Chapter Thirty-five
On the 29th of December Deronda knew that the Grandcourts had arrived at the Abbey, but he had had no glimpse of them before he went to dress for dinner. There had been a splendid fall of snow, allowing the Mallinger girls the rare pleasures of snow-balling and snow-building, in which amusement they insisted on the company of “cousin,” as they had always called Deronda. After that exertion, he played billiards, and thus the hours had passed without his dwelling on the prospect of meeting Gwendolen at dinner.
Nevertheless that prospect was interesting to him; and when he went to his room to dress, he began to speculate on how her marriage with Grandcourt would have influenced her. He thought there would be some changes in her manner since he saw her at Diplow, just as there had been since his first vision of her at Leubronn.
“I fancy there are some natures one could see growing or degenerating every day, if one watched them,” was his thought. “I am sure she is a creature who keeps strong traces of anything that has impressed her. That little matter of the necklace, and the idea that somebody thought her gambling wrong, had evidently bitten into her. But such impressibility may drive one to desperation. As for having Grandcourt as a daily companion – good heavens! One might be tempted to horsewhip him for the sake of getting him to show some passion. I’m afraid she married him to escape poverty. But why did she run away at first? The poverty came after, though. Poor thing! she may have been urged into it. One can only pity a young creature like that – full of unused life – ignorantly rash – hanging all her blind expectations on that remnant of a human being!”
Deronda’s notion of Grandcourt as a “remnant” was founded on no particular knowledge, but simply on his impression that Grandcourt had worn out all his natural healthy interest in things.
In general, whenever a marriage of any mark takes place, male acquaintances are likely to pity the bride, female acquaintances the bridegroom: each, it is thought, might have done better; and especially where the bride is charming, young gentlemen are apt to conclude that she can have no real attachment to a fellow so uninteresting as her husband, but has married him on other grounds. But perhaps Deronda may be excused for not pitying Grandcourt, who had never struck acquaintances as likely to undergo more suffering than he inflicted; whereas, for Gwendolen, young, headlong, eager for pleasure – how quickly might life turn from expectancy to a bitter sense of the irremediable!
Still, since the honeymoon was already three weeks past, and Gwendolen had been enthroned at both Ryelands and Diplow, she was likely to have composed herself with suitable concealment, not being one who would indulge the curious by a helpless exposure of her feelings.
A varied party had been invited to meet the new couple; the aristocracy was represented by Lord and Lady Pentreath; the gentry by Mr. and Mrs. Fitzadam of the Worcestershire Fitzadams; politics by Mr. Fenn, Member of Parliament, with his daughters; Lady Mallinger’s family, by her brother and his wife with various little Raymonds; the useful bachelor element by Mr. Sinker, the eminent lawyer, and Mr. Vandernoodt, whose acquaintance Sir Hugo had found pleasant enough at Leubronn to be adopted in England.
All had assembled in the drawing-room before the new couple appeared. The scene was really delightful: full-length portraits with deep backgrounds, inserted in the cedar panelling, were surmounted by a ceiling that glowed with the richly coloured coats of arms. Sounds were muted by the deep-piled carpet and by the high English breeding that subdues all voices; while the mixture of ages, from the white-haired Lord and Lady Pentreath to the four-year-old Edgar Raymond, gave a varied charm to the groups. Lady Mallinger moved about in her black velvet, carrying a tiny white dog as a sort of finish to her costume; while the gentlemen were conversing with very moderate vivacity.
Deronda was a little out of the circle with Mr. Vandernoodt, a nonchalant Dutchman, who was talking of the bride and bridegroom. Mr. Vandernoodt was an industrious gleaner of personal details, and implied that he had learned many facts about Grandcourt since meeting him at Leubronn.
“Men who have seen a good deal of life don’t always end by choosing their wives so well. He has gone rather deep into pleasures, I fancy, lazy as he is. But, of course, you know all about him.”
“No, really,” said Deronda in an indifferent tone. “I know little more of him than that he is Sir Hugo’s nephew.”
But now the door opened and their conversation halted.
When Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt entered, no beholder could deny that their figures had distinction. The bridegroom had the same easy perfection of costume and impassivity of face as before his marriage: and his bride looked as faultless as one might expect.
“By George, I think she’s handsomer, if anything!” said Mr. Vandernoodt. Deronda was of the same opinion, but he said nothing. The white silk and diamonds – it may seem strange, but she did wear diamonds on her neck, in her ears, in her hair – might have something to do with the new imposing nature of her beauty; but at Diplow, Deronda had discerned in her that tender appealing charm which we call womanly. Was there any new change since then? As he saw her receiving greetings with what seemed a proud cold quietude and a superficial smile, he thought that there was within her the same demonic force that had possessed her when she turned away a loser from the gaming-table. There was no time for more of a conclusion – no time even for him to greet her before the summons to dinner.
He sat almost opposite her at table, and could sometimes hear what she said in answer to Sir Hugo, who was at his liveliest with her; but she did not look his way at all. At last Sir Hugo, who might have imagined that they had already spoken to each other, said, “Deronda, you will like to hear what Mrs. Grandcourt tells me about your favourite Klesmer.”
Deronda thought he saw a quivering reluctance in Gwendolen’s eyelids as she was obliged to raise them and return his bow and smile. It was but an instant, and Sir Hugo continued–
“The Arrowpoints have condoned the marriage, and he is spending Christmas at Quetcham.”
“I suppose he will be glad of it for his wife’s sake, if not his own,” said Deronda.
“It’s a sort of troubadour story,” said Lady Pentreath, an easy, deep-voiced old lady; “I’m glad to find a little romance left among us. I think our young people now are too worldly wise.”
“It shows the Arrowpoints’ good sense, after the fuss in the paper,” said Sir Hugo. “Disowning your own child because of a mésalliance is something like disowning your one eye: everybody knows it’s yours, and you have no other to make an appearance with.”
“As to mésalliance,” said Lady Pentreath, “old Admiral Arrowpoint was one of Nelson’s men – a doctor’s son. And we all know how the mother’s money came.”
“If there were any mésalliance in the case, I should say it was on Klesmer’s side,” said Deronda.
“Ah, you think it is a case of the immortal marrying the mortal. What is your opinion?” said Sir Hugo, looking at Gwendolen.
“I have no doubt that Herr Klesmer thinks himself immortal. But I dare say his wife will burn as much incense before him as he requires,” said Gwendolen.
“Don’t you approve of a wife burning incense before her husband?” said Sir Hugo, smiling.
“Oh, yes,” said Gwendolen, “if it were only to make others believe in him. When Herr Klesmer admires his own genius, it will take off some of the absurdity if his wife says Amen.”
“Klesmer is no favourite of yours, I see,” said Sir Hugo.
“I think very highly of him, I assure you,” said Gwendolen. “His genius is quite above my judgment, and I know him to be exceedingly generous.”
She spoke with the sudden seriousness which is often meant to correct an unfair or indiscreet sally. Deronda wondered what he would have thought of her if he had never met her before: probably that she put on a little hard defiance to conceal some painful knowledge. But why did she not greet him with more friendliness?
Sir Hugo, changing the subject, said to
her, “Is not this a beautiful room? It was part of the Abbey’s refectory. There used to be rows of Benedictines sitting here. Suppose we were suddenly to see the lights burning low and the ghosts of the old monks rising behind our chairs!”
“Please don’t!” said Gwendolen, with a playful shudder. “It is very nice to come after ancestors and monks, but they should know their places and keep underground. I should be rather frightened to go about this house all alone.”
“But I hope you will like to go in company. You and Grandcourt ought to see it all. We will ask Deronda to go round with us. He is more learned about it than I am,” said the baronet good-humouredly.
Gwendolen stole a glance at Deronda; but he looked as impassive as a picture. At the notion of Deronda’s showing her and Grandcourt the place which was to be theirs, and which she painfully remembered might perhaps have been his, certain recurring thoughts about inheritance rushed in anew; and she was conscious of something furtive and awkward in her glance. To explain it, she said, playfully, “You don’t know how much I am afraid of Mr. Deronda.”
“How’s that? Because you think him too learned?” said Sir Hugo, who had noticed the peculiarity of her glance.
