Kabanata Kabanata 37 · Chapter XXXVII

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_Aspern._ Pardon, my lord—I speak for Sigismund.

_Fronsberg._ For him? Oh, ay—for him I always hold

A pardon safe in bank, sure he will draw

Sooner or later on me. What his need?

Mad project broken? fine mechanic wings

That would not fly? durance, assault on watch,

Bill for Epernay, not a crust to eat?

_Aspern._ Oh, none of these, my lord; he has escaped

From Circe’s herd, and seeks to win the love

Of your fair ward Cecilia: but would win

First your consent. You frown.

_Fronsberg._ Distinguish words.

I said I held a pardon, not consent.

In spite of Deronda’s reasons for wishing to be in town again—reasons

in which his anxiety for Mirah was blent with curiosity to know more of

the enigmatic Mordecai—he did not manage to go up before Sir Hugo, who

preceded his family that he might be ready for the opening of

Parliament on the sixth of February. Deronda took up his quarters in

Park Lane, aware that his chambers were sufficiently tenanted by Hans

Meyrick. This was what he expected; but he found other things not

altogether according to his expectations.

Most of us remember Retzsch’s drawing of destiny in the shape of

Mephistopheles playing at chess with man for his soul, a game in which

we may imagine the clever adversary making a feint of unintended moves

so as to set the beguiled mortal on carrying his defensive pieces away

from the true point of attack. The fiend makes preparation his favorite

object of mockery, that he may fatally persuade us against our taking

out waterproofs when he is well aware the sky is going to clear,

foreseeing that the imbecile will turn this delusion into a prejudice

against waterproofs instead of giving a closer study to the

weather-signs. It is a peculiar test of a man’s mettle when, after he

has painfully adjusted himself to what seems a wise provision, he finds

all his mental precaution a little beside the mark, and his excellent

intentions no better than miscalculated dovetails, accurately cut from

a wrong starting-point. His magnanimity has got itself ready to meet

misbehavior, and finds quite a different call upon it. Something of

this kind happened to Deronda.

His first impression was one of pure pleasure and amusement at finding

his sitting-room transformed into an _atelier_ strewed with

miscellaneous drawings and with the contents of two chests from Rome,

the lower half of the windows darkened with baize, and the blonde Hans

in his weird youth as the presiding genius of the littered place—his

hair longer than of old, his face more whimsically creased, and his

high voice as usual getting higher under the excitement of rapid talk.

The friendship of the two had been kept up warmly since the memorable

Cambridge time, not only by correspondence but by little episodes of

companionship abroad and in England, and the original relation of

confidence on one side and indulgence on the other had been developed

in practice, as is wont to be the case where such spiritual borrowing

and lending has been well begun.

“I knew you would like to see my casts and antiquities,” said Hans,

after the first hearty greetings and inquiries, “so I didn’t scruple to

unlade my chests here. But I’ve found two rooms at Chelsea not many

hundred yards from 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. That’s all I’m waiting for. But you see I don’t wait to begin

work: 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—a growing disease in the lungs,”

said Deronda, accustomed to treat Hans in brotherly fashion. He was

walking toward some drawings propped on the ledge of his bookcases;

five rapidly-sketched heads—different aspects of the same face. He

stood at a convenient distance from them, without making any remark.

Hans, too, was silent for a minute, took up his palette and began

touching 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, more coldly than was usual with him.

“No, it is not too massive,” said Hans, decisively. “I have noted that.

There is always a little surprise when one passes from the profile to

the full face. But I shall enlarge her scale for Berenice. I am making

a Berenice series—look at the sketches along there—and now I think of

it, you are just the model I want for the Agrippa.” Hans, still with

pencil and palette in hand, had moved to Deronda’s side while he said

this, but he added hastily, as if conscious of a mistake, “No, 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. The first is Berenice clasping the knees of Gessius Florus and

beseeching him to spare her people; I’ve got that on the easel. Then,

this, where she is standing on the Xystus with Agrippa, entreating the

people not to injure themselves by resistance.”

“Agrippa’s legs will never do,” said Deronda.

“The legs are good realistically,” said Hans, his face creasing drolly;

“public men are often shaky about the legs—’ Their legs, the emblem of

their various thought,’ as somebody says in the _Rehearsal._”

“But these are as impossible as the legs of Raphael’s Alcibiades,” said

Deronda.

“Then they are good ideally,” said Hans. “Agrippa’s legs were possibly

bad; I idealize that and make them impossibly bad. Art, my Eugenius,

must intensify. But never mind the legs now: the third sketch in the

series 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. You can’t tell that in a picture.”

