probably, an increasing power, both of

rank and wealth, which may be used for the benefit of others. These

considerations are something higher than romance! You are fitted by

natural gifts for a position which, considering your birth and early

prospects, could hardly be looked forward to as in the ordinary course

of things; and I trust that you will grace it, not only by those

personal gifts, but by a good and consistent life.”

“I hope mamma will be the happier,” said Gwendolen, in a more cheerful

way, lifting her hands backward to her neck and moving toward the door.

She wanted to waive those higher considerations.

Mr. Gascoigne felt that he had come to a satisfactory understanding

with his niece, and had furthered her happy settlement in life by

furthering her engagement to Grandcourt. Meanwhile there was another

person to whom the contemplation of that issue had been a motive for

some activity, and who believed that he, too, on this particular day

had done something toward bringing about a favorable decision in _his_

sense—which happened to be the reverse of the rector’s.

Mr. Lush’s absence from Diplow during Gwendolen’s visit had been due,

not to any fear on his part of meeting that supercilious young lady, or

of being abashed by her frank dislike, but to an engagement from which

he expected important consequences. He was gone, in fact, to the

Wanchester station to meet a lady, accompanied by a maid and two

children, whom he put into a fly, and afterward followed to the hotel

of the Golden Keys, in that town. An impressive woman, whom many would

turn to look at again in passing; her figure was slim and sufficiently

tall, her face rather emaciated, so that its sculpturesque beauty was

the more pronounced, her crisp hair perfectly black, and her large,

anxious eyes what we call black. Her dress was soberly correct, her

age, perhaps, physically more advanced than the number of years would

imply, but hardly less than seven-and-thirty. An uneasy-looking woman:

her glance seemed to presuppose that the people and things were going

to be unfavorable to her, while she was, nevertheless, ready to meet

them with resolution. The children were lovely—a dark-haired girl of

six or more, a fairer boy of five. When Lush incautiously expressed

some surprise at her having brought the children, she said, with a

sharp-toned intonation,

“Did you suppose I should come wandering about here by myself? Why

should I not bring all four if I liked?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Lush, with his usual fluent _nonchalance_.

He stayed an hour or so in conference with her, and rode back to Diplow

in a state of mind that was at once hopeful and busily anxious as to

the execution of the little plan on which his hopefulness was based.

Grandcourt’s marriage to Gwendolen Harleth would not, he believed, be

much of a good to either of them, and it would plainly be fraught with

disagreeables to himself. But now he felt confident enough to say

inwardly, “I will take, nay, I will lay odds that the marriage will

never happen.”

CHAPTER XIV.

I will not clothe myself in wreck—wear gems

Sawed from cramped finger-bones of women drowned;

Feel chilly vaporous hands of ireful ghosts

Clutching my necklace: trick my maiden breast

With orphans’ heritage. Let your dead love

Marry its dead.

Gwendolen looked lovely and vigorous as a tall, newly-opened lily the

next morning: there was a reaction of young energy in her, and

yesterday’s self-distrust seemed no more than the transient shiver on

the surface of a full stream. The roving archery match in Cardell Chase

was a delightful prospect for the sport’s sake: she felt herself

beforehand moving about like a wood-nymph under the beeches (in

appreciative company), and the imagined scene lent a charm to further

advances on the part of Grandcourt—not an impassioned lyrical Daphnis

for the wood-nymph, certainly: but so much the better. To-day Gwendolen

foresaw him making slow conversational approaches to a declaration, and

foresaw herself awaiting and encouraging it according to the rational

conclusion which she had expressed to her uncle.

When she came down to breakfast (after every one had left the table

except Mrs. Davilow) there were letters on her plate. One of them she

read with a gathering smile, and then handed it to her mamma, who, on

returning it, smiled also, finding new cheerfulness in the good spirits

her daughter had shown ever since waking, and said,

“You don’t feel inclined to go a thousand miles away?”

“Not exactly so far.”

“It was a sad omission not to have written again before this. Can’t you

write now—before we set out this morning?”

“It is not so pressing. To-morrow will do. You see they leave town

to-day. I must write to Dover. They will be there till Monday.”

“Shall I write for you, dear—if it teases you?”

Gwendolen did not speak immediately, but after sipping her coffee,

answered brusquely, “Oh no, let it be; I will write to-morrow.” Then,

feeling a touch of compunction, she looked up and said with playful

tenderness, “Dear, old, beautiful mamma!”

“Old, child, truly.”

“Please don’t, mamma! I meant old for darling. You are hardly

twenty-five years older than I am. When you talk in that way my life

shrivels up before me.”

“One can have a great deal of happiness in twenty-five years, my dear.”

“I must lose no time in beginning,” said Gwendolen, merrily. “The

sooner I get my palaces and coaches the better.”

“And a good husband who adores you, Gwen,” said Mrs. Davilow,

encouragingly.

Gwendolen put out her lips saucily and said nothing.

It was a slight drawback on her pleasure in starting that the rector

was detained by magistrate’s business, and would probably not be able

to get to Cardell Chase at all that day. She cared little that Mrs.

Gascoigne and Anna chose not to go without him, but her uncle’s

presence would have seemed to make it a matter of course that the

decision taken would be acted on. For decision in itself began to be

formidable. Having come close to accepting Grandcourt, Gwendolen felt

this lot of unhoped-for fullness rounding itself too definitely. When

we take to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon

turns into mere limitation and exclusion. Still there was the

reassuring thought that marriage would be the gate into a larger

freedom.

The place of meeting was a grassy spot called Green Arbor, where a bit

of hanging wood made a sheltering amphitheatre. It was here that the

coachful of servants with provisions had to prepare the picnic meal;

and the warden of the Chase was to guide the roving archers so as to

keep them within the due distance from this centre, and hinder them

from wandering beyond the limit which had been fixed on—a curve that

might be drawn through certain well-known points, such as the double

Oak, the Whispering Stones, and the High Cross. The plan was to take

only a preliminary stroll before luncheon, keeping the main roving

expedition for the more exquisite lights of the afternoon. The muster

was rapid enough to save every one from dull moments of waiting, and

when the groups began to scatter themselves through the light and

shadow made here by closely neighboring beeches and there by rarer

oaks, one may suppose that a painter would have been glad to look on.

This roving archery was far prettier than the stationary game, but

success in shooting at variable marks were less favored by practice,

and the hits were distributed among the volunteer archers otherwise

than they would have been in target-shooting. From this cause, perhaps,

as well as from the twofold distraction of being preoccupied and

wishing not to betray her preoccupation, Gwendolen did not greatly

distinguish herself in these first experiments, unless it were by the

lively grace with which she took her comparative failure. She was in

white and green as on the day of the former meeting, when it made an

epoch for her that she was introduced to Grandcourt; he was continually

by her side now, yet it would have been hard to tell from mere looks

and manners that their relation to each other had at all changed since

their first conversation. Still there were other grounds that made most

persons conclude them to be, if not engaged already, on the eve of

being so. And she believed this herself. As they were all returning

toward Green Arbor in divergent groups, not thinking at all of taking

aim but merely chattering, words passed which seemed really the

beginning of that end—the beginning of her acceptance. Grandcourt

said, “Do you know how long it is since I first saw you in this dress?”

“The archery meeting was on the 25th, and this is the 13th,” said

Gwendolen, laughingly. “I am not good at calculating, but I will

venture to say that it must be nearly three weeks.”

A little pause, and then he said, “That is a great loss of time.”

“That your knowing me has caused you? Pray don’t be uncomplimentary; I

don’t like it.”

Pause again. “It is because of the gain that I feel the loss.”

Here Gwendolen herself left a pause. She was thinking, “He is really

very ingenious. He never speaks stupidly.” Her silence was so unusual

that it seemed the strongest of favorable answers, and he continued:

“The gain of knowing you makes me feel the time I lose in uncertainty.

Do _you_ like uncertainty?”

“I think I do, rather,” said Gwendolen, suddenly beaming on him with a

playful smile. “There is more in it.”

Grandcourt met her laughing eyes with a slow, steady look right into

them, which seemed like vision in the abstract, and then said, “Do you

mean more torment for me?”

There was something so strange to Gwendolen in this moment that she was

quite shaken out of her usual self-consciousness. Blushing and turning

away her eyes, she said, “No, that would make me sorry.”

Grandcourt would have followed up this answer, which the change in her

manner made apparently decisive of her favorable intention; but he was

not in any way overcome so as to be unaware that they were now, within

sight of everybody, descending the space into Green Arbor, and

descending it at an ill-chosen point where it began to be

inconveniently steep. This was a reason for offering his hand in the

literal sense to help her; she took it, and they came down in silence,

much observed by those already on the level—among others by Mrs.

Arrowpoint, who happened to be standing with Mrs. Davilow. That lady

had now made up her mind that Grandcourt’s merits were not such as

would have induced Catherine to accept him, Catherine having so high a

standard as to have refused Lord Slogan. Hence she looked at the tenant

of Diplow with dispassionate eyes.

“Mr. Grandcourt is not equal as a man to his uncle, Sir Hugo

Mallinger—too languid. To be sure, Mr. Grandcourt is a much younger

man, but I shouldn’t wonder if Sir Hugo were to outlive him,

notwithstanding the difference of years. It is ill calculating on

successions,” concluded Mrs. Arrowpoint, rather too loudly.

“It is indeed,” said Mrs. Davilow, able to assent with quiet

cheerfulness, for she was so well satisfied with the actual situation

of affairs that her habitual melancholy in their general

unsatisfactoriness was altogether in abeyance.

I am not concerned to tell of the food that was eaten in that green

refectory, or even to dwell on the stories of the forest scenery that

spread themselves out beyond the level front of the hollow; being just

now bound to tell a story of life at a stage when the blissful beauty

of earth and sky entered only by narrow and oblique inlets into the

consciousness, which was busy with a small social drama almost as

little penetrated by a feeling of wider relations as if it had been a

puppet-show. It will be understood that the food and champagne were of

the best—the talk and laughter too, in the sense of belonging to the

best society, where no one makes an invidious display of anything in

particular, and the advantages of the world are taken with that

high-bred depreciation which follows from being accustomed to them.

Some of the gentlemen strolled a little and indulged in a cigar, there

being a sufficient interval before four o’clock—the time for

beginning to rove again. Among these, strange to say, was Grandcourt;

but not Mr. Lush, who seemed to be taking his pleasure quite generously

to-day by making himself particularly serviceable, ordering everything

for everybody, and by this activity becoming more than ever a blot on

the scene to Gwendolen, though he kept himself amiably aloof from her,

and never even looked at her obviously. When there was a general move

to prepare for starting, it appeared that the bows had all been put

under the charge of Lord Brackenshaw’s valet, and Mr. Lush was

concerned to save ladies the trouble of fetching theirs from the

carriage where they were propped. He did not intend to bring

Gwendolen’s, but she, fearful lest he should do so, hurried to fetch it

herself. The valet, seeing her approach, met her with it, and in giving

it into her hand gave also a letter addressed to her. She asked no

question about it, perceived at a glance that the address was in a

lady’s handwriting (of the delicate kind which used to be esteemed

feminine before the present uncial period), and moving away with her

bow in her hand, saw Mr. Lush coming to fetch other bows. To avoid

meeting him she turned aside and walked with her back toward the stand

of carriages, opening the letter. It contained these words,

If Miss Harleth is in doubt whether she should accept Mr. Grandcourt,

let her break from her party after they have passed the Whispering

Stones and return to that spot. She will then hear something to decide

her; but she can only hear it by keeping this letter a strict secret

from every one. If she does not act according to this letter, she will

repent, as the woman who writes it has repented. The secrecy Miss

Harleth will feel herself bound in honor to guard.

Gwendolen felt an inward shock, but her immediate thought was, “It is

come in time.” It lay in her youthfulness that she was absorbed by the

idea of the revelation to be made, and had not even a momentary

suspicion of contrivance that could justify her in showing the letter.

Her mind gathered itself up at once into the resolution, that she would

manage to go unobserved to the Whispering Stones; and thrusting the

letter into her pocket she turned back to rejoin the company, with that

sense of having something to conceal which to her nature had a bracing

quality and helped her to be mistress of herself.

It was a surprise to every one that Grandcourt was not, like the other

smokers, on the spot in time to set out roving with the rest. “We shall

alight on him by-and-by,” said Lord Brackenshaw; “he can’t be gone

far.” At any rate, no man could be waited for. This apparent

forgetfulness might be taken for the distraction of a lover so absorbed

in thinking of the beloved object as to forget an appointment which

would bring him into her actual presence. And the good-natured Earl

gave Gwendolen a distant jocose hint to that effect, which she took

with suitable quietude. But the thought in her mind was “Can he too be

starting away from a decision?” It was not exactly a pleasant thought

to her; but it was near the truth. “Starting away,” however, was not

the right expression for the languor of intention that came over

Grandcourt, like a fit of diseased numbness, when an end seemed within

easy reach: to desist then, when all expectation was to the contrary,

became another gratification of mere will, sublimely independent of

definite motive. At that moment he had begun a second large cigar in a

vague, hazy obstinacy which, if Lush or any other mortal who might be

insulted with impunity had interrupted by overtaking him with a request

for his return, would have expressed itself by a slow removal of his

cigar, to say in an undertone, “You’ll be kind enough to go to the

devil, will you?”

But he was not interrupted, and the rovers set off without any visible

depression of spirits, leaving behind only a few of the less vigorous

ladies, including Mrs. Davilow, who preferred a quiet stroll free from

obligation to keep up with others. The enjoyment of the day was soon at

its highest pitch, the archery getting more spirited and the changing

scenes of the forest from roofed grove to open glade growing lovelier

with the lengthening shadows, and the deeply-felt but undefinable

gradations of the mellowing afternoon. It was agreed that they were

playing an extemporized _As you like it_; and when a pretty compliment

had been turned to Gwendolen about her having the part of Rosalind, she

felt the more compelled to be surpassing in loveliness. This was not

very difficult to her, for the effect of what had happened to-day was

an excitement which needed a vent—a sense of adventure rather than

alarm, and a straining toward the management of her retreat, so as not

to be impeded.

The roving had been lasting nearly an hour before the arrival at the

Whispering Stones, two tall conical blocks that leaned toward each

other like gigantic gray-mantled figures. They were soon surveyed and

passed by with the remark that they would be good ghosts on a starlit

night. But a soft sunlight was on them now, and Gwendolen felt daring.

The stones were near a fine grove of beeches, where the archers found

plenty of marks.

“How far are we from Green Arbor now?” said Gwendolen, having got in

front by the side of the warden.

“Oh, not more than half a mile, taking along the avenue we’re going to

cross up there: but I shall take round a couple of miles, by the High

Cross.”

She was falling back among the rest, when suddenly they seemed all to

be hurrying obliquely forward under the guidance of Mr. Lush, and

lingering a little where she was, she perceived her opportunity of

slipping away. Soon she was out of sight, and without running she

seemed to herself to fly along the ground and count the moments nothing

till she found herself back again at the Whispering Stones. They turned

their blank gray sides to her: what was there on the other side? If

there were nothing after all? That was her only dread now—to have to

turn back again in mystification; and walking round the right-hand

stone without pause, she found herself in front of some one whose large

dark eyes met hers at a foot’s distance. In spite of expectation, she

was startled and shrank bank, but in doing so she could take in the

whole figure of this stranger and perceive that she was unmistakably a

lady, and one who must have been exceedingly handsome. She perceived,

also, that a few yards from her were two children seated on the grass.

“Miss Harleth?” said the lady.

“Yes.” All Gwendolen’s consciousness was wonder.

“Have you accepted Mr. Grandcourt?”

“No.”

“I have promised to tell you something. And you will promise to keep my

secret. However you may decide you will not tell Mr. Grandcourt, or any

one else, that you have seen me?”

“I promise.”

“My name is Lydia Glasher. Mr. Grandcourt ought not to marry any one

but me. I left my husband and child for him nine years ago. Those two

children are his, and we have two others—girls—who are older. My

husband is dead now, and Mr. Grandcourt ought to marry me. He ought to

make that boy his heir.”

She looked at the boy as she spoke, and Gwendolen’s eyes followed hers.

The handsome little fellow was puffing out his cheeks in trying to blow

a tiny trumpet which remained dumb. His hat hung backward by a string,

and his brown curls caught the sun-rays. He was a cherub.

The two women’s eyes met again, and Gwendolen said proudly, “I will not

interfere with your wishes.” She looked as if she were shivering, and

her lips were pale.

“You are very attractive, Miss Harleth. But when he first knew me, I

too was young. Since then my life has been broken up and embittered. It

is not fair that he should be happy and I miserable, and my boy thrust

out of sight for another.”

These words were uttered with a biting accent, but with a determined

abstinence from anything violent in tone or manner. Gwendolen, watching

Mrs. Glasher’s face while she spoke, felt a sort of terror: it was as

if some ghastly vision had come to her in a dream and said, “I am a

woman’s life.”

“Have you anything more to say to me?” she asked in a low tone, but

still proud and coldly. The revulsion within her was not tending to

soften her. Everyone seemed hateful.

“Nothing. You know what I wished you to know. You can inquire about me

if you like. My husband was Colonel Glasher.”

“Then I will go,” said Gwendolen, moving away with a ceremonious

inclination, which was returned with equal grace.

In a few minutes Gwendolen was in the beech grove again but her party

had gone out of sight and apparently had not sent in search of her, for

all was solitude till she had reached the avenue pointed out by the

warden. She determined to take this way back to Green Arbor, which she

reached quickly; rapid movements seeming to her just now a means of

suspending the thoughts which might prevent her from behaving with due

calm. She had already made up her mind what step she would take.

Mrs. Davilow was of course astonished to see Gwendolen returning alone,

and was not without some uneasiness which the presence of other ladies

hindered her from showing. In answer to her words of surprise Gwendolen

said,

“Oh, I have been rather silly. I lingered behind to look at the

Whispering Stones, and the rest hurried on after something, so I lost

sight of them. I thought it best to come home by the short way—the

avenue that the warden had told me of. I’m not sorry after all. I had

had enough walking.”

“Your party did not meet Mr. Grandcourt, I presume,” said Mrs.

Arrowpoint, not without intention.

“No,” said Gwendolen, with a little flash of defiance, and a light

laugh. “And we didn’t see any carvings on the trees, either. Where can

he be? I should think he has fallen into the pool or had an apoplectic

fit.”

With all Gwendolen’s resolve not to betray any agitation, she could not

help it that her tone was unusually high and hard, and her mother felt

sure that something unpropitious had happened.

Mrs. Arrowpoint thought that the self-confident young lady was much

piqued, and that Mr. Grandcourt was probably seeing reason to change

his mind.

“If you have no objection, mamma, I will order the carriage,” said

Gwendolen. “I am tired. And every one will be going soon.”

Mrs. Davilow assented; but by the time the carriage was announced as

ready—the horses having to be fetched from the stables on the warden’s

premises—the roving party reappeared, and with them Mr. Grandcourt.

“Ah, there you are!” said Lord Brackenshaw, going up to Gwendolen, who

was arranging her mamma’s shawl for the drive. “We thought at first you

had alighted on Grandcourt and he had taken you home. Lush said so. But

after that we met Grandcourt. However, we didn’t suppose you could be

in any danger. The warden said he had told you a near way back.”

“You are going?” said Grandcourt, coming up with his usual air, as if

he did not conceive that there had been any omission on his part. Lord

Brackenshaw gave place to him and moved away.

“Yes, we are going,” said Gwendolen, looking busily at her scarf, which

she was arranging across her shoulders Scotch fashion.

“May I call at Offendene to-morrow?”

“Oh yes, if you like,” said Gwendolen, sweeping him from a distance

with her eyelashes. Her voice was light and sharp as the first touch of

frost.

Mrs. Davilow accepted his arm to lead her to the carriage; but while

that was happening, Gwendolen with incredible swiftness had got in

advance of them, and had sprung into the carriage.

“I got in, mamma, because I wished to be on this side,” she said,

apologetically. But she had avoided Grandcourt’s touch: he only lifted

his hat and walked away—with the not unsatisfactory impression that

she meant to show herself offended by his neglect.

The mother and daughter drove for five minutes in silence. Then

Gwendolen said, “I intend to join the Langens at Dover, mamma. I shall

pack up immediately on getting home, and set off by the early train. I

shall be at Dover almost as soon as they are; we can let them know by

telegraph.”

“Good heavens, child! what can be your reason for saying so?”

“My reason for saying it, mamma, is that I mean to do it.”

“But why do you mean to do it?”

“I wish to go away.”

“Is it because you are offended with Mr. Grandcourt’s odd behavior in

walking off to-day?”

“It is useless to enter into such questions. I am not going in any case

to marry Mr. Grandcourt. Don’t interest yourself further about it.”

“What can I say to your uncle, Gwendolen? Consider the position you

place me in. You led him to believe only last night that you had made

up your mind in favor of Mr. Grandcourt.”

“I am very sorry to cause you annoyance, mamma, dear, but I can’t help

it,” said Gwendolen, with still harder resistance in her tone.

“Whatever you or my uncle may think or do, I shall not alter my

resolve, and I shall not tell my reason. I don’t care what comes of it.

I don’t care if I never marry any one. There is nothing worth caring

for. I believe all men are bad, and I hate them.”

“But need you set off in this way, Gwendolen?” said Mrs. Davilow,

miserable and helpless.

“Now mamma, don’t interfere with me. If you have ever had any trouble

in your own life, remember it and don’t interfere with me. If I am to

be miserable, let it be by my own choice.”

The mother was reduced to trembling silence. She began to see that the

difficulty would be lessened if Gwendolen went away.

