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Home -> George Eliot -> Daniel Deronda -> Chapter 69

Daniel Deronda - Chapter 69

1. Book I, Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Book II, Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Book III, Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Chapter 22

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

28. Book IV, Chapter 28

29. Chapter 29

30. Chapter 30

31. Chapter 31

32. Chapter 32

33. Chapter 33

34. Chapter 34

35. Book V, Chapter 35

36. Chapter 36

37. Chapter 37

38. Chapter 38

39. Chapter 39

40. Chapter 40

41. Book VI, Chapter 41

42. Chapter 42

43. Chapter 43

44. Chapter 44

45. Chapter 45

46. Chapter 46

47. Chapter 47

48. Chapter 48

49. Chapter 49

50. Book VII, Chapter 50

51. Chapter 51

52. Chapter 52

53. Chapter 53

54. Chapter 54

55. Chapter 55

56. Chapter 56

57. Chapter 57

58. Book VIII, Chapter 58

59. Chapter 59

60. Chapter 60

61. Chapter 61

62. Chapter 62

63. Chapter 63

64. Chapter 64

65. Chapter 65

66. Chapter 66

67. Chapter 67

68. Chapter 68

69. Chapter 69

70. Chapter 70







CHAPTER LXIX.

"The human nature unto which I felt
That I belonged, and reverenced with love,
Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit
Diffused through time and space, with aid derived
Of evidence from monuments, erect,
Prostrate, or leaning toward their common rest
In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime
Of vanished nations."
--WORDSWORTH: _The Prelude_.


Sir Hugo carried out his plan of spending part of the autumn at Diplow,
and by the beginning of October his presence was spreading some
cheerfulness in the neighborhood, among all ranks and persons concerned,
from the stately home of Brackenshaw and Quetcham to the respectable shop-
parlors in Wanchester. For Sir Hugo was a man who liked to show himself
and be affable, a Liberal of good lineage, who confided entirely in reform
as not likely to make any serious difference in English habits of feeling,
one of which undoubtedly is the liking to behold society well fenced and
adorned with hereditary rank. Hence he made Diplow a most agreeable house,
extending his invitations to old Wanchester solicitors and young village
curates, but also taking some care in the combination of the guests, and
not feeding all the common poultry together, so that they should think
their meal no particular compliment. Easy-going Lord Brackenshaw, for
example, would not mind meeting Robinson the attorney, but Robinson would
have been naturally piqued if he had been asked to meet a set of people
who passed for his equals. On all these points Sir Hugo was well informed
enough at once to gain popularity for himself and give pleasure to others
--two results which eminently suited his disposition. The rector of
Pennicote now found a reception at Diplow very different from the haughty
tolerance he had undergone during the reign of Grandcourt. It was not that
the baronet liked Mr. Gascoigne; it was that he desired to keep up a
marked relation of friendliness with him on account of Mrs. Grandcourt,
for whom Sir Hugo's chivalry had become more and more engaged. Why? The
chief reason was one that he could not fully communicate, even to Lady
Mallinger--for he would not tell what he thought one woman's secret to
another, even though the other was his wife--which shows that his chivalry
included a rare reticence.

Deronda, after he had become engaged to Mirah, felt it right to make a
full statement of his position and purposes to Sir Hugo, and he chose to
make it by letter. He had more than a presentiment that his fatherly
friend would feel some dissatisfaction, if not pain, at this turn of his
destiny. In reading unwelcome news, instead of hearing it, there is the
advantage that one avoids a hasty expression of impatience which may
afterward be repented of. Deronda dreaded that verbal collision which
makes otherwise pardonable feeling lastingly offensive.

And Sir Hugo, though not altogether surprised, was thoroughly vexed. His
immediate resource was to take the letter to Lady Mallinger, who would be
sure to express an astonishment which her husband could argue against as
unreasonable, and in this way divide the stress of his discontent. And in
fact when she showed herself astonished and distressed that all Daniel's
wonderful talents, and the comfort of having him in the house, should have
ended in his going mad in this way about the Jews, the baronet could say--

"Oh, nonsense, my dear! depend upon it, Dan will not make a fool of
himself. He has large notions about Judaism--political views which you
can't understand. No fear but Dan will keep himself head uppermost."

