Kabanata Kabanata 38 · Chapter XXXVIII

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There be who hold that the deeper tragedy were a Prometheus Bound

not _after_ but _before_ he had well got the celestial fire into

the νάρθηξ whereby it might be conveyed to mortals: thrust by the

Kratos and Bia of instituted methods into a solitude of despised

ideas, fastened in throbbing helplessness by the fatal pressure of

poverty and disease—a solitude where many pass by, but none

regard.

“Second-sight” is a flag over disputed ground. But it is matter of

knowledge that there are persons whose yearnings, conceptions—nay,

traveled conclusions—continually take the form of images which have a

foreshadowing power; the deed they would do starts up before them in

complete shape, making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or

dread rises into vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on

unnumbered impressions. They are not always the less capable of the

argumentative process, nor less sane than the commonplace calculators

of the market: sometimes it may be that their natures have manifold

openings, like the hundred-gated Thebes, where there may naturally be a

greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through a narrow

beadle-watched portal. No doubt there are abject specimens of the

visionary, as there is a minim mammal which you might imprison in the

finger of your glove. That small relative of the elephant has no harm

in him; but what great mental or social type is free from specimens

whose insignificance is both ugly and noxious? One is afraid to think

of all that the genus “patriot” embraces; or of the elbowing there

might be at the day of judgment for those who ranked as authors, and

brought volumes either in their hands or on trucks.

This apology for inevitable kinship is meant to usher in some facts

about Mordecai, whose figure had bitten itself into Deronda’s mind as a

new question which he felt an interest in getting answered. But the

interest was no more than a vaguely-expectant suspense: the

consumptive-looking Jew, apparently a fervid student of some kind,

getting his crust by a quiet handicraft, like Spinoza, fitted into none

of Deronda’s anticipations.

It was otherwise with the effect of their meeting on Mordecai. For many

winters, while he had been conscious of an ebbing physical life, and as

widening spiritual loneliness, all his passionate desire had

concentrated itself in the yearning for some young ear into which he

could pour his mind as a testament, some soul kindred enough to accept

the spiritual product of his own brief, painful life, as a mission to

be executed. It was remarkable that the hopefulness which is often the

beneficent illusion of consumptive patients, was in Mordecai wholly

diverted from the prospect of bodily recovery and carried into the

current of this yearning for transmission. The yearning, which had

panted upward from out of over-whelming discouragements, had grown into

a hope—the hope into a confident belief, which, instead of being

checked by the clear conception he had of his hastening decline, took

rather the intensity of expectant faith in a prophecy which has only

brief space to get fulfilled in.

Some years had now gone since he had first begun to measure men with a

keen glance, searching for a possibility which became more and more a

distinct conception. Such distinctness as it had at first was reached

chiefly by a method of contrast: he wanted to find a man who differed

from himself. Tracing reasons in that self for the rebuffs he had met

with and the hindrances that beset him, he imagined a man who would

have all the elements necessary for sympathy with him, but in an

embodiment unlike his own: he must be a Jew, intellectually cultured,

morally fervid—in all this a nature ready to be plenished from

Mordecai’s; but his face and frame must be beautiful and strong, he

must have been used to all the refinements of social life, his voice

must flow with a full and easy current, his circumstances be free from

sordid need: he must glorify the possibilities of the Jew, not sit and

wonder as Mordecai did, bearing the stamp of his people amid the sign

of poverty and waning breath. Sensitive to physical characteristics, he

had, both abroad and in England, looked at pictures as well as men, and

in a vacant hour he had sometimes lingered in the National Gallery in

search of paintings which might feed his hopefulness with grave and

noble types of the human form, such as might well belong to men of his

own race. But he returned in disappointment. The instances are

scattered but thinly over the galleries of Europe, in which the fortune

or selection even of the chief masters has given to art a face at once

young, grand, and beautiful, where, if there is any melancholy, it is

no feeble passivity, but enters into the foreshadowed capability of

heroism.

Some observant persons may perhaps remember his emaciated figure, and

dark eyes deep in their sockets, as he stood in front of a picture that

had touched him either to new or habitual meditation: he commonly wore

a cloth cap with black fur round it, which no painter would have asked

him to take off. But spectators would be likely to think of him as an

odd-looking Jew who probably got money out of pictures; and Mordecai,

when he looked at them, was perfectly aware of the impression he made.

