Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LIV. Page 1
"The unwilling brainFeigns often what it would not; and we trustImagination with such phantasiesAs the tongue dares not fashion into words;Which have no words, their horror makes them dimTo the mind's eye."--SHELLEY.
Madonna Pia, whose husband, feeling himself injured by her, took her tohis castle amid the swampy flats of the Maremma and got rid of her there,makes a pathetic figure in Dante's Purgatory, among the sinners whorepented at the last and desire to be remembered compassionately by theirfellow-countrymen. We know little about the grounds of mutual discontentbetween the Siennese couple, but we may infer with some confidence thatthe husband had never been a very delightful companion, and that on theflats of the Maremma his disagreeable manners had a background which threwthem out remarkably; whence in his desire to punish his wife to theunmost, the nature of things was so far against him that in relievinghimself of her he could not avoid making the relief mutual. And thus,without any hardness to the poor Tuscan lady, who had her deliverance longago, one may feel warranted in thinking of her with a less sympatheticinterest than of the better known Gwendolen who, instead of beingdelivered from her errors or earth and cleansed from their effect inpurgatory, is at the very height of her entanglement in those fatal mesheswhich are woven within more closely than without, and often make theinward torture disproportionate to what is discernable as outward cause.
In taking his wife with him on a yachting expedition, Grandcourt had nointention to get rid of her; on the contrary, he wanted to feel moresecurely that she was his to do as he liked with, and to make her feel italso. Moreover, he was himself very fond of yachting: its dreamy do-nothing absolutism, unmolested by social demands, suited his disposition,and he did not in the least regard it as an equivalent for the drearinessof the Maremma. He had his reasons for carrying Gwendolen out of reach,but they were not reasons that can seem black in the mere statement. Hesuspected a growing spirit of opposition in her, and his feeling about thesentimental inclination she betrayed for Deronda was what in another manhe would have called jealously. In himself it seemed merely a resolutionto put an end to such foolery as must have been going on in thatprearranged visit of Deronda's which he had divined and interrupted.
And Grandcourt might have pleaded that he was perfectly justified intaking care that his wife should fulfill the obligations she had accepted.Her marriage was a contract where all the ostensible advantages were onher side, and it was only of those advantages that her husband should usehis power to hinder her from any injurious self committal or unsuitablebehavior. He knew quite well that she had not married him--had notovercome her repugnance to certain facts--out of love to him personally;he had won her by the rank and luxuries he had to give her, and these shehad got: he had fulfilled his side of the contract.
And Gwendolen, we know, was thoroughly aware of the situation. She couldnot excuse herself by saying that there had been a tacit part of thecontract on her side--namely, that she meant to rule and have her own way.With all her early indulgence in the disposition to dominate, she was notone of the narrow-brained women who through life regard all their ownselfish demands as rights, and every claim upon themselves as an injury.She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of purgatory hadbegun for her on the green earth: she knew that she had been wrong.
But now enter into the soul of this young creature as she found herself,with the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on the tinyplank-island of a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she felt thatshe had sold herself, and had been paid the strict price--nay, paid morethan she had dared to ask in the handsome maintenance of her mother:--thehusband to whom she had sold her truthfulness and sense of justice, sothat he held them throttled into silence, collared and dragged behind himto witness what he would, without remonstrance.
What had she to complain of? The yacht was of the prettiest; the cabinfitted up to perfection, smelling of cedar, soft-cushioned, hung withsilk, expanded with mirrors; the crew such as suited an elegant toy, oneof them having even ringlets, as well as a bronze complexion and fineteeth; and Mr. Lush was not there, for he had taken his way back toEngland as soon as he had seen all and everything on board. Moreover,Gwendolen herself liked the sea: it did not make her ill; and to observethe rigging of the vessel and forecast the necessary adjustments was asort of amusement that might have gratified her activity and enjoyment ofimaginary rule; the weather was fine, and they were coasting southward,where even the rain-furrowed, heat-cracked clay becomes gem-like withpurple shadows, and where one may float between blue and blue in an open-eyed dream that the world has done with sorrow.
But what can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye forbeauty, and makes sweet-scented ease an oppression? What sort of Moslemparadise would quiet the terrible fury of moral repulsion and cowedresistance which, like an eating pain intensifying into torture,concentrates the mind in that poisonous misery? While Gwendolen, thronedon her cushions at evening, and beholding the glory of sea and skysoftening as if with boundless love around her, was hoping that Grandcourtin his march up and down was not going to pause near her, not going tolook at her or speak to her, some woman, under a smoky sky, obliged toconsider the price of eggs in arranging her dinner, was listening for themusic of a footstep that would remove all risk from her foretaste of joy;some couple, bending cheek by cheek, over a bit of work done by the oneand delighted in by the other, were reckoning the earnings that would makethem rich enough for a holiday among the furze and heather.
