Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER XLIII.
"My spirit is too weak; mortalityWeighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,And each imagined pinnacle and steepOf godlike hardship tells me I must dieLike a sick eagle looking at the sky."--KEATS.
After a few minutes the unwonted stillness had penetrated Mordecai'sconsciousness, and he looked up at Deronda, not in the least withbewilderment and surprise, but with a gaze full of reposing satisfaction.Deronda rose and placed his chair nearer, where there could be no imaginedneed for raising the voice. Mordecai felt the action as a patient feelsthe gentleness that eases his pillow. He began to speak in a low tone, asif he were only thinking articulately, not trying to reach an audience.
"In the doctrine of the Cabbala, souls are born again and again in newbodies till they are perfected and purified, and a soul liberated from aworn-out body may join the fellow-soul that needs it, that they may beperfected together, and their earthly work accomplished. Then they willdepart from the mortal region, and leave place for new souls to be bornout of the store in the eternal bosom. It is the lingering imperfection ofthe souls already born into the mortal region that hinders the birth ofnew souls and the preparation of the Messianic time:--thus the mind hasgiven shape to what is hidden, as the shadow of what is known, and hasspoken truth, though it were only in parable. When my long-wandering soulis liberated from this weary body, it will join yours, and its work willbe perfected."
Mordecai's pause seemed an appeal which Deronda's feeling would not lethim leave unanswered. He tried to make it truthful; but for Mordecai's earit was inevitably filled with unspoken meaning. He only said--
"Everything I can in conscience do to make your life effective I will do."
"I know it," said Mordecai, in a tone of quiet certainty which dispenseswith further assurance. "I heard it. You see it all--you are by my side onthe mount of vision, and behold the paths of fulfillment which othersdeny."
He was silent a moment or two, and then went on meditatively--
"You will take up my life where it was broken. I feel myself back in thatday when my life was broken. The bright morning sun was on the quay--itwas at Trieste--the garments of men from all nations shone like jewels--the boats were pushing off--the Greek vessel that would land us at Beyroutwas to start in an hour. I was going with a merchant as his clerk andcompanion. I said, I shall behold the lands and people of the East, and Ishall speak with a fuller vision. I breathed then as you do, withoutlabor; I had the light step and the endurance of youth, I could fast, Icould sleep on the hard ground. I had wedded poverty, and I loved mybride--for poverty to me was freedom. My heart exulted as if it had beenthe heart of Moses ben Maimon, strong with the strength of three scoreyears, and knowing the work that was to fill them. It was the first time Ihad been south; the soul within me felt its former sun; and standing onthe quay, where the ground I stood on seemed to send forth light, and theshadows had an azure glory as of spirits become visible, I felt myself inthe flood of a glorious life, wherein my own small year-counted existenceseemed to melt, so that I knew it not; and a great sob arose within me asat the rush of waters that were too strong a bliss. So I stood thereawaiting my companion; and I saw him not till he said: 'Ezra, I have beento the post and there is your letter.'"
"Ezra!" exclaimed Deronda, unable to contain himself.
"Ezra," repeated Mordecai, affirmatively, engrossed in memory. "I wasexpecting a letter; for I wrote continually to my mother. And that soundof my name was like the touch of a wand that recalled me to the bodywherefrom I had been released as it were to mingle with the ocean of humanexistence, free from the pressure of individual bondage. I opened theletter; and the name came again as a cry that would have disturbed me inthe bosom of heaven, and made me yearn to reach where that sorrow was--'Ezra, my son!'"
Mordecai paused again, his imagination arrested by the grasp of that long-passed moment. Deronda's mind was almost breathlessly suspended on whatwas coming. A strange possibility had suddenly presented itself.Mordecai's eyes were cast down in abstracted contemplation, and in a fewmoments he went on--
"She was a mother of whom it might have come--yea, might have come to besaid, 'Her children arise up and call her blessed.' In her I understoodthe meaning of that Master who, perceiving the footsteps of his mother,rose up and said, 'The Majesty of the Eternal cometh near!' And thatletter was her cry from the depths of anguish and desolation--the cry of amother robbed of her little ones. I was her eldest. Death had taken fourbabes one after the other. Then came, late, my little sister, who was,more than all the rest, the desire of my mother's eyes; and the letter wasa piercing cry to me--'Ezra, my son, I am robbed of her. He has taken heraway and left disgrace behind. They will never come again.'"--Here Mordecailifted his eyes suddenly, laid his hand on Deronda's arm, and said, "Minewas the lot of Israel. For the sin of the father my soul must go intoexile. For the sin of the father the work was broken, and the day offulfilment delayed. She who bore me was desolate, disgraced, destitute. Iturned back. On the instant I turned--her spirit and the spirit of herfathers, who had worthy Jewish hearts, moved within me, and drew me. God,in whom dwells the universe, was within me as the strength of obedience.I turned and traveled with hardship--to save the scant money which shewould need. I left the sunshine, and traveled into freezing cold. In thelast stage I spent a night in exposure to cold and snow. And that was thebeginning of this slow death."
