บทที่ บทที่ 48 · Chapter XLVIII

.

’Tis hard and ill-paid task to order all things beforehand by the rule

of our own security, as is well hinted by Machiavelli concerning

Cæsar Borgia, who, saith he, had thought of all that might occur on

his father’s death, and had provided against every evil chance save

only one: it had never come into his mind that when his father died,

his own death would quickly follow.

Grandcourt’s importance as a subject of this realm was of the grandly

passive kind which consists in the inheritance of land. Political and

social movements touched him only through the wire of his rental, and

his most careful biographer need not have read up on

Schleswig-Holstein, the policy of Bismarck, trade-unions, household

suffrage, or even the last commercial panic. He glanced over the best

newspaper columns on these topics, and his views on them can hardly be

said to have wanted breadth, since he embraced all Germans, all

commercial men, and all voters liable to use the wrong kind of soap,

under the general epithet of “brutes;” but he took no action on these

much-agitated questions beyond looking from under his eyelids at any

man who mentioned them, and retaining a silence which served to shake

the opinions of timid thinkers.

But Grandcourt, within his own sphere of interest, showed some of the

qualities which have entered into triumphal diplomacy of the wildest

continental sort.

No movement of Gwendolen in relation to Deronda escaped him. He would

have denied that he was jealous; because jealousy would have implied

some doubt of his own power to hinder what he had determined against.

That his wife should have more inclination to another man’s society

than to his own would not pain him: what he required was that she

should be as fully aware as she would have been of a locked hand-cuff,

that her inclination was helpless to decide anything in contradiction

with his resolve. However much of vacillating whim there might have

been in his entrance on matrimony, there was no vacillating in his

interpretation of the bond. He had not repented of his marriage; it had

really brought more of aim into his life, new objects to exert his will

upon; and he had not repented of his choice. His taste was fastidious,

and Gwendolen satisfied it: he would not have liked a wife who had not

received some elevation of rank from him; nor one who did not command

admiration by her mien and beauty; nor one whose nails were not of the

right shape; nor one the lobe of whose ear was at all too large and

red; nor one who, even if her nails and ears were right, was at the

same time a ninny, unable to make spirited answers. These requirements

may not seem too exacting to refined contemporaries whose own ability

to fall in love has been held in suspense for lack of indispensable

details; but fewer perhaps may follow him in his contentment that his

wife should be in a temper which would dispose her to fly out if she

dared, and that she should have been urged into marrying him by other

feelings than passionate attachment. Still, for those who prefer

command to love, one does not see why the habit of mind should change

precisely at the point of matrimony.

Grandcourt did not feel that he had chosen the wrong wife; and having

taken on himself the part of husband, he was not going in any way to be

fooled, or allow himself to be seen in a light that could be regarded

as pitiable. This was his state of mind—not jealousy; still, his

behavior in some respects was as like jealousy as yellow is to yellow,

which color we know may be the effect of very different causes.

He had come up to town earlier than usual because he wished to be on

the spot for legal consultation as to the arrangements of his will, the

transference of mortgages, and that transaction with his uncle about

the succession to Diplow, which the bait of ready money, adroitly

dangled without importunity, had finally won him to agree upon. But

another acceptable accompaniment of his being in town was the

presentation of himself with the beautiful bride whom he had chosen to

marry in spite of what other people might have expected of him. It is

true that Grandcourt went about with the sense that he did not care a

languid curse for any one’s admiration: but this state of not-caring,

just as much as desire, required its related object—namely, a world of

admiring or envying spectators: for if you are fond of looking stonily

at smiling persons—the persons must be and they must smile—a

rudimentary truth which is surely forgotten by those who complain of

mankind as generally contemptible, since any other aspect of the race

must disappoint the voracity of their contempt. Grandcourt, in town for

the first time with his wife, had his non-caring abstinence from curses

enlarged and diversified by splendid receptions, by conspicuous rides

and drives, by presentations of himself with her on all distinguished

occasions. He wished her to be sought after; he liked that “fellows”

should be eager to talk with her and escort her within his observation;

there was even a kind of lofty coquetry on her part that he would not

have objected to. But what he did not like were her ways in relation to

Deronda.

After the musical party at Lady Mallinger’s, when Grandcourt had

observed the dialogue on the settee as keenly as Hans had done, it was

characteristic of him that he named Deronda for invitation along with

the Mallingers, tenaciously avoiding the possible suggestion to

anybody concerned that Deronda’s presence or absence could be of the

least importance to him; and he made no direct observation to Gwendolen

on her behavior that evening, lest the expression of his disgust should

be a little too strong to satisfy his own pride. But a few days

afterward he remarked, without being careful of the _à propos_,

“Nothing makes a woman more of a gawky than looking out after people

and showing tempers in public. A woman ought to have good manners. Else

it’s intolerable to appear with her.”

Gwendolen made the expected application, and was not without alarm at

the notion of being a gawky. For she, too, with her melancholy distaste

for things, preferred that her distaste should include admirers. But

the sense of overhanging rebuke only intensified the strain of

expectation toward any meeting with Deronda. The novelty and excitement

of her town life was like the hurry and constant change of foreign

travel; whatever might be the inward despondency, there was a programme

to be fulfilled, not without gratification to many-sided self. But, as

always happens with a deep interest, the comparatively rare occasions

on which she could exchange any words with Deronda had a diffusive

effect in her consciousness, magnifying their communication with each

other, and therefore enlarging the place she imagined it to have in his

mind. How could Deronda help this? He certainly did not avoid her;

rather he wished to convince her by every delicate indirect means that

her confidence in him had not been indiscreet since it had not lowered

his respect. Moreover he liked being near her—how could it be

otherwise? She was something more than a problem: she was a lovely

woman, for the turn of whose mind and fate he had a care which, however

futile it might be, kept soliciting him as a responsibility, perhaps

all the more that, when he dared to think of his own future, he saw it

lying far away from this splendid sad-hearted creature, who, because he

had once been impelled to arrest her attention momentarily, as he might

have seized her arm with warning to hinder her from stepping where

there was danger, had turned to him with a beseeching persistent need.

One instance in which Grandcourt stimulated a feeling in Gwendolen that

he would have liked to suppress without seeming to care about it, had

relation to Mirah. Gwendolen’s inclination lingered over the project of

the singing lessons as a sort of obedience to Deronda’s advice, but day

followed day with that want of perceived leisure which belongs to lives

where there is no work to mark off intervals; and the continual

liability to Grandcourt’s presence and surveillance seemed to flatten

every effort to the level of the boredom which his manner expressed;

his negative mind was as diffusive as fog, clinging to all objects, and

spoiling all contact.