And she did go. The packing was all carefully done that evening, and

not long after dawn the next day Mrs. Davilow accompanied her daughter

to the railway station. The sweet dews of morning, the cows and horses

looking over the hedges without any particular reason, the early

travelers on foot with their bundles, seemed all very melancholy and

purposeless to them both. The dingy torpor of the railway station,

before the ticket could be taken, was still worse. Gwendolen had

certainly hardened in the last twenty-four hours: her mother’s trouble

evidently counted for little in her present state of mind, which did

not essentially differ from the mood that makes men take to worse

conduct when their belief in persons or things is upset. Gwendolen’s

uncontrolled reading, though consisting chiefly in what are called

pictures of life, had somehow not prepared her for this encounter with

reality. Is that surprising? It is to be believed that attendance at

the _opéra bouffe_ in the present day would not leave men’s minds

entirely without shock, if the manners observed there with some

applause were suddenly to start up in their own families. Perspective,

as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp

huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through

aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish

over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and

artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other

painful effects when presented in our personal experience.

Mrs. Davilow felt Gwendolen’s new phase of indifference keenly, and as

she drove back alone, the brightening morning was sadder to her than

before.

Mr. Grandcourt called that day at Offendene, but nobody was at home.

CHAPTER XV.

“_Festina lente_—celerity should be contempered with

cunctation.”—SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

Gwendolen, we have seen, passed her time abroad in the new excitement

of gambling, and in imagining herself an empress of luck, having

brought from her late experience a vague impression that in this

confused world it signified nothing what any one did, so that they

amused themselves. We have seen, too, that certain persons,

mysteriously symbolized as Grapnell & Co., having also thought of

reigning in the realm of luck, and being also bent on amusing

themselves, no matter how, had brought about a painful change in her

family circumstances; whence she had returned home—carrying with her,

against her inclination, a necklace which she had pawned and some one

else had redeemed.

While she was going back to England, Grandcourt was coming to find her;

coming, that is, after his own manner—not in haste by express straight

from Diplow to Leubronn, where she was understood to be; but so

entirely without hurry that he was induced by the presence of some

Russian acquaintances to linger at Baden-Baden and make various

appointments with them, which, however, his desire to be at Leubronn

ultimately caused him to break. Grandcourt’s passions were of the

intermittent, flickering kind: never flaming out strongly. But a great

deal of life goes on without strong passion: myriads of cravats are

carefully tied, dinners attended, even speeches made proposing the

health of august personages without the zest arising from a strong

desire. And a man may make a good appearance in high social

positions—may be supposed to know the classics, to have his reserves

on science, a strong though repressed opinion on politics, and all the

sentiments of the English gentleman, at a small expense of vital

energy. Also, he may be obstinate or persistent at the same low rate,

and may even show sudden impulses which have a false air of daemonic

strength because they seem inexplicable, though perhaps their secret

lies merely in the want of regulated channels for the soul to move

in—good and sufficient ducts of habit without which our nature easily

turns to mere ooze and mud, and at any pressure yields nothing but a

spurt or a puddle.

Grandcourt had not been altogether displeased by Gwendolen’s running

away from the splendid chance he was holding out to her. The act had

some piquancy for him. He liked to think that it was due to resentment

of his careless behavior in Cardell Chase, which, when he came to

consider it, did appear rather cool. To have brought her so near a

tender admission, and then to have walked headlong away from further

opportunities of winning the consent which he had made her understand

him to be asking for, was enough to provoke a girl of spirit; and to be

worth his mastering it was proper that she should have some spirit.

Doubtless she meant him to follow her, and it was what he meant too.

But for a whole week he took no measures toward starting, and did not

even inquire where Miss Harleth was gone. Mr. Lush felt a triumph that

was mingled with much distrust; for Grandcourt had said no word to him

about her, and looked as neutral as an alligator; there was no telling

what might turn up in the slowly-churning chances of his mind. Still,

to have put off a decision was to have made room for the waste of

Grandcourt’s energy.

The guests at Diplow felt more curiosity than their host. How was it

that nothing more was heard of Miss Harleth? Was it credible that she

had refused Mr. Grandcourt? Lady Flora Hollis, a lively middle-aged

woman, well endowed with curiosity, felt a sudden interest in making a

round of calls with Mrs. Torrington, including the rectory, Offendene,

and Quetcham, and thus not only got twice over, but also discussed with

the Arrowpoints, the information that Miss Harleth was gone to

Leubronn, with some old friends, the Baron and Baroness von Langen; for

the immediate agitation and disappointment of Mrs. Davilow and the

Gascoignes had resolved itself into a wish that Gwendolen’s

disappearance should not be interpreted as anything eccentric or

needful to be kept secret. The rector’s mind, indeed, entertained the

possibility that the marriage was only a little deferred, for Mrs.

Davilow had not dared to tell him of the bitter determination with

which Gwendolen had spoken. And in spite of his practical ability, some

of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. Amaryllis

fleeing desired that her hiding-place should be known; and that love

will find out the way “over the mountain and over the wave” may be said

without hyperbole in this age of steam. Gwendolen, he conceived, was an

Amaryllis of excellent sense but coquettish daring; the question was

whether she had dared too much.

Lady Flora, coming back charged with news about Miss Harleth, saw no

good reason why she should not try whether she could electrify Mr.

Grandcourt by mentioning it to him at the table; and in doing so shot a

few hints of a notion having got abroad that he was a disappointed

adorer. Grandcourt heard with quietude, but with attention; and the

next day he ordered Lush to bring about a decent reason for breaking up

the party at Diplow by the end of another week, as he meant to go

yachting to the Baltic or somewhere—it being impossible to stay at

Diplow as if he were a prisoner on parole, with a set of people whom he

had never wanted. Lush needed no clearer announcement that Grandcourt

was going to Leubronn; but he might go after the manner of a creeping

billiard-ball and stick on the way. What Mr. Lush intended was to make

himself indispensable so that he might go too, and he succeeded;

Gwendolen’s repulsion for him being a fact that only amused his patron,

and made him none the less willing to have Lush always at hand.

This was how it happened that Grandcourt arrived at the _Czarina_ on

the fifth day after Gwendolen had left Leubronn, and found there his

uncle, Sir Hugo Mallinger, with his family, including Deronda. It is

not necessarily a pleasure either to the reigning power or the heir

presumptive when their separate affairs—a touch of gout, say, in the

one, and a touch of willfulness in the other—happen to bring them to

the same spot. Sir Hugo was an easy-tempered man, tolerant both of

differences and defects; but a point of view different from his own

concerning the settlement of the family estates fretted him rather more

than if it had concerned Church discipline or the ballot, and faults

were the less venial for belonging to a person whose existence was

inconvenient to him. In no case could Grandcourt have been a nephew

after his own heart; but as the presumptive heir to the Mallinger

estates he was the sign and embodiment of a chief grievance in the

baronet’s life—the want of a son to inherit the lands, in no portion

of which had he himself more than a life-interest. For in the

ill-advised settlement which his father, Sir Francis, had chosen to

make by will, even Diplow with its modicum of land had been left under

the same conditions as the ancient and wide inheritance of the two

Toppings—Diplow, where Sir Hugo had lived and hunted through many a

season in his younger years, and where his wife and daughters ought to

have been able to retire after his death.

This grievance had naturally gathered emphasis as the years advanced,

and Lady Mallinger, after having had three daughters in quick

succession, had remained for eight years till now that she was over

forty without producing so much as another girl; while Sir Hugo, almost

twenty years older, was at a time of life when, notwithstanding the

fashionable retardation of most things from dinners to marriages, a

man’s hopefulness is apt to show signs of wear, until restored by

second childhood.

In fact, he had begun to despair of a son, and this confirmation of

Grandcourt’s interest in the estates certainly tended to make his image

and presence the more unwelcome; but, on the other hand, it carried

circumstances which disposed Sir Hugo to take care that the relation

between them should be kept as friendly as possible. It led him to

dwell on a plan which had grown up side by side with his disappointment

of an heir; namely, to try and secure Diplow as a future residence for

Lady Mallinger and her daughters, and keep this pretty bit of the

family inheritance for his own offspring in spite of that

disappointment. Such knowledge as he had of his nephew’s disposition

and affairs encouraged the belief that Grandcourt might consent to a

transaction by which he would get a good sum of ready money, as an

equivalent for his prospective interest in the domain of Diplow and the

moderate amount of land attached to it. If, after all, the unhoped-for

son should be born, the money would have been thrown away, and

Grandcourt would have been paid for giving up interests that had turned

out good for nothing; but Sir Hugo set down this risk as _nil_, and of

late years he had husbanded his fortune so well by the working of mines

and the sale of leases that he was prepared for an outlay.

Here was an object that made him careful to avoid any quarrel with

Grandcourt. Some years before, when he was making improvements at the

Abbey, and needed Grandcourt’s concurrence in his felling an

obstructive mass of timber on the demesne, he had congratulated himself

on finding that there was no active spite against him in his nephew’s

peculiar mind; and nothing had since occurred to make them hate each

other more than was compatible with perfect politeness, or with any

accommodation that could be strictly mutual.

Grandcourt, on his side, thought his uncle a superfluity and a bore,

and felt that the list of things in general would be improved whenever

Sir Hugo came to be expunged. But he had been made aware through Lush,

always a useful medium, of the baronet’s inclinations concerning

Diplow, and he was gratified to have the alternative of the money in

his mind: even if he had not thought it in the least likely that he

would choose to accept it, his sense of power would have been flattered

by his being able to refuse what Sir Hugo desired. The hinted

transaction had told for something among the motives which had made him

ask for a year’s tenancy of Diplow, which it had rather annoyed Sir

Hugo to grant, because the excellent hunting in the neighborhood might

decide Grandcourt not to part with his chance of future possession;—a

man who has two places, in one of which the hunting is less good,

naturally desiring a third where it is better. Also, Lush had thrown

out to Sir Hugo the probability that Grandcourt would woo and win Miss

Arrowpoint, and in that case ready money might be less of a temptation

to him. Hence, on this unexpected meeting at Leubronn, the baronet felt

much curiosity to know how things had been going on at Diplow, was bent

on being as civil as possible to his nephew, and looked forward to some

private chat with Lush.

Between Deronda and Grandcourt there was a more faintly-marked but

peculiar relation, depending on circumstances which have yet to be made

known. But on no side was there any sign of suppressed chagrin on the

first meeting at the _table d’hôte_, an hour after Grandcourt’s

arrival; and when the quartette of gentlemen afterward met on the

terrace, without Lady Mallinger, they moved off together to saunter

through the rooms, Sir Hugo saying as they entered the large _saal_,

“Did you play much at Baden, Grandcourt?”

“No; I looked on and betted a little with some Russians there.”

“Had you luck?”

“What did I win, Lush?”

“You brought away about two hundred,” said Lush.

“You are not here for the sake of the play, then?” said Sir Hugo.

“No; I don’t care about play now. It’s a confounded strain,” said

Grandcourt, whose diamond ring and demeanor, as he moved along playing

slightly with his whisker, were being a good deal stared at by rouged

foreigners interested in a new milord.

“The fact is, somebody should invent a mill to do amusements for you,

my dear fellow,” said Sir Hugo, “as the Tartars get their praying done.

But I agree with you; I never cared for play. It’s monotonous—knits

the brain up into meshes. And it knocks me up to watch it now. I

suppose one gets poisoned with the bad air. I never stay here more than

ten minutes. But where’s your gambling beauty, Deronda? Have you seen

her lately?”

“She’s gone,” said Deronda, curtly.

“An uncommonly fine girl, a perfect Diana,” said Sir Hugo, turning to

Grandcourt again. “Really worth a little straining to look at her. I

saw her winning, and she took it as coolly as if she had known it all

beforehand. The same day Deronda happened to see her losing like

wildfire, and she bore it with immense pluck. I suppose she was cleaned

out, or was wise enough to stop in time. How do you know she’s gone?”

“Oh, by the Visitor-list, ...” said Deronda, with a scarcely perceptible

shrug. “Vandernoodt told me her name was Harleth, and she was with the

Baron and Baroness von Langen. I saw by the list that Miss Harleth was

no longer there.”

This held no further information for Lush than that Gwendolen had been

gambling. He had already looked at the list, and ascertained that

Gwendolen had gone, but he had no intention of thrusting this knowledge

on Grandcourt before he asked for it; and he had not asked, finding it

enough to believe that the object of search would turn up somewhere or

other.

But now Grandcourt had heard what was rather piquant, and not a word

about Miss Harleth had been missed by him. After a moment’s pause he

said to Deronda,

“Do you know those people—the Langens?”

“I have talked with them a little since Miss Harleth went away. I knew

nothing of them before.”

“Where is she gone—do you know?”

“She is gone home,” said Deronda, coldly, as if he wished to say no

more. But then, from a fresh impulse, he turned to look markedly at

Grandcourt, and added, “But it is possible you know her. Her home is

not far from Diplow: Offendene, near Winchester.”

Deronda, turning to look straight at Grandcourt, who was on his left

hand, might have been a subject for those old painters who liked

contrasts of temperament. There was a calm intensity of life and

richness of tint in his face that on a sudden gaze from him was rather

startling, and often made him seem to have spoken, so that servants and

officials asked him automatically, “What did you say, sir?” when he had

been quite silent. Grandcourt himself felt an irritation, which he did

not show except by a slight movement of the eyelids, at Deronda’s

turning round on him when he was not asked to do more than speak. But

he answered, with his usual drawl, “Yes, I know her,” and paused with

his shoulder toward Deronda, to look at the gambling.

“What of her, eh?” asked Sir Hugo of Lush, as the three moved on a

little way. “She must be a new-comer at Offendene. Old Blenny lived

there after the dowager died.”

“A little too much of her,” said Lush, in a low, significant tone; not

sorry to let Sir Hugo know the state of affairs.

“Why? how?” said the baronet. They all moved out of the _salon_ into an

airy promenade.

“He has been on the brink of marrying her,” Lush went on. “But I hope

it’s off now. She’s a niece of the clergyman—Gascoigne—at Pennicote.

Her mother is a widow with a brood of daughters. This girl will have

nothing, and is as dangerous as gunpowder. It would be a foolish

marriage. But she has taken a freak against him, for she ran off here

without notice, when he had agreed to call the next day. The fact is,

he’s here after her; but he was in no great hurry, and between his

caprice and hers they are likely enough not to get together again. But

of course he has lost his chance with the heiress.”

Grandcourt joining them said, “What a beastly den this is!—a worse

hole than Baden. I shall go back to the hotel.”

When Sir Hugo and Deronda were alone, the baronet began,

“Rather a pretty story. That girl has something in her. She must be

worth running after—has _de l’imprévu_. I think her appearance on the

scene has bettered my chance of getting Diplow, whether the marriage

comes off or not.”

“I should hope a marriage like that would not come off,” said Deronda,

in a tone of disgust.

“What! are you a little touched with the sublime lash?” said Sir Hugo,

putting up his glasses to help his short sight in looking at his

companion. “Are you inclined to run after her?”

“On the contrary,” said Deronda, “I should rather be inclined to run

away from her.”

“Why, you would easily cut out Grandcourt. A girl with her spirit would

think you the finer match of the two,” said Sir Hugo, who often tried

Deronda’s patience by finding a joke in impossible advice. (A

difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.)

“I suppose pedigree and land belong to a fine match,” said Deronda,

coldly.

“The best horse will win in spite of pedigree, my boy. You remember

Napoleon’s _mot—Je suis un ancêtre_” said Sir Hugo, who habitually

undervalued birth, as men after dining well often agree that the good

of life is distributed with wonderful equality.

“I am not sure that I want to be an ancestor,” said Deronda. “It

doesn’t seem to me the rarest sort of origination.”

“You won’t run after the pretty gambler, then?” said Sir Hugo, putting

down his glasses.

“Decidedly not.”

This answer was perfectly truthful; nevertheless it had passed through

Deronda’s mind that under other circumstances he should have given way

to the interest this girl had raised in him, and tried to know more of

her. But his history had given him a stronger bias in another

direction. He felt himself in no sense free.

CHAPTER XVI.

Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The

astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so

for every visible arc in the wanderer’s orbit; and the narrator of

human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would

have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead

up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense

suffering which take the quality of action—like the cry of

Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea

and sky he invokes and the deity he defies.

Deronda’s circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional. One moment had

been burned into his life as its chief epoch—a moment full of July

sunshine and large pink roses shedding their last petals on a grassy

court enclosed on three sides by a gothic cloister. Imagine him in such

a scene: a boy of thirteen, stretched prone on the grass where it was

in shadow, his curly head propped on his arms over a book, while his

tutor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool under shelter. Deronda’s book

was Sismondi’s _History of the Italian Republics_; the lad had a

passion for history, eager to know how time had been filled up since

the flood, and how things were carried on in the dull periods. Suddenly

he let down his left arm and looked at his tutor, saying in purest

boyish tones,

“Mr. Fraser, how was it that the popes and cardinals always had so many

nephews?”

The tutor, an able young Scotchman, who acted as Sir Hugo Mallinger’s

secretary, roused rather unwillingly from his political economy,

answered with the clear-cut emphatic chant which makes a truth doubly

telling in Scotch utterance,

“Their own children were called nephews.”

“Why?” said Deronda.

“It was just for the propriety of the thing; because, as you know very

well, priests don’t marry, and the children were illegitimate.”

Mr. Fraser, thrusting out his lower lip and making his chant of the

last word the more emphatic for a little impatience at being

interrupted, had already turned his eyes on his book again, while

Deronda, as if something had stung him, started up in a sitting

attitude with his back to the tutor.

He had always called Sir Hugo Mallinger his uncle, and when it once

occurred to him to ask about his father and mother, the baronet had

answered, “You lost your father and mother when you were quite a little

one; that is why I take care of you.” Daniel then straining to discern

something in that early twilight, had a dim sense of having been kissed

very much, and surrounded by thin, cloudy, scented drapery, till his

fingers caught in something hard, which hurt him, and he began to cry.

Every other memory he had was of the little world in which he still

lived. And at that time he did not mind about learning more, for he was

too fond of Sir Hugo to be sorry for the loss of unknown parents. Life

was very delightful to the lad, with an uncle who was always indulgent

and cheerful—a fine man in the bright noon of life, whom Daniel

thought absolutely perfect, and whose place was one of the finest in

England, at once historical, romantic, and home-like: a picturesque

architectural outgrowth from an abbey, which had still remnants of the

old monastic trunk. Diplow lay in another county, and was a

comparatively landless place which had come into the family from a rich

lawyer on the female side who wore the perruque of the restoration;

whereas the Mallingers had the grant of Monk’s Topping under Henry the

Eighth, and ages before had held the neighboring lands of King’s

Topping, tracing indeed their origin to a certain Hugues le Malingre,

who came in with the Conqueror—and also apparently with a sickly

complexion which had been happily corrected in his descendants. Two

rows of these descendants, direct and collateral, females of the male

line, and males of the female, looked down in the gallery over the

cloisters on the nephew Daniel as he walked there: men in armor with

pointed beards and arched eyebrows, pinched ladies in hoops and ruffs

with no face to speak of; grave-looking men in black velvet and stuffed

hips, and fair, frightened women holding little boys by the hand;

smiling politicians in magnificent perruques, and ladies of the

prize-animal kind, with rosebud mouths and full eyelids, according to

Lely; then a generation whose faces were revised and embellished in the

taste of Kneller; and so on through refined editions of the family

types in the time of Reynolds and Romney, till the line ended with Sir

Hugo and his younger brother Henleigh. This last had married Miss

Grandcourt, and taken her name along with her estates, thus making a

junction between two equally old families, impaling the three Saracens’

heads proper and three bezants of the one with the tower and falcons

_argent_ of the other, and, as it happened, uniting their highest

advantages in the prospects of that Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt who

is at present more of an acquaintance to us than either Sir Hugo or his

nephew Daniel Deronda.

In Sir Hugo’s youthful portrait with rolled collar and high cravat, Sir

Thomas Lawrence had done justice to the agreeable alacrity of

expression and sanguine temperament still to be seen in the original,

but had done something more than justice in slightly lengthening the

nose, which was in reality shorter than might have been expected in a

Mallinger. Happily the appropriate nose of the family reappeared in his

younger brother, and was to be seen in all its refined regularity in

his nephew Mallinger Grandcourt. But in the nephew Daniel Deronda the

family faces of various types, seen on the walls of the gallery, found

no reflex. Still he was handsomer than any of them, and when he was

thirteen might have served as model for any painter who wanted to image

the most memorable of boys: you could hardly have seen his face

thoroughly meeting yours without believing that human creatures had

done nobly in times past, and might do more nobly in time to come. The

finest childlike faces have this consecrating power, and make us

shudder anew at all the grossness and basely-wrought griefs of the

world, lest they should enter here and defile.

