Daniel Deronda. Джордж Элиот

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      Gwendolen looked round at him and smiled. “Treat you? Nonsense! I am only rather cross. Why did you come so very early? You must expect to find tempers in dishabille.”

      “Be as cross with me as you like—only don’t treat me with indifference,” said Rex, imploringly. “All the happiness of my life depends on your loving me—if only a little—better than any one else.”

      He tried to take her hand, but she hastily eluded his grasp and moved to the other end of the hearth, facing him.

      “Pray don’t make love to me! I hate it!” she looked at him fiercely.

      Rex turned pale and was silent, but could not take his eyes off her, and the impetus was not yet exhausted that made hers dart death at him. Gwendolen herself could not have foreseen that she should feel in this way. It was all a sudden, new experience to her. The day before she had been quite aware that her cousin was in love with her; she did not mind how much, so that he said nothing about it; and if any one had asked her why she objected to love-making speeches, she would have said, laughingly, “Oh I am tired of them all in the books.” But now the life of passion had begun negatively in her. She felt passionately averse to this volunteered love.

      To Rex at twenty the joy of life seemed at an end more absolutely than it can do to a man at forty. But before they had ceased to look at each other, he did speak again.

      “Is that last word you have to say to me, Gwendolen? Will it always be so?”

      She could not help seeing his wretchedness and feeling a little regret for the old Rex who had not offended her. Decisively, but yet with some return of kindness, she said,

      “About making love? Yes. But I don’t dislike you for anything else.”

      There was just a perceptible pause before he said a low “good-bye.” and passed out of the room. Almost immediately after, she heard the heavy hall door bang behind him.

      Mrs. Davilow, too, had heard Rex’s hasty departure, and presently came into the drawing-room, where she found Gwendolen seated on the low couch, her face buried, and her hair falling over her figure like a garment. She was sobbing bitterly. “My child, my child, what is it?” cried the mother, who had never before seen her darling struck down in this way, and felt something of the alarmed anguish that women, feel at the sight of overpowering sorrow in a strong man; for this child had been her ruler. Sitting down by her with circling arms, she pressed her cheek against Gwendolen’s head, and then tried to draw it upward. Gwendolen gave way, and letting her head rest against her mother, cried out sobbingly, “Oh, mamma, what can become of my life? there is nothing worth living for!”

      “Why, dear?” said Mrs. Davilow. Usually she herself had been rebuked by her daughter for involuntary signs of despair.

      “I shall never love anybody. I can’t love people. I hate them.”

      “The time will come, dear, the time will come.”

      Gwendolen was more and more convulsed with sobbing; but putting her arms round her mother’s neck with an almost painful clinging, she said brokenly, “I can’t bear any one to be very near me but you.”

      Then the mother began to sob, for this spoiled child had never shown such dependence on her before: and so they clung to each other.

CHAPTER VIII.

       Table of Contents

      What name doth Joy most borrow

       When life is fair?

       “To-morrow.”

       What name doth best fit Sorrow

       In young despair?

       “To-morrow.”

      There was a much more lasting trouble at the rectory. Rex arrived there only to throw himself on his bed in a state of apparent apathy, unbroken till the next day, when it began to be interrupted by more positive signs of illness. Nothing could be said about his going to Southampton: instead of that, the chief thought of his mother and Anna was how to tend this patient who did not want to be well, and from being the brightest, most grateful spirit in the household, was metamorphosed into an irresponsive, dull-eyed creature who met all affectionate attempts with a murmur of “Let me alone.” His father looked beyond the crisis, and believed it to be the shortest way out of an unlucky affair; but he was sorry for the inevitable suffering, and went now and then to sit by him in silence for a few minutes, parting with a gentle pressure of his hand on Rex’s blank brow, and a “God bless you, my boy.” Warham and the younger children used to peep round the edge of the door to see this incredible thing of their lively brother being laid low; but fingers were immediately shaken at them to drive them back. The guardian who was always there was Anna, and her little hand was allowed to rest within her brother’s, though he never gave it a welcoming pressure. Her soul was divided between anguish for Rex and reproach of Gwendolen.

      “Perhaps it is wicked of me, but I think I never can love her again,” came as the recurrent burden of poor little Anna’s inward monody. And even Mrs. Gascoigne had an angry feeling toward her niece which she could not refrain from expressing (apologetically) to her husband.

      “I know of course it is better, and we ought to be thankful that she is not in love with the poor boy; but really. Henry, I think she is hard; she has the heart of a coquette. I can not help thinking that she must have made him believe something, or the disappointment would not have taken hold of him in that way. And some blame attaches to poor Fanny; she is quite blind about that girl.”

      Mr. Gascoigne answered imperatively: “The less said on that point the better, Nancy. I ought to have been more awake myself. As to the boy, be thankful if nothing worse ever happens to him. Let the thing die out as quickly as possible; and especially with regard to Gwendolen—let it be as if it had never been.”

      The rector’s dominant feeling was that there had been a great escape. Gwendolen in love with Rex in return would have made a much harder problem, the solution of which might have been taken out of his hands. But he had to go through some further difficulty.

      One fine morning Rex asked for his bath, and made his toilet as usual. Anna, full of excitement at this change, could do nothing but listen for his coming down, and at last hearing his step, ran to the foot of the stairs to meet him. For the first time he gave her a faint smile, but it looked so melancholy on his pale face that she could hardly help crying.

      “Nannie!” he said gently, taking her hand and leading her slowly along with him to the drawing-room. His mother was there, and when she came to kiss him, he said: “What a plague I am!”

      Then he sat still and looked out of the bow-window on the lawn and shrubs covered with hoar-frost, across which the sun was sending faint occasional gleams:—something like that sad smile on Rex’s face, Anna thought. He felt as if he had had a resurrection into a new world, and did not know what to do with himself there, the old interests being left behind. Anna sat near him, pretending to work, but really watching him with yearning looks. Beyond the garden hedge there was a road where wagons and carts sometimes went on field-work: a railed opening was made in the hedge, because the upland with its bordering wood and clump of ash-trees against the sky was a pretty sight. Presently there came along a wagon laden with timber; the horses СКАЧАТЬ