Chapter Sixty-two
Something which Mirah had lately been watching for now came about.
Turning out of Knightsbridge after singing at a charitable morning concert, she began to feel herself dogged by footsteps that kept pace with her own. She immediately thought of her father, and could no more look round than if she had felt herself tracked by a ghost. She walked on, not quickening her pace – of what use was that? – but certain that the man behind her was her father. Hoping to prevent any unnecessary shock for her brother, she resolved to turn to meet her father before she reached her door. She came to the entrance of the small square where her home lay, but before she could turn she felt him grasping her wrist, and saying, with a persuasive curl of accent, “Mirah!”
She paused without any start; it was the voice she expected. Her face was as grave as if she were looking at her executioner, while his had a propitiating expression. Once a handsome face, it was now sallow and deep-lined, with an impudent suavity. He was lightly made and active, with something youthful about him which made the signs of age seem a disguise. His dress was shabby, and Mirah felt mingled shame and grief, repulsion and pity.
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. “What were you afraid of? I never made you do anything against your will. I broke up your engagement in the Vorstadt because I saw it didn’t suit you, and you repaid me by leaving me. I had made an easier engagement for you: I didn’t tell you, because I wanted to surprise you. And you left me planted there, after I had given up everything for the sake of getting you an education. What father devoted himself to his daughter more than I did? You know how I bore that disappointment in your voice, and made the best of it: and when I had nobody besides you, you chose to leave me. Who else did you owe 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, taking out an old yellow silk handkerchief. He really felt that his daughter had treated him ill – a sort of feeling which is strong in unscrupulous persons. Mirah, despite that sob, answered 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.”
“I never meant to deceive your mother, Mirah,” said Lapidoth, with a voice that struggled against further sobs. “I meant to take you back to her, but then I had word of her death from a particular friend, and I sent him money to pay necessary expenses. 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 money out of me.”
Mirah made no answer; she could not bear to utter the only true one – “I don’t believe one word you say” – and she simply walked on. They might well have caused passers-by to turn 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, eagerly gesticulating man, with his light, jaunty walk.
“You seem to have done well for yourself, Mirah? You are in no want, I see,” he said.
“Good friends who found me in distress have helped me to get work,” said Mirah, “I give lessons. 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. I might have done very well, staying abroad: 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. Talents like mine are no use in this country. I’ve been obliged to get pretty low for a shilling already.”
Mirah anxiously imagined her father’s sinking into further degradation, which she was bound to prevent if she could. Before she could answer, he said,
“Where do you live, Mirah?”
“Here, in this square.”
“In lodgings?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone to take care of you?”
“Yes,” said Mirah again, looking full at the keen face – “my brother.”
The father’s eyelids fluttered, and there was a slight movement of the shoulders. But he said, after a brief pause: “Ezra? 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’s heart had begun to beat faster with the prospect of what was coming in the presence of Ezra; and she had a pang of the sympathetic humiliation and shame – the stabbed heart of reverence – which belongs to a nature intensely filial.
“Stay a minute, Liebchen,” said Lapidoth; “what sort of man has Ezra turned out?”
“A good man – a wonderful man,” said Mirah, with slow emphasis, trying to master her agitation. She felt urged to prepare her father for the penetration of himself which awaited him. “But he was very poor when my friends found him. Once – twelve years ago – he was strong and happy, going to the East; and my mother called him back because she had lost me. And he went to her, and took care of her, and worked for her till she died in grief. And Ezra, too, had lost his health and strength. For years he has been getting weaker – always poor, always working – but full of knowledge, and great-minded. All who come near him honour him. To stand before him is like standing before a prophet of God”– Mirah ended with difficulty, her heart throbbing– “falsehoods are no use.”
She had cast down her eyes while she spoke, unable to bear the ignoble look of frustration in his face. But he was quick in invention.