But one morning when they were breakfasting, Gwendolen, in a recurrent

fit of determination to exercise the old spirit, said, dallying

prettily over her prawns without eating them,

“I think of making myself accomplished while we are in town, and having

singing lessons.”

“Why?” said Grandcourt, languidly.

“Why?” echoed Gwendolen, playing at sauciness; “because I can’t eat

_pâté de foie gras_ to make me sleepy, and I can’t smoke, and I can’t

go to the club to make me like to come away again—I want a variety of

_ennui_. What would be the most convenient time, when you are busy with

your lawyers and people, for me to have lessons from that little

Jewess, whose singing is getting all the rage.”

“Whenever you like,” said Grandcourt, pushing away his plate, and

leaning back in his chair while he looked at her with his most

lizard-like expression and, played with the ears of the tiny spaniel on

his lap (Gwendolen had taken a dislike to the dogs because they fawned

on him).

Then he said, languidly, “I don’t see why a lady should sing. Amateurs

make fools of themselves. A lady can’t risk herself in that way in

company. And one doesn’t want to hear squalling in private.”

“I like frankness: that seems to me a husband’s great charm,” said

Gwendolen, with her little upward movement of her chin, as she turned

her eyes away from his, and lifting a prawn before her, looked at the

boiled ingenuousness of its eyes as preferable to the lizard’s. “But;”

she added, having devoured her mortification, “I suppose you don’t

object to Miss Lapidoth’s singing at our party on the fourth? I thought

of engaging her. Lady Brackenshaw had her, you know: and the Raymonds,

who are very particular about their music. And Mr. Deronda, who is a

musician himself and a first-rate judge, says there is no singing in

such good taste as hers for a drawing-room. I think his opinion is an

authority.”

She meant to sling a small stone at her husband in that way.

“It’s very indecent of Deronda to go about praising that girl,” said

Grandcourt in a tone of indifference.

“Indecent!” exclaimed Gwendolen, reddening and looking at him again,

overcome by startled wonder, and unable to reflect on the probable

falsity of the phrase—“to go about praising.”

“Yes; and especially when she is patronized by Lady Mallinger. He ought

to hold his tongue about her. Men can see what is his relation to her.”

“Men who judge of others by themselves,” said Gwendolen, turning white

after her redness, and immediately smitten with a dread of her own

words.

“Of course. And a woman should take their judgment—else she is likely

to run her head into the wrong place,” said Grandcourt, conscious of

using pinchers on that white creature. “I suppose you take Deronda for

a saint.”

“Oh dear no!” said Gwendolen, summoning desperately her almost

miraculous power of self-control, and speaking in a high hard tone.

“Only a little less of a monster.”

She rose, pushed her chair away without hurry, and walked out of the

room with something like the care of a man who is afraid of showing

that he has taken more wine than usual. She turned the keys inside her

dressing-room doors, and sat down for some time looking pale and quiet

as when she was leaving the breakfast-room. Even in the moments after

reading the poisonous letter she had hardly had more cruel sensations

than now; for emotion was at the acute point, where it is not

distinguishable from sensation. Deronda unlike what she had believed

him to be, was an image which affected her as a hideous apparition

would have done, quite apart from the way in which it was produced. It

had taken hold of her as pain before she could consider whether it were

fiction or truth; and further to hinder her power of resistance came

the sudden perception, how very slight were the grounds of her faith in

Deronda—how little she knew of his life—how childish she had been in

her confidence. His rebukes and his severity to her began to seem

odious, along with all the poetry and lofty doctrine in the world,

whatever it might be; and the grave beauty of his face seemed the most

unpleasant mask that the common habits of men could put on.

All this went on in her with the rapidity of a sick dream; and her

start into resistance was very much like a waking. Suddenly from out

the gray sombre morning there came a stream of sunshine, wrapping her

in warmth and light where she sat in stony stillness. She moved gently

and looked round her—there was a world outside this bad dream, and the

dream proved nothing; she rose, stretching her arms upward and clasping

her hands with her habitual attitude when she was seeking relief from

oppressive feeling, and walked about the room in this flood of sunbeams.

“It is not true! What does it matter whether _he_ believes it or not?”

This is what she repeated to herself—but this was not her faith come

back again; it was only the desperate cry of faith, finding suffocation

intolerable. And how could she go on through the day in this state?

With one of her impetuous alternations, her imagination flew to wild

actions by which she would convince herself of what she wished: she

would go to Lady Mallinger and question her about Mirah; she would

write to Deronda and upbraid him with making the world all false and

wicked and hopeless to her—to him she dared pour out all the bitter

indignation of her heart. No; she would go to Mirah. This last form

taken by her need was more definitely practicable, and quickly became

imperious. No matter what came of it. She had the pretext of asking

Mirah to sing at her party on the fourth. What was she going to say

beside? How satisfy? She did not foresee—she could not wait to

foresee. If that idea which was maddening her had been a living thing,

she would have wanted to throttle it without waiting to foresee what

would come of the act. She rang her bell and asked if Mr. Grandcourt

were gone out: finding that he was, she ordered the carriage, and began

to dress for the drive; then she went down, and walked about the large

drawing-room like an imprisoned dumb creature, not recognizing herself

in the glass panels, not noting any object around her in the painted

gilded prison. Her husband would probably find out where she had been,

and punish her in some way or other—no matter—she could neither

desire nor fear anything just now but the assurance that she had not

been deluding herself in her trust.

She was provided with Mirah’s address. Soon she was on the way with all

the fine equipage necessary to carry about her poor uneasy heart,

depending in its palpitations on some answer or other to questioning

which she did not know how she should put. She was as heedless of what

happened before she found that Miss Lapidoth was at home, as one is of

lobbies and passages on the way to a court of justice—heedless of

everything till she was in a room where there were folding-doors, and

she heard Deronda’s voice behind it. Doubtless the identification was

helped by forecast, but she was as certain of it as if she had seen

him. She was frightened at her own agitation, and began to unbutton her

gloves that she might button them again, and bite her lips over the

pretended difficulty, while the door opened, and Mirah presented

herself with perfect quietude and a sweet smile of recognition. There

was relief in the sight of her face, and Gwendolen was able to smile in

return, while she put out her hand in silence; and as she seated

herself, all the while hearing the voice, she felt some reflux of

energy in the confused sense that the truth could not be anything that

she dreaded. Mirah drew her chair very near, as if she felt that the

sound of the conversation should be subdued, and looked at her visitor

with placid expectation, while Gwendolen began in a low tone, with

something that seemed like bashfulness,

“Perhaps you wonder to see me—perhaps I ought to have written—but I

wished to make a particular request.”

