CHAPTER LV.

"Ritorna a tua scienza
Che vuoi, quanto la cosa e piu perfetta
Piu senta if bene, e cosi la doglienza."
--DANTE.


When Deronda met Gwendolen and Grandcourt 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 Halm-
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 Kalonymos, 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 morning 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 Mirah were always present, as beings who clasped hands with
him in sympathetic silence.

Of such quick, responsive 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 Mainz 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 they 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 to-night, 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 bill, 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 Gwendolen, 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 Grandcourt's 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 flavor, 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 wakened among
the sparse _talithim_ and keen dark faces of worshippers whose way of
taking awful prayers and invocations with the easy familiarity which might
be called Hebrew dyed 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--moulding 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 Gwendolen (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. Deronda, 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 rowed by two men.
Amidst the clamorous talk in various languages, Deronda held it the surer
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 _milord_ who had gone
out in a sailing boat; another maintained that the prostrate figure he
discerned was _miladi_; a Frenchman who had no glass would rather say that
it was _milord_ 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 Deronda, 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 Gwendolen half raising herself on her hands, by her own effort,
under her heavy covering of tarpaulin and pea-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 Deronda from advancing, and he
could only look on while Gwendolen gave sacred 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 Deronda, 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 Deronda, in a tone of authority; "quiet yourself." 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 a cry, had come up 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, Deronda 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. Gascoigne, whose address at the rectory made his nearest known way
of getting the information to Gwendolen's mother. Certain words of
Gwendolen'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.