Chapter Fifty-eight
Length of time is a very imperfect measure of things; a man may head an expedition that opens new continental pathways, and at the end of a few months come back to find his neighbours grumbling at the same parish grievance as before. If the swiftest thinking has the pace of a greyhound, the slowest must be supposed to move, like the limpet, by an apparent sticking, which after a good while is discerned to be a slight progression. Such differences are manifest in the variable intensity of human experience, from the revolutionary rush of change to the quiet recurrence of the familiar.
Something of this contrast was seen in the year’s experience which had turned the brilliant, self-confident Gwendolen Harleth of the Archery Meeting into the crushed penitent impelled to confess her unworthiness; while it had left her family in Pennicote without deeper change than some adjustment of prospects as to reduced income and fewer visits.
The rectory was as pleasant a home as before: the red and pink peonies and hollyhocks had bloomed as well this year as last: the rector maintained his cheerful confidence in the good will of patrons, doing nothing with an eye to promotion except, perhaps, the writing of two ecclesiastical articles, which having no signature, were attributed to some one else, except by the patrons who had a special copy sent them, and these certainly knew the author but did not read the articles. The rector, however, was gratified that the Archdeacon and other authorities had nothing to say against his argument.
Then there was the father’s delight in his favourite son, which was a happiness outweighing the loss of eighteen hundred a year. However Rex had been changed by the disappointment of his first love, his serious ambition dated from the family misfortune; indeed, Mr. Gascoigne was inclined to regard the little affair which had caused him so much anxiety as a kind of finish to the baking process which the human dough demands. Rex had lately come for a summer visit to the rectory, bringing Anna home, and while still lively with his brothers and sisters, he rose early in the morning and shut himself up in the evenings to study.
“You don’t repent the choice of the law as a profession, Rex?” said his father.
“There is no profession I would choose before it,” said Rex. “I should like to end my life as a first-rate judge, and help to draw up a code.”
“You have to learn an immense amount of rubbish, I suppose,” said the rector.
“I don’t see that law-rubbish is worse than any other sort. It is not so bad as the rubbishy literature that people choke their minds with. It doesn’t make one so dull. Our wittiest men have often been lawyers. Of course there will be a good deal that is troublesome and drudging. But the great prizes in life can’t be won easily.”
“Well, my boy, the best augury of a man’s success in any line of work is that he thinks it the finest in the world. Brewitt, the blacksmith, said to me the other day that his apprentice had no mind to his trade; ‘and yet, sir,’ said Brewitt, ‘what would a young fellow have if he doesn’t like the blacksmithing?’”
The rector cherished a fatherly delight in his son, which he showed in moderation. It was only to his wife that he said: “Rex will be a distinguished man, Nancy, I am sure of it.”
This quiet trotting of time at the rectory was shared by Mrs Davilow and her family at the low white house not a mile off, enclosed with evergreens, and known to the villagers as “Jodson’s.” Mrs. Davilow’s delicate face showed only a slight deepening of its mild melancholy, her hair only a few more silver lines; the four girls had bloomed a little from being less in the shade; and the good Jocosa preserved her serviceable neutrality of feeling.
The narrow drawing-room, enlarged by two quaint projecting windows, with lattices wide open on a July afternoon to the scent of roses, made rather a crowded, lively scene. Rex and Anna were added to the usual group of six. Anna had much to tell her cousins of her experience of London, and when she came alone, many questions were asked her about Gwendolen’s house in Grosvenor Square, what Gwendolen had said, and what anyone else had said about her. Gwendolen had written to her family to say that Mr. Grandcourt and she were going yachting on the Mediterranean, and again from Marseilles to say that the cabins were very elegant, and that she would probably not send another letter for a while. This movement of Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt had been mentioned in “the newspaper;” so that altogether this phase of Gwendolen’s exalted life made a striking part of the sisters’ romantic speculations.
But when Rex was present, the girls never started this fascinating topic. Today there had only been animated descriptions of the Meyricks and their extraordinary Jewish friends. To the sisters, who knew of Jews only from books, these accounts were as alien as the depiction of a strange race in Pliny’s Natural History, that could sleep under the shade of its own ears. Bertha had a dim idea that Jews rejected the Old Testament since it proved the New; Miss Merry thought that Mirah and her brother could “never have been properly argued with,” and the amiable Alice did not mind what the Jews believed, she was sure she “couldn’t bear them.” Mrs. Davilow corrected her by saying that the great Jewish families in society were quite what they ought to be, but admitted that the commoner unconverted Jews were objectionable; and Isabel asked whether Mirah talked just as they did.
Rex was amusing himself by playfully exaggerating the notion of each speaker, when the laughter was interrupted by the bringing in of a letter for Mrs. Davilow. A messenger had run with it in great haste from the rectory. It enclosed a telegram, which Mrs. Davilow read in agitated silence, while all eyes were turned anxiously on her. Looking up at last at their troubled faces, with a sob which was half relief that the news was not worse–
“My dears, Mr. Grandcourt–” She paused, and then began again. “Mr. Grandcourt is drowned.”
