Daniel Deronda

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Under the first shock she forgot everything but her anger, and snatched at
any phrase that would serve as a weapon.

"If Klesmer has presumed to offer himself to you, your father shall
horsewhip him off the premises. Pray, speak, Mr. Arrowpoint."

The father took his cigar from his mouth, and rose to the occasion by
saying, "This will never do, Cath."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Never mind, mamma," said Catherine, indignant in her turn. "We all know
he is a genius--as Tasso was."

"Those times were not these, nor is Klesmer Tasso," said Mrs. Arrowpoint,
getting more heated. "There is no sting in _that_ sarcasm, except the
sting of undutifulness."

"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."

"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?"

"What are the right hands? My grandfather gained the property in trade."

"Mr. Arrowpoint, _will_ you sit by and hear this without speaking?"

"I am a gentleman, Cath. We expect you to marry a gentleman," said the
father, exerting himself.

"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."

"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."

"Your parent's desire makes no duty for you, then?"

"Yes, within reason. But before I give up the happiness of my life--"

"Catherine, Catherine, it will not be your happiness," said Mrs.
Arrowpoint, in her most raven-like tones.

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I cannot understand the application of such words, mamma."

"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."

"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."

"It certainly will not be done," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, imperiously. "Where
is the man? Let him be fetched."

"I cannot fetch him to be insulted," said Catherine. "Nothing will be
achieved by that."

"I suppose you would wish him to know that in marrying you he will not
marry your fortune," said Mrs. Arrowpoint.

"Certainly; if it were so, I should wish him to know it."

"Then you had better fetch him."

Catherine only went into the music-room and said, "Come." She felt no need
to prepare Klesmer.

"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."

"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."

"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.

Klesmer made a low bow in silent irony.

"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.

"I can give up nothing without reference to your daughter's wish," said
Klesmer. "My engagement is to her."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"You mean to defy us, then?" said Mrs. Arrowpoint.

"I mean to marry Herr Klesmer," said Catherine, firmly.

"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.

"Madam," said Klesmer, "certain reasons forbid me to retort. But
understand that I consider it out of the power 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."

"You will leave the house, however," said Mrs. Arrowpoint.

"I go at once," said Klesmer, bowing and quitting the room.

"Let there be no misunderstanding, mamma," said Catherine; "I consider
myself engaged to Herr Klesmer, and I intend to marry him."

The mother turned her head away and waved her hand in sign of dismissal.

"It's all very fine," said Mr. Arrowpoint, when Catherine was gone; "but
what the deuce are we to do with the property?"

"There is Harry Brendall. He can take the name."

"Harry Brendall will get through it all in no time," said Mr. Arrowpoint,
relighting his cigar.

And thus, with nothing settled but the determination of the lovers,
Klesmer had left Quetcham.

CHAPTER XXIII.

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.

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.

"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.)

"That is hardly correct, I think," said Mrs. Davilow, anxiously.

"Our affairs are too serious for us to think of such nonsensical rules,"
said Gwendolen, contemptuously. "They are insulting as well as
ridiculous."

"You would not mind Isabel sitting with you? She would be reading in a
corner."

"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."

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.

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 knicknacks 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.

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 _am_ 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.

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.

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."

"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.

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.

"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."

Klesmer put down his hat upon the piano, and folded his arms as if to
concentrate himself.

"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."

Gwendolen somehow had the conviction that now she made this serious appeal
the truth would be favorable.

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?"

"Oh, no," said Gwendolen, not perturbed by a reference to this obvious
fact in the history of a young lady hitherto well provided for.

"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?"

"I am twenty-one," said Gwendolen, a slight fear rising in her. "Do you
think I am too old?"

Klesmer pouted his under lip and shook his long fingers upward in a manner
totally enigmatic.

"Many persons begin later than others," said Gwendolen, betrayed by her
habitual consciousness of having valuable information to bestow.

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?"

"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.

"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.

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."

"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--_Boesewicht_." In the last word Klesmer's voice had
dropped to a loud whisper.

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.

"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 _musts_, 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."

He paused an instant; then resting his fingers on his hips again, and
thrusting out his powerful chin, he said--

"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."

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--

"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."

"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."

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 insistance--

"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."

Klesmer was convinced now that he must speak plainly.

"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 _standpunkt_. My dear
Fraeulein, 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."

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.

"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."

At these relentless words Klesmer put out his lip and looked through his
spectacles with the air of a monster impenetrable by beauty.

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--

"You think I want talent, or am too old to begin."

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."

"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."

"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."