Daniel Deronda

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Hans, on his side, had a mind equally busy. Mirah's anger had waked in him
a new perception, and with it the unpleasant sense that he was a dolt not
to have had it before. Suppose Mirah's heart were entirely preoccupied
with Deronda in another character than that of her own and her brother's
benefactor; the supposition was attended in Hans's mind with anxieties
which, to do him justice, were not altogether selfish. He had a strong
persuasion, which only direct evidence to the contrary could have
dissipated, and that was that there was a serious attachment between
Deronda and Mrs. Grandcourt; he had pieced together many fragments of
observation, and gradually gathered knowledge, completed by what his
sisters had heard from Anna Gascoigne, which convinced him not only that
Mrs. Grandcourt had a passion for Deronda, but also, notwithstanding his
friend's austere self-repression, that Deronda's susceptibility about her
was the sign of concealed love. Some men, having such a conviction, would
have avoided allusions that could have roused that susceptibility; but
Hans's talk naturally fluttered toward mischief, and he was given to a
form of experiment on live animals which consisted in irritating his
friends playfully. His experiments had ended in satisfying him that what
he thought likely was true.

On the other hand, any susceptibility Deronda had manifested about a
lover's attentions being shown to Mirah, Hans took to be sufficiently
accounted for by the alleged reason, namely, her dependent position; for
he credited his friend with all possible unselfish anxiety for those whom
he could rescue and protect. And Deronda's insistence that Mirah would
never marry one who was not a Jew necessarily seemed to exclude himself,
since Hans shared the ordinary opinion, which he knew nothing to disturb,
that Deronda was the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger.

Thus he felt himself in clearness about the state of Deronda's affections;
but now, the events which really struck him as concurring toward the
desirable union with Mrs. Grandcourt, had called forth a flash of
revelation from Mirah--a betrayal of her passionate feeling on this
subject which had made him melancholy on her account as well as his own--
yet on the whole less melancholy than if he had imagined Deronda's hopes
fixed on her. It is not sublime, but it is common, for a man to see the
beloved object unhappy because his rival loves another, with more
fortitude and a milder jealousy than if he saw her entirely happy in his
rival. At least it was so with the mercurial Hans, who fluctuated between
the contradictory states of feeling, wounded because Mirah was wounded,
and of being almost obliged to Deronda for loving somebody else. It was
impossible for him to give Mirah any direct sign of the way in which he
had understood her anger, yet he longed that his speechless companionship
should be eloquent in a tender, penitent sympathy which is an admissible
form of wooing a bruised heart.

Thus the two went side by side in a companionship that yet seemed an
agitated communication, like that of two chords whose quick vibrations lie
outside our hearing. But when they reached the door of Mirah's home, and
Hans said "Good-bye," putting out his hand with an appealing look of
penitence, she met the look with melancholy gentleness, and said, "Will
you not come in and see my brother?"

Hans could not but interpret this invitation as a sign of pardon. He had
not enough understanding of what Mirah's nature had been wrought into by
her early experience, to divine how the very strength of her late
excitement had made it pass more quickly into the resolute acceptance of
pain. When he had said, "If you will let me," and they went in together,
half his grief was gone, and he was spinning a little romance of how his
devotion might make him indispensable to Mirah in proportion as Deronda
gave his devotion elsewhere. This was quite fair, since his friend was
provided for according to his own heart; and on the question of Judaism
Hans felt thoroughly fortified:--who ever heard in tale or history that a
woman's love went in the track of her race and religion? Moslem and Jewish
damsels were always attracted toward Christians, and now if Mirah's heart
had gone forth too precipitately toward Deronda, here was another case in
point. Hans was wont to make merry with his own arguments, to call himself
a Giaour, and antithesis the sole clue to events; but he believed a little
in what he laughed at. And thus his bird-like hope, constructed on the
lightest principles, soared again in spite of heavy circumstances.

They found Mordecai looking singularly happy, holding a closed letter in
his hand, his eyes glowing with a quiet triumph which in his emaciated
face gave the idea of a conquest over assailing death. After the greeting
between him and Hans, Mirah put her arm round her brother's neck and
looked down at the letter in his hand, without the courage to ask about
it, though she felt sure that it was the cause of his happiness.

