บทที่ บทที่ 36 · Chapter XXXVI
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“Rien ne pèse tant qu’un secret
Le porter loin est difficile aux dames:
Et je sçais mesme sur ce fait
Bon nombre d’hommes qui sont femmes.”
—LA FONTAINE.
Meanwhile Deronda had been fastened and led off by Mr. Vandernoodt, who
wished for a brisker walk, a cigar, and a little gossip. Since we
cannot tell a man his own secrets, the restraint of being in his
company often breeds a desire to pair off in conversation with some
more ignorant person, and Mr. Vandernoodt presently said,
“What a washed-out piece of cambric Grandcourt is! But if he is a
favorite of yours, I withdraw the remark.”
“Not the least in the world,” said Deronda.
“I thought not. One wonders how he came to have a great passion again;
and he must have had—to marry in this way. Though Lush, his old chum,
hints that he married this girl out of obstinacy. By George! it was a
very accountable obstinacy. A man might make up his mind to marry her
without the stimulus of contradiction. But he must have made himself a
pretty large drain of money, eh?”
“I know nothing of his affairs.”
“What! not of the other establishment he keeps up?”
“Diplow? Of course. He took that of Sir Hugo. But merely for the year.”
“No, no; not Diplow: Gadsmere. Sir Hugo knows, I’ll answer for it.”
Deronda said nothing. He really began to feel some curiosity, but he
foresaw that he should hear what Mr. Vandernoodt had to tell, without
the condescension of asking.
“Lush would not altogether own to it, of course. He’s a confident and
go-between of Grandcourt’s. But I have it on the best authority. The
fact is, there’s another lady with four children at Gadsmere. She has
had the upper hand of him these ten years and more, and by what I can
understand has it still—left her husband for him, and used to travel
with him everywhere. Her husband’s dead now; I found a fellow who was
in the same regiment with him, and knew this Mrs. Glasher before she
took wing. A fiery dark-eyed woman—a noted beauty at that time—he
thought she was dead. They say she has Grandcourt under her thumb
still, and it’s a wonder he didn’t marry her, for there’s a very fine
boy, and I understand Grandcourt can do absolutely as he pleases with
the estates. Lush told me as much as that.”
“What right had he to marry this girl?” said Deronda, with disgust.
Mr. Vandernoodt, adjusting the end of his cigar, shrugged his shoulders
and put out his lips.
“_She_ can know nothing of it,” said Deronda, emphatically. But that
positive statement was immediately followed by an inward query—“Could
she have known anything of it?”
“It’s rather a piquant picture,” said Mr. Vandernoodt—“Grandcourt
between two fiery women. For depend upon it this light-haired one has
plenty of devil in her. I formed that opinion of her at Leubronn. It’s
a sort of Medea and Creüsa business. Fancy the two meeting! Grandcourt
is a new kind of Jason: I wonder what sort of a part he’ll make of it.
It’s a dog’s part at best. I think I hear Ristori now, saying, ‘Jasone!
Jasone!’ These fine women generally get hold of a stick.”
“Grandcourt can bite, I fancy,” said Deronda. “He is no stick.”
“No, no; I meant Jason. I can’t quite make out Grandcourt. But he’s a
keen fellow enough—uncommonly well built too. And if he comes into all
this property, the estates will bear dividing. This girl, whose friends
had come to beggary, I understand, may think herself lucky to get him.
I don’t want to be hard on a man because he gets involved in an affair
of that sort. But he might make himself more agreeable. I was telling
him a capital story last night, and he got up and walked away in the
middle. I felt inclined to kick him. Do you suppose that is inattention
or insolence, now?”
“Oh, a mixture. He generally observes the forms: but he doesn’t listen
much,” said Deronda. Then, after a moment’s pause, he went on, “I
should think there must be some exaggeration or inaccuracy in what you
have heard about this lady at Gadsmere.”
“Not a bit, depend upon it; it has all lain snug of late years. People
have forgotten all about it. But there the nest is, and the birds are
in it. And I know Grandcourt goes there. I have good evidence that he
goes there. However, that’s nobody’s business but his own. The affair
has sunk below the surface.”
“I wonder you could have learned so much about it,” said Deronda,
rather drily.
“Oh, there are plenty of people who knew all about it; but such stories
get packed away like old letters. They interest me. I like to know the
manners of my time—contemporary gossip, not antediluvian. These
Dryasdust fellows get a reputation by raking up some small scandal
about Semiramis or Nitocris, and then we have a thousand and one poems
written upon it by all the warblers big and little. But I don’t care a
straw about the _faux pas_ of the mummies. You do, though. You are one
of the historical men—more interested in a lady when she’s got a rag
face and skeleton toes peeping out. Does that flatter your imagination?”
“Well, if she had any woes in her love, one has the satisfaction of
knowing that she’s well out of them.”
“Ah, you are thinking of the Medea, I see.”
Deronda then chose to point to some giant oaks worth looking at in
their bareness. He also felt an interest in this piece of contemporary
gossip, but he was satisfied that Mr. Vandernoodt had no more to tell
about it.
