Daniel Deronda
乔治.艾略特 George Eliot
CHAPTER LXVI.
"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 thinkingabout Deronda, were having their relation to him drawn closer and broughtinto fuller light.
The father Lapidoth had quitted his daughter at the doorstep, ruled bythat possibility of staking something in play of betting which presenteditself with the handling of any sum beyond the price of staying actualhunger, and left no care for alternative prospects or resolutions. Untilhe had lost everything he never considered whether he would apply to Mirahagain or whether he would brave his son's presence. In the first moment hehad shrunk from encountering Ezra as he would have shrunk from any othersituation of disagreeable constraint; and the possession of Mirah's pursewas enough to banish the thought of future necessities. The gamblingappetite is more absolutely dominant than bodily hunger, which can beneutralized by an emotional or intellectual excitation; but the passionfor watching chances--the habitual suspensive poise of the mind in actualor imaginary play--nullifies the susceptibility of other excitation. Inits 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 thesupport of at least one meal a day; and though Lapidoth's appetite forfood and drink was extremely moderate, he had slipped into a shabby,unfriendly form of life in which the appetite could not be satisfiedwithout some ready money. When, in a brief visit at a house whichannounced "Pyramids" on the window-blind, he had first doubled and trebledand finally lost Mirah's thirty shillings, he went out with her emptypurse in his pocket, already balancing in his mind whether he should getanother immediate stake by pawning the purse, or whether he should go backto her giving himself a good countenance by restoring the purse, anddeclaring that he had used the money in paying a score that was standingagainst him. Besides, among the sensibilities still left strong inLapidoth was the sensibility to his own claims, and he appeared to himselfto have a claim on any property his children might possess, which wasstronger than the justice of his son's resentment. After all, to take uphis lodging with his children was the best thing he could do; and the morehe thought of meeting Ezra the less he winced from it, his imaginationbeing more wrought on by the chances of his getting something into hispocket with safety and without exertion, than by the threat of a privatehumiliation. Luck had been against him lately; he expected it to turn--andmight not the turn begin with some opening of supplies which would presentitself through his daughter's affairs and the good friends she had spokenof? Lapidoth counted on the fascination of his cleverness--an old habit ofmind which early experience had sanctioned: and it is not only women whoare unaware of their diminished charm, or imagine that they can feign notto be worn out.
The result of Lapidoth's rapid balancing was that he went toward thelittle square in Brompton with the hope that, by walking about andwatching, he might catch sight of Mirah going out or returning, in whichcase his entrance into the house would be made easier. But it was alreadyevening--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 wasexpected. But on coming near the house he knew that she was at home: heheard her singing.
Mirah, seated at the piano, was pouring forth "_Herz, mein Herz_," whileEzra was listening with his eyes shut, when Mrs. Adam opened the door, andsaid in some embarrassment--
"A gentleman below says he is your father, miss."
"I will go down to him," said Mirah, starting up immediately and lookingat 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 withanxiety, while she continued looking at Ezra, who had also risen, and wasevidently much shaken. But there was an expression in his face which shehad never seen before; his brow was knit, his lips seemed hardened withthe same severity that gleamed from his eye.
When Mrs. Adam opened the door to let in the father, she could not helpcasting a look at the group, and after glancing from the younger man tothe elder, said to herself as she closed the door, "Father, sure enough."The likeness was that of outline, which is always most striking at thefirst moment; the expression had been wrought into the strongest contrastsby such hidden or inconspicuous differences as can make the genius of aCromwell within the outward type of a father who was no more than arespectable parishioner.
Lapidoth had put on a melancholy expression beforehand, but there was somereal 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 solemnitywhich made the word father a reproach.
"Ah, you are not pleased with me. I don't wonder at it. Appearances havebeen against me. When a man gets into straits he can't do just as he wouldby himself or anybody else, _I_'ve suffered enough, I know," saidLapidoth, quickly. In speaking he always recovered some glibness andhardihood; 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 itbecause of that bit of writing. I've emptied it, you'll see, for I had ascore to pay for food and lodging. I knew you would like me to clearmyself, and here I stand--without a single farthing in my pocket--at themercy of my children; You can turn me out if you like, without getting apoliceman. Say the word, Mirah; say, 'Father, I've had enough of you; youmade a pet of me, and spent your all on me, when I couldn't have donewithout you; but I can do better without you now,'--say that, and I'm goneout like a spark. I shan't spoil your pleasure again." The tears were inhis voice as usual, before he had finished.
