Daniel Deronda

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There was silence for a little while. Sir Hugo had begun to talk of the
Grandcourts as the less difficult subject between himself and Deronda; but
they were both wishing to overcome a reluctance to perfect frankness on
the events which touched their relation to each other. Deronda felt that
his letter, after the first interview with his mother, had been rather a
thickening than a breaking of the ice, and that he ought to wait for the
first opening to come from Sir Hugo. Just when they were about to lose
sight of the port, the baronet turned, and pausing as if to get a last
view, said in a tone of more serious feeling--"And about the main
business of your coming to Genoa, Dan? You have not been deeply pained by
anything you have learned, I hope? There is nothing that you feel need
change your position in any way? You know, whatever happens to you must
always be of importance to me."

"I desire to meet your goodness by perfect confidence, sir," said Deronda.
"But I can't answer those questions truly by a simple yes or no. Much that
I have heard about the past has pained me. And it has been a pain to meet
and part with my mother in her suffering state, as I have been compelled
to do, But it is no pain--it is rather a clearing up of doubts for which I
am thankful, to know my parentage. As to the effect on my position, there
will be no change in my gratitude to you, sir, for the fatherly care and
affection you have always shown me. But to know that I was born a Jew, may
have a momentous influence on my life, which I am hardly able to tell you
of at present."

Deronda spoke the last sentence with a resolve that overcame some
diffidence. He felt that the differences between Sir Hugo's nature and his
own would have, by-and-by, to disclose themselves more markedly than had
ever yet been needful. The baronet gave him a quick glance, and turned to
walk on. After a few moments' silence, in which he had reviewed all the
material in his memory which would enable him to interpret Deronda's
words, he said--

"I have long expected something remarkable from you, Dan; but, for God's
sake, don't go into any eccentricities! I can tolerate any man's
difference of opinion, but let him tell it me without getting himself up
as a lunatic. At this stage of the world, if a man wants to be taken
seriously, he must keep clear of melodrama. Don't misunderstand me. I am
not suspecting you of setting up any lunacy on your own account. I only
think you might easily be led arm in arm with a lunatic, especially if he
wanted defending. You have a passion for people who are pelted, Dan. I'm
sorry for them too; but so far as company goes, it's a bad ground of
selection. However, I don't ask you to anticipate your inclination in
anything you have to tell me. When you make up your mind to a course that
requires money, I have some sixteen thousand pounds that have been
accumulating for you over and above what you have been having the interest
of as income. And now I am come, I suppose you want to get back to England
as soon as you can?"

"I must go first to Mainz to get away a chest of my grandfather's, and
perhaps to see a friend of his," said Deronda. "Although the chest has
been lying there these twenty years, I have an unreasonable sort of
nervous eagerness to get it away under my care, as if it were more likely
now than before that something might happen to it. And perhaps I am the
more uneasy, because I lingered after my mother left, instead of setting
out immediately. Yet I can't regret that I was here--else Mrs. Grandcourt
would have had none but servants to act for her."

"Yes, yes," said Sir Hugo, with a flippancy which was an escape of some
vexation hidden under his more serious speech; "I hope you are not going
to set a dead Jew above a living Christian."

Deronda colored, and repressed a retort. They were just turning into the
_Italia_.

CHAPTER LX.

"But I shall say no more of this at this time; for this is to be felt
and not to be talked of; and they who never touched it with their
fingers may secretly perhaps laugh at it in their hearts and be never
the wiser."--JEREMY TAYLOR.

The Roman Emperor in the legend put to death ten learned Israelites to
avenge the sale of Joseph by his brethren. And there have always been
enough of his kidney, whose piety lies in punishing who can see the
justice of grudges but not of gratitude. For you shall never convince
the stronger feeling that it hath not the stronger reason, or incline
him who hath no love to believe that there is good ground for loving.
As we may learn from the order of word-making, wherein _love_
precedeth _lovable_.