But with regard to the prospective marriage she afforded him no counter-
irritant. The gentle lady observed, without rancor, that she had little
dreamed of what was coming when she had Mirah to sing at her musical party
and give lessons to Amabel. After some hesitation, indeed, she confessed
it _had_ passed through her mind that after a proper time Daniel might
marry Mrs. Grandcourt--because it seemed so remarkable that she should be
at Genoa just at that time--and although she herself was not fond of
widows she could not help thinking that such a marriage would have been
better than his going altogether with the Jews. But Sir Hugo was so
strongly of the same opinion that he could not correct it as a feminine
mistake; and his ill-humor at the disproof of his disagreeable conclusions
on behalf of Gwendolen was left without vent. He desired Lady Mallinger
not to breathe a word about the affair till further notice, saying to
himself, "If it is an unkind cut to the poor thing (meaning Gwendolen),
the longer she is without knowing it the better, in her present nervous
state. And she will best learn it from Dan himself." Sir Hugo's
conjectures had worked so industriously with his knowledge, that he
fancied himself well informed concerning the whole situation.

Meanwhile his residence with his family at Diplow enabled him to continue
his fatherly attentions to Gwendolen; and in these Lady Mallinger,
notwithstanding her small liking for widows, was quite willing to second
him.

The plan of removal to Offendene had been carried out; and Gwendolen, in
settling there, maintained a calm beyond her mother's hopes. She was
experiencing some of that peaceful melancholy which comes from the
renunciation of demands for self, and from taking the ordinary good of
existence, and especially kindness, even from a dog, as a gift above
expectation. Does one who has been all but lost in a pit of darkness
complain of the sweet air and the daylight? There is a way of looking at
our life daily as an escape, and taking the quiet return of morn and
evening--still more the star-like out-glowing of some pure fellow-feeling,
some generous impulse breaking our inward darkness--as a salvation that
reconciles us to hardship. Those who have a self-knowledge prompting such
self-accusation as Hamlet's, can understand this habitual feeling of
rescue. And it was felt by Gwendolen as she lived through and through
again the terrible history of her temptations, from their first form of
illusory self-pleasing when she struggled away from the hold of
conscience, to their latest form of an urgent 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 past deliverance from the worst evil in
herself, and the worst infliction of it on others, 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 did
not imagine him otherwise than always within her reach, her supreme need
of him blinding her to the separateness of his life, the whole scene of
which she filled with his relation to her--no unique preoccupation of
Gwendolen's, for we are all apt to fall into this passionate egoism of
imagination, not only toward our fellow-men, but toward God. And the
future which she turned her face to with a willing step was one where she
would be continually assimilating herself to some type that he would hold
before her. Had he not first risen on her vision as a corrective presence
which she had recognized in the beginning with resentment, and at last
with entire love and trust? She could not spontaneously think of an end to
that reliance, which had become to her imagination like the firmness of
the earth, the only condition of her walking.

And Deronda was not long before he came to Diplow, which was a more
convenient distance from town than the Abbey. He had wished to carry out a
plan for taking 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 unitedly watch over her brother. But Ezra begged not to be removed,
unless it were to go with them to the East. All outward solicitations were
becoming more and more of a burden to him; but his mind dwelt on the
possibility of this voyage with a visionary joy. Deronda, in his
preparations for the marriage, which he hoped might not be deferred beyond
a couple of months, wished to have fuller consultation as to his resources
and affairs generally with Sir Hugo, and here was a reason for not
delaying his visit to Diplow. But he thought quite as much of another
reason--his promise to Gwendolen. The sense of blessedness in his own lot
had yet an aching anxiety at his heart: this may be held paradoxical, for
the beloved lover is always called happy, and happiness is considered as a
well-fleshed indifference to sorrow outside it. But human experience is
usually paradoxical, if that means incongruous with the phrases of
current, talk or even current philosophy. It was no treason to Mirah, but
a part of that full nature which made his love for her the more worthy,
that his joy in her could hold by its side the care for another. For what
is love itself, for the one we love best?--an enfolding of immeasurable
cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

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 lot
and prospects. He blamed himself; but in all momentous communication
likely to give pain we feel dependent on some preparatory turn of words or
associations, some agreement of the other's mood with the probable effect
of what we have to impart. 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, what she could do to make
herself less ignorant, how she could be kindest to everybody, and make
amends for her selfishness and try to be rid of it, that Deronda utterly
shrank from waiving her immediate wants in order to speak of himself, nay,
from inflicting a wound on her in these moments when she was leaning on
him for help in her path. In the second interview, when he went with new
resolve to command the conversation into some preparatory track, he found
her in a state of deep depression, overmastered by some distasteful
miserable memories which forced themselves on her as something more real
and ample than any new material out of which she could mould her future.
She cried hysterically, and said that he would always despise her. He
could only seek words of soothing and encouragement: and when she
gradually revived under them, with that pathetic look of renewed childlike
interest which we see in eyes where the lashes are still beaded with
tears, it was impossible to lay another burden on her.

