Gwendolen (13 page)

Was she, I then asked, as perfect in everything else as in her music? You replied you had seen nothing in her you would wish to be different. She had had an unhappy life and childhood, but no advantages could have given her more grace or truer refinement. Mrs Lewes concurred.

I asked about her unhappiness. I was well versed in my own. You said she had been abandoned and ill-used by her father and in despair was on the brink of drowning herself. ‘What stopped her?' Mrs Lewes asked, and you spoke in your oblique way of a ray of light, piety and submission to duty. I became impatient. ‘I have no sympathy with women who are always doing right,' I said. ‘I cannot believe in their great suffering.'

I was stung to compare myself in ill light with this Miss Lapidoth. There was much in me you would wish to be different. Unhappiness had spawned in me not grace and refinement but bitterness and hate. Klesmer lauded her playing and singing with the same authority as he dismissed mine. No doubt you and Mrs Lewes would do likewise.

You did not endear me to Miss Lapidoth. None the less, beyond the catalogue of my shortcomings, I felt you were as drawn to me as I to you, although it seemed there was a barrier, even beyond my marriage, to your making any move towards me.

*

On our last day Grandcourt and I were to leave at three in the afternoon. In the morning he went with Sir Hugo to King's Topping to see the old Manor House. Other gentlemen went shooting. I strolled with the ladies, looked at the waterfowl and shrub and endured Lord Pentreath's anecdotes about the Crimean War and Mr Vandernoodt's compliments on my complexion and figure.

Hoping to find you I slipped away, ran back to the house and through a side door into the library. You were sitting at a writing table, your back to the door. There was a huge log fire and the room was like a sequestered private chapel which I scarcely dared enter. When you seemed to pause I said your name. You rose in surprise. ‘Am I wrong to come in?' I asked.

‘I thought you were out on your walk,' you said.

‘I turned back.'

You offered to accompany me, if I wished to join the others. I said no, I needed to say something and could not stay long. I had so little time. I needed your guidance. I rested my arms and muff on the back of the chair and spoke quickly. My intention was to confess and tell all, but my words when they came were evasive and circumventory. Vandernoodt, I believe, had hinted to you about Grandcourt's establishment at Gadsmere, but I found I could not mention Lydia Glasher by name or directly say what I had done.

I told you I had deliberately thrust others out and made my gain out of their loss. I could not alter that, but what should I do, I asked, as recompense for the injury caused? ‘What would
you
do, what would
you
feel in my place?' Your reply was guarded. In my place, you said, you would feel the sorrow I was feeling. That, I understood as a tautology. It was not enough. I persisted: ‘What would you try to
do
?'

‘Order my life so as to make any possible amends,' you said, ‘and keep away from doing any sort of injury again.' I said I could not make amends, I had to continue on the path I was on.

I wanted to be taken to a safe harbour, to be shown what to do today and tomorrow. Instead, in an exchange of hints and suggestions, you gave me advice more lofty than uncle's sermons. You talked of ‘the yoke of my own wrongdoing', said I must submit to it as if to an incurable disease and, to counterbalance evil, use this unalterable wrong I had done as a reason for effort towards good. ‘Be spurred into higher conduct,' you said, ‘and save other lives from being spoiled.'

How might I do that? I wondered. I did not want to save ‘other lives'. I did not much care for anyone's life except my own and mamma's. And yours of course. Above all yours. ‘But what can I do?' I asked you. ‘I must get up in the morning and do what everyone else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. The world is all confusion to me and I am tired and sick of it.'

You became severe and said again life would be worth more if I had an interest beyond the drama of my small personal desires. ‘Is there any single occupation of mind that you care about with passionate delight or even independent interest?' you asked.

I had no answer. Grandcourt insisted I be what he commanded. You suggested I ought be someone in my own right. It was hard for any woman to have passionate independent delights and interests, least of all a woman in my circumstances, young, disastrously married and weakly educated. I wanted to cry to you, Don't you see I am in a trap? Can't you see that I need help to escape?

