"Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow. As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around the globe." --WALT WHITMAN.
"Now my cousins are at Diplow," said Grandcourt, "will you go there?--to-morrow? The carriage shall come for Mrs. Davilow. You can tell me what you would like done in the rooms. Things must be put in decent order while we are away at Ryelands. And to-morrow is the only day."
He was sitting sideways on a sofa in the drawing-room at Offendene, one hand and elbow resting on the back, and the other hand thrust between his crossed knees--in the attitude of a man who is much interested in watching the person next to him. Gwendolen, who had always disliked needlework, had taken to it with apparent zeal since her engagement, and now held a piece of white embroidery which, on examination, would have shown many false stitches. During the last eight or nine days their hours had been chiefly spent on horseback, but some margin had always been left for this more difficult sort of companionship, which, however, Gwendolen had not found disagreeable. She was very well satisfied with Grandcourt. His answers to her lively questions about what he had seen and done in his life, bore drawling very well. From the first she had noticed that he knew what to say; and she was constantly feeling not only that he had nothing of the fool in his composition, but that by some subtle means he communicated to her the impression that all the folly lay with other people, who did what he did not care to do. A man who seems to have been able to command the best, has a sovereign power of depreciation. Then Grandcourt's behavior as a lover had hardly at all passed the limit of an amorous homage which was inobtrusive as a wafted odor of roses, and spent all its effects in a gratified vanity. One day, indeed, he had kissed not her cheek but her neck a little below her ear; and Gwendolen, taken by surprise, had started up with a marked agitation which made him rise too and say, "I beg your pardon--did I annoy you?" "Oh, it was nothing," said Gwendolen, rather afraid of herself, "only I cannot bear--to be kissed under my ear." She sat down again with a little playful laugh, but all the while she felt her heart beating with a vague fear: she was no longer at liberty to flout him as she had flouted poor Rex. Her agitation seemed not uncomplimentary, and he had been contented not to transgress again.
To-day a slight rain hindered riding; but to compensate, a package had come from London, and Mrs. Davilow had just left the room after bringing in for admiration the beautiful things (of Grandcourt's ordering) which lay scattered about on the tables. Gwendolen was just then enjoying the scenery of her life. She let her hands fall on her lap, and said with a pretty air of perversity,
"Why is to-morrow the only day?"
"Because the next day is the first with the hounds," said Grandcourt.
"And after that?"
"After that I must go away for a couple of days--it's a bore--but I shall go one day and come back the next." Grandcourt noticed a change in her face, and releasing his hand from under his knees, he laid it on hers, and said, "You object to my going away?"
"It's no use objecting," said Gwendolen, coldly. She was resisting to the utmost her temptation to tell him that she suspected to whom he was going--the temptation to make a clean breast, speaking without restraint.
"Yes it is," said Grandcourt, enfolding her hand. "I will put off going. And I will travel at night, so as only to be away one day." He thought that he knew the reason of what he inwardly called this bit of temper, and she was particularly fascinating to him at this moment.
"Then don't put off going, but travel at night," said Gwendolen, feeling that she could command him, and finding in this peremptoriness a small outlet for her irritation.
"Then you will go to Diplow to-morrow?"
"Oh, yes, if you wish it," said Gwendolen, in a high tone of careless assent. Her concentration in other feelings had really hindered her from taking notice that her hand was being held.
"How you treat us poor devils of men!" said Grandcourt, lowering his tone. "We are always getting the worst of it."
"_Are_ you?" said Gwendolen, in a tone of inquiry, looking at him more navely than usual. She longed to believe this commonplace _badinage_ as the serious truth about her lover: in that case, she too was justified. If she knew everything, Mrs. Glasher would appear more blamable than Grandcourt. "_Are_ you always getting the worst?"
"Yes. Are you as kind to me as I am to you?" said Grandcourt, looking into her eyes with his narrow gaze.
Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was conscious of having received so much, that her sense of command was checked, and sank away in the perception that, look around her as she might, she could not turn back: it was as if she had consented to mount a chariot where another held the reins; and it was not in her nature to leap out in the eyes of the world. She had not consented in ignorance, and all she could say now would be a confession that she had not been ignorant. Her right to explanation was gone. All she had to do now was to adjust herself, so that the spikes of that unwilling penance which conscience imposed should not gall her. With a sort of mental shiver, she resolutely changed her mental attitude. There had been a little pause, during which she had not turned away her eyes; and with a sudden break into a smile, she said,
"If I were as kind to you as you are to me, that would spoil your generosity: it would no longer be as great as it could be--and it is that now."
"Then I am not to ask for one kiss," said Grandcourt, contented to pay a large price for this new kind of love-making, which introduced marriage by the finest contrast.
"Not one?" said Gwendolen, getting saucy, and nodding at him defiantly.
He lifted her little left hand to his lips, and then released it respectfully. Clearly it was faint praise to say of him that he was not disgusting: he was almost charming; and she felt at this moment that it was not likely she could ever have loved another man better than this one. His reticence gave her some inexplicable, delightful consciousness.
"Apropos," she said, taking up her work again, "is there any one besides Captain and Mrs. Torrington at Diplow?--or do you leave them _tete--tete_? I suppose he converses in cigars, and she answers with her chignon."
"She has a sister with her," said Grandcourt, with his shadow of a smile, "and there are two men besides--one of them you know, I believe."
"Ah, then, I have a poor opinion of him," said Gwendolen, shaking her head.
"You saw him at Leubronn--young Deronda--a young fellow with the Mallingers."
Gwendolen felt as if her heart were making a sudden gambol, and her fingers, which tried to keep a firm hold on her work, got cold.
"I never spoke to him," she said, dreading any discernible change in herself. "Is he not disagreeable?"
"No, not particularly," said Grandcourt, in his most languid way. "He thinks a little too much of himself. I thought he had been introduced to you."
"No. Some one told me his name the evening before I came away. That was all. What is he?"
"A sort of ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger's. Nothing of any consequence."
"Oh, poor creature! How very unpleasant for him!" said Gwendolen, speaking from the lip, and not meaning any sarcasm. "I wonder if it has left off raining!" she added, rising and going to look out of the window.
Happily it did not rain the next day, and Gwendolen rode to Diplow on Criterion as she had done on that former day when she returned with her mother in the carriage. She always felt the more daring for being in her riding-dress; besides having the agreeable belief that she looked as well as possible in it--a sustaining consciousness in any meeting which seems formidable. Her anger toward Deronda had changed into a superstitious dread--due, perhaps, to the coercion he had exercised over her thought--lest the first interference of his in her life might foreshadow some future influence. It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly made: an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superstitions carry consequences which often verify their hope or their foreboding.
The time before luncheon was taken up for Gwendolen by going over the rooms with Mrs. Torrington and Mrs. Davilow; and she thought it likely that if she saw Deronda, there would hardly be need for more than a bow between them. She meant to notice him as little as possible.
And after all she found herself under an inward compulsion too strong for her pride. From the first moment of their being in the room together, she seemed to herself to be doing nothing but notice him; everything else was automatic performance of an habitual part.
When he took his place at lunch, Grandcourt had said, "Deronda, Miss Harleth tells me you were not introduced to her at Leubronn?"
"Miss Harleth hardly remembers me, I imagine," said Deronda, looking at her quite simply, as they bowed. "She was intensely occupied when I saw her."
Now, did he suppose that she had not suspected him of being the person who redeemed her necklace?
"On the contrary. I remember you very well," said Gwendolen, feeling rather nervous, but governing herself and looking at him in return with new examination. "You did not approve of my playing at roulette."
"How did you come to that conclusion?" said Deronda, gravely.
"Oh, you cast an evil eye on my play," said Gwendolen, with a turn of her head and a smile. "I began to lose as soon as you came to look on. I had always been winning till then."
"Roulette in such a kennel as Leubronn is a horrid bore," said Grandcourt.
"_I_ found it a bore when I began to lose," said Gwendolen. Her face was turned toward Grandcourt as she smiled and spoke, but she gave a sidelong glance at Deronda, and saw his eyes fixed on her with a look so gravely penetrating that it had a keener edge for her than his ironical smile at her losses--a keener edge than Klesmer's judgment. She wheeled her neck round as if she wanted to listen to what was being said by the rest, while she was only thinking of Deronda. His face had that disturbing kind of form and expression which threatens to affect opinion--as if one's standard was somehow wrong. (Who has not seen men with faces of this corrective power till they frustrated it by speech or action?) His voice, heard now for the first time, was to Grandcourt's toneless drawl, which had been in her ears every day, as the deep notes of a violoncello to the broken discourse of poultry and other lazy gentry in the afternoon sunshine. Grandcourt, she inwardly conjectured, was perhaps right in saying that Deronda thought too much of himself:--a favorite way of explaining a superiority that humiliates. However the talk turned on the rinderpest and Jamaica, and no more was said about roulette. Grandcourt held that the Jamaica negro was a beastly sort of baptist Caliban; Deronda said he had always felt a little with Caliban, who naturally had his own point of view and could sing a good song; Mrs. Davilow observed that her father had an estate in Barbadoes, but that she herself had never been in the West Indies; Mrs. Torrington was sure she should never sleep in her bed if she lived among blacks; her husband corrected her by saying that the blacks would be manageable enough if it were not for the half-breeds; and Deronda remarked that the whites had to thank themselves for the half-breeds.
