 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Daniel Deronda by George Elliott Chapter 54 The unwilling brain feigns often what it would not, and we trust imagination with such fantasies as the tongue dares not fashion into words, which have no words, their horror makes them dim to the mind's eye. Shelley Madonna Pia, whose husband, feeling himself injured by her, took her to his castle amid the swampy flats of the Marema and got rid of her there, makes a pathetic figure in Dante's purgatory among the sinners who repented at the last and desired to be remembered compassionately by their fellow countrymen. We know little about the grounds of mutual discontent between the sea and east couple, but we may infer with some confidence that the husband had never been a very delightful companion and that on the flats of the Marema his disagreeable manners had a background which threw them out remarkably. Once in his desire to punish his wife to the utmost, the nature of things was so far against him that in relieving himself of her he could not avoid making the relief mutual. And thus without any hardness to the poor Tuscan lady who had her deliverance long ago, one may feel warranted in thinking of her with a less sympathetic interest than of the better known Gwendolyn, who instead of being delivered from her errors on earth and cleansed from their effect in purgatory, is at the very height of her entanglement in those fatal meshes which are woven within more closely than without and often make the inward torture disproportionate to what is discernible as outward cause. In taking his wife with him on a yachting expedition, Grandcourt had no intention to get rid of her. On the contrary, he wanted to feel more securely that she was his to do as he liked with and to make her feel it also. Moreover, he was himself very fond of yachting. Its dreamy, do-nothing absolutism, unmolested by social demands, suited his disposition, and he did not in the least regard it as an equivalent for the dreariness of the Marema. He had his reasons for carrying Gwendolyn out of reach, but there were not reasons that can seem black in the mere statement. He suspected a growing spirit of opposition in her, and his feeling about the sentimental inclination she betrayed for Duranda was what in another man he would have called jealousy. In himself it seemed merely a resolution to put an end to such foolery as might have been going on in that prearranged visit of Duranda's which he had divined and interrupted. And Grandcourt might have pleaded that he was perfectly justified in taking care that his wife should fulfill the obligations she had accepted. Her marriage was a contract where all the ostensible advantages were on her side, and it was only of those advantages that her husband should use his power to hinder her from any injurious self-committal or unsuitable behavior. He knew quite well that she had not married him, had not overcome her repugnance to certain facts, out of love to him personally. He had won her by the rank and luxuries he had to give her, and these she had got. He had fulfilled his side of the contract. And Gwendolyn, we know, was thoroughly aware of the situation. She could not excuse herself by saying that there had been a tacit part of the contract on her side, namely that she meant to rule and have her own way. With all her early indulgence in the disposition to dominate, she was not one of the narrow-brained women who through life regard all their own selfish demands as rights and every claim upon themselves as an injury. She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of purgatory had begun for her on the green earth. She knew that she had been wrong. But now enter into the soul of this young creature as she found herself, with the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on the tiny plank island of a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she felt that she had sold herself, and had been paid the strict price. Nay paid more than she had dared to ask in the handsome maintenance of her mother, the husband to whom she had sold her truthfulness and sense of justice, so that he held them throttled into silence, collared and dragged behind him to witness what he would, without remonstrance. What had she to complain of? The yacht was of the prettiest, the cabin fitted up to perfection, smelling of cedar, soft cushioned, hung with silk, expanded with mirrors. The crew such as suited an elegant toy, one of them having even ringlets as well as a bronze complexion and fine teeth, and Mr. Lush was not there, for he had taken his way back to England as soon as he had seen all and everything on board. Moreover, Gwendolyn herself liked the sea, it did not make her ill, and to observe the rigging of the vessel and forecast the necessary adjustments was a sort of amusement that might have gratified her activity and enjoyment of imaginary rule. The weather was fine, and they were coasting southward where even the rain furrowed heat-cracked clay becomes gem-like with purple shadows, and where one may float between blue and blue in an open-eyed dream that the world has done with sorrow. But what can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye for beauty and makes sweet-scented ease and oppression? What sort of Muslim paradise would quiet the terrible fury of moral repulsion and cowed resistance, which like an eating pain intensifying into torture, concentrates the mind in that poisonous misery? While Gwendolyn, throned on her cushions at evening, and beholding the glory of sea and sky softening as if with boundless love around her, was hoping that Grandcourt in his march up and down was not going to pause near her, not going to look at her or speak to her, some woman under a smoky sky, obliged to consider the price of eggs in arranging her dinner, was listening for the music of a footstep that would remove all risk from her foretaste of joy. Some couple, bending cheek by cheek over a bit of work done by the one and delighted in by the other, were reckoning the earnings that would make them rich enough for a holiday among the furs and heather. Had Grandcourt the least conception of what was going on in the breast of his wife? He conceived that she did not love him, but was that necessary? She was under his power, and he was not accustomed to soothe himself, as some cheerfully disposed persons are, with the conviction that he was very generally and justly beloved. But what lay quite away from his conception was that she could have any special repulsion for him personally. How could she? He himself knew what personal repulsion was, nobody better. His mind was much furnished with the sense of what broods his fellow creatures were, both masculine and feminine. What odious familiarities they had, what smirks, what modes of flourishing their handkerchiefs, what costume, what lavender water, what bulging eyes, and what foolish notions of making themselves agreeable by remarks which were not wanted. In this critical view of mankind there was an affinity between him and Gwendolyn before their marriage, and we know that she had been attractingly wrought upon by the refined negations he presented to her. Hence he understood her repulsion for lush. But how was he to understand or conceive her present repulsion for Henley Grandcourt? Some men might bring themselves to believe, and to not merely maintain, the non-existence of an external world. A few others believed themselves objects of repulsion to a woman without being told so in plain language. But Grandcourt did not belong to this eccentric body of thinkers. He had all his life had reason to take a flattering view of his own attractiveness and to place himself in fine antithesis to the men who he saw at once must be revolting to a woman of taste. He had no idea of moral repulsion, and could not have believed, if he had been told it, that there may be a resentment and disgust which will gradually make beauty more detestable than ugliness, through exasperation at that outward virtue in which hateful things can flaunt themselves or find a supercilious advantage. How then could Grandcourt divine what was going on in Gwendolyn's breast? For their behavior to each other scandalized no observer, not even the foreign maid warranted against sea sickness, nor Grandcourt's own experienced valet, still lest the picturesque crew, who regarded them as a model couple in high life. Their companionship consisted chiefly in a well-bred silence. Grandcourt had no humorous observations at which Gwendolyn could refuse to smile, no chit-chat to make small occasions of dispute. He was perfectly polite in arranging an additional garment over her when needful, and in handing her any object that he perceived her to need, and she could not fall into the vulgarity of accepting or rejecting such politeness rudely. Grandcourt put up his telescope and said, There's a plantation of sugar canes at the foot of that rock. Should you like to look? Gwendolyn said, Yes, please. Remembering that she must try and interest herself in sugar canes as something outside her personal affairs, then Grandcourt would walk up and down and smoke for a long while, pausing occasionally to point out a sail on the horizon, and at last would seat himself and look at Gwendolyn with his narrow immovable gaze as if she were part of the complete yacht. While she, conscious of being looked at, was exerting her ingenuity not to meet his eyes. At dinner he would remark that the fruit was getting stale and that they