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Home -> George Eliot -> Daniel Deronda -> Chapter 66

Daniel Deronda - Chapter 66

1. Book I, Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Book II, Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Book III, Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Chapter 22

23. Chapter 23

24. Chapter 24

25. Chapter 25

26. Chapter 26

27. Chapter 27

28. Book IV, Chapter 28

29. Chapter 29

30. Chapter 30

31. Chapter 31

32. Chapter 32

33. Chapter 33

34. Chapter 34

35. Book V, Chapter 35

36. Chapter 36

37. Chapter 37

38. Chapter 38

39. Chapter 39

40. Chapter 40

41. Book VI, Chapter 41

42. Chapter 42

43. Chapter 43

44. Chapter 44

45. Chapter 45

46. Chapter 46

47. Chapter 47

48. Chapter 48

49. Chapter 49

50. Book VII, Chapter 50

51. Chapter 51

52. Chapter 52

53. Chapter 53

54. Chapter 54

55. Chapter 55

56. Chapter 56

57. Chapter 57

58. Book VIII, Chapter 58

59. Chapter 59

60. Chapter 60

61. Chapter 61

62. Chapter 62

63. Chapter 63

64. Chapter 64

65. Chapter 65

66. Chapter 66

67. Chapter 67

68. Chapter 68

69. Chapter 69

70. Chapter 70







CHAPTER LXVI.


"One day still fierce 'mid many a day struck calm."
--BROWNING: _The King and the Book_.


Meanwhile Ezra and Mirah, whom Gwendolen did not include in her thinking
about Deronda, were having their relation to him drawn closer and brought
into fuller light.

The father Lapidoth had quitted his daughter at the doorstep, ruled by
that possibility of staking something in play of betting which presented
itself with the handling of any sum beyond the price of staying actual
hunger, and left no care for alternative prospects or resolutions. Until
he had lost everything he never considered whether he would apply to Mirah
again or whether he would brave his son's presence. In the first moment he
had shrunk from encountering Ezra as he would have shrunk from any other
situation of disagreeable constraint; and the possession of Mirah's purse
was enough to banish the thought of future necessities. The gambling
appetite is more absolutely dominant than bodily hunger, which can be
neutralized by an emotional or intellectual excitation; but the passion
for watching chances--the habitual suspensive poise of the mind in actual
or imaginary play--nullifies the susceptibility of other excitation. In
its final, imperious stage, it seems the unjoyous dissipation of demons,
seeking diversion on the burning marl of perdition.

But every form of selfishness, however abstract and unhuman, requires the
support of at least one meal a day; and though Lapidoth's appetite for
food and drink was extremely moderate, he had slipped into a shabby,
unfriendly form of life in which the appetite could not be satisfied
without some ready money. When, in a brief visit at a house which
announced "Pyramids" on the window-blind, he had first doubled and trebled
and finally lost Mirah's thirty shillings, he went out with her empty
purse in his pocket, already balancing in his mind whether he should get
another immediate stake by pawning the purse, or whether he should go back
to her giving himself a good countenance by restoring the purse, and
declaring that he had used the money in paying a score that was standing
against him. Besides, among the sensibilities still left strong in
Lapidoth was the sensibility to his own claims, and he appeared to himself
to have a claim on any property his children might possess, which was
stronger than the justice of his son's resentment. After all, to take up
his lodging with his children was the best thing he could do; and the more
he thought of meeting Ezra the less he winced from it, his imagination
being more wrought on by the chances of his getting something into his
pocket with safety and without exertion, than by the threat of a private
humiliation. Luck had been against him lately; he expected it to turn--and
might not the turn begin with some opening of supplies which would present
itself through his daughter's affairs and the good friends she had spoken
of? Lapidoth counted on the fascination of his cleverness--an old habit of
mind which early experience had sanctioned: and it is not only women who
are unaware of their diminished charm, or imagine that they can feign not
to be worn out.

The result of Lapidoth's rapid balancing was that he went toward the
little square in Brompton with the hope that, by walking about and
watching, he might catch sight of Mirah going out or returning, in which
case his entrance into the house would be made easier. But it was already
evening--the evening of the day next to that which he had first seen her;
and after a little waiting, weariness made him reflect that he might ring,
and if she were not at home he might ask the time at which she was
expected. But on coming near the house he knew that she was at home: he
heard her singing.

