CHAPTER XXIV.

"I question things but do not find
One that will answer to my mind:
And all the world appears unkind."
--WORDSWORTH.


Gwendolen was glad that she had got through her interview with Klesmer
before meeting her uncle and aunt. She had made up her mind now that there
were only disagreeables before her, and she felt able to maintain a dogged
calm in the face of any humiliation that might be proposed.

The meeting did not happen until the Monday, when Gwendolen went to the
rectory with her mamma. They had called at Sawyer's Cottage by the way,
and had seen every cranny of the narrow rooms in a mid-day light,
unsoftened by blinds and curtains; for the furnishing to be done by
gleanings from the rectory had not yet begun.

"How _shall_ you endure it, mamma?" said Gwendolen, as they walked away.
She had not opened her lips while they were looking round at the bare
walls and floors, and the little garden with the cabbage-stalks, and the
yew arbor all dust and cobwebs within. "You and the four girls all in that
closet of a room, with the green and yellow paper pressing on your eyes?
And without me?"

"It will be some comfort that you have not to bear it too, dear."

"If it were not that I must get some money, I would rather be there than
go to be a governess."

"Don't set yourself against it beforehand, Gwendolen. If you go to the
palace you will have every luxury about you. And you know how much you
have always cared for that. You will not find it so hard as going up and
down those steep narrow stairs, and hearing the crockery rattle through
the house, and the dear girls talking."

"It is like a bad dream," said Gwendolen, impetuously. "I cannot believe
that my uncle will let you go to such a place. He ought to have taken some
other steps."

"Don't be unreasonable, dear child. What could he have done?"

"That was for him to find out. It seems to me a very extraordinary world
if people in our position must sink in this way all at once," said
Gwendolen, the other worlds with which she was conversant being
constructed with a sense of fitness that arranged her own future
agreeably.

It was her temper that framed her sentences under this entirely new
pressure of evils: she could have spoken more suitably on the vicissitudes
in other people's lives, though it was never her aspiration to express
herself virtuously so much as cleverly--a point to be remembered in
extenuation of her words, which were usually worse than she was.

And, notwithstanding the keen sense of her own bruises, she was capable of
some compunction when her uncle and aunt received her with a more
affectionate kindness than they had ever shown before. She could not but
be struck by the dignified cheerfulness with which they talked of the
necessary economies in their way of living, and in the education of the
boys. Mr. Gascoigne's worth of character, a little obscured by wordly
opportunities--as the poetic beauty of women is obscured by the demands of
fashionable dressing--showed itself to great advantage under this sudden
reduction of fortune. Prompt and methodical, he had set himself not only
to put down his carriage, but to reconsider his worn suits of clothes, to
leave off meat for breakfast, to do without periodicals, to get Edwy from
school and arrange hours of study for all the boys under himself, and to
order the whole establishment on the sparest footing possible. For all
healthy people economy has its pleasures; and the rector's spirit had
spread through the household. Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna, who always made
papa their model, really did not miss anything they cared about for
themselves, and in all sincerity felt that the saddest part of the family
losses was the change for Mrs. Davilow and her children.

Anna for the first time could merge her resentment on behalf of Rex in her
sympathy with Gwendolen; and Mrs. Gascoigne was disposed to hope that
trouble would have a salutary effect on her niece, without thinking it her
duty to add any bitters by way of increasing the salutariness. They had
both been busy devising how to get blinds and curtains for the cottage out
of the household stores; but with delicate feeling they left these matters
in the back-ground, and talked at first of Gwendolen's journey, and the
comfort it was to her mamma to have her at home again.

In fact there was nothing for Gwendolen to take as a justification for
extending her discontent with events to the persons immediately around
her, and she felt shaken into a more alert attention, as if by a call to
drill that everybody else was obeying, when her uncle began in a voice of
firm kindness to talk to her of the efforts he had been making to get her
a situation which would offer her as many advantages as possible. Mr.
Gascoigne had not forgotten Grandcourt, but the possibility of further
advances from that quarter was something too vague for a man of his good
sense to be determined by it: uncertainties of that kind must not now
slacken his action in doing the best he could for his niece under actual
conditions.

