第 三十五 章 · Chapter XXXV

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Were uneasiness of conscience measured by extent of crime, human

history had been different, and one should look to see the contrivers

of greedy wars and the mighty marauders of the money-market in one

troop of self-lacerating penitents with the meaner robber and

cut-purse and the murderer that doth his butchery in small with his own

hand. No doubt wickedness hath its rewards to distribute; but who so

wins in this devil’s game must needs be baser, more cruel, more brutal

than the order of this planet will allow for the multitude born of

woman, the most of these carrying a form of conscience—a fear which

is the shadow of justice, a pity which is the shadow of love—that

hindereth from the prize of serene wickedness, itself difficult of

maintenance in our composite flesh.

On the twenty-ninth of December Deronda knew that the Grandcourts had

arrived at the Abbey, but he had had no glimpse of them before he went

to dress for dinner. There had been a splendid fall of snow, allowing

the party of children the rare pleasures of snow-balling and

snow-building, and in the Christmas holidays the Mallinger girls were

content with no amusement unless it were joined in and managed by

“cousin,” as they had always called Deronda. After that outdoor

exertion he had been playing billiards, and thus the hours had passed

without his dwelling at all on the prospect of meeting Gwendolen at

dinner. Nevertheless that prospect was interesting to him; and when, a

little tired and heated with working at amusement, he went to his room

before the half-hour bell had rung, he began to think of it with some

speculation on the sort of influence her marriage with Grandcourt would

have on her, and on the probability that there would be some

discernible shades of change in her manner since he saw her at Diplow,

just as there had been since his first vision of her at Leubronn.

“I fancy there are some natures one could see growing or degenerating

every day, if one watched them,” was his thought. “I suppose some of us

go on faster than others: and I am sure she is a creature who keeps

strong traces of anything that has once impressed her. That little

affair of the necklace, and the idea that somebody thought her gambling

wrong, had evidently bitten into her. But such impressibility leads

both ways: it may drive one to desperation as soon as to anything

better. And whatever fascinations Grandcourt may have for capricious

tastes—good heavens! who can believe that he would call out the tender

affections in daily companionship? One might be tempted to horsewhip

him for the sake of getting some show of passion into his face and

speech. I’m afraid she married him out of ambition—to escape poverty.

But why did she run out of his way at first? The poverty came after,

though. Poor thing! she may have been urged into it. How can one feel

anything else than pity for a young creature like that—full of unused

life—ignorantly rash—hanging all her blind expectations on that

remnant of a human being.”

Doubtless the phrases which Deronda’s meditation applied to the

bridegroom were the less complimentary for the excuses and pity in

which it clad the bride. His notion of Grandcourt as a “remnant” was

founded on no particular knowledge, but simply on the impression which

ordinary polite intercourse had given him that Grandcourt had worn out

all his natural healthy interest in things.

In general, one may be sure that whenever a marriage of any mark takes

place, male acquaintances are likely to pity the bride, female

acquaintances the bridegroom: each, it is thought, might have done

better; and especially where the bride is charming, young gentlemen on

the scene are apt to conclude that she can have no real attachment to a

fellow so uninteresting to themselves as her husband, but has married

him on other grounds. Who, under such circumstances, pities the

husband? Even his female friends are apt to think his position

retributive: he should have chosen some one else. But perhaps Deronda

may be excused that he did not prepare any pity for Grandcourt, who had

never struck acquaintances as likely to come out of his experiences

with more suffering than he inflicted; whereas, for Gwendolen, young,

headlong, eager for pleasure, fed with the flattery which makes a

lovely girl believe in her divine right to rule—how quickly might life

turn from expectancy to a bitter sense of the irremediable! After what

he had seen of her he must have had rather dull feelings not to have

looked forward with some interest to her entrance into the room. Still,

since the honeymoon was already three weeks in the distance, and

Gwendolen had been enthroned, not only at Ryelands, but at Diplow, she

was likely to have composed her countenance with suitable manifestation

or concealment, not being one who would indulge the curious by a

helpless exposure of her feelings.

A various party had been invited to meet the new couple; the old

aristocracy was represented by Lord and Lady Pentreath; the old gentry

by young Mr. and Mrs. Fitzadam of the Worcestershire branch of the

Fitzadams; politics and the public good, as specialized in the cider

interest, by Mr. Fenn, member for West Orchards, accompanied by his two

daughters; Lady Mallinger’s family, by her brother, Mr. Raymond, and

his wife; the useful bachelor element by Mr. Sinker, the eminent

counsel, and by Mr. Vandernoodt, whose acquaintance Sir Hugo had found

pleasant enough at Leubronn to be adopted in England.

All had assembled in the drawing-room before the new couple appeared.

Meanwhile, the time was being passed chiefly in noticing the

children—various little Raymonds, nephews and nieces of Lady

Mallinger’s with her own three girls, who were always allowed to appear

at this hour. The scene was really delightful—enlarged by full-length

portraits with deep back-grounds, inserted in the cedar

paneling—surmounted by a ceiling that glowed with the rich colors of

the coats of arms ranged between the sockets—illuminated almost as

much by the red fire of oak-boughs as by the pale wax-lights—stilled

by the deep-piled carpet and by the high English breeding that subdues

all voices; while the mixture of ages, from the white-haired Lord and

Lady Pentreath to the four-year-old Edgar Raymond, gave a varied charm

to the living groups. Lady Mallinger, with fair matronly roundness and

mildly prominent blue eyes, moved about in her black velvet, carrying a

tiny white dog on her arm as a sort of finish to her costume; the

children were scattered among the ladies, while most of the gentlemen

were standing rather aloof, conversing with that very moderate vivacity

observable during the long minutes before dinner. Deronda was a little

out of the circle in a dialogue fixed upon him by Mr. Vandernoodt, a

man of the best Dutch blood imported at the revolution: for the rest,

one of those commodious persons in society who are nothing particular

themselves, but are understood to be acquainted with the best in every

department; close-clipped, pale-eyed, _nonchalant_, as good a foil as

could well be found to the intense coloring and vivid gravity of

Deronda.

He was talking of the bride and bridegroom, whose appearance was being

waited for. Mr. Vandernoodt was an industrious gleaner of personal

details, and could probably tell everything about a great philosopher

or physicist except his theories or discoveries; he was now implying

that he had learned many facts about Grandcourt since meeting him at

Leubronn.

“Men who have seen a good deal of life don’t always end by choosing

their wives so well. He has had rather an anecdotic history—gone

rather deep into pleasures, I fancy, lazy as he is. But, of course, you

know all about him.”

“No, really,” said Deronda, in an indifferent tone. “I know little more

of him than that he is Sir Hugo’s nephew.”

But now the door opened and deferred any satisfaction of Mr.

Vandernoodt’s communicativeness.

