Gwendolen

by Diana Souhami

  He drew his chair close, grasped my hair, pulled back my head, pushed his face close to mine, and said, “Just be quiet and listen. Let us understand each other. I know very well what this nonsense means. But if you suppose I am going to let you make a fool of me, just dismiss that notion from your mind. What are you to look forward to if you can’t behave properly as my wife? There is disgrace for you if you choose it. And as for Deronda, you are not to converse with him.”

  I said he could not in the least imagine what was in my mind, that I had seen enough of the disgrace that came from bad behavior, and that it would be better for him if he left me at liberty to speak with anyone I liked.

  “You will allow me to be the judge of that.” He tugged at my hair, rose, and walked to the window. I felt such a sense of capture, held by bit and bridle. He would keep on until I ceased to be restive, my spirit broken.

  “What decision have you come to?” he asked. “What orders shall I give?”

  It was to seem, if not my choice, my consent. His words were thumbscrews, his presence the rack. “Oh, let us go,” I said.

  * * *

  THE BOAT WAS ordered. We inspected it at midday and went to the quay at five in the afternoon. A group of onlookers admired the scene: this model couple indulging their monied idle life. A fisherman relayed a warning about the gathering wind, but Grandcourt’s manner made it clear he could as easily command a boat as a horse or a platoon.

  I was afraid not of the wind or the dangers of the sea but of my violent hatred, which grew ever more keen. I guided the tiller under Grandcourt’s eye and did exactly as he commanded. I kept to the thought of you. I was sure you would not leave Genoa. You would know I needed to talk with you, needed your help; you would save me from my murderous desires.

  The boat was carried eastward by a gentle breeze, the grand city shimmered, the mountains loomed, the sun was setting, and there were sails near and far.

  “Don’t you find this pleasant?” he asked.

  “Very,” I replied.

  “You admit now we could not have done anything better.”

  “No, nothing better. We shall go on always, like the Flying Dutchman.”

  He gave a warning glance. For as long as I hated him he would desire me. In my mind yet again I took that small sharp knife from its silver sheath.

  “If you like, we can go to Spezia in the morning and let the yacht meet us there.”

  “No, I should like nothing better than this.”

  “Very well, we’ll do the same tomorrow.”

  I hoped for forked lightning to strike him dead. I sat like a galley slave. To see you at the hotel was such joy and reassurance, but knowing you were near, I felt a terrible disappointment at being denied you. I did not look at my captor, who spoke only to order me to pull the tiller. As a child, when my hated stepfather came home, I used to imagine sailing away to a place where people were not forced to live with anyone they did not like. Now I was sailing with no hope of deliverance. My only avoidance of misery was to think of the life I might have, the woman I might be, were I with you.

  I let go of the tiller and heard my voice say aloud, “God help me.”

  “What’s the matter?” Grandcourt asked.

  “Oh, nothing.” I took the ropes again.

  An eternity passed. It grew late. He said, “I shall put about.” He turned the sail. I do not know if it was my mind or heart that acted. It was so quick. I think I pulled the tiller the wrong way at the same time as the wind gusted. The boom struck him and he fell from the boat. I saw him sink. My heart gave a lurch of joy. I did not move. I feared he would come up again, and he did, though farther off, for the boat moved fast with the tide. So quick. So quick. Like lightning. Like an arrow from a bow. “The rope!” he called in a voice not his own. I stooped for the rope. I felt sure he could swim and would come back whether I threw it or not. The rope was in my hands. I did not throw it. The words he will come back were in my mind.

  When he pinned me to the bed in humiliation and assault, I so longed for his death. In the mornings when I woke, often after dreaming of you, to the prison I was in, as I felt hope drain from me, I so longed for this moment of his drowning. But all the while I also longed for you to stop me growing more wicked. You were the vision of love, goodness, and redemption beyond the evil of my life.

