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 woven upon it, and 
 
DANIEL DERONDA 
 
 BOOK LV. 
 
 GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE 
 
BOOK LY. 
 
 GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 “Tl est plus aisé de connoitre ’homme en général que de connoftre un 
 homme en particulier.”—La RocHEFOUCAULD. 
 
 AN hour after Grandcourt had left, the important 
 news of Gwendolen’s engagement was known at 
 the Rectory, and Mr and Mrs Gascoigne, with 
 Anna, spent the evening at Offendene. 
 
 “ My dear, let me congratulate you on having 
 created a strong attachment,” said the Rector. 
 “You look serious, and I don’t wonder at it: a life- 
 long union is a solemn thing. But from the way 
 Mr Grandcourt has acted and spoken I think we 
 may already see some good arising out of our ad- 
 versity. It has given you an opportunity of ob- 
 serving your future husband’s delicate liberality.” 
 
192 . DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Mr Gascoigne referred to Grandcourt’s mode of 
 implying that he would provide for Mrs Davilow— 
 a part of the love-making which Gwendolen had 
 remembered to cite to her mother with perfect 
 accuracy. 
 
 “But I have no doubt that Mr Grandcourt 
 would have behaved quite as handsomely if you had 
 not gone away to Germany, Gwendolen, and had 
 been engaged to him, as you no doubt might have 
 been, more than a month ago,” said Mrs Gascoigne, 
 feeling that she had to discharge a duty on this 
 occasion. “But now there is no more room for 
 caprice ; indeed, I trust you have no inclination to 
 any. A woman has a great debt of gratitude to a 
 man who perseveres in making her such an offer. 
 But no doubt you feel properly.” 
 
 “Tam not at all sure that I do, aunt,” said 
 Gwendolen, with saucy gravity. “I don’t know 
 everything it is proper to feel on being engaged.” 
 
 The Rector patted her shoulder and smiled as 
 at a bit of innocent naughtiness, and his wife took 
 his behaviour as an indication that she was not to 
 be displeased. As for Anna, she kissed Gwendolen 
 and said, “Ido hope you will be happy,” but then 
 sank into the background and tried to keep the 
 tears back too. In the late days she had been 
 imagining a little romance about Rex—how if he 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 193 
 
 still longed for Gwendolen her heart might be soft- 
 ened by trouble into love, so that they could by- 
 and-by be married. And the romance had turned 
 to a prayer that she, Anna, might be able to rejoice 
 like a good sister, and only think of being useful 
 in working for Gwendolen, as long as Rex was not 
 rich. But now she wanted grace to rejoice in 
 something else. Miss Merry and the four girls, 
 Alice with the high shoulders, Bertha and Fanny 
 the whisperers, and Isabel the listener, were all 
 present on this family occasion, when everything 
 seemed appropriately turning to the honour and 
 glory of Gwendolen, and real life was as interesting 
 as “Sir Charles Grandison.” The evening passed 
 chiefly in decisive remarks from the Rector, in 
 answer to conjectures from the two elder ladies. 
 According to him, the case was not one in which 
 he could think it his duty to mention settlements : 
 everything must, and doubtless would safely be 
 left to Mr Grandcourt. 
 
 “T should like to know exactly what sort of 
 places Ryelands and Gadsmere are,’ said Mrs 
 Davilow. 
 
 “Gadsmere, I believe, is a secondary place,” 
 said Mr Gascoigne ; “but Ryelands I know to be 
 one of our finest seats. The park is extensive and 
 the woods of a very valuable order. The house 
 
194 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 was built by Inigo Jones, and the ceilings are 
 painted in the Italian style. The estate is said to 
 be worth twelve thousand a-year, and there are two 
 livings, onea rectory,in the gift of the Grandcourts. 
 There may be some burthens on the land. Still, 
 Mr Grandcourt was an only child.” 
 
 “Tt would be most remarkable,” said Mrs Gas- 
 coigne, “if he were to become Lord Stannery in 
 addition to everything else. Only think: there is 
 the Grandcourt estate, the Mallinger estate, and 
 the baronetcy, and the peerage,’—she was mark- 
 ing off the items on her fingers, and paused on 
 the fourth while she added, “ but they say there 
 will be no land coming to him with the peerage.” 
 It seemed a pity there was nothing for the fifth 
 finger. 
 
 “The peerage,” said the Rector, judiciously, 
 “must be regarded as a remote chance. ‘There are 
 two cousins between the present peer and Mr 
 Grandcourt. It is certainly a serious reflection 
 how death and other causes do sometimes concen- 
 trate inheritances on one man. But an excess of 
 that kind is to be deprecated. To be Sir Mallin- 
 ger Grandcourt Mallinger—I suppose that will be 
 his style—with the corresponding properties, is a 
 valuable talent enough for any man to have com- 
 mitted to him. Let us hope it will be well used.” 
 
 ¢ 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 195 
 
 « And what a position for the wife, Gwendolen !” 
 said Mrs Gascoigne; “a great responsibility in- 
 deed. But you must lose no time in writing to 
 Mrs Mompert, Henry. It is a good thing that 
 you have an engagement of marriage to offer as 
 an excuse, else she might feel offended. She is 
 rather a high woman.” 
 
 “T am rid of that horror,” thought Gwendolen, 
 to whom the name of Mompert had become a sort 
 of Mumbo-jumbo. She was very silent through 
 the evening, and that night could hardly sleep 
 at allin her little white bed. It was a rarity in 
 her strong youth to be wakeful; and perhaps a still 
 greater rarity for her to be careful that her mother 
 should not know of her restlessness. But her 
 state of mind was altogether new: she who had 
 been used to feel sure of herself, and ready to 
 manage others, had just taken a decisive step 
 which she had beforehand thought that she would 
 not take—nay, perhaps, was bound not to take. 
 She could not go backward now; she liked a great 
 deal of what lay before her ; and there was nothing 
 for her to like if she went back. But her resolu- 
 tion was dogged by the shadow of that previous 
 resolve which had at first come as the undoubting 
 movement of her whole being. While she lay on 
 her pillow with wide-open eyes, “ looking on dark- 
 
196 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ness which the blind do see,” she was appalled by 
 the idea that she was going to do what she had 
 once started away from with repugnance. It was 
 new to her that a question of right or wrong in 
 her conduct should rouse her terror; she had 
 known no compunction that atoning caresses and 
 presents could not lay to rest. But here had 
 come a moment when something like a new con- 
 sclousness was awaked. She seemed on the edge 
 of adopting deliberately, as a notion for all the 
 rest of her life, what she had rashly said in her 
 bitterness, when her discovery had driven her 
 away to Leubronn :—that it did not signify what 
 she did; she had only to amuse herself as best 
 she could. That lawlessness, that casting away of 
 all care for justification, suddenly frightened her : 
 it came to her with the shadowy array of possible 
 calamity behind it—calamity which had ceased to 
 be a mere name for her; and all the infiltrated in- 
 fluences of disregarded religious teaching, as well 
 as the deeper impressions of something awful and 
 inexorable enveloping her, seemed to concentrate 
 themselves in the vague conception of avenging 
 power. The brilliant position she had longed for, 
 the imagined freedom she would create for herself 
 in marriage, the deliverance from the dull insignifi- 
 cance of her girlhood—all were immediately before 
 her; and yet they had come to her hunger like 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 197 
 
 food with the taint of sacrilege upon it, which she 
 must snatch with terror. In the darkness and 
 loneliness of her little bed, her more resistant self 
 could not act against the first onslaught of dread 
 after her irrevocable decision. That unhappy- 
 faced woman and her children—Grandcourt and 
 his relations with her—kept repeating themselves 
 in her imagination like the clinging memory of 
 a disgrace, and gradually obliterated all other 
 thought, leaving only the consciousness that she 
 had taken those scenes into her life. Her long 
 wakefulness seemed a delirium ; a faint, faint light 
 penetrated beside the window-curtain ; the chill- 
 ness increased. She could bear it no longer, and 
 cried “Mamma!” 
 
 “Yes, dear,” said Mrs Davilow, immediately, in 
 a wakeful voice. 
 
 “Let me come to you.” 
 
 She soon went to sleep on her mother’s shoulder, 
 and slept on till late, when, dreaming of a lit-up 
 ball-room, she opened her eyes on her mother 
 standing by the bedside with a small packet in 
 her hand. 
 
 “J am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought 
 it better to give you this at once. The groom has 
 brought Criterion ; he has come on another horse, 
 and says he is to stay here.” 
 
 Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. 
 
198 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 It was a delicate little enamelled casket, and in- 
 side was a splendid diamond ring with a letter 
 which contained a folded bit of coloured paper 
 and these words :— 
 
 “ Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in 
 sign of our betrothal. I enclose a cheque drawn 
 in the name of Mr Gascoigne, for immediate ex- 
 penses. Of course Mrs Davilow will remain at 
 Offendene, at least for some time. I hope, when 
 I come, you will have granted me an early day, 
 when you may begin to command me at a shorter 
 distance.—Yours devotedly, 
 
 “H. M. GRANDCOURT.” 
 
 The cheque was for five hundred pounds, and 
 Gwendolen turned it towards her mother, with the 
 letter. 
 
 “ How very kind and delicate!” said Mrs Da- 
 vilow, with much feeling. ‘But I really should 
 like better not to be dependent on a son-in-law. 
 I and the girls could get along very well.” 
 
 “Mamma, if you say that again, I will not 
 marry him,” said Gwendolen, angrily. 
 
 “My dear child, I trust you are not going to 
 marry only for my sake,” said Mrs Davilow, de- 
 precatingly. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 199 
 
 Gwendolen tossed her head on the pillow away 
 from her mother, and let the ring lie. She was irri- 
 tated at this attempt to take away a motive. Per- 
 haps the deeper cause of her irritation was the con- 
 sciousness that she was not going to marry solely 
 for her mamma’s sake—that she was drawn to- 
 wards the marriage in ways against which stronger 
 reasons than her mother’s renunciation were yet 
 not strong enough to hinder her. She had waked 
 up to the signs that she was irrevocably engaged, 
 and all the ugly visions, the alarms, the argu- 
 ments of the night, must be met by daylight, 
 in which probably they would show themselves 
 weak. 
 
 “ What I long for is your happiness, dear,” con- 
 tinued Mrs Davilow, pleadingly. “I will not say 
 anything to vex you. Will you not put on the 
 ring ?” 
 
 For a few moments Gwendolen did not answer, 
 but her thoughts were active. At last she raised 
 herself with a determination to do as she would do 
 if she had started on horseback, and go on with 
 spirit, whatever ideas might be running in her head. 
 
 “T thought the lover always put on the be- 
 trothal ring himself,” she said, laughingly, slipping 
 the ring on her finger, and looking at it witha 
 charming movement of her head. “I know why 
 
200 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 he has sent it,” she added, nodding at her 
 mamma. 
 
 “Why?” 
 
 “He would rather make me put it on, than ask 
 me to let him do it. Aha! he is very proud. 
 But so am I. We shall match each other. I 
 should hate a man who went down on his knees, 
 and came fawning on me. He really is not dis- 
 gusting.” 
 
 “That is very moderate praise, Gwen.” 
 
 “No, it is not, for a man,” said Gwendolen, 
 gaily. “But now I must get up and dress. Will 
 you come and do my hair, mamma dear,” she 
 went on, drawing down her mamma's face to 
 caress it with her own cheeks, “and not be so 
 naughty any more as to talk of living in poverty ? 
 You must bear to be made comfortable, even if 
 you don’t like it. And Mr Grandcourt behaves 
 perfectly, now, does he not ?” 
 
 “Certainly he does,” said Mrs Davilow, en- 
 couraged, and persuaded that after all Gwendolen 
 was fond of her betrothed. She herself thought 
 him a man whose attentions were likely to tell on 
 a girl’s feeling. Suitors must often be judged as 
 words are, by the standing and the figure they 
 make in polite society: it is difficult to know 
 much else of them. And all the mother’s anxiety 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 201 
 
 turned, not on Grandcourt’s character, but on 
 Gwendolen’s mood in accepting him. 
 
 The mood was necessarily passing through a 
 new phase this morning. Even in the hour of 
 making her toilet, she had drawn on all the 
 knowledge she had for grounds to justify her 
 marriage. And what she most dwelt on was the 
 determination, that when she was Grandcourt’s 
 wife, she would urge him to the most liberal con- 
 duct towards Mrs Glasher’s children. 
 
 “Of what use would it be to her that I should 
 not marry him? He could have married her if he 
 had liked; but he did not like. Perhaps she is 
 to blame for that. There must be a great deal 
 about her that I know nothing of. And he must 
 have been good to her in many ways, else she 
 would not have wanted to marry him.” 
 
 But that last argument at once began to appear 
 doubtful. Mrs Glasher naturally wished to ex- 
 clude other children who would stand between 
 Grandcourt and her own; and Gwendolen’s com- 
 prehension of this feeling prompted another way 
 of reconciling claims. 
 
 “Perhaps we shall have no children. I hope 
 we shall not. And he might leave the estate to 
 the pretty little boy. My uncle said that Mr 
 Grandcourt could do as he liked with the estates. 
 
202 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Only when Sir Hugo Mallinger dies there will be 
 enough for two.” 
 
 This made Mrs Glasher appear quite unreason- 
 able in demanding that her boy should be sole 
 heir; and the double property was a security that 
 Grandcourt’s marriage would do her no wrong, 
 when the wife was Gwendolen Harleth with all 
 her proud resolution not to be fairly accused. 
 This maiden had been accustomed to think herself 
 blameless: other persons only were faulty. 
 
 It was striking, that in the hold which this 
 argument of her doing no wrong to Mrs Glasher 
 had taken on her mind, her repugnance to the 
 idea of Grandcourt’s past had sunk into a subor- 
 dinate feeling. The terror she had felt in the 
 night watches at overstepping the border of wick- 
 edness by doing what she had at first felt to be 
 wrong, had dulled any emotions about his conduct. 
 She was thinking of him, whatever he might be, as 
 a man over whom she was going to have indefinite 
 power; and her loving him having never been a 
 question with her, any agreeableness he had was so 
 much gain. Poor Gwendolen had no awe of un- 
 manageable forces in the state of matrimony, but 
 regarded it as altogether a matter of management, 
 in which she would know how to act. In relation 
 to Grandcourt’s past she encouraged new doubts 
 
BOOK IVY.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 203 
 
 whether he were likely to have differed much from 
 other men; and she devised little schemes for learn- 
 ing what was expected of men in general. 
 
 But whatever else might be true in the world, 
 her hair was dressed suitably for riding, and she 
 went -down in her riding-habit, to avoid delay 
 before getting on horseback. She wanted to have 
 her blood stirred once more with the intoxication 
 of youth, and to recover the daring with which 
 she had been used to think of her course in life. 
 Already a load was lifted off her; for in daylight 
 and activity it was less oppressive to have doubts 
 about her choice, than to feel that she had no 
 choice but to endure insignificance and servi- 
 tude, 
 
 “Go back and make yourself look like a 
 duchess, mamma,” she said, turning suddenly as 
 she was going down-stairs. “ Put your point-lace 
 over your head I must have you look like a 
 duchess. You must not take things humbly.” 
 
 When Grandcourt raised her left hand gently 
 and looked at the ring, she said gravely, “It was 
 very good of you to think of everything and send 
 me that packet.” 
 
 “You will tell me if there is anything I forget ?” 
 he said, keeping the hand softly within his own. 
 “T will do anything you wish.” 
 
204 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “But I am very unreasonable in my wishes,” 
 said Gwendolen, smiling. 
 
 “Yes, I expect that. Women always are.” 
 
 “Then I will not be unreasonable,” said Gwen- 
 dolen, taking away her hand, and tossing her head 
 saucily. “I will not be told that I am what 
 women always are.” 
 
 “TI did not say that,” said Grandcourt, looking 
 at her with his usual gravity. “You are what no 
 other woman is.” 
 
 “And what is that, pray?” said Gwendolen, 
 moving to a distance with a little air of menace. 
 
 Grandcourt made his pause before he answered. 
 “You are the woman I love.” 
 
 “Oh what nice speeches!” said Gwendolen, 
 laughing. The sense of that love which he must 
 once have given to another woman under strange 
 circumstances was getting familiar. 
 
 “Give me a nice speech in return. Say when 
 we are to be married.” 
 
 “Not yet. Not till we have had a gallop over 
 the downs. Iam so thirsty for that, I can think 
 of nothing else. I wish the hunting had begun. 
 Sunday the twentieth, twenty-seventh, Monday, 
 Tuesday.” Gwendolen was counting on her fingers 
 with the prettiest nod while she looked at Grand- 
 court, and at last swept one palm over the other 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 205 
 
 while she said triumphantly, “It will begin in 
 ten days!” 
 
 “Let us be married in ten days, then,” said 
 Grandcourt, “and we shall not be bored about the 
 stables.” 
 
 “What do women always say in answer to 
 that?” said Gwendolen, mischievously. 
 
 “They agree to it,” said the lover, rather off his 
 guard. 
 
 “Then I will not!” said Gwendolen, taking up 
 her gauntlets and putting them on, while she kept 
 her eyes on him with gathering fun in them. 
 
 The scene was pleasant on both sides. A cruder 
 lover would have lost the view of her pretty ways 
 and attitudes, and spoiled all by stupid attempts 
 at caresses, utterly destructive of drama. Grand- 
 court preferred the drama; and Gwendolen, left 
 at ease, found her spirits rising continually as she 
 played at reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had seen 
 more of her in this unconscious kind of acting, 
 instead of when she was trying to be theatrical, 
 he might have rated her chance higher. 
 
 When they had had a glorious gallop, however, 
 she was in a state of exhilaration that disposed her 
 to think well of hastening the marriage which 
 would make her life all of a piece with this 
 splendid kind of enjoyment. She would not 
 
 VOL. II. 0 
 
206 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 debate any more about an act to which she had 
 committed herself; and she consented to fix the 
 wedding on that day three weeks, notwithstanding 
 the difficulty of fulfilling the customary laws of 
 the trousseau. 
 
 Lush, of course, was made aware of the engage- 
 ment by abundant signs, without being formally 
 told. But he expected some communication as a 
 consequence of it, and after a few days he became 
 rather impatient under Grandcourt’s silence, feel- 
 ing sure that the change would affect his personal 
 prospects, and wishing to know exactly how. His 
 tactics no longer included any opposition—which 
 he did not love for its own sake. He might easily 
 cause Grandcourt a great deal of annoyance, but 
 it would be to his own injury, and to create annoy- 
 ance was not a motive with him. Miss Gwendolen 
 he would certainly not have been sorry to frustrate 
 a little, but—after all there was no knowing what 
 would come. It was nothing new that Grand- 
 court should show a perverse wilfulness ; yet in 
 his freak about this girl he struck Lush rather 
 newly as something like a man who was fey—led 
 on by an ominous fatality ; and that one born to 
 his fortune should make a worse business of his 
 life than was necessary, seemed really pitiable. 
 Having protested against the marriage, Lush had 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 207 
 
 a second-sight for its evil consequences. Grand- 
 court had been taking the pains to write letters 
 and give orders himself instead of employing Lush; 
 and appeared to be ignoring his usefulness, even 
 choosing, against the habit of years, to breakfast 
 alone in his dressing-room. Buta téte-d-téte was 
 not to be avoided in a house empty of guests; and 
 Lush hastened to use an opportunity of saying—it 
 was one day after dinner, for there were difficulties 
 in Grandcourt’s dining at Offendene— 
 
 “And when is the marriage to take place?” 
 
 Grandcourt, who drank little wine, had left the 
 table and was lounging, while he smoked, in an 
 easy-chair near the hearth, where a fire of oak 
 boughs was gaping to its glowing depths, and edg- 
 ing them with a delicate tint of ashes delightful to 
 behold. The chair of red-brown velvet brocade 
 was a becoming background for his pale-tinted 
 well-cut features and exquisite long hands: omitting 
 the cigar, you might have imagined him a portrait 
 by Moroni, who would have rendered wonderfully 
 the impenetrable gaze and air of distinction ; and a 
 portrait by that great master would have been quite 
 as lively a companion as Grandcourt was disposed 
 to be. But he answered without unusual delay. 
 
 “On the tenth.” 
 
 “TY suppose you intend to remain here,” 
 
208 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “We shall go to Ryelands for a little while; but 
 we shall return here for the sake of the hunting.” 
 
 After this word there was the languid inartic- 
 ulate sound frequent with Grandcourt when he 
 meant to continue speaking, and Lush waited for 
 something more. Nothing came, and he was 
 going to put another question, when the inarticu- 
 late sound began again and introduced the mildly- 
 uttered suggestion— 
 
 “You had better make some new arrangement 
 for yourself.” 
 
 “What! I am to cut and run?” said Lush, pre- 
 pared to be good-tempered on the occasion. 
 
 “Something of that kind.” 
 
 “The bride objects to me. I hope she will 
 make up to you for the want of my services.” 
 
 “T can’t help your being so damnably disagree- 
 able to women,” said Grandcourt, in soothing 
 apology. 
 
 “To one woman, if you please.” 
 
 “Tt makes no difference, since she is the one in 
 question.” 
 
 “T suppose I am not to be turned adrift after 
 fifteen years without some provision.” 
 
 “You must have saved something out of me.” 
 
 “Deuced little. I have often saved something 
 for you.” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 209 
 
 “You can have three hundred a-year. But you 
 must live in town and be ready to look after 
 things for me when I want you. I shall be rather 
 hard up.” 
 
 “Tf you are not going to be at Ryelands this 
 winter, I might run down there and let you know 
 how Swinton goes on.” 
 
 “Tf you like. I don’t care a toss where you 
 are, so that you keep out of sight.” 
 
 “Much obliged,” said Lush, able to take the 
 affair more easily than he had expected. He was 
 supported by the secret belief that he should by- 
 and-by be wanted as much as ever. 
 
 “Perhaps you will not object to packing up as 
 soon as possible,” said Grandcourt. “The Tor- 
 ringtons are coming, and Miss Harleth will be 
 riding over here.” 
 
 “With all my heart. Can’t I be of use in going 
 to Gadsmere ?” 
 
 “No. Iam going myself.” 
 
