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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Clara Hopgood, by Mark Rutherford
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Clara Hopgood
+
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 15, 2014  [eBook #5986]
+[This file was first posted on October 8, 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARA HOPGOOD***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                              CLARA HOPGOOD
+
+
+                                    BY
+                             MARK RUTHERFORD
+
+                           EDITED BY HIS FRIEND
+                             REUBEN SHAPCOTT
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            _THIRD IMPRESSION_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  LONDON
+                             T. FISHER UNWIN
+                             ADELPHI TERRACE
+
+_First Edition_          _March_ 1896
+_Second Impression_       _June_ 1896
+_Third Impression_        _July_ 1907
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                          _All rights reserved_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+ABOUT ten miles north-east of Eastthorpe lies the town of Fenmarket, very
+like Eastthorpe generally; and as we are already familiar with
+Eastthorpe, a particular description of Fenmarket is unnecessary.  There
+is, however, one marked difference between them.  Eastthorpe, it will be
+remembered, is on the border between the low uplands and the Fens, and
+has one side open to soft, swelling hills.  Fenmarket is entirely in the
+Fens, and all the roads that lead out of it are alike level, monotonous,
+straight, and flanked by deep and stagnant ditches.  The river, also,
+here is broader and slower; more reluctant than it is even at Eastthorpe
+to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea.  During the greater part of
+the year the visitor to Fenmarket would perhaps find it dull and
+depressing, and at times, under a grey, wintry sky, almost unendurable;
+but nevertheless, for days and weeks it has a charm possessed by few
+other landscapes in England, provided only that behind the eye which
+looks there is something to which a landscape of that peculiar character
+answers.  There is, for example, the wide, dome-like expanse of the sky,
+there is the distance, there is the freedom and there are the stars on a
+clear night.  The orderly, geometrical march of the constellations from
+the extreme eastern horizon across the meridian and down to the west has
+a solemn majesty, which is only partially discernible when their course
+is interrupted by broken country.
+
+On a dark afternoon in November 1844, two young women, Clara and Madge
+Hopgood, were playing chess in the back parlour of their mother’s house
+at Fenmarket, just before tea.  Clara, the elder, was about
+five-and-twenty, fair, with rather light hair worn flat at the side of
+her face, after the fashion of that time.  Her features were tolerably
+regular.  It is true they were somewhat marred by an uneven nasal
+outline, but this was redeemed by the curved lips of a mouth which was
+small and rather compressed, and by a definite, symmetrical and graceful
+figure.  Her eyes were grey, with a curious peculiarity in them.
+Ordinarily they were steady, strong eyes, excellent and renowned optical
+instruments.  Over and over again she had detected, along the stretch of
+the Eastthorpe road, approaching visitors, and had named them when her
+companions could see nothing but specks.  Occasionally, however, these
+steady, strong, grey eyes utterly changed.  They were the same eyes, the
+same colour, but they ceased to be mere optical instruments and became
+instruments of expression, transmissive of radiance to such a degree that
+the light which was reflected from them seemed insufficient to account
+for it.  It was also curious that this change, though it must have been
+accompanied by some emotion, was just as often not attended by any other
+sign of it.  Clara was, in fact, little given to any display of feeling.
+
+Madge, four years younger than her sister, was of a different type
+altogether, and one more easily comprehended.  She had very heavy dark
+hair, and she had blue eyes, a combination which fascinated Fenmarket.
+Fenmarket admired Madge more than it was admired by her in return, and
+she kept herself very much to herself, notwithstanding what it considered
+to be its temptations.  If she went shopping she nearly always went with
+her sister; she stood aloof from all the small gaieties of the town;
+walked swiftly through its streets, and repelled, frigidly and
+decisively, all offers, and they were not a few, which had been made to
+her by the sons of the Fenmarket tradesfolk.  Fenmarket pronounced her
+‘stuck-up,’ and having thus labelled her, considered it had exhausted
+her.  The very important question, Whether there was anything which
+naturally stuck up?  Fenmarket never asked.  It was a great relief to
+that provincial little town in 1844, in this and in other cases, to find
+a word which released it from further mental effort and put out of sight
+any troublesome, straggling, indefinable qualities which it would
+otherwise have been forced to examine and name.  Madge was certainly
+stuck-up, but the projection above those around her was not artificial.
+Both she and her sister found the ways of Fenmarket were not to their
+taste.  The reason lay partly in their nature and partly in their
+history.
+
+Mrs Hopgood was the widow of the late manager in the Fenmarket branch of
+the bank of Rumbold, Martin & Rumbold, and when her husband died she had
+of course to leave the Bank Buildings.  As her income was somewhat
+straitened, she was obliged to take a small house, and she was now living
+next door to the ‘Crown and Sceptre,’ the principal inn in the town.
+There was then no fringe of villas to Fenmarket for retired quality; the
+private houses and shops were all mixed together, and Mrs Hopgood’s
+cottage was squeezed in between the ironmonger’s and the inn.  It was
+very much lower than either of its big neighbours, but it had a brass
+knocker and a bell, and distinctly asserted and maintained a kind of
+aristocratic superiority.
+
+Mr Hopgood was not a Fenmarket man.  He came straight from London to be
+manager.  He was in the bank of the London agents of Rumbold, Martin &
+Rumbold, and had been strongly recommended by the city firm as just the
+person to take charge of a branch which needed thorough reorganisation.
+He succeeded, and nobody in Fenmarket was more respected.  He lived,
+however, a life apart from his neighbours, excepting so far as business
+was concerned.  He went to church once on Sunday because the bank
+expected him to go, but only once, and had nothing to do with any of its
+dependent institutions.  He was a great botanist, very fond of walking,
+and in the evening, when Fenmarket generally gathered itself into groups
+for gossip, either in the street or in back parlours, or in the ‘Crown
+and Sceptre,’ Mr Hopgood, tall, lean and stately, might be seen wandering
+along the solitary roads searching for flowers, which, in that part of
+the world, were rather scarce.  He was also a great reader of the best
+books, English, German and French, and held high doctrine, very high for
+those days, on the training of girls, maintaining that they need, even
+more than boys, exact discipline and knowledge.  Boys, he thought, find
+health in an occupation; but an uncultivated, unmarried girl dwells with
+her own untutored thoughts, which often breed disease.  His two
+daughters, therefore, received an education much above that which was
+usual amongst people in their position, and each of them—an unheard of
+wonder in Fenmarket—had spent some time in a school in Weimar.  Mr
+Hopgood was also peculiar in his way of dealing with his children.  He
+talked to them and made them talk to him, and whatever they read was
+translated into speech; thought, in his house, was vocal.
+
+Mrs Hopgood, too, had been the intimate friend of her husband, and was
+the intimate friend of her daughters.  She was now nearly sixty, but
+still erect and graceful, and everybody could see that the picture of a
+beautiful girl of one-and-twenty, which hung opposite the fireplace, had
+once been her portrait.  She had been brought up, as thoroughly as a
+woman could be brought up, in those days, to be a governess.  The war
+prevented her education abroad, but her father, who was a clergyman, not
+too rich, engaged a French emigrant lady to live in his house to teach
+her French and other accomplishments.  She consequently spoke French
+perfectly, and she could also read and speak Spanish fairly well, for the
+French lady had spent some years in Spain.  Mr Hopgood had never been
+particularly in earnest about religion, but his wife was a believer,
+neither High Church nor Low Church, but inclined towards a kind of
+quietism not uncommon in the Church of England, even during its bad time,
+a reaction against the formalism which generally prevailed.  When she
+married, Mrs Hopgood did not altogether follow her husband.  She never
+separated herself from her faith, and never would have confessed that she
+had separated herself from her church.  But although she knew that his
+creed externally was not hers, her own was not sharply cut, and she
+persuaded herself that, in substance, his and her belief were identical.
+As she grew older her relationship to the Unseen became more and more
+intimate, but she was less and less inclined to criticise her husband’s
+freedom, or to impose on the children a rule which they would certainly
+have observed, but only for her sake.  Every now and then she felt a
+little lonely; when, for example, she read one or two books which were
+particularly her own; when she thought of her dead father and mother, and
+when she prayed her solitary prayer.  Mr Hopgood took great pains never
+to disturb that sacred moment.  Indeed, he never for an instant permitted
+a finger to be laid upon what she considered precious.  He loved her
+because she had the strength to be what she was when he first knew her
+and she had so fascinated him.  He would have been disappointed if the
+mistress of his youth had become some other person, although the change,
+in a sense, might have been development and progress.  He did really love
+her piety, too, for its own sake.  It mixed something with her behaviour
+to him and to the children which charmed him, and he did not know from
+what other existing source anything comparable to it could be supplied.
+Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church.  The church, to be sure, was horribly
+dead, but she did not give that as a reason.  She had, she said, an
+infirmity, a strange restlessness which prevented her from sitting still
+for an hour.  She often pleaded this excuse, and her husband and
+daughters never, by word or smile, gave her the least reason to suppose
+that they did not believe her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+BOTH Clara and Madge went first to an English day-school, and Clara went
+straight from this school to Germany, but Madge’s course was a little
+different.  She was not very well, and it was decided that she should
+have at least a twelvemonth in a boarding-school at Brighton before going
+abroad.  It had been very highly recommended, but the head-mistress was
+Low Church and aggressive.  Mr Hopgood, far away from the High and Low
+Church controversy, came to the conclusion that, in Madge’s case, the
+theology would have no effect on her.  It was quite impossible, moreover,
+to find a school which would be just what he could wish it to be.  Madge,
+accordingly, was sent to Brighton, and was introduced into a new world.
+She was just beginning to ask herself _why_ certain things were right and
+other things were wrong, and the Brighton answer was that the former were
+directed by revelation and the latter forbidden, and that the ‘body’ was
+an affliction to the soul, a means of ‘probation,’ our principal duty
+being to ‘war’ against it.
+
+Madge’s bedroom companion was a Miss Selina Fish, daughter of Barnabas
+Fish, Esquire, of Clapham, and merchant of the City of London.  Miss Fish
+was not traitorous at heart, but when she found out that Madge had not
+been christened, she was so overcome that she was obliged to tell her
+mother.  Miss Fish was really unhappy, and one cold night, when Madge
+crept into her neighbour’s bed, contrary to law, but in accordance with
+custom when the weather was very bitter, poor Miss Fish shrank from her,
+half-believing that something dreadful might happen if she should by any
+chance touch unbaptised, naked flesh.  Mrs Fish told her daughter that
+perhaps Miss Hopgood might be a Dissenter, and that although Dissenters
+were to be pitied, and even to be condemned, many of them were
+undoubtedly among the redeemed, as for example, that man of God, Dr
+Doddridge, whose _Family Expositor_ was read systematically at home, as
+Selina knew.  Then there were Matthew Henry, whose commentary her father
+preferred to any other, and the venerable saint, the Reverend William Jay
+of Bath, whom she was proud to call her friend.  Miss Fish, therefore,
+made further inquiries gently and delicately, but she found to her horror
+that Madge had neither been sprinkled nor immersed!  Perhaps she was a
+Jewess or a heathen!  This was a happy thought, for then she might be
+converted.  Selina knew what interest her mother took in missions to
+heathens and Jews; and if Madge, by the humble instrumentality of a
+child, could be brought to the foot of the Cross, what would her mother
+and father say?  What would they not say?  Fancy taking Madge to Clapham
+in a nice white dress—it should be white, thought Selina—and presenting
+her as a saved lamb!
+
+The very next night she began,—
+
+‘I suppose your father is a foreigner?’
+
+‘No, he is an Englishman.’
+
+‘But if he is an Englishman you must have been baptised, or sprinkled, or
+immersed, and your father and mother must belong to church or chapel.  I
+know there are thousands of wicked people who belong to neither, but they
+are drunkards and liars and robbers, and even they have their children
+christened.’
+
+‘Well, he is an Englishman,’ said Madge, smiling.
+
+‘Perhaps,’ said Selina, timidly, ‘he may be—he may be—Jewish.  Mamma and
+papa pray for the Jews every morning.  They are not like other
+unbelievers.’
+
+‘No, he is certainly not a Jew.’
+
+‘What is he, then?’
+
+‘He is my papa and a very honest, good man.’
+
+‘Oh, my dear Madge! honesty is a broken reed.  I have heard mamma say
+that she is more hopeful of thieves than honest people who think they are
+saved by works, for the thief who was crucified went to heaven, and if he
+had been only an honest man he never would have found the Saviour and
+would have gone to hell.  Your father must be something.’
+
+‘I can only tell you again that he is honest and good.’
+
+Selina was confounded.  She had heard of those people who were _nothing_,
+and had always considered them as so dreadful that she could not bear to
+think of them.  The efforts of her father and mother did not extend to
+them; they were beyond the reach of the preacher—mere vessels of wrath.
+If Madge had confessed herself Roman Catholic, or idolator, Selina knew
+how to begin.  She would have pointed out to the Catholic how
+unscriptural it was to suppose that anybody could forgive sins excepting
+God, and she would at once have been able to bring the idolator to his
+knees by exposing the absurdity of worshipping bits of wood and stone;
+but with a person who was nothing she could not tell what to do.  She was
+puzzled to understand what right Madge had to her name.  Who had any
+authority to say she was to be called Madge Hopgood?  She determined at
+last to pray to God and again ask her mother’s help.
+
+She did pray earnestly that very night, and had not finished until long
+after Madge had said her Lord’s Prayer.  This was always said night and
+morning, both by Madge and Clara.  They had been taught it by their
+mother.  It was, by the way, one of poor Selina’s troubles that Madge
+said nothing but the Lord’s Prayer when she lay down and when she rose;
+of course, the Lord’s Prayer was the best—how could it be otherwise,
+seeing that our Lord used it?—but those who supplemented it with no
+petitions of their own were set down as formalists, and it was always
+suspected that they had not received the true enlightenment from above.
+Selina cried to God till the counterpane was wet with her tears, but it
+was the answer from her mother which came first, telling her that however
+praiseworthy her intentions might be, argument with such a _dangerous_
+infidel as Madge would be most perilous, and she was to desist from it at
+once.  Mrs Fish had by that post written to Miss Pratt, the
+schoolmistress, and Selina no doubt would not be exposed to further
+temptation.  Mrs Fish’s letter to Miss Pratt was very strong, and did not
+mince matters.  She informed Miss Pratt that a wolf was in her fold, and
+that if the creature were not promptly expelled, Selina must be removed
+into safety.  Miss Pratt was astonished, and instantly, as her custom
+was, sought the advice of her sister, Miss Hannah Pratt, who had charge
+of the wardrobes and household matters generally.  Miss Hannah Pratt was
+never in the best of tempers, and just now was a little worse than usual.
+It was one of the rules of the school that no tradesmen’s daughters
+should be admitted, but it was very difficult to draw the line, and when
+drawn, the Misses Pratt were obliged to admit it was rather ridiculous.
+There was much debate over an application by an auctioneer.  He was
+clearly not a tradesman, but he sold chairs, tables and pigs, and, as
+Miss Hannah said, used vulgar language in recommending them.  However,
+his wife had money; they lived in a pleasant house in Lewes, and the line
+went outside him.  But when a druggist, with a shop in Bond Street,
+proposed his daughter, Miss Hannah took a firm stand.  What is the use of
+a principle, she inquired severely, if we do not adhere to it?  On the
+other hand, the druggist’s daughter was the eldest of six, who might all
+come when they were old enough to leave home, and Miss Pratt thought
+there was a real difference between a druggist and, say, a bootmaker.
+
+‘Bootmaker!’ said Miss Hannah with great scorn.  ‘I am surprised that you
+venture to hint the remotest possibility of such a contingency.’
+
+At last it was settled that the line should also be drawn outside the
+druggist.  Miss Hannah, however, had her revenge.  A tanner in Bermondsey
+with a house in Bedford Square, had sent two of his children to Miss
+Pratt’s seminary.  Their mother found out that they had struck up a
+friendship with a young person whose father compounded prescriptions for
+her, and when she next visited Brighton she called on Miss Pratt,
+reminded her that it was understood that her pupils would ‘all be taken
+from a superior class in society,’ and gently hinted that she could not
+allow Bedford Square to be contaminated by Bond Street.  Miss Pratt was
+most apologetic, enlarged upon the druggist’s respectability, and more
+particularly upon his well-known piety and upon his generous
+contributions to the cause of religion.  This, indeed, was what decided
+her to make an exception in his favour, and the piety also of his
+daughter was ‘most exemplary.’  However, the tanner’s lady, although a
+shining light in the church herself, was not satisfied that a retail
+saint could produce a proper companion for her own offspring, and went
+away leaving Miss Pratt very uncomfortable.
+
+‘I warned you,’ said Miss Hannah; ‘I told you what would happen, and as
+to Mr Hopgood, I suspected him from the first.  Besides, he is only a
+banker’s clerk.’
+
+‘Well, what is to be done?’
+
+‘Put your foot down at once.’  Miss Hannah suited the action to the word,
+and put down, with emphasis, on the hearthrug a very large, plate-shaped
+foot cased in a black felt shoe.
+
+‘But I cannot dismiss them.  Don’t you think it will be better, first of
+all, to talk to Miss Hopgood?  Perhaps we could do her some good.’
+
+‘Good!  Now, do you think we can do any good to an atheist?  Besides, we
+have to consider our reputation.  Whatever good we might do, it would be
+believed that the infection remained.’
+
+‘We have no excuse for dismissing the other.’
+
+‘Excuse! none is needed, nor would any be justifiable.  Excuses are
+immoral.  Say at once—of course politely and with regret—that the school
+is established on a certain basis.  It will be an advantage to us if it
+is known why these girls do not remain.  I will dictate the letter, if
+you like.’
+
+Miss Hannah Pratt had not received the education which had been given to
+her younger sister, and therefore, was nominally subordinate, but really
+she was chief.  She considered it especially her duty not only to look
+after the children’s clothes, the servants and the accounts, but to
+maintain _tone_ everywhere in the establishment, and to stiffen her
+sister when necessary, and preserve in proper sharpness her orthodoxy,
+both in theology and morals.
+
+Accordingly, both the girls left, and both knew the reason for leaving.
+The druggist’s faith was sorely tried.  If Miss Pratt’s had been a
+worldly seminary he would have thought nothing of such behaviour, but he
+did not expect it from one of the faithful.  The next Sunday morning
+after he received the news, he stayed at home out of his turn to make up
+any medicines which might be urgently required, and sent his assistant to
+church.
+
+As to Madge, she enjoyed her expulsion as a great joke, and her Brighton
+experiences were the cause of much laughter.  She had learned a good deal
+while she was away from home, not precisely what it was intended she
+should learn, and she came back with a strong, insurgent tendency, which
+was even more noticeable when she returned from Germany.  Neither of the
+sisters lived at the school in Weimar, but at the house of a lady who had
+been recommended to Mrs Hopgood, and by this lady they were introduced to
+the great German classics.  She herself was an enthusiast for Goethe,
+whom she well remembered in his old age, and Clara and Madge, each of
+them in turn, learned to know the poet as they would never have known him
+in England.  Even the town taught them much about him, for in many ways
+it was expressive of him and seemed as if it had shaped itself for him.
+It was a delightful time for them.  They enjoyed the society and constant
+mental stimulus; they loved the beautiful park; not a separate enclosure
+walled round like an English park, but suffering the streets to end in
+it, and in summer time there were excursions into the Thüringer Wald,
+generally to some point memorable in history, or for some literary
+association.  The drawback was the contrast, when they went home, with
+Fenmarket, with its dulness and its complete isolation from the
+intellectual world.  At Weimar, in the evening, they could see Egmont or
+hear Fidelio, or talk with friends about the last utterance upon the
+Leben Jesu; but the Fenmarket Egmont was a travelling wax-work show, its
+Fidelio psalm tunes, or at best some of Bishop’s glees, performed by a
+few of the tradesfolk, who had never had an hour’s instruction in music;
+and for theological criticism there were the parish church and Ram Lane
+Chapel.  They did their best; they read their old favourites and
+subscribed for a German as well as an English literary weekly newspaper,
+but at times they were almost beaten.  Madge more than Clara was liable
+to depression.
+
+No Fenmarket maiden, other than the Hopgoods, was supposed to have any
+connection whatever, or to have any capacity for any connection with
+anything outside the world in which ‘young ladies’ dwelt, and if a
+Fenmarket girl read a book, a rare occurrence, for there were no
+circulating libraries there in those days, she never permitted herself to
+say anything more than that it was ‘nice,’ or it was ‘not nice,’ or she
+‘liked it’ or did ‘not like it;’ and if she had ventured to say more,
+Fenmarket would have thought her odd, not to say a little improper.  The
+Hopgood young women were almost entirely isolated, for the tradesfolk
+felt themselves uncomfortable and inferior in every way in their
+presence, and they were ineligible for rectory and brewery society, not
+only because their father was merely a manager, but because of their
+strange ways.  Mrs Tubbs, the brewer’s wife, thought they were due to
+Germany.  From what she knew of Germany she considered it most
+injudicious, and even morally wrong, to send girls there.  She once made
+the acquaintance of a German lady at an hotel at Tunbridge Wells, and was
+quite shocked.  She could see quite plainly that the standard of female
+delicacy must be much lower in that country than in England.  Mr Tubbs
+was sure Mrs Hopgood must have been French, and said to his daughters,
+mysteriously, ‘you never can tell who Frenchwomen are.’
+
+‘But, papa,’ said Miss Tubbs, ‘you know Mrs Hopgood’s maiden name; we
+found that out.  It was Molyneux.’
+
+‘Of course, my dear, of course; but if she was a Frenchwoman resident in
+England she would prefer to assume an English name, that is to say if she
+wished to be married.’
+
+Occasionally the Miss Hopgoods were encountered, and they confounded
+Fenmarket sorely.  On one memorable occasion there was a party at the
+Rectory: it was the annual party into which were swept all the
+unclassifiable odds-and-ends which could not be put into the two
+gatherings which included the aristocracy and the democracy of the place.
+Miss Clara Hopgood amazed everybody by ‘beginning talk,’ by asking Mrs
+Greatorex, her hostess, who had been far away to Sidmouth for a holiday,
+whether she had been to the place where Coleridge was born, and when the
+parson’s wife said she had not, and that she could not be expected to
+make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of an infidel, Miss Hopgood expressed
+her surprise, and declared she would walk twenty miles any day to see
+Ottery St Mary.  Still worse, when somebody observed that an
+Anti-Corn-Law lecturer was coming to Fenmarket, and the parson’s daughter
+cried ‘How horrid!’  Miss Hopgood talked again, and actually told the
+parson that, so far as she had read upon the subject—fancy her reading
+about the Corn-Laws!—the argument was all one way, and that after Colonel
+Thompson nothing new could really be urged.
+
+‘What is so—’ she was about to say ‘objectionable,’ but she recollected
+her official position and that she was bound to be politic—‘so odd and
+unusual,’ observed Mrs Greatorex to Mrs Tubbs afterwards, ‘is not that
+Miss Hopgood should have radical views.  Mrs Barker, I know, is a radical
+like her husband, but then she never puts herself forward, nor makes
+speeches.  I never saw anything quite like it, except once in London at a
+dinner-party.  Lady Montgomery then went on in much the same way, but she
+was a baronet’s wife; the baronet was in Parliament; she received a good
+deal and was obliged to entertain her guests.’
+
+Poor Clara! she was really very unobtrusive and very modest, but there
+had been constant sympathy between her and her father, not the dumb
+sympathy as between man and dog, but that which can manifest itself in
+human fashion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+CLARA and her father were both chess-players, and at the time at which
+our history begins, Clara had been teaching Madge the game for about six
+months.
+
+‘Check!’ said Clara.
+
+‘Check! after about a dozen moves.  It is of no use to go on; you always
+beat me.  I should not mind that if I were any better now than when I
+started.  It is not in me.’
+
+‘The reason is that you do not look two moves ahead.  You never say to
+yourself, “Suppose I move there, what is she likely to do, and what can I
+do afterwards?”’
+
+‘That is just what is impossible to me.  I cannot hold myself down; the
+moment I go beyond the next move my thoughts fly away, and I am in a
+muddle, and my head turns round.  I was not born for it.  I can do what
+is under my nose well enough, but nothing more.’
+
+‘The planning and the forecasting are the soul of the game.  I should
+like to be a general, and play against armies and calculate the
+consequences of manœuvres.’
+
+‘It would kill me.  I should prefer the fighting.  Besides, calculation
+is useless, for when I think that you will be sure to move such and such
+a piece, you generally do not.’
+
+‘Then what makes the difference between the good and the bad player?’
+
+‘It is a gift, an instinct, I suppose.’
+
+‘Which is as much as to say that you give it up.  You are very fond of
+that word instinct; I wish you would not use it.’
+
+‘I have heard you use it, and say you instinctively like this person or
+that.’
+
+‘Certainly; I do not deny that sometimes I am drawn to a person or
+repelled from him before I can say why; but I always force myself to
+discover afterwards the cause of my attraction or repulsion, and I
+believe it is a duty to do so.  If we neglect it we are little better
+than the brutes, and may grossly deceive ourselves.’
+
+At this moment the sound of wheels was heard, and Madge jumped up, nearly
+over-setting the board, and rushed into the front room.  It was the
+four-horse coach from London, which, once a day, passed through Fenmarket
+on its road to Lincoln.  It was not the direct route from London to
+Lincoln, but the _Defiance_ went this way to accommodate Fenmarket and
+other small towns.  It slackened speed in order to change horses at the
+‘Crown and Sceptre,’ and as Madge stood at the window, a gentleman on the
+box-seat looked at her intently as he passed.  In another minute he had
+descended, and was welcomed by the landlord, who stood on the pavement.
+Clara meanwhile had taken up a book, but before she had read a page, her
+sister skipped into the parlour again, humming a tune.
+
+‘Let me see—check, you said, but it is not mate.’
+
+She put her elbows on the table, rested her head between her hands, and
+appeared to contemplate the game profoundly.
+
+‘Now, then, what do you say to that?’
+
+It was really a very lucky move, and Clara, whose thoughts perhaps were
+elsewhere, was presently most unaccountably defeated.  Madge was
+triumphant.
+
+‘Where are all your deep-laid schemes?  Baffled by a poor creature who
+can hardly put two and two together.’
+
+‘Perhaps your schemes were better than mine.’
+
+‘You know they were not.  I saw the queen ought to take that bishop, and
+never bothered myself as to what would follow.  Have you not lost your
+faith in schemes?’
+
+‘You are very much mistaken if you suppose that, because of one failure,
+or of twenty failures, I would give up a principle.’
+
+‘Clara, you are a strange creature.  Don’t let us talk any more about
+chess.’
+
+Madge swept all the pieces with her hand into the box, shut it, closed
+the board, and put her feet on the fender.
+
+‘You never believe in impulses or in doing a thing just because here and
+now it appears to be the proper thing to do.  Suppose anybody were to
+make love to you—oh! how I wish somebody would, you dear girl, for nobody
+deserves it more—’  Madge put her head caressingly on Clara’s shoulder
+and then raised it again.  ‘Suppose, I say, anybody were to make love to
+you, would you hold off for six months and consider, and consider, and
+ask yourself whether he had such and such virtues, and whether he could
+make you happy?  Would not that stifle love altogether?  Would you not
+rather obey your first impression and, if you felt you loved him, would
+you not say “Yes”?’
+
+‘Time is not everything.  A man who is prompt and is therefore thought to
+be hasty by sluggish creatures who are never half awake, may in five
+minutes spend more time in consideration than his critics will spend in
+as many weeks.  I have never had the chance, and am not likely to have
+it.  I can only say that if it were to come to me, I should try to use
+the whole strength of my soul.  Precisely because the question would be
+so important, would it be necessary to employ every faculty I have in
+order to decide it.  I do not believe in oracles which are supposed to
+prove their divinity by giving no reasons for their commands.’
+
+‘Ah, well, _I_ believe in Shakespeare.  His lovers fall in love at first
+sight.’
+
+‘No doubt they do, but to justify yourself you have to suppose that you
+are a Juliet and your friend a Romeo.  They may, for aught I know, be
+examples in my favour.  However, I have to lay down a rule for my own
+poor, limited self, and, to speak the truth, I am afraid that great men
+often do harm by imposing on us that which is serviceable to themselves
+only; or, to put it perhaps more correctly, we mistake the real nature of
+their processes, just as a person who is unskilled in arithmetic would
+mistake the processes of anybody who is very quick at it, and would be
+led away by them.  Shakespeare is much to me, but the more he is to me,
+the more careful I ought to be to discover what is the true law of my own
+nature, more important to me after all than Shakespeare’s.’
+
+‘Exactly.  I know what the law of mine is.  If a man were to present
+himself to me, I should rely on that instinct you so much despise, and I
+am certain that the balancing, see-saw method would be fatal.  It would
+disclose a host of reasons against any conclusion, and I should never
+come to any.’
+
+Clara smiled.  Although this impetuosity was foreign to her, she loved it
+for the good which accompanied it.
+
+‘You do not mean to say you would accept or reject him at once?’
+
+‘No, certainly not.  What I mean is that in a few days, perhaps in a
+shorter time, something within me would tell me whether we were suited to
+one another, although we might not have talked upon half-a-dozen
+subjects.’
+
+‘I think the risk tremendous.’
+
+‘But there is just as much risk the other way.  You would examine your
+friend, catalogue him, sum up his beliefs, note his behaviour under
+various experimental trials, and miserably fail, after all your
+scientific investigation, to ascertain just the one important point
+whether you loved him and could live with him.  Your reason was not meant
+for that kind of work.  If a woman trusts in such matters to the faculty
+by which, when she wishes to settle whether she is to take this house or
+that, she puts the advantages of the larger back kitchen on one side and
+the bigger front kitchen on the other, I pity her.’
