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diff --git a/7469-h/7469-h.htm b/7469-h/7469-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7d2987a --- /dev/null +++ b/7469-h/7469-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,40064 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta charset="UTF-8" /> + <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot</title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover" /> +<style> /* <![CDATA[ */ + + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, .ph2 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2, .ph2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +hr.small {width: 40%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.footnote {font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +sup { vertical-align: top; font-size: 0.6em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + + + /* ]]> */ </style> + </head> + <body> +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Daniel Deronda</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: George Eliot</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 5, 2003 [eBook #7469]<br /> +[Most recently updated: January 29, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Anne Soulard, Tiffany Vergon, the Online Distributed Proofreading Team and David Widger +<br />Revised by Richard Tonsing.</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANIEL DERONDA ***</div> + + + + +<h1>DANIEL DERONDA</h1> + +<div class="ph2">By George Eliot</div> + +<p class="poem"> +Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:<br/> +There, ’mid the throng of hurrying desires<br/> +That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,<br/> +Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible<br/> +As exhalations laden with slow death,<br/> +And o’er the fairest troop of captured joys<br/> +Breathes pallid pestilence. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0001"><b>DANIEL DERONDA</b>.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0002"><b>BOOK I.—THE SPOILED CHILD</b>.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0001">CHAPTER I.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0002">CHAPTER II.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0003">CHAPTER III.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0005">CHAPTER V.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0006">CHAPTER VI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0007">CHAPTER VII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0008">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0009">CHAPTER IX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0010">CHAPTER X.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0013"><b>BOOK II.—MEETING STREAMS.</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0011">CHAPTER XI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0012">CHAPTER XII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0013">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0014">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0015">CHAPTER XV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0016">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0017">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0018">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0022"><b>BOOK III.—MAIDENS CHOOSING</b>.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0019">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0020">CHAPTER XX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0021">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0022">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0023">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0024">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0025">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0026">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0027">CHAPTER XXVII.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0032"><b>BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE.</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0028">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0029">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0030">CHAPTER XXX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0031">CHAPTER XXXI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0032">CHAPTER XXXII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0033">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0034">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0040"><b>BOOK V.—MORDECAI</b>.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0035">CHAPTER XXXV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0036">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0037">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0038">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0039">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0040">CHAPTER XL.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0047"><b>BOOK VI.—REVELATIONS</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0041">CHAPTER XLI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0042">CHAPTER XLII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0043">CHAPTER XLIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0044">CHAPTER XLIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0045">CHAPTER XLV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0046">CHAPTER XLVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0047">CHAPTER XLVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0048">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0049">CHAPTER XLIX.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0057"><b>BOOK VII.—THE MOTHER AND THE SON</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0050">CHAPTER L.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0051">CHAPTER LI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0052">CHAPTER LII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0053">CHAPTER LIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0054">CHAPTER LIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0055">CHAPTER LV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0056">CHAPTER LVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0057">CHAPTER LVII.</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2H_4_0066"><b> BOOK VIII.—FRUIT AND SEED.</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0058">CHAPTER LVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0059">CHAPTER LIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0060">CHAPTER LX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0061">CHAPTER LXI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0062">CHAPTER LXII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0063">CHAPTER LXIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0064">CHAPTER LXIV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0065">CHAPTER LXV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0066">CHAPTER LXVI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0067">CHAPTER LXVII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0068">CHAPTER LXVIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0069">CHAPTER LXIX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#2HCH0070">CHAPTER LXX.</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0001"></a> +DANIEL DERONDA.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0002"></a> +BOOK I.—THE SPOILED CHILD.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0001"></a> +CHAPTER I.</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the +strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on +a point in the stars’ unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall +pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always +been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her +proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward +as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger +at Nought really sets off <i>in medias res</i>. No retrospect will take us to +the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is +but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out. +</p> + +<p> +Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or +expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or the +evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was the effect +that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the wish to look again +felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents? +</p> + +<p> +She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda’s mind was occupied in +gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined +wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which the +enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at a heavy +cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned color and chubby nudities, all +correspondingly heavy—forming a suitable condenser for human breath +belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to +be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little +fashion. +</p> + +<p> +It was near four o’clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was +well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a light +rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in +French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously constructed +automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried crowds of human +beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent on the tables. The +one exception was a melancholy little boy, with his knees and calves simply in +their natural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a fancy +dress. He alone had his face turned toward the doorway, and fixing on it the +blank gaze of a bedizened child stationed as a masquerading advertisement on +the platform of an itinerant show, stood close behind a lady deeply engaged at +the roulette-table. +</p> + +<p> +About this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many in the outer rows, +where there was occasionally a deposit of new-comers, being mere spectators, +only that one of them, usually a woman, might now and then be observed putting +down a five-franc with a simpering air, just to see what the passion of +gambling really was. Those who were taking their pleasure at a higher strength, +and were absorbed in play, showed very distant varieties of European type: +Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English +aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of +human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very +near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch +a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set +eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight +metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously +consented to sit by that dry-lipped feminine figure prematurely old, withered +after short bloom like her artificial flowers, holding a shabby velvet reticule +before her, and occasionally putting in her mouth the point with which she +pricked her card? There too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable +London tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his sleek hair scrupulously parted +behind and before, conscious of circulars addressed to the nobility and gentry, +whose distinguished patronage enabled him to take his holidays fashionably, and +to a certain extent in their distinguished company. Not his the gambler’s +passion that nullifies appetite, but a well-fed leisure, which, in the +intervals of winning money in business and spending it showily, sees no better +resource than winning money in play and spending it yet more +showily—reflecting always that Providence had never manifested any +disapprobation of his amusement, and dispassionate enough to leave off if the +sweetness of winning much and seeing others lose had turned to the sourness of +losing much and seeing others win. For the vice of gambling lay in losing money +at it. In his bearing there might be something of the tradesman, but in his +pleasures he was fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing +close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across +him to place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by +an envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to +an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There was a slight +gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; but the +statuesque Italian remained impassive, and—probably secure in an +infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of chance—immediately +prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of an emaciated beau or worn-out +libertine, who looked at life through one eye-glass, and held out his hand +tremulously when he asked for change. It could surely be no severity of system, +but rather some dream of white crows, or the induction that the eighth of the +month was lucky, which inspired the fierce yet tottering impulsiveness of his +play. +</p> + +<p> +But, while every single player differed markedly from every other, there was a +certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the effect of a +mask—as if they had all eaten of some root that for the time compelled +the brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s first thought when his eyes fell on this scene of dull, +gas-poisoned absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish shepherd-boys had +seemed to him more enviable:—so far Rousseau might be justified in +maintaining that art and science had done a poor service to mankind. But +suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was arrested by a +young lady who, standing at an angle not far from him, was the last to whom his +eyes traveled. She was bending and speaking English to a middle-aged lady +seated at play beside her: but the next instant she returned to her play, and +showed the full height of a graceful figure, with a face which might possibly +be looked at without admiration, but could hardly be passed with indifference. +</p> + +<p> +The inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to his eyes a growing +expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from the glow of +mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one moment they followed +the movements of the figure, of the arms and hands, as this problematic sylph +bent forward to deposit her stake with an air of firm choice; and the next they +returned to the face which, at present unaffected by beholders, was directed +steadily toward the game. The sylph was a winner; and as her taper fingers, +delicately gloved in pale-gray, were adjusting the coins which had been pushed +toward her in order to pass them back again to the winning point, she looked +round her with a survey too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a +little of that nature which we call art concealing an inward exultation. +</p> + +<p> +But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda’s, and instead of +averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly conscious +that they were arrested—how long? The darting sense that he was measuring +her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of different quality +from the human dross around her, that he felt himself in a region outside and +above her, and was examining her as a specimen of a lower order, roused a +tingling resentment which stretched the moment with conflict. It did not bring +the blood to her cheeks, but it sent it away from her lips. She controlled +herself by the help of an inward defiance, and without other sign of emotion +than this lip-paleness turned to her play. But Deronda’s gaze seemed to +have acted as an evil eye. Her stake was gone. No matter; she had been winning +ever since she took to roulette with a few napoleons at command, and had a +considerable reserve. She had begun to believe in her luck, others had begun to +believe in it: she had visions of being followed by a <i>cortège</i> who would +worship her as a goddess of luck and watch her play as a directing augury. Such +things had been known of male gamblers; why should not a woman have a like +supremacy? Her friend and chaperon who had not wished her to play at first was +beginning to approve, only administering the prudent advice to stop at the +right moment and carry money back to England—advice to which Gwendolen +had replied that she cared for the excitement of play, not the winnings. On +that supposition the present moment ought to have made the flood-tide in her +eager experience of gambling. Yet, when her next stake was swept away, she felt +the orbits of her eyes getting hot, and the certainty she had (without looking) +of that man still watching her was something like a pressure which begins to be +torturing. The more reason to her why she should not flinch, but go on playing +as if she were indifferent to loss or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and +proposed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on +the same spot: she was in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight +of any end beyond the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile +stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance. +Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose +strikingly. She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or hands. +Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it. Many were now watching her, +but the sole observation she was conscious of was Deronda’s, who, though +she never looked toward him, she was sure had not moved away. Such a drama +takes no long while to play out: development and catastrophe can often be +measured by nothing clumsier than the moment-hand. “Faites votre jeu, +mesdames et messieurs,” said the automatic voice of destiny from between +the mustache and imperial of the croupier: and Gwendolen’s arm was +stretched to deposit her last poor heap of napoleons. “Le jeu ne va +plus,” said destiny. And in five seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, +but turned resolutely with her face toward Deronda and looked at him. There was +a smile of irony in his eyes as their glances met; but it was at least better +that he should have kept his attention fixed on her than that he disregarded +her as one of an insect swarm who had no individual physiognomy. Besides, in +spite of his superciliousness and irony, it was difficult to believe that he +did not admire her spirit as well as her person: he was young, handsome, +distinguished in appearance—not one of these ridiculous and dowdy +Philistines who thought it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table with a +sour look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction that we are +admirable does not easily give way before a single negative; rather when any of +Vanity’s large family, male or female, find their performance received +coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the +unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen’s habits of mind it had been taken +for granted that she knew what was admirable and that she herself was admired. +This basis of her thinking had received a disagreeable concussion, and reeled a +little, but was not easily to be overthrown. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, was brilliant with gas +and with the costumes of ladies who floated their trains along it or were +seated on the ottomans. +</p> + +<p> +The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale sea-green +feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green hat and light brown +hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the wing, or rather soared by the +shoulder, of the lady who had sat by her at the roulette-table; and with them +was a gentleman with a white mustache and clipped hair: solid-browed, stiff and +German. They were walking about or standing to chat with acquaintances, and +Gwendolen was much observed by the seated groups. +</p> + +<p> +“A striking girl—that Miss Harleth—unlike others.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now—all green and +silver, and winds her neck about a little more than usual.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind +of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very. A man might risk hanging for her—I mean a fool might.” +</p> + +<p> +“You like a <i>nez retroussé</i>, then, and long narrow eyes?” +</p> + +<p> +“When they go with such an <i>ensemble</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“The <i>ensemble du serpent</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is certainly very graceful; but she wants a tinge of color in her +cheeks. It is a sort of Lamia beauty she has.” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. It is a +warm paleness; it looks thoroughly healthy. And that delicate nose with its +gradual little upward curve is distracting. And then her mouth—there +never was a prettier mouth, the lips curled backward so finely, eh, +Mackworth?” +</p> + +<p> +“Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so +self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty—the curves are too +immovable. I like a mouth that trembles more.” +</p> + +<p> +“For my part, I think her odious,” said a dowager. “It is +wonderful what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does +anybody know them?” +</p> + +<p> +“They are quite <i>comme il faut</i>. I have dined with them several +times at the <i>Russie</i>. The baroness is English. Miss Harleth calls her +cousin. The girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as +possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me! and the baron?”. +</p> + +<p> +“A very good furniture picture.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your baroness is always at the roulette-table,” said Mackworth. +“I fancy she has taught the girl to gamble.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece here +and there. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich? Who +knows?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, who knows? Who knows that about anybody?” said Mr. +Vandernoodt, moving off to join the Langens. +</p> + +<p> +The remark that Gwendolen wound her neck about more than usual this evening was +true. But it was not that she might carry out the serpent idea more completely: +it was that she watched for any chance of seeing Deronda, so that she might +inquire about this stranger, under whose measuring gaze she was still wincing. +At last her opportunity came. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Vandernoodt, you know everybody,” said Gwendolen, not too +eagerly, rather with a certain languor of utterance which she sometimes gave to +her clear soprano. “Who is that near the door?” +</p> + +<p> +“There are half a dozen near the door. Do you mean that old Adonis in the +George the Fourth wig?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; the dark-haired young man on the right with the dreadful +expression.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly fine +fellow.” +</p> + +<p> +“But who is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Hugo Mallinger?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Do you know him?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” (Gwendolen colored slightly.) “He has a place near us, +but he never comes to it. What did you say was the name of that gentleman near +the door?” +</p> + +<p> +“Deronda—Mr. Deronda.” +</p> + +<p> +“What a delightful name! Is he an Englishman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the baronet. You are +interested in him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. I think he is not like young men in general.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you don’t admire young men in general?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can’t at all +guess what this Mr. Deronda would say. What <i>does</i> he say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for a good hour last night on the +terrace, and he never spoke—and was not smoking either. He looked +bored.” +</p> + +<p> +“Another reason why I should like to know him. I am always bored.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction. Shall I +bring it about? Will you allow it, baroness?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?—since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It is a new +<i>rôle</i> of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored,” continued Madame +von Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved away. “Until now you have +always seemed eager about something from morning till night.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to leave off play I +must break my arm or my collar-bone. I must make something happen; unless you +will go into Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps this Mr. Deronda’s acquaintance will do instead of the +Matterhorn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps.” +</p> + +<p> +But Gwendolen did not make Deronda’s acquaintance on this occasion. Mr. +Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing him up to her that evening, and when +she re-entered her own room she found a letter recalling her home. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0002"></a> +CHAPTER II.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +This man contrives a secret ’twixt us two,<br/> +That he may quell me with his meeting eyes<br/> +Like one who quells a lioness at bay. +</p> + +<p> +This was the letter Gwendolen found on her table: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +DEAREST CHILD.—I have been expecting to hear from you for a week. In your +last you said the Langens thought of leaving Leubronn and going to Baden. How +could you be so thoughtless as to leave me in uncertainty about your address? I +am in the greatest anxiety lest this should not reach you. In any case, you +were to come home at the end of September, and I must now entreat you to return +as quickly as possible, for if you spent all your money it would be out of my +power to send you any more, and you must not borrow of the Langens, for I could +not repay them. This is the sad truth, my child—I wish I could prepare +you for it better—but a dreadful calamity has befallen us all. You know +nothing about business and will not understand it; but Grapnell & Co. have +failed for a million, and we are totally ruined—your aunt Gascoigne as +well as I, only that your uncle has his benefice, so that by putting down their +carriage and getting interest for the boys, the family can go on. All the +property our poor father saved for us goes to pay the liabilities. There is +nothing I can call my own. It is better you should know this at once, though it +rends my heart to have to tell it you. Of course we cannot help thinking what a +pity it was that you went away just when you did. But I shall never reproach +you, my dear child; I would save you from all trouble if I could. On your way +home you will have time to prepare yourself for the change you will find. We +shall perhaps leave Offendene at once, for we hope that Mr. Haynes, who wanted +it before, may be ready to take it off my hands. Of course we cannot go to the +rectory—there is not a corner there to spare. We must get some hut or +other to shelter us, and we must live on your uncle Gascoigne’s charity, +until I see what else can be done. I shall not be able to pay the debts to the +tradesmen besides the servants’ wages. Summon up your fortitude, my dear +child; we must resign ourselves to God’s will. But it is hard to resign +one’s self to Mr. Lassman’s wicked recklessness, which they say was +the cause of the failure. Your poor sisters can only cry with me and give me no +help. If you were once here, there might be a break in the cloud—I always +feel it impossible that you can have been meant for poverty. If the Langens +wish to remain abroad, perhaps you can put yourself under some one else’s +care for the journey. But come as soon as you can to your afflicted and loving +mamma, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +FANNY DAVILOW. +</p> + +<p> +The first effect of this letter on Gwendolen was half-stupefying. The implicit +confidence that her destiny must be one of luxurious ease, where any trouble +that occurred would be well clad and provided for, had been stronger in her own +mind than in her mamma’s, being fed there by her youthful blood and that +sense of superior claims which made a large part of her consciousness. It was +almost as difficult for her to believe suddenly that her position had become +one of poverty and of humiliating dependence, as it would have been to get into +the strong current of her blooming life the chill sense that her death would +really come. She stood motionless for a few minutes, then tossed off her hat +and automatically looked in the glass. The coils of her smooth light-brown hair +were still in order perfect enough for a ball-room; and as on other nights, +Gwendolen might have looked lingeringly at herself for pleasure (surely an +allowable indulgence); but now she took no conscious note of her reflected +beauty, and simply stared right before her as if she had been jarred by a +hateful sound and was waiting for any sign of its cause. By-and-by she threw +herself in the corner of the red velvet sofa, took up the letter again and read +it twice deliberately, letting it at last fall on the ground, while she rested +her clasped hands on her lap and sat perfectly still, shedding no tears. Her +impulse was to survey and resist the situation rather than to wail over it. +There was no inward exclamation of “Poor mamma!” Her mamma had +never seemed to get much enjoyment out of life, and if Gwendolen had been at +this moment disposed to feel pity she would have bestowed it on +herself—for was she not naturally and rightfully the chief object of her +mamma’s anxiety too? But it was anger, it was resistance that possessed +her; it was bitter vexation that she had lost her gains at roulette, whereas if +her luck had continued through this one day she would have had a handsome sum +to carry home, or she might have gone on playing and won enough to support them +all. Even now was it not possible? She had only four napoleons left in her +purse, but she possessed some ornaments which she could sell: a practice so +common in stylish society at German baths that there was no need to be ashamed +of it; and even if she had not received her mamma’s letter, she would +probably have decided to get money for an Etruscan necklace which she happened +not to have been wearing since her arrival; nay, she might have done so with an +agreeable sense that she was living with some intensity and escaping humdrum. +With ten louis at her disposal and a return of her former luck, which seemed +probable, what could she do better than go on playing for a few days? If her +friends at home disapproved of the way in which she got the money, as they +certainly would, still the money would be there. Gwendolen’s imagination +dwelt on this course and created agreeable consequences, but not with unbroken +confidence and rising certainty as it would have done if she had been touched +with the gambler’s mania. She had gone to the roulette-table not because +of passion, but in search of it: her mind was still sanely capable of picturing +balanced probabilities, and while the chance of winning allured her, the chance +of losing thrust itself on her with alternate strength and made a vision from +which her pride sank sensitively. For she was resolved not to tell the Langens +that any misfortune had befallen her family, or to make herself in any way +indebted to their compassion; and if she were to part with her jewelry to any +observable extent, they would interfere by inquiries and remonstrances. The +course that held the least risk of intolerable annoyance was to raise money on +her necklace early in the morning, tell the Langens that her mother desired her +immediate return without giving a reason, and take the train for Brussels that +evening. She had no maid with her, and the Langens might make difficulties +about her returning home, but her will was peremptory. +</p> + +<p> +Instead of going to bed she made as brilliant a light as she could and began to +pack, working diligently, though all the while visited by the scenes that might +take place on the coming day—now by the tiresome explanations and +farewells, and the whirling journey toward a changed home, now by the +alternative of staying just another day and standing again at the +roulette-table. But always in this latter scene there was the presence of that +Deronda, watching her with exasperating irony, and—the two keen +experiences were inevitably revived together—beholding her again forsaken +by luck. This importunate image certainly helped to sway her resolve on the +side of immediate departure, and to urge her packing to the point which would +make a change of mind inconvenient. It had struck twelve when she came into her +room, and by the time she was assuring herself that she had left out only what +was necessary, the faint dawn was stealing through the white blinds and dulling +her candles. What was the use of going to bed? Her cold bath was refreshment +enough, and she saw that a slight trace of fatigue about the eyes only made her +look the more interesting. Before six o’clock she was completely equipped +in her gray traveling dress even to her felt hat, for she meant to walk out as +soon as she could count on seeing other ladies on their way to the springs. And +happening to be seated sideways before the long strip of mirror between her two +windows she turned to look at herself, leaning her elbow on the back of the +chair in an attitude that might have been chosen for her portrait. It is +possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with +a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core +of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care; but Gwendolen knew nothing of such +inward strife. She had a <i>naïve</i> delight in her fortunate self, which any +but the harshest saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who had +every day seen a pleasant reflection of that self in her friends’ +flattery as well as in the looking-glass. And even in this beginning of +troubles, while for lack of anything else to do she sat gazing at her image in +the growing light, her face gathered a complacency gradual as the cheerfulness +of the morning. Her beautiful lips curled into a more and more decided smile, +till at last she took off her hat, leaned forward and kissed the cold glass +which had looked so warm. How could she believe in sorrow? If it attacked her, +she felt the force to crush it, to defy it, or run away from it, as she had +done already. Anything seemed more possible than that she could go on bearing +miseries, great or small. +</p> + +<p> +Madame von Langen never went out before breakfast, so that Gwendolen could +safely end her early walk by taking her way homeward through the Obere Strasse +in which was the needed shop, sure to be open after seven. At that hour any +observers whom she minded would be either on their walks in the region of the +springs, or would be still in their bedrooms; but certainly there was one grand +hotel, the <i>Czarina</i> from which eyes might follow her up to Mr. +Wiener’s door. This was a chance to be risked: might she not be going in +to buy something which had struck her fancy? This implicit falsehood passed +through her mind as she remembered that the <i>Czarina</i> was Deronda’s +hotel; but she was then already far up the Obere Strasse, and she walked on +with her usual floating movement, every line in her figure and drapery falling +in gentle curves attractive to all eyes except those which discerned in them +too close a resemblance to the serpent, and objected to the revival of +serpent-worship. She looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, and +transacted her business in the shop with a coolness which gave little Mr. +Wiener nothing to remark except her proud grace of manner, and the superior +size and quality of the three central turquoises in the necklace she offered +him. They had belonged to a chain once her father’s: but she had never +known her father; and the necklace was in all respects the ornament she could +most conveniently part with. Who supposes that it is an impossible +contradiction to be superstitious and rationalizing at the same time? Roulette +encourages a romantic superstition as to the chances of the game, and the most +prosaic rationalism as to human sentiments which stand in the way of raising +needful money. Gwendolen’s dominant regret was that after all she had +only nine louis to add to the four in her purse: these Jew dealers were so +unscrupulous in taking advantage of Christians unfortunate at play! But she was +the Langens’ guest in their hired apartment, and had nothing to pay +there: thirteen louis would do more than take her home; even if she determined +on risking three, the remaining ten would more than suffice, since she meant to +travel right on, day and night. As she turned homeward, nay, entered and seated +herself in the <i>salon</i> to await her friends and breakfast, she still +wavered as to her immediate departure, or rather she had concluded to tell the +Langens simply that she had had a letter from her mamma desiring her return, +and to leave it still undecided when she should start. It was already the usual +breakfast-time, and hearing some one enter as she was leaning back rather tired +and hungry with her eyes shut, she rose expecting to see one or other of the +Langens—the words which might determine her lingering at least another +day, ready-formed to pass her lips. But it was the servant bringing in a small +packet for Miss Harleth, which had at that moment been left at the door. +Gwendolen took it in her hand and immediately hurried into her own room. She +looked paler and more agitated than when she had first read her mamma’s +letter. Something—she never quite knew what—revealed to her before +she opened the packet that it contained the necklace she had just parted with. +Underneath the paper it was wrapped in a cambric handkerchief, and within this +was a scrap of torn-off note-paper, on which was written with a pencil, in +clear but rapid handwriting—“<i>A stranger who has found Miss +Harleth’s necklace returns it to her with the hope that she will not +again risk the loss of it.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen reddened with the vexation of wounded pride. A large corner of the +handkerchief seemed to have been recklessly torn off to get rid of a mark; but +she at once believed in the first image of “the stranger” that +presented itself to her mind. It was Deronda; he must have seen her go into the +shop; he must have gone in immediately after and repurchased the necklace. He +had taken an unpardonable liberty, and had dared to place her in a thoroughly +hateful position. What could she do?—Not, assuredly, act on her +conviction that it was he who had sent her the necklace and straightway send it +back to him: that would be to face the possibility that she had been mistaken; +nay, even if the “stranger” were he and no other, it would be +something too gross for her to let him know that she had divined this, and to +meet him again with that recognition in their minds. He knew very well that he +was entangling her in helpless humiliation: it was another way of smiling at +her ironically, and taking the air of a supercilious mentor. Gwendolen felt the +bitter tears of mortification rising and rolling down her cheeks. No one had +ever before dared to treat her with irony and contempt. One thing was clear: +she must carry out her resolution to quit this place at once; it was impossible +for her to reappear in the public <i>salon</i>, still less stand at the +gaming-table with the risk of seeing Deronda. Now came an importunate knock at +the door: breakfast was ready. Gwendolen with a passionate movement thrust +necklace, cambric, scrap of paper, and all into her <i>nécessaire</i>, pressed +her handkerchief against her face, and after pausing a minute or two to summon +back her proud self-control, went to join her friends. Such signs of tears and +fatigue as were left seemed accordant enough with the account she at once gave +of her having sat up to do her packing, instead of waiting for help from her +friend’s maid. There was much protestation, as she had expected, against +her traveling alone, but she persisted in refusing any arrangements for +companionship. She would be put into the ladies’ compartment and go right +on. She could rest exceedingly well in the train, and was afraid of nothing. +</p> + +<p> +In this way it happened that Gwendolen never reappeared at the roulette-table, +but that Thursday evening left Leubronn for Brussels, and on Saturday morning +arrived at Offendene, the home to which she and her family were soon to say a +last good-bye. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0003"></a> +CHAPTER III.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with +rosebuds before they be withered.”—B<small>OOK OF</small> +W<small>ISDOM</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Pity that Offendene was not the home of Miss Harleth’s childhood, or +endeared to her by family memories! A human life, I think, should be well +rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender +kinship for the face of earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds +and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar +unmistakable difference amid the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the +definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, +and—kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, +may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of +the blood. At five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the +world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar above preference into +impartiality; and that prejudice in favor of milk with which we blindly begin, +is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The +best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little +lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead. +</p> + +<p> +But this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting +in Gwendolen’s life. It was only a year before her recall from Leubronn +that Offendene had been chosen as her mamma’s home, simply for its +nearness to Pennicote Rectory, and that Mrs. Davilow, Gwendolen, and her four +half-sisters (the governess and the maid following in another vehicle) had been +driven along the avenue for the first time, on a late October afternoon when +the rooks were crawing loudly above them, and the yellow elm-leaves were +whirling. +</p> + +<p> +The season suited the aspect of the old oblong red-brick house, rather too +anxiously ornamented with stone at every line, not excepting the double row of +narrow windows and the large square portico. The stone encouraged a greenish +lichen, the brick a powdery gray, so that though the building was rigidly +rectangular there was no harshness in the physiognomy which it turned to the +three avenues cut east, west and south in the hundred yards’ breadth of +old plantation encircling the immediate grounds. One would have liked the house +to have been lifted on a knoll, so as to look beyond its own little domain to +the long thatched roofs of the distant villages, the church towers, the +scattered homesteads, the gradual rise of surging woods, and the green breadths +of undulating park which made the beautiful face of the earth in that part of +Wessex. But though standing thus behind a screen amid flat pastures, it had on +one side a glimpse of the wider world in the lofty curves of the chalk downs, +grand steadfast forms played over by the changing days. +</p> + +<p> +The house was but just large enough to be called a mansion, and was moderately +rented, having no manor attached to it, and being rather difficult to let with +its sombre furniture and faded upholstery. But inside and outside it was what +no beholder could suppose to be inhabited by retired trades-people: a certainty +which was worth many conveniences to tenants who not only had the taste that +shrinks from new finery, but also were in that border-territory of rank where +annexation is a burning topic: and to take up her abode in a house which had +once sufficed for dowager countesses gave a perceptible tinge to Mrs. +Davilow’s satisfaction in having an establishment of her own. This, +rather mysteriously to Gwendolen, appeared suddenly possible on the death of +her step-father, Captain Davilow, who had for the last nine years joined his +family only in a brief and fitful manner, enough to reconcile them to his long +absences; but she cared much more for the fact than for the explanation. All +her prospects had become more agreeable in consequence. She had disliked their +former way of life, roving from one foreign watering-place or Parisian +apartment to another, always feeling new antipathies to new suites of hired +furniture, and meeting new people under conditions which made her appear of +little importance; and the variation of having passed two years at a showy +school, where, on all occasions of display, she had been put foremost, had only +deepened her sense that so exceptional a person as herself could hardly remain +in ordinary circumstances or in a social position less than advantageous. Any +fear of this latter evil was banished now that her mamma was to have an +establishment; for on the point of birth Gwendolen was quite easy. She had no +notion how her maternal grandfather got the fortune inherited by his two +daughters; but he had been a West Indian—which seemed to exclude further +question; and she knew that her father’s family was so high as to take no +notice of her mamma, who nevertheless preserved with much pride the miniature +of a Lady Molly in that connection. She would probably have known much more +about her father but for a little incident which happened when she was twelve +years old. Mrs. Davilow had brought out, as she did only at wide intervals, +various memorials of her first husband, and while showing his miniature to +Gwendolen recalled with a fervor which seemed to count on a peculiar filial +sympathy, the fact that dear papa had died when his little daughter was in long +clothes. Gwendolen, immediately thinking of the unlovable step-father whom she +had been acquainted with the greater part of her life while her frocks were +short, said, +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you marry again, mamma? It would have been nicer if you had +not.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow colored deeply, a slight convulsive movement passed over her face, +and straightway shutting up the memorials she said, with a violence quite +unusual in her, +</p> + +<p> +“You have no feeling, child!” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, who was fond of her mamma, felt hurt and ashamed, and had never +since dared to ask a question about her father. +</p> + +<p> +This was not the only instance in which she had brought on herself the pain of +some filial compunction. It was always arranged, when possible, that she should +have a small bed in her mamma’s room; for Mrs. Davilow’s motherly +tenderness clung chiefly to her eldest girl, who had been born in her happier +time. One night under an attack of pain she found that the specific regularly +placed by her bedside had been forgotten, and begged Gwendolen to get out of +bed and reach it for her. That healthy young lady, snug and warm as a rosy +infant in her little couch, objected to step out into the cold, and lying +perfectly still, grumbling a refusal. Mrs. Davilow went without the medicine +and never reproached her daughter; but the next day Gwendolen was keenly +conscious of what must be in her mamma’s mind, and tried to make amends +by caresses which cost her no effort. Having always been the pet and pride of +the household, waited on by mother, sisters, governess and maids, as if she had +been a princess in exile, she naturally found it difficult to think her own +pleasure less important than others made it, and when it was positively +thwarted felt an astonished resentment apt, in her cruder days, to vent itself +in one of those passionate acts which look like a contradiction of habitual +tendencies. Though never even as a child thoughtlessly cruel, nay delighting to +rescue drowning insects and watch their recovery, there was a disagreeable +silent remembrance of her having strangled her sister’s canary-bird in a +final fit of exasperation at its shrill singing which had again and again +jarringly interrupted her own. She had taken pains to buy a white mouse for her +sister in retribution, and though inwardly excusing herself on the ground of a +peculiar sensitiveness which was a mark of her general superiority, the thought +of that infelonious murder had always made her wince. Gwendolen’s nature +was not remorseless, but she liked to make her penances easy, and now that she +was twenty and more, some of her native force had turned into a self-control by +which she guarded herself from penitential humiliation. There was more show of +fire and will in her than ever, but there was more calculation underneath it. +</p> + +<p> +On this day of arrival at Offendene, which not even Mrs. Davilow had seen +before—the place having been taken for her by her brother-in-law, Mr. +Gascoigne—when all had got down from the carriage, and were standing +under the porch in front of the open door, so that they could have a general +view of the place and a glimpse of the stone hall and staircase hung with +sombre pictures, but enlivened by a bright wood fire, no one spoke; mamma, the +four sisters and the governess all looked at Gwendolen, as if their feelings +depended entirely on her decision. Of the girls, from Alice in her sixteenth +year to Isabel in her tenth, hardly anything could be said on a first view, but +that they were girlish, and that their black dresses were getting shabby. Miss +Merry was elderly and altogether neutral in expression. Mrs. Davilow’s +worn beauty seemed the more pathetic for the look of entire appeal which she +cast at Gwendolen, who was glancing round at the house, the landscape and the +entrance hall with an air of rapid judgment. Imagine a young race-horse in the +paddock among untrimmed ponies and patient hacks. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, dear, what do you think of the place,” said Mrs. Davilow at +last, in a gentle, deprecatory tone. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is charming,” said Gwendolen, quickly. “A +romantic place; anything delightful may happen in it; it would be a good +background for anything. No one need be ashamed of living here.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is certainly nothing common about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it would do for fallen royalty or any sort of grand poverty. We +ought properly to have been living in splendor, and have come down to this. It +would have been as romantic as could be. But I thought my uncle and aunt +Gascoigne would be here to meet us, and my cousin Anna,” added Gwendolen, +her tone changed to sharp surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“We are early,” said Mrs. Davilow, and entering the hall, she said +to the housekeeper who came forward, “You expect Mr. and Mrs. +Gascoigne?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, madam; they were here yesterday to give particular orders about the +fires and the dinner. But as to fires, I’ve had ’em in all the +rooms for the last week, and everything is well aired. I could wish some of the +furniture paid better for all the cleaning it’s had, but I <i>think</i> +you’ll see the brasses have been done justice to. I <i>think</i> when Mr. +and Mrs. Gascoigne come, they’ll tell you nothing has been neglected. +They’ll be here at five, for certain.” +</p> + +<p> +This satisfied Gwendolen, who was not prepared to have their arrival treated +with indifference; and after tripping a little way up the matted stone +staircase to take a survey there, she tripped down again, and followed by all +the girls looked into each of the rooms opening from the hall—the +dining-room all dark oak and worn red satin damask, with a copy of snarling, +worrying dogs from Snyders over the side-board, and a Christ breaking bread +over the mantel-piece; the library with a general aspect and smell of old +brown-leather; and lastly, the drawing-room, which was entered through a small +antechamber crowded with venerable knick-knacks. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, mamma, pray come here!” said Gwendolen, Mrs. Davilow having +followed slowly in talk with the housekeeper. “Here is an organ. I will +be Saint Cecilia: some one shall paint me as Saint Cecilia. Jocosa (this was +her name for Miss Merry), let down my hair. See, mamma?” +</p> + +<p> +She had thrown off her hat and gloves, and seated herself before the organ in +an admirable pose, looking upward; while the submissive and sad Jocosa took out +the one comb which fastened the coil of hair, and then shook out the mass till +it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far below its owner’s slim waist. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow smiled and said, “A charming picture, my dear!” not +indifferent to the display of her pet, even in the presence of a housekeeper. +Gwendolen rose and laughed with delight. All this seemed quite to the purpose +on entering a new house which was so excellent a background. +</p> + +<p> +“What a queer, quaint, picturesque room!” she went on, looking +about her. “I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the +wainscot, and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the +ribs—nothing but ribs and darkness—I should think that is Spanish, +mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Gwendolen!” said the small Isabel, in a tone of astonishment, +while she held open a hinged panel of the wainscot at the other end of the +room. +</p> + +<p> +Every one, Gwendolen first, went to look. The opened panel had disclosed the +picture of an upturned dead face, from which an obscure figure seemed to be +fleeing with outstretched arms. “How horrible!” said Mrs. Davilow, +with a look of mere disgust; but Gwendolen shuddered silently, and Isabel, a +plain and altogether inconvenient child with an alarming memory, said, +</p> + +<p> +“You will never stay in this room by yourself, Gwendolen.” +</p> + +<p> +“How dare you open things which were meant to be shut up, you perverse +little creature?” said Gwendolen, in her angriest tone. Then snatching +the panel out of the hand of the culprit, she closed it hastily, saying, +“There is a lock—where is the key? Let the key be found, or else +let one be made, and let nobody open it again; or rather, let the key be +brought to me.” +</p> + +<p> +At this command to everybody in general Gwendolen turned with a face which was +flushed in reaction from her chill shudder, and said, “Let us go up to +our own room, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +The housekeeper on searching found the key in the drawer of the cabinet close +by the panel, and presently handed it to Bugle, the lady’s-maid, telling +her significantly to give it to her Royal Highness. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Startin,” said Bugle, who +had been busy up-stairs during the scene in the drawing-room, and was rather +offended at this irony in a new servant. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean the young lady that’s to command us all—and well +worthy for looks and figure,” replied Mrs. Startin in propitiation. +“She’ll know what key it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you have laid out what we want, go and see to the others, +Bugle,” Gwendolen had said, when she and Mrs. Davilow entered their black +and yellow bedroom, where a pretty little white couch was prepared by the side +of the black and yellow catafalque known as the best bed. “I will help +mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +But her first movement was to go to the tall mirror between the windows, which +reflected herself and the room completely, while her mamma sat down and also +looked at the reflection. +</p> + +<p> +“That is a becoming glass, Gwendolen; or is it the black and gold color +that sets you off?” said Mrs. Davilow, as Gwendolen stood obliquely with +her three-quarter face turned toward the mirror, and her left hand brushing +back the stream of hair. +</p> + +<p> +“I should make a tolerable St. Cecilia with some white roses on my +head,” said Gwendolen,—“only how about my nose, mamma? I +think saint’s noses never in the least turn up. I wish you had given me +your perfectly straight nose; it would have done for any sort of +character—a nose of all work. Mine is only a happy nose; it would not do +so well for tragedy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, any nose will do to be miserable with in this world,” +said Mrs. Davilow, with a deep, weary sigh, throwing her black bonnet on the +table, and resting her elbow near it. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a strongly remonstrant tone, +turning away from the glass with an air of vexation, “don’t begin +to be dull here. It spoils all my pleasure, and everything may be so happy now. +What have you to be gloomy about <i>now</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, seeming to rouse herself, and +beginning to take off her dress. “It is always enough for me to see you +happy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you should be happy yourself,” said Gwendolen, still +discontentedly, though going to help her mamma with caressing touches. +“Can nobody be happy after they are quite young? You have made me feel +sometimes as if nothing were of any use. With the girls so troublesome, and +Jocosa so dreadfully wooden and ugly, and everything make-shift about us, and +you looking so dull—what was the use of my being anything? But now you +<i>might</i> be happy.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I shall, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, patting the cheek that was +bending near her. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but really. Not with a sort of make-believe,” said Gwendolen, +with resolute perseverance. “See what a hand and arm!—much more +beautiful than mine. Any one can see you were altogether more beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, dear; I was always heavier. Never half so charming as you +are.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, but what is the use of my being charming, if it is to end in my +being dull and not minding anything? Is that what marriage always comes +to?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, child, certainly not. Marriage is the only happy state for a woman, +as I trust you will prove.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will not put up with it if it is not a happy state. I am determined to +be happy—at least not to go on muddling away my life as other people do, +being and doing nothing remarkable. I have made up my mind not to let other +people interfere with me as they have done. Here is some warm water ready for +you, mamma,” Gwendolen ended, proceeding to take off her own dress and +then waiting to have her hair wound up by her mamma. +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for a minute or two, till Mrs. Davilow said, while coiling +the daughter’s hair, “I am sure I have never crossed you, +Gwendolen.” +</p> + +<p> +“You often want me to do what I don’t like.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean, to give Alice lessons?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. And I have done it because you asked me. But I don’t see why +I should, else. It bores me to death, she is so slow. She has no ear for music, +or language, or anything else. It would be much better for her to be ignorant, +mamma: it is her <i>rôle</i>, she would do it well.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a hard thing to say of your poor sister, Gwendolen, who is so +good to you, and waits on you hand and foot.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see why it is hard to call things by their right names, +and put them in their proper places. The hardship is for me to have to waste my +time on her. Now let me fasten up your hair, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must make haste; your uncle and aunt will be here soon. For +heaven’s sake, don’t be scornful to <i>them</i>, my dear child! or +to your cousin Anna, whom you will always be going out with. Do promise me, +Gwendolen. You know, you can’t expect Anna to be equal to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want her to be equal,” said Gwendolen, with a toss +of her head and a smile, and the discussion ended there. +</p> + +<p> +When Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne and their daughter came, Gwendolen, far from being +scornful, behaved as prettily as possible to them. She was introducing herself +anew to relatives who had not seen her since the comparatively unfinished age +of sixteen, and she was anxious—no, not anxious, but resolved that they +should admire her. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Gascoigne bore a family likeness to her sister. But she was darker and +slighter, her face was unworn by grief, her movements were less languid, her +expression more alert and critical as that of a rector’s wife bound to +exert a beneficent authority. Their closest resemblance lay in a non-resistant +disposition, inclined to imitation and obedience; but this, owing to the +difference in their circumstances, had led them to very different issues. The +younger sister had been indiscreet, or at least unfortunate in her marriages; +the elder believed herself the most enviable of wives, and her pliancy had +ended in her sometimes taking shapes of surprising definiteness. Many of her +opinions, such as those on church government and the character of Archbishop +Laud, seemed too decided under every alteration to have been arrived at +otherwise than by a wifely receptiveness. And there was much to encourage trust +in her husband’s authority. He had some agreeable virtues, some striking +advantages, and the failings that were imputed to him all leaned toward the +side of success. +</p> + +<p> +One of his advantages was a fine person, which perhaps was even more impressive +at fifty-seven than it had been earlier in life. There were no distinctively +clerical lines in the face, no tricks of starchiness or of affected ease: in +his Inverness cape he could not have been identified except as a gentleman with +handsome dark features, a nose which began with an intention to be aquiline but +suddenly became straight, and iron-gray hair. Perhaps he owed this freedom from +the sort of professional make-up which penetrates skin, tones and gestures and +defies all drapery, to the fact that he had once been Captain Gaskin, having +taken orders and a diphthong but shortly before his engagement to Miss Armyn. +If any one had objected that his preparation for the clerical function was +inadequate, his friends might have asked who made a better figure in it, who +preached better or had more authority in his parish? He had a native gift for +administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt +himself able to overrule them, and was free from the irritations of conscious +feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste which he did not +share—at floriculture or antiquarianism for example, which were much in +vogue among his fellow-clergyman in the diocese: for himself, he preferred +following the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge of +Nesselrode’s motives what would have been his conduct if our cabinet had +taken a different course. Mr. Gascoigne’s tone of thinking after some +long-quieted fluctuations had become ecclesiastical rather than theological; +not the modern Anglican, but what he would have called sound English, free from +nonsense; such as became a man who looked at a national religion by daylight, +and saw it in its relation to other things. No clerical magistrate had greater +weight at sessions, or less of mischievous impracticableness in relation to +worldly affairs. Indeed, the worst imputation thrown out against him was +worldliness: it could not be proved that he forsook the less fortunate, but it +was not to be denied that the friendships he cultivated were of a kind likely +to be useful to the father of six sons and two daughters; and bitter +observers—for in Wessex, say ten years ago, there were persons whose +bitterness may now seem incredible—remarked that the color of his +opinions had changed in consistency with this principle of action. But +cheerful, successful worldliness has a false air of being more selfish than the +acrid, unsuccessful kind, whose secret history is summed up in the terrible +words, “Sold, but not paid for.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen wondered that she had not better remembered how very fine a man her +uncle was; but at the age of sixteen she was a less capable and more +indifferent judge. At present it was a matter of extreme interest to her that +she was to have the near countenance of a dignified male relative, and that the +family life would cease to be entirely, insipidly feminine. She did not intend +that her uncle should control her, but she saw at once that it would be +altogether agreeable to her that he should be proud of introducing her as his +niece. And there was every sign of his being likely to feel that pride. He +certainly looked at her with admiration as he said, +</p> + +<p> +“You have outgrown Anna, my dear,” putting his arm tenderly round +his daughter, whose shy face was a tiny copy of his own, and drawing her +forward. “She is not so old as you by a year, but her growing days are +certainly over. I hope you will be excellent companions.” +</p> + +<p> +He did give a comparing glance at his daughter, but if he saw her inferiority, +he might also see that Anna’s timid appearance and miniature figure must +appeal to a different taste from that which was attracted by Gwendolen, and +that the girls could hardly be rivals. Gwendolen at least, was aware of this, +and kissed her cousin with real cordiality as well as grace, saying, “A +companion is just what I want. I am so glad we are come to live here. And mamma +will be much happier now she is near you, aunt.” +</p> + +<p> +The aunt trusted indeed that it would be so, and felt it a blessing that a +suitable home had been vacant in their uncle’s parish. Then, of course, +notice had to be taken of the four other girls, whom Gwendolen had always felt +to be superfluous: all of a girlish average that made four units utterly +unimportant, and yet from her earliest days an obtrusive influential fact in +her life. She was conscious of having been much kinder to them than could have +been expected. And it was evident to her that her uncle and aunt also felt it a +pity there were so many girls:—what rational person could feel otherwise, +except poor mamma, who never would see how Alice set up her shoulders and +lifted her eyebrows till she had no forehead left, how Bertha and Fanny +whispered and tittered together about everything, or how Isabel was always +listening and staring and forgetting where she was, and treading on the toes of +her suffering elders? +</p> + +<p> +“You have brothers, Anna,” said Gwendolen, while the sisters were +being noticed. “I think you are enviable there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Anna, simply. “I am very fond of them; but of +course their education is a great anxiety to papa. He used to say they made me +a tomboy. I really was a great romp with Rex. I think you will like Rex. He +will come home before Christmas.” +</p> + +<p> +“I remember I used to think you rather wild and shy; but it is difficult +now to imagine you a romp,” said Gwendolen, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, I am altered now; I am come out, and all that. But in reality +I like to go blackberrying with Edwy and Lotta as well as ever. I am not very +fond of going out; but I dare say I shall like it better now you will be often +with me. I am not at all clever, and I never know what to say. It seems so +useless to say what everybody knows, and I can think of nothing else, except +what papa says.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall like going out with you very much,” said Gwendolen, well +disposed toward this <i>naïve</i> cousin. “Are you fond of riding?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but we have only one Shetland pony amongst us. Papa says he +can’t afford more, besides the carriage-horses and his own nag; he has so +many expenses.” +</p> + +<p> +“I intend to have a horse and ride a great deal now,” said +Gwendolen, in a tone of decision. “Is the society pleasant in this +neighborhood?” +</p> + +<p> +“Papa says it is, very. There are the clergymen all about, you know; and +the Quallons, and the Arrowpoints, and Lord Brackenshaw, and Sir Hugo +Mallinger’s place, where there is nobody—that’s very nice, +because we make picnics there—and two or three families at Wanchester: +oh, and old Mrs. Vulcany, at Nuttingwood, and—” +</p> + +<p> +But Anna was relieved of this tax on her descriptive powers by the announcement +of dinner, and Gwendolen’s question was soon indirectly answered by her +uncle, who dwelt much on the advantages he had secured for them in getting a +place like Offendene. Except the rent, it involved no more expense than an +ordinary house at Wanchester would have done. +</p> + +<p> +“And it is always worth while to make a little sacrifice for a good style +of house,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in his easy, pleasantly confident tone, +which made the world in general seem a very manageable place of residence: +“especially where there is only a lady at the head. All the best people +will call upon you; and you need give no expensive dinners. Of course, I have +to spend a good deal in that way; it is a large item. But then I get my house +for nothing. If I had to pay three hundred a year for my house I could not keep +a table. My boys are too great a drain on me. You are better off than we are, +in proportion; there is no great drain on you now, after your house and +carriage.” +</p> + +<p> +“I assure you, Fanny, now that the children are growing up, I am obliged +to cut and contrive,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. “I am not a good manager +by nature, but Henry has taught me. He is wonderful for making the best of +everything; he allows himself no extras, and gets his curates for nothing. It +is rather hard that he has not been made a prebendary or something, as others +have been, considering the friends he has made and the need there is for men of +moderate opinions in all respects. If the Church is to keep its position, +ability and character ought to tell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear Nancy, you forget the old story—thank Heaven, there +are three hundred as good as I. And ultimately, we shall have no reason to +complain, I am pretty sure. There could hardly be a more thorough friend than +Lord Brackenshaw—your landlord, you know, Fanny. Lady Brackenshaw will +call upon you. And I have spoken for Gwendolen to be a member of our Archery +Club—the Brackenshaw Archery Club—the most select thing anywhere. +That is, if she has no objection,” added Mr. Gascoigne, looking at +Gwendolen with pleasant irony. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like it of all things,” said Gwendolen. “There is +nothing I enjoy more than taking aim—and hitting,” she ended, with +a pretty nod and smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Our Anna, poor child, is too short-sighted for archery. But I consider +myself a first-rate shot, and you shall practice with me. I must make you an +accomplished archer before our great meeting in July. In fact, as to +neighborhood, you could hardly be better placed. There are the +Arrowpoints—they are some of our best people. Miss Arrowpoint is a +delightful girl—she has been presented at Court. They have a magnificent +place—Quetcham Hall—worth seeing in point of art; and their +parties, to which you are sure to be invited, are the best things of the sort +we have. The archdeacon is intimate there, and they have always a good kind of +people staying in the house. Mrs. Arrowpoint is peculiar, certainly; something +of a caricature, in fact; but well-meaning. And Miss Arrowpoint is as nice as +possible. It is not all young ladies who have mothers as handsome and graceful +as yours and Anna’s.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow smiled faintly at this little compliment, but the husband and wife +looked affectionately at each other, and Gwendolen thought, “My uncle and +aunt, at least, are happy: they are not dull and dismal.” Altogether, she +felt satisfied with her prospects at Offendene, as a great improvement on +anything she had known. Even the cheap curates, she incidentally learned, were +almost always young men of family, and Mr. Middleton, the actual curate, was +said to be quite an acquisition: it was only a pity he was so soon to leave. +</p> + +<p> +But there was one point which she was so anxious to gain that she could not +allow the evening to pass without taking her measures toward securing it. Her +mamma, she knew, intended to submit entirely to her uncle’s judgment with +regard to expenditure; and the submission was not merely prudential, for Mrs. +Davilow, conscious that she had always been seen under a cloud as poor dear +Fanny, who had made a sad blunder with her second marriage, felt a hearty +satisfaction in being frankly and cordially identified with her sister’s +family, and in having her affairs canvassed and managed with an authority which +presupposed a genuine interest. Thus the question of a suitable saddle-horse, +which had been sufficiently discussed with mamma, had to be referred to Mr. +Gascoigne; and after Gwendolen had played on the piano, which had been provided +from Wanchester, had sung to her hearers’ admiration, and had induced her +uncle to join her in a duet—what more softening influence than this on +any uncle who would have sung finely if his time had not been too much taken up +by graver matters?—she seized the opportune moment for saying, +“Mamma, you have not spoken to my uncle about my riding.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gwendolen desires above all things to have a horse to ride—a +pretty, light, lady’s horse,” said Mrs. Davilow, looking at Mr. +Gascoigne. “Do you think we can manage it?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne projected his lower lip and lifted his handsome eyebrows +sarcastically at Gwendolen, who had seated herself with much grace on the elbow +of her mamma’s chair. +</p> + +<p> +“We could lend her the pony sometimes,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, +watching her husband’s face, and feeling quite ready to disapprove if he +did. +</p> + +<p> +“That might be inconveniencing others, aunt, and would be no pleasure to +me. I cannot endure ponies,” said Gwendolen. “I would rather give +up some other indulgence and have a horse.” (Was there ever a young lady +or gentleman not ready to give up an unspecified indulgence for the sake of the +favorite one specified?) +</p> + +<p> +“She rides so well. She has had lessons, and the riding-master said she +had so good a seat and hand she might be trusted with any mount,” said +Mrs. Davilow, who, even if she had not wished her darling to have the horse, +would not have dared to be lukewarm in trying to get it for her. +</p> + +<p> +“There is the price of the horse—a good sixty with the best chance, +and then his keep,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in a tone which, though +demurring, betrayed the inward presence of something that favored the demand. +“There are the carriage-horses—already a heavy item. And remember +what you ladies cost in toilet now.” +</p> + +<p> +“I really wear nothing but two black dresses,” said Mrs. Davilow, +hastily. “And the younger girls, of course, require no toilet at present. +Besides, Gwendolen will save me so much by giving her sisters lessons.” +Here Mrs. Davilow’s delicate cheek showed a rapid blush. “If it +were not for that, I must really have a more expensive governess, and masters +besides.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt some anger with her mamma, but carefully concealed it. +</p> + +<p> +“That is good—that is decidedly good,” said Mr. Gascoigne, +heartily, looking at his wife. And Gwendolen, who, it must be owned, was a deep +young lady, suddenly moved away to the other end of the long drawing-room, and +busied herself with arranging pieces of music. +</p> + +<p> +“The dear child has had no indulgences, no pleasures,” said Mrs. +Davilow, in a pleading undertone. “I feel the expense is rather imprudent +in this first year of our settling. But she really needs the exercise—she +needs cheering. And if you were to see her on horseback, it is something +splendid.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is what we could not afford for Anna,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. +“But she, dear child, would ride Lotta’s donkey and think it good +enough.” (Anna was absorbed in a game with Isabel, who had hunted out an +old back-gammon-board, and had begged to sit up an extra hour.) +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, a fine woman never looks better than on horseback,” +said Mr. Gascoigne. “And Gwendolen has the figure for it. I don’t +say the thing should not be considered.” +</p> + +<p> +“We might try it for a time, at all events. It can be given up, if +necessary,” said Mrs. Davilow. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I will consult Lord Brackenshaw’s head groom. He is my +<i>fidus Achates</i> in the horsey way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks,” said Mrs. Davilow, much relieved. “You are very +kind.” +</p> + +<p> +“That he always is,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. And later that night, +when she and her husband were in private, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you were almost too indulgent about the horse for Gwendolen. +She ought not to claim so much more than your own daughter would think of. +Especially before we see how Fanny manages on her income. And you really have +enough to do without taking all this trouble on yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Nancy, one must look at things from every point of view. This +girl is really worth some expense: you don’t often see her equal. She +ought to make a first-rate marriage, and I should not be doing my duty if I +spared my trouble in helping her forward. You know yourself she has been under +a disadvantage with such a father-in-law, and a second family, keeping her +always in the shade. I feel for the girl, And I should like your sister and her +family now to have the benefit of your having married rather a better specimen +of our kind than she did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather better! I should think so. However, it is for me to be grateful +that you will take so much on your shoulders for the sake of my sister and her +children. I am sure I would not grudge anything to poor Fanny. But there is one +thing I have been thinking of, though you have never mentioned it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is that?” +</p> + +<p> +“The boys. I hope they will not be falling in love with Gwendolen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t presuppose anything of the kind, my dear, and there will be +no danger. Rex will never be at home for long together, and Warham is going to +India. It is the wiser plan to take it for granted that cousins will not fall +in love. If you begin with precautions, the affair will come in spite of them. +One must not undertake to act for Providence in these matters, which can no +more be held under the hand than a brood of chickens. The boys will have +nothing, and Gwendolen will have nothing. They can’t marry. At the worst +there would only be a little crying, and you can’t save boys and girls +from that.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Gascoigne’s mind was satisfied: if anything did happen, there was +the comfort of feeling that her husband would know what was to be done, and +would have the energy to do it. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0004"></a> +CHAPTER IV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Gorgibus.</i>— * * * Je te dis que le mariage est une chose +sainte et sacrée: et que c’est faire en honnêtes gens, que de débuter par +là.<br/> +“<i>Madelon.</i>—Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, +un roman serait bientôt fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d’abord +Cyrus épousait Mandane, et qu’Aronce de plain-pied fût marié à Clélie! * +* * Laissez-nous faire à loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n’en pressez +pas tant la conclusion.”<br/> + MOLIÈRE. <i>Les Précieuses Ridicules.</i> +</p> + +<p> +It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote that in the course +of looking at things from every point of view, he looked at Gwendolen as a girl +likely to make a brilliant marriage. Why should he be expected to differ from +his contemporaries in this matter, and wish his niece a worse end of her +charming maidenhood than they would approve as the best possible? It is rather +to be set down to his credit that his feelings on the subject were entirely +good-natured. And in considering the relation of means to ends, it would have +been mere folly to have been guided by the exceptional and idyllic—to +have recommended that Gwendolen should wear a gown as shabby as +Griselda’s in order that a marquis might fall in love with her, or to +have insisted that since a fair maiden was to be sought, she should keep +herself out of the way. Mr. Gascoigne’s calculations were of the kind +called rational, and he did not even think of getting a too frisky horse in +order that Gwendolen might be threatened with an accident and be rescued by a +man of property. He wished his niece well, and he meant her to be seen to +advantage in the best society of the neighborhood. +</p> + +<p> +Her uncle’s intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen’s own +wishes. But let no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage +as the direct end of her witching the world with her grace on horseback, or +with any other accomplishment. That she was to be married some time or other +she would have felt obliged to admit; and that her marriage would not be of a +middling kind, such as most girls were contented with, she felt quietly, +unargumentatively sure. But her thoughts never dwelt on marriage as the +fulfillment of her ambition; the dramas in which she imagined herself a heroine +were not wrought up to that close. To be very much sued or hopelessly sighed +for as a bride was indeed an indispensable and agreeable guarantee of womanly +power; but to become a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that +condition, was on the whole a vexatious necessity. Her observation of matrimony +had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state in which a woman could not +do what she liked, had more children than were desirable, was consequently +dull, and became irrevocably immersed in humdrum. Of course marriage was social +promotion; she could not look forward to a single life; but promotions have +sometimes to be taken with bitter herbs—a peerage will not quite do +instead of leadership to the man who meant to lead; and this delicate-limbed +sylph of twenty meant to lead. For such passions dwell in feminine breasts +also. In Gwendolen’s, however, they dwelt among strictly feminine +furniture, and had no disturbing reference to the advancement of learning or +the balance of the constitution; her knowledge being such as with no sort of +standing-room or length of lever could have been expected to move the world. +She meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner; or rather, +whatever she could do so as to strike others with admiration and get in that +reflected way a more ardent sense of living, seemed pleasant to her fancy. +</p> + +<p> +“Gwendolen will not rest without having the world at her feet,” +said Miss Merry, the meek governess: hyperbolical words which have long come to +carry the most moderate meanings; for who has not heard of private persons +having the world at their feet in the shape of some half-dozen items of +flattering regard generally known in a genteel suburb? And words could hardly +be too wide or vague to indicate the prospect that made a hazy largeness about +poor Gwendolen on the heights of her young self-exultation. Other people +allowed themselves to be made slaves of, and to have their lives blown hither +and thither like empty ships in which no will was present. It was not to be so +with her; she would no longer be sacrificed to creatures worth less than +herself, but would make the very best of the chances that life offered her, and +conquer circumstances by her exceptional cleverness. Certainly, to be settled +at Offendene, with the notice of Lady Brackenshaw, the archery club, and +invitations to dine with the Arrowpoints, as the highest lights in her scenery, +was not a position that seemed to offer remarkable chances; but +Gwendolen’s confidence lay chiefly in herself. She felt well equipped for +the mastery of life. With regard to much in her lot hitherto, she held herself +rather hardly dealt with, but as to her “education,” she would have +admitted that it had left her under no disadvantages. In the school-room her +quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and +disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness; +and what remained of all things knowable, she was conscious of being +sufficiently acquainted with through novels, plays and poems. About her French +and music, the two justifying accomplishments of a young lady, she felt no +ground for uneasiness; and when to all these qualifications, negative and +positive, we add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy persons are +born with, so that any subject they turn their attention to impresses them with +their own power of forming a correct judgment on it, who can wonder if +Gwendolen felt ready to manage her own destiny? +</p> + +<p> +There were many subjects in the world—perhaps the majority—in which +she felt no interest, because they were stupid; for subjects are apt to appear +stupid to the young as light seems dull to the old; but she would not have felt +at all helpless in relation to them if they had turned up in conversation. It +must be remembered that no one had disputed her power or her general +superiority. As on the arrival at Offendene, so always, the first thought of +those about her had been, what will Gwendolen think?—if the footman trod +heavily in creaking boots, or if the laundress’s work was unsatisfactory, +the maid said, “This will never do for Miss Harleth”; if the wood +smoked in the bedroom fire-place, Mrs. Davilow, whose own weak eyes suffered +much from this inconvenience, spoke apologetically of it to Gwendolen. If, when +they were under the stress of traveling, she did not appear at the breakfast +table till every one else had finished, the only question was, how +Gwendolen’s coffee and toast should still be of the hottest and crispest; +and when she appeared with her freshly-brushed light-brown hair streaming +backward and awaiting her mamma’s hand to coil it up, her large brown +eyes glancing bright as a wave-washed onyx from under their long lashes, it was +always she herself who had to be tolerant—to beg that Alice who sat +waiting on her would not stick up her shoulders in that frightful manner, and +that Isabel, instead of pushing up to her and asking questions, would go away +to Miss Merry. +</p> + +<p> +Always she was the princess in exile, who in time of famine was to have her +breakfast-roll made of the finest-bolted flour from the seven thin ears of +wheat, and in a general decampment was to have her silver fork kept out of the +baggage. How was this to be accounted for? The answer may seem to lie quite on +the surface:—in her beauty, a certain unusualness about her, a decision +of will which made itself felt in her graceful movements and clear unhesitating +tones, so that if she came into the room on a rainy day when everybody else was +flaccid and the use of things in general was not apparent to them, there seemed +to be a sudden, sufficient reason for keeping up the forms of life; and even +the waiters at hotels showed the more alacrity in doing away with crumbs and +creases and dregs with struggling flies in them. This potent charm, added to +the fact that she was the eldest daughter, toward whom her mamma had always +been in an apologetic state of mind for the evils brought on her by a +step-father, may seem so full a reason for Gwendolen’s domestic empire, +that to look for any other would be to ask the reason of daylight when the sun +is shining. But beware of arriving at conclusions without comparison. I +remember having seen the same assiduous, apologetic attention awarded to +persons who were not at all beautiful or unusual, whose firmness showed itself +in no very graceful or euphonious way, and who were not eldest daughters with a +tender, timid mother, compunctious at having subjected them to inconveniences. +Some of them were a very common sort of men. And the only point of resemblance +among them all was a strong determination to have what was pleasant, with a +total fearlessness in making themselves disagreeable or dangerous when they did +not get it. Who is so much cajoled and served with trembling by the weak +females of a household as the unscrupulous male—capable, if he has not +free way at home, of going and doing worse elsewhere? Hence I am forced to +doubt whether even without her potent charm and peculiar filial position +Gwendolen might not still have played the queen in exile, if only she had kept +her inborn energy of egoistic desire, and her power of inspiring fear as to +what she might say or do. However, she had the charm, and those who feared her +were also fond of her; the fear and the fondness being perhaps both heightened +by what may be called the iridescence of her character—the play of +various, nay, contrary tendencies. For Macbeth’s rhetoric about the +impossibility of being many opposite things in the same moment, referred to the +clumsy necessities of action and not to the subtler possibilities of feeling. +We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent; we cannot kill and not kill +in the same moment; but a moment is wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, +for the outlash of a murderous thought and the sharp backward stroke of +repentance. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0005"></a> +CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + “Her wit<br/> +Values itself so highly, that to her<br/> +All matter else seems weak.”<br/> + —<i>Much Ado About Nothing.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s reception in the neighborhood fulfilled her uncle’s +expectations. From Brackenshaw Castle to the Firs at Wanchester, where Mr. +Quallon the banker kept a generous house, she was welcomed with manifest +admiration, and even those ladies who did not quite like her, felt a comfort in +having a new, striking girl to invite; for hostesses who entertain much must +make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other +than personal liking. Then, in order to have Gwendolen as a guest, it was not +necessary to ask any one who was disagreeable, for Mrs. Davilow always made a +quiet, picturesque figure as a chaperon, and Mr. Gascoigne was everywhere in +request for his own sake. +</p> + +<p> +Among the houses where Gwendolen was not quite liked, and yet invited, was +Quetcham Hall. One of her first invitations was to a large dinner-party there, +which made a sort of general introduction for her to the society of the +neighborhood; for in a select party of thirty and of well-composed proportions +as to age, few visitable families could be entirely left out. No youthful +figure there was comparable to Gwendolen’s as she passed through the long +suite of rooms adorned with light and flowers, and, visible at first as a slim +figure floating along in white drapery, approached through one wide doorway +after another into fuller illumination and definiteness. She had never had that +sort of promenade before, and she felt exultingly that it befitted her: any one +looking at her for the first time might have supposed that long galleries and +lackeys had always been a matter of course in her life; while her cousin Anna, +who was really more familiar with these things, felt almost as much embarrassed +as a rabbit suddenly deposited in that well-lit-space. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is that with Gascoigne?” said the archdeacon, neglecting a +discussion of military manoeuvres on which, as a clergyman, he was naturally +appealed to. And his son, on the other side of the room—a hopeful young +scholar, who had already suggested some “not less elegant than +ingenious,” emendations of Greek texts—said nearly at the same +time, “By George! who is that girl with the awfully well-set head and +jolly figure?” +</p> + +<p> +But to a mind of general benevolence, wishing everybody to look well, it was +rather exasperating to see how Gwendolen eclipsed others: how even the handsome +Miss Lawe, explained to be the daughter of Lady Lawe, looked suddenly broad, +heavy and inanimate; and how Miss Arrowpoint, unfortunately also dressed in +white, immediately resembled a <i>carte-de-visite</i> in which one would fancy +the skirt alone to have been charged for. Since Miss Arrowpoint was generally +liked for the amiable unpretending way in which she wore her fortunes, and made +a softening screen for the oddities of her mother, there seemed to be some +unfitness in Gwendolen’s looking so much more like a person of social +importance. +</p> + +<p> +“She is not really so handsome if you come to examine her +features,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, later in the evening, confidentially to +Mrs. Vulcany. “It is a certain style she has, which produces a great +effect at first, but afterward she is less agreeable.” +</p> + +<p> +In fact, Gwendolen, not intending it, but intending the contrary, had offended +her hostess, who, though not a splenetic or vindictive woman, had her +susceptibilities. Several conditions had met in the Lady of Quetcham which to +the reasoners in that neighborhood seemed to have an essential connection with +each other. It was occasionally recalled that she had been the heiress of a +fortune gained by some moist or dry business in the city, in order fully to +account for her having a squat figure, a harsh parrot-like voice, and a +systematically high head-dress; and since these points made her externally +rather ridiculous, it appeared to many only natural that she should have what +are called literary tendencies. A little comparison would have shown that all +these points are to be found apart; daughters of aldermen being often +well-grown and well-featured, pretty women having sometimes harsh or husky +voices, and the production of feeble literature being found compatible with the +most diverse forms of <i>physique</i>, masculine as well as feminine. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, who had a keen sense of absurdity in others, but was kindly disposed +toward any one who could make life agreeable to her, meant to win Mrs. +Arrowpoint by giving her an interest and attention beyond what others were +probably inclined to show. But self-confidence is apt to address itself to an +imaginary dullness in others; as people who are well off speak in a cajoling +tone to the poor, and those who are in the prime of life raise their voice and +talk artificially to seniors, hastily conceiving them to be deaf and rather +imbecile. Gwendolen, with all her cleverness and purpose to be agreeable, could +not escape that form of stupidity: it followed in her mind, unreflectingly, +that because Mrs. Arrowpoint was ridiculous she was also likely to be wanting +in penetration, and she went through her little scenes without suspicion that +the various shades of her behavior were all noted. +</p> + +<p> +“You are fond of books as well as of music, riding, and archery, I +hear,” Mrs. Arrowpoint said, going to her for a <i>tête-à-tête</i> in the +drawing-room after dinner. “Catherine will be very glad to have so +sympathetic a neighbor.” This little speech might have seemed the most +graceful politeness, spoken in a low, melodious tone; but with a twang, fatally +loud, it gave Gwendolen a sense of exercising patronage when she answered, +gracefully: +</p> + +<p> +“It is I who am fortunate. Miss Arrowpoint will teach me what good music +is. I shall be entirely a learner. I hear that she is a thorough +musician.” +</p> + +<p> +“Catherine has certainly had every advantage. We have a first-rate +musician in the house now—Herr Klesmer; perhaps you know all his +compositions. You must allow me to introduce him to you. You sing, I believe. +Catherine plays three instruments, but she does not sing. I hope you will let +us hear you. I understand you are an accomplished singer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no!—‘die Kraft ist schwach, allein die Lust ist +gross,’ as Mephistopheles says.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you are a student of Goethe. Young ladies are so advanced now. I +suppose you have read everything.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, really. I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have +been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is +nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could +write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write +books after one’s own taste instead of reading other people’s! +Home-made books must be so nice.” +</p> + +<p> +For an instant Mrs. Arrowpoint’s glance was a little sharper, but the +perilous resemblance to satire in the last sentence took the hue of girlish +simplicity when Gwendolen added, +</p> + +<p> +“I would give anything to write a book!” +</p> + +<p> +“And why should you not?” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, encouragingly. +“You have but to begin as I did. Pen, ink, and paper are at +everybody’s command. But I will send you all I have written with +pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks. I shall be so glad to read your writings. Being acquainted with +authors must give a peculiar understanding of their books: one would be able to +tell then which parts were funny and which serious. I am sure I often laugh in +the wrong place.” Here Gwendolen herself became aware of danger, and +added quickly, “In Shakespeare, you know, and other great writers that we +can never see. But I always want to know more than there is in the +books.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are interested in any of my subjects I can lend you many extra +sheets in manuscript,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint—while Gwendolen felt +herself painfully in the position of the young lady who professed to like +potted sprats. +</p> + +<p> +“These are things I dare say I shall publish eventually: several friends +have urged me to do so, and one doesn’t like to be obstinate. My Tasso, +for example—I could have made it twice the size.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dote on Tasso,” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you shall have all my papers, if you like. So many, you know, have +written about Tasso; but they are all wrong. As to the particular nature of his +madness, and his feelings for Leonora, and the real cause of his imprisonment, +and the character of Leonora, who, in my opinion, was a cold-hearted woman, +else she would have married him in spite of her brother—they are all +wrong. I differ from everybody.” +</p> + +<p> +“How very interesting!” said Gwendolen. “I like to differ +from everybody. I think it is so stupid to agree. That is the worst of writing +your opinions; you make people agree with you.” This speech renewed a +slight suspicion in Mrs. Arrowpoint, and again her glance became for a moment +examining. But Gwendolen looked very innocent, and continued with a docile air: +</p> + +<p> +“I know nothing of Tasso except the <i>Gerusalemme Liberata</i>, which we +read and learned by heart at school.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, his life is more interesting than his poetry, I have constructed the +early part of his life as a sort of romance. When one thinks of his father +Bernardo, and so on, there is much that must be true.” +</p> + +<p> +“Imagination is often truer than fact,” said Gwendolen, decisively, +though she could no more have explained these glib words than if they had been +Coptic or Etruscan. “I shall be so glad to learn all about +Tasso—and his madness especially. I suppose poets are always a little +mad.” +</p> + +<p> +“To be sure—‘the poet’s eye in a fine frenzy +rolling’; and somebody says of Marlowe, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘For that fine madness still he did maintain,<br/> +Which always should possess the poet’s brain.’” +</p> + +<p> +“But it was not always found out, was it?” said Gwendolen +innocently. “I suppose some of them rolled their eyes in private. Mad +people are often very cunning.” +</p> + +<p> +Again a shade flitted over Mrs. Arrowpoint’s face; but the entrance of +the gentlemen prevented any immediate mischief between her and this too quick +young lady, who had over-acted her <i>naïveté</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, here comes Herr Klesmer,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, rising; and +presently bringing him to Gwendolen, she left them to a dialogue which was +agreeable on both sides, Herr Klesmer being a felicitous combination of the +German, the Sclave and the Semite, with grand features, brown hair floating in +artistic fashion, and brown eyes in spectacles. His English had little +foreignness except its fluency; and his alarming cleverness was made less +formidable just then by a certain softening air of silliness which will +sometimes befall even Genius in the desire of being agreeable to Beauty. +</p> + +<p> +Music was soon begun. Miss Arrowpoint and Herr Klesmer played a four-handed +piece on two pianos, which convinced the company in general that it was long, +and Gwendolen in particular that the neutral, placid-faced Miss Arrowpoint had +a mastery of the instrument which put her own execution out of +question—though she was not discouraged as to her often-praised touch and +style. After this every one became anxious to hear Gwendolen sing; especially +Mr. Arrowpoint; as was natural in a host and a perfect gentleman, of whom no +one had anything to say but that he married Miss Cuttler and imported the best +cigars; and he led her to the piano with easy politeness. Herr Klesmer closed +the instrument in readiness for her, and smiled with pleasure at her approach; +then placed himself at a distance of a few feet so that he could see her as she +sang. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was not nervous; what she undertook to do she did without trembling, +and singing was an enjoyment to her. Her voice was a moderately powerful +soprano (some one had told her it was like Jenny Lind’s), her ear good, +and she was able to keep in tune, so that her singing gave pleasure to ordinary +hearers, and she had been used to unmingled applause. She had the rare +advantage of looking almost prettier when she was singing than at other times, +and that Herr Klesmer was in front of her seemed not disagreeable. Her song, +determined on beforehand, was a favorite aria of Belini’s, in which she +felt quite sure of herself. +</p> + +<p> +“Charming!” said Mr. Arrowpoint, who had remained near, and the +word was echoed around without more insincerity than we recognize in a +brotherly way as human. But Herr Klesmer stood like a statue—if a statue +can be imagined in spectacles; at least, he was as mute as a statue. Gwendolen +was pressed to keep her seat and double the general pleasure, and she did not +wish to refuse; but before resolving to do so, she moved a little toward Herr +Klesmer, saying with a look of smiling appeal, “It would be too cruel to +a great musician. You cannot like to hear poor amateur singing.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, truly; but that makes nothing,” said Herr Klesmer, suddenly +speaking in an odious German fashion with staccato endings, quite unobservable +in him before, and apparently depending on a change of mood, as Irishmen resume +their strongest brogue when they are fervid or quarrelsome. “That makes +nothing. It is always acceptable to see you sing.” +</p> + +<p> +Was there ever so unexpected an assertion of superiority—at least before +the late Teutonic conquest? Gwendolen colored deeply, but, with her usual +presence of mind, did not show an ungraceful resentment by moving away +immediately; and Miss Arrowpoint, who had been near enough to overhear (and +also to observe that Herr Klesmer’s mode of looking at Gwendolen was more +conspicuously admiring than was quite consistent with good taste), now with the +utmost tact and kindness came close to her and said, +</p> + +<p> +“Imagine what I have to go through with this professor! He can hardly +tolerate anything we English do in music. We can only put up with his severity, +and make use of it to find out the worst that can be said of us. It is a little +comfort to know that; and one can bear it when every one else is +admiring.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should be very much obliged to him for telling me the worst,” +said Gwendolen, recovering herself. “I dare say I have been extremely ill +taught, in addition to having no talent—only liking for music.” +This was very well expressed considering that it had never entered her mind +before. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it is true: you have not been well taught,” said Herr +Klesmer, quietly. Woman was dear to him, but music was dearer. “Still, +you are not quite without gifts. You sing in tune, and you have a pretty fair +organ. But you produce your notes badly; and that music which you sing is +beneath you. It is a form of melody which expresses a puerile state of +culture—a dawdling, canting, see-saw kind of stuff—the passion and +thought of people without any breadth of horizon. There is a sort of +self-satisfied folly about every phrase of such melody; no cries of deep, +mysterious passion—no conflict—no sense of the universal. It makes +men small as they listen to it. Sing now something larger. And I shall +see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, not now—by-and-by,” said Gwendolen, with a sinking of +heart at the sudden width of horizon opened round her small musical +performance. For a lady desiring to lead, this first encounter in her campaign +was startling. But she was bent on not behaving foolishly, and Miss Arrowpoint +helped her by saying, “Yes, by-and-by. I always require half an hour to +get up my courage after being criticised by Herr Klesmer. We will ask him to +play to us now: he is bound to show us what is good music.” +</p> + +<p> +To be quite safe on this point Herr Klesmer played a composition of his own, a +fantasia called <i>Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedankenvoll</i>—an extensive +commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly +fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the piano as that +moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic in +his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden +hammer, and compel the strings to make a quivering lingering speech for him. +Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded egoism, had fullness of nature enough to +feel the power of this playing, and it gradually turned her inward sob of +mortification into an excitement which lifted her for the moment into a +desperate indifference about her own doings, or at least a determination to get +a superiority over them by laughing at them as if they belonged to somebody +else. Her eyes had become brighter, her cheeks slightly flushed, and her tongue +ready for any mischievous remarks. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you would sing to us again, Miss Harleth,” said young +Clintock, the archdeacon’s classical son, who had been so fortunate as to +take her to dinner, and came up to renew conversation as soon as Herr +Klesmer’s performance was ended, “That is the style of music for +me. I never can make anything of this tip-top playing. It is like a jar of +leeches, where you can never tell either beginnings or endings. I could listen +to your singing all day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, we should be glad of something popular now—another song from +you would be a relaxation,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, who had also come near +with polite intentions. +</p> + +<p> +“That must be because you are in a puerile state of culture, and have no +breadth of horizon. I have just learned that. I have been taught how bad my +taste is, and am feeling growing pains. They are never pleasant,” said +Gwendolen, not taking any notice of Mrs. Arrowpoint, and looking up with a +bright smile at young Clintock. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Arrowpoint was not insensible to this rudeness, but merely said, +“Well, we will not press anything disagreeably,” and as there was a +perceptible outburst of imprisoned conversation just then, and a movement of +guests seeking each other, she remained seated where she was, and looked around +her with the relief of a hostess at finding she is not needed. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad you like this neighborhood,” said young Clintock, +well-pleased with his station in front of Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Exceedingly. There seems to be a little of everything and not much of +anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is rather equivocal praise.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not with me. I like a little of everything; a little absurdity, for +example, is very amusing. I am thankful for a few queer people; but much of +them is a bore.” +</p> + +<p> +(Mrs. Arrowpoint, who was hearing this dialogue, perceived quite a new tone in +Gwendolen’s speech, and felt a revival of doubt as to her interest in +Tasso’s madness.) +</p> + +<p> +“I think there should be more croquet, for one thing,” said young +Clintock; “I am usually away, but if I were more here I should go in for +a croquet club. You are one of the archers, I think. But depend upon it croquet +is the game of the future. It wants writing up, though. One of our best men has +written a poem on it, in four cantos;—as good as Pope. I want him to +publish it—You never read anything better.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall study croquet to-morrow. I shall take to it instead of +singing.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, not that; but do take to croquet. I will send you +Jenning’s poem if you like. I have a manuscript copy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he a great friend of yours?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, rather.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if he is only rather, I think I will decline. Or, if you send it to +me, will you promise not to catechise me upon it and ask me which part I like +best? Because it is not so easy to know a poem without reading it as to know a +sermon without listening.” +</p> + +<p> +“Decidedly,” Mrs. Arrowpoint thought, “this girl is double +and satirical. I shall be on my guard against her.” +</p> + +<p> +But Gwendolen, nevertheless, continued to receive polite attentions from the +family at Quetcham, not merely because invitations have larger grounds than +those of personal liking, but because the trying little scene at the piano had +awakened a kindly solicitude toward her in the gentle mind of Miss Arrowpoint, +who managed all the invitations and visits, her mother being otherwise +occupied. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0006"></a> +CHAPTER VI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Croyez-vous m’avoir humiliée pour m’avoir appris que la +terre tourne autour du soleil? Je vous jure que je ne m’en estime pas +moins.”<br/> + —F<small>ONTENELLE</small>: <i>Pluralité des +Mondes</i>. +</p> + +<p> +That lofty criticism had caused Gwendolen a new sort of pain. She would not +have chosen to confess how unfortunate she thought herself in not having had +Miss Arrowpoint’s musical advantages, so as to be able to question Herr +Klesmer’s taste with the confidence of thorough knowledge; still less, to +admit even to herself that Miss Arrowpoint each time they met raised an +unwonted feeling of jealousy in her: not in the least because she was an +heiress, but because it was really provoking that a girl whose appearance you +could not characterize except by saying that her figure was slight and of +middle stature, her features small, her eyes tolerable, and her complexion +sallow, had nevertheless a certain mental superiority which could not be +explained away—an exasperating thoroughness in her musical +accomplishment, a fastidious discrimination in her general tastes, which made +it impossible to force her admiration and kept you in awe of her standard. This +insignificant-looking young lady of four-and-twenty, whom any one’s eyes +would have passed over negligently if she had not been Miss Arrowpoint, might +be suspected of a secret opinion that Miss Harleth’s acquirements were +rather of a common order, and such an opinion was not made agreeable to think +of by being always veiled under a perfect kindness of manner. +</p> + +<p> +But Gwendolen did not like to dwell on facts which threw an unfavorable light +on itself. The musical Magus who had so suddenly widened her horizon was not +always on the scene; and his being constantly backward and forward between +London and Quetcham soon began to be thought of as offering opportunities for +converting him to a more admiring state of mind. Meanwhile, in the manifest +pleasure her singing gave at Brackenshaw Castle, the Firs, and elsewhere, she +recovered her equanimity, being disposed to think approval more trustworthy +than objection, and not being one of the exceptional persons who have a +parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by their neighbors. Perhaps it +would have been rash to say then that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or +that the unusual in her was more than her rare grace of movement and bearing, +and a certain daring which gave piquancy to a very common egoistic ambition, +such as exists under many clumsy exteriors and is taken no notice of. For I +suppose that the set of the head does not really determine the hunger of the +inner self for supremacy: it only makes a difference sometimes as to the way in +which the supremacy is held attainable, and a little also to the degree in +which it can be attained; especially when the hungry one is a girl, whose +passion for doing what is remarkable has an ideal limit in consistency with the +highest breeding and perfect freedom from the sordid need of income. Gwendolen +was as inwardly rebellious against the restraints of family conditions, and as +ready to look through obligations into her own fundamental want of feeling for +them, as if she had been sustained by the boldest speculations; but she really +had no such speculations, and would at once have marked herself off from any +sort of theoretical or practically reforming women by satirizing them. She +rejoiced to feel herself exceptional; but her horizon was that of the genteel +romance where the heroine’s soul poured out in her journal is full of +vague power, originality, and general rebellion, while her life moves strictly +in the sphere of fashion; and if she wanders into a swamp, the pathos lies +partly, so to speak, in her having on her satin shoes. Here is a restraint +which nature and society have provided on the pursuit of striking adventure; so +that a soul burning with a sense of what the universe is not, and ready to take +all existence as fuel, is nevertheless held captive by the ordinary wirework of +social forms and does nothing particular. +</p> + +<p> +This commonplace result was what Gwendolen found herself threatened with even +in the novelty of the first winter at Offendene. What she was clear upon was, +that she did not wish to lead the same sort of life as ordinary young ladies +did; but what she was not clear upon was, how she should set about leading any +other, and what were the particular acts which she would assert her freedom by +doing. Offendene remained a good background, if anything would happen there; +but on the whole the neighborhood was in fault. +</p> + +<p> +Beyond the effect of her beauty on a first presentation, there was not much +excitement to be got out of her earliest invitations, and she came home after +little sallies of satire and knowingness, such as had offended Mrs. Arrowpoint, +to fill the intervening days with the most girlish devices. The strongest +assertion she was able to make of her individual claims was to leave out +Alice’s lessons (on the principle that Alice was more likely to excel in +ignorance), and to employ her with Miss Merry, and the maid who was understood +to wait on all the ladies, in helping to arrange various dramatic costumes +which Gwendolen pleased herself with having in readiness for some future +occasions of acting in charades or theatrical pieces, occasions which she meant +to bring about by force of will or contrivance. She had never acted—only +made a figure in <i>tableaux vivans</i> at school; but she felt assured that +she could act well, and having been once or twice to the Théâtre Français, and +also heard her mamma speak of Rachel, her waking dreams and cogitations as to +how she would manage her destiny sometimes turned on the question whether she +would become an actress like Rachel, since she was more beautiful than that +thin Jewess. Meanwhile the wet days before Christmas were passed pleasantly in +the preparation of costumes, Greek, Oriental, and Composite, in which Gwendolen +attitudinized and speechified before a domestic audience, including even the +housekeeper, who was once pressed into it that she might swell the notes of +applause; but having shown herself unworthy by observing that Miss Harleth +looked far more like a queen in her own dress than in that baggy thing with her +arms all bare, she was not invited a second time. +</p> + +<p> +“Do I look as well as Rachel, mamma?” said Gwendolen, one day when +she had been showing herself in her Greek dress to Anna, and going through +scraps of scenes with much tragic intention. +</p> + +<p> +“You have better arms than Rachel,” said Mrs. Davilow, “your +arms would do for anything, Gwen. But your voice is not so tragic as hers; it +is not so deep.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can make it deeper, if I like,” said Gwendolen, provisionally; +then she added, with decision, “I think a higher voice is more tragic: it +is more feminine; and the more feminine a woman is, the more tragic it seems +when she does desperate actions.” +</p> + +<p> +“There may be something in that,” said Mrs. Davilow, languidly. +“But I don’t know what good there is in making one’s blood +creep. And if there is anything horrible to be done, I should like it to be +left to the men.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mamma, you are so dreadfully prosaic! As if all the great poetic +criminals were not women! I think the men are poor cautious creatures.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, dear, and you—who are afraid to be alone in the +night—I don’t think you would be very bold in crime, thank +God.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not talking about reality, mamma,” said Gwendolen, +impatiently. Then her mamma being called out of the room, she turned quickly to +her cousin, as if taking an opportunity, and said, “Anna, do ask my uncle +to let us get up some charades at the rectory. Mr. Middleton and Warham could +act with us—just for practice. Mamma says it will not do to have Mr. +Middleton consulting and rehearsing here. He is a stick, but we could give him +suitable parts. Do ask, or else I will.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, not till Rex comes. He is so clever, and such a dear old thing, and +he will act Napoleon looking over the sea. He looks just like Napoleon. Rex can +do anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t in the least believe in your Rex, Anna,” said +Gwendolen, laughing at her. “He will turn out to be like those wretched +blue and yellow water-colors of his which you hang up in your bedroom and +worship.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, you will see,” said Anna. “It is not that I know +what is clever, but he has got a scholarship already, and papa says he will get +a fellowship, and nobody is better at games. He is cleverer than Mr. Middleton, +and everybody but you call Mr. Middleton clever.” +</p> + +<p> +“So he may be in a dark-lantern sort of way. But he <i>is</i> a stick. If +he had to say, ‘Perdition catch my soul, but I do love her,’ he +would say it in just the same tone as, ‘Here endeth the second +lesson.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Gwendolen!” said Anna, shocked at these promiscuous allusions. +“And it is very unkind of you to speak so of him, for he admires you very +much. I heard Warham say one day to mamma, ‘Middleton is regularly +spooney upon Gwendolen.’ She was very angry with him; but I know what it +means. It is what they say at college for being in love.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can I help it?” said Gwendolen, rather contemptuously. +“Perdition catch my soul if I love <i>him</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, of course; papa, I think, would not wish it. And he is to go away +soon. But it makes me sorry when you ridicule him.” +</p> + +<p> +“What shall you do to me when I ridicule Rex?” said Gwendolen, +wickedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Gwendolen, dear, you <i>will not</i>?” said Anna, her eyes +filling with tears. “I could not bear it. But there really is nothing in +him to ridicule. Only you may find out things. For no one ever thought of +laughing at Mr. Middleton before you. Every one said he was nice-looking, and +his manners perfect. I am sure I have always been frightened at him because of +his learning and his square-cut coat, and his being a nephew of the +bishop’s, and all that. But you will not ridicule Rex—promise +me.” Anna ended with a beseeching look which touched Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a dear little coz,” she said, just touching the tip of +Anna’s chin with her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t ever want +to do anything that will vex you. Especially if Rex is to make everything come +off—charades and everything.” +</p> + +<p> +And when at last Rex was there, the animation he brought into the life of +Offendene and the rectory, and his ready partnership in Gwendolen’s +plans, left her no inclination for any ridicule that was not of an open and +flattering kind, such as he himself enjoyed. He was a fine open-hearted youth, +with a handsome face strongly resembling his father’s and Anna’s, +but softer in expression than the one, and larger in scale than the other: a +bright, healthy, loving nature, enjoying ordinary innocent things so much that +vice had no temptation for him, and what he knew of it lay too entirely in the +outer courts and little-visited chambers of his mind for him to think of it +with great repulsion. Vicious habits were with him “what some fellows +did”—“stupid stuff” which he liked to keep aloof from. +He returned Anna’s affection as fully as could be expected of a brother +whose pleasures apart from her were more than the sum total of hers; and he had +never known a stronger love. +</p> + +<p> +The cousins were continually together at the one house or the +other—chiefly at Offendene, where there was more freedom, or rather where +there was a more complete sway for Gwendolen; and whatever she wished became a +ruling purpose for Rex. The charades came off according to her plans; and also +some other little scenes not contemplated by her in which her acting was more +impromptu. It was at Offendene that the charades and <i>tableaux</i> were +rehearsed and presented, Mrs. Davilow seeing no objection even to Mr. +Middleton’s being invited to share in them, now that Rex too was +there—especially as his services were indispensable: Warham, who was +studying for India with a Wanchester “coach,” having no time to +spare, and being generally dismal under a cram of everything except the answers +needed at the forthcoming examination, which might disclose the welfare of our +Indian Empire to be somehow connected with a quotable knowledge of +Browne’s Pastorals. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Middleton was persuaded to play various grave parts, Gwendolen having +flattered him on his enviable immobility of countenance; and at first a little +pained and jealous at her comradeship with Rex, he presently drew encouragement +from the thought that this sort of cousinly familiarity excluded any serious +passion. Indeed, he occasionally felt that her more formal treatment of himself +was such a sign of favor as to warrant his making advances before he left +Pennicote, though he had intended to keep his feelings in reserve until his +position should be more assured. Miss Gwendolen, quite aware that she was +adored by this unexceptionable young clergyman with pale whiskers and +square-cut collar, felt nothing more on the subject than that she had no +objection to being adored: she turned her eyes on him with calm mercilessness +and caused him many mildly agitating hopes by seeming always to avoid dramatic +contact with him—for all meanings, we know, depend on the key of +interpretation. +</p> + +<p> +Some persons might have thought beforehand that a young man of Anglican +leanings, having a sense of sacredness much exercised on small things as well +as great, rarely laughing save from politeness, and in general regarding the +mention of spades by their naked names as rather coarse, would not have seen a +fitting bride for himself in a girl who was daring in ridicule, and showed none +of the special grace required in the clergyman’s wife; or, that a young +man informed by theological reading would have reflected that he was not likely +to meet the taste of a lively, restless young lady like Miss Harleth. But are +we always obliged to explain why the facts are not what some persons thought +beforehand? The apology lies on their side, who had that erroneous way of +thinking. +</p> + +<p> +As for Rex, who would possibly have been sorry for poor Middleton if he had +been aware of the excellent curate’s inward conflict, he was too +completely absorbed in a first passion to have observation for any person or +thing. He did not observe Gwendolen; he only felt what she said or did, and the +back of his head seemed to be a good organ of information as to whether she was +in the room or out. Before the end of the first fortnight he was so deeply in +love that it was impossible for him to think of his life except as bound up +with Gwendolen’s. He could see no obstacles, poor boy; his own love +seemed a guarantee of hers, since it was one with the unperturbed delight in +her image, so that he could no more dream of her giving him pain than an +Egyptian could dream of snow. She sang and played to him whenever he liked, was +always glad of his companionship in riding, though his borrowed steeds were +often comic, was ready to join in any fun of his, and showed a right +appreciation of Anna. No mark of sympathy seemed absent. That because Gwendolen +was the most perfect creature in the world she was to make a grand match, had +not occurred to him. He had no conceit—at least not more than goes to +make up the necessary gum and consistence of a substantial personality: it was +only that in the young bliss of loving he took Gwendolen’s perfection as +part of that good which had seemed one with life to him, being the outcome of a +happy, well-embodied nature. +</p> + +<p> +One incident which happened in the course of their dramatic attempts impressed +Rex as a sign of her unusual sensibility. It showed an aspect of her nature +which could not have been preconceived by any one who, like him, had only seen +her habitual fearlessness in active exercises and her high spirits in society. +</p> + +<p> +After a good deal of rehearsing it was resolved that a select party should be +invited to Offendene to witness the performances which went with so much +satisfaction to the actors. Anna had caused a pleasant surprise; nothing could +be neater than the way in which she played her little parts; one would even +have suspected her of hiding much sly observation under her simplicity. And Mr. +Middleton answered very well by not trying to be comic. The main source of +doubt and retardation had been Gwendolen’s desire to appear in her Greek +dress. No word for a charade would occur to her either waking or dreaming that +suited her purpose of getting a statuesque pose in this favorite costume. To +choose a motive from Racine was of no use, since Rex and the others could not +declaim French verse, and improvised speeches would turn the scene into +burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: +he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which was fitting for +every one else was unfitting for a clergyman; but he would not in this matter +overstep the line of decorum as drawn in that part of Wessex, which did not +exclude his sanction of the young people’s acting charades in his +sister-in-law’s house—a very different affair from private +theatricals in the full sense of the word. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody of course was concerned to satisfy this wish of Gwendolen’s, +and Rex proposed that they should wind up with a tableau in which the effect of +her majesty would not be marred by any one’s speech. This pleased her +thoroughly, and the only question was the choice of the tableau. +</p> + +<p> +“Something pleasant, children, I beseech you,” said Mrs. Davilow; +“I can’t have any Greek wickedness.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is no worse than Christian wickedness, mamma,” said Gwendolen, +whose mention of Rachelesque heroines had called forth that remark. +</p> + +<p> +“And less scandalous,” said Rex. “Besides, one thinks of it +as all gone by and done with. What do you say to Briseis being led away? I +would be Achilles, and you would be looking round at me—after the print +we have at the rectory.” +</p> + +<p> +“That would be a good attitude for me,” said Gwendolen, in a tone +of acceptance. But afterward she said with decision, “No. It will not do. +There must be three men in proper costume, else it will be ridiculous.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have it,” said Rex, after a little reflection. “Hermione +as the statue in Winter’s Tale? I will be Leontes, and Miss Merry, +Paulina, one on each side. Our dress won’t signify,” he went on +laughingly; “it will be more Shakespearian and romantic if Leontes looks +like Napoleon, and Paulina like a modern spinster.” +</p> + +<p> +And Hermione was chosen; all agreeing that age was of no consequence, but +Gwendolen urged that instead of the mere tableau there should be just enough +acting of the scene to introduce the striking up of the music as a signal for +her to step down and advance; when Leontes, instead of embracing her, was to +kneel and kiss the hem of her garment, and so the curtain was to fall. The +antechamber with folding doors lent itself admirably to the purpose of a stage, +and the whole of the establishment, with the addition of Jarrett the village +carpenter, was absorbed in the preparations for an entertainment, which, +considering that it was an imitation of acting, was likely to be successful, +since we know from ancient fable that an imitation may have more chance of +success than the original. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was not without a special exultation in the prospect of this +occasion, for she knew that Herr Klesmer was again at Quetcham, and she had +taken care to include him among the invited. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer came. He was in one of his placid, silent moods, and sat in serene +contemplation, replying to all appeals in benignant-sounding syllables more or +less articulate—as taking up his cross meekly in a world overgrown with +amateurs, or as careful how he moved his lion paws lest he should crush a +rampant and vociferous mouse. +</p> + +<p> +Everything indeed went off smoothly and according to expectation—all that +was improvised and accidental being of a probable sort—until the incident +occurred which showed Gwendolen in an unforeseen phase of emotion. How it came +about was at first a mystery. +</p> + +<p> +The tableau of Hermione was doubly striking from its dissimilarity with what +had gone before: it was answering perfectly, and a murmur of applause had been +gradually suppressed while Leontes gave his permission that Paulina should +exercise her utmost art and make the statue move. +</p> + +<p> +Hermione, her arm resting on a pillar, was elevated by about six inches, which +she counted on as a means of showing her pretty foot and instep, when at the +given signal she should advance and descend. +</p> + +<p> +“Music, awake her, strike!” said Paulina (Mrs. Davilow, who, by +special entreaty, had consented to take the part in a white burnous and hood). +</p> + +<p> +Herr Klesmer, who had been good-natured enough to seat himself at the piano, +struck a thunderous chord—but in the same instant, and before Hermione +had put forth her foot, the movable panel, which was on a line with the piano, +flew open on the right opposite the stage and disclosed the picture of the dead +face and the fleeing figure, brought out in pale definiteness by the position +of the wax-lights. Everyone was startled, but all eyes in the act of turning +toward the open panel were recalled by a piercing cry from Gwendolen, who stood +without change of attitude, but with a change of expression that was terrifying +in its terror. She looked like a statue into which a soul of Fear had entered: +her pallid lips were parted; her eyes, usually narrowed under their long +lashes, were dilated and fixed. Her mother, less surprised than alarmed, rushed +toward her, and Rex, too, could not help going to her side. But the touch of +her mother’s arm had the effect of an electric charge; Gwendolen fell on +her knees and put her hands before her face. She was still trembling, but mute, +and it seemed that she had self-consciousness enough to aim at controlling her +signs of terror, for she presently allowed herself to be raised from her +kneeling posture and led away, while the company were relieving their minds by +explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“A magnificent bit of <i>plastik</i> that!” said Klesmer to Miss +Arrowpoint. And a quick fire of undertoned question and answer went round. +</p> + +<p> +“Was it part of the play?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no, surely not. Miss Harleth was too much affected. A sensitive +creature!” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me! I was not aware that there was a painting behind that panel; +were you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; how should I? Some eccentricity in one of the Earl’s family +long ago, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“How very painful! Pray shut it up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was the door locked? It is very mysterious. It must be the +spirits.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there is no medium present.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know that? We must conclude that there is, when such things +happen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the door was not locked; it was probably the sudden vibration from +the piano that sent it open.” +</p> + +<p> +This conclusion came from Mr. Gascoigne, who begged Miss Merry if possible to +get the key. But this readiness to explain the mystery was thought by Mrs. +Vulcany unbecoming in a clergyman, and she observed in an undertone that Mr. +Gascoigne was always a little too worldly for her taste. However, the key was +produced, and the rector turned it in the lock with an emphasis rather +offensively rationalizing—as who should say, “it will not start +open again”—putting the key in his pocket as a security. +</p> + +<p> +However, Gwendolen soon reappeared, showing her usual spirits, and evidently +determined to ignore as far as she could the striking change she had made in +the part of Hermione. +</p> + +<p> +But when Klesmer said to her, “We have to thank you for devising a +perfect climax: you could not have chosen a finer bit of <i>plastik</i>,” +there was a flush of pleasure in her face. She liked to accept as a belief what +was really no more than delicate feigning. He divined that the betrayal into a +passion of fear had been mortifying to her, and wished her to understand that +he took it for good acting. Gwendolen cherished the idea that now he was struck +with her talent as well as her beauty, and her uneasiness about his opinion was +half turned to complacency. +</p> + +<p> +But too many were in the secret of what had been included in the rehearsals, +and what had not, and no one besides Klesmer took the trouble to soothe +Gwendolen’s imagined mortification. The general sentiment was that the +incident should be let drop. +</p> + +<p> +There had really been a medium concerned in the starting open of the panel: one +who had quitted the room in haste and crept to bed in much alarm of conscience. +It was the small Isabel, whose intense curiosity, unsatisfied by the brief +glimpse she had had of the strange picture on the day of arrival at Offendene, +had kept her on the watch for an opportunity of finding out where Gwendolen had +put the key, of stealing it from the discovered drawer when the rest of the +family were out, and getting on a stool to unlock the panel. While she was +indulging her thirst for knowledge in this way, a noise which she feared was an +approaching footstep alarmed her: she closed the door and attempted hurriedly +to lock it, but failing and not daring to linger, she withdrew the key and +trusted that the panel would stick, as it seemed well inclined to do. In this +confidence she had returned the key to its former place, stilling any anxiety +by the thought that if the door were discovered to be unlocked nobody would +know how the unlocking came about. The inconvenient Isabel, like other +offenders, did not foresee her own impulse to confession, a fatality which came +upon her the morning after the party, when Gwendolen said at the +breakfast-table, “I know the door was locked before the housekeeper gave +me the key, for I tried it myself afterward. Some one must have been to my +drawer and taken the key.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to Isabel that Gwendolen’s awful eyes had rested on her more +than on the other sisters, and without any time for resolve, she said, with a +trembling lip: +</p> + +<p> +“Please forgive me, Gwendolen.” +</p> + +<p> +The forgiveness was sooner bestowed than it would have been if Gwendolen had +not desired to dismiss from her own and every one else’s memory any case +in which she had shown her susceptibility to terror. She wondered at herself in +these occasional experiences, which seemed like a brief remembered madness, an +unexplained exception from her normal life; and in this instance she felt a +peculiar vexation that her helpless fear had shown itself, not, as usual, in +solitude, but in well-lit company. Her ideal was to be daring in speech and +reckless in braving dangers, both moral and physical; and though her practice +fell far behind her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness +of circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of twenty, who +cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as in any position +which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no permanent consciousness of +other fetters, or of more spiritual restraints, having always disliked whatever +was presented to her under the name of religion, in the same way that some +people dislike arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, +no alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it had not +occurred to her any more than it had occurred to her to inquire into the +conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she had had many +opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was dependent. All these facts +about herself she would have been ready to admit, and even, more or less +indirectly, to state. What she unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad +for others to be unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual +dread, though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into +connection with the religion taught her or with any human relations. She was +ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in remembering her +tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for example, she was walking +without companionship and there came some rapid change in the light. Solitude +in any wide scene impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable +existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of +asserting herself. The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to +set her imagination at work in a way that made her tremble: but always when +some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in which she +seemed an exile; she found again her usual world in which her will was of some +avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to this world was no more +identified for her with those uneasy impressions of awe than her uncle’s +surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With human ears and eyes about her, +she had always hitherto recovered her confidence, and felt the possibility of +winning empire. +</p> + +<p> +To her mamma and others her fits of timidity or terror were sufficiently +accounted for by her “sensitiveness” or the “excitability of +her nature”; but these explanatory phrases required conciliation with +much that seemed to be blank indifference or rare self-mastery. Heat is a great +agent and a useful word, but considered as a means of explaining the universe +it requires an extensive knowledge of differences; and as a means of explaining +character “sensitiveness” is in much the same predicament. But who, +loving a creature like Gwendolen, would not be inclined to regard every +peculiarity in her as a mark of pre-eminence? That was what Rex did. After the +Hermione scene he was more persuaded than ever that she must be instinct with +all feeling, and not only readier to respond to a worshipful love, but able to +love better than other girls. Rex felt the summer on his young wings and soared +happily. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0007"></a> +CHAPTER VII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Perigot</i>. As the bonny lasse passed by,<br/> +<i>Willie</i>. Hey, ho, bonnilasse!<br/> +<i>P</i>. She roode at me with glauncing eye,<br/> +<i>W</i>. As clear as the crystal glasse.<br/> +<i>P</i>. All as the sunny beame so bright,<br/> +<i>W</i>. Hey, ho, the sunnebeame!<br/> +<i>P</i>. Glaunceth from Phoebus’ face forthright,<br/> +<i>W</i>. So love into thy heart did streame.”<br/> + —S<small>PENSER</small>: <i>Shepard’s +Calendar</i>. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“The kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish +state of youth; the nourisher and destroyer of hopeful wits; * * * the +servitude above freedom; the gentle mind’s religion; the liberal +superstition.”—C<small>HARLES</small> L<small>AMB</small>. +</p> + +<p> +The first sign of the unimagined snow-storm was like the transparent white +cloud that seems to set off the blue. Anna was in the secret of Rex’s +feeling; though for the first time in their lives he had said nothing to her +about what he most thought of, and he only took it for granted that she knew +it. For the first time, too, Anna could not say to Rex what was continually in +her mind. Perhaps it might have been a pain which she would have had to +conceal, that he should so soon care for some one else more than for herself, +if such a feeling had not been thoroughly neutralized by doubt and anxiety on +his behalf. Anna admired her cousin—would have said with simple +sincerity, “Gwendolen is always very good to me,” and held it in +the order of things for herself to be entirely subject to this cousin; but she +looked at her with mingled fear and distrust, with a puzzled contemplation as +of some wondrous and beautiful animal whose nature was a mystery, and who, for +anything Anna knew, might have an appetite for devouring all the small +creatures that were her own particular pets. And now Anna’s heart was +sinking under the heavy conviction which she dared not utter, that Gwendolen +would never care for Rex. What she herself held in tenderness and reverence had +constantly seemed indifferent to Gwendolen, and it was easier to imagine her +scorning Rex than returning any tenderness of his. Besides, she was always +thinking of being something extraordinary. And poor Rex! Papa would be angry +with him if he knew. And of course he was too young to be in love in that way; +and she, Anna had thought that it would be years and years before any thing of +that sort came, and that she would be Rex’s housekeeper ever so long. But +what a heart must that be which did not return his love! Anna, in the prospect +of his suffering, was beginning to dislike her too fascinating cousin. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to her, as it did to Rex, that the weeks had been filled with a +tumultuous life evident to all observers: if he had been questioned on the +subject he would have said that he had no wish to conceal what he hoped would +be an engagement which he should immediately tell his father of: and yet for +the first time in his life he was reserved not only about his feelings +but—which was more remarkable to Anna—about certain actions. She, +on her side, was nervous each time her father or mother began to speak to her +in private lest they should say anything about Rex and Gwendolen. But the +elders were not in the least alive to this agitating drama, which went forward +chiefly in a sort of pantomime extremely lucid in the minds thus expressing +themselves, but easily missed by spectators who were running their eyes over +the <i>Guardian</i> or the <i>Clerical Gazette</i>, and regarded the +trivialities of the young ones with scarcely more interpretation than they gave +to the action of lively ants. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going, Rex?” said Anna one gray morning when her +father had set off in his carriage to the sessions, Mrs. Gascoigne with him, +and she had observed that her brother had on his antigropelos, the utmost +approach he possessed to a hunting equipment. +</p> + +<p> +“Going to see the hounds throw off at the Three Barns.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to take Gwendolen?” said Anna, timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“She told you, did she?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, but I thought—Does papa know you are going?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not that I am aware of. I don’t suppose he would trouble himself +about the matter.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are going to use his horse?” +</p> + +<p> +“He knows I do that whenever I can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t let Gwendolen ride after the hounds, Rex,” said Anna, +whose fears gifted her with second-sight. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” said Rex, smiling rather provokingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Papa and mamma and aunt Davilow all wish her not to. They think it is +not right for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should you suppose she is going to do what is not right?” +</p> + +<p> +“Gwendolen minds nobody sometimes,” said Anna getting bolder by +dint of a little anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Then she would not mind me,” said Rex, perversely making a joke of +poor Anna’s anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh Rex, I cannot bear it. You will make yourself very unhappy.” +Here Anna burst into tears. +</p> + +<p> +“Nannie, Nannie, what on earth is the matter with you?” said Rex, a +little impatient at being kept in this way, hat on and whip in hand. +</p> + +<p> +“She will not care for you one bit—I know she never will!” +said the poor child in a sobbing whisper. She had lost all control of herself. +</p> + +<p> +Rex reddened and hurried away from her out of the hall door, leaving her to the +miserable consciousness of having made herself disagreeable in vain. +</p> + +<p> +He did think of her words as he rode along; they had the unwelcomeness which +all unfavorable fortune-telling has, even when laughed at; but he quickly +explained them as springing from little Anna’s tenderness, and began to +be sorry that he was obliged to come away without soothing her. Every other +feeling on the subject, however, was quickly merged in a resistant belief to +the contrary of hers, accompanied with a new determination to prove that he was +right. This sort of certainty had just enough kinship to doubt and uneasiness +to hurry on a confession which an untouched security might have delayed. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was already mounted and riding up and down the avenue when Rex +appeared at the gate. She had provided herself against disappointment in case +he did not appear in time by having the groom ready behind her, for she would +not have waited beyond a reasonable time. But now the groom was dismissed, and +the two rode away in delightful freedom. Gwendolen was in her highest spirits, +and Rex thought that she had never looked so lovely before; her figure, her +long white throat, and the curves of her cheek and chin were always set off to +perfection by the compact simplicity of her riding dress. He could not conceive +a more perfect girl; and to a youthful lover like Rex it seems that the +fundamental identity of the good, the true and the beautiful, is already extant +and manifest in the object of his love. Most observers would have held it more +than equally accountable that a girl should have like impressions about Rex, +for in his handsome face there was nothing corresponding to the undefinable +stinging quality—as it were a trace of demon ancestry—which made +some beholders hesitate in their admiration of Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +It was an exquisite January morning in which there was no threat of rain, but a +gray sky making the calmest background for the charms of a mild winter +scene—the grassy borders of the lanes, the hedgerows sprinkled with red +berries and haunted with low twitterings, the purple bareness of the elms, the +rich brown of the furrows. The horses’ hoofs made a musical chime, +accompanying their young voices. She was laughing at his equipment, for he was +the reverse of a dandy, and he was enjoying her laughter; the freshness of the +morning mingled with the freshness of their youth; and every sound that came +from their clear throats, every glance they gave each other, was the bubbling +outflow from a spring of joy. It was all morning to them, within and without. +And thinking of them in these moments one is tempted to that futile sort of +wishing—if only things could have been a little otherwise then, so as to +have been greatly otherwise after—if only these two beautiful young +creatures could have pledged themselves to each other then and there, and never +through life have swerved from that pledge! For some of the goodness which Rex +believed in was there. Goodness is a large, often a prospective word; like +harvest, which at one stage when we talk of it lies all underground, with an +indeterminate future; is the germ prospering in the darkness? at another, it +has put forth delicate green blades, and by-and-by the trembling blossoms are +ready to be dashed off by an hour of rough wind or rain. Each stage has its +peculiar blight, and may have the healthy life choked out of it by a particular +action of the foul land which rears or neighbors it, or by damage brought from +foulness afar. +</p> + +<p> +“Anna had got it into her head that you would want to ride after the +hounds this morning,” said Rex, whose secret associations with +Anna’s words made this speech seem quite perilously near the most +momentous of subjects. +</p> + +<p> +“Did she?” said Gwendolen, laughingly. “What a little +clairvoyant she is!” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you?” said Rex, who had not believed in her intending to do +it if the elders objected, but confided in her having good reasons. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. I can’t tell what I shall do till I get there. +Clairvoyants are often wrong: they foresee what is likely. I am not fond of +what is likely: it is always dull. I do what is unlikely.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, there you tell me a secret. When once I knew what people in general +would be likely to do, I should know you would do the opposite. So you would +have come round to a likelihood of your own sort. I shall be able to calculate +on you. You couldn’t surprise me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I could. I should turn round and do what was likely for people in +general,” said Gwendolen, with a musical laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“You see you can’t escape some sort of likelihood. And +contradictoriness makes the strongest likelihood of all. You must give up a +plan.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I shall not. My plan is to do what pleases me.” (Here should +any young lady incline to imitate Gwendolen, let her consider the set of her +head and neck: if the angle there had been different, the chin protrusive, and +the cervical vertebrae a trifle more curved in their position, ten to one +Gwendolen’s words would have had a jar in them for the sweet-natured Rex. +But everything odd in her speech was humor and pretty banter, which he was only +anxious to turn toward one point.) +</p> + +<p> +“Can you manage to feel only what pleases you?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course not; that comes from what other people do. But if the world +were pleasanter, one would only feel what was pleasant. Girls’ lives are +so stupid: they never do what they like.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought that was more the case of the men. They are forced to do hard +things, and are often dreadfully bored, and knocked to pieces too. And then, if +we love a girl very dearly we want to do as she likes, so after all you have +your own way.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe it. I never saw a married woman who had her own +way.” +</p> + +<p> +“What should you like to do?” said Rex, quite guilelessly, and in +real anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know!—go to the North Pole, or ride +steeple-chases, or go to be a queen in the East like Lady Hester +Stanhope,” said Gwendolen, flightily. Her words were born on her lips, +but she would have been at a loss to give an answer of deeper origin. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean you would never be married?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I didn’t say that. Only when I married, I should not do as +other women do.” +</p> + +<p> +“You might do just as you liked if you married a man who loved you more +dearly than anything else in the world,” said Rex, who, poor youth, was +moving in themes outside the curriculum in which he had promised to win +distinction. “I know one who does.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t talk of Mr. Middleton, for heaven’s sake,” said +Gwendolen, hastily, a quick blush spreading over her face and neck; “that +is Anna’s chant. I hear the hounds. Let us go on.” +</p> + +<p> +She put her chestnut to a canter, and Rex had no choice but to follow her. +Still he felt encouraged. Gwendolen was perfectly aware that her cousin was in +love with her; but she had no idea that the matter was of any consequence, +having never had the slightest visitation of painful love herself. She wished +the small romance of Rex’s devotion to fill up the time of his stay at +Pennicote, and to avoid explanations which would bring it to an untimely end. +Besides, she objected, with a sort of physical repulsion, to being directly +made love to. With all her imaginative delight in being adored, there was a +certain fierceness of maidenhood in her. +</p> + +<p> +But all other thoughts were soon lost for her in the excitement of the scene at +the Three Barns. Several gentlemen of the hunt knew her, and she exchanged +pleasant greetings. Rex could not get another word with her. The color, the +stir of the field had taken possession of Gwendolen with a strength which was +not due to habitual associations, for she had never yet ridden after the +hounds—only said she should like to do it, and so drawn forth a +prohibition; her mamma dreading the danger, and her uncle declaring that for +his part he held that kind of violent exercise unseemly in a woman, and that +whatever might be done in other parts of the country, no lady of good position +followed the Wessex hunt: no one but Mrs. Gadsby, the yeomanry captain’s +wife, who had been a kitchenmaid and still spoke like one. This last argument +had some effect on Gwendolen, and had kept her halting between her desire to +assert her freedom and her horror of being classed with Mrs. Gadsby. +</p> + +<p> +Some of the most unexceptionable women in the neighborhood occasionally went to +see the hounds throw off; but it happened that none of them were present this +morning to abstain from following, while Mrs. Gadsby, with her doubtful +antecedents, grammatical and otherwise, was not visible to make following seem +unbecoming. Thus Gwendolen felt no check on the animal stimulus that came from +the stir and tongue of the hounds, the pawing of the horses, the varying voices +of men, the movement hither and thither of vivid color on the background of +green and gray stillness:—that utmost excitement of the coming chase +which consists in feeling something like a combination of dog and horse, with +the superadded thrill of social vanities and consciousness of centaur-power +which belongs to humankind. +</p> + +<p> +Rex would have felt more of the same enjoyment if he could have kept nearer to +Gwendolen, and not seen her constantly occupied with acquaintances, or looked +at by would-be acquaintances, all on lively horses which veered about and swept +the surrounding space as effectually as a revolving lever. +</p> + +<p> +“Glad to see you here this fine morning, Miss Harleth,” said Lord +Brackenshaw, a middle-aged peer of aristocratic seediness in stained pink, with +easy-going manners which would have made the threatened deluge seem of no +consequence. “We shall have a first-rate run. A pity you didn’t go +with us. Have you ever tried your little chestnut at a ditch? you +wouldn’t be afraid, eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not the least in the world,” said Gwendolen. And that was true: +she was never fearful in action and companionship. “I have often taken +him at some rails and a ditch too, near—” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, by Jove!” said his lordship, quietly, in notation that +something was happening which must break off the dialogue: and as he reined off +his horse, Rex was bringing his sober hackney up to Gwendolen’s side +when—the hounds gave tongue, and the whole field was in motion as if the +whirl of the earth were carrying it; Gwendolen along with everything else; no +word of notice to Rex, who without a second thought followed too. Could he let +Gwendolen go alone? under other circumstances he would have enjoyed the run, +but he was just now perturbed by the check which had been put on the impetus to +utter his love, and get utterance in return, an impetus which could not at once +resolve itself into a totally different sort of chase, at least with the +consciousness of being on his father’s gray nag, a good horse enough in +his way, but of sober years and ecclesiastical habits. Gwendolen on her +spirited little chestnut was up with the best, and felt as secure as an +immortal goddess, having, if she had thought of risk, a core of confidence that +no ill luck would happen to her. But she thought of no such thing, and +certainly not of any risk there might be for her cousin. If she had thought of +him, it would have struck her as a droll picture that he should be gradually +falling behind, and looking round in search of gates: a fine lithe youth, whose +heart must be panting with all the spirit of a beagle, stuck as if under a +wizard’s spell on a stiff clerical hackney, would have made her laugh +with a sense of fun much too strong for her to reflect on his mortification. +But Gwendolen was apt to think rather of those who saw her than of those whom +she could not see; and Rex was soon so far behind that if she had looked she +would not have seen him. For I grieve to say that in the search for a gate, +along a lane lately mended, Primrose fell, broke his knees, and undesignedly +threw Rex over his head. +</p> + +<p> +Fortunately a blacksmith’s son who also followed the hounds under +disadvantages, namely, on foot (a loose way of hunting which had struck some +even frivolous minds as immoral), was naturally also in the rear, and happened +to be within sight of Rex’s misfortune. He ran to give help which was +greatly needed, for Rex was a great deal stunned, and the complete recovery of +sensation came in the form of pain. Joel Dagge on this occasion showed himself +that most useful of personages, whose knowledge is of a kind suited to the +immediate occasion: he not only knew perfectly well what was the matter with +the horse, how far they were both from the nearest public-house and from +Pennicote Rectory, and could certify to Rex that his shoulder was only a bit +out of joint, but also offered experienced surgical aid. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord, sir, let me shove it in again for you! I’s seen Nash, the +bone-setter, do it, and done it myself for our little Sally twice over. +It’s all one and the same, shoulders is. If you’ll trusten to me +and tighten your mind up a bit, I’ll do it for you in no time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come then, old fellow,” said Rex, who could tighten his mind +better than his seat in the saddle. And Joel managed the operation, though not +without considerable expense of pain to his patient, who turned so pitiably +pale while tightening his mind, that Joel remarked, “Ah, sir, you +aren’t used to it, that’s how it is. I’s see lots and lots +o’ joints out. I see a man with his eye pushed out once—that was a +rum go as ever I see. You can’t have a bit o’ fun wi’out such +sort o’ things. But it went in again. I’s swallowed three teeth +mysen, as sure as I’m alive. Now, sirrey” (this was addressed to +Primrose), “come alonk—you musn’t make believe as you +can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Joel being clearly a low character, it is, happily, not necessary to say more +of him to the refined reader, than that he helped Rex to get home with as +little delay as possible. There was no alternative but to get home, though all +the while he was in anxiety about Gwendolen, and more miserable in the thought +that she, too, might have had an accident, than in the pain of his own bruises +and the annoyance he was about to cause his father. He comforted himself about +her by reflecting that every one would be anxious to take care of her, and that +some acquaintance would be sure to conduct her home. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne was already at home, and was writing letters in his study, when +he was interrupted by seeing poor Rex come in with a face which was not the +less handsome and ingratiating for being pale and a little distressed. He was +secretly the favorite son, and a young portrait of the father; who, however, +never treated him with any partiality—rather, with an extra rigor. Mr. +Gascoigne having inquired of Anna, knew that Rex had gone with Gwendolen to the +meet at the Three Barns. +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter?” he said hastily, not laying down his pen. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m very sorry, sir; Primrose has fallen down and broken his +knees.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you been with him?” said Mr. Gascoigne, with a touch of +severity. He rarely gave way to temper. +</p> + +<p> +“To the Three Barns to see the hounds throw off.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you were fool enough to follow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir. I didn’t go at any fences, but the horse got his leg +into a hole.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you got hurt yourself, I hope, eh!” +</p> + +<p> +“I got my shoulder put out, but a young blacksmith put it in again for +me. I’m just a little battered, that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sit down.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m very sorry about the horse, sir; I knew it would be a vexation +to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what has become of Gwendolen?” said Mr. Gascoigne, abruptly. +Rex, who did not imagine that his father had made any inquiries about him, +answered at first with a blush, which was the more remarkable for his previous +paleness. Then he said, nervously, +</p> + +<p> +“I am anxious to know—I should like to go or send at once to +Offendene—but she rides so well, and I think she would keep +up—there would most likely be many round her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose it was she who led you on, eh?” said Mr. Gascoigne, +laying down his pen, leaning back in his chair, and looking at Rex with more +marked examination. +</p> + +<p> +“It was natural for her to want to go: she didn’t intend it +beforehand—she was led away by the spirit of the thing. And, of course, I +went when she went.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne left a brief interval of silence, and then said, with quiet +irony,—“But now you observe, young gentleman, that you are not +furnished with a horse which will enable you to play the squire to your cousin. +You must give up that amusement. You have spoiled my nag for me, and that is +enough mischief for one vacation. I shall beg you to get ready to start for +Southampton to-morrow and join Stilfox, till you go up to Oxford with him. That +will be good for your bruises as well as your studies.” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Rex felt his heart swelling and comporting itself as if it had been no +better than a girl’s. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you will not insist on my going immediately, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you feel too ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not that—but—” here Rex bit his lips and felt the +tears starting, to his great vexation; then he rallied and tried to say more +firmly, “I want to go to Offendene, but I can go this evening.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am going there myself. I can bring word about Gwendolen, if that is +what you want.” +</p> + +<p> +Rex broke down. He thought he discerned an intention fatal to his happiness, +nay, his life. He was accustomed to believe in his father’s penetration, +and to expect firmness. “Father, I can’t go away without telling +her that I love her, and knowing that she loves me.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne was inwardly going through some self-rebuke for not being more +wary, and was now really sorry for the lad; but every consideration was +subordinate to that of using the wisest tactics in the case. He had quickly +made up his mind and to answer the more quietly, +</p> + +<p> +“My dear boy, you are too young to be taking momentous, decisive steps of +that sort. This is a fancy which you have got into your head during an idle +week or two: you must set to work at something and dismiss it. There is every +reason against it. An engagement at your age would be totally rash and +unjustifiable; and moreover, alliances between first cousins are undesirable. +Make up your mind to a brief disappointment. Life is full of them. We have all +got to be broken in; and this is a mild beginning for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not mild. I can’t bear it. I shall be good for nothing. I +shouldn’t mind anything, if it were settled between us. I could do +anything then,” said Rex, impetuously. “But it’s of no use to +pretend that I will obey you. I can’t do it. If I said I would, I should +be sure to break my word. I should see Gwendolen again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, wait till to-morrow morning, that we may talk of the matter +again—you will promise me that,” said Mr. Gascoigne, quietly; and +Rex did not, could not refuse. +</p> + +<p> +The rector did not even tell his wife that he had any other reason for going to +Offendene that evening than his desire to ascertain that Gwendolen had got home +safely. He found her more than safe—elated. Mr. Quallon, who had won the +brush, had delivered the trophy to her, and she had brought it before her, +fastened on the saddle; more than that, Lord Brackenshaw had conducted her +home, and had shown himself delighted with her spirited riding. All this was +told at once to her uncle, that he might see how well justified she had been in +acting against his advice; and the prudential rector did feel himself in a +slight difficulty, for at that moment he was particularly sensible that it was +his niece’s serious interest to be well regarded by the Brackenshaws, and +their opinion as to her following the hounds really touched the essence of his +objection. However, he was not obliged to say anything immediately, for Mrs. +Davilow followed up Gwendolen’s brief triumphant phrases with, +</p> + +<p> +“Still, I do hope you will not do it again, Gwendolen. I should never +have a moment’s quiet. Her father died by an accident, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Mrs. Davilow had turned away from Gwendolen, and looked at Mr. Gascoigne. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, dear,” said Gwendolen, kissing her merrily, and passing +over the question of the fears which Mrs. Davilow had meant to account for, +“children don’t take after their parents in broken legs.” +</p> + +<p> +Not one word had yet been said about Rex. In fact there had been no anxiety +about him at Offendene. Gwendolen had observed to her mamma, “Oh, he must +have been left far behind, and gone home in despair,” and it could not be +denied that this was fortunate so far as it made way for Lord +Brackenshaw’s bringing her home. But now Mr. Gascoigne said, with some +emphasis, looking at Gwendolen, +</p> + +<p> +“Well, the exploit has ended better for you than for Rex.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I dare say he had to make a terrible round. You have not taught +Primrose to take the fences, uncle,” said Gwendolen, without the faintest +shade of alarm in her looks and tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Rex has had a fall,” said Mr. Gascoigne, curtly, throwing himself +into an arm-chair resting his elbows and fitting his palms and fingers +together, while he closed his lips and looked at Gwendolen, who said, +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, poor fellow! he is not hurt, I hope?” with a correct look of +anxiety such as elated mortals try to super-induce when their pulses are all +the while quick with triumph; and Mrs. Davilow, in the same moment, uttered a +low “Good heavens! There!” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne went on: “He put his shoulder out, and got some bruises, I +believe.” Here he made another little pause of observation; but +Gwendolen, instead of any such symptoms as pallor and silence, had only +deepened the compassionateness of her brow and eyes, and said again, “Oh, +poor fellow! it is nothing serious, then?” and Mr. Gascoigne held his +diagnosis complete. But he wished to make assurance doubly sure, and went on +still with a purpose. +</p> + +<p> +“He got his arm set again rather oddly. Some blacksmith—not a +parishioner of mine—was on the field—a loose fish, I suppose, but +handy, and set the arm for him immediately. So after all, I believe, I and +Primrose come off worst. The horse’s knees are cut to pieces. He came +down in a hole, it seems, and pitched Rex over his head.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s face had allowably become contented again, since Rex’s +arm had been reset; and now, at the descriptive suggestions in the latter part +of her uncle’s speech, her elated spirits made her features less +unmanageable than usual; the smiles broke forth, and finally a descending scale +of laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a pretty young lady—to laugh at other people’s +calamities,” said Mr. Gascoigne, with a milder sense of disapprobation +than if he had not had counteracting reasons to be glad that Gwendolen showed +no deep feeling on the occasion. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray forgive me, uncle. Now Rex is safe, it is so droll to fancy the +figure he and Primrose would cut—in a lane all by themselves—only a +blacksmith running up. It would make a capital caricature of ‘Following +the Hounds.’” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen rather valued herself on her superior freedom in laughing where +others might only see matter for seriousness. Indeed, the laughter became her +person so well that her opinion of its gracefulness was often shared by others; +and it even entered into her uncle’s course of thought at this moment, +that it was no wonder a boy should be fascinated by this young witch—who, +however, was more mischievous than could be desired. +</p> + +<p> +“How can you laugh at broken bones, child?” said Mrs. Davilow, +still under her dominant anxiety. “I wish we had never allowed you to +have the horse. You will see that we were wrong,” she added, looking with +a grave nod at Mr. Gascoigne—“at least I was, to encourage her in +asking for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, seriously, Gwendolen,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in a judicious +tone of rational advice to a person understood to be altogether rational, +“I strongly recommend you—I shall ask you to oblige me so +far—not to repeat your adventure of to-day. Lord Brackenshaw is very +kind, but I feel sure that he would concur with me in what I say. To be spoken +of as ‘the young lady who hunts’ by way of exception, would give a +tone to the language about you which I am sure you would not like. Depend upon +it, his lordship would not choose that Lady Beatrice or Lady Maria should hunt +in this part of the country, if they were old enough to do so. When you are +married, it will be different: you may do whatever your husband sanctions. But +if you intend to hunt, you must marry a man who can keep horses.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know why I should do anything so horrible as to marry +without <i>that</i> prospect, at least,” said Gwendolen, pettishly. Her +uncle’s speech had given her annoyance, which she could not show more +directly; but she felt that she was committing herself, and after moving +carelessly to another part of the room, went out. +</p> + +<p> +“She always speaks in that way about marriage,” said Mrs. Davilow; +“but it will be different when she has seen the right person.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her heart has never been in the least touched, that you know of?” +said Mr. Gascoigne. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow shook her head silently. “It was only last night she said to +me, ‘Mamma, I wonder how girls manage to fall in love. It is easy to make +them do it in books. But men are too ridiculous.’” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne laughed a little, and made no further remark on the subject. The +next morning at breakfast he said, +</p> + +<p> +“How are your bruises, Rex?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, not very mellow yet, sir; only beginning to turn a little.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t feel quite ready for a journey to Southampton?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not quite,” answered Rex, with his heart metaphorically in his +mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you can wait till to-morrow, and go to say good-bye to them at +Offendene.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Gascoigne, who now knew the whole affair, looked steadily at her coffee +lest she also should begin to cry, as Anna was doing already. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne felt that he was applying a sharp remedy to poor Rex’s +acute attack, but he believed it to be in the end the kindest. To let him know +the hopelessness of his love from Gwendolen’s own lips might be curative +in more ways than one. +</p> + +<p> +“I can only be thankful that she doesn’t care about him,” +said Mrs. Gascoigne, when she joined her husband in his study. “There are +things in Gwendolen I cannot reconcile myself to. My Anna is worth two of her, +with all her beauty and talent. It looks very ill in her that she will not help +in the schools with Anna—not even in the Sunday-school. What you or I +advise is of no consequence to her: and poor Fannie is completely under her +thumb. But I know you think better of her,” Mrs. Gascoigne ended with a +deferential hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, there is no harm in the girl. It is only that she has a +high spirit, and it will not do to hold the reins too tight. The point is, to +get her well married. She has a little too much fire in her for her present +life with her mother and sisters. It is natural and right that she should be +married soon—not to a poor man, but one who can give her a fitting +position.” +</p> + +<p> +Presently Rex, with his arm in a sling, was on his two miles’ walk to +Offendene. He was rather puzzled by the unconditional permission to see +Gwendolen, but his father’s real ground of action could not enter into +his conjectures. If it had, he would first have thought it horribly +cold-blooded, and then have disbelieved in his father’s conclusions. +</p> + +<p> +When he got to the house, everybody was there but Gwendolen. The four girls, +hearing him speak in the hall, rushed out of the library, which was their +school-room, and hung round him with compassionate inquiries about his arm. +Mrs. Davilow wanted to know exactly what had happened, and where the blacksmith +lived, that she might make him a present; while Miss Merry, who took a subdued +and melancholy part in all family affairs, doubted whether it would not be +giving too much encouragement to that kind of character. Rex had never found +the family troublesome before, but just now he wished them all away and +Gwendolen there, and he was too uneasy for good-natured feigning. When at last +he had said, “Where is Gwendolen?” and Mrs. Davilow had told Alice +to go and see if her sister were come down, adding, “I sent up her +breakfast this morning. She needed a long rest.” Rex took the shortest +way out of his endurance by saying, almost impatiently, “Aunt, I want to +speak to Gwendolen—I want to see her alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, dear; go into the drawing-room. I will send her there,” +said Mrs. Davilow, who had observed that he was fond of being with Gwendolen, +as was natural, but had not thought of this as having any bearing on the +realities of life: it seemed merely part of the Christmas holidays which were +spinning themselves out. +</p> + +<p> +Rex for his part thought that the realities of life were all hanging on this +interview. He had to walk up and down the drawing-room in expectation for +nearly ten minutes—ample space for all imaginative fluctuations; yet, +strange to say, he was unvaryingly occupied in thinking what and how much he +could do, when Gwendolen had accepted him, to satisfy his father that the +engagement was the most prudent thing in the world, since it inspired him with +double energy for work. He was to be a lawyer, and what reason was there why he +should not rise as high as Eldon did? He was forced to look at life in the +light of his father’s mind. +</p> + +<p> +But when the door opened and she whose presence he was longing for entered, +there came over him suddenly and mysteriously a state of tremor and distrust +which he had never felt before. Miss Gwendolen, simple as she stood there, in +her black silk, cut square about the round white pillar of her throat, a black +band fastening her hair which streamed backward in smooth silky abundance, +seemed more queenly than usual. Perhaps it was that there was none of the +latent fun and tricksiness which had always pierced in her greeting of Rex. How +much of this was due to her presentiment from what he had said yesterday that +he was going to talk of love? How much from her desire to show regret about his +accident? Something of both. But the wisdom of ages has hinted that there is a +side of the bed which has a malign influence if you happen to get out on it; +and this accident befalls some charming persons rather frequently. Perhaps it +had befallen Gwendolen this morning. The hastening of her toilet, the way in +which Bugle used the brush, the quality of the shilling serial mistakenly +written for her amusement, the probabilities of the coming day, and, in short, +social institutions generally, were all objectionable to her. It was not that +she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her +fine organism. +</p> + +<p> +However it might be, Rex saw an awful majesty about her as she entered and put +out her hand to him, without the least approach to a smile in eyes or mouth. +The fun which had moved her in the evening had quite evaporated from the image +of his accident, and the whole affair seemed stupid to her. But she said with +perfect propriety, “I hope you are not much hurt, Rex; I deserve that you +should reproach me for your accident.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” said Rex, feeling the soul within him spreading +itself like an attack of illness. “There is hardly any thing the matter +with me. I am so glad you had the pleasure: I would willingly pay for it by a +tumble, only I was sorry to break the horse’s knees.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen walked to the hearth and stood looking at the fire in the most +inconvenient way for conversation, so that he could only get a side view of her +face. +</p> + +<p> +“My father wants me to go to Southampton for the rest of the +vacation,” said Rex, his baritone trembling a little. +</p> + +<p> +“Southampton! That’s a stupid place to go to, isn’t +it?” said Gwendolen, chilly. +</p> + +<p> +“It would be to me, because you would not be there.” Silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Should you mind about me going away, Gwendolen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course. Every one is of consequence in this dreary country,” +said Gwendolen, curtly. The perception that poor Rex wanted to be tender made +her curl up and harden like a sea-anemone at the touch of a finger. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you angry with me, Gwendolen? Why do you treat me in this way all at +once?” said Rex, flushing, and with more spirit in his voice, as if he +too were capable of being angry. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen looked round at him and smiled. “Treat you? Nonsense! I am only +rather cross. Why did you come so very early? You must expect to find tempers +in dishabille.” +</p> + +<p> +“Be as cross with me as you like—only don’t treat me with +indifference,” said Rex, imploringly. “All the happiness of my life +depends on your loving me—if only a little—better than any one +else.” +</p> + +<p> +He tried to take her hand, but she hastily eluded his grasp and moved to the +other end of the hearth, facing him. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray don’t make love to me! I hate it!” she looked at him +fiercely. +</p> + +<p> +Rex turned pale and was silent, but could not take his eyes off her, and the +impetus was not yet exhausted that made hers dart death at him. Gwendolen +herself could not have foreseen that she should feel in this way. It was all a +sudden, new experience to her. The day before she had been quite aware that her +cousin was in love with her; she did not mind how much, so that he said nothing +about it; and if any one had asked her why she objected to love-making +speeches, she would have said, laughingly, “Oh I am tired of them all in +the books.” But now the life of passion had begun negatively in her. She +felt passionately averse to this volunteered love. +</p> + +<p> +To Rex at twenty the joy of life seemed at an end more absolutely than it can +do to a man at forty. But before they had ceased to look at each other, he did +speak again. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that last word you have to say to me, Gwendolen? Will it always be +so?” +</p> + +<p> +She could not help seeing his wretchedness and feeling a little regret for the +old Rex who had not offended her. Decisively, but yet with some return of +kindness, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“About making love? Yes. But I don’t dislike you for anything +else.” +</p> + +<p> +There was just a perceptible pause before he said a low “good-bye,” +and passed out of the room. Almost immediately after, she heard the heavy hall +door bang behind him. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow, too, had heard Rex’s hasty departure, and presently came +into the drawing-room, where she found Gwendolen seated on the low couch, her +face buried, and her hair falling over her figure like a garment. She was +sobbing bitterly. “My child, my child, what is it?” cried the +mother, who had never before seen her darling struck down in this way, and felt +something of the alarmed anguish that women, feel at the sight of overpowering +sorrow in a strong man; for this child had been her ruler. Sitting down by her +with circling arms, she pressed her cheek against Gwendolen’s head, and +then tried to draw it upward. Gwendolen gave way, and letting her head rest +against her mother, cried out sobbingly, “Oh, mamma, what can become of +my life? there is nothing worth living for!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, dear?” said Mrs. Davilow. Usually she herself had been +rebuked by her daughter for involuntary signs of despair. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never love anybody. I can’t love people. I hate +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“The time will come, dear, the time will come.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was more and more convulsed with sobbing; but putting her arms round +her mother’s neck with an almost painful clinging, she said brokenly, +“I can’t bear any one to be very near me but you.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the mother began to sob, for this spoiled child had never shown such +dependence on her before: and so they clung to each other. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0008"></a> +CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +What name doth Joy most borrow<br/> +When life is fair?<br/> + “To-morrow.”<br/> +What name doth best fit Sorrow<br/> +In young despair?<br/> + “To-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a much more lasting trouble at the rectory. Rex arrived there only to +throw himself on his bed in a state of apparent apathy, unbroken till the next +day, when it began to be interrupted by more positive signs of illness. Nothing +could be said about his going to Southampton: instead of that, the chief +thought of his mother and Anna was how to tend this patient who did not want to +be well, and from being the brightest, most grateful spirit in the household, +was metamorphosed into an irresponsive, dull-eyed creature who met all +affectionate attempts with a murmur of “Let me alone.” His father +looked beyond the crisis, and believed it to be the shortest way out of an +unlucky affair; but he was sorry for the inevitable suffering, and went now and +then to sit by him in silence for a few minutes, parting with a gentle pressure +of his hand on Rex’s blank brow, and a “God bless you, my +boy.” Warham and the younger children used to peep round the edge of the +door to see this incredible thing of their lively brother being laid low; but +fingers were immediately shaken at them to drive them back. The guardian who +was always there was Anna, and her little hand was allowed to rest within her +brother’s, though he never gave it a welcoming pressure. Her soul was +divided between anguish for Rex and reproach of Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps it is wicked of me, but I think I never <i>can</i> love her +again,” came as the recurrent burden of poor little Anna’s inward +monody. And even Mrs. Gascoigne had an angry feeling toward her niece which she +could not refrain from expressing (apologetically) to her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“I know of course it is better, and we ought to be thankful that she is +not in love with the poor boy; but really. Henry, I think she is hard; she has +the heart of a coquette. I can not help thinking that she must have made him +believe something, or the disappointment would not have taken hold of him in +that way. And some blame attaches to poor Fanny; she is quite blind about that +girl.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne answered imperatively: “The less said on that point the +better, Nancy. I ought to have been more awake myself. As to the boy, be +thankful if nothing worse ever happens to him. Let the thing die out as quickly +as possible; and especially with regard to Gwendolen—let it be as if it +had never been.” +</p> + +<p> +The rector’s dominant feeling was that there had been a great escape. +Gwendolen in love with Rex in return would have made a much harder problem, the +solution of which might have been taken out of his hands. But he had to go +through some further difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +One fine morning Rex asked for his bath, and made his toilet as usual. Anna, +full of excitement at this change, could do nothing but listen for his coming +down, and at last hearing his step, ran to the foot of the stairs to meet him. +For the first time he gave her a faint smile, but it looked so melancholy on +his pale face that she could hardly help crying. +</p> + +<p> +“Nannie!” he said gently, taking her hand and leading her slowly +along with him to the drawing-room. His mother was there, and when she came to +kiss him, he said: “What a plague I am!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he sat still and looked out of the bow-window on the lawn and shrubs +covered with hoar-frost, across which the sun was sending faint occasional +gleams:—something like that sad smile on Rex’s face, Anna thought. +He felt as if he had had a resurrection into a new world, and did not know what +to do with himself there, the old interests being left behind. Anna sat near +him, pretending to work, but really watching him with yearning looks. Beyond +the garden hedge there was a road where wagons and carts sometimes went on +field-work: a railed opening was made in the hedge, because the upland with its +bordering wood and clump of ash-trees against the sky was a pretty sight. +Presently there came along a wagon laden with timber; the horses were straining +their grand muscles, and the driver having cracked his whip, ran along +anxiously to guide the leader’s head, fearing a swerve. Rex seemed to be +shaken into attention, rose and looked till the last quivering trunk of the +timber had disappeared, and then walked once or twice along the room. Mrs. +Gascoigne was no longer there, and when he came to sit down again, Anna, seeing +a return of speech in her brother’s eyes, could not resist the impulse to +bring a little stool and seat herself against his knee, looking up at him with +an expression which seemed to say, “Do speak to me.” And he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking of, Nannie. I will go to +Canada, or somewhere of that sort.” (Rex had not studied the character of +our colonial possessions.) +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Rex, not for always!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, to get my bread there. I should like to build a hut, and work hard +at clearing, and have everything wild about me, and a great wide quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +“And not take me with you?” said Anna, the big tears coming fast. +</p> + +<p> +“How could I?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like it better than anything; and settlers go with their +families. I would sooner go there than stay here in England. I could make the +fires, and mend the clothes, and cook the food; and I could learn how to make +the bread before we went. It would be nicer than anything—like playing at +life over again, as we used to do when we made our tent with the drugget, and +had our little plates and dishes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Father and mother would not let you go.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I think they would, when I explained everything. It would save +money; and papa would have more to bring up the boys with.” +</p> + +<p> +There was further talk of the same practical kind at intervals, and it ended in +Rex’s being obliged to consent that Anna should go with him when he spoke +to his father on the subject. +</p> + +<p> +Of course it was when the rector was alone in his study. Their mother would +become reconciled to whatever he decided on, but mentioned to her first, the +question would have distressed her. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my children!” said Mr. Gascoigne, cheerfully, as they +entered. It was a comfort to see Rex about again. +</p> + +<p> +“May we sit down with you a little, papa?” said Anna. “Rex +has something to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart.” +</p> + +<p> +It was a noticeable group that these three creatures made, each of them with a +face of the same structural type—the straight brow, the nose suddenly +straightened from an intention of being aquiline, the short upper lip, the +short but strong and well-hung chin: there was even the same tone of complexion +and set of the eye. The gray-haired father was at once massive and +keen-looking; there was a perpendicular line in his brow which when he spoke +with any force of interest deepened; and the habit of ruling gave him an air of +reserved authoritativeness. Rex would have seemed a vision of his +father’s youth, if it had been possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne without +distinct plans and without command, smitten with a heart sorrow, and having no +more notion of concealment than a sick animal; and Anna was a tiny copy of Rex, +with hair drawn back and knotted, her face following his in its changes of +expression, as if they had one soul between them. +</p> + +<p> +“You know all about what has upset me, father,” Rex began, and Mr. +Gascoigne nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“I am quite done up for life in this part of the world. I am sure it will +be no use my going back to Oxford. I couldn’t do any reading. I should +fail, and cause you expense for nothing. I want to have your consent to take +another course, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne nodded more slowly, the perpendicular line on his brow deepened, +and Anna’s trembling increased. +</p> + +<p> +“If you would allow me a small outfit, I should like to go to the +colonies and work on the land there.” Rex thought the vagueness of the +phrase prudential; “the colonies” necessarily embracing more +advantages, and being less capable of being rebutted on a single ground than +any particular settlement. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, and with me, papa,” said Anna, not bearing to be left out from +the proposal even temporarily. “Rex would want some one to take care of +him, you know—some one to keep house. And we shall never, either of us, +be married. And I should cost nothing, and I should be so happy. I know it +would be hard to leave you and mamma; but there are all the others to bring up, +and we two should be no trouble to you any more.” +</p> + +<p> +Anna had risen from her seat, and used the feminine argument of going closer to +her papa as she spoke. He did not smile, but he drew her on his knee and held +her there, as if to put her gently out of the question while he spoke to Rex. +</p> + +<p> +“You will admit that my experience gives me some power of judging for +you, and that I can probably guide you in practical matters better than you can +guide yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +Rex was obliged to say, “Yes, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“And perhaps you will admit—though I don’t wish to press that +point—that you are bound in duty to consider my judgment and +wishes?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have never yet placed myself in opposition to you, sir.” Rex in +his secret soul could not feel that he was bound not to go to the colonies, but +to go to Oxford again—which was the point in question. +</p> + +<p> +“But you will do so if you persist in setting your mind toward a rash and +foolish procedure, and deafening yourself to considerations which my experience +of life assures me of. You think, I suppose, that you have had a shock which +has changed all your inclinations, stupefied your brains, unfitted you for +anything but manual labor, and given you a dislike to society? Is that what you +believe?” +</p> + +<p> +“Something like that. I shall never be up to the sort of work I must do +to live in this part of the world. I have not the spirit for it. I shall never +be the same again. And without any disrespect to you, father, I think a young +fellow should be allowed to choose his way of life, if he does nobody any harm. +There are plenty to stay at home, and those who like might be allowed to go +where there are empty places.” +</p> + +<p> +“But suppose I am convinced on good evidence—as I am—that +this state of mind of yours is transient, and that if you went off as you +propose, you would by-and-by repent, and feel that you had let yourself slip +back from the point you have been gaining by your education till now? Have you +not strength of mind enough to see that you had better act on my assurance for +a time, and test it? In my opinion, so far from agreeing with you that you +should be free to turn yourself into a colonist and work in your shirt-sleeves +with spade and hatchet—in my opinion you have no right whatever to +expatriate yourself until you have honestly endeavored to turn to account the +education you have received here. I say nothing of the grief to your mother and +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m very sorry; but what can I do? I can’t +study—that’s certain,” said Rex. +</p> + +<p> +“Not just now, perhaps. You will have to miss a term. I have made +arrangements for you—how you are to spend the next two months. But I +confess I am disappointed in you, Rex. I thought you had more sense than to +take up such ideas—to suppose that because you have fallen into a very +common trouble, such as most men have to go through, you are loosened from all +bonds of duty—just as if your brain had softened and you were no longer a +responsible being.” +</p> + +<p> +What could Rex say? Inwardly he was in a state of rebellion, but he had no +arguments to meet his father’s; and while he was feeling, in spite of any +thing that might be said, that he should like to go off to “the +colonies” to-morrow, it lay in a deep fold of his consciousness that he +ought to feel—if he had been a better fellow he would have +felt—more about his old ties. This is the sort of faith we live by in our +soul sicknesses. +</p> + +<p> +Rex got up from his seat, as if he held the conference to be at an end. +“You assent to my arrangement, then?” said Mr. Gascoigne, with that +distinct resolution of tone which seems to hold one in a vise. +</p> + +<p> +There was a little pause before Rex answered, “I’ll try what I can +do, sir. I can’t promise.” His thought was, that trying would be of +no use. +</p> + +<p> +Her father kept Anna, holding her fast, though she wanted to follow Rex. +“Oh, papa,” she said, the tears coming with her words when the door +had closed; “it is very hard for him. Doesn’t he look ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but he will soon be better; it will all blow over. And now, Anna, +be as quiet as a mouse about it all. Never let it be mentioned when he is +gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, papa. But I would not be like Gwendolen for any thing—to have +people fall in love with me so. It is very dreadful.” +</p> + +<p> +Anna dared not say that she was disappointed at not being allowed to go to the +colonies with Rex; but that was her secret feeling, and she often afterward +went inwardly over the whole affair, saying to herself, “I should have +done with going out, and gloves, and crinoline, and having to talk when I am +taken to dinner—and all that!” +</p> + +<p> +I like to mark the time, and connect the course of individual lives with the +historic stream, for all classes of thinkers. This was the period when the +broadening of gauge in crinolines seemed to demand an agitation for the general +enlargement of churches, ball-rooms, and vehicles. But Anna Gascoigne’s +figure would only allow the size of skirt manufactured for young ladies of +fourteen. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0009"></a> +CHAPTER IX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +I’ll tell thee, Berthold, what men’s hopes are like:<br/> +A silly child that, quivering with joy,<br/> +Would cast its little mimic fishing-line<br/> +Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys<br/> +In the salt ocean. +</p> + +<p> +Eight months after the arrival of the family at Offendene, that is to say in +the end of the following June, a rumor was spread in the neighborhood which to +many persons was matter of exciting interest. It had no reference to the +results of the American war, but it was one which touched all classes within a +certain circuit round Wanchester: the corn-factors, the brewers, the +horse-dealers, and saddlers, all held it a laudable thing, and one which was to +be rejoiced in on abstract grounds, as showing the value of an aristocracy in a +free country like England; the blacksmith in the hamlet of Diplow felt that a +good time had come round; the wives of laboring men hoped their nimble boys of +ten or twelve would be taken into employ by the gentlemen in livery; and the +farmers about Diplow admitted, with a tincture of bitterness and reserve, that +a man might now again perhaps have an easier market or exchange for a rick of +old hay or a wagon-load of straw. If such were the hopes of low persons not in +society, it may be easily inferred that their betters had better reasons for +satisfaction, probably connected with the pleasures of life rather than its +business. Marriage, however, must be considered as coming under both heads; and +just as when a visit of majesty is announced, the dream of knighthood or a +baronetcy is to be found under various municipal nightcaps, so the news in +question raised a floating indeterminate vision of marriage in several +well-bred imaginations. +</p> + +<p> +The news was that Diplow Hall, Sir Hugo Mallinger’s place, which had for +a couple of years turned its white window-shutters in a painfully wall-eyed +manner on its fine elms and beeches, its lilied pool and grassy acres specked +with deer, was being prepared for a tenant, and was for the rest of the summer +and through the hunting season to be inhabited in a fitting style both as to +house and stable. But not by Sir Hugo himself: by his nephew, Mr. Mallinger +Grandcourt, who was presumptive heir to the baronetcy, his uncle’s +marriage having produced nothing but girls. Nor was this the only contingency +with which fortune flattered young Grandcourt, as he was pleasantly called; for +while the chance of the baronetcy came through his father, his mother had given +a baronial streak to his blood, so that if certain intervening persons slightly +painted in the middle distance died, he would become a baron and peer of this +realm. +</p> + +<p> +It is the uneven allotment of nature that the male bird alone has the tuft, but +we have not yet followed the advice of hasty philosophers who would have us +copy nature entirely in these matters; and if Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt became a +baronet or a peer, his wife would share the title—which in addition to +his actual fortune was certainly a reason why that wife, being at present +unchosen, should be thought of by more than one person with a sympathetic +interest as a woman sure to be well provided for. +</p> + +<p> +Some readers of this history will doubtless regard it as incredible that people +should construct matrimonial prospects on the mere report that a bachelor of +good fortune and possibilities was coming within reach, and will reject the +statement as a mere outflow of gall: they will aver that neither they nor their +first cousins have minds so unbridled; and that in fact this is not human +nature, which would know that such speculations might turn out to be +fallacious, and would therefore not entertain them. But, let it be observed, +nothing is here narrated of human nature generally: the history in its present +stage concerns only a few people in a corner of Wessex—whose reputation, +however, was unimpeached, and who, I am in the proud position of being able to +state, were all on visiting terms with persons of rank. +</p> + +<p> +There were the Arrowpoints, for example, in their beautiful place at Quetcham: +no one could attribute sordid views in relation to their daughter’s +marriage to parents who could leave her at least half a million; but having +affectionate anxieties about their Catherine’s position (she having +resolutely refused Lord Slogan, an unexceptionable Irish peer, whose estate +wanted nothing but drainage and population), they wondered, perhaps from +something more than a charitable impulse, whether Mr. Grandcourt was +good-looking, of sound constitution, virtuous, or at least reformed, and if +liberal-conservative, not too liberal-conservative; and without wishing anybody +to die, thought his succession to the title an event to be desired. +</p> + +<p> +If the Arrowpoints had such ruminations, it is the less surprising that they +were stimulated in Mr. Gascoigne, who for being a clergyman was not the less +subject to the anxieties of a parent and guardian; and we have seen how both he +and Mrs. Gascoigne might by this time have come to feel that he was overcharged +with the management of young creatures who were hardly to be held in with bit +or bridle, or any sort of metaphor that would stand for judicious advice. +</p> + +<p> +Naturally, people did not tell each other all they felt and thought about young +Grandcourt’s advent: on no subject is this openness found prudently +practicable—not even on the generation of acids, or the destination of +the fixed stars: for either your contemporary with a mind turned toward the +same subjects may find your ideas ingenious and forestall you in applying them, +or he may have other views on acids and fixed stars, and think ill of you in +consequence. Mr. Gascoigne did not ask Mr. Arrowpoint if he had any trustworthy +source of information about Grandcourt considered as a husband for a charming +girl; nor did Mrs. Arrowpoint observe to Mrs. Davilow that if the possible peer +sought a wife in the neighborhood of Diplow, the only reasonable expectation +was that he would offer his hand to Catherine, who, however, would not accept +him unless he were in all respects fitted to secure her happiness. Indeed, even +to his wife the rector was silent as to the contemplation of any matrimonial +result, from the probability that Mr. Grandcourt would see Gwendolen at the +next Archery Meeting; though Mrs. Gascoigne’s mind was very likely still +more active in the same direction. She had said interjectionally to her sister, +“It would be a mercy, Fanny, if that girl were well married!” to +which Mrs. Davilow discerning some criticism of her darling in the fervor of +that wish, had not chosen to make any audible reply, though she had said +inwardly, “You will not get her to marry for your pleasure”; the +mild mother becoming rather saucy when she identified herself with her +daughter. +</p> + +<p> +To her husband Mrs. Gascoigne said, “I hear Mr. Grandcourt has got two +places of his own, but he comes to Diplow for the hunting. It is to be hoped he +will set a good example in the neighborhood. Have you heard what sort of a +young man he is, Henry?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne had not heard; at least, if his male acquaintances had gossiped +in his hearing, he was not disposed to repeat their gossip, or to give it any +emphasis in his own mind. He held it futile, even if it had been becoming, to +show any curiosity as to the past of a young man whose birth, wealth, and +consequent leisure made many habits venial which under other circumstances +would have been inexcusable. Whatever Grandcourt had done, he had not ruined +himself; and it is well-known that in gambling, for example, whether of the +business or holiday sort, a man who has the strength of mind to leave off when +he has only ruined others, is a reformed character. This is an illustration +merely: Mr. Gascoigne had not heard that Grandcourt had been a gambler; and we +can hardly pronounce him singular in feeling that a landed proprietor with a +mixture of noble blood in his veins was not to be an object of suspicious +inquiry like a reformed character who offers himself as your butler or footman. +Reformation, where a man can afford to do without it, can hardly be other than +genuine. Moreover, it was not certain on any other showing hitherto, that Mr. +Grandcourt had needed reformation more than other young men in the ripe youth +of five-and-thirty; and, at any rate, the significance of what he had been must +be determined by what he actually was. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow, too, although she would not respond to her sister’s +pregnant remark, could not be inwardly indifferent to an advent that might +promise a brilliant lot for Gwendolen. A little speculation on “what may +be” comes naturally, without encouragement—comes inevitably in the +form of images, when unknown persons are mentioned; and Mr. Grandcourt’s +name raised in Mrs. Davilow’s mind first of all the picture of a +handsome, accomplished, excellent young man whom she would be satisfied with as +a husband for her daughter; but then came the further speculation—would +Gwendolen be satisfied with him? There was no knowing what would meet that +girl’s taste or touch her affections—it might be something else +than excellence; and thus the image of the perfect suitor gave way before a +fluctuating combination of qualities that might be imagined to win +Gwendolen’s heart. In the difficulty of arriving at the particular +combination which would insure that result, the mother even said to herself, +“It would not signify about her being in love, if she would only accept +the right person.” For whatever marriage had been for herself, how could +she the less desire it for her daughter? The difference her own misfortunes +made was, that she never dared to dwell much to Gwendolen on the desirableness +of marriage, dreading an answer something like that of the future Madame +Roland, when her gentle mother urging the acceptance of a suitor, said, +“Tu seras heureuse, ma chère.” “Oui, maman, comme toi.” +</p> + +<p> +In relation to the problematic Mr. Grandcourt least of all would Mrs. Davilow +have willingly let fall a hint of the aerial castle-building which she had the +good taste to be ashamed of; for such a hint was likely enough to give an +adverse poise to Gwendolen’s own thought, and make her detest the +desirable husband beforehand. Since that scene after poor Rex’s farewell +visit, the mother had felt a new sense of peril in touching the mystery of her +child’s feeling, and in rashly determining what was her welfare: only she +could think of welfare in no other shape than marriage. +</p> + +<p> +The discussion of the dress that Gwendolen was to wear at the Archery Meeting +was a relevant topic, however; and when it had been decided that as a touch of +color on her white cashmere, nothing, for her complexion, was comparable to +pale green—a feather which she was trying in her hat before the +looking-glass having settled the question—Mrs. Davilow felt her ears +tingle when Gwendolen, suddenly throwing herself into the attitude of drawing +her bow, said with a look of comic enjoyment, +</p> + +<p> +“How I pity all the other girls at the Archery Meeting—all thinking +of Mr. Grandcourt! And they have not a shadow of a chance.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow had not the presence of mind to answer immediately, and Gwendolen +turned round quickly toward her, saying, wickedly, +</p> + +<p> +“Now you know they have not, mamma. You and my uncle and aunt—you +all intend him to fall in love with me.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow, piqued into a little stratagem, said, “Oh, my dear, that +is not so certain. Miss Arrowpoint has charms which you have not.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know, but they demand thought. My arrow will pierce him before he has +time for thought. He will declare himself my slave—I shall send him round +the world to bring me back the wedding ring of a happy woman—in the +meantime all the men who are between him and the title will die of different +diseases—he will come back Lord Grandcourt—but without the +ring—and fall at my feet. I shall laugh at him—he will rise in +resentment—I shall laugh more—he will call for his steed and ride +to Quetcham, where he will find Miss Arrowpoint just married to a needy +musician, Mrs. Arrowpoint tearing her cap off, and Mr. Arrowpoint standing by. +Exit Lord Grandcourt, who returns to Diplow, and, like M. Jabot, <i>change de +linge</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Was ever any young witch like this? You thought of hiding things from +her—sat upon your secret and looked innocent, and all the while she knew +by the corner of your eye that it was exactly five pounds ten you were sitting +on! As well turn the key to keep out the damp! It was probable that by dint of +divination she already knew more than any one else did of Mr. Grandcourt. That +idea in Mrs. Davilow’s mind prompted the sort of question which often +comes without any other apparent reason than the faculty of speech and the not +knowing what to do with it. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what kind of a man do you imagine him to be, Gwendolen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me see!” said the witch, putting her forefinger to her lips, +with a little frown, and then stretching out the finger with decision. +“Short—just above my shoulder—trying to make himself tall by +turning up his mustache and keeping his beard long—a glass in his right +eye to give him an air of distinction—a strong opinion about his +waistcoat, but uncertain and trimming about the weather, on which he will try +to draw me out. He will stare at me all the while, and the glass in his eye +will cause him to make horrible faces, especially when he smiles in a +flattering way. I shall cast down my eyes in consequence, and he will perceive +that I am not indifferent to his attentions. I shall dream that night that I am +looking at the extraordinary face of a magnified insect—and the next +morning he will make an offer of his hand; the sequel as before.