Chapter Chapter 1 · Chapter I
.
Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even
science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe
unit, and must fix on a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his
sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate
grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle;
but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different
from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward,
divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought
really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us to
the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth,
it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our
story sets out.
Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or
expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good
or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why
was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was
the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which
the whole being consents?
She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda’s mind was occupied in
gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on
a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid
resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same
species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned
color and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy—forming a
suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the
highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere
in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.
It was near four o’clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was
well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by
a light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an
occasional monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from
an ingeniously constructed automaton. Round two long tables were
gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one having their
faces and attention bent on the tables. The one exception was a
melancholy little boy, with his knees and calves simply in their
natural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a
fancy dress. He alone had his face turned toward the doorway, and
fixing on it the blank gaze of a bedizened child stationed as a
masquerading advertisement on the platform of an itinerant show, stood
close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulette-table.
About this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many in the
outer rows, where there was occasionally a deposit of new-comers, being
mere spectators, only that one of them, usually a woman, might now and
then be observed putting down a five-franc with a simpering air, just
to see what the passion of gambling really was. Those who were taking
their pleasure at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed
very distant varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish,
Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and
English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human
equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very
near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist
to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt
face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair
which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else
would her ladyship have graciously consented to sit by that dry-lipped
feminine figure prematurely old, withered after short bloom like her
artificial flowers, holding a shabby velvet reticule before her, and
occasionally putting in her mouth the point with which she pricked her
card? There too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable London
tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his sleek hair scrupulously parted
behind and before, conscious of circulars addressed to the nobility and
gentry, whose distinguished patronage enabled him to take his holidays
fashionably, and to a certain extent in their distinguished company.
Not his the gambler’s passion that nullifies appetite, but a well-fed
leisure, which, in the intervals of winning money in business and
spending it showily, sees no better resource than winning money in play
and spending it yet more showily—reflecting always that Providence had
never manifested any disapprobation of his amusement, and dispassionate
enough to leave off if the sweetness of winning much and seeing others
lose had turned to the sourness of losing much and seeing others win.
For the vice of gambling lay in losing money at it. In his bearing
there might be something of the tradesman, but in his pleasures he was
fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing close to his
chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to
place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by
an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed
over to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There
was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old
woman; but the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and—probably
secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of
chance—immediately prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of
an emaciated beau or worn-out libertine, who looked at life through one
eye-glass, and held out his hand tremulously when he asked for change.
It could surely be no severity of system, but rather some dream of
white crows, or the induction that the eighth of the month was lucky,
which inspired the fierce yet tottering impulsiveness of his play.
But, while every single player differed markedly from every other,
there was a certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the
effect of a mask—as if they had all eaten of some root that for the
time compelled the brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action.
Deronda’s first thought when his eyes fell on this scene of dull,
gas-poisoned absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish shepherd-boys
had seemed to him more enviable:—so far Rousseau might be justified in
maintaining that art and science had done a poor service to mankind.
But suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was
arrested by a young lady who, standing at an angle not far from him,
was the last to whom his eyes traveled. She was bending and speaking
English to a middle-aged lady seated at play beside her: but the next
instant she returned to her play, and showed the full height of a
graceful figure, with a face which might possibly be looked at without
admiration, but could hardly be passed with indifference.
The inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to his eyes a
growing expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from
the glow of mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one
moment they followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and
hands, as this problematic sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with
an air of firm choice; and the next they returned to the face which, at
present unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the game.
The sylph was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in
pale-gray, were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in
order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked round
her with a survey too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a
little of that nature which we call art concealing an inward exultation.
But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda’s, and instead of
averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly
conscious that they were arrested—how long? The darting sense that he
was measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of
different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself
in a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen
of a lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the
moment with conflict. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it
sent it away from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an
inward defiance, and without other sign of emotion than this
lip-paleness turned to her play. But Deronda’s gaze seemed to have acted
as an evil eye. Her stake was gone. No matter; she had been winning ever
since she took to roulette with a few napoleons at command, and had a
considerable reserve. She had begun to believe in her luck, others had
begun to believe in it: she had visions of being followed by a _cortège_
who would worship her as a goddess of luck and watch her play as a
directing augury. Such things had been known of male gamblers; why
should not a woman have a like supremacy? Her friend and chaperon who
had not wished her to play at first was beginning to approve, only
administering the prudent advice to stop at the right moment and carry
money back to England—advice to which Gwendolen had replied that she
cared for the excitement of play, not the winnings. On that supposition
the present moment ought to have made the flood-tide in her eager
experience of gambling. Yet, when her next stake was swept away, she
felt the orbits of her eyes getting hot, and the certainty she had
(without looking) of that man still watching her was something like a
pressure which begins to be torturing. The more reason to her why she
should not flinch, but go on playing as if she were indifferent to loss
or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and proposed that they should quit
the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was
in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond
the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity
of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. Since
she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose
strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or
hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now
watching her, but the sole observation she was conscious of was
Deronda’s, who, though she never looked toward him, she was sure had not
moved away. Such a drama takes no long while to play out: development
and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier than the
moment-hand. “Faites votre jeu, mesdames et messieurs,” said the
automatic voice of destiny from between the mustache and imperial of the
croupier: and Gwendolen’s arm was stretched to deposit her last poor
heap of napoleons. “Le jeu ne va plus,” said destiny. And in five
seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, but turned resolutely with her
face toward Deronda and looked at him. There was a smile of irony in his
eyes as their glances met; but it was at least better that he should
have kept his attention fixed on her than that he disregarded her as one
of an insect swarm who had no individual physiognomy. Besides, in spite
of his superciliousness and irony, it was difficult to believe that he
did not admire her spirit as well as her person: he was young, handsome,
distinguished in appearance—not one of these ridiculous and dowdy
Philistines who thought it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table
with a sour look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction
that we are admirable does not easily give way before a single negative;
rather when any of Vanity’s large family, male or female, find their
performance received coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more
of it will win over the unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen’s habits
of mind it had been taken for granted that she knew what was admirable
and that she herself was admired. This basis of her thinking had
received a disagreeable concussion, and reeled a little, but was not
easily to be overthrown.