But at this moment on the grass among the rose-petals, Daniel Deronda

was making a first acquaintance with those griefs. A new idea had

entered his mind, and was beginning to change the aspect of his

habitual feelings as happy careless voyagers are changed with the sky

suddenly threatened and the thought of danger arises. He sat perfectly

still with his back to the tutor, while his face expressed rapid inward

transition. The deep blush, which had come when he first started up,

gradually subsided; but his features kept that indescribable look of

subdued activity which often accompanies a new mental survey of

familiar facts. He had not lived with other boys, and his mind showed

the same blending of child’s ignorance with surprising knowledge which

is oftener seen in bright girls. Having read Shakespeare as well as a

great deal of history, he could have talked with the wisdom of a

bookish child about men who were born out of wedlock and were held

unfortunate in consequence, being under disadvantages which required

them to be a sort of heroes if they were to work themselves up to an

equal standing with their legally born brothers. But he had never

brought such knowledge into any association with his own lot, which had

been too easy for him ever to think about it—until this moment when

there had darted into his mind with the magic of quick comparison, the

possibility that here was the secret of his own birth, and that the man

whom he called uncle was really his father. Some children, even younger

than Daniel, have known the first arrival of care, like an ominous

irremovable guest in their tender lives, on the discovery that their

parents, whom they had imagined able to buy everything, were poor and

in hard money troubles. Daniel felt the presence of a new guest who

seemed to come with an enigmatic veiled face, and to carry

dimly-conjectured, dreaded revelations. The ardor which he had given to

the imaginary world in his books suddenly rushed toward his own history

and spent its pictorial energy there, explaining what he knew,

representing the unknown. The uncle whom he loved very dearly took the

aspect of a father who held secrets about him—who had done him a

wrong—yes, a wrong: and what had become of his mother, for whom he

must have been taken away?—Secrets about which he, Daniel, could never

inquire; for to speak or to be spoken to about these new thoughts

seemed like falling flakes of fire to his imagination. Those who have

known an impassioned childhood will understand this dread of utterance

about any shame connected with their parents. The impetuous advent of

new images took possession of him with the force of fact for the first

time told, and left him no immediate power for the reflection that he

might be trembling at a fiction of his own. The terrible sense of

collision between a strong rush of feeling and the dread of its

betrayal, found relief at length in big slow tears, which fell without

restraint until the voice of Mr. Fraser was heard saying:

“Daniel, do you see that you are sitting on the bent pages of your

book?”

Daniel immediately moved the book without turning round, and after

holding it before him for an instant, rose with it and walked away into

the open grounds, where he could dry his tears unobserved. The first

shock of suggestion past, he could remember that he had no certainty

how things really had been, and that he had been making conjectures

about his own history, as he had often made stories about Pericles or

Columbus, just to fill up the blanks before they became famous. Only

there came back certain facts which had an obstinate reality, almost

like the fragments of a bridge, telling you unmistakably how the arches

lay. And again there came a mood in which his conjectures seemed like a

doubt of religion, to be banished as an offense, and a mean prying

after what he was not meant to know; for there was hardly a delicacy of

feeling this lad was not capable of. But the summing-up of all his

fluctuating experience at this epoch was, that a secret impression had

come to him which had given him something like a new sense in relation

to all the elements of his life. And the idea that others probably knew

things concerning which they did not choose to mention, set up in him a

premature reserve which helped to intensify his inward experience. His

ears open now to words which before that July day would have passed by

him unnoted; and round every trivial incident which imagination could

connect with his suspicions, a newly-roused set of feelings were ready

to cluster themselves.

One such incident a month later wrought itself deeply into his life.

Daniel had not only one of those thrilling boy voices which seem to

bring an idyllic heaven and earth before our eyes, but a fine musical

instinct, and had early made out accompaniments for himself on the

piano, while he sang from memory. Since then he had had some teaching,

and Sir Hugo, who delighted in the boy, used to ask for his music in

the presence of guests. One morning after he had been singing “Sweet

Echo” before a small party of gentlemen whom the rain had kept in the

house, the baronet, passing from a smiling remark to his next neighbor

said:

“Come here, Dan!”

The boy came forward with unusual reluctance. He wore an embroidered

holland blouse which set off the rich coloring of his head and throat,

and the resistant gravity about his mouth and eyes as he was being

smiled upon, made their beauty the more impressive. Every one was

admiring him.

“What do you say to being a great singer? Should you like to be adored

by the world and take the house by storm, like Mario and Tamberlik?”

Daniel reddened instantaneously, but there was a just perceptible

interval before he answered with angry decision,

“No; I should hate it!”

“Well, well, well!” said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness intended

to be soothing. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and

going to his own chamber threw himself on the broad window-sill, which

was a favorite retreat of his when he had nothing particular to do.

Here he could see the rain gradually subsiding with gleams through the

parting clouds which lit up a great reach of the park, where the old

oaks stood apart from each other, and the bordering wood was pierced

with a green glade which met the eastern sky. This was a scene which

had always been part of his home—part of the dignified ease which had

been a matter of course in his life. And his ardent clinging nature had

appropriated it all with affection. He knew a great deal of what it was

to be a gentleman by inheritance, and without thinking much about

himself—for he was a boy of active perceptions and easily forgot his

own existence in that of Robert Bruce—he had never supposed that he

could be shut out from such a lot, or have a very different part in the

world from that of the uncle who petted him. It is possible (though not

greatly believed in at present) to be fond of poverty and take it for a

bride, to prefer scoured deal, red quarries and whitewash for one’s

private surroundings, to delight in no splendor but what has open doors

for the whole nation, and to glory in having no privileges except such

as nature insists on; and noblemen have been known to run away from

elaborate ease and the option of idleness, that they might bind

themselves for small pay to hard-handed labor. But Daniel’s tastes were

altogether in keeping with his nurture: his disposition was one in

which everyday scenes and habits beget not _ennui_ or rebellion, but

delight, affection, aptitudes; and now the lad had been stung to the

quick by the idea that his uncle—perhaps his father—thought of a

career for him which was totally unlike his own, and which he knew very

well was not thought of among possible destinations for the sons of

English gentlemen. He had often stayed in London with Sir Hugo, who to

indulge the boy’s ear had carried him to the opera to hear the great

tenors, so that the image of a singer taking the house by storm was

very vivid to him; but now, spite of his musical gift, he set himself

bitterly against the notion of being dressed up to sing before all

those fine people, who would not care about him except as a wonderful

toy. That Sir Hugo should have thought of him in that position for a

moment, seemed to Daniel an unmistakable proof that there was something

about his birth which threw him out from the class of gentlemen to

which the baronet belonged. Would it ever be mentioned to him? Would

the time come when his uncle would tell him everything? He shrank from

the prospect: in his imagination he preferred ignorance. If his father

had been wicked—Daniel inwardly used strong words, for he was feeling

the injury done him as a maimed boy feels the crushed limb which for

others is merely reckoned in an average of accidents—if his father had

done any wrong, he wished it might never be spoken of to him: it was

already a cutting thought that such knowledge might be in other minds.

Was it in Mr. Fraser’s? probably not, else he would not have spoken in

that way about the pope’s nephews. Daniel fancied, as older people do,

that every one else’s consciousness was as active as his own on a

matter which was vital to him. Did Turvey the valet know?—and old Mrs.

French the housekeeper?—and Banks the bailiff, with whom he had ridden

about the farms on his pony?—And now there came back the recollection

of a day some years before when he was drinking Mrs. Banks’s whey, and

Banks said to his wife with a wink and a cunning laugh, “He features

the mother, eh?” At that time little Daniel had merely thought that

Banks made a silly face, as the common farming men often did, laughing

at what was not laughable; and he rather resented being winked at and

talked of as if he did not understand everything. But now that small

incident became information: it was to be reasoned on. How could he be

like his mother and not like his father? His mother must have been a

Mallinger, if Sir Hugo were his uncle. But no! His father might have

been Sir Hugo’s brother and have changed his name, as Mr. Henleigh

Mallinger did when he married Miss Grandcourt. But then, why had he

never heard Sir Hugo speak of his brother Deronda, as he spoke of his

brother Grandcourt? Daniel had never before cared about the family

tree—only about that ancestor who had killed three Saracens in one

encounter. But now his mind turned to a cabinet of estate-maps in the

library, where he had once seen an illuminated parchment hanging out,

that Sir Hugo said was the family tree. The phrase was new and odd to

him—he was a little fellow then—hardly more than half his present

age—and he gave it no precise meaning. He knew more now and wished

that he could examine that parchment. He imagined that the cabinet was

always locked, and longed to try it. But here he checked himself. He

might be seen: and he would never bring himself near even a silent

admission of the sore that had opened in him.

It is in such experiences of a boy or girlhood, while elders are

debating whether most education lies in science or literature, that the

main lines of character are often laid down. If Daniel had been of a

less ardently affectionate nature, the reserve about himself and the

supposition that others had something to his disadvantage in their

minds, might have turned into a hard, proud antagonism. But inborn

lovingness was strong enough to keep itself level with resentment.

There was hardly any creature in his habitual world that he was not

fond of; teasing them occasionally, of course—all except his uncle, or

“Nunc,” as Sir Hugo had taught him to say; for the baronet was the

reverse of a strait-laced man, and left his dignity to take care of

itself. Him Daniel loved in that deep-rooted filial way which makes

children always the happier for being in the same room with father or

mother, though their occupations may be quite apart. Sir Hugo’s

watch-chain and seals, his handwriting, his mode of smoking and of

talking to his dogs and horses, had all a rightness and charm about

them to the boy which went along with the happiness of morning and

breakfast time. That Sir Hugo had always been a Whig, made Tories and

Radicals equally opponents of the truest and best; and the books he had

written were all seen under the same consecration of loving belief

which differenced what was his from what was not his, in spite of

general resemblance. Those writings were various, from volumes of

travel in the brilliant style, to articles on things in general, and

pamphlets on political crises; but to Daniel they were alike in having

an unquestionable rightness by which other people’s information could

be tested.

Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion that something

in this object of complete love was _not_ quite right? Children demand

that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so:

perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is hardly a less

revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall

of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in

maturer life.

But some time after this renewal of Daniel’s agitation it appeared that

Sir Hugo must have been making a merely playful experiment in his

question about the singing. He sent for Daniel into the library, and

looking up from his writing as the boy entered threw himself sideways

in his arm-chair. “Ah, Dan!” he said kindly, drawing one of the old

embroidered stools close to him. “Come and sit down here.”

Daniel obeyed, and Sir Hugo put a gentle hand on his shoulder, looking

at him affectionately.

“What is it, my boy? Have you heard anything that has put you out of

spirits lately?”

Daniel was determined not to let the tears come, but he could not speak.

“All changes are painful when people have been happy, you know,” said

Sir Hugo, lifting his hand from the boy’s shoulder to his dark curls

and rubbing them gently. “You can’t be educated exactly as I wish you

to be without our parting. And I think you will find a great deal to

like at school.”

This was not what Daniel expected, and was so far a relief, which gave

him spirit to answer,

“Am I to go to school?”

“Yes, I mean you to go to Eton. I wish you to have the education of an

English gentleman; and for that it is necessary that you should go to a

public school in preparation for the university: Cambridge I mean you

to go to; it was my own university.”

Daniel’s color came and went.

“What do you say, Sirrah?” said Sir Hugo, smiling.

“I should like to be a gentleman,” said Daniel, with firm distinctness,

“and go to school, if that is what a gentleman’s son must do.”

Sir Hugo watched him silently for a few moments, thinking he understood

now why the lad had seemed angry at the notion of becoming a singer.

Then he said tenderly,

“And so you won’t mind about leaving your old Nunc?”

“Yes, I shall,” said Daniel, clasping Sir Hugo’s caressing arm with

both his hands. “But sha’n’t I come home and be with you in the

holidays?”

“Oh yes, generally,” said Sir Hugo. “But now I mean you to go at once

to a new tutor, to break the change for you before you go to Eton.”

After this interview Daniel’s spirit rose again. He was meant to be a

gentleman, and in some unaccountable way it might be that his

conjectures were all wrong. The very keenness of the lad taught him to

find comfort in his ignorance. While he was busying his mind in the

construction of possibilities, it became plain to him that there must

be possibilities of which he knew nothing. He left off brooding, young

joy and the spirit of adventure not being easily quenched within him,

and in the interval before his going away he sang about the house,

danced among the old servants, making them parting gifts, and insisted

many times to the groom on the care that was to be taken of the black

pony.

“Do you think I shall know much less than the other boys, Mr. Fraser?”

said Daniel. It was his bent to think that every stranger would be

surprised at his ignorance.

“There are dunces to be found everywhere,” said the judicious Fraser.

“You’ll not be the biggest; but you’ve not the makings of a Porson in

you, or a Leibnitz either.”

“I don’t want to be a Porson or a Leibnitz,” said Daniel. “I would

rather be a greater leader, like Pericles or Washington.”

“Ay, ay; you’ve a notion they did with little parsing, and less

algebra,” said Fraser. But in reality he thought his pupil a remarkable

lad, to whom one thing was as easy as another, if he had only a mind to

it.

Things went on very well with Daniel in his new world, except that a

boy with whom he was at once inclined to strike up a close friendship

talked to him a great deal about his home and parents, and seemed to

expect a like expansiveness in return. Daniel immediately shrank into

reserve, and this experience remained a check on his naturally strong

bent toward the formation of intimate friendship. Every one, his tutor

included, set him down as a reserved boy, though he was so good-humored

and unassuming, as well as quick, both at study and sport, that nobody

called his reserve disagreeable. Certainly his face had a great deal to

do with that favorable interpretation; but in this instance the beauty

of the closed lips told no falsehood.

A surprise that came to him before his first vacation strengthened the

silent consciousness of a grief within, which might be compared in some

ways with Byron’s susceptibility about his deformed foot. Sir Hugo

wrote word that he was married to Miss Raymond, a sweet lady, whom

Daniel must remember having seen. The event would make no difference

about his spending the vacation at the Abbey; he would find Lady

Mallinger a new friend whom he would be sure to love—and much more to

the usual effect when a man, having done something agreeable to

himself, is disposed to congratulate others on his own good fortune,

and the deducible satisfactoriness of events in general.

Let Sir Hugo be partly excused until the grounds of his action can be

more fully known. The mistakes in his behavior to Deronda were due to

that dullness toward what may be going on in other minds, especially

the minds of children, which is among the commonest deficiencies, even

in good-natured men like him, when life has been generally easy to

themselves, and their energies have been quietly spent in feeling

gratified. No one was better aware than he that Daniel was generally

suspected to be his own son. But he was pleased with that suspicion;

and his imagination had never once been troubled with the way in which

the boy himself might be affected, either then or in the future, by the

enigmatic aspect of his circumstances. He was as fond of him as could

be, and meant the best by him. And, considering the lightness with

which the preparation of young lives seem to lie on respectable

consciences, Sir Hugo Mallinger can hardly be held open to exceptional

reproach. He had been a bachelor till he was five-and-forty, had always

been regarded as a fascinating man of elegant tastes; what could be

more natural, even according to the index of language, than that he

should have a beautiful boy like the little Deronda to take care of?

The mother might even, perhaps, be in the great world—met with in Sir

Hugo’s residence abroad. The only person to feel any objection was the

boy himself, who could not have been consulted. And the boy’s

objections had never been dreamed of by anybody but himself.

By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady Mallinger had

already three daughters—charming babies, all three, but whose sex was

announced as a melancholy alternative, the offspring desired being a

son; if Sir Hugo had no son the succession must go to his nephew,

Mallinger Grandcourt. Daniel no longer held a wavering opinion about

his own birth. His fuller knowledge had tended to convince him that Sir

Hugo was his father, and he conceived that the baronet, since he never

approached a communication on the subject, wished him to have a tacit

understanding of the fact, and to accept in silence what would be

generally considered more than the due love and nurture. Sir Hugo’s

marriage might certainly have been felt as a new ground of resentment

by some youths in Deronda’s position, and the timid Lady Mallinger with

her fast-coming little ones might have been images to scowl at, as

likely to divert much that was disposable in the feelings and

possessions of the baronet from one who felt his own claim to be prior.

But hatred of innocent human obstacles was a form of moral stupidity

not in Deronda’s grain; even the indignation which had long mingled

itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took the quality of pain rather

than of temper; and as his mind ripened to the idea of tolerance toward

error, he habitually liked the idea with his own silent grievances.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage—the deformed foot doubtfully

hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and

easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But

in the rarer sort, who presently see their own frustrated claim as one

among a myriad, the inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and

makes the imagination tender. Deronda’s early-weakened susceptibility,

charged at first with ready indignation and resistant pride, had raised

in him a premature reflection on certain questions of life; it had

given a bias to his conscience, a sympathy with certain ills, and a

tension of resolve in certain directions, who marked him off from other

youths much more than any talents he possessed.

One day near the end of the long vacation, when he had been making a

tour in the Rhineland with his Eton tutor, and was come for a farewell

stay at the Abbey before going to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo,

“What do you intend me to be, sir?” They were in the library, and it

was the fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called him in to read a letter from

a Cambridge Don who was to be interested in him; and since the baronet

wore an air at once business-like and leisurely, the moment seemed

propitious for entering on a grave subject which had never yet been

thoroughly discussed.

“Whatever your inclination leads you to, my boy. I thought it right to

give you the option of the army, but you shut the door on that, and I

was glad. I don’t expect you to choose just yet—by-and-by, when you

have looked about you a little more and tried your mettle among older

men. The university has a good wide opening into the forum. There are

prizes to be won, and a bit of good fortune often gives the turn to a

man’s taste. From what I see and hear, I should think you can take up

anything you like. You are in the deeper water with your classics than

I ever got into, and if you are rather sick of that swimming, Cambridge

is the place where you can go into mathematics with a will, and disport

yourself on the dry sand as much as you like. I floundered along like a

carp.”

“I suppose money will make some difference, sir,” said Daniel blushing.

“I shall have to keep myself by-and-by.”

“Not exactly. I recommend you not to be extravagant—yes, yes, I

know—you are not inclined to that—but you need not take up anything

against the grain. You will have a bachelor’s income—enough for you to

look about with. Perhaps I had better tell you that you may consider

yourself secure of seven hundred a year. You might make yourself a

barrister—be a writer—take up politics. I confess that is what would

please me best. I should like to have you at my elbow and pulling with

me.”

Deronda looked embarrassed. He felt that he ought to make some sign of

gratitude, but other feelings clogged his tongue. A moment was passing

by in which a question about his birth was throbbing within him, and

yet it seemed more impossible than ever that the question should find

vent—more impossible than ever that he could hear certain things from

Sir Hugo’s lips. The liberal way in which he was dealt with was the

more striking because the baronet had of late cared particularly for

money, and for making the utmost of his life-interest in the estate by

way of providing for his daughters; and as all this flashed through

Daniel’s mind it was momentarily within his imagination that the

provision for him might come in some way from his mother. But such

vaporous conjecture passed away as quickly as it came.

Sir Hugo appeared not to notice anything peculiar in Daniel’s manner,

and presently went on with his usual chatty liveliness.

“I am glad you have done some good reading outside your classics, and

have got a grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can

get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it’s

hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself

and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse

you’ll give him as a cue. That’s all very fine, but in practical life

nobody does give you the cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it’s a nicety

of conversation which I would have you attend to—much quotation of any

sort, even in English is bad. It tends to choke ordinary remark. One

couldn’t carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the

fact that everything had been said better than we can put it ourselves.

But talking of Dons, I have seen Dons make a capital figure in society;

and occasionally he can shoot you down a cart-load of learning in the

right place, which will tell in politics. Such men are wanted; and if

you have any turn for being a Don, I say nothing against it.”

“I think there’s not much chance of that. Quicksett and Puller are both

stronger than I am. I hope you will not be much disappointed if I don’t

come out with high honors.”

“No, no. I should like you to do yourself credit, but for God’s sake

don’t come out as a superior expensive kind of idiot, like young

Brecon, who got a Double First, and has been learning to knit braces

ever since. What I wish you to get is a passport in life. I don’t go

against our university system: we want a little disinterested culture

to make head against cotton and capital, especially in the House. My

Greek has all evaporated; if I had to construe a verse on a sudden, I

should get an apoplectic fit. But it formed my taste. I dare say my

English is the better for it.”

On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The enthusiastic belief

in Sir Hugo’s writings as a standard, and in the Whigs as the chosen

race among politicians, had gradually vanished along with the seraphic

boy’s face. He had not been the hardest of workers at Eton. Though some

kinds of study and reading came as easily as boating to him, he was not

of the material that usually makes the first-rate Eton scholar. There

had sprung up in him a meditative yearning after wide knowledge which

is likely always to abate ardor in the fight for prize acquirement in

narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and took any second-rateness in

himself simply as a fact, not as a marvel necessarily to be accounted

for by a superiority. Still, Mr. Fraser’s high opinion of the lad had

not been altogether belied by the youth: Daniel had the stamp of rarity

in a subdued fervor of sympathy, an activity of imagination on behalf

of others which did not show itself effusively, but was continually

seen in acts of considerateness that struck his companions as moral

eccentricity. “Deronda would have been first-rate if he had had more

ambition,” was a frequent remark about him. But how could a fellow push

his way properly when he objected to swop for his own advantage,

knocked under by choice when he was within an inch of victory, and,

unlike the great Clive, would rather be the calf than the butcher? It

was a mistake, however, to suppose that Deronda had not his share of

ambition. We know he had suffered keenly from the belief that there was

a tinge of dishonor in his lot; but there are some cases, and his was

one of them, in which the sense of injury breeds—not the will to

inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but, a hatred of all

injury. He had his flashes of fierceness and could hit out upon

occasion, but the occasions were not always what might have been

expected. For in what related to himself his resentful impulses had

been early checked by a mastering affectionateness. Love has a habit of

saying “Never mind” to angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in

the lower place, by-and-by gets used to it. So it was that as Deronda

approached manhood his feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was getting more

and more mixed with criticism, was gaining in that sort of allowance

which reconciles criticism with tenderness. The dear old beautiful home

and everything within it, Lady Mallinger and her little ones included,

were consecrated for the youth as they had been for the boy—only with

a certain difference of light on the objects. The altarpiece was no

longer miraculously perfect, painted under infallible guidance, but the

human hand discerned in the work was appealing to a reverent tenderness

safer from the gusts of discovery. Certainly Deronda’s ambition, even

in his spring-time, lay exceptionally aloof from conspicuous, vulgar

triumph, and from other ugly forms of boyish energy; perhaps because he

was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those heights.