Rex started up as if a missile had been suddenly thrown into the room. Then, gathering some self-command while Mrs. Davilow was reading what the rector had written on the enclosing paper, he said–
“Can I do anything, aunt? Can I carry any word to my father from you?”
“Yes, dear. Tell him I will be ready – he is very good. He says he will go with me to Genoa – he will be here at half-past six. She is safe – Gwendolen is safe – but I am sure she must be very ill. Rex, dear, go and tell your father I will be quite ready. I would not for the world lose another night. I can travel night and day till we get there.”
Rex and Anna hurried away through the sunshine which was suddenly solemn to them, without uttering a word to each other: she anxious about any reopening of his wound, he struggling with a tumult of thoughts that were an offence against his better will. At the rectory gate, he said–
“Nannie, I will leave you to say everything to my father. If he wants me immediately, let me know. I shall stay in the shrubbery for ten minutes.”
Who has been quite free from egoistic imaginings, picturing desirable consequences on his own future based on another’s misfortune or death? This type of temptation sometimes raises an inward shame, a self-distaste that is worse than any other form of unpleasant companionship.
In Rex’s nature the shame was immediate, and overspread like an ugly light all the hurrying images of what might come now that Gwendolen was again free – overspread them, perhaps, the more persistently because every phantom hope was quickly nullified by an obstacle. If formerly, when both their lives were fresh, she had turned from his love with repugnance, what ground was there for supposing that her heart would be more open to him in the future?
These thoughts were like a ringing of opposing chimes that he could not escape. During the last year he had brought himself into a state of calm resolve, and now it seemed that three words had been enough to undo all that difficult work, and cast him back into a hopeless longing, whose untimeliness was repulsive to his better self.
Excuse poor Rex; it was only eighteen months since he had been laid low by an archer who sometimes touches his arrow with a subtle, lingering poison, which affects each nature differently. In Rex’s na
ture, brief as the hope had been, the passionate stirring had gone deep, and the effect of disappointment was revolutionary; he believed that it had determined the colour of his life. Now, however, it seemed that his inward peace was overturned.
Rex’s love had been of that sudden, penetrating, clinging sort which the ancients knew and sung. To have the consciousness suddenly steeped with another’s personality, which retains its dominance in spite of change and apart from worthiness, is a type of love which the common-minded may call blind animalism, insensible to the higher sway of moral affinity. But when this attaching force is present in a dignified nature that can risk itself safely, it may result in a devotedness not unfit to be called divine.
This sort of passion had nested in the sweet-natured, strong Rex, and he had made up his mind to its companionship, as if it had been an object supremely dear, stricken dumb and helpless. But he had also decided that his life was not to be pauperized because he had had to renounce one sort of joy; rather, he had begun life again with a new counting-up of the treasures that remained to him.
And now, here he was pacing the shrubbery, angry with himself that the sense of irrevocableness in his lot had been shaken by a change of circumstances that could make no change in relation to him. He told himself the truth quite roughly–
“She would never love me; and I could never approach her as a lover in her present position. I am exactly of no consequence at all. She would not have me on any terms, and I would not ask her. It is a meanness to be thinking about it now – no better than lurking about the battle-field to strip the dead. Then why can’t I face the facts, and behave as they demand, instead of leaving my father to suppose that there are matters he can’t speak to me about?”
The last thought sent Rex walking firmly inside and into the study, where he saw his father packing a travelling-desk.
“Can I be of any use, sir?” said Rex, with rallied courage, as his father looked up.
“Yes, my boy; when I’m gone, just see to my letters, and answer where necessary, and send me word of everything, till I come back, whenever that may be.”
“You will hardly be very long, sir, I suppose,” said Rex, beginning to strap a railway rug. “You will perhaps bring my cousin back to England?” He forced himself to speak of Gwendolen for the first time, and the rector noticed this with satisfaction.
“That depends,” he answered, taking the subject as a matter-of-course between them. “Perhaps her mother may stay there with her, and I may come back very soon. This telegram leaves us in ignorance which is rather anxious. But no doubt the arrangements of the will are satisfactory, and I feel confident that Gwendolen will be liberally provided for.”
“It must have been a great shock for her,” said Rex, with resolution. “I suppose he was a devoted husband.”
“No doubt of it,” said the rector. “Few men of his position would have come forward as he did under the circumstances.”
Rex had never seen Grandcourt, and knew nothing of Gwendolen’s flight from her suitor to Leubronn. He only knew that Grandcourt, being in love with her, had made her an offer in the first weeks of her sudden poverty, and had behaved very handsomely in providing for her family. That was all very natural and what Rex himself would have liked to do. Grandcourt had been a lucky fellow, and had had some happiness before he got drowned. Yet Rex wondered much whether Gwendolen had been in love with him, or had only refrained from telling him that she hated being made love to.