Part 81 (1/2)

Mrs. Meyrick's quick eye and ear detected something unusual, but immediately explained it to herself. Fine ladies had often wounded Mirah by caprices of manner and intention.

”Mrs. Grandcourt had thought of having lessons of Mirah,” she said turning to Anna. ”But many have talked of having lessons, and then have found no time. Fas.h.i.+onable ladies have too much work to do.”

And the chat went on without further insistance on the _Princess of Eboli_. That comparison escaped Mirah's lips under the urgency of a pang unlike anything she had felt before. The conversation from the beginning had revived unpleasant impressions, and Mrs. Meyrick's suggestion of Gwendolen's figure by the side of Deronda's had the stinging effect of a voice outside her, confirming her secret conviction that this tall and fair woman had some hold on his lot. For a long while afterward she felt as if she had had a jarring shock through her frame.

In the evening, putting her cheek against her brother's shoulder as she was sitting by him, while he sat propped up in bed under a new difficulty of breathing, she said--

”Ezra, does it ever hurt your love for Mr. Deronda that so much of his life was all hidden away from you--that he is amongst persons and cares about persons who are all so unlike us--I mean unlike you?”

”No, a.s.suredly no,” said Mordecai. ”Rather it is a precious thought to me that he has a preparation which I lacked, and is an accomplished Egyptian.” Then, recollecting that his words had reference which his sister must not yet understand, he added. ”I have the more to give him, since his treasure differs from mine. That is a blessedness in friends.h.i.+p.”

Mirah mused a little.

”Still,” she said, ”it would be a trial to your love for him if that other part of his life were like a crowd in which he had got entangled, so that he was carried away from you--I mean in his thoughts, and not merely carried out of sight as he is now--and not merely for a little while, but continually. How should you bear that! Our religion commands us to bear. But how should you bear it?”

”Not well, my sister--not well; but it will never happen,” said Mordecai, looking at her with a tender smile. He thought that her heart needed comfort on his account.

Mirah said no more. She mused over the difference between her own state of mind and her brother's, and felt her comparative pettiness. Why could she not be completely satisfied with what satisfied his larger judgment? She gave herself no fuller reason than a painful sense of unfitness--in what? Airy possibilities to which she could give no outline, but to which one name and one figure gave the wandering persistency of a blot in her vision. Here lay the vaguer source of the hidden sadness rendered noticeable to Hans by some diminution of that sweet ease, that ready joyousness of response in her speech and smile, which had come with the new sense of freedom and safety, and had made her presence like the freshly-opened daisies and clear bird-notes after the rain. She herself regarded her uneasiness as a sort of ingrat.i.tude and dullness of sensibility toward the great things that had been given her in her new life; and whenever she threw more energy than usual into her singing, it was the energy of indignation against the shallowness of her own content. In that mood she once said, ”Shall I tell you what is the difference between you and me, Ezra? You are a spring in the drought, and I am an acorn-cup; the waters of heaven fill me, but the least little shake leaves me empty.”

”Why, what has shaken thee?” said Mordecai. He fell into this antique form of speech habitually in talking to his sister and to the Cohen children.

”Thoughts,” said Mirah; ”thoughts that come like the breeze and shake me--bad people, wrong things, misery--and how they might touch our life.”

”We must take our portion, Mirah. It is there. On whose shoulder would we lay it, that we might be free?”

The one voluntary sign she made of her inward care was this distant allusion.

CHAPTER LIII.

”My desolation does begin to make A better life.”

--SHAKESPEARE: _Antony and Cleopatra._

Before Deronda was summoned to a second interview with his mother, a day had pa.s.sed in which she had only sent him a message to say that she was not yet well enough to receive him again; but on the third morning he had a note saying, ”I leave to-day. Come and see me at once.”

He was shown into the same room as before; but it was much darkened with blinds and curtains. The Princess was not there, but she presently entered, dressed in a loose wrap of some soft silk, in color a dusky orange, her head again with black lace floating about it, her arms showing themselves bare from under her wide sleeves. Her face seemed even more impressive in the sombre light, the eyes larger, the lines more vigorous. You might have imagined her a sorceress who would stretch forth her wonderful hand and arm to mix youth-potions for others, but scorned to mix them for herself, having had enough of youth.

She put her arms on her son's shoulders at once, and kissed him on both cheeks, then seated herself among her cus.h.i.+ons with an air of a.s.sured firmness and dignity unlike her fitfulness in their first interview, and told Deronda to sit down by her. He obeyed, saying, ”You are quite relieved now, I trust?”

”Yes, I am at ease again. Is there anything more that you would like to ask me?” she said, with the matter of a queen rather than of a mother.

”Can I find the house in Genoa where you used to live with my grandfather?” said Deronda.

”No,” she answered, with a deprecating movement of her arm, ”it is pulled down--not to be found. But about our family, and where my father lived at various times--you will find all that among the papers in the chest, better than I can tell you. My father, I told you, was a physician. My mother was a Morteira. I used to hear all those things without listening. You will find them all. I was born amongst them without my will. I banished them as soon as I could.”

Deronda tried to hide his pained feeling, and said, ”Anything else that I should desire to know from you could only be what it is some satisfaction to your own feeling to tell me.”

”I think I have told you everything that could be demanded of me,” said the Princess, looking coldly meditative. It seemed as if she had exhausted her emotion in their former interview. The fact was, she had said to herself, ”I have done it all. I have confessed all. I will not go through it again. I will save myself from agitation.” And she was acting out that scheme.