Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XVI. Page 2
Daniel obeyed, and Sir Hugo put a gentle hand on his shoulder, looking athim affectionately.
"What is it, my boy? Have you heard anything that has put you out ofspirits lately?"
Daniel was determined not to let the tears come, but he could not speak.
"All changes are painful when people have been happy, you know," said SirHugo, lifting his hand from the boy's shoulder to his dark curls andrubbing them gently. "You can't be educated exactly as I wish you to bewithout our parting. And I think you will find a great deal to like atschool."
This was not what Daniel expected, and was so far a relief, which gave himspirit to answer--
"Am I to go to school?"
little parsing, and less algebra,"said Fraser. But in reality he thought his pupil .
"Yes, I mean you to go to Eton. I wish you to have the education of anEnglish gentleman; and for that it is necessary that you should go to apublic school in preparation for the university: Cambridge I mean you togo to; it was my own university."
Daniel's color came went.
"What do you say, sirrah?" said Sir Hugo, smiling.
"I should like to be a gentleman," said Daniel, with firm distinctness,"and go to school, if that is what a gentleman's son must do."
Sir Hugo watched him silently for a few moments, thinking he understoodnow why the lad had seemed angry at the notion of becoming a singer. Thenhe said tenderly--
"And so you won't mind about leaving your old Nunc?"
"Yes, I shall," said Daniel, clasping Sir Hugo's caressing arm with bothhis hands. "But shan't I come home and be with you in the holidays?"
"Oh yes, generally," said Sir Hugo. "But now I mean you to go at once to anew tutor, to break the change for you before you go to Eton."
After this interview Daniel's spirit rose again. He was meant to be agentleman, and in some unaccountable way it might be that his conjectureswere all wrong. The very keenness of the lad taught him to find comfort inhis ignorance. While he was busying his mind in the construction ofpossibilities, it became plain to him that there must be possibilities ofwhich he knew nothing. He left off brooding, young joy and the spirit ofadventure not being easily quenched within him, and in the interval beforehis going away he sang about the house, danced among the old servants,making them parting gifts, and insisted many times to the groom on thecare that was to be taken of the black pony.
"Do you think I shall know much less than the other boys, Mr. Fraser?"said Daniel. It was his bent to think that every stranger would besurprised at his ignorance.
"There are dunces to be found everywhere," said the judicious Fraser."You'll not be the biggest; but you've not, the makings of a Porson inyou, or a Leibnitz either."
"I don't want to be a Porson or a Leibnitz," said Daniel. "I would ratherbe a greater leader, like Pericles or Washington."
"Ay, ay; you've a notion they did with little parsing, and less algebra,"said Fraser. But in reality he thought his pupil a remarkable lad, to whomone thing was as easy as another, if he had only a mind to it.
Things went on very well with Daniel in his new world, except that a boywith whom he was at once inclined to strike up a close friendship talkedto him a great deal about his home and parents, and seemed to expect alike expansiveness in return. Daniel immediately shrank into reserve, andthis experience remained a check on his naturally strong bent toward theformation of intimate friendship. Every one, his tutor included, set himdown as a reserved boy, though he was so good-humored and unassuming, aswell as quick, both at study and sport, that nobody called his reservedisagreeable. Certainly his face had a great deal to do with thatfavorable interpretation; but in this instance the beauty of the closedlips told no falsehood.
A surprise that came to him before his first vacation strengthened thesilent consciousness of a grief within, which might be compared in someways with Byron's susceptibility about his deformed foot. Sir Hugo wroteword that he was married to Miss Raymond, a sweet lady, whom Daniel mustremember having seen. The event would make no difference about hisspending the vacation at the Abbey; he would find Lady Mallinger a newfriend whom he would be sure to love--and much more to the usual effectwhen a man, having done something agreeable to himself, is disposed tocongratulate others on his own good fortune, and the deduciblesatisfactoriness of events in general.
