Gwendolen

by Diana Souhami

  Grandcourt’s visits to Gadsmere were frequent and not to be discussed. He never said when he was going, or where, or for how long, but I knew and was resentful, though glad to be free of his presence. Usually he was away a day and a night.

  As soon as he was gone, I would take Criterion and ride fiercely across the fields and through the woods. I instructed the groom and servants never to mention this to my husband. I galloped fast, jumped brooks and streams, and hardly cared if I fell. Those were my times of escape, my means of defiance. Riding fast and recklessly, I dared hope that one day my captivity and suffering might end.

  On one occasion, soon after Grandcourt left the house, on impulse and unannounced, I rode to Offendene to see Mama. My aunt and uncle were there, the four girls, and Miss Merry. I was warmed by seven family kisses.

  They all urged me to join them for lunch. Impatience with any of my family had vanished. I had no hunger, but, determined not to show unhappiness, I agreed to a drink of chocolate. I said I wanted to say good-bye, for I was soon to go to our house in Grosvenor Square for the spring months. Uncle said that at Easter both he and Anna would also be in London, staying at Lord Brackenshaw’s house, to meet with Rex, who was excelling in his law studies and one day would be a great lawyer. I missed Rex’s friendship with the same sense of bereavement as I missed my sisters. I formally invited Uncle, with Anna and Rex, to visit me in Grosvenor Square, but in truth I hoped they would not come near the place for I did not want my misery seen.

  Lord Brackenshaw had assured Mama she could remain at Offendene, whatever her circumstances, but the White House, smaller, at a lower rent, and only a mile from the rectory, had become available. Mama liked the house and the views of trees and was saving for new furniture. I felt I would cry at her moving from Offendene and how less than generous, despite his promises, my husband was to her.

  Uncle spoke of the great influence of wives in bettering their husbands’ careers and advised me to urge Grandcourt to enter Parliament. I might have laughed were I not so bitter. I had gone into this marriage confident of the wife’s influence to manage I was not sure what, my own happiness and freedom, I suppose. I was too proud to let Mama and Uncle know I could not influence Grandcourt even to permit me to wear the clothes and jewels I chose. Uncle spoke of the power of MPs and how a suffrage bill was to be debated because of demands by working-class men for the right to vote. (No mention was made of women’s demands.) I did not tell him Grandcourt despised the working class and favored dictatorship over democracy; I merely said he would not like making speeches, then praised the chocolate drink Jocasta had brought to me.

  I tried to be bright, but when I went upstairs with Mama to our bedroom I felt weak with homesickness. My made-up bed was there. I gave Mama an envelope containing thirty pounds. It seemed a feeble generosity. I said it was for the girls to spend on things for themselves when they went to the new house.

  * * *

  GRANDCOURT INTENDED TO go to London to make his will and sort financial matters. I was indifferent to where I went with him. My one enthusiasm for the visit was the thought of seeing you.

  Three days after we arrived at Grosvenor Square, we attended a music party at Lady Mallinger’s. I wore pale green velvet and at Grandcourt’s command the poisoned diamonds. The Mallinger drawing rooms on Park Lane were regally decorated in white, gold, and crimson. Gathered in them was London Society. Herr Klesmer, of course, with his now adoring wife, Catherine. You were in a group with Mrs. Lewes, the talented Miss Lapidoth, and your artist friend Hans Meyrick, who had shoulder-length golden curls, was a member of the family with whom Miss Lapidoth was staying, and apparently, from when he first saw me, referred to me as “the van Dyck duchess.”

  Miss Lapidoth was the evening’s star. The little Jewess held this sophisticated audience in her thrall. She sang “O patria mia” from Verdi’s Aida, with Klesmer accompanying her on the piano. I watched you while she sang. You were absorbed and admiring. She was where I aspired to be, but I was merely one of the crowd in silk and gems, whose only worth was to praise or find fault.

  The applause was prolonged. I offered my congratulations and told her Herr Klesmer had advised me to take lessons from her. “I sing very badly, as he will tell you,” I said. “I have been rebuked for not liking to be middling, since I can be nothing more.” Too straightforward to sense my bitterness or troubled mind, she replied she would be glad to teach me if she could. “If I do it well, it must be by remembering how my master taught me,” she said.

