Chapter Twenty-eight
The news of Gwendolen’s engagement was soon known at the rectory, and the Gascoignes spent the evening at Offendene.
“My dear, let me congratulate you,” said the rector. “You look serious, and I don’t wonder: a lifelong union is a solemn thing. But from the way Mr. Grandcourt has spoken we may already see some good arising out of our adversity, in showing you your future husband’s delicate liberality.” For Gwendolen had told her mother of Mr. Grandcourt’s offer to provide for her.
“No doubt he would have behaved as handsomely had you become engaged to him a month ago,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, feeling that she had to discharge a duty. “But now there is no more room for caprice. 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 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. Anna kissed her, saying, “I do hope you will be happy,” but then moved away and tried to keep the tears back. Lately she had been imagining a little romance about Rex – how Gwendolen’s heart might be softened by trouble into love, so that they could marry. But now she wanted grace to rejoice in something else.
“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, with an extensive park. The house was built by Inigo Jones. The estate is said to be worth twelve thousand a year.”
“It would be most remarkable,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, “if Mr. Grandcourt were to become Lord Stannery in addition to everything else. What a position for his wife! 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 evil charm. She was silent all evening, and that night could hardly sleep. It was rare for her to be wakeful: and perhaps still rarer for her to be careful that her mother should not know of it.
But her state of mind was altogether new: she who used to feel sure of herself, had just taken a decisive step which she had thought that she would not 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 she was dogged by the shadow of that previous, instinctive resolve. Lying awake, she was appalled by the idea that she was going to do what she had once recoiled from. A question of right or wrong in her conduct had never raised terror in her before; she had known no compunction that atoning caresses could not lay to rest.
But now something like a new consciousness was awaked. She seemed on the edge of adopting deliberately, for the rest of her life, what she had rashly said in her bitterness – that it did not signify what she did; she had only to amuse herself. That lawlessness, that casting away of all care about justification, suddenly frightened her: she glimpsed shadowy calamity behind it.
All the influences of her disregarded religious teaching, as well as the deeper impressions of something awful and inexorable enveloping her, seemed to concentrate themselves in the vague idea of avenging power. The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined freedom of marriage, the deliverance from dull insignificance – all had come to her hunger like food with the taint of sacrilege upon it, which she must snatch with terror. That unhappy-faced woman and her children kept reappearing in her imagination, and gradually obliterated all other thought. Her long wakefulness seemed a delirium; a faint light penetrated the window-curtain; the chillness increased. She could bear it no longer, and cried “Mamma!”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, immediately wakeful.
“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 for you.”
Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. It was a delicate enamelled casket, and inside was a splendid diamond ring with a letter which contained a folded paper and these words:
‘Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in sign of our betrothal. I enclose a cheque 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 cheque was for five hundred pounds.
“How very kind and delicate!” said Mrs. Davilow, with feeling. “But I should prefer 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, irritated at this attempt to take away a motive. Perhaps the deeper cause of her irritation was the consciousness that she was drawn toward the marriage for other reasons, as well as for her mamma’s sake. She had woken to the knowledge that she was irrevocably engaged, and the ugly visions of the night would probably show themselves weak by day.
“What I long for is your happiness, dear,” continued Mrs. Davilow, pleadingly. “Will you not put on the ring?”
At first Gwendolen did not answer. Then she decided to act as if she were riding on horseback: she would 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 with a laugh, slipping the ring on her finger, and looking at it. “I know why he has sent it.”
“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 fawned 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 do my hair, mamma, dear, 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 was not anxious about Grandcourt’s character, but about Gwendolen’s mood in accepting him.
The mood was passing through a new phase this morning. Even while she dressed, she was drawing on all her knowledge 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 be generous to Mrs. Glasher’s children.
“What use would it be to her if I did 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, else she would not want to marry him.”
But that last argument at once appeared doubtful. Mrs. Glasher naturally wished her own children to inherit, and to exclude other children.
“Perhaps we shall have no children,” thought Gwendolen. “I hope we shall not. And he might leave the estate to the pretty little boy. When Sir Hugo Mallinger dies there will be enough for two.”
This made Mrs. Glasher appear quite unreasonable in demanding that her little boy should be sole heir. Grandcourt’s marriage would her do no wrong, when the wife was Gwendolen Harleth. That maiden was accustomed to think herself b
lameless; other persons only were faulty.
It was striking that her repugnance to the idea of Grandcourt’s past had sunk into a subordinate feeling. She was thinking of him as a man over whom she was going to have indefinite power; and since her loving him had never been a question with her, any agreeableness he had was so much gain. Poor Gwendolen regarded matrimony as altogether a matter of management, in which she would know how to act.
By now her hair was dressed, and she went down in her riding-habit, eager to stir her blood again in riding with the daring intoxication of youth. 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.
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.”
“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 season had begun. 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, 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 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.
When they had had a glorious gallop, she was in a state of exhilaration that made her think well of hastening the marriage and having more of this splendid kind of enjoyment. She would not debate it any longer; and she consented to fix the wedding on that day three weeks.
Lush, of course, was made aware of the engagement without being formally told. But, expecting some communication, after a few days he became rather impatient under Grandcourt’s silence; he was sure that the change would affect his personal prospects. He had no wish to annoy Grandcourt. Miss Gwendolen he would certainly not have been sorry to frustrate a little; in his freak about this girl Grandcourt struck Lush as a man who was fey – led on by an ominous fatality. Having protested against the marriage, Lush foresaw evil consequences.