  He went down again. Then again his face rose above the water. He cried out. I held the rope in my hand and my heart said, Die. He sank, and I thought, It is done. I am wicked. I am lost. Then I let go of the rope and leaped into the water. I was leaping away from myself, thrashing at the waves not to save him but to save myself. And then there was his dead face close to me. I did not touch him. I could not. The sea churned. I thought I would drown too. He went down. Then there was a fishing boat rowed by two men; one jumped from it, held my chin, dragged me from the sea and into their boat. They wrapped me in pea jackets and a tarpaulin.

  * * *

  AS WE REACHED the shore I saw you standing before me as if by plan. I was always expecting you, always hoping against hope for you and at last had found you. The boatmen supported me. I stretched out my arms to you; I called, “It is come. It is come. He is dead.” You tried to silence me. The boatmen did not understand English. They told you they heard a cry, saw me jump in after my husband, then hurried to rescue me. The man had drowned. He was beneath the waves. He might in time be washed ashore.

  The boat, drifting empty, was towed in, its sail loose. The fishermen were witness to the story you chose to believe and which became the formal, legally recognized account of what had happened.

  You informed the fishermen you were connected to my husband, instructed them to take me to the Italia, and told me that when you had dealt with the police and harbormaster you would come to me.

  I waited in the hotel. I put on the turquoise necklace. You summoned doctors, telegraphed Sir Hugo and my uncle to come at once and bring Mama. I kept saying he was dead, that I was a murderess, that he called for the rope which I did not throw, that I let him drown. I implored you not to say I must tell the world what I had done, not to tell me I deserved disgrace. I could not bear for Mama to know.

  I was like two creatures: one overcome by joy at release, the other burdened by guilt. Words spilled out: I had wanted to kill. I knew I must not act, but I was always waiting for the chance and it came; each day and night hatred worked in me; my consolation, my only way to free myself, was to contrive to kill him, at Ryelands, at Diplow, at Topping Abbey, at Grosvenor Square; I longed to use the sharp knife in the silver sheath locked in the drawer of my dressing case. I dared not unlock the case; in the yacht I dropped the key into the sea, I so longed to use that knife.

  You drew a chair up close to where I sat and tried to reassure me. Grandcourt’s death was an accident, I could not have prevented it, you said. He had fallen from the boat, he could not swim; I had leaped into the water with the impulse to save him.

  But only thinking of what you would do made me pretend to try to save my jailer, my tormentor. And in my heart I knew it was a futile gesture and to my joy too late. Had you been overboard, I would have thrown the rope, maneuvered the boat, and swum with all force to save you.

  I poured out my confession: how I used to think I could never be wicked, wicked people were distant from me, but within so little time I became wicked. Everything became a punishment to me, the very daylight seemed red hot … I ought not to have married. That was the beginning and end of it. I broke my promise to Lydia Glasher.

  And then I was a coward. I ought to have left and wandered like a beggar, not stayed to feel like a fiend. I thought he would kill me if I resisted his will. At night in the cabin of the yacht, the sea, the stillness were punishment. You were my only hope. When I saw you in the Italia, I thought that if I told you everything—the locked drawer, the knife, the murderous thoughts, the temptation that frightened me—all would have less power over me. But he shut me off from speaking to you and took me out in the boat wi
th no escape. And then the knowledge that at night his hated body would be on mine. Were he here again, I would wish him dead. But now his dead face will rise from the sea and be in the room, and I cannot bear more punishment.

  You tried to quieten me, said I had resisted temptation to the last, that my fears were in my imagination, and that what was done could not be altered. But you could not lessen my aversion to my worst self, for though I had not murdered Grandcourt, you saw, or I think you saw, that a criminal desire impelled my hesitation in assisting him. I remember saying, “I make you very unhappy.”

  You told me to say no more, try to sleep, that you would see me again after I had rested. I saw my torment was not yours. I felt your desire to be gone from me. You promised to come when I asked for you the next day.

  * * *

  YOU CAME TO my rooms the next morning. You said you had not undressed or slept. I again implored you not to tell Mama or anyone else how I resisted throwing the rope as Grandcourt drowned. Again you said my thoughts and hesitation would have made no difference: he could not swim, he must have been seized with cramp. And then at last I told you of Mrs. Glasher, of their children, the will, the money, and how I wanted none of it.