“No. It is ever since I first saw him at Leubronn. When he looked on at the roulette-table, I began to lose. He cast an evil eye on my play. He didn’t approve it. He has told me so. And now whatever I do, I am afraid he will cast an evil eye upon it.”
“Gad! I’m rather afraid of him myself when he doesn’t approve,” said Sir Hugo, glancing at Deronda; and added less audibly to Gwendolen, “I don’t think ladies generally object to have his eyes upon them.” The baronet’s facetiousness was at this moment almost as annoying to her as it often was to Deronda.
“I object to any eyes that are critical,” she said, in a cool, high voice. “Are there many of these old rooms left in the Abbey?”
“Not many. There is a fine cloistered court with a long gallery above it. But the best bit of all is turned into stables. It is part of the old church, so the horses have the benefit of the fine old choir. You must go and see it.”
“I shall like to see the horses as well as the building,” said Gwendolen.
“Oh, I have no stud to speak of. Grandcourt will look with contempt at my horses,” said Sir Hugo. “I’ve given up hunting. The fact is, I did too much at this place. We all lived at Diplow for two years while the alterations were going on. Do you like Diplow?”
“Not particularly,” said Gwendolen, with indifference.
“Ah! it will not do after Ryelands,” said Sir Hugo, well pleased. “Grandcourt, I know, took it for the hunting. But he found something so much better there that he might well prefer it to any other place in the world.”
“It has one attraction for me,” said Gwendolen, passing over this compliment with a chill smile, “that it is within reach of Offendene.”
“I understand that,” said Sir Hugo.
Deronda did not hear much of this conversation, but the glimpses he had of Gwendolen’s manner deepened the impression that it had something newly artificial.
Later, in the drawing-room, Deronda, at somebody’s request, sat down to the piano and sang. On rising to make way for another, he observed that Gwendolen had left her seat, and had come to this end of the room as if to listen, but was now standing with her back to everyone, apparently contemplating a fine cowled ivory head on a small table. He longed to go to her and speak. Why should he not obey such an impulse, as he would have done toward any other lady in the room? Yet he hesitated, observing the graceful lines of her back, but not moving.
If you have any reason for not indulging a wish to speak to a fair woman, it is a bad plan to look at her back: the wish to see what it screens becomes the stronger. Deronda ended by going to the small table, but before he could speak Gwendolen had turned on him such an appealing look of sadness, so utterly different from her chilly recognition at table, that his speech was checked. For a moment they looked at each other – she seeming to take the deep rest of confession, he with an answering depth of sympathy that neutralised all other feelings.
“Will you not join in the music?” he said, since speech seemed necessary.
That her look of confession had been involuntary was shown by her change of expression as she roused herself to reply calmly, “I join in it by listening. I am fond of music.”
“Are you not a musician?”
“I have given a great deal of time to music. But I have not talent enough to make it worth while. I shall never sing again.”
“But if you are fond of music, it will always be worth while in private, for your own delight. I make it a virtue to be content with my middlingness,” said Deronda, smiling. “It is always pardonable, if one does not ask other to take it for superiority.”
“I cannot imitate you,” said Gwendolen, recovering her tone of artificial vivacity. “To be middling with me is another word for being dull. And the worst fault I have to find with the world is, that it is dull. Do you know, I am going to justify gambling in spite of you. It is a refuge from dullness.”
“I don’t agree,” said Deronda. “I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how can anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.”
“Ah, I see! The fault I find in the world is my own fault,” said Gwendolen, smiling at him. Then after a moment, she said, “Do you never find fault with the world or with others?”
“Oh, yes. When I am in a grumbling mood.”
“And hate people? Confess you hate them when they stand in your way.”
“We are often standing in each other’s way when we can’t help it. I think it is stupid to hate people on that ground.”
“But if they injure you and could have helped it?” said Gwendolen with an unaccountable intensity.
Deronda wondered at her choice of subjects. At last he said, more gravely, “Why, then, after all, I prefer my place to theirs.”
“There I believe you are right,” said Gwendolen, with a sudden little laugh, and turned to join the group at the piano.
