“O, welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,
Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!”
—MILTON.
Deronda did not obey Gwendolen’s new summons without some agitation.
Not his vanity, but his keen sympathy made him susceptible to the
danger that another’s heart might feel larger demands on him than he
would be able to fulfill; and it was no longer a matter of argument
with him, but of penetrating consciousness, that Gwendolen’s soul clung
to his with a passionate need. We do not argue the existence of the
anger or the scorn that thrills through us in a voice; we simply feel
it, and it admits of no disproof. Deronda felt this woman’s destiny
hanging on his over a precipice of despair. Any one who knows him
cannot wonder at his inward confession, that if all this had happened
little more than a year ago, he would hardly have asked himself whether
he loved her; the impetuous determining impulse which would have moved
him would have been to save her from sorrow, to shelter her life
forevermore from the dangers of loneliness, and carry out to the last
the rescue he had begun in that monitory redemption of the necklace.
But now, love and duty had thrown other bonds around him, and that
impulse could no longer determine his life; still, it was present in
him as a compassionate yearning, a painful quivering at the very
imagination of having again and again to meet the appeal of her eyes
and words. The very strength of the bond, the certainty of the resolve,
that kept him asunder from her, made him gaze at her lot apart with the
more aching pity.
He awaited her coming in the back drawing-room—part of that white and
crimson space where they had sat together at the musical party, where
Gwendolen had said for the first time that her lot depended on his not
forsaking her, and her appeal had seemed to melt into the melodic
cry—_Per pietà non dirmi addio_. But the melody had come from Mirah’s
dear voice.
Deronda walked about this room, which he had for years known by heart,
with a strange sense of metamorphosis in his own life. The familiar
objects around him, from Lady Mallinger’s gently smiling portrait to
the also human and urbane faces of the lions on the pilasters of the
chimney-piece, seemed almost to belong to a previous state of existence
which he was revisiting in memory only, not in reality; so deep and
transforming had been the impressions he had lately experienced, so new
were the conditions under which he found himself in the house he had
been accustomed to think of as a home—standing with his hat in his
hand awaiting the entrance of a young creature whose life had also been
undergoing a transformation—a tragic transformation toward a wavering
result, in which he felt with apprehensiveness that his own action was
still bound up.
But Gwendolen was come in, looking changed; not only by her mourning
dress, but by a more satisfied quietude of expression than he had seen
in her face at Genoa. Her satisfaction was that Deronda was there; but
there was no smile between them as they met and clasped hands; each was
full of remembrance—full of anxious prevision. She said, “It was good
of you to come. Let us sit down,” immediately seating herself in the
nearest chair. He placed himself opposite to her.
“I asked you to come because I want you to tell me what I ought to do,”
she began, at once. “Don’t be afraid of telling me what you think is
right, because it seems hard. I have made up my mind to do it. I was
afraid once of being poor; I could not bear to think of being under
other people; and that was why I did something—why I married. I have
borne worse things now. I think I could bear to be poor, if you think I
ought. Do you know about my husband’s will?”
“Yes, Sir Hugo told me,” said Deronda, already guessing the question
she had to ask.
“Ought I to take anything he has left me? I will tell you what I have
been thinking,” said Gwendolen, with a more nervous eagerness. “Perhaps
you may not quite know that I really did think a good deal about my
mother when I married. I _was_ selfish, but I did love her, and feel
about her poverty; and what comforted me most at first, when I was
miserable, was her being better off because I had married. The thing
that would be hardest to me now would be to see her in poverty again;
and I have been thinking that if I took enough to provide for her, and
no more—nothing for myself—it would not be wrong; for I was very
precious to my mother—and he took me from her—and he meant—and if
she had known—”
Gwendolen broke off. She had been preparing herself for this interview
by thinking of hardly anything else than this question of right toward
her mother; but the question had carried with it thoughts and reasons
which it was impossible for her to utter, and these perilous
remembrances swarmed between her words, making her speech more and more
agitated and tremulous. She looked down helplessly at her hands, now
unladen of all rings except her wedding-ring.
“Do not hurt yourself by speaking of that,” said Deronda, tenderly.
“There is no need; the case is very simple. I think I can hardly judge
wrongly about it. You consult me because I am the only person to whom
you have confided the most painful part of your experience: and I can
understand your scruples.” He did not go on immediately, waiting for
her to recover herself. The silence seemed to Gwendolen full of the
tenderness that she heard in his voice, and she had courage to lift up
her eyes and look at him as he said, “You are conscious of something
which you feel to be a crime toward one who is dead. You think that you
have forfeited all claim as a wife. You shrink from taking what was
his. You want to keep yourself from profiting by his death. Your
feeling even urges you to some self-punishment—some scourging of the
self that disobeyed your better will—the will that struggled against
temptation. I have known something of that myself. Do I understand you?”
