Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (476 page)

It was when Anna Gascoigne, visiting the Meyricks; was led to speak of her cousinship with Gwendolen. The visit had been arranged that Anna might see Mirah; the three girls were at home with their mother, and there was naturally a flux of talk among six feminine creatures, free from the presence of a distorting male standard. Anna Gascoigne felt herself much at home with the Meyrick girls, who knew what it was to have a brother, and to be generally regarded as of minor importance in the world; and she had told Rex that she thought the University very nice, because brothers made friends there whose families were not rich and grand, and yet (like the University) were very nice. The Meyricks seemed to her almost alarmingly clever, and she consulted them much on the best mode of teaching Lotta, confiding to them that she herself was the least clever of her family. Mirah had lately come in, and there was a complete bouquet of young faces around the tea-table — Hafiz, seated a little aloft with large eyes on the alert, regarding the whole scene as an apparatus for supplying his allowance of milk.

“Think of our surprise, Mirah,” said Kate. “We were speaking of Mr. Deronda and the Mallingers, and it turns out that Miss Gascoigne knows them.”

“I only knew about them,” said Anna, a little flushed with excitement, what she had heard and now saw of the lovely Jewess being an almost startling novelty to her. “I have not even seen them. But some months ago, my cousin married Sir Hugo Mallinger’s nephew, Mr. Grandcourt, who lived in Sir Hugo’s place at Diplow, near us.”

“There!” exclaimed Mab, clasping her hands. “Something must come of that. Mrs. Grandcourt, the Vandyke duchess, is your cousin?”

“Oh, yes; I was her bridesmaid,” said Anna. “Her mamma and mine are sisters. My aunt was much richer before last year, but then she and mamma lost all their fortune. Papa is a clergyman, you know, so it makes very little difference to us, except that we keep no carriage, and have no dinner parties — and I like it better. But it was very sad for poor Aunt Davilow, for she could not live with us, because she has four daughters besides Gwendolen; but then, when she married Mr. Grandcourt, it did not signify so much, because of his being so rich.”

“Oh, this finding out relationships is delightful!” said Mab. “It is like a Chinese puzzle that one has to fit together. I feel sure something wonderful may be made of it, but I can’t tell what.”

“Dear me, Mab,” said Amy, “relationships must branch out. The only difference is, that we happen to know some of the people concerned. Such things are going on every day.”

“And pray, Amy, why do you insist on the number nine being so wonderful?” said Mab. “I am sure that is happening every day. Never mind, Miss Gascoigne; please go on. And Mr. Deronda? — have you never seen Mr. Deronda? You
must
bring him in.”

“No, I have not seen him,” said Anna; “but he was at Diplow before my cousin was married, and I have heard my aunt speaking of him to papa. She said what you have been saying about him — only not so much: I mean, about Mr. Deronda living with Sir Hugo Mallinger, and being so nice, she thought. We talk a great deal about every one who comes near Pennicote, because it is so seldom there is any one new. But I remember, when I asked Gwendolen what she thought of Mr. Deronda, she said, ‘Don’t mention it, Anna: but I think his hair is dark.’ That was her droll way of answering: she was always so lively. It is really rather wonderful that I should come to hear so much about him, all through Mr. Hans knowing Rex, and then my having the pleasure of knowing you,” Anna ended, looking at Mrs. Meyrick with a shy grace.

“The pleasure is on our side too; but the wonder would have been, if you had come to this house without hearing of Mr. Deronda — wouldn’t it, Mirah?” said Mrs. Meyrick.

Mirah smiled acquiescently, but had nothing to say. A confused discontent took possession of her at the mingling of names and images to which she had been listening.

“My son calls Mrs. Grandcourt the Vandyke duchess,” continued Mrs. Meyrick, turning again to Anna; “he thinks her so striking and picturesque.”

“Yes,” said Anna. “Gwendolen was always so beautiful — people fell dreadfully in love with her. I thought it a pity, because it made them unhappy.”

