Daniel Deronda

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"Your uncle and Anna will very likely be in town about Easter," she said,
with a vague sense of expressing a slight discontent. "Dear Rex hopes to
come out with honors and a fellowship, and he wants his father and Anna to
meet him in London, that they may be jolly together, as he says. I
shouldn't wonder if Lord Brackenshaw invited them, he has been so very
kind since he came back to the Castle."

"I hope my uncle will bring Ann to stay in Grosvenor Square," said
Gwendolen, risking herself so far, for the sake of the present moment, but
in reality wishing that she might never be obliged to bring any of her
family near Grandcourt again. "I am very glad of Rex's good fortune."

"We must not be premature, and rejoice too much beforehand," said the
rector, to whom this topic was the happiest in the world, and altogether
allowable, now that the issue of that little affair about Gwendolen had
been so satisfactory. "Not but that I am in correspondence with impartial
judges, who have the highest hopes about my son, as a singularly clear-
headed young man. And of his excellent disposition and principle I have
had the best evidence."

"We shall have him a great lawyer some time," said Mrs. Gascoigne.

"How very nice!" said Gwendolen, with a concealed scepticism as to
niceness in general, which made the word quite applicable to lawyers.

"Talking of Lord Brackenshaw's kindness," said Mrs. Davilow, "you don't
know how delightful he has been, Gwendolen. He has begged me to consider
myself his guest in this house till I can get another that I like--he did
it in the most graceful way. But now a house has turned up. Old Mr. Jodson
is dead, and we can have his house. It is just what I want; small, but
with nothing hideous to make you miserable thinking about it. And it is
only a mile from the Rectory. You remember the low white house nearly
hidden by the trees, as we turn up the lane to the church?"

"Yes, but you have no furniture, poor mamma," said Gwendolen, in a
melancholy tone.

"Oh, I am saving money for that. You know who has made me rather rich,
dear," said Mrs. Davilow, laying her hand on Gwendolen's. "And Jocosa
really makes so little do for housekeeping--it is quite wonderful."

"Oh, please let me go up-stairs with you and arrange my hat, mamma," said
Gwendolen, suddenly putting up her hand to her hair and perhaps creating a
desired disarrangement. Her heart was swelling, and she was ready to cry.
Her mother _must_ have been worse off, if it had not been for Grandcourt.
"I suppose I shall never see all this again," said Gwendolen, looking
round her, as they entered the black and yellow bedroom, and then throwing
herself into a chair in front of the glass with a little groan as of
bodily fatigue. In the resolve not to cry she had become very pale.

"You are not well, dear?" said Mrs. Davilow.

"No; that chocolate has made me sick," said Gwendolen, putting up her hand
to be taken.

"I should be allowed to come to you if you were ill, darling," said Mrs.
Davilow, rather timidly, as she pressed the hand to her bosom. Something
had made her sure today that her child loved her--needed her as much as
ever.

"Oh, yes," said Gwendolen, leaning her head against her mother, though
speaking as lightly as she could. "But you know I never am ill. I am as
strong as possible; and you must not take to fretting about me, but make
yourself as happy as you can with the girls. They are better children to
you than I have been, you know." She turned up her face with a smile.

"You have always been good, my darling. I remember nothing else."

"Why, what did I ever do that was good to you, except marry Mr.
Grandcourt?" said Gwendolen, starting up with a desperate resolve to be
playful, and keep no more on the perilous edge of agitation. "And I should
not have done that unless it had pleased myself." She tossed up her chin,
and reached her hat.

"God forbid, child! I would not have had you marry for my sake. Your
happiness by itself is half mine."

"Very well," said Gwendolen, arranging her hat fastidiously, "then you
will please to consider that you are half happy, which is more than I am
used to seeing you." With the last words she again turned with her old
playful smile to her mother. "Now I am ready; but oh, mamma, Mr.
Grandcourt gives me a quantity of money, and expects me to spend it, and I
can't spend it; and you know I can't bear charity children and all that;
and here are thirty pounds. I wish the girls would spend it for me on
little things for themselves when you go to the new house. Tell them so."
Gwendolen put the notes into her mother's hands and looked away hastily,
moving toward the door.

"God bless you, dear," said Mrs. Davilow. "It will please them so that you
should have thought of them in particular."

