George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

  Chapter Sixteen

  Deronda’s circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional. One early moment had been burned into his life – a moment full of July sunshine and large pink roses shedding petals on a grassy court enclosed on three sides by a Gothic cloister. Imagine him: a boy of thirteen, stretched on the grass, his curly head propped on his arms over a book, while his tutor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool. Deronda’s book was Sismondi’s “History of the Italian Republics”; the lad had a passion for history. Suddenly he looked at his tutor, saying–

  “Mr. Fraser, how was it that the popes and cardinals always had so many nephews?”

  The tutor, an able young Scotsman who acted as Sir Hugo Mallinger’s secretary, answered with his clear-cut emphatic chant–

  “Their own children were called nephews.”

  “Why?” said Deronda.

  “For propriety; because, as you know, priests don’t marry, and the children were illegitimate.”

  Mr. Fraser had already turned his eyes on his book again, while Deronda, as if something had stung him, sat up abruptly.

  He had always called Sir Hugo Mallinger his uncle, and when he once asked about his parents, the baronet had answered, “You lost your father and mother when you were quite little; that is why I take care of you.” Daniel, trying to remember, had a dim sense of having been kissed very much, and surrounded by thin, scented drapery. Every other memory was of the world in which he lived now.

  At that time he did not mind, for he was too fond of Sir Hugo to be sorry for the loss of unknown parents. His uncle was always indulgent and cheerful; Daniel thought him absolutely perfect, and his place was one of the finest in England, a picturesque outgrowth from an abbey. Diplow lay in another county, and was a comparatively landless place; whereas the Mallingers had the grant of Monk’s Topping and its land under Henry the Eighth. Two rows of Mallinger ancestors looked down on Daniel as he walked in the gallery: men in armour with pointed beards and arched eyebrows, pinched ladies in hoops and ruffs with no face to speak of; smiling politicians in magnificent wigs, and ladies of the prize-animal kind, till the line ended with Sir Hugo and his younger brother Henleigh.

  This last had married Miss Grandcourt, taking her name along with her estates: thus joining two old families, and uniting their advantages in the prospects of that Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt whom we have already met.

  Grandcourt’s portrait was one of these; but the other nephew, Daniel Deronda, found in the family faces on the walls no reflection of his own. Still he was handsomer than any of them, and at thirteen appeared the most memorable of boys, whose face would make you believe in the innate nobility of humankind.

  But at this moment on the grass among the rose-petals, Daniel Deronda was making a first acquaintance with grief. A new idea was changing his habitual feelings as happy careless voyagers are changed with the sky suddenly threatening danger. He sat perfectly still with his back to the tutor, surveying familiar facts anew.

  He had not lived with other boys, and his mind showed the same blending of 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. But he had never associated these ideas with his own lot – until this moment, when there darted into his mind the possibility that here was the secret of his own birth, and that the man whom he called uncle was really his father.

  Daniel felt the presence of trouble like a new guest with an enigmatic veiled face. The uncle whom he loved dearly became a father who held secrets about him – and what had become of his mother?– secrets about which he, Daniel, could never inquire; for to speak about these new thoughts seemed like falling flakes of fire to his imagination. The impetuous force of these new images took possession of him, and left him no power to reflect that he might be trembling at a fiction of his own. This strong rush of feeling, and his dread of its betrayal, brought big slow tears, which fell until the voice of Mr. Fraser said:

  “Daniel, you are sitting on the bent pages of your book.”

  Daniel immediately moved the book without turning round, and then rose and walked away into the grounds, where he could dry his tears unobserved. After the first shock, he could remember that he was not certain how things really stood, and that he had been conjecturing about his own history. Only some memories had an obstinate reality, like the fragments of a bridge, telling you unmistakably how the arches lay. His conjectures seemed like a mean offence; for he had great delicacy of feeling.

  But at this time he acquired a new sense in relation to all the elements of his life. The idea that others knew things about him which they did not mention, made him reserved and sensitive. He noticed words which before that July day would have passed him by; and round every trivial incident, newly-roused feelings were ready to cluster.