While this polite pea-shooting was going on, Gwendolen trifled with her jelly, and looked at every speaker in turn that she might feel at ease in looking at Deronda.
"I wonder what he thinks of me, really? He must have felt interested in me, else he would not have sent me my necklace. I wonder what he thinks of my marriage? What notions has he to make him so grave about things? Why is he come to Diplow?"
These questions ran in her mind as the voice of an uneasy longing to be judged by Deronda with unmixed admiration--a longing which had had its seed in her first resentment at his critical glance. Why did she care so much about the opinion of this man who was "nothing of any consequence"? She had no time to find the reason--she was too much engaged in caring. In the drawing-room, when something had called Grandcourt away, she went quite unpremeditatedly up to Deronda, who was standing at a table apart, turning over some prints, and said to him,
"Shall you hunt to-morrow, Mr. Deronda?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"You don't object to hunting, then?"
"I find excuses for it. It is a sin I am inclined to--when I can't get boating or cricketing."
"Do you object to my hunting?" said Gwendolen, with a saucy movement of the chin.
"I have no right to object to anything you choose to do."
"You thought you had a right to object to my gambling," persisted Gwendolen.
"I was sorry for it. I am not aware that I told you of my objection," said Deronda, with his usual directness of gaze--a large-eyed gravity, innocent of any intention. His eyes had a peculiarity which has drawn many men into trouble; they were of a dark yet mild intensity which seemed to express a special interest in every one on whom he fixed them, and might easily help to bring on him those claims which ardently sympathetic people are often creating in the minds of those who need help. In mendicant fashion we make the goodness of others a reason for exorbitant demands on them. That sort of effect was penetrating Gwendolen.
"You hindered me from gambling again," she answered. But she had no sooner spoken than she blushed over face and neck; and Deronda blushed, too, conscious that in the little affair of the necklace he had taken a questionable freedom.
It was impossible to speak further; and she turned away to a window, feeling that she had stupidly said what she had not meant to say, and yet being rather happy that she had plunged into this mutual understanding. Deronda also did not dislike it. Gwendolen seemed more decidedly attractive than before; and certainly there had been changes going on within her since that time at Leubronn: the struggle of mind attending a conscious error had wakened something like a new soul, which had better, but also worse, possibilities than her former poise of crude self-confidence: among the forces she had come to dread was something within her that troubled satisfaction.
That evening Mrs. Davilow said, "Was it really so, or only a joke of yours, about Mr. Deronda's spoiling your play, Gwen?"
Her curiosity had been excited, and she could venture to ask a question that did not concern Mr. Grandcourt.
"Oh, it merely happened that he was looking on when I began to lose," said Gwendolen, carelessly. "I noticed him."
"I don't wonder at that: he is a striking young man. He puts me in mind of Italian paintings. One would guess, without being told, that there was foreign blood in his veins."
"Is there?" said Gwendolen.
"Mrs. Torrington says so. I asked particularly who he was, and she told me that his mother was some foreigner of high rank."
"His mother?" said Gwendolen, rather sharply. "Then who was his father?"
"Well--every one says he is the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, who brought him up; though he passes for a ward. She says, if Sir Hugo Mallinger could have done as he liked with his estates, he would have left them to this Mr. Deronda, since he has no legitimate son."
Gwendolen was silent; but her mother observed so marked an effect in her face that she was angry with herself for having repeated Mrs. Torrington's gossip. It seemed, on reflection, unsuited to the ear of her daughter, for whom Mrs. Davilow disliked what is called knowledge of the world; and indeed she wished that she herself had not had any of it thrust upon her.
An image which had immediately arisen in Gwendolen's mind was that of the unknown mother--no doubt a dark-eyed woman--probably sad. Hardly any face could be less like Deronda's than that represented as Sir Hugo's in a crayon portrait at Diplow. A dark-eyed woman, no longer young, had become "stuff o' the conscience" to Gwendolen.
That night when she had got into her little bed, and only a dim light was burning, she said,
"Mamma, have men generally children before they are married?"
"No, dear, no," said Mrs. Davilow. "Why do you ask such a question?" (But she began to think that she saw the why.)
"If it were so, I ought to know," said Gwendolen, with some indignation.
"You are thinking of what I said about Mr. Deronda and Sir Hugo Mallinger. That is a very unusual case, dear."
"Does Lady Mallinger know?"
"She knows enough to satisfy her. That is quite clear, because Mr. Deronda has lived with them."
"And people think no worse of him?"
"Well, of course he is under some disadvantage: it is not as if he were Lady Mallinger's son. He does not inherit the property, and he is not of any consequence in the world. But people are not obliged to know anything about his birth; you see, he is very well received."
"I wonder whether he knows about it; and whether he is angry with his father?"
"My dear child, why should you think of that?"
"Why?" said Gwendolen, impetuously, sitting up in her bed. "Haven't children reason to be angry with their parents? How can they help their parents marrying or not marrying?"
But a consciousness rushed upon her, which made her fall back again on her pillow. It was not only what she would have felt months before--that she might seem to be reproaching her mother for that second marriage of hers; what she chiefly felt now was that she had been led on to a condemnation which seemed to make her own marriage a forbidden thing.
There was no further talk, and till sleep came over her Gwendolen lay struggling with the reasons against that marriage--reasons which pressed upon her newly now that they were unexpectedly mirrored in the story of a man whose slight relations with her had, by some hidden affinity, bitten themselves into the most permanent layers of feeling. It was characteristic that, with all her debating, she was never troubled by the question whether the indefensibleness of her marriage did not include the fact that she had accepted Grandcourt solely as a man whom it was convenient for her to marry, not in the least as one to whom she would be binding herself in duty. Gwendolen's ideas were pitiably crude; but many grand difficulties of life are apt to force themselves on us in our crudity. And to judge wisely, I suppose we must know how things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part of the world's history.
In the morning there was a double excitement for her. She was going to hunt, from which scruples about propriety had threatened to hinder her, until it was found that Mrs. Torrington was horsewoman enough to accompany her--going to hunt for the first time since her escapade with Rex; and she was going again to see Deronda, in whom, since last night, her interest had so gathered that she expected, as people do about revealed celebrities, to see something in his appearance which she had missed before.
What was he going to be? What sort of life had he before him--he being nothing of any consequence? And with only a little difference in events he might have been as important as Grandcourt, nay--her imagination inevitably went into that direction--might have held the very estates which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would probably some day see her mistress of the Abbey at Topping, see her bearing the title which would have been his own wife's. These obvious, futile thoughts of what might have been, made a new epoch for Gwendolen. She, whose unquestionable habit it had been to take the best that came to her for less than her own claim, had now to see the position which tempted her in a new light, as a hard, unfair exclusion of others. What she had now heard about Deronda seemed to her imagination to throw him into one group with Mrs. Glasher and her children; before whom she felt herself in an attitude of apology--she who had hitherto been surrounded by a group that in her opinion had need be apologetic to her. Perhaps Deronda himself was thinking of these things. Could he know of Mrs. Glasher? If he knew that she knew, he would despise her; but he could have no such knowledge. Would he, without that, despise her for marrying Grandcourt? His possible judgment of her actions was telling on her as importunately as Klesmer's judgment of her powers; but she found larger room for resistance to a disapproval of her marriage, because it is easier to make our conduct seem justifiable to ourselves than to make our ability strike others. "How can I help it?" is not our favorite apology for incompetency. But Gwendolen felt some strength in saying,
"How can I help what other people have done? Things would not come right if I were to turn round now and declare that I would not marry Mr. Grandcourt." And such turning round was out of the question. The horses in the chariot she had mounted were going at full speed.
This mood of youthful, elated desperation had a tidal recurrence. She could dare anything that lay before her sooner than she could choose to go backward, into humiliation; and it was even soothing to think that there would now be as much ill-doing in the one as in the other. But the immediate delightful fact was the hunt, where she would see Deronda, and where he would see her; for always lurking ready to obtrude before other thoughts about him was the impression that he was very much interested in her. But to-day she was resolved not to repeat her folly of yesterday, as if she were anxious to say anything to him. Indeed, the hunt would be too absorbing.