Since the early days when he tried to construct the hidden story of his
own birth, his mind had perhaps never been so active in weaving
probabilities about any private affair as it had now begun to be about
Gwendolen’s marriage. This unavowed relation of Grandcourt’s—could she
have gained some knowledge of it, which caused her to shrink from the
match—a shrinking finally overcome by the urgence of poverty? He could
recall almost every word she had said to him, and in certain of these
words he seemed to discern that she was conscious of having done some
wrong—inflicted some injury. His own acute experience made him alive
to the form of injury which might affect the unavowed children and
their mother. Was Mrs. Grandcourt, under all her determined show of
satisfaction, gnawed by a double, a treble-headed grief—self-reproach,
disappointment, jealousy? He dwelt especially on all the slight signs
of self-reproach: he was inclined to judge her tenderly, to excuse, to
pity. He thought he had found a key now by which to interpret her more
clearly: what magnifying of her misery might not a young creature get
into who had wedded her fresh hopes to old secrets! He thought he saw
clearly enough now why Sir Hugo had never dropped any hint of this
affair to him; and immediately the image of this Mrs. Glasher became
painfully associated with his own hidden birth. Gwendolen knowing of
that woman and her children, marrying Grandcourt, and showing herself
contented, would have been among the most repulsive of beings to him;
but Gwendolen tasting the bitterness of remorse for having contributed
to their injury was brought very near to his fellow-feeling. If it were
so, she had got to a common plane of understanding with him on some
difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able to judge of with any
justice or generosity; for, according to precedent, Gwendolen’s view of
her position might easily have been no other than that her husband’s
marriage with her was his entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs.
Glasher represented his forsaken sin. And Deronda had naturally some
resentment on behalf of the Hagars and Ishmaels.
Undeniably Deronda’s growing solicitude about Gwendolen depended
chiefly on her peculiar manner toward him; and I suppose neither man
nor woman would be the better for an utter insensibility to such
appeals. One sign that his interest in her had changed its footing was
that he dismissed any caution against her being a coquette setting
snares to involve him in a vulgar flirtation, and determined that he
would not again evade any opportunity of talking to her. He had shaken
off Mr. Vandernoodt, and got into a solitary corner in the twilight;
but half an hour was long enough to think of those possibilities in
Gwendolen’s position and state of mind; and on forming the
determination not to avoid her, he remembered that she was likely to be
at tea with the other ladies in the drawing-room. The conjecture was
true; for Gwendolen, after resolving not to go down again for the next
four hours, began to feel, at the end of one, that in shutting herself
up she missed all chances of seeing and hearing, and that her visit
would only last two days more. She adjusted herself, put on her little
air of self-possession, and going down, made herself resolutely
agreeable. Only ladies were assembled, and Lady Pentreath was amusing
them with a description of a drawing-room under the Regency, and the
figure that was cut by ladies and gentlemen in 1819, the year she was
presented—when Deronda entered.
“Shall I be acceptable?” he said. “Perhaps I had better go back and
look for the others. I suppose they are in the billiard-room.”
“No, no; stay where you are,” said Lady Pentreath. “They were all
getting tired of me; let us hear what _you_ have to say.”
“That is rather an embarrassing appeal,” said Deronda, drawing up a
chair near Lady Mallinger’s elbow at the tea-table. “I think I had
better take the opportunity of mentioning our songstress,” he added,
looking at Lady Mallinger—“unless you have done so.”
“Oh, the little Jewess!” said Lady Mallinger. “No, I have not mentioned
her. It never entered my head that any one here wanted singing lessons.”
“All ladies know some one else who wants singing lessons,” said
Deronda. “I have happened to find an exquisite singer,”—here he turned
to Lady Pentreath. “She is living with some ladies who are friends of
mine—the mother and sisters of a man who was my chum at Cambridge. She
was on the stage at Vienna; but she wants to leave that life, and
maintain herself by teaching.”
“There are swarms of those people, aren’t there?” said the old lady.
“Are her lessons to be very cheap or very expensive? Those are the two
baits I know of.”
“There is another bait for those who hear her,” said Deronda. “Her
singing is something quite exceptional, I think. She has had such
first-rate teaching—or rather first-rate instinct with her
teaching—that you might imagine her singing all came by nature.”
“Why did she leave the stage, then?” said Lady Pentreath. “I’m too old
to believe in first-rate people giving up first-rate chances.”
“Her voice was too weak. It is a delicious voice for a room. You who
put up with my singing of Schubert would be enchanted with hers,” said
Deronda, looking at Mrs. Raymond. “And I imagine she would not object
to sing at private parties or concerts. Her voice is quite equal to
that.”
“I am to have her in my drawing-room when we go up to town,” said Lady
Mallinger. “You shall hear her then. I have not heard her myself yet;
but I trust Daniel’s recommendation. I mean my girls to have lessons of
her.”
“Is it a charitable affair?” said Lady Pentreath. “I can’t bear
charitable music.”
Lady Mallinger, who was rather helpless in conversation, and felt
herself under an engagement not to tell anything of Mirah’s story, had
an embarrassed smile on her face, and glanced at Deronda.
“It is a charity to those who want to have a good model of feminine
singing,” said Deronda. “I think everybody who has ears would benefit
by a little improvement on the ordinary style. If you heard Miss
Lapidoth”—here he looked at Gwendolen—“perhaps you would revoke your
resolution to give up singing.”
“I should rather think my resolution would be confirmed,” said
Gwendolen. “I don’t feel able to follow your advice of enjoying my own
middlingness.”
“For my part,” said Deronda, “people who do anything finely always
inspirit me to try. I don’t mean that they make me believe I can do it
as well. But they make the thing, whatever it may be, seem worthy to be
done. I can bear to think my own music not good for much, but the world
would be more dismal if I thought music itself not good for much.
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual
wealth of the world.”
“But then, if we can’t imitate it, it only makes our own life seem the
tamer,” said Gwendolen, in a mood to resent encouragement founded on
her own insignificance.