I felt like a child shaken and told to wake up, get up, but into an empty house with locked doors. I said I would try but that I was living without affection around me. I so wanted to be with mamma and that was impossible; everything had changed in such a short time and the old things now gone, which I used not to like, I now longed for with all my heart.

‘Take your present suffering as a painful letting in of light,' you said. ‘You cannot escape that painful process.'

I wanted to tell you of the cruel form of suffering given to me, but I could not. I said, ‘I am frightened of everything. When my blood is fired I dare do anything, take any leap, and that makes me frightened of myself.'

I wanted to tell you of my battle with anger and hatred, of the knife with the willow-shaped blade, my fear of what I might do if the moment came when I could bear my affliction no longer. You see, you could not know what it was to be used by Grandcourt in the way I was used.

‘Turn your fear into a safeguard,' you said. How often would I cling to those words.
Turn your fear into a safeguard.
‘It is like quickness of hearing,' you said. ‘When calm, we can change the bias of our fear. Take hold of your sensibility and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.'

You looked at me as if I were drowning, which indeed I was, and as if you could not save me. I believe you wanted to help me but could do no more than share with me thoughts that had consoled you. Perhaps all I heard was your soft voice and all I sensed was your concern. I reassured you I would think of what you told me. I said you had helped me, my life would be better because I had known you. I could not tell you that you were my only lifeline and that I loved you.

*

Deronda, I struggled with your advice, vague though it was. My rejection of it was not wilful but I did not know how to apply it. I wanted redemption and to be guided towards virtue but you were telling me to bear the unbearable.

With silence, space and the passing of time, I see my situation differently. What had happened to me was not like an incurable disease. I had married a cruel and deceitful man. It should have been possible for me to leave him, gain my freedom, expose his wrongdoing and turn the spotlight of wrongdoing on him.

*

I longed for you to respect me. I wanted to improve and change. I wondered what books you might advise me to read. When Grandcourt and I returned to Ryelands, from the library I took to my room
Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
by René Descartes, and
The History of Civilization in Europe
by François Guizot … but I could not get far with either. I read some pages, but was deterred by their impenetrability and my thoughts strayed.

*

Grandcourt's visits to Gadsmere were frequent and not to be discussed. He never said when he was going, or where, or for how long, but I knew and was resentful, though glad to be free of his presence. Usually he was away a day and a night.

As soon as he was gone, I would take Criterion and ride fiercely across the fields and through the woods. I instructed the groom and servants never to mention this to my husband. I galloped fast, jumped brooks and streams and hardly cared if I fell. Those were my times of escape, my means of defiance. Riding fast and recklessly my spirits rose and I dared to hope that one day my captivity and suffering would end.

On one occasion, soon after Grandcourt left the house, on impulse and unannounced, I rode to Offendene to see mamma. Aunt and uncle were there, the four girls and Miss Merry. I was warmed by seven family kisses.

They all urged me to join them for lunch. Impatience with any of my family had vanished. I had no hunger but, determined not to show unhappiness, I agreed to a drink of chocolate. I said I wanted to say goodbye, for I was soon to go to our house in Grosvenor Square for the spring months. Uncle said at Easter both he and Anna would also be in London, staying at Lord Brackenshaw's house, to meet with Rex, who was excelling in his law studies and one day would be a great lawyer. I missed Rex's friendship with the same sense of bereavement as I missed my sisters. I formally invited uncle, with Anna and Rex, to visit me in Grosvenor Square, but in truth I hoped they would not come near the place for I did not want my misery seen.

Lord Brackenshaw had assured mamma she could remain at Offendene, whatever her circumstances, but the White House, smaller, at a lower rent, and only a mile from the rectory, had come up. Mamma liked the house with its views of trees and was saving for furniture. I felt I would cry at her moving from Offendene and how less than generous, despite his promises, my husband was to her.

