Daniel Deronda, George Eliot [portable ebook reader .TXT] 📗

always made her wince. Gwendolen’s nature was not remorseless, but she liked to make her penances easy, and now that she was twenty and more, some of her native force had turned into a self-control by which she guarded herself from penitential humiliation. There was more show of fire and will in her than ever, but there was more calculation underneath it.

On this day of arrival at Offendene, which not even Mrs. Davilow had seen before⁠—the place having been taken for her by her brother-in-law, Mr. Gascoigne⁠—when all had got down from the carriage, and were standing under the porch in front of the open door, so that they could have a general view of the place and a glimpse of the stone hall and staircase hung with sombre pictures, but enlivened by a bright wood fire, no one spoke; mamma, the four sisters and the governess all looked at Gwendolen, as if their feelings depended entirely on her decision. Of the girls, from Alice in her sixteenth year to Isabel in her tenth, hardly anything could be said on a first view, but that they were girlish, and that their black dresses were getting shabby. Miss Merry was elderly and altogether neutral in expression. Mrs. Davilow’s worn beauty seemed the more pathetic for the look of entire appeal which she cast at Gwendolen, who was glancing round at the house, the landscape and the entrance hall with an air of rapid judgment. Imagine a young racehorse in the paddock among untrimmed ponies and patient hacks.

“Well, dear, what do you think of the place,” said Mrs. Davilow at last, in a gentle, deprecatory tone.

“I think it is charming,” said Gwendolen, quickly. “A romantic place; anything delightful may happen in it; it would be a good background for anything. No one need be ashamed of living here.”

“There is certainly nothing common about it.”

“Oh, it would do for fallen royalty or any sort of grand poverty. We ought properly to have been living in splendor, and have come down to this. It would have been as romantic as could be. But I thought my uncle and aunt Gascoigne would be here to meet us, and my cousin Anna,” added Gwendolen, her tone changed to sharp surprise.

“We are early,” said Mrs. Davilow, and entering the hall, she said to the housekeeper who came forward, “You expect Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne?”

“Yes, madam; they were here yesterday to give particular orders about the fires and the dinner. But as to fires, I’ve had ’em in all the rooms for the last week, and everything is well aired. I could wish some of the furniture paid better for all the cleaning it’s had, but I think you’ll see the brasses have been done justice to. I think when Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne come, they’ll tell you nothing has been neglected. They’ll be here at five, for certain.”

This satisfied Gwendolen, who was not prepared to have their arrival treated with indifference; and after tripping a little way up the matted stone staircase to take a survey there, she tripped down again, and followed by all the girls looked into each of the rooms opening from the hall⁠—the dining-room all dark oak and worn red satin damask, with a copy of snarling, worrying dogs from Snyders over the sideboard, and a Christ breaking bread over the mantelpiece; the library with a general aspect and smell of old brown-leather; and lastly, the drawing-room, which was entered through a small antechamber crowded with venerable knickknacks.

“Mamma, mamma, pray come here!” said Gwendolen, Mrs. Davilow having followed slowly in talk with the housekeeper. “Here is an organ. I will be Saint Cecilia: someone shall paint me as Saint Cecilia. Jocosa (this was her name for Miss Merry), let down my hair. See, mamma?”

She had thrown off her hat and gloves, and seated herself before the organ in an admirable pose, looking upward; while the submissive and sad Jocosa took out the one comb which fastened the coil of hair, and then shook out the mass till it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far below its owner’s slim waist.

Mrs. Davilow smiled and said, “A charming picture, my dear!” not indifferent to the display of her pet, even in the presence of a housekeeper. Gwendolen rose and laughed with delight. All this seemed quite to the purpose on entering a new house which was so excellent a background.

“What a queer, quaint, picturesque room!” she went on, looking about her. “I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the wainscot, and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the ribs⁠—nothing but ribs and darkness⁠—I should think that is Spanish, mamma.”

“Oh, Gwendolen!” said the small Isabel, in a tone of astonishment, while she held open a hinged panel of the wainscot at the other end of the room.

Everyone, Gwendolen first, went to look. The opened panel had disclosed the picture of an upturned dead face, from which an obscure figure seemed to be fleeing with outstretched arms. “How horrible!” said Mrs. Davilow, with a look of mere disgust; but Gwendolen shuddered silently, and Isabel, a plain and altogether inconvenient child with an alarming memory, said,

“You will never stay in this room by yourself, Gwendolen.”

“How dare you open things which were meant to be shut up, you perverse little creature?” said Gwendolen, in her angriest tone. Then snatching the panel out of the hand of the culprit, she closed it hastily, saying, “There is a lock⁠—where is the key? Let the key be found, or else let one be made, and let nobody open it again; or rather, let the key be brought to me.”

At this command to everybody in general Gwendolen turned with a face which was flushed in reaction from her chill shudder, and said, “Let us go up to our own room, mamma.”

The housekeeper on searching found the key in the drawer of the cabinet close by the panel, and presently handed it to Bugle, the lady’s-maid, telling her significantly to give it to her Royal Highness.

“I don’t know what you