+
+Mrs Hopgood at this moment came downstairs and asked when in the name of
+fortune they meant to have the tea ready.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+FRANK PALMER, the gentleman whom we saw descend from the coach, was the
+eldest son of a wholesale and manufacturing chemist in London.  He was
+now about five-and-twenty, and having just been admitted as a partner, he
+had begun, as the custom was in those days, to travel for his firm.  The
+elder Mr Palmer was a man of refinement, something more than a Whig in
+politics, and an enthusiastic member of the Broad Church party, which was
+then becoming a power in the country.  He was well-to-do, living in a
+fine old red-brick house at Stoke Newington, with half-a-dozen acres of
+ground round it, and, if Frank had been born thirty years later, he would
+probably have gone to Cambridge or Oxford.  In those days, however, it
+was not the custom to send boys to the Universities unless they were
+intended for the law, divinity or idleness, and Frank’s training, which
+was begun at St Paul’s school, was completed there.  He lived at home,
+going to school in the morning and returning in the evening.  He was
+surrounded by every influence which was pure and noble.  Mr Maurice and
+Mr Sterling were his father’s guests, and hence it may be inferred that
+there was an altar in the house, and that the sacred flame burnt thereon.
+Mr Palmer almost worshipped Mr Maurice, and his admiration was not blind,
+for Maurice connected the Bible with what was rational in his friend.
+‘What! still believable: no need then to pitch it overboard: here after
+all is the Eternal Word!’  It can be imagined how those who dared not
+close their eyes to the light, and yet clung to that book which had been
+so much to their forefathers and themselves, rejoiced when they were able
+to declare that it belonged to them more than to those who misjudged them
+and could deny that they were heretics.  The boy’s education was entirely
+classical and athletic, and as he was quick at learning and loved his
+games, he took a high position amongst his school-fellows.  He was not
+particularly reflective, but he was generous and courageous, perfectly
+straightforward, a fair specimen of thousands of English public-school
+boys.  As he grew up, he somewhat disappointed his father by a lack of
+any real interest in the subjects in which his father was interested.  He
+accepted willingly, and even enthusiastically, the household conclusions
+on religion and politics, but they were not properly his, for he accepted
+them merely as conclusions and without the premisses, and it was often
+even a little annoying to hear him express some free opinion on religious
+questions in a way which showed that it was not a growth but something
+picked up.  Mr Palmer, senior, sometimes recoiled into intolerance and
+orthodoxy, and bewildered his son who, to use one of his own phrases,
+‘hardly knew where his father was.’  Partly the reaction was due to the
+oscillation which accompanies serious and independent thought, but mainly
+it was caused by Mr Palmer’s discontent with Frank’s appropriation of a
+sentiment or doctrine of which he was not the lawful owner.  Frank,
+however, was so hearty, so affectionate, and so cheerful, that it was
+impossible not to love him dearly.
+
+In his visits to Fenmarket, Frank had often noticed Madge, for the ‘Crown
+and Sceptre’ was his headquarters, and Madge was well enough aware that
+she had been noticed.  He had inquired casually who it was who lived next
+door, and when the waiter told him the name, and that Mr Hopgood was
+formerly the bank manager, Frank remembered that he had often heard his
+father speak of a Mr Hopgood, a clerk in a bank in London, as one of his
+best friends.  He did not fail to ask his father about this friend, and
+to obtain an introduction to the widow.  He had now brought it to
+Fenmarket, and within half an hour after he had alighted, he had
+presented it.
+
+Mrs Hopgood, of course, recollected Mr Palmer perfectly, and the welcome
+to Frank was naturally very warm.  It was delightful to connect earlier
+and happier days with the present, and she was proud in the possession of
+a relationship which had lasted so long.  Clara and Madge, too, were both
+excited and pleased.  To say nothing of Frank’s appearance, of his
+unsnobbish, deferential behaviour which showed that he understood who
+they were and that the little house made no difference to him, the girls
+and the mother could not resist a side glance at Fenmarket and the
+indulgence of a secret satisfaction that it would soon hear that the son
+of Mr Palmer, so well known in every town round about, was on intimate
+terms with them.
+
+Madge was particularly gay that evening.  The presence of sympathetic
+people was always a powerful stimulus to her, and she was often
+astonished at the witty things and even the wise things she said in such
+company, although, when she was alone, so few things wise or witty
+occurred to her.  Like all persons who, in conversation, do not so much
+express the results of previous conviction obtained in silence as the
+inspiration of the moment, Madge dazzled everybody by a brilliancy which
+would have been impossible if she had communicated that which had been
+slowly acquired, but what she left with those who listened to her, did
+not always seem, on reflection, to be so much as it appeared to be while
+she was talking.  Still she was very charming, and it must be confessed
+that sometimes her spontaneity was truer than the limitations of speech
+more carefully weighed.
+
+‘What makes you stay in Fenmarket, Mrs Hopgood?  How I wish you would
+come to London!’
+
+‘I do not wish to leave it now; I have become attached to it; I have very
+few friends in London, and lastly, perhaps the most convincing reason, I
+could not afford it.  Rent and living are cheaper here than in town.’
+
+‘Would you not like to live in London, Miss Hopgood?’
+
+Clara hesitated for a few seconds.
+
+‘I am not sure—certainly not by myself.  I was in London once for six
+months as a governess in a very pleasant family, where I saw much
+society; but I was glad to return to Fenmarket.’
+
+‘To the scenery round Fenmarket,’ interrupted Madge; ‘it is so romantic,
+so mountainous, so interesting in every way.’
+
+‘I was thinking of people, strange as it may appear.  In London nobody
+really cares for anybody, at least, not in the sense in which I should
+use the words.  Men and women in London stand for certain talents, and
+are valued often very highly for them, but they are valued merely as
+representing these talents.  Now, if I had a talent, I should not be
+satisfied with admiration or respect because of it.  No matter what
+admiration, or respect, or even enthusiasm I might evoke, even if I were
+told that my services had been immense and that life had been changed
+through my instrumentality, I should feel the lack of quiet, personal
+affection, and that, I believe, is not common in London.  If I were
+famous, I would sacrifice all the adoration of the world for the love of
+a brother—if I had one—or a sister, who perhaps had never heard what it
+was which had made me renowned.’
+
+‘Certainly,’ said Madge, laughing, ‘for the love of _such_ a sister.
+But, Mr Palmer, I like London.  I like the people, just the people,
+although I do not know a soul, and not a soul cares a brass farthing
+about me.  I am not half so stupid in London as in the country.  I never
+have a thought of my own down here.  How should I?  But in London there
+is plenty of talk about all kinds of things, and I find I too have
+something in me.  It is true, as Clara says, that nobody is anything
+particular to anybody, but that to me is rather pleasant.  I do not want
+too much of profound and eternal attachments.  They are rather a burden.
+They involve profound and eternal attachment on my part; and I have
+always to be at my best; such watchfulness and such jealousy!  I prefer a
+dressing-gown and slippers and bonds which are not so tight.’
+
+‘Madge, Madge, I wish you would sometimes save me the trouble of
+laboriously striving to discover what you really mean.’
+
+Mrs Hopgood bethought herself that her daughters were talking too much to
+one another, as they often did, even when guests were present, and she
+therefore interrupted them.
+
+‘Mr Palmer, you see both town and country—which do you prefer?’
+
+‘Oh!  I hardly know; the country in summer-time, perhaps, and town in the
+winter.’
+
+This was a safe answer, and one which was not very original; that is to
+say, it expressed no very distinct belief; but there was one valid reason
+why he liked being in London in the winter.
+
+‘Your father, I remember, loves music.  I suppose you inherit his taste,
+and it is impossible to hear good music in the country.’
+
+‘I am very fond of music.  Have you heard “St Paul?”  I was at Birmingham
+when it was first performed in this country.  Oh! it _is_ lovely,’ and he
+began humming ‘_Be thou faithful unto death_.’
+
+Frank did really care for music.  He went wherever good music was to be
+had; he belonged to a choral society and was in great request amongst his
+father’s friends at evening entertainments.  He could also play the
+piano, so far as to be able to accompany himself thereon.  He sang to
+himself when he was travelling, and often murmured favourite airs when
+people around him were talking.  He had lessons from an old Italian, a
+little, withered, shabby creature, who was not very proud of his pupil.
+‘He is a talent,’ said the Signor, ‘and he will amuse himself; good for a
+ballad at a party, but a musician? no!’ and like all mere ‘talents’ Frank
+failed in his songs to give them just what is of most value—just that
+which separates an artistic performance from the vast region of
+well-meaning, respectable, but uninteresting commonplace.  There was a
+curious lack in him also of correspondence between his music and the rest
+of himself.  As music is expression, it might be supposed that something
+which it serves to express would always lie behind it; but this was not
+the case with him, although he was so attractive and delightful in many
+ways.  There could be no doubt that his love for Beethoven was genuine,
+but that which was in Frank Palmer was not that of which the sonatas and
+symphonies of the master are the voice.  He went into raptures over the
+slow movement in the _C minor_ Symphony, but no _C minor_ slow movement
+was discernible in his character.
+
+‘What on earth can be found in “St Paul” which can be put to music?’ said
+Madge.  ‘Fancy a chapter in the Epistle to the Romans turned into a
+duet!’
+
+‘Madge!  Madge!  I am ashamed of you,’ said her mother.
+
+‘Well, mother,’ said Clara, ‘I am sure that some of the settings by your
+divinity, Handel, are absurd.  “_For as in Adam all die_” may be true
+enough, and the harmonies are magnificent, but I am always tempted to
+laugh when I hear it.’
+
+Frank hummed the familiar apostrophe ‘_Be not afraid_.’
+
+‘Is that a bit of “St Paul”?’ said Mrs Hopgood.
+
+‘Yes, it goes like this,’ and Frank went up to the little piano and sang
+the song through.
+
+‘There is no fault to be found with that,’ said Madge, ‘so far as the
+coincidence of sense and melody is concerned, but I do not care much for
+oratorios.  Better subjects can be obtained outside the Bible, and the
+main reason for selecting the Bible is that what is called religious
+music may be provided for good people.  An oratorio, to me, is never
+quite natural.  Jewish history is not a musical subject, and, besides,
+you cannot have proper love songs in an oratorio, and in them music is at
+its best.’
+
+Mrs Hopgood was accustomed to her daughter’s extravagance, but she was,
+nevertheless, a little uncomfortable.
+
+‘Ah!’ said Frank, who had not moved from the piano, and he struck the
+first two bars of ‘_Adelaide_.’
+
+‘Oh, please,’ said Madge, ‘go on, go on,’ but Frank could not quite
+finish it.
+
+She was sitting on the little sofa, and she put her feet up, lay and
+listened with her eyes shut.  There was a vibration in Mr Palmer’s voice
+not perceptible during his vision of the crown of life and of fidelity to
+death.
+
+‘Are you going to stay over Sunday?’ inquired Mrs Hopgood.
+
+‘I am not quite sure; I ought to be back on Sunday evening.  My father
+likes me to be at home on that day.’
+
+‘Is there not a Mr Maurice who is a friend of your father?’
+
+‘Oh, yes, a great friend.’
+
+‘He is not High Church nor Low Church?’
+
+‘No, not exactly.’
+
+‘What is he, then?  What does he believe?’
+
+‘Well, I can hardly say; he does not believe that anybody will be burnt
+in a brimstone lake for ever.’
+
+‘That is what he does not believe,’ interposed Clara.
+
+‘He believes that Socrates and the great Greeks and Romans who acted up
+to the light that was within them were not sent to hell.  I think that is
+glorious, don’t you?’
+
+‘Yes, but that also is something he does not believe.  What is there in
+him which is positive?  What has he distinctly won from the unknown?’
+
+‘Ah, Miss Hopgood, you ought to hear him yourself; he is wonderful.  I do
+admire him so much; I am sure you would like him.’
+
+‘If you do not go home on Saturday,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘we shall be
+pleased if you will have dinner with us on Sunday; we generally go for a
+walk in the afternoon.’
+
+Frank hesitated, but at that moment Madge rose from the sofa.  Her hair
+was disarranged, and she pushed its thick folds backward.  It grew rather
+low down on her forehead and stood up a little on her temples, a mystery
+of shadow and dark recess.  If it had been electrical with the force of a
+strong battery and had touched him, he could not have been more
+completely paralysed, and his half-erect resolution to go back on
+Saturday was instantly laid flat.
+
+‘Thank you, Mrs Hopgood,’ looking at Madge and meeting her eyes, ‘I think
+it very likely I shall stay, and if I do I will most certainly accept
+your kind invitation.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+SUNDAY morning came, and Frank, being in the country, considered himself
+absolved from the duty of going to church, and went for a long stroll.
+At half-past one he presented himself at Mrs Hopgood’s house.
+
+‘I have had a letter from London,’ said Clara to Frank, ‘telling me a
+most extraordinary story, and I should like to know what you think of it.
+A man, who was left a widower, had an only child, a lovely daughter of
+about fourteen years old, in whose existence his own was completely
+wrapped up.  She was subject at times to curious fits of self-absorption
+or absence of mind, and while she was under their influence she resembled
+a somnambulist rather than a sane human being awake.  Her father would
+not take her to a physician, for he dreaded lest he should be advised to
+send her away from home, and he also feared the effect which any
+recognition of her disorder might have upon her.  He believed that in
+obscure and half-mental diseases like hers, it was prudent to suppress
+all notice of them, and that if he behaved to her as if she were
+perfectly well, she would stand a chance of recovery.  Moreover, the
+child was visibly improving, and it was probable that the disturbance in
+her health would be speedily outgrown.  One hot day he went out shopping
+with her, and he observed that she was tired and strange in her manner,
+although she was not ill, or, at least, not so ill as he had often before
+seen her.  The few purchases they had to make at the draper’s were
+completed, and they went out into the street.  He took her hand-bag, and,
+in doing so, it opened and he saw to his horror a white silk
+pocket-handkerchief crumpled up in it, which he instantly recognised as
+one which had been shown him five minutes before, but he had not bought.
+The next moment a hand was on his shoulder.  It was that of an assistant,
+who requested that they would both return for a few minutes.  As they
+walked the half dozen steps back, the father’s resolution was taken.  “I
+am sixty,” he thought to himself, “and she is fourteen.”  They went into
+the counting-house and he confessed that he had taken the handkerchief,
+but that it was taken by mistake and that he was about to restore it when
+he was arrested.  The poor girl was now herself again, but her mind was
+an entire blank as to what she had done, and she could not doubt her
+father’s statement, for it was a man’s handkerchief and the bag was in
+his hands.  The draper was inexorable, and as he had suffered much from
+petty thefts of late, had determined to make an example of the first
+offender whom he could catch.  The father was accordingly prosecuted,
+convicted and sentenced to imprisonment.  When his term had expired, his
+daughter, who, I am glad to say, never for an instant lost her faith in
+him, went away with him to a distant part of the country, where they
+lived under an assumed name.  About ten years afterwards he died and kept
+his secret to the last; but he had seen the complete recovery and happy
+marriage of his child.  It was remarkable that it never occurred to her
+that she might have been guilty, but her father’s confession, as already
+stated, was apparently so sincere that she could do nothing but believe
+him.  You will wonder how the facts were discovered.  After his death a
+sealed paper disclosing them was found, with the inscription, “_Not to be
+opened during my daughter’s life_, _and if she should have children or a
+husband who may survive her_, _it is to be burnt_.”  She had no children,
+and when she died as an old woman, her husband also being dead, the seal
+was broken.’
+
+‘Probably,’ said Madge, ‘nobody except his daughter believed he was not a
+thief.  For her sake he endured the imputation of common larceny, and was
+content to leave the world with only a remote chance that he would ever
+be justified.’
+
+‘I wonder,’ said Frank, ‘that he did not admit that it was his daughter
+who had taken the handkerchief, and excuse her on the ground of her
+ailment.’
+
+‘He could not do that,’ replied Madge.  ‘The object of his life was to
+make as little of the ailment as possible.  What would have been the
+effect on her if she had been made aware of its fearful consequences?
+Furthermore, would he have been believed?  And then—awful thought, the
+child might have suspected him of attempting to shield himself at her
+expense!  Do you think you could be capable of such sacrifice, Mr
+Palmer?’
+
+Frank hesitated.  ‘It would—’
+
+‘The question is not fair, Madge,’ said Mrs Hopgood, interrupting him.
+‘You are asking for a decision when all the materials to make up a
+decision are not present.  It is wrong to question ourselves in cold
+blood as to what we should do in a great strait; for the emergency brings
+the insight and the power necessary to deal with it.  I often fear lest,
+if such-and-such a trial were to befall me, I should miserably fail.  So
+I should, furnished as I now am, but not as I should be under stress of
+the trial.’
+
+‘What is the use,’ said Clara, ‘of speculating whether we can, or cannot,
+do this or that?  It _is_ now an interesting subject for discussion
+whether the lie was a sin.’
+
+‘No,’ said Madge, ‘a thousand times no.’
+
+‘Brief and decisive.  Well, Mr Palmer, what do you say?’
+
+‘That is rather an awkward question.  A lie is a lie.’
+
+‘But not,’ broke in Madge, vehemently, ‘to save anybody whom you love.
+Is a contemptible little two-foot measuring-tape to be applied to such an
+action as that?’
+
+‘The consequences of such a philosophy, though, my dear,’ said Mrs
+Hopgood, ‘are rather serious.  The moment you dispense with a fixed
+standard, you cannot refuse permission to other people to dispense with
+it also.’
+
+‘Ah, yes, I know all about that, but I am not going to give up my
+instinct for the sake of a rule.  Do what you feel to be right, and let
+the rule go hang.  Somebody, cleverer in logic than we are, will come
+along afterwards and find a higher rule which we have obeyed, and will
+formulate it concisely.’
+
+‘As for my poor self,’ said Clara, ‘I do not profess to know, without the
+rule, what is right and what is not.  We are always trying to transcend
+the rule by some special pleading, and often in virtue of some fancied
+superiority.  Generally speaking, the attempt is fatal.’
+
+‘Madge,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘your dogmatic decision may have been
+interesting, but it prevented the expression of Mr Palmer’s opinion.’
+
+Madge bent forward and politely inclined her head to the embarrassed
+Frank.
+
+‘I do not know what to say.  I have never thought much about such
+matters.  Is not what they call casuistry a science among Roman
+Catholics?  If I were in a difficulty and could not tell right from
+wrong, I should turn Catholic, and come to you as my priest, Mrs
+Hopgood.’
+
+‘Then you would do, not what you thought right yourself, but what I
+thought right.  The worth of the right to you is that it is your right,
+and that you arrive at it in your own way.  Besides, you might not have
+time to consult anybody.  Were you never compelled to settle promptly a
+case of this kind?’
+
+‘I remember once at school, when the mathematical master was out of the
+class-room, a boy named Carpenter ran up to the blackboard and wrote
+“Carrots” on it.  That was the master’s nickname, for he was red-haired.
+Scarcely was the word finished, when Carpenter heard him coming along the
+passage.  There was just time partially to rub out some of the big
+letters, but CAR remained, and Carpenter was standing at the board when
+“Carrots” came in.  He was an excitable man, and he knew very well what
+the boys called him.
+
+‘“What have you been writing on the board, sir?”
+
+‘“Carpenter, sir.”
+
+‘The master examined the board.  The upper half of the second R was
+plainly perceptible, but it might possibly have been a P.  He turned
+round, looked steadily at Carpenter for a moment, and then looked at us.
+Carpenter was no favourite, but not a soul spoke.
+
+‘“Go to your place, sir.”
+
+‘Carpenter went to his place, the letters were erased and the lesson was
+resumed.  I was greatly perplexed; I had acquiesced in a cowardly
+falsehood.  Carrots was a great friend of mine, and I could not bear to
+feel that he was humbugged, so when we were outside I went up to
+Carpenter and told him he was an infernal sneak, and we had a desperate
+fight, and I licked him, and blacked both his eyes.  I did not know what
+else to do.’
+
+The company laughed.
+
+‘We cannot,’ said Madge, ‘all of us come to terms after this fashion with
+our consciences, but we have had enough of these discussions on morality.
+Let us go out.’
+
+They went out, and, as some relief from the straight road, they turned
+into a field as they came home, and walked along a footpath which crossed
+the broad, deep ditches by planks.  They were within about fifty yards of
+the last and broadest ditch, more a dyke than a ditch, when Frank,
+turning round, saw an ox which they had not noticed, galloping after
+them.
+
+‘Go on, go on,’ he cried, ‘make for the plank.’
+
+He discerned in an instant that unless the course of the animal could be
+checked it would overtake them before the bridge could be reached.  The
+women fled, but Frank remained.  He was in the habit of carrying a heavy
+walking-stick, the end of which he had hollowed out in his schooldays and
+had filled up with lead.  Just as the ox came upon him, it laid its head
+to the ground, and Frank, springing aside, dealt it a tremendous,
+two-handed blow on the forehead with his knobbed weapon.  The creature
+was dazed, it stopped and staggered, and in another instant Frank was
+across the bridge in safety.  There was a little hysterical sobbing, but
+it was soon over.
+
+‘Oh, Mr Palmer,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘what presence of mind and what
+courage!  We should have been killed without you.’
+
+‘The feat is not original, Mrs Hopgood.  I saw it done by a tough little
+farmer last summer on a bull that was really mad.  There was no ditch for
+him though, poor fellow, and he had to jump a hedge.’
+
+‘You did not find it difficult,’ said Madge, ‘to settle your problem when
+it came to you in the shape of a wild ox.’
+
+‘Because there was nothing to settle,’ said Frank, laughing; ‘there was
+only one thing to be done.’
+
+‘So you believed, or rather, so you saw,’ said Clara.  ‘I should have
+seen half-a-dozen things at once—that is to say, nothing.’
+
+‘And I,’ said Madge, ‘should have settled it the wrong way: I am sure I
+should, even if I had been a man.  I should have bolted.’
+
+Frank stayed to tea, and the evening was musical.  He left about ten, but
+just as the door had shut he remembered he had forgotten his stick.  He
+gave a gentle rap and Madge appeared.  She gave him his stick.
+
+‘Good-bye again.  Thanks for my life.’
+
+Frank cursed himself that he could not find the proper word.  He knew
+there was something which might be said and ought to be said, but he
+could not say it.  Madge held out her hand to him, he raised it to his
+lips and kissed it, and then, astonished at his boldness, he instantly
+retreated.  He went to the ‘Crown and Sceptre’ and was soon in bed, but
+not to sleep.  Strange, that the moment we lie down in the dark, images,
+which were half obscured, should become so intensely luminous!  Madge
+hovered before Frank with almost tangible distinctness, and he felt his
+fingers moving in her heavy, voluptuous tresses.  Her picture at last
+became almost painful to him and shamed him, so that he turned over from
+side to side to avoid it.  He had never been thrown into the society of
+women of his own age, for he had no sister, and a fire was kindled within
+him which burnt with a heat all the greater because his life had been so
+pure.  At last he fell asleep and did not wake till late in the morning.
+He had just time to eat his breakfast, pay one more business visit in the
+town, and catch the coach due at eleven o’clock from Lincoln to London.
+As the horses were being changed, he walked as near as he dared venture
+to the windows of the cottage next door, but he could see nobody.  When
+the coach, however, began to move, he turned round and looked behind him,
+and a hand was waved to him.  He took off his hat, and in five minutes he
+was clear of the town.  It was in sight a long way, but when, at last, it
+disappeared, a cloud of wretchedness swept over him as the vapour sweeps
+up from the sea.  What was she doing? talking to other people, existing
+for others, laughing with others!  There were miles between himself and
+Fenmarket.  Life! what was life?  A few moments of living and long,
+dreary gaps between.  All this, however, is a vain attempt to delineate
+what was shapeless.  It was an intolerable, unvanquishable oppression.
+This was Love; this was the blessing which the god with the ruddy wings
+had bestowed on him.  It was a relief to him when the coach rattled
+through Islington, and in a few minutes had landed him at the ‘Angel.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+THERE was to be a grand entertainment in the assembly room of the ‘Crown
+and Sceptre’ in aid of the County Hospital.  Mrs Martin, widow of one of
+the late partners in the bank, lived in a large house near Fenmarket, and
+still had an interest in the business.  She was distinctly above anybody
+who lived in the town, and she knew how to show her superiority by
+venturing sometimes to do what her urban neighbours could not possibly
+do.  She had been known to carry through the street a quart bottle of
+horse physic although it was wrapped up in nothing but brown paper.  On
+her way she met the brewer’s wife, who was more aggrieved than she was
+when Mrs Martin’s carriage swept past her in the dusty, narrow lane which
+led to the Hall.  Mrs Martin could also afford to recognise in a measure
+the claims of education and talent.  A gentleman came from London to
+lecture in the town, and showed astonished Fenmarket an orrery and a
+magic lantern with dissolving views of the Holy Land.  The exhibition had
+been provided in order to extinguish a debt incurred in repairing the
+church, but the rector’s wife, and the brewer’s wife, after consultation,
+decided that they must leave the lecturer to return to his inn.  Mrs
+Martin, however, invited him to supper.  Of course she knew Mr Hopgood
+well, and knew that he was no ordinary man.  She knew also something of
+Mrs Hopgood and the daughters, and that they were no ordinary women.  She
+had been heard to say that they were ladies, and that Mr Hopgood was a
+gentleman; and she kept up a distant kind of intimacy with them, always
+nodded to them whenever she met them, and every now and then sent them
+grapes and flowers.  She had observed once or twice to Mrs Tubbs that Mr
+Hopgood was a remarkable person, who was quite scientific and therefore
+did not associate with the rest of the Fenmarket folk; and Mrs Tubbs was
+much annoyed, particularly by a slight emphasis which she thought she
+detected in the ‘therefore,’ for Mr Tubbs had told her that one of the
+smaller London brewers, who had only about fifty public-houses, had
+refused to meet at dinner a learned French chemist who had written books.
+Mrs Martin could not make friends with the Hopgoods, nor enter the
+cottage.  It would have been a transgression of that infinitely fine and
+tortuous line whose inexplicable convolutions mark off what is forbidden
+to a society lady.  Clearly, however, the Hopgoods could be requested to
+co-operate at the ‘Crown and Sceptre;’ in fact, it would be impolitic not
+to put some of the townsfolk on the list of patrons.  So it came about
+that Mrs Hopgood was included, and that she was made responsible for the
+provision of one song and one recitation.  For the song it was settled
+that Frank Palmer should be asked, as he would be in Fenmarket.  Usually
+he came but once every half year, but he had not been able, so he said,
+to finish all his work the last time.  The recitation Madge undertook.
+
+The evening arrived, the room was crowded and a dozen private carriages
+stood in the ‘Crown and Sceptre’ courtyard.  Frank called for the
+Hopgoods.  Mrs Hopgood and Clara sat with presentation tickets in the
+second row, amongst the fashionable folk; Frank and Madge were upon the
+platform.  Frank was loudly applauded in ‘_Il Mio Tesoro_,’ but the
+loudest applause of the evening was reserved for Madge, who declaimed
+Byron’s ‘_Destruction of Sennacherib_’ with much energy.  She certainly
+looked very charming in her red gown, harmonising with her black hair.
+The men in the audience were vociferous for something more, and would not
+be contented until she again came forward.  The truth is, that the wily
+young woman had prepared herself beforehand for possibilities, but she
+artfully concealed her preparation.  Looking on the ground and
+hesitating, she suddenly raised her head as if she had just remembered
+something, and then repeated Sir Henry Wotton’s ‘_Happy Life_.’  She was
+again greeted with cheers, subdued so as to be in accordance with the
+character of the poem, but none the less sincere, and in the midst of
+them she gracefully bowed and retired.  Mrs Martin complimented her
+warmly at the end of the performance, and inwardly debated whether Madge
+could be asked to enliven one of the parties at the Hall, and how it
+could, at the same time, be made clear to the guests that she and her
+mother, who must come with her, were not even acquaintances, properly so
+called, but were patronised as persons of merit living in the town which
+the Hall protected.  Mrs Martin was obliged to be very careful.  She
+certainly was on the list at the Lord Lieutenant’s, but she was in the
+outer ring, and she was not asked to those small and select little
+dinners which were given to Sir Egerton, the Dean of Peterborough, Lord
+Francis, and his brother, the county member.  She decided, however, that
+she could make perfectly plain the conditions upon which the Hopgoods
+would be present, and the next day she sent Madge a little note asking
+her if she would ‘assist in some festivities’ at the Hall in about two
+months’ time, which were to be given in celebration of the twenty-first
+birthday of Mrs Martin’s third son.  The scene from the ‘_Tempest_,’
+where Ferdinand and Miranda are discovered playing chess, was suggested,
+and it was proposed that Madge should be Miranda, and Mr Palmer
+Ferdinand.  Mrs Martin concluded with a hope that Mrs Hopgood and her
+eldest daughter would ‘witness the performance.’
+
+Frank joyously consented, for amateur theatricals had always attracted
+him, and in a few short weeks he was again at Fenmarket.  He was obliged
+to be there for three or four days before the entertainment, in order to
+attend the rehearsals, which Mrs Martin had put under the control of a
+professional gentleman from London, and Madge and he were consequently
+compelled to make frequent journeys to the Hall.
+
+At last the eventful night arrived, and a carriage was hired next door to
+take the party.  They drove up to the grand entrance and were met by a
+footman, who directed Madge and Frank to their dressing-rooms, and
+escorted Mrs Hopgood and Clara to their places in the theatre.  They had
+gone early in order to accommodate Frank and Madge, and they found
+themselves alone.  They were surprised that there was nobody to welcome
+them, and a little more surprised when they found that the places
+allotted to them were rather in the rear.  Presently two or three
+fiddlers were seen, who began to tune their instruments.  Then some
+Fenmarket folk and some of the well-to-do tenants on the estate made
+their appearance, and took seats on either side of Mrs Hopgood and Clara.
+Quite at the back were the servants.  At five minutes to eight the band
+struck up the overture to ‘_Zampa_,’ and in the midst of it in sailed Mrs
+Martin and a score or two of fashionably-dressed people, male and female.
+The curtain ascended and Prospero’s cell was seen.  Alonso and his
+companions were properly grouped, and Prospero began,—
+
+             ‘Behold, Sir King,
+    The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero.’
+
+The audience applauded him vigorously when he came to the end of his
+speech, but there was an instantaneous cry of ‘hush!’ when Prospero
+disclosed the lovers.  It was really very pretty.  Miranda wore a loose,
+simple, white robe, and her wonderful hair was partly twisted into a
+knot, and partly strayed down to her waist.  The dialogue between the two
+was spoken with much dramatic feeling, and when Ferdinand came to the
+lines—
+
+             ‘Sir, she is mortal,
+    But by immortal Providence she’s mine,’
+
+old Boston, a worthy and wealthy farmer, who sat next to Mrs Hopgood,
+cried out ‘hear, hear!’ but was instantly suppressed.
