Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XL. Page 2
Mordecai let his hands fall, and his head sink in melancholy: for themoment he had lost hold of his hope. Despondency, conjured up by his ownwords, had floated in and hovered above him with eclipsing wings. He hadsunk into momentary darkness,
"I feel with you--I feel strongly with you," said Deronda, in a clear deepvoice which was itself a cordial, apart from the words of sympathy. "Butforgive me if I speak hastily--for what you have actually written thereneed be no utter burial. The means of publication are within reach. If youwill rely on me, I can assure you of all that is necessary to that end."
"That is not enough," said Mordecai, quickly, looking up again with theflash of recovered memory and confidence. "That is not all my trust inyou. You must be not only a hand to me, but a soul--believing my belief--being moved by my reasons--hoping my hope-seeing the vision I point to--beholding a glory where I behold it!"--Mordecai had taken a step nearer ashe spoke, and now laid his hand on Deronda's arm with a tight grasp; hisface little more than a foot off had something like a pale flame in it--anintensity of reliance that acted as a peremptory claim, while he went on--"You will be my life: it will be planted afresh; it will grow. You shalltake the inheritance; it has been gathering for ages. The generations arecrowding on my narrow life as a bridge: what has been and what is to beare meeting there; and the bridge is breaking. But I have found you. Youhave come in time, You will take the inheritance which the base sonrefuses because of the tombs which the plow and harrow may not pass overor the gold-seeker disturb: you will take the sacred inheritance of theJew." Deronda had become as pallid as Mordecai. Quick as an alarm of floodor fire, there spread within him not only a compassionate dread ofdiscouraging this fellowman who urged a prayer as one in the last agony,but also tie opposing dread of fatally feeding an illusion, and beinghurried on to a self-committal which might turn into a falsity. Thepeculiar appeal to his tenderness overcame the repulsion that most of usexperience under a grasp and speech which assumed to dominate. Thedifficulty to him was to inflict the accents of hesitation and doubt onthis ardent suffering creature, who was crowding too much of his briefbeing into a moment of perhaps extravagant trust. With exquisite instinct,Deronda, before he opened his lips, placed his palm gently on Mordecai'sstraining hand--an act just then equal to many speeches. And after that hesaid, without haste, as if conscious that he might be wrong--
"Do you forget what I told you when we first saw each other? Do youremember that I said I was not of your race?"
"It can't be true," Mordecai whispered immediately, with no sign of shock.The sympathetic hand still upon him had fortified the feeling which wasstronger than those words of denial. There was a perceptible pause,Deronda feeling it impossible to answer, conscious indeed that theassertion "It can't be true"--had the pressure of argument for him.Mordecai, too entirely possessed by the supreme importance of the relationbetween himself and Deronda to have any other care in his speech, followedup that assertion by a second, which came to his lips as a mere sequenceof his long-cherished conviction--"You are not sure of your own origin."
"How do you know that?" said Daniel, with an habitual shrinking which madehim remove his hands from Mordecai's, who also relaxed his hold, and fellback into his former leaning position.
"I know it--I know it; what is my life else?" said Mordecai, with a lowcry of impatience. "Tell me everything: tell me why you deny?"
He could have no conception what that demand was to the hearer--howprobingly it touched the hidden sensibility, the vividly consciousreticence of years; how the uncertainty he was insisting on as part of hisown hope had always for Daniel been a threatening possibility of painfulrevelation about his mother. But the moment had influences which were notonly new but solemn to Deronda; any evasion here might turn out to be ahateful refusal of some task that belonged to him, some act of duefellowship; in any case it would be a cruel rebuff to a being who wasappealing to him as a forlorn hope under the shadow of a coming doom.After a few moments, he said, with a great effort over himself--determinedto tell all the truth briefly--
"I have never known my mother. I have no knowledge about her. I have nevercalled any man father. But I am convinced that my father is anEnglishman."
Deronda's deep tones had a tremor in them as he uttered this confession;and all the while there was an undercurrent of amazement in him at thestrange circumstances under which he uttered it. It seemed as if Mordecaiwere hardly overrating his own power to determine the action of the friendwhom he had mysteriously chosen.