In the evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, was brilliant
with gas and with the costumes of ladies who floated their trains along
it or were seated on the ottomans.
The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale
sea-green feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green
hat and light brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the
wing, or rather soared by the shoulder, of the lady who had sat by her
at the roulette-table; and with them was a gentleman with a white
mustache and clipped hair: solid-browed, stiff and German. They were
walking about or standing to chat with acquaintances, and Gwendolen was
much observed by the seated groups.
“A striking girl—that Miss Harleth—unlike others.”
“Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now—all green and
silver, and winds her neck about a little more than usual.”
“Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind
of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?”
“Very. A man might risk hanging for her—I mean a fool might.”
“You like a _nez retroussé_, then, and long narrow eyes?”
“When they go with such an _ensemble_.”
“The _ensemble du serpent_?”
“If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?”
“She is certainly very graceful; but she wants a tinge of color in her
cheeks. It is a sort of Lamia beauty she has.”
“On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. It is
a warm paleness; it looks thoroughly healthy. And that delicate nose
with its gradual little upward curve is distracting. And then her
mouth—there never was a prettier mouth, the lips curled backward so
finely, eh, Mackworth?”
“Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so
self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty—the curves are too
immovable. I like a mouth that trembles more.”
“For my part, I think her odious,” said a dowager. “It is wonderful
what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does
anybody know them?”
“They are quite _comme il faut_. I have dined with them several times
at the _Russie_. The baroness is English. Miss Harleth calls her
cousin. The girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as
possible.”
“Dear me! and the baron?”.
“A very good furniture picture.”
“Your baroness is always at the roulette-table,” said Mackworth. “I
fancy she has taught the girl to gamble.”
“Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece
here and there. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak.”
“I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich? Who knows?”
“Ah, who knows? Who knows that about anybody?” said Mr. Vandernoodt,
moving off to join the Langens.
The remark that Gwendolen wound her neck about more than usual this
evening was true. But it was not that she might carry out the serpent
idea more completely: it was that she watched for any chance of seeing
Deronda, so that she might inquire about this stranger, under whose
measuring gaze she was still wincing. At last her opportunity came.
“Mr. Vandernoodt, you know everybody,” said Gwendolen, not too eagerly,
rather with a certain languor of utterance which she sometimes gave to
her clear soprano. “Who is that near the door?”
“There are half a dozen near the door. Do you mean that old Adonis in
the George the Fourth wig?”
“No, no; the dark-haired young man on the right with the dreadful
expression.”
“Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly fine fellow.”
“But who is he?”
“He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger.”
“Sir Hugo Mallinger?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“No.” (Gwendolen colored slightly.) “He has a place near us, but he
never comes to it. What did you say was the name of that gentleman near
the door?”
“Deronda—Mr. Deronda.”
“What a delightful name! Is he an Englishman?”
“Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the baronet. You
are interested in him?”
“Yes. I think he is not like young men in general.”
“And you don’t admire young men in general?”
“Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can’t at all
guess what this Mr. Deronda would say. What _does_ he say?”
“Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for a good hour last night on
the terrace, and he never spoke—and was not smoking either. He looked
bored.”
“Another reason why I should like to know him. I am always bored.”
“I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction. Shall I
bring it about? Will you allow it, baroness?”
“Why not?—since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It is a new
_rôle_ of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored,” continued Madame von
Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved away. “Until now you have always
seemed eager about something from morning till night.”
“That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to leave off play I
must break my arm or my collar-bone. I must make something happen;
unless you will go into Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn.”
“Perhaps this Mr. Deronda’s acquaintance will do instead of the
Matterhorn.”
“Perhaps.”
But Gwendolen did not make Deronda’s acquaintance on this occasion. Mr.
Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing him up to her that evening, and
when she re-entered her own room she found a letter recalling her home.