for every visible arc in the wanderer’s orbit; and the narrator of
human actions, if he did his work with the same completeness, would
have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling and thought which lead
up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense
suffering which take the quality of action—like the cry of
Prometheus, whose chained anguish4 seems a greater energy than the sea
and sky he invokes5 and the deity6 he defies.
Deronda’s circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional. One moment had been burned into his life as its chief epoch7—a moment full of July sunshine and large pink roses shedding their last petals8 on a grassy9 court enclosed on three sides by a gothic cloister10. Imagine him in such a scene: a boy of thirteen, stretched prone11 on the grass where it was in shadow, his curly head propped13 on his arms over a book, while his tutor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool under shelter. Deronda’s book was Sismondi’s History of the Italian Republics; the lad had a passion for history, eager to know how time had been filled up since the flood, and how things were carried on in the dull periods. Suddenly he let down his left arm and looked at his tutor, saying in purest boyish tones,
“Mr. Fraser, how was it that the popes and cardinals14 always had so many nephews?”
The tutor, an able young Scotchman, who acted as Sir Hugo Mallinger’s secretary, roused rather unwillingly16 from his political economy, answered with the clear-cut emphatic17 chant which makes a truth doubly telling in Scotch15 utterance18,
“Their own children were called nephews.”
“Why?” said Deronda.
“It was just for the propriety19 of the thing; because, as you know very well, priests don’t marry, and the children were illegitimate.”
Mr. Fraser, thrusting out his lower lip and making his chant of the last word the more emphatic for a little impatience20 at being interrupted, had already turned his eyes on his book again, while Deronda, as if something had stung him, started up in a sitting attitude with his back to the tutor.
He had always called Sir Hugo Mallinger his uncle, and when it once occurred to him to ask about his father and mother, the baronet had answered, “You lost your father and mother when you were quite a little one; that is why I take care of you.” Daniel then straining to discern something in that early twilight21, had a dim sense of having been kissed very much, and surrounded by thin, cloudy, scented22 drapery, till his fingers caught in something hard, which hurt him, and he began to cry. Every other memory he had was of the little world in which he still lived. And at that time he did not mind about learning more, for he was too fond of Sir Hugo to be sorry for the loss of unknown parents. Life was very delightful23 to the lad, with an uncle who was always indulgent and cheerful—a fine man in the bright noon of life, whom Daniel thought absolutely perfect, and whose place was one of the finest in England, at once historical, romantic, and home-like: a picturesque24 architectural outgrowth from an abbey, which had still remnants of the old monastic trunk. Diplow lay in another county, and was a comparatively landless place which had come into the family from a rich lawyer on the female side who wore the perruque of the restoration; whereas the Mallingers had the grant of Monk’s Topping under Henry the Eighth, and ages before had held the neighboring lands of King’s Topping, tracing indeed their origin to a certain Hugues le Malingre, who came in with the Conqueror—and also apparently25 with a sickly complexion26 which had been happily corrected in his descendants. Two rows of these descendants, direct and collateral27, females of the male line, and males of the female, looked down in the gallery over the cloisters28 on the nephew Daniel as he walked there: men in armor with pointed29 beards and arched eyebrows30, pinched ladies in hoops31 and ruffs with no face to speak of; grave-looking men in black velvet32 and stuffed hips33, and fair, frightened women holding little boys by the hand; smiling politicians in magnificent perruques, and ladies of the prize-animal kind, with rosebud34 mouths and full eyelids35, according to Lely; then a generation whose faces were revised and embellished36 in the taste of Kneller; and so on through refined editions of the family types in the time of Reynolds and Romney, till the line ended with Sir Hugo and his younger brother Henleigh. This last had married Miss Grandcourt, and taken her name along with her estates, thus making a junction37 between two equally old families, impaling38 the three Saracens’ heads proper and three bezants of the one with the tower and falcons39 argent of the other, and, as it happened, uniting their highest advantages in the prospects40 of that Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt who is at present more of an acquaintance to us than either Sir Hugo or his nephew Daniel Deronda.
In Sir Hugo’s youthful portrait with rolled collar and high cravat43, Sir Thomas Lawrence had done justice to the agreeable alacrity44 of expression and sanguine45 temperament46 still to be seen in the original, but had done something more than justice in slightly lengthening47 the nose, which was in reality shorter than might have been expected in a Mallinger. Happily the appropriate nose of the family reappeared in his younger brother, and was to be seen in all its refined regularity48 in his nephew Mallinger Grandcourt. But in the nephew Daniel Deronda the family faces of various types, seen on the walls of the gallery, found no reflex. Still he was handsomer than any of them, and when he was thirteen might have served as model for any painter who wanted to image the most memorable49 of boys: you could hardly have seen his face thoroughly50 meeting yours without believing that human creatures had done nobly in times past, and might do more nobly in time to come. The finest childlike faces have this consecrating51 power, and make us shudder52 anew at all the grossness and basely-wrought53 griefs of the world, lest they should enter here and defile54.