"Oh, they are troublesome things; but they don't trouble me now," said
Gwendolen, turning and nodding playfully. She hardly understood her own
feeling in this act toward her sisters, but at any rate she did not wish
it to be taken as anything serious. She was glad to have got out of the
bedroom without showing more signs of emotion, and she went through the
rest of her visit and all the good-byes with a quiet propriety that made
her say to herself sarcastically as she rode away, "I think I am making a
very good Mrs. Grandcourt."

She believed that her husband had gone to Gadsmere that day--had inferred
this, as she had long ago inferred who were the inmates of what he had
described as "a dog-hutch of a place in a black country;" and the strange
conflict of feeling within her had had the characteristic effect of
sending her to Offendene with a tightened resolve--a form of excitement
which was native to her.

She wondered at her own contradictions. Why should she feel it bitter to
her that Grandcourt showed concern for the beings on whose account she
herself was undergoing remorse? Had she not before her marriage inwardly
determined to speak and act on their behalf?--and since he had lately
implied that he wanted to be in town because he was making arrangements
about his will, she ought to have been glad of any sign that he kept a
conscience awake toward those at Gadsmere; and yet, now that she was a
wife, the sense that Grandcourt was gone to Gadsmere was like red heat
near a burn. She had brought on herself this indignity in her own eyes--
this humiliation of being doomed to a terrified silence lest her husband
should discover with what sort of consciousness she had married him; and
as she had said to Deronda, she "must go on." After the intense moments of
secret hatred toward this husband who from the very first had cowed her,
there always came back the spiritual pressure which made submission
inevitable. There was no effort at freedoms that would not bring fresh and
worse humiliation. Gwendolen could dare nothing except an impulsive
action--least of all could she dare premeditatedly a vague future in which
the only certain condition was indignity. It spite of remorse, it still
seemed the worst result of her marriage that she should in any way make a
spectacle of herself; and her humiliation was lightened by her thinking
that only Mrs. Glasher was aware of the fact which caused it. For
Gwendolen had never referred the interview at the Whispering Stones to
Lush's agency; her disposition to vague terror investing with shadowy
omnipresence any threat of fatal power over her, and so hindering her from
imagining plans and channels by which news had been conveyed to the woman
who had the poisoning skill of a sorceress. To Gwendolen's mind the secret
lay with Mrs. Glasher, and there were words in the horrible letter which
implied that Mrs. Glasher would dread disclosure to the husband, as much
as the usurping Mrs. Grandcourt.

Something else, too, she thought of as more of a secret from her husband
than it really was--namely that suppressed struggle of desperate rebellion
which she herself dreaded. Grandcourt could not indeed fully imagine how
things affected Gwendolen: he had no imagination of anything in her but
what affected the gratification of his own will; but on this point he had
the sensibility which seems like divination. What we see exclusively we
are apt to see with some mistake of proportions; and Grandcourt was not
likely to be infallible in his judgments concerning this wife who was
governed by many shadowy powers, to him nonexistent. He magnified her
inward resistance, but that did not lessen his satisfaction in the mastery
of it.

CHAPTER XLV.

Behold my lady's carriage stop the way.
With powdered lacquey and with charming bay;
She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair.
Her arduous function solely "to be there."
Like Sirious rising o'er the silent sea.
She hides her heart in lustre loftily.

So the Grandcourts were in Grosvenor Square in time to receive a card for
the musical party at Lady Mallinger's, there being reasons of business
which made Sir Hugo know beforehand that his ill-beloved nephew was coming
up. It was only a third evening after their arrival, and Gwendolen made
rather an absent-minded acquaintance with her new ceilings and furniture,
preoccupied with the certainty that she was going to speak to Deronda
again, and also to see the Miss Lapidoth who had gone through so much, and
was "capable of submitting to anything in the form of duty." For Gwendolen
had remembered nearly every word that Deronda had said about Mirah, and
especially that phrase, which she repeated to herself bitterly, having an
ill-defined consciousness that her own submission was something very
different. She would have been obliged to allow, if any one had said it to
her, that what she submitted to could not take the shape of duty, but was
submission to a yoke drawn on her by an action she was ashamed of, and
worn with a strength of selfish motives that left no weight for duty to
carry.

