Daniel Deronda

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The words had nestled their venomous life within her, and stirred
continually the vision of the scene at the Whispering Stones. That scene
was now like an accusing apparition: she dreaded that Grandcourt should
know of it--so far out of her sight now was that possibility she had once
satisfied herself with, of speaking to him about Mrs. Glasher and her
children, and making them rich amends. Any endurance seemed easier than
the mortal humiliation of confessing that she knew all before she married
him, and in marrying him had broken her word. For the reasons by which she
had justified herself when the marriage tempted her, and all her easy
arrangement of her future power over her husband to make him do better
than he might be inclined to do, were now as futile as the burned-out
lights which set off a child's pageant. Her sense of being blameworthy was
exaggerated by a dread both definite and vague. The definite dread was
lest the veil of secrecy should fall between her and Grandcourt, and give
him the right to taunt her. With the reading of that letter had begun her
husband's empire of fear.

And her husband all the while knew it. He had not, indeed, any distinct
knowledge of her broken promise, and would not have rated highly the
effect of that breach on her conscience; but he was aware not only of what
Lush had told him about the meeting at the Whispering Stones, but also of
Gwendolen's concealment as to the cause of her sudden illness. He felt
sure that Lydia had enclosed something with the diamonds, and that this
something, whatever it was, had at once created in Gwendolen a new
repulsion for him and a reason for not daring to manifest it. He did not
greatly mind, or feel as many men might have felt, that his hopes in
marriage were blighted: he had wanted to marry Gwendolen, and he was not a
man to repent. Why should a gentleman whose other relations in life are
carried on without the luxury of sympathetic feeling, be supposed to
require that kind of condiment in domestic life? What he chiefly felt was
that a change had come over the conditions of his mastery, which, far from
shaking it, might establish it the more thoroughly. And it was
established. He judged that he had not married a simpleton unable to
perceive the impossibility of escape, or to see alternative evils: he had
married a girl who had spirit and pride enough not to make a fool of
herself by forfeiting all the advantages of a position which had attracted
her; and if she wanted pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind
properly he would take care not to withhold them.

Gwendolen, indeed, with all that gnawing trouble in her consciousness, had
hardly for a moment dropped the sense that it was her part to bear herself
with dignity, and appear what is called happy. In disclosure of
disappointment or sorrow she saw nothing but a humiliation which would
have been vinegar to her wounds. Whatever her husband might have come at
last to be to her, she meant to wear the yoke so as not to be pitied. For
she did think of the coming years with presentiment: she was frightened at
Grandcourt. The poor thing had passed from her girlish sauciness of
superiority over this inert specimen of personal distinction into an
amazed perception of her former ignorance about the possible mental
attitude of a man toward the woman he sought in marriage--of her present
ignorance as to what their life with each other might turn into. For
novelty gives immeasurableness to fear, and fills the early time of all
sad changes with phantoms of the future. Her little coquetries, voluntary
or involuntary, had told on Grandcourt during courtship, and formed a
medium of communication between them, showing him in the light of a
creature such as she could understand and manage: But marriage had
nulified all such interchange, and Grandcourt had become a blank
uncertainty to her in everything but this, that he would do just what he
willed, and that she had neither devices at her command to determine his
will, nor any rational means of escaping it.

What had occurred between them and her wearing the diamonds was typical.
One evening, shortly before they came to the Abbey, they were going to
dine at Brackenshaw Castle. Gwendolen had said to herself that she would
never wear those diamonds: they had horrible words clinging and crawling
about them, as from some bad dream, whose images lingered on the perturbed
sense. She came down dressed in her white, with only a streak of gold and
a pendant of emeralds, which Grandcourt had given her, round her neck, and
the little emerald stars in her ears.

Grandcourt stood with his back to the fire and looked at her as she
entered.

"Am I altogether as you like?" she said, speaking rather gaily. She was
not without enjoyment in this occasion of going to Brackenshaw Castle with
her new dignities upon her, as men whose affairs are sadly involved will
enjoy dining out among persons likely to be under a pleasant mistake about
them.

"No," said Grandcourt.