must put in somewhere for more, or observing that she did not drink the wine, he asked her if she would like any other kind better. A lady was obliged to respond to these things suitably, and even if she had not shrunk from quarreling on other grounds, quarreling with Grandcourt was impossible. She might as well have made angry remarks to a dangerous serpent ornamentally coiled in her cabin without invitation. And what sort of dispute would a woman of any pride and dignity begin on a yacht? Grandcourt had intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive under this fashion. It gave their life on a small scale a royal representation and publicity in which everything familiar was got rid of, and everybody must do what was expected of them, whatever might be their private protest. The protest kept strictly private, adding to the pecancy of despotism. To Gwendolyn, who even in the freedom of her maiden time had had very faint glimpses of any heroism or sublimity, the medium that now thrust itself everywhere before her view was this husband and her relation to him. The beings closest to us, whether in love or hate, are often virtually our interpreters of the world, and some feather-headed gentleman or lady whom in passing we regret to take as legal tender for a human being, may be acting as a melancholy theory of life in the minds of those who live with them, like a piece of yellow and wavy glass that distorts form and makes color and affliction. Their trivial sentences, their petty standards, their low suspicions, their loveless ennui may be making somebody else's life no better than a promenade through a pantheon of ugly idols. Gwendolyn had that kind of window before her, affecting the distant equally with the nearer. Some unhappy wives are soothed by the possibility that they may become mothers, but Gwendolyn felt that to desire a child for herself would have been a consenting to the completion of the injury she had been guilty of. She was reduced to dread lest she should become a mother. It was not the image of a new, sweetly budding life that came as a vision of deliverance from the monotony of distaste. It was an image of another sort. In the irritable, fluctuating stages of despair, gleams of hope came in the form of some possible accident. To dwell on the benignity of accident was a refuge from worse temptation. The embitterment of hatred is often as unaccountable to onlookers as the growth of devoted love, and it not only seems but is really out of direct relation with any outward causes to be alleged. Passion is of the nature of seed and finds nourishment within tending to a predominance which determines all currents toward itself and makes the whole life its tributary. And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear which compels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the detested object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage and soothed their suffering into numbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolyn's mind, but not with soothing effect, rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past wrongdoing and what it had brought on her came with a pale, ghastly illumination over every imagined deed that was a rash effort at freedom such as she had made in her marriage. Moreover, she had learned to see all her acts through the impression they would make on Duranda. Whatever relief might come to her, she could not sever it from the judgment of her that would be created in his mind. Not one word of flattery, of indulgence, of dependence on her favor could be fastened on by her and all their intercourse to weaken his restraining power over her. In this way Duranda's effort over himself was repaid. And amid the dreary uncertainties of her spoiled life the possible remedies that lay in his mind, nay the remedy that lay in her feeling for him, made her only hope. He seemed to her a terrible, broad angel from whom she could not think of concealing any deed so as to win an ignorant regard from him. It belonged to the nature of their relation that she should be truthful, for his power over her had begun in the raising of a self-discontent which could be satisfied only by genuine change. But in no concealment had she now any confidence. The notion of what she had to dread took more decidedly than ever the form of some fiercely impulsive deed committed as in a dream that she would instantaneously wake from to find the effects real though the images had been false. To find death under her hands, but instead of darkness, daylight, instead of satisfied hatred, the dismay of guilt, instead of freedom, the palsy of a new terror, a white dead face from which she was forever trying to flee and forever held back. She remembered Doronda's words. They were continually recurring in her thought. Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of increasing your remorse. Take your fear as a safeguard. It is like quickness of hearing. It may make consequences passionately present to you. And so it was. In Gwendolyn's consciousness temptation and dread met and stared like two pale phantoms, each seeing itself in the other, each obstructed by its own image, and all the while her fuller self beheld the apparitions and sobbed for deliverance from them. Inarticulate prayers no more definite than a cry often swept out from her into the vast silence unbroken except by her husband's breathing or the plash of the wave or the creaking of the mass. But if ever she thought of definite help, it took the form of Doronda's presence and words of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped, fierce-eyed temptation with murdering fingers had made its demon visit that these best moments of inward crying and clinging for rescue would come to her, and she would lie with wide-open eyes in which the rising tears seemed a blessing and the thought, I will not mind if I can keep from getting wicked, seemed an answer to the indefinite prayer. So the days passed, taking with them light breezes beyond and about the Beleric Isles and then to Sardinia and then with gentle change persuading them northward again toward Corsica. But this floating, gentle-wafted existence with its apparently peaceful influences was becoming as bad as a nightmare to Gwendolyn. How long are we to be yachting? She ventured to ask one day after they had been touching at a giacchio and the mere fact of change and going ashore had given her a relief from some of the thoughts which seem to now to cling about the very rigging of the vessel mixed with the air in the red silk cabin below and make the smell of the sea odious. What else should we do? said Grandcourt. I'm not tired of it. I don't see why we shouldn't stay out any length of time. There's less to bore one in this way. And where would you go to? I'm sick of foreign places, and we shall have enough of Rylans. Would you rather be at Rylans? Oh, no! said Gwendolyn indifferently, finding all places alike undescribable as soon as she imagined herself and her husband in them. I only wondered how long you would like this. I like yachting longer than anything else, said Grandcourt. And I had none last year. I suppose you were beginning to tire of it. Women are so confoundedly whimsical. They expect everything to give way to them. Oh, dear no! said Gwendolyn, letting out her scorn in a flute-like tone. I never expect you to give way. Why should I? said Grandcourt, with his inward voice looking at her, and then choosing an orange, for they were at table. She made up her mind to a length of yachting that she could not see beyond. But the next day, after a squall which had made her rather ill for the first time, he came down to her and said, There's been the devil's own work in the night. The skipper says we shall have to stay at Genoa for a week while things are set right. Do you mind that, said Gwendolyn, who lay looking very white amidst her white drapery? I should think so. Who wants to be broiling at Genoa? It will be a change, said Gwendolyn, made a little incautious by her langer. I don't want any change. Besides, the place is intolerable, and one can't move along the roads. I shall go out in a boat, as I used to do, and manage it myself. One can get a few hours every day in that way instead of striving in a damnable hotel. Here was a prospect which held hope in it. Gwendolyn thought of hours when she would be alone since Grand Court would not want to take her in the said boat, and in her exultation at this unlooked-for relief she had wild, contradictory fantasies of what she might do with her freedom. That running away which she had already innumerable times seemed to be a worse evil than any actual endurance, now finding new arguments as an escape from her worst self. Also visionary relief on a par with the fancy of a prisoner that the night wind may blow down the wall of his prison and save him from desperate devices, insinuated itself as a better alternative, lawful to wish for. The fresh current of expectation revived her energies and enabled her to take all things with an air of cheerfulness and alacrity that made a change marked enough to be noticed by her husband. She watched through the evening lights to the shrinking of the moon with less of odd loneliness than was habitual to her. Nay, with a vague impression that in this mighty frame of things there might be some preparation of rescue for her. Why not, since the weather had just been on her side? This possibility of hoping after her long fluctuation amid fears was like a first return of