Part 70 (2/2)
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 grat.i.tude 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 any one to a.s.sume 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 compa.s.sion 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 _protege_ 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 ba.s.s 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 person. I should think she will be a great success.”
This speech was grating on Deronda, and he would not answer it, but looked gravely before him. She knew that he was displeased with her, and she was getting so impatient under the neighborhood of Mr. Lush, which prevented her from saying any word she wanted to say, that she meditated some desperate step to get rid of it, and remained silent, too. That constraint seemed to last a long while, neither Gwendolen nor Deronda looking at the other, till Lush slowly relieved the wall of his weight, and joined some one at a distance.
Gwendolen immediately said, ”You despise me for talking artificially.”
”No,” said Deronda, looking at her coolly; ”I think that is quite excusable sometimes. But I did not think what you were last saying was altogether artificial.”
”There was something in it that displeased you,” said Gwendolen. ”What was it?”
”It is impossible to explain such things,” said Deronda. ”One can never communicate niceties of feeling about words and manner.”
”You think I am shut out from understanding them,” said Gwendolen, with a slight tremor in her voice, which she was trying to conquer. ”Have I shown myself so very dense to everything you have said?” There was an indescribable look of suppressed tears in her eyes, which were turned on him.
”Not at all,” said Deronda, with some softening of voice. ”But experience differs for different people. We don't all wince at the same things. I have had plenty of proof that you are not dense.” He smiled at her.
”But one may feel things and are not able to do anything better for all that,” said Gwendolen, not smiling in return--the distance to which Deronda's words seemed to throw her chilling her too much. ”I begin to think we can only get better by having people about us who raise good feelings. You must not be surprised at anything in me. I think it is too late for me to alter. I don't know how to set about being wise, as you told me to be.”
”I seldom find I do any good by my preaching. I might as well have kept from meddling,” said Deronda, thinking rather sadly that his interference about that unfortunate necklace might end in nothing but an added pain to him in seeing her after all hardened to another sort of gambling than roulette.
”Don't say that,” said Gwendolen, hurriedly, feeling that this might be her only chance of getting the words uttered, and dreading the increase of her own agitation. ”If you despair of me, I shall despair. Your saying that I should not go on being selfish and ignorant has been some strength to me. If you say you wish you had not meddled--that means you despair of me and forsake me. And then you will decide for me that I shall not be good. It is you who will decide; because you might have made me different by keeping as near to me as you could, and believing in me.”
She had not been looking at him as she spoke, but at the handle of the fan which she held closed. With the last words she rose and left him, returning to her former place, which had been left vacant; while every one was settling into quietude in expectation of Mirah's voice, which presently, with that wonderful, searching quality of subdued song in which the melody seems simply an effect of the emotion, gave forth, _Per pieta non dirmi addio_.
In Deronda's ear the strain was for the moment a continuance of Gwendolen's pleading--a painful urging of something vague and difficult, irreconcilable with pressing conditions, and yet cruel to resist. However strange the mixture in her of a resolute pride and a precocious air of knowing the world, with a precipitate, guileless indiscretion, he was quite sure now that the mixture existed. Sir Hugo's hints had made him alive to dangers that his own disposition might have neglected; but that Gwendolen's reliance on him was unvisited by any dream of his being a man who could misinterpret her was as manifest as morning, and made an appeal which wrestled with his sense of present dangers, and with his foreboding of a growing incompatible claim on him in her mind. There was a foreshadowing of some painful collision: on the one side the grasp of Mordecai's dying hand on him, with all the ideals and prospects it aroused; on the other the fair creature in silk and gems, with her hidden wound and her self-dread, making a trustful effort to lean and find herself sustained. It was as if he had a vision of himself besought with outstretched arms and cries, while he was caught by the waves and compelled to mount the vessel bound for a far-off coast. That was the strain of excited feeling in him that went along with the notes of Mirah's song; but when it ceased he moved from his seat with the reflection that he had been falling into an exaggeration of his own importance, and a ridiculous readiness to accept Gwendolen's view of himself, as if he could really have any decisive power over her.
”What an enviable fellow you are,” said Hans to him, ”sitting on a sofa with that young d.u.c.h.ess, and having an interesting quarrel with her!”
”Quarrel with her?” repeated Deronda, rather uncomfortably.
”Oh, about theology, of course; nothing personal. But she told you what you ought to think, and then left you with a grand air which was admirable. Is she an Antinomian--if so, tell her I am an Antinomian painter, and introduce me. I should like to paint her and her husband.
He has the sort of handsome _physique_ that the Duke ought to have in _Lucrezia Borgia_--if it could go with a fine baritone, which it can't.”
Deronda devoutly hoped that Hans's account of the impression his dialogue with Gwendolen had made on a distant beholder was no more than a bit of fantastic representation, such as was common with him.
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