Chapter Fifty-three
On the third morning after his meeting with his mother, Deronda had a note from her saying, “I leave today. Come and see me at once.”
He was shown into the same room as before, but darkened with blinds. The Princess presently entered, dressed in a loose wrap of dusky orange silk, with black lace about her head. Her face seemed even more impressive in the sombre light, the eyes larger, the lines more vigorous. You might have imagined her a sorceress.
She kissed Deronda on both cheeks, then seated herself among her cushions, and told Deronda to sit down by her.
“Is there anything more that you would like to ask me?” she said with a queenly air.
“Can I find the house in Genoa where you used to live with my grandfather?” said Deronda.
“No, it is pulled down. But you will find out about our family from the papers in the chest. My father was a physician. My mother was a Morteira. You will find all these things. I was born amongst them without my will. I banished them as soon as I could.”
Deronda tried to hide his pained feeling, and said, “Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”
“I think I have told you everything that could be demanded of me,” said the Princess coldly. It seemed as if she had exhausted her emotion in their former interview. The fact was, she had said to herself, “I have confessed all. I will not go through it again.”
But to Deronda the moment was cruel; it made the filial yearning of his life a disappointed pilgrimage to a ruined shrine. He said, with some tremor in his voice–
“Then are we to part and I never to be anything to you?”
“It is better so,” said the Princess, in a softer voice. “There could be nothing but hard duty for you. You would not love me. Don’t deny it,” she said, abruptly, putting up her hand. “I know the truth. You are angry with me. You think I robbed you of something. You are on your grandfather’s side, and you will always condemn me in your heart.”
Deronda stood up in silence. But his mother now looked at him with a new admiration in her glance, saying–
“You are wrong to be angry. You are the better for what I did. What shall you do? What difference will it make that I have told you about your birth?”
“A very great difference,” said Deronda, emphatically.
“What shall you do then?” said the Princess, more sharply. “Make yourself into a Jew just like your grandfather?”
“That is impossible. The effect of my education can never be done away with,” said Deronda. “But it is my duty and my impulse to identify myself, as far as possible, with my hereditary people, and if I can do any work for them that I can give my soul and hand to, I shall do it.”
His mother studied him with a wondering speculation, as if she could read a difficult language in his face, while he bore her gaze with firm resolution. She said–
“You are in love with a Jewess.”
Deronda coloured. “My reasons would be independent of any such fact.”
“I know better. I have seen what men are,” said the Princess. “Tell me the truth. She is a Jewess who will not accept anyone but a Jew. There are a few such,” she added, with a touch of scorn.
Deronda remained silent, and she presently said, with rising passion–
“You love her as your father loved me, and she draws you after her as I drew him. But I was leading him the other way. And now your grandfather is getting his revenge.”
“Mother, don’t let us think of it in that way. I admit that there may come some benefit from the education you chose for me. I prefer cherishing the benefit, to dwelling with resentment on the injury. I think it would have been right that I should have been brought up knowing that I was a Jew, but I had a good upbringing. And now, you have restored my inheritance – you have been saved from robbing me of my duty: can you not bring yourself to consent to this?”
His mother slowly shook her head, and he said, more urgently,
“You have told me that you sought what you held the best for me: open your heart and relent toward my grandfather, who sought what he held the best for you.”
“Not for me, no,” she said, shaking her head, and folding her arms tightly. “He never thought of his daughter except as an instrument. Because I had wishes outside his purpose, I was to be put in a frame and tortured. If that is the right law for the world, I will not say that I love it. If my acts were wrong – well, I have told everything. I have done what I could. I have after all been the instrument my father wanted – ‘I desire a grandson who shall have a true Jewish heart.’”
“Were those my grandfather’s words?” said Deronda.
“Yes, yes. I wanted to thwart him,” said the Princess, with a sudden outburst of passion. “You would have me love what I have hated since I was small. But what does it matter? His yoke has been on me, whether I loved it or not. You are the grandson he wanted. You speak as men do – as if you felt yourself wise. What does it all mean?”
Her tone was abrupt and scornful. Deronda, pained, had to remember their relationship, lest his words should become cruel.
