Daniel Deronda - George Eliot (best romance books of all time txt) 📗

“Not bad for anybody we care much about,” said Hans, quickly; “rather uncommonly lucky, I think. I never knew anybody die conveniently before. Considering what a dear gazelle I am, I am constantly wondering to find myself alive.”

“Oh me, Hans!” said Mab, impatiently, “if you must talk of yourself, let it be behind your own back. What is it that has happened?”

“Duke Alfonso is drowned, and the Duchess is alive, that’s all,” said Hans, putting the paper before Mrs. Meyrick, with his finger against a paragraph. “But more than all is⁠—Deronda was at Genoa in the same hotel with them, and he saw her brought in by the fishermen who had got her out of the water time enough to save her from any harm. It seems they saw her jump in after her husband, which was a less judicious action than I should have expected of the Duchess. However Deronda is a lucky fellow in being there to take care of her.”

Mirah had sunk on the music stool again, with her eyelids down and her hands tightly clasped; and Mrs. Meyrick, giving up the paper to Mab, said,

“Poor thing! she must have been fond of her husband to jump in after him.”

“It was an inadvertence⁠—a little absence of mind,” said Hans, creasing his face roguishly, and throwing himself into a chair not far from Mirah. “Who can be fond of a jealous baritone, with freezing glances, always singing asides?⁠—that was the husband’s role, depend upon it. Nothing can be neater than his getting drowned. The Duchess is at liberty now to marry a man with a fine head of hair, and glances that will melt instead of freezing her. And I shall be invited to the wedding.”

Here Mirah started from her sitting posture, and fixing her eyes on Hans, with an angry gleam in them, she said, in a deeply-shaken voice of indignation,

“Mr. Hans, you ought not to speak in that way. Mr. Deronda would not like you to speak so. Why will you say he is lucky⁠—why will you use words of that sort about life and death⁠—when what is life to one is death to another? How do you know it would be lucky if he loved Mrs. Grandcourt? It might be a great evil to him. She would take him away from my brother⁠—I know she would. Mr. Deronda would not call that lucky to pierce my brother’s heart.”

All three were struck with the sudden transformation. Mirah’s face, with a look of anger that might have suited Ithuriel, pale, even to the lips that were usually so rich of tint, was not far from poor Hans, who sat transfixed, blushing under it as if he had been a girl, while he said, nervously,

“I am a fool and a brute, and I withdraw every word. I’ll go and hang myself like Judas⁠—if it’s allowable to mention him.” Even in Hans’s sorrowful moments, his improvised words had inevitably some drollery.

But Mirah’s anger was not appeased: how could it be? She had burst into indignant speech as creatures in intense pain bite and make their teeth meet even through their own flesh, by way of making their agony bearable. She said no more, but, seating herself at the piano, pressed the sheet of music before her, as if she thought of beginning to play again.

It was Mab who spoke, while Mrs. Meyrick’s face seemed to reflect some of Hans’ discomfort.

“Mirah is quite right to scold you, Hans. You are always taking Mr. Deronda’s name in vain. And it is horrible, joking in that way about his marrying Mrs. Grandcourt. Men’s minds must be very black, I think,” ended Mab, with much scorn.

“Quite true, my dear,” said Hans, in a low tone, rising and turning on his heel to walk toward the back window.

“We had better go on, Mab; you have not given your full time to the lesson,” said Mirah, in a higher tone than usual. “Will you sing this again, or shall I sing it to you?”

“Oh, please sing it to me,” said Mab, rejoiced to take no more notice of what had happened.

And Mirah immediately sang Lascia ch’io pianga, giving forth its melodious sobs and cries with new fullness and energy. Hans paused in his walk and leaned against the mantelpiece, keeping his eyes carefully away from his mother’s. When Mirah had sung her last note and touched the last chord, she rose and said, “I must go home now. Ezra expects me.”

She gave her hand silently to Mrs. Meyrick and hung back a little, not daring to look at her, instead of kissing her, as usual. But the little mother drew Mirah’s face down to hers, and said, soothingly, “God bless you, my dear.” Mirah felt that she had committed an offense against Mrs. Meyrick by angrily rebuking Hans, and mixed with the rest of her suffering was the sense that she had shown something like a proud ingratitude, an unbecoming assertion of superiority. And her friend had divined this compunction.

Meanwhile Hans had seized his wide-awake, and was ready to open the door.

“Now, Hans,” said Mab, with what was really a sister’s tenderness cunningly disguised, “you are not going to walk home with Mirah. I am sure she would rather not. You are so dreadfully disagreeable today.”

“I shall go to take care of her, if she does not forbid me,” said Hans, opening the door.

Mirah said nothing, and when he had opened the outer door for her and closed it behind him, he walked by her side unforbidden. She had not the courage to begin speaking to him again⁠—conscious that she had perhaps been unbecomingly severe in her words to him, yet finding only severer words behind them in her heart. Besides, she was pressed upon by a crowd of thoughts thrusting themselves forward as interpreters of that consciousness which still remained unaltered to herself.

Hans, on his side, had a mind equally busy. Mirah’s anger had waked in him a new perception, and with it the