Daniel Deronda

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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.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice,
him or her I shall follow.
As the water follows the moon, silently,
with fluid steps anywhere around the globe."
--WALT WHITMAN.

"Now my cousins are at Diplow," said Grandcourt, "will you go there?--to-
morrow? The carriage shall come for Mrs. Davilow. You can tell me what you
would like done in the rooms. Things must be put in decent order while we
are away at Ryelands. And to-morrow is the only day."

He was sitting sideways on a sofa in the drawing-room at Offendene, one
hand and elbow resting on the back, and the other hand thrust between his
crossed knees--in the attitude of a man who is much interested in watching
the person next to him. Gwendolen, who had always disliked needlework, had
taken to it with apparent zeal since her engagement, and now held a piece
of white embroidery which, on examination, would have shown many false
stitches. During the last eight or nine days their hours had been chiefly
spent on horseback, but some margin had always been left for this more
difficult sort of companionship, which, however, Gwendolen had not found
disagreeable. She was very well satisfied with Grandcourt. His answers to
her lively questions about what he had seen and done in his life, bore
drawling very well. From the first she had noticed that he knew what to
say; and she was constantly feeling not only that he had nothing of the
fool in his composition, but that by some subtle means he communicated to
her the impression that all the folly lay with other people, who did what
he did not care to do. A man who seems to have been able to command the
best, has a sovereign power of depreciation. Then Grandcourt's behavior as
a lover had hardly at all passed the limit of an amorous homage which was
inobtrusive as a wafted odor of roses, and spent all its effects in a
gratified vanity. One day, indeed, he had kissed not her cheek but her
neck a little below her ear; and Gwendolen, taken by surprise, had started
up with a marked agitation which made him rise too and say, "I beg your
pardon--did I annoy you?" "Oh, it was nothing," said Gwendolen, rather
afraid of herself, "only I cannot bear--to be kissed under my ear." She
sat down again with a little playful laugh, but all the while she felt her
heart beating with a vague fear: she was no longer at liberty to flout him
as she had flouted poor Rex. Her agitation seemed not uncomplimentary, and
he had been contented not to transgress again.

To-day a slight rain hindered riding; but to compensate, a package had
come from London, and Mrs. Davilow had just left the room after bringing
in for admiration the beautiful things (of Grandcourt's ordering) which
lay scattered about on the tables. Gwendolen was just then enjoying the
scenery of her life. She let her hands fall on her lap, and said with a
pretty air of perversity--

"Why is to-morrow the only day?"

"Because the next day is the first with the hounds," said Grandcourt.

"And after that?"

"After that I must go away for a couple of days--it's a bore--but I shall
go one day and come back the next." Grandcourt noticed a change in her
face, and releasing his hand from under his knees, he laid it on hers, and
said, "You object to my going away?"

"It's no use objecting," said Gwendolen, coldly. She was resisting to the
utmost her temptation to tell him that she suspected to whom he was going
--the temptation to make a clean breast, speaking without restraint.

"Yes it is," said Grandcourt, enfolding her hand. "I will put off going.
And I will travel at night, so as only to be away one day." He thought
that he knew the reason of what he inwardly called this bit of temper, and
she was particularly fascinating to him at this moment.

"Then don't put off going, but travel at night," said Gwendolen, feeling
that she could command him, and finding in this peremptoriness a small
outlet for her irritation.

"Then you will go to Diplow to-morrow?"

"Oh, yes, if you wish it," said Gwendolen, in a high tone of careless
assent. Her concentration in other feelings had really hindered her from
taking notice that her hand was being held.

"How you treat us poor devils of men!" said Grandcourt, lowering his tone.
"We are always getting the worst of it."

"_Are_ you?" said Gwendolen, in a tone of inquiry, looking at him more
naively than usual. She longed to believe this commonplace _badinage_ as
the serious truth about her lover: in that case, she too was justified. If
she knew everything, Mrs. Glasher would appear more blamable than
Grandcourt. "_Are_ you always getting the worst?"

"Yes. Are you as kind to me as I am to you?" said Grandcourt, looking into
her eyes with his narrow gaze.

Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was conscious of having received so
much, that her sense of command was checked, and sank away in the
perception that, look around her as she might, she could not turn back: it
was as if she had consented to mount a chariot where another held the
reins; and it was not in her nature to leap out in the eyes of the world.
She had not consented in ignorance, and all she could say now would be a
confession that she had not been ignorant. Her right to explanation was
gone. All she had to do now was to adjust herself, so that the spikes of
that unwilling penance which conscience imposed should not gall her. With
a sort of mental shiver, she resolutely changed her mental attitude. There
had been a little pause, during which she had not turned away her eyes;
and with a sudden break into a smile, she said--

"If I were as kind to you as you are to me, that would spoil your
generosity: it would no longer be as great as it could be--and it is that
now."

"Then I am not to ask for one kiss," said Grandcourt, contented to pay a
large price for this new kind of love-making, which introduced marriage by
the finest contrast.

