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

While this polite pea-shooting was going on, Gwendolen trifled with her
jelly, and looked at every speaker in turn that she might feel at ease in
looking at Deronda.

"I wonder what he thinks of me, really? He must have felt interested in
me, else he would not have sent me my necklace. I wonder what he thinks of
my marriage? What notions has he to make him so grave about things? Why is
he come to Diplow?"

These questions ran in her mind as the voice of an uneasy longing to be
judged by Deronda with unmixed admiration--a longing which had had its
seed in her first resentment at his critical glance. Why did she care so
much about the opinion of this man who was "nothing of any consequence"?
She had no time to find the reason--she was too much engaged in caring. In
the drawing-room, when something had called Grandcourt away, she went
quite unpremeditatedly up to Deronda, who was standing at a table apart,
turning over some prints, and said to him--

"Shall you hunt to-morrow, Mr. Deronda?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"You don't object to hunting, then?"

"I find excuses for it. It is a sin I am inclined to--when I can't get
boating or cricketing."

"Do you object to my hunting?" said Gwendolen, with a saucy movement of
the chin.

"I have no right to object to anything you choose to do."

"You thought you had a right to object to my gambling," persisted
Gwendolen.

"I was sorry for it. I am not aware that I told you of my objection," said
Deronda, with his usual directness of gaze--a large-eyed gravity, innocent
of any intention. His eyes had a peculiarity which has drawn many men into
trouble; they were of a dark yet mild intensity which seemed to express a
special interest in every one on whom he fixed them, and might easily help
to bring on him those claims which ardently sympathetic people are often
creating in the minds of those who need help. In mendicant fashion we make
the goodness of others a reason for exorbitant demands on them. That sort
of effect was penetrating Gwendolen.

"You hindered me from gambling again," she answered. But she had no sooner
spoken than she blushed over face and neck; and Deronda blushed, too,
conscious that in the little affair of the necklace he had taken a
questionable freedom.

It was impossible to speak further; and she turned away to a window,
feeling that she had stupidly said what she had not meant to say, and yet
being rather happy that she had plunged into this mutual understanding.
Deronda also did not like it. Gwendolen seemed more decidedly attractive
than before; and certainly there had been changes going on within her
since that time at Leubronn: the struggle of mind attending a conscious
error had wakened something like a new soul, which had better, but also
worse, possibilities than her former poise of crude self-confidence: among
the forces she had come to dread was something within her that troubled
satisfaction.

That evening Mrs. Davilow said, "Was it really so, or only a joke of
yours, about Mr. Deronda's spoiling your play, Gwen?"

Her curiosity had been excited, and she could venture to ask a question
that did not concern Mr. Grandcourt.

"Oh, it merely happened that he was looking on when I began to lose," said
Gwendolen, carelessly. "I noticed him."

"I don't wonder at that: he is a striking young man. He puts me in mind of
Italian paintings. One would guess, without being told, that there was
foreign blood in his veins."

"Is there?" said Gwendolen.

"Mrs. Torrington says so. I asked particularly who he was, and she told me
that his mother was some foreigner of high rank."

"His mother?" said Gwendolen, rather sharply. "Then who was his father?"

"Well--every one says he is the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, who brought him
up; though he passes for a ward. She says, if Sir Hugo Mallinger could
have done as he liked with his estates, he would have left them to this
Mr. Deronda, since he has no legitimate son."

Gwendolen was silent; but her mother observed so marked an effect in her
face that she was angry with herself for having repeated Mrs. Torrington's
gossip. It seemed, on reflection, unsuited to the ear of her daughter, for
whom Mrs. Davilow disliked what is called knowledge of the world; and
indeed she wished that she herself had not had any of it thrust upon her.

An image which had immediately arisen in Gwendolen's mind was that of the
unknown mother--no doubt a dark-eyed woman--probably sad. Hardly any face
could be less like Deronda's than that represented as Sir Hugo's in a
crayon portrait at Diplow. A dark-eyed woman, no longer young, had become
"stuff o' the conscience" to Gwendolen.

That night when she had got into her little bed, and only a dim light was
burning, she said--

"Mamma, have men generally children before they are married?"

"No, dear, no," said Mrs. Davilow. "Why do you ask such a question?" (But
she began to think that she saw the why.)

"If it were so, I ought to know," said Gwendolen, with some indignation.

"You are thinking of what I said about Mr. Deronda and Sir Hugo Mallinger.
That is a very unusual case, dear."