+
+He put his head down behind the people in front of him, rubbed his knees,
+grinned, and then turned to Mrs Hopgood, whom he knew, and whispered,
+with his hand to his mouth,—
+
+‘And a precious lucky chap he is.’
+
+Mrs Hopgood watched intently, and when Gonzalo invoked the gods to drop a
+blessed crown on the couple, and the applause was renewed, and Boston
+again cried ‘hear, hear!’ without fear of check, she did not applaud, for
+something told her that behind this stage show a drama was being played
+of far more serious importance.
+
+The curtain fell, but there were loud calls for the performers.  It rose,
+and they presented themselves, Alonso still holding the hands of the
+happy pair.  The cheering now was vociferous, more particularly when a
+wreath was flung at the feet of the young princess, and Ferdinand,
+stooping, placed it on her head.
+
+Again the curtain fell, the band struck up some dance music and the
+audience were treated to ‘something light,’ and roared with laughter at a
+pretty chambermaid at an inn who captivated and bamboozled a young booby
+who was staying there, pitched him overboard; ‘wondered what he meant;’
+sang an audacious song recounting her many exploits, and finished with a
+_pas-seul_.
+
+The performers and their friends were invited to a sumptuous supper, and
+the Fenmarket folk were not at home until half-past two in the morning.
+On their way back, Clara broke out against the juxtaposition of
+Shakespeare and such vulgarity.
+
+‘Much better,’ she said, ‘to have left the Shakespeare out altogether.
+The lesson of the sequence is that each is good in its way, a perfectly
+hateful doctrine to me.
+
+Frank and Madge were, however, in the best of humours, especially Frank,
+who had taken a glass of wine beyond his customary very temperate
+allowance.
+
+‘But, Miss Hopgood, Mrs Martin had to suit all tastes; we must not be too
+severe upon her.’
+
+There was something in this remark most irritating to Clara; the word
+‘tastes,’ for example, as if the difference between Miranda and the
+chambermaid were a matter of ‘taste.’  She was annoyed too with Frank’s
+easy, cheery tones for she felt deeply what she said, and his mitigation
+and smiling latitudinarianism were more exasperating than direct
+opposition.
+
+‘I am sure,’ continued Frank, ‘that if we were to take the votes of the
+audience, Miranda would be the queen of the evening;’ and he put the
+crown which he had brought away with him on her head again.
+
+Clara was silent.  In a few moments they were at the door of their house.
+It had begun to rain, and Madge, stepping out of the carriage in a hurry,
+threw a shawl over her head, forgetting the wreath.  It fell into the
+gutter and was splashed with mud.  Frank picked it up, wiped it as well
+as he could with his pocket-handkerchief, took it into the parlour and
+laid it on a chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+THE next morning it still rained, a cold rain from the north-east, a very
+disagreeable type of weather on the Fenmarket flats.  Madge was not awake
+until late, and when she caught sight of the grey sky and saw her finery
+tumbled on the floor—no further use for it in any shape save as rags—and
+the dirty crown, which she had brought upstairs, lying on the heap, the
+leaves already fading, she felt depressed and miserable.  The breakfast
+was dull, and for the most part all three were silent.  Mrs Hopgood and
+Clara went away to begin their housework, leaving Madge alone.
+
+‘Madge,’ cried Mrs Hopgood, ‘what am I to do with this thing?  It is of
+no use to preserve it; it is dead and covered with dirt.’
+
+‘Throw it down here.’
+
+She took it and rammed it into the fire.  At that moment she saw Frank
+pass.  He was evidently about to knock, but she ran to the door and
+opened it.
+
+‘I did not wish to keep you waiting in the wet.’
+
+‘I am just off but I could not help calling to see how you are.  What!
+burning your laurels, the testimony to your triumph?’
+
+‘Triumph! rather transitory; finishes in smoke,’ and she pushed two or
+three of the unburnt leaves amongst the ashes and covered them over.  He
+stooped down, picked up a leaf, smoothed it between his fingers, and then
+raised his eyes.  They met hers at that instant, as she lifted them and
+looked in his face.  They were near one another, and his hands strayed
+towards hers till they touched.  She did not withdraw; he clasped the
+hand, she not resisting; in another moment his arms were round her, his
+face was on hers, and he was swept into self-forgetfulness.  Suddenly the
+horn of the coach about to start awoke him, and he murmured the line from
+one of his speeches of the night before—
+
+    ‘But by immortal Providence she’s mine.’
+
+She released herself a trifle, held her head back as if she desired to
+survey him apart from her, so that the ecstasy of union might be renewed,
+and then fell on his neck.
+
+The horn once more sounded, she let him out silently, and he was off.
+Mrs Hopgood and Clara presently came downstairs.
+
+‘Mr Palmer came in to bid you good-bye, but he heard the coach and was
+obliged to rush away.’
+
+‘What a pity,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘that you did not call us.’
+
+‘I thought he would be able to stay longer.’
+
+The lines which followed Frank’s quotation came into her head,—
+
+    ‘Sweet lord, you play me false.’
+          ‘No, my dearest love,
+       I would not for the world.’
+
+‘An omen,’ she said to herself; ‘“he would not for the world.”’
+
+She was in the best of spirits all day long.  When the housework was over
+and they were quiet together, she said,—
+
+‘Now, my dear mother and sister, I want to know how the performance
+pleased you.’
+
+‘It was as good as it could be,’ replied her mother, ‘but I cannot think
+why all plays should turn upon lovemaking.  I wonder whether the time
+will ever come when we shall care for a play in which there is no
+courtship.’
+
+‘What a horrible heresy, mother,’ said Madge.
+
+‘It may be so; it may be that I am growing old, but it seems astonishing
+to me sometimes that the world does not grow a little weary of endless
+variations on the same theme.’
+
+‘Never,’ said Madge, ‘as long as it does not weary of the thing itself,
+and it is not likely to do that.  Fancy a young man and a young woman
+stopping short and exclaiming, “This is just what every son of Adam and
+daughter of Eve has gone through before; why should we proceed?”
+Besides, it is the one emotion common to the whole world; we can all
+comprehend it.  Once more, it reveals character.  In _Hamlet_ and
+_Othello_, for example, what is interesting is not solely the bare love.
+The natures of Hamlet and Othello are brought to light through it as they
+would not have been through any other stimulus.  I am sure that no
+ordinary woman ever shows what she really is, except when she is in love.
+Can you tell what she is from what she calls her religion, or from her
+friends, or even from her husband?’
+
+‘Would it not be equally just to say women are more alike in love than in
+anything else?  Mind, I do not say alike, but more alike.  Is it not the
+passion which levels us all?’
+
+‘Oh, mother, mother! did one ever hear such dreadful blasphemy?  That the
+loves, for example, of two such cultivated, exquisite creatures as Clara
+and myself would be nothing different from those of the barmaids next
+door?’
+
+‘Well, at anyrate, I do not want to see _my_ children in love to
+understand what they are—to me at least.’
+
+‘Then, if you comprehend us so completely—and let us have no more
+philosophy—just tell me, should I make a good actress?  Oh! to be able to
+sway a thousand human beings into tears or laughter!  It must be divine.’
+
+‘No, I do not think you would,’ replied Clara.
+
+‘Why not, miss?  _Your_ opinion, mind, was not asked.  Did I not act to
+perfection last night?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Then why are you so decisive?’
+
+‘Try a different part some day.  I may be mistaken.’
+
+‘You are very oracular.’
+
+She turned to the piano, played a few chords, closed the instrument,
+swung herself round on the music stool, and said she should go for a
+walk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+IT was Mr Palmer’s design to send Frank abroad as soon as he understood
+the home trade.  It was thought it would be an advantage to him to learn
+something of foreign manufacturing processes.  Frank had gladly agreed to
+go, but he was now rather in the mood for delay.  Mr Palmer conjectured a
+reason for it, and the conjecture was confirmed when, after two or three
+more visits to Fenmarket, perfectly causeless, so far as business was
+concerned, Frank asked for the paternal sanction to his engagement with
+Madge.  Consent was willingly given, for Mr Palmer knew the family well;
+letters passed between him and Mrs Hopgood, and it was arranged that
+Frank’s visit to Germany should be postponed till the summer.  He was now
+frequently at Fenmarket as Madge’s accepted suitor, and, as the spring
+advanced, their evenings were mostly spent by themselves out of doors.
+One afternoon they went for a long walk, and on their return they rested
+by a stile.  Those were the days when Tennyson was beginning to stir the
+hearts of the young people in England, and the two little green volumes
+had just become a treasure in the Hopgood household.  Mr Palmer, senior,
+knew them well, and Frank, hearing his father speak so enthusiastically
+about them, thought Madge would like them, and had presented them to her.
+He had heard one or two read aloud at home, and had looked at one or two
+himself, but had gone no further.  Madge, her mother, and her sister had
+read and re-read them.
+
+‘Oh,’ said Madge, ‘for that Vale in Ida.  Here in these fens how I long
+for something that is not level!  Oh, for the roar of—
+
+    “The long brook falling thro’ the clov’n ravine
+    In cataract after cataract to the sea.”
+
+Go on with it, Frank.’
+
+‘I cannot.’
+
+‘But you know _Œnone_?’
+
+‘I cannot say I do.  I began it—’
+
+‘Frank, how could you begin it and lay it down unfinished?  Besides,
+those lines are some of the first; you _must_ remember—
+
+    “Behind the valley topmost Gargarus
+    Stands up and takes the morning.”’
+
+‘No, I do not recollect, but I will learn them; learn them for your
+sake.’
+
+‘I do not want you to learn them for my sake.’
+
+‘But I shall.’
+
+She had taken off her hat and his hand strayed to her neck.  Her head
+fell on his shoulder and she had forgotten his ignorance of _Œnone_.
+Presently she awoke from her delicious trance and they moved homewards in
+silence.  Frank was a little uneasy.
+
+‘I do greatly admire Tennyson,’ he said.
+
+‘What do you admire?  You have hardly looked at him.’
+
+‘I saw a very good review of him.  I will look that review up, by the
+way, before I come down again.  Mr Maurice was talking about it.’
+
+Madge had a desire to say something, but she did not know what to say, a
+burden lay upon her chest.  It was that weight which presses there when
+we are alone with those with whom we are not strangers, but with whom we
+are not completely at home, and she actually found herself impatient and
+half-desirous of solitude.  This must be criminal or disease, she thought
+to herself, and she forcibly recalled Frank’s virtues.  She was so far
+successful that when they parted and he kissed her, she was more than
+usually caressing, and her ardent embrace, at least for the moment,
+relieved that unpleasant sensation in the region of the heart.  When he
+had gone she reasoned with herself.  What a miserable counterfeit of
+love, she argued, is mere intellectual sympathy, a sympathy based on
+books!  What did Miranda know about Ferdinand’s ‘views’ on this or that
+subject?  Love is something independent of ‘views.’  It is an attraction
+which has always been held to be inexplicable, but whatever it may be it
+is not ‘views.’  She was becoming a little weary, she thought, of what
+was called ‘culture.’  These creatures whom we know through Shakespeare
+and Goethe are ghostly.  What have we to do with them?  It is idle work
+to read or even to talk fine things about them.  It ends in nothing.
+What we really have to go through and that which goes through it are
+interesting, but not circumstances and character impossible to us.  When
+Frank spoke of his business, which he understood, he was wise, and some
+observations which he made the other day, on the management of his
+workpeople, would have been thought original if they had been printed.
+The true artist knows that his hero must be a character shaping events
+and shaped by them, and not a babbler about literature.  Frank, also, was
+so susceptible.  He liked to hear her read to him, and her enthusiasm
+would soon be his.  Moreover, how gifted he was, unconsciously, with all
+that makes a man admirable, with courage, with perfect unselfishness!
+How handsome he was, and then his passion for her!  She had read
+something of passion, but she never knew till now what the white
+intensity of its flame in a man could be.  She was committed, too,
+happily committed; it was an engagement.
+
+Thus, whenever doubt obtruded itself, she poured a self-raised tide over
+it and concealed it.  Alas! it could not be washed away; it was a little
+sharp rock based beneath the ocean’s depths, and when the water ran low
+its dark point reappeared.  She was more successful, however, than many
+women would have been, for, although her interest in ideas was deep,
+there was fire in her blood, and Frank’s arm around her made the world
+well nigh disappear; her surrender was entire, and if Sinai had thundered
+in her ears she would not have heard.  She was destitute of that power,
+which her sister possessed, of surveying herself from a distance.  On the
+contrary, her emotion enveloped her, and the safeguard of reflection on
+it was impossible to her.
+
+As to Frank, no doubt ever approached him.  He was intoxicated, and
+beside himself.  He had been brought up in a clean household, knowing
+nothing of the vice by which so many young men are overcome, and woman
+hitherto had been a mystery to him.  Suddenly he found himself the
+possessor of a beautiful creature, whose lips it was lawful to touch and
+whose heartbeats he could feel as he pressed her to his breast.  It was
+permitted him to be alone with her, to sit on the floor and rest his head
+on her knees, and he had ventured to capture one of her slippers and
+carry it off to London, where he kept it locked up amongst his treasures.
+If he had been drawn over Fenmarket sluice in a winter flood he would not
+have been more incapable of resistance.
+
+Every now and then Clara thought she discerned in Madge that she was not
+entirely content, but the cloud-shadows swept past so rapidly and were
+followed by such dazzling sunshine that she was perplexed and hoped that
+her sister’s occasional moodiness might be due to parting and absence, or
+the anticipation of them.  She never ventured to say anything about Frank
+to Madge, for there was something in her which forbade all approach from
+that side.  Once when he had shown his ignorance of what was so familiar
+to the Hopgoods, and Clara had expected some sign of dissatisfaction from
+her sister, she appeared ostentatiously to champion him against
+anticipated criticism.  Clara interpreted the warning and was silent,
+but, after she had left the room with her mother in order that the lovers
+might be alone, she went upstairs and wept many tears.  Ah! it is a sad
+experience when the nearest and dearest suspects that we are aware of
+secret disapproval, knows that it is justifiable, throws up a rampart and
+becomes defensively belligerent.  From that moment all confidence is at
+an end.  Without a word, perhaps, the love and friendship of years
+disappear, and in the place of two human beings transparent to each
+other, there are two who are opaque and indifferent.  Bitter, bitter!  If
+the cause of separation were definite disagreement upon conduct or
+belief, we could pluck up courage, approach and come to an understanding,
+but it is impossible to bring to speech anything which is so close to the
+heart, and there is, therefore, nothing left for us but to submit and be
+dumb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+IT was now far into June, and Madge and Frank extended their walks and
+returned later.  He had come down to spend his last Sunday with the
+Hopgoods before starting with his father for Germany, and on the Monday
+they were to leave London.
+
+Wordsworth was one of the divinities at Stoke Newington, and just before
+Frank visited Fenmarket that week, he had heard the _Intimations of
+Immortality_ read with great fervour.  Thinking that Madge would be
+pleased with him if she found that he knew something about that famous
+Ode, and being really smitten with some of the passages in it, he learnt
+it, and just as they were about to turn homewards one sultry evening he
+suddenly began to repeat it, and declaimed it to the end with much
+rhetorical power.
+
+‘Bravo!’ said Madge, ‘but, of all Wordsworth’s poems, that is the one for
+which I believe I care the least.’
+
+Frank’s countenance fell.
+
+‘Oh, me!  I thought it was just what would suit you.’
+
+‘No, not particularly.  There are some noble lines in it; for example—
+
+    “And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
+    Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”
+
+But the very title—_Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of
+Early Childhood_—is unmeaning to me, and as for the verse which is in
+everybody’s mouth—
+
+    “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;”
+
+and still worse the vision of “that immortal sea,” and of the children
+who “sport upon the shore,” they convey nothing whatever to me.  I find
+though they are much admired by the clergy of the better sort, and by
+certain religiously-disposed people, to whom thinking is distasteful or
+impossible.  Because they cannot definitely believe, they fling
+themselves with all the more fervour upon these cloudy Wordsworthian
+phrases, and imagine they see something solid in the coloured fog.’
+
+It was now growing dark and a few heavy drops of rain began to fall, but
+in a minute or two they ceased.  Frank, contrary to his usual wont, was
+silent.  There was something undiscovered in Madge, a region which he had
+not visited and perhaps could not enter.  She discerned in an instant
+what she had done, and in an instant repented.  He had taken so much
+pains with a long piece of poetry for her sake: was not that better than
+agreement in a set of propositions?  Scores of persons might think as she
+thought about the ode, who would not spend a moment in doing anything to
+gratify her.  It was delightful also to reflect that Frank imagined she
+would sympathise with anything written in that temper.  She recalled what
+she herself had said when somebody gave Clara a copy in ‘Parian’ of a
+Greek statue, a thing coarse in outline and vulgar.  Clara was about to
+put it in a cupboard in the attic, but Madge had pleaded so pathetically
+that the donor had in a measure divined what her sister loved, and had
+done her best, although she had made a mistake, that finally the statue
+was placed on the bedroom mantelpiece.  Madge’s heart overflowed, and
+Frank had never attracted her so powerfully as at that moment.  She took
+his hand softly in hers.
+
+‘Frank,’ she murmured, as she bent her head towards him, ‘it is really a
+lovely poem.’
+
+Suddenly there was a flash of forked lightning at some distance, followed
+in a few seconds by a roll of thunder increasing in intensity until the
+last reverberation seemed to shake the ground.  They took refuge in a
+little barn and sat down.  Madge, who was timid and excited in a
+thunderstorm, closed her eyes to shield herself from the glare.
+
+The tumult in the heavens lasted for nearly two hours and, when it was
+over, Madge and Frank walked homewards without speaking a word for a good
+part of the way.
+
+‘I cannot, cannot go to-morrow,’ he suddenly cried, as they neared the
+town.
+
+‘You _shall_ go,’ she replied calmly.
+
+‘But, Madge, think of me in Germany, think what my dreams and thoughts
+will be—you here—hundreds of miles between us.’
+
+She had never seen him so shaken with terror.
+
+‘You _shall_ go; not another word.’
+
+‘I must say something—what can I say?  My God, my God, have mercy on me!’
+
+‘Mercy! mercy!’ she repeated, half unconsciously, and then rousing
+herself, exclaimed, ‘You shall not say it; I will not hear; now,
+good-bye.’
+
+They had come to the door; he went inside; she took his face between her
+hands, left one kiss on his forehead, led him back to the doorway and he
+heard the bolts drawn.  When he recovered himself he went to the ‘Crown
+and Sceptre’ and tried to write a letter to her, but the words looked
+hateful, horrible on the paper, and they were not the words he wanted.
+He dared not go near the house the next morning, but as he passed it on
+the coach he looked at the windows.  Nobody was to be seen, and that
+night he left England.
+
+‘Did you hear,’ said Clara to her mother at breakfast, ‘that the
+lightning struck one of the elms in the avenue at Mrs Martin’s yesterday
+evening and splintered it to the ground?’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+IN a few days Madge received the following letter:—
+
+                                                        ‘FRANKFORT, O. M.,
+                                                        HÔTEL WAIDENBUSCH.
+
+    ‘MY DEAREST MADGE,—I do not know how to write to you.  I have begun a
+    dozen letters but I cannot bring myself to speak of what lies before
+    me, hiding the whole world from me.  Forgiveness! how is any
+    forgiveness possible?  But Madge, my dearest Madge, remember that my
+    love is intenser than ever.  What has happened has bound you closer
+    to me.  I _implore_ you to let me come back.  I will find a thousand
+    excuses for returning, and we will marry.  We had vowed marriage to
+    each other and why should not our vows be fulfilled?  Marriage,
+    marriage _at once_.  You will not, you _cannot_, no, you _cannot_,
+    you must see you cannot refuse.  My father wishes to make this town
+    his headquarters for ten days.  Write by return for mercy’s
+    sake.—Your ever devoted
+
+                                                                  ‘FRANK.’
+
+The reply came only a day late.
+
+    ‘MY DEAR FRANK,—Forgiveness!  Who is to be forgiven?  Not you.  You
+    believed you loved me, but I doubted my love, and I know now that no
+    true love for you exists.  We must part, and part forever.  Whatever
+    wrong may have been done, marriage to avoid disgrace would be a wrong
+    to both of us infinitely greater.  I owe you an expiation; your
+    release is all I can offer, and it is insufficient.  I can only plead
+    that I was deaf and blind.  By some miracle, I cannot tell how, my
+    ears and eyes are opened, and I hear and see.  It is not the first
+    time in my life that the truth has been revealed to me suddenly,
+    supernaturally, I may say, as if in a vision, and I know the
+    revelation is authentic.  There must be no wavering, no
+    half-measures, and I absolutely forbid another letter from you.  If
+    one arrives I must, for the sake of my own peace and resolution,
+    refuse to read it.  You have simply to announce to your father that
+    the engagement is at an end, and give no reasons.—Your faithful
+    friend
+
+                                                          ‘MADGE HOPGOOD.’
+
+Another letter did come, but Madge was true to her word, and it was
+returned unopened.
+
+For a long time Frank was almost incapable of reflection.  He dwelt on an
+event which might happen, but which he dared not name; and if it should
+happen!  Pictures of his father, his home his father’s friends,
+Fenmarket, the Hopgood household, passed before him with such wild
+rapidity and intermingled complexity that it seemed as if the reins had
+dropped out of his hands and he was being hurried away to madness.
+
+He resisted with all his might this dreadful sweep of the imagination,
+tried to bring himself back into sanity and to devise schemes by which,
+although he was prohibited from writing to Madge, he might obtain news of
+her.  Her injunction might not be final.  There was but one hope for him,
+one possibility of extrication, one necessity—their marriage.  It _must_
+be.  He dared not think of what might be the consequences if they did not
+marry.
+
+Hitherto Madge had given no explanation to her mother or sister of the
+rupture, but one morning—nearly two months had now passed—Clara did not
+appear at breakfast.
+
+‘Clara is not here,’ said Mrs Hopgood; ‘she was very tired last night,
+perhaps it is better not to disturb her.’
+
+‘Oh, no! please let her alone.  I will see if she still sleeps.’
+
+Madge went upstairs, opened her sister’s door noiselessly, saw that she
+was not awake, and returned.  When breakfast was over she rose, and after
+walking up and down the room once or twice, seated herself in the
+armchair by her mother’s side.  Her mother drew herself a little nearer,
+and took Madge’s hand gently in her own.
+
+‘Madge, my child, have you nothing to say to your mother?’
+
+‘Nothing.’
+
+‘Cannot you tell me why Frank and you have parted?  Do you not think I
+ought to know something about such an event in the life of one so close
+to me?’
+
+‘I broke off the engagement: we were not suited to one another.’
+
+‘I thought as much; I honour you; a thousand times better that you should
+separate now than find out your mistake afterwards when it is
+irrevocable.  Thank God, He has given you such courage!  But you must
+have suffered—I know you must;’ and she tenderly kissed her daughter.
+
+‘Oh, mother! mother!’ cried Madge, ‘what is the worst—at least to—you—the
+worst that can happen to a woman?’
+
+Mrs Hopgood did not speak; something presented itself which she refused
+to recognise, but she shuddered.  Before she could recover herself Madge
+broke out again,—
+
+‘It has happened to me; mother, your daughter has wrecked your peace for
+ever!’
+
+‘And he has abandoned you?’
+
+‘No, no; I told you it was I who left him.’
+
+It was Mrs Hopgood’s custom, when any evil news was suddenly communicated
+to her, to withdraw at once if possible to her own room.  She detached
+herself from Madge, rose, and, without a word, went upstairs and locked
+her door.  The struggle was terrible.  So much thought, so much care,
+such an education, such noble qualities, and they had not accomplished
+what ordinary ignorant Fenmarket mothers and daughters were able to
+achieve!  This fine life, then, was a failure, and a perfect example of
+literary and artistic training had gone the way of the common wenches
+whose affiliation cases figured in the county newspaper.  She was shaken
+and bewildered.  She was neither orthodox nor secular.  She was too
+strong to be afraid that what she disbelieved could be true, and yet a
+fatal weakness had been disclosed in what had been set up as its
+substitute.  She could not treat her child as a sinner who was to be
+tortured into something like madness by immitigable punishment, but, on
+the other hand, she felt that this sorrow was unlike other sorrows and
+that it could never be healed.  For some time she was powerless, blown
+this way and that way by contradictory storms, and unable to determine
+herself to any point whatever.  She was not, however, new to the tempest.
+She had lived and had survived when she thought she must have gone down.
+She had learned the wisdom which the passage through desperate straits
+can bring.  At last she prayed and in a few minutes a message was
+whispered to her.  She went into the breakfast-room and seated herself
+again by Madge.  Neither uttered a word, but Madge fell down before her,
+and, with a great cry, buried her face in her mother’s lap.  She remained
+kneeling for some time waiting for a rebuke, but none came.  Presently
+she felt smoothing hands on her head and the soft impress of lips.  So
+was she judged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+IT was settled that they should leave Fenmarket.  Their departure caused
+but little surprise.  They had scarcely any friends, and it was always
+conjectured that people so peculiar would ultimately find their way to
+London.  They were particularly desirous to conceal their movements, and
+therefore determined to warehouse their furniture in town, to take
+furnished apartments there for three months, and then to move elsewhere.
+Any letters which might arrive at Fenmarket for them during these three
+months would be sent to them at their new address; nothing probably would
+come afterwards, and as nobody in Fenmarket would care to take any
+trouble about them, their trace would become obliterated.  They found
+some rooms near Myddelton Square, Pentonville, not a particularly
+cheerful place, but they wished to avoid a more distant suburb, and
+Pentonville was cheap.  Fortunately for them they had no difficulty
+whatever in getting rid of the Fenmarket house for the remainder of their
+term.
+
+For a little while London diverted them after a fashion, but the absence
+of household cares told upon them.  They had nothing to do but to read
+and to take dismal walks through Islington and Barnsbury, and the gloom
+of the outlook thickened as the days became shorter and the smoke began
+to darken the air.  Madge was naturally more oppressed than the others,
+not only by reason of her temperament, but because she was the author of
+the trouble which had befallen them.  Her mother and Clara did everything
+to sustain and to cheer her.  They possessed the rare virtue of
+continuous tenderness.  The love, which with many is an inspiration, was
+with them their own selves, from which they could not be separated; a
+harsh word could not therefore escape from them.  It was as impossible as
+that there should be any failure in the pressure with which the rocks
+press towards the earth’s centre.  Madge at times was very far gone in
+melancholy.  How different this thing looked when it was close at hand;
+when she personally was to be the victim!  She had read about it in
+history, the surface of which it seemed scarcely to ripple; it had been
+turned to music in some of her favourite poems and had lent a charm to
+innumerable mythologies, but the actual fact was nothing like the poetry
+or mythology, and threatened to ruin her own history altogether.  Nor
+would it be her own history solely, but more or less that of her mother
+and sister.
+
+Had she believed in the common creed, her attention would have been
+concentrated on the salvation of her own soul; she would have found her
+Redeemer and would have been comparatively at peace; she would have
+acknowledged herself convicted of infinite sin, and hell would have been
+opened before her, but above the sin and the hell she would have seen the
+distinct image of the Mediator abolishing both.  Popular theology makes
+personal salvation of such immense importance that, in comparison
+therewith, we lose sight of the consequences to others of our misdeeds.
+The sense of cruel injustice to those who loved her remained with Madge
+perpetually.
+
+To obtain relief she often went out of London for the day; sometimes her
+mother and sister went with her; sometimes she insisted on going alone.
+One autumn morning, she found herself at Letherhead, the longest trip she
+had undertaken, for there were scarcely any railways then.  She wandered
+about till she discovered a footpath which took her to a mill-pond, which
+spread itself out into a little lake.  It was fed by springs which burst
+up through the ground.  She watched at one particular point, and saw the
+water boil up with such force that it cleared a space of a dozen yards in
+diameter from every weed, and formed a transparent pool just tinted with
+that pale azure which is peculiar to the living fountains which break out
+from the bottom of the chalk.  She was fascinated for a moment by the
+spectacle, and reflected upon it, but she passed on.  In about
+three-quarters of an hour she found herself near a church, larger than an
+ordinary village church, and, as she was tired, and the gate of the
+church porch was open, she entered and sat down.  The sun streamed in
+upon her, and some sheep which had strayed into the churchyard from the
+adjoining open field came almost close to her, unalarmed, and looked in
+her face.  The quiet was complete, and the air so still, that a yellow
+leaf dropping here and there from the churchyard elms—just beginning to
+turn—fell quiveringly in a straight path to the earth.  Sick at heart and
+despairing, she could not help being touched, and she thought to herself
+how strange the world is—so transcendent both in glory and horror; a
+world capable of such scenes as those before her, and a world in which
+such suffering as hers could be; a world infinite both ways.  The porch
+gate was open because the organist was about to practise, and in another
+instant she was listening to the _Kyrie_ from Beethoven’s Mass in C.  She
+knew it; Frank had tried to give her some notion of it on the piano, and
+since she had been in London she had heard it at St Mary’s, Moorfields.
+She broke down and wept, but there was something new in her sorrow, and
+it seemed as if a certain Pity overshadowed her.
+
+She had barely recovered herself when she saw a woman, apparently about
+fifty, coming towards her with a wicker basket on her arm.  She sat down
+beside Madge, put her basket on the ground, and wiped her face with her
+apron.
+
+‘Marnin’ miss! its rayther hot walkin’, isn’t it?  I’ve come all the way
+from Darkin, and I’m goin’ to Great Oakhurst.  That’s a longish step
+there and back again; not that this is the nearest way, but I don’t like
+climbing them hills, and then when I get to Letherhead I shall have a
+lift in a cart.’
+
+Madge felt bound to say something as the sunburnt face looked kind and
+motherly.
+
+‘I suppose you live at Great Oakhurst?’
+
+‘Yes.  I do: my husband, God bless him! he was a kind of foreman at The
+Towers, and when he died I was left alone and didn’t know what to be at,
+as both my daughters were out and one married; so I took the general shop
+at Great Oakhurst, as Longwood used to have, but it don’t pay for I ain’t
+used to it, and the house is too big for me, and there isn’t nobody
+proper to mind it when I goes over to Darkin for anything.’
+
+‘Are you going to leave?’
+
+‘Well, I don’t quite know yet, miss, but I thinks I shall live with my
+daughter in London.  She’s married a cabinetmaker in Great Ormond Street:
+they let lodgings, too.  Maybe you know that part?’