Grandcourt appeared to be ignoring him, even choosing, against the habit of years, to breakfast alone in his dressing-room. But Lush found an opportunity of saying–
“And when is the marriage to take place?”
Grandcourt had left the dinner table and was lounging, while he smoked, in an easy chair near the hearth. The red-brown velvet brocade was a becoming background for his pale, well-cut features and exquisite long hands. He had a portrait’s impenetrable gaze and air of distinction; and was just as lively a companion. 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 hunting.”
After these words there was the languid inarticulate sound frequent with Grandcourt when he meant to continue speaking, and Lush waited for something more.
“You had better make some new arrangement for yourself.”
“What! I am to cut and run?” said Lush, prepared to be good-tempered.
“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 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.”
“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.
“Certainly. 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 reading, he employed himself in sitting meditatively on the sofa and abstaining from any literature. In this way hours may pass surprisingly soon, without the arduous chase of philosophy; not from love of thought, but from hatred of effort.
But Grandcourt’s moods were not to be explained as ebbing energy. We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that a lazy stagnation may be preparing one knows not what explosive material. 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 were not the ones of love poetry. He got none of his satisfaction from the belief that Gwendolen was in love with him. On the contrary, he believed that this girl was rather exceptional in the fact that, in spite of his assiduous attention, she was not in love with him; and it seemed to him very likely that if it had not been for her family’s sudden poverty, she would not have accepted him.
From the very first there had been an exasperating fascination in the tricksiness with which she had wheeled away from him. 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 object to it.
On the whole, Grandcourt got more pleasure out of this notion than he could have done out of winning a girl whom he thought was attracted to him personally. And yet along with this pleasure in mastering reluctance, he was persuaded that no woman whom he favoured could be quite indifferent to him; and it seemed likely that by-and-by Gwendolen might be more enamoured 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 everyone but himself. He had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness 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 thought it well to communicate with Sir Hugo, whose friendship he was anxious to cultivate, in case he should have need of future employment. 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 decided on, and is to take place in less than three weeks. It is the worse for him that her mother has lately lost all her fortune. Grandcourt, I know, is feeling the want of cash; but I am leaving Diplow immediately, and I shall not be able to raise the topic with him. Therefore I advise that Mr. Deronda, who I know has your confidence, should propose to pay a short visit here (there will be other people in the house). Then he should introduce the subject to Grandcourt so as not to imply that you suspect his need of money. I have told him that you might be willing to give a good sum to rent Diplow; but if Mr. Deronda came armed with a definite offer, the proposal will get a stronger lodgement in his mind; and though at present he has a great notion of the hunting here, I see a likelihood that he will get a distaste for the neighbourhood, and will not need urging. I would bet on your ultimate success. As I am not exiled to Siberia, but am to be within call, it is possible that I may be of more service to you. But at present I can think of no medium so good as Mr. Deronda.
‘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 hardly ever in them, since Sir Hugo was not contented without him. The chatty baronet’s affection for Deronda was not diminished by the differences in their ideas and tastes. Sir Hugo had a certain pride in Deronda’s differing from him, and his having strong notions of his own.
Deronda, in turn, was moved by an affectionate nature 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.
“What do you say, Dan? It would be pleasant enough for you. You have not seen the place for a good many years, and you might have a 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. He objected to this transparent kind of persuasiveness.
“I think Lush’s notion is a good one. And it would be a pity to lose the chance.”
“That is a different matter – if you think my going is important to your object,” said Deronda, still aloof.
“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.
“I cannot conceive whom you mean,” said Lady Mallinger, who in fact had not been listening.
“Grandcourt is going to marry the girl you saw at Leubronn – the Miss Harleth who played at roulette.”
“Dear me! Is that a good match for him?”
“That depends on the sort of goodness he wants,” said Sir Hugo, smiling. “She has nothing: so it’s a good match for my purposes, because if I am willing to fork out a large enough sum of money, he may be willing to give up Diplow, so that we shall have it.”
“But why are we to invite them to the Abbey?” said Lady Mallinger. “I do not like women who gamble.”
“Oh, you will not mind her for a week. I want to keep Grandcourt in good humour, 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 agree. If Dan were to 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, 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, since Sir Hugo wishes it.”
“That’s a good fellow!” said Sir Hugo, well pleased. “And if you don’t find it very pleasant, it’s so much experience. 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, 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.”
Deronda felt more willingness than at first. The story of that girl’s marriage interested him: what he had heard through Lush, about her having run away from the man she was now going to take as a husband, had thrown a new light on her gambling. It was probably the transition into poverty which had urged her acceptance where she must have felt repulsion.
All this implied a nature liable to difficulty and struggle – elements of life which had attracted his sympathy, due perhaps to his early pain in conjecturing about his own story. People attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defending and rescuing them; and he had to resist an inclination to withdraw coldly from the fortunate.
But his impulse to repurchase Gwendolen’s necklace for her had been due to something beyond his habitual compassion – to the fascination of her womanhood. He was very open to that sort of charm; yet he would be more likely than many less passionate men to love a woman without telling her of it. Deronda’s 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 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 understood the reason behind Sir Hugo’s desire to court him; and it was not disagreeable to him that this fine fellow, whom he believed to be his cousin, would witness with some jealousy Henleigh Grandcourt play the commanding part of betrothed lover to a splendid girl, whom the cousin had seen and admired.
Grandcourt himself was not jealous of anything unless it threatened his mastery – which he did not think himself likely to lose.
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged Page 30