  I asked where she first met you, but all I really wanted to know of course was how much you meant to each other. “Did you meet Mr. Deronda abroad?” I asked. She said she had been in great distress, you helped her, then took her to the Meyrick family, who gave her shelter and protection. She owed everything to you. Though vague, her answer satisfied me. It allowed me to see her relationship to you as gratitude for practical help given, not as a romantic attachment. I placed her in a lower social class than yours. I wondered if it was you who saved her from drowning, or if you had found her destitute and furnished her with money.

  She moved to the piano to sing again. I dared not approach you for fear of angering Grandcourt, but my fear turned to scornful determination when I saw him talking with Lush, with whom he had not for a moment dispensed. Lush was just as central to his life, the architect of much of it, and conspired with everything connected to the secrets that made me wretched.

  I chose to sit on a small settee with room only for one other person, then looked toward you and smiled encouragement. You sat beside me. Mrs. Lewes, I observed, was watching me as if reading my mind and heart. Lush came and stood nearby, I supposed at Grandcourt’s instruction to spy. I told you I thought Miss Lapidoth lovely, not in the least common, and a complete little person who would be a great success.

  You looked annoyed. Conscious of having blundered, I felt my heart lurch. I waited for Lush to turn his head away, then asked what had displeased you. What had I done wrong? I asked. You said you couldn’t explain, that it was hard to explain niceties of words and manner. I wanted to cry. I suppose jealousy provoked me to speak with condescension.

  “Have I shown myself so very dense to everything you have said?” I asked you.

  “Not at all,” you replied, but with a formality and distance that belied your politeness. I wanted you to focus on me, my heart, my needs. I said I could only become a better person if I had people who inspired good feelings in me, for I did not know how else to set about being wise.

  I hated your reply. It left me feeling so alone. You said you seldom did any good by your preaching and perhaps should have kept from meddling. I took you to mean you regretted returning the necklace and saw your action as prelude to a fatal encounter. I said that if you wished you had not meddled, it meant you despaired of me and had forsaken me, and that if you despaired of me, I should despair, for it would mean you had decided for me that I should not be good. “It is you who must decide,” I said, “because you might have made me different by keeping as near to me as you could and believing in me.”

  You looked perturbed. I had gone too far. When Miss Lapidoth began to sing again, I got up and sat elsewhere. I suspected I had driven you away. I tried not to weep in my velvet and gems, my wounds hidden from all but you, and with dread in my heart and fear of the compulsion that made me turn to you in a search for protection and love. Mirah Lapidoth was singing Beethoven’s “Per pieta, non dirmi addio” (For pity’s sake, do not leave me).

  Grandcourt’s eyes were on me of course. In the carriage home he said, “Lush will dine with us among the other people tomorrow. You will treat him civilly.”

  I did not speak the enraged words in my head: You are breaking your promise. The only promise you made me. I feared a quarrel might end with his white throttling fingers around my neck. “I thought you did not intend Lush to frequent the house again,” I said. Grandcourt retorted he wanted his presence and found him useful.

  Why was I an
gered? Grandcourt was not a man to whom a promise meant anything. To compound my loathing he said, “Nothing makes a woman more of a gawky than searching out people and showing moods in public. A woman ought to have fine manners. Else it’s intolerable to appear with her.”

  Grandcourt had no cultural or political curiosity. He scanned the newspaper columns only to describe as brutes all Germans, commercial men, and voters liable to use the wrong kind of soap. He assumed a scornful silence if Schleswig-Holstein, the policy of Bismarck, trade unions, or household suffrage were mentioned. But no movement of mine in relation to you escaped him. He had no regrets about marrying me; far from it, the marriage brought purpose to his life, indulged his brutality, and did not impede his visits to Mrs. Glasher. My shoulders, nails, hair, ears, neck, teeth, feet satisfied his fastidious taste. My spirited repartee aroused him. He did not care that I hated him. My hatred fed his cruelty. Nor did it pain him that I preferred your society to his. But he wanted me to know, with as much clarity as if I were handcuffed with the keys dangling from his chain, that my inclination toward you was useless.

