Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XXXVII. Page 2
He was conscious of that peculiar irritation which will sometimes befallthe man whom others are inclined to trust as a mentor--the irritation ofperceiving that he is supposed to be entirely off the same plane of desireand temptation as those who confess to him. Our guides, we pretend, mustbe sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who onlyyesterday got corrected for their mistakes. Throughout their friendshipDeronda had been used to Hans's egotism, but he had never before feltintolerant of it: when Hans, habitually pouring out his own feelings andaffairs, had never cared for any detail in return, and, if he chanced toknow any, and soon forgotten it. Deronda had been inwardly as well asoutwardly indulgent--nay, satisfied. But now he had noted with someindignation, all the stronger because it must not be betrayed, Hans'sevident assumption that for any danger of rivalry or jealousy in relationto Mirah, Deronda was not as much out of the question as the angelGabriel. It is one thing to be resolute in placing one's self out of thequestion, and another to endure that others should perform that exclusionfor us. He had expected that Hans would give him trouble: what he had notexpected was that the trouble would have a strong element of personalfeeling. And he was rather ashamed that Hans's hopes caused him uneasinessin spite of his well-warranted conviction that they would never befulfilled. They had raised an image of Mirah changing; and however hemight protest that the change would not happen, the protest kept up theunpleasant image. Altogether poor Hans seemed to be entering intoDeronda's experience in a disproportionate manner--going beyond his partof rescued prodigal, and rousing a feeling quite distinct fromcompassionate affection.
When Deronda went to Chelsea he was not made as comfortable as he ought tohave been by Mrs. Meyrick's evident release from anxiety about the belovedbut incalculable son. Mirah seemed livelier than before, and for the firsttime he' saw her laugh. It was when they were talking of Hans, he beingnaturally the mother's first topic. Mirah wished to know if Deronda hadseen Mr. Hans going through a sort of character piece without changing hisdress.
"He passes from one figure to another as if he were a bit of flame whereyou fancied the figures without seeing them," said Mirah, full of hersubject; "he is so wonderfully quick. I used never to like comic things onthe stage--they were dwelt on too long; but all in one minute Mr. Hansmakes himself a blind bard, and then Rienzi addressing the Romans, andthen an opera-dancer, and then a desponding young gentleman--I am sorryfor them all, and yet I laugh, all in one"--here Mirah gave a little laughthat might have entered into a song.
"We hardly thought that Mirah could laugh till Hans came," said Mrs.Meyrick, seeing that Deronda, like herself, was observing the prettypicture.
"Hans seems in great force just now," said Deronda in a tone ofcongratulation. "I don't wonder at his enlivening you."
"He's been just perfect ever since he came back," said Mrs. Meyrick,keeping to herself the next clause--"if it will but last."
"It is a great happiness," said Mirah, "to see the son and brother comeinto this dear home. And I hear them all talk about what they did togetherwhen they were little. That seems like heaven, and to have a mother andbrother who talk in that way. I have never had it."
"Nor I," said Deronda, involuntarily.
"No?" said Mirah, regretfully. "I wish you had. I wish you had had everygood." The last words were uttered with a serious ardor as if they hadbeen part of a litany, while her eyes were fixed on Deronda, who with hiselbow on the back of his chair was contemplating her by the new light ofthe impression she had made on Hans, and the possibility of her beingattracted by that extraordinary contrast. It was no more than what hadhappened on each former visit of his, that Mirah appeared to enjoyspeaking of what she felt very much as a little girl fresh from schoolpours forth spontaneously all the long-repressed chat for which she hasfound willing ears. For the first time in her life Mirah was among thosewhom she entirely trusted, and her original visionary impression thatDeronda was a divinely-sent messenger hung about his image still, stirringalways anew the disposition to reliance and openness. It was in this wayshe took what might have been the injurious flattery of admiring attentioninto which her helpless dependence had been suddenly transformed. Everyone around her watched for her looks and words, and the effect on her wassimply that of having passed from a trifling imprisonment into anexhilarating air which made speech and action a delight. To her mind itwas all a gift from others' goodness. But that word of Deronda's implyingthat there had been some lack in his life which might be compared withanything she had known in hers, was an entirely new inlet of thought abouthim. After her first expression of sorrowful surprise she went on--
"But Mr. Hans said yesterday that you thought so much of others you hardlywanted anything for yourself. He told us a wonderful story of Buddhagiving himself to the famished tigress to save her and her little onesfrom starving. And he said you were like Buddha. That is what we allimagine of you."