“That depends on the point of view, I think,” said Deronda. “We should
have a poor life of it if we were reduced for all our pleasure to our
own performances. A little private imitation of what is good is a sort
of private devotion to it, and most of us ought to practice art only in
the light of private study—preparation to understand and enjoy what
the few can do for us. I think Miss Lapidoth is one of the few.”
“She must be a very happy person, don’t you think?” said Gwendolen,
with a touch of sarcasm, and a turn of her neck toward Mrs. Raymond.
“I don’t know,” answered the independent lady; “I must hear more of her
before I say that.”
“It may have been a bitter disappointment to her that her voice failed
her for the stage,” said Juliet Fenn, sympathetically.
“I suppose she’s past her best, though,” said the deep voice of Lady
Pentreath.
“On the contrary, she has not reached it,” said Deronda. “She is barely
twenty.”
“And very pretty,” interposed Lady Mallinger, with an amiable wish to
help Deronda. “And she has very good manners. I’m sorry she’s a bigoted
Jewess; I should not like it for anything else, but it doesn’t matter
in singing.”
“Well, since her voice is too weak for her to scream much, I’ll tell
Lady Clementina to set her on my nine granddaughters,” said Lady
Pentreath; “and I hope she’ll convince eight of them that they have not
voice enough to sing anywhere but at church. My notion is, that many of
our girls nowadays want lessons not to sing.”
“I have had my lessons in that,” said Gwendolen, looking at Deronda.
“You see Lady Pentreath is on my side.”
While she was speaking, Sir Hugo entered with some of the other
gentlemen, including Grandcourt, and standing against the group at the
low tea-table said,
“What imposition is Deronda putting on you, ladies—slipping in among
you by himself?”
“Wanting to pass off an obscurity on us as better than any celebrity,”
said Lady Pentreath—“a pretty singing Jewess who is to astonish these
young people. You and I, who heard Catalani in her prime, are not so
easily astonished.”
Sir Hugo listened with his good-humored smile as he took a cup of tea
from his wife, and then said, “Well, you know, a Liberal is bound to
think that there have been singers since Catalani’s time.”
“Ah, you are younger than I am. I dare say you are one of the men who
ran after Alcharisi. But she married off and left you all in the lurch.”
“Yes, yes; it’s rather too bad when these great singers marry
themselves into silence before they have a crack in their voices. And
the husband is a public robber. I remember Leroux saying, ‘A man might
as well take down a fine peal of church bells and carry them off to the
steppes,’ said Sir Hugo, setting down his cup and turning away, while
Deronda, who had moved from his place to make room for others, and felt
that he was not in request, sat down a little apart. Presently he
became aware that, in the general dispersion of the group, Gwendolen
had extricated herself from the attentions of Mr. Vandernoodt and had
walked to the piano, where she stood apparently examining the music
which lay on the desk. Will any one be surprised at Deronda’s
concluding that she wished him to join her? Perhaps she wanted to make
amends for the unpleasant tone of resistance with which she had met his
recommendation of Mirah, for he had noticed that her first impulse
often was to say what she afterward wished to retract. He went to her
side and said,
“Are you relenting about the music and looking for something to play or
sing?”
“I am not looking for anything, but I _am_ relenting,” said Gwendolen,
speaking in a submissive tone.
“May I know the reason?”
“I should like to hear Miss Lapidoth and have lessons from her, since
you admire her so much—that is, of course, when we go to town. I mean
lessons in rejoicing at her excellence and my own deficiency,” said
Gwendolen, turning on him a sweet, open smile.
“I shall be really glad for you to see and hear her,” said Deronda,
returning the smile in kind.
“Is she as perfect in every thing else as in her music?”
“I can’t vouch for that exactly. I have not seen enough of her. But I
have seen nothing in her that I could wish to be different. She has had
an unhappy life. Her troubles began in early childhood, and she has
grown up among very painful surroundings. But I think you will say that
no advantages could have given her more grace and truer refinement.”
“I wonder what sort of trouble hers were?”
“I have not any very precise knowledge. But I know that she was on the
brink of drowning herself in despair.”
“And what hindered her?” said Gwendolen, quickly, looking at Deronda.
“Some ray or other came—which made her feel that she ought to
live—that it was good to live,” he answered, quietly. “She is full of
piety, and seems capable of submitting to anything when it takes the
form of duty.”
“Those people are not to be pitied,” said Gwendolen, impatiently. “I
have no sympathy with women who are always doing right. I don’t believe
in their great sufferings.” Her fingers moved quickly among the edges
of the music.
“It is true,” said Deronda, “that the consciousness of having done
wrong is something deeper, more bitter. I suppose we faulty creatures
can never feel so much for the irreproachable as for those who are
bruised in the struggle with their own faults. It is a very ancient
story, that of the lost sheep—but it comes up afresh every day.”
“That is a way of speaking—it is not acted upon, it is not real,” said
Gwendolen, bitterly. “You admire Miss Lapidoth because you think her
blameless, perfect. And you know you would despise a woman who had done
something you thought very wrong.”
“That would depend entirely upon her own view of what she had done,”
said Deronda.
“You would be satisfied if she were very wretched, I suppose,” said
Gwendolen, impetuously.
“No, not satisfied—full of sorrow for her. It was not a mere way of
speaking. I did not mean to say that the finer nature is not more
adorable; I meant that those who would be comparatively uninteresting
beforehand may become worthier of sympathy when they do something that
awakens in them a keen remorse. Lives are enlarged in different ways. I
dare say some would never get their eyes opened if it were not for a
violent shock from the consequences of their own actions. And when they
are suffering in that way one must care for them more than for the
comfortably self-satisfied.” Deronda forgot everything but his vision
of what Gwendolen’s experience had probably been, and urged by
compassion let his eyes and voice express as much interest as they
would.