“I am glad to see you instead of having a letter,” said Mirah,

wondering at the changed expression and manner of the “Vandyke

duchess,” as Hans had taught her to call Gwendolen. The rich color and

the calmness of her own face were in strong contrast with the pale

agitated beauty under the plumed hat.

“I thought,” Gwendolen went on—“at least I hoped, you would not object

to sing at our house on the 4th—in the evening—at a party like Lady

Brackenshaw’s. I should be so much obliged.”

“I shall be very happy to sing for you. At ten?” said Mirah, while

Gwendolen seemed to get more instead of less embarrassed.

“At ten, please,” she answered; then paused, and felt that she had

nothing more to say. She could not go. It was impossible to rise and

say good-bye. Deronda’s voice was in her ears. She must say it—she

could contrive no other sentence,

“Mr. Deronda is in the next room.”

“Yes,” said Mirah, in her former tone. “He is reading Hebrew with my

brother.”

“You have a brother?” said Gwendolen, who had heard this from Lady

Mallinger, but had not minded it then.

“Yes, a dear brother who is ill—consumptive, and Mr. Deronda is the

best of friends to him, as he has been to me,” said Mirah, with the

impulse that will not let us pass the mention of a precious person

indifferently.

“Tell me,” said Gwendolen, putting her hand on Mirah’s, and speaking

hardly above a whisper—“tell me—tell me the truth. You are sure he is

quite good. You know no evil of him. Any evil that people say of him is

false.”

Could the proud-spirited woman have behaved more like a child? But the

strange words penetrated Mirah with nothing but a sense of solemnity

and indignation. With a sudden light in her eyes and a tremor in her

voice, she said,

“Who are the people that say evil of him? I would not believe any evil

of him, if an angel came to tell it me. He found me when I was so

miserable—I was going to drown myself; I looked so poor and forsaken;

you would have thought I was a beggar by the wayside. And he treated me

as if I had been a king’s daughter. He took me to the best of women. He

found my brother for me. And he honors my brother—though he too was

poor—oh, almost as poor as he could be. And my brother honors him.

That is no light thing to say”—here Mirah’s tone changed to one of

profound emphasis, and she shook her head backward: “for my brother is

very learned and great-minded. And Mr. Deronda says there are few men

equal to him.” Some Jewish defiance had flamed into her indignant

gratitude and her anger could not help including Gwendolen since she

seemed to have doubted Deronda’s goodness.

But Gwendolen was like one parched with thirst, drinking the fresh

water that spreads through the frame as a sufficient bliss. She did not

notice that Mirah was angry with her; she was not distinctly conscious

of anything but of the penetrating sense that Deronda and his life were

no more like her husband’s conception than the morning in the horizon

was like the morning mixed with street gas. Even Mirah’s words sank

into the indefiniteness of her relief. She could hardly have repeated

them, or said how her whole state of feeling was changed. She pressed

Mirah’s hand, and said, “Thank you, thank you,” in a hurried whisper,

then rose, and added, with only a hazy consciousness, “I must go, I

shall see you—on the fourth—I am so much obliged”—bowing herself out

automatically, while Mirah, opening the door for her, wondered at what

seemed a sudden retreat into chill loftiness.

Gwendolen, indeed, had no feeling to spare in any effusiveness toward

the creature who had brought her relief. The passionate need of

contradiction to Grandcourt’s estimate of Deronda, a need which had

blunted her sensibility to everything else, was no sooner satisfied

than she wanted to be gone. She began to be aware that she was out of

place, and to dread Deronda’s seeing her. And once in the carriage

again, she had the vision of what awaited her at home. When she drew up

before the door in Grosvenor Square, her husband was arriving with a

cigar between his fingers. He threw it away and handed her out,

accompanying her up-stairs. She turned into the drawing-room, lest he

should follow her farther and give her no place to retreat to; then she

sat down with a weary air, taking off her gloves, rubbing her hand over

her forehead, and making his presence as much of a cipher as possible.

But he sat, too, and not far from her—just in front, where to avoid

looking at him must have the emphasis of effort.

“May I ask where you have been at this extraordinary hour?” said

Grandcourt.

“Oh, yes; I have been to Miss Lapidoth’s, to ask her to come and sing

for us,” said Gwendolen, laying her gloves on the little table beside

her, and looking down at them.

“And to ask her about her relations with Deronda?” said Grandcourt,

with the coldest possible sneer in his low voice which in poor

Gwendolen’s ear was diabolical.

For the first time since their marriage she flashed out upon him

without inward check. Turning her eyes full on his she said, in a

biting tone,

“Yes; and what you said is false—a low, wicked falsehood.”

“She told you so—did she?” returned Grandcourt, with a more thoroughly

distilled sneer.

Gwendolen was mute. The daring anger within her was turned into the

rage of dumbness. What reasons for her belief could she give? All the

reasons that seemed so strong and living within her—she saw them

suffocated and shrivelled up under her husband’s breath. There was no

proof to give, but her own impression, which would seem to him her own

folly. She turned her head quickly away from him and looked angrily

toward the end of the room: she would have risen, but he was in her way.

Grandcourt saw his advantage. “It’s of no consequence so far as her

singing goes,” he said, in his superficial drawl. “You can have her to

sing, if you like.” Then, after a pause, he added in his lowest

imperious tone, “But you will please to observe that you are not to go

near that house again. As my wife, you must take my word about what is

proper for you. When you undertook to be Mrs. Grandcourt, you undertook

not to make a fool of yourself. You have been making a fool of yourself

this morning; and if you were to go on as you have begun, you might

soon get yourself talked of at the clubs in a way you would not like.

What do _you_ know about the world? You have married _me_, and must be

guided by my opinion.”

Every slow sentence of that speech had a terrific mastery in it for

Gwendolen’s nature. If the low tones had come from a physician telling

her that her symptoms were those of a fatal disease, and

prognosticating its course, she could not have been more helpless

against the argument that lay in it. But she was permitted to move now,

and her husband never again made any reference to what had occurred

this morning. He knew the force of his own words. If this white-handed

man with the perpendicular profile had been sent to govern a difficult

colony, he might have won reputation among his contemporaries. He had

certainly ability, would have understood that it was safer to

exterminate than to cajole superseded proprietors, and would not have

flinched from making things safe in that way.

Gwendolen did not, for all this, part with her recovered

faith;—rather, she kept it with a more anxious tenacity, as a

Protestant of old kept his bible hidden or a Catholic his crucifix,

according to the side favored by the civil arm; and it was

characteristic of her that apart from the impression gained concerning

Deronda in that visit, her imagination was little occupied with Mirah

or the eulogised brother. The one result established for her was, that

Deronda had acted simply as a generous benefactor, and the phrase

“reading Hebrew” had fleeted unimpressively across her sense of

hearing, as a stray stork might have made its peculiar flight across

her landscape without rousing any surprised reflection on its natural

history.