 “ About your being raghgr hard up. Have aoe 
 thought of that plan 
 
 “Just leave me aloneyewill you?” said, Grand- 
 court, in his lowest audible tone, tossing his cigar 
 into the fire, and rising to walk wey, © - 
 
 He spent the evening in the solitude of the 
 smaller drawing-room, wheréf with various new 
 
210 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 publications on the table, of the kind a gentleman 
 may like to have at hand without touching, he 
 employed himself (as a philosopher might have 
 done) in sitting meditatively on a sofa and abstain- 
 ing from literature—political, comic, cynical, or 
 romantic. In this way hours may pass surpris- 
 ingly soon, without the arduous invisible chase of 
 philosophy ; not from love of thought, but from 
 hatred of effort—from a state of the inward world, 
 something like premature age, where the need for 
 action lapses into a mere image of what has been, 
 is, and may or might be; where impulse is born 
 and dies in a phantasmal world, pausing in rejec- 
 tion even of a shadowy fulfilment. That is a con- 
 dition which often comes with whitening hair; 
 and sometimes, +00, an intense obstinacy and ten- 
 acity of rule, like the main trunk of an exorbitant 
 egoism, conspicuous in proportion as the varied 
 susceptibilities of younger years are stripped 
 awaygee, © | ‘ 
 
 But Grandcourt’s hairy,though he had not much 
 of itfwas' of a fine sunny blond, and his moods 
 were not entirely to beve®plained as ebbing energy. 
 We mortals haye a strange spiritual chemistry 
 going of withine US, #80 that a lazy stagnation or 
 even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one 
 Fnéws not what bititg or explosive material. The 
 
 % 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 211 
 
 navvy waking from sleep and without malice heav- 
 ing a stone to crush the life out of his still sleep- 
 ing comrade, is understood to lack the trained 
 motive which makes a character fairly calculable 
 in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a 
 gentleman may make of himself a chancy person- 
 age, raising an uncertainty as to what he may do 
 next, which sadly spoils companionship. 
 Grandcourt’s thoughts this evening were like 
 the circlets one sees in a dark pool continually 
 dying out and continually started again by some 
 impulse from below the surface. The deeper central 
 impulse came from the image of Gwendolen ; but 
 the thoughts it stirred would be imperfectly illus- 
 trated by a reference to the amatory poets of all 
 ages. It was characteristic that he got none of his 
 satisfaction from the belief that Gwendolen was in 
 love with him; and that love had overcome the 
 jealous resentment which had made her run away 
 from him. On the contrary, he believed that this 
 girl was rather exceptional in the fact that, in spite 
 of his assiduous attention to her, she was not in 
 love with him; and it seemed to him very likely 
 that if it had not been for the sudden poverty which 
 had come over her family, she would not’ have 
 accepted him. From the very first there had been 
 an exasperating fascination in the tricksiness with 
 
212 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 which she had—not met his advances, but—wheeled 
 away from them. She had been brought to accept 
 him in spite of everything—brought to kneel down 
 like a horse under training for the arena, though 
 she might have an objection to it all the while. 
 On the whole, Grandcourt got more pleasure out of 
 this notion than he could have done out of winning 
 a girl of whom he was sure that she had a strong 
 inclination for him personally. And yet this plea- 
 sure in mastering reluctance flourished along with 
 the habitual persuasion that no woman whom he 
 favoured could be quite indifferent to his personal 
 influence ; and it seemed to him not unlikely that 
 by-and-by Gwendolen might be more enamoured 
 of him than he of her. In any case she would 
 have to submit ; and he enjoyed thinking of her as 
 his future wife, whose pride and spirit were suited 
 to command every one but himself. He had no 
 taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, 
 full of petitioning solicitude and willing obedience. 
 He meant to be master of a woman who would 
 have liked to master him, and who perhaps would 
 have been capable of mastering another man. 
 Lush, having failed in his attempted reminder 
 to Grandcourt, thought it well to communicate 
 with Sir Hugo, in whom, as a man having per- 
 haps interest enough to command the bestowal 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 213 
 
 of some place where the work was light, gentle- 
 manly, and not ill-paid, he was anxious to culti- 
 vate a sense of friendly obligation, not feeling at 
 all secure against the future need of such a place. 
 He wrote the following letter, and addressed it to 
 Park Lane, whither he knew the family had re- 
 turned from Leubronn :— 
 
 “ My DEAR Sir HuGo,—Since we came home the 
 marriage has been absolutely decided on, and is to 
 take place in less than three weeks. It is so far 
 the worse for him that her mother has lately lost 
 all her fortune, and he will have to find supplies. 
 Grandcourt, I know, is feeling the want of cash ; 
 and unless some other plan is resorted to, he will 
 be raising money in a foolish way. I am going to 
 leave Diplow immediately, and I shall not be able 
 to start the topic. What I should advise is, that 
 Mr Deronda, who I know has your confidence, 
 should propose to come and pay a short visit 
 here, according to invitation (there are going to 
 be other people in the house), and that you should 
 put him fully in possession of your wishes and 
 the possible extent of your offer. Then, that he 
 should introduce the subject to Grandcourt so as 
 not to imply that you suspect any particular want 
 of money on his part, but only that there is a 
 
214 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 strong wish on yours. What I have formerly 
 said to him has been in the way of a conjecture 
 that you might be willing to give a good sum for 
 his chance of Diplow; but if Mr Deronda came 
 armed with a definite offer, that would take an- 
 other sort of hold. Ten to one he will not close 
 for some time to come; but the proposal will have 
 got a stronger lodgment in his mind; and though 
 at present he has a great notion of the hunting 
 here, I see a likelihood, under the circumstances, 
 that he will get a distaste for the neighbourhood, 
 and there will be the notion of the money sticking 
 by him without being urged. I would bet on 
 your ultimate success. As I am not to be exiled 
 to Siberia, but am to be within call, it is possible 
 that, by-and-by, I may be of more service to you. 
 But at present I can think of no medium so good 
 as Mr Deronda. Nothing puts Grandcourt in 
 worse humour than having the lawyers thrust 
 their paper under his nose uninvited. 
 “Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has put 
 you in excellent condition for the winter, I re- 
 main, my dear Sir Hugo, yours very faithfully, 
 “THOMAS CRANMER LUSH.” 
 
 Sir Hugo, having received this letter at breakfast, 
 handed it to Deronda, who, though he had cham- 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 215 
 
 bers in town, was somehow hardly ever in them, 
 Sir Hugo not being contented without him. The 
 chatty baronet would have liked a young com- 
 panion even if there had been no peculiar reasons 
 for attachment between them: one with a fine 
 harmonious unspoiled face fitted to keep up a 
 cheerful view of posterity and inheritance gener- 
 ally, notwithstanding particular disappointments ; 
 and his affection for Deronda was not diminished 
 by the deep-lying though not obtrusive difference 
 in their notions and tastes. Perhaps it was all the 
 stronger; acting as the same sort of difference 
 does between a man and a woman in giving a 
 piquancy to the attachment which subsists in 
 spite of it. Sir Hugo did not think unapprov- 
 ingly of himself; but he looked at men and society 
 from a liberal-menagerie point of view, and he 
 had a certain pride in Deronda’s differing from 
 him, which, if it had found voice, might have 
 said—*“ You see this fine young fellow—not such 
 as you see every day, is he ?—he belongs to me in 
 a sort of way, I brought him up from a child; but 
 you would not ticket him off easily, he has notions 
 of his own, and he’s as far as the poles asunder 
 from what I was at his age.” This state of feeling 
 was kept up by the mental balance in Deronda, 
 who was moved by an affectionateness such as we 
 
216 DANIEL -DERONDA. 
 
 are apt to call feminine, disposing him to yield in 
 ordinary details, while he had a certain inflexi- 
 bility of judgment, an independence of opinion, 
 held to be rightfully masculine. 
 
 When he had read the letter, he returned it 
 without speaking, inwardly wincing under Lush’s 
 mode of attributing a neutral usefulness to him in 
 the family affairs. 
 
 “What do you say, Dan? It would be pleasant 
 enough for you. You have not seen the place for 
 a good many years now, and you might have a 
 famous run with the harriers if you went down 
 next week,” said Sir Hugo. 
 
 “T should not go on that account,” said Deronda, 
 buttering his bread attentively. He had an objec- 
 tion to this transparent kind of persuasiveness, 
 which all intelligent animals are seen to treat with 
 indifference. If he went to Diplow he should be 
 doing something disagreable to oblige Sir Hugo. 
 
 “T think Lush’s notion isa good one. And it 
 would be a pity to lose the occasion.” 
 
 “That is a different matter—if you think my 
 going of importance to your object,” said Deronda, 
 still with that aloofness of manner which implied 
 some suppression. He knew that the baronet had 
 set his heart on the affair. 
 
 “Why, you will see the fair gambler, the Leu- 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 217 
 
 bronn Diana, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Sir Hugo, 
 gaily. “We shall have to invite her to the Abbey, 
 when they are married, Louisa,” he added, turning 
 to Lady Mallinger, as if she too had read the 
 letter. 
 
 ‘“‘T cannot conceive whom you mean,” said Lady 
 Mallinger, who in fact had not been listening, her 
 mind having been taken up with her first sips of 
 coffee, the objectionable cuff of her sleeve, and the 
 necessity of carrying Theresa to the dentist—inno- 
 cent and partly laudable preoccupations, as the 
 gentle lady’s usually were. Should her appear- 
 ance be inquired after, let it be said that she had 
 reddish blond hair (the hair of the period), a small 
 Roman nose, rather prominent blue eyes and 
 delicate eyelids, with a figure which her thinner 
 friends called fat, her hands showing curves and 
 dimples like a magnified baby’s. 
 
 “T mean that Grandcourt is going to marry the 
 girl you saw at Leubronn—don’t you remember 
 her?—the Miss Harleth who used to play at 
 roulette.” 
 
 “Dear me! Is that a good match for him ?” 
 
 “That depends on the sort of goodness he 
 wants,” said Sir Hugo, smiling. “However, she 
 and her friends have nothing, and she will bring 
 him expenses. It’s a good match for my purposes, 
 
218 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 because if Iam willing to fork out a sum of money, 
 he may be willing to give up his chance of Diplow, 
 so that we shall have it out and out, and when 
 I die you will have the consolation of going to 
 the place you would like to go to—wherever I 
 may go.” 
 
 “YT wish you would not talk of dying in that 
 light way, dear.” 
 
 “Tt’s rather a heavy way, Lou, for I shall have 
 to pay a heavy sum—forty thousand, at least.” 
 
 “But why are we to invite them to the Abbey?” 
 said Lady Mallinger. “I do not like women who 
 gamble, like Lady Cragstone.” 
 
 “Oh, you will not mind her for a week. Besides, 
 she is not like Lady Cragstone because she gambled 
 a little, any more than I am like a broker because 
 I'ma Whig. I want to keep Grandcourt in good 
 humour, and to let him see plenty of this place, 
 that he may think the less of Diplow. I don’t 
 know yet whether I shall get him to meet me in 
 this matter. And if Dan were to go over on a visit 
 there, he might hold out the bait to him. It 
 would be doing me a great service.” This was 
 meant for Deronda. 
 
 “Daniel is not fond of Mr Grandcourt, I think, 
 is he?” said Lady Mallinger, looking at Deronda 
 inquiringly. 
 
 se 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 219 
 
 “There is no avoiding everybody one doesn’t 
 happen to be fond of,” said Deronda. “I will go to 
 Diplow—I don’t know that I have anything better 
 to do—since Sir Hugo wishes it.” 
 
 “That’s a trump !” said Sir Hugo, well pleased. 
 “And if you don’t find it very pleasant, it’s so 
 much experience. Nothing used to come amiss to 
 me when I was young. You must see men and 
 manners.” 
 
 “Yes; but I have seen that man, and something 
 of his manners too,” said Deronda. 
 
 “Not nice manners, I think,” said Lady Mal- 
 linger. 
 
 “Well, you see they succeed with your sex,” 
 said Sir Hugo, provokingly. “And he was an un- 
 commonly good-looking fellow when he was two 
 or three and twenty—like his father. He doesn’t 
 take after his father in marrying the heiress, 
 though, If he had got Miss Arrowpoint and my 
 land too, confound him, he would have had a fine 
 principality.” 
 
 Deronda, in anticipating the projected visit, felt 
 less disinclination than when consenting to it. 
 The drama of that girl’s marriage did interest him: 
 what he had heard through Lush of her having 
 run away from the suit of the man she was now 
 going to take as a husband, had thrown a new sort 
 
220 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 of light on her gambling ; and it was probably the 
 transition from that fevered worldliness into pov- 
 erty which had urged her acceptance where she 
 must in some way have felt repulsion. All this im- 
 plied a nature liable to difficulty and struggle— 
 elements of life which had a predominant attraction 
 for his sympathy, due perhaps to his early pain in 
 dwelling on the conjectured story of his own ex- 
 istence. Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick 
 had done, in proportion to the possibility of his 
 defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their 
 lives with some sort of redeeming influence; and he 
 had to resist an inclination, easily accounted for, 
 to withdraw coldly from the fortunate. But in the 
 movement which had led him to redeem Gwen- 
 ~ dolen’s necklace for her, and which was at work in 
 him still, there was something beyond his habitual 
 compassionate fervour— something due to the 
 fascination of her womanhood. He was very open 
 to that sort of charm, and mingled it with the con- 
 sciously Utopian pictures of his own future; yet 
 any one able to trace the folds of his character 
 might have conceived that he would be more 
 likely than many less passionate men to love a 
 woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle food be- 
 fore a delicate-eared bird: there is nothing he would 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 221 
 
 more willingly take, yet he keeps aloof, because 
 of his sensibility to checks which to you are im- 
 perceptible. And one man differs from another, 
 as we all differ from the Bosjesman, in a sensi- 
 bility to checks, that come from variety of needs, 
 spiritual or other. It seemed to foreshadow that 
 capability of reticence in Deronda that his imagi- 
 nation was much occupied with two women, to 
 neither of whom would he have held it possible 
 that he should ever make love. Hans Meyrick 
 had laughed at him for having something of the 
 knight-errant in his disposition; and he would 
 have found his proof if he had known what was 
 Just now going on in Deronda’s mind about Mirah 
 and Gwendolen. 
 
 He wrote without delay to announce the visit 
 to Diplow, and received in reply a polite assurance 
 that his coming would give great pleasure. That 
 was not altogether untrue. Grandcourt thought 
 it probable that the visit was prompted by Sir 
 Hugo’s desire to court him for a purpose which he 
 did not make up his mind to resist; and it was 
 not a disagreeable idea to him that this fine fel- 
 low, whom he believed to be his cousin under 
 the rose, would witness, perhaps with some jeal- 
 ousy, Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt play the 
 
 VOL. Il, P 
 
222 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 commanding part of betrothed lover to a splen- 
 did girl whom the cousin had already looked at 
 with admiration. 
 
 Grandcourt himself was not jealous of anything 
 unless it threatened his mastery—which he did 
 not think himself likely to lose. 
 
223 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 “¢ 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.” 
 —Watt WHITMAN. 
 
 “Now my cousins are at Diplow,” said Grand- 
 court, “will you go there?—to-morrow? The 
 carriage shall come for Mrs Davilow. You can tell 
 me what you would like done inthe 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 draw- 
 ing-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 needle- 
 work, had taken to it with apparent zeal since her 
 engagement, and now held a piece of white em- 
 broidery which on examination would have shown 
 
224 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 many false stitches. During the last eight or nine 
 days their hours had been chiefly spent on horse- 
 back, 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 foolin 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 behaviour as a lover had hardly 
 at all passed the limit of an amorous homage which 
 was inobtrusive as a wafted odour of roses, and 
 spent all its effect 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 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 225 
 
 down again witha 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 com- 
 pensate, a package had come from London, and 
 Mrs Davilow had just left the room after bringing 
 in for admiration the beautiful things (of Grand- 
 court’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 ?”’ 
 
 “Tt is 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 
 
226 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 —and the temptation to makea clean breast,speak- 
 ing 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 in- 
 wardly called this bit of temper, and she was par- 
 ticularly 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 in- 
 quiry, looking at him more naively 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 ?” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 227 
 
 “Yes, Are you as kind to meas I am to you?” 
 said Grandcourt, looking into her eyes with his 
 narrow gaze. 
 
 Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was con- 
 scious 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 con- 
 sented 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 bea 
 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— 
 
 “Tf 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 
 
228 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 new kind of love-making, which introduced mar- 
 riage 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 mo- 
 ment 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 Tor- 
 rington at Diplow ?—or do you leave them téte-d- 
 téte? 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. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 229 
 
 “JT never spoke to him,” she said, dreading any 
 discernible change in herself. “Is he not dis- 
 agreeable ?” 
 
 “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 
 towards Deronda had changed into a superstitious 
 dread—due, perhaps, to the coercion he had exer- 
 
230 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 cised over her thought—lest that first interference 
 of his in her life might foreshadow some future in- 
 fluence. It is of such stuff that superstitions are 
 commonly made: an intense feeling about our- 
 selves which makes the evening star shine at us 
 with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar en- 
 courage 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 Tor- 
 rington 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 per- 
 formance 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 ima- 
 gine,” said Deronda, looking at her quite simply, 
 as they bowed. “She was intensely occupied 
 when I saw her.” 
 
 Api ED 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 231 
 
 Now, did he suppose that she had not suspected 
 him of being the person who redeemed her neck- 
 lace ? 
 
 “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. 
 “T 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. 
 
 “TJ found it a bore when I began to lose,” said 
 Gwendolen. Her face was turned towards Grand- 
 court 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 judg- 
 ment. 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 ex- 
 
232 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 pression which threatens to affect opinion—as if 
 one’s standard were 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 Grand- 
 court’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 in- 
 wardly conjectured, was perhaps right in saying 
 that Deronda thought too much of himself :— 
 a favourite way of explaining a superiority that 
 humiliates. However, the talk turned on the rin- 
 derpest and Jamaica, and no more was said about 
 roulette. Grandcourt held that the Jamaican 
 negro was a beastly sort of baptist Caliban ; De- 
 ronda said he had always felt a little with Cali- 
 ban, 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 In- 
 dies ; 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. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 233 
 
 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. 
 
 “T 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?” 
 
 “T find excuses for it. It is a sin I am inclined 
 to—when I can’t get boating or cricketing.” 
 
234 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “Do you object to my hunting?” said Gwen- 
 dolen, with a saucy movement of the chin. 
 
 “T have no right to object to anything you 
 choose to do.” 
 
 “You thought you had a right to object to my 
 gambling,” persisted Gwendolen. 
 
 “T was sorry for it. Iam 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 pecu- 
 liarity 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 sym- 
 pathetic people are often creating in the minds of 
 those who need help. In mendicant fashion, we 
 make the goodness of others a reason for exorbi- 
 tant 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 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 235 
 
 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 at- 
 tractive than before ; and certainly there had been 
 changes going on within her since that time at 
 Leubronn: the struggle of mind attending a con- 
 scious 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. 
 
 “Qh, it merely happened that he was looking 
 on when I began to lose,’ said Gwendolen, care- 
 lessly. “I noticed him.” 
 
 “T 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.” 
 
 “Ts there?” said Gwendolen. 
 
236 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “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 award. 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 Torring- 
 ton’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 beautiful wo- 
 man, no longer young, had become “ stuff o’ the 
 conscience ” to Gwendolen. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 2387 
 
 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.) 
 
 “Tf it were so, I ought to know,” said Gwen- 
 dolen, 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.” 
 
 “TY 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 
 
 VOL. II. Q 
 
238 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 rea- 
 sons against that marriage—reasons which pressed 
 upon her newly now that they were unexpectedly 
 mirrored in the story of a man whose slight rela- 
 tions with her had, by some hidden affinity, bitten 
 themselves into the most permanent layers of feel- 
 ing. 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 Grand- 
 court solely as the 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 diffi- 
 culties of life are apt to force themselves on us in 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 239 
 
 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 imagi- 
 nation inevitably went in 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 unquestioning habit it 
 
240 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 atti- 
 tude of apology-—she who had hitherto been sur- 
 rounded 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 favourite apology for incompetence. 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 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 241 
 
 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 sooth- 
 ing to think that there would now be as much ill- 
 doing in the one as in the other. But the im- 
 mediate 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 con- 
 venient reach of home, and in the agreeable 
 sombreness of the grey November afternoon, with 
 a long stratum of yellow light in the west, Gwen- 
 
242 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 dolen was returning with the company from Dip- 
 low, who were attending her on the way to Offen- 
 dene. Now that the sense of glorious excitement 
 was over and gone, she was getting irritably dis-. 
 appointed 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. Grand- 
 court was by her side; Mrs Torrington, her hus- 
 band, and another gentleman in advance; and De- 
 ronda’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.” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 243 
 
 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. Herode 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 be- 
 cause you were a woman,” said Deronda, with an 
 irrepressible smile. Apparently it must be under- 
 stood 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 ex- 
 
244 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 aggerating 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 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 245 
 
 and joined Grandcourt, who made no observa- 
 tion. 
 
 “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. 
 
 “T 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 gam- 
 bling, and he gave me a little sermon.” 
 
 “Yes—but excuse me the sermon.” If Gwen- 
 dolen 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 towards 
 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. 
 
246 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 l No penitence and no confessional : 
 No priest ordains it, yet they’re forced to sit 
 Amid deep ashes of their vanished years. 
 
 IMAGINE a rambling, patchy house, the best part 
 built of grey stone, and red-tiled, a round tower 
 jutting at one of the corners, the mellow darkness 
 of its conical roof surmounted by a weather-cock 
 making an agreeable object either amidst the 
 gleams and greenth of summer or the low-hanging 
 clouds and snowy branches of winter: the grounds 
 shady with spreading trees: a great cedar flourish- 
 ing on one side, backward some Scotch firs on a 
 broken bank where the roots hung naked, and 
 beyond, a rookery: on the other side a pool 
 overhung with bushes, where the water-fowl 
 fluttered and screamed: all around, a vast mea- 
 dow which might be called a park, bordered by 
 an old plantation and guarded by stone lodges 
 which looked like little prisons. Outside the 
 . gate the country, once entirely rural and lovely, 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 247 
 
 now black with coal-mines, was chiefly peopled by 
 men and brethren with candles stuck in their hats, 
 and with a diabolic complexion which laid them 
 peculiarly open to suspicion in the eyes of the 
 children at Gadsmere—Mrs Glasher’s four beauti- 
 ful children, who had dwelt there for about three 
 years. Now, in November, when the flower- 
 beds were empty, the trees leafless, and the pool 
 blackly shivering, one might have said that the 
 place was sombrely in keeping with the black 
 roads and black mounds which seemed to put the 
 district in mourning ;—except when the children 
 were playing on the gravel with the dogs for their 
 companions. But Mrs Glasher under her present 
 circumstances liked Gadsmere as well as_ she 
 would have liked any other abode.* The complete 
 seclusion of the place, which the unattractiveness 
 of the country secured, was exactly to her taste. 
 When she drove her two ponies with a waggonet 
 full of children, there were no gentry in carriages 
 to be met, only men of business in gigs; at 
 church there were no eyes she cared to avoid, for 
 the curate’s wife and the curate himself were 
 either ignorant of anything to her disadvantage, 
 or ignored it: to them she was simply a widow 
 lady, the tenant of Gadsmere; and the name of 
 Grandcourt was of little interest in that district 
 
248 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 compared with the names of Fletcher and Gaw- 
 come, the lessees of the collieries. 
 
 It was full ten years since the elopement of an 
 Trish officer’s beautiful wife with young Grandcourt, 
 and a consequent duel where the bullets wounded 
 the air only, had made some little noise. Most of 
 those who remembered the affair now wondered 
 what! had become of that Mrs Glasher whose 
 beauty and brilliancy had made her rather con- 
 spicuous to them in foreign places, where she was 
 known to be living with young Grandcourt. 
 