"A letter from Daniel Deronda," said Mordecai, answering her look. "Brief
--only saying that he hopes soon to return. Unexpected claims have
detained him. The promise of seeing him again is like the bow in the cloud
to me," continued Mordecai, looking at Hans; "and to you it must be a
gladness. For who has two friends like him?"

While Hans was answering Mirah slipped away to her own room; but not to
indulge in any outburst of the passion within her. If the angels, once
supposed to watch the toilet of women, had entered the little chamber with
her and let her shut the door behind them, they would only have seen her
take off her hat, sit down and press her hands against her temples as if
she had suddenly reflected that her head ached; then rise to dash cold
water on her eyes and brow and hair till her backward curls were full of
crystal beads, while she had dried her brow and looked out like a freshly-
opened flower from among the dewy tresses of the woodland; then give deep
sighs of relief, and putting on her little slippers, sit still after that
action for a couple of minutes, which seemed to her so long, so full of
things to come, that she rose with an air of recollection, and went down
to make tea.

Something of the old life had returned. She had been used to remember that
she must learn her part, must go to rehearsal, must act and sing in the
evening, must hide her feelings from her father; and the more painful her
life grew, the more she had been used to hide. The force of her nature had
long found its chief action in resolute endurance, and to-day the violence
of feeling which had caused the first jet of anger had quickly transformed
itself into a steady facing of trouble, the well-known companion of her
young years. But while she moved about and spoke as usual, a close
observer might have discerned a difference between this apparent calm,
which was the effect of restraining energy, and the sweet genuine calm of
the months when she first felt a return of her infantine happiness.

Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of
calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the
reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter
the course of the storm. Mirah felt no such surprise when familiar Sorrow
came back from brief absence, and sat down with her according to the old
use and wont. And this habit of expecting trouble rather than joy,
hindered her from having any persistent belief in opposition to the
probabilities which were not merely suggested by Hans, but were supported
by her own private knowledge and long-growing presentiment. An attachment
between Deronda and Mrs. Grandcourt, to end in their future marriage, had
the aspect of a certainty for her feeling. There had been no fault in him:
facts had ordered themselves so that there was a tie between him and this
woman who belonged to another world than hers and Ezra's--nay, who seemed
another sort of being than Deronda, something foreign that would be a
disturbance in his life instead of blending with it. Well, well--but if it
could have been deferred so as to make no difference while Ezra was there!
She did not know all the momentousness of the relation between Deronda and
her brother, but she had seen, and instinctively felt enough to forebode
its being incongruous with any close tie to Mrs. Grandcourt; at least this
was the clothing that Mirah first gave to her mortal repugnance. But in
the still, quick action of her consciousness, thoughts went on like
changing states of sensation unbroken by her habitual acts; and this
inward language soon said distinctly that the mortal repugnance would
remain even if Ezra were secured from loss.

"What I have read about and sung about and seen acted, is happening to me
--this that I am feeling is the love that makes jealousy;" so impartially
Mirah summed up the charge against herself. But what difference could this
pain of hers make to any one else? It must remain as exclusively her own,
and hidden, as her early yearning and devotion to her lost mother. But
unlike that devotion, it was something that she felt to be a misfortune of
her nature--a discovery that what should have been pure gratitude and
reverence had sunk into selfish pain, that the feeling she had hitherto
delighted to pour out in words was degraded into something she was ashamed
to betray--an absurd longing that she who had received all and given
nothing should be of importance where she was of no importance--an angry
feeling toward another woman who possessed the good she wanted. But what
notion, what vain reliance could it be that had lain darkly within her and
was now burning itself into sight as disappointment and jealousy? It was
as if her soul had been steeped in poisonous passion by forgotten dreams
of deep sleep, and now flamed out in this unaccountable misery. For with
her waking reason she had never entertained what seemed the wildly
unfitting thought that Deronda could love her. The uneasiness she had felt
before had been comparatively vague and easily explained as part of a
general regret that he was only a visitant in her and her brother's world,
from which the world where his home lay was as different as a portico with
lights and lacqueys was different from the door of a tent, where the only
splendor came from the mysterious inaccessible stars. But her feeling was
no longer vague: the cause of her pain--the image of Mrs. Grandcourt by
Deronda's side, drawing him farther and farther into the distance, was as
definite as pincers on her flesh. In the Psyche-mould of Mirah's frame
there rested a fervid quality of emotion, sometimes rashly supposed to
require the bulk of a Cleopatra; her impressions had the thoroughness and
tenacity that give to the first selection of passionate feeling the
character of a lifelong faithfulness. And now a selection had declared
itself, which gave love a cruel heart of jealousy: she had been used to a
strong repugnance toward certain objects that surrounded her, and to walk
inwardly aloof from them while they touched her sense. And now her
repugnance concentrated itself on Mrs. Grandcourt, of whom she
involuntarily conceived more evil than she knew. "I could bear everything
that used to be--but this is worse--this is worse,--I used not to have
horrible feelings!" said the poor child in a loud whisper to her pillow.
Strange that she should have to pray against any feeling which concerned
Deronda!

