Daniel Deronda

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"What decision have you come to?" he said, presently looking at her. "What
orders shall I give?"

"Oh, let us go," said Gwendolen. The walls had begun to be an
imprisonment, and while there was breath in this man he would have the
mastery over her. His words had the power of thumb-screws and the cold
touch of the rock. To resist was to act like a stupid animal unable to
measure results.

So the boat was ordered. She even went down to the quay again with him to
see it before midday. Grandcourt had recovered perfect quietude of temper,
and had a scornful satisfaction in the attention given by the nautical
groups to the _milord_, owner of the handsome yacht which had just put in
for repairs, and who being an Englishman was naturally so at home on the
sea that he could manage a sail with the same ease that he could manage a
horse. The sort of exultation he had discerned in Gwendolen this morning
she now thought that she discerned in him; and it was true that he had set
his mind on this boating, and carried out his purpose as something that
people might not expect him to do, with the gratified impulse of a strong
will which had nothing better to exert itself upon. He had remarkable
physical courage, and was proud of it--or rather he had a great contempt
for the coarser, bulkier men who generally had less. Moreover, he was
ruling that Gwendolen should go with him.

And when they came down again at five o'clock, equipped for their boating,
the scene was as good as a theatrical representation for all beholders.
This handsome, fair-skinned English couple, manifesting the usual
eccentricity of their nation, both of them proud, pale, and calm, without
a smile on their faces, moving like creatures who were fulfilling a
supernatural destiny--it was a thing to go out and see, a thing to paint.
The husband's chest, back, and arms, showed very well in his close-fitting
dress, and the wife was declared to be a statue.

Some suggestions were proffered concerning a possible change in the
breeze, and the necessary care in putting about, but Grandcourt's manner
made the speakers understand that they were too officious, and that he
knew better than they.

Gwendolen, keeping her impassable air, as they moved away from the strand,
felt her imagination obstinately at work. She was not afraid of any
outward dangers--she was afraid of her own wishes which were taking shapes
possible and impossible, like a cloud of demon-faces. She was afraid of
her own hatred, which under the cold iron touch that had compelled her to-
day had gathered a fierce intensity. As she sat guiding the tiller under
her husband's eyes, doing just what he told her, the strife within her
seemed like her own effort to escape from herself. She clung to the
thought of Deronda: she persuaded herself that he would not go away while
she was there--he knew that she needed help. The sense that he was there
would save her from acting out the evil within. And yet quick, quick, came
images, plans of evil that would come again and seize her in the night,
like furies preparing the deed that they would straightway avenge.

They were taken out of the port and carried eastward by a gentle breeze.
Some clouds tempered the sunlight, and the hour was always deepening
toward the supreme beauty of evening. Sails larger and smaller changed
their aspect like sensitive things, and made a cheerful companionship,
alternately near and far. The grand city shone more vaguely, the mountains
looked out above it, and there was stillness as in an island sanctuary.
Yet suddenly Gwendolen let her hands fall, and said in a scarcely audible
tone, "God help me!"

"What is the matter?" said Grandcourt, not distinguishing the words.

"Oh, nothing," said Gwendolen, rousing herself from her momentary
forgetfulness and resuming the ropes.

"Don't you find this pleasant?" said Grandcourt.

"Very."

"You admit now we couldn't have done anything better?"

"No--I see nothing better. I think we shall go on always, like the Flying
Dutchman," said Gwendolen wildly.

Grandcourt gave her one of his narrow examining glances, and then said,
"If you like, we can go to Spezia in the morning, and let them take us up
there."

"No; I shall like nothing better than this."

"Very well: we'll do the same to-morrow. But we must be turning in soon. I
shall put about."

CHAPTER LV.

"Ritorna a tua scienza
Che vuoi, quanto la cosa e piu perfetta
Piu senta if bene, e cosi la doglienza."
--DANTE.

When Deronda met Gwendolen and Grandcourt on the staircase, his mind was
seriously preoccupied. He had just been summoned to the second interview
with his mother.