Deronda looked around for Grandcourt, wondering whether he followed his bride’s movements with any attention; but he should not have supposed he would be able to find that out. Grandcourt had a delusive mood of observing whatever had an interest for him, which could be surpassed by no sleepy-eyed animal on the watch for prey. At that moment he was plunged in the depth of an easy chair, being talked to by Mr. Vandernoodt, and one might have thought it safe to telegraph secrets in front of that unmoving gaze. But Grandcourt saw anyone he cared to out of the corners of his long narrow eyes, and if they went behind him he had a constructive process by which he knew what they were doing there. He knew perfectly well where his wife was, and how she was behaving.
Would he be a jealous husband? Deronda imagined so; but his imagination was as much astray about Grandcourt as it would have been about an unexplored continent where all the species were peculiar. He did not think that he himself was a likely subject of jealousy, or that he gave any pretext for it; but the suspicion that a wife is not happy naturally leads one to speculate on the husband’s private conduct.
Hence Deronda found himself at one o’clock in the morning in the ludicrous position of sitting up, severely holding a Hebrew grammar in his hands (for in deference to Mordecai, he had begun to study Hebrew), with the consciousness that he had been in that attitude nearly an hour, and had thought of nothing but Gwendolen and her husband. Deronda’s nature had been acutely touched by his brief acquaintance and speech with Gwendolen. His ready sympathy made him alive to a certain appealingness in her behaviour toward him; and he remembered that unmistakable look of involuntary confidence which she had turned on him as he approached her.
“What is the use of it all?” thought Deronda, throwing down his book. “I can’t do anything to help her, if she has found out her mistake already. And it seems to me that she has a dreary lack of the ideas that might help her. Poor so
ul, wrapped around with fine raiment and gems, smiling loftily, and with a sick distaste of all things! But what do I know? There may be a demon in her to match the worst husband, for all I can tell. She is clearly ill-educated and worldly: perhaps she is a coquette.”
This last reflection, not much believed in, was a self-administered dose of caution, prompted partly by Sir Hugo’s joke about flirtation. Deronda resolved not to have any tête-à-tête with Gwendolen during her stay at the Abbey.
But few words could less represent Gwendolen than “coquette.” She had a love of homage, and belief in her own power; but no cold artifice for the sake of enslaving. And the poor thing’s belief in her power, with her other dreams before marriage, had to be thrust aside now like the toys of a sick child, which it looks at with dull eyes, and has no heart to play with, however it may try.
The next day at lunch Sir Hugo said to her, “It’s so pleasant out of doors just now – shall we go and see the stables and the other odd bits about the place?”
“Yes, pray,” said Gwendolen. “You will like to see the stables, Henleigh?” she added, looking at her husband.
“Uncommonly,” said Grandcourt, with an indifference which seemed ironic. It was the first time Deronda had seen them speak to each other since their arrival, and he thought their exchange as cold as an official ceremony. Still, English reserve might account for much of that.
“Who else is inclined to make the tour of the house and premises?” said Sir Hugo. “There is just about time to do it before sunset. You will go, Dan, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Deronda, carelessly, knowing that Sir Hugo would think any excuse disobliging.
“All meet in the library, then – say in half an hour,” said the baronet.
Gwendolen made herself ready with wonderful quickness, and in ten minutes came down into the library in her sables, plume, and little thick boots. As soon as she entered the room she saw that Deronda was there, as she had hoped. He was standing with his back toward her at the far end of the room, looking over a newspaper. How could little thick boots make any noise on an Axminster carpet? And a cough would have seemed a signal which her pride could not allow. Also, she felt bashful about walking up to him, though it was her hunger to speak to him which had made her hurry down.
Always uneasy about his opinion of her, she felt a peculiar anxiety today, lest he might think of her with contempt, as one triumphantly conscious of being Grandcourt’s wife, the future lady of this domain. There was not the faintest touch of coquetry in her attitude toward him: he was unique to her among men, because he had impressed her as being not her admirer but her superior: in some mysterious way he was becoming a part of her conscience.