Gwendolen felt suddenly uncomfortable, wondering what was to come. She was
not unprepared for some struggle about the diamonds; but suppose he were
going to say, in low, contemptuous tones, "You are not in any way what I
like." It was very bad for her to be secretly hating him; but it would be
much worse when he gave the first sign of hating her.

"Oh, mercy!" she exclaimed, the pause lasting till she could bear it no
longer. "How am I to alter myself?"

"Put on the diamonds," said Grandcourt, looking straight at her with his
narrow glance.

Gwendolen paused in her turn, afraid of showing any emotion, and feeling
that nevertheless there was some change in her eyes as they met his. But
she was obliged to answer, and said as indifferently as she could, "Oh,
please not. I don't think diamonds suit me."

"What you think has nothing to do with it," said Grandcourt, his _sotto
voce_ imperiousness seeming to have an evening quietude and finish, like
his toilet. "I wish you to wear the diamonds."

"Pray excuse me; I like these emeralds," said Gwendolen, frightened in
spite of her preparation. That white hand of his which was touching his
whisker was capable, she fancied, of clinging round her neck and
threatening to throttle her; for her fear of him, mingling with the vague
foreboding of some retributive calamity which hung about her life, had
reached a superstitious point.

"Oblige me by telling me your reason for not wearing the diamonds when I
desire it," said Grandcourt. His eyes were still fixed upon her, and she
felt her own eyes narrowing under them as if to shut out an entering pain.

Of what use was the rebellion within her? She could say nothing that would
not hurt her worse than submission. Turning slowing and covering herself
again, she went to her dressing-room. As she reached out the diamonds it
occurred to her that her unwillingness to wear them might have already
raised a suspicion in Grandcourt that she had some knowledge about them
which he had not given her. She fancied that his eyes showed a delight in
torturing her. How could she be defiant? She had nothing to say that would
touch him--nothing but what would give him a more painful grasp on her
consciousness.

"He delights in making the dogs and horses quail: that is half his
pleasure in calling them his," she said to herself, as she opened the
jewel-case with a shivering sensation.

"It will come to be so with me; and I shall quail. What else is there for
me? I will not say to the world, 'Pity me.'"

She was about to ring for her maid when she heard the door open behind
her. It was Grandcourt who came in.

"You want some one to fasten them," he said, coming toward her.

She did not answer, but simply stood still, leaving him to take out the
ornaments and fasten them as he would. Doubtless he had been used to
fasten them on some one else. With a bitter sort of sarcasm against
herself, Gwendolen thought, "What a privilege this is, to have robbed
another woman of!"

"What makes you so cold?" said Grandcourt, when he had fastened the last
ear-ring. "Pray put plenty of furs on. I hate to see a woman come into a
room looking frozen. If you are to appear as a bride at all, appear
decently."

This martial speech was not exactly persuasive, but it touched the quick
of Gwendolen's pride and forced her to rally. The words of the bad dream
crawled about the diamonds still, but only for her: to others they were
brilliants that suited her perfectly, and Grandcourt inwardly observed
that she answered to the rein.

"Oh, yes, mamma, quite happy," Gwendolen had said on her return to Diplow.
"Not at all disappointed in Ryelands. It is a much finer place than this--
larger in every way. But don't you want some more money?"

"Did you not know that Mr. Grandcourt left me a letter on your wedding-
day? I am to have eight hundred a year. He wishes me to keep Offendene for
the present, while you are at Diplow. But if there were some pretty
cottage near the park at Ryelands we might live there without much
expense, and I should have you most of the year, perhaps."

"We must leave that to Mr. Grandcourt, mamma."

"Oh, certainly. It is exceedingly handsome of him to say that he will pay
the rent for Offendene till June. And we can go on very well--without any
man-servant except Crane, just for out-of-doors. Our good Merry will stay
with us and help me to manage everything. It is natural that Mr.
Grandcourt should wish me to live in a good style of house in your
neighborhood, and I cannot decline. So he said nothing about it to you?"

"No; he wished me to hear it from you, I suppose."

Gwendolen in fact had been very anxious to have some definite knowledge of
what would be done for her mother, but at no moment since her marriage had
she been able to overcome the difficulty of mentioning the subject to
Grandcourt. Now, however, she had a sense of obligation which would not
let her rest without saying to him, "It is very good of you to provide for
mamma. You took a great deal on yourself in marrying a girl who had
nothing but relations belonging to her."

