BOOK VIII.--FRUIT AND SEED.


CHAPTER LVIII.


"Much adoe there was, God wot;
He wold love and she wold not."
--NICHOLAS BRETON.


Extension, we know, is a very imperfect measure of things; and the length
of the sun's journeying can no more tell us how life has advanced than the
acreage of a field can tell us what growths may be active within it. A man
may go south, and, stumbling over a bone, may meditate upon it till he has
found a new starting-point for anatomy; or eastward, and discover a new
key to language telling a new story of races; or he may head an expedition
that opens new continental pathways, get himself mained in body, and go
through a whole heroic poem of resolve and endurance; and at the end of a
few months he may come back to find his neighbors grumbling at the same
parish grievance as before, or to see the same elderly gentleman treading
the pavement in discourse with himself, shaking his head after the same
percussive butcher's boy, and pausing at the same shop-window to look at
the same prints. If the swiftest thinking has about 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 which
we call human experience, from the revolutionary rush of change which
makes a new inner and outer life, to that quiet recurrence of the
familiar, which has no other epochs than those of hunger and the heavens.

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
where it would have been her happiness to be held worthy; while it had
left her family in Pennicote without deeper change than that of some
outward habits, and some adjustment of prospects and intentions to reduced
income, fewer visits, and fainter compliments. The rectory was as pleasant
a home as before: and the red and pink peonies on the lawn, the rows of
hollyhocks by the hedges, had bloomed as well this year as last: the
rector maintained his cheerful confidence in the good will of patrons and
his resolution to deserve it by diligence in the fulfillment of his
duties, whether patrons were likely to hear of it or not; doing nothing
solely 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, chewed no poisonous cud of suspicion on this point: he made
marginal notes on his own copies to render them a more interesting loan,
and was gratified that the Archdeacon and other authorities had nothing to
say against the general tenor of his argument. Peaceful authorship!--
living in the air of the fields and downs, and not in the thrice-breathed
breath of criticism--bringing no Dantesque leanness; rather, assisting
nutrition by complacency, and perhaps giving a more suffusive sense of
achievement than the production of a whole _Divina Commedia_. Then there
was the father's recovered delight in his favorite son, which was a
happiness outweighing the loss of eighteen hundred a year. Of whatever
nature might be the hidden change wrought in Rex by the disappointment of
his first love, it was apparently quite secondary to that evidence of more
serious ambition which dated from the family misfortune; indeed, Mr.
Gascoigne was inclined to regard the little affair which had caused him so
much anxiety the year before as an evaporation of superfluous moisture, a
kind of finish to the baking process which the human dough demands. Rex
had lately come down for a summer visit to the rectory, bringing Anna
home, and while he showed nearly the old liveliness with his brothers and
sisters, he continued in his holiday the habits of the eager student,
rising early in the morning and shutting himself up early in the evenings
to carry on a fixed course of 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. I
reverse the famous dictum. I should say, 'Give me something to do with
making the laws, and let who will make the songs.'"

"You will have to stow in an immense amount of rubbish, I suppose--that's
the worst of it," 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. Any
orderly way of looking at things as cases and evidence seems to me better
than a perpetual wash of odds and ends bearing on nothing in particular.
And then, from a higher point of view, the foundations and the growth of
law make the most interesting aspects of philosophy and history. Of course
there will be a good deal that is troublesome, drudging, perhaps
exasperating. But the great prizes in life can't be won easily--I see
that."

"Well, my boy, the best augury of a man's success in his profession is
that he thinks it the finest in the world. But I fancy it so with most
work when a man goes into it with a will. Brewitt, the blacksmith, said to
me the other day that his 'prentice 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, which he allowed to escape him
only in moderation. Warham, who had gone to India, he had easily borne
parting with, but Rex was that romance of later life which a man sometimes
finds in a son whom he recognizes as superior to himself, picturing a
future eminence for him according to a variety of famous examples. It was
only to his wife that he said with decision: "Rex will be a distinguished
man, Nancy, I am sure of it--as sure as Paley's father was about his son."

"Was Paley an old bachelor?" said Mrs. Gascoigne.