But at this moment on the grass among the rose-petals, Daniel Deronda was making a first acquaintance with those griefs. A new idea had entered his mind, and was beginning to change the aspect of his habitual55 feelings as happy careless voyagers are changed with the sky suddenly threatened and the thought of danger arises. He sat perfectly56 still with his back to the tutor, while his face expressed rapid inward transition. The deep blush, which had come when he first started up, gradually subsided57; but his features kept that indescribable look of subdued58 activity which often accompanies a new mental survey of familiar facts. He had not lived with other boys, and his mind showed the same blending of child’s ignorance with surprising knowledge which is oftener seen in bright girls. Having read Shakespeare as well as a great deal of history, he could have talked with the wisdom of a bookish child about men who were born out of wedlock59 and were held unfortunate in consequence, being under disadvantages which required them to be a sort of heroes if they were to work themselves up to an equal standing60 with their legally born brothers. But he had never brought such knowledge into any association with his own lot, which had been too easy for him ever to think about it—until this moment when there had darted61 into his mind with the magic of quick comparison, the possibility that here was the secret of his own birth, and that the man whom he called uncle was really his father. Some children, even younger than Daniel, have known the first arrival of care, like an ominous62 irremovable guest in their tender lives, on the discovery that their parents, whom they had imagined able to buy everything, were poor and in hard money troubles. Daniel felt the presence of a new guest who seemed to come with an enigmatic veiled face, and to carry dimly-conjectured, dreaded64 revelations. The ardor66 which he had given to the imaginary world in his books suddenly rushed toward his own history and spent its pictorial67 energy there, explaining what he knew, representing the unknown. The uncle whom he loved very dearly took the aspect of a father who held secrets about him—who had done him a wrong—yes, a wrong: and what had become of his mother, for whom he must have been taken away?—Secrets about which he, Daniel, could never inquire; for to speak or to be spoken to about these new thoughts seemed like falling flakes69 of fire to his imagination. Those who have known an impassioned childhood will understand this dread65 of utterance about any shame connected with their parents. The impetuous advent70 of new images took possession of him with the force of fact for the first time told, and left him no immediate71 power for the reflection that he might be trembling at a fiction of his own. The terrible sense of collision between a strong rush of feeling and the dread of its betrayal, found relief at length in big slow tears, which fell without restraint until the voice of Mr. Fraser was heard saying:
“Daniel, do you see that you are sitting on the bent72 pages of your book?”
Daniel immediately moved the book without turning round, and after holding it before him for an instant, rose with it and walked away into the open grounds, where he could dry his tears unobserved. The first shock of suggestion past, he could remember that he had no certainty how things really had been, and that he had been making conjectures73 about his own history, as he had often made stories about Pericles or Columbus, just to fill up the blanks before they became famous. Only there came back certain facts which had an obstinate74 reality, almost like the fragments of a bridge, telling you unmistakably how the arches lay. And again there came a mood in which his conjectures seemed like a doubt of religion, to be banished75 as an offense76, and a mean prying77 after what he was not meant to know; for there was hardly a delicacy78 of feeling this lad was not capable of. But the summing-up of all his fluctuating experience at this epoch was, that a secret impression had come to him which had given him something like a new sense in relation to all the elements of his life. And the idea that others probably knew things concerning which they did not choose to mention, set up in him a premature79 reserve which helped to intensify80 his inward experience. His ears open now to words which before that July day would have passed by him unnoted; and round every trivial incident which imagination could connect with his suspicions, a newly-roused set of feelings were ready to cluster themselves.
One such incident a month later wrought itself deeply into his life. Daniel had not only one of those thrilling boy voices which seem to bring an idyllic81 heaven and earth before our eyes, but a fine musical instinct, and had early made out accompaniments for himself on the piano, while he sang from memory. Since then he had had some teaching, and Sir Hugo, who delighted in the boy, used to ask for his music in the presence of guests. One morning after he had been singing “Sweet Echo” before a small party of gentlemen whom the rain had kept in the house, the baronet, passing from a smiling remark to his next neighbor said:
“Come here, Dan!”