The scene was one to set off any figure of distinction that entered on

it, and certainly when Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt entered, no beholder

could deny that their figures had distinction. The bridegroom had

neither more nor less easy perfection of costume, neither more nor less

well-cut impassibility of face, than before his marriage. It was to be

supposed of him that he would put up with nothing less than the best in

outward equipment, wife included; and the bride was what he might have

been expected to choose. “By George, I think she’s handsomer, if

anything!” said Mr. Vandernoodt. And Deronda was of the same opinion,

but he said nothing. The white silk and diamonds—it may seem strange,

but she did wear diamonds on her neck, in her ears, in her hair—might

have something to do with the new imposingness of her beauty, which

flashed on him as more unquestionable if not more thoroughly

satisfactory than when he had first seen her at the gaming-table. Some

faces which are peculiar in their beauty are like original works of

art: for the first time they are almost always met with question. But

in seeing Gwendolen at Diplow, Deronda had discerned in her more than

he had expected of that tender appealing charm which we call womanly.

Was there any new change since then? He distrusted his impressions; but

as he saw her receiving greetings with what seemed a proud cold

quietude and a superficial smile, there seemed to be at work within her

the same demonic force that had possessed her when she took him in her

resolute glance and turned away a loser from the gaming-table. There

was no time for more of a conclusion—no time even for him to give his

greeting before the summons to dinner.

He sat not far from opposite to her at table, and could sometimes hear

what she said in answer to Sir Hugo, who was at his liveliest in

conversation with her; but though he looked toward her with the

intention of bowing, she gave him no opportunity of doing so for some

time. At last Sir Hugo, who might have imagined that they had already

spoken to each other, said, “Deronda, you will like to hear what Mrs.

Grandcourt tells me about your favorite Klesmer.”

Gwendolen’s eyelids had been lowered, and Deronda, already looking at

her, thought he discovered a quivering reluctance as she was obliged to

raise them and return his unembarrassed bow and smile, her own smile

being one of the lip merely. It was but an instant, and Sir Hugo

continued without pause,

“The Arrowpoints have condoned the marriage, and he is spending the

Christmas with his bride at Quetcham.”

“I suppose he will be glad of it for the sake of his wife, else I dare

say he would not have minded keeping at a distance,” said Deronda.

“It’s a sort of troubadour story,” said Lady Pentreath, an easy,

deep-voiced old lady; “I’m glad to find a little romance left among us.

I think our young people now are getting too worldly wise.”

“It shows the Arrowpoints’ good sense, however, to have adopted the

affair, after the fuss in the paper,” said Sir Hugo. “And disowning

your own child because of a _mésalliance_ is something like disowning

your one eye: everybody knows it’s yours, and you have no other to make

an appearance with.”

“As to _mésalliance_, there’s no blood on any side,” said Lady

Pentreath. “Old Admiral Arrowpoint was one of Nelson’s men, you know—a

doctor’s son. And we all know how the mother’s money came.”

“If they were any _mésalliance_ in the case, I should say it was on

Klesmer’s side,” said Deronda.

“Ah, you think it is a case of the immortal marrying the mortal. What

is your opinion?” said Sir Hugo, looking at Gwendolen.

“I have no doubt that Herr Klesmer thinks himself immortal. But I dare

say his wife will burn as much incense before him as he requires,” said

Gwendolen. She had recovered any composure that she might have lost.

“Don’t you approve of a wife burning incense before her husband?” said

Sir Hugo, with an air of jocoseness.

“Oh, yes,” said Gwendolen, “if it were only to make others believe in

him.” She paused a moment and then said with more gayety, “When Herr

Klesmer admires his own genius, it will take off some of the absurdity

if his wife says Amen.”

“Klesmer is no favorite of yours, I see,” said Sir Hugo.

“I think very highly of him, I assure you,” said Gwendolen. “His genius

is quite above my judgment, and I know him to be exceedingly generous.”

She spoke with the sudden seriousness which is often meant to correct

an unfair or indiscreet sally, having a bitterness against Klesmer in

her secret soul which she knew herself unable to justify. Deronda was

wondering what he should have thought of her if he had never heard of

her before: probably that she put on a little hardness and defiance by

way of concealing some painful consciousness—if, indeed, he could

imagine her manners otherwise than in the light of his suspicion. But

why did she not recognize him with more friendliness?

Sir Hugo, by way of changing the subject, said to her, “Is not this a

beautiful room? It was part of the refectory of the Abbey. There was a

division made by those pillars and the three arches, and afterward they

were built up. Else it was half as large again originally. There used

to be rows of Benedictines sitting where we are sitting. Suppose we

were suddenly to see the lights burning low and the ghosts of the old

monks rising behind all our chairs!”

“Please don’t!” said Gwendolen, with a playful shudder. “It is very

nice to come after ancestors and monks, but they should know their

places and keep underground. I should be rather frightened to go about

this house all alone. I suppose the old generations must be angry with

us because we have altered things so much.”

“Oh, the ghosts must be of all political parties,” said Sir Hugo. “And

those fellows who wanted to change things while they lived and couldn’t

do it must be on our side. But if you would not like to go over the

house alone, you will like to go in company, I hope. You and Grandcourt

ought to see it all. And we will ask Deronda to go round with us. He is

more learned about it than I am.” The baronet was in the most

complaisant of humors.

Gwendolen stole a glance at Deronda, who must have heard what Sir Hugo

said, for he had his face turned toward them helping himself to an

_entrée_; but he looked as impassive as a picture. At the notion of

Deronda’s showing her and Grandcourt the place which was to be theirs,

and which she with painful emphasis remembered might have been his

(perhaps, if others had acted differently), certain thoughts had rushed

in—thoughts repeated within her, but now returning on an occasion

embarrassingly new; and was conscious of something furtive and awkward

in her glance which Sir Hugo must have noticed. With her usual

readiness of resource against betrayal, she said, playfully, “You don’t

know how much I am afraid of Mr. Deronda.”

“How’s that? Because you think him too learned?” said Sir Hugo, whom

the peculiarity of her glance had not escaped.

“No. It is ever since I first saw him at Leubronn. Because when he came

to look on at the roulette-table, I began to lose. He cast an evil eye

on my play. He didn’t approve it. He has told me so. And now whatever I

do before him, I am afraid he will cast an evil eye upon it.”

“Gad! I’m rather afraid of him myself when he doesn’t approve,” said

Sir Hugo, glancing at Deronda; and then turning his face toward

Gwendolen, he said less audibly, “I don’t think ladies generally object

to have his eyes upon them.” The baronet’s small chronic complaint of

facetiousness was at this moment almost as annoying to Gwendolen as it

often was to Deronda.

“I object to any eyes that are critical,” she said, in a cool, high

voice, with a turn of her neck. “Are there many of these old rooms left

in the Abbey?”

