“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.”
—COLERIDGE.
Deronda’s eagerness to confess his love could hardly have had a
stronger stimulus than Hans had given it in his assurance that Mirah
needed relief from jealousy. He went on his next visit to Ezra with the
determination to be resolute in using—nay, in requesting—an
opportunity of private conversation with her. If she accepted his love,
he felt courageous about all other consequences, and as her betrothed
husband he would gain a protective authority which might be a desirable
defense for her in future difficulties with her father. Deronda had not
observed any signs of growing restlessness in Lapidoth, or of
diminished desire to recommend himself; but he had forebodings of some
future struggle, some mortification, or some intolerable increase of
domestic disquietude in which he might save Ezra and Mirah from being
helpless victims.
His forebodings would have been strengthened if he had known what was
going on in the father’s mind. That amount of restlessness, that
desultoriness of attention, which made a small torture to Ezra, was to
Lapidoth an irksome submission to restraint, only made bearable by his
thinking of it as a means of by-and-by securing a well-conditioned
freedom. He began with the intention of awaiting some really good
chance, such as an opening for getting a considerable sum from Deronda;
but all the while he was looking about curiously, and trying to
discover where Mirah deposited her money and her keys. The imperious
gambling desire within him, which carried on its activity through every
other occupation, and made a continuous web of imagination that held
all else in its meshes, would hardly have been under the control of a
contracted purpose, if he had been able to lay his hands on any sum
worth capturing. But Mirah, with her practical clear-sightedness,
guarded against any frustration of the promise she had given to Ezra,
by confiding all money, except what she was immediately in want of, to
Mrs. Meyrick’s care, and Lapidoth felt himself under an irritating
completeness of supply in kind as in a lunatic asylum where everything
was made safe against him. To have opened a desk or drawer of Mirah’s,
and pocketed any bank-notes found there, would have been to his mind a
sort of domestic appropriation which had no disgrace in it; the degrees
of liberty a man allows himself with other people’s property being
often delicately drawn, even beyond the boundary where the law begins
to lay its hold—which is the reason why spoons are a safer investment
than mining shares. Lapidoth really felt himself injuriously treated by
his daughter, and thought that he ought to have had what he wanted of
her other earnings as he had of her apple-tart. But he remained
submissive; indeed, the indiscretion that most tempted him, was not any
insistence with Mirah, but some kind of appeal to Deronda. Clever
persons who have nothing else to sell can often put a good price on
their absence, and Lapidoth’s difficult search for devices forced upon
him the idea that his family would find themselves happier without him,
and that Deronda would be willing to advance a considerable sum for the
sake of getting rid of him. But, in spite of well-practiced hardihood,
Lapidoth was still in some awe of Ezra’s imposing friend, and deferred
his purpose indefinitely.
On this day, when Deronda had come full of a gladdened consciousness,
which inevitably showed itself in his air and speech, Lapidoth was at a
crisis of discontent and longing that made his mind busy with schemes
of freedom, and Deronda’s new amenity encouraged them. This
preoccupation was at last so strong as to interfere with his usual
show of interest in what went forward, and his persistence in sitting
by even when there was reading which he could not follow. After sitting
a little while, he went out to smoke and walk in the square, and the
two friends were all the easier. Mirah was not at home, but she was
sure to be in again before Deronda left, and his eyes glowed with a
secret anticipation: he thought that when he saw her again he should
see some sweetness of recognition for himself to which his eyes had
been sealed before. There was an additional playful affectionateness in
his manner toward Ezra.
“This little room is too close for you, Ezra,” he said, breaking off
his reading. “The week’s heat we sometimes get here is worse than the
heat in Genoa, where one sits in the shaded coolness of large rooms.
You must have a better home now. I shall do as I like with you, being
the stronger half.” He smiled toward Ezra, who said,
“I am straitened for nothing except breath. But you, who might be in a
spacious palace, with the wide green country around you, find this a
narrow prison. Nevertheless, I cannot say, ‘Go.’”
“Oh, the country would be a banishment while you are here,” said
Deronda, rising and walking round the double room, which yet offered no
long promenade, while he made a great fan of his handkerchief. “This is
the happiest room in the world to me. Besides, I will imagine myself in
the East, since I am getting ready to go there some day. Only I will
not wear a cravat and a heavy ring there,” he ended emphatically,
pausing to take off those superfluities and deposit them on a small
table behind Ezra, who had the table in front of him covered with books
and papers.
“I have been wearing my memorable ring ever since I came home,” he went
on, as he reseated himself. “But I am such a Sybarite that I constantly
put it off as a burden when I am doing anything. I understand why the
Romans had summer rings—_if_ they had them. Now then, I shall get on
better.”
They were soon absorbed in their work again. Deronda was reading a
piece of rabbinical Hebrew under Ezra’s correction and comment, and
they took little notice when Lapidoth re-entered and took a seat
somewhat in the background.
His rambling eyes quickly alighted on the ring that sparkled on the bit
of dark mahogany. During his walk, his mind had been occupied with the
fiction of an advantageous opening for him abroad, only requiring a sum
of ready money, which, on being communicated to Deronda in private,
might immediately draw from him a question as to the amount of the
required sum: and it was this part of his forecast that Lapidoth found
the most debatable, there being a danger in asking too much, and a
prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire gave him no
limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of Deronda’s
willingness. But now, in the midst of these airy conditions preparatory
to a receipt which remained indefinite, this ring, which on Deronda’s
finger had become familiar to Lapidoth’s envy, suddenly shone detached
and within easy grasp. Its value was certainly below the smallest of
the imaginary sums that his purpose fluctuated between; but then it was
before him as a solid fact, and his desire at once leaped into the
thought (not yet an intention) that if he were quietly to pocket that
ring and walk away he would have the means of comfortable escape from
present restraint, without trouble, and also without danger; for any
property of Deronda’s (available without his formal consent) was all
one with his children’s property, since their father would never be
prosecuted for taking it. The details of this thinking followed each
other so quickly that they seemed to rise before him as one picture.