“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, both sad—_invitus

invitam_, as Suetonius hath it. I’ve found a model for the Roman brute.”

“Shall you make Berenice look fifty? She must have been that.”

“No, no; a few mature touches to show the lapse of time. Dark-eyed

beauty wears well, hers particularly. 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. Now, see how

I tell a pathetic negative. Nobody knows what became of her—that is

finely indicated by the series coming to a close. There is no sixth

picture.” Here Hans pretended to speak with a gasping sense of

sublimity, and drew back his head with a frown, as if looking for a

like impression on Deronda. “I break off in the Homeric style. The

story is chipped off, so to speak, and passes with a ragged edge into

nothing—_le néant_; can anything be more sublime, especially in

French? The vulgar would desire to see her corpse and burial—perhaps

her will read and her linen distributed. But now come and look at this

on the easel. I have made some way there.”

“That beseeching attitude is really good,” said Deronda, after a

moment’s contemplation. “You have been very industrious in the

Christmas holidays; for I suppose you have taken up the subject since

you came to London.” Neither of them had yet mentioned Mirah.

“No,” said Hans, putting touches to his picture, “I made up my mind to

the subject before. I take that lucky chance for an augury that I am

going to burst on the world as a great painter. I saw a splendid woman

in the Trastevere—the grandest women there are half Jewesses—and she

set me hunting for a fine situation of a Jewess at Rome. Like other men

of vast learning, I ended by taking what lay on the surface. 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 a bit of it. The model ought to be the most beautiful Jewess in

the world, and I have found her.”

“Have you made yourself 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 precisely into this attitude.

Little mother sat for Gessius Florus, and Mirah clasped her knees.”

Here Hans went a little way off and looked at the effect of his touches.

“I dare say she knows nothing about Berenice’s history,” said Deronda,

feeling more indignation than he would have been able to justify.

“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. Whence the Nemesis. 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 hinder

himself from saying something else.

“Shall you mind turning over that folio?” said Hans. “My studies of

heads are all there. But they are in confusion. You will perhaps find

her next to a crop-eared undergraduate.”

After Deronda had been turning over the drawings a minute or two, he

said,

“These seem to be all Cambridge heads and bits of country. Perhaps I

had better begin at the other end.”

“No; you’ll find her about the middle. I emptied one folio into

another.”

“Is this one of your undergraduates?” said Deronda, holding up a

drawing. “It’s an unusually agreeable face.”

“That! Oh, that’s a man named Gascoigne—Rex Gascoigne. An uncommonly

good fellow; his upper lip, too, is good. I coached him before he got

his scholarship. He ought to have taken honors last Easter. But he was

ill, and has had to stay up another year. I must look him up. I want to

know how he’s going on.”

“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, leaving the Trasteverina

outside. Then clasping his coat-collar, and turning toward Hans, he

said, “I dare say my scruples are excessive, Meyrick, but I must ask

you to oblige me by giving up this notion.”

Hans threw himself into a tragic attitude, and screamed, “What! my

series—my immortal Berenice series? Think of what you are saying,

man—destroying, as Milton says, not a life but an immortality. Wait

before you answer, that I may deposit the implements of my art and be

ready to uproot my hair.”

Here Hans laid down his pencil and palette, threw himself backward into

a great chair, and hanging limply over the side, shook his long hair

over his face, lifted his hooked fingers on each side his head, 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 could feel with

me—perhaps you will, on reflection—that you should choose another

model.”

“Why?” said Hans, standing up, and looking serious again.

“Because she may get into such a position that her face is likely to be

recognized. Mrs. Meyrick and I are anxious for her that she should be

known as an admirable singer. It is right, and she wishes it, that she

should 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—well, it is

useless to attempt to explain, unless you feel as I do. 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 the belt of his blouse, listening to

this speech, his face showed a growing surprise melting into amusement,

that at last would have its way in an explosive laugh: but seeing that

Deronda looked gravely offended, he checked himself to say, “Excuse my

laughing, Deronda. You never gave me an advantage over you before. If

it had been about anything but my own pictures, I should have swallowed

every word because you said it. And so you actually believe that I

should get my five pictures hung on the line in a conspicuous position,

and carefully studied by the public? Zounds, man! cider-cup and conceit

never gave me half such a beautiful dream. My pictures are likely to

remain as private as the utmost hypersensitiveness could desire.”

Hans turned to paint again as a way of filling up awkward pauses.