And so it was for a long while. Deronda was there, and within her sight very often; but this only added to the stimulus of a pleasure which Gwendolen had only once before tasted, and which seemed likely always to give a delight independent of any crosses, except such as took away the chance of riding. No accident happened to throw them together; the run took them within convenient reach of home, and the agreeable sombreness of the gray November afternoon, with a long stratum of yellow light in the west, Gwendolen was returning with the company from Diplow, who were attending her on the way to Offendene. Now the sense of glorious excitement was over and gone, she was getting irritably disappointed that she had had no opportunity of speaking to Deronda, whom she would not see again, since he was to go away in a couple of days. What was she going to say? That was not quite certain. She wanted to speak to him. Grandcourt was by her side; Mrs. Torrington, her husband, and another gentleman in advance; and Deronda's horse she could hear behind. The wish to speak to him and have him speaking to her was becoming imperious; and there was no chance of it unless she simply asserted her will and defied everything. Where the order of things could give way to Miss Gwendolen, it must be made to do so. They had lately emerged from a wood of pines and beeches, where the twilight stillness had a repressing effect, which increased her impatience. The horse-hoofs again heard behind at some little distance were a growing irritation. She reined in her horse and looked behind her; Grandcourt after a few paces, also paused; but she, waving her whip and nodding sideways with playful imperiousness, said, "Go on! I want to speak to Mr. Deronda."
Grandcourt hesitated; but that he would have done after any proposition. It was an awkward situation for him. No gentleman, before marriage, could give the emphasis of refusal to a command delivered in this playful way. He rode on slowly, and she waited till Deronda came up. He looked at her with tacit inquiry, and she said at once, letting her horse go alongside of his,
"Mr. Deronda, you must enlighten my ignorance. I want to know why you thought it wrong for me to gamble. Is it because I am a woman?"
"Not altogether; but I regretted it the more because you were a woman," said Deronda, with an irrepressible smile. Apparently it must be understood between them now that it was he who sent the necklace. "I think it would be better for men not to gamble. It is a besotting kind of taste, likely to turn into a disease. And, besides, there is something revolting to me in raking a heap of money together, and internally chuckling over it, when others are feeling the loss of it. I should even call it base, if it were more than an exceptional lapse. There are enough inevitable turns of fortune which force us to see that our gain is another's loss:--that is one of the ugly aspects of life. One would like to reduce it as much as one could, not get amusement out of exaggerating it." Deronda's voice had gathered some indignation while he was speaking.
"But you do admit that we can't help things," said Gwendolen, with a drop in her tone. The answer had not been anything like what she had expected. "I mean that things are so in spite of us; we can't always help it that our gain is another's loss."
"Clearly. Because of that, we should help it where we can."
Gwendolen, biting her lip inside, paused a moment, and then forcing herself to speak with an air of playfulness again, said,
"But why should you regret it more because I am a woman?"
"Perhaps because we need that you should be better than we are."
"But suppose _we_ need that men should be better than we are," said Gwendolen with a little air of "check!"
"That is rather a difficulty," said Deronda, smiling. "I suppose I should have said, we each of us think it would be better for the other to be good."
"You see, I needed you to be better than I was--and you thought so," said Gwendolen, nodding and laughing, while she put her horse forward and joined Grandcourt, who made no observation.
"Don't you want to know what I had to say to Mr. Deronda?" said Gwendolen, whose own pride required her to account for her conduct.
"A--no," said Grandcourt, coldly.
"Now that is the first impolite word you have spoken--that you don't wish to hear what I had to say," said Gwendolen, playing at a pout.
"I wish to hear what you say to me--not to other men," said Grandcourt.
"Then you wish to hear this. I wanted to make him tell me why he objected to my gambling, and he gave me a little sermon."
"Yes--but excuse me the sermon." If Gwendolen imagined that Grandcourt cared about her speaking to Deronda, he wished her to understand that she was mistaken. But he was not fond of being told to ride on. She saw he was piqued, but did not mind. She had accomplished her object of speaking again to Deronda before he raised his hat and turned with the rest toward Diplow, while her lover attended her to Offendene, where he was to bid farewell before a whole day's absence on the unspecified journey. Grandcourt had spoken truth in calling the journey a bore: he was going by train to Gadsmere.

"Now my cousins are at Diplow," said Grandcourt, "will you go there? The carriage shall come for Mrs. Davilow. You can tell me what you would like done in the rooms. Things must be put in decent order while we are away at Ryelands. And tomorrow is the only day."
He was sitting on a sofa in the drawing-room at Offendene, one elbow resting on the back, in the attitude of a man who is much interested in watching the person next to him. Gwendolen, who had always disliked needlework, had taken to it with apparent zeal since her engagement, and now held a piece of white embroidery which, on examination, would have shown many false stitches. During the last eight or nine days their hours had been chiefly spent on horseback, but some time had been left for this more difficult sort of companionship, which, however, Gwendolen had not found disagreeable. She was very well satisfied with Grandcourt. His answers to her lively questions about what he had seen and done in his life, bore drawling very well. She felt not only that he had nothing of the fool in his composition, but that by some subtle means he gave the impression that all the folly lay with other people.
And then Grandcourt's behaviour as a lover had hardly passed the limit of an unobtrusive homage. One day, indeed, he had kissed her neck, below her ear; and Gwendolen, taken by surprise, had started up with a marked agitation which made him say, "I beg your pardon - did I annoy you?"
"Oh, it was nothing," said Gwendolen, rather afraid of herself, "only I cannot bear - to be kissed under my ear." She sat down again with a little playful laugh, but felt her heart beating with a vague fear: she was no longer at liberty to flout him as she had flouted poor Rex. Her agitation seemed to him to be a compliment, and he was content not to transgress again.
Today rain hindered riding; but to compensate, a package had come from London, and beautiful things (of Grandcourt's ordering) lay scattered about on the tables for Gwendolen to enjoy. She said with a pretty air of perversity-
"Why is tomorrow the only day?"
"Because the next day is the first with the hounds," said Grandcourt. "And after that I must go away for a couple of days - it's a bore - but I shall go one day and come back the next." He noticed a change in her face, and laying his hand on hers, he said, "You object to my going away?"
"It's no use objecting," said Gwendolen, coldly. She was resisting the temptation to tell him that she suspected to whom he was going.
Grandcourt said, enfolding her hand, "I will travel at night, so as only to be away one day." He thought that he knew the reason of what he inwardly called this bit of temper, and she was particularly fascinating to him at this moment. "You will go to Diplow tomorrow?"
"Oh, yes, if you wish it," said Gwendolen, in a high tone of careless assent. Her concentration on other feelings had prevented her from noticing that her hand was being held.
"How you treat us poor devils of men!" said Grandcourt. "We are always getting the worst of it."
"Are you?" said Gwendolen. She longed to believe this commonplace statement was the truth: in that case, Mrs. Glasher would appear more blameable than Grandcourt. "Are you always getting the worst?"
"Yes. Are you as kind to me as I am to you?" said Grandcourt, looking into her eyes with his narrow gaze.
Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was conscious of having received so much, that her sense of command was checked. She could not turn back: it was as if she had consented to mount a chariot where another held the reins. All she could do was to adjust herself, so that the spikes of that unwilling penance which conscience imposed should not gall her. With a sort of inward shiver, she resolutely changed her mental attitude, and smiling suddenly, she said-
"If I were as kind to you as you are to me, that would spoil your generosity: it would no longer be as great as it is."
"Then I am not to ask for one kiss," said Grandcourt, contented to pay a large price for this new kind of love-making, which introduced marriage by the finest contrast.
"Not one!" said Gwendolen, getting saucy.
He lifted her little left hand to his lips, and then released it respectfully. Indeed, he was almost charming; and she felt at this moment that it was not likely she could ever have loved another man better than this one. His reticence gave her some inexplicable, delightful consciousness.
"Is there anyone besides the Torringtons at Diplow?" she said, taking up her work again.
"She has a sister with her," said Grandcourt, "and there are two men - one of them you know, I believe. You saw him at Leubronn - young Deronda - with the Mallingers."
Gwendolen felt as if her heart made a sudden jump. "I never spoke to him," she said, dreading to show any change. "Is he not disagreeable?"
"Not particularly," said Grandcourt languidly. "He thinks a little too much of himself. I thought he had been introduced to you."
"No. Some one told me his name before I came away, that's all. What is he?"
"A ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger's. Nothing of any consequence."
"Oh, poor creature! How very unpleasant for him!" said Gwendolen, speaking from the lip, and not meaning any sarcasm. "I wonder if it has left off raining!" she added, rising to look out of the window.
Happily it did not rain the next day, and Gwendolen rode to Diplow on Criterion. She always felt more daring in her riding-dress; besides having the fortifying belief that she looked as well as possible in it. Her anger toward Deronda had changed to superstitious dread lest his first interference in her life might foreshadow some future influence. It is of such stuff that superstitions are made; and they carry consequences which often verify their hope or their foreboding.
She did not see Deronda until lunchtime. But from the first moment of their being in the room together, she seemed to herself to be doing nothing but notice him.
When he took his place at lunch, Grandcourt said, "Deronda, Miss Harleth tells me you were not introduced to her at Leubronn?"
"Miss Harleth hardly remembers me, I imagine," said Deronda, looking at her as they bowed. "She was intensely occupied when I saw her."
Now, did he suppose that she had not suspected him of being the person who redeemed her necklace?
"On the contrary. I remember you very well," said Gwendolen, feeling rather nervous, but governing herself. "You did not approve of my playing at roulette."
"How did you come to that conclusion?" said Deronda, gravely.