In two hours after his parting from her he knew that the Princess Halm-
Eberstein had left the hotel, and so far as the purpose of his journey to
Genoa was concerned, he might himself have set off on his way to Mainz, to
deliver the letter from Joseph Kalonymos, and get possession of the family
chest. But mixed mental conditions, which did not resolve themselves into
definite reasons, hindered him from departure. Long after the farewell he
was kept passive by a weight of retrospective feeling. He lived again,
with the new keenness of emotive memory, through the exciting scenes which
seemed past only in the sense of preparation for their actual presence in
his soul. He allowed himself in his solitude to sob, with perhaps more
than a woman's acuteness of compassion, over that woman's life so near to
his, and yet so remote. He beheld the world changed for him by the
certitude of ties that altered the poise of hopes and fears, and gave him
a new sense of fellowship, as if under cover of the night he had joined
the wrong band of wanderers, and found with the rise of morning that the
tents of his kindred were grouped far off. He had a quivering imaginative
sense of close relation to the grandfather who had been animated by strong
impulses and beloved thoughts, which were now perhaps being roused from
their slumber within himself. And through all this passionate meditation
Mordecai and Mirah were always present, as beings who clasped hands with
him in sympathetic silence.

Of such quick, responsive fibre was Deronda made, under that mantle of
self-controlled reserve into which early experience had thrown so much of
his young strength.

When the persistent ringing of a bell as a signal reminded him of the hour
he thought of looking into _Bradshaw_, and making the brief necessary
preparations for starting by the next train--thought of it, but made no
movement in consequence. Wishes went to Mainz and what he was to get
possession of there--to London and the beings there who made the strongest
attachments of his life; but there were other wishes that clung in these
moments to Genoa, and they kept him where he was by that force which urges
us to linger over an interview that carries a presentiment of final
farewell or of overshadowing sorrow. Deronda did not formally say, "I will
stay over to-night, because it is Friday, and I should like to go to the
evening service at the synagogue where they must all have gone; and
besides, I may see the Grandcourts again." But simply, instead of packing
and ringing for his bill, he sat doing nothing at all, while his mind went
to the synagogue and saw faces there probably little different from those
of his grandfather's time, and heard the Spanish-Hebrew liturgy which had
lasted through the seasons of wandering generations like a plant with
wandering seed, that gives the far-off lands a kinship to the exile's
home--while, also, his mind went toward Gwendolen, with anxious
remembrance of what had been, and with a half-admitted impression that it
would be hardness in him willingly to go away at once without making some
effort, in spite of Grandcourt's probable dislike, to manifest the
continuance of his sympathy with her since their abrupt parting.

In this state of mind he deferred departure, ate his dinner without sense
of flavor, rose from it quickly to find the synagogue, and in passing the
porter asked if Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt were still in the hotel, and what
was the number of their apartment. The porter gave him the number, but
added that they were gone out boating. That information had somehow power
enough over Deronda to divide his thoughts with the memories wakened among
the sparse _talithim_ and keen dark faces of worshippers whose way of
taking awful prayers and invocations with the easy familiarity which might
be called Hebrew dyed Italian, made him reflect that his grandfather,
according to the Princess's hints of his character, must have been almost
as exceptional a Jew as Mordecai. But were not men of ardent zeal and far-
reaching hope everywhere exceptional? the men who had the visions which,
as Mordecai said, were the creators and feeders of the world--moulding and
feeding the more passive life which without them would dwindle and shrivel
into the narrow tenacity of insects, unshaken by thoughts beyond the reach
of their antennae. Something of a mournful impatience perhaps added itself
to the solicitude about Gwendolen (a solicitude that had room to grow in
his present release from immediate cares) as an incitement to hasten from
the synagogue and choose to take his evening walk toward the quay, always
a favorite haunt with him, and just now attractive with the possibility
that he might be in time to see the Grandcourts come in from their
boating. In this case, he resolved that he would advance to greet them
deliberately, and ignore any grounds that the husband might have for
wishing him elsewhere.

