George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Sir Hugo carried out his plan of spending part of the autumn at Diplow. He extended invitations to old Wanchester solicitors and young village curates, taking such care in the combination of guests that he both gained popularity for himself and gave pleasure to others. The rector of Pennicote now found a reception at Diplow very different from Grandcourt’s haughtiness. Sir Hugo desired to keep up a marked friendliness with him on account of Mrs. Grandcourt, for whom he secretly thought Deronda had a preference.

  But Deronda, after he became engaged to Mirah, wrote a full statement of his position and purposes to Sir Hugo. He feared that his fatherly friend would feel some dissatisfaction, if not pain, at this turn of his destiny, and thought a letter would avoid any hasty response which might afterward be repented of. And Sir Hugo, though not altogether surprised, was thoroughly vexed.

  He took the letter to Lady Mallinger, who professed herself astonished, observing without rancour that she had little dreamed of what was coming when she had Mirah to sing at her musical party. Indeed, she confessed it had passed through her mind that Daniel might marry Mrs. Grandcourt. Sir Hugo desired his wife not to breathe a word about the affair till further notice, saying to himself, “If it is an unkind cut to poor Gwendolen, the longer she is without knowing it the better, in her present nervous state. And she will best learn it from Dan himself.”

  The plan of removal to Offendene had been carried out; and Gwendolen maintained a calm beyond her mother’s hopes. She was experiencing some of that peaceful melancholy which comes from taking the ordinary good of existence, and especially kindness, even from a dog, as a gift above expectation. Does one who has been lost in a pit of darkness complain of the sweet air and the daylight? There is a way of looking at our daily life as an escape, and taking the quiet return of morn and evening as a salvation. This feeling of rescue came to Gwendolen as she lived through and through again the terrible history of her temptations, from her first illusory self-pleasing to her final hatred dragging her toward its satisfaction, while she prayed and cried for the help of that conscience which she had once forsaken. She was now dwelling on every word of Deronda’s that pointed to her deliverance from the worst evil in herself, and on every word that carried a force to resist self-despair.

  But she was also upborne by the prospect of soon seeing him again: she imagined him always within her reach, her supreme need of him blinding her to the separateness of his life, which she filled with his relation to her. We are all apt to fall into this passionate egoism, not only toward our fellow-men, but toward God. And she looked to a future where she would be guided by him. Had she not seen him first as a corrective presence which she had recognized in the beginning with resentment, and at last with entire love and trust? She could not imagine an end to that reliance.

  And soon Deronda came to Diplow. He had wished to take Ezra and Mirah to a mild spot on the coast, while he prepared another home which Mirah might enter as his bride, and where they might watch over her brother. But Ezra begged not to be removed, unless it were to go with them to the East: his mind dwelt on the possibility of this voyage with a visionary joy.

  Deronda, in his preparations for the marriage, which he hoped not to defer beyond a couple of months, wished to consult Sir Hugo about his affairs. But he had another reason to visit Diplow – his promise to Gwendolen. His sense of blessedness in his own lot had an aching anxiety at its heart: it was no treason to Mirah, but a part of that full nature which, along with his joy in her, could hold by its side the care for another.

  Deronda came twice to Diplow, and saw Gwendolen twice – and yet he went back to town without having told her anything about the change in his prospects. He blamed himself; but in the first interview Gwendolen was so absorbed in what she had to say to him, so full of questions which he must answer about the arrangement of her life, how she could make herself less ignorant and selfish, that Deronda shrank from brushing her wants aside in order to speak of himself, nay, from inflicting a wound on her when she was leaning on him for help.

  In the second interview, he found her in a state of deep depression, overmastered by miserable memories. She cried hysterically, and said that he would always despise her. He could only seek words of soothing encouragement: and when she gradually revived under them, with a pathetic look of renewed childlike interest, it was impossible to lay another burden on her.

  But he felt it a pressing duty to make the difficult disclosure. Gwendolen, it was true, never recognized his having any affairs; and it had never even occurred to her to ask him why he happened to be at Genoa. But this unconsciousness would make a sudden revelation all the heavier a blow to her; and it would be cruel to let her hear of it from others. He could not tell her in writing: his tenderness could not bear to think of her reading his virtual farewell in solitude, and perhaps feeling him indifferent to her.

  So he made a third visit. This time, he found Hans Meyrick installed with his easel at Diplow, beginning his picture of the three daughters “in the Gainsborough style,” and varying his work by rambling to Pennicote to see the Gascoignes. Hans appeared to have recovered his vivacity, but Deronda detected some artificiality in it. With all his admiration for Deronda, Hans could not help a certain irritation against him, for keeping the true state of his feelings hidden.

  It is true that poor Hans had confided in Deronda without any curiosity as to confidences that might have been given in return; but he must be excused for his bruised sensibility, since he had the consciousness of having done right by his fortunate friend. Perhaps in reward of his good behaviour he gave his tongue more freedom; and he was too convinced of Deronda’s happiness to have any idea of what he was feeling about Gwendolen, so that he spoke of her without hesitation.