 That he should have disentangled himself from 
 that connection seemed only natural and desir- 
 able. As to her it was thought that a woman 
 who was understood to have forsaken her child 
 along with her husband had probably sunk lower. 
 Grandcourt had of course got weary of her. He 
 was much given to the pursuit of women; but a 
 man in his position would by this time desire to 
 make a suitable marriage with the fair young 
 daughter of a noble house. No one talked of 
 Mrs Glasher now, any more than they talked of 
 the victim in a trial for manslaughter ten years 
 before: she was a lost vessel after whom nobody 
 would send out an expedition of search; but 
 Grandcourt was seen in harbour with his colours 
 flying, registered as seaworthy as ever. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 249 
 
 Yet in fact Grandcourt had never disentangled 
 himself from Mrs Glasher. His passion for her 
 had been the strongest and most lasting he had 
 ever known ; and though it was now as dead as 
 the music of a cracked flute, it had left a certain 
 dull disposedness, which on the death of her hus- 
 band three years before had prompted in him a 
 -vacillating notion of marrying her, in accordance 
 with the understanding often expressed between 
 them during the days of his first ardour. At that 
 early time Grandcourt would willingly have paid 
 for the freedom to be won by a divorce; but the 
 husband would not oblige him, not wanting to be 
 married again himself, and not wishing to have 
 his domestic habits printed in evidence. 
 
 The altered poise which the years had brought 
 in Mrs Glasher was just the reverse. At first she 
 was comparatively careless about the possibility of 
 marriage. It was enough that she had escaped from 
 a disagreeable husband and found a sort of bliss 
 with a lover who had completely fascinated her— 
 young, handsome, amorous, and living in the best 
 style, with equipage and conversation en swite, of the 
 kind to be expected in young men of fortune who 
 have seen everything. She was an impassioned, 
 vivacious woman, fond of adoration, exasperated 
 by five years of marital rudeness; and the sense 
 
250 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 of release was so strong upon her that it stilled 
 anxiety for more than she actually enjoyed. An 
 equivocal position was of no importance to her then; 
 she had no envy for the honours of a dull, disre- 
 garded wife : the one spot which spoiled her vision 
 of her new pleasant world, was the sense that she 
 had left her three-year-old boy, who died two years 
 afterwards, and whose first tones saying “‘ mamma ” 
 retained a difference from those of the children 
 that came after. But now the years had brought 
 many changes besides those in the contour of her 
 cheek and throat; and that Grandcourt should 
 marry her had become her dominant desire. The 
 equivocal position which she had not minded 
 about for herself was now telling upon her through 
 her children, whom she loved with a devotion 
 charged with the added passion of atonement. 
 She had no repentance except in this direction. 
 If Grandcourt married her, the children would be 
 none the worse off for what had passed: they 
 would see their mother in a dignified position, and 
 they would be at no disadvantage with the world: 
 her son would be made his father’s heir. It was 
 the yearning for this result which gave the supreme 
 importance to Grandcourt’s feeling for her; her 
 love for him had long resolved itself into anxiety 
 that he should give her the unique, permanent 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 251 
 
 claim of a wife, and she expected no other hap- 
 piness in marriage than the satisfaction of her 
 maternal love and pride—including her pride for 
 herself in the presence of her children. For the 
 sake of that result she was prepared even with a 
 tragic firmness to endure anything quietly in 
 marriage ; and she had had acuteness enough to 
 cherish Grandcourt’s flickering purpose nega- 
 tively, by not molesting him with passionate 
 appeals and with scene-making. In her, as in 
 every one else who wanted anything of him, his 
 incalculable turns, and his tendency to harden 
 under beseeching, had created a reasonable dread : 
 —a slow discovery, of which no presentiment 
 had been given in the bearing of a youthful lover 
 with a fine line of face and the softest manners. 
 But reticence had necessarily cost something to 
 this impassioned woman, and she was the bitterer 
 for it. There is no quailing—even that forced on 
 the helpless and injured—which has not an ugly 
 obverse: the withheld sting was gathering venom. 
 She was absolutely dependent on Grandcourt; for 
 though he had been always liberal in expenses 
 for her, he had kept everything voluntary on his 
 part; and with the goal of marriage before her 
 she would ask for nothing less. He had said that 
 he would never settle anything except by will; and 
 
252 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 when she was thinking of alternatives for the 
 future it often occurred to her that, even if she did 
 not become Grandcourt’s wife, he might never 
 have a son who would have a legitimate claim on 
 him, and the end might be that her son would 
 be made heir to the best part of his estates. No 
 son at that early age could promise to have more 
 of his father’s physique. But her becoming 
 Grandcourt’s wife was so far from being an extra- 
 vagant notion of possibility, that even Lush had 
 entertained it, and had said that he would as soon 
 bet on it as on any other likelihood with regard 
 to his familiar companion. Lush, indeed, on infer- 
 ring that Grandcourt had a preconception of using 
 his residence at Diplow in order to win Miss 
 Arrowpoint, had thought it well to fan that pro- 
 ject, taking it as a tacit renunciation of the mar- 
 riage with Mrs Glasher, which had long been a 
 mark for the hovering and wheeling of Grand- 
 court's caprice. But both prospects had been 
 negatived by Gwendolen’s appearance on the 
 scene; and it was natural enough for Mrs.Glasher 
 to enter with eagerness into Lush’s plan of hin- 
 dering that new danger by setting up a barrier 
 in the mind of the girl who was being sought as 
 a bride. She entered into it with an eagerness 
 which had passion in it as well as purpose, 
 
BOOK IVY.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 253 
 
 some of the stored-up venom delivering itself in 
 that way. © 
 
 After that, she had heard from Lush of Gwen- 
 dolen’s departure, and the probability that all 
 danger from her was got rid of; but there had 
 been no letter to tell her that the danger had re- 
 turned and had become a certainty. She had 
 since then written to Grandcourt as she did habit- 
 ually, and he had been longer than usual in an- 
 swering. She was inferring that he might intend 
 coming to Gadsmere at the time when he was 
 actually on the way; and she was not without 
 hope—what construction of another’s mind is not 
 strong wishing equal to ?—that a certain sicken- 
 ing from that frustrated courtship might dispose 
 him to slip the more easily into the old track of 
 intention. 
 
 Grandcourt had two grave purposes in coming 
 to Gadsmere : to convey the news of his approach- 
 ing marriage in person, in order to make this first 
 difficulty final ; and to get from Lydia his mother’s 
 diamonds, which long ago he had confided to her 
 and wished her to wear. Her person suited dia- 
 monds and made them look as if they were worth 
 some of the money given for them. These parti- 
 cular diamonds were not mountains of light—they 
 were mere peas and haricots for the ears, neck, and 
 
 VOL, II. R 
 
254 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 hair; but they were worth some thousands, and 
 Grandcourt necessarily wished to have them for his 
 wife. Formerly when he had asked Lydia to put 
 them into his keeping again, simply on the ground 
 that they would be safer and ought to be deposited 
 at the bank, she had quietly but absolutely refused, 
 declaring that they were quite safe; and at last had 
 said, “If you ever marry another woman I will 
 give them up to her: are you going to marry 
 another woman?” At that time Grandcourt had no 
 motive which urged him to persist, and he had 
 this grace in him, that the disposition to exercise 
 power either by cowing or disappointing others or 
 exciting in them a rage which they dared not ex- 
 press—a disposition which was active in him as 
 other propensities became languid—had always 
 been in abeyance before Lydia. A severe inter- 
 preter might say that the mere facts of their rela- 
 tion to each other, the melancholy position of this 
 woman who depended on his will, made a standing 
 banquet for his delight in dominating. But there 
 was something else than this in his forbearance 
 towards her: there was the surviving though 
 metamorphosed effect of the power she had had 
 over him; and it was this effect, the fitful dull © 
 lapse towards solicitations that once had the zest 
 now missing from life, which had again and again 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 255 
 
 inclined him to espouse a familiar past rather than 
 rouse himself to the expectation of novelty. But 
 now novelty had taken hold of him and urged him 
 to make the most of it. 
 
 Mrs Glasher was seated in the pleasant room 
 where she habitually passed her mornings with 
 her children round her. It had a square project- 
 ing window and looked on broad gravel and grass, 
 sloping towards a little brook that entered the pool. 
 The top of a low black cabinet, the old oak table, 
 the chairs in tawny leather, were littered with the 
 children’s toys, books, and garden garments, at 
 which a maternal lady in pastel looked down from 
 the walls with smiling indulgence. The children 
 were all there. The three girls, seated round their 
 mother near the window, were miniature portraits 
 of her—dark-eyed, delicate-featured brunettes with 
 a rich bloom on their cheeks, their little nostrils and 
 eyebrows singularly finished as if they were tiny 
 women, the eldest being barely nine. The boy was 
 seated on the carpet at some distance, bending his 
 blond head over the animals from a Noah’s ark, 
 admonishing them separately in a voice of threat- 
 ening command, and occasionally licking the 
 spotted ones to see if the colours would hold. 
 Josephine, the eldest, was having her French 
 lesson; and the others, with their dolls on their 
 
256 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 laps, sate demurely enough for images of the 
 Madonna. Mrs Glasher’s toilet had been made 
 very carefully—each day now she said to herself 
 that Grandcourt might comein. Her head, which, 
 spite of emaciation, had an ineffaceable beauty in 
 the fine profile, crisp curves of hair, and clearly- 
 marked eyebrows, rose impressively above her 
 bronze-coloured silk and velvet, and the gold neck- 
 lace which Grandcourt had first clasped round 
 her neck years ago. Not that she had any 
 pleasure in her toilet; her chief thought of her- 
 self seen in the glass was, “How changed !”—but 
 such good in life as remained to her she would 
 keep. If her chief wish were fulfilled, she could 
 imagine herself getting the comeliness of a matron 
 fit for the highest rank. The little faces beside 
 her, almost exact reductions of her own, seemed to 
 tell of the blooming curves which had once been 
 where now was sunken pallor. But the children 
 kissed the pale cheeks and never found them de- 
 ficient. That love was now the one end of her 
 life. 
 
 Suddenly Mrs Glasher turned away her head 
 from Josephine’s book and listened. “Hush, 
 dear! I think some one is coming.” 
 
 Henleigh the boy jumped up and said, “Mamma, 
 is it the miller with my donkey 2” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 257 
 
 He got no answer, and going up to his mamma’s 
 knee repeated his question in an insistent tone. 
 But the door opened, and the servant announced 
 Mr Grandcourt. Mrs Glasher rose in some agita- 
 tion. Henleigh frowned at him in disgust at his 
 not being the miller, and the three little girls lifted 
 up their dark eyes to him timidly. They had 
 none of them any particular liking for this friend 
 of mamma’s—in fact, when he had taken Mrs 
 Glasher’s hand and then turned to put his other 
 hand on Henleigh’s head, that energetic scion be- 
 gan to beat the friend’s arm away with his fists. 
 The little girls submitted bashfully to be patted 
 under the chin and kissed, but on the whole it 
 seemed better to send them into the garden, where 
 they were presently dancing and chatting with 
 the dogs on the gravel. 
 
 “How far are you come?” said Mrs Glasher, as 
 Grandcourt put away his hat and overcoat. 
 
 “From Diplow,” he answered slowly, seating 
 himself opposite her and looking at her with an 
 unnoting gaze which she noted. 
 
 “You are tired, then.” 
 
 “No, I rested at the Junction—a hideous hole. 
 These railway journeys are always a confounded 
 bore. But I had coffee and smoked.” 
 
 Grandcourt drew out his handkerchief, rubbed 
 
258 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 his face, and in returning the handkerchief to his 
 pocket looked at his crossed knee and blameless 
 boot, as if any stranger were opposite to him, 
 instead of a woman quivering with a suspense 
 which every word and look of his was to incline 
 towards hope or dread. But he was really occu- 
 pied with their interview and what it was likely 
 to include. Imagine the difference in rate of 
 emotion between this woman whom the years had 
 worn to a more conscious dependence and sharper 
 eagerness, and this man whom they were dulling 
 into a more and more neutral obstinacy. 
 
 “TI expected to see you—it was so long since I 
 had heard from you. I suppose the weeks seem 
 longer at Gadsmere than they do at Diplow,” said 
 Mrs Glasher. She had a quick, incisive way of 
 speaking that seemed to go with her features, as 
 the tone and timbre of a violin go with its form. 
 
 “Yes,” drawled Grandcourt. “But you found 
 the money paid into the bank.” 
 
 “Oh yes,” said Mrs Glasher, curtly, tingling with 
 impatience. Always before—at least she fancied. 
 so—Grandcourt had taken more notice of her and 
 the children than he did to-day. 
 
 “Yes,” he resumed, playing with his whisker, 
 and at first not looking at her, “the time has gone 
 on at rather a rattling pace with me; generally it 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 259 
 
 is slow enough. But there has been a,.good deal 
 happening, as you know ”—here he turned his eyes 
 upon her, 
 
 “What do I know?” said she, sharply. 
 
 He left a pause before he said, without change 
 of manner, “That I was thinking of marrying. 
 You saw Miss Harleth ?” 
 
 “ She told you that?” 
 
 The pale cheeks looked even paler, perhaps from 
 the fierce brightness in the eyes above them. 
 
 “No. Lush told me,’ was the slow answer. It 
 was as if the thumb-screw and the iron-boot were 
 being placed by creeping hands within sight of the 
 expectant victim. 
 
 “Good God! say at once that you are going to 
 marry her,” she burst out passionately, her knee 
 shaking and her hands tightly clasped. 
 
 “Of course, this kind of thing must happen 
 some time or other, Lydia,” said he; really, now 
 the thumb-screw was on, not wishing to make the 
 pain worse. 
 
 “You didn’t always see the necessity.” 
 
 “Perhaps not. I see it now.” 
 
 In those few undertoned words of Grandcourt’s 
 she felt as absolute a resistance as if her thin 
 fingers had been pushing at a fast-shut iron door, 
 She knew her helplessness, and shrank from test- 
 
260 DANIEL DERONDA. ~ 
 
 ing it by any appeal—shrank from crying in a dead 
 ear and clinging to dead knees, only to see the 
 immovable face and feel the rigid limbs. She did 
 not weep nor speak: she was too hard pressed by 
 the sudden certainty which had as much of chill 
 sickness in it as of thought and emotion. The 
 defeated clutch of struggling hope gave her in 
 these first moments a horrible sensation. At last 
 she rose with a spasmodic effort, and, unconscious 
 of everything but her wretchedness, pressed her 
 forehead against the hard cold glass of the win- 
 dow. The children, playing on the gravel, took 
 this as a sign that she wanted them, and running 
 forward stood in front of her with their sweet faces 
 upturned expectantly. This roused her: she shook 
 her head at them, waved them off, and overcome 
 with this painful exertion sank back in the nearest 
 chair. hoe oe ee 
 Grandecourt had risen too. He was doubly 
 annoyed—at the scene itself, and at the sense 
 that no imperiousness of his could save him from 
 it; but the task had to be gone through, and 
 there was the administrative necessity of arrang- 
 ing things so that there should be as little annoy- 
 ance as possible in future. He was leaning against 
 the corner of the fireplace. She looked up at him 
 and said bitterly— 
 
 “ All this is of no consequence to you. I and 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 261 
 
 the children are importunate creatures. You wish 
 to get away again and be with Miss Harleth.” 
 
 “Don’t make the affair more disagreeable than it 
 need be, Lydia. It is of no use to harp on things 
 that can’t be altered: Of course it’s deucedly dis- 
 agreeable to me to see you making yourself miser- 
 able. Tve taken this journey to tell you what 
 you must make up your mind to ;—you and the 
 children will be provided for as usual ;— and 
 there’s an end of it.” 
 
 Silence. She dared not answer. This woman 
 with the intense eager look had had the iron of 
 the mother’s anguish in her soul, and it had made 
 her sometimes capable of a repression harder than 
 shrieking and struggle. But underneath the silence 
 there was an outlash of hatred and vindictiveness : 
 she wished that the marriage might make two 
 others wretched, besides herself. Presently he 
 went on. 
 
 “Tt will be better for you. You may go on 
 living here. But I think of by-and-by settling a 
 good sum on you and the children, and you can 
 live where you like. There will be nothing for 
 you to complain of then. Whatever happens, you 
 will feel secure. Nothing could be done before- 
 hand. Everything has gone on in a hurry.” 
 
 Grandcourt ceased his slow delivery of sen- 
 tences. He did not expect her to thank him, but 
 
262 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 he considered that she might reasonably be con- 
 tented ; if it were possible for Lydia to be con- 
 tented. She showed no change, and after a minute 
 he said— 
 
 “You have never had any reason to fear that I 
 should be illiberal. I don’t care a curse about the 
 money.” 
 
 “Tf you did care about it, I suppose you would 
 not give it us,” said Lydia. The sarcasm was irre- 
 pressible. 
 
 “That's a devilishly unfair thing to say,” 
 Grandcourt replied, in a lower tone; “and I 
 advise you not to say that sort. of thing again.” 
 
 “Should you punish me by leaving the children 
 in beggary?” In spite of herself, the one outlet 
 of venom had brought the other. 
 
 “There is no question about leaving the children 
 in beggary,’ said Grandcourt, still in his low voice. 
 “T advise you not to say things that you will 
 repent of.” 
 
 “TI am used to repenting,” said she, bitterly. 
 “Perhaps yow will repent. You have already 
 repented of loving me.” 
 
 “ All this will only make it uncommonly diffi- © 
 cult for us to meet again. What friend have you 
 besides me ?” 
 
 “ Quite true.” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 263 
 
 The words came like a low moan. At the same 
 moment there flashed through her the wish that 
 after promising himself a better happiness. than 
 that he had had with her, he might feel a misery 
 and loneliness which would drive him back to 
 her to find some memory of a time when he was 
 young, glad, and hopeful. But no! he would go 
 scathless ; it was she who had to suffer. 
 
 With this the scorching words were ended. 
 Grandcourt had meant to stay till evening; he 
 wished to curtail his visit, but there was no suit- 
 able train earlier than the one he had arranged to 
 go by, and he had still to speak to Lydia on the 
 second object of his visit, which like a second sur- 
 gical operation seemed to require an interval. The 
 hours had to go by ; there was eating to be done ; 
 the children came in again—all this mechanism of 
 life had to be gone through with the dreary sense 
 of constraint which is often felt in domestic quar- 
 -rels of a commoner kind. To Lydia it was some 
 slight relief for her stifled fury to have the chil- 
 dren present: she felt a savage glory in their 
 loveliness, as if it would taunt Grandcourt with 
 his indifference to her and them—a secret darting 
 of venom which was strongly imaginative. * He 
 acquitted himself with all the advantage of a man 
 whose grace of bearing has long been moulded on 
 
264 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 an experience of boredom—unursed the little An- 
 tonia, who sat with her hands crossed and eyes 
 upturned to his bald head, which struck her as 
 worthy of observation—and propitiated Henleigh 
 by promising him a beautiful saddle and bridle. 
 It was only the two eldest girls who had known 
 him as a continual presence ; and the intervening 
 years had overlaid their infantine memories with 
 a bashfulness which Grandcourt’s bearing was not 
 likely to dissipate. He and Lydia occasionally, in 
 the presence of the servants, made a conventional 
 remark; otherwise they never spoke; and the stag- 
 nant thought in Grandcourt’s mind all the while 
 was of his own infatuation in having given her 
 those diamonds, which obliged him to incur the 
 nuisance of speaking about them. He had an 
 ingrained care for what he held to belong to his 
 caste, and about property he liked to be lordly; 
 also he had a consciousness of indignity to him- 
 self in having to ask for anything in the world. 
 But however he might assert his independence of 
 Mrs Glasher’s past, he had made a past for himself 
 which was a stronger yoke than any he could im- 
 pose. He must ask for the diamonds which he 
 had promised to Gwendolen. 
 
 At last they were alone again, with the candles 
 above them, face to face with each other. Grand- 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 265 
 
 court looked at his watch, and then said, in an 
 apparently indifferent drawl, “There is one thing 
 I had to mention, Lydia. My diamonds—you 
 have them.” 
 
 “Ves, I have them,” she answered promptly, 
 rising, and standing with her arms thrust down 
 and her fingers threaded, while Grandcourt sat 
 still. She had expected the topic, and made her 
 resolve about it. But she meant to carry out her 
 resolve, if possible, without exasperating him. 
 During the hours of silence she had longed to 
 recall the words which had only widened the 
 breach between them. 
 
 “ They are in this house, I suppose? ’ 
 
 “No; not in this house.” 
 
 “T thought you said you kept them by you.” 
 
 “When I said so it was true. They are in the 
 bank at Dudley.” 
 
 “Get them away, will you? I must make an 
 arrangement for your delivering them to some one.” 
 
 “Make no arrangement. They shall be deliv- 
 ered to the person you intended them for. JZ will 
 make the arrangement.” 
 
 “What do you mean?” 
 
 “What I say. I have always told you that I 
 would give them up to your wife. I shall keep 
 my word, She is not your wife yet.” 
 
 Se 
 
266 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “This is foolery,” said Grandcourt, with un- 
 dertoned disgust. It was too irritating that his 
 indulgence of Lydia had given her a sort of 
 mastery over him in spite of her dependent con- 
 dition. 
 
 She did not speak. He also rose now, but 
 stood leaning against the mantelpiece with his 
 side-face towards her. 
 
 “The diamonds must be delivered to me before 
 my marriage,” he began again. 
 
 “What is your wedding-day ?” 
 
 “The tenth. There is no time to be lost.” 
 
 “ And where do you go after the marriage ?” 
 
 He did not reply except by looking more sul- 
 len. Presently he said, “ You must appoint a day 
 before then, to get them from the bank and meet 
 me—or somebody else I will commission :—it’s 
 a great nuisance. Mention a day.” 
 
 “No; I shall not do that. They shall be deliv- 
 ered to her safely. I shall keep my word.” 
 
 “Do you mean to say,” said Grandcourt, just 
 audibly, turning to face her, “that you will not do 
 as I tell you?” 
 
 “Yes, I mean that,” was the answer that leaped 
 out, while her eyes flashed close to him. The poor 
 creature was immediately conscious that if her 
 words had any effect on her own lot, the effect 
 
 % 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 267 
 
 must be mischievous, and might nullify all the 
 remaining advantage of her long patience. But 
 the word had been spoken. 
 
 He was in a position the most irritating to him. 
 He could not shake her nor touch her hostilely ; 
 and if he could, the process would not bring the 
 diamonds. He shrank from the only sort of threat 
 that would frighten her—if she believed it. And 
 in general, there was nothing he hated more than 
 to be forced into anything like violence even in 
 words: his will must impose itself without trouble. 
 After looking at her for a moment, he turned his 
 side-face towards her again, leaning as before, 
 and said— 
 
 “Tnfernal idiots that women are !” 
 