hunger to the long languishing patient. She was waked the next morning by the casting of the anchor in the port of Genoa, waked from a strangely mixed dream in which she felt herself escaping over the Monsenas and wondering to find it warmer even in the moonlight on the snow till suddenly she met Duranda, who told her to go back. In an hour or so from that dream she actually met Duranda, but it was on the palatial staircase of the Italia where she was feeling warm in her light woolen dress and straw hat, and her husband was by her side. There was a start of surprise in Duranda before he could raise his hat and pass on. The moment did not seem to favour any closer greeting, and the circumstances under which they had last parted made him doubtful whether Grandcourt would be civilly inclined to him. The doubt might certainly have been changed into a disagreeable certainty that Grandcourt on this unaccountable appearance of Duranda at Genoa of all places immediately tried to conceive how there could have been an arrangement between him and Gwendolyn. It is true that before they were well in their rooms he had seen how difficult it was to shape such an arrangement with any probability, being too cool-headed to find it at once easily credible that Gwendolyn had not only while in London hastened to inform Duranda of the yachting project, but had posted a letter to him from Marseille or Barcelona, advising him to travel to Genoa in time for the chance of meeting her there, or of receiving a letter from her telling of some other destination, all which must have implied a miraculous foreknowledge in her, and in Duranda a bird-like facility in flying about and perching idly. Still he was there, and though Grandcourt would not make a fool of himself by fabrications that others might call preposterous, he was not, for all that, disposed to admit fully that Duranda's presence was, so far as Gwendolyn was concerned, a mere accident. It was a disgusting fact that was enough, and no doubt she was well pleased. A man out of temper does not wait for proofs before feeling toward all things animate and inanimate as if they were in a conspiracy against him, but at once threshes his horse or kicks his dog in consequence. Grandcourt felt toward Gwendolyn and Duranda as if he knew them to be in a conspiracy against him, and here was an event in league with them. What he took for clearly certain, and so far he divine to the truth, was that Gwendolyn was now counting on an interview with Duranda whenever her husband's back was turned. As he sat taking his coffee at a convenient angle for observing her, he discerned something which he felt sure was the effect of a secret delight, some fresh ease in moving and speaking, some peculiar meaning in her eyes, whatever she looked on. Certainly her troubles had not marred her beauty. Mrs. Grandcourt was handsomer than Gwendolyn Harlith. Her grace and expression were informed by a greater variety of inward experience, giving new play to her features, new attitudes in movement and repose. Her whole person and heir had the nameless something which often makes a woman more interesting after marriage than before. Less confident that all things are according to her opinion, and yet with less of dear-like shyness, more fully a human being. This morning the benefits of the voyage seemed to be suddenly revealing themselves in a new elasticity of mean. As she rose from the table and put her two heavily jeweled hands on each side of her neck, according to her want, there was no art to conceal that sort of joyous expectation which makes the present more bearable than usual. Just as when a man means to go out, he finds it easier to be amiable to the family for a quarter of an hour beforehand. It is not impossible that a terrier whose pleasure was concerned would perceive those amiable signs and know their meaning, know why his master stood in a peculiar way, talked with alacrity, and even had a peculiar gleam in his eye on the least movement toward the door, the terrier was scuttled to be in time. And in dog-fashion, Grandcourt discerned the signs of Gwendolyn's expectation, interpreting them with the narrow correctness which leaves a world of unknown feeling behind. Uh, just ring, please, and tell Gibbs to order some dinner for us at three, said Grandcourt, as he too rose, took out a cigar, and then stretched his hand toward the hat that lay near. I'm going to send Angus to find a little sailing-boat for us to go out in, one that I can manage, with you at the tiller. It's uncommonly pleasant these fine evenings, the least boring of anything we can do. Gwendolyn turned cold. There was not only the cruel disappointment, there was the immediate conviction that her husband had determined to take her because he would not leave her out of his sight, and probably this dual solitude in a boat was the more attractive to him because it would be wearisome to her. They were not on the Plank Island. She felt it the more possible to begin a contest, but the gleaming content had died out of her. There was a change in her, like that of a glacier, after sunset. I would rather not go in the boat, she said. Take someone else with you. Very well. If you don't go, I shall not go, said Grandcourt. We shall stay suffocating here, that's all. I can't bear to go in a boat, said Gwendolyn angrily. That is a sudden change, said Grandcourt, with a slight sneer. But since you decline, we shall stay indoors. He laid down his hat again, lit his cigar, and walked up and down the room, pausing now and then to look out of the windows. Gwendolyn's temper told her to persist. She knew very well now that Grandcourt would not go without her. But if he must tyrannize over her, he should not do it precisely in the way he would choose. She would oblige him to stay in the hotel. Without speaking again, she passed into the adjoining bedroom and threw herself into a chair with her anger, seeing no purpose or issue, only feeling that the wave of evil had rushed back upon her and dragged her away from her momentary breathing place. Presently Grandcourt came in with his hat on, but threw it off and sat down sideways on a chair nearly in front of her, saying, in his superficial drawl, Have you come round yet? Or do you find it agreeable to be out of temper? You make things uncommonly pleasant for me. Why do you want to make them unpleasant for me? said Gwendolyn, getting helpless again and feeling the hot tears rise. Now, will you be good enough to say what it is you have to complain of? said Grandcourt, looking into her eyes and using his most inward voice. Is it that I stay indoors when you stay? She could give no answer. The sort of truth that made any excuse for her anger could not be uttered. In the conflict of despair and humiliation she began to sob and the tears rolled down her cheeks, a form of agitation which she had never shown before in her husband's presence. I hope this is useful, said Grandcourt, after a moment or two. All I can say is it's most confoundedly unpleasant. What the devil women can see in this kind of thing I don't know. You see something to be got by it, of course. All I can see is that we shall be shut up here when we might have been having a pleasant sale. Let us go, then, said Gwendolyn impetuously. Perhaps we shall be drowned. She began to sob again. This extraordinary behaviour which had evidently some relation to Dharonda gave more definiteness to Grandcourt's conclusions. He drew his chair quite close in front of her and said, in a low tone, just be quiet and listen, will you? There seemed to be a magical effect in this close vicinity. Gwendolyn shrank and ceased to sob. She kept her eyelids down and clasped her hands tightly. Let us understand each other, said Grandcourt, in the same tone. I know very well what this nonsense means, but if you suppose I am going to let you make a fool of me, just dismiss that notion from your mind. What are you looking forward to if you can't behave properly as my wife? There is disgrace for you, if you like to have it, but I don't know anything else. And as to Dharonda, it's quite clear that he hangs back from you. It's all false, said Gwendolyn bitterly. You don't in the least imagine what is in my mind. I have seen enough of the disgrace that comes in that way, and you would better leave me at liberty to speak with anyone I like. It will be better for you. You will allow me to judge of that, said Grandcourt, rising and moving to a little distance toward the window, but standing there playing with his whiskers as if he were awaiting something. Gwendolyn's words had so clear and tremendous a meaning for herself that she thought they must have expressed it to Grandcourt and had no sooner uttered them than she dreaded their effect. But his soul was garrisoned against pre-sentiments and fears. He had the courage and confidence that belonged to domination, and he was at that moment feeling perfectly satisfied with his wife, with bit and bridal. By the time they had been married a year she would cease to be restive. He continued standing with his air of indifference till she felt her habitual stifling consciousness of having an immovable obstruction in her life, like the nightmare of beholding a single form that serves to arrest all passage though the wide country lies open. What decision have you come to? he said, presently looking at her. What order shall I give? Oh, let us go! said Gwendolyn. 