"I felt that there was no time to be lost, Gwendolen; for a position in a
good family where you will have some consideration is not to be had at a
moment's notice. And however long we waited we could hardly find one where
you would be better off than at Bishop Mompert's. I am known to both him
and Mrs. Mompert, and that of course is an advantage to you. Our
correspondence has gone on favorably; but I cannot be surprised that Mrs.
Mompert wishes to see you before making an absolute engagement. She thinks
of arranging for you to meet her at Wanchester when she is on her way to
town. I dare say you will feel the interview rather trying for you, my
dear; but you will have a little time to prepare your mind."

"Do you know _why_ she wants to see me, uncle?" said Gwendolen, whose mind
had quickly gone over various reasons that an imaginary Mrs. Mompert with
three daughters might be supposed to entertain, reasons all of a
disagreeable kind to the person presenting herself for inspection.

The rector smiled. "Don't be alarmed, my dear. She would like to have a
more precise idea of you than my report can give. And a mother is
naturally scrupulous about a companion for her daughters. I have told her
you are very young. But she herself exercises a close supervision over her
daughters' education, and that makes her less anxious as to age. She is a
woman of taste and also of strict principle, and objects to having a
French person in the house. I feel sure that she will think your manners
and accomplishments as good as she is likely to find; and over the
religious and moral tone of the education she, and indeed the bishop
himself, will preside."

Gwendolen dared not answer, but the repression of her decided dislike to
the whole prospect sent an unusually deep flush over her face and neck,
subsiding as quickly as it came. Anna, full of tender fears, put her
little hand into her cousin's, and Mr. Gascoigne was too kind a man not to
conceive something of the trial which this sudden change must be for a
girl like Gwendolen. Bent on giving a cheerful view of things, he went on,
in an easy tone of remark, not as if answering supposed objections--

"I think so highly of the position, that I should have been tempted to try
and get it for Anna, if she had been at all likely to meet Mrs. Mompert's
wants. It is really a home, with a continuance of education in the highest
sense: 'governess' is a misnomer. The bishop's views are of a more
decidedly Low Church color than my own--he is a close friend of Lord
Grampian's; but, though privately strict, he is not by any means narrow in
public matters. Indeed, he has created as little dislike in his diocese as
any bishop on the bench. He has always remained friendly to me, though
before his promotion, when he was an incumbent of this diocese, we had a
little controversy about the Bible Society."

The rector's words were too pregnant with satisfactory meaning to himself
for him to imagine the effect they produced in the mind of his niece.
"Continuance of education"--"bishop's views"--"privately strict"--"Bible
Society,"--it was as if he had introduced a few snakes at large for the
instruction of ladies who regarded them as all alike furnished with
poison-bags, and, biting or stinging, according to convenience. To
Gwendolen, already shrinking from the prospect open to her, such phrases
came like the growing heat of a burning glass--not at all as the links of
persuasive reflection which they formed for the good uncle. She began,
desperately, to seek an alternative.

"There was another situation, I think, mamma spoke of?" she said, with
determined self-mastery.

'"Yes," said the rector, in rather a depreciatory tone; "but that is in a
school. I should not have the same satisfaction in your taking that. It
would be much harder work, you are aware, and not so good in any other
respect. Besides, you have not an equal chance of getting it."

"Oh dear no," said Mrs. Gascoigne, "it would be much less appropriate, You
might not have a bedroom to yourself." And Gwendolen's memories of school
suggested other particulars which forced her to admit to herself that this
alternative would be no relief. She turned to her uncle again and said,
apparently in acceptance of his ideas--

"When is Mrs. Mompert likely to send for me?"

"That is rather uncertain, but she has promised not to entertain any other
proposal till she has seen you. She has entered with much feeling into
your position. It will be within the next fortnight, probably. But I must
be off now. I am going to let part of my glebe uncommonly well."

The rector ended very cheerfully, leaving the room with the satisfactory
conviction that Gwendolen was going to adapt herself to circumstances like
a girl of good sense. Having spoken appropriately, he naturally supposed
that the effects would be appropriate; being accustomed, as a household
and parish authority, to be asked to "speak to" refractory persons, with
the understanding that the measure was morally coercive.