And now he would not look round and see that she was there! The paper crackled in his hand, his head rose and sank, exploring those stupid columns. The rest of the company would soon be down, and the opportunity of her saying something to erase the flippancy of the evening before, would be quite gone. She felt sick with irritation and mortification.
At last he threw down the paper and turned round.
“Oh, you are there already,” he said: “I must go and put on my coat.”
He turned aside and walked out of the room. This was behaving quite badly. Mere politeness would have made him stay to exchange some words before leaving. It was true that Grandcourt came in with Sir Hugo immediately after, so that the words must have been few. As it was, they saw him walking from the library door.
“A – you look rather ill,” said Grandcourt, going straight up to her, and looking into her eyes. “Do you feel equal to the walk?”
“Yes, I shall like it,” said Gwendolen, without the slightest movement except of the lips.
“We could put off going over the house, you know,” said Sir Hugo, kindly.
“Oh dear no!” said Gwendolen, speaking with determination, “let us put off nothing. I want a long walk.”
The rest of the walking party had now assembled; and Gwendolen, rallying, went with due cheerfulness by the side of Sir Hugo, paying apparently equal attention to Deronda’s commentaries on the architectural fragments and to Sir Hugo’s reasons for not attempting to change them. Outside the house they paused before a beautiful pointed doorway, the only old remnant of the east front.
“To my mind,” said Sir Hugo, “that is more interesting than if the whole front had been dressed up in a pretence of the thirteenth century. That notion of reproducing the old is a mistake, I think. As for your new-old building, you need to hire men to scratch and chip it all over artistically to give it an elderly-looking surface.”
“Do you want to keep up the old fashions, Mr. Deronda?” said Gwendolen, taking advantage of the grouping to fall back a little, while Sir Hugo and Grandcourt went on.
“Some of them. I don’t see why we should not choose, and why age or novelty in itself is an argument for or against. To delight in doing things because our fathers did them is good if it shuts out nothing better; it enlarges the range of affection – and affection is the broadest basis of good in life.”
“Do you think so?” said Gwendolen, surprised. “I should have thought you cared most about ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and all that.”
“But to care about them is a sort of affection,” said Deronda, smiling. “Call it attachment, interest, willingness to bear a great deal for the sake of being with them and saving them from injury. Of course, it makes a difference if the objects of interest are human beings; but generally the objects of deep affections are a mixture of people and ideas.”
“I wonder whether I understand that,” said Gwendolen, putting up her chin in her old saucy manner. “I believe I am not very affectionate; perhaps you mean to tell me, that is the reason why I don’t see much good in life.”
“No, I did not mean to tell you that; but I admit that I should think it true if I believed what you say of yourself,” said Deronda gravely.
Here Sir Hugo and Grandcourt turned and paused.
“I never can get Mr. Deronda to pay me a compliment,” said Gwendolen. “I am quite curious to see whether a little flattery can be extracted from him.”
“Ah!” said Sir Hugo, glancing at Deronda, “the fact is, it is useless to flatter a bride. She has been so fed on sweet speeches that everything we say seems tasteless.”
“Quite true,” said Gwendolen, bending her head. “Mr. Grandcourt won me by neatly-turned compliments. If there had been one word out of place it would have been fatal.”
“Do you hear that?” said Sir Hugo, looking at the husband.
“Yes,” said Grandcourt, without change of expression. “It’s a deucedly hard thing to keep up, though.”
All this seemed to Sir Hugo a natural playfulness between husband and wife; but Deronda wondered at the alternations in Gwendolen’s manner, which at one moment seemed to excite sympathy by childlike indiscretion, at another to repel it by proud concealment. He tried to keep out of her way by devoting himself to Miss Juliet Fenn, a young lady whose unfortunate profile had months ago made Gwendolen feel it impossible to be jealous of her.
Nevertheless, when they were viewing the kitchen, the play of light from the huge glowing fire, the polished brass and copper, the fine resonance of every sound, were all spoiled for Gwendolen, because Deronda was talking to the other ladies. It did not signify that the other gentlemen were near her: of what use was their admiration compared to Deronda’s judgment?
