Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LXI.
"Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,As birds within the green shade of the grove.Before the gentle heart, in Nature's scheme,Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love."--GUIDO GUNICELLI (_Rossetti's Translation_).
There was another house besides the white house at Pennicote, anotherbreast besides Rex Gascoigne's, in which the news of Grandcourt's deathcaused both strong agitation and the effort to repress it.
It was Hans Meyrick's habit to send or bring in the _Times_ for hismother's reading. She was a great reader of news, from the widest-reachingpolitics to the list of marriages; the latter, she said, giving her thepleasant sense of finishing the fashionable novels without having readthem, and seeing the heroes and heroines happy without knowing what poorcreatures they were. On a Wednesday, there were reasons why Hans alwayschose to bring the paper, and to do so about the time that Mirah hadnearly ended giving Mab her weekly lesson, avowing that he came thenbecause he wanted to hear Mirah sing. But on the particular Wednesday nowin question, after entering the house as quietly as usual with his latch-key, he appeared in the parlor, shaking the _Times_ aloft with a cracklingnoise, in remorseless interruption of Mab's attempt to render _Lasciach'io pianga_ with a remote imitation of her teacher. Piano and songceased immediately; Mirah, who had been playing the accompaniment,involuntarily started up and turned round, the crackling sound, after theoccasional trick of sounds, having seemed to her something thunderous; andMab said--
"O-o-o, Hans! why do you bring a more horrible noise than my singing?"
"What on earth is the wonderful news?" said Mrs. Meyrick, who was the onlyother person in the room. "Anything about Italy--anything about theAustrians giving up Venice?"
"Nothing about Italy, but something from Italy," said Hans, with apeculiarity in his tone and manner which set his mother interpreting.Imagine how some of us feel and behave when an event, not disagreeableseems to be confirming and carrying out our private constructions. We say,"What do you think?" in a pregnant tone to some innocent person who hasnot embarked his wisdom in the same boat with ours, and finds ourinformation flat.
"Nothing bad?" said Mrs. Meyrick anxiously, thinking immediately ofDeronda; and Mirah's heart had been already clutched by the same thought.
"Not bad for anybody we care much about," said Hans, quickly; "ratheruncommonly lucky, I think. I never knew anybody die conveniently before.Considering what a dear gazelle I am, I am constantly wondering to findmyself alive."
"Oh me, Hans!" said Mab, impatiently, "if you must talk of yourself, letit be behind your own back. What _is_ it that has happened?"
improvised words had inevitably some drollery.fashionable novels.
"Duke Alfonso is drowned, and the Duchess is alive, that's all," saidHans, putting the paper before Mrs. Meyrick, with his finger against aparagraph. "But more than all is--Deronda was at Genoa in the same hotelwith them, and he saw her brought in by the fishermen who had got her outof the water time enough to save her from any harm. It seems they saw herjump in after her husband, which was a less judicious action than I shouldhave expected of the Duchess. However Deronda is a lucky fellow in beingthere to take care of her."
on her. It is not sublime, but it is common, for a man to see thebeloved object unhappy because.
Mirah had sunk on the music stool again, with her eyelids down and herhands tightly clasped; and Mrs. Meyrick, giving up the paper to Mab,said--
"Poor thing! she must have been fond of her husband to jump in after him."
"It was an inadvertence--a little absence of mind," said Hans, creasinghis face roguishly, and throwing himself into a chair not far from Mirah."Who can be fond of a jealous baritone, with freezing glances, alwayssinging asides?--that was the husband's _rôle_, depend upon it. Nothingcan be neater than his getting drowned. The Duchess is at liberty now tomarry a man with a fine head of hair, and glances that will melt insteadof freezing her. And I shall be invited to the wedding."
Here Mirah started from her sitting posture, and fixing her eyes on Hans,with an angry gleam in them, she said, in a deeply-shaken voice ofindignation--
"Mr. Hans, you ought not to speak in that way. Mr. Deronda would not likeyou to speak so. Why will you say he is lucky--why will you use words ofthat sort about life and death--when what is life to one is death toanother? How do you know it would be lucky if he loved Mrs. Grandcourt? Itmight be a great evil to him. She would take him away from my brother--Iknow she would. Mr. Deronda would not call that lucky to pierce mybrother's heart."
All three were struck with the sudden transformation. Mirah's face, with alook of anger that might have suited Ithuriel, pale, even to the lips thatwere usually so rich of tint, was not far from poor Hans, who sattransfixed, blushing under it as if he had been a girl, while he said,nervously--
"I am a fool and a brute, and I withdraw every word. I'll go and hangmyself like Judas--if it's allowable to mention him." Even in Hans'ssorrowful moments, his improvised words had inevitably some drollery.