"What a stay Henry is to us all?" said Mrs. Gascoigne, when her husband
had left the room.

"He is indeed," said Mrs. Davilow, cordially. "I think cheerfulness is a
fortune in itself. I wish I had it."

"And Rex is just like him," said Mrs. Gascoigne. "I must tell you the
comfort we have had in a letter from him. I must read you a little bit,"
she added, taking the letter from her pocket, while Anna looked rather
frightened--she did not know why, except that it had been a rule with her
not to mention Rex before Gwendolen.

The proud mother ran her eyes over the letter, seeking for sentences to
read aloud. But apparently she had found it sown with what might seem to
be closer allusions than she desired to the recent past, for she looked
up, folding the letter, and saying--

"However, he tells us that our trouble has made a man of him; he sees a
reason for any amount of work: he means to get a fellowship, to take
pupils, to set one of his brothers going, to be everything that is most
remarkable. The letter is full of fun--just like him. He says, 'Tell
mother she has put out an advertisement for a jolly good hard-working son,
in time to hinder me from taking ship; and I offer myself for the place.'
The letter came on Friday. I never saw my husband so much moved by
anything since Rex was born. It seemed a gain to balance our loss."

This letter, in fact, was what had helped both Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna to
show Gwendolen an unmixed kindliness; and she herself felt very amiably
about it, smiling at Anna, and pinching her chin, as much as to say,
"Nothing is wrong with you now, is it?" She had no gratuitously ill-
natured feeling, or egoistic pleasure in making men miserable. She only
had an intense objection to their making her miserable.

But when the talk turned on furniture for the cottage Gwendolen was not
roused to show even a languid interest. She thought that she had done as
much as could be expected of her this morning, and indeed felt at an
heroic pitch in keeping to herself the struggle that was going on within
her. The recoil of her mind from the only definite prospect allowed her,
was stronger than even she had imagined beforehand. The idea of presenting
herself before Mrs. Mompert in the first instance, to be approved or
disapproved, came as pressure on an already painful bruise; even as a
governess, it appeared she was to be tested and was liable to rejection.
After she had done herself the violence to accept the bishop and his wife,
they were still to consider whether they would accept her; it was at her
peril that she was to look, speak, or be silent. And even when she had
entered on her dismal task of self-constraint in the society of three
girls whom she was bound incessantly to edify, the same process of
inspection was to go on: there was always to be Mrs. Mompert's
supervision; always something or other would be expected of her to which
she had not the slightest inclination; and perhaps the bishop would
examine her on serious topics. Gwendolen, lately used to the social
successes of a handsome girl, whose lively venturesomeness of talk has the
effect of wit, and who six weeks before would have pitied the dullness of
the bishop rather than have been embarrassed by him, saw the life before
her as an entrance into a penitentiary. Wild thoughts of running away to
be an actress, in spite of Klesmer, came to her with the lure of freedom;
but his words still hung heavily on her soul; they had alarmed her pride
and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived herself getting amongst
vulgar people who would treat her with rude familiarity--odious men, whose
grins and smirks would not be seen through the strong grating of polite
society. Gwendolen's daring was not in the least that of the adventuress;
the demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow; and when she had
dreamed that she might be the heroine of the gaming-table, it was with the
understanding that no one should treat her with the less consideration, or
presume to look at her with irony as Deronda had done. To be protected and
petted, and to have her susceptibilities consulted in every detail, had
gone along with her food and clothing as matters of course in her life:
even without any such warning as Klesmer's she could not have thought it
an attractive freedom to be thrown in solitary dependence on the doubtful
civility of strangers. The endurance of the episcopal penitentiary was
less repulsive than that; though here too she would certainly never be
petted or have her susceptibilities consulted. Her rebellion against this
hard necessity which had come just to her of all people in the world--to
her whom all circumstances had concurred in preparing for something quite
different--was exaggerated instead of diminished as one hour followed
another, with the imagination of what she might have expected in her lot
and what it was actually to be. The family troubles, she thought, were
easier for every one than for her--even for poor dear mamma, because she
had always used herself to not enjoying. As to hoping that if she went to
the Momperts' and was patient a little while, things might get better--it
would be stupid to entertain hopes for herself after all that had
happened: her talents, it appeared, would never be recognized as anything
remarkable, and there was not a single direction in which probability
seemed to flatter her wishes. Some beautiful girls who, like her, had read
romances where even plain governesses are centres of attraction and are
sought in marriage, might have solaced themselves a little by transporting
such pictures into their own future; but even if Gwendolen's experience
had led her to dwell on love-making and marriage as her elysium, her heart
was too much oppressed by what was near to her, in both the past and the
future, for her to project her anticipations very far off. She had a
world-nausea upon her, and saw no reason all through her life why she
should wish to live. No religious view of trouble helped her: her troubles
had in her opinion all been caused by other people's disagreeable or
wicked conduct; and there was really nothing pleasant to be counted on in
the world: that was her feeling; everything else she had heard said about
trouble was mere phrase-making not attractive enough for her to have
caught it up and repeated it. As to the sweetness of labor and fulfilled
claims; the interest of inward and outward activity; the impersonal
delights of life as a perpetual discovery; the dues of courage, fortitude,
industry, which it is mere baseness not to pay toward the common burden;
the supreme worth of the teacher's vocation;--these, even if they had been
eloquently preached to her, could have been no more than faintly
apprehended doctrines: the fact which wrought upon her was her invariable
observation that for a lady to become a governess--to "take a situation"--
was to descend in life and to be treated at best with a compassionate
patronage. And poor Gwendolen had never dissociated happiness from
personal pre-eminence and _eclat_. That where these threatened to forsake
her, she should take life to be hardly worth the having, cannot make her
so unlike the rest of us, men or women, that we should cast her out of our
compassion; our moments of temptation to a mean opinion of things in
general being usually dependent on some susceptibility about ourselves and
some dullness to subjects which every one else would consider more
important. Surely a young creature is pitiable who has the labyrinth of
life before her and no clue--to whom distrust in herself and her good
fortune has come as a sudden shock, like a rent across the path that she
was treading carelessly.