The drawing-rooms in Park Lane, all white, gold, and pale crimson, were
agreeably furnished, and not crowded with guests, before Mr. and Mrs.
Grandcourt entered; and more than half an hour of instrumental music was
being followed by an interval of movement and chat. Klesmer was there with
his wife, and in his generous interest for Mirah he proposed to accompany
her singing of Leo's "_O patria mia_," which he had before recommended her
to choose, as more distinctive of her than better known music. He was
already at the piano, and Mirah was standing there conspicuously, when
Gwendolen, magnificent in her pale green velvet and poisoned diamonds, was
ushered to a seat of honor well in view of them. With her long sight and
self-command she had the rare power of quickly distinguishing persons and
objects on entering a full room, and while turning her glance toward Mirah
she did not neglect to exchange a bow with Klesmer as she passed. The
smile seemed to each a lightning-flash back on that morning when it had
been her ambition to stand as the "little Jewess" was standing, and survey
a grand audience from the higher rank of her talent--instead of which she
was one of the ordinary crowd in silk and gems, whose utmost performance
it must be to admire or find fault. "He thinks I am in the right road
now," said the lurking resentment within her.

Gwendolen had not caught sight of Deronda in her passage, and while she
was seated acquitting herself in chat with Sir Hugo, she glanced round her
with careful ease, bowing a recognition here and there, and fearful lest
an anxious-looking exploration in search of Deronda might be observed by
her husband, and afterward rebuked as something "damnably vulgar." But all
traveling, even that of a slow gradual glance round a room, brings a
liability to undesired encounters, and amongst the eyes that met
Gwendolen's, forcing her into a slight bow, were those of the "amateur too
fond of Meyerbeer," Mr. Lush, whom Sir Hugo continued to find useful as a
half-caste among gentlemen. He was standing near her husband, who,
however, turned a shoulder toward him, and was being understood to listen
to Lord Pentreath. How was it that at this moment, for the first time,
there darted through Gwendolen, like a disagreeable sensation, the idea
that this man knew all about her husband's life? He had been banished from
her sight, according to her will, and she had been satisfied; he had sunk
entirely into the background of her thoughts, screened away from her by
the agitating figures that kept up an inward drama in which Lush had no
place. Here suddenly he reappeared at her husband's elbow, and there
sprang up in her, like an instantaneously fabricated memory in a dream,
the sense of his being connected with the secrets that made her wretched.
She was conscious of effort in turning her head away from him, trying to
continue her wandering survey as if she had seen nothing of more
consequence than the picture on the wall, till she discovered Deronda. But
he was not looking toward her, and she withdrew her eyes from him, without
having got any recognition, consoling herself with the assurance that he
must have seen her come in. In fact, he was not standing far from the door
with Hans Meyrick, whom he had been careful to bring into Lady Mallinger's
list. They were both a little more anxious than was comfortable lest Mirah
should not be heard to advantage. Deronda even felt himself on the brink
of betraying emotion, Mirah's presence now being linked with crowding
images of what had gone before and was to come after--all centering in the
brother he was soon to reveal to her; and he had escaped as soon as he
could from the side of Lady Pentreath, who had said in her violoncello
voice--

"Well, your Jewess is pretty--there's no denying that. But where is her
Jewish impudence? She looks as demure as a nun. I suppose she learned that
on the stage."

He was beginning to feel on Mirah's behalf something of what he had felt
for himself in his seraphic boyish time, when Sir Hugo asked him if he
would like to be a great singer--an indignant dislike to her being
remarked on in a free and easy way, as if she were an imported commodity
disdainfully paid for by the fashionable public, and he winced the more
because Mordecai, he knew, would feel that the name "Jewess" was taken as
a sort of stamp like the lettering of Chinese silk. In this susceptible
mood he saw the Grandcourts enter, and was immediately appealed to by Hans
about "that Vandyke duchess of a beauty." Pray excuse Deronda that in this
moment he felt a transient renewal of his first repulsion from Gwendolen,
as if she and her beauty and her failings were to blame for the
undervaluing of Mirah as a woman--a feeling something like class
animosity, which affection for what is not fully recognized by others,
whether in persons or in poetry, rarely allows us to escape. To Hans
admiring Gwendolen with his habitual hyperbole, he answered, with a
sarcasm that was not quite good-natured--

"I thought you could admire no style of woman but your Berenice."

