Chapter Sixty-five
Deronda did not obey Gwendolen’s new summons without some agitation. He felt the danger that her heart might make larger demands on him than he could fulfil; and he knew that Gwendolen’s soul clung to his with a passionate need. Deronda felt this woman’s destiny hanging on his over a precipice of despair. Inwardly he confessed that if all this had happened a year ago, he would hardly have asked himself whether he loved her; his impulse would have been to save her from sorrow, to shelter her life forevermore from loneliness, and to complete the rescue he had begun in that 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, and he pitied her all the more.
He awaited her in the drawing-room where they had sat together at the musical party, when Gwendolen had asked for the first time that he should not forsake her, and her appeal had seemed to melt into the song. But the melody had come from Mirah’s dear voice.
Deronda walked about this familiar room with a strange sense of metamorphosis. The objects around him 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 his recent experiences. And he was 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 apprehensively that he was still bound up.
Gwendolen came 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. She said, “It was good of you to come. Let us sit down.” He placed himself opposite her.
“I asked you to come because I want you to tell me what I ought to do,” she began. “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; that was why I married. I have borne worse things now, and 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.
“Ought I to take anything he has left me? I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said Gwendolen, with nervous eagerness. “I really did care about my mother when I married. I was selfish, but I did love her; and what comforted me most at first, when I was miserable, was her being better off. 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, 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 as perilous remembrances swarmed between her words, making her speech more and more 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. “The case is very simple. I think I can hardly judge wrongly about it.” He waited until Gwendolen had courage to lift up her eyes before he continued, “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. Do I understand you?”
“Yes – I want to be good,” 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. Your husband’s dues are not nullified by any act you have committed. He voluntarily entered into your life: it was due from him 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, who had been inwardly arguing for this so long, 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 no-one else should know of the burden on your conscience. It is best if you save all others from the pain of that knowledge. In my opinion you ought simply to abide by your husband’s will, and let your remorse decide only on the use that you will make of your money.”
In uttering the last sentence Deronda automatically took up his hat to go. Gwendolen felt her heart giving a great leap, as if it would hinder him from going: she rose from her chair, unable to reflect that the movement was an acceptance of his apparent intention to leave; and Deronda, of course, also rose.
“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; as the child-like sentences fell from her lips they acted on her like a picture of her own helplessness, and she could not check a sob. Deronda, too, felt a crushing pain; but knew the need of the utmost exertion of conscience. He said gently–
“You will probably be soon going with Mrs. Davilow into the country.”
“Yes, in a week or so.” Gwendolen turned her eyes vaguely toward the window. “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, 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 satisfaction – there will be new needs – continually carrying 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 as if she had been stretching her arms toward him from a forsaken shore. He said imploringly–
“This sorrow, which has cut to the root, has come to you while you are young – try to think of it not as a spoiling of your life, but as a preparation for it.” Anyone listening 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 degradation; think that a severe angel, seeing you on the road of error, grasped your 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 the strength of a new existence. 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; 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 put out his hand, saying, “I must not weary you.”
Startled by the sense that he was going, she put her hand in his without speaking.
“You look ill,” he added.
“I can’t sleep much,” she answered, with some return of her dispirited manner. “Things
come back – they will all come back.” She shuddered.
“By degrees they will be less insistent,” said Deronda. He could not drop her hand abruptly.
“Sir Hugo says he shall come to stay at Diplow,” said Gwendolen. “You will come too.”
“Probably,” he said, and then feeling that the word was cold, he added, “Yes, I shall come.” He released her hand, with a final friendly pressure.
“And not again here, before I leave town?” said Gwendolen, with timid sadness.
What could Deronda say? “If I can be of any use – if you wish – 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 and looked miserable as he said, “I will certainly come.”
She perceived the change in his face; but her intense relief could not give way to any other feeling, and there was a recovery of hope and courage in her.
“Don’t be unhappy about me,” she said, in a tone of affectionate assurance. “I shall remember your words. I shall remember what you believe about me; I shall try.”
She looked at him firmly, and put out her hand again, but without a smile. She had never smiled since her husband’s death. 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 her life-changing anguish that we can understand her behaviour to Deronda – the unreflecting openness, the pleading, with which she expressed her dependence on him. She did not think about how it would appear to others, any more than if flames had been mounting, and she had flung herself into his arms and clung about his neck that he might carry her into safety.
Is it any wonder that she saw her own need reflected in his feeling? She was in that state of unconscious reliance and expectation which is common when we are preoccupied with our own trouble. We diffuse our feeling over others, and count on their acting from our motives. She had not imagined any future union with Deronda other than the spiritual tie between them; but also she had not envisaged a future separation. Love-making and marriage had no connection with attachment for poor Gwendolen now. 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, what then? She cried as the child cries whose little feet have fallen behind – cries to be taken by the hand, lest she should lose herself.
The cry pierced Deronda. He was the only creature who knew the real nature of Gwendolen’s trouble: to withdraw himself from her appeal would be to consign her to a dangerous loneliness. He could not cruelly reject her dependence on him; and yet in the 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 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 decided to move with her mother and sisters to Offendene again, and, as she said, piece back her life unto that time when they first went there, when everything was happiness, only she did not know it. Sir Hugo was going to arrange 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 soothe Gwendolen. Her mind was fixed on his coming to Diplow before the autumn was over; and she never thought of the Lapidoths as likely to make a difference in her destiny. In fact, poor Gwendolen’s memory had been stunned, and all outside the lava-lit track of her troubled conscience lay for her in dim forgetfulness.
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged Page 68