  My expression of longing for intimacy with you was punished that night in the usual way.

  * * *

  FROM THE GROSVENOR Square house Grandcourt and I attended and gave splendid receptions, went on conspicuous rides and drives, and made fashionable appearances at the opera. In this opulent display of city life, my only ambition was to see you.

  One morning at breakfast I said I had a mind to take singing lessons. “Why?” Grandcourt asked, in his disparaging way. “Why?” I replied. “Because I can’t eat pâté de foie gras to make me sleepy, and I can’t smoke or go to the club to make me want to go away again. I want a variety of ennui.” What, I asked him, would be the most convenient time, when he was with his lawyers, for me to take lessons from the little Jewess whose singing was all the rage?

  “Whenever you like.” He pushed back his chair, gave his lizardlike stare, and fondled the ears of the tiny spaniel on his lap. How I loathed the way he made those dogs fawn on him. Then he said, “I don’t see why a lady should sing. Amateurs make fools of themselves. A lady can’t risk herself in that way in company, and one doesn’t want to hear squalling in private.”

  “I like frankness,” I said. “That seems to me a husband’s great charm.” I looked at the boiled eyes of the prawns on my plate in preference to looking into his.

  “I hope you don’t object to Miss Lapidoth’s singing at our party on the fourth of May,” I said. “I thought of engaging her. Lady Brackenshaw had her, you know, and the Raymonds, who are particular about their music. And Mr. Deronda, who is a musician himself and a first-rate judge, says there is no singing in such good taste as hers for a drawing room. His opinion is an authority.”

  I dared to sling that small stone. A rock was thrown in return. “It’s very indecent of Deronda to go about praising that girl,” Grandcourt said in his bored voice.

  “Indecent? To go about praising?” I felt trepidation.

  “Yes, and especially when she is patronized by Lady Mallinger. He ought to hold his tongue about her. Men can see what is his relation to her.”

  “Men who judge of others by themselves,” I said, heedless of the repercussions of my daring.

  “Of course. And a woman should take their judgment—else she is likely to find herself in the wrong place. I suppose you take Deronda for a saint.”

  “Oh dear, no,” I replied, careless of retribution. “Only a little less of a monster than you.”

  * * *

  I HURRIED OUT, locked the door of my dressing room, and tried to calm my racing heart. Were you betraying me and Mirah Lapidoth, setting us against each other, as my poisonous husband betrayed two women? I loathed Grandcourt for imparting such suspicion. It hurt me to consider you might be other than how I imagined you. But I was not entitled to you; the grounds for my faith in you were fragile; I knew little of your life; my opening up to you was impulsive and childish; from our first meeting on you had rebuked me. Might the grave beauty of your face be as much a mask as Grandcourt’s aristocratic ease? Did both conceal untrustworthiness?

  Suddenly, though the morning was gray, a stream of sunshine poured through the window from the fast-changing skies of April. And although I try not to be guided by signs and auguries, with this flood of warmth and light that bathed me and the room, I dared plant the seedling of hope that one day, one day, I might flourish in a world beyond my fear, dark thoughts, and captivity.

  I rang for the housekeeper, ascertained Grandcourt had gone to his lawyers, ordered a carriage, and dressed for the drive. Grandcourt would find out and punish me, but I was punished enough. It would be hard for him to punish me more.

  The carriage drew up at a humble, terraced house in Chelsea overlooking the river. Miss Lapidoth was at home. I was shown into a cramped room with folding doors. When I heard your voice behind them, I became agitated and wanted to leave. I buttoned and unbuttoned my gloves and feared I had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior.

  Miss Lapidoth came in, smiled, took my outstretched hand, and drew a chair near as if prepared for confidences. Her calmness contrasted with my agitation. I apologized for calling, said perhaps I ought to have written but that I had a particular request. She said she was glad I called. I was aware of the difference between us: my height and pallor, her smallness and fresh complexion; she in her simple clothes, I in my plumed hat. I wanted to tell her I now hated diamonds and was not born with an expectation of finery. I said I would be much obliged if she would sing at our house on the fourth, in the evening, at a party, as at Lady Brackenshaw’s.