"Oh, you cast an evil eye on my play," said Gwendolen, with a turn of her head and a smile. "I began to lose as soon as you came to look on. I had been winning till then."
"Roulette in such a kennel as Leubronn is a horrid bore," said Grandcourt.
"I found it a bore when I began to lose," said Gwendolen. Her face was turned toward Grandcourt as she smiled and spoke, but she gave a sidelong glance at Deronda, and saw his eyes fixed on her with a gravely penetrating look. She wheeled her neck round as if she wanted to listen to what was being said by the rest, while she was only thinking of Deronda. His face had that disturbing expression which threatens to affect one's opinion - as if one's standard was somehow wrong. His voice, heard now for the first time, was to Grandcourt's toneless drawl as the deep notes of a cello to the broken discourse of poultry. Grandcourt, she decided, was perhaps right in saying that Deronda thought too much of himself: a favourite way of explaining a superiority that humiliates.
The talk turned on the West Indies, and no more was said about roulette. Gwendolen trifled with her jelly, and looked at every speaker in turn that she might feel at ease in looking at Deronda.
"I wonder what he thinks of me, really? He must have felt interested in me, else he would not have sent me my necklace. I wonder what he thinks of my marriage? Why is he so grave? Why has he come to Diplow?"
These questions ran in her mind, and she felt an uneasy longing to be admired by Deronda - a longing which sprang from her first resentment at his critical glance. Why did she care so much about the opinion of this man who was "nothing of any consequence"? She had no time to find the reason: she was too much engaged in caring.
In the drawing-room, when something had called Grandcourt away, she went up to Deronda, and said-
"Shall you hunt tomorrow, Mr. Deronda?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"You don't object to hunting, then?"
"It is a sin I am inclined to, when I can't get boating or cricket."
"Do you object to my hunting?" said Gwendolen, with a saucy movement of the chin.
"I have no right to object to anything you choose to do."
"You thought you had a right to object to my gambling," persisted Gwendolen.
"I was sorry for it. I am not aware that I told you of my objection," said Deronda, with his usual directness of gaze - a large-eyed gravity, innocent of any intention. His eyes had an intensity which seemed to express a special interest in everyone on whom he fixed them, and which might easily encourage them to ask for his help and sympathy.
"You hindered me from gambling again," she answered. But she had no sooner spoken than she blushed over face and neck; and Deronda blushed, too, conscious that in the little affair of the necklace he had taken a questionable freedom.
It was impossible to speak further; and she turned away to a window, feeling that she had stupidly said what she had not meant to say, and yet being rather happy that she had plunged into this mutual understanding.
Deronda also did not dislike it. Gwendolen seemed more decidedly attractive than before; and certainly she had changed since Leubronn: she showed the consciousness of error rather than her former crude self-confidence.
That evening Mrs. Davilow said, "Did Mr. Deronda really spoil your play, Gwen?"
"Oh, it merely happened that he was looking on when I began to lose," said Gwendolen, carelessly. "I noticed him."
"I don't wonder: he is a striking young man. He puts me in mind of Italian paintings. One would guess, without being told, that there was foreign blood in his veins."
"Is there?"
"Mrs. Torrington says so. She told me that his mother was some foreigner of high rank."
"His mother?" said Gwendolen, rather sharply. "Then who was his father?"
"Well - everyone says he is the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger, who brought him up; though he passes for a ward. She says, if Sir Hugo could have done as he liked with his estates, he would have left them to this Mr. Deronda, since he has no legitimate son."
Gwendolen was silent; but her mother saw so marked an effect in her face that she was angry with herself for having repeated Mrs. Torrington's gossip. It seemed, on reflection, unsuited to her daughter's ear.
An image of the sad, dark-eyed, unknown mother had immediately arisen in Gwendolen's mind. A dark-eyed woman, no longer young, had become "stuff o' the conscience" to her.
That night when she was in her little bed, and only a dim light was burning, she said-
"Mamma, have men generally children before they are married?"
"No, dear," said Mrs. Davilow.
"If it were so, I ought to know," said Gwendolen indignantly.
"You are thinking of what I said about Mr. Deronda and Sir Hugo Mallinger. That is a very unusual case, dear."
"Does Lady Mallinger know?"
"She knows enough to satisfy her. That is quite clear, because Mr. Deronda has lived with them."
"And people think no worse of him?"
"Well, of course he does not inherit the property. But people are not obliged to know anything about his birth; he is very well received."
"I wonder whether he knows about it; and is angry with his father?"
"My dear child, why should you think of that?"
"Why?" said Gwendolen, impetuously, sitting up in her bed. "Haven't children reason to be angry with their parents? How can they help their parents marrying or not marrying?"
But a consciousness rushed upon her, which made her fall back again on her pillow. It was not only that she might seem to reproach her mother for her second marriage; but she had been led to a condemnation which made her own marriage a forbidden thing.
There was no further talk, and till sleep came Gwendolen lay struggling with the reasons against that marriage - reasons which pressed upon her newly, now that they were unexpectedly mirrored in the story of Deronda, whose relations with her had bitten themselves into the most permanent layers of feeling. But for all her debating, she was never troubled by the question whether it was defensible of her to marry Grandcourt solely for convenience, without seeing him as one to whom she was to bind herself in duty.
In the morning there was a double excitement for her. She was going to hunt; and she was going again to see Deronda, in whom her interest had grown.
What sort of life and career had he before him? With only a little difference in events he might have been as important as Grandcourt, nay, might have held the very estates which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would probably some day see her bearing the title which would have been his own wife's.
She had now to see her marriage in a new light, as a hard, unfair exclusion of others. What she had heard about Deronda seemed to throw him into one group with Mrs. Glasher and her children. Perhaps Deronda himself was thinking of these things. Could he know of Mrs. Glasher? If he knew that she knew, he would despise her; but he could have no such knowledge. Would he, without that, despise her for marrying Grandcourt? His possible judgment of her actions was telling on her as strongly as Klesmer's judgment of her powers; but she felt some strength in saying-
"How can I help what other people have done? Things would not come right if I were to turn round now and declare that I would not marry Mr. Grandcourt." And such turning round was out of the question. The horses in the chariot she had mounted were going at full speed.
And the immediate delightful fact was the hunt, where she would see Deronda, and where he would see her; for always lurking in her thoughts about him was the impression that he was very much interested in her. But today she was resolved not to repeat her folly of yesterday, as if she were anxious to say anything to him. Indeed, the hunt would be too absorbing.
So it was for a long while. Deronda was there, and within her sight; but this only added to the pleasure of the hunt. No accident happened to throw them together; and once they were within reach of home, and Gwendolen was returning with the company to Offendene, the sense of glorious excitement had gone. She was irritably disappointed that she had had no opportunity of speaking to Deronda, whom she would not see again, since he was to go away in a couple of days.
What was she going to say? That was not quite certain. She wanted to speak to him. Grandcourt was by her side, and Deronda's horse she could hear behind. The wish to speak to him was becoming imperious; and there was no chance of it unless she simply asserted her will and defied everything. Where the order of things could give way to Miss Gwendolen, it must be made to do so.
The horse-hoofs heard behind her were a growing irritation. She reined in her horse and looked back; Grandcourt also paused; but she, waving her whip with playful imperiousness, said, "Go on! I want to speak to Mr. Deronda."
Grandcourt hesitated; it was an awkward situation for him. No gentleman, before marriage, could refuse a command delivered in this playful way. He rode on slowly, and she waited till Deronda came up. He looked at her with tacit inquiry, and she said at once, riding alongside him-
"Mr. Deronda, you must enlighten me. Why did you think it wrong for me to gamble? Is it because I am a woman?"
"Not altogether; but I regretted it the more because you were a woman," said Deronda, with an irrepressible smile. Apparently it must be understood between them now that it was he who sent the necklace. "I think it would be better for men not to gamble. It is a taste likely to turn into a disease. And, besides, there is something revolting to me in raking a heap of money together, and chuckling over it, when others are feeling the loss of it. There are enough events where our gain is another's loss: that is one of the ugly aspects of life. One should not get amusement out of exaggerating it." Deronda's voice had gathered some indignation.
"But you do admit that we can't help things," said Gwendolen. The answer had not been anything like what she had expected. "We can't always help it that our gain is another's loss."
"Clearly. But we should help it where we can."
Gwendolen, biting her lip, paused, and then forcing herself to speak playfully again, said-
"But why should you regret it more because I am a woman?"
"Perhaps because we need you to be better than us."
"But suppose we need men to be better than us," said Gwendolen with a little air of "check!"
"That is rather a difficulty," said Deronda, smiling. "I suppose I should have said, we each of us think it would be better for the other to be good."
"You see, I needed you to be better than I was - and you thought so," said Gwendolen, laughing, while she put her horse forward and joined Grandcourt, who made no observation.
"Don't you want to know what I had to say to Mr. Deronda?" said Gwendolen, whose pride required her to account for her conduct.
"Ah - no," said Grandcourt, coldly.
