Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER IV.
"_Gorgibus._-- * * * Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainteet sacrée: et que c'est faire en honnêtes gens, que de débuter par là.
"_Madelon._--Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, unroman serait bientôt fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d'abordCyrus épousait Mandane, et qu'Aronce de plain-pied fût marié à Clélie!* * * Laissez-nous faire à loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n'enpressez pas tant la conclusion."MOLIÈRE. _Les Précieuses Ridicules._
It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote that in thecourse of looking at things from every point of view, he looked atGwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage. Why should he beexpected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter, and wish hisniece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would approve asthe best possible? It is rather to be set down to his credit that hisfeelings on the subject were entirely good-natured. And in considering therelation of means to ends, it would have been mere folly to have beenguided by the exceptional and idyllic--to have recommended that Gwendolenshould wear a gown as shabby as Griselda's in order that a marquis mightfall in love with her, or to have insisted that since a fair maiden was tobe sought, she should keep herself out of the way. Mr. Gascoigne'scalculations were of the kind called rational, and he did not even thinkof getting a too frisky horse in order that Gwendolen might be threatenedwith an accident and be rescued by a man of property. He wished his niecewell, and he meant her to be seen to advantage in the best society of theneighborhood.
Her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen's own wishes. Butlet no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage as thedirect end of her witching the world with her grace on horseback, or withany other accomplishment. That she was to be married some time or othershe would have felt obliged to admit; and that her marriage would not beof a middling kind, such as most girls were contented with, she feltquietly, unargumentatively sure. But her thoughts never dwelt on marriageas the fulfillment of her ambition; the dramas in which she imaginedherself a heroine were not wrought up to that close. To be very much suedor hopelessly sighed for as a bride was indeed an indispensable andagreeable guarantee of womanly power; but to become a wife and wear allthe domestic fetters of that condition, was on the whole a vexatiousnecessity. Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think itrather a dreary state in which a woman could not do what she liked, hadmore children than were desirable, was consequently dull, and becameirrevocably immersed in humdrum. Of course marriage was social promotion;she could not look forward to a single life; but promotions have sometimesto be taken with bitter herbs--a peerage will not quite do instead ofleadership to the man who meant to lead; and this delicate-limbed sylph oftwenty meant to lead. For such passions dwell in feminine breasts also. InGwendolen's, however, they dwelt among strictly feminine furniture, andhad no disturbing reference to the advancement of learning or the balanceof the constitution; her knowledge being such as with no sort of standing-room or length of lever could have been expected to move the world. Shemeant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner; or rather,whatever she could do so as to strike others with admiration and get inthat reflected way a more ardent sense of living, seemed pleasant to herfancy.
"Gwendolen will not rest without having the world at her feet," said MissMerry, the meek governess: hyperbolical words which have long come tocarry the most moderate meanings; for who has not heard of private personshaving the world at their feet in the shape of some half-dozen items offlattering regard generally known in a genteel suburb? And words couldhardly be too wide or vague to indicate the prospect that made a hazylargeness about poor Gwendolen on the heights of her young self-exultation. Other people allowed themselves to be made slaves of, and tohave their lives blown hither and thither like empty ships in which nowill was present. It was not to be so with her; she would no longer besacrificed to creatures worth less than herself, but would make the verybest of the chances that life offered her, and conquer circumstances byher exceptional cleverness. Certainly, to be settled at Offendene, withthe notice of Lady Brackenshaw, the archery club, and invitations to dinewith the Arrowpoints, as the highest lights in her scenery, was not aposition that seemed to offer remarkable chances; but Gwendolen'sconfidence lay chiefly in herself. She felt well equipped for the masteryof life. With regard to much in her lot hitherto, she held herself ratherhardly dealt with, but as to her "education," she would have admitted thatit had left her under no disadvantages. In the school-room her quick mindhad taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules and disconnectedfacts which saves ignorance from any painful sense of limpness; and whatremained of all things knowable, she was conscious of being sufficientlyacquainted with through novels, plays and poems. About her French andmusic, the two justifying accomplishments of a young lady, she felt noground for uneasiness; and when to all these qualifications, negative andpositive, we add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy personsare born with, so that any subject they turn their attention to impressesthem with their own power of forming a correct judgment on it, who canwonder if Gwendolen felt ready to manage her own destiny?
