Chapter Sixty-seven
It was an unpleasant surprise to Deronda when he returned to find the undesirable father installed in the lodgings at Brompton. Mirah had felt it necessary to speak of Deronda to her father, making him aware of how the friendship with Ezra had begun, but omitting altogether the rescue from drowning, and letting her father suppose that she had met Deronda through the Meyricks. Lapidoth was much interested in the fact of his children having a friend high in the world.
“I am become calm in beholding him now,” Ezra told Deronda, “and I try to think it possible that my sister’s tenderness may keep him from temptation. We have agreed to trust him with no money, for he will buy with it his own destruction.”
The first time Deronda came after the father’s arrival, Lapidoth did not present himself, for his new clothes were not yet ready. Watching from the window, he was surprised at Deronda’s youthfulness; he had assumed him an older man who had taken up a grave friendship with the sepulchral Ezra, and began to imagine that Deronda’s real motive must be that he was in love with Mirah; which might make it easier for Lapidoth to recommend himself to him.
He was behaving amiably, and trying to get himself into easy domestication with his children – entering into Mirah’s music, showing himself docile about smoking, and walking out in the square with his pipe and the tobacco which Mirah gave him. He was too acute to remonstrate against the refusal of money: he was comfortable enough to wait.
The next time Deronda came, Lapidoth, satisfied with his own appearance in his new clothes, was in the room with Ezra, who was teaching himself, as a part of his severe duty, to tolerate his father’s presence. Deronda was cold and distant, the sight of this man who had blighted the lives of his family creating in him a physical repulsion.
But Lapidoth was not discouraged: he asked leave to stay and hear the reading of papers from the old chest, and actually made himself useful in helping to decipher some difficult German manuscript. This led him to suggest that it might be desirable to make a transcription of the manuscript, and he offered his services for this purpose.
Deronda accepted the offer, thinking that Lapidoth showed a sign of grace in this willingness to be employed usefully; and he saw a gratified expression in Ezra’s face, who, however, said, “Let all the writing be done here; for I cannot trust the papers out of my sight, lest there be an accident.” Poor Ezra felt as if he had a convict under his charge. But by this arrangement he fastened on himself the burden of his father’s presence, with all its restlessness, which showed itself more as Lapidoth become familiarized with his situation, and lost his awe of his son.
The fact was, he was putting a strong constraint on himself for the sake of winning Deronda’s favour; and like a man in an uncomfortable garment he gave himself relief at every opportunity, going out to smoke, or moving about and talking; and if Mirah were in the room, he would fall into his old habit of gossiping, or repeating stories, in the belief that he could command his old vivacity. All this was a mortal infliction to Ezra; and when Mirah was at home she tried to relieve him, by taking her father down into the parlour. The prospect of this duty to an unworthy father seemed to Mirah to stretch onward through her life.
Meanwhile Lapidoth’s presence had raised a new partition between Deronda and Mirah – each of them dreading the soiling inferences of his mind, each interpreting mistakenly the increased reserve of the other. But it was not long before some light came to Deronda.
He had called at Hans Meyrick’s rooms to let him know the outcome of his recent journey. Hans was not there; and Deronda, after leaving a note, waited a week. But receiving no word, he at length made a second call, and was admitted into the painting-room, where he found his friend looking worn and wizened. He stood before his easel when Deronda entered, but seemed not to be painting.
As they shook hands, Deronda said, “You don’t look well, old fellow. Is it Cambridge you have been to?”
“No,” said Hans curtly, throwing himself into a chair. “I’ve been to No man’s land – and a mortally unpleasant country it is.”
“Have you been drinking, Hans?” said Deronda, in anxious survey.
“I’ve been smoking opium. I always meant to try it some time or other, when I was feeling low. But I shall never do it again. It disagrees with me.”
“What has been the matter? You were in good spirits enough when you wrote to me.”
“Oh, nothing in particular. The world began to look seedy – a sort of cabbage-garden with all the cabbages cut. A malady of genius, you may be sure,” said Hans, creasing his face into a smile.
“Nothing else?” said Deronda. “I came to tell you of my own affairs, but I can’t do it with a good grace if you hide yours.”
