“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 or 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
bedroom 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.