“The heat is too much. I must really go out,” she cried at last, marching resolutely into the open air. Grandcourt was already outside, and as she joined him, he said–
“I wondered how long you meant to stay in that damned place”– one of the freedoms he had assumed as a husband being the use of his strongest epithets. Gwendolen, turning to see the rest of the party approach, said–
“It was certainly rather too warm in one’s wraps.”
They walked on the gravel across a green court, where the snow still lay in islets on the grass, and in masses
on the boughs of the great cedar and the stone walls; and then into a larger court, to find the choir that had been turned into stables. The exterior was much defaced, its gargoyles maimed, the friable limestone broken and fretted; the long windows were bricked in, up to the springing of the arches.
With the low wintry sun lighting up the snow on every ledge, it had an antique solemnity which gave the scene rather a startling effect. Each finely-arched chapel was turned into a stall, where in the dusty glazing of the windows there gleamed patches of crimson, orange and blue; the choir had been gutted, the floor levelled, paved, and drained, and a line of loose boxes erected in the middle. A soft light fell from the upper windows on sleek brown or grey flanks and on mild equine faces looking out over the varnished boarding; while over all, the grand pointed roof showed its lines mysteriously through veiling shadow and cobweb, and a hoof now and then striking against the boards seemed to fill the vault with thunder.
“Oh, this is glorious!” Gwendolen burst forth, forgetting everything but the immediate impression. “I wish there were a horse in every one of the boxes. I would ten times rather have these stables than those at Diplow.”
But she had no sooner said this than she involuntarily turned her eyes toward Deronda, who oddly enough had taken off his hat and stood holding it as if in an actual church. He happened to be looking at her, and their eyes met – to her intense vexation, for she felt herself blushing at the thought that Sir Hugo as well as Deronda would have felt her bad taste in referring to the possession of anything at the Abbey. Her annoyance at her own confusion robbed her of her usual facility of playful speech, and turning up her face to look at the roof, she wheeled away. Deronda alone guessed part of her feeling; but while he was observing her, he was himself under observation.
“Do you take off your hat to horses?” said Grandcourt, with a slight sneer.
“Why not?” said Deronda, replacing his hat, which he had removed automatically.
Gwendolen’s confusion was soon merged in the survey of the horses, which Grandcourt politely abstained from appraising, languidly assenting to Sir Hugo’s self-deprecating opinion of his animals.
“The fact is, stables dive deeper and deeper into the pocket nowadays,” said Sir Hugo, as they were coming out.
“What is a man to do, though?” said Grandcourt. “He must ride. I don’t see what else there is to do. And I don’t call it riding to sit astride a set of brutes with every deformity under the sun.”
At this delicate diplomatic assessment of Sir Hugo’s stud, the baronet, feeling that the conversation had worn rather thin, said, “Now we are going to see the cloister, which is in perfect preservation; the monks might have been walking there yesterday.”
But Gwendolen had lingered behind, and Grandcourt waited for her.
“You had better take my arm,” he said, in his low tone of command. “It’s a great bore being dragged about in this way, and no cigar.”
“I thought you would like it.”
“Like it!– one eternal chatter. And encouraging those ugly girls – inviting one to meet such monsters. How that smug Deronda can bear looking at her–”
“Why do you call him smug? Do you object to him so much?”
“Object? He’s of no consequence to me. I’ll invite him to Diplow again if you like.”
“I don’t think he would come. He is too clever and learned to care about us,” said Gwendolen, thinking it useful for her husband to be told (privately) that it was possible for him to be looked down upon.
“I never saw that make much difference in a man. Either he is a gentleman, or he is not,” said Grandcourt.
Meanwhile the group, wishing to indulge a tete-a-tete between the new husband and wife, left them behind. On their re-entering the garden, they all paused in that cloistered court where, among the falling rose-petals thirteen years before, we saw a boy becoming acquainted with his first sorrow. This cloister was built of a harder stone than the church, and the delicately-wrought foliage of the capitals seemed still to carry the touches of the chisel. Gwendolen dropped her husband’s arm and joined the other ladies, to whom Deronda was indicating the artistry of the carvings.