In spite of her healthy frame, her irreconcilable repugnance affected her
even physically; she felt a sort of numbness and could set about nothing;
the least urgency, even that she should take her meals, was an irritation
to her; the speech of others on any subject seemed unreasonable, because
it did not include her feeling and was an ignorant claim on her. It was
not in her nature to busy herself with the fancies of suicide to which
disappointed young people are prone: what occupied and exasperated her was
the sense that there was nothing for her but to live in a way she hated.
She avoided going to the rectory again: it was too intolerable to have to
look and talk as if she were compliant; and she could not exert herself to
show interest about the furniture of that horrible cottage. Miss Merry was
staying on purpose to help, and such people as Jocosa liked that sort of
thing. Her mother had to make excuses for her not appearing, even when
Anna came to see her. For that calm which Gwendolen had promised herself
to maintain had changed into sick motivelessness: she thought, "I suppose
I shall begin to pretend by-and-by, but why should I do it now?"

Her mother watched her with silent distress; and, lapsing into the habit
of indulgent tenderness, she began to think what she imagined that
Gwendolen was thinking, and to wish that everything should give way to the
possibility of making her darling less miserable.

One day when she was in the black and yellow bedroom and her mother was
lingering there under the pretext of considering and arranging Gwendolen's
articles of dress, she suddenly roused herself to fetch the casket which
contained the ornaments.

"Mamma," she began, glancing over the upper layer, "I had forgotten these
things. Why didn't you remind me of them? Do see about getting them sold.
You will not mind about parting with them. You gave them all to me long
ago."

She lifted the upper tray and looked below.

"If we can do without them, darling, I would rather keep them for you,"
said Mrs. Davilow, seating herself beside Gwendolen with a feeling of
relief that she was beginning to talk about something. The usual relation
between them had become reversed. It was now the mother who tried to cheer
the daughter. "Why, how came you to put that pocket handkerchief in here?"

It was the handkerchief with the corner torn off which Gwendolen had
thrust in with the turquoise necklace.

"It happened to be with the necklace--I was in a hurry." said Gwendolen,
taking the handkerchief away and putting it in her pocket. "Don't sell the
necklace, mamma," she added, a new feeling having come over her about that
rescue of it which had formerly been so offensive.