  One such incident a month later wrought itself deeply into his life. Daniel had not only a thrilling boy’s soprano voice, but a fine musical instinct, and had worked out accompaniments for himself on the piano. Sir Hugo, who delighted in the boy, used to ask him to sing for guests. One morning after he had been singing “Sweet Echo” before a small party of gentlemen, the baronet said:

  “Come here, Dan!”

  He came forward with unusual reluctance. His rich colouring was set off by his resistant gravity, and everyone 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?”

  Daniel reddened instantaneously, and answered with angry decision–

  “No; I should hate it!”

  “Well, well!” said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness. But Daniel turned away quickly, left the room, and going to his own chamber threw himself on the broad window-sill.

  Here he could see the rain gradually subsiding over a great reach of the park, with old oaks and a green glade. This scene had always been part of his home, and his ardent nature clung to it with affection. He had never supposed that he could be shut out from the world of his uncle. 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 possible for the son of an English gentleman. He had often stayed in London with Sir Hugo, and been taken 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 he set himself bitterly against the notion of being dressed up to sing before fine people, who would not care about him except as a wonderful toy. Sir Hugo’s suggestion seemed to Daniel proof that there was something about his birth which meant that he was not a gentleman.

  Would his uncle ever tell him everything? He shrank from the prospect, preferring ignorance. If his father had been wicked – Daniel inwardly used strong words for the injury done him – 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. Daniel fancied that everyone else’s mind was as active as his own on a matter which was so vital to him. Did the valet know? – and the housekeeper? – and Banks the bailiff?

  He recalled a time when Banks said to his wife with a wink, “He features the mother, eh?” At that time little Daniel had merely thought that Banks made a silly face. But now that small incident became information. How could he be like his mother and not like his father? His mother must have been a Mallinger. 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? He wished that he could examine the family tree in the library. But he might be seen: and he would never bring himself near even a silent admission of the sore that had opened in him.

  In such youthful experiences are the lines of
character often laid down. If Daniel had been of a less affectionate nature, the reserve might have turned into a hard, proud antagonism. But he was a loving child, who had always trusted in his uncle.

  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 flawless.

  But some time after this, it appeared that Sir Hugo must have been joking about the singing. He sent for Daniel into the library, and as the boy entered said kindly, “Ah, Dan! Come and sit down here.” He drew one of the old embroidered stools close to him.

  Daniel obeyed, and Sir Hugo put an affectionate, gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “What is it, my boy? Has anything put you out of spirits lately?”

  Daniel was determined not to cry, but he could not speak.

  “All changes are painful when people have been happy, you know,” said Sir Hugo, rubbing the boy’s curls gently. “You can’t be educated exactly as I wish, without our parting. And I think you will find a great deal to like at school.”

  This was not what Daniel expected, and was 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 go to a public school in preparation for the university: Cambridge, I hope; it was my own university.”

  Daniel’s colour 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–

  “So you won’t mind about leaving your old Nunc?”

  “Yes, I shall,” said Daniel, clasping Sir Hugo’s arm. “But shan’t I come home in the holidays?”

  “Oh yes,” said Sir Hugo. “But now I mean you to go to a new tutor, before you go to Eton.”

  After this interview Daniel’s spirit rose. He was meant to be a gentleman, and it might be that his conjectures were all wrong. It became plain to him that there must be possibilities of which he knew nothing. He left off brooding and was merry again until he went away.

  Things went on very well with Daniel at school, except that a boy with whom he was inclined to make friends talked to him a great deal about his home and parents, and seemed to expect a like expansiveness in return. Daniel shrank into reserve, and this experience checked him from forming any intimate friendship. Everyone set him down as a reserved boy, though he was so good-humoured, quick and unassuming, that nobody called his reserve disagreeable. Certainly his handsome face aided the favourable impression; but in this case, beauty told no falsehood.

  A surprise came before his first vacation, strengthening the silent consciousness of a grief within. Sir Hugo wrote that he was married to Miss Raymond, a sweet lady. It 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.