“Mother, don’t say that I feel myself wise. I think only the truth can bring us guidance toward duty. Your will was strong, but my grandfather’s trust in you – what you call his yoke – is the expression of something stronger, with deeper roots. You renounced me – you banish me as a son”– there was an involuntary indignation in Deronda’s voice– “but that stronger Something has determined that I shall be the grandson whom you willed to annihilate.”
His mother was watching him fixedly, and again her face gathered admiration.
“Sit down again,” she said, and he obeyed. She laid her hand on his shoulder and went on–
“You rebuke me. You are angry because I banish you. What could you do for me but weary your own patience? Your mother is a shattered woman. You reproach me that I parted with you. I had joy enough without you. Now you are come back to me, and I cannot make you a joy. Have you the cursing spirit of the Jew in you? Are you not able to forgive me? Shall you be glad to think that I am punished?”
“How can you ask me that?” said Deronda, remonstrantly. “Have I not sought to be a son to you? My grief is that you have declared me helpless to comfort you. I would give up much to soothe your anguish.”
“You shall give up nothing,” said his mother, agitated. “You shall be happy. I shall have done you no harm. You have no reason to curse me. You shall pray that I may be freed from suffering. And I shall see you instead of always seeing your grandfather. If you think Kaddish will help me, say it. You will come between me and the dead. When I am in your mind, you will look as you do now – as if you were a tender son – as if I had been a tender mother.”
Her hand trembled on his shoulder. Deep compassion hemmed in his words. Putting his arm around her, he pressed her head tenderly to his. They sat so for some moments. Then she lifted her head and rose from her seat with a sigh.
“Is she beautiful?” she said, abruptly.
“Who?”
“The woman you love.”
He was obliged to say, “Yes.”
“Not ambitious?”
“No, I think not.”
“She is not like that?” said the Princess, taking from her wallet a miniature. It was her own portrait in youth, and as Deronda looked at it with admiring sadness, she said, “Had I not a rightful claim to be more than a mere daughter and mother? The voice and the genius matched the face. Whatever else was wrong, acknowledge that I had a right to be an artist.”
“I do acknowledge that,” said Deronda.
“Will you take the portrait?” said the Princess, more gently. “Teach her to think of me kindly.”
“I shall be grateful for the portrait,” said Deronda, “but I have no assurance that she whom I love will have any love for me. I have kept silence.”
“Who and what is she?”
“She was brought up as a singer for the stage,” he said reluctantl
y. “Her father took her away early from her mother, and her life has been unhappy. She is only twenty. Her father wished to bring her up in disregard of her Jewish origin, but she has clung with affection to the memory of her mother and her people.”
“Ah, like you. She is attached to the Judaism she knows nothing of,” said the Princess, peremptorily. “Is her singing worth anything?”
“Her singing is exquisite. But her voice is not suited to the stage, and the artist’s life has been made repugnant to her.”
“Why, she is made for you then. Sir Hugo said you were bitterly against being a singer.”
“I repeat,” said Deronda, emphatically, “that I have no assurance of her love for me. Other painful issues lie before me. I have always felt that I should prepare myself to renounce, not cherish that prospect. But whether happiness may come or not, one should prepare one’s self to do without it.”
“Do you feel in that way?” said his mother. “Poor boy! I wonder how it would have been if I had kept you with me – whether we should have quarrelled – your grandfather would have been in you – and you would have hampered my life.”
“I think my affection might have lasted through our quarrelling,” said Deronda, saddened, “and that surely would have enriched your life.”
“Not then, I did not want it then. I might have been glad of it now,” said the mother, with a bitter melancholy.
“But you love your other children, and they love you?” said Deronda, anxiously.
“Oh, yes. But I am not a loving woman. That is the truth. I know what love makes of men and women – it is subjection. I was never willingly subject to any man. Men have been subject to me. For a few years I was happy. What then? It is all over. Another life! Men talk of ‘another life,’ as if it only began on the other side of the grave. I have long entered on another life.” Her eyes were closed, her voice was smothered: in her dusky flame-coloured garment, she looked like a visitant from some land of the dead.
Deronda was no longer quite master of himself. He gave an audible sob. His mother, opening her eyes, said–
“Good-bye, my son, good-bye. We shall hear no more of each other. Kiss me.”
He clasped his arms round her neck, and they kissed each other.
Deronda did not know how he got out of the room. He felt an older man. All his boyish yearnings about his mother had vanished. He had gone through a tragic experience which must forever solemnize his life.