Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (437 page)

He was in a state of disgust and embitterment quite new in the history of their relation to each other. It was undeniable that this woman, whose life he had allowed to send such deep suckers into his, had a terrible power of annoyance in her; and the rash hurry of his proceedings had left her opportunities open. His pride saw very ugly possibilities threatening it, and he stood for several minutes in silence reviewing the situation — considering how he could act upon her. Unlike himself she was of a direct nature, with certain simple strongly-colored tendencies, and there was one often-experienced effect which he thought he could count upon now. As Sir Hugo had said of him, Grandcourt knew how to play his cards upon occasion.

He did not speak again, but looked at his watch, rang the bell, and ordered the vehicle to be brought round immediately. Then he removed farther from her, walked as if in expectation of a summons, and remained silent without turning his eyes upon her.

She was suffering the horrible conflict of self-reproach and tenacity. She saw beforehand Grandcourt leaving her without even looking at her again — herself left behind in lonely uncertainty — hearing nothing from him — not knowing whether she had done her children harm — feeling that she had perhaps made him hate her; — all the wretchedness of a creature who had defeated her own motives. And yet she could not bear to give up a purpose which was a sweet morsel to her vindictiveness. If she had not been a mother she would willingly have sacrificed herself to her revenge — to what she felt to be the justice of hindering another from getting happiness by willingly giving her over to misery. The two dominant passions were at struggle. She must satisfy them both.

“Don’t let us part in anger, Henleigh,” she began, without changing her voice or attitude: “it is a very little thing I ask. If I were refusing to give anything up that you call yours it would be different: that would be a reason for treating me as if you hated me. But I ask such a little thing. If you will tell me where you are going on the wedding-day I will take care that the diamonds shall be delivered to her without scandal. Without scandal,” she repeated entreatingly.

“Such preposterous whims make a woman odious,” said Grandcourt, not giving way in look or movement. “What is the use of talking to mad people?”

“Yes, I am foolish — loneliness has made me foolish — indulge me.” Sobs rose as she spoke. “If you will indulge me in this one folly I will be very meek — I will never trouble you.” She burst into hysterical crying, and said again almost with a scream — “I will be very meek after that.”

There was a strange mixture of acting and reality in this passion. She kept hold of her purpose as a child might tighten its hand over a small stolen thing, crying and denying all the while. Even Grandcourt was wrought upon by surprise: this capricious wish, this childish violence, was as unlike Lydia’s bearing as it was incongruous with her person. Both had always had a stamp of dignity on them. Yet she seemed more manageable in this state than in her former attitude of defiance. He came close up to her again, and said, in his low imperious tone, “Be quiet, and hear what I tell you, I will never forgive you if you present yourself again and make a scene.”

She pressed her handkerchief against her face, and when she could speak firmly said, in the muffled voice that follows sobbing, “I will not — if you will let me have my way — I promise you not to thrust myself forward again. I have never broken my word to you — how many have you broken to me? When you gave me the diamonds to wear you were not thinking of having another wife. And I now give them up — I don’t reproach you — I only ask you to let me give them up in my own way. Have I not borne it well? Everything is to be taken away from me, and when I ask for a straw, a chip — you deny it me.” She had spoken rapidly, but after a little pause she said more slowly, her voice freed from its muffled tone: “I will not bear to have it denied me.”

Grandcourt had a baffling sense that he had to deal with something like madness; he could only govern by giving way. The servant came to say the fly was ready. When the door was shut again Grandcourt said sullenly, “We are going to Ryelands then.”

“They shall be delivered to her there,” said Lydia, with decision.

“Very well, I am going.” He felt no inclination even to take her hand: she had annoyed him too sorely. But now that she had gained her point, she was prepared to humble herself that she might propitiate him.

“Forgive me; I will never vex you again,” she said, with beseeching looks. Her inward voice said distinctly — “It is only I who have to forgive.” Yet she was obliged to ask forgiveness.