“And how do you like Mr. Grandcourt, the happy lover?” said Mrs. Meyrick, who, in her way, was as much interested as Mab in the hints she had been hearing of vicissitude in in the life of a widow with daughters.

“Papa approved of Gwendolen’s accepting him, and my aunt says he is very generous,” said Anna, beginning with a virtuous intention of repressing her own sentiments; but then, unable to resist a rare occasion for speaking them freely, she went on — “else I should have thought he was not very nice — rather proud, and not at all lively, like Gwendolen. I should have thought some one younger and more lively would have suited her better. But, perhaps, having a brother who seems to us better than any one makes us think worse of others.”

“Wait till you see Mr. Deronda,” said Mab, nodding significantly.
“Nobody’s brother will do after him.”

“Our brothers
must
do for people’s husbands,” said Kate, curtly, “because they will not get Mr. Deronda. No woman will do for him to marry.”

“No woman ought to want him to marry him,” said Mab, with indignation. “
I
never should. Fancy finding out that he had a tailor’s bill, and used boot-hooks, like Hans. Who ever thought of his marrying?”

“I have,” said Kate. “When I drew a wedding for a frontispiece to ‘Hearts and Diamonds,’ I made a sort of likeness to him for the bridegroom, and I went about looking for a grand woman who would do for his countess, but I saw none that would not be poor creatures by the side of him.”

“You should have seen this Mrs. Grandcourt then,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “Hans says that she and Mr. Deronda set each other off when they are side by side. She is tall and fair. But you know her, Mirah — you can always say something descriptive. What do
you
think of Mrs. Grandcourt?”

“I think she is the
Princess of Eboli
in
Don Carlos
,” said Mirah, with a quick intensity. She was pursuing an association in her own mind not intelligible to her hearers — an association with a certain actress as well as the part she represented.

“Your comparison is a riddle for me, my dear,” said Mrs. Meyrick, smiling.

“You said that Mrs. Grandcourt was tall and fair,” continued Mirah, slightly paler. “That is quite true.”

Mrs. Meyrick’s quick eye and ear detected something unusual, but immediately explained it to herself. Fine ladies had often wounded Mirah by caprices of manner and intention.

“Mrs. Grandcourt had thought of having lessons of Mirah,” she said turning to Anna. “But many have talked of having lessons, and then have found no time. Fashionable ladies have too much work to do.”

And the chat went on without further insistance on the
Princess of Eboli
. That comparison escaped Mirah’s lips under the urgency of a pang unlike anything she had felt before. The conversation from the beginning had revived unpleasant impressions, and Mrs. Meyrick’s suggestion of Gwendolen’s figure by the side of Deronda’s had the stinging effect of a voice outside her, confirming her secret conviction that this tall and fair woman had some hold on his lot. For a long while afterward she felt as if she had had a jarring shock through her frame.

In the evening, putting her cheek against her brother’s shoulder as she was sitting by him, while he sat propped up in bed under a new difficulty of breathing, she said —

“Ezra, does it ever hurt your love for Mr. Deronda that so much of his life was all hidden away from you — that he is amongst persons and cares about persons who are all so unlike us — I mean unlike you?”

“No, assuredly no,” said Mordecai. “Rather it is a precious thought to me that he has a preparation which I lacked, and is an accomplished Egyptian.” Then, recollecting that his words had reference which his sister must not yet understand, he added. “I have the more to give him, since his treasure differs from mine. That is a blessedness in friendship.”

Mirah mused a little.

“Still,” she said, “it would be a trial to your love for him if that other part of his life were like a crowd in which he had got entangled, so that he was carried away from you — I mean in his thoughts, and not merely carried out of sight as he is now — and not merely for a little while, but continually. How should you bear that! Our religion commands us to bear. But how should you bear it?”