Grandcourt was smoking, and only said carelessly, "Of course I was not
going to let her live like a gamekeeper's mother."

"At least he is not mean about money," thought Gwendolen, "and mamma is
the better off for my marriage."

She often pursued the comparison between what might have been, if she had
not married Grandcourt, and what actually was, trying to persuade herself
that life generally was barren of satisfaction, and that if she had chosen
differently she might now have been looking back with a regret as bitter
as the feeling she was trying to argue away. Her mother's dullness, which
used to irritate her, she was at present inclined to explain as the
ordinary result of woman's experience. True, she still saw that she would
"manage differently from mamma;" but her management now only meant that
she would carry her troubles with spirit, and let none suspect them. By
and by she promised herself that she should get used to her heart-sores,
and find excitements that would carry her through life, as a hard gallop
carried her through some of the morning hours. There was gambling: she had
heard stories at Leubronn of fashionable women who gambled in all sorts of
ways. It seemed very flat to her at this distance, but perhaps if she
began to gamble again, the passion might awake. Then there was the
pleasure of producing an effect by her appearance in society: what did
celebrated beauties do in town when their husbands could afford display?
All men were fascinated by them: they had a perfect equipage and toilet,
walked into public places, and bowed, and made the usual answers, and
walked out again, perhaps they bought china, and practiced
accomplishments. If she could only feel a keen appetite for those
pleasures--could only believe in pleasure as she used to do!
Accomplishments had ceased to have the exciting quality of promising any
pre-eminence to her; and as for fascinated gentlemen--adorers who might
hover round her with languishment, and diversify married life with the
romantic stir of mystery, passion, and danger, which her French reading
had given her some girlish notion of--they presented themselves to her
imagination with the fatal circumstance that, instead of fascinating her
in return, they were clad in her own weariness and disgust. The admiring
male, rashly adjusting the expression of his features and the turn of his
conversation to her supposed tastes, had always been an absurd object to
her, and at present seemed rather detestable. Many courses are actually
pursued--follies and sins both convenient and inconvenient--without
pleasure or hope of pleasure; but to solace ourselves with imagining any
course beforehand, there must be some foretaste of pleasure in the shape
of appetite; and Gwendolen's appetite had sickened. Let her wander over
the possibilities of her life as she would, an uncertain shadow dogged
her. Her confidence in herself and her destiny had turned into remorse and
dread; she trusted neither herself nor her future.

This hidden helplessness gave fresh force to the hold Deronda had from the
first taken on her mind, as one who had an unknown standard by which he
judged her. Had he some way of looking at things which might be a new
footing for her--an inward safeguard against possible events which she
dreaded as stored-up retribution? It is one of the secrets in that change
of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among
us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality
touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into
receptiveness. It had been Gwendolen's habit to think of the persons
around her as stale books, too familiar to be interesting. Deronda had lit
up her attention with a sense of novelty: not by words only, but by
imagined facts, his influence had entered into the current of that self-
suspicion and self-blame which awakens a new consciousness.

"I wish he could know everything about me without my telling him," was one
of her thoughts, as she sat leaning over the end of a couch, supporting
her head with her hand, and looking at herself in a mirror--not in
admiration, but in a sad kind of companionship. "I wish he knew that I am
not so contemptible as he thinks me; that I am in deep trouble, and want
to be something better if I could." Without the aid of sacred ceremony or
costume, her feelings had turned this man, only a few years older than
herself, into a priest; a sort of trust less rare than the fidelity that
guards it. Young reverence for one who is also young is the most coercive
of all: there is the same level of temptation, and the higher motive is
believed in as a fuller force--not suspected to be a mere residue from
weary experience.

But the coercion is often stronger on the one who takes the reverence.
Those who trust us educate us. And perhaps in that ideal consecration of
Gwendolen's, some education was being prepared for Deronda.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

"Rien ne pese tant qu'un secret
Le porter loin est difficile aux dames:
Et je scais mesme sur ce fait
Bon nombre d'hommes qui sont femmes."
--LA FONTAINE.

