Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER L.
"If some mortal, born too soon,Were laid away in some great trance--the agesComing and going all the while--till dawnedHis true time's advent; and could then recordThe words they spoke who kept watch by his bed,Then I might tell more of the breath so lightUpon my eyelids, and the fingers warmAmong my hair. Youth is confused; yet neverSo dull was I but, when that spirit passed,I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turnsA water-snake when fairies cross his sleep."--BROWNING: _Paracelsus_.
This was the letter which Sir Hugo put into Deronda's hands:--
TO MY SON, DANIEL DERONDA.
My good friend and yours, Sir Hugo Mallinger, will have told you thatI wish to see you. My health is shaken, and I desire there should beno time lost before I deliver to you what I have long withheld. Letnothing hinder you from being at the _Albergo dell' Italia_ inGenoa by the fourteenth of this month. Wait for me there. I amuncertain when I shall be able to make the journey from Spezia, whereI shall be staying. That will depend on several things. Wait for me--the Princess Halm-Eberstein. Bring with you the diamond ring that SirHugo gave you. I shall like to see it again.--Your unknown mother,
LEONORA HALM-EBERSTEIN.
This letter with its colorless wording gave Deronda no clue to what was inreserve for him; but he could not do otherwise than accept Sir Hugo'sreticence, which seeded to imply some pledge not to anticipate themother's disclosures; and the discovery that his life-long conjectures hadbeen mistaken checked further surmise. Deronda could not hinder hisimagination from taking a quick flight over what seemed possibilities, buthe refused to contemplate any of them as more likely than another, lest heshould be nursing it into a dominant desire or repugnance, instead ofsimply preparing himself with resolve to meet the fact bravely, whateverit might turn out to be.
In this state of mind he could not have communicated to any one the reasonfor the absence which in some quarters he was obliged to mentionbeforehand, least of all to Mordecai, whom it would affect as powerfullyas it did himself, only in rather a different way. If he were to say, "Iam going to learn the truth about my birth," Mordecai's hope would gatherwhat might prove a painful, dangerous excitement. To exclude suppositions,he spoke of his journey as being undertaken by Sir Hugo's wish, and threwas much indifference as he could into his manner of announcing it, sayinghe was uncertain of its duration, but it would perhaps be very short.
"I will ask to have the child Jacob to stay with me," said Mordecai,comforting himself in this way, after the first mournful glances.
"I will drive round and ask Mrs. Cohen to let him come," said Mirah.
"The grandmother will deny you nothing," said Deronda. "I'm glad you werea little wrong as well as I," he added, smiling at Mordecai. "You thoughtthat old Mrs. Cohen would not bear to see Mirah."
"I undervalued her heart," said Mordecai. "She is capable of rejoicingthat another's plant blooms though her own be withered."
"Oh, they are dear good people; I feel as if we all belonged to eachother," said Mirah, with a tinge of merriment in her smile.
"What should you have felt if that Ezra had been your brother?" saidDeronda, mischievously--a little provoked that she had taken kindly atonce to people who had caused him so much prospective annoyance on heraccount.
the first mournful glances.another's plant blooms though her own be withered."who hadannounced herself coldly and still kept away.annoyance on heraccount.to any one the reasonfor the absence.
Mirah looked at him with a slight surprise for a moment, and then said,"He is not a bad man--I think he would never forsake any one." But whenshe uttered the words she blushed deeply, and glancing timidly atMordecai, turned away to some occupation. Her father was in her mind,and this was a subject on which she and her brother had a painful mutualconsciousness. "If he should come and find us!" was a thought which toMirah sometimes made the street daylight as shadowy as a haunted forestwhere each turn screened for her an imaginary apparition.
Deronda felt what was her involuntary allusion, and understood the blush.How could he be slow to understand feelings which now seemed nearer thanever to his own? for the words of his mother's letter implied that hisfilial relation was not to be freed from painful conditions; indeed,singularly enough that letter which had brought his mother nearer as aliving reality had thrown her into more remoteness for his affections. Thetender yearning after a being whose life might have been the worse for nothaving his care and love, the image of a mother who had not had all herdues, whether of reverence or compassion, had long been secretly presentwith him in his observation of all the women he had come near. But itseemed now that this picturing of his mother might fit the facts no betterthan his former conceptions about Sir Hugo. He wondered to find that whenthis mother's very hand-writing had come to him with words holding heractual feeling, his affections had suddenly shrunk into a state ofcomparative neutrality toward her. A veiled figure with enigmatic speechhad thrust away that image which, in spite of uncertainty, his clingingthought had gradually modeled and made the possessor of his tenderness andduteous longing. When he set off to Genoa, the interest really uppermostin his mind had hardly so much relation to his mother as to Mordecai andMirah.