But the issue of that visit, as it regarded her husband, took a

strongly active part in the process which made an habitual conflict

within her, and was the cause of some external change perhaps not

observed by any one except Deronda. As the weeks went on bringing

occasional transient interviews with her, he thought that he perceived

in her an intensifying of her superficial hardness and resolute

display, which made her abrupt betrayals of agitation the more marked

and disturbing to him.

In fact, she was undergoing a sort of discipline for the refractory

which, as little as possible like conversion, bends half the self with

a terrible strain, and exasperates the unwillingness of the other half.

Grandcourt had an active divination rather than discernment of

refractoriness in her, and what had happened about Mirah quickened his

suspicion that there was an increase of it dependent on the occasions

when she happened to see Deronda: there was some “confounded nonsense”

between them: he did not imagine it exactly as flirtation, and his

imagination in other branches was rather restricted; but it was

nonsense that evidently kept up a kind of simmering in her mind—an

inward action which might become disagreeable outward. Husbands in the

old time are known to have suffered from a threatening devoutness in

their wives, presenting itself first indistinctly as oddity, and ending

in that mild form of lunatic asylum, a nunnery: Grandcourt had a vague

perception of threatening moods in Gwendolen which the unity between

them in his views of marriage required him peremptorily to check. Among

the means he chose, one was peculiar, and was less ably calculated than

the speeches we have just heard.

He determined that she should know the main purport of the will he was

making, but he could not communicate this himself, because it involved

the fact of his relation to Mrs. Glasher and her children; and that

there should be any overt recognition of this between Gwendolen and

himself was supremely repugnant to him. Like all proud, closely-wrapped

natures, he shrank from explicitness and detail, even on trivialities,

if they were personal: a valet must maintain a strict reserve with him

on the subject of shoes and stockings. And clashing was intolerable to

him; his habitual want was to put collision out of the question by the

quiet massive pressure of his rule. But he wished Gwendolen to know

that before he made her an offer it was no secret to him that she was

aware of his relations with Lydia, her previous knowledge being the

apology for bringing the subject before her now. Some men in his place

might have thought of writing what he wanted her to know, in the form

of a letter. But Grandcourt hated writing: even writing a note was a

bore to him, and he had long been accustomed to have all his writing

done by Lush. We know that there are persons who will forego their own

obvious interest rather than do anything so disagreeable as to write

letters; and it is not probable that these imperfect utilitarians would

rush into manuscript and syntax on a difficult subject in order to save

another’s feelings. To Grandcourt it did not even occur that he should,

would, or could write to Gwendolen the information in question; and the

only medium of communication he could use was Lush, who, to his mind,

was as much of an implement as pen and paper. But here too Grandcourt

had his reserves, and would not have uttered a word likely to encourage

Lush in an impudent sympathy with any supposed grievance in a marriage

which had been discommended by him. Who that has a confidant escapes

believing too little in his penetration, and too much in his

discretion? Grandcourt had always allowed Lush to know his external

affairs indiscriminately—irregularities, debts, want of ready money;

he had only used discrimination about what he would allow his confidant

to say to him; and he had been so accustomed to this human tool, that

the having him at call in London was a recovery of lost ease. It

followed that Lush knew all the provisions of the will more exactly

than they were known to the testator himself.

Grandcourt did not doubt that Gwendolen, since she was a woman who

could put two and two together, knew or suspected Lush to be the

contriver of her interview with Lydia, and that this was the reason why

her first request was for his banishment. But the bent of a woman’s

inferences on mixed subjects which excites mixed passions is not

determined by her capacity for simple addition; and here Grandcourt

lacked the only organ of thinking that could have saved him from

mistake—namely, some experience of the mixed passions concerned. He

had correctly divined one-half of Gwendolen’s dread—all that related

to her personal pride, and her perception that his will must conquer

hers; but the remorseful half, even if he had known of her broken

promise, was as much out of his imagination as the other side of the

moon. What he believed her to feel about Lydia was solely a tongue-tied

jealousy, and what he believed Lydia to have written with the jewels

was the fact that she had once been used to wearing them, with other

amenities such as he imputed to the intercourse with jealous women. He

had the triumphant certainty that he could aggravate the jealousy and

yet smite it with a more absolute dumbness. His object was to engage

all his wife’s egoism on the same side as his own, and in his

employment of Lush he did not intend an insult to her: she ought to

understand that he was the only possible envoy. Grandcourt’s view of

things was considerably fenced in by his general sense, that what

suited him others must put up with. There is no escaping the fact that

want of sympathy condemns us to corresponding stupidity. Mephistopheles

thrown upon real life, and obliged to manage his own plots, would

inevitably make blunders.

One morning he went to Gwendolen in the boudoir beyond the back

drawing-room, hat and gloves in hand, and said with his best-tempered,

most persuasive drawl, standing before her and looking down on her as

she sat with a book on her lap,

“A—Gwendolen, there’s some business about property to be explained. I

have told Lush to come and explain it to you. He knows all about these

things. I am going out. He can come up now. He’s the only person who

can explain. I suppose you’ll not mind.”

“You know that I do mind,” said Gwendolen, angrily, starting up. “I

shall not see him.” She showed the intention to dart away to the door.

Grandcourt was before her, with his back toward it. He was prepared for

her anger, and showed none in return, saying, with the same sort of

remonstrant tone that he might have used about an objection to dining

out,

“It’s no use making a fuss. There are plenty of brutes in the world

that one has to talk to. People with any _savoir vivre_ don’t make a

fuss about such things. Some business must be done. You can’t expect

agreeable people to do it. If I employ Lush, the proper thing for you

is to take it as a matter of course. Not to make a fuss about it. Not

to toss your head and bite your lips about people of that sort.”

The drawling and the pauses with which this speech was uttered gave

time for crowding reflections in Gwendolen, quelling her resistance.

What was there to be told her about property? This word had certain

dominant associations for her, first with her mother, then with Mrs.

Glasher and her children. What would be the use if she refused to see

Lush? Could she ask Grandcourt to tell her himself? That might be

intolerable, even if he consented, which it was certain he would not,

if he had made up his mind to the contrary. The humiliation of standing

an obvious prisoner, with her husband barring the door, was not to be

borne any longer, and she turned away to lean against a cabinet, while

Grandcourt again moved toward her.

“I have arranged for Lush to come up now, while I am out,” he said,

after a long organ stop, during which Gwendolen made no sign. “Shall I

tell him he may come?”

Yet another pause before she could say “Yes”—her face turned obliquely

and her eyes cast down.

