Daniel Deronda, George Eliot [portable ebook reader .TXT] 📗

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.

XXXI

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

—⁠Shakespeare.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank God you bear it so well, my darling!” said Mrs. Davilow, when she had helped Gwendolen to doff her bridal white and put on her traveling dress. All the