But this conclusion had been reached through an evening spent in attending
to Mordecai, whose exaltation of spirit in the prospect of seeing his
friend again, disposed him to utter many thoughts aloud to Mirah, though
such communication was often interrupted by intervals apparently filled
with an inward utterance that animated his eyes and gave an occasional
silent action to his lips. One thought especially occupied him.

"Seest thou, Mirah," he said once, after a long silence, "the _Shemah_,
wherein we briefly confess the divine Unity, is the chief devotional
exercise of the Hebrew; and this made our religion the fundamental
religion for the whole world; for the divine Unity embraced as its
consequence the ultimate unity of mankind. See, then--the nation which has
been scoffed at for its separateness, has given a binding theory to the
human race. Now, in complete unity a part possesses the whole as the whole
possesses every part: and in this way human life is tending toward the
image of the Supreme Unity: for as our life becomes more spiritual by
capacity of thought, and joy therein, possession tends to become more
universal, being independent of gross material contact; so that in a brief
day the soul of man may know in fuller volume the good which has been and
is, nay, is to come, than all he could possess in a whole life where he
had to follow the creeping paths of the senses. In this moment, my sister,
I hold the joy of another's future within me: a future which these eyes
will not see, and which my spirit may not then recognize as mine. I
recognize it now, and love it so, that I can lay down this poor life upon
its altar and say: 'Burn, burn indiscernibly into that which shall be,
which is my love and not me.' Dost thou understand, Mirah?"

"A little," said Mirah, faintly, "but my mind is too poor to have felt
it."

"And yet," said Mordecai, rather insistently, "women are specially framed
for the love which feels possession in renouncing, and is thus a fit image
of what I mean. Somewhere in the later _Midrash_, I think, is the story of
a Jewish maiden who loved a Gentile king so well, that this was what she
did:--she entered into prison and changed clothes with the woman who was
beloved by the king, that she might deliver that woman from death by dying
in her stead, and leave the king to be happy in his love which was not for
her. This is the surpassing love, that loses self in the object of love."

"No, Ezra, no," said Mirah, with low-toned intensity, "that was not it.
She wanted the king when she was dead to know what she had done, and feel
that she was better than the other. It was her strong self, wanting to
conquer, that made her die."

Mordecai was silent a little, and then argued--

"That might be, Mirah. But if she acted so, believing the king would never
know."

"You can make the story so in your mind, Ezra, because you are great, and
like to fancy the greatest that could be. But I think it was not really
like that. The Jewish girl must have had jealousy in her heart, and she
wanted somehow to have the first place in the king's mind. That is what
she would die for."

"My sister, thou hast read too many plays, where the writers delight in
showing the human passions as indwelling demons, unmixed with the
relenting and devout elements of the soul. Thou judgest by the plays, and
not by thy own heart, which is like our mother's."

Mirah made no answer.

CHAPTER LXII.

"Das Gluck ist eine leichte Dirne,
Und weilt nicht gern am selben Ort;
Sie streicht das Haar dir von der Stirn
Und kusst dich rasch und flattert fort

Frau Ungluck hat im Gegentheile
Dich liebefest an's Herz gedruckt;
Sie sagt, sie habe keine Eile,
Setzt sich zu dir ans Bett und strickt."
--HEINE.