“Not well, my sister — not well; but it will never happen,” said Mordecai, looking at her with a tender smile. He thought that her heart needed comfort on his account.

Mirah said no more. She mused over the difference between her own state of mind and her brother’s, and felt her comparative pettiness. Why could she not be completely satisfied with what satisfied his larger judgment? She gave herself no fuller reason than a painful sense of unfitness — in what? Airy possibilities to which she could give no outline, but to which one name and one figure gave the wandering persistency of a blot in her vision. Here lay the vaguer source of the hidden sadness rendered noticeable to Hans by some diminution of that sweet ease, that ready joyousness of response in her speech and smile, which had come with the new sense of freedom and safety, and had made her presence like the freshly-opened daisies and clear bird-notes after the rain. She herself regarded her uneasiness as a sort of ingratitude and dullness of sensibility toward the great things that had been given her in her new life; and whenever she threw more energy than usual into her singing, it was the energy of indignation against the shallowness of her own content. In that mood she once said, “Shall I tell you what is the difference between you and me, Ezra? You are a spring in the drought, and I am an acorn-cup; the waters of heaven fill me, but the least little shake leaves me empty.”

“Why, what has shaken thee?” said Mordecai. He fell into this antique form of speech habitually in talking to his sister and to the Cohen children.

“Thoughts,” said Mirah; “thoughts that come like the breeze and shake me — bad people, wrong things, misery — and how they might touch our life.”

“We must take our portion, Mirah. It is there. On whose shoulder would we lay it, that we might be free?”

The one voluntary sign she made of her inward care was this distant allusion.

CHAPTER LIII
.

  ”My desolation does begin to make
  A better life.”
      — SHAKESPEARE:
Antony and Cleopatra.

Before Deronda was summoned to a second interview with his mother, a day had passed in which she had only sent him a message to say that she was not yet well enough to receive him again; but on the third morning he had a note saying, “I leave to-day. Come and see me at once.”

He was shown into the same room as before; but it was much darkened with blinds and curtains. The Princess was not there, but she presently entered, dressed in a loose wrap of some soft silk, in color a dusky orange, her head again with black lace floating about it, her arms showing themselves bare from under her wide sleeves. Her face seemed even more impressive in the sombre light, the eyes larger, the lines more vigorous. You might have imagined her a sorceress who would stretch forth her wonderful hand and arm to mix youth-potions for others, but scorned to mix them for herself, having had enough of youth.

She put her arms on her son’s shoulders at once, and kissed him on both cheeks, then seated herself among her cushions with an air of assured firmness and dignity unlike her fitfulness in their first interview, and told Deronda to sit down by her. He obeyed, saying, “You are quite relieved now, I trust?”

“Yes, I am at ease again. Is there anything more that you would like to ask me?” she said, with the matter of a queen rather than of a mother.

“Can I find the house in Genoa where you used to live with my grandfather?” said Deronda.

“No,” she answered, with a deprecating movement of her arm, “it is pulled down — not to be found. But about our family, and where my father lived at various times — you will find all that among the papers in the chest, better than I can tell you. My father, I told you, was a physician. My mother was a Morteira. I used to hear all those things without listening. You will find them all. I was born amongst them without my will. I banished them as soon as I could.”

Deronda tried to hide his pained feeling, and said, “Anything else that I should desire to know from you could only be what it is some satisfaction to your own feeling to tell me.”

“I think I have told you everything that could be demanded of me,” said the Princess, looking coldly meditative. It seemed as if she had exhausted her emotion in their former interview. The fact was, she had said to herself, “I have done it all. I have confessed all. I will not go through it again. I will save myself from agitation.” And she was acting out that scheme.

But to Deronda’s nature the moment was cruel; it made the filial yearning of his life a disappointed pilgrimage to a shrine where there were no longer the symbols of sacredness. It seemed that all the woman lacking in her was present in him, as he said, with some tremor in his voice —

“Then are we to part and I never be anything to you?”