Had Grandcourt the least conception of what was going on in the breast ofhis wife? He conceived that she did not love him; but was that necessary?She was under his power, and he was not accustomed to soothe himself, assome cheerfully-disposed persons are, with the conviction that he was verygenerally and justly beloved. But what lay quite away from his conceptionwas, that she could have any special repulsion for him personally. Howcould she? He himself knew what personal repulsion was--nobody better; hismind was much furnished with a sense of what brutes his fellow-creatureswere, both masculine and feminine; what odious familiarities they had,what smirks, what modes of flourishing their handkerchiefs, what costume,what lavender water, what bulging eyes, and what foolish notions of makingthemselves agreeable by remarks which were not wanted. In this criticalview of mankind there was an affinity between him and Gwendolen beforetheir marriage, and we know that she had been attractingly wrought upon bythe refined negations he presented to her. Hence he understood herrepulsion for Lush. But how was he to understand or conceive her presentrepulsion for Henleigh Grandcourt? Some men bring themselves to believe,and not merely maintain, the non-existence of an external world; a fewothers believe themselves objects of repulsion to a woman without beingtold so in plain language. But Grandcourt did not belong to this eccentricbody of thinkers. He had all his life had reason to take a flattering viewof his own attractiveness, and to place himself in fine antithesis to themen who, he saw at once, must be revolting to a woman of taste. He had noidea of moral repulsion, and could not have believed, if he had been toldit, that there may be a resentment and disgust which will gradually makebeauty more detestable than ugliness, through exasperation at that outwardvirtue in which hateful things can flaunt themselves or find asupercilious advantage.
How, then, could Grandcourt divine what was going on in Gwendolen'sbreast?
For their behavior to each other scandalized no observer--not even theforeign maid, warranted against sea-sickness; nor Grandcourt's ownexperienced valet: still less the picturesque crew, who regarded them as amodel couple in high life. Their companionship consisted chiefly in awell-bred silence. Grandcourt had no humorous observations at whichGwendolen could refuse to smile, no chit-chat to make small occasions ofdispute. He was perfectly polite in arranging an additional garment overher when needful, and in handing her any object that he perceived her toneed, and she could not fall into the vulgarity of accepting or rejectingsuch politeness rudely.
Grandcourt put up his telescope and said, "There's a plantation of sugar-canes at the foot of that rock; should you like to look?"
Gwendolen said, "Yes, please," remembering that she must try and interestherself in sugar-canes as something outside her personal affairs. ThenGrandcourt would walk up and down and smoke for a long while, pausingoccasionally to point out a sail on the horizon, and at last would seathimself and look at Gwendolen with his narrow immovable gaze, as if shewere part of the complete yacht; while she, conscious of being looked atwas exerting her ingenuity not to meet his eyes. At dinner he would remarkthat the fruit was getting stale, and they must put in somewhere for more;or, observing that she did not drink the wine, he asked her if she wouldlike any other kind better. A lady was obliged to respond to these thingssuitably; and even if she had not shrunk from quarrelling on othergrounds, quarreling with Grandcourt was impossible; she might as well havemade angry remarks to a dangerous serpent ornamentally coiled in her cabinwithout invitation. And what sort of dispute could a woman of any prideand dignity begin on a yacht?
Grandcourt had intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive after thisfashion; it gave their life on a small scale a royal representation andpublicity in which every thing familiar was got rid of, and every bodymust do what was expected of them whatever might be their private protest--the protest (kept strictly private) adding to the piquancy of despotism.
To Gwendolen, who even in the freedom of her maiden time, had had veryfaint glimpses of any heroism or sublimity, the medium that now thrustitself everywhere before her view was this husband and her relation tohim. The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are oftenvirtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentlemanor lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a humanbeing, may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of thosewho live with them--like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distortsform and makes color an affliction. Their trivial sentences, their pettystandards, their low suspicions, their loveless _ennui_, may be makingsomebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of uglyidols. Gwendolen had that kind of window before her, affecting the distantequally with the near. Some unhappy wives are soothed by the possibilitythat they may become mothers; but Gwendolen felt that to desire a childfor herself would have been a consenting to the completion of the injuryshe had been guilty of. She was reduced to dread lest she should become amother. It was not the image of a new sweetly-budding life that came as avision of deliverance from the monotony of distaste: it was an image ofanother sort. In the irritable, fluctuating stages of despair, gleams ofhope came in the form of some possible accident. To dwell on the benignityof accident was a refuge from worse temptation.
