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

framed his resolve to go near her on the first opportunity, and show his regard for her past confidence, in spite of Sir Hugo’s unwelcome hints.

Klesmer, having risen to Gwendolen as she approached, and being included by her in the opening conversation with Mirah, continued near them a little while, looking down with a smile, which was rather in his eyes than on his lips, at the piquant contrast of the two charming young creatures seated on the red divan. The solicitude seemed to be all on the side of the splendid one.

“You must let me say how much I am obliged to you,” said Gwendolen. “I had heard from Mr. Deronda that I should have a great treat in your singing, but I was too ignorant to imagine how great.”

“You are very good to say so,” answered Mirah, her mind chiefly occupied in contemplating Gwendolen. It was like a new kind of stage-experience to her to be close to genuine grand ladies with genuine brilliants and complexions, and they impressed her vaguely as coming out of some unknown drama, in which their parts perhaps got more tragic as they went on.

“We shall all want to learn of you⁠—I, at least,” said Gwendolen. “I sing very badly, as Herr Klesmer will tell you,”⁠—here she glanced upward to that higher power rather archly, and continued⁠—“but I have been rebuked for not liking to be middling, since I can be nothing more. I think that is a different doctrine from yours?” She was still looking at Klesmer, who said quickly,

“Not if it means that it would be worth while for you to study further, and for Miss Lapidoth to have the pleasure of helping you.” With that he moved away, and Mirah taking everything with naive seriousness, said,

“If you think I could teach you, I shall be very glad. I am anxious to teach, but I have only just begun. If I do it well, it must be by remembering how my master taught me.”

Gwendolen was in reality too uncertain about herself to be prepared for this simple promptitude of Mirah’s, and in her wish to change the subject, said, with some lapse from the good taste of her first address,

“You have not been long in London, I think?⁠—but you were perhaps introduced to Mr. Deronda abroad?”

“No,” said Mirah; “I never saw him before I came to England in the summer.”

“But he has seen you often and heard you sing a great deal, has he not?” said Gwendolen, led on partly by the wish to hear anything about Deronda, and partly by the awkwardness which besets the readiest person, in carrying on a dialogue when empty of matter. “He spoke of you to me with the highest praise. He seemed to know you quite well.”

“Oh, I was poor and needed help,” said Mirah, in a new tone of feeling, “and Mr. Deronda has given me the best friends in the world. That is the only way he came to know anything about me⁠—because he was sorry for me. I had no friends when I came. I was in distress. I owe everything to him.”

Poor Gwendolen, who had wanted to be a struggling artist herself, could nevertheless not escape the impression that a mode of inquiry which would have been rather rude toward herself was an amiable condescension to this Jewess who was ready to give her lessons. The only effect on Mirah, as always on any mention of Deronda, was to stir reverential gratitude and anxiety that she should be understood to have the deepest obligation to him.

But both he and Hans, who were noticing the pair from a distance, would have felt rather indignant if they had known that the conversation had led up to Mirah’s representation of herself in this light of neediness. In the movement that prompted her, however, there was an exquisite delicacy, which perhaps she could not have stated explicitly⁠—the feeling that she ought not to allow anyone to assume in Deronda a relation of more equality or less generous interest toward her than actually existed. Her answer was delightful to Gwendolen: she thought of nothing but the ready compassion which in another form she had trusted in and found herself; and on the signals that Klesmer was about to play she moved away in much content, entirely without presentiment that this Jewish protégé would ever make a more important difference in her life than the possible improvement of her singing⁠—if the leisure and spirits of a Mrs. Grandcourt would allow of other lessons than such as the world was giving her at rather a high charge.

With her wonted alternation from resolute care of appearances to some rash indulgence of an impulse, she chose, under the pretext of getting farther from the instrument, not to go again to her former seat, but placed herself on a settee where she could only have one neighbor. She was nearer to Deronda than before: was it surprising that he came up in time to shake hands before the music began⁠—then, that after he had stood a little while by the elbow of the settee at the empty end, the torrent-like confluences of bass and treble seemed, like a convulsion of nature, to cast the conduct of petty mortals into insignificance, and to warrant his sitting down?

But when at the end of Klesmer’s playing there came the outburst of talk under which Gwendolen had hoped to speak as she would to Deronda, she observed that Mr. Lush was within hearing, leaning against the wall close by them. She could not help her flush of anger, but she tried to have only an air of polite indifference in saying,

“Miss Lapidoth is everything you described her to be.”

“You have been very quick in discovering that,” said Deronda, ironically.

“I have not found out all the excellencies you spoke of⁠—I don’t mean that,” said Gwendolen; “but I think her singing is charming, and herself, too. Her face is lovely⁠—not in the least common; and she is such a complete little