Daniel Deronda

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"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 We 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 desespoir_."

"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.