 “Why will you not tell me where you are going 
 after the marriage? I could’be at the wedding if 
 I liked, and learn in that way,” said Lydia, not 
 shrinking from the one suicidal form of threat 
 within her power. 
 
 “Of course, if you like, you can play the mad 
 woman,” said Grandcourt, with sotto voce scorn. 
 “Tt is not to be supposed that you will wait to 
 think what good will come of it—or what you owe 
 to me.” 
 
 He was in a state of disgust and embitterment 
 quite new in the history of their relation to each 
 
268 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 other. It was undeniable that this woman whose 
 life he had allowed to send such ‘deep suckers 
 into his had a terrible power of annoyance in her ; 
 and the rash hurry of his proceedings had left her 
 opportunities open. His pride saw very ugly pos- 
 sibilities threatening it, and he stood for several 
 minutes in silence reviewing the situation—con- 
 sidering how he could act upon her. Unlike him- 
 self she was of a direct nature, with certain simple 
 strongly-coloured tendencies, and there was one 
 often-experienced effect which he thought he 
 could count upon now. As Sir Hugo had said 
 of him, Grandcourt knew how to play his cards 
 upon occasion. 
 
 He did not speak again, but looked at his 
 watch, rang the bell, and ordered the vehicle to 
 be brought round immediately. Then he removed 
 farther from her, walked as if in expectation of a 
 summons, and remained silent without turning his 
 eyes upon her. 
 
 She was suffering the horrible conflict of self- 
 reproach and tenacity. She saw beforehand 
 Grandcourt leaving her without even looking at 
 her again—herself left behind in lonely uncer- 
 tainty—hearing nothing from him—not knowing - 
 whether she had done her children harm—feeling 
 that she had perhaps made him hate her :—all the 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 269 
 
 wretchedness of a creature who had defeated her 
 own motives. And yet she could not bear to give 
 up a purpose which was a sweet morsel to her 
 vindictiveness. If she had not been a mother she 
 would willingly have sacrificed herself to her re- 
 venge—to what she felt to be the justice of hinder- 
 ing another from getting happiness by willingly 
 giving her over to misery. The two dominant 
 passions were at struggle. She must satisfy them 
 both. 
 
 “Don’t let us part in anger, Henleigh,” she be- 
 gan, without changing her place or attitude: “it 
 is a very little thing I ask. If I were refusing to 
 give anything up that you call yours, it would 
 be different: that would be a reason for treating 
 me as if you hated-me. But I ask such a little 
 thing. If you will tell me where you are going 
 on the wedding-day, I will take care that the 
 diamonds shall be delivered to her without 
 scandal. Without scandal,” she repeated en- 
 treatingly. 
 
 “Such preposterous whims make a woman 
 odious,” said Grandcourt, not giving way in look 
 or movement. “What is the use of talking to 
 mad people?” 
 
 “Yes, I am foolish—loneliness has made me 
 
 foolish—indulge me.” Sobs rose as she spoke, 
 VOL, II. S 
 
270 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “Tf you will indulge me in this one folly, I will 
 be very meek—I will never trouble you.” She 
 burst into hysterical crying, and said again almost 
 with a scream—“I will be very meek after that.” 
 
 There was a strange mixture of acting and 
 reality in this passion. She kept hold of her 
 purpose as a child might tighten its hand over a 
 small stolen thing, crying and denying all the 
 while. Even Grandcourt was wrought upon by 
 surprise: this capricious wish, this childish vio- 
 lence, was as unlike Lydia’s bearing as it was in- 
 congruous with her person. Both had always had 
 a stamp of dignity on them. Yet she seemed 
 more manageable in this state than in her former 
 attitude of defiance. He came close up to her 
 again, and said, in his low imperious tone, “Be 
 quiet, and hear what I tell you. I will never for- 
 give you if you present yourself again and make a 
 scene,” 
 
 She pressed her handkerchief against her face, 
 and when she could speak firmly said, in the 
 muffled voice that follows sobbing, “I will not— 
 if you will let me have my way—I promise you 
 not to thrust myself forward again. I have never 
 broken my word to you—how many have you 
 broken to me? When you gave me the diamonds 
 to wear, you were not thinking of having another 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 271 
 
 wife. And I now give them up—I don’t reproach 
 you—lI only ask you to let me give them up inmy 
 own way. Have I not borne it well? Everything is 
 to be taken away from me, and when I ask for a 
 straw, a chip—you deny it me.” She had spoken 
 rapidly, but after a little pause she said more 
 slowly, her voice freed from its muffled tone: “I 
 will not bear to have it denied me.” 
 
 Grandcourt had a baffling sense that he had to 
 deal with something like madness; he could only 
 govern by giving way. The servant came to say 
 the fly was ready. When the door was shut 
 again, Grandcourt said, sullenly, “We are going 
 to Ryelands, then.” 
 
 “They shall be delivered to her there,” said 
 Lydia, with decision. 
 
 “Very well, I am going.” He felt no inclina- 
 tion even to take her hand: she had annoyed 
 him too sorely. But now that she had gained her 
 point, she was prepared to humble herself that she 
 might propitiate him. 
 
 “Forgive me; I will never vex you again,” she 
 said, with beseeching looks. Her inward voice 
 said distinctly—‘ It is only I who have to forgive.’ 
 Yet she was obliged to ask forgiveness. 
 
 “You had better keep that promise. You have 
 made me feel uncommonly ill with your folly,” 
 
272 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 said Grandcourt, apparently choosing this state- 
 ment as the strongest possible use of language. 
 
 “Poor thing!” said Lydia, with a faint smile :— 
 was he aware of the minor fact that he had made 
 her feel ill this morning ? 
 
 But with the quick transition natural to her, 
 she was now ready to coax him if he would let 
 her, that they might part in some degree recon- 
 ciled. She ventured to lay her hand on his 
 shoulder, and he did not move away from her: 
 she had so far succeeded in alarming him, that 
 he was not sorry for these proofs of returned 
 subjection. 
 
 “Light a cigar,” she said, soothingly, taking the 
 case from his breast-pocket and opening it. 
 
 Amidst such caressing signs of mutual fear they 
 parted. The effect that clung and gnawed within 
 Grandcourt was a sense of imperfect mastery. 
 
273 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 **A wild dedication of yourselves 
 To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores.” 
 —SHAKESPLARE. 
 
 On the day when Gwendolen Harleth was married 
 and became Mrs Grandcourt, the morning was 
 clear and bright, and while the sun was low a 
 slight frost crisped the leaves. The bridal party 
 was worth seeing, and half Pennicote turned out 
 to see it, lining the pathway up to the church. 
 An old friend of the Rector’s performed the mar- 
 riage ceremony, the Rector himself acting as 
 father, to the great advantage of the procession. 
 Only two faces, it was remarked, showed signs of 
 sadness—Mrs Davilow’s and Anna’s. The mother’s 
 delicate eyelids were pink, as if she had been cry- 
 ing half the night ; and no one was surprised that, 
 splendid as the match was, she should feel the 
 parting from a daughter who was the flower of 
 her’children and of her own life. It was less un- 
 
274 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 derstood why Anna should be troubled when she 
 was being so well set off by the bridesmaid’s dress. 
 Every one else seemed to reflect the brilliancy of 
 the occasion—the bride most of all. Of her it 
 was agreed that as to figure and carriage she was 
 worthy to be a “lady o’ title:” as to face, perhaps 
 it might be thought that a title required some- 
 thing more rosy ; but the bridegroom himself not 
 being fresh-coloured—being indeed, as the miller’s 
 wife observed, very much of her own husband’s 
 complexion—the match was the more complete. 
 Anyhow he must be very fond of her; and it was 
 to be hoped that he would never cast it up to her 
 that she had been going out to service as a gover- 
 ness, and her mother to live at Sawyer’s Cottage 
 —vicissitudes which had been much spoken of in 
 the village. The miller’s daughter of fourteen 
 could not believe that high gentry behaved badly 
 to their wives, but her mother instructed her— 
 “Oh, child, men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re 
 much of a muchness. I’ve heard my mother say 
 Squire Pelton used to take his dogs and a long 
 whip into his wife’s room, and flog ’em there to 
 frighten her; and my mother was lady’s-maid | 
 there at the very time.” 
 
 “That's unlucky talk for a wedding, Mrs 
 Girdle,” said the tailor. “A quarrel may end 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 275 
 
 wi the whip, but it begins wi’ the tongue, and 
 it’s the women have got the most o’ that.” 
 
 “The Lord gave it ’em to use, I suppose,” said 
 Mrs Girdle ; “He never meant you to have it all 
 your own way.” 
 
 “By what I can make out from the gentleman 
 as attends to the grooming at Offendene,” said the 
 tailor, “this Mr Grandcourt has wonderful little 
 tongue. Everything must be done dummy-like 
 without his ordering.” 
 
 “Then he’s the more whip, I doubt,” said Mrs 
 Girdle. “She's got tongue enough, I warrant 
 her. See, there they come out together!” 
 
 “What wonderful long corners she’s got to her 
 eyes!” said the tailor. ‘She makes you feel comi- 
 cal when she looks at you.” 
 
 Gwendolen, in fact, never showed more elasti- 
 city in her bearing, more lustre in her long brown 
 glance: she had the brilliancy of strong excite- 
 ment, which will sometimes come even from pain. 
 It was not pain, however, that she was feeling: 
 she had wrought herself up to much the same 
 condition as that in which she stood at the gam- 
 bling-table when Deronda was looking at her, and 
 she began to lose. There was enjoyment in it: 
 whatever uneasiness a growing conscience had 
 created, was disregarded as an ailment might 
 
276 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 have been, amidst the gratification of that ambi- 
 tious vanity and desire for luxury within her 
 which it would take a great deal of slow poison- 
 ing to kill. This morning she could not have 
 said truly that she repented her acceptance of 
 Grandcourt, or that any fears in hazy perspective 
 could hinder the glowing effects of the immediate 
 scene in which she was the central object. That 
 she was doing something wrong—that a punish- 
 ment might be hanging over her—that the woman 
 to whom she had given a promise and broken it, was 
 thinking of her in bitterness and misery with a 
 just reproach—that Deronda with his way of look- 
 ing into things very likely despised her for marry- 
 ing Grandcourt, as he had despised her for gam- 
 bling—above all, that the cord which united her 
 with this lover and which she had hitherto held 
 by the hand, was now being flung over her neck,— 
 all this yeasty mingling of dimly understood facts 
 with vague but deep impressions, and with images 
 half real, half fantastic, had been disturbing her 
 during the weeks of her engagement. Was that 
 agitating experience nullified this morning? No: 
 it was surmounted and thrust down with a sort 
 of exulting defiance as she felt herself standing 
 at the game of life with many eyes upon her, 
 daring everything to win much—or if to lose, 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 277 
 
 still with éclat and a sense of importance. But 
 this morning a losing destiny for herself did not 
 press upon her as a fear: she thought that she 
 was entering on a fuller power of managing circum- 
 stance—with all the official strength of marriage, 
 which some women made so poor a use of. That 
 intoxication of youthful egoism out of which she 
 had been shaken by trouble, humiliation, and a new 
 sense of culpability, had returned upon her under 
 the newly-fed strength of the old fumes. She did 
 not in the least present the ideal of the tearful, 
 tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some 
 had judged much too forward and instructed in 
 the world’s ways !—with her erect head and elas- 
 tic footstep she was walking amid illusions; and 
 yet, too, there was an under-consciousness in her 
 that she was a little intoxicated. 
 
 “Thank God you bear it so well, my darling!” 
 said Mrs Davilow, when she had helped Gwendo- 
 len to doff her bridal white and put on her travel- 
 ling dress. All the trembling had been done by the 
 poor mother, and her agitation urged Gwendolen 
 doubly to take the morning as if it were a triumph. 
 
 “Why, you might have said that, if I had been 
 going to Mrs Mompert’s, you dear, sad, incorrigible 
 mamma!” said Gwendolen, just putting her hands 
 to her mother’s cheeks with laughing tenderness— 
 
278 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 then retreating a little and spreading out her arms 
 as if to exhibit herself. “Here am I—Mrs Grand- 
 court! what else would you have me, but what I 
 am sure to be? You know you were ready to die 
 with vexation when you thought that I would not 
 be Mrs Grandcourt.” 
 
 “ Hush, hush, my child, for heaven’s sake!” said 
 Mrs Davilow, almost ina whisper. “How can I 
 help feeling it when I am parting from you? But 
 I can bear anything gladly if you are happy.” 
 
 “Not gladly, mamma, no!” said Gwendolen, 
 shaking her head, with a bright smile. “ Willing- 
 ly you would bear it, but always sorrowfully. 
 Sorrowing is your sauce; you can take nothing 
 without it.” Then, clasping her mother’s shoulders 
 and raining kisses first on one cheek and then on 
 the other between her words, she said, gaily, “And 
 you shall sorrow over my having everything at 
 my beck—and enjoying everything gloriously— 
 splendid houses—and horses—and diamonds, I 
 shall have diamonds—and going to court—and 
 being Lady Certainly—and Lady Perhaps—and 
 grand here—and tantivy there—and always lov- 
 ing you better than anybody else in the world.” 
 
 “My sweet child!—But I shall not be jealous 
 if you love your husband better; and he will 
 expect to be first.” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 279 
 
 Gwendolen thrust out her lips and chin with 
 a pretty grimace, saying, “Rather a ridiculous 
 expectation. However, I don’t mean to treat 
 him ill, unless he deserves it.” 
 
 Then the two fell into a clinging embrace, and 
 Gwendolen could not hinder a rising sob when she 
 said, “I wish you were going with me, mamma.” 
 
 But the slight dew on her long eyelashes only 
 made her the more charming when she gave her 
 hand to Grandcourt to be led to the carriage. 
 
 The Rector looked in on her to give a final 
 “Good-bye; God bless you; we shall see you 
 again before long,” and then returned to Mrs 
 Davilow saying half cheerfully, half solemnly— 
 
 “Let us be thankful, Fanny. She is in a posi- 
 tion well suited to her, and beyond what I should 
 have dared to hope for. And few women can 
 have been chosen more entirely for their own 
 sake. You should feel yourself a happy mother.” 
 
 There was a railway journey of some fifty miles 
 before the new husband and wife reached the 
 station near Ryelands. The sky had veiled itself 
 since the morning, and it was hardly more than 
 twilight when they entered the park-gates, but 
 still Gwendolen, looking out of the carriage-win- 
 dow as they drove rapidly along, could see the 
 
280 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 grand outlines and the nearer beauties of the scene 
 —the long winding drive bordered with evergreens 
 backed by huge grey stems; then the opening of 
 wide grassy spaces and undulations studded with 
 dark clumps ; till at last came a wide level where 
 the white house could be seen, with a hanging 
 wood for a background, and the rising and sinking 
 balustrade of a terrace in front. 
 
 Gwendolen had been at her liveliest during the 
 journey, chatting incessantly, ignoring any change 
 in their mutual position since yesterday; and 
 Grandcourt had been rather ecstatically quiescent, 
 while she turned his gentle seizure of her hand 
 into a grasp of his hand by both hers, with an 
 increased vivacity as of a kitten that will not sit 
 quiet to be petted. She was really getting some- 
 what febrile in her excitement; and now in this 
 drive through the park her usual susceptibility to 
 changes of light and scenery helped to make her 
 heart palpitate newly. Was it at the novelty 
 simply, or the almost incredible fulfilment about 
 to be given to her girlish dreams of being “some- 
 body ”—walking through her own furlong of corri- 
 dors and under her own ceilings of an out-of-sight 
 loftiness, where her own painted Spring was shed- 
 ding painted flowers, and her own foreshortened 
 Zephyrs were blowing their trumpets over her; 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 281 
 
 while her own servants, lackeys in clothing but 
 men in bulk and shape, were as nought in her pre- 
 sence, and revered the propriety of her insolence 
 to them:—being in short the heroine of an admired 
 play without the pains of art? Was it alone the 
 closeness of this fulfilment which made her heart 
 flutter? or was it some dim forecast, the insist- 
 ent penetration of suppressed experience, mixing 
 the expectation of a triumph with the dread of 
 a crisis? Hers was one of the natures in which 
 exultation inevitably carries an infusion of dread 
 ready to curdle and declare itself. 
 
 She fell silent in spite of herself as they ap- 
 proached the gates, and when her husband said, 
 “Here we are at home!” and for the first. time 
 kissed her on the lips, she hardly knew of it: 
 it was no more than the passive acceptance of a 
 greeting in the midst of an absorbing show. Was 
 not all her hurrying life of the last three months a 
 show, in which her consciousness was a wondering 
 spectator? After the half-wilful excitement of the 
 day, a numbness had come over her personality. 
 
 But there was a brilliant light in the hall— 
 warmth, matting, carpets, full-length portraits, 
 Olympian statues, assiduous servants. Not many 
 servants, however: only a few from Diplow in 
 addition to those constantly in charge of the house ; 
 
282 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and Gwendolen’s new maid, who had come with 
 her, was taken under guidance by the housekeeper. 
 Gwendolen felt herself being led by Grandcourt 
 along a subtly-scented corridor, then into an ante- 
 room where she saw an open doorway sending out 
 a rich glow of light and colour. 
 
 «These are our dens,” said Grandcourt. “You 
 will like to be quiet here till dinner. We shall 
 dine early.” 
 
 He pressed her hand to his lips and moved away, 
 more in love than he had ever expected to be. 
 
 Gwendolen, yielding up her hat and mantle, 
 threw herself into a chair by the glowing hearth, 
 and saw herself repeated in glass panels with all 
 her faint-green satin surroundings. The house- 
 keeper bad passed into this boudoir from the ad- 
 joining dressing-room and seemed disposed to 
 linger, Gwendolen thought, in order to look at the 
 new mistress of Ryelands, who however, being im- 
 patient for solitude, said to her, “Will you tell 
 Hudson when she has put out my dress to leave 
 everything? I shall not want her again, unless I 
 ring.” 
 
 The housekeeper, coming forward, said, “ Here 
 is a packet, madam, which I was ordered to give 
 into nobody’s hands but yours, when you were 
 alone. The person who brought it said it was a 
 present particularly ordered by Mr Grandcourt ; 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 283 
 
 but he was not to know of its arrival till he saw 
 you wear it. Excuse me, madam; I felt it right 
 to obey orders.” 
 
 Gwendolen took the packet and let it lie on her 
 lap till she heard the doors close. It came into 
 her mind that the packet might contain the 
 diamonds which Grandcourt had spoken of as 
 being deposited somewhere and to be given to her 
 on her marriage. Inthis moment of confused feel- 
 ing and creeping luxurious languor she was glad 
 of this diversion—glad of such an event as having 
 her own diamonds to try on. 
 
 Within all the sealed paper coverings was a box, 
 but within the box there was a jewel-case; and 
 now she felt no doubt that she had the diamonds. 
 But on opening the case, in the same instant that 
 she saw their gleam she saw a letter lying above 
 them. She knew the handwriting of the address. 
 It was as if an adder had lain onthem. Her heart 
 gave a leap which seemed to have spent all her 
 strength ; and as she opened the bit of thin paper, 
 it shook with the trembling of her hands. But it 
 was legible as print, and thrust its words upon her. 
 
 “These diamonds, which were once given with 
 ardent love to Lydia Glasher, she passes on to you. 
 You have broken your word to her, that you might 
 possess what washers. Perhaps you think of being 
 
284 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 happy, as she once was, and of having beautiful 
 children such as hers, who will thrust hers aside. 
 God is too just for that. The man you have married 
 has a withered heart. His best young love was 
 mine; you could not take that from me when you 
 took the rest. It is dead; but I am the grave in 
 which your chance of happiness is buried as well 
 as mine. You had your warming. You have 
 chosen to injure me and my children. He had 
 meant to marry me. He would have married me 
 at last, if you had not broken your word. You 
 will have your punishment. I desire it with all 
 my soul. 
 
 “ Will you give him this letter to set him against 
 me and ruin us more—me and my children? Shall 
 you like to stand before your husband with these 
 diamonds on you, and these words of mine in his 
 thoughts and yours? Will he think you have any 
 right to complain when he has made you miser- 
 able? You took him with your eyes open. The 
 willing wrong you have done me will be your 
 curse.” 
 
 It seemed at first as if Gwendolen’s eyes were 
 spell-bound in reading the horrible words of the 
 letter over and over again as a doom of penance; 
 but suddenly a new spasm of terror made her lean 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 28 
 
 “forward and stretch out the paper towards the fire, 
 lest accusation and proof at once should meet all 
 eyes. It flew like a feather from her trembling 
 fingers and was caught up in the great draught of 
 flame. In her movement the casket fell on the 
 floor and the diamonds rolled out. She took no no- 
 tice, but fell back in her chair again helpless. She 
 could not see the reflections of herself then: they 
 were like so many women petrified white; but com- 
 ing near herself you might have seen the tremor 
 in her lipsand hands. She sat so for a long while, 
 knowing little more than that she was feeling ill, 
 and that those written words kept repeating them- 
 selves in her. 
 
 Truly here were poisoned gems, and the poison 
 had entered into this poor young creature. 
 
 After that long while, there was a tap at the 
 door and Grandcourt entered, dressed for dinner. 
 The sight of him brought a new nervous shock, 
 and Gwendolen screamed again and again with 
 hysterical violence. He had expected to see her 
 dressed and smiling, ready to be led down. He 
 saw her pallid, shrieking as it seemed with terror, 
 the jewels scattered around heron the floor. Was 
 it a fit of madness ? 
 
 In some form or other the Furies had crossed 
 his threshold. 
 
 VOL. II. T 
 
286 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 In all ages it hath been a favourite text that a potent love hath the na- 
 ture of an isolated fatality, whereto the mind’s opinions and wonted resolves 
 are altogether alien; as, for example, Daphnis his frenzy, wherein it had 
 little availed him to have been convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine ; or the 
 philtre-bred passion of Tristan, who, though he had been as deep as Duns 
 Scotus, would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or 
 Romeo in his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections he might 
 have held against Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under 
 the baleony. Yet all love is not such, even though potent; nay, this pas- 
 sion hath as large scope as any for allying itself with every operation of the 
 soul: so that it shall acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of 
 nnproven firmaments, and have its scale set to the grander orbits of what 
 hath been and shall be. 
 
 DERONDA, on his return to town, could assure Sir 
 Hugo of his having lodged in Grandcourt’s mind 
 a distinct understanding that he could get fifty 
 thousand pounds by giving up a prospect which 
 was probably distant, and not absolutely certain ; 
 put he had no further sign of Grandcourt’s dispo- 
 sition in the matter than that he was evidently 
 inclined to keep up friendly communications. 
 
 « And what did you think of the future bride - 
 on a nearer survey ?” said Sir Hugo. 
 
