Daniel Deronda

Chapter 16

Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history. The

astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction, accounting so

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 anguish seems a greater energy than the sea

and sky he invokes and the deity he defies.

Deronda's circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional. One moment had been

burned into his life as its chief epoch--a moment full of July sunshine

and large pink roses shedding their last petals on a grassy court enclosed

on three sides by a gothic cloister. Imagine him in such a scene: a boy of

thirteen, stretched prone on the grass where it was in shadow, his curly

head propped 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 cardinals always had so many

nephews?"

The tutor, an able young Scotchman, who acted as Sir Hugo Mallinger's

secretary, roused rather unwillingly from his political economy, answered

with the clear-cut emphatic chant which makes a truth doubly telling in

Scotch utterance--

"Their own children were called nephews."

"Why?" said Deronda.

"It was just for the propriety 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 impatience 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 twilight, had a dim sense of having been kissed

very much, and surrounded by thin, cloudy, scented 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

delightful 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 picturesque 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

apparently with a sickly complexion which had been happily corrected in

his descendants. Two rows of these descendants, direct and collateral,

females of the male line, and males of the female, looked down in the

gallery over the cloisters on the nephew Daniel as he walked there: men in

armor with pointed beards and arched eyebrows, pinched ladies in hoops and

ruffs with no face to speak of; grave-looking men in black velvet and

stuffed hips, and fair, frightened women holding little boys by the hand;

smiling politicians in magnificent perruques, and ladies of the prize-

animal kind, with rosebud mouths and full eyelids, according to Lely; then

a generation whose faces were revised and embellished 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 junction between two

equally old families, impaling the three Saracens' heads proper and three

bezants of the one with the tower and falcons _argent_ of the other, and,

as it happened, uniting their highest advantages in the prospects 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 cravat, Sir

Thomas Lawrence had done justice to the agreeable alacrity of expression

and sanguine temperament still to be seen in the original, but had done

something more than justice in slightly lengthening 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 regularity 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 memorable of boys: you

could hardly have seen his face thoroughly 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 consecrating power,

and make us shudder anew at all the grossness and basely-wrought griefs of

the world, lest they should enter here and defile.

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 habitual feelings as

happy careless voyagers are changed with the sky suddenly threatened and

the thought of danger arises. He sat perfectly 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 subsided; but his

features kept that indescribable look of subdued 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 wedlock

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 standing 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 darted 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 ominous

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,

dreaded revelations. The ardor which he had given to the imaginary world

in his books suddenly rushed toward his own history and spent its

pictorial 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 flakes of fire to his

imagination. Those who have known an impassioned childhood will understand

this dread of utterance about any shame connected with their parents. The

impetuous advent of new images took possession of him with the force of

fact for the first time told, and left him no immediate 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 bent 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 conjectures 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 obstinate 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

banished as an offense, and a mean prying after what he was not meant to

know; for there was hardly a delicacy 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 premature reserve which helped to

intensify 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 idyllic 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 reluctance. He wore an embroidered

holland blouse which set off the rich coloring of his head and throat, and

the resistant 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 interval

before he answered with angry decision--

"No; I should hate it!"

"Well, well, well!" said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness intended to

be soothing. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and going to

his own chamber 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 subsiding 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

glade which met the eastern sky. This was a scene which had always been

part of his home--part of the dignified ease which had been a matter of

course in his life. And his ardent 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 scoured deal, red quarries

and whitewash for one's private surroundings, to delight in no splendor

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 bind themselves for small pay to hard-handed labor. But Daniel's

tastes were altogether in keeping with his nurture: his disposition was

one in which everyday scenes and habits beget not _ennui_ or rebellion,

but delight, affection, aptitudes; 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 tenors, 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 prospect: 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 housekeeper?--and Banks the bailiff, with

whom he had ridden about the farms on his pony?--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 wink 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 winked 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 spoke 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 illuminated 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 mare 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 ardently

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 antagonism. But inborn lovingness was strong enough to

keep itself level with resentment. 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

Radicals equally opponents of the truest and best; and the books he had

written were all seen under the same consecration 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

passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which

makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

But some time after this renewal of Daniel's agitation 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 kindly, 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 determined 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 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 caressing arm with both

his hands. "But shan'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 quenched 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 groom 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 judicious 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 parsing, and less algebra,"

said Fraser. But in reality he thought his pupil a remarkable lad, to whom

one thing was as easy as another, if he had only a mind to it.