“Not many. There is a fine cloistered court with a long gallery above

it. But the finest bit of all is turned into stables. It is part of the

old church. When I improved the place I made the most of every other

bit; but it was out of my reach to change the stables, so the horses

have the benefit of the fine old choir. You must go and see it.”

“I shall like to see the horses as well as the building,” said

Gwendolen.

“Oh, I have no stud to speak of. Grandcourt will look with contempt at

my horses,” said Sir Hugo. “I’ve given up hunting, and go on in a

jog-trot way, as becomes an old gentlemen with daughters. The fact is,

I went in for doing too much at this place. We all lived at Diplow for

two years while the alterations were going on: Do you like Diplow?”

“Not particularly,” said Gwendolen, with indifference. One would have

thought that the young lady had all her life had more family seats than

she cared to go to.

“Ah! it will not do after Ryelands,” said Sir Hugo, well pleased.

“Grandcourt, I know, took it for the sake of the hunting. But he found

something so much better there,” added the baronet, lowering his voice,

“that he might well prefer it to any other place in the world.”

“It has one attraction for me,” said Gwendolen, passing over this

compliment with a chill smile, “that it is within reach of Offendene.”

“I understand that,” said Sir Hugo, and then let the subject drop.

What amiable baronet can escape the effect of a strong desire for a

particular possession? Sir Hugo would have been glad that Grandcourt,

with or without reason, should prefer any other place to Diplow; but

inasmuch as in the pure process of wishing we can always make the

conditions of our gratification benevolent, he did wish that

Grandcourt’s convenient disgust for Diplow should not be associated

with his marriage with this very charming bride. Gwendolen was much to

the baronet’s taste, but, as he observed afterward to Lady Mallinger,

he should never have taken her for a young girl who had married beyond

her expectations.

Deronda had not heard much of this conversation, having given his

attention elsewhere, but the glimpses he had of Gwendolen’s manner

deepened the impression that it had something newly artificial.

Later, in the drawing-room, Deronda, at somebody’s request, sat down to

the piano and sang. Afterward, Mrs. Raymond took his place; and on

rising he observed that Gwendolen had left her seat, and had come to

this end of the room, as if to listen more fully, but was now standing

with her back to every one, apparently contemplating a fine cowled head

carved in ivory which hung over a small table. He longed to go to her

and speak. Why should he not obey such an impulse, as he would have

done toward any other lady in the room? Yet he hesitated some moments,

observing the graceful lines of her back, but not moving.

If you have any reason for not indulging a wish to speak to a fair

woman, it is a bad plan to look long at her back: the wish to see what

it screens becomes the stronger. There may be a very sweet smile on the

other side. Deronda ended by going to the end of the small table, at

right angles to Gwendolen’s position, but before he could speak she had

turned on him no smile, but such an appealing look of sadness, so

utterly different from the chill effort of her recognition at table,

that his speech was checked. For what was an appreciative space of time

to both, though the observation of others could not have measured it,

they looked at each other—she seeming to take the deep rest of

confession, he with an answering depth of sympathy that neutralized all

other feelings.

“Will you not join in the music?” he said, by way of meeting the

necessity for speech.

That her look of confession had been involuntary was shown by that just

perceptible shake and change of countenance with which she roused

herself to reply calmly, “I join in it by listening. I am fond of

music.”

“Are you not a musician?”

“I have given a great deal of time to music. But I have not talent

enough to make it worth while. I shall never sing again.”

“But if you are fond of music, it will always be worth while in

private, for your own delight. I make it a virtue to be content with my

middlingness,” said Deronda, smiling; “it is always pardonable, so that

one does not ask others to take it for superiority.”

“I cannot imitate you,” said Gwendolen, recovering her tone of

artificial vivacity. “To be middling with me is another phrase for

being dull. And the worst fault I have to find with the world is that

it is dull. Do you know, I am going to justify gambling in spite of

you. It is a refuge from dullness.”

“I don’t admit the justification,” said Deronda. “I think what we call

the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how can any one

find an intense interest in life? And many do.”

“Ah, I see! The fault I find in the world is my own fault,” said

Gwendolen, smiling at him. Then after a moment, looking up at the ivory

again, she said, “Do _you_ never find fault with the world or with

others?”

“Oh, yes. When I am in a grumbling mood.”

“And hate people? Confess you hate them when they stand in your

way—when their gain is your loss? That is your own phrase, you know.”

“We are often standing in each other’s way when we can’t help it. I

think it is stupid to hate people on that ground.”

“But if they injure you and could have helped it?” said Gwendolen with

a hard intensity unaccountable in incidental talk like this.

Deronda wondered at her choice of subjects. A painful impression

arrested his answer a moment, but at last he said, with a graver,

deeper intonation, “Why, then, after all, I prefer my place to theirs.”

“There I believe you are right,” said Gwendolen, with a sudden little

laugh, and turned to join the group at the piano.

Deronda looked around for Grandcourt, wondering whether he followed his

bride’s movements with any attention; but it was rather undiscerning to

him to suppose that he could find out the fact. Grandcourt had a

delusive mood of observing whatever had an interest for him, which

could be surpassed by no sleepy-eyed animal on the watch for prey. At

that moment he was plunged in the depth of an easy chair, being talked

to by Mr. Vandernoodt, who apparently thought the acquaintance of such

a bridegroom worth cultivating; and an incautious person might have

supposed it safe to telegraph secrets in front of him, the common

prejudice being that your quick observer is one whose eyes have quick

movements. Not at all. If you want a respectable witness who will see

nothing inconvenient, choose a vivacious gentleman, very much on the

alert, with two eyes wide open, a glass in one of them, and an entire

impartiality as to the purpose of looking. If Grandcourt cared to keep

any one under his power he saw them out of the corners of his long

narrow eyes, and if they went behind him he had a constructive process

by which he knew what they were doing there. He knew perfectly well

where his wife was, and how she was behaving. Was he going to be a

jealous husband? Deronda imagined that to be likely; but his

imagination was as much astray about Grandcourt as it would have been

about an unexplored continent where all the species were peculiar. He

did not conceive that he himself was a likely subject of jealousy, or

that he should give any pretext for it; but the suspicion that a wife

is not happy naturally leads one to speculate on the husband’s private

deportment; and Deronda found himself after one o’clock in the morning

in the rather ludicrous position of sitting up severely holding a

Hebrew grammar in his hands (for somehow, in deference to Mordecai, he

had begun to study Hebrew), with the consciousness that he had been in

that attitude nearly an hour, and had thought of nothing but Gwendolen

and her husband. To be an unusual young man means for the most part to

get a difficult mastery over the usual, which is often like the sprite

of ill-luck you pack up your goods to escape from, and see grinning at

you from the top of your luggage van. The peculiarities of Deronda’s

nature had been acutely touched by the brief incident and words which

made the history of his intercourse with Gwendolen; and this evening’s

slight addition had given them an importunate recurrence. It was not

vanity—it was ready sympathy that had made him alive to a certain

appealingness in her behavior toward him; and the difficulty with which

she had seemed to raise her eyes to bow to him, in the first instance,

was to be interpreted now by that unmistakable look of involuntary

confidence which she had afterward turned on him under the

consciousness of his approach.