When Deronda presented his letter at the banking-house in the _Schuster
Strasse_ at Mainz, and asked for Joseph Kalonymos, he was presently shown
into an inner room, where, seated at a table arranging open letters, was
the white-bearded man whom he had seen the year before in the synagogue at
Frankfort. He wore his hat--it seemed to be the same old felt hat as
before--and near him was a packed portmanteau with a wrap and overcoat
upon it. On seeing Deronda enter he rose, but did not advance or put out
his hand. Looking at him with small penetrating eyes which glittered like
black gems in the midst of his yellowish face and white hair, he said in
German--

"Good! It is now you who seek me, young man."

"Yes; I seek you with gratitude, as a friend of my grandfather's," said
Deronda, "and I am under an obligation to you for giving yourself much
trouble on my account." He spoke without difficulty in that liberal German
tongue which takes many strange accents to its maternal bosom.

Kalonymos now put out his hand and said cordially, "So you are no longer
angry at being something more than an Englishman?"

"On the contrary. I thank you heartily for helping to save me from
remaining in ignorance of my parentage, and for taking care of the chest
that my grandfather left in trust for me."

"Sit down, sit down," said Kalonymos, in a quick undertone, seating
himself again, and pointing to a chair near him. Then deliberately laying
aside his hat and showing a head thickly covered, with white hair, he
stroked and clutched his beard while he looked examiningly at the young
face before him. The moment wrought strongly on Deronda's imaginative
susceptibility: in the presence of one linked still in zealous friendship
with the grandfather whose hope had yearned toward him when he was unborn,
and who, though dead, was yet to speak with him in those written memorials
which, says Milton, "contain a potency of life in them to be as active as
that soul whose progeny they are," he seemed to himself to be touching the
electric chain of his own ancestry; and he bore the scrutinizing look of
Kalonymos with a delighted awe, something like what one feels in the
solemn commemoration of acts done long ago but still telling markedly on
the life of to-day. Impossible for men of duller, fibre--men whose
affection is not ready to diffuse itself through the wide travel of
imagination, to comprehend, perhaps even to credit this sensibility of
Deronda's; but it subsisted, like their own dullness, notwithstanding
their lack of belief in it--and it gave his face an expression which
seemed very satisfactory to the observer.

He said in Hebrew, quoting from one of the fine hymns in the Hebrew
liturgy, "As thy goodness has been great to the former generations, even
so may it be to the latter." Then after pausing a little he began, "Young
man, I rejoice that I was not yet set off again on my travels, and that
you are come in time for me to see the image of my friend as he was in his
youth--no longer perverted from the fellowship of your people--no longer
shrinking in proud wrath from the touch of him who seemed to be claiming
you as a Jew. You come with thankfulness yourself to claim the kindred and
heritage that wicked contrivance would have robbed you of. You come with a
willing soul to declare, 'I am the grandson of Daniel Charisi.' Is it not
so?"

"Assuredly it is," said Deronda. "But let me say that I should at no time
have been inclined to treat a Jew with incivility simply because he was a
Jew. You can understand that I shrank from saying to a stranger, 'I know
nothing of my mother.'"

"A sin, a sin!" said Kalonymos, putting up his hand and closing his eyes
in disgust. "A robbery of our people--as when our youths and maidens were
reared for the Roman Edom. But it is frustrated. I have frustrated it.
When Daniel Charisi--may his Rock and his Redeemer guard him!--when Daniel
Charisi was a stripling and I was a lad little above his shoulder, we made
a solemn vow always to be friends. He said, 'Let us bind ourselves with
duty, as if we were sons of the same mother.' That was his bent from first
to last--as he said, to fortify his soul with bonds. It was a saying of
his, 'Let us bind love with duty; for duty is the love of law; and law is
the nature of the Eternal.' So we bound ourselves. And though we were much
apart in our later life, the bond has never been broken. When he was dead,
they sought to rob him; but they could not rob him of me. I rescued that
remainder of him which he had prized and preserved for his offspring. And
I have restored to him the offspring they had robbed him of. I will bring
you the chest forthwith."