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 thumbscrews 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 mid-day. Grandcourt had recovered perfect quietude of temper and had a scornful satisfaction in the attention given by the nautical groups to the malored owner of the handsome yacht which had just put in for repairs and to 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 Gwendolyn this morning she now thought that she discerned in him. And it was true that he had set his mind on this boating for 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 Gwendolyn 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 preferred concerning a possible change in the breeze and the necessary care and putting about but Grandcourt's manner made the speakers understand that they were too officious and that he knew better than they. Gwendolyn 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 and 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 today 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 unless 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 the supreme beauty of the evening. Sales 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 Gwendolyn let her hands fall and set in a scarcely audible tone. God help me! What's the matter, said Grand Court, not distinguishing the words? Oh, nothing, said Gwendolyn, rousing herself from her momentary forgetfulness and resuming the ropes. Don't you find this pleasant, said Grand Court? 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 Gwendolyn wildly. Grand Court gave her one of his narrow thin 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. End of chapter 54 This recording is in the public domain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Daniel Deronda, by George Elliott. Chapter 55 Ritorna a toa scienza Che voi quanto la cosa e più perfetta Più santa e bene e cosi la dolienza Dante. When Deronda met Gwendolyn and Grand Court 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 Hulme 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 Colognimos 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 mourning 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 Myra were always present as beings who clasped hands with him in sympathetic silence. Of such quick response of 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 mains 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 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 tonight 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 bell 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 Gwendolyn 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 grandcourts 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 flavour, 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 awakened among the sparse Dala theme and keen dark faces of worshipers whose way of taking awful prayers and invocations with the easy familiarity which might be called Hebrew-died 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 molding 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 Gwendolyn, 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. Duranda, 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 rode by two men. Amidst the clamorous talk in various languages Duranda held at the sureer 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 malored who had gone out in a sailing boat another maintained that the prostrate figure he discerned was Malady a Frenchman who had no glass would rather say that it was malored 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 Duranda 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 Gwendolyn half raising herself on her hands by her own effort under her heavy covering of tarpolin and P-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 Duranda from advancing and he could only look on while Gwendolyn gave scared 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 Duranda 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 Duranda in a tone of authority to stretch herself 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 her cry had come up just 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 Duranda 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. Gasquan whose address at the rectory made his nearest known way of getting the information to Gwendolyn's mother Certain words of Gwendolyn'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 End of Chapter 55 This recording is in the public domain This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Daniel Duranda by George Elliott Chapter 56 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 Colouridge Duranda did not take off his clothes that night Gwendolyn, 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 supervaining 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 if 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 Loranda 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 toilette and reflected that it was too early to send inquiries 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 the determination of concealment for his own part he thought that his sensibilities were limited 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 Gwendolyn'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 Gwendolyn 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 fisherman 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 Duranda was told that Gwendolyn 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 looking 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 whom Duranda 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 Duranda 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'm a guilty woman Duranda himself turned paler as he said I know nothing I dare to say more he is dead she uttered this with the same undertoned decision yes said Duranda in a mournful suspense which made him reluctant to speak his face will not be seen above the water again said Gwendolyn in a tone that was not louder but of a suppressed eagerness while she held both her hands clenched no not by anyone else only by me with her pale 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 Duranda 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 confession such thoughts glanced through Duranda 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 and 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 could not have my mother know not if I were dead no I could not ever know I must tell you but you will not say that anyone else should know I can say nothing in my ignorance said Duranda 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 Duranda turned his ear only her face afflicted him too much I felt a hatred in me that it 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 ask 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 shutter passed through her but soon went on I will tell you everything now and struggled to be saved from herself could be a murderous great god said Duranda 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 Duranda 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 scorched 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 if you had not come 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 Duranda 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 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 for Dandelion 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 in events she began again in a fragmentary way all sorts of contrivances in my mind but also 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 Duranda'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 mess 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 what 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 still there there it was something my fingers longed for among the beautiful toys in the cabinet in my bourgeois 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 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 Duranda did not look at her but he said insistently and it has all remained in your imagination it has gone on only in your thought to the last the evil temptation has been resisted there was silence the tears had rolled down her cheeks she pressed her handkerchief against them and sat upright she was summoning her resolution and again leaning a little toward Duranda's ear she began in a whisper no, no I will tell you everything as God knows it I will tell you no falsehood I will tell you the exact truth what should I do else I used to think I could never be wicked I thought of wicked people as if they were a long way off me since then I have been wicked I have felt wicked and everything has been a punishment to me all the things I used to wish for it is as if they had been made red hot the very daylight has often been a punishment to me because you know I ought not to have married that was the beginning of it I wronged someone else I broke my promise I meant to get pleasure for myself and it all turned to misery I wanted to make my gain out of another's loss you remember it was like roulette and the money burned into me I could not complain it was as if I had prayed that another should lose and I should win and I had won I knew it all I knew I was guilty when we were on the sea and I lay awake at night in the cabin I sometimes felt that everything I had done lay open without excuse nothing was hidden how could anything be known to me only it was not my own knowledge it was God's that had entered into me and even the stillness everything held a punishment for me everything but you I always thought that you would not want me to be punished you would have tried and