  Let Sir Hugo be excused for the mistakes in his behaviour to Deronda. Dullness toward what may be going on in children’s minds is common even in good-natured men. He was aware that Daniel was generally suspected to be his own son. But he was pleased with that suspicion; and he had never imagined how the boy himself might be affected. He was as fond of him as could be, and meant the best by him.

  By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady Mallinger had three daughters – charming babies, all three, but if Sir Hugo had no son the succession must go to his nephew, Grandcourt. Daniel was by now convinced that Sir Hugo was his father, and he conceived that the baronet, since he never spoke on the subject, wished him to have a silent understanding of the fact. Some youths in Deronda’s position might have resented Sir Hugo’s marriage, and scowled at the timid Lady Mallinger and her little ones; but hatred of innocent human obstacles was a moral stupidity not in Deronda’s grain.

  In a rare few, sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination tender. Deronda’s early susceptibility, charged at first with indignation and resistant pride, made him reflect on certain questions of life; it gave him a sympathy with certain ills which marked him off from other youths.

  One day near the end of the long vacation, before his departure to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo–

  “What do you intend me to be, sir?”

  “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, until you have looked about you a little more. The university has a good wide opening into the forum. There are prizes to be won, and from what I hear, I should think you can take up anything you like. You are in deeper water with your classics than I ever got into; or at Cambridge you can go into mathematics, and disport yourself on the dry sand as much as you like. I floundered along like a carp.”

  Daniel, blushing, said, “I suppose I shall have to earn my keep by-and-by.”

  “Not exactly. I recommend you not to be extravagant – I know you are not inclined to that. You will have a bachelor’s income. Perhaps I had better tell you that you will have 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.”

  Deronda looked embarrassed. He ought to express gratitude, but other feelings clogged his tongue. A question about his birth was throbbing within him, and yet it seemed more impossible than ever that the question should be asked – or answered. Sir Hugo’s generosity was the more striking because the baronet had of late cared particularly for money, and for providing for his daughters; and it flashed through Daniel’s mind that his own provision might come in some way from his mother.

  Sir Hugo appeared not to notice anything peculiar in Daniel’s manner, and presently went on,

  “I am glad you have done some good reading outside your classics, and have got a grip of French and German. And if you have any turn for being a Don, I say nothing against it.”

  “I think there’s not much chance of that. I hope you will not be disappointed if I don’t come out with high honours.”

  “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 idiot, like young Brecon, who got a Double First, and has been learning to knit braces ever since.”

  Daniel had not been the hardest of workers at Eton. Though some kinds of study and reading came easily to him, he was not a first-rate Eton scholar. His yearning after wide knowledge meant he had little ardour for acquiring prizes in narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and took any second-rateness in himself simply as a fact.

  Still Daniel had a rare sympathy, an active imagination on behalf of others which was continually seen in considerate acts. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that he had no ambition. He had suffered keenly from the belief that there was a tinge of dishonour in his lot; but this bred in him a hatred of all injury. He had flashes of fierceness upon occasion, but the occasions were not always what might have been expected. For any resentful impulses had been early checked by his affectionate nature. Love has a habit of saying “Never mind” to angry self, who, sitting down in the lower place, by-and-by gets used to it.

  So as Deronda approached manhood, his feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was more mixed with criticism, gained too in tenderness. The dear old beautiful home and everything within it, Lady Mallinger and her little ones included, were sacred to the youth as they had been to the boy – only with a certain difference of light. Still, he was not disposed 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. For his interest in learning how human miseries are made was so infu
sed with kindliness that it easily passed for comradeship.

  The impression he made at Cambridge was similar to at Eton. Everyone agreed that he might have taken a high place if he had been more pushing, and if he had not hampered himself with the notion that studies were nourishers of opinion rather than instruments of success. In the beginning, his work at the university had a new zest for him: he applied himself vigorously to mathematics, and delighted to feel his strength in a fresh exercise of thought. That delight determined him to try for a mathematical scholarship in his second year: he wished to gratify Sir Hugo by some achievement.