Meanwhile Deronda had been fastened and led off by Mr. Vandernoodt, who
wished for a brisker walk, a cigar, and a little gossip. Since we cannot
tell a man his own secrets, the restraint of being in his company often
breeds a desire to pair off in conversation with some more ignorant
person, and Mr. Vandernoodt presently said--

"What a washed-out piece of cambric Grandcourt is! But if he is a favorite
of yours, I withdraw the remark."

"Not the least in the world," said Deronda.

"I thought not. One wonders how he came to have a great passion again; and
he must have had--to marry in this way. Though Lush, his old chum, hints
that he married this girl out of obstinacy. By George! it was a very
accountable obstinacy. A man might make up his mind to marry her without
the stimulus of contradiction. But he must have made himself a pretty
large drain of money, eh?"

"I know nothing of his affairs."

"What! not of the other establishment he keeps up?"

"Diplow? Of course. He took that of Sir Hugo. But merely for the year."

"No, no; not Diplow: Gadsmere. Sir Hugo knows, I'll answer for it."

Deronda said nothing. He really began to feel some curiosity, but he
foresaw that he should hear what Mr. Vandernoodt had to tell, without the
condescension of asking.

"Lush would not altogether own to it, of course. He's a confident and go-
between of Grandcourt's. But I have it on the best authority. The fact is,
there's another lady with four children at Gadsmere. She has had the upper
hand of him these ten years and more, and by what I can understand has it
still--left her husband for him, and used to travel with him everywhere.
Her husband's dead now; I found a fellow who was in the same regiment with
him, and knew this Mrs. Glasher before she took wing. A fiery dark-eyed
woman--a noted beauty at that time--he thought she was dead. They say she
has Grandcourt under her thumb still, and it's a wonder he didn't marry
her, for there's a very fine boy, and I understand Grandcourt can do
absolutely as he pleases with the estates. Lush told me as much as that."

"What right had he to marry this girl?" said Deronda, with disgust.

Mr. Vandernoodt, adjusting the end of his cigar, shrugged his shoulders
and put out his lips.

"_She_ can know nothing of it," said Deronda, emphatically. But that
positive statement was immediately followed by an inward query--"Could she
have known anything of it?"

"It's rather a piquant picture," said Mr. Vandernoodt--"Grandcourt between
two fiery women. For depend upon it this light-haired one has plenty of
devil in her. I formed that opinion of her at Leubronn. It's a sort of
Medea and Creuesa business. Fancy the two meeting! Grandcourt is a new kind
of Jason: I wonder what sort of a part he'll make of it. It's a dog's part
at best. I think I hear Ristori now, saying, 'Jasone! Jasone!' These fine
women generally get hold of a stick."

"Grandcourt can bite, I fancy," said Deronda. "He is no stick."

"No, no; I meant Jason. I can't quite make out Grandcourt. But he's a keen
fellow enough--uncommonly well built too. And if he comes into all this
property, the estates will bear dividing. This girl, whose friends had
come to beggary, I understand, may think herself lucky to get him. I don't
want to be hard on a man because he gets involved in an affair of that
sort. But he might make himself more agreeable. I was telling him a
capital story last night, and he got up and walked away in the middle. I
felt inclined to kick him. Do you suppose that is inattention or
insolence, now?"

"Oh, a mixture. He generally observes the forms: but he doesn't listen
much," said Deronda. Then, after a moment's pause, he went on, "I should
think there must be some exaggeration or inaccuracy in what you have heard
about this lady at Gadsmere."

"Not a bit, depend upon it; it has all lain snug of late years. People
have forgotten all about it. But there the nest is, and the birds are in
it. And I know Grandcourt goes there. I have good evidence that he goes
there. However, that's nobody's business but his own. The affair has sunk
below the surface."

"I wonder you could have learned so much about it," said Deronda, rather
drily.

"Oh, there are plenty of people who knew all about it; but such stories
get packed away like old letters. They interest me. I like to know the
manners of my time--contemporary gossip, not antediluvian. These Dryasdust
fellows get a reputation by raking up some small scandal about Semiramis
or Nitocris, and then we have a thousand and one poems written upon it by
all the warblers big and little. But I don't care a straw about the _faux
pas_ of the mummies. You do, though. You are one of the historical men--
more interested in a lady when she's got a rag face and skeleton toes
peeping out. Does that flatter your imagination?"