“It is better so,” said the Princess, in a softer, mellower voice. “There could be nothing but hard duty for you, even if it were possible for you to take the place of my son. You would not love me. Don’t deny it,” she said, abruptly, putting up her hand. “I know what is the truth. You don’t like what I did. You are angry with me. You think I robbed you of something. You are on your grandfather’s side, and you will always have a condemnation of me in your heart.”

Deronda felt himself under a ban of silence. He rose from his seat by her, preferring to stand, if he had to obey that imperious prohibition of any tenderness. But his mother now looked up at him with a new admiration in her glance, saying —

“You are wrong to be angry with me. You are the better for what I did.” After pausing a little, she added, abruptly, “And now tell me what you shall do?”

“Do you mean now, immediately,” said Deronda; “or as to the course of my future life?”

“I mean in the future. What difference will it make to you that I have told you about your birth?”

“A very great difference,” said Deronda, emphatically. “I can hardly think of anything that would make a greater difference.”

“What shall you do then?” said the Princess, with more sharpness. “Make yourself just like your grandfather — be what he wished you — turn yourself into a Jew like him?”

“That is impossible. The effect of my education can never be done away with. The Christian sympathies in which my mind was reared can never die out of me,” said Deronda, with increasing tenacity of tone. “But I consider it my duty — it is the impulse of my feeling — to identify myself, as far as possible, with my hereditary people, and if I can see any work to be done for them that I can give my soul and hand to I shall choose to do it.”

His mother had her eyes fixed on him with a wondering speculation, examining his face as if she thought that by close attention she could read a difficult language there. He bore her gaze very firmly, sustained by a resolute opposition, which was the expression of his fullest self. She bent toward him a little, and said, with a decisive emphasis —

“You are in love with a Jewess.”

Deronda colored and said, “My reasons would be independent of any such fact.”

“I know better. I have seen what men are,” said the Princess, peremptorily. “Tell me the truth. She is a Jewess who will not accept any one but a Jew. There
are
a few such,” she added, with a touch of scorn.

Deronda had that objection to answer which we all have known in speaking to those who are too certain of their own fixed interpretations to be enlightened by anything we may say. But besides this, the point immediately in question was one on which he felt a repugnance either to deny or affirm. He remained silent, and she presently said —

“You love her as your father loved me, and she draws you after her as I drew him.”

Those words touched Deronda’s filial imagination, and some tenderness in his glance was taken by his mother as an assent. She went on with rising passion: “But I was leading him the other way. And now your grandfather is getting his revenge.”

“Mother,” said Deronda, remonstrantly, “don’t let us think of it in that way. I will admit that there may come some benefit from the education you chose for me. I prefer cherishing the benefit with gratitude, to dwelling with resentment on the injury. I think it would have been right that I should have been brought up with the consciousness that I was a Jew, but it must always have been a good to me to have as wide an instruction and sympathy as possible. And now, you have restored me my inheritance — events have brought a fuller restitution than you could have made — you have been saved from robbing my people of my service and me of my duty: can you not bring your whole soul to consent to this?”

Deronda paused in his pleading: his mother looked at him listeningly, as if the cadence of his voice were taking her ear, yet she shook her head slowly. He began again, even more urgently.

“You have told me that you sought what you held the best for me: open your heart to relenting and love toward my grandfather, who sought what he held the best for you.”

“Not for me, no,” she said, shaking her head with more absolute denial, and folding her arms tightly. “I tell you, he never thought of his daughter except as an instrument. Because I had wants outside his purpose, I was to be put in a frame and tortured. If that is the right law for the world, I will not say that I love it. If my acts were wrong — if it is God who is exacting from me that I should deliver up what I withheld — who is punishing me because I deceived my father and did not warn him that I should contradict his trust — well, I have told everything. I have done what I could. And
your
soul consents. That is enough. I have after all been the instrument my father wanted. — ‘I desire a grandson who shall have a true Jewish heart. Every Jew should rear his family as if he hoped that a Deliverer might spring from it.’“

In uttering these last sentences the Princess narrowed her eyes, waved her head up and down, and spoke slowly with a new kind of chest-voice, as if she were quoting unwillingly.