Gwendolen had slipped on to the music-stool, and looked up at him with
pain in her long eyes, like a wounded animal asking for help.
“Are you persuading Mrs. Grandcourt to play to us, Dan?” said Sir Hugo,
coming up and putting his hand on Deronda’s shoulder with a gentle,
admonitory pinch.
“I cannot persuade myself,” said Gwendolen, rising.
Others had followed Sir Hugo’s lead, and there was an end of any
liability to confidences for that day. But the next was New Year’s Eve;
and a grand dance, to which the chief tenants were invited, was to be
held in the picture-gallery above the cloister—the sort of
entertainment in which numbers and general movement may create privacy.
When Gwendolen was dressing, she longed, in remembrance of Leubronn, to
put on the old turquoise necklace for her sole ornament; but she dared
not offend her husband by appearing in that shabby way on an occasion
when he would demand her utmost splendor. Determined to wear the
memorial necklace somehow, she wound it thrice round her wrist and made
a bracelet of it—having gone to her room to put it on just before the
time of entering the ball-room.
It was always a beautiful scene, this dance on New Year’s Eve, which
had been kept up by the family tradition as nearly in the old fashion
as inexorable change would allow. Red carpet was laid down for the
occasion: hot-house plants and evergreens were arranged in bowers at
the extremities and in every recess of the gallery; and the old
portraits stretching back through generations, even to the
pre-portraying period, made a piquant line of spectators. Some
neighboring gentry, major and minor, were invited; and it was certainly
an occasion when a prospective master and mistress of Abbott’s and
King’s Topping might see their future glory in an agreeable light, as a
picturesque provincial supremacy with a rent-roll personified by the
most prosperous-looking tenants. Sir Hugo expected Grandcourt to feel
flattered by being asked to the Abbey at a time which included this
festival in honor of the family estate; but he also hoped that his own
hale appearance might impress his successor with the probable length of
time that would elapse before the succession came, and with the wisdom
of preferring a good actual sum to a minor property that must be waited
for. All present, down to the least important farmer’s daughter, knew
that they were to see “young Grandcourt,” Sir Hugo’s nephew, the
presumptive heir and future baronet, now visiting the Abbey with his
bride after an absence of many years; any coolness between uncle and
nephew having, it is understood, given way to a friendly warmth. The
bride opening the ball with Sir Hugo was necessarily the cynosure of
all eyes; and less than a year before, if some magic mirror could have
shown Gwendolen her actual position, she would have imagined herself
moving in it with a glow of triumphant pleasure, conscious that she
held in her hands a life full of favorable chances which her cleverness
and spirit would enable her to make the best of. And now she was
wondering that she could get so little joy out of the exaltation to
which she had been suddenly lifted, away from the distasteful petty
empire of her girlhood with its irksome lack of distinction and
superfluity of sisters. She would have been glad to be even
unreasonably elated, and to forget everything but the flattery of the
moment; but she was like one courting sleep, in whom thoughts insist
like willful tormentors.
Wondering in this way at her own dullness, and all the while longing
for an excitement that would deaden importunate aches, she was passing
through files of admiring beholders in the country-dance with which it
was traditional to open the ball, and was being generally regarded by
her own sex as an enviable woman. It was remarked that she carried
herself with a wonderful air, considering that she had been nobody in
particular, and without a farthing to her fortune. If she had been a
duke’s daughter, or one of the royal princesses, she could not have
taken the honors of the evening more as a matter of course. Poor
Gwendolen! It would by-and-by become a sort of skill in which she was
automatically practiced to bear this last great gambling loss with an
air of perfect self-possession.
The next couple that passed were also worth looking at. Lady Pentreath
had said, “I shall stand up for one dance, but I shall choose my
partner. Mr. Deronda, you are the youngest man, I mean to dance with
you. Nobody is old enough to make a good pair with me. I must have a
contrast.” And the contrast certainly set off the old lady to the
utmost. She was one of those women who are never handsome till they are
old, and she had had the wisdom to embrace the beauty of age as early
as possible. What might have seemed harshness in her features when she
was young, had turned now into a satisfactory strength of form and
expression which defied wrinkles, and was set off by a crown of white
hair; her well-built figure was well covered with black drapery, her
ears and neck comfortably caressed with lace, showing none of those
withered spaces which one would think it a pitiable condition of
poverty to expose. She glided along gracefully enough, her dark eyes
still with a mischievous smile in them as she observed the company. Her
partner’s young richness of tint against the flattened hues and rougher
forms of her aged head had an effect something like that of a fine
flower against a lichenous branch. Perhaps the tenants hardly
appreciated this pair. Lady Pentreath was nothing more than a straight,
active old lady: Mr. Deronda was a familiar figure regarded with
friendliness; but if he had been the heir, it would have been regretted
that his face was not as unmistakably English as Sir Hugo’s.
Grandcourt’s appearance when he came up with Lady Mallinger was not
impeached with foreignness: still the satisfaction in it was not
complete. It would have been matter of congratulation if one who had
the luck to inherit two old family estates had had more hair, a fresher
color, and a look of greater animation; but that fine families dwindled
off into females, and estates ran together into the single heirship of
a mealy-complexioned male, was a tendency in things which seemed to be
accounted for by a citation of other instances. It was agreed that Mr.
