“Those words are not suitable to your lips,” said Klesmer, quickly, with one of his grand frowns, while he shook his hand as if to banish the discordant sounds.
“Are you as critical of words as of music?”
“Certainly I am. I should require your words to be what your face and form are—always among the meanings of a noble music.”
“That is a compliment as well as a correction. I am obliged for both. But do you know I am bold enough to wish to correct you, and require you to understand a joke?”
“One may understand jokes without liking them,” said the terrible Klesmer. “I have had opera books sent me full of jokes; it was just because I understood them that I did not like them. The comic people are ready to challenge a man because he looks grave. ‘You don’t see the witticism, sir?’ ‘No, sir, but I see what you meant.’ Then I am what we call ticketed as a fellow without esprit. But, in fact,” said Klesmer, suddenly dropping from his quick narrative to a reflective tone, with an impressive frown, “I am very sensible to wit and humor.”
“I am glad you tell me that,” said Gwendolen, not without some wickedness of intention. But Klesmer’s thoughts had flown off on the wings of his own statement, as their habit was, and she had the wickedness all to herself. “Pray, who is that standing near the card-room door?” she went on, seeing there the same stranger with whom Klesmer had been in animated talk on the archery ground. “He is a friend of yours, I think.”
“No, no; an amateur I have seen in town; Lush, a Mr. Lush—too fond of Meyerbeer and Scribe—too fond of the mechanical-dramatic.”
“Thanks. I wanted to know whether you thought his face and form required that his words should be among the meanings of noble music?” Klesmer was conquered, and flashed at her a delightful smile which made them quite friendly until she begged to be deposited by the side of her mamma.
Three minutes afterward her preparations for Grandcourt’s indifference were all canceled. Turning her head after some remark to her mother, she found that he had made his way up to her.
“May I ask if you are tired of dancing, Miss Harleth?” he began, looking down with his former unperturbed expression.
“Not in the least.”
“Will you do me the honor—the next—or another quadrille?”
“I should have been very happy,” said Gwendolen looking at her card, “but I am engaged for the next to Mr. Clintock—and indeed I perceive that I am doomed for every quadrille; I have not one to dispose of.” She was not sorry to punish Mr. Grandcourt’s tardiness, yet at the same time she would have liked to dance with him. She gave him a charming smile as she looked up to deliver her answer, and he stood still looking down at her with no smile at all.
“I am unfortunate in being too late,” he said, after a moment’s pause.
“It seemed to me that you did not care for dancing,” said Gwendolen. “I thought it might be one of the things you had left off.”
“Yes, but I have not begun to dance with you,” said Grandcourt. Always there was the same pause before he took up his cue. “You make dancing a new thing, as you make archery.”
“Is novelty always agreeable?”
“No, no—not always.”
“Then I don’t know whether to feel flattered or not. When you had once danced with me there would be no more novelty in it.”
“On the contrary, there would probably be much more.”
“That is deep. I don’t understand.”
“It is difficult to make Miss Harleth understand her power?” Here Grandcourt had turned to Mrs. Davilow, who, smiling gently at her daughter, said—
“I think she does not generally strike people as slow to understand.”
“Mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a deprecating tone, “I am adorably stupid, and want everything explained to me—when the meaning is pleasant.”
“If you are stupid, I admit that stupidity is adorable,” returned Grandcourt, after the usual pause, and without change of tone. But clearly he knew what to say.
“I begin to think that my cavalier has forgotten me,” Gwendolen observed after a little while. “I see the quadrille is being formed.”
“He deserves to be renounced,” said Grandcourt.
“I think he is very pardonable,” said Gwendolen.
“There must have been some misunderstanding,” said Mrs. Davilow. “Mr. Clintock was too anxious about the engagement to have forgotten it.”
But now Lady Brackenshaw came up and said, “Miss Harleth, Mr. Clintock has charged me to express to you his deep regret that he was obliged to leave without having the pleasure of dancing with you again. An express came from his father, the archdeacon; something important; he was to go. He was au désespoir.”
“Oh, he was very good to remember the engagement under the circumstances,” said Gwendolen. “I am sorry he was called away.” It was easy to be politely sorrowful on so felicitous an occasion.
“Then I can profit by Mr. Clintock’s misfortune?” said Grandcourt. “May I hope that you will let me take his place?”
“I shall be very happy to dance the next quadrille with you.”
The appropriateness of the event seemed an augury, and as Gwendolen stood up for the quadrille with Grandcourt, there was a revival in her of the exultation—the sense of carrying everything before her, which she had felt earlier in the day. No man could have walked through the quadrille with more irreproachable ease than Grandcourt; and the absence of all eagerness in his attention to her suited his partner’s taste. She was now convinced that he meant to distinguish her, to mark his admiration of her in a noticeable way; and it began to appear probable that she would have it in her power to reject him, whence there was a pleasure in reckoning up the advantages which would make her rejection splendid, and in giving Mr. Grandcourt his utmost value. It was also agreeable to divine that this exclusive selection of her to dance with, from among all the unmarried ladies present, would attract observation; though she studiously avoided seeing this, and at the end of the quadrille walked away on Grandcourt’s arm as if she had been one of the shortest sighted instead of the longest and widest sighted of mortals. They encountered Miss Arrowpoint, who was standing with Lady Brackenshaw and a group of gentlemen. The heiress looked at Gwendolen invitingly and said, “I hope you will vote with us, Miss Harleth, and Mr. Grandcourt too, though he is not an archer.” Gwendolen and Grandcourt paused to join the group, and found that the voting turned on the project of a picnic archery meeting to be held in Cardell Chase, where the evening entertainment would be more poetic than a ball under, chandeliers—a feast of sunset lights along the glades and through the branches and over the solemn tree-tops.
Gwendolen thought the scheme delightful—equal to playing Robin Hood and Maid Marian: and Mr. Grandcourt, when appealed to a second time, said it was a thing to be done; whereupon Mr. Lush, who stood behind Lady Brackenshaw’s elbow, drew Gwendolen’s notice by saying with a familiar look and tone to Grandcourt, “Diplow would be a good place for the meeting, and more convenient: there’s a fine bit between the oaks toward the north gate.”
Impossible to look more unconscious of being addressed than Grandcourt; but Gwendolen took a new survey of the speaker, deciding, first, that he must be on terms of intimacy with the tenant of Diplow, and, secondly, that she would never, if she could help it, let him come within a yard of her. She was subject to physical antipathies, and Mr. Lush’s prominent eyes, fat though not clumsy figure, and strong black gray-besprinkled hair of frizzy thickness, which, with the rest of his prosperous person, was enviable to many, created one of the strongest of her antipathies.