Daniel Deronda, George Eliot [portable ebook reader .TXT] 📗

who had been thrust out sanctioned her remorse; he could not try to nullify it, yet his heart was full of pity for her. But as soon as he could he answered⁠—taking up her last words,

“That is the bitterest of all⁠—to wear the yoke of our own wrongdoing. But if you submitted to that as men submit to maiming or lifelong incurable disease?⁠—and made the unalterable wrong a reason for more effort toward a good, that may do something to counterbalance the evil? One who has committed irremediable errors may be scourged by that consciousness into a higher course than is common. There are many examples. Feeling what it is to have spoiled one life may well make us long to save other lives from being spoiled.”

“But you have not wronged anyone, or spoiled their lives,” said Gwendolen, hastily. “It is only others who have wronged you.”

Deronda colored slightly, but said immediately⁠—“I suppose our keen feeling for ourselves might end in giving us a keen feeling for others, if, when we are suffering acutely, we were to consider that others go through the same sharp experience. That is a sort of remorse before commission. Can’t you understand that?”

“I think I do⁠—now,” said Gwendolen. “But you were right⁠—I am selfish. I have never thought much of anyone’s feelings, except my mother’s. I have not been fond of people. But what can I do?” she went on, more quickly. “I must get up in the morning and do what everyone else does. It is all like a dance set beforehand. I seem to see all that can be⁠—and I am tired and sick of it. And the world is all confusion to me”⁠—she made a gesture of disgust. “You say I am ignorant. But what is the good of trying to know more, unless life were worth more?”

“This good,” said Deronda promptly, with a touch of indignant severity, which he was inclined to encourage as his own safeguard; “life would be worth more to you: some real knowledge would give you an interest in the world beyond the small drama of personal desires. It is the curse of your life⁠—forgive me⁠—of so many lives, that all passion is spent in that narrow round, for want of ideas and sympathies to make a larger home for it. Is there any single occupation of mind that you care about with passionate delight or even independent interest?”

Deronda paused, but Gwendolen, looking startled and thrilled as by an electric shock, said nothing, and he went on more insistently,

“I take what you said of music for a small example⁠—it answers for all larger things⁠—you will not cultivate it for the sake of a private joy in it. What sort of earth or heaven would hold any spiritual wealth in it for souls pauperized by inaction? If one firmament has no stimulus for our attention and awe, I don’t see how four would have it. We should stamp every possible world with the flatness of our own inanity⁠—which is necessarily impious, without faith or fellowship. The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own appetites and vanities. The few may find themselves in it simply by an elevation of feeling; but for us who have to struggle for our wisdom, the higher life must be a region in which the affections are clad with knowledge.”

The half-indignant remonstrance that vibrated in Deronda’s voice came, as often happens, from the habit of inward argument with himself rather than from severity toward Gwendolen: but it had a more beneficial effect on her than any soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent rebellion of complaint; and to be roused into self-judgment is comparative activity. For the moment she felt like a shaken child⁠—shaken out of its wailing into awe, and she said humbly,

“I will try. I will think.”

They both stood silent for a minute, as if some third presence had arrested them⁠—for Deronda, too, was under that sense of pressure which is apt to come when our own winged words seem to be hovering around us⁠—till Gwendolen began again,

“You said affection was the best thing, and I have hardly any⁠—none about me. If I could, I would have mamma; but that is impossible. Things have changed to me so⁠—in such a short time. What I used not to like I long for now. I think I am almost getting fond of the old things now they are gone.” Her lip trembled.

“Take the present suffering as a painful letting in of light,” said Deronda, more gently. “You are conscious of more beyond the round of your own inclinations⁠—you know more of the way in which your life presses on others, and their life on yours. I don’t think you could have escaped the painful process in some form or other.”

“But it is a very cruel form,” said Gwendolen, beating her foot on the ground with returning agitation. “I am frightened at everything. I am frightened at myself. When my blood is fired I can do daring things⁠—take any leap; but that makes me frightened at myself.” She was looking at nothing outside her; but her eyes were directed toward the window, away from Deronda, who, with quick comprehension said,

“Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on the idea of increasing that remorse which is so bitter to you. Fixed meditation may do a great deal toward defining our longing or dread. We are not always in a state of strong emotion, and when we are calm we can use our memories and gradually change the bias of our fear, as we do our tastes. Take your fear as a safeguard. It is like quickness of hearing. It may make consequences passionately present to you. Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.” Deronda uttered each sentence more urgently; he felt as if he were seizing