"That is hardly to the point, my dear," said the rector, who did not
remember that irrelevant detail. And Mrs. Gascoigne felt that she had
spoken rather weakly.

This quiet trotting of time at the rectory was shared by the group who had
exchanged the faded dignity of Offendene for the low white house not a
mile off, well 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, in consequence
of the last year's trials; the four girls had bloomed out a little from
being less in the shade; and the good Jocosa preserved her serviceable
neutrality toward the pleasures and glories of the world as things made
for those who were not "in a situation."

The low narrow drawing-room, enlarged by two quaint projecting windows,
with lattices wide open on a July afternoon to the scent of monthly roses,
the faint murmurs of the garden, and the occasional rare sound of hoofs
and wheels seeming to clarify the succeeding silence, made rather a
crowded, lively scene, Rex and Anna being added to the usual group of six.
Anna, always a favorite with her younger cousins, had much to tell of her
new experience, and the acquaintances she had made in London, and when on
her first visit she came alone, many questions were asked her about
Gwendolen's house in Grosvenor Square, what Gwendolen herself had said,
and what any one else had said about Gwendolen. Had Anna been to see
Gwendolen after she had known about the yacht? No:--an answer which left
speculation free concerning everything connected with that interesting
unknown vessel beyond the fact that Gwendolen had written just before she
set out to say that Mr. Grandcourt and she were going yachting on the
Mediterranean, and again from Marseilles to say that she was sure to like
the yachting, the cabins were very elegant, and she would probably not
send another letter till she had written quite a long diary filled with
_dittos_. Also, this movement of Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt had been
mentioned in "the newspaper;" so that altogether this new phase of
Gwendolen's exalted life made a striking part of the sisters' romance, the
book-devouring Isabel throwing in a corsair or two to make an adventure
that might end well.

But when Rex was present, the girls, according to instructions, never
started this fascinating topic, and to-day there had only been animated
descriptions of the Meyricks and their extraordinary Jewish friends, which
caused some astonished questioning from minds to which the idea of live
Jews, out of a book, suggested a difference deep enough to be almost
zoological, as of a strange race in Pliny's Natural History that might
sleep under the shade of its own ears. Bertha could not imagine what Jews
believed now; and she had a dim idea that they 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 who
were in society were quite what they ought to be both in London and Paris,
but admitted that the commoner unconverted Jews were objectionable; and
Isabel asked whether Mirah talked just as they did, or whether you might
be with her and not find out that she was a Jewess.

Rex, who had no partisanship with the Israelites, having made a
troublesome acquaintance with the minutiae of their ancient history in the
form of "cram," was amusing himself by playfully exaggerating the notion
of each speaker, while Anna begged them all to understand that he was only
joking, 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, and as Mrs. Davilow read and re-read it
in silence and agitation, all eyes were turned on her with anxiety, but no
one dared to speak. Looking up at last and seeing the young faces "painted
with fear," she remembered that they might be imagining something worse
than the truth, something like her own first dread which made her unable
to understand what was written, and she said, with a sob which was half
relief--

"My dears, Mr. Grandcourt--" She paused an instant, and then began again,
"Mr. Grandcourt is drowned."

Rex started up as if a missile had been suddenly thrown into the room. He
could not help himself, and Anna's first look was at him. But 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. Jocosa and Alice, help
me to get ready. She is safe--Gwendolen is safe--but she must be ill. I am
sure she must be very ill. Rex, dear--Rex and Anna--go and and tell your
father I will be quite ready. I would not for the world lose another
night. And bless him for being ready so soon. 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 chiefly possessed by
solicitude about any reopening of his wound, he struggling with a
tumultuary crowd of thoughts that were an offence against his better will.
The tumult being undiminished when they were 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--
only ten minutes."