“Haven’t an affair in the world,” said Hans, in a flighty way. “Besides, as it is the first time in our lives that you ever spoke to me about your own affairs, you are beginning to pay a pretty long debt.”
Deronda felt convinced that Hans was behaving artificially, but he trusted to a return of the old frankness if he gave his own confidence.
“You laughed at the mystery of my journey to Italy, Hans,” he began. “I had never known anything about my parents, and I went to Genoa to meet my mother. My father died when I was an infant. My mother was the daughter of an eminent Jew; my father was her cousin. Many things had caused me to think of this origin as almost a probability before I set out. I was so far prepared that I was glad of it – glad to find myself a Jew.”
“You must not expect me to look surprised, Deronda,” said Hans, laying one leg across the other and examining his slipper.
“You knew it?”
“My mother told me, after Mirah and Ezra told her. We can’t rejoice as they do. But whatever you are glad of, I shall come to be glad of in the end,” said Hans, speaking in a low tone.
“I quite understand that you can’t share my feeling,” said Deronda; “but I could not let silence lie between us on my future. I have taken up some of Mordecai’s ideas, and I mean to try and carry them out, so far as one man’s efforts can go. I shall travel to the East and be away for some years.”
Hans said nothing, but rose, seized his palette and began to work his brush on it, standing with his back to Deronda, who felt himself embarrassed by Hans’s embarrassment.
Presently Hans said, without turning, “Does Mrs. Grandcourt know of all this?”
“No; and I must beg of you, Hans,” said Deronda, rather angrily, “to cease joking on that subject. Any notions you have are the very reverse of the truth.”
“I am not sure that you are aware what are my notions on that subject.”
“Perhaps not,” said Deronda. “But let me say, once for all, that in relation to Mrs. Grandcourt, I never have had, and never shall have the position of a lover. If you have ever thought that, you are supremely mistaken.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Perhaps I have been mistaken in another interpretation, also,” said Hans.
“What is that?”
“That you had no wish to hold the position of a lover toward another woman, who is neither wife nor widow.”
“I can’t pretend not to understand you, Meyrick. It is painful that our wishes should clash. I hope you will tell me if you have any ground for supposing that you would succeed.”
“That seems rather a superfluous inquiry on your part, Deronda,” said Hans, with some irritation. “You are perfectly convinced on the subject – and you probably have had the very best evidence to convince you.”
“I will be more frank with you than you are with me,” said Deronda, still heated. “I have never had the slightest evidence that I should succeed. In fact, I have very little hope. And in our present situation, I don’t see how I can make known my feeling to her. If she could not return it, I should have embittered her best comfort; for we should have to meet continually to tend to her brother. You have no reason to envy me.”
“Oh, not the sl
ightest,” said Hans, with bitter irony. “You have measured my conceit and know that it out-tops all your advantages.”
“I am a nuisance to you, Meyrick. I am sorry, but I can’t help it,” said Deronda, rising. “I don’t see that any pretensions of mine have made a difference to you. They are not likely to make any pleasant difference to myself. Now the father is there, she and I meet under greater constraint than ever. Things might go on in this way for two years without my getting any insight into her feeling toward me. That is the whole state of affairs, Hans. Neither you nor I have injured the other, that I can see. We are rivals without hope: our friendship can bear that strain, surely.”
“No, it can’t,” said Hans, throwing down his tools, and turning to face Deronda, who looked at him with amazement. Hans went on, with a fierce expression–
“Our friendship can’t bear the strain of my behaving to you like an ungrateful dastard and grudging you your happiness. If Mirah loves anybody better than her brother, you are the man.”
A shock passed through Deronda. After an instant, he said–
“It is a good-natured fiction of yours, Hans.”
“I am not in a good-natured mood. I found the fact disagreeable when it was thrust on me: I believed then that your heart was pledged to the duchess. But now, confound you! you turn out to be in love in the right place – a Jew – and everything eligible.”
“Tell me what convinced you – there’s a good fellow,” said Deronda, distrusting his unfamiliar delight.
“Don’t ask. Little mother was witness. The upshot is, that Mirah is jealous of the duchess, and I may be allowed to swear at you for getting what you deserve – which is just the very best luck.”
“God bless you, Hans!” said Deronda, putting out his hand, which the other shook in silence.