Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (669 page)

Were that deed branded, then the brand should fix

On him who urged me.

SEPHARDO.

Will it, though, my lord ?

DON SILVA.

I speak not of the fact, but of the right.

SEPHARDO.

My lord, you said but now you were resolved.

Question not if the world will be unjust

Branding your deed. If conscience has two courts

With differing verdicts, where shall lie the appeal ?

Our law must be without us or within.

The Highest speaks through all our people’s voice,

Custom, tradition, and old sanctities ;

Or he reveals himself by new decrees

Of inward certitude.

DON SILVA.

My love for her

Makes highest law, must be the voice of God.

SEPHARDO.

I thought, but now, you seemed to make excuse,

And plead as in some, court where Spanish knights

Are tried by other laws than those of love.

DON SILVA.

‘T was’ momentary. I shall dare it all.

How the great planet glows, and looks at me,

And seems to pierce me with his effluence !

Were he a living God, these rays that stir

In me the pulse of wonder were in him

Fulness of knowledge. Are you certified,

Sephardo, that the astral science shrinks

To such pale ashes, dead symbolic forms

For that congenital mixture of effects

Which life declares without the aid of lore ?

If there are times propitious or malign

To our first framing, then must all events

Have favoring periods : yon cull your plants

By signal of the heavens, then why not trace

As others would by astrologic rule

Times of good augury for momentous acts, —

As secret journeys ?

SEPHARDO.

0
            
my lord, the stars

Act not as witchcraft or as muttered spells.

1
            
said before they are not absolute,

And tell no fortunes. I adhere alone

To such tradition of their agencies

As reason fortifies.

DON SILVA.

A barren science !

Some argue now ‘t is folly. ‘T were as well

Be of their mind. If those bright stars had will, —

But they are fatal fires, and know no love.

Of old, I think, the world was happier

With many gods, who held a struggling life

As mortals do, and helped men in the straits

Of forced misdoing. I doubt that horoscope.

(DON SILVA turns from the window and reseats himself opposite

SEPHARDO.)

I am most self-contained, and strong to bear.

No man save you has seen my trembling lip

Uttering her name, since she was lost to me.

I’ll face the progeny of all my deeds.

SEPHARDO.

May they be fair ! No horoscope makes slaves.

‘T is but a mirror, shows one image forth,

And leaves the future dark with endless “ifs.”

DON SILVA.

I marvel, my Sephardo, you can pinch

With confident selection these few grains,

And call them verity, from out the dust,

Of crumbling error. Surely such thought creeps,

With insect exploration of the world.

Were I a Hebrew, now, I would be bold.

Why should you fear, not being Catholic ?

SEPHARDO.

Lo ! you yourself, my lord, mix subtleties

With gross belief; by momentary lapse

Conceive, with all the vulgar, that we Jews

Must hold ourselves God’s outlaws, and defy

All good with blasphemy, because we hold

Your good is evil ; think we must turn pale

To see our portraits painted in your hell,

And sin the more for knowing we. are lost.

DON SILVA.

Read not my words with malice. I but meant,

My temper hates an over-cautious march.

SEPHARDO.

The Unnamable made not the search for truth

To suit hidalgos’ temper. I abide

By that wise spirit of listening reverence

Which marks the boldest doctors of our race.

For truth, to us, is like a living child

Born of two parents : if the parents part

And will divide the child, how shall it live ?

Or, I will rather say : Two angels guide

The path of man, both aged and yet young,

As angels are, ripening through endless years.

On one he leans : some call her Memory,

And some, Tradition ; and her voice is sweet,

With deep mysterious accords : the other,

Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams

A light divine and searching on the earth,

Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,

Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew

Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp

Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked

But for Tradition ; we walk evermore

To higher paths, by brightening Reason’s lamp.

Still we are purblind, tottering. I hold less

Than Aben-Ezra, of that aged lore

Brought by long centuries from Chaldean plains ;

The Jew-taught Florentine rejects it all.

For still the light is measured by the eye,

And the weak organ fails. I may see ill ;

But over all belief is faithfulness,

Which fulfils vision with obedience.

So, I must grasp my morsels : truth is oft

Scattered in fragments round a stately pile

Built half of error ; and the eye’s defect

May breed too much denial. But, my lord,

I weary your sick soul. Go now with me

Into the turret. We will watch the spheres,

And. see the constellations bend and plunge

Into a depth of being where our eyes

Hold them no more. We’ll quit ourselves and be

Red Aldebaran or bright Sirius,

And sail as in a solemn voyage, bound

On some great quest we know not.

DON SILVA.

Let us go.

She may be watching too, and thought of her

Sways me, as if she knew, to every act

Of pure allegiance.

SEPHARDO.

That is love’s perfection, —

Tuning the soul to all her harmonies

So that no chord can jar. Now we will mount.

(Exeunt.)

A large hall in the Castle, of Moorish architecture. On the side where the

windows are, an outer gallery. Pages and other young gentlemen attached

to DON SILVA’S household, gathered chiefly . at one end of the hall. Some

are moving about; others are lounging on the carved benches ; others, half

stretched on pieces of matting and carpet, are gambling. ARIAS, a stripling

of fifteen, sings by snatches in a boyish treble, as he walks up and down, and

tosses back the nuts which another youth flings towards him. In the middle

DON AMADOR, a gaunt, grey-haired soldier, in a handsome uniform, sits in

a marble red-cushioned chair, with a large book spread out on his knees,

from which he is reading aloud, while his voice is half drowned by the talk

that is going on around him, first one voice and then another surging above

the hum.

ARIAS (singing).

There was a holy hermit

Who counted all things loss

For Christ his Master’s glory :

He made an ivory cross,

And as he knelt before it

And wept his murdered Lord,

The ivory turned to iron,

The cross became a sword.

JOSE (from the floor).

I say, twenty cruzados ! thy Galician wit

Can never count.

HERNANDO (also from the floor).

And thy Sevillian wit always counts double.

ARIAS (singing).

The tears that fell upon it,

They turned to red, red rust,

The tears that fell from off it

Made writing in the dust.