  “When did you come down, Hans?” said Deronda, joining him in the grounds where he was sketching.

  “Oh, ten days ago; I ran down with Rex Gascoigne and stayed at the rectory a day or two. I’m up in all the gossip of these parts, and have assisted at an infant school to which sister Anna escorted me. The village is idyllic, and the Gascoignes are perfect – besides being related to the Vandyke duchess. I caught a glimpse of her in her black robes at a distance when I was taken to Offendene to see the old house. I suppose you have been there? A fine old place. An excellent setting for a widow with romantic fortunes. And she seems to have had several romances. I think there was one between her and my friend Rex.”

  “Not long before her marriage, then?” said Deronda, interested. “How came you to know of it?”

  “Oh – I found out that Rex never goes to Offendene, and has never seen the duchess since she came back; and Anna let slip something that proved to me that Rex was once hovering about his fair cousin close enough to get singed. I don’t know what was her part in the affair. Perhaps the duke came in and carried her off. I understand now why Gascoigne talks of making the law his mistress and remaining a bachelor. But since the duke did not get himself drowned for your sake, it may turn out to be for my friend Rex’s. Who knows?”

  “Is it absolutely necessary that Mrs. Grandcourt should marry again?” said Deronda.

  “You monster!” retorted Hans, “do you want her to wear mourning clothes for you all her life?”

  Deronda could say nothing, but he looked so annoyed that Hans changed the subject.

  No wonder that Deronda winced. The joke touched sensibilities that were already quivering with the anticipation of witnessing Gwendolen’s pain. But he had come with the firm resolve that he would not again evade the trial, and the next day he rode to Offendene.

  He found Gwendolen awaiting him in the drawing-room. She seemed less sad than he had seen her since her husband’s death; there was no smile on her face, but a placid self-possession, in contrast with the mood in which he had last found her. She noticed Deronda’s sadness; and they were no sooner seated than she said:

  “You were afraid of coming to see me, because I was so full of despair last
time. But I have been sorry ever since. I have been making it a reason why I should be as cheerful as I can, because I would not give you any pain about me.”

  There was an unusual sweetness in Gwendolen’s tone that seemed to Deronda to infuse the utmost cruelty into his task. But he felt obliged to begin.

  “I am in some trouble to-day,” he said, looking at her rather mournfully; “because I have things to tell you which you will think I should have spoken of before. They are things affecting my own future. I shall seem to have made an ill return to you for the trust you have placed in me – never to have given you an idea of events that make great changes for me. But when we have been together we have hardly had time to enter into less pressing subjects than the trials you were going through.” There was a sort of timid, pleading tenderness in Deronda’s deep tones.

  A thrill of surprise was visible in Gwendolen, but she did not feel any fear. Her mind flew at once of some change in his position with regard to Sir Hugo and Sir Hugo’s property. She said–

  “You never thought of anything but what you could do to help me.”

  “It will perhaps astonish you,” said Deronda, “that I have only quite lately known who were my parents.”

  Gwendolen was not astonished: she felt the more assured that her expectations were right. Deronda went on.

  “I went to Italy to meet my mother. It was by her wish that I was brought up in ignorance of my parentage. She parted with me after my father’s death, when I was a baby. But she is now very ill, and she felt that the secrecy ought not to be any longer maintained. Her chief reason for it had been that she did not wish me to know I was a Jew.”

  “A Jew!” Gwendolen exclaimed, in a low tone of amazement, with an utterly frustrated look, as if some confusing potion were creeping through her system.

  Deronda coloured, and did not speak, while Gwendolen, with her eyes fixed on the floor, was struggling to find her answer. Looking up, she said–

  “What difference need that have made?”

  “It has made a great difference to me that I have known it,” said Deronda, emphatically, but uncertain what force his words would carry.

  Gwendolen meditated again, and then said feelingly, “I hope there is nothing to make you mind. You are just the same as if you were not a Jew.” She meant to reassure him that nothing of that external sort could affect the way in which she regarded him.

  “The discovery was far from being painful to me,” he said. “I was glad of it. I had been prepared for it by becoming intimate with a very remarkable Jew, whose ideas have attracted me so much that I think of devoting my life to them.”

  Again Gwendolen seemed shaken – this time frustration was mingled with alarm. She looked at Deronda with lips childishly parted. She had a dreadful foreboding of mountainous travel for her mind before it could reach Deronda’s.

  “That is an object,” he said, “which will by-and-by force me to leave England for some time – for some years. I have purposes which will take me to the East.”

  Gwendolen’s lips began to tremble. “But you will come back?” she said, tasting her own tears as they fell.

  Deronda could not sit still. He rose, and went to the mantelpiece. “If I live,” he said– “some time.”

  They were both silent.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked at last, very mildly. “Can I understand the ideas, or am I too ignorant?”

