Daniel Deronda

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He held a small paper folded in his hand while he spoke.

"I need hardly say that I should not have presented myself if Mr.
Grandcourt had not expressed a strong wish to that effect--as no doubt he
has mentioned to you."

From some voices that speech might have sounded entirely reverential, and
even timidly apologetic. Lush had no intention to the contrary, but to
Gwendolen's ear his words had as much insolence in them as his prominent
eyes, and the pronoun "you" was too familiar. He ought to have addressed
the folding-screen, and spoke of her as Mrs. Grandcourt. She gave the
smallest sign of a bow, and Lush went on, with a little awkwardness,
getting entangled in what is elegantly called tautology.

"My having been in Mr. Grandcourt's confidence for fifteen years or more--
since he was a youth, in fact--of course gives me a peculiar position. He
can speak to me of affairs that he could not mention to any one else; and,
in fact, he could not have employed any one else in this affair. I have
accepted the task out of friendship for him. Which is my apology for
accepting the task--if you would have preferred some one else."

He paused, but she made no sign, and Lush, to give himself a countenance
in an apology which met no acceptance, opened the folded paper, and looked
at it vaguely before he began to speak again.

"This paper contains some information about Mr. Grandcourt's will, an
abstract of a part he wished you to know--if you'll be good enough to cast
your eyes over it. But there is something I had to say by way of
introduction--which I hope you'll pardon me for, if it's not quite
agreeable." Lush found that he was behaving better than he had expected,
and had no idea how insulting he made himself with his "not quite
agreeable."

"Say what you have to say without apologizing, please," said Gwendolen,
with the air she might have bestowed on a dog-stealer come to claim a
reward for finding the dog he had stolen.

"I have only to remind you of something that occurred before your
engagement to Mr. Grandcourt," said Lush, not without the rise of some
willing insolence in exchange for her scorn. "You met a lady in Cardell
Chase, if you remember, who spoke to you of her position with regard to
Mr. Grandcourt. She had children with her--one a very fine boy."

Gwendolen's lips were almost as pale as her cheeks; her passion had no
weapons--words were no better than chips. This man's speech was like a
sharp knife-edge drawn across her skin: but even her indignation at the
employment of Lush was getting merged in a crowd of other feelings, dim
and alarming as a crowd of ghosts.

"Mr. Grandcourt was aware that you were acquainted with this unfortunate
affair beforehand, and he thinks it only right that his position and
intentions should be made quite clear to you. It is an affair of property
and prospects; and if there were any objection you had to make, if you
would mention it to me--it is a subject which of course he would rather
not speak about himself--if you will be good enough just to read this."
With the last words Lush rose and presented the paper to her.

When Gwendolen resolved that she would betray no feeling in the presence
of this man, she had not prepared herself to hear that her husband knew
the silent consciousness, the silently accepted terms on which she had
married him. She dared not raise her hand to take the paper, least it
should visibly tremble. For a moment Lush stood holding it toward her, and
she felt his gaze on her as ignominy, before she could say even with low-
toned haughtiness--

"Lay it on the table. And go into the next room, please."

Lush obeyed, thinking as he took an easy-chair in the back drawing-room,
"My lady winces considerably. She didn't know what would be the charge for
that superfine article, Henleigh Grandcourt." But it seemed to him that a
penniless girl had done better than she had any right to expect, and that
she had been uncommonly knowing for her years and opportunities: her words
to Lydia meant nothing, and her running away had probably been part of her
adroitness. It had turned out a master-stroke.

Meanwhile Gwendolen was rallying her nerves to the reading of the paper.
She must read it. Her whole being--pride, longing for rebellion, dreams of
freedom, remorseful conscience, dread of fresh visitation--all made one
need to know what the paper contained. But at first it was not easy to
take in the meaning of the words. When she had succeeded, she found that
in the case of there being no son as issue of her marriage, Grandcourt had
made the small Henleigh his heir; that was all she cared to extract from
the paper with any distinctness. The other statement as to what provision
would be made for her in the same case, she hurried over, getting only a
confused perception of thousands and Gadsmere. It was enough. She could
dismiss the man in the next room with the defiant energy which had revived
in her at the idea that this question of property and inheritance was
meant as a finish to her humiliations and her thraldom.