The embitterment of hatred is often as unaccountable to onlookers as thegrowth of devoted love, and it not only seems but is really out of directrelation with any outward causes to be alleged. Passion is of the natureof seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance whichdetermines all currents toward itself, and makes the whole life itstributary. And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, whichcompels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructivevindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the detested object,something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecutedhave made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering intodumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind,but not with soothing effect--rather with the effect of a strugglingterror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the self-dread, which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by herpent-up impulse. The vision of her past wrong-doing, and what it hadbrought on her, came with a pale ghastly illumination over every imagineddeed that was a rash effort at freedom, such as she had made in hermarriage. Moreover, she had learned to see all her acts through theimpression they would make on Deronda: whatever relief might come to her,she could not sever it from the judgment of her that would be created inhis mind. Not one word of flattery, of indulgence, of dependence on herfavor, could be fastened on by her in all their intercourse, to weaken hisrestraining power over her (in this way Deronda's effort over himself wasrepaid); and amid the dreary uncertainties of her spoiled life thepossible remedies that lay in his mind, nay, the remedy that lay in herfeeling for him, made her only hope. He seemed to her a terrible-browedangel, from whom she could not think of concealing any deed so as to winan ignorant regard from him: it belonged to the nature of their relationthat she should be truthful, for his power over her had begun in theraising of a self-discontent which could be satisfied only by genuinechange. But in no concealment had she now any confidence: her vision ofwhat she had to dread took more decidedly than ever the form of somefiercely impulsive deed, committed as in a dream that she wouldinstantaneously wake from to find the effects real though the images hadbeen false: to find death under her hands, but instead of darkness,daylight; instead of satisfied hatred, the dismay of guilt; instead offreedom, the palsy of a new terror--a white dead face from which she wasforever trying to flee and forever held back. She remembered Deronda'swords: they were continually recurring in her thought--
"Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea ofincreasing your remorse. * * * Take your fear as a safeguard. It is likequickness of hearing. It may make consequences passionately present toyou."
And so it was. In Gwendolen's consciousness temptation and dread met andstared like two pale phantoms, each seeing itself in the other--eachobstructed by its own image; and all the while her fuller self beheld theapparitions and sobbed for deliverance from them.
Inarticulate prayers, no more definite than a cry, often swept out fromher into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing orthe plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever shethought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence andwords, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he mightgive her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped fierce-eyed temptationwith murdering fingers had made its demon-visit that these best moments ofinward crying and clinging for rescue would come to her, and she would liewith wide-open eyes in which the rising tears seemed a blessing, and thethought, "I will not mind if I can keep from getting wicked," seemed ananswer to the indefinite prayer.
So the days passed, taking with them light breezes beyond and about theBalearic Isles, and then to Sardinia, and then with gentle changepersuading them northward again toward Corsica. But this floating, gentle-wafted existence, with its apparently peaceful influences, was becoming asbad as a nightmare to Gwendolen.
"How long are we to be yachting?" she ventured to ask one day after theyhad been touching at Ajaccio, and the mere fact of change in going ashorehad given her a relief from some of the thoughts which seemed now to clingabout the very rigging of the vessel, mix with the air in the red silkcabin below, and make the smell of the sea odious.
"What else should we do?" said Grandcourt. "I'm not tired of it. I don'tsee why we shouldn't stay out any length of time. There's less to bore onein this way. And where would you go to? I'm sick of foreign places. And weshall have enough of Ryelands. Would you rather be at Ryeland's?"
"Oh, no," said Gwendolen, indifferently, finding all places alikeundescribable as soon as she imagined herself and her husband in them. "Ionly wondered how long you would like this."
"I like yachting longer than anything else," said Grandcourt; "and I hadnone last year. I suppose you are beginning to tire of it. Women are soconfoundedly whimsical. They expect everything to give way to them."
"Oh, dear, no!" said Gwendolen, letting out her scorn in a flute-liketone. "I never expect you to give way."
"Why should I?" said Grandcourt, with his inward voice, looking at her,and then choosing an orange--for they were at table.
She made up her mind to a length of yatching that she could not seebeyond; but the next day, after a squall which had made her rather ill forthe first time, he came down to her and said--
"There's been the devil's own work in the night. The skipper says we shallhave to stay at Genoa for a week while things are set right."
"Do you mind that?" said Gwendolen, who lay looking very white amidst herwhite drapery.
"I should think so. Who wants to be broiling at Genoa?"
"It will be a change," said Gwendolen, made a little incautious by herlanguor.
"_I_ don't want any change. Besides, the place is intolerable; and onecan't move along the roads. I shall go out in a boat, as I used to do, andmanage it myself. One can get a few hours every day in that way instead ofstriving in a damnable hotel."
Here was a prospect which held hope in it. Gwendolen thought of hours whenshe would be alone, since Grandcourt would not want to take her in thesaid boat, and in her exultation at this unlooked-for relief, she hadwild, contradictory fancies of what she might do with her freedom--that"running away" which she had already innumerable times seen to be a worseevil than any actual endurance, now finding new arguments as an escapefrom her worse self. Also, visionary relief on a par with the fancy of aprisoner that the night wind may blow down the wall of his prison and savehim from desperate devices, insinuated itself as a better alternative,lawful to wish for.
The fresh current of expectation revived her energies, and enabled her totake all things with an air of cheerfulness and alacrity that made achange marked enough to be noticed by her husband. She watched through theevening lights to the sinking of the moon with less of awed lonelinessthan was habitual to her--nay, with a vague impression that in this mightyframe of things there might be some preparation of rescue for her. Whynot?--since the weather had just been on her side. This possibility ofhoping, after her long fluctuation amid fears, was like a first return ofhunger to the long-languishing patient.