helped me to be better and only thinking of that helped me you will not change you will not want to punish me now again a sob had risen God forbid groaned Duranda but he sat motionless this long wandering with the conscious stricken one over her past was difficult to bear but he dared not again urge her with a question he must let her mind follow its own need she unconsciously left intervals in her retrospect not clearly distinguishing between what she said and what she had only an inward vision of her next words came after such interval that all made it so hard when I was forced to go in the boat because when I saw you it was an unexpected joy and I thought I could tell you everything about the locked up drawer and what I had not told you before and if I had told you and knew it was in your mind it would have less power over me I hoped and trusted in that for after all my struggles and my crying the temptation that frightened me the longing the thirst for what I dreaded always came back and that disappointment when I was quite shut out from speaking to you and was driven to go in the boat brought all the evil back as if I had been locked in a prison with it and no escape oh it seems so long ago now since I stepped into that boat I could have given up everything in that moment I was lightning for a weapon to strike him dead some of the compressed fierceness that she was recalling seemed to find its way into her undertoned utterance after a little silence she said with agitated hurry if he were here again what should I do I cannot wish him here and yet I cannot bear his dead face I was a coward I ought to have borne contempt I ought to have gone away gone and wandered like a beggar rather than to stay and feel like a fiend but turn where I would there was something I could not bear sometimes I thought he would kill me if I resisted his will but now his dead face is there and I cannot bear it suddenly loosing Dharanda's hand she started up stretching her arms to their full length upward alone I have been a cruel woman what can I do but cry for help I am sinking die die you are forsaken go down into darkness forsaken no pity I shall be forsaken she sank in her chair again and broke into sobs even Dharanda had no place in her consciousness at that moment she was greatly unmanned instead of finding as he had imagined that his late experience had dulled his susceptibility to fresh emotion it seemed that the lot of this young creature who swift travel from her bright rash girlhood into this agony of remorse he had had to behold in helplessness pierced him the deeper because it came close upon another sad revelation of spiritual conflict he was in one of those moments when the very anguish of passionate pity makes us ready to choose that we will no pleasure, no more and live only for the stricken and afflicted he had risen from his seat while he watched that terrible outburst which seemed the more awful to him because even in this supreme agitation she kept the suppressed voice of one who confesses in secret at last he felt impelled to turn his back toward her and walk to a distance but presently there was stillness her mind had opened to the sense that he had gone away from her when Deronda turned round to approach her again he saw her face bent toward him her eyes dilated her lips parted she was an image of timid forlorn beseeching too timid to entreat in words while he kept himself aloof from her was she forsaken by him now already but his eyes met her sorrowfully met hers for the first time fully since she had said you know I am a guilty woman and that full glance in its intense mournfulness seemed to say I know it but I shall all the less forsake you he sat down by her side again in the same attitude without turning his face toward her and without again taking her hand once more Gwendolyn was pierced as she had been by his face of sorrow at the abbey with a compunction less egoistic than that which urged her to confess and she said in a tone of loving regret I make you very unhappy Deronda gave an indistinct oh just shrinking together and changing his attitude a little a third resolution enough to say clearly there is no question of being happy or unhappy what I most desire at this moment is what will most help you tell me all you feel it a relief to tell devoted as these words were they widened his spiritual distance from her and she felt it more difficult to speak she had a vague need of getting nearer to that compassion which seemed to be regarding her a halo of superiority and the need turned into an impulse to humble herself more she was ready to throw herself on her knees before him but no her wonderfully mixed consciousness held checks on that impulse and she was kept silent and motionless by the pressure of opposing needs her stillness made Deronda at last say perhaps you are too weary shall I go away and come again whenever you wish it no no said Gwendolyn the dread of his leaving her bringing back her power of speech she went on with her low toned eagerness I want to tell you what it was that came over me in that boat I was full of rage at being obliged to go full of rage and I could do nothing but sit there like a galley slave and then we got away out of the port into the deep and everything was still and we never looked at each other only he spoke to order me and the very light about me seemed to hold me a prisoner and forced me to sit as I did it came over me that when I was a child I used to fancy sailing away into a world where people were not forced to live with anyone they did not like I did not like my father-in-law to come home and now I thought just the opposite had come to me I had stepped into a boat and my life was a sailing and sailing away gliding on and no help always into solitude with him away from deliverance and because I felt more helpless than ever my thoughts went out over worse things I longed for worse things I had cruel wishes I fancied impossible ways of I did not want to die myself I was afraid of our being drowned together if it had been any use I should have prayed I should have prayed that something might befall him I should have prayed that he might sink out of my sight and leave me alone I knew no way of killing hint there but I did I did kill him in my thoughts she sank into silence for a minute submerged by the weight of memory which no words could represent but yet all the while I felt that I was getting more wicked and what had been with me so much came to me just then what you once said about dreading to increase my wrongdoing and my remorse I should hope for nothing then it was all like a writing of fire within me getting wicked was misery being shot out forever from knowing what you what better lives were that had always been coming back to me then but yet with a despair a feeling that it was no use evil wishes were too strong I remember then letting go the tiller and saying God help me but then I was forced to take it again and go on and the evil longings the evil prayers came again and blotted everything else dim till in the midst of them I don't know how it was you know there was a ghost he was struck I know nothing I only know that I saw my wish outside me she began to speak more hurriedly and did more of a whisper I saw him sink and my heart gave a leap as if it were going out of me I think I did not move I kept my hands tight it was long enough for me to be glad and yet to think it was no use he would come up again and he was come farther off the boat had moved it was all like lightning the rope he called out in a voice not his own I hear it now and I stooped for the rope I felt I must I felt sure he could swim and he would come back whether or not and I dreaded him that was in my mind he would come back but he was gone down again and I had the rope in my hand no there he was again his face above the water and he cried again out my hand and my heart said die and he sank and I felt it is done I am wicked and I am lost I had the rope in my hand I don't know what I thought I was leaping away from myself I would have saved him then I was leaping from my crime and there it was close to me as I fell there was the dead face dead it can never be altered that was what happened that was what I did you know it all it could never be altered she shrank back in her chair exhausted with the agitation of memory and speech Deronda felt the burden on his spirit less heavy than the foregoing dread the word guilty had held a possibility of interpretations worse than the fact and Gwendolyn's confession for the very reason that her conscience made her dwell on the determining power of her evil thoughts convinced him the more that there had been throughout a counterbalancing struggle of her better will it seemed almost certain that her murderous thought had had no outward effect that quite apart from it the death was inevitable still a question as to the outward effectiveness of a criminal desire dominant enough to impel even a momentary act cannot alter our judgment of the desire and Deronda shrank from putting that question forward in the first instance he held it likely that Gwendolyn's remorse aggravated her inward guilt and that she gave the character of decisive action to what had been an inappreciably instantaneous glance of desire but her remorse was the precious sign of a recoverable nature it was the culmination of that self disapproval which had been the awakening of a new life within her it marked her off from the criminals whose only regret is failure in securing their evil