CHAPTER XXXVII.

_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 metal 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 asthetic
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 neant_; 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 were 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 Marts 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, 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, 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.