第 二十八 章 · Chapter XXVIII

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“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.