“I shall come back in time to ride, if you like to get ready,” said

Grandcourt. No answer. “She is in a desperate rage,” thought he. But

the rage was silent, and therefore not disagreeable to him. It followed

that he turned her chin and kissed her, while she still kept her

eyelids down, and she did not move them until he was on the other side

of the door.

What was she to do? Search where she would in her consciousness, she

found no plea to justify a plaint. Any romantic illusions she had had

in marrying this man had turned on her power of using him as she liked.

He was using her as he liked.

She sat awaiting the announcement of Lush as a sort of searing

operation that she had to go through. The facts that galled her

gathered a burning power when she thought of their lying in his mind.

It was all a part of that new gambling, in which the losing was not

simply a _minus_, but a terrible _plus_ that had never entered into her

reckoning.

Lush was neither quite pleased nor quite displeased with his task.

Grandcourt had said to him by way of conclusion, “Don’t make yourself

more disagreeable than nature obliges you.”

“That depends,” thought Lush. But he said, “I will write a brief

abstract for Mrs. Grandcourt to read.” He did not suggest that he

should make the whole communication in writing, which was a proof that

the interview did not wholly displease him.

Some provision was being made for himself in the will, and he had no

reason to be in a bad humor, even if a bad humor had been common with

him. He was perfectly convinced that he had penetrated all the secrets

of the situation; but he had no diabolical delight in it. He had only

the small movements of gratified self-loving resentment in discerning

that this marriage had fulfilled his own foresight in not being as

satisfactory as the supercilious young lady had expected it to be, and

as Grandcourt wished to feign that it was. He had no persistent spite

much stronger than what gives the seasoning of ordinary scandal to

those who repeat it and exaggerate it by their conjectures. With no

active compassion or good-will, he had just as little active

malevolence, being chiefly occupied in liking his particular pleasures,

and not disliking anything but what hindered those

pleasures—everything else ranking with the last murder and the last

_opéra bouffe_, under the head of things to talk about. Nevertheless,

he was not indifferent to the prospect of being treated uncivilly by a

beautiful woman, or to the counterbalancing fact that his present

commission put into his hands an official power of humiliating her. He

did not mean to use it needlessly; but there are some persons so gifted

in relation to us that their “How do you do?” seems charged with

offense.

By the time that Mr. Lush was announced, Gwendolen had braced herself

to a bitter resolve that he should not witness the slightest betrayal

of her feeling, whatever he might have to tell. She invited him to sit

down with stately quietude. After all, what was this man to her? He was

not in the least like her husband. Her power of hating a coarse,

familiar-mannered man, with clumsy hands, was now relaxed by the

intensity with which she hated his contrast.

He held a small paper folded in his hand while he spoke.

“I need hardly say that I should not have presented myself if Mr.

Grandcourt had not expressed a strong wish to that effect—as no doubt

he has mentioned to you.”

From some voices that speech might have sounded entirely reverential,

and even timidly apologetic. Lush had no intention to the contrary, but

to Gwendolen’s ear his words had as much insolence in them as his

prominent eyes, and the pronoun “you” was too familiar. He ought to

have addressed the folding-screen, and spoke of her as Mrs. Grandcourt.

She gave the smallest sign of a bow, and Lush went on, with a little

awkwardness, getting entangled in what is elegantly called tautology.

“My having been in Mr. Grandcourt’s confidence for fifteen years or

more—since he was a youth, in fact—of course gives me a peculiar

position. He can speak to me of affairs that he could not mention to

any one else; and, in fact, he could not have employed any one else in

this affair. I have accepted the task out of friendship for him. Which

is my apology for accepting the task—if you would have preferred some

one else.”

He paused, but she made no sign, and Lush, to give himself a

countenance in an apology which met no acceptance, opened the folded

paper, and looked at it vaguely before he began to speak again.

“This paper contains some information about Mr. Grandcourt’s will, an

abstract of a part he wished you to know—if you’ll be good enough to

cast your eyes over it. But there is something I had to say by way of

introduction—which I hope you’ll pardon me for, if it’s not quite

agreeable.” Lush found that he was behaving better than he had

expected, and had no idea how insulting he made himself with his “not

quite agreeable.”

“Say what you have to say without apologizing, please,” said Gwendolen,

with the air she might have bestowed on a dog-stealer come to claim a

reward for finding the dog he had stolen.

“I have only to remind you of something that occurred before your

engagement to Mr. Grandcourt,” said Lush, not without the rise of some

willing insolence in exchange for her scorn. “You met a lady in Cardell

Chase, if you remember, who spoke to you of her position with regard to

Mr. Grandcourt. She had children with her—one a very fine boy.”

Gwendolen’s lips were almost as pale as her cheeks; her passion had no

weapons—words were no better than chips. This man’s speech was like a

sharp knife-edge drawn across her skin: but even her indignation at the

employment of Lush was getting merged in a crowd of other feelings, dim

and alarming as a crowd of ghosts.

“Mr. Grandcourt was aware that you were acquainted with this

unfortunate affair beforehand, and he thinks it only right that his

position and intentions should be made quite clear to you. It is an

affair of property and prospects; and if there were any objection you

had to make, if you would mention it to me—it is a subject which of

course he would rather not speak about himself—if you will be good

enough just to read this.” With the last words Lush rose and presented

the paper to her.

When Gwendolen resolved that she would betray no feeling in the

presence of this man, she had not prepared herself to hear that her

husband knew the silent consciousness, the silently accepted terms on

which she had married him. She dared not raise her hand to take the

paper, least it should visibly tremble. For a moment Lush stood holding

it toward her, and she felt his gaze on her as ignominy, before she

could say even with low-toned haughtiness,

“Lay it on the table. And go into the next room, please.”

Lush obeyed, thinking as he took an easy-chair in the back

drawing-room, “My lady winces considerably. She didn’t know what would

be the charge for that superfine article, Henleigh Grandcourt.” But it

seemed to him that a penniless girl had done better than she had any

right to expect, and that she had been uncommonly knowing for her years

and opportunities: her words to Lydia meant nothing, and her running

away had probably been part of her adroitness. It had turned out a

master-stroke.

Meanwhile Gwendolen was rallying her nerves to the reading of the

paper. She must read it. Her whole being—pride, longing for rebellion,

dreams of freedom, remorseful conscience, dread of fresh

visitation—all made one need to know what the paper contained. But at

first it was not easy to take in the meaning of the words. When she had

succeeded, she found that in the case of there being no son as issue of

her marriage, Grandcourt had made the small Henleigh his heir; that was

all she cared to extract from the paper with any distinctness. The

other statement as to what provision would be made for her in the same

case, she hurried over, getting only a confused perception of thousands

and Gadsmere. It was enough. She could dismiss the man in the next room

with the defiant energy which had revived in her at the idea that this

question of property and inheritance was meant as a finish to her

humiliations and her thraldom.