Things went on very well with Daniel in his new world, except that a boy

with whom he was at once inclined to strike up a close friendship talked

to him a great deal about his home and parents, and seemed to expect a

like expansiveness in return. Daniel immediately shrank into reserve, and

this experience remained a check on his naturally strong bent toward the

formation of intimate friendship. Every one, his tutor included, set him

down as a reserved boy, though he was so good-humored and unassuming, as

well as quick, both at study and sport, that nobody called his reserve

disagreeable. Certainly his face had a great deal to do with that

favorable interpretation; but in this instance the beauty of the closed

lips told no falsehood.

A surprise that came to him before his first vacation strengthened the

silent consciousness of a grief within, which might be compared in some

ways with Byron's susceptibility about his deformed foot. Sir Hugo wrote

word that he was married to Miss Raymond, a sweet lady, whom Daniel must

remember having seen. The event would make no difference about his

spending the vacation at the Abbey; he would find Lady Mallinger a new

friend whom he would be sure to love--and much more to the usual effect

when a man, having done something agreeable to himself, is disposed to

congratulate others on his own good fortune, and the deducible

satisfactoriness of events in general.

Let Sir Hugo be partly excused until the grounds of his action can be more

fully known. The mistakes in his behavior to Deronda were due to that

dullness toward what may be going on in other minds, especially the minds

of children, which is among the commonest deficiencies, even in good-

natured men like him, when life has been generally easy to themselves, and

their energies have been quietly spent in feeling gratified. No one was

better aware than he that Daniel was generally suspected to be his own

son. But he was pleased with that suspicion; and his imagination had never

once been troubled with the way in which the boy himself might be

affected, either then or in the future, by the enigmatic aspect of his

circumstances. He was as fond of him as could be, and meant the best by

him. And, considering the lightness with which the preparation of young

lives seem to lie on respectable consciences, Sir Hugo Mallinger can

hardly be held open to exceptional reproach. He had been a bachelor till

he was five-and-forty, had always been regarded as a fascinating man of

elegant tastes; what could be more natural, even according to the index of

language, than that he should have a beautiful boy like the little Deronda

to take care of? The mother might even, perhaps, be in the great world--

met with in Sir Hugo's residence abroad. The only person to feel any

objection was the boy himself, who could not have been consulted. And the

boy's objections had never been dreamed of by anybody but himself.

By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady Mallinger had

already three daughters--charming babies, all three, but whose s*x was

announced as a melancholy alternative, the offspring desired being a son;

if Sir Hugo had no son the succession must go to his nephew, Mallinger

Grandcourt. Daniel no longer held a wavering opinion about his own birth.

His fuller knowledge had tended to convince him that Sir Hugo was his

father, and he conceived that the baronet, since he never approached a

communication on the subject, wished him to have a tacit understanding of

the fact, and to accept in silence what would be generally considered more

than the due love and nurture. Sir Hugo's marriage might certainly have

been felt as a new ground of resentment by some youths in Deronda's

position, and the timid Lady Mallinger with her fast-coming little ones

might have been images to scowl at, as likely to divert much that was

disposable in the feelings and possessions of the baronet from one who

felt his own claim to be prior. But hatred of innocent human obstacles was

a form of moral stupidity not in Deronda's grain; even the indignation

which had long mingled itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took the

quality of pain rather than of temper; and as his mind ripened to the idea

of tolerance toward error, he habitually liked the idea with his own

silent grievances.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage--the deformed foot doubtfully hidden

by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a

self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort,

who presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a myriad, the

inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination

tender. Deronda's early-weakened susceptibility, charged at first with

ready indignation and resistant pride, had raised in him a premature

reflection on certain questions of life; it had given a bias to his

conscience, a sympathy with certain ills, and a tension of resolve in

certain directions, who marked him off from other youths much more than

any talents he possessed.

