Daniel Deronda

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

DANIEL DERONDA

BY GEORGE ELIOT

Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul:
There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires
That trample on the dead to seize their spoil,
Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible
As exhalations laden with slow death,
And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys
Breathes pallid pestilence.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD
" II. MEETING STREAMS
" III. MAIDENS CHOOSING
" IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE
" V. MORDECAI
" VI. REVELATIONS
" VII. THE MOTHER AND THE SON
" VIII. FRUIT AND SEED

DANIEL DERONDA.

BOOK I.--THE SPOILED CHILD.

CHAPTER I.

Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even
science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe
unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his
sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate
grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle;
but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different
from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward,
divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought
really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us to
the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth,
it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our
story sets out.

Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or
expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or
the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was
the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the
wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the
whole being consents?

She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda's mind was occupied in
gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a
ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid
resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species
of pleasure at a heavy cost of guilt mouldings, dark-toned color and
chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy--forming a suitable condenser
for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not
easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at
least by persons of little fashion.

It was near four o'clock on a September day, so that the atmosphere was
well-brewed to a visible haze. There was deep stillness, broken only by a
light rattle, a light chink, a small sweeping sound, and an occasional
monotone in French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously
constructed automaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried
crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and attention bent
on the tables. The one exception was a melancholy little boy, with his
knees and calves simply in their natural clothing of epidermis, but for
the rest of his person in a fancy dress. He alone had his face turned
toward the doorway, and fixing on it the blank gaze of a bedizened child
stationed as a masquerading advertisement on the platform of an itinerant
show, stood close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulette-table.

About this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled, many in the outer
rows, where there was occasionally a deposit of new-comers, being mere
spectators, only that one of them, usually a woman, might now and then be
observed putting down a five-franc with a simpering air, just to see what
the passion of gambling really was. Those who were taking their pleasure
at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed very distant
varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and
miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here
certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled
fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow,
crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin--a hand
easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled
eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis
of the vulture. And where else would her ladyship have graciously
consented to sit by that dry-lipped feminine figure prematurely old,
withered after short bloom like her artificial flowers, holding a shabby
velvet reticule before her, and occasionally putting in her mouth the
point with which she pricked her card? There too, very near the fair
countess, was a respectable London tradesman, blonde and soft-handed, his
sleek hair scrupulously parted behind and before, conscious of circulars
addressed to the nobility and gentry, whose distinguished patronage
enabled him to take his holidays fashionably, and to a certain extent in
their distinguished company. Not his gambler's passion that nullifies
appetite, but a well-fed leisure, which, in the intervals of winning money
in business and spending it showily, sees no better resource than winning
money in play and spending it yet more showily--reflecting always that
Providence had never manifested any disapprobation of his amusement, and
dispassionate enough to leave off if the sweetness of winning much and
seeing others lose had turned to the sourness of losing much and seeing
others win. For the vice of gambling lay in losing money at it. In his
bearing there might be something of the tradesman, but in his pleasures he
was fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles. Standing close to
his chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statuesque, reaching across him to
place the first pile of napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an
envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over
to an old bewigged woman with eye-glasses pinching her nose. There was a
slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of the old woman; but
the statuesque Italian remained impassive, and--probably secure in an
infallible system which placed his foot on the neck of chance--immediately
prepared a new pile. So did a man with the air of an emaciated beau or
worn-out libertine, who looked at life through one eye-glass, and held out
his hand tremulously when he asked for change. It could surely be no
severity of system, but rather some dream of white crows, or the induction
that the eighth of the month was lucky, which inspired the fierce yet
tottering impulsiveness of his play.

But, while every single player differed markedly from every other, there
was a certain uniform negativeness of expression which had the effect of a
mask--as if they had all eaten of some root that for the time compelled
the brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action.

Deronda's first thought when his eyes fell on this scene of dull, gas-
poisoned absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish shepherd-boys had
seemed to him more enviable:--so far Rousseau might be justified in
maintaining that art and science had done a poor service to mankind. But
suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention was arrested by
a young lady who, standing at an angle not far from him, was the last to
whom his eyes traveled. She was bending and speaking English to a middle-
aged lady seated at play beside her: but the next instant she returned to
her play, and showed the full height of a graceful figure, with a face
which might possibly be looked at without admiration, but could hardly be
passed with indifference.

The inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to his eyes a growing
expression of scrutiny, tending farther and farther away from the glow of
mingled undefined sensibilities forming admiration. At one moment they
followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and hands, as this
problematic sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with an air of firm
choice; and the next they returned to the face which, at present
unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the game. The sylph
was a winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in pale-gray,
were adjusting the coins which had been pushed toward her in order to pass
them back again to the winning point, she looked round her with a survey
too markedly cold and neutral not to have in it a little of that nature
which we call art concealing an inward exultation.