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a portrait of some one you have seen already, Gwen. Mr. +Grandcourt may be a delightful young man for what you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Gwendolen, with a high note of careless admission, +taking off her best hat and turning it round on her hand contemplatively. +“I wonder what sort of behavior a delightful young man would have? I know +he would have hunters and racers, and a London house and two +country-houses—one with battlements and another with a veranda. And I +feel sure that with a little murdering he might get a title.” +</p> + +<p> +The irony of this speech was of the doubtful sort that has some genuine belief +mixed up with it. Poor Mrs. Davilow felt uncomfortable under it. Her own +meanings being usually literal and in intention innocent; and she said with a +distressed brow: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t talk in that way, child, for heaven’s sake! you do +read such books—they give you such ideas of everything. I declare when +your aunt and I were your age we knew nothing about wickedness. I think it was +better so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you not bring me up in that way, mamma?” said Gwendolen. +But immediately perceiving in the crushed look and rising sob that she had +given a deep wound, she tossed down her hat and knelt at her mother’s +feet crying, +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, mamma! I was only speaking in fun. I meant nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“How could I, Gwendolen?” said poor Mrs. Davilow, unable to hear +the retraction, and sobbing violently while she made the effort to speak. +“Your will was always too strong for me—if everything else had been +different.” +</p> + +<p> +This disjoined logic was intelligible enough to the daughter. “Dear +mamma, I don’t find fault with you—I love you,” said +Gwendolen, really compunctious. “How can you help what I am? Besides, I +am very charming. Come, now.” Here Gwendolen with her handkerchief gently +rubbed away her mother’s tears. “Really—I am contented with +myself. I like myself better than I should have liked my aunt and you. How +dreadfully dull you must have been!” +</p> + +<p> +Such tender cajolery served to quiet the mother, as it had often done before +after like collisions. Not that the collisions had often been repeated at the +same point; for in the memory of both they left an association of dread with +the particular topics which had occasioned them: Gwendolen dreaded the +unpleasant sense of compunction toward her mother, which was the nearest +approach to self-condemnation and self-distrust that she had known; and Mrs. +Davilow’s timid maternal conscience dreaded whatever had brought on the +slightest hint of reproach. Hence, after this little scene, the two concurred +in excluding Mr. Grandcourt from their conversation. +</p> + +<p> +When Mr. Gascoigne once or twice referred to him, Mrs. Davilow feared least +Gwendolen should betray some of her alarming keen-sightedness about what was +probably in her uncle’s mind; but the fear was not justified. Gwendolen +knew certain differences in the characters with which she was concerned as +birds know climate and weather; and for the very reason that she was determined +to evade her uncle’s control, she was determined not to clash with him. +The good understanding between them was much fostered by their enjoyment of +archery together: Mr. Gascoigne, as one of the best bowmen in Wessex, was +gratified to find the elements of like skill in his niece; and Gwendolen was +the more careful not to lose the shelter of his fatherly indulgence, because +since the trouble with Rex both Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna had been unable to hide +what she felt to be a very unreasonable alienation from her. Toward Anna she +took some pains to behave with a regretful affectionateness; but neither of +them dared to mention Rex’s name, and Anna, to whom the thought of him +was part of the air she breathed, was ill at ease with the lively cousin who +had ruined his happiness. She tried dutifully to repress any sign of her +changed feeling; but who in pain can imitate the glance and hand-touch of +pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +This unfair resentment had rather a hardening effect on Gwendolen, and threw +her into a more defiant temper. Her uncle too might be offended if she refused +the next person who fell in love with her; and one day when that idea was in +her mind she said, +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, I see now why girls are glad to be married—to escape being +expected to please everybody but themselves.” +</p> + +<p> +Happily, Mr. Middleton was gone without having made any avowal; and +notwithstanding the admiration for the handsome Miss Harleth, extending perhaps +over thirty square miles in a part of Wessex well studded with families whose +numbers included several disengaged young men, each glad to seat himself by the +lively girl with whom it was so easy to get on in +conversation,—notwithstanding these grounds for arguing that Gwendolen +was likely to have other suitors more explicit than the cautious curate, the +fact was not so. +</p> + +<p> +Care has been taken not only that the trees should not sweep the stars down, +but also that every man who admires a fair girl should not be enamored of her, +and even that every man who is enamored should not necessarily declare himself. +There are various refined shapes in which the price of corn, known to be potent +cause in their relation, might, if inquired into, show why a young lady, +perfect in person, accomplishments, and costume, has not the trouble of +rejecting many offers; and nature’s order is certainly benignant in not +obliging us one and all to be desperately in love with the most admirable +mortal we have ever seen. Gwendolen, we know, was far from holding that +supremacy in the minds of all observers. Besides, it was but a poor eight +months since she had come to Offendene, and some inclinations become manifest +slowly, like the sunward creeping of plants. +</p> + +<p> +In face of this fact that not one of the eligible young men already in the +neighborhood had made Gwendolen an offer, why should Mr. Grandcourt be thought +of as likely to do what they had left undone? +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps because he was thought of as still more eligible; since a great deal of +what passes for likelihood in the world is simply the reflex of a wish. Mr. and +Mrs. Arrowpoint, for example, having no anxiety that Miss Harleth should make a +brilliant marriage, had quite a different likelihood in their minds. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0010"></a> +CHAPTER X.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<i>1st Gent.</i><br/> +What woman should be? Sir, consult the taste<br/> +Of marriageable men. This planet’s store<br/> +In iron, cotton, wool, or chemicals—<br/> +All matter rendered to our plastic skill,<br/> +Is wrought in shapes responsive to demand;<br/> +The market’s pulse makes index high or low,<br/> +By rule sublime. Our daughters must be wives,<br/> +And to the wives must be what men will choose;<br/> +Men’s taste is woman’s test. You mark the phrase?<br/> +’Tis good, I think?—the sense well-winged and poised<br/> +With t’s and s’s.<br/> +<br/> +<i>2nd Gent.</i><br/> +Nay, but turn it round;<br/> +Give us the test of taste. A fine <i>menu</i>—<br/> +Is it to-day what Roman epicures<br/> +Insisted that a gentleman must eat<br/> +To earn the dignity of dining well? +</p> + +<p> +Brackenshaw Park, where the archery meeting was held, looked out from its +gentle heights far over the neighboring valley to the outlying eastern downs +and the broad, slow rise of cultivated country, hanging like a vast curtain +toward the west. The castle which stood on the highest platform of the +clustered hills, was built of rough-hewn limestone, full of lights and shadows +made by the dark dust of lichens and the washings of the rain. Masses of beech +and fir sheltered it on the north, and spread down here and there along the +green slopes like flocks seeking the water which gleamed below. The +archery-ground was a carefully-kept enclosure on a bit of table-land at the +farthest end of the park, protected toward the south-west by tall elms and a +thick screen of hollies, which kept the gravel walk and the bit of newly-mown +turf where the targets were placed in agreeable afternoon shade. The Archery +Hall with an arcade in front showed like a white temple against the greenery on +the north side. +</p> + +<p> +What could make a better background for the flower-groups of ladies, moving and +bowing and turning their necks as it would become the leisurely lilies to do if +they took to locomotion. The sounds too were very pleasant to hear, even when +the military band from Wanchester ceased to play: musical laughs in all the +registers and a harmony of happy, friendly speeches, now rising toward mild +excitement, now sinking to an agreeable murmur. +</p> + +<p> +No open-air amusement could be much freer from those noisy, crowding conditions +which spoil most modern pleasures; no Archery Meeting could be more select, the +number of friends accompanying the members being restricted by an award of +tickets, so as to keep the maximum within the limits of convenience for the +dinner and ball to be held in the castle. Within the enclosure no plebeian +spectators were admitted except Lord Brackenshaw’s tenants and their +families, and of these it was chiefly the feminine members who used the +privilege, bringing their little boys and girls or younger brothers and +sisters. The males among them relieved the insipidity of the entertainment by +imaginative betting, in which the stake was “anything you like,” on +their favorite archers; but the young maidens, having a different principle of +discrimination, were considering which of those sweetly-dressed ladies they +would choose to be, if the choice were allowed them. Probably the form these +rural souls would most have striven for as a tabernacle, was some other than +Gwendolen’s—one with more pink in her cheeks and hair of the most +fashionable yellow; but among the male judges in the ranks immediately +surrounding her there was unusual unanimity in pronouncing her the finest girl +present. +</p> + +<p> +No wonder she enjoyed her existence on that July day. Pre-eminence is sweet to +those who love it, even under mediocre circumstances. Perhaps it was not quite +mythical that a slave has been proud to be bought first; and probably a +barn-door fowl on sale, though he may not have understood himself to be called +the best of a bad lot, may have a self-informed consciousness of his relative +importance, and strut consoled. But for complete enjoyment the outward and the +inward must concur. And that concurrence was happening to Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +Who can deny that bows and arrows are among the prettiest weapons in the world +for feminine forms to play with? They prompt attitudes full of grace and power, +where that fine concentration of energy seen in all markmanship, is freed from +associations of bloodshed. The time-honored British resource of “killing +something” is no longer carried on with bow and quiver; bands defending +their passes against an invading nation fight under another sort of shade than +a cloud of arrows; and poisoned darts are harmless survivals either in rhetoric +or in regions comfortably remote. Archery has no ugly smell of brimstone; +breaks nobody’s shins, breeds no athletic monsters; its only danger is +that of failing, which for generous blood is enough to mould skilful action. +And among the Brackenshaw archers the prizes were all of the nobler symbolic +kind; not properly to be carried off in a parcel, degrading honor into gain; +but the gold arrow and the silver, the gold star and the silver, to be worn for +a long time in sign of achievement and then transferred to the next who did +excellently. These signs of pre-eminence had the virtue of wreaths without +their inconveniences, which might have produced a melancholy effect in the heat +of the ball-room. Altogether the Brackenshaw Archery Club was an institution +framed with good taste, so as not to have by necessity any ridiculous +incidents. +</p> + +<p> +And to-day all incalculable elements were in its favor. There was mild warmth, +and no wind to disturb either hair or drapery or the course of the arrow; all +skillful preparation had fair play, and when there was a general march to +extract the arrows, the promenade of joyous young creatures in light speech and +laughter, the graceful movement in common toward a common object, was a show +worth looking at. Here Gwendolen seemed a Calypso among her nymphs. It was in +her attitudes and movements that every one was obliged to admit her surpassing +charm. +</p> + +<p> +“That girl is like a high-mettled racer,” said Lord Brackenshaw to +young Clintock, one of the invited spectators. +</p> + +<p> +“First chop! tremendously pretty too,” said the elegant Grecian, +who had been paying her assiduous attention; “I never saw her look +better.” +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps she had never looked so well. Her face was beaming with young pleasure +in which there was no malign rays of discontent; for being satisfied with her +own chances, she felt kindly toward everybody and was satisfied with the +universe. Not to have the highest distinction in rank, not to be marked out as +an heiress, like Miss Arrowpoint, gave an added triumph in eclipsing those +advantages. For personal recommendation she would not have cared to change the +family group accompanying her for any other: her mamma’s appearance would +have suited an amiable duchess; her uncle and aunt Gascoigne with Anna made +equally gratifying figures in their way; and Gwendolen was too full of joyous +belief in herself to feel in the least jealous though Miss Arrowpoint was one +of the best archeresses. +</p> + +<p> +Even the reappearance of the formidable Herr Klesmer, which caused some +surprise in the rest of the company, seemed only to fall in with +Gwendolen’s inclination to be amused. Short of Apollo himself, what great +musical <i>maestro</i> could make a good figure at an archery meeting? There +was a very satirical light in Gwendolen’s eyes as she looked toward the +Arrowpoint party on their first entrance, when the contrast between Klesmer and +the average group of English country people seemed at its utmost intensity in +the close neighborhood of his hosts—or patrons, as Mrs. Arrowpoint would +have liked to hear them called, that she might deny the possibility of any +longer patronizing genius, its royalty being universally acknowledged. The +contrast might have amused a graver personage than Gwendolen. We English are a +miscellaneous people, and any chance fifty of us will present many varieties of +animal architecture or facial ornament; but it must be admitted that our +prevailing expression is not that of a lively, impassioned race, preoccupied +with the ideal and carrying the real as a mere make-weight. The strong point of +the English gentleman pure is the easy style of his figure and clothing; he +objects to marked ins and outs in his costume, and he also objects to looking +inspired. +</p> + +<p> +Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that ordinary stamp of the well-bred +Englishman, watching the entrance of Herr Klesmer—his mane of hair +floating backward in massive inconsistency with the chimney-pot hat, which had +the look of having been put on for a joke above his pronounced but well-modeled +features and powerful clear-shaven mouth and chin; his tall, thin figure clad +in a way which, not being strictly English, was all the worse for its apparent +emphasis of intention. Draped in a loose garment with a Florentine +<i>berretta</i> on his head, he would have been fit to stand by the side of +Leonardo de Vinci; but how when he presented himself in trousers which were not +what English feeling demanded about the knees?—and when the fire that +showed itself in his glances and the movements of his head, as he looked round +him with curiosity, was turned into comedy by a hat which ruled that mankind +should have well-cropped hair and a staid demeanor, such, for example, as Mr. +Arrowsmith’s, whose nullity of face and perfect tailoring might pass +everywhere without ridicule? One feels why it is often better for greatness to +be dead, and to have got rid of the outward man. +</p> + +<p> +Many present knew Klesmer, or knew of him; but they had only seen him on +candle-light occasions when he appeared simply as a musician, and he had not +yet that supreme, world-wide celebrity which makes an artist great to the most +ordinary people by their knowledge of his great expensiveness. It was literally +a new light for them to see him in—presented unexpectedly on this July +afternoon in an exclusive society: some were inclined to laugh, others felt a +little disgust at the want of judgment shown by the Arrowpoints in this use of +an introductory card. +</p> + +<p> +“What extreme guys those artistic fellows usually are!” said young +Clintock to Gwendolen. “Do look at the figure he cuts, bowing with his +hand on his heart to Lady Brackenshaw—and Mrs. Arrowpoint’s feather +just reaching his shoulder.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are one of the profane,” said Gwendolen. “You are blind +to the majesty of genius. Herr Klesmer smites me with awe; I feel crushed in +his presence; my courage all oozes from me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you understand all about his music.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, indeed,” said Gwendolen, with a light laugh; “it is he +who understands all about mine and thinks it pitiable.” Klesmer’s +verdict on her singing had been an easier joke to her since he had been struck +by her <i>plastik</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not addressed to the ears of the future, I suppose. I’m glad +of that: it suits mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you are very kind. But how remarkably well Miss Arrowpoint looks +to-day! She would make quite a fine picture in that gold-colored dress.” +</p> + +<p> +“Too splendid, don’t you think?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, perhaps a little too symbolical—too much like the figure of +Wealth in an allegory.” +</p> + +<p> +This speech of Gwendolen’s had rather a malicious sound, but it was not +really more than a bubble of fun. She did not wish Miss Arrowpoint or any one +else to be out of the way, believing in her own good fortune even more than in +her skill. The belief in both naturally grew stronger as the shooting went on, +for she promised to achieve one of the best scores—a success which +astonished every one in a new member; and to Gwendolen’s temperament one +success determined another. She trod on air, and all things pleasant seemed +possible. The hour was enough for her, and she was not obliged to think what +she should do next to keep her life at the due pitch. +</p> + +<p> +“How does the scoring stand, I wonder?” said Lady Brackenshaw, a +gracious personage who, adorned with two little girls and a boy of stout make, +sat as lady paramount. Her lord had come up to her in one of the intervals of +shooting. “It seems to me that Miss Harleth is likely to win the gold +arrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gad, I think she will, if she carries it on! she is running Juliet Fenn +hard. It is wonderful for one in her first year. Catherine is not up to her +usual mark,” continued his lordship, turning to the heiress’s +mother who sat near. “But she got the gold arrow last time. And +there’s a luck even in these games of skill. That’s better. It +gives the hinder ones a chance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Catherine will be very glad for others to win,” said Mrs. +Arrowpoint, “she is so magnanimous. It was entirely her considerateness +that made us bring Herr Klesmer instead of Canon Stopley, who had expressed a +wish to come. For her own pleasure, I am sure she would rather have brought the +Canon; but she is always thinking of others. I told her it was not quite <i>en +règle</i> to bring one so far out of our own set; but she said, ‘Genius +itself is not <i>en règle</i>; it comes into the world to make new +rules.’ And one must admit that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, to be sure,” said Lord Brackenshaw, in a tone of careless +dismissal, adding quickly, “For my part, I am not magnanimous; I should +like to win. But, confound it! I never have the chance now. I’m getting +old and idle. The young ones beat me. As old Nestor says—the gods +don’t give us everything at one time: I was a young fellow once, and now +I am getting an old and wise one. Old, at any rate; which is a gift that comes +to everybody if they live long enough, so it raises no jealousy.” The +Earl smiled comfortably at his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my lord, people who have been neighbors twenty years must not talk +to each other about age,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “Years, as the +Tuscans say, are made for the letting of houses. But where is our new neighbor? +I thought Mr. Grandcourt was to be here to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, by the way, so he was. The time’s getting on too,” said +his lordship, looking at his watch. “But he only got to Diplow the other +day. He came to us on Tuesday and said he had been a little bothered. He may +have been pulled in another direction. Why, Gascoigne!”—the rector +was just then crossing at a little distance with Gwendolen on his arm, and +turned in compliance with the call—“this is a little too bad; you +not only beat us yourself, but you bring up your niece to beat all the +archeresses.” +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>is</i> rather scandalous in her to get the better of elder +members,” said Mr. Gascoigne, with much inward satisfaction curling his +short upper lip. “But it is not my doing, my lord. I only meant her to +make a tolerable figure, without surpassing any one.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not my fault, either,” said Gwendolen, with pretty archness. +“If I am to aim, I can’t help hitting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ay, that may be a fatal business for some people,” said Lord +Brackenshaw, good-humoredly; then taking out his watch and looking at Mrs. +Arrowpoint again—“The time’s getting on, as you say. But +Grandcourt is always late. I notice in town he’s always late, and +he’s no bowman—understands nothing about it. But I told him he must +come; he would see the flower of the neighborhood here. He asked about +you—had seen Arrowpoint’s card. I think you had not made his +acquaintance in town. He has been a good deal abroad. People don’t know +him much.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; we are strangers,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “But that is +not what might have been expected. For his uncle Sir Hugo Mallinger and I are +great friends when we meet.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know; uncles and nephews are not so likely to be seen +together as uncles and nieces,” said his lordship, smiling toward the +rector. “But just come with me one instant, Gascoigne, will you? I want +to speak a word about the clout-shooting.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen chose to go too and be deposited in the same group with her mamma and +aunt until she had to shoot again. That Mr. Grandcourt might after all not +appear on the archery-ground, had begun to enter into Gwendolen’s thought +as a possible deduction from the completeness of her pleasure. Under all her +saucy satire, provoked chiefly by her divination that her friends thought of +him as a desirable match for her, she felt something very far from indifference +as to the impression she would make on him. True, he was not to have the +slightest power over her (for Gwendolen had not considered that the desire to +conquer is itself a sort of subjection); she had made up her mind that he was +to be one of those complimentary and assiduously admiring men of whom even her +narrow experience had shown her several with various-colored beards and various +styles of bearing; and the sense that her friends would want her to think him +delightful, gave her a resistant inclination to presuppose him ridiculous. But +that was no reason why she could spare his presence: and even a passing +prevision of trouble in case she despised and refused him, raised not the +shadow of a wish that he should save her that trouble by showing no disposition +to make her an offer. Mr. Grandcourt taking hardly any notice of her, and +becoming shortly engaged to Miss Arrowpoint, was not a picture which flattered +her imagination. +</p> + +<p> +Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw’s mode of accounting +for Grandcourt’s non-appearance; and when he did arrive, no +consciousness—not even Mrs. Arrowpoint’s or Mr. +Gascoigne’s—was more awake to the fact than hers, although she +steadily avoided looking toward any point where he was likely to be. There +should be no slightest shifting of angles to betray that it was of any +consequence to her whether the much-talked-of Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt +presented himself or not. She became again absorbed in the shooting, and so +resolutely abstained from looking round observantly that, even supposing him to +have taken a conspicuous place among the spectators, it might be clear she was +not aware of him. And all the while the certainty that he was there made a +distinct thread in her consciousness. Perhaps her shooting was the better for +it: at any rate, it gained in precision, and she at last raised a delightful +storm of clapping and applause by three hits running in the gold—a feat +which among the Brackenshaw archers had not the vulgar reward of a shilling +poll-tax, but that of a special gold star to be worn on the breast. That moment +was not only a happy one to herself—it was just what her mamma and her +uncle would have chosen for her. There was a general falling into ranks to give +her space that she might advance conspicuously to receive the gold star from +the hands of Lady Brackenshaw; and the perfect movement of her fine form was +certainly a pleasant thing to behold in the clear afternoon light when the +shadows were long and still. She was the central object of that pretty picture, +and every one present must gaze at her. That was enough: she herself was +determined to see nobody in particular, or to turn her eyes any way except +toward Lady Brackenshaw, but her thoughts undeniably turned in other ways. It +entered a little into her pleasure that Herr Klesmer must be observing her at a +moment when music was out of the question, and his superiority very far in the +background; for vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is +under a love which it cannot return; and the unconquered Klesmer threw a trace +of his malign power even across her pleasant consciousness that Mr. Grandcourt +was seeing her to the utmost advantage, and was probably giving her an +admiration unmixed with criticism. She did not expect to admire <i>him</i>, but +that was not necessary to her peace of mind. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen met Lady Brackenshaw’s gracious smile without blushing (which +only came to her when she was taken by surprise), but with a charming gladness +of expression, and then bent with easy grace to have the star fixed near her +shoulder. That little ceremony had been over long enough for her to have +exchanged playful speeches and received congratulations as she moved among the +groups who were now interesting themselves in the results of the scoring; but +it happened that she stood outside examining the point of an arrow with rather +an absent air when Lord Brackenshaw came up to her and said, +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Harleth, here is a gentleman who is not willing to wait any longer +for an introduction. He has been getting Mrs. Davilow to send me with him. Will +you allow me to introduce Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt?” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0013"></a> +BOOK II.—MEETING STREAMS.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0011"></a> +CHAPTER XI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a +definite outline for our ignorance. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Grandcourt’s wish to be introduced had no suddenness for Gwendolen; +but when Lord Brackenshaw moved aside a little for the prefigured stranger to +come forward and she felt herself face to face with the real man, there was a +little shock which flushed her cheeks and vexatiously deepened with her +consciousness of it. The shock came from the reversal of her expectations: +Grandcourt could hardly have been more unlike all her imaginary portraits of +him. He was slightly taller than herself, and their eyes seemed to be on a +level; there was not the faintest smile on his face as he looked at her, not a +trace of self-consciousness or anxiety in his bearing: when he raised his hat +he showed an extensive baldness surrounded with a mere fringe of reddish-blonde +hair, but he also showed a perfect hand; the line of feature from brow to chin +undisguised by beard was decidedly handsome, with only moderate departures from +the perpendicular, and the slight whisker too was perpendicular. It was not +possible for a human aspect to be freer from grimace or solicitous wrigglings: +also it was perhaps not possible for a breathing man wide awake to look less +animated. The correct Englishman, drawing himself up from his bow into +rigidity, assenting severely, and seemed to be in a state of internal drill, +suggests a suppressed vivacity, and may be suspected of letting go with some +violence when he is released from parade; but Grandcourt’s bearing had no +rigidity, it inclined rather to the flaccid. His complexion had a faded +fairness resembling that of an actress when bare of the artificial white and +red; his long narrow gray eyes expressed nothing but indifference. Attempts at +description are stupid: who can all at once describe a human being? Even when +he is presented to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance which must +be completed by innumerable impressions under differing circumstances. We +recognize the alphabet; we are not sure of the language. I am only mentioning +the point that Gwendolen saw by the light of a prepared contrast in the first +minutes of her meeting with Grandcourt: they were summed up in the words, +“He is not ridiculous.” But forthwith Lord Brackenshaw was gone, +and what is called conversation had begun, the first and constant element in it +being that Grandcourt looked at Gwendolen persistently with a slightly +exploring gaze, but without change of expression, while she only occasionally +looked at him with a flash of observation a little softened by coquetry. Also, +after her answers there was a longer or shorter pause before he spoke again. +</p> + +<p> +“I used to think archery was a great bore,” Grandcourt began. He +spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as of a +distinguished personage with a distinguished cold on his chest. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you converted to-day?” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes of opinion about +herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.) +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one generally sees +people missing and simpering.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you are a first-rate shot with a rifle.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, during which Gwendolen, having taken a rapid observation of Grandcourt, +made a brief graphic description of him to an indefinite hearer.) +</p> + +<p> +“I have left off shooting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, then, you are a formidable person. People who have done things once +and left them off make one feel very contemptible, as if one were using +cast-off fashions. I hope you have not left off all follies, because I practice +a great many.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, during which Gwendolen made several interpretations of her own speech.) +</p> + +<p> +“What do you call follies?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, in general, I think, whatever is agreeable is called a folly. But +you have not left off hunting, I hear.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, wherein Gwendolen recalled what she had heard about Grandcourt’s +position, and decided that he was the most aristocratic-looking man she had +ever seen.) +</p> + +<p> +“One must do something.” +</p> + +<p> +“And do you care about the turf?—or is that among the things you +have left off?” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely calm, cold +manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than other men, and not likely +to interfere with his wife’s preferences.) +</p> + +<p> +“I run a horse now and then; but I don’t go in for the thing as +some men do. Are you fond of horses?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, indeed; I never like my life so well as when I am on horseback, +having a great gallop. I think of nothing. I only feel myself strong and +happy.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, wherein Gwendolen wondered whether Grandcourt would like what she said, +but assured herself that she was not going to disguise her tastes.) +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like danger?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. When I am on horseback I never think of danger. It +seems to me that if I broke my bones I should not feel it. I should go at +anything that came in my way.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause during which Gwendolen had run through a whole hunting season with two +chosen hunters to ride at will.) +</p> + +<p> +“You would perhaps like tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I saw some of that +for a season or two in the East. Everything here is poor stuff after +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> are fond of danger, then?” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, wherein Gwendolen speculated on the probability that the men of coldest +manners were the most adventurous, and felt the strength of her own insight, +supposing the question had to be decided.) +</p> + +<p> +“One must have something or other. But one gets used to it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything is new to me: +it is only that I can’t get enough of it. I am not used to anything +except being dull, which I should like to leave off as you have left off +shooting.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man of cold and +distinguished manners might possibly be a dull companion; but on the other hand +she thought that most persons were dull, that she had not observed husbands to +be companions—and that after all she was not going to accept Grandcourt.) +</p> + +<p> +“Why are you dull?” +</p> + +<p> +“This is a dreadful neighborhood. There is nothing to be done in it. That +is why I practiced my archery.” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an unmarried woman +who could not go about and had no command of anything must necessarily be dull +through all degrees of comparison as time went on.) +</p> + +<p> +“You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry the first +prize.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe how +well Miss Arrowpoint shot?” +</p> + +<p> +(Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been known to choose some +one else than the woman they most admired, and recalled several experiences of +that kind in novels.) +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Arrowpoint. No—that is, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we go now and hear what the scoring says? Every one is going to +the other end now—shall we join them? I think my uncle is looking toward +me. He perhaps wants me.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen found a relief for herself by thus changing the situation: not that +the <i>tête-à-tête</i> was quite disagreeable to her; but while it lasted she +apparently could not get rid of the unwonted flush in her cheeks and the sense +of surprise which made her feel less mistress of herself than usual. And this +Mr. Grandcourt, who seemed to feel his own importance more than he did +hers—a sort of unreasonableness few of us can tolerate—must not +take for granted that he was of great moment to her, or that because others +speculated on him as a desirable match she held herself altogether at his beck. +How Grandcourt had filled up the pauses will be more evident hereafter. +</p> + +<p> +“You have just missed the gold arrow, Gwendolen,” said Mr. +Gascoigne. “Miss Juliet Fenn scores eight above you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very glad to hear it. I should have felt that I was making myself +too disagreeable—taking the best of everything,” said Gwendolen, +quite easily. +</p> + +<p> +It was impossible to be jealous of Juliet Fenn, a girl as middling as midday +market in everything but her archery and plainness, in which last she was +noticeable like her father: underhung and with receding brow resembling that of +the more intelligent fishes. (Surely, considering the importance which is given +to such an accident in female offspring, marriageable men, or what the new +English calls “intending bridegrooms,” should look at themselves +dispassionately in the glass, since their natural selection of a mate prettier +than themselves is not certain to bar the effect of their own ugliness.) +</p> + +<p> +There was now a lively movement in the mingling groups, which carried the talk +along with it. Every one spoke to every one else by turns, and Gwendolen, who +chose to see what was going on around her now, observed that Grandcourt was +having Klesmer presented to him by some one unknown to her—a middle-aged +man, with dark, full face and fat hands, who seemed to be on the easiest terms +with both, and presently led the way in joining the Arrowpoints, whose +acquaintance had already been made by both him and Grandcourt. Who this +stranger was she did not care much to know; but she wished to observe what was +Grandcourt’s manner toward others than herself. Precisely the same: +except that he did not look much at Miss Arrowpoint, but rather at Klesmer, who +was speaking with animation—now stretching out his long fingers +horizontally, now pointing downward with his forefinger, now folding his arms +and tossing his mane, while he addressed himself first to one and then to the +other, including Grandcourt, who listened with an impassive face and narrow +eyes, his left forefinger in his waistcoat-pocket, and his right slightly +touching his thin whisker. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder which style Miss Arrowpoint admires most,” was a thought +that glanced through Gwendolen’s mind, while her eyes and lips gathered +rather a mocking expression. But she would not indulge her sense of amusement +by watching, as if she were curious, and she gave all her animation to those +immediately around her, determined not to care whether Mr. Grandcourt came near +her again or not. +</p> + +<p> +He did come, however, and at a moment when he could propose to conduct Mrs. +Davilow to her carriage, “Shall we meet again in the ball-room?” +she said as he raised his hat at parting. The “yes” in reply had +the usual slight drawl and perfect gravity. +</p> + +<p> +“You were wrong for once, Gwendolen,” said Mrs. Davilow, during +their few minutes’ drive to the castle. +</p> + +<p> +“In what, mamma?” +</p> + +<p> +“About Mr. Grandcourt’s appearance and manners. You can’t +find anything ridiculous in him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I could if I tried, but I don’t want to do it,” +said Gwendolen, rather pettishly; and her mother was afraid to say more. +</p> + +<p> +It was the rule on these occasions for the ladies and gentlemen to dine apart, +so that the dinner might make a time of comparative ease and rest for both. +Indeed, the gentlemen had a set of archery stories about the epicurism of the +ladies, who had somehow been reported to show a revolting masculine judgment in +venison, even asking for the fat—a proof of the frightful rate at which +corruption might go on in women, but for severe social restraint, and every +year the amiable Lord Brackenshaw, who was something of a <i>gourmet</i>, +mentioned Byron’s opinion that a woman should never be seen +eating,—introducing it with a confidential—“The fact +is” as if he were for the first time admitting his concurrence in that +sentiment of the refined poet. +</p> + +<p> +In the ladies’ dining-room it was evident that Gwendolen was not a +general favorite with her own sex: there were no beginnings of intimacy between +her and other girls, and in conversation they rather noticed what she said than +spoke to her in free exchange. Perhaps it was that she was not much interested +in them, and when left alone in their company had a sense of empty benches. +Mrs. Vulcany once remarked that Miss Harleth was too fond of the gentlemen; but +we know that she was not in the least fond of them—she was only fond of +their homage—and women did not give her homage. The exception to this +willing aloofness from her was Miss Arrowpoint, who often managed +unostentatiously to be by her side, and talked to her with quiet friendliness. +</p> + +<p> +“She knows, as I do, that our friends are ready to quarrel over a husband +for us,” thought Gwendolen, “and she is determined not to enter +into the quarrel.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think Miss Arrowpoint has the best manners I ever saw,” said +Mrs. Davilow, when she and Gwendolen were in a dressing-room with Mrs. +Gascoigne and Anna, but at a distance where they could have their talk apart. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I were like her,” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Are you getting discontented with yourself, Gwen?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; but I am discontented with things. She seems contented.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure you ought to be satisfied to-day. You must have enjoyed the +shooting. I saw you did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that is over now, and I don’t know what will come next,” +said Gwendolen, stretching herself with a sort of moan and throwing up her +arms. They were bare now; it was the fashion to dance in the archery dress, +throwing off the jacket; and the simplicity of her white cashmere with its +border of pale green set off her form to the utmost. A thin line of gold round +her neck, and the gold star on her breast, were her only ornaments. Her smooth +soft hair piled up into a grand crown made a clear line about her brow. Sir +Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an +easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to +represent the truth of change—only to give stability to one beautiful +moment. +</p> + +<p> +“The dancing will come next,” said Mrs. Davilow “You are sure +to enjoy that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall only dance in the quadrille. I told Mr. Clintock so. I shall not +waltz or polk with any one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why in the world do you say that all on a sudden?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t bear having ugly people so near me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Whom do you mean by ugly people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, plenty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Clintock, for example, is not ugly.” Mrs. Davilow dared not +mention Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I hate woolen cloth touching me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Fancy!” said Mrs. Davilow to her sister who now came up from the +other end of the room. “Gwendolen says she will not waltz or polk.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is rather given to whims, I think,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, +gravely. “It would be more becoming in her to behave as other young +ladies do on such an occasion as this; especially when she has had the +advantage of first-rate dancing lessons.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I dance if I don’t like it, aunt? It is not in the +catechism.” +</p> + +<p> +“My <i>dear</i>!” said Mrs. Gascoigne, in a tone of severe check, +and Anna looked frightened at Gwendolen’s daring. But they all passed on +without saying any more. +</p> + +<p> +Apparently something had changed Gwendolen’s mood since the hour of +exulting enjoyment in the archery-ground. But she did not look the worse under +the chandeliers in the ball-room, where the soft splendor of the scene and the +pleasant odors from the conservatory could not but be soothing to the temper, +when accompanied with the consciousness of being preeminently sought for. +Hardly a dancing man but was anxious to have her for a partner, and each whom +she accepted was in a state of melancholy remonstrance that she would not waltz +or polk. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you under a vow, Miss Harleth?”—“Why are you so +cruel to us all?”—“You waltzed with me in +February.”—“And you who waltz so perfectly!” were +exclamations not without piquancy for her. The ladies who waltzed naturally +thought that Miss Harleth only wanted to make herself particular; but her uncle +when he overheard her refusal, supported her by saying, +</p> + +<p> +“Gwendolen has usually good reasons.” He thought she was certainly +more distinguished in not waltzing, and he wished her to be distinguished. The +archery ball was intended to be kept at the subdued pitch that suited all +dignities clerical and secular; it was not an escapement for youthful high +spirits, and he himself was of opinion that the fashionable dances were too +much of a romp. +</p> + +<p> +Among the remonstrant dancing men, however, Mr. Grandcourt was not numbered. +After standing up for a quadrille with Miss Arrowpoint, it seemed that he meant +to ask for no other partner. Gwendolen observed him frequently with the +Arrowpoints, but he never took an opportunity of approaching her. Mr. Gascoigne +was sometimes speaking to him; but Mr. Gascoigne was everywhere. It was in her +mind now that she would probably after all not have the least trouble about +him: perhaps he had looked at her without any particular admiration, and was +too much used to everything in the world to think of her as more than one of +the girls who were invited in that part of the country. Of course! It was +ridiculous of elders to entertain notions about what a man would do, without +having seen him even through a telescope. Probably he meant to marry Miss +Arrowpoint. Whatever might come, she, Gwendolen, was not going to be +disappointed: the affair was a joke whichever way it turned, for she had never +committed herself even by a silent confidence in anything Mr. Grandcourt would +do. Still, she noticed that he did sometimes quietly and gradually change his +position according to hers, so that he could see her whenever she was dancing, +and if he did not admire her—so much the worse for him. +</p> + +<p> +This movement for the sake of being in sight of her was more direct than usual +rather late in the evening, when Gwendolen had accepted Klesmer as a partner; +and that wide-glancing personage, who saw everything and nothing by turns, said +to her when they were walking, “Mr. Grandcourt is a man of taste. He +likes to see you dancing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps he likes to look at what is against his taste,” said +Gwendolen, with a light laugh; she was quite courageous with Klesmer now. +“He may be so tired of admiring that he likes disgust for variety.” +</p> + +<p> +“Those words are not suitable to your lips,” said Klesmer, quickly, +with one of his grand frowns, while he shook his hand as if to banish the +discordant sounds. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you as critical of words as of music?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly I am. I should require your words to be what your face and +form are—always among the meanings of a noble music.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a compliment as well as a correction. I am obliged for both. But +do you know I am bold enough to wish to correct <i>you</i>, and require you to +understand a joke?” +</p> + +<p> +“One may understand jokes without liking them,” said the terrible +Klesmer. “I have had opera books sent me full of jokes; it was just +because I understood them that I did not like them. The comic people are ready +to challenge a man because he looks grave. ‘You don’t see the +witticism, sir?’ ‘No, sir, but I see what you meant.’ Then I +am what we call ticketed as a fellow without <i>esprit</i>. But, in +fact,” said Klesmer, suddenly dropping from his quick narrative to a +reflective tone, with an impressive frown, “I am very sensible to wit and +humor.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad you tell me that,” said Gwendolen, not without some +wickedness of intention. But Klesmer’s thoughts had flown off on the +wings of his own statement, as their habit was, and she had the wickedness all +to herself. “Pray, who is that standing near the card-room door?” +she went on, seeing there the same stranger with whom Klesmer had been in +animated talk on the archery ground. “He is a friend of yours, I +think.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; an amateur I have seen in town; Lush, a Mr. Lush—too fond +of Meyerbeer and Scribe—too fond of the mechanical-dramatic.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks. I wanted to know whether you thought his face and form required +that his words should be among the meanings of noble music?” Klesmer was +conquered, and flashed at her a delightful smile which made them quite friendly +until she begged to be deposited by the side of her mamma. +</p> + +<p> +Three minutes afterward her preparations for Grandcourt’s indifference +were all canceled. Turning her head after some remark to her mother, she found +that he had made his way up to her. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask if you are tired of dancing, Miss Harleth?” he began, +looking down with his former unperturbed expression. +</p> + +<p> +“Not in the least.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you do me the honor—the next—or another +quadrille?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should have been very happy,” said Gwendolen looking at her +card, “but I am engaged for the next to Mr. Clintock—and indeed I +perceive that I am doomed for every quadrille; I have not one to dispose +of.” She was not sorry to punish Mr. Grandcourt’s tardiness, yet at +the same time she would have liked to dance with him. She gave him a charming +smile as she looked up to deliver her answer, and he stood still looking down +at her with no smile at all. +</p> + +<p> +“I am unfortunate in being too late,” he said, after a +moment’s pause. +</p> + +<p> +“It seemed to me that you did not care for dancing,” said +Gwendolen. “I thought it might be one of the things you had left +off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I have not begun to dance with you,” said Grandcourt. +Always there was the same pause before he took up his cue. “You make +dancing a new thing, as you make archery.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is novelty always agreeable?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no—not always.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I don’t know whether to feel flattered or not. When you had +once danced with me there would be no more novelty in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary, there would probably be much more.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is deep. I don’t understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is difficult to make Miss Harleth understand her power?” Here +Grandcourt had turned to Mrs. Davilow, who, smiling gently at her daughter, +said, +</p> + +<p> +“I think she does not generally strike people as slow to +understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a deprecating tone, “I am +adorably stupid, and want everything explained to me—when the meaning is +pleasant.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are stupid, I admit that stupidity is adorable,” returned +Grandcourt, after the usual pause, and without change of tone. But clearly he +knew what to say. +</p> + +<p> +“I begin to think that my cavalier has forgotten me,” Gwendolen +observed after a little while. “I see the quadrille is being +formed.” +</p> + +<p> +“He deserves to be renounced,” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“I think he is very pardonable,” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“There must have been some misunderstanding,” said Mrs. Davilow. +“Mr. Clintock was too anxious about the engagement to have forgotten +it.” +</p> + +<p> +But now Lady Brackenshaw came up and said, “Miss Harleth, Mr. Clintock +has charged me to express to you his deep regret that he was obliged to leave +without having the pleasure of dancing with you again. An express came from his +father, the archdeacon; something important; he was to go. He was <i>au +désespoir</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he was very good to remember the engagement under the +circumstances,” said Gwendolen. “I am sorry he was called +away.” It was easy to be politely sorrowful on so felicitous an occasion. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I can profit by Mr. Clintock’s misfortune?” said +Grandcourt. “May I hope that you will let me take his place?” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be very happy to dance the next quadrille with you.” +</p> + +<p> +The appropriateness of the event seemed an augury, and as Gwendolen stood up +for the quadrille with Grandcourt, there was a revival in her of the +exultation—the sense of carrying everything before her, which she had +felt earlier in the day. No man could have walked through the quadrille with +more irreproachable ease than Grandcourt; and the absence of all eagerness in +his attention to her suited his partner’s taste. She was now convinced +that he meant to distinguish her, to mark his admiration of her in a noticeable +way; and it began to appear probable that she would have it in her power to +reject him, whence there was a pleasure in reckoning up the advantages which +would make her rejection splendid, and in giving Mr. Grandcourt his utmost +value. It was also agreeable to divine that this exclusive selection of her to +dance with, from among all the unmarried ladies present, would attract +observation; though she studiously avoided seeing this, and at the end of the +quadrille walked away on Grandcourt’s arm as if she had been one of the +shortest sighted instead of the longest and widest sighted of mortals. They +encountered Miss Arrowpoint, who was standing with Lady Brackenshaw and a group +of gentlemen. The heiress looked at Gwendolen invitingly and said, “I +hope you will vote with us, Miss Harleth, and Mr. Grandcourt too, though he is +not an archer.” Gwendolen and Grandcourt paused to join the group, and +found that the voting turned on the project of a picnic archery meeting to be +held in Cardell Chase, where the evening entertainment would be more poetic +than a ball under chandeliers—a feast of sunset lights along the glades +and through the branches and over the solemn tree-tops. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen thought the scheme delightful—equal to playing Robin Hood and +Maid Marian: and Mr. Grandcourt, when appealed to a second time, said it was a +thing to be done; whereupon Mr. Lush, who stood behind Lady Brackenshaw’s +elbow, drew Gwendolen’s notice by saying with a familiar look and tone to +Grandcourt, “Diplow would be a good place for the meeting, and more +convenient: there’s a fine bit between the oaks toward the north +gate.” +</p> + +<p> +Impossible to look more unconscious of being addressed than Grandcourt; but +Gwendolen took a new survey of the speaker, deciding, first, that he must be on +terms of intimacy with the tenant of Diplow, and, secondly, that she would +never, if she could help it, let him come within a yard of her. She was subject +to physical antipathies, and Mr. Lush’s prominent eyes, fat though not +clumsy figure, and strong black gray-besprinkled hair of frizzy thickness, +which, with the rest of his prosperous person, was enviable to many, created +one of the strongest of her antipathies. To be safe from his looking at her, +she murmured to Grandcourt, “I should like to continue walking.” +</p> + +<p> +He obeyed immediately; but when they were thus away from any audience, he spoke +no word for several minutes, and she, out of a half-amused, half-serious +inclination for experiment, would not speak first. They turned into the large +conservatory, beautifully lit up with Chinese lamps. The other couples there +were at a distance which would not have interfered with any dialogue, but still +they walked in silence until they had reached the farther end where there was a +flush of pink light, and the second wide opening into the ball-room. +Grandcourt, when they had half turned round, paused and said languidly, +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like this kind of thing?” +</p> + +<p> +If the situation had been described to Gwendolen half an hour before, she would +have laughed heartily at it, and could only have imagined herself returning a +playful, satirical answer. But for some mysterious reason—it was a +mystery of which she had a faint wondering consciousness—she dared not be +satirical: she had begun to feel a wand over her that made her afraid of +offending Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” she said, quietly, without considering what “kind of +thing” was meant—whether the flowers, the scents, the ball in +general, or this episode of walking with Mr. Grandcourt in particular. And they +returned along the conservatory without farther interpretation. She then +proposed to go and sit down in her old place, and they walked among scattered +couples preparing for the waltz to the spot where Mrs. Davilow had been seated +all the evening. As they approached it her seat was vacant, but she was coming +toward it again, and, to Gwendolen’s shuddering annoyance, with Mr. Lush +at her elbow. There was no avoiding the confrontation: her mamma came close to +her before they had reached the seats, and, after a quiet greeting smile, said +innocently, “Gwendolen, dear, let me present Mr. Lush to you.” +Having just made the acquaintance of this personage, as an intimate and +constant companion of Mr. Grandcourt’s, Mrs. Davilow imagined it +altogether desirable that her daughter also should make the acquaintance. +</p> + +<p> +It was hardly a bow that Gwendolen gave—rather, it was the slightest +forward sweep of the head away from the physiognomy that inclined itself toward +her, and she immediately moved toward her seat, saying, “I want to put on +my burnous.” No sooner had she reached it, than Mr. Lush was there, and +had the burnous in his hand: to annoy this supercilious young lady, he would +incur the offense of forestalling Grandcourt; and, holding up the garment close +to Gwendolen, he said, “Pray, permit me?” But she, wheeling away +from him as if he had been a muddy hound, glided on to the ottoman, saying, +“No, thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +A man who forgave this would have much Christian feeling, supposing he had +intended to be agreeable to the young lady; but before he seized the burnous +Mr. Lush had ceased to have that intention. Grandcourt quietly took the drapery +from him, and Mr. Lush, with a slight bow, moved away. “You had perhaps +better put it on,” said Mr. Grandcourt, looking down on her without +change of expression. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks; perhaps it would be wise,” said Gwendolen, rising, and +submitting very gracefully to take the burnous on her shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +After that, Mr. Grandcourt exchanged a few polite speeches with Mrs. Davilow, +and, in taking leave, asked permission to call at Offendene the next day. He +was evidently not offended by the insult directed toward his friend. Certainly +Gwendolen’s refusal of the burnous from Mr. Lush was open to the +interpretation that she wished to receive it from Mr. Grandcourt. But she, poor +child, had no design in this action, and was simply following her antipathy and +inclination, confiding in them as she did in the more reflective judgments into +which they entered as sap into leafage. Gwendolen had no sense that these men +were dark enigmas to her, or that she needed any help in drawing conclusions +about them—Mr. Grandcourt at least. The chief question was, how far his +character and ways might answer her wishes; and unless she were satisfied about +that, she had said to herself that she would not accept his offer. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human history than +this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in +which she could make her life pleasant?—in a time, too, when ideas were +with fresh vigor making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was +declaring itself fiercely; when women on the other side of the world would not +mourn for the husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause, and men +stinted of bread on our side of the world heard of that willing loss and were +patient: a time when the soul of man was walking to pulses which had for +centuries been beating in him unfelt, until their full sum made a new life of +terror or of joy. +</p> + +<p> +What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions? They +are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting. In +these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human +affections. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0012"></a> +CHAPTER XII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“O gentlemen, the time of life is short;<br/> +To spend that shortness basely were too long,<br/> +If life did ride upon a dial’s point,<br/> +Still ending at the arrival of an hour.”<br/> + —S<small>HAKESPEARE</small>: <i>Henry IV</i>. +</p> + +<p> +On the second day after the archery meeting, Mr. Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt +was at his breakfast-table with Mr. Lush. Everything around them was agreeable: +the summer air through the open windows, at which the dogs could walk in from +the old green turf on the lawn; the soft, purplish coloring of the park beyond, +stretching toward a mass of bordering wood; the still life in the room, which +seemed the stiller for its sober antiquated elegance, as if it kept a +conscious, well-bred silence, unlike the restlessness of vulgar furniture. +</p> + +<p> +Whether the gentlemen were agreeable to each other was less evident. Mr. +Grandcourt had drawn his chair aside so as to face the lawn, and with his left +leg over another chair, and his right elbow on the table, was smoking a large +cigar, while his companion was still eating. The dogs—half-a-dozen of +various kinds were moving lazily in and out, taking attitudes of brief +attention—gave a vacillating preference first to one gentleman, then to +the other; being dogs in such good circumstances that they could play at +hunger, and liked to be served with delicacies which they declined to put in +their mouths; all except Fetch, the beautiful liver-colored water-spaniel, +which sat with its forepaws firmly planted and its expressive brown face turned +upward, watching Grandcourt with unshaken constancy. He held in his lap a tiny +Maltese dog with a tiny silver collar and bell, and when he had a hand unused +by cigar or coffee-cup, it rested on this small parcel of animal warmth. I fear +that Fetch was jealous, and wounded that her master gave her no word or look; +at last it seemed that she could bear this neglect no longer, and she gently +put her large silky paw on her master’s leg. Grandcourt looked at her +with unchanged face for half a minute, and then took the trouble to lay down +his cigar while he lifted the unimpassioned Fluff close to his chin and gave it +caressing pats, all the while gravely watching Fetch, who, poor thing, +whimpered interruptedly, as if trying to repress that sign of discontent, and +at last rested her head beside the appealing paw, looking up with piteous +beseeching. So, at least, a lover of dogs must have interpreted Fetch, and +Grandcourt kept so many dogs that he was reputed to love them; at any rate, his +impulse to act just in that way started from such an interpretation. But when +the amusing anguish burst forth in a howling bark, Grandcourt pushed Fetch down +without speaking, and, depositing Fluff carelessly on the table (where his +black nose predominated over a salt-cellar), began to look to his cigar, and +found, with some annoyance against Fetch as the cause, that the brute of a +cigar required relighting. Fetch, having begun to wail, found, like others of +her sex, that it was not easy to leave off; indeed, the second howl was a +louder one, and the third was like unto it. +</p> + +<p> +“Turn out that brute, will you?” said Grandcourt to Lush, without +raising his voice or looking at him—as if he counted on attention to the +smallest sign. +</p> + +<p> +And Lush immediately rose, lifted Fetch, though she was rather heavy, and he +was not fond of stooping, and carried her out, disposing of her in some way +that took him a couple of minutes before he returned. He then lit a cigar, +placed himself at an angle where he could see Grandcourt’s face without +turning, and presently said, +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you ride or drive to Quetcham to-day?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not going to Quetcham.” +</p> + +<p> +“You did not go yesterday.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt smoked in silence for half a minute, and then said, +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you sent my card and inquiries.” +</p> + +<p> +“I went myself at four, and said you were sure to be there shortly. They +would suppose some accident prevented you from fulfilling the intention. +Especially if you go to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +Silence for a couple of minutes. Then Grandcourt said, “What men are +invited here with their wives?” +</p> + +<p> +Lush drew out a note-book. “The Captain and Mrs. Torrington come next +week. Then there are Mr. Hollis and Lady Flora, and the Cushats and the +Gogoffs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather a ragged lot,” remarked Grandcourt, after a while. +“Why did you ask the Gogoffs? When you write invitations in my name, be +good enough to give me a list, instead of bringing down a giantess on me +without my knowledge. She spoils the look of the room.” +</p> + +<p> +“You invited the Gogoffs yourself when you met them in Paris.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has my meeting them in Paris to do with it? I told you to give me a +list.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt, like many others, had two remarkably different voices. Hitherto we +have heard him speaking in a superficial interrupted drawl suggestive chiefly +of languor and <i>ennui</i>. But this last brief speech was uttered in subdued +inward, yet distinct, tones, which Lush had long been used to recognize as the +expression of a peremptory will. +</p> + +<p> +“Are there any other couples you would like to invite?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; think of some decent people, with a daughter or two. And one of +your damned musicians. But not a comic fellow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder if Klesmer would consent to come to us when he leaves Quetcham. +Nothing but first-class music will go down with Miss Arrowpoint.” +</p> + +<p> +Lush spoke carelessly, but he was really seizing an opportunity and fixing an +observant look on Grandcourt, who now for the first time, turned his eyes +toward his companion, but slowly and without speaking until he had given two +long luxuriant puffs, when he said, perhaps in a lower tone than ever, but with +a perceptible edge of contempt, +</p> + +<p> +“What in the name of nonsense have I to do with Miss Arrowpoint and her +music?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, something,” said Lush, jocosely. “You need not give +yourself much trouble, perhaps. But some forms must be gone through before a +man can marry a million.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very likely. But I am not going to marry a million.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a pity—to fling away an opportunity of this sort, and +knock down your own plans.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Your</i> plans, I suppose you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have some debts, you know, and things may turn out inconveniently, +after all. The heirship is not <i>absolutely</i> certain.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt did not answer, and Lush went on. +</p> + +<p> +“It really is a fine opportunity. The father and mother ask for nothing +better, I can see, and the daughter’s looks and manners require no +allowances, any more than if she hadn’t a sixpence. She is not beautiful; +but equal to carrying any rank. And she is not likely to refuse such prospects +as you can offer her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps not.” +</p> + +<p> +“The father and mother would let you do anything you like with +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I should not like to do anything with them.” +</p> + +<p> +Here it was Lush who made a little pause before speaking again, and then he +said in a deep voice of remonstrance, “Good God, Grandcourt! after your +experience, will you let a whim interfere with your comfortable settlement in +life?” +</p> + +<p> +“Spare your oratory. I know what I am going to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” Lush put down his cigar and thrust his hands into his side +pockets, as if he had to face something exasperating, but meant to keep his +temper. +</p> + +<p> +“I am going to marry the other girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you fallen in love?” This question carried a strong sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“I am going to marry her.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have made her an offer already, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is a young lady with a will of her own, I fancy. Extremely well +fitted to make a rumpus. She would know what she liked.” +</p> + +<p> +“She doesn’t like you,” said Grandcourt, with the ghost of a +smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly true,” said Lush, adding again in a markedly sneering +tone. “However, if you and she are devoted to each other, that will be +enough.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt took no notice of this speech, but sipped his coffee, rose, and +strolled out on the lawn, all the dogs following him. +</p> + +<p> +Lush glanced after him a moment, then resumed his cigar and lit it, but smoked +slowly, consulting his beard with inspecting eyes and fingers, till he finally +stroked it with an air of having arrived at some conclusion, and said in a +subdued voice, +</p> + +<p> +“Check, old boy!” +</p> + +<p> +Lush, being a man of some ability, had not known Grandcourt for fifteen years +without learning what sort of measures were useless with him, though what sort +might be useful remained often dubious. In the beginning of his career he held +a fellowship, and was near taking orders for the sake of a college living, but, +not being fond of that prospect, accepted instead the office of traveling +companion to a marquess, and afterward to young Grandcourt, who had lost his +father early, and who found Lush so convenient that he had allowed him to +become prime minister in all his more personal affairs. The habit of fifteen +years had made Grandcourt more and more in need of Lush’s handiness, and +Lush more and more in need of the lazy luxury to which his transactions on +behalf of Grandcourt made no interruption worth reckoning. I cannot say that +the same lengthened habit had intensified Grandcourt’s want of respect +for his companion since that want had been absolute from the beginning, but it +had confirmed his sense that he might kick Lush if he chose—only he never +did choose to kick any animal, because the act of kicking is a compromising +attitude, and a gentleman’s dogs should be kicked for him. He only said +things which might have exposed himself to be kicked if his confidant had been +a man of independent spirit. But what son of a vicar who has stinted his wife +and daughters of calico in order to send his male offspring to Oxford, can keep +an independent spirit when he is bent on dining with high discrimination, +riding good horses, living generally in the most luxuriant honey-blossomed +clover—and all without working? Mr. Lush had passed for a scholar once, +and had still a sense of scholarship when he was not trying to remember much of +it; but the bachelor’s and other arts which soften manners are a +time-honored preparation for sinecures; and Lush’s present comfortable +provision was as good a sinecure in not requiring more than the odor of +departed learning. He was not unconscious of being held kickable, but he +preferred counting that estimate among the peculiarities of Grandcourt’s +character, which made one of his incalculable moods or judgments as good as +another. Since in his own opinion he had never done a bad action, it did not +seem necessary to consider whether he should be likely to commit one if his +love of ease required it. Lush’s love of ease was well-satisfied at +present, and if his puddings were rolled toward him in the dust, he took the +inside bits and found them relishing. +</p> + +<p> +This morning, for example, though he had encountered more annoyance than usual, +he went to his private sitting-room and played a good hour on the violoncello. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0013"></a> +CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Philistia, be thou glad of me!” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt having made up his mind to marry Miss Harleth, showed a power of +adapting means to ends. During the next fortnight there was hardly a day on +which by some arrangement or other he did not see her, or prove by emphatic +attentions that she occupied his thoughts. His cousin, Mrs. Torrington, was now +doing the honors of his house, so that Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen could be +invited to a large party at Diplow in which there were many witnesses how the +host distinguished the dowerless beauty, and showed no solicitude about the +heiress. The world—I mean Mr. Gascoigne and all the families worth +speaking of within visiting distance of Pennicote—felt an assurance on +the subject which in the rector’s mind converted itself into a resolution +to do his duty by his niece and see that the settlements were adequate. Indeed +the wonder to him and Mrs. Davilow was that the offer for which so many +suitable occasions presented themselves had not been already made; and in this +wonder Grandcourt himself was not without a share. When he had told his +resolution to Lush he had thought that the affair would be concluded more +quickly, and to his own surprise he had repeatedly promised himself in a +morning that he would to-day give Gwendolen the opportunity of accepting him, +and had found in the evening that the necessary formality was still +unaccomplished. This remarkable fact served to heighten his determination on +another day. He had never admitted to himself that Gwendolen might refuse him, +but—heaven help us all!—we are often unable to act on our +certainties; our objection to a contrary issue (were it possible) is so strong +that it rises like a spectral illusion between us and our certainty; we are +rationally sure that the blind worm can not bite us mortally, but it would be +so intolerable to be bitten, and the creature has a biting look—we +decline to handle it. +</p> + +<p> +He had asked leave to have a beautiful horse of his brought for Gwendolen to +ride. Mrs. Davilow was to accompany her in the carriage, and they were to go to +Diplow to lunch, Grandcourt conducting them. It was a fine mid-harvest time, +not too warm for a noonday ride of five miles to be delightful; the poppies +glowed on the borders of the fields, there was enough breeze to move gently +like a social spirit among the ears of uncut corn, and to wing the shadow of a +cloud across the soft gray downs; here the sheaves were standing, there the +horses were straining their muscles under the last load from a wide space of +stubble, but everywhere the green pasture made a broader setting for the +corn-fields, and the cattle took their rest under wide branches. The road lay +through a bit of country where the dairy-farms looked much as they did in the +days of our forefathers—where peace and permanence seemed to find a home +away from the busy change that sent the railway train flying in the distance. +</p> + +<p> +But the spirit of peace and permanence did not penetrate poor Mrs. +Davilow’s mind so as to overcome her habit of uneasy foreboding. +Gwendolen and Grandcourt cantering in front of her, and then slackening their +pace to a conversational walk till the carriage came up with them again, made a +gratifying sight; but it served chiefly to keep up the conflict of hopes and +fears about her daughter’s lot. Here was an irresistible opportunity for +a lover to speak and put an end to all uncertainties, and Mrs. Davilow could +only hope with trembling that Gwendolen’s decision would be favorable. +Certainly if Rex’s love had been repugnant to her, Mr. Grandcourt had the +advantage of being in complete contrast with Rex; and that he had produced some +quite novel impression on her seemed evident in her marked abstinence from +satirical observations, nay, her total silence about his characteristics, a +silence which Mrs. Davilow did not dare to break. “Is he a man she would +be happy with?”—was a question that inevitably arose in the +mother’s mind. “Well, perhaps as happy as she would be with any one +else—or as most other women are”—was the answer with which +she tried to quiet herself; for she could not imagine Gwendolen under the +influence of any feeling which would make her satisfied in what we +traditionally call “mean circumstances.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt’s own thought was looking in the same direction: he wanted to +have done with the uncertainty that belonged to his not having spoken. As to +any further uncertainty—well, it was something without any reasonable +basis, some quality in the air which acted as an irritant to his wishes. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen enjoyed the riding, but her pleasure did not break forth in girlish +unpremeditated chat and laughter as it did on that morning with Rex. She spoke +a little, and even laughed, but with a lightness as of a far-off echo: for her +too there was some peculiar quality in the air—not, she was sure, any +subjugation of her will by Mr. Grandcourt, and the splendid prospects he meant +to offer her; for Gwendolen desired every one, that dignified gentleman himself +included, to understand that she was going to do just as she liked, and that +they had better not calculate on her pleasing them. If she chose to take this +husband, she would have him know that she was not going to renounce her +freedom, or according to her favorite formula, “not going to do as other +women did.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt’s speeches this morning were, as usual, all of that brief sort +which never fails to make a conversational figure when the speaker is held +important in his circle. Stopping so soon, they give signs of a suppressed and +formidable ability so say more, and have also the meritorious quality of +allowing lengthiness to others. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you like Criterion’s paces?” he said, after they had +entered the park and were slacking from a canter to a walk. +</p> + +<p> +“He is delightful to ride. I should like to have a leap with him, if it +would not frighten mamma. There was a good wide channel we passed five minutes +ago. I should like to have a gallop back and take it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray do. We can take it together.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thanks. Mamma is so timid—if she saw me it might make her +ill.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me go and explain. Criterion would take it without fail.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—indeed—you are very kind—but it would alarm her too +much. I dare take any leap when she is not by; but I do it and don’t tell +her about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“We can let the carriage pass and then set off.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, pray don’t think of it any more: I spoke quite +randomly,” said Gwendolen; she began to feel a new objection to carrying +out her own proposition. +</p> + +<p> +“But Mrs. Davilow knows I shall take care of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but she would think of you as having to take care of my broken +neck.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a considerable pause before Grandcourt said, looking toward her, +“I should like to have the right always to take care of you.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen did not turn her eyes on him; it seemed to her a long while that she +was first blushing, and then turning pale, but to Grandcourt’s rate of +judgment she answered soon enough, with the lightest flute-tone and a careless +movement of the head, “Oh, I am not sure that I want to be taken care of: +if I chose to risk breaking my neck, I should like to be at liberty to do +it.” +</p> + +<p> +She checked her horse as she spoke, and turned in her saddle, looking toward +the advancing carriage. Her eyes swept across Grandcourt as she made this +movement, but there was no language in them to correct the carelessness of her +reply. At that very moment she was aware that she was risking +something—not her neck, but the possibility of finally checking +Grandcourt’s advances, and she did not feel contented with the +possibility. +</p> + +<p> +“Damn her!” thought Grandcourt, as he too checked his horse. He was +not a wordy thinker, and this explosive phrase stood for mixed impressions +which eloquent interpreters might have expanded into some sentences full of an +irritated sense that he was being mystified, and a determination that this girl +should not make a fool of him. Did she want him to throw himself at her feet +and declare that he was dying for her? It was not by that gate that she could +enter on the privileges he could give her. Or did she expect him to write his +proposals? Equally a delusion. He would not make his offer in any way that +could place him definitely in the position of being rejected. But as to her +accepting him, she had done it already in accepting his marked attentions: and +anything which happened to break them off would be understood to her +disadvantage. She was merely coquetting, then? +</p> + +<p> +However, the carriage came up, and no further <i>tête-à-tête</i> could well +occur before their arrival at the house, where there was abundant company, to +whom Gwendolen, clad in riding-dress, with her hat laid aside, clad also in the +repute of being chosen by Mr. Grandcourt, was naturally a centre of +observation; and since the objectionable Mr. Lush was not there to look at her, +this stimulus of admiring attention heightened her spirits, and dispersed, for +the time, the uneasy consciousness of divided impulses which threatened her +with repentance of her own acts. Whether Grandcourt had been offended or not +there was no judging: his manners were unchanged, but Gwendolen’s +acuteness had not gone deeper than to discern that his manners were no clue for +her, and because these were unchanged she was not the less afraid of him. +</p> + +<p> +She had not been at Diplow before except to dine; and since certain points of +view from the windows and the garden were worth showing, Lady Flora Hollis +proposed after luncheon, when some of the guests had dispersed, and the sun was +sloping toward four o’clock, that the remaining party should make a +little exploration. Here came frequent opportunities when Grandcourt might have +retained Gwendolen apart, and have spoken to her unheard. But no! He indeed +spoke to no one else, but what he said was nothing more eager or intimate than +it had been in their first interview. He looked at her not less than usual; and +some of her defiant spirit having come back, she looked full at him in return, +not caring—rather preferring—that his eyes had no expression in +them. +</p> + +<p> +But at last it seemed as if he entertained some contrivance. After they had +nearly made the tour of the grounds, the whole party stopped by the pool to be +amused with Fetch’s accomplishment of bringing a water lily to the bank +like Cowper’s spaniel Beau, and having been disappointed in his first +attempt insisted on his trying again. +</p> + +<p> +Here Grandcourt, who stood with Gwendolen outside the group, turned +deliberately, and fixing his eyes on a knoll planted with American shrubs, and +having a winding path up it, said languidly, +</p> + +<p> +“This is a bore. Shall we go up there?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, certainly—since we are exploring,” said Gwendolen. She +was rather pleased, and yet afraid. +</p> + +<p> +The path was too narrow for him to offer his arm, and they walked up in +silence. When they were on the bit of platform at the summit, Grandcourt said, +</p> + +<p> +“There is nothing to be seen here: the thing was not worth +climbing.” +</p> + +<p> +How was it that Gwendolen did not laugh? She was perfectly silent, holding up +the folds of her robe like a statue, and giving a harder grasp to the handle of +her whip, which she had snatched up automatically with her hat when they had +first set off. +</p> + +<p> +“What sort of a place do you prefer?” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Different places are agreeable in their way. On the whole, I think, I +prefer places that are open and cheerful. I am not fond of anything +sombre.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your place of Offendene is too sombre....”. +</p> + +<p> +“It is, rather.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will not remain there long, I hope.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, I think so. Mamma likes to be near her sister.” +</p> + +<p> +Silence for a short space. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not to be supposed that <i>you</i> will always live there, though +Mrs. Davilow may.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. We women can’t go in search of +adventures—to find out the North-West Passage or the source of the Nile, +or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we grow, or where the +gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as +pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining. That is my notion about the +plants; they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them have got +poisonous. What do you think?” Gwendolen had run on rather nervously, +lightly whipping the rhododendron bush in front of her. +</p> + +<p> +“I quite agree. Most things are bores,” said Grandcourt, his mind +having been pushed into an easy current, away from its intended track. But, +after a moment’s pause, he continued in his broken, refined drawl, +</p> + +<p> +“But a woman can be married.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some women can.” +</p> + +<p> +“You, certainly, unless you are obstinately cruel.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not sure that I am not both cruel and obstinate.” Here +Gwendolen suddenly turned her head and looked full at Grandcourt, whose eyes +she had felt to be upon her throughout their conversation. She was wondering +what the effect of looking at him would be on herself rather than on him. +</p> + +<p> +He stood perfectly still, half a yard or more away from her; and it flashed +through her mind what a sort of lotus-eater’s stupor had begun in him and +was taking possession of her. Then he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Are you as uncertain about yourself as you make others about you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am quite uncertain about myself; I don’t know how uncertain +others may be.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you wish them to understand that you don’t care?” said +Grandcourt, with a touch of new hardness in his tone. +</p> + +<p> +“I did not say that,” Gwendolen replied, hesitatingly, and turning +her eyes away whipped the rhododendron bush again. She wished she were on +horseback that she might set off on a canter. It was impossible to set off +running down the knoll. +</p> + +<p> +“You do care, then,” said Grandcourt, not more quickly, but with a +softened drawl. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! my whip!” said Gwendolen, in a little scream of distress. She +had let it go—what could be more natural in a slight +agitation?—and—but this seemed less natural in a gold-handled whip +which had been left altogether to itself—it had gone with some force over +the immediate shrubs, and had lodged itself in the branches of an azalea +half-way down the knoll. She could run down now, laughing prettily, and +Grandcourt was obliged to follow; but she was beforehand with him in rescuing +the whip, and continued on her way to the level ground, when she paused and +looked at Grandcourt with an exasperating brightness in her glance and a +heightened color, as if she had carried a triumph, and these indications were +still noticeable to Mrs. Davilow when Gwendolen and Grandcourt joined the rest +of the party. +</p> + +<p> +“It is all coquetting,” thought Grandcourt; “the next time I +beckon she will come down.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to him likely that this final beckoning might happen the very next +day, when there was to be a picnic archery meeting in Cardell Chase, according +to the plan projected on the evening of the ball. +</p> + +<p> +Even in Gwendolen’s mind that result was one of two likelihoods that +presented themselves alternately, one of two decisions toward which she was +being precipitated, as if they were two sides of a boundary-line, and she did +not know on which she should fall. This subjection to a possible self, a self +not to be absolutely predicted about, caused her some astonishment and terror; +her favorite key of life—doing as she liked—seemed to fail her, and +she could not foresee what at a given moment she might like to do. The prospect +of marrying Grandcourt really seemed more attractive to her than she had +believed beforehand that any marriage could be: the dignities, the luxuries, +the power of doing a great deal of what she liked to do, which had now come +close to her, and within her choice to secure or to lose, took hold of her +nature as if it had been the strong odor of what she had only imagined and +longed for before. And Grandcourt himself? He seemed as little of a flaw in his +fortunes as a lover and husband could possibly be. Gwendolen wished to mount +the chariot and drive the plunging horses herself, with a spouse by her side +who would fold his arms and give her his countenance without looking +ridiculous. Certainly, with all her perspicacity, and all the reading which +seemed to her mamma dangerously instructive, her judgment was consciously a +little at fault before Grandcourt. He was adorably quiet and free from +absurdities—he would be a husband to suit with the best appearance a +woman could make. But what else was he? He had been everywhere, and seen +everything. <i>That</i> was desirable, and especially gratifying as a preamble +to his supreme preference for Gwendolen Harleth. He did not appear to enjoy +anything much. That was not necessary: and the less he had of particular +tastes, or desires, the more freedom his wife was likely to have in following +hers. Gwendolen conceived that after marriage she would most probably be able +to manage him thoroughly. +</p> + +<p> +How was it that he caused her unusual constraint now?—that she was less +daring and playful in her talk with him than with any other admirer she had +known? That absence of demonstrativeness which she was glad of, acted as a +charm in more senses than one, and was slightly benumbing. Grandcourt after all +was formidable—a handsome lizard of a hitherto unknown species, not of +the lively, darting kind. But Gwendolen knew hardly anything about lizards, and +ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. This splendid specimen was +probably gentle, suitable as a boudoir pet: what may not a lizard be, if you +know nothing to the contrary? Her acquaintance with Grandcourt was such that no +accomplishment suddenly revealed in him would have surprised her. And he was so +little suggestive of drama, that it hardly occurred to her to think with any +detail how his life of thirty-six years had been passed: in general, she +imagined him always cold and dignified, not likely ever to have committed +himself. He had hunted the tiger—had he ever been in love or made love? +The one experience and the other seemed alike remote in Gwendolen’s fancy +from the Mr. Grandcourt who had come to Diplow in order apparently to make a +chief epoch in her destiny—perhaps by introducing her to that state of +marriage which she had resolved to make a state of greater freedom than her +girlhood. And on the whole she wished to marry him; he suited her purpose; her +prevailing, deliberate intention was, to accept him. +</p> + +<p> +But was she going to fulfill her deliberate intention? She began to be afraid +of herself, and to find out a certain difficulty in doing as she liked. Already +her assertion of independence in evading his advances had been carried farther +than was necessary, and she was thinking with some anxiety what she might do on +the next occasion. +</p> + +<p> +Seated according to her habit with her back to the horses on their drive +homeward, she was completely under the observation of her mamma, who took the +excitement and changefulness in the expression of her eyes, her unwonted +absence of mind and total silence, as unmistakable signs that something +unprecedented had occurred between her and Grandcourt. Mrs. Davilow’s +uneasiness determined her to risk some speech on the subject: the Gascoignes +were to dine at Offendene, and in what had occurred this morning there might be +some reason for consulting the rector; not that she expected him anymore than +herself to influence Gwendolen, but that her anxious mind wanted to be +disburdened. +</p> + +<p> +“Something has happened, dear?” she began, in a tender tone of +question. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen looked round, and seeming to be roused to the consciousness of her +physical self, took off her gloves and then her hat, that the soft breeze might +blow on her head. They were in a retired bit of the road, where the long +afternoon shadows from the bordering trees fell across it and no observers were +within sight. Her eyes continued to meet her mother’s, but she did not +speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Grandcourt has been saying something?—Tell me, dear.” +The last words were uttered beseechingly. +</p> + +<p> +“What am I to tell you, mamma?” was the perverse answer. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure something has agitated you. You ought to confide in me, Gwen. +You ought not to leave me in doubt and anxiety.” Mrs. Davilow’s +eyes filled with tears. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, dear, please don’t be miserable,” said Gwendolen, +with pettish remonstrance. “It only makes me more so. I am in doubt +myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“About Mr. Grandcourt’s intentions?” said Mrs. Davilow, +gathering determination from her alarms. +</p> + +<p> +“No; not at all,” said Gwendolen, with some curtness, and a pretty +little toss of the head as she put on her hat again. +</p> + +<p> +“About whether you will accept him, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you given him a doubtful answer?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have given him no answer at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“He <i>has</i> spoken so that you could not misunderstand him?” +</p> + +<p> +“As far as I would let him speak.” +</p> + +<p> +“You expect him to persevere?” Mrs. Davilow put this question +rather anxiously, and receiving no answer, asked another: “You +don’t consider that you have discouraged him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say not.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you liked him, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“So I do, mamma, as liking goes. There is less to dislike about him than +about most men. He is quiet and <i>distingué</i>.” Gwendolen so far spoke +with a pouting sort of gravity; but suddenly she recovered some of her +mischievousness, and her face broke into a smile as she +added—“Indeed he has all the qualities that would make a husband +tolerable—battlement, veranda, stable, etc., no grins and no glass in his +eye.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do be serious with me for a moment, dear. Am I to understand that you +mean to accept him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, pray, mamma, leave me to myself,” said Gwendolen, with a +pettish distress in her voice. +</p> + +<p> +And Mrs. Davilow said no more. +</p> + +<p> +When they got home Gwendolen declared that she would not dine. She was tired, +and would come down in the evening after she had taken some rest. The +probability that her uncle would hear what had passed did not trouble her. She +was convinced that whatever he might say would be on the side of her accepting +Grandcourt, and she wished to accept him if she could. At this moment she would +willingly have had weights hung on her own caprice. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne did hear—not Gwendolen’s answers repeated verbatim, +but a softened generalized account of them. The mother conveyed as vaguely as +the keen rector’s questions would let her the impression that Gwendolen +was in some uncertainty about her own mind, but inclined on the whole to +acceptance. The result was that the uncle felt himself called on to interfere; +he did not conceive that he should do his duty in witholding direction from his +niece in a momentous crisis of this kind. Mrs. Davilow ventured a hesitating +opinion that perhaps it would be safer to say nothing—Gwendolen was so +sensitive (she did not like to say willful). But the rector’s was a firm +mind, grasping its first judgments tenaciously and acting on them promptly, +whence counter-judgments were no more for him than shadows fleeting across the +solid ground to which he adjusted himself. +</p> + +<p> +This match with Grandcourt presented itself to him as a sort of public affair; +perhaps there were ways in which it might even strengthen the establishment. To +the rector, whose father (nobody would have suspected it, and nobody was told) +had risen to be a provincial corn-dealer, aristocratic heirship resembled regal +heirship in excepting its possessor from the ordinary standard of moral +judgments, Grandcourt, the almost certain baronet, the probable peer, was to be +ranged with public personages, and was a match to be accepted on broad general +grounds national and ecclesiastical. Such public personages, it is true, are +often in the nature of giants which an ancient community may have felt pride +and safety in possessing, though, regarded privately, these born eminences must +often have been inconvenient and even noisome. But of the future husband +personally Mr. Gascoigne was disposed to think the best. Gossip is a sort of +smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it +proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker. But if Grandcourt had really +made any deeper or more unfortunate experiments in folly than were common in +young men of high prospects, he was of an age to have finished them. All +accounts can be suitably wound up when a man has not ruined himself, and the +expense may be taken as an insurance against future error. This was the view of +practical wisdom; with reference to higher views, repentance had a supreme +moral and religious value. There was every reason to believe that a woman of +well-regulated mind would be happy with Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +It was no surprise to Gwendolen on coming down to tea to be told that her uncle +wished to see her in the dining-room. He threw aside the paper as she entered +and greeted her with his usual kindness. As his wife had remarked, he always +“made much” of Gwendolen, and her importance had risen of late. +“My dear,” he said, in a fatherly way, moving a chair for her as he +held her hand, “I want to speak to you on a subject which is more +momentous than any other with regard to your welfare. You will guess what I +mean. But I shall speak to you with perfect directness: in such matters I +consider myself bound to act as your father. You have no objection, I +hope?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh dear, no, uncle. You have always been very kind to me,” said +Gwendolen, frankly. This evening she was willing, if it were possible, to be a +little fortified against her troublesome self, and her resistant temper was in +abeyance. The rector’s mode of speech always conveyed a thrill of +authority, as of a word of command: it seemed to take for granted that there +could be no wavering in the audience, and that every one was going to be +rationally obedient. +</p> + +<p> +“It is naturally a satisfaction to me that the prospect of a marriage for +you—advantageous in the highest degree—has presented itself so +early. I do not know exactly what has passed between you and Mr. Grandcourt, +but I presume there can be little doubt, from the way in which he has +distinguished you, that he desires to make you his wife.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen did not speak immediately, and her uncle said with more emphasis, +</p> + +<p> +“Have you any doubt of that yourself, my dear?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose that is what he has been thinking of. But he may have changed +his mind to-morrow,” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Why to-morrow? Has he made advances which you have discouraged?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he meant—he began to make advances—but I did not +encourage them. I turned the conversation.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you confide in me so far as to tell me your reasons?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not sure that I had any reasons, uncle.” Gwendolen laughed +rather artificially. +</p> + +<p> +“You are quite capable of reflecting, Gwendolen. You are aware that this +is not a trivial occasion, and it concerns your establishment for life under +circumstances which may not occur again. You have a duty here both to yourself +and your family. I wish to understand whether you have any ground for +hesitating as to your acceptance of Mr. Grandcourt.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I hesitate without grounds.” Gwendolen spoke rather +poutingly, and her uncle grew suspicious. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he disagreeable to you personally?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you heard anything of him which has affected you +disagreeably?” The rector thought it impossible that Gwendolen could have +heard the gossip he had heard, but in any case he must endeavor to put all +things in the right light for her. +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard nothing about him except that he is a great match,” +said Gwendolen, with some sauciness; “and that affects me very +agreeably.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then, my dear Gwendolen, I have nothing further to say than this: you +hold your fortune in your own hands—a fortune such as rarely happens to a +girl in your circumstances—a fortune in fact which almost takes the +question out of the range of mere personal feeling, and makes your acceptance +of it a duty. If Providence offers you power and position—especially when +unclogged by any conditions that are repugnant to you—your course is one +of responsibility, into which caprice must not enter. A man does not like to +have his attachment trifled with: he may not be at once repelled—these +things are matters of individual disposition. But the trifling may be carried +too far. And I must point out to you that in case Mr. Grandcourt were repelled +without your having refused him—without your having intended ultimately +to refuse him, your situation would be a humiliating and painful one. I, for my +part, should regard you with severe disapprobation, as the victim of nothing +else than your own coquetry and folly.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen became pallid as she listened to this admonitory speech. The ideas it +raised had the force of sensations. Her resistant courage would not help her +here, because her uncle was not urging her against her own resolve; he was +pressing upon her the motives of dread which she already felt; he was making +her more conscious of the risks that lay within herself. She was silent, and +the rector observed that he had produced some strong effect. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean this in kindness, my dear.” His tone had softened. +</p> + +<p> +“I am aware of that, uncle,” said Gwendolen, rising and shaking her +head back, as if to rouse herself out of painful passivity. “I am not +foolish. I know that I must be married some time—before it is too late. +And I don’t see how I could do better than marry Mr. Grandcourt. I mean +to accept him, if possible.” She felt as if she were reinforcing herself +by speaking with this decisiveness to her uncle. +</p> + +<p> +But the rector was a little startled by so bare a version of his own meaning +from those young lips. He wished that in her mind his advice should be taken in +an infusion of sentiments proper to a girl, and such as are presupposed in the +advice of a clergyman, although he may not consider them always appropriate to +be put forward. He wished his niece parks, carriages, a title—everything +that would make this world a pleasant abode; but he wished her not to be +cynical—to be, on the contrary, religiously dutiful, and have warm +domestic affections. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Gwendolen,” he said, rising also, and speaking with +benignant gravity, “I trust that you will find in marriage a new fountain +of duty and affection. Marriage is the only true and satisfactory sphere of a +woman, and if your marriage with Mr. Grandcourt should be happily decided upon, +you will have, probably, an increasing power, both of rank and wealth, which +may be used for the benefit of others. These considerations are something +higher than romance! You are fitted by natural gifts for a position which, +considering your birth and early prospects, could hardly be looked forward to +as in the ordinary course of things; and I trust that you will grace it, not +only by those personal gifts, but by a good and consistent life.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope mamma will be the happier,” said Gwendolen, in a more +cheerful way, lifting her hands backward to her neck and moving toward the +door. She wanted to waive those higher considerations. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne felt that he had come to a satisfactory understanding with his +niece, and had furthered her happy settlement in life by furthering her +engagement to Grandcourt. Meanwhile there was another person to whom the +contemplation of that issue had been a motive for some activity, and who +believed that he, too, on this particular day had done something toward +bringing about a favorable decision in <i>his</i> sense—which happened to +be the reverse of the rector’s. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Lush’s absence from Diplow during Gwendolen’s visit had been +due, not to any fear on his part of meeting that supercilious young lady, or of +being abashed by her frank dislike, but to an engagement from which he expected +important consequences. He was gone, in fact, to the Wanchester station to meet +a lady, accompanied by a maid and two children, whom he put into a fly, and +afterward followed to the hotel of the Golden Keys, in that town. An impressive +woman, whom many would turn to look at again in passing; her figure was slim +and sufficiently tall, her face rather emaciated, so that its sculpturesque +beauty was the more pronounced, her crisp hair perfectly black, and her large, +anxious eyes what we call black. Her dress was soberly correct, her age, +perhaps, physically more advanced than the number of years would imply, but +hardly less than seven-and-thirty. An uneasy-looking woman: her glance seemed +to presuppose that the people and things were going to be unfavorable to her, +while she was, nevertheless, ready to meet them with resolution. The children +were lovely—a dark-haired girl of six or more, a fairer boy of five. When +Lush incautiously expressed some surprise at her having brought the children, +she said, with a sharp-toned intonation, +</p> + +<p> +“Did you suppose I should come wandering about here by myself? Why should +I not bring all four if I liked?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, certainly,” said Lush, with his usual fluent +<i>nonchalance</i>. +</p> + +<p> +He stayed an hour or so in conference with her, and rode back to Diplow in a +state of mind that was at once hopeful and busily anxious as to the execution +of the little plan on which his hopefulness was based. Grandcourt’s +marriage to Gwendolen Harleth would not, he believed, be much of a good to +either of them, and it would plainly be fraught with disagreeables to himself. +But now he felt confident enough to say inwardly, “I will take, nay, I +will lay odds that the marriage will never happen.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0014"></a> +CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +I will not clothe myself in wreck—wear gems<br/> +Sawed from cramped finger-bones of women drowned;<br/> +Feel chilly vaporous hands of ireful ghosts<br/> +Clutching my necklace: trick my maiden breast<br/> +With orphans’ heritage. Let your dead love<br/> +Marry its dead. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen looked lovely and vigorous as a tall, newly-opened lily the next +morning: there was a reaction of young energy in her, and yesterday’s +self-distrust seemed no more than the transient shiver on the surface of a full +stream. The roving archery match in Cardell Chase was a delightful prospect for +the sport’s sake: she felt herself beforehand moving about like a +wood-nymph under the beeches (in appreciative company), and the imagined scene +lent a charm to further advances on the part of Grandcourt—not an +impassioned lyrical Daphnis for the wood-nymph, certainly: but so much the +better. To-day Gwendolen foresaw him making slow conversational approaches to a +declaration, and foresaw herself awaiting and encouraging it according to the +rational conclusion which she had expressed to her uncle. +</p> + +<p> +When she came down to breakfast (after every one had left the table except Mrs. +Davilow) there were letters on her plate. One of them she read with a gathering +smile, and then handed it to her mamma, who, on returning it, smiled also, +finding new cheerfulness in the good spirits her daughter had shown ever since +waking, and said, +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t feel inclined to go a thousand miles away?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly so far.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was a sad omission not to have written again before this. Can’t +you write now—before we set out this morning?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not so pressing. To-morrow will do. You see they leave town +to-day. I must write to Dover. They will be there till Monday.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I write for you, dear—if it teases you?” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen did not speak immediately, but after sipping her coffee, answered +brusquely, “Oh no, let it be; I will write to-morrow.” Then, +feeling a touch of compunction, she looked up and said with playful tenderness, +“Dear, old, beautiful mamma!” +</p> + +<p> +“Old, child, truly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Please don’t, mamma! I meant old for darling. You are hardly +twenty-five years older than I am. When you talk in that way my life shrivels +up before me.” +</p> + +<p> +“One can have a great deal of happiness in twenty-five years, my +dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must lose no time in beginning,” said Gwendolen, merrily. +“The sooner I get my palaces and coaches the better.” +</p> + +<p> +“And a good husband who adores you, Gwen,” said Mrs. Davilow, +encouragingly. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen put out her lips saucily and said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +It was a slight drawback on her pleasure in starting that the rector was +detained by magistrate’s business, and would probably not be able to get +to Cardell Chase at all that day. She cared little that Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna +chose not to go without him, but her uncle’s presence would have seemed +to make it a matter of course that the decision taken would be acted on. For +decision in itself began to be formidable. Having come close to accepting +Grandcourt, Gwendolen felt this lot of unhoped-for fullness rounding itself too +definitely. When we take to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get +soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion. Still there was the reassuring +thought that marriage would be the gate into a larger freedom. +</p> + +<p> +The place of meeting was a grassy spot called Green Arbor, where a bit of +hanging wood made a sheltering amphitheatre. It was here that the coachful of +servants with provisions had to prepare the picnic meal; and the warden of the +Chase was to guide the roving archers so as to keep them within the due +distance from this centre, and hinder them from wandering beyond the limit +which had been fixed on—a curve that might be drawn through certain +well-known points, such as the double Oak, the Whispering Stones, and the High +Cross. The plan was to take only a preliminary stroll before luncheon, keeping +the main roving expedition for the more exquisite lights of the afternoon. The +muster was rapid enough to save every one from dull moments of waiting, and +when the groups began to scatter themselves through the light and shadow made +here by closely neighboring beeches and there by rarer oaks, one may suppose +that a painter would have been glad to look on. This roving archery was far +prettier than the stationary game, but success in shooting at variable marks +were less favored by practice, and the hits were distributed among the +volunteer archers otherwise than they would have been in target-shooting. From +this cause, perhaps, as well as from the twofold distraction of being +preoccupied and wishing not to betray her preoccupation, Gwendolen did not +greatly distinguish herself in these first experiments, unless it were by the +lively grace with which she took her comparative failure. She was in white and +green as on the day of the former meeting, when it made an epoch for her that +she was introduced to Grandcourt; he was continually by her side now, yet it +would have been hard to tell from mere looks and manners that their relation to +each other had at all changed since their first conversation. Still there were +other grounds that made most persons conclude them to be, if not engaged +already, on the eve of being so. And she believed this herself. As they were +all returning toward Green Arbor in divergent groups, not thinking at all of +taking aim but merely chattering, words passed which seemed really the +beginning of that end—the beginning of her acceptance. Grandcourt said, +“Do you know how long it is since I first saw you in this dress?” +</p> + +<p> +“The archery meeting was on the 25th, and this is the 13th,” said +Gwendolen, laughingly. “I am not good at calculating, but I will venture +to say that it must be nearly three weeks.” +</p> + +<p> +A little pause, and then he said, “That is a great loss of time.” +</p> + +<p> +“That your knowing me has caused you? Pray don’t be +uncomplimentary; I don’t like it.” +</p> + +<p> +Pause again. “It is because of the gain that I feel the loss.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Gwendolen herself left a pause. She was thinking, “He is really very +ingenious. He never speaks stupidly.” Her silence was so unusual that it +seemed the strongest of favorable answers, and he continued: +</p> + +<p> +“The gain of knowing you makes me feel the time I lose in uncertainty. Do +<i>you</i> like uncertainty?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I do, rather,” said Gwendolen, suddenly beaming on him +with a playful smile. “There is more in it.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt met her laughing eyes with a slow, steady look right into them, +which seemed like vision in the abstract, and then said, “Do you mean +more torment for me?” +</p> + +<p> +There was something so strange to Gwendolen in this moment that she was quite +shaken out of her usual self-consciousness. Blushing and turning away her eyes, +she said, “No, that would make me sorry.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt would have followed up this answer, which the change in her manner +made apparently decisive of her favorable intention; but he was not in any way +overcome so as to be unaware that they were now, within sight of everybody, +descending the space into Green Arbor, and descending it at an ill-chosen point +where it began to be inconveniently steep. This was a reason for offering his +hand in the literal sense to help her; she took it, and they came down in +silence, much observed by those already on the level—among others by Mrs. +Arrowpoint, who happened to be standing with Mrs. Davilow. That lady had now +made up her mind that Grandcourt’s merits were not such as would have +induced Catherine to accept him, Catherine having so high a standard as to have +refused Lord Slogan. Hence she looked at the tenant of Diplow with +dispassionate eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Grandcourt is not equal as a man to his uncle, Sir Hugo +Mallinger—too languid. To be sure, Mr. Grandcourt is a much younger man, +but I shouldn’t wonder if Sir Hugo were to outlive him, notwithstanding +the difference of years. It is ill calculating on successions,” concluded +Mrs. Arrowpoint, rather too loudly. +</p> + +<p> +“It is indeed,” said Mrs. Davilow, able to assent with quiet +cheerfulness, for she was so well satisfied with the actual situation of +affairs that her habitual melancholy in their general unsatisfactoriness was +altogether in abeyance. +</p> + +<p> +I am not concerned to tell of the food that was eaten in that green refectory, +or even to dwell on the stories of the forest scenery that spread themselves +out beyond the level front of the hollow; being just now bound to tell a story +of life at a stage when the blissful beauty of earth and sky entered only by +narrow and oblique inlets into the consciousness, which was busy with a small +social drama almost as little penetrated by a feeling of wider relations as if +it had been a puppet-show. It will be understood that the food and champagne +were of the best—the talk and laughter too, in the sense of belonging to +the best society, where no one makes an invidious display of anything in +particular, and the advantages of the world are taken with that high-bred +depreciation which follows from being accustomed to them. Some of the gentlemen +strolled a little and indulged in a cigar, there being a sufficient interval +before four o’clock—the time for beginning to rove again. Among +these, strange to say, was Grandcourt; but not Mr. Lush, who seemed to be +taking his pleasure quite generously to-day by making himself particularly +serviceable, ordering everything for everybody, and by this activity becoming +more than ever a blot on the scene to Gwendolen, though he kept himself amiably +aloof from her, and never even looked at her obviously. When there was a +general move to prepare for starting, it appeared that the bows had all been +put under the charge of Lord Brackenshaw’s valet, and Mr. Lush was +concerned to save ladies the trouble of fetching theirs from the carriage where +they were propped. He did not intend to bring Gwendolen’s, but she, +fearful lest he should do so, hurried to fetch it herself. The valet, seeing +her approach, met her with it, and in giving it into her hand gave also a +letter addressed to her. She asked no question about it, perceived at a glance +that the address was in a lady’s handwriting (of the delicate kind which +used to be esteemed feminine before the present uncial period), and moving away +with her bow in her hand, saw Mr. Lush coming to fetch other bows. To avoid +meeting him she turned aside and walked with her back toward the stand of +carriages, opening the letter. It contained these words, +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +If Miss Harleth is in doubt whether she should accept Mr. Grandcourt, let her +break from her party after they have passed the Whispering Stones and return to +that spot. She will then hear something to decide her; but she can only hear it +by keeping this letter a strict secret from every one. If she does not act +according to this letter, she will repent, as the woman who writes it has +repented. The secrecy Miss Harleth will feel herself bound in honor to guard. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt an inward shock, but her immediate thought was, “It is +come in time.” It lay in her youthfulness that she was absorbed by the +idea of the revelation to be made, and had not even a momentary suspicion of +contrivance that could justify her in showing the letter. Her mind gathered +itself up at once into the resolution, that she would manage to go unobserved +to the Whispering Stones; and thrusting the letter into her pocket she turned +back to rejoin the company, with that sense of having something to conceal +which to her nature had a bracing quality and helped her to be mistress of +herself. +</p> + +<p> +It was a surprise to every one that Grandcourt was not, like the other smokers, +on the spot in time to set out roving with the rest. “We shall alight on +him by-and-by,” said Lord Brackenshaw; “he can’t be gone +far.” At any rate, no man could be waited for. This apparent +forgetfulness might be taken for the distraction of a lover so absorbed in +thinking of the beloved object as to forget an appointment which would bring +him into her actual presence. And the good-natured Earl gave Gwendolen a +distant jocose hint to that effect, which she took with suitable quietude. But +the thought in her mind was “Can he too be starting away from a +decision?” It was not exactly a pleasant thought to her; but it was near +the truth. “Starting away,” however, was not the right expression +for the languor of intention that came over Grandcourt, like a fit of diseased +numbness, when an end seemed within easy reach: to desist then, when all +expectation was to the contrary, became another gratification of mere will, +sublimely independent of definite motive. At that moment he had begun a second +large cigar in a vague, hazy obstinacy which, if Lush or any other mortal who +might be insulted with impunity had interrupted by overtaking him with a +request for his return, would have expressed itself by a slow removal of his +cigar, to say in an undertone, “You’ll be kind enough to go to the +devil, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +But he was not interrupted, and the rovers set off without any visible +depression of spirits, leaving behind only a few of the less vigorous ladies, +including Mrs. Davilow, who preferred a quiet stroll free from obligation to +keep up with others. The enjoyment of the day was soon at its highest pitch, +the archery getting more spirited and the changing scenes of the forest from +roofed grove to open glade growing lovelier with the lengthening shadows, and +the deeply-felt but undefinable gradations of the mellowing afternoon. It was +agreed that they were playing an extemporized <i>As you like it</i>; and when a +pretty compliment had been turned to Gwendolen about her having the part of +Rosalind, she felt the more compelled to be surpassing in loveliness. This was +not very difficult to her, for the effect of what had happened to-day was an +excitement which needed a vent—a sense of adventure rather than alarm, +and a straining toward the management of her retreat, so as not to be impeded. +</p> + +<p> +The roving had been lasting nearly an hour before the arrival at the Whispering +Stones, two tall conical blocks that leaned toward each other like gigantic +gray-mantled figures. They were soon surveyed and passed by with the remark +that they would be good ghosts on a starlit night. But a soft sunlight was on +them now, and Gwendolen felt daring. The stones were near a fine grove of +beeches, where the archers found plenty of marks. +</p> + +<p> +“How far are we from Green Arbor now?” said Gwendolen, having got +in front by the side of the warden. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, not more than half a mile, taking along the avenue we’re going +to cross up there: but I shall take round a couple of miles, by the High +Cross.” +</p> + +<p> +She was falling back among the rest, when suddenly they seemed all to be +hurrying obliquely forward under the guidance of Mr. Lush, and lingering a +little where she was, she perceived her opportunity of slipping away. Soon she +was out of sight, and without running she seemed to herself to fly along the +ground and count the moments nothing till she found herself back again at the +Whispering Stones. They turned their blank gray sides to her: what was there on +the other side? If there were nothing after all? That was her only dread +now—to have to turn back again in mystification; and walking round the +right-hand stone without pause, she found herself in front of some one whose +large dark eyes met hers at a foot’s distance. In spite of expectation, +she was startled and shrank bank, but in doing so she could take in the whole +figure of this stranger and perceive that she was unmistakably a lady, and one +who must have been exceedingly handsome. She perceived, also, that a few yards +from her were two children seated on the grass. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Harleth?” said the lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” All Gwendolen’s consciousness was wonder. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you accepted Mr. Grandcourt?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have promised to tell you something. And you will promise to keep my +secret. However you may decide you will not tell Mr. Grandcourt, or any one +else, that you have seen me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I promise.” +</p> + +<p> +“My name is Lydia Glasher. Mr. Grandcourt ought not to marry any one but +me. I left my husband and child for him nine years ago. Those two children are +his, and we have two others—girls—who are older. My husband is dead +now, and Mr. Grandcourt ought to marry me. He ought to make that boy his +heir.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at the boy as she spoke, and Gwendolen’s eyes followed hers. +The handsome little fellow was puffing out his cheeks in trying to blow a tiny +trumpet which remained dumb. His hat hung backward by a string, and his brown +curls caught the sun-rays. He was a cherub. +</p> + +<p> +The two women’s eyes met again, and Gwendolen said proudly, “I will +not interfere with your wishes.” She looked as if she were shivering, and +her lips were pale. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very attractive, Miss Harleth. But when he first knew me, I too +was young. Since then my life has been broken up and embittered. It is not fair +that he should be happy and I miserable, and my boy thrust out of sight for +another.” +</p> + +<p> +These words were uttered with a biting accent, but with a determined abstinence +from anything violent in tone or manner. Gwendolen, watching Mrs. +Glasher’s face while she spoke, felt a sort of terror: it was as if some +ghastly vision had come to her in a dream and said, “I am a woman’s +life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you anything more to say to me?” she asked in a low tone, but +still proud and coldly. The revulsion within her was not tending to soften her. +Everyone seemed hateful. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing. You know what I wished you to know. You can inquire about me if +you like. My husband was Colonel Glasher.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I will go,” said Gwendolen, moving away with a ceremonious +inclination, which was returned with equal grace. +</p> + +<p> +In a few minutes Gwendolen was in the beech grove again but her party had gone +out of sight and apparently had not sent in search of her, for all was solitude +till she had reached the avenue pointed out by the warden. She determined to +take this way back to Green Arbor, which she reached quickly; rapid movements +seeming to her just now a means of suspending the thoughts which might prevent +her from behaving with due calm. She had already made up her mind what step she +would take. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow was of course astonished to see Gwendolen returning alone, and was +not without some uneasiness which the presence of other ladies hindered her +from showing. In answer to her words of surprise Gwendolen said, +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I have been rather silly. I lingered behind to look at the +Whispering Stones, and the rest hurried on after something, so I lost sight of +them. I thought it best to come home by the short way—the avenue that the +warden had told me of. I’m not sorry after all. I had had enough +walking.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your party did not meet Mr. Grandcourt, I presume,” said Mrs. +Arrowpoint, not without intention. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gwendolen, with a little flash of defiance, and a light +laugh. “And we didn’t see any carvings on the trees, either. Where +can he be? I should think he has fallen into the pool or had an apoplectic +fit.” +</p> + +<p> +With all Gwendolen’s resolve not to betray any agitation, she could not +help it that her tone was unusually high and hard, and her mother felt sure +that something unpropitious had happened. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Arrowpoint thought that the self-confident young lady was much piqued, and +that Mr. Grandcourt was probably seeing reason to change his mind. +</p> + +<p> +“If you have no objection, mamma, I will order the carriage,” said +Gwendolen. “I am tired. And every one will be going soon.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow assented; but by the time the carriage was announced as +ready—the horses having to be fetched from the stables on the +warden’s premises—the roving party reappeared, and with them Mr. +Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, there you are!” said Lord Brackenshaw, going up to Gwendolen, +who was arranging her mamma’s shawl for the drive. “We thought at +first you had alighted on Grandcourt and he had taken you home. Lush said so. +But after that we met Grandcourt. However, we didn’t suppose you could be +in any danger. The warden said he had told you a near way back.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are going?” said Grandcourt, coming up with his usual air, as +if he did not conceive that there had been any omission on his part. Lord +Brackenshaw gave place to him and moved away. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, we are going,” said Gwendolen, looking busily at her scarf, +which she was arranging across her shoulders Scotch fashion. +</p> + +<p> +“May I call at Offendene to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, if you like,” said Gwendolen, sweeping him from a distance +with her eyelashes. Her voice was light and sharp as the first touch of frost. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow accepted his arm to lead her to the carriage; but while that was +happening, Gwendolen with incredible swiftness had got in advance of them, and +had sprung into the carriage. +</p> + +<p> +“I got in, mamma, because I wished to be on this side,” she said, +apologetically. But she had avoided Grandcourt’s touch: he only lifted +his hat and walked away—with the not unsatisfactory impression that she +meant to show herself offended by his neglect. +</p> + +<p> +The mother and daughter drove for five minutes in silence. Then Gwendolen said, +“I intend to join the Langens at Dover, mamma. I shall pack up +immediately on getting home, and set off by the early train. I shall be at +Dover almost as soon as they are; we can let them know by telegraph.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good heavens, child! what can be your reason for saying so?” +</p> + +<p> +“My reason for saying it, mamma, is that I mean to do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why do you mean to do it?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to go away.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it because you are offended with Mr. Grandcourt’s odd behavior +in walking off to-day?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is useless to enter into such questions. I am not going in any case +to marry Mr. Grandcourt. Don’t interest yourself further about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What can I say to your uncle, Gwendolen? Consider the position you place +me in. You led him to believe only last night that you had made up your mind in +favor of Mr. Grandcourt.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very sorry to cause you annoyance, mamma, dear, but I can’t +help it,” said Gwendolen, with still harder resistance in her tone. +“Whatever you or my uncle may think or do, I shall not alter my resolve, +and I shall not tell my reason. I don’t care what comes of it. I +don’t care if I never marry any one. There is nothing worth caring for. I +believe all men are bad, and I hate them.” +</p> + +<p> +“But need you set off in this way, Gwendolen?” said Mrs. Davilow, +miserable and helpless. +</p> + +<p> +“Now mamma, don’t interfere with me. If you have ever had any +trouble in your own life, remember it and don’t interfere with me. If I +am to be miserable, let it be by my own choice.” +</p> + +<p> +The mother was reduced to trembling silence. She began to see that the +difficulty would be lessened if Gwendolen went away. +</p> + +<p> +And she did go. The packing was all carefully done that evening, and not long +after dawn the next day Mrs. Davilow accompanied her daughter to the railway +station. The sweet dews of morning, the cows and horses looking over the hedges +without any particular reason, the early travelers on foot with their bundles, +seemed all very melancholy and purposeless to them both. The dingy torpor of +the railway station, before the ticket could be taken, was still worse. +Gwendolen had certainly hardened in the last twenty-four hours: her +mother’s trouble evidently counted for little in her present state of +mind, which did not essentially differ from the mood that makes men take to +worse conduct when their belief in persons or things is upset. +Gwendolen’s uncontrolled reading, though consisting chiefly in what are +called pictures of life, had somehow not prepared her for this encounter with +reality. Is that surprising? It is to be believed that attendance at the +<i>opéra bouffe</i> in the present day would not leave men’s minds +entirely without shock, if the manners observed there with some applause were +suddenly to start up in their own families. Perspective, as its inventor +remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings +languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of +cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe +remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a +repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our +personal experience. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow felt Gwendolen’s new phase of indifference keenly, and as +she drove back alone, the brightening morning was sadder to her than before. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Grandcourt called that day at Offendene, but nobody was at home. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0015"></a> +CHAPTER XV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Festina lente</i>—celerity should be contempered with +cunctation.”—S<small>IR</small> T<small>HOMAS</small> +B<small>ROWNE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, we have seen, passed her time abroad in the new excitement of +gambling, and in imagining herself an empress of luck, having brought from her +late experience a vague impression that in this confused world it signified +nothing what any one did, so that they amused themselves. We have seen, too, +that certain persons, mysteriously symbolized as Grapnell & Co., having +also thought of reigning in the realm of luck, and being also bent on amusing +themselves, no matter how, had brought about a painful change in her family +circumstances; whence she had returned home—carrying with her, against +her inclination, a necklace which she had pawned and some one else had +redeemed. +</p> + +<p> +While she was going back to England, Grandcourt was coming to find her; coming, +that is, after his own manner—not in haste by express straight from +Diplow to Leubronn, where she was understood to be; but so entirely without +hurry that he was induced by the presence of some Russian acquaintances to +linger at Baden-Baden and make various appointments with them, which, however, +his desire to be at Leubronn ultimately caused him to break. Grandcourt’s +passions were of the intermittent, flickering kind: never flaming out strongly. +But a great deal of life goes on without strong passion: myriads of cravats are +carefully tied, dinners attended, even speeches made proposing the health of +august personages without the zest arising from a strong desire. And a man may +make a good appearance in high social positions—may be supposed to know +the classics, to have his reserves on science, a strong though repressed +opinion on politics, and all the sentiments of the English gentleman, at a +small expense of vital energy. Also, he may be obstinate or persistent at the +same low rate, and may even show sudden impulses which have a false air of +daemonic strength because they seem inexplicable, though perhaps their secret +lies merely in the want of regulated channels for the soul to move +in—good and sufficient ducts of habit without which our nature easily +turns to mere ooze and mud, and at any pressure yields nothing but a spurt or a +puddle. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt had not been altogether displeased by Gwendolen’s running away +from the splendid chance he was holding out to her. The act had some piquancy +for him. He liked to think that it was due to resentment of his careless +behavior in Cardell Chase, which, when he came to consider it, did appear +rather cool. To have brought her so near a tender admission, and then to have +walked headlong away from further opportunities of winning the consent which he +had made her understand him to be asking for, was enough to provoke a girl of +spirit; and to be worth his mastering it was proper that she should have some +spirit. Doubtless she meant him to follow her, and it was what he meant too. +But for a whole week he took no measures toward starting, and did not even +inquire where Miss Harleth was gone. Mr. Lush felt a triumph that was mingled +with much distrust; for Grandcourt had said no word to him about her, and +looked as neutral as an alligator; there was no telling what might turn up in +the slowly-churning chances of his mind. Still, to have put off a decision was +to have made room for the waste of Grandcourt’s energy. +</p> + +<p> +The guests at Diplow felt more curiosity than their host. How was it that +nothing more was heard of Miss Harleth? Was it credible that she had refused +Mr. Grandcourt? Lady Flora Hollis, a lively middle-aged woman, well endowed +with curiosity, felt a sudden interest in making a round of calls with Mrs. +Torrington, including the rectory, Offendene, and Quetcham, and thus not only +got twice over, but also discussed with the Arrowpoints, the information that +Miss Harleth was gone to Leubronn, with some old friends, the Baron and +Baroness von Langen; for the immediate agitation and disappointment of Mrs. +Davilow and the Gascoignes had resolved itself into a wish that +Gwendolen’s disappearance should not be interpreted as anything eccentric +or needful to be kept secret. The rector’s mind, indeed, entertained the +possibility that the marriage was only a little deferred, for Mrs. Davilow had +not dared to tell him of the bitter determination with which Gwendolen had +spoken. And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had +petrified into maxims and quotations. Amaryllis fleeing desired that her +hiding-place should be known; and that love will find out the way “over +the mountain and over the wave” may be said without hyperbole in this age +of steam. Gwendolen, he conceived, was an Amaryllis of excellent sense but +coquettish daring; the question was whether she had dared too much. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Flora, coming back charged with news about Miss Harleth, saw no good +reason why she should not try whether she could electrify Mr. Grandcourt by +mentioning it to him at the table; and in doing so shot a few hints of a notion +having got abroad that he was a disappointed adorer. Grandcourt heard with +quietude, but with attention; and the next day he ordered Lush to bring about a +decent reason for breaking up the party at Diplow by the end of another week, +as he meant to go yachting to the Baltic or somewhere—it being impossible +to stay at Diplow as if he were a prisoner on parole, with a set of people whom +he had never wanted. Lush needed no clearer announcement that Grandcourt was +going to Leubronn; but he might go after the manner of a creeping billiard-ball +and stick on the way. What Mr. Lush intended was to make himself indispensable +so that he might go too, and he succeeded; Gwendolen’s repulsion for him +being a fact that only amused his patron, and made him none the less willing to +have Lush always at hand. +</p> + +<p> +This was how it happened that Grandcourt arrived at the <i>Czarina</i> on the +fifth day after Gwendolen had left Leubronn, and found there his uncle, Sir +Hugo Mallinger, with his family, including Deronda. It is not necessarily a +pleasure either to the reigning power or the heir presumptive when their +separate affairs—a touch of gout, say, in the one, and a touch of +willfulness in the other—happen to bring them to the same spot. Sir Hugo +was an easy-tempered man, tolerant both of differences and defects; but a point +of view different from his own concerning the settlement of the family estates +fretted him rather more than if it had concerned Church discipline or the +ballot, and faults were the less venial for belonging to a person whose +existence was inconvenient to him. In no case could Grandcourt have been a +nephew after his own heart; but as the presumptive heir to the Mallinger +estates he was the sign and embodiment of a chief grievance in the +baronet’s life—the want of a son to inherit the lands, in no +portion of which had he himself more than a life-interest. For in the +ill-advised settlement which his father, Sir Francis, had chosen to make by +will, even Diplow with its modicum of land had been left under the same +conditions as the ancient and wide inheritance of the two +Toppings—Diplow, where Sir Hugo had lived and hunted through many a +season in his younger years, and where his wife and daughters ought to have +been able to retire after his death. +</p> + +<p> +This grievance had naturally gathered emphasis as the years advanced, and Lady +Mallinger, after having had three daughters in quick succession, had remained +for eight years till now that she was over forty without producing so much as +another girl; while Sir Hugo, almost twenty years older, was at a time of life +when, notwithstanding the fashionable retardation of most things from dinners +to marriages, a man’s hopefulness is apt to show signs of wear, until +restored by second childhood. +</p> + +<p> +In fact, he had begun to despair of a son, and this confirmation of +Grandcourt’s interest in the estates certainly tended to make his image +and presence the more unwelcome; but, on the other hand, it carried +circumstances which disposed Sir Hugo to take care that the relation between +them should be kept as friendly as possible. It led him to dwell on a plan +which had grown up side by side with his disappointment of an heir; namely, to +try and secure Diplow as a future residence for Lady Mallinger and her +daughters, and keep this pretty bit of the family inheritance for his own +offspring in spite of that disappointment. Such knowledge as he had of his +nephew’s disposition and affairs encouraged the belief that Grandcourt +might consent to a transaction by which he would get a good sum of ready money, +as an equivalent for his prospective interest in the domain of Diplow and the +moderate amount of land attached to it. If, after all, the unhoped-for son +should be born, the money would have been thrown away, and Grandcourt would +have been paid for giving up interests that had turned out good for nothing; +but Sir Hugo set down this risk as <i>nil</i>, and of late years he had +husbanded his fortune so well by the working of mines and the sale of leases +that he was prepared for an outlay. +</p> + +<p> +Here was an object that made him careful to avoid any quarrel with Grandcourt. +Some years before, when he was making improvements at the Abbey, and needed +Grandcourt’s concurrence in his felling an obstructive mass of timber on +the demesne, he had congratulated himself on finding that there was no active +spite against him in his nephew’s peculiar mind; and nothing had since +occurred to make them hate each other more than was compatible with perfect +politeness, or with any accommodation that could be strictly mutual. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt, on his side, thought his uncle a superfluity and a bore, and felt +that the list of things in general would be improved whenever Sir Hugo came to +be expunged. But he had been made aware through Lush, always a useful medium, +of the baronet’s inclinations concerning Diplow, and he was gratified to +have the alternative of the money in his mind: even if he had not thought it in +the least likely that he would choose to accept it, his sense of power would +have been flattered by his being able to refuse what Sir Hugo desired. The +hinted transaction had told for something among the motives which had made him +ask for a year’s tenancy of Diplow, which it had rather annoyed Sir Hugo +to grant, because the excellent hunting in the neighborhood might decide +Grandcourt not to part with his chance of future possession;—a man who +has two places, in one of which the hunting is less good, naturally desiring a +third where it is better. Also, Lush had thrown out to Sir Hugo the probability +that Grandcourt would woo and win Miss Arrowpoint, and in that case ready money +might be less of a temptation to him. Hence, on this unexpected meeting at +Leubronn, the baronet felt much curiosity to know how things had been going on +at Diplow, was bent on being as civil as possible to his nephew, and looked +forward to some private chat with Lush. +</p> + +<p> +Between Deronda and Grandcourt there was a more faintly-marked but peculiar +relation, depending on circumstances which have yet to be made known. But on no +side was there any sign of suppressed chagrin on the first meeting at the +<i>table d’hôte</i>, an hour after Grandcourt’s arrival; and when +the quartette of gentlemen afterward met on the terrace, without Lady +Mallinger, they moved off together to saunter through the rooms, Sir Hugo +saying as they entered the large <i>saal</i>, +</p> + +<p> +“Did you play much at Baden, Grandcourt?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I looked on and betted a little with some Russians there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Had you luck?” +</p> + +<p> +“What did I win, Lush?” +</p> + +<p> +“You brought away about two hundred,” said Lush. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not here for the sake of the play, then?” said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I don’t care about play now. It’s a confounded +strain,” said Grandcourt, whose diamond ring and demeanor, as he moved +along playing slightly with his whisker, were being a good deal stared at by +rouged foreigners interested in a new milord. +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is, somebody should invent a mill to do amusements for you, my +dear fellow,” said Sir Hugo, “as the Tartars get their praying +done. But I agree with you; I never cared for play. It’s +monotonous—knits the brain up into meshes. And it knocks me up to watch +it now. I suppose one gets poisoned with the bad air. I never stay here more +than ten minutes. But where’s your gambling beauty, Deronda? Have you +seen her lately?” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s gone,” said Deronda, curtly. +</p> + +<p> +“An uncommonly fine girl, a perfect Diana,” said Sir Hugo, turning +to Grandcourt again. “Really worth a little straining to look at her. I +saw her winning, and she took it as coolly as if she had known it all +beforehand. The same day Deronda happened to see her losing like wildfire, and +she bore it with immense pluck. I suppose she was cleaned out, or was wise +enough to stop in time. How do you know she’s gone?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, by the Visitor-list,...” said Deronda, with a scarcely +perceptible shrug. “Vandernoodt told me her name was Harleth, and she was +with the Baron and Baroness von Langen. I saw by the list that Miss Harleth was +no longer there.” +</p> + +<p> +This held no further information for Lush than that Gwendolen had been +gambling. He had already looked at the list, and ascertained that Gwendolen had +gone, but he had no intention of thrusting this knowledge on Grandcourt before +he asked for it; and he had not asked, finding it enough to believe that the +object of search would turn up somewhere or other. +</p> + +<p> +But now Grandcourt had heard what was rather piquant, and not a word about Miss +Harleth had been missed by him. After a moment’s pause he said to +Deronda, +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know those people—the Langens?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have talked with them a little since Miss Harleth went away. I knew +nothing of them before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is she gone—do you know?” +</p> + +<p> +“She is gone home,” said Deronda, coldly, as if he wished to say no +more. But then, from a fresh impulse, he turned to look markedly at Grandcourt, +and added, “But it is possible you know her. Her home is not far from +Diplow: Offendene, near Winchester.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, turning to look straight at Grandcourt, who was on his left hand, +might have been a subject for those old painters who liked contrasts of +temperament. There was a calm intensity of life and richness of tint in his +face that on a sudden gaze from him was rather startling, and often made him +seem to have spoken, so that servants and officials asked him automatically, +“What did you say, sir?” when he had been quite silent. Grandcourt +himself felt an irritation, which he did not show except by a slight movement +of the eyelids, at Deronda’s turning round on him when he was not asked +to do more than speak. But he answered, with his usual drawl, “Yes, I +know her,” and paused with his shoulder toward Deronda, to look at the +gambling. +</p> + +<p> +“What of her, eh?” asked Sir Hugo of Lush, as the three moved on a +little way. “She must be a new-comer at Offendene. Old Blenny lived there +after the dowager died.” +</p> + +<p> +“A little too much of her,” said Lush, in a low, significant tone; +not sorry to let Sir Hugo know the state of affairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? how?” said the baronet. They all moved out of the +<i>salon</i> into an airy promenade. +</p> + +<p> +“He has been on the brink of marrying her,” Lush went on. +“But I hope it’s off now. She’s a niece of the +clergyman—Gascoigne—at Pennicote. Her mother is a widow with a +brood of daughters. This girl will have nothing, and is as dangerous as +gunpowder. It would be a foolish marriage. But she has taken a freak against +him, for she ran off here without notice, when he had agreed to call the next +day. The fact is, he’s here after her; but he was in no great hurry, and +between his caprice and hers they are likely enough not to get together again. +But of course he has lost his chance with the heiress.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt joining them said, “What a beastly den this is!—a worse +hole than Baden. I shall go back to the hotel.” +</p> + +<p> +When Sir Hugo and Deronda were alone, the baronet began, +</p> + +<p> +“Rather a pretty story. That girl has something in her. She must be worth +running after—has <i>de l’imprévu</i>. I think her appearance on +the scene has bettered my chance of getting Diplow, whether the marriage comes +off or not.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should hope a marriage like that would not come off,” said +Deronda, in a tone of disgust. +</p> + +<p> +“What! are you a little touched with the sublime lash?” said Sir +Hugo, putting up his glasses to help his short sight in looking at his +companion. “Are you inclined to run after her?” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary,” said Deronda, “I should rather be inclined +to run away from her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you would easily cut out Grandcourt. A girl with her spirit would +think you the finer match of the two,” said Sir Hugo, who often tried +Deronda’s patience by finding a joke in impossible advice. (A difference +of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.) +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose pedigree and land belong to a fine match,” said Deronda, +coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“The best horse will win in spite of pedigree, my boy. You remember +Napoleon’s <i>mot—Je suis un ancêtre</i>” said Sir Hugo, who +habitually undervalued birth, as men after dining well often agree that the +good of life is distributed with wonderful equality. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not sure that I want to be an ancestor,” said Deronda. +“It doesn’t seem to me the rarest sort of origination.” +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t run after the pretty gambler, then?” said Sir +Hugo, putting down his glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“Decidedly not.” +</p> + +<p> +This answer was perfectly truthful; nevertheless it had passed through +Deronda’s mind that under other circumstances he should have given way to +the interest this girl had raised in him, and tried to know more of her. But +his history had given him a stronger bias in another direction. He felt himself +in no sense free. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0016"></a> +CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The astronomer +threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so for every visible arc +in the wanderer’s orbit; and the narrator of human actions, if he did his +work with the same completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of +feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those +moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action—like the +cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea +and sky he invokes and the deity he defies. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional. One moment had +been burned into his life as its chief epoch—a moment full of July +sunshine and large pink roses shedding their last petals on a grassy court +enclosed on three sides by a gothic cloister. Imagine him in such a scene: a +boy of thirteen, stretched prone on the grass where it was in shadow, his curly +head propped on his arms over a book, while his tutor, also reading, sat on a +camp-stool under shelter. Deronda’s book was Sismondi’s <i>History +of the Italian Republics</i>; the lad had a passion for history, eager to know +how time had been filled up since the flood, and how things were carried on in +the dull periods. Suddenly he let down his left arm and looked at his tutor, +saying in purest boyish tones, +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Fraser, how was it that the popes and cardinals always had so many +nephews?” +</p> + +<p> +The tutor, an able young Scotchman, who acted as Sir Hugo Mallinger’s +secretary, roused rather unwillingly from his political economy, answered with +the clear-cut emphatic chant which makes a truth doubly telling in Scotch +utterance, +</p> + +<p> +“Their own children were called nephews.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“It was just for the propriety of the thing; because, as you know very +well, priests don’t marry, and the children were illegitimate.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fraser, thrusting out his lower lip and making his chant of the last word +the more emphatic for a little impatience at being interrupted, had already +turned his eyes on his book again, while Deronda, as if something had stung +him, started up in a sitting attitude with his back to the tutor. +</p> + +<p> +He had always called Sir Hugo Mallinger his uncle, and when it once occurred to +him to ask about his father and mother, the baronet had answered, “You +lost your father and mother when you were quite a little one; that is why I +take care of you.” Daniel then straining to discern something in that +early twilight, had a dim sense of having been kissed very much, and surrounded +by thin, cloudy, scented drapery, till his fingers caught in something hard, +which hurt him, and he began to cry. Every other memory he had was of the +little world in which he still lived. And at that time he did not mind about +learning more, for he was too fond of Sir Hugo to be sorry for the loss of +unknown parents. Life was very delightful to the lad, with an uncle who was +always indulgent and cheerful—a fine man in the bright noon of life, whom +Daniel thought absolutely perfect, and whose place was one of the finest in +England, at once historical, romantic, and home-like: a picturesque +architectural outgrowth from an abbey, which had still remnants of the old +monastic trunk. Diplow lay in another county, and was a comparatively landless +place which had come into the family from a rich lawyer on the female side who +wore the perruque of the restoration; whereas the Mallingers had the grant of +Monk’s Topping under Henry the Eighth, and ages before had held the +neighboring lands of King’s Topping, tracing indeed their origin to a +certain Hugues le Malingre, who came in with the Conqueror—and also +apparently with a sickly complexion which had been happily corrected in his +descendants. Two rows of these descendants, direct and collateral, females of +the male line, and males of the female, looked down in the gallery over the +cloisters on the nephew Daniel as he walked there: men in armor with pointed +beards and arched eyebrows, pinched ladies in hoops and ruffs with no face to +speak of; grave-looking men in black velvet and stuffed hips, and fair, +frightened women holding little boys by the hand; smiling politicians in +magnificent perruques, and ladies of the prize-animal kind, with rosebud mouths +and full eyelids, according to Lely; then a generation whose faces were revised +and embellished in the taste of Kneller; and so on through refined editions of +the family types in the time of Reynolds and Romney, till the line ended with +Sir Hugo and his younger brother Henleigh. This last had married Miss +Grandcourt, and taken her name along with her estates, thus making a junction +between two equally old families, impaling the three Saracens’ heads +proper and three bezants of the one with the tower and falcons <i>argent</i> of +the other, and, as it happened, uniting their highest advantages in the +prospects of that Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt who is at present more of an +acquaintance to us than either Sir Hugo or his nephew Daniel Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +In Sir Hugo’s youthful portrait with rolled collar and high cravat, Sir +Thomas Lawrence had done justice to the agreeable alacrity of expression and +sanguine temperament still to be seen in the original, but had done something +more than justice in slightly lengthening the nose, which was in reality +shorter than might have been expected in a Mallinger. Happily the appropriate +nose of the family reappeared in his younger brother, and was to be seen in all +its refined regularity in his nephew Mallinger Grandcourt. But in the nephew +Daniel Deronda the family faces of various types, seen on the walls of the +gallery, found no reflex. Still he was handsomer than any of them, and when he +was thirteen might have served as model for any painter who wanted to image the +most memorable of boys: you could hardly have seen his face thoroughly meeting +yours without believing that human creatures had done nobly in times past, and +might do more nobly in time to come. The finest childlike faces have this +consecrating power, and make us shudder anew at all the grossness and +basely-wrought griefs of the world, lest they should enter here and defile. +</p> + +<p> +But at this moment on the grass among the rose-petals, Daniel Deronda was +making a first acquaintance with those griefs. A new idea had entered his mind, +and was beginning to change the aspect of his habitual feelings as happy +careless voyagers are changed with the sky suddenly threatened and the thought +of danger arises. He sat perfectly still with his back to the tutor, while his +face expressed rapid inward transition. The deep blush, which had come when he +first started up, gradually subsided; but his features kept that indescribable +look of subdued activity which often accompanies a new mental survey of +familiar facts. He had not lived with other boys, and his mind showed the same +blending of child’s ignorance with surprising knowledge which is oftener +seen in bright girls. Having read Shakespeare as well as a great deal of +history, he could have talked with the wisdom of a bookish child about men who +were born out of wedlock and were held unfortunate in consequence, being under +disadvantages which required them to be a sort of heroes if they were to work +themselves up to an equal standing with their legally born brothers. But he had +never brought such knowledge into any association with his own lot, which had +been too easy for him ever to think about it—until this moment when there +had darted into his mind with the magic of quick comparison, the possibility +that here was the secret of his own birth, and that the man whom he called +uncle was really his father. Some children, even younger than Daniel, have +known the first arrival of care, like an ominous irremovable guest in their +tender lives, on the discovery that their parents, whom they had imagined able +to buy everything, were poor and in hard money troubles. Daniel felt the +presence of a new guest who seemed to come with an enigmatic veiled face, and +to carry dimly-conjectured, dreaded revelations. The ardor which he had given +to the imaginary world in his books suddenly rushed toward his own history and +spent its pictorial energy there, explaining what he knew, representing the +unknown. The uncle whom he loved very dearly took the aspect of a father who +held secrets about him—who had done him a wrong—yes, a wrong: and +what had become of his mother, for whom he must have been taken +away?—Secrets about which he, Daniel, could never inquire; for to speak +or to be spoken to about these new thoughts seemed like falling flakes of fire +to his imagination. Those who have known an impassioned childhood will +understand this dread of utterance about any shame connected with their +parents. The impetuous advent of new images took possession of him with the +force of fact for the first time told, and left him no immediate power for the +reflection that he might be trembling at a fiction of his own. The terrible +sense of collision between a strong rush of feeling and the dread of its +betrayal, found relief at length in big slow tears, which fell without +restraint until the voice of Mr. Fraser was heard saying: +</p> + +<p> +“Daniel, do you see that you are sitting on the bent pages of your +book?” +</p> + +<p> +Daniel immediately moved the book without turning round, and after holding it +before him for an instant, rose with it and walked away into the open grounds, +where he could dry his tears unobserved. The first shock of suggestion past, he +could remember that he had no certainty how things really had been, and that he +had been making conjectures about his own history, as he had often made stories +about Pericles or Columbus, just to fill up the blanks before they became +famous. Only there came back certain facts which had an obstinate reality, +almost like the fragments of a bridge, telling you unmistakably how the arches +lay. And again there came a mood in which his conjectures seemed like a doubt +of religion, to be banished as an offense, and a mean prying after what he was +not meant to know; for there was hardly a delicacy of feeling this lad was not +capable of. But the summing-up of all his fluctuating experience at this epoch +was, that a secret impression had come to him which had given him something +like a new sense in relation to all the elements of his life. And the idea that +others probably knew things concerning which they did not choose to mention, +set up in him a premature reserve which helped to intensify his inward +experience. His ears open now to words which before that July day would have +passed by him unnoted; and round every trivial incident which imagination could +connect with his suspicions, a newly-roused set of feelings were ready to +cluster themselves. +</p> + +<p> +One such incident a month later wrought itself deeply into his life. Daniel had +not only one of those thrilling boy voices which seem to bring an idyllic +heaven and earth before our eyes, but a fine musical instinct, and had early +made out accompaniments for himself on the piano, while he sang from memory. +Since then he had had some teaching, and Sir Hugo, who delighted in the boy, +used to ask for his music in the presence of guests. One morning after he had +been singing “Sweet Echo” before a small party of gentlemen whom +the rain had kept in the house, the baronet, passing from a smiling remark to +his next neighbor said: +</p> + +<p> +“Come here, Dan!” +</p> + +<p> +The boy came forward with unusual reluctance. He wore an embroidered holland +blouse which set off the rich coloring of his head and throat, and the +resistant gravity about his mouth and eyes as he was being smiled upon, made +their beauty the more impressive. Every one was admiring him. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you say to being a great singer? Should you like to be adored by +the world and take the house by storm, like Mario and Tamberlik?” +</p> + +<p> +Daniel reddened instantaneously, but there was a just perceptible interval +before he answered with angry decision, +</p> + +<p> +“No; I should hate it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, well, well!” said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness +intended to be soothing. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and +going to his own chamber threw himself on the broad window-sill, which was a +favorite retreat of his when he had nothing particular to do. Here he could see +the rain gradually subsiding with gleams through the parting clouds which lit +up a great reach of the park, where the old oaks stood apart from each other, +and the bordering wood was pierced with a green glade which met the eastern +sky. This was a scene which had always been part of his home—part of the +dignified ease which had been a matter of course in his life. And his ardent +clinging nature had appropriated it all with affection. He knew a great deal of +what it was to be a gentleman by inheritance, and without thinking much about +himself—for he was a boy of active perceptions and easily forgot his own +existence in that of Robert Bruce—he had never supposed that he could be +shut out from such a lot, or have a very different part in the world from that +of the uncle who petted him. It is possible (though not greatly believed in at +present) to be fond of poverty and take it for a bride, to prefer scoured deal, +red quarries and whitewash for one’s private surroundings, to delight in +no splendor but what has open doors for the whole nation, and to glory in +having no privileges except such as nature insists on; and noblemen have been +known to run away from elaborate ease and the option of idleness, that they +might bind themselves for small pay to hard-handed labor. But Daniel’s +tastes were altogether in keeping with his nurture: his disposition was one in +which everyday scenes and habits beget not <i>ennui</i> or rebellion, but +delight, affection, aptitudes; and now the lad had been stung to the quick by +the idea that his uncle—perhaps his father—thought of a career for +him which was totally unlike his own, and which he knew very well was not +thought of among possible destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. He +had often stayed in London with Sir Hugo, who to indulge the boy’s ear +had carried him to the opera to hear the great tenors, so that the image of a +singer taking the house by storm was very vivid to him; but now, spite of his +musical gift, he set himself bitterly against the notion of being dressed up to +sing before all those fine people, who would not care about him except as a +wonderful toy. That Sir Hugo should have thought of him in that position for a +moment, seemed to Daniel an unmistakable proof that there was something about +his birth which threw him out from the class of gentlemen to which the baronet +belonged. Would it ever be mentioned to him? Would the time come when his uncle +would tell him everything? He shrank from the prospect: in his imagination he +preferred ignorance. If his father had been wicked—Daniel inwardly used +strong words, for he was feeling the injury done him as a maimed boy feels the +crushed limb which for others is merely reckoned in an average of +accidents—if his father had done any wrong, he wished it might never be +spoken of to him: it was already a cutting thought that such knowledge might be +in other minds. Was it in Mr. Fraser’s? probably not, else he would not +have spoken in that way about the pope’s nephews. Daniel fancied, as +older people do, that every one else’s consciousness was as active as his +own on a matter which was vital to him. Did Turvey the valet know?—and +old Mrs. French the housekeeper?—and Banks the bailiff, with whom he had +ridden about the farms on his pony?—And now there came back the +recollection of a day some years before when he was drinking Mrs. Banks’s +whey, and Banks said to his wife with a wink and a cunning laugh, “He +features the mother, eh?” At that time little Daniel had merely thought +that Banks made a silly face, as the common farming men often did, laughing at +what was not laughable; and he rather resented being winked at and talked of as +if he did not understand everything. But now that small incident became +information: it was to be reasoned on. How could he be like his mother and not +like his father? His mother must have been a Mallinger, if Sir Hugo were his +uncle. But no! His father might have been Sir Hugo’s brother and have +changed his name, as Mr. Henleigh Mallinger did when he married Miss +Grandcourt. But then, why had he never heard Sir Hugo speak of his brother +Deronda, as he spoke of his brother Grandcourt? Daniel had never before cared +about the family tree—only about that ancestor who had killed three +Saracens in one encounter. But now his mind turned to a cabinet of estate-maps +in the library, where he had once seen an illuminated parchment hanging out, +that Sir Hugo said was the family tree. The phrase was new and odd to +him—he was a little fellow then—hardly more than half his present +age—and he gave it no precise meaning. He knew more now and wished that +he could examine that parchment. He imagined that the cabinet was always +locked, and longed to try it. But here he checked himself. He might be seen: +and he would never bring himself near even a silent admission of the sore that +had opened in him. +</p> + +<p> +It is in such experiences of a boy or girlhood, while elders are debating +whether most education lies in science or literature, that the main lines of +character are often laid down. If Daniel had been of a less ardently +affectionate nature, the reserve about himself and the supposition that others +had something to his disadvantage in their minds, might have turned into a +hard, proud antagonism. But inborn lovingness was strong enough to keep itself +level with resentment. There was hardly any creature in his habitual world that +he was not fond of; teasing them occasionally, of course—all except his +uncle, or “Nunc,” as Sir Hugo had taught him to say; for the +baronet was the reverse of a strait-laced man, and left his dignity to take +care of itself. Him Daniel loved in that deep-rooted filial way which makes +children always the happier for being in the same room with father or mother, +though their occupations may be quite apart. Sir Hugo’s watch-chain and +seals, his handwriting, his mode of smoking and of talking to his dogs and +horses, had all a rightness and charm about them to the boy which went along +with the happiness of morning and breakfast time. That Sir Hugo had always been +a Whig, made Tories and Radicals equally opponents of the truest and best; and +the books he had written were all seen under the same consecration of loving +belief which differenced what was his from what was not his, in spite of +general resemblance. Those writings were various, from volumes of travel in the +brilliant style, to articles on things in general, and pamphlets on political +crises; but to Daniel they were alike in having an unquestionable rightness by +which other people’s information could be tested. +</p> + +<p> +Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion that something in this +object of complete love was <i>not</i> quite right? Children demand that their +heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first +discovery to the contrary is hardly a less revolutionary shock to a passionate +child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world +seem to totter for us in maturer life. +</p> + +<p> +But some time after this renewal of Daniel’s agitation it appeared that +Sir Hugo must have been making a merely playful experiment in his question +about the singing. He sent for Daniel into the library, and looking up from his +writing as the boy entered threw himself sideways in his arm-chair. “Ah, +Dan!” he said kindly, drawing one of the old embroidered stools close to +him. “Come and sit down here.” +</p> + +<p> +Daniel obeyed, and Sir Hugo put a gentle hand on his shoulder, looking at him +affectionately. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, my boy? Have you heard anything that has put you out of +spirits lately?” +</p> + +<p> +Daniel was determined not to let the tears come, but he could not speak. +</p> + +<p> +“All changes are painful when people have been happy, you know,” +said Sir Hugo, lifting his hand from the boy’s shoulder to his dark curls +and rubbing them gently. “You can’t be educated exactly as I wish +you to be without our parting. And I think you will find a great deal to like +at school.” +</p> + +<p> +This was not what Daniel expected, and was so far a relief, which gave him +spirit to answer, +</p> + +<p> +“Am I to go to school?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I mean you to go to Eton. I wish you to have the education of an +English gentleman; and for that it is necessary that you should go to a public +school in preparation for the university: Cambridge I mean you to go to; it was +my own university.” +</p> + +<p> +Daniel’s color came and went. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you say, Sirrah?” said Sir Hugo, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to be a gentleman,” said Daniel, with firm +distinctness, “and go to school, if that is what a gentleman’s son +must do.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo watched him silently for a few moments, thinking he understood now why +the lad had seemed angry at the notion of becoming a singer. Then he said +tenderly, +</p> + +<p> +“And so you won’t mind about leaving your old Nunc?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I shall,” said Daniel, clasping Sir Hugo’s caressing +arm with both his hands. “But sha’n’t I come home and be with +you in the holidays?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, generally,” said Sir Hugo. “But now I mean you to go +at once to a new tutor, to break the change for you before you go to +Eton.” +</p> + +<p> +After this interview Daniel’s spirit rose again. He was meant to be a +gentleman, and in some unaccountable way it might be that his conjectures were +all wrong. The very keenness of the lad taught him to find comfort in his +ignorance. While he was busying his mind in the construction of possibilities, +it became plain to him that there must be possibilities of which he knew +nothing. He left off brooding, young joy and the spirit of adventure not being +easily quenched within him, and in the interval before his going away he sang +about the house, danced among the old servants, making them parting gifts, and +insisted many times to the groom on the care that was to be taken of the black +pony. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think I shall know much less than the other boys, Mr. +Fraser?” said Daniel. It was his bent to think that every stranger would +be surprised at his ignorance. +</p> + +<p> +“There are dunces to be found everywhere,” said the judicious +Fraser. “You’ll not be the biggest; but you’ve not the +makings of a Porson in you, or a Leibnitz either.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to be a Porson or a Leibnitz,” said Daniel. +“I would rather be a greater leader, like Pericles or Washington.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ay; you’ve a notion they did with little parsing, and less +algebra,” said Fraser. But in reality he thought his pupil a remarkable +lad, to whom one thing was as easy as another, if he had only a mind to it. +</p> + +<p> +Things went on very well with Daniel in his new world, except that a boy with +whom he was at once inclined to strike up a close friendship talked to him a +great deal about his home and parents, and seemed to expect a like +expansiveness in return. Daniel immediately shrank into reserve, and this +experience remained a check on his naturally strong bent toward the formation +of intimate friendship. Every one, his tutor included, set him down as a +reserved boy, though he was so good-humored and unassuming, as well as quick, +both at study and sport, that nobody called his reserve disagreeable. Certainly +his face had a great deal to do with that favorable interpretation; but in this +instance the beauty of the closed lips told no falsehood. +</p> + +<p> +A surprise that came to him before his first vacation strengthened the silent +consciousness of a grief within, which might be compared in some ways with +Byron’s susceptibility about his deformed foot. Sir Hugo wrote word that +he was married to Miss Raymond, a sweet lady, whom Daniel must remember having +seen. The event would make no difference about his spending the vacation at the +Abbey; he would find Lady Mallinger a new friend whom he would be sure to +love—and much more to the usual effect when a man, having done something +agreeable to himself, is disposed to congratulate others on his own good +fortune, and the deducible satisfactoriness of events in general. +</p> + +<p> +Let Sir Hugo be partly excused until the grounds of his action can be more +fully known. The mistakes in his behavior to Deronda were due to that dullness +toward what may be going on in other minds, especially the minds of children, +which is among the commonest deficiencies, even in good-natured men like him, +when life has been generally easy to themselves, and their energies have been +quietly spent in feeling gratified. No one was better aware than he that Daniel +was generally suspected to be his own son. But he was pleased with that +suspicion; and his imagination had never once been troubled with the way in +which the boy himself might be affected, either then or in the future, by the +enigmatic aspect of his circumstances. He was as fond of him as could be, and +meant the best by him. And, considering the lightness with which the +preparation of young lives seem to lie on respectable consciences, Sir Hugo +Mallinger can hardly be held open to exceptional reproach. He had been a +bachelor till he was five-and-forty, had always been regarded as a fascinating +man of elegant tastes; what could be more natural, even according to the index +of language, than that he should have a beautiful boy like the little Deronda +to take care of? The mother might even, perhaps, be in the great +world—met with in Sir Hugo’s residence abroad. The only person to +feel any objection was the boy himself, who could not have been consulted. And +the boy’s objections had never been dreamed of by anybody but himself. +</p> + +<p> +By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady Mallinger had already +three daughters—charming babies, all three, but whose sex was announced +as a melancholy alternative, the offspring desired being a son; if Sir Hugo had +no son the succession must go to his nephew, Mallinger Grandcourt. Daniel no +longer held a wavering opinion about his own birth. His fuller knowledge had +tended to convince him that Sir Hugo was his father, and he conceived that the +baronet, since he never approached a communication on the subject, wished him +to have a tacit understanding of the fact, and to accept in silence what would +be generally considered more than the due love and nurture. Sir Hugo’s +marriage might certainly have been felt as a new ground of resentment by some +youths in Deronda’s position, and the timid Lady Mallinger with her +fast-coming little ones might have been images to scowl at, as likely to divert +much that was disposable in the feelings and possessions of the baronet from +one who felt his own claim to be prior. But hatred of innocent human obstacles +was a form of moral stupidity not in Deronda’s grain; even the +indignation which had long mingled itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took +the quality of pain rather than of temper; and as his mind ripened to the idea +of tolerance toward error, he habitually liked the idea with his own silent +grievances. +</p> + +<p> +The sense of an entailed disadvantage—the deformed foot doubtfully hidden +by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a +self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort, who +presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a myriad, the inexorable +sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination tender. +Deronda’s early-weakened susceptibility, charged at first with ready +indignation and resistant pride, had raised in him a premature reflection on +certain questions of life; it had given a bias to his conscience, a sympathy +with certain ills, and a tension of resolve in certain directions, who marked +him off from other youths much more than any talents he possessed. +</p> + +<p> +One day near the end of the long vacation, when he had been making a tour in +the Rhineland with his Eton tutor, and was come for a farewell stay at the +Abbey before going to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo, +</p> + +<p> +“What do you intend me to be, sir?” They were in the library, and +it was the fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called him in to read a letter from a +Cambridge Don who was to be interested in him; and since the baronet wore an +air at once business-like and leisurely, the moment seemed propitious for +entering on a grave subject which had never yet been thoroughly discussed. +</p> + +<p> +“Whatever your inclination leads you to, my boy. I thought it right to +give you the option of the army, but you shut the door on that, and I was glad. +I don’t expect you to choose just yet—by-and-by, when you have +looked about you a little more and tried your mettle among older men. The +university has a good wide opening into the forum. There are prizes to be won, +and a bit of good fortune often gives the turn to a man’s taste. From +what I see and hear, I should think you can take up anything you like. You are +in the deeper water with your classics than I ever got into, and if you are +rather sick of that swimming, Cambridge is the place where you can go into +mathematics with a will, and disport yourself on the dry sand as much as you +like. I floundered along like a carp.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose money will make some difference, sir,” said Daniel +blushing. “I shall have to keep myself by-and-by.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly. I recommend you not to be extravagant—yes, yes, I +know—you are not inclined to that—but you need not take up anything +against the grain. You will have a bachelor’s income—enough for you +to look about with. Perhaps I had better tell you that you may consider +yourself secure of seven hundred a year. You might make yourself a +barrister—be a writer—take up politics. I confess that is what +would please me best. I should like to have you at my elbow and pulling with +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda looked embarrassed. He felt that he ought to make some sign of +gratitude, but other feelings clogged his tongue. A moment was passing by in +which a question about his birth was throbbing within him, and yet it seemed +more impossible than ever that the question should find vent—more +impossible than ever that he could hear certain things from Sir Hugo’s +lips. The liberal way in which he was dealt with was the more striking because +the baronet had of late cared particularly for money, and for making the utmost +of his life-interest in the estate by way of providing for his daughters; and +as all this flashed through Daniel’s mind it was momentarily within his +imagination that the provision for him might come in some way from his mother. +But such vaporous conjecture passed away as quickly as it came. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo appeared not to notice anything peculiar in Daniel’s manner, and +presently went on with his usual chatty liveliness. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad you have done some good reading outside your classics, and +have got a grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can get the +prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it’s hardly worth +while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin +you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you’ll give him as a +cue. That’s all very fine, but in practical life nobody does give you the +cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it’s a nicety of conversation which I +would have you attend to—much quotation of any sort, even in English is +bad. It tends to choke ordinary remark. One couldn’t carry on life +comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything had been +said better than we can put it ourselves. But talking of Dons, I have seen Dons +make a capital figure in society; and occasionally he can shoot you down a +cart-load of learning in the right place, which will tell in politics. Such men +are wanted; and if you have any turn for being a Don, I say nothing against +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think there’s not much chance of that. Quicksett and Puller are +both stronger than I am. I hope you will not be much disappointed if I +don’t come out with high honors.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no. I should like you to do yourself credit, but for God’s +sake don’t come out as a superior expensive kind of idiot, like young +Brecon, who got a Double First, and has been learning to knit braces ever +since. What I wish you to get is a passport in life. I don’t go against +our university system: we want a little disinterested culture to make head +against cotton and capital, especially in the House. My Greek has all +evaporated; if I had to construe a verse on a sudden, I should get an +apoplectic fit. But it formed my taste. I dare say my English is the better for +it.” +</p> + +<p> +On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The enthusiastic belief in Sir +Hugo’s writings as a standard, and in the Whigs as the chosen race among +politicians, had gradually vanished along with the seraphic boy’s face. +He had not been the hardest of workers at Eton. Though some kinds of study and +reading came as easily as boating to him, he was not of the material that +usually makes the first-rate Eton scholar. There had sprung up in him a +meditative yearning after wide knowledge which is likely always to abate ardor +in the fight for prize acquirement in narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and +took any second-rateness in himself simply as a fact, not as a marvel +necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority. Still, Mr. Fraser’s +high opinion of the lad had not been altogether belied by the youth: Daniel had +the stamp of rarity in a subdued fervor of sympathy, an activity of imagination +on behalf of others which did not show itself effusively, but was continually +seen in acts of considerateness that struck his companions as moral +eccentricity. “Deronda would have been first-rate if he had had more +ambition,” was a frequent remark about him. But how could a fellow push +his way properly when he objected to swop for his own advantage, knocked under +by choice when he was within an inch of victory, and, unlike the great Clive, +would rather be the calf than the butcher? It was a mistake, however, to +suppose that Deronda had not his share of ambition. We know he had suffered +keenly from the belief that there was a tinge of dishonor in his lot; but there +are some cases, and his was one of them, in which the sense of injury +breeds—not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, +but, a hatred of all injury. He had his flashes of fierceness and could hit out +upon occasion, but the occasions were not always what might have been expected. +For in what related to himself his resentful impulses had been early checked by +a mastering affectionateness. Love has a habit of saying “Never +mind” to angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in the lower place, +by-and-by gets used to it. So it was that as Deronda approached manhood his +feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was getting more and more mixed with criticism, +was gaining in that sort of allowance which reconciles criticism with +tenderness. The dear old beautiful home and everything within it, Lady +Mallinger and her little ones included, were consecrated for the youth as they +had been for the boy—only with a certain difference of light on the +objects. The altarpiece was no longer miraculously perfect, painted under +infallible guidance, but the human hand discerned in the work was appealing to +a reverent tenderness safer from the gusts of discovery. Certainly +Deronda’s ambition, even in his spring-time, lay exceptionally aloof from +conspicuous, vulgar triumph, and from other ugly forms of boyish energy; +perhaps because he was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those +heights. One may spend a good deal of energy in disliking and resisting what +others pursue, and a boy who is fond of somebody else’s pencil-case may +not be more energetic than another who is fond of giving his own pencil-case +away. Still it was not Deronda’s disposition to escape from ugly scenes; +he was more inclined to sit through them and take care of the fellow least able +to take care of himself. It had helped to make him popular that he was +sometimes a little compromised by this apparent comradeship. For a meditative +interest in learning how human miseries are wrought—as precocious in him +as another sort of genius in the poet who writes a Queen Mab at +nineteen—was so infused with kindliness that it easily passed for +comradeship. Enough. In many of our neighbors’ lives there is much not +only of error and lapse, but of a certain exquisite goodness which can never be +written or even spoken—only divined by each of us, according to the +inward instruction of our own privacy. +</p> + +<p> +The impression he made at Cambridge corresponded to his position at Eton. Every +one interested in him agreed that he might have taken a high place if his +motives had been of a more pushing sort, and if he had not, instead of +regarding studies as instruments of success, hampered himself with the notion +that they were to feed motive and opinion—a notion which set him +criticising methods and arguing against his freight and harness when he should +have been using all his might to pull. In the beginning his work at the +university had a new zest for him: indifferent to the continuation of Eton +classical drill, he applied himself vigorously to mathematics, for which he had +shown an early aptitude under Mr. Fraser, and he had the delight of feeling his +strength in a comparatively fresh exercise of thought. That delight, and the +favorable opinion of his tutor, determined him to try for a mathematical +scholarship in the Easter of his second year: he wished to gratify Sir Hugo by +some achievement, and the study of the higher mathematics, having the growing +fascination inherent in all thinking which demands intensity, was making him a +more exclusive worker than he had been before. +</p> + +<p> +But here came the old check which had been growing with his growth. He found +the inward bent toward comprehension and thoroughness diverging more and more +from the track marked out by the standards of examination: he felt a +heightening discontent with the wearing futility and enfeebling strain of a +demand for excessive retention and dexterity without any insight into the +principles which form the vital connections of knowledge. (Deronda’s +undergraduateship occurred fifteen years ago, when the perfection of our +university methods was not yet indisputable.) In hours when his dissatisfaction +was strong upon him he reproached himself for having been attracted by the +conventional advantage of belonging to an English university, and was tempted +toward the project of asking Sir Hugo to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a +more independent line of study abroad. The germs of this inclination had been +already stirring in his boyish love of universal history, which made him want +to be at home in foreign countries, and follow in imagination the traveling +students of the middle ages. He longed now to have the sort of apprenticeship +to life which would not shape him too definitely, and rob him of the choice +that might come from a free growth. One sees that Deronda’s demerits were +likely to be on the side of reflective hesitation, and this tendency was +encouraged by his position; there was no need for him to get an immediate +income, or to fit himself in haste for a profession; and his sensibility to the +half-known facts of his parentage made him an excuse for lingering longer than +others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he inwardly said, had a more +definite place and duties. But the project which flattered his inclination +might not have gone beyond the stage of ineffective brooding, if certain +circumstances had not quickened it into action. +</p> + +<p> +The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship which extended into +his after-life. Of the same year with himself, and occupying small rooms close +to his, was a youth who had come as an exhibitioner from Christ’s +Hospital, and had eccentricities enough for a Charles Lamb. Only to look at his +pinched features and blonde hair hanging over his collar reminded one of pale +quaint heads by early German painters; and when this faint coloring was lit up +by a joke, there came sudden creases about the mouth and eyes which might have +been moulded by the soul of an aged humorist. His father, an engraver of some +distinction, had been dead eleven years, and his mother had three girls to +educate and maintain on a meagre annuity. Hans Meyrick—he had been +daringly christened after Holbein—felt himself the pillar, or rather the +knotted and twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing plants must cling. +There was no want of ability or of honest well-meaning affection to make the +prop trustworthy: the ease and quickness with which he studied might serve him +to win prizes at Cambridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of +irregularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies in him +might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions might be frustrated by +some act which was not due to habit but to capricious, scattered impulses. He +could not be said to have any one bad habit; yet at longer or shorter intervals +he had fits of impish recklessness, and did things that would have made the +worst habits. +</p> + +<p> +Hans in his right mind, however, was a lovable creature, and in Deronda he had +happened to find a friend who was likely to stand by him with the more +constancy, from compassion for these brief aberrations that might bring a long +repentance. Hans, indeed, shared Deronda’s rooms nearly as much as he +used his own: to Deronda he poured himself out on his studies, his affairs, his +hopes; the poverty of his home, and his love for the creatures there; the +itching of his fingers to draw, and his determination to fight it away for the +sake of getting some sort of a plum that he might divide with his mother and +the girls. He wanted no confidence in return, but seemed to take Deronda as an +Olympian who needed nothing—an egotism in friendship which is common +enough with mercurial, expansive natures. Deronda was content, and gave Meyrick +all the interest he claimed, getting at last a brotherly anxiety about him, +looking after him in his erratic moments, and contriving by adroitly delicate +devices not only to make up for his friend’s lack of pence, but to save +him from threatening chances. Such friendship easily becomes tender: the one +spreads strong sheltering wings that delight in spreading, the other gets the +warm protection which is also a delight. Meyrick was going in for a classical +scholarship, and his success, in various ways momentous, was the more probable +from the steadying influence of Deronda’s friendship. +</p> + +<p> +But an imprudence of Meyrick’s, committed at the beginning of the autumn +term, threatened to disappoint his hopes. With his usual alternation between +unnecessary expense and self-privation, he had given too much money for an old +engraving which fascinated him, and to make up for it, had come from London in +a third-class carriage with his eyes exposed to a bitter wind and any +irritating particles the wind might drive before it. The consequence was a +severe inflammation of the eyes, which for some time hung over him the threat +of a lasting injury. This crushing trouble called out all Deronda’s +readiness to devote himself, and he made every other occupation secondary to +that of being companion and eyes to Hans, working with him and for him at his +classics, that if possible his chance of the classical scholarship might be +saved. Hans, to keep the knowledge of his suffering from his mother and +sisters, alleged his work as a reason for passing the Christmas at Cambridge, +and his friend stayed up with him. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Deronda relaxed his hold on his mathematics, and Hans, reflecting on +this, at length said: “Old fellow, while you are hoisting me you are +risking yourself. With your mathematical cram one may be like Moses or Mohammed +or somebody of that sort who had to cram, and forgot in one day what it had +taken him forty to learn.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda would not admit that he cared about the risk, and he had really been +beguiled into a little indifference by double sympathy: he was very anxious +that Hans should not miss the much-needed scholarship, and he felt a revival of +interest in the old studies. Still, when Hans, rather late in the day, got able +to use his own eyes, Deronda had tenacity enough to try hard and recover his +lost ground. He failed, however; but he had the satisfaction of seeing Meyrick +win. +</p> + +<p> +Success, as a sort of beginning that urged completion, might have reconciled +Deronda to his university course; but the emptiness of all things, from +politics to pastimes, is never so striking to us as when we fail in them. The +loss of the personal triumph had no severity for him, but the sense of having +spent his time ineffectively in a mode of working which had been against the +grain, gave him a distaste for any renewal of the process, which turned his +imagined project of quitting Cambridge into a serious intention. In speaking of +his intention to Meyrick he made it appear that he was glad of the turn events +had taken—glad to have the balance dip decidedly, and feel freed from his +hesitations; but he observed that he must of course submit to any strong +objection on the part of Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +Meyrick’s joy and gratitude were disturbed by much uneasiness. He +believed in Deronda’s alleged preference, but he felt keenly that in +serving him Daniel had placed himself at a disadvantage in Sir Hugo’s +opinion, and he said mournfully, “If you had got the scholarship, Sir +Hugo would have thought that you asked to leave us with a better grace. You +have spoiled your luck for my sake, and I can do nothing to amend it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you can; you are to be a first-rate fellow. I call that a +first-rate investment of my luck.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, confound it! You save an ugly mongrel from drowning, and expect him +to cut a fine figure. The poets have made tragedies enough about signing +one’s self over to wickedness for the sake of getting something plummy; I +shall write a tragedy of a fellow who signed himself over to be good, and was +uncomfortable ever after.” +</p> + +<p> +But Hans lost no time in secretly writing the history of the affair to Sir +Hugo, making it plain that but for Deronda’s generous devotion he could +hardly have failed to win the prize he had been working for. +</p> + +<p> +The two friends went up to town together: Meyrick to rejoice with his mother +and the girls in their little home at Chelsea; Deronda to carry out the less +easy task of opening his mind to Sir Hugo. He relied a little on the +baronet’s general tolerance of eccentricities, but he expected more +opposition than he met with. He was received with even warmer kindness than +usual, the failure was passed over lightly, and when he detailed his reasons +for wishing to quit the university and go to study abroad, Sir Hugo sat for +some time in a silence which was rather meditative than surprised. At last he +said, looking at Daniel with examination, “So you don’t want to be +an Englishman to the backbone after all?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want to be an Englishman, but I want to understand other points of +view. And I want to get rid of a merely English attitude in studies.” +</p> + +<p> +“I see; you don’t want to be turned out in the same mould as every +other youngster. And I have nothing to say against your doffing some of our +national prejudices. I feel the better myself for having spent a good deal of +my time abroad. But, for God’s sake, keep an English cut, and don’t +become indifferent to bad tobacco! And, my dear boy, it is good to be unselfish +and generous; but don’t carry that too far. It will not do to give +yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow-trade; you must know +where to find yourself. However, I shall put no veto on your going. Wait until +I can get off Committee, and I’ll run over with you.” +</p> + +<p> +So Deronda went according to his will. But not before he had spent some hours +with Hans Meyrick, and been introduced to the mother and sisters in the Chelsea +home. The shy girls watched and registered every look of their brother’s +friend, declared by Hans to have been the salvation of him, a fellow like +nobody else, and, in fine, a brick. They so thoroughly accepted Deronda as an +ideal, that when he was gone the youngest set to work, under the criticism of +the two elder girls, to paint him as Prince Camaralzaman. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0017"></a> +CHAPTER XVII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“This is true the poet sings,<br/> +That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow<br/> +Is remembering happier things.”<br/> + —T<small>ENNYSON</small>: <i>In Memoriam</i>. +</p> + +<p> +On a fine evening near the end of July, Deronda was rowing himself on the +Thames. It was already a year or more since he had come back to England, with +the understanding that his education was finished, and that he was somehow to +take his place in English society; but though, in deference to Sir Hugo’s +wish, and to fence off idleness, he had begun to read law, this apparent +decision had been without other result than to deepen the roots of indecision. +His old love of boating had revived with the more force now that he was in town +with the Mallingers, because he could nowhere else get the same still seclusion +which the river gave him. He had a boat of his own at Putney, and whenever Sir +Hugo did not want him, it was his chief holiday to row till past sunset and +come in again with the stars. Not that he was in a sentimental stage; but he +was in another sort of contemplative mood perhaps more common in the young men +of our day—that of questioning whether it were worth while to take part +in the battle of the world: I mean, of course, the young men in whom the +unproductive labor of questioning is sustained by three or five per cent, on +capital which somebody else has battled for. It puzzled Sir Hugo that one who +made a splendid contrast with all that was sickly and puling should be hampered +with ideas which, since they left an accomplished Whig like himself +unobstructed, could be no better than spectral illusions; especially as Deronda +set himself against authorship—a vocation which is understood to turn +foolish thinking into funds. +</p> + +<p> +Rowing in his dark-blue shirt and skull-cap, his curls closely clipped, his +mouth beset with abundant soft waves of beard, he bore only disguised traces of +the seraphic boy “trailing clouds of glory.” Still, even one who +had never seen him since his boyhood might have looked at him with slow +recognition, due perhaps to the peculiarity of the gaze which Gwendolen chose +to call “dreadful,” though it had really a very mild sort of +scrutiny. The voice, sometimes audible in subdued snatches of song, had turned +out merely a high baritone; indeed, only to look at his lithe, powerful frame +and the firm gravity of his face would have been enough for an experienced +guess that he had no rare and ravishing tenor such as nature reluctantly makes +at some sacrifice. Look at his hands: they are not small and dimpled, with +tapering fingers that seem to have only a deprecating touch: they are long, +flexible, firmly-grasping hands, such as Titian has painted in a picture where +he wanted to show the combination of refinement with force. And there is +something of a likeness, too, between the faces belonging to the hands—in +both the uniform pale-brown skin, the perpendicular brow, the calmly +penetrating eyes. Not seraphic any longer: thoroughly terrestrial and manly; +but still of a kind to raise belief in a human dignity which can afford to +recognize poor relations. +</p> + +<p> +Such types meet us here and there among average conditions; in a workman, for +example, whistling over a bit of measurement and lifting his eyes to answer our +question about the road. And often the grand meanings of faces as well as of +written words may lie chiefly in the impressions that happen just now to be of +importance in relation to Deronda, rowing on the Thames in a very ordinary +equipment for a young Englishman at leisure, and passing under Kew Bridge with +no thought of an adventure in which his appearance was likely to play any part. +In fact, he objected very strongly to the notion, which others had not allowed +him to escape, that his appearance was of a kind to draw attention; and hints +of this, intended to be complimentary, found an angry resonance in him, coming +from mingled experiences, to which a clue has already been given. His own face +in the glass had during many years associated for him with thoughts of some one +whom he must be like—one about whose character and lot he continually +wondered, and never dared to ask. +</p> + +<p> +In the neighborhood of Kew Bridge, between six and seven o’clock, the +river was no solitude. Several persons were sauntering on the towing-path, and +here and there a boat was plying. Deronda had been rowing fast to get over this +spot, when, becoming aware of a great barge advancing toward him, he guided his +boat aside, and rested on his oar within a couple of yards of the river-brink. +He was all the while unconsciously continuing the low-toned chant which had +haunted his throat all the way up the river—the gondolier’s song in +the <i>Otello</i>, where Rossini has worthily set to music the immortal words +of Dante, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + “Nessun maggior dolore<br/> +Che ricordarsi del tempo felice<br/> +Nella miseria”:[*] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +[* Dante’s words are best rendered by our own poet in the lines at the +head of the chapter.] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +and, as he rested on his oar, the pianissimo fall of the melodic wail +“nella miseria” was distinctly audible on the brink of the water. +Three or four persons had paused at various spots to watch the barge passing +the bridge, and doubtless included in their notice the young gentleman in the +boat; but probably it was only to one ear that the low vocal sounds came with +more significance than if they had been an insect-murmur amidst the sum of +current noises. Deronda, awaiting the barge, now turning his head to the +river-side, and saw at a few yards’ distant from him a figure which might +have been an impersonation of the misery he was unconsciously giving voice to: +a girl hardly more than eighteen, of low slim figure, with most delicate little +face, her dark curls pushed behind her ears under a large black hat, a long +woolen cloak over her shoulders. Her hands were hanging down clasped before +her, and her eyes were fixed on the river with a look of immovable, statue-like +despair. This strong arrest of his attention made him cease singing: apparently +his voice had entered her inner world without her taking any note of whence it +came, for when it suddenly ceased she changed her attitude slightly, and, +looking round with a frightened glance, met Deronda’s face. It was but a +couple of moments, but that seemed a long while for two people to look straight +at each other. Her look was something like that of a fawn or other gentle +animal before it turns to run away: no blush, no special alarm, but only some +timidity which yet could not hinder her from a long look before she turned. In +fact, it seemed to Deronda that she was only half conscious of her +surroundings: was she hungry, or was there some other cause of bewilderment? He +felt an outleap of interest and compassion toward her; but the next instant she +had turned and walked away to a neighboring bench under a tree. He had no right +to linger and watch her: poorly-dressed, melancholy women are common sights; it +was only the delicate beauty, picturesque lines and color of the image that was +exceptional, and these conditions made it more markedly impossible that he +should obtrude his interest upon her. He began to row away and was soon far up +the river; but no other thoughts were busy enough quite to expel that pale +image of unhappy girlhood. He fell again and again to speculating on the +probable romance that lay behind that loneliness and look of desolation; then +to smile at his own share in the prejudice that interesting faces must have +interesting adventures; then to justify himself for feeling that sorrow was the +more tragic when it befell delicate, childlike beauty. +</p> + +<p> +“I should not have forgotten the look of misery if she had been ugly and +vulgar,” he said to himself. But there was no denying that the +attractiveness of the image made it likelier to last. It was clear to him as an +onyx cameo; the brown-black drapery, the white face with small, small features +and dark, long-lashed eyes. His mind glanced over the girl-tragedies that are +going on in the world, hidden, unheeded, as if they were but tragedies of the +copse or hedgerow, where the helpless drag wounded wings forsakenly, and streak +the shadowed moss with the red moment-hand of their own death. Deronda of late, +in his solitary excursions, had been occupied chiefly with uncertainties about +his own course; but those uncertainties, being much at their leisure, were wont +to have such wide-sweeping connections with all life and history that the new +image of helpless sorrow easily blent itself with what seemed to him the strong +array of reasons why he should shrink from getting into that routine of the +world which makes men apologize for all its wrong-doing, and take opinions as +mere professional equipment—why he should not draw strongly at any thread +in the hopelessly-entangled scheme of things. +</p> + +<p> +He used his oars little, satisfied to go with the tide and be taken back by it. +It was his habit to indulge himself in that solemn passivity which easily comes +with the lengthening shadows and mellow light, when thinking and desiring melt +together imperceptibly, and what in other hours may have seemed argument takes +the quality of passionate vision. By the time he had come back again with the +tide past Richmond Bridge the sun was near setting: and the approach of his +favorite hour—with its deepening stillness and darkening masses of tree +and building between the double glow of the sky and the river—disposed +him to linger as if they had been an unfinished strain of music. He looked out +for a perfectly solitary spot where he could lodge his boat against the bank, +and, throwing himself on his back with his head propped on the cushions, could +watch out the light of sunset and the opening of that bead-roll which some +oriental poet describes as God’s call to the little stars, who each +answer, “Here am I.” He chose a spot in the bend of the river just +opposite Kew Gardens, where he had a great breadth of water before him +reflecting the glory of the sky, while he himself was in shadow. He lay with +his hands behind his head, propped on a level with the boat’s edge, so +that he could see all round him, but could not be seen by any one at a few +yards’ distance; and for a long while he never turned his eyes from the +view right in front of him. He was forgetting everything else in a +half-speculative, half-involuntary identification of himself with the objects +he was looking at, thinking how far it might be possible habitually to shift +his centre till his own personality would be no less outside him than the +landscape—when the sense of something moving on the bank opposite him +where it was bordered by a line of willow bushes, made him turn his glance +thitherward. In the first moment he had a darting presentiment about the moving +figure; and now he could see the small face with the strange dying sunlight +upon it. He feared to frighten her by a sudden movement, and watched her with +motionless attention. She looked round, but seemed only to gather security from +the apparent solitude, hid her hat among the willows, and immediately took off +her woolen cloak. Presently she seated herself and deliberately dipped the +cloak in the water, holding it there a little while, then taking it out with +effort, rising from her seat as she did so. By this time Deronda felt sure that +she meant to wrap the wet cloak round her as a drowning shroud; there was no +longer time to hesitate about frightening her. He rose and seized his oar to +ply across; happily her position lay a little below him. The poor thing, +overcome with terror at this sign of discovery from the opposite bank, sank +down on the brink again, holding her cloak half out of the water. She crouched +and covered her face as if she kept a faint hope that she had not been seen, +and that the boatman was accidentally coming toward her. But soon he was within +brief space of her, steadying his boat against the bank, and speaking, but very +gently, +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be afraid. You are unhappy. Pray, trust me. Tell me what I +can do to help you.” +</p> + +<p> +She raised her head and looked up at him. His face now was toward the light, +and she knew it again. But she did not speak for a few moments which were a +renewal of their former gaze at each other. At last she said in a low sweet +voice, with an accent so distinct that it suggested foreignness and yet was not +foreign, “I saw you before,” and then added dreamily, after a like +pause, “nella miseria.