The boy came forward with unusual reluctance82. He wore an embroidered83 holland blouse which set off the rich coloring of his head and throat, and the resistant84 gravity about his mouth and eyes as he was being smiled upon, made their beauty the more impressive. Every one was admiring him.
“What do you say to being a great singer? Should you like to be adored by the world and take the house by storm, like Mario and Tamberlik?”
Daniel reddened instantaneously, but there was a just perceptible interval85 before he answered with angry decision,
“No; I should hate it!”
“Well, well, well!” said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness86 intended to be soothing87. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and going to his own chamber88 threw himself on the broad window-sill, which was a favorite retreat of his when he had nothing particular to do. Here he could see the rain gradually subsiding89 with gleams through the parting clouds which lit up a great reach of the park, where the old oaks stood apart from each other, and the bordering wood was pierced with a green glade90 which met the eastern sky. This was a scene which had always been part of his home—part of the dignified91 ease which had been a matter of course in his life. And his ardent92 clinging nature had appropriated it all with affection. He knew a great deal of what it was to be a gentleman by inheritance, and without thinking much about himself—for he was a boy of active perceptions and easily forgot his own existence in that of Robert Bruce—he had never supposed that he could be shut out from such a lot, or have a very different part in the world from that of the uncle who petted him. It is possible (though not greatly believed in at present) to be fond of poverty and take it for a bride, to prefer scoured93 deal, red quarries94 and whitewash95 for one’s private surroundings, to delight in no splendor96 but what has open doors for the whole nation, and to glory in having no privileges except such as nature insists on; and noblemen have been known to run away from elaborate ease and the option of idleness, that they might bind98 themselves for small pay to hard-handed labor97. But Daniel’s tastes were altogether in keeping with his nurture99: his disposition100 was one in which everyday scenes and habits beget101 not ennui102 or rebellion, but delight, affection, aptitudes103; and now the lad had been stung to the quick by the idea that his uncle—perhaps his father—thought of a career for him which was totally unlike his own, and which he knew very well was not thought of among possible destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. He had often stayed in London with Sir Hugo, who to indulge the boy’s ear had carried him to the opera to hear the great tenors105, so that the image of a singer taking the house by storm was very vivid to him; but now, spite of his musical gift, he set himself bitterly against the notion of being dressed up to sing before all those fine people, who would not care about him except as a wonderful toy. That Sir Hugo should have thought of him in that position for a moment, seemed to Daniel an unmistakable proof that there was something about his birth which threw him out from the class of gentlemen to which the baronet belonged. Would it ever be mentioned to him? Would the time come when his uncle would tell him everything? He shrank from the prospect41: in his imagination he preferred ignorance. If his father had been wicked—Daniel inwardly used strong words, for he was feeling the injury done him as a maimed boy feels the crushed limb which for others is merely reckoned in an average of accidents—if his father had done any wrong, he wished it might never be spoken of to him: it was already a cutting thought that such knowledge might be in other minds. Was it in Mr. Fraser’s? probably not, else he would not have spoken in that way about the pope’s nephews. Daniel fancied, as older people do, that every one else’s consciousness was as active as his own on a matter which was vital to him. Did Turvey the valet know?—and old Mrs. French the housekeeper106?—and Banks the bailiff, with whom he had ridden about the farms on his pony107?—And now there came back the recollection of a day some years before when he was drinking Mrs. Banks’s whey, and Banks said to his wife with a wink108 and a cunning laugh, “He features the mother, eh?” At that time little Daniel had merely thought that Banks made a silly face, as the common farming men often did, laughing at what was not laughable; and he rather resented being winked109 at and talked of as if he did not understand everything. But now that small incident became information: it was to be reasoned on. How could he be like his mother and not like his father? His mother must have been a Mallinger, if Sir Hugo were his uncle. But no! His father might have been Sir Hugo’s brother and have changed his name, as Mr. Henleigh Mallinger did when he married Miss Grandcourt. But then, why had he never heard Sir Hugo speak of his brother Deronda, as he spoke68 of his brother Grandcourt? Daniel had never before cared about the family tree—only about that ancestor who had killed three Saracens in one encounter. But now his mind turned to a cabinet of estate-maps in the library, where he had once seen an illuminated110 parchment hanging out, that Sir Hugo said was the family tree. The phrase was new and odd to him—he was a little fellow then—hardly more than half his present age—and he gave it no precise meaning. He knew more now and wished that he could examine that parchment. He imagined that the cabinet was always locked, and longed to try it. But here he checked himself. He might be seen: and he would never bring himself near even a silent admission of the sore that had opened in him.