"It will be seen--it will be declared," said Mordecai, triumphantly. "Theworld grows, and its frame is knit together by the growing soul; dim, dimat first, then clearer and more clear, the consciousness discerns remotestirrings. As thoughts move within us darkly, and shake us before they arefully discerned--so events--so beings: they are knit with us in the growthof the world. You have risen within me like a thought not fully spelled;my soul is shaken before the words are all there. The rest will come--itwill come.".
"We must not lose sight of the fact that the outward event has not alwaysbeen a fulfillment of the firmest faith," said Deronda, in a tone that wasmade hesitating by the painfully conflicting desires, not to give anysevere blow to Mordecai, and not to give his confidence a sanction whichmight have the severest of blows in reserve.
Mordecai's face, which had been illuminated to the utmost in that lastdeclaration of his confidence, changed under Deronda's words, not onlyinto any show of collapsed trust: the force did not disappear from theexpression, but passed from the triumphant into the firmly resistant.
"You would remind me that I may be under an illusion--that the history ofour people's trust has been full of illusion. I face it all." HereMordecai paused a moment. Then bending his head a little forward, he said,in his hoarse whisper, "_So if might be with my trust, if you would makeit an illusion. But you will not._"
The very sharpness with which these words penetrated Deronda made him feelthe more that here was a crisis in which he must be firm.
"What my birth was does not lie in my will," he answered. "My sense ofclaims on me cannot be independent of my knowledge there. And I cannotpromise you that I will try to hasten a disclosure. Feelings which havestruck root through half my life may still hinder me from doing what Ihave never been able to do. Everything must be waited for. I must knowmore of the truth about my own life, and I must know more of what it wouldbecome if it were made a part of yours."
Mordecai had folded his arms again while Deronda was speaking, and nowanswered with equal firmness, though with difficult breathing--
"You _shall_ know. What are we met for, but that you should know. Yourdoubts lie as light as dust on my belief. I know the philosophies of thistime and of other times; if I chose I could answer a summons before theirtribunals. I could silence the beliefs which are the mother-tongue of mysoul and speak with the rote-learned language of a system, that gives youthe spelling of all things, sure of its alphabet covering them all. Icould silence them: may not a man silence his awe or his love, and take tofinding reasons, which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than anyreasons to be found? Man finds his pathways: at first they were foottracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness: now they are swift andinvisible: his thought dives through the ocean, and his wishes thread theair: has he found all the pathways yet? What reaches him, stays with him,rules him: he must accept it, not knowing its pathway. Say, my expectationof you has grown but as false hopes grow. That doubt is in your mind?Well, my expectation was there, and you are come. Men have died of thirst.But I was thirsty, and the water is on my lips? What are doubts to me? Inthe hour when you come to me and say, 'I reject your soul: I know that Iam not a Jew: we have no lot in common'--I shall not doubt. I shall becertain--certain that I have been deluded. That hour will never come!"
Deronda felt a new chord sounding in his speech: it was rather imperiousthan appealing--had more of conscious power than of the yearning needwhich had acted as a beseeching grasp on him before. And usually, thoughhe was the reverse of pugnacious, such a change of attitude toward himwould have weakened his inclination to admit a claim. But here there wassomething that balanced his resistance and kept it aloof. This strong manwhose gaze was sustainedly calm and his finger-nails pink with health, whowas exercised in all questioning, and accused of excessive mentalindependence, still felt a subduing influence over him in the tenaciouscertitude of the fragile creature before him, whose pallid yellow nostrilwas tense with effort as his breath labored under the burthen of eagerspeech. The influence seemed to strengthen the bond of sympatheticobligation. In Deronda at this moment the desire to escape what might turninto a trying embarrassment was no more likely to determine action thanthe solicitations of indolence are likely to determine it in one with whomindustry is a daily law. He answered simply--
"It is my wish to meet and satisfy your wishes wherever that is possibleto me. It is certain to me at least that I desire not to undervalue yourtoil and your suffering. Let me know your thoughts. But where can wemeet?"
"I have thought of that," said Mordecai. "It is not hard for you to comeinto this neighborhood later in the evening? You did so once."
"I can manage it very well occasionally," said Deronda. "You live underthe same roof with the Cohens, I think?"
