الفصل الفصل 43 · Chapter XLIII

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“My spirit is too weak; mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagined pinnacle and steep

Of godlike hardship tells me I must die

Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”

—KEATS.

After a few minutes the unwonted stillness had penetrated Mordecai’s

consciousness, and he looked up at Deronda, not in the least with

bewilderment and surprise, but with a gaze full of reposing

satisfaction. Deronda rose and placed his chair nearer, where there

could be no imagined need for raising the voice. Mordecai felt the

action as a patient feels the gentleness that eases his pillow. He

began to speak in a low tone, as if he were only thinking articulately,

not trying to reach an audience.

“In the doctrine of the Cabbala, souls are born again and again in new

bodies till they are perfected and purified, and a soul liberated from

a worn-out body may join the fellow-soul that needs it, that they may

be perfected together, and their earthly work accomplished. Then they

will depart from the mortal region, and leave place for new souls to be

born out of the store in the eternal bosom. It is the lingering

imperfection of the souls already born into the mortal region that

hinders the birth of new souls and the preparation of the Messianic

time:—thus the mind has given shape to what is hidden, as the shadow

of what is known, and has spoken truth, though it were only in parable.

When my long-wandering soul is liberated from this weary body, it will

join yours, and its work will be perfected.”

Mordecai’s pause seemed an appeal which Deronda’s feeling would not let

him leave unanswered. He tried to make it truthful; but for Mordecai’s

ear it was inevitably filled with unspoken meaning. He only said,

“Everything I can in conscience do to make your life effective I will

do.”

“I know it,” said Mordecai, in a tone of quiet certainty which

dispenses with further assurance. “I heard it. You see it all—you are

by my side on the mount of vision, and behold the paths of fulfillment

which others deny.”

He was silent a moment or two, and then went on meditatively,

“You will take up my life where it was broken. I feel myself back in

that day when my life was broken. The bright morning sun was on the

quay—it was at Trieste—the garments of men from all nations shone

like jewels—the boats were pushing off—the Greek vessel that would

land us at Beyrout was to start in an hour. I was going with a merchant

as his clerk and companion. I said, I shall behold the lands and people

of the East, and I shall speak with a fuller vision. I breathed then as

you do, without labor; I had the light step and the endurance of youth,

I could fast, I could sleep on the hard ground. I had wedded poverty,

and I loved my bride—for poverty to me was freedom. My heart exulted

as if it had been the heart of Moses ben Maimon, strong with the

strength of three score years, and knowing the work that was to fill

them. It was the first time I had been south; the soul within me felt

its former sun; and standing on the quay, where the ground I stood on

seemed to send forth light, and the shadows had an azure glory as of

spirits become visible, I felt myself in the flood of a glorious life,

wherein my own small year-counted existence seemed to melt, so that I

knew it not; and a great sob arose within me as at the rush of waters

that were too strong a bliss. So I stood there awaiting my companion;

and I saw him not till he said: ‘Ezra, I have been to the post and

there is your letter.’”

“Ezra!” exclaimed Deronda, unable to contain himself.

“Ezra,” repeated Mordecai, affirmatively, engrossed in memory. “I was

expecting a letter; for I wrote continually to my mother. And that

sound of my name was like the touch of a wand that recalled me to the

body wherefrom I had been released as it were to mingle with the ocean

of human existence, free from the pressure of individual bondage. I

opened the letter; and the name came again as a cry that would have

disturbed me in the bosom of heaven, and made me yearn to reach where

that sorrow was—‘Ezra, my son!’”

Mordecai paused again, his imagination arrested by the grasp of that

long-passed moment. Deronda’s mind was almost breathlessly suspended on

what was coming. A strange possibility had suddenly presented itself.

Mordecai’s eyes were cast down in abstracted contemplation, and in a

few moments he went on,

“She was a mother of whom it might have come—yea, might have come to

be said, ‘Her children arise up and call her blessed.’ In her I

understood the meaning of that Master who, perceiving the footsteps of

his mother, rose up and said, ‘The Majesty of the Eternal cometh near!’

And that letter was her cry from the depths of anguish and

desolation—the cry of a mother robbed of her little ones. I was her

eldest. Death had taken four babes one after the other. Then came,

late, my little sister, who was, more than all the rest, the desire of

my mother’s eyes; and the letter was a piercing cry to me—‘Ezra, my

son, I am robbed of her. He has taken her away and left disgrace

behind. They will never come again.’”—Here Mordecai lifted his eyes

suddenly, laid his hand on Deronda’s arm, and said, “Mine was the lot

of Israel. For the sin of the father my soul must go into exile. For

the sin of the father the work was broken, and the day of fulfilment

delayed. She who bore me was desolate, disgraced, destitute. I turned

back. On the instant I turned—her spirit and the spirit of her

fathers, who had worthy Jewish hearts, moved within me, and drew me.