"God bless you, Dan!" Sir Hugo had said, when they shook hands. "Whateverelse changes for you, it can't change my being the oldest friend you haveknown, and the one who has all along felt the most for you. I couldn'thave loved you better if you'd been my own-only I should have been betterpleased with thinking of you always as the future master of the Abbeyinstead of my fine nephew; and then you would have seen it necessary foryou to take a political line. However--things must be as they may." It wasa defensive movement of the baronet's to mingle purposeless remarks withthe expression of serious feeling.
When Deronda arrived at the _Italia_ in Genoa, no Princess Halm-Ebersteinwas there; but on the second day there was a letter for him, saying thather arrival might happen within a week, or might be deferred a fortnightand more; she was under circumstances which made it impossible for her tofix her journey more precisely, and she entreated him to wait as patientlyas he could.
With this indefinite prospect of suspense on matters of supreme moment tohim, Deronda set about the difficult task of seeking amusement onphilosophic grounds, as a means of quieting excited feeling and givingpatience a lift over a weary road. His former visit to the superb city hadbeen only cursory, and left him much to learn beyond the prescribed roundof sight-seeing, by spending the cooler hours in observant wandering aboutthe streets, the quay, and the environs; and he often took a boat that hemight enjoy the magnificent view of the city and harbor from the sea. Allsights, all subjects, even the expected meeting with his mother, found acentral union in Mordecai and Mirah, and the ideas immediately associatedwith them; and among the thoughts that most filled his mind while his boatwas pushing about within view of the grand harbor was that of themultitudinous Spanish Jews centuries ago driven destitute from theirSpanish homes, suffered to land from the crowded ships only for a briefrest on this grand quay of Genoa, overspreading it with a pall of famineand plague--dying mothers and dying children at their breasts--fathers andsons a-gaze at each other's haggardness, like groups from a hundredHunger-towers turned out beneath the midday sun. Inevitably dreamyconstructions of a possible ancestry for himself would weave themselveswith historic memories which had begun to have a new interest for him onhis discovery of Mirah, and now, under the influence of Mordecai, hadbecome irresistibly dominant. He would have sealed his mind against suchconstructions if it had been possible, and he had never yet fully admittedto himself that he wished the facts to verify Mordecai's conviction: heinwardly repeated that he had no choice in the matter, and that wishingwas folly--nay, on the question of parentage, wishing seemed part of thatmeanness which disowns kinship: it was a disowning by anticipation. Whathe had to do was simply to accept the fact; and he had really no strongpresumption to go upon, now that he was assured of his mistake about SirHugo. There had been a resolved concealment which made all inferenceuntrustworthy, and the very name he bore might be a false one. If Mordecaiwas wrong--if he, the so-called Daniel Deronda, were held by ties entirelyaloof from any such course as his friend's pathetic hope had marked out?--he would not say "I wish"; but he could not help feeling on which side thesacrifice lay.