Lapidoth had never committed larceny; but larceny is a form of
appropriation for which people are punished by law; and, take this ring
from a virtual relation, who would have been willing to make a much
heavier gift, would not come under the head of larceny. Still, the
heavier gift was to be preferred, if Lapidoth could only make haste
enough in asking for it, and the imaginary action of taking the ring,
which kept repeating itself like an inward tune, sank into a rejected
idea. He satisfied his urgent longing by resolving to go below, and
watch for the moment of Deronda’s departure, when he would ask leave to
join him in his walk and boldly carry out his meditated plan. He rose
and stood looking out of the window, but all the while he saw what lay
beyond him—the brief passage he would have to make to the door close
by the table where the ring was. However he was resolved to go down;
but—by no distinct change of resolution, rather by a dominance of
desire, like the thirst of the drunkard—it so happened that in passing
the table his fingers fell noiselessly on the ring, and he found
himself in the passage with the ring in his hand. It followed that he
put on his hat and quitted the house. The possibility of again throwing
himself on his children receded into the indefinite distance, and
before he was out on the square his sense of haste had concentrated
itself on selling the ring and getting on shipboard.
Deronda and Ezra were just aware of his exit; that was all. But,
by-and-by, Mirah came in and made a real interruption. She had not
taken off her hat; and when Deronda rose and advanced to shake hands
with her, she said, in a confusion at once unaccountable and
troublesome to herself,
“I only came in to see that Ezra had his new draught. I must go
directly to Mrs. Meyrick’s to fetch something.”
“Pray allow me to walk with you,” said Deronda urgently. “I must not
tire Ezra any further; besides my brains are melting. I want to go to
Mrs. Meyrick’s: may I go with you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mirah, blushing still more, with the vague sense of
something new in Deronda, and turning away to pour out Ezra’s draught;
Ezra meanwhile throwing back his head with his eyes shut, unable to get
his mind away from the ideas that had been filling it while the reading
was going on. Deronda for a moment stood thinking of nothing but the
walk, till Mirah turned round again and brought the draught, when he
suddenly remembered that he had laid aside his cravat, and
saying—“Pray excuse my dishabille—I did not mean you to see it,” he
went to the little table, took up his cravat, and exclaimed with a
violent impulse of surprise, “Good heavens, where is my ring gone?”
beginning to search about on the floor.
Ezra looked round the corner of his chair. Mirah, quick as thought,
went to the spot where Deronda was seeking, and said, “Did you lay it
down?”
“Yes,” said Deronda, still unvisited by any other explanation than that
the ring had fallen and was lurking in shadow, indiscernable on the
variegated carpet. He was moving the bits of furniture near, and
searching in all possible and impossible places with hand and eyes.
But another explanation had visited Mirah and taken the color from her
cheeks. She went to Ezra’s ear and whispered “Was my father here?” He
bent his head in reply, meeting her eyes with terrible understanding.
She darted back to the spot where Deronda was still casting down his
eyes in that hopeless exploration which we are apt to carry on over a
space we have examined in vain. “You have not found it?” she said,
hurriedly.
He, meeting her frightened gaze, immediately caught alarm from it and
answered, “I perhaps put it in my pocket,” professing to feel for it
there.
She watched him and said, “It is not there?—you put it on the table,”
with a penetrating voice that would not let him feign to have found it
in his pocket; and immediately she rushed out of the room. Deronda
followed her—she was gone into the sitting-room below to look for her
father—she opened the door of the bedroom to see if he were there—she
looked where his hat usually hung—she turned with her hands clasped
tight and her lips pale, gazing despairingly out of the window. Then
she looked up at Deronda, who had not dared to speak to her in her
white agitation. She looked up at him, unable to utter a word—the look
seemed a tacit acceptance of the humiliation she felt in his presence.
But he, taking her clasped hands between both his, said, in a tone of
reverent adoration,
“Mirah, let me think that he is my father as well as yours—that we can
have no sorrow, no disgrace, no joy apart. I will rather take your
grief to be mine than I would take the brightest joy of another woman.
Say you will not reject me—say you will take me to share all things
with you. Say you will promise to be my wife—say it now. I have been
in doubt so long—I have had to hide my love so long. Say that now and
always I may prove to you that I love you with complete love.”
The change in Mirah had been gradual. She had not passed at once from
anguish to the full, blessed consciousness that, in this moment of
grief and shame, Deronda was giving her the highest tribute man can
give to woman. With the first tones and the first words, she had only a
sense of solemn comfort, referring this goodness of Deronda’s to his
feeling for Ezra. But by degrees the rapturous assurance of unhoped-for
good took possession of her frame: her face glowed under Deronda’s as
he bent over her; yet she looked up still with intense gravity, as when
she had first acknowledged with religious gratitude that he had thought
her “worthy of the best;” and when he had finished, she could say
nothing—she could only lift up her lips to his and just kiss them, as
if that were the simplest “yes.” They stood then, only looking at each
other, he holding her hands between his—too happy to move, meeting so
fully in their new consciousness that all signs would have seemed to
throw them farther apart, till Mirah said in a whisper: “Let us go and
comfort Ezra.”