Gwendolen (8 page)

Mrs Mompert, uncle told me, wished to interview me before confirming my appointment as governess. Why? I asked. I had done myself the violence of accepting the humiliation of her employing me. Was that not enough? Did I need to be vetted like a horse for the stable?

Mrs Mompert needed to be sure of me, uncle said. A woman of strict principle, she presided over her daughters' religious and moral education. She would not, for example, have a French person in the house. She needed to assess my character and likely influence on her daughters.

He went on to extol the Bishop's ecclesiastical credentials. He talked of the Bible Society, private strictures and Lord Grampian, and conveyed a sense of oppression more stifling than embroidering table napkins for Pennicote church. I became awash with anxiety. I felt like a trapped and drowning bird. The pompous Bishop was to inform me on church matters of infinite dullness. His prim wife would have me hide my hair under a maid's cap. Their wretched unmet girls already irritated me far more than my own sisters. I wanted to fly to the open sea, jump to freedom from any high window. I enquired desperately about the alternative: the position in a school.

The teaching post was not good enough, uncle said, nor did I have an equal chance of securing it. ‘Oh dear no,' aunt added. ‘It would be much harder for you. You might not have a bedroom to yourself.' They apprised me of the character-building benefits of self-abnegation and how, from Mrs Mompert, ghastly Mrs Mompert, I would learn to conduct myself from a woman who was my superior.

*

Life was hateful. Mamma watched me in distress. I evinced no interest in dreary furnishings for the horrible cottage, I refused to go to the rectory and face uncle's stoicism, I dreaded being subjected to Mrs Mompert's scrutiny.

The interview with her was fixed for a week away but I could not rouse myself. I had known since I was little that mamma was unhappy. Now it seemed I was to be even more unhappy than she. I do not think I suffered from overweening arrogance, only naïve optimism. You had given me insubstantial hope, Grandcourt concealed a nest of iniquities, Klesmer informed me I had no talent, only worthless beauty, uncle insisted I resign myself to a grey flannel costume and a straw poke hat, aunt derided me for rejecting Grandcourt, Anna viewed me as shameful for not being in love with Rex. I had failed them all, but especially mamma. She was so used, abused and hard done by and I could not rescue her, only become like her. She would have to stitch her fingers to the bone. The best I could do was to give her the £80 a year I might earn as a governess. I saw mamma as old and white-haired and I no longer young but faded. I felt her grief that she could not contrive my happiness. ‘Poor Gwen too is sad and faded now,' I seemed to hear her say.

*

One early morning I got out my casket of jewellery, thinking its contents might buy us a month's respite. I told mamma to sell everything but my father's chain. In my barren world you were my consolation and the chain my talisman link to you. Mamma was doubtful that the sale of a few pearls and clasps would mitigate our problems. She asked about the handkerchief, from which you had torn your initials, in which it was wrapped. I was vague in my explanation but, as I held both necklace and handkerchief, I yearned for your advice, your soft voice and kind eyes.

*

A few days later I, who viewed tears as a weakness and seldom cried, was in bed weeping with disappointment when mamma came in, put her arms around me and when I was calm gave me a letter from Grandcourt. He announced he had returned from Homburg where he had gone in the hope of finding me, and asked if he might call at Offendene the following day to see me alone.

I was torn between guilt and hope: I saw the dark-eyed woman and beautiful boy and heard her warning voice. I thought of Grandcourt's cold allure and life of such high style. I felt a rush of obstinate determination: here was the only way for me to recapture authority and steer my life. Marrying Grandcourt would at a stroke resolve so much: mamma need not go to Sawyer's Cottage and stitch for sixpences, I need not defer to Bishop Mompert and his catechisms, pretend piety, feign respect for his self-important wife or concern for their prim and pampered daughters. You? Where were you? Grandcourt was the armoured knight who came to rescue me from the undoubted trouble I was in.

I read the note to mamma. If Grandcourt had heard about Sawyer's Cottage, she said, it was proof of his strong and generous attachment to me. Why else would he choose a wife from a family reduced to beggary? She urged me to reply while the Diplow servant waited. I did not wish to reflect. I told her to fetch pen and paper.