Mirah, seated at the piano, was pouring forth "_Herz, mein Herz_," while
Ezra was listening with his eyes shut, when Mrs. Adam opened the door, and
said in some embarrassment--

"A gentleman below says he is your father, miss."

"I will go down to him," said Mirah, starting up immediately and looking
at her brother.

"No, Mirah, not so," said Ezra, with decision. "Let him come up, Mrs.
Adam."

Mirah stood with her hands pinching each other, and feeling sick with
anxiety, while she continued looking at Ezra, who had also risen, and was
evidently much shaken. But there was an expression in his face which she
had never seen before; his brow was knit, his lips seemed hardened with
the same severity that gleamed from his eye.

When Mrs. Adam opened the door to let in the father, she could not help
casting a look at the group, and after glancing from the younger man to
the elder, said to herself as she closed the door, "Father, sure enough."
The likeness was that of outline, which is always most striking at the
first moment; the expression had been wrought into the strongest contrasts
by such hidden or inconspicuous differences as can make the genius of a
Cromwell within the outward type of a father who was no more than a
respectable parishioner.

Lapidoth had put on a melancholy expression beforehand, but there was some
real wincing in his frame as he said--

"Well, Ezra, my boy, you hardly know me after so many years."

"I know you--too well--father," said Ezra, with a slow biting solemnity
which made the word father a reproach.

"Ah, you are not pleased with me. I don't wonder at it. Appearances have
been against me. When a man gets into straits he can't do just as he would
by himself or anybody else, _I_'ve suffered enough, I know," said
Lapidoth, quickly. In speaking he always recovered some glibness and
hardihood; and now turning toward Mirah, he held out her purse, saying,
"Here's your little purse, my dear. I thought you'd be anxious about it
because of that bit of writing. I've emptied it, you'll see, for I had a
score to pay for food and lodging. I knew you would like me to clear
myself, and here I stand--without a single farthing in my pocket--at the
mercy of my children; You can turn me out if you like, without getting a
policeman. Say the word, Mirah; say, 'Father, I've had enough of you; you
made a pet of me, and spent your all on me, when I couldn't have done
without you; but I can do better without you now,'--say that, and I'm gone
out like a spark. I shan't spoil your pleasure again." The tears were in
his voice as usual, before he had finished.

"You know I could never say it, father," answered Mirah, with not the less
anguish because she felt the falsity of everything in his speech except
the implied wish to remain in the house.

"Mirah, my sister, leave us!" said Ezra, in a tone of authority.

She looked at her brother falteringly, beseechingly--in awe of his
decision, yet unable to go without making a plea for this father who was
like something that had grown in her flesh with pain. She went close to
her brother, and putting her hand in his, said, in a low voice, but not so
low as to be unheard by Lapidoth, "Remember, Ezra--you said my mother
would not have shut him out."

"Trust me, and go," said Ezra.

She left the room, but after going a few steps up the stairs, sat down
with a palpitating heart. If, because of anything her brother said to him,
he went away---

Lapidoth had some sense of what was being prepared for him in his son's
mind, but he was beginning to adjust himself to the situation and find a
point of view that would give him a cool superiority to any attempt at
humiliating him. This haggard son, speaking as from a sepulchre, had the
incongruity which selfish levity learns to see in suffering, and until the
unrelenting pincers of disease clutch its own flesh. Whatever preaching he
might deliver must be taken for a matter of course, as a man finding
shelter from hail in an open cathedral! might take a little religious
howling that happened to be going on there.

Lapidoth was not born with this sort of callousness: he had achieved it.