But time went on, and 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 of hers would make a sudden
revelation of affairs that were determining his course in life all the
heavier blow to her; and if he left the revelation to be made by different
persons, she would feel that he had treated her with cruel
inconsiderateness. He could not make the communication in writing: his
tenderness could not bear to think of her reading his virtual farewell in
solitude, and perhaps feeling his words full of a hard gladness for
himself and indifference for her. He went down to Diplow again, feeling
that every other peril was to be incurred rather than that of returning
and leaving her still in ignorance.

On this third visit Deronda found Hans Meyrick installed with his easel at
Diplow, beginning his picture of the three daughters sitting on a bank,
"in the Gainsborough style," and varying his work by rambling to Pennicote
to sketch the village children and improve his acquaintance with the
Gascoignes. Hans appeared to have recovered his vivacity, but Deronda
detected some feigning in it, as we detect the artificiality of a lady's
bloom from its being a little too high-toned and steadily persistent (a
"Fluctuating Rouge" not having yet appeared among the advertisements).
Also with all his grateful friendship and admiration for Deronda, Hans
could not help a certain irritation against him, such as extremely
incautious, open natures are apt to feel when the breaking of a friend's
reserve discloses a state of things not merely unsuspected but the reverse
of what had been hoped and ingeniously conjectured. It is true that poor
Hans had always cared chiefly to confide in Deronda, and had been quite
incurious as to any confidence that might have been given in return; but
what outpourer of his own affairs is not tempted to think any hint of his
friend's affairs is an egotisic irrelevance? That was no reason why it was
not rather a sore reflection to Hans that while he had been all along
naively opening his heart about Mirah, Deronda had kept secret a feeling
of rivalry which now revealed itself as the important determining fact.
Moreover, it is always at their peril that our friends turn out to be
something more than we were aware of. Hans must be excused for these
promptings of bruised sensibility, since he had not allowed them to govern
his substantial conduct: he had the consciousness of having done right by
his fortunate friend; or, as he told himself, "his metal had given a
better ring than he would have sworn to beforehand." For Hans had always
said that in point of virtue he was a _dilettante_: which meant that he
was very fond of it in other people, but if he meddled with it himself he
cut a poor figure. Perhaps in reward of his good behavior he gave his
tongue the more freedom; and he was too fully possessed by the notion of
Deronda's happiness to have a conception of what lie 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 making a study of the requisite bank and trees.

"Oh, ten days ago; before the time Sir Hugo fixed. 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; I know the state of the wheelright's interior, and have
assisted at an infant school examination. Sister Anna, with the good upper
lip, escorted me, else I should have been mobbed by three urchins and an
idiot, because of my long hair and a general appearance which departs from
the Pennicote type of the beautiful. Altogether, the village is idyllic.
Its only fault is a dark curate with broad shoulders and broad trousers
who ought to have gone into the heavy drapery line. The Gascoignes are
perfect--besides being related to the Vandyke duchess. I caught a glimpse
of her in her black robes at a distance, though she doesn't show to
visitors."

"She was not staying at the rectory?" said Deronda,

"No; but I was taken to Offendene to see the old house, and as a
consequence I saw the duchess' family. I suppose you have been there and
know all about them?"

"Yes, I have been there," said Deronda, quietly.

"A fine old place. An excellent setting for a widow with romantic
fortunes. And she seems to have had several romances. I think I have found
out that there was one between her and my friend Rex."

"Not long before her marriage, then?" said Deronda, really interested,
"for they had only been a year at Offendene. How came you to know anything
of it?"

"Oh--not ignorant of what it is to be a miserable devil. I learn to gloat
on the signs of misery in others. I found out that Rex never goes to
Offendene, and has never seen the duchess since she came back; and Miss
Gascoigne let fall something in our talk about charade-acting--for I went
through some of my nonsense to please the young ones--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. That is always the way when an
exceptionally worthy young man forms an attachment. I understand now why
Gascoigne talks of making the law his mistress and remaining a bachelor.
But these are green resolves. Since the duke did not get himself drowned
for your sake, it may turn out to be for my friend Rex's sake. Who knows?"

"Is it absolutely necessary that Mrs. Grandcourt should marry again?" said
Deronda, ready to add that Hans's success in constructing her fortunes
hitherto had not been enough to warrant a new attempt.