Grandcourt, I believed, now declared his paramount reason for not marrying Mrs Glasher: the insuperable obstacle was that he did not love her. He loved me.

That night I could not sleep. Grandcourt's promise buoyed my hopes but quietened and enhanced my fear. I had been rendered powerless, brought savagely to heel. I wanted, needed, to find control and command. But I neither loved nor trusted Grandcourt. I was muddled and uncertain, and in my troubled heart I loved and trusted you.

Next afternoon mamma coiled my hair and I dressed in black silk. Grandcourt arrived on Yarico, his beautiful black horse, accompanied by his groom, who rode the chestnut Criterion. The groom waited outside. Miss Merry announced when Grandcourt was in the drawing room. I went down alone. I see and feel the day so clearly: the view that beckoned from the window, the horses that symbolised freedom, the scent of rose atar.

Grandcourt and I sat facing each other. He held his hat in his left hand and gazed at me with his long, narrow, light-coloured eyes. It occurred to me he had the stillness of a snake. The atmosphere was intense. He asked if I was well. ‘I was disappointed not to find you at Homburg,' he drawled in a voice that admitted no disappointment at all. ‘The place was intolerable without you. A kennel of a place, don't you think so?'

‘I can't judge what it would be without myself,' I said, relieved to be reacquainted with my sparring wit. ‘With myself I liked it well enough to have stayed longer if I could. But I was obliged to come home on account of family troubles.'

He had no need to ask what those troubles were; he knew from his repulsive scout. ‘It was cruel of you to go to Homburg,' he said, then told me I was ‘the heart and soul of things' and must have known my going would spoil everything.

‘Are you quite reckless about me?' he asked. The question made me blush.

Was there another man who stood between us?

I wanted to say, No but there is a woman. You were only half-formed in my mind as my guide and hope.

He persisted: ‘Am I to understand that someone else is preferred?'

‘No,' I said. We were both guilty of concealment, but a preference of mine for someone else was not the obstacle to this wooing.

‘The last thing I would do is to importune you,' Grandcourt said. ‘I should not hope to win you by making myself a bore. If there were no hope for me I would ask you to tell me so at once, that I might just ride away to – no matter where.'

I felt a rush of alarm at the thought of him riding away. Were he to do so nothing was left for me. His lack of reference to Mrs Glasher made it seem she did not exist. There was just him and me, the sunlight of the morning, the beautiful horses waiting outside the window, the coolness of his wooing to soothe my hurt and quieten my fear. I wanted no other reality to intrude and break this fragile spell of make-believe.

I spoke briefly of mamma's troubles and our dismal prospects. The money needed to spare her from Sawyer's Cottage and me from Bishop Mompert was as nothing to Grandcourt but everything to us. He looked at me with his pale eyes. I thought I held him in my thrall. I did not know how much it mattered to him that I had not so much as held a man's hand. I did not know he liked my insolence not because it amused him, but because he intended to subdue it.

He was impassive, his timing perfect, his manners faultless. He said, ‘You will tell me now, I hope, that Mrs Davilow's loss of fortune will not trouble you further. You will trust me to prevent it from weighing upon her. You will give me the claim to provide against that.'

I felt I had quaffed wine. Momentarily I loved this man. He was my saviour and the woman at Cardell Chase no more than an unsettling hallucination. My fears were needless, my pain gone. I told Grandcourt he was very generous. I meant it.

‘You accept what will make such things a matter of course?' he asked without urgency, eagerness, allusion or caveat that might frighten me away. ‘You consent to become my wife?'

A word was needed but I could not utter it.

*

Was it shame at my moral recklessness that froze my voice, or did I again perceive the fly-fisher who entices with perfectly crafted bait, who knows the necessity for concealment and stillness if his prey is to be deceived?

*

I walked to the mantelpiece, folded my hands and turned to him. He too rose, held his hat but did not move towards me. My hesitation fired him. Here was the moment of my renunciation. ‘Do you command me to go?' he asked. He let me believe, for oh so brief a time, my word was his command. I feared his going more than I feared the consequence of his staying. I could not steer; I could only yield to the tide I hoped might carry me to a safe shore.

