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

“That is rather an embarrassing appeal,” said Deronda, drawing up a chair near Lady Mallinger’s elbow at the tea-table. “I think I had better take the opportunity of mentioning our songstress,” he added, looking at Lady Mallinger⁠—“unless you have done so.”

“Oh, the little Jewess!” said Lady Mallinger. “No, I have not mentioned her. It never entered my head that anyone here wanted singing lessons.”

“All ladies know someone else who wants singing lessons,” said Deronda. “I have happened to find an exquisite singer,”⁠—here he turned to Lady Pentreath. “She is living with some ladies who are friends of mine⁠—the mother and sisters of a man who was my chum at Cambridge. She was on the stage at Vienna; but she wants to leave that life, and maintain herself by teaching.”

“There are swarms of those people, aren’t there?” said the old lady. “Are her lessons to be very cheap or very expensive? Those are the two baits I know of.”

“There is another bait for those who hear her,” said Deronda. “Her singing is something quite exceptional, I think. She has had such first-rate teaching⁠—or rather first-rate instinct with her teaching⁠—that you might imagine her singing all came by nature.”

“Why did she leave the stage, then?” said Lady Pentreath. “I’m too old to believe in first-rate people giving up first-rate chances.”

“Her voice was too weak. It is a delicious voice for a room. You who put up with my singing of Schubert would be enchanted with hers,” said Deronda, looking at Mrs. Raymond. “And I imagine she would not object to sing at private parties or concerts. Her voice is quite equal to that.”

“I am to have her in my drawing-room when we go up to town,” said Lady Mallinger. “You shall hear her then. I have not heard her myself yet; but I trust Daniel’s recommendation. I mean my girls to have lessons of her.”

“Is it a charitable affair?” said Lady Pentreath. “I can’t bear charitable music.”

Lady Mallinger, who was rather helpless in conversation, and felt herself under an engagement not to tell anything of Mirah’s story, had an embarrassed smile on her face, and glanced at Deronda.

“It is a charity to those who want to have a good model of feminine singing,” said Deronda. “I think everybody who has ears would benefit by a little improvement on the ordinary style. If you heard Miss Lapidoth”⁠—here he looked at Gwendolen⁠—“perhaps you would revoke your resolution to give up singing.”

“I should rather think my resolution would be confirmed,” said Gwendolen. “I don’t feel able to follow your advice of enjoying my own middlingness.”

“For my part,” said Deronda, “people who do anything finely always inspirit me to try. I don’t mean that they make me believe I can do it as well. But they make the thing, whatever it may be, seem worthy to be done. I can bear to think my own music not good for much, but the world would be more dismal if I thought music itself not good for much. Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.”

“But then, if we can’t imitate it, it only makes our own life seem the tamer,” said Gwendolen, in a mood to resent encouragement founded on her own insignificance.

“That depends on the point of view, I think,” said Deronda. “We should have a poor life of it if we were reduced for all our pleasure to our own performances. A little private imitation of what is good is a sort of private devotion to it, and most of us ought to practice art only in the light of private study⁠—preparation to understand and enjoy what the few can do for us. I think Miss Lapidoth is one of the few.”

“She must be a very happy person, don’t you think?” said Gwendolen, with a touch of sarcasm, and a turn of her neck toward Mrs. Raymond.

“I don’t know,” answered the independent lady; “I must hear more of her before I say that.”

“It may have been a bitter disappointment to her that her voice failed her for the stage,” said Juliet Fenn, sympathetically.

“I suppose she’s past her best, though,” said the deep voice of Lady Pentreath.

“On the contrary, she has not reached it,” said Deronda. “She is barely twenty.”

“And very pretty,” interposed Lady Mallinger, with an amiable wish to help Deronda. “And she has very good manners. I’m sorry she’s a bigoted Jewess; I should not like it for anything else, but it doesn’t matter in singing.”

“Well, since her voice is too weak for her to scream much, I’ll tell Lady Clementina to set her on my nine granddaughters,” said Lady Pentreath; “and I hope she’ll convince eight of them that they have not voice enough to sing anywhere but at church. My notion is, that many of our girls nowadays want lessons not to sing.”

“I have had my lessons in that,” said Gwendolen, looking at Deronda. “You see Lady Pentreath is on my side.”

While she was speaking, Sir Hugo entered with some of the other gentlemen, including Grandcourt, and standing against the group at the low tea-table said,

“What imposition is Deronda putting on you, ladies⁠—slipping in among you by himself?”

“Wanting to pass off an obscurity on us as better than any celebrity,” said Lady Pentreath⁠—“a pretty singing Jewess who is to astonish these young people. You and I, who heard Catalani in her prime, are not so easily astonished.”

Sir Hugo listened with his good-humored smile as he took a cup of tea from his wife, and then said, “Well, you know, a Liberal is bound to think that there have been singers since Catalani’s time.”

“Ah, you are younger than I am. I dare say you are one of the men who ran after Alcharisi. But she married off and left you all in the lurch.”

“Yes, yes; it’s rather too bad when these great singers marry themselves into silence before they have a crack in their voices. And the husband is a public robber. I remember Leroux saying,