Something which Mirah had lately been watching for as the fulfilment of a
threat, seemed now the continued visit of that familiar sorrow which had
lately come back, bringing abundant luggage.

Turning out of Knightsbridge, after singing at a charitable morning
concert in a wealthy house, where she had been recommended by Klesmer, and
where there had been the usual groups outside to see the departing
company, she began to feel herself dogged by footsteps that kept an even
pace with her own. Her concert dress being simple black, over which she
had thrown a dust cloak, could not make her an object of unpleasant
attention, and render walking an imprudence; but this reflection did not
occur to Mirah: another kind of alarm lay uppermost in her mind. She
immediately thought of her father, and could no more look round than if
she had felt herself tracked by a ghost. To turn and face him would be
voluntarily to meet the rush of emotions which beforehand seemed
intolerable. If it were her father he must mean to claim recognition, and
he would oblige her to face him. She must wait for that compulsion. She
walked on, not quickening her pace--of what use was that?--but picturing
what was about to happen as if she had the full certainty that the man
behind her was her father; and along with her picturing went a regret that
she had given her word to Mrs. Meyrick not to use any concealment about
him. The regret at last urged her, at least, to try and hinder any sudden
betrayal that would cause her brother an unnecessary shock. Under the
pressure of this motive, she resolved to turn before she reached her own
door, and firmly will the encounter instead of merely submitting to it.
She had already reached the entrance of the small square where her home
lay, and had made up her mind to turn, when she felt her embodied
presentiment getting closer to her, then slipping to her side, grasping
her wrist, and saying, with a persuasive curl of accent, "Mirah!"

She paused at once without any start; it was the voice she expected, and
she was meeting the expected eyes. Her face was as grave as if she had
been looking at her executioner, while his was adjusted to the intention
of soothing and propitiating her. Once a handsome face, with bright color,
it was now sallow and deep-lined, and had that peculiar impress of
impudent suavity which comes from courting favor while accepting
disrespect. He was lightly made and active, with something of youth about
him which made the signs of age seem a disguise; and in reality he was
hardly fifty-seven. His dress was shabby, as when she had seen him before.
The presence of this unreverend father now, more than ever, affected Mirah
with the mingled anguish of shame and grief, repulsion and pity--more than
ever, now that her own world was changed into one where there was no
comradeship to fence him from scorn and contempt.

Slowly, with a sad, tremulous voice, she said, "It is you, father."

"Why did you run away from me, child?" he began with rapid speech which
was meant to have a tone of tender remonstrance, accompanied with various
quick gestures like an abbreviated finger-language. "What were you afraid
of? You knew I never made you do anything against your will. It was for
your sake I broke up your engagement in the Vorstadt, because I saw it
didn't suit you, and you repaid me by leaving me to the bad times that
came in consequence. I had made an easier engagement for you at the
Vorstadt Theater in Dresden: I didn't tell you, because I wanted to take
you by surprise. And you left me planted there--obliged to make myself
scarce because I had broken contract. That was hard lines for me, after I
had given up everything for the sake of getting you an education which was
to be a fortune to you. What father devoted himself to his daughter more
than I did to you? You know how I bore that disappointment in your voice,
and made the best of it: and when I had nobody besides you, and was
getting broken, as a man must who has had to fight his way with his
brains--you chose that time to leave me. Who else was it you owed
everything to, if not to me? and where was your feeling in return? For
what my daughter cared, I might have died in a ditch."

Lapidoth stopped short here, not from lack of invention, but because he
had reached a pathetic climax, and gave a sudden sob, like a woman's,
taking out hastily an old yellow silk handkerchief. He really felt that
his daughter had treated him ill--a sort of sensibility which is naturally
strong in unscrupulous persons, who put down what is owing to them,
without any _per contra_. Mirah, in spite of that sob, had energy enough
not to let him suppose that he deceived her. She answered more firmly,
though it was the first time she had ever used accusing words to him.

"You know why I left you, father; and I had reason to distrust you,
because I felt sure that you had deceived my mother. If I could have
trusted you, I would have stayed with you and worked for you."

