Daniel Deronda

G >> George Eliot >> Daniel Deronda

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69

"I think so highly of the position, that I should have been tempted to try
and get it for Anna, if she had been at all likely to meet Mrs. Mompert's
wants. It is really a home, with a continuance of education in the highest
sense: 'governess' is a misnomer. The bishop's views are of a more
decidedly Low Church color than my own--he is a close friend of Lord
Grampian's; but, though privately strict, he is not by any means narrow in
public matters. Indeed, he has created as little dislike in his diocese as
any bishop on the bench. He has always remained friendly to me, though
before his promotion, when he was an incumbent of this diocese, we had a
little controversy about the Bible Society."

The rector's words were too pregnant with satisfactory meaning to himself
for him to imagine the effect they produced in the mind of his niece.
"Continuance of education"--"bishop's views"--"privately strict"--"Bible
Society,"--it was as if he had introduced a few snakes at large for the
instruction of ladies who regarded them as all alike furnished with
poison-bags, and, biting or stinging, according to convenience. To
Gwendolen, already shrinking from the prospect open to her, such phrases
came like the growing heat of a burning glass--not at all as the links of
persuasive reflection which they formed for the good uncle. She began,
desperately, to seek an alternative.

"There was another situation, I think, mamma spoke of?" she said, with
determined self-mastery.

'"Yes," said the rector, in rather a depreciatory tone; "but that is in a
school. I should not have the same satisfaction in your taking that. It
would be much harder work, you are aware, and not so good in any other
respect. Besides, you have not an equal chance of getting it."

"Oh dear no," said Mrs. Gascoigne, "it would be much less appropriate, You
might not have a bedroom to yourself." And Gwendolen's memories of school
suggested other particulars which forced her to admit to herself that this
alternative would be no relief. She turned to her uncle again and said,
apparently in acceptance of his ideas--

"When is Mrs. Mompert likely to send for me?"

"That is rather uncertain, but she has promised not to entertain any other
proposal till she has seen you. She has entered with much feeling into
your position. It will be within the next fortnight, probably. But I must
be off now. I am going to let part of my glebe uncommonly well."

The rector ended very cheerfully, leaving the room with the satisfactory
conviction that Gwendolen was going to adapt herself to circumstances like
a girl of good sense. Having spoken appropriately, he naturally supposed
that the effects would be appropriate; being accustomed, as a household
and parish authority, to be asked to "speak to" refractory persons, with
the understanding that the measure was morally coercive.

"What a stay Henry is to us all?" said Mrs. Gascoigne, when her husband
had left the room.

"He is indeed," said Mrs. Davilow, cordially. "I think cheerfulness is a
fortune in itself. I wish I had it."

"And Rex is just like him," said Mrs. Gascoigne. "I must tell you the
comfort we have had in a letter from him. I must read you a little bit,"
she added, taking the letter from her pocket, while Anna looked rather
frightened--she did not know why, except that it had been a rule with her
not to mention Rex before Gwendolen.

The proud mother ran her eyes over the letter, seeking for sentences to
read aloud. But apparently she had found it sown with what might seem to
be closer allusions than she desired to the recent past, for she looked
up, folding the letter, and saying--

"However, he tells us that our trouble has made a man of him; he sees a
reason for any amount of work: he means to get a fellowship, to take
pupils, to set one of his brothers going, to be everything that is most
remarkable. The letter is full of fun--just like him. He says, 'Tell
mother she has put out an advertisement for a jolly good hard-working son,
in time to hinder me from taking ship; and I offer myself for the place.'
The letter came on Friday. I never saw my husband so much moved by
anything since Rex was born. It seemed a gain to balance our loss."

This letter, in fact, was what had helped both Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna to
show Gwendolen an unmixed kindliness; and she herself felt very amiably
about it, smiling at Anna, and pinching her chin, as much as to say,
"Nothing is wrong with you now, is it?" She had no gratuitously ill-
natured feeling, or egoistic pleasure in making men miserable. She only
had an intense objection to their making her miserable.