+
+‘No, I do not.’
+
+‘You don’t live in London, then?’
+
+‘Yes, I do.  I came from London this morning.’
+
+‘The Lord have mercy on us, did you though!  I suppose, then, you’re
+a-visitin’ here.  I know most of the folk hereabouts.’
+
+‘No: I am going back this afternoon.’
+
+Her interrogator was puzzled and her curiosity stimulated.  Presently she
+looked in Madge’s face.
+
+‘Ah! my poor dear, you’ll excuse me, I don’t mean to be forward, but I
+see you’ve been a-cryin’: there’s somebody buried here.’
+
+‘No.’
+
+That was all she could say.  The walk from Letherhead, and the excitement
+had been too much for her and she fainted.  Mrs Caffyn, for that was her
+name, was used to fainting fits.  She was often ‘a bit faint’ herself,
+and she instantly loosened Madge’s gown, brought out some smelling-salts
+and also a little bottle of brandy and water.  Something suddenly struck
+her.  She took up Madge’s hand: there was no wedding ring on it.
+
+Presently her patient recovered herself.
+
+‘Look you now, my dear; you aren’t noways fit to go back to London
+to-day.  If you was my child you shouldn’t do it for all the gold in the
+Indies, no, nor you sha’n’t now.  I shouldn’t have a wink of sleep this
+night if I let you go, and if anything were to happen to you it would be
+me as ’ud have to answer for it.’
+
+‘But I must go; my mother and sister will not know what has become of
+me.’
+
+‘You leave that to me; I tell you again as you can’t go.  I’ve been a
+mother myself, and I haven’t had children for nothing.  I was just
+a-goin’ to send a little parcel up to my daughter by the coach, and her
+husband’s a-goin’ to meet it.  She’d left something behind last week when
+she was with me, and I thought I’d get a bit of fresh butter here for her
+and put along with it.  They make better butter in the farm in the bottom
+there, than they do at Great Oakhurst.  A note inside now will get to
+your mother all right; you have a bit of something to eat and drink here,
+and you’ll be able to walk along of me just into Letherhead, and then you
+can ride to Great Oakhurst; it’s only about two miles, and you can stay
+there all night.’
+
+Madge was greatly touched; she took Mrs Caffyn’s hands in hers, pressed
+them both and consented.  She was very weary, and the stamp on Mrs
+Caffyn’s countenance was indubitable; it was evidently no forgery, but of
+royal mintage.  They walked slowly to Letherhead, and there they found
+the carrier’s cart, which took them to Great Oakhurst.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+MRS CAFFYN’S house was a roomy old cottage near the church, with a
+bow-window in which were displayed bottles of ‘suckers,’ and of Day &
+Martin’s blacking, cotton stuffs, a bag of nuts and some mugs, cups and
+saucers.  Inside were salt butter, washing-blue, drapery, treacle,
+starch, tea, tobacco and snuff, cheese, matches, bacon, and a few drugs,
+such as black draught, magnesia, pills, sulphur, dill-water, Dalby’s
+Carminative, and steel-drops.  There was also a small stock of
+writing-paper, string and tin ware.  A boy was behind the counter.  When
+Mrs Caffyn was out he always asked the customers who desired any article,
+the sale of which was in any degree an art, to call again when she
+returned.  He went as far as those things which were put up in packets,
+such as what were called ‘grits’ for making gruel, and he was also
+authorised to venture on pennyworths of liquorice and peppermints, but
+the sale of half-a-dozen yards of cotton print was as much above him as
+the negotiation of a treaty of peace would be to a messenger in the
+Foreign Office.  In fact, nobody, excepting children, went into the shop
+when Mrs Caffyn was not to be seen there, and, if she had to go to
+Dorking or Letherhead on business, she always chose the middle of the
+day, when the folk were busy at their homes or in the fields.  Poor
+woman! she was much tried.  Half the people who dealt with her were in
+her debt, but she could not press them for her money.  During winter-time
+they were discharged by the score from their farms, but as they were not
+sufficiently philosophic, or sufficiently considerate for their fellows
+to hang or drown themselves, they were obliged to consume food, and to
+wear clothes, for which they tried to pay by instalments during spring,
+summer and autumn.  Mrs Caffyn managed to make both ends meet by the help
+of two or three pigs, by great economy, and by letting some of her
+superfluous rooms.  Great Oakhurst was not a show place nor a Spa, but
+the Letherhead doctor had once recommended her to a physician in London,
+who occasionally sent her a patient who wanted nothing but rest and fresh
+air.  She also, during the shooting-season, was often asked to find a
+bedroom for visitors to The Towers.
+
+She might have done better had she been on thoroughly good terms with the
+parson.  She attended church on Sunday morning with tolerable regularity.
+She never went inside a dissenting chapel, and was not heretical on any
+definite theological point, but the rector and she were not friends.  She
+had lived in Surrey ever since she was a child, but she was not Surrey
+born.  Both her father and mother came from the north country, and
+migrated southwards when she was very young.  They were better educated
+than the southerners amongst whom they came; and although their daughter
+had no schooling beyond what was obtainable in a Surrey village of that
+time, she was distinguished by a certain superiority which she had
+inherited or acquired from her parents.  She was never subservient to the
+rector after the fashion of her neighbours; she never curtsied to him,
+and if he passed and nodded she said ‘Marnin’, sir,’ in just the same
+tone as that in which she said it to the smallest of the Great Oakhurst
+farmers.  Her church-going was an official duty incumbent upon her as the
+proprietor of the only shop in the parish.  She had nothing to do with
+church matters except on Sunday, and she even went so far as to neglect
+to send for the rector when one of her children lay dying.  She was
+attacked for the omission, but she defended herself.
+
+‘What was the use when the poor dear was only seven year old?  What call
+was there for him to come to a blessed innocent like that?  I did tell
+him to look in when my husband was took, for I know as before we were
+married there was something atween him and that gal Sanders.  He never
+would own up to me about it, and I thought as he might to a clergyman,
+and, if he did, it would ease his mind and make it a bit better for him
+afterwards; but, Lord! it warn’t no use, for he went off and we didn’t so
+much as hear her name, not even when he was a-wandering.  I says to
+myself when the parson left, “What’s the good of having you?”’
+
+Mrs Caffyn was a Christian, but she was a disciple of St James rather
+than of St Paul.  She believed, of course, the doctrines of the
+Catechism, in the sense that she denied none, and would have assented to
+all if she had been questioned thereon; but her belief that ‘faith, if it
+hath not works, is dead, being alone,’ was something very vivid and very
+practical.
+
+Her estimate, too, of the relative values of the virtues and of the
+relative sinfulness of sins was original, and the rector therefore told
+all his parishioners that she was little better than a heathen.  The
+common failings in that part of the country amongst the poor were
+Saturday-night drunkenness and looseness in the relations between the
+young men and young women.  Mrs Caffyn’s indignation never rose to the
+correct boiling point against these crimes.  The rector once ventured to
+say, as the case was next door to her,—
+
+‘It is very sad, is it not, Mrs Caffyn, that Polesden should be so
+addicted to drink.  I hope he did not disturb you last Saturday night.  I
+have given the constable directions to look after the street more closely
+on Saturday evening, and if Polesden again offends he must be taken up.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn was behind her own counter.  She had just served a customer
+with two ounces of Dutch cheese, and she sat down on her stool.  Being
+rather a heavy woman she always sat down when she was not busy, and she
+never rose merely to talk.
+
+‘Yes, it is sad, sir, and Polesden isn’t no particular friend of mine,
+but I tell you what’s sad too, sir, and that’s the way them people are
+mucked up in that cottage.  Why, their living room opens straight on the
+road, and the wind comes in fit to blow your head off, and when he goes
+home o’ nights, there’s them children a-squalling, and he can’t bide
+there and do nothing.’
+
+‘I am afraid, though, Mrs Caffyn, there must be something radically wrong
+with that family.  I suppose you know all about the eldest daughter?’
+
+‘Yes, sir, I _have_ heard it: it wouldn’t be Great Oakhurst if I hadn’t,
+but p’r’aps, sir, you’ve never been upstairs in that house, and yet a
+house it isn’t.  There’s just two sleeping-rooms, that’s all; it’s
+shameful, it isn’t decent.  Well, that gal, she goes away to service.
+Maybe, sir, them premises at the farm are also unbeknown to you.  In the
+back kitchen there’s a broadish sort of shelf as Jim climbs into o’
+nights, and it has a rail round it to keep you from a-falling out, and
+there’s a ladder as they draws up in the day as goes straight up from
+that kitchen to the gal’s bedroom door.  It’s downright disgraceful, and
+I don’t believe the Lord A’mighty would be marciful to neither of _us_ if
+we was tried like that.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn bethought herself of the ‘us’ and was afraid that even she had
+gone a little too far; ‘leastways, speaking for myself, sir,’ she added.
+
+The rector turned rather red, and repented his attempt to enlist Mrs
+Caffyn.
+
+‘If the temptations are so great, Mrs Caffyn, that is all the more reason
+why those who are liable to them should seek the means which are provided
+in order that they may be overcome.  I believe the Polesdens are very lax
+attendants at church, and I don’t think they ever communicated.’
+
+Mrs Polesden at that moment came in for an ounce of tea, and as Mrs
+Caffyn rose to weigh it, the rector departed with a stiff ‘good-morning,’
+made to do duty for both women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+MRS CAFFYN persuaded Madge to go to bed at once, after giving her
+‘something to comfort her.’  In the morning her kind hostess came to her
+bedside.
+
+‘You’ve got a mother, haven’t you—leastways, I know you have, because you
+wrote to her.’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Well, and you lives with her and she looks after you?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘And she’s fond of you, maybe?’
+
+‘Oh, yes.’
+
+‘That’s a marcy; well then, my dear, you shall go back in the cart to
+Letherhead, and you’ll catch the Darkin coach to London.’
+
+‘You have been very good to me; what have I to pay you?’
+
+‘Pay?  Nothing! why, if I was to let you pay, it would just look as if
+I’d trapped you here to get something out of you.  Pay! no, not a penny.’
+
+‘I can afford very well to pay, but if it vexes you I will not offer
+anything.  I don’t know how to thank you enough.’
+
+Madge took Mrs Caffyn’s hand in hers and pressed it firmly.
+
+‘Besides, my dear,’ said Mrs Caffyn, smoothing the sheets a little, ‘you
+won’t mind my saying it, I expex you are in trouble.  There’s something
+on your mind, and I believe as I knows pretty well what it is.’
+
+Madge turned round in the bed so as no longer to face the light; Mrs
+Caffyn sat between her and the window.
+
+‘Look you here, my dear; don’t you suppose I meant to say anything to
+hurt you.  The moment I looked on you I was drawed to you like; I
+couldn’t help it.  I see’d what was the matter, but I was all the more
+drawed, and I just wanted you to know as it makes no difference.  That’s
+like me; sometimes I’m drawed that way and sometimes t’other way, and
+it’s never no use for me to try to go against it.  I ain’t a-going to say
+anything more to you; God-A’mighty, He’s above us all; but p’r’aps you
+may be comm’ this way again some day, and then you’ll look in.’
+
+Madge turned again to the light, and again caught Mrs Caffyn’s hand, but
+was silent.
+
+The next morning, after Madge’s return, Mrs Cork, the landlady, presented
+herself at the sitting-room door and ‘wished to speak with Mrs Hopgood
+for a minute.’
+
+‘Come in, Mrs Cork.’
+
+‘Thank you, ma’am, but I prefer as you should come downstairs.’
+
+Mrs Cork was about forty, a widow with no children.  She had a face of
+which it was impossible to recollect, when it had been seen even a dozen
+times, any feature except the eyes, which were steel-blue, a little bluer
+than the faceted head of the steel poker in her parlour, but just as
+hard.  She lived in the basement with a maid, much like herself but a
+little more human.  Although the front underground room was furnished Mrs
+Cork never used it, except on the rarest occasions, and a kind of apron
+of coloured paper hung over the fireplace nearly all the year.  She was a
+woman of what she called regular habits.  No lodger was ever permitted to
+transgress her rules, or to have meals ten minutes before or ten minutes
+after the appointed time.  She had undoubtedly been married, but who Cork
+could have been was a marvel.  Why he died, and why there were never any
+children were no marvels.  At two o’clock her grate was screwed up to the
+narrowest possible dimensions, and the ashes, potato peelings, tea leaves
+and cabbage stalks were thrown on the poor, struggling coals.  No meat,
+by the way, was ever roasted—it was considered wasteful—everything was
+baked or boiled.  After half-past four not a bit of anything that was not
+cold was allowed till the next morning, and, indeed, from the first of
+April to the thirty-first of October the fire was raked out the moment
+tea was over.  Mrs Hopgood one night was not very well and Clara wished
+to give her mother something warm.  She rang the bell and asked for hot
+water.  Maria came up and disappeared without a word after receiving the
+message.  Presently she returned.
+
+‘Mrs Cork, miss, wishes me to tell you as it was never understood as ’ot
+water would be required after tea, and she hasn’t got any.’
+
+Mrs Hopgood had a fire, although it was not yet the thirty-first of
+October, for it was very damp and raw.  She had with much difficulty
+induced Mrs Cork to concede this favour (which probably would not have
+been granted if the coals had not yielded a profit of threepence a
+scuttleful), and Clara, therefore, asked if she could not have the kettle
+upstairs.  Again Maria disappeared and returned.
+
+‘Mrs Cork says, miss, as it’s very ill-convenient as the kettle is
+cleaned up agin to-morrow, and if you can do without it she will be
+obliged.’
+
+It was of no use to continue the contest, and Clara bethought herself of
+a little ‘Etna’ she had in her bedroom.  She went to the druggist’s,
+bought some methylated spirit, and obtained what she wanted.
+
+Mrs Cork had one virtue and one weakness.  Her virtue was cleanliness,
+but she persecuted the ‘blacks,’ not because she objected to dirt as
+dirt, but because it was unauthorised, appeared without permission at
+irregular hours, and because the glittering polish on varnished paint and
+red mahogany was a pleasure to her.  She liked the dirt, too, in a way,
+for she enjoyed the exercise of her ill-temper on it and the pursuit of
+it to destruction.  Her weakness was an enormous tom-cat which had a bell
+round its neck and slept in a basket in the kitchen, the best-behaved and
+most moral cat in the parish.  At half-past nine every evening it was let
+out into the back-yard and vanished.  At ten precisely it was heard to
+mew and was immediately admitted.  Not once in a twelvemonth did that cat
+prolong its love making after five minutes to ten.
+
+Mrs Hopgood went upstairs to her room, Mrs Cork following and closing the
+door.
+
+‘If you please, ma’am, I wish to give you notice to leave this day week.’
+
+‘What is the matter, Mrs Cork?’
+
+‘Well, ma’am, for one thing, I didn’t know as you’d bring a bird with
+you.’
+
+It was a pet bird belonging to Madge.
+
+‘But what harm does the bird do?  It gives no trouble; my daughter
+attends to it.’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am, but it worrits my Joseph—the cat, I mean.  I found him the
+other mornin’ on the table eyin’ it, and I can’t a-bear to see him
+urritated.’
+
+‘I should hardly have thought that a reason for parting with good
+lodgers.’
+
+Mrs Hopgood had intended to move, as before explained, but she did not
+wish to go till the three months had expired.
+
+‘I don’t say as that is everything, but if you wish me to tell you the
+truth, Miss Madge is not a person as I like to keep in the house.  I wish
+you to know’—Mrs Cork suddenly became excited and venomous—‘that I’m a
+respectable woman, and have always let my apartments to respectable
+people, and do you think I should ever let them to respectable people
+again if it got about as I had had anybody as wasn’t respectable?  Where
+was she last night?  And do you suppose as me as has been a married woman
+can’t see the condition she’s in?  I say as you, Mrs Hopgood, ought to be
+ashamed of yourself for bringing of such a person into a house like mine,
+and you’ll please vacate these premises on the day named.’  She did not
+wait for an answer, but banged the door after her, and went down to her
+subterranean den.
+
+Mrs Hopgood did not tell her children the true reason for leaving.  She
+merely said that Mrs Cork had been very impertinent, and that they must
+look out for other rooms.  Madge instantly recollected Great Ormond
+Street, but she did not know the number, and oddly enough she had
+completely forgotten Mrs Caffyn’s name.  It was a peculiar name, she had
+heard it only once, she had not noticed it over the door, and her
+exhaustion may have had something to do with her loss of memory.  She
+could not therefore write, and Mrs Hopgood determined that she herself
+would go to Great Oakhurst.  She had another reason for her journey.  She
+wished her kind friend there to see that Madge had really a mother who
+cared for her.  She was anxious to confirm Madge’s story, and Mrs
+Caffyn’s confidence.  Clara desired to go also, but Mrs Hopgood would not
+leave Madge alone, and the expense of a double fare was considered
+unnecessary.
+
+When Mrs Hopgood came to Letherhead on her return, the coach was full
+inside, and she was obliged to ride outside, although the weather was
+cold and threatening.  In about half an hour it began to rain heavily,
+and by the time she was in Pentonville she was wet through.  The next
+morning she ought to have lain in bed, but she came down at her
+accustomed hour as Mrs Cork was more than usually disagreeable, and it
+was settled that they would leave at once if the rooms in Great Ormond
+Street were available.  Clara went there directly after breakfast, and
+saw Mrs Marshall, who had already received an introductory letter from
+her mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+THE Marshall family included Marshall and his wife.  He was rather a
+small man, with blackish hair, small lips, and with a nose just a little
+turned up at the tip.  As we have been informed, he was a cabinet-maker.
+He worked for very good shops, and earned about two pounds a week.  He
+read books, but he did not know their value, and often fancied he had
+made a great discovery on a bookstall of an author long ago superseded
+and worthless.  He belonged to a mechanic’s institute, and was fond of
+animal physiology; heard courses of lectures on it at the institute, and
+had studied two or three elementary handbooks.  He found in a second-hand
+dealer’s shop a model, which could be taken to pieces, of the inside of
+the human body.  He had also bought a diagram of a man, showing the
+circulation, and this he had hung in his bedroom, his mother-in-law
+objecting most strongly on the ground that its effect on his wife was
+injurious.  He had a notion that the world might be regenerated if men
+and women were properly instructed in physiological science, and if
+before marriage they would study their own physical peculiarities, and
+those of their intended partners.  The crossing of peculiarities
+nevertheless presented difficulties.  A man with long legs surely ought
+to choose a woman with short legs, but if a man who was mathematical
+married a woman who was mathematical, the result might be a mathematical
+prodigy.  On the other hand the parents of the prodigy might each have
+corresponding qualities, which, mixed with the mathematical tendency,
+would completely nullify it.  The path of duty therefore was by no means
+plain.  However, Marshall was sure that great cities dwarfed their
+inhabitants, and as he himself was not so tall as his father, and,
+moreover, suffered from bad digestion, and had a tendency to ‘run to
+head,’ he determined to select as his wife a ‘daughter of the soil,’ to
+use his own phrase, above the average height, with a vigorous
+constitution and plenty of common sense.  She need not be bookish, ‘he
+could supply all that himself.’  Accordingly, he married Sarah Caffyn.
+His mother and Mrs Caffyn had been early friends.  He was not mistaken in
+Sarah.  She was certainly robust; she was a shrewd housekeeper, and she
+never read anything, except now and then a paragraph or two in the weekly
+newspaper, notwithstanding (for there were no children), time hung rather
+heavily on her hands.  One child had been born, but to Marshall’s
+surprise and disappointment it was a poor, rickety thing, and died before
+it was a twelvemonth old.
+
+Mrs Marshall was not a very happy woman.  Marshall was a great politician
+and spent many of his evenings away from home at political meetings.  He
+never informed her what he had been doing, and if he had told her, she
+would neither have understood nor cared anything about it.  At Great
+Oakhurst she heard everything and took an interest in it, and she often
+wished with all her heart that the subject which occupied Marshall’s
+thoughts was not Chartism but the draining of that heavy, rush-grown bit
+of rough pasture that lay at the bottom of the village.  He was very good
+and kind to her, and she never imagined, before marriage, that he ought
+to be more.  She was sure that at Great Oakhurst she would have been
+quite comfortable with him but somehow, in London, it was different.  ‘I
+don’t know how it is,’ she said one day, ‘the sort of husband as does for
+the country doesn’t do for London.’
+
+At Great Oakhurst, where the doors were always open into the yard and the
+garden, where every house was merely a covered bit of the open space,
+where people were always in and out, and women never sat down, except to
+their meals, or to do a little stitching or sewing, it was really not
+necessary, as Mrs Caffyn observed, that husband and wife should ‘hit it
+so fine.’  Mrs Marshall hated all the conveniences of London.  She
+abominated particularly the taps, and longed to be obliged in all
+weathers to go out to the well and wind up the bucket.  She abominated
+also the dust-bin, for it was a pleasure to be compelled—so at least she
+thought it now—to walk down to the muck-heap and throw on it what the pig
+could not eat.  Nay, she even missed that corner of the garden against
+the elder-tree, where the pig-stye was, for ‘you could smell the
+elder-flowers there in the spring-time, and the pig-stye wasn’t as bad as
+the stuffy back room in Great Ormond Street when three or four men were
+in it.’  She did all she could to spend her energy on her cooking and
+cleaning, but ‘there was no satisfaction in it,’ and she became much
+depressed, especially after the child died.  This was the main reason why
+Mrs Caffyn determined to live with her.  Marshall was glad she resolved
+to come.  His wife had her full share of the common sense he desired, but
+the experiment had not altogether succeeded.  He knew she was lonely, and
+he was sorry for her, although he did not see how he could mend matters.
+He reflected carefully, nothing had happened which was a surprise to him,
+the relationship was what he had supposed it would be, excepting that the
+child did not live and its mother was a little miserable.  There was
+nothing he would not do for her, but he really had nothing more to offer
+her.
+
+Although Mrs Marshall had made up her mind that husbands and wives could
+not be as contented with one another in the big city as they would be in
+a village, a suspicion crossed her mind one day that, even in London, the
+relationship might be different from her own.  She was returning from
+Great Oakhurst after a visit to her mother.  She had stayed there for
+about a month after her child’s death, and she travelled back to town
+with a Letherhead woman, who had married a journeyman tanner, who
+formerly worked in the Letherhead tan-yard, and had now moved to
+Bermondsey, a horrid hole, worse than Great Ormond Street.  Both Marshall
+and the tanner were at the ‘Swan with Two Necks’ to meet the covered van,
+and the tanner’s wife jumped out first.
+
+‘Hullo, old gal, here you are,’ cried the tanner, and clasped her in his
+brown, bark-stained arms, giving her, nothing loth, two or three hearty
+kisses.  They were so much excited at meeting one another, that they
+forgot their friends, and marched off without bidding them good-bye.  Mrs
+Marshall was welcomed in quieter fashion.
+
+‘Ah!’ she thought to herself.  ‘Red Tom,’ as the tanner was called, ‘is
+not used to London ways.  They are, perhaps, correct for London, but
+Marshall might now and then remember that I have not been brought up to
+them.’
+
+To return, however, to the Hopgoods.  Before the afternoon they were in
+their new quarters, happily for them, for Mrs Hopgood became worse.  On
+the morrow she was seriously ill, inflammation of the lungs appeared, and
+in a week she was dead.  What Clara and Madge suffered cannot be told
+here.  Whenever anybody whom we love dies, we discover that although
+death is commonplace it is terribly original.  We may have thought about
+it all our lives, but if it comes close to us, it is quite a new, strange
+thing to us, for which we are entirely unprepared.  It may, perhaps, not
+be the bare loss so much as the strength of the bond which is broken that
+is the surprise, and we are debtors in a way to death for revealing
+something in us which ordinary life disguises.  Long after the first
+madness of their grief had passed, Clara and Madge were astonished to
+find how dependent they had been on their mother.  They were grown-up
+women accustomed to act for themselves, but they felt unsteady, and as if
+deprived of customary support.  The reference to her had been constant,
+although it was often silent, and they were not conscious of it.  A
+defence from the outside waste desert had been broken down, their mother
+had always seemed to intervene between them and the world, and now they
+were exposed and shelterless.
+
+Three parts of Mrs Hopgood’s little income was mainly an annuity, and
+Clara and Madge found that between them they had but seventy-five pounds
+a year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+FRANK could not rest.  He wrote again to Clara at Fenmarket; the letter
+went to Mrs Cork’s, and was returned to him.  He saw that the Hopgoods
+had left Fenmarket, and suspecting the reason, he determined at any cost
+to go home.  He accordingly alleged ill-health, a pretext not altogether
+fictitious, and within a few days after the returned letter reached him
+he was back at Stoke Newington.  He went immediately to the address in
+Pentonville which he found on the envelope, but was very shortly informed
+by Mrs Cork that ‘she knew nothing whatever about them.’  He walked round
+Myddelton Square, hopeless, for he had no clue whatever.
+
+What had happened to him would scarcely, perhaps, have caused some young
+men much uneasiness, but with Frank the case was altogether different.
+There was a chance of discovery, and if his crime should come to light
+his whole future life would be ruined.  He pictured his excommunication,
+his father’s agony, and it was only when it seemed possible that the
+water might close over the ghastly thing thrown in it, and no ripple
+reveal what lay underneath, that he was able to breathe again.
+Immediately he asked himself, however, _if_ he could live with his father
+and wear a mask, and never betray his dreadful secret.  So he wandered
+homeward in the most miserable of all conditions; he was paralysed by the
+intricacy of the coil which enveloped and grasped him.
+
+That evening it happened that there was a musical party at his father’s
+house; and, of course, he was expected to assist.  It would have suited
+his mood better if he could have been in his own room, or out in the
+streets, but absence would have been inconsistent with his disguise, and
+might have led to betrayal.  Consequently he was present, and the gaiety
+of the company and the excitement of his favourite exercise, brought
+about for a time forgetfulness of his trouble.  Amongst the performers
+was a distant cousin, Cecilia Morland, a young woman rather tall and
+fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely
+reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich
+pulsations.  She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a
+blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing.  She was dressed in a
+fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at
+Mr Palmer’s house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could
+not restrain his eyes from straying every now and then a way from his
+music to her shoulders, and once nearly lost himself, during a solo which
+required a little unusual exertion, in watching the movement of a locket
+and of what was for a moment revealed beneath it.  He escorted her amidst
+applause to a corner of the room, and the two sat down side by side.
+
+‘What a long time it is, Frank, since you and I sang that duet together.
+We have seen nothing of you lately.’
+
+‘Of course not; I was in Germany.’
+
+‘Yes, but I think you deserted us before then.  Do you remember that
+summer when we were all together at Bonchurch, and the part songs which
+astonished our neighbours just as it was growing dark?  I recollect you
+and I tried together that very duet for the first time with the old
+lodging-house piano.’
+
+Frank remembered that evening well.
+
+‘You sang better than you did to-night.  You did not keep time: what were
+you dreaming about?’
+
+‘How hot the room is!  Do you not feel it oppressive?  Let us go into the
+conservatory for a minute.’
+
+The door was behind them and they slipped in and sat down, just inside,
+and under the orange tree.
+
+‘You must not be away so long again.  Now mind, we have a musical evening
+this day fortnight.  You will come?  Promise; and we must sing that duet
+again, and sing it properly.’
+
+He did not reply, but he stooped down, plucked a blood-red begonia, and
+gave it to her.
+
+‘That is a pledge.  It is very good of you.’
+
+She tried to fasten it in her gown, underneath the locket, but she
+dropped a little black pin.  He went down on his knees to find it; rose,
+and put the flower in its proper place himself, and his head nearly
+touched her neck, quite unnecessarily.
+
+‘We had better go back now,’ she said, ‘but mind, I shall keep this
+flower for a fortnight and a day, and if you make any excuses I shall
+return it faded and withered.’
+
+‘Yes, I will come.’
+
+‘Good boy; no apologies like those you sent the last time.  No bad
+throat.  Play me false, and there will be a pretty rebuke for you—a dead
+flower.’
+
+_Play me false_!  It was as if there were some stoppage in a main artery
+to his brain.  _Play me false_!  It rang in his ears, and for a moment he
+saw nothing but the scene at the Hall with Miranda.  Fortunately for him,
+somebody claimed Cecilia, and he slunk back into the greenhouse.
+
+One of Mr Palmer’s favourite ballads was _The Three Ravens_.  Its pathos
+unfits it for an ordinary drawing-room, but as the music at Mr Palmer’s
+was not of the common kind, _The Three Ravens_ was put on the list for
+that night.
+
+    ‘_She was dead herself ere evensong time_.  _With a down_, _hey
+    down_, _hey down_,
+    _God send every gentleman_
+    _Such hawks_, _such hounds_, _and such a leman_.  _With down_, _hey
+    down_, _hey down_.’
+
+Frank knew well the prayer of that melody, and, as he listened, he
+painted to himself, in the vividest colours, Madge in a mean room, in a
+mean lodging, and perhaps dying.  The song ceased, and one for him stood
+next.  He heard voices calling him, but he passed out into the garden and
+went down to the further end, hiding himself behind the shrubs.
+Presently the inquiry for him ceased, and he was relieved by hearing an
+instrumental piece begin.
+
+Following on that presentation of Madge came self-torture for his
+unfaithfulness.  He scourged himself into what he considered to be his
+duty.  He recalled with an effort all Madge’s charms, mental and bodily,
+and he tried to break his heart for her.  He was in anguish because he
+found that in order to feel as he ought to feel some effort was
+necessary; that treason to her was possible, and because he had looked
+with such eyes upon his cousin that evening.  He saw himself as something
+separate from himself, and although he knew what he saw to be flimsy and
+shallow, he could do nothing to deepen it, absolutely nothing!  It was
+not the betrayal of that thunderstorm which now tormented him.  He could
+have represented that as a failure to be surmounted; he could have
+repented it.  It was his own inner being from which he revolted, from
+limitations which are worse than crimes, for who, by taking thought, can
+add one cubit to his stature?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+THE next morning found Frank once more in Myddelton Square.  He looked up
+at the house; the windows were all shut, and the blinds were drawn down.