"I never meant to deceive your mother, Mirah," said Lapidoth, putting back
his handkerchief, but beginning with a voice that seemed to struggle
against further sobbing. "I meant to take you back to her, but chances
hindered me just at the time, and then there came information of her
death. It was better for you that I should stay where I was, and your
brother could take care of himself. Nobody had any claim on me but you. I
had word of your mother's death from a particular friend, who had
undertaken to manage things for me, and I sent him over money to pay
expenses. There's one chance to be sure--" Lapidoth had quickly conceived
that he must guard against something unlikely, yet possible--"he may have
written me lies for the sake of getting the money out of me."

Mirah made no answer; she could not bear to utter the only true one--"I
don't believe one word of what you say"--and she simply showed a wish that
they should walk on, feeling that their standing still might draw down
unpleasant notice. Even as they walked along, their companionship might
well have made a passer-by turn back to look at them. The figure of Mirah,
with her beauty set off by the quiet, careful dress of an English lady,
made a strange pendant to this shabby, foreign-looking, eager, and
gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable jauntiness of air,
perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the smallness of his
hands and feet, and his light walk.

"You seem to have done well for yourself, Mirah? _You_ are in no want, I
see," said the father, looking at her with emphatic examination.

"Good friends who found me in distress have helped me to get work," said
Mirah, hardly knowing what she actually said, from being occupied with
what she would presently have to say. "I give lessons. I have sung in
private houses. I have just been singing at a private concert." She
paused, and then added, with significance, "I have very good friends, who
know all about me."

"And you would be ashamed they should see your father in this plight? No
wonder. I came to England with no prospect, but the chance of finding you.
It was a mad quest; but a father's heart is superstitious--feels a
loadstone drawing it somewhere or other. I might have done very well,
staying abroad: when I hadn't you to take care of, I could have rolled or
settled as easily as a ball; but it's hard being lonely in the world, when
your spirit's beginning to break. And I thought my little Mirah would
repent leaving her father when she came to look back. I've had a sharp
pinch to work my way; I don't know what I shall come down to next. Talents
like mine are no use in this country. When a man's getting out at elbows
nobody will believe in him. I couldn't get any decent employ with my
appearance. I've been obliged to get pretty low for a shilling already."

Mirah's anxiety was quick enough to imagine her father's sinking into a
further degradation, which she was bound to hinder if she could. But
before she could answer his string of inventive sentences, delivered with
as much glibness as if they had been learned by rote, he added promptly---

"Where do you live, Mirah?"

"Here, in this square. We are not far from the house."

"In lodgings?"

"Yes."

"Any one to take care of you?"

"Yes," said Mirah again, looking full at the keen face which was turned
toward hers--"my brother."

The father's eyelids fluttered as if the lightning had come across them,
and there was a slight movement of the shoulders. But he said, after a
just perceptible pause: "Ezra? How did you know--how did you find him?"

"That would take long to tell. Here we are at the door. My brother would
not wish me to close it on you."

Mirah was already on the doorstep, but had her face turned toward her
father, who stood below her on the pavement. Her heart had begun to beat
faster with the prospect of what was coming in the presence of Ezra; and
already in this attitude of giving leave to the father whom she had been
used to obey--in this sight of him standing below her, with a perceptible
shrinking from the admission which he had been indirectly asking for, she
had a pang of the peculiar, sympathetic humiliation and shame--the stabbed
heart of reverence--which belongs to a nature intensely filial.

"Stay a minute, _Liebchen_," said Lapidoth, speaking in a lowered tone;
"what sort of man has Ezra turned out?"

"A good man--a wonderful man," said Mirah, with slow emphasis, trying to
master the agitation which made her voice more tremulous as she went on.
She felt urged to prepare her father for the complete penetration of
himself which awaited him. "But he was very poor when my friends found him
for me--a poor workman. Once--twelve years ago--he was strong and happy,
going to the East, which he loved to think of; and my mother called him
back because--because she had lost me. And he went to her, and took care
of her through great trouble, and worked for her till she died--died in
grief. And Ezra, too, had lost his health and strength. The cold had
seized him coming back to my mother, because she was forsaken. For years
he has been getting weaker--always poor, always working--but full of
knowledge, and great-minded. All who come near him honor him. To stand
before him is like standing before a prophet of God"--Mirah ended with
difficulty, her heart throbbing--"falsehoods are no use."