“You had better keep that promise. You have made me feel uncommonly ill with your folly,” said Grandcourt, apparently choosing this statement as the strongest possible use of language.

“Poor thing!” cried Lydia, with a faint smile; — was he aware of the minor fact that he made her feel ill this morning?

But with the quick transition natural to her, she was now ready to coax him if he would let her, that they might part in some degree reconciled. She ventured to lay her hand on his shoulder, and he did not move away from her: she had so far succeeded in alarming him, that he was not sorry for these proofs of returned subjection.

“Light a cigar,” she said, soothingly, taking the case from his breast-pocket and opening it.

Amidst such caressing signs of mutual fear they parted. The effect that clung and gnawed within Grandcourt was a sense of imperfect mastery.

CHAPTER XXXI
.

        ”A wild dedication of yourselves
  To unpath’d waters, undreamed shores.”
                            — SHAKESPEARE.

On the day when Gwendolen Harleth was married and became Mrs. Grandcourt, the morning was clear and bright, and while the sun was low a slight frost crisped the leaves. The bridal party was worth seeing, and half Pennicote turned out to see it, lining the pathway up to the church. An old friend of the rector’s performed the marriage ceremony, the rector himself acting as father, to the great advantage of the procession. Only two faces, it was remarked, showed signs of sadness — Mrs. Davilow’s and Anna’s. The mother’s delicate eyelids were pink, as if she had been crying half the night; and no one was surprised that, splendid as the match was, she should feel the parting from a daughter who was the flower of her children and of her own life. It was less understood why Anna should be troubled when she was being so well set off by the bridesmaid’s dress. Every one else seemed to reflect the brilliancy of the occasion — the bride most of all. Of her it was agreed that as to figure and carriage she was worthy to be a “lady o’ title”: as to face, perhaps it might be thought that a title required something more rosy; but the bridegroom himself not being fresh-colored — being indeed, as the miller’s wife observed, very much of her own husband’s complexion — the match was the more complete. Anyhow he must be very fond of her; and it was to be hoped that he would never cast it up to her that she had been going out to service as a governess, and her mother to live at Sawyer’s Cottage — vicissitudes which had been much spoken of in the village. The miller’s daughter of fourteen could not believe that high gentry behaved badly to their wives, but her mother instructed her — “Oh, child, men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re much of a muchness. I’ve heard my mother say Squire Pelton used to take his dogs and a long whip into his wife’s room, and flog ‘em there to frighten her; and my mother was lady’s-maid there at the very time.”

“That’s unlucky talk for a wedding, Mrs. Girdle,” said the tailor. “A quarrel may end wi’ the whip, but it begins wi’ the tongue, and it’s the women have got the most o’ that.”

“The Lord gave it ‘em to use, I suppose,” said Mrs. Girdle. “
He
never meant you to have it all your own way.”

“By what I can make out from the gentleman as attends to the grooming at Offendene,” said the tailor, “this Mr. Grandcourt has wonderful little tongue. Everything must be done dummy-like without his ordering.”

“Then he’s the more whip, I doubt,” said Mrs. Girdle. “
She’s
got tongue enough, I warrant her. See, there they come out together!”

“What wonderful long corners she’s got to her eyes!” said the tailor.
“She makes you feel comical when she looks at you.”