Deronda stood perfectly still, recognizing his mistake as to publicity,

but also conscious that his repugnance was not much diminished. He was

the reverse of satisfied either with himself or with Hans; but the

power of being quiet carries a man well through moments of

embarrassment. Hans had a reverence for his friend which made him feel

a sort of shyness at Deronda’s being in the wrong; but it was not in

his nature to give up anything readily, though it were only a whim—or

rather, especially if it were a whim, and he presently went on,

painting the while,

“But even supposing I had a 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 worth

remembering has painted the face he admired most, as often as he could.

It is a part of his soul that goes out into his pictures. He diffuses

its influence in that way. He puts what he hates into a caricature. He

puts what he adores into some sacred, heroic form. If a man could paint

the woman he loves a thousand times as the _Stella Maris_ to put courage

into the sailors on board a thousand ships, so much the more honor to

her. Isn’t that better than painting a piece of staring immodesty and

calling it by a worshipful name?”

“Every objection can be answered if you take broad ground enough, Hans:

no special question of conduct can be properly settled in that way,”

said Deronda, with a touch of peremptoriness. “I might admit all your

generalities, and yet be right in saying you ought not to publish

Mirah’s face as a model for Berenice. But I give up the question of

publicity. I was unreasonable there.” Deronda hesitated a moment.

“Still, even as a private affair, there might be good reasons for your

not indulging yourself too much in painting her from the point of view

you mention. You must feel that her situation at present is a very

delicate one; and until she is in more independence, she should be kept

as carefully as a bit of Venetian glass, for fear of shaking her out of

the safe place she is lodged in. Are you quite sure of your own

discretion? Excuse me, Hans. My having found her binds me to watch over

her. Do you understand me?”

“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 somehow turned

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 with 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?”

“That can’t last,” said Hans. “She will see no Jew who is tolerable.

Every male of that race is insupportable—‘insupportably

advancing’—his nose.”

“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 know nothing; I can’t tell what 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 that 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.”

“You can’t keep your resolve, Hans. You used to resolve what you would

do for your mother and sisters.”

“You have a right to reproach me, old fellow,” said Hans, gently.

“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, had 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, that

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 with 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 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—still searching for some

expression.

“But _was_ it beautiful for Buddha to let the tiger eat him?” said Amy,

changing her ground. “It would be a bad pattern.”

“The world would get full of fat tigers,” said Mab.

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 with you to Klesmer’s house.”

“Oh, no, not at all trying. I have been doing that 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

whether he 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.”

“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. “You never

thought of getting grand so quickly, Mirah.”

“I am a little frightened at being called Miss Lapidoth,” said Mirah,

coloring 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—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

nobody 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 that she could possibly give herself to

him.”

What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such thoughts? He was

not one who could quite naively introduce himself where he had just

excluded his friend, yet it was undeniable that what had just happened

made a new stage in his feeling toward Mirah. But apart from other

grounds for self-repression, reasons both definite and vague made him

shut away that question as he might have shut up a half-opened writing

that would have carried his imagination too far, and given too much

shape to presentiments. Might there not come a disclosure which would

hold the missing determination of his course? What did he really know

about his origin? Strangely in these latter months when it seemed right

that he should exert his will in the choice of a destination, the

passion of his nature had got more and more locked by this uncertainty.

The disclosure might bring its pain, indeed the likelihood seemed to

him to be all on that side; but if it helped him to make his life a

sequence which would take the form of duty—if it saved him from having

to make an arbitrary selection where he felt no preponderance of

desire? Still more, he wanted to escape standing as a critic outside

the activities of men, stiffened into the ridiculous attitude of

self-assigned superiority. His chief tether was his early inwrought

affection for Sir Hugo, making him gratefully deferential to wishes

with which he had little agreement: but gratitude had been sometimes

disturbed by doubts which were near reducing it to a fear of being

ungrateful. Many of us complain that half our birthright is sharp duty:

Deronda was more inclined to complain that he was robbed of this half;

yet he accused himself, as he would have accused another, of being

weakly self-conscious and wanting in resolve. He was the reverse of

that type painted for us in Faulconbridge and Edmund of Gloster, whose

coarse ambition for personal success is inflamed by a defiance of

accidental disadvantages. To Daniel the words Father and Mother had the

altar-fire in them; and the thought of all closest relations of our

nature held still something of the mystic power which had made his neck

and ears burn in boyhood. The average man may regard this sensibility

on the question of birth as preposterous and hardly credible; but with

the utmost respect for his knowledge as the rock from which all other

knowledge is hewn, it must be admitted that many well-proved facts are

dark to the average man, even concerning the action of his own heart

and the structure of his own retina. A century ago he and all his

forefathers had not had the slightest notion of that electric discharge

by means of which they had all wagged their tongues mistakenly; any

more than they were awake to the secluded anguish of exceptional

sensitiveness into which many a carelessly-begotten child of man is

born.

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.