Kabanata Kabanata 28 · Chapter XXVIII
.
“Il est plus aisé de connoître l’homme en général que de connoître un
homme en particulier.”—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
An hour after Grandcourt had left, the important news of Gwendolen’s
engagement was known at the rectory, and Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne, with
Anna, spent the evening at Offendene.
“My dear, let me congratulate you on having created a strong
attachment,” said the rector. “You look serious, and I don’t wonder at
it: a life-long union is a solemn thing. But from the way Mr. Grandcourt
has acted and spoken I think we may already see some good arising out
of our adversity. It has given you an opportunity of observing your
future husband’s delicate liberality.”
Mr. Gascoigne referred to Grandcourt’s mode of implying that he would
provide for Mrs. Davilow—a part of the love-making which Gwendolen had
remembered to cite to her mother with perfect accuracy.
“But I have no doubt that Mr. Grandcourt would have behaved quite as
handsomely if you had not gone away to Germany, Gwendolen, and had been
engaged to him, as you no doubt might have been, more than a month
ago,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, feeling that she had to discharge a duty on
this occasion. “But now there is no more room for caprice; indeed, I
trust you have no inclination to any. A woman has a great debt of
gratitude to a man who perseveres in making her such an offer. But no
doubt you feel properly.”
“I am not at all sure that I do, aunt,” said Gwendolen, with saucy
gravity. “I don’t know everything it is proper to feel on being
engaged.”
The rector patted her shoulder and smiled as at a bit of innocent
naughtiness, and his wife took his behavior as an indication that she
was not to be displeased. As for Anna, she kissed Gwendolen and said,
“I do hope you will be happy,” but then sank into the background and
tried to keep the tears back too. In the late days she had been
imagining a little romance about Rex—how if he still longed for
Gwendolen her heart might be softened by trouble into love, so that
they could by-and-by be married. And the romance had turned to a prayer
that she, Anna, might be able to rejoice like a good sister, and only
think of being useful in working for Gwendolen, as long as Rex was not
rich. But now she wanted grace to rejoice in something else. Miss Merry
and the four girls, Alice with the high shoulders, Bertha and Fanny the
whisperers, and Isabel the listener, were all present on this family
occasion, when everything seemed appropriately turning to the honor and
glory of Gwendolen, and real life was as interesting as “Sir Charles
Grandison.” The evening passed chiefly in decisive remarks from the
rector, in answer to conjectures from the two elder ladies. According
to him, the case was not one in which he could think it his duty to
mention settlements: everything must, and doubtless would safely be
left to Mr. Grandcourt.
“I should like to know exactly what sort of places Ryelands and
Gadsmere are,” said Mrs. Davilow.
“Gadsmere, I believe, is a secondary place,” said Mr. Gascoigne; “But
Ryelands I know to be one of our finest seats. The park is extensive
and the woods of a very valuable order. The house was built by Inigo
Jones, and the ceilings are painted in the Italian style. The estate is
said to be worth twelve thousand a year, and there are two livings, one
a rectory, in the gift of the Grandcourts. There may be some burdens on
the land. Still, Mr. Grandcourt was an only child.”
“It would be most remarkable,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, “if he were to
become Lord Stannery in addition to everything else. Only think: there
is the Grandcourt estate, the Mallinger estate, _and_ the baronetcy,
_and_ the peerage,”—she was marking off the items on her fingers, and
paused on the fourth while she added, “but they say there will be no
land coming to him with the peerage.” It seemed a pity there was
nothing for the fifth finger.
“The peerage,” said the rector, judiciously, “must be regarded as a
remote chance. There are two cousins between the present peer and Mr.
Grandcourt. It is certainly a serious reflection how death and other
causes do sometimes concentrate inheritances on one man. But an excess
of that kind is to be deprecated. To be Sir Mallinger Grandcourt
Mallinger—I suppose that will be his style—with corresponding
properties, is a valuable talent enough for any man to have committed
to him. Let us hope it will be well used.”