One day near the end of the long vacation, when he had been making a tour

in the Rhineland with his Eton tutor, and was come for a farewell stay at

the Abbey before going to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo--

"What do you intend me to be, sir?" They were in the library, and it was

the fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called him in to read a letter from a

Cambridge Don who was to be interested in him; and since the baronet wore

an air at once business-like and leisurely, the moment seemed propitious

for entering on a grave subject which had never yet been thoroughly

discussed.

"Whatever your inclination leads you to, my boy. I thought it right to

give you the option of the army, but you shut the door on that, and I was

glad. I don't expect you to choose just yet--by-and-by, when you have

looked about you a little more and tried your mettle among older men. The

university has a good wide opening into the forum. There are prizes to be

won, and a bit of good fortune often gives the turn to a man's taste. From

what I see and hear, I should think you can take up anything you like. You

are in the deeper water with your classics than I ever got into, and if

you are rather sick of that swimming, Cambridge is the place where you can

go into mathematics with a will, and disport yourself on the dry sand as

much as you like. I floundered along like a carp."

"I suppose money will make some difference, sir," said Daniel blushing. "I

shall have to keep myself by-and-by."

"Not exactly. I recommend you not to be extravagant--yes, yes, I know--you

are not inclined to that;--but you need not take up anything against the

grain. You will have a bachelor's income--enough for you to look about

with. Perhaps I had better tell you that you may consider yourself secure

of seven hundred a year. You might make yourself a barrister--be a writer

--take up politics. I confess that is what would please me best. I should

like to have you at my elbow and pulling with me."

Deronda looked embarrassed. He felt that he ought to make some sign of

gratitude, but other feelings clogged his tongue. A moment was passing by

in which a question about his birth was throbbing within him, and yet it

seemed more impossible than ever that the question should find vent--more

impossible than ever that he could hear certain things from Sir Hugo's

lips. The liberal way in which he was dealt with was the more striking

because the baronet had of late cared particularly for money, and for

making the utmost of his life-interest in the estate by way of providing

for his daughters; and as all this flashed through Daniel's mind it was

momentarily within his imagination that the provision for him might come

in some way from his mother. But such vaporous conjecture passed away as

quickly as it came.

Sir Hugo appeared not to notice anything peculiar in Daniel's manner, and

presently went on with his usual chatty liveliness.

"I am glad you have done some good reading outside your classics, and have

got a grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can get the

prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worth

while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to

spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you'll give him as

a cue. That's all very fine, but in practical life nobody does give you

the cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it's a nicety of conversation which I

would have you attend to--much quotation of any sort, even in English is

bad. It tends to choke ordinary remark. One couldn't carry on life

comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything had

been said better than we can put it ourselves. But talking of Dons, I have

seen Dons make a capital figure in society; and occasionally he can shoot

you down a cart-load of learning in the right place, which will tell in

politics. Such men are wanted; and if you have any turn for being a Don, I

say nothing against it."

"I think there's not much chance of that. Quicksett and Puller are both

stronger than I am. I hope you will not be much disappointed if I don't

come out with high honors."

"No, no. I should like you to do yourself credit, but for God's sake don't

come out as a superior expensive kind of i***t, like young Brecon, who got

a Double First, and has been learning to knit braces ever since. What I

wish you to get is a passport in life. I don't go against our university

system: we want a little disinterested culture to make head against cotton

and capital, especially in the House. My Greek has all evaporated; if I

had to construe a verse on a sudden, I should get an apoplectic fit. But

it formed my taste. I dare say my English is the better for it."

On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The enthusiastic belief in

Sir Hugo's writings as a standard, and in the Whigs as the chosen race

among politicians, had gradually vanished along with the seraphic boy's

face. He had not been the hardest of workers at Eton. Though some kinds of

study and reading came as easily as boating to him, he was not of the

material that usually makes the first-rate Eton scholar. There had sprung

up in him a meditative yearning after wide knowledge which is likely

always to abate ardor in the fight for prize acquirement in narrow tracks.