 “TI thought better of her than I did at Leubronn. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 287 
 
 ~ Roulette was not a good setting for her; it brought 
 out something of the demon. At Diplow she 
 seemed much more womanly and attractive—less 
 hard and self-possessed. I thought her mouth 
 and eyes had quite a different expression.” 
 
 “Don’t flirt with her too much, Dan,” said Sir 
 Hugo, meaning to be agreeably playful. “Ifyou 
 make Grandcourt savage when they come to the 
 Abbey at Christmas, it will interfere with my 
 affairs.” 
 
 “T can stay in town, sir.” 
 
 “No, no. Lady Mallinger and the children 
 can’t do without you at Christmas. Only don’t 
 make mischief—unless you can get up a duel, 
 and manage to shoot Grandcourt, which might be 
 worth a little inconvenience.” 
 
 “TI don’t think you ever saw me flirt,” said 
 Deronda, not amused. 
 
 “Oh, haven’t I, though?” said Sir Hugo, pro- 
 vokingly. ‘You are always looking tenderly at 
 the women, and talking to them in a Jesuitical 
 way. You are a dangerous young fellow—a kind 
 of Lovelace who will make the Clarissas run after 
 you instead of your running after them.” 
 
 What was the use of being exasperated at a 
 tasteless joke?—only the exasperation comes be- 
 fore the reflection on utility. Few friendly re- 
 
288 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 marks are more annoying than the information 
 that we are always seeming to do what we never 
 mean to do. Sir Hugo’s notion of flirting, it was 
 to be hoped, was rather peculiar; for his own 
 part, Deronda was sure that he had never flirted. 
 But he was glad that the baronet had no know- 
 ledge about the redemption of Gwendolen’s 
 necklace to feed his taste for this kind of 
 rallying. 
 
 He would be on his guard in future; for ex- 
 ample, in his behaviour at Mrs Meyrick’s, where 
 he was about to pay his first visit since his arrival 
 from Leubronn. For Mirah was certainly a crea- 
 ture in whom it was difficult not to show a tender 
 kind of interest both by looks and speech. 
 
 Mrs Meyrick had not failed to send Deronda a 
 report of Mirah’s wellbeing in her family. “We 
 are getting fonder of her every day,” she had writ- 
 ten. “ At breakfast-time we all look towards the 
 door with expectation to see her come in; and we 
 watch her and listen to her as if she were a native 
 from a new country. I have not heard a word 
 from her lips that gives me a doubt about her. 
 
 She is quite contented and full of gratitude. My 
 
 daughters are learning from her, and they hope to 
 get her other pupils; for she is anxious not to eat 
 the bread of idleness, but to work, like my girls. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 289 
 
 ~ Mab says our life has become like a fairy tale, 
 and all she is afraid of is that Mirah will turn 
 into a nightingale again and fly away from us. 
 Her voice is just perfect: not loud and strong, 
 but searching and melting, like the thoughts of 
 what has been. That is the way old people like 
 me feel a beautiful voice.” 
 
 But Mrs Meyrick did not enter into particulars 
 which would have required her to say that Amy 
 and Mab, who had accompanied Mirah to the 
 synagogue, found the Jewish faith less reconcil- 
 able with their wishes in her case than in that of 
 Scott’s Rebecca. They kept silence out of deli- 
 cacy to Mirah, with whom her religion was too 
 tender a subject to be touched lightly ; but after 
 a while, Amy, who was much of a practical re- 
 former, could not restrain a question. 
 
 “Excuse me, Mirah, but does it seem quite 
 right to you that the women should sit behind 
 rails in a gallery apart?” 
 
 “Yes, I never thought of anything else,” said 
 Mirah, with mild surprise. 
 
 “ And you like better to see the men with their 
 hats on?” said Mab, cautiously proposing the 
 smallest item of difference. 
 
 “Oh yes. I like what I have always seen 
 there, because it brings back to me the same feel- 
 
290 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ings—the feelings I would not part with for any- 
 thing else in the world.” 
 
 After this, any criticism, whether of doctrine or 
 of practice, would have seemed to these generous 
 little people an inhospitable cruelty. Mirah’s 
 religion was of one fibre with her affections, and 
 had never presented itself to her as a set of pro- 
 positions. 
 
 “She says herself she is a very bad Jewess, and 
 does not half know her people’s religion,” said 
 Amy, when Mirah was gone to bed. “Perhaps 
 it would gradually melt away from her, and she 
 would pass into Christianity like the rest of the 
 world, if she got to love us very much, and never 
 found her mother. It is so strange to be of the 
 Jews’ religion now.” 
 
 “ Oh, oh, oh!” cried Mab. “I wish I were not 
 such a. hideous Christian. How can an ugly 
 Christian, who is always dropping her work, con- 
 vert a beautiful Jewess, who has not a fault?” 
 
 “Tt may be wicked of me,” said shrewd Kate, 
 “but I cannot help wishing that her mother may 
 not be found. There might be something un- 
 pleasant.” 
 
 “T don’t think it, my dear,” said Mrs Meyrick. 
 “T believe Mirah is cut out after the pattern of 
 her mother. And what a joy it would be to her 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 291 
 
 to have such a daughter brought back again! But 
 a mother’s feelings are not worth reckoning, I sup- 
 pose” (she shot a mischievous glance at her own 
 daughters), “and a dead mother is worth more 
 than a living one?” 
 
 “ Well, and so she may be, little mother,” said 
 Kate; “but we would rather hold you cheaper, 
 and have you alive.” 
 
 Not only the Meyricks, whose various know- 
 ledge had been acquired by the irregular foraging 
 to which clever girls have usually been reduced, 
 but Deronda himself, with all his masculine in- 
 struction, had been roused by this apparition of 
 Mirah to the consciousness of knowing hardly any- 
 thing about modern Judaism or the inner Jewish 
 history. The Chosen People have been commonly 
 treated as a people chosen for the sake of some- 
 body else; and their thinking as something (no mat- 
 ter exactly what) that ought to have been entirely 
 otherwise ; and Deronda, like his neighbours, had 
 regarded Judaism as a sort of eccentric fossil- 
 ised form, which an accomplished man might dis- 
 pense with studying, and leave to specialists. 
 But Mirah, with her terrified flight from one 
 parent, and her yearning after the other, had 
 flashed on him the hitherto neglected reality that 
 Judaism was something still throbbing in human 
 
292 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 lives, still making for them the only conceivable 
 vesture of the world; and in the idling excursion 
 on which he immediately afterwards set out with 
 Sir Hugo he began to look for the outsides of syn- 
 agogues, and the titles of books about the Jews. 
 This wakening of a new interest—this passing 
 from the supposition that we hold the right 
 opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a 
 sudden care for it, and a sense that our opinions 
 were ignorance—is an effectual remedy for ennwi, 
 which unhappily cannot be secured on a physi- 
 cian’s prescription ; but Deronda had carried it 
 with him, and endured his weeks of lounging 
 all the better. It was on this journey that he 
 first entered a Jewish synagogue—at Frankfort— 
 where his party rested on a Friday. In exploring 
 the Juden-gasse, which he had seen long before, 
 he remembered well enough its picturesque old 
 houses ; what his eyes chiefly dwelt on now were 
 the human types there; and his thought, busily 
 connecting them with the past phases of their 
 race, stirred that fibre of historic sympathy which 
 had helped to determine in him certain traits worth 
 mentioning for those who are interested in his 
 future. True, when a young man has a fine person, 
 no eccentricity of manners, the education of a 
 gentleman, and a present income, it is not custom- 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 293 
 
 ary to feel a prying curiosity about his way of 
 thinking, or his peculiar tastes. He may very well 
 be settled in life as an agreeable clever young fel- 
 low without passing a special examination on those 
 heads. Later, when he is getting rather slovenly 
 and portly, his peculiarities are more distinctly 
 discerned, and it is taken as a mercy if they are 
 not highly objectionable. But any one wishing to 
 understand the effect of after-events on Deronda 
 should know a little more of what he was at five- 
 and-twenty than was evident in ordinary inter- 
 course. 
 
 It happened that the very vividness of his im- 
 pressions had often made him the more enigmatic 
 to his friends, and had contributed to an apparent 
 indefiniteness in his sentiments. His early-wak- 
 ened sensibility and reflectiveness had developed 
 into a many-sided sympathy, which threatened to 
 hinder any persistent course of action: as soon 
 as he took up any antagonism, though only in 
 thought, he seemed to himself like the Sabine 
 warriors in the memorable story—with nothing to 
 meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, and objects 
 that he loved. His imagination had so wrought 
 itself to the habit of seeing things as they pro- 
 bably appeared to others, that a strong partisan- 
 ship, unless it were against an immediate op- 
 
294 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 pression, had become an insincerity for him. His 
 plenteous, flexible sympathy had ended by fall- 
 ing into one current with that reflective analysis 
 which tends to neutralise sympathy. Few men 
 were able to keep themselves clearer of vices than 
 he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think 
 of them less in the abstract than as a part of mixed 
 human natures having an individual history, which 
 it was the bent of his mind to trace with under- 
 standing and pity. With the same innate balance 
 he was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the 
 multitude, and yet, through his affections and 
 imagination, intensely conservative ; voracious of 
 speculations on government and religion, yet loath 
 to part with long-sanctioned forms which, for him, 
 were quick with memories and sentiments that 
 no argument could lay dead. We fall on the 
 leaning side; and Deronda suspected himself of 
 loving too well the losing causes of the world. 
 Martyrdom changes sides, and he was in danger 
 of changing with it, having a strong repugnance 
 to taking up that clue of success which the order 
 of the world often forces upon us and makes it 
 treason against the common weal to reject. And 
 yet his fear of falling into an unreasoning narrow 
 hatred made a check for him: he apologised for 
 the heirs of privilege ; he shrank with dislike from 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 295 
 
 the loser’s bitterness and the denunciatory tone of 
 the unaccepted innovator. A too reflective and 
 diffusive sympathy was in danger of paralysing 
 in him that indignation against wrong and that 
 selectness of fellowship which are the conditions of 
 moral force; and in the last few years of confirmed 
 manhood he had become so keenly aware of this 
 that what he most longed for was either some 
 external event, or some inward light, that would 
 urge him into a definite line of action, and compress 
 his wandering energy. He was ceasing to care for 
 knowledge—he had no ambition for practice— 
 unless they could both be gathered up into one 
 current with his emotions; and he dreaded, as if 
 it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, that dead 
 anatomy of culture which turns the universe into 
 a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and knows, not 
 everything, but everything else about everything 
 —as if one should be ignorant of nothing con- 
 cerning the scent of violets except the scent itself 
 for which one had no nostril. But how and 
 whence was the needed event to come ?—the in- 
 fluence that would justify partiality, and make 
 him what he longed to be yet was unable to make 
 himself—an organic part of social life, instead of 
 roaming in it like a yearning disembodied spirit, 
 stirred with a vague social passion, but without 
 
296 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 fixed local habitation to render fellowship real ? 
 To make a little difference for the better was what 
 he was not contented to live without; but how 
 make it? It is one thing to see your road, another 
 to cut it. He found some of the fault in his birth 
 and the way he had been brought up, which had 
 laid no special demands on him and given him no 
 fixed relationship except one of a doubtful kind; 
 but he did not attempt to hide from himself that 
 he had fallen into a meditative numbness, and was 
 gliding farther and farther from that life of prac- 
 tically energetic sentiment which he would have 
 proclaimed (if he had been inclined to proclaim 
 anything) to be the best of all life, and for him- 
 self the only life worth living. He wanted some 
 way of keeping emotion and its progeny of senti- 
 ments—which make the savours of life—substan- 
 tial and strong in the face a reflectiveness that 
 threatened to nullify all differences. To pound 
 the objects of sentiment into small dust, yet keep 
 sentiment alive and active, was something like the 
 famous recipe for making cannon—to first take a 
 round hole and then enclose it with iron; what- 
 ever you do keeping fast hold of your round hole. 
 Yet how distinguish what our will may wisely 
 save in its completeness, from the heaping of cat- 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 297 
 
 mummies and the expensive cult of enshrined 
 putrefactions ? 
 
 Something like this was the common under- 
 current in Deronda’s mind, while he was reading 
 law, or imperfectly attending to polite conversa- 
 tion. Meanwhile he had not set about one func- 
 tion in particular with zeal and steadiness. Not 
 an admirable experience, to be proposed as an 
 ideal; but a form of struggle before break of day 
 which some young men since the patriarch have 
 had to pass through, with more or less of bruising 
 if not laming. 
 
 I have said that under his calm exterior he had 
 a fervour which made him easily feel the presence 
 of poetry in everyday events; and the forms of 
 the Juden-gasse, rousing the sense of union 
 with what is remote, set him musing on two ele- 
 ments of our historic life which that sense raises 
 into the same region of poetry :—the faint begin- 
 nings of faiths and institutions, and: their obscure 
 lingering decay ; the dust and withered remnants 
 with which they are apt to be covered, only 
 enhancing for the awakened perception the im- 
 pressiveness either of a sublimely penetrating life, 
 as in the twin green leaves that will become the 
 sheltering tree, or of a pathetic inheritance in 
 
298 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 which all the grandeur and the glory have become 
 a sorrowing memory. 
 
 This imaginative stirring, as he turned out of 
 the Juden-gasse, and continued to saunter in the 
 warm evening air, meaning to find his way to the 
 synagogue, neutralised the repellent effect of cer- 
 tain ugly little incidents on his way. Turning into 
 an old book-shop to ask the exact time of service at 
 the synagogue, he was affectionately directed by a 
 precocious Jewish youth, who entered cordially into 
 his wanting not the fine new building of the Re- 
 formed but the old Rabbinical school of the ortho- 
 dox; and then cheated him like a pure Teuton, only 
 with more amenity, in his charge for a book quite 
 out of request as one “nicht so leicht zu bekom- 
 men.” Meanwhile at the opposite counter a deaf 
 and grisly tradesman was casting a flinty look at 
 certain cards, apparently combining advantages 
 of business with religion, and shoutingly proposed 
 to him in Jew-dialect by a dingy man in a tall 
 coat hanging from neck to heel, a bag in hand, and 
 a broad low hat surmounting his chosen nose— 
 who had no sooner disappeared than another dingy 
 man of the same pattern issued from the back-— 
 ward glooms of the shop and also shouted in the 
 same dialect. In fact, Deronda saw various queer- 
 looking Israelites not altogether without guile, 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 299 
 
 and just distinguishable from queer-looking Chris- 
 tians of the same mixed morale. In his anxiety 
 about Mirah’s relatives, he had lately been think- 
 ing of vulgar Jews with a sort of personal alarm. 
 But a little comparison will often diminish our 
 surprise and disgust at the aberrations of Jews 
 and other dissidents whose lives do not offer a 
 consistent or lovely pattern of their creed; and 
 this evening Deronda, becoming more conscious 
 that he was falling into unfairness and ridiculous 
 exaggeration, began to use that corrective com- 
 parison: he paid his thaler too much, without 
 prejudice to his interest in the Hebrew destiny, or 
 his wish to find the Rabbinische Schule, which he 
 arrived at by sunset, and entered with a good 
 congregation of men. 
 
 He happened to take his seat in a line with an 
 elderly man from whom he was distant enough to 
 glance at him more than once as rather a notice- 
 able figure—his ordinary clothes, as well as the 
 talith or white blue-fringed kind of blanket which 
 is the garment of prayer, being much worn; while 
 his ample white beard and old felt hat framed a 
 profile of that fine contour which may as easily be 
 Italian as Hebrew. He returned Deronda’s notice 
 till at last their eyes met: an undesirable chance 
 with unknown persons, and a reason to Deronda 
 
300 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 for not looking again ; but he immediately found an 
 open prayer-book pushed towards him and had to 
 bow his thanks. However, the white taliths had 
 mustered, the Reader had mounted to the almemor 
 or platform, and the service began. Deronda, 
 having looked enough at the German translation 
 of the Hebrew in the book before him to know 
 that he was chiefly hearing Psalms and Old 
 Testament passages or phrases, gave himself up to 
 that strongest effect of chanted liturgies which is 
 independent of detailed verbal meaning—like the 
 effect of an Allegri’s Miserere or a Palestrina’s 
 Magnificat. The most powerful movement of 
 feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks 
 for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape 
 from the limitations of our own weakness and an 
 invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us; 
 or else a self-oblivious lifting up of gladness, a 
 Gloria in excelsis that such Good exists; both the 
 yearning and the exultation gathering their ut- 
 most force from the sense of communion in a form 
 which has expressed them both, for long gener- 
 ations of struggling fellow-men. The Hebrew 
 liturgy, like others, has its transitions of litany, 
 lyric, proclamation, dry statement and blessing; but — 
 this evening all were one for Deronda: the chant of 
 the Chazan’s or Reader’s grand wide-ranging voice 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 301 
 
 with its passage from monotony to sudden cries, the 
 outburst of sweet boys’ voices from the little quire, 
 the devotional swaying of men’s bodies backwards 
 and forwards, the very commonness of the build- 
 ing and shabbiness of the scene where a national 
 faith, which had penetrated the thinking of half 
 the world, and moulded the splendid forms of that 
 world’s religion, was finding a remote, obscure echo 
 —all were blent for him as one expression of a 
 binding history, tragic and yet glorious. He won- 
 dered at the strength of his own feeling; it seemed 
 beyond the occasion—what one might imagine to 
 be a divine influx in the darkness, before there 
 was any vision to interpret. The whole scene was 
 a coherent strain, its burthen a passionate regret, 
 which, if he had known the liturgy for the Day of 
 Reconciliation, he might have clad in its antithetic 
 burthen: “Happy the eye which saw all these 
 things ; but verily to hear only of them afflicts our 
 soul. Happy the eye that saw our temple and the 
 joy of our congregation ; but verily to hear only of 
 them afflicts our soul. Happy the eye that saw 
 the fingers when tuning every kind of song; but 
 verily to hear only of them afflicts our soul.” 
 
 But with the cessation of the devotional sounds 
 and the movement of many indifferent faces and 
 vulgar figures before him there darted into his 
 
 VOL. II. U 
 
302 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 mind the frigid idea that he had probably been 
 alone in his feeling, and perhaps the only person 
 in the congregation for whom the service was more 
 than a dull routine. There was just time for this 
 chilling thought before he had bowed to his civil 
 neighbour and was moving away with the rest— 
 when he felt a hand on his arm, and turning with 
 the rather unpleasant sensation which this abrupt 
 sort of claim is apt to bring, he saw close to him 
 the white-bearded face of that neighbour, who 
 said to him in German, “ Excuse me, young gen- 
 tleman—allow me—what is your parentage—your 
 mother’s family—her maiden name?” 
 
 Deronda had a strongly resistent feeling: he 
 was inclined to shake off hastily the touch on his 
 arm; but he managed to slip it away and said 
 coldly, “I am an Englishman.” 
 
 The questioner looked at him dubiously still for 
 an instant, then just lifted his hat and turned away 
 —whether under a sense of having made a mistake 
 or of having been repulsed, Deronda was uncertain. 
 In his walk back to the hotel he tried to still any 
 uneasiness on the subject by reflecting that he 
 could not have acted differently. How could he 
 say that he did not know the name of his mother’s © 
 family to that total stranger ?—who indeed had 
 taken an unwarrantable liberty in the abruptness 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 303 
 
 of his question, dictated probably by some fancy 
 of likeness such as often occurs without real sig- 
 nificance. The incident, he said to himself, was 
 trivial; but whatever import it might have, his 
 inward shrinking on the occasion was too strong 
 for him to be sorry that he had cut it short. It 
 was a reason however for his not mentioning the 
 synagogue to the Mallingers—in addition to his 
 usual inclination to reticence on anything that 
 the baronet would have been likely to call Quixotic 
 enthusiasm. Hardly any man could be more 
 good-natured than Sir Hugo; indeed in his kind- 
 liness, especially to women, he did actions which 
 others would have called romantic ; but he never 
 took a romantic view of them, and in general 
 smiled at the introduction of motives on a grand 
 scale, or of reasons that lay very far off. This was 
 the point of strongest difference between him and 
 Deronda, who rarely ate his breakfast without 
 some silent discursive flight after grounds for fill- 
 ing up his day according to the practice of his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 This halt at Frankfort was taken on their way 
 home, and its impressions were kept the more 
 actively vibrating in him by the duty of caring for 
 Mirah’s welfare. That question about his parentage, 
 which if he had not both inwardly and outwardly 
 
304 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 shaken it off as trivial, would have seemed a threat 
 rather than a promise of revelation, had reinforced 
 his anxiety as to the effect of finding Mirah’s rela- 
 tives and his resolve to proceed with caution. Ifhe 
 made any unpleasant discovery, was he bound te 
 a disclosure that might cast a new net of trouble 
 around her ? 
 
 He had written to Mrs Meyrick to announce 
 his visit at four o’clock, and he found Mirah seated 
 at work with only Mrs Meyrick and Mab, the 
 open piano, and all the glorious company of en- 
 eravings. The dainty neatness of her hair and 
 dress, the glow of tranquil happiness in a face 
 where a painter need have changed nothing if he 
 had wanted to put it in front of the host singing 
 “peace on earth and goodwill to men,” made a 
 contrast to his first vision of her that was delight- 
 ful to Deronda’s eyes. Mirah herself was think- 
 ing of it, and immediately on their greeting said— 
 
 “See how different I am from that miserable 
 creature by the river !—all because you found me 
 and brought me to the very best.” 
 
 “It was my good chance to find you,” said 
 Deronda. ‘Any other man would have been glad 
 to do what I did.” Ns 
 
 “That is not the right way of thinking about it,” 
 said Mirah, shaking her head with decisive gravity. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 305 
 
 “T think of what really was. It was you, and not 
 another, who found me, and were good to me.” 
 
 “T agree with Mirah,” said Mrs Meyrick. 
 “Saint Anybody is a bad saint to pray to.” 
 
 “ Besides, Anybody could not have brought me 
 to you,” said Mirah, smiling at Mrs Meyrick. 
 “ And I would rather be with you than with any 
 one else in the world except my mother. I won- 
 der if ever a poor little bird, that was lost and 
 could not fly, was taken and put into a warm nest 
 where there was a mother and sisters who took to 
 it so that everything came naturally, as if it had 
 been always there. I hardly thought before that the 
 world could ever be as happy and without fear as 
 itis tome now. She looked meditative a moment, 
 and then said, “Sometimes I am a Jittle afraid.” 
 
 “What is it you are afraid of?” said Deronda, 
 with anxiety. 
 
 “That when I am turning at the corner of a 
 street I may meet my father. It seems dreadful 
 that I should be afraid of meeting him. That is 
 my only sorrow,” said Mirah, plaintively. 
 
 “Tt is surely not very probable,” said Deronda, 
 wishing that it were less so; then, not to let the 
 opportunity escape—* Would it be a great grief 
 to you now, if you were never to meet your 
 mother ?” 
 