“And what a position for the wife, Gwendolen!” said Mrs. Gascoigne; “a
great responsibility indeed. But you must lose no time in writing to
Mrs. Mompert, Henry. It is a good thing that you have an engagement of
marriage to offer as an excuse, else she might feel offended. She is
rather a high woman.”
“I am rid of that horror,” thought Gwendolen, to whom the name of
Mompert had become a sort of Mumbo-jumbo. She was very silent through
the evening, and that night could hardly sleep at all in her little
white bed. It was a rarity in her strong youth to be wakeful: and
perhaps a still greater rarity for her to be careful that her mother
should not know of her restlessness. But her state of mind was
altogether new: she who had been used to feel sure of herself, and
ready to manage others, had just taken a decisive step which she had
beforehand thought that she would not take—nay, perhaps, was bound not
to take. She could not go backward now; she liked a great deal of what
lay before her; and there was nothing for her to like if she went back.
But her resolution was dogged by the shadow of that previous resolve
which had at first come as the undoubting movement of her whole being.
While she lay on her pillow with wide-open eyes, “looking on darkness
which the blind do see,” she was appalled by the idea that she was
going to do what she had once started away from with repugnance. It was
new to her that a question of right or wrong in her conduct should
rouse her terror; she had known no compunction that atoning caresses
and presents could not lay to rest. But here had come a moment when
something like a new consciousness was awaked. She seemed on the edge
of adopting deliberately, as a notion for all the rest of her life,
what she had rashly said in her bitterness, when her discovery had
driven her away to Leubronn:—that it did not signify what she did; she
had only to amuse herself as best she could. That lawlessness, that
casting away of all care for justification, suddenly frightened her: it
came to her with the shadowy array of possible calamity behind
it—calamity which had ceased to be a mere name for her; and all the
infiltrated influences of disregarded religious teaching, as well as
the deeper impressions of something awful and inexorable enveloping
her, seemed to concentrate themselves in the vague conception of
avenging power. The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined
freedom she would create for herself in marriage, the deliverance from
the dull insignificance of her girlhood—all immediately before her;
and yet they had come to her hunger like food with the taint of
sacrilege upon it, which she must snatch with terror. In the darkness
and loneliness of her little bed, her more resistant self could not act
against the first onslaught of dread after her irrevocable decision.
That unhappy-faced woman and her children—Grandcourt and his relations
with her—kept repeating themselves in her imagination like the
clinging memory of a disgrace, and gradually obliterated all other
thought, leaving only the consciousness that she had taken those scenes
into her life. Her long wakefulness seemed a delirium; a faint, faint
light penetrated beside the window-curtain; the chillness increased.
She could bear it no longer, and cried “Mamma!”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, immediately, in a wakeful voice.
“Let me come to you.”
She soon went to sleep on her mother’s shoulder, and slept on till
late, when, dreaming of a lit-up ball-room, she opened her eyes on her
mother standing by the bedside with a small packet in her hand.
“I am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought it better to give you
this at once. The groom has brought Criterion; he has come on another
horse, and says he is to stay here.”
Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. It was a delicate
enameled casket, and inside was a splendid diamond ring with a letter
which contained a folded bit of colored paper and these words:
Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in sign of our betrothal. I
enclose a check drawn in the name of Mr. Gascoigne, for immediate
expenses. Of course Mrs. Davilow will remain at Offendene, at least
for some time. I hope, when I come, you will have granted me an early
day, when you may begin to command me at a shorter distance.—Yours
devotedly,
H. M. GRANDCOURT.
The check was for five hundred pounds, and Gwendolen turned it toward
her mother, with the letter.
“How very kind and delicate!” said Mrs. Davilow, with much feeling.
“But I really should like better not to be dependent on a son-in-law. I
and the girls could get along very well.”
“Mamma, if you say that again, I will not marry him,” said Gwendolen,
angrily.
