Chapter Thirty-seven
In spite of Deronda’s reasons for wishing to be in London again – anxiety for Mirah, combined with curiosity about Mordecai – he did not manage to go there before Sir Hugo, who went ahead of his family for the opening of Parliament in February. Deronda took up his quarters in Park Lane, since his chambers were tenanted by Hans Meyrick – but he found things there not altogether according to his expectations.
It is a peculiar test of a man’s mettle when, after painfully adjusting himself to a wise precaution, he finds he has missed the mark, so that quite a different call is made upon him to that which he expected.
On visiting Hans, Deronda’s first impression was one of pure pleasure and amusement, at finding his sitting-room transformed into a studio. It was strewn with drawings and the contents of the trunks from Rome, with Hans as the presiding genius of the littered place – his hair longer than before, his face more whimsically creased, and his high voice getting higher under the excitement of rapid talk.
“I knew you would like to see my casts and antiquities,” said Hans, after the first hearty greetings, “but I didn’t unload my chests here. I’ve found two rooms at Chelsea close to my mother and sisters, and I shall soon be ready to hang out there – when they’ve scraped the walls and put in some new lights. But you see I’ve already begun working: you can’t conceive what a great fellow I’m going to be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within me.”
“Only a fungoid growth, I dare say,” said Deronda, accustomed to treat Hans in brotherly fashion. He walked toward some drawings propped on the bookcases; five rapidly-sketched heads – different aspects of the same face. He looked at them without making any remark.
Hans, too, was silent for a minute, and began touching up the picture on his easel.
“What do you think of them?” he said at last.
“The full face looks too massive; otherwise the likenesses are good,” said Deronda, somewhat coldly.
“No, it is not too massive,” said Hans, decisively. “But I shall enlarge her scale for Berenice. I am making a Berenice series – there are the sketches – and you are just the model I want for Agrippa. No, I forgot; you don’t like sitting for your portrait, confound you! However, I’ve picked up a capital Titus. There are to be five in the series.”
“Agrippa’s legs will never do,” said Deronda.
“The legs are realistic,” said Hans; “public men are often shaky about the legs. But never mind the legs: the third sketch is Berenice exulting in the prospects of being Empress of Rome, when the news has come that Vespasian is declared Emperor and her lover Titus his successor.”
“You must put a scroll in her mouth, else people will not understand that.”
“It will make them feel their ignorance then – an excellent æsthetic effect. The fourth is, Titus sending Berenice away from Rome after she has shared his palace for ten years – both reluctant and sad.”
“Shall you make Berenice look fifty? She must have been that.”
“No, no; a few mature touches to show the lapse of time. But now, here is the fifth: Berenice seated lonely on the ruins of Jerusalem. That is pure imagination. That is what ought to have been – perhaps was. Nobody knows what became of her. There is no sixth picture. I break off in the Homeric style. The story is chipped off, so to speak. But now come and look at this on the easel.”
“That beseeching attitude is really good,” said Deronda, after a moment’s contemplation. “You have been very industrious over Christmas; for I suppose you have taken up the subject since you came to London.” Neither of them had yet mentioned Mirah.
“No,” said Hans, “I decided on the subject before. I saw a splendid woman in the Trastevere – the grandest women there are half Jewesses – and she set me hunting for a fine subject of a Jewess at Rome. I’ll show you a sketch of the Trasteverina’s head when I can lay my hands on it.”
“I should think she would be a more suitable model for Berenice,” said Deronda, not knowing exactly how to express his discontent.
“Not at all. The model ought to be the most beautiful Jewess in the world, and I have found her.”
“Are you sure that she would like to figure in that character? I should think no woman would be more abhorrent to her. Does she quite know what you are doing?”
“Certainly. I got her to throw herself into this attitude. Little mother sat for Gessius Florus, and Mirah clasped her knees.”
“I dare say she knows nothing about Berenice’s history,” said Deronda, with some indignation.
“Oh, yes, she does – ladies’ edition. Berenice was a fervid patriot, but was beguiled by love and ambition into attaching herself to the arch-enemy of her people. Mirah takes it as a tragic parable, and cries to think what the penitent Berenice suffered as she wandered back to Jerusalem and sat desolate amidst desolation. That was her own phrase. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell her I invented that part of the story.”
“Show me your Trasteverina,” said Deronda, chiefly in order to stop himself from saying something else.
“Look in that folio,” said Hans. “My portrait studies are all there, Cambridge heads and others all mixed up. You’ll find her about the middle.”
“Is this one of your undergraduates?” said Deronda, holding up a drawing. “It’s an unusually agreeable face.”
“Oh, that’s a man named Gascoigne – Rex Gascoigne. An uncommonly good fellow; I coached him before he got his scholarship. He was ill, and has had to stay up another year. I must look him up.”