306 “DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 She did not answer immediately, but meditated 
 again, with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall. 
 Then she turned them on Deronda and said firmly, 
 as if she had arrived at the exact truth, “I want 
 her to know that I have always loved her, and if 
 she is alive I want to comfort her. She may be 
 dead. If she were, I should long to know where 
 she was buried ; and to know whether my brother 
 lives to say Kaddish in memory of her. But I 
 will try not to grieve. I have thought much for 
 so many years of her being dead. And I shall 
 have her with me in my mind, as I have always 
 had. We can never be really parted. I think I 
 have never sinned against her. I have always 
 tried not to do what would hurt her. Only she 
 might be sorry that I was not a good Jewess.” 
 
 - “In what way are you not a good Jewess?” 
 said Deronda. 
 
 “ T am ignorant, and we never observed the laws, 
 but lived among Christians just as they did) But 
 I have heard my father laugh at the strictness of 
 the Jews about their food and all customs, and 
 their not liking Christians. I think my mother 
 was strict; but she could never want me not to 
 like those who are better to me than any of my 
 own people I have ever known. I think I could 
 obey in other things that she wished, but not in 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 307 
 
 that. It is so much easier to me to share in love 
 than in hatred. I remember a play I read in 
 German—since I have been here, it has come into 
 my mind—where the heroine says something like 
 that.” 
 
 “ Antigone,” said Deronda. 
 
 “ Ah, you know it. But I do not believe that 
 my mother would wish me not to love my best 
 friends. She would be grateful to them.” Here 
 Mirah had turned to Mrs Meyrick, and with a sud- 
 den lighting up of her whole countenance she said, 
 “ Oh, if we ever do meet and know each other as 
 we are now, so that I could tell what would com- 
 fort her—I should be so full of blessedness, my 
 soul would know no want but to love her!” 
 
 “God bless you, child!” said Mrs Meyrick, the 
 words escaping involuntarily from her motherly 
 heart. But to relieve the strain of feeling she 
 looked at Deronda and said, “It is curious that 
 Mirah, who remembers her mother so well, it is 
 as if she saw her, cannot recall her brother the 
 least bit—except the feeling of having been car- 
 ried by him when she was tired, and of his being 
 near her when she was in her mother’s lap. It 
 must be that he was rarely at home. He was 
 already grown up. It is a pity her brother should 
 be quite a stranger to her.” 
 
308 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 “He is good; I feel sure Ezra is good,” said 
 Mirah, eagerly. “He loved my mother—he would 
 take care of her. I remember more of him than 
 that. I remember my mother’s voice once calling, 
 “Ezra!” and then his answering from the distance, 
 “Mother!”—Mirah had changed her voice a 
 little in each of these words and had given them 
 a loving intonation—“and then he came close to 
 us. I feel sure he is good. I have always taken 
 comfort from that.” 
 
 It was impossible to answer this either with 
 agreement or doubt. Mrs Meyrick and Deronda 
 exchanged a quick glance: about this brother 
 she felt as painfully dubious as he did. But 
 Mirah went on, absorbed in her memories— 
 
 “Ts it not wonderful how I remember the 
 voices better than anything else? I think they 
 must go deeper into us than other things. I 
 have often fancied heaven might be made of 
 voices.” 
 
 “Like your singing—yes,” said Mab, who had 
 hitherto kept a modest silence, and now spoke 
 bashfully, as was her wont in the presence of 
 Prince Camaralzaman,—“‘ Ma, do ask Mirah to . 
 sing. Mr Deronda has not heard her.” 
 
 “Would it be disagreeable to you to sing 
 now?” said Deronda, with a more deferential 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 309 
 
 gentleness than he had ever been conscious of 
 before. 
 
 “Oh, I shall like it,’ said Mirah. “My voice 
 has come back a little with rest.” 
 
 Perhaps her ease of manner was due to some- 
 thing more than the simplicity of her nature. 
 The circumstances of her life had made her think 
 of everything she did as work demanded from her, 
 _in which affectation had nothing to do; and she 
 had begun her work before self-consciousness was 
 born. 
 
 She immediately rose and went to the piano— 
 a somewhat worn instrument that seemed to get 
 the better of its infirmities under the firm touch 
 of her small fingers as she preluded. Deronda 
 placed himself where he could see her while she 
 sang ; and she took everything as quietly as if she 
 had been a child going to breakfast. 
 
 Imagine her—it is always good to imagine a 
 human creature in whom bodily loveliness seems 
 as properly one with the entire being as the bodily 
 loveliness of those wondrous transparent orbs of 
 life that we find in the sea—imagine her with her 
 dark hair brushed from her temples, but yet show- 
 ing certain tiny rings there which had cunningly 
 found their own way back, the mass of it hang- 
 ing behind just to the nape of the little neck in 
 
310 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 curly fibres, such as renew themselves at their own 
 will after being bathed into straightness like that 
 of water-grasses. Then see the perfect cameo her 
 profile makes, cut in a duskish shell where by 
 some happy fortune there pierced a gem-like dark- 
 ness for the eye and eyebrow; the delicate nostrils 
 defined enough to be ready for sensitive move- 
 ments, the finished ear, the firm curves of the 
 chin and neck entering into the expression of a 
 refinement which was not feebleness. 
 
 She sang Beethoven’s “Per pietad non dirmi 
 addio,” with a subdued but searching pathos 
 which had that essential of perfect singing, the 
 making one oblivious of art or manner, and only 
 possessing one with the song. It was the sort of 
 voice that gives the impression of being meant 
 like a bird’s wooing for an audience near and be- 
 loved. Deronda began by looking at her, but felt 
 himself presently covering his eyes with his 
 hand, wanting to seclude the melody in darkness ; 
 then he refrained from what might seem oddity, 
 and was ready to meet the look of mute appeal 
 which she turned towards him at the end. 
 
 “T think I never enjoyed a song more than 
 that,” he said, gratefully. 
 
 “You like my singing? I am so glad,” she 
 said, with a smile of delight. “It has been a great 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 311 
 
 pain to me, because it failed in what it was wanted 
 for. But now we think I can use it to get my 
 bread. I have really been taught well. And now 
 I have two pupils, that Miss Meyrick found for 
 me. They pay me nearly two crowns for their 
 two lessons.” 
 
 “T think I know some ladies who would find 
 you many pupils after Christmas,” said Deronda. 
 “You would not mind singing before any one who 
 wished to hear you?” 
 
 “Oh no, I want to do something to get money. 
 I could teach reading and speaking, Mrs Meyrick 
 thinks. But if no one would learn of me, that is 
 difficult.” Mirah smiled with a touch of merri- 
 ment he had not seen in her before. ‘I daresay 
 I should find her poor—I mean my mother. I 
 should want to get money for her. And I cannot 
 always live on charity ; though ”—here she turned 
 so as to take all three of her companions in one 
 glance—“it is the sweetest charity in all the 
 world.” 
 
 “T should think you can get rich,” said Deronda, 
 smiling. ‘Great ladies will perhaps like you to 
 teach their daughters. We shall see. But now, 
 do sing again to us.” 
 
 She went on willingly, singing with ready 
 memory various things by Gordigiani and Schu- 
 
312 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 bert ; then, when she had left the piano, Mab said, 
 entreatingly, “ Oh Mirah, if you would not mind 
 singing the little hymn.” 
 
 “Tt is too childish,” said Mirah. “It is like 
 lisping.” 
 
 “What is the hymn ?” said Deronda. — 
 
 “It is the Hebrew hymn she remembers her 
 mother singing over her when she lay in her cot,” 
 said Mrs Meyrick. 
 
 “TI should like very much to hear it,” said De- 
 ronda, “if you think I am worthy to hear what is 
 so sacred.” 
 
 “TJ will sing it if you like,” said Mirah, “ but 
 I don’t sing real words—only here and there a 
 syllable like hers—the rest is lisping. Do you 
 know Hebrew? because if you do, my singing will 
 seem childish nonsense.” 
 
 Deronda shook his head. “It will be quite 
 good Hebrew to me.” 
 
 Mirah crossed her little feet and hands in her 
 easiest attitude, and then lifted up her head at an 
 angle which seemed to be directed to some in- 
 visible face bent over her, while she sang a little 
 hymn of quaint melancholy intervals, with syl- 
 lables that really seemed childish lisping to her 
 audience ; but the voice in which she gave it forth 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 313 
 
 had gathered even a sweeter, more cooing tender- 
 ness than was heard in her other songs. 
 
 “Tf I were ever to know the real words, I 
 should still go on in my old way with them,” said 
 Mirah, when she had repeated the hymn several 
 times. 
 
 “Why not?” said Deronda. “The lisped syl- 
 lables are very full of meaning.” 
 
 “Yes, indeed,” said Mrs Meyrick. “<A mother 
 hears something like a lisp in her children’s talk 
 to the very last. Their words are not just what 
 everybody else says, though they may be spelt the 
 same. If I were to live till my Hans got old, I 
 should still see the boy in him. A mother’s love, 
 I often say, is like a tree that has got all the wood 
 in it, from the very first it made.” 
 
 “Ts not that the way with friendship, too?” 
 said Deronda, smiling. “We must not let 
 mothers be too arrogant.” 
 
 The bright little woman shook her head over 
 her darning. 
 
 “Tt is easier to find an old mother than an old 
 friend. Friendships begin with liking or grati- 
 tude—roots that can be pulled up. Mother’s love 
 begins deeper down.” 
 
 “ Like what you were saying about the influence 
 
314 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 of voices,” said Deronda, looking at Mirah. “I 
 don’t think your hymn would have had more ex- 
 pression for me if I had known the words. I went 
 to the synagogue at Frankfort before I came home, 
 and the service impressed me just as much as if I 
 had followed the words—perhaps more.” 
 
 “Oh, was it great to you? Did it go to your 
 heart?” said Mirah, eagerly. “I thought none 
 but our people would feel that. I thought it was 
 all shut away like a river in a deep valley, where 
 only heaven saw—I mean——.” she hesitated, feel- 
 ing that she could not disentangle her thought 
 from its imagery. 
 
 “T understand,” said Deronda. “But there is 
 not really such a separation—deeper down, as Mrs 
 Meyrick says. Our religion is chiefly a Hebrew 
 religion; and since Jews are men, their religious 
 feelings must have much in common with those 
 of other men—just as their poetry, though in one 
 sense peculiar, has a great deal in common with 
 the poetry of other nations. Still it is to be ex- 
 pected that a Jew would feel the forms of his 
 people’s religion more than one of another race— 
 and yet”—here Deronda hesitated in his turn— | 
 “that is perhaps not always so.” 
 
 “ Ah no,” said Mirah, sadly. “I have seen that. 
 I have seen them mock. Is it not like mocking 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 315 
 
 your parents ?—like rejoicing in your parents’ 
 shame ?” 
 
 “Some minds naturally rebel against whatever 
 they were brought up in, and like the opposite: 
 they see the faults in what is nearest to them,” 
 said Deronda, apologetically. 
 
 “But you are not like that,” seid Mirah, look- 
 ing at him with unconscious fixedness. 
 
 “No, I think not,” said Deronda; “but you 
 know I was not brought up as a Jew.” 
 
 “ Ah, I am always forgetting,” said Mirah, with 
 a look of disappointed recollection, and slightly 
 blushing. 
 
 Deronda also felt rather embarrassed, and there 
 was an awkward pause, which he put an end to 
 by saying playfully— 
 
 “Whichever way we take it, we have to toler- 
 ate each other; for if we all went in opposition 
 to our teaching, we must end in difference, just 
 the same.” 
 
 “To be sure. We should go on for ever in 
 zigzags,” said Mrs Meyrick. “TI think it is very 
 weak-minded to make your creed up by the rule 
 of contrary. Still one may honour one’s parents, 
 without following their notions exactly, any more 
 than the exact cut of their clothing. My father 
 was a Scotch Calvinist and my mother was a 
 
316 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 French Calvinist: I am neither quite Scotch, nor 
 quite French, nor two Calvinists rolled into one, 
 yet I honour my parents’ memory.” 
 
 “But I could not make myself not a Jewess,” 
 said Mirah, insistently, “even if I changed my 
 belief.” ‘ 
 
 “No, my dear. Butif Jews and Jewesses went 
 on changing their religion, and making no differ- 
 ence between themselves and Christians, there 
 would come a time when there would be no Jews 
 to be seen,” said Mrs Meyrick, taking that con- 
 summation very cheerfully. 
 
 “ Oh please not to say that,” said Mirah, the tears 
 gathering. “It is the first unkind thing you ever 
 said. I will not begin that. I will never separate 
 myself from my mother’s people. I was forced to 
 fly from my father; but if he came back in age and 
 weakness and want, and needed me, should I say, 
 ‘This is not my father?’ If he had shame I must 
 share it. It was he who was given to me for my 
 father, and not another. And so it is with my 
 people. I will always be a Jewess. I will love 
 Christians when they are good, like you. But I 
 will always cling to my people. I will always 
 worship with them.” 
 
 As Mirah had gone on speaking she had become 
 possessed with a sorrowful passion—fervent, not 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 317 
 
 violent. Holding her little hands tightly clasped 
 and looking at Mrs Meyrick with beseeching, 
 she seemed to Deronda a personification of that 
 spirit which impelled men after a long inheritance 
 of professed Catholicism to leave wealth and high 
 place, and risk their lives in flight, that they 
 might join their own people and say, “I am a 
 Jew.” 
 
 “Mirah, Mirah, my dear child, you mistake 
 me!” said Mrs Meyrick, alarmed. “God forbid I 
 should want you to do anything against your con- 
 science, I was only saying what might be if the 
 world went on. But I had better have left the 
 world alone, and not wanted to be over- wise. 
 Forgive me, come! we will not try to take you 
 from anybody you feel has more right to you.” 
 
 “T would do anything else for you. I owe you 
 my life,” said Mirah, not yet quite calm. 
 
 “Hush, hush, now,” said Mrs Meyrick. “I 
 have been punished enough for wagging my 
 tongue foolishly—making an almanac for the 
 Millennium, as my husband used to say.” 
 
 “But everything in the world must come to an 
 end some time. We must bear to think of that,” 
 said Mab, unable to hold her peace on this point. : 
 She had already suffered froma bondage of tongue 
 which threatened to become severe if Mirah were 
 
 VOL, II. & 
 
318 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 to be too much indulged in this inconvenient 
 susceptibility to innocent remarks. 
 
 Deronda smiled at the irregular, blond face, 
 brought into strange contrast by the side of 
 Mirah’s—smiled, Mab thought, rather sarcasti- 
 cally as he said, “That prospect of everything 
 coming to an end will not guide us far in prac- 
 tice. Mirah’s feelings, she tells us, are concerned 
 with what is.” 
 
 Mab was confused and wished she had not 
 spoken, since Mr Deronda seemed to think that 
 she had found fault with Mirah; but to have 
 spoken once is a tyrannous reason for speaking 
 again, and she said— 
 
 “TI only meant that we must have courage to 
 hear things, else there is hardly anything we can 
 talk about.” Mab felt herself unanswerable here, 
 inclining to the opinion of Socrates: “What 
 motive has a man to live, if not for the pleasures 
 of discourse ?” 
 
 Deronda took his leave soon after, and when 
 Mrs Meyrick went outside with him to exchange 
 a few words about Mirah, he said, “ Hans is to 
 share my chambers when he comes at Christmas.” 
 
 “You have written to Rome about that?” said 
 Mrs Meyrick, her face lighting up. “How very 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 319 
 
 good and thoughtful of you! You mentioned 
 Mirah, then?” . 
 
 “Yes, I referred to her. I concluded he knew 
 everything from you.” 
 
 “T must confess my folly. I have not yet 
 written a word about her. I have always been 
 meaning to do it, and yet have ended my letter 
 without saying a word. And I told the girls to 
 leave it tome. However !—Thank you a thousand 
 times.” 
 
 Deronda divined something of what was in the 
 mother’s mind, and his divination reinforced a cer- 
 tain anxiety already present in him. His inward 
 colloquy was not soothing. He said to himself 
 that no man could see this exquisite creature 
 without feeling it possible to fall in love with 
 her; but all the fervour of his nature was engaged 
 on the side of precaution. There are personages 
 who feel themselves tragic because they march 
 into a palpable morass, dragging another with 
 them, and then cry out against all the gods, 
 Deronda’s mind was strongly set against imitating 
 them. 
 
 “YT have my hands on the reins now,” he 
 thought, “and I will not drop them. I shall go 
 there as little as possible.” 
 
320 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 He saw the reasons acting themselves out be- 
 fore him. How could he be Mirah’s guardian and 
 claim to unite with Mrs Meyrick, to whose charge 
 he had committed her, if he showed himself as a 
 lover—whom she did not love—whom she would 
 not marry? And if he encouraged any germ of 
 lover's feeling in himself it would lead up to that 
 issue. Mirah’s was not a nature that would bear 
 dividing against itself; and even if love won her 
 consent to marry a man who was not of her race 
 and religion, she would never be happy in acting 
 against that strong native bias which would still 
 reign in her conscience as remorse. 
 
 Deronda saw these consequences as we see any 
 danger of marring our own work well begun. It 
 was a delight to have rescued this child acquainted 
 with sorrow, and to think of having placed her 
 little feet in protected paths. The creature we 
 help to save, though only a half-reared linnet, 
 bruised and lost by the wayside—how we watch 
 and fence it, and dote on its signs of recovery! 
 Our pride becomes loving, our self is a not-self for 
 whose sake we become virtuous, when we set to 
 some hidden work of reclaiming a life from misery | 
 and look for our triumph in the secret joy—“ This 
 one is the better for me.” 
 
 “T would as soon hold out my finger to be bitten 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 32] 
 
 off as set about spoiling her peace,” said Deronda. . 
 “Tt was one of the rarest bits of fortune that I 
 should have had friends like the Meyricks to place 
 her with—generous, delicate friends without any 
 loftiness in their ways, so that her dependence on 
 them is not only safety but happiness. There could 
 be no refuge to replace that, if it were broken up. 
 But what is the use of my taking the vows and 
 settling everything as it should be, if that marplot 
 Hans comes and upsets it all?” 
 
 Few things were more likely. Hans was made 
 for mishaps: his very limbs seemed more break- 
 able than other people’s—his eyes more of a re- 
 sort for uninvited flies and other irritating guests. 
 But it was impossible to forbid Hans’s coming to 
 London. He was intending to get a studio there 
 and make it his chief home; and to propose that 
 he should defer coming on some ostensible ground, 
 concealing the real motive of winning time for 
 Mirah’s position to become more confirmed and 
 independent, was impracticable. Having no other 
 resource Deronda tried to believe that both he and 
 Mrs Meyrick were foolishly troubling themselves 
 about one of those endless things called proba- 
 bilities, which never occur; but he did not quite 
 succeed in his trying; on the contrary, he found 
 himself going inwardly through a scene where on 
 
322 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the first discovery of Hans’s inclination, he gave 
 him a very energetic warning—suddenly checked, 
 however, by the suspicion of personal feeling that 
 his warmth might be creating in Hans. He could 
 come to no result, but that the position was 
 peculiar, and that he could make no further pro- 
 vision against dangers until they came nearer. To 
 save an unhappy Jewess from drowning herself, 
 would not have seemed a startling variation among 
 police reports ; but to discover in her so rare a 
 creature as Mirah, was an exceptional event which 
 might well bring exceptional consequences. De- 
 ronda would not let himself for a moment dwell 
 on any supposition that the consequences might 
 enter deeply into his own life. The image of 
 Mirah had never yet had that penetrating radi- 
 ation which would have been given to it by the 
 idea of her loving him. When this sort of efflu- 
 ence is absent from the fancy (whether from the fact 
 or not) a man may go far in devotedness without 
 perturbation. 
 
 As to the search for Mirah’s mother and brother, 
 Deronda took what she had said to-day as a war- 
 rant for deferring any immediate measures. His 
 conscience was not quite easy in this desire for 
 delay, any more than it was quite easy in his 
 not attempting to learn the truth about his own 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 323 
 
 mother: in both cases he felt that there might be 
 an unfulfilled duty to a parent, but in both cases 
 there was an overpowering repugnance to the 
 possible truth, which threw a turning weight into 
 the scale of argument. 
 
 « At least, I will look about,” was his final de- 
 termination. “I may find some special Jewish 
 machinery. I will wait till after Christmas.” 
 
 What should we all do without the calendar, 
 when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The 
 admirable arrangements of the solar system, by 
 which our time is measured, always supply us with 
 a term before which it is hardly worth while to ° 
 set about anything we are disinclined to. 
 
324 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 “‘No man,” says a Rabbi, by way of indisputable instance, ‘‘ may turn 
 the bones of his father and mother into spoons ”—sure that his hearers felt 
 the checks against that form of economy, The market for spoons has never 
 expanded enough for any one to say, ‘‘ Why not?” and to argue that human 
 progress lies in such an application of material. The only check to be 
 alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold that senti- 
 ments are the better part of the world’s wealth, 
 
 DrRonDA meanwhile took to a less fashionable 
 form of exercise than riding in Rotten Row. He 
 went often rambling in those parts of London 
 which are most inhabited by common Jews: he 
 walked to the synagogues at times of service, he 
 looked into shops, he observed faces :—a process 
 not very promising of particular discovery. Why 
 did he not address himself to an influential Rabbi 
 or other member of a Jewish community, to con- 
 sult on the chances of finding a mother named 
 Cohen, with a son named Ezra, and a lost daughter 
 named Mirah? He thought of doing so—after 
 Christmas. The fact was, notwithstanding all his 
 sense of poetry in common things, Deronda, where 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 325 
 
 a keen personal interest was aroused, could not, 
 more than the rest of us, continuously escape 
 suffering from the pressure of that hard unaccom- 
 modating Actual, which has never consulted our 
 taste and is entirely unselect. Enthusiasm, we 
 know, dwells at ease among ideas, tolerates garlic 
 breathed in the middle ages, and sees no shabbi- 
 ness in the official trappings of classic processions: 
 it gets squeamish when ideals press upon it as 
 something warmly incarnate, and can hardly face 
 them without fainting. Lying dreamily in a boat, 
 imagining one’s self in quest of a beautiful maiden’s 
 relatives in Cordova elbowed by Jews in the time 
 of Ibn-Gebirol, all the physical incidents can be 
 borne without shock. Or if the scenery of St 
 Mary Axe and Whitechapel were imaginatively 
 transported to the borders of the Rhine at the end 
 of the eleventh century, when in the ears listening 
 for the signals of the Messiah, the Hep! Hep! 
 Hep! of the Crusaders came like the bay of blood- 
 hounds ; and in the presence of those devilish mis- 
 sionaries with sword and firebrand the crouching 
 figure of the reviled Jew turned round erect, heroic, 
 flashing with sublime constancy in the face of 
 torture and death—what would the dingy shops 
 and unbeautiful faces signify to the thrill of con- 
 templative emotion? But the fervour of sympathy 
 
326 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 with which we contemplate a grandiose martyrdom 
 is feeble compared with the enthusiasm that keeps 
 unslacked where there is no danger, no challenge— 
 nothing but impartial mid-day falling on common- 
 place, perhaps half-repulsive, objects which are 
 really the beloved ideas made flesh. Here un- 
 doubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:—2in the 
 force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid 
 fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures. To 
 glory in a prophetic vision of knowledge covering 
 the earth, is an easier exercise of believing ima- 
 gination than to see its beginning in newspaper 
 placards, staring at you from a bridge beyond the 
 corn-fields ; and it might well happen to most of 
 us dainty people that we were in the thick of the 
 battle of Armageddon without being aware of 
 anything more than the annoyance of a little 
 explosive smoke and struggling on the ground 
 immediately about us. . 
 