But when the talk turned on furniture for the cottage Gwendolen was not
roused to show even a languid interest. She thought that she had done as
much as could be expected of her this morning, and indeed felt at an
heroic pitch in keeping to herself the struggle that was going on within
her. The recoil of her mind from the only definite prospect allowed her,
was stronger than even she had imagined beforehand. The idea of presenting
herself before Mrs. Mompert in the first instance, to be approved or
disapproved, came as pressure on an already painful bruise; even as a
governess, it appeared she was to be tested and was liable to rejection.
After she had done herself the violence to accept the bishop and his wife,
they were still to consider whether they would accept her; it was at her
peril that she was to look, speak, or be silent. And even when she had
entered on her dismal task of self-constraint in the society of three
girls whom she was bound incessantly to edify, the same process of
inspection was to go on: there was always to be Mrs. Mompert's
supervision; always something or other would be expected of her to which
she had not the slightest inclination; and perhaps the bishop would
examine her on serious topics. Gwendolen, lately used to the social
successes of a handsome girl, whose lively venturesomeness of talk has the
effect of wit, and who six weeks before would have pitied the dullness of
the bishop rather than have been embarrassed by him, saw the life before
her as an entrance into a penitentiary. Wild thoughts of running away to
be an actress, in spite of Klesmer, came to her with the lure of freedom;
but his words still hung heavily on her soul; they had alarmed her pride
and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived herself getting amongst
vulgar people who would treat her with rude familiarity--odious men, whose
grins and smirks would not be seen through the strong grating of polite
society. Gwendolen's daring was not in the least that of the adventuress;
the demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow; and when she had
dreamed that she might be the heroine of the gaming-table, it was with the
understanding that no one should treat her with the less consideration, or
presume to look at her with irony as Deronda had done. To be protected and
petted, and to have her susceptibilities consulted in every detail, had
gone along with her food and clothing as matters of course in her life:
even without any such warning as Klesmer's she could not have thought it
an attractive freedom to be thrown in solitary dependence on the doubtful
civility of strangers. The endurance of the episcopal penitentiary was
less repulsive than that; though here too she would certainly never be
petted or have her susceptibilities consulted. Her rebellion against this
hard necessity which had come just to her of all people in the world--to
her whom all circumstances had concurred in preparing for something quite
different--was exaggerated instead of diminished as one hour followed
another, with the imagination of what she might have expected in her lot
and what it was actually to be. The family troubles, she thought, were
easier for every one than for her--even for poor dear mamma, because she
had always used herself to not enjoying. As to hoping that if she went to
the Momperts' and was patient a little while, things might get better--it
would be stupid to entertain hopes for herself after all that had
happened: her talents, it appeared, would never be recognized as anything
remarkable, and there was not a single direction in which probability
seemed to flatter her wishes. Some beautiful girls who, like her, had read
romances where even plain governesses are centres of attraction and are
sought in marriage, might have solaced themselves a little by transporting
such pictures into their own future; but even if Gwendolen's experience
had led her to dwell on love-making and marriage as her elysium, her heart
was too much oppressed by what was near to her, in both the past and the
future, for her to project her anticipations very far off. She had a
world-nausea upon her, and saw no reason all through her life why she
should wish to live. No religious view of trouble helped her: her troubles
had in her opinion all been caused by other people's disagreeable or
wicked conduct; and there was really nothing pleasant to be counted on in
the world: that was her feeling; everything else she had heard said about
trouble was mere phrase-making not attractive enough for her to have
caught it up and repeated it. As to the sweetness of labor and fulfilled
claims; the interest of inward and outward activity; the impersonal
delights of life as a perpetual discovery; the dues of courage, fortitude,
industry, which it is mere baseness not to pay toward the common burden;
the supreme worth of the teacher's vocation;--these, even if they had been
eloquently preached to her, could have been no more than faintly
apprehended doctrines: the fact which wrought upon her was her invariable
observation that for a lady to become a governess--to "take a situation"--
was to descend in life and to be treated at best with a compassionate
patronage. And poor Gwendolen had never dissociated happiness from
personal pre-eminence and _eclat_. That where these threatened to forsake
her, she should take life to be hardly worth the having, cannot make her
so unlike the rest of us, men or women, that we should cast her out of our
compassion; our moments of temptation to a mean opinion of things in
general being usually dependent on some susceptibility about ourselves and
some dullness to subjects which every one else would consider more
important. Surely a young creature is pitiable who has the labyrinth of
life before her and no clue--to whom distrust in herself and her good
fortune has come as a sudden shock, like a rent across the path that she
was treading carelessly.

