Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LXIX. Page 2
"It will perhaps astonish you," said Deronda, "that I have only quitelately known who were my parents."
Gwendolen was not astonished: she felt the more assured that herexpectations of what was coming were right. Deronda went on without check.
"The reason why you found me in Italy was that I had gone there to learnthat--in fact, to meet my mother. It was by her wish that I was brought upin ignorance of my parentage. She parted with me after my father's death,when I was a little creature. But she is now very ill, and she felt thatthe secrecy ought not to be any longer maintained. Her chief reason hadbeen that she did not wish me to know I was a Jew."
"_A Jew_!" Gwendolen exclaimed, in a low tone of amazement, with anutterly frustrated look, as if some confusing potion were creeping throughher system.
Deronda colored, and did not speak, while Gwendolen, with her eyes fixedon the floor, was struggling to find her way in the dark by the aid ofvarious reminiscences. She seemed at last to have arrived at somejudgment, for she looked up at Deronda again and said, as if remonstratingagainst the mother's conduct--
"What difference need that have made?"
"It has made a great difference to me that I have known it," said Deronda,emphatically; but he could not go on easily--the distance between herideas and his acted like a difference of native language, making himuncertain what force his words would carry.
Gwendolen meditated again, and then said feelingly, "I hope there isnothing to make you mind. _You_ are just the same as if you were not aJew."
She meant to assure him that nothing of that external sort could affectthe way in which she regarded him, or the way in which he could influenceher. Deronda was a little helped by this misunderstanding.
"The discovery was far from being painful to me," he said, "I had beengradually prepared for it, and I was glad of it. I had been prepared forit by becoming intimate with a very remarkable Jew, whose ideas haveattracted me so much that I think of devoting the best part of my life tosome effort at giving them effect."
Again Gwendolen seemed shaken--again there was a look of frustration, butthis time it was mingled with alarm. She looked at Deronda with lipschildishly parted. It was not that she had yet connected his words withMirah and her brother, but that they had inspired her with a dreadfulpresentiment of mountainous travel for her mind before it could reachDeronda's. Great ideas in general which she had attributed to him seemedto make no great practical difference, and were not formidable in the sameway as these mysteriously-shadowed particular ideas. He could not quitedivine what was going on within her; he could only seek the least abruptpath of disclosure.
"That is an object," he said, after a moment, "which will by-and-by forceme to leave England for some time--for some years. I have purposes whichwill take me to the East."
Here was something clearer, but all the more immediately agitating.Gwendolen's lips began to tremble. "But you will come back?" she said,tasting her own tears as they fell, before she thought of drying them.
Deronda could not sit still. He rose, and went to prop himself against thecorner of the mantel-piece, at a different angle from her face. But whenshe had pressed her handkerchief against her cheeks, she turned and lookedup at him, awaiting an answer.
"If I live," said Deronda--"_some time_."
They were both silent. He could not persuade himself to say more unlessshe led up to it by a question; and she was apparently meditatingsomething that she had to say.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, at last, very mildly. "Can Iunderstand the ideas, or am I too ignorant?"
"I am going to the East to become better acquainted with the condition ofmy race in various countries there," said Deronda, gently--anxious to beas explanatory as he could on what was the impersonal part of theirseparateness from each other. "The idea that I am possessed with is thatof restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nationagain, giving them a national center, such as the English has, though theytoo are scattered over the face of the globe. That is a task whichpresents itself to me as a duty; I am resolved to begin it, howeverfeebly. I am resolved to devote my life to it. At the least, I may awakena movement in other minds, such as has been awakened in my own."
There was a long silence between them. The world seemed getting largerround poor Gwendolen, and she more solitary and helpless in the midst. Thethought that he might come back after going to the East, sank before thebewildering vision of these wild-stretching purposes in which she feltherself reduced to a mere speck. There comes a terrible moment to manysouls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies ofmankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading,enter like an earthquake into their own lives--where the slow urgency ofgrowing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the direclash of civil war, and gray fathers know nothing to seek for but thecorpses of their blooming sons, and girls forgot all vanity to make lintand bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothedhusbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object oflip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imageryof the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wingsof the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under therolling fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrateunder the thunder of relenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die,and no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then itis that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even inthe eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle withthe awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which is somethingelse than a private consolation.
That was the sort of crisis which was at this moment beginning inGwendolen's small life: she was for the first time feeling the pressure ofa vast mysterious movement, for the first time being dislodged from hersupremacy in her own world, and getting a sense that her horizon was but adipping onward of an existence with which her own was revolving. All thetroubles of her wifehood and widowhood had still left her with theimplicit impression which had accompanied her from childhood, thatwhatever surrounded her was somehow specially for her, and it was becauseof this that no personal jealousy had been roused in her relation toDeronda: she could not spontaneously think of him as rightfully belongingto others more than to her. But here had come a shock which went deeperthan personal jealousy--something spiritual and vaguely tremendous thatthrust her away, and yet quelled all her anger into self-humiliation.