Across these two importunate thoughts, which he resisted as much as onecan resist anything in that unstrung condition which belongs to suspense,there came continually an anxiety which he made no effort to banish--dwelling on it rather with a mournfulness, which often seems to us thebest atonement we can make to one whose need we have been unable to meet.The anxiety was for Gwendolen. In the wonderful mixtures of our naturethere is a feeling distinct from that exclusive passionate love of whichsome men and women (by no means all) are capable, which yet is not thesame with friendship, nor with a merely benevolent regard, whetheradmiring or compassionate: a man, say--for it is a man who is hereconcerned--hardly represents to himself this shade of feeling toward awoman more nearly than in words, "I should have loved her, if----": the"if" covering some prior growth in the inclinations, or else somecircumstances which have made an inward prohibitory law as a stay againstthe emotions ready to quiver out of balance. The "if" in Deronda's casecarried reasons of both kinds; yet he had never throughout his relationswith Gwendolen been free from the nervous consciousness that there wassomething to guard against not only on her account but on his own--someprecipitancy in the manifestations of impulsive feeling--some ruinousinroad of what is but momentary on the permanent chosen treasure of theheart--some spoiling of her trust, which wrought upon him now as if it hadbeen the retreating cry of a creature snatched and carried out of hisreach by swift horsemen or swifter waves, while his own strength was onlya stronger sense of weakness. How could his feelings for Gwendolen ever beexactly like his feelings for other women, even when there was one bywhose side he desired to stand apart from them? Strangely the figureentered into the pictures of his present and future; strangely (and now itseemed sadly) their two lots had come in contact, hers narrowly personal,his charged with far-reaching sensibilities, perhaps with durablepurposes, which were hardly more present to her than the reasons why menmigrate are present to the birds that come as usual for the crumbs andfind them no more. Not that Deronda was too ready to imagine himself ofsupreme importance to a woman; but her words of insistance that he must"remain near her--must not forsake her"--continually recurred to him withthe clearness and importunity of imagined sounds, such as Dante has saidpierce us like arrows whose points carry the sharpness ofpity--
"Lamenti saettaron me diversiCà che di piefermti avean gli strali?"
Day after day passed, and the very air of Italy seemed to carry theconsciousness that war had been declared against Austria, and every daywas a hurrying march of crowded Time toward the world-changing battle ofSadowa. Meanwhile, in Genoa, the noons were getting hotter, the convergingouter roads getting deeper with white dust, the oleanders in the tubsalong the wayside gardens looking more and more like fatigued holiday-makers, and the sweet evening changing her office--scattering abroad thosewhom the midday had sent under shelter, and sowing all paths with happysocial sounds, little tinklings of mule-bells and whirrings of thrumbedstrings, light footsteps and voices, if not leisurely, then with the hurryof pleasure in them; while the encircling heights, crowned with forts,skirted with fine dwellings and gardens, seemed also to come forth andgaze in fullness of beauty after their long siesta, till all strong colormelted in the stream of moonlight which made the Streets a new spectaclewith shadows, both still and moving, on cathedral steps and against thefaçades of massive palaces; and then slowly with the descending moon allsank in deep night and silence, and nothing shone but the port lights ofthe great Lanterna in the blackness below, and the glimmering stars in theblackness above. Deronda, in his suspense, watched this revolving of thedays as he might have watched a wonderful clock where the striking of thehours was made solemn with antique figures advancing and retreating inmonitory procession, while he still kept his ear open for another kind ofsignal which would have its solemnity too: He was beginning to sicken ofoccupation, and found himself contemplating all activity with thealoofness of a prisoner awaiting ransom. In his letters to Mordecai andHans, he had avoided writing about himself, but he was really getting intothat state of mind to which all subjects become personal; and the fewbooks he had brought to make him a refuge in study were becomingunreadable, because the point of view that life would make for him was inthat agitating moment of uncertainty which is close upon decision.
Many nights were watched through by him in gazing from the open window ofhis room on the double, faintly pierced darkness of the sea and theheavens; often in Struggling under the oppressive skepticism whichrepresented his particular lot, with all the importance he was allowingMordecai to give it, as of no more lasting effect than a dream--a set ofchanges which made passion to him, but beyond his consciousness were nomore than an imperceptible difference of mass and shadow; sometimes with areaction of emotive force which gave even to sustained disappointment,even to the fulfilled demand of sacrifice, the nature of a satisfiedenergy, and spread over his young future, whatever it might be, theattraction of devoted service; sometimes with a sweet irresistiblehopefulness that the very best of human possibilities might befall him--the blending of a complete personal love in one current with a largerduty; and sometimes again in a mood of rebellion (what human creatureescapes it?) against things in general because they are thus and nototherwise, a mood in which Gwendolen and her equivocal fate moved as busyimages of what was amiss in the world along with the concealments which hehad felt as a hardship in his own life, and which were acting in him nowunder the form of an afflicting doubtfulness about the mother who hadannounced herself coldly and still kept away.
But at last she was come. One morning in his third week of waiting therewas a new kind of knock at the door. A servant in Chasseurs liveryentered and delivered in French the verbal message that, the PrincessHalm-Eberstein had arrived, that she was going to rest during the day, butwould be obliged if Monsieur would dine early, so as to be at liberty atseven, when she would be able to receive him.