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, not understanding the connection of her thoughts, supposed that her +mind was weakened by distress and hunger. +</p> + +<p> +“It was you, singing?” she went on, +hesitatingly—“Nessun maggior dolore.” The mere words +themselves uttered in her sweet undertones seemed to give the melody to +Deronda’s ear. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, yes,” he said, understanding now, “I am often singing +them. But I fear you will injure yourself staying here. Pray let me take you in +my boat to some place of safety. And that wet cloak—let me take +it.” +</p> + +<p> +He would not attempt to take it without her leave, dreading lest he should +scare her. Even at his words, he fancied that she shrank and clutched the cloak +more tenaciously. But her eyes were fixed on him with a question in them as she +said, “You look good. Perhaps it is God’s command.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do trust me. Let me help you. I will die before I will let any harm come +to you.” +</p> + +<p> +She rose from her sitting posture, first dragging the saturated cloak and then +letting it fall on the ground—it was too heavy for her tired arms. Her +little woman’s figure as she laid her delicate chilled hands together one +over the other against her waist, and went a step backward while she leaned her +head forward as if not to lose sight of his face, was unspeakably touching. +</p> + +<p> +“Great God!” the words escaped Deronda in a tone so low and solemn +that they seemed like a prayer become unconsciously vocal. The agitating +impression this forsaken girl was making on him stirred a fibre that lay close +to his deepest interest in the fates of women—“perhaps my mother +was like this one.” The old thought had come now with a new impetus of +mingled feeling, and urged that exclamation in which both East and West have +for ages concentrated their awe in the presence of inexorable calamity. +</p> + +<p> +The low-toned words seemed to have some reassurance in them for the hearer: she +stepped forward close to the boat’s side, and Deronda put out his hand, +hoping now that she would let him help her in. She had already put her tiny +hand into his which closed around it, when some new thought struck her, and +drawing back she said, +</p> + +<p> +“I have nowhere to go—nobody belonging to me in all this +land.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will take you to a lady who has daughters,” said Deronda, +immediately. He felt a sort of relief in gathering that the wretched home and +cruel friends he imagined her to be fleeing from were not in the near +background. Still she hesitated, and said more timidly than ever, +</p> + +<p> +“Do you belong to the theatre?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I have nothing to do with the theatre,” said Deronda, in a +decided tone. Then beseechingly, “I will put you in perfect safety at +once; with a lady, a good woman; I am sure she will be kind. Let us lose no +time: you will make yourself ill. Life may still become sweet to you. There are +good people—there are good women who will take care of you.” +</p> + +<p> +She drew backward no more, but stepped in easily, as if she were used to such +action, and sat down on the cushions. +</p> + +<p> +“You had a covering for your head,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“My hat?” (She lifted up her hands to her head.) “It is quite +hidden in the bush.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will find it,” said Deronda, putting out his hand deprecatingly +as she attempted to rise. “The boat is fixed.” +</p> + +<p> +He jumped out, found the hat, and lifted up the saturated cloak, wringing it +and throwing it into the bottom of the boat. +</p> + +<p> +“We must carry the cloak away, to prevent any one who may have noticed +you from thinking you have been drowned,” he said, cheerfully, as he got +in again and presented the old hat to her. “I wish I had any other +garment than my coat to offer you. But shall you mind throwing it over your +shoulders while we are on the water? It is quite an ordinary thing to do, when +people return late and are not enough provided with wraps.” He held out +the coat toward her with a smile, and there came a faint melancholy smile in +answer, as she took it and put it on very cleverly. +</p> + +<p> +“I have some biscuits—should you like them?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I cannot eat. I had still some money left to buy bread.” +</p> + +<p> +He began to ply his oar without further remark, and they went along swiftly for +many minutes without speaking. She did not look at him, but was watching the +oar, leaning forward in an attitude of repose, as if she were beginning to feel +the comfort of returning warmth and the prospect of life instead of death. The +twilight was deepening; the red flush was all gone and the little stars were +giving their answer one after another. The moon was rising, but was still +entangled among the trees and buildings. The light was not such that he could +distinctly discern the expression of her features or her glance, but they were +distinctly before him nevertheless—features and a glance which seemed to +have given a fuller meaning for him to the human face. Among his anxieties one +was dominant: his first impression about her, that her mind might be +disordered, had not been quite dissipated: the project of suicide was +unmistakable, and given a deeper color to every other suspicious sign. He +longed to begin a conversation, but abstained, wishing to encourage the +confidence that might induce her to speak first. At last she did speak. +</p> + +<p> +“I like to listen to the oar.” +</p> + +<p> +“So do I.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you had not come, I should have been dead now.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot bear you to speak of that. I hope you will never be sorry that +I came.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot see how I shall be glad to live. The <i>maggior dolore</i> and +the <i>miseria</i> have lasted longer than the <i>tempo felice</i>.” She +paused and then went on +dreamily,—“<i>Dolore—miseria</i>—I think those words +are alive.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was mute: to question her seemed an unwarrantable freedom; he shrank +from appearing to claim the authority of a benefactor, or to treat her with the +less reverence because she was in distress. She went on musingly, +</p> + +<p> +“I thought it was not wicked. Death and life are one before the Eternal. +I know our fathers slew their children and then slew themselves, to keep their +souls pure. I meant it so. But now I am commanded to live. I cannot see how I +shall live.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will find friends. I will find them for you.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head and said mournfully, “Not my mother and brother. I +cannot find them.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are English? You must be—speaking English so perfectly.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer immediately, but looked at Deronda again, straining to see +him in the double light. Until now she had been watching the oar. It seemed as +if she were half roused, and wondered which part of her impression was dreaming +and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and +the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away +from her. Her look was full of wondering timidity such as the forsaken one in +the desert might have lifted to the angelic vision before she knew whether his +message was in anger or in pity. +</p> + +<p> +“You want to know if I am English?” she said at last, while Deronda +was reddening nervously under a gaze which he felt more fully than he saw. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to know nothing except what you like to tell me,” he said, +still uneasy in the fear that her mind was wandering. “Perhaps it is not +good for you to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I will tell you. I am English-born. But I am a Jewess.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was silent, inwardly wondering that he had not said this to himself +before, though any one who had seen delicate-faced Spanish girls might simply +have guessed her to be Spanish. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you despise me for it?” she said presently in low tones, which +had a sadness that pierced like a cry from a small dumb creature in fear. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I?” said Deronda. “I am not so foolish.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know many Jews are bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“So are many Christians. But I should not think it fair for you to +despise me because of that.” +</p> + +<p> +“My mother and brother were good. But I shall never find them. I am come +a long way—from abroad. I ran away; but I cannot tell you—I cannot +speak of it. I thought I might find my mother again—God would guide me. +But then I despaired. This morning when the light came, I felt as if one word +kept sounding within me—Never! never! But now—I begin—to +think—” her words were broken by rising sobs—“I am +commanded to live—perhaps we are going to her.” +</p> + +<p> +With an outburst of weeping she buried her head on her knees. He hoped that +this passionate weeping might relieve her excitement. Meanwhile he was inwardly +picturing in much embarrassment how he should present himself with her in Park +Lane—the course which he had at first unreflectingly determined on. No +one kinder and more gentle than Lady Mallinger; but it was hardly probable that +she would be at home; and he had a shuddering sense of a lackey staring at this +delicate, sorrowful image of womanhood—of glaring lights and fine +staircases, and perhaps chilling suspicious manners from lady’s maid and +housekeeper, that might scare the mind already in a state of dangerous +susceptibility. But to take her to any other shelter than a home already known +to him was not to be contemplated: he was full of fears about the issue of the +adventure which had brought on him a responsibility all the heavier for the +strong and agitating impression this childlike creature had made on him. But +another resource came to mind: he could venture to take her to Mrs. +Meyrick’s—to the small house at Chelsea—where he had been +often enough since his return from abroad to feel sure that he could appeal +there to generous hearts, which had a romantic readiness to believe in innocent +need and to help it. Hans Meyrick was safe away in Italy, and Deronda felt the +comfort of presenting himself with his charge at a house where he would be met +by a motherly figure of quakerish neatness, and three girls who hardly knew of +any evil closer to them than what lay in history-books, and dramas, and would +at once associate a lovely Jewess with Rebecca in <i>Ivanhoe</i>, besides +thinking that everything they did at Deronda’s request would be done for +their idol, Hans. The vision of the Chelsea home once raised, Deronda no longer +hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +The rumbling thither in the cab after the stillness of the water seemed long. +Happily his charge had been quiet since her fit of weeping, and submitted like +a tired child. When they were in the cab, she laid down her hat and tried to +rest her head, but the jolting movement would not let it rest. Still she dozed, +and her sweet head hung helpless, first on one side, then on the other. +</p> + +<p> +“They are too good to have any fear about taking her in,” thought +Deronda. Her person, her voice, her exquisite utterance, were one strong appeal +to belief and tenderness. Yet what had been the history which had brought her +to this desolation? He was going on a strange errand—to ask shelter for +this waif. Then there occurred to him the beautiful story Plutarch somewhere +tells of the Delphic women: how when the Maenads, outworn with their torch-lit +wanderings, lay down to sleep in the market-place, the matrons came and stood +silently round them to keep guard over their slumbers; then, when they waked, +ministered to them tenderly and saw them safely to their own borders. He could +trust the women he was going to for having hearts as good. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt himself growing older this evening and entering on a new phase in +finding a life to which his own had come—perhaps as a rescue; but how to +make sure that snatching from death was rescue? The moment of finding a +fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation as the moment +of finding an idea. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0018"></a> +CHAPTER XVIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Life is a various mother: now she dons<br/> +Her plumes and brilliants, climbs the marble stairs<br/> +With head aloft, nor ever turns her eyes<br/> +On lackeys who attend her; now she dwells<br/> +Grim-clad, up darksome alleys, breathes hot gin,<br/> +And screams in pauper riot.<br/> + But to these<br/> +She came a frugal matron, neat and deft,<br/> +With cheerful morning thoughts and quick device<br/> +To find the much in little. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick’s house was not noisy: the front parlor looked on the river, +and the back on gardens, so that though she was reading aloud to her daughters, +the window could be left open to freshen the air of the small double room where +a lamp and two candles were burning. The candles were on a table apart for +Kate, who was drawing illustrations for a publisher; the lamp was not only for +the reader but for Amy and Mab, who were embroidering satin cushions for +“the great world.” +</p> + +<p> +Outside, the house looked very narrow and shabby, the bright light through the +holland blind showing the heavy old-fashioned window-frame; but it is pleasant +to know that many such grim-walled slices of space in our foggy London have +been and still are the homes of a culture the more spotlessly free from +vulgarity, because poverty has rendered everything like display an impersonal +question, and all the grand shows of the world simply a spectacle which rouses +petty rivalry or vain effort after possession. +</p> + +<p> +The Meyricks’ was a home of that kind: and they all clung to this +particular house in a row because its interior was filled with objects always +in the same places, which, for the mother held memories of her marriage time, +and for the young ones seemed as necessary and uncriticised a part of their +world as the stars of the Great Bear seen from the back windows. Mrs. Meyrick +had borne much stint of other matters that she might be able to keep some +engravings specially cherished by her husband; and the narrow spaces of wall +held a world history in scenes and heads which the children had early learned +by heart. The chairs and tables were also old friends preferred to new. But in +these two little parlors with no furniture that a broker would have cared to +cheapen except the prints and piano, there was space and apparatus for a +wide-glancing, nicely-select life, opened to the highest things in music, +painting and poetry. I am not sure that in the times of greatest scarcity, +before Kate could get paid-work, these ladies had always had a servant to light +their fires and sweep their rooms; yet they were fastidious in some points, and +could not believe that the manners of ladies in the fashionable world were so +full of coarse selfishness, petty quarreling, and slang as they are represented +to be in what are called literary photographs. The Meyricks had their little +oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother’s blood as well as the +father’s, their minds being like mediæval houses with unexpected recesses +and openings from this into that, flights of steps and sudden outlooks. +</p> + +<p> +But mother and daughters were all united by a triple bond—family love; +admiration for the finest work, the best action; and habitual industry. +Hans’ desire to spend some of his money in making their lives more +luxurious had been resisted by all of them, and both they and he had been thus +saved from regrets at the threatened triumphs of his yearning for art over the +attractions of secured income—a triumph that would by-and-by oblige him +to give up his fellowship. They could all afford to laugh at his +Gavarni-caricatures and to hold him blameless in following a natural bent which +their unselfishness and independence had left without obstacle. It was enough +for them to go on in their old way, only having a grand treat of opera-going +(to the gallery) when Hans came home on a visit. +</p> + +<p> +Seeing the group they made this evening, one could hardly wish them to change +their way of life. They were all alike small, and so in due proportion to their +miniature rooms. Mrs. Meyrick was reading aloud from a French book; she was a +lively little woman, half French, half Scotch, with a pretty articulateness of +speech that seemed to make daylight in her hearer’s understanding. Though +she was not yet fifty, her rippling hair, covered by a quakerish net cap, was +chiefly gray, but her eyebrows were brown as the bright eyes below them; her +black dress, almost like a priest’s cassock with its rows of buttons, +suited a neat figure hardly five feet high. The daughters were to match the +mother, except that Mab had Hans’ light hair and complexion, with a +bossy, irregular brow, and other quaintnesses that reminded one of him. +Everything about them was compact, from the firm coils of their hair, fastened +back <i>à la Chinoise</i>, to their gray skirts in Puritan nonconformity with +the fashion, which at that time would have demanded that four feminine +circumferences should fill all the free space in the front parlor. All four, if +they had been wax-work, might have been packed easily in a fashionable +lady’s traveling trunk. Their faces seemed full of speech, as if their +minds had been shelled, after the manner of horse-chestnuts, and become +brightly visible. The only large thing of its kind in the room was Hafiz, the +Persian cat, comfortably poised on the brown leather back of a chair, and +opening his large eyes now and then to see that the lower animals were not in +any mischief. +</p> + +<p> +The book Mrs. Meyrick had before her was Erckmann-Chatrian’s <i>Historie +d’un Conscrit</i>. She had just finished reading it aloud, and Mab, who +had let her work fall on the ground while she stretched her head forward and +fixed her eyes on the reader, exclaimed, +</p> + +<p> +“I think that is the finest story in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, Mab!” said Amy, “it is the last you have heard. +Everything that pleases you is the best in its turn.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is hardly to be called a story,” said Kate. “It is a bit +of history brought near us with a strong telescope. We can see the +soldiers’ faces: no, it is more than that—we can hear +everything—we can almost hear their hearts beat.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care what you call it,” said Mab, flirting away her +thimble. “Call it a chapter in Revelations. It makes me want to do +something good, something grand. It makes me so sorry for everybody. It makes +me like Schiller—I want to take the world in my arms and kiss it. I must +kiss you instead, little mother!” She threw her arms round her +mother’s neck. +</p> + +<p> +“Whenever you are in that mood, Mab, down goes your work,” said +Amy. “It would be doing something good to finish your cushion without +soiling it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—oh—oh!” groaned Mab, as she stooped to pick up her +work and thimble. “I wish I had three wounded conscripts to take care +of.” +</p> + +<p> +“You would spill their beef tea while you were talking,” said Amy. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor Mab! don’t be hard on her,” said the mother. +“Give me the embroidery now, child. You go on with your enthusiasm, and I +will go on with the pink and white poppy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, ma, I think you are more caustic than Amy,” said Kate, while +she drew her head back to look at her drawing. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—oh—oh!” cried Mab again, rising and stretching her +arms. “I wish something wonderful would happen. I feel like the deluge. +The waters of the great deep are broken up, and the windows of heaven are +opened. I must sit down and play the scales.” +</p> + +<p> +Mab was opening the piano while the others were laughing at this climax, when a +cab stopped before the house, and there forthwith came a quick rap of the +knocker. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me!” said Mrs. Meyrick, starting up, “it is after ten, +and Phœbe is gone to bed.” She hastened out, leaving the parlor door +open. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Deronda!” The girls could hear this exclamation from their +mamma. Mab clasped her hands, saying in a loud whisper, “There now! +something <i>is</i> going to happen.” Kate and Amy gave up their work in +amazement. But Deronda’s tone in reply was so low that they could not +hear his words, and Mrs. Meyrick immediately closed the parlor door. +</p> + +<p> +“I know I am trusting to your goodness in a most extraordinary +way,” Deronda went on, after giving his brief narrative; “but you +can imagine how helpless I feel with a young creature like this on my hands. I +could not go with her among strangers, and in her nervous state I should dread +taking her into a house full of servants. I have trusted to your mercy. I hope +you will not think my act unwarrantable.” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary. You have honored me by trusting me. I see your +difficulty. Pray bring her in. I will go and prepare the girls.” +</p> + +<p> +While Deronda went back to the cab, Mrs. Meyrick turned into the parlor again +and said: “Here is somebody to take care of instead of your wounded +conscripts, Mab: a poor girl who was going to drown herself in despair. Mr. +Deronda found her only just in time to save her. He brought her along in his +boat, and did not know what else it would be safe to do with her, so he has +trusted us and brought her here. It seems she is a Jewess, but quite refined, +he says—knowing Italian and music.” +</p> + +<p> +The three girls, wondering and expectant, came forward and stood near each +other in mute confidence that they were all feeling alike under this appeal to +their compassion. Mab looked rather awe-stricken, as if this answer to her wish +were something preternatural. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Deronda going to the door of the cab where the pale face was now +gazing out with roused observation, said, “I have brought you to some of +the kindest people in the world: there are daughters like you. It is a happy +home. Will you let me take you to them?” +</p> + +<p> +She stepped out obediently, putting her hand in his and forgetting her hat; and +when Deronda led her into the full light of the parlor where the four little +women stood awaiting her, she made a picture that would have stirred much +duller sensibilities than theirs. At first she was a little dazed by the sudden +light, and before she had concentrated her glance he had put her hand into the +mother’s. He was inwardly rejoicing that the Meyricks were so small: the +dark-curled head was the highest among them. The poor wanderer could not be +afraid of these gentle faces so near hers: and now she was looking at each of +them in turn while the mother said, “You must be weary, poor +child.” +</p> + +<p> +“We will take care of you—we will comfort you—we will love +you,” cried Mab, no longer able to restrain herself, and taking the small +right hand caressingly between both her own. This gentle welcoming warmth was +penetrating the bewildered one: she hung back just enough to see better the +four faces in front of her, whose good will was being reflected in hers, not in +any smile, but in that undefinable change which tells us that anxiety is +passing in contentment. For an instant she looked up at Deronda, as if she were +referring all this mercy to him, and then again turning to Mrs. Meyrick, said +with more collectedness in her sweet tones than he had heard before, +</p> + +<p> +“I am a stranger. I am a Jewess. You might have thought I was +wicked.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, we are sure you are good,” burst out Mab. +</p> + +<p> +“We think no evil of you, poor child. You shall be safe with us,” +said Mrs. Meyrick. “Come now and sit down. You must have some food, and +then you must go to rest.” +</p> + +<p> +The stranger looked up again at Deronda, who said, +</p> + +<p> +“You will have no more fears with these friends? You will rest +to-night?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I should not fear. I should rest. I think these are the ministering +angels.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick wanted to lead her to seat, but again hanging back gently, the +poor weary thing spoke as if with a scruple at being received without a further +account of herself. +</p> + +<p> +“My name is Mirah Lapidoth. I am come a long way, all the way from Prague +by myself. I made my escape. I ran away from dreadful things. I came to find my +mother and brother in London. I had been taken from my mother when I was +little, but I thought I could find her again. I had trouble—the houses +were all gone—I could not find her. It has been a long while, and I had +not much money. That is why I am in distress.” +</p> + +<p> +“Our mother will be good to you,” cried Mab. “See what a nice +little mother she is!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do sit down now,” said Kate, moving a chair forward, while Amy ran +to get some tea. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah resisted no longer, but seated herself with perfect grace, crossing her +little feet, laying her hands one over the other on her lap, and looking at her +friends with placid reverence; whereupon Hafiz, who had been watching the scene +restlessly came forward with tail erect and rubbed himself against her ankles. +Deronda felt it time to go. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you allow me to come again and inquire—perhaps at five +to-morrow?” he said to Mrs. Meyrick. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, pray; we shall have had time to make acquaintance then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye,” said Deronda, looking down at Mirah, and putting out +his hand. She rose as she took it, and the moment brought back to them both +strongly the other moment when she had first taken that outstretched hand. She +lifted her eyes to his and said with reverential fervor, “The God of our +fathers bless you and deliver you from all evil as you have delivered me. I did +not believe there was any man so good. None before have thought me worthy of +the best. You found me poor and miserable, yet you have given me the +best.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda could not speak, but with silent adieux to the Meyricks, hurried away. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0022"></a> +BOOK III.—MAIDENS CHOOSING.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0019"></a> +CHAPTER XIX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, +‘’Tis all barren’: and so it is: and so is all the world to +him who will not cultivate the fruits it +offers.”—S<small>TERNE</small>: <i>Sentimental Journey</i>. +</p> + +<p> +To say that Deronda was romantic would be to misrepresent him; but under his +calm and somewhat self-repressed exterior there was a fervor which made him +easily find poetry and romance among the events of everyday life. And perhaps +poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world except for those +phlegmatic natures who I suspect would in any age have regarded them as a dull +form of erroneous thinking. They exist very easily in the same room with the +microscope and even in railway carriages: what banishes them in the vacuum in +gentlemen and lady passengers. How should all the apparatus of heaven and +earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who +nourished us, make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and +tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, +and back again from the distant to the near? +</p> + +<p> +To Deronda this event of finding Mirah was as heart-stirring as anything that +befell Orestes or Rinaldo. He sat up half the night, living again through the +moments since he had first discerned Mirah on the river-brink, with the fresh +and fresh vividness which belongs to emotive memory. When he took up a book to +try and dull this urgency of inward vision, the printed words were no more than +a network through which he saw and heard everything as clearly as +before—saw not only the actual events of two hours, but possibilities of +what had been and what might be which those events were enough to feed with the +warm blood of passionate hope and fear. Something in his own experience caused +Mirah’s search after her mother to lay hold with peculiar force on his +imagination. The first prompting of sympathy was to aid her in her search: if +given persons were extant in London there were ways of finding them, as subtle +as scientific experiment, the right machinery being set at work. But here the +mixed feelings which belonged to Deronda’s kindred experience naturally +transfused themselves into his anxiety on behalf of Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +The desire to know his own mother, or to know about her, was constantly haunted +with dread; and in imagining what might befall Mirah it quickly occurred to him +that finding the mother and brother from whom she had been parted when she was +a little one might turn out to be a calamity. When she was in the boat she said +that her mother and brother were good; but the goodness might have been chiefly +in her own ignorant innocence and yearning memory, and the ten or twelve years +since the parting had been time enough for much worsening. Spite of his strong +tendency to side with the objects of prejudice, and in general with those who +got the worst of it, his interest had never been practically drawn toward +existing Jews, and the facts he knew about them, whether they walked +conspicuous in fine apparel or lurked in by-streets, were chiefly of a sort +most repugnant to him. Of learned and accomplished Jews he took it for granted +that they had dropped their religion, and wished to be merged in the people of +their native lands. Scorn flung at a Jew as such would have roused all his +sympathy in griefs of inheritance; but the indiscriminate scorn of a race will +often strike a specimen who has well earned it on his own account, and might +fairly be gibbeted as a rascally son of Adam. It appears that the Caribs, who +know little of theology, regard thieving as a practice peculiarly connected +with Christian tenets, and probably they could allege experimental grounds for +this opinion. Deronda could not escape (who can?) knowing ugly stories of +Jewish characteristics and occupations; and though one of his favorite protests +was against the severance of past and present history, he was like others who +shared his protest, in never having cared to reach any more special conclusions +about actual Jews than that they retained the virtues and vices of a +long-oppressed race. But now that Mirah’s longing roused his mind to a +closer survey of details, very disagreeable images urged themselves of what it +might be to find out this middle-aged Jewess and her son. To be sure, there was +the exquisite refinement and charm of the creature herself to make a +presumption in favor of her immediate kindred, but—he must wait to know +more: perhaps through Mrs. Meyrick he might gather some guiding hints from +Mirah’s own lips. Her voice, her accent, her looks—all the sweet +purity that clothed her as with a consecrating garment made him shrink the more +from giving her, either ideally or practically, an association with what was +hateful or contaminating. But these fine words with which we fumigate and +becloud unpleasant facts are not the language in which we think. +Deronda’s thinking went on in rapid images of what might be: he saw +himself guided by some official scout into a dingy street; he entered through a +dim doorway, and saw a hawk-eyed woman, rough-headed, and unwashed, cheapening +a hungry girl’s last bit of finery; or in some quarter only the more +hideous for being smarter, he found himself under the breath of a young Jew +talkative and familiar, willing to show his acquaintance with gentlemen’s +tastes, and not fastidious in any transactions with which they would favor +him—and so on through the brief chapter of his experience in this kind. +Excuse him: his mind was not apt to run spontaneously into insulting ideas, or +to practice a form of wit which identifies Moses with the advertisement sheet; +but he was just now governed by dread, and if Mirah’s parents had been +Christian, the chief difference would have been that his forebodings would have +been fed with wider knowledge. It was the habit of his mind to connect dread +with unknown parentage, and in this case as well as his own there was enough to +make the connection reasonable. +</p> + +<p> +But what was to be done with Mirah? She needed shelter and protection in the +fullest sense, and all his chivalrous sentiment roused itself to insist that +the sooner and the more fully he could engage for her the interest of others +besides himself, the better he should fulfill her claims on him. He had no +right to provide for her entirely, though he might be able to do so; the very +depth of the impression she had produced made him desire that she should +understand herself to be entirely independent of him; and vague visions of the +future which he tried to dispel as fantastic left their influence in an anxiety +stronger than any motive he could give for it, that those who saw his actions +closely should be acquainted from the first with the history of his relation to +Mirah. He had learned to hate secrecy about the grand ties and obligations of +his life—to hate it the more because a strong spell of interwoven +sensibilities hindered him from breaking such secrecy. Deronda had made a vow +to himself that—since the truths which disgrace mortals are not all of +their own making—the truth should never be made a disgrace to another by +his act. He was not without terror lest he should break this vow, and fall into +the apologetic philosophy which explains the world into containing nothing +better than one’s own conduct. +</p> + +<p> +At one moment he resolved to tell the whole of his adventure to Sir Hugo and +Lady Mallinger the next morning at breakfast, but the possibility that +something quite new might reveal itself on his next visit to Mrs. +Meyrick’s checked this impulse, and he finally went to sleep on the +conclusion that he would wait until that visit had been made. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0020"></a> +CHAPTER XX.</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +“It will hardly be denied that even in this frail and corrupted world, we +sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and aspect, as well as in the +whole habit of life, manifest such a signature and stamp of virtue, as to make +our judgment of them a matter of intuition rather than the result of continued +examination.”—A<small>LEXANDER</small> K<small>NOX</small>: quoted +in Southey’s Life of Wesley. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah said that she had slept well that night; and when she came down in +Mab’s black dress, her dark hair curling in fresh fibrils as it gradually +dried from its plenteous bath, she looked like one who was beginning to take +comfort after the long sorrow and watching which had paled her cheek and made +blue semicircles under her eyes. It was Mab who carried her breakfast and +ushered her down—with some pride in the effect produced by a pair of tiny +felt slippers which she had rushed out to buy because there were no shoes in +the house small enough for Mirah, whose borrowed dress ceased about her ankles +and displayed the cheap clothing that, moulding itself on her feet, seemed an +adornment as choice as the sheaths of buds. The farthing buckles were bijoux. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if you please, mamma?” cried Mab, clasping her hands and +stooping toward Mirah’s feet, as she entered the parlor; “look at +the slippers, how beautiful they fit! I declare she is like the Queen +Budoor—‘two delicate feet, the work of the protecting and +all-recompensing Creator, support her; and I wonder how they can sustain what +is above them.’” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah looked down at her own feet in a childlike way and then smiled at Mrs. +Meyrick, who was saying inwardly, “One could hardly imagine this creature +having an evil thought. But wise people would tell me to be cautious.” +She returned Mirah’s smile and said, “I fear the feet have had to +sustain their burden a little too often lately. But to-day she will rest and be +my companion.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she will tell you so many things and I shall not hear them,” +grumbled Mab, who felt herself in the first volume of a delightful romance and +obliged to miss some chapters because she had to go to pupils. +</p> + +<p> +Kate was already gone to make sketches along the river, and Amy was away on +business errands. It was what the mother wished, to be alone with this +stranger, whose story must be a sorrowful one, yet was needful to be told. +</p> + +<p> +The small front parlor was as good as a temple that morning. The sunlight was +on the river and soft air came in through the open window; the walls showed a +glorious silent cloud of witnesses—the Virgin soaring amid her cherubic +escort; grand Melancholia with her solemn universe; the Prophets and Sibyls; +the School of Athens; the Last Supper; mystic groups where far-off ages made +one moment; grave Holbein and Rembrandt heads; the Tragic Muse; last-century +children at their musings or their play; Italian poets—all were there +through the medium of a little black and white. The neat mother who had +weathered her troubles, and come out of them with a face still cheerful, was +sorting colored wools for her embroidery. Hafiz purred on the window-ledge, the +clock on the mantle-piece ticked without hurry, and the occasional sound of +wheels seemed to lie outside the more massive central quiet. Mrs. Meyrick +thought that this quiet might be the best invitation to speech on the part of +her companion, and chose not to disturb it by remark. Mirah sat opposite in her +former attitude, her hands clasped on her lap, her ankles crossed, her eyes at +first traveling slowly over the objects around her, but finally resting with a +sort of placid reverence on Mrs. Meyrick. At length she began to speak softly. +</p> + +<p> +“I remember my mother’s face better than anything; yet I was not +seven when I was taken away, and I am nineteen now.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can understand that,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “There are some +earliest things that last the longest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, it was the earliest. I think my life began with waking up and +loving my mother’s face: it was so near to me, and her arms were round +me, and she sang to me. One hymn she sang so often, so often: and then she +taught me to sing it with her: it was the first I ever sang. They were always +Hebrew hymns she sang; and because I never knew the meaning of the words they +seemed full of nothing but our love and happiness. When I lay in my little bed +and it was all white above me, she used to bend over me, between me and the +white, and sing in a sweet, low voice. I can dream myself back into that time +when I am awake, and it often comes back to me in my sleep—my hand is +very little, I put it up to her face and she kisses it. Sometimes in my dreams +I begin to tremble and think that we are both dead; but then I wake up and my +hand lies like this, and for a moment I hardly know myself. But if I could see +my mother again I should know her.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must expect some change after twelve years,” said Mrs. +Meyrick, gently. “See my grey hair: ten years ago it was bright brown. +The days and months pace over us like restless little birds, and leave the +marks of their feet backward and forward; especially when they are like birds +with heavy hearts—then they tread heavily.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I am sure her heart has been heavy for want of me. But to feel her +joy if we could meet again, and I could make her know I love her and give her +deep comfort after all her mourning! If that could be, I should mind nothing; I +should be glad that I have lived through my trouble. I did despair. The world +seemed miserable and wicked; none helped me so that I could bear their looks +and words; I felt that my mother was dead, and death was the only way to her. +But then in the last moment—yesterday, when I longed for the water to +close over me—and I thought that death was the best image of +mercy—then goodness came to me living, and I felt trust in the living. +And—it is strange—but I began to hope that she was living too. And +now I with you—here—this morning, peace and hope have come into me +like a flood. I want nothing; I can wait; because I hope and believe and am +grateful—oh, so grateful! You have not thought evil of me—you have +not despised me.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah spoke with low-toned fervor, and sat as still as a picture all the while. +</p> + +<p> +“Many others would have felt as we do, my dear,” said Mrs. Meyrick, +feeling a mist come over her eyes as she looked at her work. +</p> + +<p> +“But I did not meet them—they did not come to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“How was it that you were taken from your mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I am a long while coming to that. It is dreadful to speak of, yet I +must tell you—I must tell you everything. My father—it was he that +took me away. I thought we were only going on a little journey; and I was +pleased. There was a box with all my little things in. But we went on board a +ship, and got farther and farther away from the land. Then I was ill; and I +thought it would never end—it was the first misery, and it seemed +endless. But at last we landed. I knew nothing then, and believed what my +father said. He comforted me, and told me I should go back to my mother. But it +was America we had reached, and it was long years before we came back to +Europe. At first I often asked my father when we were going back; and I tried +to learn writing fast, because I wanted to write to my mother; but one day when +he found me trying to write a letter, he took me on his knee and told me that +my mother and brother were dead; that was why we did not go back. I remember my +brother a little; he carried me once; but he was not always at home. I believed +my father when he said that they were dead. I saw them under the earth when he +said they were there, with their eyes forever closed. I never thought of its +not being true; and I used to cry every night in my bed for a long while. Then +when she came so often to me, in my sleep, I thought she must be living about +me though I could not always see her, and that comforted me. I was never afraid +in the dark, because of that; and very often in the day I used to shut my eyes +and bury my face and try to see her and to hear her singing. I came to do that +at last without shutting my eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah paused with a sweet content in her face, as if she were having her happy +vision, while she looked out toward the river. +</p> + +<p> +“Still your father was not unkind to you, I hope,” said Mrs. +Meyrick, after a minute, anxious to recall her. +</p> + +<p> +“No; he petted me, and took pains to teach me. He was an actor; and I +found out, after, that the ‘Coburg’ I used to hear of his going to +at home was a theatre. But he had more to do with the theatre than acting. He +had not always been an actor; he had been a teacher, and knew many languages. +His acting was not very good; I think, but he managed the stage, and wrote and +translated plays. An Italian lady, a singer, lived with us a long time. They +both taught me, and I had a master besides, who made me learn by heart and +recite. I worked quite hard, though I was so little; and I was not nine when I +first went on the stage. I could easily learn things, and I was not afraid. But +then and ever since I hated our way of life. My father had money, and we had +finery about us in a disorderly way; always there were men and women coming and +going; there was loud laughing and disputing, strutting, snapping of fingers, +jeering, faces I did not like to look at—though many petted and caressed +me. But then I remembered my mother. Even at first when I understood nothing, I +shrank away from all those things outside me into companionship with thoughts +that were not like them; and I gathered thoughts very fast, because I read many +things—plays and poetry, Shakespeare and Schiller, and learned evil and +good. My father began to believe that I might be a great singer: my voice was +considered wonderful for a child; and he had the best teaching for me. But it +was painful that he boasted of me, and set me to sing for show at any minute, +as if I had been a musical box. Once when I was nine years old, I played the +part of a little girl who had been forsaken and did not know it, and sat +singing to herself while she played with flowers. I did it without any trouble; +but the clapping and all the sounds of the theatre were hateful to me; and I +never liked the praise I had, because it all seemed very hard and unloving: I +missed the love and trust I had been born into. I made a life in my own +thoughts quite different from everything about me: I chose what seemed to me +beautiful out of the plays and everything, and made my world out of it; and it +was like a sharp knife always grazing me that we had two sorts of life which +jarred so with each other—women looking good and gentle on the stage, and +saying good things as if they felt them, and directly after I saw them with +coarse, ugly manners. My father sometimes noticed my shrinking ways; and +Signora said one day, when I had been rehearsing, ‘She will never be an +artist: she has no notion of being anybody but herself. That does very well +now, but by-and-by you will see—she will have no more face and action +than a singing-bird.’ My father was angry, and they quarreled. I sat +alone and cried, because what she had said was like a long unhappy future +unrolled before me. I did not want to be an artist; but this was what my father +expected of me. After a while Signora left us, and a governess used to come and +give me lessons in different things, because my father began to be afraid of my +singing too much; but I still acted from time to time. Rebellious feelings grew +stronger in me, and I wished to get away from this life; but I could not tell +where to go, and I dreaded the world. Besides, I felt it would be wrong to +leave my father: I dreaded doing wrong, for I thought I might get wicked and +hateful to myself, in the same way that many others seemed hateful to me. For +so long, so long I had never felt my outside world happy; and if I got wicked I +should lose my world of happy thoughts where my mother lived with me. That was +my childish notion all through those years. Oh how long they were!” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah fell to musing again. +</p> + +<p> +“Had you no teaching about what was your duty?” said Mrs. Meyrick. +She did not like to say “religion”—finding herself on +inspection rather dim as to what the Hebrew religion might have turned into at +this date. +</p> + +<p> +“No—only that I ought to do what my father wished. He did not +follow our religion at New York, and I think he wanted me not to know much +about it. But because my mother used to take me to the synagogue, and I +remembered sitting on her knee and looking through the railing and hearing the +chanting and singing, I longed to go. One day when I was quite small I slipped +out and tried to find the synagogue, but I lost myself a long while till a +peddler questioned me and took me home. My father, missing me, had been much in +fear, and was very angry. I too had been so frightened at losing myself that it +was long before I thought of venturing out again. But after Signora left us we +went to rooms where our landlady was a Jewess and observed her religion. I +asked her to take me with her to the synagogue; and I read in her prayer-books +and Bible, and when I had money enough I asked her to buy me books of my own, +for these books seemed a closer companionship with my mother: I knew that she +must have looked at the very words and said them. In that way I have come to +know a little of our religion, and the history of our people, besides piecing +together what I read in plays and other books about Jews and Jewesses; because +I was sure my mother obeyed her religion. I had left off asking my father about +her. It is very dreadful to say it, but I began to disbelieve him. I had found +that he did not always tell the truth, and made promises without meaning to +keep them; and that raised my suspicion that my mother and brother were still +alive though he had told me they were dead. For in going over the past again as +I got older and knew more, I felt sure that my mother had been deceived, and +had expected to see us back again after a very little while; and my father +taking me on his knee and telling me that my mother and brother were both dead +seemed to me now but a bit of acting, to set my mind at rest. The cruelty of +that falsehood sank into me, and I hated all untruth because of it. I wrote to +my mother secretly: I knew the street, Colman Street, where we lived, and that +it was not Blackfriars Bridge and the Coburg, and that our name was Cohen then, +though my father called us Lapidoth, because, he said, it was a name of his +forefathers in Poland. I sent my letter secretly; but no answer came, and I +thought there was no hope for me. Our life in America did not last much longer. +My father suddenly told me we were to pack up and go to Hamburg, and I was +rather glad. I hoped we might get among a different sort of people, and I knew +German quite well—some German plays almost all by heart. My father spoke +it better than he spoke English. I was thirteen then, and I seemed to myself +quite old—I knew so much, and yet so little. I think other children +cannot feel as I did. I had often wished that I had been drowned when I was +going away from my mother. But I set myself to obey and suffer: what else could +I do? One day when we were on our voyage, a new thought came into my mind. I +was not very ill that time, and I kept on deck a good deal. My father acted and +sang and joked to amuse people on board, and I used often to hear remarks about +him. One day, when I was looking at the sea and nobody took notice of me, I +overheard a gentleman say, ‘Oh, he is one of those clever Jews—a +rascal, I shouldn’t wonder. There’s no race like them for cunning +in the men and beauty in the women. I wonder what market he means that daughter +for.’ When I heard this it darted into my mind that the unhappiness in my +life came from my being a Jewess, and that always to the end the world would +think slightly of me and that I must bear it, for I should be judged by that +name; and it comforted me to believe that my suffering was part of the +affliction of my people, my part in the long song of mourning that has been +going on through ages and ages. For if many of our race were wicked and made +merry in their wickedness—what was that but part of the affliction borne +by the just among them, who were despised for the sins of their +brethren?—But you have not rejected me.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah had changed her tone in this last sentence, having suddenly reflected +that at this moment she had reason not for complaint but for gratitude. +</p> + +<p> +“And we will try to save you from being judged unjustly by others, my +poor child,” said Mrs. Meyrick, who had now given up all attempt at going +on with her work, and sat listening with folded hands and a face hardly less +eager than Mab’s would have been. “Go on, go on: tell me +all.” +</p> + +<p> +“After that we lived in different towns—Hamburg and Vienna, the +longest. I began to study singing again: and my father always got money about +the theatres. I think he brought a good deal of money from America, I never +knew why we left. For some time he was in great spirits about my singing, and +he made me rehearse parts and act continually. He looked forward to my coming +out in the opera. But by-and-by it seemed that my voice would never be strong +enough—it did not fulfill its promise. My master at Vienna said, +‘Don’t strain it further: it will never do for the public:—it +is gold, but a thread of gold dust.’ My father was bitterly disappointed: +we were not so well off at that time. I think I have not quite told you what I +felt about my father. I knew he was fond of me and meant to indulge me, and +that made me afraid of hurting him; but he always mistook what would please me +and give me happiness. It was his nature to take everything lightly; and I soon +left off asking him any questions about things that I cared for much, because +he always turned them off with a joke. He would even ridicule our own people; +and once when he had been imitating their movements and their tones in praying, +only to make others laugh, I could not restrain myself—for I always had +an anger in my heart about my mother—and when we were alone, I said, +‘Father, you ought not to mimic our own people before Christians who mock +them: would it not be bad if I mimicked you, that they might mock you?’ +But he only shrugged his shoulders and laughed and pinched my chin, and said, +‘You couldn’t do it, my dear.’ It was this way of turning off +everything, that made a great wall between me and my father, and whatever I +felt most I took the most care to hide from him. For there were some +things—when they were laughed at I could not bear it: the world seemed +like a hell to me. Is this world and all the life upon it only like a farce or +a vaudeville, where you find no great meanings? Why then are there tragedies +and grand operas, where men do difficult things and choose to suffer? I think +it is silly to speak of all things as a joke. And I saw that his wishing me to +sing the greatest music, and parts in grand operas, was only wishing for what +would fetch the greatest price. That hemmed in my gratitude for his +affectionateness, and the tenderest feeling I had toward him was pity. Yes, I +did sometimes pity him. He had aged and changed. Now he was no longer so +lively. I thought he seemed worse—less good to others than to me. Every +now and then in the latter years his gaiety went away suddenly, and he would +sit at home silent and gloomy; or he would come in and fling himself down and +sob, just as I have done myself when I have been in trouble. If I put my hand +on his knee and say, ‘What is the matter, father?’ he would make no +answer, but would draw my arm round his neck and put his arm round me and go on +crying. There never came any confidence between us; but oh, I was sorry for +him. At those moments I knew he must feel his life bitter, and I pressed my +cheek against his head and prayed. Those moments were what most bound me to +him; and I used to think how much my mother once loved him, else she would not +have married him. +</p> + +<p> +“But soon there came the dreadful time. We had been at Pesth and we came +back to Vienna. In spite of what my master Leo had said, my father got me an +engagement, not at the opera, but to take singing parts at a suburb theatre in +Vienna. He had nothing to do with the theatre then; I did not understand what +he did, but I think he was continually at a gambling house, though he was +careful always about taking me to the theatre. I was very miserable. The plays +I acted in were detestable to me. Men came about us and wanted to talk to me: +women and men seemed to look at me with a sneering smile; it was no better than +a fiery furnace. Perhaps I make it worse than it was—you don’t know +that life: but the glare and the faces, and my having to go on and act and sing +what I hated, and then see people who came to stare at me behind the +scenes—it was all so much worse than when I was a little girl. I went +through with it; I did it; I had set my mind to obey my father and work, for I +saw nothing better that I could do. But I felt that my voice was getting +weaker, and I knew that my acting was not good except when it was not really +acting, but the part was one that I could be myself in, and some feeling within +me carried me along. That was seldom. +</p> + +<p> +“Then, in the midst of all this, the news came to me one morning that my +father had been taken to prison, and he had sent for me. He did not tell me the +reason why he was there, but he ordered me to go to an address he gave me, to +see a Count who would be able to get him released. The address was to some +public rooms where I was to ask for the Count, and beg him to come to my +father. I found him, and recognized him as a gentleman whom I had seen the +other night for the first time behind the scenes. That agitated me, for I +remembered his way of looking at me and kissing my hand—I thought it was +in mockery. But I delivered my errand, and he promised to go immediately to my +father, who came home again that very evening, bringing the Count with him. I +now began to feel a horrible dread of this man, for he worried me with his +attentions, his eyes were always on me: I felt sure that whatever else there +might be in his mind toward me, below it all there was scorn for the Jewess and +the actress. And when he came to me the next day in the theatre and would put +my shawl around me, a terror took hold of me; I saw that my father wanted me to +look pleased. The Count was neither very young nor very old; his hair and eyes +were pale; he was tall and walked heavily, and his face was heavy and grave +except when he looked at me. He smiled at me, and his smile went through me +with horror: I could not tell why he was so much worse to me than other men. +Some feelings are like our hearing: they come as sounds do, before we know +their reason. My father talked to me about him when we were alone, and praised +him—said what a good friend he had been. I said nothing, because I +supposed he had got my father out of prison. When the Count came again, my +father left the room. He asked me if I liked being on the stage. I said No, I +only acted in obedience to my father. He always spoke French, and called me +<i>petite ange</i> and such things, which I felt insulting. I knew he meant to +make love to me, and I had it firmly in my mind that a nobleman and one who was +not a Jew could have no love for me that was not half contempt. But then he +told me that I need not act any longer; he wished me to visit him at his +beautiful place, where I might be queen of everything. It was difficult to me +to speak, I felt so shaken with anger: I could only say, ‘I would rather +stay on the stage forever,’ and I left him there. Hurrying out of the +room I saw my father sauntering in the passage. My heart was crushed. I went +past him and locked myself up. It had sunk into me that my father was in a +conspiracy with that man against me. But the next day he persuaded me to come +out: he said that I had mistaken everything, and he would explain: if I did not +come out and act and fulfill my engagement, we should be ruined and he must +starve. So I went on acting, and for a week or more the Count never came near +me. My father changed our lodgings, and kept at home except when he went to the +theatre with me. He began one day to speak discouragingly of my acting, and +say, I could never go on singing in public—I should lose my voice—I +ought to think of my future, and not put my nonsensical feelings between me and +my fortune. He said, ‘What will you do? You will be brought down to sing +and beg at people’s doors. You have had a splendid offer and ought to +accept it.’ I could not speak: a horror took possession of me when I +thought of my mother and of him. I felt for the first time that I should not do +wrong to leave him. But the next day he told me that he had put an end to my +engagement at the theatre, and that we were to go to Prague. I was getting +suspicious of everything, and my will was hardening to act against him. It took +us two days to pack and get ready; and I had it in my mind that I might be +obliged to run away from my father, and then I would come to London and try if +it were possible to find my mother. I had a little money, and I sold some +things to get more. I packed a few clothes in a little bag that I could carry +with me, and I kept my mind on the watch. My father’s silence—his +letting drop that subject of the Count’s offer—made me feel sure +that there was a plan against me. I felt as if it had been a plan to take me to +a madhouse. I once saw a picture of a madhouse, that I could never forget; it +seemed to me very much like some of the life I had seen—the people +strutting, quarreling, leering—the faces with cunning and malice in them. +It was my will to keep myself from wickedness; and I prayed for help. I had +seen what despised women were: and my heart turned against my father, for I saw +always behind him that man who made me shudder. You will think I had not enough +reason for my suspicions, and perhaps I had not, outside my own feeling; but it +seemed to me that my mind had been lit up, and all that might be stood out +clear and sharp. If I slept, it was only to see the same sort of things, and I +could hardly sleep at all. Through our journey I was everywhere on the watch. I +don’t know why, but it came before me like a real event, that my father +would suddenly leave me and I should find myself with the Count where I could +not get away from him. I thought God was warning me: my mother’s voice +was in my soul. It was dark when we reached Prague, and though the strange +bunches of lamps were lit it was difficult to distinguish faces as we drove +along the street. My father chose to sit outside—he was always smoking +now—and I watched everything in spite of the darkness. I do believe I +could see better then than I ever did before: the strange clearness within +seemed to have got outside me. It was not my habit to notice faces and figures +much in the street; but this night I saw every one; and when we passed before a +great hotel I caught sight only of a back that was passing in—the light +of the great bunch of lamps a good way off fell on it. I knew it—before +the face was turned, as it fell into shadow, I knew who it was. Help came to +me. I feel sure help came. I did not sleep that night. I put on my plainest +things—the cloak and hat I have worn ever since; and I sat watching for +the light and the sound of the doors being unbarred. Some one rose +early—at four o’clock, to go to the railway. That gave me courage. +I slipped out, with my little bag under my cloak, and none noticed me. I had +been a long while attending to the railway guide that I might learn the way to +England; and before the sun had risen I was in the train for Dresden. Then I +cried for joy. I did not know whether my money would last out, but I trusted. I +could sell the things in my bag, and the little rings in my ears, and I could +live on bread only. My only terror was lest my father should follow me. But I +never paused. I came on, and on, and on, only eating bread now and then. When I +got to Brussels I saw that I should not have enough money, and I sold all that +I could sell; but here a strange thing happened. Putting my hand into the +pocket of my cloak, I found a half-napoleon. Wondering and wondering how it +came there, I remembered that on the way from Cologne there was a young workman +sitting against me. I was frightened at every one, and did not like to be +spoken to. At first he tried to talk, but when he saw that I did not like it, +he left off. It was a long journey; I ate nothing but a bit of bread, and he +once offered me some of the food he brought in, but I refused it. I do believe +it was he who put that bit of gold in my pocket. Without it I could hardly have +got to Dover, and I did walk a good deal of the way from Dover to London. I +knew I should look like a miserable beggar-girl. I wanted not to look very +miserable, because if I found my mother it would grieve her to see me so. But +oh, how vain my hope was that she would be there to see me come! As soon as I +set foot in London, I began to ask for Lambeth and Blackfriars Bridge, but they +were a long way off, and I went wrong. At last I got to Blackfriars Bridge and +asked for Colman Street. People shook their heads. None knew it. I saw it in my +mind—our doorsteps, and the white tiles hung in the windows, and the +large brick building opposite with wide doors. But there was nothing like it. +At last when I asked a tradesman where the Coburg Theatre and Colman Street +were, he said, ‘Oh, my little woman, that’s all done away with. The +old streets have been pulled down; everything is new.’ I turned away and +felt as if death had laid a hand on me. He said: ‘Stop, stop! young +woman; what is it you’re wanting with Colman Street, eh?’ meaning +well, perhaps. But his tone was what I could not bear; and how could I tell him +what I wanted? I felt blinded and bewildered with a sudden shock. I suddenly +felt that I was very weak and weary, and yet where could I go? for I looked so +poor and dusty, and had nothing with me—I looked like a street-beggar. +And I was afraid of all places where I could enter. I lost my trust. I thought +I was forsaken. It seemed that I had been in a fever of +hope—delirious—all the way from Prague: I thought that I was +helped, and I did nothing but strain my mind forward and think of finding my +mother; and now—there I stood in a strange world. All who saw me would +think ill of me, and I must herd with beggars. I stood on the bridge and looked +along the river. People were going on to a steamboat. Many of them seemed poor, +and I felt as if it would be a refuge to get away from the streets; perhaps the +boat would take me where I could soon get into a solitude. I had still some +pence left, and I bought a loaf when I went on the boat. I wanted to have a +little time and strength to think of life and death. How could I live? And now +again it seemed that if ever I were to find my mother again, death was the way +to her. I ate, that I might have strength to think. The boat set me down at a +place along the river—I don’t know where—and it was late in +the evening. I found some large trees apart from the road, and I sat down under +them that I might rest through the night. Sleep must have soon come to me, and +when I awoke it was morning. The birds were singing, and the dew was white +about me, I felt chill and oh, so lonely! I got up and walked and followed the +river a long way and then turned back again. There was no reason why I should +go anywhere. The world about me seemed like a vision that was hurrying by while +I stood still with my pain. My thoughts were stronger than I was; they rushed +in and forced me to see all my life from the beginning; ever since I was +carried away from my mother I had felt myself a lost child taken up and used by +strangers, who did not care what my life was to me, but only what I could do +for them. It seemed all a weary wandering and heart-loneliness—as if I +had been forced to go to merrymakings without the expectation of joy. And now +it was worse. I was lost again, and I dreaded lest any stranger should notice +me and speak to me. I had a terror of the world. None knew me; all would +mistake me. I had seen so many in my life who made themselves glad with +scorning, and laughed at another’s shame. What could I do? This life +seemed to be closing in upon me with a wall of fire—everywhere there was +scorching that made me shrink. The high sunlight made me shrink. And I began to +think that my despair was the voice of God telling me to die. But it would take +me long to die of hunger. Then I thought of my people, how they had been driven +from land to land and been afflicted, and multitudes had died of misery in +their wandering—was I the first? And in the wars and troubles when +Christians were cruelest, our fathers had sometimes slain their children and +afterward themselves: it was to save them from being false apostates. That +seemed to make it right for me to put an end to my life; for calamity had +closed me in too, and I saw no pathway but to evil. But my mind got into war +with itself, for there were contrary things in it. I knew that some had held it +wrong to hasten their own death, though they were in the midst of flames; and +while I had some strength left it was a longing to bear if I ought to +bear—else where was the good of all my life? It had not been happy since +the first years: when the light came every morning I used to think, ‘I +will bear it.’ But always before I had some hope; now it was gone. With +these thoughts I wandered and wandered, inwardly crying to the Most High, from +whom I should not flee in death more than in life—though I had no strong +faith that He cared for me. The strength seemed departing from my soul; deep +below all my cries was the feeling that I was alone and forsaken. The more I +thought the wearier I got, till it seemed I was not thinking at all, but only +the sky and the river and the Eternal God were in my soul. And what was it +whether I died or lived? If I lay down to die in the river, was it more than +lying down to sleep?—for there too I committed my soul—I gave +myself up. I could not bear memories any more; I could only feel what was +present in me—it was all one longing to cease from my weary life, which +seemed only a pain outside the great peace that I might enter into. That was +how it was. When the evening came and the sun was gone, it seemed as if that +was all I had to wait for. And a new strength came into me to will what I would +do. You know what I did. I was going to die. You know what happened—did +he not tell you? Faith came to me again; I was not forsaken. He told you how he +found me?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick gave no audible answer, but pressed her lips against Mirah’s +forehead. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“She’s just a pearl; the mud has only washed her,” was the +fervid little woman’s closing commentary when, <i>tête-à-tête</i> with +Deronda in the back parlor that evening, she had conveyed Mirah’s story +to him with much vividness. +</p> + +<p> +“What is your feeling about a search for this mother?” said +Deronda. “Have you no fears? I have, I confess.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I believe the mother’s good,” said Mrs. Meyrick, with +rapid decisiveness; “or <i>was</i> good. She may be +dead—that’s my fear. A good woman, you may depend: you may know it +by the scoundrel the father is. Where did the child get her goodness from? +Wheaten flour has to be accounted for.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was rather disappointed at this answer; he had wanted a confirmation of +his own judgment, and he began to put in demurrers. The argument about the +mother would not apply to the brother; and Mrs. Meyrick admitted that the +brother might be an ugly likeness of the father. Then, as to advertising, if +the name was Cohen, you might as well advertise for two undescribed terriers; +and here Mrs. Meyrick helped him, for the idea of an advertisement, already +mentioned to Mirah, had roused the poor child’s terror; she was convinced +that her father would see it—he saw everything in the papers. Certainly +there were safer means than advertising; men might be set to work whose +business it was to find missing persons; but Deronda wished Mrs. Meyrick to +feel with him that it would be wiser to wait, before seeking a +dubious—perhaps a deplorable result; especially as he was engaged to go +abroad the next week for a couple of months. If a search were made, he would +like to be at hand, so that Mrs. Meyrick might not be unaided in meeting any +consequences—supposing that she would generously continue to watch over +Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“We should be very jealous of any one who took the task from us,” +said Mrs. Meyrick. “She will stay under my roof; there is Hans’s +old room for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will she be content to wait?” said Deronda, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“No trouble there. It is not her nature to run into planning and +devising: only to submit. See how she submitted to that father! It was a wonder +to herself how she found the will and contrivance to run away from him. About +finding her mother, her only notion now is to trust; since you were sent to +save her and we are good to her, she trusts that her mother will be found in +the same unsought way. And when she is talking I catch her feeling like a +child.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick hoped that the sum Deronda put into her hands as a provision for +Mirah’s wants was more than would be needed; after a little while Mirah +would perhaps like to occupy herself as the other girls did, and make herself +independent. Deronda pleaded that she must need a long rest. “Oh, yes; we +will hurry nothing,” said Mrs. Meyrick. +</p> + +<p> +“Rely upon it, she shall be taken tender care of. If you like to give me +your address abroad, I will write to let you know how we get on. It is not fair +that we should have all the pleasure of her salvation to ourselves. And +besides, I want to make believe that I am doing something for you as well as +for Mirah.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is no make-believe. What should I have done without you last night? +Everything would have gone wrong. I shall tell Hans that the best of having him +for a friend is, knowing his mother.” +</p> + +<p> +After that they joined the girls in the other room, where Mirah was seated +placidly, while the others were telling her what they knew about Mr. +Deronda—his goodness to Hans, and all the virtues that Hans had reported +of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Kate burns a pastille before his portrait every day,” said Mab. +“And I carry his signature in a little black-silk bag round my neck to +keep off the cramp. And Amy says the multiplication-table in his name. We must +all do something extra in honor of him, now he has brought you to us.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose he is too great a person to want anything,” said Mirah, +smiling at Mab, and appealing to the graver Amy. “He is perhaps very high +in the world?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is very much above us in rank,” said Amy. “He is related +to grand people. I dare say he leans on some of the satin cushions we prick our +fingers over.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad he is of high rank,” said Mirah, with her usual +quietness. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, why are you glad of that?” said Amy, rather suspicious of +this sentiment, and on the watch for Jewish peculiarities which had not +appeared. +</p> + +<p> +“Because I have always disliked men of high rank before.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Mr. Deronda is not so very high,” said Kate, “He need +not hinder us from thinking ill of the whole peerage and baronetage if we +like.” +</p> + +<p> +When he entered, Mirah rose with the same look of grateful reverence that she +had lifted to him the evening before: impossible to see a creature freer at +once from embarrassment and boldness. Her theatrical training had left no +recognizable trace; probably her manners had not much changed since she played +the forsaken child at nine years of age; and she had grown up in her simplicity +and truthfulness like a little flower-seed that absorbs the chance confusion of +its surrounding into its own definite mould of beauty. Deronda felt that he was +making acquaintance with something quite new to him in the form of womanhood. +For Mirah was not childlike from ignorance: her experience of evil and trouble +was deeper and stranger than his own. He felt inclined to watch her and listen +to her as if she had come from a far off shore inhabited by a race different +from our own. +</p> + +<p> +But for that very reason he made his visit brief with his usual activity of +imagination as to how his conduct might affect others, he shrank from what +might seem like curiosity or the assumption of a right to know as much as he +pleased of one to whom he had done a service. For example, he would have liked +to hear her sing, but he would have felt the expression of such a wish to be +rudeness in him—since she could not refuse, and he would all the while +have a sense that she was being treated like one whose accomplishments were to +be ready on demand. And whatever reverence could be shown to woman, he was bent +on showing to this girl. Why? He gave himself several good reasons; but +whatever one does with a strong unhesitating outflow of will has a store of +motive that it would be hard to put into words. Some deeds seem little more +than interjections which give vent to the long passion of a life. +</p> + +<p> +So Deronda soon took his farewell for the two months during which he expected +to be absent from London, and in a few days he was on his way with Sir Hugo and +Lady Mallinger to Leubronn. +</p> + +<p> +He had fulfilled his intention of telling them about Mirah. The baronet was +decidedly of opinion that the search for the mother and brother had better be +let alone. Lady Mallinger was much interested in the poor girl, observing that +there was a society for the conversion of the Jews, and that it was to be hoped +Mirah would embrace Christianity; but perceiving that Sir Hugo looked at her +with amusement, she concluded that she had said something foolish. Lady +Mallinger felt apologetically about herself as a woman who had produced nothing +but daughters in a case where sons were required, and hence regarded the +apparent contradictions of the world as probably due to the weakness of her own +understanding. But when she was much puzzled, it was her habit to say to +herself, “I will ask Daniel.” Deronda was altogether a convenience +in the family; and Sir Hugo too, after intending to do the best for him, had +begun to feel that the pleasantest result would be to have this substitute for +a son always ready at his elbow. +</p> + +<p> +This was the history of Deronda, so far as he knew it, up to the time of that +visit to Leubronn in which he saw Gwendolen Harleth at the gaming-table. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0021"></a> +CHAPTER XXI.</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered +or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance +in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, +enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s +dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with +the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, +refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life +various with a new six days’ work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, +with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy “Let there not be,” +and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, +Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of +what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him +but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the +long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a +buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, +who having a practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond +between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be +compelled—like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of +distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a +grasp—precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction? +</p> + +<p> +It was half-past ten in the morning when Gwendolen Harleth, after her gloomy +journey from Leubronn, arrived at the station from which she must drive to +Offendene. No carriage or friend was awaiting her, for in the telegram she had +sent from Dover she had mentioned a later train, and in her impatience of +lingering at a London station she had set off without picturing what it would +be to arrive unannounced at half an hour’s drive from home—at one +of those stations which have been fixed on not as near anywhere, but as +equidistant from everywhere. Deposited as a <i>femme sole</i> with her large +trunks, and having to wait while a vehicle was being got from the large-sized +lantern called the Railway Inn, Gwendolen felt that the dirty paint in the +waiting-room, the dusty decanter of flat water, and the texts in large letters +calling on her to repent and be converted, were part of the dreary prospect +opened by her family troubles; and she hurried away to the outer door looking +toward the lane and fields. But here the very gleams of sunshine seemed +melancholy, for the autumnal leaves and grass were shivering, and the wind was +turning up the feathers of a cock and two croaking hens which had doubtless +parted with their grown-up offspring and did not know what to do with +themselves. The railway official also seemed without resources, and his +innocent demeanor in observing Gwendolen and her trunks was rendered +intolerable by the cast in his eye; especially since, being a new man, he did +not know her, and must conclude that she was not very high in the world. The +vehicle—a dirty old barouche—was within sight, and was being slowly +prepared by an elderly laborer. Contemptible details these, to make part of a +history; yet the turn of most lives is hardly to be accounted for without them. +They are continually entering with cumulative force into a mood until it gets +the mass and momentum of a theory or a motive. Even philosophy is not quite +free from such determining influences; and to be dropped solitary at an ugly, +irrelevant-looking spot, with a sense of no income on the mind, might well +prompt a man to discouraging speculation on the origin of things and the reason +of a world where a subtle thinker found himself so badly off. How much more +might such trifles tell on a young lady equipped for society with a fastidious +taste, an Indian shawl over her arm, some twenty cubic feet of trunks by her +side, and a mortal dislike to the new consciousness of poverty which was +stimulating her imagination of disagreeables? At any rate they told heavily on +poor Gwendolen, and helped to quell her resistant spirit. What was the good of +living in the midst of hardships, ugliness, and humiliation? This was the +beginning of being at home again, and it was a sample of what she had to +expect. +</p> + +<p> +Here was the theme on which her discontent rung its sad changes during her slow +drive in the uneasy barouche, with one great trunk squeezing the meek driver, +and the other fastened with a rope on the seat in front of her. Her ruling +vision all the way from Leubronn had been that the family would go abroad +again; for of course there must be some little income left—her mamma did +not mean that they would have literally nothing. To go to a dull place abroad +and live poorly, was the dismal future that threatened her: she had seen plenty +of poor English people abroad and imagined herself plunged in the despised +dullness of their ill-plenished lives, with Alice, Bertha, Fanny and Isabel all +growing up in tediousness around her, while she advanced toward thirty and her +mamma got more and more melancholy. But she did not mean to submit, and let +misfortune do what it would with her: she had not yet quite believed in the +misfortune; but weariness and disgust with this wretched arrival had begun to +affect her like an uncomfortable waking, worse than the uneasy dreams which had +gone before. The self-delight with which she had kissed her image in the glass +had faded before the sense of futility in being anything +whatever—charming, clever, resolute—what was the good of it all? +Events might turn out anyhow, and men were hateful. Yes, men were hateful. But +in these last hours, a certain change had come over their meaning. It is one +thing to hate stolen goods, and another thing to hate them the more because +their being stolen hinders us from making use of them. Gwendolen had begun to +be angry with Grandcourt for being what had hindered her from marrying him, +angry with him as the cause of her present dreary lot. +</p> + +<p> +But the slow drive was nearly at an end, and the lumbering vehicle coming up +the avenue was within sight of the windows. A figure appearing under the +portico brought a rush of new and less selfish feeling in Gwendolen, and when +springing from the carriage she saw the dear beautiful face with fresh lines of +sadness in it, she threw her arms round her mother’s neck, and for the +moment felt all sorrows only in relation to her mother’s feeling about +them. +</p> + +<p> +Behind, of course, were the sad faces of the four superfluous girls, each, poor +thing—like those other many thousand sisters of us all—having her +peculiar world which was of no importance to any one else, but all of them +feeling Gwendolen’s presence to be somehow a relenting of misfortune: +where Gwendolen was, something interesting would happen; even her hurried +submission to their kisses, and “Now go away, girls,” carried the +sort of comfort which all weakness finds in decision and authoritativeness. +Good Miss Merry, whose air of meek depression, hitherto held unaccountable in a +governess affectionately attached to the family, was now at the general level +of circumstances, did not expect any greeting, but busied herself with the +trunks and the coachman’s pay; while Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen hastened +up-stairs and shut themselves in the black and yellow bedroom. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, mamma dear,” said Gwendolen, tenderly pressing her +handkerchief against the tears that were rolling down Mrs. Davilow’s +cheeks. “Never mind. I don’t mind. I will do something. I will be +something. Things will come right. It seemed worse because I was away. Come +now! you must be glad because I am here.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt every word of that speech. A rush of compassionate tenderness +stirred all her capability of generous resolution; and the self-confident +projects which had vaguely glanced before her during her journey sprang +instantaneously into new definiteness. Suddenly she seemed to perceive how she +could be “something.” It was one of her best moments, and the fond +mother, forgetting everything below that tide mark, looked at her with a sort +of adoration. She said, +</p> + +<p> +“Bless you, my good, good darling! I can be happy, if you can!” +</p> + +<p> +But later in the day there was an ebb; the old slippery rocks, the old weedy +places reappeared. Naturally, there was a shrinking of courage as misfortune +ceased to be a mere announcement, and began to disclose itself as a grievous +tyrannical inmate. At first—that ugly drive at an end—it was still +Offendene that Gwendolen had come home to, and all surroundings of immediate +consequence to her were still there to secure her personal ease; the roomy +stillness of the large solid house while she rested; all the luxuries of her +toilet cared for without trouble to her; and a little tray with her favorite +food brought to her in private. For she had said, “Keep them all away +from us to-day, mamma. Let you and me be alone together.” +</p> + +<p> +When Gwendolen came down into the drawing-room, fresh as a newly-dipped swan, +and sat leaning against the cushions of the settee beside her mamma, their +misfortune had not yet turned its face and breath upon her. She felt prepared +to hear everything, and began in a tone of deliberate intention, +</p> + +<p> +“What have you thought of doing, exactly, mamma?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, the next thing to be done is to move away from this house. +Mr. Haynes most fortunately is as glad to have it now as he would have been +when we took it. Lord Brackenshaw’s agent is to arrange everything with +him to the best advantage for us: Bazley, you know; not at all an ill-natured +man.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot help thinking that Lord Brackenshaw would let you stay here +rent-free, mamma,” said Gwendolen, whose talents had not been applied to +business so much as to discernment of the admiration excited by her charms. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear child, Lord Brackenshaw is in Scotland, and knows nothing about +us. Neither your uncle nor I would choose to apply to him. Besides, what could +we do in this house without servants, and without money to warm it? The sooner +we are out the better. We have nothing to carry but our clothes, you +know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you mean to go abroad, then?” said Gwendolen. After all, +this is what she had familiarized her mind with. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no, dear, no. How could we travel? You never did learn anything +about income and expenses,” said Mrs. Davilow, trying to smile, and +putting her hand on Gwendolen’s as she added, mournfully, “that +makes it so much harder for you, my pet.” +</p> + +<p> +“But where are we to go?” said Gwendolen, with a trace of sharpness +in her tone. She felt a new current of fear passing through her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is all decided. A little furniture is to be got in from the +rectory—all that can be spared.” Mrs. Davilow hesitated. She +dreaded the reality for herself less than the shock she must give to Gwendolen, +who looked at her with tense expectancy, but was silent. +</p> + +<p> +“It is Sawyer’s Cottage we are to go to.” +</p> + +<p> +At first, Gwendolen remained silent, paling with anger—justifiable anger, +in her opinion. Then she said with haughtiness, +</p> + +<p> +“That is impossible. Something else than that ought to have been thought +of. My uncle ought not to allow that. I will not submit to it.” +</p> + +<p> +“My sweet child, what else could have been thought of? Your uncle, I am +sure, is as kind as he can be: but he is suffering himself; he has his family +to bring up. And do you quite understand? You must remember—we have +nothing. We shall have absolutely nothing except what he and my sister give us. +They have been as wise and active as possible, and we must try to earn +something. I and the girls are going to work a table-cloth border for the +Ladies’ Charity at Winchester, and a communion cloth that the +parishioners are to present to Pennicote Church.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow went into these details timidly: but how else was she to bring the +fact of their position home to this poor child who, alas! must submit at +present, whatever might be in the background for her? and she herself had a +superstition that there must be something better in the background. +</p> + +<p> +“But surely somewhere else than Sawyer’s Cottage might have been +found,” Gwendolen persisted—taken hold of (as if in a nightmare) by +the image of this house where an exciseman had lived. +</p> + +<p> +“No, indeed, dear. You know houses are scarce, and we may be thankful to +get anything so private. It is not so very bad. There are two little parlors +and four bedrooms. You shall sit alone whenever you like.” +</p> + +<p> +The ebb of sympathetic care for her mamma had gone so low just now, that +Gwendolen took no notice of these deprecatory words. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot conceive that all your property is gone at once, mamma. How can +you be sure in so short a time? It is not a week since you wrote to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“The first news came much earlier, dear. But I would not spoil your +pleasure till it was quite necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, how vexatious!” said Gwendolen, coloring with fresh anger. +“If I had known, I could have brought home the money I had won: and for +want of knowing, I stayed and lost it. I had nearly two hundred pounds, and it +would have done for us to live on a little while, till I could carry out some +plan.” She paused an instant and then added more impetuously, +“Everything has gone against me. People have come near me only to blight +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Among the “people” she was including Deronda. If he had not +interfered in her life she would have gone to the gaming-table again with a few +napoleons, and might have won back her losses. +</p> + +<p> +“We must resign ourselves to the will of Providence, my child,” +said poor Mrs. Davilow, startled by this revelation of the gambling, but not +daring to say more. She felt sure that “people” meant Grandcourt, +about whom her lips were sealed. And Gwendolen answered immediately, +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t resign myself. I shall do what I can against it. What +is the good of calling the people’s wickedness Providence? You said in +your letter it was Mr. Lassman’s fault we had lost our money. Has he run +away with it all?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear, you don’t understand. There were great speculations: he +meant to gain. It was all about mines and things of that sort. He risked too +much.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t call that Providence: it was his improvidence with our +money, and he ought to be punished. Can’t we go to law and recover our +fortune? My uncle ought to take measures, and not sit down by such wrongs. We +ought to go to law.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear child, law can never bring back money lost in that way. Your +uncle says it is milk spilled upon the ground. Besides, one must have a fortune +to get any law: there is no law for people who are ruined. And our money has +only gone along with other people’s. We are not the only sufferers: +others have to resign themselves besides us.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t resign myself to live at Sawyer’s Cottage and +see you working for sixpences and shillings because of that. I shall not do it. +I shall do what is more befitting our rank and education.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure your uncle and all of us will approve of that, dear, and +admire you the more for it,” said Mrs. Davilow, glad of an unexpected +opening for speaking on a difficult subject. “I didn’t mean that +you should resign yourself to worse when anything better offered itself. Both +your uncle and aunt have felt that your abilities and education were a fortune +for you, and they have already heard of something within your reach.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is that, mamma?” some of Gwendolen’s anger gave way to +interest, and she was not without romantic conjectures. +</p> + +<p> +“There are two situations that offer themselves. One is in a +bishop’s family, where there are three daughters, and the other is in +quite a high class of school; and in both, your French, and music, and +dancing—and then your manners and habits as a lady, are exactly what is +wanted. Each is a hundred a year—and—just for the +present,”—Mrs. Davilow had become frightened and +hesitating,—“to save you from the petty, common way of living that +we must go to—you would perhaps accept one of the two.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! be like Miss Graves at Madame Meunier’s? No.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think, myself, that Dr. Monpert’s would be more suitable. There +could be no hardship in a bishop’s family.” +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me, mamma. There are hardships everywhere for a governess. And I +don’t see that it would be pleasanter to be looked down on in a +bishop’s family than in any other. Besides, you know very well I hate +teaching. Fancy me shut up with three awkward girls something like Alice! I +would rather emigrate than be a governess.” +</p> + +<p> +What it precisely was to emigrate, Gwendolen was not called on to explain. Mrs. +Davilow was mute, seeing no outlet, and thinking with dread of the collision +that might happen when Gwendolen had to meet her uncle and aunt. There was an +air of reticence in Gwendolen’s haughty, resistant speeches which implied +that she had a definite plan in reserve; and her practical ignorance +continually exhibited, could not nullify the mother’s belief in the +effectiveness of that forcible will and daring which had held mastery over +herself. +</p> + +<p> +“I have some ornaments, mamma, and I could sell them,” said +Gwendolen. “They would make a sum: I want a little sum—just to go +on with. I dare say Marshall, at Wanchester, would take them: I know he showed +me some bracelets once that he said he had bought from a lady. Jocosa might go +and ask him. Jocosa is going to leave us, of course. But she might do that +first.” +</p> + +<p> +“She would do anything she could, poor, dear soul. I have not told you +yet—she wanted me to take all her savings—her three hundred pounds. +I tell her to set up a little school. It will be hard for her to go into a new +family now she has been so long with us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, recommend her for the bishop’s daughters,” said +Gwendolen, with a sudden gleam of laughter in her face. “I am sure she +will do better than I should.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do take care not to say such things to your uncle,” said Mrs. +Davilow. “He will be hurt at your despising what he has exerted himself +about. But I dare say you have something else in your mind that he might not +disapprove, if you consulted him.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is some one else I want to consult first. Are the Arrowpoints at +Quetcham still, and is Herr Klesmer there? But I daresay you know nothing about +it, poor, dear mamma. Can Jeffries go on horseback with a note?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, Jeffries is not here, and the dealer has taken the horses. +But some one could go for us from Leek’s farm. The Arrowpoints are at +Quetcham, I know. Miss Arrowpoint left her card the other day: I could not see +her. But I don’t know about Herr Klesmer. Do you want to send before +to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, as soon as possible. I will write a note,” said Gwendolen, +rising. +</p> + +<p> +“What can you be thinking of, Gwen?” said Mrs. Davilow, relieved in +the midst of her wonderment by signs of alacrity and better humor. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t mind what, there’s a dear, good mamma,” said +Gwendolen, reseating herself a moment to give atoning caresses. “I mean +to do something. Never mind what until it is all settled. And then you shall be +comforted. The dear face!—it is ten years older in these three weeks. +Now, now, now! don’t cry”—Gwendolen, holding her +mamma’s head with both hands, kissed the trembling eyelids. “But +mind you don’t contradict me or put hindrances in my way. I must decide +for myself. I cannot be dictated to by my uncle or any one else. My life is my +own affair. And I think”—here her tone took an edge of +scorn—“I think I can do better for you than let you live in +Sawyer’s Cottage.” +</p> + +<p> +In uttering this last sentence Gwendolen again rose, and went to a desk where +she wrote the following note to Klesmer:— +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Miss Harleth presents her compliments to Herr Klesmer, and ventures to request +of him the very great favor that he will call upon her, if possible, to-morrow. +Her reason for presuming so far on his kindness is of a very serious nature. +Unfortunate family circumstances have obliged her to take a course in which she +can only turn for advice to the great knowledge and judgment of Herr Klesmer. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray get this sent to Quetcham at once, mamma,” said Gwendolen, as +she addressed the letter. “The man must be told to wait for an answer. +Let no time be lost.” +</p> + +<p> +For the moment, the absorbing purpose was to get the letter dispatched; but +when she had been assured on this point, another anxiety arose and kept her in +a state of uneasy excitement. If Klesmer happened not to be at Quetcham, what +could she do next? Gwendolen’s belief in her star, so to speak, had had +some bruises. Things had gone against her. A splendid marriage which presented +itself within reach had shown a hideous flaw. The chances of roulette had not +adjusted themselves to her claims; and a man of whom she knew nothing had +thrust himself between her and her intentions. The conduct of those +uninteresting people who managed the business of the world had been culpable +just in the points most injurious to her in particular. Gwendolen Harleth, with +all her beauty and conscious force, felt the close threats of humiliation: for +the first time the conditions of this world seemed to her like a hurrying +roaring crowd in which she had got astray, no more cared for and protected than +a myriad of other girls, in spite of its being a peculiar hardship to her. If +Klesmer were not at Quetcham—that would be all of a piece with the rest: +the unwelcome negative urged itself as a probability, and set her brain working +at desperate alternatives which might deliver her from Sawyer’s Cottage +or the ultimate necessity of “taking a situation,” a phrase that +summed up for her the disagreeables most wounding to her pride, most irksome to +her tastes; at least so far as her experience enabled her to imagine +disagreeables. +</p> + +<p> +Still Klesmer might be there, and Gwendolen thought of the result in that case +with a hopefulness which even cast a satisfactory light over her peculiar +troubles, as what might well enter into the biography of celebrities and +remarkable persons. And if she had heard her immediate acquaintances +cross-examined as to whether they thought her remarkable, the first who said +“No” would have surprised her. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0022"></a> +CHAPTER XXII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +We please our fancy with ideal webs<br/> +Of innovation, but our life meanwhile<br/> +Is in the loom, where busy passion plies<br/> +The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds<br/> +The accustomed pattern. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s note, coming “pat betwixt too early and too +late,” was put into Klesmer’s hands just when he was leaving +Quetcham, and in order to meet her appeal to his kindness he, with some +inconvenience to himself spent the night at Wanchester. There were reasons why +he would not remain at Quetcham. +</p> + +<p> +That magnificent mansion, fitted with regard to the greatest expense, had in +fact became too hot for him, its owners having, like some great politicians, +been astonished at an insurrection against the established order of things, +which we plain people after the event can perceive to have been prepared under +their very noses. +</p> + +<p> +There were as usual many guests in the house, and among them one in whom Miss +Arrowpoint foresaw a new pretender to her hand: a political man of good family +who confidently expected a peerage, and felt on public grounds that he required +a larger fortune to support the title properly. Heiresses vary, and persons +interested in one of them beforehand are prepared to find that she is too +yellow or too red, tall and toppling or short and square, violent and +capricious or moony and insipid; but in every case it is taken for granted that +she will consider herself an appendage to her fortune, and marry where others +think her fortunes ought to go. Nature, however, not only accommodates herself +ill to our favorite practices by making “only children” daughters, +but also now and then endows the misplaced daughter with a clear head and a +strong will. The Arrowpoints had already felt some anxiety owing to these +endowments of their Catherine. She would not accept the view of her social duty +which required her to marry a needy nobleman or a commoner on the ladder toward +nobility; and they were not without uneasiness concerning her persistence in +declining suitable offers. As to the possibility of her being in love with +Klesmer they were not at all uneasy—a very common sort of blindness. For +in general mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an +effect toward which they have done everything, and at the absence of an effect +toward which they had done nothing but desire it. Parents are astonished at the +ignorance of their sons, though they have used the most time-honored and +expensive means of securing it; husbands and wives are mutually astonished at +the loss of affection which they have taken no pains to keep; and all of us in +our turn are apt to be astonished that our neighbors do not admire us. In this +way it happens that the truth seems highly improbable. The truth is something +different from the habitual lazy combinations begotten by our wishes. The +Arrowpoints’ hour of astonishment was come. +</p> + +<p> +When there is a passion between an heiress and a proud independent-spirited +man, it is difficult for them to come to an understanding; but the difficulties +are likely to be overcome unless the proud man secures himself by a constant +<i>alibi</i>. Brief meetings after studied absence are potent in disclosure: +but more potent still is frequent companionship, with full sympathy in taste +and admirable qualities on both sides; especially where the one is in the +position of teacher and the other is delightedly conscious of receptive ability +which also gives the teacher delight. The situation is famous in history, and +has no less charm now than it had in the days of Abelard. +</p> + +<p> +But this kind of comparison had not occurred to the Arrowpoints when they first +engaged Klesmer to come down to Quetcham. To have a first-rate musician in your +house is a privilege of wealth; Catherine’s musical talent demanded every +advantage; and she particularly desired to use her quieter time in the country +for more thorough study. Klesmer was not yet a Liszt, understood to be adored +by ladies of all European countries with the exception of Lapland: and even +with that understanding it did not follow that he would make proposals to an +heiress. No musician of honor would do so. Still less was it conceivable that +Catherine would give him the slightest pretext for such daring. The large check +that Mr. Arrowpoint was to draw in Klesmer’s name seemed to make him as +safe an inmate as a footman. Where marriage is inconceivable, a girl’s +sentiments are safe. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer was eminently a man of honor, but marriages rarely begin with formal +proposals, and moreover, Catherine’s limit of the conceivable did not +exactly correspond with her mother’s. +</p> + +<p> +Outsiders might have been more apt to think that Klesmer’s position was +dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint had been an acknowledged beauty; not +taking into account that the most powerful of all beauty is that which reveals +itself after sympathy and not before it. There is a charm of eye and lip which +comes with every little phrase that certifies delicate perception or fine +judgment, with every unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart awake to +others; and no sweep of garment or turn of figure is more satisfying than that +which enters as a restoration of confidence that one person is present on whom +no intention will be lost. What dignity of meaning goes on gathering in frowns +and laughs which are never observed in the wrong place; what suffused +adorableness in a human frame where there is a mind that can flash out +comprehension and hands that can execute finely! The more obvious beauty, also +adorable sometimes—one may say it without blasphemy—begins by being +an apology for folly, and ends like other apologies in becoming tiresome by +iteration; and that Klesmer, though very susceptible to it, should have a +passionate attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a paradox than any other +triumph of a manifold sympathy over a monotonous attraction. We object less to +be taxed with the enslaving excess of our passions than with our deficiency in +wider passion; but if the truth were known, our reputed intensity is often the +dullness of not knowing what else to do with ourselves. Tannhäuser, one +suspects, was a knight of ill-furnished imagination, hardly of larger discourse +than a heavy Guardsman; Merlin had certainly seen his best days, and was merely +repeating himself, when he fell into that hopeless captivity; and we know that +Ulysses felt so manifest an <i>ennui</i> under similar circumstances that +Calypso herself furthered his departure. There is indeed a report that he +afterward left Penelope; but since she was habitually absorbed in worsted work, +and it was probably from her that Telemachus got his mean, pettifogging +disposition, always anxious about the property and the daily consumption of +meat, no inference can be drawn from this already dubious scandal as to the +relation between companionship and constancy. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer was as versatile and fascinating as a young Ulysses on a sufficient +acquaintance—one whom nature seemed to have first made generously and +then to have added music as a dominant power using all the abundant rest, and, +as in Mendelssohn, finding expression for itself not only in the highest finish +of execution, but in that fervor of creative work and theoretic belief which +pierces the whole future of a life with the delight of congruous devoted +purpose. His foibles of arrogance and vanity did not exceed such as may be +found in the best English families; and Catherine Arrowpoint had no +corresponding restlessness to clash with his: notwithstanding her native +kindliness she was perhaps too coolly firm and self-sustained. But she was one +of those satisfactory creatures whose intercourse has the charm of discovery; +whose integrity of faculty and expression begets a wish to know what they will +say on all subjects or how they will perform whatever they undertake; so that +they end by raising not only a continual expectation but a continual sense of +fulfillment—the systole and diastole of blissful companionship. In such +cases the outward presentment easily becomes what the image is to the +worshipper. It was not long before the two became aware that each was +interesting to the other; but the “how far” remained a matter of +doubt. Klesmer did not conceive that Miss Arrowpoint was likely to think of him +as a possible lover, and she was not accustomed to think of herself as likely +to stir more than a friendly regard, or to fear the expression of more from any +man who was not enamored of her fortune. Each was content to suffer some +unshared sense of denial for the sake of loving the other’s society a +little too well; and under these conditions no need had been felt to restrict +Klesmer’s visits for the last year either in country or in town. He knew +very well that if Miss Arrowpoint had been poor he would have made ardent love +to her instead of sending a storm through the piano, or folding his arms and +pouring out a hyperbolical tirade about something as impersonal as the north +pole; and she was not less aware that if it had been possible for Klesmer to +wish for her hand she would have found overmastering reasons for giving it to +him. Here was the safety of full cups, which are as secure from overflow as the +half-empty, always supposing no disturbance. Naturally, silent feeling had not +remained at the same point any more than the stealthly dial-hand, and in the +present visit to Quetcham, Klesmer had begun to think that he would not come +again; while Catherine was more sensitive to his frequent <i>brusquerie</i>, +which she rather resented as a needless effort to assert his footing of +superior in every sense except the conventional. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile enters the expectant peer, Mr. Bult, an esteemed party man who, +rather neutral in private life, had strong opinions concerning the districts of +the Niger, was much at home also in Brazils, spoke with decision of affairs in +the South Seas, was studious of his Parliamentary and itinerant speeches, and +had the general solidity and suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the +central table-land of life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding that he +was an undeniable husband for an heiress, had nothing to say against him but +that he was thoroughly tiresome to her. Mr. Bult was amiably confident, and had +no idea that his insensibility to counterpoint could ever be reckoned against +him. Klesmer he hardly regarded in the light of a serious human being who ought +to have a vote; and he did not mind Miss Arrowpoint’s addiction to music +any more than her probable expenses in antique lace. He was consequently a +little amazed at an after-dinner outburst of Klesmer’s on the lack of +idealism in English politics, which left all mutuality between distant races to +be determined simply by the need of a market; the crusades, to his mind, had at +least this excuse, that they had a banner of sentiment round which generous +feelings could rally: of course, the scoundrels rallied too, but what then? +they rally in equal force round your advertisement van of “Buy cheap, +sell dear.” On this theme Klesmer’s eloquence, gesticulatory and +other, went on for a little while like stray fireworks accidentally ignited, +and then sank into immovable silence. Mr. Bult was not surprised that +Klesmer’s opinions should be flighty, but was astonished at his command +of English idiom and his ability to put a point in a way that would have told +at a constituents’ dinner—to be accounted for probably by his being +a Pole, or a Czech, or something of that fermenting sort, in a state of +political refugeeism which had obliged him to make a profession of his music; +and that evening in the drawing-room he for the first time went up to Klesmer +at the piano, Miss Arrowpoint being near, and said, +</p> + +<p> +“I had no idea before that you were a political man.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer’s only answer was to fold his arms, put out his nether lip, and +stare at Mr. Bult. +</p> + +<p> +“You must have been used to public speaking. You speak uncommonly well, +though I don’t agree with you. From what you said about sentiment, I +fancy you are a Panslavist.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; my name is Elijah. I am the Wandering Jew,” said Klesmer, +flashing a smile at Miss Arrowpoint, and suddenly making a mysterious, +wind-like rush backward and forward on the piano. Mr. Bult felt this buffoonery +rather offensive and Polish, but—Miss Arrowpoint being there—did +not like to move away. +</p> + +<p> +“Herr Klesmer has cosmopolitan ideas,” said Miss Arrowpoint, trying +to make the best of the situation. “He looks forward to a fusion of +races.” +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart,” said Mr. Bult, willing to be gracious. +“I was sure he had too much talent to be a mere musician.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, sir, you are under some mistake there,” said Klesmer, firing +up. “No man has too much talent to be a musician. Most men have too +little. A creative artist is no more a mere musician than a great statesman is +a mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and +look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. We help to rule the +nations and make the age as much as any other public men. We count ourselves on +level benches with legislators. And a man who speaks effectively through music +is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence.” +</p> + +<p> +With the last word Klesmer wheeled from the piano and walked away. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Arrowpoint colored, and Mr. Bult observed, with his usual phlegmatic +stolidity, “Your pianist does not think small beer of himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Herr Klesmer is something more than a pianist,” said Miss +Arrowpoint, apologetically. “He is a great musician in the fullest sense +of the word. He will rank with Schubert and Mendelssohn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you ladies understand these things,” said Mr. Bult, none the +less convinced that these things were frivolous because Klesmer had shown +himself a coxcomb. +</p> + +<p> +Catherine, always sorry when Klesmer gave himself airs, found an opportunity +the next day in the music-room to say, “Why were you so heated last night +with Mr. Bult? He meant no harm.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wish me to be complaisant to him?” said Klesmer, rather +fiercely. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is hardly worth your while to be other than civil.” +</p> + +<p> +“You find no difficulty in tolerating him, then?—you have a respect +for a political platitudinarian as insensible as an ox to everything he +can’t turn into political capital. You think his monumental obtuseness +suited to the dignity of the English gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not say that.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean that I acted without dignity, and you are offended with +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now you are slightly nearer the truth,” said Catherine, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I had better put my burial-clothes in my portmanteau and set off at +once.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see that. If I have to bear your criticism of my operetta, +you should not mind my criticism of your impatience.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I do mind it. You would have wished me to take his ignorant +impertinence about a ‘mere musician’ without letting him know his +place. I am to hear my gods blasphemed as well as myself insulted. But I beg +pardon. It is impossible you should see the matter as I do. Even you +can’t understand the wrath of the artist: he is of another caste for +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is true,” said Catherine, with some betrayal of feeling. +“He is of a caste to which I look up—a caste above mine.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer, who had been seated at a table looking over scores, started up and +walked to a little distance, from which he said, +</p> + +<p> +“That is finely felt—I am grateful. But I had better go, all the +same. I have made up my mind to go, for good and all. You can get on +exceedingly well without me: your operetta is on wheels—it will go of +itself. And your Mr. Bull’s company fits me ‘wie die Faust ins +Auge.’ I am neglecting my engagements. I must go off to St. +Petersburg.” +</p> + +<p> +There was no answer. +</p> + +<p> +“You agree with me that I had better go?” said Klesmer, with some +irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly; if that is what your business and feeling prompt. I have only +to wonder that you have consented to give us so much of your time in the last +year. There must be treble the interest to you anywhere else. I have never +thought of you consenting to come here as anything else than a +sacrifice.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I make the sacrifice?” said Klesmer, going to seat +himself at the piano, and touching the keys so as to give with the delicacy of +an echo in the far distance a melody which he had set to Heine’s +“Ich hab’ dich geliebet und liebe dich noch.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is the mystery,” said Catherine, not wanting to affect +anything, but from mere agitation. From the same cause she was tearing a piece +of paper into minute morsels, as if at a task of utmost multiplication imposed +by a cruel fairy. +</p> + +<p> +“You can conceive no motive?” said Klesmer, folding his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“None that seems in the least probable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I shall tell you. It is because you are to me the chief woman in +the world—the throned lady whose colors I carry between my heart and my +armor.” +</p> + +<p> +Catherine’s hands trembled so much that she could no longer tear the +paper: still less could her lips utter a word. Klesmer went on, +</p> + +<p> +“This would be the last impertinence in me, if I meant to found anything +upon it. That is out of the question. I meant no such thing. But you once said +it was your doom to suspect every man who courted you of being an adventurer, +and what made you angriest was men’s imputing to you the folly of +believing that they courted you for your own sake. Did you not say so?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very likely,” was the answer, in a low murmur. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a bitter word. Well, at least one man who has seen women as +plenty as flowers in May has lingered about you for your own sake. And since he +is one whom you can never marry, you will believe him. There is an argument in +favor of some other man. But don’t give yourself for a meal to a minotaur +like Bult. I shall go now and pack. I shall make my excuses to Mrs. +Arrowpoint.” Klesmer rose as he ended, and walked quickly toward the +door. +</p> + +<p> +“You must take this heap of manuscript,” then said Catherine, +suddenly making a desperate effort. She had risen to fetch the heap from +another table. Klesmer came back, and they had the length of the folio sheets +between them. +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I not marry the man who loves me, if I love him?” said +Catherine. To her the effort was something like the leap of a woman from the +deck into the lifeboat. +</p> + +<p> +“It would be too hard—impossible—you could not carry it +through. I am not worth what you would have to encounter. I will not accept the +sacrifice. It would be thought a <i>mésalliance</i> for you and I should be +liable to the worst accusations.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it the accusations you are afraid of? I am afraid of nothing but that +we should miss the passing of our lives together.” +</p> + +<p> +The decisive word had been spoken: there was no doubt concerning the end willed +by each: there only remained the way of arriving at it, and Catherine +determined to take the straightest possible. She went to her father and mother +in the library, and told them that she had promised to marry Klesmer. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Arrowpoint’s state of mind was pitiable. Imagine Jean Jacques, after +his essay on the corrupting influence of the arts, waking up among children of +nature who had no idea of grilling the raw bone they offered him for breakfast +with the primitive couvert of a flint knife; or Saint Just, after fervidly +denouncing all recognition of pre-eminence, receiving a vote of thanks for the +unbroken mediocrity of his speech, which warranted the dullest patriots in +delivering themselves at equal length. Something of the same sort befell the +authoress of “Tasso,” when what she had safely demanded of the dead +Leonora was enacted by her own Catherine. It is hard for us to live up to our +own eloquence, and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the +solid earth and are liable to heavy dining. Besides, it has long been +understood that the proprieties of literature are not those of practical life. +Mrs. Arrowpoint naturally wished for the best of everything. She not only liked +to feel herself at a higher level of literary sentiment than the ladies with +whom she associated; she wished not to be behind them in any point of social +consideration. While Klesmer was seen in the light of a patronized musician, +his peculiarities were picturesque and acceptable: but to see him by a sudden +flash in the light of her son-in-law gave her a burning sense of what the world +would say. And the poor lady had been used to represent her Catherine as a +model of excellence. +</p> + +<p> +Under the first shock she forgot everything but her anger, and snatched at any +phrase that would serve as a weapon. +</p> + +<p> +“If Klesmer has presumed to offer himself to you, your father shall +horsewhip him off the premises. Pray, speak, Mr. Arrowpoint.” +</p> + +<p> +The father took his cigar from his mouth, and rose to the occasion by saying, +“This will never do, Cath.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do!” cried Mrs. Arrowpoint; “who in their senses ever +thought it would do? You might as well say poisoning and strangling will not +do. It is a comedy you have got up, Catherine. Else you are mad.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am quite sane and serious, mamma, and Herr Klesmer is not to blame. He +never thought of my marrying him. I found out that he loved me, and loving him, +I told him I would marry him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Leave that unsaid, Catherine,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, bitterly. +“Every one else will say that for you. You will be a public fable. Every +one will say that you must have made an offer to a man who has been paid to +come to the house—who is nobody knows what—a gypsy, a Jew, a mere +bubble of the earth.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, mamma,” said Catherine, indignant in her turn. +“We all know he is a genius—as Tasso was.” +</p> + +<p> +“Those times were not these, nor is Klesmer Tasso,” said Mrs. +Arrowpoint, getting more heated. “There is no sting in <i>that</i> +sarcasm, except the sting of undutifulness.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry to hurt you, mamma. But I will not give up the happiness of +my life to ideas that I don’t believe in and customs I have no respect +for.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have lost all sense of duty, then? You have forgotten that you are +our only child—that it lies with you to place a great property in the +right hands?” +</p> + +<p> +“What are the right hands? My grandfather gained the property in +trade.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Arrowpoint, <i>will</i> you sit by and hear this without +speaking?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am a gentleman, Cath. We expect you to marry a gentleman,” said +the father, exerting himself. +</p> + +<p> +“And a man connected with the institutions of this country,” said +the mother. “A woman in your position has serious duties. Where duty and +inclination clash, she must follow duty.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t deny that,” said Catherine, getting colder in +proportion to her mother’s heat. “But one may say very true things +and apply them falsely. People can easily take the sacred word duty as a name +for what they desire any one else to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your parent’s desire makes no duty for you, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, within reason. But before I give up the happiness of my +life—” +</p> + +<p> +“Catherine, Catherine, it will not be your happiness,” said Mrs. +Arrowpoint, in her most raven-like tones. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what seems to me my happiness—before I give it up, I must +see some better reason than the wish that I should marry a nobleman, or a man +who votes with a party that he may be turned into a nobleman. I feel at liberty +to marry the man I love and think worthy, unless some higher duty +forbids.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so it does, Catherine, though you are blinded and cannot see it. It +is a woman’s duty not to lower herself. You are lowering yourself. Mr. +Arrowpoint, will you tell your daughter what is her duty?” +</p> + +<p> +“You must see, Catherine, that Klesmer is not the man for you,” +said Mr. Arrowpoint. “He won’t do at the head of estates. He has a +deuced foreign look—is an unpractical man.” +</p> + +<p> +“I really can’t see what that has to do with it, papa. The land of +England has often passed into the hands of foreigners—Dutch soldiers, +sons of foreign women of bad character:—if our land were sold to-morrow +it would very likely pass into the hands of some foreign merchant on +’Change. It is in everybody’s mouth that successful swindlers may +buy up half the land in the country. How can I stem that tide?” +</p> + +<p> +“It will never do to argue about marriage, Cath,” said Mr. +Arrowpoint. “It’s no use getting up the subject like a +parliamentary question. We must do as other people do. We must think of the +nation and the public good.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t see any public good concerned here, papa,” said +Catherine. “Why is it to be expected of any heiress that she should carry +the property gained in trade into the hands of a certain class? That seems to +be a ridiculous mishmash of superannuated customs and false ambition. I should +call it a public evil. People had better make a new sort of public good by +changing their ambitions.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is mere sophistry, Catherine,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. +“Because you don’t wish to marry a nobleman, you are not obliged to +marry a mountebank or a charlatan.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot understand the application of such words, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I dare say not,” rejoined Mrs. Arrowpoint, with significant +scorn. “You have got to a pitch at which we are not likely to understand +each other.” +</p> + +<p> +“It can’t be done, Cath,” said Mr. Arrowpoint, wishing to +substitute a better-humored reasoning for his wife’s impetuosity. +“A man like Klesmer can’t marry such a property as yours. It +can’t be done.” +</p> + +<p> +“It certainly will not be done,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, imperiously. +“Where is the man? Let him be fetched.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot fetch him to be insulted,” said Catherine. “Nothing +will be achieved by that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you would wish him to know that in marrying you he will not +marry your fortune,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly; if it were so, I should wish him to know it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you had better fetch him.” +</p> + +<p> +Catherine only went into the music-room and said, “Come.” She felt +no need to prepare Klesmer. +</p> + +<p> +“Herr Klesmer,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, with a rather contemptuous +stateliness, “it is unnecessary to repeat what has passed between us and +our daughter. Mr. Arrowpoint will tell you our resolution.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your marrying is out of the question,” said Mr. Arrowpoint, rather +too heavily weighted with his task, and standing in an embarrassment unrelieved +by a cigar. “It is a wild scheme altogether. A man has been called out +for less.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have taken a base advantage of our confidence,” burst in Mrs. +Arrowpoint, unable to carry out her purpose and leave the burden of speech to +her husband. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer made a low bow in silent irony. +</p> + +<p> +“The pretension is ridiculous. You had better give it up and leave the +house at once,” continued Mr. Arrowpoint. He wished to do without +mentioning the money. +</p> + +<p> +“I can give up nothing without reference to your daughter’s +wish,” said Klesmer. “My engagement is to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is useless to discuss the question,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. +“We shall never consent to the marriage. If Catherine disobeys us we +shall disinherit her. You will not marry her fortune. It is right you should +know that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Madam, her fortune has been the only thing I have had to regret about +her. But I must ask her if she will not think the sacrifice greater than I am +worthy of.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is no sacrifice to me,” said Catherine, “except that I am +sorry to hurt my father and mother. I have always felt my fortune to be a +wretched fatality of my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean to defy us, then?” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean to marry Herr Klesmer,” said Catherine, firmly. +</p> + +<p> +“He had better not count on our relenting,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint, +whose manners suffered from that impunity in insult which has been reckoned +among the privileges of women. +</p> + +<p> +“Madam,” said Klesmer, “certain reasons forbid me to retort. +But understand that I consider it out of the power of either of you, or of your +fortune, to confer on me anything that I value. My rank as an artist is of my +own winning, and I would not exchange it for any other. I am able to maintain +your daughter, and I ask for no change in my life but her companionship.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will leave the house, however,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. +</p> + +<p> +“I go at once,” said Klesmer, bowing and quitting the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Let there be no misunderstanding, mamma,” said Catherine; “I +consider myself engaged to Herr Klesmer, and I intend to marry him.” +</p> + +<p> +The mother turned her head away and waved her hand in sign of dismissal. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all very fine,” said Mr. Arrowpoint, when Catherine was +gone; “but what the deuce are we to do with the property?” +</p> + +<p> +“There is Harry Brendall. He can take the name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Harry Brendall will get through it all in no time,” said Mr. +Arrowpoint, relighting his cigar. +</p> + +<p> +And thus, with nothing settled but the determination of the lovers, Klesmer had +left Quetcham. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0023"></a> +CHAPTER XXIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Among the heirs of Art, as is the division of the promised land, each has to +win his portion by hard fighting: the bestowal is after the manner of prophecy, +and is a title without possession. To carry the map of an ungotten estate in +your pocket is a poor sort of copyhold. And in fancy to cast his shoe over Eden +is little warrant that a man shall ever set the sole of his foot on an acre of +his own there. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such as +they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of their +self-satisfaction—as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that +they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray go to church, mamma,” said Gwendolen the next morning. +“I prefer seeing Herr Klesmer alone.” (He had written in reply to +her note that he would be with her at eleven.) +</p> + +<p> +“That is hardly correct, I think,” said Mrs. Davilow, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Our affairs are too serious for us to think of such nonsensical +rules,” said Gwendolen, contemptuously. “They are insulting as well +as ridiculous.” +</p> + +<p> +“You would not mind Isabel sitting with you? She would be reading in a +corner.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; she could not: she would bite her nails and stare. It would be too +irritating. Trust my judgment, mamma, I must be alone. Take them all to +church.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen had her way, of course; only that Miss Merry and two of the girls +stayed at home, to give the house a look of habitation by sitting at the +dining-room windows. +</p> + +<p> +It was a delicious Sunday morning. The melancholy waning sunshine of autumn +rested on the half-strown grass and came mildly through the windows in slanting +bands of brightness over the old furniture, and the glass panel that reflected +the furniture; over the tapestried chairs with their faded flower-wreaths, the +dark enigmatic pictures, the superannuated organ at which Gwendolen had pleased +herself with acting Saint Cecelia on her first joyous arrival, the crowd of +pallid, dusty knick-knacks seen through the open doors of the antechamber where +she had achieved the wearing of her Greek dress as Hermione. This last memory +was just now very busy in her; for had not Klesmer then been struck with +admiration of her pose and expression? Whatever he had said, whatever she +imagined him to have thought, was at this moment pointed with keenest interest +for her: perhaps she had never before in her life felt so inwardly dependent, +so consciously in need of another person’s opinion. There was a new +fluttering of spirit within her, a new element of deliberation in her +self-estimate which had hitherto been a blissful gift of intuition. Still it +was the recurrent burden of her inward soliloquy that Klesmer had seen but +little of her, and any unfavorable conclusion of his must have too narrow a +foundation. She really felt clever enough for anything. +</p> + +<p> +To fill up the time she collected her volumes and pieces of music, and laying +them on the top of the piano, set herself to classify them. Then catching the +reflection of her movements in the glass panel, she was diverted to the +contemplation of the image there and walked toward it. Dressed in black, +without a single ornament, and with the warm whiteness of her skin set off +between her light-brown coronet of hair and her square-cut bodice, she might +have tempted an artist to try again the Roman trick of a statue in black, +white, and tawny marble. Seeing her image slowly advancing, she thought +“I <i>am</i> beautiful”—not exultingly, but with grave +decision. Being beautiful was after all the condition on which she most needed +external testimony. If any one objected to the turn of her nose or the form of +her neck and chin, she had not the sense that she could presently show her +power of attainment in these branches of feminine perfection. +</p> + +<p> +There was not much time to fill up in this way before the sound of wheels, the +loud ring, and the opening doors assured her that she was not by any accident +to be disappointed. This slightly increased her inward flutter. In spite of her +self-confidence, she dreaded Klesmer as part of that unmanageable world which +was independent of her wishes—something vitriolic that would not cease to +burn because you smiled or frowned at it. Poor thing! she was at a higher +crisis of her woman’s fate than in her last experience with Grandcourt. +The questioning then, was whether she should take a particular man as a +husband. The inmost fold of her questioning now was whether she need take a +husband at all—whether she could not achieve substantially for herself +and know gratified ambition without bondage. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer made his most deferential bow in the wide doorway of the +antechamber—showing also the deference of the finest gray kerseymere +trousers and perfect gloves (the ‘masters of those who know’ are +happily altogether human). Gwendolen met him with unusual gravity, and holding +out her hand said, “It is most kind of you to come, Herr Klesmer. I hope +you have not thought me presumptuous.” +</p> + +<p> +“I took your wish as a command that did me honor,” said Klesmer, +with answering gravity. He was really putting by his own affairs in order to +give his utmost attention to what Gwendolen might have to say; but his +temperament was still in a state of excitation from the events of yesterday, +likely enough to give his expressions a more than usually biting edge. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen for once was under too great a strain of feeling to remember +formalities. She continued standing near the piano, and Klesmer took his stand +near the other end of it with his back to the light and his terribly omniscient +eyes upon her. No affectation was of use, and she began without delay. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to consult you, Herr Klesmer. We have lost all our fortune; we +have nothing. I must get my own bread, and I desire to provide for my mamma, so +as to save her from any hardship. The only way I can think of—and I +should like it better than anything—is to be an actress—to go on +the stage. But, of course, I should like to take a high position, and I +thought—if you thought I could”—here Gwendolen became a +little more nervous—“it would be better for me to be a +singer—to study singing also.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer put down his hat upon the piano, and folded his arms as if to +concentrate himself. +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” Gwendolen resumed, turning from pale to pink and back +again—“I know that my method of singing is very defective; but I +have been ill taught. I could be better taught; I could study. And you will +understand my wish:—to sing and act too, like Grisi, is a much higher +position. Naturally, I should wish to take as high rank as I can. And I can +rely on your judgment. I am sure you will tell me the truth.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen somehow had the conviction that now she made this serious appeal the +truth would be favorable. +</p> + +<p> +Still Klesmer did not speak. He drew off his gloves quickly, tossed them into +his hat, rested his hands on his hips, and walked to the other end of the room. +He was filled with compassion for this girl: he wanted to put a guard on his +speech. When he turned again, he looked at her with a mild frown of inquiry, +and said with gentle though quick utterance, “You have never seen +anything, I think, of artists and their lives?—I mean of musicians, +actors, artists of that kind?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no,” said Gwendolen, not perturbed by a reference to this +obvious fact in the history of a young lady hitherto well provided for. +</p> + +<p> +“You are—pardon me,” said Klesmer, again pausing near the +piano—“in coming to a conclusion on such a matter as this, +everything must be taken into consideration—you are perhaps +twenty?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am twenty-one,” said Gwendolen, a slight fear rising in her. +“Do you think I am too old?” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer pouted his under lip and shook his long fingers upward in a manner +totally enigmatic. +</p> + +<p> +“Many persons begin later than others,” said Gwendolen, betrayed by +her habitual consciousness of having valuable information to bestow. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer took no notice, but said with more studied gentleness than ever, +“You have probably not thought of an artistic career until now: you did +not entertain the notion, the longing—what shall I say?—you did not +wish yourself an actress, or anything of that sort, till the present +trouble?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly: but I was fond of acting. I have acted; you saw me, if you +remember—you saw me here in charades, and as Hermione,” said +Gwendolen, really fearing that Klesmer had forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” he answered quickly, “I remember—I remember +perfectly,” and again walked to the other end of the room. It was +difficult for him to refrain from this kind of movement when he was in any +argument either audible or silent. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt that she was being weighed. The delay was unpleasant. But she +did not yet conceive that the scale could dip on the wrong side, and it seemed +to her only graceful to say, “I shall be very much obliged to you for +taking the trouble to give me your advice, whatever it maybe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Harleth,” said Klesmer, turning toward her and speaking with +a slight increase of accent, “I will veil nothing from you in this +matter. I should reckon myself guilty if I put a false visage on +things—made them too black or too white. The gods have a curse for him +who willingly tells another the wrong road. And if I misled one who is so +young, so beautiful—who, I trust, will find her happiness along the right +road, I should regard myself as a—<i>Bösewicht</i>.” In the last +word Klesmer’s voice had dropped to a loud whisper. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt a sinking of heart under this unexpected solemnity, and kept a +sort of fascinated gaze on Klesmer’s face, as he went on. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a beautiful young lady—you have been brought up in +ease—you have done what you would—you have not said to yourself, +‘I must know this exactly,’ ‘I must understand this +exactly,’ ‘I must do this exactly,’”—in uttering +these three terrible <i>musts</i>, Klesmer lifted up three long fingers in +succession. “In sum, you have not been called upon to be anything but a +charming young lady, whom it is an impoliteness to find fault with.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused an instant; then resting his fingers on his hips again, and thrusting +out his powerful chin, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, with that preparation, you wish to try the life of an +artist; you wish to try a life of arduous, unceasing work, and—uncertain +praise. Your praise would have to be earned, like your bread; and both would +come slowly, scantily—what do I say?—they may hardly come at +all.” +</p> + +<p> +This tone of discouragement, which Klesmer had hoped might suffice without +anything more unpleasant, roused some resistance in Gwendolen. With a slight +turn of her head away from him, and an air of pique, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“I thought that you, being an artist, would consider the life one of the +most honorable and delightful. And if I can do nothing better?—I suppose +I can put up with the same risks as other people do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do nothing better?” said Klesmer, a little fired. “No, my +dear Miss Harleth, you could do nothing better—neither man nor woman +could do anything better—if you could do what was best or good of its +kind. I am not decrying the life of the true artist. I am exalting it. I say, +it is out of the reach of any but choice organizations—natures framed to +love perfection and to labor for it; ready, like all true lovers, to endure, to +wait, to say, I am not yet worthy, but she—Art, my mistress—is +worthy, and I will live to merit her. An honorable life? Yes. But the honor +comes from the inward vocation and the hard-won achievement: there is no honor +in donning the life as a livery.” +</p> + +<p> +Some excitement of yesterday had revived in Klesmer and hurried him into speech +a little aloof from his immediate friendly purpose. He had wished as delicately +as possible to rouse in Gwendolen a sense of her unfitness for a perilous, +difficult course; but it was his wont to be angry with the pretensions of +incompetence, and he was in danger of getting chafed. Conscious of this, he +paused suddenly. But Gwendolen’s chief impression was that he had not yet +denied her the power of doing what would be good of its kind. Klesmer’s +fervor seemed to be a sort of glamor such as he was prone to throw over things +in general; and what she desired to assure him of was that she was not afraid +of some preliminary hardships. The belief that to present herself in public on +the stage must produce an effect such as she had been used to feel certain of +in private life, was like a bit of her flesh—it was not to be peeled off +readily, but must come with blood and pain. She said, in a tone of some +insistence; +</p> + +<p> +“I am quite prepared to bear hardships at first. Of course no one can +become celebrated all at once. And it is not necessary that every one should be +first-rate—either actresses or singers. If you would be so kind as to +tell me what steps I should take, I shall have the courage to take them. I +don’t mind going up hill. It will be easier than the dead level of being +a governess. I will take any steps you recommend.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer was convinced now that he must speak plainly. +</p> + +<p> +“I will tell you the steps, not that I recommend, but that will be forced +upon you. It is all one, so far, what your goal will be—excellence, +celebrity, second, third rateness—it is all one. You must go to town +under the protection of your mother. You must put yourself under +training—musical, dramatic, theatrical:—whatever you desire to do +you have to learn”—here Gwendolen looked as if she were going to +speak, but Klesmer lifted up his hand and said, decisively, “I know. You +have exercised your talents—you recite—you sing—from the +drawing-room <i>Standpunkt</i>. My dear Fräulein, you must unlearn all that. +You have not yet conceived what excellence is: you must unlearn your mistaken +admirations. You must know what you have to strive for, and then you must +subdue your mind and body to unbroken discipline. Your mind, I say. For you +must not be thinking of celebrity: put that candle out of your eyes, and look +only at excellence. You would of course earn nothing—you could get no +engagement for a long while. You would need money for yourself and your family. +But that,” here Klesmer frowned and shook his fingers as if to dismiss a +triviality, “that could perhaps be found.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen turned pink and pale during this speech. Her pride had felt a +terrible knife-edge, and the last sentence only made the smart keener. She was +conscious of appearing moved, and tried to escape from her weakness by suddenly +walking to a seat and pointing out a chair to Klesmer. He did not take it, but +turned a little in order to face her and leaned against the piano. At that +moment she wished that she had not sent for him: this first experience of being +taken on some other ground than that of her social rank and her beauty was +becoming bitter to her. Klesmer, preoccupied with a serious purpose, went on +without change of tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, what sort of issue might be fairly expected from all this +self-denial? You would ask that. It is right that your eyes should be open to +it. I will tell you truthfully. This issue would be uncertain, and, most +probably, would not be worth much.” +</p> + +<p> +At these relentless words Klesmer put out his lip and looked through his +spectacles with the air of a monster impenetrable by beauty. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s eyes began to burn, but the dread of showing weakness urged +her to added self-control. She compelled herself to say, in a hard tone, +</p> + +<p> +“You think I want talent, or am too old to begin.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer made a sort of hum, and then descended on an emphatic “Yes! The +desire and the training should have begun seven years ago—or a good deal +earlier. A mountebank’s child who helps her father to earn shillings when +she is six years old—a child that inherits a singing throat from a long +line of choristers and learns to sing as it learns to talk, has a likelier +beginning. Any great achievement in acting or in music grows with the growth. +Whenever an artist has been able to say, ‘I came, I saw, I +conquered,’ it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius at first +is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. Singing and +acting, like the fine dexterity of the juggler with his cups and balls, require +a shaping of the organs toward a finer and finer certainty of effect. Your +muscles—your whole frame—must go like a watch, true, true to a +hair. That is the work of spring-time, before habits have been +determined.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not pretend to genius,” said Gwendolen, still feeling that +she might somehow do what Klesmer wanted to represent as impossible. “I +only suppose that I might have a little talent—enough to improve.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t deny that,” said Klesmer. “If you had been put +in the right track some years ago and had worked well you might now have made a +public singer, though I don’t think your voice would have counted for +much in public. For the stage your personal charms and intelligence might then +have told without the present drawback of inexperience—lack of +discipline—lack of instruction.” +</p> + +<p> +Certainly Klesmer seemed cruel, but his feeling was the reverse of cruel. Our +speech, even when we are most single-minded, can never take its line absolutely +from one impulse; but Klesmer’s was, as far as possible, directed by +compassion for poor Gwendolen’s ignorant eagerness to enter on a course +of which he saw all the miserable details with a definiteness which he could +not if he would have conveyed to her mind. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, however, was not convinced. Her self-opinion rallied, and since the +counselor whom she had called in gave a decision of such severe peremptoriness, +she was tempted to think that his judgment was not only fallible but biased. It +occurred to her that a simpler and wiser step for her to have taken would have +been to send a letter through the post to the manager of a London theatre, +asking him to make an appointment. She would make no further reference to her +singing; Klesmer, she saw, had set himself against her singing. But she felt +equal to arguing with him about her going on the stage, and she answered in a +resistant tone, +</p> + +<p> +“I understood, of course, that no one can be a finished actress at once. +It may be impossible to tell beforehand whether I should succeed; but that +seems to me a reason why I should try. I should have thought that I might have +taken an engagement at a theatre meanwhile, so as to earn money and study at +the same time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t be done, my dear Miss Harleth—I speak plainly—it +can’t be done. I must clear your mind of these notions which have no more +resemblance to reality than a pantomime. Ladies and gentlemen think that when +they have made their toilet and drawn on their gloves they are as presentable +on the stage as in a drawing-room. No manager thinks that. With all your grace +and charm, if you were to present yourself as an aspirant to the stage, a +manager would either require you to pay as an amateur for being allowed to +perform or he would tell you to go and be taught—trained to bear yourself +on the stage, as a horse, however beautiful, must be trained for the circus; to +say nothing of that study which would enable you to personate a character +consistently, and animate it with the natural language of face, gesture, and +tone. For you to get an engagement fit for you straight away is out of the +question.” +</p> + +<p> +“I really cannot understand that,” said Gwendolen, rather +haughtily—then, checking herself, she added in another +tone—“I shall be obliged to you if you will explain how it is that +such poor actresses get engaged. I have been to the theatre several times, and +I am sure there were actresses who seemed to me to act not at all well and who +were quite plain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, my dear Miss Harleth, that is the easy criticism of the buyer. We +who buy slippers toss away this pair and the other as clumsy; but there went an +apprenticeship to the making of them. Excuse me; you could not at present teach +one of those actresses; but there is certainly much that she could teach you. +For example, she can pitch her voice so as to be heard: ten to one you could +not do it till after many trials. Merely to stand and move on the stage is an +art—requires practice. It is understood that we are not now talking of a +<i>comparse</i> in a petty theatre who earns the wages of a needle-woman. That +is out of the question for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I must earn more than that,” said Gwendolen, with a +sense of wincing rather than of being refuted, “but I think I could soon +learn to do tolerably well all those little things you have mentioned. I am not +so very stupid. And even in Paris, I am sure, I saw two actresses playing +important ladies’ parts who were not at all ladies and quite ugly. I +suppose I have no particular talent, but I <i>must</i> think it is an +advantage, even on the stage, to be a lady and not a perfect fright.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, let us understand each other,” said Klesmer, with a flash of +new meaning. “I was speaking of what you would have to go through if you +aimed at becoming a real artist—if you took music and the drama as a +higher vocation in which you would strive after excellence. On that head, what +I have said stands fast. You would find—after your education in doing +things slackly for one-and-twenty years—great difficulties in study; you +would find mortifications in the treatment you would get when you presented +yourself on the footing of skill. You would be subjected to tests; people would +no longer feign not to see your blunders. You would at first only be accepted +on trial. You would have to bear what I may call a glaring insignificance: any +success must be won by the utmost patience. You would have to keep your place +in a crowd, and after all it is likely you would lose it and get out of sight. +If you determine to face these hardships and still try, you will have the +dignity of a high purpose, even though you may have chosen unfortunately. You +will have some merit, though you may win no prize. You have asked my judgment +on your chances of winning. I don’t pretend to speak absolutely; but +measuring probabilities, my judgment is:—you will hardly achieve more +than mediocrity.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer had delivered himself with emphatic rapidity, and now paused a moment. +Gwendolen was motionless, looking at her hands, which lay over each other on +her lap, till the deep-toned, long-drawn “<i>But</i>,” with which +he resumed, had a startling effect, and made her look at him again. +</p> + +<p> +“But—there are certainly other ideas, other dispositions with which +a young lady may take up an art that will bring her before the public. She may +rely on the unquestioned power of her beauty as a passport. She may desire to +exhibit herself to an admiration which dispenses with skill. This goes a +certain way on the stage: not in music: but on the stage, beauty is taken when +there is nothing more commanding to be had. Not without some drilling, however: +as I have said before, technicalities have in any case to be mastered. But +these excepted, we have here nothing to do with art. The woman who takes up +this career is not an artist: she is usually one who thinks of entering on a +luxurious life by a short and easy road—perhaps by marriage—that is +her most brilliant chance, and the rarest. Still, her career will not be +luxurious to begin with: she can hardly earn her own poor bread independently +at once, and the indignities she will be liable to are such as I will not speak +of.” +</p> + +<p> +“I desire to be independent,” said Gwendolen, deeply stung and +confusedly apprehending some scorn for herself in Klesmer’s words. +“That was my reason for asking whether I could not get an immediate +engagement. Of course I cannot know how things go on about theatres. But I +thought that I could have made myself independent. I have no money, and I will +not accept help from any one.” +</p> + +<p> +Her wounded pride could not rest without making this disclaimer. It was +intolerable to her that Klesmer should imagine her to have expected other help +from him than advice. +</p> + +<p> +“That is a hard saying for your friends,” said Klesmer, recovering +the gentleness of tone with which he had begun the conversation. “I have +given you pain. That was inevitable. I was bound to put the truth, the +unvarnished truth, before you. I have not said—I will not say—you +will do wrong to choose the hard, climbing path of an endeavoring artist. You +have to compare its difficulties with those of any less hazardous—any +more private course which opens itself to you. If you take that more courageous +resolve I will ask leave to shake hands with you on the strength of our +freemasonry, where we are all vowed to the service of art, and to serve her by +helping every fellow-servant.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was silent, again looking at her hands. She felt herself very far +away from taking the resolve that would enforce acceptance; and after waiting +an instant or two, Klesmer went on with deepened seriousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Where there is the duty of service there must be the duty of accepting +it. The question is not one of personal obligation. And in relation to +practical matters immediately affecting your future—excuse my permitting +myself to mention in confidence an affair of my own. I am expecting an event +which would make it easy for me to exert myself on your behalf in furthering +your opportunities of instruction and residence in London—under the care, +that is, of your family—without need for anxiety on your part. If you +resolve to take art as a bread-study, you need only undertake the study at +first; the bread will be found without trouble. The event I mean is my +marriage—in fact—you will receive this as a matter of +confidence—my marriage with Miss Arrowpoint, which will more than double +such right as I have to be trusted by you as a friend. Your friendship will +have greatly risen in value for <i>her</i> by your having adopted that generous +labor.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s face had begun to burn. That Klesmer was about to marry Miss +Arrowpoint caused her no surprise, and at another moment she would have amused +herself in quickly imagining the scenes that must have occurred at Quetcham. +But what engrossed her feeling, what filled her imagination now, was the +panorama of her own immediate future that Klesmer’s words seemed to have +unfolded. The suggestion of Miss Arrowpoint as a patroness was only another +detail added to its repulsiveness: Klesmer’s proposal to help her seemed +an additional irritation after the humiliating judgment he had passed on her +capabilities. His words had really bitten into her self-confidence and turned +it into the pain of a bleeding wound; and the idea of presenting herself before +other judges was now poisoned with the dread that they also might be harsh; +they also would not recognize the talent she was conscious of. But she +controlled herself, and rose from her seat before she made any answer. It +seemed natural that she should pause. She went to the piano and looked absently +at leaves of music, pinching up the corners. At last she turned toward Klesmer +and said, with almost her usual air of proud equality, which in this interview +had not been hitherto perceptible. +</p> + +<p> +“I congratulate you sincerely, Herr Klesmer. I think I never saw any one +so admirable as Miss Arrowpoint. And I have to thank you for every sort of +kindness this morning. But I can’t decide now. If I make the resolve you +have spoken of, I will use your permission—I will let you know. But I +fear the obstacles are too great. In any case, I am deeply obliged to you. It +was very bold of me to ask you to take this trouble.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer’s inward remark was, “She will never let me know.” +But with the most thorough respect in his manner, he said, “Command me at +any time. There is an address on this card which will always find me with +little delay.” +</p> + +<p> +When he had taken up his hat and was going to make his bow, Gwendolen’s +better self, conscious of an ingratitude which the clear-seeing Klesmer must +have penetrated, made a desperate effort to find its way above the stifling +layers of egoistic disappointment and irritation. Looking at him with a glance +of the old gayety, she put out her hand, and said with a smile, “If I +take the wrong road, it will not be because of your flattery.” +</p> + +<p> +“God forbid that you should take any road but one where you will find and +give happiness!” said Klesmer, fervently. Then, in foreign fashion, he +touched her fingers lightly with his lips, and in another minute she heard the +sound of his departing wheels getting more distant on the gravel. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen had never in her life felt so miserable. No sob came, no passion of +tears, to relieve her. Her eyes were burning; and the noonday only brought into +more dreary clearness the absence of interest from her life. All memories, all +objects, the pieces of music displayed, the open piano—the very +reflection of herself in the glass—seemed no better than the packed-up +shows of a departing fair. For the first time since her consciousness began, +she was having a vision of herself on the common level, and had lost the innate +sense that there were reasons why she should not be slighted, elbowed, +jostled—treated like a passenger with a third-class ticket, in spite of +private objections on her own part. She did not move about; the prospects +begotten by disappointment were too oppressively preoccupying; she threw +herself into the shadiest corner of a settee, and pressed her fingers over her +burning eyelids. Every word that Klesmer had said seemed to have been branded +into her memory, as most words are which bring with them a new set of +impressions and make an epoch for us. Only a few hours before, the dawning +smile of self-contentment rested on her lips as she vaguely imagined a future +suited to her wishes: it seemed but the affair of a year or so for her to +become the most approved Juliet of the time: or, if Klesmer encouraged her idea +of being a singer, to proceed by more gradual steps to her place in the opera, +while she won money and applause by occasional performances. Why not? At home, +at school, among acquaintances, she had been used to have her conscious +superiority admitted; and she had moved in a society where everything, from low +arithmetic to high art, is of the amateur kind, politely supposed to fall short +of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do more than +they like—otherwise they would probably give forth abler writings, and +show themselves more commanding artists than any the world is at present +obliged to put up with. The self-confident visions that had beguiled her were +not of a highly exceptional kind; and she had at least shown some rationality +in consulting the person who knew the most and had flattered her the least. In +asking Klesmer’s advice, however, she had rather been borne up by a +belief in his latent admiration than bent on knowing anything more unfavorable +that might have lain behind his slight objections to her singing; and the truth +she had asked for, with an expectation that it would be agreeable, had come +like a lacerating thong. +</p> + +<p> +“Too old—should have begun seven years ago—you will not, at +best, achieve more than mediocrity—hard, incessant work, uncertain +praise—bread coming slowly, scantily, perhaps not at +all—mortifications, people no longer feigning not to see your +blunders—glaring insignificance”—all these phrases rankled in +her; and even more galling was the hint that she could only be accepted on the +stage as a beauty who hoped to get a husband. The “indignities” +that she might be visited with had no very definite form for her, but the mere +association of anything called “indignity” with herself, roused a +resentful alarm. And along with the vaguer images which were raised by those +biting words, came the precise conception of disagreeables which her experience +enabled her to imagine. How could she take her mamma and the four sisters to +London, if it were not possible for her to earn money at once? And as for +submitting to be a <i>protégée</i>, and asking her mamma to submit with her to +the humiliation of being supported by Miss Arrowpoint—that was as bad as +being a governess; nay, worse; for suppose the end of all her study to be as +worthless as Klesmer clearly expected it to be, the sense of favors received +and never repaid, would embitter the miseries of disappointment. Klesmer +doubtless had magnificent ideas about helping artists; but how could he know +the feelings of ladies in such matters? It was all over: she had entertained a +mistaken hope; and there was an end of it. +</p> + +<p> +“An end of it!” said Gwendolen, aloud, starting from her seat as +she heard the steps and voices of her mamma and sisters coming in from church. +She hurried to the piano and began gathering together her pieces of music with +assumed diligence, while the expression on her pale face and in her burning +eyes was what would have suited a woman enduring a wrong which she might not +resent, but would probably revenge. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my darling,” said gentle Mrs. Davilow, entering, “I +see by the wheel-marks that Klesmer has been here. Have you been satisfied with +the interview?” She had some guesses as to its object, but felt timid +about implying them. +</p> + +<p> +“Satisfied, mamma? oh, yes,” said Gwendolen, in a high, hard tone, +for which she must be excused, because she dreaded a scene of emotion. If she +did not set herself resolutely to feign proud indifference, she felt that she +must fall into a passionate outburst of despair, which would cut her mamma more +deeply than all the rest of their calamities. +</p> + +<p> +“Your uncle and aunt were disappointed at not seeing you,” said +Mrs. Davilow, coming near the piano, and watching Gwendolen’s movements. +“I only said that you wanted rest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite right, mamma,” said Gwendolen, in the same tone, turning to +put away some music. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I not to know anything now, Gwendolen? Am I always to be in the +dark?” said Mrs. Davilow, too keenly sensitive to her daughter’s +manner and expression not to fear that something painful had occurred. +</p> + +<p> +“There is really nothing to tell now, mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a +still higher voice. “I had a mistaken idea about something I could do. +Herr Klesmer has undeceived me. That is all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t look and speak in that way, my dear child: I cannot bear +it,” said Mrs. Davilow, breaking down. She felt an undefinable terror. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen looked at her a moment in silence, biting her inner lip; then she +went up to her, and putting her hands on her mamma’s shoulders, said, +with a drop in her voice to the lowest undertone, “Mamma, don’t +speak to me now. It is useless to cry and waste our strength over what +can’t be altered. You will live at Sawyer’s Cottage, and I am going +to the bishop’s daughters. There is no more to be said. Things cannot be +altered, and who cares? It makes no difference to any one else what we do. We +must try not to care ourselves. We must not give way. I dread giving way. Help +me to be quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow was like a frightened child under her daughter’s face and +voice; her tears were arrested and she went away in silence. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0024"></a> +CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“I question things but do not find<br/> +One that will answer to my mind:<br/> +And all the world appears unkind.”<br/> + —W<small>ORDSWORTH</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was glad that she had got through her interview with Klesmer before +meeting her uncle and aunt. She had made up her mind now that there were only +disagreeables before her, and she felt able to maintain a dogged calm in the +face of any humiliation that might be proposed. +</p> + +<p> +The meeting did not happen until the Monday, when Gwendolen went to the rectory +with her mamma. They had called at Sawyer’s Cottage by the way, and had +seen every cranny of the narrow rooms in a midday light, unsoftened by blinds +and curtains; for the furnishing to be done by gleanings from the rectory had +not yet begun. +</p> + +<p> +“How <i>shall</i> you endure it, mamma?” said Gwendolen, as they +walked away. She had not opened her lips while they were looking round at the +bare walls and floors, and the little garden with the cabbage-stalks, and the +yew arbor all dust and cobwebs within. “You and the four girls all in +that closet of a room, with the green and yellow paper pressing on your eyes? +And without me?” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be some comfort that you have not to bear it too, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“If it were not that I must get some money, I would rather be there than +go to be a governess.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t set yourself against it beforehand, Gwendolen. If you go to +the palace you will have every luxury about you. And you know how much you have +always cared for that. You will not find it so hard as going up and down those +steep narrow stairs, and hearing the crockery rattle through the house, and the +dear girls talking.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is like a bad dream,” said Gwendolen, impetuously. “I +cannot believe that my uncle will let you go to such a place. He ought to have +taken some other steps.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be unreasonable, dear child. What could he have done?” +</p> + +<p> +“That was for him to find out. It seems to me a very extraordinary world +if people in our position must sink in this way all at once,” said +Gwendolen, the other worlds with which she was conversant being constructed +with a sense of fitness that arranged her own future agreeably. +</p> + +<p> +It was her temper that framed her sentences under this entirely new pressure of +evils: she could have spoken more suitably on the vicissitudes in other +people’s lives, though it was never her aspiration to express herself +virtuously so much as cleverly—a point to be remembered in extenuation of +her words, which were usually worse than she was. +</p> + +<p> +And, notwithstanding the keen sense of her own bruises, she was capable of some +compunction when her uncle and aunt received her with a more affectionate +kindness than they had ever shown before. She could not but be struck by the +dignified cheerfulness with which they talked of the necessary economies in +their way of living, and in the education of the boys. Mr. Gascoigne’s +worth of character, a little obscured by worldly opportunities—as the +poetic beauty of women is obscured by the demands of fashionable +dressing—showed itself to great advantage under this sudden reduction of +fortune. Prompt and methodical, he had set himself not only to put down his +carriage, but to reconsider his worn suits of clothes, to leave off meat for +breakfast, to do without periodicals, to get Edwy from school and arrange hours +of study for all the boys under himself, and to order the whole establishment +on the sparest footing possible. For all healthy people economy has its +pleasures; and the rector’s spirit had spread through the household. Mrs. +Gascoigne and Anna, who always made papa their model, really did not miss +anything they cared about for themselves, and in all sincerity felt that the +saddest part of the family losses was the change for Mrs. Davilow and her +children. +</p> + +<p> +Anna for the first time could merge her resentment on behalf of Rex in her +sympathy with Gwendolen; and Mrs. Gascoigne was disposed to hope that trouble +would have a salutary effect on her niece, without thinking it her duty to add +any bitters by way of increasing the salutariness. They had both been busy +devising how to get blinds and curtains for the cottage out of the household +stores; but with delicate feeling they left these matters in the background, +and talked at first of Gwendolen’s journey, and the comfort it was to her +mamma to have her at home again. +</p> + +<p> +In fact there was nothing for Gwendolen to take as a justification for +extending her discontent with events to the persons immediately around her, and +she felt shaken into a more alert attention, as if by a call to drill that +everybody else was obeying, when her uncle began in a voice of firm kindness to +talk to her of the efforts he had been making to get her a situation which +would offer her as many advantages as possible. Mr. Gascoigne had not forgotten +Grandcourt, but the possibility of further advances from that quarter was +something too vague for a man of his good sense to be determined by it: +uncertainties of that kind must not now slacken his action in doing the best he +could for his niece under actual conditions. +</p> + +<p> +“I felt that there was no time to be lost, Gwendolen; for a position in a +good family where you will have some consideration is not to be had at a +moment’s notice. And however long we waited we could hardly find one +where you would be better off than at Bishop Mompert’s. I am known to +both him and Mrs. Mompert, and that of course is an advantage to you. Our +correspondence has gone on favorably; but I cannot be surprised that Mrs. +Mompert wishes to see you before making an absolute engagement. She thinks of +arranging for you to meet her at Wanchester when she is on her way to town. I +dare say you will feel the interview rather trying for you, my dear; but you +will have a little time to prepare your mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know <i>why</i> she wants to see me, uncle?” said +Gwendolen, whose mind had quickly gone over various reasons that an imaginary +Mrs. Mompert with three daughters might be supposed to entertain, reasons all +of a disagreeable kind to the person presenting herself for inspection. +</p> + +<p> +The rector smiled. “Don’t be alarmed, my dear. She would like to +have a more precise idea of you than my report can give. And a mother is +naturally scrupulous about a companion for her daughters. I have told her you +are very young. But she herself exercises a close supervision over her +daughters’ education, and that makes her less anxious as to age. She is a +woman of taste and also of strict principle, and objects to having a French +person in the house. I feel sure that she will think your manners and +accomplishments as good as she is likely to find; and over the religious and +moral tone of the education she, and indeed the bishop himself, will +preside.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen dared not answer, but the repression of her decided dislike to the +whole prospect sent an unusually deep flush over her face and neck, subsiding +as quickly as it came. Anna, full of tender fears, put her little hand into her +cousin’s, and Mr. Gascoigne was too kind a man not to conceive something +of the trial which this sudden change must be for a girl like Gwendolen. Bent +on giving a cheerful view of things, he went on, in an easy tone of remark, not +as if answering supposed objections, +</p> + +<p> +“I think so highly of the position, that I should have been tempted to +try and get it for Anna, if she had been at all likely to meet Mrs. +Mompert’s wants. It is really a home, with a continuance of education in +the highest sense: ‘governess’ is a misnomer. The bishop’s +views are of a more decidedly Low Church color than my own—he is a close +friend of Lord Grampian’s; but, though privately strict, he is not by any +means narrow in public matters. Indeed, he has created as little dislike in his +diocese as any bishop on the bench. He has always remained friendly to me, +though before his promotion, when he was an incumbent of this diocese, we had a +little controversy about the Bible Society.” +</p> + +<p> +The rector’s words were too pregnant with satisfactory meaning to himself +for him to imagine the effect they produced in the mind of his niece. +“Continuance of education”—“bishop’s +views”—“privately strict”—“Bible +Society,”—it was as if he had introduced a few snakes at large for +the instruction of ladies who regarded them as all alike furnished with +poison-bags, and, biting or stinging, according to convenience. To Gwendolen, +already shrinking from the prospect open to her, such phrases came like the +growing heat of a burning glass—not at all as the links of persuasive +reflection which they formed for the good uncle. She began, desperately, to +seek an alternative. +</p> + +<p> +“There was another situation, I think, mamma spoke of?” she said, +with determined self-mastery. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said the rector, in rather a deprecatory tone; +“but that is in a school. I should not have the same satisfaction in your +taking that. It would be much harder work, you are aware, and not so good in +any other respect. Besides, you have not an equal chance of getting it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh dear no,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, “it would be much harder +for you, my dear—it would be much less appropriate. You might not have a +bedroom to yourself.” And Gwendolen’s memories of school suggested +other particulars which forced her to admit to herself that this alternative +would be no relief. She turned to her uncle again and said, apparently in +acceptance of his ideas, +</p> + +<p> +“When is Mrs. Mompert likely to send for me?” +</p> + +<p> +“That is rather uncertain, but she has promised not to entertain any +other proposal till she has seen you. She has entered with much feeling into +your position. It will be within the next fortnight, probably. But I must be +off now. I am going to let part of my glebe uncommonly well.” +</p> + +<p> +The rector ended very cheerfully, leaving the room with the satisfactory +conviction that Gwendolen was going to adapt herself to circumstances like a +girl of good sense. Having spoken appropriately, he naturally supposed that the +effects would be appropriate; being accustomed, as a household and parish +authority, to be asked to “speak to” refractory persons, with the +understanding that the measure was morally coercive. +</p> + +<p> +“What a stay Henry is to us all!” said Mrs. Gascoigne, when her +husband had left the room. +</p> + +<p> +“He is indeed,” said Mrs. Davilow, cordially. “I think +cheerfulness is a fortune in itself. I wish I had it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Rex is just like him,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. “I must tell +you the comfort we have had in a letter from him. I must read you a little +bit,” she added, taking the letter from her pocket, while Anna looked +rather frightened—she did not know why, except that it had been a rule +with her not to mention Rex before Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +The proud mother ran her eyes over the letter, seeking for sentences to read +aloud. But apparently she had found it sown with what might seem to be closer +allusions than she desired to the recent past, for she looked up, folding the +letter, and saying, +</p> + +<p> +“However, he tells us that our trouble has made a man of him; he sees a +reason for any amount of work: he means to get a fellowship, to take pupils, to +set one of his brothers going, to be everything that is most remarkable. The +letter is full of fun—just like him. He says, ‘Tell mother she has +put out an advertisement for a jolly good hard-working son, in time to hinder +me from taking ship; and I offer myself for the place.’ The letter came +on Friday. I never saw my husband so much moved by anything since Rex was born. +It seemed a gain to balance our loss.” +</p> + +<p> +This letter, in fact, was what had helped both Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna to show +Gwendolen an unmixed kindliness; and she herself felt very amiably about it, +smiling at Anna, and pinching her chin, as much as to say, “Nothing is +wrong with you now, is it?” She had no gratuitously ill-natured feeling, +or egoistic pleasure in making men miserable. She only had an intense objection +to their making her miserable. +</p> + +<p> +But when the talk turned on furniture for the cottage Gwendolen was not roused +to show even a languid interest. She thought that she had done as much as could +be expected of her this morning, and indeed felt at an heroic pitch in keeping +to herself the struggle that was going on within her. The recoil of her mind +from the only definite prospect allowed her, was stronger than even she had +imagined beforehand. The idea of presenting herself before Mrs. Mompert in the +first instance, to be approved or disapproved, came as pressure on an already +painful bruise; even as a governess, it appeared she was to be tested and was +liable to rejection. After she had done herself the violence to accept the +bishop and his wife, they were still to consider whether they would accept her; +it was at her peril that she was to look, speak, or be silent. And even when +she had entered on her dismal task of self-constraint in the society of three +girls whom she was bound incessantly to edify, the same process of inspection +was to go on: there was always to be Mrs. Mompert’s supervision; always +something or other would be expected of her to which she had not the slightest +inclination; and perhaps the bishop would examine her on serious topics. +Gwendolen, lately used to the social successes of a handsome girl, whose lively +venturesomeness of talk has the effect of wit, and who six weeks before would +have pitied the dullness of the bishop rather than have been embarrassed by +him, saw the life before her as an entrance into a penitentiary. Wild thoughts +of running away to be an actress, in spite of Klesmer, came to her with the +lure of freedom; but his words still hung heavily on her soul; they had alarmed +her pride and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived herself getting +amongst vulgar people who would treat her with rude familiarity—odious +men, whose grins and smirks would not be seen through the strong grating of +polite society. Gwendolen’s daring was not in the least that of the +adventuress; the demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow; and when she +had dreamed that she might be the heroine of the gaming-table, it was with the +understanding that no one should treat her with the less consideration, or +presume to look at her with irony as Deronda had done. To be protected and +petted, and to have her susceptibilities consulted in every detail, had gone +along with her food and clothing as matters of course in her life: even without +any such warning as Klesmer’s she could not have thought it an attractive +freedom to be thrown in solitary dependence on the doubtful civility of +strangers. The endurance of the episcopal penitentiary was less repulsive than +that; though here too she would certainly never be petted or have her +susceptibilities consulted. Her rebellion against this hard necessity which had +come just to her of all people in the world—to her whom all circumstances +had concurred in preparing for something quite different—was exaggerated +instead of diminished as one hour followed another, with the imagination of +what she might have expected in her lot and what it was actually to be. The +family troubles, she thought, were easier for every one than for her—even +for poor dear mamma, because she had always used herself to not enjoying. As to +hoping that if she went to the Momperts’ and was patient a little while, +things might get better—it would be stupid to entertain hopes for herself +after all that had happened: her talents, it appeared, would never be +recognized as anything remarkable, and there was not a single direction in +which probability seemed to flatter her wishes. Some beautiful girls who, like +her, had read romances where even plain governesses are centres of attraction +and are sought in marriage, might have solaced themselves a little by +transporting such pictures into their own future; but even if Gwendolen’s +experience had led her to dwell on love-making and marriage as her elysium, her +heart was too much oppressed by what was near to her, in both the past and the +future, for her to project her anticipations very far off. She had a +world-nausea upon her, and saw no reason all through her life why she should +wish to live. No religious view of trouble helped her: her troubles had in her +opinion all been caused by other people’s disagreeable or wicked conduct; +and there was really nothing pleasant to be counted on in the world: that was +her feeling; everything else she had heard said about trouble was mere +phrase-making not attractive enough for her to have caught it up and repeated +it. As to the sweetness of labor and fulfilled claims; the interest of inward +and outward activity; the impersonal delights of life as a perpetual discovery; +the dues of courage, fortitude, industry, which it is mere baseness not to pay +toward the common burden; the supreme worth of the teacher’s +vocation;—these, even if they had been eloquently preached to her, could +have been no more than faintly apprehended doctrines: the fact which wrought +upon her was her invariable observation that for a lady to become a +governess—to “take a situation”—was to descend in life +and to be treated at best with a compassionate patronage. And poor Gwendolen +had never dissociated happiness from personal pre-eminence and <i>éclat</i>. +That where these threatened to forsake her, she should take life to be hardly +worth the having, cannot make her so unlike the rest of us, men or women, that +we should cast her out of our compassion; our moments of temptation to a mean +opinion of things in general being usually dependent on some susceptibility +about ourselves and some dullness to subjects which every one else would +consider more important. Surely a young creature is pitiable who has the +labyrinth of life before her and no clue—to whom distrust in herself and +her good fortune has come as a sudden shock, like a rent across the path that +she was treading carelessly. +</p> + +<p> +In spite of her healthy frame, her irreconcilable repugnance affected her even +physically; she felt a sort of numbness and could set about nothing; the least +urgency, even that she should take her meals, was an irritation to her; the +speech of others on any subject seemed unreasonable, because it did not include +her feeling and was an ignorant claim on her. It was not in her nature to busy +herself with the fancies of suicide to which disappointed young people are +prone: what occupied and exasperated her was the sense that there was nothing +for her but to live in a way she hated. She avoided going to the rectory again: +it was too intolerable to have to look and talk as if she were compliant; and +she could not exert herself to show interest about the furniture of that +horrible cottage. Miss Merry was staying on purpose to help, and such people as +Jocosa liked that sort of thing. Her mother had to make excuses for her not +appearing, even when Anna came to see her. For that calm which Gwendolen had +promised herself to maintain had changed into sick motivelessness: she thought, +“I suppose I shall begin to pretend by-and-by, but why should I do it +now?” +</p> + +<p> +Her mother watched her with silent distress; and, lapsing into the habit of +indulgent tenderness, she began to think what she imagined that Gwendolen was +thinking, and to wish that everything should give way to the possibility of +making her darling less miserable. +</p> + +<p> +One day when she was in the black and yellow bedroom and her mother was +lingering there under the pretext of considering and arranging +Gwendolen’s articles of dress, she suddenly roused herself to fetch the +casket which contained the ornaments. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma,” she began, glancing over the upper layer, “I had +forgotten these things. Why didn’t you remind me of them? Do see about +getting them sold. You will not mind about parting with them. You gave them all +to me long ago.” +</p> + +<p> +She lifted the upper tray and looked below. +</p> + +<p> +“If we can do without them, darling, I would rather keep them for +you,” said Mrs. Davilow, seating herself beside Gwendolen with a feeling +of relief that she was beginning to talk about something. The usual relation +between them had become reversed. It was now the mother who tried to cheer the +daughter. “Why, how came you to put that pocket handkerchief in +here?” +</p> + +<p> +It was the handkerchief with the corner torn off which Gwendolen had thrust in +with the turquoise necklace. +</p> + +<p> +“It happened to be with the necklace—I was in a hurry,” said +Gwendolen, taking the handkerchief away and putting it in her pocket. +“Don’t sell the necklace, mamma,” she added, a new feeling +having come over her about that rescue of it which had formerly been so +offensive. +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear, no; it was made out of your dear father’s chain. And I +should prefer not selling the other things. None of them are of any great +value. All my best ornaments were taken from me long ago.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow colored. She usually avoided any reference to such facts about +Gwendolen’s step-father as that he had carried off his wife’s +jewelry and disposed of it. After a moment’s pause she went on, +</p> + +<p> +“And these things have not been reckoned on for any expenses. Carry them +with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“That would be quite useless, mamma,” said Gwendolen, coldly. +“Governesses don’t wear ornaments. You had better get me a gray +frieze livery and a straw poke, such as my aunt’s charity children +wear.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear, no; don’t take that view of it. I feel sure the Momperts +will like you the better for being graceful and elegant.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not at all sure what the Momperts will like me to be. It is enough +that I am expected to be what they like,” said Gwendolen bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +“If there is anything you would object to less—anything that could +be done—instead of your going to the bishop’s, do say so, +Gwendolen. Tell me what is in your heart. I will try for anything you +wish,” said the mother, beseechingly. “Don’t keep things away +from me. Let us bear them together.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mamma, there is nothing to tell. I can’t do anything better. I +must think myself fortunate if they will have me. I shall get some money for +you. That is the only thing I have to think of. I shall not spend any money +this year: you will have all the eighty pounds. I don’t know how far that +will go in housekeeping; but you need not stitch your poor fingers to the bone, +and stare away all the sight that the tears have left in your dear eyes.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen did not give any caresses with her words as she had been used to do. +She did not even look at her mother, but was looking at the turquoise necklace +as she turned it over her fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“Bless you for your tenderness, my good darling!” said Mrs. +Davilow, with tears in her eyes. “Don’t despair because there are +clouds now. You are so young. There may be great happiness in store for you +yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see any reason for expecting it, mamma,” said +Gwendolen, in a hard tone; and Mrs. Davilow was silent, thinking as she had +often thought before—“What did happen between her and Mr. +Grandcourt?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>will</i> keep this necklace, mamma,” said Gwendolen, laying +it apart and then closing the casket. “But do get the other things sold, +even if they will not bring much. Ask my uncle what to do with them. I shall +certainly not use them again. I am going to take the veil. I wonder if all the +poor wretches who have ever taken it felt as I do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t exaggerate evils, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can any one know that I exaggerate, when I am speaking of my own +feeling? I did not say what any one else felt.” +</p> + +<p> +She took out the torn handkerchief from her pocket again, and wrapped it +deliberately round the necklace. Mrs. Davilow observed the action with some +surprise, but the tone of her last words discouraged her from asking any +question. +</p> + +<p> +The “feeling” Gwendolen spoke of with an air of tragedy was not to +be explained by the mere fact that she was going to be a governess: she was +possessed by a spirit of general disappointment. It was not simply that she had +a distaste for what she was called on to do: the distaste spread itself over +the world outside her penitentiary, since she saw nothing very pleasant in it +that seemed attainable by her even if she were free. Naturally her grievances +did not seem to her smaller than some of her male contemporaries held theirs to +be when they felt a profession too narrow for their powers, and had an <i>à +priori</i> conviction that it was not worth while to put forth their latent +abilities. Because her education had been less expensive than theirs, it did +not follow that she should have wider emotions or a keener intellectual vision. +Her griefs were feminine; but to her as a woman they were not the less hard to +bear, and she felt an equal right to the Promethean tone. +</p> + +<p> +But the movement of mind which led her to keep the necklace, to fold it up in +the handkerchief, and rise to put it in her <i>nécessaire</i>, where she had +first placed it when it had been returned to her, was more peculiar, and what +would be called less reasonable. It came from that streak of superstition in +her which attached itself both to her confidence and her terror—a +superstition which lingers in an intense personality even in spite of theory +and science; any dread or hope for self being stronger than all reasons for or +against it. Why she should suddenly determine not to part with the necklace was +not much clearer to her than why she should sometimes have been frightened to +find herself in the fields alone: she had a confused state of emotion about +Deronda—was it wounded pride and resentment, or a certain awe and +exceptional trust? It was something vague and yet mastering, which impelled her +to this action about the necklace. There is a great deal of unmapped country +within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our +gusts and storms. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0025"></a> +CHAPTER XXV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +How trace the why and wherefore in a mind reduced to the barrenness of a +fastidious egoism, in which all direct desires are dulled, and have dwindled +from motives into a vacillating expectation of motives: a mind made up of +moods, where a fitful impulse springs here and there conspicuously rank amid +the general weediness? ’Tis a condition apt to befall a life too much at +large, unmoulded by the pressure of obligation. <i>Nam deteriores omnes sumus +licentiæ</i>, or, as a more familiar tongue might deliver it, <i>“As you +like” is a bad finger-post.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Potentates make known their intentions and affect the funds at a small expense +of words. So when Grandcourt, after learning that Gwendolen had left Leubronn, +incidentally pronounced that resort of fashion a beastly hole, worse than +Baden, the remark was conclusive to Mr. Lush that his patron intended +straightway to return to Diplow. The execution was sure to be slower than the +intention, and, in fact, Grandcourt did loiter through the next day without +giving any distinct orders about departure—perhaps because he discerned +that Lush was expecting them: he lingered over his toilet, and certainly came +down with a faded aspect of perfect distinction which made fresh complexions +and hands with the blood in them, seem signs of raw vulgarity; he lingered on +the terrace, in the gambling-rooms, in the reading-room, occupying himself in +being indifferent to everybody and everything around him. When he met Lady +Mallinger, however, he took some trouble—raised his hat, paused, and +proved that he listened to her recommendation of the waters by replying, +“Yes; I heard somebody say how providential it was that there always +happened to be springs at gambling places.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that was a joke,” said innocent Lady Mallinger, misled by +Grandcourt’s languid seriousness, “in imitation of the old one +about the towns and the rivers, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, perhaps,” said Grandcourt, without change of expression. Lady +Mallinger thought this worth telling to Sir Hugo, who said, “Oh, my dear, +he is not a fool. You must not suppose that he can’t see a joke. He can +play his cards as well as most of us.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has never seemed to me a very sensible man,” said Lady +Mallinger, in excuse of herself. She had a secret objection to meeting +Grandcourt, who was little else to her than a large living sign of what she +felt to be her failure as a wife—the not having presented Sir Hugo with a +son. Her constant reflection was that her husband might fairly regret his +choice, and if he had not been very good might have treated her with some +roughness in consequence, gentlemen naturally disliking to be disappointed. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, too, had a recognition from Grandcourt, for which he was not grateful, +though he took care to return it with perfect civility. No reasoning as to the +foundations of custom could do away with the early-rooted feeling that his +birth had been attended with injury for which his father was to blame; and +seeing that but for this injury Grandcourt’s prospects might have been +his, he was proudly resolute not to behave in any way that might be interpreted +into irritation on that score. He saw a very easy descent into mean unreasoning +rancor and triumph in others’ frustration; and being determined not to go +down that ugly pit, he turned his back on it, clinging to the kindlier +affections within him as a possession. Pride certainly helped him +well—the pride of not recognizing a disadvantage for one’s self +which vulgar minds are disposed to exaggerate, such as the shabby equipage of +poverty: he would not have a man like Grandcourt suppose himself envied by him. +But there is no guarding against interpretation. Grandcourt did believe that +Deronda, poor devil, who he had no doubt was his cousin by the father’s +side, inwardly winced under their mutual position; wherefore the presence of +that less lucky person was more agreeable to him than it would otherwise have +been. An imaginary envy, the idea that others feel their comparative +deficiency, is the ordinary <i>cortège</i> of egoism; and his pet dogs were not +the only beings that Grandcourt liked to feel his power over in making them +jealous. Hence he was civil enough to exchange several words with Deronda on +the terrace about the hunting round Diplow, and even said, “You had +better come over for a run or two when the season begins.” +</p> + +<p> +Lush, not displeased with delay, amused himself very well, partly in gossiping +with Sir Hugo and in answering his questions about Grandcourt’s affairs +so far as they might affect his willingness to part with his interest in +Diplow. Also about Grandcourt’s personal entanglements, the baronet knew +enough already for Lush to feel released from silence on a sunny autumn day, +when there was nothing more agreeable to do in lounging promenades than to +speak freely of a tyrannous patron behind his back. Sir Hugo willingly inclined +his ear to a little good-humored scandal, which he was fond of calling +<i>traits de mœurs</i>; but he was strict in keeping such communications from +hearers who might take them too seriously. Whatever knowledge he had of his +nephew’s secrets, he had never spoken of it to Deronda, who considered +Grandcourt a pale-blooded mortal, but was far from wishing to hear how the red +corpuscles had been washed out of him. It was Lush’s policy and +inclination to gratify everybody when he had no reason to the contrary; and the +baronet always treated him well, as one of those easy-handled personages who, +frequenting the society of gentlemen, without being exactly gentlemen +themselves, can be the more serviceable, like the second-best articles of our +wardrobe, which we use with a comfortable freedom from anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you will let me know the turn of events,” said Sir Hugo, +“if this marriage seems likely to come off after all, or if anything else +happens to make the want of money pressing. My plan would be much better for +him than burdening Ryelands.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s true,” said Lush, “only it must not be urged on +him—just placed in his way that the scent may tickle him. Grandcourt is +not a man to be always led by what makes for his own interest; especially if +you let him see that it makes for your interest too. I’m attached to him, +of course. I’ve given up everything else for the sake of keeping by him, +and it has lasted a good fifteen years now. He would not easily get any one +else to fill my place. He’s a peculiar character, is Henleigh Grandcourt, +and it has been growing on him of late years. However, I’m of a constant +disposition, and I’ve been a sort of guardian to him since he was twenty; +an uncommonly fascinating fellow he was then, to be sure—and could be +now, if he liked. I’m attached to him; and it would be a good deal worse +for him if he missed me at his elbow.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo did not think it needful to express his sympathy or even assent, and +perhaps Lush himself did not expect this sketch of his motives to be taken as +exact. But how can a man avoid himself as a subject in conversation? And he +must make some sort of decent toilet in words, as in cloth and linen. +Lush’s listener was not severe: a member of Parliament could allow for +the necessities of verbal toilet; and the dialogue went on without any change +of mutual estimate. +</p> + +<p> +However, Lush’s easy prospect of indefinite procrastination was cut off +the next morning by Grandcourt’s saluting him with the question, +</p> + +<p> +“Are you making all the arrangements for our starting by the Paris +train?” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know you meant to start,” said Lush, not exactly +taken by surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“You might have known,” said Grandcourt, looking at the burned +length of his cigar, and speaking in that lowered tone which was usual with him +when he meant to express disgust and be peremptory. “Just see to +everything, will you? and mind no brute gets into the same carriage with us. +And leave my P. P. C. at the Mallingers’.” +</p> + +<p> +In consequence they were at Paris the next day; but here Lush was gratified by +the proposal or command that he should go straight on to Diplow and see that +everything was right, while Grandcourt and the valet remained behind; and it +was not until several days later that Lush received the telegram ordering the +carriage to the Wanchester station. +</p> + +<p> +He had used the interim actively, not only in carrying out Grandcourt’s +orders about the stud and household, but in learning all he could of Gwendolen, +and how things were going on at Offendene. What was the probable effect that +the news of the family misfortunes would have on Grandcourt’s fitful +obstinacy he felt to be quite incalculable. So far as the girl’s poverty +might be an argument that she would accept an offer from him now in spite of +any previous coyness, it might remove that bitter objection to risk a repulse +which Lush divined to be one of Grandcourt’s deterring motives; on the +other hand, the certainty of acceptance was just “the sort of +thing” to make him lapse hither and thither with no more apparent will +than a moth. Lush had had his patron under close observation for many years, +and knew him perhaps better than he knew any other subject; but to know +Grandcourt was to doubt what he would do in any particular case. It might +happen that he would behave with an apparent magnanimity, like the hero of a +modern French drama, whose sudden start into moral splendor after much lying +and meanness, leaves you little confidence as to any part of his career that +may follow the fall of the curtain. Indeed, what attitude would have been more +honorable for a final scene than that of declining to seek an heiress for her +money, and determining to marry the attractive girl who had none? But Lush had +some general certainties about Grandcourt, and one was that of all inward +movements those of generosity were least likely to occur in him. Of what use, +however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head +hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends +him hither and thither in a network of possible paths? Thus Lush was much at +fault as to the probable issue between Grandcourt and Gwendolen, when what he +desired was a perfect confidence that they would never be married. He would +have consented willingly that Grandcourt should marry an heiress, or that he +should marry Mrs. Glasher: in the one match there would have been the immediate +abundance that prospective heirship could not supply, in the other there would +have been the security of the wife’s gratitude, for Lush had always been +Mrs. Glasher’s friend; and that the future Mrs. Grandcourt should not be +socially received could not affect his private comfort. He would not have +minded, either, that there should be no marriage in question at all; but he +felt himself justified in doing his utmost to hinder a marriage with a girl who +was likely to bring nothing but trouble to her husband—not to speak of +annoyance if not ultimate injury to her husband’s old companion, whose +future Mr. Lush earnestly wished to make as easy as possible, considering that +he had well deserved such compensation for leading a dog’s life, though +that of a dog who enjoyed many tastes undisturbed, and who profited by a large +establishment. He wished for himself what he felt to be good, and was not +conscious of wishing harm to any one else; unless perhaps it were just now a +little harm to the inconvenient and impertinent Gwendolen. But the +easiest-humored of luxury and music, the toad-eater the least liable to nausea, +must be expected to have his susceptibilities. And Mr. Lush was accustomed to +be treated by the world in general as an apt, agreeable fellow: he had not made +up his mind to be insulted by more than one person. +</p> + +<p> +With this imperfect preparation of a war policy, Lush was awaiting +Grandcourt’s arrival, doing little more than wondering how the campaign +would begin. The first day Grandcourt was much occupied with the stables, and +amongst other things he ordered a groom to put a side-saddle on Criterion and +let him review the horse’s paces. This marked indication of purpose set +Lush on considering over again whether he should incur the ticklish +consequences of speaking first, while he was still sure that no compromising +step had been taken; and he rose the next morning almost resolved that if +Grandcourt seemed in as good a humor as yesterday and entered at all into talk, +he would let drop the interesting facts about Gwendolen and her family, just to +see how they would work, and to get some guidance. But Grandcourt did not enter +into talk, and in answer to a question even about his own convenience, no fish +could have maintained a more unwinking silence. After he had read his letters +he gave various orders to be executed or transmitted by Lush, and then thrust +his shoulder toward that useful person, who accordingly rose to leave the room. +But before he was out of the door Grandcourt turned his head slightly and gave +a broken, languid “Oh.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” said Lush, who, it must have been observed, did not +take his dusty puddings with a respectful air. +</p> + +<p> +“Shut the door, will you? I can’t speak into the corridor.” +</p> + +<p> +Lush closed the door, came forward, and chose to sit down. +</p> + +<p> +After a little pause Grandcourt said, “Is Miss Harleth at +Offendene?” He was quite certain that Lush had made it his business to +inquire about her, and he had some pleasure in thinking that Lush did not want +<i>him</i> to inquire. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I hardly know,” said Lush, carelessly. “The +family’s utterly done up. They and the Gascoignes too have lost all their +money. It’s owing to some rascally banking business. The poor mother +hasn’t a <i>sou</i>, it seems. She and the girls have to huddle +themselves into a little cottage like a laborer’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t lie to me, if you please,” said Grandcourt, in his +lowest audible tone. “It’s not amusing, and it answers no other +purpose.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” said Lush, more nettled than was common with +him—the prospect before him being more than commonly disturbing. +</p> + +<p> +“Just tell me the truth, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no invention of mine. I have heard the story from +several—Bazley, Brackenshaw’s man, for one. He is getting a new +tenant for Offendene.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean that. Is Miss Harleth there, or is she not?” +said Grandcourt, in his former tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my soul, I can’t tell,” said Lush, rather sulkily. +“She may have left yesterday. I heard she had taken a situation as +governess; she may be gone to it for what I know. But if you wanted to see her +no doubt the mother would send for her back.” This sneer slipped off his +tongue without strict intention. +</p> + +<p> +“Send Hutchins to inquire whether she will be there to-morrow.” Lush +did not move. Like many persons who have thought over beforehand what they +shall say in given cases, he was impelled by an unexpected irritation to say +some of those prearranged things before the cases were given. Grandcourt, in +fact, was likely to get into a scrape so tremendous that it was impossible to +let him take the first step toward it without remonstrance. Lush retained +enough caution to use a tone of rational friendliness, still he felt his own +value to his patron, and was prepared to be daring. +</p> + +<p> +“It would be as well for you to remember, Grandcourt, that you are coming +under closer fire now. There can be none of the ordinary flirting done, which +may mean everything or nothing. You must make up your mind whether you wish to +be accepted; and more than that, how you would like being refused. Either one +or the other. You can’t be philandering after her again for six +weeks.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt said nothing, but pressed the newspaper down on his knees and began +to light another cigar. Lush took this as a sign that he was willing to listen, +and was the more bent on using the opportunity; he wanted, if possible, to find +out which would be the more potent cause of hesitation—probable +acceptance or probable refusal. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything has a more serious look now than it had before. There is her +family to be provided for. You could not let your wife’s mother live in +beggary. It will be a confoundedly hampering affair. Marriage will pin you down +in a way you haven’t been used to; and in point of money you have not too +much elbow-room. And after all, what will you get by it? You are master over +your estates, present or future, as far as choosing your heir goes; it’s +a pity to go on encumbering them for a mere whim, which you may repent of in a +twelvemonth. I should be sorry to see you making a mess of your life in that +way. If there were anything solid to be gained by the marriage, that would be a +different affair.” +</p> + +<p> +Lush’s tone had gradually become more and more unctuous in its +friendliness of remonstrance, and he was almost in danger of forgetting that he +was merely gambling in argument. When he left off, Grandcourt took his cigar +out of his mouth, and looking steadily at the moist end while he adjusted the +leaf with his delicate finger-tips, said, +</p> + +<p> +“I knew before that you had an objection to my marrying Miss +Harleth.” Here he made a little pause before he continued. “But I +never considered that a reason against it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never supposed you did,” answered Lush, not unctuously but +dryly. “It was not <i>that</i> I urged as a reason. I should have thought +it might have been a reason against it, after all your experience, that you +would be acting like the hero of a ballad, and making yourself absurd—and +all for what? You know you couldn’t make up your mind before. It’s +impossible you can care much about her. And as for the tricks she is likely to +play, you may judge of that from what you heard at Leubronn. However, what I +wished to point out to you was, that there can be no shilly-shally now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” said Grandcourt, looking round at Lush and fixing him +with narrow eyes; “I don’t intend that there should be. I dare say +it’s disagreeable to you. But if you suppose I care a damn for that you +are most stupendously mistaken.