God, in whom dwells the universe, was within me as the strength of

obedience. I turned and traveled with hardship—to save the scant money

which she would need. I left the sunshine, and traveled into freezing

cold. In the last stage I spent a night in exposure to cold and snow.

And that was the beginning of this slow death.”

Mordecai let his eyes wander again and removed his hand. Deronda

resolutely repressed the questions which urged themselves within him.

While Mordecai was in this state of emotion, no other confidence must

be sought than what came spontaneously: nay, he himself felt a kindred

emotion which made him dread his own speech as too momentous.

“But I worked. We were destitute—every thing had been seized. And she

was ill: the clutch of anguish was too strong for her, and wrought with

some lurking disease. At times she could not stand for the beating of

her heart, and the images in her brain became as chambers of terror,

where she beheld my sister reared in evil. In the dead of night I heard

her crying for her child. Then I rose, and we stretched forth our arms

together and prayed. We poured forth our souls in desire that Mirah

might be delivered from evil.”

“Mirah?” Deronda repeated, wishing to assure, himself that his ears had

not been deceived by a forecasting imagination. “Did you say Mirah?”

“That was my little sister’s name. After we had prayed for her, my

mother would rest awhile. It lasted hardly four years, and in the

minute before she died, we were praying the same prayer—I aloud, she

silently. Her soul went out upon its wings.”

“Have you never since heard of your sister?” said Deronda, as quietly

as he could.

“Never. Never have I heard whether she was delivered according to our

prayer. I know not, I know not. Who shall say where the pathways lie?

The poisonous will of the wicked is strong. It poisoned my life—it is

slowly stifling this breath. Death delivered my mother, and I felt it a

blessedness that I was alone in the winters of suffering. But what are

the winters now?—they are far off”—here Mordecai again rested his

hand on Deronda’s arm, and looked at him with that joy of the hectic

patient which pierces us to sadness—“there is nothing to wail in the

withering of my body. The work will be the better done. Once I said the

work of this beginning was mine, I am born to do it. Well, I shall do

it. I shall live in you. I shall live in you.”

His grasp had become convulsive in its force, and Deronda, agitated as

he had never been before—the certainty that this was Mirah’s brother

suffusing his own strange relation to Mordecai with a new solemnity and

tenderness—felt his strong young heart beating faster and his lips

paling. He shrank from speech. He feared, in Mordecai’s present state

of exaltation (already an alarming strain on his feeble frame), to

utter a word of revelation about Mirah. He feared to make an answer

below that high pitch of expectation which resembled a flash from a

dying fire, making watchers fear to see it die the faster. His dominant

impulse was to do as he had once done before: he laid his firm, gentle

hand on the hand that grasped him. Mordecai’s, as if it had a soul of

its own—for he was not distinctly willing to do what he did—relaxed

its grasp, and turned upward under Deronda’s. As the two palms met and

pressed each other Mordecai recovered some sense of his surroundings,

and said,

“Let us go now. I cannot talk any longer.”

And in fact they parted at Cohen’s door without having spoken to each

other again—merely with another pressure of the hands.