Experience had rendered him morbidly alive to the effect of a man’s

poverty and other physical disadvantages in cheapening his ideas,

unless they are those of a Peter the Hermit who has a tocsin for the

rabble. But he was too sane and generous to attribute his spiritual

banishment solely to the excusable prejudices of others; certain

incapacities of his own had made the sentence of exclusion; and hence

it was that his imagination had constructed another man who would be

something more ample than the second soul bestowed, according to the

notion of the Cabalists, to help out the insufficient first—who would

be a blooming human life, ready to incorporate all that was worthiest

in an existence whose visible, palpable part was burning itself fast

away. His inward need for the conception of this expanded, prolonged

self was reflected as an outward necessity. The thoughts of his heart

(that ancient phrase best shadows the truth) seemed to him too

precious, too closely interwoven with the growth of things not to have

a further destiny. And as the more beautiful, the stronger, the more

executive self took shape in his mind, he loved it beforehand with an

affection half identifying, half contemplative and grateful.

Mordecai’s mind wrought so constantly in images, that his coherent

trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to

sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments: nay, they

often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage

from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually

thought of the Being answering to his need as one distantly approaching

or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a golden sky.

The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai’s habits. He was

keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a favorite resort of

his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some of the bridges,

especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he was bending over

watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper room looking out

on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his imagination

spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a far-stretching

scene; his thoughts went on in wide spaces; and whenever he could, he

tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. Leaning on the

parapet of Blackfriar’s Bridge, and gazing meditatively, the breadth

and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half luminous,

the grand dim masses of tall forms of buildings which were the signs of

world-commerce, the oncoming of boats and barges from the still

distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent

themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to

which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our

spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of

Mordecai’s longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light in

the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his

imagination toward fuller detail, he ceased to see the figure with its

back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible;

the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity,

turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from

his memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and

from the paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said

of this mature spiritual need that it was akin to the boy’s and girl’s

picturing of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire

are feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life

straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to imminent

dissolution. The visionary form became a companion and auditor; keeping

a place not only in the waking imagination, but in those dreams of

lighter slumber of which it is truest to say, “I sleep, but my heart

waketh”—when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged with

the impassioned purpose of years.

Of late the urgency of irremediable time, measured by the gradual

choking of life, had turned Mordecai’s trust into an agitated watch for

the fulfillment that must be at hand. Was the bell on the verge of

tolling, the sentence about to be executed? The deliverer’s footstep

must be near—the deliverer who was to rescue Mordecai’s spiritual

travail from oblivion, and give it an abiding-place in the best

heritage of his people. An insane exaggeration of his own value, even

if his ideas had been as true and precious as those of Columbus or

Newton, many would have counted this yearning, taking it as the

sublimer part for a man to say, “If not I, then another,” and to hold

cheap the meaning of his own life. But the fuller nature desires to be

an agent, to create, and not merely to look on: strong love hungers to

bless, and not merely to behold blessing. And while there is warmth

enough in the sun to feed an energetic life, there will still be men to

feel, “I am lord of this moment’s change, and will charge it with my

soul.”

But with that mingling of inconsequence which belongs to us all, and

not unhappily, since it saves us from many effects of mistake,

Mordecai’s confidence in the friend to come did not suffice to make him

passive, and he tried expedients, pathetically humble, such as happened

to be within his reach, for communicating something of himself. It was

now two years since he had taken up his abode under Ezra Cohen’s roof,

where he was regarded with much good-will as a compound of workman,

dominie, vessel of charity, inspired idiot, man of piety, and (if he

were inquired into) dangerous heretic. During that time little Jacob

had advanced into knickerbockers, and into that quickness of

apprehension which has been already made manifest in relation to

hardware and exchange. He had also advanced in attachment to Mordecai,

regarding him as an inferior, but liking him none the worse, and taking

his helpful cleverness as he might have taken the services of an

enslaved Djinn. As for Mordecai, he had given Jacob his first lessons,

and his habitual tenderness easily turned into the teacher’s

fatherhood. Though he was fully conscious of the spiritual distance

between the parents and himself, and would never have attempted any

communication to them from his peculiar world, the boy moved him with

that idealizing affection which merges the qualities of the individual

child in the glory of childhood and the possibilities of a long future.