“My dear child, I trust you are not going to marry only for my sake,”
said Mrs. Davilow, deprecatingly.
Gwendolen tossed her head on the pillow away from her mother, and let
the ring lie. She was irritated at this attempt to take away a motive.
Perhaps the deeper cause of her irritation was the consciousness that
she was not going to marry solely for her mamma’s sake—that she was
drawn toward the marriage in ways against which stronger reasons than
her mother’s renunciation were yet not strong enough to hinder her. She
had waked up to the signs that she was irrevocably engaged, and all the
ugly visions, the alarms, the arguments of the night, must be met by
daylight, in which probably they would show themselves weak. “What I
long for is your happiness, dear,” continued Mrs. Davilow, pleadingly.
“I will not say anything to vex you. Will you not put on the ring?”
For a few moments Gwendolen did not answer, but her thoughts were
active. At last she raised herself with a determination to do as she
would do if she had started on horseback, and go on with spirit,
whatever ideas might be running in her head.
“I thought the lover always put on the betrothal ring himself,” she
said laughingly, slipping the ring on her finger, and looking at it
with a charming movement of her head. “I know why he has sent it,” she
added, nodding at her mamma.
“Why?”
“He would rather make me put it on than ask me to let him do it. Aha!
he is very proud. But so am I. We shall match each other. I should hate
a man who went down on his knees, and came fawning on me. He really is
not disgusting.”
“That is very moderate praise, Gwen.”
“No, it is not, for a man,” said Gwendolen gaily. “But now I must get
up and dress. Will you come and do my hair, mamma, dear,” she went on,
drawing down her mamma’s face to caress it with her own cheeks, “and
not be so naughty any more as to talk of living in poverty? You must
bear to be made comfortable, even if you don’t like it. And Mr.
Grandcourt behaves perfectly, now, does he not?”
“Certainly he does,” said Mrs. Davilow, encouraged, and persuaded that
after all Gwendolen was fond of her betrothed. She herself thought him
a man whose attentions were likely to tell on a girl’s feeling. Suitors
must often be judged as words are, by the standing and the figure they
make in polite society: it is difficult to know much else of them. And
all the mother’s anxiety turned not on Grandcourt’s character, but on
Gwendolen’s mood in accepting him.
The mood was necessarily passing through a new phase this morning. Even
in the hour of making her toilet, she had drawn on all the knowledge
she had for grounds to justify her marriage. And what she most dwelt on
was the determination, that when she was Grandcourt’s wife, she would
urge him to the most liberal conduct toward Mrs. Glasher’s children.
“Of what use would it be to her that I should not marry him? He could
have married her if he liked; but he did _not_ like. Perhaps she is to
blame for that. There must be a great deal about her that I know
nothing of. And he must have been good to her in many ways, else she
would not have wanted to marry him.”
But that last argument at once began to appear doubtful. Mrs. Glasher
naturally wished to exclude other children who would stand between
Grandcourt and her own: and Gwendolen’s comprehension of this feeling
prompted another way of reconciling claims.
“Perhaps we shall have no children. I hope we shall not. And he might
leave the estate to the pretty little boy. My uncle said that Mr.
Grandcourt could do as he liked with the estates. Only when Sir Hugo
Mallinger dies there will be enough for two.”
This made Mrs. Glasher appear quite unreasonable in demanding that her
boy should be sole heir; and the double property was a security that
Grandcourt’s marriage would do her no wrong, when the wife was
Gwendolen Harleth with all her proud resolution not to be fairly
accused. This maiden had been accustomed to think herself blameless;
other persons only were faulty.
It was striking, that in the hold which this argument of her doing no
wrong to Mrs. Glasher had taken on her mind, her repugnance to the idea
of Grandcourt’s past had sunk into a subordinate feeling. The terror
she had felt in the night-watches at overstepping the border of
wickedness by doing what she had at first felt to be wrong, had dulled
any emotions about his conduct. She was thinking of him, whatever he
might be, as a man over whom she was going to have indefinite power;
and her loving him having never been a question with her, any
agreeableness he had was so much gain. Poor Gwendolen had no awe of
unmanageable forces in the state of matrimony, but regarded it as
altogether a matter of management, in which she would know how to act.