One may spend a good deal of energy in disliking and resisting what

others pursue, and a boy who is fond of somebody else’s pencil-case may

not be more energetic than another who is fond of giving his own

pencil-case away. Still it was not Deronda’s disposition to escape from

ugly scenes; he was more inclined to sit through them and take care of

the fellow least able to take care of himself. It had helped to make

him popular that he was sometimes a little compromised by this apparent

comradeship. For a meditative interest in learning how human miseries

are wrought—as precocious in him as another sort of genius in the poet

who writes a Queen Mab at nineteen—was so infused with kindliness that

it easily passed for comradeship. Enough. In many of our neighbors’

lives there is much not only of error and lapse, but of a certain

exquisite goodness which can never be written or even spoken—only

divined by each of us, according to the inward instruction of our own

privacy.

The impression he made at Cambridge corresponded to his position at

Eton. Every one interested in him agreed that he might have taken a

high place if his motives had been of a more pushing sort, and if he

had not, instead of regarding studies as instruments of success,

hampered himself with the notion that they were to feed motive and

opinion—a notion which set him criticising methods and arguing against

his freight and harness when he should have been using all his might to

pull. In the beginning his work at the university had a new zest for

him: indifferent to the continuation of Eton classical drill, he

applied himself vigorously to mathematics, for which he had shown an

early aptitude under Mr. Fraser, and he had the delight of feeling his

strength in a comparatively fresh exercise of thought. That delight,

and the favorable opinion of his tutor, determined him to try for a

mathematical scholarship in the Easter of his second year: he wished to

gratify Sir Hugo by some achievement, and the study of the higher

mathematics, having the growing fascination inherent in all thinking

which demands intensity, was making him a more exclusive worker than he

had been before.

But here came the old check which had been growing with his growth. He

found the inward bent toward comprehension and thoroughness diverging

more and more from the track marked out by the standards of

examination: he felt a heightening discontent with the wearing futility

and enfeebling strain of a demand for excessive retention and dexterity

without any insight into the principles which form the vital

connections of knowledge. (Deronda’s undergraduateship occurred fifteen

years ago, when the perfection of our university methods was not yet

indisputable.) In hours when his dissatisfaction was strong upon him he

reproached himself for having been attracted by the conventional

advantage of belonging to an English university, and was tempted toward

the project of asking Sir Hugo to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a

more independent line of study abroad. The germs of this inclination

had been already stirring in his boyish love of universal history,

which made him want to be at home in foreign countries, and follow in

imagination the traveling students of the middle ages. He longed now to

have the sort of apprenticeship to life which would not shape him too

definitely, and rob him of the choice that might come from a free

growth. One sees that Deronda’s demerits were likely to be on the side

of reflective hesitation, and this tendency was encouraged by his

position; there was no need for him to get an immediate income, or to

fit himself in haste for a profession; and his sensibility to the

half-known facts of his parentage made him an excuse for lingering

longer than others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he

inwardly said, had a more definite place and duties. But the project

which flattered his inclination might not have gone beyond the stage of

ineffective brooding, if certain circumstances had not quickened it

into action.

The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship which

extended into his after-life. Of the same year with himself, and

occupying small rooms close to his, was a youth who had come as an

exhibitioner from Christ’s Hospital, and had eccentricities enough for

a Charles Lamb. Only to look at his pinched features and blonde hair

hanging over his collar reminded one of pale quaint heads by early

German painters; and when this faint coloring was lit up by a joke,

there came sudden creases about the mouth and eyes which might have

been moulded by the soul of an aged humorist. His father, an engraver

of some distinction, had been dead eleven years, and his mother had

three girls to educate and maintain on a meagre annuity. Hans

Meyrick—he had been daringly christened after Holbein—felt himself

the pillar, or rather the knotted and twisted trunk, round which these

feeble climbing plants must cling. There was no want of ability or of

honest well-meaning affection to make the prop trustworthy: the ease

and quickness with which he studied might serve him to win prizes at

Cambridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of

irregularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies

in him might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions might be

frustrated by some act which was not due to habit but to capricious,

scattered impulses. He could not be said to have any one bad habit; yet

at longer or shorter intervals he had fits of impish recklessness, and

did things that would have made the worst habits.

Hans in his right mind, however, was a lovable creature, and in Deronda

he had happened to find a friend who was likely to stand by him with

the more constancy, from compassion for these brief aberrations that

might bring a long repentance. Hans, indeed, shared Deronda’s rooms

nearly as much as he used his own: to Deronda he poured himself out on

his studies, his affairs, his hopes; the poverty of his home, and his

love for the creatures there; the itching of his fingers to draw, and

his determination to fight it away for the sake of getting some sort of

a plum that he might divide with his mother and the girls. He wanted no

confidence in return, but seemed to take Deronda as an Olympian who

needed nothing—an egotism in friendship which is common enough with

mercurial, expansive natures. Deronda was content, and gave Meyrick all

the interest he claimed, getting at last a brotherly anxiety about him,

looking after him in his erratic moments, and contriving by adroitly

delicate devices not only to make up for his friend’s lack of pence,

but to save him from threatening chances. Such friendship easily

becomes tender: the one spreads strong sheltering wings that delight in

spreading, the other gets the warm protection which is also a delight.

Meyrick was going in for a classical scholarship, and his success, in

various ways momentous, was the more probable from the steadying

influence of Deronda’s friendship.

But an imprudence of Meyrick’s, committed at the beginning of the

autumn term, threatened to disappoint his hopes. With his usual

alternation between unnecessary expense and self-privation, he had

given too much money for an old engraving which fascinated him, and to

make up for it, had come from London in a third-class carriage with his

eyes exposed to a bitter wind and any irritating particles the wind

might drive before it. The consequence was a severe inflammation of the

eyes, which for some time hung over him the threat of a lasting injury.

This crushing trouble called out all Deronda’s readiness to devote

himself, and he made every other occupation secondary to that of being

companion and eyes to Hans, working with him and for him at his

classics, that if possible his chance of the classical scholarship

might be saved. Hans, to keep the knowledge of his suffering from his

mother and sisters, alleged his work as a reason for passing the

Christmas at Cambridge, and his friend stayed up with him.

Meanwhile Deronda relaxed his hold on his mathematics, and Hans,

reflecting on this, at length said: “Old fellow, while you are hoisting

me you are risking yourself. With your mathematical cram one may be

like Moses or Mohammed or somebody of that sort who had to cram, and

forgot in one day what it had taken him forty to learn.”

Deronda would not admit that he cared about the risk, and he had really

been beguiled into a little indifference by double sympathy: he was

very anxious that Hans should not miss the much-needed scholarship, and

he felt a revival of interest in the old studies. Still, when Hans,

rather late in the day, got able to use his own eyes, Deronda had

tenacity enough to try hard and recover his lost ground. He failed,

however; but he had the satisfaction of seeing Meyrick win.

Success, as a sort of beginning that urged completion, might have

reconciled Deronda to his university course; but the emptiness of all

things, from politics to pastimes, is never so striking to us as when

we fail in them. The loss of the personal triumph had no severity for

him, but the sense of having spent his time ineffectively in a mode of

working which had been against the grain, gave him a distaste for any

renewal of the process, which turned his imagined project of quitting

Cambridge into a serious intention. In speaking of his intention to

Meyrick he made it appear that he was glad of the turn events had

taken—glad to have the balance dip decidedly, and feel freed from his

hesitations; but he observed that he must of course submit to any

strong objection on the part of Sir Hugo.

Meyrick’s joy and gratitude were disturbed by much uneasiness. He

believed in Deronda’s alleged preference, but he felt keenly that in

serving him Daniel had placed himself at a disadvantage in Sir Hugo’s

opinion, and he said mournfully, “If you had got the scholarship, Sir

Hugo would have thought that you asked to leave us with a better grace.

You have spoiled your luck for my sake, and I can do nothing to amend

it.”

“Yes, you can; you are to be a first-rate fellow. I call that a

first-rate investment of my luck.”

“Oh, confound it! You save an ugly mongrel from drowning, and expect

him to cut a fine figure. The poets have made tragedies enough about

signing one’s self over to wickedness for the sake of getting something

plummy; I shall write a tragedy of a fellow who signed himself over to

be good, and was uncomfortable ever after.”

But Hans lost no time in secretly writing the history of the affair to

Sir Hugo, making it plain that but for Deronda’s generous devotion he

could hardly have failed to win the prize he had been working for.

The two friends went up to town together: Meyrick to rejoice with his

mother and the girls in their little home at Chelsea; Deronda to carry

out the less easy task of opening his mind to Sir Hugo. He relied a

little on the baronet’s general tolerance of eccentricities, but he

expected more opposition than he met with. He was received with even

warmer kindness than usual, the failure was passed over lightly, and

when he detailed his reasons for wishing to quit the university and go

to study abroad, Sir Hugo sat for some time in a silence which was

rather meditative than surprised. At last he said, looking at Daniel

with examination, “So you don’t want to be an Englishman to the

backbone after all?”

“I want to be an Englishman, but I want to understand other points of

view. And I want to get rid of a merely English attitude in studies.”

“I see; you don’t want to be turned out in the same mould as every

other youngster. And I have nothing to say against your doffing some of

our national prejudices. I feel the better myself for having spent a

good deal of my time abroad. But, for God’s sake, keep an English cut,

and don’t become indifferent to bad tobacco! And, my dear boy, it is

good to be unselfish and generous; but don’t carry that too far. It

will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the

tallow-trade; you must know where to find yourself. However, I shall

put no veto on your going. Wait until I can get off Committee, and I’ll

run over with you.”

So Deronda went according to his will. But not before he had spent some

hours with Hans Meyrick, and been introduced to the mother and sisters

in the Chelsea home. The shy girls watched and registered every look of

their brother’s friend, declared by Hans to have been the salvation of

him, a fellow like nobody else, and, in fine, a brick. They so

thoroughly accepted Deronda as an ideal, that when he was gone the

youngest set to work, under the criticism of the two elder girls, to

paint him as Prince Camaralzaman.

CHAPTER XVII.

“This is true the poet sings,

That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow

Is remembering happier things.”

—TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_.

On a fine evening near the end of July, Deronda was rowing himself on

the Thames. It was already a year or more since he had come back to

England, with the understanding that his education was finished, and

that he was somehow to take his place in English society; but though,

in deference to Sir Hugo’s wish, and to fence off idleness, he had

begun to read law, this apparent decision had been without other result

than to deepen the roots of indecision. His old love of boating had

revived with the more force now that he was in town with the

Mallingers, because he could nowhere else get the same still seclusion

which the river gave him. He had a boat of his own at Putney, and

whenever Sir Hugo did not want him, it was his chief holiday to row

till past sunset and come in again with the stars. Not that he was in a

sentimental stage; but he was in another sort of contemplative mood

perhaps more common in the young men of our day—that of questioning

whether it were worth while to take part in the battle of the world: I

mean, of course, the young men in whom the unproductive labor of

questioning is sustained by three or five per cent, on capital which

somebody else has battled for. It puzzled Sir Hugo that one who made a

splendid contrast with all that was sickly and puling should be

hampered with ideas which, since they left an accomplished Whig like

himself unobstructed, could be no better than spectral illusions;

especially as Deronda set himself against authorship—a vocation which

is understood to turn foolish thinking into funds.

Rowing in his dark-blue shirt and skull-cap, his curls closely clipped,

his mouth beset with abundant soft waves of beard, he bore only

disguised traces of the seraphic boy “trailing clouds of glory.” Still,

even one who had never seen him since his boyhood might have looked at

him with slow recognition, due perhaps to the peculiarity of the gaze

which Gwendolen chose to call “dreadful,” though it had really a very

mild sort of scrutiny. The voice, sometimes audible in subdued snatches

of song, had turned out merely a high baritone; indeed, only to look at

his lithe, powerful frame and the firm gravity of his face would have

been enough for an experienced guess that he had no rare and ravishing

tenor such as nature reluctantly makes at some sacrifice. Look at his

hands: they are not small and dimpled, with tapering fingers that seem

to have only a deprecating touch: they are long, flexible,

firmly-grasping hands, such as Titian has painted in a picture where he

wanted to show the combination of refinement with force. And there is

something of a likeness, too, between the faces belonging to the

hands—in both the uniform pale-brown skin, the perpendicular brow, the

calmly penetrating eyes. Not seraphic any longer: thoroughly

terrestrial and manly; but still of a kind to raise belief in a human

dignity which can afford to recognize poor relations.

Such types meet us here and there among average conditions; in a

workman, for example, whistling over a bit of measurement and lifting

his eyes to answer our question about the road. And often the grand

meanings of faces as well as of written words may lie chiefly in the

impressions that happen just now to be of importance in relation to

Deronda, rowing on the Thames in a very ordinary equipment for a young

Englishman at leisure, and passing under Kew Bridge with no thought of

an adventure in which his appearance was likely to play any part. In

fact, he objected very strongly to the notion, which others had not

allowed him to escape, that his appearance was of a kind to draw

attention; and hints of this, intended to be complimentary, found an

angry resonance in him, coming from mingled experiences, to which a

clue has already been given. His own face in the glass had during many

years associated for him with thoughts of some one whom he must be

like—one about whose character and lot he continually wondered, and

never dared to ask.

In the neighborhood of Kew Bridge, between six and seven o’clock, the

river was no solitude. Several persons were sauntering on the

towing-path, and here and there a boat was plying. Deronda had been

rowing fast to get over this spot, when, becoming aware of a great

barge advancing toward him, he guided his boat aside, and rested on his

oar within a couple of yards of the river-brink. He was all the while

unconsciously continuing the low-toned chant which had haunted his

throat all the way up the river—the gondolier’s song in the _Otello_,

where Rossini has worthily set to music the immortal words of Dante,

“Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Nella miseria”:[*]

[* Dante’s words are best rendered by our own poet in the lines at

the head of the chapter.]

and, as he rested on his oar, the pianissimo fall of the melodic wail

“nella miseria” was distinctly audible on the brink of the water. Three

or four persons had paused at various spots to watch the barge passing

the bridge, and doubtless included in their notice the young gentleman

in the boat; but probably it was only to one ear that the low vocal

sounds came with more significance than if they had been an

insect-murmur amidst the sum of current noises. Deronda, awaiting the

barge, now turning his head to the river-side, and saw at a few yards’

distant from him a figure which might have been an impersonation of the

misery he was unconsciously giving voice to: a girl hardly more than

eighteen, of low slim figure, with most delicate little face, her dark

curls pushed behind her ears under a large black hat, a long woolen

cloak over her shoulders. Her hands were hanging down clasped before

her, and her eyes were fixed on the river with a look of immovable,

statue-like despair. This strong arrest of his attention made him cease

singing: apparently his voice had entered her inner world without her

taking any note of whence it came, for when it suddenly ceased she

changed her attitude slightly, and, looking round with a frightened

glance, met Deronda’s face. It was but a couple of moments, but that

seemed a long while for two people to look straight at each other. Her

look was something like that of a fawn or other gentle animal before it

turns to run away: no blush, no special alarm, but only some timidity

which yet could not hinder her from a long look before she turned. In

fact, it seemed to Deronda that she was only half conscious of her

surroundings: was she hungry, or was there some other cause of

bewilderment? He felt an outleap of interest and compassion toward her;

but the next instant she had turned and walked away to a neighboring

bench under a tree. He had no right to linger and watch her:

poorly-dressed, melancholy women are common sights; it was only the

delicate beauty, picturesque lines and color of the image that was

exceptional, and these conditions made it more markedly impossible that

he should obtrude his interest upon her. He began to row away and was

soon far up the river; but no other thoughts were busy enough quite to

expel that pale image of unhappy girlhood. He fell again and again to

speculating on the probable romance that lay behind that loneliness and

look of desolation; then to smile at his own share in the prejudice

that interesting faces must have interesting adventures; then to

justify himself for feeling that sorrow was the more tragic when it

befell delicate, childlike beauty.

“I should not have forgotten the look of misery if she had been ugly

and vulgar,” he said to himself. But there was no denying that the

attractiveness of the image made it likelier to last. It was clear to

him as an onyx cameo; the brown-black drapery, the white face with

small, small features and dark, long-lashed eyes. His mind glanced over

the girl-tragedies that are going on in the world, hidden, unheeded, as

if they were but tragedies of the copse or hedgerow, where the helpless

drag wounded wings forsakenly, and streak the shadowed moss with the

red moment-hand of their own death. Deronda of late, in his solitary

excursions, had been occupied chiefly with uncertainties about his own

course; but those uncertainties, being much at their leisure, were wont

to have such wide-sweeping connections with all life and history that

the new image of helpless sorrow easily blent itself with what seemed

to him the strong array of reasons why he should shrink from getting

into that routine of the world which makes men apologize for all its

wrong-doing, and take opinions as mere professional equipment—why he

should not draw strongly at any thread in the hopelessly-entangled

scheme of things.

He used his oars little, satisfied to go with the tide and be taken

back by it. It was his habit to indulge himself in that solemn

passivity which easily comes with the lengthening shadows and mellow

light, when thinking and desiring melt together imperceptibly, and what

in other hours may have seemed argument takes the quality of passionate

vision. By the time he had come back again with the tide past Richmond

Bridge the sun was near setting: and the approach of his favorite

hour—with its deepening stillness and darkening masses of tree and

building between the double glow of the sky and the river—disposed him

to linger as if they had been an unfinished strain of music. He looked

out for a perfectly solitary spot where he could lodge his boat against

the bank, and, throwing himself on his back with his head propped on

the cushions, could watch out the light of sunset and the opening of

that bead-roll which some oriental poet describes as God’s call to the

little stars, who each answer, “Here am I.” He chose a spot in the bend

of the river just opposite Kew Gardens, where he had a great breadth of

water before him reflecting the glory of the sky, while he himself was

in shadow. He lay with his hands behind his head, propped on a level

with the boat’s edge, so that he could see all round him, but could not

be seen by any one at a few yards’ distance; and for a long while he

never turned his eyes from the view right in front of him. He was

forgetting everything else in a half-speculative, half-involuntary

identification of himself with the objects he was looking at, thinking

how far it might be possible habitually to shift his centre till his

own personality would be no less outside him than the landscape—when

the sense of something moving on the bank opposite him where it was

bordered by a line of willow bushes, made him turn his glance

thitherward. In the first moment he had a darting presentiment about

the moving figure; and now he could see the small face with the strange

dying sunlight upon it. He feared to frighten her by a sudden movement,

and watched her with motionless attention. She looked round, but seemed

only to gather security from the apparent solitude, hid her hat among

the willows, and immediately took off her woolen cloak. Presently she

seated herself and deliberately dipped the cloak in the water, holding

it there a little while, then taking it out with effort, rising from

her seat as she did so. By this time Deronda felt sure that she meant

to wrap the wet cloak round her as a drowning shroud; there was no

longer time to hesitate about frightening her. He rose and seized his

oar to ply across; happily her position lay a little below him. The

poor thing, overcome with terror at this sign of discovery from the

opposite bank, sank down on the brink again, holding her cloak half out

of the water. She crouched and covered her face as if she kept a faint

hope that she had not been seen, and that the boatman was accidentally

coming toward her. But soon he was within brief space of her, steadying

his boat against the bank, and speaking, but very gently,

“Don’t be afraid. You are unhappy. Pray, trust me. Tell me what I can

do to help you.”

She raised her head and looked up at him. His face now was toward the

light, and she knew it again. But she did not speak for a few moments

which were a renewal of their former gaze at each other. At last she

said in a low sweet voice, with an accent so distinct that it suggested

foreignness and yet was not foreign, “I saw you before,” and then added

dreamily, after a like pause, “nella miseria.”

Deronda, not understanding the connection of her thoughts, supposed

that her mind was weakened by distress and hunger.

“It was you, singing?” she went on, hesitatingly—“Nessun maggior

dolore.” The mere words themselves uttered in her sweet undertones

seemed to give the melody to Deronda’s ear.

“Ah, yes,” he said, understanding now, “I am often singing them. But I

fear you will injure yourself staying here. Pray let me take you in my

boat to some place of safety. And that wet cloak—let me take it.”

He would not attempt to take it without her leave, dreading lest he

should scare her. Even at his words, he fancied that she shrank and

clutched the cloak more tenaciously. But her eyes were fixed on him

with a question in them as she said, “You look good. Perhaps it is

God’s command.”

“Do trust me. Let me help you. I will die before I will let any harm

come to you.”

She rose from her sitting posture, first dragging the saturated cloak

and then letting it fall on the ground—it was too heavy for her tired

arms. Her little woman’s figure as she laid her delicate chilled hands

together one over the other against her waist, and went a step backward

while she leaned her head forward as if not to lose sight of his face,

was unspeakably touching.

“Great God!” the words escaped Deronda in a tone so low and solemn that

they seemed like a prayer become unconsciously vocal. The agitating

impression this forsaken girl was making on him stirred a fibre that

lay close to his deepest interest in the fates of women—“perhaps my

mother was like this one.” The old thought had come now with a new

impetus of mingled feeling, and urged that exclamation in which both

East and West have for ages concentrated their awe in the presence of

inexorable calamity.

The low-toned words seemed to have some reassurance in them for the

hearer: she stepped forward close to the boat’s side, and Deronda put

out his hand, hoping now that she would let him help her in. She had

already put her tiny hand into his which closed around it, when some

new thought struck her, and drawing back she said,

“I have nowhere to go—nobody belonging to me in all this land.”

“I will take you to a lady who has daughters,” said Deronda,

immediately. He felt a sort of relief in gathering that the wretched

home and cruel friends he imagined her to be fleeing from were not in

the near background. Still she hesitated, and said more timidly than

ever,

“Do you belong to the theatre?”

“No; I have nothing to do with the theatre,” said Deronda, in a decided

tone. Then beseechingly, “I will put you in perfect safety at once;

with a lady, a good woman; I am sure she will be kind. Let us lose no

time: you will make yourself ill. Life may still become sweet to you.

There are good people—there are good women who will take care of you.”

She drew backward no more, but stepped in easily, as if she were used

to such action, and sat down on the cushions.