Happily he was modest, and took any second-rate-*ness in himself simply as

a fact, not as a marvel necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority.

Still Mr. Eraser's high opinion of the lad had not been altogether belied

by the youth: Daniel had the stamp of rarity in a subdued fervor of

sympathy, an activity of imagination on behalf of others which did not

show itself effusively, but was continually seen in acts of

considerateness that struck his companions as moral eccentricity. "Deronda

would have been first-rate if he had had more ambition," was a frequent

remark about him. But how could a fellow push his way properly when he

objected to swop for his own advantage, knocked under by choice when he

was within an inch of victory, and, unlike the great Clive, would rather

be the calf than the butcher? It was a mistake, however, to suppose that

Deronda had not his share of ambition. We know he had suffered keenly from

the belief that there was a tinge of dishonor in his lot; but there are

some cases, and his was one of them, in which the sense of injury breeds--

not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a

hatred of all injury. He had his flashes of fierceness and could hit out

upon occasion, but the occasions were not always what might have been

expected. For in what related to himself his resentful impulses had been

early checked by a mastering affectionateness. Love has a habit of saying

"Never mind" to angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in the lower

place, by-and-by gets used to it. So it was that as Deronda approached

manhood his feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was getting more and more mixed

with criticism, was gaining in that sort of allowance which reconciles

criticism with tenderness. The dear old beautiful home and everything

within it, Lady Mallinger and her little ones included, were consecrated

for the youth as they had been for the boy--only with a certain difference

of light on the objects. The altarpiece was no longer miraculously

perfect, painted under infallible guidance, but the human hand discerned

in the work was appealing to a reverent tenderness safer from the gusts of

discovery. Certainly Deronda's ambition, even in his spring-time, lay

exceptionally aloof from conspicuous, vulgar triumph, and from other ugly

forms of boyish energy; perhaps because he was early impassioned by ideas,

and burned his fire on those heights. One may spend a good deal of energy

in disliking and resisting what others pursue, and a boy who is fond of

somebody else's pencil-case may not be more energetic than another who is

fond of giving his own pencil-case away. Still it was not Deronda's

disposition to escape from ugly scenes; he was more inclined to sit

through them and take care of the fellow least able to take care of

himself. It had helped to make him popular that he was sometimes a little

compromised by this apparent comradeship. For a meditative interest in

learning how human miseries are wrought--as precocious in him as another

sort of genius in the poet who writes a Queen Mab at nineteen--was so

infused with kindliness that it easily passed for comradeship. Enough. In

many of our neighbors' lives there is much not only of error and lapse,

but of a certain exquisite goodness which can never be written or even

spoken--only divined by each of us, according to the inward instruction of

our own privacy.

The impression he made at Cambridge corresponded to his position at Eton.

Every one interested in him agreed that he might have taken a high place

if his motives had been of a more pushing sort, and if he had not, instead

of regarding studies as instruments of success, hampered himself with the

notion that they were to feed motive and opinion--a notion which set him

criticising methods and arguing against his freight and harness when he

should have been using all his might to pull. In the beginning his work at

the university had a new zest for him: indifferent to the continuation of

Eton classical drill, he applied himself vigorously to mathematics, for

which he had shown an early aptitude under Mr. Fraser, and he had the

delight of feeling his strength in a comparatively fresh exercise of

thought. That delight, and the favorable opinion of his tutor, determined

him to try for a mathematical scholarship in the Easter of his second

year: he wished to gratify Sir Hugo by some achievement, and the study of

the higher mathematics, having the growing fascination inherent in all

thinking which demands intensity, was making him a more exclusive worker

than he had been before.

But here came the old check which had been growing with his growth. He

found the inward bent toward comprehension and thoroughness diverging more

and more from the track marked out by the standards of examination: he

felt a heightening discontent with the wearing futility and enfeebling

strain of a demand for excessive retention and dexterity without any

insight into the principles which form the vital connections of knowledge.