"You monster!" retorted Hans, "do you want her to wear weeds for _you_ all
her life--burn herself in perpetual suttee while you are alive and merry?"

Deronda could say nothing, but he looked so much annoyed that Hans turned
the current of his chat, and when he was alone shrugged his shoulders a
little over the thought that there really had been some stronger feeling
between Deronda and the duchess than Mirah would like to know of. "Why
didn't she fall in love with me?" thought Hans, laughing at himself. "She
would have had no rivals. No woman ever wanted to discuss theology with
me."

No wonder that Deronda winced under that sort of joking with a whip-lash.
It touched sensibilities that were already quivering with the anticipation
of witnessing some of that pain to which even Hans's light words seemed to
give more reality:--any sort of recognition by another giving emphasis to
the subject of our anxiety. And now he had come down with the firm resolve
that he would not again evade the trial. The next day he rode to
Offendene. He had sent word that he intended to call and to ask if
Gwendolen could receive him; and he found her awaiting him in the old
drawing-room where some chief crises of her life had happened. 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 was all the more alive to the sadness
perceptible in Deronda; and they were no sooner seated--he at a little
distance opposite to her--than she said:

"You were afraid of coming to see me, because I was so full of grief and
despair the last time. But I am not so today. I have been sorry ever
since. I have been making it a reason why I should keep up my hope and be
as cheerful as I can, because I would not give you any pain about me."

There was an unwonted sweetness in Gwendolen's tone and look as she
uttered these words that seemed to Deronda to infuse the utmost cruelty
into the task now laid upon him. But he felt obliged to make his answer a
beginning of the task.

"I _am_ in some trouble to-day," he said, looking at her rather
mournfully; "but it is because I have things to tell you which you will
almost think it a want of confidence on my part not to have spoken of
before. They are things affecting my own life--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
subjects which at the moment were really less pressing to me than the
trials you have been going through." There was a sort of timid tenderness
in Deronda's deep tones, and he paused with a pleading look, as if it had
been Gwendolen only who had conferred anything in her scenes of beseeching
and confession.

A thrill of surprise was visible in her. Such meaning as she found in his
words had shaken her, but without causing fear. Her mind had flown at once
to some change in his position with regard to Sir Hugo and Sir Hugo's
property. She said, with a sense of comfort from Deronda's way of asking
her pardon--

"You never thought of anything but what you could do to help me; and I was
so troublesome. How could you tell me things?"

"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 of what was coming were right. Deronda went on without check.

"The reason why you found me in Italy was that I had gone there to learn
that--in fact, 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 little creature. But she is now very ill, and she felt that
the secrecy ought not to be any longer maintained. Her chief reason 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 colored, and did not speak, while Gwendolen, with her eyes fixed
on the floor, was struggling to find her way in the dark by the aid of
various reminiscences. She seemed at last to have arrived at some
judgment, for she looked up at Deronda again and said, as if remonstrating
against the mother's conduct--

"What difference need that have made?"

"It has made a great difference to me that I have known it," said Deronda,
emphatically; but he could not go on easily--the distance between her
ideas and his acted like a difference of native language, making him
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 assure him that nothing of that external sort could affect
the way in which she regarded him, or the way in which he could influence
her. Deronda was a little helped by this misunderstanding.

"The discovery was far from being painful to me," he said, "I had been
gradually prepared for it, and 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 the best part of my life to
some effort at giving them effect."

Again Gwendolen seemed shaken--again there was a look of frustration, but
this time it was mingled with alarm. She looked at Deronda with lips
childishly parted. It was not that she had yet connected his words with
Mirah and her brother, but that they had inspired her with a dreadful
presentiment of mountainous travel for her mind before it could reach
Deronda's. Great ideas in general which she had attributed to him seemed
to make no great practical difference, and were not formidable in the same
way as these mysteriously-shadowed particular ideas. He could not quite
divine what was going on within her; he could only seek the least abrupt
path of disclosure.

"That is an object," he said, after a moment, "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."

Here was something clearer, but all the more immediately agitating.
Gwendolen's lips began to tremble. "But you will come back?" she said,
tasting her own tears as they fell, before she thought of drying them.

Deronda could not sit still. He rose, and went to prop himself against the
corner of the mantel-piece, at a different angle from her face. But when
she had pressed her handkerchief against her cheeks, she turned and looked
up at him, awaiting an answer.

"If I live," said Deronda--"_some time_."

They were both silent. He could not persuade himself to say more unless
she led up to it by a question; and she was apparently meditating
something that she had to say.

