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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clara Hopgood, by Mark Rutherford
+(#3 in our series by Mark Rutherford)
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+Title: Clara Hopgood
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+Release Date: June, 2004  [EBook #5986]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 8, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CLARA HOPGOOD ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+CLARA HOPGOOD
+
+
+
+
+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 Thuringer 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 manoeuvres.'
+
+'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 OEnone?'
+
+'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 OEnone.
+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.,
+HOTEL 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 manoeuvring 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 GENTLEman in the true sense of that
+much misused word, and not a mere TRADESman; 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 aerial 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 pounds, 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 A 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 manoeuvred 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.'
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CLARA HOPGOOD ***
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+<title>Clara Hopgood</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">Clara Hopgood, by Mark Rutherford</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clara Hopgood, by Mark Rutherford
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+Title: Clara Hopgood
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+Release Date: June, 2004  [EBook #5986]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 8, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>CLARA HOPGOOD</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+There is, however, one marked difference between them.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+The river, also, here is broader and slower; more reluctant than it
+is even at Eastthorpe to hasten its journey to the inevitable sea.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>On a dark afternoon in November 1844, two young women, Clara and
+Madge Hopgood, were playing chess in the back parlour of their mother&rsquo;s
+house at Fenmarket, just before tea.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Her features were
+tolerably regular.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Her eyes were grey, with a curious peculiarity
+in them.&nbsp; Ordinarily they were steady, strong eyes, excellent and
+renowned optical instruments.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Occasionally, however, these steady, strong, grey eyes utterly changed.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Clara
+was, in fact, little given to any display of feeling.</p>
+<p>Madge, four years younger than her sister, was of a different type
+altogether, and one more easily comprehended.&nbsp; She had very heavy
+dark hair, and she had blue eyes, a combination which fascinated Fenmarket.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Fenmarket
+pronounced her &lsquo;stuck-up,&rsquo; and having thus labelled her,
+considered it had exhausted her.&nbsp; The very important question,
+Whether there was anything which naturally stuck up?&nbsp; Fenmarket
+never asked.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Madge was certainly stuck-up, but the projection above
+those around her was not artificial.&nbsp; Both she and her sister found
+the ways of Fenmarket were not to their taste.&nbsp; The reason lay
+partly in their nature and partly in their history.</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood was the widow of the late manager in the Fenmarket branch
+of the bank of Rumbold, Martin &amp; Rumbold, and when her husband died
+she had of course to leave the Bank Buildings.&nbsp; As her income was
+somewhat straitened, she was obliged to take a small house, and she
+was now living next door to the &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre,&rsquo; the
+principal inn in the town.&nbsp; There was then no fringe of villas
+to Fenmarket for retired quality; the private houses and shops were
+all mixed together, and Mrs Hopgood&rsquo;s cottage was squeezed in
+between the ironmonger&rsquo;s and the inn.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Mr Hopgood was not a Fenmarket man.&nbsp; He came straight from London
+to be manager.&nbsp; He was in the bank of the London agents of Rumbold,
+Martin &amp; Rumbold, and had been strongly recommended by the city
+firm as just the person to take charge of a branch which needed thorough
+reorganisation.&nbsp; He succeeded, and nobody in Fenmarket was more
+respected.&nbsp; He lived, however, a life apart from his neighbours,
+excepting so far as business was concerned.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre,&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Boys, he thought, find health
+in an occupation; but an uncultivated, unmarried girl dwells with her
+own untutored thoughts, which often breed disease.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Mr Hopgood
+was also peculiar in his way of dealing with his children.&nbsp; He
+talked to them and made them talk to him, and whatever they read was
+translated into speech; thought, in his house, was vocal.</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood, too, had been the intimate friend of her husband, and
+was the intimate friend of her daughters.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She had been brought up, as thoroughly
+as a woman could be brought up, in those days, to be a governess.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+When she married, Mrs Hopgood did not altogether follow her husband.&nbsp;
+She never separated herself from her faith, and never would have confessed
+that she had separated herself from her church.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s freedom, or to impose on the children
