Daniel Deronda, George Eliot [portable ebook reader .TXT] 📗

sea⁠—imagine her with her dark hair brushed from her temples, but yet showing certain tiny rings there which had cunningly found their own way back, the mass of it hanging behind just to the nape of the little neck in curly fibres, such as renew themselves at their own will after being bathed into straightness like that of water-grasses. Then see the perfect cameo her profile makes, cut in a duskish shell, where by some happy fortune there pierced a gem-like darkness for the eye and eyebrow; the delicate nostrils defined enough to be ready for sensitive movements, the finished ear, the firm curves of the chin and neck, entering into the expression of a refinement which was not feebleness.

She sang Beethoven’s “Per pietà non dirmi addio” with a subdued but searching pathos which had that essential of perfect singing, the making one oblivious of art or manner, and only possessing one with the song. It was the sort of voice that gives the impression of being meant like a bird’s wooing for an audience near and beloved. Deronda began by looking at her, but felt himself presently covering his eyes with his hand, wanting to seclude the melody in darkness; then he refrained from what might seem oddity, and was ready to meet the look of mute appeal which she turned toward him at the end.

“I think I never enjoyed a song more than that,” he said, gratefully.

“You like my singing? I am so glad,” she said, with a smile of delight. “It has been a great pain to me, because it failed in what it was wanted for. But now we think I can use it to get my bread. I have really been taught well. And now I have two pupils, that Miss Meyrick found for me. They pay me nearly two crowns for their two lessons.”

“I think I know some ladies who would find you many pupils after Christmas,” said Deronda. “You would not mind singing before anyone who wished to hear you?”

“Oh no, I want to do something to get money. I could teach reading and speaking, Mrs. Meyrick thinks. But if no one would learn of me, that is difficult.” Mirah smiled with a touch of merriment he had not seen in her before. “I dare say I should find her poor⁠—I mean my mother. I should want to get money for her. And I can not always live on charity; though”⁠—here she turned so as to take all three of her companions in one glance⁠—“it is the sweetest charity in all the world.”

“I should think you can get rich,” said Deronda, smiling. “Great ladies will perhaps like you to teach their daughters. We shall see. But now do sing again to us.”

She went on willingly, singing with ready memory various things by Gordigiani and Schubert; then, when she had left the piano, Mab said, entreatingly, “Oh, Mirah, if you would not mind singing the little hymn.”

“It is too childish,” said Mirah. “It is like lisping.”

“What is the hymn?” said Deronda.

“It is the Hebrew hymn she remembers her mother singing over her when she lay in her cot,” said Mrs. Meyrick.

“I should like very much to hear it,” said Deronda, “if you think I am worthy to hear what is so sacred.”

“I will sing it if you like,” said Mirah, “but I don’t sing real words⁠—only here and there a syllable like hers⁠—the rest is lisping. Do you know Hebrew? because if you do, my singing will seem childish nonsense.”

Deronda shook his head. “It will be quite good Hebrew to me.”

Mirah crossed her little feet and hands in her easiest attitude, and then lifted up her head at an angle which seemed to be directed to some invisible face bent over her, while she sang a little hymn of quaint melancholy intervals, with syllables that really seemed childish lisping to her audience; the voice in which she gave it forth had gathered even a sweeter, more cooing tenderness than was heard in her other songs.

“If I were ever to know the real words, I should still go on in my old way with them,” said Mirah, when she had repeated the hymn several times.

“Why not?” said Deronda. “The lisped syllables are very full of meaning.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Meyrick. “A mother hears something of a lisp in her children’s talk to the very last. Their words are not just what everybody else says, though they may be spelled the same. If I were to live till my Hans got old, I should still see the boy in him. A mother’s love, I often say, is like a tree that has got all the wood in it, from the very first it made.”

“Is not that the way with friendship, too?” said Deronda, smiling. “We must not let the mothers be too arrogant.”

The little woman shook her head over her darning.

“It is easier to find an old mother than an old friend. Friendships begin with liking or gratitude⁠—roots that can be pulled up. Mother’s love begins deeper down.”

“Like what you were saying about the influence of voices,” said Deronda, looking at Mirah. “I don’t think your hymn would have had more expression for me if I had known the words. I went to the synagogue at Frankfort before I came home, and the service impressed me just as much as if I had followed the words⁠—perhaps more.”

“Oh, was it great to you? Did it go to your heart?” said Mirah, eagerly. “I thought none but our people would feel that. I thought it was all shut away like a river in a deep valley, where only heaven saw⁠—I mean⁠—” she hesitated, feeling that she could not disentangle her thought from its imagery.

“I understand,” said Deronda. “But there is not really such a separation⁠—deeper down, as Mrs. Meyrick says. Our religion is chiefly a Hebrew religion; and since Jews are men, their religious feelings must have much in common with those of other men⁠—just as their poetry, though in