“What is the use of it all?” thought Deronda, as he threw down his

grammar, and began to undress. “I can’t do anything to help her—nobody

can, if she has found out her mistake already. And it seems to me that

she has a dreary lack of the ideas that might help her. Strange and

piteous to think what a center of wretchedness a delicate piece of

human flesh like that might be, wrapped round with fine

raiment, her ears pierced for gems, her head held loftily, her mouth

all smiling pretense, the poor soul within her sitting in sick distaste

of all things! But what do I know of her? There may be a demon in her

to match the worst husband, for what I can tell. She was clearly an

ill-educated, worldly girl: perhaps she is a coquette.”

This last reflection, not much believed in, was a self-administered

dose of caution, prompted partly by Sir Hugo’s much-contemned joking on

the subject of flirtation. Deronda resolved not to volunteer any

_tête-à-tête_ with Gwendolen during the days of her stay at the Abbey;

and he was capable of keeping a resolve in spite of much inclination to

the contrary.

But a man cannot resolve about a woman’s actions, least of all about

those of a woman like Gwendolen, in whose nature there was a

combination of proud reserve with rashness, of perilously poised terror

with defiance, which might alternately flatter and disappoint control.

Few words could less represent her than “coquette.” She had native love

of homage, and belief in her own power; but no cold artifice for the

sake of enslaving. And the poor thing’s belief in her power, with her

other dreams before marriage, had often to be thrust aside now like the

toys of a sick child, which it looks at with dull eyes, and has no

heart to play with, however it may try.

The next day at lunch Sir Hugo said to her, “The thaw has gone on like

magic, and it’s so pleasant out of doors just now—shall we go and see

the stables and the other odd bits about the place?”

“Yes, pray,” said Gwendolen. “You will like to see the stables,

Henleigh?” she added, looking at her husband.

“Uncommonly,” said Grandcourt, with an indifference which seemed to

give irony to the word, as he returned her look. It was the first time

Deronda had seen them speak to each other since their arrival, and he

thought their exchange of looks as cold or official as if it had been a

ceremony to keep up a charter. Still, the English fondness for reserve

will account for much negation; and Grandcourt’s manners with an extra

veil of reserve over them might be expected to present the extreme type

of the national taste.

“Who else is inclined to make the tour of the house and premises?” said

Sir Hugo. “The ladies must muffle themselves; there is only just about

time to do it well before sunset. You will go, Dan, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Deronda, carelessly, knowing that Sir Hugo would think

any excuse disobliging.

“All meet in the library, then, when they are ready—say in half an

hour,” said the baronet. Gwendolen made herself ready with wonderful

quickness, and in ten minutes came down into the library in her sables,

plume, and little thick boots. As soon as she entered the room she was

aware that some one else was there: it was precisely what she had hoped

for. Deronda was standing with his back toward her at the far end of

the room, and was looking over a newspaper. How could little thick

boots make any noise on an Axminster carpet? And to cough would have

seemed an intended signaling which her pride could not condescend to;

also, she felt bashful about walking up to him and letting him know

that she was there, though it was her hunger to speak to him which had

set her imagination on constructing this chance of finding him, and had

made her hurry down, as birds hover near the water which they dare not

drink. Always uneasily dubious about his opinion of her, she felt a

peculiar anxiety to-day, lest he might think of her with contempt, as

one triumphantly conscious of being Grandcourt’s wife, the future lady

of this domain. It was her habitual effort now to magnify the

satisfactions of her pride, on which she nourished her strength; but

somehow Deronda’s being there disturbed them all. There was not the

faintest touch of coquetry in the attitude of her mind toward him: he

was unique to her among men, because he had impressed her as being not

her admirer but her superior: in some mysterious way he was becoming a

part of her conscience, as one woman whose nature is an object of

reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man.

And now he would not look round and find out that she was there! The

paper crackled in his hand, his head rose and sank, exploring those

stupid columns, and he was evidently stroking his beard; as if this

world were a very easy affair to her. Of course all the rest of the

company would soon be down, and the opportunity of her saying something

to efface her flippancy of the evening before, would be quite gone. She

felt sick with irritation—so fast do young creatures like her absorb

misery through invisible suckers of their own fancies—and her face had

gathered that peculiar expression which comes with a mortification to

which tears are forbidden.

At last he threw down the paper and turned round.

“Oh, you are there already,” he said, coming forward a step or two: “I

must go and put on my coat.”

He turned aside and walked out of the room. This was behaving quite

badly. Mere politeness would have made him stay to exchange some words

before leaving her alone. It was true that Grandcourt came in with Sir

Hugo immediately after, so that the words must have been too few to be

worth anything. As it was, they saw him walking from the library door.

“A—you look rather ill,” said Grandcourt, going straight up to her,

standing in front of her, and looking into her eyes. “Do you feel equal

to the walk?”

“Yes, I shall like it,” said Gwendolen, without the slightest movement

except this of the lips.

“We could put off going over the house, you know, and only go out of

doors,” said Sir Hugo, kindly, while Grandcourt turned aside.

“Oh, dear no!” said Gwendolen, speaking with determination; “let us put

off nothing. I want a long walk.”

The rest of the walking party—two ladies and two gentlemen besides

Deronda—had now assembled; and Gwendolen rallying, went with due

cheerfulness by the side of Sir Hugo, paying apparently an equal

attention to the commentaries Deronda was called upon to give on the

various architectural fragments, to Sir Hugo’s reasons for not

attempting to remedy the mixture of the undisguised modern with the

antique—which in his opinion only made the place the more truly

historical. On their way to the buttery and kitchen they took the

outside of the house and paused before a beautiful pointed doorway,

which was the only old remnant in the east front.

“Well, now, to my mind,” said Sir Hugo, “that is more interesting

standing as it is in the middle of what is frankly four centuries

later, than if the whole front had been dressed up in a pretense of the

thirteenth century. Additions ought to smack of the time when they are

made and carry the stamp of their period. I wouldn’t destroy any old

bits, but that notion of reproducing the old is a mistake, I think. At

least, if a man likes to do it he must pay for his whistle. Besides,

where are you to stop along that road—making loopholes where you don’t

want to peep, and so on? You may as well ask me to wear out the stones

with kneeling; eh, Grandcourt?”

“A confounded nuisance,” drawled Grandcourt. “I hate fellows wanting to

howl litanies—acting the greatest bores that have ever existed.”

“Well, yes, that’s what their romanticism must come to,” said Sir Hugo,

in a tone of confidential assent—“that is if they carry it out

logically.”