“You had a covering for your head,” said Deronda.

“My hat?” (She lifted up her hands to her head.) “It is quite hidden in

the bush.”

“I will find it,” said Deronda, putting out his hand deprecatingly as

she attempted to rise. “The boat is fixed.”

He jumped out, found the hat, and lifted up the saturated cloak,

wringing it and throwing it into the bottom of the boat.

“We must carry the cloak away, to prevent any one who may have noticed

you from thinking you have been drowned,” he said, cheerfully, as he

got in again and presented the old hat to her. “I wish I had any other

garment than my coat to offer you. But shall you mind throwing it over

your shoulders while we are on the water? It is quite an ordinary thing

to do, when people return late and are not enough provided with wraps.”

He held out the coat toward her with a smile, and there came a faint

melancholy smile in answer, as she took it and put it on very cleverly.

“I have some biscuits—should you like them?” said Deronda.

“No; I cannot eat. I had still some money left to buy bread.”

He began to ply his oar without further remark, and they went along

swiftly for many minutes without speaking. She did not look at him, but

was watching the oar, leaning forward in an attitude of repose, as if

she were beginning to feel the comfort of returning warmth and the

prospect of life instead of death. The twilight was deepening; the red

flush was all gone and the little stars were giving their answer one

after another. The moon was rising, but was still entangled among the

trees and buildings. The light was not such that he could distinctly

discern the expression of her features or her glance, but they were

distinctly before him nevertheless—features and a glance which seemed

to have given a fuller meaning for him to the human face. Among his

anxieties one was dominant: his first impression about her, that her

mind might be disordered, had not been quite dissipated: the project of

suicide was unmistakable, and given a deeper color to every other

suspicious sign. He longed to begin a conversation, but abstained,

wishing to encourage the confidence that might induce her to speak

first. At last she did speak.

“I like to listen to the oar.”

“So do I.”

“If you had not come, I should have been dead now.”

“I cannot bear you to speak of that. I hope you will never be sorry

that I came.”

“I cannot see how I shall be glad to live. The _maggior dolore_ and the

_miseria_ have lasted longer than the _tempo felice_.” She paused and

then went on dreamily,—“_Dolore—miseria_—I think those words are

alive.”

Deronda was mute: to question her seemed an unwarrantable freedom; he

shrank from appearing to claim the authority of a benefactor, or to

treat her with the less reverence because she was in distress. She went

on musingly,

“I thought it was not wicked. Death and life are one before the

Eternal. I know our fathers slew their children and then slew

themselves, to keep their souls pure. I meant it so. But now I am

commanded to live. I cannot see how I shall live.”

“You will find friends. I will find them for you.”

She shook her head and said mournfully, “Not my mother and brother. I

cannot find them.”

“You are English? You must be—speaking English so perfectly.”

She did not answer immediately, but looked at Deronda again, straining

to see him in the double light. Until now she had been watching the

oar. It seemed as if she were half roused, and wondered which part of

her impression was dreaming and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had

benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward

and inward was continually slipping away from her. Her look was full of

wondering timidity such as the forsaken one in the desert might have

lifted to the angelic vision before she knew whether his message was in

anger or in pity.

“You want to know if I am English?” she said at last, while Deronda was

reddening nervously under a gaze which he felt more fully than he saw.

“I want to know nothing except what you like to tell me,” he said,

still uneasy in the fear that her mind was wandering. “Perhaps it is

not good for you to talk.”

“Yes, I will tell you. I am English-born. But I am a Jewess.”

Deronda was silent, inwardly wondering that he had not said this to

himself before, though any one who had seen delicate-faced Spanish

girls might simply have guessed her to be Spanish.

“Do you despise me for it?” she said presently in low tones, which had

a sadness that pierced like a cry from a small dumb creature in fear.

“Why should I?” said Deronda. “I am not so foolish.”

“I know many Jews are bad.”

“So are many Christians. But I should not think it fair for you to

despise me because of that.”

“My mother and brother were good. But I shall never find them. I am

come a long way—from abroad. I ran away; but I cannot tell you—I

cannot speak of it. I thought I might find my mother again—God would

guide me. But then I despaired. This morning when the light came, I

felt as if one word kept sounding within me—Never! never! But now—I

begin—to think—” her words were broken by rising sobs—“I am

commanded to live—perhaps we are going to her.”

With an outburst of weeping she buried her head on her knees. He hoped

that this passionate weeping might relieve her excitement. Meanwhile he

was inwardly picturing in much embarrassment how he should present

himself with her in Park Lane—the course which he had at first

unreflectingly determined on. No one kinder and more gentle than Lady

Mallinger; but it was hardly probable that she would be at home; and he

had a shuddering sense of a lackey staring at this delicate, sorrowful

image of womanhood—of glaring lights and fine staircases, and perhaps

chilling suspicious manners from lady’s maid and housekeeper, that

might scare the mind already in a state of dangerous susceptibility.

But to take her to any other shelter than a home already known to him

was not to be contemplated: he was full of fears about the issue of the

adventure which had brought on him a responsibility all the heavier for

the strong and agitating impression this childlike creature had made on

him. But another resource came to mind: he could venture to take her to

Mrs. Meyrick’s—to the small house at Chelsea—where he had been often

enough since his return from abroad to feel sure that he could appeal

there to generous hearts, which had a romantic readiness to believe in

innocent need and to help it. Hans Meyrick was safe away in Italy, and

Deronda felt the comfort of presenting himself with his charge at a

house where he would be met by a motherly figure of quakerish neatness,

and three girls who hardly knew of any evil closer to them than what

lay in history-books, and dramas, and would at once associate a lovely

Jewess with Rebecca in _Ivanhoe_, besides thinking that everything they

did at Deronda’s request would be done for their idol, Hans. The vision

of the Chelsea home once raised, Deronda no longer hesitated.

The rumbling thither in the cab after the stillness of the water seemed

long. Happily his charge had been quiet since her fit of weeping, and

submitted like a tired child. When they were in the cab, she laid down

her hat and tried to rest her head, but the jolting movement would not

let it rest. Still she dozed, and her sweet head hung helpless, first

on one side, then on the other.

“They are too good to have any fear about taking her in,” thought

Deronda. Her person, her voice, her exquisite utterance, were one

strong appeal to belief and tenderness. Yet what had been the history

which had brought her to this desolation? He was going on a strange

errand—to ask shelter for this waif. Then there occurred to him the

beautiful story Plutarch somewhere tells of the Delphic women: how when

the Maenads, outworn with their torch-lit wanderings, lay down to sleep

in the market-place, the matrons came and stood silently round them to

keep guard over their slumbers; then, when they waked, ministered to

them tenderly and saw them safely to their own borders. He could trust

the women he was going to for having hearts as good.

Deronda felt himself growing older this evening and entering on a new

phase in finding a life to which his own had come—perhaps as a rescue;

but how to make sure that snatching from death was rescue? The moment

of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and

exultation as the moment of finding an idea.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Life is a various mother: now she dons

Her plumes and brilliants, climbs the marble stairs

With head aloft, nor ever turns her eyes

On lackeys who attend her; now she dwells

Grim-clad, up darksome alleys, breathes hot gin,

And screams in pauper riot.

But to these

She came a frugal matron, neat and deft,

With cheerful morning thoughts and quick device

To find the much in little.

Mrs. Meyrick’s house was not noisy: the front parlor looked on the

river, and the back on gardens, so that though she was reading aloud to

her daughters, the window could be left open to freshen the air of the

small double room where a lamp and two candles were burning. The

candles were on a table apart for Kate, who was drawing illustrations

for a publisher; the lamp was not only for the reader but for Amy and

Mab, who were embroidering satin cushions for “the great world.”

Outside, the house looked very narrow and shabby, the bright light

through the holland blind showing the heavy old-fashioned window-frame;

but it is pleasant to know that many such grim-walled slices of space

in our foggy London have been and still are the homes of a culture the

more spotlessly free from vulgarity, because poverty has rendered

everything like display an impersonal question, and all the grand shows

of the world simply a spectacle which rouses petty rivalry or vain

effort after possession.

The Meyricks’ was a home of that kind: and they all clung to this

particular house in a row because its interior was filled with objects

always in the same places, which, for the mother held memories of her

marriage time, and for the young ones seemed as necessary and

uncriticised a part of their world as the stars of the Great Bear seen

from the back windows. Mrs. Meyrick had borne much stint of other

matters that she might be able to keep some engravings specially

cherished by her husband; and the narrow spaces of wall held a world

history in scenes and heads which the children had early learned by

heart. The chairs and tables were also old friends preferred to new.

But in these two little parlors with no furniture that a broker would

have cared to cheapen except the prints and piano, there was space and

apparatus for a wide-glancing, nicely-select life, opened to the

highest things in music, painting and poetry. I am not sure that in the

times of greatest scarcity, before Kate could get paid-work, these

ladies had always had a servant to light their fires and sweep their

rooms; yet they were fastidious in some points, and could not believe

that the manners of ladies in the fashionable world were so full of

coarse selfishness, petty quarreling, and slang as they are represented

to be in what are called literary photographs. The Meyricks had their

little oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother’s blood as

well as the father’s, their minds being like mediæval houses with

unexpected recesses and openings from this into that, flights of steps

and sudden outlooks.

But mother and daughters were all united by a triple bond—family love;

admiration for the finest work, the best action; and habitual industry.

Hans’ desire to spend some of his money in making their lives more

luxurious had been resisted by all of them, and both they and he had

been thus saved from regrets at the threatened triumphs of his yearning

for art over the attractions of secured income—a triumph that would

by-and-by oblige him to give up his fellowship. They could all afford

to laugh at his Gavarni-caricatures and to hold him blameless in

following a natural bent which their unselfishness and independence had

left without obstacle. It was enough for them to go on in their old

way, only having a grand treat of opera-going (to the gallery) when

Hans came home on a visit.

Seeing the group they made this evening, one could hardly wish them to

change their way of life. They were all alike small, and so in due

proportion to their miniature rooms. Mrs. Meyrick was reading aloud

from a French book; she was a lively little woman, half French, half

Scotch, with a pretty articulateness of speech that seemed to make

daylight in her hearer’s understanding. Though she was not yet fifty,

her rippling hair, covered by a quakerish net cap, was chiefly gray,

but her eyebrows were brown as the bright eyes below them; her black

dress, almost like a priest’s cassock with its rows of buttons, suited

a neat figure hardly five feet high. The daughters were to match the

mother, except that Mab had Hans’ light hair and complexion, with a

bossy, irregular brow, and other quaintnesses that reminded one of him.

Everything about them was compact, from the firm coils of their hair,

fastened back _à la Chinoise_, to their gray skirts in Puritan

nonconformity with the fashion, which at that time would have demanded

that four feminine circumferences should fill all the free space in the

front parlor. All four, if they had been wax-work, might have been

packed easily in a fashionable lady’s traveling trunk. Their faces

seemed full of speech, as if their minds had been shelled, after the

manner of horse-chestnuts, and become brightly visible. The only large

thing of its kind in the room was Hafiz, the Persian cat, comfortably

poised on the brown leather back of a chair, and opening his large eyes

now and then to see that the lower animals were not in any mischief.

The book Mrs. Meyrick had before her was Erckmann-Chatrian’s _Historie

d’un Conscrit_. She had just finished reading it aloud, and Mab, who

had let her work fall on the ground while she stretched her head

forward and fixed her eyes on the reader, exclaimed,

“I think that is the finest story in the world.”

“Of course, Mab!” said Amy, “it is the last you have heard. Everything

that pleases you is the best in its turn.”

“It is hardly to be called a story,” said Kate. “It is a bit of history

brought near us with a strong telescope. We can see the soldiers’

faces: no, it is more than that—we can hear everything—we can almost

hear their hearts beat.”

“I don’t care what you call it,” said Mab, flirting away her thimble.

“Call it a chapter in Revelations. It makes me want to do something

good, something grand. It makes me so sorry for everybody. It makes me

like Schiller—I want to take the world in my arms and kiss it. I must

kiss you instead, little mother!” She threw her arms round her mother’s

neck.

“Whenever you are in that mood, Mab, down goes your work,” said Amy.

“It would be doing something good to finish your cushion without

soiling it.”

“Oh—oh—oh!” groaned Mab, as she stooped to pick up her work and

thimble. “I wish I had three wounded conscripts to take care of.”

“You would spill their beef tea while you were talking,” said Amy.

“Poor Mab! don’t be hard on her,” said the mother. “Give me the

embroidery now, child. You go on with your enthusiasm, and I will go on

with the pink and white poppy.”

“Well, ma, I think you are more caustic than Amy,” said Kate, while she

drew her head back to look at her drawing.

“Oh—oh—oh!” cried Mab again, rising and stretching her arms. “I wish

something wonderful would happen. I feel like the deluge. The waters of

the great deep are broken up, and the windows of heaven are opened. I

must sit down and play the scales.”

Mab was opening the piano while the others were laughing at this

climax, when a cab stopped before the house, and there forthwith came a

quick rap of the knocker.

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Meyrick, starting up, “it is after ten, and Phœbe

is gone to bed.” She hastened out, leaving the parlor door open.

“Mr. Deronda!” The girls could hear this exclamation from their mamma.

Mab clasped her hands, saying in a loud whisper, “There now! something

_is_ going to happen.” Kate and Amy gave up their work in amazement.

But Deronda’s tone in reply was so low that they could not hear his

words, and Mrs. Meyrick immediately closed the parlor door.

“I know I am trusting to your goodness in a most extraordinary way,”

Deronda went on, after giving his brief narrative; “but you can imagine

how helpless I feel with a young creature like this on my hands. I

could not go with her among strangers, and in her nervous state I

should dread taking her into a house full of servants. I have trusted

to your mercy. I hope you will not think my act unwarrantable.”

“On the contrary. You have honored me by trusting me. I see your

difficulty. Pray bring her in. I will go and prepare the girls.”

While Deronda went back to the cab, Mrs. Meyrick turned into the parlor

again and said: “Here is somebody to take care of instead of your

wounded conscripts, Mab: a poor girl who was going to drown herself in

despair. Mr. Deronda found her only just in time to save her. He

brought her along in his boat, and did not know what else it would be

safe to do with her, so he has trusted us and brought her here. It

seems she is a Jewess, but quite refined, he says—knowing Italian and

music.”

The three girls, wondering and expectant, came forward and stood near

each other in mute confidence that they were all feeling alike under

this appeal to their compassion. Mab looked rather awe-stricken, as if

this answer to her wish were something preternatural.

Meanwhile Deronda going to the door of the cab where the pale face was

now gazing out with roused observation, said, “I have brought you to

some of the kindest people in the world: there are daughters like you.

It is a happy home. Will you let me take you to them?”

She stepped out obediently, putting her hand in his and forgetting her

hat; and when Deronda led her into the full light of the parlor where

the four little women stood awaiting her, she made a picture that would

have stirred much duller sensibilities than theirs. At first she was a

little dazed by the sudden light, and before she had concentrated her

glance he had put her hand into the mother’s. He was inwardly rejoicing

that the Meyricks were so small: the dark-curled head was the highest

among them. The poor wanderer could not be afraid of these gentle faces

so near hers: and now she was looking at each of them in turn while the

mother said, “You must be weary, poor child.”

“We will take care of you—we will comfort you—we will love you,”

cried Mab, no longer able to restrain herself, and taking the small

right hand caressingly between both her own. This gentle welcoming

warmth was penetrating the bewildered one: she hung back just enough to

see better the four faces in front of her, whose good will was being

reflected in hers, not in any smile, but in that undefinable change

which tells us that anxiety is passing in contentment. For an instant

she looked up at Deronda, as if she were referring all this mercy to

him, and then again turning to Mrs. Meyrick, said with more

collectedness in her sweet tones than he had heard before,

“I am a stranger. I am a Jewess. You might have thought I was wicked.”

“No, we are sure you are good,” burst out Mab.

“We think no evil of you, poor child. You shall be safe with us,” said

Mrs. Meyrick. “Come now and sit down. You must have some food, and then

you must go to rest.”

The stranger looked up again at Deronda, who said,

“You will have no more fears with these friends? You will rest

to-night?”

“Oh, I should not fear. I should rest. I think these are the

ministering angels.”

Mrs. Meyrick wanted to lead her to seat, but again hanging back gently,

the poor weary thing spoke as if with a scruple at being received

without a further account of herself.

“My name is Mirah Lapidoth. I am come a long way, all the way from

Prague by myself. I made my escape. I ran away from dreadful things. I

came to find my mother and brother in London. I had been taken from my

mother when I was little, but I thought I could find her again. I had

trouble—the houses were all gone—I could not find her. It has been a

long while, and I had not much money. That is why I am in distress.”

“Our mother will be good to you,” cried Mab. “See what a nice little

mother she is!”

“Do sit down now,” said Kate, moving a chair forward, while Amy ran to

get some tea.

Mirah resisted no longer, but seated herself with perfect grace,

crossing her little feet, laying her hands one over the other on her

lap, and looking at her friends with placid reverence; whereupon Hafiz,

who had been watching the scene restlessly came forward with tail erect

and rubbed himself against her ankles. Deronda felt it time to go.

“Will you allow me to come again and inquire—perhaps at five

to-morrow?” he said to Mrs. Meyrick.

“Yes, pray; we shall have had time to make acquaintance then.”

“Good-bye,” said Deronda, looking down at Mirah, and putting out his

hand. She rose as she took it, and the moment brought back to them both

strongly the other moment when she had first taken that outstretched

hand. She lifted her eyes to his and said with reverential fervor, “The

God of our fathers bless you and deliver you from all evil as you have

delivered me. I did not believe there was any man so good. None before

have thought me worthy of the best. You found me poor and miserable,

yet you have given me the best.”

Deronda could not speak, but with silent adieux to the Meyricks,

hurried away.

BOOK III.—MAIDENS CHOOSING.

CHAPTER XIX.

“I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, ‘’Tis

all barren’: and so it is: and so is all the world to him who will not

cultivate the fruits it offers.”—STERNE: _Sentimental Journey_.

To say that Deronda was romantic would be to misrepresent him; but

under his calm and somewhat self-repressed exterior there was a fervor

which made him easily find poetry and romance among the events of

everyday life. And perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever

in the world except for those phlegmatic natures who I suspect would in

any age have regarded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking. They

exist very easily in the same room with the microscope and even in

railway carriages: what banishes them in the vacuum in gentlemen and

lady passengers. How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from

the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished

us, make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness,

no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and

back again from the distant to the near?

To Deronda this event of finding Mirah was as heart-stirring as

anything that befell Orestes or Rinaldo. He sat up half the night,

living again through the moments since he had first discerned Mirah on

the river-brink, with the fresh and fresh vividness which belongs to

emotive memory. When he took up a book to try and dull this urgency of

inward vision, the printed words were no more than a network through

which he saw and heard everything as clearly as before—saw not only

the actual events of two hours, but possibilities of what had been and

what might be which those events were enough to feed with the warm

blood of passionate hope and fear. Something in his own experience

caused Mirah’s search after her mother to lay hold with peculiar force

on his imagination. The first prompting of sympathy was to aid her in

her search: if given persons were extant in London there were ways of

finding them, as subtle as scientific experiment, the right machinery

being set at work. But here the mixed feelings which belonged to

Deronda’s kindred experience naturally transfused themselves into his

anxiety on behalf of Mirah.

The desire to know his own mother, or to know about her, was constantly

haunted with dread; and in imagining what might befall Mirah it quickly

occurred to him that finding the mother and brother from whom she had

been parted when she was a little one might turn out to be a calamity.

When she was in the boat she said that her mother and brother were

good; but the goodness might have been chiefly in her own ignorant

innocence and yearning memory, and the ten or twelve years since the

parting had been time enough for much worsening. Spite of his strong

tendency to side with the objects of prejudice, and in general with

those who got the worst of it, his interest had never been practically

drawn toward existing Jews, and the facts he knew about them, whether

they walked conspicuous in fine apparel or lurked in by-streets, were

chiefly of a sort most repugnant to him. Of learned and accomplished

Jews he took it for granted that they had dropped their religion, and

wished to be merged in the people of their native lands. Scorn flung at

a Jew as such would have roused all his sympathy in griefs of

inheritance; but the indiscriminate scorn of a race will often strike a

specimen who has well earned it on his own account, and might fairly be

gibbeted as a rascally son of Adam. It appears that the Caribs, who

know little of theology, regard thieving as a practice peculiarly

connected with Christian tenets, and probably they could allege

experimental grounds for this opinion. Deronda could not escape (who

can?) knowing ugly stories of Jewish characteristics and occupations;

and though one of his favorite protests was against the severance of

past and present history, he was like others who shared his protest, in

never having cared to reach any more special conclusions about actual

Jews than that they retained the virtues and vices of a long-oppressed

race. But now that Mirah’s longing roused his mind to a closer survey

of details, very disagreeable images urged themselves of what it might

be to find out this middle-aged Jewess and her son. To be sure, there

was the exquisite refinement and charm of the creature herself to make

a presumption in favor of her immediate kindred, but—he must wait to

know more: perhaps through Mrs. Meyrick he might gather some guiding

hints from Mirah’s own lips. Her voice, her accent, her looks—all the

sweet purity that clothed her as with a consecrating garment made him

shrink the more from giving her, either ideally or practically, an

association with what was hateful or contaminating. But these fine

words with which we fumigate and becloud unpleasant facts are not the

language in which we think. Deronda’s thinking went on in rapid images

of what might be: he saw himself guided by some official scout into a

dingy street; he entered through a dim doorway, and saw a hawk-eyed

woman, rough-headed, and unwashed, cheapening a hungry girl’s last bit

of finery; or in some quarter only the more hideous for being smarter,

he found himself under the breath of a young Jew talkative and

familiar, willing to show his acquaintance with gentlemen’s tastes, and

not fastidious in any transactions with which they would favor him—and

so on through the brief chapter of his experience in this kind. Excuse

him: his mind was not apt to run spontaneously into insulting ideas, or

to practice a form of wit which identifies Moses with the advertisement

sheet; but he was just now governed by dread, and if Mirah’s parents

had been Christian, the chief difference would have been that his

forebodings would have been fed with wider knowledge. It was the habit

of his mind to connect dread with unknown parentage, and in this case

as well as his own there was enough to make the connection reasonable.