(Deronda's undergraduateship occurred fifteen years ago, when the

perfection of our university methods was not yet indisputable.) In hours

when his dissatisfaction was strong upon him he reproached himself for

having been attracted by the conventional advantage of belonging to an

English university, and was tempted toward the project of asking Sir Hugo

to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a more independent line of study

abroad. The germs of this inclination had been already stirring in his

boyish love of universal history, which made him want to be at home in

foreign countries, and follow in imagination the traveling students of the

middle ages. He longed now to have the sort of apprenticeship to life

which would not shape him too definitely, and rob him of the choice that

might come from a free growth. One sees that Deronda's demerits were

likely to be on the side of reflective hesitation, and this tendency was

encouraged by his position; there was no need for him to get an immediate

income, or to fit himself in haste for a profession; and his sensibility

to the half-known facts of his parentage made him an excuse for lingering

longer than others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he inwardly

said, had a more definite place and duties. But the project which

flattered his inclination might not have gone beyond the stage of

ineffective brooding, if certain circumstances had not quickened it into

action.

The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship which extended

into his after-life. Of the same year with himself, and occupying small

rooms close to his, was a youth who had come as an exhibitioner from

Christ's Hospital, and had eccentricities enough for a Charles Lamb. Only

to look at his pinched features and blonde hair hanging over his collar

reminded one of pale quaint heads by early German painters; and when this

faint coloring was lit up by a joke, there came sudden creases about the

mouth and eyes which might have been moulded by the soul of an aged

humorist. His father, an engraver of some distinction, had been dead

eleven years, and his mother had three girls to educate and maintain on a

meagre annuity. Hans Meyrick--he had been daringly christened after

Holbein--felt himself the pillar, or rather the knotted and twisted trunk,

round which these feeble climbing plants must cling. There was no want of

ability or of honest well-meaning affection to make the prop trustworthy:

the ease and quickness with which he studied might serve him to win prizes

at Cambridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of

irregularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies in

him might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions might be

frustrated by some act which was not due to habit but to capricious,

scattered impulses. He could not be said to have any one bad habit; yet at

longer or shorter intervals he had fits of impish recklessness, and did

things that would have made the worst habits.

Hans in his right mind, however, was a lovable creature, and in Deronda he

had happened to find a friend who was likely to stand by him with the more

constancy, from compassion for these brief aberrations that might bring a

long repentance. Hans, indeed, shared Deronda's rooms nearly as much as he

used his own: to Deronda he poured himself out on his studies, his

affairs, his hopes; the poverty of his home, and his love for the

creatures there; the itching of his fingers to draw, and his determination

to fight it away for the sake of getting some sort of a plum that he might

divide with his mother and the girls. He wanted no confidence in return,

but seemed to take Deronda as an Olympian who needed nothing--an egotism

in friendship which is common enough with mercurial, expansive natures.

Deronda was content, and gave Meyrick all the interest he claimed, getting

at last a brotherly anxiety about him, looking after him in his erratic

moments, and contriving by adroitly delicate devices not only to make up

for his friend's lack of pence, but to save him from threatening chances.

Such friendship easily becomes tender: the one spreads strong sheltering

wings that delight in spreading, the other gets the warm protection which

is also a delight. Meyrick was going in for a classical scholarship, and

his success, in various ways momentous, was the more probable from the

steadying influence of Deronda's friendship.

But an imprudence of Meyrick's, committed at the beginning of the autumn

term, threatened to disappoint his hopes. With his usual alternation

between unnecessary expense and self-privation, he had given too much

money for an old engraving which fascinated him, and to make up for it,

had come from London in a third-class carriage with his eyes exposed to a

bitter wind and any irritating particles the wind might drive before it.

The consequence was a severe inflammation of the eyes, which for some time

hung over him the threat of a lasting injury. This crushing trouble called

out all Deronda's readiness to devote himself, and he made every other

occupation secondary to that of being companion and eyes to Hans, working

with him and for him at his classics, that if possible his chance of the

classical scholarship might be saved. Hans, to keep the knowledge of his

suffering from his mother and sisters, alleged his work as a reason for

passing the Christmas at Cambridge, and his friend stayed up with him.