"Now that is the first impolite word you have spoken - that you don't wish to hear what I had to say," said Gwendolen, playing at a pout.
"I wish to hear what you say to me, not to other men," said Grandcourt.
"I wanted to make him tell me why he objected to my gambling, and he gave me a little sermon."
"Excuse me the sermon." If Gwendolen imagined that Grandcourt cared about her speaking to Deronda, he wished her to know that she was mistaken. But he was not fond of being told to ride on. She saw he was piqued, but did not mind. She had accomplished her object of speaking again to Deronda before he turned with the rest toward Diplow, while her lover attended her to Offendene, where he was to bid farewell before his absence on the unspecified journey. Grandcourt was going by train to Gadsmere.

Book 4 - GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE | Chapter 29


"This, too is probable, according to that saying of Agathon: 'It is a part of probability that many improbable things will happen.'" --ARISTOTLE: _Poetics_.
Imagine the conflict in a mind like Deronda's given not only to feel strongly but to question actively, on the evening after the interview with Mordecai. To a young man of much duller susceptibilities the adventure might have seemed enough out of the common way to divide his thoughts; but it had stirred Deronda so deeply, that with the usual reaction of his intellect he began to examine the grounds of his emotion, and consider how far he must resist its guidance. The consciousness that he was half dominated by Mordecai's energetic certitude, and still more by his fervent trust, roused his alarm. It was his characteristic bias to shrink from the moral stupidity of valuing lightly what had come close to him, and of missing blindly in his own life of to-day the crisis which he recognized as momentous and sacred in the historic life of men. If he had read of this incident as having happened centuries ago in Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, Cairo, to some man young as himself, dissatisfied with his neutral life, and wanting some closer fellowship, some more special duty to give him ardor for the possible consequences of his work, it would have appeared to him quite natural that the incident should have created a deep impression on that far-off man, whose clothing and action would have been seen in his imagination as part of an age chiefly known to us through its more serious effects. Why should he be ashamed of his own agitated feeling merely because he dressed for dinner, wore a white tie, and lived among people who might laugh at his owning any conscience in the matter, as the solemn folly of taking himself too seriously?--that bugbear of circles in which the lack of grave emotion passes for wit. From such cowardice before modish ignorance and obtuseness, Deronda shrank. But he also shrank from having his course determined by mere contagion, without consent of reason; or from allowing a reverential pity for spiritual struggle to hurry him along a dimly-seen path.
What, after all, had really happened? He knew quite accurately the answer Sir Hugo would have given: "A consumptive Jew, possessed by a fanaticism which obstacles and hastening death intensified, had fixed on Deronda as the antitype of some visionary image, the offspring of wedded hope and despair: despair of his own life, irrepressible hope in the propagation of his fanatical beliefs. The instance was perhaps odd, exceptional in its form, but substantially it was not rare. Fanaticism was not so common as bankruptcy, but taken in all its aspects it was abundant enough. While Mordecai was waiting on the bridge for the fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that he had the mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and keep the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key, with just that hair's-breadth of difference from the old wards which would make it fit exactly. Scattered here and there in every direction you might find a terrible person, with more or less power of speech, and with an eye either glittering or preternaturally dull, on the look-out for the man who must hear him; and in most cases he had volumes which it was difficult to get printed, or if printed to get read. This Mordecai happened to have a more pathetic aspect, a more passionate, penetrative speech than was usual with such monomaniacs; he was more poetical than a social reformer with colored views of the new moral world in parallelograms, or than an enthusiast in sewage; still he came under the same class. It would be only right and kind to indulge him a little, to comfort him with such help as was practicable; but what likelihood was there that his notions had the sort of value he ascribed to them? In such cases a man of the world knows what to think beforehand. And as to Mordecai's conviction that he had found a new executive self, it might be preparing for him the worst of disappointments--that which presents itself as final."
Deronda's ear caught all these negative whisperings; nay, he repeated them distinctly to himself. It was not the first but it was the most pressing occasion on which he had had to face this question of the family likeness among the heirs of enthusiasm, whether prophets or dreamers of dreams, whether the
"Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers,"
or the devotees of phantasmal discovery--from the first believer in his own unmanifested inspiration, down to the last inventor of an ideal machine that will achieve perpetual motion. The kinship of human passion, the sameness of mortal scenery, inevitably fill fact with burlesque and parody. Error and folly have had their hecatombs of martyrs. Reduce the grandest type of man hitherto known to an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts, and he appears in dangerous company: say that, like Copernicus and Galileo, he was immovably convinced in the face of hissing incredulity; but so is the contriver of perpetual motion. We cannot fairly try the spirits by this sort of test. If we want to avoid giving the dose of hemlock or the sentence of banishment in the wrong case, nothing will do but a capacity to understand the subject-matter on which the immovable man is convinced, and fellowship with human travail, both near and afar, to hinder us from scanning any deep experience lightly. Shall we say, "Let the ages try the spirits, and see what they are worth?" Why, we are the beginning of the ages, which can only be just by virtue of just judgments in separate human breasts--separate yet combined. Even steam-engines could not have got made without that condition, but must have stayed in the mind of James Watt.
This track of thinking was familiar enough to Deronda to have saved him from any contemptuous prejudgment of Mordecai, even if their communication had been free from that peculiar claim on himself strangely ushered in by some long-growing preparation in the Jew's agitated mind. This claim, indeed, considered in what is called a rational way, might seem justifiably dismissed as illusory and even preposterous; but it was precisely what turned Mordecai's hold on him from an appeal to his ready sympathy into a clutch on his struggling conscience. Our consciences are not all of the same pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws: they are the voice of sensibilities as various as our memories (which also have their kinship and likeness). And Deronda's conscience included sensibilities beyond the common, enlarged by his early habit of thinking himself imaginatively into the experience of others.
What was the claim this eager soul made upon him?--"You must believe my beliefs--be moved by my reasons--hope my hopes--see the vision I point to--behold a glory where I behold it!" To take such a demand in the light of an obligation in any direct sense would have been preposterous--to have seemed to admit it would have been dishonesty; and Deronda, looking on the agitation of those moments, felt thankful that in the midst of his compassion he had preserved himself from the bondage of false concessions. The claim hung, too, on a supposition which might be--nay, probably was--in discordance with the full fact: the supposition that he, Deronda, was of Jewish blood. Was there ever a more hypothetic appeal?
But since the age of thirteen Deronda had associated the deepest experience of his affections with what was a pure supposition, namely, that Sir Hugo was his father: that was a hypothesis which had been the source of passionate struggle within him; by its light he had been accustomed to subdue feelings and to cherish them. He had been well used to find a motive in a conception which might be disproved; and he had been also used to think of some revelation that might influence his view of the particular duties belonging to him. To be in a state of suspense, which was also one of emotive activity and scruple, was a familiar attitude of his conscience.
And now, suppose that wish-begotten belief in his Jewish birth, and that extravagant demand of discipleship, to be the foreshadowing of an actual discovery and a genuine spiritual result: suppose that Mordecai's ideas made a real conquest over Deronda's conviction? Nay, it was conceivable that as Mordecai needed and believed that, he had found an active replenishment of himself, so Deronda might receive from Mordecai's mind the complete ideal shape of that personal duty and citizenship which lay in his own thought like sculptured fragments certifying some beauty yearned after but not traceable by divination.
As that possibility presented itself in his meditations, he was aware that it would be called dreamy, and began to defend it. If the influence he imagined himself submitting to had been that of some honored professor, some authority in a seat of learning, some philosopher who had been accepted as a voice of the age, would a thorough receptiveness toward direction have been ridiculed? Only by those who hold it a sign of weakness to be obliged for an idea, and prefer to hint that they have implicitly held in a more correct form whatever others have stated with a sadly short-coming explicitness. After all, what was there but vulgarity in taking the fact that Mordecai was a poor Jewish workman, and that he was to be met perhaps on a sanded floor in the parlor of the _Hand and Banner_ as a reason for determining beforehand that there was not some spiritual force within him that might have a determining effect on a white-handed gentleman? There is a legend told of the Emperor Domitian, that having heard of a Jewish family, of the house of David, whence the ruler of the world was to spring, he sent for its members in alarm, but quickly released them on observing that they had the hands of work-people--being of just the opposite opinion with that Rabbi who stood waiting at the gate of Rome in confidence that the Messiah would be found among the destitute who entered there. Both Emperor and Rabbi were wrong in their trust of outward signs: poverty and poor clothes are no sign of inspiration, said Deronda to his inward objector, but they have gone with it in some remarkable cases. And to regard discipleship as out of the question because of them, would be mere dullness of imagination.
A more plausible reason for putting discipleship out of the question was the strain of visionary excitement in Mordecai, which turned his wishes into overmastering impressions, and made him read outward facts as fulfillment. Was such a temper of mind likely to accompany that wise estimate of consequences which is the only safeguard from fatal error, even to ennobling motive? But it remained to be seen whether that rare conjunction existed or not in Mordecai: perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in. The inspirations of the world have come in that way too: even strictly-measuring science could hardly have got on without that forecasting ardor which feels the agitations of discovery beforehand, and has a faith in its preconception that surmounts many failures of experiment. And in relation to human motives and actions, passionate belief has a fuller efficacy. Here enthusiasm may have the validity of proof, and happening in one soul, give the type of what will one day be general.