“I wonder whether one learns to love real objects through their representations, or the representations through the real objects,” he said, after pointing out some lovely curled leaves of stone. “When I was a little fellow these capitals taught me to delight in the structure of leaves.”
“I suppose you can see every line of them with your eyes shut. You must love this place very much,” said Miss Fenn, innocently, not thinking of inheritance. “You seem to know every cranny of it. I dare say you could never love another home so well.”
“Oh, I carry it with me,” said Deronda quietly.
Gwendolen felt that he probably thought of her as a selfish creature who only cared about possessions. It must be a secret hardship to him that he was shut out from his inheritance; and if he supposed that she exulted in her husband’s taking it, what could he feel for her but scornful pity? It seemed clear to her that he was avoiding her.
With these thoughts in her mind she was prevented by a mixture of pride and timidity from addressing him again, and when they were looking at the quaint portraits in the gallery, she made her vivacious remarks without any direct appeal to Deronda. But at the end she was very weary of her assumed spirits, and when Grandcourt turned into the billiard-room, she went to her pretty boudoir to be melancholy at her ease. No chemical process shows a more extraordinary activity than the transforming influence of the thoughts we imagine to be going on in another. Changes in theory, religion, admirations, may all begin with a suspicion of another’s dissent.
Poor Gwendolen was conscious of an uneasy, transforming process – all the old nature shaken to its depths, its hopes spoiled, its pleasures perturbed, but still showing strength in the will to reassert itself. After every new shock of humiliation she tried to adjust herself and seize her old supports – proud concealment, new excitements that would make life go by without much thinking; trust in some deed of reparation to shield her from a vague, ever-visiting dread of some horrible calamity; trust in the hardening effect of use that would make her indifferent to her miseries.
Yes – miseries. This beautiful, healthy young creature, with her two-and-twenty years and her gratified ambition, no longer felt inclined to kiss her fortunate image in the glass. She looked at it with wonder that she could be so miserable. Her belief in her own power of dominating was utterly gone. Already, in seven short weeks, which seemed half her life, her husband had gained a mastery which she could no more resist than she could have resisted the numbing electric touch of a torpedo fish. Gwendolen’s will had seemed imperious in its small girlish sway; but it had been beset by imaginative fears, and even a shadow could weaken it: and she had found a will like that of a boa-constrictor, which goes on crushing without alarm at thunder. Not that Grandcourt was without acuity; he detected the feeling which made her proud and rebellious spirit dumb and helpless before him.
She had burned Lydia Glasher’s letter in terror lest other eyes should see it, and had blamed her violent hysterics solely on the excitement and fatigue of the day. “Don’t ask me – it was my feeling about everything – it was the sudden change from home.” But the words of that letter kept repeating themselves with the weight of doom:
‘I am the grave in which your chance of happiness is buried. You had your warning. You have chosen to injure me and my children. He had meant to marry me. He would have married me at last, if you had not broken your word. You will have your punishment. I desire it with all my soul.
‘Will you give him this letter to set him against me and ruin us – me and my children? Shall you like to stand before your husband with these diamonds on you, and these words in his thoughts and yours? Will he think you have any right to complain when he has made you miserable? You took him with your eyes open. The wrong you have done me will be your curse.’
The words
had nestled their venomous life within her. She dreaded that Grandcourt should know of that meeting at the Whispering Stones – so far out of her sight now was the possibility of speaking to him about Mrs. Glasher and her children, and making them rich amends. Any endurance seemed easier than the 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 her marriage, and her easy assumption of her future power over her husband, seemed now childish and futile. She dreaded the veil of secrecy being removed, and giving Grandcourt 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 did not know of her broken promise; 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 which had created in Gwendolen a new repulsion for him and a reason for not daring to show it. He did not greatly mind, or feel that his hopes in marriage were blighted: he had wanted to marry Gwendolen, and he was not a man to repent. Sympathetic feeling did not play a large part in his life. What he chiefly felt was that the change might establish his mastery more thoroughly.
And it was established. He judged that he had not married a simpleton: he had married a girl who had spirit and pride enough not to make a fool of herself by forfeiting the advantages of her position; and if she wanted pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind properly he would not withhold them.
