Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LXIV.
important place than Offendene, I suppose?" said Mr. Gascoigne.
"Questa montagna e tale,Che sempre al cominciar di sotto a grave.E quanto uom piu va su e men fa male."--DANTE: _Il Purgatorio_.
It was not many days after her mother's arrival that Gwendolen wouldconsent to remain at Genoa. Her desire to get away from that gem of thesea, helped to rally her strength and courage. For what place, though itwere the flowery vale of Enna, may not the inward sense turn into a circleof punishment where the flowers are no better than a crop of flame-tonguesburning the soles of our feet?
"I shall never like to see the Mediterranean again," said Gwendolen, toher mother, who thought that she quite understood her child's feeling--even in her tacit prohibition of any express reference to her latehusband.
Mrs. Davilow, indeed, though compelled formally to regard this time as oneof severe calamity, was virtually enjoying her life more than she had everdone since her daughter's marriage. It seemed that her darling was broughtback to her not merely with all the old affection, but with a consciouscherishing of her mother's nearness, such as we give to a possession thatwe have been on the brink of losing.
"Are you there, mamma?" cried Gwendolen, in the middle of the night (a bedhad been made for her mother in the same room with hers), very much as shewould have done in her early girlhood, if she had felt frightened in lyingawake.
"Yes, dear; can I do anything for you?"
"No, thank you; only I like so to know you are there. Do you mind mywaking you?" (This question would hardly have been Gwendolen's in herearly girlhood.)
"I was not asleep, darling."
"God bless you, dear; I have the best happiness I can have, when you makemuch of me."
But the next night, hearing that she was sighing and restless Mrs. Davilowsaid, "Let me give you your sleeping-draught, Gwendolen."
"No, mamma, thank you; I don't want to sleep."
"It would be so good for you to sleep more, my darling."
"Don't say what would be good for me, mamma," Gwendolen answered,impetuously. "You don't know what would be good for me. You and my unclemust not contradict me and tell me anything is good for me when I feel itis not good."
Mrs. Davilow was silent, not wondering that the poor child was irritable.Presently Gwendolen said--
"I was always naughty to you, mamma."
werecircumscribed within a coal area.Gwendolen, toher mother, who thought that she quite understood .
"No, dear, no."
"Yes, I was," said Gwendolen insistently. "It is because I was alwayswicked that I am miserable now."
She burst into sobs and cries. The determination to be silent about allthe facts of her married life and its close, reacted in these escapes ofenigmatic excitement.
But dim lights of interpretation were breaking on the mother's mindthrough the information that came from Sir Hugo to Mr. Gascoigne, and,with some omissions, from Mr. Gascoigne to herself. The good-naturedbaronet, while he was attending to all decent measures in relation to hisnephew's death, and the possible washing ashore of the body, thought itthe kindest thing he could do to use his present friendly intercourse withthe rector as an opportunity for communicating with him, in the mildestway, the purport of Grandcourt's will, so as to save him the additionalshock that would be in store for him if he carried his illusions all theway home. Perhaps Sir Hugo would have been communicable enough withoutthat kind motive, but he really felt the motive. He broke the unpleasantnews to the rector by degrees: at first he only implied his fear that thewidow was not so splendidly provided for as Mr. Gascoigne, nay, as thebaronet himself had expected; and only at last, after some previous vaguereference to large claims on Grandcourt, he disclosed the prior relationswhich, in the unfortunate absence of a legitimate heir, had determined allthe splendor in another direction.