"No, dear, no; it was made out of your dear father's chain. And I should
prefer not selling the other things. None of them are of any great value.
All my best ornaments were taken from me long ago."

Mrs. Davilow colored. She usually avoided any reference to such facts
about Gwendolen's step-father as that he had carried off his wife's
jewelry and disposed of it. After a moment's pause she went on--

"And these things have not been reckoned on for any expenses. Carry them
with you."

"That would be quite useless, mamma," said Gwendolen, coldly. "Governesses
don't wear ornaments. You had better get me a gray frieze livery and a
straw poke, such as my aunt's charity children wear."

"No, dear, no; don't take that view of it. I feel sure the Momperts will
like you the better for being graceful and elegant."

"I am not at all sure what the Momperts will like me to be. It is enough
that I am expected to be what they like," said Gwendolen bitterly.

"If there is anything you would object to less--anything that could be
done--instead of your going to the bishop's, do say so, Gwendolen. Tell me
what is in your heart. I will try for anything you wish," said the mother,
beseechingly. "Don't keep things away from me. Let us bear them together."

"Oh, mamma, there is nothing to tell. I can't do anything better. I must
think myself fortunate if they will have me. I shall get some money for
you. That is the only thing I have to think of. I shall not spend any
money this year: you will have all the eighty pounds. I don't know how far
that will go in housekeeping; but you need not stitch your poor fingers to
the bone, and stare away all the sight that the tears have left in your
dear eyes."

Gwendolen did not give any caresses with her words as she had been used to
do. She did not even look at her mother, but was looking at the turquoise
necklace as she turned it over her fingers.

"Bless you for your tenderness, my good darling!" said Mrs. Davilow, with
tears in her eyes. "Don't despair because there are clouds now. You are so
young. There may be great happiness in store for you yet."

"I don't see any reason for expecting it, mamma," said Gwendolen, in a
hard tone; and Mrs. Davilow was silent, thinking as she had often thought
before--"What did happen between her and Mr. Grandcourt?"

"I _will_ keep this necklace, mamma," said Gwendolen, laying it apart and
then closing the casket. "But do get the other things sold, even if they
will not bring much. Ask my uncle what to do with them. I shall certainly
not use them again. I am going to take the veil. I wonder if all the poor
wretches who have ever taken it felt as I do."

"Don't exaggerate evils, dear."

"How can any one know that I exaggerate, when I am speaking of my own
feeling? I did not say what any one else felt."

She took out the torn handkerchief from her pocket again, and wrapped it
deliberately round the necklace. Mrs. Davilow observed the action with
some surprise, but the tone of her last words discouraged her from asking
any question.

The "feeling" Gwendolen spoke of with an air of tragedy was not to be
explained by the mere fact that she was going to be a governess: she was
possessed by a spirit of general disappointment. It was not simply that
she had a distaste for what she was called on to do: the distaste spread
itself over the world outside her penitentiary, since she saw nothing very
pleasant in it that seemed attainable by her even if she were free.
Naturally her grievances did not seem to her smaller than some of her male
contemporaries held theirs to be when they felt a profession too narrow
for their powers, and had an _a priori_ conviction that it was not worth
while to put forth their latent abilities. Because her education had been
less expensive than theirs, it did not follow that she should have wider
emotions or a keener intellectual vision. Her griefs were feminine; but to
her as a woman they were not the less hard to bear, and she felt an equal
right to the Promethean tone.

But the movement of mind which led her to keep the necklace, to fold it up
in the handkerchief, and rise to put it in her _necessaire_, where she had
first placed it when it had been returned to her, was more peculiar, and
what would be called less reasonable. It came from that streak of
superstition in her which attached itself both to her confidence and her
terror--a superstition which lingers in an intense personality even in
spite of theory and science; any dread or hope for self being stronger
than all reasons for or against it. Why she should suddenly determine not
to part with the necklace was not much clearer to her than why she should
sometimes have been frightened to find herself in the fields alone: she
had a confused state of emotion about Deronda--was it wounded pride and
resentment, or a certain awe and exceptional trust? It was something vague
and yet mastering, which impelled her to this action about the necklace.
There, is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to
be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.