"Vor den Wissenden sich stellen
Sicher ist's in alien Faellen!
Wenn du lange dich gequaelet
Weiss er gleich wo dir es fehlet;
Auch auf Beifall darfst du hoffen,
Denn er weiss wo du's getroffen,"
--GOETHE: _West-oestlicker Divan_.
Momentous things happened to Deronda the very evening of that visit to the
small house at Chelsea, when there was the discussion about Mirah's public
name. But for the family group there, what appeared to be the chief
sequence connected with it occurred two days afterward. About four o'clock
wheels paused before the door, and there came one of those knocks with an
accompanying ring which serve to magnify the sense of social existence in
a region where the most enlivening signals are usually those of the
muffin-man. All the girls were at home, and the two rooms were thrown
together to make space for Kate's drawing, as well as a great length of
embroidery which had taken the place of the satin cushions--a sort of
_piece de resistance_ in the courses of needlework, taken up by any clever
fingers that happened to be at liberty. It stretched across the front room
picturesquely enough, Mrs. Meyrick bending over it on one corner, Mab in
the middle, and Amy at the other end. Mirah, whose performances in point
of sewing were on the make-shift level of the tailor-bird's, her education
in that branch having been much neglected, was acting as reader to the
party, seated on a camp-stool; in which position she also served Kate as
model for a title-page vignette, symbolizing a fair public absorbed in the
successive volumes of the family tea-table. She was giving forth with
charming distinctness the delightful Essay of Elia, "The Praise of
Chimney-Sweeps," and all we're smiling over the "innocent blackness," when
the imposing knock and ring called their thoughts to loftier spheres, and
they looked up in wonderment.
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Meyrick; "can it be Lady Mallinger? Is there a grand
carriage, Amy?"
"No--only a hansom cab. It must be a gentleman."
"The Prime Minister, I should think," said Kate dryly. "Hans says the
greatest man in London may get into a hansom cab."
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried Mab. "Suppose it should be Lord Russell!"
The five bright faces were all looking amused when the old maid-servant
bringing in a card distractedly left the parlor-door open, and there was
seen bowing toward Mrs. Meyrick a figure quite unlike that of the
YOU ARE READING
DANIEL DERONDA (Completed)
ClassicsDaniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day. The work's mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with its sy...