"Does Lady Mallinger know?"

"She knows enough to satisfy her. That is quite clear, because Mr. Deronda
has lived with them."

"And people think no worse of him?"

"Well, of course he is under some disadvantage: it is not as if he were
Lady Mallinger's son. He does not inherit the property, and he is not of
any consequence in the world. But people are not obliged to know anything
about his birth; you see, he is very well received."

"I wonder whether he knows about it; and whether he is angry with his
father?"

"My dear child, why should you think of that?"

"Why?" said Gwendolen, impetuously, sitting up in her bed. "Haven't
children reason to be angry with their parents? How can they help their
parents marrying or not marrying?"

But a consciousness rushed upon her, which made her fall back again on her
pillow. It was not only what she would have felt months before--that she
might seem to be reproaching her mother for that second marriage of hers;
what she chiefly felt now was, that she had been led on to a condemnation
which seemed to make her own marriage a forbidden thing.

There was no further talk, and till sleep came over her Gwendolen lay
struggling with the reasons against that marriage--reasons which pressed
upon her newly now that they were unexpectedly mirrored in the story of a
man whose slight relations with her had, by some hidden affinity, bitten
themselves into the most permanent layers of feeling. It was
characteristic that, with all her debating, she was never troubled by the
question whether the indefensibleness of her marriage did not include the
fact that she had accepted Grandcourt solely as a man whom it was
convenient for her to marry, not in the least as one to whom she would be
binding herself in duty. Gwendolen's ideas were pitiably crude; but many
grand difficulties of life are apt to force themselves on us in our
crudity. And to judge wisely, I suppose we must know how things appear to
the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part of the world's
history.

In the morning there was a double excitement for her. She was going to
hunt, from which scruples about propriety had threatened to hinder her,
until it was found that Mrs. Torrington was horsewoman enough to accompany
her--going to hunt for the first time since her escapade with Rex; and she
was going again to see Deronda, in whom, since last night, her interest
had so gathered that she expected, as people do about revealed
celebrities, to see something in his appearance which she had missed
before.

What was he going to be? What sort of life had he before him--he being
nothing of any consequence? And with only a little difference in events he
might have been as important as Grandcourt, nay--her imagination
inevitably went into that direction--might have held the very estates
which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would probably some day see
her mistress of the Abbey at Topping, see her bearing the title which
would have been his own wife's. These obvious, futile thoughts of what
might have been, made a new epoch for Gwendolen. She, whose unquestionable
habit it had been to take the best that came to her for less than her own
claim, had now to see the position which tempted her in a new light, as a
hard, unfair exclusion of others. What she had now heard about Deronda
seemed to her imagination to throw him into one group with Mrs. Glasher
and her children; before whom she felt herself in an attitude of apology--
she who had hitherto been surrounded by a group that in her opinion had
need be apologetic to her. Perhaps Deronda himself was thinking of these
things. Could he know of Mrs. Glasher? If he knew that she knew, he would
despise her; but he could have no such knowledge. Would he, without that,
despise her for marrying Grandcourt? His possible judgment of her actions
was telling on her as importunately as Klesmer's judgment of her powers;
but she found larger room for resistance to a disapproval of her marriage,
because it is easier to make our conduct seem justifiable to ourselves
than to make our ability strike others. "How can I help it?" is not our
favorite apology for incompetency. But Gwendolen felt some strength in
saying--

"How can I help what other people have done? Things would not come right
if I were to turn round now and declare that I would not marry Mr.
Grandcourt." And such turning round was out of the question. The horses in
the chariot she had mounted were going at full speed.

This mood of youthful, elated desperation had a tidal recurrence. She
could dare anything that lay before her sooner than she could choose to go
backward, into humiliation; and it was even soothing to think that there
would now be as much ill-doing in the one as in the other. But the
immediate delightful fact was the hunt, where she would see Deronda, and
where he would see her; for always lurking ready to obtrude before other
thoughts about him was the impression that he was very much interested in
her. But to-day she was resolved not to repeat her folly of yesterday, as
if she were anxious to say anything to him. Indeed, the hunt would be too
absorbing.