She thrust the paper between the leaves of her book, which she took in

her hand, and walked with her stateliest air into the next room, where

Lush immediately arose, awaiting her approach. When she was four yards

from him, it was hardly an instant that she paused to say in a high

tone, while she swept him with her eyelashes,

“Tell Mr. Grandcourt that his arrangements are just what I

desired”—passing on without haste, and leaving Lush time to mingle

some admiration of her graceful back with that half-amused sense of her

spirit and impertinence, which he expressed by raising his eyebrows and

just thrusting his tongue between his teeth. He really did not want her

to be worse punished, and he was glad to think that it was time to go

and lunch at the club, where he meant to have a lobster salad.

What did Gwendolen look forward to? When her husband returned he found

her equipped in her riding-dress, ready to ride out with him. She was

not again going to be hysterical, or take to her bed and say she was

ill. That was the implicit resolve adjusting her muscles before she

could have framed it in words, as she walked out of the room, leaving

Lush behind her. She was going to act in the spirit of her message, and

not to give herself time to reflect. She rang the bell for her maid,

and went with the usual care through her change of toilet. Doubtless

her husband had meant to produce a great effect on her: by-and-by

perhaps she would let him see an effect the very opposite of what he

intended; but at present all that she could show was a defiant

satisfaction in what had been presumed to be disagreeable. It came as

an instinct rather than a thought, that to show any sign which could be

interpreted as jealousy, when she had just been insultingly reminded

that the conditions were what she had accepted with her eyes open,

would be the worst self-humiliation. She said to herself that she had

not time to-day to be clear about her future actions; all she could be

clear about was that she would match her husband in ignoring any ground

for excitement. She not only rode, but went out with him to dine,

contributing nothing to alter their mutual manner, which was never that

of rapid interchange in discourse; and curiously enough she rejected a

handkerchief on which her maid had by mistake put the wrong scent—a

scent that Grandcourt had once objected to. Gwendolen would not have

liked to be an object of disgust to this husband whom she hated: she

liked all disgust to be on her side.

But to defer thought in this way was something like trying to talk

without singing in her own ears. The thought that is bound up with our

passion is as penetrative as air—everything is porous to it; bows,

smiles, conversation, repartee, are mere honeycombs where such thoughts

rushes freely, not always with a taste of honey. And without shutting

herself up in any solitude, Gwendolen seemed at the end of nine or ten

hours to have gone through a labyrinth of reflection, in which already

the same succession of prospects had been repeated, the same fallacious

outlets rejected, the same shrinking from the necessities of every

course. Already she was undergoing some hardening effect from feeling

that she was under eyes which saw her past actions solely in the light

of her lowest motives. She lived back in the scenes of her courtship,

with the new bitter consciousness of what had been in Grandcourt’s

mind—certain now, with her present experience of him, that he had a

peculiar triumph in conquering her dumb repugnance, and that ever since

their marriage he had had a cold exultation in knowing her fancied

secret. Her imagination exaggerated every tyrannical impulse he was

capable of. “I will insist on being separated from him”—was her first

darting determination; then, “I will leave him whether he consents or

not. If this boy becomes his heir, I have made an atonement.” But

neither in darkness nor in daylight could she imagine the scenes which

must carry out those determinations with the courage to feel them

endurable. How could she run away to her own family—carry distress

among them, and render herself an object of scandal in the society she

had left behind her? What future lay before her as Mrs. Grandcourt gone

back to her mother, who would be made destitute again by the rupture of

the marriage for which one chief excuse had been that it had brought

that mother a maintenance? She had lately been seeing her uncle and

Anna in London, and though she had been saved from any difficulty about

inviting them to stay in Grosvenor Square by their wish to be with Rex,

who would not risk a meeting with her, the transient visit she had had

from them helped now in giving stronger color to the picture of what it

would be for her to take refuge in her own family. What could she say

to justify her flight? Her uncle would tell her to go back. Her mother

would cry. Her aunt and Anna would look at her with wondering alarm.

Her husband would have power to compel her. She had absolutely nothing

that she could allege against him in judicious or judicial ears. And to

“insist on separation!” That was an easy combination of words; but

considered as an action to be executed against Grandcourt, it would be

about as practicable as to give him a pliant disposition and a dread of

other people’s unwillingness. How was she to begin? What was she to say

that would not be a condemnation of herself? “If I am to have misery

anyhow,” was the bitter refrain of her rebellious dreams, “I had better

have the misery that I can keep to myself.” Moreover, her capability of

rectitude told her again and again that she had no right to complain of

her contract, or to withdraw from it.

And always among the images that drove her back to submission was

Deronda. The idea of herself separated from her husband, gave Deronda a

changed, perturbing, painful place in her consciousness: instinctively

she felt that the separation would be from him too, and in the

prospective vision of herself as a solitary, dubiously-regarded woman,

she felt some tingling bashfulness at the remembrance of her behavior

towards him. The association of Deronda with a dubious position for

herself was intolerable. And what would he say if he knew everything?

Probably that she ought to bear what she had brought on herself, unless

she were sure that she could make herself a better woman by taking any

other course. And what sort of woman was she to be—solitary, sickened

of life, looked at with a suspicious kind of pity?—even if she could

dream of success in getting that dreary freedom. Mrs. Grandcourt “run

away” would be a more pitiable creature than Gwendolen Harleth

condemned to teach the bishop’s daughters, and to be inspected by Mrs.

Mompert.

One characteristic trait in her conduct is worth mentioning. She would

not look a second time at the paper Lush had given her; and before

ringing for her maid she locked it up in a traveling-desk which was at

hand, proudly resolved against curiosity about what was allotted to

herself in connection with Gadsmere—feeling herself branded in the

minds of her husband and his confidant with the meanness that would

accept marriage and wealth on any conditions, however dishonorable and

humiliating.

Day after day the same pattern of thinking was repeated. There came

nothing to change the situation—no new elements in the sketch—only a

recurrence which engraved it. The May weeks went on into June, and

still Mrs. Grandcourt was outwardly in the same place, presenting

herself as she was expected to do in the accustomed scenes, with the

accustomed grace, beauty, and costume; from church at one end of the

week, through all the scale of desirable receptions, to opera at the

other. Church was not markedly distinguished in her mind from the other

forms of self-presentation, for marriage had included no instruction

that enabled her to connect liturgy and sermon with any larger order of

the world than that of unexplained and perhaps inexplicable social

fashions. While a laudable zeal was laboring to carry the light of

spiritual law up the alleys where law is chiefly known as the

policeman, the brilliant Mrs. Grandcourt, condescending a little to a

fashionable rector and conscious of a feminine advantage over a learned

dean, was, so far as pastoral care and religious fellowship were

concerned, in as complete a solitude as a man in a lighthouse.

