Daniel Deronda
George Eliot
CHAPTER XXXVII. Page 2
"Perfectly," said Hans, turning his face into a good-humored smile. "You have the very justifiable opinion of me that I am likely to shatter all the glass in my way, and break my own skull into the bargain. Quite fair. Since I got into the scrape of being born, everything I have liked best has been a scrape either for myself or somebody else. Everything I have taken to heartily has someturned into a scrape. My painting is the last scrape; and I shall be all my life getting out of it. You think now I shall get into a scrape at home. No; I am regenerate. You think I must be over head and ears in love Mirah. Quite right; so I am. But you think I shall scream and plunge and spoil everything. There you are mistaken-- excusably, but transcendently mistaken. I have undergone baptism by immersion. Awe takes care of me. Ask the little mother."
"You don't reckon a hopeless love among your scrapes, then," said Deronda, whose voice seemed to get deeper as Hans's went higher.
"I don't mean to call mine hopeless," said Hans, with provoking coolness, laying down his tools, thrusting his thumbs into his belt, and moving away a little, as if to contemplate his picture more deliberately.
"My dear fellow, you are only preparing misery for yourself," said Deronda, decisively. "She would not marry a Christian, even if she loved him. Have you heard her--of course you have--heard her speak of her people and her religion?"
"can't last," said Hans. "She will see no Jew who is tolerable. Every male of that race is insupportable,--'insupportably advancing'--his nose."
"I'll turn proselyte, if she wishes it," said Hans, with a shrug and a laugh.
"Don't talk nonsense, Hans. I thought you professed a serious love for her," said Deronda, getting heated.
"So I do. You think it desperate, but I don't."
"I know nothing; I can't tell has happened. We must be prepared for surprises. But I can hardly imagine a greater surprise to me than that there should have seemed to be anything in Mirah's sentiments for you to found a romantic hope on." Deronda felt that he was too contemptuous.
"I don't found my romantic hopes on a woman's sentiments," said Hans, perversely inclined to be the merrier when he was addressed with gravity. "I go to science and philosophy for my romance. Nature designed Mirah to fall in love with me. The amalgamation of races demands it--the mitigation of human ugliness demands it--the affinity of contrasts assures it. I am the utmost contrast to Mirah--a bleached Christian, who can't sing two notes in tune. Who has a chance against me?"
"I see now; it was all _persiflage_. You don't mean a word you say, Meyrick," said Deronda, laying his hand on Meyrick's shoulder, and speaking in a tone of cordial relief. "I was a wiseacre to answer you seriously."
"Upon my honor I do mean it, though," said Hans, facing round and laying his left hand on Deronda's shoulder, so that their eyes fronted each other closely. "I am at the confessional. I meant to tell you as soon as you came. My mother says you are Mirah's guardian, and she thinks herself responsible to you for every breath falls on Mirah in her house. Well, I love her--I worship her--I won't despair--I mean to deserve her."
"My dear fellow, you can't do it," said Deronda, quickly.
"I should have said, I mean to try."
"Perhaps I am ungenerous," said Deronda, not apologetically, however. "Yet it can't be ungenerous to warn you that you are indulging mad, Quixotic expectations."
"Who will be hurt but myself, then?" said Hans, putting out his lip. "I am not going to say anything to her unless I felt sure of the answer. I dare not ask the oracles: I prefer a cheerful caliginosity, as Sir Thomas Browne might say. I would rather run my chance there and lose, than be sure of winning anywhere else. And I don't mean to swallow the poison of despair, though you are disposed to thrust it on me. I am giving up wine, so let me get a little drunk on hope and vanity."
"With all my heart, if it will do you any good," said Deronda, loosing Hans's shoulder, with a little push. He made his tone kindly, but his words were from the lip only. As to his real feeling he was silenced.