"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--anxious to be
as explanatory as he could on what was the impersonal part of their
separateness from each other. "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 center, such as the English has, though they
too are scattered over the face of the globe. That is a task which
presents itself to me as a duty; I am resolved to begin it, however
feebly. I am resolved to devote my life to it. At the least, I may awaken
a movement in other minds, such as has been awakened in my own."

There was a long silence between them. The world seemed getting larger
round poor Gwendolen, and she more solitary and helpless in the midst. The
thought that he might come back after going to the East, sank before the
bewildering vision of these wild-stretching purposes in which 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 aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading,
enter like an earthquake into their own lives--where the slow urgency of
growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire
clash of civil war, and gray fathers know nothing to seek for but the
corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forgot all vanity to make lint
and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed
husbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object of
lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imagery
of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings
of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the
rolling fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate
under the thunder of relenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die,
and no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then it
is that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even in
the eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle with
the awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which is something
else than a private consolation.

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. Ail the
troubles of her wifehood and widowhood had still left her with the
implicit impression which had accompanied her from childhood, that
whatever surrounded her was somehow specially for her, and it was because
of this that no personal jealousy had been roused in her relation to
Deronda: she could not spontaneously 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 vaguely tremendous that
thrust her away, and yet quelled all her anger into self-humiliation.

There had been a long silence. Deronda had stood still, even thankful for
an interval before he needed to say more, and Gwendolen had sat like a
statue with her wrists lying over each other and her eyes fixed--the
intensity of her mental action arresting all other excitation. At length
something occurred to her that made her turn her face to Deronda and say
in a trembling voice--

"Is that all you can tell me?"

The question was like a dart to him. "The Jew whom I mentioned just now,"
he answered, not without a certain tremor in his tones too, "the
remarkable man who has greatly influenced my mind, has not perhaps been
totally unheard of by you. He 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. It had come first at the scene of that
morning when she had called on Mirah, and heard Deronda's voice reading,
and been told, without then heeding it, that he was reading Hebrew with
Mirah's brother.

"He is very ill--very near death now," Deronda went on, nervously, and
then stopped short. He felt that he must wait. Would she divine the rest?

"Did she tell you that I went to her?" said Gwendolen, abruptly, looking
up at him.

"No," said Deronda. "I don't understand you."

She turned away her eyes again, and sat thinking. Slowly the color dried
out of face and neck, and she was as pale as before--with that almost
withered paleness which is seen after a painful flush. At last she said--
without turning toward him--in a low, measured voice, as if she were only
thinking aloud in preparation for future speech--

"But _can_ you marry?"

"Yes," said Deronda, also in a low voice. "I am going to marry."

At first there was no change in Gwendolen's attitude: she only began to
tremble visibly; then she looked before her with dilated eyes, as at
something lying in front of her, till she stretched her arms out straight,
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 held them together, 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, looking
up at her imploringly.

His presence and touch seemed to dispel a horrible vision, and she met his
upward look of sorrow with something like the return of consciousness
after fainting. Then she dwelt on it with that growing pathetic movement
of the brow which accompanies the revival of some tender recollection. The
look of sorrow brought back what seemed a very far-off moment--the first
time she had ever seen it, in the library at the Abbey. Sobs rose, and
great tears fell fast. Deronda would not let her hands go--held them still
with one of his, and himself pressed her handkerchief against her eyes.
She submitted like a half-soothed child, making an effort to speak, which
was hindered by struggling sobs. At last she succeeded in saying,
brokenly--

"I said--I said--it should be better--better with me--for having known
you."

His eyes too were larger with tears. She wrested 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 with gentle
urgency, releasing her hands and rising from his kneeling posture. "If we
had been much together before, we should have felt our differences more,
and seemed to get farther apart. Now we can perhaps never see each other
again. But our minds may get nearer."

Gwendolen said nothing, but rose too, automatically. Her withered look of
grief, such as the sun often shines on when the blinds are drawn up after
the burial of life's joy, 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, which dulled all other consciousness; and she had not known
that she was rising.

Deronda could not speak again. He thought that they must part in silence,
but it was difficult to move toward the parting, till she looked at him
with a sort of intention in her eyes, which helped him. He advanced to put
out his hand silently, and when she had placed hers within it, she said
what her mind had been laboring 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. It was not that she was sobbing, but that the
intense effort with which she spoke made her too tremulous. The burden of
that difficult rectitude toward him 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, bending over her and
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 continually 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 in the morning light, she looked
up fixedly 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."




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