And this feeling had drawn him on, at first without premeditation, and

afterward with conscious purpose, to a sort of outpouring in the ear of

the boy which might have seemed wild enough to any excellent man of

business who overheard it. But none overheard when Jacob went up to

Mordecai’s room one day, for example, in which there was little work to

be done, or at an hour when the work was ended, and after a brief

lesson in English reading or in numeration, was induced to remain

standing at his teacher’s knees, or chose to jump astride them, often

to the patient fatigue of the wasted limbs. The inducement was perhaps

the mending of a toy, or some little mechanical device in which

Mordecai’s well-practiced finger-tips had an exceptional skill; and

with the boy thus tethered, he would begin to repeat a Hebrew poem of

his own, into which years before he had poured his first youthful

ardors for that conception of a blended past and future which was the

mistress of his soul, telling Jacob to say the words after him.

“The boy will get them engraved within him,” thought Mordecai; “it is a

way of printing.”

None readier than Jacob at this fascinating game of imitating

unintelligible words; and if no opposing diversion occurred he would

sometimes carry on his share in it as long as the teacher’s breath

would last out. For Mordecai threw into each repetition the fervor

befitting a sacred occasion. In such instances, Jacob would show no

other distraction than reaching out and surveying the contents of his

pockets; or drawing down the skin of his cheeks to make his eyes look

awful, and rolling his head to complete the effect; or alternately

handling his own nose and Mordecai’s as if to test the relation of

their masses. Under all this the fervid reciter would not pause,

satisfied if the young organs of speech would submit themselves. But

most commonly a sudden impulse sent Jacob leaping away into some antic

or active amusement, when, instead of following the recitation he would

return upon the foregoing words most ready to his tongue, and mouth or

gabble, with a see-saw suited to the action of his limbs, a verse on

which Mordecai had spent some of his too scanty heart’s blood. Yet he

waited with such patience as a prophet needs, and began his strange

printing again undiscouraged on the morrow, saying inwardly,

“My words may rule him some day. Their meaning may flash out on him. It

is so with a nation—after many days.”

Meanwhile Jacob’s sense of power was increased and his time enlivened

by a store of magical articulation with which he made the baby crow, or

drove the large cat into a dark corner, or promised himself to frighten

any incidental Christian of his own years. One week he had

unfortunately seen a street mountebank, and this carried off his

muscular imitativeness in sad divergence from New Hebrew poetry, after

the model of Jehuda ha-Levi. Mordecai had arrived at a fresh passage in

his poem; for as soon as Jacob had got well used to one portion, he was

led on to another, and a fresh combination of sounds generally answered

better in keeping him fast for a few minutes. The consumptive voice,

generally a strong high baritone, with its variously mingling

hoarseness, like a haze amidst illuminations, and its occasional

incipient gasp had more than the usual excitement, while it gave forth

Hebrew verses with a meaning something like this:

“Away from me the garment of forgetfulness.

Withering the heart;

The oil and wine from presses of the Goyim,

Poisoned with scorn.

Solitude is on the sides of Mount Nebo,

In its heart a tomb:

There the buried ark and golden cherubim

Make hidden light:

There the solemn gaze unchanged,

The wings are spread unbroken:

Shut beneath in silent awful speech

The Law lies graven.

Solitude and darkness are my covering,

And my heart a tomb;

Smite and shatter it, O Gabriel!

Shatter it as the clay of the founder

Around the golden image.”

In the absorbing enthusiasm with which Mordecai had intoned rather than

spoken this last invocation, he was unconscious that Jacob had ceased

to follow him and had started away from his knees; but pausing he saw,

as by a sudden flash, that the lad had thrown himself on his hands with

his feet in the air, mountebank fashion, and was picking up with his

lips a bright farthing which was a favorite among his pocket treasures.

This might have been reckoned among the tricks Mordecai was used to,

but at this moment it jarred him horribly, as if it had been a Satanic

grin upon his prayer.

“Child! child!” he called out with a strange cry that startled Jacob to

his feet, and then he sank backward with a shudder, closing his eyes.

“What?” said Jacob, quickly. Then, not getting an immediate answer, he

pressed Mordecai’s knees with a shaking movement, in order to rouse

him. Mordecai opened his eyes with a fierce expression in them, leaned

forward, grasped the little shoulders, and said in a quick, hoarse

whisper,

“A curse is on your generation, child. They will open the mountain and

drag forth the golden wings and coin them into money, and the solemn

faces they will break up into earrings for wanton women! And they

shall get themselves a new name, but the angel of ignominy, with the

fiery brand, shall know them, and their heart shall be the tomb of dead

desires that turn their life to rottenness.”