 It lay in Deronda’s nature usually to contemn 
 the feeble, fastidious sympathy which shrinks 
 from the broad life of mankind; but now, with 
 Mirah before him as a living reality whose ex- 
 perience he had to care for, he saw every common 
 Jew and Jewess in the light of comparison with 
 her, and had a presentiment of the collison be- 
 tween her idea of the unknown mother and brother 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 327 
 
 and the discovered fact—a presentiment all the 
 keener in him because of a suppressed conscious- 
 ness that a- not unlike possibility of collision 
 might lie hidden in his own lot. Not that he 
 would have looked with more complacency of ex- 
 pectation at wealthy Jews, outdoing the lords of 
 the Philistines in their sports ; but since there was 
 no likelihood of Mirah’s friends being found among 
 that class, their habits did not immediately affect 
 him. In this mood he rambled, without expecta- 
 tion of a more pregnant result than a little pre- 
 paration of his own mind, perhaps for future 
 theorising as well as practice—very much as if, 
 Mirah being related to Welsh miners, he had 
 gone to look more closely at the ways of those 
 people, not without wishing at the same time to 
 get a little light of detail on the history of Strikes. 
 
 He really did not long to find anybody in par- 
 ticular ; and when, as his habit was, he looked at 
 the name over a shop-door, he was well content 
 that it was not Ezra Cohen. I confess, he particu- 
 larly desired that Ezra Cohen should not keep a 
 shop. Wishes are held to be ominous; according 
 to which belief the order of the world is so arranged 
 that if you have an impious objection to a squint, 
 your offspring is the more likely to be born with 
 one ; also, that if you happened to desire a squint, 
 
328 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 you would not get it. This desponding view of 
 probability the hopeful entirely reject, taking their 
 wishes as good and sufficient security: for all kinds 
 of fulfilment. Who is absolutely neutral? Deronda 
 happening one morning to turn into a little side 
 street out of the noise and obstructions of Hol- 
 born, felt the scale dip on the desponding side. 
 He was rather tired of the streets and had paused 
 to hail a hansom cab which he saw coming, when 
 his attention was caught by some fine old clasps 
 in chased silver displayed in the window at his 
 right hand. His first thought was that Lady 
 Mallinger, who had a strictly Protestant taste for 
 such Catholic spoils, might like to have these mis- 
 sal-clasps turned into a bracelet; then his eyes 
 travelled over the other contents of the window, 
 and he saw that the shop was that kind of pawn- 
 broker’s where the lead is given to jewellery, lace, 
 and all equivocal objects introduced as bric-a-brac. 
 A placard in one corner announced— Watches and 
 Jewellery exchanged and repaired. But his survey 
 had been noticed from within, and a figure appeared 
 at the door, looking round at him and saying, in a 
 tone of cordial encouragement, “Good day, sir.” 
 The instant was enough for Deronda to see that 
 the face, unmistakably Jewish, belonged to a young 
 man about thirty; and wincing from the shop- 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 329 
 
 keeper’s persuasiveness that would probably follow, 
 he had no sooner returned the “good day,” than he 
 passed to the other side of the street and beckoned 
 to the cabman to draw up there. From that 
 station he saw the name over the shop-window— 
 Ezra Cohen. 
 
 There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered 
 above shop-windows, but Deronda had not seen 
 them. Probably the young man interested in a 
 possible customer was Ezra himself; and he was 
 about the age to be expected in Mirah’s brother, 
 who was grown up while she was still a little 
 child. But Deronda’s first endeavour as he drove 
 homewards was to convince himself that there was 
 not the slightest warrantable presumption of this 
 Ezra being Mirah’s brother; and next, that even if, 
 in spite of good reasoning, he turned out to be that 
 brother, while on inquiry the mother was found to 
 be dead, it was not his—Deronda’s—duty to make 
 known the discovery to Mirah. In inconvenient 
 disturbance of this conclusion there came his lately 
 acquired knowledge that Mirah would have a re- 
 ligious desire to know of her mother’s death, and 
 also to learn whether her brother were living. 
 How far was he justified in determining another 
 life by his own notions? Was it not his secret 
 complaint against the way in which others had 
 
330 DANIEL DERONDA, 
 
 ordered his own life, that he had not open day- 
 light on all its relations, so that he had not, like 
 other men, the full guidance of primary duties ? 
 
 The immediate relief from this inward debate 
 was the reflection that he had not yet made any 
 real discovery, and that by looking into the facts 
 more closely he should be certified that there 
 was no demand on him for any decision whatever. 
 He intended to return to that shop as soon as he 
 could conveniently, and buy the clasps for Lady 
 Mallinger. But he was hindered for several days 
 by Sir Hugo, who, about to make an after-dinner 
 speech on a burning topic, wanted Deronda to 
 forage for him on the legal part of the question, 
 besides wasting time every day on argument which 
 always ended in a drawn battle. As on many 
 other questions, they held different sides ; but Sir 
 Hugo did not mind this, and when Deronda put 
 his point well said, with a mixture of satisfaction 
 and regret— 
 
 “Confound it, Dan! why don’t you make an op- 
 portunity of saying these things in public? You're 
 wrong, you know. You won't succeed. You've 
 got the massive sentiment—the heavy artillery of 
 the country against you. But it’s all the better 
 ground for a young man to display himself on. 
 When I was your age, I should have taken it. And 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 331 
 
 it would be quite as well for you to be in opposi- 
 tion to me here and there. It would throw you 
 more into relief. If you would seize an occasion of 
 this sort to make an impression, you might be in 
 Parliament in no time. And you know that would 
 gratify me.” 
 
 “T am sorry not to do what would gratify you, 
 sir,’ said Deronda. “ But I cannot persuade ny 
 self to look at politics as a profession.” 
 
 “Why not? Ifa man is not born into public 
 life by his position in the country, there’s no way 
 for him but to embrace it by his own efforts. The 
 business of the country must be done—her Majes- 
 ty’s Government carried on, as the old Duke said. 
 And it never could be, my boy, if everybody looked 
 at politics as if they were prophecy, and demanded 
 an inspired vocation. If you are to get into Par- 
 lament, it won’t do to sit still and wait for a call 
 either from heaven or constituents.” 
 
 “T don’t want to make a living out of opin- 
 ions,” said Deronda ; “especially out of borrowed 
 opinions. Not that I mean to blame other men. 
 I daresay many better fellows than I don’t mind 
 getting on to a platform to praise themselves, and 
 giving their word of honour for a party.” 
 
 “Tl tell you what, Dan,” said Sir Hugo, 
 “a man who sets his face against every sort of 
 
332 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 humbug is simply a three-cornered, impracticable 
 fellow. There’s a bad style of humbug, but there 
 is also a good style—one that oils the wheels and 
 makes progress possible. If you are to rule men, 
 you must rule them through their own ideas; and 
 I agree with the Archbishop at Naples who had a 
 St Januarius procession against the plague. It’s 
 no use having an Order in Council against popular 
 shallowness. There is no action possible without 
 a little acting.” 
 
 “One may be obliged to give way to an occa- 
 sional necessity,” said Deronda. “But it is one 
 thing to say, ‘In this particular case I am forced 
 to put on this foolscap and grin,’ and another to 
 buy a pocket foolscap and practise myself in 
 grinning. I can’t see any real public expediency 
 that does not keep an ideal before it which makes 
 a limit of deviation from the direct path. But if 
 I were to set up for a public man I might mistake 
 my own success for public expediency.” 
 
 It was after this dialogue, which was rather 
 jarring to him, that Deronda set out on his medi- 
 tated second visit to Ezra Cohen’s. He entered the 
 street at the end opposite to the Holborn entrance, 
 and an inward reluctance slackened his pace, 
 while his thoughts were transferring what he had 
 just been saying about public expediency to the 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 333 
 
 entirely private difficulty which brought him back 
 again into this unattractive thoroughfare. It 
 might soon become an immediate practical question 
 with him how far he could call it a wise expedi- 
 ency to conceal the fact of close kindred. Such 
 questions turning up constantly in life are often 
 decided in a rough and ready way; and to many it 
 will appear an over-refinement in Deronda that he 
 should make any great point of a matter confined 
 to his own knowledge. But we have seen the 
 reasons why he had come to regard concealment as 
 a bane of life, and the necessity of concealment as 
 a mark by which lines of action were to be avoided. 
 The prospect of being urged against the confirmed 
 habit of his mind was naturally grating. He even 
 paused here and there before the most plausible 
 shop-windows for a gentleman to look into, half 
 inclined to decide that he would not increase his 
 knowledge about that modern Ezra, who was 
 certainly not a leader among his people—a hesi- 
 tation which proved how, in a man much given to 
 reasoning, a bare possibility may weigh more than 
 the best-clad likelihood ; for Deronda’s reasoning 
 had decided that all likelihood was against this 
 man’s being Mirah’s brother. 
 
 One of the shop-windows he paused before 
 
 was that of a second-hand book-shop, where, on a 
 VOL, Il. yi 
 
334 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 narrow table outside, the literature of the ages 
 was represented in judicious mixture, from the 
 immortal verse of Homer to the mortal prose 
 of the railway novel. That the mixture was 
 judicious was apparent from Deronda’s finding 
 in it something that he wanted—namely, that 
 wonderful bit of autobiography, the life of the 
 Polish Jew, Salomon Maimon; which, as he could 
 easily slip it into his pocket, he took from its place, 
 and entered the shop to pay for, expecting to see 
 behind the counter a grimy personage showing that 
 nonchalance about sales which seems to belong 
 universally to the second-hand book-business. 
 In most other trades you find generous men who 
 are anxious to sell you their wares for your 
 own welfare; but even a Jew will not urge 
 Simson’s Euclid on you with an affectionate 
 assurance that you will have pleasure in reading 
 it, and that he wishes he had twenty more of the 
 article, so much is it in request. One is led to 
 fear that a second-hand bookseller may belong to 
 that unhappy class of men who have no belief 
 in the good of what they get their living by, yet 
 keep conscience enough to be morose rather than 
 unctuous in their vocation. 
 
 But instead of the ordinary tradesman, he saw, 
 on the dark background of books in the long 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 335 
 
 narrow shop, a figure that was somewhat startling 
 in its unusualness. A man in threadbare clothing, 
 whose age was difficult to guess—from the dead 
 yellowish flatness of the flesh, something like an 
 old ivory carving—was seated on a stool against 
 some book-shelves that projected beyond the short 
 counter, doing nothing more remarkable than 
 reading the yesterday’s Zimes ; but when he let 
 the paper rest on his lap and looked at the incom- 
 ing customer, the thought glanced through Der- 
 onda that precisely such a physiognomy as that 
 might possibly have been seen in a prophet of 
 the Exile, or in some New Hebrew poet of the 
 medieval time. It was a finely typical Jewish 
 face, wrought into intensity of expression appa- 
 rently by a strenuous eager experience in which 
 all the satisfaction had been indirect and far 
 off, and perhaps by some bodily suffering also, 
 which involved that absence of ease in the pre- 
 sent. The features were clear-cut, not large; 
 the brow not high but broad, and fully defined 
 by the crisp black hair. It might never have 
 been a particularly handsome face, but it must 
 always have been forcible; and now with its 
 dark, far-off gaze, and yellow pallor in relief on 
 the gloom of the backward shop, one might have 
 imagined one’s self coming upon it in some past 
 
336 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 prison of the Inquisition, which a mob had sud- 
 denly burst open; while the look fixed on an in- 
 cidental customer seemed eager and questioning 
 enough to have been turned on one who might have 
 been a messenger either of delivery or of death. 
 The figure was probably familiar and unexciting 
 enough to the inhabitants of this street; but to 
 Deronda’s mind it brought so strange a blending 
 of the unwonted with the common, that there was 
 a perceptible interval of mutual observation before 
 he asked his question: “‘ What is the price of this 
 book ?” 
 
 After taking the book and examining the fly- 
 leaves without rising, the supposed bookseller said, 
 “There is no mark, and Mr Ram is not in now. 
 I am keeping the shop while he is gone to dinner. 
 What are you disposed to give for it?” He held 
 the book closed on his lap with his hand on it and 
 looked examiningly at Deronda, over whom there 
 came the disagreeable idea, that possibly this strik- 
 ing personage wanted to see how much could be 
 got out of a customer’s ignorance of prices. But 
 without further reflection he said, “ Don’t you know 
 how much it is worth ?” 
 
 “Not its market-price.. May I ask, have you 
 read it ?” 
 
 “No. I have read an account of.it, which makes 
 me want.to buy it.” 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 337 
 
 «You are a man of learning—you are interested 
 in Jewish history?” This was said in a deepened 
 tone of eager inquiry. 
 
 “T am certainly interested in Jewish history,” 
 said Deronda, quietly, curiosity overcoming his 
 dislike to the sort of inspection as well as ques- 
 tioning he was under. 
 
 But immediately the strange Jew rose from his 
 sitting posture, and Deronda felt a thin hand 
 pressing his arm tightly, while a hoarse, excited 
 voice, not much above a loud whisper, said— 
 
 “ You are perhaps of our race ?” 
 
 Deronda coloured deeply, not liking the grasp, 
 and then answered with a slight shake of the head, 
 “No.” The grasp was relaxed, the hand withdrawn, 
 the eagerness of the face collapsed into uninter- 
 ested melancholy, as if some possessing spirit 
 which had leaped into the eyes and gestures had 
 sunk back again to the inmost recesses of the 
 frame ; and moving further off as he held out the 
 little book, the stranger said in a tone of distant 
 civility, “I believe Mr Ram will be satisfied with 
 half-a-crown, sir.” 
 
 The effect of this change on Deronda—he after- 
 wards smiled when he recalled it—was oddly 
 embarrassing and humiliating, as if some high 
 dignitary had found him deficient and given him 
 his congé. There was nothing further to be said, 
 
338 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 however: he paid his half-crown and carried off 
 his Salomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte with a 
 mere ‘good morning.’ 
 
 He felt some vexation at the sudden arrest of the 
 interview, and the apparent prohibition that he 
 should know more of this man, who was certainly 
 something out of the common way—as different 
 probably as a Jew could well be from Ezra Cohen, 
 through whose door Deronda was presently enter- 
 ing, and whose flourishing face glistening on the 
 way to fatness was hanging over the counter in 
 negotiation with some one on the other side of the 
 partition, concerning two plated stoppers and three 
 teaspoons, which lay spread before him. Seeing 
 Deronda enter, he called out “ Mother! Mother!” 
 and then with a familiar nod and smile, said, 
 ‘Coming, sir—coming directly.” 
 
 Deronda could not help looking towards the door 
 from the back with some anxiety, which was not 
 soothed when he saw a vigorous woman beyond 
 fifty enter, and approach to serve him. Not that 
 there was anything very repulsive about her: the 
 worst that could be said was that she had that 
 look of having made her toilet with little water, 
 and by twilight, which is common to unyouthful 
 people of her class, and of having presumably 
 slept in her large earrings, if not in her rings and 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 339 
 
 necklace. In fact, what caused a sinking of heart 
 in Deronda was, her not being so coarse and ugly 
 as to exclude the idea of her being Mirah’s mother. 
 Any one who has looked at a face to try and dis- 
 cern signs of known kinship in it will understand 
 his process of conjecture—how he tried to think 
 away the fat which had gradually disguised the 
 outlines of youth, and to discern what one may 
 call the elementary expressions of the face. He 
 was sorry to see no absolute negative to his fears. 
 Just as it was conceivable that this Ezra, brought 
 up to trade, might resemble the scapegrace father 
 in everything but his knowledge and talent, so it 
 was not impossible that this mother might have 
 had a lovely refined daughter whose type of feature 
 and expression was like Mirah’s. The eyebrows 
 had a vexatious similarity of line ; and who shall 
 decide how far a face may be masked when the 
 uncherishing years have thrust it far onward in 
 the ever-new procession of youth and age? The 
 good-humour of the glance remained and shone 
 out in a motherly way at Deronda, as she said, 
 in a mild guttural tone— 
 
 “‘ How can I serve you, sir?” 
 
 “J should like to look at the silver clasps in the 
 window,” said Deronda; “ the larger ones, please, 
 in the corner there.” 
 
340 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 They were not quite easy to get at from the 
 mother’s station, and the son seeing this called out, 
 “Tl reach ’em, mother; I’ll reach ’em,” running 
 forward with alacrity, and then handing the clasps 
 to Deronda with the smiling remark— 
 
 “‘Mother’s too proud: she wants to do every- 
 thing herself. That’s why I called her to wait on 
 you, sir. When there’s a particular gentleman 
 customer, sir, I daredn’t do any other than call 
 her. But I can’t let her do herself a mischief with 
 stretching.” 
 
 Here Mr Cohen made way again for his parent, 
 who gave a little guttural amiable laugh while she 
 looked at Deronda, as much as to say, “ This boy 
 will be at his jokes, but you see he’s the best son 
 in the world;” and evidently the son enjoyed 
 pleasing her, though he also wished to convey an 
 apology to his distinguished customer for not 
 giving him the advantage of his own exclusive 
 attention. 
 
 Deronda began to examine the clasps as if he 
 had many points to observe before he could come 
 to a decision. 
 
 “They are only three guineas, sir,” said the 
 mother, encouragingly. 
 
 “First-rate workmanship, sir—worth twice 
 the money; only I got ’em a bargain from 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 341 
 
 Cologne,” said the son, parenthetically, from a 
 distance. 
 
 Meanwhile two new customers entered, and the 
 repeated call, “ Addy!” brought from the back of 
 the shop a group that Deronda turned frankly to 
 stare at, feeling sure that the stare would be held 
 _ complimentary. The group consisted of a black- 
 eyed young woman who carried a black-eyed little 
 one, its head already well-covered with black curls, 
 and deposited it on the counter, from which sta- 
 tion it looked round with even more than the usual 
 intelligence of babies ; also a robust boy of six and 
 a younger girl, both with black eyes and black- 
 ringed hair—looking more Semitic than their pa- 
 rents, as the puppy lions show the spots of far-off 
 progenitors. The young woman answering to 
 “ Addy”—a sort of paroquet in a bright blue dress, 
 with coral necklace and earrings, her hair set up 
 in a huge bush—looked as complacently lively 
 and unrefined as her husband; and by a certain 
 difference from the mother deepened in Deronda 
 the unwelcome impression that the latter was 
 not so utterly common a Jewess as to exclude 
 her being the mother of Mirah. While that 
 thought was glancing through his mind, the boy 
 had run forward into the shop with an ener- 
 getic stamp, and setting himself about four feet 
 
342 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 from Deronda, with his hands in the pockets of 
 his miniature knickerbockers, looked at him with 
 a precocious air of survey. Perhaps it was chiefly 
 with a diplomatic design to linger and ingratiate 
 himself that Deronda patted the boy’s head, 
 saying— 
 
 “What is your name, sirrah?” 
 
 “ Jacob Alexander Cohen,” said the small man, 
 with much ease and distinctness. 
 
 “You are not named after your father, then?” 
 
 “No; after my grandfather. He sells knives 
 and razors and scissors—my grandfather does,” 
 said Jacob, wishing to impress the stranger with 
 that high connection. “He gave me this knife.” 
 Here a pocket-knife was drawn forth, and the 
 small fingers, both naturally and artificially dark, 
 opened two blades and a cork-screw with much 
 quickness. 
 
 “Ts not that a dangerous plaything?” said 
 Deronda, turning to the grandmother. 
 
 “ He'll never hurt himself, bless you !” said she, 
 contemplating her grandson with placid rapture. 
 
 “Have you got a knife?” says Jacob, coming 
 closer. His small voice was hoarse in its glib- 
 ness, as if it belonged to an aged commercial 
 soul, fatigued with bargaining through many 
 generations. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICI:2 343 
 
 “Yes. Do you want to see it?” said Deronda, 
 taking a small penknife from his waistcoat- 
 pocket. 
 
 Jacob seized it immediately and retreated a 
 little, holding the two knives in his palms and 
 bending over them in meditative comparison. By 
 this time the other clients were gone, and the 
 whole family had gathered to the spot, centering 
 their attention on the marvellous Jacob: the father, 
 mother, and grandmother behind the counter, with 
 baby held staggering thereon, and the little girl in 
 front leaning at her brother’s elbow to assist him 
 in looking at the knives. 
 
 “ Mine’s the best,” said Jacob, at last, returning 
 Deronda’s knife, as if he had been entertaining 
 the idea of exchange and had rejected it. 
 
 Father and mother laughed aloud with delight. 
 “You won’t find Jacob choosing the worst,” said 
 Mr Cohen, winking, with much confidence in the 
 customer’s admiration. Deronda, looking at the 
 grandmother, who had only an inward silent laugh, 
 said— 
 
 “ Are these the only grandchildren you have ?” 
 
 “All. This is my only son,” she answered, in 
 a communicative tone, Deronda’s glance and man- 
 ner as usual conveying the impression of sympa- 
 thetic interest—which on this occasion answered 
 
344 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 his purpose well. It seemed to come naturally 
 enough that he should say— 
 
 “And you have no daughter?” 
 
 There was an instantaneous change in the 
 mother’s face. Her lips closed more firmly, she 
 looked down, swept her hands outward on the 
 counter, and finally turned her back on Deronda 
 to examine some Indian handkerchiefs that hung 
 in pawn behind her. Her son gave a significant 
 glance, set up his shoulders an instant and just 
 put his finger to his lips,—then said quickly, “I 
 think you're a first-rate gentleman in the city, sir, 
 if I may be allowed to guess.” 
 
 “No,” said Deronda, with a preoccupied air, 
 “T have nothing to do with the city.” 
 
 “That’s a bad job. Ithought you might be the 
 young principal of a first-rate firm,” said Mr Cohen, 
 wishing to make amends for the check on his 
 customer’s natural desire to know more of him and 
 his. “ But you understand silver-work, I see.” 
 
 “A little,” said Deronda, taking up the clasps 
 a moment and laying them down again. That 
 unwelcome bit of circumstantial evidence had 
 made his mind busy with a plan which was cer- 
 tainly more like acting. than anything he had 
 been aware of in his own conduct before. But 
 the bare possibility that more knowledge might 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 345 
 
 nullify the evidence, now overpowered the inclina- 
 tion to rest in uncertainty. 
 