"Well, if she had any woes in her love, one has the satisfaction of
knowing that she's well out of them."

"Ah, you are thinking of the Medea, I see."

Deronda then chose to point to some giant oaks worth looking at in their
bareness. He also felt an interest in this piece of contemporary gossip,
but he was satisfied that Mr. Vandernoodt had no more to tell about it.

Since the early days when he tried to construct the hidden story of his
own birth, his mind had perhaps never been so active in weaving
probabilities about any private affair as it had now begun to be about
Gwendolen's marriage. This unavowed relation of Grandcourt's--could she
have gained some knowledge of it, which caused her to shrink from the
match--a shrinking finally overcome by the urgence of poverty? He could
recall almost every word she had said to him, and in certain of these
words he seemed to discern that she was conscious of having done some
wrong--inflicted some injury. His own acute experience made him alive to
the form of injury which might affect the unavowed children and their
mother. Was Mrs. Grandcourt, under all her determined show of
satisfaction, gnawed by a double, a treble-headed grief--self-reproach,
disappointment, jealousy? He dwelt especially on all the slight signs of
self-reproach: he was inclined to judge her tenderly, to excuse, to pity.
He thought he had found a key now by which to interpret her more clearly:
what magnifying of her misery might not a young creature get into who had
wedded her fresh hopes to old secrets! He thought he saw clearly enough
now why Sir Hugo had never dropped any hint of this affair to him; and
immediately the image of this Mrs. Glasher became painfully associated
with his own hidden birth. Gwendolen knowing of that woman and her
children, marrying Grandcourt, and showing herself contented, would have
been among the most repulsive of beings to him; but Gwendolen tasting the
bitterness of remorse for having contributed to their injury was brought
very near to his fellow-feeling. If it were so, she had got to a common
plane of understanding with him on some difficulties of life which a woman
is rarely able to judge of with any justice or generosity; for, according
to precedent, Gwendolen's view of her position might easily have been no
other than that her husband's marriage with her was his entrance on the
path of virtue, while Mrs. Glasher represented his forsaken sin. And
Deronda had naturally some resentment on behalf of the Hagars and
Ishmaels.

Undeniably Deronda's growing solicitude about Gwendolen depended chiefly
on her peculiar manner toward him; and I suppose neither man nor woman
would be the better for an utter insensibility to such appeals. One sign
that his interest in her had changed its footing was that he dismissed any
caution against her being a coquette setting snares to involve him in a
vulgar flirtation, and determined that he would not again evade any
opportunity of talking to her. He had shaken off Mr. Vandernoodt, and got
into a solitary corner in the twilight; but half an hour was long enough
to think of those possibilities in Gwendolen's position and state of mind;
and on forming the determination not to avoid her, he remembered that she
was likely to be at tea with the other ladies in the drawing-room. The
conjecture was true; for Gwendolen, after resolving not to go down again
for the next four hours, began to feel, at the end of one, that in
shutting herself up she missed all chances of seeing and hearing, and that
her visit would only last two days more. She adjusted herself, put on her
little air of self-possession, and going down, made herself resolutely
agreeable. Only ladies were assembled, and Lady Pentreath was amusing them
with a description of a drawing-room under the Regency, and the figure
that was cut by ladies and gentlemen in 1819, the year she was presented--
when Deronda entered.

"Shall I be acceptable?" he said. "Perhaps I had better go back and look
for the others. I suppose they are in the billiard-room."

"No, no; stay where you are," said Lady Pentreath. "They were all getting
tired of me; let us hear what _you_ have to say."

"That is rather an embarrassing appeal," said Deronda, drawing up a chair
near Lady Mallinger's elbow at the tea-table. "I think I had better take
the opportunity of mentioning our songstress," he added, looking at Lady
Mallinger--"unless you have done so."

"Oh, the little Jewess!" said Lady Mallinger. "No, I have not mentioned
her. It never entered my head that any one here wanted singing lessons."

"All ladies know some one else who wants singing lessons," said Deronda.
"I have happened to find an exquisite singer,"--here he turned to Lady
Pentreath. "She is living with some ladies who are friends of mine--the
mother and sisters of a man who was my chum at Cambridge. She was on the
stage at Vienna; but she wants to leave that life, and maintain herself by
teaching."