“Here she is, I suppose,” said Deronda, holding up a sketch of the Trasteverina.
“Ah,” said Hans, looking at it rather contemptuously, “too coarse. I was unregenerate then.”
Deronda was silent while he closed the folio. Then turning toward Hans, he said, “I dare say my scruples are excessive, Meyrick, but I must ask you to give up this notion.”
Hans threw himself into a tragic attitude, screaming, “What! my immortal Berenice series? Think of what you are saying, man – destroying not a life but an immortality. Wait, while I deposit the implements of my art and uproot my hair.”
Here Hans laid down his pencil, threw himself into a great chair, and shaking his long hair over his face, hooked his fingers onto it and looked up with comic terror at Deronda, who was obliged to smile, as he said–
“Paint as many Berenices as you like, but I wish you would choose another model.”
“Why?” said Hans, standing up, and looking serious again.
“Because she may get into such a position that her face is recognized. Mrs. Meyrick and I are anxious that she should be known as an admirable singer. She wishes to make herself independent. And she has excellent chances. One good introduction is secured already, and I am going to speak to Klesmer. Her face may come to be very well known, and I believe that if Mirah saw the circumstances clearly, she would strongly object to being exhibited in this way – to allowing herself to be used as a model for a heroine of this sort.”
As Hans stood with his thumbs in his belt, listening to this speech, his face showed surprise melting into amusement: but seeing that Deronda looked gravely offended, he said, “Excuse my laughing, Deronda. You never gave me an advantage over you before. So you actually believe that I could get my five pictures hung in a conspicuous position, and carefully studied by the public? Zounds, man! what a beautiful dream. My pictures are likely to remain as private as you could desire.”
Hans turned to paint again to fill up the awkward pause. Deronda stood still, recognizing his mistake as to publicity; but his repugnance was not diminished. Hans presently went on, painting the while–
“Even supposing I had the public rushing after my pictures as if they were a railway series including nurses, babies and bonnet-boxes, I can’t see any justice in your objection. Every painter paints the face he admires most. Part of his soul goes out into his pictures. He puts what he adores into some sacred, heroic form.”
&n
bsp; “Every objection can be answered by generalising, Hans,” said Deronda, impatiently. “I might admit your generalities, and yet be right in saying you ought not to publish Mirah’s face. I was unreasonable about publicity; but there might be other good reasons for your not indulging yourself too much in painting her. Her situation is very delicate; and until she is more independent, she should be carefully kept safe. Are you quite sure of your own discretion? Excuse me, Hans. My having found her binds me to watch over her. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” said Hans, putting on a good-humoured smile. “You think I shall get into a scrape. 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. My painting is the latest scrape; and I shall be all my life getting out of it. You think I am head over heels in love with Mirah. Quite right; so I am. But if you think I shall scream and plunge and spoil everything, you are mistaken. Awe prevents 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.
“My dear fellow, you are only preparing misery for yourself. She would not marry a Christian, even if she loved him. Have you heard her speak of her people and her religion?”
“That can’t last,” said Hans. “She will see no Jew who is tolerable. Every male of that race is insupportable.”
“She may rejoin her family. That is what she longs for. Her mother and brother are probably strict Jews.”
“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 can hardly imagine that there was anything in Mirah’s sentiments for you to found a romantic hope on.”
“I don’t found my romantic hopes on a woman’s sentiments,” said Hans. “I go to science and philosophy for my romance. Nature designed Mirah to fall in love with me. The amalgamation of races demands it.”
“You don’t mean a word you say, Meyrick,” said Deronda, laying his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Upon my honour I do mean it, though,” said Hans, in turn laying his hand on Deronda’s shoulder. “I am at the confessional. My mother says you are Mirah’s guardian, and she thinks herself responsible to you for every breath that falls on Mirah in her house. Well, I worship her – I won’t despair – I mean to deserve her.”
“My dear fellow, you can’t do it,” said Deronda, quickly. “Perhaps I am ungenerous, but I warn you that you are indulging mad, Quixotic expectations.”
“Who will be hurt but myself, then?” said Hans. “I am not going to say anything to her unless I am sure of the answer. 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, making his tone kindly, as he loosed Hans’s shoulder with a little push.
He was conscious of that irritation which sometimes befalls the man whom others 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. Deronda had grown used to Hans’s egotism, but he had never before felt intolerant of it. When Hans poured out his own feelings, and never cared for any detail in return, Deronda had been indulgent.
But now he was indignant at Hans’s assumption that as far as rivalry over Mirah was concerned, Deronda was as much out of the question as the angel Gabriel. He had expected that Hans would give him trouble: what he had not expected was that the trouble would make him feel so strongly. And he was rather ashamed that Hans’s hopes caused him uneasiness. They had raised an unpleasant image of Mirah changing.