wish Deronda could not utter one word to diminish that sacred aversion to her worst self that thorn pressure which must come with the crowning of the sorrow full better suffering because of the worse all this mingled thought and feeling kept him silent speech was too momentous to be ventured on rashly of comfort that did not carry some sacrilege if he had opened his lips to speak he could only have echoed it can never be altered it remains unaltered to alter other things but he was silent and motionless he did not know how long before he turned to look at her and saw her sunk back with closed eyes like a lost weary storm-beaten white dough unable to rise and pursue its unguided way he rose and stood before her the movement touched her consciousness and she opened her eyes with a slight quivering that seemed like fear you must rest now try to rest try to sleep and may I see you again this evening tomorrow when you have had some rest let us say no more now the tears came and she could not answer except by a slight movement of the head Deronda rang for attendance spoke urgently of the necessity that she should be got to rest and then left her end of chapter 56 this recording is in the public domain this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Daniel Deronda by George Elliott Chapter 57 The unripe grape the ripe and the dried all things are changes not into nothing but into that which is not at present Marcus Aurelius Deeds are the pulse of time his beating life and righteous or unrighteous being done must throb in after-throbs till time itself be laid in darkness and the universe quiver and breathe upon no mirror more in the evening she sent for him again it was already near the hour at which she had been brought in from the sea the evening before and the light was subdued enough with blinds drawn up and windows open she was seated gazing fixedly on the sea resting her cheek on her hand looking less shattered than when he had left her but with a deep melancholy in her expression which as Deronda approached her passed into an anxious timidity she did not put out her hand but said how long ago it is then will you sit near me again a little while he placed himself by her side as he had done before and seeing that she turned to him with that indefinable expression which implies a wish to say something that was intended for her to speak but again she looked toward the window silently and again turned with the same expression which yet did not issue in speech there was some fear hindering her and Deronda wishing to relieve her timidity averted his face presently he heard her cry imploringly you will not say that anyone else should know most decidedly not Deronda there is no action that ought to be taken in consequence there is no injury that could be righted in that way there is no retribution that any mortal could apportion justly she was so still during a pause that she seemed to be holding her breath before she said but if I had not had that murderous will that moment if I had thrown the rope on the instant perhaps it would have hindered death no I think not said Deronda slowly if it were true that he could swim he must have been seized with cramp with your quickest utmost effort it seems impossible that you could have done anything to save him that momentary murderous will cannot I think have altered the course of events its effect is confined to the motives in your own breast within ourselves our evil will is momentous and sooner or later it works its way outside us it may be in the vitiation that breeds evil acts but also it may be in the self-abhorrence that stings us into better striving I am saved from robbing others there are others they will have everything they will have what they ought to have I knew that sometime before I left town you do not suspect me of wrong desires about those things she spoke hesitatingly I had not thought of them said Deronda I was thinking too much of the other things perhaps you don't quite know the beginning of it all said Gwendolyn slowly as if she were overcoming her reluctance there was someone else he ought to have married and I knew it and I told her I would not hinder it and I went away that was when you first saw me but then we became poor all at once and I was very miserable and I was tempted I thought I shall do as I like and make everything right I persuaded myself and it was all different it was all dreadful then came hatred and wicked thoughts that was how it all came I told you I was afraid of myself and I did what you told me I did try to make my fear a safeguard I thought of what would be if I I felt what would come how I should dread the morning wishing it would be always night and yet in the darkness always seeing something seeing death if you did not know how miserable I was you might but now it has all been useless I can care for nothing but saving the rest from knowing poor mama who has never been happy there was silence again before she said with a repressed sob you cannot bear to look at me anymore you think I am too wicked you do not believe that I can become any better worth anything worthy enough I shall always be too wicked too Deronda's heart was pierced he turned his eyes on her poor beseeching face and said I believe that you may become worthier than you have ever yet been worthy to lead a life that may be a blessing no evil dooms us hopelessly except to evil we love and desire to continue in and make no effort to escape from you have made efforts you will go on making them but you were the beginning of them you must not forsake me said Gwendolyn leaning with her clasped hands on the arm of her chair and looking at him while her face bore piteous traces of the life experience concentrated in the 24 hours that new terrible life lying on the other side of the deed which fulfills a criminal desire I will bear any penance I will lead any life you tell me but you must not forsake me you must be nearer if you had been near me if I could have said everything to you I should have been different you will not forsake me it could never be my impulse to forsake you said Deronda Prompley with that voice which like his eyes had the unintentional effect of making his ready sympathy seem more personal and special than it really was and in that moment he was not himself quite free from the foreboding of some such self committing effect his strong feeling for this stricken creature could not hinder rushing images of future difficulty he continued to meet her appealing eyes as he spoke but it was with the painful consciousness that to her ear his words might carry a promise which one day would seem unfulfilled he was making an indefinite promise to an indefinite hope anxieties both immediate and distant crowded on his thought and it was under their influence that after a moment's silence he said I expect Sir Hugo Malinger to arrive by tomorrow night at least and I am not without hope that Mrs. Davilo may shortly follow him her presence will be the greatest comfort to you it will give you a motive to save her from unnecessary pain yes yes I will try I will not go away not till after Sir Hugo has come but we shall all go to England as soon as possible said Deronda not wishing to enter into particulars Gwendolyn looked toward the window again with an expression which seemed like a gradual awakening to new thoughts the twilight was perceptibly deepening but Deronda could see a movement in her eyes and hands such as a company's a return of perception who has been stunned you will always be with Sir Hugo now she said presently looking at him you will always live at the Abbey or else at Diplo I am quite uncertain where I shall live said Deronda coloring she was warned by his changed color that she had spoken too rashly and fell silent after a little while she began again looking away it is impossible to think how my life would go on I think now it would be better for me to be poor and obliged to work new promptings will come as the days pass when you are among your friends again you will discern new duties said Deronda make it a task now to get as well and calm as much like yourself as you can before he hesitated before my mother comes ah, I must be changed I have not looked at myself should you have known me she added turning toward him if you had met me now should you have known me for the one you saw at Lebron yes, I should have known you said Deronda mournfully the outside change is not great I should have seen it once that it was you and that you had gone through some great sorrow don't wish now that you had never seen me don't wish that said Gwendolyn imploringly while the tears gathered I should despise myself for wishing it said Deronda how could I know what I was wishing we must find our duties in what comes to us not in what we imagine might have been if I took to foolish wishing of that sort I should wish not that I had never seen you but that I had been able to save you from this you have saved me from worse said Gwendolyn in a sobbing voice I should have been worse if it had not been for you if you had not been good I should have been more wicked than I am it will be better for me to go now said Deronda warn in spirit by the perpetual strain of this scene remember what we said of your task to get well and calm before other friends come he rose as he spoke and she gave him her hand submissively she had left her she sank on her knees in hysterical crying the distance between them was too great she was a banished soul beholding a possible life which she had