But Mirah's anger was not appeased: how could it be? She had burst intoindignant speech as creatures in intense pain bite and make their teethmeet even through their own flesh, by way of making their agony bearable.She said no more, but, seating herself at the piano, pressed the sheet ofmusic before her, as if she thought of beginning to play again.
It was Mab who spoke, while. Mrs. Meyrick's face seemed to reflect some ofHans' discomfort.
"Mirah is quite right to scold you, Hans. You are always taking Mr.Deronda's name in vain. And it is horrible, joking in that way about hismarrying Mrs. Grandcourt. Men's minds must be very black, I think," endedMab, with much scorn.
"Quite true, my dear," said Hans, in a low tone, rising and turning on hisheel to walk toward the back window.
"We had better go on, Mab; you have not given your full time to thelesson," said Mirah, in a higher tone than usual. "Will you sing thisagain, or shall I sing it to you?"
"Oh, please sing it to me," said Mab, rejoiced to take no more notice ofwhat had happened.
And Mirah immediately sang _Lascia ch'io pianga_, giving forth itsmelodious sobs and cries with new fullness and energy. Hans paused in hiswalk and leaned against the mantel-piece, keeping his eyes carefully awayfrom his mother's. When Mirah had sung her last note and touched the lastchord, she rose and said, "I must go home now. Ezra expects me."
She gave her hand silently to Mrs. Meyrick and hung back a little, notdaring to look at her, instead of kissing her, as usual. But the littlemother drew Mirah's face down to hers, and said, soothingly, "God blessyou, my dear." Mirah felt that she had committed an offense against Mrs.Meyrick by angrily rebuking Hans, and mixed with the rest of her sufferingwas the sense that she had shown something like a proud ingratitude, anunbecoming assertion of superiority. And her friend had divined thiscompunction.
Meanwhile Hans had seized his wide-awake, and was ready to open the door.
"Now, Hans," said Mab, with what was really a sister's tendernesscunningly disguised, "you are not going to walk home with Mirah. I am sureshe would rather not. You are so dreadfully disagreeable to-day."
"I shall go to take care of her, if she does not forbid me," said Hans,opening the door.
Mirah said nothing, and when he had opened the outer door for her andclosed it behind him, he walked by her side unforbidden. She had not thecourage to begin speaking to him again--conscious that she had perhapsbeen unbecomingly severe in her words to him, yet finding only severerwords behind them in her heart. Besides, she was pressed upon by a crowdof thoughts thrusting themselves forward as interpreters of thatconsciousness which still remained unaltered to herself.
Hans, on his side, had a mind equally busy. Mirah's anger had waked in hima new perception, and with it the unpleasant sense that he was a dolt notto have had it before. Suppose Mirah's heart were entirely preoccupiedwith Deronda in another character than that of her own and her brother'sbenefactor; the supposition was attended in Hans's mind with anxietieswhich, to do him justice, were not altogether selfish. He had a strongpersuasion, which only direct evidence to the contrary could havedissipated, and that was that there was a serious attachment betweenDeronda and Mrs. Grandcourt; he had pieced together many fragments ofobservation, and gradually gathered knowledge, completed by what hissisters had heard from Anna Gascoigne, which convinced him not only thatMrs. Grandcourt had a passion for Deronda, but also, notwithstanding hisfriend's austere self-repression, that Deronda's susceptibility about herwas the sign of concealed love. Some men, having such a conviction, wouldhave avoided allusions that could have roused that susceptibility; butHans's talk naturally fluttered toward mischief, and he was given to aform of experiment on live animals which consisted in irritating hisfriends playfully. His experiments had ended in satisfying him that whathe thought likely was true.
On the other hand, any susceptibility Deronda had manifested about alover's attentions being shown to Mirah, Hans took to be sufficientlyaccounted for by the alleged reason, namely, her dependent position; forhe credited his friend with all possible unselfish anxiety for those whomhe could rescue and protect. And Deronda's insistence that Mirah wouldnever marry one who was not a Jew necessarily seemed to exclude himself,since Hans shared the ordinary opinion, which he knew nothing to disturb,that Deronda was the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger.
Thus he felt himself in clearness about the state of Deronda's affections;but now, the events which really struck him as concurring toward thedesirable union with Mrs. Grandcourt, had called forth a flash ofrevelation from Mirah--a betrayal of her passionate feeling on thissubject which had made him melancholy on her account as well as his own--yet on the whole less melancholy than if he had imagined Deronda's hopesfixed on her. It is not sublime, but it is common, for a man to see thebeloved object unhappy because his rival loves another, with morefortitude and a milder jealousy than if he saw her entirely happy in hisrival. At least it was so with the mercurial Hans, who fluctuated betweenthe contradictory states of feeling, wounded because Mirah was wounded,and of being almost obliged to Deronda for loving somebody else. It wasimpossible for him to give Mirah any direct sign of the way in which hehad understood her anger, yet he longed that his speechless companionshipshould be eloquent in a tender, penitent sympathy which is an admissibleform of wooing a bruised heart.