Let Sir Hugo be partly excused until the grounds of his action can be morefully known. The mistakes in his behavior to Deronda were due to thatdullness toward what may be going on in other minds, especially the mindsof children, which is among the commonest deficiencies, even in good-natured men like him, when life has been generally easy to themselves, andtheir energies have been quietly spent in feeling gratified. No one wasbetter aware than he that Daniel was generally suspected to be his ownson. But he was pleased with that suspicion; and his imagination had neveronce been troubled with the way in which the boy himself might beaffected, either then or in the future, by the enigmatic aspect of hiscircumstances. He was as fond of him as could be, and meant the best byhim. And, considering the lightness with which the preparation of younglives seem to lie on respectable consciences, Sir Hugo Mallinger canhardly be held open to exceptional reproach. He had been a bachelor tillhe was five-and-forty, had always been regarded as a fascinating man ofelegant tastes; what could be more natural, even according to the index oflanguage, than that he should have a beautiful boy like the little Derondato take care of? The mother might even, perhaps, be in the great world--met with in Sir Hugo's residence abroad. The only person to feel anyobjection was the boy himself, who could not have been consulted. And theboy's objections had never been dreamed of by anybody but himself.
By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady Mallinger hadalready three daughters--charming babies, all three, but whose sex wasannounced as a melancholy alternative, the offspring desired being a son;if Sir Hugo had no son the succession must go to his nephew, MallingerGrandcourt. Daniel no longer held a wavering opinion about his own birth.His fuller knowledge had tended to convince him that Sir Hugo was hisfather, and he conceived that the baronet, since he never approached acommunication on the subject, wished him to have a tacit understanding ofthe fact, and to accept in silence what would be generally considered morethan the due love and nurture. Sir Hugo's marriage might certainly havebeen felt as a new ground of resentment by some youths in Deronda'sposition, and the timid Lady Mallinger with her fast-coming little onesmight have been images to scowl at, as likely to divert much that wasdisposable in the feelings and possessions of the baronet from one whofelt his own claim to be prior. But hatred of innocent human obstacles wasa form of moral stupidity not in Deronda's grain; even the indignationwhich had long mingled itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took thequality of pain rather than of temper; and as his mind ripened to the ideaof tolerance toward error, he habitually liked the idea with his ownsilent grievances.
The sense of an entailed disadvantage--the deformed foot doubtfully hiddenby the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns aself-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort,who presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a myriad, theinexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imaginationtender. Deronda's early-weakened susceptibility, charged at first withready indignation and resistant pride, had raised in him a prematurereflection on certain questions of life; it had given a bias to hisconscience, a sympathy with certain ills, and a tension of resolve incertain directions, who marked him off from other youths much more thanany talents he possessed.
One day near the end of the long vacation, when he had been making a tourin the Rhineland with his Eton tutor, and was come for a farewell stay atthe Abbey before going to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo--
"What do you intend me to be, sir?" They were in the library, and it wasthe fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called him in to read a letter from aCambridge Don who was to be interested in him; and since the baronet worean air at once business-like and leisurely, the moment seemed propitiousfor entering on a grave subject which had never yet been thoroughlydiscussed.
"Whatever your inclination leads you to, my boy. I thought it right togive you the option of the army, but you shut the door on that, and I wasglad. I don't expect you to choose just yet--by-and-by, when you havelooked about you a little more and tried your mettle among older men. Theuniversity has a good wide opening into the forum. There are prizes to bewon, and a bit of good fortune often gives the turn to a man's taste. Fromwhat I see and hear, I should think you can take up anything you like. Youare in the deeper water with your classics than I ever got into, and ifyou are rather sick of that swimming, Cambridge is the place where you cango into mathematics with a will, and disport yourself on the dry sand asmuch as you like. I floundered along like a carp."
"I suppose money will make some difference, sir," said Daniel blushing. "Ishall have to keep myself by-and-by."