The aspect and action of Mordecai were so new and mysterious to

Jacob—they carried such a burden of obscure threat—it was as if the

patient, indulgent companion had turned into something unknown and

terrific: the sunken dark eyes and hoarse accents close to him, the

thin grappling fingers, shook Jacob’s little frame into awe, and while

Mordecai was speaking he stood trembling with a sense that the house

was tumbling in and they were not going to have dinner any more. But

when the terrible speech had ended and the pinch was relaxed, the shock

resolved itself into tears; Jacob lifted up his small patriarchal

countenance and wept aloud. This sign of childish grief at once

recalled Mordecai to his usual gentle self: he was not able to speak

again at present, but with a maternal action he drew the curly head

toward him and pressed it tenderly against his breast. On this Jacob,

feeling the danger well-nigh over, howled at ease, beginning to imitate

his own performance and improve upon it—a sort of transition from

impulse into art often observable. Indeed, the next day he undertook to

terrify Adelaide Rebekah in like manner, and succeeded very well.

But Mordecai suffered a check which lasted long, from the consciousness

of a misapplied agitation; sane as well as excitable, he judged

severely his moments of aberration into futile eagerness, and felt

discredited with himself. All the more his mind was strained toward the

discernment of that friend to come, with whom he would have a calm

certainty of fellowship and understanding.

It was just then that, in his usual midday guardianship of the old

book-shop, he was struck by the appearance of Deronda, and it is

perhaps comprehensible now why Mordecai’s glance took on a sudden eager

interest as he looked at the new-comer: he saw a face and frame which

seemed to him to realize the long-conceived type. But the disclaimer of

Jewish birth was for the moment a backward thrust of double severity,

the particular disappointment tending to shake his confidence in the

more indefinite expectation. Nevertheless, when he found Deronda seated

at the Cohens’ table, the disclaimer was for the moment nullified: the

first impression returned with added force, seeming to be guaranteed by

this second meeting under circumstance more peculiar than the former;

and in asking Deronda if he knew Hebrew, Mordecai was so possessed by

the new inrush of belief, that he had forgotten the absence of any

other condition to the fulfillment of his hopes. But the answering “No”

struck them all down again, and the frustration was more painful than

before. After turning his back on the visitor that Sabbath evening,

Mordecai went through days of a deep discouragement, like that of men

on a doomed ship, who having strained their eyes after a sail, and

beheld it with rejoicing, behold it never advance, and say, “Our sick

eyes make it.” But the long-contemplated figure had come as an

emotional sequence of Mordecai’s firmest theoretic convictions; it had

been wrought from the imagery of his most passionate life; and it

inevitably reappeared—reappeared in a more specific self-asserting

form than ever. Deronda had that sort of resemblance to the

preconceived type which a finely individual bust or portrait has to the

more generalized copy left in our minds after a long interval: we renew

our memory with delight, but we hardly know with how much correction.

And now, his face met Mordecai’s inward gaze as it had always belonged

to the awaited friend, raying out, moreover, some of that influence

which belongs to breathing flesh; till by-and-by it seemed that

discouragement had turned into a new obstinacy of resistance, and the

ever-recurrent vision had the force of an outward call to disregard

counter-evidence, and keep expectation awake. It was Deronda now who

was seen in the often painful night-watches, when we are all liable to

be held with the clutch of a single thought—whose figure, never with

its back turned, was seen in moments of soothed reverie or soothed

dozing, painted on that golden sky which was the doubly blessed symbol

of advancing day and of approaching rest.

Mordecai knew that the nameless stranger was to come and redeem his

ring; and, in spite of contrary chances, the wish to see him again was

growing into a belief that he should see him. In the January weeks, he

felt an increasing agitation of that subdued hidden quality which

hinders nervous people from any steady occupation on the eve of an

anticipated change. He could not go on with his printing of Hebrew on

little Jacob’s mind; or with his attendance at a weekly club, which was

another effort of the same forlorn hope: something else was coming. The

one thing he longed for was to get as far as the river, which he could

do but seldom and with difficulty. He yearned with a poet’s yearning

for the wide sky, the far-reaching vista of bridges, the tender and

fluctuating lights on the water which seems to breathe with a life that

can shiver and mourn, be comforted and rejoice.