Can we wonder at the practical submission which hid her constructive

rebellion? The combination is common enough, as we know from the number

of persons who make us aware of it in their own case by a clamorous

unwearied statement of the reasons against their submitting to a

situation which, on inquiry, we discover to be the least disagreeable

within their reach. Poor Gwendolen had both too much and too little

mental power and dignity to make herself exceptional. No wonder that

Deronda now marked some hardening in a look and manner which were

schooled daily to the suppression of feeling.

For example. One morning, riding in Rotten Row with Grandcourt by her

side, she saw standing against the railing at the turn, just facing

them, a dark-eyed lady with a little girl and a blonde boy, whom she at

once recognized as the beings in all the world the most painful for her

to behold. She and Grandcourt had just slackened their pace to a walk;

he being on the outer side was the nearer to the unwelcome vision, and

Gwendolen had not presence of mind to do anything but glance away from

the dark eyes that met hers piercingly toward Grandcourt, who wheeled

past the group with an unmoved face, giving no sign of recognition.

Immediately she felt a rising rage against him mingling with her shame

for herself, and the words, “You might at least have raised your hat to

her,” flew impetuously to her lips—but did not pass them. If as her

husband, in her company, he chose to ignore these creatures whom she

herself had excluded from the place she was filling, how could she be

the person to reproach him? She was dumb.

It was not chance, but her own design, that had brought Mrs. Glasher

there with her boy. She had come to town under the pretext of making

purchases—really wanting educational apparatus for her children, and

had had interviews with Lush in which she had not refused to soothe her

uneasy mind by representing the probabilities as all on the side of her

ultimate triumph. Let her keep quiet, and she might live to see the

marriage dissolve itself in one way or other—Lush hinted at several

ways—leaving the succession assured to her boy. She had had an

interview with Grandcourt, too, who had as usual told her to behave

like a reasonable woman, and threatened punishment if she were

troublesome; but had, also as usual, vindicated himself from any wish

to be stingy, the money he was receiving from Sir Hugo on account of

Diplow encouraging him to be lavish. Lydia, feeding on the

probabilities in her favor, devoured her helpless wrath along with that

pleasanter nourishment; but she could not let her discretion go

entirely without the reward of making a Medusa-apparition before

Gwendolen, vindictiveness and jealousy finding relief in an outlet of

venom, though it were as futile as that of a viper already flung on the

other side of the hedge. Hence, each day, after finding out from Lush

the likely time for Gwendolen to be riding, she had watched at that

post, daring Grandcourt so far. Why should she not take little Henleigh

into the Park?

The Medusa-apparition was made effective beyond Lydia’s conception by

the shock it gave Gwendolen actually to see Grandcourt ignoring this

woman who had once been the nearest in the world to him, along with the

children she had borne him. And all the while the dark shadow thus cast

on the lot of a woman destitute of acknowledged social dignity, spread

itself over her visions of a future that might be her own, and made

part of her dread on her own behalf. She shrank all the more from any

lonely action. What possible release could there be for her from this

hated vantage ground, which yet she dared not quit, any more than if

fire had been raining outside it? What release, but death? Not her own

death. Gwendolen was not a woman who could easily think of her own

death as a near reality, or front for herself the dark entrance on the

untried and invisible. It seemed more possible that Grandcourt should

die:—and yet not likely. The power of tyranny in him seemed a power of

living in the presence of any wish that he should die. The thought that

his death was the only possible deliverance for her was one with the

thought that deliverance would never come—the double deliverance from

the injury with which other beings might reproach her and from the yoke

she had brought on her own neck. No! she foresaw him always living, and

her own life dominated by him; the “always” of her young experience not

stretching beyond the few immediate years that seemed immeasurably long

with her passionate weariness. The thought of his dying would not

subsist: it turned as with a dream-change into the terror that she

should die with his throttling fingers on her neck avenging that

thought. Fantasies moved within her like ghosts, making no break in her

more acknowledged consciousness and finding no obstruction in it: dark

rays doing their work invisibly in the broad light.

Only an evening or two after that encounter in the Park, there was a

grand concert at Klesmer’s, who was living rather magnificently now in

one of the large houses in Grosvenor Place, a patron and prince among

musical professors. Gwendolen had looked forward to this occasion as

one on which she was sure to meet Deronda, and she had been meditating

how to put a question to him which, without containing a word that she

would feel a dislike to utter, would yet be explicit enough for him to

understand it. The struggle of opposite feelings would not let her

abide by her instinct that the very idea of Deronda’s relation to her

was a discouragement to any desperate step towards freedom. The next

wave of emotion was a longing for some word of his to enforce a

resolve. The fact that her opportunities of conversation with him had

always to be snatched in the doubtful privacy of large parties, caused

her to live through them many times beforehand, imagining how they

would take place and what she would say. The irritation was

proportionate when no opportunity came; and this evening at Klesmer’s

she included Deronda in her anger, because he looked as calm as

possible at a distance from her, while she was in danger of betraying

her impatience to every one who spoke to her. She found her only safety

in a chill haughtiness which made Mr. Vandernoodt remark that Mrs.

Grandcourt was becoming a perfect match for her husband. When at last

the chances of the evening brought Deronda near her, Sir Hugo and Mrs.

Raymond were close by and could hear every word she said. No matter:

her husband was not near, and her irritation passed without check into

a fit of daring which restored the security of her self-possession.

Deronda was there at last, and she would compel him to do what she

pleased. Already and without effort rather queenly in her air as she

stood in her white lace and green leaves she threw a royal

permissiveness into her way of saying, “I wish you would come and see

me to-morrow between five and six, Mr. Deronda.”

There could be but one answer at that moment: “Certainly,” with a tone

of obedience.

Afterward it occurred to Deronda that he would write a note to excuse

himself. He had always avoided making a call at Grandcourt’s. He could

not persuade himself to any step that might hurt her, and whether his

excuse were taken for indifference or for the affectation of

indifference it would be equally wounding. He kept his promise.

Gwendolen had declined to ride out on the plea of not feeling well

enough having left her refusal to the last moment when the horses were

soon to be at the door—not without alarm lest her husband should say

that he too would stay at home. Become almost superstitious about his

power of suspicious divination, she had a glancing forethought of what

she would do in that case—namely, have herself denied as not well. But

Grandcourt accepted her excuse without remark, and rode off.