"Not exactly. I recommend you not to be extravagant--yes, yes, I know--youare not inclined to that;--but you need not take up anything against thegrain. You will have a bachelor's income--enough for you to look aboutwith. Perhaps I had better tell you that you may consider yourself secureof seven hundred a year. You might make yourself a barrister--be a writer--take up politics. I confess that is what would please me best. I shouldlike to have you at my elbow and pulling with me."
Deronda looked embarrassed. He felt that he ought to make some sign ofgratitude, but other feelings clogged his tongue. A moment was passing byin which a question about his birth was throbbing within him, and yet itseemed more impossible than ever that the question should find vent--moreimpossible than ever that he could hear certain things from Sir Hugo'slips. The liberal way in which he was dealt with was the more strikingbecause the baronet had of late cared particularly for money, and formaking the utmost of his life-interest in the estate by way of providingfor his daughters; and as all this flashed through Daniel's mind it wasmomentarily within his imagination that the provision for him might comein some way from his mother. But such vaporous conjecture passed away asquickly as it came.
Sir Hugo appeared not to notice anything peculiar in Daniel's manner, andpresently went on with his usual chatty liveliness.
"I am glad you have done some good reading outside your classics, and havegot a grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can get theprestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worthwhile for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able tospin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you'll give him asa cue. That's all very fine, but in practical life nobody does give youthe cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it's a nicety of conversation which Iwould have you attend to--much quotation of any sort, even in English isbad. It tends to choke ordinary remark. One couldn't carry on lifecomfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything hadbeen said better than we can put it ourselves. But talking of Dons, I haveseen Dons make a capital figure in society; and occasionally he can shootyou down a cart-load of learning in the right place, which will tell inpolitics. Such men are wanted; and if you have any turn for being a Don, Isay nothing against it."
"I think there's not much chance of that. Quicksett and Puller are bothstronger than I am. I hope you will not be much disappointed if I don'tcome out with high honors."
"No, no. I should like you to do yourself credit, but for God's sake don'tcome out as a superior expensive kind of idiot, like young Brecon, who gota Double First, and has been learning to knit braces ever since. What Iwish you to get is a passport in life. I don't go against our universitysystem: we want a little disinterested culture to make head against cottonand capital, especially in the House. My Greek has all evaporated; if Ihad to construe a verse on a sudden, I should get an apoplectic fit. Butit formed my taste. I dare say my English is the better for it."
On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The enthusiastic belief inSir Hugo's writings as a standard, and in the Whigs as the chosen raceamong politicians, had gradually vanished along with the seraphic boy'sface. He had not been the hardest of workers at Eton. Though some kinds ofstudy and reading came as easily as boating to him, he was not of thematerial that usually makes the first-rate Eton scholar. There had sprungup in him a meditative yearning after wide knowledge which is likelyalways to abate ardor in the fight for prize acquirement in narrow tracks.Happily he was modest, and took any second-rate-*ness in himself simply asa fact, not as a marvel necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority.Still Mr. Eraser's high opinion of the lad had not been altogether beliedby the youth: Daniel had the stamp of rarity in a subdued fervor ofsympathy, an activity of imagination on behalf of others which did notshow itself effusively, but was continually seen in acts ofconsiderateness that struck his companions as moral eccentricity. "Derondawould have been first-rate if he had had more ambition," was a frequentremark about him. But how could a fellow push his way properly when heobjected to swop for his own advantage, knocked under by choice when hewas within an inch of victory, and, unlike the great Clive, would ratherbe the calf than the butcher? It was a mistake, however, to suppose thatDeronda had not his share of ambition. We know he had suffered keenly fromthe belief that there was a tinge of dishonor in his lot; but there aresome cases, and his was one of them, in which the sense of injury breeds--not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but ahatred of all injury. He had his flashes of fierceness and could hit outupon occasion, but the occasions were not always what might have beenexpected. For in what related to himself