Mordecai let his eyes wander again and removed his hand. Derondaresolutely repressed the questions which urged themselves within him.While Mordecai was in this state of emotion, no other confidence must besought than what came spontaneously: nay, he himself felt a kindredemotion which made him dread his own speech as too momentous.
"But I worked. We were destitute--every thing had been seized. And she wasill: the clutch of anguish was too strong for her, and wrought with somelurking disease. At times she could not stand for the beating of herheart, and the images in her brain became as chambers of terror, where shebeheld my sister reared in evil. In the dead of night I heard her cryingfor her child. Then I rose, and we stretched forth our arms together andprayed. We poured forth our souls in desire that Mirah might be deliveredfrom evil."
"Mirah?" Deronda repeated, wishing to assure, himself that his ears hadnot been deceived by a forecasting imagination. "Did you say Mirah?"
"That was my little sister's name. After we had prayed for her, my motherwould rest awhile. It lasted hardly four years, and in the minute beforeshe died, we were praying the same prayer--I aloud, she silently. Her soulwent out upon its wings."
"Have you never since heard of your sister?" said Deronda, as quietly ashe could.
"Never. Never have I heard whether she was delivered according to ourprayer. I know not, I know not. Who shall say where the pathways lie? Thepoisonous will of the wicked is strong. It poisoned my life--it is slowlystifling this breath. Death delivered my mother, and I felt it ablessedness that I was alone in the winters of suffering. But what are thewinters now?--they are far off"--here Mordecai again rested his hand onDeronda's arm, and looked at him with that joy of the hectic patient whichpierces us to sadness--"there is nothing to wail in the withering of mybody. The work will be the better done. Once I said the work of thisbeginning was mine, I am born to do it. Well, I shall do it. I shall livein you. I shall live in you."
His grasp had become convulsive in its force, and Deronda, agitated as hehad never been before--the certainty that this was Mirah's brothersuffusing his own strange relation to Mordecai with a new solemnity andtenderness--felt his strong young heart beating faster and his lipspaling. He shrank from speech. He feared, in Mordecai's present state ofexaltation (already an alarming strain on his feeble frame), to utter aword of revelation about Mirah. He feared to make an answer below thathigh pitch of expectation which resembled a flash from a dying fire,making watchers fear to see it die the faster. His dominant impulse was todo as he had once done before: he laid his firm, gentle hand on the handthat grasped him. Mordecai's, as if it had a soul of its own--for he wasnot distinctly willing to do what he did--relaxed its grasp, and turnedupward under Deronda's. As the two palms met and pressed each otherMordecai recovered some sense of his surroundings, and said--
"Let us go now. I cannot talk any longer."
And in fact they parted at Cohen's door without having spoken to eachother again--merely with another pressure of the hands.