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well,” said Lush, rising with his hands in his pockets, and +feeling some latent venom still within him, “if you have made up your +mind!—only there’s another aspect of the affair. I have been +speaking on the supposition that it was absolutely certain she would accept +you, and that destitution would have no choice. But I am not so sure that the +young lady is to be counted on. She is kittle cattle to shoe, I think. And she +had her reasons for running away before.” Lush had moved a step or two +till he stood nearly in front of Grandcourt, though at some distance from him. +He did not feel himself much restrained by consequences, being aware that the +only strong hold he had on his present position was his serviceableness; and +even after a quarrel the want of him was likely sooner or later to recur. He +foresaw that Gwendolen would cause him to be ousted for a time, and his temper +at this moment urged him to risk a quarrel. +</p> + +<p> +“She had her reasons,” he repeated more significantly. +</p> + +<p> +“I had come to that conclusion before,” said Grandcourt, with +contemptuous irony. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I hardly think you know what her reasons were.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do, apparently,” said Grandcourt, not betraying by so much as +an eyelash that he cared for the reasons. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and you had better know too, that you may judge of the influence +you have over her if she swallows her reasons and accepts you. For my own part +I would take odds against it. She saw Lydia in Cardell Chase and heard the +whole story.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt made no immediate answer, and only went on smoking. He was so long +before he spoke that Lush moved about and looked out of the windows, unwilling +to go away without seeing some effect of his daring move. He had expected that +Grandcourt would tax him with having contrived the affair, since Mrs. Glasher +was then living at Gadsmere, a hundred miles off, and he was prepared to admit +the fact: what he cared about was that Grandcourt should be staggered by the +sense that his intended advances must be made to a girl who had that knowledge +in her mind and had been scared by it. At length Grandcourt, seeing Lush turn +toward him, looked at him again and said, contemptuously, “What +follows?” +</p> + +<p> +Here certainly was a “mate” in answer to Lush’s +“check”; and though his exasperation with Grandcourt was perhaps +stronger than it had ever been before, it would have been idiocy to act as if +any further move could be useful. He gave a slight shrug with one shoulder, and +was going to walk away, when Grandcourt, turning on his seat toward the table, +said, as quietly as if nothing had occurred, “Oblige me by pushing that +pen and paper here, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +No thunderous, bullying superior could have exercised the imperious spell that +Grandcourt did. Why, instead of being obeyed, he had never been told to go to a +warmer place, was perhaps a mystery to those who found themselves obeying him. +The pen and paper were pushed to him, and as he took them he said, “Just +wait for this letter.” +</p> + +<p> +He scrawled with ease, and the brief note was quickly addressed. “Let +Hutchins go with it at once, will you?” said Grandcourt, pushing the +letter away from him. +</p> + +<p> +As Lush had expected, it was addressed to Miss Harleth, Offendene. When his +irritation had cooled down he was glad there had been no explosive quarrel; but +he felt sure that there was a notch made against him, and that somehow or other +he was intended to pay. It was also clear to him that the immediate effect of +his revelation had been to harden Grandcourt’s previous determination. +But as to the particular movements that made this process in his baffling mind, +Lush could only toss up his chin in despair of a theory. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0026"></a> +CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +He brings white asses laden with the freight<br/> +Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold and balm,<br/> +To bribe my will: I’ll bid them chase him forth,<br/> +Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise<br/> +On my secure resolve.<br/> + Ay, ’tis secure:<br/> +And therefore let him come to spread his freight.<br/> +For firmness hath its appetite and craves<br/> +The stronger lure, more strongly to resist;<br/> +Would know the touch of gold to fling it off;<br/> +Scent wine to feel its lip the soberer;<br/> +Behold soft byssus, ivory, and plumes<br/> +To say, “They’re fair, but I will none of them,”<br/> +And flout Enticement in the very face. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne one day came to Offendene with what he felt to be the +satisfactory news that Mrs. Mompert had fixed Tuesday in the following week for +her interview with Gwendolen at Wanchester. He said nothing of his having +incidentally heard that Mr. Grandcourt had returned to Diplow; knowing no more +than she did that Leubronn had been the goal of her admirer’s journeying, +and feeling that it would be unkind uselessly to revive the memory of a +brilliant prospect under the present reverses. In his secret soul he thought of +his niece’s unintelligible caprice with regret, but he vindicated her to +himself by considering that Grandcourt had been the first to behave oddly, in +suddenly walking away when there had the best opportunity for crowning his +marked attentions. The rector’s practical judgment told him that his +chief duty to his niece now was to encourage her resolutely to face the change +in her lot, since there was no manifest promise of any event that would avert +it. +</p> + +<p> +“You will find an interest in varied experience, my dear, and I have no +doubt you will be a more valuable woman for having sustained such a part as you +are called to.” +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot pretend to believe that I shall like it,” said Gwendolen, +for the first time showing her uncle some petulance. “But I am quite +aware that I am obliged to bear it.” +</p> + +<p> +She remembered having submitted to his admonition on a different occasion when +she was expected to like a very different prospect. +</p> + +<p> +“And your good sense will teach you to behave suitably under it,” +said Mr. Gascoigne, with a shade more gravity. “I feel sure that Mrs. +Mompert will be pleased with you. You will know how to conduct yourself to a +woman who holds in all senses the relation of a superior to you. This trouble +has come on you young, but that makes it in some respects easier, and there is +a benefit in all chastisement if we adjust our minds to it.” +</p> + +<p> +This was precisely what Gwendolen was unable to do; and after her uncle was +gone, the bitter tears, which had rarely come during the late trouble, rose and +fell slowly as she sat alone. Her heart denied that the trouble was easier +because she was young. When was she to have any happiness, if it did not come +while she was young? Not that her visions of possible happiness for herself +were as unmixed with necessary evil as they used to be—not that she could +still imagine herself plucking the fruits of life without suspicion of their +core. But this general disenchantment with the world—nay, with herself, +since it appeared that she was not made for easy pre-eminence—only +intensified her sense of forlornness; it was a visibly sterile distance +enclosing the dreary path at her feet, in which she had no courage to tread. +She was in that first crisis of passionate youthful rebellion against what is +not fitly called pain, but rather the absence of joy—that first rage of +disappointment in life’s morning, which we whom the years have subdued +are apt to remember but dimly as part of our own experience, and so to be +intolerant of its self-enclosed unreasonableness and impiety. What passion +seems more absurd, when we have got outside it and looked at calamity as a +collective risk, than this amazed anguish that I and not Thou, He or She, +should be just the smitten one? Yet perhaps some who have afterward made +themselves a willing fence before the breast of another, and have carried their +own heart-wound in heroic silence—some who have made their deeds great, +nevertheless began with this angry amazement at their own smart, and on the +mere denial of their fantastic desires raged as if under the sting of wasps +which reduced the universe for them to an unjust infliction of pain. This was +nearly poor Gwendolen’s condition. What though such a reverse as hers had +often happened to other girls? The one point she had been all her life learning +to care for was that it had happened to <i>her</i>: it was what <i>she</i> felt +under Klesmer’s demonstration that she was not remarkable enough to +command fortune by force of will and merit; it was what <i>she</i> would feel +under the rigors of Mrs. Mompert’s constant expectation, under the dull +demand that she should be cheerful with three Miss Momperts, under the +necessity of showing herself entirely submissive, and keeping her thoughts to +herself. To be a queen disthroned is not so hard as some other down-stepping: +imagine one who had been made to believe in his own divinity finding all homage +withdrawn, and himself unable to perform a miracle that would recall the homage +and restore his own confidence. Something akin to this illusion and this +helplessness had befallen the poor spoiled child, with the lovely lips and eyes +and the majestic figure—which seemed now to have no magic in them. +</p> + +<p> +She rose from the low ottoman where she had been sitting purposeless, and +walked up and down the drawing-room, resting her elbow on one palm while she +leaned down her cheek on the other, and a slow tear fell. She thought, “I +have always, ever since I was little, felt that mamma was not a happy woman; +and now I dare say I shall be more unhappy than she has been.” +</p> + +<p> +Her mind dwelt for a few moments on the picture of herself losing her youth and +ceasing to enjoy—not minding whether she did this or that: but such +picturing inevitably brought back the image of her mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor mamma! it will be still worse for her now. I can get a little money +for her—that is all I shall care about now.” And then with an +entirely new movement of her imagination, she saw her mother getting quite old +and white, and herself no longer young but faded, and their two faces meeting +still with memory and love, and she knowing what was in her mother’s +mind—“Poor Gwen too is sad and faded now”—and then, for +the first time, she sobbed, not in anger, but with a sort of tender misery. +</p> + +<p> +Her face was toward the door, and she saw her mother enter. She barely saw +that; for her eyes were large with tears, and she pressed her handkerchief +against them hurriedly. Before she took it away she felt her mother’s +arms round her, and this sensation, which seemed a prolongation of her inward +vision, overcame her will to be reticent; she sobbed anew in spite of herself, +as they pressed their cheeks together. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow had brought something in her hand which had already caused her an +agitating anxiety, and she dared not speak until her darling had become calmer. +But Gwendolen, with whom weeping had always been a painful manifestation to be +resisted, if possible, again pressed her handkerchief against her eyes, and, +with a deep breath, drew her head backward and looked at her mother, who was +pale and tremulous. +</p> + +<p> +“It was nothing, mamma,” said Gwendolen, thinking that her mother +had been moved in this way simply by finding her in distress. “It is all +over now.” +</p> + +<p> +But Mrs. Davilow had withdrawn her arms, and Gwendolen perceived a letter in +her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that letter?—worse news still?” she asked, with a +touch of bitterness. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you will think it, dear,” said Mrs. +Davilow, keeping the letter in her hand. “You will hardly guess where it +comes from.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t ask me to guess anything,” said Gwendolen, rather +impatiently, as if a bruise were being pressed. +</p> + +<p> +“It is addressed to you, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen gave the slightest perceptible toss of the head. +</p> + +<p> +“It comes from Diplow,” said Mrs. Davilow, giving her the letter. +</p> + +<p> +She knew Grandcourt’s indistinct handwriting, and her mother was not +surprised to see her blush deeply; but watching her as she read, and wondering +much what was the purport of the letter, she saw the color die out. +Gwendolen’s lips even were pale as she turned the open note toward her +mother. The words were few and formal: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Mr. Grandcourt presents his compliments to Miss Harleth, and begs to know +whether he may be permitted to call at Offendene to-morrow after two and to see +her alone. Mr. Grandcourt has just returned from Leubronn, where he had hoped +to find Miss Harleth. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow read, and then looked at her daughter inquiringly, leaving the +note in her hand. Gwendolen let it fall to the floor, and turned away. +</p> + +<p> +“It must be answered, darling,” said Mrs. Davilow, timidly. +“The man waits.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen sank on the settee, clasped her hands, and looked straight before +her, not at her mother. She had the expression of one who had been startled by +a sound and was listening to know what would come of it. The sudden change of +the situation was bewildering. A few minutes before she was looking along an +inescapable path of repulsive monotony, with hopeless inward rebellion against +the imperious lot which left her no choice: and lo, now, a moment of choice was +come. Yet—was it triumph she felt most or terror? Impossible for +Gwendolen not to feel some triumph in a tribute to her power at a time when she +was first tasting the bitterness of insignificance: again she seemed to be +getting a sort of empire over her own life. But how to use it? Here came the +terror. Quick, quick, like pictures in a book beaten open with a sense of +hurry, came back vividly, yet in fragments, all that she had gone through in +relation to Grandcourt—the allurements, the vacillations, the resolve to +accede, the final repulsion; the incisive face of that dark-eyed lady with the +lovely boy: her own pledge (was it a pledge not to marry him?)—the new +disbelief in the worth of men and things for which that scene of disclosure had +become a symbol. That unalterable experience made a vision at which in the +first agitated moment, before tempering reflections could suggest themselves, +her native terror shrank. +</p> + +<p> +Where was the good of choice coming again? What did she wish? Anything +different? No! And yet in the dark seed-growths of consciousness a new wish was +forming itself—“I wish I had never known it!” Something, +anything she wished for that would have saved her from the dread to let +Grandcourt come. +</p> + +<p> +It was no long while—yet it seemed long to Mrs. Davilow, before she +thought it well to say, gently, +</p> + +<p> +“It will be necessary for you to write, dear. Or shall I write an answer +for you—which you will dictate?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, mamma,” said Gwendolen, drawing a deep breath. “But +please lay me out the pen and paper.” +</p> + +<p> +That was gaining time. Was she to decline Grandcourt’s visit—close +the shutters—not even look out on what would happen?—though with +the assurance that she should remain just where she was? The young activity +within her made a warm current through her terror and stirred toward something +that would be an event—toward an opportunity in which she could look and +speak with the former effectiveness. The interest of the morrow was no longer +at a deadlock. +</p> + +<p> +“There is really no reason on earth why you should be so alarmed at the +man’s waiting a few minutes, mamma,” said Gwendolen, remonstrantly, +as Mrs. Davilow, having prepared the writing materials, looked toward her +expectantly. “Servants expect nothing else than to wait. It is not to be +supposed that I must write on the instant.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, in the tone of one corrected, +turning to sit down and take up a bit of work that lay at hand; “he can +wait another quarter of an hour, if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +It was very simple speech and action on her part, but it was what might have +been subtly calculated. Gwendolen felt a contradictory desire to be hastened: +hurry would save her from deliberate choice. +</p> + +<p> +“I did not mean him to wait long enough for that needlework to be +finished,” she said, lifting her hands to stroke the backward curves of +her hair, while she rose from her seat and stood still. +</p> + +<p> +“But if you don’t feel able to decide?” said Mrs. Davilow, +sympathizingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>must</i> decide,” said Gwendolen, walking to the +writing-table and seating herself. All the while there was a busy under-current +in her, like the thought of a man who keeps up a dialogue while he is +considering how he can slip away. Why should she not let him come? It bound her +to nothing. He had been to Leubronn after her: of course he meant a direct +unmistakable renewal of the suit which before had been only implied. What then? +She could reject him. Why was she to deny herself the freedom of doing +this—which she would like to do? +</p> + +<p> +“If Mr. Grandcourt has only just returned from Leubronn,” said Mrs. +Davilow, observing that Gwendolen leaned back in her chair after taking the pen +in her hand—“I wonder whether he has heard of our +misfortunes?” +</p> + +<p> +“That could make no difference to a man in his position,” said +Gwendolen, rather contemptuously, +</p> + +<p> +“It would to some men,” said Mrs. Davilow. “They would not +like to take a wife from a family in a state of beggary almost, as we are. Here +we are at Offendene with a great shell over us, as usual. But just imagine his +finding us at Sawyer’s Cottage. Most men are afraid of being bored or +taxed by a wife’s family. If Mr. Grandcourt did know, I think it a strong +proof of his attachment to you.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow spoke with unusual emphasis: it was the first time she had +ventured to say anything about Grandcourt which would necessarily seem intended +as an argument in favor of him, her habitual impression being that such +arguments would certainly be useless and might be worse. The effect of her +words now was stronger than she could imagine: they raised a new set of +possibilities in Gwendolen’s mind—a vision of what Grandcourt might +do for her mother if she, Gwendolen, did—what she was not going to do. +She was so moved by a new rush of ideas that, like one conscious of being +urgently called away, she felt that the immediate task must be hastened: the +letter must be written, else it might be endlessly deferred. After all, she +acted in a hurry, as she had wished to do. To act in a hurry was to have a +reason for keeping away from an absolute decision, and to leave open as many +issues as possible. +</p> + +<p> +She wrote: “Miss Harleth presents her compliments to Mr. Grandcourt. She +will be at home after two o’clock to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Before addressing the note she said, “Pray ring the bell, mamma, if there +is any one to answer it.” She really did not know who did the work of the +house. +</p> + +<p> +It was not till after the letter had been taken away and Gwendolen had risen +again, stretching out one arm and then resting it on her head, with a low moan +which had a sound of relief in it, that Mrs. Davilow ventured to ask, +</p> + +<p> +“What did you say, Gwen?” +</p> + +<p> +“I said that I should be at home,” answered Gwendolen, rather +loftily. Then after a pause, “You must not expect, because Mr. Grandcourt +is coming, that anything is going to happen, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t allow myself to expect anything, dear. I desire you to +follow your own feeling. You have never told me what that was.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the use of telling?” said Gwendolen, hearing a reproach in +that true statement. “When I have anything pleasant to tell, you may be +sure I will tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But Mr. Grandcourt will consider that you have already accepted him, in +allowing him to come. His note tells you plainly enough that he is coming to +make you an offer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well; and I wish to have the pleasure of refusing him.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow looked up in wonderment, but Gwendolen implied her wish not to be +questioned further by saying, +</p> + +<p> +“Put down that detestable needlework, and let us walk in the avenue. I +am stifled.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0027"></a> +CHAPTER XXVII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Desire has trimmed the sails, and Circumstance<br/> +Brings but the breeze to fill them. +</p> + +<p> +While Grandcourt on his beautiful black Yarico, the groom behind him on +Criterion, was taking the pleasant ride from Diplow to Offendene, Gwendolen was +seated before the mirror while her mother gathered up the lengthy mass of +light-brown hair which she had been carefully brushing. +</p> + +<p> +“Only gather it up easily and make a coil, mamma,” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me bring you some earrings, Gwen,” said Mrs. Davilow, when +the hair was adjusted, and they were both looking at the reflection in the +glass. It was impossible for them not to notice that the eyes looked brighter +than they had done of late, that there seemed to be a shadow lifted from the +face, leaving all the lines once more in their placid youthfulness. The mother +drew some inference that made her voice rather cheerful. “You do want +your earrings?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, mamma; I shall not wear any ornaments, and I shall put on my black +silk. Black is the only wear when one is going to refuse an offer,” said +Gwendolen, with one of her old smiles at her mother, while she rose to throw +off her dressing-gown. +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose the offer is not made after all,” said Mrs. Davilow, not +without a sly intention. +</p> + +<p> +“Then that will be because I refuse it beforehand,” said Gwendolen. +“It comes to the same thing.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a proud little toss of the head as she said this; and when she walked +down-stairs in her long black robes, there was just that firm poise of head and +elasticity of form which had lately been missing, as in a parched plant. Her +mother thought, “She is quite herself again. It must be pleasure in his +coming. Can her mind be really made up against him?” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen would have been rather angry if that thought had been uttered; +perhaps all the more because through the last twenty hours, with a brief +interruption of sleep, she had been so occupied with perpetually alternating +images and arguments for and against the possibility of her marrying +Grandcourt, that the conclusion which she had determined on beforehand ceased +to have any hold on her consciousness: the alternate dip of counterbalancing +thoughts begotten of counterbalancing desires had brought her into a state in +which no conclusion could look fixed to her. She would have expressed her +resolve as before; but it was a form out of which the blood had been +sucked—no more a part of quivering life than the “God’s will +be done” of one who is eagerly watching chances. She did not mean to +accept Grandcourt; from the first moment of receiving his letter she had meant +to refuse him; still, that could not but prompt her to look the unwelcome +reasons full in the face until she had a little less awe of them, could not +hinder her imagination from filling out her knowledge in various ways, some of +which seemed to change the aspect of what she knew. By dint of looking at a +dubious object with a constructive imagination, one can give it twenty +different shapes. Her indistinct grounds of hesitation before the interview at +the Whispering Stones, at present counted for nothing; they were all merged in +the final repulsion. If it had not been for that day in Cardell Chase, she said +to herself now, there would have been no obstacle to her marrying Grandcourt. +On that day and after it, she had not reasoned and balanced; she had acted with +a force of impulse against which all questioning was no more than a voice +against a torrent. The impulse had come—not only from her maidenly pride +and jealousy, not only from the shock of another woman’s calamity thrust +close on her vision, but—from her dread of wrong-doing, which was vague, +it was true, and aloof from the daily details of her life, but not the less +strong. Whatever was accepted as consistent with being a lady she had no +scruple about; but from the dim region of what was called disgraceful, wrong, +guilty, she shrunk with mingled pride and terror; and even apart from shame, +her feeling would have made her place any deliberate injury of another in the +region of guilt. +</p> + +<p> +But now—did she know exactly what was the state of the case with regard +to Mrs. Glasher and her children? She had given a sort of promise—had +said, “I will not interfere with your wishes.” But would another +woman who married Grandcourt be in fact the decisive obstacle to her wishes, or +be doing her and her boy any real injury? Might it not be just as well, nay +better, that Grandcourt should marry? For what could not a woman do when she +was married, if she knew how to assert herself? Here all was constructive +imagination. Gwendolen had about as accurate a conception of +marriage—that is to say, of the mutual influences, demands, duties of man +and woman in the state of matrimony—as she had of magnetic currents and +the law of storms. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma managed badly,” was her way of summing up what she had seen +of her mother’s experience: she herself would manage quite differently. +And the trials of matrimony were the last theme into which Mrs. Davilow could +choose to enter fully with this daughter. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder what mamma and my uncle would say if they knew about Mrs. +Glasher!” thought Gwendolen in her inward debating; not that she could +imagine herself telling them, even if she had not felt bound to silence. +“I wonder what anybody would say; or what they would say to Mr. +Grandcourt’s marrying some one else and having other children!” To +consider what “anybody” would say, was to be released from the +difficulty of judging where everything was obscure to her when feeling had +ceased to be decisive. She had only to collect her memories, which proved to +her that “anybody” regarded the illegitimate children as more +rightfully to be looked shy on and deprived of social advantages than +illegitimate fathers. The verdict of “anybody” seemed to be that +she had no reason to concern herself greatly on behalf of Mrs. Glasher and her +children. +</p> + +<p> +But there was another way in which they had caused her concern. What others +might think could not do away with a feeling which in the first instance would +hardly be too strongly described as indignation and loathing that she should +have been expected to unite herself with an outworn life, full of backward +secrets which must have been more keenly felt than any association with +<i>her</i>. True, the question of love on her own part had occupied her +scarcely at all in relation to Grandcourt. The desirability of marriage for her +had always seemed due to other feeling than love; and to be enamored was the +part of the man, on whom the advances depended. Gwendolen had found no +objection to Grandcourt’s way of being enamored before she had had that +glimpse of his past, which she resented as if it had been a deliberate offense +against her. His advances to <i>her</i> were deliberate, and she felt a +retrospective disgust for them. Perhaps other men’s lives were of the +same kind—full of secrets which made the ignorant suppositions of the +women they wanted to marry a farce at which they were laughing in their +sleeves. +</p> + +<p> +These feelings of disgust and indignation had sunk deep; and though other +troublous experience in the last weeks had dulled them from passion into +remembrance, it was chiefly their reverberating activity which kept her firm to +the understanding with herself, that she was not going to accept Grandcourt. +She had never meant to form a new determination; she had only been considering +what might be thought or said. If anything could have induced her to change, it +would have been the prospect of making all things easy for “poor +mamma:” that, she admitted, was a temptation. But no! she was going to +refuse him. Meanwhile, the thought that he was coming to be refused was +inspiriting: she had the white reins in her hands again; there was a new +current in her frame, reviving her from the beaten-down consciousness in which +she had been left by the interview with Klesmer. She was not now going to crave +an opinion of her capabilities; she was going to exercise her power. +</p> + +<p> +Was this what made her heart palpitate annoyingly when she heard the +horse’s footsteps on the gravel?—when Miss Merry, who opened the +door to Grandcourt, came to tell her that he was in the drawing-room? The hours +of preparation and the triumph of the situation were apparently of no use: she +might as well have seen Grandcourt coming suddenly on her in the midst of her +despondency. While walking into the drawing-room, she had to concentrate all +her energy in that self-control, which made her appear gravely +gracious—as she gave her hand to him, and answered his hope that she was +quite well in a voice as low and languid as his own. A moment afterward, when +they were both of them seated on two of the wreath-painted +chairs—Gwendolen upright with downcast eyelids, Grandcourt about two +yards distant, leaning one arm over the back of his chair and looking at her, +while he held his hat in his left hand—any one seeing them as a picture +would have concluded that they were in some stage of love-making suspense. And +certainly the love-making had begun: she already felt herself being wooed by +this silent man seated at an agreeable distance, with the subtlest atmosphere +of attar of roses and an attention bent wholly on her. And he also considered +himself to be wooing: he was not a man to suppose that his presence carried no +consequences; and he was exactly the man to feel the utmost piquancy in a girl +whom he had not found quite calculable. +</p> + +<p> +“I was disappointed not to find you at Leubronn,” he began, his +usual broken drawl having just a shade of amorous languor in it. “The +place was intolerable without you. A mere kennel of a place. Don’t you +think so?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t judge what it would be without myself,” said +Gwendolen, turning her eyes on him, with some recovered sense of mischief. +“<i>With</i> myself I like it well enough to have stayed longer, if I +could. But I was obliged to come home on account of family troubles.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was very cruel of you to go to Leubronn,” said Grandcourt, +taking no notice of the troubles, on which Gwendolen—she hardly knew +why—wished that there should be a clear understanding at once. “You +must have known that it would spoil everything: you knew you were the heart and +soul of everything that went on. Are you quite reckless about me?” +</p> + +<p> +It would be impossible to say “yes” in a tone that would be taken +seriously; equally impossible to say “no;” but what else could she +say? In her difficulty, she turned down her eyelids again and blushed over face +and neck. Grandcourt saw her in a new phase, and believed that she was showing +her inclination. But he was determined that she should show it more decidedly. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps there is some deeper interest? Some attraction—some +engagement—which it would have been only fair to make me aware of? Is +there any man who stands between us?” +</p> + +<p> +Inwardly the answer framed itself. “No; but there is a woman.” Yet +how could she utter this? Even if she had not promised that woman to be silent, +it would have been impossible for her to enter on the subject with Grandcourt. +But how could she arrest his wooing by beginning to make a formal +speech—“I perceive your intention—it is most flattering, +etc.”? A fish honestly invited to come and be eaten has a clear course in +declining, but how if it finds itself swimming against a net? And apart from +the network, would she have dared at once to say anything decisive? Gwendolen +had not time to be clear on that point. As it was, she felt compelled to +silence, and after a pause, Grandcourt said, +</p> + +<p> +“Am I to understand that some one else is preferred?” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, now impatient of her own embarrassment, determined to rush at the +difficulty and free herself. She raised her eyes again and said with something +of her former clearness and defiance, “No”—wishing him to +understand, “What then? I may not be ready to take <i>you</i>.” +There was nothing that Grandcourt could not understand which he perceived +likely to affect his <i>amour propre</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“The last thing I would do, is to importune you. I should not hope to win +you by making myself a bore. If there were no hope for me, I would ask you to +tell me so at once, that I might just ride away to—no matter +where.” +</p> + +<p> +Almost to her own astonishment, Gwendolen felt a sudden alarm at the image of +Grandcourt finally riding away. What would be left her then? Nothing but the +former dreariness. She liked him to be there. She snatched at the subject that +would defer any decisive answer. +</p> + +<p> +“I fear you are not aware of what has happened to us. I have lately had +to think so much of my mamma’s troubles, that other subjects have been +quite thrown into the background. She has lost all her fortune, and we are +going to leave this place. I must ask you to excuse my seeming +preoccupied.” +</p> + +<p> +In eluding a direct appeal Gwendolen recovered some of her self-possession. She +spoke with dignity and looked straight at Grandcourt, whose long, narrow, +impenetrable eyes met hers, and mysteriously arrested them: mysteriously; for +the subtly-varied drama between man and woman is often such as can hardly be +rendered in words put together like dominoes, according to obvious fixed marks. +The word of all work, Love, will no more express the myriad modes of mutual +attraction, than the word Thought can inform you what is passing through your +neighbor’s mind. It would be hard to tell on which +side—Gwendolen’s or Grandcourt’s—the influence was more +mixed. At that moment his strongest wish was to be completely master of this +creature—this piquant combination of maidenliness and mischief: that she +knew things which had made her start away from him, spurred him to triumph over +that repugnance; and he was believing that he should triumph. And she—ah, +piteous equality in the need to dominate!—she was overcome like the +thirsty one who is drawn toward the seeming water in the desert, overcome by +the suffused sense that here in this man’s homage to her lay the rescue +from helpless subjection to an oppressive lot. +</p> + +<p> +All the while they were looking at each other; and Grandcourt said, slowly and +languidly, as if it were of no importance, other things having been settled, +</p> + +<p> +“You will tell me now, I hope, that Mrs. Davilow’s loss of fortune +will not trouble you further. You will trust me to prevent it from weighing +upon her. You will give me the claim to provide against that.” +</p> + +<p> +The little pauses and refined drawlings with which this speech was uttered, +gave time for Gwendolen to go through the dream of a life. As the words +penetrated her, they had the effect of a draught of wine, which suddenly makes +all things easier, desirable things not so wrong, and people in general less +disagreeable. She had a momentary phantasmal love for this man who chose his +words so well, and who was a mere incarnation of delicate homage. Repugnance, +dread, scruples—these were dim as remembered pains, while she was already +tasting relief under the immediate pain of hopelessness. She imagined herself +already springing to her mother, and being playful again. Yet when Grandcourt +had ceased to speak, there was an instant in which she was conscious of being +at the turning of the ways. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very generous,” she said, not moving her eyes, and +speaking with a gentle intonation. +</p> + +<p> +“You accept what will make such things a matter of course?” said +Grandcourt, without any new eagerness. “You consent to become my +wife?” +</p> + +<p> +This time Gwendolen remained quite pale. Something made her rise from her seat +in spite of herself and walk to a little distance. Then she turned and with her +hands folded before her stood in silence. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt immediately rose too, resting his hat on the chair, but still +keeping hold of it. The evident hesitation of this destitute girl to take his +splendid offer stung him into a keenness of interest such as he had not known +for years. None the less because he attributed her hesitation entirely to her +knowledge about Mrs. Glasher. In that attitude of preparation, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Do you command me to go?” No familiar spirit could have suggested +to him more effective words. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Gwendolen. She could not let him go: that negative was a +clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, only drifted toward the +tremendous decision—but drifting depends on something besides the +currents when the sails have been set beforehand. +</p> + +<p> +“You accept my devotion?” said Grandcourt, holding his hat by his +side and looking straight into her eyes, without other movement. Their eyes +meeting in that way seemed to allow any length of pause: but wait as long as +she would, how could she contradict herself? What had she detained him for? He +had shut out any explanation. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” came as gravely from Gwendolen’s lips as if she had +been answering to her name in a court of justice. He received it gravely, and +they still looked at each other in the same attitude. Was there ever such a way +before of accepting the bliss-giving “Yes”? Grandcourt liked better +to be at that distance from her, and to feel under a ceremony imposed by an +indefinable prohibition that breathed from Gwendolen’s bearing. +</p> + +<p> +But he did at length lay down his hat and advance to take her hand, just +pressing his lips upon it and letting it go again. She thought his behavior +perfect, and gained a sense of freedom which made her almost ready to be +mischievous. Her “Yes” entailed so little at this moment that there +was nothing to screen the reversal of her gloomy prospects; her vision was +filled by her own release from the Momperts, and her mother’s release +from Sawyer’s Cottage. With a happy curl of the lips, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“Will you not see mamma? I will fetch her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us wait a little,” said Grandcourt, in his favorite attitude, +having his left forefinger and thumb in his waist-coat pocket, and with his +right hand caressing his whisker, while he stood near Gwendolen and looked at +her—not unlike a gentleman who has a felicitous introduction at an +evening party. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you anything else to say to me?” said Gwendolen, playfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I know having things said to you is a great bore,” said +Grandcourt, rather sympathetically. +</p> + +<p> +“Not when they are things I like to hear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will it bother you to be asked how soon we can be married?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think it will, to-day,” said Gwendolen, putting up her chin +saucily. +</p> + +<p> +“Not to-day, then, but to-morrow. Think of it before I come to-morrow. In +a fortnight—or three weeks—as soon as possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you think you will be tired of my company,” said Gwendolen. +“I notice when people are married the husband is not so much with his +wife as when they are engaged. But perhaps I shall like that better, +too.” +</p> + +<p> +She laughed charmingly. +</p> + +<p> +“You shall have whatever you like,” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“And nothing that I don’t like?—please say that; because I +think I dislike what I don’t like more than I like what I like,” +said Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman’s paradise, where all her +nonsense is adorable. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt paused; these were subtilties in which he had much experience of his +own. “I don’t know—this is such a brute of a world, things +are always turning up that one doesn’t like. I can’t always hinder +your being bored. If you like to ride Criterion, I can’t hinder his +coming down by some chance or other.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, my friend Criterion, how is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is outside: I made the groom ride him, that you might see him. He had +the side-saddle on for an hour or two yesterday. Come to the window and look at +him.” +</p> + +<p> +They could see the two horses being taken slowly round the sweep, and the +beautiful creatures, in their fine grooming, sent a thrill of exultation +through Gwendolen. They were the symbols of command and luxury, in delightful +contrast with the ugliness of poverty and humiliation at which she had lately +been looking close. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you ride Criterion to-morrow?” said Grandcourt. “If you +will, everything shall be arranged.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like it of all things,” said Gwendolen. “I want to +lose myself in a gallop again. But now I must go and fetch mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“Take my arm to the door, then,” said Grandcourt, and she accepted. +Their faces were very near each other, being almost on a level, and he was +looking at her. She thought his manners as a lover more agreeable than any she +had seen described. She had no alarm lest he meant to kiss her, and was so much +at her ease, that she suddenly paused in the middle of the room and said half +archly, half earnestly, +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, while I think of it—there is something I dislike that you can +save me from. I do <i>not</i> like Mr. Lush’s company.” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall not have it. I’ll get rid of him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are not fond of him yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not in the least. I let him hang on me because he has always been a poor +devil,” said Grandcourt, in an <i>adagio</i> of utter indifference. +“They got him to travel with me when I was a lad. He was always that +coarse-haired kind of brute—sort of cross between a hog and a +<i>dilettante</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen laughed. All that seemed kind and natural enough: Grandcourt’s +fastidiousness enhanced the kindness. And when they reached the door, his way +of opening it for her was the perfection of easy homage. Really, she thought, +he was likely to be the least disagreeable of husbands. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow was waiting anxiously in her bedroom when Gwendolen entered, +stepped toward her quickly, and kissing her on both cheeks said in a low tone, +“Come down, mamma, and see Mr. Grandcourt. I am engaged to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“My darling child,” said Mrs. Davilow, with a surprise that was +rather solemn than glad. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gwendolen, in the same tone, and with a quickness which +implied that it was needless to ask questions. “Everything is settled. +You are not going to Sawyer’s Cottage, I am not going to be inspected by +Mrs. Mompert, and everything is to be as I like. So come down with me +immediately.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0032"></a> +BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0028"></a> +CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Il est plus aisé de connoître l’homme en général que de connoître +un homme en particulier.”—L<small>A</small> +R<small>OCHEFOUCAULD</small>. +</p> + +<p> +An hour after Grandcourt had left, the important news of Gwendolen’s +engagement was known at the rectory, and Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne, with Anna, +spent the evening at Offendene. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, let me congratulate you on having created a strong +attachment,” said the rector. “You look serious, and I don’t +wonder at it: a life-long union is a solemn thing. But from the way Mr. +Grandcourt has acted and spoken I think we may already see some good arising +out of our adversity. It has given you an opportunity of observing your future +husband’s delicate liberality.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gascoigne referred to Grandcourt’s mode of implying that he would +provide for Mrs. Davilow—a part of the love-making which Gwendolen had +remembered to cite to her mother with perfect accuracy. +</p> + +<p> +“But I have no doubt that Mr. Grandcourt would have behaved quite as +handsomely if you had not gone away to Germany, Gwendolen, and had been engaged +to him, as you no doubt might have been, more than a month ago,” said +Mrs. Gascoigne, feeling that she had to discharge a duty on this occasion. +“But now there is no more room for caprice; indeed, I trust you have no +inclination to any. A woman has a great debt of gratitude to a man who +perseveres in making her such an offer. But no doubt you feel properly.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not at all sure that I do, aunt,” said Gwendolen, with saucy +gravity. “I don’t know everything it is proper to feel on being +engaged.” +</p> + +<p> +The rector patted her shoulder and smiled as at a bit of innocent naughtiness, +and his wife took his behavior as an indication that she was not to be +displeased. As for Anna, she kissed Gwendolen and said, “I do hope you +will be happy,” but then sank into the background and tried to keep the +tears back too. In the late days she had been imagining a little romance about +Rex—how if he still longed for Gwendolen her heart might be softened by +trouble into love, so that they could by-and-by be married. And the romance had +turned to a prayer that she, Anna, might be able to rejoice like a good sister, +and only think of being useful in working for Gwendolen, as long as Rex was not +rich. But now she wanted grace to rejoice in something else. Miss Merry and the +four girls, Alice with the high shoulders, Bertha and Fanny the whisperers, and +Isabel the listener, were all present on this family occasion, when everything +seemed appropriately turning to the honor and glory of Gwendolen, and real life +was as interesting as “Sir Charles Grandison.” The evening passed +chiefly in decisive remarks from the rector, in answer to conjectures from the +two elder ladies. According to him, the case was not one in which he could +think it his duty to mention settlements: everything must, and doubtless would +safely be left to Mr. Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to know exactly what sort of places Ryelands and Gadsmere +are,” said Mrs. Davilow. +</p> + +<p> +“Gadsmere, I believe, is a secondary place,” said Mr. Gascoigne; +“But Ryelands I know to be one of our finest seats. The park is extensive +and the woods of a very valuable order. The house was built by Inigo Jones, and +the ceilings are painted in the Italian style. The estate is said to be worth +twelve thousand a year, and there are two livings, one a rectory, in the gift +of the Grandcourts. There may be some burdens on the land. Still, Mr. +Grandcourt was an only child.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would be most remarkable,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, “if he +were to become Lord Stannery in addition to everything else. Only think: there +is the Grandcourt estate, the Mallinger estate, <i>and</i> the baronetcy, +<i>and</i> the peerage,”—she was marking off the items on her +fingers, and paused on the fourth while she added, “but they say there +will be no land coming to him with the peerage.” It seemed a pity there +was nothing for the fifth finger. +</p> + +<p> +“The peerage,” said the rector, judiciously, “must be +regarded as a remote chance. There are two cousins between the present peer and +Mr. Grandcourt. It is certainly a serious reflection how death and other causes +do sometimes concentrate inheritances on one man. But an excess of that kind is +to be deprecated. To be Sir Mallinger Grandcourt Mallinger—I suppose that +will be his style—with corresponding properties, is a valuable talent +enough for any man to have committed to him. Let us hope it will be well +used.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what a position for the wife, Gwendolen!” said Mrs. Gascoigne; +“a great responsibility indeed. But you must lose no time in writing to +Mrs. Mompert, Henry. It is a good thing that you have an engagement of marriage +to offer as an excuse, else she might feel offended. She is rather a high +woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am rid of that horror,” thought Gwendolen, to whom the name of +Mompert had become a sort of Mumbo-jumbo. She was very silent through the +evening, and that night could hardly sleep at all in her little white bed. It +was a rarity in her strong youth to be wakeful: and perhaps a still greater +rarity for her to be careful that her mother should not know of her +restlessness. But her state of mind was altogether new: she who had been used +to feel sure of herself, and ready to manage others, had just taken a decisive +step which she had beforehand thought that she would not take—nay, +perhaps, was bound not to take. She could not go backward now; she liked a +great deal of what lay before her; and there was nothing for her to like if she +went back. But her resolution was dogged by the shadow of that previous resolve +which had at first come as the undoubting movement of her whole being. While +she lay on her pillow with wide-open eyes, “looking on darkness which the +blind do see,” she was appalled by the idea that she was going to do what +she had once started away from with repugnance. It was new to her that a +question of right or wrong in her conduct should rouse her terror; she had +known no compunction that atoning caresses and presents could not lay to rest. +But here had come a moment when something like a new consciousness was awaked. +She seemed on the edge of adopting deliberately, as a notion for all the rest +of her life, what she had rashly said in her bitterness, when her discovery had +driven her away to Leubronn:—that it did not signify what she did; she +had only to amuse herself as best she could. That lawlessness, that casting +away of all care for justification, suddenly frightened her: it came to her +with the shadowy array of possible calamity behind it—calamity which had +ceased to be a mere name for her; and all the infiltrated influences of +disregarded religious teaching, as well as the deeper impressions of something +awful and inexorable enveloping her, seemed to concentrate themselves in the +vague conception of avenging power. The brilliant position she had longed for, +the imagined freedom she would create for herself in marriage, the deliverance +from the dull insignificance of her girlhood—all immediately before her; +and yet they had come to her hunger like food with the taint of sacrilege upon +it, which she must snatch with terror. In the darkness and loneliness of her +little bed, her more resistant self could not act against the first onslaught +of dread after her irrevocable decision. That unhappy-faced woman and her +children—Grandcourt and his relations with her—kept repeating +themselves in her imagination like the clinging memory of a disgrace, and +gradually obliterated all other thought, leaving only the consciousness that +she had taken those scenes into her life. Her long wakefulness seemed a +delirium; a faint, faint light penetrated beside the window-curtain; the +chillness increased. She could bear it no longer, and cried +“Mamma!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, immediately, in a wakeful voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me come to you.” +</p> + +<p> +She soon went to sleep on her mother’s shoulder, and slept on till late, +when, dreaming of a lit-up ball-room, she opened her eyes on her mother +standing by the bedside with a small packet in her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought it better to give you +this at once. The groom has brought Criterion; he has come on another horse, +and says he is to stay here.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. It was a delicate enameled +casket, and inside was a splendid diamond ring with a letter which contained a +folded bit of colored paper and these words: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in sign of our betrothal. I enclose a +check drawn in the name of Mr. Gascoigne, for immediate expenses. Of course +Mrs. Davilow will remain at Offendene, at least for some time. I hope, when I +come, you will have granted me an early day, when you may begin to command me +at a shorter distance.—Yours devotedly, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +H. M. G<small>RANDCOURT</small>. +</p> + +<p> +The check was for five hundred pounds, and Gwendolen turned it toward her +mother, with the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“How very kind and delicate!” said Mrs. Davilow, with much feeling. +“But I really should like better not to be dependent on a son-in-law. I +and the girls could get along very well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, if you say that again, I will not marry him,” said +Gwendolen, angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear child, I trust you are not going to marry only for my +sake,” said Mrs. Davilow, deprecatingly. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen tossed her head on the pillow away from her mother, and let the ring +lie. She was irritated at this attempt to take away a motive. Perhaps the +deeper cause of her irritation was the consciousness that she was not going to +marry solely for her mamma’s sake—that she was drawn toward the +marriage in ways against which stronger reasons than her mother’s +renunciation were yet not strong enough to hinder her. She had waked up to the +signs that she was irrevocably engaged, and all the ugly visions, the alarms, +the arguments of the night, must be met by daylight, in which probably they +would show themselves weak. “What I long for is your happiness, +dear,” continued Mrs. Davilow, pleadingly. “I will not say anything +to vex you. Will you not put on the ring?” +</p> + +<p> +For a few moments Gwendolen did not answer, but her thoughts were active. At +last she raised herself with a determination to do as she would do if she had +started on horseback, and go on with spirit, whatever ideas might be running in +her head. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought the lover always put on the betrothal ring himself,” she +said laughingly, slipping the ring on her finger, and looking at it with a +charming movement of her head. “I know why he has sent it,” she +added, nodding at her mamma. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“He would rather make me put it on than ask me to let him do it. Aha! he +is very proud. But so am I. We shall match each other. I should hate a man who +went down on his knees, and came fawning on me. He really is not +disgusting.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is very moderate praise, Gwen.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, it is not, for a man,” said Gwendolen gaily. “But now I +must get up and dress. Will you come and do my hair, mamma, dear,” she +went on, drawing down her mamma’s face to caress it with her own cheeks, +“and not be so naughty any more as to talk of living in poverty? You must +bear to be made comfortable, even if you don’t like it. And Mr. +Grandcourt behaves perfectly, now, does he not?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly he does,” said Mrs. Davilow, encouraged, and persuaded +that after all Gwendolen was fond of her betrothed. She herself thought him a +man whose attentions were likely to tell on a girl’s feeling. Suitors +must often be judged as words are, by the standing and the figure they make in +polite society: it is difficult to know much else of them. And all the +mother’s anxiety turned not on Grandcourt’s character, but on +Gwendolen’s mood in accepting him. +</p> + +<p> +The mood was necessarily passing through a new phase this morning. Even in the +hour of making her toilet, she had drawn on all the knowledge she had for +grounds to justify her marriage. And what she most dwelt on was the +determination, that when she was Grandcourt’s wife, she would urge him to +the most liberal conduct toward Mrs. Glasher’s children. +</p> + +<p> +“Of what use would it be to her that I should not marry him? He could +have married her if he liked; but he did <i>not</i> like. Perhaps she is to +blame for that. There must be a great deal about her that I know nothing of. +And he must have been good to her in many ways, else she would not have wanted +to marry him.” +</p> + +<p> +But that last argument at once began to appear doubtful. Mrs. Glasher naturally +wished to exclude other children who would stand between Grandcourt and her +own: and Gwendolen’s comprehension of this feeling prompted another way +of reconciling claims. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps we shall have no children. I hope we shall not. And he might +leave the estate to the pretty little boy. My uncle said that Mr. Grandcourt +could do as he liked with the estates. Only when Sir Hugo Mallinger dies there +will be enough for two.” +</p> + +<p> +This made Mrs. Glasher appear quite unreasonable in demanding that her boy +should be sole heir; and the double property was a security that +Grandcourt’s marriage would do her no wrong, when the wife was Gwendolen +Harleth with all her proud resolution not to be fairly accused. This maiden had +been accustomed to think herself blameless; other persons only were faulty. +</p> + +<p> +It was striking, that in the hold which this argument of her doing no wrong to +Mrs. Glasher had taken on her mind, her repugnance to the idea of +Grandcourt’s past had sunk into a subordinate feeling. The terror she had +felt in the night-watches at overstepping the border of wickedness by doing +what she had at first felt to be wrong, had dulled any emotions about his +conduct. She was thinking of him, whatever he might be, as a man over whom she +was going to have indefinite power; and her loving him having never been a +question with her, any agreeableness he had was so much gain. Poor Gwendolen +had no awe of unmanageable forces in the state of matrimony, but regarded it as +altogether a matter of management, in which she would know how to act. In +relation to Grandcourt’s past she encouraged new doubts whether he were +likely to have differed much from other men; and she devised little schemes for +learning what was expected of men in general. +</p> + +<p> +But whatever else might be true in the world, her hair was dressed suitably for +riding, and she went down in her riding-habit, to avoid delay before getting on +horseback. She wanted to have her blood stirred once more with the intoxication +of youth, and to recover the daring with which she had been used to think of +her course in life. Already a load was lifted off her; for in daylight and +activity it was less oppressive to have doubts about her choice, than to feel +that she had no choice but to endure insignificance and servitude. +</p> + +<p> +“Go back and make yourself look like a duchess, mamma,” she said, +turning suddenly as she was going down-stairs. “Put your point-lace over +your head. I must have you look like a duchess. You must not take things +humbly.” +</p> + +<p> +When Grandcourt raised her left hand gently and looked at the ring, she said +gravely, “It was very good of you to think of everything and send me that +packet.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will tell me if there is anything I forget?” he said, keeping +the hand softly within his own. “I will do anything you wish.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I am very unreasonable in my wishes,” said Gwendolen, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I expect that. Women always are.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I will not be unreasonable,” said Gwendolen, taking away her +hand and tossing her head saucily. “I will not be told that I am what +women always are.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not say that,” said Grandcourt, looking at her with his +usual gravity. “You are what no other woman is.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is that, pray?” said Gwendolen, moving to a distance with +a little air of menace. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt made his pause before he answered. “You are the woman I +love.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, what nice speeches!” said Gwendolen, laughing. The sense of +that love which he must once have given to another woman under strange +circumstances was getting familiar. +</p> + +<p> +“Give me a nice speech in return. Say when we are to be married.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not yet. Not till we have had a gallop over the downs. I am so thirsty +for that, I can think of nothing else. I wish the hunting had begun. Sunday the +twentieth, twenty-seventh, Monday, Tuesday.” Gwendolen was counting on +her fingers with the prettiest nod while she looked at Grandcourt, and at last +swept one palm over the other while she said triumphantly, “It will begin +in ten days!” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us be married in ten days, then,” said Grandcourt, “and +we shall not be bored about the stables.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do women always say in answer to that?” said Gwendolen, +mischievously. +</p> + +<p> +“They agree to it,” said the lover, rather off his guard. +</p> + +<p> +“Then I will not!” said Gwendolen, taking up her gauntlets and +putting them on, while she kept her eyes on him with gathering fun in them. +</p> + +<p> +The scene was pleasant on both sides. A cruder lover would have lost the view +of her pretty ways and attitudes, and spoiled all by stupid attempts at +caresses, utterly destructive of drama. Grandcourt preferred the drama; and +Gwendolen, left at ease, found her spirits rising continually as she played at +reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had seen more of her in this unconscious kind of +acting, instead of when she was trying to be theatrical, he might have rated +her chance higher. +</p> + +<p> +When they had had a glorious gallop, however, she was in a state of +exhilaration that disposed her to think well of hastening the marriage which +would make her life all of apiece with this splendid kind of enjoyment. She +would not debate any more about an act to which she had committed herself; and +she consented to fix the wedding on that day three weeks, notwithstanding the +difficulty of fulfilling the customary laws of the <i>trousseau</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Lush, of course, was made aware of the engagement by abundant signs, without +being formally told. But he expected some communication as a consequence of it, +and after a few days he became rather impatient under Grandcourt’s +silence, feeling sure that the change would affect his personal prospects, and +wishing to know exactly how. His tactics no longer included any +opposition—which he did not love for its own sake. He might easily cause +Grandcourt a great deal of annoyance, but it would be to his own injury, and to +create annoyance was not a motive with him. Miss Gwendolen he would certainly +not have been sorry to frustrate a little, but—after all there was no +knowing what would come. It was nothing new that Grandcourt should show a +perverse wilfulness; yet in his freak about this girl he struck Lush rather +newly as something like a man who was <i>fey</i>—led on by an ominous +fatality; and that one born to his fortune should make a worse business of his +life than was necessary, seemed really pitiable. Having protested against the +marriage, Lush had a second-sight for its evil consequences. Grandcourt had +been taking the pains to write letters and give orders himself instead of +employing Lush, and appeared to be ignoring his usefulness, even choosing, +against the habit of years, to breakfast alone in his dressing-room. But a +<i>tête-à-tête</i> was not to be avoided in a house empty of guests; and Lush +hastened to use an opportunity of saying—it was one day after dinner, for +there were difficulties in Grandcourt’s dining at Offendene, +</p> + +<p> +“And when is the marriage to take place?” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt, who drank little wine, had left the table and was lounging, while +he smoked, in an easy chair near the hearth, where a fire of oak boughs was +gaping to its glowing depths, and edging them with a delicate tint of ashes +delightful to behold. The chair of red-brown velvet brocade was a becoming +background for his pale-tinted, well-cut features and exquisite long hands. +Omitting the cigar, you might have imagined him a portrait by Moroni, who would +have rendered wonderfully the impenetrable gaze and air of distinction; and a +portrait by that great master would have been quite as lively a companion as +Grandcourt was disposed to be. But he answered without unusual delay. +</p> + +<p> +“On the tenth.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you intend to remain here.” +</p> + +<p> +“We shall go to Ryelands for a little while; but we shall return here for +the sake of the hunting.” +</p> + +<p> +After this word there was the languid inarticulate sound frequent with +Grandcourt when he meant to continue speaking, and Lush waited for something +more. Nothing came, and he was going to put another question, when the +inarticulate sound began again and introduced the mildly uttered suggestion, +</p> + +<p> +“You had better make some new arrangement for yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! I am to cut and run?” said Lush, prepared to be +good-tempered on the occasion. +</p> + +<p> +“Something of that kind.” +</p> + +<p> +“The bride objects to me. I hope she will make up to you for the want of +my services.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help your being so damnably disagreeable to women,” +said Grandcourt, in soothing apology. +</p> + +<p> +“To one woman, if you please.” +</p> + +<p> +“It makes no difference since she is the one in question.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose I am not to be turned adrift after fifteen years without some +provision.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must have saved something out of me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Deuced little. I have often saved something for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can have three hundred a year. But you must live in town and be +ready to look after things when I want you. I shall be rather hard up.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are not going to be at Ryelands this winter, I might run down +there and let you know how Swinton goes on.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you like. I don’t care a toss where you are, so that you keep +out of sight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Much obliged,” said Lush, able to take the affair more easily than +he had expected. He was supported by the secret belief that he should by-and-by +be wanted as much as ever. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you will not object to packing up as soon as possible,” +said Grandcourt. “The Torringtons are coming, and Miss Harleth will be +riding over here.” +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart. Can’t I be of use in going to Gadsmere?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I am going myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“About your being rather hard up. Have you thought of that +plan—” +</p> + +<p> +“Just leave me alone, will you?” said Grandcourt, in his lowest +audible tone, tossing his cigar into the fire, and rising to walk away. +</p> + +<p> +He spent the evening in the solitude of the smaller drawing-room, where, with +various new publications on the table of the kind a gentleman may like to have +on hand without touching, he employed himself (as a philosopher might have +done) in sitting meditatively on the sofa and abstaining from +literature—political, comic, cynical, or romantic. In this way hours may +pass surprisingly soon, without the arduous invisible chase of philosophy; not +from love of thought, but from hatred of effort—from a state of the +inward world, something like premature age, where the need for action lapses +into a mere image of what has been, is, and may or might be; where impulse is +born and dies in a phantasmal world, pausing in rejection of even a shadowy +fulfillment. That is a condition which often comes with whitening hair; and +sometimes, too, an intense obstinacy and tenacity of rule, like the main trunk +of an exorbitant egoism, conspicuous in proportion as the varied +susceptibilities of younger years are stripped away. +</p> + +<p> +But Grandcourt’s hair, though he had not much of it, was of a fine, sunny +blonde, and his moods were not entirely to be explained as ebbing energy. We +mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that a lazy +stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows not what +biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from sleep and without malice +heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping comrade, is +understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character fairly calculable +in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a gentleman may make of himself +a chancy personage, raising an uncertainty as to what he may do next, that +sadly spoils companionship. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt’s thoughts this evening were like the circlets one sees in a +dark pool, continually dying out and continually started again by some impulse +from below the surface. The deeper central impulse came from the image of +Gwendolen; but the thoughts it stirred would be imperfectly illustrated by a +reference to the amatory poets of all ages. It was characteristic that he got +none of his satisfaction from the belief that Gwendolen was in love with him; +and that love had overcome the jealous resentment which had made her run away +from him. On the contrary, he believed that this girl was rather exceptional in +the fact that, in spite of his assiduous attention to her, she was not in love +with him; and it seemed to him very likely that if it had not been for the +sudden poverty which had come over her family, she would not have accepted him. +From the very first there had been an exasperating fascination in the +tricksiness with which she had—not met his advances, but—wheeled +away from them. She had been brought to accept him in spite of +everything—brought to kneel down like a horse under training for the +arena, though she might have an objection to it all the while. On the whole, +Grandcourt got more pleasure out of this notion than he could have done out of +winning a girl of whom he was sure that she had a strong inclination for him +personally. And yet this pleasure in mastering reluctance flourished along with +the habitual persuasion that no woman whom he favored could be quite +indifferent to his personal influence; and it seemed to him not unlikely that +by-and-by Gwendolen might be more enamored of him than he of her. In any case, +she would have to submit; and he enjoyed thinking of her as his future wife, +whose pride and spirit were suited to command every one but himself. He had no +taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of petitioning solicitude +and willing obedience. He meant to be master of a woman who would have liked to +master him, and who perhaps would have been capable of mastering another man. +</p> + +<p> +Lush, having failed in his attempted reminder to Grandcourt, thought it well to +communicate with Sir Hugo, in whom, as a man having perhaps interest enough to +command the bestowal of some place where the work was light, gentlemanly, and +not ill-paid, he was anxious to cultivate a sense of friendly obligation, not +feeling at all secure against the future need of such a place. He wrote the +following letter, and addressed it to Park Lane, whither he knew the family had +returned from Leubronn: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +M<small>Y DEAR</small> S<small>IR</small> H<small>UGO</small>—Since we +came home the marriage has been absolutely decided on, and is to take place in +less than three weeks. It is so far the worse for him that her mother has +lately lost all her fortune, and he will have to find supplies. Grandcourt, I +know, is feeling the want of cash; and unless some other plan is resorted to, +he will be raising money in a foolish way. I am going to leave Diplow +immediately, and I shall not be able to start the topic. What I should advise +is, that Mr. Deronda, who I know has your confidence, should propose to come +and pay a short visit here, according to invitation (there are going to be +other people in the house), and that you should put him fully in possession of +your wishes and the possible extent of your offer. Then, that he should +introduce the subject to Grandcourt so as not to imply that you suspect any +particular want of money on his part, but only that there is a strong wish on +yours. What I have formerly said to him has been in the way of a conjecture +that you might be willing to give a good sum for his chance of Diplow; but if +Mr. Deronda came armed with a definite offer, that would take another sort of +hold. Ten to one he will not close for some time to come; but the proposal will +have got a stronger lodgment in his mind; and though at present he has a great +notion of the hunting here, I see a likelihood, under the circumstances, that +he will get a distaste for the neighborhood, and there will be the notion of +the money sticking by him without being urged. I would bet on your ultimate +success. As I am not to be exiled to Siberia, but am to be within call, it is +possible that, by and by, I may be of more service to you. But at present I can +think of no medium so good as Mr. Deronda. Nothing puts Grandcourt in worse +humor than having the lawyers thrust their paper under his nose uninvited.<br/> + Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has put you in excellent condition for +the winter, I remain, my dear Sir Hugo, yours very faithfully, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +T<small>HOMAS</small> C<small>RANMER</small> L<small>USH</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo, having received this letter at breakfast, handed it to Deronda, who, +though he had chambers in town, was somehow hardly ever in them, Sir Hugo not +being contented without him. The chatty baronet would have liked a young +companion even if there had been no peculiar reasons for attachment between +them: one with a fine harmonious unspoiled face fitted to keep up a cheerful +view of posterity and inheritance generally, notwithstanding particular +disappointments; and his affection for Deronda was not diminished by the +deep-lying though not obtrusive difference in their notions and tastes. Perhaps +it was all the stronger; acting as the same sort of difference does between a +man and a woman in giving a piquancy to the attachment which subsists in spite +of it. Sir Hugo did not think unapprovingly of himself; but he looked at men +and society from a liberal-menagerie point of view, and he had a certain pride +in Deronda’s differing from him, which, if it had found voice, might have +said—“You see this fine young fellow—not such as you see +every day, is he?—he belongs to me in a sort of way. I brought him up +from a child; but you would not ticket him off easily, he has notions of his +own, and he’s as far as the poles asunder from what I was at his +age.” This state of feeling was kept up by the mental balance in Deronda, +who was moved by an affectionateness such as we are apt to call feminine, +disposing him to yield in ordinary details, while he had a certain +inflexibility of judgment, and independence of opinion, held to be rightfully +masculine. +</p> + +<p> +When he had read the letter, he returned it without speaking, inwardly wincing +under Lush’s mode of attributing a neutral usefulness to him in the +family affairs. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you say, Dan? It would be pleasant enough for you. You have not +seen the place for a good many years now, and you might have a famous run with +the harriers if you went down next week,” said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“I should not go on that account,” said Deronda, buttering his +bread attentively. He had an objection to this transparent kind of +persuasiveness, which all intelligent animals are seen to treat with +indifference. If he went to Diplow he should be doing something disagreeable to +oblige Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“I think Lush’s notion is a good one. And it would be a pity to +lose the occasion.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a different matter—if you think my going of importance to +your object,” said Deronda, still with that aloofness of manner which +implied some suppression. He knew that the baronet had set his heart on the +affair. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you will see the fair gambler, the Leubronn Diana, I +shouldn’t wonder,” said Sir Hugo, gaily. “We shall have to +invite her to the Abbey, when they are married,” he added, turning to +Lady Mallinger, as if she too had read the letter. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot conceive whom you mean,” said Lady Mallinger, who in fact +had not been listening, her mind having been taken up with her first sips of +coffee, the objectionable cuff of her sleeve, and the necessity of carrying +Theresa to the dentist—innocent and partly laudable preoccupations, as +the gentle lady’s usually were. Should her appearance be inquired after, +let it be said that she had reddish blonde hair (the hair of the period), a +small Roman nose, rather prominent blue eyes and delicate eyelids, with a +figure which her thinner friends called fat, her hands showing curves and +dimples like a magnified baby’s. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean that Grandcourt is going to marry the girl you saw at +Leubronn—don’t you remember her—the Miss Harleth who used to +play at roulette.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me! Is that a good match for him?” +</p> + +<p> +“That depends on the sort of goodness he wants,” said Sir Hugo, +smiling. “However, she and her friends have nothing, and she will bring +him expenses. It’s a good match for my purposes, because if I am willing +to fork out a sum of money, he may be willing to give up his chance of Diplow, +so that we shall have it out and out, and when I die you will have the +consolation of going to the place you would like to go to—wherever I may +go.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you would not talk of dying in that light way, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s rather a heavy way, Lou, for I shall have to pay a heavy +sum—forty thousand, at least.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why are we to invite them to the Abbey?” said Lady Mallinger. +“I do <i>not</i> like women who gamble, like Lady Cragstone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you will not mind her for a week. Besides, she is not like Lady +Cragstone because she gambled a little, any more than I am like a broker +because I’m a Whig. I want to keep Grandcourt in good humor, and to let +him see plenty of this place, that he may think the less of Diplow. I +don’t know yet whether I shall get him to meet me in this matter. And if +Dan were to go over on a visit there, he might hold out the bait to him. It +would be doing me a great service.” This was meant for Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Daniel is not fond of Mr. Grandcourt, I think, is he?” said Lady +Mallinger, looking at Deronda inquiringly. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no avoiding everybody one doesn’t happen to be fond +of,” said Deronda. “I will go to Diplow—I don’t know +that I have anything better to do—since Sir Hugo wishes it.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a trump!” said Sir Hugo, well pleased. “And if +you don’t find it very pleasant, it’s so much experience. Nothing +used to come amiss to me when I was young. You must see men and manners.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but I have seen that man, and something of his manners too,” +said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Not nice manners, I think,” said Lady Mallinger. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you see they succeed with your sex,” said Sir Hugo, +provokingly. “And he was an uncommonly good-looking fellow when he was +two or three and twenty—like his father. He doesn’t take after his +father in marrying the heiress, though. If he had got Miss Arrowpoint and my +land too, confound him, he would have had a fine principality.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, in anticipating the projected visit, felt less disinclination than +when consenting to it. The story of that girl’s marriage did interest +him: what he had heard through Lush of her having run away from the suit of the +man she was now going to take as a husband, had thrown a new sort of light on +her gambling; and it was probably the transition from that fevered worldliness +into poverty which had urged her acceptance where she must in some way have +felt repulsion. All this implied a nature liable to difficulty and +struggle—elements of life which had a predominant attraction for his +sympathy, due perhaps to his early pain in dwelling on the conjectured story of +his own existence. Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in +proportion to the possibility of his defending them, rescuing them, telling +upon their lives with some sort of redeeming influence; and he had to resist an +inclination, easily accounted for, to withdraw coldly from the fortunate. But +in the movement which had led him to repurchase Gwendolen’s necklace for +her, and which was at work in him still, there was something beyond his +habitual compassionate fervor—something due to the fascination of her +womanhood. He was very open to that sort of charm, and mingled it with the +consciously Utopian pictures of his own future; yet any one able to trace the +folds of his character might have conceived that he would be more likely than +many less passionate men to love a woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle +food before a delicate-eared bird: there is nothing he would more willingly +take, yet he keeps aloof, because of his sensibility to checks which to you are +imperceptible. And one man differs from another, as we all differ from the +Bosjesman, in a sensibility to checks, that come from variety of needs, +spiritual or other. It seemed to foreshadow that capability of reticence in +Deronda that his imagination was much occupied with two women, to neither of +whom would he have held it possible that he should ever make love. Hans Meyrick +had laughed at him for having something of the knight-errant in his +disposition; and he would have found his proof if he had known what was just +now going on in Deronda’s mind about Mirah and Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda wrote without delay to announce his visit to Diplow, and received in +reply a polite assurance that his coming would give great pleasure. That was +not altogether untrue. Grandcourt thought it probable that the visit was +prompted by Sir Hugo’s desire to court him for a purpose which he did not +make up his mind to resist; and it was not a disagreeable idea to him that this +fine fellow, whom he believed to be his cousin under the rose, would witness, +perhaps with some jealousy, Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt play the commanding +part of betrothed lover to a splendid girl whom the cousin had already looked +at with admiration. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt himself was not jealous of anything unless it threatened his +mastery—which he did not think himself likely to lose. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0029"></a> +CHAPTER XXIX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice,<br/> + him or her I shall follow.<br/> +As the water follows the moon, silently,<br/> + with fluid steps anywhere around the globe.”<br/> + —W<small>ALT</small> W<small>HITMAN</small>. +</p> + +<p> +“Now my cousins are at Diplow,” said Grandcourt, “will you go +there?—to-morrow? The carriage shall come for Mrs. Davilow. You can tell +me what you would like done in the rooms. Things must be put in decent order +while we are away at Ryelands. And to-morrow is the only day.” +</p> + +<p> +He was sitting sideways on a sofa in the drawing-room at Offendene, one hand +and elbow resting on the back, and the other hand thrust between his crossed +knees—in the attitude of a man who is much interested in watching the +person next to him. Gwendolen, who had always disliked needlework, had taken to +it with apparent zeal since her engagement, and now held a piece of white +embroidery which, on examination, would have shown many false stitches. During +the last eight or nine days their hours had been chiefly spent on horseback, +but some margin had always been left for this more difficult sort of +companionship, which, however, Gwendolen had not found disagreeable. She was +very well satisfied with Grandcourt. His answers to her lively questions about +what he had seen and done in his life, bore drawling very well. From the first +she had noticed that he knew what to say; and she was constantly feeling not +only that he had nothing of the fool in his composition, but that by some +subtle means he communicated to her the impression that all the folly lay with +other people, who did what he did not care to do. A man who seems to have been +able to command the best, has a sovereign power of depreciation. Then +Grandcourt’s behavior as a lover had hardly at all passed the limit of an +amorous homage which was inobtrusive as a wafted odor of roses, and spent all +its effects in a gratified vanity. One day, indeed, he had kissed not her cheek +but her neck a little below her ear; and Gwendolen, taken by surprise, had +started up with a marked agitation which made him rise too and say, “I +beg your pardon—did I annoy you?” “Oh, it was nothing,” +said Gwendolen, rather afraid of herself, “only I cannot bear—to be +kissed under my ear.” She sat down again with a little playful laugh, but +all the while she felt her heart beating with a vague fear: she was no longer +at liberty to flout him as she had flouted poor Rex. Her agitation seemed not +uncomplimentary, and he had been contented not to transgress again. +</p> + +<p> +To-day a slight rain hindered riding; but to compensate, a package had come +from London, and Mrs. Davilow had just left the room after bringing in for +admiration the beautiful things (of Grandcourt’s ordering) which lay +scattered about on the tables. Gwendolen was just then enjoying the scenery of +her life. She let her hands fall on her lap, and said with a pretty air of +perversity, +</p> + +<p> +“Why is to-morrow the only day?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because the next day is the first with the hounds,” said +Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“And after that?” +</p> + +<p> +“After that I must go away for a couple of days—it’s a +bore—but I shall go one day and come back the next.” Grandcourt +noticed a change in her face, and releasing his hand from under his knees, he +laid it on hers, and said, “You object to my going away?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no use objecting,” said Gwendolen, coldly. She was +resisting to the utmost her temptation to tell him that she suspected to whom +he was going—the temptation to make a clean breast, speaking without +restraint. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes it is,” said Grandcourt, enfolding her hand. “I will put +off going. And I will travel at night, so as only to be away one day.” He +thought that he knew the reason of what he inwardly called this bit of temper, +and she was particularly fascinating to him at this moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Then don’t put off going, but travel at night,” said +Gwendolen, feeling that she could command him, and finding in this +peremptoriness a small outlet for her irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you will go to Diplow to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, if you wish it,” said Gwendolen, in a high tone of +careless assent. Her concentration in other feelings had really hindered her +from taking notice that her hand was being held. +</p> + +<p> +“How you treat us poor devils of men!” said Grandcourt, lowering +his tone. “We are always getting the worst of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Are</i> you?” said Gwendolen, in a tone of inquiry, looking at +him more naively than usual. She longed to believe this commonplace +<i>badinage</i> as the serious truth about her lover: in that case, she too was +justified. If she knew everything, Mrs. Glasher would appear more blamable than +Grandcourt. “<i>Are</i> you always getting the worst?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Are you as kind to me as I am to you?” said Grandcourt, +looking into her eyes with his narrow gaze. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was conscious of having received so much, +that her sense of command was checked, and sank away in the perception that, +look around her as she might, she could not turn back: it was as if she had +consented to mount a chariot where another held the reins; and it was not in +her nature to leap out in the eyes of the world. She had not consented in +ignorance, and all she could say now would be a confession that she had not +been ignorant. Her right to explanation was gone. All she had to do now was to +adjust herself, so that the spikes of that unwilling penance which conscience +imposed should not gall her. With a sort of mental shiver, she resolutely +changed her mental attitude. There had been a little pause, during which she +had not turned away her eyes; and with a sudden break into a smile, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“If I were as kind to you as you are to me, that would spoil your +generosity: it would no longer be as great as it could be—and it is that +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I am not to ask for one kiss,” said Grandcourt, contented to +pay a large price for this new kind of love-making, which introduced marriage +by the finest contrast. +</p> + +<p> +“Not one?” said Gwendolen, getting saucy, and nodding at him +defiantly. +</p> + +<p> +He lifted her little left hand to his lips, and then released it respectfully. +Clearly it was faint praise to say of him that he was not disgusting: he was +almost charming; and she felt at this moment that it was not likely she could +ever have loved another man better than this one. His reticence gave her some +inexplicable, delightful consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Apropos,” she said, taking up her work again, “is there any +one besides Captain and Mrs. Torrington at Diplow?—or do you leave them +<i>tête-à-tête</i>? I suppose he converses in cigars, and she answers with her +chignon.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has a sister with her,” said Grandcourt, with his shadow of a +smile, “and there are two men besides—one of them you know, I +believe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, then, I have a poor opinion of him,” said Gwendolen, shaking +her head. +</p> + +<p> +“You saw him at Leubronn—young Deronda—a young fellow with +the Mallingers.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen felt as if her heart were making a sudden gambol, and her fingers, +which tried to keep a firm hold on her work, got cold. +</p> + +<p> +“I never spoke to him,” she said, dreading any discernible change +in herself. “Is he not disagreeable?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not particularly,” said Grandcourt, in his most languid way. +“He thinks a little too much of himself. I thought he had been introduced +to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Some one told me his name the evening before I came away. That was +all. What is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“A sort of ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger’s. Nothing of any +consequence.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, poor creature! How very unpleasant for him!” said Gwendolen, +speaking from the lip, and not meaning any sarcasm. “I wonder if it has +left off raining!” she added, rising and going to look out of the window. +</p> + +<p> +Happily it did not rain the next day, and Gwendolen rode to Diplow on Criterion +as she had done on that former day when she returned with her mother in the +carriage. She always felt the more daring for being in her riding-dress; +besides having the agreeable belief that she looked as well as possible in +it—a sustaining consciousness in any meeting which seems formidable. Her +anger toward Deronda had changed into a superstitious dread—due, perhaps, +to the coercion he had exercised over her thought—lest the first +interference of his in her life might foreshadow some future influence. It is +of such stuff that superstitions are commonly made: an intense feeling about +ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, and the +blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superstitions carry consequences which +often verify their hope or their foreboding. +</p> + +<p> +The time before luncheon was taken up for Gwendolen by going over the rooms +with Mrs. Torrington and Mrs. Davilow; and she thought it likely that if she +saw Deronda, there would hardly be need for more than a bow between them. She +meant to notice him as little as possible. +</p> + +<p> +And after all she found herself under an inward compulsion too strong for her +pride. From the first moment of their being in the room together, she seemed to +herself to be doing nothing but notice him; everything else was automatic +performance of an habitual part. +</p> + +<p> +When he took his place at lunch, Grandcourt had said, “Deronda, Miss +Harleth tells me you were not introduced to her at Leubronn?” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Harleth hardly remembers me, I imagine,” said Deronda, +looking at her quite simply, as they bowed. “She was intensely occupied +when I saw her.” +</p> + +<p> +Now, did he suppose that she had not suspected him of being the person who +redeemed her necklace? +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary. I remember you very well,” said Gwendolen, +feeling rather nervous, but governing herself and looking at him in return with +new examination. “You did not approve of my playing at roulette.” +</p> + +<p> +“How did you come to that conclusion?” said Deronda, gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you cast an evil eye on my play,” said Gwendolen, with a turn +of her head and a smile. “I began to lose as soon as you came to look on. +I had always been winning till then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Roulette in such a kennel as Leubronn is a horrid bore,” said +Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> found it a bore when I began to lose,” said Gwendolen. +Her face was turned toward Grandcourt as she smiled and spoke, but she gave a +sidelong glance at Deronda, and saw his eyes fixed on her with a look so +gravely penetrating that it had a keener edge for her than his ironical smile +at her losses—a keener edge than Klesmer’s judgment. She wheeled +her neck round as if she wanted to listen to what was being said by the rest, +while she was only thinking of Deronda. His face had that disturbing kind of +form and expression which threatens to affect opinion—as if one’s +standard was somehow wrong. (Who has not seen men with faces of this corrective +power till they frustrated it by speech or action?) His voice, heard now for +the first time, was to Grandcourt’s toneless drawl, which had been in her +ears every day, as the deep notes of a violoncello to the broken discourse of +poultry and other lazy gentry in the afternoon sunshine. Grandcourt, she +inwardly conjectured, was perhaps right in saying that Deronda thought too much +of himself:—a favorite way of explaining a superiority that humiliates. +However the talk turned on the rinderpest and Jamaica, and no more was said +about roulette. Grandcourt held that the Jamaica negro was a beastly sort of +baptist Caliban; Deronda said he had always felt a little with Caliban, who +naturally had his own point of view and could sing a good song; Mrs. Davilow +observed that her father had an estate in Barbadoes, but that she herself had +never been in the West Indies; Mrs. Torrington was sure she should never sleep +in her bed if she lived among blacks; her husband corrected her by saying that +the blacks would be manageable enough if it were not for the half-breeds; and +Deronda remarked that the whites had to thank themselves for the half-breeds. +</p> + +<p> +While this polite pea-shooting was going on, Gwendolen trifled with her jelly, +and looked at every speaker in turn that she might feel at ease in looking at +Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder what he thinks of me, really? He must have felt interested in +me, else he would not have sent me my necklace. I wonder what he thinks of my +marriage? What notions has he to make him so grave about things? Why is he come +to Diplow?” +</p> + +<p> +These questions ran in her mind as the voice of an uneasy longing to be judged +by Deronda with unmixed admiration—a longing which had had its seed in +her first resentment at his critical glance. Why did she care so much about the +opinion of this man who was “nothing of any consequence”? She had +no time to find the reason—she was too much engaged in caring. In the +drawing-room, when something had called Grandcourt away, she went quite +unpremeditatedly up to Deronda, who was standing at a table apart, turning over +some prints, and said to him, +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you hunt to-morrow, Mr. Deronda?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I believe so.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t object to hunting, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“I find excuses for it. It is a sin I am inclined to—when I +can’t get boating or cricketing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you object to my hunting?” said Gwendolen, with a saucy +movement of the chin. +</p> + +<p> +“I have no right to object to anything you choose to do.” +</p> + +<p> +“You thought you had a right to object to my gambling,” persisted +Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“I was sorry for it. I am not aware that I told you of my +objection,” said Deronda, with his usual directness of gaze—a +large-eyed gravity, innocent of any intention. His eyes had a peculiarity which +has drawn many men into trouble; they were of a dark yet mild intensity which +seemed to express a special interest in every one on whom he fixed them, and +might easily help to bring on him those claims which ardently sympathetic +people are often creating in the minds of those who need help. In mendicant +fashion we make the goodness of others a reason for exorbitant demands on them. +That sort of effect was penetrating Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“You hindered me from gambling again,” she answered. But she had no +sooner spoken than she blushed over face and neck; and Deronda blushed, too, +conscious that in the little affair of the necklace he had taken a questionable +freedom. +</p> + +<p> +It was impossible to speak further; and she turned away to a window, feeling +that she had stupidly said what she had not meant to say, and yet being rather +happy that she had plunged into this mutual understanding. Deronda also did not +dislike it. Gwendolen seemed more decidedly attractive than before; and +certainly there had been changes going on within her since that time at +Leubronn: the struggle of mind attending a conscious error had wakened +something like a new soul, which had better, but also worse, possibilities than +her former poise of crude self-confidence: among the forces she had come to +dread was something within her that troubled satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +That evening Mrs. Davilow said, “Was it really so, or only a joke of +yours, about Mr. Deronda’s spoiling your play, Gwen?” +</p> + +<p> +Her curiosity had been excited, and she could venture to ask a question that +did not concern Mr. Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it merely happened that he was looking on when I began to +lose,” said Gwendolen, carelessly. “I noticed him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t wonder at that: he is a striking young man. He puts me in +mind of Italian paintings. One would guess, without being told, that there was +foreign blood in his veins.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there?” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Torrington says so. I asked particularly who he was, and she told +me that his mother was some foreigner of high rank.” +</p> + +<p> +“His mother?” said Gwendolen, rather sharply. “Then who was +his father?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—every one says he is the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, who +brought him up; though he passes for a ward. She says, if Sir Hugo Mallinger +could have done as he liked with his estates, he would have left them to this +Mr. Deronda, since he has no legitimate son.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was silent; but her mother observed so marked an effect in her face +that she was angry with herself for having repeated Mrs. Torrington’s +gossip. It seemed, on reflection, unsuited to the ear of her daughter, for whom +Mrs. Davilow disliked what is called knowledge of the world; and indeed she +wished that she herself had not had any of it thrust upon her. +</p> + +<p> +An image which had immediately arisen in Gwendolen’s mind was that of the +unknown mother—no doubt a dark-eyed woman—probably sad. Hardly any +face could be less like Deronda’s than that represented as Sir +Hugo’s in a crayon portrait at Diplow. A dark-eyed woman, no longer +young, had become “stuff o’ the conscience” to Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +That night when she had got into her little bed, and only a dim light was +burning, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma, have men generally children before they are married?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear, no,” said Mrs. Davilow. “Why do you ask such a +question?” (But she began to think that she saw the why.) +</p> + +<p> +“If it were so, I ought to know,” said Gwendolen, with some +indignation. +</p> + +<p> +“You are thinking of what I said about Mr. Deronda and Sir Hugo +Mallinger. That is a very unusual case, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does Lady Mallinger know?” +</p> + +<p> +“She knows enough to satisfy her. That is quite clear, because Mr. +Deronda has lived with them.” +</p> + +<p> +“And people think no worse of him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, of course he is under some disadvantage: it is not as if he were +Lady Mallinger’s son. He does not inherit the property, and he is not of +any consequence in the world. But people are not obliged to know anything about +his birth; you see, he is very well received.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder whether he knows about it; and whether he is angry with his +father?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear child, why should you think of that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said Gwendolen, impetuously, sitting up in her bed. +“Haven’t children reason to be angry with their parents? How can +they help their parents marrying or not marrying?” +</p> + +<p> +But a consciousness rushed upon her, which made her fall back again on her +pillow. It was not only what she would have felt months before—that she +might seem to be reproaching her mother for that second marriage of hers; what +she chiefly felt now was that she had been led on to a condemnation which +seemed to make her own marriage a forbidden thing. +</p> + +<p> +There was no further talk, and till sleep came over her Gwendolen lay +struggling with the reasons against that marriage—reasons which pressed +upon her newly now that they were unexpectedly mirrored in the story of a man +whose slight relations with her had, by some hidden affinity, bitten themselves +into the most permanent layers of feeling. It was characteristic that, with all +her debating, she was never troubled by the question whether the +indefensibleness of her marriage did not include the fact that she had accepted +Grandcourt solely as a man whom it was convenient for her to marry, not in the +least as one to whom she would be binding herself in duty. Gwendolen’s +ideas were pitiably crude; but many grand difficulties of life are apt to force +themselves on us in our crudity. And to judge wisely, I suppose we must know +how things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part +of the world’s history. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning there was a double excitement for her. She was going to hunt, +from which scruples about propriety had threatened to hinder her, until it was +found that Mrs. Torrington was horsewoman enough to accompany her—going +to hunt for the first time since her escapade with Rex; and she was going again +to see Deronda, in whom, since last night, her interest had so gathered that +she expected, as people do about revealed celebrities, to see something in his +appearance which she had missed before. +</p> + +<p> +What was he going to be? What sort of life had he before him—he being +nothing of any consequence? And with only a little difference in events he +might have been as important as Grandcourt, nay—her imagination +inevitably went into that direction—might have held the very estates +which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would probably some day see her +mistress of the Abbey at Topping, see her bearing the title which would have +been his own wife’s. These obvious, futile thoughts of what might have +been, made a new epoch for Gwendolen. She, whose unquestionable habit it had +been to take the best that came to her for less than her own claim, had now to +see the position which tempted her in a new light, as a hard, unfair exclusion +of others. What she had now heard about Deronda seemed to her imagination to +throw him into one group with Mrs. Glasher and her children; before whom she +felt herself in an attitude of apology—she who had hitherto been +surrounded by a group that in her opinion had need be apologetic to her. +Perhaps Deronda himself was thinking of these things. Could he know of Mrs. +Glasher? If he knew that she knew, he would despise her; but he could have no +such knowledge. Would he, without that, despise her for marrying Grandcourt? +His possible judgment of her actions was telling on her as importunately as +Klesmer’s judgment of her powers; but she found larger room for +resistance to a disapproval of her marriage, because it is easier to make our +conduct seem justifiable to ourselves than to make our ability strike others. +“How can I help it?” is not our favorite apology for incompetency. +But Gwendolen felt some strength in saying, +</p> + +<p> +“How can I help what other people have done? Things would not come right +if I were to turn round now and declare that I would not marry Mr. +Grandcourt.” And such turning round was out of the question. The horses +in the chariot she had mounted were going at full speed. +</p> + +<p> +This mood of youthful, elated desperation had a tidal recurrence. She could +dare anything that lay before her sooner than she could choose to go backward, +into humiliation; and it was even soothing to think that there would now be as +much ill-doing in the one as in the other. But the immediate delightful fact +was the hunt, where she would see Deronda, and where he would see her; for +always lurking ready to obtrude before other thoughts about him was the +impression that he was very much interested in her. But to-day she was resolved +not to repeat her folly of yesterday, as if she were anxious to say anything to +him. Indeed, the hunt would be too absorbing. +</p> + +<p> +And so it was for a long while. Deronda was there, and within her sight very +often; but this only added to the stimulus of a pleasure which Gwendolen had +only once before tasted, and which seemed likely always to give a delight +independent of any crosses, except such as took away the chance of riding. No +accident happened to throw them together; the run took them within convenient +reach of home, and the agreeable sombreness of the gray November afternoon, +with a long stratum of yellow light in the west, Gwendolen was returning with +the company from Diplow, who were attending her on the way to Offendene. Now +the sense of glorious excitement was over and gone, she was getting irritably +disappointed that she had had no opportunity of speaking to Deronda, whom she +would not see again, since he was to go away in a couple of days. What was she +going to say? That was not quite certain. She wanted to speak to him. +Grandcourt was by her side; Mrs. Torrington, her husband, and another gentleman +in advance; and Deronda’s horse she could hear behind. The wish to speak +to him and have him speaking to her was becoming imperious; and there was no +chance of it unless she simply asserted her will and defied everything. Where +the order of things could give way to Miss Gwendolen, it must be made to do so. +They had lately emerged from a wood of pines and beeches, where the twilight +stillness had a repressing effect, which increased her impatience. The +horse-hoofs again heard behind at some little distance were a growing +irritation. She reined in her horse and looked behind her; Grandcourt after a +few paces, also paused; but she, waving her whip and nodding sideways with +playful imperiousness, said, “Go on! I want to speak to Mr. +Deronda.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt hesitated; but that he would have done after any proposition. It was +an awkward situation for him. No gentleman, before marriage, could give the +emphasis of refusal to a command delivered in this playful way. He rode on +slowly, and she waited till Deronda came up. He looked at her with tacit +inquiry, and she said at once, letting her horse go alongside of his, +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Deronda, you must enlighten my ignorance. I want to know why you +thought it wrong for me to gamble. Is it because I am a woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not altogether; but I regretted it the more because you were a +woman,” said Deronda, with an irrepressible smile. Apparently it must be +understood between them now that it was he who sent the necklace. “I +think it would be better for men not to gamble. It is a besotting kind of +taste, likely to turn into a disease. And, besides, there is something +revolting to me in raking a heap of money together, and internally chuckling +over it, when others are feeling the loss of it. I should even call it base, if +it were more than an exceptional lapse. There are enough inevitable turns of +fortune which force us to see that our gain is another’s loss:—that +is one of the ugly aspects of life. One would like to reduce it as much as one +could, not get amusement out of exaggerating it.” Deronda’s voice +had gathered some indignation while he was speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“But you do admit that we can’t help things,” said Gwendolen, +with a drop in her tone. The answer had not been anything like what she had +expected. “I mean that things are so in spite of us; we can’t +always help it that our gain is another’s loss.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clearly. Because of that, we should help it where we can.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, biting her lip inside, paused a moment, and then forcing herself to +speak with an air of playfulness again, said, +</p> + +<p> +“But why should you regret it more because I am a woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps because we need that you should be better than we are.” +</p> + +<p> +“But suppose <i>we</i> need that men should be better than we are,” +said Gwendolen with a little air of “check!” +</p> + +<p> +“That is rather a difficulty,” said Deronda, smiling. “I +suppose I should have said, we each of us think it would be better for the +other to be good.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see, I needed you to be better than I was—and you thought +so,” said Gwendolen, nodding and laughing, while she put her horse +forward and joined Grandcourt, who made no observation. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you want to know what I had to say to Mr. Deronda?” +said Gwendolen, whose own pride required her to account for her conduct. +</p> + +<p> +“A—no,” said Grandcourt, coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“Now that is the first impolite word you have spoken—that you +don’t wish to hear what I had to say,” said Gwendolen, playing at a +pout. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to hear what you say to me—not to other men,” said +Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Then you wish to hear this. I wanted to make him tell me why he objected +to my gambling, and he gave me a little sermon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—but excuse me the sermon.” If Gwendolen imagined that +Grandcourt cared about her speaking to Deronda, he wished her to understand +that she was mistaken. But he was not fond of being told to ride on. She saw he +was piqued, but did not mind. She had accomplished her object of speaking again +to Deronda before he raised his hat and turned with the rest toward Diplow, +while her lover attended her to Offendene, where he was to bid farewell before +a whole day’s absence on the unspecified journey. Grandcourt had spoken +truth in calling the journey a bore: he was going by train to Gadsmere. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0030"></a> +CHAPTER XXX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +No penitence and no confessional,<br/> +No priest ordains it, yet they’re forced to sit<br/> +Amid deep ashes of their vanished years. +</p> + +<p> +Imagine a rambling, patchy house, the best part built of gray stone, and +red-tiled, a round tower jutting at one of the corners, the mellow darkness of +its conical roof surmounted by a weather-cock making an agreeable object either +amidst the gleams and greenth of summer or the low-hanging clouds and snowy +branches of winter: the ground shady with spreading trees: a great tree +flourishing on one side, backward some Scotch firs on a broken bank where the +roots hung naked, and beyond, a rookery: on the other side a pool overhung with +bushes, where the water-fowl fluttered and screamed: all around, a vast meadow +which might be called a park, bordered by an old plantation and guarded by +stone lodges which looked like little prisons. Outside the gate the country, +once entirely rural and lovely, now black with coal mines, was chiefly peopled +by men and brethren with candles stuck in their hats, and with a diabolic +complexion which laid them peculiarly open to suspicion in the eyes of the +children at Gadsmere—Mrs. Glasher’s four beautiful children, who +had dwelt there for about three years. Now, in November, when the flower-beds +were empty, the trees leafless, and the pool blackly shivering, one might have +said that the place was sombrely in keeping with the black roads and black +mounds which seemed to put the district in mourning;—except when the +children were playing on the gravel with the dogs for their companions. But +Mrs. Glasher, under her present circumstances, liked Gadsmere as well as she +would have liked any other abode. The complete seclusion of the place, which +the unattractiveness of the country secured, was exactly to her taste. When she +drove her two ponies with a waggonet full of children, there were no gentry in +carriages to be met, only men of business in gigs; at church there were no eyes +she cared to avoid, for the curate’s wife and the curate himself were +either ignorant of anything to her disadvantage, or ignored it: to them she was +simply a widow lady, the tenant of Gadsmere; and the name of Grandcourt was of +little interest in that district compared with the names of Fletcher and +Gawcome, the lessees of the collieries. +</p> + +<p> +It was full ten years since the elopement of an Irish officer’s beautiful +wife with young Grandcourt, and a consequent duel where the bullets wounded the +air only, had made some little noise. Most of those who remembered the affair +now wondered what had become of that Mrs. Glasher, whose beauty and brilliancy +had made her rather conspicuous to them in foreign places, where she was known +to be living with young Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +That he should have disentangled himself from that connection seemed only +natural and desirable. As to her, it was thought that a woman who was +understood to have forsaken her child along with her husband had probably sunk +lower. Grandcourt had of course got weary of her. He was much given to the +pursuit of women: but a man in his position would by this time desire to make a +suitable marriage with the fair young daughter of a noble house. No one talked +of Mrs. Glasher now, any more than they talked of the victim in a trial for +manslaughter ten years before: she was a lost vessel after whom nobody would +send out an expedition of search; but Grandcourt was seen in harbor with his +colors flying, registered as seaworthy as ever. +</p> + +<p> +Yet, in fact, Grandcourt had never disentangled himself from Mrs. Glasher. His +passion for her had been the strongest and most lasting he had ever known; and +though it was now as dead as the music of a cracked flute, it had left a +certain dull disposedness, which, on the death of her husband three years +before, had prompted in him a vacillating notion of marrying her, in accordance +with the understanding often expressed between them during the days of his +first ardor. At that early time Grandcourt would willingly have paid for the +freedom to be won by a divorce; but the husband would not oblige him, not +wanting to be married again himself, and not wishing to have his domestic +habits printed in evidence. +</p> + +<p> +The altered poise which the years had brought in Mrs. Glasher was just the +reverse. At first she was comparatively careless about the possibility of +marriage. It was enough that she had escaped from a disagreeable husband and +found a sort of bliss with a lover who had completely fascinated +her—young, handsome, amorous, and living in the best style, with equipage +and conversation of the kind to be expected in young men of fortune who have +seen everything. She was an impassioned, vivacious woman, fond of adoration, +exasperated by five years of marital rudeness; and the sense of release was so +strong upon her that it stilled anxiety for more than she actually enjoyed. An +equivocal position was of no importance to her then; she had no envy for the +honors of a dull, disregarded wife: the one spot which spoiled her vision of +her new pleasant world, was the sense that she left her three-year-old boy, who +died two years afterward, and whose first tones saying “mamma” +retained a difference from those of the children that came after. But now the +years had brought many changes besides those in the contour of her cheek and +throat; and that Grandcourt should marry her had become her dominant desire. +The equivocal position which she had not minded about for herself was now +telling upon her through her children, whom she loved with a devotion charged +with the added passion of atonement. She had no repentance except in this +direction. If Grandcourt married her, the children would be none the worse off +for what had passed: they would see their mother in a dignified position, and +they would be at no disadvantage with the world: her son could be made his +father’s heir. It was the yearning for this result which gave the supreme +importance to Grandcourt’s feeling for her; her love for him had long +resolved itself into anxiety that he should give her the unique, permanent +claim of a wife, and she expected no other happiness in marriage than the +satisfaction of her maternal love and pride—including her pride for +herself in the presence of her children. For the sake of that result she was +prepared even with a tragic firmness to endure anything quietly in marriage; +and she had acuteness enough to cherish Grandcourt’s flickering purpose +negatively, by not molesting him with passionate appeals and with scene-making. +In her, as in every one else who wanted anything of him, his incalculable +turns, and his tendency to harden under beseeching, had created a reasonable +dread:—a slow discovery, of which no presentiment had been given in the +bearing of a youthful lover with a fine line of face and the softest manners. +But reticence had necessarily cost something to this impassioned woman, and she +was the bitterer for it. There is no quailing—even that forced on the +helpless and injured—which has not an ugly obverse: the withheld sting +was gathering venom. She was absolutely dependent on Grandcourt; for though he +had been always liberal in expenses for her, he had kept everything voluntary +on his part; and with the goal of marriage before her, she would ask for +nothing less. He had said that he would never settle anything except by will; +and when she was thinking of alternatives for the future it often occurred to +her that, even if she did not become Grandcourt’s wife, he might never +have a son who would have a legitimate claim on him, and the end might be that +her son would be made heir to the best part of his estates. No son at that +early age could promise to have more of his father’s physique. But her +becoming Grandcourt’s wife was so far from being an extravagant notion of +possibility, that even Lush had entertained it, and had said that he would as +soon bet on it as on any other likelihood with regard to his familiar +companion. Lush, indeed, on inferring that Grandcourt had a preconception of +using his residence at Diplow in order to win Miss Arrowpoint, had thought it +well to fan that project, taking it as a tacit renunciation of the marriage +with Mrs. Glasher, which had long been a mark for the hovering and wheeling of +Grandcourt’s caprice. But both prospects had been negatived by +Gwendolen’s appearance on the scene; and it was natural enough for Mrs. +Glasher to enter with eagerness into Lush’s plan of hindering that new +danger by setting up a barrier in the mind of the girl who was being sought as +a bride. She entered into it with an eagerness which had passion in it as well +as purpose, some of the stored-up venom delivering itself in that way. +</p> + +<p> +After that, she had heard from Lush of Gwendolen’s departure, and the +probability that all danger from her was got rid of; but there had been no +letter to tell her that the danger had returned and had become a certainty. She +had since then written to Grandcourt, as she did habitually, and he had been +longer than usual in answering. She was inferring that he might intend coming +to Gadsmere at the time when he was actually on the way; and she was not +without hope—what construction of another’s mind is not strong +wishing equal to?—that a certain sickening from that frustrated courtship +might dispose him to slip the more easily into the old track of intention. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt had two grave purposes in coming to Gadsmere: to convey the news of +his approaching marriage in person, in order to make this first difficulty +final; and to get from Lydia his mother’s diamonds, which long ago he had +confided to her and wished her to wear. Her person suited diamonds, and made +them look as if they were worth some of the money given for them. These +particular diamonds were not mountains of light—they were mere peas and +haricots for the ears, neck and hair; but they were worth some thousands, and +Grandcourt necessarily wished to have them for his wife. Formerly when he had +asked Lydia to put them into his keeping again, simply on the ground that they +would be safer and ought to be deposited at the bank, she had quietly but +absolutely refused, declaring that they were quite safe; and at last had said, +“If you ever marry another woman I will give them up to her: are you +going to marry another woman?” At that time Grandcourt had no motive +which urged him to persist, and he had this grace in him, that the disposition +to exercise power either by cowing or disappointing others or exciting in them +a rage which they dared not express—a disposition which was active in him +as other propensities became languid—had always been in abeyance before +Lydia. A severe interpreter might say that the mere facts of their relation to +each other, the melancholy position of this woman who depended on his will, +made a standing banquet for his delight in dominating. But there was something +else than this in his forbearance toward her: there was the surviving though +metamorphosed effect of the power she had had over him; and it was this effect, +the fitful dull lapse toward solicitations that once had the zest now missing +from life, which had again and again inclined him to espouse a familiar past +rather than rouse himself to the expectation of novelty. But now novelty had +taken hold of him and urged him to make the most of it. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Glasher was seated in the pleasant room where she habitually passed her +mornings with her children round her. It had a square projecting window and +looked on broad gravel and grass, sloping toward a little brook that entered +the pool. The top of a low, black cabinet, the old oak table, the chairs in +tawny leather, were littered with the children’s toys, books and garden +garments, at which a maternal lady in pastel looked down from the walls with +smiling indulgence. The children were all there. The three girls, seated round +their mother near the window, were miniature portraits of her—dark-eyed, +delicate-featured brunettes with a rich bloom on their cheeks, their little +nostrils and eyebrows singularly finished as if they were tiny women, the +eldest being barely nine. The boy was seated on the carpet at some distance, +bending his blonde head over the animals from a Noah’s ark, admonishing +them separately in a voice of threatening command, and occasionally licking the +spotted ones to see if the colors would hold. Josephine, the eldest, was having +her French lesson; and the others, with their dolls on their laps, sat demurely +enough for images of the Madonna. Mrs. Glasher’s toilet had been made +very carefully—each day now she said to herself that Grandcourt might +come in. Her head, which, spite of emaciation, had an ineffaceable beauty in +the fine profile, crisp curves of hair, and clearly-marked eyebrows, rose +impressively above her bronze-colored silk and velvet, and the gold necklace +which Grandcourt had first clasped round her neck years ago. Not that she had +any pleasure in her toilet; her chief thought of herself seen in the glass was, +“How changed!”—but such good in life as remained to her she +would keep. If her chief wish were fulfilled, she could imagine herself getting +the comeliness of a matron fit for the highest rank. The little faces beside +her, almost exact reductions of her own, seemed to tell of the blooming curves +which had once been where now was sunken pallor. But the children kissed the +pale cheeks and never found them deficient. That love was now the one end of +her life. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Mrs. Glasher turned away her head from Josephine’s book and +listened. “Hush, dear! I think some one is coming.” +</p> + +<p> +Henleigh the boy jumped up and said, “Mamma, is it the miller with my +donkey?” +</p> + +<p> +He got no answer, and going up to his mamma’s knee repeated his question +in an insistent tone. But the door opened, and the servant announced Mr. +Grandcourt. Mrs. Glasher rose in some agitation. Henleigh frowned at him in +disgust at his not being the miller, and the three little girls lifted up their +dark eyes to him timidly. They had none of them any particular liking for this +friend of mamma’s—in fact, when he had taken Mrs. Glasher’s +hand and then turned to put his other hand on Henleigh’s head, that +energetic scion began to beat the friend’s arm away with his fists. The +little girls submitted bashfully to be patted under the chin and kissed, but on +the whole it seemed better to send them into the garden, where they were +presently dancing and chatting with the dogs on the gravel. +</p> + +<p> +“How far are you come?” said Mrs. Glasher, as Grandcourt put away +his hat and overcoat. +</p> + +<p> +“From Diplow,” he answered slowly, seating himself opposite her and +looking at her with an unnoting gaze which she noted. +</p> + +<p> +“You are tired, then.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I rested at the Junction—a hideous hole. These railway +journeys are always a confounded bore. But I had coffee and smoked.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt drew out his handkerchief, rubbed his face, and in returning the +handkerchief to his pocket looked at his crossed knee and blameless boot, as if +any stranger were opposite to him, instead of a woman quivering with a suspense +which every word and look of his was to incline toward hope or dread. But he +was really occupied with their interview and what it was likely to include. +Imagine the difference in rate of emotion between this woman whom the years had +worn to a more conscious dependence and sharper eagerness, and this man whom +they were dulling into a more neutral obstinacy. +</p> + +<p> +“I expected to see you—it was so long since I had heard from you. I +suppose the weeks seem longer at Gadsmere than they do at Diplow,” said +Mrs. Glasher. She had a quick, incisive way of speaking that seemed to go with +her features, as the tone and <i>timbre</i> of a violin go with its form. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” drawled Grandcourt. “But you found the money paid into +the bank.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Glasher, curtly, tingling with impatience. +Always before—at least she fancied so—Grandcourt had taken more +notice of her and the children than he did to-day. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he resumed, playing with his whisker, and at first not +looking at her, “the time has gone on at rather a rattling pace with me; +generally it is slow enough. But there has been a good deal happening, as you +know”—here he turned his eyes upon her. +</p> + +<p> +“What do I know?” said she, sharply. +</p> + +<p> +He left a pause before he said, without change of manner, “That I was +thinking of marrying. You saw Miss Harleth?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>She</i> told you that?” +</p> + +<p> +The pale cheeks looked even paler, perhaps from the fierce brightness in the +eyes above them. +</p> + +<p> +“No. Lush told me,” was the slow answer. It was as if the +thumb-screw and the iron boot were being placed by creeping hands within sight +of the expectant victim. +</p> + +<p> +“Good God! say at once that you are going to marry her,” she burst +out, passionately, her knees shaking and her hands tightly clasped. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, this kind of thing must happen some time or other, +Lydia,” said he; really, now the thumb-screw was on, not wishing to make +the pain worse. +</p> + +<p> +“You didn’t always see the necessity.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps not. I see it now.” +</p> + +<p> +In those few undertoned words of Grandcourt’s she felt as absolute a +resistance as if her thin fingers had been pushing at a fast shut iron door. +She knew her helplessness, and shrank from testing it by any +appeal—shrank from crying in a dead ear and clinging to dead knees, only +to see the immovable face and feel the rigid limbs. She did not weep nor speak; +she was too hard pressed by the sudden certainty which had as much of chill +sickness in it as of thought and emotion. The defeated clutch of struggling +hope gave her in these first moments a horrible sensation. At last she rose, +with a spasmodic effort, and, unconscious of every thing but her wretchedness, +pressed her forehead against the hard, cold glass of the window. The children, +playing on the gravel, took this as a sign that she wanted them, and, running +forward, stood in front of her with their sweet faces upturned expectantly. +This roused her: she shook her head at them, waved them off, and overcome with +this painful exertion, sank back in the nearest chair. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt had risen too. He was doubly annoyed—at the scene itself, and +at the sense that no imperiousness of his could save him from it; but the task +had to be gone through, and there was the administrative necessity of arranging +things so that there should be as little annoyance as possible in the future. +He was leaning against the corner of the fire-place. She looked up at him and +said, bitterly, +</p> + +<p> +“All this is of no consequence to you. I and the children are importunate +creatures. You wish to get away again and be with Miss Harleth.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t make the affair more disagreeable than it need be. Lydia. It +is of no use to harp on things that can’t be altered. Of course, its +deucedly disagreeable to me to see you making yourself miserable. I’ve +taken this journey to tell you what you must make up your mind to—you and +the children will be provided for as usual—and there’s an end of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Silence. She dared not answer. This woman with the intense, eager look had had +the iron of the mother’s anguish in her soul, and it had made her +sometimes capable of a repression harder than shrieking and struggle. But +underneath the silence there was an outlash of hatred and vindictiveness: she +wished that the marriage might make two others wretched, besides herself. +Presently he went on, +</p> + +<p> +“It will be better for you. You may go on living here. But I think of +by-and-by settling a good sum on you and the children, and you can live where +you like. There will be nothing for you to complain of then. Whatever happens, +you will feel secure. Nothing could be done beforehand. Every thing has gone on +in a hurry.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt ceased his slow delivery of sentences. He did not expect her to +thank him, but he considered that she might reasonably be contented; if it were +possible for Lydia to be contented. She showed no change, and after a minute he +said, +</p> + +<p> +“You have never had any reason to fear that I should be illiberal. I +don’t care a curse about the money.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you did care about it, I suppose you would not give it us,” +said Lydia. The sarcasm was irrepressible. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a devilishly unfair thing to say,” Grandcourt +replied, in a lower tone; “and I advise you not to say that sort of thing +again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Should you punish me by leaving the children in beggary?” In spite +of herself, the one outlet of venom had brought the other. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no question about leaving the children in beggary,” said +Grandcourt, still in his low voice. “I advise you not to say things that +you will repent of.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am used to repenting,” said she, bitterly. “Perhaps you +will repent. You have already repented of loving me.” +</p> + +<p> +“All this will only make it uncommonly difficult for us to meet again. +What friend have you besides me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite true.” +</p> + +<p> +The words came like a low moan. At the same moment there flashed through her +the wish that after promising himself a better happiness than that he had had +with her, he might feel a misery and loneliness which would drive him back to +her to find some memory of a time when he was young, glad, and hopeful. But no! +he would go scathless; it was she that had to suffer. +</p> + +<p> +With this the scorching words were ended. Grandcourt had meant to stay till +evening; he wished to curtail his visit, but there was no suitable train +earlier than the one he had arranged to go by, and he had still to speak to +Lydia on the second object of his visit, which like a second surgical operation +seemed to require an interval. The hours had to go by; there was eating to be +done; the children came in—all this mechanism of life had to be gone +through with the dreary sense of constraint which is often felt in domestic +quarrels of a commoner kind. To Lydia it was some slight relief for her stifled +fury to have the children present: she felt a savage glory in their loveliness, +as if it would taunt Grandcourt with his indifference to her and them—a +secret darting of venom which was strongly imaginative. He acquitted himself +with all the advantage of a man whose grace of bearing has long been moulded on +an experience of boredom—nursed the little Antonia, who sat with her +hands crossed and eyes upturned to his bald head, which struck her as worthy of +observation—and propitiated Henleigh by promising him a beautiful saddle +and bridle. It was only the two eldest girls who had known him as a continual +presence; and the intervening years had overlaid their infantine memories with +a bashfulness which Grandcourt’s bearing was not likely to dissipate. He +and Lydia occasionally, in the presence of the servants, made a conventional +remark; otherwise they never spoke; and the stagnant thought in +Grandcourt’s mind all the while was of his own infatuation in having +given her those diamonds, which obliged him to incur the nuisance of speaking +about them. He had an ingrained care for what he held to belong to his caste, +and about property he liked to be lordly; also he had a consciousness of +indignity to himself in having to ask for anything in the world. But however he +might assert his independence of Mrs. Glasher’s past, he had made a past +for himself which was a stronger yoke than any he could impose. He must ask for +the diamonds which he had promised to Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +At last they were alone again, with the candles above them, face to face with +each other. Grandcourt looked at his watch, and then said, in an apparently +indifferent drawl, “There is one thing I had to mention, Lydia. My +diamonds—you have them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I have them,” she answered promptly, rising and standing with +her arms thrust down and her fingers threaded, while Grandcourt sat still. She +had expected the topic, and made her resolve about it. But she meant to carry +out her resolve, if possible, without exasperating him. During the hours of +silence she had longed to recall the words which had only widened the breach +between them. +</p> + +<p> +“They are in this house, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; not in this house.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you said you kept them by you.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I said so it was true. They are in the bank at Dudley.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get them away, will you? I must make an arrangement for your delivering +them to some one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Make no arrangement. They shall be delivered to the person you intended +them for. <i>I</i> will make the arrangement.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“What I say. I have always told you that I would give them up to your +wife. I shall keep my word. She is not your wife yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“This is foolery,” said Grandcourt, with undertoned disgust. It was +too irritating that this indulgence of Lydia had given her a sort of mastery +over him in spite of dependent condition. +</p> + +<p> +She did not speak. He also rose now, but stood leaning against the mantle-piece +with his side-face toward her. +</p> + +<p> +“The diamonds must be delivered to me before my marriage,” he began +again. +</p> + +<p> +“What is your wedding-day?” +</p> + +<p> +“The tenth. There is no time to be lost.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where do you go after the marriage?” +</p> + +<p> +He did not reply except by looking more sullen. Presently he said, “You +must appoint a day before then, to get them from the bank and meet me—or +somebody else I will commission;—it’s a great nuisance. Mention a +day.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I shall not do that. They shall be delivered to her safely. I shall +keep my word.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean to say,” said Grandcourt, just audibly, turning to +face her, “that you will not do as I tell you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I mean that,” was the answer that leaped out, while her eyes +flashed close to him. The poor creature was immediately conscious that if her +words had any effect on her own lot, the effect must be mischievous, and might +nullify all the remaining advantage of her long patience. But the word had been +spoken. +</p> + +<p> +He was in a position the most irritating to him. He could not shake her nor +touch her hostilely; and if he could, the process would not bring his +mother’s diamonds. He shrank from the only sort of threat that would +frighten her—if she believed it. And in general, there was nothing he +hated more than to be forced into anything like violence even in words: his +will must impose itself without trouble. After looking at her for a moment, he +turned his side-face toward her again, leaning as before, and said, +</p> + +<p> +“Infernal idiots that women are!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why will you not tell me where you are going after the marriage? I could +be at the wedding if I liked, and learn in that way,” said Lydia, not +shrinking from the one suicidal form of threat within her power. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, if you like, you can play the mad woman,” said +Grandcourt, with <i>sotto voce</i> scorn. “It is not to be supposed that +you will wait to think what good will come of it—or what you owe to +me.” +</p> + +<p> +He was in a state of disgust and embitterment quite new in the history of their +relation to each other. It was undeniable that this woman, whose life he had +allowed to send such deep suckers into his, had a terrible power of annoyance +in her; and the rash hurry of his proceedings had left her opportunities open. +His pride saw very ugly possibilities threatening it, and he stood for several +minutes in silence reviewing the situation—considering how he could act +upon her. Unlike himself she was of a direct nature, with certain simple +strongly-colored tendencies, and there was one often-experienced effect which +he thought he could count upon now. As Sir Hugo had said of him, Grandcourt +knew how to play his cards upon occasion. +</p> + +<p> +He did not speak again, but looked at his watch, rang the bell, and ordered the +vehicle to be brought round immediately. Then he removed farther from her, +walked as if in expectation of a summons, and remained silent without turning +his eyes upon her. +</p> + +<p> +She was suffering the horrible conflict of self-reproach and tenacity. She saw +beforehand Grandcourt leaving her without even looking at her +again—herself left behind in lonely uncertainty—hearing nothing +from him—not knowing whether she had done her children harm—feeling +that she had perhaps made him hate her;—all the wretchedness of a +creature who had defeated her own motives. And yet she could not bear to give +up a purpose which was a sweet morsel to her vindictiveness. If she had not +been a mother she would willingly have sacrificed herself to her +revenge—to what she felt to be the justice of hindering another from +getting happiness by willingly giving her over to misery. The two dominant +passions were at struggle. She must satisfy them both. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t let us part in anger, Henleigh,” she began, without +changing her voice or attitude: “it is a very little thing I ask. If I +were refusing to give anything up that you call yours it would be different: +that would be a reason for treating me as if you hated me. But I ask such a +little thing. If you will tell me where you are going on the wedding-day I will +take care that the diamonds shall be delivered to her without scandal. Without +scandal,” she repeated entreatingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Such preposterous whims make a woman odious,” said Grandcourt, not +giving way in look or movement. “What is the use of talking to mad +people?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am foolish—loneliness has made me foolish—indulge +me.” Sobs rose as she spoke. “If you will indulge me in this one +folly I will be very meek—I will never trouble you.” She burst into +hysterical crying, and said again almost with a scream—“I will be +very meek after that.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a strange mixture of acting and reality in this passion. She kept +hold of her purpose as a child might tighten its hand over a small stolen +thing, crying and denying all the while. Even Grandcourt was wrought upon by +surprise: this capricious wish, this childish violence, was as unlike +Lydia’s bearing as it was incongruous with her person. Both had always +had a stamp of dignity on them. Yet she seemed more manageable in this state +than in her former attitude of defiance. He came close up to her again, and +said, in his low imperious tone, “Be quiet, and hear what I tell you, I +will never forgive you if you present yourself again and make a scene.” +</p> + +<p> +She pressed her handkerchief against her face, and when she could speak firmly +said, in the muffled voice that follows sobbing, “I will not—if you +will let me have my way—I promise you not to thrust myself forward again. +I have never broken my word to you—how many have you broken to me? When +you gave me the diamonds to wear you were not thinking of having another wife. +And I now give them up—I don’t reproach you—I only ask you to +let me give them up in my own way. Have I not borne it well? Everything is to +be taken away from me, and when I ask for a straw, a chip—you deny it +me.” She had spoken rapidly, but after a little pause she said more +slowly, her voice freed from its muffled tone: “I will not bear to have +it denied me.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt had a baffling sense that he had to deal with something like +madness; he could only govern by giving way. The servant came to say the fly +was ready. When the door was shut again Grandcourt said sullenly, “We are +going to Ryelands then.” +</p> + +<p> +“They shall be delivered to her there,” said Lydia, with decision. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, I am going.” He felt no inclination even to take her +hand: she had annoyed him too sorely. But now that she had gained her point, +she was prepared to humble herself that she might propitiate him. +</p> + +<p> +“Forgive me; I will never vex you again,” she said, with beseeching +looks. Her inward voice said distinctly—“It is only I who have to +forgive.” Yet she was obliged to ask forgiveness. +</p> + +<p> +“You had better keep that promise. You have made me feel uncommonly ill +with your folly,” said Grandcourt, apparently choosing this statement as +the strongest possible use of language. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor thing!” cried Lydia, with a faint smile;—was he aware +of the minor fact that he made her feel ill this morning? +</p> + +<p> +But with the quick transition natural to her, she was now ready to coax him if +he would let her, that they might part in some degree reconciled. She ventured +to lay her hand on his shoulder, and he did not move away from her: she had so +far succeeded in alarming him, that he was not sorry for these proofs of +returned subjection. +</p> + +<p> +“Light a cigar,” she said, soothingly, taking the case from his +breast-pocket and opening it. +</p> + +<p> +Amidst such caressing signs of mutual fear they parted. The effect that clung +and gnawed within Grandcourt was a sense of imperfect mastery. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0031"></a> +CHAPTER XXXI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“A wild dedication of yourselves<br/> +To unpath’d waters, undreamed shores.”<br/> + —S<small>HAKESPEARE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +On the day when Gwendolen Harleth was married and became Mrs. Grandcourt, the +morning was clear and bright, and while the sun was low a slight frost crisped +the leaves. The bridal party was worth seeing, and half Pennicote turned out to +see it, lining the pathway up to the church. An old friend of the +rector’s performed the marriage ceremony, the rector himself acting as +father, to the great advantage of the procession. Only two faces, it was +remarked, showed signs of sadness—Mrs. Davilow’s and Anna’s. +The mother’s delicate eyelids were pink, as if she had been crying half +the night; and no one was surprised that, splendid as the match was, she should +feel the parting from a daughter who was the flower of her children and of her +own life. It was less understood why Anna should be troubled when she was being +so well set off by the bridesmaid’s dress. Every one else seemed to +reflect the brilliancy of the occasion—the bride most of all. Of her it +was agreed that as to figure and carriage she was worthy to be a “lady +o’ title”: as to face, perhaps it might be thought that a title +required something more rosy; but the bridegroom himself not being +fresh-colored—being indeed, as the miller’s wife observed, very +much of her own husband’s complexion—the match was the more +complete. Anyhow he must be very fond of her; and it was to be hoped that he +would never cast it up to her that she had been going out to service as a +governess, and her mother to live at Sawyer’s Cottage—vicissitudes +which had been much spoken of in the village. The miller’s daughter of +fourteen could not believe that high gentry behaved badly to their wives, but +her mother instructed her—“Oh, child, men’s men: gentle or +simple, they’re much of a muchness. I’ve heard my mother say Squire +Pelton used to take his dogs and a long whip into his wife’s room, and +flog ’em there to frighten her; and my mother was lady’s-maid there +at the very time.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s unlucky talk for a wedding, Mrs. Girdle,” said the +tailor. “A quarrel may end wi’ the whip, but it begins wi’ +the tongue, and it’s the women have got the most o’ that.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Lord gave it ’em to use, I suppose,” said Mrs. Girdle. +“<i>He</i> never meant you to have it all your own way.” +</p> + +<p> +“By what I can make out from the gentleman as attends to the grooming at +Offendene,” said the tailor, “this Mr. Grandcourt has wonderful +little tongue. Everything must be done dummy-like without his ordering.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then he’s the more whip, I doubt,” said Mrs. Girdle. +“<i>She’s</i> got tongue enough, I warrant her. See, there they +come out together!” +</p> + +<p> +“What wonderful long corners she’s got to her eyes!” said the +tailor. “She makes you feel comical when she looks at you.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, in fact, never showed more elasticity in her bearing, more lustre in +her long brown glance: she had the brilliancy of strong excitement, which will +sometimes come even from pain. It was not pain, however, that she was feeling: +she had wrought herself up to much the same condition as that in which she +stood at the gambling-table when Deronda was looking at her, and she began to +lose. There was an enjoyment in it: whatever uneasiness a growing conscience +had created was disregarded as an ailment might have been, amidst the +gratification of that ambitious vanity and desire for luxury within her which +it would take a great deal of slow poisoning to kill. This morning she could +not have said truly that she repented her acceptance of Grandcourt, or that any +fears in hazy perspective could hinder the glowing effect of the immediate +scene in which she was the central object. That she was doing something +wrong—that a punishment might be hanging over her—that the woman to +whom she had given a promise and broken it, was thinking of her in bitterness +and misery with a just reproach—that Deronda with his way of looking into +things very likely despised her for marrying Grandcourt, as he had despised her +for gambling—above all, that the cord which united her with this lover +and which she had heretofore held by the hand, was now being flung over her +neck,—all this yeasty mingling of dimly understood facts with vague but +deep impressions, and with images half real, half fantastic, had been +disturbing her during the weeks of her engagement. Was that agitating +experience nullified this morning? No: it was surmounted and thrust down with a +sort of exulting defiance as she felt herself standing at the game of life with +many eyes upon her, daring everything to win much—or if to lose, still +with <i>éclat</i> and a sense of importance. But this morning a losing destiny +for herself did not press upon her as a fear: she thought that she was entering +on a fuller power of managing circumstances—with all the official +strength of marriage, which some women made so poor a use of. That intoxication +of youthful egoism out of which she had been shaken by trouble, humiliation, +and a new sense of culpability, had returned upon her under a newly-fed +strength of the old fumes. She did not in the least present the ideal of the +tearful, tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some had judged much too forward +and instructed in the world’s ways!—with her erect head and elastic +footstep she was walking among illusions; and yet, too, there was an +under-consciousness of her that she was a little intoxicated. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank God you bear it so well, my darling!” said Mrs. Davilow, +when she had helped Gwendolen to doff her bridal white and put on her traveling +dress. All the trembling had been done by the poor mother, and her agitation +urged Gwendolen doubly to take the morning as if it were a triumph. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you might have said that, if I had been going to Mrs. +Mompert’s, you dear, sad, incorrigible mamma!” said Gwendolen just +putting her hands to her mother’s cheeks with laughing +tenderness—then retreating a little and spreading out her arms as if to +exhibit herself: “Here am I—Mrs. Grandcourt! what else would you +have me, but what I am sure to be? You know you were ready to die with vexation +when you thought that I would not be Mrs. Grandcourt.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush, hush, my child, for heaven’s sake!” said Mrs. Davilow, +almost in a whisper. “How can I help feeling it when I am parting from +you. But I can bear anything gladly if you are happy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not gladly, mamma, no!” said Gwendolen, shaking her head, with a +bright smile. “Willingly you would bear it, but always sorrowfully. +Sorrowing is your sauce; you can take nothing without it.” Then, clasping +her mother’s shoulders and raining kisses first on one cheek and then on +the other between her words, she said, gaily, “And you shall sorrow over +my having everything at my beck—and enjoying everything +glorious—splendid houses—and horses—and diamonds, I shall +have diamonds—and going to court—and being Lady Certainly—and +Lady Perhaps—and grand here—and tantivy there—and always +loving you better than anybody else in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“My sweet child!—But I shall not be jealous if you love your +husband better; and he will expect to be first.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen thrust out her lips and chin with a pretty grimace, saying, +“Rather a ridiculous expectation. However, I don’t mean to treat +him ill, unless he deserves it.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the two fell into a clinging embrace, and Gwendolen could not hinder a +rising sob when she said, “I wish you were going with me, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +But the slight dew on her long eyelashes only made her the more charming when +she gave her hand to Grandcourt to be led to the carriage. +</p> + +<p> +The rector looked in on her to give a final “Good-bye; God bless you; we +shall see you again before long,” and then returned to Mrs. Davilow, +saying half cheerfully, half solemnly, +</p> + +<p> +“Let us be thankful, Fanny. She is in a position well suited to her, and +beyond what I should have dared to hope for. And few women can have been chosen +more entirely for their own sake. You should feel yourself a happy +mother.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +There was a railway journey of some fifty miles before the new husband and wife +reached the station near Ryelands. The sky had veiled itself since the morning, +and it was hardly more than twilight when they entered the park-gates, but +still Gwendolen, looking out of the carriage-window as they drove rapidly +along, could see the grand outlines and the nearer beauties of the +scene—the long winding drive bordered with evergreens backed by huge gray +stems: then the opening of wide grassy spaces and undulations studded with dark +clumps; till at last came a wide level where the white house could be seen, +with a hanging wood for a background, and the rising and sinking balustrade of +a terrace in front. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen had been at her liveliest during the journey, chatting incessantly, +ignoring any change in their mutual position since yesterday; and Grandcourt +had been rather ecstatically quiescent, while she turned his gentle seizure of +her hand into a grasp of his hand by both hers, with an increased vivacity as +of a kitten that will not sit quiet to be petted. She was really getting +somewhat febrile in her excitement; and now in this drive through the park her +usual susceptibility to changes of light and scenery helped to make her heart +palpitate newly. Was it at the novelty simply, or the almost incredible +fulfilment about to be given to her girlish dreams of being +“somebody”—walking through her own furlong of corridor and +under her own ceilings of an out-of-sight loftiness, where her own painted +Spring was shedding painted flowers, and her own fore-shortened Zephyrs were +blowing their trumpets over her; while her own servants, lackeys in clothing +but men in bulk and shape, were as nought in her presence, and revered the +propriety of her insolence to them:—being in short the heroine of an +admired play without the pains of art? Was it alone the closeness of this +fulfilment which made her heart flutter? or was it some dim forecast, the +insistent penetration of suppressed experience, mixing the expectation of a +triumph with the dread of a crisis? Hers was one of the natures in which +exultation inevitably carries an infusion of dread ready to curdle and declare +itself. +</p> + +<p> +She fell silent in spite of herself as they approached the gates, and when her +husband said, “Here we are at home!” and for the first time kissed +her on the lips, she hardly knew of it: it was no more than the passive +acceptance of a greeting in the midst of an absorbing show. Was not all her +hurrying life of the last three months a show, in which her consciousness was a +wondering spectator? After the half-willful excitement of the day, a numbness +had come over her personality. +</p> + +<p> +But there was a brilliant light in the hall—warmth, matting, carpets, +full-length portraits, Olympian statues, assiduous servants. Not many servants, +however: only a few from Diplow in addition to those constantly in charge of +the house; and Gwendolen’s new maid, who had come with her, was taken +under guidance by the housekeeper. Gwendolen felt herself being led by +Grandcourt along a subtly-scented corridor, into an ante-room where she saw an +open doorway sending out a rich glow of light and color. +</p> + +<p> +“These are our dens,” said Grandcourt. “You will like to be +quiet here till dinner. We shall dine early.” +</p> + +<p> +He pressed her hand to his lips and moved away, more in love than he had ever +expected to be. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, yielded up her hat and mantle, threw herself into a chair by the +glowing hearth, and saw herself repeated in glass panels with all her +faint-green satin surroundings. The housekeeper had passed into this boudoir +from the adjoining dressing-room and seemed disposed to linger, Gwendolen +thought, in order to look at the new mistress of Ryelands, who, however, being +impatient for solitude said to her, “Will you tell Hudson when she has +put out my dress to leave everything? I shall not want her again, unless I +ring.” +</p> + +<p> +The housekeeper, coming forward, said, “Here is a packet, madam, which I +was ordered to give into nobody’s hands but yours, when you were alone. +The person who brought it said it was a present particularly ordered by Mr. +Grandcourt; but he was not to know of its arrival till he saw you wear it. +Excuse me, madam; I felt it right to obey orders.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen took the packet and let it lie on her lap till she heard the doors +close. It came into her mind that the packet might contain the diamonds which +Grandcourt had spoken of as being deposited somewhere and to be given to her on +her marriage. In this moment of confused feeling and creeping luxurious languor +she was glad of this diversion—glad of such an event as having her own +diamonds to try on. +</p> + +<p> +Within all the sealed paper coverings was a box, but within the box there +<i>was</i> a jewel-case; and now she felt no doubt that she had the diamonds. +But on opening the case, in the same instant that she saw them gleam she saw a +letter lying above them. She knew the handwriting of the address. It was as if +an adder had lain on them. Her heart gave a leap which seemed to have spent all +her strength; and as she opened the bit of thin paper, it shook with the +trembling of her hands. But it was legible as print, and thrust its words upon +her. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +These diamonds, which were once given with ardent love to Lydia Glasher, she +passes on to you. You have broken your word to her, that you might possess what +was hers. Perhaps you think of being happy, as she once was, and of having +beautiful children such as hers, who will thrust hers aside. God is too just +for that. The man you have married has a withered heart. His best young love +was mine: you could not take that from me when you took the rest. It is dead: +but 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It seemed at first as if Gwendolen’s eyes were spell-bound in reading the +horrible words of the letter over and over again as a doom of penance; but +suddenly a new spasm of terror made her lean forward and stretch out the paper +toward the fire, lest accusation and proof at once should meet all eyes. It +flew like a feather from her trembling fingers and was caught up in a great +draught of flame. In her movement the casket fell on the floor and the diamonds +rolled out. She took no notice, but fell back in her chair again helpless. She +could not see the reflections of herself then; they were like so many women +petrified white; but coming near herself you might have seen the tremor in her +lips and hands. She sat so for a long while, knowing little more than that she +was feeling ill, and that those written words kept repeating themselves to her. +</p> + +<p> +Truly here were poisoned gems, and the poison had entered into this poor young +creature. +</p> + +<p> +After that long while, there was a tap at the door and Grandcourt entered, +dressed for dinner. The sight of him brought a new nervous shock, and Gwendolen +screamed again and again with hysterical violence. He had expected to see her +dressed and smiling, ready to be led down. He saw her pallid, shrieking as it +seemed with terror, the jewels scattered around her on the floor. Was it a fit +of madness? +</p> + +<p> +In some form or other the furies had crossed his threshold. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0032"></a> +CHAPTER XXXII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In all ages it hath been a favorite text that a potent love hath the nature of +an isolated fatality, whereto the mind’s opinions and wonted resolves are +altogether alien; as, for example, Daphnis his frenzy, wherein it had little +availed him to have been convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine; or the +philtre-bred passion of Tristan, who, though he had been as deep as Duns +Scotus, would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or Romeo in +his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections he might have held against +Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under the balcony. Yet all +love is not such, even though potent; nay, this passion hath as large scope as +any for allying itself with every operation of the soul: so that it shall +acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven firmaments, and have +its scale set to the grander orbits of what hath been and shall be. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, on his return to town, could assure Sir Hugo of his having lodged in +Grandcourt’s mind a distinct understanding that he could get fifty +thousand pounds by giving up a prospect which was probably distant, and not +absolutely certain; but he had no further sign of Grandcourt’s +disposition in the matter than that he was evidently inclined to keep up +friendly communications. +</p> + +<p> +“And what did you think of the future bride on a nearer survey?” +said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought better of her than I did in Leubronn. Roulette was not a good +setting for her; it brought out something of the demon. At Diplow she seemed +much more womanly and attractive—less hard and self-possessed. I thought +her mouth and eyes had quite a different expression.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t flirt with her too much, Dan,” said Sir Hugo, meaning +to be agreeably playful. “If you make Grandcourt savage when they come to +the Abbey at Christmas, it will interfere with my affairs.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can stay in town, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no. Lady Mallinger and the children can’t do without you at +Christmas. Only don’t make mischief—unless you can get up a duel, +and manage to shoot Grandcourt, which might be worth a little +inconvenience.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think you ever saw me flirt,” said Deronda, not +amused. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, haven’t I, though?” said Sir Hugo, provokingly. +“You are always looking tenderly at the women, and talking to them in a +Jesuitical way. You are a dangerous young fellow—a kind of Lovelace who +will make the Clarissas run after you instead of you running after them.” +</p> + +<p> +What was the use of being exasperated at a tasteless joke?—only the +exasperation comes before the reflection on utility. Few friendly remarks are +more annoying than the information that we are always seeming to do what we +never mean to do. Sir Hugo’s notion of flirting, it was to be hoped, was +rather peculiar; for his own part, Deronda was sure that he had never flirted. +But he was glad that the baronet had no knowledge about the repurchase of +Gwendolen’s necklace to feed his taste for this kind of rallying. +</p> + +<p> +He would be on his guard in future; for example, in his behavior at Mrs. +Meyrick’s, where he was about to pay his first visit since his arrival +from Leubronn. For Mirah was certainly a creature in whom it was difficult not +to show a tender kind of interest both by looks and speech. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick had not failed to send Deronda a report of Mirah’s +well-being in her family. “We are getting fonder of her every day,” +she had written. “At breakfast-time we all look toward the door with +expectation to see her come in; and we watch her and listen to her as if she +were a native from a new country. I have not heard a word from her lips that +gives me a doubt about her. She is quite contented and full of gratitude. My +daughters are learning from her, and they hope to get her other pupils; for she +is anxious not to eat the bread of idleness, but to work, like my girls. Mab +says our life has become like a fairy tale, and all she is afraid of is that +Mirah will turn into a nightingale again and fly away from us. Her voice is +just perfect: not loud and strong, but searching and melting, like the thoughts +of what has been. That is the way old people like me feel a beautiful +voice.” +</p> + +<p> +But Mrs. Meyrick did not enter into particulars which would have required her +to say that Amy and Mab, who had accompanied Mirah to the synagogue, found the +Jewish faith less reconcilable with their wishes in her case than in that of +Scott’s Rebecca. They kept silence out of delicacy to Mirah, with whom +her religion was too tender a subject to be touched lightly; but after a while +Amy, who was much of a practical reformer, could not restrain a question. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me, Mirah, but <i>does</i> it seem quite right to you that the +women should sit behind rails in a gallery apart?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I never thought of anything else,” said Mirah, with mild +surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“And you like better to see the men with their hats on?” said Mab, +cautiously proposing the smallest item of difference. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes. I like what I have always seen there, because it brings back to +me the same feelings—the feelings I would not part with for anything else +in the world.” +</p> + +<p> +After this, any criticism, whether of doctrine or practice, would have seemed +to these generous little people an inhospitable cruelty. Mirah’s religion +was of one fibre with her affections, and had never presented itself to her as +a set of propositions. +</p> + +<p> +“She says herself she is a very bad Jewess, and does not half know her +people’s religion,” said Amy, when Mirah was gone to bed. +“Perhaps it would gradually melt away from her, and she would pass into +Christianity like the rest of the world, if she got to love us very much, and +never found her mother. It is so strange to be of the Jews’ religion +now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Mab. “I wish I were not such a hideous +Christian. How can an ugly Christian, who is always dropping her work, convert +a beautiful Jewess, who has not a fault?” +</p> + +<p> +“It may be wicked of me,” said shrewd Kate, “but I cannot +help wishing that her mother may not be found. There might be something +unpleasant.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think it, my dear,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “I +believe Mirah is cut out after the pattern of her mother. And what a joy it +would be to her to have such a daughter brought back again! But a +mother’s feelings are not worth reckoning, I suppose” (she shot a +mischievous glance at her own daughters), “and a dead mother is worth +more than a living one?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, and so she may be, little mother,” said Kate; “but we +would rather hold you cheaper, and have you alive.” +</p> + +<p> +Not only the Meyricks, whose various knowledge had been acquired by the +irregular foraging to which clever girls have usually been reduced, but Deronda +himself, with all his masculine instruction, had been roused by this apparition +of Mirah to the consciousness of knowing hardly anything about modern Judaism +or the inner Jewish history. The Chosen People have been commonly treated as a +people chosen for the sake of somebody else; and their thinking as something +(no matter exactly what) that ought to have been entirely otherwise; and +Deronda, like his neighbors, had regarded Judaism as a sort of eccentric +fossilized form which an accomplished man might dispense with studying, and +leave to specialists. But Mirah, with her terrified flight from one parent, and +her yearning after the other, had flashed on him the hitherto neglected reality +that Judaism was something still throbbing in human lives, still making for +them the only conceivable vesture of the world; and in the idling excursion on +which he immediately afterward set out with Sir Hugo he began to look for the +outsides of synagogues, and the title of books about the Jews. This awakening +of a new interest—this passing from the supposition that we hold the +right opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a sudden care for it, and +a sense that our opinions were ignorance—is an effectual remedy for +<i>ennui</i>, which, unhappily, cannot be secured on a physician’s +prescription; but Deronda had carried it with him, and endured his weeks of +lounging all the better. It was on this journey that he first entered a Jewish +synagogue—at Frankfort—where his party rested on a Friday. In +exploring the Juden-gasse, which he had seen long before, he remembered well +enough its picturesque old houses; what his eyes chiefly dwelt on now were the +human types there; and his thought, busily connecting them with the past phases +of their race, stirred that fibre of historic sympathy which had helped to +determine in him certain traits worth mentioning for those who are interested +in his future. True, when a young man has a fine person, no eccentricity of +manners, the education of a gentleman, and a present income, it is not +customary to feel a prying curiosity about his way of thinking, or his peculiar +tastes. He may very well be settled in life as an agreeable clever young fellow +without passing a special examination on those heads. Later, when he is getting +rather slovenly and portly, his peculiarities are more distinctly discerned, +and it is taken as a mercy if they are not highly objectionable. But any one +wishing to understand the effect of after-events on Deronda should know a +little more of what he was at five-and-twenty than was evident in ordinary +intercourse. +</p> + +<p> +It happened that the very vividness of his impressions had often made him the +more enigmatic to his friends, and had contributed to an apparent +indefiniteness in his sentiments. His early-wakened sensibility and +reflectiveness had developed into a many-sided sympathy, which threatened to +hinder any persistent course of action: as soon as he took up any antagonism, +though only in thought, he seemed to himself like the Sabine warriors in the +memorable story—with nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, +and objects that he loved. His imagination had so wrought itself to the habit +of seeing things as they probably appeared to others, that a strong +partisanship, unless it were against an immediate oppression, had become an +insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy had ended by falling into +one current with that reflective analysis which tends to neutralize sympathy. +Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of vices than he; yet he hated +vices mildly, being used to think of them less in the abstract than as a part +of mixed human natures having an individual history, which it was the bent of +his mind to trace with understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he +was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his +affections and imagination, intensely conservative; voracious of speculations +on government and religion, yet loth to part with long-sanctioned forms which, +for him, were quick with memories and sentiments that no argument could lay +dead. We fall on the leaning side; and Deronda suspected himself of loving too +well the losing causes of the world. Martyrdom changes sides, and he was in +danger of changing with it, having a strong repugnance to taking up that clue +of success which the order of the world often forces upon us and makes it +treason against the common weal to reject. And yet his fear of falling into an +unreasoning narrow hatred made a check for him: he apologized for the heirs of +privilege; he shrank with dislike from the loser’s bitterness and the +denunciatory tone of the unaccepted innovator. A too reflective and diffusive +sympathy was in danger of paralyzing in him that indignation against wrong and +that selectness of fellowship which are the conditions of moral force; and in +the last few years of confirmed manhood he had become so keenly aware of this +that what he most longed for was either some external event, or some inward +light, that would urge him into a definite line of action, and compress his +wandering energy. He was ceasing to care for knowledge—he had no ambition +for practice—unless they could both be gathered up into one current with +his emotions; and he dreaded, as if it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, +that dead anatomy of culture which turns the universe into a mere ceaseless +answer to queries, and knows, not everything, but everything else about +everything—as if one should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent +of violets except the scent itself for which one had no nostril. But how and +whence was the needed event to come?—the influence that would justify +partiality, and make him what he longed to be, yet was unable to make +himself—an organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a +yearning disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague social passion, but without +fixed local habitation to render fellowship real? To make a little difference +for the better was what he was not contented to live without; but how to make +it? It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it. He found some of the +fault in his birth and the way he had been brought up, which had laid no +special demands on him and had given him no fixed relationship except one of a +doubtful kind; but he did not attempt to hide from himself that he had fallen +into a meditative numbness, and was gliding farther and farther from that life +of practically energetic sentiment which he would have proclaimed (if he had +been inclined to proclaim anything) to be the best of all life, and for himself +the only way worth living. He wanted some way of keeping emotion and its +progeny of sentiments—which make the savors of life—substantial and +strong in the face of a reflectiveness that threatened to nullify all +differences. To pound the objects of sentiment into small dust, yet keep +sentiment alive and active, was something like the famous recipe for making +cannon—to first take a round hole and then enclose it with iron; whatever +you do keeping fast hold of your round hole. Yet how distinguish what our will +may wisely save in its completeness, from the heaping of cat-mummies and the +expensive cult of enshrined putrefactions? +</p> + +<p> +Something like this was the common under-current in Deronda’s mind while +he was reading law or imperfectly attending to polite conversation. Meanwhile +he had not set about one function in particular with zeal and steadiness. Not +an admirable experience, to be proposed as an ideal; but a form of struggle +before break of day which some young men since the patriarch have had to pass +through, with more or less of bruising if not laming. +</p> + +<p> +I have said that under his calm exterior he had a fervor which made him easily +feel the presence of poetry in everyday events; and the forms of the +Juden-gasse, rousing the sense of union with what is remote, set him musing on +two elements of our historic life which that sense raises into the same region +of poetry;—the faint beginnings of faiths and institutions, and their +obscure lingering decay; the dust and withered remnants with which they are apt +to be covered, only enhancing for the awakened perception the impressiveness +either of a sublimely penetrating life, as in the twin green leaves that will +become the sheltering tree, or of a pathetic inheritance in which all the +grandeur and the glory have become a sorrowing memory. +</p> + +<p> +This imaginative stirring, as he turned out of the Juden-gasse, and continued +to saunter in the warm evening air, meaning to find his way to the synagogue, +neutralized the repellent effect of certain ugly little incidents on his way. +Turning into an old book-shop to ask the exact time of service at the +synagogue, he was affectionately directed by a precocious Jewish youth, who +entered cordially into his wanting, not the fine new building of the Reformed +but the old Rabbinical school of the orthodox; and then cheated him like a pure +Teuton, only with more amenity, in his charge for a book quite out of request +as one “nicht so leicht zu bekommen.” Meanwhile at the opposite +counter a deaf and grisly tradesman was casting a flinty look at certain cards, +apparently combining advantages of business with religion, and shoutingly +proposed to him in Jew-dialect by a dingy man in a tall coat hanging from neck +to heel, a bag in hand, and a broad low hat surmounting his chosen +nose—who had no sooner disappeared than another dingy man of the same +pattern issued from the background glooms of the shop and also shouted in the +same dialect. In fact, Deronda saw various queer-looking Israelites not +altogether without guile, and just distinguishable from queer-looking +Christians of the same mixed <i>morale</i>. In his anxiety about Mirah’s +relatives, he had lately been thinking of vulgar Jews with a sort of personal +alarm. But a little comparison will often diminish our surprise and disgust at +the aberrations of Jews and other dissidents whose lives do not offer a +consistent or lovely pattern of their creed; and this evening Deronda, becoming +more conscious that he was falling into unfairness and ridiculous exaggeration, +began to use that corrective comparison: he paid his thaler too much, without +prejudice to his interests in the Hebrew destiny, or his wish to find the +<i>Rabbinische Schule</i>, which he arrived at by sunset, and entered with a +good congregation of men. +</p> + +<p> +He happened to take his seat in a line with an elderly man from whom he was +distant enough to glance at him more than once as rather a noticeable +figure—his ample white beard and felt hat framing a profile of that fine +contour which may as easily be Italian as Hebrew. He returned Deronda’s +notice till at last their eyes met; an undesirable chance with unknown persons, +and a reason to Deronda for not looking again; but he immediately found an open +prayer-book pushed toward him and had to bow his thanks. However, the +congregation had mustered, the reader had mounted to the <i>almemor</i> or +platform, and the service began. Deronda, having looked enough at the German +translation of the Hebrew in the book before him to know that he was chiefly +hearing Psalms and Old Testament passages or phrases, gave himself up to that +strongest effect of chanted liturgies which is independent of detailed verbal +meaning—like the effect of an Allegri’s <i>Miserere</i> or a +Palestrina’s <i>Magnificat</i>. The most powerful movement of feeling +with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning +to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all +Good to enter and abide with us; or else a self-oblivious lifting up of +Gladness, a <i>Gloria in excelsis</i> that such Good exists; both the yearning +and the exaltation gathering their utmost force from the sense of communion in +a form which has expressed them both, for long generations of struggling +fellow-men. The Hebrew liturgy, like others, has its transitions of litany, +lyric, proclamation, dry statement and blessing; but this evening, all were one +for Deronda: the chant of the <i>Chazaris</i> or Reader’s grand +wide-ranging voice with its passage from monotony to sudden cries, the outburst +of sweet boys’ voices from the little choir, the devotional swaying of +men’s bodies backward and forward, the very commonness of the building +and shabbiness of the scene where a national faith, which had penetrated the +thinking of half the world, and moulded the splendid forms of that +world’s religion, was finding a remote, obscure echo—all were blent +for him as one expression of a binding history, tragic and yet glorious. He +wondered at the strength of his own feeling; it seemed beyond the +occasion—what one might imagine to be a divine influx in the darkness, +before there was any vision to interpret. The whole scene was a coherent +strain, its burden a passionate regret, which, if he had known the liturgy for +the Day of Reconciliation, he might have clad in its antithetic burden; +“Happy the eye which saw all these things; but verily to hear only of +them afflicts our soul. Happy the eye that saw our temple and the joy of our +congregation; but verily to hear only of them afflicts our soul. Happy the eye +that saw the fingers when tuning every kind of song; but verily to hear only of +them afflicts our soul.” +</p> + +<p> +But with the cessation of the devotional sounds and the movement of many +indifferent faces and vulgar figures before him there darted into his mind the +frigid idea that he had probably been alone in his feeling, and perhaps the +only person in the congregation for whom the service was more than a dull +routine. There was just time for this chilling thought before he had bowed to +his civil neighbor and was moving away with the rest—when he felt a hand +on his arm, and turning with the rather unpleasant sensation which this abrupt +sort of claim is apt to bring, he saw close to him the white-bearded face of +that neighbor, who said to him in German, “Excuse me, young +gentleman—allow me—what is your parentage—your mother’s +family—her maiden name?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda had a strongly resistant feeling: he was inclined to shake off hastily +the touch on his arm; but he managed to slip it away and said coldly, “I +am an Englishman.” +</p> + +<p> +The questioner looked at him dubiously still for an instant, then just lifted +his hat and turned away; whether under a sense of having made a mistake or of +having been repulsed, Deronda was uncertain. In his walk back to the hotel he +tried to still any uneasiness on the subject by reflecting that he could not +have acted differently. How could he say that he did not know the name of his +mother’s family to that total stranger?—who indeed had taken an +unwarrantable liberty in the abruptness of his question, dictated probably by +some fancy of likeness such as often occurs without real significance. The +incident, he said to himself, was trivial; but whatever import it might have, +his inward shrinking on the occasion was too strong for him to be sorry that he +had cut it short. It was a reason, however, for his not mentioning the +synagogue to the Mallingers—in addition to his usual inclination to +reticence on anything that the baronet would have been likely to call Quixotic +enthusiasm. Hardly any man could be more good-natured than Sir Hugo; indeed in +his kindliness especially to women, he did actions which others would have +called romantic; but he never took a romantic view of them, and in general +smiled at the introduction of motives on a grand scale, or of reasons that lay +very far off. This was the point of strongest difference between him and +Deronda, who rarely ate at breakfast without some silent discursive flight +after grounds for filling up his day according to the practice of his +contemporaries. +</p> + +<p> +This halt at Frankfort was taken on their way home, and its impressions were +kept the more actively vibrating in him by the duty of caring for Mirah’s +welfare. That question about his parentage, which if he had not both inwardly +and outwardly shaken it off as trivial, would have seemed a threat rather than +a promise of revelation, and reinforced his anxiety as to the effect of finding +Mirah’s relatives and his resolve to proceed with caution. If he made any +unpleasant discovery, was he bound to a disclosure that might cast a new net of +trouble around her? He had written to Mrs. Meyrick to announce his visit at +four o’clock, and he found Mirah seated at work with only Mrs. Meyrick +and Mab, the open piano, and all the glorious company of engravings. The dainty +neatness of her hair and dress, the glow of tranquil happiness in a face where +a painter need have changed nothing if he had wanted to put it in front of the +host singing “peace on earth and good will to men,” made a contrast +to his first vision of her that was delightful to Deronda’s eyes. Mirah +herself was thinking of it, and immediately on their greeting said, +</p> + +<p> +“See how different I am from the miserable creature by the river! all +because you found me and brought me to the very best.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was my good chance to find you,” said Deronda. “Any other +man would have been glad to do what I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is not the right way to be thinking about it,” said Mirah, +shaking her head with decisive gravity, “I think of what really was. It +was you, and not another, who found me and were good to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I agree with Mirah,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “Saint Anybody is a +bad saint to pray to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Besides, Anybody could not have brought me to you,” said Mirah, +smiling at Mrs. Meyrick. “And I would rather be with you than with any +one else in the world except my mother. I wonder if ever a poor little bird, +that was lost and could not fly, was taken and put into a warm nest where was a +mother and sisters who took to it so that everything came naturally, as if it +had been always there. I hardly thought before that the world could ever be as +happy and without fear as it is to me now.” She looked meditative a +moment, and then said, “sometimes I am a <i>little</i> afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it you are afraid of?” said Deronda with anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“That when I am turning at the corner of a street I may meet my father. +It seems dreadful that I should be afraid of meeting him. That is my only +sorrow,” said Mirah, plaintively. +</p> + +<p> +“It is surely not very probable,” said Deronda, wishing that it +were less so; then, not to let the opportunity escape—“Would it be +a great grief to you now if you were never to meet your mother?” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer immediately, but meditated again, with her eyes fixed on the +opposite wall. Then she turned them on Deronda and said firmly, as if she had +arrived at the exact truth, “I want her to know that I have always loved +her, and if she is alive I want to comfort her. She may be dead. If she were I +should long to know where she was buried; and to know whether my brother lives, +to say Kaddish in memory of her. But I will try not to grieve. I have thought +much for so many years of her being dead. And I shall have her with me in my +mind, as I have always had. We can never be really parted. I think I have never +sinned against her. I have always tried not to do what would hurt her. Only, +she might be sorry that I was not a good Jewess.” +</p> + +<p> +“In what way are you not a good Jewess?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“I am ignorant, and we never observed the laws, but lived among +Christians just as they did. But I have heard my father laugh at the strictness +of the Jews about their food and all customs, and their not liking Christians. +I think my mother was strict; but she could never want me not to like those who +are better to me than any of my own people I have ever known. I think I could +obey in other things that she wished but not in that. It is so much easier to +me to share in love than in hatred. I remember a play I read in +German—since I have been here it has come into my mind—where the +heroine says something like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Antigone</i>,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you know it. But I do not believe that my mother would wish me not +to love my best friends. She would be grateful to them.” Here Mirah had +turned to Mrs. Meyrick, and with a sudden lighting up of her whole countenance, +she said, “Oh, if we ever do meet and know each other as we are now, so +that I could tell what would comfort her—I should be so full of +blessedness my soul would know no want but to love her!” +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you, child!” said Mrs. Meyrick, the words escaping +involuntarily from her motherly heart. But to relieve the strain of feeling she +looked at Deronda and said, “It is curious that Mirah, who remembers her +mother so well it is as if she saw her, cannot recall her brother the least +bit—except the feeling of having been carried by him when she was tired, +and of his being near her when she was in her mother’s lap. It must be +that he was rarely at home. He was already grown up. It is a pity her brother +should be quite a stranger to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is good; I feel sure Ezra is good,” said Mirah, eagerly. +“He loved my mother—he would take care of her. I remember more of +him than that. I remember my mother’s voice once calling, +‘Ezra!’ and then his answering from a distance +‘Mother!’”—Mirah had changed her voice a little in each +of these words and had given them a loving intonation—“and then he +came close to us. I feel sure he is good. I have always taken comfort from +that.” +</p> + +<p> +It was impossible to answer this either with agreement or doubt. Mrs. Meyrick +and Deronda exchanged a quick glance: about this brother she felt as painfully +dubious as he did. But Mirah went on, absorbed in her memories, +</p> + +<p> +“Is it not wonderful how I remember the voices better than anything else? +I think they must go deeper into us than other things. I have often fancied +heaven might be made of voices.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like your singing—yes,” said Mab, who had hitherto kept a +modest silence, and now spoke bashfully, as was her wont in the presence of +Prince Camaralzaman—“Ma, do ask Mirah to sing. Mr. Deronda has not +heard her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would it be disagreeable to you to sing now?” said Deronda, with a +more deferential gentleness than he had ever been conscious of before. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I shall like it,” said Mirah. “My voice has come back a +little with rest.” +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps her ease of manner was due to something more than the simplicity of her +nature. The circumstances of her life made her think of everything she did as +work demanded from her, in which affectation had nothing to do; and she had +begun her work before self-consciousness was born. +</p> + +<p> +She immediately rose and went to the piano—a somewhat worn instrument +that seemed to get the better of its infirmities under the firm touch of her +small fingers as she preluded. Deronda placed himself where he could see her +while she sang; and she took everything as quietly as if she had been a child +going to breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +Imagine her—it is always good to imagine a human creature in whom bodily +loveliness seems as properly one with the entire being as the bodily loveliness +of those wondrous transparent orbs of life that we find in the +sea—imagine her with her dark hair brushed from her temples, but yet +showing certain tiny rings there which had cunningly found their own way back, +the mass of it hanging behind just to the nape of the little neck in curly +fibres, such as renew themselves at their own will after being bathed into +straightness like that of water-grasses. Then see the perfect cameo her profile +makes, cut in a duskish shell, where by some happy fortune there pierced a +gem-like darkness for the eye and eyebrow; the delicate nostrils defined enough +to be ready for sensitive movements, the finished ear, the firm curves of the +chin and neck, entering into the expression of a refinement which was not +feebleness. +</p> + +<p> +She sang Beethoven’s “Per pietà non dirmi addio” with a +subdued but searching pathos which had that essential of perfect singing, the +making one oblivious of art or manner, and only possessing one with the song. +It was the sort of voice that gives the impression of being meant like a +bird’s wooing for an audience near and beloved. Deronda began by looking +at her, but felt himself presently covering his eyes with his hand, wanting to +seclude the melody in darkness; then he refrained from what might seem oddity, +and was ready to meet the look of mute appeal which she turned toward him at +the end. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I never enjoyed a song more than that,” he said, +gratefully. +</p> + +<p> +“You like my singing? I am so glad,” she said, with a smile of +delight. “It has been a great pain to me, because it failed in what it +was wanted for. But now we think I can use it to get my bread. I have really +been taught well. And now I have two pupils, that Miss Meyrick found for me. +They pay me nearly two crowns for their two lessons.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I know some ladies who would find you many pupils after +Christmas,” said Deronda. “You would not mind singing before any +one who wished to hear you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no, I want to do something to get money. I could teach reading and +speaking, Mrs. Meyrick thinks. But if no one would learn of me, that is +difficult.” Mirah smiled with a touch of merriment he had not seen in her +before. “I dare say I should find her poor—I mean my mother. I +should want to get money for her. And I can not always live on charity; +though”—here she turned so as to take all three of her companions +in one glance—“it is the sweetest charity in all the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think you can get rich,” said Deronda, smiling. +“Great ladies will perhaps like you to teach their daughters. We shall +see. But now do sing again to us.” +</p> + +<p> +She went on willingly, singing with ready memory various things by Gordigiani +and Schubert; then, when she had left the piano, Mab said, entreatingly, +“Oh, Mirah, if you would not mind singing the little hymn.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is too childish,” said Mirah. “It is like lisping.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the hymn?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“It is the Hebrew hymn she remembers her mother singing over her when she +lay in her cot,” said Mrs. Meyrick. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like very much to hear it,” said Deronda, “if you +think I am worthy to hear what is so sacred.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will sing it if you like,” said Mirah, “but I don’t +sing real words—only here and there a syllable like hers—the rest +is lisping. Do you know Hebrew? because if you do, my singing will seem +childish nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda shook his head. “It will be quite good Hebrew to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah crossed her little feet and hands in her easiest attitude, and then +lifted up her head at an angle which seemed to be directed to some invisible +face bent over her, while she sang a little hymn of quaint melancholy +intervals, with syllables that really seemed childish lisping to her audience; +the voice in which she gave it forth had gathered even a sweeter, more cooing +tenderness than was heard in her other songs. +</p> + +<p> +“If I were ever to know the real words, I should still go on in my old +way with them,” said Mirah, when she had repeated the hymn several times. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” said Deronda. “The lisped syllables are very full +of meaning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “A mother hears something +of a lisp in her children’s talk to the very last. Their words are not +just what everybody else says, though they may be spelled the same. If I were +to live till my Hans got old, I should still see the boy in him. A +mother’s love, I often say, is like a tree that has got all the wood in +it, from the very first it made.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is not that the way with friendship, too?” said Deronda, smiling. +“We must not let the mothers be too arrogant.” +</p> + +<p> +The little woman shook her head over her darning. +</p> + +<p> +“It is easier to find an old mother than an old friend. Friendships begin +with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up. Mother’s love +begins deeper down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like what you were saying about the influence of voices,” said +Deronda, looking at Mirah. “I don’t think your hymn would have had +more expression for me if I had known the words. I went to the synagogue at +Frankfort before I came home, and the service impressed me just as much as if I +had followed the words—perhaps more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, was it great to you? Did it go to your heart?” said Mirah, +eagerly. “I thought none but our people would feel that. I thought it was +all shut away like a river in a deep valley, where only heaven saw—I +mean—” she hesitated, feeling that she could not disentangle her +thought from its imagery. +</p> + +<p> +“I understand,” said Deronda. “But there is not really such a +separation—deeper down, as Mrs. Meyrick says. Our religion is chiefly a +Hebrew religion; and since Jews are men, their religious feelings must have +much in common with those of other men—just as their poetry, though in +one sense peculiar, has a great deal in common with the poetry of other +nations. Still it is to be expected that a Jew would feel the forms of his +people’s religion more than one of another race—and +yet”—here Deronda hesitated in his turn—“that is +perhaps not always so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah no,” said Mirah, sadly. “I have seen that. I have seen +them mock. Is it not like mocking your parents?—like rejoicing in your +parents’ shame?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some minds naturally rebel against whatever they were brought up in, and +like the opposite; they see the faults in what is nearest to them,” said +Deronda apologetically. +</p> + +<p> +“But you are not like that,” said Mirah, looking at him with +unconscious fixedness. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I think not,” said Deronda; “but you know I was not +brought up as a Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I am always forgetting,” said Mirah, with a look of +disappointed recollection, and slightly blushing. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda also felt rather embarrassed, and there was an awkward pause, which he +put an end to by saying playfully, +</p> + +<p> +“Whichever way we take it, we have to tolerate each other; for if we all +went in opposition to our teaching, we must end in difference, just the +same.” +</p> + +<p> +“To be sure. We should go on forever in zig-zags,” said Mrs. +Meyrick. “I think it is very weak-minded to make your creed up by the +rule of the contrary. Still one may honor one’s parents, without +following their notions exactly, any more than the exact cut of their clothing. +My father was a Scotch Calvinist and my mother was a French Calvinist; I am +neither quite Scotch, nor quite French, nor two Calvinists rolled into one, yet +I honor my parents’ memory.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I could not make myself not a Jewess,” said Mirah, +insistently, “even if I changed my belief.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, my dear. But if Jews and Jewesses went on changing their religion, +and making no difference between themselves and Christians, there would come a +time when there would be no Jews to be seen,” said Mrs. Meyrick, taking +that consummation very cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, please not to say that,” said Mirah, the tears gathering. +“It is the first unkind thing you ever said. I will not begin that. I +will never separate myself from my mother’s people. I was forced to fly +from my father; but if he came back in age and weakness and want, and needed +me, should I say, ‘This is not my father’? If he had shame, I must +share it. It was he who was given to me for my father, and not another. And so +it is with my people. I will always be a Jewess. I will love Christians when +they are good, like you. But I will always cling to my people. I will always +worship with them.” +</p> + +<p> +As Mirah had gone on speaking she had become possessed with a sorrowful +passion—fervent, not violent. Holding her little hands tightly clasped +and looking at Mrs. Meyrick with beseeching, she seemed to Deronda a +personification of that spirit which impelled men after a long inheritance of +professed Catholicism to leave wealth and high place and risk their lives in +flight, that they might join their own people and say, “I am a +Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah, Mirah, my dear child, you mistake me!” said Mrs. Meyrick, +alarmed. “God forbid I should want you to do anything against your +conscience. I was only saying what might be if the world went on. But I had +better have left the world alone, and not wanted to be over-wise. Forgive me, +come! we will not try to take you from anybody you feel has more right to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would do anything else for you. I owe you my life,” said Mirah, +not yet quite calm. +</p> + +<p> +“Hush, hush, now,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “I have been punished +enough for wagging my tongue foolishly—making an almanac for the +Millennium, as my husband used to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“But everything in the world must come to an end some time. We must bear +to think of that,” said Mab, unable to hold her peace on this point. She +had already suffered from a bondage of tongue which threatened to become severe +if Mirah were to be too much indulged in this inconvenient susceptibility to +innocent remarks. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda smiled at the irregular, blonde face, brought into strange contrast by +the side of Mirah’s—smiled, Mab thought, rather sarcastically as he +said, “That prospect of everything coming to an end will not guide us far +in practice. Mirah’s feelings, she tells us, are concerned with what +is.” +</p> + +<p> +Mab was confused and wished she had not spoken, since Mr. Deronda seemed to +think that she had found fault with Mirah; but to have spoken once is a +tyrannous reason for speaking again, and she said, +</p> + +<p> +“I only meant that we must have courage to hear things, else there is +hardly anything we can talk about.” Mab felt herself unanswerable here, +inclining to the opinion of Socrates: “What motive has a man to live, if +not for the pleasure of discourse?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda took his leave soon after, and when Mrs. Meyrick went outside with him +to exchange a few words about Mirah, he said, “Hans is to share my +chambers when he comes at Christmas.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have written to Rome about that?” said Mrs. Meyrick, her face +lighting up. “How very good and thoughtful of you! You mentioned Mirah, +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I referred to her. I concluded he knew everything from you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must confess my folly. I have not yet written a word about her. I have +always been meaning to do it, and yet have ended my letter without saying a +word. And I told the girls to leave it to me. However!—Thank you a +thousand times.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda divined something of what was in the mother’s mind, and his +divination reinforced a certain anxiety already present in him. His inward +colloquy was not soothing. He said to himself that no man could see this +exquisite creature without feeling it possible to fall in love with her; but +all the fervor of his nature was engaged on the side of precaution. There are +personages who feel themselves tragic because they march into a palpable +morass, dragging another with them, and then cry out against all the gods. +Deronda’s mind was strongly set against imitating them. +</p> + +<p> +“I have my hands on the reins now,” he thought, “and I will +not drop them. I shall go there as little as possible.” +</p> + +<p> +He saw the reasons acting themselves out before him. How could he be +Mirah’s guardian and claim to unite with Mrs. Meyrick, to whose charge he +had committed her, if he showed himself as a lover—whom she did not +love—whom she would not marry? And if he encouraged any germ of +lover’s feeling in himself it would lead up to that issue. Mirah’s +was not a nature that would bear dividing against itself; and even if love won +her consent to marry a man who was not of her race and religion, she would +never be happy in acting against that strong native bias which would still +reign in her conscience as remorse. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda saw these consequences as we see any danger of marring our own work +well begun. It was a delight to have rescued this child acquainted with sorrow, +and to think of having placed her little feet in protected paths. The creature +we help to save, though only a half-reared linnet, bruised and lost by the +wayside—how we watch and fence it, and dote on its signs of recovery! Our +pride becomes loving, our self is a not-self for whose sake we become virtuous, +when we set to some hidden work of reclaiming a life from misery and look for +our triumph in the secret joy—“This one is the better for +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would as soon hold out my finger to be bitten off as set about +spoiling her peace,” said Deronda. “It was one of the rarest bits +of fortune that I should have had friends like the Meyricks to place her +with—generous, delicate friends without any loftiness in their ways, so +that her dependence on them is not only safety but happiness. There could be no +refuge to replace that, if it were broken up. But what is the use of my taking +the vows and settling everything as it should be, if that marplot Hans comes +and upsets it all?” +</p> + +<p> +Few things were more likely. Hans was made for mishaps: his very limbs seemed +more breakable than other people’s—his eyes more of a resort for +uninvited flies and other irritating guests. But it was impossible to forbid +Hans’s coming to London. He was intending to get a studio there and make +it his chief home; and to propose that he should defer coming on some +ostensible ground, concealing the real motive of winning time for Mirah’s +position to become more confirmed and independent, was impracticable. Having no +other resource Deronda tried to believe that both he and Mrs. Meyrick were +foolishly troubling themselves about one of those endless things called +probabilities, which never occur; but he did not quite succeed in his trying; +on the contrary, he found himself going inwardly through a scene where on the +first discovery of Hans’s inclination he gave him a very energetic +warning—suddenly checked, however, by the suspicion of personal feeling +that his warmth might be creating in Hans. He could come to no result, but that +the position was peculiar, and that he could make no further provision against +dangers until they came nearer. To save an unhappy Jewess from drowning +herself, would not have seemed a startling variation among police reports; but +to discover in her so rare a creature as Mirah, was an exceptional event which +might well bring exceptional consequences. Deronda would not let himself for a +moment dwell on any supposition that the consequences might enter deeply into +his own life. The image of Mirah had never yet had that penetrating radiation +which would have been given to it by the idea of her loving him. When this sort +of effluence is absent from the fancy (whether from the fact or not) a man may +go far in devotedness without perturbation. +</p> + +<p> +As to the search for Mirah’s mother and brother, Deronda took what she +had said to-day as a warrant for deferring any immediate measures. His +conscience was not quite easy in this desire for delay, any more than it was +quite easy in his not attempting to learn the truth about his own mother: in +both cases he felt that there might be an unfulfilled duty to a parent, but in +both cases there was an overpowering repugnance to the possible truth, which +threw a turning weight into the scale of argument. +</p> + +<p> +“At least, I will look about,” was his final determination. +“I may find some special Jewish machinery. I will wait till after +Christmas.” +</p> + +<p> +What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a +disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our +time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth +while to set about anything we are disinclined to. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0033"></a> +CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“No man,” says a Rabbi, by way of indisputable instance, “may +turn the bones of his father and mother into spoons”—sure that his +hearers felt the checks against that form of economy. The market for spoons has +never expanded enough for any one to say, “Why not?” and to argue +that human progress lies in such an application of material. The only check to +be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold that +sentiments are the better part of the world’s wealth. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda meanwhile took to a less fashionable form of exercise than riding in +Rotten Row. He went often rambling in those parts of London which are most +inhabited by common Jews. He walked to the synagogues at times of service, he +looked into shops, he observed faces:—a process not very promising of +particular discovery. Why did he not address himself to an influential Rabbi or +other member of a Jewish community, to consult on the chances of finding a +mother named Cohen, with a son named Ezra, and a lost daughter named Mirah? He +thought of doing so—after Christmas. The fact was, notwithstanding all +his sense of poetry in common things, Deronda, where a keen personal interest +was aroused, could not, more than the rest of us, continuously escape suffering +from the pressure of that hard unaccommodating Actual, which has never +consulted our taste and is entirely unselect. Enthusiasm, we know, dwells at +ease among ideas, tolerates garlic breathed in the middle ages, and sees no +shabbiness in the official trappings of classic processions: it gets squeamish +when ideals press upon it as something warmly incarnate, and can hardly face +them without fainting. Lying dreamily in a boat, imagining one’s self in +quest of a beautiful maiden’s relatives in Cordova elbowed by Jews in the +time of Ibn-Gebirol, all the physical incidents can be borne without shock. Or +if the scenery of St. Mary Axe and Whitechapel were imaginatively transported +to the borders of the Rhine at the end of the eleventh century, when in the +ears listening for the signals of the Messiah, the Hep! Hep! Hep! of the +Crusaders came like the bay of blood-hounds; and in the presence of those +devilish missionaries with sword and firebrand the crouching figure of the +reviled Jew turned round erect, heroic, flashing with sublime constancy in the +face of torture and death—what would the dingy shops and unbeautiful +faces signify to the thrill of contemplative emotion? But the fervor of +sympathy with which we contemplate a grandiose martyrdom is feeble compared +with the enthusiasm that keeps unslacked where there is no danger, no +challenge—nothing but impartial midday falling on commonplace, perhaps +half-repulsive, objects which are really the beloved ideas made flesh. Here +undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: in the force of imagination that +pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures. To +glory in a prophetic vision of knowledge covering the earth, is an easier +exercise of believing imagination than to see its beginning in newspaper +placards, staring at you from the bridge beyond the corn-fields; and it might +well happen to most of us dainty people that we were in the thick of the battle +of Armageddon without being aware of anything more than the annoyance of a +little explosive smoke and struggling on the ground immediately about us. +</p> + +<p> +It lay in Deronda’s nature usually to contemn the feeble, fastidious +sympathy which shrinks from the broad life of mankind; but now, with Mirah +before him as a living reality, whose experience he had to care for, he saw +every common Jew and Jewess in the light of a comparison with her, and had a +presentiment of the collision between her idea of the unknown mother and +brother and the discovered fact—a presentiment all the keener in him +because of a suppressed consciousness that a not unlike possibility of +collision might lie hidden in his own lot. Not that he would have looked with +more complacency of expectation at wealthy Jews, outdoing the lords of the +Philistines in their sports; but since there was no likelihood of Mirah’s +friends being found among that class, their habits did not immediately affect +him. In this mood he rambled, without expectation of a more pregnant result +than a little preparation of his own mind, perhaps for future theorizing as +well as practice—very much as if, Mirah being related to Welsh miners, he +had gone to look more closely at the ways of those people, not without wishing +at the same time to get a little light of detail on the history of Strikes. +</p> + +<p> +He really did not long to find anybody in particular; and when, as his habit +was, he looked at the name over a shop door, he was well content that it was +not Ezra Cohen. I confess, he particularly desired that Ezra Cohen should not +keep a shop. Wishes are held to be ominous; according to which belief the order +of the world is so arranged that if you have an impious objection to a squint, +your offspring is the more likely to be born with one; also, that if you +happened to desire a squint you would not get it. This desponding view of +probability the hopeful entirely reject, taking their wishes as good and +sufficient security for all kinds of fulfilment. Who is absolutely neutral? +Deronda happening one morning to turn into a little side street out of the +noise and obstructions of Holborn, felt the scale dip on the desponding side. +</p> + +<p> +He was rather tired of the streets and had paused to hail a hansom cab which he +saw coming, when his attention was caught by some fine old clasps in chased +silver displayed in the window at his right hand. His first thought was that +Lady Mallinger, who had a strictly Protestant taste for such Catholic spoils, +might like to have these missal-clasps turned into a bracelet: then his eyes +traveled over the other contents of the window, and he saw that the shop was +that kind of pawnbroker’s where the lead is given to jewelry, lace and +all equivocal objects introduced as <i>bric-à-brac</i>. A placard in one corner +announced—<i>Watches and Jewelry exchanged and repaired</i>. But his +survey had been noticed from within, and a figure appeared at the door, looking +round at him and saying in a tone of cordial encouragement, “Good day, +sir.” The instant was enough for Deronda to see the face, unmistakably +Jewish, belonged to a young man about thirty, and wincing from the +shopkeeper’s persuasiveness that would probably follow, he had no sooner +returned the “good day,” than he passed to the other side of the +street and beckoned to the cabman to draw up there. From that station he saw +the name over the shop window—<i>Ezra Cohen</i>. +</p> + +<p> +There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered above shop windows, but Deronda +had not seen them. Probably the young man interested in a possible customer was +Ezra himself; and he was about the age to be expected in Mirah’s brother, +who was grown up while she was still a little child. But Deronda’s first +endeavor as he drove homeward was to convince himself that there was not the +slightest warrantable presumption of this Ezra being Mirah’s brother; and +next, that even if, in spite of good reasoning, he turned out to be that +brother, while on inquiry the mother was found to be dead, it was not +his—Deronda’s—duty to make known the discovery to Mirah. In +inconvenient disturbance of this conclusion there came his lately-acquired +knowledge that Mirah would have a religious desire to know of her +mother’s death, and also to learn whether her brother were living. How +far was he justified in determining another life by his own notions? Was it not +his secret complaint against the way in which others had ordered his own life, +that he had not open daylight on all its relations, so that he had not, like +other men, the full guidance of primary duties? +</p> + +<p> +The immediate relief from this inward debate was the reflection that he had not +yet made any real discovery, and that by looking into the facts more closely he +should be certified that there was no demand on him for any decision whatever. +He intended to return to that shop as soon as he could conveniently, and buy +the clasps for Lady Mallinger. But he was hindered for several days by Sir +Hugo, who, about to make an after-dinner speech on a burning topic, wanted +Deronda to forage for him on the legal part of the question, besides wasting +time every day on argument which always ended in a drawn battle. As on many +other questions, they held different sides, but Sir Hugo did not mind this, and +when Deronda put his point well, said, with a mixture of satisfaction and +regret, +</p> + +<p> +“Confound it, Dan! why don’t you make an opportunity of saying +these things in public? You’re wrong, you know. You won’t succeed. +You’ve got the massive sentiment—the heavy artillery of the country +against you. But it’s all the better ground for a young man to display +himself on. When I was your age, I should have taken it. And it would be quite +as well for you to be in opposition to me here and there. It would throw you +more into relief. If you would seize an occasion of this sort to make an +impression, you might be in Parliament in no time. And you know that would +gratify me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry not to do what would gratify you, sir,” said Deronda. +“But I cannot persuade myself to look at politics as a profession.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not? if a man is not born into public life by his position in the +country, there’s no way for him but to embrace it by his own efforts. The +business of the country must be done—her Majesty’s Government +carried on, as the old Duke said. And it never could be, my boy, if everybody +looked at politics as if they were prophecy, and demanded an inspired vocation. +If you are to get into Parliament, it won’t do to sit still and wait for +a call either from heaven or constituents.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to make a living out of opinions,” said +Deronda; “especially out of borrowed opinions. Not that I mean to blame +other men. I dare say many better fellows than I don’t mind getting on to +a platform to praise themselves, and giving their word of honor for a +party.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you what, Dan,” said Sir Hugo, “a man who +sets his face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered, +impracticable fellow. There’s a bad style of humbug, but there is also a +good style—one that oils the wheels and makes progress possible. If you +are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas; and I agree with +the Archbishop at Naples who had a St. Januarius procession against the plague. +It’s no use having an Order in Council against popular shallowness. There +is no action possible without a little acting.” +</p> + +<p> +“One may be obliged to give way to an occasional necessity,” said +Deronda. “But it is one thing to say, ‘In this particular case I am +forced to put on this foolscap and grin,’ and another to buy a pocket +foolscap and practice myself in grinning. I can’t see any real public +expediency that does not keep an ideal before it which makes a limit of +deviation from the direct path. But if I were to set up for a public man I +might mistake my success for public expediency.” +</p> + +<p> +It was after this dialogue, which was rather jarring to him, that Deronda set +out on his meditated second visit to Ezra Cohen’s. He entered the street +at the end opposite to the Holborn entrance, and an inward reluctance slackened +his pace while his thoughts were transferring what he had just been saying +about public expediency to the entirely private difficulty which brought him +back again into this unattractive thoroughfare. It might soon become an +immediate practical question with him how far he could call it a wise +expediency to conceal the fact of close kindred. Such questions turning up +constantly in life are often decided in a rough-and-ready way; and to many it +will appear an over-refinement in Deronda that he should make any great point +of a matter confined to his own knowledge. But we have seen the reasons why he +had come to regard concealment as a bane of life, and the necessity of +concealment as a mark by which lines of action were to be avoided. The prospect +of being urged against the confirmed habit of his mind was naturally grating. +He even paused here and there before the most plausible shop-windows for a +gentleman to look into, half inclined to decide that he would not increase his +knowledge about that modern Ezra, who was certainly not a leader among his +people—a hesitation which proved how, in a man much given to reasoning, a +bare possibility may weigh more than the best-clad likelihood; for +Deronda’s reasoning had decided that all likelihood was against this +man’s being Mirah’s brother. +</p> + +<p> +One of the shop-windows he paused before was that of a second-hand book-shop, +where, on a narrow table outside, the literature of the ages was represented in +judicious mixture, from the immortal verse of Homer to the mortal prose of the +railway novel. That the mixture was judicious was apparent from Deronda’s +finding in it something that he wanted—namely, that wonderful bit of +autobiography, the life of the Polish Jew, Salomon Maimon; which, as he could +easily slip it into his pocket, he took from its place, and entered the shop to +pay for, expecting to see behind the counter a grimy personage showing that +<i>nonchalance</i> about sales which seems to belong universally to the +second-hand book-business. In most other trades you find generous men who are +anxious to sell you their wares for your own welfare; but even a Jew will not +urge Simson’s Euclid on you with an affectionate assurance that you will +have pleasure in reading it, and that he wishes he had twenty more of the +article, so much is it in request. One is led to fear that a second-hand +bookseller may belong to that unhappy class of men who have no belief in the +good of what they get their living by, yet keep conscience enough to be morose +rather than unctuous in their vocation. +</p> + +<p> +But instead of the ordinary tradesman, he saw, on the dark background of books +in the long narrow shop, a figure that was somewhat startling in its +unusualness. A man in threadbare clothing, whose age was difficult to +guess—from the dead yellowish flatness of the flesh, something like an +old ivory carving—was seated on a stool against some bookshelves that +projected beyond the short counter, doing nothing more remarkable than reading +yesterday’s <i>Times</i>; but when he let the paper rest on his lap and +looked at the incoming customer, the thought glanced through Deronda that +precisely such a physiognomy as that might possibly have been seen in a prophet +of the Exile, or in some New Hebrew poet of the mediæval time. It was a fine +typical Jewish face, wrought into intensity of expression apparently by a +strenuous eager experience in which all the satisfaction had been indirect and +far off, and perhaps by some bodily suffering also, which involved that absence +of ease in the present. The features were clear-cut, not large; the brow not +high but broad, and fully defined by the crisp black hair. It might never have +been a particularly handsome face, but it must always have been forcible; and +now with its dark, far-off gaze, and yellow pallor in relief on the gloom of +the backward shop, one might have imagined one’s self coming upon it in +some past prison of the Inquisition, which a mob had suddenly burst upon; while +the look fixed on an incidental customer seemed eager and questioning enough to +have been turned on one who might have been a messenger either of delivery or +of death. The figure was probably familiar and unexciting enough to the +inhabitants of this street; but to Deronda’s mind it brought so strange a +blending of the unwonted with the common, that there was a perceptible interval +of mutual observation before he asked his question; “What is the price of +this book?” +</p> + +<p> +After taking the book and examining the fly-leaves without rising, the supposed +bookseller said, “There is no mark, and Mr. Ram is not in now. I am +keeping the shop while he is gone to dinner. What are you disposed to give for +it?” He held the book close on his lap with his hand on it and looked +examiningly at Deronda, over whom there came the disagreeable idea, that +possibly this striking personage wanted to see how much could be got out of a +customer’s ignorance of prices. But without further reflection he said, +“Don’t you know how much it is worth?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not its market-price. May I ask have you read it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I have read an account of it, which makes me want to buy it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are a man of learning—you are interested in Jewish +history?” This was said in a deepened tone of eager inquiry. +</p> + +<p> +“I am certainly interested in Jewish history,” said Deronda, +quietly, curiosity overcoming his dislike to the sort of inspection as well as +questioning he was under. +</p> + +<p> +But immediately the strange Jew rose from his sitting posture, and Deronda felt +a thin hand pressing his arm tightly, while a hoarse, excited voice, not much +above a loud whisper, said, +</p> + +<p> +“You are perhaps of our race?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda colored deeply, not liking the grasp, and then answered with a slight +shake of the head, “No.” The grasp was relaxed, the hand withdrawn, +the eagerness of the face collapsed into uninterested melancholy, as if some +possessing spirit which had leaped into the eyes and gestures had sunk back +again to the inmost recesses of the frame; and moving further off as he held +out the little book, the stranger said in a tone of distant civility, “I +believe Mr. Ram will be satisfied with half-a-crown, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +The effect of this change on Deronda—he afterward smiled when he recalled +it—was oddly embarrassing and humiliating, as if some high dignitary had +found him deficient and given him his <i>congé</i>. There was nothing further +to be said, however: he paid his half-crown and carried off his <i>Salomon +Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte</i> with a mere “good-morning.” +</p> + +<p> +He felt some vexation at the sudden arrest of the interview, and the apparent +prohibition that he should know more of this man, who was certainly something +out of the common way—as different probably as a Jew could well be from +Ezra Cohen, through whose door Deronda was presently entering, and whose +flourishing face glistening on the way to fatness was hanging over the counter +in negotiation with some one on the other side of the partition, concerning two +plated stoppers and three teaspoons, which lay spread before him. Seeing +Deronda enter, he called out “Mother! Mother!” and then with a +familiar nod and smile, said, “Coming, sir—coming directly.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda could not help looking toward the door from the back with some anxiety, +which was not soothed when he saw a vigorous woman beyond fifty enter and +approach to serve him. Not that there was anything very repulsive about her: +the worst that could be said was that she had that look of having made her +toilet with little water, and by twilight, which is common to unyouthful people +of her class, and of having presumably slept in her large earrings, if not in +her rings and necklace. In fact, what caused a sinking of heart in Deronda was +her not being so coarse and ugly as to exclude the idea of her being +Mirah’s mother. Any one who has looked at a face to try and discern signs +of known kinship in it will understand his process of conjecture—how he +tried to think away the fat which had gradually disguised the outlines of +youth, and to discern what one may call the elementary expressions of the face. +He was sorry to see no absolute negative to his fears. Just as it was +conceivable that this Ezra, brought up to trade, might resemble the scapegrace +father in everything but his knowledge and talent, so it was not impossible +that this mother might have had a lovely refined daughter whose type of feature +and expression was like Mirah’s. The eyebrows had a vexatious similarity +of line; and who shall decide how far a face may be masked when the +uncherishing years have thrust it far onward in the ever-new procession of +youth and age? The good-humor of the glance remained and shone out in a +motherly way at Deronda, as she said, in a mild guttural tone, +</p> + +<p> +“How can I serve you, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to look at the silver clasps in the window,” said +Deronda; “the larger ones, please, in the corner there.” +</p> + +<p> +They were not quite easy to get at from the mother’s station, and the son +seeing this called out, “I’ll reach ’em, mother; I’ll +reach ’em,” running forward with alacrity, and then handing the +clasps to Deronda with the smiling remark, +</p> + +<p> +“Mother’s too proud: she wants to do everything herself. +That’s why I called her to wait on you, sir. When there’s a +particular gentleman customer, sir, I daren’t do any other than call her. +But I can’t let her do herself mischief with stretching.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Mr. Cohen made way again for his parent, who gave a little guttural, +amiable laugh while she looked at Deronda, as much as to say, “This boy +will be at his jokes, but you see he’s the best son in the world,” +and evidently the son enjoyed pleasing her, though he also wished to convey an +apology to his distinguished customer for not giving him the advantage of his +own exclusive attention. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda began to examine the clasps as if he had many points to observe before +he could come to a decision. +</p> + +<p> +“They are only three guineas, sir,” said the mother, encouragingly. +</p> + +<p> +“First-rate workmanship, sir—worth twice the money; only I get +’em a bargain from Cologne,” said the son, parenthetically, from a +distance. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile two new customers entered, and the repeated call, “Addy!” +brought from the back of the shop a group that Deronda turned frankly to stare +at, feeling sure that the stare would be held complimentary. The group +consisted of a black-eyed young woman who carried a black-eyed little one, its +head already covered with black curls, and deposited it on the counter, from +which station it looked round with even more than the usual intelligence of +babies: also a robust boy of six and a younger girl, both with black eyes and +black-ringed hair—looking more Semitic than their parents, as the puppy +lions show the spots of far-off progenitors. The young woman answering to +“Addy”—a sort of paroquet in a bright blue dress, with coral +necklace and earrings, her hair set up in a huge bush—looked as +complacently lively and unrefined as her husband; and by a certain difference +from the mother deepened in Deronda the unwelcome impression that the latter +was not so utterly common a Jewess as to exclude her being the mother of Mirah. +While that thought was glancing through his mind, the boy had run forward into +the shop with an energetic stamp, and setting himself about four feet from +Deronda, with his hands in the pockets of his miniature knickerbockers, looked +at him with a precocious air of survey. Perhaps it was chiefly with a +diplomatic design to linger and ingratiate himself that Deronda patted the +boy’s head, saying, +</p> + +<p> +“What is your name, sirrah?” +</p> + +<p> +“Jacob Alexander Cohen,” said the small man, with much ease and +distinctness. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not named after your father, then?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, after my grandfather; he sells knives and razors and +scissors—my grandfather does,” said Jacob, wishing to impress the +stranger with that high connection. “He gave me this knife.” Here a +pocket-knife was drawn forth, and the small fingers, both naturally and +artificially dark, opened two blades and a cork-screw with much quickness. +</p> + +<p> +“Is not that a dangerous plaything?” said Deronda, turning to the +grandmother. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>He</i>’ll never hurt himself, bless you!” said she, +contemplating her grandson with placid rapture. +</p> + +<p> +“Have <i>you</i> got a knife?” says Jacob, coming closer. His small +voice was hoarse in its glibness, as if it belonged to an aged commercial soul, +fatigued with bargaining through many generations. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Do you want to see it?” said Deronda, taking a small penknife +from his waistcoat-pocket. +</p> + +<p> +Jacob seized it immediately and retreated a little, holding the two knives in +his palms and bending over them in meditative comparison. By this time the +other clients were gone, and the whole family had gathered to the spot, +centering their attention on the marvelous Jacob: the father, mother, and +grandmother behind the counter, with baby held staggering thereon, and the +little girl in front leaning at her brother’s elbow to assist him in +looking at the knives. +</p> + +<p> +“Mine’s the best,” said Jacob, at last, returning +Deronda’s knife as if he had been entertaining the idea of exchange and +had rejected it. +</p> + +<p> +Father and mother laughed aloud with delight. “You won’t find Jacob +choosing the worst,” said Mr. Cohen, winking, with much confidence in the +customer’s admiration. Deronda, looking at the grandmother, who had only +an inward silent laugh, said, +</p> + +<p> +“Are these the only grandchildren you have?” +</p> + +<p> +“All. This is my only son,” she answered in a communicative tone, +Deronda’s glance and manner as usual conveying the impression of +sympathetic interest—which on this occasion answered his purpose well. It +seemed to come naturally enough that he should say, +</p> + +<p> +“And you have no daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +There was an instantaneous change in the mother’s face. Her lips closed +more firmly, she looked down, swept her hands outward on the counter, and +finally turned her back on Deronda to examine some Indian handkerchiefs that +hung in pawn behind her. Her son gave a significant glance, set up his +shoulders an instant and just put his fingers to his lips,—then said +quickly, “I think you’re a first-rate gentleman in the city, sir, +if I may be allowed to guess.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Deronda, with a preoccupied air, “I have nothing +to do with the city.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a bad job. I thought you might be the young principal of a +first-rate firm,” said Mr. Cohen, wishing to make amends for the check on +his customer’s natural desire to know more of him and his. “But you +understand silver-work, I see.” +</p> + +<p> +“A little,” said Deronda, taking up the clasps a moment and laying +them down again. That unwelcome bit of circumstantial evidence had made his +mind busy with a plan which was certainly more like acting than anything he had +been aware of in his own conduct before. But the bare possibility that more +knowledge might nullify the evidence now overpowered the inclination to rest in +uncertainty. +</p> + +<p> +“To tell you the truth,” he went on, “my errand is not so +much to buy as to borrow. I dare say you go into rather heavy transactions +occasionally.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sir, I’ve accommodated gentlemen of +distinction—I’m proud to say it. I wouldn’t exchange my +business with any in the world. There’s none more honorable, nor more +charitable, nor more necessary for all classes, from the good lady who wants a +little of the ready for the baker, to a gentleman like yourself, sir, who may +want it for amusement. I like my business, I like my street, and I like my +shop. I wouldn’t have it a door further down. And I wouldn’t be +without a pawn-shop, sir, to be the Lord Mayor. It puts you in connection with +the world at large. I say it’s like the government revenue—it +embraces the brass as well as the gold of the country. And a man who +doesn’t get money, sir, can’t accommodate. Now, what can I do for +<i>you</i>, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +If an amiable self-satisfaction is the mark of earthly bliss, Solomon in all +his glory was a pitiable mortal compared with Mr. Cohen—clearly one of +those persons, who, being in excellent spirits about themselves, are willing to +cheer strangers by letting them know it. While he was delivering himself with +lively rapidity, he took the baby from his wife and holding it on his arm +presented his features to be explored by its small fists. Deronda, not in a +cheerful mood, was rashly pronouncing this Ezra Cohen to be the most unpoetic +Jew he had ever met with in books or life: his phraseology was as little as +possible like that of the Old Testament: and no shadow of a suffering race +distinguished his vulgarity of soul from that of a prosperous, pink-and-white +huckster of the purest English lineage. It is naturally a Christian feeling +that a Jew ought not to be conceited. However, this was no reason for not +persevering in his project, and he answered at once in adventurous ignorance of +technicalities, +</p> + +<p> +“I have a fine diamond ring to offer as security—not with me at +this moment, unfortunately, for I am not in the habit of wearing it. But I will +come again this evening and bring it with me. Fifty pounds at once would be a +convenience to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you know, this evening is the Sabbath, young gentleman,” +said Cohen, “and I go to the <i>Shool</i>. The shop will be closed. But +accommodation is a work of charity; if you can’t get here before, and are +any ways pressed—why, I’ll look at your diamond. You’re +perhaps from the West End—a longish drive?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and your Sabbath begins early at this season. I could be here by +five—will that do?” Deronda had not been without hope that by +asking to come on a Friday evening he might get a better opportunity of +observing points in the family character, and might even be able to put some +decisive question. +</p> + +<p> +Cohen assented; but here the marvelous Jacob, whose <i>physique</i> supported a +precocity that would have shattered a Gentile of his years, showed that he had +been listening with much comprehension by saying, “You are coming again. +Have you got any more knives at home?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I have one,” said Deronda, smiling down at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Has it two blades and a hook—and a white handle like that?” +said Jacob, pointing to the waistcoat-pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say it has.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you like a cork-screw?” said Jacob, exhibiting that article in +his own knife again, and looking up with serious inquiry. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Deronda, experimentally. +</p> + +<p> +“Bring your knife, then, and we’ll shwop,” said Jacob, +returning the knife to his pocket, and stamping about with the sense that he +had concluded a good transaction. +</p> + +<p> +The grandmother had now recovered her usual manners, and the whole family +watched Deronda radiantly when he caressingly lifted the little girl, to whom +he had not hitherto given attention, and seating her on the counter, asked for +her name also. She looked at him in silence, and put her fingers to her gold +earrings, which he did not seem to have noticed. +</p> + +<p> +“Adelaide Rebekah is her name,” said her mother, proudly. +“Speak to the gentleman, lovey.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shlav’m Shabbes fyock on,” said Adelaide Rebekah. +</p> + +<p> +“Her Sabbath frock, she means,” said the father, in explanation. +“She’ll have her Sabbath frock on this evening.” +</p> + +<p> +“And will you let me see you in it, Adelaide?” said Deronda, with +that gentle intonation which came very easily to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Say yes, lovey—yes, if you please, sir,” said her mother, +enchanted with this handsome young gentleman, who appreciated remarkable +children. +</p> + +<p> +“And will you give me a kiss this evening?” said Deronda with a +hand on each of her little brown shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +Adelaide Rebekah (her miniature crinoline and monumental features corresponded +with the combination of her names) immediately put up her lips to pay the kiss +in advance; whereupon her father rising in still more glowing satisfaction with +the general meritoriousness of his circumstances, and with the stranger who was +an admiring witness, said cordially, +</p> + +<p> +“You see there’s somebody will be disappointed if you don’t +come this evening, sir. You won’t mind sitting down in our family place +and waiting a bit for me, if I’m not in when you come, sir? I’ll +stretch a point to accommodate a gent of your sort. Bring the diamond, and +I’ll see what I can do for you.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda thus left the most favorable impression behind him, as a preparation +for more easy intercourse. But for his own part those amenities had been +carried on under the heaviest spirits. If these were really Mirah’s +relatives, he could not imagine that even her fervid filial piety could give +the reunion with them any sweetness beyond such as could be found in the strict +fulfillment of a painful duty. What did this vaunting brother need? And with +the most favorable supposition about the hypothetic mother, Deronda shrank from +the image of a first meeting between her and Mirah, and still more from the +idea of Mirah’s domestication with this family. He took refuge in +disbelief. To find an Ezra Cohen when the name was running in your head was no +more extraordinary than to find a Josiah Smith under like circumstances; and as +to the coincidence about the daughter, it would probably turn out to be a +difference. If, however, further knowledge confirmed the more undesirable +conclusion, what would be wise expediency?—to try and determine the best +consequences by concealment, or to brave other consequences for the sake of +that openness which is the sweet fresh air of our moral life. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0034"></a> +CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Er ist geheissen<br/> +Israel. Ihn hat verwandelt<br/> +Hexenspruch in einen Hund. +</p> + +<hr class="small" /> + +<p class="poem"> +Aber jeden Freitag Abend,<br/> +In der Dämm’rungstunde, plötzlich<br/> +Weicht der Zauber, und der Hund<br/> +Wird aufs Neu’ ein menschlich Wesen.”<br/> + —H<small>EINE</small>: <i>Prinzessin Sabbath</i>. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda arrived at five o’clock, the shop was closed and the door +was opened for him by the Christian servant. When she showed him into the room +behind the shop he was surprised at the prettiness of the scene. The house was +old, and rather extensive at the back: probably the large room he now entered +was gloomy by daylight, but now it was agreeably lit by a fine old brass lamp +with seven oil-lights hanging above the snow-white cloth spread on the central +table. The ceiling and walls were smoky, and all the surroundings were dark +enough to throw into relief the human figures, which had a Venetian glow of +coloring. The grandmother was arrayed in yellowish brown with a large gold +chain in lieu of the necklace, and by this light her yellow face with its +darkly-marked eyebrows and framing roll of gray hair looked as handsome as was +necessary for picturesque effect. Young Mrs. Cohen was clad in red and black, +with a string of large artificial pearls wound round and round her neck: the +baby lay asleep in the cradle under a scarlet counterpane; Adelaide Rebekah was +in braided amber, and Jacob Alexander was in black velveteen with scarlet +stockings. As the four pairs of black eyes all glistened a welcome at Deronda, +he was almost ashamed of the supercilious dislike these happy-looking creatures +had raised in him by daylight. Nothing could be more cordial than the greeting +he received, and both mother and grandmother seemed to gather more dignity from +being seen on the private hearth, showing hospitality. He looked round with +some wonder at the old furniture: the oaken bureau and high side-table must +surely be mere matters of chance and economy, and not due to the family taste. +A large dish of blue and yellow ware was set up on the side-table, and flanking +it were two old silver vessels; in front of them a large volume in darkened +vellum with a deep-ribbed back. In the corner at the farther end was an open +door into an inner room, where there was also a light. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda took in these details by parenthetic glances while he met Jacob’s +pressing solicitude about the knife. He had taken the pains to buy one with the +requisites of the hook and white handle, and produced it on demand, saying, +</p> + +<p> +“Is that the sort of thing you want, Jacob?” +</p> + +<p> +It was subjected to a severe scrutiny, the hook and blades were opened, and the +article of barter with the cork-screw was drawn forth for comparison. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you like a hook better than a cork-screw?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“’Caush I can get hold of things with a hook. A cork-screw +won’t go into anything but corks. But it’s better for you, you can +draw corks.” +</p> + +<p> +“You agree to change, then?” said Deronda, observing that the +grandmother was listening with delight. +</p> + +<p> +“What else have you got in your pockets?” said Jacob, with +deliberative seriousness. +</p> + +<p> +“Hush, hush, Jacob, love,” said the grandmother. And Deronda, +mindful of discipline, answered, +</p> + +<p> +“I think I must not tell you that. Our business was with the +knives.” +</p> + +<p> +Jacob looked up into his face scanningly for a moment or two, and apparently +arriving at his conclusions, said gravely, +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll shwop,” handing the cork-screw knife to Deronda, who +pocketed it with corresponding gravity. +</p> + +<p> +Immediately the small son of Shem ran off into the next room, whence his voice +was heard in rapid chat; and then ran back again—when, seeing his father +enter, he seized a little velveteen hat which lay on a chair and put it on to +approach him. Cohen kept on his own hat, and took no notice of the visitor, but +stood still while the two children went up to him and clasped his knees: then +he laid his hands on each in turn and uttered his Hebrew benediction; whereupon +the wife, who had lately taken baby from the cradle, brought it up to her +husband and held it under his outstretched hands, to be blessed in its sleep. +For the moment, Deronda thought that this pawnbroker, proud of his vocation, +was not utterly prosaic. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sir, you found your welcome in my family, I think,” said +Cohen, putting down his hat and becoming his former self. “And +you’ve been punctual. Nothing like a little stress here,” he added, +tapping his side pocket as he sat down. “It’s good for us all in +our turn. I’ve felt it when I’ve had to make up payments. I began +to fit every sort of box. It’s bracing to the mind. Now then! let us see, +let us see.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is the ring I spoke of,” said Deronda, taking it from his +finger. “I believe it cost a hundred pounds. It will be a sufficient +pledge to you for fifty, I think. I shall probably redeem it in a month or +so.” +</p> + +<p> +Cohen’s glistening eyes seemed to get a little nearer together as he met +the ingenuous look of this crude young gentleman, who apparently supposed that +redemption was a satisfaction to pawnbrokers. He took the ring, examined and +returned it, saying with indifference, “Good, good. We’ll talk of +it after our meal. Perhaps you’ll join us, if you’ve no objection. +Me and my wife’ll feel honored, and so will mother; won’t you, +mother?” +</p> + +<p> +The invitation was doubly echoed, and Deronda gladly accepted it. All now +turned and stood round the table. No dish was at present seen except one +covered with a napkin; and Mrs. Cohen had placed a china bowl near her husband +that he might wash his hands in it. But after putting on his hat again, he +paused, and called in a loud voice, “Mordecai!” +</p> + +<p> +Can this be part of the religious ceremony? thought Deronda, not knowing what +might be expected of the ancient hero. But he heard a “Yes” from +the next room, which made him look toward the open door; and there, to his +astonishment, he saw the figure of the enigmatic Jew whom he had this morning +met with in the book-shop. Their eyes met, and Mordecai looked as much +surprised as Deronda—neither in his surprise making any sign of +recognition. But when Mordecai was seating himself at the end of the table, he +just bent his head to the guest in a cold and distant manner, as if the +disappointment of the morning remained a disagreeable association with this new +acquaintance. +</p> + +<p> +Cohen now washed his hands, pronouncing Hebrew words the while: afterward, he +took off the napkin covering the dish and disclosed the two long flat loaves +besprinkled with seed—the memorial of the manna that fed the wandering +forefathers—and breaking off small pieces gave one to each of the family, +including Adelaide Rebekah, who stood on the chair with her whole length +exhibited in her amber-colored garment, her little Jewish nose lengthened by +compression of the lip in the effort to make a suitable appearance. Cohen then +uttered another Hebrew blessing, and after that, the male heads were uncovered, +all seated themselves, and the meal went on without any peculiarity that +interested Deronda. He was not very conscious of what dishes he ate from; being +preoccupied with a desire to turn the conversation in a way that would enable +him to ask some leading question; and also thinking of Mordecai, between whom +and himself there was an exchange of fascinated, half-furtive glances. Mordecai +had no handsome Sabbath garment, but instead of the threadbare rusty black coat +of the morning he wore one of light drab, which looked as if it had once been a +handsome loose paletot now shrunk with washing; and this change of clothing +gave a still stronger accentuation to his dark-haired, eager face which might +have belonged to the prophet Ezekiel—also probably not modish in the eyes +of contemporaries. It was noticeable that the thin tails of the fried fish were +given to Mordecai; and in general the sort of share assigned to a poor +relation—no doubt a “survival” of prehistoric practice, not +yet generally admitted to be superstitious. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Cohen kept up the conversation with much liveliness, introducing as +subjects always in taste (the Jew is proud of his loyalty) the Queen and the +Royal Family, the Emperor and Empress of the French—into which both +grandmother and wife entered with zest. Mrs. Cohen the younger showed an +accurate memory of distinguished birthdays; and the elder assisted her son in +informing the guest of what occurred when the Emperor and Empress were in +England and visited the city ten years before. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say you know all about it better than we do, sir,” said +Cohen, repeatedly, by way of preface to full information; and the interesting +statements were kept up in a trio. +</p> + +<p> +“Our baby is named <i>Eu</i>genie Esther,” said young Mrs. Cohen, +vivaciously. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s wonderful how the Emperor’s like a cousin of mine in +the face,” said the grandmother; “it struck me like lightning when +I caught sight of him. I couldn’t have thought it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mother and me went to see the Emperor and Empress at the Crystal +Palace,” said Mr. Cohen. “I had a fine piece of work to take care +of, mother; she might have been squeezed flat—though she was pretty near +as lusty then as she is now. I said if I had a hundred mothers I’d never +take one of ’em to see the Emperor and Empress at the Crystal Palace +again; and you may think a man can’t afford it when he’s got but +one mother—not if he’d ever so big an insurance on her.” He +stroked his mother’s shoulder affectionately, and chuckled a little at +his own humor. +</p> + +<p> +“Your mother has been a widow a long while, perhaps,” said Deronda, +seizing his opportunity. “That has made your care for her the more +needful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ay, it’s a good many <i>yore-zeit</i> since I had to manage +for her and myself,” said Cohen quickly. “I went early to it. +It’s that makes you a sharp knife.” +</p> + +<p> +“What does—what makes a sharp knife, father?” said Jacob, his +cheek very much swollen with sweet-cake. +</p> + +<p> +The father winked at his guest and said, “Having your nose put on the +grindstone.” +</p> + +<p> +Jacob slipped from his chair with the piece of sweet-cake in his hand, and +going close up to Mordecai, who had been totally silent hitherto, said, +“What does that mean—putting my nose to the grindstone?” +</p> + +<p> +“It means that you are to bear being hurt without making a noise,” +said Mordecai, turning his eyes benignantly on the small face close to his. +Jacob put the corner of the cake into Mordecai’s mouth as an invitation +to bite, saying meanwhile, “I shan’t though,” and keeping his +eyes on the cake to observe how much of it went in this act of generosity. +Mordecai took a bite and smiled, evidently meaning to please the lad, and the +little incident made them both look more lovable. Deronda, however, felt with +some vexation that he had taken little by his question. +</p> + +<p> +“I fancy that is the right quarter for learning,” said he, carrying +on the subject that he might have an excuse for addressing Mordecai, to whom he +turned and said, “You have been a great student, I imagine?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have studied,” was the quiet answer. “And you?—You +know German by the book you were buying.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I have studied in Germany. Are you generally engaged in +bookselling?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I only go to Mr. Ram’s shop every day to keep it while he goes +to meals,” said Mordecai, who was now looking at Deronda with what seemed +a revival of his original interest: it seemed as if the face had some +attractive indication for him which now neutralized the former disappointment. +After a slight pause, he said, “Perhaps you know Hebrew?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry to say, not at all.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s countenance fell: he cast down his eyelids, looking at his +hands, which lay crossed before him, and said no more. Deronda had now noticed +more decisively than in their former interview a difficulty in breathing, which +he thought must be a sign of consumption. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve had something else to do than to get book-learning,” +said Mr. Cohen,—“I’ve had to make myself knowing about useful +things. I know stones well,”—here he pointed to Deronda’s +ring. “I’m not afraid of taking that ring of yours at my own +valuation. But now,” he added, with a certain drop in his voice to a +lower, more familiar nasal, “what do you want for it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Fifty or sixty pounds,” Deronda answered, rather too carelessly. +</p> + +<p> +Cohen paused a little, thrust his hands into his pockets, fixed on Deronda a +pair of glistening eyes that suggested a miraculous guinea-pig, and said, +“Couldn’t do you that. Happy to oblige, but couldn’t go that +lengths. Forty pound—say forty—I’ll let you have forty on +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was aware that Mordecai had looked up again at the words implying a +monetary affair, and was now examining him again, while he said, “Very +well, I shall redeem it in a month or so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good. I’ll make you out the ticket by-and-by,” said Cohen, +indifferently. Then he held up his finger as a sign that conversation must be +deferred. He, Mordecai and Jacob put on their hats, and Cohen opened a +thanksgiving, which was carried on by responses, till Mordecai delivered +himself alone at some length, in a solemn chanting tone, with his chin slightly +uplifted and his thin hands clasped easily before him. Not only in his accent +and tone, but in his freedom from the self-consciousness which has reference to +others’ approbation, there could hardly have been a stronger contrast to +the Jew at the other end of the table. It was an unaccountable +conjunction—the presence among these common, prosperous, shopkeeping +types, of a man who, in an emaciated threadbare condition, imposed a certain +awe on Deronda, and an embarrassment at not meeting his expectations. +</p> + +<p> +No sooner had Mordecai finished his devotional strain, than rising, with a +slight bend of his head to the stranger, he walked back into his room, and shut +the door behind him. +</p> + +<p> +“That seems to be rather a remarkable man,” said Deronda, turning +to Cohen, who immediately set up his shoulders, put out his tongue slightly, +and tapped his own brow. It was clearly to be understood that Mordecai did not +come up to the standard of sanity which was set by Mr. Cohen’s view of +men and things. +</p> + +<p> +“Does he belong to your family?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +This idea appeared to be rather ludicrous to the ladies as well as to Cohen, +and the family interchanged looks of amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” said Cohen. “Charity! charity! he worked for me, +and when he got weaker and weaker I took him in. He’s an incumbrance; but +he brings a blessing down, and he teaches the boy. Besides, he does the +repairing at the watches and jewelry.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda hardly abstained from smiling at this mixture of kindliness and the +desire to justify it in the light of a calculation; but his willingness to +speak further of Mordecai, whose character was made the more enigmatically +striking by these new details, was baffled. Mr. Cohen immediately dismissed the +subject by reverting to the “accommodation,” which was also an act +of charity, and proceeded to make out the ticket, get the forty pounds, and +present them both in exchange for the diamond ring. Deronda, feeling that it +would be hardly delicate to protract his visit beyond the settlement of the +business which was its pretext, had to take his leave, with no more decided +result than the advance of forty pounds and the pawn-ticket in his +breast-pocket, to make a reason for returning when he came up to town after +Christmas. He was resolved that he would then endeavor to gain a little more +insight into the character and history of Mordecai; from whom also he might +gather something decisive about the Cohens—for example, the reason why it +was forbidden to ask Mrs. Cohen the elder whether she had a daughter. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0040"></a> +BOOK V.—MORDECAI.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0035"></a> +CHAPTER XXXV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>nonchalant</i>, as good a foil as could well be found to the +intense coloring and vivid gravity of Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, really,” said Deronda, in an indifferent tone. “I know +little more of him than that he is Sir Hugo’s nephew.” +</p> + +<p> +But now the door opened and deferred any satisfaction of Mr. +Vandernoodt’s communicativeness. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“The Arrowpoints have condoned the marriage, and he is spending the +Christmas with his bride at Quetcham.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>mésalliance</i> is something like disowning your +one eye: everybody knows it’s yours, and you have no other to make an +appearance with.” +</p> + +<p> +“As to <i>mésalliance</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“If they were any <i>mésalliance</i> in the case, I should say it was on +Klesmer’s side,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you think it is a case of the immortal marrying the mortal. What is +your opinion?” said Sir Hugo, looking at Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you approve of a wife burning incense before her +husband?” said Sir Hugo, with an air of jocoseness. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Klesmer is no favorite of yours, I see,” said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>entrée</i>; 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How’s that? Because you think him too learned?” said Sir +Hugo, whom the peculiarity of her glance had not escaped. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall like to see the horses as well as the building,” said +Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has one attraction for me,” said Gwendolen, passing over this +compliment with a chill smile, “that it is within reach of +Offendene.” +</p> + +<p> +“I understand that,” said Sir Hugo, and then let the subject drop. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you not join in the music?” he said, by way of meeting the +necessity for speech. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you not a musician?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>you</i> never find fault with the world or with +others?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes. When I am in a grumbling mood.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if they injure you and could have helped it?” said Gwendolen +with a hard intensity unaccountable in incidental talk like this. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“There I believe you are right,” said Gwendolen, with a sudden +little laugh, and turned to join the group at the piano. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, pray,” said Gwendolen. “You will like to see the +stables, Henleigh?” she added, looking at her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Deronda, carelessly, knowing that Sir Hugo would +think any excuse disobliging. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +At last he threw down the paper and turned round. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you are there already,” he said, coming forward a step or two: +“I must go and put on my coat.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I shall like it,” said Gwendolen, without the slightest +movement except this of the lips. +</p> + +<p> +“We could put off going over the house, you know, and only go out of +doors,” said Sir Hugo, kindly, while Grandcourt turned aside. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dear no!” said Gwendolen, speaking with determination; +“let us put off nothing. I want a long walk.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“A confounded nuisance,” drawled Grandcourt. “I hate fellows +wanting to howl litanies—acting the greatest bores that have ever +existed.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think so?” said Gwendolen with a little surprise. “I +should have thought you cared most about ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and all +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“But to care about <i>them</i> is a sort of affection,” said +Deronda, smiling at her sudden <i>naïveté</i>. “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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I did <i>not</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +Here Sir Hugo and Grandcourt turned round and paused. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you hear that?” said Sir Hugo, looking at the husband. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Grandcourt, without change of countenance. +“It’s a deucedly hard thing to keep up, though.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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, +</p> + +<p> +“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, +</p> + +<p> +“It was certainly rather too warm in one’s wraps.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>is</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you take off your hat to horses?” said Grandcourt, with a +slight sneer. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is, stables dive deeper and deeper into the pocket nowadays, +and I am very glad to have got rid of that <i>démangeaison</i>,” said Sir +Hugo, as they were coming out. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +But Gwendolen had lingered behind to look at the kenneled blood-hounds, perhaps +because she felt a little dispirited; and Grandcourt waited for her. +</p> + +<p> +“You had better take my arm,” he said, in his low tone of command; +and she took it. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a great bore being dragged about in this way, and no +cigar,” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you would like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like it!—one eternal chatter. And encouraging those ugly +girls—inviting one to meet such monsters. How that <i>fat</i> Deronda can +bear looking at her——” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you call him a <i>fat</i>? Do you object to him so much?” +</p> + +<p> +“Object? no. What do I care about his being a <i>fat</i>? It’s of +no consequence to me. I’ll invite him to Diplow again if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think he would come. He is too clever and learned to care +about <i>us</i>,” said Gwendolen, thinking it useful for her husband to +be told (privately) that it was possible for him to be looked down upon. +</p> + +<p> +“I never saw that make much difference in a man. Either he is a +gentleman, or he is not,” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +That a new husband and wife should snatch a moment’s <i>tête-à-tête</i> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you can see every line of them with your eyes shut,” +said Juliet Fenn. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt stood with his back to the fire and looked at her as she entered. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mercy!” she exclaimed, the pause lasting till she could bear +it no longer. “How am I to alter myself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Put on the diamonds,” said Grandcourt, looking straight at her +with his narrow glance. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“What you think has nothing to do with it,” said Grandcourt, his +<i>sotto voce</i> imperiousness seeming to have an evening quietude and finish, +like his toilet. “I wish you to wear the diamonds.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.’” +</p> + +<p> +She was about to ring for her maid when she heard the door open behind her. It +was Grandcourt who came in. +</p> + +<p> +“You want some one to fasten them,” he said, coming toward her. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must leave that to Mr. Grandcourt, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; he wished me to hear it from you, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt was smoking, and only said carelessly, “Of course I was not +going to let her live like a gamekeeper’s mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“At least he is not mean about money,” thought Gwendolen, +“and mamma is the better off for my marriage.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0036"></a> +CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Rien ne pèse tant qu’un secret<br/> +Le porter loin est difficile aux dames:<br/> +Et je sçais mesme sur ce fait<br/> +Bon nombre d’hommes qui sont femmes.”<br/> + —L<small>A</small> F<small>ONTAINE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Deronda had been fastened and led off by Mr. Vandernoodt, who wished +for a brisker walk, a cigar, and a little gossip. Since we cannot tell a man +his own secrets, the restraint of being in his company often breeds a desire to +pair off in conversation with some more ignorant person, and Mr. Vandernoodt +presently said, +</p> + +<p> +“What a washed-out piece of cambric Grandcourt is! But if he is a +favorite of yours, I withdraw the remark.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not the least in the world,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought not. One wonders how he came to have a great passion again; +and he must have had—to marry in this way. Though Lush, his old chum, +hints that he married this girl out of obstinacy. By George! it was a very +accountable obstinacy. A man might make up his mind to marry her without the +stimulus of contradiction. But he must have made himself a pretty large drain +of money, eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know nothing of his affairs.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! not of the other establishment he keeps up?” +</p> + +<p> +“Diplow? Of course. He took that of Sir Hugo. But merely for the +year.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; not Diplow: Gadsmere. Sir Hugo knows, I’ll answer for +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda said nothing. He really began to feel some curiosity, but he foresaw +that he should hear what Mr. Vandernoodt had to tell, without the condescension +of asking. +</p> + +<p> +“Lush would not altogether own to it, of course. He’s a confident +and go-between of Grandcourt’s. But I have it on the best authority. The +fact is, there’s another lady with four children at Gadsmere. She has had +the upper hand of him these ten years and more, and by what I can understand +has it still—left her husband for him, and used to travel with him +everywhere. Her husband’s dead now; I found a fellow who was in the same +regiment with him, and knew this Mrs. Glasher before she took wing. A fiery +dark-eyed woman—a noted beauty at that time—he thought she was +dead. They say she has Grandcourt under her thumb still, and it’s a +wonder he didn’t marry her, for there’s a very fine boy, and I +understand Grandcourt can do absolutely as he pleases with the estates. Lush +told me as much as that.” +</p> + +<p> +“What right had he to marry this girl?” said Deronda, with disgust. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Vandernoodt, adjusting the end of his cigar, shrugged his shoulders and put +out his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>She</i> can know nothing of it,” said Deronda, emphatically. +But that positive statement was immediately followed by an inward +query—“Could she have known anything of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s rather a piquant picture,” said Mr. +Vandernoodt—“Grandcourt between two fiery women. For depend upon it +this light-haired one has plenty of devil in her. I formed that opinion of her +at Leubronn. It’s a sort of Medea and Creüsa business. Fancy the two +meeting! Grandcourt is a new kind of Jason: I wonder what sort of a part +he’ll make of it. It’s a dog’s part at best. I think I hear +Ristori now, saying, ‘Jasone! Jasone!’ These fine women generally +get hold of a stick.” +</p> + +<p> +“Grandcourt can bite, I fancy,” said Deronda. “He is no +stick.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; I meant Jason. I can’t quite make out Grandcourt. But +he’s a keen fellow enough—uncommonly well built too. And if he +comes into all this property, the estates will bear dividing. This girl, whose +friends had come to beggary, I understand, may think herself lucky to get him. +I don’t want to be hard on a man because he gets involved in an affair of +that sort. But he might make himself more agreeable. I was telling him a +capital story last night, and he got up and walked away in the middle. I felt +inclined to kick him. Do you suppose that is inattention or insolence, +now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, a mixture. He generally observes the forms: but he doesn’t +listen much,” said Deronda. Then, after a moment’s pause, he went +on, “I should think there must be some exaggeration or inaccuracy in what +you have heard about this lady at Gadsmere.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit, depend upon it; it has all lain snug of late years. People +have forgotten all about it. But there the nest is, and the birds are in it. +And I know Grandcourt goes there. I have good evidence that he goes there. +However, that’s nobody’s business but his own. The affair has sunk +below the surface.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder you could have learned so much about it,” said Deronda, +rather drily. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, there are plenty of people who knew all about it; but such stories +get packed away like old letters. They interest me. I like to know the manners +of my time—contemporary gossip, not antediluvian. These Dryasdust fellows +get a reputation by raking up some small scandal about Semiramis or Nitocris, +and then we have a thousand and one poems written upon it by all the warblers +big and little. But I don’t care a straw about the <i>faux pas</i> of the +mummies. You do, though. You are one of the historical men—more +interested in a lady when she’s got a rag face and skeleton toes peeping +out. Does that flatter your imagination?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, if she had any woes in her love, one has the satisfaction of +knowing that she’s well out of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you are thinking of the Medea, I see.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda then chose to point to some giant oaks worth looking at in their +bareness. He also felt an interest in this piece of contemporary gossip, but he +was satisfied that Mr. Vandernoodt had no more to tell about it. +</p> + +<p> +Since the early days when he tried to construct the hidden story of his own +birth, his mind had perhaps never been so active in weaving probabilities about +any private affair as it had now begun to be about Gwendolen’s marriage. +This unavowed relation of Grandcourt’s—could she have gained some +knowledge of it, which caused her to shrink from the match—a shrinking +finally overcome by the urgence of poverty? He could recall almost every word +she had said to him, and in certain of these words he seemed to discern that +she was conscious of having done some wrong—inflicted some injury. His +own acute experience made him alive to the form of injury which might affect +the unavowed children and their mother. Was Mrs. Grandcourt, under all her +determined show of satisfaction, gnawed by a double, a treble-headed +grief—self-reproach, disappointment, jealousy? He dwelt especially on all +the slight signs of self-reproach: he was inclined to judge her tenderly, to +excuse, to pity. He thought he had found a key now by which to interpret her +more clearly: what magnifying of her misery might not a young creature get into +who had wedded her fresh hopes to old secrets! He thought he saw clearly enough +now why Sir Hugo had never dropped any hint of this affair to him; and +immediately the image of this Mrs. Glasher became painfully associated with his +own hidden birth. Gwendolen knowing of that woman and her children, marrying +Grandcourt, and showing herself contented, would have been among the most +repulsive of beings to him; but Gwendolen tasting the bitterness of remorse for +having contributed to their injury was brought very near to his fellow-feeling. +If it were so, she had got to a common plane of understanding with him on some +difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able to judge of with any justice +or generosity; for, according to precedent, Gwendolen’s view of her +position might easily have been no other than that her husband’s marriage +with her was his entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs. Glasher represented +his forsaken sin. And Deronda had naturally some resentment on behalf of the +Hagars and Ishmaels. +</p> + +<p> +Undeniably Deronda’s growing solicitude about Gwendolen depended chiefly +on her peculiar manner toward him; and I suppose neither man nor woman would be +the better for an utter insensibility to such appeals. One sign that his +interest in her had changed its footing was that he dismissed any caution +against her being a coquette setting snares to involve him in a vulgar +flirtation, and determined that he would not again evade any opportunity of +talking to her. He had shaken off Mr. Vandernoodt, and got into a solitary +corner in the twilight; but half an hour was long enough to think of those +possibilities in Gwendolen’s position and state of mind; and on forming +the determination not to avoid her, he remembered that she was likely to be at +tea with the other ladies in the drawing-room. The conjecture was true; for +Gwendolen, after resolving not to go down again for the next four hours, began +to feel, at the end of one, that in shutting herself up she missed all chances +of seeing and hearing, and that her visit would only last two days more. She +adjusted herself, put on her little air of self-possession, and going down, +made herself resolutely agreeable. Only ladies were assembled, and Lady +Pentreath was amusing them with a description of a drawing-room under the +Regency, and the figure that was cut by ladies and gentlemen in 1819, the year +she was presented—when Deronda entered. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I be acceptable?” he said. “Perhaps I had better go +back and look for the others. I suppose they are in the billiard-room.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; stay where you are,” said Lady Pentreath. “They were +all getting tired of me; let us hear what <i>you</i> have to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is rather an embarrassing appeal,” said Deronda, drawing up a +chair near Lady Mallinger’s elbow at the tea-table. “I think I had +better take the opportunity of mentioning our songstress,” he added, +looking at Lady Mallinger—“unless you have done so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the little Jewess!” said Lady Mallinger. “No, I have not +mentioned her. It never entered my head that any one here wanted singing +lessons.” +</p> + +<p> +“All ladies know some one else who wants singing lessons,” said +Deronda. “I have happened to find an exquisite singer,”—here +he turned to Lady Pentreath. “She is living with some ladies who are +friends of mine—the mother and sisters of a man who was my chum at +Cambridge. She was on the stage at Vienna; but she wants to leave that life, +and maintain herself by teaching.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are swarms of those people, aren’t there?” said the +old lady. “Are her lessons to be very cheap or very expensive? Those are +the two baits I know of.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is another bait for those who hear her,” said Deronda. +“Her singing is something quite exceptional, I think. She has had such +first-rate teaching—or rather first-rate instinct with her +teaching—that you might imagine her singing all came by nature.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did she leave the stage, then?” said Lady Pentreath. +“I’m too old to believe in first-rate people giving up first-rate +chances.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her voice was too weak. It is a delicious voice for a room. You who put +up with my singing of Schubert would be enchanted with hers,” said +Deronda, looking at Mrs. Raymond. “And I imagine she would not object to +sing at private parties or concerts. Her voice is quite equal to that.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am to have her in my drawing-room when we go up to town,” said +Lady Mallinger. “You shall hear her then. I have not heard her myself +yet; but I trust Daniel’s recommendation. I mean my girls to have lessons +of her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it a charitable affair?” said Lady Pentreath. “I +can’t bear charitable music.” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Mallinger, who was rather helpless in conversation, and felt herself under +an engagement not to tell anything of Mirah’s story, had an embarrassed +smile on her face, and glanced at Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a charity to those who want to have a good model of feminine +singing,” said Deronda. “I think everybody who has ears would +benefit by a little improvement on the ordinary style. If you heard Miss +Lapidoth”—here he looked at Gwendolen—“perhaps you +would revoke your resolution to give up singing.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should rather think my resolution would be confirmed,” said +Gwendolen. “I don’t feel able to follow your advice of enjoying my +own middlingness.” +</p> + +<p> +“For my part,” said Deronda, “people who do anything finely +always inspirit me to try. I don’t mean that they make me believe I can +do it as well. But they make the thing, whatever it may be, seem worthy to be +done. I can bear to think my own music not good for much, but the world would +be more dismal if I thought music itself not good for much. Excellence +encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the +world.” +</p> + +<p> +“But then, if we can’t imitate it, it only makes our own life seem +the tamer,” said Gwendolen, in a mood to resent encouragement founded on +her own insignificance. +</p> + +<p> +“That depends on the point of view, I think,” said Deronda. +“We should have a poor life of it if we were reduced for all our pleasure +to our own performances. A little private imitation of what is good is a sort +of private devotion to it, and most of us ought to practice art only in the +light of private study—preparation to understand and enjoy what the few +can do for us. I think Miss Lapidoth is one of the few.” +</p> + +<p> +“She must be a very happy person, don’t you think?” said +Gwendolen, with a touch of sarcasm, and a turn of her neck toward Mrs. Raymond. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” answered the independent lady; “I must +hear more of her before I say that.” +</p> + +<p> +“It may have been a bitter disappointment to her that her voice failed +her for the stage,” said Juliet Fenn, sympathetically. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose she’s past her best, though,” said the deep voice +of Lady Pentreath. +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary, she has not reached it,” said Deronda. “She +is barely twenty.” +</p> + +<p> +“And very pretty,” interposed Lady Mallinger, with an amiable wish +to help Deronda. “And she has very good manners. I’m sorry +she’s a bigoted Jewess; I should not like it for anything else, but it +doesn’t matter in singing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, since her voice is too weak for her to scream much, I’ll +tell Lady Clementina to set her on my nine granddaughters,” said Lady +Pentreath; “and I hope she’ll convince eight of them that they have +not voice enough to sing anywhere but at church. My notion is, that many of our +girls nowadays want lessons not to sing.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have had my lessons in that,” said Gwendolen, looking at +Deronda. “You see Lady Pentreath is on my side.” +</p> + +<p> +While she was speaking, Sir Hugo entered with some of the other gentlemen, +including Grandcourt, and standing against the group at the low tea-table said, +</p> + +<p> +“What imposition is Deronda putting on you, ladies—slipping in +among you by himself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Wanting to pass off an obscurity on us as better than any +celebrity,” said Lady Pentreath—“a pretty singing Jewess who +is to astonish these young people. You and I, who heard Catalani in her prime, +are not so easily astonished.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo listened with his good-humored smile as he took a cup of tea from his +wife, and then said, “Well, you know, a Liberal is bound to think that +there have been singers since Catalani’s time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you are younger than I am. I dare say you are one of the men who ran +after Alcharisi. But she married off and left you all in the lurch.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes; it’s rather too bad when these great singers marry +themselves into silence before they have a crack in their voices. And the +husband is a public robber. I remember Leroux saying, ‘A man might as +well take down a fine peal of church bells and carry them off to the +steppes,’ said Sir Hugo, setting down his cup and turning away, while +Deronda, who had moved from his place to make room for others, and felt that he +was not in request, sat down a little apart. Presently he became aware that, in +the general dispersion of the group, Gwendolen had extricated herself from the +attentions of Mr. Vandernoodt and had walked to the piano, where she stood +apparently examining the music which lay on the desk. Will any one be surprised +at Deronda’s concluding that she wished him to join her? Perhaps she +wanted to make amends for the unpleasant tone of resistance with which she had +met his recommendation of Mirah, for he had noticed that her first impulse +often was to say what she afterward wished to retract. He went to her side and +said, +</p> + +<p> +“Are you relenting about the music and looking for something to play or +sing?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not looking for anything, but I <i>am</i> relenting,” said +Gwendolen, speaking in a submissive tone. +</p> + +<p> +“May I know the reason?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to hear Miss Lapidoth and have lessons from her, since you +admire her so much—that is, of course, when we go to town. I mean lessons +in rejoicing at her excellence and my own deficiency,” said Gwendolen, +turning on him a sweet, open smile. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be really glad for you to see and hear her,” said Deronda, +returning the smile in kind. +</p> + +<p> +“Is she as perfect in every thing else as in her music?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t vouch for that exactly. I have not seen enough of her. But +I have seen nothing in her that I could wish to be different. She has had an +unhappy life. Her troubles began in early childhood, and she has grown up among +very painful surroundings. But I think you will say that no advantages could +have given her more grace and truer refinement.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder what sort of trouble hers were?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not any very precise knowledge. But I know that she was on the +brink of drowning herself in despair.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what hindered her?” said Gwendolen, quickly, looking at +Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Some ray or other came—which made her feel that she ought to +live—that it was good to live,” he answered, quietly. “She is +full of piety, and seems capable of submitting to anything when it takes the +form of duty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Those people are not to be pitied,” said Gwendolen, impatiently. +“I have no sympathy with women who are always doing right. I don’t +believe in their great sufferings.” Her fingers moved quickly among the +edges of the music. +</p> + +<p> +“It is true,” said Deronda, “that the consciousness of having +done wrong is something deeper, more bitter. I suppose we faulty creatures can +never feel so much for the irreproachable as for those who are bruised in the +struggle with their own faults. It is a very ancient story, that of the lost +sheep—but it comes up afresh every day.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a way of speaking—it is not acted upon, it is not +real,” said Gwendolen, bitterly. “You admire Miss Lapidoth because +you think her blameless, perfect. And you know you would despise a woman who +had done something you thought very wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“That would depend entirely upon her own view of what she had +done,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“You would be satisfied if she were very wretched, I suppose,” said +Gwendolen, impetuously. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not satisfied—full of sorrow for her. It was not a mere way of +speaking. I did not mean to say that the finer nature is not more adorable; I +meant that those who would be comparatively uninteresting beforehand may become +worthier of sympathy when they do something that awakens in them a keen +remorse. Lives are enlarged in different ways. I dare say some would never get +their eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of +their own actions. And when they are suffering in that way one must care for +them more than for the comfortably self-satisfied.” Deronda forgot +everything but his vision of what Gwendolen’s experience had probably +been, and urged by compassion let his eyes and voice express as much interest +as they would. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen had slipped on to the music-stool, and looked up at him with pain in +her long eyes, like a wounded animal asking for help. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you persuading Mrs. Grandcourt to play to us, Dan?” said Sir +Hugo, coming up and putting his hand on Deronda’s shoulder with a gentle, +admonitory pinch. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot persuade myself,” said Gwendolen, rising. +</p> + +<p> +Others had followed Sir Hugo’s lead, and there was an end of any +liability to confidences for that day. But the next was New Year’s Eve; +and a grand dance, to which the chief tenants were invited, was to be held in +the picture-gallery above the cloister—the sort of entertainment in which +numbers and general movement may create privacy. When Gwendolen was dressing, +she longed, in remembrance of Leubronn, to put on the old turquoise necklace +for her sole ornament; but she dared not offend her husband by appearing in +that shabby way on an occasion when he would demand her utmost splendor. +Determined to wear the memorial necklace somehow, she wound it thrice round her +wrist and made a bracelet of it—having gone to her room to put it on just +before the time of entering the ball-room. +</p> + +<p> +It was always a beautiful scene, this dance on New Year’s Eve, which had +been kept up by the family tradition as nearly in the old fashion as inexorable +change would allow. Red carpet was laid down for the occasion: hot-house plants +and evergreens were arranged in bowers at the extremities and in every recess +of the gallery; and the old portraits stretching back through generations, even +to the pre-portraying period, made a piquant line of spectators. Some +neighboring gentry, major and minor, were invited; and it was certainly an +occasion when a prospective master and mistress of Abbott’s and +King’s Topping might see their future glory in an agreeable light, as a +picturesque provincial supremacy with a rent-roll personified by the most +prosperous-looking tenants. Sir Hugo expected Grandcourt to feel flattered by +being asked to the Abbey at a time which included this festival in honor of the +family estate; but he also hoped that his own hale appearance might impress his +successor with the probable length of time that would elapse before the +succession came, and with the wisdom of preferring a good actual sum to a minor +property that must be waited for. All present, down to the least important +farmer’s daughter, knew that they were to see “young +Grandcourt,” Sir Hugo’s nephew, the presumptive heir and future +baronet, now visiting the Abbey with his bride after an absence of many years; +any coolness between uncle and nephew having, it is understood, given way to a +friendly warmth. The bride opening the ball with Sir Hugo was necessarily the +cynosure of all eyes; and less than a year before, if some magic mirror could +have shown Gwendolen her actual position, she would have imagined herself +moving in it with a glow of triumphant pleasure, conscious that she held in her +hands a life full of favorable chances which her cleverness and spirit would +enable her to make the best of. And now she was wondering that she could get so +little joy out of the exaltation to which she had been suddenly lifted, away +from the distasteful petty empire of her girlhood with its irksome lack of +distinction and superfluity of sisters. She would have been glad to be even +unreasonably elated, and to forget everything but the flattery of the moment; +but she was like one courting sleep, in whom thoughts insist like willful +tormentors. +</p> + +<p> +Wondering in this way at her own dullness, and all the while longing for an +excitement that would deaden importunate aches, she was passing through files +of admiring beholders in the country-dance with which it was traditional to +open the ball, and was being generally regarded by her own sex as an enviable +woman. It was remarked that she carried herself with a wonderful air, +considering that she had been nobody in particular, and without a farthing to +her fortune. If she had been a duke’s daughter, or one of the royal +princesses, she could not have taken the honors of the evening more as a matter +of course. Poor Gwendolen! It would by-and-by become a sort of skill in which +she was automatically practiced to bear this last great gambling loss with an +air of perfect self-possession. +</p> + +<p> +The next couple that passed were also worth looking at. Lady Pentreath had +said, “I shall stand up for one dance, but I shall choose my partner. Mr. +Deronda, you are the youngest man, I mean to dance with you. Nobody is old +enough to make a good pair with me. I must have a contrast.” And the +contrast certainly set off the old lady to the utmost. She was one of those +women who are never handsome till they are old, and she had had the wisdom to +embrace the beauty of age as early as possible. What might have seemed +harshness in her features when she was young, had turned now into a +satisfactory strength of form and expression which defied wrinkles, and was set +off by a crown of white hair; her well-built figure was well covered with black +drapery, her ears and neck comfortably caressed with lace, showing none of +those withered spaces which one would think it a pitiable condition of poverty +to expose. She glided along gracefully enough, her dark eyes still with a +mischievous smile in them as she observed the company. Her partner’s +young richness of tint against the flattened hues and rougher forms of her aged +head had an effect something like that of a fine flower against a lichenous +branch. Perhaps the tenants hardly appreciated this pair. Lady Pentreath was +nothing more than a straight, active old lady: Mr. Deronda was a familiar +figure regarded with friendliness; but if he had been the heir, it would have +been regretted that his face was not as unmistakably English as Sir +Hugo’s. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt’s appearance when he came up with Lady Mallinger was not +impeached with foreignness: still the satisfaction in it was not complete. It +would have been matter of congratulation if one who had the luck to inherit two +old family estates had had more hair, a fresher color, and a look of greater +animation; but that fine families dwindled off into females, and estates ran +together into the single heirship of a mealy-complexioned male, was a tendency +in things which seemed to be accounted for by a citation of other instances. It +was agreed that Mr. Grandcourt could never be taken for anything but what he +was—a born gentleman; and that, in fact, he looked like an heir. Perhaps +the person least complacently disposed toward him at that moment was Lady +Mallinger, to whom going in procession up this country-dance with Grandcourt +was a blazonment of herself as the infelicitous wife who had produced nothing +but daughters, little better than no children, poor dear things, except for her +own fondness and for Sir Hugo’s wonderful goodness to them. But such +inward discomfort could not prevent the gentle lady from looking fair and stout +to admiration, or her full blue eyes from glancing mildly at her neighbors. All +the mothers and fathers held it a thousand pities that she had not had a fine +boy, or even several—which might have been expected, to look at her when +she was first married. +</p> + +<p> +The gallery included only three sides of the quadrangle, the fourth being shut +off as a lobby or corridor: one side was used for dancing, and the opposite +side for the supper-table, while the intermediate part was less brilliantly +lit, and fitted with comfortable seats. Later in the evening Gwendolen was in +one of these seats, and Grandcourt was standing near her. They were not talking +to each other: she was leaning backward in her chair, and he against the wall; +and Deronda, happening to observe this, went up to ask her if she had resolved +not to dance any more. Having himself been doing hard duty in this way among +the guests, he thought he had earned the right to sink for a little while into +the background, and he had spoken little to Gwendolen since their conversation +at the piano the day before. Grandcourt’s presence would only make it the +easier to show that pleasure in talking to her even about trivialities which +would be a sign of friendliness; and he fancied that her face looked blank. A +smile beamed over it as she saw him coming, and she raised herself from her +leaning posture. Grandcourt had been grumbling at the <i>ennui</i> of staying +so long in this stupid dance, and proposing that they should vanish: she had +resisted on the ground of politeness—not without being a little +frightened at the probability that he was silently angry with her. She had her +reason for staying, though she had begun to despair of the opportunity for the +sake of which she had put the old necklace on her wrist. But now at last +Deronda had come. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I shall not dance any more. Are you not glad?” she said, with +some gayety, “you might have felt obliged humbly to offer yourself as a +partner, and I feel sure you have danced more than you like already.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will not deny that,” said Deronda, “since you have danced +as much as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“But will you take trouble for me in another way, and fetch me a glass of +that fresh water?” +</p> + +<p> +It was but a few steps that Deronda had to go for the water. Gwendolen was +wrapped in the lightest, softest of white woolen burnouses, under which her +hands were hidden. While he was gone she had drawn off her glove, which was +finished with a lace ruffle, and when she put up her hand to take the glass and +lifted it to her mouth, the necklace-bracelet, which in its triple winding +adapted itself clumsily to her wrist, was necessarily conspicuous. Grandcourt +saw it, and saw that it was attracting Deronda’s notice. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that hideous thing you have got on your wrist?” said the +husband. +</p> + +<p> +“That?” said Gwendolen, composedly, pointing to the turquoises, +while she still held the glass; “it is an old necklace I like to wear. I +lost it once, and someone found it for me.” +</p> + +<p> +With that she gave the glass again to Deronda, who immediately carried it away, +and on returning said, in order to banish any consciousness about the necklace, +</p> + +<p> +“It is worth while for you to go and look out at one of the windows on +that side. You can see the finest possible moonlight on the stone pillars and +carving, and shadows waving across it in the wind.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to see it. Will you go?” said Gwendolen, looking up +at her husband. +</p> + +<p> +He cast his eyes down at her, and saying, “No, Deronda will take +you,” slowly moved from his leaning attitude, and walked away. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s face for a moment showed a fleeting vexation: she resented +this show of indifference toward her. Deronda felt annoyed, chiefly for her +sake; and with a quick sense, that it would relieve her most to behave as if +nothing peculiar had occurred, he said, “Will you take my arm and go, +while only servants are there?” He thought that he understood well her +action in drawing his attention to the necklace: she wished him to infer that +she had submitted her mind to rebuke—her speech and manner had from the +first fluctuated toward that submission—and that she felt no lingering +resentment. Her evident confidence in his interpretation of her appealed to him +as a peculiar claim. +</p> + +<p> +When they were walking together, Gwendolen felt as if the annoyance which had +just happened had removed another film of reserve from between them, and she +had more right than before to be as open as she wished. She did not speak, +being filled with the sense of silent confidence, until they were in front of +the window looking out on the moonlit court. A sort of bower had been made +round the window, turning it into a recess. Quitting his arm, she folded her +hands in her burnous, and pressed her brow against the glass. He moved slightly +away, and held the lapels of his coat with his thumbs under the collar as his +manner was: he had a wonderful power of standing perfectly still, and in that +position reminded one sometimes of Dante’s <i>spiriti magni con occhi +tardi e gravi</i>. (Doubtless some of these danced in their youth, doubted of +their own vocation, and found their own times too modern.) He abstained from +remarking on the scene before them, fearing that any indifferent words might +jar on her: already the calm light and shadow, the ancient steadfast forms, and +aloofness enough from those inward troubles which he felt sure were agitating +her. And he judged aright: she would have been impatient of polite +conversation. The incidents of the last minute or two had receded behind former +thoughts which she had imagined herself uttering to Deronda, which now urged +themselves to her lips. In a subdued voice, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose I had gambled again, and lost the necklace again, what should +you have thought of me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Worse than I do now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you are mistaken about me. You wanted me not to do that—not +to make my gain out of another’s loss in that way—and I have done a +great deal worse.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t imagine temptations,” said Deronda. “Perhaps I +am able to understand what you mean. At least I understand +self-reproach.” In spite of preparation he was almost alarmed at +Gwendolen’s precipitancy of confidence toward him, in contrast with her +habitual resolute concealment. +</p> + +<p> +“What should you do if you were like me—feeling that you were wrong +and miserable, and dreading everything to come?” It seemed that she was +hurrying to make the utmost use of this opportunity to speak as she would. +</p> + +<p> +“That is not to be amended by doing one thing only—but many,” +said Deronda, decisively. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said Gwendolen, hastily, moving her brow from the glass and +looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +He looked full at her in return, with what she thought was severity. He felt +that it was not a moment in which he must let himself be tender, and flinch +from implying a hard opinion. +</p> + +<p> +“I mean there are many thoughts and habits that may help us to bear +inevitable sorrow. Multitudes have to bear it.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned her brow to the window again, and said impatiently, “You must +tell me then what to think and what to do; else why did you not let me go on +doing as I liked and not minding? If I had gone on gambling I might have won +again, and I might have got not to care for anything else. You would not let me +do that. Why shouldn’t I do as I like, and not mind? Other people +do.” Poor Gwendolen’s speech expressed nothing very clearly except +her irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t believe you would ever get not to mind,” said +Deronda, with deep-toned decision. “If it were true that baseness and +cruelty made an escape from pain, what difference would that make to people who +can’t be quite base or cruel? Idiots escape some pain; but you +can’t be an idiot. Some may do wrong to another without remorse; but +suppose one does feel remorse? I believe you could never lead an injurious +life—all reckless lives are injurious, pestilential—without feeling +remorse.” Deronda’s unconscious fervor had gathered as he went on: +he was uttering thoughts which he had used for himself in moments of painful +meditation. +</p> + +<p> +“Then tell me what better I can do,” said Gwendolen, insistently. +</p> + +<p> +“Many things. Look on other lives besides your own. See what their +troubles are, and how they are borne. Try to care about something in this vast +world besides the gratification of small selfish desires. Try to care for what +is best in thought and action—something that is good apart from the +accidents of your own lot.” +</p> + +<p> +For an instant or two Gwendolen was mute. Then, again moving her brow from the +glass, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“You mean that I am selfish and ignorant.” +</p> + +<p> +He met her fixed look in silence before he answered firmly—“You +will not go on being selfish and ignorant!” +</p> + +<p> +She did not turn away her glance or let her eyelids fall, but a change came +over her face—that subtle change in nerve and muscle which will sometimes +give a childlike expression even to the elderly: it is the subsidence of +self-assertion. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I lead you back?” said Deronda, gently, turning and offering +her his arm again. She took it silently, and in that way they came in sight of +Grandcourt, who was walking slowly near their former place. Gwendolen went up +to him and said, “I am ready to go now. Mr. Deronda will excuse us to +Lady Mallinger.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” said Deronda. “Lord and Lady Pentreath +disappeared some time ago.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt gave his arm in silent compliance, nodding over his shoulder to +Deronda, and Gwendolen too only half turned to bow and say, +“Thanks.” The husband and wife left the gallery and paced the +corridors in silence. When the door had closed on them in the boudoir, +Grandcourt threw himself into a chair and said, with undertoned peremptoriness, +“Sit down.” She, already in the expectation of something +unpleasant, had thrown off her burnous with nervous unconsciousness, and +immediately obeyed. Turning his eyes toward her, he began, +</p> + +<p> +“Oblige me in future by not showing whims like a mad woman in a +play.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose there is some understanding between you and Deronda about that +thing you have on your wrist. If you have anything to say to him, say it. But +don’t carry on a telegraphing which other people are supposed not to see. +It’s damnably vulgar.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can know all about the necklace,” said Gwendolen, her angry +pride resisting the nightmare of fear. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to know. Keep to yourself whatever you like.” +Grandcourt paused between each sentence, and in each his speech seemed to +become more preternaturally distinct in its inward tones. “What I care to +know I shall know without your telling me. Only you will please to behave as +becomes my wife. And not make a spectacle of yourself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you object to my talking to Mr. Deronda?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care two straws about Deronda, or any other conceited +hanger-on. You may talk to him as much as you like. He is not going to take my +place. You are my wife. And you will either fill your place properly—to +the world and to me—or you will go to the devil.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never intended anything but to fill my place properly,” said +Gwendolen, with bitterest mortification in her soul. +</p> + +<p> +“You put that thing on your wrist, and hid it from me till you wanted him +to see it. Only fools go into that deaf and dumb talk, and think they’re +secret. You will understand that you are not to compromise yourself. Behave +with dignity. That’s all I have to say.” +</p> + +<p> +With that last word Grandcourt rose, turned his back to the fire and looked +down on her. She was mute. There was no reproach that she dared to fling back +at him in return for these insulting admonitions, and the very reason she felt +them to be insulting was that their purport went with the most absolute dictate +of her pride. What she would least like to incur was the making a fool of +herself and being compromised. It was futile and irrelevant to try and explain +that Deronda too had only been a monitor—the strongest of all monitors. +Grandcourt was contemptuous, not jealous; contemptuously certain of all the +subjection he cared for. Why could she not rebel and defy him? She longed to do +it. But she might as well have tried to defy the texture of her nerves and the +palpitation of her heart. Her husband had a ghostly army at his back, that +could close round her wherever she might turn. She sat in her splendid attire, +like a white image of helplessness, and he seemed to gratify himself with +looking at her. She could not even make a passionate exclamation, or throw up +her arms, as she would have done in her maiden days. The sense of his scorn +kept her still. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I ring?” he said, after what seemed to her a long while. She +moved her head in assent, and after ringing he went to his dressing-room. +</p> + +<p> +Certain words were gnawing within her. “The wrong you have done me will +be your own curse.” As he closed the door, the bitter tears rose, and the +gnawing words provoked an answer: “Why did you put your fangs into me and +not into him?” It was uttered in a whisper, as the tears came up +silently. But she immediately pressed her handkerchief against her eyes, and +checked her tendency to sob. +</p> + +<p> +The next day, recovered from the shuddering fit of this evening scene, she +determined to use the charter which Grandcourt had scornfully given her, and to +talk as much as she liked with Deronda; but no opportunities occurred, and any +little devices she could imagine for creating them were rejected by her pride, +which was now doubly active. Not toward Deronda himself—she was +singularly free from alarm lest he should think her openness wanting in +dignity: it was part of his power over her that she believed him free from all +misunderstanding as to the way in which she appealed to him; or rather, that he +should misunderstand her had never entered into her mind. But the last morning +came, and still she had never been able to take up the dropped thread of their +talk, and she was without devices. She and Grandcourt were to leave at three +o’clock. It was too irritating that after a walk in the grounds had been +planned in Deronda’s hearing, he did not present himself to join in it. +Grandcourt was gone with Sir Hugo to King’s Topping, to see the old +manor-house; others of the gentlemen were shooting; she was condemned to go and +see the decoy and the water-fowl, and everything else that she least wanted to +see, with the ladies, with old Lord Pentreath and his anecdotes, with Mr. +Vandernoodt and his admiring manners. The irritation became too strong for her; +without premeditation, she took advantage of the winding road to linger a +little out of sight, and then set off back to the house, almost running when +she was safe from observation. She entered by a side door, and the library was +on her left hand; Deronda, she knew, was often there; why might she not turn in +there as well as into any other room in the house? She had been taken there +expressly to see the illuminated family tree, and other remarkable +things—what more natural than that she should like to look in again? The +thing most to be feared was that the room would be empty of Deronda, for the +door was ajar. She pushed it gently, and looked round it. He was there, writing +busily at a distant table, with his back toward the door (in fact, Sir Hugo had +asked him to answer some constituents’ letters which had become +pressing). An enormous log fire, with the scent of Russia from the books, made +the great room as warmly odorous as a private chapel in which the censers have +been swinging. It seemed too daring to go in—too rude to speak and +interrupt him; yet she went in on the noiseless carpet, and stood still for two +or three minutes, till Deronda, having finished a letter, pushed it aside for +signature, and threw himself back to consider whether there were anything else +for him to do, or whether he could walk out for the chance of meeting the party +which included Gwendolen, when he heard her voice saying, “Mr. +Deronda.” +</p> + +<p> +It was certainly startling. He rose hastily, turned round, and pushed away his +chair with a strong expression of surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I wrong to come in?” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you were far on your walk,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“I turned back,” said Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you intend to go out again? I could join you now, if you would allow +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I want to say something, and I can’t stay long,” said +Gwendolen, speaking quickly in a subdued tone, while she walked forward and +rested her arms and muff on the back of the chair he had pushed away from him. +“I want to tell you that it is really so—I can’t help feeling +remorse for having injured others. That was what I meant when I said that I had +done worse than gamble again and pawn the necklace again—something more +injurious, as you called it. And I can’t alter it. I am punished, but I +can’t alter it. You said I could do many things. Tell me again. What +should you do—what should you feel if you were in my place?” +</p> + +<p> +The hurried directness with which she spoke—the absence of all her little +airs, as if she were only concerned to use the time in getting an answer that +would guide her, made her appeal unspeakably touching. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda said, “I should feel something of what you feel—deep +sorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what would you try to do?” said Gwendolen, with urgent +quickness. +</p> + +<p> +“Order my life so as to make any possible amends, and keep away from +doing any sort of injury again,” said Deronda, catching her sense that +the time for speech was brief. +</p> + +<p> +“But I can’t—I can’t; I must go on,” said +Gwendolen, in a passionate loud whisper. “I have thrust out +others—I have made my gain out of their loss—tried to make +it—tried. And I must go on. I can’t alter it.” +</p> + +<p> +It was impossible to answer this instantaneously. Her words had confirmed his +conjecture, and the situation of all concerned rose in swift images before him. +His feeling for those who had been thrust out sanctioned her remorse; he could +not try to nullify it, yet his heart was full of pity for her. But as soon as +he could he answered—taking up her last words, +</p> + +<p> +“That is the bitterest of all—to wear the yoke of our own +wrong-doing. But if you submitted to that as men submit to maiming or life-long +incurable disease?—and made the unalterable wrong a reason for more +effort toward a good, that may do something to counterbalance the evil? One who +has committed irremediable errors may be scourged by that consciousness into a +higher course than is common. There are many examples. Feeling what it is to +have spoiled one life may well make us long to save other lives from being +spoiled.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you have not wronged any one, or spoiled their lives,” said +Gwendolen, hastily. “It is only others who have wronged +<i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda colored slightly, but said immediately—“I suppose our keen +feeling for ourselves might end in giving us a keen feeling for others, if, +when we are suffering acutely, we were to consider that others go through the +same sharp experience. That is a sort of remorse before commission. Can’t +you understand that?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I do—now,” said Gwendolen. “But you were +right—I <i>am</i> selfish. I have never thought much of any one’s +feelings, except my mother’s. I have not been fond of people. But what +can I do?” she went on, more quickly. “I must get up in the morning +and do what every one else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem +to see all that can be—and I am tired and sick of it. And the world is +all confusion to me”—she made a gesture of disgust. “You say +I am ignorant. But what is the good of trying to know more, unless life were +worth more?” +</p> + +<p> +“This good,” said Deronda promptly, with a touch of indignant +severity, which he was inclined to encourage as his own safeguard; “life +<i>would</i> be worth more to you: some real knowledge would give you an +interest in the world beyond the small drama of personal desires. It is the +curse of your life—forgive me—of so many lives, that all passion is +spent in that narrow round, for want of ideas and sympathies to make a larger +home for it. Is there any single occupation of mind that you care about with +passionate delight or even independent interest?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda paused, but Gwendolen, looking startled and thrilled as by an electric +shock, said nothing, and he went on more insistently, +</p> + +<p> +“I take what you said of music for a small example—it answers for +all larger things—you will not cultivate it for the sake of a private joy +in it. What sort of earth or heaven would hold any spiritual wealth in it for +souls pauperized by inaction? If one firmament has no stimulus for our +attention and awe, I don’t see how four would have it. We should stamp +every possible world with the flatness of our own inanity—which is +necessarily impious, without faith or fellowship. The refuge you are needing +from personal trouble is the higher, the religious life, which holds an +enthusiasm for something more than our own appetites and vanities. The few may +find themselves in it simply by an elevation of feeling; but for us who have to +struggle for our wisdom, the higher life must be a region in which the +affections are clad with knowledge.” +</p> + +<p> +The half-indignant remonstrance that vibrated in Deronda’s voice came, as +often happens, from the habit of inward argument with himself rather than from +severity toward Gwendolen: but it had a more beneficial effect on her than any +soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent rebellion of complaint; and to +be roused into self-judgment is comparative activity. For the moment she felt +like a shaken child—shaken out of its wailing into awe, and she said +humbly, +</p> + +<p> +“I will try. I will think.” +</p> + +<p> +They both stood silent for a minute, as if some third presence had arrested +them,—for Deronda, too, was under that sense of pressure which is apt to +come when our own winged words seem to be hovering around us,—till +Gwendolen began again, +</p> + +<p> +“You said affection was the best thing, and I have hardly any—none +about me. If I could, I would have mamma; but that is impossible. Things have +changed to me so—in such a short time. What I used not to like I long for +now. I think I am almost getting fond of the old things now they are +gone.” Her lip trembled. +</p> + +<p> +“Take the present suffering as a painful letting in of light,” said +Deronda, more gently. “You are conscious of more beyond the round of your +own inclinations—you know more of the way in which your life presses on +others, and their life on yours. I don’t think you could have escaped the +painful process in some form or other.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it is a very cruel form,” said Gwendolen, beating her foot on +the ground with returning agitation. “I am frightened at everything. I am +frightened at myself. When my blood is fired I can do daring things—take +any leap; but that makes me frightened at myself.” She was looking at +nothing outside her; but her eyes were directed toward the window, away from +Deronda, who, with quick comprehension said, +</p> + +<p> +“Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of +increasing that remorse which is so bitter to you. Fixed meditation may do a +great deal toward defining our longing or dread. We are not always in a state +of strong emotion, and when we are calm we can use our memories and gradually +change the bias of our fear, as we do our tastes. Take your fear as a +safeguard. It is like quickness of hearing. It may make consequences +passionately present to you. Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it +as if it were a faculty, like vision.” Deronda uttered each sentence more +urgently; he felt as if he were seizing a faint chance of rescuing her from +some indefinite danger. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I know; I understand what you mean,” said Gwendolen in her +loud whisper, not turning her eyes, but lifting up her small gloved hand and +waving it in deprecation of the notion that it was easy to obey that advice. +“But if feelings rose—there are some feelings—hatred and +anger—how can I be good when they keep rising? And if there came a moment +when I felt stifled and could bear it no longer——” She broke +off, and with agitated lips looked at Deronda, but the expression on his face +pierced her with an entirely new feeling. He was under the baffling difficulty +of discerning that what he had been urging on her was thrown into the pallid +distance of mere thought before the outburst of her habitual emotion. It was as +if he saw her drowning while his limbs were bound. The pained compassion which +was spread over his features as he watched her, affected her with a compunction +unlike any she had felt before, and in a changed and imploring tone she said, +</p> + +<p> +“I am grieving you. I am ungrateful. You <i>can</i> help me. I will think +of everything. I will try. Tell me—it will not be a pain to you that I +have dared to speak of my trouble to you? You began it, you know, when you +rebuked me.” There was a melancholy smile on her lips as she said that, +but she added more entreatingly, “It will not be a pain to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not if it does anything to save you from an evil to come,” said +Deronda, with strong emphasis; “otherwise, it will be a lasting +pain.” +</p> + +<p> +“No—no—it shall not be. It may be—it shall be better +with me because I have known you.” She turned immediately, and quitted +the room. +</p> + +<p> +When she was on the first landing of the staircase, Sir Hugo passed across the +hall on his way to the library, and saw her. Grandcourt was not with him. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, when the baronet entered, was standing in his ordinary attitude, +grasping his coat-collar, with his back to the table, and with that indefinable +expression by which we judge that a man is still in the shadow of a scene which +he has just gone through. He moved, however, and began to arrange the letters. +</p> + +<p> +“Has Mrs. Grandcourt been in here?” said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she has.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where are the others?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe she left them somewhere in the grounds.” +</p> + +<p> +After a moment’s silence, in which Sir Hugo looked at a letter without +reading it, he said “I hope you are not playing with fire, Dan—you +understand me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe I do, sir,” said Deronda, after a slight hesitation, +which had some repressed anger in it. “But there is nothing answering to +your metaphor—no fire, and therefore no chance of scorching.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo looked searchingly at him, and then said, “So much the better. +For, between ourselves, I fancy there may be some hidden gunpowder in that +establishment.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0037"></a> +CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +<i>Aspern.</i><br/> + Pardon, my lord—I speak for Sigismund.<br/> +<br/> +<i>Fronsberg.</i><br/> + For him? Oh, ay—for him I always hold<br/> +A pardon safe in bank, sure he will draw<br/> +Sooner or later on me. What his need?<br/> +Mad project broken? fine mechanic wings<br/> +That would not fly? durance, assault on watch,<br/> +Bill for Epernay, not a crust to eat?<br/> +<br/> +<i>Aspern.</i><br/> + Oh, none of these, my lord; he has escaped<br/> +From Circe’s herd, and seeks to win the love<br/> +Of your fair ward Cecilia: but would win<br/> +First your consent. You frown.<br/> +<br/> +<i>Fronsberg.</i><br/> + Distinguish words.<br/> +I said I held a pardon, not consent. +</p> + +<p> +In spite of Deronda’s reasons for wishing to be in town +again—reasons in which his anxiety for Mirah was blent with curiosity to +know more of the enigmatic Mordecai—he did not manage to go up before Sir +Hugo, who preceded his family that he might be ready for the opening of +Parliament on the sixth of February. Deronda took up his quarters in Park Lane, +aware that his chambers were sufficiently tenanted by Hans Meyrick. This was +what he expected; but he found other things not altogether according to his +expectations. +</p> + +<p> +Most of us remember Retzsch’s drawing of destiny in the shape of +Mephistopheles playing at chess with man for his soul, a game in which we may +imagine the clever adversary making a feint of unintended moves so as to set +the beguiled mortal on carrying his defensive pieces away from the true point +of attack. The fiend makes preparation his favorite object of mockery, that he +may fatally persuade us against our taking out waterproofs when he is well +aware the sky is going to clear, foreseeing that the imbecile will turn this +delusion into a prejudice against waterproofs instead of giving a closer study +to the weather-signs. It is a peculiar test of a man’s mettle when, after +he has painfully adjusted himself to what seems a wise provision, he finds all +his mental precaution a little beside the mark, and his excellent intentions no +better than miscalculated dovetails, accurately cut from a wrong +starting-point. His magnanimity has got itself ready to meet misbehavior, and +finds quite a different call upon it. Something of this kind happened to +Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +His first impression was one of pure pleasure and amusement at finding his +sitting-room transformed into an <i>atelier</i> strewed with miscellaneous +drawings and with the contents of two chests from Rome, the lower half of the +windows darkened with baize, and the blonde Hans in his weird youth as the +presiding genius of the littered place—his hair longer than of old, his +face more whimsically creased, and his high voice as usual getting higher under +the excitement of rapid talk. The friendship of the two had been kept up warmly +since the memorable Cambridge time, not only by correspondence but by little +episodes of companionship abroad and in England, and the original relation of +confidence on one side and indulgence on the other had been developed in +practice, as is wont to be the case where such spiritual borrowing and lending +has been well begun. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew you would like to see my casts and antiquities,” said Hans, +after the first hearty greetings and inquiries, “so I didn’t +scruple to unlade my chests here. But I’ve found two rooms at Chelsea not +many hundred yards from my mother and sisters, and I shall soon be ready to +hang out there—when they’ve scraped the walls and put in some new +lights. That’s all I’m waiting for. But you see I don’t wait +to begin work: you can’t conceive what a great fellow I’m going to +be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Only a fungoid growth, I dare say—a growing disease in the +lungs,” said Deronda, accustomed to treat Hans in brotherly fashion. He +was walking toward some drawings propped on the ledge of his bookcases; five +rapidly-sketched heads—different aspects of the same face. He stood at a +convenient distance from them, without making any remark. Hans, too, was silent +for a minute, took up his palette and began touching the picture on his easel. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of them?” he said at last. +</p> + +<p> +“The full face looks too massive; otherwise the likenesses are +good,” said Deronda, more coldly than was usual with him. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it is not too massive,” said Hans, decisively. “I have +noted that. There is always a little surprise when one passes from the profile +to the full face. But I shall enlarge her scale for Berenice. I am making a +Berenice series—look at the sketches along there—and now I think of +it, you are just the model I want for the Agrippa.” Hans, still with +pencil and palette in hand, had moved to Deronda’s side while he said +this, but he added hastily, as if conscious of a mistake, “No, no, I +forgot; you don’t like sitting for your portrait, confound you! However, +I’ve picked up a capital Titus. There are to be five in the series. The +first is Berenice clasping the knees of Gessius Florus and beseeching him to +spare her people; I’ve got that on the easel. Then, this, where she is +standing on the Xystus with Agrippa, entreating the people not to injure +themselves by resistance.” +</p> + +<p> +“Agrippa’s legs will never do,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“The legs are good realistically,” said Hans, his face creasing +drolly; “public men are often shaky about the legs—’ Their +legs, the emblem of their various thought,’ as somebody says in the +<i>Rehearsal.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“But these are as impossible as the legs of Raphael’s +Alcibiades,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Then they are good ideally,” said Hans. “Agrippa’s +legs were possibly bad; I idealize that and make them impossibly bad. Art, my +Eugenius, must intensify. But never mind the legs now: the third sketch in the +series is Berenice exulting in the prospects of being Empress of Rome, when the +news has come that Vespasian is declared Emperor and her lover Titus his +successor.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must put a scroll in her mouth, else people will not understand +that. You can’t tell that in a picture.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will make them feel their ignorance then—an excellent æsthetic +effect. The fourth is, Titus sending Berenice away from Rome after she has +shared his palace for ten years—both reluctant, both sad—<i>invitus +invitam</i>, as Suetonius hath it. I’ve found a model for the Roman +brute.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you make Berenice look fifty? She must have been that.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; a few mature touches to show the lapse of time. Dark-eyed beauty +wears well, hers particularly. But now, here is the fifth: Berenice seated +lonely on the ruins of Jerusalem. That is pure imagination. That is what ought +to have been—perhaps was. Now, see how I tell a pathetic negative. Nobody +knows what became of her—that is finely indicated by the series coming to +a close. There is no sixth picture.” Here Hans pretended to speak with a +gasping sense of sublimity, and drew back his head with a frown, as if looking +for a like impression on Deronda. “I break off in the Homeric style. The +story is chipped off, so to speak, and passes with a ragged edge into +nothing—<i>le néant</i>; can anything be more sublime, especially in +French? The vulgar would desire to see her corpse and burial—perhaps her +will read and her linen distributed. But now come and look at this on the +easel. I have made some way there.” +</p> + +<p> +“That beseeching attitude is really good,” said Deronda, after a +moment’s contemplation. “You have been very industrious in the +Christmas holidays; for I suppose you have taken up the subject since you came +to London.” Neither of them had yet mentioned Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Hans, putting touches to his picture, “I made up +my mind to the subject before. I take that lucky chance for an augury that I am +going to burst on the world as a great painter. I saw a splendid woman in the +Trastevere—the grandest women there are half Jewesses—and she set +me hunting for a fine situation of a Jewess at Rome. Like other men of vast +learning, I ended by taking what lay on the surface. I’ll show you a +sketch of the Trasteverina’s head when I can lay my hands on it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think she would be a more suitable model for Berenice,” +said Deronda, not knowing exactly how to express his discontent. +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit of it. The model ought to be the most beautiful Jewess in the +world, and I have found her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you made yourself sure that she would like to figure in that +character? I should think no woman would be more abhorrent to her. Does she +quite know what you are doing?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly. I got her to throw herself precisely into this attitude. +Little mother sat for Gessius Florus, and Mirah clasped her knees.” Here +Hans went a little way off and looked at the effect of his touches. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say she knows nothing about Berenice’s history,” said +Deronda, feeling more indignation than he would have been able to justify. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, she does—ladies’ edition. Berenice was a fervid +patriot, but was beguiled by love and ambition into attaching herself to the +arch-enemy of her people. Whence the Nemesis. Mirah takes it as a tragic +parable, and cries to think what the penitent Berenice suffered as she wandered +back to Jerusalem and sat desolate amidst desolation. That was her own phrase. +I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her I invented that part of the +story.” +</p> + +<p> +“Show me your Trasteverina,” said Deronda, chiefly in order to +hinder himself from saying something else. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you mind turning over that folio?” said Hans. “My +studies of heads are all there. But they are in confusion. You will perhaps +find her next to a crop-eared undergraduate.” +</p> + +<p> +After Deronda had been turning over the drawings a minute or two, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“These seem to be all Cambridge heads and bits of country. Perhaps I had +better begin at the other end.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; you’ll find her about the middle. I emptied one folio into +another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is this one of your undergraduates?” said Deronda, holding up a +drawing. “It’s an unusually agreeable face.” +</p> + +<p> +“That! Oh, that’s a man named Gascoigne—Rex Gascoigne. An +uncommonly good fellow; his upper lip, too, is good. I coached him before he +got his scholarship. He ought to have taken honors last Easter. But he was ill, +and has had to stay up another year. I must look him up. I want to know how +he’s going on.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here she is, I suppose,” said Deronda, holding up a sketch of the +Trasteverina. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Hans, looking at it rather contemptuously, “too +coarse. I was unregenerate then.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was silent while he closed the folio, leaving the Trasteverina outside. +Then clasping his coat-collar, and turning toward Hans, he said, “I dare +say my scruples are excessive, Meyrick, but I must ask you to oblige me by +giving up this notion.” +</p> + +<p> +Hans threw himself into a tragic attitude, and screamed, “What! my +series—my immortal Berenice series? Think of what you are saying, +man—destroying, as Milton says, not a life but an immortality. Wait +before you answer, that I may deposit the implements of my art and be ready to +uproot my hair.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Hans laid down his pencil and palette, threw himself backward into a great +chair, and hanging limply over the side, shook his long hair over his face, +lifted his hooked fingers on each side his head, and looked up with comic +terror at Deronda, who was obliged to smile, as he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Paint as many Berenices as you like, but I wish you could feel with +me—perhaps you will, on reflection—that you should choose another +model.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said Hans, standing up, and looking serious again. +</p> + +<p> +“Because she may get into such a position that her face is likely to be +recognized. Mrs. Meyrick and I are anxious for her that she should be known as +an admirable singer. It is right, and she wishes it, that she should make +herself independent. And she has excellent chances. One good introduction is +secured already, and I am going to speak to Klesmer. Her face may come to be +very well known, and—well, it is useless to attempt to explain, unless +you feel as I do. I believe that if Mirah saw the circumstances clearly, she +would strongly object to being exhibited in this way—to allowing herself +to be used as a model for a heroine of this sort.” +</p> + +<p> +As Hans stood with his thumbs in the belt of his blouse, listening to this +speech, his face showed a growing surprise melting into amusement, that at last +would have its way in an explosive laugh: but seeing that Deronda looked +gravely offended, he checked himself to say, “Excuse my laughing, +Deronda. You never gave me an advantage over you before. If it had been about +anything but my own pictures, I should have swallowed every word because you +said it. And so you actually believe that I should get my five pictures hung on +the line in a conspicuous position, and carefully studied by the public? +Zounds, man! cider-cup and conceit never gave me half such a beautiful dream. +My pictures are likely to remain as private as the utmost hypersensitiveness +could desire.” +</p> + +<p> +Hans turned to paint again as a way of filling up awkward pauses. Deronda stood +perfectly still, recognizing his mistake as to publicity, but also conscious +that his repugnance was not much diminished. He was the reverse of satisfied +either with himself or with Hans; but the power of being quiet carries a man +well through moments of embarrassment. Hans had a reverence for his friend +which made him feel a sort of shyness at Deronda’s being in the wrong; +but it was not in his nature to give up anything readily, though it were only a +whim—or rather, especially if it were a whim, and he presently went on, +painting the while, +</p> + +<p> +“But even supposing I had a public rushing after my pictures as if they +were a railway series including nurses, babies and bonnet-boxes, I can’t +see any justice in your objection. Every painter worth remembering has painted +the face he admired most, as often as he could. It is a part of his soul that +goes out into his pictures. He diffuses its influence in that way. He puts what +he hates into a caricature. He puts what he adores into some sacred, heroic +form. If a man could paint the woman he loves a thousand times as the <i>Stella +Maris</i> to put courage into the sailors on board a thousand ships, so much +the more honor to her. Isn’t that better than painting a piece of staring +immodesty and calling it by a worshipful name?” +</p> + +<p> +“Every objection can be answered if you take broad ground enough, Hans: +no special question of conduct can be properly settled in that way,” said +Deronda, with a touch of peremptoriness. “I might admit all your +generalities, and yet be right in saying you ought not to publish Mirah’s +face as a model for Berenice. But I give up the question of publicity. I was +unreasonable there.” Deronda hesitated a moment. “Still, even as a +private affair, there might be good reasons for your not indulging yourself too +much in painting her from the point of view you mention. You must feel that her +situation at present is a very delicate one; and until she is in more +independence, she should be kept as carefully as a bit of Venetian glass, for +fear of shaking her out of the safe place she is lodged in. Are you quite sure +of your own discretion? Excuse me, Hans. My having found her binds me to watch +over her. Do you understand me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” said Hans, turning his face into a good-humored smile. +“You have the very justifiable opinion of me that I am likely to shatter +all the glass in my way, and break my own skull into the bargain. Quite fair. +Since I got into the scrape of being born, everything I have liked best has +been a scrape either for myself or somebody else. Everything I have taken to +heartily has somehow turned into a scrape. My painting is the last scrape; and +I shall be all my life getting out of it. You think now I shall get into a +scrape at home. No; I am regenerate. You think I must be over head and ears in +love with Mirah. Quite right; so I am. But you think I shall scream and plunge +and spoil everything. There you are mistaken—excusably, but +transcendently mistaken. I have undergone baptism by immersion. Awe takes care +of me. Ask the little mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t reckon a hopeless love among your scrapes, then,” +said Deronda, whose voice seemed to get deeper as Hans’s went higher. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean to call mine hopeless,” said Hans, with +provoking coolness, laying down his tools, thrusting his thumbs into his belt, +and moving away a little, as if to contemplate his picture more deliberately. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow, you are only preparing misery for yourself,” said +Deronda, decisively. “She would not marry a Christian, even if she loved +him. Have you heard her—of course you have—heard her speak of her +people and her religion?” +</p> + +<p> +“That can’t last,” said Hans. “She will see no Jew who +is tolerable. Every male of that race is +insupportable—‘insupportably advancing’—his +nose.” +</p> + +<p> +“She may rejoin her family. That is what she longs for. Her mother and +brother are probably strict Jews.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll turn proselyte, if she wishes it,” said Hans, with a +shrug and a laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t talk nonsense, Hans. I thought you professed a serious love +for her,” said Deronda, getting heated. +</p> + +<p> +“So I do. You think it desperate, but I don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know nothing; I can’t tell what has happened. We must be +prepared for surprises. But I can hardly imagine a greater surprise to me than +that there should have seemed to be anything in Mirah’s sentiments for +you to found a romantic hope on.” Deronda felt that he was too +contemptuous. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t found my romantic hopes on a woman’s +sentiments,” said Hans, perversely inclined to be the merrier when he was +addressed with gravity. “I go to science and philosophy for my romance. +Nature designed Mirah to fall in love with me. The amalgamation of races +demands it—the mitigation of human ugliness demands it—the affinity +of contrasts assures it. I am the utmost contrast to Mirah—a bleached +Christian, who can’t sing two notes in tune. Who has a chance against +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I see now; it was all <i>persiflage</i>. You don’t mean a word you +say, Meyrick,” said Deronda, laying his hand on Meyrick’s shoulder, +and speaking in a tone of cordial relief. “I was a wiseacre to answer you +seriously.” +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my honor I do mean it, though,” said Hans, facing round and +laying his left hand on Deronda’s shoulder, so that their eyes fronted +each other closely. “I am at the confessional. I meant to tell you as +soon as you came. My mother says you are Mirah’s guardian, and she thinks +herself responsible to you for every breath that falls on Mirah in her house. +Well, I love her—I worship her—I won’t despair—I mean +to deserve her.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow, you can’t do it,” said Deronda, quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“I should have said, I mean to try.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t keep your resolve, Hans. You used to resolve what you +would do for your mother and sisters.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have a right to reproach me, old fellow,” said Hans, gently. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I am ungenerous,” said Deronda, not apologetically, +however. “Yet it can’t be ungenerous to warn you that you are +indulging mad, Quixotic expectations.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who will be hurt but myself, then?” said Hans, putting out his +lip. “I am not going to say anything to her unless I felt sure of the +answer. I dare not ask the oracles: I prefer a cheerful caliginosity, as Sir +Thomas Browne might say. I would rather run my chance there and lose, than be +sure of winning anywhere else. And I don’t mean to swallow the poison of +despair, though you are disposed to thrust it on me. I am giving up wine, so +let me get a little drunk on hope and vanity.” +</p> + +<p> +“With all my heart, if it will do you any good,” said Deronda, +loosing Hans’s shoulder, with a little push. He made his tone kindly, but +his words were from the lip only. As to his real feeling he was silenced. +</p> + +<p> +He was conscious of that peculiar irritation which will sometimes befall the +man whom others are inclined to trust as a mentor—the irritation of +perceiving that he is supposed to be entirely off the same plane of desire and +temptation as those who confess to him. Our guides, we pretend, must be +sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got +corrected for their mistakes. Throughout their friendship Deronda had been used +to Hans’s egotism, but he had never before felt intolerant of it: when +Hans, habitually pouring out his own feelings and affairs, had never cared for +any detail in return, and, if he chanced to know any, had soon forgotten it. +Deronda had been inwardly as well as outwardly indulgent—nay, satisfied. +But now he had noted with some indignation, all the stronger because it must +not be betrayed, Hans’s evident assumption that for any danger of rivalry +or jealousy in relation to Mirah, Deronda was not as much out of the question +as the angel Gabriel. It is one thing to be resolute in placing one’s +self out of the question, and another to endure that others should perform that +exclusion for us. He had expected that Hans would give him trouble: what he had +not expected was that the trouble would have a strong element of personal +feeling. And he was rather ashamed that Hans’s hopes caused him +uneasiness in spite of his well-warranted conviction that they would never be +fulfilled. They had raised an image of Mirah changing; and however he might +protest that the change would not happen, the protest kept up the unpleasant +image. Altogether poor Hans seemed to be entering into Deronda’s +experience in a disproportionate manner—going beyond his part of rescued +prodigal, and rousing a feeling quite distinct from compassionate affection. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda went to Chelsea he was not made as comfortable as he ought to have +been by Mrs. Meyrick’s evident release from anxiety about the beloved but +incalculable son. Mirah seemed livelier than before, and for the first time he +saw her laugh. It was when they were talking of Hans, he being naturally the +mother’s first topic. Mirah wished to know if Deronda had seen Mr. Hans +going through a sort of character piece without changing his dress. +</p> + +<p> +“He passes from one figure to another as if he were a bit of flame where +you fancied the figures without seeing them,” said Mirah, full of her +subject; “he is so wonderfully quick. I used never to like comic things +on the stage—they were dwelt on too long; but all in one minute Mr. Hans +makes himself a blind bard, and then Rienzi addressing the Romans, and then an +opera-dancer, and then a desponding young gentleman—I am sorry for them +all, and yet I laugh, all in one”—here Mirah gave a little laugh +that might have entered into a song. +</p> + +<p> +“We hardly thought that Mirah could laugh till Hans came,” said +Mrs. Meyrick, seeing that Deronda, like herself, was observing the pretty +picture. +</p> + +<p> +“Hans seems in great force just now,” said Deronda in a tone of +congratulation. “I don’t wonder at his enlivening you.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s been just perfect ever since he came back,” said Mrs. +Meyrick, keeping to herself the next clause—“if it will but +last.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a great happiness,” said Mirah, “to see the son and +brother come into this dear home. And I hear them all talk about what they did +together when they were little. That seems like heaven, and to have a mother +and brother who talk in that way. I have never had it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nor I,” said Deronda, involuntarily. +</p> + +<p> +“No?” said Mirah, regretfully. “I wish you had. I wish you +had had every good.” The last words were uttered with a serious ardor as +if they had been part of a litany, while her eyes were fixed on Deronda, who +with his elbow on the back of his chair was contemplating her by the new light +of the impression she had made on Hans, and the possibility of her being +attracted by that extraordinary contrast. It was no more than what had happened +on each former visit of his, that Mirah appeared to enjoy speaking of what she +felt very much as a little girl fresh from school pours forth spontaneously all +the long-repressed chat for which she has found willing ears. For the first +time in her life Mirah was among those whom she entirely trusted, and her +original visionary impression that Deronda was a divinely-sent messenger hung +about his image still, stirring always anew the disposition to reliance and +openness. It was in this way she took what might have been the injurious +flattery of admiring attention into which her helpless dependence had been +suddenly transformed. Every one around her watched for her looks and words, and +the effect on her was simply that of having passed from a trifling imprisonment +into an exhilarating air which made speech and action a delight. To her mind it +was all a gift from others’ goodness. But that word of Deronda’s +implying that there had been some lack in his life which might be compared with +anything she had known in hers, was an entirely new inlet of thought about him. +After her first expression of sorrowful surprise she went on, +</p> + +<p> +“But Mr. Hans said yesterday that you thought so much of others you +hardly wanted anything for yourself. He told us a wonderful story of Buddha +giving himself to the famished tigress to save her and her little ones from +starving. And he said you were like Buddha. That is what we all imagine of +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray don’t imagine that,” said Deronda, who had lately been +finding such suppositions rather exasperating. “Even if it were true that +I thought so much of others, it would not follow that I had no wants for +myself. When Buddha let the tigress eat him he might have been very hungry +himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps if he was starved he would not mind so much about being +eaten,” said Mab, shyly. +</p> + +<p> +“Please don’t think that, Mab; it takes away the beauty of the +action,” said Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“But if it were true, Mirah?” said the rational Amy, having a +half-holiday from her teaching; “you always take what is beautiful as if +it were true.” +</p> + +<p> +“So it is,” said Mirah, gently. “If people have thought what +is the most beautiful and the best thing, it must be true. It is always +there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Mirah, what do you mean?” said Amy. +</p> + +<p> +“I understand her,” said Deronda, coming to the rescue. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a truth in thought though it may never have been carried out in +action. It lives as an idea. Is that it?” He turned to Mirah, who was +listening with a blind look in her lovely eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“It must be that, because you understand me, but I cannot quite +explain,” said Mirah, rather abstractedly—still searching for some +expression. +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>was</i> it beautiful for Buddha to let the tiger eat him?” +said Amy, changing her ground. “It would be a bad pattern.” +</p> + +<p> +“The world would get full of fat tigers,” said Mab. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda laughed, but defended the myth. “It is like a passionate +word,” he said; “the exaggeration is a flash of fervor. It is an +extreme image of what is happening every day—the transmutation of +self.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I can say what I mean, now,” said Mirah, who had not heard +the intermediate talk. “When the best thing comes into our thoughts, it +is like what my mother has been to me. She has been just as really with me as +all the other people about me—often more really with me.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, inwardly wincing under this illustration, which brought other possible +realities about that mother vividly before him, presently turned the +conversation by saying, “But we must not get too far away from practical +matters. I came, for one thing, to tell of an interview I had yesterday, which +I hope Mirah will find to have been useful to her. It was with Klesmer, the +great pianist.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah?” said Mrs. Meyrick, with satisfaction. “You think he +will help her?” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope so. He is very much occupied, but has promised to fix a time for +receiving and hearing Miss Lapidoth, as we must learn to call +her”—here Deronda smiled at Mirah—“If she consents to +go to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be very grateful,” said Mirah. “He wants to hear me +sing, before he can judge whether I ought to be helped.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was struck with her plain sense about these matters of practical +concern. +</p> + +<p> +“It will not be at all trying to you, I hope, if Mrs. Meyrick will kindly +go with you to Klesmer’s house.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no, not at all trying. I have been doing that all my life—I +mean, told to do things that others may judge of me. And I have gone through a +bad trial of that sort. I am prepared to bear it, and do some very small thing. +Is Klesmer a severe man?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is peculiar, but I have not had experience enough of him to know +whether he would be what you would call severe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know he is kind-hearted—kind in action, if not in speech.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have been used to be frowned at and not praised,” said Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“By the by, Klesmer frowns a good deal,” said Deronda, “but +there is often a sort of smile in his eyes all the while. Unhappily he wears +spectacles, so you must catch him in the right light to see the smile.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall not be frightened,” said Mirah. “If he were like a +roaring lion, he only wants me to sing. I shall do what I can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I feel sure you will not mind being invited to sing in Lady +Mallinger’s drawing-room,” said Deronda. “She intends to ask +you next month, and will invite many ladies to hear you, who are likely to want +lessons from you for their daughters.” +</p> + +<p> +“How fast we are mounting!” said Mrs. Meyrick, with delight. +“You never thought of getting grand so quickly, Mirah.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am a little frightened at being called Miss Lapidoth,” said +Mirah, coloring with a new uneasiness. “Might I be called Cohen?” +</p> + +<p> +“I understand you,” said Deronda, promptly. “But I assure +you, you must not be called Cohen. The name is inadmissible for a singer. This +is one of the trifles in which we must conform to vulgar prejudice. We could +choose some other name, however—such as singers ordinarily +choose—an Italian or Spanish name, which would suit your +<i>physique</i>.” To Deronda just now the name Cohen was equivalent to +the ugliest of yellow badges. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah reflected a little, anxiously, then said, “No. If Cohen will not +do, I will keep the name I have been called by. I will not hide myself. I have +friends to protect me. And now—if my father were very miserable and +wanted help—no,” she said, looking at Mrs. Meyrick, “I should +think, then, that he was perhaps crying as I used to see him, and had nobody to +pity him, and I had hidden myself from him. He had none belonging to him but +me. Others that made friends with him always left him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Keep to what you feel right, my dear child,” said Mrs. Meyrick. +“<i>I</i> would not persuade you to the contrary.” For her own part +she had no patience or pity for that father, and would have left him to his +crying. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was saying to himself, “I am rather base to be angry with Hans. +How can he help being in love with her? But it is too absurdly presumptuous for +him even to frame the idea of appropriating her, and a sort of blasphemy to +suppose that she could possibly give herself to him.” +</p> + +<p> +What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such thoughts? He was not one +who could quite naively introduce himself where he had just excluded his +friend, yet it was undeniable that what had just happened made a new stage in +his feeling toward Mirah. But apart from other grounds for self-repression, +reasons both definite and vague made him shut away that question as he might +have shut up a half-opened writing that would have carried his imagination too +far, and given too much shape to presentiments. Might there not come a +disclosure which would hold the missing determination of his course? What did +he really know about his origin? Strangely in these latter months when it +seemed right that he should exert his will in the choice of a destination, the +passion of his nature had got more and more locked by this uncertainty. The +disclosure might bring its pain, indeed the likelihood seemed to him to be all +on that side; but if it helped him to make his life a sequence which would take +the form of duty—if it saved him from having to make an arbitrary +selection where he felt no preponderance of desire? Still more, he wanted to +escape standing as a critic outside the activities of men, stiffened into the +ridiculous attitude of self-assigned superiority. His chief tether was his +early inwrought affection for Sir Hugo, making him gratefully deferential to +wishes with which he had little agreement: but gratitude had been sometimes +disturbed by doubts which were near reducing it to a fear of being ungrateful. +Many of us complain that half our birthright is sharp duty: Deronda was more +inclined to complain that he was robbed of this half; yet he accused himself, +as he would have accused another, of being weakly self-conscious and wanting in +resolve. He was the reverse of that type painted for us in Faulconbridge and +Edmund of Gloster, whose coarse ambition for personal success is inflamed by a +defiance of accidental disadvantages. To Daniel the words Father and Mother had +the altar-fire in them; and the thought of all closest relations of our nature +held still something of the mystic power which had made his neck and ears burn +in boyhood. The average man may regard this sensibility on the question of +birth as preposterous and hardly credible; but with the utmost respect for his +knowledge as the rock from which all other knowledge is hewn, it must be +admitted that many well-proved facts are dark to the average man, even +concerning the action of his own heart and the structure of his own retina. A +century ago he and all his forefathers had not had the slightest notion of that +electric discharge by means of which they had all wagged their tongues +mistakenly; any more than they were awake to the secluded anguish of +exceptional sensitiveness into which many a carelessly-begotten child of man is +born. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deronda’s mind because he had +never had a confidant to whom he could open himself on these delicate subjects. +He had always been leaned on instead of being invited to lean. Sometimes he had +longed for the sort of friend to whom he might possibly unfold his experience: +a young man like himself who sustained a private grief and was not too +confident about his own career; speculative enough to understand every moral +difficulty, yet socially susceptible, as he himself was, and having every +outward sign of equality either in bodily or spiritual wrestling—for he +had found it impossible to reciprocate confidences with one who looked up to +him. But he had no expectation of meeting the friend he imagined. +Deronda’s was not one of those quiveringly-poised natures that lend +themselves to second-sight. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0038"></a> +CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +There be who hold that the deeper tragedy were a Prometheus Bound not +<i>after</i> but <i>before</i> he had well got the celestial fire into the +νάρθηξ whereby it might be conveyed to mortals: +thrust by the Kratos and Bia of instituted methods into a solitude of despised +ideas, fastened in throbbing helplessness by the fatal pressure of poverty and +disease—a solitude where many pass by, but none regard. +</p> + +<p> +“Second-sight” is a flag over disputed ground. But it is matter of +knowledge that there are persons whose yearnings, conceptions—nay, +traveled conclusions—continually take the form of images which have a +foreshadowing power; the deed they would do starts up before them in complete +shape, making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or dread rises into +vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on unnumbered impressions. +They are not always the less capable of the argumentative process, nor less +sane than the commonplace calculators of the market: sometimes it may be that +their natures have manifold openings, like the hundred-gated Thebes, where +there may naturally be a greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through a +narrow beadle-watched portal. No doubt there are abject specimens of the +visionary, as there is a minim mammal which you might imprison in the finger of +your glove. That small relative of the elephant has no harm in him; but what +great mental or social type is free from specimens whose insignificance is both +ugly and noxious? One is afraid to think of all that the genus +“patriot” embraces; or of the elbowing there might be at the day of +judgment for those who ranked as authors, and brought volumes either in their +hands or on trucks. +</p> + +<p> +This apology for inevitable kinship is meant to usher in some facts about +Mordecai, whose figure had bitten itself into Deronda’s mind as a new +question which he felt an interest in getting answered. But the interest was no +more than a vaguely-expectant suspense: the consumptive-looking Jew, apparently +a fervid student of some kind, getting his crust by a quiet handicraft, like +Spinoza, fitted into none of Deronda’s anticipations. +</p> + +<p> +It was otherwise with the effect of their meeting on Mordecai. For many +winters, while he had been conscious of an ebbing physical life, and as +widening spiritual loneliness, all his passionate desire had concentrated +itself in the yearning for some young ear into which he could pour his mind as +a testament, some soul kindred enough to accept the spiritual product of his +own brief, painful life, as a mission to be executed. It was remarkable that +the hopefulness which is often the beneficent illusion of consumptive patients, +was in Mordecai wholly diverted from the prospect of bodily recovery and +carried into the current of this yearning for transmission. The yearning, which +had panted upward from out of over-whelming discouragements, had grown into a +hope—the hope into a confident belief, which, instead of being checked by +the clear conception he had of his hastening decline, took rather the intensity +of expectant faith in a prophecy which has only brief space to get fulfilled +in. +</p> + +<p> +Some years had now gone since he had first begun to measure men with a keen +glance, searching for a possibility which became more and more a distinct +conception. Such distinctness as it had at first was reached chiefly by a +method of contrast: he wanted to find a man who differed from himself. Tracing +reasons in that self for the rebuffs he had met with and the hindrances that +beset him, he imagined a man who would have all the elements necessary for +sympathy with him, but in an embodiment unlike his own: he must be a Jew, +intellectually cultured, morally fervid—in all this a nature ready to be +plenished from Mordecai’s; but his face and frame must be beautiful and +strong, he must have been used to all the refinements of social life, his voice +must flow with a full and easy current, his circumstances be free from sordid +need: he must glorify the possibilities of the Jew, not sit and wonder as +Mordecai did, bearing the stamp of his people amid the sign of poverty and +waning breath. Sensitive to physical characteristics, he had, both abroad and +in England, looked at pictures as well as men, and in a vacant hour he had +sometimes lingered in the National Gallery in search of paintings which might +feed his hopefulness with grave and noble types of the human form, such as +might well belong to men of his own race. But he returned in disappointment. +The instances are scattered but thinly over the galleries of Europe, in which +the fortune or selection even of the chief masters has given to art a face at +once young, grand, and beautiful, where, if there is any melancholy, it is no +feeble passivity, but enters into the foreshadowed capability of heroism. +</p> + +<p> +Some observant persons may perhaps remember his emaciated figure, and dark eyes +deep in their sockets, as he stood in front of a picture that had touched him +either to new or habitual meditation: he commonly wore a cloth cap with black +fur round it, which no painter would have asked him to take off. But spectators +would be likely to think of him as an odd-looking Jew who probably got money +out of pictures; and Mordecai, when he looked at them, was perfectly aware of +the impression he made. Experience had rendered him morbidly alive to the +effect of a man’s poverty and other physical disadvantages in cheapening +his ideas, unless they are those of a Peter the Hermit who has a tocsin for the +rabble. But he was too sane and generous to attribute his spiritual banishment +solely to the excusable prejudices of others; certain incapacities of his own +had made the sentence of exclusion; and hence it was that his imagination had +constructed another man who would be something more ample than the second soul +bestowed, according to the notion of the Cabalists, to help out the +insufficient first—who would be a blooming human life, ready to +incorporate all that was worthiest in an existence whose visible, palpable part +was burning itself fast away. His inward need for the conception of this +expanded, prolonged self was reflected as an outward necessity. The thoughts of +his heart (that ancient phrase best shadows the truth) seemed to him too +precious, too closely interwoven with the growth of things not to have a +further destiny. And as the more beautiful, the stronger, the more executive +self took shape in his mind, he loved it beforehand with an affection half +identifying, half contemplative and grateful. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s mind wrought so constantly in images, that his coherent trains +of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to sleepers by +waking persons in their most inventive moments: nay, they often resembled +genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage from the known to the +unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually thought of the Being answering +to his need as one distantly approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly +painted against a golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of +Mordecai’s habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; +and a favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some of +the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he was bending over +watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper room looking out on dingy +bricks and dingy cracked windows, his imagination spontaneously planted him on +some spot where he had a far-stretching scene; his thoughts went on in wide +spaces; and whenever he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a +large sky. Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriar’s Bridge, and gazing +meditatively, the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, +half luminous, the grand dim masses of tall forms of buildings which were the +signs of world-commerce, the oncoming of boats and barges from the still +distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent themselves +indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to which we can hardly +be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our spiritual wings. Thus it +happened that the figure representative of Mordecai’s longing was +mentally seen darkened by the excess of light in the aerial background. But in +the inevitable progress of his imagination toward fuller detail, he ceased to +see the figure with its back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became +discernible; the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity, +turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from his +memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and from the +paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said of this mature +spiritual need that it was akin to the boy’s and girl’s picturing +of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire are feeble +compared with the passionate current of an ideal life straining to embody +itself, made intense by resistance to imminent dissolution. The visionary form +became a companion and auditor; keeping a place not only in the waking +imagination, but in those dreams of lighter slumber of which it is truest to +say, “I sleep, but my heart waketh”—when the disturbing +trivial story of yesterday is charged with the impassioned purpose of years. +</p> + +<p> +Of late the urgency of irremediable time, measured by the gradual choking of +life, had turned Mordecai’s trust into an agitated watch for the +fulfillment that must be at hand. Was the bell on the verge of tolling, the +sentence about to be executed? The deliverer’s footstep must be +near—the deliverer who was to rescue Mordecai’s spiritual travail +from oblivion, and give it an abiding-place in the best heritage of his people. +An insane exaggeration of his own value, even if his ideas had been as true and +precious as those of Columbus or Newton, many would have counted this yearning, +taking it as the sublimer part for a man to say, “If not I, then +another,” and to hold cheap the meaning of his own life. But the fuller +nature desires to be an agent, to create, and not merely to look on: strong +love hungers to bless, and not merely to behold blessing. And while there is +warmth enough in the sun to feed an energetic life, there will still be men to +feel, “I am lord of this moment’s change, and will charge it with +my soul.” +</p> + +<p> +But with that mingling of inconsequence which belongs to us all, and not +unhappily, since it saves us from many effects of mistake, Mordecai’s +confidence in the friend to come did not suffice to make him passive, and he +tried expedients, pathetically humble, such as happened to be within his reach, +for communicating something of himself. It was now two years since he had taken +up his abode under Ezra Cohen’s roof, where he was regarded with much +good-will as a compound of workman, dominie, vessel of charity, inspired idiot, +man of piety, and (if he were inquired into) dangerous heretic. During that +time little Jacob had advanced into knickerbockers, and into that quickness of +apprehension which has been already made manifest in relation to hardware and +exchange. He had also advanced in attachment to Mordecai, regarding him as an +inferior, but liking him none the worse, and taking his helpful cleverness as +he might have taken the services of an enslaved Djinn. As for Mordecai, he had +given Jacob his first lessons, and his habitual tenderness easily turned into +the teacher’s fatherhood. Though he was fully conscious of the spiritual +distance between the parents and himself, and would never have attempted any +communication to them from his peculiar world, the boy moved him with that +idealizing affection which merges the qualities of the individual child in the +glory of childhood and the possibilities of a long future. And this feeling had +drawn him on, at first without premeditation, and afterward with conscious +purpose, to a sort of outpouring in the ear of the boy which might have seemed +wild enough to any excellent man of business who overheard it. But none +overheard when Jacob went up to Mordecai’s room one day, for example, in +which there was little work to be done, or at an hour when the work was ended, +and after a brief lesson in English reading or in numeration, was induced to +remain standing at his teacher’s knees, or chose to jump astride them, +often to the patient fatigue of the wasted limbs. The inducement was perhaps +the mending of a toy, or some little mechanical device in which +Mordecai’s well-practiced finger-tips had an exceptional skill; and with +the boy thus tethered, he would begin to repeat a Hebrew poem of his own, into +which years before he had poured his first youthful ardors for that conception +of a blended past and future which was the mistress of his soul, telling Jacob +to say the words after him. +</p> + +<p> +“The boy will get them engraved within him,” thought Mordecai; +“it is a way of printing.” +</p> + +<p> +None readier than Jacob at this fascinating game of imitating unintelligible +words; and if no opposing diversion occurred he would sometimes carry on his +share in it as long as the teacher’s breath would last out. For Mordecai +threw into each repetition the fervor befitting a sacred occasion. In such +instances, Jacob would show no other distraction than reaching out and +surveying the contents of his pockets; or drawing down the skin of his cheeks +to make his eyes look awful, and rolling his head to complete the effect; or +alternately handling his own nose and Mordecai’s as if to test the +relation of their masses. Under all this the fervid reciter would not pause, +satisfied if the young organs of speech would submit themselves. But most +commonly a sudden impulse sent Jacob leaping away into some antic or active +amusement, when, instead of following the recitation he would return upon the +foregoing words most ready to his tongue, and mouth or gabble, with a see-saw +suited to the action of his limbs, a verse on which Mordecai had spent some of +his too scanty heart’s blood. Yet he waited with such patience as a +prophet needs, and began his strange printing again undiscouraged on the +morrow, saying inwardly, +</p> + +<p> +“My words may rule him some day. Their meaning may flash out on him. It +is so with a nation—after many days.” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Jacob’s sense of power was increased and his time enlivened by +a store of magical articulation with which he made the baby crow, or drove the +large cat into a dark corner, or promised himself to frighten any incidental +Christian of his own years. One week he had unfortunately seen a street +mountebank, and this carried off his muscular imitativeness in sad divergence +from New Hebrew poetry, after the model of Jehuda ha-Levi. Mordecai had arrived +at a fresh passage in his poem; for as soon as Jacob had got well used to one +portion, he was led on to another, and a fresh combination of sounds generally +answered better in keeping him fast for a few minutes. The consumptive voice, +generally a strong high baritone, with its variously mingling hoarseness, like +a haze amidst illuminations, and its occasional incipient gasp had more than +the usual excitement, while it gave forth Hebrew verses with a meaning +something like this: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Away from me the garment of forgetfulness.<br/> +Withering the heart;<br/> +The oil and wine from presses of the Goyim,<br/> +Poisoned with scorn.<br/> +Solitude is on the sides of Mount Nebo,<br/> +In its heart a tomb:<br/> +There the buried ark and golden cherubim<br/> +Make hidden light:<br/> +There the solemn gaze unchanged,<br/> +The wings are spread unbroken:<br/> +Shut beneath in silent awful speech<br/> +The Law lies graven.<br/> +Solitude and darkness are my covering,<br/> +And my heart a tomb;<br/> +Smite and shatter it, O Gabriel!<br/> +Shatter it as the clay of the founder<br/> +Around the golden image.” +</p> + +<p> +In the absorbing enthusiasm with which Mordecai had intoned rather than spoken +this last invocation, he was unconscious that Jacob had ceased to follow him +and had started away from his knees; but pausing he saw, as by a sudden flash, +that the lad had thrown himself on his hands with his feet in the air, +mountebank fashion, and was picking up with his lips a bright farthing which +was a favorite among his pocket treasures. This might have been reckoned among +the tricks Mordecai was used to, but at this moment it jarred him horribly, as +if it had been a Satanic grin upon his prayer. +</p> + +<p> +“Child! child!” he called out with a strange cry that startled +Jacob to his feet, and then he sank backward with a shudder, closing his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said Jacob, quickly. Then, not getting an immediate answer, +he pressed Mordecai’s knees with a shaking movement, in order to rouse +him. Mordecai opened his eyes with a fierce expression in them, leaned forward, +grasped the little shoulders, and said in a quick, hoarse whisper, +</p> + +<p> +“A curse is on your generation, child. They will open the mountain and +drag forth the golden wings and coin them into money, and the solemn faces they +will break up into earrings for wanton women! And they shall get themselves a +new name, but the angel of ignominy, with the fiery brand, shall know them, and +their heart shall be the tomb of dead desires that turn their life to +rottenness.” +</p> + +<p> +The aspect and action of Mordecai were so new and mysterious to +Jacob—they carried such a burden of obscure threat—it was as if the +patient, indulgent companion had turned into something unknown and terrific: +the sunken dark eyes and hoarse accents close to him, the thin grappling +fingers, shook Jacob’s little frame into awe, and while Mordecai was +speaking he stood trembling with a sense that the house was tumbling in and +they were not going to have dinner any more. But when the terrible speech had +ended and the pinch was relaxed, the shock resolved itself into tears; Jacob +lifted up his small patriarchal countenance and wept aloud. This sign of +childish grief at once recalled Mordecai to his usual gentle self: he was not +able to speak again at present, but with a maternal action he drew the curly +head toward him and pressed it tenderly against his breast. On this Jacob, +feeling the danger well-nigh over, howled at ease, beginning to imitate his own +performance and improve upon it—a sort of transition from impulse into +art often observable. Indeed, the next day he undertook to terrify Adelaide +Rebekah in like manner, and succeeded very well. +</p> + +<p> +But Mordecai suffered a check which lasted long, from the consciousness of a +misapplied agitation; sane as well as excitable, he judged severely his moments +of aberration into futile eagerness, and felt discredited with himself. All the +more his mind was strained toward the discernment of that friend to come, with +whom he would have a calm certainty of fellowship and understanding. +</p> + +<p> +It was just then that, in his usual midday guardianship of the old book-shop, +he was struck by the appearance of Deronda, and it is perhaps comprehensible +now why Mordecai’s glance took on a sudden eager interest as he looked at +the new-comer: he saw a face and frame which seemed to him to realize the +long-conceived type. But the disclaimer of Jewish birth was for the moment a +backward thrust of double severity, the particular disappointment tending to +shake his confidence in the more indefinite expectation. Nevertheless, when he +found Deronda seated at the Cohens’ table, the disclaimer was for the +moment nullified: the first impression returned with added force, seeming to be +guaranteed by this second meeting under circumstance more peculiar than the +former; and in asking Deronda if he knew Hebrew, Mordecai was so possessed by +the new inrush of belief, that he had forgotten the absence of any other +condition to the fulfillment of his hopes. But the answering “No” +struck them all down again, and the frustration was more painful than before. +After turning his back on the visitor that Sabbath evening, Mordecai went +through days of a deep discouragement, like that of men on a doomed ship, who +having strained their eyes after a sail, and beheld it with rejoicing, behold +it never advance, and say, “Our sick eyes make it.” But the +long-contemplated figure had come as an emotional sequence of Mordecai’s +firmest theoretic convictions; it had been wrought from the imagery of his most +passionate life; and it inevitably reappeared—reappeared in a more +specific self-asserting form than ever. Deronda had that sort of resemblance to +the preconceived type which a finely individual bust or portrait has to the +more generalized copy left in our minds after a long interval: we renew our +memory with delight, but we hardly know with how much correction. And now, his +face met Mordecai’s inward gaze as it had always belonged to the awaited +friend, raying out, moreover, some of that influence which belongs to breathing +flesh; till by-and-by it seemed that discouragement had turned into a new +obstinacy of resistance, and the ever-recurrent vision had the force of an +outward call to disregard counter-evidence, and keep expectation awake. It was +Deronda now who was seen in the often painful night-watches, when we are all +liable to be held with the clutch of a single thought—whose figure, never +with its back turned, was seen in moments of soothed reverie or soothed dozing, +painted on that golden sky which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day +and of approaching rest. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai knew that the nameless stranger was to come and redeem his ring; and, +in spite of contrary chances, the wish to see him again was growing into a +belief that he should see him. In the January weeks, he felt an increasing +agitation of that subdued hidden quality which hinders nervous people from any +steady occupation on the eve of an anticipated change. He could not go on with +his printing of Hebrew on little Jacob’s mind; or with his attendance at +a weekly club, which was another effort of the same forlorn hope: something +else was coming. The one thing he longed for was to get as far as the river, +which he could do but seldom and with difficulty. He yearned with a +poet’s yearning for the wide sky, the far-reaching vista of bridges, the +tender and fluctuating lights on the water which seems to breathe with a life +that can shiver and mourn, be comforted and rejoice. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0039"></a> +CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Vor den Wissenden sich stellen,<br/> +Sicher ist’s in allen Fällen!<br/> +Wenn du lange dich gequälet,<br/> +Weiß er gleich, wo dir es fehlet.<br/> +Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen;<br/> +Denn er weiß, wo du’s getroffen.”<br/> + —G<small>OETHE</small>: <i>West-östlicher Divan</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Momentous things happened to Deronda the very evening of that visit to the +small house at Chelsea, when there was the discussion about Mirah’s +public name. But for the family group there, what appeared to be the chief +sequence connected with it occurred two days afterward. About four +o’clock wheels paused before the door, and there came one of those knocks +with an accompanying ring which serve to magnify the sense of social existence +in a region where the most enlivening signals are usually those of the +muffin-man. All the girls were at home, and the two rooms were thrown together +to make space for Kate’s drawing, as well as a great length of embroidery +which had taken the place of the satin cushions—a sort of <i>pièce de +résistance</i> in the courses of needlework, taken up by any clever fingers +that happened to be at liberty. It stretched across the front room +picturesquely enough, Mrs. Meyrick bending over it on one corner, Mab in the +middle, and Amy at the other end. Mirah, whose performances in point of sewing +were on the make-shift level of the tailor-bird’s, her education in that +branch having been much neglected, was acting as reader to the party, seated on +a camp-stool; in which position she also served Kate as model for a title-page +vignette, symbolizing a fair public absorbed in the successive volumes of the +family tea-table. She was giving forth with charming distinctness the +delightful Essay of Elia, “The Praise of Chimney-Sweeps,” and all +were smiling over the “innocent blackness,” when the imposing knock +and ring called their thoughts to loftier spheres, and they looked up in +wonderment. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me!” said Mrs. Meyrick; “can it be Lady Mallinger? Is +there a grand carriage, Amy?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—only a hansom cab. It must be a gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Prime Minister, I should think,” said Kate dryly. “Hans +says the greatest man in London may get into a hansom cab.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Mab. “Suppose it should be Lord +Russell!” +</p> + +<p> +The five bright faces were all looking amused when the old maid-servant +bringing in a card distractedly left the parlor-door open, and there was seen +bowing toward Mrs. Meyrick a figure quite unlike that of the respected +Premier—tall and physically impressive even in his kid and kerseymere, +with massive face, flamboyant hair, and gold spectacles: in fact, as Mrs. +Meyrick saw from the card, <i>Julius Klesmer</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Even embarrassment could hardly have made the “little mother” +awkward, but quick in her perceptions she was at once aware of the situation, +and felt well satisfied that the great personage had come to Mirah instead of +requiring her to come to him; taking it as a sign of active interest. But when +he entered, the rooms shrank into closets, the cottage piano, Mab thought, +seemed a ridiculous toy, and the entire family existence as petty and private +as an establishment of mice in the Tuileries. Klesmer’s personality, +especially his way of glancing round him, immediately suggested vast areas and +a multitudinous audience, and probably they made the usual scenery of his +consciousness, for we all of us carry on our thinking in some habitual locus +where there is a presence of other souls, and those who take in a larger sweep +than their neighbors are apt to seem mightily vain and affected. Klesmer was +vain, but not more so than many contemporaries of heavy aspect, whose vanity +leaps out and startles one like a spear out of a walking-stick; as to his +carriage and gestures, these were as natural to him as the length of his +fingers; and the rankest affectation he could have shown would have been to +look diffident and demure. While his grandiose air was making Mab feel herself +a ridiculous toy to match the cottage piano, he was taking in the details +around him with a keen and thoroughly kind sensibility. He remembered a home no +longer than this on the outskirts of Bohemia; and in the figurative Bohemia too +he had had large acquaintance with the variety and romance which belong to +small incomes. He addressed Mrs. Meyrick with the utmost deference. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope I have not taken too great a freedom. Being in the neighborhood, +I ventured to save time by calling. Our friend, Mr. Deronda, mentioned to me an +understanding that I was to have the honor of becoming acquainted with a young +lady here—Miss Lapidoth.” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer had really discerned Mirah in the first moment of entering, but, with +subtle politeness, he looked round bowingly at the three sisters as if he were +uncertain which was the young lady in question. +</p> + +<p> +“Those are my daughters: this is Miss Lapidoth,” said Mrs. Meyrick, +waving her hand toward Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah,” said Klesmer, in a tone of gratified expectation, turning a +radiant smile and deep bow to Mirah, who, instead of being in the least taken +by surprise, had a calm pleasure in her face. She liked the look of Klesmer, +feeling sure that he would scold her, like a great musician and a kind man. +</p> + +<p> +“You will not object to beginning our acquaintance by singing to +me,” he added, aware that they would all be relieved by getting rid of +preliminaries. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be very glad. It is good of you to be willing to listen to +me,” said Mirah, moving to the piano. “Shall I accompany +myself?” +</p> + +<p> +“By all means,” said Klesmer, seating himself, at Mrs. +Meyrick’s invitation, where he could have a good view of the singer. The +acute little mother would not have acknowledged the weakness, but she really +said to herself, “He will like her singing better if he sees her.” +</p> + +<p> +All the feminine hearts except Mirah’s were beating fast with anxiety, +thinking Klesmer terrific as he sat with his listening frown on, and only +daring to look at him furtively. If he did say anything severe it would be so +hard for them all. They could only comfort themselves with thinking that Prince +Camaralzaman, who had heard the finest things, preferred Mirah’s singing +to any other: also she appeared to be doing her very best, as if she were more +instead of less at ease than usual. +</p> + +<p> +The song she had chosen was a fine setting of some words selected from +Leopardi’s grand Ode to Italy:, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>O patria mia, vedo le mura c gli archi<br/> +E le colonne e i simula-cri e l’erme<br/> +Torridegli avi nostri</i>”, +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +This was recitative: then followed, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Ma la gloria—non vedo</i>”, +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +a mournful melody, a rhythmic plaint. After this came a climax of devout +triumph—passing from the subdued adoration of a happy Andante in the +words, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>Beatissimi voi.<br/> +Che offriste il petto alle nemiche lance<br/> +Per amor di costei che al sol vi diede</i>”, +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +to the joyous outburst of an exultant Allegro in, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + “<i>Oh viva, oh viva:<br/> +Beatissimi voi<br/> +Mentre nel monde si favelli o scriva.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +When she had ended, Klesmer said after a moment, +</p> + +<p> +“That is old Leo’s music.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, he was my last master—at Vienna: so fierce and so +good,” said Mirah, with a melancholy smile. “He prophesied that my +voice would not do for the stage. And he was right.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Con</i>tinue, if you please,” said Klesmer, putting out his +lips and shaking his long fingers, while he went on with a smothered +articulation quite unintelligible to the audience. +</p> + +<p> +The three girls detested him unanimously for not saying one word of praise. +Mrs. Meyrick was a little alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah, simply bent on doing what Klesmer desired, and imagining that he would +now like to hear her sing some German, went through Prince Radzivill’s +music to Gretchen’s songs in the <i>Faust</i>, one after the other +without any interrogatory pause. When she had finished he rose and walked to +the extremity of the small space at command, then walked back to the piano, +where Mirah had risen from her seat and stood looking toward him with her +little hands crossed before her, meekly awaiting judgment; then with a sudden +unknitting of his brow and with beaming eyes, he stretched out his hand and +said abruptly, “Let us shake hands: you are a musician.” +</p> + +<p> +Mab felt herself beginning to cry, and all the three girls held Klesmer +adorable. Mrs. Meyrick took a long breath. +</p> + +<p> +But straightway the frown came again, the long hand, back uppermost, was +stretched out in quite a different sense to touch with finger-tip the back of +Mirah’s, and with protruded lip he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Not for great tasks. No high roofs. We are no skylarks. We must be +modest.” Klesmer paused here. And Mab ceased to think him adorable: +“as if Mirah had shown the least sign of conceit!” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah was silent, knowing that there was a specific opinion to be waited for, +and Klesmer presently went on—“I would not advise—I would not +further your singing in any larger space than a private drawing-room. But you +will do there. And here in London that is one of the best careers open. Lessons +will follow. Will you come and sing at a private concert at my house on +Wednesday?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I shall be grateful,” said Mirah, putting her hands together +devoutly. “I would rather get my bread in that way than by anything more +public. I will try to improve. What should I work at most?” +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer made a preliminary answer in noises which sounded like words bitten in +two and swallowed before they were half out, shaking his fingers the while, +before he said, quite distinctly, “I shall introduce you to Astorga: he +is the foster-father of good singing and will give you advice.” Then +addressing Mrs. Meyrick, he added, “Mrs. Klesmer will call before +Wednesday, with your permission.” +</p> + +<p> +“We shall feel that to be a great kindness,” said Mrs. Meyrick. +</p> + +<p> +“You will sing to her,” said Klesmer, turning again to Mirah. +“She is a thorough musician, and has a soul with more ears to it than you +will often get in a musician. Your singing will satisfy her: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘Vor den Wissenden sich stellen;’ +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +you know the rest?” +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘Sicher ist’s in allen Fällen.’” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +said Mirah, promptly. And Klesmer saying “Schön!” put out his hand +again as a good-by. +</p> + +<p> +He had certainly chosen the most delicate way of praising Mirah, and the +Meyrick girls had now given him all their esteem. But imagine Mab’s +feeling when suddenly fixing his eyes on her, he said decisively, “That +young lady is musical, I see!” She was a mere blush and sense of +scorching. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mirah, on her behalf. “And she has a +touch.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, please, Mirah—a scramble, not a touch,” said Mab, in +anguish, with a horrible fear of what the next thing might be: this dreadful +divining personage—evidently Satan in gray trousers—might order her +to sit down to the piano, and her heart was like molten wax in the midst of +her. But this was cheap payment for her amazed joy when Klesmer said +benignantly, turning to Mrs. Meyrick, “Will she like to accompany Miss +Lapidoth and hear the music on Wednesday?” +</p> + +<p> +“There could hardly be a greater pleasure for her,” said Mrs. +Meyrick. “She will be most glad and grateful.” +</p> + +<p> +Thereupon Klesmer bowed round to the three sisters more grandly than they had +ever been bowed to before. Altogether it was an amusing picture—the +little room with so much of its diagonal taken up in Klesmer’s +magnificent bend to the small feminine figures like images a little less than +life-size, the grave Holbein faces on the walls, as many as were not otherwise +occupied, looking hard at this stranger who by his face seemed a dignified +contemporary of their own, but whose garments seemed a deplorable mockery of +the human form. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick could not help going out of the room with Klesmer and closing the +door behind her. He understood her, and said with a frowning nod, +</p> + +<p> +“She will do: if she doesn’t attempt too much and her voice holds +out, she can make an income. I know that is the great point: Deronda told me. +You are taking care of her. She looks like a good girl.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is an angel,” said the warm-hearted woman. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Klesmer, with a playful nod; “she is a pretty +Jewess: the angels must not get the credit of her. But I think she has found a +guardian angel,” he ended, bowing himself out in this amiable way. +</p> + +<p> +The four young creatures had looked at each other mutely till the door banged +and Mrs. Meyrick re-entered. Then there was an explosion. Mab clapped her hands +and danced everywhere inconveniently; Mrs. Meyrick kissed Mirah and blessed +her; Amy said emphatically, “We can never get her a new dress before +Wednesday!” and Kate exclaimed, “Thank heaven my table is not +knocked over!” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah had reseated herself on the music-stool without speaking, and the tears +were rolling down her cheeks as she looked at her friends. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, now, Mab!” said Mrs. Meyrick; “come and sit down +reasonably and let us talk?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, let us talk,” said Mab, cordially, coming back to her low +seat and caressing her knees. “I am beginning to feel large again. Hans +said he was coming this afternoon. I wish he had been here—only there +would have been no room for him. Mirah, what are you looking sad for?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am too happy,” said Mirah. “I feel so full of gratitude to +you all; and he was so very kind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, at last,” said Mab, sharply. “But he might have said +something encouraging sooner. I thought him dreadfully ugly when he sat +frowning, and only said, ‘<i>Con</i>tinue.’ I hated him all the +long way from the top of his hair to the toe of his polished boot.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense, Mab; he has a splendid profile,” said Kate. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Now</i>, but not <i>then</i>. I cannot bear people to keep their +minds bottled up for the sake of letting them off with a pop. They seem to +grudge making you happy unless they can make you miserable beforehand. However, +I forgive him everything,” said Mab, with a magnanimous air, “but +he has invited me. I wonder why he fixed on me as the musical one? Was it +because I have a bulging forehead, ma, and peep from under it like a newt from +under a stone?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was your way of listening to the singing, child,” said Mrs. +Meyrick. “He has magic spectacles and sees everything through them, +depend upon it. But what was that German quotation you were so ready with, +Mirah—you learned puss?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that was not learning,” said Mirah, her tearful face breaking +into an amused smile. “I said it so many times for a lesson. It means +that it is safer to do anything—singing or anything else—before +those who know and understand all about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“That was why you were not one bit frightened, I suppose,” said +Amy. “But now, what we have to talk about is a dress for you on +Wednesday.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want anything better than this black merino,” said +Mirah, rising to show the effect. “Some white gloves and some new +<i>bottines</i>.” She put out her little foot, clad in the famous felt +slipper. +</p> + +<p> +“There comes Hans,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “Stand still, and let +us hear what he says about the dress. Artists are the best people to consult +about such things.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t consult me, ma,” said Kate, lifting up her eyebrow +with a playful complainingness. “I notice mothers are like the people I +deal with—the girls’ doings are always priced low.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear child, the boys are such a trouble—we could never put up +with them, if we didn’t make believe they were worth more,” said +Mrs. Meyrick, just as her boy entered. “Hans, we want your opinion about +Mirah’s dress. A great event has happened. Klesmer has been here, and she +is going to sing at his house on Wednesday among grand people. She thinks this +dress will do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me see,” said Hans. Mirah in her childlike way turned toward +him to be looked at; and he, going to a little further distance, knelt with one +knee on a hassock to survey her. +</p> + +<p> +“This would be thought a very good stage-dress for me,” she said, +pleadingly, “in a part where I was to come on as a poor Jewess and sing +to fashionable Christians.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would be effective,” said Hans, with a considering air; +“it would stand out well among the fashionable <i>chiffons</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you ought not to claim all the poverty on your side, Mirah,” +said Amy. “There are plenty of poor Christians and dreadfully rich Jews +and fashionable Jewesses.” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t mean any harm,” said Mirah. “Only I have been +used to thinking about my dress for parts in plays. And I almost always had a +part with a plain dress.” +</p> + +<p> +“That makes me think it questionable,” said Hans, who had suddenly +become as fastidious and conventional on this occasion as he had thought +Deronda was, apropos of the Berenice-pictures. “It looks a little too +theatrical. We must not make you a <i>rôle</i> of the poor Jewess—or of +being a Jewess at all.” Hans had a secret desire to neutralize the Jewess +in private life, which he was in danger of not keeping secret. +</p> + +<p> +“But it is what I am really. I am not pretending anything. I shall never +be anything else,” said Mirah. “I always feel myself a +Jewess.” +</p> + +<p> +“But we can’t feel that about you,” said Hans, with a devout +look. “What does it signify whether a perfect woman is a Jewess or +not?” +</p> + +<p> +“That is your kind way of praising me; I never was praised so +before,” said Mirah, with a smile, which was rather maddening to Hans and +made him feel still more of a cosmopolitan. +</p> + +<p> +“People don’t think of me as a British Christian,” he said, +his face creasing merrily. “They think of me as an imperfectly handsome +young man and an unpromising painter.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you are wandering from the dress,” said Amy. “If that +will not do, how are we to get another before Wednesday? and to-morrow +Sunday?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed this will do,” said Mirah, entreatingly. “It is all +real, you know,” here she looked at Hans—“even if it seemed +theatrical. Poor Berenice sitting on the ruins—any one might say that was +theatrical, but I know that this is just what she would do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am a scoundrel,” said Hans, overcome by this misplaced trust. +“That is my invention. Nobody knows that she did that. Shall you forgive +me for not saying so before?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Mirah, after a momentary pause of surprise. +“You knew it was what she would be sure to do—a Jewess who had not +been faithful—who had done what she did and was penitent. She could have +no joy but to afflict herself; and where else would she go? I think it is very +beautiful that you should enter so into what a Jewess would feel.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Jewesses of that time sat on ruins,” said Hans, starting up +with a sense of being checkmated. “That makes them convenient for +pictures.” +</p> + +<p> +“But the dress—the dress,” said Amy; “is it +settled?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; is it not?” said Mirah, looking doubtfully at Mrs. Meyrick, +who in her turn looked up at her son, and said, “What do you think, +Hans?” +</p> + +<p> +“That dress will not do,” said Hans, decisively. “She is not +going to sit on ruins. You must jump into a cab with her, little mother, and go +to Regent Street. It’s plenty of time to get anything you like—a +black silk dress such as ladies wear. She must not be taken for an object of +charity. She has talents to make people indebted to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is what Mr. Deronda would like—for her to have a +handsome dress,” said Mrs. Meyrick, deliberating. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it is,” said Hans, with some sharpness. “You may +take my word for what a gentleman would feel.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish to do what Mr. Deronda would like me to do,” said Mirah, +gravely, seeing that Mrs. Meyrick looked toward her; and Hans, turning on his +heel, went to Kate’s table and took up one of her drawings as if his +interest needed a new direction. +</p> + +<p> +“Shouldn’t you like to make a study of Klesmer’s head, +Hans?” said Kate. “I suppose you have often seen him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Seen him!” exclaimed Hans, immediately throwing back his head and +mane, seating himself at the piano and looking round him as if he were +surveying an amphitheatre, while he held his fingers down perpendicularly +toward the keys. But then in another instant he wheeled round on the stool, +looked at Mirah and said, half timidly—“Perhaps you don’t +like this mimicry; you must always stop my nonsense when you don’t like +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah had been smiling at the swiftly-made image, and she smiled still, but +with a touch of something else than amusement, as she said—“Thank +you. But you have never done anything I did not like. I hardly think he could, +belonging to you,” she added, looking at Mrs. Meyrick. +</p> + +<p> +In this way Hans got food for his hope. How could the rose help it when several +bees in succession took its sweet odor as a sign of personal attachment? +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0040"></a> +CHAPTER XL.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Within the soul a faculty abides,<br/> +That with interpositions, which would hide<br/> +And darken, so can deal, that they become<br/> +Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt<br/> +Her native brightness, as the ample moon,<br/> +In the deep stillness of a summer even,<br/> +Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,<br/> +Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light,<br/> +In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides<br/> +Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil<br/> +Into a substance glorious as her own,<br/> +Yea, with her own incorporated, by power<br/> +Capacious and serene.”<br/> + —W<small>ORDSWORTH</small>: <i>Excursion</i>, B. IV. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda came out of the narrow house at Chelsea in a frame of mind that made +him long for some good bodily exercise to carry off what he was himself +inclined to call the fumes of his temper. He was going toward the city, and the +sight of the Chelsea Stairs with the waiting boats at once determined him to +avoid the irritating inaction of being driven in a cab, by calling a wherry and +taking an oar. +</p> + +<p> +His errand was to go to Ram’s book-shop, where he had yesterday arrived +too late for Mordecai’s midday watch, and had been told that he +invariably came there again between five and six. Some further acquaintance +with this remarkable inmate of the Cohens was particularly desired by Deronda +as a preliminary to redeeming his ring: he wished that their conversation +should not again end speedily with that drop of Mordecai’s interest which +was like the removal of a drawbridge, and threatened to shut out any easy +communication in future. As he got warmed with the use of the oar, fixing his +mind on the errand before him and the ends he wanted to achieve on +Mirah’s account, he experienced, as was wont with him, a quick change of +mental light, shifting his point of view to that of the person whom he had been +thinking of hitherto chiefly as serviceable to his own purposes, and was +inclined to taunt himself with being not much better than an enlisting +sergeant, who never troubles himself with the drama that brings him the needful +recruits. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose if I got from this man the information I am most anxious +about,” thought Deronda, “I should be contented enough if he felt +no disposition to tell me more of himself, or why he seemed to have some +expectation from me which was disappointed. The sort of curiosity he stirs +would die out; and yet it might be that he had neared and parted as one can +imagine two ships doing, each freighted with an exile who would have recognized +the other if the two could have looked out face to face. Not that there is any +likelihood of a peculiar tie between me and this poor fellow, whose voyage, I +fancy, must soon be over. But I wonder whether there is much of that momentous +mutual missing between people who interchange blank looks, or even long for one +another’s absence in a crowded place. However, one makes one’s self +chances of missing by going on the recruiting sergeant’s plan.” +</p> + +<p> +When the wherry was approaching Blackfriars Bridge, where Deronda meant to +land, it was half-past four, and the gray day was dying gloriously, its western +clouds all broken into narrowing purple strata before a wide-spreading saffron +clearness, which in the sky had a monumental calm, but on the river, with its +changing objects, was reflected as a luminous movement, the alternate flash of +ripples or currents, the sudden glow of the brown sail, the passage of laden +barges from blackness into color, making an active response to that brooding +glory. +</p> + +<p> +Feeling well heated by this time, Deronda gave up the oar and drew over him +again his Inverness cape. As he lifted up his head while fastening the topmost +button his eyes caught a well-remembered face looking toward him over the +parapet of the bridge—brought out by the western light into startling +distinctness and brilliancy—an illuminated type of bodily emaciation and +spiritual eagerness. It was the face of Mordecai, who also, in his watch toward +the west, had caught sight of the advancing boat, and had kept it fast within +his gaze, at first simply because it was advancing, then with a recovery of +impressions that made him quiver as with a presentiment, till at last the +nearing figure lifted up its face toward him—the face of his +visions—and then immediately, with white uplifted hand, beckoned again +and again. +</p> + +<p> +For Deronda, anxious that Mordecai should recognize and await him, had lost no +time before signaling, and the answer came straightway. Mordecai lifted his cap +and waved it—feeling in that moment that his inward prophecy was +fulfilled. Obstacles, incongruities, all melted into the sense of completion +with which his soul was flooded by this outward satisfaction of his longing. +His exultation was not widely different from that of the experimenter, bending +over the first stirrings of change that correspond to what in the fervor of +concentrated prevision his thought has foreshadowed. The prefigured friend had +come from the golden background, and had signaled to him: this actually was: +the rest was to be. +</p> + +<p> +In three minutes Deronda had landed, had paid his boatman, and was joining +Mordecai, whose instinct it was to stand perfectly still and wait for him. +</p> + +<p> +“I was very glad to see you standing here,” said Deronda, +“for I was intending to go on to the book-shop and look for you again. I +was there yesterday—perhaps they mentioned it to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mordecai; “that was the reason I came to the +bridge.” +</p> + +<p> +This answer, made with simple gravity, was startlingly mysterious to Deronda. +Were the peculiarities of this man really associated with any sort of mental +alienation, according to Cohen’s hint? +</p> + +<p> +“You knew nothing of my being at Chelsea?” he said, after a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“No; but I expected you to come down the river. I have been waiting for +you these five years.” Mordecai’s deep-sunk eyes were fixed on +those of the friend who had at last arrived with a look of affectionate +dependence, at once pathetic and solemn. Deronda’s sensitiveness was not +the less responsive because he could not but believe that this +strangely-disclosed relation was founded on an illusion. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be a satisfaction to me if I can be of any real use to +you,” he answered, very earnestly. “Shall we get into a cab and +drive to—wherever you wish to go? You have probably had walking enough +with your short breath.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go to the book-shop. It will soon be time for me to be there. But +now look up the river,” said Mordecai, turning again toward it and +speaking in undertones of what may be called an excited calm—so absorbed +by a sense of fulfillment that he was conscious of no barrier to a complete +understanding between him and Deronda. “See the sky, how it is slowly +fading. I have always loved this bridge: I stood on it when I was a little boy. +It is a meeting-place for the spiritual messengers. It is true—what the +Masters said—that each order of things has its angel: that means the full +message of each from what is afar. Here I have listened to the messages of +earth and sky; when I was stronger I used to stay and watch for the stars in +the deep heavens. But this time just about sunset was always what I loved best. +It has sunk into me and dwelt with me—fading, slowly fading: it was my +own decline: it paused—it waited, till at last it brought me my new +life—my new self—who will live when this breath is all breathed +out.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda did not speak. He felt himself strangely wrought upon. The +first-prompted suspicion that Mordecai might be liable to hallucinations of +thought—might have become a monomaniac on some subject which had given +too severe a strain to his diseased organism—gave way to a more +submissive expectancy. His nature was too large, too ready to conceive regions +beyond his own experience, to rest at once in the easy explanation, +“madness,” whenever a consciousness showed some fullness and +conviction where his own was blank. It accorded with his habitual disposition +that he should meet rather than resist any claim on him in the shape of +another’s need; and this claim brought with it a sense of solemnity which +seemed a radiation from Mordecai, as utterly nullifying his outward poverty and +lifting him into authority as if he had been that preternatural guide seen in +the universal legend, who suddenly drops his mean disguise and stands a +manifest Power. That impression was the more sanctioned by a sort of resolved +quietude which the persuasion of fulfillment had produced in Mordecai’s +manner. After they had stood a moment in silence he said, “Let us go +now,” and when they were riding he added, “We will get down at the +end of the street and walk to the shop. You can look at the books, and Mr. Ram +will be going away directly and leave us alone.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed that this enthusiast was just as cautious, just as much alive to +judgments in other minds as if he had been that antipode of all enthusiasm +called “a man of the world.” +</p> + +<p> +While they were rattling along in the cab, Mirah was still present with Deronda +in the midst of this strange experience, but he foresaw that the course of +conversation would be determined by Mordecai, not by himself: he was no longer +confident what questions he should be able to ask; and with a reaction on his +own mood, he inwardly said, “I suppose I am in a state of complete +superstition, just as if I were awaiting the destiny that could interpret the +oracle. But some strong relation there must be between me and this man, since +he feels it strongly. Great heaven! what relation has proved itself more potent +in the world than faith even when mistaken—than expectation even when +perpetually disappointed? Is my side of the relation to be disappointing or +fulfilling?—well, if it is ever possible for me to fulfill I will not +disappoint.” +</p> + +<p> +In ten minutes the two men, with as intense a consciousness as if they had been +two undeclared lovers, felt themselves alone in the small gas-lit book-shop and +turned face to face, each baring his head from an instinctive feeling that they +wished to see each other fully. Mordecai came forward to lean his back against +the little counter, while Deronda stood against the opposite wall hardly more +than four feet off. I wish I could perpetuate those two faces, as +Titian’s “Tribute Money” has perpetuated two types presenting +another sort of contrast. Imagine—we all of us can—the pathetic +stamp of consumption with its brilliancy of glance to which the sharply-defined +structure of features reminding one of a forsaken temple, give already a +far-off look as of one getting unwillingly out of reach; and imagine it on a +Jewish face naturally accentuated for the expression of an eager mind—the +face of a man little above thirty, but with that age upon it which belongs to +time lengthened by suffering, the hair and beard, still black, throwing out the +yellow pallor of the skin, the difficult breathing giving more decided marking +to the mobile nostril, the wasted yellow hands conspicuous on the folded arms: +then give to the yearning consumptive glance something of the slowly dying +mother’s look, when her one loved son visits her bedside, and the +flickering power of gladness leaps out as she says, “My +boy!”—for the sense of spiritual perpetuation in another resembles +that maternal transference of self. +</p> + +<p> +Seeing such a portrait you would see Mordecai. And opposite to him was a face +not more distinctively oriental than many a type seen among what we call the +Latin races; rich in youthful health, and with a forcible masculine gravity in +its repose, that gave the value of judgment to the reverence with which he met +the gaze of this mysterious son of poverty who claimed him as a long-expected +friend. The more exquisite quality of Deronda’s nature—that keenly +perceptive sympathetic emotiveness which ran along with his speculative +tendency—was never more thoroughly tested. He felt nothing that could be +called belief in the validity of Mordecai’s impressions concerning him or +in the probability of any greatly effective issue: what he felt was a profound +sensibility to a cry from the depths of another and accompanying that, the +summons to be receptive instead of superciliously prejudging. Receptiveness is +a rare and massive power, like fortitude; and this state of mind now gave +Deronda’s face its utmost expression of calm benignant force—an +expression which nourished Mordecai’s confidence and made an open way +before him. He began to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“You cannot know what has guided me to you and brought us together at +this moment. You are wondering.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not impatient,” said Deronda. “I am ready to listen to +whatever you may wish to disclose.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see some of the reasons why I needed you,” said Mordecai, +speaking quietly, as if he wished to reserve his strength. “You see that +I am dying. You see that I am as one shut up behind bars by the wayside, who if +he spoke to any would be met only by head-shaking and pity. The day is +closing—the light is fading—soon we should not have been able to +discern each other. But you have come in time.” +</p> + +<p> +“I rejoice that I am come in time,” said Deronda, feelingly. He +would not say, “I hope you are not mistaken in me,”—the very +word “mistaken,” he thought, would be a cruelty at that moment. +</p> + +<p> +“But the hidden reasons why I need you began afar off,” said +Mordecai; “began in my early years when I was studying in another land. +Then ideas, beloved ideas, came to me, because I was a Jew. They were a trust +to fulfill, because I was a Jew. They were an inspiration, because I was a Jew, +and felt the heart of my race beating within me. They were my life; I was not +fully born till then. I counted this heart, and this breath, and this right +hand”—Mordecai had pathetically pressed his hand upon his breast, +and then stretched its wasted fingers out before him—“I counted my +sleep and my waking, and the work I fed my body with, and the sights that fed +my eyes—I counted them but as fuel to the divine flame. But I had done as +one who wanders and engraves his thought in rocky solitudes, and before I could +change my course came care and labor and disease, and blocked the way before +me, and bound me with the iron that eats itself into the soul. Then I said, +‘How shall I save the life within me from being stifled with this stifled +breath?’” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai paused to rest that poor breath which had been taxed by the rising +excitement of his speech. And also he wished to check that excitement. Deronda +dared not speak: the very silence in the narrow space seemed alive with mingled +awe and compassion before this struggling fervor. And presently Mordecai went +on: +</p> + +<p> +“But you may misunderstand me. I speak not as an ignorant +dreamer—as one bred up in the inland valleys, thinking ancient thoughts +anew, and not knowing them ancient, never having stood by the great waters +where the world’s knowledge passes to and fro. English is my +mother-tongue, England is the native land of this body, which is but as a +breaking pot of earth around the fruit-bearing tree, whose seed might make the +desert rejoice. But my true life was nourished in Holland at the feet of my +mother’s brother, a Rabbi skilled in special learning: and when he died I +went to Hamburg to study, and afterwards to Göttingen, that I might take a +larger outlook on my people, and on the Gentile world, and drank knowledge at +all sources. I was a youth; I felt free; I saw our chief seats in Germany; I +was not then in utter poverty. And I had possessed myself of a handicraft. For +I said, I care not if my lot be as that of Joshua ben Chananja: after the last +destruction he earned his bread by making needles, but in his youth he had been +a singer on the steps of the Temple, and had a memory of what was before the +glory departed. I said, let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the +hands of the toiler: but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the +treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. I knew what I +chose. They said, ‘He feeds himself on visions,’ and I denied not; +for visions are the creators and feeders of the world. I see, I measure the +world as it is, which the vision will create anew. You are not listening to one +who raves aloof from the lives of his fellows.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai paused, and Deronda, feeling that the pause was expectant, said, +“Do me the justice to believe that I was not inclined to call your words +raving. I listen that I may know, without prejudgment. I have had experience +which gives me a keen interest in the story of a spiritual destiny embraced +willingly, and embraced in youth.” +</p> + +<p> +“A spiritual destiny embraced willingly—in youth?” Mordecai +repeated in a corrective tone. “It was the soul fully born within me, and +it came in my boyhood. It brought its own world—a mediaeval world, where +there are men who made the ancient language live again in new psalms of exile. +They had absorbed the philosophy of the Gentile into the faith of the Jew, and +they still yearned toward a center for our race. One of their souls was born +again within me, and awakened amid the memories of their world. It traveled +into Spain and Provence; it debated with Aben-Ezra; it took ship with Jehuda +ha-Levi; it heard the roar of the Crusaders and the shrieks of tortured Israel. +And when its dumb tongue was loosed, it spoke the speech they had made alive +with the new blood of their ardor, their sorrow, and their martyred trust: it +sang with the cadence of their strain.