 “To tell you the truth,” he went on, “my 
 errand is not so much to buy as to borrow. I 
 daresay you go into rather heavy transactions 
 occasionally.” 
 
 “Well, sir, I’ve accommodated gentlemen of 
 distinction—I’m proud to say it. I wouldn’t 
 exchange my business with any in the world. 
 There’s none more honourable, nor more charita- 
 ble, nor more necessary for all classes, from the 
 good lady who wants a little of the ready for 
 the baker, to a gentleman like yourself, sir, who 
 may want it for amusement. I like my busi- 
 ness, I like my street, and I like my shop. J] 
 wouldn’t have it a door further down. And I 
 wouldn’t be without a pawn-shop, sir, to be the 
 Lord Mayor. It puts you in connection with the 
 world at large. I say it’s like the Government 
 revenue—it embraces the brass as well as the 
 gold of the country. Andaman who doesn’t get 
 money, sir, can’t accommodate. Now what can I 
 do for you, sir?” 
 
 If an amiable self-satisfaction is the mark of 
 earthly bliss, Solomon in all his glory was a 
 pitiable mortal compared with Mr Cohen—clearly 
 one of those persons who, being in excellent 
 
346 DANIEL DERONDA, 
 
 spirits about themselves, are willing to cheer 
 strangers by letting them know it. While he 
 was delivering himself with lively rapidity, he 
 took the baby from his wife and holding it on his 
 arm presented his features to be explored by its 
 small fists. Deronda, not in a cheerful mood, was 
 rashly pronouncing this Ezra Cohen to be the 
 most unpoetic Jew he had ever met with in books 
 or life: his phraseology was as little as possible like 
 that of the Old Testament; and no shadow of a 
 Suffering Race distinguished his vulgarity of soul 
 from that of a prosperous pink-and-white huckster 
 of the purest English lineage. It is naturally 
 a Christian feeling that a Jew ought not to be 
 conceited. However, this was no reason for not 
 persevering in his project, and he answered at 
 once in adventurous ignorance of technicalities— 
 
 “T have a fine diamond ring to offer as security 
 —not with me at this moment, unfortunately, for 
 I am not in the habit of wearing it. But I will 
 come again this evening and bring it with me. 
 Fifty pounds at once would be a convenience to 
 me.” 
 
 “Well, you know, this evening is the Sabbath, 
 young gentleman,” said Cohen, “and I go to the 
 Shool. The shop will be closed. But accom- 
 modation. is a work of charity; if you can’t get 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 347 
 
 here before, and are any ways pressed—why, [ll 
 look at your diamond. You're perhaps from the 
 West End—a longish drive?” 
 
 “Yes; and your Sabbath begins early at this 
 season. I could be here by five—will that do?” 
 Deronda had not been without hope that by ask- 
 ing to come on a Friday evening he might get 
 a better opportunity of observing points in the 
 family character, and might even be able to put 
 some decisive question. 
 
 Cohen assented ; but here the marvellous Jacob, 
 whose physique supported a precocity that would 
 have shattered a Gentile of his years, showed that 
 he had been listening with much comprehension 
 by saying, “You are coming again. Have you got 
 any more knives at home?” 
 
 “TY think I have one,” said Deronda, smiling 
 down at him. 
 
 “Has it two blades and a hook—and a white 
 handle like that?” said Jacob, pointing to the 
 waistcoat-pocket. 
 
 “T daresay it has.” 
 
 “Do you like a cork-screw?” said Jacob, ex- 
 hibiting that article in his own knife again, and 
 looking up with serious inquiry. 
 
 “Yes,” said Deronda, experimentally. 
 
 “Bring your knife, then, and we'll shwop,” said 
 
348 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Jacob, returning the knife to his pocket, and 
 stamping about with the sense that he had con- 
 cluded a good transaction. 
 
 The grandmother had now recovered her usual 
 manners, and the whole family watched Deronda 
 radiantly when he caressingly lifted the little girl, 
 to whom he had not hitherto given attention, and 
 seating her on the counter, asked for her name 
 also. She looked at him in silence, and put her 
 fingers to her gold earrings, which he did not seem 
 to have noticed. 
 
 “ Adelaide Rebekah is her name,” said her mo- 
 ther, proudly. ‘Speak to the gentleman, lovey.” 
 
 “Shlavm Shabbes fyock on,’ said Adelaide 
 Rebekah. 
 
 “Her Sabbath frock, she means,” said the 
 father, in explanation. “She'll have her Sabbath 
 frock on this evening.” 
 
 “ And will you let me see you in it, Adelaide ?” 
 said Deronda, with that gentle intonation which 
 came very easily to him. 
 
 “Say yes, lovey—yes, if you please, sir,” said 
 her mother, enchanted with this handsome young 
 gentleman, who appreciated remarkable children. 
 
 “ And will you give mea kiss this evening?” 
 said Deronda, with a hand on each of her little 
 brown shoulders. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 349 
 
 Adelaide Rebekah (her miniature crinoline and 
 monumental features corresponded with the com- 
 bination of her names) immediately put up her 
 lips to pay the kiss in advance ; whereupon her 
 father, rising into still more glowing satisfaction 
 with the general meritoriousness of his circum- 
 stances, and with the stranger who was an admir- 
 ing witness, said cordially— 
 
 “You see there’s somebody will be disappointed 
 if you don’t come this evening, sir. You won't 
 mind sitting down in our family place and wait- 
 ing a bit for me, if ’m not in when you come, 
 sir? Tl stretch a point to accommodate a gent 
 of your sort. Bring the diamond, and I'll see 
 what I can do for you.” 
 
 Deronda thus left the most favourable impres- 
 sion behind him, as a preparation for more easy 
 intercourse. But for his own part those amenities 
 had been carried on under the heaviest spirits. 
 If these were really Mirah’s relatives, he could not 
 imagine that even her fervid filial piety could 
 give the reunion with them any sweetness beyond 
 such as could be found in the strict fulfilment of 
 a painful duty. What did this vaunting brother 
 need? And with the most favourable supposition 
 about the hypothetic mother, Deronda shrank 
 from the image of a first meeting between her 
 
 VOL. IL Z 
 
350 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and Mirah, and still more from the idea of Mirah’s 
 domestication with this family. He took refuge 
 in disbelief. To find an Ezra Cohen when the 
 name was running in your head was no more 
 extraordinary than to find a Josiah Smith under 
 like circumstances; and as to the coincidence 
 about the daughter, it would probably turn out to 
 be a difference, If, however, further knowledge 
 confirmed the more undesirable conclusion, what 
 would be wise expediency ?—to try and determine 
 the best consequences by concealment, or to brave 
 other consequences for the sake of that openness 
 which is the sweet fresh air of our moral life? 
 
351 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 “Er ist geheissen 
 Israel, Ihn hat verwandelt 
 Hexenspruch in einen Hund. 
 
 Aber jeden Freitag Abend, 
 In der Dimmrungstunde, plétzlich 
 Weicht der Zauber, und der Hund 
 Wird aufs New’ ein menschlich Wesen.” 
 —HEINE ; Prinzessin Sabbath. 
 
 WueEn Deronda arrived at five o’clock, the shop 
 was closed and the door was opened for him by 
 the Christian servant. When she showed him 
 into the room behind the shop he was surprised at 
 the prettiness of the scene. The house was old, 
 and rather extensive at the back: probably the 
 large room he now entered was gloomy by day- 
 light, but now it was agreeably lit by a fine old 
 brass lamp with seven oil-lights hanging above the 
 snow-white cloth spread on the central table. The 
 ceiling and walls were smoky, and all the surround- 
 ings were dark enough to throw into relief the 
 human figures, which had a Venetian glow of 
 
352 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 colouring. The grandmother was arrayed in 
 yellowish brown with a large gold chain in lieu 
 of the necklace, and by this light her yellow face 
 with its darkly -marked eyebrows and framing 
 rouleau of grey hair looked as handsome as was 
 necessary for picturesque effect. Young Mrs 
 Cohen was clad in red and black, with a string of 
 large artificial pearls wound round and round her 
 neck; the baby lay asleep in the cradle under a 
 scarlet counterpane; Adelaide Rebekah was in 
 braided amber; and Jacob Alexander was in black 
 velveteen with scarlet stockings. As the four 
 pairs of black eyes all glistened a welcome at Der- 
 onda, he was almost ashamed of the supercilious 
 dislike these happy-looking creatures had raised 
 in him by daylight. Nothing could be more 
 cordial than the greeting he received, and both 
 mother and grandmother seemed to gather more 
 dignity from being seen on the private hearth, 
 showing hospitality. He looked round with some 
 wonder at the old furniture : the oaken bureau and 
 high side table must surely be mere matters of 
 chance and economy, and not due to the family 
 taste. A large dish of blue-and-yellow ware was 
 set up on the side table, and flanking it were two 
 old silver vessels ; in front of them a large volume 
 in darkened vellum with a deep-ribbed back. In 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 353 
 
 the corner at the farther end was an open door 
 into an inner room, where there was also a light. 
 
 Deronda took in these details by parenthetic 
 glances while he met Jacob’s pressing solicitude 
 about the knife. He had taken the pains to buy 
 one with the requisites of the hook and white 
 handle, and produced it on demand, saying— 
 
 “Ts that the sort of thing you want, Jacob?” 
 
 It was subjected to a severe scrutiny, the hook 
 and blades were opened, and the article of barter 
 with the cork-screw was drawn forth for com- 
 parison. 
 
 “Why do you like a hook better than a cork- 
 screw ?” said Deronda. 
 
 “’Caush I can get hold of things with a hook. 
 A cork-screw won’t go into anything but corks, 
 But it’s better for you, you can draw corks.” 
 
 “You agree to change, then?” said Deronda, 
 observing that the grandmother was listening with 
 delight. 
 
 “What else have you got in your pockets ?” 
 said Jacob, with deliberative seriousness. 
 
 “Hush, hush, Jacob, love,” said the grand- 
 mother. And Deronda, mindful of discipline, 
 answered— 
 
 “JT think I must not tell you that. Our busi- 
 ness was with the knives,” 
 
354 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Jacob looked up into his face scanningly for a 
 moment or two, and apparently arriving at his 
 conclusions, said gravely— 
 
 “‘T’ll shwop,” handing the cork-screw knife to 
 Deronda, who pocketed it with corresponding 
 gravity. 
 
 Immediately the small son of Shem ran off into 
 the next room, whence his voice was heard in 
 rapid chat ; and then ran back again—when, see- 
 ing his father enter, he seized a little velveteen hat 
 which lay on a chair and put it on to approach 
 him. Cohen kept on his own hat, and took no 
 notice of the visitor, but stood still while the two 
 children went up to him and clasped his knees: 
 then he laid his hands on each in turn and ut- 
 tered his Hebrew benediction; whereupon the 
 wife who had lately taken baby from the cradle 
 brought it up to her husband and held it under 
 his outstretched hands, to be blessed in its sleep. 
 For.the moment Deronda thought that this pawn- 
 broker proud of his vocation was not utterly 
 prosaic. 
 
 “Well, sir, you found your welcome in my 
 family, I think,” said Cohen, putting down his 
 hat, and becoming his former self. “ And you’ve 
 been punctual. Nothing like a little stress here,” 
 he added, tapping his side pocket, as he sat down. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 355 
 
 *Tt’s good for us all in our turn, I’ve felt it when 
 I’ve had to make up payments. I began early— 
 had to turn myself about and put myself into 
 shapes to fit every sort of box. It’s bracing to the 
 mind. Now then! let us see, let us see.” 
 
 “That is the ring I spoke of,” said Deronda, 
 taking it from his finger. “I believe it cost a 
 hundred pounds, It will be a sufficient pledge to 
 you for fifty, I think. I shall probably redeem it 
 in a month or so.” 
 
 Cohen’s glistening eyes seemed to get a little 
 nearer together as he met the ingenuous look of 
 this crude young gentleman, who apparently sup- 
 posed that redemption was a satisfaction to pawn- 
 brokers. He took the ring, examined and returned 
 it, saying with indifference, “Good, good. We'll 
 talk of it after our meal. Perhaps you'll join us, 
 if you've no objection. Me and my wife ’ll feel 
 honoured, and so will mother; won’t you, mother ?” 
 
 The invitation was doubly echoed and Deronda 
 gladly accepted it. All now turned and stood 
 round the table. No dish was at present seen 
 except one covered with a napkin; and Mrs Cohen 
 had placed a china bowl near her husband that he 
 might wash his hands init. But after putting on 
 his hat again, he paused, and called in a loud 
 voice, “ Mordecai!” 
 
356 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Can this be part of the religious ceremony? 
 thought Deronda, not knowing what might be 
 expected of the ancient hero. But he heard a 
 “Ves” from the next room, which made him look 
 towards the open door ; and there, to his astonish- 
 ment, he saw the figure of the enigmatic Jew 
 whom he had this morning met with in the book- 
 shop. Their eyes met, and Mordecai looked as 
 much surprised as Deronda—neither in his surprise 
 making any sign of recognition. But when Mor- 
 decai was seating himself at the end of the table, 
 he just bent his head to the guest in a cold and 
 distant manner, as if the disappointment of the 
 morning remained a disagreeable association with 
 this new acquaintance. 
 
 Cohen now washed his hands, pronouncing 
 Hebrew words the while: afterwards, he took off 
 the napkin covering the dish and disclosed the 
 two long flat loaves besprinkled with seed—the 
 memorial of the manna that fed the wandering 
 forefathers—and breaking off small pieces gave 
 one to each of the family, including Adelaide 
 Rebekah, who stood on the chair with her whole 
 length exhibited in her amber-coloured garment, 
 her little Jewish nose lengthened by compression 
 of the lip in the effort to make a suitable appear- 
 ance. Cohen then began another Hebrew blessing, 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 357 
 
 in which Jacob put on his hat to join with close 
 imitation. After that, the heads were uncovered, 
 all seated themselves, and the meal went on with- 
 out any peculiarity that interested Deronda. He 
 was not very conscious of what dishes he ate from, 
 being preoccupied with a desire to turn the con- 
 versation in a way that would enable him to ask 
 some leading question; and also with thinking of 
 Mordecai, between whom and himself there was 
 an exchange of fascinated, half-furtive glances. 
 Mordecai had no handsome Sabbath garment, but 
 instead of the threadbare rusty black coat of the 
 morning he wore one of light drab, which looked 
 as if it had once been a handsome loose paletot 
 now shrunk with washing; and this change of 
 clothing gave a still stronger accentuation to his 
 dark-haired, eager face, which might have belonged 
 to the prophet Ezekiel—also probably not modish 
 in the eyes of contemporaries. It was noticeable 
 that the thin tails of the fried fish were given to 
 Mordecai; and in general the sort of share assigned 
 to a poor relation—no doubt a ‘survival’ of pre- 
 historic practice, not yet generally admitted to be 
 superstitious. 
 
 Mr Cohen kept up the conversation with much 
 liveliness, introducing as subjects always in taste 
 (the Jew is proud of his loyalty) the Queen and 
 
358 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the Royal Family, the Emperor and Empress of 
 the French—into which both grandmother and 
 wife entered with zest. Mrs Cohen the younger 
 showed an accurate memory of distinguished 
 birthdays; and the elder assisted her son in in- 
 forming the guest of what occurred when the Em- 
 peror and Empress were in England and visited 
 the city, ten years before. 
 
 “T daresay you know all about it better than 
 we do, sir,’ said Cohen, repeatedly, by way of pre- 
 face to full information ; and the interesting state- 
 ments were kept up in a trio. 
 
 “Our baby is named Hugenie Esther,” said 
 young Mrs Cohen, vivaciously. 
 
 “Tt’s wonderful how the Emperor’s like a cousin 
 of mine in the face,” said the grandmother; “it 
 struck me like lightning when I caught sight of 
 him. I couldn’t have thought it.” 
 
 “Mother and me went to see the Emperor and 
 Empress at the Crystal Palace,” said Mr Cohen. 
 “T had a fine piece of work to take care of 
 mother; she might have been squeezed flat— 
 though she was pretty near as lusty then as she is 
 now. Isaid,if I had a hundred mothers I’d never 
 take one of ’em to see the Emperor and Empress 
 at the Crystal Palace again; and you may think 
 a man can’t afford it when he’s got but one mother 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 359 
 
 —not if he’d ever so big an insurance on her.” 
 He stroked his mother’s shoulder affectionately, 
 and chuckled a little at his own humour. 
 
 «Your mother has been a widow a long while, 
 perhaps,” said Deronda, seizing his opportunity. 
 “That has made your care for her the more 
 needful.” 
 
 “Ay, ay, it’s a good many yore-zeit since I 
 had to manage for her and myself,” said Cohen, 
 quickly. “I went early to it. It’s that makes 
 you a sharp knife.” 
 
 “What does—what makes a sharp knife, 
 father?” said Jacob, his cheek very much swollen 
 with sweet-cake. 
 
 The father winked at his guest and said, “ Hav- 
 ing your nose put on the grindstone.” 
 
 Jacob slipped from his chair with the piece of 
 sweet-cake in his hand, and going close up to Mor- 
 decai, who had been totally silent hitherto, said, 
 “What does that mean—putting my nose to the 
 grindstone ?” 
 
 “Tt means that you are to bear being hurt with- 
 out making a noise,” said Mordecai, turning his 
 eyes benignantly on the small face close to his, 
 Jacob put the corner of the cake into Mordecai’s 
 mouth as an invitation to bite, saying mean- 
 while, “I shan’t though,” and keeping his eyes on 
 
360 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the cake to observe how much of it went in this 
 act of generosity. Mordecai took a bite and 
 smiled, evidently meaning to please the lad, and 
 the little incident made them both look more loy- 
 able. Deronda, however, felt with some vexation 
 that he had taken little by his question. 
 
 “T fancy that is the right quarter for learning,” 
 said he, carrying on the subject that he might 
 have an excuse for addressing Mordecai, to whom 
 he turned and said, “ You have been a great stu- 
 dent, I imagine.” 
 
 “T have studied,” was the quiet answer. “And 
 you ?—you know German, by the book you were 
 buying.” 
 
 “Yes, I have studied in Germany. Are you 
 generally engaged in bookselling ?” said Deronda. 
 
 “No; I only go to Mr Ram’s shop every day 
 to keep it while he goes to meals,” said Mor- 
 decai, who was now looking at Deronda with 
 what seemed a revival of his original interest: 
 it seemed as if the face had some attractive indi- 
 cation for him which now neutralised the former 
 disappointment. After a slight pause, he said, 
 “Perhaps you know Hebrew ?” 
 
 ‘“‘T am sorry to say, not at all.” 
 
 Mordecai’s countenance fell: he cast down his 
 eyelids, looking at his hands, which lay crossed 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 36] 
 
 before him, and said no more. Deronda had now 
 noticed more decisively than in their former in- 
 terview a difficulty of breathing, which he thought 
 must be a sign of consumption. 
 
 “T’ve had something else to do than to get 
 book-learning,’ said Mr Cohen,—‘Tve had to 
 make myself knowing about useful things. I 
 know stones well,”—here he pointed to Deronda’s 
 ring. “I’m not afraid of taking that ring of yours 
 at my own valuation. But now,” he added, with 
 a certain drop in his voice to a lower, more famil- 
 iar nasal, “ what do you want for it?” 
 
 “Fifty or sixty pounds,” Deronda answered, 
 rather too carelessly. 
 
 Cohen paused a little, thrust his hands into his 
 pockets, fixed on Deronda a pair of glistening eyes 
 that suggested a miraculous guinea-pig, and said, 
 “Couldn’t do you that. Happy to oblige, but 
 couldn’t go that lengths. Forty pound—say forty 
 —T'll let you have forty on it.” 
 
 Deronda was aware that Mordecai had looked 
 up again at the words implying a monetary af- 
 fair, and was now examining him again, while he 
 said, “Very well; I shall redeem it in a month 
 or so.” : 
 
 “Good. [ll make you out the ticket by-and- 
 by,” said Cohen, indifferently. Then he held up 
 
362 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 his finger as a sign that conversation must be 
 deferred. He, Mordecai, and Jacob put on their 
 hats, and Cohen opened a thanksgiving, which 
 was carried on by responses, till Mordecai de- 
 livered himself alone at some length, in a solemn 
 chanting tone, with his chin slightly uplifted and 
 his thin hands clasped easily before him. Not 
 only in his accent and tone, but in his free- 
 dom from the self-consciousness which has refer- 
 ence to others’ approbation, there could hardly 
 have been a stronger contrast to the Jew at the 
 other end of the table. It was an unaccountable 
 conjunction—the presence among these common, 
 prosperous, shopkeeping types, of a man who, in 
 an emaciated threadbare condition, imposed a cer- 
 tain awe on Deronda, and an embarrassment at 
 not meeting his expectations. 
 
 No sooner had Mordecai finished his devotional 
 strain, than rising, with a slight bend of his head 
 to the stranger, he walked back into his room, and 
 shut the door behind him. 
 
 “That seems to be rather a remarkable man,” 
 said Deronda, turning to Cohen, who immediately 
 set up his shoulders, put out his tongue slightly, 
 and tapped his own brow. It was clearly to be 
 understood that Mordecai did not come up to the 
 standard of sanity which was set by Mr Cohen’s 
 view of men and things. 
 
BOOK IV.—GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 363 
 
 “Does he belong to your family?” said De- 
 ronda. 
 
 This idea appeared to be rather ludicrous to the 
 ladies as well as to Cohen, and the family inter- 
 changed looks of amusement. 
 
 “No, no,” said Cohen. “ Charity! charity! He 
 worked for me, and when he got weaker and 
 weaker I took him in. He’s an encumbrance; 
 but he brings a blessing down, and he teaches the 
 boy. Besides, he does the repairing at the watches 
 and jewellery.” 
 
 Deronda hardly abstained from smiling at this 
 mixture of kindliness and the desire to justify it 
 in the light of a calculation; but his willingness 
 to speak further of Mordecai, whose character 
 was made the more enigmatically striking by 
 these new details, was baffled. Mr Cohen im- 
 mediately dismissed the subject by reverting to 
 the “ accommodation,” which was also an act of 
 charity, and proceeded to make out the ticket, get 
 the forty pounds, and present them both in ex- 
 change for the diamond ring. Deronda, feeling 
 that it would be hardly delicate to protract his 
 * visit beyond the settlement of the business which 
 was its pretext, had to take his leave, with no 
 more decided result than the advance of forty 
 pounds and the pawn-ticket in his breast-pocket, 
 
364 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 to make a reason for returning when he came up 
 to town after Christmas. He was resolved that 
 he would then endeavour to gain a little more 
 insight into the character and history of Mor- 
 decai; from whom also he might gather some- 3 
 thing decisive about the Cohens—for example, — , 
 the reason why it was forbidden to ask Mrs Cohen 
 the elder whether she had a daughter. ; 
 
 END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 
 
DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 BOOK V.—MORDECAI. 
 
 WILL BE PUBLISHED ON FIRST FUNE. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWoop & Sons, Edinburgh and London.