When Deronda went to Chelsea he was not comforted by Mrs. Meyrick’s lack of anxiety about her son. Mirah seemed livelier than before, and for the first time he saw her laugh, as she described Hans play-acting.
“He is so wonderfully quick,” said Mirah. “I used never to like comic things on the stage; but all in one minute Mr. Hans makes himself a blind bard, and then an opera-dancer, and then a desponding young gentleman – I am sorry for them, and yet I laugh.”
“We hardly thought that Mirah could laugh till Hans came,” said Mrs. Meyrick.
“Hans seems in great force just now,” said Deronda in a tone of congratulation.
“He’s been just perfect ever since he came back,” said Mrs. Meyrick.
“It is a great happiness,” said Mirah, “to see the son and brother come into this dear home, and to hear them all talk about what they did together when they were little. That seems like heaven, 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 ardour, while her eyes were fixed on Deronda, who was contemplating her by the new light of Hans’s worship, and the possibility of her being attracted to his friend.
For the first time in her life Mirah was among those whom she trusted, and her original vision of Deronda as a divinely-sent messenger hung about him still. She felt that she had passed from imprisonment into an exhilarating air which made speech and action a delight. But Deronda’s implying that there had been some lack in his life comparable to hers, was an entirely new inlet of thought about him. She went on–
“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.”
“Pray don’t imagine that,” said Deronda, rather exasperated. “Even if it were true that I thought so much of others, it would not follow that I had no wants. When Buddha let the tigress eat him he might have been very hungry himself.”
“Perhaps if he was starved he would not mind 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; “you always take what 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.
“But was it beautiful for Buddha to let the tiger eat him?” said Amy. “It would be a bad example.”
“The world would get full of fat tigers,” said Mab.
“When the best thing comes into our thoughts, it is like what my mother has been to me,” said Mirah.
Deronda, inwardly wincing as he thought of other possibilities about that mother, turned the conversation, saying, “I came to tell you of an interview I had yesterday with Klesmer, the great pianist. He has promised to fix a time for hearing Miss Lapidoth, if she consents.”
“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 and practicality. “Is Klesmer a severe man?”
“He is peculiar, but I do not know if you would call him severe. He is kind in action, if not in speech.”
“I have been used to be frowned at and not praised,” sai
d Mirah.
“Klesmer frowns a good deal,” said Deronda, “but with a sort of smile in his eyes, if you can catch it.”
“I shall not be frightened. I shall do what I can.”
“Then I feel sure you will not mind being invited to sing in Lady Mallinger’s drawing-room,” said Deronda. “She intends to ask you next month, and will invite many ladies to hear you, who are likely to want lessons from you for their daughters.”
“How fast we are mounting!” said Mrs. Meyrick, with delight.
“I am a little frightened at being called Miss Lapidoth,” said Mirah, with 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: an Italian or Spanish name, which would suit your looks.” To Deronda just now the name Cohen was equivalent to the ugliest of yellow badges.
Mirah reflected anxiously, then said, “No. I will keep the name Lapidoth. I will not hide myself. I have friends to protect me. And now – if my father were very miserable and wanted help,” she said, looking at Mrs. Meyrick, “I should think, then, that I had hidden myself from him. He had no one but me.”
“Do what you feel right, my dear child,” said Mrs. Meyrick. For her own part she had no patience or pity for that father.
Deronda thought, “I should not be angry with Hans. How can he help being in love with her? But it is too absurd for him even to think of marrying her, and a sort of blasphemy to suppose that she could possibly give herself to him.”
What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such hopes? He could not naively introduce himself where he had just excluded his friend, yet it was undeniable that he had reached a new stage in his feeling toward Mirah. But reasons both definite and vague made him shut away that question. What did he really know about his origin? What was his destination? Strangely, in these latter months when it seemed right that he should choose a destination, he had become more and more locked in by this uncertainty. His chief tether was his early affection for Sir Hugo: he was gratefully deferential to his wishes, while not agreeing with them; but now his doubts were close to making him ungrateful.
He accused himself of being weakly self-conscious and wanting in resolve. To Daniel the words Father and Mother still held the mystic power which had made his neck and ears burn in boyhood. The average man may regard this sensitivity on the question of birth as preposterous; but the average man does not even understand the action of his own heart and the structure of his own retina, let alone his mind.
Perhaps Deronda struggled all the more because he had never had a confidant to speak openly to 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 unfold his experience: a young man like himself who had sustained a private grief and was not too confident about his own career. But he had no expectation of meeting the friend he imagined. Deronda’s was not one of those natures that lend themselves to second-sight.
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged Page 40