But what was to be done with Mirah? She needed shelter and protection

in the fullest sense, and all his chivalrous sentiment roused itself to

insist that the sooner and the more fully he could engage for her the

interest of others besides himself, the better he should fulfill her

claims on him. He had no right to provide for her entirely, though he

might be able to do so; the very depth of the impression she had

produced made him desire that she should understand herself to be

entirely independent of him; and vague visions of the future which he

tried to dispel as fantastic left their influence in an anxiety

stronger than any motive he could give for it, that those who saw his

actions closely should be acquainted from the first with the history of

his relation to Mirah. He had learned to hate secrecy about the grand

ties and obligations of his life—to hate it the more because a strong

spell of interwoven sensibilities hindered him from breaking such

secrecy. Deronda had made a vow to himself that—since the truths which

disgrace mortals are not all of their own making—the truth should

never be made a disgrace to another by his act. He was not without

terror lest he should break this vow, and fall into the apologetic

philosophy which explains the world into containing nothing better than

one’s own conduct.

At one moment he resolved to tell the whole of his adventure to Sir

Hugo and Lady Mallinger the next morning at breakfast, but the

possibility that something quite new might reveal itself on his next

visit to Mrs. Meyrick’s checked this impulse, and he finally went to

sleep on the conclusion that he would wait until that visit had been

made.

CHAPTER XX.

“It will hardly be denied that even in this frail and corrupted world,

we sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and aspect, as well

as in the whole habit of life, manifest such a signature and stamp of

virtue, as to make our judgment of them a matter of intuition rather

than the result of continued examination.”—ALEXANDER KNOX: quoted in

Southey’s Life of Wesley.

Mirah said that she had slept well that night; and when she came down

in Mab’s black dress, her dark hair curling in fresh fibrils as it

gradually dried from its plenteous bath, she looked like one who was

beginning to take comfort after the long sorrow and watching which had

paled her cheek and made blue semicircles under her eyes. It was Mab

who carried her breakfast and ushered her down—with some pride in the

effect produced by a pair of tiny felt slippers which she had rushed

out to buy because there were no shoes in the house small enough for

Mirah, whose borrowed dress ceased about her ankles and displayed the

cheap clothing that, moulding itself on her feet, seemed an adornment

as choice as the sheaths of buds. The farthing buckles were bijoux.

“Oh, if you please, mamma?” cried Mab, clasping her hands and stooping

toward Mirah’s feet, as she entered the parlor; “look at the slippers,

how beautiful they fit! I declare she is like the Queen Budoor—‘two

delicate feet, the work of the protecting and all-recompensing Creator,

support her; and I wonder how they can sustain what is above them.’”

Mirah looked down at her own feet in a childlike way and then smiled at

Mrs. Meyrick, who was saying inwardly, “One could hardly imagine this

creature having an evil thought. But wise people would tell me to be

cautious.” She returned Mirah’s smile and said, “I fear the feet have

had to sustain their burden a little too often lately. But to-day she

will rest and be my companion.”

“And she will tell you so many things and I shall not hear them,”

grumbled Mab, who felt herself in the first volume of a delightful

romance and obliged to miss some chapters because she had to go to

pupils.

Kate was already gone to make sketches along the river, and Amy was

away on business errands. It was what the mother wished, to be alone

with this stranger, whose story must be a sorrowful one, yet was

needful to be told.

The small front parlor was as good as a temple that morning. The

sunlight was on the river and soft air came in through the open window;

the walls showed a glorious silent cloud of witnesses—the Virgin

soaring amid her cherubic escort; grand Melancholia with her solemn

universe; the Prophets and Sibyls; the School of Athens; the Last

Supper; mystic groups where far-off ages made one moment; grave Holbein

and Rembrandt heads; the Tragic Muse; last-century children at their

musings or their play; Italian poets—all were there through the medium

of a little black and white. The neat mother who had weathered her

troubles, and come out of them with a face still cheerful, was sorting

colored wools for her embroidery. Hafiz purred on the window-ledge, the

clock on the mantle-piece ticked without hurry, and the occasional

sound of wheels seemed to lie outside the more massive central quiet.

Mrs. Meyrick thought that this quiet might be the best invitation to

speech on the part of her companion, and chose not to disturb it by

remark. Mirah sat opposite in her former attitude, her hands clasped on

her lap, her ankles crossed, her eyes at first traveling slowly over

the objects around her, but finally resting with a sort of placid

reverence on Mrs. Meyrick. At length she began to speak softly.

“I remember my mother’s face better than anything; yet I was not seven

when I was taken away, and I am nineteen now.”

“I can understand that,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “There are some earliest

things that last the longest.”

“Oh, yes, it was the earliest. I think my life began with waking up and

loving my mother’s face: it was so near to me, and her arms were round

me, and she sang to me. One hymn she sang so often, so often: and then

she taught me to sing it with her: it was the first I ever sang. They

were always Hebrew hymns she sang; and because I never knew the meaning

of the words they seemed full of nothing but our love and happiness.

When I lay in my little bed and it was all white above me, she used to

bend over me, between me and the white, and sing in a sweet, low voice.

I can dream myself back into that time when I am awake, and it often

comes back to me in my sleep—my hand is very little, I put it up to

her face and she kisses it. Sometimes in my dreams I begin to tremble

and think that we are both dead; but then I wake up and my hand lies

like this, and for a moment I hardly know myself. But if I could see my

mother again I should know her.”

“You must expect some change after twelve years,” said Mrs. Meyrick,

gently. “See my grey hair: ten years ago it was bright brown. The days

and months pace over us like restless little birds, and leave the marks

of their feet backward and forward; especially when they are like birds

with heavy hearts—then they tread heavily.”

“Ah, I am sure her heart has been heavy for want of me. But to feel her

joy if we could meet again, and I could make her know I love her and

give her deep comfort after all her mourning! If that could be, I

should mind nothing; I should be glad that I have lived through my

trouble. I did despair. The world seemed miserable and wicked; none

helped me so that I could bear their looks and words; I felt that my

mother was dead, and death was the only way to her. But then in the

last moment—yesterday, when I longed for the water to close over

me—and I thought that death was the best image of mercy—then goodness

came to me living, and I felt trust in the living. And—it is

strange—but I began to hope that she was living too. And now I with

you—here—this morning, peace and hope have come into me like a flood.

I want nothing; I can wait; because I hope and believe and am

grateful—oh, so grateful! You have not thought evil of me—you have

not despised me.”

Mirah spoke with low-toned fervor, and sat as still as a picture all

the while.

“Many others would have felt as we do, my dear,” said Mrs. Meyrick,

feeling a mist come over her eyes as she looked at her work.

“But I did not meet them—they did not come to me.”

“How was it that you were taken from your mother?”

“Ah, I am a long while coming to that. It is dreadful to speak of, yet

I must tell you—I must tell you everything. My father—it was he that

took me away. I thought we were only going on a little journey; and I

was pleased. There was a box with all my little things in. But we went

on board a ship, and got farther and farther away from the land. Then I

was ill; and I thought it would never end—it was the first misery, and

it seemed endless. But at last we landed. I knew nothing then, and

believed what my father said. He comforted me, and told me I should go

back to my mother. But it was America we had reached, and it was long

years before we came back to Europe. At first I often asked my father

when we were going back; and I tried to learn writing fast, because I

wanted to write to my mother; but one day when he found me trying to

write a letter, he took me on his knee and told me that my mother and

brother were dead; that was why we did not go back. I remember my

brother a little; he carried me once; but he was not always at home. I

believed my father when he said that they were dead. I saw them under

the earth when he said they were there, with their eyes forever closed.

I never thought of its not being true; and I used to cry every night in

my bed for a long while. Then when she came so often to me, in my

sleep, I thought she must be living about me though I could not always

see her, and that comforted me. I was never afraid in the dark, because

of that; and very often in the day I used to shut my eyes and bury my

face and try to see her and to hear her singing. I came to do that at

last without shutting my eyes.”

Mirah paused with a sweet content in her face, as if she were having

her happy vision, while she looked out toward the river.

“Still your father was not unkind to you, I hope,” said Mrs. Meyrick,

after a minute, anxious to recall her.

“No; he petted me, and took pains to teach me. He was an actor; and I

found out, after, that the ‘Coburg’ I used to hear of his going to at

home was a theatre. But he had more to do with the theatre than acting.

He had not always been an actor; he had been a teacher, and knew many

languages. His acting was not very good; I think, but he managed the

stage, and wrote and translated plays. An Italian lady, a singer, lived

with us a long time. They both taught me, and I had a master besides,

who made me learn by heart and recite. I worked quite hard, though I

was so little; and I was not nine when I first went on the stage. I

could easily learn things, and I was not afraid. But then and ever

since I hated our way of life. My father had money, and we had finery

about us in a disorderly way; always there were men and women coming

and going; there was loud laughing and disputing, strutting, snapping

of fingers, jeering, faces I did not like to look at—though many

petted and caressed me. But then I remembered my mother. Even at first

when I understood nothing, I shrank away from all those things outside

me into companionship with thoughts that were not like them; and I

gathered thoughts very fast, because I read many things—plays and

poetry, Shakespeare and Schiller, and learned evil and good. My father

began to believe that I might be a great singer: my voice was

considered wonderful for a child; and he had the best teaching for me.

But it was painful that he boasted of me, and set me to sing for show

at any minute, as if I had been a musical box. Once when I was nine

years old, I played the part of a little girl who had been forsaken and

did not know it, and sat singing to herself while she played with

flowers. I did it without any trouble; but the clapping and all the

sounds of the theatre were hateful to me; and I never liked the praise

I had, because it all seemed very hard and unloving: I missed the love

and trust I had been born into. I made a life in my own thoughts quite

different from everything about me: I chose what seemed to me beautiful

out of the plays and everything, and made my world out of it; and it

was like a sharp knife always grazing me that we had two sorts of life

which jarred so with each other—women looking good and gentle on the

stage, and saying good things as if they felt them, and directly after

I saw them with coarse, ugly manners. My father sometimes noticed my

shrinking ways; and Signora said one day, when I had been rehearsing,

‘She will never be an artist: she has no notion of being anybody but

herself. That does very well now, but by-and-by you will see—she will

have no more face and action than a singing-bird.’ My father was angry,

and they quarreled. I sat alone and cried, because what she had said

was like a long unhappy future unrolled before me. I did not want to be

an artist; but this was what my father expected of me. After a while

Signora left us, and a governess used to come and give me lessons in

different things, because my father began to be afraid of my singing

too much; but I still acted from time to time. Rebellious feelings grew

stronger in me, and I wished to get away from this life; but I could

not tell where to go, and I dreaded the world. Besides, I felt it would

be wrong to leave my father: I dreaded doing wrong, for I thought I

might get wicked and hateful to myself, in the same way that many

others seemed hateful to me. For so long, so long I had never felt my

outside world happy; and if I got wicked I should lose my world of

happy thoughts where my mother lived with me. That was my childish

notion all through those years. Oh how long they were!”

Mirah fell to musing again.

“Had you no teaching about what was your duty?” said Mrs. Meyrick. She

did not like to say “religion”—finding herself on inspection rather

dim as to what the Hebrew religion might have turned into at this date.

“No—only that I ought to do what my father wished. He did not follow

our religion at New York, and I think he wanted me not to know much

about it. But because my mother used to take me to the synagogue, and I

remembered sitting on her knee and looking through the railing and

hearing the chanting and singing, I longed to go. One day when I was

quite small I slipped out and tried to find the synagogue, but I lost

myself a long while till a peddler questioned me and took me home. My

father, missing me, had been much in fear, and was very angry. I too

had been so frightened at losing myself that it was long before I

thought of venturing out again. But after Signora left us we went to

rooms where our landlady was a Jewess and observed her religion. I

asked her to take me with her to the synagogue; and I read in her

prayer-books and Bible, and when I had money enough I asked her to buy

me books of my own, for these books seemed a closer companionship with

my mother: I knew that she must have looked at the very words and said

them. In that way I have come to know a little of our religion, and the

history of our people, besides piecing together what I read in plays

and other books about Jews and Jewesses; because I was sure my mother

obeyed her religion. I had left off asking my father about her. It is

very dreadful to say it, but I began to disbelieve him. I had found

that he did not always tell the truth, and made promises without

meaning to keep them; and that raised my suspicion that my mother and

brother were still alive though he had told me they were dead. For in

going over the past again as I got older and knew more, I felt sure

that my mother had been deceived, and had expected to see us back again

after a very little while; and my father taking me on his knee and

telling me that my mother and brother were both dead seemed to me now

but a bit of acting, to set my mind at rest. The cruelty of that

falsehood sank into me, and I hated all untruth because of it. I wrote

to my mother secretly: I knew the street, Colman Street, where we

lived, and that it was not Blackfriars Bridge and the Coburg, and that

our name was Cohen then, though my father called us Lapidoth, because,

he said, it was a name of his forefathers in Poland. I sent my letter

secretly; but no answer came, and I thought there was no hope for me.

Our life in America did not last much longer. My father suddenly told

me we were to pack up and go to Hamburg, and I was rather glad. I hoped

we might get among a different sort of people, and I knew German quite

well—some German plays almost all by heart. My father spoke it better

than he spoke English. I was thirteen then, and I seemed to myself

quite old—I knew so much, and yet so little. I think other children

cannot feel as I did. I had often wished that I had been drowned when I

was going away from my mother. But I set myself to obey and suffer:

what else could I do? One day when we were on our voyage, a new thought

came into my mind. I was not very ill that time, and I kept on deck a

good deal. My father acted and sang and joked to amuse people on board,

and I used often to hear remarks about him. One day, when I was looking

at the sea and nobody took notice of me, I overheard a gentleman say,

‘Oh, he is one of those clever Jews—a rascal, I shouldn’t wonder.

There’s no race like them for cunning in the men and beauty in the

women. I wonder what market he means that daughter for.’ When I heard

this it darted into my mind that the unhappiness in my life came from

my being a Jewess, and that always to the end the world would think

slightly of me and that I must bear it, for I should be judged by that

name; and it comforted me to believe that my suffering was part of the

affliction of my people, my part in the long song of mourning that has

been going on through ages and ages. For if many of our race were

wicked and made merry in their wickedness—what was that but part of

the affliction borne by the just among them, who were despised for the

sins of their brethren?—But you have not rejected me.”

Mirah had changed her tone in this last sentence, having suddenly

reflected that at this moment she had reason not for complaint but for

gratitude.

“And we will try to save you from being judged unjustly by others, my

poor child,” said Mrs. Meyrick, who had now given up all attempt at

going on with her work, and sat listening with folded hands and a face

hardly less eager than Mab’s would have been. “Go on, go on: tell me

all.”

“After that we lived in different towns—Hamburg and Vienna, the

longest. I began to study singing again: and my father always got money

about the theatres. I think he brought a good deal of money from

America, I never knew why we left. For some time he was in great

spirits about my singing, and he made me rehearse parts and act

continually. He looked forward to my coming out in the opera. But

by-and-by it seemed that my voice would never be strong enough—it did

not fulfill its promise. My master at Vienna said, ‘Don’t strain it

further: it will never do for the public:—it is gold, but a thread of

gold dust.’ My father was bitterly disappointed: we were not so well

off at that time. I think I have not quite told you what I felt about

my father. I knew he was fond of me and meant to indulge me, and that

made me afraid of hurting him; but he always mistook what would please

me and give me happiness. It was his nature to take everything lightly;

and I soon left off asking him any questions about things that I cared

for much, because he always turned them off with a joke. He would even

ridicule our own people; and once when he had been imitating their

movements and their tones in praying, only to make others laugh, I

could not restrain myself—for I always had an anger in my heart about

my mother—and when we were alone, I said, ‘Father, you ought not to

mimic our own people before Christians who mock them: would it not be

bad if I mimicked you, that they might mock you?’ But he only shrugged

his shoulders and laughed and pinched my chin, and said, ‘You couldn’t

do it, my dear.’ It was this way of turning off everything, that made a

great wall between me and my father, and whatever I felt most I took

the most care to hide from him. For there were some things—when they

were laughed at I could not bear it: the world seemed like a hell to

me. Is this world and all the life upon it only like a farce or a

vaudeville, where you find no great meanings? Why then are there

tragedies and grand operas, where men do difficult things and choose to

suffer? I think it is silly to speak of all things as a joke. And I saw

that his wishing me to sing the greatest music, and parts in grand

operas, was only wishing for what would fetch the greatest price. That

hemmed in my gratitude for his affectionateness, and the tenderest

feeling I had toward him was pity. Yes, I did sometimes pity him. He

had aged and changed. Now he was no longer so lively. I thought he

seemed worse—less good to others than to me. Every now and then in the

latter years his gaiety went away suddenly, and he would sit at home

silent and gloomy; or he would come in and fling himself down and sob,

just as I have done myself when I have been in trouble. If I put my

hand on his knee and say, ‘What is the matter, father?’ he would make

no answer, but would draw my arm round his neck and put his arm round

me and go on crying. There never came any confidence between us; but

oh, I was sorry for him. At those moments I knew he must feel his life

bitter, and I pressed my cheek against his head and prayed. Those

moments were what most bound me to him; and I used to think how much my

mother once loved him, else she would not have married him.

“But soon there came the dreadful time. We had been at Pesth and we

came back to Vienna. In spite of what my master Leo had said, my father

got me an engagement, not at the opera, but to take singing parts at a

suburb theatre in Vienna. He had nothing to do with the theatre then; I

did not understand what he did, but I think he was continually at a

gambling house, though he was careful always about taking me to the

theatre. I was very miserable. The plays I acted in were detestable to

me. Men came about us and wanted to talk to me: women and men seemed to

look at me with a sneering smile; it was no better than a fiery

furnace. Perhaps I make it worse than it was—you don’t know that life:

but the glare and the faces, and my having to go on and act and sing

what I hated, and then see people who came to stare at me behind the

scenes—it was all so much worse than when I was a little girl. I went

through with it; I did it; I had set my mind to obey my father and

work, for I saw nothing better that I could do. But I felt that my

voice was getting weaker, and I knew that my acting was not good except

when it was not really acting, but the part was one that I could be

myself in, and some feeling within me carried me along. That was seldom.

“Then, in the midst of all this, the news came to me one morning that

my father had been taken to prison, and he had sent for me. He did not

tell me the reason why he was there, but he ordered me to go to an

address he gave me, to see a Count who would be able to get him

released. The address was to some public rooms where I was to ask for

the Count, and beg him to come to my father. I found him, and

recognized him as a gentleman whom I had seen the other night for the

first time behind the scenes. That agitated me, for I remembered his

way of looking at me and kissing my hand—I thought it was in mockery.

But I delivered my errand, and he promised to go immediately to my

father, who came home again that very evening, bringing the Count with

him. I now began to feel a horrible dread of this man, for he worried

me with his attentions, his eyes were always on me: I felt sure that

whatever else there might be in his mind toward me, below it all there

was scorn for the Jewess and the actress. And when he came to me the

next day in the theatre and would put my shawl around me, a terror took

hold of me; I saw that my father wanted me to look pleased. The Count

was neither very young nor very old; his hair and eyes were pale; he

was tall and walked heavily, and his face was heavy and grave except

when he looked at me. He smiled at me, and his smile went through me

with horror: I could not tell why he was so much worse to me than other

men. Some feelings are like our hearing: they come as sounds do, before

we know their reason. My father talked to me about him when we were

alone, and praised him—said what a good friend he had been. I said

nothing, because I supposed he had got my father out of prison. When

the Count came again, my father left the room. He asked me if I liked

being on the stage. I said No, I only acted in obedience to my father.

