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

at elbows nobody will believe in him. I couldn’t get any decent employ with my appearance. I’ve been obliged to get pretty low for a shilling already.”

Mirah’s anxiety was quick enough to imagine her father’s sinking into a further degradation, which she was bound to hinder if she could. But before she could answer his string of inventive sentences, delivered with as much glibness as if they had been learned by rote, he added promptly,

“Where do you live, Mirah?”

“Here, in this square. We are not far from the house.”

“In lodgings?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone to take care of you?”

“Yes,” said Mirah again, looking full at the keen face which was turned toward hers⁠—“my brother.”

The father’s eyelids fluttered as if the lightning had come across them, and there was a slight movement of the shoulders. But he said, after a just perceptible pause: “Ezra? How did you know⁠—how did you find him?”

“That would take long to tell. Here we are at the door. My brother would not wish me to close it on you.”

Mirah was already on the doorstep, but had her face turned toward her father, who stood below her on the pavement. Her heart had begun to beat faster with the prospect of what was coming in the presence of Ezra; and already in this attitude of giving leave to the father whom she had been used to obey⁠—in this sight of him standing below her, with a perceptible shrinking from the admission which he had been indirectly asking for, she had a pang of the peculiar, sympathetic humiliation and shame⁠—the stabbed heart of reverence⁠—which belongs to a nature intensely filial.

“Stay a minute, Liebchen,” said Lapidoth, speaking in a lowered tone; “what sort of man has Ezra turned out?”

“A good man⁠—a wonderful man,” said Mirah, with slow emphasis, trying to master the agitation which made her voice more tremulous as she went on. She felt urged to prepare her father for the complete penetration of himself which awaited him. “But he was very poor when my friends found him for me⁠—a poor workman. Once⁠—twelve years ago⁠—he was strong and happy, going to the East, which he loved to think of; and my mother called him back because⁠—because she had lost me. And he went to her, and took care of her through great trouble, and worked for her till she died⁠—died in grief. And Ezra, too, had lost his health and strength. The cold had seized him coming back to my mother, because she was forsaken. For years he has been getting weaker⁠—always poor, always working⁠—but full of knowledge, and great-minded. All who come near him honor him. To stand before him is like standing before a prophet of God”⁠—Mirah ended with difficulty, her heart throbbing⁠—“falsehoods are no use.”

She had cast down her eyes that she might not see her father while she spoke the last words⁠—unable to bear the ignoble look of frustration that gathered in his face. But he was none the less quick in invention and decision.

“Mirah, Liebchen,” he said, in the old caressing way, “shouldn’t you like me to make myself a little more respectable before my son sees me? If I had a little sum of money, I could fit myself out and come home to you as your father ought, and then I could offer myself for some decent place. With a good shirt and coat on my back, people would be glad enough to have me. I could offer myself for a courier, if I didn’t look like a broken-down mountebank. I should like to be with my children, and forget and forgive. But you have never seen your father look like this before. If you had ten pounds at hand⁠—or I could appoint you to bring it me somewhere⁠—I could fit myself out by the day after tomorrow.”

Mirah felt herself under a temptation which she must try to overcome. She answered, obliging herself to look at him again,

“I don’t like to deny you what you ask, father; but I have given a promise not to do things for you in secret. It is hard to see you looking needy; but we will bear that for a little while; and then you can have new clothes, and we can pay for them.” Her practical sense made her see now what was Mrs. Meyrick’s wisdom in exacting a promise from her.

Lapidoth’s good humor gave way a little. He said, with a sneer, “You are a hard and fast young lady⁠—you have been learning useful virtues⁠—keeping promises not to help your father with a pound or two when you are getting money to dress yourself in silk⁠—your father who made an idol of you, and gave up the best part of his life to providing for you.”

“It seems cruel⁠—I know it seems cruel,” said Mirah, feeling this a worse moment than when she meant to drown herself. Her lips were suddenly pale. “But, father, it is more cruel to break the promises people trust in. That broke my mother’s heart⁠—it has broken Ezra’s life. You and I must eat now this bitterness from what has been. Bear it. Bear to come in and be cared for as you are.”

“Tomorrow, then,” said Lapidoth, almost turning on his heel away from this pale, trembling daughter, who seemed now to have got the inconvenient world to back her; but he quickly turned on it again, with his hands feeling about restlessly in his pockets, and said, with some return to his appealing tone, “I’m a little cut up with all this, Mirah. I shall get up my spirits by tomorrow. If you’ve a little money in your pocket, I suppose it isn’t against your promise to give me a trifle⁠—to buy a cigar with.”

Mirah could not ask herself another question⁠—could not do anything else than put her cold trembling hands in her pocket for her portemonnaie and hold it out. Lapidoth grasped it at once, pressed her fingers the while, said, “Goodbye, my little girl⁠—tomorrow then!”