his resentful impulses had beenearly checked by a mastering affectionateness. Love has a habit of saying"Never mind" to angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in the lowerplace, by-and-by gets used to it. So it was that as Deronda approachedmanhood his feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was getting more and more mixedwith criticism, was gaining in that sort of allowance which reconcilescriticism with tenderness. The dear old beautiful home and everythingwithin it, Lady Mallinger and her little ones included, were consecratedfor the youth as they had been for the boy--only with a certain differenceof light on the objects. The altarpiece was no longer miraculouslyperfect, painted under infallible guidance, but the human hand discernedin the work was appealing to a reverent tenderness safer from the gusts ofdiscovery. Certainly Deronda's ambition, even in his spring-time, layexceptionally aloof from conspicuous, vulgar triumph, and from other uglyforms of boyish energy; perhaps because he was early impassioned by ideas,and burned his fire on those heights. One may spend a good deal of energyin disliking and resisting what others pursue, and a boy who is fond ofsomebody else's pencil-case may not be more energetic than another who isfond of giving his own pencil-case away. Still it was not Deronda'sdisposition to escape from ugly scenes; he was more inclined to sitthrough them and take care of the fellow least able to take care ofhimself. It had helped to make him popular that he was sometimes a littlecompromised by this apparent comradeship. For a meditative interest inlearning how human miseries are wrought--as precocious in him as anothersort of genius in the poet who writes a Queen Mab at nineteen--was soinfused with kindliness that it easily passed for comradeship. Enough. Inmany of our neighbors' lives there is much not only of error and lapse,but of a certain exquisite goodness which can never be written or evenspoken--only divined by each of us, according to the inward instruction ofour own privacy.
The impression he made at Cambridge corresponded to his position at Eton.Every one interested in him agreed that he might have taken a high placeif his motives had been of a more pushing sort, and if he had not, insteadof regarding studies as instruments of success, hampered himself with thenotion that they were to feed motive and opinion--a notion which set himcriticising methods and arguing against his freight and harness when heshould have been using all his might to pull. In the beginning his work atthe university had a new zest for him: indifferent to the continuation ofEton classical drill, he applied himself vigorously to mathematics, forwhich he had shown an early aptitude under Mr. Fraser, and he had thedelight of feeling his strength in a comparatively fresh exercise ofthought. That delight, and the favorable opinion of his tutor, determinedhim to try for a mathematical scholarship in the Easter of his secondyear: he wished to gratify Sir Hugo by some achievement, and the study ofthe higher mathematics, having the growing fascination inherent in allthinking which demands intensity, was making him a more exclusive workerthan he had been before.
But here came the old check which had been growing with his growth. Hefound the inward bent toward comprehension and thoroughness diverging moreand more from the track marked out by the standards of examination: hefelt a heightening discontent with the wearing futility and enfeeblingstrain of a demand for excessive retention and dexterity without anyinsight into the principles which form the vital connections of knowledge.(Deronda's undergraduateship occurred fifteen years ago, when theperfection of our university methods was not yet indisputable.) In hourswhen his dissatisfaction was strong upon him he reproached himself forhaving been attracted by the conventional advantage of belonging to anEnglish university, and was tempted toward the project of asking Sir Hugoto let him quit Cambridge and pursue a more independent line of studyabroad. The germs of this inclination had been already stirring in hisboyish love of universal history, which made him want to be at home inforeign countries, and follow in imagination the traveling students of themiddle ages. He longed now to have the sort of apprenticeship to lifewhich would not shape him too definitely, and rob him of the choice thatmight come from a free growth. One sees that Deronda's demerits werelikely to be on the side of reflective hesitation, and this tendency wasencouraged by his position; there was no need for him to get an immediateincome, or to fit himself in haste for a profession; and his sensibilityto the half-known facts of his parentage made him an excuse for lingeringlonger than others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he inwardlysaid, had a more definite place and duties. But the project whichflattered his inclination might not have gone beyond the stage ofineffective brooding, if certain circumstances had not quickened it intoaction.