Deronda felt a weight on him which was half joy, half anxiety. The joy offinding in Mirah's brother a nature even more than worthy of that relationto her, had the weight of solemnity and sadness; the reunion of brotherand sister was in reality the first stage of a supreme parting--like thatfarewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love whichbecomes the sharpest pang of sorrow. Then there was the weight of anxietyabout the revelation of the fact on both sides, and the arrangements itwould be desirable to make beforehand. I suppose we should all have feltas Deronda did, without sinking into snobbishness or the notion that theprimal duties of life demand a morning and an evening suit, that it was anadmissible desire to free Mirah's first meeting with her brother from alljarring outward conditions. His own sense of deliverance from the dreadedrelationship of the other Cohens, notwithstanding their good nature, madehim resolve if possible to keep them in the background for Mirah, untilher acquaintance with them would be an unmarred rendering of gratitude forany kindness they had shown to her brother. On all accounts he wished togive Mordecai's surroundings not only more suited to his frail bodilycondition, but less of a hindrance to easy intercourse, even apart fromthe decisive prospect of Mirah's taken up her abode with her brother, andtending him through the precious remnant of his life. In the heroic drama,great recognitions are not encumbered with these details; and certainlyDeronda had as reverential an interest in Mordecai and Mirah as he couldhave had in the offspring of Agamemnon; but he was caring for destiniesstill moving in the dim streets of our earthly life, not yet lifted amongthe constellations, and his task presented itself to him as difficult anddelicate, especially in persuading Mordecai to change his abode andhabits. Concerning Mirah's feeling and resolve he had no doubt: therewould be a complete union of sentiment toward the departed mother, andMirah would understand her brother's greatness. Yes, greatness: that wasthe word which Deronda now deliberately chose to signify the impressionthat Mordecai had made on him. He said to himself, perhaps ratherdefiantly toward the more negative spirit within him, that this man,however erratic some of his interpretations might be--this consumptiveJewish workman in threadbare clothing, lodged by charity, deliveringhimself to hearers who took his thoughts without attaching moreconsequences to them than the Flemings to the ethereal chimes ringingabove their market-places--had the chief elements of greatness; a mindconsciously, energetically moving with the larger march of humandestinies, but not the less full of conscience and tender heart for thefootsteps that tread near and need a leaning-place; capable of conceivingand choosing a life's task with far-off issues, yet capable of theunapplauded heroism which turns off the road of achievement at the call ofthe nearer duty whose effect lies within the beatings of the hearts thatare close to us, as the hunger of the unfledged bird to the breast of itsparent.
Deronda to-night was stirred with, the feeling that the brief remnant ofthis fervid life had become his charge. He had been peculiarly wrought onby what he had seen at the club of the friendly indifference whichMordecai must have gone on encountering. His own experience of the smallroom that ardor can make for itself in ordinary minds had had the effectof increasing his reserve; and while tolerance was the easiest attitude tohim, there was another bent in him also capable of becoming a weakness--the dislike to appear exceptional or to risk an ineffective insistance onhis own opinion. But such caution appeared contemptible to him just now,when he, for the first time, saw in a complete picture and felt as areality the lives that burn themselves out in solitary enthusiasm: martyrsof obscure circumstance, exiled in the rarity of their own minds, whosedeliverances in other ears are no more than a long passionate soliloquy--unless perhaps at last, when they are nearing the invisible shores, signsof recognition and fulfilment may penetrate the cloud of loneliness; orperhaps it may be with them as with the dying Copernicus made to touch thefirst printed copy of his book when the sense of touch was gone, seeing itonly as a dim object through the deepening dusk.
Deronda had been brought near to one of those spiritual exiles, and it wasin his nature to feel the relation as a strong chain, nay, to feel hisimagination moving without repugnance in the direction of Mordecai'sdesires. With all his latent objection to schemes only definite in theirgenerality and nebulous in detail--in the poise of his sentiments he feltat one with this man who had made a visionary selection of him: the linesof what may be called their emotional theory touched. He had not theJewish consciousness, but he had a yearning, grown the stronger for thedenial which had been his grievance, after the obligation of avowed filialand social ties. His feeling was ready for difficult obedience. In thisway it came that he set about his new task ungrudgingly; and again hethought of Mrs. Meyrick as his chief helper. To her first he must makeknown the discovery of Mirah's brother, and with her he must consult onall preliminaries of bringing the mutually lost together. Happily the bestquarter for a consumptive patient did not lie too far off the small houseat Chelsea, and the first office Deronda had to perform for this Hebrewprophet who claimed him as a spiritual inheritor, was to get him a healthylodging. Such is the irony of earthly mixtures, that the heroes have notalways had carpets and teacups of their own; and, seen through the openwindow by the mackerel-vender, may have been invited with some hopefulnessto pay three hundred per cent, in the form of fourpence. However,Deronda's mind was busy with a prospective arrangement for giving afurnished lodging some faint likeness to a refined home by dismantling hisown chambers of his best old books in vellum, his easiest chair, and thebas-reliefs of Milton and Dante.
But was not Mirah to be there? What furniture can give such finish to aroom as a tender woman's face?--and is there any harmony of tints that hassuch stirrings of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice? Here isone good, at least, thought Deronda, that comes to Mordecai from hishaving fixed his imagination on me. He has recovered a perfect sister,whose affection is waiting for him.