There had been a long silence. Deronda had stood still, even thankful foran interval before he needed to say more, and Gwendolen had sat like astatue with her wrists lying over each other and her eyes fixed--theintensity of her mental action arresting all other excitation. At lengthsomething occurred to her that made her turn her face to Deronda and sayin a trembling voice--
"Is that all you can tell me?"
The question was like a dart to him. "The Jew whom I mentioned just now,"he answered, not without a certain tremor in his tones too, "theremarkable man who has greatly influenced my mind, has not perhaps beentotally unheard of by you. He is the brother of Miss Lapidoth, whom youhave often heard sing."
A great wave of remembrance passed through Gwendolen and spread as a deep,painful flush over neck and face. It had come first at the scene of thatmorning when she had called on Mirah, and heard Deronda's voice reading,and been told, without then heeding it, that he was reading Hebrew withMirah's brother.
"He is very ill--very near death now," Deronda went on, nervously, andthen stopped short. He felt that he must wait. Would she divine the rest?
"Did she tell you that I went to her?" said Gwendolen, abruptly, lookingup at him.
"No," said Deronda. "I don't understand you."
She turned away her eyes again, and sat thinking. Slowly the color driedout of face and neck, and she was as pale as before--with that almostwithered paleness which is seen after a painful flush. At last she said--without turning toward him--in a low, measured voice, as if she were onlythinking aloud in preparation for future speech--
"But _can_ you marry?"
"Yes," said Deronda, also in a low voice. "I am going to marry."
At first there was no change in Gwendolen's attitude: she only began totremble visibly; then she looked before her with dilated eyes, as atsomething lying in front of her, till she stretched her arms out straight,and cried with a smothered voice--
"I said I should be forsaken. I have been a cruel woman. And I amforsaken."
Deronda's anguish was intolerable. He could not help himself. He seizedher outstretched hands and held them together, and kneeled at her feet.She was the victim of his happiness.
"I am cruel, too, I am cruel," he repeated, with a sort of groan, lookingup at her imploringly.
he was quite gone, her mother !
His presence and touch seemed to dispel a horrible vision, and she met hisupward look of sorrow with something like the return of consciousnessafter fainting. Then she dwelt on it with that growing pathetic movementof the brow which accompanies the revival of some tender recollection. Thelook of sorrow brought back what seemed a very far-off moment--the firsttime she had ever seen it, in the library at the Abbey. Sobs rose, andgreat tears fell fast. Deronda would not let her hands go--held them stillwith one of his, and himself pressed her handkerchief against her eyes.She submitted like a half-soothed child, making an effort to speak, whichwas hindered by struggling sobs. At last she succeeded in saying,brokenly--
"I said--I said--it should be better--better with me--for having knownyou."
His eyes too were larger with tears. She wrested one of her hands fromhis, and returned his action, pressing his tears away.
"We shall not be quite parted," he said. "I will write to you always, whenI can, and you will answer?"
He waited till she said in a whisper, "I will try."
"I shall be more with you than I used to be," Deronda said with gentleurgency, releasing her hands and rising from his kneeling posture. "If wehad been much together before, we should have felt our differences more,and seemed to get farther apart. Now we can perhaps never see each otheragain. But our minds may get nearer."
Gwendolen said nothing, but rose too, automatically. Her withered look ofgrief, such as the sun often shines on when the blinds are drawn up afterthe burial of life's joy, made him hate his own words: they seemed to havethe hardness of easy consolation in them. She felt that he was going, andthat nothing could hinder it. The sense of it was like a dreadful whisperin her ear, which dulled all other consciousness; and she had not knownthat she was rising.
Deronda could not speak again. He thought that they must part in silence,but it was difficult to move toward the parting, till she looked at himwith a sort of intention in her eyes, which helped him. He advanced to putout his hand silently, and when she had placed hers within it, she saidwhat her mind had been laboring with--
"You have been very good to me. I have deserved nothing. I will try--tryto live. I shall think of you. What good have I been? Only harm. Don't letme be harm to _you_. It shall be the better for me--"
She could not finish. It was not that she was sobbing, but that theintense effort with which she spoke made her too tremulous. The burden ofthat difficult rectitude toward him was a weight her frame tottered under.
When he was quite gone, her mother came in and found her sittingmotionless.
"Gwendolen, dearest, you look very ill," she said, bending over her andtouching her cold hands.
"Yes, mamma. But don't be afraid. I am going to live," said Gwendolen,bursting out hysterically.
Her mother persuaded her to go to bed, and watched by her. Through the dayand half the night she fell continually into fits of shrieking, but criedin the midst of them to her mother, "Don't be afraid. I shall live. I meanto live."
After all, she slept; and when she waked in the morning light, she lookedup fixedly at her mother and said tenderly, "Ah, poor mamma! You have beensitting up with me. Don't be unhappy. I shall live. I shall be better."