The rector was deeply hurt, and remembered, more vividly than he had everdone before, how offensively proud and repelling the manners of thedeceased had been toward him--remembered also that he himself, in thatinteresting period just before the arrival of the new occupant at Diplow,had received hints of former entangling dissipations, and an undueaddiction to pleasure, though he had not foreseen that the pleasure whichhad probably, so to speak, been swept into private rubbish-heaps, wouldever present itself as an array of live caterpillars, disastrous to thegreen meat of respectable people. But he did not make these retrospectivethoughts audible to Sir Hugo, or lower himself by expressing anyindignation on merely personal grounds, but behaved like a man of theworld who had become a conscientious clergyman. His first remark was--
"When a young man makes his will in health, he usually counts on living along while. Probably Mr. Grandcourt did not believe that this will wouldever have its present effect." After a moment, he added, "The effect ispainful in more ways than one. Female morality is likely to suffer fromthis marked advantage and prominence being given to illegitimateoffspring."
"Well, in point of fact," said Sir Hugo, in his comfortable way, "sincethe boy is there, this was really the best alternative for the disposal ofthe estates. Grandcourt had nobody nearer than his cousin. And it's achilling thought that you go out of this life only for the benefit of acousin. A man gets a little pleasure in making his will, if it's for thegood of his own curly heads; but it's a nuisance when you're giving thebequeathing to a used-up fellow like yourself, and one you don't care twostraws for. It's the next worse thing to having only a life interest inyour estates. No; I forgive Grandcourt for that part of his will. But,between ourselves, what I don't forgive him for, is the shabby way he hasprovided for your niece--_our_ niece, I will say--no better a positionthan if she had been a doctor's widow. Nothing grates on me more than thatposthumous grudgingness toward a wife. A man ought to have some pride andfondness for his widow. _I_ should, I know. I take it as a test of a man,that he feels the easier about his death when he can think of his wife anddaughters being comfortable after it. I like that story of the fellows inthe Crimean war, who were ready to go to the bottom of the sea if theirwidows were provided for."
"It has certainly taken me by surprise," said Mr. Gascoigne, "all the morebecause, as the one who stood in the place of father to my niece, I hadshown my reliance on Mr. Grandcourt's apparent liberality in money mattersby making no claims for her beforehand. That seemed to me due to him underthe circumstances. Probably you think me blamable."
"Not blamable exactly. I respect a man for trusting another. But take myadvice. If you marry another niece, though it may be to the Archbishop ofCanterbury, bind him down. Your niece can't be married for the first timetwice over. And if he's a good fellow, he'll wish to be bound. But as toMrs. Grandcourt, I can only say that I feel my relation to her all thenearer because I think that she has not been well treated. And I hope youwill urge her to rely on me as a friend."
Thus spake the chivalrous Sir Hugo, in his disgust at the young andbeautiful widow of a Mallinger Grandcourt being left with only twothousand a year and a house in a coal-mining district. To the rector thatincome naturally appeared less shabby and less accompanied with mortifyingprivations; but in this conversation he had devoured a much keener sensethan the baronet's of the humiliation cast over his niece, and also overher nearest friends, by the conspicuous publishing of her husband'srelation to Mrs. Glasher. And like all men who are good husbands andfathers, he felt the humiliation through the minds of the women who wouldbe chiefly affected by it; so that the annoyance of first hearing thefacts was far slighter than what he felt in communicating them to Mrs.Davilow, and in anticipating Gwendolen's feeling whenever her mother sawfit to tell her of them. For the good rector had an innocent convictionthat his niece was unaware of Mrs. Glasher's existence, arguing withmasculine soundness from what maidens and wives were likely to know, do,and suffer, and having had a most imperfect observation of the particularmaiden and wife in question. Not so Gwendolen's mother, who now thoughtthat she saw an explanation of much that had been enigmatic in her child'sconduct and words before and after her engagement, concluding that in someinconceivable way Gwendolen had been informed of this left-handed marriageand the existence of the children. She trusted to opportunities that wouldarise in moments of affectionate confidence before and during theirjourney to England, when she might gradually learn how far the actualstate of things was clear to Gwendolen, and prepare her for anything thatmight be a disappointment. But she was spared from devices on the subject.
"I hope you don't expect that I am going to be rich and grand, mamma,"said Gwendolen, not long after the rector's communication; "perhaps Ishall have nothing at all."