“I think that way of arguing against a course because it may be ridden

down to an absurdity would soon bring life to a standstill,” said

Deronda. “It is not the logic of human action, but of a roasting-jack,

that must go on to the last turn when it has been once wound up. We can

do nothing safely without some judgment as to where we are to stop.”

“I find the rule of the pocket the best guide,” said Sir Hugo,

laughingly. “And as for most of your new-old building, you had need to

hire men to scratch and chip it all over artistically to give it an

elderly-looking surface; which at the present rate of labor would not

answer.”

“Do you want to keep up the old fashions, then, Mr. Deronda?” said

Gwendolen, taking advantage of the freedom of grouping to fall back a

little, while Sir Hugo and Grandcourt went on.

“Some of them. I don’t see why we should not use our choice there as we

do elsewhere—or why either age or novelty by itself is an argument for

or against. To delight in doing things because our fathers did them is

good if it shuts out nothing better; it enlarges the range of

affection—and affection is the broadest basis of good in life.”

“Do you think so?” said Gwendolen with a little surprise. “I should

have thought you cared most about ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and all

that.”

“But to care about _them_ is a sort of affection,” said Deronda,

smiling at her sudden _naïveté_. “Call it attachment; interest, willing

to bear a great deal for the sake of being with them and saving them

from injury. Of course, it makes a difference if the objects of

interest are human beings; but generally in all deep affections the

objects are a mixture—half persons and half ideas—sentiments and

affections flow in together.”

“I wonder whether I understand that,” said Gwendolen, putting up her

chin in her old saucy manner. “I believe I am not very affectionate;

perhaps you mean to tell me, that is the reason why I don’t see much

good in life.”

“No, I did _not_ mean to tell you that; but I admit that I should think

it true if I believed what you say of yourself,” said Deronda, gravely.

Here Sir Hugo and Grandcourt turned round and paused.

“I never can get Mr. Deronda to pay me a compliment,” said Gwendolen.

“I have quite a curiosity to see whether a little flattery can be

extracted from him.”

“Ah!” said Sir Hugo, glancing at Deronda, “the fact is, it is useless

to flatter a bride. We give it up in despair. She has been so fed on

sweet speeches that every thing we say seems tasteless.”

“Quite true,” said Gwendolen, bending her head and smiling. “Mr.

Grandcourt won me by neatly-turned compliments. If there had been one

word out of place it would have been fatal.”

“Do you hear that?” said Sir Hugo, looking at the husband.

“Yes,” said Grandcourt, without change of countenance. “It’s a deucedly

hard thing to keep up, though.”

All this seemed to Sir Hugo a natural playfulness between such a

husband and wife; but Deronda wondered at the misleading alternations

in Gwendolen’s manner, which at one moment seemed to excite sympathy by

childlike indiscretion, at another to repel it by proud concealment. He

tried to keep out of her way by devoting himself to Miss Juliet Fenn, a

young lady whose profile had been so unfavorably decided by

circumstances over which she had no control, that Gwendolen some months

ago had felt it impossible to be jealous of her. Nevertheless, when

they were seeing the kitchen—a part of the original building in

perfect preservation—the depth of shadow in the niches of the

stone-walls and groined vault, the play of light from the huge glowing

fire on polished tin, brass, and copper, the fine resonance that came

with every sound of voice or metal, were all spoiled for Gwendolen, and

Sir Hugo’s speech about them was made rather importunate, because

Deronda was discoursing to the other ladies and kept at a distance from

her. It did not signify that the other gentlemen took the opportunity

of being near her: of what use in the world was their admiration while

she had an uneasy sense that there was some standard in Deronda’s mind

which measured her into littleness? Mr. Vandernoodt, who had the mania

of always describing one thing while you were looking at another, was

quite intolerable with his insistence on Lord Blough’s kitchen, which

he had seen in the north.

“Pray don’t ask us to see two kitchens at once. It makes the heat

double. I must really go out of it,” she cried at last, marching

resolutely into the open air, and leaving the others in the rear.

Grandcourt was already out, and as she joined him, he said,

“I wondered how long you meant to stay in that damned place”—one of

the freedoms he had assumed as a husband being the use of his strongest

epithets. Gwendolen, turning to see the rest of the party approach,

said,

“It was certainly rather too warm in one’s wraps.”

They walked on the gravel across a green court, where the snow still

lay in islets on the grass, and in masses on the boughs of the great

cedar and the crenelated coping of the stone walls, and then into a

larger court, where there was another cedar, to find the beautiful

choir long ago turned into stables, in the first instance perhaps after

an impromptu fashion by troopers, who had a pious satisfaction in

insulting the priests of Baal and the images of Ashtoreth, the queen of

heaven. The exterior—its west end, save for the stable door, walled in

with brick and covered with ivy—was much defaced, maimed of finial and

gargoyle, the friable limestone broken and fretted, and lending its

soft gray to a powdery dark lichen; the long windows, too, were filled

in with brick as far as the springing of the arches, the broad

clerestory windows with wire or ventilating blinds. With the low wintry

afternoon sun upon it, sending shadows from the cedar boughs, and

lighting up the touches of snow remaining on every ledge, it had still

a scarcely disturbed aspect of antique solemnity, which gave the scene

in the interior rather a startling effect; though, ecclesiastical or

reverential indignation apart, the eyes could hardly help dwelling with

pleasure on its piquant picturesqueness. Each finely-arched chapel was

turned into a stall, where in the dusty glazing of the windows there

still gleamed patches of crimson, orange, blue, and palest violet; for

the rest, the choir had been gutted, the floor leveled, paved, and

drained according to the most approved fashion, and a line of loose

boxes erected in the middle: a soft light fell from the upper windows

on sleek brown or gray flanks and haunches; on mild equine faces

looking out with active nostrils over the varnished brown boarding; on

the hay hanging from racks where the saints once looked down from the

altar-pieces, and on the pale golden straw scattered or in heaps; on a

little white-and-liver-colored spaniel making his bed on the back of an

elderly hackney, and on four ancient angels, still showing signs of

devotion like mutilated martyrs—while over all, the grand pointed

roof, untouched by reforming wash, showed its lines and colors

mysteriously through veiling shadow and cobweb, and a hoof now and then

striking against the boards seemed to fill the vault with thunder,

while outside there was the answering bay of the blood-hounds.

“Oh, this is glorious!” Gwendolen burst forth, in forgetfulness of

everything but the immediate impression: there had been a little

intoxication for her in the grand spaces of courts and building, and

the fact of her being an important person among them. “This _is_

glorious! Only I wish there were a horse in every one of the boxes. I

would ten times rather have these stables than those at Diplow.”

