“Do you command me to go?” No familiar spirit could have suggested to him more effective words.
“No,” said Gwendolen. She could not let him go: that negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, only drifted toward the tremendous decision—but drifting depends on something besides the currents when the sails have been set beforehand.
“You accept my devotion?” said Grandcourt, holding his hat by his side and looking straight into her eyes, without other movement. Their eyes meeting in that way seemed to allow any length of pause: but wait as long as she would, how could she contradict herself! What had she detained him for? He had shut out any explanation.
“Yes,” came as gravely from Gwendolen’s lips as if she had been answering to her name in a court of justice. He received it gravely, and they still looked at each other in the same attitude. Was there ever such a way before of accepting the bliss-giving “Yes”? Grandcourt liked better to be at that distance from her, and to feel under a ceremony imposed by an indefinable prohibition that breathed from Gwendolen’s bearing.
But he did at length lay down his hat and advance to take her hand, just pressing his lips upon it and letting it go again. She thought his behavior perfect, and gained a sense of freedom which made her almost ready to be mischievous. Her “Yes” entailed so little at this moment that there was nothing to screen the reversal of her gloomy prospects; her vision was filled by her own release from the Momperts, and her mother’s release from Sawyer’s Cottage. With a happy curl of the lips, she said—
“Will you not see mamma? I will fetch her.”
“Let us wait a little,” said Grandcourt, in his favorite attitude, having his left forefinger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket, and with his right hand caressing his whisker, while he stood near Gwendolen and looked at her—not unlike a gentleman who has a felicitous introduction at an evening party.
“Have you anything else to say to me,” said Gwendolen, playfully.
“Yes—I know having things said to you is a great bore,” said Grandcourt, rather sympathetically.
“Not when they are things I like to hear.”
“Will it bother you to be asked how soon we can be married?”
“I think it will, to-day,” said Gwendolen, putting up her chin saucily.
“Not to-day, then, but tomorrow. Think of it before I come tomorrow. In a fortnight—or three weeks—as soon as possible.”
“Ah, you think you will be tired of my company,” said Gwendolen. “I notice when people are married the husband is not so much with his wife as when they are engaged. But perhaps I shall like that better, too.”
She laughed charmingly.
“You shall have whatever you like,” said Grandcourt.
“And nothing that I don’t like?—please say that; because I think I dislike what I don’t like more than I like what I like,” said Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman’s paradise, where all her nonsense is adorable.
Grandcourt paused; these were subtilties in which he had much experience of his own. “I don’t know—this is such a brute of a world, things are always turning up that one doesn’t like. I can’t always hinder your being bored. If you like to ride Criterion, I can’t hinder his coming down by some chance or other.”
“Ah, my friend Criterion, how is he?”
“He is outside: I made the groom ride him, that you might see him. He had the side-saddle on for an hour or two yesterday. Come to the window and look at him.”
They could see the two horses being taken slowly round the sweep, and the beautiful creatures, in their fine grooming, sent a thrill of exultation through Gwendolen. They were the symbols of command and luxury, in delightful contrast with the ugliness of poverty and humiliation at which she had lately been looking close.
“Will you ride Criterion tomorrow?” said Grandcourt. “If you will, everything shall be arranged.”
“I should like it of all things,” said Gwendolen. “I want to lose myself in a gallop again. But now I must go and fetch mamma.”
“Take my arm to the door, then,” said Grandcourt, and she accepted. Their faces were very near each other, being almost on a level, and he was looking at her. She thought his manners as a lover more agreeable than any she had seen described. She had no alarm lest he meant to kiss her, and was so much at her ease, that she suddenly paused in the middle of the room and said half archly, half earnestly—
“Oh, while I think of it—there is something I dislike that you can save me from. I do not like Mr. Lush’s company.”
“You shall not have it. I’ll get rid of him.”
“You are not fond of him yourself?”
“Not in the least. I let him hang on me because he has always been a poor devil,” said Grandcourt, in an adagio of utter indifference. “They got him to travel with me when I was a lad. He was always that coarse-haired kind of brute—sort of cross between a hog and a dilettante.”
Gwendolen laughed. All that seemed kind and natural enough: Grandcourt’s fastidiousness enhanced the kindness. And when they reached the door, his way of opening it for her was the perfection of easy homage. Really, she thought, he was likely to be the least disagreeable of husbands.
Mrs. Davilow was waiting anxiously in her bedroom when Gwendolen entered, stepped toward her quickly, and kissing her on both cheeks said in a low tone, “Come down, mamma, and see Mr. Grandcourt. I am engaged to him.”
“My darling child,” said Mrs. Davilow, with a surprise that was rather solemn than glad.
“Yes,” said Gwendolen, in the same tone, and with a quickness which implied that it was needless to ask questions. “Everything is settled. You are not going to Sawyer’s Cottage, I am not going to be inspected by Mrs. Mompert, and everything is to be as I like. So come down with me immediately.”
BOOK IV—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
“Il est plus aise de connoitre l’homme en general que de connoitre 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 lifelong 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.