In spite of her healthy frame, her irreconcilable repugnance affected her
even physically; she felt a sort of numbness and could set about nothing;
the least urgency, even that she should take her meals, was an irritation
to her; the speech of others on any subject seemed unreasonable, because
it did not include her feeling and was an ignorant claim on her. It was
not in her nature to busy herself with the fancies of suicide to which
disappointed young people are prone: what occupied and exasperated her was
the sense that there was nothing for her but to live in a way she hated.
She avoided going to the rectory again: it was too intolerable to have to
look and talk as if she were compliant; and she could not exert herself to
show interest about the furniture of that horrible cottage. Miss Merry was
staying on purpose to help, and such people as Jocosa liked that sort of
thing. Her mother had to make excuses for her not appearing, even when
Anna came to see her. For that calm which Gwendolen had promised herself
to maintain had changed into sick motivelessness: she thought, "I suppose
I shall begin to pretend by-and-by, but why should I do it now?"

Her mother watched her with silent distress; and, lapsing into the habit
of indulgent tenderness, she began to think what she imagined that
Gwendolen was thinking, and to wish that everything should give way to the
possibility of making her darling less miserable.

One day when she was in the black and yellow bedroom and her mother was
lingering there under the pretext of considering and arranging Gwendolen's
articles of dress, she suddenly roused herself to fetch the casket which
contained the ornaments.

"Mamma," she began, glancing over the upper layer, "I had forgotten these
things. Why didn't you remind me of them? Do see about getting them sold.
You will not mind about parting with them. You gave them all to me long
ago."

She lifted the upper tray and looked below.

"If we can do without them, darling, I would rather keep them for you,"
said Mrs. Davilow, seating herself beside Gwendolen with a feeling of
relief that she was beginning to talk about something. The usual relation
between them had become reversed. It was now the mother who tried to cheer
the daughter. "Why, how came you to put that pocket handkerchief in here?"

It was the handkerchief with the corner torn off which Gwendolen had
thrust in with the turquoise necklace.

"It happened to be with the necklace--I was in a hurry." said Gwendolen,
taking the handkerchief away and putting it in her pocket. "Don't sell the
necklace, mamma," she added, a new feeling having come over her about that
rescue of it which had formerly been so offensive.

"No, dear, no; it was made out of your dear father's chain. And I should
prefer not selling the other things. None of them are of any great value.
All my best ornaments were taken from me long ago."

Mrs. Davilow colored. She usually avoided any reference to such facts
about Gwendolen's step-father as that he had carried off his wife's
jewelry and disposed of it. After a moment's pause she went on--

"And these things have not been reckoned on for any expenses. Carry them
with you."

"That would be quite useless, mamma," said Gwendolen, coldly. "Governesses
don't wear ornaments. You had better get me a gray frieze livery and a
straw poke, such as my aunt's charity children wear."

"No, dear, no; don't take that view of it. I feel sure the Momperts will
like you the better for being graceful and elegant."

"I am not at all sure what the Momperts will like me to be. It is enough
that I am expected to be what they like," said Gwendolen bitterly.

"If there is anything you would object to less--anything that could be
done--instead of your going to the bishop's, do say so, Gwendolen. Tell me
what is in your heart. I will try for anything you wish," said the mother,
beseechingly. "Don't keep things away from me. Let us bear them together."

"Oh, mamma, there is nothing to tell. I can't do anything better. I must
think myself fortunate if they will have me. I shall get some money for
you. That is the only thing I have to think of. I shall not spend any
money this year: you will have all the eighty pounds. I don't know how far
that will go in housekeeping; but you need not stitch your poor fingers to
the bone, and stare away all the sight that the tears have left in your
dear eyes."

Gwendolen did not give any caresses with her words as she had been used to
do. She did not even look at her mother, but was looking at the turquoise
necklace as she turned it over her fingers.