In relation to Grandcourt’s past she encouraged new doubts whether he
were likely to have differed much from other men; and she devised
little schemes for learning what was expected of men in general.
But whatever else might be true in the world, her hair was dressed
suitably for riding, and she went down in her riding-habit, to avoid
delay before getting on horseback. She wanted to have her blood stirred
once more with the intoxication of youth, and to recover the daring
with which she had been used to think of her course in life. Already a
load was lifted off her; for in daylight and activity it was less
oppressive to have doubts about her choice, than to feel that she had
no choice but to endure insignificance and servitude.
“Go back and make yourself look like a duchess, mamma,” she said,
turning suddenly as she was going down-stairs. “Put your point-lace
over your head. I must have you look like a duchess. You must not take
things humbly.”
When Grandcourt raised her left hand gently and looked at the ring, she
said gravely, “It was very good of you to think of everything and send
me that packet.”
“You will tell me if there is anything I forget?” he said, keeping the
hand softly within his own. “I will do anything you wish.”
“But I am very unreasonable in my wishes,” said Gwendolen, smiling.
“Yes, I expect that. Women always are.”
“Then I will not be unreasonable,” said Gwendolen, taking away her hand
and tossing her head saucily. “I will not be told that I am what women
always are.”
“I did not say that,” said Grandcourt, looking at her with his usual
gravity. “You are what no other woman is.”
“And what is that, pray?” said Gwendolen, moving to a distance with a
little air of menace.
Grandcourt made his pause before he answered. “You are the woman I
love.”
“Oh, what nice speeches!” said Gwendolen, laughing. The sense of that
love which he must once have given to another woman under strange
circumstances was getting familiar.
“Give me a nice speech in return. Say when we are to be married.”
“Not yet. Not till we have had a gallop over the downs. I am so thirsty
for that, I can think of nothing else. I wish the hunting had begun.
Sunday the twentieth, twenty-seventh, Monday, Tuesday.” Gwendolen was
counting on her fingers with the prettiest nod while she looked at
Grandcourt, and at last swept one palm over the other while she said
triumphantly, “It will begin in ten days!”
“Let us be married in ten days, then,” said Grandcourt, “and we shall
not be bored about the stables.”
“What do women always say in answer to that?” said Gwendolen,
mischievously.
“They agree to it,” said the lover, rather off his guard.
“Then I will not!” said Gwendolen, taking up her gauntlets and putting
them on, while she kept her eyes on him with gathering fun in them.
The scene was pleasant on both sides. A cruder lover would have lost
the view of her pretty ways and attitudes, and spoiled all by stupid
attempts at caresses, utterly destructive of drama. Grandcourt
preferred the drama; and Gwendolen, left at ease, found her spirits
rising continually as she played at reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had
seen more of her in this unconscious kind of acting, instead of when
she was trying to be theatrical, he might have rated her chance higher.
When they had had a glorious gallop, however, she was in a state of
exhilaration that disposed her to think well of hastening the marriage
which would make her life all of apiece with this splendid kind of
enjoyment. She would not debate any more about an act to which she had
committed herself; and she consented to fix the wedding on that day
three weeks, notwithstanding the difficulty of fulfilling the customary
laws of the _trousseau_.
Lush, of course, was made aware of the engagement by abundant signs,
without being formally told. But he expected some communication as a
consequence of it, and after a few days he became rather impatient
under Grandcourt’s silence, feeling sure that the change would affect
his personal prospects, and wishing to know exactly how. His tactics no
longer included any opposition—which he did not love for its own sake.