And so it was for a long while. Deronda was there, and within her sight
very often; but this only added to the stimulus of a pleasure which
Gwendolen had only once before tasted, and which seemed likely always to
give a delight independent of any crosses, except such as took away the
chance of riding. No accident happened to throw them together; the run
took them within convenient reach of home, and the agreeable sombreness of
the gray November afternoon, with a long stratum of yellow light in the
west, Gwendolen was returning with the company from Diplow, who were
attending her on the way to Offendene. Now the sense of glorious
excitement was over and gone, she was getting irritably disappointed that
she had had no opportunity of speaking to Deronda, whom she would not see
again, since he was to go away in a couple of days. What was she going to
say? That was not quite certain. She wanted to speak to him. Grandcourt
was by her side; Mrs. Torrington, her husband, and another gentleman in
advance; and Deronda's horse she could hear behind. The wish to speak to
him and have him speaking to her was becoming imperious; and there was no
chance of it unless she simply asserted her will and defied everything.
Where the order of things could give way to Miss Gwendolen, it must be
made to do so. They had lately emerged from a wood of pines and beeches,
where the twilight stillness had a repressing effect, which increased her
impatience. The horse-hoofs again heard behind at some little distance
were a growing irritation. She reined in her horse and looked behind her;
Grandcourt after a few paces, also paused; but she, waving her whip and
nodding sideways with playful imperiousness, said, "Go on! I want to speak
to Mr. Deronda."

Grandcourt hesitated; but that he would have done after any proposition.
It was an awkward situation for him. No gentleman, before marriage; could
give the emphasis of refusal to a command delivered in this playful way.
He rode on slowly, and she waited till Deronda came up. He looked at her
with tacit inquiry, and she said at once, letting her horse go alongside
of his--

"Mr. Deronda, you must enlighten my ignorance. I want to know why you
thought it wrong for me to gamble. Is it because I am a woman?"

"Not altogether; but I regretted it the more because you were a woman,"
said Deronda, with an irrepressible smile. Apparently it must be
understood between them now that it was he who sent the necklace. "I think
it would be better for men not to gamble. It is a besotting kind of taste,
likely to turn into a disease. And, besides, there is something revolting
to me in raking a heap of money together, and internally chuckling over
it, when others are feeling the loss of it. I should even call it base, if
it were more than an exceptional lapse. There are enough inevitable turns
of fortune which force us to see that our gain is another's loss:--that is
one of the ugly aspects of life. One would like to reduce it as much as
one could, not get amusement out of exaggerating it." Deronda's voice had
gathered some indignation while he was speaking.

"But you do admit that we can't help things," said Gwendolen, with a drop
in her tone. The answer had not been anything like what she had expected.
"I mean that things are so in spite of us; we can't always help it that
our gain is another's loss."

"Clearly. Because of that, we should help it where we can."

Gwendolen, biting her lip inside, paused a moment, and then forcing
herself to speak with an air of playfulness again, said--

"But why should you regret it more because I am a woman?"

"Perhaps because we need that you should be better than we are."

"But suppose _we_ need that men should be better than we are," said
Gwendolen with a little air of "check!"

"That is rather a difficulty," said Deronda, smiling. "I suppose I should
have said, we each of us think it would be better for the other to be
good."

"You see, I needed you to be better than I was--and you thought so," said
Gwendolen, nodding and laughing, while she put her horse forward and
joined Grandcourt, who made no observation.

"Don't you want to know what I had to say to Mr. Deronda?" said Gwendolen,
whose own pride required her to account for her conduct.

"A--no," said Grandcourt, coldly.

"Now that is the first impolite word you have spoken--that you don't wish
to hear what I had to say," said Gwendolen, playing at a pout.

"I wish to hear what you say to me--not to other men," said Grandcourt.

"Then you wish to hear this. I wanted to make him tell me why he objected
to my gambling, and he gave me a little sermon."

"Yes--but excuse me the sermon." If Gwendolen imagined that Grandcourt
cared about her speaking to Deronda, he wished her to understand that she
was mistaken. But he was not fond of being told to ride on. She saw he was
piqued, but did not mind. She had accomplished her object of speaking
again to Deronda before he raised his hat and turned with the rest toward
Diplow, while her lover attended her to Offendene, where he was to bid
farewell before a whole day's absence on the unspecified journey.
Grandcourt had spoken truth in calling the journey a bore: he was going by
train to Gadsmere.

CHAPTER XXX.

No penitence and no confessional,
No priest ordains it, yet they're forced to sit
Amid deep ashes of their vanished years.