He was conscious of that peculiar irritation which will sometimes befall the man whom others are inclined to trust as a mentor--the irritation of perceiving that he is supposed to be entirely off the same plane of desire and temptation as those who confess to him. Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their mistakes. Throughout their friendship Deronda had been used to Hans's egotism, but he had never before felt intolerant of it: when Hans, habitually pouring out his own feelings and affairs, had never cared for any detail in return, and, if he chanced to know any, and soon forgotten it. Deronda had been inwardly as well as outwardly indulgent--nay, satisfied. But now he had noted with some indignation, all the stronger because it must not be betrayed, Hans's evident assumption that for any danger of rivalry or jealousy in relation to Mirah, Deronda was not as much out of the question as the angel Gabriel. It is one thing to be resolute in placing one's self out of the question, and another to endure that others should perform that exclusion for us. He had expected that Hans would give him trouble: what he had not expected was that the trouble would have a strong element of personal feeling. And he was rather ashamed that Hans's hopes caused him uneasiness in spite of his well-warranted conviction that they would never be fulfilled. They had raised an image of Mirah changing; and however he might protest that the change would not happen, the protest kept up the unpleasant image. Altogether poor Hans seemed to be entering into Deronda's experience in a disproportionate manner--going beyond his part of rescued prodigal, and rousing a feeling quite distinct from compassionate affection.
When Deronda went to Chelsea he was not made as comfortable as he ought to have been by Mrs. Meyrick's evident release from anxiety about the beloved but incalculable son. Mirah seemed livelier than before, and for the first time he' saw her laugh. It was when they were talking of Hans, he being naturally the mother's first topic. Mirah wished to know if Deronda had seen Mr. Hans going through a sort of character piece without changing his dress.
"He passes from one figure to another as if he were a bit of flame where you fancied the figures without seeing them," said Mirah, full of her subject; "he is so wonderfully quick. I used never to like comic things on the stage--they were dwelt on too long; but all in one minute Mr. Hans makes himself a blind bard, and then Rienzi addressing the Romans, and then an opera-dancer, and then a desponding young gentleman--I am sorry for them all, and yet I laugh, all in one"--here Mirah gave a little laugh that might have entered into a song.
"We hardly thought that Mirah could laugh till Hans came," said Mrs. Meyrick, seeing that Deronda, like herself, was observing the pretty picture.
"Hans seems in great force just now," said Deronda in a tone of congratulation. "I don't wonder at his enlivening you."
"He's been just perfect ever since he came back," said Mrs. Meyrick, keeping to herself the next clause--"if it will but last."
"It is a great happiness," said Mirah, "to see the son and brother come into this dear home. And I hear them all talk about what they did together when they were little. That seems like heaven, and to have a mother and brother who talk in that way. I have never had it."
"Nor I," said Deronda, involuntarily.
"No?" said Mirah, regretfully. "I wish you had. I wish you had had every good." The last words were uttered with a serious ardor as if they had been part of a litany, while her eyes were fixed on Deronda, who with his elbow on the back of his chair was contemplating her by the new light of the impression she had made on Hans, and the possibility of her being attracted by that extraordinary contrast. It was no more than what had happened on each former visit of his, Mirah appeared to enjoy speaking of what she felt very much as a little girl fresh from school pours forth spontaneously all the long-repressed chat for which she has found willing ears. For the first time in her life Mirah was among those whom she entirely trusted, and her original visionary impression that Deronda was a divinely-sent messenger hung about his image still, stirring always anew the disposition to reliance and openness. It was in this way she took what might have been the injurious flattery of admiring attention into which her helpless dependence had been suddenly transformed. Every one around her watched for her looks and words, and the effect on her was simply that of having passed from a trifling imprisonment into an exhilarating air which made speech and action a delight. To her mind it was all a gift from others' goodness. But that word of Deronda's implying that there had been some lack in his life which might be compared anything she had known in hers, was an entirely new inlet of thought about him. After her first expression of sorrowful surprise she went on--
"But Mr. Hans said yesterday that you thought so much of others you hardly wanted anything for yourself. He told us a wonderful story of Buddha giving himself to the famished tigress to save her and her little ones from starving. And he said you were like Buddha. That is what we all imagine of you."
"Pray don't imagine that," said Deronda, who had lately been finding such suppositions rather exasperating. "Even if it were true that I thought so much of others, it would not follow that I had no wants for myself. When Buddha let the tigress eat him he might have been very hungry himself."
"Perhaps if he was starved he would not mind so much about being eaten," said Mab, shyly.
"Please don't think that, Mab; it takes away the beauty of the action," said Mirah.
"But if it were true, Mirah?" said the rational Amy, having a half-holiday from her teaching; "you always take is beautiful as if it were true."
"So it is," said Mirah, gently. "If people have thought what is the most beautiful and the best thing, it must be true. It is always there."
"Now, Mirah, what do you mean?" said Amy.
"I understand her," said Deronda, coming to the rescue.