  I implored you to be patient with me. What I wanted, but could not ask, was for you to hold me. Instead you gave me lofty advice. I might, you said, become worthier than I had been thus far. “No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love and desire to continue in and make no effort to escape from.” You took my hand and held it in yours.

  I had never before had from a man a physical sign of tenderness that I needed and wanted. The feel of your hand seemed my link to life. I said that if you were close to me, I could be different, but that if you turned from me and forsook me, I did not know what I would do. I should not have said this. I was aware of urging you to make promises you would not know how to keep. Again I had gone too far.

  You became pragmatic, said you would not leave Genoa before Mama, Uncle, and Sir Hugo arrived, that my mother’s presence would be a comfort, that I must save her from unnecessary pain. I asked if it was your plan to live with Sir Hugo at the Abbey or at Diplow. You reddened and said you were uncertain where you would live.

  Worn down, you said you must go to your rooms and change your clothes, and that I must get well and calm before the others arrived. As you went through the door I felt like a banished soul, more alone than was bearable, with the distance between us too great for me to bridge. I sank to my knees and gave way to crying, and the attendant who found me thought my display was of grief and despair because my husband of a year had drowned in my presence.

  When you held my hand in consolation, your touch was a revelation. For you it was an unmemorable exchange, a reassurance you would have offered any troubled soul. I could not tell you I would have liked you to kiss my neck below my ear. Forgive me, I could never have told you that. Nor could I tell you, because I could not utter the words, about the violation I endured from Grandcourt. At times he did not wait for night. He dismissed the servants, turned the key in the door of my room, mocked me with his pale eyes, then stripped me of my clothes. I struggled and cried, but he insisted I be silent, unresistant, which was how I became.

  * * *

  NEWS OF THE drowning was in the Times. Mama and Uncle left for Genoa. They found me in a strange state of elation. I greeted them as liberators.

  Sir Hugo arrived some days later. His delay was because, as Grandcourt’s executor, he had gone to London to consult with Lush about the will. In Genoa he wondered about “the entanglement of our horoscopes,” as he put it, yours and mine, that led us to be in the same hotel when this drama broke, but he was a man who could go one better with most stories: once by chance he had stayed in a Paris hotel on the night a former lover of his was abandoned there, without money, by her husband, an Austrian baron.

  Sir Hugo had learned from Lush of the bad feeling between Grandcourt and me and about Mrs. Glasher and their children. The will stipulated, as I knew, that Grandcourt’s estate go to Mrs. Glasher’s boy. He left me two thousand pounds a year and the house at Gadsmere.

  It was not that Grandcourt cared overly for his son, but he would not tolerate the notion that I might meet with you when financed by him. He knew you belonged to Topping Abbey, and how it pained me that you should be denied your home on his account. Sir Hugo was disgusted. Grandcourt, he said, intended his death to put an extinguisher on me. He had married me; he should have made provision for me to continue living in a style fitting to the rank to which he raised me. Sir Hugo thought I ought to have had four or five thousand pounds a year and the London house for life. He said he was not obliged to think better of Grandcourt because he had drowned, and in his view nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it. Nor did he hide his satisfaction that Grandcourt was not to be master of the Abbey. Your view was that Grandcourt’s wrongdoing was in marrying me, not in leaving his estate to his son.

  Uncle, deeply offended by the will, blamed himself for omitting at the time of the marriage to bind Grandcourt to provision for me. Only now did he choose to remember rumors of Grandcourt’s entanglements and dissipation, which previously he found convenient to overlook. He resisted telling Mama about Mrs. Glasher and her children, but Mama, though too diffident to question me, had intuited something was wrong. I told her I was unsure what I would accept from the will and that she must not try to persuade or dissuade me on such matters. I implored her not to cry, promised to ensure she would have eight hundred pounds a year, and said I intended to be so wise, good, and sweet to her she would not know me.