At least, Deronda argued, Mordecai's visionary excitability was hardly a reason for concluding beforehand that he was not worth listening to except for pity's sake. Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners. Do they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions, and propositions, with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the matter to be thought about. And since the unemotional intellect may carry us into a mathematical dreamland where nothing is but what is not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be--the more comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains and justifies. At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be trusted. We must be patient with the inevitable makeshift of our human thinking, whether in its sum total or in the separate minds that have made the sum. Columbus had some impressions about himself which we call superstitions, and used some arguments which we disapprove; but he had also some sound physical conceptions, and he had the passionate patience of genius to make them tell on mankind. The world has made up its mind rather contemptuously about those who were deaf to Columbus.
"My contempt for them binds me to see that I don't adopt their mistake on a small scale," said Deronda, "and make myself deaf with the assumption that there cannot be any momentous relation between this Jew and me, simply because he has clad it in illusory notions. What I can be to him, or he to me, may not at all depend on his persuasion about the way we came together. To me the way seems made up of plainly discernible links. If I had not found Mirah, it is probable that I should not have begun to be specially interested in the Jews, and certainly I should not have gone on that loitering search after an Ezra Cohen which made me pause at Ram's book-shop and ask the price of _Maimon_. Mordecai, on his side, had his visions of a disciple, and he saw me by their light; I corresponded well enough with the image his longing had created. He took me for one of his race. Suppose that his impression--the elderly Jew at Frankfort seemed to have something like it--suppose in spite of all presumptions to the contrary, that his impression should somehow be proved true, and that I should come actually to share any of the ideas he is devoted to? This is the only question which really concerns the effect of our meeting on my life.
"But if the issue should be quite different?--well, there will be something painful to go through. I shall almost inevitably have to be an active cause of that poor fellow's crushing disappointment. Perhaps this issue is the one I had need prepare myself for. I fear that no tenderness of mine can make his suffering lighter. Would the alternative--that I should not disappoint him--be less painful to me?"
Here Deronda wavered. Feelings had lately been at work within him which had very much modified the reluctance he would formerly have had to think of himself as probably a Jew. And, if you like, he was romantic. That young energy and spirit of adventure which have helped to create the world-wide legions of youthful heroes going to seek the hidden tokens of their birth and its inheritance of tasks, gave him a certain quivering interest in the bare possibility that he was entering on a like track --all the more because the track was one of thought as well as action.
"The bare possibility." He could not admit it to be more. The belief that his father was an Englishman only grew firmer under the weak assaults of unwarranted doubt. And that a moment should ever come in which that belief was declared a delusion, was something of which Deronda would not say, "I should be glad." His life-long affection for Sir Hugo, stronger than all his resentment, made him shrink from admitting that wish.
Which way soever the truth might lie, he repeated to himself what he had said to Mordecai--that he could not without farther reasons undertake to hasten its discovery. Nay, he was tempted now to regard his uncertainty as a condition to be cherished for the present. If further intercourse revealed nothing but illusions as what he was expected to share in, the want of any valid evidence that he was a Jew might save Mordecai the worst shock in the refusal of fraternity. It might even be justifiable to use the uncertainty on this point in keeping up a suspense which would induce Mordecai to accept those offices of friendship that Deronda longed to urge on him.
These were the meditations that busied Deronda in the interval of four days before he could fulfill his promise to call for Mordecai at Ezra Cohen's, Sir Hugo's demands on him often lasting to an hour so late as to put the evening expedition to Holborn out of the question.

Imagine the conflict in a responsive and questioning mind like Deronda's, after the interview with Mordecai. The adventure might have moved a much duller young man; but it had stirred Deronda so deeply, that with his usual reaction of his intellect he began to examine his emotion, and consider how far he must resist its guidance.
The consciousness that he was dominated by Mordecai's certainty and trust alarmed him. He shrank from undervaluing an experience simply because it had come close to him, when in an historical context he would recognise it as a momentous event. If he had read of this incident as having happened centuries ago in Rome, Greece, or Asia Minor, to some young man dissatisfied with life, and wanting a special fellowship or duty to inspire him with passion for his work, it would have seemed quite natural that the meeting should have created a deep impression on him. Why should he be ashamed of his own agitated feeling merely because he dressed for dinner, wore a white tie, and lived among people who might laugh at his seriousness in the matter? But Deronda also shrank from having his course determined without the consent of reason; or from allowing his pity to hurry him along a dimly-seen path.
What, after all, had really happened? He knew what Sir Hugo would have said: "A consumptive, fanatical Jew has fixed on Deronda as the embodiment of some visionary image born of his fanatical beliefs and his despair of his own life. Fanaticism is not rare. The world is full of fanatics convinced they hold the key to unique knowledge. Scattered in every direction you might find a terrible person with a glittering eye, on the look-out for the man who must hear him; and in most cases he had volumes which he could not get printed or read. This Mordecai happened to have a more pathetic aspect, a more passionate speech than most; but still he came under the same class. It would be only right and kind to indulge him a little, to comfort him with such help as was practicable; but how likely was it that his ideas had any value? In such cases a man of the world knows what to think beforehand. As to Mordecai's conviction that he had found a new executive self, it might lead to the worst of disappointments."
Deronda's ear caught all these negative whisperings. He knew that human passion invites burlesque and parody. Many martyrs have been sacrificed to error and folly. The grandest man can appear ridiculous if reduced to an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts: to do him justice, we need to understand the subject-matter on which he is convinced, and to feel fellowship with his effort.
Deronda was familiar enough with this track of thinking to be saved from any contemptuous prejudgment of Mordecai, even without the peculiar claim made on him by the Jew. This claim, indeed, considered rationally, might seem preposterous; but it was precisely what turned Mordecai's hold on him from an appeal to his sympathy into a clutch on his struggling conscience. Our consciences are not all of the same pattern: they are as various as our memories. And Deronda's conscience was enlarged by his early habit of thinking himself imaginatively into the experience of others.
What was the claim this eager soul made upon him? "You must believe my beliefs - be moved by my reasons - hope my hopes - behold a glory where I behold it!" To see this as an obligation would have been preposterous - to have agreed to it would have been dishonesty; and Deronda felt thankful that in his compassion he had preserved himself from the bondage of false agreements. The claim hung, too, on a supposition which was probably not true: the supposition that he, Deronda, was of Jewish blood.
But since the age of thirteen Deronda had associated his deepest affections with the assumption that Sir Hugo was his father. That theory had been the source of passionate struggle within him; by its light he had been accustomed to subdue feelings and to cherish them. He had been well used to find a motive in a belief which might be disproved; and he had been also used to imagine some revelation that might change his view of his duties. A state of scrupulous suspense was familiar to him.
And now, suppose that belief in his Jewish birth, and that extravagant demand of discipleship, to be the foreshadowing of an actual discovery: suppose that Mordecai's ideas made a real conquest over Deronda's conviction? It was possible that just as Mordecai believed he had found a renewal of himself, so Deronda might receive from Mordecai's mind the complete ideal shape of that personal duty which lay in his own thought, like sculptured fragments indicating some beauty yearned after but without a foreseeable form.
As he meditated on that possibility, he was aware that it would be called dreamy, and began to defend it. If Mordecai were some honoured professor or distinguished philosopher, would Deronda's receptiveness toward him be ridiculed? Because he was a poor Jewish workman, to be met in the Hand and Banner, was that a reason for deciding that there was no spiritual force within him?
There is a legend that the Emperor Domitian, having heard that a ruler of the world was to spring from a Jewish family, sent for its members in alarm, but quickly released them on observing that they had the hands of work-people; in contrast to the Rabbi who stood waiting at the gate of Rome, sure that the Messiah would be found among the destitute who entered there. Both Emperor and Rabbi were wrong to trust outward signs: poverty and poor clothes are no mark of inspiration, said Deronda to himself, but they have gone with it in some remarkable cases.
A more plausible reason for rejecting discipleship was Mordecai's visionary excitement, which made him see events as fulfilment of his overwhelming wishes. Was he capable of judging consequences wisely in such a frame of mind? But perhaps Mordecai might able to combine wise judgment with that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in. Even strictly-measuring science could hardly have got on without that ardour which feels the excitement of discovery beforehand, and has a faith in its result that overcomes many failures of experiment.
At least, Deronda argued, Mordecai's visionary excitability was hardly a reason for assuming that he was not worth listening to. Are stricter reasoners free from false conclusions? The driest argument has its hallucinations; no formulas for thinking will save us imperfect mortals from mistake in our thought. We must be patient with the inevitable makeshift nature of our human thinking. Columbus was superstitious; but he had also some sound ideas, and the passionate patience of genius to make them tell on mankind. The world is rather contemptuous about those who were deaf to Columbus.