Imagine a rambling, patchy house, the best part built of gray stone, and
red-tiled, a round tower jutting at one of the corners, the mellow
darkness of its conical roof surmounted by a weather-cock making an
agreeable object either amidst the gleams and greenth of summer or the
low-hanging clouds and snowy branches of winter: the ground shady with
spreading trees: a great tree flourishing on one side, backward some
Scotch firs on a broken bank where the roots hung naked, and beyond, a
rookery: on the other side a pool overhung with bushes, where the water-
fowl fluttered and screamed: all around, a vast meadow which might be
called a park, bordered by an old plantation and guarded by stone ledges
which looked like little prisons. Outside the gate the country, once
entirely rural and lovely, now black with coal mines, was chiefly peopled
by men and brethren with candles stuck in their hats, and with a diabolic
complexion which laid them peculiarly open to suspicion in the eyes of the
children at Gadsmere--Mrs. Glasher's four beautiful children, who had
dwelt there for about three years. Now, in November, when the flower-beds
were empty, the trees leafless, and the pool blackly shivering, one might
have said that the place was sombrely in keeping with the black roads and
black mounds which seemed to put the district in mourning;--except when
the children were playing on the gravel with the dogs for their
companions. But Mrs. Glasher, under her present circumstances, liked
Gadsmere as well as she would have liked any other abode. The complete
seclusion of the place, which the unattractiveness of the country secured,
was exactly to her taste. When she drove her two ponies with a waggonet
full of children, there were no gentry in carriages to be met, only men of
business in gigs; at church there were no eyes she cared to avoid, for the
curate's wife and the curate himself were either ignorant of anything to
her disadvantage, or ignored it: to them she was simply a widow lady, the
tenant of Gadsmere; and the name of Grandcourt was of little interest in
that district compared with the names of Fletcher and Gawcome, the lessees
of the collieries.

It was full ten years since the elopement of an Irish officer's beautiful
wife with young Grandcourt, and a consequent duel where the bullets
wounded the air only, had made some little noise. Most of those who
remembered the affair now wondered what had become of that Mrs. Glasher,
whose beauty and brilliancy had made her rather conspicuous to them in
foreign places, where she was known to be living with young Grandcourt.

That he should have disentangled himself from that connection seemed only
natural and desirable. As to her, it was thought that a woman who was
understood to have forsaken her child along with her husband had probably
sunk lower. Grandcourt had of course got weary of her. He was much given
to the pursuit of women: but a man in his position would by this time
desire to make a suitable marriage with the fair young daughter of a noble
house. No one talked of Mrs. Glasher now, any more than they talked of the
victim in a trial for manslaughter ten years before: she was a lost vessel
after whom nobody would send out an expedition of search; but Grandcourt
was seen in harbor with his colors flying, registered as seaworthy as
ever.

Yet, in fact, Grandcourt had never disentangled himself from Mrs. Glasher.
His passion for her had been the strongest and most lasting he had ever
known; and though it was now as dead as the music of a cracked flute, it
had left a certain dull disposedness, which, on the death of her husband
three years before, had prompted in him a vacillating notion of marrying
her, in accordance with the understanding often expressed between them
during the days of his first ardor. At that early time Grandcourt would
willingly have paid for the freedom to be won by a divorce; but the
husband would not oblige him, not wanting to be married again himself, and
not wishing to have his domestic habits printed in evidence.