"It is a truth in thought though it may never have been carried out in action. It lives as an idea. Is that it?" He turned to Mirah, who was listening with a blind look in her lovely eyes.
"It must be that, because you understand me, but I cannot quite explain," said Mirah, rather abstractedly--still searching for some expression.
"But _was_ it beautiful for Buddha to let the tiger eat him?" said Amy, changing ground. "It would be a bad pattern."
Deronda laughed, but defended the myth. "It is like a passionate word," he said; "the exaggeration is a flash of fervor. It is an extreme image of what is happening every day-the transmutation of self."
"I think I can say what I mean, now," said Mirah, who had not heard the intermediate talk. "When the best thing comes into our thoughts, it is like what my mother has been to me. She has been just as really with me as all the other people about me--often more really with me."
Deronda, inwardly wincing under this illustration, which brought other possible realities about that mother vividly before him, presently turned the conversation by saying, "But we must not get too far away from practical matters. I came, for one thing, to tell of an interview I had yesterday, which I hope Mirah will find to have been useful to her. It was with Klesmer, the great pianist."
"Ah?" said Mrs. Meyrick, with satisfaction. "You think he will help her?"
"I hope so. He is very much occupied, but has promised to fix a time for receiving and hearing Miss Lapidoth, as we must learn to call her"--here Deronda smiled at Mirah--"If she consents to go to him."
"I shall be very grateful," said Mirah. "He wants to hear me sing, before he can judge whether I ought to be helped."
Deronda was struck with her plain sense about these matters of practical concern.
"It will not be at all trying to you, I hope, if Mrs. Meyrick will kindly go you to Klesmer's house."
"Oh, no, not at all trying. I have been doing all my life--I mean, told to do things that others may judge of me. And I have gone through a bad trial of that sort. I am prepared to bear it, and do some very small thing. Is Klesmer a severe man?"
"He is peculiar, but I have not had experience enough of him to know whethe would be what you would call severe."
"I know he is kind-hearted--kind in action, if not in speech."
"I have been used to be frowned at and not praised," said Mirah.
"By the by, Klesmer frowns a good deal," said Deronda, "but there is often a sort of smile in his eyes all the while. Unhappily he wears spectacles, so you must catch him in the right light to see the smile."
"I shall not be frightened," said Mirah. "If he were like a roaring lion, he only wants me to sing. I shall do what I can."
"How fast we are mounting!" said Mrs. Meyrick, with delight. "You never thought of getting grand so quickly, Mirah."
"I am a little frightened at being called Miss Lapidoth," said Mirah, coloring a new uneasiness. "Might I be called Cohen?"
"I understand you," said Deronda, promptly. "But I assure you, you must not be called Cohen. The name is inadmissible for a singer. This is one of the trifles in which we must conform to vulgar prejudice. We could choose some other name, however--such as singers ordinarily choose--an Italian or Spanish name, which would suit your _physique_." To Deronda just now the name Cohen was equivalent to the ugliest of yellow badges.
Mirah reflected a little, anxiously, then said, "No. If Cohen will not do, I will keep the name I have been called by. I will not hide myself. I have friends to protect me. And now--if my father were very miserable and wanted help--no," she said, looking at Mrs. Meyrick, "I should think, then, that he was perhaps crying as I used to see him, and had to pity him, and I had hidden myself from him. He had none belonging to him but me. Others that made friends with him always left him."
"Keep to what you feel right, my dear child," said Mrs. Meyrick. "_I_ would not persuade you to the contrary." For her own part she had no patience or pity for that father, and would have left him to his crying.
Deronda was saying to himself, "I am rather base to be angry with Hans. How can he help being in love with her? But it is too absurdly presumptuous for him even to frame the idea of appropriating her, and a sort of blasphemy to suppose she could possibly give herself to him."
Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deronda's mind because he had never had a confidant to whom he could open himself on these delicate subjects. He had always been leaned on instead of being invited to lean. Sometimes he had longed for the sort of friend to whom he might possibly unfold his experience: a young man like himself who sustained a private grief and was not too confident about his own career; speculative enough to understand every moral difficulty, yet socially susceptible, as he himself was, and having every outward sign of equality either in bodily or spiritual wrestling;--for he had found it impossible to reciprocate confidences with one who looked up to him. But he had no expectation of meeting the friend he imagined. Deronda's was not one of those quiveringly-poised natures that lend themselves to second-sight.