"That is the style I worship--not admire," said Hans. "Other styles of
women I might make myself wicked for, but for Berenice I could make
myself--well, pretty good, which is something much more difficult."

"Hush," said Deronda, under the pretext that the singing was going to
begin. He was not so delighted with the answer as might have been
expected, and was relieved by Hans's movement to a more advanced spot.

Deronda had never before heard Mirah sing "_O patria mia_." He knew well
Leopardi's fine Ode to Italy (when Italy sat like a disconsolate mother in
chains, hiding her face on her knees and weeping), and the few selected
words were filled for him with the grandeur of the whole, which seemed to
breath an inspiration through the music. Mirah singing this, made Mordecai
more than ever one presence with her. Certain words not included in the
song nevertheless rang within Deronda as harmonies from the invisible--

"Non ti difende
Nessun de tuoi! L'armi, qua l'armi: io solo
Combattero, procombero sol io"--
[Footnote: Do none of thy children defend thee? Arms! bring me arms! alone
I will fight, alone I will fall.]

they seemed the very voice of that heroic passion which is falsely said to
devote itself in vain when it achieves the god-like end of manifesting
unselfish love. And that passion was present to Deronda now as the vivid
image of a man dying helplessly away from the possibility of battle.

Mirah was equal to his wishes. While the general applause was sounding,
Klesmer gave a more valued testimony, audible to her only--"Good, good--
the crescendo better than before." But her chief anxiety was to know that
she had satisfied Mr. Deronda: any failure on her part this evening would
have pained her as an especial injury to him. Of course all her prospects
were due to what he had done for her; still, this occasion of singing in
the house that was his home brought a peculiar demand. She looked toward
him in the distance, and he saw that she did; but he remained where he
was, and watched the streams of emulous admirers closing round her, till
presently they parted to make way for Gwendolen, who was taken up to be
introduced by Mrs. Klesmer. Easier now about "the little Jewess," Daniel
relented toward poor Gwendolen in her splendor, and his memory went back,
with some penitence for his momentary hardness, over all the signs and
confessions that she too needed a rescue, and one much more difficult than
that of the wanderer by the river--a rescue for which he felt himself
helpless. The silent question--"But is it not cowardly to make that a
reason for turning away?" was the form in which he framed his resolve to
go near her on the first opportunity, and show his regard for her past
confidence, in spite of Sir Hugo's unwelcome hints.

Klesmer, having risen to Gwendolen as she approached, and being included
by her in the opening conversation with Mirah, continued near them a
little while, looking down with a smile, which was rather in his eyes than
on his lips, at the piquant contrast of the two charming young creatures
seated on the red divan. The solicitude seemed to be all on the side of
the splendid one.

"You must let me say how much I am obliged to you," said Gwendolen. "I had
heard from Mr. Deronda that I should have a great treat in your singing,
but I was too ignorant to imagine how great."

"You are very good to say so," answered Mirah, her mind chiefly occupied
in contemplating Gwendolen. It was like a new kind of stage-experience to
her to be close to genuine grand ladies with genuine brilliants and
complexions, and they impressed her vaguely as coming out of some unknown
drama, in which their parts perhaps got more tragic as they went on.

"We shall all want to learn of you--I, at least," said Gwendolen. "I sing
very badly, as Herr Klesmer will tell you,"--here she glanced upward to
that higher power rather archly, and continued--"but I have been rebuked
for not liking to middling, since I can be nothing more. I think that is a
different doctrine from yours?" She was still looking at Klesmer, who said
quickly--

"Not if it means that it would be worth while for you to study further,
and for Miss Lapidoth to have the pleasure of helping you." With that he
moved away, and Mirah taking everything with _naive_ seriousness, said--

"If you think I could teach you, I shall be very glad. I am anxious to
teach, but I have only just begun. If I do it well, it must be by
remembering how my master taught me."

Gwendolen was in reality too uncertain about herself to be prepared for
this simple promptitude of Mirah's, and in her wish to change the subject,
said, with some lapse from the good taste of her first address--

"You have not been long in London, I think?--but you were perhaps
introduced to Mr. Deronda abroad?"

"No," said Mirah; "I never saw him before I came to England in the
summer."