He always spoke French, and called me _petite ange_ and such things,

which I felt insulting. I knew he meant to make love to me, and I had

it firmly in my mind that a nobleman and one who was not a Jew could

have no love for me that was not half contempt. But then he told me

that I need not act any longer; he wished me to visit him at his

beautiful place, where I might be queen of everything. It was difficult

to me to speak, I felt so shaken with anger: I could only say, ‘I would

rather stay on the stage forever,’ and I left him there. Hurrying out

of the room I saw my father sauntering in the passage. My heart was

crushed. I went past him and locked myself up. It had sunk into me that

my father was in a conspiracy with that man against me. But the next

day he persuaded me to come out: he said that I had mistaken

everything, and he would explain: if I did not come out and act and

fulfill my engagement, we should be ruined and he must starve. So I

went on acting, and for a week or more the Count never came near me. My

father changed our lodgings, and kept at home except when he went to

the theatre with me. He began one day to speak discouragingly of my

acting, and say, I could never go on singing in public—I should lose

my voice—I ought to think of my future, and not put my nonsensical

feelings between me and my fortune. He said, ‘What will you do? You

will be brought down to sing and beg at people’s doors. You have had a

splendid offer and ought to accept it.’ I could not speak: a horror

took possession of me when I thought of my mother and of him. I felt

for the first time that I should not do wrong to leave him. But the

next day he told me that he had put an end to my engagement at the

theatre, and that we were to go to Prague. I was getting suspicious of

everything, and my will was hardening to act against him. It took us

two days to pack and get ready; and I had it in my mind that I might be

obliged to run away from my father, and then I would come to London and

try if it were possible to find my mother. I had a little money, and I

sold some things to get more. I packed a few clothes in a little bag

that I could carry with me, and I kept my mind on the watch. My

father’s silence—his letting drop that subject of the Count’s

offer—made me feel sure that there was a plan against me. I felt as if

it had been a plan to take me to a madhouse. I once saw a picture of a

madhouse, that I could never forget; it seemed to me very much like

some of the life I had seen—the people strutting, quarreling,

leering—the faces with cunning and malice in them. It was my will to

keep myself from wickedness; and I prayed for help. I had seen what

despised women were: and my heart turned against my father, for I saw

always behind him that man who made me shudder. You will think I had

not enough reason for my suspicions, and perhaps I had not, outside my

own feeling; but it seemed to me that my mind had been lit up, and all

that might be stood out clear and sharp. If I slept, it was only to see

the same sort of things, and I could hardly sleep at all. Through our

journey I was everywhere on the watch. I don’t know why, but it came

before me like a real event, that my father would suddenly leave me and

I should find myself with the Count where I could not get away from

him. I thought God was warning me: my mother’s voice was in my soul. It

was dark when we reached Prague, and though the strange bunches of

lamps were lit it was difficult to distinguish faces as we drove along

the street. My father chose to sit outside—he was always smoking

now—and I watched everything in spite of the darkness. I do believe I

could see better then than I ever did before: the strange clearness

within seemed to have got outside me. It was not my habit to notice

faces and figures much in the street; but this night I saw every one;

and when we passed before a great hotel I caught sight only of a back

that was passing in—the light of the great bunch of lamps a good way

off fell on it. I knew it—before the face was turned, as it fell into

shadow, I knew who it was. Help came to me. I feel sure help came. I

did not sleep that night. I put on my plainest things—the cloak and

hat I have worn ever since; and I sat watching for the light and the

sound of the doors being unbarred. Some one rose early—at four

o’clock, to go to the railway. That gave me courage. I slipped out,

with my little bag under my cloak, and none noticed me. I had been a

long while attending to the railway guide that I might learn the way to

England; and before the sun had risen I was in the train for Dresden.

Then I cried for joy. I did not know whether my money would last out,

but I trusted. I could sell the things in my bag, and the little rings

in my ears, and I could live on bread only. My only terror was lest my

father should follow me. But I never paused. I came on, and on, and on,

only eating bread now and then. When I got to Brussels I saw that I

should not have enough money, and I sold all that I could sell; but

here a strange thing happened. Putting my hand into the pocket of my

cloak, I found a half-napoleon. Wondering and wondering how it came

there, I remembered that on the way from Cologne there was a young

workman sitting against me. I was frightened at every one, and did not

like to be spoken to. At first he tried to talk, but when he saw that I

did not like it, he left off. It was a long journey; I ate nothing but

a bit of bread, and he once offered me some of the food he brought in,

but I refused it. I do believe it was he who put that bit of gold in my

pocket. Without it I could hardly have got to Dover, and I did walk a

good deal of the way from Dover to London. I knew I should look like a

miserable beggar-girl. I wanted not to look very miserable, because if

I found my mother it would grieve her to see me so. But oh, how vain my

hope was that she would be there to see me come! As soon as I set foot

in London, I began to ask for Lambeth and Blackfriars Bridge, but they

were a long way off, and I went wrong. At last I got to Blackfriars

Bridge and asked for Colman Street. People shook their heads. None knew

it. I saw it in my mind—our doorsteps, and the white tiles hung in the

windows, and the large brick building opposite with wide doors. But

there was nothing like it. At last when I asked a tradesman where the

Coburg Theatre and Colman Street were, he said, ‘Oh, my little woman,

that’s all done away with. The old streets have been pulled down;

everything is new.’ I turned away and felt as if death had laid a hand

on me. He said: ‘Stop, stop! young woman; what is it you’re wanting

with Colman Street, eh?’ meaning well, perhaps. But his tone was what I

could not bear; and how could I tell him what I wanted? I felt blinded

and bewildered with a sudden shock. I suddenly felt that I was very

weak and weary, and yet where could I go? for I looked so poor and

dusty, and had nothing with me—I looked like a street-beggar. And I

was afraid of all places where I could enter. I lost my trust. I

thought I was forsaken. It seemed that I had been in a fever of

hope—delirious—all the way from Prague: I thought that I was helped,

and I did nothing but strain my mind forward and think of finding my

mother; and now—there I stood in a strange world. All who saw me would

think ill of me, and I must herd with beggars. I stood on the bridge

and looked along the river. People were going on to a steamboat. Many

of them seemed poor, and I felt as if it would be a refuge to get away

from the streets; perhaps the boat would take me where I could soon get

into a solitude. I had still some pence left, and I bought a loaf when

I went on the boat. I wanted to have a little time and strength to

think of life and death. How could I live? And now again it seemed that

if ever I were to find my mother again, death was the way to her. I

ate, that I might have strength to think. The boat set me down at a

place along the river—I don’t know where—and it was late in the

evening. I found some large trees apart from the road, and I sat down

under them that I might rest through the night. Sleep must have soon

come to me, and when I awoke it was morning. The birds were singing,

and the dew was white about me, I felt chill and oh, so lonely! I got

up and walked and followed the river a long way and then turned back

again. There was no reason why I should go anywhere. The world about me

seemed like a vision that was hurrying by while I stood still with my

pain. My thoughts were stronger than I was; they rushed in and forced

me to see all my life from the beginning; ever since I was carried away

from my mother I had felt myself a lost child taken up and used by

strangers, who did not care what my life was to me, but only what I

could do for them. It seemed all a weary wandering and

heart-loneliness—as if I had been forced to go to merrymakings without

the expectation of joy. And now it was worse. I was lost again, and I

dreaded lest any stranger should notice me and speak to me. I had a

terror of the world. None knew me; all would mistake me. I had seen so

many in my life who made themselves glad with scorning, and laughed at

another’s shame. What could I do? This life seemed to be closing in

upon me with a wall of fire—everywhere there was scorching that made

me shrink. The high sunlight made me shrink. And I began to think that

my despair was the voice of God telling me to die. But it would take me

long to die of hunger. Then I thought of my people, how they had been

driven from land to land and been afflicted, and multitudes had died of

misery in their wandering—was I the first? And in the wars and

troubles when Christians were cruelest, our fathers had sometimes slain

their children and afterward themselves: it was to save them from being

false apostates. That seemed to make it right for me to put an end to

my life; for calamity had closed me in too, and I saw no pathway but to

evil. But my mind got into war with itself, for there were contrary

things in it. I knew that some had held it wrong to hasten their own

death, though they were in the midst of flames; and while I had some

strength left it was a longing to bear if I ought to bear—else where

was the good of all my life? It had not been happy since the first

years: when the light came every morning I used to think, ‘I will bear

it.’ But always before I had some hope; now it was gone. With these

thoughts I wandered and wandered, inwardly crying to the Most High,

from whom I should not flee in death more than in life—though I had no

strong faith that He cared for me. The strength seemed departing from

my soul; deep below all my cries was the feeling that I was alone and

forsaken. The more I thought the wearier I got, till it seemed I was

not thinking at all, but only the sky and the river and the Eternal God

were in my soul. And what was it whether I died or lived? If I lay down

to die in the river, was it more than lying down to sleep?—for there

too I committed my soul—I gave myself up. I could not bear memories

any more; I could only feel what was present in me—it was all one

longing to cease from my weary life, which seemed only a pain outside

the great peace that I might enter into. That was how it was. When the

evening came and the sun was gone, it seemed as if that was all I had

to wait for. And a new strength came into me to will what I would do.

You know what I did. I was going to die. You know what happened—did he

not tell you? Faith came to me again; I was not forsaken. He told you

how he found me?”

Mrs. Meyrick gave no audible answer, but pressed her lips against

Mirah’s forehead.

* * * * *

“She’s just a pearl; the mud has only washed her,” was the fervid

little woman’s closing commentary when, _tête-à-tête_ with Deronda in

the back parlor that evening, she had conveyed Mirah’s story to him

with much vividness.

“What is your feeling about a search for this mother?” said Deronda.

“Have you no fears? I have, I confess.”

“Oh, I believe the mother’s good,” said Mrs. Meyrick, with rapid

decisiveness; “or _was_ good. She may be dead—that’s my fear. A good

woman, you may depend: you may know it by the scoundrel the father is.

Where did the child get her goodness from? Wheaten flour has to be

accounted for.”

Deronda was rather disappointed at this answer; he had wanted a

confirmation of his own judgment, and he began to put in demurrers. The

argument about the mother would not apply to the brother; and Mrs.

Meyrick admitted that the brother might be an ugly likeness of the

father. Then, as to advertising, if the name was Cohen, you might as

well advertise for two undescribed terriers; and here Mrs. Meyrick

helped him, for the idea of an advertisement, already mentioned to

Mirah, had roused the poor child’s terror; she was convinced that her

father would see it—he saw everything in the papers. Certainly there

were safer means than advertising; men might be set to work whose

business it was to find missing persons; but Deronda wished Mrs.

Meyrick to feel with him that it would be wiser to wait, before seeking

a dubious—perhaps a deplorable result; especially as he was engaged to

go abroad the next week for a couple of months. If a search were made,

he would like to be at hand, so that Mrs. Meyrick might not be unaided

in meeting any consequences—supposing that she would generously

continue to watch over Mirah.

“We should be very jealous of any one who took the task from us,” said

Mrs. Meyrick. “She will stay under my roof; there is Hans’s old room

for her.”

“Will she be content to wait?” said Deronda, anxiously.

“No trouble there. It is not her nature to run into planning and

devising: only to submit. See how she submitted to that father! It was

a wonder to herself how she found the will and contrivance to run away

from him. About finding her mother, her only notion now is to trust;

since you were sent to save her and we are good to her, she trusts that

her mother will be found in the same unsought way. And when she is

talking I catch her feeling like a child.”

Mrs. Meyrick hoped that the sum Deronda put into her hands as a

provision for Mirah’s wants was more than would be needed; after a

little while Mirah would perhaps like to occupy herself as the other

girls did, and make herself independent. Deronda pleaded that she must

need a long rest. “Oh, yes; we will hurry nothing,” said Mrs. Meyrick.

“Rely upon it, she shall be taken tender care of. If you like to give

me your address abroad, I will write to let you know how we get on. It

is not fair that we should have all the pleasure of her salvation to

ourselves. And besides, I want to make believe that I am doing

something for you as well as for Mirah.”

“That is no make-believe. What should I have done without you last

night? Everything would have gone wrong. I shall tell Hans that the

best of having him for a friend is, knowing his mother.”

After that they joined the girls in the other room, where Mirah was

seated placidly, while the others were telling her what they knew about

Mr. Deronda—his goodness to Hans, and all the virtues that Hans had

reported of him.

“Kate burns a pastille before his portrait every day,” said Mab. “And I

carry his signature in a little black-silk bag round my neck to keep

off the cramp. And Amy says the multiplication-table in his name. We

must all do something extra in honor of him, now he has brought you to

us.”

“I suppose he is too great a person to want anything,” said Mirah,

smiling at Mab, and appealing to the graver Amy. “He is perhaps very

high in the world?”

“He is very much above us in rank,” said Amy. “He is related to grand

people. I dare say he leans on some of the satin cushions we prick our

fingers over.”

“I am glad he is of high rank,” said Mirah, with her usual quietness.

“Now, why are you glad of that?” said Amy, rather suspicious of this

sentiment, and on the watch for Jewish peculiarities which had not

appeared.

“Because I have always disliked men of high rank before.”

“Oh, Mr. Deronda is not so very high,” said Kate, “He need not hinder

us from thinking ill of the whole peerage and baronetage if we like.”

When he entered, Mirah rose with the same look of grateful reverence

that she had lifted to him the evening before: impossible to see a

creature freer at once from embarrassment and boldness. Her theatrical

training had left no recognizable trace; probably her manners had not

much changed since she played the forsaken child at nine years of age;

and she had grown up in her simplicity and truthfulness like a little

flower-seed that absorbs the chance confusion of its surrounding into

its own definite mould of beauty. Deronda felt that he was making

acquaintance with something quite new to him in the form of womanhood.

For Mirah was not childlike from ignorance: her experience of evil and

trouble was deeper and stranger than his own. He felt inclined to watch

her and listen to her as if she had come from a far off shore inhabited

by a race different from our own.

But for that very reason he made his visit brief with his usual

activity of imagination as to how his conduct might affect others, he

shrank from what might seem like curiosity or the assumption of a right

to know as much as he pleased of one to whom he had done a service. For

example, he would have liked to hear her sing, but he would have felt

the expression of such a wish to be rudeness in him—since she could

not refuse, and he would all the while have a sense that she was being

treated like one whose accomplishments were to be ready on demand. And

whatever reverence could be shown to woman, he was bent on showing to

this girl. Why? He gave himself several good reasons; but whatever one

does with a strong unhesitating outflow of will has a store of motive

that it would be hard to put into words. Some deeds seem little more

than interjections which give vent to the long passion of a life.

So Deronda soon took his farewell for the two months during which he

expected to be absent from London, and in a few days he was on his way

with Sir Hugo and Lady Mallinger to Leubronn.

He had fulfilled his intention of telling them about Mirah. The baronet

was decidedly of opinion that the search for the mother and brother had

better be let alone. Lady Mallinger was much interested in the poor

girl, observing that there was a society for the conversion of the

Jews, and that it was to be hoped Mirah would embrace Christianity; but

perceiving that Sir Hugo looked at her with amusement, she concluded

that she had said something foolish. Lady Mallinger felt apologetically

about herself as a woman who had produced nothing but daughters in a

case where sons were required, and hence regarded the apparent

contradictions of the world as probably due to the weakness of her own

understanding. But when she was much puzzled, it was her habit to say

to herself, “I will ask Daniel.” Deronda was altogether a convenience

in the family; and Sir Hugo too, after intending to do the best for

him, had begun to feel that the pleasantest result would be to have

this substitute for a son always ready at his elbow.

This was the history of Deronda, so far as he knew it, up to the time

of that visit to Leubronn in which he saw Gwendolen Harleth at the

gaming-table.

CHAPTER XXI.

It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly

considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly

builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through

patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of

it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the

record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of

many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and

multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various

with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with

a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” and the

many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth,

Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a

conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a

blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to

seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good,

and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking

at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a

practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between

events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be

compelled—like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of

distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or

a grasp—precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?

It was half-past ten in the morning when Gwendolen Harleth, after her

gloomy journey from Leubronn, arrived at the station from which she

must drive to Offendene. No carriage or friend was awaiting her, for in

the telegram she had sent from Dover she had mentioned a later train,

and in her impatience of lingering at a London station she had set off

without picturing what it would be to arrive unannounced at half an

hour’s drive from home—at one of those stations which have been fixed

on not as near anywhere, but as equidistant from everywhere. Deposited

as a _femme sole_ with her large trunks, and having to wait while a

vehicle was being got from the large-sized lantern called the Railway

Inn, Gwendolen felt that the dirty paint in the waiting-room, the dusty

decanter of flat water, and the texts in large letters calling on her

to repent and be converted, were part of the dreary prospect opened by

her family troubles; and she hurried away to the outer door looking

toward the lane and fields. But here the very gleams of sunshine seemed

melancholy, for the autumnal leaves and grass were shivering, and the

wind was turning up the feathers of a cock and two croaking hens which

had doubtless parted with their grown-up offspring and did not know

what to do with themselves. The railway official also seemed without

resources, and his innocent demeanor in observing Gwendolen and her

trunks was rendered intolerable by the cast in his eye; especially

since, being a new man, he did not know her, and must conclude that she

was not very high in the world. The vehicle—a dirty old barouche—was

within sight, and was being slowly prepared by an elderly laborer.

Contemptible details these, to make part of a history; yet the turn of

most lives is hardly to be accounted for without them. They are

continually entering with cumulative force into a mood until it gets

the mass and momentum of a theory or a motive. Even philosophy is not

quite free from such determining influences; and to be dropped solitary

at an ugly, irrelevant-looking spot, with a sense of no income on the

mind, might well prompt a man to discouraging speculation on the origin

of things and the reason of a world where a subtle thinker found

himself so badly off. How much more might such trifles tell on a young

lady equipped for society with a fastidious taste, an Indian shawl over

her arm, some twenty cubic feet of trunks by her side, and a mortal

dislike to the new consciousness of poverty which was stimulating her

imagination of disagreeables? At any rate they told heavily on poor

Gwendolen, and helped to quell her resistant spirit. What was the good

of living in the midst of hardships, ugliness, and humiliation? This

was the beginning of being at home again, and it was a sample of what

she had to expect.

Here was the theme on which her discontent rung its sad changes during

her slow drive in the uneasy barouche, with one great trunk squeezing

the meek driver, and the other fastened with a rope on the seat in

front of her. Her ruling vision all the way from Leubronn had been that

the family would go abroad again; for of course there must be some

little income left—her mamma did not mean that they would have

literally nothing. To go to a dull place abroad and live poorly, was

the dismal future that threatened her: she had seen plenty of poor

English people abroad and imagined herself plunged in the despised

dullness of their ill-plenished lives, with Alice, Bertha, Fanny and

Isabel all growing up in tediousness around her, while she advanced

toward thirty and her mamma got more and more melancholy. But she did

not mean to submit, and let misfortune do what it would with her: she

had not yet quite believed in the misfortune; but weariness and disgust

with this wretched arrival had begun to affect her like an

uncomfortable waking, worse than the uneasy dreams which had gone

before. The self-delight with which she had kissed her image in the

glass had faded before the sense of futility in being anything

whatever—charming, clever, resolute—what was the good of it all?

Events might turn out anyhow, and men were hateful. Yes, men were

hateful. But in these last hours, a certain change had come over their

meaning. It is one thing to hate stolen goods, and another thing to

hate them the more because their being stolen hinders us from making

use of them. Gwendolen had begun to be angry with Grandcourt for being

what had hindered her from marrying him, angry with him as the cause of

her present dreary lot.

But the slow drive was nearly at an end, and the lumbering vehicle

coming up the avenue was within sight of the windows. A figure

appearing under the portico brought a rush of new and less selfish

feeling in Gwendolen, and when springing from the carriage she saw the

dear beautiful face with fresh lines of sadness in it, she threw her

arms round her mother’s neck, and for the moment felt all sorrows only

in relation to her mother’s feeling about them.

Behind, of course, were the sad faces of the four superfluous girls,

each, poor thing—like those other many thousand sisters of us

all—having her peculiar world which was of no importance to any one

else, but all of them feeling Gwendolen’s presence to be somehow a

relenting of misfortune: where Gwendolen was, something interesting

would happen; even her hurried submission to their kisses, and “Now go

away, girls,” carried the sort of comfort which all weakness finds in

decision and authoritativeness. Good Miss Merry, whose air of meek

depression, hitherto held unaccountable in a governess affectionately

attached to the family, was now at the general level of circumstances,

did not expect any greeting, but busied herself with the trunks and the

coachman’s pay; while Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen hastened up-stairs and

shut themselves in the black and yellow bedroom.

“Never mind, mamma dear,” said Gwendolen, tenderly pressing her

handkerchief against the tears that were rolling down Mrs. Davilow’s

cheeks. “Never mind. I don’t mind. I will do something. I will be

something. Things will come right. It seemed worse because I was away.

Come now! you must be glad because I am here.”

Gwendolen felt every word of that speech. A rush of compassionate

tenderness stirred all her capability of generous resolution; and the

self-confident projects which had vaguely glanced before her during her

journey sprang instantaneously into new definiteness. Suddenly she

seemed to perceive how she could be “something.” It was one of her best

moments, and the fond mother, forgetting everything below that tide

mark, looked at her with a sort of adoration. She said,

“Bless you, my good, good darling! I can be happy, if you can!”

But later in the day there was an ebb; the old slippery rocks, the old

weedy places reappeared. Naturally, there was a shrinking of courage as

misfortune ceased to be a mere announcement, and began to disclose

itself as a grievous tyrannical inmate. At first—that ugly drive at an

end—it was still Offendene that Gwendolen had come home to, and all

surroundings of immediate consequence to her were still there to secure

her personal ease; the roomy stillness of the large solid house while

she rested; all the luxuries of her toilet cared for without trouble to

her; and a little tray with her favorite food brought to her in

private. For she had said, “Keep them all away from us to-day, mamma.

Let you and me be alone together.”

When Gwendolen came down into the drawing-room, fresh as a newly-dipped

swan, and sat leaning against the cushions of the settee beside her

mamma, their misfortune had not yet turned its face and breath upon

her. She felt prepared to hear everything, and began in a tone of

deliberate intention,

“What have you thought of doing, exactly, mamma?”

“Oh, my dear, the next thing to be done is to move away from this

house. Mr. Haynes most fortunately is as glad to have it now as he

would have been when we took it. Lord Brackenshaw’s agent is to arrange

everything with him to the best advantage for us: Bazley, you know; not

at all an ill-natured man.”

“I cannot help thinking that Lord Brackenshaw would let you stay here

rent-free, mamma,” said Gwendolen, whose talents had not been applied

to business so much as to discernment of the admiration excited by her

charms.

“My dear child, Lord Brackenshaw is in Scotland, and knows nothing

about us. Neither your uncle nor I would choose to apply to him.

Besides, what could we do in this house without servants, and without

money to warm it? The sooner we are out the better. We have nothing to

carry but our clothes, you know?”

“I suppose you mean to go abroad, then?” said Gwendolen. After all,

this is what she had familiarized her mind with.

“Oh, no, dear, no. How could we travel? You never did learn anything

about income and expenses,” said Mrs. Davilow, trying to smile, and

putting her hand on Gwendolen’s as she added, mournfully, “that makes

it so much harder for you, my pet.”