"Not one?" said Gwendolen, getting saucy, and nodding at him defiantly.

He lifted her little left hand to his lips, and then released it
respectfully. Clearly it was faint praise to say of him that he was not
disgusting: he was almost charming; and she felt at this moment that it
was not likely she could ever have loved another man better than this one.
His reticence gave her some inexplicable, delightful consciousness.

"Apropos," she said, taking up her work again, "is there any one besides
Captain and Mrs. Torrington at Diplow?--or do you leave them _tete-a-
tete_? I suppose he converses in cigars, and she answers with her
chignon."

"She has a sister with her," said Grandcourt, with his shadow of a smile,
"and there are two men besides--one of them you know, I believe."

"Ah, then, I have a poor opinion of him," said Gwendolen, shaking her
head.

"You saw him at Leubronn--young Deronda--a young fellow with the
Mallingers."

Gwendolen felt as if her heart were making a sudden gambol, and her
fingers, which tried to keep a firm hold on her work got cold.

"I never spoke to him," she said, dreading any discernible change in
herself. "Is he not disagreeable?"

"No, not particularly," said Grandcourt, in his most languid way. "He
thinks a little too much of himself. I thought he had been introduced to
you."

"No. Some one told me his name the evening before I came away? that was
all. What is he?"

"A sort of ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger's. Nothing of any consequence."

"Oh, poor creature! How very unpleasant for him!" said Gwendolen, speaking
from the lip, and not meaning any sarcasm. "I wonder if it has left off
raining!" she added, rising and going to look out of the window.

Happily it did not rain the next day, and Gwendolen rode to Diplow on
Criterion as she had done on that former day when she returned with her
mother in the carriage. She always felt the more daring for being in her
riding-dress; besides having the agreeable belief that she looked as well
as possible in it--a sustaining consciousness in any meeting which seems
formidable. Her anger toward Deronda had changed into a superstitious
dread--due, perhaps, to the coercion he had exercised over her thought--
lest the first interference of his in her life might foreshadow some
future influence. It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly
made: an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star
shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And
superstitions carry consequences which often verify their hope or their
foreboding.

The time before luncheon was taken up for Gwendolen by going over the
rooms with Mrs. Torrington and Mrs. Davilow; and she thought it likely
that if she saw Deronda, there would hardly be need for more than a bow
between them. She meant to notice him as little as possible.

And after all she found herself under an inward compulsion too strong for
her pride. From the first moment of their being in the room together, she
seemed to herself to be doing nothing but notice him; everything else was
automatic performance of an habitual part.

When he took his place at lunch, Grandcourt had said, "Deronda, Miss
Harleth tells me you were not introduced to her at Leubronn?"

"Miss Harleth hardly remembers me, I imagine," said Deronda, looking at
her quite simply, as they bowed. "She was intensely occupied when I saw
her."

Now, did he suppose that she had not suspected him of being the person
who redeemed her necklace?

"On the contrary. I remember you very well," said Gwendolen, feeling
rather nervous, but governing herself and looking at him in return with
new examination. "You did not approve of my playing at roulette."

"How did you come to that conclusion?" said Deronda, gravely.

"Oh, you cast an evil eye on my play," said Gwendolen, with a turn of her
head and a smile. "I began to lose as soon as you came to look on. I had
always been winning till then."

"Roulette in such a kennel as Leubronn is a horrid bore," said Grandcourt.

"_I_ found it a bore when I began to lose," said Gwendolen. Her face was
turned toward Grandcourt as she smiled and spoke, but she gave a sidelong
glance at Deronda, and saw his eyes fixed on her with a look so gravely
penetrating that it had a keener edge for her than his ironical smile at
her losses--a keener edge than Klesmer's judgment. She wheeled her neck
round as if she wanted to listen to what was being said by the rest, while
she was only thinking of Deronda. His face had that disturbing kind of
form and expression which threatens to affect opinion--as if one's
standard was somehow wrong. (Who has not seen men with faces of this
corrective power till they frustrated it by speech or action?) His voice,
heard now for the first time, was to Grandcourt's toneless drawl, which
had been in her ears every day, as the deep notes of a violoncello to the
broken discourse of poultry and other lazy gentry in the afternoon
sunshine. Grandcourt, she inwardly conjectured, was perhaps right in
saying that Deronda thought too much of himself:--a favorite way of
explaining a superiority that humiliates. However the talk turned on the
rinderpest and Jamaica, and no more was said about roulette. Grandcourt
held that the Jamaica negro was a beastly sort of baptist Caliban; Deronda
said he had always felt a little with Caliban, who naturally had his own
point of view and could sing a good song; Mrs. Davilow observed that her
father had an estate in Barbadoes, but that she herself had never been in
the West Indies; Mrs. Torrington was sure she should never sleep in her
bed if she lived among blacks; her husband corrected her by saying that
the blacks would be manageable enough if it were not for the half-breeds;
and Deronda remarked that the whites had to thank themselves for the half-
breeds.