“What extreme guys those artistic fellows usually are!” said young Clintock to Gwendolen. “Do look at the figure he cuts, bowing with his hand on his heart to Lady Brackenshaw—and Mrs. Arrowpoint’s feather just reaching his shoulder.”
“You are one of the profane,” said Gwendolen. “You are blind to the majesty of genius. Herr Klesmer smites me with awe; I feel crushed in his presence; my courage all oozes from me.”
“Ah, you understand all about his music.”
“No, indeed,” said Gwendolen, with a light laugh; “it is he who understands all about mine and thinks it pitiable.” Klesmer’s verdict on her singing had been an easier joke to her since he had been struck by her plastik.
“It is not addressed to the ears of the future, I suppose. I’m glad of that: it suits mine.”
“Oh, you are very kind. But how remarkably well Miss Arrowpoint looks to-day! She would make quite a fine picture in that gold-colored dress.”
“Too splendid, don’t you think?”
“Well, perhaps a little too symbolical—too much like the figure of Wealth in an allegory.”
This speech of Gwendolen’s had rather a malicious sound, but it was not really more than a bubble of fun. She did not wish Miss Arrowpoint or any one else to be out of the way, believing in her own good fortune even more than in her skill. The belief in both naturally grew stronger as the shooting went on, for she promised to achieve one of the best scores—a success which astonished every one in a new member; and to Gwendolen’s temperament one success determined another. She trod on air, and all things pleasant seemed possible. The hour was enough for her, and she was not obliged to think what she should do next to keep her life at the due pitch.
“How does the scoring stand, I wonder?” said Lady Brackenshaw, a gracious personage who, adorned with two little girls and a boy of stout make, sat as lady paramount. Her lord had come up to her in one of the intervals of shooting. “It seems to me that Miss Harleth is likely to win the gold arrow.”
“Gad, I think she will, if she carries it on! she is running Juliet Fenn hard. It is wonderful for one in her first year. Catherine is not up to her usual mark,” continued his lordship, turning to the heiress’s mother who sat near. “But she got the gold arrow last time. And there’s a luck even in these games of skill. That’s better. It gives the hinder ones a chance.”
“Catherine will be very glad for others to win,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, “she is so magnanimous. It was entirely her considerateness that made us bring Herr Klesmer instead of Canon Stopley, who had expressed a wish to come. For her own pleasure, I am sure she would rather have brought the Canon; but she is always thinking of others. I told her it was not quite en règle to bring one so far out of our own set; but she said, ‘Genius itself is not en règle; it comes into the world to make new rules.’ And one must admit that.”
“Ay, to be sure,” said Lord Brackenshaw, in a tone of careless dismissal, adding quickly, “For my part, I am not magnanimous; I should like to win. But, confound it! I never have the chance now. I’m getting old and idle. The young ones beat me. As old Nestor says—the gods don’t give us everything at one time: I was a young fellow once, and now I am getting an old and wise one. Old, at any rate; which is a gift that comes to everybody if they live long enough, so it raises no jealousy.” The Earl smiled comfortably at his wife.
“Oh, my lord, people who have been neighbors twenty years must not talk to each other about age,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “Years, as the Tuscans say, are made for the letting of houses. But where is our new neighbor? I thought Mr. Grandcourt was to be here to-day.”
“Ah, by the way, so he was. The time’s getting on too,” said his lordship, looking at his watch. “But he only got to Diplow the other day. He came to us on Tuesday and said he had been a little bothered. He may have been pulled in another direction. Why, Gascoigne!”—the rector was just then crossing at a little distance with Gwendolen on his arm, and turned in compliance with the call—“this is a little too bad; you not only beat us yourself, but you bring up your niece to beat all the archeresses.”
“It is rather scandalous in her to get the better of elder members,” said Mr. Gascoigne, with much inward satisfaction curling his short upper lip. “But it is not my doing, my lord. I only meant her to make a tolerable figure, without surpassing any one.”
“It is not my fault, either,” said Gwendolen, with pretty archness. “If I am to aim, I can’t help hitting.”
“Ay, ay, that may be a fatal business for some people,” said Lord Brackenshaw, good-humoredly; then taking out his watch and looking at Mrs. Arrowpoint again—“The time’s getting on, as you say. But Grandcourt is always late. I notice in town he’s always late, and he’s no bowman—understands nothing about it. But I told him he must come; he would see the flower of the neighborhood here. He asked about you—had seen Arrowpoint’s card. I think you had not made his acquaintance in town. He has been a good deal abroad. People don’t know him much.”
“No; we are strangers,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “But that is not what might have been expected. For his uncle Sir Hugo Mallinger and I are great friends when we meet.”
“I don’t know; uncles and nephews are not so likely to be seen together as uncles and nieces,” said his lordship, smiling toward the rector. “But just come with me one instant, Gascoigne, will you? I want to speak a word about the clout-shooting.”
Gwendolen chose to go too and be deposited in the same group with her mamma and aunt until she had to shoot again. That Mr. Grandcourt might after all not appear on the archery-ground, had begun to enter into Gwendolen’s thought as a possible deduction from the completeness of her pleasure. Under all her saucy satire, provoked chiefly by her divination that her friends thought of him as a desirable match for her, she felt something very far from indifference as to the impression she would make on him. True, he was not to have the slightest power over her (for Gwendolen had not considered that the desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection); she had made up her mind that he was to be one of those complimentary and assiduously admiring men of whom even her narrow experience had shown her several with various-colored beards and various styles of bearing; and the sense that her friends would want her to think him delightful, gave her a resistant inclination to presuppose him ridiculous. But that was no reason why she could spare his presence: and even a passing prevision of trouble in case she despised and refused him, raised not the shadow of a wish that he should save her that trouble by showing no disposition to make her an offer. Mr. Grandcourt taking hardly any notice of her, and becoming shortly engaged to Miss Arrowpoint, was not a picture which flattered her imagination.
Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw’s mode of accounting for Grandcourt’s non-appearance; and when he did arrive, no consciousness—not even Mrs. Arrowpoint’s or Mr. Gascoigne’s—was more awake to the fact than hers, although she steadily avoided looking toward any point where he was likely to be. There should be no slightest shifting of angles to betray that it was of any consequence to her whether the much-talked-of Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt presented himself or not. She became again absorbed in the shooting, and so resolutely abstained from looking round observantly that, even supposing him to have taken a conspicuous place among the spectators, it might be clear she was not aware of him. And all the while the certainty that he was there made a distinct thread in her consciousness. Perhaps her shooting was the better for it: at any rate, it gained in precision, and she at last raised a delightful storm of clapping and applause by three hits running in the gold—a feat which among the Brackenshaw archers had not the vulgar reward of a shilling poll-tax, but that of a special gold star to be worn on the breast. That moment was not only a happy one to herself—it was just what her mamma and her uncle would have chosen for her. There was a general falling into ranks to give