Who has been quite free from egoistic escapes of the imagination,
picturing desirable consequences on his own future in the presence of
another's misfortune, sorrow, or death? The expected promotion or legacy
is the common type of a temptation which makes speech and even prayer a
severe avoidance of the most insistent thoughts, and 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,
which thrust themselves in with the idea that Gwendolen was again free--
overspread them, perhaps, the more persistently because every phantasm of
a hope was quickly nullified by a more substantial obstacle. Before the
vision of "Gwendolen free" rose the impassable vision of "Gwendolen rich,
exalted, courted;" and if in the former time, 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, which he wanted to master and suspend, were like a
tumultuary ringing of opposing chimes that he could not escape from by
running. 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 the wretched fluctuations of a
longing which he recognized as simply perturbing and hopeless. And at this
moment the activity of such longing had an untimeliness that made it
repulsive to his better self. Excuse poor Rex; it was not much more than
eighteen months since he had been laid low by an archer who sometimes
touches his arrow with a subtle, lingering poison. The disappointment of a
youthful passion has effects as incalculable as those of small-pox which
may make one person plain and a genius, another less plain and more
foolish, another plain without detriment to his folly, and leave perhaps
the majority without obvious change. Everything depends--not on the mere
fact of disappointment, but--on the nature affected and the force that
stirs it. In Rex's well-endowed nature, brief as the hope had been, the
passionate stirring had gone deep, and the effect of disappointment was
revolutionary, though fraught with a beneficent new order which retained
most of the old virtues; in certain respects he believed that it had
finally determined the bias and color of his life. Now, however, it seemed
that his inward peace was hardly more than that of republican Florence,
and his heart no better than the alarm-bell that made work slack and
tumult busy.

Rex's love had been of that sudden, penetrating, clinging sort which the
ancients knew and sung, and in singing made a fashion of talk for many
moderns whose experience has by no means a fiery, demonic character. To
have the consciousness suddenly steeped with another's personality, to
have the strongest inclinations possessed by an image which retains its
dominance in spite of change and apart from worthiness--nay, to feel a
passion which clings faster for the tragic pangs inflicted by a cruel,
reorganized unworthiness--is a phase of love which in the feeble and
common-minded has a repulsive likeness to his blind animalism insensible
to the higher sway of moral affinity or heaven-lit admiration. But when
this attaching force is present in a nature not of brutish
unmodifiableness, but of a human dignity that can risk itself safely, it
may even result in a devotedness not unfit to be called divine in a higher
sense than the ancient. Phlegmatic rationality stares and shakes its head
at these unaccountable prepossessions, but they exist as undeniably as the
winds and waves, determining here a wreck and there a triumphant voyage.

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, and turning all the future of
tenderness into a shadow of the past. But he had also made up his mind
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 he had even felt a release of power
such as may come from ceasing to be afraid of your own neck.

And now, here he was pacing the shrubbery, angry with himself that the
sense of irrevocableness in his lot, which ought in reason to have been as
strong as ever, 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 that is not the question--I could never
approach her as a lover in her present position. I am exactly of no
consequence at all, and am not likely to be of much consequence till my
head is turning gray. But what has that to do with it? 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; but there never was more gratuitous sinning. I have nothing to gain
there--absolutely nothing. * * * 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, though I might be useful in them?"

The last thought made one wave with the impulse that sent Rex walking
firmly into the house and through the open door of the study, where he saw
his father packing a traveling-desk.

"Can I be of any use, sir?" said Rex, with rallied courage, as his father
looked up at him.

"Yes, my boy; when I'm gone, just see to my letters, and answer where
necessary, and send me word of everything. Dymock will manage the parish
very well, and you will stay with your mother, or, at least, go up and
down again, 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 the epoch 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 lately made are
satisfactory, and there may possibly be an heir yet to be born. In any
case, I feel confident that Gwendolen will be liberally--I should expect,
splendidly--provided for."

"It must have been a great shock for her," said Rex, getting more resolute
after the first twinge had been borne. "I suppose he was a devoted
husband."

"No doubt of it," said the rector, in his most decided manner. "Few men of
his position would have come forward as he did under the circumstances."

Rex had never seen Grandcourt, had never been spoken to about him by any
one of the family, and knew nothing of Gwendolen's flight from her suitor
to Leubronn. He only knew that Grandcourt, being very much 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 mother and sisters. 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
the successful suitor, or had only forborne to tell him that she hated
being made love to.