Kalonymos left the room for a few minutes, and returned with a clerk who
carried the chest, set it down on the floor, drew off a leather cover, and
went out again. It was not very large, but was made heavy by ornamental
bracers and handles of gilt iron. The wood was beautifully incised with
Arabic lettering.

"So!" said Kalonymos, returning to his seat. "And here is the curious
key," he added, taking it from a small leathern bag. "Bestow it carefully.
I trust you are methodic and wary." He gave Deronda the monitory and
slightly suspicious look with which age is apt to commit any object to the
keeping of youth.

"I shall be more careful of this than of any other property," said
Deronda, smiling and putting the key in his breast-pocket. "I never before
possessed anything that was a sign to me of so much cherished hope and
effort. And I shall never forget that the effort was partly yours. Have
you time to tell me more of my grandfather? Or shall I be trespassing in
staying longer?"

"Stay yet a while. In an hour and eighteen minutes I start for Trieste,"
said Kalonymos, looking at his watch, "and presently my sons will expect my
attention. Will you let me make you known to them, so that they may have
the pleasure of showing hospitality to my friend's grandson? They dwell
here in ease and luxury, though I choose to be a wanderer."

"I shall be glad if you will commend me to their acquaintance for some
future opportunity," said Deronda. "There are pressing claims calling me
to England--friends who may be much in need of my presence. I have been
kept away from them too long by unexpected circumstances. But to know more
of you and your family would be motive enough to bring me again to Mainz."

"Good! Me you will hardly find, for I am beyond my threescore years and
ten, and I am a wanderer, carrying my shroud with me. But my sons and
their children dwell here in wealth and unity. The days are changed for us
since Karl the Great fetched my ancestors from Italy to bring some
tincture of knowledge to our rough German brethren. I and my
contemporaries have had to fight for it too. Our youth fell on evil days;
but this we have won; we increase our wealth in safety, and the learning
of all Germany is fed and fattened by Jewish brains--though they keep not
always their Jewish hearts. Have you been left altogether ignorant of your
people's life, young man?"

"No," said Deronda, "I have lately, before I had any true suspicion of my
parentage, been led to study everything belonging to their history with
more interest than any other subject. It turns out that I have been making
myself ready to understand my grandfather a little." He was anxious less
the time should be consumed before this circuitous course of talk could
lead them back to the topic he most cared about. Age does not easily
distinguish between what it needs to express and what youth needs to know-
distance seeming to level the objects of memory; and keenly active as
Joseph Kalonymos showed himself, an inkstand in the wrong place would have
hindered his imagination from getting to Beyrout: he had been used to
unite restless travel with punctilious observation. But Deronda's last
sentence answered its purpose.

"So-you would perhaps have been such a man as he if your education had not
hindered; for you are like him in features:--yet not altogether, young
man. He had an iron will in his face: it braced up everybody about him.
When he was quite young he had already got one deep upright line in his
brow. I see none of that in you. Daniel Charisi used to say, 'Better, a
wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain
friend; better a false belief than no belief at all.' What he despised
most was indifference. He had longer reasons than I can give you."

"Yet his knowledge was not narrow?" said Deronda, with a tacit reference
to the usual excuse for indecision--that it comes from knowing too much.