+a rule which they would certainly have observed, but only for her sake.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+Mr Hopgood took great pains never to disturb that sacred moment.&nbsp;
+Indeed, he never for an instant permitted a finger to be laid upon what
+she considered precious.&nbsp; He loved her because she had the strength
+to be what she was when he first knew her and she had so fascinated
+him.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He did really love her piety,
+too, for its own sake.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church.&nbsp; The church, to be sure, was
+horribly dead, but she did not give that as a reason.&nbsp; She had,
+she said, an infirmity, a strange restlessness which prevented her from
+sitting still for an hour.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Both Clara and Madge went first to an English day-school, and Clara
+went straight from this school to Germany, but Madge&rsquo;s course
+was a little different.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It had been very highly recommended,
+but the head-mistress was Low Church and aggressive.&nbsp; Mr Hopgood,
+far away from the High and Low Church controversy, came to the conclusion
+that, in Madge&rsquo;s case, the theology would have no effect on her.&nbsp;
+It was quite impossible, moreover, to find a school which would be just
+what he could wish it to be.&nbsp; Madge, accordingly, was sent to Brighton,
+and was introduced into a new world.&nbsp; She was just beginning to
+ask herself <i>why</i> 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 &lsquo;body&rsquo;
+was an affliction to the soul, a means of &lsquo;probation,&rsquo; our
+principal duty being to &lsquo;war&rsquo; against it.</p>
+<p>Madge&rsquo;s bedroom companion was a Miss Selina Fish, daughter
+of Barnabas Fish, Esquire, of Clapham, and merchant of the City of London.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Miss Fish was really unhappy, and one cold night,
+when Madge crept into her neighbour&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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 <i>Family Expositor</i> was read systematically
+at home, as Selina knew.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Miss Fish, therefore, made further inquiries gently and delicately,
+but she found to her horror that Madge had neither been sprinkled nor
+immersed!&nbsp; Perhaps she was a Jewess or a heathen!&nbsp; This was
+a happy thought, for then she might be converted.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp;
+What would they not say?&nbsp; Fancy taking Madge to Clapham in a nice
+white dress - it should be white, thought Selina - and presenting her
+as a saved lamb!</p>
+<p>The very next night she began, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose your father is a foreigner?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, he is an Englishman.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, he is an Englishman,&rsquo; said Madge, smiling.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Perhaps,&rsquo; said Selina, timidly, &lsquo;he may be - he
+may be - Jewish.&nbsp; Mamma and papa pray for the Jews every morning.&nbsp;
+They are not like other unbelievers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, he is certainly not a Jew.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is he, then?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is my papa and a very honest, good man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, my dear Madge! honesty is a broken reed.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Your father must
+be something.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can only tell you again that he is honest and good.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Selina was confounded.&nbsp; She had heard of those people who were
+<i>nothing</i>, and had always considered them as so dreadful that she
+could not bear to think of them.&nbsp; The efforts of her father and
+mother did not extend to them; they were beyond the reach of the preacher
+- mere vessels of wrath.&nbsp; If Madge had confessed herself Roman
+Catholic, or idolator, Selina knew how to begin.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She was puzzled to understand what
+right Madge had to her name.&nbsp; Who had any authority to say she
+was to be called Madge Hopgood?&nbsp; She determined at last to pray
+to God and again ask her mother&rsquo;s help.</p>
+<p>She did pray earnestly that very night, and had not finished until
+long after Madge had said her Lord&rsquo;s Prayer.&nbsp; This was always
+said night and morning, both by Madge and Clara.&nbsp; They had been
+taught it by their mother.&nbsp; It was, by the way, one of poor Selina&rsquo;s
+troubles that Madge said nothing but the Lord&rsquo;s Prayer when she
+lay down and when she rose; of course, the Lord&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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 <i>dangerous</i> infidel as Madge would
+be most perilous, and she was to desist from it at once.&nbsp; Mrs Fish
+had by that post written to Miss Pratt, the schoolmistress, and Selina
+no doubt would not be exposed to further temptation.&nbsp; Mrs Fish&rsquo;s
+letter to Miss Pratt was very strong, and did not mince matters.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Miss Hannah Pratt was never in
+the best of tempers, and just now was a little worse than usual.&nbsp;
+It was one of the rules of the school that no tradesmen&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+There was much debate over an application by an auctioneer.&nbsp; He
+was clearly not a tradesman, but he sold chairs, tables and pigs, and,
+as Miss Hannah said, used vulgar language in recommending them.&nbsp;
+However, his wife had money; they lived in a pleasant house in Lewes,
+and the line went outside him.&nbsp; But when a druggist, with a shop
+in Bond Street, proposed his daughter, Miss Hannah took a firm stand.&nbsp;
+What is the use of a principle, she inquired severely, if we do not
+adhere to it?&nbsp; On the other hand, the druggist&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bootmaker!&rsquo; said Miss Hannah with great scorn.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am surprised that you venture to hint the remotest possibility