“Yes—at least, I want to be good—not like what I have been,” said
Gwendolen. “I will try to bear what you think I ought to bear. I have
tried to tell you the worst about myself. What ought I to do?”
“If no one but yourself were concerned in this question of income,”
said Deronda, “I should hardly dare to urge you against any remorseful
prompting; but I take as a guide now, your feeling about Mrs. Davilow,
which seems to me quite just. I cannot think that your husband’s dues
even to yourself are nullified by any act you have committed. He
voluntarily entered into your life, and affected its course in what is
always the most momentous way. But setting that aside, it was due from
him in his position that he should provide for your mother, and he of
course understood that if this will took effect she would share the
provision he had made for you.”
“She has had eight hundred a year. What I thought of was to take that
and leave the rest,” said Gwendolen. She had been so long inwardly
arguing for this as a permission, that her mind could not at once take
another attitude.
“I think it is not your duty to fix a limit in that way,” said Deronda.
“You would be making a painful enigma for Mrs. Davilow; an income from
which you shut yourself out must be embittered to her. And your own
course would become too difficult. We agreed at Genoa that the burden
on your conscience is one what no one ought to be admitted to the
knowledge of. The future beneficence of your life will be best
furthered by your saving all others from the pain of that knowledge. In
my opinion you ought simply to abide by the provisions of your
husband’s will, and let your remorse tell only on the use that you will
make of your monetary independence.”
In uttering the last sentence Deronda automatically took up his hat
which he had laid on the floor beside him. Gwendolen, sensitive to his
slightest movement, felt her heart giving a great leap, as if it too
had a consciousness of its own, and would hinder him from going: in the
same moment she rose from her chair, unable to reflect that the
movement was an acceptance of his apparent intention to leave her; and
Deronda, of course, also rose, advancing a little.
“I will do what you tell me,” said Gwendolen, hurriedly; “but what else
shall I do?” No other than these simple words were possible to her; and
even these were too much for her in a state of emotion where her proud
secrecy was disenthroned: as the childlike sentences fell from her
lips they reacted on her like a picture of her own helplessness, and
she could not check the sob which sent the large tears to her eyes.
Deronda, too, felt a crushing pain; but imminent consequences were
visible to him, and urged him to the utmost exertion of conscience.
When she had pressed her tears away, he said, in a gently questioning
tone,
“You will probably be soon going with Mrs. Davilow into the country.”
“Yes, in a week or ten days.” Gwendolen waited an instant, turning her
eyes vaguely toward the window, as if looking at some imagined
prospect. “I want to be kind to them all—they can be happier than I
can. Is that the best I can do?”
“I think so. It is a duty that cannot be doubtful,” said Deronda. He
paused a little between his sentences, feeling a weight of anxiety on
all his words. “Other duties will spring from it. Looking at your life
as a debt may seem the dreariest view of things at a distance; but it
cannot really be so. What makes life dreary is the want of motive: but
once beginning to act with that penitential, loving purpose you have in
your mind, there will be unexpected satisfactions—there will be
newly-opening needs—continually coming to carry you on from day to
day. You will find your life growing like a plant.”
Gwendolen turned her eyes on him with the look of one athirst toward
the sound of unseen waters. Deronda felt the look as if she had been
stretching her arms toward him from a forsaken shore. His voice took an
affectionate imploringness when he said,
“This sorrow, which has cut down to the root, has come to you while you
are so young—try to think of it not as a spoiling of your life, but as
a preparation for it. Let it be a preparation——” Any one overhearing
his tones would have thought he was entreating for his own happiness.
“See! you have been saved from the worst evils that might have come
from your marriage, which you feel was wrong. You have had a vision of
injurious, selfish action—a vision of possible degradation; think that
a severe angel, seeing you along the road of error, grasped you by the
wrist and showed you the horror of the life you must avoid. And it has
come to you in your spring-time. Think of it as a preparation. You can,
you will, be among the best of women, such as make others glad that
they were born.”
The words were like the touch of a miraculous hand to Gwendolen.
Mingled emotions streamed through her frame with a strength that seemed
the beginning of a new existence, having some new power or other which
stirred in her vaguely. So pregnant is the divine hope of moral
recovery with the energy that fulfills it. So potent in us is the
infused action of another soul, before which we bow in complete love.
But the new existence seemed inseparable from Deronda: the hope seemed
to make his presence permanent. It was not her thought, that he loved
her, and would cling to her—a thought would have tottered with
improbability; it was her spiritual breath. For the first time since
that terrible moment on the sea a flush rose and spread over her cheek,
brow and neck, deepened an instant or two, and then gradually
disappeared. She did not speak.