She thrust the paper between the leaves of her book, which she took in her
hand, and walked with her stateliest air into the next room, where Lush
immediately arose, awaiting her approach. When she was four yards from
him, it was hardly an instant that she paused to say in a high tone, while
she swept him with her eyelashes--

"Tell Mr. Grandcourt that his arrangements are just what I desired"--
passing on without haste, and leaving Lush time to mingle some admiration
of her graceful back with that half-amused sense of her spirit and
impertinence, which he expressed by raising his eyebrows and just
thrusting his tongue between his teeth. He really did not want her to be
worse punished, and he was glad to think that it was time to go and lunch
at the club, where he meant to have a lobster salad.

What did Gwendolen look forward to? When her husband returned he found her
equipped in her riding-dress, ready to ride out with him. She was not
again going to be hysterical, or take to her bed and say she was ill. That
was the implicit resolve adjusting her muscles before she could have
framed it in words, as she walked out of the room, leaving Lush behind
her. She was going to act in the spirit of her message, and not to give
herself time to reflect. She rang the bell for her maid, and went with the
usual care through her change of toilet. Doubtless her husband had meant
to produce a great effect on her: by-and-by perhaps she would let him see
an effect the very opposite of what he intended; but at present all that
she could show was a defiant satisfaction in what had been presumed to be
disagreeable. It came as an instinct rather than a thought, that to show
any sign which could be interpreted as jealousy, when she had just been
insultingly reminded that the conditions were what she had accepted with
her eyes open, would be the worst self-humiliation. She said to herself
that she had not time to-day to be clear about her future actions; all she
could be clear about was that she would match her husband in ignoring any
ground for excitement. She not only rode, but went out with him to dine,
contributing nothing to alter their mutual manner, which was never that of
rapid interchange in discourse; and curiously enough she rejected a
handkerchief on which her maid had by mistake put the wrong scent--a scent
that Grandcourt had once objected to. Gwendolen would not have liked to be
an object of disgust to this husband whom she hated: she liked all disgust
to be on her side.

But to defer thought in this way was something like trying to talk without
singing in her own ears. The thought that is bound up with our passion is
as penetrative as air--everything is porous to it; bows, smiles,
conversation, repartee, are mere honeycombs where such thoughts rushes
freely, not always with a taste of honey. And without shutting herself up
in any solitude, Gwendolen seemed at the end of nine or ten hours to have
gone through a labyrinth of reflection, in which already the same
succession of prospects had been repeated, the same fallacious outlets
rejected, the same shrinking from the necessities of every course. Already
she was undergoing some hardening effect from feeling that she was under
eyes which saw her past actions solely in the light of her lowest motives.
She lived back in the scenes of her courtship, with the new bitter
consciousness of what had been in Grandcourt's mind--certain now, with her
present experience of him, that he had a peculiar triumph in conquering
her dumb repugnance, and that ever since their marriage he had had a cold
exultation in knowing her fancied secret. Her imagination exaggerated
every tyrannical impulse he was capable of. "I will insist on being
separated from him"--was her first darting determination; then, "I will
leave him whether he consents or not. If this boy becomes his heir, I have
made an atonement." But neither in darkness nor in daylight could she
imagine the scenes which must carry out those determinations with the
courage to feel them endurable. How could she run away to her own family--
carry distress among them, and render herself an object of scandal in the
society she had left behind her? What future lay before her as Mrs.
Grandcourt gone back to her mother, who would be made destitute again by
the rupture of the marriage for which one chief excuse had been that it
had brought that mother a maintenance? She had lately been seeing her
uncle and Anna in London, and though she had been saved from any
difficulty about inviting them to stay in Grosvenor Square by their wish
to be with Rex, who would not risk a meeting with her, the transient visit
she had had from them helped now in giving stronger color to the picture
of what it would be for her to take refuge in her own family. What could
she say to justify her flight? Her uncle would tell her to go back. Her
mother would cry. Her aunt and Anna would look at her with wondering
alarm. Her husband would have power to compel her. She had absolutely
nothing that she could allege against him in judicious or judicial ears.
And to "insist on separation!" That was an easy combination of words; but
considered as an action to be executed against Grandcourt, it would be
about as practicable as to give him a pliant disposition and a dread of
other people's unwillingness. How was she to begin? What was she to say
that would not be a condemnation of herself? "If I am to have misery
anyhow," was the bitter refrain of her rebellious dreams, "I had better
have the misery that I can keep to myself." Moreover, her capability of
rectitude told her again and again that she had no right to complain of
her contract, or to withdraw from it.