Grandcourt could never be taken for anything but what he was—a born
gentleman; and that, in fact, he looked like an heir. Perhaps the
person least complacently disposed toward him at that moment was Lady
Mallinger, to whom going in procession up this country-dance with
Grandcourt was a blazonment of herself as the infelicitous wife who had
produced nothing but daughters, little better than no children, poor
dear things, except for her own fondness and for Sir Hugo’s wonderful
goodness to them. But such inward discomfort could not prevent the
gentle lady from looking fair and stout to admiration, or her full blue
eyes from glancing mildly at her neighbors. All the mothers and fathers
held it a thousand pities that she had not had a fine boy, or even
several—which might have been expected, to look at her when she was
first married.
The gallery included only three sides of the quadrangle, the fourth
being shut off as a lobby or corridor: one side was used for dancing,
and the opposite side for the supper-table, while the intermediate part
was less brilliantly lit, and fitted with comfortable seats. Later in
the evening Gwendolen was in one of these seats, and Grandcourt was
standing near her. They were not talking to each other: she was leaning
backward in her chair, and he against the wall; and Deronda, happening
to observe this, went up to ask her if she had resolved not to dance
any more. Having himself been doing hard duty in this way among the
guests, he thought he had earned the right to sink for a little while
into the background, and he had spoken little to Gwendolen since their
conversation at the piano the day before. Grandcourt’s presence would
only make it the easier to show that pleasure in talking to her even
about trivialities which would be a sign of friendliness; and he
fancied that her face looked blank. A smile beamed over it as she saw
him coming, and she raised herself from her leaning posture. Grandcourt
had been grumbling at the _ennui_ of staying so long in this stupid
dance, and proposing that they should vanish: she had resisted on the
ground of politeness—not without being a little frightened at the
probability that he was silently angry with her. She had her reason
for staying, though she had begun to despair of the opportunity for the
sake of which she had put the old necklace on her wrist. But now at
last Deronda had come.
“Yes; I shall not dance any more. Are you not glad?” she said, with
some gayety, “you might have felt obliged humbly to offer yourself as a
partner, and I feel sure you have danced more than you like already.”
“I will not deny that,” said Deronda, “since you have danced as much as
you like.”
“But will you take trouble for me in another way, and fetch me a glass
of that fresh water?”
It was but a few steps that Deronda had to go for the water. Gwendolen
was wrapped in the lightest, softest of white woolen burnouses, under
which her hands were hidden. While he was gone she had drawn off her
glove, which was finished with a lace ruffle, and when she put up her
hand to take the glass and lifted it to her mouth, the
necklace-bracelet, which in its triple winding adapted itself clumsily
to her wrist, was necessarily conspicuous. Grandcourt saw it, and saw
that it was attracting Deronda’s notice.
“What is that hideous thing you have got on your wrist?” said the
husband.
“That?” said Gwendolen, composedly, pointing to the turquoises, while
she still held the glass; “it is an old necklace I like to wear. I lost
it once, and someone found it for me.”
With that she gave the glass again to Deronda, who immediately carried
it away, and on returning said, in order to banish any consciousness
about the necklace,
“It is worth while for you to go and look out at one of the windows on
that side. You can see the finest possible moonlight on the stone
pillars and carving, and shadows waving across it in the wind.”
“I should like to see it. Will you go?” said Gwendolen, looking up at
her husband.
He cast his eyes down at her, and saying, “No, Deronda will take you,”
slowly moved from his leaning attitude, and walked away.
Gwendolen’s face for a moment showed a fleeting vexation: she resented
this show of indifference toward her. Deronda felt annoyed, chiefly for
her sake; and with a quick sense, that it would relieve her most to
behave as if nothing peculiar had occurred, he said, “Will you take my
arm and go, while only servants are there?” He thought that he
understood well her action in drawing his attention to the necklace:
she wished him to infer that she had submitted her mind to rebuke—her
speech and manner had from the first fluctuated toward that
submission—and that she felt no lingering resentment. Her evident
confidence in his interpretation of her appealed to him as a peculiar
claim.
When they were walking together, Gwendolen felt as if the annoyance
which had just happened had removed another film of reserve from
between them, and she had more right than before to be as open as she
wished. She did not speak, being filled with the sense of silent
confidence, until they were in front of the window looking out on the
moonlit court. A sort of bower had been made round the window, turning
it into a recess. Quitting his arm, she folded her hands in her
burnous, and pressed her brow against the glass. He moved slightly
away, and held the lapels of his coat with his thumbs under the collar
as his manner was: he had a wonderful power of standing perfectly
still, and in that position reminded one sometimes of Dante’s _spiriti
magni con occhi tardi e gravi_. (Doubtless some of these danced in
their youth, doubted of their own vocation, and found their own times
too modern.) He abstained from remarking on the scene before them,
fearing that any indifferent words might jar on her: already the calm
light and shadow, the ancient steadfast forms, and aloofness enough
from those inward troubles which he felt sure were agitating her. And
he judged aright: she would have been impatient of polite conversation.
The incidents of the last minute or two had receded behind former
thoughts which she had imagined herself uttering to Deronda, which now
urged themselves to her lips. In a subdued voice, she said,
“Suppose I had gambled again, and lost the necklace again, what should
you have thought of me?”
“Worse than I do now.”
“Then you are mistaken about me. You wanted me not to do that—not to
make my gain out of another’s loss in that way—and I have done a great
deal worse.”
“I can’t imagine temptations,” said Deronda. “Perhaps I am able to
understand what you mean. At least I understand self-reproach.” In
spite of preparation he was almost alarmed at Gwendolen’s precipitancy
of confidence toward him, in contrast with her habitual resolute
concealment.