Nevertheless when Gwendolen found herself alone, and had sent down the

order that only Mr. Deronda was to be admitted, she began to be alarmed

at what she had done, and to feel a growing agitation in the thought

that he would soon appear, and she should soon be obliged to speak: not

of trivialities, as if she had no serious motive in asking him to come:

and yet what she had been for hours determining to say began to seem

impossible. For the first time the impulse of appeal to him was being

checked by timidity, and now that it was too late she was shaken by the

possibility that he might think her invitation unbecoming. If so, she

would have sunk in his esteem. But immediately she resisted this

intolerable fear as an infection from her husband’s way of thinking.

That _he_ would say she was making a fool of herself was rather a

reason why such a judgment would be remote from Deronda’s mind. But

that she could not rid herself from this sudden invasion of womanly

reticence was manifest in a kind of action which had never occurred to

her before. In her struggle between agitation and the effort to

suppress it, she was walking up and down the length of the two

drawing-rooms, where at one end a long mirror reflected her in her

black dress, chosen in the early morning with a half-admitted reference

to this hour. But above this black dress her head on its white pillar

of a neck showed to advantage. Some consciousness of this made her turn

hastily and hurry to the boudoir, where again there was a glass, but

also, tossed over a chair, a large piece of black lace which she

snatched and tied over her crown of hair so as completely to conceal

her neck, and leave only her face looking out from the black frame. In

this manifest contempt of appearance, she thought it possible to be

freer from nervousness, but the black lace did not take away the

uneasiness from her eyes and lips.

She was standing in the middle of the room when Deronda was announced,

and as he approached her she perceived that he too for some reason was

not his usual self. She could not have defined the change except by

saying that he looked less happy than usual, and appeared to be under

some effort in speaking to her. And yet the speaking was the slightest

possible. They both said, “How do you do?” quite curtly; and Gwendolen,

instead of sitting down, moved to a little distance, resting her arms

slightly on the tall back of a chair, while Deronda stood where he

was,—both feeling it difficult to say any more, though the

preoccupation in his mind could hardly have been more remote than it

was from Gwendolen’s conception. She naturally saw in his embarrassment

some reflection of her own. Forced to speak, she found all her training

in concealment and self-command of no use to her and began with timid

awkwardness,

“You will wonder why I begged you to come. I wanted to ask you

something. You said I was ignorant. That is true. And what can I do but

ask you?”

And at this moment she was feeling it utterly impossible to put the

questions she had intended. Something new in her nervous manner roused

Deronda’s anxiety lest there might be a new crisis. He said with the

sadness of affection in his voice,

“My only regret is, that I can be of so little use to you.” The words

and the tone touched a new spring in her, and she went on with more

sense of freedom, yet still not saying anything she had designed to

say, and beginning to hurry, that she might somehow arrive at the right

words.

“I wanted to tell you that I have always been thinking of your advice,

but is it any use?—I can’t make myself different, because things about

me raise bad feelings—and I must go on—I can alter nothing—it is no

use.”

She paused an instant, with the consciousness that she was not finding

the right words, but began again hurriedly, “But if I go on I shall get

worse. I want not to get worse. I should like to be what you wish.

There are people who are good and enjoy great things—I know there are.

I am a contemptible creature. I feel as if I should get wicked with

hating people. I have tried to think that I would go away from

everybody. But I can’t. There are so many things to hinder me. You

think, perhaps, that I don’t mind. But I do mind. I am afraid of

everything. I am afraid of getting wicked. Tell me what I can do.”

She had forgotten everything but that image of her helpless misery

which she was trying to make present to Deronda in broken allusive

speech—wishing to convey but not express all her need. Her eyes were

tearless, and had a look of smarting in their dilated brilliancy; there

was a subdued sob in her voice which was more and more veiled, till it

was hardly above a whisper. She was hurting herself with the jewels

that glittered on her tightly-clasped fingers pressed against her heart.

The feeling Deronda endured in these moments he afterward called

horrible. Words seemed to have no more rescue in them than if he had

been beholding a vessel in peril of wreck—the poor ship with its

many-lived anguish beaten by the inescapable storm. How could he grasp

the long-growing process of this young creature’s wretchedness?—how

arrest and change it with a sentence? He was afraid of his own voice.

The words that rushed into his mind seemed in their feebleness nothing

better than despair made audible, or than that insensibility to

another’s hardship which applies precept to soothe pain. He felt

himself holding a crowd of words imprisoned within his lips, as if the

letting them escape would be a violation of awe before the mysteries of

our human lot. The thought that urged itself foremost was—“Confess

everything to your husband; have nothing concealed:”—the words carried

in his mind a vision of reasons which would have needed much fuller

expressions for Gwendolen to apprehend them, but before he had begun

those brief sentences, the door opened and the husband entered.

Grandcourt had deliberately gone out and turned back to satisfy a

suspicion. What he saw was Gwendolen’s face of anguish framed black

like a nun’s, and Deronda standing three yards from her with a look of

sorrow such as he might have bent on the last struggle of life in a

beloved object. Without any show of surprise Grandcourt nodded to

Deronda, gave a second look at Gwendolen, passed on, and seated himself

easily at a little distance crossing his legs, taking out his

handkerchief and trifling with it elegantly.

Gwendolen had shrunk and changed her attitude on seeing him, but she

did not turn or move from her place. It was not a moment in which she

could feign anything, or manifest any strong revulsion of feeling: the

passionate movement of her last speech was still too strong within her.

What she felt beside was a dull despairing sense that her interview

with Deronda was at an end: a curtain had fallen. But he, naturally,

was urged into self-possession and effort by susceptibility to what

might follow for her from being seen by her husband in this betrayal of

agitation; and feeling that any pretense of ease in prolonging his

visit would only exaggerate Grandcourt’s possible conjectures of

duplicity, he merely said,

“I will not stay longer now. Good-bye.”

He put out his hand, and she let him press her poor little chill

fingers; but she said no good-bye.

When he had left the room, Gwendolen threw herself into a seat, with an

expectation as dull as her despair—the expectation that she was going

to be punished. But Grandcourt took no notice: he was satisfied to have

let her know that she had not deceived him, and to keep a silence which

was formidable with omniscience. He went out that evening, and her plea

of feeling ill was accepted without even a sneer.

The next morning at breakfast he said, “I am going yachting to the

Mediterranean.”

“When?” said Gwendolen, with a leap of heart which had hope in it.

“The day after to-morrow. The yacht is at Marseilles. Lush is gone to

get everything ready.”

“Shall I have mamma to stay with me, then?” said Gwendolen, the new

sudden possibility of peace and affection filling her mind like a burst

of morning light.

“No; you will go with me.”