"But he has seen you often and heard you sing a great deal, has he not?"
said Gwendolen, led on partly by the wish to hear anything about Deronda,
and partly by the awkwardness which besets the readiest person, in
carrying on a dialogue when empty of matter. "He spoke of you to me with
the highest praise. He seemed to know you quite well."

"Oh, I was poor and needed help," said Mirah, in a new tone of feeling,
"and Mr. Deronda has given me the best friends in the world. That is the
only way he came to know anything about me--because he was sorry for me. I
had no friends when I came. I was in distress. I owe everything to him."

Poor Gwendolen, who had wanted to be a struggling artist herself, could
nevertheless not escape the impression that a mode of inquiry which would
have been rather rude toward herself was an amiable condescension to this
Jewess who was ready to give her lessons. The only effect on Mirah, as
always on any mention of Deronda, was to stir reverential gratitude and
anxiety that she should be understood to have the deepest obligation to
him.

But both he and Hans, who were noticing the pair from a distance, would
have felt rather indignant if they had known that the conversation had led
up to Mirah's representation of herself in this light of neediness. In the
movement that prompted her, however, there was an exquisite delicacy,
which perhaps she could not have stated explicitly--the feeling that she
ought not to allow any one to assume in Deronda a relation of more
equality or less generous interest toward her than actually existed. Her
answer was delightful to Gwendolen: she thought of nothing but the ready
compassion which in another form she had trusted in and found herself; and
on the signals that Klesmer was about to play she moved away in much
content, entirely without presentiment that this Jewish _protege_ would
ever make a more important difference in her life than the possible
improvement of her singing--if the leisure and spirits of a Mrs.
Grandcourt would allow of other lessons than such as the world was giving
her at rather a high charge.

With her wonted alternation from resolute care of appearances to some rash
indulgence of an impulse, she chose, under the pretext of getting farther
from the instrument, not to go again to her former seat, but placed
herself on a settee where she could only have one neighbor. She was nearer
to Deronda than before: was it surprising that he came up in time to shake
hands before the music began--then, that after he had stood a little while
by the elbow of the settee at the empty end, the torrent-like confluences
of bass and treble seemed, like a convulsion of nature, to cast the
conduct of petty mortals into insignificance, and to warrant his sitting
down?

But when at the end of Klesmer's playing there came the outburst of talk
under which Gwendolen had hoped to speak as she would to Deronda, she
observed that Mr. Lush was within hearing, leaning against the wall close
by them. She could not help her flush of anger, but she tried to have only
an air of polite indifference in saying--

"Miss Lapidoth is everything you described her to be."

"You have been very quick in discovering that," said Deronda, ironically.

"I have not found out all the excellencies you spoke of--I don't mean
that," said Gwendolen; "but I think her singing is charming, and herself,
too. Her face is lovely--not in the least common; and she is such a
complete little person. I should think she will be a great success."

This speech was grating on Deronda, and he would not answer it, but looked
gravely before him. She knew that he was displeased with her, and she was
getting so impatient under the neighborhood of Mr. Lush, which prevented
her from saying any word she wanted to say, that she meditated some
desperate step to get rid of it, and remained silent, too. That constraint
seemed to last a long while, neither Gwendolen nor Deronda looking at the
other, till Lush slowly relieved the wall of his weight, and joined some
one at a distance.

Gwendolen immediately said, "You despise me for talking artificially."

"No," said Deronda, looking at her coolly; "I think that is quite
excusable sometimes. But I did not think what you were last saying was
altogether artificial."

"There was something in it that displeased you," said Gwendolen. "What was
it?"

"It is impossible to explain such things," said Deronda. "One can never
communicate niceties of feeling about words and manner."

"You think I am shut out from understanding them," said Gwendolen, with a
slight tremor in her voice, which she was trying to conquer. "Have I shown
myself so very dense to everything you have said?" There was an
indescribable look of suppressed tears in her eyes, which were turned on
him.

"Not at all," said Deronda, with some softening of voice. "But experience
differs for different people. We don't all wince at the same things. I
have had plenty of proof that you are not dense." He smiled at her.

"But one may feel things and are not able to do anything better for all
that," said Gwendolen, not smiling in return--the distance to which
Deronda's words seemed to throw her chilling her too much. "I begin to
think we can only get better by having people about us who raise good
feelings. You must not be surprised at anything in me. I think it is too
late for me to alter. I don't know how to set about being wise, as you
told me to be."