"This home that we have here," Ezra began, "is maintained partly by the
generosity of a beloved friend who supports me, and partly by the labors
of my sister, who supports herself. While we have a home we will not shut
you out from it. We will not cast you out to the mercy of your vices. For
you are our father, and though you have broken your bond, we acknowledge
ours. But I will never trust you. You absconded with money, leaving your
debts unpaid; you forsook my mother; you robbed her of her little child
and broke her heart; you have become a gambler, and where shame and
conscience were there sits an insatiable desire; you were ready to sell my
sister--you had sold her, but the price was denied you. The man who has
done these things must never expect to be trusted any more. We will share
our food with you--you shall have a bed, and clothing. We will do this
duty to you, because you are our father. But you will never be trusted.
You are an evil man: you made the misery of our mother. That such a man is
our father is a brand on our flesh which will not cease smarting. But the
Eternal has laid it upon us; and though human justice were to flog you for
crimes, and your body fell helpless before the public scorn, we would
still say, 'This is our father; make way, that we may carry him out of
your sight.'"

Lapidoth, in adjusting himself to what was coming, had not been able to
foresee the exact intensity of the lightning or the exact course it would
take--that it would not fall outside his frame but through it. He could
not foresee what was so new to him as this voice from the soul of his son.
It touched that spring of hysterical excitability which Mirah used to
witness in him when he sat at home and sobbed. As Ezra ended, Lapidoth
threw himself into a chair and cried like a woman, burying his face
against the table--and yet, strangely, while this hysterical crying was an
inevitable reaction in him under the stress of his son's words, it was
also a conscious resource in a difficulty; just as in early life, when he
was a bright-faced curly young man, he had been used to avail himself of
this subtly-poised physical susceptibility to turn the edge of resentment
or disapprobation.

Ezra sat down again and said nothing--exhausted by the shock of his own
irrepressible utterance, the outburst of feelings which for years he had
borne in solitude and silence. His thin hands trembled on the arms of the
chair; he would hardly have found voice to answer a question; he felt as
if he had taken a step toward beckoning Death. Meanwhile Mirah's quick
expectant ear detected a sound which her heart recognized: she could not
stay out of the room any longer. But on opening the door her immediate
alarm was for Ezra, and it was to his side that she went, taking his
trembling hand in hers, which he pressed and found support in; but he did
not speak or even look at her. The father with his face buried was
conscious that Mirah had entered, and presently lifted up his head,
pressed his handkerchief against his eyes, put out his hand toward her,
and said with plaintive hoarseness, "Good-bye, Mirah; your father will not
trouble you again. He deserves to die like a dog by the roadside, and he
will. If your mother had lived, she would have forgiven me--thirty-four
years ago I put the ring on her finger under the _Chuppa_, and we were
made one. She would have forgiven me, and we should have spent our old age
together. But I haven't deserved it. Good-bye."

He rose from the chair as he said the last "good-bye.' Mirah had put her
hand in his and held him. She was not tearful and grieving, but frightened
and awe-struck, as she cried out--

"No, father, no!" Then turning to her brother, "Ezra, you have not
forbidden him?--Stay, father, and leave off wrong things. Ezra, I cannot
bear it. How can I say to my father, 'Go and die!'"

"I have not said it," Ezra answered, with great effort. "I have said, stay
and be sheltered."

"Then you will stay, father--and be taken care of--and come with me," said
Mirah, drawing him toward the door.

This was really what Lapidoth wanted. And for the moment he felt a sort of
comfort in recovering his daughter's dutiful attendance, that made a
change of habits seem possible to him. She led him down to the parlor
below, and said--

"This is my sitting-room when I am not with Ezra, and there is a bed-room
behind which shall be yours. You will stay and be good, father. Think that
you are come back to my mother, and that she has forgiven you--she speaks
to you through me." Mirah's tones were imploring, but she could not give
one of her former caresses.

Lapidoth quickly recovered his composure, began to speak to Mirah of the
improvement in her voice, and other easy subjects, and when Mrs. Adam came
to lay out his supper, entered into converse with her in order to show her
that he was not a common person, though his clothes were just now against
him.

But in his usual wakefulness at night, he fell to wondering what money
Mirah had by her, and went back over old Continental hours at _Roulette_,
reproducing the method of his play, and the chances that had frustrated
it. He had had his reasons for coming to England, but for most things it
was a cursed country.

These were the stronger visions of the night with Lapidoth, and not the
worn frame of his ireful son uttering a terrible judgment. Ezra did pass
across the gaming-table, and his words were audible; but he passed like an
insubstantial ghost, and his words had the heart eaten out of them by
numbers and movements that seemed to make the very tissue of Lapidoth's
consciousness.




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