"Bless you for your tenderness, my good darling!" said Mrs. Davilow, with
tears in her eyes. "Don't despair because there are clouds now. You are so
young. There may be great happiness in store for you yet."

"I don't see any reason for expecting it, mamma," said Gwendolen, in a
hard tone; and Mrs. Davilow was silent, thinking as she had often thought
before--"What did happen between her and Mr. Grandcourt?"

"I _will_ keep this necklace, mamma," said Gwendolen, laying it apart and
then closing the casket. "But do get the other things sold, even if they
will not bring much. Ask my uncle what to do with them. I shall certainly
not use them again. I am going to take the veil. I wonder if all the poor
wretches who have ever taken it felt as I do."

"Don't exaggerate evils, dear."

"How can any one know that I exaggerate, when I am speaking of my own
feeling? I did not say what any one else felt."

She took out the torn handkerchief from her pocket again, and wrapped it
deliberately round the necklace. Mrs. Davilow observed the action with
some surprise, but the tone of her last words discouraged her from asking
any question.

The "feeling" Gwendolen spoke of with an air of tragedy was not to be
explained by the mere fact that she was going to be a governess: she was
possessed by a spirit of general disappointment. It was not simply that
she had a distaste for what she was called on to do: the distaste spread
itself over the world outside her penitentiary, since she saw nothing very
pleasant in it that seemed attainable by her even if she were free.
Naturally her grievances did not seem to her smaller than some of her male
contemporaries held theirs to be when they felt a profession too narrow
for their powers, and had an _a priori_ conviction that it was not worth
while to put forth their latent abilities. Because her education had been
less expensive than theirs, it did not follow that she should have wider
emotions or a keener intellectual vision. Her griefs were feminine; but to
her as a woman they were not the less hard to bear, and she felt an equal
right to the Promethean tone.

But the movement of mind which led her to keep the necklace, to fold it up
in the handkerchief, and rise to put it in her _necessaire_, where she had
first placed it when it had been returned to her, was more peculiar, and
what would be called less reasonable. It came from that streak of
superstition in her which attached itself both to her confidence and her
terror--a superstition which lingers in an intense personality even in
spite of theory and science; any dread or hope for self being stronger
than all reasons for or against it. Why she should suddenly determine not
to part with the necklace was not much clearer to her than why she should
sometimes have been frightened to find herself in the fields alone: she
had a confused state of emotion about Deronda--was it wounded pride and
resentment, or a certain awe and exceptional trust? It was something vague
and yet mastering, which impelled her to this action about the necklace.
There, is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to
be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

CHAPTER XXV.

How trace the why and wherefore in a mind reduced to the barrenness of
a fastidious egoism, in which all direct desires are dulled, and have
dwindled from motives into a vacillating expectation of motives: a
mind made up of moods, where a fitful impulse springs here and there
conspicuously rank amid the general weediness? 'Tis a condition apt to
befall a life too much at large, unmoulded by the pressure of
obligation. _Nam deteriores omnes sumus licentiae_, or, as a more
familiar tongue might deliver it, _"As you like" is a bad finger-
post._

Potentates make known their intentions and affect the funds at a small
expense of words. So when Grandcourt, after learning that Gwendolen had
left Leubronn, incidentally pronounced that resort of fashion a beastly
hole, worse than Baden, the remark was conclusive to Mr. Lush that his
patron intended straightway to return to Diplow. The execution was sure to
be slower than the intention, and, in fact, Grandcourt did loiter through
the next day without giving any distinct orders about departure--perhaps
because he discerned that Lush was expecting them: he lingered over his
toilet, and certainly came down with a faded aspect of perfect distinction
which made fresh complexions and hands with the blood in them, seem signs
of raw vulgarity; he lingered on the terrace, in the gambling-rooms, in
the reading-room, occupying himself in being indifferent to everybody and
everything around him. When he met Lady Mallinger, however, he took some
trouble--raised his hat, paused, and proved that he listened to her
recommendation of the waters by replying, "Yes; I heard somebody say how
providential it was that there always happened to be springs at gambling
places."

"Oh, that was a joke," said innocent Lady Mallinger, misled by
Grandcourt's languid seriousness, "in imitation of the old one about the
towns and the rivers, you know."