+He had half a mind to call again, but Mrs Cork’s manner had been so
+offensive and repellent that he desisted.  Presently the door opened, and
+Maria, the maid, came out to clean the doorsteps.  Maria, as we have
+already said, was a little more human than her mistress, and having
+overheard the conversation between her and Frank at the first interview,
+had come to the conclusion that Frank was to be pitied, and she took a
+fancy to him.  Accordingly, when he passed her, she looked up and
+said,—‘Good-morning.’  Frank stopped, and returned her greeting.
+
+‘You was here the other day, sir, asking where them Hopgoods had gone.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Frank, eagerly, ‘do you know what has become of them?’
+
+‘I helped the cabman with the boxes, and I heard Mrs Hopgood say “Great
+Ormond Street,” but I have forgotten the number.’
+
+‘Thank you very much.’
+
+Frank gave the astonished and grateful Maria half-a-crown, and went off
+to Great Ormond Street at once.  He paced up and down the street half a
+dozen times, hoping he might recognise in a window some ornament from
+Fenmarket, or perhaps that he might be able to distinguish a piece of
+Fenmarket furniture, but his search was in vain, for the two girls had
+taken furnished rooms at the back of the house.  His quest was not
+renewed that week.  What was there to be gained by going over the ground
+again?  Perhaps they might have found the lodgings unsuitable and have
+moved elsewhere.  At church on Sunday he met his cousin Cecilia, who
+reminded him of his promise.
+
+‘See,’ she said, ‘here is the begonia.  I put it in my prayer-book in
+order to preserve it when I could keep it in water no longer, and it has
+stained the leaf, and spoilt the Athanasian Creed.  You will have it sent
+to you if you are faithless.  Reflect on your emotions, sir, when you
+receive a dead flower, and you have the bitter consciousness also that
+you have damaged my creed without any recompense.’
+
+It was impossible not to protest that he had no thought of breaking his
+engagement, although, to tell the truth, he had wished once or twice he
+could find some way out of it.  He walked with her down the churchyard
+path to her carriage, assisted her into it, saluted her father and
+mother, and then went home with his own people.
+
+The evening came, he sang with Cecilia, and it was observed, and he
+himself observed it, how completely their voices harmonised.  He was not
+without a competitor, a handsome young baritone, who was much commended.
+When he came to the end of his performance everybody said what a pity it
+was that the following duet could not also be given, a duet which Cecilia
+knew perfectly well.  She was very much pressed to take her part with
+him, but she steadily refused, on the ground that she had not practised
+it, that she had already sung once, and that she was engaged to sing once
+more with her cousin.  Frank was sitting next to her, and she added, so
+as to be heard by him alone, ‘He is no particular favourite of mine.’
+
+There was no direct implication that Frank was a favourite, but an
+inference was possible, and at least it was clear that she preferred to
+reserve herself for him.  Cecilia’s gifts, her fortune, and her gay,
+happy face had made many a young fellow restless, and had brought several
+proposals, none of which had been accepted.  All this Frank knew, and how
+could he repress something more than satisfaction when he thought that
+perhaps he might have been the reason why nobody as yet had been able to
+win her.  She always called him Frank, for although they were not first
+cousins, they were cousins.  He generally called her Cecilia, but she was
+Cissy in her own house.  He was hardly close enough to venture upon the
+more familiar nickname, but to-night, as they rose to go to the piano, he
+said, and the baritone sat next to her,—
+
+‘Now, _Cissy_, once more.’
+
+She looked at him with just a little start of surprise, and a smile
+spread itself over her face.  After they had finished, and she never sang
+better, the baritone noticed that she seemed indisposed to return to her
+former place, and she retired with Frank to the opposite corner of the
+room.
+
+‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if being happy in a thing is a sign of being born
+to do it.  If it is, I am born to be a musician.’
+
+‘I should say it is; if two people are quite happy in one another’s
+company, it is as a sign they were born for one another.’
+
+‘Yes, if they are sure they are happy.  It is easier for me to be sure
+that I am happier with a thing than with a person.’
+
+‘Do you think so?  Why?’
+
+‘There is the uncertainty whether the person is happy with me.  I cannot
+be altogether happy with anybody unless I know I make him happy.’
+
+‘What kind of person is he with whom you _could_ be without making him
+happy?’
+
+The baritone rose to the upper F with a clash of chords on the piano, and
+the company broke up.  Frank went home with but one thought in his
+head—the thought of Cecilia.
+
+His bedroom faced the south-west, its windows were open, and when he
+entered, the wind, which was gradually rising, struck him on the face and
+nearly forced the door out of his hand; the fire in his blood was
+quenched, and the image of Cecilia receded.  He looked out, and saw
+reflected on the low clouds the dull glare of the distant city.  Just
+over there was Great Ormond Street, and underneath that dim, red light,
+like the light of a great house burning, was Madge Hopgood.  He lay down,
+turning over from side to side in the vain hope that by change of
+position he might sleep.  After about an hour’s feverish tossing, he just
+lost himself, but not in that oblivion which slumber usually brought him.
+He was so far awake that he saw what was around him, and yet, he was so
+far released from the control of his reason that he did not recognise
+what he saw, and it became part of a new scene created by his delirium.
+The full moon, clearing away the clouds as she moved upwards, had now
+passed round to the south, and just caught the white window-curtain
+farthest from him.  He half-opened his eyes, his mad dream still clung to
+him, and there was the dead Madge before him, pale in death, and holding
+a child in her arms!  He distinctly heard himself scream as he started up
+in affright; he could not tell where he was; the spectre faded and the
+furniture and hangings transformed themselves into their familiar
+reality.  He could not lie down again, and rose and dressed himself.  He
+was not the man to believe that the ghost could be a revelation or a
+prophecy, but, nevertheless, he was once more overcome with fear, a vague
+dread partly justifiable by the fact of Madge, by the fact that his
+father might soon know what had happened, that others also might know,
+Cecilia for example, but partly also a fear going beyond all the facts,
+and not to be accounted for by them, a strange, horrible trembling such
+as men feel in earthquakes when the solid rock shakes, on which
+everything rests.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+WHEN Frank came downstairs to breakfast the conversation turned upon his
+return to Germany.  He did not object to going, although it can hardly be
+said that he willed to go.  He was in that perilous condition in which
+the comparison of reasons is impossible, and the course taken depends
+upon some chance impulse of the moment, and is a mere drift.  He could
+not leave, however, in complete ignorance of Madge, and with no certainty
+as to her future.  He resolved therefore to make one more effort to
+discover the house.  That was all which he determined to do.  What was to
+happen when he had found it, he did not know.  He was driven to do
+something, which could not be of any importance, save for what must
+follow, but he was unable to bring himself even to consider what was to
+follow.  He knew that at Fenmarket one or other of the sisters went out
+soon after breakfast to make provision for the day, and perhaps, if they
+kept up this custom, he might be successful in his search.  He
+accordingly stationed himself in Great Ormond Street at about half-past
+nine, and kept watch from the Lamb’s Conduit Street end, shifting his
+position as well as he could, in order to escape notice.  He had not been
+there half an hour when he saw a door open, and Madge came out and went
+westwards.  She turned down Devonshire Street as if on her way to
+Holborn.  He instantly ran back to Theobalds Road, and when he came to
+the corner of Devonshire Street she was about ten yards from him, and he
+faced her.  She stopped irresolutely, as if she had a mind to return, but
+as he approached her, and she found she was recognised, she came towards
+him.
+
+‘Madge, Madge,’ he cried, ‘I want to speak to you.  I must speak with
+you.’
+
+‘Better not; let me go.’
+
+‘I say I _must_ speak to you.’
+
+‘We cannot talk here; let me go.’
+
+‘I must!  I must! come with me.’
+
+She pitied him, and although she did not consent she did not refuse.  He
+called a cab, and in ten minutes, not a word having been spoken during
+those ten minutes, they were at St Paul’s.  The morning service had just
+begun, and they sat down in a corner far away from the worshippers.
+
+‘Oh, Madge,’ he began, ‘I implore you to take me back.  I love you.  I do
+love you, and—and—I cannot leave you.’
+
+She was side by side with the father of her child about to be born.  He
+was not and could not be as another man to her, and for the moment there
+was the danger lest she should mistake this secret bond for love.  The
+thought of what had passed between them, and of the child, his and hers,
+almost overpowered her.
+
+‘I cannot,’ he repeated.  ‘I _ought_ not.  What will become of me?’
+
+She felt herself stronger; he was excited, but his excitement was not
+contagious.  The string vibrated, and the note was resonant, but it was
+not a note which was consonant with hers, and it did not stir her to
+respond.  He might love her, he was sincere enough to sacrifice himself
+for her, and to remain faithful to her, but the voice was not altogether
+that of his own true self.  Partly, at least, it was the voice of what he
+considered to be duty, of superstition and alarm.  She was silent.
+
+‘Madge,’ he continued, ‘ought you to refuse?  You have some love for me.
+Is it not greater than the love which thousands feel for one another.
+Will you blast your future and mine, and, perhaps, that of someone
+besides, who may be very dear to you?  _Ought_ you not, I say, to
+listen?’
+
+The service had come to an end, the organist was playing a voluntary,
+rather longer than usual, and the congregation was leaving, some of them
+passing near Madge and Frank, and casting idle glances on the young
+couple who had evidently come neither to pray nor to admire the
+architecture.  Madge recognised the well-known St Ann’s fugue, and,
+strange to say, even at such a moment it took entire possession of her;
+the golden ladder was let down and celestial visitors descended.  When
+the music ceased she spoke.
+
+‘It would be a crime.’
+
+‘A crime, but I—’  She stopped him.
+
+‘I know what you are going to say.  I know what is the crime to the
+world; but it would have been a crime, perhaps a worse crime, if a
+ceremony had been performed beforehand by a priest, and the worst of
+crimes would be that ceremony now.  I must go.’  She rose and began to
+move towards the door.
+
+He walked silently by her side till they were in St Paul’s churchyard,
+when she took him by the hand, pressed it affectionately and suddenly
+turned into one of the courts that lead towards Paternoster Row.  He did
+not follow her, something repelled him, and when he reached home it
+crossed his mind that marriage, after such delay, would be a poor
+recompense, as he could not thereby conceal her disgrace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+IT was clear that these two women could not live in London on
+seventy-five pounds a year, most certainly not with the prospect before
+them, and Clara cast about for something to do.  Marshall had a
+brother-in-law, a certain Baruch Cohen, a mathematical instrument maker
+in Clerkenwell, and to him Marshall accidentally one day talked about
+Clara, and said that she desired an occupation.  Cohen himself could not
+give Clara any work, but he knew a second-hand bookseller, an old man who
+kept a shop in Holborn, who wanted a clerk, and Clara thus found herself
+earning another pound a week.  With this addition she and her sister
+could manage to pay their way and provide what Madge would want.  The
+hours were long, the duties irksome and wearisome, and, worst of all, the
+conditions under which they were performed, were not only as bad as they
+could be, but their badness was of a kind to which Clara had never been
+accustomed, so that she felt every particle of it in its full force.  The
+windows of the shop were, of course, full of books, and the walls were
+lined with them.  In the middle of the shop also was a range of shelves,
+and books were stacked on the floor, so that the place looked like a huge
+cubical block of them through which passages had been bored.  At the back
+the shop became contracted in width to about eight feet, and consequently
+the central shelves were not continued there, but just where they ended,
+and overshadowed by them were a little desk and a stool.  All round the
+desk more books were piled, and some manœuvring was necessary in order to
+sit down.  This was Clara’s station.  Occasionally, on a brilliant, a
+very brilliant day in summer, she could write without gas, but, perhaps,
+there were not a dozen such days in the year.  By twisting herself
+sideways she could just catch a glimpse of a narrow line of sky over some
+heavy theology which was not likely to be disturbed, and was therefore
+put at the top of the window, and once when somebody bought the _Calvin
+Joann_.  _Opera Omnia_, 9 _vol. folio_, _Amst._ 1671—it was very clear
+that afternoon—she actually descried towards seven o’clock a blessed star
+exactly in the middle of the gap the Calvin had left.
+
+The darkness was very depressing, and poor Clara often shut her eyes as
+she bent over her day-book and ledger, and thought of the Fenmarket flats
+where the sun could be seen bisected by the horizon at sun-rising and
+sun-setting, and where even the southern Antares shone with diamond
+glitter close to the ground during summer nights.  She tried to reason
+with herself during the dreadful smoke fogs; she said to herself that
+they were only half-a-mile thick, and she carried herself up in
+imagination and beheld the unclouded azure, the filthy smother lying all
+beneath her, but her dream did not continue, and reality was too strong
+for her.  Worse, perhaps, than the eternal gloom was the dirt.  She was
+naturally fastidious, and as her skin was thin and sensitive, dust was
+physically a discomfort.  Even at Fenmarket she was continually washing
+her hands and face, and, indeed, a wash was more necessary to her after a
+walk than food or drink.  It was impossible to remain clean in Holborn
+for five minutes; everything she touched was foul with grime; her collar
+and cuffs were black with it when she went home to her dinner, and it was
+not like the honest, blowing road-sand of Fenmarket highways, but a
+loathsome composition of everything disgusting which could be produced by
+millions of human beings and animals packed together in soot.  It was a
+real misery to her and made her almost ill.  However, she managed to set
+up for herself a little lavatory in the basement, and whenever she had a
+minute at her command, she descended and enjoyed the luxury of a cool,
+dripping sponge and a piece of yellow soap.  The smuts began to gather
+again the moment she went upstairs, but she strove to arm herself with a
+little philosophy against them.  ‘What is there in life,’ she moralised,
+smiling at her sermonising, ‘which once won is for ever won?  It is
+always being won and always being lost.’  Her master, fortunately, was
+one of the kindest of men, an old gentleman of about sixty-five, who wore
+a white necktie, clean every morning.  He was really a _gentle_man in the
+true sense of that much misused word, and not a mere _trades_man; that is
+to say, he loved his business, not altogether for the money it brought
+him, but as an art.  He was known far and wide, and literary people were
+glad to gossip with him.  He never pushed his wares, and he hated to sell
+them to anybody who did not know their value.  He amused Clara one
+afternoon when a carriage stopped at the door, and a lady inquired if he
+had a Manning and Bray’s _History of Surrey_.  Yes, he had a copy, and he
+pointed to the three handsome, tall folios.
+
+‘What is the price?’
+
+‘Twelve pounds ten.’
+
+‘I think I will have them.’
+
+‘Madam, you will pardon me, but, if I were you, I would not.  I think
+something much cheaper will suit you better.  If you will allow me, I
+will look out for you and will report in a few days.’
+
+‘Oh! very well,’ and she departed.
+
+‘The wife of a brassfounder,’ he said to Clara; ‘made a lot of money, and
+now he has bought a house at Dulwich and is setting up a library.
+Somebody has told him that he ought to have a county history, and that
+Manning and Bray is the book.  Manning and Bray!  What he wants is a
+Dulwich and Denmark Hill Directory.  No, no,’ and he took down one of the
+big volumes, blew the dust off the top edges and looked at the old
+book-plate inside, ‘you won’t go there if I can help it.’  He took a
+fancy to Clara when he found she loved literature, although what she read
+was out of his department altogether, and his perfectly human behaviour
+to her prevented that sense of exile and loneliness which is so horrible
+to many a poor creature who comes up to London to begin therein the
+struggle for existence.  She read and meditated a good deal in the shop,
+but not to much profit, for she was continually interrupted, and the
+thought of her sister intruded itself perpetually.
+
+Madge seldom or never spoke of her separation from Frank, but one night,
+when she was somewhat less reserved than usual, Clara ventured to ask her
+if she had heard from him since they parted.
+
+‘I met him once.’
+
+‘Madge, do you mean that he found out where we are living, and that he
+came to see you?’
+
+‘No, it was just round the corner as I was going towards Holborn.’
+
+‘Nothing could have brought him here but yourself,’ said Clara, slowly.
+
+‘Clara, you doubt?’
+
+‘No, no!  I doubt you?  Never!’
+
+‘But you hesitate; you reflect.  Speak out.’
+
+‘God forbid I should utter a word which would induce you to disbelieve
+what you know to be right.  It is much more important to believe
+earnestly that something is morally right than that it should be really
+right, and he who attempts to displace a belief runs a certain risk,
+because he is not sure that what he substitutes can be held with equal
+force.  Besides, each person’s belief, or proposed course of action, is a
+part of himself, and if he be diverted from it and takes up with that
+which is not himself, the unity of his nature is impaired, and he loses
+himself.’
+
+‘Which is as much as to say that the prophet is to break no idols.’
+
+‘You know I do not mean that, and you know, too, how incapable I am of
+defending myself in argument.  I never can stand up for anything I say.
+I can now and then say something, but, when I have said it, I run away.’
+
+‘My dearest Clara,’ Madge put her arm over her sister’s shoulder as they
+sat side by side, ‘do not run away now; tell me just what you think of
+me.’
+
+Clara was silent for a minute.
+
+‘I have sometimes wondered whether you have not demanded a little too
+much of yourself and Frank.  It is always a question of how much.  There
+is no human truth which is altogether true, no love which is altogether
+perfect.  You may possibly have neglected virtue or devotion such as you
+could not find elsewhere, overlooking it because some failing, or the
+lack of sympathy on some unimportant point, may at the moment have been
+prominent.  Frank loved you, Madge.’
+
+Madge did not reply; she withdrew her arm from her sister’s neck, threw
+herself back in her chair and closed her eyes.  She saw again the
+Fenmarket roads, that summer evening, and she felt once more Frank’s
+burning caresses.  She thought of him as he left St Paul’s, perhaps
+broken-hearted.  Stronger than every other motive to return to him, and
+stronger than ever, was the movement towards him of that which belonged
+to him.
+
+At last she cried out, literally cried, with a vehemence which startled
+and terrified Clara,—
+
+‘Clara, Clara, you know not what you do!  For God’s sake forbear!’  She
+was again silent, and then she turned round hurriedly, hid her face, and
+sobbed piteously.  It lasted, however, but for a minute; she rose, wiped
+her eyes, went to the window, came back again, and said,—
+
+‘It is beginning to snow.’
+
+The iron pillar bolted to the solid rock had quivered and resounded under
+the blow, but its vibrations were nothing more than those of the rigid
+metal; the base was unshaken and, except for an instant, the column had
+not been deflected a hair’s-breadth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+MR COHEN, who had obtained the situation indirectly for Clara, thought
+nothing more about it until, one day, he went to the shop, and he then
+recollected his recommendation, which had been given solely in faith, for
+he had never seen the young woman, and had trusted entirely to Marshall.
+He found her at her dark desk, and as he approached her, she hastily put
+a mark in a book and closed it.
+
+‘Have you sold a little volume called _After Office Hours_ by a man named
+Robinson?’
+
+‘I did not know we had it.  I have never seen it.’
+
+‘I do not wonder, but I saw it here about six months ago; it was up
+there,’ pointing to a top shelf.  Clara was about to mount the ladder,
+but he stopped her, and found what he wanted.  Some of the leaves were
+torn.
+
+‘We can repair those for you; in about a couple of days it shall be
+ready.’
+
+He lingered a little, and at that moment another customer entered.  Clara
+went forward to speak to him, and Cohen was able to see that it was the
+_Heroes and Hero Worship_ she had been studying, a course of lectures
+which had been given by a Mr Carlyle, of whom Cohen knew something.  As
+the customer showed no signs of departing, Cohen left, saying he would
+call again.
+
+Before sending Robinson’s _After Office Hours_ to the binder, Clara
+looked at it.  It was made up of short essays, about twenty altogether,
+bound in dark-green cloth, lettered at the side, and published in 1841.
+They were upon the oddest subjects: such as, _Ought Children to learn
+Rules before Reasons_?  _The Higher Mathematics and Materialism_.  _Ought
+We to tell Those Whom We love what We think about Them_?  _Deductive
+Reasoning in Politics_.  _What Troubles ought We to Make Known and What
+ought We to Keep Secret_: _Courage as a Science and an Art_.
+
+Clara did not read any one essay through, she had no time, but she was
+somewhat struck with a few sentences which caught her eye; for example—‘A
+mere dream, a vague hope, ought in some cases to be more potent than a
+certainty in regulating our action.  The faintest vision of God should be
+more determinative than the grossest earthly assurance.’
+
+‘I knew a case in which a man had to encounter three successive trials of
+all the courage and inventive faculty in him.  Failure in one would have
+been ruin.  The odds against him in each trial were desperate, and
+against ultimate victory were overwhelming.  Nevertheless, he made the
+attempt, and was triumphant, by the narrowest margin, in every struggle.
+That which is of most value to us is often obtained in defiance of the
+laws of probability.’
+
+‘What is precious in Quakerism is not so much the doctrine of the Divine
+voice as that of the preliminary stillness, the closure against other
+voices and the reduction of the mind to a condition in which it can
+_listen_, in which it can discern the merest whisper, inaudible when the
+world, or interest, or passion, are permitted to speak.’
+
+‘The acutest syllogiser can never develop the actual consequences of any
+system of policy, or, indeed, of any change in human relationship, man
+being so infinitely complex, and the interaction of human forces so
+incalculable.’
+
+‘Many of our speculative difficulties arise from the unauthorised
+conception of an _omnipotent_ God, a conception entirely of our own
+creation, and one which, if we look at it closely, has no meaning.  It is
+because God _could_ have done otherwise, and did not, that we are
+confounded.  It may be distressing to think that God cannot do any
+better, but it is not so distressing as to believe that He might have
+done better had He so willed.’
+
+Although these passages were disconnected, each of them seemed to Clara
+to be written in a measure for herself, and her curiosity was excited
+about the author.  Perhaps the man who called would say something about
+him.
+
+Baruch Cohen was now a little over forty.  He was half a Jew, for his
+father was a Jew and his mother a Gentile.  The father had broken with
+Judaism, but had not been converted to any Christian church or sect.  He
+was a diamond-cutter, originally from Holland, came over to England and
+married the daughter of a mathematical instrument maker, at whose house
+he lodged in Clerkenwell.  The son was apprenticed to his maternal
+grandfather’s trade, became very skilful at it, worked at it himself,
+employed a man and a boy, and supplied London shops, which sold his
+instruments at about three times the price he obtained for them.  Baruch,
+when he was very young, married Marshall’s elder sister, but she died at
+the birth of her first child and he had been a widower now for nineteen
+years.  He had often thought of taking another wife, and had seen, during
+these nineteen years, two or three women with whom he had imagined
+himself to be really in love, and to whom he had been on the verge of
+making proposals, but in each case he had hung back, and when he found
+that a second and a third had awakened the same ardour for a time as the
+first, he distrusted its genuineness.  He was now, too, at a time of life
+when a man has to make the unpleasant discovery that he is beginning to
+lose the right to expect what he still eagerly desires, and that he must
+beware of being ridiculous.  It is indeed a very unpleasant discovery.
+If he has done anything well which was worth doing, or has made himself a
+name, he may be treated by women with respect or adulation, but any
+passable boy of twenty is really more interesting to them, and,
+unhappily, there is perhaps so much of the man left in him that he would
+rather see the eyes of a girl melt when she looked at him than be adored
+by all the drawing-rooms in London as the author of the greatest poem
+since _Paradise Lost_, or as the conqueror of half a continent.  Baruch’s
+life during the last nineteen years had been such that he was still
+young, and he desired more than ever, because not so blindly as he
+desired it when he was a youth, the tender, intimate sympathy of a
+woman’s love.  It was singular that, during all those nineteen years, he
+should not once have been overcome.  It seemed to him as if he had been
+held back, not by himself, but by some external power, which refused to
+give any reasons for so doing.  There was now less chance of yielding
+than ever; he was reserved and self-respectful, and his manner towards
+women distinctly announced to them that he knew what he was and that he
+had no claims whatever upon them.  He was something of a philosopher,
+too; he accepted, therefore, as well as he could, without complaint, the
+inevitable order of nature, and he tried to acquire, although often he
+failed, that blessed art of taking up lightly and even with a smile
+whatever he was compelled to handle.  ‘It is possible,’ he said once, ‘to
+consider death too seriously.’  He was naturally more than half a Jew;
+his features were Jewish, his thinking was Jewish, and he believed after
+a fashion in the Jewish sacred books, or, at anyrate, read them
+continuously, although he had added to his armoury defensive weapons of
+another type.  In nothing was he more Jewish than in a tendency to dwell
+upon the One, or what he called God, clinging still to the expression of
+his forefathers although departing so widely from them.  In his ethics
+and system of life, as well as in his religion, there was the same
+intolerance of a multiplicity which was not reducible to unity.  He
+seldom explained his theory, but everybody who knew him recognised the
+difference which it wrought between him and other men.  There was a
+certain concord in everything he said and did, as if it were directed by
+some enthroned but secret principle.
+
+He had encountered no particular trouble since his wife’s death, but his
+life had been unhappy.  He had no friends, much as he longed for
+friendship, and he could not give any reasons for his failure.  He saw
+other persons more successful, but he remained solitary.  Their needs
+were not so great as his, for it is not those who have the least but
+those who have the most to give who most want sympathy.  He had often
+made advances; people had called on him and had appeared interested in
+him, but they had dropped away.  The cause was chiefly to be found in his
+nationality.  The ordinary Englishman disliked him simply as a Jew, and
+the better sort were repelled by a lack of geniality and by his inability
+to manifest a healthy interest in personal details.  Partly also the
+cause was that those who care to speak about what is nearest to them are
+very rare, and most persons find conversation easy in proportion to the
+remoteness of its topics from them.  Whatever the reasons may have been,
+Baruch now, no matter what the pressure from within might be, generally
+kept himself to himself.  It was a mistake and he ought not to have
+retreated so far upon repulse.  A word will sometimes, when least
+expected, unlock a heart, a soul is gained for ever, and at once there is
+much more than a recompense for the indifference of years.
+
+After the death of his wife, Baruch’s affection spent itself upon his son
+Benjamin, whom he had apprenticed to a firm of optical instrument makers
+in York.  The boy was not very much like his father.  He was indifferent
+to that religion by which his father lived, but he inherited an aptitude
+for mathematics, which was very necessary in his trade.  Benjamin also
+possessed his father’s rectitude, trusted him, and looked to him for
+advice to such a degree that even Baruch, at last, thought it would be
+better to send him away from home in order that he might become a little
+more self-reliant and independent.  It was the sorest of trials to part
+with him, and, for some time after he left, Baruch’s loneliness was
+intolerable.  It was, however, relieved by a visit to York perhaps once
+in four or five months, for whenever business could be alleged as an
+excuse for going north, he managed, as he said, ‘to take York on his
+way.’
+
+The day after he met Clara he started for Birmingham, and although York
+was certainly not ‘on his way,’ he pushed forward to the city and reached
+it on a Saturday evening.  He was to spend Sunday there, and on Sunday
+morning he proposed that they should hear the cathedral service, and go
+for a walk in the afternoon.  To this suggestion Benjamin partially
+assented.  He wished to go to the cathedral in the morning, but thought
+his father had better rest after dinner.  Baruch somewhat resented the
+insinuation of possible fatigue consequent on advancing years.
+
+‘What do you mean?’ he said; ‘you know well enough I enjoy a walk in the
+afternoon; besides, I shall not see much of you, and do not want to lose
+what little time I have.’
+
+About three, therefore, they started, and presently a girl met them, who
+was introduced simply as ‘Miss Masters.’
+
+‘We are going to your side of the water,’ said the son; ‘you may as well
+cross with us.’
+
+They came to a point where a boat was moored, and a man was in it.  There
+was no regular ferry, but on Sundays he earned a trifle by taking people
+to the opposite meadow, and thus enabling them to vary their return
+journey to the city.  When they were about two-thirds of the way over,
+Benjamin observed that if they stood up they could see the Minster.  They
+all three rose, and without an instant’s warning—they could not tell
+afterwards how it happened—the boat half capsized, and they were in eight
+or nine feet of water.  Baruch could not swim and went down at once, but
+on coming up close to the gunwale he caught at it and held fast.  Looking
+round, he saw that Benjamin, who could swim well, had made for Miss
+Masters, and, having caught her by the back of the neck, was taking her
+ashore.  The boatman, who could also swim, called out to Baruch to hold
+on, gave the boat three or four vigorous strokes from the stern, and
+Baruch felt the ground under his feet.  The boatman’s little cottage was
+not far off, and, when the party reached it, Benjamin earnestly desired
+Miss Masters to take off her wet clothes and occupy the bed which was
+offered her.  He himself would run home—it was not half-a-mile—and, after
+having changed, would go to her house and send her sister with what was
+wanted.  He was just off when it suddenly struck him that his father
+might need some attention.
+
+‘Oh, father—’ he began, but the boatman’s wife interposed.
+
+‘He can’t be left like that, and he can’t go home; he’ll catch his death
+o’ cold, and there isn’t but one more bed in the house, and that isn’t
+quite fit to put a gentleman in.  Howsomever, he must turn in there, and
+my husband, he can go into the back-kitchen and rub himself down.  You
+won’t do yourself no good, Mr Cohen,’ addressing the son, whom she knew,
+‘by going back; you’d better stay here and get into bed with your
+father.’
+
+In a few minutes the boatman would have gone on the errand, but Benjamin
+could not lose the opportunity of sacrificing himself for Miss Masters.
+He rushed off, and in three-quarters of an hour had returned with the
+sister.  Having learned, after anxious inquiry, that Miss Masters, so far
+as could be discovered, had not caught a chill, he went to his father.
+
+‘Well, father, I hope you are none the worse for the ducking,’ he said
+gaily.  ‘The next time you come to York you’d better bring another suit
+of clothes with you.’
+
+Baruch turned round uneasily and did not answer immediately.  He had had
+a narrow escape from drowning.
+
+‘Nothing of much consequence.  Is your friend all right?’
+
+‘Oh, yes; I was anxious about her, for she is not very strong, but I do
+not think she will come to much harm.  I made them light a fire in her
+room.’
+
+‘Are they drying my clothes?’
+
+‘I’ll go and see.’
+
+He went away and encountered the elder Miss Masters, who told him that
+her sister, feeling no ill effects from the plunge, had determined to go
+home at once, and in fact was nearly ready.  Benjamin waited, and
+presently she came downstairs, smiling.
+
+‘Nothing the matter.  I owe it to you, however, that I am not now in
+another world.’
+
+Benjamin was in an ecstasy, and considered himself bound to accompany her
+to her door.