"Pray don't imagine that," said Deronda, who had lately been finding suchsuppositions rather exasperating. "Even if it were true that I thought somuch of others, it would not follow that I had no wants for myself. WhenBuddha let the tigress eat him he might have been very hungry himself."
"Perhaps if he was starved he would not mind so much about being eaten,"said Mab, shyly.
"Please don't think that, Mab; it takes away the beauty of the action,"said Mirah.
"But if it were true, Mirah?" said the rational Amy, having a half-holidayfrom her teaching; "you always take what is beautiful as if it were true."
"So it is," said Mirah, gently. "If people have thought what is the mostbeautiful and the best thing, it must be true. It is always there."
"Now, Mirah, what do you mean?" said Amy.
"I understand her," said Deronda, coming to the rescue.
"It is a truth in thought though it may never have been carried out inaction. It lives as an idea. Is that it?" He turned to Mirah, who waslistening with a blind look in her lovely eyes.
"It must be that, because you understand me, but I cannot quite explain,"said Mirah, rather abstractedly--still searching for some expression.
"But _was_ it beautiful for Buddha to let the tiger eat him?" said Amy,changing her ground. "It would be a bad pattern."
"The world would get full of fat tigers," said Mab.
Deronda laughed, but defended the myth. "It is like a passionate word," hesaid; "the exaggeration is a flash of fervor. It is an extreme image ofwhat is happening every day-the transmutation of self."
often more really with me."at and not praised," said Mirah.do you mean?" said Amy.
"I think I can say what I mean, now," said Mirah, who had not heard theintermediate talk. "When the best thing comes into our thoughts, it islike what my mother has been to me. She has been just as really with me asall the other people about me--often more really with me."
Deronda, inwardly wincing under this illustration, which brought otherpossible realities about that mother vividly before him, presently turnedthe conversation by saying, "But we must not get too far away frompractical matters. I came, for one thing, to tell of an interview I hadyesterday, which I hope Mirah will find to have been useful to her. It waswith Klesmer, the great pianist."
"Ah?" said Mrs. Meyrick, with satisfaction. "You think he will help her?"
"I hope so. He is very much occupied, but has promised to fix a time forreceiving and hearing Miss Lapidoth, as we must learn to call her"--hereDeronda smiled at Mirah--"If she consents to go to him."
now he had noted with someindignation, all the stronger because it must not be betrayed, Hans!
"I shall be very grateful," said Mirah. "He wants to hear me sing, beforehe can judge whether I ought to be helped."
Deronda was struck with her plain sense about these matters of practicalconcern.
"It will not be at all trying to you, I hope, if Mrs. Meyrick will kindlygo with you to Klesmer's house."
"Oh, no, not at all trying. I have been doing that all my life--I mean,told to do things that others may judge of me. And I have gone through abad trial of that sort. I am prepared to bear it, and do some very smallthing. Is Klesmer a severe man?"
"He is peculiar, but I have not had experience enough of him to knowwhether he would be what you would call severe."
"I know he is kind-hearted--kind in action, if not in speech."
"I have been used to be frowned at and not praised," said Mirah.
"By the by, Klesmer frowns a good deal," said Deronda, "but there is oftena sort of smile in his eyes all the while. Unhappily he wears spectacles,so you must catch him in the right light to see the smile."
"I shall not be frightened," said Mirah. "If he were like a roaring lion,he only wants me to sing. I shall do what I can."
"Then I feel sure you will not mind being invited to sing in LadyMallinger's drawing-room," said Deronda. "She intends to ask you nextmonth, and will invite many ladies to hear you, who are likely to wantlessons from you for their daughters."
"How fast we are mounting!" said Mrs. Meyrick, with delight. "You neverthought of getting grand so quickly, Mirah."