The altered poise which the years had brought in Mrs. Glasher was just the
reverse. At first she was comparatively careless about the possibility of
marriage. It was enough that she had escaped from a disagreeable husband
and found a sort of bliss with a lover who had completely fascinated her--
young, handsome, amorous, and living in the best style, with equipage and
conversation of the kind to be expected in young men of fortune who have
seen everything. She was an impassioned, vivacious woman, fond of
adoration, exasperated by five years of marital rudeness; and the sense of
release was so strong upon her that it stilled anxiety for more than she
actually enjoyed. An equivocal position was of no importance to her then;
she had no envy for the honors of a dull, disregarded wife: the one spot
which spoiled her vision of her new pleasant world, was the sense that she
left her three-year-old boy, who died two years afterward, and whose first
tones saying "mamma" retained a difference from those of the children that
came after. But now the years had brought many changes besides those in
the contour of her cheek and throat; and that Grandcourt should marry her
had become her dominant desire. The equivocal position which she had not
minded about for herself was now telling upon her through her children,
whom she loved with a devotion charged with the added passion of
atonement. She had no repentance except in this direction. If Grandcourt
married her, the children would be none the worse off for what had passed:
they would see their mother in a dignified position, and they would be at
no disadvantage with the world: her son could be made his father's heir.
It was the yearning for this result which gave the supreme importance to
Grandcourt's feeling for her; her love for him had long resolved itself
into anxiety that he should give her the unique, permanent claim of a
wife, and she expected no other happiness in marriage than the
satisfaction of her maternal love and pride--including her pride for
herself in the presence of her children. For the sake of that result she
was prepared even with a tragic firmness to endure anything quietly in
marriage; and she had acuteness enough to cherish Grandcourt's flickering
purpose negatively, by not molesting him with passionate appeals and with
scene-making. In her, as in every one else who wanted anything of him, his
incalculable turns, and his tendency to harden under beseeching, had
created a reasonable dread:--a slow discovery, of which no presentiment
had been given in the bearing of a youthful lover with a fine line of face
and the softest manners. But reticence had necessarily cost something to
this impassioned woman, and she was the bitterer for it. There is no
quailing--even that forced on the helpless and injured--which has not an
ugly obverse: the withheld sting was gathering venom. She was absolutely
dependent on Grandcourt; for though he had been always liberal in expenses
for her, he had kept everything voluntary on his part; and with the goal
of marriage before her, she would ask for nothing less. He had said that
he would never settle anything except by will; and when she was thinking
of alternatives for the future it often occurred to her that, even if she
did not become Grandcourt's wife, he might never have a son who would have
a legitimate claim on him, and the end might be that her son would be made
heir to the best part of his estates. No son at that early age could
promise to have more of his father's physique. But her becoming
Grandcourt's wife was so far from being an extravagant notion of
possibility, that even Lush had entertained it, and had said that he would
as soon bet on it as on any other likelihood with regard to his familiar
companion. Lush, indeed, on inferring that Grandcourt had a preconception
of using his residence at Diplow in order to win Miss Arrowpoint, had
thought it well to fan that project, taking it as a tacit renunciation of
the marriage with Mrs. Glasher, which had long been a mark for the
hovering and wheeling of Grandcourt's caprice. But both prospects had been
negatived by Gwendolen's appearance on the scene; and it was natural
enough for Mrs. Glasher to enter with eagerness into Lush's plan of
hindering that new danger by setting up a barrier in the mind of the girl
who was being sought as a bride. She entered into it with an eagerness
which had passion in it as well as purpose, some of the stored-up venom
delivering itself in that way.

After that, she had heard from Lush of Gwendolen's departure, and the
probability that all danger from her was got rid of; but there had been no
letter to tell her that the danger had returned and had become a
certainty. She had since then written to Grandcourt, as she did
habitually, and he had been longer than usual in answering. She was
inferring that he might intend coming to Gadsmere at the time when he was
actually on the way; and she was not without hope--what construction of
another's mind is not strong wishing equal to?--that a certain sickening
from that frustrated courtship might dispose him to slip the more easily
into the old track of intention.

Grandcourt had two grave purposes in coming to Gadsmere: to convey the
news of his approaching marriage in person, in order to make this first
difficulty final; and to get from Lydia his mother's diamonds, which long
ago he had confided to her and wished her to wear. Her person suited
diamonds, and made them look as if they were worth some of the money given
for them. These particular diamonds were not mountains of light--they were
mere peas and haricots for the ears, neck and hair; but they were worth
some thousands, and Grandcourt necessarily wished to have them for his
wife. Formerly when he had asked Lydia to put them into his keeping again,
simply on the ground that they would be safer and ought to be deposited at
the bank, she had quietly but absolutely refused, declaring that they were
quite safe; and at last had said, "If you ever marry another woman I will
give them up to her: are you going to marry another woman?" At that time
Grandcourt had no motive which urged him to persist, and he had this grace
in him, that the disposition to exercise power either by cowing or
disappointing others or exciting in them a rage which they dared not
express--a disposition which was active in him as other propensities
became languid--had always been in abeyance before Lydia. A severe
interpreter might say that the mere facts of their relation to each other,
the melancholy position of this woman who depended on his will, made a
standing banquet for his delight in dominating. But there was something
else than this in his forbearance toward her: there was the surviving
though metamorphosed effect of the power she had had over him; and it was
this effect, the fitful dull lapse toward solicitations that once had the
zest now missing from life, which had again and again inclined him to
espouse a familiar past rather than rouse himself to the expectation of
novelty. But now novelty had taken hold of him and urged him to make the
most of it.