“Mirah, Liebchen,” he said, in the old caressing way, “shouldn’t you like me to make myself a little more respectable before my son sees me? If I had a little money, I could fit myself out decently with a good coat, and find work. I should like to be with my children, and forget and forgive. But you have never seen your father look like this before. If you had ten pounds at hand, I could fit myself out by the day after tomorrow.”
Mirah answered–
“I don’t like to deny you what you ask, father; but I have given a promise not to do things for you in secret. It is hard to see you looking needy; but we will bear that for a little while; and then we can pay for new clothes.” Her practical sense made her now see Mrs. Meyrick’s wisdom in exacting a promise from her.
Lapidoth’s good humour gave way a little. He said, with a sneer, “You are a hard and fast young lady – you have been learning useful virtues – promising not to help your father with a pound or two when you dress yourself in silk – your father who gave up the best part of his life to providing for you.”
“I know it seems cruel,” said Mirah, pale, and feeling this a worse moment than when she meant to drown herself. “But, father, it is more cruel to break the promises people trust in. That broke my mother’s heart – it has broken Ezra’s life. You and I must eat this bitterness. Bear it. Come in and be cared for as you are.”
“Tomorrow, then,” said Lapidoth, almost turning away from this trembling daughter, who seemed now to have got the inconvenient world to back her; but he quickly turned again, and said in his appealing tone, “I’m a little cut up with all this, Mirah. If you’ve a little money in your pocket, I suppose it isn’t against your promise to give me a trifle – to buy a cigar with.”
Mirah could not do anything else than put her cold trembling hands in her pocket for her purse and hold it out. Lapidoth grasped it, pressing her fingers, said, “Good-bye, my little gir
l – tomorrow then!” and left her.
He had not taken many steps before he looked carefully into the purse, found two half-sovereigns and odd silver, and, pasted against the cover, a bit of paper on which Ezra had inscribed, in a beautiful Hebrew character, the name of his mother, the days of her birth, marriage, and death, and the prayer, “May Mirah be delivered from evil.” Mirah liked to have this little inscription on many articles that she used. The father read it, and had a quick vision of his marriage day, and the bright, unblamed young fellow he was at that time; very fond of his beautiful bride Sara – crying when she expected him to cry, and reflecting every phase of her feeling with perfect mimicry.
Lapidoth had travelled a long way from that young self, and remembered this without emotion, like a morsel of food which had no taste to him. Among the things we may gamble away in a lazy selfish life is the capacity for pity, compunction, or unselfish regret – which we may come to long for as one in slow death longs to feel pain, rather than a widening space where consciousness once was.
Mirah’s purse was a handsome one, and Lapidoth found himself considering what it would fetch in addition to the sum it contained, and what prospect there was of his being able to get more from his daughter without submitting to penance under the eyes of that formidable son.
Meanwhile Mirah was overcome by her pain. She found her brother quietly sifting old manuscripts which he meant to give to Deronda, and fell down and clasped his knees, sobbing, and crying, “Ezra, Ezra!”
He did not speak, though he was stricken with alarm. But presently she raised her head, and said brokenly–
“Ezra, my father! our father! He followed me. I wanted him to come in. And he said No, he would not now, but tomorrow. And he begged for money. And I gave him my purse, and he went away.”
Although Mirah’s words expressed all her misery, her brother found them less grievous than his preconceptions, and said gently, “Wait for calm, Mirah, and then tell me all,” laying his hands tenderly on her head. Under this soothing influence, she told him what had happened.
“He will not come tomorrow,” said Mordecai. Neither of them said to the other what they both thought, namely, that he might watch for Mirah and beg from her again.
“Seest thou,” he presently added, “our lot is the lot of Israel. The grief and the glory are mingled as the smoke and the flame. It is because we children have inherited the good that we feel the evil. These things are wedded for us, as our father was wedded to our mother.”
The surroundings were of Brompton, but the voice might have come from a Rabbi. It is said, “God is occupied in making marriages”: whereby are meant all the wondrous combinations of the universe whose issue makes our good and evil.
George Eliot's Daniel Deronda: Abridged Page 65