"Narrow? no," said Kalonymos, shaking his head with a compassionate smile
"From his childhood upward, he drank in learning as easily as the plant
sucks up water. But he early took to medicine and theories about life and
health. He traveled to many countries, and spent much of his substance in
seeing and knowing. What he used to insist on was that the strength and
wealth of mankind depended on the balance of separateness and
communication, and he was bitterly against our people losing themselves
among the Gentiles; 'It's no better,' said he, 'than the many sorts of
grain going back from their variety into sameness.' He mingled all sorts
of learning; and in that he was like our Arabic writers in the golden
time. We studied together, but he went beyond me. Though we were bosom
friends, and he poured himself out to me, we were as different as the
inside and outside of the bowl. I stood up for two notions of my own: I
took Charisi's sayings as I took the shape of the trees: they were there,
not to be disputed about. It came to the same thing in both of us; we were
both faithful Jews, thankful not to be Gentiles. And since I was a ripe
man, I have been what I am now, for all but age-loving to wander, loving
transactions, loving to behold all things, and caring nothing about
hardship. Charisi thought continually of our people's future: he went with
all his soul into that part of our religion: I, not. So we have freedom, I
am content. Our people wandered before they were driven. Young man when I
am in the East, I lie much on deck and watch the greater stars. The sight
of them satisfies me. I know them as they rise, and hunger not to know
more. Charisi was satisfied with no sight, but pieced it out with what had
been before and what would come after. Yet we loved each other, and as he
said, he bound our love with duty; we solemnly pledged ourselves to help
and defend each other to the last. I have fulfilled my pledge." Here
Kalonymos rose, and Deronda, rising also, said--

"And in being faithful to him you have caused justice to be done to me. It
would have been a robbery of me too that I should never have known of the
inheritance he had prepared for me. I thank you with my whole soul."

"Be worthy of him, young man. What is your vocation?" This question was
put with a quick abruptness which embarrassed Deronda, who did not feel it
quite honest to allege his law-reading as a vocation. He answered--

"I cannot say that I have any."

"Get one, get one. The Jew must be diligent. You will call yourself a Jew
and profess the faith of your fathers?" said Kalonymos, putting his hand
on Deronda's shoulder and looking sharply in his face.

"I shall call myself a Jew," said Deronda, deliberately, becoming slightly
paler under the piercing eyes of his questioner. "But I will not say that
I shall profess to believe exactly as my fathers have believed. Our
fathers themselves changed the horizon of their belief and learned of
other races. But I think I can maintain my grandfather's notion of
separateness with communication. I hold that my first duty is to my own
people, and if there is anything to be done toward restoring or perfecting
their common life, I shall make that my vocation."

It happened to Deronda at that moment, as it has often happened to others,
that the need for speech made an epoch in resolve. His respect for the
questioner would not let him decline to answer, and by the necessity to
answer he found out the truth for himself.

"Ah, you argue and you look forward--you are Daniel Charisi's grandson,"
said Kalonymos, adding a benediction in Hebrew.

With that they parted; and almost as soon as Deronda was in London, the
aged man was again on shipboard, greeting the friendly stars without any
eager curiosity.

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, another
breast besides Rex Gascoigne's, in which the news of Grandcourt's death
caused both strong agitation and the effort to repress it.

It was Hans Meyrick's habit to send or bring in the _Times_ for his
mother's reading. She was a great reader of news, from the widest-reaching
politics to the list of marriages; the latter, she said, giving her the
pleasant sense of finishing the fashionable novels without having read
them, and seeing the heroes and heroines happy without knowing what poor
creatures they were. On a Wednesday, there were reasons why Hans always
chose to bring the paper, and to do so about the time that Mirah had
nearly ended giving Mab her weekly lesson, avowing that he came then
because he wanted to hear Mirah sing. But on the particular Wednesday now
in question, after entering the house as quietly as usual with his latch-
key, he appeared in the parlor, shaking the _Times_ aloft with a crackling
noise, in remorseless interruption of Mab's attempt to render _Lascia
ch'io pianga_ with a remote imitation of her teacher. Piano and song
ceased immediately; Mirah, who had been playing the accompaniment,
involuntarily started up and turned round, the crackling sound, after the
occasional trick of sounds, having seemed to her something thunderous; and
Mab 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 only
other person in the room. "Anything about Italy--anything about the
Austrians giving up Venice?"

"Nothing about Italy, but something from Italy," said Hans, with a
peculiarity in his tone and manner which set his mother interpreting.
Imagine how some of us feel and behave when an event, not disagreeable
seems to be confirming and carrying out our private constructions. We say,
"What do you think?" in a pregnant tone to some innocent person who has
not embarked his wisdom in the same boat with ours, and finds our
information flat.