But she had no sooner said this than some consciousness arrested her,

and involuntarily she turned her eyes toward Deronda, who oddly enough

had taken off his felt hat and stood holding it before him as if they

had entered a room or an actual church. He, like others, happened to be

looking at her, and their eyes met—to her intense vexation, for it

seemed to her that by looking at him she had betrayed the reference of

her thoughts, and she felt herself blushing: she exaggerated the

impression that even Sir Hugo as well as Deronda would have of her bad

taste in referring to the possession of anything at the Abbey: as for

Deronda, she had probably made him despise her. Her annoyance at what

she imagined to be the obviousness of her confusion robbed her of her

usual facility in carrying it off by playful speech, and turning up her

face to look at the roof, she wheeled away in that attitude. If any had

noticed her blush as significant, they had certainly not interpreted it

by the secret windings and recesses of her feeling. A blush is no

language: only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two

contradictories. Deronda alone had a faint guess at some part of her

feeling; but while he was observing her he was himself under

observation.

“Do you take off your hat to horses?” said Grandcourt, with a slight

sneer.

“Why not?” said Deronda, covering himself. He had really taken off the

hat automatically, and if he had been an ugly man might doubtless have

done so with impunity; ugliness having naturally the air of involuntary

exposure, and beauty, of display.

Gwendolen’s confusion was soon merged in the survey of the horses,

which Grandcourt politely abstained from appraising, languidly

assenting to Sir Hugo’s alternate depreciation and eulogy of the same

animal, as one that he should not have bought when he was younger, and

piqued himself on his horses, but yet one that had better qualities

than many more expensive brutes.

“The fact is, stables dive deeper and deeper into the pocket nowadays,

and I am very glad to have got rid of that _démangeaison_,” said Sir

Hugo, as they were coming out.

“What is a man to do, though?” said Grandcourt. “He must ride. I don’t

see what else there is to do. And I don’t call it riding to sit astride

a set of brutes with every deformity under the sun.”

This delicate diplomatic way of characterizing Sir Hugo’s stud did not

require direct notice; and the baronet, feeling that the conversation

had worn rather thin, said to the party generally, “Now we are going to

see the cloister—the finest bit of all—in perfect preservation; the

monks might have been walking there yesterday.”

But Gwendolen had lingered behind to look at the kenneled blood-hounds,

perhaps because she felt a little dispirited; and Grandcourt waited for

her.

“You had better take my arm,” he said, in his low tone of command; and

she took it.

“It’s a great bore being dragged about in this way, and no cigar,” said

Grandcourt.

“I thought you would like it.”

“Like it!—one eternal chatter. And encouraging those ugly

girls—inviting one to meet such monsters. How that _fat_ Deronda can

bear looking at her——”

“Why do you call him a _fat_? Do you object to him so much?”

“Object? no. What do I care about his being a _fat_? It’s of no

consequence to me. I’ll invite him to Diplow again if you like.”

“I don’t think he would come. He is too clever and learned to care

about _us_,” said Gwendolen, thinking it useful for her husband to be

told (privately) that it was possible for him to be looked down upon.

“I never saw that make much difference in a man. Either he is a

gentleman, or he is not,” said Grandcourt.

That a new husband and wife should snatch a moment’s _tête-à-tête_ was

what could be understood and indulged; and the rest of the party left

them in the rear till, re-entering the garden, they all paused in that

cloistered court where, among the falling rose-petals thirteen years

before, we saw a boy becoming acquainted with his first sorrow. This

cloister was built of a harder stone than the church, and had been in

greater safety from the wearing weather. It was a rare example of a

northern cloister with arched and pillared openings not intended for

glazing, and the delicately-wrought foliage of the capitals seemed

still to carry the very touches of the chisel. Gwendolen had dropped

her husband’s arm and joined the other ladies, to whom Deronda was

noticing the delicate sense which had combined freedom with accuracy in

the imitation of natural forms.

“I wonder whether one oftener learns to love real objects through their

representations, or the representations through the real objects,” he

said, after pointing out a lovely capital made by the curled leaves of

greens, showing their reticulated under-side with the firm gradual

swell of its central rib. “When I was a little fellow these capitals

taught me to observe and delight in the structure of leaves.”

“I suppose you can see every line of them with your eyes shut,” said

Juliet Fenn.

“Yes. I was always repeating them, because for a good many years this

court stood for me as my only image of a convent, and whenever I read

of monks and monasteries, this was my scenery for them.”

“You must love this place very much,” said Miss Fenn, innocently, not

thinking of inheritance. “So many homes are like twenty others. But

this is unique, and you seem to know every cranny of it. I dare say you

could never love another home so well.”

“Oh, I carry it with me,” said Deronda, quietly, being used to all

possible thoughts of this kind. “To most men their early home is no

more than a memory of their early years, and I’m not sure but they have

the best of it. The image is never marred. There’s no disappointment in

memory, and one’s exaggerations are always on the good side.”

Gwendolen felt sure that he spoke in that way out of delicacy to her

and Grandcourt—because he knew they must hear him; and that he

probably thought of her as a selfish creature who only cared about

possessing things in her own person. But whatever he might say, it must

have been a secret hardship to him that any circumstances of his birth

had shut him out from the inheritance of his father’s position; and if

he supposed that she exulted in her husband’s taking it, what could he

feel for her but scornful pity? Indeed it seemed clear to her that he

was avoiding her, and preferred talking to others—which nevertheless

was not kind in him.

With these thoughts in her mind she was prevented by a mixture of pride

and timidity from addressing him again, and when they were looking at

the rows of quaint portraits in the gallery above the cloisters, she

kept up her air of interest and made her vivacious remarks without any

direct appeal to Deronda. But at the end she was very weary of her

assumed spirits, and as Grandcourt turned into the billiard-room, she went

to the pretty boudoir which had been assigned to her, and shut herself

up to look melancholy at her ease. No chemical process shows a more

wonderful activity than the transforming influence of the thoughts we

imagine to be going on in another. Changes in theory, religion,

admirations, may begin with a suspicion of dissent or disapproval, even

when the grounds of disapproval are but matter of searching conjecture.

Poor Gwendolen was conscious of an uneasy, transforming process—all

the old nature shaken to its depths, its hopes spoiled, its pleasures

perturbed, but still showing wholeness and strength in the will to

reassert itself. After every new shock of humiliation she tried to

adjust herself and seize her old supports—proud concealment, trust in

new excitements that would make life go by without much thinking; trust

in some deed of reparation to nullify her self-blame and shield her

from a vague, ever-visiting dread of some horrible calamity; trust in

the hardening effect of use and wont that would make her indifferent to

her miseries.

Yes—miseries. This beautiful, healthy young creature, with her

two-and-twenty years and her gratified ambition, no longer felt

inclined to kiss her fortunate image in the glass. She looked at it

with wonder that she could be so miserable. One belief which had

accompanied her through her unmarried life as a self-cajoling

superstition, encouraged by the subordination of every one about

her—the belief in her own power of dominating—was utterly gone.