  You told Sir Hugo about my unhappiness with Grandcourt and how you thought I would not mind about the disposal of the property. He said this made me unlike other women, but you were right: I wanted nothing from Grandcourt and no reminder of him.

  That same day, you left for Mainz. I resolved to ask you, on your return, whether I ought to refuse to accept any of Grandcourt’s money. Within two days we all left Genoa. I never wanted to see the Mediterranean again. In a trance I did what was expected of me. I was compliant but not present. I feared causing anxiety to Mama. I could not talk to her about my marriage or the true manner of Grandcourt’s death.

  I did not want to reenter any of the houses I had lived in with Grandcourt. Kind Sir Hugo asked me to look on him as my protector and friend, called me “my dear,” said my being badly treated made him feel nearer to me, opened his London house on Park Lane to Mama and me while mourning and other matters were attended to and for as long as we liked after that, and arranged for my possessions to be collected from Grosvenor Square and taken there. At Park Lane a bed was made up for me in the same room as Mama’s. At night she lay wakeful, hoping to help me. I cried out for her, but when she suggested giving me a sleeping draft I chastised her.

  Sir Hugo absolved me from any dealings with Lush or my uncle on practical matters to do with the will. He informed me I would have enough money to provide for Mama and my sisters and, as Offendene was again free, advised us to return there and try to re-create life as it had been only a year ago.

  * * *

  GRANDCOURT’S BODY WAS not washed ashore. A memorial service was held, which Mrs. Glasher and her children attended. With my face concealed behind a black veil, I held out my hand to her, but she turned away.

  Sir Hugo spent some days at the Abbey, then returned to help us. I said in front of Mama, “Sir Hugo, I wish to see Mr. Deronda again as soon as possible. I don’t know his address. Will you tell it me or let him know I want to see him?”

  He said, “I am sure he will want to obey your wish,” and that when you returned from Mainz, if you went to the Abbey he would give you the message or send a note to your chambers. Sir Hugo was convinced of my passionate attachment to you and supposed you to be in love with me. Though plans and expectations were inappropriate, mere days after Grandcourt’s death, he viewed it as natural and right for us to be together now that the apparent obstacle to our being so ha
d been removed.

  You agreed to come to Park Lane. I waited alone for you in the white and crimson drawing room, with the lions on the pilasters of the chimney piece and Lady Mallinger’s smiling portrait looking down. I thought of how, when we sat together on the small settee at her musical party, despite Grandcourt’s surveillance, I told you my life depended on your not forsaking me, but it was Miss Lapidoth who sang “Per pietà, non dirmi addio.”

  I was joyous I could now see you without fear of reprisal. I wore black and no jewelry except the turquoise chain. You looked apprehensive. It was good of you to come, I said, I wanted your advice: you knew the terms of my husband’s will; ought I, in the light of my wrongdoing, take anything that had once been his? I admitted I married him because I was afraid of being poor and the dreary confinement of life as a governess, but in the marriage I had borne far worse things and could be poor now if you thought that right, though it would be hard for me to see Mama in poverty again. I was selfish, but I loved her, and even at my most miserable and desperate, knowing she was better off had in a small way comforted me. I was very precious to her, and Grandcourt had taken me from her and tried to keep us apart. If, I asked you, I took enough to provide for her but nothing for myself, would that still be wrong?

  My tears came, though I tried to be calm. You did not hesitate with your advice: I should abide by the provisions of the will. The case was straightforward, and I should not punish myself further. Grandcourt chose to enter my life and affect its course in the most momentous way. He had an obligation to provide for me and Mama. If I took just eight hundred pounds for her and abjured the rest, it would create an uncomfortable predicament for her. She would not want income from me from which I was cut out. “You are conscious of something which you feel to be a crime toward one who is dead,” you said. “You think you have forfeited all claim as a wife. You shrink from taking what was his.” You then advised me not to speak about my guilt to Mama or anyone else, and to let my remorse show in the use I made of my monetary independence.