Thus the two went side by side in a companionship that yet seemed anagitated communication, like that of two chords whose quick vibrations lieoutside our hearing. But when they reached the door of Mirah's home, andHans said "Good-bye," putting out his hand with an appealing look ofpenitence, she met the look with melancholy gentleness, and said, "Willyou not come in and see my brother?"
Hans could not but interpret this invitation as a sign of pardon. He hadnot enough understanding of what Mirah's nature had been wrought into byher early experience, to divine how the very strength of her lateexcitement had made it pass more quickly into the resolute acceptance ofpain. When he had said, "If you will let me," and they went in together,half his grief was gone, and he was spinning a little romance of how hisdevotion might make him indispensable to Mirah in proportion as Derondagave his devotion elsewhere. This was quite fair, since his friend wasprovided for according to his own heart; and on the question of JudaismHans felt thoroughly fortified:--who ever heard in tale or history that awoman's love went in the track of her race and religion? Moslem and Jewishdamsels were always attracted toward Christians, and now if Mirah's hearthad gone forth too precipitately toward Deronda, here was another case inpoint. Hans was wont to make merry with his own arguments, to call himselfa Giaour, and antithesis the sole clue to events; but he believed a littlein what he laughed at. And thus his bird-like hope, constructed on thelightest principles, soared again in spite of heavy circumstances.
They found Mordecai looking singularly happy, holding a closed letter inhis hand, his eyes glowing with a quiet triumph which in his emaciatedface gave the idea of a conquest over assailing death. After the greetingbetween him and Hans, Mirah put her arm round her brother's neck andlooked down at the letter in his hand, without the courage to ask aboutit, though she felt sure that it was the cause of his happiness.
"A letter from Daniel Deronda," said Mordecai, answering her look. "Brief--only saying that he hopes soon to return. Unexpected claims havedetained him. The promise of seeing him again is like the bow in the cloudto me," continued Mordecai, looking at Hans; "and to you it must be agladness. For who has two friends like him?"
While Hans was answering Mirah slipped away to her own room; but not toindulge in any outburst of the passion within her. If the angels, oncesupposed to watch the toilet of women, had entered the little chamber withher and let her shut the door behind them, they would only have seen hertake off her hat, sit down and press her hands against her temples as ifshe had suddenly reflected that her head ached; then rise to dash coldwater on her eyes and brow and hair till her backward curls were full ofcrystal beads, while she had dried her brow and looked out like a freshly-opened flower from among the dewy tresses of the woodland; then give deepsighs of relief, and putting on her little slippers, sit still after thataction for a couple of minutes, which seemed to her so long, so full ofthings to come, that she rose with an air of recollection, and went downto make tea.
Something of the old life had returned. She had been used to remember thatshe must learn her part, must go to rehearsal, must act and sing in theevening, must hide her feelings from her father; and the more painful herlife grew, the more she had been used to hide. The force of her nature hadlong found its chief action in resolute endurance, and to-day the violenceof feeling which had caused the first jet of anger had quickly transformeditself into a steady facing of trouble, the well-known companion of heryoung years. But while she moved about and spoke as usual, a closeobserver might have discerned a difference between this apparent calm,which was the effect of restraining energy, and the sweet genuine calm ofthe months when she first felt a return of her infantine happiness.
Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought ofcalamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at thereversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alterthe course of the storm. Mirah felt no such surprise when familiar Sorrowcame back from brief absence, and sat down with her according to the olduse and wont. And this habit of expecting trouble rather than joy,hindered her from having any persistent belief in opposition to theprobabilities which were not merely suggested by Hans, but were supportedby her own private knowledge and long-growing presentiment. An attachmentbetween Deronda and Mrs. Grandcourt, to end in their future marriage, hadthe aspect of a certainty for her feeling. There had been no fault in him:facts had ordered themselves so that there was a tie between him and thiswoman who belonged to another world than hers and Ezra's--nay, who seemedanother sort of being than Deronda, something foreign that would be adisturbance in his life instead of blending with it. Well, well--but if itcould have been deferred so as to make no difference while Ezra was there!She did not know all the momentousness of the relation between Deronda andher brother, but she had seen, and instinctively felt enough to forebodeits being incongruous with any close tie to Mrs. Grandcourt; at least thiswas the clothing that Mirah first gave to her mortal repugnance. But inthe still, quick action of her consciousness, thoughts went on likechanging states of sensation unbroken by her habitual acts; and thisinward language soon said distinctly that the mortal repugnance wouldremain even if Ezra were secured from loss.