Uncle spoke of the great influence of wives in bettering their husbands' careers and advised me to urge Grandcourt to enter Parliament. I might have laughed were I not so bitter. I had gone into this marriage confident of the wife's influence to manage I was not sure what – my own happiness and freedom, I suppose. I was too proud to let mamma and uncle know I could not influence Grandcourt even to permit me to wear the clothes and jewels I chose. Uncle spoke of the power of MPs, and how a suffrage bill was to be debated because of demands by working-class men for the right to vote. (No mention was made of women's demands.) I did not tell him Grandcourt despised the working class and favoured dictatorship over democracy, I merely said he would not like making speeches, then praised the chocolate drink Jocasta brought me.

I tried to appear happy, but when I went upstairs with mamma to our bedroom I felt weak with homesickness. My made-up bed was there. I gave mamma an envelope with £30 in it. It seemed a feeble generosity. I said it was for the girls to spend on things for themselves when they went to the new house.

*

Grandcourt wished to go to London to make his will and sort financial matters. I was indifferent to where I went with him. My one enthusiasm for the visit was the thought of seeing you.

Three days after we arrived at Grosvenor Square we attended a music party at Lady Mallinger's. I wore pale-green velvet and at Grandcourt's command the poisoned diamonds. The Mallinger drawing rooms in Park Lane were regally decorated in white, gold and crimson. Herr Klesmer was there with his now adoring wife, Catherine; you were in a group with Mrs Lewes, the talented Miss Lapidoth, and your artist friend Hans Meyrick, who had shoulder-length golden curls, was the bread-winner in the family with whom Miss Lapidoth was staying and apparently, from when he first saw me, referred to me as ‘the Van Dyck duchess'.

Miss Lapidoth was the evening's star. The little Jewess held this sophisticated audience in her thrall. She sang ‘O patria mia' from Verdi's
Aida
with Klesmer accompanying her on the piano. I watched you while she sang. You were absorbed and admiring. She was where I aspired to be, but I was merely one of the crowd in silk and gems, whose only worth was to praise or find fault.

The applause was prolonged. I offered my congratulations and told her you had advised me to take lessons from her. ‘I sing very badly as Herr Klesmer will tell you,' I said. ‘And I have been rebuked by Mr Deronda for not liking to be middling, since I can be nothing more.' Too straightforward to sense my bitterness or troubled mind, she replied she would be glad to teach me if she could. ‘If I do it well it must be by remembering how my master taught me,' she said.

I asked where she first met you: ‘Did you meet Mr Deronda abroad?' But all I really wanted to know was how much you meant to each other. She said she had been in great distress, you helped her, then took her to the Meyrick family, who gave her shelter and protection. She owed everything to you. Though vague, her answer satisfied. It allowed me to see her relationship to you as gratitude for practical help given, not as a romantic attachment. I placed her in a lower social class than yours. I wondered if it was you who saved her from drowning, or if you had found her destitute and furnished her with money.

She moved to the piano to sing again. I dared not approach you for fear of angering Grandcourt, but my fear turned to scornful determination when I saw him talking with Lush, with whom he had not for a moment dispensed. Lush was just as central to his life as he had ever been, the architect of much of it, and conspired with everything connected to the deceits that made me wretched.

I chose to sit on a small settee with room only for one other person, then looked towards you and smiled encouragement. You sat beside me. Mrs Lewes, I observed, was watching me as if reading my mind and heart. Lush came and stood nearby, I supposed at Grandcourt's instruction to spy. I told you I thought Miss Lapidoth lovely, not in the least common, and a complete little person who would be a great success.

You looked annoyed. Conscious of having blundered, I felt my heart lurch. I waited for Lush to turn his head, then asked what had displeased you. ‘What have I done wrong?' I asked. ‘What have I said?' You replied you couldn't explain, for it was hard to explain niceties of words and manner. I wanted to cry. I supposed that jealousy had provoked me to speak with condescension.

‘Have I shown myself so very dense to everything you have said?' I asked.

‘Not at all,' you replied, but with a formality and distance that belied your politeness. I wanted you to focus on me, my heart, my needs. I said I could become a better person only if I had people who inspired good feelings in me, for I did not know how else to set about being wise.