Gwendolen, in fact, never showed more elasticity in her bearing, more lustre in her long brown glance: she had the brilliancy of strong excitement, which will sometimes come even from pain. It was not pain, however, that she was feeling: she had wrought herself up to much the same condition as that in which she stood at the gambling-table when Deronda was looking at her, and she began to lose. There was an enjoyment in it: whatever uneasiness a growing conscience had created was disregarded as an ailment might have been, amidst the gratification of that ambitious vanity and desire for luxury within her which it would take a great deal of slow poisoning to kill. This morning she could not have said truly that she repented her acceptance of Grandcourt, or that any fears in hazy perspective could hinder the glowing effect of the immediate scene in which she was the central object. That she was doing something wrong — that a punishment might be hanging over her — that the woman to whom she had given a promise and broken it, was thinking of her in bitterness and misery with a just reproach — that Deronda with his way of looking into things very likely despised her for marrying Grandcourt, as he had despised her for gambling — above all, that the cord which united her with this lover and which she had heretofore held by the hand, was now being flung over her neck, — all this yeasty mingling of dimly understood facts with vague but deep impressions, and with images half real, half fantastic, had been disturbing her during the weeks of her engagement. Was that agitating experience nullified this morning? No: it was surmounted and thrust down with a sort of exulting defiance as she felt herself standing at the game of life with many eyes upon her, daring everything to win much — or if to lose, still with
éclat
and a sense of importance. But this morning a losing destiny for herself did not press upon her as a fear: she thought that she was entering on a fuller power of managing circumstances — with all the official strength of marriage, which some women made so poor a use of. That intoxication of youthful egoism out of which she had been shaken by trouble, humiliation, and a new sense of culpability, had returned upon her under a newly-fed strength of the old fumes. She did not in the least present the ideal of the tearful, tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some had judged much too forward and instructed in the world’s ways! — with her erect head and elastic footstep she was walking among illusions; and yet, too, there was an under-consciousness of her that she was a little intoxicated.

“Thank God you bear it so well, my darling!” said Mrs. Davilow, when she had helped Gwendolen to doff her bridal white and put on her traveling dress. All the trembling had been done by the poor mother, and her agitation urged Gwendolen doubly to take the morning as if it were a triumph.

“Why, you might have said that, if I had been going to Mrs. Mompert’s, you dear, sad, incorrigible mamma!” said Gwendolen just putting her hands to her mother’s cheeks with laughing tenderness — then retreating a little and spreading out her arms as if to exhibit herself: “Here am I — Mrs. Grandcourt! what else would you have me, but what I am sure to be? You know you were ready to die with vexation when you thought that I would not be Mrs. Grandcourt.”

“Hush, hush, my child, for heaven’s sake!” said Mrs. Davilow, almost in a whisper. “How can I help feeling it when I am parting from you. But I can bear anything gladly if you are happy.”

“Not gladly, mamma, no!” said Gwendolen, shaking her head, with a bright smile. “Willingly you would bear it, but always sorrowfully. Sorrowing is your sauce; you can take nothing without it.” Then, clasping her mother’s shoulders and raining kisses first on one cheek and then on the other between her words, she said, gaily, “And you shall sorrow over my having everything at my beck — -and enjoying everything glorious — splendid houses — and horses — and diamonds, I shall have diamonds — and going to court — and being Lady Certainly — and Lady Perhaps — and grand here — and tantivy there — and always loving you better than anybody else in the world.”

“My sweet child! — But I shall not be jealous if you love your husband better; and he will expect to be first.”

Gwendolen thrust out her lips and chin with a pretty grimace, saying, “Rather a ridiculous expectation. However, I don’t mean to treat him ill, unless he deserves it.”

Then the two fell into a clinging embrace, and Gwendolen could not hinder a rising sob when she said, “I wish you were going with me, mamma.”

But the slight dew on her long eyelashes only made her the more charming when she gave her hand to Grandcourt to be led to the carriage.

The rector looked in on her to give a final “Good-bye; God bless you; we shall see you again before long,” and then returned to Mrs. Davilow, saying half cheerfully, half solemnly —

“Let us be thankful, Fanny. She is in a position well suited to her, and beyond what I should have dared to hope for. And few women can have been chosen more entirely for their own sake. You should feel yourself a happy mother.”

* * * * *

There was a railway journey of some fifty miles before the new husband and wife reached the station near Ryelands. The sky had veiled itself since the morning, and it was hardly more than twilight when they entered the park-gates, but still Gwendolen, looking out of the carriage-window as they drove rapidly along, could see the grand outlines and the nearer beauties of the scene — the long winding drive bordered with evergreens backed by huge gray stems: then the opening of wide grassy spaces and undulations studded with dark clumps; till at last came a wide level where the white house could be seen, with a hanging wood for a back-ground, and the rising and sinking balustrade of a terrace in front.