"Nothing bad?" said Mrs. Meyrick anxiously, thinking immediately of
Deronda; and Mirah's heart had been already clutched by the same thought.

"Not bad for anybody we care much about," said Hans, quickly; "rather
uncommonly lucky, I think. I never knew anybody die conveniently before.
Considering what a dear gazelle I am, I am constantly wondering to find
myself alive."

"Oh me, Hans!" said Mab, impatiently, "if you must talk of yourself, let
it be behind your own back. What _is_ it that has happened?"

"Duke Alfonso is drowned, and the Duchess is alive, that's all," said
Hans, putting the paper before Mrs. Meyrick, with his finger against a
paragraph. "But more than all is--Deronda was at Genoa in the same hotel
with them, and he saw her brought in by the fishermen who had got her out
of the water time enough to save her from any harm. It seems they saw her
jump in after her husband, which was a less judicious action than I should
have expected of the Duchess. However Deronda is a lucky fellow in being
there to take care of her."

Mirah had sunk on the music stool again, with her eyelids down and her
hands 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, creasing
his face roguishly, and throwing himself into a chair not far from Mirah.
"Who can be fond of a jealous baritone, with freezing glances, always
singing asides?--that was the husband's _role_, depend upon it. Nothing
can be neater than his getting drowned. The Duchess is at liberty now to
marry a man with a fine head of hair, and glances that will melt instead
of 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 of
indignation--

"Mr. Hans, you ought not to speak in that way. Mr. Deronda would not like
you to speak so. Why will you say he is lucky--why will you use words of
that sort about life and death--when what is life to one is death to
another? How do you know it would be lucky if he loved Mrs. Grandcourt? It
might be a great evil to him. She would take him away from my brother--I
know she would. Mr. Deronda would not call that lucky to pierce my
brother's heart."

All three were struck with the sudden transformation. Mirah's face, with a
look of anger that might have suited Ithuriel, pale, even to the lips that
were usually so rich of tint, was not far from poor Hans, who sat
transfixed, 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 hang
myself like Judas--if it's allowable to mention him." Even in Hans's
sorrowful moments, his improvised words had inevitably some drollery.

But Mirah's anger was not appeased: how could it be? She had burst into
indignant speech as creatures in intense pain bite and make their teeth
meet 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 of
music 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 of
Hans' 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 his
marrying Mrs. Grandcourt. Men's minds must be very black, I think," ended
Mab, with much scorn.

"Quite true, my dear," said Hans, in a low tone, rising and turning on his
heel to walk toward the back window.

"We had better go on, Mab; you have not given your full time to the
lesson," said Mirah, in a higher tone than usual. "Will you sing this
again, or shall I sing it to you?"

"Oh, please sing it to me," said Mab, rejoiced to take no more notice of
what had happened.

And Mirah immediately sang _Lascia ch'io pianga_, giving forth its
melodious sobs and cries with new fullness and energy. Hans paused in his
walk and leaned against the mantel-piece, keeping his eyes carefully away
from his mother's. When Mirah had sung her last note and touched the last
chord, 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, not
daring to look at her, instead of kissing her, as usual. But the little
mother drew Mirah's face down to hers, and said, soothingly, "God bless
you, my dear." Mirah felt that she had committed an offense against Mrs.
Meyrick by angrily rebuking Hans, and mixed with the rest of her suffering
was the sense that she had shown something like a proud ingratitude, an
unbecoming assertion of superiority. And her friend had divined this
compunction.

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 tenderness
cunningly disguised, "you are not going to walk home with Mirah. I am sure
she 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 and
closed it behind him, he walked by her side unforbidden. She had not the
courage to begin speaking to him again--conscious that she had perhaps
been unbecomingly severe in her words to him, yet finding only severer
words behind them in her heart. Besides, she was pressed upon by a crowd
of thoughts thrusting themselves forward as interpreters of that
consciousness which still remained unaltered to herself.