“What should you do if you were like me—feeling that you were wrong
and miserable, and dreading everything to come?” It seemed that she was
hurrying to make the utmost use of this opportunity to speak as she
would.
“That is not to be amended by doing one thing only—but many,” said
Deronda, decisively.
“What?” said Gwendolen, hastily, moving her brow from the glass and
looking at him.
He looked full at her in return, with what she thought was severity. He
felt that it was not a moment in which he must let himself be tender,
and flinch from implying a hard opinion.
“I mean there are many thoughts and habits that may help us to bear
inevitable sorrow. Multitudes have to bear it.”
She turned her brow to the window again, and said impatiently, “You
must tell me then what to think and what to do; else why did you not
let me go on doing as I liked and not minding? If I had gone on
gambling I might have won again, and I might have got not to care for
anything else. You would not let me do that. Why shouldn’t I do as I
like, and not mind? Other people do.” Poor Gwendolen’s speech expressed
nothing very clearly except her irritation.
“I don’t believe you would ever get not to mind,” said Deronda, with
deep-toned decision. “If it were true that baseness and cruelty made an
escape from pain, what difference would that make to people who can’t
be quite base or cruel? Idiots escape some pain; but you can’t be an
idiot. Some may do wrong to another without remorse; but suppose one
does feel remorse? I believe you could never lead an injurious
life—all reckless lives are injurious, pestilential—without feeling
remorse.” Deronda’s unconscious fervor had gathered as he went on: he
was uttering thoughts which he had used for himself in moments of
painful meditation.
“Then tell me what better I can do,” said Gwendolen, insistently.
“Many things. Look on other lives besides your own. See what their
troubles are, and how they are borne. Try to care about something in
this vast world besides the gratification of small selfish desires. Try
to care for what is best in thought and action—something that is good
apart from the accidents of your own lot.”
For an instant or two Gwendolen was mute. Then, again moving her brow
from the glass, she said,
“You mean that I am selfish and ignorant.”
He met her fixed look in silence before he answered firmly—“You will
not go on being selfish and ignorant!”
She did not turn away her glance or let her eyelids fall, but a change
came over her face—that subtle change in nerve and muscle which will
sometimes give a childlike expression even to the elderly: it is the
subsidence of self-assertion.
“Shall I lead you back?” said Deronda, gently, turning and offering her
his arm again. She took it silently, and in that way they came in sight
of Grandcourt, who was walking slowly near their former place.
Gwendolen went up to him and said, “I am ready to go now. Mr. Deronda
will excuse us to Lady Mallinger.”
“Certainly,” said Deronda. “Lord and Lady Pentreath disappeared some
time ago.”
Grandcourt gave his arm in silent compliance, nodding over his shoulder
to Deronda, and Gwendolen too only half turned to bow and say,
“Thanks.” The husband and wife left the gallery and paced the corridors
in silence. When the door had closed on them in the boudoir, Grandcourt
threw himself into a chair and said, with undertoned peremptoriness,
“Sit down.” She, already in the expectation of something unpleasant,
had thrown off her burnous with nervous unconsciousness, and
immediately obeyed. Turning his eyes toward her, he began,
“Oblige me in future by not showing whims like a mad woman in a play.”
“What do you mean?” said Gwendolen.
“I suppose there is some understanding between you and Deronda about
that thing you have on your wrist. If you have anything to say to him,
say it. But don’t carry on a telegraphing which other people are
supposed not to see. It’s damnably vulgar.”
“You can know all about the necklace,” said Gwendolen, her angry pride
resisting the nightmare of fear.
“I don’t want to know. Keep to yourself whatever you like.” Grandcourt
paused between each sentence, and in each his speech seemed to become
more preternaturally distinct in its inward tones. “What I care to know
I shall know without your telling me. Only you will please to behave as
becomes my wife. And not make a spectacle of yourself.”
“Do you object to my talking to Mr. Deronda?”
“I don’t care two straws about Deronda, or any other conceited
hanger-on. You may talk to him as much as you like. He is not going to
take my place. You are my wife. And you will either fill your place
properly—to the world and to me—or you will go to the devil.”
“I never intended anything but to fill my place properly,” said
Gwendolen, with bitterest mortification in her soul.
“You put that thing on your wrist, and hid it from me till you wanted
him to see it. Only fools go into that deaf and dumb talk, and think
they’re secret. You will understand that you are not to compromise
yourself. Behave with dignity. That’s all I have to say.”
With that last word Grandcourt rose, turned his back to the fire and
looked down on her. She was mute. There was no reproach that she dared
to fling back at him in return for these insulting admonitions, and the
very reason she felt them to be insulting was that their purport went
with the most absolute dictate of her pride. What she would least like
to incur was the making a fool of herself and being compromised. It was
futile and irrelevant to try and explain that Deronda too had only been
a monitor—the strongest of all monitors. Grandcourt was contemptuous,
not jealous; contemptuously certain of all the subjection he cared for.
Why could she not rebel and defy him? She longed to do it. But she
might as well have tried to defy the texture of her nerves and the
palpitation of her heart. Her husband had a ghostly army at his back,
that could close round her wherever she might turn. She sat in her
splendid attire, like a white image of helplessness, and he seemed to
gratify himself with looking at her. She could not even make a
passionate exclamation, or throw up her arms, as she would have done in
her maiden days. The sense of his scorn kept her still.
“Shall I ring?” he said, after what seemed to her a long while. She
moved her head in assent, and after ringing he went to his
dressing-room.
