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

posture, first dragging the saturated cloak and then letting it fall on the ground⁠—it was too heavy for her tired arms. Her little woman’s figure as she laid her delicate chilled hands together one over the other against her waist, and went a step backward while she leaned her head forward as if not to lose sight of his face, was unspeakably touching.

“Great God!” the words escaped Deronda in a tone so low and solemn that they seemed like a prayer become unconsciously vocal. The agitating impression this forsaken girl was making on him stirred a fibre that lay close to his deepest interest in the fates of women⁠—“perhaps my mother was like this one.” The old thought had come now with a new impetus of mingled feeling, and urged that exclamation in which both East and West have for ages concentrated their awe in the presence of inexorable calamity.

The low-toned words seemed to have some reassurance in them for the hearer: she stepped forward close to the boat’s side, and Deronda put out his hand, hoping now that she would let him help her in. She had already put her tiny hand into his which closed around it, when some new thought struck her, and drawing back she said,

“I have nowhere to go⁠—nobody belonging to me in all this land.”

“I will take you to a lady who has daughters,” said Deronda, immediately. He felt a sort of relief in gathering that the wretched home and cruel friends he imagined her to be fleeing from were not in the near background. Still she hesitated, and said more timidly than ever,

“Do you belong to the theatre?”

“No; I have nothing to do with the theatre,” said Deronda, in a decided tone. Then beseechingly, “I will put you in perfect safety at once; with a lady, a good woman; I am sure she will be kind. Let us lose no time: you will make yourself ill. Life may still become sweet to you. There are good people⁠—there are good women who will take care of you.”

She drew backward no more, but stepped in easily, as if she were used to such action, and sat down on the cushions.

“You had a covering for your head,” said Deronda.

“My hat?” (She lifted up her hands to her head.) “It is quite hidden in the bush.”

“I will find it,” said Deronda, putting out his hand deprecatingly as she attempted to rise. “The boat is fixed.”

He jumped out, found the hat, and lifted up the saturated cloak, wringing it and throwing it into the bottom of the boat.

“We must carry the cloak away, to prevent anyone who may have noticed you from thinking you have been drowned,” he said, cheerfully, as he got in again and presented the old hat to her. “I wish I had any other garment than my coat to offer you. But shall you mind throwing it over your shoulders while we are on the water? It is quite an ordinary thing to do, when people return late and are not enough provided with wraps.” He held out the coat toward her with a smile, and there came a faint melancholy smile in answer, as she took it and put it on very cleverly.

“I have some biscuits⁠—should you like them?” said Deronda.

“No; I cannot eat. I had still some money left to buy bread.”

He began to ply his oar without further remark, and they went along swiftly for many minutes without speaking. She did not look at him, but was watching the oar, leaning forward in an attitude of repose, as if she were beginning to feel the comfort of returning warmth and the prospect of life instead of death. The twilight was deepening; the red flush was all gone and the little stars were giving their answer one after another. The moon was rising, but was still entangled among the trees and buildings. The light was not such that he could distinctly discern the expression of her features or her glance, but they were distinctly before him nevertheless⁠—features and a glance which seemed to have given a fuller meaning for him to the human face. Among his anxieties one was dominant: his first impression about her, that her mind might be disordered, had not been quite dissipated: the project of suicide was unmistakable, and given a deeper color to every other suspicious sign. He longed to begin a conversation, but abstained, wishing to encourage the confidence that might induce her to speak first. At last she did speak.

“I like to listen to the oar.”

“So do I.”

“If you had not come, I should have been dead now.”

“I cannot bear you to speak of that. I hope you will never be sorry that I came.”

“I cannot see how I shall be glad to live. The maggior dolore and the miseria have lasted longer than the tempo felice.” She paused and then went on dreamily⁠—“Dolore⁠—miseria⁠—I think those words are alive.”

Deronda was mute: to question her seemed an unwarrantable freedom; he shrank from appearing to claim the authority of a benefactor, or to treat her with the less reverence because she was in distress. She went on musingly,

“I thought it was not wicked. Death and life are one before the Eternal. I know our fathers slew their children and then slew themselves, to keep their souls pure. I meant it so. But now I am commanded to live. I cannot see how I shall live.”

“You will find friends. I will find them for you.”

She shook her head and said mournfully, “Not my mother and brother. I cannot find them.”

“You are English? You must be⁠—speaking English so perfectly.”

She did not answer immediately, but looked at Deronda again, straining to see him in the double light. Until now she had been watching the oar. It seemed as if she were half roused, and wondered which part of her impression was dreaming and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and