It is in such experiences of a boy or girlhood, while elders are debating whether most education lies in science or literature, that the main lines of character are often laid down. If Daniel had been of a less ardently111 affectionate nature, the reserve about himself and the supposition that others had something to his disadvantage in their minds, might have turned into a hard, proud antagonism112. But inborn113 lovingness was strong enough to keep itself level with resentment114. There was hardly any creature in his habitual world that he was not fond of; teasing them occasionally, of course—all except his uncle, or “Nunc,” as Sir Hugo had taught him to say; for the baronet was the reverse of a strait-laced man, and left his dignity to take care of itself. Him Daniel loved in that deep-rooted filial way which makes children always the happier for being in the same room with father or mother, though their occupations may be quite apart. Sir Hugo’s watch-chain and seals, his handwriting, his mode of smoking and of talking to his dogs and horses, had all a rightness and charm about them to the boy which went along with the happiness of morning and breakfast time. That Sir Hugo had always been a Whig, made Tories and Radicals115 equally opponents of the truest and best; and the books he had written were all seen under the same consecration116 of loving belief which differenced what was his from what was not his, in spite of general resemblance. Those writings were various, from volumes of travel in the brilliant style, to articles on things in general, and pamphlets on political crises; but to Daniel they were alike in having an unquestionable rightness by which other people’s information could be tested.
Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion that something in this object of complete love was not quite right? Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is hardly a less revolutionary shock to a passionate117 child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter118 for us in maturer life.
But some time after this renewal119 of Daniel’s agitation120 it appeared that Sir Hugo must have been making a merely playful experiment in his question about the singing. He sent for Daniel into the library, and looking up from his writing as the boy entered threw himself sideways in his armchair. “Ah, Dan!” he said kindly121, drawing one of the old embroidered stools close to him. “Come and sit down here.”
Daniel obeyed, and Sir Hugo put a gentle hand on his shoulder, looking at him affectionately.
“What is it, my boy? Have you heard anything that has put you out of spirits lately?”
Daniel was determined122 not to let the tears come, but he could not speak.
“All changes are painful when people have been happy, you know,” said Sir Hugo, lifting his hand from the boy’s shoulder to his dark curls and rubbing them gently. “You can’t be educated exactly as I wish you to be without our parting. And I think you will find a great deal to like at school.”
This was not what Daniel expected, and was so far a relief, which gave him spirit to answer,
“Am I to go to school?”
“Yes, I mean you to go to Eton. I wish you to have the education of an English gentleman; and for that it is necessary that you should go to a public school in preparation for the university: Cambridge I mean you to go to; it was my own university.”
Daniel’s color came and went.
“What do you say, Sirrah?” said Sir Hugo, smiling.
“I should like to be a gentleman,” said Daniel, with firm distinctness, “and go to school, if that is what a gentleman’s son must do.”
Sir Hugo watched him silently for a few moments, thinking he understood now why the lad had seemed angry at the notion of becoming a singer. Then he said tenderly,
“And so you won’t mind about leaving your old Nunc?”
“Yes, I shall,” said Daniel, clasping Sir Hugo’s caressing123 arm with both his hands. “But sha’n’t I come home and be with you in the holidays?”
“Oh yes, generally,” said Sir Hugo. “But now I mean you to go at once to a new tutor, to break the change for you before you go to Eton.”
After this interview Daniel’s spirit rose again. He was meant to be a gentleman, and in some unaccountable way it might be that his conjectures were all wrong. The very keenness of the lad taught him to find comfort in his ignorance. While he was busying his mind in the construction of possibilities, it became plain to him that there must be possibilities of which he knew nothing. He left off brooding, young joy and the spirit of adventure not being easily quenched124 within him, and in the interval before his going away he sang about the house, danced among the old servants, making them parting gifts, and insisted many times to the groom125 on the care that was to be taken of the black pony.
“Do you think I shall know much less than the other boys, Mr. Fraser?” said Daniel. It was his bent to think that every stranger would be surprised at his ignorance.
“There are dunces to be found everywhere,” said the judicious126 Fraser. “You’ll not be the biggest; but you’ve not the makings of a Porson in you, or a Leibnitz either.”
“I don’t want to be a Porson or a Leibnitz,” said Daniel. “I would rather be a greater leader, like Pericles or Washington.”
“Ay, ay; you’ve a notion they did with little parsing127, and less algebra,” said Fraser. But in reality he thought his pupil a remarkable
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