She was dressed, and had been sitting long in quiet meditation. Mrs.Davilow was startled, but said, after a moment's reflection--
"Oh yes, dear, you will have something. Sir Hugo knows all about thewill."
"That will not decide," said Gwendolen, abruptly.
"Surely, dear: Sir Hugo says you are to have two thousand a year and thehouse at Gadsmere."
"What I have will depend on what I accept," said Gwendolen. "You and myuncle must not attempt to cross me and persuade me about this. I will doeverything I can do to make you happy, but in anything about my husband Imust not be interfered with. Is eight hundred a year enough for you,mamma?"
"More than enough, dear. You must not think of giving me so much." Mrs.Davilow paused a little, and then said, "Do you know who is to have theestates and the rest of the money?"
"Yes," said Gwendolen, waving her hand in dismissal of the subject. "Iknow everything. It is all perfectly right, and I wish never to have itmentioned."
The mother was silent, looked away, and rose to fetch a fan-screen, with aslight flush on her delicate cheeks. Wondering, imagining, she did notlike to meet her daughter's eyes, and sat down again under a sadconstraint. What wretchedness her child had perhaps gone through, whichyet must remain as it always had been, locked away from their mutualspeech. But Gwendolen was watching her mother with that new divinationwhich experience had given her; and in tender relenting at her ownperemptoriness, said, "Come and sit nearer to me, mamma, and don't beunhappy."
Mrs. Davilow did as she was told, but bit her lips in the vain attempt tohinder smarting tears. Gwendolen leaned toward her caressingly and said,"I mean to be very wise; I do, really. And good--oh, so good to you, dear,old, sweet mamma, you won't know me. Only you must not cry."
The resolve that Gwendolen had in her mind was that she would ask Derondawhether she ought to accept any of her husband's money--whether she mightaccept what would enable her to provide for her mother. The poor thingfelt strong enough to do anything that would give her a higher place inDeronda's mind.
An invitation that Sir Hugo pressed on her with kind urgency was that sheand Mrs. Davilow should go straight with him to Park Lane, and make hishouse their abode as long as mourning and other details needed attendingto in London. Town, he insisted, was just then the most retired of places;and he proposed to exert himself at once in getting all articles belongingto Gwendolen away from the house in Grosvenor Square. No proposal couldhave suited her better than this of staying a little while in Park Lane.It would be easy for her there to have an interview with Deronda, if sheonly knew how to get a letter into his hands, asking him to come to her.During the journey, Sir Hugo, having understood that she was acquaintedwith the purport of her husband's will, ventured to talk before her and toher about her future arrangements, referring here and there to mildlyagreeable prospects as matters of course, and otherwise shedding adecorous cheerfulness over her widowed position. It seemed to him reallythe more graceful course for a widow to recover her spirits on findingthat her husband had not dealt as handsomely by her as he might have done;it was the testator's fault if he compromised all her grief at hisdeparture by giving a testamentary reason for it, so that she might besupposed to look sad, not because he had left her, but because he had lefther poor. The baronet, having his kindliness doubly fanned by thefavorable wind on his fortunes and by compassion for Gwendolen, had becomequite fatherly in his behavior to her, called her "my dear," and inmentioning Gadsmere to Mr. Gascoigne, with its various advantages anddisadvantages, spoke of what "we" might do to make the best of thatproperty. Gwendolen sat by in pale silence while Sir Hugo, with his faceturned toward Mrs. Davilow or Mr. Gascoigne, conjectured that Mrs.Grandcourt might perhaps prefer letting Gadsmere to residing there duringany part of the year, in which case he thought that it might be leased oncapital terms to one of the fellows engaged with the coal: Sir Hugo hadseen enough of the place to know that it was as comfortable andpicturesque a box as any man need desire, providing his desires werecircumscribed within a coal area.