"You know I could never say it, father," answered Mirah, with not the lessanguish because she felt the falsity of everything in his speech exceptthe 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 hisdecision, yet unable to go without making a plea for this father who waslike something that had grown in her flesh with pain. She went close toher brother, and putting her hand in his, said, in a low voice, but not solow as to be unheard by Lapidoth, "Remember, Ezra--you said my motherwould 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 downwith 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'smind, but he was beginning to adjust himself to the situation and find apoint of view that would give him a cool superiority to any attempt athumiliating him. This haggard son, speaking as from a sepulchre, had theincongruity which selfish levity learns to see in suffering, and until theunrelenting pincers of disease clutch its own flesh. Whatever preaching hemight deliver must be taken for a matter of course, as a man findingshelter from hail in an open cathedral! might take a little religioushowling 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 thegenerosity of a beloved friend who supports me, and partly by the laborsof my sister, who supports herself. While we have a home we will not shutyou out from it. We will not cast you out to the mercy of your vices. Foryou are our father, and though you have broken your bond, we acknowledgeours. But I will never trust you. You absconded with money, leaving yourdebts unpaid; you forsook my mother; you robbed her of her little childand broke her heart; you have become a gambler, and where shame andconscience were there sits an insatiable desire; you were ready to sell mysister--you had sold her, but the price was denied you. The man who hasdone these things must never expect to be trusted any more. We will shareour food with you--you shall have a bed, and clothing. We will do thisduty 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 isour father is a brand on our flesh which will not cease smarting. But theEternal has laid it upon us; and though human justice were to flog you forcrimes, and your body fell helpless before the public scorn, we wouldstill say, 'This is our father; make way, that we may carry him out ofyour sight.'"
there is a bed-roombehind which shall be yours. You will stay.
Lapidoth, in adjusting himself to what was coming, had not been able toforesee the exact intensity of the lightning or the exact course it wouldtake--that it would not fall outside his frame but through it. He couldnot 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 towitness in him when he sat at home and sobbed. As Ezra ended, Lapidoththrew himself into a chair and cried like a woman, burying his faceagainst the table--and yet, strangely, while this hysterical crying was aninevitable reaction in him under the stress of his son's words, it wasalso a conscious resource in a difficulty; just as in early life, when hewas a bright-faced curly young man, he had been used to avail himself ofthis subtly-poised physical susceptibility to turn the edge of resentmentor disapprobation.
Ezra sat down again and said nothing--exhausted by the shock of his ownirrepressible utterance, the outburst of feelings which for years he hadborne in solitude and silence. His thin hands trembled on the arms of thechair; he would hardly have found voice to answer a question; he felt asif he had taken a step toward beckoning Death. Meanwhile Mirah's quickexpectant ear detected a sound which her heart recognized: she could notstay out of the room any longer. But on opening the door her immediatealarm was for Ezra, and it was to his side that she went, taking histrembling hand in hers, which he pressed and found support in; but he didnot speak or even look at her. The father with his face buried wasconscious 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 nottrouble you again. He deserves to die like a dog by the roadside, and hewill. If your mother had lived, she would have forgiven me--thirty-fouryears ago I put the ring on her finger under the _Chuppa_, and we weremade one. She would have forgiven me, and we should have spent our old agetogether. But I haven't deserved it. Good-bye."
He rose from the chair as he said the last "good-bye." Mirah had put herhand in his and held him. She was not tearful and grieving, but frightenedand awe-struck, as she cried out--
"No, father, no!" Then turning to her brother, "Ezra, you have notforbidden him?--Stay, father, and leave off wrong things. Ezra, I cannotbear it. How can I say to my father, 'Go and die!'"
"I have not said it," Ezra answered, with great effort. "I have said, stayand be sheltered."
"Then you will stay, father--and be taken care of--and come with me," saidMirah, drawing him toward the door.
This was really what Lapidoth wanted. And for the moment he felt a sort ofcomfort in recovering his daughter's dutiful attendance, that made achange of habits seem possible to him. She led him down to the parlorbelow, and said--
"This is my sitting-room when I am not with Ezra, and there is a bed-roombehind which shall be yours. You will stay and be good, father. Think thatyou are come back to my mother, and that she has forgiven you--she speaksto you through me." Mirah's tones were imploring, but she could not giveone of her former caresses.
Lapidoth quickly recovered his composure, began to speak to Mirah of theimprovement in her voice, and other easy subjects, and when Mrs. Adam cameto lay out his supper, entered into converse with her in order to show herthat he was not a common person, though his clothes were just now againsthim.
But in his usual wakefulness at night, he fell to wondering what moneyMirah had by her, and went back over old Continental hours at _Roulette_,reproducing the method of his play, and the chances that had frustratedit. He had had his reasons for coming to England, but for most things itwas a cursed country.
These were the stronger visions of the night with Lapidoth, and not theworn frame of his ireful son uttering a terrible judgment. Ezra did passacross the gaming-table, and his words were audible; but he passed like aninsubstantial ghost, and his words had the heart eaten out of them bynumbers and movements that seemed to make the very tissue of Lapidoth'sconsciousness.