"I am a little frightened at being called Miss Lapidoth," said Mirah,coloring with a new uneasiness. "Might I be called Cohen?"
"I understand you," said Deronda, promptly. "But I assure you, you mustnot be called Cohen. The name is inadmissible for a singer. This is oneof the trifles in which we must conform to vulgar prejudice. We couldchoose some other name, however--such as singers ordinarily choose--anItalian or Spanish name, which would suit your _physique_." To Derondajust now the name Cohen was equivalent to the ugliest of yellow badges.
Mirah reflected a little, anxiously, then said, "No. If Cohen will not do,I will keep the name I have been called by. I will not hide myself. I havefriends to protect me. And now--if my father were very miserable andwanted help--no," she said, looking at Mrs. Meyrick, "I should think,then, that he was perhaps crying as I used to see him, and had nobody topity him, and I had hidden myself from him. He had none belonging to himbut me. Others that made friends with him always left him."
"Keep to what you feel right, my dear child," said Mrs. Meyrick. "_I_would not persuade you to the contrary." For her own part she had nopatience or pity for that father, and would have left him to his crying.
Deronda was saying to himself, "I am rather base to be angry with Hans.How can he help being in love with her? But it is too absurdlypresumptuous for him even to frame the idea of appropriating her, and asort of blasphemy to suppose that she could possibly give herself to him."
What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such thoughts? He was notone who could quite naively introduce himself where he had just excludedhis friend, yet it was undeniable that what had just happened made a newstage in his feeling toward Mirah. But apart from other grounds for self-repression, reasons both definite and vague made him shut away thatquestion as he might have shut up a half-opened writing that would havecarried his imagination too far, and given too much shape topresentiments. Might there not come a disclosure which would hold themissing determination of his course? What did he really know about hisorigin? Strangely in these latter months when it seemed right that heshould exert his will in the choice of a destination, the passion of hisnature had got more and more locked by this uncertainty. The disclosuremight bring its pain, indeed the likelihood seemed to him to be all onthat side; but if it helped him to make his life a sequence which wouldtake the form of duty--if it saved him from having to make an arbitraryselection where he felt no preponderance of desire? Still more, he wantedto escape standing as a critic outside the activities of men, stiffenedinto the ridiculous attitude of self-assigned superiority. His chieftether was his early inwrought affection for Sir Hugo, making himgratefully deferential to wishes with which he had little agreement: butgratitude had been sometimes disturbed by doubts which were near reducingit to a fear of being ungrateful. Many of us complain that half ourbirthright is sharp duty: Deronda was more inclined to complain that hewas robbed of this half; yet he accused himself, as he would have accusedanother, of being weakly self-conscious and wanting in resolve. He was thereverse of that type painted for us in Faulconbridge and Edmund ofGloster, whose coarse ambition for personal success is inflamed by adefiance of accidental disadvantages. To Daniel the words Father andMother had the altar-fire in them; and the thought of all closestrelations of our nature held still something of the mystic power which hadmade his neck and ears burn in boyhood. The average man may regard thissensibility on the question of birth as preposterous and hardly credible;but with the utmost respect for his knowledge as the rock from which allother knowledge is hewn, it must be admitted that many well-proved factsare dark to the average man, even concerning the action of his own heartand the structure of his own retina. A century ago he and all hisforefathers had not had the slightest notion of that electric discharge bymeans of which they had all wagged their tongues mistakenly; any more thanthey were awake to the secluded anguish of exceptional sensitiveness intowhich many a carelessly-begotten child of man is born.
Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deronda's mind because he hadnever had a confidant to whom he could open himself on these delicatesubjects. He had always been leaned on instead of being invited to lean.Sometimes he had longed for the sort of friend to whom he might possiblyunfold his experience: a young man like himself who sustained a privategrief and was not too confident about his own career; speculative enoughto understand every moral difficulty, yet socially susceptible, as hehimself was, and having every outward sign of equality either in bodily orspiritual wrestling;--for he had found it impossible to reciprocateconfidences with one who looked up to him. But he had no expectation ofmeeting the friend he imagined. Deronda's was not one of thosequiveringly-poised natures that lend themselves to second-sight.