sinned herself away from she was found in this way crushed on the floor such grief seemed natural in a poor lady whose husband had been drowned in her presence End of Chapter 57 End of Book 7 This recording is in the public domain this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Daniel Deronda by George Elliott Book 8 Fruit and Seed Chapter 58 Much ado there was Godwatt he would love and she would not Nicholas Breaton Extension we know is a very imperfect measure of things and the length of the sun's journeying can no more tell us how life has advanced than acreage of a field can tell us what growths may be active within it a man may go south and stumbling over a bone may meditate upon it till he has found a new starting point for anatomy he may go eastward and discover a new key to language telling a new story of races or he may head an expedition that opens new continental pathways get himself mained in the body and go through a whole heroic poem of resolve and endurance and at the end of a few months he may come back to find his neighbors grumbling at the same parish grievances before or to see the same elderly gentleman treading the pavement in discourse with himself, shaking his head after the same percussive butcher's boy and pausing at the same shop window to look at the same prince if the swiftest thinking has about the pace of a greyhound the slowest must be supposed to move like the limpet by an apparent sticking which after a good while is discerned to be a slight progression such differences are manifest in the variable intensity which we call human experience from the revolutionary rush of change which makes a new inner and outer life to that quiet recurrence of the familiar which has no other epochs than those of hunger and the heavens something of this contrast was seen in the year's experience which had turned the brilliant self-confident Gwendolyn Harloth of the Erturi meeting into the crushed penitent impelled to confess her unworthiness where it would have been her happiness to be held worthy while it had left her family in penicote without deeper change than that of some outward habits and some adjustment of prospects and intentions to reduced income fewer visits and fainter compliments the rectory was as pleasant a home as before and the red and pink peonies on the lawn the rows of hollyhocks by the hedges had bloomed as well this year as last which contained his cheerful confidence in the goodwill of patrons in his resolution to deserve it by diligence in the fulfillment of his duties whether patrons were likely to hear of it or not doing nothing solely with an eye to promotion except perhaps the writing of two ecclesiastical articles which having no signature were attributed to someone else except by the patrons who had a special copy sent them and these certainly knew the author the rector however chewed no poisonous cut of suspicion on this point he made marginal notes in his own copies to render them a more interesting loan and was gratified that the Archdeacon and other authorities had nothing to say against the general tenor of his argument peaceful authorship living in the air of the fields and downs and not in the thrice-breathed breath of criticism bringing no Dante-esque leanness rather assisting nutrition by complacency and perhaps giving a more suffusive sense of achievement than the production of a whole divina comedia then there was the father's recovered delight in his favorite son which was a happiness outweighing the loss of eighteen hundred a year of whatever nature might be the hidden change wrought in wrecks by the disappointment of his first love it was apparently quite secondary to that evidence of more serious ambition which dated from the family misfortune indeed Mr. Gasquan was inclined to regard the little affair which had caused him so much anxiety the year before as an evaporation of superfluous moisture a kind of finish to the baking process which the human dough demands rex had lately come down for a summer visit to the rectory bringing Anna home and while he showed nearly the old liveliness with his brothers and sisters he continued in his holiday the habits of the eager student rising early in the morning and shutting himself up early in the evenings to carry on a fixed course of study you don't repent the choice of the law as a profession rex said his father there is no profession I would choose before it said rex I should like to end my life as a first rate judge and help to draw up a code I reverse the famous dictum I should say there will be something to do with making the laws and let who will make the songs you will have to stow in an immense amount of rubbish I suppose that's the worst of it said the rector I don't see that law rubbish as worse than any other sort it is not so bad as the rubbishy literature that people choke their minds with it doesn't make one so dull our wittiest men have often been lawyers any orderly way of looking at things as cases and evidence seems to me better than a perpetual wash of odds and ends bearing on nothing in particular and then from a higher point of view the foundations and the growth of law make the most interesting aspects of philosophy and history of course there will be a good deal that is troublesome judging, perhaps exasperating but the great prizes in life can't be won easily I see that well my boy the best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks that the finest in the world but I fancy it so with most work when a man goes into it with a will bruit the blacksmith said to me the other day that his apprentice had no mind to his trade and yet sir said bruit what would a young fellow have if he doesn't like a blacksmithing the rector cherished a fatherly delight which he allowed to escape him only in moderation warram who had gone to India he had easily born parting with but Rex was that romance of later life which a man sometimes finds in a son whom he recognizes as superior to himself picturing a future eminence for him according to a variety of famous examples it was only to his wife that he said with decision Rex will be a distinguished man Nancy I'm sure of it as sure as Paley's father was about his son was Paley an old bachelor said Mrs. Gasquan that is hardly to the point, my dear said the rector who did not remember that irrelevant detail and Mrs. Gasquan felt that she had spoken rather weakly this quiet trotting of time at the rectory was shared by the group who had exchanged the fated dignity of often dean for the low white house not a mile off well enclosed with evergreens and known to the villagers as Jodsons Mrs. Davolo's delicate face showed only a slight deepening of its mild melancholy her hair only a few more silver lines in consequence of the last year's trials the four girls had bloomed out a little from being less in the shade and the good jacosa preserved her serviceable neutrality toward the pleasures and glories of the world as things made for those who were not in a situation the low narrow drawing room enlarged by two quaint projecting windows with lattices wide open on a July afternoon to the scent of monthly roses the faint murmurs of the garden and the occasional rare sound of hoofs and wheels seeming to clarify the succeeding silence made rather a crowded, lively scene Rex and Anna being added to the usual group of six Anna always a favorite with her younger cousins had much to tell of her new experience and the acquaintances she had made in London and when on her first visit many questions were asked her about Gwendolyn's house in Grassvenor Square what Gwendolyn herself had said and what anyone else had said about Gwendolyn had Anna been to see Gwendolyn after she had known about the yacht? No. An answer which left speculation free concerning everything connected with that interesting unknown vessel beyond the fact that Gwendolyn had written just before she set out to say that Mr. Grandcourt and she were going yachting in the Mediterranean and again from Marseille to say that she was sure to like the yachting the cabins were very elegant and she would probably not send another letter till she had written quite a long diary filled with dittos Also this movement of Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt had been mentioned in the newspaper so that altogether this new phase of Gwendolyn's exalted life made a striking part of the sister's romance the book devouring Isabel throwing in a Coursera or two to make an adventure that might end well but when Rex was present the girls, according to instructions never started this fascinating topic and today there had only been animated descriptions of the Marix and their extraordinary Jewish friends which caused some astonishing questioning from minds to which the idea of live Jews out of a book suggested a difference deep enough to be almost zoological a strange race in Pliny's natural history that might sleep under the shade of its own ears Bertha could not imagine what Jews believed now and she had a dim idea that they rejected the Old Testament since it proved the new Miss Mary thought that Myra and her brother could never have been properly argued with and the amiable Alice did not mind what the Jews believed she was sure she couldn't bear them Miss Davolo corrected her by saying that the great Jewish families who were in society were quite what they ought to be both in London and Paris but admitted that the commoner, unconverted Jews were objectionable and Isabel asked whether Myra talked just as they did