He might easily cause Grandcourt a great deal of annoyance, but it
would be to his own injury, and to create annoyance was not a motive
with him. Miss Gwendolen he would certainly not have been sorry to
frustrate a little, but—after all there was no knowing what would
come. It was nothing new that Grandcourt should show a perverse
wilfulness; yet in his freak about this girl he struck Lush rather
newly as something like a man who was _fey_—led on by an ominous
fatality; and that one born to his fortune should make a worse business
of his life than was necessary, seemed really pitiable. Having
protested against the marriage, Lush had a second-sight for its evil
consequences. Grandcourt had been taking the pains to write letters and
give orders himself instead of employing Lush, and appeared to be
ignoring his usefulness, even choosing, against the habit of years, to
breakfast alone in his dressing-room. But a _tête-à-tête_ was not to be
avoided in a house empty of guests; and Lush hastened to use an
opportunity of saying—it was one day after dinner, for there were
difficulties in Grandcourt’s dining at Offendene,
“And when is the marriage to take place?”
Grandcourt, who drank little wine, had left the table and was lounging,
while he smoked, in an easy chair near the hearth, where a fire of oak
boughs was gaping to its glowing depths, and edging them with a
delicate tint of ashes delightful to behold. The chair of red-brown
velvet brocade was a becoming background for his pale-tinted, well-cut
features and exquisite long hands. Omitting the cigar, you might have
imagined him a portrait by Moroni, who would have rendered wonderfully
the impenetrable gaze and air of distinction; and a portrait by that
great master would have been quite as lively a companion as Grandcourt
was disposed to be. But he answered without unusual delay.
“On the tenth.”
“I suppose you intend to remain here.”
“We shall go to Ryelands for a little while; but we shall return here
for the sake of the hunting.”
After this word there was the languid inarticulate sound frequent with
Grandcourt when he meant to continue speaking, and Lush waited for
something more. Nothing came, and he was going to put another question,
when the inarticulate sound began again and introduced the mildly
uttered suggestion,
“You had better make some new arrangement for yourself.”
“What! I am to cut and run?” said Lush, prepared to be good-tempered on
the occasion.
“Something of that kind.”
“The bride objects to me. I hope she will make up to you for the want
of my services.”
“I can’t help your being so damnably disagreeable to women,” said
Grandcourt, in soothing apology.
“To one woman, if you please.”
“It makes no difference since she is the one in question.”
“I suppose I am not to be turned adrift after fifteen years without
some provision.”
“You must have saved something out of me.”
“Deuced little. I have often saved something for you.”
“You can have three hundred a year. But you must live in town and be
ready to look after things when I want you. I shall be rather hard up.”
“If you are not going to be at Ryelands this winter, I might run down
there and let you know how Swinton goes on.”
“If you like. I don’t care a toss where you are, so that you keep out
of sight.”
“Much obliged,” said Lush, able to take the affair more easily than he
had expected. He was supported by the secret belief that he should
by-and-by be wanted as much as ever.
“Perhaps you will not object to packing up as soon as possible,” said
Grandcourt. “The Torringtons are coming, and Miss Harleth will be
riding over here.”
“With all my heart. Can’t I be of use in going to Gadsmere?”
“No. I am going myself.”
“About your being rather hard up. Have you thought of that plan—”
“Just leave me alone, will you?” said Grandcourt, in his lowest audible
tone, tossing his cigar into the fire, and rising to walk away.
He spent the evening in the solitude of the smaller drawing-room,
where, with various new publications on the table of the kind a
gentleman may like to have on hand without touching, he employed
himself (as a philosopher might have done) in sitting meditatively on
the sofa and abstaining from literature—political, comic, cynical, or
romantic. In this way hours may pass surprisingly soon, without the
arduous invisible chase of philosophy; not from love of thought, but
from hatred of effort—from a state of the inward world, something like
premature age, where the need for action lapses into a mere image of
what has been, is, and may or might be; where impulse is born and dies
in a phantasmal world, pausing in rejection of even a shadowy
fulfillment. That is a condition which often comes with whitening hair;
and sometimes, too, an intense obstinacy and tenacity of rule, like the
main trunk of an exorbitant egoism, conspicuous in proportion as the
varied susceptibilities of younger years are stripped away.