“But where are we to go?” said Gwendolen, with a trace of sharpness in

her tone. She felt a new current of fear passing through her.

“It is all decided. A little furniture is to be got in from the

rectory—all that can be spared.” Mrs. Davilow hesitated. She dreaded

the reality for herself less than the shock she must give to Gwendolen,

who looked at her with tense expectancy, but was silent.

“It is Sawyer’s Cottage we are to go to.”

At first, Gwendolen remained silent, paling with anger—justifiable

anger, in her opinion. Then she said with haughtiness,

“That is impossible. Something else than that ought to have been

thought of. My uncle ought not to allow that. I will not submit to it.”

“My sweet child, what else could have been thought of? Your uncle, I am

sure, is as kind as he can be: but he is suffering himself; he has his

family to bring up. And do you quite understand? You must remember—we

have nothing. We shall have absolutely nothing except what he and my

sister give us. They have been as wise and active as possible, and we

must try to earn something. I and the girls are going to work a

table-cloth border for the Ladies’ Charity at Winchester, and a

communion cloth that the parishioners are to present to Pennicote

Church.”

Mrs. Davilow went into these details timidly: but how else was she to

bring the fact of their position home to this poor child who, alas!

must submit at present, whatever might be in the background for her?

and she herself had a superstition that there must be something better

in the background.

“But surely somewhere else than Sawyer’s Cottage might have been

found,” Gwendolen persisted—taken hold of (as if in a nightmare) by

the image of this house where an exciseman had lived.

“No, indeed, dear. You know houses are scarce, and we may be thankful

to get anything so private. It is not so very bad. There are two little

parlors and four bedrooms. You shall sit alone whenever you like.”

The ebb of sympathetic care for her mamma had gone so low just now,

that Gwendolen took no notice of these deprecatory words.

“I cannot conceive that all your property is gone at once, mamma. How

can you be sure in so short a time? It is not a week since you wrote to

me.”

“The first news came much earlier, dear. But I would not spoil your

pleasure till it was quite necessary.”

“Oh, how vexatious!” said Gwendolen, coloring with fresh anger. “If I

had known, I could have brought home the money I had won: and for want

of knowing, I stayed and lost it. I had nearly two hundred pounds, and

it would have done for us to live on a little while, till I could carry

out some plan.” She paused an instant and then added more impetuously,

“Everything has gone against me. People have come near me only to

blight me.”

Among the “people” she was including Deronda. If he had not interfered

in her life she would have gone to the gaming-table again with a few

napoleons, and might have won back her losses.

“We must resign ourselves to the will of Providence, my child,” said

poor Mrs. Davilow, startled by this revelation of the gambling, but not

daring to say more. She felt sure that “people” meant Grandcourt, about

whom her lips were sealed. And Gwendolen answered immediately,

“But I don’t resign myself. I shall do what I can against it. What is

the good of calling the people’s wickedness Providence? You said in

your letter it was Mr. Lassman’s fault we had lost our money. Has he

run away with it all?”

“No, dear, you don’t understand. There were great speculations: he

meant to gain. It was all about mines and things of that sort. He

risked too much.”

“I don’t call that Providence: it was his improvidence with our money,

and he ought to be punished. Can’t we go to law and recover our

fortune? My uncle ought to take measures, and not sit down by such

wrongs. We ought to go to law.”

“My dear child, law can never bring back money lost in that way. Your

uncle says it is milk spilled upon the ground. Besides, one must have a

fortune to get any law: there is no law for people who are ruined. And

our money has only gone along with other people’s. We are not the

only sufferers: others have to resign themselves besides us.”

“But I don’t resign myself to live at Sawyer’s Cottage and see you

working for sixpences and shillings because of that. I shall not do it.

I shall do what is more befitting our rank and education.”

“I am sure your uncle and all of us will approve of that, dear, and

admire you the more for it,” said Mrs. Davilow, glad of an unexpected

opening for speaking on a difficult subject. “I didn’t mean that you

should resign yourself to worse when anything better offered itself.

Both your uncle and aunt have felt that your abilities and education

were a fortune for you, and they have already heard of something within

your reach.”

“What is that, mamma?” some of Gwendolen’s anger gave way to interest,

and she was not without romantic conjectures.

“There are two situations that offer themselves. One is in a bishop’s

family, where there are three daughters, and the other is in quite a

high class of school; and in both, your French, and music, and

dancing—and then your manners and habits as a lady, are exactly what

is wanted. Each is a hundred a year—and—just for the present,”—Mrs.

Davilow had become frightened and hesitating,—“to save you from the

petty, common way of living that we must go to—you would perhaps

accept one of the two.”

“What! be like Miss Graves at Madame Meunier’s? No.”

“I think, myself, that Dr. Monpert’s would be more suitable. There

could be no hardship in a bishop’s family.”

“Excuse me, mamma. There are hardships everywhere for a governess. And

I don’t see that it would be pleasanter to be looked down on in a

bishop’s family than in any other. Besides, you know very well I hate

teaching. Fancy me shut up with three awkward girls something like

Alice! I would rather emigrate than be a governess.”

What it precisely was to emigrate, Gwendolen was not called on to

explain. Mrs. Davilow was mute, seeing no outlet, and thinking with

dread of the collision that might happen when Gwendolen had to meet her

uncle and aunt. There was an air of reticence in Gwendolen’s haughty,

resistant speeches which implied that she had a definite plan in

reserve; and her practical ignorance continually exhibited, could not

nullify the mother’s belief in the effectiveness of that forcible will

and daring which had held mastery over herself.

“I have some ornaments, mamma, and I could sell them,” said Gwendolen.

“They would make a sum: I want a little sum—just to go on with. I dare

say Marshall, at Wanchester, would take them: I know he showed me some

bracelets once that he said he had bought from a lady. Jocosa might go

and ask him. Jocosa is going to leave us, of course. But she might do

that first.”

“She would do anything she could, poor, dear soul. I have not told you

yet—she wanted me to take all her savings—her three hundred pounds. I

tell her to set up a little school. It will be hard for her to go into

a new family now she has been so long with us.”

“Oh, recommend her for the bishop’s daughters,” said Gwendolen, with a

sudden gleam of laughter in her face. “I am sure she will do better

than I should.”

“Do take care not to say such things to your uncle,” said Mrs. Davilow.

“He will be hurt at your despising what he has exerted himself about.

But I dare say you have something else in your mind that he might not

disapprove, if you consulted him.”

“There is some one else I want to consult first. Are the Arrowpoints

at Quetcham still, and is Herr Klesmer there? But I daresay you know

nothing about it, poor, dear mamma. Can Jeffries go on horseback with a

note?”

“Oh, my dear, Jeffries is not here, and the dealer has taken the

horses. But some one could go for us from Leek’s farm. The Arrowpoints

are at Quetcham, I know. Miss Arrowpoint left her card the other day: I

could not see her. But I don’t know about Herr Klesmer. Do you want to

send before to-morrow?”

“Yes, as soon as possible. I will write a note,” said Gwendolen, rising.

“What can you be thinking of, Gwen?” said Mrs. Davilow, relieved in the

midst of her wonderment by signs of alacrity and better humor.

“Don’t mind what, there’s a dear, good mamma,” said Gwendolen,

reseating herself a moment to give atoning caresses. “I mean to do

something. Never mind what until it is all settled. And then you shall

be comforted. The dear face!—it is ten years older in these three

weeks. Now, now, now! don’t cry”—Gwendolen, holding her mamma’s head

with both hands, kissed the trembling eyelids. “But mind you don’t

contradict me or put hindrances in my way. I must decide for myself. I

cannot be dictated to by my uncle or any one else. My life is my own

affair. And I think”—here her tone took an edge of scorn—“I think I

can do better for you than let you live in Sawyer’s Cottage.”

In uttering this last sentence Gwendolen again rose, and went to a desk

where she wrote the following note to Klesmer:—

Miss Harleth presents her compliments to Herr Klesmer, and ventures

to request of him the very great favor that he will call upon her, if

possible, to-morrow. Her reason for presuming so far on his kindness

is of a very serious nature. Unfortunate family circumstances have

obliged her to take a course in which she can only turn for advice to

the great knowledge and judgment of Herr Klesmer.

“Pray get this sent to Quetcham at once, mamma,” said Gwendolen, as she

addressed the letter. “The man must be told to wait for an answer. Let

no time be lost.”

For the moment, the absorbing purpose was to get the letter dispatched;

but when she had been assured on this point, another anxiety arose and

kept her in a state of uneasy excitement. If Klesmer happened not to be

at Quetcham, what could she do next? Gwendolen’s belief in her star, so

to speak, had had some bruises. Things had gone against her. A splendid

marriage which presented itself within reach had shown a hideous flaw.

The chances of roulette had not adjusted themselves to her claims; and

a man of whom she knew nothing had thrust himself between her and her

intentions. The conduct of those uninteresting people who managed the

business of the world had been culpable just in the points most

injurious to her in particular. Gwendolen Harleth, with all her beauty

and conscious force, felt the close threats of humiliation: for the

first time the conditions of this world seemed to her like a hurrying

roaring crowd in which she had got astray, no more cared for and

protected than a myriad of other girls, in spite of its being a

peculiar hardship to her. If Klesmer were not at Quetcham—that would

be all of a piece with the rest: the unwelcome negative urged itself as

a probability, and set her brain working at desperate alternatives

which might deliver her from Sawyer’s Cottage or the ultimate necessity

of “taking a situation,” a phrase that summed up for her the

disagreeables most wounding to her pride, most irksome to her tastes;

at least so far as her experience enabled her to imagine disagreeables.

Still Klesmer might be there, and Gwendolen thought of the result in

that case with a hopefulness which even cast a satisfactory light over

her peculiar troubles, as what might well enter into the biography of

celebrities and remarkable persons. And if she had heard her immediate

acquaintances cross-examined as to whether they thought her remarkable,

the first who said “No” would have surprised her.

CHAPTER XXII.

We please our fancy with ideal webs

Of innovation, but our life meanwhile

Is in the loom, where busy passion plies

The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds

The accustomed pattern.

Gwendolen’s note, coming “pat betwixt too early and too late,” was put

into Klesmer’s hands just when he was leaving Quetcham, and in order to

meet her appeal to his kindness he, with some inconvenience to himself

spent the night at Wanchester. There were reasons why he would not

remain at Quetcham.

That magnificent mansion, fitted with regard to the greatest expense,

had in fact became too hot for him, its owners having, like some great

politicians, been astonished at an insurrection against the established

order of things, which we plain people after the event can perceive to

have been prepared under their very noses.

There were as usual many guests in the house, and among them one in

whom Miss Arrowpoint foresaw a new pretender to her hand: a political

man of good family who confidently expected a peerage, and felt on

public grounds that he required a larger fortune to support the title

properly. Heiresses vary, and persons interested in one of them

beforehand are prepared to find that she is too yellow or too red, tall

and toppling or short and square, violent and capricious or moony and

insipid; but in every case it is taken for granted that she will

consider herself an appendage to her fortune, and marry where others

think her fortunes ought to go. Nature, however, not only accommodates

herself ill to our favorite practices by making “only children”

daughters, but also now and then endows the misplaced daughter with a

clear head and a strong will. The Arrowpoints had already felt some

anxiety owing to these endowments of their Catherine. She would not

accept the view of her social duty which required her to marry a needy

nobleman or a commoner on the ladder toward nobility; and they were not

without uneasiness concerning her persistence in declining suitable

offers. As to the possibility of her being in love with Klesmer they

were not at all uneasy—a very common sort of blindness. For in general

mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an

effect toward which they have done everything, and at the absence of an

effect toward which they had done nothing but desire it. Parents are

astonished at the ignorance of their sons, though they have used the

most time-honored and expensive means of securing it; husbands and

wives are mutually astonished at the loss of affection which they have

taken no pains to keep; and all of us in our turn are apt to be

astonished that our neighbors do not admire us. In this way it happens

that the truth seems highly improbable. The truth is something

different from the habitual lazy combinations begotten by our wishes.

The Arrowpoints’ hour of astonishment was come.

When there is a passion between an heiress and a proud

independent-spirited man, it is difficult for them to come to an

understanding; but the difficulties are likely to be overcome unless

the proud man secures himself by a constant _alibi_. Brief meetings

after studied absence are potent in disclosure: but more potent still

is frequent companionship, with full sympathy in taste and admirable

qualities on both sides; especially where the one is in the position of

teacher and the other is delightedly conscious of receptive ability

which also gives the teacher delight. The situation is famous in

history, and has no less charm now than it had in the days of Abelard.

But this kind of comparison had not occurred to the Arrowpoints when

they first engaged Klesmer to come down to Quetcham. To have a

first-rate musician in your house is a privilege of wealth; Catherine’s

musical talent demanded every advantage; and she particularly desired

to use her quieter time in the country for more thorough study. Klesmer

was not yet a Liszt, understood to be adored by ladies of all European

countries with the exception of Lapland: and even with that

understanding it did not follow that he would make proposals to an

heiress. No musician of honor would do so. Still less was it

conceivable that Catherine would give him the slightest pretext for

such daring. The large check that Mr. Arrowpoint was to draw in

Klesmer’s name seemed to make him as safe an inmate as a footman. Where

marriage is inconceivable, a girl’s sentiments are safe.

Klesmer was eminently a man of honor, but marriages rarely begin with

formal proposals, and moreover, Catherine’s limit of the conceivable

did not exactly correspond with her mother’s.

Outsiders might have been more apt to think that Klesmer’s position was

dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint had been an acknowledged

beauty; not taking into account that the most powerful of all beauty is

that which reveals itself after sympathy and not before it. There is a

charm of eye and lip which comes with every little phrase that

certifies delicate perception or fine judgment, with every

unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart awake to others; and no

sweep of garment or turn of figure is more satisfying than that which

enters as a restoration of confidence that one person is present on

whom no intention will be lost. What dignity of meaning goes on

gathering in frowns and laughs which are never observed in the wrong

place; what suffused adorableness in a human frame where there is a

mind that can flash out comprehension and hands that can execute

finely! The more obvious beauty, also adorable sometimes—one may say

it without blasphemy—begins by being an apology for folly, and ends

like other apologies in becoming tiresome by iteration; and that

Klesmer, though very susceptible to it, should have a passionate

attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a paradox than any other

triumph of a manifold sympathy over a monotonous attraction. We object

less to be taxed with the enslaving excess of our passions than with

our deficiency in wider passion; but if the truth were known, our

reputed intensity is often the dullness of not knowing what else to do

with ourselves. Tannhäuser, one suspects, was a knight of ill-furnished

imagination, hardly of larger discourse than a heavy Guardsman; Merlin

had certainly seen his best days, and was merely repeating himself,

when he fell into that hopeless captivity; and we know that Ulysses

felt so manifest an _ennui_ under similar circumstances that Calypso

herself furthered his departure. There is indeed a report that he

afterward left Penelope; but since she was habitually absorbed in

worsted work, and it was probably from her that Telemachus got his

mean, pettifogging disposition, always anxious about the property and

the daily consumption of meat, no inference can be drawn from this

already dubious scandal as to the relation between companionship and

constancy.

Klesmer was as versatile and fascinating as a young Ulysses on a

sufficient acquaintance—one whom nature seemed to have first made

generously and then to have added music as a dominant power using all

the abundant rest, and, as in Mendelssohn, finding expression for

itself not only in the highest finish of execution, but in that fervor

of creative work and theoretic belief which pierces the whole future of

a life with the delight of congruous devoted purpose. His foibles of

arrogance and vanity did not exceed such as may be found in the best

English families; and Catherine Arrowpoint had no corresponding

restlessness to clash with his: notwithstanding her native kindliness

she was perhaps too coolly firm and self-sustained. But she was one of

those satisfactory creatures whose intercourse has the charm of

discovery; whose integrity of faculty and expression begets a wish to

know what they will say on all subjects or how they will perform

whatever they undertake; so that they end by raising not only a

continual expectation but a continual sense of fulfillment—the systole

and diastole of blissful companionship. In such cases the outward

presentment easily becomes what the image is to the worshipper. It was

not long before the two became aware that each was interesting to the

other; but the “how far” remained a matter of doubt. Klesmer did not

conceive that Miss Arrowpoint was likely to think of him as a possible

lover, and she was not accustomed to think of herself as likely to stir

more than a friendly regard, or to fear the expression of more from any

man who was not enamored of her fortune. Each was content to suffer some

unshared sense of denial for the sake of loving the other’s society a

little too well; and under these conditions no need had been felt to

restrict Klesmer’s visits for the last year either in country or in

town. He knew very well that if Miss Arrowpoint had been poor he would

have made ardent love to her instead of sending a storm through the

piano, or folding his arms and pouring out a hyperbolical tirade about

something as impersonal as the north pole; and she was not less aware

that if it had been possible for Klesmer to wish for her hand she would

have found overmastering reasons for giving it to him. Here was the

safety of full cups, which are as secure from overflow as the half-empty,

always supposing no disturbance. Naturally, silent feeling had

not remained at the same point any more than the stealthly dial-hand,

and in the present visit to Quetcham, Klesmer had begun to think that he

would not come again; while Catherine was more sensitive to his frequent

_brusquerie_, which she rather resented as a needless effort to assert

his footing of superior in every sense except the conventional.

Meanwhile enters the expectant peer, Mr. Bult, an esteemed party man

who, rather neutral in private life, had strong opinions concerning the

districts of the Niger, was much at home also in Brazils, spoke with

decision of affairs in the South Seas, was studious of his

Parliamentary and itinerant speeches, and had the general solidity and

suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the central table-land of

life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding that he was an

undeniable husband for an heiress, had nothing to say against him but

that he was thoroughly tiresome to her. Mr. Bult was amiably confident,

and had no idea that his insensibility to counterpoint could ever be

reckoned against him. Klesmer he hardly regarded in the light of a

serious human being who ought to have a vote; and he did not mind Miss

Arrowpoint’s addiction to music any more than her probable expenses in

antique lace. He was consequently a little amazed at an after-dinner

outburst of Klesmer’s on the lack of idealism in English politics,

which left all mutuality between distant races to be determined simply

by the need of a market; the crusades, to his mind, had at least this

excuse, that they had a banner of sentiment round which generous

feelings could rally: of course, the scoundrels rallied too, but what

then? they rally in equal force round your advertisement van of “Buy

cheap, sell dear.” On this theme Klesmer’s eloquence, gesticulatory and

other, went on for a little while like stray fireworks accidentally

ignited, and then sank into immovable silence. Mr. Bult was not

surprised that Klesmer’s opinions should be flighty, but was astonished

at his command of English idiom and his ability to put a point in a way

that would have told at a constituents’ dinner—to be accounted for

probably by his being a Pole, or a Czech, or something of that

fermenting sort, in a state of political refugeeism which had obliged

him to make a profession of his music; and that evening in the

drawing-room he for the first time went up to Klesmer at the piano,

Miss Arrowpoint being near, and said,

“I had no idea before that you were a political man.”

Klesmer’s only answer was to fold his arms, put out his nether lip, and

stare at Mr. Bult.

“You must have been used to public speaking. You speak uncommonly well,

though I don’t agree with you. From what you said about sentiment, I

fancy you are a Panslavist.”

“No; my name is Elijah. I am the Wandering Jew,” said Klesmer, flashing

a smile at Miss Arrowpoint, and suddenly making a mysterious, wind-like

rush backward and forward on the piano. Mr. Bult felt this buffoonery

rather offensive and Polish, but—Miss Arrowpoint being there—did not

like to move away.

“Herr Klesmer has cosmopolitan ideas,” said Miss Arrowpoint, trying to

make the best of the situation. “He looks forward to a fusion of races.”

“With all my heart,” said Mr. Bult, willing to be gracious. “I was sure

he had too much talent to be a mere musician.”

“Ah, sir, you are under some mistake there,” said Klesmer, firing up.

“No man has too much talent to be a musician. Most men have too little.

A creative artist is no more a mere musician than a great statesman is

a mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box

and look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. We help

to rule the nations and make the age as much as any other public men.

We count ourselves on level benches with legislators. And a man who

speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more

difficult than parliamentary eloquence.”

With the last word Klesmer wheeled from the piano and walked away.

Miss Arrowpoint colored, and Mr. Bult observed, with his usual

phlegmatic stolidity, “Your pianist does not think small beer of

himself.”

“Herr Klesmer is something more than a pianist,” said Miss Arrowpoint,

apologetically. “He is a great musician in the fullest sense of the

word. He will rank with Schubert and Mendelssohn.”

“Ah, you ladies understand these things,” said Mr. Bult, none the less

convinced that these things were frivolous because Klesmer had shown

himself a coxcomb.

Catherine, always sorry when Klesmer gave himself airs, found an

opportunity the next day in the music-room to say, “Why were you so

heated last night with Mr. Bult? He meant no harm.”

“You wish me to be complaisant to him?” said Klesmer, rather fiercely.

“I think it is hardly worth your while to be other than civil.”

“You find no difficulty in tolerating him, then?—you have a respect

for a political platitudinarian as insensible as an ox to everything he

can’t turn into political capital. You think his monumental obtuseness

suited to the dignity of the English gentleman.”

“I did not say that.”

“You mean that I acted without dignity, and you are offended with me.”

“Now you are slightly nearer the truth,” said Catherine, smiling.

“Then I had better put my burial-clothes in my portmanteau and set off

at once.”

“I don’t see that. If I have to bear your criticism of my operetta, you

should not mind my criticism of your impatience.”

“But I do mind it. You would have wished me to take his ignorant

impertinence about a ‘mere musician’ without letting him know his

place. I am to hear my gods blasphemed as well as myself insulted. But

I beg pardon. It is impossible you should see the matter as I do. Even

you can’t understand the wrath of the artist: he is of another caste

for you.”