Meanwhile Deronda relaxed his hold on his mathematics, and Hans,

reflecting on this, at length said: "Old fellow, while you are hoisting me

you are risking yourself. With your mathematical cram one may be like

Moses or Mahomet or somebody of that sort who had to cram, and forgot in

one day what it had taken him forty to learn."

Deronda would not admit that he cared about the risk, and he had really

been beguiled into a little indifference by double sympathy: he was very

anxious that Hans should not miss the much-needed scholarship, and he felt

a revival of interest in the old studies. Still, when Hans, rather late in

the day, got able to use his own eyes, Deronda had tenacity enough to try

hard and recover his lost ground. He failed, however; but he had the

satisfaction of seeing Meyrick win.

Success, as a sort of beginning that urged completion, might have

reconciled Deronda to his university course; but the emptiness of all

things, from politics to pastimes, is never so striking to us as when we

fail in them. The loss of the personal triumph had no severity for him,

but the sense of having spent his time ineffectively in a mode of working

which had been against the grain, gave him a distaste for any renewal of

the process, which turned his imagined project of quitting Cambridge into

a serious intention. In speaking of his intention to Meyrick he made it

appear that he was glad of the turn events had taken--glad to have the

balance dip decidedly, and feel freed from his hesitations; but he

observed that he must of course submit to any strong objection on the part

of Sir Hugo.

Meyrick's joy and gratitude were disturbed by much uneasiness. He believed

in Deronda's alleged preference, but he felt keenly that in serving him

Daniel had placed himself at a disadvantage in Sir Hugo's opinion, and he

said mournfully, "If you had got the scholarship, Sir Hugo would have

thought that you asked to leave us with a better grace. You have spoiled

your luck for my sake, and I can do nothing to amend it."

"Yes, you can; you are to be a first-rate fellow. I call that a first-rate

investment of my luck."

"Oh, confound it! You save an ugly mongrel from drowning, and expect him

to cut a fine figure. The poets have made tragedies enough about signing

one's self over to wickedness for the sake of getting something plummy; I

shall write a tragedy of a fellow who signed himself over to be good, and

was uncomfortable ever after."

But Hans lost no time in secretly writing the history of the affair to Sir

Hugo, making it plain that but for Deronda's generous devotion he could

hardly have failed to win the prize he had been working for.

The two friends went up to town together: Meyrick to rejoice with his

mother and the girls in their little home at Chelsea; Deronda to carry out

the less easy task of opening his mind to Sir Hugo. He relied a little on

the baronet's general tolerance of eccentricities, but he expected more

opposition than he met with. He was received with even warmer kindness

than usual, the failure was passed over lightly, and when he detailed his

reasons for wishing to quit the university and go to study abroad. Sir

Hugo sat for some time in a silence which was rather meditative than

surprised. At last he said, looking at Daniel with examination, "So you

don't want to be an Englishman to the backbone after all?"

"I want to be an Englishman, but I want to understand other points of

view. And I want to get rid of a merely English attitude in studies."

"I see; you don't want to be turned out in the same mould as every other

youngster. And I have nothing to say against your doffing some of our

national prejudices. I feel the better myself for having spent a good deal

of my time abroad. But, for God's sake, keep an English cut, and don't

become indifferent to bad tobacco! And, my dear boy, it is good to be

unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It will not do to

give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the tallow-trade; you

must know where to find yourself. However, I shall put no vote on your

going. Wait until I can get off Committee, and I'll run over with you."

So Deronda went according to his will. But not before he had spent some

hours with Hans Meyrick, and been introduced to the mother and sisters in

the Chelsea home. The shy girls watched and registered every look of their

brother's friend, declared by Hans to have been the salvation of him, a

fellow like nobody else, and, in fine, a brick. They so thoroughly

accepted Deronda as an ideal, that when he was gone the youngest set to

work, under the criticism of the two elder girls, to paint him as Prince

Camaralzaman.