"What I have read about and sung about and seen acted, is happening to me--this that I am feeling is the love that makes jealousy;" so impartiallyMirah summed up the charge against herself. But what difference could thispain of hers make to any one else? It must remain as exclusively her own,and hidden, as her early yearning and devotion to her lost mother. Butunlike that devotion, it was something that she felt to be a misfortune ofher nature--a discovery that what should have been pure gratitude andreverence had sunk into selfish pain, that the feeling she had hithertodelighted to pour out in words was degraded into something she was ashamedto betray--an absurd longing that she who had received all and givennothing should be of importance where she was of no importance--an angryfeeling toward another woman who possessed the good she wanted. But whatnotion, what vain reliance could it be that had lain darkly within her andwas now burning itself into sight as disappointment and jealousy? It wasas if her soul had been steeped in poisonous passion by forgotten dreamsof deep sleep, and now flamed out in this unaccountable misery. For withher waking reason she had never entertained what seemed the wildlyunfitting thought that Deronda could love her. The uneasiness she had feltbefore had been comparatively vague and easily explained as part of ageneral regret that he was only a visitant in her and her brother's world,from which the world where his home lay was as different as a portico withlights and lacqueys was different from the door of a tent, where the onlysplendor came from the mysterious inaccessible stars. But her feeling wasno longer vague: the cause of her pain--the image of Mrs. Grandcourt byDeronda's side, drawing him farther and farther into the distance, was asdefinite as pincers on her flesh. In the Psyche-mould of Mirah's framethere rested a fervid quality of emotion, sometimes rashly supposed torequire the bulk of a Cleopatra; her impressions had the thoroughness andtenacity that give to the first selection of passionate feeling thecharacter of a lifelong faithfulness. And now a selection had declareditself, which gave love a cruel heart of jealousy: she had been used to astrong repugnance toward certain objects that surrounded her, and to walkinwardly aloof from them while they touched her sense. And now herrepugnance concentrated itself on Mrs. Grandcourt, of whom sheinvoluntarily conceived more evil than she knew. "I could bear everythingthat used to be--but this is worse--this is worse,--I used not to havehorrible feelings!" said the poor child in a loud whisper to her pillow.Strange that she should have to pray against any feeling which concernedDeronda!
But this conclusion had been reached through an evening spent in attendingto Mordecai, whose exaltation of spirit in the prospect of seeing hisfriend again, disposed him to utter many thoughts aloud to Mirah, thoughsuch communication was often interrupted by intervals apparently filledwith an inward utterance that animated his eyes and gave an occasionalsilent action to his lips. One thought especially occupied him.
"Seest thou, Mirah," he said once, after a long silence, "the _Shemah_,wherein we briefly confess the divine Unity, is the chief devotionalexercise of the Hebrew; and this made our religion the fundamentalreligion for the whole world; for the divine Unity embraced as itsconsequence the ultimate unity of mankind. See, then--the nation which hasbeen scoffed at for its separateness, has given a binding theory to thehuman race. Now, in complete unity a part possesses the whole as the wholepossesses every part: and in this way human life is tending toward theimage of the Supreme Unity: for as our life becomes more spiritual bycapacity of thought, and joy therein, possession tends to become moreuniversal, being independent of gross material contact; so that in a briefday the soul of man may know in fuller volume the good which has been andis, nay, is to come, than all he could possess in a whole life where hehad to follow the creeping paths of the senses. In this moment, my sister,I hold the joy of another's future within me: a future which these eyeswill not see, and which my spirit may not then recognize as mine. Irecognize it now, and love it so, that I can lay down this poor life uponits altar and say: 'Burn, burn indiscernibly into that which shall be,which is my love and not me.' Dost thou understand, Mirah?"
"A little," said Mirah, faintly, "but my mind is too poor to have feltit."
"And yet," said Mordecai, rather insistently, "women are specially framedfor the love which feels possession in renouncing, and is thus a fit imageof what I mean. Somewhere in the later _Midrash_, I think, is the story ofa Jewish maiden who loved a Gentile king so well, that this was what shedid:--she entered into prison and changed clothes with the woman who wasbeloved by the king, that she might deliver that woman from death by dyingin her stead, and leave the king to be happy in his love which was not forher. This is the surpassing love, that loses self in the object of love."
"No, Ezra, no," said Mirah, with low-toned intensity, "that was not it.She wanted the king when she was dead to know what she had done, and feelthat she was better than the other. It was her strong self, wanting toconquer, that made her die."
Mordecai was silent a little, and then argued--
"You can make the story so in your mind, Ezra, because you are great, andlike to fancy the greatest that could be. But I think it was not reallylike that. The Jewish girl must have had jealousy in her heart, and shewanted somehow to have the first place in the king's mind. That is whatshe would die for."
"My sister, thou hast read too many plays, where the writers delight inshowing the human passions as indwelling demons, unmixed with therelenting and devout elements of the soul. Thou judgest by the plays, andnot by thy own heart, which is like our mother's."
Mirah made no answer.