And always among the images that drove her back to submission was Deronda.
The idea of herself separated from her husband, gave Deronda a changed,
perturbing, painful place in her consciousness: instinctively she felt
that the separation would be from him too, and in the prospective vision
of herself as a solitary, dubiously-regarded woman, she felt some tingling
bashfulness at the remembrance of her behavior towards him. The
association of Deronda with a dubious position for herself was
intolerable. And what would he say if he knew everything? Probably that
she ought to bear what she had brought on herself, unless she were sure
that she could make herself a better woman by taking any other course. And
what sort of woman was she to be--solitary, sickened of life, looked at
with a suspicious kind of pity?--even if she could dream of success in
getting that dreary freedom. Mrs. Grandcourt "run away" would be a more
pitiable creature than Gwendolen Harleth condemned to teach the bishop's
daughters, and to be inspected by Mrs. Mompert.

One characteristic trait in her conduct is worth mentioning. She would not
look a second time at the paper Lush had given her; and before ringing for
her maid she locked it up in a traveling-desk which was at hand, proudly
resolved against curiosity about what was allotted to herself in
connection with Gadsmere--feeling herself branded in the minds of her
husband and his confidant with the meanness that would accept marriage and
wealth on any conditions, however dishonorable and humiliating.

Day after day the same pattern of thinking was repeated. There came
nothing to change the situation--no new elements in the sketch--only a
recurrence which engraved it. The May weeks went on into June, and still
Mrs. Grandcourt was outwardly in the same place, presenting herself as she
was expected to do in the accustomed scenes, with the accustomed grace,
beauty, and costume; from church at one end of the week, through all the
scale of desirable receptions, to opera at the other. Church was not
markedly distinguished in her mind from the other forms of self-
presentation, for marriage had included no instruction that enabled her to
connect liturgy and sermon with any larger order of the world than that of
unexplained and perhaps inexplicable social fashions. While a laudable
zeal was laboring to carry the light of spiritual law up the alleys where
law is chiefly known as the policeman, the brilliant Mrs. Grandcourt,
condescending a little to a fashionable rector and conscious of a feminine
advantage over a learned dean, was, so far as pastoral care and religious
fellowship were concerned, in as complete a solitude as a man in a
lighthouse.

Can we wonder at the practical submission which hid her constructive
rebellion? The combination is common enough, as we know from the number of
persons who make us aware of it in their own case by a clamorous unwearied
statement of the reasons against their submitting to a situation which, on
inquiry, we discover to be the least disagreeable within their reach. Poor
Gwendolen had both too much and too little mental power and dignity to
make herself exceptional. No wonder that Deronda now marked some hardening
in a look and manner which were schooled daily to the suppression of
feeling.

For example. One morning, riding in Rotten Row with Grandcourt by her
side, she saw standing against the railing at the turn, just facing them,
a dark-eyed lady with a little girl and a blonde boy, whom she at once
recognized as the beings in all the world the most painful for her to
behold. She and Grandcourt had just slackened their pace to a walk; he
being on the outer side was the nearer to the unwelcome vision, and
Gwendolen had not presence of mind to do anything but glance away from the
dark eyes that met hers piercingly toward Grandcourt, who wheeled past the
group with an unmoved face, giving no sign of recognition.

Immediately she felt a rising rage against him mingling with her shame for
herself, and the words, "You might at least have raised your hat to her,"
flew impetuously to her lips--but did not pass them. If as her husband, in
her company, he chose to ignore these creatures whom she herself had
excluded from the place she was filling, how could she be the person to
reproach him? She was dumb.