  But here came the old check. He found his inward bent for comprehension diverging more and more from the track marked out by the standards of examination: he felt discontented with the futility of a demand for excessive retention of knowledge without any insight into its connecting principles.

  He was tempted to ask Sir Hugo to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a more independent line of study abroad. His old love of universal history made him want to study in foreign countries, following in imagination the travelling students of the middle ages. He longed to have the sort of apprenticeship to life which would not rob him of choice. This hesitation was encouraged because there was no need for him to get an immediate income, or to fit himself in haste for a profession. But the project might not have gone beyond the stage of ineffective brooding, if circumstances had not quickened it into action.

  The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship with a youth in the same year with himself, who had come as an exhibitioner from Christ’s Hospital. His pinched features and long blonde hair reminded one of quaint heads by early German painters; but when his face was lit up by a joke, there came sudden creases about the mouth and eyes. His father, an engraver, had been dead eleven years, and his mother had three girls to educate and maintain on a meagre income. Hans Meyrick felt himself the pillar, or rather the twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing plants must cling. He had ability and affection: the ease and quickness with which he studied might serve him to win prizes at Cambridge. The only danger was that his good intentions might be frustrated by his capricious impulses and fits of impish recklessness.

  Hans in his right mind, however, was a lovable creature, and in Deronda he found a friend who was likely to stand by him with compassion for these brief aberrations. To Deronda Hans poured out his affairs; the poverty of his home, the itching of his fingers to draw, and his determination to fight it away for the sake of getting money for his beloved mother and sisters. He wanted no confidences in return, but seemed to take Deronda as an Olympian who needed nothing. Deronda gave Meyrick all the attention he claimed, looking after him in his erratic moments, and contriving by delicate devices to make up for his friend’s lack of pence.

  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 was made more probable by the steadying influence of Deronda’s friendship.

  But Meyrick’s imprudence threatened to disappoint his hopes. He had paid too much for an old engraving, and to make up for it, had come from London in a third-class carriage with his eyes exposed to a bitter wind that carried irritating particles. The consequence was a severe inflammation of the eyes, which threatened a lasting injury. Deronda made every other task secondary to that of being companion and eyes to Hans, working with him and for him at his classics, so that if possible his chance of the scholarship might be saved. Hans, to keep the knowledge of his suffering from his mother and sisters, claimed his work as a reason for passing Christmas at Cambridge; and his friend stayed up with him.

  Meanwhile Deronda relaxed his hold on his mathematics, until Hans said: “Old fellow, while you are helping me you are risking yourself.”

  Deronda would not admit that he cared about the risk: he was very anxious that Hans should not miss the much-needed scholarship. Still, when Hans was able to use his own eyes, Deronda tried to recover his lost ground. He failed; but he had the satisfaction of seeing Meyrick win.

  The sense of having spent his time working against the grain gave him a distaste for renewing the process, and made him think seriously of quitting Cambridge, provided Sir Hugo would agree. In speaking of his intention to Meyrick he made it appear that he was glad of the turn events had taken.

  Meyrick was uneasy, feeling that in serving him Daniel had placed himself at a disadvantage, and he said mournfully, “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 an excellent investment of my luck.”

  “Oh, confound it! You save an ugly mongrel from drowning, and expect him to cut a fine figure.” After this, Hans secretly wrote 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 family in their little home at Chelsea; Deronda to carry out the less easy task of opening his mind to Sir Hugo. 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 study abroad, Sir Hugo was meditative rather than surprised. He said, “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.”

  “I see; you don’t want to be turned out in the same mould as every other youngster. I have nothing to say against your doffing some of our national prejudices. I feel the better myself for having spent time abroad. I shall put no veto on your going.”

  So Deronda went; 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 registered every look of their brother’s friend, declared by Hans to have been his salvation, a fellow like nobody else. They so thoroughly accepted Deronda as an ideal, that when he was gone the youngest set to work to paint him as Prince Camaralzaman from the Arabian Nights.