Daniel Deronda

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But Gwendolen had forgotten to ask him for his address in case she wanted
to write, and her only way of reaching him was through Sir Hugo. She was
not in the least blind to the construction that all witnesses might put on
her giving signs of dependence on Deronda, and her seeking him more than
he sought her: Grandcourt's rebukes had sufficiently enlightened her
pride. But the force, the tenacity of her nature had thrown itself into
that dependence, and she would no more let go her hold on Deronda's help,
or deny herself the interview her soul needed, because of witnesses, than
if she had been in prison in danger of being condemned to death. When she
was in Park Lane and knew that the baronet would be going down to the
Abbey immediately (just to see his family for a couple of days and then
return to transact needful business for Gwendolen), she said to him
without any air of hesitation, while her mother was present--

"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 that I want to see
him?"

A quick thought passed across Sir Hugo's face, but made no difference to
the ease with which he said, "Upon my word, I don't know whether he's at
his chambers or the Abbey at this moment. But I'll make sure of him. I'll
send a note now to his chambers telling him to come, and if he's at the
Abbey I can give him your message and send him up at once. I am sure he
will want to obey your wish," the baronet ended, with grave kindness, as
if nothing could seem to him more in the appropriate course of things than
that she should send such a message.

But he was convinced that Gwendolen had a passionate attachment to
Deronda, the seeds of which had been laid long ago, and his former
suspicion now recurred to him with more strength than ever, that her
feeling was likely to lead her into imprudences--in which kind-hearted Sir
Hugo was determined to screen and defend her as far as lay in his power.
To him it was as pretty a story as need be that this fine creature and his
favorite Dan should have turned out to be formed for each other, and that
the unsuitable husband should have made his exit in such excellent time.
Sir Hugo liked that a charming woman should be made as happy as possible.
In truth, what most vexed his mind in this matter at present was a doubt
whether the too lofty and inscrutable Dan had not got some scheme or other
in his head, which would prove to be dearer to him than the lovely Mrs.
Grandcourt, and put that neatly-prepared marriage with her out of the
question. It was among the usual paradoxes of feeling that Sir Hugo, who
had given his fatherly cautions to Deronda against too much tenderness in
his relations with the bride, should now feel rather irritated against him
by the suspicion that he had not fallen in love as he ought to have done.
Of course all this thinking on Sir Hugo's part was eminently premature,
only a fortnight or so after Grandcourt's death. But it is the trick of
thinking to be either premature or behind-hand.

However, he sent the note to Deronda's chambers, and it found him there.

CHAPTER LXV.

"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 pieta 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 child-like sentences fell from her lips
they re-acted 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.

CHAPTER LXVI.

"One day still fierce 'mid many a day struck calm."
--BROWNING: _The King and the Book_.

Meanwhile Ezra and Mirah, whom Gwendolen did not include in her thinking
about Deronda, were having their relation to him drawn closer and brought
into fuller light.

The father Lapidoth had quitted his daughter at the doorstep, ruled by
that possibility of staking something in play of betting which presented
itself with the handling of any sum beyond the price of staying actual
hunger, and left no care for alternative prospects or resolutions. Until
he had lost everything he never considered whether he would apply to Mirah
again or whether he would brave his son's presence. In the first moment he
had shrunk from encountering Ezra as he would have shrunk from any other
situation of disagreeable constraint; and the possession of Mirah's purse
was enough to banish the thought of future necessities. The gambling
appetite is more absolutely dominant than bodily hunger, which can be
neutralized by an emotional or intellectual excitation; but the passion
for watching chances--the habitual suspensive poise of the mind in actual
or imaginary play--nullifies the susceptibility of other excitation. In
its final, imperious stage, it seems the unjoyous dissipation of demons,
seeking diversion on the burning marl of perdition.

But every form of selfishness, however abstract and unhuman, requires the
support of at least one meal a day; and though Lapidoth's appetite for
food and drink was extremely moderate, he had slipped into a shabby,
unfriendly form of life in which the appetite could not be satisfied
without some ready money. When, in a brief visit at a house which
announced "Pyramids" on the window-blind, he had first doubled and trebled
and finally lost Mirah's thirty shillings, he went out with her empty
purse in his pocket, already balancing in his mind whether he should get
another immediate stake by pawning the purse, or whether he should go back
to her giving himself a good countenance by restoring the purse, and
declaring that he had used the money in paying a score that was standing
against him. Besides, among the sensibilities still left strong in
Lapidoth was the sensibility to his own claims, and he appeared to himself
to have a claim on any property his children might possess, which was
stronger than the justice of his son's resentment. After all, to take up
his lodging with his children was the best thing he could do; and the more
he thought of meeting Ezra the less he winced from it, his imagination
being more wrought on by the chances of his getting something into his
pocket with safety and without exertion, than by the threat of a private
humiliation. Luck had been against him lately; he expected it to turn--and
might not the turn begin with some opening of supplies which would present
itself through his daughter's affairs and the good friends she had spoken
of? Lapidoth counted on the fascination of his cleverness--an old habit of
mind which early experience had sanctioned: and it is not only women who
are unaware of their diminished charm, or imagine that they can feign not
to be worn out.

The result of Lapidoth's rapid balancing was that he went toward the
little square in Brompton with the hope that, by walking about and
watching, he might catch sight of Mirah going out or returning, in which
case his entrance into the house would be made easier. But it was already
evening--the evening of the day next to that which he had first seen her;
and after a little waiting, weariness made him reflect that he might ring,
and if she were not at home he might ask the time at which she was
expected. But on coming near the house he knew that she was at home: he
heard her singing.

Mirah, seated at the piano, was pouring forth "_Herz, mein Herz_," while
Ezra was listening with his eyes shut, when Mrs. Adam opened the door, and
said in some embarrassment--

"A gentleman below says he is your father, miss."

"I will go down to him," said Mirah, starting up immediately and looking
at her brother.

"No, Mirah, not so," said Ezra, with decision. "Let him come up, Mrs.
Adam."

Mirah stood with her hands pinching each other, and feeling sick with
anxiety, while she continued looking at Ezra, who had also risen, and was
evidently much shaken. But there was an expression in his face which she
had never seen before; his brow was knit, his lips seemed hardened with
the same severity that gleamed from his eye.