“Were those my grandfather’s words?” said Deronda.

“Yes, yes; and you will find them written. I wanted to thwart him,” said the Princess, with a sudden outburst of the passion she had shown in the former interview. Then she added more slowly, “You would have me love what I have hated from the time I was so high” — here she held her left hand a yard from the floor. — “That can never be. But what does it matter? His yoke has been on me, whether I loved it or not. You are the grandson he wanted. You speak as men do — as if you felt yourself wise. What does it all mean?”

Her tone was abrupt and scornful. Deronda, in his pained feeling, and under the solemn urgency of the moment, had to keep a clutching remembrance of their relationship, lest his words should become cruel. He began in a deep entreating tone:

“Mother, don’t say that I feel myself wise. We are set in the midst of difficulties. I see no other way to get any clearness than by being truthful — not by keeping back facts which may — which should carry obligation within them — which should make the only guidance toward duty. No wonder if such facts come to reveal themselves in spite of concealments. The effects prepared by generations are likely to triumph over a contrivance which would bend them all to the satisfaction of self. Your will was strong, but my grandfather’s trust which you accepted and did not fulfill — what you call his yoke — is the expression of something stronger, with deeper, farther-spreading roots, knit into the foundations of sacredness for all men. You renounced me — you still banish me — as a son” — there was an involuntary movement of indignation in Deronda’s voice — “But that stronger Something has determined that I shall be all the more the grandson whom also you willed to annihilate.”

His mother was watching him fixedly, and again her face gathered admiration. After a moment’s silence she said, in a low, persuasive tone —

“Sit down again,” and he obeyed, placing himself beside her. She laid her hand on his shoulder and went on —

“You rebuke me. Well — I am the loser. And you are angry because I banish you. What could you do for me but weary your own patience? Your mother is a shattered woman. My sense of life is little more than a sense of what was — except when the pain is present. You reproach me that I parted with you. I had joy enough without you then. Now you are come back to me, and I cannot make you a joy. Have you the cursing spirit of the Jew in you? Are you not able to forgive me? Shall you be glad to think that I am punished because I was not a Jewish mother to you?”

“How can you ask me that?” said Deronda, remonstrantly. “Have I not besought you that I might now at least be a son to you? My grief is that you have declared me helpless to comfort you. I would give up much that is dear for the sake of soothing your anguish.”

“You shall give up nothing,” said his mother, with the hurry of agitation. “You shall be happy. You shall let me think of you as happy. I shall have done you no harm. You have no reason to curse me. You shall feel for me as they feel for the dead whom they say prayers for — you shall long that I may be freed from all suffering — from all punishment. And I shall see you instead of always seeing your grandfather. Will any harm come to me because I broke his trust in the daylight after he was gone into darkness? I cannot tell: — if you think
Kaddish
will help me — say it, say it. You will come between me and the dead. When I am in your mind, you will look as you do now — always as if you were a tender son — always — as if I had been a tender mother.”

She seemed resolved that her agitation should not conquer her, but he felt her hand trembling on his shoulder. Deep, deep compassion hemmed in all words. With a face of beseeching he put his arm around her and pressed her head tenderly under his. They sat so for some moments. Then she lifted her head again and rose from her seat with a great sigh, as if in that breath she were dismissing a weight of thoughts. Deronda, standing in front of her, felt that the parting was near. But one of her swift alternations had come upon his mother.

“Is she beautiful?” she said, abruptly.

“Who?” said Deronda, changing color.

“The woman you love.”

It was not a moment for deliberate explanation. He was obliged to say,
“Yes.”