But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda's, and instead of
averting them as she would have desired to do, she was unpleasantly
conscious that they were arrested--how long? The darting sense that he was
measuring her and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of
different quality from the human dross around her, that he felt himself in
a region outside and above her, and was examining her as a specimen of a
lower order, roused a tingling resentment which stretched the moment with
conflict. It did not bring the blood to her cheeks, but it sent it away
from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an inward defiance,
and without other sign of emotion than this lip-paleness turned to her
play. But Deronda's gaze seemed to have acted as an evil eye. Her stake
was gone. No matter; she had been winning ever since she took to roulette
with a few napoleons at command, and had a considerable reserve. She had
begun to believe in her luck, others had begun to believe in it: she had
visions of being followed by a _cortege_ 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 disregarded her as one of an insect swarm who
had no individual physiognomy. Besides, in spite of his superciliousness
and irony, it was difficult to believe that he did not admire her spirit
as well as her person: he was young, handsome, distinguished in
appearance--not one of these ridiculous and dowdy Philistines who thought
it incumbent on them to blight the gaming-table with a sour look of
protest as they passed by it. The general conviction that we are admirable
does not easily give way before a single negative; rather when any of
Vanity's large family, male or female, find their performance received
coldly, they are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the
unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen's habits of mind it had been taken
for granted that she knew what was admirable and that she herself was
admired. This basis of her thinking had received a disagreeable
concussion, and reeled a little, but was not easily to be overthrown.

In the evening the same room was more stiflingly heated, was brilliant
with gas and with the costumes of ladies who floated their trains along it
or were seated on the ottomans.

The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale sea-green
feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green hat and light
brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth. She was under the wing, or rather
soared by the shoulder, of the lady who had sat by her at the roulette-
table; and with them was a gentleman with a white mustache and clipped
hair: solid-browed, stiff and German. They were walking about or standing
to chat with acquaintances, and Gwendolen was much observed by the seated
groups.

"A striking girl--that Miss Harleth--unlike others."

"Yes, she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now--all green and
silver, and winds her neck about a little more than usual."

"Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary. She is that kind of
girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty, Mr. Vandernoodt?"

"Very. A man might risk hanging for her--I mean a fool might."

"You like a _nez retrousse_, then, and long narrow eyes?"

"When they go with such an _ensemble_."

"The _ensemble du serpent_?"

"If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent; why not man?"

"She is certainly very graceful; but she wants a tinge of color in her
cheeks. It is a sort of Lamia beauty she has."

"On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief charms. It is a
warm paleness; it looks thoroughly healthy. And that delicate nose with
its gradual little upward curve is distracting. And then her mouth--there
never was a prettier mouth, the lips curled backward so finely, eh,
Mackworth?"

"Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks so self-
complacent, as if it knew its own beauty--the curves are too immovable. I
like a mouth that trembles more."

"For my part, I think her odious," said a dowager. "It is wonderful what
unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these Langens? Does anybody know
them?"

"They are quite _comme il faut_. I have dined with them several times at
the _Russie_. The baroness is English. Miss Harleth calls her cousin. The
girl herself is thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as possible."

"Dear me! and the baron?".

"A very good furniture picture."

"Your baroness is always at the roulette-table," said Mackworth. "I fancy
she has taught the girl to gamble."

"Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece here
and there. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak."

"I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich? Who knows?"

"Ah, who knows? Who knows that about anybody?" said Mr. Vandernoodt,
moving off to join the Langens.

The remark that Gwendolen wound her neck about more than usual this
evening was true. But it was not that she might carry out the serpent idea
more completely: it was that she watched for any chance of seeing Deronda,
so that she might inquire about this stranger, under whose measuring gaze
she was still wincing. At last her opportunity came.

"Mr. Vandernoodt, you know everybody," said Gwendolen, not too eagerly,
rather with a certain languor of utterance which she sometimes gave to her
clear soprano. "Who is that near the door?"

"There are half a dozen near the door. Do you mean that old Adonis in the
George the Fourth wig?"

"No, no; the dark-haired young man on the right with the dreadful
expression."

"Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly fine fellow."

"But who is he?"

"He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger."

"Sir Hugo Mallinger?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"No." (Gwendolen colored slightly.) "He has a place near us, but he never
comes to it. What did you say was the name of that gentleman near the
door?"

"Deronda--Mr. Deronda."

"What a delightful name! Is he an Englishman?"

"Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the baronet. You are
interested in him?"

"Yes. I think he is not like young men in general."

"And you don't admire young men in general?"

"Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can't at all guess
what this Mr. Deronda would say. What _does_ he say?"

"Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for a good hour last night on the
terrace, and he never spoke--and was not smoking either. He looked bored."

"Another reason why I should like to know him. I am always bored."

"I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction. Shall I bring
it about? Will you allow it, baroness?"

"Why not?--since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It is a new _role_
of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored," continued Madame von Langen,
when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved away. "Until now you have always seemed
eager about something from morning till night."

"That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to leave off play I
must break my arm or my collar-bone. I must make something happen; unless
you will go into Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn."

"Perhaps this Mr. Deronda's acquaintance will do instead of the
Matterhorn."

"Perhaps."

But Gwendolen did not make Deronda's acquaintance on this occasion. Mr.
Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing him up to her that evening, and
when she re-entered her own room she found a letter recalling her home.

CHAPTER II.

This man contrives a secret 'twixt us two,
That he may quell me with his meeting eyes
Like one who quells a lioness at bay.

This was the letter Gwendolen found on her table:--

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,

FANNY DAVILOW.

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.

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 _naive_
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.