+of such a contingency.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At last it was settled that the line should also be drawn outside
+the druggist.&nbsp; Miss Hannah, however, had her revenge.&nbsp; A tanner
+in Bermondsey with a house in Bedford Square, had sent two of his children
+to Miss Pratt&rsquo;s seminary.&nbsp; 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
+&lsquo;all be taken from a superior class in society,&rsquo; and gently
+hinted that she could not allow Bedford Square to be contaminated by
+Bond Street.&nbsp; Miss Pratt was most apologetic, enlarged upon the
+druggist&rsquo;s respectability, and more particularly upon his well-known
+piety and upon his generous contributions to the cause of religion.&nbsp;
+This, indeed, was what decided her to make an exception in his favour,
+and the piety also of his daughter was &lsquo;most exemplary.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+However, the tanner&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I warned you,&rsquo; said Miss Hannah; &lsquo;I told you what
+would happen, and as to Mr Hopgood, I suspected him from the first.&nbsp;
+Besides, he is only a banker&rsquo;s clerk.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, what is to be done?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Put your foot down at once.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But I cannot dismiss them.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you think it
+will be better, first of all, to talk to Miss Hopgood?&nbsp; Perhaps
+we could do her some good.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good!&nbsp; Now, do you think we can do any good to an atheist?&nbsp;
+Besides, we have to consider our reputation.&nbsp; Whatever good we
+might do, it would be believed that the infection remained.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We have no excuse for dismissing the other.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Excuse! none is needed, nor would any be justifiable.&nbsp;
+Excuses are immoral.&nbsp; Say at once - of course politely and with
+regret - that the school is established on a certain basis.&nbsp; It
+will be an advantage to us if it is known why these girls do not remain.&nbsp;
+I will dictate the letter, if you like.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; She considered it especially her duty not
+only to look after the children&rsquo;s clothes, the servants and the
+accounts, but to maintain <i>tone</i> everywhere in the establishment,
+and to stiffen her sister when necessary, and preserve in proper sharpness
+her orthodoxy, both in theology and morals.</p>
+<p>Accordingly, both the girls left, and both knew the reason for leaving.&nbsp;
+The druggist&rsquo;s faith was sorely tried.&nbsp; If Miss Pratt&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>As to Madge, she enjoyed her expulsion as a great joke, and her Brighton
+experiences were the cause of much laughter.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was a delightful time for
+them.&nbsp; 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 Th&uuml;ringer Wald, generally to
+some point memorable in history, or for some literary association.&nbsp;
+The drawback was the contrast, when they went home, with Fenmarket,
+with its dulness and its complete isolation from the intellectual world.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s glees, performed by a few of
+the tradesfolk, who had never had an hour&rsquo;s instruction in music;
+and for theological criticism there were the parish church and Ram Lane
+Chapel.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Madge more than Clara was
+liable to depression.</p>
+<p>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 &lsquo;young ladies&rsquo;
+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 &lsquo;nice,&rsquo; or
+it was &lsquo;not nice,&rsquo; or she &lsquo;liked it&rsquo; or did
+&lsquo;not like it;&rsquo; and if she had ventured to say more, Fenmarket
+would have thought her odd, not to say a little improper.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Mrs Tubbs, the brewer&rsquo;s wife, thought they were due to Germany.&nbsp;
+From what she knew of Germany she considered it most injudicious, and
+even morally wrong, to send girls there.&nbsp; She once made the acquaintance
+of a German lady at an hotel at Tunbridge Wells, and was quite shocked.&nbsp;
+She could see quite plainly that the standard of female delicacy must
+be much lower in that country than in England.&nbsp; Mr Tubbs was sure
+Mrs Hopgood must have been French, and said to his daughters, mysteriously,
+&lsquo;you never can tell who Frenchwomen are.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, papa,&rsquo; said Miss Tubbs, &lsquo;you know Mrs Hopgood&rsquo;s
+maiden name; we found that out.&nbsp; It was Molyneux.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Occasionally the Miss Hopgoods were encountered, and they confounded
+Fenmarket sorely.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Miss Clara Hopgood amazed everybody by &lsquo;beginning talk,&rsquo;
+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&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Still worse, when somebody
+observed that an Anti-Corn-Law lecturer was coming to Fenmarket, and
+the parson&rsquo;s daughter cried &lsquo;How horrid!&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is so - &rsquo; she was about to say &lsquo;objectionable,&rsquo;
+but she recollected her official position and that she was bound to
+be politic - &lsquo;so odd and unusual,&rsquo; observed Mrs Greatorex
+to Mrs Tubbs afterwards, &lsquo;is not that Miss Hopgood should have
+radical views.&nbsp; Mrs Barker, I know, is a radical like her husband,
+but then she never puts herself forward, nor makes speeches.&nbsp; I
+never saw anything quite like it, except once in London at a dinner-party.&nbsp;
+Lady Montgomery then went on in much the same way, but she was a baronet&rsquo;s
+wife; the baronet was in Parliament; she received a good deal and was
+obliged to entertain her guests.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Check!&rsquo; said Clara.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Check! after about a dozen moves.&nbsp; It is of no use to