Gwendolen had been at her liveliest during the journey, chatting incessantly, ignoring any change in their mutual position since yesterday; and Grandcourt had been rather ecstatically quiescent, while she turned his gentle seizure of her hand into a grasp of his hand by both hers, with an increased vivacity as of a kitten that will not sit quiet to be petted. She was really getting somewhat febrile in her excitement; and now in this drive through the park her usual susceptibility to changes of light and scenery helped to make her heart palpitate newly. Was it at the novelty simply, or the almost incredible fulfilment about to be given to her girlish dreams of being “somebody” — walking through her own furlong of corridor and under her own ceilings of an out-of-sight loftiness, where her own painted Spring was shedding painted flowers, and her own fore-shortened Zephyrs were blowing their trumpets over her; while her own servants, lackeys in clothing but men in bulk and shape, were as nought in her presence, and revered the propriety of her insolence to them: — being in short the heroine of an admired play without the pains of art? Was it alone the closeness of this fulfilment which made her heart flutter? or was it some dim forecast, the insistent penetration of suppressed experience, mixing the expectation of a triumph with the dread of a crisis? Hers was one of the natures in which exultation inevitably carries an infusion of dread ready to curdle and declare itself.

She fell silent in spite of herself as they approached the gates, and when her husband said, “Here we are at home!” and for the first time kissed her on the lips, she hardly knew of it: it was no more than the passive acceptance of a greeting in the midst of an absorbing show. Was not all her hurrying life of the last three months a show, in which her consciousness was a wondering spectator? After the half-willful excitement of the day, a numbness had come over her personality.

But there was a brilliant light in the hall — warmth, matting, carpets, full-length portraits, Olympian statues, assiduous servants. Not many servants, however: only a few from Diplow in addition to those constantly in charge of the house; and Gwendolen’s new maid, who had come with her, was taken under guidance by the housekeeper. Gwendolen felt herself being led by Grandcourt along a subtly-scented corridor, into an ante-room where she saw an open doorway sending out a rich glow of light and color.

“These are our dens,” said Grandcourt. “You will like to be quiet here till dinner. We shall dine early.”

He pressed her hand to his lips and moved away, more in love than he had ever expected to be.

Gwendolen, yielded up her hat and mantle, threw herself into a chair by the glowing hearth, and saw herself repeated in glass panels with all her faint-green satin surroundings. The housekeeper had passed into this boudoir from the adjoining dressing-room and seemed disposed to linger, Gwendolen thought, in order to look at the new mistress of Ryelands, who, however, being impatient for solitude said to her, “Will you tell Hudson when she has put out my dress to leave everything? I shall not want her again, unless I ring.”

The housekeeper, coming forward, said, “Here is a packet, madam, which I was ordered to give into nobody’s hands but yours, when you were alone. The person who brought it said it was a present particularly ordered by Mr. Grandcourt; but he was not to know of its arrival till he saw you wear it. Excuse me, madam; I felt it right to obey orders.”

Gwendolen took the packet and let it lie on her lap till she heard the doors close. It came into her mind that the packet might contain the diamonds which Grandcourt had spoken of as being deposited somewhere and to be given to her on her marriage. In this moment of confused feeling and creeping luxurious languor she was glad of this diversion — glad of such an event as having her own diamonds to try on.

Within all the sealed paper coverings was a box, but within the box there
was
a jewel-case; and now she felt no doubt that she had the diamonds. But on opening the case, in the same instant that she saw them gleam she saw a letter lying above them. She knew the handwriting of the address. It was as if an adder had lain on them. Her heart gave a leap which seemed to have spent all her strength; and as she opened the bit of thin paper, it shook with the trembling of her hands. But it was legible as print, and thrust its words upon her.