  “I am going to the East to become better acquainted with the condition of my race in various countries there,” said Deronda, gently, and anxious to expand on impersonal reasons. “The idea that I am possessed with is that of restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nation again, giving them a national centre, though they are scattered over the face of the globe. I am resolved to devote my life to that task.”

  There was a long silence. The world seemed getting larger round poor Gwendolen, and she more solitary and helpless in the midst. Before the bewildering vision of these wild-stretching purposes, she felt herself reduced to a mere speck. There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain neglected in newspapers, enter like an earthquake into their own lives. That was the sort of crisis which was at this moment beginning in Gwendolen’s small life: she was for the first time feeling the pressure of a vast mysterious movement, for the first time being dislodged from her supremacy in her own world, and getting a sense that her horizon was but a dipping onward of an existence with which her own was revolving.

  All her troubles had still left her with the impression that whatever surrounded her was somehow specially for her, and it was because of this that no jealousy had been roused in her relation to Deronda: she could not think of him as rightfully belonging to others more than to her. But here had come a shock which went deeper than personal jealousy – something spiritual and tremendous that thrust her away, and yet quelled her into self-humiliation.

  Gwendolen sat like a statue in the intensity of her thought. At length something occurred to her that made her turn to Deronda and say in a trembling voice–

  “Is that everything?”

  The question was like a dart to him. “The Jew whom I mentioned just now,” he answered, with a tremor in his tones too, “is the brother of Miss Lapidoth, whom you have often heard sing.”

  A great wave of remembrance passed through Gwendolen and spread as a deep, painful flush over neck and face. She recalled that morning when she had called on Mirah, and heard Deronda’s voice reading, and had been told that he was reading Hebrew with Mirah’s brother.

  “He is very ill – very near death,” Deronda went on nervously, and then stopped short. Would she divine the rest?

  “Did she tell you that I went to her?” said Gwendolen, abruptly.

  “No,” said Deronda. “I don’t understand you.”

  She turned away her eyes again, and sat thinking, until at last she said–

  “But can you marry?”

  “Yes,” said Deronda. “I am going to marry.”

  Gwendolen began to tremble visibly; then she looked before her with dilated eyes, stretched out her arms, and cried with a smothered voice–

  “I said I should be forsaken. I have been a cruel woman. And I am forsaken.”

  Deronda’s anguish was intolerable. He could not help himself. He seized her outstretched hands, and kneeled at her feet. She was the victim of his happiness.

  “I am cruel, too, I am cruel,” he repeated, with a sort of groan.

  His presence and touch seemed to dispel a horrible vision, and she felt something like the return of consciousness after fainting. She dwelt on his face with tender recollection: his look of sorrow brought back a very far-off moment in the library, at the Abbey. Sobs rose, and great tears fell fast. Deronda held her hands still with one of his, and himself pressed her handkerchief against her eyes. She submitted like a half-soothed child, her effort to speak hindered by struggling sobs. At last she said, brokenly–

  “I said – it should be better – better with me – for having known you.”

  His eyes too were large with tears. She pulled one of her hands from his, and returned his action, pressing his tears away.

  “We shall not be quite parted,” he said. “I will write to you always, when I can, and you will answer?”

  He waited till she said in a whisper, “I will try.”

  “I shall be more with you than I used to be,” Deronda said, releasing her hands and rising from his knees. “Perhaps we can never see each other again. But our minds may get nearer.”

  Gwendolen said nothing, but rose too, automatically. Her withered look of grief made him hate his own words: they seemed to have the hardness of easy consolation in them. She felt that he was going, and that nothing could hinder it. The sense of it was like a dreadful whisper in her ear.

  Deronda could not speak again: yet it was difficult to move toward the parting, till she looked at him with a sor
t of intention in her eyes, which helped him. He put out his hand silently, and when she had placed hers within it, she said what her mind had been labouring with–

  “You have been very good to me. I have deserved nothing. I will try – try to live. I shall think of you. What good have I been? Only harm. Don’t let me be harm to you. It shall be the better for me–”

  She could not finish for the intense effort of speaking. The burden of that difficult rectitude was a weight her frame tottered under.

  She bent forward to kiss his cheek, and he kissed hers. Then they looked at each other for an instant with clasped hands, and he turned away.

  When he was quite gone, her mother came in and found her sitting motionless.

  “Gwendolen, dearest, you look very ill,” she said, touching her cold hands.

  “Yes, mamma. But don’t be afraid. I am going to live,” said Gwendolen, bursting out hysterically.

  Her mother persuaded her to go to bed, and watched by her. Through the day and half the night she fell into fits of shrieking, but cried in the midst of them to her mother, “Don’t be afraid. I shall live. I mean to live.”

  After all, she slept; and when she waked, she looked up at her mother and said tenderly, “Ah, poor mamma! You have been sitting up with me. Don’t be unhappy. I shall live. I shall be better.”