+
+Meanwhile, Baruch lay upstairs alone in no very happy temper.  He heard
+the conversation below, and knew that his son had gone.  In all genuine
+love there is something of ferocious selfishness.  The perfectly divine
+nature knows how to keep it in check, and is even capable—supposing it to
+be a woman’s nature—of contentment if the loved one is happy, no matter
+with what or with whom; but the nature only a little less than divine
+cannot, without pain, endure the thought that it no longer owns privately
+and exclusively that which it loves, even when it loves a child, and
+Baruch was particularly excusable, considering his solitude.
+Nevertheless, he had learned a little wisdom, and, what was of much
+greater importance, had learned how to use it when he needed it.  It had
+been forced upon him; it was an adjustment to circumstances, the wisest
+wisdom.  It was not something without any particular connection with him;
+it was rather the external protection built up from within to shield him
+where he was vulnerable; it was the answer to questions which had been
+put to _him_, and not to those which had been put to other people.  So it
+came to pass that, when he said bitterly to himself that, if he were at
+that moment lying dead at the bottom of the river, Benjamin would have
+found consolation very near at hand, he was able to reflect upon the
+folly of self-laceration, and to rebuke himself for a complaint against
+what was simply the order of Nature, and not a personal failure.
+
+His self-conquest, however, was not very permanent.  When he left York
+the next morning, he fancied his son was not particularly grieved, and he
+was passive under the thought that an epoch in his life had come, that
+the milestones now began to show the distance to the place to which he
+travelled, and, still worse, that the boy who had been so close to him,
+and upon whom he had so much depended, had gone from him.
+
+There is no remedy for our troubles which is uniformly and progressively
+efficacious.  All that we have a right to expect from our religion is
+that gradually, very gradually, it will assist us to a real victory.
+After each apparent defeat, if we are bravely in earnest, we gain
+something on our former position.  Baruch was two days on his journey
+back to town, and as he came nearer home, he recovered himself a little.
+Suddenly he remembered the bookshop and the book for which he had to
+call, and that he had intended to ask Marshall something about the
+bookseller’s new assistant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+MADGE was a puzzle to Mrs Caffyn.  Mrs Caffyn loved her, and when she was
+ill had behaved like a mother to her.  The newly-born child, a healthy
+girl, was treated by Mrs Caffyn as if it were her own granddaughter, and
+many little luxuries were bought which never appeared in Mrs Marshall’s
+weekly bill.  Naturally, Mrs Caffyn’s affection moved a response from
+Madge, and Mrs Caffyn by degrees heard the greater part of her history;
+but why she had separated herself from her lover without any apparent
+reason remained a mystery, and all the greater was the mystery because
+Mrs Caffyn believed that there were no other facts to be known than those
+she knew.  She longed to bring about a reconciliation.  It was dreadful
+to her that Madge should be condemned to poverty, and that her infant
+should be fatherless, although there was a gentleman waiting to take them
+both and make them happy.
+
+‘The hair won’t be dark like yours, my love,’ she said one afternoon,
+soon after Madge had come downstairs and was lying on the sofa.  ‘The
+hair do darken a lot, but hers will never be black.  It’s my opinion as
+it’ll be fair.’
+
+Madge did not speak, and Mrs Caffyn, who was sitting at the head of the
+couch, put her work and her spectacles on the table.  It was growing
+dusk; she took Madge’s hand, which hung down by her side, and gently
+lifted it up.  Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn thought.  She was proud
+that she had for a friend the owner of such a hand, who behaved to her as
+an equal.  It was delightful to be kissed—no mere formal salutations—by a
+lady fit to go into the finest drawing-room in London, but it was a
+greater delight that Madge’s talk suited her better than any she had
+heard at Great Oakhurst.  It was natural she should rejoice when she
+discovered, unconsciously that she had a soul, to which the speech of the
+stars, though somewhat strange, was not an utterly foreign tongue.
+
+She retained her hold on Madge’s hand.
+
+‘May be,’ she continued, ‘it’ll be like its father’s.  In our family all
+the gals take after the father, and all the boys after the mother.  I
+suppose as _he_ has lightish hair?’
+
+Still Madge said nothing.
+
+‘It isn’t easy to believe as the father of that blessed dear could have
+been a bad lot.  I’m sure he isn’t, and yet there’s that Polesden gal at
+the farm, she as went wrong with Jim, a great ugly brute, and she herself
+warnt up to much, well, as I say, her child was the delicatest little
+angel as I ever saw.  It’s my belief as God-a-mighty mixes Hisself up in
+it more nor we think.  But there _was_ nothing amiss with him, was there,
+my sweet?’
+
+Mrs Caffyn inclined her head towards Madge.
+
+‘Oh, no!  Nothing, nothing.’
+
+‘Don’t you think, my dear, if there’s nothing atwixt you, as it was a
+flyin’ in the face of Providence to turn him off?  You were reglarly
+engaged to him, and I have heard you say he was very fond of you.  I
+suppose there were some high words about something, and a kind of a
+quarrel like, and so you parted, but that’s nothing.  It might all be
+made up now, and it ought to be made up.  What was it about?’
+
+‘There was no quarrel.’
+
+‘Well, of course, if you don’t like to say anything more to me, I won’t
+ask you.  I don’t want to hear any secrets as I shouldn’t hear.  I speak
+only because I can’t abear to see you here when I believe as everything
+might be put right, and you might have a house of your own, and a good
+husband, and be happy for the rest of your days.  It isn’t too late for
+that now.  I know what I know, and as how he’d marry you at once.’
+
+‘Oh, my dear Mrs Caffyn, I have no secret from you, who have been so good
+to me: I can only say I could not love him—not as I ought.’
+
+‘If you can’t love a man, that’s to say if you can’t _abear_ him, it’s
+wrong to have him, but if there’s a child that does make a difference,
+for one has to think of the child and of being respectable.  There’s
+something in being respectable; although, for that matter, I’ve see’d
+respectable people at Great Oakhurst as were ten times worse than those
+as aren’t.  Still, a-speaking for myself, I’d put up with a goodish bit
+to marry the man whose child wor mine.’
+
+‘For myself I could, but it wouldn’t be just to him.’
+
+‘I don’t see what you mean.’
+
+‘I mean that I could sacrifice myself if I believed it to be my duty, but
+I should wrong him cruelly if I were to accept him and did not love him
+with all my heart.’
+
+‘My dear, you take my word for it, he isn’t so particklar as you are.  A
+man isn’t so particklar as a woman.  He goes about his work, and has all
+sorts of things in his head, and if a woman makes him comfortable when he
+comes home, he’s all right.  I won’t say as one woman is much the same as
+another to a man—leastways to all men—but still they are _not_
+particklar.  Maybe, though, it isn’t quite the same with gentlefolk like
+yourself,—but there’s that blessed baby a-cryin’.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn hastened upstairs, leaving Madge to her reflections.  Once
+more the old dialectic reappeared.  ‘After all,’ she thought, ‘it is, as
+Clara said, a question of degree.  There are not a thousand husbands and
+wives in this great city whose relationship comes near perfection.  If I
+felt aversion my course would be clear, but there is no aversion; on the
+contrary, our affection for one another is sufficient for a decent
+household and decent existence undisturbed by catastrophes.  No brighter
+sunlight is obtained by others far better than myself.  Ought I to expect
+a refinement of relationship to which I have no right?  Our claims are
+always beyond our deserts, and we are disappointed if our poor, mean,
+defective natures do not obtain the homage which belongs to those of
+ethereal texture.  It will be a life with no enthusiasms nor romance,
+perhaps, but it will be tolerable, and what may be called happy, and my
+child will be protected and educated.  My child! what is there which I
+ought to put in the balance against her?  If our sympathy is not
+complete, I have my own little oratory: I can keep the candles alight,
+close the door, and worship there alone.’
+
+So she mused, and her foes again ranged themselves over against her.
+There was nothing to support her but something veiled, which would not
+altogether disclose or explain itself.  Nevertheless, in a few minutes,
+her enemies had vanished, like a mist before a sudden wind, and she was
+once more victorious.  Precious and rare are those divine souls, to whom
+that which is aërial is substantial, the only true substance; those for
+whom a pale vision possesses an authority they are forced unconditionally
+to obey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+MRS CAFFYN was unhappy, and made up her mind that she would talk to Frank
+herself.  She had learned enough about him from the two sisters,
+especially from Clara, to make her believe that, with a very little
+management, she could bring him back to Madge.  The difficulty was to see
+him without his father’s knowledge.  At last she determined to write to
+him, and she made her son-in-law address the envelope and mark it
+private.  This is what she said:—
+
+    ‘DEAR SIR,—Although unbeknown to you, I take the liberty of telling
+    you as M. H. is alivin’ here with me, and somebody else as I think
+    you ought to see, but perhaps I’d better have a word or two with you
+    myself, if not quite ill-convenient to you, and maybe you’ll be kind
+    enough to say how that’s to be done to your obedient, humble servant,
+
+                                                             ‘MRS CAFFYN.’
+
+She thought this very diplomatic, inasmuch as nobody but Frank could
+possibly suspect what the letter meant.  It went to Stoke Newington, but,
+alas! he was in Germany, and poor Mrs Caffyn had to wait a week before
+she received a reply.  Frank of course understood it.  Although he had
+thought about Madge continually, he had become calmer.  He saw, it is
+true, that there was no stability in his position, and that he could not
+possibly remain where he was.  Had Madge been the commonest of the
+common, and his relationship to her the commonest of the common, he could
+not permit her to cast herself loose from him for ever and take upon
+herself the whole burden of his misdeed.  But he did not know what to do,
+and, as successive considerations and reconsiderations ended in nothing,
+and the distractions of a foreign country were so numerous, Madge had for
+a time been put aside, like a huge bill which we cannot pay, and which
+staggers us.  We therefore docket it, and hide it in the desk, and we
+imagine we have done something.  Once again, however, the flame leapt up
+out of the ashes, vivid as ever.  Once again the thought that he had been
+so close to Madge, and that she had yielded to him, touched him with
+peculiar tenderness, and it seemed impossible to part himself from her.
+To a man with any of the nobler qualities of man it is not only a sense
+of honour which binds him to a woman who has given him all she has to
+give.  Separation seems unnatural, monstrous, a divorce from himself; it
+is not she alone, but it is himself whom he abandons.  Frank’s duty, too,
+pointed imperiously to the path he ought to take, duty to the child as
+well as to the mother.  He determined to go home, secretly; Mrs Caffyn
+would not have written if she had not seen good reason for believing that
+Madge still belonged to him.  He made up his mind to start the next day,
+but when the next day came, instructions to go immediately to Hamburg
+arrived from his father.  There were rumours of the insolvency of a house
+with which Mr Palmer dealt; inquiries were necessary which could better
+be made personally, and if these rumours were correct, as Mr Palmer
+believed them to be, his agency must be transferred to some other firm.
+There was now no possibility of a journey to England.  For a moment he
+debated whether, when he was at Hamburg, he could not slip over to
+London, but it would be dangerous.  Further orders might come from his
+father, and the failure to acknowledge them would lead to evasion, and
+perhaps to discovery.  He must, therefore, content himself with a written
+explanation to Mrs Caffyn why he could not meet her, and there should be
+one more effort to make atonement to Madge.  This was what went to Mrs
+Caffyn, and to her lodger:—
+
+    ‘DEAR MADAM,—Your note has reached me here.  I am very sorry that my
+    engagements are so pressing that I cannot leave Germany at present.
+    I have written to Miss Hopgood.  There is one subject which I cannot
+    mention to her—I cannot speak to her about money.  Will you please
+    give me full information?  I enclose £20, and I must trust to your
+    discretion.  I thank you heartily for all your kindness.—Truly yours,
+
+                                                           ‘FRANK PALMER.’
+
+    ‘MY DEAREST MADGE,—I cannot help saying one more word to you,
+    although, when I last saw you, you told me that it was useless for me
+    to hope.  I know, however, that there is now another bond between us,
+    the child is mine as well as yours, and if I am not all that you
+    deserve, ought you to prevent me from doing my duty to it as well as
+    to you?  It is true that if we were to marry I could never right you,
+    and perhaps my father would have nothing to do with us, but in time
+    he might relent, and I will come over at once, or, at least, the
+    moment I have settled some business here, and you shall be my wife.
+    Do, my dearest Madge, consent.’
+
+When he came to this point his pen stopped.  What he had written was very
+smooth, but very tame and cold.  However, nothing better presented
+itself; he changed his position, sat back in his chair, and searched
+himself, but could find nothing.  It was not always so.  Some months ago
+there would have been no difficulty, and he would not have known when to
+come to an end.  The same thing would have been said a dozen times,
+perhaps, but it would not have seemed the same to him, and each
+succeeding repetition would have been felt with the force of novelty.  He
+took a scrap of paper and tried to draft two or three sentences, altered
+them several times and made them worse.  He then re-read the letter; it
+was too short; but after all it contained what was necessary, and it must
+go as it stood.  She knew how he felt towards her.  So he signed it after
+giving his address at Hamburg, and it was posted.
+
+Three or four days afterwards Mrs Marshall, in accordance with her usual
+custom, went to see Madge before she was up.  The child lay peacefully by
+its mother’s side and Frank’s letter was upon the counterpane.  The
+resolution that no letter from him should be opened had been broken.  The
+two women had become great friends and, within the last few weeks, Madge
+had compelled Mrs Marshall to call her by her Christian name.
+
+‘You’ve had a letter from Mr Palmer; I was sure it was his handwriting
+when it came late last night.’
+
+‘You can read it; there is nothing private in it.’
+
+She turned round to the child and Mrs Marshall sat down and read.  When
+she had finished she laid the letter on the bed again and was silent.
+
+‘Well?’ said Madge.  ‘Would you say “No?”’
+
+‘Yes, I would.’
+
+‘For your own sake, as well as for his?’
+
+Mrs Marshall took up the letter and read half of it again.
+
+‘Yes, you had better say “No.”  You will find it dull, especially if you
+have to live in London.’
+
+‘Did you find London dull when you came to live in it?’
+
+‘Rather; Marshall is away all day long.’
+
+‘But scarcely any woman in London expects to marry a man who is not away
+all day.’
+
+‘They ought then to have heaps of work, or they ought to have a lot of
+children to look after; but, perhaps, being born and bred in the country,
+I do not know what people in London are.  Recollect you were country born
+and bred yourself, or, at anyrate, you have lived in the country for the
+most of your life.’
+
+‘Dull! we must all expect to be dull.’
+
+‘There’s nothing worse.  I’ve had rheumatic fever, and I say, give me the
+fever rather than what comes over me at times here.  If Marshall had not
+been so good to me, I do not know what I should have done with myself.’
+
+Madge turned round and looked Mrs Marshall straight in the face, but she
+did not flinch.
+
+‘Marshall is very good to me, but I was glad when mother and you and your
+sister came to keep me company when he is not at home.  It tired me to
+have my meals alone: it is bad for the digestion; at least, so he says,
+and he believes that it was indigestion that was the matter with me.  I
+should be sorry for myself if you were to go away; not that I want to put
+that forward.  Maybe I should never see much more of you: he is rich: you
+might come here sometimes, but he would not like to have Marshall and
+mother and me at his house.’
+
+Not a word was spoken for at least a minute.
+
+Suddenly Mrs Marshall took Madge’s hand in her own hands, leaned over
+her, and in that kind of whisper with which we wake a sleeper who is to
+be aroused to escape from sudden peril, she said in her ear,—
+
+‘Madge, Madge: for God’s sake leave him!’
+
+‘I have left him.’
+
+‘Are you sure?’
+
+‘Quite.’
+
+‘For ever?’
+
+‘For ever!’
+
+Mrs Marshall let go Madge’s hand, turned her eyes towards her intently
+for a moment, and again bent over her as if she were about to embrace
+her.  A knock, however, came at the door, and Mrs Caffyn entered with the
+cup of coffee which she always insisted on bringing before Madge rose.
+After she and her daughter had left, Madge read the letter once more.
+There was nothing new in it, but formally it was something, like the
+tolling of the bell when we know that our friend is dead.  There was a
+little sobbing, and then she kissed her child with such eagerness that it
+began to cry.
+
+‘You’ll answer that letter, I suppose?’ said Mrs Caffyn, when they were
+alone.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘I’m rather glad.  It would worrit you, and there’s nothing worse for a
+baby than worritin’ when it’s mother’s a-feedin it.’
+
+Mr Caffyn wrote as follows:—
+
+    ‘DEAR SIR,—I was sorry as you couldn’t come; but I believe now as it
+    was better as you didn’t.  I am no scollard, and so no more from your
+    obedient, humble servant,
+
+                                                              ‘MRS CAFFYN.
+
+    ‘_P.S._—I return the money, having no use for the same.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+BARUCH did not obtain any very definite information from Marshall about
+Clara.  He was told that she had a sister; that they were both of them
+gentlewomen; that their mother and father were dead; that they were great
+readers, and that they did not go to church nor chapel, but that they
+both went sometimes to hear a certain Mr A. J. Scott lecture.  He was
+once assistant minister to Irving, but was now heretical, and had a
+congregation of his own creating at Woolwich.
+
+Baruch called at the shop and found Clara once more alone.  The book was
+packed up and had being lying ready for him for two or three days.  He
+wanted to speak, but hardly knew how to begin.  He looked idly round the
+shelves, taking down one volume after another, and at last he said,—
+
+‘I suppose nobody but myself has ever asked for a copy of Robinson?’
+
+‘Not since I have been here.’
+
+‘I do not wonder at it; he printed only two hundred and fifty; he gave
+away five-and-twenty, and I am sure nearly two hundred were sold as
+wastepaper.’
+
+‘He is a friend of yours?’
+
+‘He was a friend; he is dead; he was an usher in a private school,
+although you might have supposed, from the title selected, that he was a
+clerk.  I told him it was useless to publish, and his publishers told him
+the same thing.’
+
+‘I should have thought that some notice would have been taken of him; he
+is so evidently worth it.’
+
+‘Yes, but although he was original and reflective, he had no particular
+talent.  His excellence lay in criticism and observation, often profound,
+on what came to him every day, and he was valueless in the literary
+market.  A talent of some kind is necessary to genius if it is to be
+heard.  So he died utterly unrecognised, save by one or two personal
+friends who loved him dearly.  He was peculiar in the depth and intimacy
+of his friendships.  Few men understand the meaning of the word
+friendship.  They consort with certain companions and perhaps very
+earnestly admire them, because they possess intellectual gifts, but of
+friendship, such as we two, Morris and I (for that was his real name)
+understood it, they know nothing.’
+
+‘Do you believe, that the good does not necessarily survive?’
+
+‘Yes and no; I believe that power every moment, so far as our eyes can
+follow it, is utterly lost.  I have had one or two friends whom the world
+has never known and never will know, who have more in them than is to be
+found in many an English classic.  I could take you to a little
+dissenting chapel not very far from Holborn where you would hear a young
+Welshman, with no education beyond that provided by a Welsh
+denominational college, who is a perfect orator and whose depth of
+insight is hardly to be matched, save by Thomas À Kempis, whom he much
+resembles.  When he dies he will be forgotten in a dozen years.  Besides,
+it is surely plain enough to everybody that there are thousands of men
+and women within a mile of us, apathetic and obscure, who, if, an object
+worthy of them had been presented to them, would have shown themselves
+capable of enthusiasm and heroism.  Huge volumes of human energy are
+apparently annihilated.’
+
+‘It is very shocking, worse to me than the thought of the earthquake or
+the pestilence.’
+
+‘I said “yes and no” and there is another side.  The universe is so
+wonderful, so intricate, that it is impossible to trace the
+transformation of its forces, and when they seem to disappear the
+disappearance may be an illusion.  Moreover, “waste” is a word which is
+applicable only to finite resources.  If the resources are infinite it
+has no meaning.’
+
+Two customers came in and Baruch was obliged to leave.  When he came to
+reflect, he was surprised to find not only how much he had said, but what
+he had said.  He was usually reserved, and with strangers he adhered to
+the weather or to passing events.  He had spoken, however, to this young
+woman as if they had been acquainted for years.  Clara, too, was
+surprised.  She always cut short attempts at conversation in the shop.
+Frequently she answered questions and receipted and returned bills
+without looking in the faces of the people who spoke to her or offered
+her the money.  But to this foreigner, or Jew, she had disclosed
+something she felt.  She was rather abashed, but presently her employer,
+Mr Barnes, returned and somewhat relieved her.
+
+‘The gentleman who bought _After Office Hours_ came for it while you were
+out?’
+
+‘Oh! what, Cohen?  Good fellow Cohen is; he it was who recommended you to
+me.  He is brother-in-law to your landlord.’  Clara was comforted; he was
+not a mere ‘casual,’ as Mr Barnes called his chance customers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+ABOUT a fortnight afterwards, on a Sunday afternoon, Cohen went to the
+Marshalls’.  He had called there once or twice since his mother-in-law
+came to London, but had seen nothing of the lodgers.  It was just about
+tea-time, but unfortunately Marshall and his wife had gone out.  Mrs
+Caffyn insisted that Cohen should stay, but Madge could not be persuaded
+to come downstairs, and Baruch, Mrs Caffyn and Clara had tea by
+themselves.  Baruch asked Mrs Caffyn if she could endure London after
+living for so long in the country.
+
+‘Ah! my dear boy, I have to like it.’
+
+‘No, you haven’t; what you mean is that, whether you like it, or whether
+you do not, you have to put up with it.’
+
+‘No, I don’t mean that.  Miss Hopgood, Cohen and me, we are the best of
+friends, but whenever he comes here, he allus begins to argue with me.
+Howsomever, arguing isn’t everything, is it, my dear?  There’s some
+things, after all, as I can do and he can’t, but he’s just wrong here in
+his arguing that wasn’t what I meant.  I meant what I said, as I had to
+like it.’
+
+‘How can you like it if you don’t?’
+
+‘How can I?  That shows you’re a man and not a woman.  Jess like you men.
+_You’d_ do what you didn’t like, I know, for you’re a good sort—and
+everybody would know you didn’t like it—but what would be the use of me
+a-livin’ in a house if I didn’t like it?—with my daughter and these dear,
+young women?  If it comes to livin’, you’d ten thousand times better say
+at once as you hate bein’ where you are than go about all day long, as if
+you was a blessed saint and put upon.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn twitched at her gown and pulled it down over her knees and
+brushed the crumbs off with energy.  She continued, ‘I can’t abide people
+who everlastin’ make believe they are put upon.  Suppose I were allus
+a-hankering every foggy day after Great Oakhurst, and yet a-tellin’ my
+daughter as I knew my place was here; if I was she, I should wish my
+mother at Jericho.’
+
+‘Then you really prefer London to Great Oakhurst?’ said Clara.
+
+‘Why, my dear, of course I do.  Don’t you think it’s pleasanter being
+here with you and your sister and that precious little creature, and my
+daughter, than down in that dead-alive place?  Not that I don’t miss my
+walk sometimes into Darkin; you remember that way as I took you once,
+Baruch, across the hill, and we went over Ranmore Common and I showed you
+Camilla Lacy, and you said as you knew a woman who wrote books who once
+lived there?  You remember them beech-woods?  Ah, it was one October!
+Weren’t they a colour—weren’t they lovely?’
+
+Baruch remembered them well enough.  Who that had ever seen them could
+forget them?
+
+‘And it was I as took you!  You wouldn’t think it, my dear, though he’s
+always a-arguin’, I do believe he’d love to go that walk again, even with
+an old woman, and see them heavenly beeches.  But, Lord, how I do talk,
+and you’ve neither of you got any tea.’
+
+‘Have you lived long in London, Miss Hopgood?’ inquired Baruch.
+
+‘Not very long.’
+
+‘Do you feel the change?’
+
+‘I cannot say I do not.’
+
+‘I suppose, however, you have brought yourself to believe in Mrs Caffyn’s
+philosophy?’
+
+‘I cannot say that, but I may say that I am scarcely strong enough for
+mere endurance, and I therefore always endeavour to find something
+agreeable in circumstances from which there is no escape.’
+
+The recognition of the One in the Many had as great a charm for Baruch as
+it had for Socrates, and Clara spoke with the ease of a person whose
+habit it was to deal with principles and generalisations.
+
+‘Yes, and mere toleration, to say nothing of opposition, at least so far
+as persons are concerned, is seldom necessary.  It is generally thought
+that what is called dramatic power is a poetic gift, but it is really an
+indispensable virtue to all of us if we are to be happy.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn did not take much interest in abstract statements.  ‘You
+remember,’ she said, turning to Baruch, ‘that man Chorley as has the big
+farm on the left-hand side just afore you come to the common?  He wasn’t
+a Surrey man: he came out of the shires.’
+
+‘Very well.’
+
+‘He’s married that Skelton girl; married her the week afore I left.
+There isn’t no love lost there, but the girl’s father said he’d murder
+him if he didn’t, and so it come off.  How she ever brought herself to it
+gets over me.  She has that big farm-house, and he’s made a fine
+drawing-room out of the livin’ room on the left-hand side as you go in,
+and put a new grate in the kitchen and turned that into the livin’ room,
+and they does the cooking in the back kitchen, but for all that, if I’d
+been her, I’d never have seen his face no more, and I’d have packed off
+to Australia.’
+
+‘Does anybody go near them?’
+
+‘Near them! of course they do, and, as true as I’m a-sittin’ here, our
+parson, who married them, went to the breakfast.  It isn’t Chorley as I
+blame so much; he’s a poor, snivellin’ creature, and he was frightened,
+but it’s the girl.  She doesn’t care for him no more than me, and then
+again, although, as I tell you, he’s such a poor creature, he’s awful
+cruel and mean, and she knows it.  But what was I a-goin’ to say?  Never
+shall I forget that wedding.  You know as it’s a short cut to the church
+across the farmyard at the back of my house.  The parson, he was rather
+late—I suppose he’d been giving himself a finishin’ touch—and, as it had
+been very dry weather, he went across the straw and stuff just at the
+edge like of the yard.  There was a pig under the straw—pigs, my dear,’
+turning to Clara, ‘nuzzle under the straw so as you can’t see them.  Just
+as he came to this pig it started up and upset him, and he fell and
+straddled across its back, and the Lord have mercy on me if it didn’t
+carry him at an awful rate, as if he was a jockey at Epsom races, till it
+come to a puddle of dung water, and then down he plumped in it.  You
+never see’d a man in such a pickle!  I heer’d the pig a-squeakin’ like
+mad, and I ran to the door, and I called out to him, and I says, “Mr
+Ormiston, won’t you come in here?” and though, as you know, he allus
+hated me, he had to come.  Mussy on us, how he did stink, and he saw me
+turn up my nose, and he was wild with rage, and he called the pig a
+filthy beast.  I says to him as that was the pig’s way and the pig didn’t
+know who it was who was a-ridin’ it, and I took his coat off and wiped
+his stockings, and sent to the rectory for another coat, and he crept up
+under the hedge to his garden, and went home, and the people at church
+had to wait for an hour.  I was glad I was goin’ away from Great
+Oakhurst, for he never would have forgiven me.’
+
+There was a ring at the front door bell, and Clara went to see who was
+there.  It was a runaway ring, but she took the opportunity of going
+upstairs to Madge.
+
+‘She has a sister?’ said Baruch.
+
+‘Yes, and I may just as well tell you about her now—leastways what I
+know—and I believe as I know pretty near everything about her.  You’ll
+have to be told if they stay here.  She was engaged to be married, and
+how it came about with a girl like that is a bit beyond me, anyhow,
+there’s a child, and the father’s a good sort by what I can make out, but
+she won’t have anything more to do with him.’
+
+‘What do you mean by “a girl like that.”’
+
+‘She isn’t one of them as goes wrong; she can talk German and reads
+books.’
+
+‘Did he desert her?’
+
+‘No, that’s just it.  She loves me, although I say it, as if I was her
+mother, and yet I’m just as much in the dark as I was the first day I saw
+her as to why she left that man.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron.
+
+‘It’s gospel truth as I never took to anybody as I’ve took to her.’
+
+After Baruch had gone, Clara returned.
+
+‘He’s a curious creature, my dear,’ said Mrs Caffyn, ‘as good as gold,
+but he’s too solemn by half.  It would do him a world of good if he’d
+somebody with him who’d make him laugh more.  He _can_ laugh, for I’ve
+seen him forced to get up and hold his sides, but he never makes no
+noise.  He’s a Jew, and they say as them as crucified our blessed Lord
+never laugh proper.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+BARUCH was now in love.  He had fallen in love with Clara suddenly and
+totally.  His tendency to reflectiveness did not diminish his passion: it
+rather augmented it.  The men and women whose thoughts are here and there
+continually are not the people to feel the full force of love.  Those who
+do feel it are those who are accustomed to think of one thing at a time,
+and to think upon it for a long time.  ‘No man,’ said Baruch once, ‘can
+love a woman unless he loves God.’  ‘I should say,’ smilingly replied the
+Gentile, ‘that no man can love God unless he loves a woman.’  ‘I am
+right,’ said Baruch, ‘and so are you.’
+
+But Baruch looked in the glass: his hair, jet black when he was a youth,
+was marked with grey, and once more the thought came to him—this time
+with peculiar force—that he could not now expect a woman to love him as
+she had a right to demand that he should love, and that he must be
+silent.  He was obliged to call upon Barnes in about a fortnight’s time.
+He still read Hebrew, and he had seen in the shop a copy of the Hebrew
+translation of the _Moreh Nevochim_ of Maimonides, which he greatly
+coveted, but could not afford to buy.  Like every true book-lover, he
+could not make up his mind when he wished for a book which was beyond his
+means that he ought once for all to renounce it, and he was guilty of
+subterfuges quite unworthy of such a reasonable creature in order to
+delude himself into the belief that he might yield.  For example, he
+wanted a new overcoat badly, but determined it was more prudent to wait,
+and a week afterwards very nearly came to the conclusion that as he had
+not ordered the coat he had actually accumulated a fund from which the
+_Moreh Nevochim_ might be purchased.  When he came to the shop he saw
+Barnes was there, and he persuaded himself he should have a quieter
+moment or two with the precious volume when Clara was alone.  Barnes, of
+course, gossiped with everybody.