  “At ten?” she asked.

  “At ten,” I said, then paused. My embarrassment grew. My impetuosity and impertinence were out of place, but I could not restrain myself: “Mr. Deronda is in the next room?” I whispered.

  “Yes, he is reading Hebrew with my brother.”

  “You have a brother?” I asked, though I had heard this from Lady Mallinger.

  “Yes,” she said. She told me how dear this brother, Mordecai, was to her and how ill with consumption, and how you were the truest of friends to him and her. I put my hand on hers and whispered, “Tell me the truth: Mr. Deronda—you are sure he is quite good? You know no evil of him? Is any evil people say of him false?”

  She drew back, glared at me, then flared with anger. She said she would not believe evil of you if an angel told it to her; you found her when she was so miserable, poor, and forsaken she was about to drown herself; you saved her life, treated her like a princess, searched London for her adored brother, with whom she was now reunited.

  I had heard all I needed. You and your life were no more like Grandcourt’s conception than southern starlight is like London smog. I was reassured your interest in Mirah Lapidoth came from your Christian kindness and was not amorous. But then I had a sudden dread of the dividing doors opening and you finding me there. I hastily thanked Miss Lapidoth and bowed myself out.

  As I arrived at Grosvenor Square, so did Grandcourt. He threw down his cigar, helped me from the carriage, and accompanied me upstairs. I went to my boudoir and tried to ignore him. He followed and sat in front of me, his chair too close. “May I ask where you have been at this extraordinary hour?” he asked.

  I felt choked like a tight-leashed dog. Not even the air I breathed belonged to me. I sat by the table, laid my gloves on it, and did not look at him.

  “Oh yes, I have been to Miss Lapidoth to ask her to come and sing for us.”

  “And to ask about her relations with Deronda?” Grandcourt added with the coldest sneer, the deepest threat.

  My control broke. I spat out in fury, “Yes, and what you said is false, a low wicked falsehood.” Oh, I could have said much more, that his whole life was a low wicked falsehood, that I detested him, saw no good in him, liked nothing about him, and wished him dead.

  “She told you so, did she?” he said with calm aggression. He stood, barred me from rising
from my chair, looked down at me, and tipped my face upward. I longed for the knife with the silver blade. “It’s of no consequence so far as the singing goes,” he drawled. “You can have her come to sing if you like. But you will please to observe that you are not to go near that house again. You have married me and must be guided by me. As my wife you must take my word about what is proper for you. When you undertook to be Mrs. Grandcourt, you undertook not to make a fool of yourself. You have been making a fool of yourself this morning, and if you were to go on as you have begun, you might get yourself talked of at the clubs in a way I would not like.”

  It was as if a disinterested physician, going about his workaday job, was explaining how an invasive cancer had so eaten my life there was nothing to be done. As Grandcourt left the room I thought of Uncle’s wish for him to enter politics. Had he done so, how calmly he would seek to exterminate those of whom he disapproved.

  I thought of the casino at Homburg, the anticipation of winning, and the disappointment of loss. I had lost fatally, but I had hardened. Grandcourt could not again make me doubt my faith in you. I believed you to be as generous and kind as he was mean and vicious. I chose to believe I was the woman you loved. A refractoriness settled in me, which Grandcourt sensed, a defiance of mood, a hardness of social manner, a careless insincerity that broke, when I saw you, into such signs of agitation and need.

  * * *

  MAMA AND MY sisters moved to the White House, known as Jodson’s, a mile from Offendene and circled by pine trees with windows that opened wide to a garden of roses. But I despaired at the loss of the old home, the red and pink peonies that bloomed on the lawn, the hollyhocks that grew tall by the hedges.

  My visits to the new house were few. Anna was our link. She came often to London to visit Rex. Mama said that when he called, to avoid paining him, I was not mentioned. Anna gave her and my sisters news of my London life, the house at Grosvenor Square, comment about me in the Society pages. Rex was a friend of Hans Meyrick’s; they too met when students at Cambridge. Hans gave Anna a sketch of Rex, which showed his strong jaw and wide mouth.