Daniel Deronda, George Eliot [portable ebook reader .TXT] 📗

about the age to be expected in Mirah’s brother, who was grown up while she was still a little child. But Deronda’s first endeavor as he drove homeward was to convince himself that there was not the slightest warrantable presumption of this Ezra being Mirah’s brother; and next, that even if, in spite of good reasoning, he turned out to be that brother, while on inquiry the mother was found to be dead, it was not his⁠—Deronda’s⁠—duty to make known the discovery to Mirah. In inconvenient disturbance of this conclusion there came his lately-acquired knowledge that Mirah would have a religious desire to know of her mother’s death, and also to learn whether her brother were living. How far was he justified in determining another life by his own notions? Was it not his secret complaint against the way in which others had ordered his own life, that he had not open daylight on all its relations, so that he had not, like other men, the full guidance of primary duties?

The immediate relief from this inward debate was the reflection that he had not yet made any real discovery, and that by looking into the facts more closely he should be certified that there was no demand on him for any decision whatever. He intended to return to that shop as soon as he could conveniently, and buy the clasps for Lady Mallinger. But he was hindered for several days by Sir Hugo, who, about to make an after-dinner speech on a burning topic, wanted Deronda to forage for him on the legal part of the question, besides wasting time every day on argument which always ended in a drawn battle. As on many other questions, they held different sides, but Sir Hugo did not mind this, and when Deronda put his point well, said, with a mixture of satisfaction and regret,

“Confound it, Dan! why don’t you make an opportunity of saying these things in public? You’re wrong, you know. You won’t succeed. You’ve got the massive sentiment⁠—the heavy artillery of the country against you. But it’s all the better ground for a young man to display himself on. When I was your age, I should have taken it. And it would be quite as well for you to be in opposition to me here and there. It would throw you more into relief. If you would seize an occasion of this sort to make an impression, you might be in Parliament in no time. And you know that would gratify me.”

“I am sorry not to do what would gratify you, sir,” said Deronda. “But I cannot persuade myself to look at politics as a profession.”

“Why not? if a man is not born into public life by his position in the country, there’s no way for him but to embrace it by his own efforts. The business of the country must be done⁠—her Majesty’s Government carried on, as the old Duke said. And it never could be, my boy, if everybody looked at politics as if they were prophecy, and demanded an inspired vocation. If you are to get into Parliament, it won’t do to sit still and wait for a call either from heaven or constituents.”

“I don’t want to make a living out of opinions,” said Deronda; “especially out of borrowed opinions. Not that I mean to blame other men. I dare say many better fellows than I don’t mind getting on to a platform to praise themselves, and giving their word of honor for a party.”

“I’ll tell you what, Dan,” said Sir Hugo, “a man who sets his face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered, impracticable fellow. There’s a bad style of humbug, but there is also a good style⁠—one that oils the wheels and makes progress possible. If you are to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas; and I agree with the Archbishop at Naples who had a St. Januarius procession against the plague. It’s no use having an Order in Council against popular shallowness. There is no action possible without a little acting.”

“One may be obliged to give way to an occasional necessity,” said Deronda. “But it is one thing to say, ‘In this particular case I am forced to put on this foolscap and grin,’ and another to buy a pocket foolscap and practice myself in grinning. I can’t see any real public expediency that does not keep an ideal before it which makes a limit of deviation from the direct path. But if I were to set up for a public man I might mistake my success for public expediency.”

It was after this dialogue, which was rather jarring to him, that Deronda set out on his meditated second visit to Ezra Cohen’s. He entered the street at the end opposite to the Holborn entrance, and an inward reluctance slackened his pace while his thoughts were transferring what he had just been saying about public expediency to the entirely private difficulty which brought him back again into this unattractive thoroughfare. It might soon become an immediate practical question with him how far he could call it a wise expediency to conceal the fact of close kindred. Such questions turning up constantly in life are often decided in a rough-and-ready way; and to many it will appear an overrefinement in Deronda that he should make any great point of a matter confined to his own knowledge. But we have seen the reasons why he had come to regard concealment as a bane of life, and the necessity of concealment as a mark by which lines of action were to be avoided. The prospect of being urged against the confirmed habit of his mind was naturally grating. He even paused here and there before the most plausible shopwindows for a gentleman to look into, half inclined to decide that he would not increase his knowledge about that modern Ezra, who was certainly not a leader among his people⁠—a hesitation which proved