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai paused again, and then said in a loud, hoarse whisper, +</p> + +<p> +“While it is imprisoned in me, it will never learn another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you written entirely in Hebrew, then?” said Deronda, +remembering with some anxiety the former question as to his own knowledge of +that tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—yes,” said Mordecai, in a tone of deep sadness: +“in my youth I wandered toward that solitude, not feeling that it was a +solitude. I had the ranks of the great dead around me; the martyrs gathered and +listened. But soon I found that the living were deaf to me. At first I saw my +life spread as a long future: I said part of my Jewish heritage is an +unbreaking patience; part is skill to seek divers methods and find a +rooting-place where the planters despair. But there came new messengers from +the Eternal. I had to bow under the yoke that presses on the great multitude +born of woman: family troubles called me—I had to work, to care, not for +myself alone. I was left solitary again; but already the angel of death had +turned to me and beckoned, and I felt his skirts continually on my path. I +loosed not my effort. I besought hearing and help. I spoke; I went to men of +our people—to the rich in influence or knowledge, to the rich in other +wealth. But I found none to listen with understanding. I was rebuked for error; +I was offered a small sum in charity. No wonder. I looked poor; I carried a +bundle of Hebrew manuscript with me; I said, our chief teachers are misleading +the hope of our race. Scholar and merchant were both too busy to listen. Scorn +stood as interpreter between me and them. One said, ‘The book of Mormon +would never have answered in Hebrew; and if you mean to address our learned +men, it is not likely you can teach them anything.’ He touched a truth +there.” +</p> + +<p> +The last words had a perceptible irony in their hoarsened tone. +</p> + +<p> +“But though you had accustomed yourself to write in Hebrew, few, surely, +can use English better,” said Deronda, wanting to hint consolation in a +new effort for which he could smooth the way. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai shook his head slowly, and answered, +</p> + +<p> +“Too late—too late. I can write no more. My writing would be like +this gasping breath. But the breath may wake the fount of pity—the +writing not. If I could write now and used English, I should be as one who +beats a board to summon those who have been used to no signal but a bell. My +soul has an ear to hear the faults of its own speech. New writing of mine would +be like this body”—Mordecai spread his arms—“within it +there might be the Ruach-ha-kodesh—the breath of divine +thought—but, men would smile at it and say, ‘A poor Jew!’ and +the chief smilers would be of my own people.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai let his hands fall, and his head sink in melancholy: for the moment he +had lost hold of his hope. Despondency, conjured up by his own words, had +floated in and hovered above him with eclipsing wings. He had sunk into +momentary darkness, +</p> + +<p> +“I feel with you—I feel strongly with you,” said Deronda, in +a clear deep voice which was itself a cordial, apart from the words of +sympathy. “But forgive me if I speak hastily—for what you have +actually written there need be no utter burial. The means of publication are +within reach. If you will rely on me, I can assure you of all that is necessary +to that end.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is not enough,” said Mordecai, quickly, looking up again with +the flash of recovered memory and confidence. “That is not all my trust +in you. You must be not only a hand to me, but a soul—believing my +belief—being moved by my reasons—hoping my hope—seeing the +vision I point to—beholding a glory where I behold +it!”—Mordecai had taken a step nearer as he spoke, and now laid his +hand on Deronda’s arm with a tight grasp; his face little more than a +foot off had something like a pale flame in it—an intensity of reliance +that acted as a peremptory claim, while he went on—“You will be my +life: it will be planted afresh; it will grow. You shall take the inheritance; +it has been gathering for ages. The generations are crowding on my narrow life +as a bridge: what has been and what is to be are meeting there; and the bridge +is breaking. But I have found you. You have come in time. You will take the +inheritance which the base son refuses because of the tombs which the plow and +harrow may not pass over or the gold-seeker disturb: you will take the sacred +inheritance of the Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda had become as pallid as Mordecai. Quick as an alarm of flood or fire, +there spread within him not only a compassionate dread of discouraging this +fellowman who urged a prayer as one in the last agony, but also the opposing +dread of fatally feeding an illusion, and being hurried on to a self-committal +which might turn into a falsity. The peculiar appeal to his tenderness overcame +the repulsion that most of us experience under a grasp and speech which assumed +to dominate. The difficulty to him was to inflict the accents of hesitation and +doubt on this ardent suffering creature, who was crowding too much of his brief +being into a moment of perhaps extravagant trust. With exquisite instinct, +Deronda, before he opened his lips, placed his palm gently on Mordecai’s +straining hand—an act just then equal to many speeches. And after that he +said, without haste, as if conscious that he might be wrong, +</p> + +<p> +“Do you forget what I told you when we first saw each other? Do you +remember that I said I was not of your race?” +</p> + +<p> +“It can’t be true,” Mordecai whispered immediately, with no +sign of shock. The sympathetic hand still upon him had fortified the feeling +which was stronger than those words of denial. There was a perceptible pause, +Deronda feeling it impossible to answer, conscious indeed that the assertion +“It can’t be true”—had the pressure of argument for +him. Mordecai, too entirely possessed by the supreme importance of the relation +between himself and Deronda to have any other care in his speech, followed up +that assertion by a second, which came to his lips as a mere sequence of his +long-cherished conviction—“You are not sure of your own +origin.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know that?” said Daniel, with an habitual shrinking +which made him remove his hands from Mordecai’s, who also relaxed his +hold, and fell back into his former leaning position. +</p> + +<p> +“I know it—I know it; what is my life else?” said Mordecai, +with a low cry of impatience. “Tell me everything: tell me why you +deny.” +</p> + +<p> +He could have no conception what that demand was to the hearer—how +probingly it touched the hidden sensibility, the vividly conscious reticence of +years; how the uncertainty he was insisting on as part of his own hope had +always for Daniel been a threatening possibility of painful revelation about +his mother. But the moment had influences which were not only new but solemn to +Deronda; any evasion here might turn out to be a hateful refusal of some task +that belonged to him, some act of due fellowship; in any case it would be a +cruel rebuff to a being who was appealing to him as a forlorn hope under the +shadow of a coming doom. After a few moments, he said, with a great effort over +himself—determined to tell all the truth briefly, +</p> + +<p> +“I have never known my mother. I have no knowledge about her. I have +never called any man father. But I am convinced that my father is an +Englishman.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s deep tones had a tremor in them as he uttered this confession; +and all the while there was an under-current of amazement in him at the strange +circumstances under which he uttered it. It seemed as if Mordecai were hardly +overrating his own power to determine the action of the friend whom he had +mysteriously chosen. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be seen—it will be declared,” said Mordecai, +triumphantly. “The world grows, and its frame is knit together by the +growing soul; dim, dim at first, then clearer and more clear, the consciousness +discerns remote stirrings. As thoughts move within us darkly, and shake us +before they are fully discerned—so events—so beings: they are knit +with us in the growth of the world. You have risen within me like a thought not +fully spelled; my soul is shaken before the words are all there. The rest will +come—it will come.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must not lose sight of the fact that the outward event has not always +been a fulfillment of the firmest faith,” said Deronda, in a tone that +was made hesitating by the painfully conflicting desires, not to give any +severe blow to Mordecai, and not to give his confidence a sanction which might +have the severest of blows in reserve. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s face, which had been illuminated to the utmost in that last +declaration of his confidence, changed under Deronda’s words, not only +into any show of collapsed trust: the force did not disappear from the +expression, but passed from the triumphant into the firmly resistant. +</p> + +<p> +“You would remind me that I may be under an illusion—that the +history of our people’s trust has been full of illusion. I face it +all.” Here Mordecai paused a moment. Then bending his head a little +forward, he said, in his hoarse whisper, “<i>So it might be with my +trust, if you would make it an illusion. But you will not.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +The very sharpness with which these words penetrated Deronda made him feel the +more that here was a crisis in which he must be firm. +</p> + +<p> +“What my birth was does not lie in my will,” he answered. “My +sense of claims on me cannot be independent of my knowledge there. And I cannot +promise you that I will try to hasten a disclosure. Feelings which have struck +root through half my life may still hinder me from doing what I have never been +able to do. Everything must be waited for. I must know more of the truth about +my own life, and I must know more of what it would become if it were made a +part of yours.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai had folded his arms again while Deronda was speaking, and now answered +with equal firmness, though with difficult breathing, +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>shall</i> know. What are we met for, but that you should know. +Your doubts lie as light as dust on my belief. I know the philosophies of this +time and of other times; if I chose I could answer a summons before their +tribunals. I could silence the beliefs which are the mother-tongue of my soul +and speak with the rote-learned language of a system, that gives you the +spelling of all things, sure of its alphabet covering them all. I could silence +them: may not a man silence his awe or his love, and take to finding reasons, +which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any reasons to be found? +Man finds his pathways: at first they were foot tracks, as those of the beast +in the wilderness: now they are swift and invisible: his thought dives through +the ocean, and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways yet? +What reaches him, stays with him, rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its +pathway. Say, my expectation of you has grown but as false hopes grow. That +doubt is in your mind? Well, my expectation was there, and you are come. Men +have died of thirst. But I was thirsty, and the water is on my lips! What are +doubts to me? In the hour when you come to me and say, ‘I reject your +soul: I know that I am not a Jew: we have no lot in common’—I shall +not doubt. I shall be certain—certain that I have been deluded. That hour +will never come!” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt a new chord sounding in his speech: it was rather imperious than +appealing—had more of conscious power than of the yearning need which had +acted as a beseeching grasp on him before. And usually, though he was the +reverse of pugnacious, such a change of attitude toward him would have weakened +his inclination to admit a claim. But here there was something that balanced +his resistance and kept it aloof. This strong man whose gaze was sustainedly +calm and his finger-nails pink with health, who was exercised in all +questioning, and accused of excessive mental independence, still felt a +subduing influence over him in the tenacious certitude of the fragile creature +before him, whose pallid yellow nostril was tense with effort as his breath +labored under the burthen of eager speech. The influence seemed to strengthen +the bond of sympathetic obligation. In Deronda at this moment the desire to +escape what might turn into a trying embarrassment was no more likely to +determine action than the solicitations of indolence are likely to determine it +in one with whom industry is a daily law. He answered simply, +</p> + +<p> +“It is my wish to meet and satisfy your wishes wherever that is possible +to me. It is certain to me at least that I desire not to undervalue your toil +and your suffering. Let me know your thoughts. But where can we meet?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have thought of that,” said Mordecai. “It is not hard for +you to come into this neighborhood later in the evening? You did so +once.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can manage it very well occasionally,” said Deronda. “You +live under the same roof with the Cohens, I think?” +</p> + +<p> +Before Mordecai could answer, Mr. Ram re-entered to take his place behind the +counter. He was an elderly son of Abraham, whose childhood had fallen on the +evil times at the beginning of this century, and who remained amid this smart +and instructed generation as a preserved specimen, soaked through and through +with the effect of the poverty and contempt which were the common heritage of +most English Jews seventy years ago. He had none of the oily cheerfulness +observable in Mr. Cohen’s aspect: his very features—broad and +chubby—showed that tendency to look mongrel without due cause, which, in +a miscellaneous London neighborhood, may perhaps be compared with the marvels +of imitation in insects, and may have been nature’s imperfect effort on +behalf of the pure Caucasian to shield him from the shame and spitting to which +purer features would have been exposed in the times of zeal. Mr. Ram dealt ably +in books, in the same way that he would have dealt in tins of meat and other +commodities—without knowledge or responsibility as to the proportion of +rottenness or nourishment they might contain. But he believed in +Mordecai’s learning as something marvellous, and was not sorry that his +conversation should be sought by a bookish gentleman, whose visits had twice +ended in a purchase. He greeted Deronda with a crabbed good-will, and, putting +on large silver spectacles, appeared at once to abstract himself in the daily +accounts. +</p> + +<p> +But Deronda and Mordecai were soon in the street together, and without any +explicit agreement as to their direction, were walking toward Ezra +Cohen’s. +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t meet there: my room is too narrow,” said Mordecai, +taking up the thread of talk where they had dropped it. “But there is a +tavern not far from here where I sometimes go to a club. It is the <i>Hand and +Banner</i>, in the street at the next turning, five doors down. We can have the +parlor there any evening.” +</p> + +<p> +“We can try that for once,” said Deronda. “But you will +perhaps let me provide you with some lodging, which would give you more freedom +and comfort than where you are.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I need nothing. My outer life is as nought. I will take nothing less +precious from you than your soul’s brotherhood. I will think of nothing +else yet. But I am glad you are rich. You did not need money on that diamond +ring. You had some other motive for bringing it.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was a little startled by this clear-sightedness; but before he could +reply Mordecai added—“it is all one. Had you been in need of the +money, the great end would have been that we should meet again. But you are +rich?” he ended, in a tone of interrogation. +</p> + +<p> +“Not rich, except in the sense that every one is rich who has more than +he needs for himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I desired that your life should be free,” said Mordecai, +dreamily—“mine has been a bondage.” +</p> + +<p> +It was clear that he had no interest in the fact of Deronda’s appearance +at the Cohens’ beyond its relation to his own ideal purpose. Despairing +of leading easily up to the question he wished to ask, Deronda determined to +put it abruptly, and said, +</p> + +<p> +“Can you tell me why Mrs. Cohen, the mother, must not be spoken to about +her daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +There was no immediate answer, and he thought that he should have to repeat the +question. The fact was that Mordecai had heard the words, but had to drag his +mind to a new subject away from his passionate preoccupation. After a few +moments, he replied with a careful effort such as he would have used if he had +been asked the road to Holborn: +</p> + +<p> +“I know the reason. But I will not speak even of trivial family affairs +which I have heard in the privacy of the family. I dwell in their tent as in a +sanctuary. Their history, so far as they injure none other, is their own +possession.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt the blood mounting to his cheeks as a sort of rebuke he was little +used to, and he also found himself painfully baffled where he had reckoned with +some confidence on getting decisive knowledge. He became the more conscious of +emotional strain from the excitements of the day; and although he had the money +in his pocket to redeem his ring, he recoiled from the further task of a visit +to the Cohens’, which must be made not only under the former uncertainty, +but under a new disappointment as to the possibility of its removal. +</p> + +<p> +“I will part from you now,” he said, just before they could reach +Cohen’s door; and Mordecai paused, looking up at him with an anxious +fatigued face under the gaslight. +</p> + +<p> +“When will you come back?” he said, with slow emphasis. +</p> + +<p> +“May I leave that unfixed? May I ask for you at the Cohens’ any +evening after your hour at the book-shop? There is no objection, I suppose, to +their knowing that you and I meet in private?” +</p> + +<p> +“None,” said Mordecai. “But the days I wait now are longer +than the years of my strength. Life shrinks: what was but a tithe is now the +half. My hope abides in you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will be faithful,” said Deronda—he could not have left +those words unuttered. “I will come the first evening I can after seven: +on Saturday or Monday, if possible. Trust me.” +</p> + +<p> +He put out his ungloved hand. Mordecai, clasping it eagerly, seemed to feel a +new instreaming of confidence, and he said with some recovered +energy—“This is come to pass, and the rest will come.” +</p> + +<p> +That was their good-by. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0047"></a> +BOOK VI.—REVELATIONS</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0041"></a> +CHAPTER XLI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“This, too is probable, according to that saying of Agathon: ‘It is +a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.’” +—A<small>RISTOTLE</small>: <i>Poetics</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Imagine the conflict in a mind like Deronda’s given not only to feel +strongly but to question actively, on the evening after the interview with +Mordecai. To a young man of much duller susceptibilities the adventure might +have seemed enough out of the common way to divide his thoughts; but it had +stirred Deronda so deeply, that with the usual reaction of his intellect he +began to examine the grounds of his emotion, and consider how far he must +resist its guidance. The consciousness that he was half dominated by +Mordecai’s energetic certitude, and still more by his fervent trust, +roused his alarm. It was his characteristic bias to shrink from the moral +stupidity of valuing lightly what had come close to him, and of missing blindly +in his own life of to-day the crisis which he recognized as momentous and +sacred in the historic life of men. If he had read of this incident as having +happened centuries ago in Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, Cairo, to some +man young as himself, dissatisfied with his neutral life, and wanting some +closer fellowship, some more special duty to give him ardor for the possible +consequences of his work, it would have appeared to him quite natural that the +incident should have created a deep impression on that far-off man, whose +clothing and action would have been seen in his imagination as part of an age +chiefly known to us through its more serious effects. Why should he be ashamed +of his own agitated feeling merely because he dressed for dinner, wore a white +tie, and lived among people who might laugh at his owning any conscience in the +matter, as the solemn folly of taking himself too seriously?—that bugbear +of circles in which the lack of grave emotion passes for wit. From such +cowardice before modish ignorance and obtuseness, Deronda shrank. But he also +shrank from having his course determined by mere contagion, without consent of +reason; or from allowing a reverential pity for spiritual struggle to hurry him +along a dimly-seen path. +</p> + +<p> +What, after all, had really happened? He knew quite accurately the answer Sir +Hugo would have given: “A consumptive Jew, possessed by a fanaticism +which obstacles and hastening death intensified, had fixed on Deronda as the +antitype of some visionary image, the offspring of wedded hope and despair: +despair of his own life, irrepressible hope in the propagation of his fanatical +beliefs. The instance was perhaps odd, exceptional in its form, but +substantially it was not rare. Fanaticism was not so common as bankruptcy, but +taken in all its aspects it was abundant enough. While Mordecai was waiting on +the bridge for the fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that +he had the mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and +regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and keep +the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key, with just that +hair’s-breadth of difference from the old wards which would make it fit +exactly. Scattered here and there in every direction you might find a terrible +person, with more or less power of speech, and with an eye either glittering or +preternaturally dull, on the look-out for the man who must hear him; and in +most cases he had volumes which it was difficult to get printed, or if printed +to get read. This Mordecai happened to have a more pathetic aspect, a more +passionate, penetrative speech than was usual with such monomaniacs; he was +more poetical than a social reformer with colored views of the new moral world +in parallelograms, or than an enthusiast in sewage; still he came under the +same class. It would be only right and kind to indulge him a little, to comfort +him with such help as was practicable; but what likelihood was there that his +notions had the sort of value he ascribed to them? In such cases a man of the +world knows what to think beforehand. And as to Mordecai’s conviction +that he had found a new executive self, it might be preparing for him the worst +of disappointments—that which presents itself as final.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s ear caught all these negative whisperings; nay, he repeated +them distinctly to himself. It was not the first but it was the most pressing +occasion on which he had had to face this question of the family likeness among +the heirs of enthusiasm, whether prophets or dreamers of dreams, whether the +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers,” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +or the devotees of phantasmal discovery—from the first believer in his +own unmanifested inspiration, down to the last inventor of an ideal machine +that will achieve perpetual motion. The kinship of human passion, the sameness +of mortal scenery, inevitably fill fact with burlesque and parody. Error and +folly have had their hecatombs of martyrs. Reduce the grandest type of man +hitherto known to an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts, and he +appears in dangerous company: say that, like Copernicus and Galileo, he was +immovably convinced in the face of hissing incredulity; but so is the contriver +of perpetual motion. We cannot fairly try the spirits by this sort of test. If +we want to avoid giving the dose of hemlock or the sentence of banishment in +the wrong case, nothing will do but a capacity to understand the subject-matter +on which the immovable man is convinced, and fellowship with human travail, +both near and afar, to hinder us from scanning any deep experience lightly. +Shall we say, “Let the ages try the spirits, and see what they are +worth?” Why, we are the beginning of the ages, which can only be just by +virtue of just judgments in separate human breasts—separate yet combined. +Even steam-engines could not have got made without that condition, but must +have stayed in the mind of James Watt. +</p> + +<p> +This track of thinking was familiar enough to Deronda to have saved him from +any contemptuous prejudgment of Mordecai, even if their communication had been +free from that peculiar claim on himself strangely ushered in by some +long-growing preparation in the Jew’s agitated mind. This claim, indeed, +considered in what is called a rational way, might seem justifiably dismissed +as illusory and even preposterous; but it was precisely what turned +Mordecai’s hold on him from an appeal to his ready sympathy into a clutch +on his struggling conscience. Our consciences are not all of the same pattern, +an inner deliverance of fixed laws: they are the voice of sensibilities as +various as our memories (which also have their kinship and likeness). And +Deronda’s conscience included sensibilities beyond the common, enlarged +by his early habit of thinking himself imaginatively into the experience of +others. +</p> + +<p> +What was the claim this eager soul made upon him?—“You must believe +my beliefs—be moved by my reasons—hope my hopes—see the +vision I point to—behold a glory where I behold it!” To take such a +demand in the light of an obligation in any direct sense would have been +preposterous—to have seemed to admit it would have been dishonesty; and +Deronda, looking on the agitation of those moments, felt thankful that in the +midst of his compassion he had preserved himself from the bondage of false +concessions. The claim hung, too, on a supposition which might be—nay, +probably was—in discordance with the full fact: the supposition that he, +Deronda, was of Jewish blood. Was there ever a more hypothetic appeal? +</p> + +<p> +But since the age of thirteen Deronda had associated the deepest experience of +his affections with what was a pure supposition, namely, that Sir Hugo was his +father: that was a hypothesis which had been the source of passionate struggle +within him; by its light he had been accustomed to subdue feelings and to +cherish them. He had been well used to find a motive in a conception which +might be disproved; and he had been also used to think of some revelation that +might influence his view of the particular duties belonging to him. To be in a +state of suspense, which was also one of emotive activity and scruple, was a +familiar attitude of his conscience. +</p> + +<p> +And now, suppose that wish-begotten belief in his Jewish birth, and that +extravagant demand of discipleship, to be the foreshadowing of an actual +discovery and a genuine spiritual result: suppose that Mordecai’s ideas +made a real conquest over Deronda’s conviction? Nay, it was conceivable +that as Mordecai needed and believed that, he had found an active replenishment +of himself, so Deronda might receive from Mordecai’s mind the complete +ideal shape of that personal duty and citizenship which lay in his own thought +like sculptured fragments certifying some beauty yearned after but not +traceable by divination. +</p> + +<p> +As that possibility presented itself in his meditations, he was aware that it +would be called dreamy, and began to defend it. If the influence he imagined +himself submitting to had been that of some honored professor, some authority +in a seat of learning, some philosopher who had been accepted as a voice of the +age, would a thorough receptiveness toward direction have been ridiculed? Only +by those who hold it a sign of weakness to be obliged for an idea, and prefer +to hint that they have implicitly held in a more correct form whatever others +have stated with a sadly short-coming explicitness. After all, what was there +but vulgarity in taking the fact that Mordecai was a poor Jewish workman, and +that he was to be met perhaps on a sanded floor in the parlor of the <i>Hand +and Banner</i> as a reason for determining beforehand that there was not some +spiritual force within him that might have a determining effect on a +white-handed gentleman? There is a legend told of the Emperor Domitian, that +having heard of a Jewish family, of the house of David, whence the ruler of the +world was to spring, he sent for its members in alarm, but quickly released +them on observing that they had the hands of work-people—being of just +the opposite opinion with that Rabbi who stood waiting at the gate of Rome in +confidence that the Messiah would be found among the destitute who entered +there. Both Emperor and Rabbi were wrong in their trust of outward signs: +poverty and poor clothes are no sign of inspiration, said Deronda to his inward +objector, but they have gone with it in some remarkable cases. And to regard +discipleship as out of the question because of them, would be mere dullness of +imagination. +</p> + +<p> +A more plausible reason for putting discipleship out of the question was the +strain of visionary excitement in Mordecai, which turned his wishes into +overmastering impressions, and made him read outward facts as fulfillment. Was +such a temper of mind likely to accompany that wise estimate of consequences +which is the only safeguard from fatal error, even to ennobling motive? But it +remained to be seen whether that rare conjunction existed or not in Mordecai: +perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences +is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the +consequences it believes in. The inspirations of the world have come in that +way too: even strictly-measuring science could hardly have got on without that +forecasting ardor which feels the agitations of discovery beforehand, and has a +faith in its preconception that surmounts many failures of experiment. And in +relation to human motives and actions, passionate belief has a fuller efficacy. +Here enthusiasm may have the validity of proof, and happening in one soul, give +the type of what will one day be general. +</p> + +<p> +At least, Deronda argued, Mordecai’s visionary excitability was hardly a +reason for concluding beforehand that he was not worth listening to except for +pity’s sake. Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest +reasoners. Do they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and +illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too hastily +concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to hold the universe. +Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of +axioms, definitions, and propositions, with a final exclusion of fact signed +Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking will save us mortals from mistake in our +imperfect apprehension of the matter to be thought about. And since the +unemotional intellect may carry us into a mathematical dreamland where nothing +is but what is not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its +passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be—the more +comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility +of the artist seizes combinations which science explains and justifies. At any +rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be trusted. We must be patient +with the inevitable makeshift of our human thinking, whether in its sum total +or in the separate minds that have made the sum. Columbus had some impressions +about himself which we call superstitions, and used some arguments which we +disapprove; but he had also some sound physical conceptions, and he had the +passionate patience of genius to make them tell on mankind. The world has made +up its mind rather contemptuously about those who were deaf to Columbus. +</p> + +<p> +“My contempt for them binds me to see that I don’t adopt their +mistake on a small scale,” said Deronda, “and make myself deaf with +the assumption that there cannot be any momentous relation between this Jew and +me, simply because he has clad it in illusory notions. What I can be to him, or +he to me, may not at all depend on his persuasion about the way we came +together. To me the way seems made up of plainly discernible links. If I had +not found Mirah, it is probable that I should not have begun to be specially +interested in the Jews, and certainly I should not have gone on that loitering +search after an Ezra Cohen which made me pause at Ram’s book-shop and ask +the price of <i>Maimon</i>. Mordecai, on his side, had his visions of a +disciple, and he saw me by their light; I corresponded well enough with the +image his longing had created. He took me for one of his race. Suppose that his +impression—the elderly Jew at Frankfort seemed to have something like +it—suppose in spite of all presumptions to the contrary, that his +impression should somehow be proved true, and that I should come actually to +share any of the ideas he is devoted to? This is the only question which really +concerns the effect of our meeting on my life. +</p> + +<p> +“But if the issue should be quite different?—well, there will be +something painful to go through. I shall almost inevitably have to be an active +cause of that poor fellow’s crushing disappointment. Perhaps this issue +is the one I had need prepare myself for. I fear that no tenderness of mine can +make his suffering lighter. Would the alternative—that I should not +disappoint him—be less painful to me?” +</p> + +<p> +Here Deronda wavered. Feelings had lately been at work within him which had +very much modified the reluctance he would formerly have had to think of +himself as probably a Jew. And, if you like, he was romantic. That young energy +and spirit of adventure which have helped to create the world-wide legions of +youthful heroes going to seek the hidden tokens of their birth and its +inheritance of tasks, gave him a certain quivering interest in the bare +possibility that he was entering on a like track —all the more because +the track was one of thought as well as action. +</p> + +<p> +“The bare possibility.” He could not admit it to be more. The +belief that his father was an Englishman only grew firmer under the weak +assaults of unwarranted doubt. And that a moment should ever come in which that +belief was declared a delusion, was something of which Deronda would not say, +“I should be glad.” His life-long affection for Sir Hugo, stronger +than all his resentment, made him shrink from admitting that wish. +</p> + +<p> +Which way soever the truth might lie, he repeated to himself what he had said +to Mordecai—that he could not without farther reasons undertake to hasten +its discovery. Nay, he was tempted now to regard his uncertainty as a condition +to be cherished for the present. If further intercourse revealed nothing but +illusions as what he was expected to share in, the want of any valid evidence +that he was a Jew might save Mordecai the worst shock in the refusal of +fraternity. It might even be justifiable to use the uncertainty on this point +in keeping up a suspense which would induce Mordecai to accept those offices of +friendship that Deronda longed to urge on him. +</p> + +<p> +These were the meditations that busied Deronda in the interval of four days +before he could fulfill his promise to call for Mordecai at Ezra Cohen’s, +Sir Hugo’s demands on him often lasting to an hour so late as to put the +evening expedition to Holborn out of the question. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0042"></a> +CHAPTER XLII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Wenn es eine Stufenleiter von Leiden giebt, so hat Israel die höchste +Staffel erstiegen; wen die Dauer der Schmerzen und die Geduld, mit welcher sie +ertragen werden, adeln, so nehmen es die Juden mit den Hochgeborenen aller +Länder auf; wenn eine Literatur reich genannt wird, die wenige klassische +Trauerspiele besitzt, welcher Platz gebührt dann einer Tragodie die anderthalb +Jahrtausende wahrt, gedichtet und dargestellt von den Helden +selber?”—Z<small>UNZ</small>: <i>Die Synagogale Poesie des +Mittelalters.</i> +</p> + +<p> +“If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all the +nations—if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are +borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land—if a +literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what +shall we say to a National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which +the poets and the actors were also the heroes?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda had lately been reading that passage of Zunz, and it occurred to him by +way of contrast when he was going to the Cohens, who certainly bore no obvious +stamp of distinction in sorrow or in any other form of aristocracy. Ezra Cohen +was not clad in the sublime pathos of the martyr, and his taste for +money-getting seemed to be favored with that success which has been the most +exasperating difference in the greed of Jews during all the ages of their +dispersion. This Jeshurun of a pawnbroker was not a symbol of the great Jewish +tragedy; and yet was there not something typical in the fact that a life like +Mordecai’s—a frail incorporation of the national consciousness, +breathing with difficult breath—was nested in the self-gratulating +ignorant prosperity of the Cohens? +</p> + +<p> +Glistening was the gladness in their faces when Deronda reappeared among them. +Cohen himself took occasion to intimate that although the diamond ring, let +alone a little longer, would have bred more money, he did not mind +<i>that</i>—not a sixpence—when compared with the pleasure of the +women and children in seeing a young gentleman whose first visit had been so +agreeable that they had “done nothing but talk of it ever since.” +Young Mrs. Cohen was very sorry that baby was asleep, and then very glad that +Adelaide was not yet gone to bed, entreating Deronda not to stay in the shop, +but to go forthwith into the parlor to see “mother and the +children.” He willingly accepted the invitation, having provided himself +with portable presents; a set of paper figures for Adelaide, and an ivory cup +and ball for Jacob. +</p> + +<p> +The grandmother had a pack of cards before her and was making +“plates” with the children. A plate had just been thrown down and +kept itself whole. +</p> + +<p> +“Stop!” said Jacob, running to Deronda as he entered. +“Don’t tread on my plate. Stop and see me throw it up again.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda complied, exchanging a smile of understanding with the grandmother, and +the plate bore several tossings before it came to pieces; then the visitor was +allowed to come forward and seat himself. He observed that the door from which +Mordecai had issued on the former visit was now closed, but he wished to show +his interest in the Cohens before disclosing a yet stronger interest in their +singular inmate. +</p> + +<p> +It was not until he had Adelaide on his knee, and was setting up the paper +figures in their dance on the table, while Jacob was already practicing with +the cup and ball, that Deronda said, +</p> + +<p> +“Is Mordecai in just now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is he, Addy?” said Cohen, who had seized an interval of +business to come and look on. +</p> + +<p> +“In the workroom there,” said his wife, nodding toward the closed +door. +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is, sir,” said Cohen, “we don’t know +what’s come to him this last day or two. He’s always what I may +call a little touched, you know”—here Cohen pointed to his own +forehead—“not quite so rational in all things, like you and me; but +he’s mostly wonderful regular and industrious so far as a poor creature +can be, and takes as much delight in the boy as anybody could. But this last +day or two he’s been moving about like a sleep-walker, or else sitting as +still as a wax figure.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the disease, poor dear creature,” said the grandmother, +tenderly. “I doubt whether he can stand long against it.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I think its only something he’s got in his head,” said +Mrs. Cohen the younger. “He’s been turning over writing +continually, and when I speak to him it takes him ever so long to hear and +answer.” +</p> + +<p> +“You may think us a little weak ourselves,” said Cohen, +apologetically. “But my wife and mother wouldn’t part with him if +he was a still worse incumbrance. It isn’t that we don’t know the +long and short of matters, but it’s our principle. There’s fools do +business at a loss and don’t know it. I’m not one of +’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Mordecai carries a blessing inside him,” said the grandmother. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s got something the matter inside him,” said Jacob, +coming up to correct this erratum of his grandmother’s. “He said he +couldn’t talk to me, and he wouldn’t have a bit o’ +bun.” +</p> + +<p> +“So far from wondering at your feeling for him,” said Deronda, +“I already feel something of the same sort myself. I have lately talked +to him at Ram’s book-shop—in fact, I promised to call for him here, +that we might go out together.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it, then!” said Cohen, slapping his knee. +“He’s been expecting you, and it’s taken hold of him. I +suppose he talks about his learning to you. It’s uncommonly kind of +<i>you</i>, sir; for I don’t suppose there’s much to be got out of +it, else it wouldn’t have left him where he is. But there’s the +shop.” Cohen hurried out, and Jacob, who had been listening +inconveniently near to Deronda’s elbow, said to him with obliging +familiarity, “I’ll call Mordecai for you, if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, Jacob,” said his mother; “open the door for the +gentleman, and let him go in himself Hush! Don’t make a noise.” +</p> + +<p> +Skillful Jacob seemed to enter into the play, and turned the handle of the door +as noiselessly as possible, while Deronda went behind him and stood on the +threshold. The small room was lit only by a dying fire and one candle with a +shade over it. On the board fixed under the window, various objects of jewelry +were scattered: some books were heaped in the corner beyond them. Mordecai was +seated on a high chair at the board with his back to the door, his hands +resting on each other and on the board, a watch propped on a stand before him. +He was in a state of expectation as sickening as that of a prisoner listening +for the delayed deliverance—when he heard Deronda’s voice saying, +“I am come for you. Are you ready?” +</p> + +<p> +Immediately he turned without speaking, seized his furred cap which lay near, +and moved to join Deronda. It was but a moment before they were both in the +sitting-room, and Jacob, noticing the change in his friend’s air and +expression, seized him by the arm and said, “See my cup and ball!” +sending the ball up close to Mordecai’s face, as something likely to +cheer a convalescent. It was a sign of the relieved tension in Mordecai’s +mind that he could smile and say, “Fine, fine!” +</p> + +<p> +“You have forgotten your greatcoat and comforter,” said young Mrs. +Cohen, and he went back into the workroom and got them. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s come to life again, do you see?” said Cohen, who had +re-entered—speaking in an undertone. “I told you so: I’m +mostly right.” Then in his usual voice, “Well, sir, we +mustn’t detain you now, I suppose; but I hope this isn’t the last +time we shall see you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall you come again?” said Jacob, advancing. “See, I can +catch the ball; I’ll bet I catch it without stopping, if you come +again.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has clever hands,” said Deronda, looking at the grandmother. +“Which side of the family does he get them from?” +</p> + +<p> +But the grandmother only nodded towards her son, who said promptly, “My +side. My wife’s family are not in that line. But bless your soul! ours is +a sort of cleverness as good as gutta percha; you can twist it which way you +like. There’s nothing some old gentlemen won’t do if you set +’em to it.” Here Cohen winked down at Jacob’s back, but it +was doubtful whether this judicious allusiveness answered its purpose, for its +subject gave a nasal whinnying laugh and stamped about singing, “Old +gentlemen, old gentlemen,” in chiming cadence. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda thought, “I shall never know anything decisive about these people +until I ask Cohen pointblank whether he lost a sister named Mirah when she was +six years old.” The decisive moment did not yet seem easy for him to +face. Still his first sense of repulsion at the commonness of these people was +beginning to be tempered with kindlier feeling. However unrefined their airs +and speech might be, he was forced to admit some moral refinement in their +treatment of the consumptive workman, whose mental distinction impressed them +chiefly as a harmless, silent raving. +</p> + +<p> +“The Cohens seem to have an affection for you,” said Deronda, as +soon as he and Mordecai were off the doorstep. +</p> + +<p> +“And I for them,” was the immediate answer. “They have the +heart of the Israelite within them, though they are as the horse and the mule, +without understanding beyond the narrow path they tread.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have caused you some uneasiness, I fear,” said Deronda, +“by my slowness in fulfilling my promise. I wished to come yesterday, but +I found it impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—yes, I trusted you. But it is true I have been uneasy, for the +spirit of my youth has been stirred within me, and this body is not strong +enough to bear the beating of its wings. I am as a man bound and imprisoned +through long years: behold him brought to speech of his fellow and his limbs +set free: he weeps, he totters, the joy within him threatens to break and +overthrow the tabernacle of flesh.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must not speak too much in this evening air,” said Deronda, +feeling Mordecai’s words of reliance like so many cords binding him +painfully. “Cover your mouth with the woolen scarf. We are going to the +<i>Hand and Banner</i>, I suppose, and shall be in private there?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, that is my trouble that you did not come yesterday. For this is the +evening of the club I spoke of, and we might not have any minutes alone until +late, when all the rest are gone. Perhaps we had better seek another place. But +I am used to that only. In new places the outer world presses on me and narrows +the inward vision. And the people there are familiar with my face.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mind the club if I am allowed to go in,” said +Deronda. “It is enough that you like this place best. If we have not +enough time I will come again. What sort of club is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is called ‘The Philosophers.’ They are few—like the +cedars of Lebanon—poor men given to thought. But none so poor as I am: +and sometimes visitors of higher worldly rank have been brought. We are allowed +to introduce a friend, who is interested in our topics. Each orders beer or +some other kind of drink, in payment for the room. Most of them smoke. I have +gone when I could, for there are other men of my race who come, and sometimes I +have broken silence. I have pleased myself with a faint likeness between these +poor philosophers and the Masters who handed down the thought of our +race—the great Transmitters, who labored with their hands for scant +bread, but preserved and enlarged for us the heritage of memory, and saved the +soul of Israel alive as a seed among the tombs. The heart pleases itself with +faint resemblances.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be very glad to go and sit among them, if that will suit you. It +is a sort of meeting I should like to join in,” said Deronda, not without +relief in the prospect of an interval before he went through the strain of his +next private conversation with Mordecai. +</p> + +<p> +In three minutes they had opened the glazed door with the red curtain, and were +in the little parlor, hardly much more than fifteen feet square, where the +gaslight shone through a slight haze of smoke on what to Deronda was a new and +striking scene. Half-a-dozen men of various ages, from between twenty and +thirty to fifty, all shabbily dressed, most of them with clay pipes in their +mouths, were listening with a look of concentrated intelligence to a man in a +pepper-and-salt dress, with blonde hair, short nose, broad forehead and general +breadth, who, holding his pipe slightly uplifted in the left hand, and beating +his knee with the right, was just finishing a quotation from Shelley (the +comparison of the avalanche in his “Prometheus Unbound”) +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth<br/> +Is loosened, and the nations echo round.” +</p> + +<p> +The entrance of the new-comers broke the fixity of attention, and called for +re-arrangement of seats in the too narrow semicircle round the fire-place and +the table holding the glasses, spare pipes and tobacco. This was the soberest +of clubs; but sobriety is no reason why smoking and “taking +something” should be less imperiously needed as a means of getting a +decent status in company and debate. Mordecai was received with welcoming +voices which had a slight cadence of compassion in them, but naturally all +glances passed immediately to his companion. +</p> + +<p> +“I have brought a friend who is interested in our subjects,” said +Mordecai. “He has traveled and studied much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is the gentlemen anonymous? Is he a Great Unknown?” said the +broad-chested quoter of Shelley, with a humorous air. +</p> + +<p> +“My name is Daniel Deronda. I am unknown, but not in any sense +great.” The smile breaking over the stranger’s grave face as he +said this was so agreeable that there was a general indistinct murmur, +equivalent to a “Hear, hear,” and the broad man said, +</p> + +<p> +“You recommend the name, sir, and are welcome. Here, Mordecai, come to +this corner against me,” he added, evidently wishing to give the coziest +place to the one who most needed it. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda was well satisfied to get a seat on the opposite side, where his +general survey of the party easily included Mordecai, who remained an eminently +striking object in this group of sharply-characterized figures, more than one +of whom, even to Daniel’s little exercised discrimination, seemed +probably of Jewish descent. +</p> + +<p> +In fact pure English blood (if leech or lancet can furnish us with the precise +product) did not declare itself predominantly in the party at present +assembled. Miller, the broad man, an exceptional second-hand bookseller who +knew the insides of books, had at least grand-parents who called themselves +German, and possibly far-away ancestors who denied themselves to be Jews; +Buchan, the saddler, was Scotch; Pash, the watchmaker, was a small, dark, +vivacious, triple-baked Jew; Gideon, the optical instrument maker, was a Jew of +the red-haired, generous-featured type easily passing for Englishmen of +unusually cordial manners: and Croop, the dark-eyed shoemaker, was probably +more Celtic than he knew. Only three would have been discernable everywhere as +Englishmen: the wood-inlayer Goodwin, well-built, open-faced, pleasant-voiced; +the florid laboratory assistant Marrables; and Lily, the pale, neat-faced +copying-clerk, whose light-brown hair was set up in a small parallelogram above +his well-filled forehead, and whose shirt, taken with an otherwise seedy +costume, had a freshness that might be called insular, and perhaps even +something narrower. +</p> + +<p> +Certainly a company select of the select among poor men, being drawn together +by a taste not prevalent even among the privileged heirs of learning and its +institutions; and not likely to amuse any gentleman in search of crime or low +comedy as the ground of interest in people whose weekly income is only +divisible into shillings. Deronda, even if he had not been more than usually +inclined to gravity under the influence of what was pending between him and +Mordecai, would not have set himself to find food for laughter in the various +shades of departure from the tone of polished society sure to be observable in +the air and talk of these men who had probably snatched knowledge as most of us +snatch indulgences, making the utmost of scant opportunity. He looked around +him with the quiet air of respect habitual to him among equals, ordered whisky +and water, and offered the contents of his cigar-case, which, +characteristically enough, he always carried and hardly ever used for his own +behoof, having reasons for not smoking himself, but liking to indulge others. +Perhaps it was his weakness to be afraid of seeming straight-laced, and turning +himself into a sort of diagram instead of a growth which can exercise the +guiding attraction of fellowship. That he made a decidedly winning impression +on the company was proved by their showing themselves no less at ease than +before, and desirous of quickly resuming their interrupted talk. +</p> + +<p> +“This is what I call one of our touch-and-go nights, sir,” said +Miller, who was implicitly accepted as a sort of moderator—on addressing +Deronda by way of explanation, and nodding toward each person whose name he +mentioned. “Sometimes we stick pretty close to the point. But to-night our +friend Pash, there, brought up the law of progress; and we got on statistics; +then Lily, there, saying we knew well enough before counting that in the same +state of society the same sort of things would happen, and it was no more +wonder that quantities should remain the same, than that qualities should +remain the same, for in relation to society numbers are qualities—the +number of drunkards is a quality in society—the numbers are an index to +the qualities, and give us no instruction, only setting us to consider the +causes of difference between different social states—Lily saying this, we +went off on the causes of social change, and when you came in I was going upon +the power of ideas, which I hold to be the main transforming cause.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t hold with you there, Miller,” said Goodwin, the +inlayer, more concerned to carry on the subject than to wait for a word from +the new guest. “For either you mean so many sorts of things by ideas that +I get no knowledge by what you say, any more than if you said light was a +cause; or else you mean a particular sort of ideas, and then I go against your +meaning as too narrow. For, look at it in one way, all actions men put a bit of +thought into are ideas—say, sowing seed, or making a canoe, or baking +clay; and such ideas as these work themselves into life and go on growing with +it, but they can’t go apart from the material that set them to work and +makes a medium for them. It’s the nature of wood and stone yielding to +the knife that raises the idea of shaping them, and with plenty of wood and +stone the shaping will go on. I look at it, that such ideas as are mixed +straight away with all the other elements of life are powerful along with +’em. The slower the mixing, the less power they have. And as to the +causes of social change, I look at it in this way—ideas are a sort of +parliament, but there’s a commonwealth outside and a good deal of the +commonwealth is working at change without knowing what the parliament is +doing.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if you take ready mixing as your test of power,” said Pash, +“some of the least practical ideas beat everything. They spread without +being understood, and enter into the language without being thought of.” +</p> + +<p> +“They may act by changing the distribution of gases,” said +Marrables; “instruments are getting so fine now, men may come to register +the spread of a theory by observed changes in the atmosphere and corresponding +changes in the nerves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Pash, his dark face lighting up rather impishly, +“there is the idea of nationalities; I dare say the wild asses are +snuffing it, and getting more gregarious.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t share that idea?” said Deronda, finding a piquant +incongruity between Pash’s sarcasm and the strong stamp of race on his +features. +</p> + +<p> +“Say, rather, he does not share that spirit,” said Mordecai, who +had turned a melancholy glance on Pash. “Unless nationality is a feeling, +what force can it have as an idea?” +</p> + +<p> +“Granted, Mordecai,” said Pash, quite good-humoredly. “And as +the feeling of nationality is dying, I take the idea to be no better than a +ghost, already walking to announce the death.” +</p> + +<p> +“A sentiment may seem to be dying and yet revive into strong life,” +said Deronda. “Nations have revived. We may live to see a great outburst +of force in the Arabs, who are being inspired with a new zeal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Amen, amen,” said Mordecai, looking at Deronda with a delight +which was the beginning of recovered energy: his attitude was more upright, his +face was less worn. +</p> + +<p> +“That may hold with backward nations,” said Pash, “but with +us in Europe the sentiment of nationality is destined to die out. It will last +a little longer in the quarters where oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The +whole current of progress is setting against it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay,” said Buchan, in a rapid thin Scotch tone which was like the +letting in of a little cool air on the conversation, “ye’ve done +well to bring us round to the point. Ye’re all agreed that societies +change—not always and everywhere—but on the whole and in the long +run. Now, with all deference, I would beg t’ observe that we have got to +examine the nature of changes before we have a warrant to call them progress, +which word is supposed to include a bettering, though I apprehend it to be +ill-chosen for that purpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or +a precipice. And the questions I would put are three: Is all change in the +direction of progress? if not, how shall we discern which change is progress +and which not? and thirdly, how far and in what way can we act upon the course +of change so as to promote it where it is beneficial, and divert it where it is +injurious?” +</p> + +<p> +But Buchan’s attempt to impose his method on the talk was a failure. Lily +immediately said, +</p> + +<p> +“Change and progress are merged in the idea of development. The laws of +development are being discovered, and changes taking place according to them +are necessarily progressive; that is to say, it we have any notion of progress +or improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake.” +</p> + +<p> +“I really can’t see how you arrive at that sort of certitude about +changes by calling them development,” said Deronda. “There will +still remain the degrees of inevitableness in relation to our own will and +acts, and the degrees of wisdom in hastening or retarding; there will still +remain the danger of mistaking a tendency which should be resisted for an +inevitable law that we must adjust ourselves to,—which seems to me as bad +a superstition or false god as any that has been set up without the ceremonies +of philosophizing.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a truth,” said Mordecai. “Woe to the men who see no +place for resistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a passage, and +a new unfolding of life whereof the seed is more perfect, more charged with the +elements that are pregnant with diviner form. The life of a people grows, it is +knit together and yet expanded, in joy and sorrow, in thought and action; it +absorbs the thought of other nations into its own forms, and gives back the +thought as new wealth to the world; it is a power and an organ in the great +body of the nations. But there may come a check, an arrest; memories may be +stifled, and love may be faint for the lack of them; or memories may shrink +into withered relics—the soul of a people, whereby they know themselves +to be one, may seem to be dying for want of common action. But who shall say, +‘The fountain of their life is dried up, they shall forever cease to be a +nation?’ Who shall say it? Not he who feels the life of his people +stirring within his own. Shall he say, ‘That way events are wending, I +will not resist?’ His very soul is resistance, and is as a seed of fire +that may enkindle the souls of multitudes, and make a new pathway for +events.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t deny patriotism,” said Gideon, “but we all +know you have a particular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai’s way of +thinking, I suppose.” Here Gideon had turned to Deronda, who sat next to +him, but without waiting for an answer he went on. “I’m a rational +Jew myself. I stand by my people as a sort of family relations, and I am for +keeping up our worship in a rational way. I don’t approve of our people +getting baptised, because I don’t believe in a Jew’s conversion to +the Gentile part of Christianity. And now we have political equality, +there’s no excuse for a pretense of that sort. But I am for getting rid +of all of our superstitions and exclusiveness. There’s no reason now why +we shouldn’t melt gradually into the populations we live among. +That’s the order of the day in point of progress. I would as soon my +children married Christians as Jews. And I’m for the old maxim, ‘A +man’s country is where he’s well off.’” +</p> + +<p> +“That country’s not so easy to find, Gideon,” said the rapid +Pash, with a shrug and grimace. “You get ten shillings a-week more than I +do, and have only half the number of children. If somebody will introduce a +brisk trade in watches among the ‘Jerusalem wares,’ I’ll +go—eh, Mordecai, what do you say?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, all ear for these hints of Mordecai’s opinion, was inwardly +wondering at his persistence in coming to this club. For an enthusiastic spirit +to meet continually the fixed indifference of men familiar with the object of +his enthusiasm is the acceptance of a slow martyrdom, beside which the fate of +a missionary tomahawked without any considerate rejection of his doctrines +seems hardly worthy of compassion. But Mordecai gave no sign of shrinking: this +was a moment of spiritual fullness, and he cared more for the utterance of his +faith than for its immediate reception. With a fervor which had no temper in +it, but seemed rather the rush of feeling in the opportunity of speech, he +answered Pash:, +</p> + +<p> +“What I say is, let every man keep far away from the brotherhood and +inheritance he despises. Thousands on thousands of our race have mixed with the +Gentiles as Celt with Saxon, and they may inherit the blessing that belongs to +the Gentile. You cannot follow them. You are one of the multitudes over this +globe who must walk among the nations and be known as Jews, and with words on +their lips which mean, ‘I wish I had not been born a Jew, I disown any +bond with the long travail of my race, I will outdo the Gentile in mocking at +our separateness,’ they all the while feel breathing on them the breath +of contempt because they are Jews, and they will breathe it back poisonously. +Can a fresh-made garment of citizenship weave itself straightway into the flesh +and change the slow deposit of eighteen centuries? What is the citizenship of +him who walks among a people he has no hardy kindred and fellowship with, and +has lost the sense of brotherhood with his own race? It is a charter of selfish +ambition and rivalry in low greed. He is an alien of spirit, whatever he may be +in form; he sucks the blood of mankind, he is not a man, sharing in no loves, +sharing in no subjection of the soul, he mocks it all. Is it not truth I speak, +Pash?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly, Mordecai,” said Pash, “if you mean that I think +the worse of myself for being a Jew. What I thank our fathers for is that there +are fewer blockheads among us than among other races. But perhaps you are right +in thinking the Christians don’t like me so well for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Catholics and Protestants have not liked each other much better,” +said the genial Gideon. “We must wait patiently for prejudices to die +out. Many of our people are on a footing with the best, and there’s been +a good filtering of our blood into high families. I am for making our +expectations rational.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so am I!” said Mordecai, quickly, leaning forward with the +eagerness of one who pleads in some decisive crisis, his long, thin hands +clasped together on his lap. “I, too, claim to be a rational Jew. But +what is it to be rational—what is it to feel the light of the divine +reason growing stronger within and without? It is to see more and more of the +hidden bonds that bind and consecrate change as a dependent growth—yea, +consecrate it with kinship: the past becomes my parent and the future stretches +toward me the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap +of special kindred that makes the families of men rich in interchanged wealth, +and various as the forests are various with the glory of the cedar and the +palm? When it is rational to say, ‘I know not my father or my mother, let +my children be aliens to me, that no prayer of mine may touch them,’ then +it will be rational for the Jew to say, ‘I will seek to know no +difference between me and the Gentile, I will not cherish the prophetic +consciousness of our nationality—let the Hebrew cease to be, and let all +his memorials be antiquarian trifles, dead as the wall-paintings of a +conjectured race. Yet let his child learn by rote the speech of the Greek, +where he abjures his fellow-citizens by the bravery of those who fought +foremost at Marathon—let him learn to say that was noble in the Greek, +that is the spirit of an immortal nation! But the Jew has no memories that bind +him to action; let him laugh that his nation is degraded from a nation; let him +hold the monuments of his law which carried within its frame the breath of +social justice, of charity, and of household sanctities—let him hold the +energy of the prophets, the patient care of the Masters, the fortitude of +martyred generations, as mere stuff for a professorship. The business of the +Jew in all things is to be even as the rich Gentile.’” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai threw himself back in his chair, and there was a moment’s +silence. Not one member of the club shared his point of view or his emotion; +but his whole personality and speech had on them the effect of a dramatic +representation which had some pathos in it, though no practical consequences; +and usually he was at once indulged and contradicted. Deronda’s mind went +back upon what must have been the tragic pressure of outward conditions +hindering this man, whose force he felt to be telling on himself, from making +any world for his thought in the minds of others—like a poet among people +of a strange speech, who may have a poetry of their own, but have no ear for +his cadence, no answering thrill to his discovery of the latent virtues in his +mother tongue. +</p> + +<p> +The cool Buchan was the first to speak, and hint the loss of time. “I +submit,” said he, “that ye’re traveling away from the +questions I put concerning progress.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say they’re levanting, Buchan,” said Miller, who liked his +joke, and would not have objected to be called Voltairian. “Never mind. +Let us have a Jewish night; we’ve not had one for a long while. Let us +take the discussion on Jewish ground. I suppose we’ve no prejudice here; +we’re all philosophers; and we like our friends Mordecai, Pash, and +Gideon, as well as if they were no more kin to Abraham than the rest of us. +We’re all related through Adam, until further showing to the contrary, +and if you look into history we’ve all got some discreditable +forefathers. So I mean no offence when I say I don’t think any great +things of the part the Jewish people have played in the world. What then? I +think they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we +don’t want any men to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or +yellow—I know I’ve just given my half-crown to the contrary. And +that reminds me, I’ve a curious old German book—I can’t read +it myself, but a friend of mine was reading out of it to me the other +day—about the prejudices against the Jews, and the stories used to be +told against ’em, and what do you think one was? Why, that they’re +punished with a bad odor in their bodies; and <i>that</i>, says the author, +date 1715 (I’ve just been pricing and marking the book this very +morning)—that is true, for the ancients spoke of it. But then, he says, +the other things are fables, such as that the odor goes away all at once when +they’re baptized, and that every one of the ten tribes, mind you, all the +ten being concerned in the crucifixion, has got a particular punishment over +and above the smell:—Asher, I remember, has the right arm a handbreadth +shorter than the left, and Naphthali has pig’s ears and a smell of live +pork. What do you think of that? There’s been a good deal of fun made of +rabbinical fables, but in point of fables my opinion is, that all over the +world it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. However, as I said +before, I hold with the philosophers of the last century that the Jews have +played no great part as a people, though Pash will have it they’re clever +enough to beat all the rest of the world. But if so, I ask, why haven’t +they done it?” +</p> + +<p> +“For the same reason that the cleverest men in the country don’t +get themselves or their ideas into Parliament,” said the ready Pash; +“because the blockheads are too many for ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is a vain question,” said Mordecai, “whether our people +would beat the rest of the world. Each nation has its own work, and is a member +of the world, enriched by the work of each. But it is true, as Jehuda-ha-Levi +first said, that Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core +of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the +reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life into +religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak and to the +dumb creature that wears the yoke for us.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re not behind any nation in arrogance,” said Lily; +“and if they have got in the rear, it has not been because they were +over-modest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, every nation brags in its turn,” said Miller. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Pash, “and some of them in the Hebrew +text.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are a stand-still +people,” said Lily. “They are the type of obstinate adherence to +the superannuated. They may show good abilities when they take up liberal +ideas, but as a race they have no development in them.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is false!” said Mordecai, leaning forward again with his +former eagerness. “Let their history be known and examined; let the seed +be sifted, let its beginning be traced to the weed of the wilderness—the +more glorious will be the energy that transformed it. Where else is there a +nation of whom it may be as truly said that their religion and law and moral +life mingled as the stream of blood in the heart and made one +growth—where else a people who kept and enlarged their spiritual store at +the very time when they are hated with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires +that chase the wild beast from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman, that +swimming to save his life he held the roll of his writings between his teeth +and saved them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our +race? They struggled to keep their place among the nations like +heroes—yea, when the hand was hacked off, they clung with their teeth; +but when the plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of +their national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with +the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, ‘The spirit is alive, +let us make it a lasting habitation—lasting because movable—so that +it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn may be +rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on an unchangeable +foundation.’ They said it and they wrought it, though often breathing +with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded amid a heap of slain. +Hooted and scared like the unknown dog, the Hebrew made himself envied for his +wealth and wisdom, and was bled of them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he +absorbed knowledge, he diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia +working the mines of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The +native spirit of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a +seed and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy; and while the +Gentile, who had said, ‘What is yours is ours, and no longer +yours,’ was reading the letter of our law as a dark inscription, or was +turning its parchments into shoe-soles for an army rabid with lust and cruelty, +our Masters were still enlarging and illuminating with fresh-fed +interpretation. But the dispersion was wide, the yoke of oppression was a +spiked torture as well as a load; the exile was forced afar among brutish +people, where the consciousness of his race was no clearer to him than the +light of the sun to our fathers in the Roman persecution, who had their +hiding-place in a cave, and knew not that it was day save by the dimmer burning +of their candles. What wonder that multitudes of our people are ignorant, +narrow, superstitious? What wonder?” +</p> + +<p> +Here Mordecai, whose seat was next the fire-place, rose and leaned his arm on +the little shelf; his excitement had risen, though his voice, which had begun +with unusual strength, was getting hoarser. +</p> + +<p> +“What wonder? The night is unto them, that they have no vision; in their +darkness they are unable to divine; the sun is gone down over the prophets, and +the day is dark above them; their observances are as nameless relics. But which +among the chief of the Gentile nations has not an ignorant multitude? They +scorn our people’s ignorant observance; but the most accursed ignorance +is that which has no observance—sunk to the cunning greed of the fox, to +which all law is no more than a trap or the cry of the worrying hound. There is +a degradation deep down below the memory that has withered into superstition. +In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and +make the confession of the divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. +Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth +and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a +polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity +of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the +West—which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, +as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, +and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and +superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the +illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive +as the young offspring of beloved memories.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s voice had sunk, but with the hectic brilliancy of his gaze it +was not the less impressive. His extraordinary excitement was certainly due to +Deronda’s presence: it was to Deronda that he was speaking, and the +moment had a testamentary solemnity for him which rallied all his powers. Yet +the presence of those other familiar men promoted expression, for they embodied +the indifference which gave a resistant energy to his speech. Not that he +looked at Deronda: he seemed to see nothing immediately around him, and if any +one had grasped him he would probably not have known it. Again the former words +came back to Deronda’s mind,—“You must hope my +hopes—see the vision I point to—behold a glory where I behold +it.” They came now with gathered pathos. Before him stood, as a living, +suffering reality, what hitherto he had only seen as an effort of imagination, +which, in its comparative faintness, yet carried a suspicion, of being +exaggerated: a man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, +consciously within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in +an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, except for its +possible making some obstruction to a conceived good which he would never share +except as a brief inward vision—a day afar off, whose sun would never +warm him, but into which he threw his soul’s desire, with a passion often +wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth. It was something more than a +grandiose transfiguration of the parental love that toils, renounces, endures, +resists the suicidal promptings of despair—all because of the little +ones, whose future becomes present to the yearning gaze of anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +All eyes were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down again, and none with unkindness; +but it happened that the one who felt the most kindly was the most prompted to +speak in opposition. This was the genial and rational Gideon, who also was not +without a sense that he was addressing the guest of the evening. He said, +</p> + +<p> +“You have your own way of looking at things, Mordecai, and as you say, +your own way seems to you rational. I know you don’t hold with the +restoration of Judea by miracle, and so on; but you are as well aware as I am +that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jews and +Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine, it has been +perverted by superstition till it’s as demoralizing as the old poor-law. +The raff and scum go there to be maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be +taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when they die. It’s no use +fighting against facts. We must look where they point; that’s what I call +rationality. The most learned and liberal men among us who are attached to our +religion are for clearing our liturgy of all such notions as a literal +fulfillment of the prophecies about restoration, and so on. Prune it of a few +useless rites and literal interpretations of that sort, and our religion is the +simplest of all religions, and makes no barrier, but a union, between us and +the rest of the world.” +</p> + +<p> +“As plain as a pike-staff,” said Pash, with an ironical laugh. +“You pluck it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark, shave off +the knots, and smooth it at top and bottom; put it where you will, it will do +no harm, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you may throw it +on the bonfire of scoured rubbish. I don’t see why our rubbish is to be +held sacred any more than the rubbish of Brahmanism or Buddhism.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Mordecai, “no, Pash, because you have lost the +heart of the Jew. Community was felt before it was called good. I praise no +superstition, I praise the living fountains of enlarging belief. What is +growth, completion, development? You began with that question, I apply it to +the history of our people. I say that the effect of our separateness will not +be completed and have its highest transformation unless our race takes on again +the character of a nationality. That is the fulfillment of the religious trust +that moulded them into a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of +the world. What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that +multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile +populations as a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts +spread afar; they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jeweled +breastplate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all +knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political counselors, who +carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all +climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new +device—let them say, ‘we will lift up a standard, we will unite in +a labor hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a +worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their +separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood.’ They have wealth enough to +redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of +the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there no +prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle with shame +at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk gazes at as at the +fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena? There is store of wisdom +among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the +old—a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which +shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more +than the brightness of Western freedom amid the despotisms of the East. Then +our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and +execute; the outraged Jew shall have a defense in the court of nations, as the +outraged Englishmen of America. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For +there will be a community in the van of the East which carries the culture and +the sympathies of every great nation in its bosom: there will be a land set for +a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for +the West. Difficulties? I know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of +sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and the work will +begin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, we may safely admit that, Mordecai,” said Pash. “When +there are great men on ’Change, and high-flying professors converted to +your doctrine, difficulties will vanish like smoke.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, inclined by nature to take the side of those on whom the arrows of +scorn were falling, could not help replying to Pash’s outfling, and said, +</p> + +<p> +“If we look back to the history of efforts which have made great changes, +it is astonishing how many of them seemed hopeless to those who looked on in +the beginning. +</p> + +<p> +“Take what we have all heard and seen something of—the effort after +the unity of Italy, which we are sure soon to see accomplished to the very last +boundary. Look into Mazzini’s account of his first yearning, when he was +a boy, after a restored greatness and a new freedom to Italy, and of his first +efforts as a young man to rouse the same feelings in other young men, and get +them to work toward a united nationality. Almost everything seemed against him; +his countrymen were ignorant or indifferent, governments hostile, Europe +incredulous. Of course the scorners often seemed wise. Yet you see the prophecy +lay with him. As long as there is a remnant of national consciousness, I +suppose nobody will deny that there may be a new stirring of memories and hopes +which may inspire arduous action.” +</p> + +<p> +“Amen,” said Mordecai, to whom Deronda’s words were a +cordial. “What is needed is the leaven—what is needed is the seed +of fire. The heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives +in their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning exultation of +herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings on +the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot divide into speech. Let the torch of +visible community be lit! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great +outward deed, and let there be another great migration, another choosing of +Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the +earth, even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, +but who still have a national hearth and a tribunal of national opinion. Will +any say ‘It cannot be’? Baruch Spinoza had not a faithful Jewish +heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect at the breasts of Jewish +tradition. He laid bare his father’s nakedness and said, ‘They who +scorn him have the higher wisdom.’ Yet Baruch Spinoza confessed, he saw +not why Israel should not again be a chosen nation. Who says that the history +and literature of our race are dead? Are they not as living as the history and +literature of Greece and Rome, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the +thought of Europe, and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an +inheritance dug from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to +quiver in millions of human frames.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai had stretched his arms upward, and his long thin hands quivered in the +air for a moment after he had ceased to speak. Gideon was certainly a little +moved, for though there was no long pause before he made a remark in objection, +his tone was more mild and deprecatory than before; Pash, meanwhile, pressing +his lips together, rubbing his black head with both his hands and wrinkling his +brow horizontally, with the expression of one who differs from every speaker, +but does not think it worth while to say so. There is a sort of human paste +that when it comes near the fire of enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape. +</p> + +<p> +“It may seem well enough on one side to make so much of our memories and +inheritance as you do, Mordecai,” said Gideon; “but there’s +another side. It isn’t all gratitude and harmless glory. Our people have +inherited a good deal of hatred. There’s a pretty lot of curses still +flying about, and stiff settled rancor inherited from the times of persecution. +How will you justify keeping one sort of memory and throwing away the other? +There are ugly debts standing on both sides.” +</p> + +<p> +“I justify the choice as all other choice is justified,” said +Mordecai. “I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for +them, but the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our +religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of aught but +wrong. The Master has said, an offence against man is worse than an offence +against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the breasts of Jews, who are +children of the ignorant and oppressed—what wonder, since there is hatred +in the breasts of Christians? Our national life was a growing light. Let the +central fire be kindled again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and +scorned of our race will learn to think of their sacred land, not as a place +for saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic +where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the old, +purified and enriched by the experience our greatest sons have gathered from +the life of the ages. How long is it?—only two centuries since a vessel +carried over the ocean the beginning of the great North American nation. The +people grew like meeting waters—they were various in habit and +sect—there came a time, a century ago, when they needed a polity, and +there were heroes of peace among them. What had they to form a polity with but +memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a better? Let our wise and +wealthy show themselves heroes. They have the memories of the East and West, +and they have the full vision of a better. A new Persia with a purified +religion magnified itself in art and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised +between East and West—a covenant of reconciliation. Will any say, the +prophetic vision of your race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry: +the angel of progress has no message for Judaism—it is a half-buried city +for the paid workers to lay open—the waters are rushing by it as a +forsaken field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human +choice. The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The +Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the planting of the national +ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward: the Egyptian could not choose +the overflow, but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying +waters, and Egypt became the land of corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the +royalty of discernment and resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, +ask no choice or purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine +principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the +blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future of the +world—not renounce our higher gift and say, ‘Let us be as if we +were not among the populations;’ but choose our full heritage, claim the +brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with the nations +of the Gentiles. The vision is there; it will be fulfilled.” +</p> + +<p> +With the last sentence, which was no more than a loud whisper, Mordecai let his +chin sink on his breast and his eyelids fall. No one spoke. It was not the +first time that he had insisted on the same ideas, but he was seen to-night in +a new phase. The quiet tenacity of his ordinary self differed as much from his +present exaltation of mood as a man in private talk, giving reasons for a +revolution of which no sign is discernable, differs from one who feels himself +an agent in a revolution begun. The dawn of fulfillment brought to his hope by +Deronda’s presence had wrought Mordecai’s conception into a state +of impassioned conviction, and he had found strength in his excitement to pour +forth the unlocked floods of emotive argument, with a sense of haste as at a +crisis which must be seized. But now there had come with the quiescence of +fatigue a sort of thankful wonder that he had spoken—a contemplation of +his life as a journey which had come at last to this bourne. After a great +excitement, the ebbing strength of impulse is apt to leave us in this aloofness +from our active self. And in the moments after Mordecai had sunk his head, his +mind was wandering along the paths of his youth, and all the hopes which had +ended in bringing him hither. +</p> + +<p> +Every one felt that the talk was ended, and the tone of phlegmatic discussion +made unseasonable by Mordecai’s high-pitched solemnity. It was as if they +had come together to hear the blowing of the <i>shophar</i>, and had nothing to +do now but to disperse. The movement was unusually general, and in less than +ten minutes the room was empty of all except Mordecai and Deronda. +“Good-nights” had been given to Mordecai, but it was evident he had +not heard them, for he remained rapt and motionless. Deronda would not disturb +this needful rest, but waited for a spontaneous movement. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0043"></a> +CHAPTER XLIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“My spirit is too weak; mortality<br/> +Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,<br/> +And each imagined pinnacle and steep<br/> +Of godlike hardship tells me I must die<br/> +Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”<br/> + —K<small>EATS</small>. +</p> + +<p> +After a few minutes the unwonted stillness had penetrated Mordecai’s +consciousness, and he looked up at Deronda, not in the least with bewilderment +and surprise, but with a gaze full of reposing satisfaction. Deronda rose and +placed his chair nearer, where there could be no imagined need for raising the +voice. Mordecai felt the action as a patient feels the gentleness that eases +his pillow. He began to speak in a low tone, as if he were only thinking +articulately, not trying to reach an audience. +</p> + +<p> +“In the doctrine of the Cabbala, souls are born again and again in new +bodies till they are perfected and purified, and a soul liberated from a +worn-out body may join the fellow-soul that needs it, that they may be +perfected together, and their earthly work accomplished. Then they will depart +from the mortal region, and leave place for new souls to be born out of the +store in the eternal bosom. It is the lingering imperfection of the souls +already born into the mortal region that hinders the birth of new souls and the +preparation of the Messianic time:—thus the mind has given shape to what +is hidden, as the shadow of what is known, and has spoken truth, though it were +only in parable. When my long-wandering soul is liberated from this weary body, +it will join yours, and its work will be perfected.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s pause seemed an appeal which Deronda’s feeling would not +let him leave unanswered. He tried to make it truthful; but for +Mordecai’s ear it was inevitably filled with unspoken meaning. He only +said, +</p> + +<p> +“Everything I can in conscience do to make your life effective I will +do.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it,” said Mordecai, in a tone of quiet certainty which +dispenses with further assurance. “I heard it. You see it all—you +are by my side on the mount of vision, and behold the paths of fulfillment +which others deny.” +</p> + +<p> +He was silent a moment or two, and then went on meditatively, +</p> + +<p> +“You will take up my life where it was broken. I feel myself back in that +day when my life was broken. The bright morning sun was on the quay—it +was at Trieste—the garments of men from all nations shone like +jewels—the boats were pushing off—the Greek vessel that would land +us at Beyrout was to start in an hour. I was going with a merchant as his clerk +and companion. I said, I shall behold the lands and people of the East, and I +shall speak with a fuller vision. I breathed then as you do, without labor; I +had the light step and the endurance of youth, I could fast, I could sleep on +the hard ground. I had wedded poverty, and I loved my bride—for poverty +to me was freedom. My heart exulted as if it had been the heart of Moses ben +Maimon, strong with the strength of three score years, and knowing the work +that was to fill them. It was the first time I had been south; the soul within +me felt its former sun; and standing on the quay, where the ground I stood on +seemed to send forth light, and the shadows had an azure glory as of spirits +become visible, I felt myself in the flood of a glorious life, wherein my own +small year-counted existence seemed to melt, so that I knew it not; and a great +sob arose within me as at the rush of waters that were too strong a bliss. So I +stood there awaiting my companion; and I saw him not till he said: ‘Ezra, +I have been to the post and there is your letter.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Ezra!” exclaimed Deronda, unable to contain himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Ezra,” repeated Mordecai, affirmatively, engrossed in memory. +“I was expecting a letter; for I wrote continually to my mother. And that +sound of my name was like the touch of a wand that recalled me to the body +wherefrom I had been released as it were to mingle with the ocean of human +existence, free from the pressure of individual bondage. I opened the letter; +and the name came again as a cry that would have disturbed me in the bosom of +heaven, and made me yearn to reach where that sorrow was—‘Ezra, my +son!’” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai paused again, his imagination arrested by the grasp of that +long-passed moment. Deronda’s mind was almost breathlessly suspended on +what was coming. A strange possibility had suddenly presented itself. +Mordecai’s eyes were cast down in abstracted contemplation, and in a few +moments he went on, +</p> + +<p> +“She was a mother of whom it might have come—yea, might have come +to be said, ‘Her children arise up and call her blessed.’ In her I +understood the meaning of that Master who, perceiving the footsteps of his +mother, rose up and said, ‘The Majesty of the Eternal cometh near!’ +And that letter was her cry from the depths of anguish and desolation—the +cry of a mother robbed of her little ones. I was her eldest. Death had taken +four babes one after the other. Then came, late, my little sister, who was, +more than all the rest, the desire of my mother’s eyes; and the letter +was a piercing cry to me—‘Ezra, my son, I am robbed of her. He has +taken her away and left disgrace behind. They will never come +again.’”—Here Mordecai lifted his eyes suddenly, laid his +hand on Deronda’s arm, and said, “Mine was the lot of Israel. For +the sin of the father my soul must go into exile. For the sin of the father the +work was broken, and the day of fulfilment delayed. She who bore me was +desolate, disgraced, destitute. I turned back. On the instant I +turned—her spirit and the spirit of her fathers, who had worthy Jewish +hearts, moved within me, and drew me. God, in whom dwells the universe, was +within me as the strength of obedience. I turned and traveled with +hardship—to save the scant money which she would need. I left the +sunshine, and traveled into freezing cold. In the last stage I spent a night in +exposure to cold and snow. And that was the beginning of this slow +death.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai let his eyes wander again and removed his hand. Deronda resolutely +repressed the questions which urged themselves within him. While Mordecai was +in this state of emotion, no other confidence must be sought than what came +spontaneously: nay, he himself felt a kindred emotion which made him dread his +own speech as too momentous. +</p> + +<p> +“But I worked. We were destitute—every thing had been seized. And +she was ill: the clutch of anguish was too strong for her, and wrought with +some lurking disease. At times she could not stand for the beating of her +heart, and the images in her brain became as chambers of terror, where she +beheld my sister reared in evil. In the dead of night I heard her crying for +her child. Then I rose, and we stretched forth our arms together and prayed. We +poured forth our souls in desire that Mirah might be delivered from +evil.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah?” Deronda repeated, wishing to assure, himself that his ears +had not been deceived by a forecasting imagination. “Did you say +Mirah?” +</p> + +<p> +“That was my little sister’s name. After we had prayed for her, my +mother would rest awhile. It lasted hardly four years, and in the minute before +she died, we were praying the same prayer—I aloud, she silently. Her soul +went out upon its wings.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you never since heard of your sister?” said Deronda, as +quietly as he could. +</p> + +<p> +“Never. Never have I heard whether she was delivered according to our +prayer. I know not, I know not. Who shall say where the pathways lie? The +poisonous will of the wicked is strong. It poisoned my life—it is slowly +stifling this breath. Death delivered my mother, and I felt it a blessedness +that I was alone in the winters of suffering. But what are the winters +now?—they are far off”—here Mordecai again rested his hand on +Deronda’s arm, and looked at him with that joy of the hectic patient +which pierces us to sadness—“there is nothing to wail in the +withering of my body. The work will be the better done. Once I said the work of +this beginning was mine, I am born to do it. Well, I shall do it. I shall live +in you. I shall live in you.” +</p> + +<p> +His grasp had become convulsive in its force, and Deronda, agitated as he had +never been before—the certainty that this was Mirah’s brother +suffusing his own strange relation to Mordecai with a new solemnity and +tenderness—felt his strong young heart beating faster and his lips +paling. He shrank from speech. He feared, in Mordecai’s present state of +exaltation (already an alarming strain on his feeble frame), to utter a word of +revelation about Mirah. He feared to make an answer below that high pitch of +expectation which resembled a flash from a dying fire, making watchers fear to +see it die the faster. His dominant impulse was to do as he had once done +before: he laid his firm, gentle hand on the hand that grasped him. +Mordecai’s, as if it had a soul of its own—for he was not +distinctly willing to do what he did—relaxed its grasp, and turned upward +under Deronda’s. As the two palms met and pressed each other Mordecai +recovered some sense of his surroundings, and said, +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go now. I cannot talk any longer.” +</p> + +<p> +And in fact they parted at Cohen’s door without having spoken to each +other again—merely with another pressure of the hands. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt a weight on him which was half joy, half anxiety. The joy of +finding in Mirah’s brother a nature even more than worthy of that +relation to her, had the weight of solemnity and sadness; the reunion of +brother and sister was in reality the first stage of a supreme +parting—like that farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last +glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow. Then there was the +weight of anxiety about the revelation of the fact on both sides, and the +arrangements it would be desirable to make beforehand. I suppose we should all +have felt as Deronda did, without sinking into snobbishness or the notion that +the primal duties of life demand a morning and an evening suit, that it was an +admissible desire to free Mirah’s first meeting with her brother from all +jarring outward conditions. His own sense of deliverance from the dreaded +relationship of the other Cohens, notwithstanding their good nature, made him +resolve if possible to keep them in the background for Mirah, until her +acquaintance with them would be an unmarred rendering of gratitude for any +kindness they had shown to her brother. On all accounts he wished to give +Mordecai surroundings not only more suited to his frail bodily condition, but +less of a hindrance to easy intercourse, even apart from the decisive prospect +of Mirah’s taking up her abode with her brother, and tending him through +the precious remnant of his life. In the heroic drama, great recognitions are +not encumbered with these details; and certainly Deronda had as reverential an +interest in Mordecai and Mirah as he could have had in the offspring of +Agamemnon; but he was caring for destinies still moving in the dim streets of +our earthly life, not yet lifted among the constellations, and his task +presented itself to him as difficult and delicate, especially in persuading +Mordecai to change his abode and habits. Concerning Mirah’s feeling and +resolve he had no doubt: there would be a complete union of sentiment toward +the departed mother, and Mirah would understand her brother’s greatness. +Yes, greatness: that was the word which Deronda now deliberately chose to +signify the impression that Mordecai had made on him. He said to himself, +perhaps rather defiantly toward the more negative spirit within him, that this +man, however erratic some of his interpretations might be—this +consumptive Jewish workman in threadbare clothing, lodged by charity, +delivering himself to hearers who took his thoughts without attaching more +consequences to them than the Flemings to the ethereal chimes ringing above +their market-places—had the chief elements of greatness; a mind +consciously, energetically moving with the larger march of human destinies, but +not the less full of conscience and tender heart for the footsteps that tread +near and need a leaning-place; capable of conceiving and choosing a +life’s task with far-off issues, yet capable of the unapplauded heroism +which turns off the road of achievement at the call of the nearer duty whose +effect lies within the beatings of the hearts that are close to us, as the +hunger of the unfledged bird to the breast of its parent. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda to-night was stirred with the feeling that the brief remnant of this +fervid life had become his charge. He had been peculiarly wrought on by what he +had seen at the club of the friendly indifference which Mordecai must have gone +on encountering. His own experience of the small room that ardor can make for +itself in ordinary minds had had the effect of increasing his reserve; and +while tolerance was the easiest attitude to him, there was another bent in him +also capable of becoming a weakness—the dislike to appear exceptional or +to risk an ineffective insistence on his own opinion. But such caution appeared +contemptible to him just now, when he, for the first time, saw in a complete +picture and felt as a reality the lives that burn themselves out in solitary +enthusiasm: martyrs of obscure circumstance, exiled in the rarity of their own +minds, whose deliverances in other ears are no more than a long passionate +soliloquy—unless perhaps at last, when they are nearing the invisible +shores, signs of recognition and fulfilment may penetrate the cloud of +loneliness; or perhaps it may be with them as with the dying Copernicus made to +touch the first printed copy of his book when the sense of touch was gone, +seeing it only as a dim object through the deepening dusk. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda had been brought near to one of those spiritual exiles, and it was in +his nature to feel the relation as a strong chain, nay, to feel his imagination +moving without repugnance in the direction of Mordecai’s desires. With +all his latent objection to schemes only definite in their generality and +nebulous in detail—in the poise of his sentiments he felt at one with +this man who had made a visionary selection of him: the lines of what may be +called their emotional theory touched. He had not the Jewish consciousness, but +he had a yearning, grown the stronger for the denial which had been his +grievance, after the obligation of avowed filial and social ties. His feeling +was ready for difficult obedience. In this way it came that he set about his +new task ungrudgingly; and again he thought of Mrs. Meyrick as his chief +helper. To her first he must make known the discovery of Mirah’s brother, +and with her he must consult on all preliminaries of bringing the mutually lost +together. Happily the best quarter for a consumptive patient did not lie too +far off the small house at Chelsea, and the first office Deronda had to perform +for this Hebrew prophet who claimed him as a spiritual inheritor, was to get +him a healthy lodging. Such is the irony of earthly mixtures, that the heroes +have not always had carpets and teacups of their own; and, seen through the +open window by the mackerel-vender, may have been invited with some hopefulness +to pay three hundred per cent, in the form of fourpence. However, +Deronda’s mind was busy with a prospective arrangement for giving a +furnished lodging some faint likeness to a refined home by dismantling his own +chambers of his best old books in vellum, his easiest chair, and the +bas-reliefs of Milton and Dante. +</p> + +<p> +But was not Mirah to be there? What furniture can give such finish to a room as +a tender woman’s face?—and is there any harmony of tints that has +such stirrings of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice? Here is one +good, at least, thought Deronda, that comes to Mordecai from his having fixed +his imagination on me. He has recovered a perfect sister, whose affection is +waiting for him. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0044"></a> +CHAPTER XLIV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Fairy folk a-listening<br/> +Hear the seed sprout in the spring.<br/> +And for music to their dance<br/> +Hear the hedgerows wake from trance,<br/> +Sap that trembles into buds<br/> +Sending little rhythmic floods<br/> +Of fairy sound in fairy ears.<br/> +Thus all beauty that appears<br/> +Has birth as sound to finer sense<br/> +And lighter-clad intelligence. +</p> + +<p> +And Gwendolen? She was thinking of Deronda much more than he was thinking of +her—often wondering what were his ideas “about things,” and +how his life was occupied. But a lap-dog would be necessarily at a loss in +framing to itself the motives and adventures of doghood at large; and it was as +far from Gwendolen’s conception that Deronda’s life could be +determined by the historical destiny of the Jews, as that he could rise into +the air on a brazen horse, and so vanish from her horizon in the form of a +twinkling star. +</p> + +<p> +With all the sense of inferiority that had been forced upon her, it was +inevitable that she should imagine a larger place for herself in his thoughts +than she actually possessed. They must be rather old and wise persons who are +not apt to see their own anxiety or elation about themselves reflected in other +minds; and Gwendolen, with her youth and inward solitude, may be excused for +dwelling on signs of special interest in her shown by the one person who had +impressed her with the feeling of submission, and for mistaking the color and +proportion of those signs in the mind of Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, what would he tell her that she ought to do? “He said, I must +get more interest in others, and more knowledge, and that I must care about the +best things—but how am I to begin?” She wondered what books he +would tell her to take up to her own room, and recalled the famous writers that +she had either not looked into or had found the most unreadable, with a +half-smiling wish that she could mischievously ask Deronda if they were not the +books called “medicine for the mind.” Then she repented of her +sauciness, and when she was safe from observation carried up a miscellaneous +selection—Descartes, Bacon, Locke, Butler, Burke, Guizot—knowing, +as a clever young lady of education, that these authors were ornaments of +mankind, feeling sure that Deronda had read them, and hoping that by dipping +into them all in succession, with her rapid understanding she might get a point +of view nearer to his level. +</p> + +<p> +But it was astonishing how little time she found for these vast mental +excursions. Constantly she had to be on the scene as Mrs. Grandcourt, and to +feel herself watched in that part by the exacting eyes of a husband who had +found a motive to exercise his tenacity—that of making his marriage +answer all the ends he chose, and with the more completeness the more he +discerned any opposing will in her. And she herself, whatever rebellion might +be going on within her, could not have made up her mind to failure in her +representation. No feeling had yet reconciled her for a moment to any act, +word, or look that would be a confession to the world: and what she most +dreaded in herself was any violent impulse that would make an involuntary +confession: it was the will to be silent in every other direction that had +thrown the more impetuosity into her confidences toward Deronda, to whom her +thought continually turned as a help against herself. Her riding, her hunting, +her visiting and receiving of visits, were all performed in a spirit of +achievement which served instead of zest and young gladness, so that all around +Diplow, in those weeks of the new year, Mrs. Grandcourt was regarded as wearing +her honors with triumph. +</p> + +<p> +“She disguises it under an air of taking everything as a matter of +course,” said Mrs. Arrowpoint. “A stranger might suppose that she +had condescended rather than risen. I always noticed that doubleness in +her.” +</p> + +<p> +To her mother most of all Gwendolen was bent on acting complete satisfaction, +and poor Mrs. Davilow was so far deceived that she took the unexpected distance +at which she was kept, in spite of what she felt to be Grandcourt’s +handsome behavior in providing for her, as a comparative indifference in her +daughter, now that marriage had created new interests. To be fetched to lunch +and then to dinner along with the Gascoignes, to be driven back soon after +breakfast the next morning, and to have brief calls from Gwendolen in which her +husband waited for her outside either on horseback or sitting in the carriage, +was all the intercourse allowed to her mother. +</p> + +<p> +The truth was, that the second time Gwendolen proposed to invite her mother +with Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne, Grandcourt had at first been silent, and then +drawled, “We can’t be having <i>those people</i> always. Gascoigne +talks too much. Country clergy are always bores—with their confounded +fuss about everything.” +</p> + +<p> +That speech was full of foreboding for Gwendolen. To have her mother classed +under “those people” was enough to confirm the previous dread of +bringing her too near. Still, she could not give the true reasons—she +could not say to her mother, “Mr. Grandcourt wants to recognize you as +little as possible; and besides it is better you should not see much of my +married life, else you might find out that I am miserable.” So she waived +as lightly as she could every allusion to the subject; and when Mrs. Davilow +again hinted the possibility of her having a house close to Ryelands, Gwendolen +said, “It would not be so nice for you as being near the rectory here, +mamma. We shall perhaps be very little at Ryelands. You would miss my aunt and +uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +And all the while this contemptuous veto of her husband’s on any intimacy +with her family, making her proudly shrink from giving them the aspect of +troublesome pensioners, was rousing more inward inclination toward them. She +had never felt so kindly toward her uncle, so much disposed to look back on his +cheerful, complacent activity and spirit of kind management, even when +mistaken, as more of a comfort than the neutral loftiness which was every day +chilling her. And here perhaps she was unconsciously finding some of that +mental enlargement which it was hard to get from her occasional dashes into +difficult authors, who instead of blending themselves with her daily agitations +required her to dismiss them. +</p> + +<p> +It was a delightful surprise one day when Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne were at +Offendene to see Gwendolen ride up without her husband—with the groom +only. All, including the four girls and Miss Merry, seated in the dining-room +at lunch, could see the welcome approach; and even the elder ones were not +without something of Isabel’s romantic sense that the beautiful sister on +the splendid chestnut, which held its head as if proud to bear her, was a sort +of Harriet Byron or Miss Wardour reappearing out of her “happiness ever +after.” +</p> + +<p> +Her uncle went to the door to give her his hand, and she sprang from her horse +with an air of alacrity which might well encourage that notion of guaranteed +happiness; for Gwendolen was particularly bent to-day on setting her +mother’s heart at rest, and her unusual sense of freedom in being able to +make this visit alone enabled her to bear up under the pressure of painful +facts which were urging themselves anew. The seven family kisses were not so +tiresome as they used to be. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Grandcourt is gone out, so I determined to fill up the time by +coming to you, mamma,” said Gwendolen, as she laid down her hat and +seated herself next to her mother; and then looking at her with a playfully +monitory air, “That is a punishment to you for not wearing better lace on +your head. You didn’t think I should come and detect you—you +dreadfully careless-about-yourself mamma!” She gave a caressing touch to +the dear head. +</p> + +<p> +“Scold me, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, her delicate worn face +flushing with delight. “But I wish there was something you could eat +after your ride—instead of these scraps. Let Jocosa make you a cup of +chocolate in your old way. You used to like that.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Merry immediately rose and went out, though Gwendolen said, “Oh, no, +a piece of bread, or one of those hard biscuits. I can’t think about +eating. I am come to say good-bye.” +</p> + +<p> +“What! going to Ryelands again?” said Mr. Gascoigne. +</p> + +<p> +“No, we are going to town,” said Gwendolen, beginning to break up a +piece of bread, but putting no morsel into her mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“It is rather early to go to town,” said Mrs. Gascoigne, “and +Mr. Grandcourt not in Parliament.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, there is only one more day’s hunting to be had, and Henleigh +has some business in town with lawyers, I think,” said Gwendolen. +“I am very glad. I shall like to go to town.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will see your house in Grosvenor Square,” said Mrs. Davilow. +She and the girls were devouring with their eyes every movement of their +goddess, soon to vanish. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gwendolen, in a tone of assent to the interest of that +expectation. “And there is so much to be seen and done in town.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish, my dear Gwendolen,” said Mr. Gascoigne, in a kind of +cordial advice, “that you would use your influence with Mr. Grandcourt to +induce him to enter Parliament. A man of his position should make his weight +felt in politics. The best judges are confident that the ministry will have to +appeal to the country on this question of further Reform, and Mr. Grandcourt +should be ready for the opportunity. I am not quite sure that his opinions and +mine accord entirely; I have not heard him express himself very fully. But I +don’t look at the matter from that point of view. I am thinking of your +husband’s standing in the country. And he has now come to that stage of +life when a man like him should enter into public affairs. A wife has great +influence with her husband. Use yours in that direction, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +The rector felt that he was acquitting himself of a duty here, and giving +something like the aspect of a public benefit to his niece’s match. To +Gwendolen the whole speech had the flavor of bitter comedy. If she had been +merry, she must have laughed at her uncle’s explanation to her that he +had not heard Grandcourt express himself very fully on politics. And the +wife’s great influence! General maxims about husbands and wives seemed +now of a precarious usefulness. Gwendolen herself had once believed in her +future influence as an omnipotence in managing—she did not know exactly +what. But her chief concern at present was to give an answer that would be felt +appropriate. +</p> + +<p> +“I should be very glad, uncle. But I think Mr. Grandcourt would not like +the trouble of an election—at least, unless it could be without his +making speeches. I thought candidates always made speeches.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not necessarily—to any great extent,” said Mr. Gascoigne. +“A man of position and weight can get on without much of it. A county +member need have very little trouble in that way, and both out of the House and +in it is liked the better for not being a speechifier. Tell Mr. Grandcourt that +I say so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Here comes Jocosa with my chocolate after all,” said Gwendolen, +escaping from a promise to give information that would certainly have been +received in a way inconceivable to the good rector, who, pushing his chair a +little aside from the table and crossing his leg, looked as well as if he felt +like a worthy specimen of a clergyman and magistrate giving experienced advice. +Mr. Gascoigne had come to the conclusion that Grandcourt was a proud man, but +his own self-love, calmed through life by the consciousness of his general +value and personal advantages, was not irritable enough to prevent him from +hoping the best about his niece’s husband because her uncle was kept +rather haughtily at a distance. A certain aloofness must be allowed to the +representative of an old family; you would not expect him to be on intimate +terms even with abstractions. But Mrs. Gascoigne was less dispassionate on her +husband’s account, and felt Grandcourt’s haughtiness as something a +little blameable in Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“Your uncle and Anna will very likely be in town about Easter,” she +said, with a vague sense of expressing a slight discontent. “Dear Rex +hopes to come out with honors and a fellowship, and he wants his father and +Anna to meet him in London, that they may be jolly together, as he says. I +shouldn’t wonder if Lord Brackenshaw invited them, he has been so very +kind since he came back to the Castle.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope my uncle will bring Ann to stay in Grosvenor Square,” said +Gwendolen, risking herself so far, for the sake of the present moment, but in +reality wishing that she might never be obliged to bring any of her family near +Grandcourt again. “I am very glad of Rex’s good fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must not be premature, and rejoice too much beforehand,” said +the rector, to whom this topic was the happiest in the world, and altogether +allowable, now that the issue of that little affair about Gwendolen had been so +satisfactory. “Not but that I am in correspondence with impartial judges, +who have the highest hopes about my son, as a singularly clear-headed young +man. And of his excellent disposition and principle I have had the best +evidence.” +</p> + +<p> +“We shall have him a great lawyer some time,” said Mrs. Gascoigne. +</p> + +<p> +“How very nice!” said Gwendolen, with a concealed scepticism as to +niceness in general, which made the word quite applicable to lawyers. +</p> + +<p> +“Talking of Lord Brackenshaw’s kindness,” said Mrs. Davilow, +“you don’t know how delightful he has been, Gwendolen. He has +begged me to consider myself his guest in this house till I can get another +that I like—he did it in the most graceful way. But now a house has +turned up. Old Mr. Jodson is dead, and we can have his house. It is just what I +want; small, but with nothing hideous to make you miserable thinking about it. +And it is only a mile from the Rectory. You remember the low white house nearly +hidden by the trees, as we turn up the lane to the church?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but you have no furniture, poor mamma,” said Gwendolen, in a +melancholy tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I am saving money for that. You know who has made me rather rich, +dear,” said Mrs. Davilow, laying her hand on Gwendolen’s. +“And Jocosa really makes so little do for housekeeping—it is quite +wonderful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, please let me go up-stairs with you and arrange my hat, +mamma,” said Gwendolen, suddenly putting up her hand to her hair and +perhaps creating a desired disarrangement. Her heart was swelling, and she was +ready to cry. Her mother <i>must</i> have been worse off, if it had not been +for Grandcourt. “I suppose I shall never see all this again,” said +Gwendolen, looking round her, as they entered the black and yellow bedroom, and +then throwing herself into a chair in front of the glass with a little groan as +of bodily fatigue. In the resolve not to cry she had become very pale. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not well, dear?” said Mrs. Davilow. +</p> + +<p> +“No; that chocolate has made me sick,” said Gwendolen, putting up +her hand to be taken. +</p> + +<p> +“I should be allowed to come to you if you were ill, darling,” said +Mrs. Davilow, rather timidly, as she pressed the hand to her bosom. Something +had made her sure to-day that her child loved her—needed her as much as +ever. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Gwendolen, leaning her head against her mother, +though speaking as lightly as she could. “But you know I never am ill. I +am as strong as possible; and you must not take to fretting about me, but make +yourself as happy as you can with the girls. They are better children to you +than I have been, you know.” She turned up her face with a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“You have always been good, my darling. I remember nothing else.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what did I ever do that was good to you, except marry Mr. +Grandcourt?” said Gwendolen, starting up with a desperate resolve to be +playful, and keep no more on the perilous edge of agitation. “And I +should not have done that unless it had pleased myself.” She tossed up +her chin, and reached her hat. +</p> + +<p> +“God forbid, child! I would not have had you marry for my sake. Your +happiness by itself is half mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well,” said Gwendolen, arranging her hat fastidiously, +“then you will please to consider that you are half happy, which is more +than I am used to seeing you.” With the last words she again turned with +her old playful smile to her mother. “Now I am ready; but oh, mamma, Mr. +Grandcourt gives me a quantity of money, and expects me to spend it, and I +can’t spend it; and you know I can’t bear charity children and all +that; and here are thirty pounds. I wish the girls would spend it for me on +little things for themselves when you go to the new house. Tell them so.” +Gwendolen put the notes into her mother’s hands and looked away hastily, +moving toward the door. +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you, dear,” said Mrs. Davilow. “It will please +them so that you should have thought of them in particular.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they are troublesome things; but they don’t trouble me +now,” said Gwendolen, turning and nodding playfully. She hardly +understood her own feeling in this act toward her sisters, but at any rate she +did not wish it to be taken as anything serious. She was glad to have got out +of the bedroom without showing more signs of emotion, and she went through the +rest of her visit and all the good-byes with a quiet propriety that made her +say to herself sarcastically as she rode away, “I think I am making a +very good Mrs. Grandcourt.” +</p> + +<p> +She believed that her husband had gone to Gadsmere that day—had inferred +this, as she had long ago inferred who were the inmates of what he had +described as “a dog-hutch of a place in a black country;” and the +strange conflict of feeling within her had had the characteristic effect of +sending her to Offendene with a tightened resolve—a form of excitement +which was native to her. +</p> + +<p> +She wondered at her own contradictions. Why should she feel it bitter to her +that Grandcourt showed concern for the beings on whose account she herself was +undergoing remorse? Had she not before her marriage inwardly determined to +speak and act on their behalf?—and since he had lately implied that he +wanted to be in town because he was making arrangements about his will, she +ought to have been glad of any sign that he kept a conscience awake toward +those at Gadsmere; and yet, now that she was a wife, the sense that Grandcourt +was gone to Gadsmere was like red heat near a burn. She had brought on herself +this indignity in her own eyes—this humiliation of being doomed to a +terrified silence lest her husband should discover with what sort of +consciousness she had married him; and as she had said to Deronda, she +“must go on.” After the intense moments of secret hatred toward +this husband who from the very first had cowed her, there always came back the +spiritual pressure which made submission inevitable. There was no effort at +freedoms that would not bring fresh and worse humiliation. Gwendolen could dare +nothing except an impulsive action—least of all could she dare +premeditatedly a vague future in which the only certain condition was +indignity. In spite of remorse, it still seemed the worst result of her +marriage that she should in any way make a spectacle of herself; and her +humiliation was lightened by her thinking that only Mrs. Glasher was aware of +the fact which caused it. For Gwendolen had never referred the interview at the +Whispering Stones to Lush’s agency; her disposition to vague terror +investing with shadowy omnipresence any threat of fatal power over her, and so +hindering her from imagining plans and channels by which news had been conveyed +to the woman who had the poisoning skill of a sorceress. To Gwendolen’s +mind the secret lay with Mrs. Glasher, and there were words in the horrible +letter which implied that Mrs. Glasher would dread disclosure to the husband, +as much as the usurping Mrs. Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +Something else, too, she thought of as more of a secret from her husband than +it really was—namely that suppressed struggle of desperate rebellion +which she herself dreaded. Grandcourt could not indeed fully imagine how things +affected Gwendolen: he had no imagination of anything in her but what affected +the gratification of his own will; but on this point he had the sensibility +which seems like divination. What we see exclusively we are apt to see with +some mistake of proportions; and Grandcourt was not likely to be infallible in +his judgments concerning this wife who was governed by many shadowy powers, to +him nonexistent. He magnified her inward resistance, but that did not lessen +his satisfaction in the mastery of it. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0045"></a> +CHAPTER XLV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +Behold my lady’s carriage stop the way.<br/> +With powdered lacquey and with charming bay;<br/> +She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair.<br/> +Her arduous function solely “to be there.”<br/> +Like Sirius rising o’er the silent sea.<br/> +She hides her heart in lustre loftily. +</p> + +<p> +So the Grandcourts were in Grosvenor Square in time to receive a card for the +musical party at Lady Mallinger’s, there being reasons of business which +made Sir Hugo know beforehand that his ill-beloved nephew was coming up. It was +only the third evening after their arrival, and Gwendolen made rather an +absent-minded acquaintance with her new ceilings and furniture, preoccupied +with the certainty that she was going to speak to Deronda again, and also to +see the Miss Lapidoth who had gone through so much, and was “capable of +submitting to anything in the form of duty.” For Gwendolen had remembered +nearly every word that Deronda had said about Mirah, and especially that +phrase, which she repeated to herself bitterly, having an ill-defined +consciousness that her own submission was something very different. She would +have been obliged to allow, if any one had said it to her, that what she +submitted to could not take the shape of duty, but was submission to a yoke +drawn on her by an action she was ashamed of, and worn with a strength of +selfish motives that left no weight for duty to carry. +</p> + +<p> +The drawing-rooms in Park Lane, all white, gold, and pale crimson, were +agreeably furnished, and not crowded with guests, before Mr. and Mrs. +Grandcourt entered; and more than half an hour of instrumental music was being +followed by an interval of movement and chat. Klesmer was there with his wife, +and in his generous interest for Mirah he proposed to accompany her singing of +Leo’s “<i>O patria mia</i>,” which he had before recommended +her to choose, as more distinctive of her than better known music. He was +already at the piano, and Mirah was standing there conspicuously, when +Gwendolen, magnificent in her pale green velvet and poisoned diamonds, was +ushered to a seat of honor well in view of them. With her long sight and +self-command she had the rare power of quickly distinguishing persons and +objects on entering a full room, and while turning her glance toward Mirah she +did not neglect to exchange a bow with Klesmer as she passed. The smile seemed +to each a lightning-flash back on that morning when it had been her ambition to +stand as the “little Jewess” was standing, and survey a grand +audience from the higher rank of her talent—instead of which she was one +of the ordinary crowd in silk and gems, whose utmost performance it must be to +admire or find fault. “He thinks I am in the right road now,” said +the lurking resentment within her. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen had not caught sight of Deronda in her passage, and while she was +seated acquitting herself in chat with Sir Hugo, she glanced round her with +careful ease, bowing a recognition here and there, and fearful lest an +anxious-looking exploration in search of Deronda might be observed by her +husband, and afterward rebuked as something “damnably vulgar.” But +all traveling, even that of a slow gradual glance round a room, brings a +liability to undesired encounters, and amongst the eyes that met +Gwendolen’s, forcing her into a slight bow, were those of the +“amateur too fond of Meyerbeer,” Mr. Lush, whom Sir Hugo continued +to find useful as a half-caste among gentlemen. He was standing near her +husband, who, however, turned a shoulder toward him, and was being understood +to listen to Lord Pentreath. How was it that at this moment, for the first +time, there darted through Gwendolen, like a disagreeable sensation, the idea +that this man knew all about her husband’s life? He had been banished +from her sight, according to her will, and she had been satisfied; he had sunk +entirely into the background of her thoughts, screened away from her by the +agitating figures that kept up an inward drama in which Lush had no place. Here +suddenly he reappeared at her husband’s elbow, and there sprang up in +her, like an instantaneously fabricated memory in a dream, the sense of his +being connected with the secrets that made her wretched. She was conscious of +effort in turning her head away from him, trying to continue her wandering +survey as if she had seen nothing of more consequence than the picture on the +wall, till she discovered Deronda. But he was not looking toward her, and she +withdrew her eyes from him, without having got any recognition, consoling +herself with the assurance that he must have seen her come in. In fact, he was +not standing far from the door with Hans Meyrick, whom he had been careful to +bring into Lady Mallinger’s list. They were both a little more anxious +than was comfortable lest Mirah should not be heard to advantage. Deronda even +felt himself on the brink of betraying emotion, Mirah’s presence now +being linked with crowding images of what had gone before and was to come +after—all centering in the brother he was soon to reveal to her; and he +had escaped as soon as he could from the side of Lady Pentreath, who had said +in her violoncello voice, +</p> + +<p> +“Well, your Jewess is pretty—there’s no denying that. But +where is her Jewish impudence? She looks as demure as a nun. I suppose she +learned that on the stage.” +</p> + +<p> +He was beginning to feel on Mirah’s behalf something of what he had felt +for himself in his seraphic boyish time, when Sir Hugo asked him if he would +like to be a great singer—an indignant dislike to her being remarked on +in a free and easy way, as if she were an imported commodity disdainfully paid +for by the fashionable public, and he winced the more because Mordecai, he +knew, would feel that the name “Jewess” was taken as a sort of +stamp like the lettering of Chinese silk. In this susceptible mood he saw the +Grandcourts enter, and was immediately appealed to by Hans about “that +Vandyke duchess of a beauty.” Pray excuse Deronda that in this moment he +felt a transient renewal of his first repulsion from Gwendolen, as if she and +her beauty and her failings were to blame for the undervaluing of Mirah as a +woman—a feeling something like class animosity, which affection for what +is not fully recognized by others, whether in persons or in poetry, rarely +allows us to escape. To Hans admiring Gwendolen with his habitual hyperbole, he +answered, with a sarcasm that was not quite good-natured, +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you could admire no style of woman but your Berenice.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is the style I worship—not admire,” said Hans. +“Other styles of women I might make myself wicked for, but for Berenice I +could make myself—well, pretty good, which is something much more +difficult.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush,” said Deronda, under the pretext that the singing was going +to begin. He was not so delighted with the answer as might have been expected, +and was relieved by Hans’s movement to a more advanced spot. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda had never before heard Mirah sing “<i>O patria mia</i>.” He +knew well Leopardi’s fine Ode to Italy (when Italy sat like a +disconsolate mother in chains, hiding her face on her knees and weeping), and +the few selected words were filled for him with the grandeur of the whole, +which seemed to breathe an inspiration through the music. Mirah singing this, +made Mordecai more than ever one presence with her. Certain words not included +in the song nevertheless rang within Deronda as harmonies from the invisible, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> + “Non ti difende<br/> +Nessun de’ tuoi! L’armi, qua l’armi: io solo<br/> +Combatterò, procomberò sol io”—[*] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +[* Do none of thy children defend thee? Arms! bring me arms! alone I will +fight, alone I will fall.] +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +they seemed the very voice of that heroic passion which is falsely said to +devote itself in vain when it achieves the godlike end of manifesting +unselfish love. And that passion was present to Deronda now as the vivid image +of a man dying helplessly away from the possibility of battle. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah was equal to his wishes. While the general applause was sounding, Klesmer +gave a more valued testimony, audible to her only—“Good, +good—the crescendo better than before.” But her chief anxiety was +to know that she had satisfied Mr. Deronda: any failure on her part this +evening would have pained her as an especial injury to him. Of course all her +prospects were due to what he had done for her; still, this occasion of singing +in the house that was his home brought a peculiar demand. She looked toward him +in the distance, and he saw that she did; but he remained where he was, and +watched the streams of emulous admirers closing round her, till presently they +parted to make way for Gwendolen, who was taken up to be introduced by Mrs. +Klesmer. Easier now about “the little Jewess,” Daniel relented +toward poor Gwendolen in her splendor, and his memory went back, with some +penitence for his momentary hardness, over all the signs and confessions that +she too needed a rescue, and one much more difficult than that of the wanderer +by the river—a rescue for which he felt himself helpless. The silent +question—“But is it not cowardly to make that a reason for turning +away?” was the form in which he framed his resolve to go near her on the +first opportunity, and show his regard for her past confidence, in spite of Sir +Hugo’s unwelcome hints. +</p> + +<p> +Klesmer, having risen to Gwendolen as she approached, and being included by her +in the opening conversation with Mirah, continued near them a little while, +looking down with a smile, which was rather in his eyes than on his lips, at +the piquant contrast of the two charming young creatures seated on the red +divan. The solicitude seemed to be all on the side of the splendid one. +</p> + +<p> +“You must let me say how much I am obliged to you,” said Gwendolen. +“I had heard from Mr. Deronda that I should have a great treat in your +singing, but I was too ignorant to imagine how great.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very good to say so,” answered Mirah, her mind chiefly +occupied in contemplating Gwendolen. It was like a new kind of stage-experience +to her to be close to genuine grand ladies with genuine brilliants and +complexions, and they impressed her vaguely as coming out of some unknown +drama, in which their parts perhaps got more tragic as they went on. +</p> + +<p> +“We shall all want to learn of you—I, at least,” said +Gwendolen. “I sing very badly, as Herr Klesmer will tell +you,”—here she glanced upward to that higher power rather archly, +and continued—“but I have been rebuked for not liking to be +middling, since I can be nothing more. I think that is a different doctrine +from yours?” She was still looking at Klesmer, who said quickly, +</p> + +<p> +“Not if it means that it would be worth while for you to study further, +and for Miss Lapidoth to have the pleasure of helping you.” With that he +moved away, and Mirah taking everything with <i>naïve</i> seriousness, said, +</p> + +<p> +“If you think I could teach you, I shall be very glad. I am anxious to +teach, but I have only just begun. If I do it well, it must be by remembering +how my master taught me.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was in reality too uncertain about herself to be prepared for this +simple promptitude of Mirah’s, and in her wish to change the subject, +said, with some lapse from the good taste of her first address, +</p> + +<p> +“You have not been long in London, I think?—but you were perhaps +introduced to Mr. Deronda abroad?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Mirah; “I never saw him before I came to England +in the summer.” +</p> + +<p> +“But he has seen you often and heard you sing a great deal, has he +not?” said Gwendolen, led on partly by the wish to hear anything about +Deronda, and partly by the awkwardness which besets the readiest person, in +carrying on a dialogue when empty of matter. “He spoke of you to me with +the highest praise. He seemed to know you quite well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I was poor and needed help,” said Mirah, in a new tone of +feeling, “and Mr. Deronda has given me the best friends in the world. +That is the only way he came to know anything about me—because he was +sorry for me. I had no friends when I came. I was in distress. I owe everything +to him.” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Gwendolen, who had wanted to be a struggling artist herself, could +nevertheless not escape the impression that a mode of inquiry which would have +been rather rude toward herself was an amiable condescension to this Jewess who +was ready to give her lessons. The only effect on Mirah, as always on any +mention of Deronda, was to stir reverential gratitude and anxiety that she +should be understood to have the deepest obligation to him. +</p> + +<p> +But both he and Hans, who were noticing the pair from a distance, would have +felt rather indignant if they had known that the conversation had led up to +Mirah’s representation of herself in this light of neediness. In the +movement that prompted her, however, there was an exquisite delicacy, which +perhaps she could not have stated explicitly—the feeling that she ought +not to allow any one to assume in Deronda a relation of more equality or less +generous interest toward her than actually existed. Her answer was delightful +to Gwendolen: she thought of nothing but the ready compassion which in another +form she had trusted in and found herself; and on the signals that Klesmer was +about to play she moved away in much content, entirely without presentiment +that this Jewish <i>protégé</i> would ever make a more important difference in +her life than the possible improvement of her singing—if the leisure and +spirits of a Mrs. Grandcourt would allow of other lessons than such as the +world was giving her at rather a high charge. +</p> + +<p> +With her wonted alternation from resolute care of appearances to some rash +indulgence of an impulse, she chose, under the pretext of getting farther from +the instrument, not to go again to her former seat, but placed herself on a +settee where she could only have one neighbor. She was nearer to Deronda than +before: was it surprising that he came up in time to shake hands before the +music began—then, that after he had stood a little while by the elbow of +the settee at the empty end, the torrent-like confluences of bass and treble +seemed, like a convulsion of nature, to cast the conduct of petty mortals into +insignificance, and to warrant his sitting down? +</p> + +<p> +But when at the end of Klesmer’s playing there came the outburst of talk +under which Gwendolen had hoped to speak as she would to Deronda, she observed +that Mr. Lush was within hearing, leaning against the wall close by them. She +could not help her flush of anger, but she tried to have only an air of polite +indifference in saying, +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Lapidoth is everything you described her to be.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have been very quick in discovering that,” said Deronda, +ironically. +</p> + +<p> +“I have not found out all the excellencies you spoke of—I +don’t mean that,” said Gwendolen; “but I think her singing is +charming, and herself, too. Her face is lovely—not in the least common; +and she is such a complete little person. I should think she will be a great +success.” +</p> + +<p> +This speech was grating on Deronda, and he would not answer it, but looked +gravely before him. She knew that he was displeased with her, and she was +getting so impatient under the neighborhood of Mr. Lush, which prevented her +from saying any word she wanted to say, that she meditated some desperate step +to get rid of it, and remained silent, too. That constraint seemed to last a +long while, neither Gwendolen nor Deronda looking at the other, till Lush +slowly relieved the wall of his weight, and joined some one at a distance. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen immediately said, “You despise me for talking +artificially.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Deronda, looking at her coolly; “I think that is +quite excusable sometimes. But I did not think what you were last saying was +altogether artificial.” +</p> + +<p> +“There was something in it that displeased you,” said Gwendolen. +“What was it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is impossible to explain such things,” said Deronda. “One +can never communicate niceties of feeling about words and manner.” +</p> + +<p> +“You think I am shut out from understanding them,” said Gwendolen, +with a slight tremor in her voice, which she was trying to conquer. “Have +I shown myself so very dense to everything you have said?” There was an +indescribable look of suppressed tears in her eyes, which were turned on him. +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all,” said Deronda, with some softening of voice. +“But experience differs for different people. We don’t all wince at +the same things. I have had plenty of proof that you are not dense.” He +smiled at her. +</p> + +<p> +“But one may feel things and are not able to do anything better for all +that,” said Gwendolen, not smiling in return—the distance to which +Deronda’s words seemed to throw her chilling her too much. “I begin +to think we can only get better by having people about us who raise good +feelings. You must not be surprised at anything in me. I think it is too late +for me to alter. I don’t know how to set about being wise, as you told me +to be.” +</p> + +<p> +“I seldom find I do any good by my preaching. I might as well have kept +from meddling,” said Deronda, thinking rather sadly that his interference +about that unfortunate necklace might end in nothing but an added pain to him +in seeing her after all hardened to another sort of gambling than roulette. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t say that,” said Gwendolen, hurriedly, feeling that +this might be her only chance of getting the words uttered, and dreading the +increase of her own agitation. “If you despair of me, I shall despair. +Your saying that I should not go on being selfish and ignorant has been some +strength to me. If you say you wish you had not meddled—that means you +despair of me and forsake me. And then you will decide for me that I shall not +be good. It is you who will decide; because you might have made me different by +keeping as near to me as you could, and believing in me.” +</p> + +<p> +She had not been looking at him as she spoke, but at the handle of the fan +which she held closed. With the last words she rose and left him, returning to +her former place, which had been left vacant; while every one was settling into +quietude in expectation of Mirah’s voice, which presently, with that +wonderful, searching quality of subdued song in which the melody seems simply +an effect of the emotion, gave forth, <i>Per pietà non dirmi addio</i>. +</p> + +<p> +In Deronda’s ear the strain was for the moment a continuance of +Gwendolen’s pleading—a painful urging of something vague and +difficult, irreconcilable with pressing conditions, and yet cruel to resist. +However strange the mixture in her of a resolute pride and a precocious air of +knowing the world, with a precipitate, guileless indiscretion, he was quite +sure now that the mixture existed. Sir Hugo’s hints had made him alive to +dangers that his own disposition might have neglected; but that +Gwendolen’s reliance on him was unvisited by any dream of his being a man +who could misinterpret her was as manifest as morning, and made an appeal which +wrestled with his sense of present dangers, and with his foreboding of a +growing incompatible claim on him in her mind. There was a foreshadowing of +some painful collision: on the one side the grasp of Mordecai’s dying +hand on him, with all the ideals and prospects it aroused; on the other the +fair creature in silk and gems, with her hidden wound and her self-dread, +making a trustful effort to lean and find herself sustained. It was as if he +had a vision of himself besought with outstretched arms and cries, while he was +caught by the waves and compelled to mount the vessel bound for a far-off +coast. That was the strain of excited feeling in him that went along with the +notes of Mirah’s song; but when it ceased he moved from his seat with the +reflection that he had been falling into an exaggeration of his own importance, +and a ridiculous readiness to accept Gwendolen’s view of himself, as if +he could really have any decisive power over her. +</p> + +<p> +“What an enviable fellow you are,” said Hans to him, “sitting +on a sofa with that young duchess, and having an interesting quarrel with +her!” +</p> + +<p> +“Quarrel with her?” repeated Deronda, rather uncomfortably. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, about theology, of course; nothing personal. But she told you what +you ought to think, and then left you with a grand air which was admirable. Is +she an Antinomian—if so, tell her I am an Antinomian painter, and +introduce me. I should like to paint her and her husband. He has the sort of +handsome <i>physique</i> that the Duke ought to have in <i>Lucrezia +Borgia</i>—if it could go with a fine baritone, which it +can’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda devoutly hoped that Hans’s account of the impression his dialogue +with Gwendolen had made on a distant beholder was no more than a bit of +fantastic representation, such as was common with him. +</p> + +<p> +And Gwendolen was not without her after-thoughts that her husband’s eyes +might have been on her, extracting something to reprove—some offence +against her dignity as his wife; her consciousness telling her that she had not +kept up the perfect air of equability in public which was her own ideal. But +Grandcourt made no observation on her behavior. All he said as they were +driving home was, +</p> + +<p> +“Lush will dine with us among the other people to-morrow. You will treat +him civilly.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s heart began to beat violently. The words that she wanted to +utter, as one wants to return a blow, were. “You are breaking your +promise to me—the first promise you made me.” But she dared not +utter them. She was as frightened at a quarrel as if she had foreseen that it +would end with throttling fingers on her neck. After a pause, she said in the +tone rather of defeat than resentment, +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you did not intend him to frequent the house again.” +</p> + +<p> +“I want him just now. He is useful to me; and he must be treated +civilly.” +</p> + +<p> +Silence. There may come a moment when even an excellent husband who has dropped +smoking under more or less of a pledge during courtship, for the first time +will introduce his cigar-smoke between himself and his wife, with the tacit +understanding that she will have to put up with it. Mr. Lush was, so to speak, +a very large cigar. +</p> + +<p> +If these are the sort of lovers’ vows at which Jove laughs, he must have +a merry time of it. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0046"></a> +CHAPTER XLVI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“If any one should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I feel +it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, ‘Because it was +he, because it was I.’ There is, beyond what I am able to say, I know not +what inexplicable power that brought on this +union.”—M<small>ONTAIGNE</small>: <i>On Friendship</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The time had come to prepare Mordecai for the revelation of the restored sister +and for the change of abode which was desirable before Mirah’s meeting +with her brother. Mrs. Meyrick, to whom Deronda had confided everything except +Mordecai’s peculiar relation to himself, had been active in helping him +to find a suitable lodging in Brompton, not many minutes’ walk from her +own house, so that the brother and sister would be within reach of her motherly +care. Her happy mixture of Scottish fervor and Gaelic liveliness had enabled +her to keep the secret close from the girls as well as from Hans, any betrayal +to them being likely to reach Mirah in some way that would raise an agitating +suspicion, and spoil the important opening of that work which was to secure her +independence, as we rather arbitrarily call one of the more arduous and +dignified forms of our dependence. And both Mrs. Meyrick and Deronda had more +reasons than they could have expressed for desiring that Mirah should be able +to maintain herself. Perhaps “the little mother” was rather helped +in her secrecy by some dubiousness in her sentiment about the remarkable +brother described to her; and certainly if she felt any joy and anticipatory +admiration, it was due to her faith in Deronda’s judgment. The +consumption was a sorrowful fact that appealed to her tenderness; but how was +she to be very glad of an enthusiasm which, to tell the truth, she could only +contemplate as Jewish pertinacity, and as rather an undesirable introduction +among them all of a man whose conversation would not be more modern and +encouraging than that of Scott’s Covenanters? Her mind was anything but +prosaic, and had her soberer share of Mab’s delight in the romance of +Mirah’s story and of her abode with them; but the romantic or unusual in +real life requires some adaptation. We sit up at night to read about +Sakya-Mouni, St. Francis, or Oliver Cromwell; but whether we should be glad for +any one at all like them to call on us the next morning, still more, to reveal +himself as a new relation, is quite another affair. Besides, Mrs. Meyrick had +hoped, as her children did, that the intensity of Mirah’s feeling about +Judaism would slowly subside, and be merged in the gradually deepening current +of loving interchange with her new friends. In fact, her secret favorite +continuation of the romance had been no discovery of Jewish relations, but +something much more favorable to the hopes she discerned in Hans. And +now—here was a brother who would dip Mirah’s mind over again in the +deepest dye of Jewish sentiment. She could not help saying to Deronda, +</p> + +<p> +“I am as glad as you are that the pawnbroker is not her brother: there +are Ezras and Ezras in the world; and really it is a comfort to think that all +Jews are not like those shopkeepers who <i>will not</i> let you get out of +their shops: and besides, what he said to you about his mother and sister makes +me bless him. I am sure he’s good. But I never did like anything +fanatical. I suppose I heard a little too much preaching in my youth and lost +my palate for it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think you will find that Mordecai obtrudes any +preaching,” said Deronda. “He is not what I should call fanatical. +I call a man fanatical when his enthusiasm is narrow and hoodwinked, so that he +has no sense of proportions, and becomes unjust and unsympathetic to men who +are out of his own track. Mordecai is an enthusiast; I should like to keep that +word for the highest order of minds—those who care supremely for grand +and general benefits to mankind. He is not a strictly orthodox Jew, and is full +of allowances for others; his conformity in many things is an allowance for the +condition of other Jews. The people he lives with are as fond of him as +possible, and they can’t in the least understand his ideas.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, I can live up to the level of the pawnbroker’s mother, +and like him for what I see to be good in him; and for what I don’t see +the merits of I will take your word. According to your definition, I suppose +one might be fanatical in worshipping common-sense; for my poor husband used to +say the world would be a poor place if there were nothing but common-sense in +it. However, Mirah’s brother will have good bedding—that I have +taken care of; and I shall have this extra window pasted up with paper to +prevent draughts.” (The conversation was taking place in the destined +lodging.) “It is a comfort to think that the people of the house are no +strangers to me—no hypocritical harpies. And when the children know, we +shall be able to make the rooms much prettier.” +</p> + +<p> +“The next stage of the affair is to tell all to Mordecai, and get him to +move—which may be a more difficult business,” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“And will you tell Mirah before I say anything to the children?” +said Mrs. Meyrick. But Deronda hesitated, and she went on in a tone of +persuasive deliberation—“No, I think not. Let me tell Hans and the +girls the evening before, and they will be away the next morning?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that will be best. But do justice to my account of +Mordecai—or Ezra, as I suppose Mirah will wish to call him: don’t +assist their imagination by referring to Habakkuk Mucklewrath,” said +Deronda, smiling—Mrs. Meyrick herself having used the comparison of the +Covenanters. +</p> + +<p> +“Trust me, trust me,” said the little mother. “I shall have +to persuade them so hard to be glad, that I shall convert myself. When I am +frightened I find it a good thing to have somebody to be angry with for not +being brave: it warms the blood.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda might have been more argumentative or persuasive about the view to be +taken of Mirah’s brother, if he had been less anxiously preoccupied with +the more important task immediately before him, which he desired to acquit +himself of without wounding the Cohens. Mordecai, by a memorable answer, had +made it evident that he would be keenly alive to any inadvertance in relation +to their feelings. In the interval, he had been meeting Mordecai at the <i>Hand +and Banner</i>, but now after due reflection he wrote to him saying that he had +particular reasons for wishing to see him in his own home the next evening, and +would beg to sit with him in his workroom for an hour, if the Cohens would not +regard it as an intrusion. He would call with the understanding that if there +were any objection, Mordecai would accompany him elsewhere. Deronda hoped in +this way to create a little expectation that would have a preparatory effect. +</p> + +<p> +He was received with the usual friendliness, some additional costume in the +women and children, and in all the elders a slight air of wondering which even +in Cohen was not allowed to pass the bounds of silence—the guest’s +transactions with Mordecai being a sort of mystery which he was rather proud to +think lay outside the sphere of light which enclosed his own understanding. But +when Deronda said, “I suppose Mordecai is at home and expecting +me,” Jacob, who had profited by the family remarks, went up to his knee +and said, “What do you want to talk to Mordecai about?” +</p> + +<p> +“Something that is very interesting to him,” said Deronda, pinching +the lad’s ear, “but that you can’t understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can you say this?” said Jacob, immediately giving forth a string +of his rote-learned Hebrew verses with a wonderful mixture of the throaty and +the nasal, and nodding his small head at his hearer, with a sense of giving +formidable evidence which might rather alter their mutual position. +</p> + +<p> +“No, really,” said Deronda, keeping grave; “I can’t say +anything like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought not,” said Jacob, performing a dance of triumph with his +small scarlet legs, while he took various objects out of the deep pockets of +his knickerbockers and returned them thither, as a slight hint of his +resources; after which, running to the door of the workroom, he opened it wide, +set his back against it, and said, “Mordecai, here’s the young +swell”—a copying of his father’s phrase, which seemed to him +well fitted to cap the recitation of Hebrew. +</p> + +<p> +He was called back with hushes by mother and grandmother, and Deronda, entering +and closing the door behind him, saw that a bit of carpet had been laid down, a +chair placed, and the fire and lights attended to, in sign of the Cohens’ +respect. As Mordecai rose to greet him, Deronda was struck with the air of +solemn expectation in his face, such as would have seemed perfectly natural if +his letter had declared that some revelation was to be made about the lost +sister. Neither of them spoke, till Deronda, with his usual tenderness of +manner, had drawn the vacant chair from the opposite side of the hearth and had +seated himself near to Mordecai, who then said, in a tone of fervid certainty, +</p> + +<p> +“You are coming to tell me something that my soul longs for.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is true I have something very weighty to tell you—something I +trust that you will rejoice in,” said Deronda, on his guard against the +probability that Mordecai had been preparing himself for something quite +different from the fact. +</p> + +<p> +“It is all revealed—it is made clear to you,” said Mordecai, +more eagerly, leaning forward with clasped hands. “You are even as my +brother that sucked the breasts of my mother—the heritage is +yours—there is no doubt to divide us.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have learned nothing new about myself,” said Deronda. The +disappointment was inevitable: it was better not to let the feeling be strained +longer in a mistaken hope. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai sank back in his chair, unable for the moment to care what was really +coming. The whole day his mind had been in a state of tension toward one +fulfillment. The reaction was sickening and he closed his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Except,” Deronda went on gently, after a +pause,—“except that I had really some time ago come into another +sort of hidden connection with you, besides what you have spoken of as existing +in your own feeling.” +</p> + +<p> +The eyes were not opened, but there was a fluttering in the lids. +</p> + +<p> +“I had made the acquaintance of one in whom you are interested.” +</p> + +<p> +“One who is closely related to your departed mother,” Deronda went +on wishing to make the disclosure gradual; but noticing a shrinking movement in +Mordecai, he added—“whom she and you held dear above all +others.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai, with a sudden start, laid a spasmodic grasp on Deronda’s wrist; +there was a great terror in him. And Deronda divined it. A tremor was +perceptible in his clear tones as he said, +</p> + +<p> +“What was prayed for has come to pass: Mirah has been delivered from +evil.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s grasp relaxed a little, but he was panting with a tearless +sob. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda went on: “Your sister is worthy of the mother you honored.” +</p> + +<p> +He waited there, and Mordecai, throwing himself backward in his chair, again +closed his eyes, uttering himself almost inaudibly for some minutes in Hebrew, +and then subsiding into a happy-looking silence. Deronda, watching the +expression in his uplifted face, could have imagined that he was speaking with +some beloved object: there was a new suffused sweetness, something like that on +the faces of the beautiful dead. For the first time Deronda thought he +discerned a family resemblance to Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +Presently when Mordecai was ready to listen, the rest was told. But in +accounting for Mirah’s flight he made the statement about the +father’s conduct as vague as he could, and threw the emphasis on her +yearning to come to England as the place where she might find her mother. Also +he kept back the fact of Mirah’s intention to drown herself, and his own +part in rescuing her; merely describing the home she had found with friends of +his, whose interest in her and efforts for her he had shared. What he dwelt on +finally was Mirah’s feeling about her mother and brother; and in relation +to this he tried to give every detail. +</p> + +<p> +“It was in search of them,” said Deronda, smiling, “that I +turned into this house: the name Ezra Cohen was just then the most interesting +name in the world to me. I confess I had fear for a long while. Perhaps you +will forgive me now for having asked you that question about the elder Mrs. +Cohen’s daughter. I cared very much what I should find Mirah’s +friends to be. But I had found a brother worthy of her when I knew that her +Ezra was disguised under the name of Mordecai.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mordecai is really my name—Ezra Mordecai Cohen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is there any kinship between this family and yours?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Only the kinship of Israel. My soul clings to these people, who have +sheltered me and given me succor out of the affection that abides in Jewish +hearts, as sweet odor in things long crushed and hidden from the outer air. It +is good for me to bear with their ignorance and be bound to them in gratitude, +that I may keep in mind the spiritual poverty of the Jewish million, and not +put impatient knowledge in the stead of loving wisdom.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you don’t feel bound to continue with them now there is a +closer tie to draw you?” said Deronda, not without fear that he might +find an obstacle to overcome. “It seems to me right now—is it +not?—that you should live with your sister; and I have prepared a home to +take you to in the neighborhood of her friends, that she may join you there. +Pray grant me this wish. It will enable me to be with you often in the hours +when Mirah is obliged to leave you. That is my selfish reason. But the chief +reason is, that Mirah will desire to watch over you, and that you ought to give +her the guardianship of a brother’s presence. You shall have books about +you. I shall want to learn of you, and to take you out to see the river and +trees. And you will have the rest and comfort that you will be more and more in +need of—nay, that I need for you. This is the claim I make on you, now +that we have found each other.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda spoke in a tone of earnest, affectionate pleading, such as he might +have used to a venerated elder brother. Mordecai’s eyes were fixed on him +with a listening contemplation, and he was silent for a little while after +Deronda had ceased to speak. Then he said, with an almost reproachful emphasis, +</p> + +<p> +“And you would have me hold it doubtful whether you were born a Jew! Have +we not from the first touched each other with invisible fibres—have we +not quivered together like the leaves from a common stem with stirring from a +common root? I know what I am outwardly, I am one among the crowd of +poor—I am stricken, I am dying. But our souls know each other. They gazed +in silence as those who have long been parted and meet again, but when they +found voice they were assured, and all their speech is understanding. The life +of Israel is in your veins.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda sat perfectly still, but felt his face tingling. It was impossible +either to deny or assent. He waited, hoping that Mordecai would presently give +him a more direct answer. And after a pause of meditation he did say, firmly, +</p> + +<p> +“What you wish of me I will do. And our mother—may the blessing of +the Eternal be with her in our souls!—would have wished it too. I will +accept what your loving kindness has prepared, and Mirah’s home shall be +mine.” He paused a moment, and then added in a more melancholy tone, +“But I shall grieve to part from these parents and the little ones. You +must tell them, for my heart would fail me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I felt that you would want me to tell them. Shall we go now at +once?” said Deronda, much relieved by this unwavering compliance. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; let us not defer it. It must be done,” said Mordecai, rising +with the air of a man who has to perform a painful duty. Then came, as an +afterthought, “But do not dwell on my sister more than is needful.” +</p> + +<p> +When they entered the parlor he said to the alert Jacob, “Ask your father +to come, and tell Sarah to mind the shop. My friend has something to +say,” he continued, turning to the elder Mrs. Cohen. It seemed part of +Mordecai’s eccentricity that he should call this gentleman his friend; +and the two women tried to show their better manners by warm politeness in +begging Deronda to seat himself in the best place. +</p> + +<p> +When Cohen entered with a pen behind his ear, he rubbed his hands and said with +loud satisfaction, “Well, sir! I’m glad you’re doing us the +honor to join our family party again. We are pretty comfortable, I +think.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked round with shiny gladness. And when all were seated on the hearth the +scene was worth peeping in upon: on one side Baby under her scarlet quilt in +the corner being rocked by the young mother, and Adelaide Rebekah seated on the +grandmother’s knee; on the other, Jacob between his father’s legs; +while the two markedly different figures of Deronda and Mordecai were in the +middle—Mordecai a little backward in the shade, anxious to conceal his +agitated susceptibility to what was going on around him. The chief light came +from the fire, which brought out the rich color on a depth of shadow, and +seemed to turn into speech the dark gems of eyes that looked at each other +kindly. +</p> + +<p> +“I have just been telling Mordecai of an event that makes a great change +in his life,” Deronda began, “but I hope you will agree with me +that it is a joyful one. Since he thinks of you as his best friends, he wishes +me to tell you for him at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Relations with money, sir?” burst in Cohen, feeling a power of +divination which it was a pity to nullify by waiting for the fact. +</p> + +<p> +“No; not exactly,” said Deronda, smiling. “But a very +precious relation wishes to be reunited to him—a very good and lovely +young sister, who will care for his comfort in every way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Married, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not married.” +</p> + +<p> +“But with a maintenance?” +</p> + +<p> +“With talents which will secure her a maintenance. A home is already +provided for Mordecai.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for a moment or two before the grandmother said in a wailing +tone, +</p> + +<p> +“Well, well! and so you’re going away from us, Mordecai.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where there’s no children as there is here,” said the +mother, catching the wail. +</p> + +<p> +“No Jacob, and no Adelaide, and no Eugenie!” wailed the grandmother +again. +</p> + +<p> +“Ay, ay, Jacob’s learning ’ill all wear out of him. He must +go to school. It’ll be hard times for Jacob,” said Cohen, in a tone +of decision. +</p> + +<p> +In the wide-open ears of Jacob his father’s words sounded like a doom, +giving an awful finish to the dirge-like effect of the whole announcement. His +face had been gathering a wondering incredulous sorrow at the notion of +Mordecai’s going away: he was unable to imagine the change as anything +lasting; but at the mention of “hard times for Jacob” there was no +further suspense of feeling, and he broke forth in loud lamentation. Adelaide +Rebekah always cried when her brother cried, and now began to howl with +astonishing suddenness, whereupon baby awaking contributed angry screams, and +required to be taken out of the cradle. A great deal of hushing was necessary, +and Mordecai feeling the cries pierce him, put out his arms to Jacob, who in +the midst of his tears and sobs was turning his head right and left for general +observation. His father, who had been saying, “Never mind, old man; you +shall go to the riders,” now released him, and he went to Mordecai, who +clasped him, and laid his cheek on the little black head without speaking. But +Cohen, sensible that the master of the family must make some apology for all +this weakness, and that the occasion called for a speech, addressed Deronda +with some elevation of pitch, squaring his elbows and resting a hand on each +knee: +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not as we’re the people to grudge anybody’s good +luck, sir, or the portion of their cup being made fuller, as I may say. +I’m not an envious man, and if anybody offered to set up Mordecai in a +shop of my sort two doors lower down, <i>I</i> shouldn’t make wry faces +about it. I’m not one of them that had need have a poor opinion of +themselves, and be frightened at anybody else getting a chance. If I’m +offal, let a wise man come and tell me, for I’ve never heard it yet. And +in point of business, I’m not a class of goods to be in danger. If +anybody takes to rolling me, I can pack myself up like a caterpillar, and find +my feet when I’m let alone. And though, as I may say, you’re taking +some of our good works from us, which is property bearing interest, I’m +not saying but we can afford that, though my mother and my wife had the good +will to wish and do for Mordecai to the last; and a Jew must not be like a +servant who works for reward—though I see nothing against a reward if I +can get it. And as to the extra outlay in schooling, I’m neither poor nor +greedy—I wouldn’t hang myself for sixpence, nor half a crown +neither. But the truth of it is, the women and children are fond of Mordecai. +You may partly see how it is, sir, by your own sense. A Jewish man is bound to +thank God, day by day, that he was not made a woman; but a woman has to thank +God that He has made her according to His will. And we all know what He has +made her—a child-bearing, tender-hearted thing is the woman of our +people. Her children are mostly stout, as I think you’ll say Addy’s +are, and she’s not mushy, but her heart is tender. So you must excuse +present company, sir, for not being glad all at once. And as to this young +lady—for by what you say ‘young lady’ is the proper +term”—Cohen here threw some additional emphasis into his look and +tone—“we shall all be glad for Mordecai’s sake by-and-by, +when we cast up our accounts and see where we are.” +</p> + +<p> +Before Deronda could summon any answer to this oddly mixed speech, Mordecai +exclaimed, +</p> + +<p> +“Friends, friends! For food and raiment and shelter I would not have +sought better than you have given me. You have sweetened the morsel with love; +and what I thought of as a joy that would be left to me even in the last months +of my waning strength was to go on teaching the lad. But now I am as one who +had clad himself beforehand in his shroud, and used himself to making the grave +his bed, when the divine command sounded in his ears, ‘Arise, and go +forth; the night is not yet come.’ For no light matter would I have +turned away from your kindness to take another’s. But it has been taught +us, as you know, that <i>the reward of one duty is the power to fulfill +another</i>—so said Ben Azai. You have made your duty to one of the poor +among your brethren a joy to you and me; and your reward shall be that you will +not rest without the joy of like deeds in the time to come. And may not Jacob +come and visit me?” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai had turned with this question to Deronda, who said, +</p> + +<p> +“Surely that can be managed. It is no further than Brompton.” +</p> + +<p> +Jacob, who had been gradually calmed by the need to hear what was going +forward, began now to see some daylight on the future, the word +“visit” having the lively charm of cakes and general relaxation at +his grandfather’s, the dealer in knives. He danced away from Mordecai, +and took up a station of survey in the middle of the hearth with his hands in +his knickerbockers. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the grandmother, with a sigh of resignation, “I +hope there’ll be nothing in the way of your getting <i>kosher</i> meat, +Mordecai. For you’ll have to trust to those you live with.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all right, that’s all right, you may be sure, +mother,” said Cohen, as if anxious to cut off inquiry on matters in which +he was uncertain of the guest’s position. “So, sir,” he +added, turning with a look of amused enlightenment to Deronda, “it was +better than learning you had to talk to Mordecai about! I wondered to myself at +the time. I thought somehow there was a something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mordecai will perhaps explain to you how it was that I was seeking +him,” said Deronda, feeling that he had better go, and rising as he +spoke. +</p> + +<p> +It was agreed that he should come again and the final move be made on the next +day but one; but when he was going Mordecai begged to walk with him to the end +of the street, and wrapped himself in coat and comforter. It was a March +evening, and Deronda did not mean to let him go far, but he understood the wish +to be outside the house with him in communicative silence, after the exciting +speech that had been filling the last hour. No word was spoken until Deronda +had proposed parting, when he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah would wish to thank the Cohens for their goodness. You would wish +her to do so—to come and see them, would you not?” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai did not answer immediately, but at length said, +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot tell. I fear not. There is a family sorrow, and the sight of my +sister might be to them as the fresh bleeding of wounds. There is a daughter +and sister who will never be restored as Mirah is. But who knows the pathways? +We are all of us denying or fulfilling prayers—and men in their careless +deeds walk amidst invisible outstretched arms and pleadings made in vain. In my +ears I have the prayers of generations past and to come. My life is as nothing +to me but the beginning of fulfilment. And yet I am only another +prayer—which you will fulfil.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda pressed his hand, and they parted. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0047"></a> +CHAPTER XLVII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“And you must love him ere to you<br/> +He will seem worthy of your love.”<br/> + —W<small>ORDSWORTH</small>. +</p> + +<p> +One might be tempted to envy Deronda providing new clothes for Mordecai, and +pleasing himself as if he were sketching a picture in imagining the effect of +the fine gray flannel shirts and a dressing-gown very much like a +Franciscan’s brown frock, with Mordecai’s head and neck above them. +Half his pleasure was the sense of seeing Mirah’s brother through her +eyes, and securing her fervid joy from any perturbing impression. And yet, +after he had made all things ready, he was visited with doubt whether he were +not mistaking her, and putting the lower effect for the higher: was she not +just as capable as he himself had been of feeling the impressive distinction in +her brother all the more for that aspect of poverty which was among the +memorials of his past? But there were the Meyricks to be propitiated toward +this too Judaic brother; and Deronda detected himself piqued into getting out +of sight everything that might feed the ready repugnance in minds unblessed +with that precious “seeing,” that bathing of all objects in a +solemnity as of sun-set glow, which is begotten of a loving reverential +emotion. +</p> + +<p> +And his inclination would have been the more confirmed if he had heard the +dialogue round Mrs. Meyrick’s fire late in the evening, after Mirah had +gone to her room. Hans, settled now in his Chelsea rooms, had stayed late, and +Mrs. Meyrick, poking the fire into a blaze, said, +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Kate, put out your candle, and all come round the fire cosily. +Hans, dear, do leave off laughing at those poems for the ninety-ninth time, and +come too. I have something wonderful to tell.” +</p> + +<p> +“As if I didn’t know that, ma. I have seen it in the corner of your +eye ever so long, and in your pretense of errands,” said Kate, while the +girls came up to put their feet on the fender, and Hans, pushing his chair near +them, sat astride it, resting his fists and chin on the back. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, if you are so wise, perhaps you know that Mirah’s +brother is found!” said Mrs. Meyrick, in her clearest accents. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, confound it!” said Hans, in the same moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Hans, that is wicked,” said Mab. “Suppose we had lost +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>cannot</i> help being rather sorry,” said Kate. “And +her mother?—where is she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Her mother is dead.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope the brother is not a bad man,” said Amy. +</p> + +<p> +“Nor a fellow all smiles and jewelry—a Crystal Palace Assyrian with +a hat on,” said Hans, in the worst humor. +</p> + +<p> +“Were there ever such unfeeling children?” said Mrs. Meyrick, a +little strengthened by the need for opposition. “You don’t think +the least bit of Mirah’s joy in the matter.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know, ma, Mirah hardly remembers her brother,” said Kate. +</p> + +<p> +“People who are lost for twelve years should never come back +again,” said Hans. “They are always in the way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hans!” said Mrs. Meyrick, reproachfully. “If you had lost me +for <i>twenty</i> years, I should have thought—” +</p> + +<p> +“I said twelve years,” Hans broke in. “Anywhere about twelve +years is the time at which lost relations should keep out of the way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, but it’s nice finding people—there is something to +tell,” said Mab, clasping her knees. “Did Prince Camaralzaman find +him?” +</p> + +<p> +Then Mrs. Meyrick, in her neat, narrative way, told all she knew without +interruption. “Mr. Deronda has the highest admiration for him,” she +ended—“seems quite to look up to him. And he says Mirah is just the +sister to understand this brother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Deronda is getting perfectly preposterous about those Jews,” said +Hans with disgust, rising and setting his chair away with a bang. “He +wants to do everything he can to encourage Mirah in her prejudices.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, for shame, Hans!—to speak in that way of Mr. Deronda,” +said Mab. And Mrs. Meyrick’s face showed something like an under-current +of expression not allowed to get to the surface. +</p> + +<p> +“And now we shall never be all together,” Hans went on, walking +about with his hands thrust into the pockets of his brown velveteen coat, +“but we must have this prophet Elijah to tea with us, and Mirah will +think of nothing but sitting on the ruins of Jerusalem. She will be spoiled as +an artist—mind that—she will get as narrow as a nun. Everything +will be spoiled—our home and everything. I shall take to drinking.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, really, Hans,” said Kate, impatiently. “I do think men +are the most contemptible animals in all creation. Every one of them must have +everything to his mind, else he is unbearable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh, oh, it’s very dreadful!” cried Mab. “I feel as +if ancient Nineveh were come again.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should like to know what is the good of having gone to the university +and knowing everything, if you are so childish, Hans,” said Amy. +“You ought to put up with a man that Providence sends you to be kind to. +<i>We</i> shall have to put up with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you will all of you like the new Lamentations of +Jeremiah—‘to be continued in our next’—that’s +all,” said Hans, seizing his wide-awake. “It’s no use being +one thing more than another if one has to endure the company of those men with +a fixed idea, staring blankly at you, and requiring all your remarks to be +small foot-notes to their text. If you’re to be under a petrifying wall, +you’d better be an old boot. I don’t feel myself an old +boot.” Then abruptly, “Good night, little mother,” bending to +kiss her brow in a hasty, desperate manner, and condescendingly, on his way to +the door, “Good-night, girls.” +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose Mirah knew how you are behaving,” said Kate. But her +answer was a slam of the door. “I <i>should</i> like to see Mirah when +Mr. Deronda tells her,” she went on to her mother. “I know she will +look so beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +But Deronda, on second thoughts, had written a letter, which Mrs. Meyrick +received the next morning, begging her to make the revelation instead of +waiting for him, not giving the real reason—that he shrank from going +again through a narrative in which he seemed to be making himself important and +giving himself a character of general beneficence—but saying that he +wished to remain with Mordecai while Mrs. Meyrick would bring Mirah on what was +to be understood as a visit, so that there might be a little interval before +that change of abode which he expected that Mirah herself would propose. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda secretly felt some wondering anxiety how far Mordecai, after years of +solitary preoccupation with ideas likely to have become the more exclusive from +continual diminution of bodily strength, would allow him to feel a tender +interest in his sister over and above the rendering of pious duties. His +feeling for the Cohens, and especially for little Jacob, showed a persistent +activity of affection; but these objects had entered into his daily life for +years; and Deronda felt it noticeable that Mordecai asked no new questions +about Mirah, maintaining, indeed, an unusual silence on all subjects, and +appearing simply to submit to the changes that were coming over his personal +life. He donned the new clothes obediently, but said afterward to Deronda, with +a faint smile, “I must keep my old garments by me for a +remembrance.” And when they were seated, awaiting Mirah, he uttered no +word, keeping his eyelids closed, but yet showing restless feeling in his face +and hands. In fact, Mordecai was undergoing that peculiar nervous perturbation +only known to those whose minds, long and habitually moving with strong impetus +in one current, are suddenly compelled into a new or reopened channel. +Susceptible people, whose strength has been long absorbed by dormant bias, +dread an interview that imperiously revives the past, as they would dread a +threatening illness. Joy may be there, but joy, too, is terrible. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt the infection of excitement, and when he heard the ring at the +door, he went out, not knowing exactly why, that he might see and greet Mirah +beforehand. He was startled to find that she had on the hat and cloak in which +he had first seen her—the memorable cloak that had once been wetted for a +winding-sheet. She had come down-stairs equipped in this way; and when Mrs. +Meyrick said, in a tone of question, “You like to go in that dress, +dear?” she answered, “My brother is poor, and I want to look as +much like him as I can, else he may feel distant from me”—imagining +that she should meet him in the workman’s dress. Deronda could not make +any remark, but felt secretly rather ashamed of his own fastidious +arrangements. They shook hands silently, for Mirah looked pale and awed. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda opened the door for her, Mordecai had risen, and had his eyes +turned toward it with an eager gaze. Mirah took only two or three steps, and +then stood still. They looked at each other, motionless. It was less their own +presence that they felt than another’s; they were meeting first in +memories, compared with which touch was no union. Mirah was the first to break +the silence, standing where she was. +</p> + +<p> +“Ezra,” she said, in exactly the same tone as when she was telling +of her mother’s call to him. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai with a sudden movement advanced and laid his hand on her shoulders. He +was the head taller, and looked down at her tenderly while he said, “That +was our mother’s voice. You remember her calling me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and how you answered her—‘Mother!’—and I +knew you loved her.” Mirah threw her arms round her brother’s neck, +clasped her little hands behind it, and drew down his face, kissing it with +childlike lavishness. Her hat fell backward on the ground and disclosed all her +curls. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, the dear head, the dear head!” said Mordecai, in a low loving +tone, laying his thin hand gently on the curls. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very ill, Ezra,” said Mirah, sadly looking at him with +more observation. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, dear child, I shall not be long with you in the body,” was +the quiet answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I will love you and we will talk to each other,” said Mirah, +with a sweet outpouring of her words, as spontaneous as bird-notes. “I +will tell you everything, and you will teach me:—you will teach me to be +a good Jewess—what she would have liked me to be. I shall always be with +you when I am not working. For I work now. I shall get money to keep us. Oh, I +have had such good friends.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah until now had quite forgotten that any one was by, but here she turned +with the prettiest attitude, keeping one hand on her brother’s arm while +she looked at Mrs. Meyrick and Deronda. The little mother’s happy emotion +in witnessing this meeting of brother and sister had already won her to +Mordecai, who seemed to her really to have more dignity and refinement than she +had felt obliged to believe in from Deronda’s account. +</p> + +<p> +“See this dear lady!” said Mirah. “I was a stranger, a poor +wanderer, and she believed in me, and has treated me as a daughter. Please give +my brother your hand,” she added, beseechingly, taking Mrs. +Meyrick’s hand and putting it in Mordecai’s, then pressing them +both with her own and lifting them to her lips. +</p> + +<p> +“The Eternal Goodness has been with you,” said Mordecai. “You +have helped to fulfill our mother’s prayer.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think we will go now, shall we?—and return later,” said +Deronda, laying a gentle pressure on Mrs. Meyrick’s arm, and she +immediately complied. He was afraid of any reference to the facts about himself +which he had kept back from Mordecai, and he felt no uneasiness now in the +thought of the brother and sister being alone together. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0048"></a> +CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +’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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +But Grandcourt, within his own sphere of interest, showed some of the qualities +which have entered into triumphal diplomacy of the wildest continental sort. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>à +propos</i>, +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“I think of making myself accomplished while we are in town, and having +singing lessons.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” said Grandcourt, languidly. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” echoed Gwendolen, playing at sauciness; “because I +can’t eat <i>pâté de foie gras</i> 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 <i>ennui</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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). +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +She meant to sling a small stone at her husband in that way. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s very indecent of Deronda to go about praising that +girl,” said Grandcourt in a tone of indifference. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Men who judge of others by themselves,” said Gwendolen, turning +white after her redness, and immediately smitten with a dread of her own words. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not true! What does it matter whether <i>he</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you wonder to see me—perhaps I ought to have +written—but I wished to make a particular request.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be very happy to sing for you. At ten?” said Mirah, while +Gwendolen seemed to get more instead of less embarrassed. +</p> + +<p> +“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, +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Deronda is in the next room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mirah, in her former tone. “He is reading Hebrew +with my brother.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have a brother?” said Gwendolen, who had heard this from Lady +Mallinger, but had not minded it then. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask where you have been at this extraordinary hour?” said +Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; and what you said is false—a low, wicked falsehood.” +</p> + +<p> +“She told you so—did she?” returned Grandcourt, with a more +thoroughly distilled sneer. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>you</i> know about the world? +You have married <i>me</i>, and must be guided by my opinion.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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, +</p> + +<p> +“It’s no use making a fuss. There are plenty of brutes in the world +that one has to talk to. People with any <i>savoir vivre</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Yet another pause before she could say “Yes”—her face turned +obliquely and her eyes cast down. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>minus</i>, but a terrible <i>plus</i> +that had never entered into her reckoning. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>opéra bouffe</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +He held a small paper folded in his hand while he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“Lay it on the table. And go into the next room, please.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +There could be but one answer at that moment: “Certainly,” with a +tone of obedience. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>he</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, +</p> + +<p> +“I will not stay longer now. Good-bye.” +</p> + +<p> +He put out his hand, and she let him press her poor little chill fingers; but +she said no good-bye. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +The next morning at breakfast he said, “I am going yachting to the +Mediterranean.” +</p> + +<p> +“When?” said Gwendolen, with a leap of heart which had hope in it. +</p> + +<p> +“The day after to-morrow. The yacht is at Marseilles. Lush is gone to get +everything ready.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“No; you will go with me.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0049"></a> +CHAPTER XLIX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + Ever in his soul<br/> +That larger justice which makes gratitude<br/> +Triumphed above resentment. ’Tis the mark<br/> +Of regal natures, with the wider life.<br/> +And fuller capability of joy:—<br/> +Not wits exultant in the strongest lens<br/> +To show you goodness vanished into pulp<br/> +Never worth “thank you”—they’re the devil’s +friars,<br/> +Vowed to be poor as he in love and trust,<br/> +Yet must go begging of a world that keeps<br/> +Some human property. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, in parting from Gwendolen, had abstained from saying, “I shall +not see you again for a long while: I am going away,” lest Grandcourt +should understand him to imply that the fact was of importance to her. +</p> + +<p> +He was actually going away under circumstances so momentous to himself that +when he set out to fulfill his promise of calling on her, he was already under +the shadow of a solemn emotion which revived the deepest experience of his +life. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo had sent for him to his chambers with the note—“Come +immediately. Something has happened:” a preparation that caused him some +relief when, on entering the baronet’s study, he was received with grave +affection instead of the distress which he had apprehended. +</p> + +<p> +“It is nothing to grieve you, sir?” said Deronda, in a tone rather +of restored confidence than question, as he took the hand held out to him. +There was an unusual meaning in Sir Hugo’s look, and a subdued emotion in +his voice, as he said, +</p> + +<p> +“No, Dan, no. Sit down. I have something to say.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda obeyed, not without presentiment. It was extremely rare for Sir Hugo to +show so much serious feeling. +</p> + +<p> +“Not to grieve me, my boy, no. At least, if there is nothing in it that +will grieve you too much. But I hardly expected that this—just +this—would ever happen. There have been reasons why I have never prepared +you for it. There have been reasons why I have never told you anything about +your parentage. But I have striven in every way not to make that an injury to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo paused, but Deronda could not speak. He could not say, “I have +never felt it an injury.” Even if that had been true, he could not have +trusted his voice to say anything. Far more than any one but himself could know +of was hanging on this moment when the secrecy was to be broken. Sir Hugo had +never seen the grand face he delighted in so pale—the lips pressed +together with such a look of pain. He went on with a more anxious tenderness, +as if he had a new fear of wounding. +</p> + +<p> +“I have acted in obedience to your mother’s wishes. The secrecy was +her wish. But now she desires to remove it. She desires to see you. I will put +this letter into your hands, which you can look at by-and-by. It will merely +tell you what she wishes you to do, and where you will find her.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo held out a letter written on foreign paper, which Deronda thrust into +his breast-pocket, with a sense of relief that he was not called on to read +anything immediately. The emotion on Daniel’s face had gained on the +baronet, and was visibly shaking his composure. Sir Hugo found it difficult to +say more. And Deronda’s whole soul was possessed by a question which was +the hardest in the world to utter. Yet he could not bear to delay it. This was +a sacramental moment. If he let it pass, he could not recover the influences +under which it was possible to utter the words and meet the answer. For some +moments his eyes were cast down, and it seemed to both as if thoughts were in +the air between them. But at last Deronda looked at Sir Hugo, and said, with a +tremulous reverence in his voice—dreading to convey indirectly the +reproach that affection had for years been stifling, +</p> + +<p> +“Is my father also living?” +</p> + +<p> +The answer came immediately in a low emphatic tone—“No.” +</p> + +<p> +In the mingled emotions which followed that answer it was impossible to +distinguish joy from pain. +</p> + +<p> +Some new light had fallen on the past for Sir Hugo too in this interview. After +a silence in which Deronda felt like one whose creed is gone before he has +religiously embraced another, the baronet said, in a tone of confession, +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I was wrong, Dan, to undertake what I did. And perhaps I liked +it a little too well—having you all to myself. But if you have had any +pain which I might have helped, I ask you to forgive me.” +</p> + +<p> +“The forgiveness has long been there,” said Deronda “The +chief pain has always been on account of some one else—whom I never +knew—whom I am now to know. It has not hindered me from feeling an +affection for you which has made a large part of all the life I +remember.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed one impulse that made the two men clasp each other’s hand for a +moment. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0057"></a> +BOOK VII.—THE MOTHER AND THE SON</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0050"></a> +CHAPTER L.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + “If some mortal, born too soon,<br/> +Were laid away in some great trance—the ages<br/> +Coming and going all the while—till dawned<br/> +His true time’s advent; and could then record<br/> +The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed,<br/> +Then I might tell more of the breath so light<br/> +Upon my eyelids, and the fingers warm<br/> +Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never<br/> +So dull was I but, when that spirit passed,<br/> +I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns<br/> +A water-snake when fairies cross his sleep.”<br/> + —B<small>ROWNING</small>: <i>Paracelsus</i>. +</p> + +<p> +This was the letter which Sir Hugo put into Deronda’s hands:, +</p> + +<p class="center"> +TO MY SON, DANIEL DERONDA. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +My good friend and yours, Sir Hugo Mallinger, will have told you that I wish to +see you. My health is shaken, and I desire there should be no time lost before +I deliver to you what I have long withheld. Let nothing hinder you from being +at the <i>Albergo dell’ Italia</i> in Genoa by the fourteenth of this +month. Wait for me there. I am uncertain when I shall be able to make the +journey from Spezia, where I shall be staying. That will depend on several +things. Wait for me—the Princess Halm-Eberstein. Bring with you the +diamond ring that Sir Hugo gave you. I shall like to see it again.—Your +unknown mother, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +L<small>EONORA</small> H<small>ALM</small>-E<small>BERSTEIN</small>. +</p> + +<p> +This letter with its colorless wording gave Deronda no clue to what was in +reserve for him; but he could not do otherwise than accept Sir Hugo’s +reticence, which seemed to imply some pledge not to anticipate the +mother’s disclosures; and the discovery that his life-long conjectures +had been mistaken checked further surmise. Deronda could not hinder his +imagination from taking a quick flight over what seemed possibilities, but he +refused to contemplate any of them as more likely than another, lest he should +be nursing it into a dominant desire or repugnance, instead of simply preparing +himself with resolve to meet the fact bravely, whatever it might turn out to +be. +</p> + +<p> +In this state of mind he could not have communicated to any one the reason for +the absence which in some quarters he was obliged to mention beforehand, least +of all to Mordecai, whom it would affect as powerfully as it did himself, only +in rather a different way. If he were to say, “I am going to learn the +truth about my birth,” Mordecai’s hope would gather what might +prove a painful, dangerous excitement. To exclude suppositions, he spoke of his +journey as being undertaken by Sir Hugo’s wish, and threw as much +indifference as he could into his manner of announcing it, saying he was +uncertain of its duration, but it would perhaps be very short. +</p> + +<p> +“I will ask to have the child Jacob to stay with me,” said +Mordecai, comforting himself in this way, after the first mournful glances. +</p> + +<p> +“I will drive round and ask Mrs. Cohen to let him come,” said +Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“The grandmother will deny you nothing,” said Deronda. +“I’m glad you were a little wrong as well as I,” he added, +smiling at Mordecai. “You thought that old Mrs. Cohen would not bear to +see Mirah.” +</p> + +<p> +“I undervalued her heart,” said Mordecai. “She is capable of +rejoicing that another’s plant blooms though her own be withered.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, they are dear good people; I feel as if we all belonged to each +other,” said Mirah, with a tinge of merriment in her smile. +</p> + +<p> +“What should you have felt if that Ezra had been your brother?” +said Deronda, mischievously—a little provoked that she had taken kindly +at once to people who had caused him so much prospective annoyance on her +account. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah looked at him with a slight surprise for a moment, and then said, +“He is not a bad man—I think he would never forsake any one.” +But when she uttered the words she blushed deeply, and glancing timidly at +Mordecai, turned away to some occupation. Her father was in her mind, and this +was a subject on which she and her brother had a painful mutual consciousness. +“If he should come and find us!” was a thought which to Mirah +sometimes made the street daylight as shadowy as a haunted forest where each +turn screened for her an imaginary apparition. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt what was her involuntary allusion, and understood the blush. How +could he be slow to understand feelings which now seemed nearer than ever to +his own? for the words of his mother’s letter implied that his filial +relation was not to be freed from painful conditions; indeed, singularly enough +that letter which had brought his mother nearer as a living reality had thrown +her into more remoteness for his affections. The tender yearning after a being +whose life might have been the worse for not having his care and love, the +image of a mother who had not had all her dues, whether of reverence or +compassion, had long been secretly present with him in his observation of all +the women he had come near. But it seemed now that this picturing of his mother +might fit the facts no better than his former conceptions about Sir Hugo. He +wondered to find that when this mother’s very handwriting had come to +him with words holding her actual feeling, his affections had suddenly shrunk +into a state of comparative neutrality toward her. A veiled figure with +enigmatic speech had thrust away that image which, in spite of uncertainty, his +clinging thought had gradually modeled and made the possessor of his tenderness +and duteous longing. When he set off to Genoa, the interest really uppermost in +his mind had hardly so much relation to his mother as to Mordecai and Mirah. +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you, Dan!” Sir Hugo had said, when they shook hands. +“Whatever else changes for you, it can’t change my being the oldest +friend you have known, and the one who has all along felt the most for you. I +couldn’t have loved you better if you’d been my own—only I +should have been better pleased with thinking of you always as the future +master of the Abbey instead of my fine nephew; and then you would have seen it +necessary for you to take a political line. However—things must be as +they may.” It was a defensive movement of the baronet’s to mingle +purposeless remarks with the expression of serious feeling. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda arrived at the <i>Italia</i> in Genoa, no Princess Halm-Eberstein +was there; but on the second day there was a letter for him, saying that her +arrival might happen within a week, or might be deferred a fortnight and more; +she was under circumstances which made it impossible for her to fix her journey +more precisely, and she entreated him to wait as patiently as he could. +</p> + +<p> +With this indefinite prospect of suspense on matters of supreme moment to him, +Deronda set about the difficult task of seeking amusement on philosophic +grounds, as a means of quieting excited feeling and giving patience a lift over +a weary road. His former visit to the superb city had been only cursory, and +left him much to learn beyond the prescribed round of sight-seeing, by spending +the cooler hours in observant wandering about the streets, the quay, and the +environs; and he often took a boat that he might enjoy the magnificent view of +the city and harbor from the sea. All sights, all subjects, even the expected +meeting with his mother, found a central union in Mordecai and Mirah, and the +ideas immediately associated with them; and among the thoughts that most filled +his mind while his boat was pushing about within view of the grand harbor was +that of the multitudinous Spanish Jews centuries ago driven destitute from +their Spanish homes, suffered to land from the crowded ships only for a brief +rest on this grand quay of Genoa, overspreading it with a pall of famine and +plague—dying mothers and dying children at their breasts—fathers +and sons a-gaze at each other’s haggardness, like groups from a hundred +Hunger-towers turned out beneath the midday sun. Inevitably dreamy +constructions of a possible ancestry for himself would weave themselves with +historic memories which had begun to have a new interest for him on his +discovery of Mirah, and now, under the influence of Mordecai, had become +irresistibly dominant. He would have sealed his mind against such constructions +if it had been possible, and he had never yet fully admitted to himself that he +wished the facts to verify Mordecai’s conviction: he inwardly repeated +that he had no choice in the matter, and that wishing was folly—nay, on +the question of parentage, wishing seemed part of that meanness which disowns +kinship: it was a disowning by anticipation. What he had to do was simply to +accept the fact; and he had really no strong presumption to go upon, now that +he was assured of his mistake about Sir Hugo. There had been a resolved +concealment which made all inference untrustworthy, and the very name he bore +might be a false one. If Mordecai was wrong—if he, the so-called Daniel +Deronda, were held by ties entirely aloof from any such course as his +friend’s pathetic hope had marked out?—he would not say “I +wish”; but he could not help feeling on which side the sacrifice lay. +</p> + +<p> +Across these two importunate thoughts, which he resisted as much as one can +resist anything in that unstrung condition which belongs to suspense, there +came continually an anxiety which he made no effort to banish—dwelling on +it rather with a mournfulness, which often seems to us the best atonement we +can make to one whose need we have been unable to meet. The anxiety was for +Gwendolen. In the wonderful mixtures of our nature there is a feeling distinct +from that exclusive passionate love of which some men and women (by no means +all) are capable, which yet is not the same with friendship, nor with a merely +benevolent regard, whether admiring or compassionate: a man, say—for it +is a man who is here concerned—hardly represents to himself this shade of +feeling toward a woman more nearly than in words, “I should have loved +her, if——”: the “if” covering some prior growth +in the inclinations, or else some circumstances which have made an inward +prohibitory law as a stay against the emotions ready to quiver out of balance. +The “if” in Deronda’s case carried reasons of both kinds; yet +he had never throughout his relations with Gwendolen been free from the nervous +consciousness that there was something to guard against not only on her account +but on his own—some precipitancy in the manifestations of impulsive +feeling—some ruinous inroad of what is but momentary on the permanent +chosen treasure of the heart—some spoiling of her trust, which wrought +upon him now as if it had been the retreating cry of a creature snatched and +carried out of his reach by swift horsemen or swifter waves, while his own +strength was only a stronger sense of weakness. How could his feelings for +Gwendolen ever be exactly like his feelings for other women, even when there +was one by whose side he desired to stand apart from them? Strangely the figure +entered into the pictures of his present and future; strangely (and now it +seemed sadly) their two lots had come in contact, hers narrowly personal, his +charged with far-reaching sensibilities, perhaps with durable purposes, which +were hardly more present to her than the reasons why men migrate are present to +the birds that come as usual for the crumbs and find them no more. Not that +Deronda was too ready to imagine himself of supreme importance to a woman; but +her words of insistence that he must “remain near her—must not +forsake her”—continually recurred to him with the clearness and +importunity of imagined sounds, such as Dante has said pierce us like arrows +whose points carry the sharpness of pity, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Lamenti saettaron me diversi<br/> +Che di pietà ferrati avean gli strali”. +</p> + +<p> +Day after day passed, and the very air of Italy seemed to carry the +consciousness that war had been declared against Austria, and every day was a +hurrying march of crowded Time toward the world-changing battle of Sadowa. +Meanwhile, in Genoa, the noons were getting hotter, the converging outer roads +getting deeper with white dust, the oleanders in the tubs along the wayside +gardens looking more and more like fatigued holiday-makers, and the sweet +evening changing her office—scattering abroad those whom the midday had +sent under shelter, and sowing all paths with happy social sounds, little +tinklings of mule-bells and whirrings of thrumbed strings, light footsteps and +voices, if not leisurely, then with the hurry of pleasure in them; while the +encircling heights, crowned with forts, skirted with fine dwellings and +gardens, seemed also to come forth and gaze in fullness of beauty after their +long siesta, till all strong color melted in the stream of moonlight which made +the Streets a new spectacle with shadows, both still and moving, on cathedral +steps and against the façades of massive palaces; and then slowly with the +descending moon all sank in deep night and silence, and nothing shone but the +port lights of the great Lanterna in the blackness below, and the glimmering +stars in the blackness above. Deronda, in his suspense, watched this revolving +of the days as he might have watched a wonderful clock where the striking of +the hours was made solemn with antique figures advancing and retreating in +monitory procession, while he still kept his ear open for another kind of +signal which would have its solemnity too: He was beginning to sicken of +occupation, and found himself contemplating all activity with the aloofness of +a prisoner awaiting ransom. In his letters to Mordecai and Hans, he had avoided +writing about himself, but he was really getting into that state of mind to +which all subjects become personal; and the few books he had brought to make +him a refuge in study were becoming unreadable, because the point of view that +life would make for him was in that agitating moment of uncertainty which is +close upon decision. +</p> + +<p> +Many nights were watched through by him in gazing from the open window of his +room on the double, faintly pierced darkness of the sea and the heavens; often +in struggling under the oppressive skepticism which represented his particular +lot, with all the importance he was allowing Mordecai to give it, as of no more +lasting effect than a dream—a set of changes which made passion to him, +but beyond his consciousness were no more than an imperceptible difference of +mass and shadow; sometimes with a reaction of emotive force which gave even to +sustained disappointment, even to the fulfilled demand of sacrifice, the nature +of a satisfied energy, and spread over his young future, whatever it might be, +the attraction of devoted service; sometimes with a sweet irresistible +hopefulness that the very best of human possibilities might befall +him—the blending of a complete personal love in one current with a larger +duty; and sometimes again in a mood of rebellion (what human creature escapes +it?) against things in general because they are thus and not otherwise, a mood +in which Gwendolen and her equivocal fate moved as busy images of what was +amiss in the world along with the concealments which he had felt as a hardship +in his own life, and which were acting in him now under the form of an +afflicting doubtfulness about the mother who had announced herself coldly and +still kept away. +</p> + +<p> +But at last she was come. One morning in his third week of waiting there was a +new kind of knock at the door. A servant in Chasseurs livery entered and +delivered in French the verbal message that, the Princess Halm-Eberstein had +arrived, that she was going to rest during the day, but would be obliged if +Monsieur would dine early, so as to be at liberty at seven, when she would be +able to receive him. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0051"></a> +CHAPTER LI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +She held the spindle as she sat,<br/> +Errina with the thick-coiled mat<br/> +Of raven hair and deepest agate eyes,<br/> +Gazing with a sad surprise<br/> +At surging visions of her destiny—<br/> +To spin the byssus drearily<br/> +In insect-labor, while the throng<br/> +Of gods and men wrought deeds that poets wrought in song. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda presented himself at the door of his mother’s apartment in +the <i>Italia</i> he felt some revival of his boyhood with its premature +agitations. The two servants in the antechamber looked at him markedly, a +little surprised that the doctor their lady had come to consult was this +striking young gentleman whose appearance gave even the severe lines of an +evening dress the credit of adornment. But Deronda could notice nothing until, +the second door being opened, he found himself in the presence of a figure +which at the other end of the large room stood awaiting his approach. +</p> + +<p> +She was covered, except as to her face and part of her arms, with black lace +hanging loosely from the summit of her whitening hair to the long train +stretching from her tall figure. Her arms, naked to the elbow, except for some +rich bracelets, were folded before her, and the fine poise of her head made it +look handsomer than it really was. But Deronda felt no interval of observation +before he was close in front of her, holding the hand she had put out and then +raising it to his lips. She still kept her hand in his and looked at him +examiningly; while his chief consciousness was that her eyes were piercing and +her face so mobile that the next moment she might look like a different person. +For even while she was examining him there was a play of the brow and nostril +which made a tacit language. Deronda dared no movement, not able to conceive +what sort of manifestation her feeling demanded; but he felt himself changing +color like a girl, and yet wondering at his own lack of emotion; he had lived +through so many ideal meetings with his mother, and they had seemed more real +than this! He could not even conjecture in what language she would speak to +him. He imagined it would not be English. Suddenly, she let fall his hand, and +placed both hers on his shoulders, while her face gave out a flash of +admiration in which every worn line disappeared and seemed to leave a restored +youth. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a beautiful creature!” she said, in a low melodious voice, +with syllables which had what might be called a foreign but agreeable outline. +“I knew you would be.” Then she kissed him on each cheek, and he +returned the kisses. But it was something like a greeting between royalties. +</p> + +<p> +She paused a moment while the lines were coming back into her face, and then +said in a colder tone, “I am your mother. But you can have no love for +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have thought of you more than of any other being in the world,” +said Deronda, his voice trembling nervously. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not like what you thought I was,” said the mother decisively, +withdrawing her hands from his shoulders, and folding her arms as before, +looking at him as if she invited him to observe her. He had often pictured her +face in his imagination as one which had a likeness to his own: he saw some of +the likeness now, but amidst more striking differences. She was a remarkable +looking being. What was it that gave her son a painful sense of +aloofness?—Her worn beauty had a strangeness in it as if she were not +quite a human mother, but a Melusina, who had ties with some world which is +independent of ours. +</p> + +<p> +“I used to think that you might be suffering,” said Deronda, +anxious above all not to wound her. “I used to wish that I could be a +comfort to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>am</i> suffering. But with a suffering that you can’t +comfort,” said the Princess, in a harder voice than before, moving to a +sofa where cushions had been carefully arranged for her. “Sit +down.” She pointed to a seat near her; and then discerning some distress +in Deronda’s face, she added, more gently, “I am not suffering at +this moment. I am at ease now. I am able to talk.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda seated himself and waited for her to speak again. It seemed as if he +were in the presence of a mysterious Fate rather than of the longed-for mother. +He was beginning to watch her with wonder, from the spiritual distance to which +she had thrown him. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she began: “I did not send for you to comfort me. I +could not know beforehand—I don’t know now—what you will feel +toward me. I have not the foolish notion that you can love me merely because I +am your mother, when you have never seen or heard of me in all your life. But I +thought I chose something better for you than being with me. I did not think I +deprived you of anything worth having.” +</p> + +<p> +“You cannot wish me to believe that your affection would not have been +worth having,” said Deronda, finding that she paused as if she expected +him to make some answer. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t mean to speak ill of myself,” said the princess, +with proud impetuosity, “But I had not much affection to give you. I did +not want affection. I had been stifled with it. I wanted to live out the life +that was in me, and not to be hampered with other lives. You wonder what I was. +I was no princess then.” She rose with a sudden movement, and stood as +she had done before. Deronda immediately rose too; he felt breathless. +</p> + +<p> +“No princess in this tame life that I live in now. I was a great singer, +and I acted as well as I sang. All the rest were poor beside me. Men followed +me from one country to another. I was living a myriad lives in one. I did not +want a child.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a passionate self-defence in her tone. She had cast all precedent out +of her mind. Precedent had no excuse for her and she could only seek a +justification in the intensest words she could find for her experience. She +seemed to fling out the last words against some possible reproach in the mind +of her son, who had to stand and hear them—clutching his coat-collar as +if he were keeping himself above water by it, and feeling his blood in the sort +of commotion that might have been excited if he had seen her going through some +strange rite of a religion which gave a sacredness to crime. What else had she +to tell him? She went on with the same intensity and a sort of pale +illumination in her face. +</p> + +<p> +“I did not want to marry. I was forced into marrying your +father—forced, I mean, by my father’s wishes and commands; and +besides, it was my best way of getting some freedom. I could rule my husband, +but not my father. I had a right to be free. I had a right to seek my freedom +from a bondage that I hated.” +</p> + +<p> +She seated herself again, while there was that subtle movement in her eyes and +closed lips which is like the suppressed continuation of speech. Deronda +continued standing, and after a moment or two she looked up at him with a less +defiant pleading as she said, +</p> + +<p> +“And the bondage I hated for myself I wanted to keep you from. What +better could the most loving mother have done? I relieved you from the bondage +of having been born a Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I <i>am</i> a Jew?” Deronda burst out with a deep-voiced +energy that made his mother shrink a little backward against her cushions. +“My father was a Jew, and you are a Jewess?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, your father was my cousin,” said the mother, watching him +with a change in her look, as if she saw something that she might have to be +afraid of. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad of it,” said Deronda, impetuously, in the veiled voice +of passion. He could not have imagined beforehand how he would have come to say +that which he had never hitherto admitted. He could not have dreamed that it +would be in impulsive opposition to his mother. He was shaken by a mixed anger +which no reflection could come soon enough to check, against this mother who it +seemed had borne him unwillingly, had willingly made herself a stranger to him, +and—perhaps—was now making herself known unwillingly. This last +suspicion seemed to flash some explanation over her speech. +</p> + +<p> +But the mother was equally shaken by an anger differently mixed, and her frame +was less equal to any repression. The shaking with her was visibly physical, +and her eyes looked the larger for her pallid excitement as she said violently, +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you say you are glad? You are an English gentleman. I secured you +that.” +</p> + +<p> +“You did not know what you secured me. How could you choose my birthright +for me?” said Deronda, throwing himself sideways into his chair again, +almost unconsciously, and leaning his arm over the back, while he looked away +from his mother. +</p> + +<p> +He was fired with an intolerance that seemed foreign to him. But he was now +trying hard to master himself and keep silence. A horror had swept in upon his +anger lest he should say something too hard in this moment which made an epoch +never to be recalled. There was a pause before his mother spoke again, and when +she spoke her voice had become more firmly resistant in its finely varied +tones: +</p> + +<p> +“I chose for you what I would have chosen for myself. How could I know +that you would have the spirit of my father in you? How could I know that you +would love what I hated?—if you really love to be a Jew.” The last +words had such bitterness in them that any one overhearing might have supposed +some hatred had arisen between the mother and son. +</p> + +<p> +But Deronda had recovered his fuller self. He was recalling his sensibilities +to what life had been and actually was for her whose best years were gone, and +who with the signs of suffering in her frame was now exerting herself to tell +him of a past which was not his alone but also hers. His habitual shame at the +acceptance of events as if they were his only, helped him even here. As he +looked at his mother silently after her last words, his face regained some of +its penetrative calm; yet it seemed to have a strangely agitating influence +over her: her eyes were fixed on him with a sort of fascination, but not with +any repose of maternal delight. +</p> + +<p> +“Forgive me, if I speak hastily,” he said, with diffident gravity. +“Why have you resolved now on disclosing to me what you took care to have +me brought up in ignorance of? Why—since you seem angry that I should be +glad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—the reasons of our actions!” said the Princess, with a +ring of something like sarcastic scorn. “When you are as old as I am, it +will not seem so simple a question—‘Why did you do this?’ +People talk of their motives in a cut and dried way. Every woman is supposed to +have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster. I am not a monster, but +I have not felt exactly what other women feel—or say they feel, for fear +of being thought unlike others. When you reproach me in your heart for sending +you away from me, you mean that I ought to say I felt about you as other women +say they feel about their children. I did <i>not</i> feel that. I was glad to +be freed from you. But I did well for you, and I gave you your father’s +fortune. Do I seem now to be revoking everything?—Well, there are +reasons. I feel many things that I cannot understand. A fatal illness has been +growing in me for a year. I shall very likely not live another year. I will not +deny anything I have done. I will not pretend to love where I have no love. But +shadows are rising round me. Sickness makes them. If I have wronged the +dead—I have but little time to do what I left undone.” +</p> + +<p> +The varied transitions of tone with which this speech was delivered were as +perfect as the most accomplished actress could have made them. The speech was +in fact a piece of what may be called sincere acting; this woman’s nature +was one in which all feeling—and all the more when it was tragic as well +as real—immediately became matter of conscious representation: experience +immediately passed into drama, and she acted her own emotions. In a minor +degree this is nothing uncommon, but in the Princess the acting had a rare +perfection of physiognomy, voice, and gesture. It would not be true to say that +she felt less because of this double consciousness: she felt—that is, her +mind went through—all the more, but with a difference; each nucleus of +pain or pleasure had a deep atmosphere of the excitement or spiritual +intoxication which at once exalts and deadens. But Deronda made no reflection +of this kind. All his thoughts hung on the purport of what his mother was +saying; her tones and her wonderful face entered into his agitation without +being noted. What he longed for with an awed desire was to know as much as she +would tell him of the strange mental conflict under which it seemed he had been +brought into the world; what his compassionate nature made the controlling idea +within him were the suffering and the confession that breathed through her +later words, and these forbade any further question, when she paused and +remained silent, with her brow knit, her head turned a little away from him, +and her large eyes fixed as if on something incorporeal. He must wait for her +to speak again. She did so with strange abruptness, turning her eyes upon him +suddenly, and saying more quickly, +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Hugo has written much about you. He tells me you have a wonderful +mind—you comprehend everything—you are wiser than he is with all +his sixty years. You say you are glad to know that you were born a Jew. I am +not going to tell you that I have changed my mind about that. Your feelings are +against mine. You don’t thank me for what I did. Shall you comprehend +your mother, or only blame her?” +</p> + +<p> +“There is not a fibre within me but makes me wish to comprehend +her,” said Deronda, meeting her sharp gaze solemnly. “It is a +bitter reversal of my longing to think of blaming her. What I have been most +trying to do for fifteen years is to have some understanding of those who +differ from myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you have become unlike your grandfather in that.” said the +mother, “though you are a young copy of him in your face. He never +comprehended me, or if he did, he only thought of fettering me into obedience. +I was to be what he called ‘the Jewish woman’ under pain of his +curse. I was to feel everything I did not feel, and believe everything I did +not believe. I was to feel awe for the bit of parchment in the <i>mezuza</i> +over the door; to dread lest a bit of butter should touch a bit of meat; to +think it beautiful that men should bind the <i>tephillin</i> on them, and women +not,—to adore the wisdom of such laws, however silly they might seem to +me. I was to love the long prayers in the ugly synagogue, and the howling, and +the gabbling, and the dreadful fasts, and the tiresome feasts, and my +father’s endless discoursing about our people, which was a thunder +without meaning in my ears. I was to care forever about what Israel had been; +and I did not care at all. I cared for the wide world, and all that I could +represent in it. I hated living under the shadow of my father’s +strictness. Teaching, teaching for everlasting—‘this you must +be,’ ‘that you must not be’—pressed on me like a frame +that got tighter and tighter as I grew. I wanted to live a large life, with +freedom to do what every one else did, and be carried along in a great current, +not obliged to care. Ah!”—here her tone changed to one of a more +bitter incisiveness—“you are glad to have been born a Jew. You say +so. That is because you have not been brought up as a Jew. That separateness +seems sweet to you because I saved you from it.” +</p> + +<p> +“When you resolved on that, you meant that I should never know my +origin?” said Deronda, impulsively. “You have at least changed in +your feeling on that point.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that was what I meant. That is what I persevered in. And it is not +true to say that I have changed. Things have changed in spite of me. I am still +the same Leonora”—she pointed with her forefinger to her +breast—“here within me is the same desire, the same will, the same +choice, <i>but</i>”—she spread out her hands, palm upward, on each +side of her, as she paused with a bitter compression of her lip, then let her +voice fall into muffled, rapid utterance—“events come upon us like +evil enchantments: and thoughts, feelings, apparitions in the darkness are +events—are they not? I don’t consent. We only consent to what we +love. I obey something tyrannic”—she spread out her hands +again—“I am forced to be withered, to feel pain, to be dying +slowly. Do I love that? Well, I have been forced to obey my dead father. I have +been forced to tell you that you are a Jew, and deliver to you what he +commanded me to deliver.” +</p> + +<p> +“I beseech you to tell me what moved you—when you were young, I +mean—to take the course you did,” said Deronda, trying by this +reference to the past to escape from what to him was the heart-rending +piteousness of this mingled suffering and defiance. “I gather that my +grandfather opposed your bent to be an artist. Though my own experience has +been quite different, I enter into the painfulness of your struggle. I can +imagine the hardship of an enforced renunciation.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said the Princess, shaking her head and folding her arms with +an air of decision. “You are not a woman. You may try—but you can +never imagine what it is to have a man’s force of genius in you, and yet +to suffer the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern cut +out—‘this is the Jewish woman; this is what you must be; this is +what you are wanted for; a woman’s heart must be of such a size and no +larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to +be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.’ That was what my father +wanted. He wished I had been a son; he cared for me as a make-shift link. His +heart was set on his Judaism. He hated that Jewish women should be thought of +by the Christian world as a sort of ware to make public singers and actresses +of. As if we were not the more enviable for that! That is a chance of escaping +from bondage.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was my grandfather a learned man?” said Deronda, eager to know +particulars that he feared his mother might not think of. +</p> + +<p> +She answered impatiently, putting up her hand, “Oh, yes,—and a +clever physician—and good: I don’t deny that he was good. A man to +be admired in a play—grand, with an iron will. Like the old Foscari +before he pardons. But such men turn their wives and daughters into slaves. +They would rule the world if they could; but not ruling the world, they throw +all the weight of their will on the necks and souls of women. But nature +sometimes thwarts them. My father had no other child than his daughter, and she +was like himself.” +</p> + +<p> +She had folded her arms again, and looked as if she were ready to face some +impending attempt at mastery. +</p> + +<p> +“Your father was different. Unlike me—all lovingness and affection. +I knew I could rule him; and I made him secretly promise me, before I married +him, that he would put no hindrance in the way of my being an artist. My father +was on his deathbed when we were married: from the first he had fixed his mind +on my marrying my cousin Ephraim. And when a woman’s will is as strong as +the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment. +I meant to have my will in the end, but I could only have it by seeming to +obey. I had an awe of my father—always I had had an awe of him: it was +impossible to help it. I hated to feel awed—I wished I could have defied +him openly; but I never could. It was what I could not imagine: I could not act +it to myself that I should begin to defy my father openly and succeed. And I +never would risk failure.” +</p> + +<p> +This last sentence was uttered with an abrupt emphasis, and she paused after it +as if the words had raised a crowd of remembrances which obstructed speech. Her +son was listening to her with feelings more and more highly mixed; the first +sense of being repelled by the frank coldness which had replaced all his +preconceptions of a mother’s tender joy in the sight of him; the first +impulses of indignation at what shocked his most cherished emotions and +principles—all these busy elements of collision between them were +subsiding for a time, and making more and more room for that effort at just +allowance and that admiration of a forcible nature whose errors lay along high +pathways, which he would have felt if, instead of being his mother, she had +been a stranger who had appealed to his sympathy. Still it was impossible to be +dispassionate: he trembled lest the next thing she had to say would be more +repugnant to him than what had gone before: he was afraid of the strange +coercion she seemed to be under to lay her mind bare: he almost wished he could +say, “Tell me only what is necessary,” and then again he felt the +fascination which made him watch her and listen to her eagerly. He tried to +recall her to particulars by asking, +</p> + +<p> +“Where was my grandfather’s home?” +</p> + +<p> +“Here in Genoa, where I was married; and his family had lived here +generations ago. But my father had been in various countries.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must surely have lived in England?” +</p> + +<p> +“My mother was English—a Jewess of Portuguese descent. My father +married her in England. Certain circumstances of that marriage made all the +difference in my life: through that marriage my father thwarted his own plans. +My mother’s sister was a singer, and afterward she married the English +partner of a merchant’s house here in Genoa, and they came and lived here +eleven years. My mother died when I was eight years old, and my father allowed +me to be continually with my Aunt Leonora and be taught under her eyes, as if +he had not minded the danger of her encouraging my wish to be a singer, as she +had been. But this was it—I saw it again and again in my father:—he +did not guard against consequences, because he felt sure he could hinder them +if he liked. Before my aunt left Genoa, I had had enough teaching to bring out +the born singer and actress within me: my father did not know everything that +was done; but he knew that I was taught music and singing—he knew my +inclination. That was nothing to him: he meant that I should obey his will. And +he was resolved that I should marry my cousin Ephraim, the only one left of my +father’s family that he knew. I wanted not to marry. I thought of all +plans to resist it, but at last I found that I could rule my cousin, and I +consented. My father died three weeks after we were married, and then I had my +way!” She uttered these words almost exultantly; but after a little pause +her face changed, and she said in a biting tone, “It has not lasted, +though. My father is getting his way now.” +</p> + +<p> +She began to look more contemplatively again at her son, and presently said, +</p> + +<p> +“You are like him—but milder—there is something of your own +father in you; and he made it the labor of his life to devote himself to me: +wound up his money-changing and banking, and lived to wait upon me—he +went against his conscience for me. As I loved the life of my art, so he loved +me. Let me look at your hand again: the hand with the ring on. It was your +father’s ring.” +</p> + +<p> +He drew his chair nearer to her and gave her his hand. We know what kind of a +hand it was: her own, very much smaller, was of the same type. As he felt the +smaller hand holding his, as he saw nearer to him the face that held the +likeness of his own, aged not by time but by intensity, the strong bent of his +nature toward a reverential tenderness asserted itself above every other +impression and in his most fervent tone he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Mother! take us all into your heart—the living and the dead. +Forgive every thing that hurts you in the past. Take my affection.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him admiringly rather than lovingly, then kissed him on the brow, +and saying sadly, “I reject nothing, but I have nothing to give,” +she released his hand and sank back on her cushions. Deronda turned pale with +what seems always more of a sensation than an emotion—the pain of +repulsed tenderness. She noticed the expression of pain, and said, still with +melodious melancholy in her tones, +</p> + +<p> +“It is better so. We must part again soon and you owe me no duties. I did +not wish you to be born. I parted with you willingly. When your father died I +resolved that I would have no more ties, but such as I could free myself from. +I was the Alcharisi you have heard of: the name had magic wherever it was +carried. Men courted me. Sir Hugo Mallinger was one who wished to marry me. He +was madly in love with me. One day I asked him, ‘Is there a man capable +of doing something for love of me, and expecting nothing in return?’ He +said: ‘What is it you want done?’ I said, ‘Take my boy and +bring him up as an Englishman, and never let him know anything about his +parents.’ You were little more than two years old, and were sitting on +his foot. He declared that he would pay money to have such a boy. I had not +meditated much on the plan beforehand, but as soon as I had spoken about it, it +took possession of me as something I could not rest without doing. At first he +thought I was not serious, but I convinced him, and he was never surprised at +anything. He agreed that it would be for your good, and the finest thing for +you. A great singer and actress is a queen, but she gives no royalty to her +son. All that happened at Naples. And afterward I made Sir Hugo the trustee of +your fortune. That is what I did; and I had a joy in doing it. My father had +tyrannized over me—he cared more about a grandson to come than he did +about me: I counted as nothing. You were to be such a Jew as he; you were to be +what he wanted. But you were my son, and it was my turn to say what you should +be. I said you should not know you were a Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +“And for months events have been preparing me to be glad that I am a +Jew,” said Deronda, his opposition roused again. The point touched the +quick of his experience. “It would always have been better that I should +have known the truth. I have always been rebelling against the secrecy that +looked like shame. It is no shame to have Jewish parents—the shame is to +disown it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You say it was a shame to me, then, that I used that secrecy,” +said his mother, with a flash of new anger. “There is no shame attaching +to me. I have no reason to be ashamed. I rid myself of the Jewish tatters and +gibberish that make people nudge each other at sight of us, as if we were +tattooed under our clothes, though our faces are as whole as theirs. I +delivered you from the pelting contempt that pursues Jewish separateness. I am +not ashamed that I did it. It was the better for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why have you now undone the secrecy?—no, not undone +it—the effects will never be undone. But why have you now sent for me to +tell me that I am a Jew?” said Deronda, with an intensity of opposition +in feeling that was almost bitter. It seemed as if her words had called out a +latent obstinacy of race in him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why?—ah, why?” said the Princess, rising quickly and walking +to the other side of the room, where she turned round and slowly approached +him, as he, too, stood up. Then she began to speak again in a more veiled +voice. “I can’t explain; I can only say what is. I don’t love +my father’s religion now any more than I did then. Before I married the +second time I was baptized; I made myself like the people I lived among. I had +a right to do it; I was not like a brute, obliged to go with my own herd. I +have not repented; I will not say that I have repented. But +yet”—here she had come near to her son, and paused; then again +retreated a little and stood still, as if resolute not to give way utterly to +an imperious influence; but, as she went on speaking, she became more and more +unconscious of anything but the awe that subdued her voice. “It is +illness, I don’t doubt that it has been gathering illness—my mind +has gone back: more than a year ago it began. You see my gray hair, my worn +look: it has all come fast. Sometimes I am in an agony of pain—I dare say +I shall be to-night. Then it is as if all the life I have chosen to live, all +thoughts, all will, forsook me and left me alone in spots of memory, and I +can’t get away: my pain seems to keep me there. My childhood—my +girlhood—the day of my marriage—the day of my father’s +death—there seems to be nothing since. Then a great horror comes over me: +what do I know of life or death? and what my father called ‘right’ +may be a power that is laying hold of me—that is clutching me now. Well, +I will satisfy him. I cannot go into the darkness without satisfying him. I +have hidden what was his. I thought once I would burn it. I have not burned it. +I thank God I have not burned it!” +</p> + +<p> +She threw herself on her cushions again, visibly fatigued. Deronda, moved too +strongly by her suffering for other impulses to act within him, drew near her, +and said, entreatingly, +</p> + +<p> +“Will you not spare yourself this evening? Let us leave the rest till +to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said decisively. “I will confess it all, now that I +have come up to it. Often when I am at ease it all fades away; my whole self +comes quite back; but I know it will sink away again, and the other will +come—the poor, solitary, forsaken remains of self, that can resist +nothing. It was my nature to resist, and say, ‘I have a right to +resist.’ Well, I say so still when I have any strength in me. You have +heard me say it, and I don’t withdraw it. But when my strength goes, some +other right forces itself upon me like iron in an inexorable hand; and even +when I am at ease, it is beginning to make ghosts upon the daylight. And now +you have made it worse for me,” she said, with a sudden return of +impetuosity; “but I shall have told you everything. And what reproach is +there against me,” she added bitterly, “since I have made you glad +to be a Jew? Joseph Kalonymos reproached me: he said you had been turned into a +proud Englishman, who resented being touched by a Jew. I wish you had!” +she ended, with a new marvelous alternation. It was as if her mind were +breaking into several, one jarring the other into impulsive action. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is Joseph Kalonymos?” said Deronda, with a darting +recollection of that Jew who touched his arm in the Frankfort synagogue. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! some vengeance sent him back from the East, that he might see you +and come to reproach me. He was my father’s friend. He knew of your +birth: he knew of my husband’s death, and once, twenty years ago, after +he had been away in the Levant, he came to see me and inquire about you. I told +him that you were dead: I meant you to be dead to all the world of my +childhood. If I had said that you were living, he would have interfered with my +plans: he would have taken on him to represent my father, and have tried to +make me recall what I had done. What could I do but say you were dead? The act +was done. If I had told him of it there would have been trouble and +scandal—and all to conquer me, who would not have been conquered. I was +strong then, and I would have had my will, though there might have been a hard +fight against me. I took the way to have it without any fight. I felt then that +I was not really deceiving: it would have come to the same in the end; or if +not to the same, to something worse. He believed me and begged that I would +give up to him the chest that my father had charged me and my husband to +deliver to our eldest son. I knew what was in the chest—things that had +been dinned in my ears since I had had any understanding—things that were +thrust on my mind that I might feel them like a wall around my life—my +life that was growing like a tree. Once, after my husband died, I was going to +burn the chest. But it was difficult to burn; and burning a chest and papers +looks like a shameful act. I have committed no shameful act—except what +Jews would call shameful. I had kept the chest, and I gave it to Joseph +Kalonymos. He went away mournful, and said, ‘If you marry again, and if +another grandson is born to him who is departed, I will deliver up the chest to +him.’ I bowed in silence. I meant not to marry again—no more than I +meant to be the shattered woman that I am now.” +</p> + +<p> +She ceased speaking, and her head sank back while she looked vaguely before +her. Her thought was traveling through the years, and when she began to speak +again her voice had lost its argumentative spirit, and had fallen into a veiled +tone of distress. +</p> + +<p> +“But months ago this Kalonymos saw you in the synagogue at Frankfort. He +saw you enter the hotel, and he went to ask your name. There was nobody else in +the world to whom the name would have told anything about me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then it is not my real name?” said Deronda, with a dislike even to +this trifling part of the disguise which had been thrown round him. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, as real as another,” said his mother, indifferently. +“The Jews have always been changing their names. My father’s family +had kept the name of Charisi: my husband was a Charisi. When I came out as a +singer, we made it Alcharisi. But there had been a branch of the family my +father had lost sight of who called themselves Deronda, and when I wanted a +name for you, and Sir Hugo said, ‘Let it be a foreign name,’ I +thought of Deronda. But Joseph Kalonymos had heard my father speak of the +Deronda branch, and the name confirmed his suspicion. He began to suspect what +had been done. It was as if everything had been whispered to him in the air. He +found out where I was. He took a journey into Russia to see me; he found me +weak and shattered. He had come back again, with his white hair, and with rage +in his soul against me. He said I was going down to the grave clad in falsehood +and robbery—falsehood to my father and robbery of my own child. He +accused me of having kept the knowledge of your birth from you, and having +brought you up as if you had been the son of an English gentleman. Well, it was +true; and twenty years before I would have maintained that I had a right to do +it. But I can maintain nothing now. No faith is strong within me. My father may +have God on his side. This man’s words were like lion’s teeth upon +me. My father’s threats eat into me with my pain. If I tell +everything—if I deliver up everything—what else can be demanded of +me? I cannot make myself love the people I have never loved—is it not +enough that I lost the life I did love?” +</p> + +<p> +She had leaned forward a little in her low-toned pleading, that seemed like a +smothered cry: her arms and hands were stretched out at full length, as if +strained in beseeching, Deronda’s soul was absorbed in the anguish of +compassion. He could not mind now that he had been repulsed before. His pity +made a flood of forgiveness within him. His single impulse was to kneel by her +and take her hand gently, between his palms, while he said in that exquisite +voice of soothing which expresses oneness with the sufferer, +</p> + +<p> +“Mother, take comfort!” +</p> + +<p> +She did not seem inclined to repulse him now, but looked down at him and let +him take both her hands to fold between his. Gradually tears gathered, but she +pressed her handkerchief against her eyes and then leaned her cheek against his +brow, as if she wished that they should not look at each other. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it not possible that I could be near you often and comfort +you?” said Deronda. He was under that stress of pity that propels us on +sacrifices. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not possible,” she answered, lifting up her head again and +withdrawing her hand as if she wished him to move away. “I have a husband +and five children. None of them know of your existence.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt painfully silenced. He rose and stood at a little distance. +</p> + +<p> +“You wonder why I married,” she went on presently, under the +influence of a newly-recurring thought. “I meant never to marry again. I +meant to be free and to live for my art. I had parted with you. I had no bonds. +For nine years I was a queen. I enjoyed the life I had longed for. But +something befell me. It was like a fit of forgetfulness. I began to sing out of +tune. They told me of it. Another woman was thrusting herself in my place. I +could not endure the prospect of failure and decline. It was horrible to +me.” She started up again, with a shudder, and lifted screening hands +like one who dreads missiles. “It drove me to marry. I made believe that +I preferred being the wife of a Russian noble to being the greatest lyric +actress of Europe; I made believe—I acted that part. It was because I +felt my greatness sinking away from me, as I feel my life sinking now. I would +not wait till men said, ‘She had better go.’” +</p> + +<p> +She sank into her seat again, and looked at the evening sky as she went on: +“I repented. It was a resolve taken in desperation. That singing out of +tune was only like a fit of illness; it went away. I repented; but it was too +late. I could not go back. All things hindered, me—all things.” +</p> + +<p> +A new haggardness had come in her face, but her son refrained from again urging +her to leave further speech till the morrow: there was evidently some mental +relief for her in an outpouring such as she could never have allowed herself +before. He stood still while she maintained silence longer than she knew, and +the light was perceptibly fading. At last she turned to him and said, +</p> + +<p> +“I can bear no more now.” She put out her hand, but then quickly +withdrew it saying, “Stay. How do I know that I can see you again? I +cannot bear to be seen when I am in pain.” +</p> + +<p> +She drew forth a pocket-book, and taking out a letter said, “This is +addressed to the banking-house in Mainz, where you are to go for your +grandfather’s chest. It is a letter written by Joseph Kalonymos: if he is +not there himself, this order of his will be obeyed.” +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda had taken the letter, she said, with effort but more gently than +before, “Kneel again, and let me kiss you.” +</p> + +<p> +He obeyed, and holding his head between her hands, she kissed him solemnly on +the brow. “You see, I had no life left to love you with,” she said, +in a low murmur. “But there is more fortune for you. Sir Hugo was to keep +it in reserve. I gave you all your father’s fortune. They can never +accuse me of robbery there.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you had needed anything I would have worked for you,” said +Deronda, conscious of disappointed yearning—a shutting out forever from +long early vistas of affectionate imagination. +</p> + +<p> +“I need nothing that the skill of man can give me,” said his +mother, still holding his head, and perusing his features. “But perhaps +now I have satisfied my father’s will, your face will come instead of +his—your young, loving face.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you will see me again?” said Deronda, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—perhaps. Wait, wait. Leave me now.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0052"></a> +CHAPTER LII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“La même fermeté qui sert à résister à l’amour sert aussi à le +rendre violent et durable; et les personnes faibles qui sont toujours agitées +des passions n’en sont presque jamais véritablement +remplies.”—L<small>A</small> R<small>OCHEFOUCAULD</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Among Deronda’s letters the next morning was one from Hans Meyrick of +four quarto pages, in the small, beautiful handwriting which ran in the Meyrick +family. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +M<small>Y DEAR</small> D<small>ERONDA</small>,—In return for your sketch +of Italian movements and your view of the world’s affairs generally, I +may say that here at home the most judicious opinion going as to the effects of +present causes is that “time will show.” As to the present causes +of past effects, it is now seen that the late swindling telegrams account for +the last year’s cattle plague—which is a refutation of philosophy +falsely so called, and justifies the compensation to the farmers. My own idea +that a murrain will shortly break out in the commercial class, and that the +cause will subsequently disclose itself in the ready sale of all rejected +pictures, has been called an unsound use of analogy; but there are minds that +will not hesitate to rob even the neglected painter of his solace. To my +feeling there is great beauty in the conception that some bad judge might give +a high price for my Berenice series, and that the men in the city would have +already been punished for my ill-merited luck. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile I am consoling myself for your absence by finding my advantage in +it—shining like Hesperus when Hyperion has departed; sitting with our +Hebrew prophet, and making a study of his head, in the hours when he used to be +occupied with you—getting credit with him as a learned young Gentile, who +would have been a Jew if he could —and agreeing with him in the general +principle, that whatever is best is for that reason Jewish. I never held it my +<i>forte</i> to be a severe reasoner, but I can see that if whatever is best is +A, and B happens to be best, B must be A, however little you might have +expected it beforehand. On that principle I could see the force of a pamphlet I +once read to prove that all good art was Protestant. However, our prophet is an +uncommonly interesting sitter—a better model than Rembrandt had for his +Rabbi—and I never come away from him without a new discovery. For one +thing, it is a constant wonder to me that, with all his fiery feeling for his +race and their traditions, he is no straight-laced Jew, spitting after the word +Christian, and enjoying the prospect that the Gentile mouth will water in vain +for a slice of the roasted Leviathan, while Israel will be sending up plates +for more, <i>ad libitum</i>, (You perceive that my studies had taught me what +to expect from the orthodox Jew.) I confess that I have always held lightly by +your account of Mordecai, as apologetic, and merely part of your disposition to +make an antediluvian point of view lest you should do injustice to the +megatherium. But now I have given ear to him in his proper person, I find him +really a sort of philosophical-allegorical-mystical believer, and yet with a +sharp dialectic point, so that any argumentative rattler of peas in a bladder +might soon be pricked in silence by him. The mixture may be one of the Jewish +prerogatives, for what I know. In fact, his mind seems so broad that I find my +own correct opinions lying in it quite commodiously, and how they are to be +brought into agreement with the vast remainder is his affair, not mine. I leave +it to him to settle our basis, never yet having seen a basis which is not a +world-supporting elephant, more or less powerful and expensive to keep. My +means will not allow me to keep a private elephant. I go into mystery instead, +as cheaper and more lasting—a sort of gas which is likely to be +continually supplied by the decomposition of the elephants. And if I like the +look of an opinion, I treat it civilly, without suspicious inquiries. I have +quite a friendly feeling toward Mordecai’s notion that a whole Christian +is three-fourths a Jew, and that from the Alexandrian time downward the most +comprehensive minds have been Jewish; for I think of pointing out to Mirah +that, Arabic and other incidents of life apart, there is really little +difference between me and—Maimonides. But I have lately been finding out +that it is your shallow lover who can’t help making a declaration. If +Mirah’s ways were less distracting, and it were less of a heaven to be in +her presence and watch her, I must long ago have flung myself at her feet, and +requested her to tell me, with less indirectness, whether she wished me to blow +my brains out. I have a knack of hoping, which is as good as an estate in +reversion, if one can keep from the temptation of turning it into certainty, +which may spoil all. My Hope wanders among the orchard blossoms, feels the warm +snow falling on it through the sunshine, and is in doubt of nothing; but, +catching sight of Certainty in the distance, sees an ugly Janus-faced deity, +with a dubious wink on the hither side of him, and turns quickly away. But you, +with your supreme reasonableness, and self-nullification, and preparation for +the worst—you know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden +forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it +were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly +enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation. (You observe my new +vein of allegory?) Seriously, however, I must be permitted to allege that truth +will prevail, that prejudice will melt before it, that diversity, accompanied +by merit, will make itself felt as fascination, and that no virtuous aspiration +will be frustrated—all which, if I mistake not, are doctrines of the +schools, and they imply that the Jewess I prefer will prefer me. Any blockhead +can cite generalities, but the mind-master discerns the particular cases they +represent. +</p> + +<p> +I am less convinced that my society makes amends to Mordecai for your absence, +but another substitute occasionally comes in the form of Jacob Cohen. It is +worth while to catch our prophet’s expression when he has that remarkable +type of young Israel on his knee, and pours forth some Semitic inspiration with +a sublime look of melancholy patience and devoutness. Sometimes it occurs to +Jacob that Hebrew will be more edifying to him if he stops his ears with his +palms, and imitates the venerable sounds as heard through that muffled medium. +When Mordecai gently draws down the little fists and holds them fast, +Jacob’s features all take on an extraordinary activity, very much as if +he was walking through a menagerie and trying to imitate every animal in turn, +succeeding best with the owl and the peccary. But I dare say you have seen +something of this. He treats me with the easiest familiarity, and seems in +general to look at me as a second-hand Christian commodity, likely to come down +in price; remarking on my disadvantages with a frankness which seems to imply +some thoughts of future purchase. It is pretty, though, to see the change in +him if Mirah happens to come in. He turns child suddenly—his age usually +strikes one as being like the Israelitish garments in the desert, perhaps near +forty, yet with an air of recent production. But, with Mirah, he reminds me of +the dogs that have been brought up by women, and remain manageable by them +only. Still, the dog is fond of Mordecai too, and brings sugar-plums to share +with him, filling his own mouth to rather an embarrassing extent, and watching +how Mordecai deals with a smaller supply. Judging from this modern Jacob at the +age of six, my astonishment is that his race has not bought us all up long ago, +and pocketed our feebler generations in the form of stock and scrip, as so much +slave property. There is one Jewess I should not mind being slave to. But I +wish I did not imagine that Mirah gets a little sadder, and tries all the while +to hide it. It is natural enough, of course, while she has to watch the slow +death of this brother, whom she has taken to worshipping with such looks of +loving devoutness that I am ready to wish myself in his place. +</p> + +<p> +For the rest, we are a little merrier than usual. Rex Gascoigne—you +remember a head you admired among my sketches, a fellow with a good upper lip, +reading law—has got some rooms in town now not far off us, and has had a +neat sister (upper lip also good) staying with him the last fortnight. I have +introduced them both to my mother and the girls, who have found out from Miss +Gascoigne that she is cousin to your Vandyke duchess!!! I put the notes of +exclamation to mark the surprise that the information at first produced on my +feeble understanding. On reflection I discovered that there was not the least +ground for surprise, unless I had beforehand believed that nobody could be +anybody’s cousin without my knowing it. This sort of surprise, I take it, +depends on a liveliness of the spine, with a more or less constant nullity of +brain. There was a fellow I used to meet at Rome who was in an effervescence of +surprise at contact with the simplest information. Tell him what you +would—that you were fond of easy boots—he would always say, +“No! are you?” with the same energy of wonder: the very fellow of +whom pastoral Browne wrote prophetically, +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“A wretch so empty that if e’er there be<br/> +In nature found the least vacuity<br/> +’Twill be in him.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +I have accounted for it all—he had a lively spine. +</p> + +<p> +However, this cousinship with the duchess came out by chance one day that Mirah +was with them at home and they were talking about the Mallingers. +<i>Apropos</i>; I am getting so important that I have rival invitations. +Gascoigne wants me to go down with him to his father’s rectory in August +and see the country round there. But I think self-interest well understood will +take me to Topping Abbey, for Sir Hugo has invited me, and proposes—God +bless him for his rashness! —that I should make a picture of his three +daughters sitting on a bank—as he says, in the Gainsborough style. He +came to my studio the other day and recommended me to apply myself to portrait. +Of course I know what that means.—“My good fellow, your attempts at +the historic and poetic are simply pitiable. Your brush is just that of a +successful portrait-painter—it has a little truth and a great facility in +falsehood—your idealism will never do for gods and goddesses and heroic +story, but it may fetch a high price as flattery. Fate, my friend, has made you +the hinder wheel—<i>rota posterior curras, et in axe +secundo</i>—run behind, because you can’t help it.” +—What great effort it evidently costs our friends to give us these candid +opinions! I have even known a man to take the trouble to call, in order to tell +me that I had irretrievably exposed my want of judgment in treating my subject, +and that if I had asked him we would have lent me his own judgment. Such was my +ingratitude and my readiness at composition, that even while he was speaking I +inwardly sketched a Last Judgment with that candid friend’s physiognomy +on the left. But all this is away from Sir Hugo, whose manner of implying that +one’s gifts are not of the highest order is so exceedingly good-natured +and comfortable that I begin to feel it an advantage not to be among those poor +fellows at the tip-top. And his kindness to me tastes all the better because it +comes out of his love for you, old boy. His chat is uncommonly amusing. By the +way, he told me that your Vandyke duchess is gone with her husband yachting to +the Mediterranean. I bethink me that it is possible to land from a yacht, or to +be taken on to a yacht from the land. Shall you by chance have an opportunity +of continuing your theological discussion with the fair Supralapsarian—I +think you said her tenets were of that complexion? Is Duke Alphonso also +theological?—perhaps an Arian who objects to triplicity. (Stage +direction. While D. is reading, a profound scorn gathers in his face till at +the last word he flings down the letter, grasps his coat-collar in a statuesque +attitude and so remains with a look generally tremendous, throughout the +following soliloquy, “O night, O blackness, etc., etc.”) +</p> + +<p> +Excuse the brevity of this letter. You are not used to more from me than a bare +statement of facts, without comment or digression. One fact I have +omitted—that the Klesmers on the eve of departure have behaved +magnificently, shining forth as might be expected from the planets of genius +and fortune in conjunction. Mirah is rich with their oriental gifts. +</p> + +<p> +What luck it will be if you come back and present yourself at the Abbey while I +am there! I am going to behave with consummate discretion and win golden +opinions, But I shall run up to town now and then, just for a peep into Gad +Eden. You see how far I have got in Hebrew lore—up with my Lord +Bolingbroke, who knew no Hebrew, but “understood that sort of learning +and what is writ about it.” If Mirah commanded, I would go to a depth +below the tri-literal roots. Already it makes no difference to me whether the +points are there or not. But while her brother’s life lasts I suspect she +would not listen to a lover, even one whose “hair is like a flock of +goats on Mount Gilead”—and I flatter myself that few heads would +bear that trying comparison better than mine. So I stay with my hope among the +orchard-blossoms.—Your devoted, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +H<small>ANS</small> M<small>EYRICK</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Some months before, this letter from Hans would have divided Deronda’s +thoughts irritatingly: its romancing, about Mirah would have had an unpleasant +edge, scarcely anointed with any commiseration for his friend’s probable +disappointment. But things had altered since March. Mirah was no longer so +critically placed with regard to the Meyricks, and Deronda’s own position +had been undergoing a change which had just been crowned by the revelation of +his birth. The new opening toward the future, though he would not trust in any +definite visions, inevitably shed new lights, and influenced his mood toward +past and present; hence, what Hans called his hope now seemed to Deronda, not a +mischievous unreasonableness which roused his indignation, but an unusually +persistent bird-dance of an extravagant fancy, and he would have felt quite +able to pity any consequent suffering of his friend’s, if he had believed +in the suffering as probable. But some of the busy thought filling that long +day, which passed without his receiving any new summons from his mother, was +given to the argument that Hans Meyrick’s nature was not one in which +love could strike the deep roots that turn disappointment into sorrow: it was +too restless, too readily excitable by novelty, too ready to turn itself into +imaginative material, and wear its grief as a fantastic costume. “Already +he is beginning to play at love: he is taking the whole affair as a +comedy,” said Deronda to himself; “he knows very well that there is +no chance for him. Just like him—never opening his eyes on any possible +objection I could have to receive his outpourings about Mirah. Poor old Hans! +If we were under a fiery hail together he would howl like a Greek, and if I did +not howl too it would never occur to him that I was as badly off as he. And yet +he is tender-hearted and affectionate in intention, and I can’t say that +he is not active in imagining what goes on in other people—but then he +always imagines it to fit his own inclination.” +</p> + +<p> +With this touch of causticity Deronda got rid of the slight heat at present +raised by Hans’s naive expansiveness. The nonsense about Gwendolen, +conveying the fact that she was gone yachting with her husband, only suggested +a disturbing sequel to his own strange parting with her. But there was one +sentence in the letter which raised a more immediate, active anxiety. +Hans’s suspicion of a hidden sadness in Mirah was not in the direction of +his wishes, and hence, instead of distrusting his observation here, Deronda +began to conceive a cause for the sadness. Was it some event that had occurred +during his absence, or only the growing fear of some event? Was it something, +perhaps alterable, in the new position which had been made for her? +Or—had Mordecai, against his habitual resolve, communicated to her those +peculiar cherished hopes about him, Deronda, and had her quickly sensitive +nature been hurt by the discovery that her brother’s will or tenacity of +visionary conviction had acted coercively on their friendship—been hurt +by the fear that there was more of pitying self-suppression than of equal +regard in Deronda’s relation to him? For amidst all Mirah’s quiet +renunciation, the evident thirst of soul with which she received the tribute of +equality implied a corresponding pain if she found that what she had taken for +a purely reverential regard toward her brother had its mixture of +condescension. +</p> + +<p> +In this last conjecture of Deronda’s he was not wrong as to the quality +in Mirah’s nature on which he was founding—the latent protest +against the treatment she had all her life being subject to until she met him. +For that gratitude which would not let her pass by any notice of their +acquaintance without insisting on the depth of her debt to him, took half its +fervor from the keen comparison with what others had thought enough to render +to her. Deronda’s affinity in feeling enabled him to penetrate such +secrets. But he was not near the truth in admitting the idea that Mordecai had +broken his characteristic reticence. To no soul but Deronda himself had he yet +breathed the history of their relation to each other, or his confidence about +his friend’s origin: it was not only that these subjects were for him too +sacred to be spoken of without weighty reason, but that he had discerned +Deronda’s shrinking at any mention of his birth; and the severity of +reserve which had hindered Mordecai from answering a question on a private +affair of the Cohen family told yet more strongly here. +</p> + +<p> +“Ezra, how is it?” Mirah one day said to him—“I am +continually going to speak to Mr. Deronda as if he were a Jew?” +</p> + +<p> +He smiled at her quietly, and said, “I suppose it is because he treats us +as if he were our brother. But he loves not to have the difference of birth +dwelt upon.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has never lived with his parents, Mr. Hans, says,” continued +Mirah, to whom this was necessarily a question of interest about every one for +whom she had a regard. +</p> + +<p> +“Seek not to know such things from Mr. Hans,” said Mordecai, +gravely, laying his hand on her curls, as he was wont. “What Daniel +Deronda wishes us to know about himself is for him to tell us.” +</p> + +<p> +And Mirah felt herself rebuked, as Deronda had done. But to be rebuked in this +way by Mordecai made her rather proud. +</p> + +<p> +“I see no one so great as my brother,” she said to Mrs. Meyrick one +day that she called at the Chelsea house on her way home, and, according to her +hope, found the little mother alone. “It is difficult to think that he +belongs to the same world as those people I used to live amongst. I told you +once that they made life seem like a madhouse; but when I am with Ezra he makes +me feel that his life is a great good, though he has suffered so much; not like +me, who wanted to die because I had suffered a little, and only for a little +while. His soul is so full, it is impossible for him to wish for death as I +did. I get the same sort of feeling from him that I got yesterday, when I was +tired, and came home through the park after the sweet rain had fallen and the +sunshine lay on the grass and flowers. Everything in the sky and under the sky +looked so pure and beautiful that the weariness and trouble and folly seemed +only a small part of what is, and I became more patient and hopeful.” +</p> + +<p> +A dove-like note of melancholy in this speech caused Mrs. Meyrick to look at +Mirah with new examination. After laying down her hat and pushing her curls +flat, with an air of fatigue, she placed herself on a chair opposite her friend +in her habitual attitude, her feet and hands just crossed; and at a distance +she might have seemed a colored statue of serenity. But Mrs. Meyrick discerned +a new look of suppressed suffering in her face, which corresponded to the hint +that to be patient and hopeful required some extra influence. +</p> + +<p> +“Is there any fresh trouble on your mind, my dear?” said Mrs. +Meyrick, giving up her needlework as a sign of concentrated attention. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah hesitated before she said, “I am too ready to speak of troubles, I +think. It seems unkind to put anything painful into other people’s minds, +unless one were sure it would hinder something worse. And perhaps I am too +hasty and fearful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, mothers are made to like pain and trouble for the sake of +their children. Is it because the singing lessons are so few, and are likely to +fall off when the season comes to an end? Success in these things can’t +come all at once.” Mrs. Meyrick did not believe that she was touching the +real grief; but a guess that could be corrected would make an easier channel +for confidence. +</p> + +<p> +“No, not that,” said Mirah, shaking her head gently. “I have +been a little disappointed because so many ladies said they wanted me to give +them or their daughters lessons, and then I never heard of them again, But +perhaps after the holidays I shall teach in some schools. Besides, you know, I +am as rich as a princess now. I have not touched the hundred pounds that Mrs. +Klesmer gave me; and I should never be afraid that Ezra would be in want of +anything, because there is Mr. Deronda, and he said, ‘It is the chief +honor of my life that your brother will share anything with me.’ Oh, no! +Ezra and I can have no fears for each other about such things as food and +clothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there is some other fear on your mind,” said Mrs. Meyrick not +without divination—“a fear of something that may disturb your +peace. Don’t be forecasting evil, dear child, unless it is what you can +guard against. Anxiety is good for nothing if we can’t turn it into a +defense. But there’s no defense against all the things that might be. +Have you any more reason for being anxious now than you had a month ago?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I have,” said Mirah. “I have kept it from Ezra. I have +not dared to tell him. Pray forgive me that I can’t do without telling +you. I <i>have</i> more reason for being anxious. It is five days ago now. I am +quite sure I saw my father.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick shrank into a smaller space, packing her arms across her chest and +leaning forward—to hinder herself from pelting that father with her worst +epithets. +</p> + +<p> +“The year has changed him,” Mirah went on. “He had already +been much altered and worn in the time before I left him. You remember I said +how he used sometimes to cry. He was always excited one way or the other. I +have told Ezra everything that I told you, and he says that my father had taken +to gambling, which makes people easily distressed, and then again exalted. And +now—it was only a moment that I saw him—his face was more haggard, +and his clothes were shabby. He was with a much worse-looking man, who carried +something, and they were hurrying along after an omnibus.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, child, he did not see you, I hope?” +</p> + +<p> +“No. I had just come from Mrs. Raymond’s, and I was waiting to +cross near the Marble Arch. Soon he was on the omnibus and gone out of sight. +It was a dreadful moment. My old life seemed to have come back again, and it +was worse than it had ever been before. And I could not help feeling it a new +deliverance that he was gone out of sight without knowing that I was there. And +yet it hurt me that I was feeling so—it seemed hateful in me—almost +like words I once had to speak in a play, that ‘I had warmed my hands in +the blood of my kindred.’ For where might my father be going? What may +become of him? And his having a daughter who would own him in spite of all, +might have hindered the worst. Is there any pain like seeing what ought to be +the best things in life turned into the worst? All those opposite feelings were +meeting and pressing against each other, and took up all my strength. No one +could act that. Acting is slow and poor to what we go through within. I +don’t know how I called a cab. I only remember that I was in it when I +began to think, ‘I cannot tell Ezra; he must not know.’” +</p> + +<p> +“You are afraid of grieving him?” Mrs. Meyrick asked, when Mirah +had paused a little. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and there is something more,” said Mirah, hesitatingly, +as if she were examining her feeling before she would venture to speak of it. +“I want to tell you; I cannot tell any one else. I could not have told my +own mother: I should have closed it up before her. I feel shame for my father, +and it is perhaps strange—but the shame is greater before Ezra than +before any one else in the world. He desired me to tell him all about my life, +and I obeyed him. But it is always like a smart to me to know that those things +about my father are in Ezra’s mind. And—can you believe it? when +the thought haunts me how it would be if my father were to come and show +himself before us both, what seems as if it would scorch me most is seeing my +father shrinking before Ezra. That is the truth. I don’t know whether it +is a right feeling. But I can’t help thinking that I would rather try to +maintain my father in secret, and bear a great deal in that way, if I could +hinder him from meeting my brother.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must not encourage that feeling, Mirah,” said Mrs. Meyrick, +hastily. “It would be very dangerous; it would be wrong. You must not +have concealment of that sort.” +</p> + +<p> +“But ought I now to tell Ezra that I have seen my father?” said +Mirah, with deprecation in her tone. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” Mrs. Meyrick answered, dubitatively. “I don’t +know that it is necessary to do that. Your father may go away with the birds. +It is not clear that he came after you; you may never see him again. And then +your brother will have been spared a useless anxiety. But promise me that if +your father sees you—gets hold of you in any way again—and you will +let us all know. Promise me that solemnly, Mirah. I have a right to ask +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah reflected a little, then leaned forward to put her hands in Mrs. +Meyrick’s, and said, “Since you ask it, I do promise. I will bear +this feeling of shame. I have been so long used to think that I must bear that +sort of inward pain. But the shame for my father burns me more when I think of +his meeting Ezra.” She was silent a moment or two, and then said, in a +new tone of yearning compassion, “And we are his children—and he +was once young like us—and my mother loved him. Oh! I cannot help seeing +it all close, and it hurts me like a cruelty.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah shed no tears: the discipline of her whole life had been against +indulgence in such manifestation, which soon falls under the control of strong +motives; but it seemed that the more intense expression of sorrow had entered +into her voice. Mrs. Meyrick, with all her quickness and loving insight, did +not quite understand that filial feeling in Mirah which had active roots deep +below her indignation for the worst offenses. She could conceive that a mother +would have a clinging pity and shame for a reprobate son, but she was out of +patience with what she held an exaggerated susceptibility on behalf of this +father, whose reappearance inclined her to wish him under the care of a +turnkey. Mirah’s promise, however, was some security against her +weakness. +</p> + +<p> +That incident was the only reason that Mirah herself could have stated for the +hidden sadness which Hans had divined. Of one element in her changed mood she +could have given no definite account: it was something as dim as the sense of +approaching weather-change, and had extremely slight external promptings, such +as we are often ashamed to find all we can allege in support of the busy +constructions that go on within us, not only without effort, but even against +it, under the influence of any blind emotional stirring. Perhaps the first +leaven of uneasiness was laid by Gwendolen’s behavior on that visit which +was entirely superfluous as a means of engaging Mirah to sing, and could have +no other motive than the excited and strange questioning about Deronda. Mirah +had instinctively kept the visit a secret, but the active remembrance of it had +raised a new susceptibility in her, and made her alive as she had never been +before to the relations Deronda must have with that society which she herself +was getting frequent glimpses of without belonging to it. Her peculiar life and +education had produced in her an extraordinary mixture of unworldliness, with +knowledge of the world’s evil, and even this knowledge was a strange +blending of direct observation with the effects of reading and theatrical +study. Her memory was furnished with abundant passionate situation and +intrigue, which she never made emotionally her own, but felt a repelled +aloofness from, as she had done from the actual life around her. Some of that +imaginative knowledge began now to weave itself around Mrs. Grandcourt; and +though Mirah would admit no position likely to affect her reverence for +Deronda, she could not avoid a new painfully vivid association of his general +life with a world away from her own, where there might be some involvement of +his feeling and action with a woman like Gwendolen, who was increasingly +repugnant to her—increasingly, even after she had ceased to see her; for +liking and disliking can grow in meditation as fast as in the more immediate +kind of presence. Any disquietude consciously due to the idea that +Deronda’s deepest care might be for something remote not only from +herself but even from his friendship for her brother, she would have checked +with rebuking questions:—What was she but one who had shared his generous +kindness with many others? and his attachment to her brother, was it not begun +late to be soon ended? Other ties had come before, and others would remain +after this had been cut by swift-coming death. But her uneasiness had not +reached that point of self-recognition in which she would have been ashamed of +it as an indirect, presumptuous claim on Deronda’s feeling. That she or +any one else should think of him as her possible lover was a conception which +had never entered her mind; indeed it was equally out of the question with Mrs. +Meyrick and the girls, who with Mirah herself regarded his intervention in her +life as something exceptional, and were so impressed by his mission as her +deliverer and guardian that they would have held it an offense to him at his +holding any other relation toward her: a point of view which Hans also had +readily adopted. It is a little hard upon some men that they appear to sink for +us in becoming lovers. But precisely to this innocence of the Meyricks was +owing the disturbance of Mirah’s unconsciousness. The first occasion +could hardly have been more trivial, but it prepared her emotive nature for a +deeper effect from what happened afterward. +</p> + +<p> +It was when Anna Gascoigne, visiting the Meyricks; was led to speak of her +cousinship with Gwendolen. The visit had been arranged that Anna might see +Mirah; the three girls were at home with their mother, and there was naturally +a flux of talk among six feminine creatures, free from the presence of a +distorting male standard. Anna Gascoigne felt herself much at home with the +Meyrick girls, who knew what it was to have a brother, and to be generally +regarded as of minor importance in the world; and she had told Rex that she +thought the University very nice, because brothers made friends there whose +families were not rich and grand, and yet (like the University) were very nice. +The Meyricks seemed to her almost alarmingly clever, and she consulted them +much on the best mode of teaching Lotta, confiding to them that she herself was +the least clever of her family. Mirah had lately come in, and there was a +complete bouquet of young faces around the tea-table—Hafiz, seated a +little aloft with large eyes on the alert, regarding the whole scene as an +apparatus for supplying his allowance of milk. +</p> + +<p> +“Think of our surprise, Mirah,” said Kate. “We were speaking +of Mr. Deronda and the Mallingers, and it turns out that Miss Gascoigne knows +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“I only knew about them,” said Anna, a little flushed with +excitement, what she had heard and now saw of the lovely Jewess being an almost +startling novelty to her. “I have not even seen them. But some months +ago, my cousin married Sir Hugo Mallinger’s nephew, Mr. Grandcourt, who +lived in Sir Hugo’s place at Diplow, near us.” +</p> + +<p> +“There!” exclaimed Mab, clasping her hands. “Something must +come of that. Mrs. Grandcourt, the Vandyke duchess, is your cousin?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes; I was her bridesmaid,” said Anna. “Her mamma and +mine are sisters. My aunt was much richer before last year, but then she and +mamma lost all their fortune. Papa is a clergyman, you know, so it makes very +little difference to us, except that we keep no carriage, and have no dinner +parties—and I like it better. But it was very sad for poor Aunt Davilow, +for she could not live with us, because she has four daughters besides +Gwendolen; but then, when she married Mr. Grandcourt, it did not signify so +much, because of his being so rich.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, this finding out relationships is delightful!” said Mab. +“It is like a Chinese puzzle that one has to fit together. I feel sure +something wonderful may be made of it, but I can’t tell what.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me, Mab,” said Amy, “relationships must branch out. The +only difference is, that we happen to know some of the people concerned. Such +things are going on every day.” +</p> + +<p> +“And pray, Amy, why do you insist on the number nine being so +wonderful?” said Mab. “I am sure that is happening every day. Never +mind, Miss Gascoigne; please go on. And Mr. Deronda?—have you never seen +Mr. Deronda? You <i>must</i> bring him in.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I have not seen him,” said Anna; “but he was at Diplow +before my cousin was married, and I have heard my aunt speaking of him to papa. +She said what you have been saying about him—only not so much: I mean, +about Mr. Deronda living with Sir Hugo Mallinger, and being so nice, she +thought. We talk a great deal about every one who comes near Pennicote, because +it is so seldom there is any one new. But I remember, when I asked Gwendolen +what she thought of Mr. Deronda, she said, ‘Don’t mention it, Anna: +but I think his hair is dark.’ That was her droll way of answering: she +was always so lively. It is really rather wonderful that I should come to hear +so much about him, all through Mr. Hans knowing Rex, and then my having the +pleasure of knowing you,” Anna ended, looking at Mrs. Meyrick with a shy +grace. +</p> + +<p> +“The pleasure is on our side too; but the wonder would have been, if you +had come to this house without hearing of Mr. Deronda—wouldn’t it, +Mirah?” said Mrs. Meyrick. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah smiled acquiescently, but had nothing to say. A confused discontent took +possession of her at the mingling of names and images to which she had been +listening. +</p> + +<p> +“My son calls Mrs. Grandcourt the Vandyke duchess,” continued Mrs. +Meyrick, turning again to Anna; “he thinks her so striking and +picturesque.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Anna. “Gwendolen was always so +beautiful—people fell dreadfully in love with her. I thought it a pity, +because it made them unhappy.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how do you like Mr. Grandcourt, the happy lover?” said Mrs. +Meyrick, who, in her way, was as much interested as Mab in the hints she had +been hearing of vicissitude in the life of a widow with daughters. +</p> + +<p> +“Papa approved of Gwendolen’s accepting him, and my aunt says he is +very generous,” said Anna, beginning with a virtuous intention of +repressing her own sentiments; but then, unable to resist a rare occasion for +speaking them freely, she went on—“else I should have thought he +was not very nice—rather proud, and not at all lively, like Gwendolen. I +should have thought some one younger and more lively would have suited her +better. But, perhaps, having a brother who seems to us better than any one +makes us think worse of others.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wait till you see Mr. Deronda,” said Mab, nodding significantly. +“Nobody’s brother will do after him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Our brothers <i>must</i> do for people’s husbands,” said +Kate, curtly, “because they will not get Mr. Deronda. No woman will do +for him to marry.” +</p> + +<p> +“No woman ought to want him to marry him,” said Mab, with +indignation. “<i>I</i> never should. Fancy finding out that he had a +tailor’s bill, and used boot-hooks, like Hans. Who ever thought of his +marrying?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have,” said Kate. “When I drew a wedding for a +frontispiece to ‘Hearts and Diamonds,’ I made a sort of likeness to +him for the bridegroom, and I went about looking for a grand woman who would do +for his countess, but I saw none that would not be poor creatures by the side +of him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You should have seen this Mrs. Grandcourt then,” said Mrs. +Meyrick. “Hans says that she and Mr. Deronda set each other off when they +are side by side. She is tall and fair. But you know her, Mirah—you can +always say something descriptive. What do <i>you</i> think of Mrs. +Grandcourt?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think she is the <i>Princess of Eboli</i> in <i>Don Carlos</i>,” +said Mirah, with a quick intensity. She was pursuing an association in her own +mind not intelligible to her hearers—an association with a certain +actress as well as the part she represented. +</p> + +<p> +“Your comparison is a riddle for me, my dear,” said Mrs. Meyrick, +smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“You said that Mrs. Grandcourt was tall and fair,” continued Mirah, +slightly paler. “That is quite true.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick’s quick eye and ear detected something unusual, but +immediately explained it to herself. Fine ladies had often wounded Mirah by +caprices of manner and intention. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Grandcourt had thought of having lessons of Mirah,” she said +turning to Anna. “But many have talked of having lessons, and then have +found no time. Fashionable ladies have too much work to do.” +</p> + +<p> +And the chat went on without further insistence on the <i>Princess of +Eboli</i>. That comparison escaped Mirah’s lips under the urgency of a +pang unlike anything she had felt before. The conversation from the beginning +had revived unpleasant impressions, and Mrs. Meyrick’s suggestion of +Gwendolen’s figure by the side of Deronda’s had the stinging effect +of a voice outside her, confirming her secret conviction that this tall and +fair woman had some hold on his lot. For a long while afterward she felt as if +she had had a jarring shock through her frame. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening, putting her cheek against her brother’s shoulder as she +was sitting by him, while he sat propped up in bed under a new difficulty of +breathing, she said, +</p> + +<p> +“Ezra, does it ever hurt your love for Mr. Deronda that so much of his +life was all hidden away from you—that he is amongst persons and cares +about persons who are all so unlike us—I mean unlike you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, assuredly no,” said Mordecai. “Rather it is a precious +thought to me that he has a preparation which I lacked, and is an accomplished +Egyptian.” Then, recollecting that his words had reference which his +sister must not yet understand, he added, “I have the more to give him, +since his treasure differs from mine. That is a blessedness in +friendship.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah mused a little. +</p> + +<p> +“Still,” she said, “it would be a trial to your love for him +if that other part of his life were like a crowd in which he had got entangled, +so that he was carried away from you—I mean in his thoughts, and not +merely carried out of sight as he is now—and not merely for a little +while, but continually. How should you bear that! Our religion commands us to +bear. But how should you bear it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not well, my sister—not well; but it will never happen,” +said Mordecai, looking at her with a tender smile. He thought that her heart +needed comfort on his account. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah said no more. She mused over the difference between her own state of mind +and her brother’s, and felt her comparative pettiness. Why could she not +be completely satisfied with what satisfied his larger judgment? She gave +herself no fuller reason than a painful sense of unfitness—in what? Airy +possibilities to which she could give no outline, but to which one name and one +figure gave the wandering persistency of a blot in her vision. Here lay the +vaguer source of the hidden sadness rendered noticeable to Hans by some +diminution of that sweet ease, that ready joyousness of response in her speech +and smile, which had come with the new sense of freedom and safety, and had +made her presence like the freshly-opened daisies and clear bird-notes after +the rain. She herself regarded her uneasiness as a sort of ingratitude and +dullness of sensibility toward the great things that had been given her in her +new life; and whenever she threw more energy than usual into her singing, it +was the energy of indignation against the shallowness of her own content. In +that mood she once said, “Shall I tell you what is the difference between +you and me, Ezra? You are a spring in the drought, and I am an acorn-cup; the +waters of heaven fill me, but the least little shake leaves me empty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what has shaken thee?” said Mordecai. He fell into this +antique form of speech habitually in talking to his sister and to the Cohen +children. +</p> + +<p> +“Thoughts,” said Mirah; “thoughts that come like the breeze +and shake me—bad people, wrong things, misery—and how they might +touch our life.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must take our portion, Mirah. It is there. On whose shoulder would we +lay it, that we might be free?” +</p> + +<p> +The one voluntary sign she made of her inward care was this distant allusion. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0053"></a> +CHAPTER LIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“My desolation does begin to make<br/> +A better life.”<br/> + —S<small>HAKESPEARE</small>: <i>Antony and +Cleopatra.</i> +</p> + +<p> +Before Deronda was summoned to a second interview with his mother, a day had +passed in which she had only sent him a message to say that she was not yet +well enough to receive him again; but on the third morning he had a note +saying, “I leave to-day. Come and see me at once.” +</p> + +<p> +He was shown into the same room as before; but it was much darkened with blinds +and curtains. The Princess was not there, but she presently entered, dressed in +a loose wrap of some soft silk, in color a dusky orange, her head again with +black lace floating about it, her arms showing themselves bare from under her +wide sleeves. Her face seemed even more impressive in the sombre light, the +eyes larger, the lines more vigorous. You might have imagined her a sorceress +who would stretch forth her wonderful hand and arm to mix youth-potions for +others, but scorned to mix them for herself, having had enough of youth. +</p> + +<p> +She put her arms on her son’s shoulders at once, and kissed him on both +cheeks, then seated herself among her cushions with an air of assured firmness +and dignity unlike her fitfulness in their first interview, and told Deronda to +sit down by her. He obeyed, saying, “You are quite relieved now, I +trust?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am at ease again. Is there anything more that you would like to +ask me?” she said, with the matter of a queen rather than of a mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Can I find the house in Genoa where you used to live with my +grandfather?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she answered, with a deprecating movement of her arm, +“it is pulled down—not to be found. But about our family, and where +my father lived at various times—you will find all that among the papers +in the chest, better than I can tell you. My father, I told you, was a +physician. My mother was a Morteira. I used to hear all those things without +listening. You will find them all. I was born amongst them without my will. I +banished them as soon as I could.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda tried to hide his pained feeling, and said, “Anything else that I +should desire to know from you could only be what it is some satisfaction to +your own feeling to tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I have told you everything that could be demanded of me,” +said the Princess, looking coldly meditative. It seemed as if she had exhausted +her emotion in their former interview. The fact was, she had said to herself, +“I have done it all. I have confessed all. I will not go through it +again. I will save myself from agitation.” And she was acting out that +scheme. +</p> + +<p> +But to Deronda’s nature the moment was cruel; it made the filial yearning +of his life a disappointed pilgrimage to a shrine where there were no longer +the symbols of sacredness. It seemed that all the woman lacking in her was +present in him, as he said, with some tremor in his voice, +</p> + +<p> +“Then are we to part and I never be anything to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is better so,” said the Princess, in a softer, mellower voice. +“There could be nothing but hard duty for you, even if it were possible +for you to take the place of my son. You would not love me. Don’t deny +it,” she said, abruptly, putting up her hand. “I know what is the +truth. You don’t like what I did. You are angry with me. You think I +robbed you of something. You are on your grandfather’s side, and you will +always have a condemnation of me in your heart.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt himself under a ban of silence. He rose from his seat by her, +preferring to stand, if he had to obey that imperious prohibition of any +tenderness. But his mother now looked up at him with a new admiration in her +glance, saying, +</p> + +<p> +“You are wrong to be angry with me. You are the better for what I +did.” After pausing a little, she added, abruptly, “And now tell me +what you shall do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean now, immediately,” said Deronda; “or as to the +course of my future life?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean in the future. What difference will it make to you that I have +told you about your birth?” +</p> + +<p> +“A very great difference,” said Deronda, emphatically. “I can +hardly think of anything that would make a greater difference.” +</p> + +<p> +“What shall you do then?” said the Princess, with more sharpness. +“Make yourself just like your grandfather—be what he wished +you—turn yourself into a Jew like him?” +</p> + +<p> +“That is impossible. The effect of my education can never be done away +with. The Christian sympathies in which my mind was reared can never die out of +me,” said Deronda, with increasing tenacity of tone. “But I +consider it my duty—it is the impulse of my feeling—to identify +myself, as far as possible, with my hereditary people, and if I can see any +work to be done for them that I can give my soul and hand to I shall choose to +do it.” +</p> + +<p> +His mother had her eyes fixed on him with a wondering speculation, examining +his face as if she thought that by close attention she could read a difficult +language there. He bore her gaze very firmly, sustained by a resolute +opposition, which was the expression of his fullest self. She bent toward him a +little, and said, with a decisive emphasis, +</p> + +<p> +“You are in love with a Jewess.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda colored and said, “My reasons would be independent of any such +fact.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know better. I have seen what men are,” said the Princess, +peremptorily. “Tell me the truth. She is a Jewess who will not accept any +one but a Jew. There <i>are</i> a few such,” she added, with a touch of +scorn. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda had that objection to answer which we all have known in speaking to +those who are too certain of their own fixed interpretations to be enlightened +by anything we may say. But besides this, the point immediately in question was +one on which he felt a repugnance either to deny or affirm. He remained silent, +and she presently said, +</p> + +<p> +“You love her as your father loved me, and she draws you after her as I +drew him.” +</p> + +<p> +Those words touched Deronda’s filial imagination, and some tenderness in +his glance was taken by his mother as an assent. She went on with rising +passion: “But I was leading him the other way. And now your grandfather +is getting his revenge.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mother,” said Deronda, remonstrantly, “don’t let us +think of it in that way. I will admit that there may come some benefit from the +education you chose for me. I prefer cherishing the benefit with gratitude, to +dwelling with resentment on the injury. I think it would have been right that I +should have been brought up with the consciousness that I was a Jew, but it +must always have been a good to me to have as wide an instruction and sympathy +as possible. And now, you have restored me my inheritance—events have +brought a fuller restitution than you could have made—you have been saved +from robbing my people of my service and me of my duty: can you not bring your +whole soul to consent to this?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda paused in his pleading: his mother looked at him listeningly, as if the +cadence of his voice were taking her ear, yet she shook her head slowly. He +began again, even more urgently. +</p> + +<p> +“You have told me that you sought what you held the best for me: open +your heart to relenting and love toward my grandfather, who sought what he held +the best for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not for me, no,” she said, shaking her head with more absolute +denial, and folding her arms tightly. “I tell you, he never thought of +his daughter except as an instrument. Because I had wants outside his purpose, +I was to be put in a frame and tortured. If that is the right law for the +world, I will not say that I love it. If my acts were wrong—if it is God +who is exacting from me that I should deliver up what I withheld—who is +punishing me because I deceived my father and did not warn him that I should +contradict his trust—well, I have told everything. I have done what I +could. And <i>your</i> soul consents. That is enough. I have after all been the +instrument my father wanted.—‘I desire a grandson who shall have a +true Jewish heart. Every Jew should rear his family as if he hoped that a +Deliverer might spring from it.’” +</p> + +<p> +In uttering these last sentences the Princess narrowed her eyes, waved her head +up and down, and spoke slowly with a new kind of chest-voice, as if she were +quoting unwillingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Were those my grandfather’s words?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes; and you will find them written. I wanted to thwart him,” +said the Princess, with a sudden outburst of the passion she had shown in the +former interview. Then she added more slowly, “You would have me love +what I have hated from the time I was so high”—here she held her +left hand a yard from the floor.—“That can never be. But what does +it matter? His yoke has been on me, whether I loved it or not. You are the +grandson he wanted. You speak as men do—as if you felt yourself wise. +What does it all mean?” +</p> + +<p> +Her tone was abrupt and scornful. Deronda, in his pained feeling, and under the +solemn urgency of the moment, had to keep a clutching remembrance of their +relationship, lest his words should become cruel. He began in a deep entreating +tone: +</p> + +<p> +“Mother, don’t say that I feel myself wise. We are set in the midst +of difficulties. I see no other way to get any clearness than by being +truthful—not by keeping back facts which may—which should carry +obligation within them—which should make the only guidance toward duty. +No wonder if such facts come to reveal themselves in spite of concealments. The +effects prepared by generations are likely to triumph over a contrivance which +would bend them all to the satisfaction of self. Your will was strong, but my +grandfather’s trust which you accepted and did not fulfill—what you +call his yoke—is the expression of something stronger, with deeper, +farther-spreading roots, knit into the foundations of sacredness for all men. +You renounced me—you still banish me—as a son”—there +was an involuntary movement of indignation in Deronda’s +voice—“But that stronger Something has determined that I shall be +all the more the grandson whom also you willed to annihilate.” +</p> + +<p> +His mother was watching him fixedly, and again her face gathered admiration. +After a moment’s silence she said, in a low, persuasive tone, +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down again,” and he obeyed, placing himself beside her. She +laid her hand on his shoulder and went on, +</p> + +<p> +“You rebuke me. Well—I am the loser. And you are angry because I +banish you. What could you do for me but weary your own patience? Your mother +is a shattered woman. My sense of life is little more than a sense of what +was—except when the pain is present. You reproach me that I parted with +you. I had joy enough without you then. Now you are come back to me, and I +cannot make you a joy. Have you the cursing spirit of the Jew in you? Are you +not able to forgive me? Shall you be glad to think that I am punished because I +was not a Jewish mother to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you ask me that?” said Deronda, remonstrantly. “Have +I not besought you that I might now at least be a son to you? My grief is that +you have declared me helpless to comfort you. I would give up much that is dear +for the sake of soothing your anguish.” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall give up nothing,” said his mother, with the hurry of +agitation. “You shall be happy. You shall let me think of you as happy. I +shall have done you no harm. You have no reason to curse me. You shall feel for +me as they feel for the dead whom they say prayers for—you shall long +that I may be freed from all suffering—from all punishment. And I shall +see you instead of always seeing your grandfather. Will any harm come to me +because I broke his trust in the daylight after he was gone into darkness? I +cannot tell:—if you think <i>Kaddish</i> will help me—say it, say +it. You will come between me and the dead. When I am in your mind, you will +look as you do now—always as if you were a tender +son—always—as if I had been a tender mother.” +</p> + +<p> +She seemed resolved that her agitation should not conquer her, but he felt her +hand trembling on his shoulder. Deep, deep compassion hemmed in all words. With +a face of beseeching he put his arm around her and pressed her head tenderly +under his. They sat so for some moments. Then she lifted her head again and +rose from her seat with a great sigh, as if in that breath she were dismissing +a weight of thoughts. Deronda, standing in front of her, felt that the parting +was near. But one of her swift alternations had come upon his mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Is she beautiful?” she said, abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Who?” said Deronda, changing color. +</p> + +<p> +“The woman you love.” +</p> + +<p> +It was not a moment for deliberate explanation. He was obliged to say, +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not ambitious?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I think not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not one who must have a path of her own?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think her nature is not given to make great claims.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is not like that?” said the Princess, taking from her wallet a +miniature with jewels around it, and holding it before her son. It was her own +in all the fire of youth, and as Deronda looked at it with admiring sadness, +she said, “Had I not a rightful claim to be something more than a mere +daughter and mother? The voice and the genius matched the face. Whatever else +was wrong, acknowledge that I had a right to be an artist, though my +father’s will was against it. My nature gave me a charter.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do acknowledge that,” said Deronda, looking from the miniature +to her face, which even in its worn pallor had an expression of living force +beyond anything that the pencil could show. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you take the portrait?” said the Princess, more gently. +“If she is a kind woman, teach her to think of me kindly.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be grateful for the portrait,” said Deronda, +“but—I ought to say, I have no assurance that she whom I love will +have any love for me. I have kept silence.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who and what is she?” said the mother. The question seemed a +command. +</p> + +<p> +“She was brought up as a singer for the stage,” said Deronda, with +inward reluctance. “Her father took her away early from her mother, and +her life has been unhappy. She is very young—only twenty. Her father +wished to bring her up in disregard—even in dislike of her Jewish origin, +but she has clung with all her affection to the memory of her mother and the +fellowship of her people.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, like you. She is attached to the Judaism she knows nothing +of,” said the Princess, peremptorily. “That is poetry—fit to +last through an opera night. Is she fond of her artist’s life—is +her singing worth anything?” +</p> + +<p> +“Her singing is exquisite. But her voice is not suited to the stage. I +think that the artist’s life has been made repugnant to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, she is made for you then. Sir Hugo said you were bitterly against +being a singer, and I can see that you would never have let yourself be merged +in a wife, as your father was.” +</p> + +<p> +“I repeat,” said Deronda, emphatically—“I repeat that I +have no assurance of her love for me, of the possibility that we can ever be +united. Other things—painful issues may lie before me. I have always felt +that I should prepare myself to renounce, not cherish that prospect. But I +suppose I might feel so of happiness in general. Whether it may come or not, +one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you feel in that way?” said his mother, laying her hands on his +shoulders, and perusing his face, while she spoke in a low meditative tone, +pausing between her sentences. “Poor boy!——I wonder how it +would have been if I had kept you with me——whether you would have +turned your heart to the old things against mine——and we should +have quarreled——your grandfather would have been in +you——and you would have hampered my life with your young growth +from the old root.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think my affection might have lasted through all our +quarreling,” said Deronda, saddened more and more, “and that would +not have hampered—surely it would have enriched your life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not then, not then——I did not want it then——I +might have been glad of it now,” said the mother, with a bitter +melancholy, “if I could have been glad of anything.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you love your other children, and they love you?” said +Deronda, anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” she answered, as to a question about a matter of course, +while she folded her arms again. “But,”——she added in a +deeper tone,——“I am not a loving woman. That is the truth. It +is a talent to love—I lack it. Others have loved me—and I have +acted their love. I know very well what love makes of men and women—it is +subjection. It takes another for a larger self, enclosing this +one,”—she pointed to her own bosom. “I was never willingly +subject to any man. Men have been subject to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps the man who was subject was the happier of the two,” said +Deronda—not with a smile, but with a grave, sad sense of his +mother’s privation. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps—but I <i>was</i> happy—for a few years I was happy. +If I had not been afraid of defeat and failure, I might have gone on. I +miscalculated. What then? It is all over. Another life! Men talk of +‘another life,’ as if it only began on the other side of the grave. +I have long entered on another life.” With the last words she raised her +arms till they were bare to the elbow, her brow was contracted in one deep +fold, her eyes were closed, her voice was smothered: in her dusky flame-colored +garment, she looked like a dreamed visitant from some region of departed +mortals. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s feeling was wrought to a pitch of acuteness in which he was no +longer quite master of himself. He gave an audible sob. His mother opened her +eyes, and letting her hands again rest on his shoulders, said, +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye, my son, good-bye. We shall hear no more of each other. Kiss +me.” +</p> + +<p> +He clasped his arms round her neck, and they kissed each other. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda did not know how he got out of the room. He felt an older man. All his +boyish yearnings and anxieties about his mother had vanished. He had gone +through a tragic experience which must forever solemnize his life and deepen +the significance of the acts by which he bound himself to others. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0054"></a> +CHAPTER LIV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + “The unwilling brain<br/> +Feigns often what it would not; and we trust<br/> +Imagination with such phantasies<br/> +As the tongue dares not fashion into words;<br/> +Which have no words, their horror makes them dim<br/> +To the mind’s eye.”<br/> + —S<small>HELLEY</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Madonna Pia, whose husband, feeling himself injured by her, took her to his +castle amid the swampy flats of the Maremma and got rid of her there, makes a +pathetic figure in Dante’s Purgatory, among the sinners who repented at +the last and desire to be remembered compassionately by their +fellow-countrymen. We know little about the grounds of mutual discontent +between the Siennese couple, but we may infer with some confidence that the +husband had never been a very delightful companion, and that on the flats of +the Maremma his disagreeable manners had a background which threw them out +remarkably; whence in his desire to punish his wife to the upmost, the nature +of things was so far against him that in relieving himself of her he could not +avoid making the relief mutual. And thus, without any hardness to the poor +Tuscan lady, who had her deliverance long ago, one may feel warranted in +thinking of her with a less sympathetic interest than of the better known +Gwendolen who, instead of being delivered from her errors on earth and cleansed +from their effect in purgatory, is at the very height of her entanglement in +those fatal meshes which are woven within more closely than without, and often +make the inward torture disproportionate to what is discernable as outward +cause. +</p> + +<p> +In taking his wife with him on a yachting expedition, Grandcourt had no +intention to get rid of her; on the contrary, he wanted to feel more securely +that she was his to do as he liked with, and to make her feel it also. +Moreover, he was himself very fond of yachting: its dreamy do-nothing +absolutism, unmolested by social demands, suited his disposition, and he did +not in the least regard it as an equivalent for the dreariness of the Maremma. +He had his reasons for carrying Gwendolen out of reach, but they were not +reasons that can seem black in the mere statement. He suspected a growing +spirit of opposition in her, and his feeling about the sentimental inclination +she betrayed for Deronda was what in another man he would have called jealousy. +In himself it seemed merely a resolution to put an end to such foolery as must +have been going on in that prearranged visit of Deronda’s which he had +divined and interrupted. +</p> + +<p> +And Grandcourt might have pleaded that he was perfectly justified in taking +care that his wife should fulfill the obligations she had accepted. Her +marriage was a contract where all the ostensible advantages were on her side, +and it was only of those advantages that her husband should use his power to +hinder her from any injurious self committal or unsuitable behavior. He knew +quite well that she had not married him—had not overcome her repugnance +to certain facts—out of love to him personally; he had won her by the +rank and luxuries he had to give her, and these she had got: he had fulfilled +his side of the contract. +</p> + +<p> +And Gwendolen, we know, was thoroughly aware of the situation. She could not +excuse herself by saying that there had been a tacit part of the contract on +her side—namely, that she meant to rule and have her own way. With all +her early indulgence in the disposition to dominate, she was not one of the +narrow-brained women who through life regard all their own selfish demands as +rights, and every claim upon themselves as an injury. She had a root of +conscience in her, and the process of purgatory had begun for her on the green +earth: she knew that she had been wrong. +</p> + +<p> +But now enter into the soul of this young creature as she found herself, with +the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on the tiny plank-island of +a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she felt that she had sold herself, +and had been paid the strict price—nay, paid more than she had dared to +ask in the handsome maintenance of her mother:—the husband to whom she +had sold her truthfulness and sense of justice, so that he held them throttled +into silence, collared and dragged behind him to witness what he would, without +remonstrance. +</p> + +<p> +What had she to complain of? The yacht was of the prettiest; the cabin fitted +up to perfection, smelling of cedar, soft-cushioned, hung with silk, expanded +with mirrors; the crew such as suited an elegant toy, one of them having even +ringlets, as well as a bronze complexion and fine teeth; and Mr. Lush was not +there, for he had taken his way back to England as soon as he had seen all and +everything on board. Moreover, Gwendolen herself liked the sea: it did not make +her ill; and to observe the rigging of the vessel and forecast the necessary +adjustments was a sort of amusement that might have gratified her activity and +enjoyment of imaginary rule; the weather was fine, and they were coasting +southward, where even the rain-furrowed, heat-cracked clay becomes gem-like +with purple shadows, and where one may float between blue and blue in an +open-eyed dream that the world has done with sorrow. +</p> + +<p> +But what can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye for beauty, +and makes sweet-scented ease an oppression? What sort of Moslem paradise would +quiet the terrible fury of moral repulsion and cowed resistance which, like an +eating pain intensifying into torture, concentrates the mind in that poisonous +misery? While Gwendolen, throned on her cushions at evening, and beholding the +glory of sea and sky softening as if with boundless love around her, was hoping +that Grandcourt in his march up and down was not going to pause near her, not +going to look at her or speak to her, some woman, under a smoky sky, obliged to +consider the price of eggs in arranging her dinner, was listening for the music +of a footstep that would remove all risk from her foretaste of joy; some +couple, bending cheek by cheek, over a bit of work done by the one and +delighted in by the other, were reckoning the earnings that would make them +rich enough for a holiday among the furze and heather. +</p> + +<p> +Had Grandcourt the least conception of what was going on in the breast of his +wife? He conceived that she did not love him; but was that necessary? She was +under his power, and he was not accustomed to soothe himself, as some +cheerfully-disposed persons are, with the conviction that he was very generally +and justly beloved. But what lay quite away from his conception was, that she +could have any special repulsion for him personally. How could she? He himself +knew what personal repulsion was—nobody better; his mind was much +furnished with a sense of what brutes his fellow-creatures were, both masculine +and feminine; what odious familiarities they had, what smirks, what modes of +flourishing their handkerchiefs, what costume, what lavender water, what +bulging eyes, and what foolish notions of making themselves agreeable by +remarks which were not wanted. In this critical view of mankind there was an +affinity between him and Gwendolen before their marriage, and we know that she +had been attractingly wrought upon by the refined negations he presented to +her. Hence he understood her repulsion for Lush. But how was he to understand +or conceive her present repulsion for Henleigh Grandcourt? Some men bring +themselves to believe, and not merely maintain, the non-existence of an +external world; a few others believe themselves objects of repulsion to a woman +without being told so in plain language. But Grandcourt did not belong to this +eccentric body of thinkers. He had all his life had reason to take a flattering +view of his own attractiveness, and to place himself in fine antithesis to the +men who, he saw at once, must be revolting to a woman of taste. He had no idea +of moral repulsion, and could not have believed, if he had been told it, that +there may be a resentment and disgust which will gradually make beauty more +detestable than ugliness, through exasperation at that outward virtue in which +hateful things can flaunt themselves or find a supercilious advantage. +</p> + +<p> +How, then, could Grandcourt divine what was going on in Gwendolen’s +breast? +</p> + +<p> +For their behavior to each other scandalized no observer—not even the +foreign maid, warranted against sea-sickness; nor Grandcourt’s own +experienced valet: still less the picturesque crew, who regarded them as a +model couple in high life. Their companionship consisted chiefly in a well-bred +silence. Grandcourt had no humorous observations at which Gwendolen could +refuse to smile, no chit-chat to make small occasions of dispute. He was +perfectly polite in arranging an additional garment over her when needful, and +in handing her any object that he perceived her to need, and she could not fall +into the vulgarity of accepting or rejecting such politeness rudely. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt put up his telescope and said, “There’s a plantation of +sugar-canes at the foot of that rock; should you like to look?” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen said, “Yes, please,” remembering that she must try and +interest herself in sugar-canes as something outside her personal affairs. Then +Grandcourt would walk up and down and smoke for a long while, pausing +occasionally to point out a sail on the horizon, and at last would seat himself +and look at Gwendolen with his narrow immovable gaze, as if she were part of +the complete yacht; while she, conscious of being looked at was exerting her +ingenuity not to meet his eyes. At dinner he would remark that the fruit was +getting stale, and they must put in somewhere for more; or, observing that she +did not drink the wine, he asked her if she would like any other kind better. A +lady was obliged to respond to these things suitably; and even if she had not +shrunk from quarrelling on other grounds, quarreling with Grandcourt was +impossible; she might as well have made angry remarks to a dangerous serpent +ornamentally coiled in her cabin without invitation. And what sort of dispute +could a woman of any pride and dignity begin on a yacht? +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt had intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive after this +fashion; it gave their life on a small scale a royal representation and +publicity in which every thing familiar was got rid of, and every body must do +what was expected of them whatever might be their private protest—the +protest (kept strictly private) adding to the piquancy of despotism. +</p> + +<p> +To Gwendolen, who even in the freedom of her maiden time, had had very faint +glimpses of any heroism or sublimity, the medium that now thrust itself +everywhere before her view was this husband and her relation to him. The beings +closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often virtually our interpreters of +the world, and some feather-headed gentleman or lady whom in passing we regret +to take as legal tender for a human being, may be acting as a melancholy theory +of life in the minds of those who live with them—like a piece of yellow +and wavy glass that distorts form and makes color an affliction. Their trivial +sentences, their petty standards, their low suspicions, their loveless +<i>ennui</i>, may be making somebody else’s life no better than a +promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols. Gwendolen had that kind of window +before her, affecting the distant equally with the near. Some unhappy wives are +soothed by the possibility that they may become mothers; but Gwendolen felt +that to desire a child for herself would have been a consenting to the +completion of the injury she had been guilty of. She was reduced to dread lest +she should become a mother. It was not the image of a new sweetly-budding life +that came as a vision of deliverance from the monotony of distaste: it was an +image of another sort. In the irritable, fluctuating stages of despair, gleams +of hope came in the form of some possible accident. To dwell on the benignity +of accident was a refuge from worse temptation. +</p> + +<p> +The embitterment of hatred is often as unaccountable to onlookers as the growth +of devoted love, and it not only seems but is really out of direct relation +with any outward causes to be alleged. Passion is of the nature of seed, and +finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all +currents toward itself, and makes the whole life its tributary. And the +intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and +drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation +of the detested object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which +the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their +suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of +Gwendolen’s mind, but not with soothing effect—rather with the +effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had +grown the self-dread, which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought +by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past wrong-doing, and what it had +brought on her, came with a pale ghastly illumination over every imagined deed +that was a rash effort at freedom, such as she had made in her marriage. +Moreover, she had learned to see all her acts through the impression they would +make on Deronda: whatever relief might come to her, she could not sever it from +the judgment of her that would be created in his mind. Not one word of +flattery, of indulgence, of dependence on her favor, could be fastened on by +her in all their intercourse, to weaken his restraining power over her (in this +way Deronda’s effort over himself was repaid); and amid the dreary +uncertainties of her spoiled life the possible remedies that lay in his mind, +nay, the remedy that lay in her feeling for him, made her only hope. He seemed +to her a terrible-browed angel, from whom she could not think of concealing any +deed so as to win an ignorant regard from him: it belonged to the nature of +their relation that she should be truthful, for his power over her had begun in +the raising of a self-discontent which could be satisfied only by genuine +change. But in no concealment had she now any confidence: her vision of what +she had to dread took more decidedly than ever the form of some fiercely +impulsive deed, committed as in a dream that she would instantaneously wake +from to find the effects real though the images had been false: to find death +under her hands, but instead of darkness, daylight; instead of satisfied +hatred, the dismay of guilt; instead of freedom, the palsy of a new +terror—a white dead face from which she was forever trying to flee and +forever held back. She remembered Deronda’s words: they were continually +recurring in her thought, +</p> + +<p> +“Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of +increasing your remorse. * * * Take your fear as a safeguard. It is like +quickness of hearing. It may make consequences passionately present to +you.” +</p> + +<p> +And so it was. In Gwendolen’s consciousness temptation and dread met and +stared like two pale phantoms, each seeing itself in the other—each +obstructed by its own image; and all the while her fuller self beheld the +apparitions and sobbed for deliverance from them. +</p> + +<p> +Inarticulate prayers, no more definite than a cry, often swept out from her +into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband’s breathing or the +plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she thought of +definite help, it took the form of Deronda’s presence and words, of the +sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. It was +sometimes after a white-lipped fierce-eyed temptation with murdering fingers +had made its demon-visit that these best moments of inward crying and clinging +for rescue would come to her, and she would lie with wide-open eyes in which +the rising tears seemed a blessing, and the thought, “I will not mind if +I can keep from getting wicked,” seemed an answer to the indefinite +prayer. +</p> + +<p> +So the days passed, taking with them light breezes beyond and about the +Balearic Isles, and then to Sardinia, and then with gentle change persuading +them northward again toward Corsica. But this floating, gentle-wafted +existence, with its apparently peaceful influences, was becoming as bad as a +nightmare to Gwendolen. +</p> + +<p> +“How long are we to be yachting?” she ventured to ask one day after +they had been touching at Ajaccio, and the mere fact of change in going ashore +had given her a relief from some of the thoughts which seemed now to cling +about the very rigging of the vessel, mix with the air in the red silk cabin +below, and make the smell of the sea odious. +</p> + +<p> +“What else should we do?” said Grandcourt. “I’m not +tired of it. I don’t see why we shouldn’t stay out any length of +time. There’s less to bore one in this way. And where would you go to? +I’m sick of foreign places. And we shall have enough of Ryelands. Would +you rather be at Ryelands?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no,” said Gwendolen, indifferently, finding all places alike +indescribable as soon as she imagined herself and her husband in them. “I +only wondered how long you would like this.” +</p> + +<p> +“I like yachting longer than anything else,” said Grandcourt; +“and I had none last year. I suppose you are beginning to tire of it. +Women are so confoundedly whimsical. They expect everything to give way to +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dear, no!” said Gwendolen, letting out her scorn in a +flute-like tone. “I never expect you to give way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should I?” said Grandcourt, with his inward voice, looking at +her, and then choosing an orange—for they were at table. +</p> + +<p> +She made up her mind to a length of yachting that she could not see beyond; but +the next day, after a squall which had made her rather ill for the first time, +he came down to her and said, +</p> + +<p> +“There’s been the devil’s own work in the night. The skipper +says we shall have to stay at Genoa for a week while things are set +right.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mind that?” said Gwendolen, who lay looking very white +amidst her white drapery. +</p> + +<p> +“I should think so. Who wants to be broiling at Genoa?” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be a change,” said Gwendolen, made a little incautious by +her languor. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t want any change. Besides, the place is intolerable; +and one can’t move along the roads. I shall go out in a boat, as I used +to do, and manage it myself. One can get a few hours every day in that way +instead of striving in a damnable hotel.” +</p> + +<p> +Here was a prospect which held hope in it. Gwendolen thought of hours when she +would be alone, since Grandcourt would not want to take her in the said boat, +and in her exultation at this unlooked-for relief, she had wild, contradictory +fancies of what she might do with her freedom—that “running +away” which she had already innumerable times seen to be a worse evil +than any actual endurance, now finding new arguments as an escape from her +worse self. Also, visionary relief on a par with the fancy of a prisoner that +the night wind may blow down the wall of his prison and save him from desperate +devices, insinuated itself as a better alternative, lawful to wish for. +</p> + +<p> +The fresh current of expectation revived her energies, and enabled her to take +all things with an air of cheerfulness and alacrity that made a change marked +enough to be noticed by her husband. She watched through the evening lights to +the sinking of the moon with less of awed loneliness than was habitual to +her—nay, with a vague impression that in this mighty frame of things +there might be some preparation of rescue for her. Why not?—since the +weather had just been on her side. This possibility of hoping, after her long +fluctuation amid fears, was like a first return of hunger to the +long-languishing patient. +</p> + +<p> +She was waked the next morning by the casting of the anchor in the port of +Genoa—waked from a strangely-mixed dream in which she felt herself +escaping over the Mont Cenis, and wondering to find it warmer even in the +moonlight on the snow, till suddenly she met Deronda, who told her to go back. +</p> + +<p> +In an hour or so from that dream she actually met Deronda. But it was on the +palatial staircase of the <i>Italia</i>, where she was feeling warm in her +light woolen dress and straw hat; and her husband was by her side. +</p> + +<p> +There was a start of surprise in Deronda before he could raise his hat and pass +on. The moment did not seem to favor any closer greeting, and the circumstances +under which they had last parted made him doubtful whether Grandcourt would be +civilly inclined to him. +</p> + +<p> +The doubt might certainly have been changed into a disagreeable certainty, for +Grandcourt on this unaccountable appearance of Deronda at Genoa of all places, +immediately tried to conceive how there could have been an arrangement between +him and Gwendolen. It is true that before they were well in their rooms, he had +seen how difficult it was to shape such an arrangement with any probability, +being too cool-headed to find it at once easily credible that Gwendolen had not +only while in London hastened to inform Deronda of the yachting project, but +had posted a letter to him from Marseilles or Barcelona, advising him to travel +to Genoa in time for the chance of meeting her there, or of receiving a letter +from her telling of some other destination—all which must have implied a +miraculous foreknowledge in her, and in Deronda a bird-like facility in flying +about and perching idly. Still he was there, and though Grandcourt would not +make a fool of himself by fabrications that others might call preposterous, he +was not, for all that, disposed to admit fully that Deronda’s presence +was, so far as Gwendolen was concerned, a mere accident. It was a disgusting +fact; that was enough; and no doubt she was well pleased. A man out of temper +does not wait for proofs before feeling toward all things animate and inanimate +as if they were in a conspiracy against him, but at once threshes his horse or +kicks his dog in consequence. Grandcourt felt toward Gwendolen and Deronda as +if he knew them to be in a conspiracy against him, and here was an event in +league with them. What he took for clearly certain—and so far he divined +the truth—was that Gwendolen was now counting on an interview with +Deronda whenever her husband’s back was turned. +</p> + +<p> +As he sat taking his coffee at a convenient angle for observing her, he +discerned something which he felt sure was the effect of a secret +delight—some fresh ease in moving and speaking, some peculiar meaning in +her eyes, whatever she looked on. Certainly her troubles had not marred her +beauty. Mrs. Grandcourt was handsomer than Gwendolen Harleth: her grace and +expression were informed by a greater variety of inward experience, giving new +play to her features, new attitudes in movement and repose; her whole person +and air had the nameless something which often makes a woman more interesting +after marriage than before, less confident that all things are according to her +opinion, and yet with less of deer-like shyness—more fully a human being. +</p> + +<p> +This morning the benefits of the voyage seemed to be suddenly revealing +themselves in a new elasticity of mien. As she rose from the table and put her +two heavily-jewelled hands on each side of her neck, according to her wont, she +had no art to conceal that sort of joyous expectation which makes the present +more bearable than usual, just as when a man means to go out he finds it easier +to be amiable to the family for a quarter of an hour beforehand. It is not +impossible that a terrier whose pleasure was concerned would perceive those +amiable signs and know their meaning—know why his master stood in a +peculiar way, talked with alacrity, and even had a peculiar gleam in his eye, +so that on the least movement toward the door, the terrier would scuttle to be +in time. And, in dog fashion, Grandcourt discerned the signs of +Gwendolen’s expectation, interpreting them with the narrow correctness +which leaves a world of unknown feeling behind. +</p> + +<p> +“A—just ring, please, and tell Gibbs to order some dinner for us at +three,” said Grandcourt, as he too rose, took out a cigar, and then +stretched his hand toward the hat that lay near. “I’m going to send +Angus to find a little sailing-boat for us to go out in; one that I can manage, +with you at the tiller. It’s uncommonly pleasant these fine +evenings—the least boring of anything we can do.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen turned cold. There was not only the cruel disappointment; there was +the immediate conviction that her husband had determined to take her because he +would not leave her out of his sight; and probably this dual solitude in a boat +was the more attractive to him because it would be wearisome to her. They were +not on the plank-island; she felt it the more possible to begin a contest. But +the gleaming content had died out of her. There was a change in her like that +of a glacier after sunset. +</p> + +<p> +“I would rather not go in the boat,” she said. “Take some one +else with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well; if you don’t go, I shall not go,” said +Grandcourt. “We shall stay suffocating here, that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t bear to go in a boat,” said Gwendolen, angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“That is a sudden change,” said Grandcourt, with a slight sneer. +“But, since you decline, we shall stay indoors.” +</p> + +<p> +He laid down his hat again, lit his cigar, and walked up and down the room, +pausing now and then to look out of the windows. Gwendolen’s temper told +her to persist. She knew very well now that Grandcourt would not go without +her; but if he must tyrannize over her, he should not do it precisely in the +way he would choose. She would oblige him to stay in the hotel. Without +speaking again, she passed into the adjoining bedroom and threw herself into a +chair with her anger, seeing no purpose or issue—only feeling that the +wave of evil had rushed back upon her, and dragged her away from her momentary +breathing-place. +</p> + +<p> +Presently Grandcourt came in with his hat on, but threw it off and sat down +sideways on a chair nearly in front of her, saying, in his superficial drawl, +</p> + +<p> +“Have you come round yet? or do you find it agreeable to be out of +temper. You make things uncommonly pleasant for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you want to make them unpleasant for <i>me</i>?” said +Gwendolen, getting helpless again, and feeling the hot tears rise. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, will you be good enough to say what it is you have to complain +of?” said Grandcourt, looking into her eyes, and using his most inward +voice. “Is it that I stay indoors when you stay?” +</p> + +<p> +She could give no answer. The sort of truth that made any excuse for her anger +could not be uttered. In the conflict of despair and humiliation she began to +sob, and the tears rolled down her cheeks—a form of agitation which she +had never shown before in her husband’s presence. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope this is useful,” said Grandcourt, after a moment or two. +“All I can say is, it’s most confoundedly unpleasant. What the +devil women can see in this kind of thing, I don’t know. <i>You</i> see +something to be got by it, of course. All I can see is, that we shall be shut +up here when we might have been having a pleasant sail.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us go, then,” said Gwendolen, impetuously. “Perhaps we +shall be drowned.” She began to sob again. +</p> + +<p> +This extraordinary behavior, which had evidently some relation to Deronda, gave +more definiteness to Grandcourt’s conclusions. He drew his chair quite +close in front of her, and said, in a low tone, “Just be quiet and +listen, will you?” +</p> + +<p> +There seemed to be a magical effect in this close vicinity. Gwendolen shrank +and ceased to sob. She kept her eyelids down and clasped her hands tightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us understand each other,” said Grandcourt, in the same tone. +“I know very well what this nonsense means. But if you suppose I am going +to let you make a fool of me, just dismiss that notion from your mind. What are +you looking forward to, if you can’t behave properly as my wife? There is +disgrace for you, if you like to have it, but I don’t know anything else; +and as to Deronda, it’s quite clear that he hangs back from you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all false!” said Gwendolen, bitterly. “You +don’t in the least imagine what is in my mind. I have seen enough of the +disgrace that comes in that way. And you had better leave me at liberty to +speak with any one I like. It will be better for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will allow me to judge of that,” said Grandcourt, rising and +moving to a little distance toward the window, but standing there playing with +his whiskers as if he were awaiting something. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen’s words had so clear and tremendous a meaning for herself that +she thought they must have expressed it to Grandcourt, and had no sooner +uttered them than she dreaded their effect. But his soul was garrisoned against +presentiments and fears: he had the courage and confidence that belong to +domination, and he was at that moment feeling perfectly satisfied that he held +his wife with bit and bridle. By the time they had been married a year she +would cease to be restive. He continued standing with his air of indifference, +till she felt her habitual stifling consciousness of having an immovable +obstruction in her life, like the nightmare of beholding a single form that +serves to arrest all passage though the wide country lies open. +</p> + +<p> +“What decision have you come to?” he said, presently looking at +her. “What orders shall I give?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, let us go,” said Gwendolen. The walls had begun to be an +imprisonment, and while there was breath in this man he would have the mastery +over her. His words had the power of thumb-screws and the cold touch of the +rock. To resist was to act like a stupid animal unable to measure results. +</p> + +<p> +So the boat was ordered. She even went down to the quay again with him to see +it before midday. Grandcourt had recovered perfect quietude of temper, and had +a scornful satisfaction in the attention given by the nautical groups to the +<i>milord</i>, owner of the handsome yacht which had just put in for repairs, +and who being an Englishman was naturally so at home on the sea that he could +manage a sail with the same ease that he could manage a horse. The sort of +exultation he had discerned in Gwendolen this morning she now thought that she +discerned in him; and it was true that he had set his mind on this boating, and +carried out his purpose as something that people might not expect him to do, +with the gratified impulse of a strong will which had nothing better to exert +itself upon. He had remarkable physical courage, and was proud of it—or +rather he had a great contempt for the coarser, bulkier men who generally had +less. Moreover, he was ruling that Gwendolen should go with him. +</p> + +<p> +And when they came down again at five o’clock, equipped for their +boating, the scene was as good as a theatrical representation for all +beholders. This handsome, fair-skinned English couple, manifesting the usual +eccentricity of their nation, both of them proud, pale, and calm, without a +smile on their faces, moving like creatures who were fulfilling a supernatural +destiny—it was a thing to go out and see, a thing to paint. The +husband’s chest, back, and arms, showed very well in his close-fitting +dress, and the wife was declared to be a statue. +</p> + +<p> +Some suggestions were proffered concerning a possible change in the breeze, and +the necessary care in putting about, but Grandcourt’s manner made the +speakers understand that they were too officious, and that he knew better than +they. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen, keeping her impassable air, as they moved away from the strand, felt +her imagination obstinately at work. She was not afraid of any outward +dangers—she was afraid of her own wishes which were taking shapes +possible and impossible, like a cloud of demon-faces. She was afraid of her own +hatred, which under the cold iron touch that had compelled her to-day had +gathered a fierce intensity. As she sat guiding the tiller under her +husband’s eyes, doing just what he told her, the strife within her seemed +like her own effort to escape from herself. She clung to the thought of +Deronda: she persuaded herself that he would not go away while she was +there—he knew that she needed help. The sense that he was there would +save her from acting out the evil within. And yet quick, quick, came images, +plans of evil that would come again and seize her in the night, like furies +preparing the deed that they would straightway avenge. +</p> + +<p> +They were taken out of the port and carried eastward by a gentle breeze. Some +clouds tempered the sunlight, and the hour was always deepening toward the +supreme beauty of evening. Sails larger and smaller changed their aspect like +sensitive things, and made a cheerful companionship, alternately near and far. +The grand city shone more vaguely, the mountains looked out above it, and there +was stillness as in an island sanctuary. Yet suddenly Gwendolen let her hands +fall, and said in a scarcely audible tone, “God help me!” +</p> + +<p> +“What is the matter?” said Grandcourt, not distinguishing the +words. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nothing,” said Gwendolen, rousing herself from her momentary +forgetfulness and resuming the ropes. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you find this pleasant?” said Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +“Very.” +</p> + +<p> +“You admit now we couldn’t have done anything better?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I see nothing better. I think we shall go on always, like the +Flying Dutchman,” said Gwendolen wildly. +</p> + +<p> +Grandcourt gave her one of his narrow examining glances, and then said, +“If you like, we can go to Spezia in the morning, and let them take us up +there.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I shall like nothing better than this.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well: we’ll do the same to-morrow. But we must be turning in +soon. I shall put about.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0055"></a> +CHAPTER LV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + “Ritorna a tua scienza<br/> +Che vuol, quanto la cosa e più perfetta<br/> +Più senta il bene, e cosi la doglienza.”<br/> + —D<small>ANTE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda met Gwendolen and Grandcourt on the staircase, his mind was +seriously preoccupied. He had just been summoned to the second interview with +his mother. +</p> + +<p> +In two hours after his parting from her he knew that the Princess +Halm-Eberstein had left the hotel, and so far as the purpose of his journey to +Genoa was concerned, he might himself have set off on his way to Mainz, to +deliver the letter from Joseph Kalonymos, and get possession of the family +chest. But mixed mental conditions, which did not resolve themselves into +definite reasons, hindered him from departure. Long after the farewell he was +kept passive by a weight of retrospective feeling. He lived again, with the new +keenness of emotive memory, through the exciting scenes which seemed past only +in the sense of preparation for their actual presence in his soul. He allowed +himself in his solitude to sob, with perhaps more than a woman’s +acuteness of compassion, over that woman’s life so near to his, and yet +so remote. He beheld the world changed for him by the certitude of ties that +altered the poise of hopes and fears, and gave him a new sense of fellowship, +as if under cover of the night he had joined the wrong band of wanderers, and +found with the rise of morning that the tents of his kindred were grouped far +off. He had a quivering imaginative sense of close relation to the grandfather +who had been animated by strong impulses and beloved thoughts, which were now +perhaps being roused from their slumber within himself. And through all this +passionate meditation Mordecai and Mirah were always present, as beings who +clasped hands with him in sympathetic silence. +</p> + +<p> +Of such quick, responsive fibre was Deronda made, under that mantle of +self-controlled reserve into which early experience had thrown so much of his +young strength. +</p> + +<p> +When the persistent ringing of a bell as a signal reminded him of the hour he +thought of looking into <i>Bradshaw</i>, and making the brief necessary +preparations for starting by the next train—thought of it, but made no +movement in consequence. Wishes went to Mainz and what he was to get possession +of there—to London and the beings there who made the strongest +attachments of his life; but there were other wishes that clung in these +moments to Genoa, and they kept him where he was by that force which urges us +to linger over an interview that carries a presentiment of final farewell or of +overshadowing sorrow. Deronda did not formally say, “I will stay over +to-night, because it is Friday, and I should like to go to the evening service +at the synagogue where they must all have gone; and besides, I may see the +Grandcourts again.” But simply, instead of packing and ringing for his +bill, he sat doing nothing at all, while his mind went to the synagogue and saw +faces there probably little different from those of his grandfather’s +time, and heard the Spanish-Hebrew liturgy which had lasted through the seasons +of wandering generations like a plant with wandering seed, that gives the +far-off lands a kinship to the exile’s home—while, also, his mind +went toward Gwendolen, with anxious remembrance of what had been, and with a +half-admitted impression that it would be hardness in him willingly to go away +at once without making some effort, in spite of Grandcourt’s probable +dislike, to manifest the continuance of his sympathy with her since their +abrupt parting. +</p> + +<p> +In this state of mind he deferred departure, ate his dinner without sense of +flavor, rose from it quickly to find the synagogue, and in passing the porter +asked if Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt were still in the hotel, and what was the +number of their apartment. The porter gave him the number, but added that they +were gone out boating. That information had somehow power enough over Deronda +to divide his thoughts with the memories wakened among the sparse +<i>talithim</i> and keen dark faces of worshippers whose way of taking awful +prayers and invocations with the easy familiarity which might be called Hebrew +dyed Italian, made him reflect that his grandfather, according to the +Princess’s hints of his character, must have been almost as exceptional a +Jew as Mordecai. But were not men of ardent zeal and far-reaching hope +everywhere exceptional? the men who had the visions which, as Mordecai said, +were the creators and feeders of the world—moulding and feeding the more +passive life which without them would dwindle and shrivel into the narrow +tenacity of insects, unshaken by thoughts beyond the reach of their antennae. +Something of a mournful impatience perhaps added itself to the solicitude about +Gwendolen (a solicitude that had room to grow in his present release from +immediate cares) as an incitement to hasten from the synagogue and choose to +take his evening walk toward the quay, always a favorite haunt with him, and +just now attractive with the possibility that he might be in time to see the +Grandcourts come in from their boating. In this case, he resolved that he would +advance to greet them deliberately, and ignore any grounds that the husband +might have for wishing him elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +The sun had set behind a bank of cloud, and only a faint yellow light was +giving its farewell kisses to the waves, which were agitated by an active +breeze. Deronda, sauntering slowly within sight of what took place on the +strand, observed the groups there concentrating their attention on a +sailing-boat which was advancing swiftly landward, being rowed by two men. +Amidst the clamorous talk in various languages, Deronda held it the surer means +of getting information not to ask questions, but to elbow his way to the +foreground and be an unobstructed witness of what was occurring. Telescopes +were being used, and loud statements made that the boat held somebody who had +been drowned. One said it was the <i>milord</i> who had gone out in a sailing +boat; another maintained that the prostrate figure he discerned was +<i>miladi</i>; a Frenchman who had no glass would rather say that it was +<i>milord</i> who had probably taken his wife out to drown her, according to +the national practice—a remark which an English skipper immediately +commented on in our native idiom (as nonsense which—had undergone a +mining operation), and further dismissed by the decision that the reclining +figure was a woman. For Deronda, terribly excited by fluctuating fears, the +strokes of the oars as he watched them were divided by swift visions of events, +possible and impossible, which might have brought about this issue, or this +broken-off fragment of an issue, with a worse half undisclosed—if this +woman apparently snatched from the waters were really Mrs. Grandcourt. +</p> + +<p> +But soon there was no longer any doubt: the boat was being pulled to land, and +he saw Gwendolen half raising herself on her hands, by her own effort, under +her heavy covering of tarpaulin and pea-jackets—pale as one of the +sheeted dead, shivering, with wet hair streaming, a wild amazed consciousness +in her eyes, as if she had waked up in a world where some judgment was +impending, and the beings she saw around were coming to seize her. The first +rower who jumped to land was also wet through, and ran off; the sailors, close +about the boat, hindered Deronda from advancing, and he could only look on +while Gwendolen gave scared glances, and seemed to shrink with terror as she +was carefully, tenderly helped out, and led on by the strong arms of those +rough, bronzed men, her wet clothes clinging about her limbs, and adding to the +impediment of her weakness. Suddenly her wandering eyes fell on Deronda, +standing before her, and immediately, as if she had been expecting him and +looking for him, she tried to stretch out her arms, which were held back by her +supporters, saying, in a muffled voice, +</p> + +<p> +“It is come, it is come! He is dead!” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush, hush!” said Deronda, in a tone of authority; “quiet +yourself.” Then to the men who were assisting her, “I am a +connection of this lady’s husband. If you will get her on to the +<i>Italia</i> as quickly as possible, I will undertake everything else.” +</p> + +<p> +He stayed behind to hear from the remaining boatman that her husband had gone +down irrecoverably, and that his boat was left floating empty. He and his +comrade had heard a cry, had come up in time to see the lady jump in after her +husband, and had got her out fast enough to save her from much damage. +</p> + +<p> +After this, Deronda hastened to the hotel to assure himself that the best +medical help would be provided; and being satisfied on this point, he +telegraphed the event to Sir Hugo, begging him to come forthwith, and also to +Mr. Gascoigne, whose address at the rectory made his nearest known way of +getting the information to Gwendolen’s mother. Certain words of +Gwendolen’s in the past had come back to him with the effectiveness of an +inspiration: in moments of agitated confession she had spoken of her +mother’s presence, as a possible help, if she could have had it. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0056"></a> +CHAPTER LVI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“The pang, the curse with which they died,<br/> + Had never passed away:<br/> +I could not draw my eyes from theirs,<br/> + Nor lift them up to pray.”<br/> + —C<small>OLERIDGE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda did not take off his clothes that night. Gwendolen, after insisting on +seeing him again before she would consent to be undressed, had been perfectly +quiet, and had only asked him, with a whispering, repressed eagerness, to +promise that he would come to her when she sent for him in the morning. Still, +the possibility that a change might come over her, the danger of a supervening +feverish condition, and the suspicion that something in the late catastrophe +was having an effect which might betray itself in excited words, acted as a +foreboding within him. He mentioned to her attendant that he should keep +himself ready to be called if there were any alarming change of symptoms, +making it understood by all concerned that he was in communication with her +friends in England, and felt bound meanwhile to take all care on her +behalf—a position which it was the easier for him to assume, because he +was well known to Grandcourt’s valet, the only old servant who had come +on the late voyage. +</p> + +<p> +But when fatigue from the strangely various emotion of the day at last sent +Deronda to sleep, he remained undisturbed except by the morning dreams, which +came as a tangled web of yesterday’s events, and finally waked him, with +an image drawn by his pressing anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +Still, it was morning, and there had been no summons—an augury which +cheered him while he made his toilet, and reflected that it was too early to +send inquiries. Later, he learned that she had passed a too wakeful night, but +had shown no violent signs of agitation, and was at last sleeping. He wondered +at the force that dwelt in this creature, so alive to dread; for he had an +irresistible impression that even under the effects of a severe physical shock +she was mastering herself with a determination of concealment. For his own +part, he thought that his sensibilities had been blunted by what he had been +going through in the meeting with his mother: he seemed to himself now to be +only fulfilling claims, and his more passionate sympathy was in abeyance. He +had lately been living so keenly in an experience quite apart from +Gwendolen’s lot, that his present cares for her were like a revisiting of +scenes familiar in the past, and there was not yet a complete revival of the +inward response to them. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile he employed himself in getting a formal, legally recognized statement +from the fishermen who had rescued Gwendolen. Few details came to light. The +boat in which Grandcourt had gone out had been found drifting with its sail +loose, and had been towed in. The fishermen thought it likely that he had been +knocked overboard by the flapping of the sail while putting about, and that he +had not known how to swim; but, though they were near, their attention had been +first arrested by a cry which seemed like that of a man in distress, and while +they were hastening with their oars, they heard a shriek from the lady, and saw +her jump in. +</p> + +<p> +On re-entering the hotel, Deronda was told that Gwendolen had risen, and was +desiring to see him. He was shown into a room darkened by blinds and curtains, +where she was seated with a white shawl wrapped round her, looking toward the +opening door like one waiting uneasily. But her long hair was gathered up and +coiled carefully, and, through all, the blue stars in her ears had kept their +place: as she started impulsively to her full height, sheathed in her white +shawl, her face and neck not less white, except for a purple line under her +eyes, her lips a little apart with the peculiar expression of one accused and +helpless, she looked like the unhappy ghost of that Gwendolen Harleth whom +Deronda had seen turning with firm lips and proud self-possession from her +losses at the gaming table. The sight pierced him with pity, and the effects of +all their past relations began to revive within him. +</p> + +<p> +“I beseech you to rest—not to stand,” said Deronda, as he +approached her; and she obeyed, falling back into her chair again. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you sit down near me?” she said. “I want to speak very +low.” +</p> + +<p> +She was in a large arm-chair, and he drew a small one near to her side. The +action seemed to touch her peculiarly: turning her pale face full upon his, +which was very near, she said, in the lowest audible tone, “You know I am +a guilty woman?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda himself turned paler as he said, “I know nothing.” He did +not dare to say more. +</p> + +<p> +“He is dead.” She uttered this with the same undertoned decision. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Deronda, in a mournful suspense which made him +reluctant to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“His face will not be seen above the water again,” said Gwendolen, +in a tone that was not louder, but of a suppressed eagerness, while she held +both her hands clenched. +</p> + +<p> +“No.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not by any one else—only by me—a dead face—I shall +never get away from it.” +</p> + +<p> +It was with an inward voice of desperate self-repression that she spoke these +last words, while she looked away from Deronda toward something at a distance +from her on the floor. She was seeing the whole event—her own acts +included—through an exaggerating medium of excitement and horror? Was she +in a state of delirium into which there entered a sense of concealment and +necessity for self-repression? Such thoughts glanced through Deronda as a sort +of hope. But imagine the conflict of feeling that kept him silent. She was bent +on confession, and he dreaded hearing her confession. Against his better will +he shrank from the task that was laid on him: he wished, and yet rebuked the +wish as cowardly, that she could bury her secrets in her own bosom. He was not +a priest. He dreaded the weight of this woman’s soul flung upon his own +with imploring dependence. But she spoke again, hurriedly, looking at him, +</p> + +<p> +“You will not say that I ought to tell the world? you will not say that I +ought to be disgraced? I could not do it. I could not bear it. I cannot have my +mother know. Not if I were dead. I could not have her know. I must tell you; +but you will not say that any one else should know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can say nothing in my ignorance,” said Deronda, mournfully, +“except that I desire to help you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I told you from the beginning—as soon as I could—I told you +I was afraid of myself.” There was a piteous pleading in the low murmur +in which Deronda turned his ear only. Her face afflicted him too much. “I +felt a hatred in me that was always working like an evil +spirit—contriving things. Everything I could do to free myself came into +my mind; and it got worse—all things got worse. That is why I asked you +to come to me in town. I thought then I would tell you the worst about myself. +I tried. But I could not tell everything. And <i>he</i> came in.” +</p> + +<p> +She paused, while a shudder passed through her; but soon went on. +</p> + +<p> +“I will tell you everything now. Do you think a woman who cried, and +prayed, and struggled to be saved from herself, could be a murderess?” +</p> + +<p> +“Great God!” said Deronda, in a deep, shaken voice, +“don’t torture me needlessly. You have not murdered him. You threw +yourself into the water with the impulse to save him. Tell me the rest +afterward. This death was an accident that you could not have hindered.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be impatient with me.” The tremor, the childlike +beseeching in these words compelled Deronda to turn his head and look at her +face. The poor quivering lips went on. “You said—you used to +say—you felt more for those who had done something wicked and were +miserable; you said they might get better—they might be scourged into +something better. If you had not spoken in that way, everything would have been +worse. I <i>did</i> remember all you said to me. It came to me always. It came +to me at the very last—that was the reason why I—But now, if you +cannot bear with me when I tell you everything—if you turn away from me +and forsake me, what shall I do? Am I worse than I was when you found me and +wanted to make me better? All the wrong I have done was in me then—and +more—and more—if you had not come and been patient with me. And +now—will you forsake me?” +</p> + +<p> +Her hands, which had been so tightly clenched some minutes before, were now +helplessly relaxed and trembling on the arm of her chair. Her quivering lips +remained parted as she ceased speaking. Deronda could not answer; he was +obliged to look away. He took one of her hands, and clasped it as if they were +going to walk together like two children: it was the only way in which he could +answer, “I will not forsake you.” And all the while he felt as if +he were putting his name to a blank paper which might be filled up terribly. +Their attitude, his adverted face with its expression of a suffering which he +was solemnly resolved to undergo, might have told half the truth of the +situation to a beholder who had suddenly entered. +</p> + +<p> +That grasp was an entirely new experience to Gwendolen: she had never before +had from any man a sign of tenderness which her own being had needed, and she +interpreted its powerful effect on her into a promise of inexhaustible patience +and constancy. The stream of renewed strength made it possible for her to go on +as she had begun—with that fitful, wandering confession where the +sameness of experience seems to nullify the sense of time or of order in +events. She began again in a fragmentary way, +</p> + +<p> +“All sorts of contrivances in my mind—but all so difficult. And I +fought against them—I was terrified at them—I saw his dead +face”—here her voice sank almost to a whisper close to +Deronda’s ear—“ever so long ago I saw it and I wished him to +be dead. And yet it terrified me. I was like two creatures. I could not +speak—I wanted to kill—it was as strong as thirst—and then +directly—I felt beforehand I had done something dreadful, +unalterable—that would make me like an evil spirit. And it came—it +came.” +</p> + +<p> +She was silent a moment or two, as if her memory had lost itself in a web where +each mesh drew all the rest. +</p> + +<p> +“It had all been in my mind when I first spoke to you—when we were +at the Abbey. I had done something then. I could not tell you that. It was the +only thing I did toward carrying out my thoughts. They went about over +everything; but they all remained like dreadful dreams—all but one. I did +one act—and I never undid it—it is there still—as long ago as +when we were at Ryelands. There it was—something my fingers longed for +among the beautiful toys in the cabinet in my boudoir—small and sharp +like a long willow leaf in a silver sheath. I locked it in the drawer of my +dressing-case. I was continually haunted with it and how I should use it. I +fancied myself putting it under my pillow. But I never did. I never looked at +it again. I dared not unlock the drawer: it had a key all to itself; and not +long ago, when we were in the yacht, I dropped the key into the deep water. It +was my wish to drop it and deliver myself. After that I began to think how I +could open the drawer without the key: and when I found we were to stay at +Genoa, it came into my mind that I could get it opened privately at the hotel. +But then, when we were going up the stairs, I met you; and I thought I should +talk to you alone and tell you this—everything I could not tell you in +town; and then I was forced to go out in the boat.” +</p> + +<p> +A sob had for the first time risen with the last words, and she sank back in +her chair. The memory of that acute disappointment seemed for the moment to +efface what had come since. Deronda did not look at her, but he said, +insistently, +</p> + +<p> +“And it has all remained in your imagination. It has gone on only in your +thought. To the last the evil temptation has been resisted?” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence. The tears had rolled down her cheeks. She pressed her +handkerchief against them and sat upright. She was summoning her resolution; +and again, leaning a little toward Deronda’s ear, she began in a whisper, +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; I will tell you everything as God knows it. I will tell you no +falsehood; I will tell you the exact truth. What should I do else? I used to +think I could never be wicked. I thought of wicked people as if they were a +long way off me. Since then I have been wicked. I have felt wicked. And +everything has been a punishment to me—all the things I used to wish +for—it is as if they had been made red-hot. The very daylight has often +been a punishment to me. Because—you know—I ought not to have +married. That was the beginning of it. I wronged some one else. I broke my +promise. I meant to get pleasure for myself, and it all turned to misery. I +wanted to make my gain out of another’s loss—you remember?—it +was like roulette—and the money burned into me. And I could not complain. +It was as if I had prayed that another should lose and I should win. And I had +won, I knew it all—I knew I was guilty. When we were on the sea, and I +lay awake at night in the cabin, I sometimes felt that everything I had done +lay open without excuse—nothing was hidden—how could anything be +known to me only?—it was not my own knowledge, it was God’s that +had entered into me, and even the stillness—everything held a punishment +for me—everything but you. I always thought that you would not want me to +be punished—you would have tried and helped me to be better. And only +thinking of that helped me. You will not change—you will not want to +punish me now?” +</p> + +<p> +Again a sob had risen. +</p> + +<p> +“God forbid!” groaned Deronda. But he sat motionless. +</p> + +<p> +This long wandering with the conscious-stricken one over her past was difficult +to bear, but he dared not again urge her with a question. He must let her mind +follow its own need. She unconsciously left intervals in her retrospect, not +clearly distinguishing between what she said and what she had only an inward +vision of. Her next words came after such an interval. +</p> + +<p> +“That all made it so hard when I was forced to go in the boat. Because +when I saw you it was an unexpected joy, and I thought I could tell you +everything—about the locked-up drawer and what I had not told you before. +And if I had told you, and knew it was in your mind, it would have less power +over me. I hoped and trusted in that. For after all my struggles and my crying, +the hatred and rage, the temptation that frightened me, the longing, the thirst +for what I dreaded, always came back. And that disappointment—when I was +quite shut out from speaking to you, and was driven to go in the +boat—brought all the evil back, as if I had been locked in a prison with +it and no escape. Oh, it seems so long ago now since I stepped into that boat! +I could have given up everything in that moment, to have the forked lightning +for a weapon to strike him dead.” +</p> + +<p> +Some of the compressed fierceness that she was recalling seemed to find its way +into her undertoned utterance. After a little silence she said, with agitated +hurry, +</p> + +<p> +“If he were here again, what should I do? I cannot wish him +here—and yet I cannot bear his dead face. I was a coward. I ought to have +borne contempt. I ought to have gone away—gone and wandered like a beggar +rather than stay to feel like a fiend. But turn where I would there was +something I could not bear. Sometimes I thought he would kill <i>me</i> if I +resisted his will. But now—his dead face is there, and I cannot bear +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly loosing Deronda’s hand, she started up, stretching her arms to +their full length upward, and said with a sort of moan, +</p> + +<p> +“I have been a cruel woman! What can <i>I</i> do but cry for help? +<i>I</i> am sinking. Die—die—you are forsaken—go down, go +down into darkness. Forsaken—no pity—<i>I</i> shall be +forsaken.” +</p> + +<p> +She sank in her chair again and broke into sobs. Even Deronda had no place in +her consciousness at that moment. He was completely unmanned. Instead of +finding, as he had imagined, that his late experience had dulled his +susceptibility to fresh emotion, it seemed that the lot of this young creature, +whose swift travel from her bright rash girlhood into this agony of remorse he +had had to behold in helplessness, pierced him the deeper because it came close +upon another sad revelation of spiritual conflict: he was in one of those +moments when the very anguish of passionate pity makes us ready to choose that +we will know pleasure no more, and live only for the stricken and afflicted. He +had risen from his seat while he watched that terrible outburst—which +seemed the more awful to him because, even in this supreme agitation, she kept +the suppressed voice of one who confesses in secret. At last he felt impelled +to turn his back toward her and walk to a distance. +</p> + +<p> +But presently there was stillness. Her mind had opened to the sense that he had +gone away from her. When Deronda turned round to approach her again, he saw her +face bent toward him, her eyes dilated, her lips parted. She was an image of +timid forlorn beseeching—too timid to entreat in words while he kept +himself aloof from her. Was she forsaken by him—now—already? But +his eyes met hers sorrowfully—met hers for the first time fully since she +had said, “You know I am a guilty woman,” and that full glance in +its intense mournfulness seemed to say, “I know it, but I shall all the +less forsake you.” He sat down by her side again in the same +attitude—without turning his face toward her and without again taking her +hand. +</p> + +<p> +Once more Gwendolen was pierced, as she had been by his face of sorrow at the +Abbey, with a compunction less egoistic than that which urged her to confess, +and she said, in a tone of loving regret, +</p> + +<p> +“I make you very unhappy.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda gave an indistinct “Oh,” just shrinking together and +changing his attitude a little. Then he had gathered resolution enough to say +clearly, “There is no question of being happy or unhappy. What I most +desire at this moment is what will most help you. Tell me all you feel it a +relief to tell.” +</p> + +<p> +Devoted as these words were, they widened his spiritual distance from her, and +she felt it more difficult to speak: she had a vague need of getting nearer to +that compassion which seemed to be regarding her from a halo of superiority, +and the need turned into an impulse to humble herself more. She was ready to +throw herself on her knees before him; but no—her wonderfully mixed +consciousness held checks on that impulse, and she was kept silent and +motionless by the pressure of opposing needs. Her stillness made Deronda at +last say, +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you are too weary. Shall I go away, and come again whenever you +wish it?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” said Gwendolen—the dread of his leaving her +bringing back her power of speech. She went on with her low-toned eagerness, +“I want to tell you what it was that came over me in that boat. I was +full of rage at being obliged to go—full of rage—and I could do +nothing but sit there like a galley slave. And then we got away—out of +the port—into the deep—and everything was still—and we never +looked at each other, only he spoke to order me—and the very light about +me seemed to hold me a prisoner and force me to sit as I did. It came over me +that when I was a child I used to fancy sailing away into a world where people +were not forced to live with any one they did not like—I did not like my +father-in-law to come home. And now, I thought, just the opposite had come to +me. I had stepped into a boat, and my life was a sailing and sailing +away—gliding on and no help—always into solitude with <i>him</i>, +away from deliverance. And because I felt more helpless than ever, my thoughts +went out over worse things—I longed for worse things—I had cruel +wishes—I fancied impossible ways of—I did not want to die myself; I +was afraid of our being drowned together. If it had been any use I should have +prayed—I should have prayed that something might befall him. I should +have prayed that he might sink out of my sight and leave me alone. I knew no +way of killing him there, but I did, I did kill him in my thoughts.” +</p> + +<p> +She sank into silence for a minute, submerged by the weight of memory which no +words could represent. +</p> + +<p> +“But yet, all the while I felt that I was getting more wicked. And what +had been with me so much, came to me just then—what you once +said—about dreading to increase my wrong-doing and my remorse—I +should hope for nothing then. It was all like a writing of fire within me. +Getting wicked was misery—being shut out forever from knowing what +you—what better lives were. That had always been coming back to me +then—but yet with a despair—a feeling that it was no use—evil +wishes were too strong. I remember then letting go the tiller and saying +‘God help me!’ But then I was forced to take it again and go on; +and the evil longings, the evil prayers came again and blotted everything else +dim, till, in the midst of them—I don’t know how it was—he +was turning the sail—there was a gust—he was struck—I know +nothing—I only know that I saw my wish outside me.” +</p> + +<p> +She began to speak more hurriedly, and in more of a whisper. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw him sink, and my heart gave a leap as if it were going out of me. +I think I did not move. I kept my hands tight. It was long enough for me to be +glad, and yet to think it was no use—he would come up again. And he +<i>was</i> come—farther off—the boat had moved. It was all like +lightning. ‘The rope!’ he called out in a voice—not his +own—I hear it now—and I stooped for the rope—I felt I +must—I felt sure he could swim, and he would come back whether or not, +and I dreaded him. That was in my mind—he would come back. But he was +gone down again, and I had the rope in my hand—no, there he was +again—his face above the water—and he cried again—and I held +my hand, and my heart said, ‘Die!’—and he sank; and I felt +‘It is done—I am wicked, I am lost!—and I had the rope in my +hand—I don’t know what I thought—I was leaping away from +myself—I would have saved him then. I was leaping from my crime, and +there it was—close to me as I fell—there was the dead +face—dead, dead. It can never be altered. That was what happened. That +was what I did. You know it all. It can never be altered.” +</p> + +<p> +She sank back in her chair, exhausted with the agitation of memory and speech. +Deronda felt the burden on his spirit less heavy than the foregoing dread. The +word “guilty” had held a possibility of interpretations worse than +the fact; and Gwendolen’s confession, for the very reason that her +conscience made her dwell on the determining power of her evil thoughts, +convinced him the more that there had been throughout a counterbalancing +struggle of her better will. It seemed almost certain that her murderous +thought had had no outward effect—that, quite apart from it, the death +was inevitable. Still, a question as to the outward effectiveness of a criminal +desire dominant enough to impel even a momentary act, cannot alter our judgment +of the desire; and Deronda shrank from putting that question forward in the +first instance. He held it likely that Gwendolen’s remorse aggravated her +inward guilt, and that she gave the character of decisive action to what had +been an inappreciably instantaneous glance of desire. But her remorse was the +precious sign of a recoverable nature; it was the culmination of that +self-disapproval which had been the awakening of a new life within her; it +marked her off from the criminals whose only regret is failure in securing +their evil wish. Deronda could not utter one word to diminish that sacred +aversion to her worst self—that thorn-pressure which must come with the +crowning of the sorrowful better, suffering because of the worse. All this +mingled thought and feeling kept him silent; speech was too momentous to be +ventured on rashly. There were no words of comfort that did not carry some +sacrilege. If he had opened his lips to speak, he could only have echoed, +“It can never be altered—it remains unaltered, to alter other +things.” But he was silent and motionless—he did not know how +long—before he turned to look at her, and saw her sunk back with closed +eyes, like a lost, weary, storm-beaten white doe, unable to rise and pursue its +unguided way. He rose and stood before her. The movement touched her +consciousness, and she opened her eyes with a slight quivering that seemed like +fear. +</p> + +<p> +“You must rest now. Try to rest: try to sleep. And may I see you again +this evening—to-morrow—when you have had some rest? Let us say no +more now.” +</p> + +<p> +The tears came, and she could not answer except by a slight movement of the +head. Deronda rang for attendance, spoke urgently of the necessity that she +should be got to rest, and then left her. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0057"></a> +CHAPTER LVII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“The unripe grape, the ripe, and the dried. All things are changes, not +into nothing, but into that which is not at +present.”—M<small>ARCUS</small> A<small>URELIUS</small>. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life,<br/> +And righteous or unrighteous, being done,<br/> +Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself<br/> +Be laid in darkness, and the universe<br/> +Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening she sent for him again. It was already near the hour at which +she had been brought in from the sea the evening before, and the light was +subdued enough with blinds drawn up and windows open. She was seated gazing +fixedly on the sea, resting her cheek on her hand, looking less shattered than +when he had left her, but with a deep melancholy in her expression which as +Deronda approached her passed into an anxious timidity. She did not put out her +hand, but said, “How long ago it is!” Then, “Will you sit +near me again a little while?” +</p> + +<p> +He placed himself by her side as he had done before, and seeing that she turned +to him with that indefinable expression which implies a wish to say something, +he waited for her to speak. But again she looked toward the window silently, +and again turned with the same expression, which yet did not issue in speech. +There was some fear hindering her, and Deronda, wishing to relieve her +timidity, averted his face. Presently he heard her cry imploringly, +</p> + +<p> +“You will not say that any one else should know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Most decidedly not,” said Deronda. “There is no action that +ought to be taken in consequence. There is no injury that could be righted in +that way. There is no retribution that any mortal could apportion +justly.” +</p> + +<p> +She was so still during a pause that she seemed to be holding her breath before +she said, +</p> + +<p> +“But if I had not had that murderous will—that moment—if I +had thrown the rope on the instant—perhaps it would have hindered +death?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—I think not,” said Deronda, slowly. “If it were +true that he could swim, he must have been seized with cramp. With your +quickest, utmost effort, it seems impossible that you could have done anything +to save him. That momentary murderous will cannot, I think, have altered the +course of events. Its effect is confined to the motives in your own breast. +Within ourselves our evil will is momentous, and sooner or later it works its +way outside us—it may be in the vitiation that breeds evil acts, but also +it may be in the self-abhorrence that stings us into better striving.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am saved from robbing others—there are others—they will +have everything—they will have what they ought to have. I knew that some +time before I left town. You do not suspect me of wrong desires about those +things?” She spoke hesitatingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I had not thought of them,” said Deronda; “I was thinking +too much of the other things.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you don’t quite know the beginning of it all,” said +Gwendolen, slowly, as if she were overcoming her reluctance. “There was +some one else he ought to have married. And I knew it, and I told her I would +not hinder it. And I went away—that was when you first saw me. But then +we became poor all at once, and I was very miserable, and I was tempted. I +thought, ‘I shall do as I like and make everything right.’ I +persuaded myself. And it was all different. It was all dreadful. Then came +hatred and wicked thoughts. That was how it all came. I told you I was afraid +of myself. And I did what you told me—I did try to make my fear a +safeguard. I thought of what would be if I—I felt what would +come—how I should dread the morning—wishing it would be always +night—and yet in the darkness always seeing something—seeing death. +If you did not know how miserable I was, you might—but now it has all +been no use. I can care for nothing but saving the rest from knowing—poor +mamma, who has never been happy.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence again before she said with a repressed sob—“You +cannot bear to look at me any more. You think I am too wicked. You do not +believe that I can become any better—worth anything—worthy +enough—I shall always be too wicked to—” The voice broke off +helpless. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s heart was pierced. He turned his eyes on her poor beseeching +face and said, “I believe that you may become worthier than you have ever +yet been—worthy to lead a life that may be a blessing. No evil dooms us +hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no +effort to escape from. You <i>have</i> made efforts—you will go on making +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you were the beginning of them. You must not forsake me,” said +Gwendolen, leaning with her clasped hands on the arm of her chair and looking +at him, while her face bore piteous traces of the life-experience concentrated +in the twenty-four hours—that new terrible life lying on the other side +of the deed which fulfills a criminal desire. “I will bear any penance. I +will lead any life you tell me. But you must not forsake me. You must be near. +If you had been near me—if I could have said everything to you, I should +have been different. You will not forsake me?” +</p> + +<p> +“It could never be my impulse to forsake you,” said Deronda +promptly, with that voice which, like his eyes, had the unintentional effect of +making his ready sympathy seem more personal and special than it really was. +And in that moment he was not himself quite free from a foreboding of some such +self-committing effect. His strong feeling for this stricken creature could not +hinder rushing images of future difficulty. He continued to meet her appealing +eyes as he spoke, but it was with the painful consciousness that to her ear his +words might carry a promise which one day would seem unfulfilled: he was making +an indefinite promise to an indefinite hope. Anxieties, both immediate and +distant, crowded on his thought, and it was under their influence that, after a +moment’s silence, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“I expect Sir Hugo Mallinger to arrive by to-morrow night at least; and I +am not without hope that Mrs. Davilow may shortly follow him. Her presence will +be the greatest comfort to you—it will give you a motive to save her from +unnecessary pain?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes—I will try. And you will not go away?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not till after Sir Hugo has come.” +</p> + +<p> +“But we shall all go to England?” +</p> + +<p> +“As soon as possible,” said Deronda, not wishing to enter into +particulars. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen looked toward the window again with an expression which seemed like a +gradual awakening to new thoughts. The twilight was perceptibly deepening, but +Deronda could see a movement in her eyes and hands such as accompanies a return +of perception in one who has been stunned. +</p> + +<p> +“You will always be with Sir Hugo now!” she said presently, looking +at him. “You will always live at the Abbey—or else at +Diplow?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am quite uncertain where I shall live,” said Deronda, coloring. +</p> + +<p> +She was warned by his changed color that she had spoken too rashly, and fell +silent. After a little while she began, again looking away, +</p> + +<p> +“It is impossible to think how my life will go on. I think now it would +be better for me to be poor and obliged to work.” +</p> + +<p> +“New promptings will come as the days pass. When you are among your +friends again, you will discern new duties,” said Deronda. “Make it +a task now to get as well and calm—as much like yourself as you can, +before—” He hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +“Before my mother comes,” said Gwendolen. “Ah! I must be +changed. I have not looked at myself. Should you have known me,” she +added, turning toward him, “if you had met me now?—should you have +known me for the one you saw at Leubronn?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I should have known you,” said Deronda, mournfully. +“The outside change is not great. I should have seen at once that it was +you, and that you had gone through some great sorrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t wish now that you had never seen me; don’t wish +that,” said Gwendolen, imploringly, while the tears gathered. +</p> + +<p> +“I should despise myself for wishing it,” said Deronda. “How +could I know what I was wishing? We must find our duties in what comes to us, +not in what we imagine might have been. If I took to foolish wishing of that +sort, I should wish—not that I had never seen you, but that I had been +able to save you from this.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have saved me from worse,” said Gwendolen, in a sobbing voice. +“I should have been worse if it had not been for you. If you had not been +good, I should have been more wicked than I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will be better for me to go now,” said Deronda, worn in spirit +by the perpetual strain of this scene. “Remember what we said of your +task—to get well and calm before other friends come.” +</p> + +<p> +He rose as he spoke, and she gave him her hand submissively. But when he had +left her she sank on her knees, in hysterical crying. The distance between them +was too great. She was a banished soul—beholding a possible life which +she had sinned herself away from. +</p> + +<p> +She was found in this way, crushed on the floor. Such grief seemed natural in a +poor lady whose husband had been drowned in her presence. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2H_4_0066"></a> +BOOK VIII.—FRUIT AND SEED.</h2> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0058"></a> +CHAPTER LVIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Much adoe there was, God wot;<br/> +He wold love and she wold not.”<br/> + —N<small>ICHOLAS</small> B<small>RETON</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Extension, we know, is a very imperfect measure of things; and the length of +the sun’s journeying can no more tell us how life has advanced than the +acreage of a field can tell us what growths may be active within it. A man may +go south, and, stumbling over a bone, may meditate upon it till he has found a +new starting-point for anatomy; or eastward, and discover a new key to language +telling a new story of races; or he may head an expedition that opens new +continental pathways, get himself maimed in body, and go through a whole heroic +poem of resolve and endurance; and at the end of a few months he may come back +to find his neighbors grumbling at the same parish grievance as before, or to +see the same elderly gentleman treading the pavement in discourse with himself, +shaking his head after the same percussive butcher’s boy, and pausing at +the same shop-window to look at the same prints. If the swiftest thinking has +about the pace of a greyhound, the slowest must be supposed to move, like the +limpet, by an apparent sticking, which after a good while is discerned to be a +slight progression. Such differences are manifest in the variable intensity +which we call human experience, from the revolutionary rush of change which +makes a new inner and outer life, to that quiet recurrence of the familiar, +which has no other epochs than those of hunger and the heavens. +</p> + +<p> +Something of this contrast was seen in the year’s experience which had +turned the brilliant, self-confident Gwendolen Harleth of the Archery Meeting +into the crushed penitent impelled to confess her unworthiness where it would +have been her happiness to be held worthy; while it had left her family in +Pennicote without deeper change than that of some outward habits, and some +adjustment of prospects and intentions to reduced income, fewer visits, and +fainter compliments. The rectory was as pleasant a home as before: and the red +and pink peonies on the lawn, the rows of hollyhocks by the hedges, had bloomed +as well this year as last: the rector maintained his cheerful confidence in the +good will of patrons and his resolution to deserve it by diligence in the +fulfillment of his duties, whether patrons were likely to hear of it or not; +doing nothing solely with an eye to promotion except, perhaps, the writing of +two ecclesiastical articles, which having no signature, were attributed to some +one else, except by the patrons who had a special copy sent them, and these +certainly knew the author but did not read the articles. The rector, however, +chewed no poisonous cud of suspicion on this point: he made marginal notes on +his own copies to render them a more interesting loan, and was gratified that +the Archdeacon and other authorities had nothing to say against the general +tenor of his argument. Peaceful authorship!—living in the air of the +fields and downs, and not in the thrice-breathed breath of +criticism—bringing no Dantesque leanness; rather, assisting nutrition by +complacency, and perhaps giving a more suffusive sense of achievement than the +production of a whole <i>Divina Commedia</i>. Then there was the father’s +recovered delight in his favorite son, which was a happiness outweighing the +loss of eighteen hundred a year. Of whatever nature might be the hidden change +wrought in Rex by the disappointment of his first love, it was apparently quite +secondary to that evidence of more serious ambition which dated from the family +misfortune; indeed, Mr. Gascoigne was inclined to regard the little affair +which had caused him so much anxiety the year before as an evaporation of +superfluous moisture, a kind of finish to the baking process which the human +dough demands. Rex had lately come down for a summer visit to the rectory, +bringing Anna home, and while he showed nearly the old liveliness with his +brothers and sisters, he continued in his holiday the habits of the eager +student, rising early in the morning and shutting himself up early in the +evenings to carry on a fixed course of study. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t repent the choice of the law as a profession, +Rex?” said his father. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no profession I would choose before it,” said Rex. +“I should like to end my life as a first-rate judge, and help to draw up +a code. I reverse the famous dictum. I should say, ‘Give me something to +do with making the laws, and let who will make the songs.’” +</p> + +<p> +“You will have to stow in an immense amount of rubbish, I +suppose—that’s the worst of it,” said the rector. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see that law-rubbish is worse than any other sort. It is +not so bad as the rubbishy literature that people choke their minds with. It +doesn’t make one so dull. Our wittiest men have often been lawyers. Any +orderly way of looking at things as cases and evidence seems to me better than +a perpetual wash of odds and ends bearing on nothing in particular. And then, +from a higher point of view, the foundations and the growth of law make the +most interesting aspects of philosophy and history. Of course there will be a +good deal that is troublesome, drudging, perhaps exasperating. But the great +prizes in life can’t be won easily—I see that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my boy, the best augury of a man’s success in his profession +is that he thinks it the finest in the world. But I fancy it so with most work +when a man goes into it with a will. Brewitt, the blacksmith, said to me the +other day that his ’prentice had no mind to his trade; ‘and yet, +sir,’ said Brewitt, ‘what would a young fellow have if he +doesn’t like the blacksmithing?” +</p> + +<p> +The rector cherished a fatherly delight, which he allowed to escape him only in +moderation. Warham, who had gone to India, he had easily borne parting with, +but Rex was that romance of later life which a man sometimes finds in a son +whom he recognizes as superior to himself, picturing a future eminence for him +according to a variety of famous examples. It was only to his wife that he said +with decision: “Rex will be a distinguished man, Nancy, I am sure of +it—as sure as Paley’s father was about his son.” +</p> + +<p> +“Was Paley an old bachelor?” said Mrs. Gascoigne. +</p> + +<p> +“That is hardly to the point, my dear,” said the rector, who did +not remember that irrelevant detail. And Mrs. Gascoigne felt that she had +spoken rather weakly. +</p> + +<p> +This quiet trotting of time at the rectory was shared by the group who had +exchanged the faded dignity of Offendene for the low white house not a mile +off, well enclosed with evergreens, and known to the villagers, as +“Jodson’s.” Mrs. Davilow’s delicate face showed only a +slight deepening of its mild melancholy, her hair only a few more silver lines, +in consequence of the last year’s trials; the four girls had bloomed out +a little from being less in the shade; and the good Jocosa preserved her +serviceable neutrality toward the pleasures and glories of the world as things +made for those who were not “in a situation.” +</p> + +<p> +The low narrow drawing-room, enlarged by two quaint projecting windows, with +lattices wide open on a July afternoon to the scent of monthly roses, the faint +murmurs of the garden, and the occasional rare sound of hoofs and wheels +seeming to clarify the succeeding silence, made rather a crowded, lively scene, +Rex and Anna being added to the usual group of six. Anna, always a favorite +with her younger cousins, had much to tell of her new experience, and the +acquaintances she had made in London, and when on her first visit she came +alone, many questions were asked her about Gwendolen’s house in Grosvenor +Square, what Gwendolen herself had said, and what any one else had said about +Gwendolen. Had Anna been to see Gwendolen after she had known about the yacht? +No:—an answer which left speculation free concerning everything connected +with that interesting unknown vessel beyond the fact that Gwendolen had written +just before she set out to say that Mr. Grandcourt and she were going yachting +on the Mediterranean, and again from Marseilles to say that she was sure to +like the yachting, the cabins were very elegant, and she would probably not +send another letter till she had written quite a long diary filled with +<i>dittos</i>. Also, this movement of Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt had been +mentioned in “the newspaper;” so that altogether this new phase of +Gwendolen’s exalted life made a striking part of the sisters’ +romance, the book-devouring Isabel throwing in a corsair or two to make an +adventure that might end well. +</p> + +<p> +But when Rex was present, the girls, according to instructions, never started +this fascinating topic, and to-day there had only been animated descriptions of +the Meyricks and their extraordinary Jewish friends, which caused some +astonished questioning from minds to which the idea of live Jews, out of a +book, suggested a difference deep enough to be almost zoological, as of a +strange race in Pliny’s Natural History that might sleep under the shade +of its own ears. Bertha could not imagine what Jews believed now; and she had a +dim idea that they rejected the Old Testament since it proved the New; Miss +Merry thought that Mirah and her brother could “never have been properly +argued with,” and the amiable Alice did not mind what the Jews believed, +she was sure she “couldn’t bear them.” Mrs. Davilow corrected +her by saying that the great Jewish families who were in society were quite +what they ought to be both in London and Paris, but admitted that the commoner +unconverted Jews were objectionable; and Isabel asked whether Mirah talked just +as they did, or whether you might be with her and not find out that she was a +Jewess. +</p> + +<p> +Rex, who had no partisanship with the Israelites, having made a troublesome +acquaintance with the minutiae of their ancient history in the form of +“cram,” was amusing himself by playfully exaggerating the notion of +each speaker, while Anna begged them all to understand that he was only joking, +when the laughter was interrupted by the bringing in of a letter for Mrs. +Davilow. A messenger had run with it in great haste from the rectory. It +enclosed a telegram, and as Mrs. Davilow read and re-read it in silence and +agitation, all eyes were turned on her with anxiety, but no one dared to speak. +Looking up at last and seeing the young faces “painted with fear,” +she remembered that they might be imagining something worse than the truth, +something like her own first dread which made her unable to understand what was +written, and she said, with a sob which was half relief, +</p> + +<p> +“My dears, Mr. Grandcourt—” She paused an instant, and then +began again, “Mr. Grandcourt is drowned.” +</p> + +<p> +Rex started up as if a missile had been suddenly thrown into the room. He could +not help himself, and Anna’s first look was at him. But then, gathering +some self-command while Mrs. Davilow was reading what the rector had written on +the enclosing paper, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Can I do anything, aunt? Can I carry any word to my father from +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, dear. Tell him I will be ready—he is very good. He says he +will go with me to Genoa—he will be here at half-past six. Jocosa and +Alice, help me to get ready. She is safe—Gwendolen is safe—but she +must be ill. I am sure she must be very ill. Rex, dear—Rex and +Anna—go and and tell your father I will be quite ready. I would not for +the world lose another night. And bless him for being ready so soon. I can +travel night and day till we get there.” +</p> + +<p> +Rex and Anna hurried away through the sunshine which was suddenly solemn to +them, without uttering a word to each other: she chiefly possessed by +solicitude about any reopening of his wound, he struggling with a tumultuary +crowd of thoughts that were an offence against his better will. The tumult +being undiminished when they were at the rectory gate, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Nannie, I will leave you to say everything to my father. If he wants me +immediately, let me know. I shall stay in the shrubbery for ten +minutes—only ten minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Who has been quite free from egoistic escapes of the imagination, picturing +desirable consequences on his own future in the presence of another’s +misfortune, sorrow, or death? The expected promotion or legacy is the common +type of a temptation which makes speech and even prayer a severe avoidance of +the most insistent thoughts, and sometimes raises an inward shame, a +self-distaste that is worse than any other form of unpleasant companionship. In +Rex’s nature the shame was immediate, and overspread like an ugly light +all the hurrying images of what might come, which thrust themselves in with the +idea that Gwendolen was again free—overspread them, perhaps, the more +persistently because every phantasm of a hope was quickly nullified by a more +substantial obstacle. Before the vision of “Gwendolen free” rose +the impassable vision of “Gwendolen rich, exalted, courted;” and if +in the former time, when both their lives were fresh, she had turned from his +love with repugnance, what ground was there for supposing that her heart would +be more open to him in the future? +</p> + +<p> +These thoughts, which he wanted to master and suspend, were like a tumultuary +ringing of opposing chimes that he could not escape from by running. During the +last year he had brought himself into a state of calm resolve, and now it +seemed that three words had been enough to undo all that difficult work, and +cast him back into the wretched fluctuations of a longing which he recognized +as simply perturbing and hopeless. And at this moment the activity of such +longing had an untimeliness that made it repulsive to his better self. Excuse +poor Rex; it was not much more than eighteen months since he had been laid low +by an archer who sometimes touches his arrow with a subtle, lingering poison. +The disappointment of a youthful passion has effects as incalculable as those +of small-pox which may make one person plain and a genius, another less plain +and more foolish, another plain without detriment to his folly, and leave +perhaps the majority without obvious change. Everything depends—not on +the mere fact of disappointment, but—on the nature affected and the force +that stirs it. In Rex’s well-endowed nature, brief as the hope had been, +the passionate stirring had gone deep, and the effect of disappointment was +revolutionary, though fraught with a beneficent new order which retained most +of the old virtues; in certain respects he believed that it had finally +determined the bias and color of his life. Now, however, it seemed that his +inward peace was hardly more than that of republican Florence, and his heart no +better than the alarm-bell that made work slack and tumult busy. +</p> + +<p> +Rex’s love had been of that sudden, penetrating, clinging sort which the +ancients knew and sung, and in singing made a fashion of talk for many moderns +whose experience has by no means a fiery, demonic character. To have the +consciousness suddenly steeped with another’s personality, to have the +strongest inclinations possessed by an image which retains its dominance in +spite of change and apart from worthiness—nay, to feel a passion which +clings faster for the tragic pangs inflicted by a cruel, reorganized +unworthiness—is a phase of love which in the feeble and common-minded has +a repulsive likeness to his blind animalism insensible to the higher sway of +moral affinity or heaven-lit admiration. But when this attaching force is +present in a nature not of brutish unmodifiableness, but of a human dignity +that can risk itself safely, it may even result in a devotedness not unfit to +be called divine in a higher sense than the ancient. Phlegmatic rationality +stares and shakes its head at these unaccountable prepossessions, but they +exist as undeniably as the winds and waves, determining here a wreck and there +a triumphant voyage. +</p> + +<p> +This sort of passion had nested in the sweet-natured, strong Rex, and he had +made up his mind to its companionship, as if it had been an object supremely +dear, stricken dumb and helpless, and turning all the future of tenderness into +a shadow of the past. But he had also made up his mind that his life was not to +be pauperized because he had had to renounce one sort of joy; rather, he had +begun life again with a new counting-up of the treasures that remained to him, +and he had even felt a release of power such as may come from ceasing to be +afraid of your own neck. +</p> + +<p> +And now, here he was pacing the shrubbery, angry with himself that the sense of +irrevocableness in his lot, which ought in reason to have been as strong as +ever, had been shaken by a change of circumstances that could make no change in +relation to him. He told himself the truth quite roughly, +</p> + +<p> +“She would never love me; and that is not the question—I could +never approach her as a lover in her present position. I am exactly of no +consequence at all, and am not likely to be of much consequence till my head is +turning gray. But what has that to do with it? She would not have me on any +terms, and I would not ask her. It is a meanness to be thinking about it +now—no better than lurking about the battle-field to strip the dead; but +there never was more gratuitous sinning. I have nothing to gain +there—absolutely nothing. Then why can’t I face the facts, and +behave as they demand, instead of leaving my father to suppose that there are +matters he can’t speak to me about, though I might be useful in +them?” +</p> + +<p> +The last thought made one wave with the impulse that sent Rex walking firmly +into the house and through the open door of the study, where he saw his father +packing a traveling-desk. +</p> + +<p> +“Can I be of any use, sir?” said Rex, with rallied courage, as his +father looked up at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, my boy; when I’m gone, just see to my letters, and answer +where necessary, and send me word of everything. Dymock will manage the parish +very well, and you will stay with your mother, or, at least, go up and down +again, till I come back, whenever that may be.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will hardly be very long, sir, I suppose,” said Rex, beginning +to strap a railway rug. “You will perhaps bring my cousin back to +England?” He forced himself to speak of Gwendolen for the first time, and +the rector noticed the epoch with satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“That depends,” he answered, taking the subject as a +matter-of-course between them. “Perhaps her mother may stay there with +her, and I may come back very soon. This telegram leaves us in ignorance which +is rather anxious. But no doubt the arrangements of the will lately made are +satisfactory, and there may possibly be an heir yet to be born. In any case, I +feel confident that Gwendolen will be liberally—I should expect, +splendidly—provided for.” +</p> + +<p> +“It must have been a great shock for her,” said Rex, getting more +resolute after the first twinge had been borne. “I suppose he was a +devoted husband.” +</p> + +<p> +“No doubt of it,” said the rector, in his most decided manner. +“Few men of his position would have come forward as he did under the +circumstances.” +</p> + +<p> +Rex had never seen Grandcourt, had never been spoken to about him by any one of +the family, and knew nothing of Gwendolen’s flight from her suitor to +Leubronn. He only knew that Grandcourt, being very much in love with her, had +made her an offer in the first weeks of her sudden poverty, and had behaved +very handsomely in providing for her mother and sisters. That was all very +natural and what Rex himself would have liked to do. Grandcourt had been a +lucky fellow, and had had some happiness before he got drowned. Yet Rex +wondered much whether Gwendolen had been in love with the successful suitor, or +had only forborne to tell him that she hated being made love to. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0059"></a> +CHAPTER LIX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“I count myself in nothing else so happy<br/> +As in a soul remembering my good friends.”<br/> + —S<small>HAKESPEARE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo Mallinger was not so prompt in starting for Genoa as Mr. Gascoigne had +been, and Deronda on all accounts would not take his departure until he had +seen the baronet. There was not only Grandcourt’s death, but also the +late crisis in his own life to make reasons why his oldest friend would desire +to have the unrestrained communication of speech with him, for in writing he +had not felt able to give any details concerning the mother who had come and +gone like an apparition. It was not till the fifth evening that Deronda, +according to telegram, waited for Sir Hugo at the station, where he was to +arrive between eight and nine; and while he was looking forward to the sight of +the kind, familiar face, which was part of his earliest memories, something +like a smile, in spite of his late tragic experience, might have been detected +in his eyes and the curve of his lips at the idea of Sir Hugo’s pleasure +in being now master of his estates, able to leave them to his daughters, or at +least—according to a view of inheritance which had just been strongly +impressed on Deronda’s imagination—to take makeshift feminine +offspring as intermediate to a satisfactory heir in a grandson. We should be +churlish creatures if we could have no joy in our fellow-mortals’ joy, +unless it were in agreement with our theory of righteous distribution and our +highest ideal of human good: what sour corners our mouths would get—our +eyes, what frozen glances! and all the while our own possessions and desires +would not exactly adjust themselves to our ideal. We must have some comradeship +with imperfection; and it is, happily, possible to feel gratitude even where we +discern a mistake that may have been injurious, the vehicle of the mistake +being an affectionate intention prosecuted through a life-time of kindly +offices. Deronda’s feeling and judgment were strongly against the action +of Sir Hugo in making himself the agent of a falsity—yes, a falsity: he +could give no milder name to the concealment under which he had been reared. +But the baronet had probably had no clear knowledge concerning the +mother’s breach of trust, and with his light, easy way of taking life, +had held it a reasonable preference in her that her son should be made an +English gentleman, seeing that she had the eccentricity of not caring to part +from her child, and be to him as if she were not. Daniel’s affectionate +gratitude toward Sir Hugo made him wish to find grounds of excuse rather than +blame; for it is as possible to be rigid in principle and tender in blame, as +it is to suffer from the sight of things hung awry, and yet to be patient with +the hanger who sees amiss. If Sir Hugo in his bachelorhood had been beguiled +into regarding children chiefly as a product intended to make life more +agreeable to the full-grown, whose convenience alone was to be consulted in the +disposal of them—why, he had shared an assumption which, if not formally +avowed, was massively acted on at that date of the world’s history; and +Deronda, with all his keen memory of the painful inward struggle he had gone +through in his boyhood, was able also to remember the many signs that his +experience had been entirely shut out from Sir Hugo’s conception. +Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if +it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant <i>un</i>kindness, the most remote +from Deronda’s large imaginative lenience toward others. And perhaps now, +after the searching scenes of the last ten days, in which the curtain had been +lifted for him from the secrets of lives unlike his own, he was more than ever +disposed to check that rashness of indignation or resentment which has an +unpleasant likeness to the love of punishing. When he saw Sir Hugo’s +familiar figure descending from the railway carriage, the life-long affection +which had been well accustomed to make excuses, flowed in and submerged all +newer knowledge that might have seemed fresh ground for blame. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Dan,” said Sir Hugo, with a serious fervor, grasping +Deronda’s hand. He uttered no other words of greeting; there was too +strong a rush of mutual consciousness. The next thing was to give orders to the +courier, and then to propose walking slowly in the mild evening, there being no +hurry to get to the hotel. +</p> + +<p> +“I have taken my journey easily, and am in excellent condition,” he +said, as he and Deronda came out under the starlight, which was still faint +with the lingering sheen of day. “I didn’t hurry in setting off, +because I wanted to inquire into things a little, and so I got sight of your +letter to Lady Mallinger before I started. But now, how is the widow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Getting calmer,” said Deronda. “She seems to be escaping the +bodily illness that one might have feared for her, after her plunge and +terrible excitement. Her uncle and mother came two days ago, and she is being +well taken care of.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any prospect of an heir being born?” +</p> + +<p> +“From what Mr. Gascoigne said to me, I conclude not. He spoke as if it +were a question whether the widow would have the estates for her life.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will not be much of a wrench to her affections, I fancy, this loss of +the husband?” said Sir Hugo, looking round at Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“The suddenness of the death has been a great blow to her,” said +Deronda, quietly evading the question. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder whether Grandcourt gave her any notion what were the provisions +of his will?” said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know what they are, sir?” parried Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do,” said the baronet, quickly. “Gad! if there is no +prospect of a legitimate heir, he has left everything to a boy he had by a Mrs. +Glasher; you know nothing about the affair, I suppose, but she was a sort of +wife to him for a good many years, and there are three older +children—girls. The boy is to take his father’s name; he is +Henleigh already, and he is to be Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt. The Mallinger +will be of no use to him, I am happy to say; but the young dog will have more +than enough with his fourteen years’ minority—no need to have had +holes filled up with my fifty thousand for Diplow that he had no right to: and +meanwhile my beauty, the young widow, is to put up with a poor two thousand a +year and the house at Gadsmere—a nice kind of banishment for her if she +chose to shut herself up there, which I don’t think she will. The +boy’s mother has been living there of late years. I’m perfectly +disgusted with Grandcourt. I don’t know that I’m obliged to think +the better of him because he’s drowned, though, so far as my affairs are +concerned, nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” +</p> + +<p> +“In my opinion he did wrong when he married this wife—not in +leaving his estates to the son,” said Deronda, rather dryly. +</p> + +<p> +“I say nothing against his leaving the land to the lad,” said Sir +Hugo; “but since he had married this girl he ought to have given her a +handsome provision, such as she could live on in a style fitted to the rank he +had raised her to. She ought to have had four or five thousand a year and the +London house for her life; that’s what I should have done for her. I +suppose, as she was penniless, her friends couldn’t stand out for a +settlement, else it’s ill trusting to the will a man may make after +he’s married. Even a wise man generally lets some folly ooze out of him +in his will—my father did, I know; and if a fellow has any spite or +tyranny in him, he’s likely to bottle off a good deal for keeping in that +sort of document. It’s quite clear Grandcourt meant that his death should +put an extinguisher on his wife, if she bore him no heir.” +</p> + +<p> +“And, in the other case, I suppose everything would have been +reversed—illegitimacy would have had the extinguisher?” said +Deronda, with some scorn. +</p> + +<p> +“Precisely—Gadsmere and the two thousand. It’s queer. One +nuisance is that Grandcourt has made me an executor; but seeing he was the son +of my only brother, I can’t refuse to act. And I shall mind it less if I +can be of any use to the widow. Lush thinks she was not in ignorance about the +family under the rose, and the purport of the will. He hints that there was no +very good understanding between the couple. But I fancy you are the man who +knew most about what Mrs. Grandcourt felt or did not feel—eh, Dan?” +Sir Hugo did not put this question with his usual jocoseness, but rather with a +lowered tone of interested inquiry; and Deronda felt that any evasion would be +misinterpreted. He answered gravely, +</p> + +<p> +“She was certainly not happy. They were unsuited to each other. But as to +the disposal of the property—from all I have seen of her, I should +predict that she will be quite contented with it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then she is not much like the rest of her sex; that’s all I can +say,” said Sir Hugo, with a slight shrug. “However, she ought to be +something extraordinary, for there must be an entanglement between your +horoscope and hers—eh? When that tremendous telegram came, the first +thing Lady Mallinger said was, ‘How very strange that it should be Daniel +who sends it!’ But I have had something of the same sort in my own life. +I was once at a foreign hotel where a lady had been left by her husband without +money. When I heard of it, and came forward to help her, who should she be but +an early flame of mine, who had been fool enough to marry an Austrian baron +with a long mustache and short affection? But it was an affair of my own that +called me there—nothing to do with knight-errantry, any more than you +coming to Genoa had to do with the Grandcourts.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence for a little while. Sir Hugo had begun to talk of the +Grandcourts as the less difficult subject between himself and Deronda; but they +were both wishing to overcome a reluctance to perfect frankness on the events +which touched their relation to each other. Deronda felt that his letter, after +the first interview with his mother, had been rather a thickening than a +breaking of the ice, and that he ought to wait for the first opening to come +from Sir Hugo. Just when they were about to lose sight of the port, the baronet +turned, and pausing as if to get a last view, said in a tone of more serious +feeling—“And about the main business of your coming to Genoa, Dan? +You have not been deeply pained by anything you have learned, I hope? There is +nothing that you feel need change your position in any way? You know, whatever +happens to you must always be of importance to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I desire to meet your goodness by perfect confidence, sir,” said +Deronda. “But I can’t answer those questions truly by a simple yes +or no. Much that I have heard about the past has pained me. And it has been a +pain to meet and part with my mother in her suffering state, as I have been +compelled to do. But it is no pain—it is rather a clearing up of doubts +for which I am thankful, to know my parentage. As to the effect on my position, +there will be no change in my gratitude to you, sir, for the fatherly care and +affection you have always shown me. But to know that I was born a Jew, may have +a momentous influence on my life, which I am hardly able to tell you of at +present.