Daniel Deronda

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Mrs. Meyrick gave no audible answer, but pressed her lips against Mirah's
forehead.

* * * * *

"She's just a pearl; the mud has only washed her," was the fervid little
woman's closing commentary when, _tete-a-tete_ with Deronda in the back
parlor that evening, she had conveyed Mirah's story to him with much
vividness.

"What is your feeling about a search for this mother?" said Deronda. "Have
you no fears? I have, I confess."

"Oh, I believe the mother's good," said Mrs. Meyrick, with rapid
decisiveness; "or _was_ 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."

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.

"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."

"Will she be content to wait?" said Deronda, anxiously.

"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."

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.

"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."

"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."

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.

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"I am glad he is of high rank," said Mirah, with her usual quietness.

"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.

"Because I have always disliked men of high rank before."

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER XXI.

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?

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 _femme sole_
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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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--

"Bless you, my good, good darling! I can be happy, if you can!"

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."

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--

"What have you thought of doing, exactly, mamma?"

"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."

"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.

"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?"

"I suppose you mean to go abroad, then?" said Gwendolen. After all, this
is what she had familiarized her mind with.

"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."

"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.

"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.

"It is Sawyer's Cottage we are to go to."

At first, Gwendolen remained silent, paling with anger--justifiable anger,
in her opinion. Then she said with haughtiness--

"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."

"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 a 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."

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.

"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.

"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."

The ebb of sympathetic care for her mamma had gone so low just now, that
Gwendolen took no notice of these deprecatory words.

"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."

"The first news came much earlier, dear. But I would not spoil your
pleasure till it was quite necessary."

"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."

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.

"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--

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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's people's. We are not the only
sufferers: others have to resign themselves besides us."

"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."

"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."

"What is that, mamma?" some of Gwendolen's anger gave way to interest, and
she was not without romantic conjectures.

"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."

"What! be like Miss Graves at Madame Meunier's? No."

"I think, myself, that Dr. Monpert's would be more suitable. There could
be no hardship in a bishop's family."

"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."

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.

"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."