But Grandcourt’s hair, though he had not much of it, was of a fine,
sunny blonde, and his moods were not entirely to be explained as ebbing
energy. We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within
us, so that a lazy stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be
preparing one knows not what biting or explosive material. The navvy
waking from sleep and without malice heaving a stone to crush the life
out of his still sleeping comrade, is understood to lack the trained
motive which makes a character fairly calculable in its actions; but by
a roundabout course even a gentleman may make of himself a chancy
personage, raising an uncertainty as to what he may do next, that sadly
spoils companionship.
Grandcourt’s thoughts this evening were like the circlets one sees in a
dark pool, continually dying out and continually started again by some
impulse from below the surface. The deeper central impulse came from
the image of Gwendolen; but the thoughts it stirred would be
imperfectly illustrated by a reference to the amatory poets of all
ages. It was characteristic that he got none of his satisfaction from
the belief that Gwendolen was in love with him; and that love had
overcome the jealous resentment which had made her run away from him.
On the contrary, he believed that this girl was rather exceptional in
the fact that, in spite of his assiduous attention to her, she was not
in love with him; and it seemed to him very likely that if it had not
been for the sudden poverty which had come over her family, she would
not have accepted him. From the very first there had been an
exasperating fascination in the tricksiness with which she had—not met
his advances, but—wheeled away from them. She had been brought to
accept him in spite of everything—brought to kneel down like a horse
under training for the arena, though she might have an objection to it
all the while. On the whole, Grandcourt got more pleasure out of this
notion than he could have done out of winning a girl of whom he was
sure that she had a strong inclination for him personally. And yet this
pleasure in mastering reluctance flourished along with the habitual
persuasion that no woman whom he favored could be quite indifferent to
his personal influence; and it seemed to him not unlikely that
by-and-by Gwendolen might be more enamored of him than he of her. In
any case, she would have to submit; and he enjoyed thinking of her as
his future wife, whose pride and spirit were suited to command every
one but himself. He had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness to
him, full of petitioning solicitude and willing obedience. He meant to
be master of a woman who would have liked to master him, and who
perhaps would have been capable of mastering another man.
Lush, having failed in his attempted reminder to Grandcourt, thought it
well to communicate with Sir Hugo, in whom, as a man having perhaps
interest enough to command the bestowal of some place where the work
was light, gentlemanly, and not ill-paid, he was anxious to cultivate a
sense of friendly obligation, not feeling at all secure against the
future need of such a place. He wrote the following letter, and
addressed it to Park Lane, whither he knew the family had returned from
Leubronn:
MY DEAR SIR HUGO—Since we came home the marriage has been absolutely
decided on, and is to take place in less than three weeks. It is so
far the worse for him that her mother has lately lost all her fortune,
and he will have to find supplies. Grandcourt, I know, is feeling the
want of cash; and unless some other plan is resorted to, he will be
raising money in a foolish way. I am going to leave Diplow
immediately, and I shall not be able to start the topic. What I should
advise is, that Mr. Deronda, who I know has your confidence, should
propose to come and pay a short visit here, according to invitation
(there are going to be other people in the house), and that you should
put him fully in possession of your wishes and the possible extent of
your offer. Then, that he should introduce the subject to Grandcourt
so as not to imply that you suspect any particular want of money on
his part, but only that there is a strong wish on yours. What I have
formerly said to him has been in the way of a conjecture that you
might be willing to give a good sum for his chance of Diplow; but if
Mr. Deronda came armed with a definite offer, that would take another
sort of hold. Ten to one he will not close for some time to come; but
the proposal will have got a stronger lodgment in his mind; and though
at present he has a great notion of the hunting here, I see a
likelihood, under the circumstances, that he will get a distaste for
the neighborhood, and there will be the notion of the money sticking
by him without being urged. I would bet on your ultimate success. As I
am not to be exiled to Siberia, but am to be within call, it is
possible that, by and by, I may be of more service to you. But at
present I can think of no medium so good as Mr. Deronda. Nothing puts
Grandcourt in worse humor than having the lawyers thrust their paper
under his nose uninvited.
Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has put you in excellent
condition for the winter, I remain, my dear Sir Hugo, yours very
faithfully,
THOMAS CRANMER LUSH.
Sir Hugo, having received this letter at breakfast, handed it to
Deronda, who, though he had chambers in town, was somehow hardly ever
in them, Sir Hugo not being contented without him. The chatty baronet
would have liked a young companion even if there had been no peculiar
reasons for attachment between them: one with a fine harmonious
unspoiled face fitted to keep up a cheerful view of posterity and
inheritance generally, notwithstanding particular disappointments; and
his affection for Deronda was not diminished by the deep-lying though
not obtrusive difference in their notions and tastes. Perhaps it was
all the stronger; acting as the same sort of difference does between a
man and a woman in giving a piquancy to the attachment which subsists
in spite of it. Sir Hugo did not think unapprovingly of himself; but he
looked at men and society from a liberal-menagerie point of view, and
he had a certain pride in Deronda’s differing from him, which, if it
had found voice, might have said—“You see this fine young fellow—not
such as you see every day, is he?—he belongs to me in a sort of way. I
brought him up from a child; but you would not ticket him off easily,
he has notions of his own, and he’s as far as the poles asunder from
what I was at his age.” This state of feeling was kept up by the mental
balance in Deronda, who was moved by an affectionateness such as we are
apt to call feminine, disposing him to yield in ordinary details, while
he had a certain inflexibility of judgment, and independence of
opinion, held to be rightfully masculine.
When he had read the letter, he returned it without speaking, inwardly
wincing under Lush’s mode of attributing a neutral usefulness to him in
the family affairs.
“What do you say, Dan? It would be pleasant enough for you. You have
not seen the place for a good many years now, and you might have a
famous run with the harriers if you went down next week,” said Sir Hugo.
“I should not go on that account,” said Deronda, buttering his bread
attentively. He had an objection to this transparent kind of
persuasiveness, which all intelligent animals are seen to treat with
indifference. If he went to Diplow he should be doing something
disagreeable to oblige Sir Hugo.
“I think Lush’s notion is a good one. And it would be a pity to lose
the occasion.”
“That is a different matter—if you think my going of importance to
your object,” said Deronda, still with that aloofness of manner which
implied some suppression. He knew that the baronet had set his heart on
the affair.
“Why, you will see the fair gambler, the Leubronn Diana, I shouldn’t
wonder,” said Sir Hugo, gaily. “We shall have to invite her to the
Abbey, when they are married,” he added, turning to Lady Mallinger, as
if she too had read the letter.
“I cannot conceive whom you mean,” said Lady Mallinger, who in fact had
not been listening, her mind having been taken up with her first sips
of coffee, the objectionable cuff of her sleeve, and the necessity of
carrying Theresa to the dentist—innocent and partly laudable
preoccupations, as the gentle lady’s usually were. Should her
appearance be inquired after, let it be said that she had reddish
blonde hair (the hair of the period), a small Roman nose, rather
prominent blue eyes and delicate eyelids, with a figure which her
thinner friends called fat, her hands showing curves and dimples like a
magnified baby’s.
“I mean that Grandcourt is going to marry the girl you saw at
Leubronn—don’t you remember her—the Miss Harleth who used to play at
roulette.”
“Dear me! Is that a good match for him?”
“That depends on the sort of goodness he wants,” said Sir Hugo,
smiling. “However, she and her friends have nothing, and she will bring
him expenses. It’s a good match for my purposes, because if I am
willing to fork out a sum of money, he may be willing to give up his
chance of Diplow, so that we shall have it out and out, and when I die
you will have the consolation of going to the place you would like to
go to—wherever I may go.”