Already, in seven short weeks, which seemed half her life, her husband

had gained a mastery which she could no more resist than she could have

resisted the benumbing effect from the touch of a torpedo. Gwendolen’s

will had seemed imperious in its small girlish sway; but it was the

will of a creature with a large discourse of imaginative fears: a

shadow would have been enough to relax its hold. And she had found a

will like that of a crab or a boa-constrictor, which goes on pinching

or crushing without alarm at thunder. Not that Grandcourt was without

calculation of the intangible effects which were the chief means of

mastery; indeed, he had a surprising acuteness in detecting that

situation of feeling in Gwendolen which made her proud and rebellious

spirit dumb and helpless before him.

She had burned Lydia Glasher’s letter with an instantaneous terror lest

other eyes should see it, and had tenaciously concealed from Grandcourt

that there was any other cause of her violent hysterics than the

excitement and fatigue of the day: she had been urged into an implied

falsehood. “Don’t ask me—it was my feeling about everything—it was

the sudden change from home.” The words of that letter kept repeating

themselves, and hung on her consciousness with the weight of a

prophetic doom. “I am the grave in which your chance of happiness is

buried as well as mine. You had your warning. You have chosen to injure

me and my children. He had meant to marry me. He would have married me

at last, if you had not broken your word. You will have your

punishment. I desire it with all my soul. Will you give him this letter

to set him against me and ruin us more—me and my children? Shall you

like to stand before your husband with these diamonds on you, and these

words of mine in his thoughts and yours? Will he think you have any

right to complain when he has made you miserable? You took him with

your eyes open. The willing wrong you have done me will be your curse.”

The words had nestled their venomous life within her, and stirred

continually the vision of the scene at the Whispering Stones. That

scene was now like an accusing apparition: she dreaded that Grandcourt

should know of it—so far out of her sight now was that possibility she

had once satisfied herself with, of speaking to him about Mrs. Glasher

and her children, and making them rich amends. Any endurance seemed

easier than the mortal humiliation of confessing that she knew all

before she married him, and in marrying him had broken her word. For

the reasons by which she had justified herself when the marriage

tempted her, and all her easy arrangement of her future power over her

husband to make him do better than he might be inclined to do, were now

as futile as the burned-out lights which set off a child’s pageant. Her

sense of being blameworthy was exaggerated by a dread both definite and

vague. The definite dread was lest the veil of secrecy should fall

between her and Grandcourt, and give him the right to taunt her. With

the reading of that letter had begun her husband’s empire of fear.

And her husband all the while knew it. He had not, indeed, any distinct

knowledge of her broken promise, and would not have rated highly the

effect of that breach on her conscience; but he was aware not only of

what Lush had told him about the meeting at the Whispering Stones, but

also of Gwendolen’s concealment as to the cause of her sudden illness.

He felt sure that Lydia had enclosed something with the diamonds, and

that this something, whatever it was, had at once created in Gwendolen

a new repulsion for him and a reason for not daring to manifest it. He

did not greatly mind, or feel as many men might have felt, that his

hopes in marriage were blighted: he had wanted to marry Gwendolen, and

he was not a man to repent. Why should a gentleman whose other

relations in life are carried on without the luxury of sympathetic

feeling, be supposed to require that kind of condiment in domestic

life? What he chiefly felt was that a change had come over the

conditions of his mastery, which, far from shaking it, might establish

it the more thoroughly. And it was established. He judged that he had

not married a simpleton unable to perceive the impossibility of escape,

or to see alternative evils: he had married a girl who had spirit and

pride enough not to make a fool of herself by forfeiting all the

advantages of a position which had attracted her; and if she wanted

pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind properly he would take

care not to withhold them.

Gwendolen, indeed, with all that gnawing trouble in her consciousness,

had hardly for a moment dropped the sense that it was her part to bear

herself with dignity, and appear what is called happy. In disclosure of

disappointment or sorrow she saw nothing but a humiliation which would

have been vinegar to her wounds. Whatever her husband might have come

at last to be to her, she meant to wear the yoke so as not to be

pitied. For she did think of the coming years with presentiment: she

was frightened at Grandcourt. The poor thing had passed from her

girlish sauciness of superiority over this inert specimen of personal

distinction into an amazed perception of her former ignorance about the

possible mental attitude of a man toward the woman he sought in

marriage—of her present ignorance as to what their life with each

other might turn into. For novelty gives immeasurableness to fear, and

fills the early time of all sad changes with phantoms of the future.

Her little coquetries, voluntary or involuntary, had told on Grandcourt

during courtship, and formed a medium of communication between them,

showing him in the light of a creature such as she could understand and

manage: but marriage had nullified all such interchange, and Grandcourt

had become a blank uncertainty to her in everything but this, that he

would do just what he willed, and that she had neither devices at her

command to determine his will, nor any rational means of escaping it.

What had occurred between them and her wearing the diamonds was

typical. One evening, shortly before they came to the Abbey, they were

going to dine at Brackenshaw Castle. Gwendolen had said to herself that

she would never wear those diamonds: they had horrible words clinging

and crawling about them, as from some bad dream, whose images lingered

on the perturbed sense. She came down dressed in her white, with only a

streak of gold and a pendant of emeralds, which Grandcourt had given

her, round her neck, and the little emerald stars in her ears.

Grandcourt stood with his back to the fire and looked at her as she

entered.

“Am I altogether as you like?” she said, speaking rather gaily. She was

not without enjoyment in this occasion of going to Brackenshaw Castle

with her new dignities upon her, as men whose affairs are sadly

involved will enjoy dining out among persons likely to be under a

pleasant mistake about them.

“No,” said Grandcourt.

Gwendolen felt suddenly uncomfortable, wondering what was to come. She

was not unprepared for some struggle about the diamonds; but suppose he

were going to say, in low, contemptuous tones, “You are not in any way

what I like.” It was very bad for her to be secretly hating him; but it

would be much worse when he gave the first sign of hating her.

“Oh, mercy!” she exclaimed, the pause lasting till she could bear it no

longer. “How am I to alter myself?”

“Put on the diamonds,” said Grandcourt, looking straight at her with

his narrow glance.

Gwendolen paused in her turn, afraid of showing any emotion, and

feeling that nevertheless there was some change in her eyes as they met

his. But she was obliged to answer, and said as indifferently as she

could, “Oh, please not. I don’t think diamonds suit me.”

“What you think has nothing to do with it,” said Grandcourt, his _sotto

voce_ imperiousness seeming to have an evening quietude and finish,

like his toilet. “I wish you to wear the diamonds.”

“Pray excuse me; I like these emeralds,” said Gwendolen, frightened in

spite of her preparation. That white hand of his which was touching his

whisker was capable, she fancied, of clinging round her neck and

threatening to throttle her; for her fear of him, mingling with the

vague foreboding of some retributive calamity which hung about her

life, had reached a superstitious point.

“Oblige me by telling me your reason for not wearing the diamonds when

I desire it,” said Grandcourt. His eyes were still fixed upon her, and

she felt her own eyes narrowing under them as if to shut out an

entering pain.