Deronda felt a weight on him which was half joy, half anxiety. The joy

of finding in Mirah’s brother a nature even more than worthy of that

relation to her, had the weight of solemnity and sadness; the reunion

of brother and sister was in reality the first stage of a supreme

parting—like that farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last

glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow. Then there

was the weight of anxiety about the revelation of the fact on both

sides, and the arrangements it would be desirable to make beforehand. I

suppose we should all have felt as Deronda did, without sinking into

snobbishness or the notion that the primal duties of life demand a

morning and an evening suit, that it was an admissible desire to free

Mirah’s first meeting with her brother from all jarring outward

conditions. His own sense of deliverance from the dreaded relationship

of the other Cohens, notwithstanding their good nature, made him

resolve if possible to keep them in the background for Mirah, until her

acquaintance with them would be an unmarred rendering of gratitude for

any kindness they had shown to her brother. On all accounts he wished

to give Mordecai surroundings not only more suited to his frail bodily

condition, but less of a hindrance to easy intercourse, even apart from

the decisive prospect of Mirah’s taking up her abode with her brother,

and tending him through the precious remnant of his life. In the heroic

drama, great recognitions are not encumbered with these details; and

certainly Deronda had as reverential an interest in Mordecai and Mirah

as he could have had in the offspring of Agamemnon; but he was caring

for destinies still moving in the dim streets of our earthly life, not

yet lifted among the constellations, and his task presented itself to

him as difficult and delicate, especially in persuading Mordecai to

change his abode and habits. Concerning Mirah’s feeling and resolve he

had no doubt: there would be a complete union of sentiment toward the

departed mother, and Mirah would understand her brother’s greatness.

Yes, greatness: that was the word which Deronda now deliberately chose

to signify the impression that Mordecai had made on him. He said to

himself, perhaps rather defiantly toward the more negative spirit

within him, that this man, however erratic some of his interpretations

might be—this consumptive Jewish workman in threadbare clothing,

lodged by charity, delivering himself to hearers who took his thoughts

without attaching more consequences to them than the Flemings to the

ethereal chimes ringing above their market-places—had the chief

elements of greatness; a mind consciously, energetically moving with

the larger march of human destinies, but not the less full of

conscience and tender heart for the footsteps that tread near and need

a leaning-place; capable of conceiving and choosing a life’s task with

far-off issues, yet capable of the unapplauded heroism which turns off

the road of achievement at the call of the nearer duty whose effect

lies within the beatings of the hearts that are close to us, as the

hunger of the unfledged bird to the breast of its parent.

Deronda to-night was stirred with the feeling that the brief remnant

of this fervid life had become his charge. He had been peculiarly

wrought on by what he had seen at the club of the friendly indifference

which Mordecai must have gone on encountering. His own experience of

the small room that ardor can make for itself in ordinary minds had had

the effect of increasing his reserve; and while tolerance was the

easiest attitude to him, there was another bent in him also capable of

becoming a weakness—the dislike to appear exceptional or to risk an

ineffective insistence on his own opinion. But such caution appeared

contemptible to him just now, when he, for the first time, saw in a

complete picture and felt as a reality the lives that burn themselves

out in solitary enthusiasm: martyrs of obscure circumstance, exiled in

the rarity of their own minds, whose deliverances in other ears are no

more than a long passionate soliloquy—unless perhaps at last, when

they are nearing the invisible shores, signs of recognition and

fulfilment may penetrate the cloud of loneliness; or perhaps it may be

with them as with the dying Copernicus made to touch the first printed

copy of his book when the sense of touch was gone, seeing it only as a

dim object through the deepening dusk.

Deronda had been brought near to one of those spiritual exiles, and it

was in his nature to feel the relation as a strong chain, nay, to feel

his imagination moving without repugnance in the direction of

Mordecai’s desires. With all his latent objection to schemes only

definite in their generality and nebulous in detail—in the poise of

his sentiments he felt at one with this man who had made a visionary

selection of him: the lines of what may be called their emotional

theory touched. He had not the Jewish consciousness, but he had a

yearning, grown the stronger for the denial which had been his

grievance, after the obligation of avowed filial and social ties. His

feeling was ready for difficult obedience. In this way it came that he

set about his new task ungrudgingly; and again he thought of Mrs.

Meyrick as his chief helper. To her first he must make known the

discovery of Mirah’s brother, and with her he must consult on all

preliminaries of bringing the mutually lost together. Happily the best

quarter for a consumptive patient did not lie too far off the small

house at Chelsea, and the first office Deronda had to perform for this

Hebrew prophet who claimed him as a spiritual inheritor, was to get him

a healthy lodging. Such is the irony of earthly mixtures, that the

heroes have not always had carpets and teacups of their own; and, seen

through the open window by the mackerel-vender, may have been invited

with some hopefulness to pay three hundred per cent, in the form of

fourpence. However, Deronda’s mind was busy with a prospective

arrangement for giving a furnished lodging some faint likeness to a

refined home by dismantling his own chambers of his best old books in

vellum, his easiest chair, and the bas-reliefs of Milton and Dante.

But was not Mirah to be there? What furniture can give such finish to a

room as a tender woman’s face?—and is there any harmony of tints that

has such stirrings of delight as the sweet modulation of her voice?

Here is one good, at least, thought Deronda, that comes to Mordecai

from his having fixed his imagination on me. He has recovered a perfect

sister, whose affection is waiting for him.