"_I_ shouldn't mind about the soot myself," said the baronet, with thatdispassionateness which belongs to the potential mood. "Nothing is morehealthy. And if one's business lay there, Gadsmere would be a paradise. Itmakes quite a feature in Scrogg's history of the county, with the littletower and the fine piece of water--the prettiest print in the book."
"A more important place than Offendene, I suppose?" said Mr. Gascoigne.
"Much," said the baronet, decisively. "I was there with my poor brother--it is more than a quarter of a century ago, but I remember it very well.The rooms may not be larger, but the grounds are on a different scale."
"Our poor dear Offendene is empty after all," said Mrs. Davilow. "When itcame to the point, Mr. Haynes declared off, and there has been no one totake it since. I might as well have accepted Lord Brackenshaw's kind offerthat I should remain in it another year rent-free: for I should have keptthe place aired and warmed."
"I hope you've something snug instead," said Sir Hugo.
"A little too snug," said Mr. Gascoigne, smiling at his sister-in-law."You are rather thick upon the ground."
Gwendolen had turned with a changed glance when her mother spoke ofOffendene being empty. This conversation passed during one of the longunaccountable pauses often experienced in foreign trains at some countrystation. There was a dreamy, sunny stillness over the hedgeless fieldsstretching to the boundary of poplars; and to Gwendolen the talk withinthe carriage seemed only to make the dreamland larger with an indistinctregion of coal-pits, and a purgatorial Gadsmere which she would nevervisit; till at her mother's words, this mingled, dozing view seemed todissolve and give way to a more wakeful vision of Offendene and Pennicoteunder their cooler lights. She saw the gray shoulders of the downs, thecattle-specked fields, the shadowy plantations with rutted lanes where thebarked timber lay for a wayside seat, the neatly-clipped hedges on theroad from the parsonage to Offendene, the avenue where she was graduallydiscerned from the window, the hall-door opening, and her mother or one ofthe troublesome sisters coming out to meet her. All that brief experienceof a quiet home which had once seemed a dullness to be fled from, now cameback to her as a restful escape, a station where she found the breath ofmorning and the unreproaching voice of birds after following a lurethrough a long Satanic masquerade, which she had entered on with anintoxicated belief in its disguises, and had seen the end of in shriekingfear lest she herself had become one of the evil spirits who were droppingtheir human mummery and hissing around her with serpent tongues.
In this way Gwendolen's mind paused over Offendene and made it the sceneof many thoughts; but she gave no further outward sign of interest in thisconversation, any more than in Sir Hugo's opinion on the telegraphic cableor her uncle's views of the Church Rate Abolition Bill. What subjects willnot our talk embrace in leisurely day-journeying from Genoa to London? Evenstrangers, after glancing from China to Peru and opening their mentalstores with a liberality threatening a mutual impression of poverty on anyfuture meeting, are liable to become excessively confidential. But thebaronet and the rector were under a still stronger pressure towardcheerful communication: they were like acquaintances compelled to a longdrive in a mourning-coach who having first remarked that the occasion is amelancholy one, naturally proceed to enliven it by the most miscellaneousdiscourse. "I don't mind telling _you_," said Sir Hugo to the rector, inmentioning some private details; while the rector, without saying so, didnot mind telling the baronet about his sons, and the difficulty of placingthem in the world. By the dint of discussing all persons and things withindriving-reach of Diplow, Sir Hugo got himself wrought to a pitch ofinterest in that former home, and of conviction that it was his pleasantduty to regain and strengthen his personal influence in the neighborhood,that made him declare his intention of taking his family to the place fora month or two before the autumn was over; and Mr. Gascoigne cordiallyrejoiced in that prospect. Altogether, the journey was continued and endedwith mutual liking between the male fellow-travellers.