+
+He therefore called again in the evening, about half an hour before
+closing time, and found that Barnes had gone home.  Clara was busy with a
+catalogue, the proof of which she was particularly anxious to send to the
+printer that night.  He did not disturb her, but took down the
+Maimonides, and for a few moments was lost in revolving the doctrine,
+afterwards repeated and proved by a greater than Maimonides, that the
+will and power of God are co-extensive: that there is nothing which might
+be and is not.  It was familiar to Baruch, but like all ideas of that
+quality and magnitude—and there are not many of them—it was always new
+and affected him like a starry night, seen hundreds of times, yet for
+ever infinite and original.
+
+But was it Maimonides which kept him till the porter began to put up the
+shutters?  Was he pondering exclusively upon God as the folio lay open
+before him?  He did think about Him, but whether he would have thought
+about Him for nearly twenty minutes if Clara had not been there is
+another matter.
+
+‘Do you walk home alone?’ he said as she gave the proof to the boy who
+stood waiting.
+
+‘Yes, always.’
+
+‘I am going to see Marshall to-night, but I must go to Newman Street
+first.  I shall be glad to walk with you, if you do not mind diverging a
+little.’
+
+She consented and they went along Oxford Street without speaking, the
+roar of the carriages and waggons preventing a word.
+
+They turned, however, into Bloomsbury, and were able to hear one another.
+He had much to say and he could not begin to say it.  There was a great
+mass of something to be communicated pent up within him, and he would
+have liked to pour it all out before her at once.  It is just at such
+times that we often take up as a means of expression and relief that
+which is absurdly inexpressive and irrelevant.
+
+‘I have not seen your sister yet; I hope I may see her this evening.’
+
+‘I hope you may, but she frequently suffers from headache and prefers to
+be alone.’
+
+‘How do you like Mr Barnes?’
+
+The answer is not worth recording, nor is any question or answer which
+was asked or returned for the next quarter of an hour worth recording,
+although they were so interesting then.  When they were crossing Bedford
+Square on their return Clara happened to say amongst other commonplaces,—
+
+‘What a relief a quiet space in London is.’
+
+‘I do not mind the crowd if I am by myself.’
+
+‘I do not like crowds; I dislike even the word, and dislike “the masses”
+still more.  I do not want to think of human beings as if they were a
+cloud of dust, and as if each atom had no separate importance.  London is
+often horrible to me for that reason.  In the country it was not quite so
+bad.’
+
+‘That is an illusion,’ said Baruch after a moment’s pause.
+
+‘I do not quite understand you, but if it be an illusion it is very
+painful.  In London human beings seem the commonest, cheapest things in
+the world, and I am one of them.  I went with Mr Marshall not long ago to
+a Free Trade Meeting, and more than two thousand people were present.
+Everybody told me it was magnificent, but it made me very sad.’  She was
+going on, but she stopped.  How was it, she thought again, that she could
+be so communicative?  How was it?  How is it that sometimes a stranger
+crosses our path, with whom, before we have known him for more than an
+hour, we have no secrets?  An hour? we have actually known him for
+centuries.
+
+She could not understand it, and she felt as if she had been inconsistent
+with her constant professions of wariness in self-revelation.
+
+‘It is an illusion, nevertheless—an illusion of the senses.  It is
+difficult to make what I mean clear, because insight is not possible
+beyond a certain point, and clearness does not come until penetration is
+complete and what we acquire is brought into a line with other
+acquisitions.  It constantly happens that we are arrested short of this
+point, but it would be wrong to suppose that our conclusions, if we may
+call them so, are of no value.’
+
+She was silent, and he did not go on.  At last he said,—
+
+‘The illusion lies in supposing that number, quantity and terms of that
+kind are applicable to any other than sensuous objects, but I cannot go
+further, at least not now.  After all, it is possible here in London for
+one atom to be of eternal importance to another.’
+
+They had gone quite round Bedford Square without entering Great Russell
+Street, which was the way eastwards.  A drunken man was holding on by the
+railings of the Square.  He had apparently been hesitating for some time
+whether he could reach the road, and, just as Baruch and Clara came up to
+him, he made a lurch towards it, and nearly fell over them.  Clara
+instinctively seized Baruch’s arm in order to avoid the poor, staggering
+mortal; they went once more to the right, and began to complete another
+circuit.  Somehow her arm had been drawn into Baruch’s, and there it
+remained.
+
+‘Have you any friends in London?’ said Baruch.
+
+‘There are Mrs Caffyn, her son and daughter, and there is Mr A. J. Scott.
+He was a friend of my father.’
+
+‘You mean the Mr Scott who was Irving’s assistant?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘An addition—’ he was about to say, ‘an additional bond’ but he corrected
+himself.  ‘A bond between us; I know Mr Scott.’
+
+‘Do you really?  I suppose you know many interesting people in London, as
+you are in his circle.’
+
+‘Very few; weeks, months have passed since anybody has said as much to me
+as you have.’
+
+His voice quivered a little, for he was trembling with an emotion quite
+inexplicable by mere intellectual relationship.  Something came through
+Clara’s glove as her hand rested on his wrist which ran through every
+nerve and sent the blood into his head.
+
+Clara felt his excitement and dreaded lest he should say something to
+which she could give no answer, and when they came opposite Great Russell
+Street, she withdrew her arm from his, and began to cross to the opposite
+pavement.  She turned the conversation towards some indifferent subject,
+and in a few minutes they were at Great Ormond Street.  Baruch would not
+go in as he had intended; he thought it was about to rain, and he was
+late.  As he went along he became calmer, and when he was fairly indoors
+he had passed into a despair entirely inconsistent—superficially—with the
+philosopher Baruch, as inconsistent as the irrational behaviour in
+Bedford Square.  He could well enough interpret, so he believed, Miss
+Hopgood’s suppression of him.  Ass that he was not to see what he ought
+to have known so well, that he was playing the fool to her; he, with a
+grown-up son, to pretend to romance with a girl!  At that moment she
+might be mocking him, or, if she was too good for mockery, she might be
+contriving to avoid or to quench him.  The next time he met her, he would
+be made to understand that he was _pitied_, and perhaps he would then
+learn the name of the youth who was his rival, and had won her.  He would
+often meet her, no doubt, but of what value would anything he could say
+be to her.  She could not be expected to make fine distinctions, and
+there was a class of elderly men, to which of course he would be
+assigned, but the thought was too horrible.
+
+Perhaps his love for Clara might be genuine; perhaps it was not.  He had
+hoped that as he grew older he might be able really to _see_ a woman, but
+he was once more like one of the possessed.  It was not Clara Hopgood who
+was before him, it was hair, lips, eyes, just as it was twenty years ago,
+just as it was with the commonest shop-boy he met, who had escaped from
+the counter, and was waiting at an area gate.  It was terrible to him to
+find that he had so nearly lost his self-control, but upon this point he
+was unjust to himself, for we are often more distinctly aware of the
+strength of the temptation than of the authority within us, which
+falteringly, but decisively, enables us at last to resist it.
+
+Then he fell to meditating how little his studies had done for him.  What
+was the use of them?  They had not made him any stronger, and he was no
+better able than other people to resist temptation.  After twenty years
+continuous labour he found himself capable of the vulgarest, coarsest
+faults and failings from which the remotest skiey influence in his
+begetting might have saved him.
+
+Clara was not as Baruch.  No such storm as that which had darkened and
+disheartened him could pass over her, but she could love, perhaps better
+than he, and she began to love him.  It was very natural to a woman such
+as Clara, for she had met a man who had said to her that what she
+believed was really of some worth.  Her father and mother had been very
+dear to her; her sister was very dear to her, but she had never received
+any such recognition as that which had now been offered to her: her own
+self had never been returned to her with such honour.  She thought,
+too—why should she not think it?—of the future, of the release from her
+dreary occupation, of a happy home with independence, and she thought of
+the children that might be.  She lay down without any misgiving.  She was
+sure he was in love with her; she did not know much of him, certainly, in
+the usual meaning of the word, but she knew enough.  She would like to
+find out more of his history; perhaps without exciting suspicion she
+might obtain it from Mrs Caffyn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+MR FRANK PALMER was back again in England.  He was much distressed when
+he received that last letter from Mrs Caffyn, and discovered that Madge’s
+resolution not to write remained unshaken.  He was really distressed, but
+he was not the man upon whom an event, however deeply felt at the time,
+could score a furrow which could not be obliterated.  If he had been a
+dramatic personage, what had happened to him would have been the second
+act leading to a fifth, in which the Fates would have appeared, but life
+seldom arranges itself in proper poetic form.  A man determines that he
+must marry; he makes the shop-girl an allowance, never sees her or her
+child again, transforms himself into a model husband, is beloved by his
+wife and family; the woman whom he kissed as he will never kiss his
+lawful partner, withdraws completely, and nothing happens to him.
+
+Frank was sure he could never love anybody as he had loved Madge, nor
+could he cut indifferently that other cord which bound him to her.
+Nobody in society expects the same paternal love for the offspring of a
+housemaid or a sempstress as for the child of the stockbroker’s or
+brewer’s daughter, and nobody expects the same obligations, but Frank was
+not a society youth, and Madge was his equal.  A score of times, when his
+fancy roved, the rope checked him as suddenly as if it were the lasso of
+a South American Gaucho.  But what could he do? that was the point.
+There were one or two things which he could have done, perhaps, and one
+or two things which he could not have done if he had been made of
+different stuff; but there was nothing more to be done which Frank Palmer
+could do.  After all, it was better that Madge should be the child’s
+mother than that it should belong to some peasant.  At least it would be
+properly educated.  As to money, Mrs Caffyn had told him expressly that
+she did not want it.  That might be nothing but pride, and he resolved,
+without very clearly seeing how, and without troubling himself for the
+moment as to details, that Madge should be entirely and handsomely
+supported by him.  Meanwhile it was of great importance that he should
+behave in such a manner as to raise no suspicion.  He did not
+particularly care for some time after his return from Germany to go out
+to the musical parties to which he was constantly invited, but he went as
+a duty, and wherever he went he met his charming cousin.  They always
+sang together; they had easy opportunities of practising together, and
+Frank, although nothing definite was said to him, soon found that his
+family and hers considered him destined for her.  He could not retreat,
+and there was no surprise manifested by anybody when it was rumoured that
+they were engaged.  His story may as well be finished at once.  He and
+Miss Cecilia Morland were married.  A few days before the wedding, when
+some legal arrangements and settlements were necessary, Frank made one
+last effort to secure an income for Madge, but it failed.  Mrs Caffyn met
+him by appointment, but he could not persuade her even to be the bearer
+of a message to Madge.  He then determined to confess his fears.  To his
+great relief Mrs Caffyn of her own accord assured him that he never need
+dread any disturbance or betrayal.
+
+‘There are three of us,’ she said, ‘as knows you—Miss Madge, Miss Clara
+and myself—and, as far as you are concerned, we are dead and buried.  I
+can’t say as I was altogether of Miss Madge’s way of looking at it at
+first, and I thought it ought to have been different, though I believe
+now as she’s right, but,’ and the old woman suddenly fired up as if some
+bolt from heaven had kindled her, ‘I pity you, sir—you, sir, I say—more
+nor I do her.  You little know what you’ve lost, the blessedest,
+sweetest, ah, and the cleverest creature, too, as ever I set eyes on.’
+
+‘But, Mrs Caffyn,’ said Frank, with much emotion, ‘it was not I who left
+her, you know it was not, and, and even—’
+
+The word ‘now’ was coming, but it did not come.
+
+‘Ah,’ said Mrs Caffyn, with something like scorn, ‘_I_ know, yes, I do
+know.  It was she, you needn’t tell me that, but, God-a-mighty in heaven,
+if I’d been you, I’d have laid myself on the ground afore her, I’d have
+tore my heart out for her, and I’d have said, “No other woman in this
+world but you”—but there, what a fool I am!  Goodbye, Mr Palmer.’
+
+She marched away, leaving Frank very miserable, and, as he imagined,
+unsettled, but he was not so.  The fit lasted all day, but when he was
+walking home that evening, he met a poor friend whose wife was dying.
+
+‘I am so grieved,’ said Frank ‘to hear of your trouble—no hope?’
+
+‘None, I am afraid.’
+
+‘It is very dreadful.’
+
+‘Yes, it is hard to bear, but to what is inevitable we must submit.’
+
+This new phrase struck Frank very much, and it seemed very philosophic to
+him, a maxim, for guidance through life.  It did not strike him that it
+was generally either a platitude or an excuse for weakness, and that a
+nobler duty is to find out what is inevitable and what is not, to declare
+boldly that what the world oftentimes affirms to be inevitable is really
+evitable, and heroically to set about making it so.  Even if revolt be
+perfectly useless, we are not particularly drawn to a man who prostrates
+himself too soon and is incapable of a little cursing.
+
+As it was impossible to provide for Madge and the child now, Frank
+considered whether he could not do something for them in the will which
+he had to make before his marriage.  He might help his daughter if he
+could not help the mother.
+
+But his wife would perhaps survive him, and the discovery would cause her
+and her children much misery; it would damage his character with them and
+inflict positive moral mischief.  The will, therefore, did not mention
+Madge, and it was not necessary to tell his secret to his solicitor.
+
+The wedding took place amidst much rejoicing; everybody thought the
+couple were most delightfully matched; the presents were magnificent; the
+happy pair went to Switzerland, came back and settled in one of the
+smaller of the old, red brick houses in Stoke Newington, with a lawn in
+front, always shaved and trimmed to the last degree of smoothness and
+accuracy, with paths on whose gravel not the smallest weed was ever seen,
+and with a hot-house that provided the most luscious black grapes.  There
+was a grand piano in the drawing-room, and Frank and Cecilia became more
+musical than ever, and Waltham Lodge was the headquarters of a little
+amateur orchestra which practised Mozart and Haydn, and gave local
+concerts.  A twelvemonth after the marriage a son was born and Frank’s
+father increased Frank’s share in the business.  Mr Palmer had long
+ceased to take any interest in the Hopgoods.  He considered that Madge
+had treated Frank shamefully in jilting him, but was convinced that he
+was fortunate in his escape.  It was clear that she was unstable; she
+probably threw him overboard for somebody more attractive, and she was
+not the woman to be a wife to his son.
+
+One day Cecilia was turning out some drawers belonging to her husband,
+and she found a dainty little slipper wrapped up in white tissue paper.
+She looked at it for a long time, wondering to whom it could have
+belonged, and had half a mind to announce her discovery to Frank, but she
+was a wise woman and forbore.  It lay underneath some neckties which were
+not now worn, two or three silk pocket handkerchiefs also discarded, and
+some manuscript books containing school themes.  She placed them on the
+top of the drawers as if they had all been taken out in a lump and the
+slipper was at the bottom.
+
+‘Frank my dear,’ she said after dinner, ‘I emptied this morning one of
+the drawers in the attic.  I wish you would look over the things and
+decide what you wish to keep.  I have not examined them, but they seem to
+be mostly rubbish.’
+
+He went upstairs after he had smoked his cigar and read his paper.  There
+was the slipper!  It all came back to him, that never-to-be-forgotten
+night, when she rebuked him for the folly of kissing her foot, and he
+begged the slipper and determined to preserve it for ever, and thought
+how delightful it would be to take it out and look at it when he was an
+old man.  Even now he did not like to destroy it, but Cecilia might have
+seen it and might ask him what he had done with it, and what could he
+say?  Finally he decided to burn it.  There was no fire, however, in the
+room, and while he stood meditating, Cecilia called him.  He replaced the
+slipper in the drawer.  He could not return that evening, but he intended
+to go back the next morning, take the little parcel away in his pocket
+and burn it at his office.  At breakfast some letters came which put
+everything else out of mind.  The first thing he did that evening was to
+revisit the garret, but the slipper had gone.  Cecilia had been there and
+had found it carefully folded up in the drawer.  She pulled it out,
+snipped and tore it into fifty pieces, carried them downstairs, threw
+them on the dining-room fire, sat down before it, poking them further and
+further into the flames, and watched them till every vestige had
+vanished.  Frank did not like to make any inquiries; Cecilia made none,
+and thence-forward no trace existed at Waltham Lodge of Madge Hopgood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+BARUCH went neither to Barnes’s shop nor to the Marshalls for nearly a
+month.  One Sunday morning he was poring over the _Moreh Nevochim_, for
+it had proved too powerful a temptation for him, and he fell upon the
+theorem that without God the Universe could not continue to exist, for
+God is its Form.  It was one of those sayings which may be nothing or
+much to the reader.  Whether it be nothing or much depends upon the
+quality of his mind.
+
+There was certainly nothing in it particularly adapted to Baruch’s
+condition at that moment, but an antidote may be none the less
+efficacious because it is not direct.  It removed him to another region.
+It was like the sight and sound of the sea to the man who has been in
+trouble in an inland city.  His self-confidence was restored, for he to
+whom an idea is revealed becomes the idea, and is no longer personal and
+consequently poor.
+
+His room seemed too small for him; he shut his book and went to Great
+Ormond Street.  He found there Marshall, Mrs Caffyn, Clara and a friend
+of Marshall’s named Dennis.
+
+‘Where is your wife?’ said Baruch to Marshall.
+
+‘Gone with Miss Madge to the Catholic chapel to hear a mass of Mozart’s.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mrs Caffyn.  ‘I tell them they’ll turn Papists if they do not
+mind.  They are always going to that place, and there’s no knowing, so
+I’ve hear’d, what them priests can do.  They aren’t like our parsons.
+Catch that man at Great Oakhurst a-turnin’ anybody.’
+
+‘I suppose,’ said Baruch to Clara, ‘it is the music takes your sister
+there?’
+
+‘Mainly, I believe, but perhaps not entirely.’
+
+‘What other attraction can there be?’
+
+‘I am not in the least disposed to become a convert.  Once for all,
+Catholicism is incredible and that is sufficient, but there is much in
+its ritual which suits me.  There is no such intrusion of the person of
+the minister as there is in the Church of England, and still worse
+amongst dissenters.  In the Catholic service the priest is nothing; it is
+his office which is everything; he is a mere means of communication.  The
+mass, in so far as it proclaims that miracle is not dead, is also very
+impressive to me.’
+
+‘I do not quite understand you,’ said Marshall, ‘but if you once chuck
+your reason overboard, you may just as well be Catholic as Protestant.
+Nothing can be more ridiculous than the Protestant objection, on the
+ground of absurdity, to the story of the saint walking about with his
+head under his arm.’
+
+The tea things had been cleared away, and Marshall was smoking.  Both he
+and Dennis were Chartists, and Baruch had interrupted a debate upon a
+speech delivered at a Chartist meeting that morning by Henry Vincent.
+
+Frederick Dennis was about thirty, tall and rather loose-limbed.  He wore
+loose clothes, his neck-cloth was tied in a big, loose knot, his feet
+were large and his boots were heavy.  His face was quite smooth, and his
+hair, which was very thick and light brown, fell across his forehead in a
+heavy wave with just two complete undulations in it from the parting at
+the side to the opposite ear.  It had a trick of tumbling over his eyes,
+so that his fingers were continually passed through it to brush it away.
+He was a wood engraver, or, as he preferred to call himself, an artist,
+but he also wrote for the newspapers, and had been a contributor to the
+_Northern Star_.  He was well brought up and was intended for the
+University, but he did not stick to his Latin and Greek, and as he showed
+some talent for drawing he was permitted to follow his bent.  His work,
+however, was not of first-rate quality, and consequently orders were not
+abundant.  This was the reason why he had turned to literature.  When he
+had any books to illustrate he lived upon what they brought him, and when
+there were no books he renewed his acquaintance with politics.  If books
+and newspapers both failed, he subsisted on a little money which had been
+left him, stayed with friends as long as he could, and amused himself by
+writing verses which showed much command over rhyme.
+
+‘I cannot stand Vincent,’ said Marshall, ‘he is too flowery for me, and
+he does not belong to the people.  He is middle-class to the backbone.’
+
+‘He is deficient in ideas,’ said Dennis.
+
+‘It is odd,’ continued Marshall, turning to Cohen, ‘that your race never
+takes any interest in politics.’
+
+‘My race is not a nation, or, if a nation, has no national home.  It took
+an interest in politics when it was in its own country, and produced some
+rather remarkable political writing.’
+
+‘But why do you care so little for what is going on now?’
+
+‘I do care, but all people are not born to be agitators, and,
+furthermore, I have doubts if the Charter will accomplish all you
+expect.’
+
+‘I know what is coming’—Marshall took the pipe out of his mouth and spoke
+with perceptible sarcasm—‘the inefficiency of merely external remedies,
+the folly of any attempt at improvement which does not begin with the
+improvement of individual character, and that those to whom we intend to
+give power are no better than those from whom we intend to take it away.
+All very well, Mr Cohen.  My answer is that at the present moment the
+stockingers in Leicester are earning four shillings and sixpence a week.
+It is not a question whether they are better or worse than their rulers.
+They want something to eat, they have nothing, and their masters have
+more than they can eat.’
+
+‘Apart altogether from purely material reasons,’ said Dennis, ‘we have
+rights; we are born into this planet without our consent, and, therefore,
+we may make certain demands.’
+
+‘Do you not think,’ said Clara, ‘that the repeal of the corn laws will
+help you?’
+
+Dennis smiled and was about to reply, but Marshall broke out savagely,—
+
+‘Repeal of the corn laws is a contemptible device of manufacturing
+selfishness.  It means low wages.  Do you suppose the great Manchester
+cotton lords care one straw for their hands?  Not they!  They will face a
+revolution for repeal because it will enable them to grind an extra
+profit out of us.’
+
+‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Dennis, turning to Clara, ‘that a tax
+upon food is wrong; it is wrong in the abstract.  The notion of taxing
+bread, the fruit of the earth, is most repulsive; but the point is—what
+is our policy to be?  If a certain end is to be achieved, we must neglect
+subordinate ends, and, at times, even contradict what our own principles
+would appear to dictate.  That is the secret of successful leadership.’
+
+He took up the poker and stirred the fire.
+
+‘That will do, Dennis,’ said Marshall, who was evidently fidgety.  ‘The
+room is rather warm.  There’s nothing in Vincent which irritates me more
+than those bits of poetry with which he winds up.
+
+    “God made the man—man made the slave,”
+
+and all that stuff.  If God made the man, God made the slave.  I know
+what Vincent’s little game is, and it is the same game with all his set.
+They want to keep Chartism religious, but we shall see.  Let us once get
+the six points, and the Established Church will go, and we shall have
+secular education, and in a generation there will not be one superstition
+left.’
+
+‘Theological superstition, you mean?’ said Clara.
+
+‘Yes, of course, what others are there worth notice?’
+
+‘A few.  The superstition of the ordinary newspaper reader is just as
+profound, and the tyranny of the majority may be just as injurious as the
+superstition of a Spanish peasant, or the tyranny of the Inquisition.’
+
+‘Newspapers will not burn people as the priests did and would do again if
+they had the power, and they do not insult us with fables and a hell and
+a heaven.’
+
+‘I maintain,’ said Clara with emphasis, ‘that if a man declines to
+examine, and takes for granted what a party leader or a newspaper tells
+him, he has no case against the man who declines to examine, or takes for
+granted what the priest tells him.  Besides, although, as you know, I am
+not a convert myself, I do lose a little patience when I hear it preached
+as a gospel to every poor conceited creature who goes to your Sunday
+evening atheist lecture, that he is to believe nothing on one particular
+subject which his own precious intellect cannot verify, and the next
+morning he finds it to be his duty to swallow wholesale anything you
+please to put into his mouth.  As to the tyranny, the day may come, and I
+believe is approaching, when the majority will be found to be more
+dangerous than any ecclesiastical establishment which ever existed.’
+
+Baruch’s lips moved, but he was silent.  He was not strong in argument.
+He was thinking about Marshall’s triumphant inquiry whether God is not
+responsible for slavery.  He would have liked to say something on that
+subject, but he had nothing ready.
+
+‘Practical people,’ said Dennis, who had not quite recovered from the
+rebuke as to the warmth of the room, ‘are often most unpractical and
+injudicious.  Nothing can be more unwise than to mix up politics and
+religion.  If you _do_,’ Dennis waved his hand, ‘you will have all the
+religious people against you.  My friend Marshall, Miss Hopgood, is under
+the illusion that the Church in this country is tottering to its fall.
+Now, although I myself belong to no sect, I do not share his illusion;
+nay, more, I am not sure’—Mr Dennis spoke slowly, rubbed his chin and
+looked up at the ceiling—‘I am not sure that there is not something to be
+said in favour of State endowment—at least, in a country like Ireland.’
+
+‘Come along, Dennis, we shall be late,’ said Marshall, and the two
+forthwith took their departure in order to attend another meeting.
+
+‘Much either of ’em knows about it,’ said Mrs Caffyn when they had gone.
+‘There’s Marshall getting two pounds a week reg’lar, and goes on talking
+about people at Leicester, and he has never been in Leicester in his
+life; and, as for that Dennis, he knows less than Marshall, for he does
+nothing but write for newspapers and draw for picture-books, never
+nothing what you may call work, and he does worrit me so whenever he
+begins about poor people that I can’t sit still.  _I_ do know what the
+poor is, having lived at Great Oakhurst all these years.’
+
+‘You are not a Chartist, then?’ said Baruch.
+
+‘Me—me a Chartist?  No, I ain’t, and yet, maybe, I’m something worse.
+What would be the use of giving them poor creatures votes?  Why, there
+isn’t one of them as wouldn’t hold up his hand for anybody as would give
+him a shilling.  Quite right of ’em, too, for the one thing they have to
+think about from morning to night is how to get a bit of something to
+fill their bellies, and they won’t fill them by voting.’
+
+‘But what would you do for them?’
+
+‘Ah! that beats me!  Hang somebody, but I don’t know who it ought to be.
+There’s a family by the name of Longwood, they live just on the slope of
+the hill nigh the Dower Farm, and there’s nine of them, and the youngest
+when I left was a baby six months old, and their living-room faces the
+road so that the north wind blows in right under the door, and I’ve seen
+the snow lie in heaps inside.  As reg’lar as winter comes Longwood is
+knocked off—no work.  I’ve knowed them not have a bit of meat for weeks
+together, and him a-loungin’ about at the corner of the street.  Wasn’t
+that enough to make him feel as if somebody ought to be killed?  And
+Marshall and Dennis say as the proper thing to do is to give him a vote,
+and prove to him there was never no Abraham nor Isaac, and that Jonah
+never was in a whale’s belly, and that nobody had no business to have
+more children than he could feed.  And what goes on, and what must go on,
+inside such a place as Longwood’s, with him and his wife, and with them
+boys and gals all huddled together—But I’d better hold my tongue.  We’ll
+let the smoke out of this room, I think, and air it a little.’
+
+She opened the window, and Baruch rose and went home.
+
+Whenever Mrs Caffyn talked about the labourers at Great Oakhurst, whom
+she knew so well, Clara always felt as if all her reading had been a
+farce, and, indeed, if we come into close contact with actual life, art,
+poetry and philosophy seem little better than trifling.  When the mist
+hangs over the heavy clay land in January, and men and women shiver in
+the bitter cold and eat raw turnips, to indulge in fireside ecstasies
+over the divine Plato or Shakespeare is surely not such a virtue as we
+imagine it to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+BARUCH sat and mused before he went to bed.  He had gone out stirred by
+an idea, but it was already dead.  Then he began to think about Clara.
+Who was this Dennis who visited the Marshalls and the Hopgoods?  Oh! for
+an hour of his youth!  Fifteen years ago the word would have come
+unbidden if he had seen Clara, but now, in place of the word, there was
+hesitation, shame.  He must make up his mind to renounce for ever.  But,
+although this conclusion had forced itself upon him overnight as
+inevitable, he could not resist the temptation when he rose the next
+morning of plotting to meet Clara, and he walked up and down the street
+opposite the shop door that evening nearly a quarter of an hour, just
+before closing time, hoping that she might come out and that he might
+have the opportunity of overtaking her apparently by accident.  At last,
+fearing he might miss her, he went in and found she had a companion whom
+he instantly knew, before any induction, to be her sister.  Madge was not
+now the Madge whom we knew at Fenmarket.  She was thinner in the face and
+paler.  Nevertheless, she was not careless; she was even more particular
+in her costume, but it was simpler.  If anything, perhaps, she was a
+little prouder.  She was more attractive, certainly, than she had ever
+been, although her face could not be said to be handsomer.  The slight
+prominence of the cheek-bone, the slight hollow underneath, the loss of
+colour, were perhaps defects, but they said something which had a meaning
+in it superior to that of the tint of the peach.  She had been reading a
+book while Clara was balancing her cash, and she attempted to replace it.
+The shelf was a little too high, and the volume fell upon the ground.  It
+contained Shelley’s _Revolt of Islam_.
+
+‘Have you read Shelley?’ said Baruch.
+
+‘Every line—when I was much younger.’
+
+‘Do you read him now?’
+
+‘Not much.  I was an enthusiast for him when I was nineteen, but I find
+that his subject matter is rather thin, and his themes are a little worn.
+He was entirely enslaved by the ideals of the French Revolution.  Take
+away what the French Revolution contributed to his poetry, and there is
+not much left.’
+
+‘As a man he is not very attractive to me.’
+
+‘Nor to me; I never shall forgive his treatment of Harriet.’
+
+‘I suppose he had ceased to love her, and he thought, therefore, he was
+justified in leaving her.’
+
+Madge turned and fixed her eyes, unobserved, on Baruch.  He was looking
+straight at the bookshelves.  There was not, and, indeed, how could there
+be, any reference to herself.
+
+‘I should put it in this way,’ she said, ‘that he thought he was
+justified in sacrificing a woman for the sake of an _impulse_.  Call this
+a defect or a crime—whichever you like—it is repellent to me.  It makes
+no difference to me to know that he believed the impulse to be divine.’
+
+‘I wish,’ interrupted Clara, ‘you two would choose less exciting subjects
+of conversation; my totals will not come right.’
+
+They were silent, and Baruch, affecting to study a Rollin’s _Ancient
+History_, wondered, especially when he called to mind Mrs Caffyn’s
+report, what this girl’s history could have been.  He presently recovered
+himself, and it occurred to him that he ought to give some reason why he
+had called.  Before, however, he was able to offer any excuse, Clara
+closed her book.
+
+‘Now, it is right,’ she said, ‘and I am ready.’
+
+Just at that moment Barnes appeared, hot with hurrying.
+
+‘Very sorry, Miss Hopgood, to ask you to stay for a few minutes.  I
+recollected after I left that the doctor particularly wanted those books
+sent off to-night.  I should not like to disappoint him.  I have been to
+the booking-office, and the van will be here in about twenty minutes.  If
+you will make out the invoice and check me, I will pack them.’