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda spoke the last sentence with a resolve that overcame some diffidence. +He felt that the differences between Sir Hugo’s nature and his own would +have, by-and-by, to disclose themselves more markedly than had ever yet been +needful. The baronet gave him a quick glance, and turned to walk on. After a +few moments’ silence, in which he had reviewed all the material in his +memory which would enable him to interpret Deronda’s words, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“I have long expected something remarkable from you, Dan; but, for +God’s sake, don’t go into any eccentricities! I can tolerate any +man’s difference of opinion, but let him tell it me without getting +himself up as a lunatic. At this stage of the world, if a man wants to be taken +seriously, he must keep clear of melodrama. Don’t misunderstand me. I am +not suspecting you of setting up any lunacy on your own account. I only think +you might easily be led arm in arm with a lunatic, especially if he wanted +defending. You have a passion for people who are pelted, Dan. I’m sorry +for them too; but so far as company goes, it’s a bad ground of selection. +However, I don’t ask you to anticipate your inclination in anything you +have to tell me. When you make up your mind to a course that requires money, I +have some sixteen thousand pounds that have been accumulating for you over and +above what you have been having the interest of as income. And now I am come, I +suppose you want to get back to England as soon as you can?” +</p> + +<p> +“I must go first to Mainz to get away a chest of my grandfather’s, +and perhaps to see a friend of his,” said Deronda. “Although the +chest has been lying there these twenty years, I have an unreasonable sort of +nervous eagerness to get it away under my care, as if it were more likely now +than before that something might happen to it. And perhaps I am the more +uneasy, because I lingered after my mother left, instead of setting out +immediately. Yet I can’t regret that I was here—else Mrs. +Grandcourt would have had none but servants to act for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” said Sir Hugo, with a flippancy which was an escape of +some vexation hidden under his more serious speech; “I hope you are not +going to set a dead Jew above a living Christian.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda colored, and repressed a retort. They were just turning into the +<i>Italia</i>. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0060"></a> +CHAPTER LX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“But I shall say no more of this at this time; for this is to be felt and +not to be talked of; and they who never touched it with their fingers may +secretly perhaps laugh at it in their hearts and be never the +wiser.”—J<small>EREMY</small> T<small>AYLOR</small>. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +The Roman Emperor in the legend put to death ten learned Israelites to avenge +the sale of Joseph by his brethren. And there have always been enough of his +kidney, whose piety lies in punishing who can see the justice of grudges but +not of gratitude. For you shall never convince the stronger feeling that it +hath not the stronger reason, or incline him who hath no love to believe that +there is good ground for loving. As we may learn from the order of word-making, +wherein <i>love</i> precedeth <i>lovable</i>. +</p> + +<p> +When Deronda presented his letter at the banking-house in the <i>Schuster +Strasse</i> at Mainz, and asked for Joseph Kalonymos, he was presently shown +into an inner room, where, seated at a table arranging open letters, was the +white-bearded man whom he had seen the year before in the synagogue at +Frankfort. He wore his hat—it seemed to be the same old felt hat as +before—and near him was a packed portmanteau with a wrap and overcoat +upon it. On seeing Deronda enter he rose, but did not advance or put out his +hand. Looking at him with small penetrating eyes which glittered like black +gems in the midst of his yellowish face and white hair, he said in German, +</p> + +<p> +“Good! It is now you who seek me, young man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; I seek you with gratitude, as a friend of my +grandfather’s,” said Deronda, “and I am under an obligation +to you for giving yourself much trouble on my account.” He spoke without +difficulty in that liberal German tongue which takes many strange accents to +its maternal bosom. +</p> + +<p> +Kalonymos now put out his hand and said cordially, “So you are no longer +angry at being something more than an Englishman?” +</p> + +<p> +“On the contrary. I thank you heartily for helping to save me from +remaining in ignorance of my parentage, and for taking care of the chest that +my grandfather left in trust for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down, sit down,” said Kalonymos, in a quick undertone, seating +himself again, and pointing to a chair near him. Then deliberately laying aside +his hat and showing a head thickly covered, with white hair, he stroked and +clutched his beard while he looked examiningly at the young face before him. +The moment wrought strongly on Deronda’s imaginative susceptibility: in +the presence of one linked still in zealous friendship with the grandfather +whose hope had yearned toward him when he was unborn, and who, though dead, was +yet to speak with him in those written memorials which, says Milton, +“contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose +progeny they are,” he seemed to himself to be touching the electric chain +of his own ancestry; and he bore the scrutinizing look of Kalonymos with a +delighted awe, something like what one feels in the solemn commemoration of +acts done long ago but still telling markedly on the life of to-day. Impossible +for men of duller fibre—men whose affection is not ready to diffuse +itself through the wide travel of imagination, to comprehend, perhaps even to +credit this sensibility of Deronda’s; but it subsisted, like their own +dullness, notwithstanding their lack of belief in it—and it gave his face +an expression which seemed very satisfactory to the observer. +</p> + +<p> +He said in Hebrew, quoting from one of the fine hymns in the Hebrew liturgy, +“As thy goodness has been great to the former generations, even so may it +be to the latter.” Then after pausing a little he began, “Young +man, I rejoice that I was not yet set off again on my travels, and that you are +come in time for me to see the image of my friend as he was in his +youth—no longer perverted from the fellowship of your people—no +longer shrinking in proud wrath from the touch of him who seemed to be claiming +you as a Jew. You come with thankfulness yourself to claim the kindred and +heritage that wicked contrivance would have robbed you of. You come with a +willing soul to declare, ‘I am the grandson of Daniel Charisi.’ Is +it not so?” +</p> + +<p> +“Assuredly it is,” said Deronda. “But let me say that I +should at no time have been inclined to treat a Jew with incivility simply +because he was a Jew. You can understand that I shrank from saying to a +stranger, ‘I know nothing of my mother.’” +</p> + +<p> +“A sin, a sin!” said Kalonymos, putting up his hand and closing his +eyes in disgust. “A robbery of our people—as when our youths and +maidens were reared for the Roman Edom. But it is frustrated. I have frustrated +it. When Daniel Charisi—may his Rock and his Redeemer guard +him!—when Daniel Charisi was a stripling and I was a lad little above his +shoulder, we made a solemn vow always to be friends. He said, ‘Let us +bind ourselves with duty, as if we were sons of the same mother.’ That +was his bent from first to last—as he said, to fortify his soul with +bonds. It was a saying of his, ‘Let us bind love with duty; for duty is +the love of law; and law is the nature of the Eternal.’ So we bound +ourselves. And though we were much apart in our later life, the bond has never +been broken. When he was dead, they sought to rob him; but they could not rob +him of me. I rescued that remainder of him which he had prized and preserved +for his offspring. And I have restored to him the offspring they had robbed him +of. I will bring you the chest forthwith.” +</p> + +<p> +Kalonymos left the room for a few minutes, and returned with a clerk who +carried the chest, set it down on the floor, drew off a leather cover, and went +out again. It was not very large, but was made heavy by ornamental bracers and +handles of gilt iron. The wood was beautifully incised with Arabic lettering. +</p> + +<p> +“So!” said Kalonymos, returning to his seat. “And here is the +curious key,” he added, taking it from a small leathern bag. +“Bestow it carefully. I trust you are methodic and wary.” He gave +Deronda the monitory and slightly suspicious look with which age is apt to +commit any object to the keeping of youth. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be more careful of this than of any other property,” said +Deronda, smiling and putting the key in his breast-pocket. “I never +before possessed anything that was a sign to me of so much cherished hope and +effort. And I shall never forget that the effort was partly yours. Have you +time to tell me more of my grandfather? Or shall I be trespassing in staying +longer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Stay yet a while. In an hour and eighteen minutes I start for +Trieste,” said Kalonymos, looking at his watch, “and presently my +sons will expect my attention. Will you let me make you known to them, so that +they may have the pleasure of showing hospitality to my friend’s +grandson? They dwell here in ease and luxury, though I choose to be a +wanderer.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be glad if you will commend me to their acquaintance for some +future opportunity,” said Deronda. “There are pressing claims +calling me to England—friends who may be much in need of my presence. I +have been kept away from them too long by unexpected circumstances. But to know +more of you and your family would be motive enough to bring me again to +Mainz.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good! Me you will hardly find, for I am beyond my threescore years and +ten, and I am a wanderer, carrying my shroud with me. But my sons and their +children dwell here in wealth and unity. The days are changed for us since Karl +the Great fetched my ancestors from Italy to bring some tincture of knowledge +to our rough German brethren. I and my contemporaries have had to fight for it +too. Our youth fell on evil days; but this we have won; we increase our wealth +in safety, and the learning of all Germany is fed and fattened by Jewish +brains—though they keep not always their Jewish hearts. Have you been +left altogether ignorant of your people’s life, young man?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Deronda, “I have lately, before I had any true +suspicion of my parentage, been led to study everything belonging to their +history with more interest than any other subject. It turns out that I have +been making myself ready to understand my grandfather a little.” He was +anxious less the time should be consumed before this circuitous course of talk +could lead them back to the topic he most cared about. Age does not easily +distinguish between what it needs to express and what youth needs to +know—distance seeming to level the objects of memory; and keenly active +as Joseph Kalonymos showed himself, an inkstand in the wrong place would have +hindered his imagination from getting to Beyrout: he had been used to unite +restless travel with punctilious observation. But Deronda’s last sentence +answered its purpose. +</p> + +<p> +“So—you would perhaps have been such a man as he if your education +had not hindered; for you are like him in features:—yet not altogether, +young man. He had an iron will in his face: it braced up everybody about him. +When he was quite young he had already got one deep upright line in his brow. I +see none of that in you. Daniel Charisi used to say, ‘Better, a wrong +will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better +a false belief than no belief at all.’ What he despised most was +indifference. He had longer reasons than I can give you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet his knowledge was not narrow?” said Deronda, with a tacit +reference to the usual excuse for indecision—that it comes from knowing +too much. +</p> + +<p> +“Narrow? no,” said Kalonymos, shaking his head with a compassionate +smile “From his childhood upward, he drank in learning as easily as the +plant sucks up water. But he early took to medicine and theories about life and +health. He traveled to many countries, and spent much of his substance in +seeing and knowing. What he used to insist on was that the strength and wealth +of mankind depended on the balance of separateness and communication, and he +was bitterly against our people losing themselves among the Gentiles; +‘It’s no better,’ said he, ‘than the many sorts of +grain going back from their variety into sameness.’ He mingled all sorts +of learning; and in that he was like our Arabic writers in the golden time. We +studied together, but he went beyond me. Though we were bosom friends, and he +poured himself out to me, we were as different as the inside and outside of the +bowl. I stood up for two notions of my own: I took Charisi’s sayings as I +took the shape of the trees: they were there, not to be disputed about. It came +to the same thing in both of us; we were both faithful Jews, thankful not to be +Gentiles. And since I was a ripe man, I have been what I am now, for all but +age—loving to wander, loving transactions, loving to behold all things, +and caring nothing about hardship. Charisi thought continually of our +people’s future: he went with all his soul into that part of our +religion: I, not. So we have freedom, I am content. Our people wandered before +they were driven. Young man when I am in the East, I lie much on deck and watch +the greater stars. The sight of them satisfies me. I know them as they rise, +and hunger not to know more. Charisi was satisfied with no sight, but pieced it +out with what had been before and what would come after. Yet we loved each +other, and as he said, he bound our love with duty; we solemnly pledged +ourselves to help and defend each other to the last. I have fulfilled my +pledge.” Here Kalonymos rose, and Deronda, rising also, said, +</p> + +<p> +“And in being faithful to him you have caused justice to be done to me. +It would have been a robbery of me too that I should never have known of the +inheritance he had prepared for me. I thank you with my whole soul.” +</p> + +<p> +“Be worthy of him, young man. What is your vocation?” This question +was put with a quick abruptness which embarrassed Deronda, who did not feel it +quite honest to allege his law-reading as a vocation. He answered, +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot say that I have any.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get one, get one. The Jew must be diligent. You will call yourself a Jew +and profess the faith of your fathers?” said Kalonymos, putting his hand +on Deronda’s shoulder and looking sharply in his face. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall call myself a Jew,” said Deronda, deliberately, becoming +slightly paler under the piercing eyes of his questioner. “But I will not +say that I shall profess to believe exactly as my fathers have believed. Our +fathers themselves changed the horizon of their belief and learned of other +races. But I think I can maintain my grandfather’s notion of separateness +with communication. I hold that my first duty is to my own people, and if there +is anything to be done toward restoring or perfecting their common life, I +shall make that my vocation.” +</p> + +<p> +It happened to Deronda at that moment, as it has often happened to others, that +the need for speech made an epoch in resolve. His respect for the questioner +would not let him decline to answer, and by the necessity to answer he found +out the truth for himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you argue and you look forward—you are Daniel Charisi’s +grandson,” said Kalonymos, adding a benediction in Hebrew. +</p> + +<p> +With that they parted; and almost as soon as Deronda was in London, the aged +man was again on shipboard, greeting the friendly stars without any eager +curiosity. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0061"></a> +CHAPTER LXI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,<br/> + As birds within the green shade of the grove.<br/> +Before the gentle heart, in Nature’s scheme,<br/> + Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.”<br/> + —G<small>UIDO</small> G<small>UINICELLI</small> +(<i>Rossetti’s Translation</i>). +</p> + +<p> +There was another house besides the white house at Pennicote, another breast +besides Rex Gascoigne’s, in which the news of Grandcourt’s death +caused both strong agitation and the effort to repress it. +</p> + +<p> +It was Hans Meyrick’s habit to send or bring in the <i>Times</i> for his +mother’s reading. She was a great reader of news, from the +widest-reaching politics to the list of marriages; the latter, she said, giving +her the pleasant sense of finishing the fashionable novels without having read +them, and seeing the heroes and heroines happy without knowing what poor +creatures they were. On a Wednesday, there were reasons why Hans always chose +to bring the paper, and to do so about the time that Mirah had nearly ended +giving Mab her weekly lesson, avowing that he came then because he wanted to +hear Mirah sing. But on the particular Wednesday now in question, after +entering the house as quietly as usual with his latch-key, he appeared in the +parlor, shaking the <i>Times</i> aloft with a crackling noise, in remorseless +interruption of Mab’s attempt to render <i>Lascia ch’io pianga</i> +with a remote imitation of her teacher. Piano and song ceased immediately; +Mirah, who had been playing the accompaniment, involuntarily started up and +turned round, the crackling sound, after the occasional trick of sounds, having +seemed to her something thunderous; and Mab said, +</p> + +<p> +“O-o-o, Hans! why do you bring a more horrible noise than my +singing?” +</p> + +<p> +“What on earth is the wonderful news?” said Mrs. Meyrick, who was +the only other person in the room. “Anything about Italy—anything +about the Austrians giving up Venice?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing about Italy, but something from Italy,” said Hans, with a +peculiarity in his tone and manner which set his mother interpreting. Imagine +how some of us feel and behave when an event, not disagreeable seems to be +confirming and carrying out our private constructions. We say, “What do +you think?” in a pregnant tone to some innocent person who has not +embarked his wisdom in the same boat with ours, and finds our information flat. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing bad?” said Mrs. Meyrick anxiously, thinking immediately of +Deronda; and Mirah’s heart had been already clutched by the same thought. +</p> + +<p> +“Not bad for anybody we care much about,” said Hans, quickly; +“rather uncommonly lucky, I think. I never knew anybody die conveniently +before. Considering what a dear gazelle I am, I am constantly wondering to find +myself alive.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh me, Hans!” said Mab, impatiently, “if you must talk of +yourself, let it be behind your own back. What <i>is</i> it that has +happened?” +</p> + +<p> +“Duke Alfonso is drowned, and the Duchess is alive, that’s +all,” said Hans, putting the paper before Mrs. Meyrick, with his finger +against a paragraph. “But more than all is—Deronda was at Genoa in +the same hotel with them, and he saw her brought in by the fishermen who had +got her out of the water time enough to save her from any harm. It seems they +saw her jump in after her husband, which was a less judicious action than I +should have expected of the Duchess. However Deronda is a lucky fellow in being +there to take care of her.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah had sunk on the music stool again, with her eyelids down and her hands +tightly clasped; and Mrs. Meyrick, giving up the paper to Mab, said, +</p> + +<p> +“Poor thing! she must have been fond of her husband to jump in after +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was an inadvertence—a little absence of mind,” said Hans, +creasing his face roguishly, and throwing himself into a chair not far from +Mirah. “Who can be fond of a jealous baritone, with freezing glances, +always singing asides?—that was the husband’s <i>rôle</i>, depend +upon it. Nothing can be neater than his getting drowned. The Duchess is at +liberty now to marry a man with a fine head of hair, and glances that will melt +instead of freezing her. And I shall be invited to the wedding.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Mirah started from her sitting posture, and fixing her eyes on Hans, with +an angry gleam in them, she said, in a deeply-shaken voice of indignation, +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Hans, you ought not to speak in that way. Mr. Deronda would not like +you to speak so. Why will you say he is lucky—why will you use words of +that sort about life and death—when what is life to one is death to +another? How do you know it would be lucky if he loved Mrs. Grandcourt? It +might be a great evil to him. She would take him away from my brother—I +know she would. Mr. Deronda would not call that lucky to pierce my +brother’s heart.” +</p> + +<p> +All three were struck with the sudden transformation. Mirah’s face, with +a look of anger that might have suited Ithuriel, pale, even to the lips that +were usually so rich of tint, was not far from poor Hans, who sat transfixed, +blushing under it as if he had been a girl, while he said, nervously, +</p> + +<p> +“I am a fool and a brute, and I withdraw every word. I’ll go and +hang myself like Judas—if it’s allowable to mention him.” +Even in Hans’s sorrowful moments, his improvised words had inevitably +some drollery. +</p> + +<p> +But Mirah’s anger was not appeased: how could it be? She had burst into +indignant speech as creatures in intense pain bite and make their teeth meet +even through their own flesh, by way of making their agony bearable. She said +no more, but, seating herself at the piano, pressed the sheet of music before +her, as if she thought of beginning to play again. +</p> + +<p> +It was Mab who spoke, while Mrs. Meyrick’s face seemed to reflect some of +Hans’ discomfort. +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah is quite right to scold you, Hans. You are always taking Mr. +Deronda’s name in vain. And it is horrible, joking in that way about his +marrying Mrs. Grandcourt. Men’s minds must be very black, I think,” +ended Mab, with much scorn. +</p> + +<p> +“Quite true, my dear,” said Hans, in a low tone, rising and turning +on his heel to walk toward the back window. +</p> + +<p> +“We had better go on, Mab; you have not given your full time to the +lesson,” said Mirah, in a higher tone than usual. “Will you sing +this again, or shall I sing it to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, please sing it to me,” said Mab, rejoiced to take no more +notice of what had happened. +</p> + +<p> +And Mirah immediately sang <i>Lascia ch’io pianga</i>, giving forth its +melodious sobs and cries with new fullness and energy. Hans paused in his walk +and leaned against the mantel-piece, keeping his eyes carefully away from his +mother’s. When Mirah had sung her last note and touched the last chord, +she rose and said, “I must go home now. Ezra expects me.” +</p> + +<p> +She gave her hand silently to Mrs. Meyrick and hung back a little, not daring +to look at her, instead of kissing her, as usual. But the little mother drew +Mirah’s face down to hers, and said, soothingly, “God bless you, my +dear.” Mirah felt that she had committed an offense against Mrs. Meyrick +by angrily rebuking Hans, and mixed with the rest of her suffering was the +sense that she had shown something like a proud ingratitude, an unbecoming +assertion of superiority. And her friend had divined this compunction. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Hans had seized his wide-awake, and was ready to open the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Hans,” said Mab, with what was really a sister’s +tenderness cunningly disguised, “you are not going to walk home with +Mirah. I am sure she would rather not. You are so dreadfully disagreeable +to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall go to take care of her, if she does not forbid me,” said +Hans, opening the door. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah said nothing, and when he had opened the outer door for her and closed it +behind him, he walked by her side unforbidden. She had not the courage to begin +speaking to him again—conscious that she had perhaps been unbecomingly +severe in her words to him, yet finding only severer words behind them in her +heart. Besides, she was pressed upon by a crowd of thoughts thrusting +themselves forward as interpreters of that consciousness which still remained +unaltered to herself. +</p> + +<p> +Hans, on his side, had a mind equally busy. Mirah’s anger had waked in +him a new perception, and with it the unpleasant sense that he was a dolt not +to have had it before. Suppose Mirah’s heart were entirely preoccupied +with Deronda in another character than that of her own and her brother’s +benefactor; the supposition was attended in Hans’s mind with anxieties +which, to do him justice, were not altogether selfish. He had a strong +persuasion, which only direct evidence to the contrary could have dissipated, +and that was that there was a serious attachment between Deronda and Mrs. +Grandcourt; he had pieced together many fragments of observation, and gradually +gathered knowledge, completed by what his sisters had heard from Anna +Gascoigne, which convinced him not only that Mrs. Grandcourt had a passion for +Deronda, but also, notwithstanding his friend’s austere self-repression, +that Deronda’s susceptibility about her was the sign of concealed love. +Some men, having such a conviction, would have avoided allusions that could +have roused that susceptibility; but Hans’s talk naturally fluttered +toward mischief, and he was given to a form of experiment on live animals which +consisted in irritating his friends playfully. His experiments had ended in +satisfying him that what he thought likely was true. +</p> + +<p> +On the other hand, any susceptibility Deronda had manifested about a +lover’s attentions being shown to Mirah, Hans took to be sufficiently +accounted for by the alleged reason, namely, her dependent position; for he +credited his friend with all possible unselfish anxiety for those whom he could +rescue and protect. And Deronda’s insistence that Mirah would never marry +one who was not a Jew necessarily seemed to exclude himself, since Hans shared +the ordinary opinion, which he knew nothing to disturb, that Deronda was the +son of Sir Hugo Mallinger. +</p> + +<p> +Thus he felt himself in clearness about the state of Deronda’s +affections; but now, the events which really struck him as concurring toward +the desirable union with Mrs. Grandcourt, had called forth a flash of +revelation from Mirah—a betrayal of her passionate feeling on this +subject which had made him melancholy on her account as well as his +own—yet on the whole less melancholy than if he had imagined +Deronda’s hopes fixed on her. It is not sublime, but it is common, for a +man to see the beloved object unhappy because his rival loves another, with +more fortitude and a milder jealousy than if he saw her entirely happy in his +rival. At least it was so with the mercurial Hans, who fluctuated between the +contradictory states of feeling, wounded because Mirah was wounded, and of +being almost obliged to Deronda for loving somebody else. It was impossible for +him to give Mirah any direct sign of the way in which he had understood her +anger, yet he longed that his speechless companionship should be eloquent in a +tender, penitent sympathy which is an admissible form of wooing a bruised +heart. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the two went side by side in a companionship that yet seemed an agitated +communication, like that of two chords whose quick vibrations lie outside our +hearing. But when they reached the door of Mirah’s home, and Hans said +“Good-bye,” putting out his hand with an appealing look of +penitence, she met the look with melancholy gentleness, and said, “Will +you not come in and see my brother?” +</p> + +<p> +Hans could not but interpret this invitation as a sign of pardon. He had not +enough understanding of what Mirah’s nature had been wrought into by her +early experience, to divine how the very strength of her late excitement had +made it pass more quickly into the resolute acceptance of pain. When he had +said, “If you will let me,” and they went in together, half his +grief was gone, and he was spinning a little romance of how his devotion might +make him indispensable to Mirah in proportion as Deronda gave his devotion +elsewhere. This was quite fair, since his friend was provided for according to +his own heart; and on the question of Judaism Hans felt thoroughly +fortified:—who ever heard in tale or history that a woman’s love +went in the track of her race and religion? Moslem and Jewish damsels were +always attracted toward Christians, and now if Mirah’s heart had gone +forth too precipitately toward Deronda, here was another case in point. Hans +was wont to make merry with his own arguments, to call himself a Giaour, and +antithesis the sole clue to events; but he believed a little in what he laughed +at. And thus his bird-like hope, constructed on the lightest principles, soared +again in spite of heavy circumstances. +</p> + +<p> +They found Mordecai looking singularly happy, holding a closed letter in his +hand, his eyes glowing with a quiet triumph which in his emaciated face gave +the idea of a conquest over assailing death. After the greeting between him and +Hans, Mirah put her arm round her brother’s neck and looked down at the +letter in his hand, without the courage to ask about it, though she felt sure +that it was the cause of his happiness. +</p> + +<p> +“A letter from Daniel Deronda,” said Mordecai, answering her look. +“Brief—only saying that he hopes soon to return. Unexpected claims +have detained him. The promise of seeing him again is like the bow in the cloud +to me,” continued Mordecai, looking at Hans; “and to you it must be +a gladness. For who has two friends like him?” +</p> + +<p> +While Hans was answering Mirah slipped away to her own room; but not to indulge +in any outburst of the passion within her. If the angels, once supposed to +watch the toilet of women, had entered the little chamber with her and let her +shut the door behind them, they would only have seen her take off her hat, sit +down and press her hands against her temples as if she had suddenly reflected +that her head ached; then rise to dash cold water on her eyes and brow and hair +till her backward curls were full of crystal beads, while she had dried her +brow and looked out like a freshly-opened flower from among the dewy tresses of +the woodland; then give deep sighs of relief, and putting on her little +slippers, sit still after that action for a couple of minutes, which seemed to +her so long, so full of things to come, that she rose with an air of +recollection, and went down to make tea. +</p> + +<p> +Something of the old life had returned. She had been used to remember that she +must learn her part, must go to rehearsal, must act and sing in the evening, +must hide her feelings from her father; and the more painful her life grew, the +more she had been used to hide. The force of her nature had long found its +chief action in resolute endurance, and to-day the violence of feeling which +had caused the first jet of anger had quickly transformed itself into a steady +facing of trouble, the well-known companion of her young years. But while she +moved about and spoke as usual, a close observer might have discerned a +difference between this apparent calm, which was the effect of restraining +energy, and the sweet genuine calm of the months when she first felt a return +of her infantine happiness. +</p> + +<p> +Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as +what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their +lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm. +Mirah felt no such surprise when familiar Sorrow came back from brief absence, +and sat down with her according to the old use and wont. And this habit of +expecting trouble rather than joy, hindered her from having any persistent +belief in opposition to the probabilities which were not merely suggested by +Hans, but were supported by her own private knowledge and long-growing +presentiment. An attachment between Deronda and Mrs. Grandcourt, to end in +their future marriage, had the aspect of a certainty for her feeling. There had +been no fault in him: facts had ordered themselves so that there was a tie +between him and this woman who belonged to another world than hers and +Ezra’s—nay, who seemed another sort of being than Deronda, +something foreign that would be a disturbance in his life instead of blending +with it. Well, well—but if it could have been deferred so as to make no +difference while Ezra was there! She did not know all the momentousness of the +relation between Deronda and her brother, but she had seen, and instinctively +felt enough to forebode its being incongruous with any close tie to Mrs. +Grandcourt; at least this was the clothing that Mirah first gave to her mortal +repugnance. But in the still, quick action of her consciousness, thoughts went +on like changing states of sensation unbroken by her habitual acts; and this +inward language soon said distinctly that the mortal repugnance would remain +even if Ezra were secured from loss. +</p> + +<p> +“What I have read about and sung about and seen acted, is happening to +me—this that I am feeling is the love that makes jealousy;” so +impartially Mirah summed up the charge against herself. But what difference +could this pain of hers make to any one else? It must remain as exclusively her +own, and hidden, as her early yearning and devotion to her lost mother. But +unlike that devotion, it was something that she felt to be a misfortune of her +nature—a discovery that what should have been pure gratitude and +reverence had sunk into selfish pain, that the feeling she had hitherto +delighted to pour out in words was degraded into something she was ashamed to +betray—an absurd longing that she who had received all and given nothing +should be of importance where she was of no importance—an angry feeling +toward another woman who possessed the good she wanted. But what notion, what +vain reliance could it be that had lain darkly within her and was now burning +itself into sight as disappointment and jealousy? It was as if her soul had +been steeped in poisonous passion by forgotten dreams of deep sleep, and now +flamed out in this unaccountable misery. For with her waking reason she had +never entertained what seemed the wildly unfitting thought that Deronda could +love her. The uneasiness she had felt before had been comparatively vague and +easily explained as part of a general regret that he was only a visitant in her +and her brother’s world, from which the world where his home lay was as +different as a portico with lights and lacqueys was different from the door of +a tent, where the only splendor came from the mysterious inaccessible stars. +But her feeling was no longer vague: the cause of her pain—the image of +Mrs. Grandcourt by Deronda’s side, drawing him farther and farther into +the distance, was as definite as pincers on her flesh. In the Psyche-mould of +Mirah’s frame there rested a fervid quality of emotion, sometimes rashly +supposed to require the bulk of a Cleopatra; her impressions had the +thoroughness and tenacity that give to the first selection of passionate +feeling the character of a life-long faithfulness. And now a selection had +declared itself, which gave love a cruel heart of jealousy: she had been used +to a strong repugnance toward certain objects that surrounded her, and to walk +inwardly aloof from them while they touched her sense. And now her repugnance +concentrated itself on Mrs. Grandcourt, of whom she involuntarily conceived +more evil than she knew. “I could bear everything that used to +be—but this is worse—this is worse,—I used not to have +horrible feelings!” said the poor child in a loud whisper to her pillow. +Strange that she should have to pray against any feeling which concerned +Deronda! +</p> + +<p> +But this conclusion had been reached through an evening spent in attending to +Mordecai, whose exaltation of spirit in the prospect of seeing his friend +again, disposed him to utter many thoughts aloud to Mirah, though such +communication was often interrupted by intervals apparently filled with an +inward utterance that animated his eyes and gave an occasional silent action to +his lips. One thought especially occupied him. +</p> + +<p> +“Seest thou, Mirah,” he said once, after a long silence, “the +<i>Shemah</i>, wherein we briefly confess the divine Unity, is the chief +devotional exercise of the Hebrew; and this made our religion the fundamental +religion for the whole world; for the divine Unity embraced as its consequence +the ultimate unity of mankind. See, then—the nation which has been +scoffed at for its separateness, has given a binding theory to the human race. +Now, in complete unity a part possesses the whole as the whole possesses every +part: and in this way human life is tending toward the image of the Supreme +Unity: for as our life becomes more spiritual by capacity of thought, and joy +therein, possession tends to become more universal, being independent of gross +material contact; so that in a brief day the soul of man may know in fuller +volume the good which has been and is, nay, is to come, than all he could +possess in a whole life where he had to follow the creeping paths of the +senses. In this moment, my sister, I hold the joy of another’s future +within me: a future which these eyes will not see, and which my spirit may not +then recognize as mine. I recognize it now, and love it so, that I can lay down +this poor life upon its altar and say: ‘Burn, burn indiscernibly into +that which shall be, which is my love and not me.’ Dost thou understand, +Mirah?” +</p> + +<p> +“A little,” said Mirah, faintly, “but my mind is too poor to +have felt it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet,” said Mordecai, rather insistently, “women are +specially framed for the love which feels possession in renouncing, and is thus +a fit image of what I mean. Somewhere in the later <i>Midrash</i>, I think, is +the story of a Jewish maiden who loved a Gentile king so well, that this was +what she did:—she entered into prison and changed clothes with the woman +who was beloved by the king, that she might deliver that woman from death by +dying in her stead, and leave the king to be happy in his love which was not +for her. This is the surpassing love, that loses self in the object of +love.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, Ezra, no,” said Mirah, with low-toned intensity, “that +was not it. She wanted the king when she was dead to know what she had done, +and feel that she was better than the other. It was her strong self, wanting to +conquer, that made her die.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai was silent a little, and then argued, +</p> + +<p> +“That might be, Mirah. But if she acted so, believing the king would +never know.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can make the story so in your mind, Ezra, because you are great, and +like to fancy the greatest that could be. But I think it was not really like +that. The Jewish girl must have had jealousy in her heart, and she wanted +somehow to have the first place in the king’s mind. That is what she +would die for.” +</p> + +<p> +“My sister, thou hast read too many plays, where the writers delight in +showing the human passions as indwelling demons, unmixed with the relenting and +devout elements of the soul. Thou judgest by the plays, and not by thy own +heart, which is like our mother’s.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah made no answer. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0062"></a> +CHAPTER LXII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Das Glück ist eine leichte Dirne,<br/> +Und weilt nicht gern am selben Ort;<br/> +Sie streicht das Haar dir von der Stirne<br/> +Und küsst dich rasch und flattert fort<br/> +<br/> +Frau Unglück hat im Gegentheile<br/> +Dich liebefest an’s Herz gedrückt;<br/> +Sie sagt, sie habe keine Eile,<br/> +Setzt sich zu dir an’s Bett und strickt.”<br/> + —H<small>EINE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Something which Mirah had lately been watching for as the fulfilment of a +threat, seemed now the continued visit of that familiar sorrow which had lately +come back, bringing abundant luggage. +</p> + +<p> +Turning out of Knightsbridge, after singing at a charitable morning concert in +a wealthy house, where she had been recommended by Klesmer, and where there had +been the usual groups outside to see the departing company, she began to feel +herself dogged by footsteps that kept an even pace with her own. Her concert +dress being simple black, over which she had thrown a dust cloak, could not +make her an object of unpleasant attention, and render walking an imprudence; +but this reflection did not occur to Mirah: another kind of alarm lay uppermost +in her mind. She immediately thought of her father, and could no more look +round than if she had felt herself tracked by a ghost. To turn and face him +would be voluntarily to meet the rush of emotions which beforehand seemed +intolerable. If it were her father he must mean to claim recognition, and he +would oblige her to face him. She must wait for that compulsion. She walked on, +not quickening her pace—of what use was that?—but picturing what +was about to happen as if she had the full certainty that the man behind her +was her father; and along with her picturing went a regret that she had given +her word to Mrs. Meyrick not to use any concealment about him. The regret at +last urged her, at least, to try and hinder any sudden betrayal that would +cause her brother an unnecessary shock. Under the pressure of this motive, she +resolved to turn before she reached her own door, and firmly will the encounter +instead of merely submitting to it. She had already reached the entrance of the +small square where her home lay, and had made up her mind to turn, when she +felt her embodied presentiment getting closer to her, then slipping to her +side, grasping her wrist, and saying, with a persuasive curl of accent, +“Mirah!” +</p> + +<p> +She paused at once without any start; it was the voice she expected, and she +was meeting the expected eyes. Her face was as grave as if she had been looking +at her executioner, while his was adjusted to the intention of soothing and +propitiating her. Once a handsome face, with bright color, it was now sallow +and deep-lined, and had that peculiar impress of impudent suavity which comes +from courting favor while accepting disrespect. He was lightly made and active, +with something of youth about him which made the signs of age seem a disguise; +and in reality he was hardly fifty-seven. His dress was shabby, as when she had +seen him before. The presence of this unreverend father now, more than ever, +affected Mirah with the mingled anguish of shame and grief, repulsion and +pity—more than ever, now that her own world was changed into one where +there was no comradeship to fence him from scorn and contempt. +</p> + +<p> +Slowly, with a sad, tremulous voice, she said, “It is you, father.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you run away from me, child?” he began with rapid speech +which was meant to have a tone of tender remonstrance, accompanied with various +quick gestures like an abbreviated finger-language. “What were you afraid +of? You knew I never made you do anything against your will. It was for your +sake I broke up your engagement in the Vorstadt, because I saw it didn’t +suit you, and you repaid me by leaving me to the bad times that came in +consequence. I had made an easier engagement for you at the Vorstadt Theater in +Dresden: I didn’t tell you, because I wanted to take you by surprise. And +you left me planted there—obliged to make myself scarce because I had +broken contract. That was hard lines for me, after I had given up everything +for the sake of getting you an education which was to be a fortune to you. What +father devoted himself to his daughter more than I did to you? You know how I +bore that disappointment in your voice, and made the best of it: and when I had +nobody besides you, and was getting broken, as a man must who has had to fight +his way with his brains—you chose that time to leave me. Who else was it +you owed everything to, if not to me? and where was your feeling in return? For +what my daughter cared, I might have died in a ditch.” +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth stopped short here, not from lack of invention, but because he had +reached a pathetic climax, and gave a sudden sob, like a woman’s, taking +out hastily an old yellow silk handkerchief. He really felt that his daughter +had treated him ill—a sort of sensibility which is naturally strong in +unscrupulous persons, who put down what is owing to them, without any <i>per +contra</i>. Mirah, in spite of that sob, had energy enough not to let him +suppose that he deceived her. She answered more firmly, though it was the first +time she had ever used accusing words to him. +</p> + +<p> +“You know why I left you, father; and I had reason to distrust you, +because I felt sure that you had deceived my mother. If I could have trusted +you, I would have stayed with you and worked for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never meant to deceive your mother, Mirah,” said Lapidoth, +putting back his handkerchief, but beginning with a voice that seemed to +struggle against further sobbing. “I meant to take you back to her, but +chances hindered me just at the time, and then there came information of her +death. It was better for you that I should stay where I was, and your brother +could take care of himself. Nobody had any claim on me but you. I had word of +your mother’s death from a particular friend, who had undertaken to +manage things for me, and I sent him over money to pay expenses. There’s +one chance to be sure—” Lapidoth had quickly conceived that he must +guard against something unlikely, yet possible—“he may have written +me lies for the sake of getting the money out of me.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah made no answer; she could not bear to utter the only true +one—“I don’t believe one word of what you +say”—and she simply showed a wish that they should walk on, feeling +that their standing still might draw down unpleasant notice. Even as they +walked along, their companionship might well have made a passer-by turn back to +look at them. The figure of Mirah, with her beauty set off by the quiet, +careful dress of an English lady, made a strange pendant to this shabby, +foreign-looking, eager, and gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable +jauntiness of air, perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the +smallness of his hands and feet, and his light walk. +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to have done well for yourself, Mirah? <i>You</i> are in no +want, I see,” said the father, looking at her with emphatic examination. +</p> + +<p> +“Good friends who found me in distress have helped me to get work,” +said Mirah, hardly knowing what she actually said, from being occupied with +what she would presently have to say. “I give lessons. I have sung in +private houses. I have just been singing at a private concert.” She +paused, and then added, with significance, “I have very good friends, who +know all about me.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you would be ashamed they should see your father in this plight? No +wonder. I came to England with no prospect, but the chance of finding you. It +was a mad quest; but a father’s heart is superstitious—feels a +loadstone drawing it somewhere or other. I might have done very well, staying +abroad: when I hadn’t you to take care of, I could have rolled or settled +as easily as a ball; but it’s hard being lonely in the world, when your +spirit’s beginning to break. And I thought my little Mirah would repent +leaving her father when she came to look back. I’ve had a sharp pinch to +work my way; I don’t know what I shall come down to next. Talents like +mine are no use in this country. When a man’s getting out at elbows +nobody will believe in him. I couldn’t get any decent employ with my +appearance. I’ve been obliged to get pretty low for a shilling +already.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah’s anxiety was quick enough to imagine her father’s sinking +into a further degradation, which she was bound to hinder if she could. But +before she could answer his string of inventive sentences, delivered with as +much glibness as if they had been learned by rote, he added promptly, +</p> + +<p> +“Where do you live, Mirah?” +</p> + +<p> +“Here, in this square. We are not far from the house.” +</p> + +<p> +“In lodgings?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Any one to take care of you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mirah again, looking full at the keen face which was +turned toward hers—“my brother.” +</p> + +<p> +The father’s eyelids fluttered as if the lightning had come across them, +and there was a slight movement of the shoulders. But he said, after a just +perceptible pause: “Ezra? How did you know—how did you find +him?” +</p> + +<p> +“That would take long to tell. Here we are at the door. My brother would +not wish me to close it on you.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah was already on the doorstep, but had her face turned toward her father, +who stood below her on the pavement. Her heart had begun to beat faster with +the prospect of what was coming in the presence of Ezra; and already in this +attitude of giving leave to the father whom she had been used to obey—in +this sight of him standing below her, with a perceptible shrinking from the +admission which he had been indirectly asking for, she had a pang of the +peculiar, sympathetic humiliation and shame—the stabbed heart of +reverence—which belongs to a nature intensely filial. +</p> + +<p> +“Stay a minute, <i>Liebchen</i>,” said Lapidoth, speaking in a +lowered tone; “what sort of man has Ezra turned out?” +</p> + +<p> +“A good man—a wonderful man,” said Mirah, with slow emphasis, +trying to master the agitation which made her voice more tremulous as she went +on. She felt urged to prepare her father for the complete penetration of +himself which awaited him. “But he was very poor when my friends found +him for me—a poor workman. Once—twelve years ago—he was +strong and happy, going to the East, which he loved to think of; and my mother +called him back because—because she had lost me. And he went to her, and +took care of her through great trouble, and worked for her till she +died—died in grief. And Ezra, too, had lost his health and strength. The +cold had seized him coming back to my mother, because she was forsaken. For +years he has been getting weaker—always poor, always working—but +full of knowledge, and great-minded. All who come near him honor him. To stand +before him is like standing before a prophet of God”—Mirah ended +with difficulty, her heart throbbing—“falsehoods are no use.” +</p> + +<p> +She had cast down her eyes that she might not see her father while she spoke +the last words—unable to bear the ignoble look of frustration that +gathered in his face. But he was none the less quick in invention and decision. +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah, <i>Liebchen</i>,” he said, in the old caressing way, +“shouldn’t you like me to make myself a little more respectable +before my son sees me? If I had a little sum of money, I could fit myself out +and come home to you as your father ought, and then I could offer myself for +some decent place. With a good shirt and coat on my back, people would be glad +enough to have me. I could offer myself for a courier, if I didn’t look +like a broken-down mountebank. I should like to be with my children, and forget +and forgive. But you have never seen your father look like this before. If you +had ten pounds at hand—or I could appoint you to bring it me +somewhere—I could fit myself out by the day after to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah felt herself under a temptation which she must try to overcome. She +answered, obliging herself to look at him again, +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like to deny you what you ask, father; but I have given a +promise not to do things for you in secret. It <i>is</i> hard to see you +looking needy; but we will bear that for a little while; and then you can have +new clothes, and we can pay for them.” Her practical sense made her see +now what was Mrs. Meyrick’s wisdom in exacting a promise from her. +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth’s good humor gave way a little. He said, with a sneer, +“You are a hard and fast young lady—you have been learning useful +virtues—keeping promises not to help your father with a pound or two when +you are getting money to dress yourself in silk—your father who made an +idol of you, and gave up the best part of his life to providing for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems cruel—I know it seems cruel,” said Mirah, feeling +this a worse moment than when she meant to drown herself. Her lips were +suddenly pale. “But, father, it is more cruel to break the promises +people trust in. That broke my mother’s heart—it has broken +Ezra’s life. You and I must eat now this bitterness from what has been. +Bear it. Bear to come in and be cared for as you are.” +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow, then,” said Lapidoth, almost turning on his heel away +from this pale, trembling daughter, who seemed now to have got the inconvenient +world to back her; but he quickly turned on it again, with his hands feeling +about restlessly in his pockets, and said, with some return to his appealing +tone, “I’m a little cut up with all this, Mirah. I shall get up my +spirits by to-morrow. If you’ve a little money in your pocket, I suppose +it isn’t against your promise to give me a trifle—to buy a cigar +with.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah could not ask herself another question—could not do anything else +than put her cold trembling hands in her pocket for her <i>portemonnaie</i> and +hold it out. Lapidoth grasped it at once, pressed her fingers the while, said, +“Good-bye, my little girl—to-morrow then!” and left her. He +had not taken many steps before he looked carefully into all the folds of the +purse, found two half-sovereigns and odd silver, and, pasted against the +folding cover, a bit of paper on which Ezra had inscribed, in a beautiful +Hebrew character, the name of his mother, the days of her birth, marriage, and +death, and the prayer, “May Mirah be delivered from evil.” It was +Mirah’s liking to have this little inscription on many articles that she +used. The father read it, and had a quick vision of his marriage day, and the +bright, unblamed young fellow he was at that time; teaching many things, but +expecting by-and-by to get money more easily by writing; and very fond of his +beautiful bride Sara—crying when she expected him to cry, and reflecting +every phase of her feeling with mimetic susceptibility. Lapidoth had traveled a +long way from that young self, and thought of all that this inscription +signified with an unemotional memory, which was like the ocular perception of a +touch to one who has lost the sense of touch, or like morsels on an untasting +palate, having shape and grain, but no flavor. Among the things we may gamble +away in a lazy selfish life is the capacity for ruth, compunction, or any +unselfish regret—which we may come to long for as one in slow death longs +to feel laceration, rather than be conscious of a widening margin where +consciousness once was. Mirah’s purse was a handsome one—a gift to +her, which she had been unable to reflect about giving away—and Lapidoth +presently found himself outside of his reverie, considering what the purse +would fetch in addition to the sum it contained, and what prospect there was of +his being able to get more from his daughter without submitting to adopt a +penitential form of life under the eyes of that formidable son. On such a +subject his susceptibilities were still lively. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Mirah had entered the house with her power of reticence overcome by +the cruelty of her pain. She found her brother quietly reading and sifting old +manuscripts of his own, which he meant to consign to Deronda. In the reaction +from the long effort to master herself, she fell down before him and clasped +his knees, sobbing, and crying, “Ezra, Ezra!” +</p> + +<p> +He did not speak. His alarm for her spending itself on conceiving the cause of +her distress, the more striking from the novelty in her of this violent +manifestation. But Mirah’s own longing was to be able to speak and tell +him the cause. Presently she raised her hand, and still sobbing, said brokenly, +</p> + +<p> +“Ezra, my father! our father! He followed me. I wanted him to come in. I +said you would let him come in. And he said No, he would not—not now, but +to-morrow. And he begged for money from me. And I gave him my purse, and he +went away.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah’s words seemed to herself to express all the misery she felt in +them. Her brother found them less grievous than his preconceptions, and said +gently, “Wait for calm, Mirah, and then tell me all,”—putting +off her hat and laying his hands tenderly on her head. She felt the soothing +influence, and in a few minutes told him as exactly as she could all that had +happened. +</p> + +<p> +“He will not come to-morrow,” said Mordecai. Neither of them said +to the other what they both thought, namely, that he might watch for +Mirah’s outgoings and beg from her again. +</p> + +<p> +“Seest thou,” he presently added, “our lot is the lot of +Israel. The grief and the glory are mingled as the smoke and the flame. It is +because we children have inherited the good that we feel the evil. These things +are wedded for us, as our father was wedded to our mother.” +</p> + +<p> +The surroundings were of Brompton, but the voice might have come from a Rabbi +transmitting the sentences of an elder time to be registered in +<i>Babli</i>—by which (to our ears) affectionate-sounding diminutive is +meant the voluminous Babylonian Talmud. “The Omnipresent,” said a +Rabbi, “is occupied in making marriages.” The levity of the saying +lies in the ear of him who hears it; for by marriages the speaker meant all the +wondrous combinations of the universe whose issue makes our good and evil. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0063"></a> +CHAPTER LXIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“Moses, trotz seiner Befeindung der Kunst, dennoch selber ein großer +Künstler war und den wahren Künstlergeist besaß. Nur war dieser Künstlergeist +bei ihm, wie bei seinen ägyptischen Landsleuten, nur auf das Kolossale und +Unverwüstliche gerichtet. Aber nicht wie die Ägypter formierte er seine +Kunstwerke aus Backstein und Granit, sondern er baute Menschenpyramiden, er +meisselte Menschenobelisken, er nahm einen armen Hirtenstamm und schuf daraus +ein Volk, das ebenfalls den Jahrhunderten trotzen sollte . . . er schuf +Israel!” —H<small>EINE</small>: <i>Geständnisse</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Imagine the difference in Deronda’s state of mind when he left England +and when he returned to it. He had set out for Genoa in total uncertainty how +far the actual bent of his wishes and affections would be encouraged—how +far the claims revealed to him might draw him into new paths, far away from the +tracks his thoughts had lately been pursuing with a consent of desire which +uncertainty made dangerous. He came back with something like a discovered +charter warranting the inherited right that his ambition had begun to yearn +for: he came back with what was better than freedom—with a duteous bond +which his experience had been preparing him to accept gladly, even if it had +been attended with no promise of satisfying a secret passionate longing never +yet allowed to grow into a hope. But now he dared avow to himself the hidden +selection of his love. Since the hour when he left the house at Chelsea in +full-hearted silence under the effect of Mirah’s farewell look and +words—their exquisite appealingness stirring in him that deep-laid care +for womanhood which had begun when his own lip was like a +girl’s—her hold on his feeling had helped him to be blameless in +word and deed under the difficult circumstances we know of. There seemed no +likelihood that he could ever woo this creature who had become dear to him +amidst associations that forbade wooing; yet she had taken her place in his +soul as a beloved type—reducing the power of other fascination and making +a difference in it that became deficiency. The influence had been continually +strengthened. It had lain in the course of poor Gwendolen’s lot that her +dependence on Deronda tended to rouse in him the enthusiasm of self-martyring +pity rather than of personal love, and his less constrained tenderness flowed +with the fuller stream toward an indwelling image in all things unlike +Gwendolen. Still more, his relation to Mordecai had brought with it a new +nearness to Mirah which was not the less agitating because there was no +apparent change in his position toward her; and she had inevitably been bound +up in all the thoughts that made him shrink from an issue disappointing to her +brother. This process had not gone on unconsciously in Deronda: he was +conscious of it as we are of some covetousness that it would be better to +nullify by encouraging other thoughts than to give it the insistency of +confession even to ourselves: but the jealous fire had leaped out at +Hans’s pretensions, and when his mother accused him of being in love with +a Jewess any evasion suddenly seemed an infidelity. His mother had compelled +him to a decisive acknowledgment of his love, as Joseph Kalonymos had compelled +him to a definite expression of his resolve. This new state of decision wrought +on Deronda with a force which surprised even himself. There was a release of +all the energy which had long been spent in self-checking and suppression +because of doubtful conditions; and he was ready to laugh at his own +impetuosity when, as he neared England on his way from Mainz, he felt the +remaining distance more and more of an obstruction. It was as if he had found +an added soul in finding his ancestry—his judgment no longer wandering in +the mazes of impartial sympathy, but choosing, with that partiality which is +man’s best strength, the closer fellowship that makes sympathy +practical—exchanging that bird’s eye reasonableness which soars to +avoid preference and loses all sense of quality for the generous reasonableness +of drawing shoulder to shoulder with men of like inheritance. He wanted now to +be again with Mordecai, to pour forth instead of restraining his feeling, to +admit agreement and maintain dissent, and all the while to find Mirah’s +presence without the embarrassment of obviously seeking it, to see her in the +light of a new possibility, to interpret her looks and words from a new +starting-point. He was not greatly alarmed about the effect of Hans’s +attentions, but he had a presentiment that her feeling toward himself had from +the first lain in a channel from which it was not likely to be diverted into +love. To astonish a woman by turning into her lover when she has been thinking +of you merely as a Lord Chancellor is what a man naturally shrinks from: he is +anxious to create an easier transition. +</p> + +<p> +What wonder that Deronda saw no other course than to go straight from the +London railway station to the lodgings in that small square in Brompton? Every +argument was in favor of his losing no time. He had promised to run down the +next day to see Lady Mallinger at the Abbey, and it was already sunset. He +wished to deposit the precious chest with Mordecai, who would study its +contents, both in his absence and in company with him; and that he should pay +this visit without pause would gratify Mordecai’s heart. Hence, and for +other reasons, it gratified Deronda’s heart. The strongest tendencies of +his nature were rushing in one current—the fervent affectionateness which +made him delight in meeting the wish of beings near to him, and the imaginative +need of some far-reaching relation to make the horizon of his immediate, daily +acts. It has to be admitted that in this classical, romantic, world-historic +position of his, bringing as it were from its hiding-place his hereditary +armor, he wore—but so, one must suppose, did the most ancient heroes, +whether Semitic or Japhetic—the summer costume of his contemporaries. He +did not reflect that the drab tints were becoming to him, for he rarely went to +the expense of such thinking; but his own depth of coloring, which made the +becomingness, got an added radiance in the eyes, a fleeting and returning glow +in the skin, as he entered the house wondering what exactly he should find. He +made his entrance as noiseless as possible. +</p> + +<p> +It was the evening of that same afternoon on which Mirah had had the interview +with her father. Mordecai, penetrated by her grief, and also the sad memories +which the incident had awakened, had not resumed his task of sifting papers: +some of them had fallen scattered on the floor in the first moments of anxiety, +and neither he nor Mirah had thought of laying them in order again. They had +sat perfectly still together, not knowing how long; while the clock ticked on +the mantel-piece, and the light was fading, Mirah, unable to think of the food +that she ought to have been taking, had not moved since she had thrown off her +dust-cloak and sat down beside Mordecai with her hand in his, while he had laid +his head backward, with closed eyes and difficult breathing, looking, Mirah +thought, as he would look when the soul within him could no longer live in its +straitened home. The thought that his death might be near was continually +visiting her when she saw his face in this way, without its vivid animation; +and now, to the rest of her grief, was added the regret that she had been +unable to control the violent outburst which had shaken him. She sat watching +him—her oval cheeks pallid, her eyes with the sorrowful brilliancy left +by young tears, her curls in as much disorder as a just-awakened +child’s—watching that emaciated face, where it might have been +imagined that a veil had been drawn never to be lifted, as if it were her dead +joy which had left her strong enough to live on in sorrow. And life at that +moment stretched before Mirah with more than a repetition of former sadness. +The shadow of the father was there, and more than that, a double +bereavement—of one living as well as one dead. +</p> + +<p> +But now the door was opened, and while none entered, a well-known voice said: +“Daniel Deronda—may he come in?” +</p> + +<p> +“Come! come!” said Mordecai, immediately rising with an irradiated +face and opened eyes—apparently as little surprised as if he had seen +Deronda in the morning, and expected this evening visit; while Mirah started up +blushing with confused, half-alarmed expectation. +</p> + +<p> +Yet when Deronda entered, the sight of him was like the clearness after rain: +no clouds to come could hinder the cherishing beam of that moment. As he held +out his right hand to Mirah, who was close to her brother’s left, he laid +his other hand on Mordecai’s right shoulder, and stood so a moment, +holding them both at once, uttering no word, but reading their faces, till he +said anxiously to Mirah, “Has anything happened?—any +trouble?” +</p> + +<p> +“Talk not of trouble now,” said Mordecai, saving her from the need +to answer. “There is joy in your face—let the joy be ours.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah thought, “It is for something he cannot tell us.” But they +all sat down, Deronda drawing a chair close in front of Mordecai. +</p> + +<p> +“That is true,” he said, emphatically. “I have a joy which +will remain to us even in the worst trouble. I did not tell you the reason of +my journey abroad, Mordecai, because—never mind—I went to learn my +parentage. And you were right. I am a Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +The two men clasped hands with a movement that seemed part of the flash from +Mordecai’s eyes, and passed through Mirah like an electric shock. But +Deronda went on without pause, speaking from Mordecai’s mind as much as +from his own, +</p> + +<p> +“We have the same people. Our souls have the same vocation. We shall not +be separated by life or by death.” +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s answer was uttered in Hebrew, and in no more than a loud +whisper. It was in the liturgical words which express the religious bond: +“Our God and the God of our fathers.” +</p> + +<p> +The weight of feeling pressed too strongly on that ready-winged speech which +usually moved in quick adaptation to every stirring of his fervor. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah fell on her knees by her brother’s side, and looked at his now +illuminated face, which had just before been so deathly. The action was an +inevitable outlet of the violent reversal from despondency to a gladness which +came over her as solemnly as if she had been beholding a religious rite. For +the moment she thought of the effect on her own life only through the effect on +her brother. +</p> + +<p> +“And it is not only that I am a Jew,” Deronda went on, enjoying one +of those rare moments when our yearnings and our acts can be completely one, +and the real we behold is our ideal good; “but I come of a strain that +has ardently maintained the fellowship of our race—a line of Spanish Jews +that has borne many students and men of practical power. And I possess what +will give us a sort of communion with them. My grandfather, Daniel Charisi, +preserved manuscripts, family records stretching far back, in the hope that +they would pass into the hands of his grandson. And now his hope is fulfilled, +in spite of attempts to thwart it by hiding my parentage from me. I possess the +chest containing them, with his own papers, and it is down below in this house. +I mean to leave it with you, Mordecai, that you may help me to study the +manuscripts. Some of them I can read easily enough—those in Spanish and +Italian. Others are in Hebrew, and, I think, Arabic; but there seem to be Latin +translations. I was only able to look at them cursorily while I stayed at +Mainz. We will study them together.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda ended with that bright smile which, beaming out from the habitual +gravity of his face, seemed a revelation (the reverse of the continual smile +that discredits all expression). But when this happy glance passed from +Mordecai to rest on Mirah, it acted like a little too much sunshine, and made +her change her attitude. She had knelt under an impulse with which any personal +embarrassment was incongruous, and especially any thoughts about how Mrs. +Grandcourt might stand to this new aspect of things—thoughts which made +her color under Deronda’s glance, and rise to take her seat again in her +usual posture of crossed hands and feet, with the effort to look as quiet as +possible. Deronda, equally sensitive, imagined that the feeling of which he was +conscious, had entered too much into his eyes, and had been repugnant to her. +He was ready enough to believe that any unexpected manifestation might spoil +her feeling toward him—and then his precious relation to brother and +sister would be marred. If Mirah could have no love for him, any advances of +love on his part would make her wretched in that continual contact with him +which would remain inevitable. +</p> + +<p> +While such feelings were pulsating quickly in Deronda and Mirah, Mordecai, +seeing nothing in his friend’s presence and words but a blessed +fulfillment, was already speaking with his old sense of enlargement in +utterance, +</p> + +<p> +“Daniel, from the first, I have said to you, we know not all the +pathways. Has there not been a meeting among them, as of the operations in one +soul, where an idea being born and breathing draws the elements toward it, and +is fed and glows? For all things are bound together in that Omnipresence which +is the place and habitation of the world, and events are of a glass +wherethrough our eyes see some of the pathways. And if it seems that the erring +and unloving wills of men have helped to prepare you, as Moses was prepared, to +serve your people the better, that depends on another order than the law which +must guide our footsteps. For the evil will of man makes not a people’s +good except by stirring the righteous will of man; and beneath all the clouds +with which our thought encompasses the Eternal, this is clear—that a +people can be blessed only by having counsellors and a multitude whose will +moves in obedience to the laws of justice and love. For see, now, it was your +loving will that made a chief pathway, and resisted the effect of evil; for, by +performing the duties of brotherhood to my sister, and seeking out her brother +in the flesh, your soul has been prepared to receive with gladness this message +of the Eternal, ‘behold the multitude of your brethren.’” +</p> + +<p> +“It is quite true that you and Mirah have been my teachers,” said +Deronda. “If this revelation had been made to me before I knew you both, +I think my mind would have rebelled against it. Perhaps I should have felt +then—‘If I could have chosen, I would not have been a Jew.’ +What I feel now is—that my whole being is a consent to the fact. But it +has been the gradual accord between your mind and mine which has brought about +that full consent.” +</p> + +<p> +At the moment Deronda was speaking, that first evening in the book-shop was +vividly in his remembrance, with all the struggling aloofness he had then felt +from Mordecai’s prophetic confidence. It was his nature to delight in +satisfying to the utmost the eagerly-expectant soul, which seemed to be looking +out from the face before him, like the long-enduring watcher who at last sees +the mountain signal-flame; and he went on with fuller fervor, +</p> + +<p> +“It is through your inspiration that I have discerned what may be my +life’s task. It is you who have given shape to what, I believe, was an +inherited yearning—the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in many +ancestors—thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my +grandfather. Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in +a city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and born +blind—the ancestral life would lie within them as a dim longing for +unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their inherited +frames would be like a cunningly-wrought musical instrument, never played on, +but quivering throughout in uneasy mysterious meanings of its intricate +structure that, under the right touch, gives music. Something like that, I +think, has been my experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always +longed for some ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of +a multitude—some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, +and not be striven for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a +task for me—to bind our race together in spite of heresy. You have said +to me—‘Our religion united us before it divided us—it made us +a people before it made Rabbanites and Karaites.’ I mean to try what can +be done with that union—I mean to work in your spirit. Failure will not +be ignoble, but it would be ignoble for me not to try.” +</p> + +<p> +“Even as my brother that fed at the breasts of my mother,” said +Mordecai, falling back in his chair with a look of exultant repose, as after +some finished labor. +</p> + +<p> +To estimate the effect of this ardent outpouring from Deronda we must remember +his former reserve, his careful avoidance of premature assent or delusive +encouragement, which gave to this decided pledge of himself a sacramental +solemnity, both for his own mind and Mordecai’s. On Mirah the effect was +equally strong, though with a difference: she felt a surprise which had no +place in her brother’s mind, at Deronda’s suddenly revealed sense +of nearness to them: there seemed to be a breaking of day around her which +might show her other facts unlike her forebodings in the darkness. But after a +moment’s silence Mordecai spoke again, +</p> + +<p> +“It has begun already—the marriage of our souls. It waits but the +passing away of this body, and then they who are betrothed shall unite in a +stricter bond, and what is mine shall be thine. Call nothing mine that I have +written, Daniel; for though our masters delivered rightly that everything +should be quoted in the name of him that said it—and their rule is +good—yet it does not exclude the willing marriage which melts soul into +soul, and makes thought fuller as the clear waters are made fuller, where the +fullness is inseparable and the clearness is inseparable. For I have judged +what I have written, and I desire the body that I gave my thought to pass away +as this fleshly body will pass; but let the thought be born again from our +fuller soul which shall be called yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must not ask me to promise that,” said Deronda, smiling. +“I must be convinced first of special reasons for it in the writings +themselves. And I am too backward a pupil yet. That blent transmission must go +on without any choice of ours; but what we can’t hinder must not make our +rule for what we ought to choose. I think our duty is faithful tradition where +we can attain it. And so you would insist for any one but yourself. Don’t +ask me to deny my spiritual parentage, when I am finding the clue of my life in +the recognition of natural parentage.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will ask for no promise till you see the reason,” said Mordecai. +“You have said the truth: I would obey the Master’s rule for +another. But for years my hope, nay, my confidence, has been, not that the +imperfect image of my thought, which is an ill-shaped work of the youthful +carver who has seen a heavenly pattern, and trembles in imitating the +vision—not that this should live, but that my vision and passion should +enter into yours—yea, into yours; for he whom I longed for afar, was he +not you whom I discerned as mine when you came near? Nevertheless, you shall +judge. For my soul is satisfied.” Mordecai paused, and then began in a +changed tone, reverting to previous suggestions from Deronda’s +disclosure: “What moved your parents——?” but he +immediately checked himself, and added, “Nay, I ask not that you should +tell me aught concerning others, unless it is your pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some time—gradually—you will know all,” said Deronda. +“But now tell me more about yourselves, and how the time has passed since +I went away. I am sure there has been some trouble. Mirah has been in distress +about something.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Mirah, but she immediately turned to her brother, appealing to him +to give the difficult answer. She hoped he would not think it necessary to tell +Deronda the facts about her father on such an evening as this. Just when +Deronda had brought himself so near, and identified himself with her brother, +it was cutting to her that he should hear of this disgrace clinging about them, +which seemed to have become partly his. To relieve herself she rose to take up +her hat and cloak, thinking she would go to her own room: perhaps they would +speak more easily when she had left them. But meanwhile Mordecai said, +</p> + +<p> +“To-day there has been a grief. A duty which seemed to have gone far into +the distance, has come back and turned its face upon us, and raised no +gladness—has raised a dread that we must submit to. But for the moment we +are delivered from any visible yoke. Let us defer speaking of it as if this +evening which is deepening about us were the beginning of the festival in which +we must offer the first fruits of our joy, and mingle no mourning with +them.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda divined the hinted grief, and left it in silence, rising as he saw +Mirah rise, and saying to her, “Are you going? I must leave almost +immediately—when I and Mrs. Adam have mounted the precious chest, and I +have delivered the key to Mordecai—no, Ezra,—may I call him Ezra +now? I have learned to think of him as Ezra since I have heard you call him +so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Please call him Ezra,” said Mirah, faintly, feeling a new timidity +under Deronda’s glance and near presence. Was there really something +different about him, or was the difference only in her feeling? The strangely +various emotions of the last few hours had exhausted her; she was faint with +fatigue and want of food. Deronda, observing her pallor and tremulousness, +longed to show more feeling, but dared not. She put out her hand with an effort +to smile, and then he opened the door for her. That was all. +</p> + +<p> +A man of refined pride shrinks from making a lover’s approaches to a +woman whose wealth or rank might make them appear presumptuous or low-motived; +but Deronda was finding a more delicate difficulty in a position which, +superficially taken, was the reverse of that—though to an ardent +reverential love, the loved woman has always a kind of wealth and rank which +makes a man keenly susceptible about the aspect of his addresses. +Deronda’s difficulty was what any generous man might have felt in some +degree; but it affected him peculiarly through his imaginative sympathy with a +mind in which gratitude was strong. Mirah, he knew, felt herself bound to him +by deep obligations, which to her sensibilities might give every wish of his +the aspect of a claim; and an inability to fulfill it would cause her a pain +continually revived by their inevitable communion in care of Ezra. Here were +fears not of pride only, but of extreme tenderness. Altogether, to have the +character of a benefactor seemed to Deronda’s anxiety an insurmountable +obstacle to confessing himself a lover, unless in some inconceivable way it +could be revealed to him that Mirah’s heart had accepted him beforehand. +And the agitation on his own account, too, was not small. +</p> + +<p> +Even a man who has practised himself in love-making till his own glibness has +rendered him sceptical, may at last be overtaken by the lover’s +awe—may tremble, stammer, and show other signs of recovered sensibility +no more in the range of his acquired talents than pins and needles after +numbness: how much more may that energetic timidity possess a man whose inward +history has cherished his susceptibilities instead of dulling them, and has +kept all the language of passion fresh and rooted as the lovely leafage about +the hill-side spring! +</p> + +<p> +As for Mirah her dear head lay on its pillow that night with its former +suspicions thrown out of shape but still present, like an ugly story which had +been discredited but not therefore dissipated. All that she was certain of +about Deronda seemed to prove that he had no such fetters upon him as she had +been allowing herself to believe in. His whole manner as well as his words +implied that there were no hidden bonds remaining to have any effect in +determining his future. But notwithstanding this plainly reasonable inference, +uneasiness still clung about Mirah’s heart. Deronda was not to blame, but +he had an importance for Mrs. Grandcourt which must give her some hold on him. +And the thought of any close confidence between them stirred the little biting +snake that had long lain curled and harmless in Mirah’s gentle bosom. +</p> + +<p> +But did she this evening feel as completely as before that her jealousy was no +less remote from any possibility for herself personally than if her human soul +had been lodged in the body of a fawn that Deronda had saved from the archers? +Hardly. Something indefinable had happened and made a difference. The soft warm +rain of blossoms which had fallen just where she was—did it really come +because she was there? What spirit was there among the boughs? +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0064"></a> +CHAPTER LXIV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> + “Questa montagna è tale,<br/> +Che sempre al cominciar di sotto è grave.<br/> +E quanto uom più va su e men fa male.”<br/> + —D<small>ANTE</small>: <i>Il Purgatorio</i>. +</p> + +<p> +It was not many days after her mother’s arrival that Gwendolen would +consent to remain at Genoa. Her desire to get away from that gem of the sea, +helped to rally her strength and courage. For what place, though it were the +flowery vale of Enna, may not the inward sense turn into a circle of punishment +where the flowers are no better than a crop of flame-tongues burning the soles +of our feet? +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never like to see the Mediterranean again,” said +Gwendolen, to her mother, who thought that she quite understood her +child’s feeling—even in her tacit prohibition of any express +reference to her late husband. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow, indeed, though compelled formally to regard this time as one of +severe calamity, was virtually enjoying her life more than she had ever done +since her daughter’s marriage. It seemed that her darling was brought +back to her not merely with all the old affection, but with a conscious +cherishing of her mother’s nearness, such as we give to a possession that +we have been on the brink of losing. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you there, mamma?” cried Gwendolen, in the middle of the night +(a bed had been made for her mother in the same room with hers), very much as +she would have done in her early girlhood, if she had felt frightened in lying +awake. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, dear; can I do anything for you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, thank you; only I like so to know you are there. Do you mind my +waking you?” (This question would hardly have been Gwendolen’s in +her early girlhood.) +</p> + +<p> +“I was not asleep, darling.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seemed not real that you were with me. I wanted to make it real. I +can bear things if you are with me. But you must not lie awake, anxious about +me. You must be happy now. You must let me make you happy now at +last—else what shall I do?” +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you, dear; I have the best happiness I can have, when you make +much of me.” +</p> + +<p> +But the next night, hearing that she was sighing and restless Mrs. Davilow +said, “Let me give you your sleeping-draught, Gwendolen.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, mamma, thank you; I don’t want to sleep.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would be so good for you to sleep more, my darling.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t say what would be good for me, mamma,” Gwendolen +answered, impetuously. “You don’t know what would be good for me. +You and my uncle must not contradict me and tell me anything is good for me +when I feel it is not good.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow was silent, not wondering that the poor child was irritable. +Presently Gwendolen said, +</p> + +<p> +“I was always naughty to you, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, dear, no.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I was,” said Gwendolen insistently. “It is because I +was always wicked that I am miserable now.” +</p> + +<p> +She burst into sobs and cries. The determination to be silent about all the +facts of her married life and its close, reacted in these escapes of enigmatic +excitement. +</p> + +<p> +But dim lights of interpretation were breaking on the mother’s mind +through the information that came from Sir Hugo to Mr. Gascoigne, and, with +some omissions, from Mr. Gascoigne to herself. The good-natured baronet, while +he was attending to all decent measures in relation to his nephew’s +death, and the possible washing ashore of the body, thought it the kindest +thing he could do to use his present friendly intercourse with the rector as an +opportunity for communicating with him, in the mildest way, the purport of +Grandcourt’s will, so as to save him the additional shock that would be +in store for him if he carried his illusions all the way home. Perhaps Sir Hugo +would have been communicable enough without that kind motive, but he really +felt the motive. He broke the unpleasant news to the rector by degrees: at +first he only implied his fear that the widow was not so splendidly provided +for as Mr. Gascoigne, nay, as the baronet himself had expected; and only at +last, after some previous vague reference to large claims on Grandcourt, he +disclosed the prior relations which, in the unfortunate absence of a legitimate +heir, had determined all the splendor in another direction. +</p> + +<p> +The rector was deeply hurt, and remembered, more vividly than he had ever done +before, how offensively proud and repelling the manners of the deceased had +been toward him—remembered also that he himself, in that interesting +period just before the arrival of the new occupant at Diplow, had received +hints of former entangling dissipations, and an undue addiction to pleasure, +though he had not foreseen that the pleasure which had probably, so to speak, +been swept into private rubbish-heaps, would ever present itself as an array of +live caterpillars, disastrous to the green meat of respectable people. But he +did not make these retrospective thoughts audible to Sir Hugo, or lower himself +by expressing any indignation on merely personal grounds, but behaved like a +man of the world who had become a conscientious clergyman. His first remark +was, +</p> + +<p> +“When a young man makes his will in health, he usually counts on living a +long while. Probably Mr. Grandcourt did not believe that this will would ever +have its present effect.” After a moment, he added, “The effect is +painful in more ways than one. Female morality is likely to suffer from this +marked advantage and prominence being given to illegitimate offspring.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, in point of fact,” said Sir Hugo, in his comfortable way, +“since the boy is there, this was really the best alternative for the +disposal of the estates. Grandcourt had nobody nearer than his cousin. And +it’s a chilling thought that you go out of this life only for the benefit +of a cousin. A man gets a little pleasure in making his will, if it’s for +the good of his own curly heads; but it’s a nuisance when you’re +giving the bequeathing to a used-up fellow like yourself, and one you +don’t care two straws for. It’s the next worse thing to having only +a life interest in your estates. No; I forgive Grandcourt for that part of his +will. But, between ourselves, what I don’t forgive him for, is the shabby +way he has provided for your niece—<i>our</i> niece, I will say—no +better a position than if she had been a doctor’s widow. Nothing grates +on me more than that posthumous grudgingness toward a wife. A man ought to have +some pride and fondness for his widow. <i>I</i> should, I know. I take it as a +test of a man, that he feels the easier about his death when he can think of +his wife and daughters being comfortable after it. I like that story of the +fellows in the Crimean war, who were ready to go to the bottom of the sea if +their widows were provided for.” +</p> + +<p> +“It has certainly taken me by surprise,” said Mr. Gascoigne, +“all the more because, as the one who stood in the place of father to my +niece, I had shown my reliance on Mr. Grandcourt’s apparent liberality in +money matters by making no claims for her beforehand. That seemed to me due to +him under the circumstances. Probably you think me blamable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not blamable exactly. I respect a man for trusting another. But take my +advice. If you marry another niece, though it may be to the Archbishop of +Canterbury, bind him down. Your niece can’t be married for the first time +twice over. And if he’s a good fellow, he’ll wish to be bound. But +as to Mrs. Grandcourt, I can only say that I feel my relation to her all the +nearer because I think that she has not been well treated. And I hope you will +urge her to rely on me as a friend.” +</p> + +<p> +Thus spake the chivalrous Sir Hugo, in his disgust at the young and beautiful +widow of a Mallinger Grandcourt being left with only two thousand a year and a +house in a coal-mining district. To the rector that income naturally appeared +less shabby and less accompanied with mortifying privations; but in this +conversation he had devoured a much keener sense than the baronet’s of +the humiliation cast over his niece, and also over her nearest friends, by the +conspicuous publishing of her husband’s relation to Mrs. Glasher. And +like all men who are good husbands and fathers, he felt the humiliation through +the minds of the women who would be chiefly affected by it; so that the +annoyance of first hearing the facts was far slighter than what he felt in +communicating them to Mrs. Davilow, and in anticipating Gwendolen’s +feeling whenever her mother saw fit to tell her of them. For the good rector +had an innocent conviction that his niece was unaware of Mrs. Glasher’s +existence, arguing with masculine soundness from what maidens and wives were +likely to know, do, and suffer, and having had a most imperfect observation of +the particular maiden and wife in question. Not so Gwendolen’s mother, +who now thought that she saw an explanation of much that had been enigmatic in +her child’s conduct and words before and after her engagement, concluding +that in some inconceivable way Gwendolen had been informed of this left-handed +marriage and the existence of the children. She trusted to opportunities that +would arise in moments of affectionate confidence before and during their +journey to England, when she might gradually learn how far the actual state of +things was clear to Gwendolen, and prepare her for anything that might be a +disappointment. But she was spared from devices on the subject. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you don’t expect that I am going to be rich and grand, +mamma,” said Gwendolen, not long after the rector’s communication; +“perhaps I shall have nothing at all.” +</p> + +<p> +She was dressed, and had been sitting long in quiet meditation. Mrs. Davilow +was startled, but said, after a moment’s reflection, +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, dear, you will have something. Sir Hugo knows all about the +will.” +</p> + +<p> +“That will not decide,” said Gwendolen, abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Surely, dear: Sir Hugo says you are to have two thousand a year and the +house at Gadsmere.” +</p> + +<p> +“What I have will depend on what I accept,” said Gwendolen. +“You and my uncle must not attempt to cross me and persuade me about +this. I will do everything I can do to make you happy, but in anything about my +husband I must not be interfered with. Is eight hundred a year enough for you, +mamma?” +</p> + +<p> +“More than enough, dear. You must not think of giving me so much.” +Mrs. Davilow paused a little, and then said, “Do you know who is to have +the estates and the rest of the money?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Gwendolen, waving her hand in dismissal of the subject. +“I know everything. It is all perfectly right, and I wish never to have +it mentioned.” +</p> + +<p> +The mother was silent, looked away, and rose to fetch a fan-screen, with a +slight flush on her delicate cheeks. Wondering, imagining, she did not like to +meet her daughter’s eyes, and sat down again under a sad constraint. What +wretchedness her child had perhaps gone through, which yet must remain as it +always had been, locked away from their mutual speech. But Gwendolen was +watching her mother with that new divination which experience had given her; +and in tender relenting at her own peremptoriness, said, “Come and sit +nearer to me, mamma, and don’t be unhappy.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Davilow did as she was told, but bit her lips in the vain attempt to +hinder smarting tears. Gwendolen leaned toward her caressingly and said, +“I mean to be very wise; I do, really. And good—oh, so good to you, +dear, old, sweet mamma, you won’t know me. Only you must not cry.” +</p> + +<p> +The resolve that Gwendolen had in her mind was that she would ask Deronda +whether she ought to accept any of her husband’s money—whether she +might accept what would enable her to provide for her mother. The poor thing +felt strong enough to do anything that would give her a higher place in +Deronda’s mind. +</p> + +<p> +An invitation that Sir Hugo pressed on her with kind urgency was that she and +Mrs. Davilow should go straight with him to Park Lane, and make his house their +abode as long as mourning and other details needed attending to in London. +Town, he insisted, was just then the most retired of places; and he proposed to +exert himself at once in getting all articles belonging to Gwendolen away from +the house in Grosvenor Square. No proposal could have suited her better than +this of staying a little while in Park Lane. It would be easy for her there to +have an interview with Deronda, if she only knew how to get a letter into his +hands, asking him to come to her. During the journey, Sir Hugo, having +understood that she was acquainted with the purport of her husband’s +will, ventured to talk before her and to her about her future arrangements, +referring here and there to mildly agreeable prospects as matters of course, +and otherwise shedding a decorous cheerfulness over her widowed position. It +seemed to him really the more graceful course for a widow to recover her +spirits on finding that her husband had not dealt as handsomely by her as he +might have done; it was the testator’s fault if he compromised all her +grief at his departure by giving a testamentary reason for it, so that she +might be supposed to look sad, not because he had left her, but because he had +left her poor. The baronet, having his kindliness doubly fanned by the +favorable wind on his fortunes and by compassion for Gwendolen, had become +quite fatherly in his behavior to her, called her “my dear,” and in +mentioning Gadsmere to Mr. Gascoigne, with its various advantages and +disadvantages, spoke of what “we” might do to make the best of that +property. Gwendolen sat by in pale silence while Sir Hugo, with his face turned +toward Mrs. Davilow or Mr. Gascoigne, conjectured that Mrs. Grandcourt might +perhaps prefer letting Gadsmere to residing there during any part of the year, +in which case he thought that it might be leased on capital terms to one of the +fellows engaged with the coal: Sir Hugo had seen enough of the place to know +that it was as comfortable and picturesque a box as any man need desire, +providing his desires were circumscribed within a coal area. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> shouldn’t mind about the soot myself,” said the +baronet, with that dispassionateness which belongs to the potential mood. +“Nothing is more healthy. And if one’s business lay there, Gadsmere +would be a paradise. It makes quite a feature in Scrogg’s history of the +county, with the little tower and the fine piece of water—the prettiest +print in the book.” +</p> + +<p> +“A more important place than Offendene, I suppose?” said Mr. +Gascoigne. +</p> + +<p> +“Much,” said the baronet, decisively. “I was there with my +poor brother—it is more than a quarter of a century ago, but I remember +it very well. The rooms may not be larger, but the grounds are on a different +scale.” +</p> + +<p> +“Our poor dear Offendene is empty after all,” said Mrs. Davilow. +“When it came to the point, Mr. Haynes declared off, and there has been +no one to take it since. I might as well have accepted Lord Brackenshaw’s +kind offer that I should remain in it another year rent-free: for I should have +kept the place aired and warmed.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you’ve something snug instead,” said Sir Hugo. +</p> + +<p> +“A little too snug,” said Mr. Gascoigne, smiling at his +sister-in-law. “You are rather thick upon the ground.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen had turned with a changed glance when her mother spoke of Offendene +being empty. This conversation passed during one of the long unaccountable +pauses often experienced in foreign trains at some country station. There was a +dreamy, sunny stillness over the hedgeless fields stretching to the boundary of +poplars; and to Gwendolen the talk within the carriage seemed only to make the +dreamland larger with an indistinct region of coal-pits, and a purgatorial +Gadsmere which she would never visit; till at her mother’s words, this +mingled, dozing view seemed to dissolve and give way to a more wakeful vision +of Offendene and Pennicote under their cooler lights. She saw the gray +shoulders of the downs, the cattle-specked fields, the shadowy plantations with +rutted lanes where the barked timber lay for a wayside seat, the neatly-clipped +hedges on the road from the parsonage to Offendene, the avenue where she was +gradually discerned from the window, the hall-door opening, and her mother or +one of the troublesome sisters coming out to meet her. All that brief +experience of a quiet home which had once seemed a dullness to be fled from, +now came back to her as a restful escape, a station where she found the breath +of morning and the unreproaching voice of birds after following a lure through +a long Satanic masquerade, which she had entered on with an intoxicated belief +in its disguises, and had seen the end of in shrieking fear lest she herself +had become one of the evil spirits who were dropping their human mummery and +hissing around her with serpent tongues. +</p> + +<p> +In this way Gwendolen’s mind paused over Offendene and made it the scene +of many thoughts; but she gave no further outward sign of interest in this +conversation, any more than in Sir Hugo’s opinion on the telegraphic +cable or her uncle’s views of the Church Rate Abolition Bill. What +subjects will not our talk embrace in leisurely day-journeying from Genoa to +London? Even strangers, after glancing from China to Peru and opening their +mental stores with a liberality threatening a mutual impression of poverty on +any future meeting, are liable to become excessively confidential. But the +baronet and the rector were under a still stronger pressure toward cheerful +communication: they were like acquaintances compelled to a long drive in a +mourning-coach who having first remarked that the occasion is a melancholy one, +naturally proceed to enliven it by the most miscellaneous discourse. “I +don’t mind telling <i>you</i>,” said Sir Hugo to the rector, in +mentioning some private details; while the rector, without saying so, did not +mind telling the baronet about his sons, and the difficulty of placing them in +the world. By the dint of discussing all persons and things within +driving-reach of Diplow, Sir Hugo got himself wrought to a pitch of interest in +that former home, and of conviction that it was his pleasant duty to regain and +strengthen his personal influence in the neighborhood, that made him declare +his intention of taking his family to the place for a month or two before the +autumn was over; and Mr. Gascoigne cordially rejoiced in that prospect. +Altogether, the journey was continued and ended with mutual liking between the +male fellow-travellers. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Gwendolen sat by like one who had visited the spirit-world and was +full to the lips of an unutterable experience that threw a strange unreality +over all the talk she was hearing of her own and the world’s business; +and Mrs. Davilow was chiefly occupied in imagining what her daughter was +feeling, and in wondering what was signified by her hinted doubt whether she +would accept her husband’s bequest. Gwendolen in fact had before her the +unsealed wall of an immediate purpose shutting off every other resolution. How +to scale the wall? She wanted again to see and consult Deronda, that she might +secure herself against any act he would disapprove. Would her remorse have +maintained its power within her, or would she have felt absolved by secrecy, if +it had not been for that outer conscience which was made for her by Deronda? It +is hard to say how much we could forgive ourselves if we were secure from +judgment by another whose opinion is the breathing-medium of all our +joy—who brings to us with close pressure and immediate sequence that +judgment of the Invisible and Universal which self-flattery and the +world’s tolerance would easily melt and disperse. In this way our brother +may be in the stead of God to us, and his opinion which has pierced even to the +joints and marrow, may be our virtue in the making. That mission of Deronda to +Gwendolen had begun with what she had felt to be his judgment of her at the +gaming-table. He might easily have spoiled it:—much of our lives is spent +in marring our own influence and turning others’ belief in us into a +widely concluding unbelief which they call knowledge of the world, while it is +really disappointment in you or me. Deronda had not spoiled his mission. +</p> + +<p> +But Gwendolen had forgotten to ask him for his address in case she wanted to +write, and her only way of reaching him was through Sir Hugo. She was not in +the least blind to the construction that all witnesses might put on her giving +signs of dependence on Deronda, and her seeking him more than he sought her: +Grandcourt’s rebukes had sufficiently enlightened her pride. But the +force, the tenacity of her nature had thrown itself into that dependence, and +she would no more let go her hold on Deronda’s help, or deny herself the +interview her soul needed, because of witnesses, than if she had been in prison +in danger of being condemned to death. When she was in Park Lane and knew that +the baronet would be going down to the Abbey immediately (just to see his +family for a couple of days and then return to transact needful business for +Gwendolen), she said to him without any air of hesitation, while her mother was +present, +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Hugo, I wish to see Mr. Deronda again as soon as possible. I +don’t know his address. Will you tell it me, or let him know that I want +to see him?” +</p> + +<p> +A quick thought passed across Sir Hugo’s face, but made no difference to +the ease with which he said, “Upon my word, I don’t know whether +he’s at his chambers or the Abbey at this moment. But I’ll make +sure of him. I’ll send a note now to his chambers telling him to come, +and if he’s at the Abbey I can give him your message and send him up at +once. I am sure he will want to obey your wish,” the baronet ended, with +grave kindness, as if nothing could seem to him more in the appropriate course +of things than that she should send such a message. +</p> + +<p> +But he was convinced that Gwendolen had a passionate attachment to Deronda, the +seeds of which had been laid long ago, and his former suspicion now recurred to +him with more strength than ever, that her feeling was likely to lead her into +imprudences—in which kind-hearted Sir Hugo was determined to screen and +defend her as far as lay in his power. To him it was as pretty a story as need +be that this fine creature and his favorite Dan should have turned out to be +formed for each other, and that the unsuitable husband should have made his +exit in such excellent time. Sir Hugo liked that a charming woman should be +made as happy as possible. In truth, what most vexed his mind in this matter at +present was a doubt whether the too lofty and inscrutable Dan had not got some +scheme or other in his head, which would prove to be dearer to him than the +lovely Mrs. Grandcourt, and put that neatly-prepared marriage with her out of +the question. It was among the usual paradoxes of feeling that Sir Hugo, who +had given his fatherly cautions to Deronda against too much tenderness in his +relations with the bride, should now feel rather irritated against him by the +suspicion that he had not fallen in love as he ought to have done. Of course +all this thinking on Sir Hugo’s part was eminently premature, only a +fortnight or so after Grandcourt’s death. But it is the trick of thinking +to be either premature or behind-hand. +</p> + +<p> +However, he sent the note to Deronda’s chambers, and it found him there. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0065"></a> +CHAPTER LXV.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,<br/> +Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!”<br/> + —M<small>ILTON</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda did not obey Gwendolen’s new summons without some agitation. Not +his vanity, but his keen sympathy made him susceptible to the danger that +another’s heart might feel larger demands on him than he would be able to +fulfill; and it was no longer a matter of argument with him, but of penetrating +consciousness, that Gwendolen’s soul clung to his with a passionate need. +We do not argue the existence of the anger or the scorn that thrills through us +in a voice; we simply feel it, and it admits of no disproof. Deronda felt this +woman’s destiny hanging on his over a precipice of despair. Any one who +knows him cannot wonder at his inward confession, that if all this had happened +little more than a year ago, he would hardly have asked himself whether he +loved her; the impetuous determining impulse which would have moved him would +have been to save her from sorrow, to shelter her life forevermore from the +dangers of loneliness, and carry out to the last the rescue he had begun in +that monitory redemption of the necklace. But now, love and duty had thrown +other bonds around him, and that impulse could no longer determine his life; +still, it was present in him as a compassionate yearning, a painful quivering +at the very imagination of having again and again to meet the appeal of her +eyes and words. The very strength of the bond, the certainty of the resolve, +that kept him asunder from her, made him gaze at her lot apart with the more +aching pity. +</p> + +<p> +He awaited her coming in the back drawing-room—part of that white and +crimson space where they had sat together at the musical party, where Gwendolen +had said for the first time that her lot depended on his not forsaking her, and +her appeal had seemed to melt into the melodic cry—<i>Per pietà non dirmi +addio</i>. But the melody had come from Mirah’s dear voice. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda walked about this room, which he had for years known by heart, with a +strange sense of metamorphosis in his own life. The familiar objects around +him, from Lady Mallinger’s gently smiling portrait to the also human and +urbane faces of the lions on the pilasters of the chimney-piece, seemed almost +to belong to a previous state of existence which he was revisiting in memory +only, not in reality; so deep and transforming had been the impressions he had +lately experienced, so new were the conditions under which he found himself in +the house he had been accustomed to think of as a home—standing with his +hat in his hand awaiting the entrance of a young creature whose life had also +been undergoing a transformation—a tragic transformation toward a +wavering result, in which he felt with apprehensiveness that his own action was +still bound up. +</p> + +<p> +But Gwendolen was come in, looking changed; not only by her mourning dress, but +by a more satisfied quietude of expression than he had seen in her face at +Genoa. Her satisfaction was that Deronda was there; but there was no smile +between them as they met and clasped hands; each was full of +remembrance—full of anxious prevision. She said, “It was good of +you to come. Let us sit down,” immediately seating herself in the nearest +chair. He placed himself opposite to her. +</p> + +<p> +“I asked you to come because I want you to tell me what I ought to +do,” she began, at once. “Don’t be afraid of telling me what +you think is right, because it seems hard. I have made up my mind to do it. I +was afraid once of being poor; I could not bear to think of being under other +people; and that was why I did something—why I married. I have borne +worse things now. I think I could bear to be poor, if you think I ought. Do you +know about my husband’s will?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Sir Hugo told me,” said Deronda, already guessing the +question she had to ask. +</p> + +<p> +“Ought I to take anything he has left me? I will tell you what I have +been thinking,” said Gwendolen, with a more nervous eagerness. +“Perhaps you may not quite know that I really did think a good deal about +my mother when I married. I <i>was</i> selfish, but I did love her, and feel +about her poverty; and what comforted me most at first, when I was miserable, +was her being better off because I had married. The thing that would be hardest +to me now would be to see her in poverty again; and I have been thinking that +if I took enough to provide for her, and no more—nothing for +myself—it would not be wrong; for I was very precious to my +mother—and he took me from her—and he meant—and if she had +known—” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen broke off. She had been preparing herself for this interview by +thinking of hardly anything else than this question of right toward her mother; +but the question had carried with it thoughts and reasons which it was +impossible for her to utter, and these perilous remembrances swarmed between +her words, making her speech more and more agitated and tremulous. She looked +down helplessly at her hands, now unladen of all rings except her wedding-ring. +</p> + +<p> +“Do not hurt yourself by speaking of that,” said Deronda, tenderly. +“There is no need; the case is very simple. I think I can hardly judge +wrongly about it. You consult me because I am the only person to whom you have +confided the most painful part of your experience: and I can understand your +scruples.” He did not go on immediately, waiting for her to recover +herself. The silence seemed to Gwendolen full of the tenderness that she heard +in his voice, and she had courage to lift up her eyes and look at him as he +said, “You are conscious of something which you feel to be a crime toward +one who is dead. You think that you have forfeited all claim as a wife. You +shrink from taking what was his. You want to keep yourself from profiting by +his death. Your feeling even urges you to some self-punishment—some +scourging of the self that disobeyed your better will—the will that +struggled against temptation. I have known something of that myself. Do I +understand you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—at least, I want to be good—not like what I have +been,” said Gwendolen. “I will try to bear what you think I ought +to bear. I have tried to tell you the worst about myself. What ought I to +do?” +</p> + +<p> +“If no one but yourself were concerned in this question of income,” +said Deronda, “I should hardly dare to urge you against any remorseful +prompting; but I take as a guide now, your feeling about Mrs. Davilow, which +seems to me quite just. I cannot think that your husband’s dues even to +yourself are nullified by any act you have committed. He voluntarily entered +into your life, and affected its course in what is always the most momentous +way. But setting that aside, it was due from him in his position that he should +provide for your mother, and he of course understood that if this will took +effect she would share the provision he had made for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has had eight hundred a year. What I thought of was to take that and +leave the rest,” said Gwendolen. She had been so long inwardly arguing +for this as a permission, that her mind could not at once take another +attitude. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it is not your duty to fix a limit in that way,” said +Deronda. “You would be making a painful enigma for Mrs. Davilow; an +income from which you shut yourself out must be embittered to her. And your own +course would become too difficult. We agreed at Genoa that the burden on your +conscience is one what no one ought to be admitted to the knowledge of. The +future beneficence of your life will be best furthered by your saving all +others from the pain of that knowledge. In my opinion you ought simply to abide +by the provisions of your husband’s will, and let your remorse tell only +on the use that you will make of your monetary independence.” +</p> + +<p> +In uttering the last sentence Deronda automatically took up his hat which he +had laid on the floor beside him. Gwendolen, sensitive to his slightest +movement, felt her heart giving a great leap, as if it too had a consciousness +of its own, and would hinder him from going: in the same moment she rose from +her chair, unable to reflect that the movement was an acceptance of his +apparent intention to leave her; and Deronda, of course, also rose, advancing a +little. +</p> + +<p> +“I will do what you tell me,” said Gwendolen, hurriedly; “but +what else shall I do?” No other than these simple words were possible to +her; and even these were too much for her in a state of emotion where her proud +secrecy was disenthroned: as the childlike sentences fell from her lips they +reacted on her like a picture of her own helplessness, and she could not check +the sob which sent the large tears to her eyes. Deronda, too, felt a crushing +pain; but imminent consequences were visible to him, and urged him to the +utmost exertion of conscience. When she had pressed her tears away, he said, in +a gently questioning tone, +</p> + +<p> +“You will probably be soon going with Mrs. Davilow into the +country.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, in a week or ten days.” Gwendolen waited an instant, turning +her eyes vaguely toward the window, as if looking at some imagined prospect. +“I want to be kind to them all—they can be happier than I can. Is +that the best I can do?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think so. It is a duty that cannot be doubtful,” said Deronda. +He paused a little between his sentences, feeling a weight of anxiety on all +his words. “Other duties will spring from it. Looking at your life as a +debt may seem the dreariest view of things at a distance; but it cannot really +be so. What makes life dreary is the want of motive: but once beginning to act +with that penitential, loving purpose you have in your mind, there will be +unexpected satisfactions—there will be newly-opening +needs—continually coming to carry you on from day to day. You will find +your life growing like a plant.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen turned her eyes on him with the look of one athirst toward the sound +of unseen waters. Deronda felt the look as if she had been stretching her arms +toward him from a forsaken shore. His voice took an affectionate imploringness +when he said, +</p> + +<p> +“This sorrow, which has cut down to the root, has come to you while you +are so young—try to think of it not as a spoiling of your life, but as a +preparation for it. Let it be a preparation——” Any one +overhearing his tones would have thought he was entreating for his own +happiness. “See! you have been saved from the worst evils that might have +come from your marriage, which you feel was wrong. You have had a vision of +injurious, selfish action—a vision of possible degradation; think that a +severe angel, seeing you along the road of error, grasped you by the wrist and +showed you the horror of the life you must avoid. And it has come to you in +your spring-time. Think of it as a preparation. You can, you will, be among the +best of women, such as make others glad that they were born.” +</p> + +<p> +The words were like the touch of a miraculous hand to Gwendolen. Mingled +emotions streamed through her frame with a strength that seemed the beginning +of a new existence, having some new power or other which stirred in her +vaguely. So pregnant is the divine hope of moral recovery with the energy that +fulfills it. So potent in us is the infused action of another soul, before +which we bow in complete love. But the new existence seemed inseparable from +Deronda: the hope seemed to make his presence permanent. It was not her +thought, that he loved her, and would cling to her—a thought would have +tottered with improbability; it was her spiritual breath. For the first time +since that terrible moment on the sea a flush rose and spread over her cheek, +brow and neck, deepened an instant or two, and then gradually disappeared. She +did not speak. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda advanced and put out his hand, saying, “I must not weary +you.” +</p> + +<p> +She was startled by the sense that he was going, and put her hand in his, still +without speaking. +</p> + +<p> +“You look ill yet—unlike yourself,” he added, while he held +her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t sleep much,” she answered, with some return of her +dispirited manner. “Things repeat themselves in me so. They come +back—they will all come back,” she ended, shudderingly, a chill +fear threatening her. +</p> + +<p> +“By degrees they will be less insistent,” said Deronda. He could +not drop her hand or move away from her abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Hugo says he shall come to stay at Diplow,” said Gwendolen, +snatching at previously intended words which had slipped away from her. +“You will come too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Probably,” said Deronda, and then feeling that the word was cold, +he added, correctively, “Yes, I shall come,” and then released her +hand, with the final friendly pressure of one who has virtually said good-bye. +</p> + +<p> +“And not again here, before I leave town?” said Gwendolen, with +timid sadness, looking as pallid as ever. +</p> + +<p> +What could Deronda say? “If I can be of any use—if you wish +me—certainly I will.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must wish it,” said Gwendolen, impetuously; “you know I +must wish it. What strength have I? Who else is there?” Again a sob was +rising. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt a pang, which showed itself in his face. He looked miserable as he +said, “I will certainly come.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen perceived the change in his face; but the intense relief of expecting +him to come again could not give way to any other feeling, and there was a +recovery of the inspired hope and courage in her. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be unhappy about me,” she said, in a tone of +affectionate assurance. “I shall remember your words—every one of +them. I shall remember what you believe about me; I shall try.” +</p> + +<p> +She looked at him firmly, and put out her hand again as if she had forgotten +what had passed since those words of his which she promised to remember. But +there was no approach to a smile on her lips. She had never smiled since her +husband’s death. When she stood still and in silence, she looked like a +melancholy statue of the Gwendolen whose laughter had once been so ready when +others were grave. +</p> + +<p> +It is only by remembering the searching anguish which had changed the aspect of +the world for her that we can understand her behavior to Deronda—the +unreflecting openness, nay, the importunate pleading, with which she expressed +her dependence on him. Considerations such as would have filled the minds of +indifferent spectators could not occur to her, any more than if flames had been +mounting around her, and she had flung herself into his open arms and clung +about his neck that he might carry her into safety. She identified him with the +struggling regenerative process in her which had begun with his action. Is it +any wonder that she saw her own necessity reflected in his feeling? She was in +that state of unconscious reliance and expectation which is a common experience +with us when we are preoccupied with our own trouble or our own purposes. We +diffuse our feeling over others, and count on their acting from our motives. +Her imagination had not been turned to a future union with Deronda by any other +than the spiritual tie which had been continually strengthening; but also it +had not been turned toward a future separation from him. Love-making and +marriage—how could they now be the imagery in which poor +Gwendolen’s deepest attachment could spontaneously clothe itself? Mighty +Love had laid his hand upon her; but what had he demanded of her? Acceptance of +rebuke—the hard task of self-change—confession—endurance. If +she cried toward him, what then? She cried as the child cries whose little feet +have fallen backward—cried to be taken by the hand, lest she should lose +herself. +</p> + +<p> +The cry pierced Deronda. What position could have been more difficult for a man +full of tenderness, yet with clear foresight? He was the only creature who knew +the real nature of Gwendolen’s trouble: to withdraw himself from any +appeal of hers would be to consign her to a dangerous loneliness. He could not +reconcile himself to the cruelty of apparently rejecting her dependence on him; +and yet in the nearer or farther distance he saw a coming wrench, which all +present strengthening of their bond would make the harder. +</p> + +<p> +He was obliged to risk that. He went once and again to Park Lane before +Gwendolen left; but their interviews were in the presence of Mrs. Davilow, and +were therefore less agitating. Gwendolen, since she had determined to accept +her income, had conceived a project which she liked to speak of: it was to +place her mother and sisters with herself in Offendene again, and, as she said, +piece back her life unto that time when they first went there, and when +everything was happiness about her, only she did not know it. The idea had been +mentioned to Sir Hugo, who was going to exert himself about the letting of +Gadsmere for a rent which would more than pay the rent of Offendene. All this +was told to Deronda, who willingly dwelt on a subject that seemed to give some +soothing occupation to Gwendolen. He said nothing and she asked nothing, of +what chiefly occupied himself. Her mind was fixed on his coming to Diplow +before the autumn was over; and she no more thought of the Lapidoths—the +little Jewess and her brother—as likely to make a difference in her +destiny, than of the fermenting political and social leaven which was making a +difference in the history of the world. In fact poor Gwendolen’s memory +had been stunned, and all outside the lava-lit track of her troubled +conscience, and her effort to get deliverance from it, lay for her in dim +forgetfulness. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0066"></a> +CHAPTER LXVI.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“One day still fierce ’mid many a day struck calm.”<br/> + —B<small>ROWNING</small>: <i>The King and the +Book</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Ezra and Mirah, whom Gwendolen did not include in her thinking about +Deronda, were having their relation to him drawn closer and brought into fuller +light. +</p> + +<p> +The father Lapidoth had quitted his daughter at the doorstep, ruled by that +possibility of staking something in play or betting which presented itself with +the handling of any sum beyond the price of staying actual hunger, and left no +care for alternative prospects or resolutions. Until he had lost everything he +never considered whether he would apply to Mirah again or whether he would +brave his son’s presence. In the first moment he had shrunk from +encountering Ezra as he would have shrunk from any other situation of +disagreeable constraint; and the possession of Mirah’s purse was enough +to banish the thought of future necessities. The gambling appetite is more +absolutely dominant than bodily hunger, which can be neutralized by an +emotional or intellectual excitation; but the passion for watching +chances—the habitual suspensive poise of the mind in actual or imaginary +play—nullifies the susceptibility of other excitation. In its final, +imperious stage, it seems the unjoyous dissipation of demons, seeking diversion +on the burning marl of perdition. +</p> + +<p> +But every form of selfishness, however abstract and unhuman, requires the +support of at least one meal a day; and though Lapidoth’s appetite for +food and drink was extremely moderate, he had slipped into a shabby, unfriendly +form of life in which the appetite could not be satisfied without some ready +money. When, in a brief visit at a house which announced “Pyramids” +on the window-blind, he had first doubled and trebled and finally lost +Mirah’s thirty shillings, he went out with her empty purse in his pocket, +already balancing in his mind whether he should get another immediate stake by +pawning the purse, or whether he should go back to her giving himself a good +countenance by restoring the purse, and declaring that he had used the money in +paying a score that was standing against him. Besides, among the sensibilities +still left strong in Lapidoth was the sensibility to his own claims, and he +appeared to himself to have a claim on any property his children might possess, +which was stronger than the justice of his son’s resentment. After all, +to take up his lodging with his children was the best thing he could do; and +the more he thought of meeting Ezra the less he winced from it, his imagination +being more wrought on by the chances of his getting something into his pocket +with safety and without exertion, than by the threat of a private humiliation. +Luck had been against him lately; he expected it to turn—and might not +the turn begin with some opening of supplies which would present itself through +his daughter’s affairs and the good friends she had spoken of? Lapidoth +counted on the fascination of his cleverness—an old habit of mind which +early experience had sanctioned: and it is not only women who are unaware of +their diminished charm, or imagine that they can feign not to be worn out. +</p> + +<p> +The result of Lapidoth’s rapid balancing was that he went toward the +little square in Brompton with the hope that, by walking about and watching, he +might catch sight of Mirah going out or returning, in which case his entrance +into the house would be made easier. But it was already evening—the +evening of the day next to that which he had first seen her; and after a little +waiting, weariness made him reflect that he might ring, and if she were not at +home he might ask the time at which she was expected. But on coming near the +house he knew that she was at home: he heard her singing. +</p> + +<p> +Mirah, seated at the piano, was pouring forth “<i>Herz, mein +Herz</i>,” while Ezra was listening with his eyes shut, when Mrs. Adam +opened the door, and said in some embarrassment, +</p> + +<p> +“A gentleman below says he is your father, miss.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will go down to him,” said Mirah, starting up immediately and +looking at her brother. +</p> + +<p> +“No, Mirah, not so,” said Ezra, with decision. “Let him come +up, Mrs. Adam.” +</p> + +<p> +Mirah stood with her hands pinching each other, and feeling sick with anxiety, +while she continued looking at Ezra, who had also risen, and was evidently much +shaken. But there was an expression in his face which she had never seen +before; his brow was knit, his lips seemed hardened with the same severity that +gleamed from his eye. +</p> + +<p> +When Mrs. Adam opened the door to let in the father, she could not help casting +a look at the group, and after glancing from the younger man to the elder, said +to herself as she closed the door, “Father, sure enough.” The +likeness was that of outline, which is always most striking at the first +moment; the expression had been wrought into the strongest contrasts by such +hidden or inconspicuous differences as can make the genius of a Cromwell within +the outward type of a father who was no more than a respectable parishioner. +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth had put on a melancholy expression beforehand, but there was some real +wincing in his frame as he said, +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Ezra, my boy, you hardly know me after so many years.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know you—too well—father,” said Ezra, with a slow +biting solemnity which made the word father a reproach. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, you are not pleased with me. I don’t wonder at it. Appearances +have been against me. When a man gets into straits he can’t do just as he +would by himself or anybody else, <i>I</i>’ve suffered enough, I +know,” said Lapidoth, quickly. In speaking he always recovered some +glibness and hardihood; and now turning toward Mirah, he held out her purse, +saying, “Here’s your little purse, my dear. I thought you’d +be anxious about it because of that bit of writing. I’ve emptied it, +you’ll see, for I had a score to pay for food and lodging. I knew you +would like me to clear myself, and here I stand—without a single farthing +in my pocket—at the mercy of my children. You can turn me out if you +like, without getting a policeman. Say the word, Mirah; say, ‘Father, +I’ve had enough of you; you made a pet of me, and spent your all on me, +when I couldn’t have done without you; but I can do better without you +now,’—say that, and I’m gone out like a spark. I shan’t +spoil your pleasure again.” The tears were in his voice as usual, before +he had finished. +</p> + +<p> +“You know I could never say it, father,” answered Mirah, with not +the less anguish because she felt the falsity of everything in his speech +except the implied wish to remain in the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah, my sister, leave us!” said Ezra, in a tone of authority. +</p> + +<p> +She looked at her brother falteringly, beseechingly—in awe of his +decision, yet unable to go without making a plea for this father who was like +something that had grown in her flesh with pain. She went close to her brother, +and putting her hand in his, said, in a low voice, but not so low as to be +unheard by Lapidoth, “Remember, Ezra—you said my mother would not +have shut him out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Trust me, and go,” said Ezra. +</p> + +<p> +She left the room, but after going a few steps up the stairs, sat down with a +palpitating heart. If, because of anything her brother said to him, he went +away— +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth had some sense of what was being prepared for him in his son’s +mind, but he was beginning to adjust himself to the situation and find a point +of view that would give him a cool superiority to any attempt at humiliating +him. This haggard son, speaking as from a sepulchre, had the incongruity which +selfish levity learns to see in suffering, and until the unrelenting pincers of +disease clutch its own flesh. Whatever preaching he might deliver must be taken +for a matter of course, as a man finding shelter from hail in an open cathedral +might take a little religious howling that happened to be going on there. +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth was not born with this sort of callousness: he had achieved it. +</p> + +<p> +“This home that we have here,” Ezra began, “is maintained +partly by the generosity of a beloved friend who supports me, and partly by the +labors of my sister, who supports herself. While we have a home we will not +shut you out from it. We will not cast you out to the mercy of your vices. For +you are our father, and though you have broken your bond, we acknowledge ours. +But I will never trust you. You absconded with money, leaving your debts +unpaid; you forsook my mother; you robbed her of her little child and broke her +heart; you have become a gambler, and where shame and conscience were there +sits an insatiable desire; you were ready to sell my sister—you had sold +her, but the price was denied you. The man who has done these things must never +expect to be trusted any more. We will share our food with you—you shall +have a bed, and clothing. We will do this duty to you, because you are our +father. But you will never be trusted. You are an evil man: you made the misery +of our mother. That such a man is our father is a brand on our flesh which will +not cease smarting. But the Eternal has laid it upon us; and though human +justice were to flog you for crimes, and your body fell helpless before the +public scorn, we would still say, ‘This is our father; make way, that we +may carry him out of your sight.’” +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth, in adjusting himself to what was coming, had not been able to foresee +the exact intensity of the lightning or the exact course it would +take—that it would not fall outside his frame but through it. He could +not foresee what was so new to him as this voice from the soul of his son. It +touched that spring of hysterical excitability which Mirah used to witness in +him when he sat at home and sobbed. As Ezra ended, Lapidoth threw himself into +a chair and cried like a woman, burying his face against the table—and +yet, strangely, while this hysterical crying was an inevitable reaction in him +under the stress of his son’s words, it was also a conscious resource in +a difficulty; just as in early life, when he was a bright-faced curly young +man, he had been used to avail himself of this subtly-poised physical +susceptibility to turn the edge of resentment or disapprobation. +</p> + +<p> +Ezra sat down again and said nothing—exhausted by the shock of his own +irrepressible utterance, the outburst of feelings which for years he had borne +in solitude and silence. His thin hands trembled on the arms of the chair; he +would hardly have found voice to answer a question; he felt as if he had taken +a step toward beckoning Death. Meanwhile Mirah’s quick expectant ear +detected a sound which her heart recognized: she could not stay out of the room +any longer. But on opening the door her immediate alarm was for Ezra, and it +was to his side that she went, taking his trembling hand in hers, which he +pressed and found support in; but he did not speak or even look at her. The +father with his face buried was conscious that Mirah had entered, and presently +lifted up his head, pressed his handkerchief against his eyes, put out his hand +toward her, and said with plaintive hoarseness, “Good-bye, Mirah; your +father will not trouble you again. He deserves to die like a dog by the +roadside, and he will. If your mother had lived, she would have forgiven +me—thirty-four years ago I put the ring on her finger under the +<i>Chuppa</i>, and we were made one. She would have forgiven me, and we should +have spent our old age together. But I haven’t deserved it. +Good-bye.” +</p> + +<p> +He rose from the chair as he said the last “good-bye.” Mirah had +put her hand in his and held him. She was not tearful and grieving, but +frightened and awe-struck, as she cried out, +</p> + +<p> +“No, father, no!” Then turning to her brother, “Ezra, you +have not forbidden him?—Stay, father, and leave off wrong things. Ezra, I +cannot bear it. How can I say to my father, ‘Go and die!’” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not said it,” Ezra answered, with great effort. “I +have said, stay and be sheltered.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you will stay, father—and be taken care of—and come +with me,” said Mirah, drawing him toward the door. +</p> + +<p> +This was really what Lapidoth wanted. And for the moment he felt a sort of +comfort in recovering his daughter’s dutiful attendance, that made a +change of habits seem possible to him. She led him down to the parlor below, +and said, +</p> + +<p> +“This is my sitting-room when I am not with Ezra, and there is a bedroom +behind which shall be yours. You will stay and be good, father. Think that you +are come back to my mother, and that she has forgiven you—she speaks to +you through me.” Mirah’s tones were imploring, but she could not +give one of her former caresses. +</p> + +<p> +Lapidoth quickly recovered his composure, began to speak to Mirah of the +improvement in her voice, and other easy subjects, and when Mrs. Adam came to +lay out his supper, entered into converse with her in order to show her that he +was not a common person, though his clothes were just now against him. +</p> + +<p> +But in his usual wakefulness at night, he fell to wondering what money Mirah +had by her, and went back over old Continental hours at <i>Roulette</i>, +reproducing the method of his play, and the chances that had frustrated it. He +had had his reasons for coming to England, but for most things it was a cursed +country. +</p> + +<p> +These were the stronger visions of the night with Lapidoth, and not the worn +frame of his ireful son uttering a terrible judgment. Ezra did pass across the +gaming-table, and his words were audible; but he passed like an insubstantial +ghost, and his words had the heart eaten out of them by numbers and movements +that seemed to make the very tissue of Lapidoth’s consciousness. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0067"></a> +CHAPTER LXVII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +The godhead in us wrings our noble deeds<br/> +From our reluctant selves. +</p> + +<p> +It was an unpleasant surprise to Deronda when he returned from the Abbey to +find the undesirable father installed in the lodgings at Brompton. Mirah had +felt it necessary to speak of Deronda to her father, and even to make him as +fully aware as she could of the way in which the friendship with Ezra had +begun, and of the sympathy which had cemented it. She passed more lightly over +what Deronda had done for her, omitting altogether the rescue from drowning, +and speaking of the shelter she had found in Mrs. Meyrick’s family so as +to leave her father to suppose that it was through these friends Deronda had +become acquainted with her. She could not persuade herself to more completeness +in her narrative: she could not let the breath of her father’s soul pass +over her relation to Deronda. And Lapidoth, for reasons, was not eager in his +questioning about the circumstances of her flight and arrival in England. But +he was much interested in the fact of his children having a beneficent friend +apparently high in the world. +</p> + +<p> +It was the brother who told Deronda of this new condition added to their life. +“I am become calm in beholding him now,” Ezra ended, “and I +try to think it possible that my sister’s tenderness, and the daily +tasting a life of peace, may win him to remain aloof from temptation. I have +enjoined her, and she has promised, to trust him with no money. I have +convinced her that he will buy with it his own destruction.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda first came on the third day from Lapidoth’s arrival. The new +clothes for which he had been measured were not yet ready, and wishing to make +a favorable impression, he did not choose to present himself in the old ones. +He watched for Deronda’s departure, and, getting a view of him from the +window, was rather surprised at his youthfulness, which Mirah had not +mentioned, and which he had somehow thought out of the question in a personage +who had taken up a grave friendship and hoary studies with the sepulchral Ezra. +Lapidoth began to imagine that Deronda’s real or chief motive must be +that he was in love with Mirah. And so much the better; for a tie to Mirah had +more promise of indulgence for her father than a tie to Ezra: and Lapidoth was +not without the hope of recommending himself to Deronda, and of softening any +hard prepossessions. He was behaving with much amiability, and trying in all +ways at his command to get himself into easy domestication with his +children—entering into Mirah’s music, showing himself docile about +smoking, which Mrs. Adam could not tolerate in her parlor, and walking out in +the square with his German pipe, and the tobacco with which Mirah supplied him. +He was too acute to offer any present remonstrance against the refusal of +money, which Mirah told him that she must persist in as a solemn duty promised +to her brother. He was comfortable enough to wait. +</p> + +<p> +The next time Deronda came, Lapidoth, equipped in his new clothes, and +satisfied with his own appearance, was in the room with Ezra, who was teaching +himself, as a part of his severe duty, to tolerate his father’s presence +whenever it was imposed. Deronda was cold and distant, the first sight of this +man, who had blighted the lives of his wife and children, creating in him a +repulsion that was even a physical discomfort. But Lapidoth did not let himself +be discouraged, asked leave to stay and hear the reading of papers from the old +chest, and actually made himself useful in helping to decipher some difficult +German manuscript. This led him to suggest that it might be desirable to make a +transcription of the manuscript, and he offered his services for this purpose, +and also to make copies of any papers in Roman characters. Though Ezra’s +young eyes he observed were getting weak, his own were still strong. Deronda +accepted the offer, thinking that Lapidoth showed a sign of grace in the +willingness to be employed usefully; and he saw a gratified expression in +Ezra’s face, who, however, presently said, “Let all the writing be +done here; for I cannot trust the papers out of my sight, lest there be an +accident by burning or otherwise.” Poor Ezra felt very much as if he had +a convict on leave under his charge. Unless he saw his father working, it was +not possible to believe that he would work in good faith. But by this +arrangement he fastened on himself the burden of his father’s presence, +which was made painful not only through his deepest, longest associations, but +also through Lapidoth’s restlessness of temperament, which showed itself +the more as he become familiarized with his situation, and lost any awe he had +felt of his son. The fact was, he was putting a strong constraint on himself in +confining his attention for the sake of winning Deronda’s favor; and like +a man in an uncomfortable garment he gave himself relief at every opportunity, +going out to smoke, or moving about and talking, or throwing himself back in +his chair and remaining silent, but incessantly carrying on a dumb language of +facial movement or gesticulation: and if Mirah were in the room, he would fall +into his old habit of talk with her, gossiping about their former doings and +companions, or repeating quirks and stories, and plots of the plays he used to +adapt, in the belief that he could at will command the vivacity of his earlier +time. All this was a mortal infliction to Ezra; and when Mirah was at home she +tried to relieve him, by getting her father down into the parlor and keeping +watch over him there. What duty is made of a single difficult resolve? The +difficulty lies in the daily unflinching support of consequences that mar the +blessed return of morning with the prospect of irritation to be suppressed or +shame to be endured. And such consequences were being borne by these, as by +many other heroic children of an unworthy father—with the prospect, at +least to Mirah, of their stretching onward through the solid part of life. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Lapidoth’s presence had raised a new impalpable partition +between Deronda and Mirah—each of them dreading the soiling inferences of +his mind, each of them interpreting mistakenly the increased reserve and +diffidence of the other. But it was not very long before some light came to +Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as he could, after returning from his brief visit to the Abbey, he had +called at Hans Meyrick’s rooms, feeling it, on more grounds than one, a +due of friendship that Hans should be at once acquainted with the reasons of +his late journey, and the changes of intention it had brought about. Hans was +not there; he was said to be in the country for a few days; and Deronda, after +leaving a note, waited a week, rather expecting a note in return. But receiving +no word, and fearing some freak of feeling in the incalculably susceptible +Hans, whose proposed sojourn at the Abbey he knew had been deferred, he at +length made a second call, and was admitted into the painting-room, where he +found his friend in a light coat, without a waistcoat, his long hair still wet +from a bath, but with a face looking worn and wizened—anything but +country-like. He had taken up his palette and brushes, and stood before his +easel when Deronda entered, but the equipment and attitude seemed to have been +got up on short notice. +</p> + +<p> +As they shook hands, Deronda said, “You don’t look much as if you +had been in the country, old fellow. Is it Cambridge you have been to?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Hans, curtly, throwing down his palette with the air of +one who has begun to feign by mistake; then pushing forward a chair for +Deronda, he threw himself into another, and leaned backward with his hands +behind his head, while he went on, “I’ve been to +I-don’t-know-where—No man’s land—and a mortally +unpleasant country it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say you have been drinking, Hans,” said +Deronda, who had seated himself opposite, in anxious survey. +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing so good. I’ve been smoking opium. I always meant to do it +some time or other, to try how much bliss could be got by it; and having found +myself just now rather out of other bliss, I thought it judicious to seize the +opportunity. But I pledge you my word I shall never tap a cask of that bliss +again. It disagrees with my constitution.” +</p> + +<p> +“What has been the matter? You were in good spirits enough when you wrote +to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nothing in particular. The world began to look seedy—a sort of +cabbage-garden with all the cabbages cut. A malady of genius, you may be +sure,” said Hans, creasing his face into a smile; “and, in fact, I +was tired of being virtuous without reward, especially in this hot London +weather.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing else? No real vexation?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +Hans shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“I came to tell you of my own affairs, but I can’t do it with a +good grace if you are to hide yours.” +</p> + +<p> +“Haven’t an affair in the world,” said Hans, in a flighty +way, “except a quarrel with a bric-à-brac man. Besides, as it is the +first time in our lives that you ever spoke to me about your own affairs, you +are only beginning to pay a pretty long debt.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda felt convinced that Hans was behaving artificially, but he trusted to a +return of the old frankness by-and-by if he gave his own confidence. +</p> + +<p> +“You laughed at the mystery of my journey to Italy, Hans,” he +began. “It was for an object that touched my happiness at the very roots. +I had never known anything about my parents, and I really went to Genoa to meet +my mother. My father has been long dead—died when I was an infant. My +mother was the daughter of an eminent Jew; my father was her cousin. Many +things had caused me to think of this origin as almost a probability before I +set out. I was so far prepared for the result that I was glad of it—glad +to find myself a Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must not expect me to look surprised, Deronda,” said Hans, who +had changed his attitude, laying one leg across the other and examining the +heel of his slipper. +</p> + +<p> +“You knew it?” +</p> + +<p> +“My mother told me. She went to the house the morning after you had been +there—brother and sister both told her. You may imagine we can’t +rejoice as they do. But whatever you are glad of, I shall come to be glad of in +the end—<i>when</i> exactly the end may be I can’t predict,” +said Hans, speaking in a low tone, which was as usual with him as it was to be +out of humor with his lot, and yet bent on making no fuss about it. +</p> + +<p> +“I quite understand that you can’t share my feeling,” said +Deronda; “but I could not let silence lie between us on what casts quite +a new light over my future. I have taken up some of Mordecai’s ideas, and +I mean to try and carry them out, so far as one man’s efforts can go. I +dare say I shall by and by travel to the East and be away for some +years.” +</p> + +<p> +Hans said nothing, but rose, seized his palette and began to work his brush on +it, standing before his picture with his back to Deronda, who also felt himself +at a break in his path embarrassed by Hans’s embarrassment. +</p> + +<p> +Presently Hans said, again speaking low, and without turning, “Excuse the +question, but does Mrs. Grandcourt know of all this?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; and I must beg of you, Hans,” said Deronda, rather angrily, +“to cease joking on that subject. Any notions you have are wide of the +truth—are the very reverse of the truth.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am no more inclined to joke than I shall be at my own funeral,” +said Hans. “But I am not at all sure that you are aware what are my +notions on that subject.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps not,” said Deronda. “But let me say, once for all, +that in relation to Mrs. Grandcourt, I never have had, and never shall have the +position of a lover. If you have ever seriously put that interpretation on +anything you have observed, you are supremely mistaken.” +</p> + +<p> +There was silence a little while, and to each the silence was like an +irritating air, exaggerating discomfort. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps I have been mistaken in another interpretation, also,” +said Hans, presently. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that?” +</p> + +<p> +“That you had no wish to hold the position of a lover toward another +woman, who is neither wife nor widow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t pretend not to understand you, Meyrick. It is painful that +our wishes should clash. I hope you will tell me if you have any ground for +supposing that you would succeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“That seems rather a superfluous inquiry on your part, Deronda,” +said Hans, with some irritation. +</p> + +<p> +“Why superfluous?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because you are perfectly convinced on the subject—and probably +have had the very best evidence to convince you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will be more frank with you than you are with me,” said Deronda, +still heated by Hans’ show of temper, and yet sorry for him. “I +have never had the slightest evidence that I should succeed myself. In fact, I +have very little hope.” +</p> + +<p> +Hans looked round hastily at his friend, but immediately turned to his picture +again. +</p> + +<p> +“And in our present situation,” said Deronda, hurt by the idea that +Hans suspected him of insincerity, and giving an offended emphasis to his +words, “I don’t see how I can deliberately make known my feeling to +her. If she could not return it, I should have embittered her best comfort; for +neither she nor I can be parted from her brother, and we should have to meet +continually. If I were to cause her that sort of pain by an unwilling betrayal +of my feeling, I should be no better than a mischievous animal.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know that I have ever betrayed <i>my</i> feeling to +her,” said Hans, as if he were vindicating himself. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean that we are on a level, then; you have no reason to envy +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, not the slightest,” said Hans, with bitter irony. “You +have measured my conceit and know that it out-tops all your advantages.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am a nuisance to you, Meyrick. I am sorry, but I can’t help +it,” said Deronda, rising. “After what passed between us before, I +wished to have this explanation; and I don’t see that any pretensions of +mine have made a real difference to you. They are not likely to make any +pleasant difference to myself under present circumstances. Now the father is +there—did you know that the father is there?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. If he were not a Jew I would permit myself to damn him—with +faint praise, I mean,” said Hans, but with no smile. +</p> + +<p> +“She and I meet under greater constraint than ever. Things might go on in +this way for two years without my getting any insight into her feeling toward +me. That is the whole state of affairs, Hans. Neither you nor I have injured +the other, that I can see. We must put up with this sort of rivalry in a hope +that is likely enough to come to nothing. Our friendship can bear that strain, +surely.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, it can’t,” said Hans, impetuously, throwing down his +tools, thrusting his hands into his coat-pockets, and turning round to face +Deronda, who drew back a little and looked at him with amazement. Hans went on +in the same tone, +</p> + +<p> +“Our friendship—my friendship—can’t bear the strain of +behaving to you like an ungrateful dastard and grudging you your happiness. For +you <i>are</i> the happiest dog in the world. If Mirah loves anybody better +than her brother, <i>you are the man</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Hans turned on his heel and threw himself into his chair, looking up at Deronda +with an expression the reverse of tender. Something like a shock passed through +Deronda, and, after an instant, he said, +</p> + +<p> +“It is a good-natured fiction of yours, Hans.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not in a good-natured mood. I assure you I found the fact +disagreeable when it was thrust on me—all the more, or perhaps all the +less, because I believed then that your heart was pledged to the duchess. But +now, confound you! you turn out to be in love in the right place—a +Jew—and everything eligible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me what convinced you—there’s a good fellow,” +said Deronda, distrusting a delight that he was unused to. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t ask. Little mother was witness. The upshot is, that Mirah is +jealous of the duchess, and the sooner you relieve your mind the better. There! +I’ve cleared off a score or two, and may be allowed to swear at you for +getting what you deserve—which is just the very best luck I know +of.” +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you, Hans!” said Deronda, putting out his hand, which +the other took and wrung in silence. +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0068"></a> +CHAPTER LXVIII.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,<br/> + Whatever stirs this mortal frame,<br/> +All are but ministers of Love,<br/> + And feed his sacred flame.”<br/> + —C<small>OLERIDGE</small>. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s eagerness to confess his love could hardly have had a stronger +stimulus than Hans had given it in his assurance that Mirah needed relief from +jealousy. He went on his next visit to Ezra with the determination to be +resolute in using—nay, in requesting—an opportunity of private +conversation with her. If she accepted his love, he felt courageous about all +other consequences, and as her betrothed husband he would gain a protective +authority which might be a desirable defense for her in future difficulties +with her father. Deronda had not observed any signs of growing restlessness in +Lapidoth, or of diminished desire to recommend himself; but he had forebodings +of some future struggle, some mortification, or some intolerable increase of +domestic disquietude in which he might save Ezra and Mirah from being helpless +victims. +</p> + +<p> +His forebodings would have been strengthened if he had known what was going on +in the father’s mind. That amount of restlessness, that desultoriness of +attention, which made a small torture to Ezra, was to Lapidoth an irksome +submission to restraint, only made bearable by his thinking of it as a means of +by-and-by securing a well-conditioned freedom. He began with the intention of +awaiting some really good chance, such as an opening for getting a considerable +sum from Deronda; but all the while he was looking about curiously, and trying +to discover where Mirah deposited her money and her keys. The imperious +gambling desire within him, which carried on its activity through every other +occupation, and made a continuous web of imagination that held all else in its +meshes, would hardly have been under the control of a contracted purpose, if he +had been able to lay his hands on any sum worth capturing. But Mirah, with her +practical clear-sightedness, guarded against any frustration of the promise she +had given to Ezra, by confiding all money, except what she was immediately in +want of, to Mrs. Meyrick’s care, and Lapidoth felt himself under an +irritating completeness of supply in kind as in a lunatic asylum where +everything was made safe against him. To have opened a desk or drawer of +Mirah’s, and pocketed any bank-notes found there, would have been to his +mind a sort of domestic appropriation which had no disgrace in it; the degrees +of liberty a man allows himself with other people’s property being often +delicately drawn, even beyond the boundary where the law begins to lay its +hold—which is the reason why spoons are a safer investment than mining +shares. Lapidoth really felt himself injuriously treated by his daughter, and +thought that he ought to have had what he wanted of her other earnings as he +had of her apple-tart. But he remained submissive; indeed, the indiscretion +that most tempted him, was not any insistence with Mirah, but some kind of +appeal to Deronda. Clever persons who have nothing else to sell can often put a +good price on their absence, and Lapidoth’s difficult search for devices +forced upon him the idea that his family would find themselves happier without +him, and that Deronda would be willing to advance a considerable sum for the +sake of getting rid of him. But, in spite of well-practiced hardihood, Lapidoth +was still in some awe of Ezra’s imposing friend, and deferred his purpose +indefinitely. +</p> + +<p> +On this day, when Deronda had come full of a gladdened consciousness, which +inevitably showed itself in his air and speech, Lapidoth was at a crisis of +discontent and longing that made his mind busy with schemes of freedom, and +Deronda’s new amenity encouraged them. This preoccupation was at last so +strong as to interfere with his usual show of interest in what went forward, +and his persistence in sitting by even when there was reading which he could +not follow. After sitting a little while, he went out to smoke and walk in the +square, and the two friends were all the easier. Mirah was not at home, but she +was sure to be in again before Deronda left, and his eyes glowed with a secret +anticipation: he thought that when he saw her again he should see some +sweetness of recognition for himself to which his eyes had been sealed before. +There was an additional playful affectionateness in his manner toward Ezra. +</p> + +<p> +“This little room is too close for you, Ezra,” he said, breaking +off his reading. “The week’s heat we sometimes get here is worse +than the heat in Genoa, where one sits in the shaded coolness of large rooms. +You must have a better home now. I shall do as I like with you, being the +stronger half.” He smiled toward Ezra, who said, +</p> + +<p> +“I am straitened for nothing except breath. But you, who might be in a +spacious palace, with the wide green country around you, find this a narrow +prison. Nevertheless, I cannot say, ‘Go.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, the country would be a banishment while you are here,” said +Deronda, rising and walking round the double room, which yet offered no long +promenade, while he made a great fan of his handkerchief. “This is the +happiest room in the world to me. Besides, I will imagine myself in the East, +since I am getting ready to go there some day. Only I will not wear a cravat +and a heavy ring there,” he ended emphatically, pausing to take off those +superfluities and deposit them on a small table behind Ezra, who had the table +in front of him covered with books and papers. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been wearing my memorable ring ever since I came home,” he +went on, as he reseated himself. “But I am such a Sybarite that I +constantly put it off as a burden when I am doing anything. I understand why +the Romans had summer rings—<i>if</i> they had them. Now then, I shall +get on better.” +</p> + +<p> +They were soon absorbed in their work again. Deronda was reading a piece of +rabbinical Hebrew under Ezra’s correction and comment, and they took +little notice when Lapidoth re-entered and took a seat somewhat in the +background. +</p> + +<p> +His rambling eyes quickly alighted on the ring that sparkled on the bit of dark +mahogany. During his walk, his mind had been occupied with the fiction of an +advantageous opening for him abroad, only requiring a sum of ready money, +which, on being communicated to Deronda in private, might immediately draw from +him a question as to the amount of the required sum: and it was this part of +his forecast that Lapidoth found the most debatable, there being a danger in +asking too much, and a prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire +gave him no limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of +Deronda’s willingness. But now, in the midst of these airy conditions +preparatory to a receipt which remained indefinite, this ring, which on +Deronda’s finger had become familiar to Lapidoth’s envy, suddenly +shone detached and within easy grasp. Its value was certainly below the +smallest of the imaginary sums that his purpose fluctuated between; but then it +was before him as a solid fact, and his desire at once leaped into the thought +(not yet an intention) that if he were quietly to pocket that ring and walk +away he would have the means of comfortable escape from present restraint, +without trouble, and also without danger; for any property of Deronda’s +(available without his formal consent) was all one with his children’s +property, since their father would never be prosecuted for taking it. The +details of this thinking followed each other so quickly that they seemed to +rise before him as one picture. Lapidoth had never committed larceny; but +larceny is a form of appropriation for which people are punished by law; and, +take this ring from a virtual relation, who would have been willing to make a +much heavier gift, would not come under the head of larceny. Still, the heavier +gift was to be preferred, if Lapidoth could only make haste enough in asking +for it, and the imaginary action of taking the ring, which kept repeating +itself like an inward tune, sank into a rejected idea. He satisfied his urgent +longing by resolving to go below, and watch for the moment of Deronda’s +departure, when he would ask leave to join him in his walk and boldly carry out +his meditated plan. He rose and stood looking out of the window, but all the +while he saw what lay beyond him—the brief passage he would have to make +to the door close by the table where the ring was. However he was resolved to +go down; but—by no distinct change of resolution, rather by a dominance +of desire, like the thirst of the drunkard—it so happened that in passing +the table his fingers fell noiselessly on the ring, and he found himself in the +passage with the ring in his hand. It followed that he put on his hat and +quitted the house. The possibility of again throwing himself on his children +receded into the indefinite distance, and before he was out on the square his +sense of haste had concentrated itself on selling the ring and getting on +shipboard. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda and Ezra were just aware of his exit; that was all. But, by-and-by, +Mirah came in and made a real interruption. She had not taken off her hat; and +when Deronda rose and advanced to shake hands with her, she said, in a +confusion at once unaccountable and troublesome to herself, +</p> + +<p> +“I only came in to see that Ezra had his new draught. I must go directly +to Mrs. Meyrick’s to fetch something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray allow me to walk with you,” said Deronda urgently. “I +must not tire Ezra any further; besides my brains are melting. I want to go to +Mrs. Meyrick’s: may I go with you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” said Mirah, blushing still more, with the vague sense of +something new in Deronda, and turning away to pour out Ezra’s draught; +Ezra meanwhile throwing back his head with his eyes shut, unable to get his +mind away from the ideas that had been filling it while the reading was going +on. Deronda for a moment stood thinking of nothing but the walk, till Mirah +turned round again and brought the draught, when he suddenly remembered that he +had laid aside his cravat, and saying—“Pray excuse my +dishabille—I did not mean you to see it,” he went to the little +table, took up his cravat, and exclaimed with a violent impulse of surprise, +“Good heavens, where is my ring gone?” beginning to search about on +the floor. +</p> + +<p> +Ezra looked round the corner of his chair. Mirah, quick as thought, went to the +spot where Deronda was seeking, and said, “Did you lay it down?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Deronda, still unvisited by any other explanation than +that the ring had fallen and was lurking in shadow, indiscernable on the +variegated carpet. He was moving the bits of furniture near, and searching in +all possible and impossible places with hand and eyes. +</p> + +<p> +But another explanation had visited Mirah and taken the color from her cheeks. +She went to Ezra’s ear and whispered “Was my father here?” He +bent his head in reply, meeting her eyes with terrible understanding. She +darted back to the spot where Deronda was still casting down his eyes in that +hopeless exploration which we are apt to carry on over a space we have examined +in vain. “You have not found it?” she said, hurriedly. +</p> + +<p> +He, meeting her frightened gaze, immediately caught alarm from it and answered, +“I perhaps put it in my pocket,” professing to feel for it there. +</p> + +<p> +She watched him and said, “It is not there?—you put it on the +table,” with a penetrating voice that would not let him feign to have +found it in his pocket; and immediately she rushed out of the room. Deronda +followed her—she was gone into the sitting-room below to look for her +father—she opened the door of the bedroom to see if he were +there—she looked where his hat usually hung—she turned with her +hands clasped tight and her lips pale, gazing despairingly out of the window. +Then she looked up at Deronda, who had not dared to speak to her in her white +agitation. She looked up at him, unable to utter a word—the look seemed a +tacit acceptance of the humiliation she felt in his presence. But he, taking +her clasped hands between both his, said, in a tone of reverent adoration, +</p> + +<p> +“Mirah, let me think that he is my father as well as yours—that we +can have no sorrow, no disgrace, no joy apart. I will rather take your grief to +be mine than I would take the brightest joy of another woman. Say you will not +reject me—say you will take me to share all things with you. Say you will +promise to be my wife—say it now. I have been in doubt so long—I +have had to hide my love so long. Say that now and always I may prove to you +that I love you with complete love.” +</p> + +<p> +The change in Mirah had been gradual. She had not passed at once from anguish +to the full, blessed consciousness that, in this moment of grief and shame, +Deronda was giving her the highest tribute man can give to woman. With the +first tones and the first words, she had only a sense of solemn comfort, +referring this goodness of Deronda’s to his feeling for Ezra. But by +degrees the rapturous assurance of unhoped-for good took possession of her +frame: her face glowed under Deronda’s as he bent over her; yet she +looked up still with intense gravity, as when she had first acknowledged with +religious gratitude that he had thought her “worthy of the best;” +and when he had finished, she could say nothing—she could only lift up +her lips to his and just kiss them, as if that were the simplest +“yes.” They stood then, only looking at each other, he holding her +hands between his—too happy to move, meeting so fully in their new +consciousness that all signs would have seemed to throw them farther apart, +till Mirah said in a whisper: “Let us go and comfort Ezra.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0069"></a> +CHAPTER LXIX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“The human nature unto which I felt<br/> +That I belonged, and reverenced with love,<br/> +Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit<br/> +Diffused through time and space, with aid derived<br/> +Of evidence from monuments, erect,<br/> +Prostrate, or leaning toward their common rest<br/> +In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime<br/> +Of vanished nations.”<br/> + —W<small>ORDSWORTH</small>: <i>The Prelude</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Hugo carried out his plan of spending part of the autumn at Diplow, and by +the beginning of October his presence was spreading some cheerfulness in the +neighborhood, among all ranks and persons concerned, from the stately home of +Brackenshaw and Quetcham to the respectable shop-parlors in Wanchester. For Sir +Hugo was a man who liked to show himself and be affable, a Liberal of good +lineage, who confided entirely in reform as not likely to make any serious +difference in English habits of feeling, one of which undoubtedly is the liking +to behold society well fenced and adorned with hereditary rank. Hence he made +Diplow a most agreeable house, extending his invitations to old Wanchester +solicitors and young village curates, but also taking some care in the +combination of the guests, and not feeding all the common poultry together, so +that they should think their meal no particular compliment. Easy-going Lord +Brackenshaw, for example, would not mind meeting Robinson the attorney, but +Robinson would have been naturally piqued if he had been asked to meet a set of +people who passed for his equals. On all these points Sir Hugo was well +informed enough at once to gain popularity for himself and give pleasure to +others—two results which eminently suited his disposition. The rector of +Pennicote now found a reception at Diplow very different from the haughty +tolerance he had undergone during the reign of Grandcourt. It was not that the +baronet liked Mr. Gascoigne; it was that he desired to keep up a marked +relation of friendliness with him on account of Mrs. Grandcourt, for whom Sir +Hugo’s chivalry had become more and more engaged. Why? The chief reason +was one that he could not fully communicate, even to Lady Mallinger—for +he would not tell what he thought one woman’s secret to another, even +though the other was his wife—which shows that his chivalry included a +rare reticence. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda, after he had become engaged to Mirah, felt it right to make a full +statement of his position and purposes to Sir Hugo, and he chose to make it by +letter. He had more than a presentiment that his fatherly friend would feel +some dissatisfaction, if not pain, at this turn of his destiny. In reading +unwelcome news, instead of hearing it, there is the advantage that one avoids a +hasty expression of impatience which may afterward be repented of. Deronda +dreaded that verbal collision which makes otherwise pardonable feeling +lastingly offensive. +</p> + +<p> +And Sir Hugo, though not altogether surprised, was thoroughly vexed. His +immediate resource was to take the letter to Lady Mallinger, who would be sure +to express an astonishment which her husband could argue against as +unreasonable, and in this way divide the stress of his discontent. And in fact +when she showed herself astonished and distressed that all Daniel’s +wonderful talents, and the comfort of having him in the house, should have +ended in his going mad in this way about the Jews, the baronet could say, +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nonsense, my dear! depend upon it, Dan will not make a fool of +himself. He has large notions about Judaism—political views which you +can’t understand. No fear but Dan will keep himself head +uppermost.” +</p> + +<p> +But with regard to the prospective marriage she afforded him no +counter-irritant. The gentle lady observed, without rancor, that she had little +dreamed of what was coming when she had Mirah to sing at her musical party and +give lessons to Amabel. After some hesitation, indeed, she confessed it +<i>had</i> passed through her mind that after a proper time Daniel might marry +Mrs. Grandcourt—because it seemed so remarkable that he should be at +Genoa just at that time—and although she herself was not fond of widows +she could not help thinking that such a marriage would have been better than +his going altogether with the Jews. But Sir Hugo was so strongly of the same +opinion that he could not correct it as a feminine mistake; and his ill-humor +at the disproof of his disagreeable conclusions on behalf of Gwendolen was left +without vent. He desired Lady Mallinger not to breathe a word about the affair +till further notice, saying to himself, “If it is an unkind cut to the +poor thing (meaning Gwendolen), the longer she is without knowing it the +better, in her present nervous state. And she will best learn it from Dan +himself.” Sir Hugo’s conjectures had worked so industriously with +his knowledge, that he fancied himself well informed concerning the whole +situation. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile his residence with his family at Diplow enabled him to continue his +fatherly attentions to Gwendolen; and in these Lady Mallinger, notwithstanding +her small liking for widows, was quite willing to second him. +</p> + +<p> +The plan of removal to Offendene had been carried out; and Gwendolen, in +settling there, maintained a calm beyond her mother’s hopes. She was +experiencing some of that peaceful melancholy which comes from the renunciation +of demands for self, and from taking the ordinary good of existence, and +especially kindness, even from a dog, as a gift above expectation. Does one who +has been all but lost in a pit of darkness complain of the sweet air and the +daylight? There is a way of looking at our life daily as an escape, and taking +the quiet return of morn and evening—still more the star-like out-glowing +of some pure fellow-feeling, some generous impulse breaking our inward +darkness—as a salvation that reconciles us to hardship. Those who have a +self-knowledge prompting such self-accusation as Hamlet’s, can understand +this habitual feeling of rescue. And it was felt by Gwendolen as she lived +through and through again the terrible history of her temptations, from their +first form of illusory self-pleasing when she struggled away from the hold of +conscience, to their latest form of an urgent hatred dragging her toward its +satisfaction, while she prayed and cried for the help of that conscience which +she had once forsaken. She was now dwelling on every word of Deronda’s +that pointed to her past deliverance from the worst evil in herself, and the +worst infliction of it on others, and on every word that carried a force to +resist self-despair. +</p> + +<p> +But she was also upborne by the prospect of soon seeing him again: she did not +imagine him otherwise than always within her reach, her supreme need of him +blinding her to the separateness of his life, the whole scene of which she +filled with his relation to her—no unique preoccupation of +Gwendolen’s, for we are all apt to fall into this passionate egoism of +imagination, not only toward our fellow-men, but toward God. And the future +which she turned her face to with a willing step was one where she would be +continually assimilating herself to some type that he would hold before her. +Had he not first risen on her vision as a corrective presence which she had +recognized in the beginning with resentment, and at last with entire love and +trust? She could not spontaneously think of an end to that reliance, which had +become to her imagination like the firmness of the earth, the only condition of +her walking. +</p> + +<p> +And Deronda was not long before he came to Diplow, which was a more convenient +distance from town than the Abbey. He had wished to carry out a plan for taking +Ezra and Mirah to a mild spot on the coast, while he prepared another home +which Mirah might enter as his bride, and where they might unitedly watch over +her brother. But Ezra begged not to be removed, unless it were to go with them +to the East. All outward solicitations were becoming more and more of a burden +to him; but his mind dwelt on the possibility of this voyage with a visionary +joy. Deronda, in his preparations for the marriage, which he hoped might not be +deferred beyond a couple of months, wished to have fuller consultation as to +his resources and affairs generally with Sir Hugo, and here was a reason for +not delaying his visit to Diplow. But he thought quite as much of another +reason—his promise to Gwendolen. The sense of blessedness in his own lot +had yet an aching anxiety at his heart: this may be held paradoxical, for the +beloved lover is always called happy, and happiness is considered as a +well-fleshed indifference to sorrow outside it. But human experience is usually +paradoxical, if that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even +current philosophy. It was no treason to Mirah, but a part of that full nature +which made his love for her the more worthy, that his joy in her could hold by +its side the care for another. For what is love itself, for the one we love +best?—an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any +joys outside our love. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda came twice to Diplow, and saw Gwendolen twice—and yet he went +back to town without having told her anything about the change in his lot and +prospects. He blamed himself; but in all momentous communication likely to give +pain we feel dependent on some preparatory turn of words or associations, some +agreement of the other’s mood with the probable effect of what we have to +impart. In the first interview Gwendolen was so absorbed in what she had to say +to him, so full of questions which he must answer, about the arrangement of her +life, what she could do to make herself less ignorant, how she could be kindest +to everybody, and make amends for her selfishness and try to be rid of it, that +Deronda utterly shrank from waiving her immediate wants in order to speak of +himself, nay, from inflicting a wound on her in these moments when she was +leaning on him for help in her path. In the second interview, when he went with +new resolve to command the conversation into some preparatory track, he found +her in a state of deep depression, overmastered by some distasteful miserable +memories which forced themselves on her as something more real and ample than +any new material out of which she could mould her future. She cried +hysterically, and said that he would always despise her. He could only seek +words of soothing and encouragement: and when she gradually revived under them, +with that pathetic look of renewed childlike interest which we see in eyes +where the lashes are still beaded with tears, it was impossible to lay another +burden on her. +</p> + +<p> +But time went on, and he felt it a pressing duty to make the difficult +disclosure. Gwendolen, it was true, never recognized his having any affairs; +and it had never even occurred to her to ask him why he happened to be at +Genoa. But this unconsciousness of hers would make a sudden revelation of +affairs that were determining his course in life all the heavier blow to her; +and if he left the revelation to be made by different persons, she would feel +that he had treated her with cruel inconsiderateness. He could not make the +communication in writing: his tenderness could not bear to think of her reading +his virtual farewell in solitude, and perhaps feeling his words full of a hard +gladness for himself and indifference for her. He went down to Diplow again, +feeling that every other peril was to be incurred rather than that of returning +and leaving her still in ignorance. +</p> + +<p> +On this third visit Deronda found Hans Meyrick installed with his easel at +Diplow, beginning his picture of the three daughters sitting on a bank, +“in the Gainsborough style,” and varying his work by rambling to +Pennicote to sketch the village children and improve his acquaintance with the +Gascoignes. Hans appeared to have recovered his vivacity, but Deronda detected +some feigning in it, as we detect the artificiality of a lady’s bloom +from its being a little too high-toned and steadily persistent (a +“Fluctuating Rouge” not having yet appeared among the +advertisements). Also with all his grateful friendship and admiration for +Deronda, Hans could not help a certain irritation against him, such as +extremely incautious, open natures are apt to feel when the breaking of a +friend’s reserve discloses a state of things not merely unsuspected but +the reverse of what had been hoped and ingeniously conjectured. It is true that +poor Hans had always cared chiefly to confide in Deronda, and had been quite +incurious as to any confidence that might have been given in return; but what +outpourer of his own affairs is not tempted to think any hint of his +friend’s affairs is an egotistic irrelevance? That was no reason why it +was not rather a sore reflection to Hans that while he had been all along +naively opening his heart about Mirah, Deronda had kept secret a feeling of +rivalry which now revealed itself as the important determining fact. Moreover, +it is always at their peril that our friends turn out to be something more than +we were aware of. Hans must be excused for these promptings of bruised +sensibility, since he had not allowed them to govern his substantial conduct: +he had the consciousness of having done right by his fortunate friend; or, as +he told himself, “his metal had given a better ring than he would have +sworn to beforehand.” For Hans had always said that in point of virtue he +was a <i>dilettante</i>: which meant that he was very fond of it in other +people, but if he meddled with it himself he cut a poor figure. Perhaps in +reward of his good behavior he gave his tongue the more freedom; and he was too +fully possessed by the notion of Deronda’s happiness to have a conception +of what he was feeling about Gwendolen, so that he spoke of her without +hesitation. +</p> + +<p> +“When did you come down, Hans?” said Deronda, joining him in the +grounds where he was making a study of the requisite bank and trees. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ten days ago; before the time Sir Hugo fixed. I ran down with Rex +Gascoigne and stayed at the rectory a day or two. I’m up in all the +gossip of these parts; I know the state of the wheelwright’s interior, +and have assisted at an infant school examination. Sister Anna, with the good +upper lip, escorted me, else I should have been mobbed by three urchins and an +idiot, because of my long hair and a general appearance which departs from the +Pennicote type of the beautiful. Altogether, the village is idyllic. Its only +fault is a dark curate with broad shoulders and broad trousers who ought to +have gone into the heavy drapery line. The Gascoignes are perfect—besides +being related to the Vandyke duchess. I caught a glimpse of her in her black +robes at a distance, though she doesn’t show to visitors.” +</p> + +<p> +“She was not staying at the rectory?” said Deronda. +</p> + +<p> +“No; but I was taken to Offendene to see the old house, and as a +consequence I saw the duchess’ family. I suppose you have been there and +know all about them?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I have been there,” said Deronda, quietly. +</p> + +<p> +“A fine old place. An excellent setting for a widow with romantic +fortunes. And she seems to have had several romances. I think I have found out +that there was one between her and my friend Rex.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not long before her marriage, then?” said Deronda, really +interested, “for they had only been a year at Offendene. How came you to +know anything of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—not ignorant of what it is to be a miserable devil, I learn to +gloat on the signs of misery in others. I found out that Rex never goes to +Offendene, and has never seen the duchess since she came back; and Miss +Gascoigne let fall something in our talk about charade-acting—for I went +through some of my nonsense to please the young ones—something that +proved to me that Rex was once hovering about his fair cousin close enough to +get singed. I don’t know what was her part in the affair. Perhaps the +duke came in and carried her off. That is always the way when an exceptionally +worthy young man forms an attachment. I understand now why Gascoigne talks of +making the law his mistress and remaining a bachelor. But these are green +resolves. Since the duke did not get himself drowned for your sake, it may turn +out to be for my friend Rex’s sake. Who knows?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it absolutely necessary that Mrs. Grandcourt should marry +again?” said Deronda, ready to add that Hans’s success in +constructing her fortunes hitherto had not been enough to warrant a new +attempt. +</p> + +<p> +“You monster!” retorted Hans, “do you want her to wear weeds +for <i>you</i> all her life—burn herself in perpetual suttee while you +are alive and merry?” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda could say nothing, but he looked so much annoyed that Hans turned the +current of his chat, and when he was alone shrugged his shoulders a little over +the thought that there really had been some stronger feeling between Deronda +and the duchess than Mirah would like to know of. “Why didn’t she +fall in love with me?” thought Hans, laughing at himself. “She +would have had no rivals. No woman ever wanted to discuss theology with +me.” +</p> + +<p> +No wonder that Deronda winced under that sort of joking with a whip-lash. It +touched sensibilities that were already quivering with the anticipation of +witnessing some of that pain to which even Hans’s light words seemed to +give more reality:—any sort of recognition by another giving emphasis to +the subject of our anxiety. And now he had come down with the firm resolve that +he would not again evade the trial. The next day he rode to Offendene. He had +sent word that he intended to call and to ask if Gwendolen could receive him; +and he found her awaiting him in the old drawing-room where some chief crises +of her life had happened. She seemed less sad than he had seen her since her +husband’s death; there was no smile on her face, but a placid +self-possession, in contrast with the mood in which he had last found her. She +was all the more alive to the sadness perceptible in Deronda; and they were no +sooner seated—he at a little distance opposite to her—than she +said: +</p> + +<p> +“You were afraid of coming to see me, because I was so full of grief and +despair the last time. But I am not so to-day. I have been sorry ever since. I +have been making it a reason why I should keep up my hope and be as cheerful as +I can, because I would not give you any pain about me.” +</p> + +<p> +There was an unwonted sweetness in Gwendolen’s tone and look as she +uttered these words that seemed to Deronda to infuse the utmost cruelty into +the task now laid upon him. But he felt obliged to make his answer a beginning +of the task. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>am</i> in some trouble to-day,” he said, looking at her +rather mournfully; “but it is because I have things to tell you which you +will almost think it a want of confidence on my part not to have spoken of +before. They are things affecting my own life—my own future. I shall seem +to have made an ill return to you for the trust you have placed in +me—never to have given you an idea of events that make great changes for +me. But when we have been together we have hardly had time to enter into +subjects which at the moment were really less pressing to me than the trials +you have been going through.” There was a sort of timid tenderness in +Deronda’s deep tones, and he paused with a pleading look, as if it had +been Gwendolen only who had conferred anything in her scenes of beseeching and +confession. +</p> + +<p> +A thrill of surprise was visible in her. Such meaning as she found in his words +had shaken her, but without causing fear. Her mind had flown at once to some +change in his position with regard to Sir Hugo and Sir Hugo’s property. +She said, with a sense of comfort from Deronda’s way of asking her +pardon, +</p> + +<p> +“You never thought of anything but what you could do to help me; and I +was so troublesome. How could you tell me things?” +</p> + +<p> +“It will perhaps astonish you,” said Deronda, “that I have +only quite lately known who were my parents.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen was not astonished: she felt the more assured that her expectations +of what was coming were right. Deronda went on without check. +</p> + +<p> +“The reason why you found me in Italy was that I had gone there to learn +that—in fact, to meet my mother. It was by her wish that I was brought up +in ignorance of my parentage. She parted with me after my father’s death, +when I was a little creature. But she is now very ill, and she felt that the +secrecy ought not to be any longer maintained. Her chief reason had been that +she did not wish me to know I was a Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>A Jew</i>!” Gwendolen exclaimed, in a low tone of amazement, +with an utterly frustrated look, as if some confusing potion were creeping +through her system. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda colored, and did not speak, while Gwendolen, with her eyes fixed on the +floor, was struggling to find her way in the dark by the aid of various +reminiscences. She seemed at last to have arrived at some judgment, for she +looked up at Deronda again and said, as if remonstrating against the +mother’s conduct, +</p> + +<p> +“What difference need that have made?” +</p> + +<p> +“It has made a great difference to me that I have known it,” said +Deronda, emphatically; but he could not go on easily—the distance between +her ideas and his acted like a difference of native language, making him +uncertain what force his words would carry. +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen meditated again, and then said feelingly, “I hope there is +nothing to make you mind. <i>You</i> are just the same as if you were not a +Jew.” +</p> + +<p> +She meant to assure him that nothing of that external sort could affect the way +in which she regarded him, or the way in which he could influence her. Deronda +was a little helped by this misunderstanding. +</p> + +<p> +“The discovery was far from being painful to me,” he said, “I +had been gradually prepared for it, and I was glad of it. I had been prepared +for it by becoming intimate with a very remarkable Jew, whose ideas have +attracted me so much that I think of devoting the best part of my life to some +effort at giving them effect.” +</p> + +<p> +Again Gwendolen seemed shaken—again there was a look of frustration, but +this time it was mingled with alarm. She looked at Deronda with lips childishly +parted. It was not that she had yet connected his words with Mirah and her +brother, but that they had inspired her with a dreadful presentiment of +mountainous travel for her mind before it could reach Deronda’s. Great +ideas in general which she had attributed to him seemed to make no great +practical difference, and were not formidable in the same way as these +mysteriously-shadowed particular ideas. He could not quite divine what was +going on within her; he could only seek the least abrupt path of disclosure. +</p> + +<p> +“That is an object,” he said, after a moment, “which will +by-and-by force me to leave England for some time—for some years. I have +purposes which will take me to the East.” +</p> + +<p> +Here was something clearer, but all the more immediately agitating. +Gwendolen’s lips began to tremble. “But you will come back?” +she said, tasting her own tears as they fell, before she thought of drying +them. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda could not sit still. He rose, and went to prop himself against the +corner of the mantel-piece, at a different angle from her face. But when she +had pressed her handkerchief against her cheeks, she turned and looked up at +him, awaiting an answer. +</p> + +<p> +“If I live,” said Deronda—“<i>some time</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +They were both silent. He could not persuade himself to say more unless she led +up to it by a question; and she was apparently meditating something that she +had to say. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you going to do?” she asked, at last, very mildly. +“Can I understand the ideas, or am I too ignorant?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am going to the East to become better acquainted with the condition of +my race in various countries there,” said Deronda, gently—anxious +to be as explanatory as he could on what was the impersonal part of their +separateness from each other. “The idea that I am possessed with is that +of restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nation again, +giving them a national center, such as the English have, though they too are +scattered over the face of the globe. That is a task which presents itself to +me as a duty; I am resolved to begin it, however feebly. I am resolved to +devote my life to it. At the least, I may awaken a movement in other minds, +such as has been awakened in my own.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a long silence between them. The world seemed getting larger round +poor Gwendolen, and she more solitary and helpless in the midst. The thought +that he might come back after going to the East, sank before the bewildering +vision of these wild-stretching purposes in which she felt herself reduced to a +mere speck. There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great +movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof +in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their +own lives—where the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the +tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and gray fathers know +nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget +all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of +their betrothed husbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been +the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the +imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the +wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the +rolling fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under +the thunder of unrelenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and no +angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then it is that the +submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even in the eyes of +frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle with the awful face +of duty, and a religion shows itself which is something else than a private +consolation. +</p> + +<p> +That was the sort of crisis which was at this moment beginning in +Gwendolen’s small life: she was for the first time feeling the pressure +of a vast mysterious movement, for the first time being dislodged from her +supremacy in her own world, and getting a sense that her horizon was but a +dipping onward of an existence with which her own was revolving. All the +troubles of her wifehood and widowhood had still left her with the implicit +impression which had accompanied her from childhood, that whatever surrounded +her was somehow specially for her, and it was because of this that no personal +jealousy had been roused in her relation to Deronda: she could not +spontaneously think of him as rightfully belonging to others more than to her. +But here had come a shock which went deeper than personal +jealousy—something spiritual and vaguely tremendous that thrust her away, +and yet quelled all her anger into self-humiliation. +</p> + +<p> +There had been a long silence. Deronda had stood still, even thankful for an +interval before he needed to say more, and Gwendolen had sat like a statue with +her wrists lying over each other and her eyes fixed—the intensity of her +mental action arresting all other excitation. At length something occurred to +her that made her turn her face to Deronda and say in a trembling voice, +</p> + +<p> +“Is that all you can tell me?” +</p> + +<p> +The question was like a dart to him. “The Jew whom I mentioned just +now,” he answered, not without a certain tremor in his tones too, +“the remarkable man who has greatly influenced my mind, has not perhaps +been totally unheard of by you. He is the brother of Miss Lapidoth, whom you +have often heard sing.” +</p> + +<p> +A great wave of remembrance passed through Gwendolen and spread as a deep, +painful flush over neck and face. It had come first at the scene of that +morning when she had called on Mirah, and heard Deronda’s voice reading, +and been told, without then heeding it, that he was reading Hebrew with +Mirah’s brother. +</p> + +<p> +“He is very ill—very near death now,” Deronda went on, +nervously, and then stopped short. He felt that he must wait. Would she divine +the rest? +</p> + +<p> +“Did she tell you that I went to her?” said Gwendolen, abruptly, +looking up at him. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Deronda. “I don’t understand you.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned away her eyes again, and sat thinking. Slowly the color dried out of +face and neck, and she was as pale as before—with that almost withered +paleness which is seen after a painful flush. At last she said—without +turning toward him—in a low, measured voice, as if she were only thinking +aloud in preparation for future speech, +</p> + +<p> +“But <i>can</i> you marry?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Deronda, also in a low voice. “I am going to +marry.” +</p> + +<p> +At first there was no change in Gwendolen’s attitude: she only began to +tremble visibly; then she looked before her with dilated eyes, as at something +lying in front of her, till she stretched her arms out straight, and cried with +a smothered voice, +</p> + +<p> +“I said I should be forsaken. I have been a cruel woman. And I am +forsaken.” +</p> + +<p> +Deronda’s anguish was intolerable. He could not help himself. He seized +her outstretched hands and held them together, and kneeled at her feet. She was +the victim of his happiness. +</p> + +<p> +“I am cruel, too, I am cruel,” he repeated, with a sort of groan, +looking up at her imploringly. +</p> + +<p> +His presence and touch seemed to dispel a horrible vision, and she met his +upward look of sorrow with something like the return of consciousness after +fainting. Then she dwelt on it with that growing pathetic movement of the brow +which accompanies the revival of some tender recollection. The look of sorrow +brought back what seemed a very far-off moment—the first time she had +ever seen it, in the library at the Abbey. Sobs rose, and great tears fell +fast. Deronda would not let her hands go—held them still with one of his, +and himself pressed her handkerchief against her eyes. She submitted like a +half-soothed child, making an effort to speak, which was hindered by struggling +sobs. At last she succeeded in saying, brokenly, +</p> + +<p> +“I said—I said—it should be better—better with +me—for having known you.” +</p> + +<p> +His eyes too were larger with tears. She wrested one of her hands from his, and +returned his action, pressing his tears away. +</p> + +<p> +“We shall not be quite parted,” he said. “I will write to you +always, when I can, and you will answer?” +</p> + +<p> +He waited till she said in a whisper, “I will try.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall be more with you than I used to be,” Deronda said with +gentle urgency, releasing her hands and rising from his kneeling posture. +“If we had been much together before, we should have felt our differences +more, and seemed to get farther apart. Now we can perhaps never see each other +again. But our minds may get nearer.” +</p> + +<p> +Gwendolen said nothing, but rose too, automatically. Her withered look of +grief, such as the sun often shines on when the blinds are drawn up after the +burial of life’s joy, made him hate his own words: they seemed to have +the hardness of easy consolation in them. She felt that he was going, and that +nothing could hinder it. The sense of it was like a dreadful whisper in her +ear, which dulled all other consciousness; and she had not known that she was +rising. +</p> + +<p> +Deronda could not speak again. He thought that they must part in silence, but +it was difficult to move toward the parting, till she looked at him with a sort +of intention in her eyes, which helped him. He advanced to put out his hand +silently, and when she had placed hers within it, she said what her mind had +been laboring with, +</p> + +<p> +“You have been very good to me. I have deserved nothing. I will +try—try to live. I shall think of you. What good have I been? Only harm. +Don’t let me be harm to <i>you</i>. It shall be the better for +me—” +</p> + +<p> +She could not finish. It was not that she was sobbing, but that the intense +effort with which she spoke made her too tremulous. The burden of that +difficult rectitude toward him was a weight her frame tottered under. +</p> + +<p> +She bent forward to kiss his cheek, and he kissed hers. Then they looked at +each other for an instant with clasped hands, and he turned away. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +When he was quite gone, her mother came in and found her sitting motionless. +</p> + +<p> +“Gwendolen, dearest, you look very ill,” she said, bending over her +and touching her cold hands. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, mamma. But don’t be afraid. I am going to live,” said +Gwendolen, bursting out hysterically. +</p> + +<p> +Her mother persuaded her to go to bed, and watched by her. Through the day and +half the night she fell continually into fits of shrieking, but cried in the +midst of them to her mother, “Don’t be afraid. I shall live. I mean +to live.” +</p> + +<p> +After all, she slept; and when she waked in the morning light, she looked up +fixedly at her mother and said tenderly, “Ah, poor mamma! You have been +sitting up with me. Don’t be unhappy. I shall live. I shall be +better.” +</p> + +</div> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="2HCH0070"></a> +CHAPTER LXX.</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +In the checkered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the +golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is +reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another +treads the winepress. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are +continually one, until himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible +fields. +</p> + +<p> +Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense +that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring +comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open +the sweetest fountains of joy. Deronda’s love for Mirah was strongly +imbued with that blessed protectiveness. Even with infantine feet she had begun +to tread among thorns; and the first time he had beheld her face it had seemed +to him the girlish image of despair. +</p> + +<p> +But now she was glowing like a dark-tipped yet delicate ivory-tinted flower in +the warm sunlight of content, thinking of any possible grief as part of that +life with Deronda, which she could call by no other name than good. And he +watched the sober gladness which gave new beauty to her movements; and her +habitual attitudes of repose, with a delight which made him say to himself that +it was enough of personal joy for him to save her from pain. She knew nothing +of Hans’s struggle or of Gwendolen’s pang; for after the assurance +that Deronda’s hidden love had been for her, she easily explained +Gwendolen’s eager solicitude about him as part of a grateful dependence +on his goodness, such as she herself had known. And all Deronda’s words +about Mrs. Grandcourt confirmed that view of their relation, though he never +touched on it except in the most distant manner. Mirah was ready to believe +that he had been a rescuing angel to many besides herself. The only wonder was, +that she among them all was to have the bliss of being continually by his side. +</p> + +<p> +So, when the bridal veil was around Mirah it hid no doubtful tremors—only +a thrill of awe at the acceptance of a great gift which required great uses. +And the velvet canopy never covered a more goodly bride and bridegroom, to whom +their people might more wisely wish offspring; more truthful lips never touched +the sacrament marriage-wine; the marriage-blessing never gathered stronger +promise of fulfillment than in the integrity of their mutual pledge. Naturally, +they were married according to the Jewish rite. And since no religion seems yet +to have demanded that when we make a feast we should invite only the highest +rank of our acquaintances, few, it is to be hoped, will be offended to learn +that among the guests at Deronda’s little wedding-feast was the entire +Cohen family, with the one exception of the baby who carried on her teething +intelligently at home. How could Mordecai have borne that those friends of his +adversity should have been shut out from rejoicing in common with him? +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Meyrick so fully understood this that she had quite reconciled herself to +meeting the Jewish pawnbroker, and was there with her three daughters—all +of them enjoying the consciousness that Mirah’s marriage to Deronda +crowned a romance which would always make a sweet memory to them. For which of +them, mother or girls, had not had a generous part in it—giving their +best in feeling and in act to her who needed? If Hans could have been there, it +would have been better; but Mab had already observed that men must suffer for +being so inconvenient; suppose she, Kate, and Amy had all fallen in love with +Mr. Deronda?—but being women they were not so ridiculous. +</p> + +<p> +The Meyricks were rewarded for conquering their prejudices by hearing a speech +from Mr. Cohen, which had the rare quality among speeches of not being quite +after the usual pattern. Jacob ate beyond his years, and contributed several +small whinnying laughs as a free accompaniment of his father’s speech, +not irreverently, but from a lively sense that his family was distinguishing +itself; while Adelaide Rebekah, in a new Sabbath frock, maintained throughout a +grave air of responsibility. +</p> + +<p> +Mordecai’s brilliant eyes, sunken in their large sockets, dwelt on the +scene with the cherishing benignancy of a spirit already lifted into an +aloofness which nullified only selfish requirements and left sympathy alive. +But continually, after his gaze had been traveling round on the others, it +returned to dwell on Deronda with a fresh gleam of trusting affection. +</p> + +<p> +The wedding-feast was humble, but Mirah was not without splendid wedding-gifts. +As soon as the betrothal had been known, there were friends who had entertained +graceful devices. Sir Hugo and Lady Mallinger had taken trouble to provide a +complete equipment for Eastern travel, as well as a precious locket containing +an inscription—“<i>To the bride of our dear Daniel Deronda all +blessings. H. and L. M.</i>” The Klesmers sent a perfect watch, also with +a pretty inscription. +</p> + +<p> +But something more precious than gold and gems came to Deronda from the +neighborhood of Diplow on the morning of his marriage. It was a letter +containing these words: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Do not think of me sorrowfully on your wedding-day. I have remembered your +words—that I may live to be one of the best of women, who make others +glad that they were born. I do not yet see how that can be, but you know better +than I. If it ever comes true, it will be because you helped me. I only thought +of myself, and I made you grieve. It hurts me now to think of your grief. You +must not grieve any more for me. It is better—it shall be better with me +because I have known you. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +G<small>WENDOLEN</small> G<small>RANDCOURT</small>. +</p> + +<p> +The preparations for the departure of all three to the East began at once; for +Deronda could not deny Ezra’s wish that they should set out on the voyage +forthwith, so that he might go with them, instead of detaining them to watch +over him. He had no belief that Ezra’s life would last through the +voyage, for there were symptoms which seemed to show that the last stage of his +malady had set in. But Ezra himself had said, “Never mind where I die, so +that I am with you.” +</p> + +<p> +He did not set out with them. One morning early he said to Deronda, “Do +not quit me to-day. I shall die before it is ended.” +</p> + +<p> +He chose to be dressed and sit up in his easy chair as usual, Deronda and Mirah +on each side of him, and for some hours he was unusually silent, not even +making the effort to speak, but looking at them occasionally with eyes full of +some restful meaning, as if to assure them that while this remnant of +breathing-time was difficult, he felt an ocean of peace beneath him. +</p> + +<p> +It was not till late in the afternoon, when the light was falling, that he took +a hand of each in his and said, looking at Deronda, “Death is coming to +me as the divine kiss which is both parting and reunion—which takes me +from your bodily eyes and gives me full presence in your soul. Where thou +goest, Daniel, I shall go. Is it not begun? Have I not breathed my soul into +you? We shall live together.” +</p> + +<p> +He paused, and Deronda waited, thinking that there might be another word for +him. But slowly and with effort Ezra, pressing on their hands, raised himself +and uttered in Hebrew the confession of the divine Unity, which long for +generations has been on the lips of the dying Israelite. +</p> + +<p> +He sank back gently into his chair, and did not speak again. But it was some +hours before he had ceased to breathe, with Mirah’s and Deronda’s +arms around him. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail<br/> +Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,<br/> +Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair,<br/> +And what may quiet us in a death so noble.” +</p> + +</div> + + + + +<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANIEL DERONDA ***</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This file should be named 7469-h.htm or 7469-h.zip</div> +<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0;'>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in https://www.gutenberg.org/7/4/6/7469/</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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