DANIEL DERONDA (Completed)

Chapter 9

I'll tell thee, Berthold, what men's hopes are like:

A silly child that, quivering with joy,

Would cast its little mimic fishing-line

Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys

In the salt ocean.

Eight months after the arrival of the family at Offendene, that is to say

in the end of the following June, a rumor was spread in the neighborhood

which to many persons was matter of exciting interest. It had no reference

to the results of the American war, but it was one which touched all

classes within a certain circuit round Wanchester: the corn-factors, the

brewers, the horse-dealers, and saddlers, all held it a laudable thing,

and one which was to be rejoiced in on abstract grounds, as showing the

value of an aristocracy in a free country like England; the blacksmith in

the hamlet of Diplow felt that a good time had come round; the wives of

laboring men hoped their nimble boys of ten or twelve would be taken into

employ by the gentlemen in livery; and the farmers about Diplow admitted,

with a tincture of bitterness and reserve that a man might now again

perhaps have an easier market or exchange for a rick of old hay or a

wagon-load of straw. If such were the hopes of low persons not in society,

it may be easily inferred that their betters had better reasons for

satisfaction, probably connected with the pleasures of life rather than

its business. Marriage, however, must be considered as coming under both

heads; and just as when a visit of majesty is announced, the dream of

knighthood or a baronetcy is to be found under various municipal

nightcaps, so the news in question raised a floating indeterminate vision

of marriage in several well-bred imaginations.

The news was that Diplow Hall, Sir Hugo Mallinger's place, which had for a

couple of years turned its white window-shutters in a painfully wall-eyed

manner on its fine elms and beeches, its lilied pool and grassy acres

specked with deer, was being prepared for a tenant, and was for the rest

of the summer and through the hunting season to be inhabited in a fitting

style both as to house and stable. But not by Sir Hugo himself: by his

nephew, Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt, who was presumptive heir to the

baronetcy, his uncle's marriage having produced nothing but girls. Nor was

this the only contingency with which fortune flattered young Grandcourt,

as he was pleasantly called; for while the chance of the baronetcy came

through his father, his mother had given a baronial streak to his blood,