Daniel Deronda

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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.

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--

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 _comparse_ in a petty theatre who earns the wages
of a needle-woman. That is out of the question for you."

"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 _must_ think it is an
advantage, even on the stage, to be a lady and not a perfect fright."

"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."

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 "_But_," with which
he resumed, had a startling effect, and made her look at him again.

"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."

"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."

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.

"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."

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.

"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 _her_ by your having adopted that
generous labor."

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.

"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."

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."

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."

"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.

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 nationality 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.

"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
_protege_, 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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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."

"Quite right, mamma," said Gwendolen, in the same tone, turning to put
away some music.

"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.

"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."

"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.

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."

Mrs. Davilow was like a frightened child under her daughter's face and
voice; her tears were arrested and she went away in silence.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"I question things but do not find
One that will answer to my mind:
And all the world appears unkind."
--WORDSWORTH.

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.

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 mid-day light,
unsoftened by blinds and curtains; for the furnishing to be done by
gleanings from the rectory had not yet begun.

"How _shall_ 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?"

"It will be some comfort that you have not to bear it too, dear."

"If it were not that I must get some money, I would rather be there than
go to be a governess."

"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."

"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."

"Don't be unreasonable, dear child. What could he have done?"

"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.

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.

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.

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 back-ground, and talked at first of Gwendolen's journey, and the
comfort it was to her mamma to have her at home again.

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.

"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."

"Do you know _why_ 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.

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."

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--