"I must not adopt their mistake on a small scale," said Deronda, "and assume that there cannot be any momentous relation between this Jew and me, simply because of his visionary ideas. What I can be to him, or he to me, may not depend on his belief about the way we came together. To me the way seems made up of plainly discernible links. If I had not found Mirah, I should not have begun to be interested in the Jews, and certainly I should not have gone on that search after an Ezra Cohen which made me pause at Ram's book-shop. Mordecai, on his side, had his visions of a disciple, and I corresponded with the image his longing had created. He took me for one of his race. The elderly Jew at Frankfort seemed to have the same impression. Suppose that this should somehow be proved true, and that I should come to share the ideas he is devoted to? This is the only question which really concerns the effect of our meeting on my life.
"But if the result should be quite different? - well, there will be pain and crushing disappointment for the poor fellow. I had better prepare myself for that. No tenderness of mine can make his suffering lighter. Would the alternative - that I should not disappoint him - be less painful to me?"
Here Deronda wavered. Feelings had lately been at work within him which had very much modified the reluctance with which he would formerly have thought of himself as a Jew. And he was romantic. His young energy and spirit of adventure gave him a certain quivering interest in the track he might enter - especially when the track was one of thought as well as action.
But his Jewishness was no more than a bare possibility. The belief that his father was an Englishman only grew firmer under the weak assaults of unwarranted doubt. And Deronda's life-long affection for Sir Hugo made him shrink from admitting that wish.
Whatever the truth about his birth might be, he decided that he would not hasten its discovery. Rather, he cherished his present uncertainty. It might even be justifiable to use it in keeping up a suspense which would induce Mordecai to accept the friendly help that Deronda longed to urge on him.
These were the thoughts that busied Deronda in the four days before he could call on Mordecai again: Sir Hugo's demands on him continued so late as to put a trip to Holborn out of the question.


What name doth Joy most borrow When life is fair? "To-morrow." What name doth best fit Sorrow In young despair? "To-morrow."
There was a much more lasting trouble at the rectory. Rex arrived there only to throw himself on his bed in a state of apparent apathy, unbroken till the next day, when it began to be interrupted by more positive signs of illness. Nothing could be said about his going to Southampton: instead of that, the chief thought of his mother and Anna was how to tend this patient who did not want to be well, and from being the brightest, most grateful spirit in the household, was metamorphosed into an irresponsive, dull-eyed creature who met all affectionate attempts with a murmur of "Let me alone." His father looked beyond the crisis, and believed it to be the shortest way out of an unlucky affair; but he was sorry for the inevitable suffering, and went now and then to sit by him in silence for a few minutes, parting with a gentle pressure of his hand on Rex's blank brow, and a "God bless you, my boy." Warham and the younger children used to peep round the edge of the door to see this incredible thing of their lively brother being laid low; but fingers were immediately shaken at them to drive them back. The guardian who was always there was Anna, and her little hand was allowed to rest within her brother's, though he never gave it a welcoming pressure. Her soul was divided between anguish for Rex and reproach of Gwendolen.
"Perhaps it is wicked of me, but I think I never _can_ love her again," came as the recurrent burden of poor little Anna's inward monody. And even Mrs. Gascoigne had an angry feeling toward her niece which she could not refrain from expressing (apologetically) to her husband.
"I know of course it is better, and we ought to be thankful that she is not in love with the poor boy; but really. Henry, I think she is hard; she has the heart of a coquette. I can not help thinking that she must have made him believe something, or the disappointment would not have taken hold of him in that way. And some blame attaches to poor Fanny; she is quite blind about that girl."
Mr. Gascoigne answered imperatively: "The less said on that point the better, Nancy. I ought to have been more awake myself. As to the boy, be thankful if nothing worse ever happens to him. Let the thing die out as quickly as possible; and especially with regard to Gwendolen--let it be as if it had never been."
The rector's dominant feeling was that there had been a great escape. Gwendolen in love with Rex in return would have made a much harder problem, the solution of which might have been taken out of his hands. But he had to go through some further difficulty.
One fine morning Rex asked for his bath, and made his toilet as usual. Anna, full of excitement at this change, could do nothing but listen for his coming down, and at last hearing his step, ran to the foot of the stairs to meet him. For the first time he gave her a faint smile, but it looked so melancholy on his pale face that she could hardly help crying.
"Nannie!" he said gently, taking her hand and leading her slowly along with him to the drawing-room. His mother was there, and when she came to kiss him, he said: "What a plague I am!"
Then he sat still and looked out of the bow-window on the lawn and shrubs covered with hoar-frost, across which the sun was sending faint occasional gleams:--something like that sad smile on Rex's face, Anna thought. He felt as if he had had a resurrection into a new world, and did not know what to do with himself there, the old interests being left behind. Anna sat near him, pretending to work, but really watching him with yearning looks. Beyond the garden hedge there was a road where wagons and carts sometimes went on field-work: a railed opening was made in the hedge, because the upland with its bordering wood and clump of ash-trees against the sky was a pretty sight. Presently there came along a wagon laden with timber; the horses were straining their grand muscles, and the driver having cracked his whip, ran along anxiously to guide the leader's head, fearing a swerve. Rex seemed to be shaken into attention, rose and looked till the last quivering trunk of the timber had disappeared, and then walked once or twice along the room. Mrs. Gascoigne was no longer there, and when he came to sit down again, Anna, seeing a return of speech in her brother's eyes, could not resist the impulse to bring a little stool and seat herself against his knee, looking up at him with an expression which seemed to say, "Do speak to me." And he spoke.
"I'll tell you what I'm thinking of, Nannie. I will go to Canada, or somewhere of that sort." (Rex had not studied the character of our colonial possessions.)
"Oh, Rex, not for always!"
"Yes, to get my bread there. I should like to build a hut, and work hard at clearing, and have everything wild about me, and a great wide quiet."
"And not take me with you?" said Anna, the big tears coming fast.
"How could I?"
"I should like it better than anything; and settlers go with their families. I would sooner go there than stay here in England. I could make the fires, and mend the clothes, and cook the food; and I could learn how to make the bread before we went. It would be nicer than anything--like playing at life over again, as we used to do when we made our tent with the drugget, and had our little plates and dishes."
"Father and mother would not let you go."
"Yes, I think they would, when I explained everything. It would save money; and papa would have more to bring up the boys with."
There was further talk of the same practical kind at intervals, and it ended in Rex's being obliged to consent that Anna should go with him when he spoke to his father on the subject.
Of course it was when the rector was alone in his study. Their mother would become reconciled to whatever he decided on, but mentioned to her first, the question would have distressed her.
"Well, my children!" said Mr. Gascoigne, cheerfully, as they entered. It was a comfort to see Rex about again.
"May we sit down with you a little, papa?" said Anna. "Rex has something to say."
"With all my heart."
It was a noticeable group that these three creatures made, each of them with a face of the same structural type--the straight brow, the nose suddenly straightened from an intention of being aquiline, the short upper lip, the short but strong and well-hung chin: there was even the same tone of complexion and set of the eye. The gray-haired father was at once massive and keen-looking; there was a perpendicular line in his brow which when he spoke with any force of interest deepened; and the habit of ruling gave him an air of reserved authoritativeness. Rex would have seemed a vision of his father's youth, if it had been possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne without distinct plans and without command, smitten with a heart sorrow, and having no more notion of concealment than a sick animal; and Anna was a tiny copy of Rex, with hair drawn back and knotted, her face following his in its changes of expression, as if they had one soul between them.
"You know all about what has upset me, father," Rex began, and Mr. Gascoigne nodded.
"I am quite done up for life in this part of the world. I am sure it will be no use my going back to Oxford. I couldn't do any reading. I should fail, and cause you expense for nothing. I want to have your consent to take another course, sir."
Mr. Gascoigne nodded more slowly, the perpendicular line on his brow deepened, and Anna's trembling increased.
"If you would allow me a small outfit, I should like to go to the colonies and work on the land there." Rex thought the vagueness of the phrase prudential; "the colonies" necessarily embracing more advantages, and being less capable of being rebutted on a single ground than any particular settlement.
"Oh, and with me, papa," said Anna, not bearing to be left out from the proposal even temporarily. "Rex would want some one to take care of him, you know--some one to keep house. And we shall never, either of us, be married. And I should cost nothing, and I should be so happy. I know it would be hard to leave you and mamma; but there are all the others to bring up, and we two should be no trouble to you any more."
Anna had risen from her seat, and used the feminine argument of going closer to her papa as she spoke. He did not smile, but he drew her on his knee and held her there, as if to put her gently out of the question while he spoke to Rex.
"You will admit that my experience gives me some power of judging for you, and that I can probably guide you in practical matters better than you can guide yourself?"
Rex was obliged to say, "Yes, sir."
"And perhaps you will admit--though I don't wish to press that point--that you are bound in duty to consider my judgment and wishes?"
"I have never yet placed myself in opposition to you, sir." Rex in his secret soul could not feel that he was bound not to go to the colonies, but to go to Oxford again--which was the point in question.