Deronda advanced and put out his hand, saying, “I must not weary you.”
She was startled by the sense that he was going, and put her hand in
his, still without speaking.
“You look ill yet—unlike yourself,” he added, while he held her hand.
“I can’t sleep much,” she answered, with some return of her dispirited
manner. “Things repeat themselves in me so. They come back—they will
all come back,” she ended, shudderingly, a chill fear threatening her.
“By degrees they will be less insistent,” said Deronda. He could not
drop her hand or move away from her abruptly.
“Sir Hugo says he shall come to stay at Diplow,” said Gwendolen,
snatching at previously intended words which had slipped away from her.
“You will come too.”
“Probably,” said Deronda, and then feeling that the word was cold, he
added, correctively, “Yes, I shall come,” and then released her hand,
with the final friendly pressure of one who has virtually said good-bye.
“And not again here, before I leave town?” said Gwendolen, with timid
sadness, looking as pallid as ever.
What could Deronda say? “If I can be of any use—if you wish
me—certainly I will.”
“I must wish it,” said Gwendolen, impetuously; “you know I must wish
it. What strength have I? Who else is there?” Again a sob was rising.
Deronda felt a pang, which showed itself in his face. He looked
miserable as he said, “I will certainly come.”
Gwendolen perceived the change in his face; but the intense relief of
expecting him to come again could not give way to any other feeling,
and there was a recovery of the inspired hope and courage in her.
“Don’t be unhappy about me,” she said, in a tone of affectionate
assurance. “I shall remember your words—every one of them. I shall
remember what you believe about me; I shall try.”
She looked at him firmly, and put out her hand again as if she had
forgotten what had passed since those words of his which she promised
to remember. But there was no approach to a smile on her lips. She had
never smiled since her husband’s death. When she stood still and in
silence, she looked like a melancholy statue of the Gwendolen whose
laughter had once been so ready when others were grave.
It is only by remembering the searching anguish which had changed the
aspect of the world for her that we can understand her behavior to
Deronda—the unreflecting openness, nay, the importunate pleading, with
which she expressed her dependence on him. Considerations such as would
have filled the minds of indifferent spectators could not occur to her,
any more than if flames had been mounting around her, and she had flung
herself into his open arms and clung about his neck that he might carry
her into safety. She identified him with the struggling regenerative
process in her which had begun with his action. Is it any wonder that
she saw her own necessity reflected in his feeling? She was in that
state of unconscious reliance and expectation which is a common
experience with us when we are preoccupied with our own trouble or our
own purposes. We diffuse our feeling over others, and count on their
acting from our motives. Her imagination had not been turned to a
future union with Deronda by any other than the spiritual tie which had
been continually strengthening; but also it had not been turned toward
a future separation from him. Love-making and marriage—how could they
now be the imagery in which poor Gwendolen’s deepest attachment could
spontaneously clothe itself? Mighty Love had laid his hand upon her;
but what had he demanded of her? Acceptance of rebuke—the hard task of
self-change—confession—endurance. If she cried toward him, what then?
She cried as the child cries whose little feet have fallen
backward—cried to be taken by the hand, lest she should lose herself.
The cry pierced Deronda. What position could have been more difficult
for a man full of tenderness, yet with clear foresight? He was the only
creature who knew the real nature of Gwendolen’s trouble: to withdraw
himself from any appeal of hers would be to consign her to a dangerous
loneliness. He could not reconcile himself to the cruelty of apparently
rejecting her dependence on him; and yet in the nearer or farther
distance he saw a coming wrench, which all present strengthening of
their bond would make the harder.
He was obliged to risk that. He went once and again to Park Lane before
Gwendolen left; but their interviews were in the presence of Mrs.
Davilow, and were therefore less agitating. Gwendolen, since she had
determined to accept her income, had conceived a project which she
liked to speak of: it was to place her mother and sisters with herself
in Offendene again, and, as she said, piece back her life unto that
time when they first went there, and when everything was happiness
about her, only she did not know it. The idea had been mentioned to Sir
Hugo, who was going to exert himself about the letting of Gadsmere for
a rent which would more than pay the rent of Offendene. All this was
told to Deronda, who willingly dwelt on a subject that seemed to give
some soothing occupation to Gwendolen. He said nothing and she asked
nothing, of what chiefly occupied himself. Her mind was fixed on his
coming to Diplow before the autumn was over; and she no more thought of
the Lapidoths—the little Jewess and her brother—as likely to make a
difference in her destiny, than of the fermenting political and social
leaven which was making a difference in the history of the world. In
fact poor Gwendolen’s memory had been stunned, and all outside the
lava-lit track of her troubled conscience, and her effort to get
deliverance from it, lay for her in dim forgetfulness.