Certain words were gnawing within her. “The wrong you have done me will
be your own curse.” As he closed the door, the bitter tears rose, and
the gnawing words provoked an answer: “Why did you put your fangs into
me and not into him?” It was uttered in a whisper, as the tears came up
silently. But she immediately pressed her handkerchief against her
eyes, and checked her tendency to sob.
The next day, recovered from the shuddering fit of this evening scene,
she determined to use the charter which Grandcourt had scornfully given
her, and to talk as much as she liked with Deronda; but no
opportunities occurred, and any little devices she could imagine for
creating them were rejected by her pride, which was now doubly active.
Not toward Deronda himself—she was singularly free from alarm lest he
should think her openness wanting in dignity: it was part of his power
over her that she believed him free from all misunderstanding as to the
way in which she appealed to him; or rather, that he should
misunderstand her had never entered into her mind. But the last morning
came, and still she had never been able to take up the dropped thread
of their talk, and she was without devices. She and Grandcourt were to
leave at three o’clock. It was too irritating that after a walk in the
grounds had been planned in Deronda’s hearing, he did not present
himself to join in it. Grandcourt was gone with Sir Hugo to King’s
Topping, to see the old manor-house; others of the gentlemen were
shooting; she was condemned to go and see the decoy and the water-fowl,
and everything else that she least wanted to see, with the ladies, with
old Lord Pentreath and his anecdotes, with Mr. Vandernoodt and his
admiring manners. The irritation became too strong for her; without
premeditation, she took advantage of the winding road to linger a
little out of sight, and then set off back to the house, almost running
when she was safe from observation. She entered by a side door, and the
library was on her left hand; Deronda, she knew, was often there; why
might she not turn in there as well as into any other room in the
house? She had been taken there expressly to see the illuminated family
tree, and other remarkable things—what more natural than that she
should like to look in again? The thing most to be feared was that the
room would be empty of Deronda, for the door was ajar. She pushed it
gently, and looked round it. He was there, writing busily at a distant
table, with his back toward the door (in fact, Sir Hugo had asked him
to answer some constituents’ letters which had become pressing). An
enormous log fire, with the scent of Russia from the books, made the
great room as warmly odorous as a private chapel in which the censers
have been swinging. It seemed too daring to go in—too rude to speak
and interrupt him; yet she went in on the noiseless carpet, and stood
still for two or three minutes, till Deronda, having finished a letter,
pushed it aside for signature, and threw himself back to consider
whether there were anything else for him to do, or whether he could
walk out for the chance of meeting the party which included Gwendolen,
when he heard her voice saying, “Mr. Deronda.”
It was certainly startling. He rose hastily, turned round, and pushed
away his chair with a strong expression of surprise.
“Am I wrong to come in?” said Gwendolen.
“I thought you were far on your walk,” said Deronda.
“I turned back,” said Gwendolen.
“Do you intend to go out again? I could join you now, if you would
allow me.”
“No; I want to say something, and I can’t stay long,” said Gwendolen,
speaking quickly in a subdued tone, while she walked forward and rested
her arms and muff on the back of the chair he had pushed away from him.
“I want to tell you that it is really so—I can’t help feeling remorse
for having injured others. That was what I meant when I said that I had
done worse than gamble again and pawn the necklace again—something
more injurious, as you called it. And I can’t alter it. I am punished,
but I can’t alter it. You said I could do many things. Tell me again.
What should you do—what should you feel if you were in my place?”
The hurried directness with which she spoke—the absence of all her
little airs, as if she were only concerned to use the time in getting
an answer that would guide her, made her appeal unspeakably touching.
Deronda said, “I should feel something of what you feel—deep sorrow.”
“But what would you try to do?” said Gwendolen, with urgent quickness.
“Order my life so as to make any possible amends, and keep away from
doing any sort of injury again,” said Deronda, catching her sense that
the time for speech was brief.
“But I can’t—I can’t; I must go on,” said Gwendolen, in a passionate
loud whisper. “I have thrust out others—I have made my gain out of
their loss—tried to make it—tried. And I must go on. I can’t alter
it.”
It was impossible to answer this instantaneously. Her words had
confirmed his conjecture, and the situation of all concerned rose in
swift images before him. His feeling for those who had been thrust out
sanctioned her remorse; he could not try to nullify it, yet his heart
was full of pity for her. But as soon as he could he answered—taking
up her last words,
“That is the bitterest of all—to wear the yoke of our own wrong-doing.
But if you submitted to that as men submit to maiming or life-long
incurable disease?—and made the unalterable wrong a reason for more
effort toward a good, that may do something to counterbalance the evil?
One who has committed irremediable errors may be scourged by that
consciousness into a higher course than is common. There are many
examples. Feeling what it is to have spoiled one life may well make us
long to save other lives from being spoiled.”
“But you have not wronged any one, or spoiled their lives,” said
Gwendolen, hastily. “It is only others who have wronged _you_.”
Deronda colored slightly, but said immediately—“I suppose our keen
feeling for ourselves might end in giving us a keen feeling for others,
if, when we are suffering acutely, we were to consider that others go
through the same sharp experience. That is a sort of remorse before
commission. Can’t you understand that?”
“I think I do—now,” said Gwendolen. “But you were right—I _am_
selfish. I have never thought much of any one’s feelings, except my
mother’s. I have not been fond of people. But what can I do?” she went
on, more quickly. “I must get up in the morning and do what every one
else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem to see all
that can be—and I am tired and sick of it. And the world is all
confusion to me”—she made a gesture of disgust. “You say I am
ignorant. But what is the good of trying to know more, unless life were
worth more?”