Of what use was the rebellion within her? She could say nothing that

would not hurt her worse than submission. Turning slowly and covering

herself again, she went to her dressing-room. As she reached out the

diamonds, it occurred to her that her unwillingness to wear them might

have already raised a suspicion in Grandcourt that she had some

knowledge about them which he had not given her. She fancied that his

eyes showed a delight in torturing her. How could she be defiant? She

had nothing to say that would touch him—nothing but what would give

him a more painful grasp on her consciousness.

“He delights in making the dogs and horses quail: that is half his

pleasure in calling them his,” she said to herself, as she opened the

jewel-case with a shivering sensation.

“It will come to be so with me; and I shall quail. What else is there

for me? I will not say to the world, ‘Pity me.’”

She was about to ring for her maid when she heard the door open behind

her. It was Grandcourt who came in.

“You want some one to fasten them,” he said, coming toward her.

She did not answer, but simply stood still, leaving him to take out the

ornaments and fasten them as he would. Doubtless he had been used to

fasten them on some one else. With a bitter sort of sarcasm against

herself, Gwendolen thought, “What a privilege this is, to have robbed

another woman of!”

“What makes you so cold?” said Grandcourt, when he had fastened the

last ear-ring. “Pray put plenty of furs on. I hate to see a woman come

into a room looking frozen. If you are to appear as a bride at all,

appear decently.”

This marital speech was not exactly persuasive, but it touched the

quick of Gwendolen’s pride and forced her to rally. The words of the

bad dream crawled about the diamonds still, but only for her: to others

they were brilliants that suited her perfectly, and Grandcourt inwardly

observed that she answered to the rein.

“Oh, yes, mamma, quite happy,” Gwendolen had said on her return to

Diplow. “Not at all disappointed in Ryelands. It is a much finer place

than this—larger in every way. But don’t you want some more money?”

“Did you not know that Mr. Grandcourt left me a letter on your

wedding-day? I am to have eight hundred a year. He wishes me to keep

Offendene for the present, while you are at Diplow. But if there were

some pretty cottage near the park at Ryelands we might live there

without much expense, and I should have you most of the year, perhaps.”

“We must leave that to Mr. Grandcourt, mamma.”

“Oh, certainly. It is exceedingly handsome of him to say that he will

pay the rent for Offendene till June. And we can go on very

well—without any man-servant except Crane, just for out-of-doors. Our

good Merry will stay with us and help me to manage everything. It is

natural that Mr. Grandcourt should wish me to live in a good style of

house in your neighborhood, and I cannot decline. So he said nothing

about it to you?”

“No; he wished me to hear it from you, I suppose.”

Gwendolen in fact had been very anxious to have some definite knowledge

of what would be done for her mother, but at no moment since her

marriage had she been able to overcome the difficulty of mentioning the

subject to Grandcourt. Now, however, she had a sense of obligation

which would not let her rest without saying to him, “It is very good of

you to provide for mamma. You took a great deal on yourself in marrying

a girl who had nothing but relations belonging to her.”

Grandcourt was smoking, and only said carelessly, “Of course I was not

going to let her live like a gamekeeper’s mother.”

“At least he is not mean about money,” thought Gwendolen, “and mamma is

the better off for my marriage.”

She often pursued the comparison between what might have been, if she

had not married Grandcourt, and what actually was, trying to persuade

herself that life generally was barren of satisfaction, and that if she

had chosen differently she might now have been looking back with a

regret as bitter as the feeling she was trying to argue away. Her

mother’s dullness, which used to irritate her, she was at present

inclined to explain as the ordinary result of woman’s experience. True,

she still saw that she would “manage differently from mamma;” but her

management now only meant that she would carry her troubles with

spirit, and let none suspect them. By and by she promised herself that

she should get used to her heart-sores, and find excitements that would

carry her through life, as a hard gallop carried her through some of

the morning hours. There was gambling: she had heard stories at

Leubronn of fashionable women who gambled in all sorts of ways. It

seemed very flat to her at this distance, but perhaps if she began to

gamble again, the passion might awake. Then there was the pleasure of

producing an effect by her appearance in society: what did celebrated

beauties do in town when their husbands could afford display? All men

were fascinated by them: they had a perfect equipage and toilet, walked

into public places, and bowed, and made the usual answers, and walked

out again, perhaps they bought china, and practiced accomplishments. If

she could only feel a keen appetite for those pleasures—could only

believe in pleasure as she used to do! Accomplishments had ceased to

have the exciting quality of promising any pre-eminence to her; and as

for fascinated gentlemen—adorers who might hover round her with

languishment, and diversify married life with the romantic stir of

mystery, passion, and danger, which her French reading had given her

some girlish notion of—they presented themselves to her imagination

with the fatal circumstance that, instead of fascinating her in return,

they were clad in her own weariness and disgust. The admiring male,

rashly adjusting the expression of his features and the turn of his

conversation to her supposed tastes, had always been an absurd object

to her, and at present seemed rather detestable. Many courses are

actually pursued—follies and sins both convenient and

inconvenient—without pleasure or hope of pleasure; but to solace

ourselves with imagining any course beforehand, there must be some

foretaste of pleasure in the shape of appetite; and Gwendolen’s

appetite had sickened. Let her wander over the possibilities of her

life as she would, an uncertain shadow dogged her. Her confidence in

herself and her destiny had turned into remorse and dread; she trusted

neither herself nor her future.

This hidden helplessness gave fresh force to the hold Deronda had from

the first taken on her mind, as one who had an unknown standard by

which he judged her. Had he some way of looking at things which might

be a new footing for her—an inward safeguard against possible events

which she dreaded as stored-up retribution? It is one of the secrets in

that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that

to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some

personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them

into receptiveness. It had been Gwendolen’s habit to think of the

persons around her as stale books, too familiar to be interesting.

Deronda had lit up her attention with a sense of novelty: not by words

only, but by imagined facts, his influence had entered into the current

of that self-suspicion and self-blame which awakens a new consciousness.

“I wish he could know everything about me without my telling him,” was

one of her thoughts, as she sat leaning over the end of a couch,

supporting her head with her hand, and looking at herself in a

mirror—not in admiration, but in a sad kind of companionship. “I wish

he knew that I am not so contemptible as he thinks me; that I am in

deep trouble, and want to be something better if I could.” Without the

aid of sacred ceremony or costume, her feelings had turned this man,

only a few years older than herself, into a priest; a sort of trust

less rare than the fidelity that guards it. Young reverence for one who

is also young is the most coercive of all: there is the same level of

temptation, and the higher motive is believed in as a fuller force—not

suspected to be a mere residue from weary experience.

But the coercion is often stronger on the one who takes the reverence.

Those who trust us educate us. And perhaps in that ideal consecration

of Gwendolen’s, some education was being prepared for Deronda.