or whether you might be with her and not find out that she was a Jewish Rex who had no partisanship with the Israelites having made a troublesome acquaintance with the minutiae of their ancient history and that myra was amusing himself by playfully exaggerating the notion of each speaker while Anna begged them all to understand that he was only joking when the laughter was interrupted by the bringing in of a letter for Mrs. Davolo a messenger had run with it in great haste from the rectory it enclosed a telegram and as Mrs. Davolo read and re-read it in silence and agitation all eyes were turned on her with anxiety but no one dared to speak looking up at last and seeing the young faces painted with fear she remembered that they might be imagining something worse than the truth something like her own first dread which made her unable to understand what was written and she said with a saw which was half-relief my dears Mr. Grandcourt she paused an instant and then began again Mr. Grandcourt is drowned Rex started up suddenly thrown into the room he could not help himself and Anna's first look was at him but then gathering some self-command while Mrs. Davolo was reading what the rector had written on the enclosing paper he said can I do anything, Aunt? can I carry any word to my father from you? yes, dear tell him I will be ready he is very good he says he will go with me to Genoa he will be here at half-past six she is safe Gwendolyn is safe but she must be ill I am sure she must be very ill Rex, dear, Rex and Anna go and tell your father I will be quite ready I would not for the world lose another night and bless him for being ready so soon I can travel night and day till we get there Rex and Anna hurried away through the sunshine which was suddenly solemn to them without uttering a word to each other she chiefly possessed by solicitude about any reopening of his wound he struggling with a tumultuary crowd of thoughts that were an offense against his better will the tumult being undiminished when they were at the rectory gate he said nanny, I will leave you to say everything to my father if he wants me immediately let me know I shall stay in the shrubbery for ten minutes only ten minutes who has been quite free from egoistic escapes of the imagination picturing desirable consequences on his own future in the presence of another's misfortune sorrow or death the expected promotion or legacy is the common type of a temptation which makes speech and even prayer a severe avoidance of the most insistent thoughts and sometimes raises an inward shame a self-distaste that is worse than any other form of unpleasant companionship in Rex's nature the shame was immediate and overspread like an ugly light all the hurrying images of what might come which thrust themselves in with the idea that Gwendolyn was again free overspread them perhaps the more persistently because every phantasm of a hope was quickly nullified by a more substantial obstacle before the vision of Gwendolyn free rose the impassable vision of Gwendolyn rich, exalted, courted and if in the former time when both their lives were fresh she had turned from his love with repugnance what ground was there for supposing that her heart would be more open to him in the future these thoughts which he wanted to master and suspend were like a tumultuary ringing of opposing chimes that he could not escape from by running during the last year he had brought himself into a state of calm resolve and now it seemed that three words were enough to undo all that difficult work and cast him back into the wretched fluctuations of a longing which he recognized as simply perturbing and hopeless and at this moment the activity of such longing had an untimeliness that made it repulsive to his better self excuse poor Rex it is not much more than 18 months since he had been laid low by an archer who sometimes touches his arrow with a subtle lingering poison his disappointment of a youthful passion has effects as incalculable as those of smallpox which may make one person plain and a genius another less plain and more foolish another plain without detriment to his folly and leave perhaps the majority without obvious change everything depends not on the mere fact of disappointment but on the nature affected and the force that stirs it in Rex's well endowed nature brief as the hope had been the passionate stirring had gone deep and the effect of disappointment was revolutionary though fraught with a beneficent new order which retained most of the old virtues in certain respects he believed that it had finally determined the bias and color of his life now however it seemed that his inward peace was hardly more than that of republican Florence and his heart no better than the alarm bell that made work slack and tumult busy Rex's love had been of that sudden penetrating clinging sort which the ancients knew and sung and in singing made a fashion of talk for many moderns whose experience has by no means a fiery demonic character to have the consciousness suddenly steeped with another's personality to have the strongest inclinations possessed by an image which retains its dominance in spite of change and apart from worthiness nay to feel a passion which clings faster for the tragic pangs inflicted by a cruel reorganized unworthiness is a phase of love which in the feeble and common minded has a repulsive likeness to his blind animalism insensible to the higher sway of moral affinity or heaven lit admiration but when this attaching force is present in a nature not of brutish unmodifiableness but of a human dignity that can risk itself safely it may even result in a devotedness not unfit to be called divine in a higher sense than the ancient phlegmatic rationality stares and shakes its head at these unaccountable prepossessions but they exist as undeniably as the winds and waves determining here a wreck and there a triumphant voyage this sort of passion had nested in the sweet-natured strong wrecks and he had made up his mind to its companionship as if it had been an object supremely dear stricken dumb and helpless and turning all the future of tenderness into a shadow of the past but he had also made up his mind that his life was not to be pauperized because he had had to renounce one sort of joy rather he had begun life again with a new counting up of the treasures that remained to him and he had even felt a release of power such as may come from ceasing to be afraid of your own neck and now here he was pacing in the shrubbery angry with himself that the sense of irrevocableness in his lot which ought in reason to have been as strong as ever had been shaken by a change of circumstances that could make no change for him he told himself the truth quite roughly she would never love me and that is not the question I could never approach her as a lover in her present position I am exactly of no consequence at all and am not likely to be of much consequence till my head is turning gray but what has that to do with it she would not have me on any terms and I would not ask her it is a meanness to be thinking about it now and lurking about the battlefield to strip the dead but there never was a more gratuitous sinning I have nothing to gain there absolutely nothing then why can't I face the facts and behave as they demand instead of leaving my father to suppose that there are matters he can't speak to me about though I might be useful with them the last thought made one wave with the impulse that sent Rex walking firmly into the house where he saw his father packing a traveling desk can I be of any use, sir, said Rex with rallied courage as his father looked up at him yes, my boy, when I'm gone just see to my letters and answer where necessary and send me word of everything Daimach will manage the parish very well and you will stay with your mother or at least go up and down again till I come back whenever that may be Rex beginning to strap a railway rug you will perhaps bring my cousin back to England he forced himself to speak of Gwendolyn for the first time and the rector noticed the epoch with satisfaction that depends, he answered taking the subject as a matter of course between them perhaps her mother may stay there with her and I may come back very soon this telegram leaves us in ignorance which is rather anxious but no doubt the arrangements of the will await our satisfactory and there may possibly be an area to be born in any case I feel confident that Gwendolyn will be liberally I should expect splendidly provided for it must have been a great shock for her said Rex getting more resolute after the first twinge had been born I suppose he was a devoted husband no doubt of it said the rector in his most decided manner few men of his position would have come forward as he did under the circumstances Rex had never seen Grandcourt had never been spoken to about him by any one of the family and knew nothing of Gwendolyn's flight from her suitor to Lebron he only knew that Grandcourt being very much in love with her had made her an offer in the first weeks of her sudden poverty and had behaved very handsomely in providing for her mother and sisters that was all very natural and what Rex himself would have liked to do Grandcourt had been a lucky fellow and had had some happiness before he got drowned yet Rex wondered much whether Gwendolyn had been in love with the successful suitor or had only foreborn to tell him that she hated being made love to End of Chapter 58 This recording is in the public domain