“This good,” said Deronda promptly, with a touch of indignant severity,
which he was inclined to encourage as his own safeguard; “life _would_
be worth more to you: some real knowledge would give you an interest in
the world beyond the small drama of personal desires. It is the curse
of your life—forgive me—of so many lives, that all passion is spent
in that narrow round, for want of ideas and sympathies to make a larger
home for it. Is there any single occupation of mind that you care about
with passionate delight or even independent interest?”
Deronda paused, but Gwendolen, looking startled and thrilled as by an
electric shock, said nothing, and he went on more insistently,
“I take what you said of music for a small example—it answers for all
larger things—you will not cultivate it for the sake of a private joy
in it. What sort of earth or heaven would hold any spiritual wealth in
it for souls pauperized by inaction? If one firmament has no stimulus
for our attention and awe, I don’t see how four would have it. We
should stamp every possible world with the flatness of our own
inanity—which is necessarily impious, without faith or fellowship. The
refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the
religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our
own appetites and vanities. The few may find themselves in it simply by
an elevation of feeling; but for us who have to struggle for our
wisdom, the higher life must be a region in which the affections are
clad with knowledge.”
The half-indignant remonstrance that vibrated in Deronda’s voice came,
as often happens, from the habit of inward argument with himself rather
than from severity toward Gwendolen: but it had a more beneficial
effect on her than any soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent
rebellion of complaint; and to be roused into self-judgment is
comparative activity. For the moment she felt like a shaken
child—shaken out of its wailing into awe, and she said humbly,
“I will try. I will think.”
They both stood silent for a minute, as if some third presence had
arrested them,—for Deronda, too, was under that sense of pressure
which is apt to come when our own winged words seem to be hovering
around us,—till Gwendolen began again,
“You said affection was the best thing, and I have hardly any—none
about me. If I could, I would have mamma; but that is impossible.
Things have changed to me so—in such a short time. What I used not to
like I long for now. I think I am almost getting fond of the old things
now they are gone.” Her lip trembled.
“Take the present suffering as a painful letting in of light,” said
Deronda, more gently. “You are conscious of more beyond the round of
your own inclinations—you know more of the way in which your life
presses on others, and their life on yours. I don’t think you could
have escaped the painful process in some form or other.”
“But it is a very cruel form,” said Gwendolen, beating her foot on the
ground with returning agitation. “I am frightened at everything. I am
frightened at myself. When my blood is fired I can do daring
things—take any leap; but that makes me frightened at myself.” She was
looking at nothing outside her; but her eyes were directed toward the
window, away from Deronda, who, with quick comprehension said,
“Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of
increasing that remorse which is so bitter to you. Fixed meditation may
do a great deal toward defining our longing or dread. We are not always
in a state of strong emotion, and when we are calm we can use our
memories and gradually change the bias of our fear, as we do our
tastes. Take your fear as a safeguard. It is like quickness of hearing.
It may make consequences passionately present to you. Try to take hold
of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.”
Deronda uttered each sentence more urgently; he felt as if he were
seizing a faint chance of rescuing her from some indefinite danger.
“Yes, I know; I understand what you mean,” said Gwendolen in her loud
whisper, not turning her eyes, but lifting up her small gloved hand and
waving it in deprecation of the notion that it was easy to obey that
advice. “But if feelings rose—there are some feelings—hatred and
anger—how can I be good when they keep rising? And if there came a
moment when I felt stifled and could bear it no longer——” She broke
off, and with agitated lips looked at Deronda, but the expression on
his face pierced her with an entirely new feeling. He was under the
baffling difficulty of discerning that what he had been urging on her
was thrown into the pallid distance of mere thought before the outburst
of her habitual emotion. It was as if he saw her drowning while his
limbs were bound. The pained compassion which was spread over his
features as he watched her, affected her with a compunction unlike any
she had felt before, and in a changed and imploring tone she said,
“I am grieving you. I am ungrateful. You _can_ help me. I will think of
everything. I will try. Tell me—it will not be a pain to you that I
have dared to speak of my trouble to you? You began it, you know, when
you rebuked me.” There was a melancholy smile on her lips as she said
that, but she added more entreatingly, “It will not be a pain to you?”
“Not if it does anything to save you from an evil to come,” said
Deronda, with strong emphasis; “otherwise, it will be a lasting pain.”
“No—no—it shall not be. It may be—it shall be better with me because
I have known you.” She turned immediately, and quitted the room.
When she was on the first landing of the staircase, Sir Hugo passed
across the hall on his way to the library, and saw her. Grandcourt was
not with him.
Deronda, when the baronet entered, was standing in his ordinary
attitude, grasping his coat-collar, with his back to the table, and
with that indefinable expression by which we judge that a man is still
in the shadow of a scene which he has just gone through. He moved,
however, and began to arrange the letters.
“Has Mrs. Grandcourt been in here?” said Sir Hugo.
“Yes, she has.”
“Where are the others?”
“I believe she left them somewhere in the grounds.”
After a moment’s silence, in which Sir Hugo looked at a letter without
reading it, he said “I hope you are not playing with fire, Dan—you
understand me?”
“I believe I do, sir,” said Deronda, after a slight hesitation, which
had some repressed anger in it. “But there is nothing answering to your
metaphor—no fire, and therefore no chance of scorching.”
Sir Hugo looked searchingly at him, and then said, “So much the better.
For, between ourselves, I fancy there may be some hidden gunpowder in
that establishment.”