There were many subjects in the world--perhaps the majority--in which shefelt no interest, because they were stupid; for subjects are apt to appearstupid to the young as light seems dull to the old; but she would not havefelt at all helpless in relation to them if they had turned up inconversation. It must be remembered that no one had disputed her power orher general superiority. As on the arrival at Offendene, so always, thefirst thought of those about her had been, what will Gwendolen think?--ifthe footman trod heavily in creaking boots, or if the laundress's work wasunsatisfactory, the maid said, "This will never do for Miss Harleth"; ifthe wood smoked in the bedroom fireplace, Mrs. Davilow, whose own weakeyes suffered much from this inconvenience, spoke apologetically of it toGwendolen. If, when they were under the stress of traveling, she did notappear at the breakfast table till every one else had finished, the onlyquestion was, how Gwendolen's coffee and toast should still be of thehottest and crispest; and when she appeared with her freshly-brushedlight-brown hair streaming backward and awaiting her mamma's hand to coilit up, her large brown eyes glancing bright as a wave-washed onyx fromunder their long lashes, it was always she herself who had to be tolerant--to beg that Alice who sat waiting on her would not stick up hershoulders in that frightful manner, and that Isabel, instead of pushing upto her and asking questions, would go away to Miss Merry.
Always she was the princess in exile, who in time of famine was to haveher breakfast-roll made of the finest-bolted flour from the seven thinears of wheat, and in a general decampment was to have her silver folkkept out of the baggage. How was this to be accounted for? The answer mayseem to lie quite on the surface:--in her beauty, a certain unusualnessabout her, a decision of will which made itself felt in her gracefulmovements and clear unhesitating tones, so that if she came into the roomon a rainy day when everybody else was flaccid and the use of things ingeneral was not apparent to them, there seemed to be a sudden, sufficientreason for keeping up the forms of life; and even the waiters at hotelsshowed the more alacrity in doing away with crumbs and creases and dregswith struggling flies in them. This potent charm, added to the fact thatshe was the eldest daughter, toward whom her mamma had always been in anapologetic state of mind for the evils brought on her by a step-father,may seem so full a reason for Gwendolen's domestic empire, that to lookfor any other would be to ask the reason of daylight when the sun isshining. But beware of arriving at conclusions without comparison. Iremember having seen the same assiduous, apologetic attention awarded topersons who were not at all beautiful or unusual, whose firmness showeditself in no very graceful or euphonious way, and who were not eldestdaughters with a tender, timid mother, compunctious at having subjectedthem to inconveniences. Some of them were a very common sort of men. Andthe only point of resemblance among them all was a strong determination tohave what was pleasant, with a total fearlessness in making themselvesdisagreeable or dangerous when they did not get it. Who is so much cajoledand served with trembling by the weak females of a household as theunscrupulous male--capable, if he has not free way at home, of going anddoing worse elsewhere? Hence I am forced to doubt whether even without herpotent charm and peculiar filial position Gwendolen might not still haveplayed the queen in exile, if only she had kept her inborn energy ofegoistic desire, and her power of inspiring fear as to what she might sayor do. However, she had the charm, and those who feared her were also fondof her; the fear and the fondness being perhaps both heightened by whatmay be called the iridescence of her character--the play of various, nay,contrary tendencies. For Macbeth's rhetoric about the impossibility ofbeing many opposite things in the same moment, referred to the clumsynecessities of action and not to the subtler possibilities of feeling. Wecannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent; we cannot kill and notkill in the same moment; but a moment is wide enough for the loyal andmean desire, for the outlash of a murderous thought and the sharp backwardstroke of repentance.