Gwendolen, indeed, for all her trouble, felt bound to bear herself with dignity, and appear what is called happy. In disclosure of her disappointment or sorrow she saw nothing but humiliation. Whatever her husband might have become to her, she meant not to be pitied. For she did think of the future with fear: she was frightened at Grandcourt.
The poor thing had passed from her girlish sauciness of superiority over this inert specimen into an amazed perception of her former ignorance about the possible attitude of a man toward the woman he sought in marriage. During their courtship, her little coquetries had formed a means of communication between them, showing him in the light of a creature such as she could understand and manage. But marriage had nullified all such interchange, and Grandcourt had become a blank uncertainty to her in everything but that he would do just what he willed; and she had no means of either discovering his will, or of escaping it.
What had occurred between them concerning 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. 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 little emerald stars in her ears.
Grandcourt looked at her as she entered.
“Am I altogether as you like?” she said, speaking rather gaily. She was not without enjoyment at going to Brackenshaw Castle with her new dignities upon her.
“No,” said Grandcourt.
Gwendolen felt suddenly uncomfortable, wondering what was to come. She was prepared 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. “How am I to alter myself?”
“Put on the diamonds,” said Grandcourt, looking straight at her with his narrow glance.
Gwendolen paused, afraid of showing any emotion. 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 with sotto voce imperiousness. “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 threatening to throttle her; for her fear of him, mingling with the vague foreboding of some retributive calamity, 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.
Of what use was rebellion? It would hurt her worse than submission. She went slowly to her dressing-room. As she brought out the diamonds it occurred to her that she might have already raised a suspicion in Grandcourt that she had some knowledge about them. She fancied that his eyes showed a delight in torturing her. How could she be defiant? Nothing she could say would touch him – it would merely give him a more painful grasp on her mind.
“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 shiver. “So shall I quail too. What else is there for me? I will not say to the world, ‘Pity me.’”
She heard the door open behind her, and Grandcourt came in.
“You want some one to fasten them,” he said.
She did not answer, but simply stood still, leaving him to fasten the diamonds on her as he would. Doubtless he had been used to fasten them on someone else. With a bitter sarcasm against herself, Gwendolen thought, “What a privilege this is, to have robbed another woman of!”
“What makes you so cold?” said Grandcourt. “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 marital speech 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. “Ryelands is a much finer place than this 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 be closer to you.”
“We must leave that to Mr. Grandcourt, mamma.”
“Oh, certainly. It is exceedingly handsome of him to pay the rent for Offendene till June. And we can go on very well; our good Merry will stay and help to manage everything. It is natural that Mr. Grandcourt should wish me to live in a good style of house, 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 had not been able to overcome the difficulty of mentioning the subject to Grandcourt. Now, however, she had a sense of obligation which made her say to him, “It is very good of you to provide for mamma.”
Grandcourt 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 be feeling a regret as bitter as her current misery. She still thought that she would “manage differently from mamma;” but her management now only meant that she would let none suspect her troubles. 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 the morning hours. There was gambling: she had heard stories at L
eubronn of fashionable women who gambled. 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, and winning men’s admiration, as celebrated beauties did: they had perfect outfits, walked into public places, bowed, made the usual answers, and walked out again; and perhaps they bought china, and practiced accomplishments.
If she could only believe in pleasure as she used to do! Accomplishments had ceased to have the exciting quality of promising her pre-eminence; and as for admirers, she imagined them with weariness and disgust. Gwendolen’s appetite for such delights had sickened. Wherever she wandered over the possibilities of her life, a 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 taken on her mind, as one who judged her by an unknown standard. Had he some way of looking at things which might be a new inward safeguard for her against the retribution which she dreaded? 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: 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,” she thought, as she sat on a couch, supporting her head with her hand, and looking at herself in a mirror – not in admiration, but in a sad 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.” Without the aid of sacred ceremony or costume, her feelings had turned this man, only a few years older than herself, into a priest. Young reverence for one who is also young is the strongest of all.
But the effect is also stronger on the one who takes the reverence. Those who trust us educate us. And perhaps in that consecration of Gwendolen’s, some education was being prepared for Deronda.
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged Page 38