"Ah, perhaps," said Grandcourt, without change of expression. Lady
Mallinger thought this worth telling to Sir Hugo, who said, "Oh, my dear,
he is not a fool. You must not suppose that he can't see a joke. He can
play his cards as well as most of us."

"He has never seemed to me a very sensible man," said Lady Mallinger, in
excuse of herself. She had a secret objection to meeting Grandcourt, who
was little else to her than a large living sign of what she felt to be her
failure as a wife--the not having presented Sir Hugo with a son. Her
constant reflection was that her husband might fairly regret his choice,
and if he had not been very good might have treated her with some
roughness in consequence, gentlemen naturally disliking to be
disappointed.

Deronda, too, had a recognition from Grandcourt, for which he was not
grateful, though he took care to return it with perfect civility. No
reasoning as to the foundations of custom could do away with the early-
rooted feeling that his birth had been attended with injury for which his
father was to blame; and seeing that but for this injury Grandcourt's
prospects might have been his, he was proudly resolute not to behave in
any way that might be interpreted into irritation on that score. He saw a
very easy descent into mean unreasoning rancor and triumph in others'
frustration; and being determined not to go down that ugly pit, he turned
his back on it, clinging to the kindlier affections within him as a
possession. Pride certainly helped him well--the pride of not recognizing
a disadvantage for one's self which vulgar minds are disposed to
exaggerate, such as the shabby equipage of poverty: he would not have a
man like Grandcourt suppose himself envied by him. But there is no
guarding against interpretation. Grandcourt did believe that Deronda, poor
devil, who he had no doubt was his cousin by the father's side, inwardly
winced under their mutual position; wherefore the presence of that less
lucky person was more agreeable to him than it would otherwise have been.
An imaginary envy, the idea that others feel their comparative deficiency,
is the ordinary _cortege_ of egoism; and his pet dogs were not the only
beings that Grandcourt liked to feel his power over in making them
jealous. Hence he was civil enough to exchange several words with Deronda
on the terrace about the hunting round Diplow, and even said, "You had
better come over for a run or two when the season begins."

Lush, not displeased with delay, amused himself very well, partly in
gossiping with Sir Hugo and in answering his questions about Grandcourt's
affairs so far as they might affect his willingness to part with his
interest in Diplow. Also about Grandcourt's personal entanglements, the
baronet knew enough already for Lush to feel released from silence on a
sunny autumn day, when there was nothing more agreeable to do in lounging
promenades than to speak freely of a tyrannous patron behind his back. Sir
Hugo willingly inclined his ear to a little good-humored scandal, which he
was fond of calling _traits de moeurs_; but he was strict in keeping such
communications from hearers who might take them too seriously. Whatever
knowledge he had of his nephew's secrets, he had never spoken of it to
Deronda, who considered Grandcourt a pale-blooded mortal, but was far from
wishing to hear how the red corpuscles had been washed out of him. It was
Lush's policy and inclination to gratify everybody when he had no reason
to the contrary; and the baronet always treated him well, as one of those
easy-handled personages who, frequenting the society of gentlemen, without
being exactly gentlemen themselves, can be the more serviceable, like the
second-best articles of our wardrobe, which we use with a comfortable
freedom from anxiety.

"Well, you will let me know the turn of events," said Sir Hugo, "if this
marriage seems likely to come off after all, or if anything else happens
to make the want of money pressing. My plan would be much better for him
than burdening Ryelands."

"That's true," said Lush, "only it must not be urged on him--just placed
in his way that the scent may tickle him. Grandcourt is not a man to be
always led by what makes for his own interest; especially if you let him
see that it makes for your interest too. I'm attached to him, of course.
I've given up everything else for the sake of keeping by him, and it has
lasted a good fifteen years now. He would not easily get any one else to
fill my place. He's a peculiar character, is Henleigh Grandcourt, and it
has been growing on him of late years. However, I'm of a constant
disposition, and I've been a sort of guardian to him since he was twenty;
an uncommonly fascinating fellow he was then, to be sure--and could be
now, if he liked. I'm attached to him; and it would be a good deal worse
for him if he missed me at his elbow."