Before Mordecai could answer, Mr. Ram re-entered to take his place behindthe counter. He was an elderly son of Abraham, whose childhood had fallenon the evil times at the beginning of this century, and who remained amidthis smart and instructed generation as a preserved specimen, soakedthrough and through with the effect of the poverty and contempt which werethe common heritage of most English Jews seventy years ago. He had none ofthe oily cheerfulness observable in Mr. Cohen's aspect: his very features--broad and chubby--showed that tendency to look mongrel without duecause, which, in a miscellaneous London neighborhood, may perhaps becompared with the marvels of imitation in insects, and may have beennature's imperfect effort on behalf of the pure Caucasian to shield himfrom the shame and spitting to which purer features would have been exposedin the times of zeal. Mr. Ram dealt ably in books, in the same way that hewould have dealt in tins of meat and other commodities--without knowledgeor responsibility as to the proportion of rottenness or nourishment theymight contain. But he believed in Mordecai's learning as somethingmarvellous, and was not sorry that his conversation should be sought by abookish gentleman, whose visits had twice ended in a purchase. He greetedDeronda with a crabbed good-will, and, putting on large silver spectacles,appeared at once to abstract himself in the daily accounts.
But Deronda and Mordecai were soon in the street together, and without anyexplicit agreement as to their direction, were walking toward EzraCohen's.
"We can't meet there: my room is too narrow," said Mordecai, taking up thethread of talk where they had dropped it. "But there is a tavern not farfrom here where I sometimes go to a club. It is the _Hand and Banner_, inthe street at the next turning, five doors down. We can have the parlorthere any evening."
"We can try that for once," said Deronda. "But you will perhaps let meprovide you with some lodging, which would give you more freedom andcomfort than where you are."
"No; I need nothing. My outer life is as nought. I will take nothing lessprecious from you than your soul's brotherhood. I will think of nothingelse yet. But I am glad you are rich. You did not need money on thatdiamond ring. You had some other motive for bringing it."
Deronda was a little startled by this clear-sightedness; but before hecould reply Mordecai added--"it is all one. Had you been in need of themoney, the great end would have been that we should meet again. But youare rich?" he ended, in a tone of interrogation.
"Not rich, except in the sense that every one is rich who has more than heneeds for himself."
"I desired that your life should be free," said Mordecai, dreamily--"minehas been a bondage."
It was clear that he had no interest in the fact of Deronda's appearanceat the Cohens' beyond its relation to his own ideal purpose. Despairing ofleading easily up to the question he wished to ask, Deronda determined toput it abruptly, and said--
"Can you tell me why Mrs. Cohen, the mother, must not be spoken to abouther daughter?"
There was no immediate answer, and he thought that he should have torepeat the question. The fact was that Mordecai had heard the words, buthad to drag his mind to a new subject away from his passionatepreoccupation. After a few moments, he replied with a careful effort suchas he would have used if he had been asked the road to Holborn---
"I know the reason. But I will not speak even of trivial family affairswhich I have heard in the privacy of the family. I dwell in their tent asin a sanctuary. Their history, so far as they injure none other, is theirown possession."
Deronda felt the blood mounting to his cheeks as a sort of rebuke he waslittle used to, and he also found himself painfully baffled where he hadreckoned with some confidence on getting decisive knowledge. He became themore conscious of emotional strain from the excitements of the day; andalthough he had the money in his pocket to redeem his ring, he recoiledfrom the further task of a visit to the Cohens', which must be made notonly under the former uncertainty, but under a new disappointment as tothe possibility of its removal.
"I will part from you now," he said, just before they could reach Cohen'sdoor; and Mordecai paused, looking up at him with an anxious fatigued faceunder the gaslight.
"When will you come back?" he said, with slow emphasis.
"May I leave that unfixed? May I ask for you at the Cohens' any eveningafter your hour at the book-shop? There is no objection, I suppose, totheir knowing that you and I meet in private?"
"None," said Mordecai. "But the days I wait now are longer than the yearsof my strength. Life shrinks: what was but a tithe is now the half. Myhope abides in you."
"I will be faithful," said Deronda--he could not have left those wordsunuttered. "I will come the first evening I can after seven: on Saturdayor Monday, if possible. Trust me."
He put out his ungloved hand. Mordecai, clasping it eagerly, seemed tofeel a new instreaming of confidence, and he said with some recoveredenergy--"This is come to pass, and the rest will come."
That was their good-bye.