The sun had set behind a bank of cloud, and only a faint yellow light was
giving its farewell kisses to the waves, which were agitated by an active
breeze. Deronda, sauntering slowly within sight of what took place on the
strand, observed the groups there concentrating their attention on a
sailing-boat which was advancing swiftly landward, being rowed by two men.
Amidst the clamorous talk in various languages, Deronda held it the surer
means of getting information not to ask questions, but to elbow his way to
the foreground and be an unobstructed witness of what was occurring.
Telescopes were being used, and loud statements made that the boat held
somebody who had been drowned. One said it was the _milord_ who had gone
out in a sailing boat; another maintained that the prostrate figure he
discerned was _miladi_; a Frenchman who had no glass would rather say that
it was _milord_ who had probably taken his wife out to drown her,
according to the national practice--a remark which an English skipper
immediately commented on in our native idiom (as nonsense which--had
undergone a mining operation), and further dismissed by the decision that
the reclining figure was a woman. For Deronda, terribly excited by
fluctuating fears, the strokes of the oars as he watched them were divided
by swift visions of events, possible and impossible, which might have
brought about this issue, or this broken-off fragment of an issue, with a
worse half undisclosed--if this woman apparently snatched from the waters
were really Mrs. Grandcourt.

But soon there was no longer any doubt: the boat was being pulled to land,
and he saw Gwendolen half raising herself on her hands, by her own effort,
under her heavy covering of tarpaulin and pea-jackets--pale as one of the
sheeted dead, shivering, with wet hair streaming, a wild amazed
consciousness in her eyes, as if she had waked up in a world where some
judgment was impending, and the beings she saw around were coming to seize
her. The first rower who jumped to land was also wet through, and ran off;
the sailors, close about the boat, hindered Deronda from advancing, and he
could only look on while Gwendolen gave sacred glances, and seemed to
shrink with terror as she was carefully, tenderly helped out, and led on
by the strong arms of those rough, bronzed men, her wet clothes clinging
about her limbs, and adding to the impediment of her weakness. Suddenly
her wandering eyes fell on Deronda, standing before her, and immediately,
as if she had been expecting him and looking for him, she tried to stretch
out her arms, which were held back by her supporters, saying, in a muffled
voice--

"It is come, it is come! He is dead!"

"Hush, hush!" said Deronda, in a tone of authority; "quiet yourself." Then
to the men who were assisting her, "I am a connection of this lady's
husband. If you will get her on to the _Italia_ as quickly as possible, I
will undertake everything else."

He stayed behind to hear from the remaining boatman that her husband had
gone down irrecoverably, and that his boat was left floating empty. He and
his comrade had heard a cry, had come up in time to see the lady jump in
after her husband, and had got her out fast enough to save her from much
damage.

After this, Deronda hastened to the hotel to assure himself that the best
medical help would be provided; and being satisfied on this point, he
telegraphed the event to Sir Hugo, begging him to come forthwith, and also
to Mr. Gascoigne, whose address at the rectory made his nearest known way
of getting the information to Gwendolen's mother. Certain words of
Gwendolen's in the past had come back to him with the effectiveness of an
inspiration: in moments of agitated confession she had spoken of her
mother's presence, as a possible help, if she could have had it.

CHAPTER LVI.

"The pang, the curse with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor lift them up to pray."
--COLERIDGE.

Deronda did not take off his clothes that night. Gwendolen, after
insisting on seeing him again before she would consent to be undressed,
had been perfectly quiet, and had only asked him, with a whispering,
repressed eagerness, to promise that he would come to her when she sent
for him in the morning. Still, the possibility that a change might come
over her, the danger of a supervening feverish condition, and the
suspicion that something in the late catastrophe was having an effect
which might betray itself in excited words, acted as a foreboding within
him. He mentioned to her attendant that he should keep himself ready to be
called if there were any alarming change of symptoms, making it understood
by all concerned that he was in communication with her friends in England,
and felt bound meanwhile to take all care on her behalf--a position which
it was the easier for him to assume, because he was well known to
Grandcourt's valet, the only old servant who had come on the late voyage.

But when fatigue from the strangely various emotion of the day at last
sent Deronda to sleep, he remained undisturbed except by the morning
dreams, which came as a tangled web of yesterday's events, and finally
waked him, with an image drawn by his pressing anxiety.