‘You accept my devotion?' The question was a command. It had all gone too far. There was to be no explanation, no straying from intention.

‘Yes,' I said, as if answering to my name in a court of law. He savoured my fear, which his authority forbade me to express. My frozen voice and nervous posture made conquest the more thrilling. He let the silence linger, put down his hat, came towards me, took my hand lightly, pressed his lips to it then let it go. Such manners were perfect for me in their cool restraint. I felt the air of liberation. The sparring was over, his victory a nonchalance. Yes to Grandcourt meant no to Sawyer's Cottage and the wretched Bishop. I said with glittering brightness that I would fetch mamma.

‘Let us wait a little,' Grandcourt said. He stood in his favourite pose, the perfect gentleman, the perfect stranger, left forefinger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket, his right forefinger stroking his blond moustache. Such was my naïvety, my self-delusion, I almost imagined ‘Reader, I married him' to be the answer to my problems, almost imagined that the drama which within a little month had taken such twists, such turns, was destined for a happy ending.

*

You, Deronda, were lodged in my heart; I had nothing of yours but a penetrating gaze and a handkerchief with your initials cut away. Your one assertion had been to return to me my father's turquoise chain which for unexamined reasons I now knew I would not part with again.

*

To my relief Grandcourt made no move to kiss me. ‘Have you anything else to say to me?' I asked, my shattered charm restored.

‘Yes, though I know having things said to you is a great bore,' my compliant lover said.

‘Not when they are things I like to hear.'

‘Will it bother you to be asked how soon we can be married?'

‘I think it will bother me today.' I was the coquettish, happy bride-to-be.

‘Then tomorrow. Decide before I come tomorrow. Let it be in a fortnight or three weeks. As soon as possible.'

‘You fear you will tire of my company.' I had heard, I added, that the husband, when married, did not feel the need to be so much with his wife as when engaged. ‘Perhaps I shall like that better too.'

Such was my hour of confidence, my brief taste of triumph and control. Outside the window Criterion and Yarico waited, so much more elegant than Twilight, so other than Anna's pony, or Primrose, or the old barouche at the railway inn. They heralded an end to scrimping and mamma's sad resignation. Grandcourt asked if I should like to ride Criterion tomorrow. I felt a burst of joy. I would gallop free and fast. ‘You shall have whatever you like,' he said. Was ever there a greater lie than that.

‘And nothing that I don't like? Please say that. I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I like.'

He repeated the lie. Whatever I liked I should have. Boldly, I said I disliked Lush's company and asked him to spare me from it. To please me he said he would dispense with him, he had been young when Lush was foisted on him, he called him a cross between a hog and a dilettante. Lush would be got rid of. I laughed with satisfaction.

‘Take my arm,' Grandcourt said. I did so, we left the room, he waited in the hall, I hurried to the bedroom, kissed mamma on both cheeks, announced there would be no Sawyer's Cottage, no scrutiny by Mrs Mompert, and everything from now on would be as I chose and as I liked. ‘Come down, mamma, and see Mr Grandcourt,' I said. ‘I am engaged to him.'

*

I was the heroine of the fairy tale. In three weeks the turning wheel of my fortune had spun from hope to fear to loss and now to resolution. Here was my husband-to-be, who would do everything for me, take nothing from me, who was courteous, solicitous, protective. Mrs Glasher was locked away like the death's head in the wainscot to which I held the key. You were out of sight.

*

Alice, Bertha, Fanny, Isabel, Miss Merry and Jocasta Bugle viewed me as their saviour. That same evening uncle, aunt and Anna came to Offendene. Uncle commended Grandcourt's generosity; my aunt warned me there was now no room for caprice and that I had a debt of gratitude to a man who persevered with such an offer; Anna, who hoped the troubles might have softened my heart towards Rex, was quiet and tearful; but the evening and all glory were mine.

Mamma wanted to know about the estates to which I would be chatelaine: Ryelands, Diplow, the London town house. Ryelands, uncle said, was one of the finest seats in the land, the house designed by Inigo Jones, its ceilings painted in Italian style, its parkland and woods extensive, the income from it twelve thousand a year.