Gwendolen

by Diana Souhami

  I dispatched this note to Quetcham Hall. I wince even now at the thought of its arrival. I was not good at anticipating how my actions affected others or at considering their point of view. It did not occur to me Herr Klesmer might be in an agitated state, immersed in problems of his own.

  The night my note arrived, Catherine Arrowpoint, in a heated exchange with her parents, had declared to them that she loved Klesmer and intended to marry him. Her parents forbade it. They expected her, their only child, to marry in accordance with their wealth and status. The husband must be a man connected to the institutions of England, of good family, and in line for a peerage. Grandcourt would suit. Klesmer, the music teacher in their paid employ, a foreigner, and, worse, a Jew, though perhaps a first-rate musician, was not the right sort.

  Catherine’s parents summoned Klesmer and told him Catherine would be disinherited were he to marry her. Neither he nor she viewed that as much of a threat. He told them that notwithstanding their power and money they could not confer on him anything he valued. He had earned success as a musician, would change his career for no other, had enough money to support Catherine, and sought no alteration to his life but her lifelong companionship.

  Mr. Arrowpoint threatened him with a duel and ordered him to leave the house. My note arrived in the middle of all this.

  Apparently, so as not to disappoint me, he stayed on at Quetcham as a most unwelcome guest for another day. At Offendene I set the scene for his arrival. I coiled my hair and, to look demure, dressed in black with no jewelry. I strewed music sheets on top of the piano and instructed Mama I wished to receive Herr Klesmer alone.

  He was shown into the drawing room. I was direct. I told him of our loss and my need to provide for Mama to save her from true hardship. I informed him of my plan to study acting and go on the stage. I asked for his help. I said I accepted my voice alone was not good enough for me to succeed professionally, but if I combined it with acting I could perhaps perform like the dramatic soprano Giulia Grisi, for whom both Rossini and Donizetti had written.

  I am embarrassed to remember. I was twenty, and I aspired to stardom and to save Mama, who looked to me for sunlight. I was her best-loved daughter. I did not know the meaning of talent, how exceptional it is, how it cannot be plucked from the air. I did not know of the gulf between aspiration and achievement, or of the essential of hard work.

  Klesmer put his hat and gloves on the piano and folded his arms. He spoke in a deliberate manner. He again told me I was beautiful. I had, he said, been brought up in ease. I knew nothing of the demands of an artist’s life, of inward vocation, subduing mind and body to unbroken discipline, and of thinking not of celebrity but of excellence, of the work required to achieve any sort of recognition, the disappointments that needed to be endured, the uncertainty of any chance of praise. He said for a long while I should expect to earn nothing and get no engagements.

  All of which was merely a gentle preamble. Was I too old, I asked, to set out on such a path, too wanting in talent? Yes, he replied. My voice would never have counted for much, but had I been trained years previously, I might have found some minor outlet as a public singer. Seeing me blanch with pain, he then compounded his insults by commending my personal charm.

  Only because my plight was desperate did I persist. Might I find engagement at a theater and study singing at the same time? I asked. No, Klesmer said. It could not be done. “Glaring insignificance” was one of his phrases. I could not pitch my voice; I did not know how to move about a stage. However hard I tried, whatever efforts and sacrifices I made, I would never achieve more than mediocrity. I would have to pay a manager to employ me. My beauty, he said, would surely find me a husband, but such beauty had nothing to do with art; it was a substitute when nothing more commanding was to be found.

  I had sought Herr Klesmer’s help. I received an exercise in humiliation. I had no money, family connections, or friends to help me. I wanted to achieve independence and recognition. I had been encouraged to view my beauty as a gift, a work of art in itself, and my singing voice as its accompaniment. Klesmer made both seem meretricious.

  He then told me of his intended marriage to Catherine Arrowpoint and of how exceptional she was. If I still wanted, after hearing these truths about myself, to try my luck in London, they would support me financially. That was the final laceration. I vowed never again to ask anyone in authority for their opinion of me.

  I congratulated him on his engagement to marry, said “If I take the wrong road, it will not be because of your flattery,” then thanked him for his kindness, his offer of hospitality, and his time. He gave me his card, said “God forbid that you should take any road but one where you will find happiness,” kissed my hand, and left.

  My hopes receded with the sound of coach wheels on the gravel. I had wanted King Klesmer, messenger from the god of Art, to admire something in me, but I was too old, mediocre, and vainglorious. I was a fantasist, a spoiled girl with a beautiful face and no talent who would earn no money and merit no applause. The acclaim accorded me thus far was from people who knew nothing of quality.

  Sawyer’s Cottage, the bleak railway waiting room, the governess’s room at the top of the bishop’s house, the death’s head in the wainscot, the woman at the Whispering Stones—their curse was upon me.

  Mama came into the room when she saw Klesmer had gone and observed my tears and brittle mood. I told her I accepted Sawyer’s Cottage and being governess to the bishop’s daughters. I resolved to try not to care, to try to bear it all. I thought I had reached the depth of my own misery. I was wrong.

  * * *

  THE NEXT ORDEAL was with Uncle and my aunt. They and my cousins faced financial devastation with a fortitude to shame me. They took to penury with Christian zeal and embraced sacrifice and austerity. Aunt sorted depressing window coverings for Sawyer’s Cottage from the rectory storeroom. Uncle endlessly boasted of no meat for breakfast. Rex, even while working for a fellowship, arranged both to tutor his brothers and to take pupils.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Are you quite reckless about me?” he asked. The question made me blush.

  Was there another man who stood between us?

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

  He persisted: “Am I to understand that someone else is preferred?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  A word was needed, but I could not utter it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Not when they are things I like to hear.”

  “Will it bother you to be asked how soon we can be married?”

  “I think the question will bother me today.” I was the coquettish, happy bride-to-be.

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

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

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

  “And nothing that I don’t like? Please say that. I think I dislike what I don’t like more than I like what I like.”

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