Still, it was morning, and there had been no summons--an augury which
cheered him while he made his toilet, and reflected that it was too early
to send inquiries. Later, he learned that she had passed a too wakeful
night, but had shown no violent signs of agitation, and was at last
sleeping. He wondered at the force that dwelt in this creature, so alive
to dread; for he had an irresistible impression that even under the
effects of a severe physical shock she was mastering herself with a
determination of concealment. For his own part, he thought that his
sensibilities had been blunted by what he had been going through in the
meeting with his mother: he seemed to himself now to be only fulfilling
claims, and his more passionate sympathy was in abeyance. He had lately
been living so keenly in an experience quite apart from Gwendolen's lot,
that his present cares for her were like a revisiting of scenes familiar
in the past, and there was not yet a complete revival of the inward
response to them.

Meanwhile he employed himself in getting a formal, legally recognized
statement from the fisherman who had rescued Gwendolen. Few details came
to light. The boat in which Grandcourt had gone out had been found
drifting with its sail loose, and had been towed in. The fishermen thought
it likely that he had been knocked overboard by the flapping of the sail
while putting about, and that he had not known how to swim; but, though
they were near, their attention had been first arrested by a cry which
seemed like that of a man in distress, and while they were hastening with
their oars, they heard a shriek from the lady, and saw her jump in.

On re-entering the hotel, Deronda was told that Gwendolen had risen, and
was desiring to see him. He was shown into a room darkened by blinds and
curtains, where she was seated with a white shawl wrapped round her,
looking toward the opening door like one waiting uneasily. But her long
hair was gathered up and coiled carefully, and, through all, the blue
stars in her ears had kept their place: as she started impulsively to her
full height, sheathed in her white shawl, her face and neck not less
white, except for a purple line under her eyes, her lips a little apart
with the peculiar expression of one accused and helpless, she looked like
the unhappy ghost of that Gwendolen Harleth whom Deronda had seen turning
with firm lips and proud self-possession from her losses at the gaming
table. The sight pierced him with pity, and the effects of all their past
relations began to revive within him.

"I beseech you to rest--not to stand," said Deronda, as he approached her;
and she obeyed, falling back into her chair again.

"Will you sit down near me?" she said. "I want to speak very low."

She was in a large arm-chair, and he drew a small one near to her side.
The action seemed to touch her peculiarly: turning her pale face full upon
his, which was very near, she said, in the lowest audible tone, "You know
I am a guilty woman?"

Deronda himself turned paler as he said, "I know nothing." He did not dare
to say more.

"He is dead." She uttered this with the same undertoned decision.

"Yes," said Deronda, in a mournful suspense which made him reluctant to
speak.

"His face will not be seen above the water again," said Gwendolen, in a
tone that was not louder, but of a suppressed eagerness, while she held
both her hands clenched.

"No."

"Not by any one else--only by me--a dead face--I shall never get away from
it."

It was with an inward voice of desperate self-repression that she spoke
these last words, while she looked away from Deronda toward something at a
distance from her on the floor. She was seeing the whole event--her own
acts included--through an exaggerating medium of excitement and horror?
Was she in a state of delirium into which there entered a sense of
concealment and necessity for self-repression? Such thoughts glanced
through Deronda as a sort of hope. But imagine the conflict of feeling
that kept him silent. She was bent on confession, and he dreaded hearing
her confession. Against his better will he shrank from the task that was
laid on him: he wished, and yet rebuked the wish as cowardly, that she
could bury her secrets in her own bosom. He was not a priest. He dreaded
the weight of this woman's soul flung upon his own with imploring
dependence. But she spoke again, hurriedly, looking at him--

"You will not say that I ought to tell the world? you will not say that I
ought to be disgraced? I could not do it. I could not bear it. I cannot
have my mother know. Not if I were dead. I could not have her know. I must
tell you; but you will not say that any one else should know."

"I can say nothing in my ignorance," said Deronda, mournfully, "except
that I desire to help you."