"But you will do so if you persist in setting your mind toward a rash and foolish procedure, and deafening yourself to considerations which my experience of life assures me of. You think, I suppose, that you have had a shock which has changed all your inclinations, stupefied your brains, unfitted you for anything but manual labor, and given you a dislike to society? Is that what you believe?"
"Something like that. I shall never be up to the sort of work I must do to live in this part of the world. I have not the spirit for it. I shall never be the same again. And without any disrespect to you, father, I think a young fellow should be allowed to choose his way of life, if he does nobody any harm. There are plenty to stay at home, and those who like might be allowed to go where there are empty places."
"But suppose I am convinced on good evidence--as I am--that this state of mind of yours is transient, and that if you went off as you propose, you would by-and-by repent, and feel that you had let yourself slip back from the point you have been gaining by your education till now? Have you not strength of mind enough to see that you had better act on my assurance for a time, and test it? In my opinion, so far from agreeing with you that you should be free to turn yourself into a colonist and work in your shirt-sleeves with spade and hatchet--in my opinion you have no right whatever to expatriate yourself until you have honestly endeavored to turn to account the education you have received here. I say nothing of the grief to your mother and me."
"I'm very sorry; but what can I do? I can't study--that's certain," said Rex.
"Not just now, perhaps. You will have to miss a term. I have made arrangements for you--how you are to spend the next two months. But I confess I am disappointed in you, Rex. I thought you had more sense than to take up such ideas--to suppose that because you have fallen into a very common trouble, such as most men have to go through, you are loosened from all bonds of duty--just as if your brain had softened and you were no longer a responsible being."
What could Rex say? Inwardly he was in a state of rebellion, but he had no arguments to meet his father's; and while he was feeling, in spite of any thing that might be said, that he should like to go off to "the colonies" to-morrow, it lay in a deep fold of his consciousness that he ought to feel--if he had been a better fellow he would have felt--more about his old ties. This is the sort of faith we live by in our soul sicknesses.
Rex got up from his seat, as if he held the conference to be at an end. "You assent to my arrangement, then?" said Mr. Gascoigne, with that distinct resolution of tone which seems to hold one in a vise.
There was a little pause before Rex answered, "I'll try what I can do, sir. I can't promise." His thought was, that trying would be of no use.
Her father kept Anna, holding her fast, though she wanted to follow Rex. "Oh, papa," she said, the tears coming with her words when the door had closed; "it is very hard for him. Doesn't he look ill?"
"Yes, but he will soon be better; it will all blow over. And now, Anna, be as quiet as a mouse about it all. Never let it be mentioned when he is gone."
"No, papa. But I would not be like Gwendolen for any thing--to have people fall in love with me so. It is very dreadful."
Anna dared not say that she was disappointed at not being allowed to go to the colonies with Rex; but that was her secret feeling, and she often afterward went inwardly over the whole affair, saying to herself, "I should have done with going out, and gloves, and crinoline, and having to talk when I am taken to dinner--and all that!"
I like to mark the time, and connect the course of individual lives with the historic stream, for all classes of thinkers. This was the period when the broadening of gauge in crinolines seemed to demand an agitation for the general enlargement of churches, ball-rooms, and vehicles. But Anna Gascoigne's figure would only allow the size of skirt manufactured for young ladies of fourteen.

There was a much more lasting trouble at the rectory. Rex threw himself on his bed in a state of apathy, which the next day began to be interrupted by signs of illness. Nothing could be said about his going to Southampton: instead, the chief thought of his mother and Anna was how to tend this patient who did not want to be well, and from being the brightest, most grateful spirit in the household, was changed into a dull-eyed creature who met all affectionate attempts with a murmur of "Let me alone."
His father was sorry for his suffering, and sat with him now and then, parting with a "God bless you, my boy." Anna was always there, and was allowed to hold his unresponding hand. Her soul was divided between anguish for Rex and reproach of Gwendolen. And even Mrs. Gascoigne had an angry feeling toward her niece which she could not refrain from expressing to her husband.
"Really, Henry, I think she is hard; she has the heart of a coquette. And some blame attaches to poor Fanny; she is quite blind about that girl."
Mr. Gascoigne answered: "I ought to have been more awake myself. Rex may be thankful if nothing worse ever happens to him."
The rector felt that there had been a great escape. Gwendolen in love with Rex would have made a much harder problem to solve. But he had further difficulty to come.
One fine morning Rex asked for his bath, and dressed himself. Anna, excited at this change, listened for his coming down, and on hearing his step, ran to meet him. For the first time he gave her a faint smile, but such a melancholy one that she could hardly help crying.
"Nannie!" he said gently, taking her hand and leading her slowly to the drawing-room. His mother was there, and when she came to kiss him, he said: "What a plague I am!"
Then he sat still and looked out of the bow-window on the lawn and shrubs covered with hoar-frost. He felt as if he had had a resurrection into a new world, and did not know what to do with himself there. Anna sat near him, pretending to work, but really watching him. After a while, she could not resist the impulse to bring a little stool and seat herself against his knee, looking up at him with an expression which seemed to say, "Do speak to me." And he spoke.
"Nannie, I think I will go to Canada, or somewhere of that sort."
"Oh, Rex, not for always!"
"Yes. I should like to build a hut, and work hard at clearing, and have everything wild about me, and a great wide quiet."
"And not take me with you?" said Anna tearfully.
"How could I?"
"I should like it better than anything; and settlers go with their families. I could make the fires, and mend the clothes, and cook the food. It would be like playing at life as we used to do when we made our tent with the drugget, and had our little plates and dishes."
"Father and mother would not let you go."
"Yes, I think they would, when I explained everything. It would save money to bring up the boys with."
The talk ended in Rex's consenting that Anna should go with him when he spoke to his father on the subject. They chose a time when the rector was alone in his study.
"Well, my children!" said Mr. Gascoigne, cheerfully, as they entered. It was a comfort to see Rex about again.
"May we sit down with you, papa?" said Anna. "Rex has something to say."
"With all my heart."
"You know all about what has upset me, father," Rex began, and Mr. Gascoigne nodded. "I am quite done up for life in this part of the world. I am sure it will be no use my going back to Oxford. I should fail, and cause you expense for nothing. I want to have your consent to take another course, sir."
Mr. Gascoigne nodded more slowly, the line on his brow deepening.
"I should like to go to the colonies and work on the land there." Rex thought the vagueness of "the colonies" less likely to be rebutted than any particular settlement.
"Oh, and with me, papa," said Anna. "Rex would want someone to take care of him, you know, to keep house. And we shall never, either of us, be married. And I should cost nothing, and I should be so happy. I know it would be hard to leave you and mamma; but there are the others to bring up, and we two should be no trouble to you any more."
Anna had gone closer to her papa as she spoke. He did not smile, but drew her on his knee and held her there, as if to put her gently out of the question while he spoke to Rex.
"You will admit that my experience means that I can probably guide you in practical matters better than you can guide yourself?"
Rex was obliged to say, "Yes, sir."
"And perhaps you will admit that you are bound in duty to consider my judgment and wishes?"
"I have never yet opposed you, sir."
"But you will do so if you persist in following a rash and foolish course. You think, I suppose, that you have had a shock which has stupefied your brains, unfitted you for anything but manual labour, and given you a dislike to society? Is that what you believe?"
"Something like that. I shall never be up to the sort of work I must do in this part of the world. I have not the spirit for it. I shall never be the same again. And I think a young fellow should be allowed to choose his way of life, if he harms nobody."
"But suppose I am convinced on good evidence that this state of mind is transient, and that you would by-and-by repent, and feel that you had lost the chance of education? Have you not strength of mind enough to see that you had better act on my assurance for a time, and test it? In my opinion you have no right whatever to go abroad until you have honestly endeavoured to turn to account the education you have received here. I say nothing of the grief to your mother and me."
"I'm very sorry; but what can I do? I can't study, that's certain," said Rex.
"Not just now, perhaps. You will have to miss a term. I have made arrangements for you. But I confess I am disappointed in you, Rex. I thought you had more sense than to suppose that because you have fallen into a common trouble, such as most men have to go through, you are loosened from all bonds of duty - as if your brain had softened and you were no longer a responsible being."
What could Rex say? Inwardly he rebelled, but he had no arguments to meet his father's; and it lay in a deep fold of his consciousness that he ought to feel more about his old ties. This is the sort of faith we live by in our soul sicknesses. He got up from his seat.
"You assent to my arrangement, then?" said Mr. Gascoigne.
There was a pause before Rex answered, "I'll try, sir. I can't promise." His thought was, that trying would be of no use.
Her father held Anna, though she wanted to follow Rex out of the room. "Oh, papa," she said when the door had closed; "it is very hard for him. Doesn't he look ill?"
"Yes, but he will soon be better; it will all blow over. And now, Anna, be as quiet as a mouse about it. Never let it be mentioned."
"No, papa." Anna dared not say that she was disappointed at not being allowed to go to the colonies with Rex; but that was her secret feeling.