It was not chance, but her own design, that had brought Mrs. Glasher there
with her boy. She had come to town under the pretext of making purchases--
really wanting educational apparatus for her children, and had had
interviews with Lush in which she had not refused to soothe her uneasy
mind by representing the probabilities as all on the side of her ultimate
triumph. Let her keep quiet, and she might live to see the marriage
dissolve itself in one way or other--Lush hinted at several ways--leaving
the succession assured to her boy. She had had an interview with
Grandcourt, too, who had as usual told her to behave like a reasonable
woman, and threatened punishment if she were troublesome; but had, also as
usual, vindicated himself from any wish to be stingy, the money he was
receiving from Sir Hugo on account of Diplow encouraging him to be lavish.
Lydia, feeding on the probabilities in her favor, devoured her helpless
wrath along with that pleasanter nourishment; but she could not let her
discretion go entirely without the reward of making a Medusa-apparition
before Gwendolen, vindictiveness and jealousy finding relief in an outlet
of venom, though it were as futile as that of a viper already flung on the
other side of the hedge. Hence, each day, after finding out from Lush the
likely time for Gwendolen to be riding, she had watched at that post,
daring Grandcourt so far. Why should she not take little Henleigh into the
Park?

The Medusa-apparition was made effective beyond Lydia's conception by the
shock it gave Gwendolen actually to see Grandcourt ignoring this woman who
had once been the nearest in the world to him, along with the children she
had borne him. And all the while the dark shadow thus cast on the lot of a
woman destitute of acknowledged social dignity, spread itself over her
visions of a future that might be her own, and made part of her dread on
her own behalf. She shrank all the more from any lonely action. What
possible release could there be for her from this hated vantage ground,
which yet she dared not quit, any more than if fire had been raining
outside it? What release, but death? Not her own death. Gwendolen was not
a woman who could easily think of her own death as a near reality, or
front for herself the dark entrance on the untried and invisible. It
seemed more possible that Grandcourt should die:--and yet not likely. The
power of tyranny in him seemed a power of living in the presence of any
wish that he should die. The thought that his death was the only possible
deliverance for her was one with the thought that deliverance would never
come--the double deliverance from the injury with which other beings might
reproach her and from the yoke she had brought on her own neck. No! she
foresaw him always living, and her own life dominated by him; the "always"
of her young experience not stretching beyond the few immediate years that
seemed immeasurably long with her passionate weariness. The thought of his
dying would not subsist: it turned as with a dream-change into the terror
that she should die with his throttling fingers on her neck avenging that
thought. Fantasies moved within her like ghosts, making no break in her
more acknowledged consciousness and finding no obstruction in it: dark
rays doing their work invisibly in the broad light.

Only an evening or two after that encounter in the Park, there was a grand
concert at Klesmer's, who was living rather magnificently now in one of
the large houses in Grosvenor Place, a patron and prince among musical
professors. Gwendolen had looked forward to this occasion as one on which
she was sure to meet Deronda, and she had been meditating how to put a
question to him which, without containing a word that she would feel a
dislike to utter, would yet be explicit enough for him to understand it.
The struggle of opposite feelings would not let her abide by her instinct
that the very idea of Deronda's relation to her was a discouragement to
any desperate step towards freedom. The next wave of emotion was a longing
for some word of his to enforce a resolve. The fact that her opportunities
of conversation with him had always to be snatched in the doubtful privacy
of large parties, caused her to live through them many times beforehand,
imagining how they would take place and what she would say. The irritation
was proportionate when no opportunity came; and this evening at Klesmer's
she included Deronda in her anger, because he looked as calm as possible
at a distance from her, while she was in danger of betraying her
impatience to every one who spoke to her. She found her only safety in a
chill haughtiness which made Mr. Vandernoodt remark that Mrs. Grandcourt
was becoming a perfect match for her husband. When at last the chances of
the evening brought Deronda near her, Sir Hugo and Mrs. Raymond were close
by and could hear every word she said. No matter: her husband was not
near, and her irritation passed without check into a fit of daring which
restored the security of her self-possession. Deronda was there at last,
and she would compel him to do what she pleased. Already and without
effort rather queenly in her air as she stood in her white lace and green
leaves she threw a royal permissiveness into her way of saying, "I wish
you would come and see me to-morrow between five and six, Mr. Deronda."