"I told you from the beginning--as soon as I could--I told you I was
afraid of myself." There was a piteous pleading in the low murmur in which
Deronda turned his ear only. Her face afflicted him too much. "I felt a
hatred in me that was always working like an evil spirit--contriving
things. Everything I could do to free myself came into my mind; and it got
worse--all things got worse. That is why I asked you to come to me in
town. I thought then I would tell you the worst about myself. I tried. But
I could not tell everything. And _he_ came in."

She paused, while a shudder passed through her; but soon went on.

"I will tell you everything now. Do you think a woman who cried, and
prayed, and struggled to be saved from herself, could be a murderess?"

"Great God!" said Deronda, in a deep, shaken voice, "don't torture me
needlessly. You have not murdered him. You threw yourself into the water
with the impulse to save him. Tell me the rest afterward. This death was
an accident that you could not have hindered."

"Don't be impatient with me." The tremor, the childlike beseeching in
these words compelled Deronda to turn his head and look at her face. The
poor quivering lips went on. "You said--you used to say--you felt more for
those who had done something wicked and were miserable; you said they
might get better--they might be scourged into something better. If you had
not spoken in that way, Everything would have been worse. I _did_ remember
all you said to me. It came to me always. It came to me at the very last--
that was the reason why I--But now, if you cannot bear with me when I tell
you everything--if you turn away from me and forsake me, what shall I do?
Am I worse than I was when you found me and wanted to make me better? All
the wrong I have done was in me then--and more--and more--if you had not
come and been patient with me. And now--will you forsake me?"

Her hands, which had been so tightly clenched some minutes before, were
now helplessly relaxed and trembling on the arm of her chair. Her
quivering lips remained parted as she ceased speaking. Deronda could not
answer; he was obliged to look away. He took one of her hands, and clasped
it as if they were going to walk together like two children: it was the
only way in which he could answer, "I will not forsake you." And all the
while he felt as if he were putting his name to a blank paper which might
be filled up terribly. Their attitude, his adverted face with its
expression of a suffering which he was solemnly resolved to undergo, might
have told half the truth of the situation to a beholder who had suddenly
entered.

That grasp was an entirely new experience to Gwendolen: she had never
before had from any man a sign of tenderness which her own being had
needed, and she interpreted its powerful effect on her into a promise of
inexhaustible patience and constancy. The stream of renewed strength made
it possible for her to go on as she had begun--with that fitful, wandering
confession where the sameness of experience seems to nullify the sense of
time or of order in events. She began again in a fragmentary way--

"All sorts of contrivances in my mind--but all so difficult. And I fought
against them--I was terrified at them--I saw his dead face"--here her
voice sank almost to a whisper close to Deronda's ear--"ever so long ago
I saw it and I wished him to be dead. And yet it terrified me. I was like
two creatures. I could not speak--I wanted to kill--it was as strong as
thirst--and then directly--I felt beforehand I had done something
dreadful, unalterable--that would make me like an evil spirit. And it
came--it came."

She was silent a moment or two, as if her memory had lost itself in a web
where each mesh drew all the rest.

"It had all been in my mind when I first spoke to you--when we were at the
Abbey. I had done something then. I could not tell you that. It was the
only thing I did toward carrying out my thoughts. They went about over
everything; but they all remained like dreadful dreams--all but one. I did
one act--and I never undid it--it is there still--as long ago as when we
were at Ryelands. There it was--something my fingers longed for among the
beautiful toys in the cabinet in my boudoir--small and sharp like a long
willow leaf in a silver sheath. I locked it in the drawer of my dressing-
case. I was continually haunted with it and how I should use it. I fancied
myself putting it under my pillow. But I never did. I never looked at it
again. I dared not unlock the drawer: it had a key all to itself; and not
long ago, when we were in the yacht, I dropped the key into the deep
water. It was my wish to drop it and deliver myself. After that I began to
think how I could open the drawer without the key: and when I found we
were to stay at Genoa, it came into my mind that I could get it opened
privately at the hotel. But then, when we were going up the stairs, I met
you; and I thought I should talk to you alone and tell you this--
everything I could not tell you in town; and then I was forced to go out
in the boat."

A sob had for the first time risen with the last words, and she sank back
in her chair. The memory of that acute disappointment seemed for the
moment to efface what had come since. Deronda did not look at her, but he
said, insistently--