+
+‘I will be off,’ said Madge.  ‘The shop will be shut if I do not make
+haste.’
+
+‘You are not going alone, are you?’ said Baruch.  ‘May I not go with you,
+and cannot we both come back for your sister?’
+
+‘It is very kind of you.’
+
+Clara looked up from her desk, watched them as they went out at the door
+and, for a moment, seemed lost.  Barnes turned round.
+
+‘Now, Miss Hopgood.’  She started.
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘_Fabricius_, _J. A._  _Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica in qua continentur_.’
+
+‘I need not put in the last three words.’
+
+‘Yes, yes.’  Barnes never liked to be corrected in a title.  ‘There’s
+another _Fabricius Bibliotheca_ or _Bibliographia_.  Go on—_Basili opera
+ad MSS. codices_, 3 vols.’
+
+Clara silently made the entries a little more scholarly.  In a quarter of
+an hour the parcel was ready and Cohen returned.
+
+‘Your sister would not allow me to wait.  She met Mrs Marshall; they said
+they should have something to carry, and that it was not worth while to
+bring it here.  I will walk with you, if you will allow me.  We may as
+well avoid Holborn.’
+
+They turned into Gray’s Inn, and, when they were in comparative quietude,
+he said,—
+
+‘Any Chartist news?’ and then without waiting for an answer, ‘By the way,
+who is your friend Dennis?’
+
+‘He is no particular friend of mine.  He is a wood-engraver, and writes
+also, I believe, for the newspapers.’
+
+‘He can talk as well as write.’
+
+‘Yes, he can talk very well.’
+
+‘Do you not think there was something unreal about what he said?’
+
+‘I do not believe he is actually insincere.  I have noticed that men who
+write or read much often appear somewhat shadowy.’
+
+‘How do you account for it?’
+
+‘What they say is not experience.’
+
+‘I do not quite understand.  A man may think much which can never become
+an experience in your sense of the word, and be very much in earnest with
+what he thinks; the thinking is an experience.’
+
+‘Yes, I suppose so, but it is what a person has gone through which I like
+to hear.  Poor Dennis has suffered much.  You are perhaps surprised, but
+it is true, and when he leaves politics alone he is a different
+creature.’
+
+‘I am afraid I must be very uninteresting to you?’
+
+‘I did not mean that I care for nothing but my friend’s aches and pains,
+but that I do not care for what he just takes up and takes on.’
+
+‘It is my misfortune that my subjects are not very—I was about to
+say—human.  Perhaps it is because I am a Jew.’
+
+‘I do not know quite what you mean by your “subjects,” but if you mean
+philosophy and religion, they are human.’
+
+‘If they are, very few people like to hear anything about them.  Do you
+know, Miss Hopgood, I can never talk to anybody as I can to you.’
+
+Clara made no reply.  A husband was to be had for a look, for a touch, a
+husband whom she could love, a husband who could give her all her
+intellect demanded.  A little house rose before her eyes as if by Arabian
+enchantment; there was a bright fire on the hearth, and there were
+children round it; without the look, the touch, there would be solitude,
+silence and a childless old age, so much more to be feared by a woman
+than by a man.  Baruch paused, waiting for her answer, and her tongue
+actually began to move with a reply, which would have sent his arm round
+her, and made them one for ever, but it did not come.  Something fell and
+flashed before her like lightning from a cloud overhead, divinely
+beautiful, but divinely terrible.
+
+‘I remember,’ she said, ‘that I have to call in Lamb’s Conduit Street to
+buy something for my sister.  I shall just be in time.’  Baruch went as
+far as Lamb’s Conduit Street with her.  He, too, would have determined
+his own destiny if she had uttered the word, but the power to proceed
+without it was wanting and he fell back.  He left her at the door of the
+shop.  She bid him good-bye, obviously intending that he should go no
+further with her, and he shook hands with her, taking her hand again and
+shaking it again with a grasp which she knew well enough was too fervent
+for mere friendship.  He then wandered back once more to his old room at
+Clerkenwell.  The fire was dead, he stirred it, the cinders fell through
+the grate and it dropped out all together.  He made no attempt to
+rekindle it, but sat staring at the black ashes, not thinking, but
+dreaming.  Thirty years more perhaps with no change!  The last chance
+that he could begin a new life had disappeared.  He cursed himself that
+nothing drove him out of himself with Marshall and his fellowmen; that he
+was not Chartist nor revolutionary; but it was impossible to create in
+himself enthusiasm for a cause.  He had tried before to become a patriot
+and had failed, and was conscious, during the trial, that he was
+pretending to be something he was not and could not be.  There was
+nothing to be done but to pace the straight road in front of him, which
+led nowhere, so far as he could see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+A MONTH afterwards Marshall announced that he intended to pay a visit.
+
+‘I am going,’ he said, ‘to see Mazzini.  Who will go with me?’
+
+Clara and Madge were both eager to accompany him.  Mrs Caffyn and Mrs
+Marshall chose to stay at home.
+
+‘I shall ask Cohen to come with us,’ said Marshall.  ‘He has never seen
+Mazzini and would like to know him.’  Cohen accordingly called one Sunday
+evening, and the party went together to a dull, dark, little house in a
+shabby street of small shops and furnished apartments.  When they knocked
+at Mazzini’s door Marshall asked for Mr — for, even in England, Mazzini
+had an assumed name which was always used when inquiries were made for
+him.  They were shown upstairs into a rather mean room, and found there a
+man, really about forty, but looking older.  He had dark hair growing
+away from his forehead, dark moustache, dark beard and a singularly
+serious face.  It was not the face of a conspirator, but that of a saint,
+although without that just perceptible touch of silliness which spoils
+the faces of most saints.  It was the face of a saint of the Reason, of a
+man who could be ecstatic for rational ideals, rarest of all endowments.
+It was the face, too, of one who knew no fear, or, if he knew it, could
+crush it.  He was once concealed by a poor woman whose house was
+surrounded by Austrian soldiers watching for him.  He was determined that
+she should not be sacrificed, and, having disguised himself a little,
+walked out into the street in broad daylight, went up to the Austrian
+sentry, asked for a light for his cigar and escaped.  He was cordial in
+his reception of his visitors, particularly of Clara, Madge and Cohen,
+whom he had not seen before.
+
+‘The English,’ he said, after some preliminary conversation, ‘are a
+curious people.  As a nation they are what they call practical and have a
+contempt for ideas, but I have known some Englishmen who have a religious
+belief in them, a nobler belief than I have found in any other nation.
+There are English women, also, who have this faith, and one or two are
+amongst my dearest friends.’
+
+‘I never,’ said Marshall, ‘quite comprehend you on this point.  I should
+say that we know as clearly as most folk what we want, and we mean to
+have it.’
+
+‘That may be, but it is not Justice, as Justice which inspires you.
+Those of you who have not enough, desire to have more, that is all.’
+
+‘If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.’
+
+‘Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ.  Whenever any real good
+is done it is by a crusade; that is to say, the cross must be raised and
+appeal be made to something _above_ the people.  No system based on
+rights will stand.  Never will society be permanent till it is founded on
+duty.  If we consider our rights exclusively, we extend them over the
+rights of our neighbours.  If the oppressed classes had the power to
+obtain their rights to-morrow, and with the rights came no deeper sense
+of duty, the new order, for the simple reason that the oppressed are no
+better than their oppressors, would be just as unstable as that which
+preceded it.’
+
+‘To put it in my own language,’ said Madge, ‘you believe in God.’
+
+Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.
+
+‘My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no other.’
+
+‘I should like, though,’ said Marshall, ‘to see the church which would
+acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit your God to be theirs.’
+
+‘What is essential,’ replied Madge, ‘in a belief in God is absolute
+loyalty to a principle we know to have authority.’
+
+‘It may, perhaps,’ said Mazzini, ‘be more to me, but you are right, it is
+a belief in the supremacy and ultimate victory of the conscience.’
+
+‘The victory seems distant in Italy now,’ said Baruch.  ‘I do not mean
+the millennial victory of which you speak, but an approximation to it by
+the overthrow of tyranny there.’
+
+‘You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you imagine.’
+
+‘Do you obtain,’ said Clara, ‘any real help from people here?  Do you not
+find that they merely talk and express what they call their sympathy?’
+
+‘I must not say what help I have received; more than words, though, from
+many.’
+
+‘You expect, then,’ said Baruch, ‘that the Italians will answer your
+appeal?’
+
+‘If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what faith could survive.’
+
+‘The people are the persons you meet in the street.’
+
+‘A people is not a mere assemblage of uninteresting units, but it is not
+a phantom.  A spirit lives in each nation which is superior to any
+individual in it.  It is this which is the true reality, the nation’s
+purpose and destiny, it is this for which the patriot lives and dies.’
+
+‘I suppose,’ said Clara, ‘you have no difficulty in obtaining volunteers
+for any dangerous enterprise?’
+
+‘None.  You would be amazed if I were to tell you how many men and women
+at this very moment would go to meet certain death if I were to ask
+them.’
+
+‘Women?’
+
+‘Oh, yes; and women are of the greatest use, but it is rather difficult
+to find those who have the necessary qualifications.’
+
+‘I suppose you employ them in order to obtain secret information?’
+
+‘Yes; amongst the Austrians.’
+
+The party broke up.  Baruch manœuvred to walk with Clara, but Marshall
+wanted to borrow a book from Mazzini, and she stayed behind for him.
+Madge was outside in the street, and Baruch could do nothing but go to
+her.  She seemed unwilling to wait, and Baruch and she went slowly
+homewards, thinking the others would overtake them.  The conversation
+naturally turned upon Mazzini.
+
+‘Although,’ said Madge, ‘I have never seen him before, I have heard much
+about him and he makes me sad.’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘Because he has done something worth doing and will do more.’
+
+‘But why should that make you sad?’
+
+‘I do not think there is anything sadder than to know you are able to do
+a little good and would like to do it, and yet you are not permitted to
+do it.  Mazzini has a world open to him large enough for the exercise of
+all his powers.’
+
+‘It is worse to have a desire which is intense but not definite, to be
+continually anxious to do something, you know not what, and always to
+feel, if any distinct task is offered, your incapability of attempting
+it.’
+
+‘A man, if he has a real desire to be of any service, can generally
+gratify it to some extent; a woman as a rule cannot, although a woman’s
+enthusiasm is deeper than a man’s.  You can join Mazzini to-morrow, I
+suppose, if you like.’
+
+‘It is a supposition not quite justifiable, and if I were free to go I
+could not.’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘I am not fitted for such work; I have not sufficient faith.  When I see
+a flag waving, a doubt always intrudes.  Long ago I was forced to the
+conclusion that I should have to be content with a life which did not
+extend outside itself.’
+
+‘I am sure that many women blunder into the wrong path, not because they
+are bad, but simply because—if I may say so—they are too good.’
+
+‘Maybe you are right.  The inability to obtain mere pleasure has not
+produced the misery which has been begotten of mistaken or baffled
+self-sacrifice.  But do you mean to say that you would like to enlist
+under Mazzini?’
+
+‘No!’
+
+Baruch thought she referred to her child, and he was silent.
+
+‘You are a philosopher,’ said Madge, after a pause.  ‘Have you never
+discovered anything which will enable us to submit to be useless?’
+
+‘That is to say, have I discovered a religion? for the core of religion
+is the relationship of the individual to the whole, the faith that the
+poorest and meanest of us is a person.  That is the real strength of all
+religions.’
+
+‘Well, go on; what do you believe?’
+
+‘I can only say it like a creed; I have no demonstration, at least none
+such as I would venture to put into words.  Perhaps the highest of all
+truths is incapable of demonstration and can only be stated.  Perhaps,
+also, the statement, at least to some of us, is a sufficient
+demonstration.  I believe that inability to imagine a thing is not a
+reason for its non-existence.  If the infinite is a conclusion which is
+forced upon me, the fact that I cannot picture it does not disprove it.
+I believe, also, in thought and the soul, and it is nothing to me that I
+cannot explain them by attributes belonging to body.  That being so, the
+difficulties which arise from the perpetual and unconscious confusion of
+the qualities of thought and soul with those of body disappear.  Our
+imagination represents to itself souls like pebbles, and asks itself what
+count can be kept of a million, but number in such a case is
+inapplicable.  I believe that all thought is a manifestation of the
+Being, who is One, whom you may call God if you like, and that, as It
+never was created, It will never be destroyed.’
+
+‘But,’ said Madge, interrupting him, ‘although you began by warning me
+not to expect that you would prove anything, you can tell me whether you
+have any kind of basis for what you say, or whether it is all a dream.’
+
+‘You will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that mathematics, which, of
+course, I had to learn for my own business, have supplied something for a
+foundation.  They lead to ideas which are inconsistent with the notion
+that the imagination is a measure of all things.  Mind, I do not for a
+moment pretend that I have any theory which explains the universe.  It is
+something, however, to know that the sky is as real as the earth.’
+
+They had now reached Great Ormond Street, and parted.  Clara and Marshall
+were about five minutes behind them.  Madge was unusually cheerful when
+they sat down to supper.
+
+‘Clara,’ she said, ‘what made you so silent to-night at Mazzini’s?’
+Clara did not reply, but after a pause of a minute or two, she asked Mrs
+Caffyn whether it would not be possible for them all to go into the
+country on Whitmonday?  Whitsuntide was late; it would be warm, and they
+could take their food with them and eat it out of doors.
+
+‘Just the very thing, my dear, if we could get anything cheap to take us;
+the baby, of course, must go with us.
+
+‘I should like above everything to go to Great Oakhurst.’
+
+‘What, five of us—twenty miles there and twenty miles back!  Besides,
+although I love the place, it isn’t exactly what one would go to see just
+for a day.  No!  Letherhead or Mickleham or Darkin would be ever so much
+better.  They are too far, though, and, then, that man Baruch must go
+with us.  He’d be company for Marshall, and he sticks up in Clerkenwell
+and never goes nowhere.  You remember as Marshall said as he must ask him
+the next time we had an outing.’
+
+Clara had not forgotten it.
+
+‘Ah,’ continued Mrs Caffyn, ‘I should just love to show you Mickleham.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn’s heart yearned after her Surrey land.  The man who is born in
+a town does not know what it is to be haunted through life by lovely
+visions of the landscape which lay about him when he was young.  The
+village youth leaves the home of his childhood for the city, but the
+river doubling on itself, the overhanging alders and willows, the fringe
+of level meadow, the chalk hills bounding the river valley and rising
+against the sky, with here and there on their summits solitary clusters
+of beech, the light and peace of the different seasons, of morning,
+afternoon and evening, never forsake him.  To think of them is not a mere
+luxury; their presence modifies the whole of his life.
+
+‘I don’t see how it is to be managed,’ she mused; ‘and yet there’s
+nothing near London as I’d give two pins to see.  There’s Richmond as we
+went to one Sunday; it was no better, to my way of thinking, than looking
+at a picture.  I’d ever so much sooner be a-walking across the turnips by
+the footpath from Darkin home.’
+
+‘Couldn’t we, for once in a way, stay somewhere over-night?’
+
+‘It might as well be two,’ said Mrs Marshall; ‘Saturday and Sunday.’
+
+‘Two,’ said Madge; ‘I vote for two.’
+
+‘Wait a bit, my dears, we’re a precious awkward lot to fit in—Marshall
+and his wife me and you and Miss Clara and the baby; and then there’s
+Baruch, who’s odd man, so to speak; that’s three bedrooms.  We sha’n’t do
+it—Otherwise, I was a-thinking—’
+
+‘What were you thinking?’ said Marshall.
+
+‘I’ve got it,’ said Mrs Caffyn, joyously.  ‘Miss Clara and me will go to
+Great Oakhurst on the Friday.  We can easy enough stay at my old shop.
+Marshall and Sarah, Miss Madge, the baby and Baruch can go to Letherhead
+on the Saturday morning.  The two women and the baby can have one of the
+rooms at Skelton’s, and Marshall and Baruch can have the other.  Then, on
+Sunday morning, Miss Clara and me we’ll come over for you, and we’ll all
+walk through Norbury Park.  That’ll be ever so much better in many ways.
+Miss Clara and me, we’ll go by the coach.  Six of us, not reckoning the
+baby, in that heavy ginger-beer cart of Masterman’s would be too much.’
+
+‘An expensive holiday, rather,’ said Marshall.
+
+‘Leave that to me; that’s my business.  I ain’t quite a beggar, and if we
+can’t take our pleasure once a year, it’s a pity.  We aren’t like some
+folk as messes about up to Hampstead every Sunday, and spends a fortune
+on shrimps and donkeys.  No; when I go away, it _is_ away, maybe it’s
+only for a couple of days, where I can see a blessed ploughed field; no
+shrimps nor donkeys for me.’
+
+
+
+
+CHARTER XXIX
+
+
+SO it was settled, and on the Friday Clara and Mrs Caffyn journeyed to
+Great Oakhurst.  They were both tired, and went to bed very early, in
+order that they might enjoy the next day.  Clara, always a light sleeper,
+woke between three and four, rose and went to the little casement window
+which had been open all night.  Below her, on the left, the church was
+just discernible, and on the right, the broad chalk uplands leaned to the
+south, and were waving with green barley and wheat.  Underneath her lay
+the cottage garden, with its row of beehives in the north-east corner,
+sheltered from the cold winds by the thick hedge.  It had evidently been
+raining a little, for the drops hung on the currant bushes, but the
+clouds had been driven by the south-westerly wind into the eastern sky,
+where they lay in a long, low, grey band.  Not a sound was to be heard,
+save every now and then the crow of a cock or the short cry of a
+just-awakened thrush.  High up on the zenith, the approach of the sun to
+the horizon was proclaimed by the most delicate tints of rose-colour, but
+the cloud-bank above him was dark and untouched, although the blue which
+was over it, was every moment becoming paler.  Clara watched; she was
+moved even to tears by the beauty of the scene, but she was stirred by
+something more than beauty, just as he who was in the Spirit and beheld a
+throne and One sitting thereon, saw something more than loveliness,
+although He was radiant with the colour of jasper and there was a rainbow
+round about Him like an emerald to look upon.  In a few moments the
+highest top of the cloud-rampart was kindled, and the whole wavy outline
+became a fringe of flame.  In a few moments more the fire just at one
+point became blinding, and in another second the sun emerged, the first
+arrowy shaft passed into her chamber, the first shadow was cast, and it
+was day.  She put her hands to her face; the tears fell faster, but she
+wiped them away and her great purpose was fixed.  She crept back into
+bed, her agitation ceased, a strange and almost supernatural peace
+overshadowed her and she fell asleep not to wake till the sound of the
+scythe had ceased in the meadow just beyond the rick-yard that came up to
+one side of the cottage, and the mowers were at their breakfast.
+
+Neither Mrs Caffyn nor Clara thought of seeing the Letherhead party on
+Saturday.  They could not arrive before the afternoon, and it was
+considered hardly worth while to walk from Great Oakhurst to Letherhead
+merely for the sake of an hour or two.  In the morning Mrs Caffyn was so
+busy with her old friends that she rather tired herself, and in the
+evening Clara went for a stroll.  She did not know the country, but she
+wandered on until she came to a lane which led down to the river.  At the
+bottom of the lane she found herself at a narrow, steep, stone bridge.
+She had not been there more than three or four minutes before she
+descried two persons coming down the lane from Letherhead.  When they
+were about a couple of hundred yards from her they turned into the meadow
+over the stile, and struck the river-bank some distance below the point
+where she was.  It was impossible to mistake them; they were Madge and
+Baruch.  They sauntered leisurely; presently Baruch knelt down over the
+water, apparently to gather something which he gave to Madge.  They then
+crossed another stile and were lost behind the tall hedge which stopped
+further view of the footpath in that direction.
+
+‘The message then was authentic,’ she said to herself.  ‘I thought I
+could not have misunderstood it.’
+
+On Sunday morning Clara wished to stay at home.  She pleaded that she
+preferred rest, but Mrs Caffyn vowed there should be no Norbury Park if
+Clara did not go, and the kind creature managed to persuade a pig-dealer
+to drive them over to Letherhead for a small sum, notwithstanding it was
+Sunday.  The whole party then set out; the baby was drawn in a borrowed
+carriage which also took the provisions, and they were fairly out of the
+town before the Letherhead bells had ceased ringing for church.  It was
+one of the sweetest of Sundays, sunny, but masses of white clouds now and
+then broke the heat.  The park was reached early in the forenoon, and it
+was agreed that dinner should be served under one of the huge beech trees
+at the lower end, as the hill was a little too steep for the
+baby-carriage in the hot sun.
+
+‘This is very beautiful,’ said Marshall, when dinner was over, ‘but it is
+not what we came to see.  We ought to move upwards to the Druid’s grove.’
+
+‘Yes, you be off, the whole lot of you,’ said Mrs Caffyn.  ‘I know every
+tree there, and I ain’t going there this afternoon.  Somebody must stay
+here to look after the baby; you can’t wheel her, you’ll have to carry
+her, and you won’t enjoy yourselves much more for moiling along with her
+up that hill.’
+
+‘I will stay with you,’ said Clara.
+
+Everybody protested, but Clara was firm.  She was tired, and the sun had
+given her a headache.  Madge pleaded that it was she who ought to remain
+behind, but at last gave way for her sister looked really fatigued.
+
+‘There’s a dear child,’ said Clara, when Madge consented to go.  ‘I shall
+lie on the grass and perhaps go to sleep.’
+
+‘It is a pity,’ said Baruch to Madge as they went away, ‘that we are
+separated; we must come again.’
+
+‘Yes, I am sorry, but perhaps it is better she should be where she is;
+she is not particularly strong, and is obliged to be very careful.’
+
+In due time they all came to the famous yews, and sat down on one of the
+seats overlooking that wonderful gate in the chalk downs through which
+the Mole passes northwards.
+
+‘We must go,’ said Marshall, ‘a little bit further and see the oak.’
+
+‘Not another step,’ said his wife.  ‘You can go it you like.’
+
+‘Content; nothing could be pleasanter than to sit here,’ and he pulled
+out his pipe; ‘but really, Miss Madge, to leave Norbury without paying a
+visit to the oak is a pity.’
+
+He did not offer, however, to accompany her.
+
+‘It is the most extraordinary tree in these parts,’ said Baruch; ‘of
+incalculable age and with branches spreading into a tent big enough to
+cover a regiment.  Marshall is quite right.’
+
+‘Where is it?’
+
+‘Not above a couple of hundred yards further; just round the corner.’
+
+Madge rose and looked.
+
+‘No; it is not visible here; it stands a little way back.  If you come a
+little further you will catch a glimpse of it.’
+
+She followed him and presently the oak came in view.  They climbed up the
+bank and went nearer to it.  The whole vale was underneath them and part
+of the weald with the Sussex downs blue in the distance.  Baruch was not
+much given to raptures over scenery, but the indifference of Nature to
+the world’s turmoil always appealed to him.
+
+‘You are not now discontented because you cannot serve under Mazzini?’
+
+‘Not now.’
+
+There was nothing in her reply on the face of it of any particular
+consequence to Baruch.  She might simply have intended that the beauty of
+the fair landscape extinguished her restlessness, or that she saw her own
+unfitness, but neither of these interpretations presented itself to him.
+
+‘I have sometimes thought,’ continued Baruch, slowly, ‘that the love of
+any two persons in this world may fulfil an eternal purpose which is as
+necessary to the Universe as a great revolution.’
+
+Madge’s eyes moved round from the hills and they met Baruch’s.  No
+syllable was uttered, but swiftest messages passed, question and answer.
+There was no hesitation on his part now, no doubt, the woman and the
+moment had come.  The last question was put, the final answer was given;
+he took her hand in his and came closer to her.
+
+‘Stop!’ she whispered, ‘do you know my history?’
+
+He did not reply, but fell upon her neck.  This was the goal to which
+both had been journeying all these years, although with much weary
+mistaking of roads; this was what from the beginning was designed for
+both!  Happy Madge! happy Baruch!  There are some so closely akin that
+the meaning of each may be said to lie in the other, who do not approach
+till it is too late.  They travel towards one another, but are waylaid
+and detained, and just as they are within greeting, one of them drops and
+dies.
+
+They left the tree and went back to the Marshalls, and then down the hill
+to Mrs Caffyn and Clara.  Clara was much better for her rest, and early
+in the evening the whole party returned to Letherhead, Clara and Mrs
+Caffyn going on to Great Oakhurst.  Madge kept close to her sister till
+they separated, and the two men walked together.  On Whitmonday morning
+the Letherhead people came over to Great Oakhurst.  They had to go back
+to London in the afternoon, but Mrs Caffyn and Clara were to stay till
+Tuesday, as they stood a better chance of securing places by the coach on
+that day.  Mrs Caffyn had as much to show them as if the village had been
+the Tower of London.  The wonder of wonders, however, was a big house,
+where she was well known, and its hot-houses.  Madge wanted to speak to
+Clara, but it was difficult to find a private opportunity.  When they
+were in the garden, however, she managed to take Clara unobserved down
+one of the twisted paths, under pretence of admiring an ancient mulberry
+tree.
+
+‘Clara,’ she said, ‘I want a word with you.  Baruch Cohen loves me.’
+
+‘Do you love him?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Without a shadow of a doubt?’
+
+‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’
+
+Clara put her arm round her sister, kissed her tenderly and said,—
+
+‘Then I am perfectly happy.’
+
+‘Did you suspect it?’
+
+‘I knew it.’
+
+Mrs Caffyn called them; it was time to be moving, and soon afterwards
+those who had to go to London that afternoon left for Letherhead.  Clara
+stood at the gate for a long time watching them along the straight, white
+road.  They came to the top of the hill; she could just discern them
+against the sky; they passed over the ridge and she went indoors.  In the
+evening a friend called to see Mrs Caffyn, and Clara went to the stone
+bridge which she had visited on Saturday.  The water on the upper side of
+the bridge was dammed up and fell over the little sluice gates under the
+arches into a clear and deep basin about forty or fifty feet in diameter.
+The river, for some reason of its own, had bitten into the western bank,
+and had scooped out a great piece of it into an island.  The main current
+went round the island with a shallow, swift ripple, instead of going
+through the pool, as it might have done, for there was a clear channel
+for it.  The centre and the region under the island were deep and still,
+but at the farther end, where the river in passing called to the pool, it
+broke into waves as it answered the appeal, and added its own
+contribution to the stream, which went away down to the mill and onwards
+to the big Thames.  On the island were aspens and alders.  The floods had
+loosened the roots of the largest tree, and it hung over heavily in the
+direction in which it had yielded to the rush of the torrent, but it
+still held its grip, and the sap had not forsaken a single branch.  Every
+one was as dense with foliage as if there had been no struggle for life,
+and the leaves sang their sweet song, just perceptible for a moment every
+now and then in the variations of the louder music below them.  It is
+curious that the sound of a weir is never uniform, but is perpetually
+changing in the ear even of a person who stands close by it.  One of the
+arches of the bridge was dry, and Clara went down into it, stood at the
+edge and watched that wonderful sight—the plunge of a smooth, pure stream
+into the great cup which it has hollowed out for itself.  Down it went,
+with a dancing, foamy fringe playing round it just where it met the
+surface; a dozen yards away it rose again, bubbling and exultant.
+
+She came up from the arch and went home as the sun was setting.  She
+found Mrs Caffyn alone.
+
+‘I have news to tell you,’ she said.  ‘Baruch Cohen is in love with my
+sister, and she is in love with him.’
+
+‘The Lord, Miss Clara!  I thought sometimes that perhaps it might be you;
+but there, it’s better, maybe, as it is, for—’
+
+‘For what?’
+
+‘Why, my dear, because somebody’s sure to turn up who’ll make you happy,
+but there aren’t many men like Baruch.  You see what I mean, don’t you?
+He’s always a-reading books, and, therefore, he don’t think so much of
+what some people would make a fuss about.  Not as anything of that kind
+would ever stop me, if I were a man and saw such a woman as Miss Madge.
+He’s really as good a creature as ever was born, and with that child she
+might have found it hard to get along, and now it will be cared for, and
+so will she be to the end of their lives.’
+
+The evening after their return to Great Ormond Street, Mazzini was
+surprised by a visit from Clara alone.
+
+‘When I last saw you,’ she said, ‘you told us that you had been helped by
+women.  I offer myself.’
+
+‘But, my dear madam, you hardly know what the qualifications are.  To
+begin with, there must be a knowledge of three foreign languages, French,
+German and Italian, and the capacity and will to endure great privation,
+suffering and, perhaps, death.’
+
+‘I was educated abroad, I can speak German and French.  I do not know
+much Italian, but when I reach Italy I will soon learn.’
+
+‘Pardon me for asking you what may appear a rude question.  Is it a
+personal disappointment which sends you to me, or love for the cause?  It
+is not uncommon to find that young women, when earthly love is
+impossible, attempt to satisfy their cravings with a love for that which
+is impersonal.’
+
+‘Does it make any difference, so far as their constancy is concerned?’
+
+‘I cannot say that it does.  The devotion of many of the martyrs of the
+Catholic church was repulsion from the world as much as attraction to
+heaven.  You must understand that I am not prompted by curiosity.  If you
+are to be my friend, it is necessary that I should know you thoroughly.’
+
+‘My motive is perfectly pure.’
+
+They had some further talk and parted.  After a few more interviews,
+Clara and another English lady started for Italy.  Madge had letters from
+her sister at intervals for eighteen months, the last being from Venice.
+Then they ceased, and shortly afterwards Mazzini told Baruch that his
+sister-in-law was dead.
+
+All efforts to obtain more information from Mazzini were in vain, but one
+day when her name was mentioned, he said to Madge,—
+
+‘The theologians represent the Crucifixion as the most sublime fact in
+the world’s history.  It was sublime, but let us reverence also the
+Eternal Christ who is for ever being crucified for our salvation.’
+
+‘Father,’ said a younger Clara to Baruch some ten years later as she sat
+on his knee, ‘I had an Aunt Clara once, hadn’t I?’
+
+‘Yes, my child.’
+
+‘Didn’t she go to Italy and die there?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Why did she go?’
+
+‘Because she wanted to free the poor people of Italy who were slaves.’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+THE END
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+          _Colston & Company_, _Ltd._, _Printers_, _Edinburgh_.
+
+
+
+
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