Meanwhile Gwendolen sat by like one who had visited the spirit-world andwas full to the lips of an unutterable experience that threw a strangeunreality over all the talk she was hearing of her own and the world'sbusiness; and Mrs. Davilow was chiefly occupied in imagining what herdaughter was feeling, and in wondering what was signified by her hinteddoubt whether she would accept her husband's bequest. Gwendolen in facthad before her the unsealed wall of an immediate purpose shutting offevery other resolution. How to scale the wall? She wanted again to see andconsult Deronda, that she might secure herself against any act he woulddisapprove. Would her remorse have maintained its power within her, orwould she have felt absolved by secrecy, if it had not been for that outerconscience which was made for her by Deronda? It is hard to say how muchwe could forgive ourselves if we were secure from judgment by anotherwhose opinion is the breathing-medium of all our joy--who brings to uswith close pressure and immediate sequence that judgment of the Invisibleand Universal which self-flattery and the world's tolerance would easilymelt and disperse. In this way our brother may be in the stead of God tous, and his opinion which has pierced even to the joints and marrow, maybe our virtue in the making. That mission of Deronda to Gwendolen hadbegun with what she had felt to be his judgment of her at the gaming-table. He might easily have spoiled it:--much of our lives is spent inmarring our own influence and turning others' belief in us into a widelyconcluding unbelief which they call knowledge of the world, while it isreally disappointment in you or me. Deronda had not spoiled his mission.
But Gwendolen had forgotten to ask him for his address in case she wantedto write, and her only way of reaching him was through Sir Hugo. She wasnot in the least blind to the construction that all witnesses might put onher giving signs of dependence on Deronda, and her seeking him more thanhe sought her: Grandcourt's rebukes had sufficiently enlightened herpride. But the force, the tenacity of her nature had thrown itself intothat dependence, and she would no more let go her hold on Deronda's help,or deny herself the interview her soul needed, because of witnesses, thanif she had been in prison in danger of being condemned to death. When shewas in Park Lane and knew that the baronet would be going down to theAbbey immediately (just to see his family for a couple of days and thenreturn to transact needful business for Gwendolen), she said to himwithout any air of hesitation, while her mother was present--
"Sir Hugo, I wish to see Mr. Deronda again as soon as possible. I don'tknow his address. Will you tell it me, or let him know that I want to seehim?"
A quick thought passed across Sir Hugo's face, but made no difference tothe ease with which he said, "Upon my word, I don't know whether he's athis chambers or the Abbey at this moment. But I'll make sure of him. I'llsend a note now to his chambers telling him to come, and if he's at theAbbey I can give him your message and send him up at once. I am sure hewill want to obey your wish," the baronet ended, with grave kindness, asif nothing could seem to him more in the appropriate course of things thanthat she should send such a message.
But he was convinced that Gwendolen had a passionate attachment toDeronda, the seeds of which had been laid long ago, and his formersuspicion now recurred to him with more strength than ever, that herfeeling was likely to lead her into imprudences--in which kind-hearted SirHugo was determined to screen and defend her as far as lay in his power.To him it was as pretty a story as need be that this fine creature and hisfavorite Dan should have turned out to be formed for each other, and thatthe unsuitable husband should have made his exit in such excellent time.Sir Hugo liked that a charming woman should be made as happy as possible.In truth, what most vexed his mind in this matter at present was a doubtwhether the too lofty and inscrutable Dan had not got some scheme or otherin his head, which would prove to be dearer to him than the lovely Mrs.Grandcourt, and put that neatly-prepared marriage with her out of thequestion. It was among the usual paradoxes of feeling that Sir Hugo, whohad given his fatherly cautions to Deronda against too much tenderness inhis relations with the bride, should now feel rather irritated against himby the suspicion that he had not fallen in love as he ought to have done.Of course all this thinking on Sir Hugo's part was eminently premature,only a fortnight or so after Grandcourt's death. But it is the trick ofthinking to be either premature or behind-hand.
However, he sent the note to Deronda's chambers, and it found him there.