“I wish you would not talk of dying in that light way, dear.”
“It’s rather a heavy way, Lou, for I shall have to pay a heavy
sum—forty thousand, at least.”
“But why are we to invite them to the Abbey?” said Lady Mallinger. “I
do _not_ like women who gamble, like Lady Cragstone.”
“Oh, you will not mind her for a week. Besides, she is not like Lady
Cragstone because she gambled a little, any more than I am like a
broker because I’m a Whig. I want to keep Grandcourt in good humor, and
to let him see plenty of this place, that he may think the less of
Diplow. I don’t know yet whether I shall get him to meet me in this
matter. And if Dan were to go over on a visit there, he might hold out
the bait to him. It would be doing me a great service.” This was meant
for Deronda.
“Daniel is not fond of Mr. Grandcourt, I think, is he?” said Lady
Mallinger, looking at Deronda inquiringly.
“There is no avoiding everybody one doesn’t happen to be fond of,” said
Deronda. “I will go to Diplow—I don’t know that I have anything better
to do—since Sir Hugo wishes it.”
“That’s a trump!” said Sir Hugo, well pleased. “And if you don’t find
it very pleasant, it’s so much experience. Nothing used to come amiss
to me when I was young. You must see men and manners.”
“Yes; but I have seen that man, and something of his manners too,” said
Deronda.
“Not nice manners, I think,” said Lady Mallinger.
“Well, you see they succeed with your sex,” said Sir Hugo, provokingly.
“And he was an uncommonly good-looking fellow when he was two or three
and twenty—like his father. He doesn’t take after his father in
marrying the heiress, though. If he had got Miss Arrowpoint and my land
too, confound him, he would have had a fine principality.”
Deronda, in anticipating the projected visit, felt less disinclination
than when consenting to it. The story of that girl’s marriage did
interest him: what he had heard through Lush of her having run away
from the suit of the man she was now going to take as a husband, had
thrown a new sort of light on her gambling; and it was probably the
transition from that fevered worldliness into poverty which had urged
her acceptance where she must in some way have felt repulsion. All this
implied a nature liable to difficulty and struggle—elements of life
which had a predominant attraction for his sympathy, due perhaps to his
early pain in dwelling on the conjectured story of his own existence.
Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in proportion to the
possibility of his defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their
lives with some sort of redeeming influence; and he had to resist an
inclination, easily accounted for, to withdraw coldly from the
fortunate. But in the movement which had led him to repurchase
Gwendolen’s necklace for her, and which was at work in him still, there
was something beyond his habitual compassionate fervor—something due
to the fascination of her womanhood. He was very open to that sort of
charm, and mingled it with the consciously Utopian pictures of his own
future; yet any one able to trace the folds of his character might have
conceived that he would be more likely than many less passionate men to
love a woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle food before a
delicate-eared bird: there is nothing he would more willingly take, yet
he keeps aloof, because of his sensibility to checks which to you are
imperceptible. And one man differs from another, as we all differ from
the Bosjesman, in a sensibility to checks, that come from variety of
needs, spiritual or other. It seemed to foreshadow that capability of
reticence in Deronda that his imagination was much occupied with two
women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should
ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of
the knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof
if he had known what was just now going on in Deronda’s mind about
Mirah and Gwendolen.
Deronda wrote without delay to announce his visit to Diplow, and
received in reply a polite assurance that his coming would give great
pleasure. That was not altogether untrue. Grandcourt thought it
probable that the visit was prompted by Sir Hugo’s desire to court him
for a purpose which he did not make up his mind to resist; and it was
not a disagreeable idea to him that this fine fellow, whom he believed
to be his cousin under the rose, would witness, perhaps with some
jealousy, Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt play the commanding part of
betrothed lover to a splendid girl whom the cousin had already looked
at with admiration.
Grandcourt himself was not jealous of anything unless it threatened his
mastery—which he did not think himself likely to lose.