There could be but one answer at that moment: "Certainly," with a tone of
obedience.

Afterward it occurred to Deronda that he would write a note to excuse
himself. He had always avoided making a call at Grandcourt's. He could not
persuade himself to any step that might hurt her, and whether his excuse
were taken for indifference or for the affectation of indifference it
would be equally wounding. He kept his promise. Gwendolen had declined to
ride out on the plea of not feeling well enough having left her refusal to
the last moment when the horses were soon to be at the door--not without
alarm lest her husband should say that he too would stay at home. Become
almost superstitious about his power of suspicious divination, she had a
glancing forethought of what she would do in that case--namely, have
herself denied as not well. But Grandcourt accepted her excuse without
remark, and rode off.

Nevertheless when Gwendolen found herself alone, and had sent down the
order that only Mr. Deronda was to be admitted, she began to be alarmed at
what she had done, and to feel a growing agitation in the thought that he
would soon appear, and she should soon be obliged to speak: not of
trivialities, as if she had no serious motive in asking him to come: and
yet what she had been for hours determining to say began to seem
impossible. For the first time the impulse of appeal to him was being
checked by timidity, and now that it was too late she was shaken by the
possibility that he might think her invitation unbecoming. If so, she
would have sunk in his esteem. But immediately she resist ed this
intolerable fear as an infection from her husband's way of thinking. That
_he_ would say she was making a fool of herself was rather a reason why
such a judgment would be remote from Deronda's mind. But that she could
not rid herself from this sudden invasion of womanly reticence was
manifest in a kind of action which had never occurred to her before. In
her struggle between agitation and the effort to suppress it, she was
walking up and down the length of the two drawing-rooms, where at one end
a long mirror reflected her in her black dress, chosen in the early
morning with a half-admitted reference to this hour. But above this black
dress her head on its white pillar of a neck showed to advantage. Some
consciousness of this made her turn hastily and hurry to the boudoir,
where again there was a glass, but also, tossed over a chair, a large
piece of black lace which she snatched and tied over her crown of hair so
as completely to conceal her neck, and leave only her face looking out
from the black frame. In this manifest contempt of appearance, she thought
it possible to be freer from nervousness, but the black lace did not take
away the uneasiness from her eyes and lips.

She was standing in the middle of the room when Deronda was announced, and
as he approached her she perceived that he too for some reason was not his
usual self. She could not have defined the change except by saying that he
looked less happy than usual, and appeared to be under some effort in
speaking to her. And yet the speaking was the slightest possible. They
both said, "How do you do?" quite curtly; and Gwendolen, instead of
sitting down, moved to a little distance, resting her arms slightly on the
tall back of a chair, while Deronda stood where he was,--both feeling it
difficult to say any more, though the preoccupation in his mind could
hardly have been more remote than it was from Gwendolen's conception. She
naturally saw in his embarrassment some reflection of her own. Forced to
speak, she found all her training in concealment and self-command of no
use to her and began with timid awkwardness--

"You will wonder why. I begged you to come. I wanted to ask you something.
You said I was ignorant. That is true. And what can I do but ask you?"

And at this moment she was feeling it utterly impossible to put the
questions she had intended. Something hew in her nervous manner roused
Deronda's anxiety lest there might be a new crisis. He said with the
sadness of affection in his voice--

"My only regret is, that I can be of so little use to you." The words and
the tone touched a new spring in her, and she went on with more sense of
freedom, yet still not saying anything she had designed to say, and
beginning to hurry, that she might somehow arrive at the right words.

"I wanted to tell you that I have always been thinking of your advice, but
is it any use?--I can't make myself different, because things about me
raise bad feelings--and I must go on--I can alter nothing--it is no use."