+go on; you always beat me.&nbsp; I should not mind that if I were any
+better now than when I started.&nbsp; It is not in me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The reason is that you do not look two moves ahead.&nbsp;
+You never say to yourself, &ldquo;Suppose I move there, what is she
+likely to do, and what can I do afterwards?&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is just what is impossible to me.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I was not born
+for it.&nbsp; I can do what is under my nose well enough, but nothing
+more.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The planning and the forecasting are the soul of the game.&nbsp;
+I should like to be a general, and play against armies and calculate
+the consequences of man&oelig;uvres.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It would kill me.&nbsp; I should prefer the fighting.&nbsp;
+Besides, calculation is useless, for when I think that you will be sure
+to move such and such a piece, you generally do not.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then what makes the difference between the good and the bad
+player?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is a gift, an instinct, I suppose.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Which is as much as to say that you give it up.&nbsp; You
+are very fond of that word instinct; I wish you would not use it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have heard you use it, and say you instinctively like this
+person or that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; If we neglect it we are little
+better than the brutes, and may grossly deceive ourselves.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this moment the sound of wheels was heard, and Madge jumped up,
+nearly over-setting the board, and rushed into the front room.&nbsp;
+It was the four-horse coach from London, which, once a day, passed through
+Fenmarket on its road to Lincoln.&nbsp; It was not the direct route
+from London to Lincoln, but the <i>Defiance</i> went this way to accommodate
+Fenmarket and other small towns.&nbsp; It slackened speed in order to
+change horses at the &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre,&rsquo; and as Madge stood
+at the window, a gentleman on the box-seat looked at her intently as
+he passed.&nbsp; In another minute he had descended, and was welcomed
+by the landlord, who stood on the pavement.&nbsp; Clara meanwhile had
+taken up a book, but before she had read a page, her sister skipped
+into the parlour again, humming a tune.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let me see - check, you said, but it is not mate.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She put her elbows on the table, rested her head between her hands,
+and appeared to contemplate the game profoundly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, then, what do you say to that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was really a very lucky move, and Clara, whose thoughts perhaps
+were elsewhere, was presently most unaccountably defeated.&nbsp; Madge
+was triumphant.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where are all your deep-laid schemes?&nbsp; Baffled by a poor
+creature who can hardly put two and two together.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Perhaps your schemes were better than mine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know they were not.&nbsp; I saw the queen ought to take
+that bishop, and never bothered myself as to what would follow.&nbsp;
+Have you not lost your faith in schemes?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are very much mistaken if you suppose that, because of
+one failure, or of twenty failures, I would give up a principle.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Clara, you are a strange creature.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t let us
+talk any more about chess.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge swept all the pieces with her hand into the box, shut it, closed
+the board, and put her feet on the fender.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You never believe in impulses or in doing a thing just because
+here and now it appears to be the proper thing to do.&nbsp; Suppose
+anybody were to make love to you - oh! how I wish somebody would, you
+dear girl, for nobody deserves it more - &rsquo;&nbsp; Madge put her
+head caressingly on Clara&rsquo;s shoulder and then raised it again.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;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?&nbsp;
+Would not that stifle love altogether?&nbsp; Would you not rather obey
+your first impression and, if you felt you loved him, would you not
+say &ldquo;Yes&rdquo;?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Time is not everything.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I have never had the chance, and
+am not likely to have it.&nbsp; I can only say that if it were to come
+to me, I should try to use the whole strength of my soul.&nbsp; Precisely
+because the question would be so important, would it be necessary to
+employ every faculty I have in order to decide it.&nbsp; I do not believe
+in oracles which are supposed to prove their divinity by giving no reasons
+for their commands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, well, <i>I</i> believe in Shakespeare.&nbsp; His lovers
+fall in love at first sight.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No doubt they do, but to justify yourself you have to suppose
+that you are a Juliet and your friend a Romeo.&nbsp; They may, for aught
+I know, be examples in my favour.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Exactly.&nbsp; I know what the law of mine is.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It would disclose a host of reasons against any
+conclusion, and I should never come to any.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara smiled.&nbsp; Although this impetuosity was foreign to her,
+she loved it for the good which accompanied it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You do not mean to say you would accept or reject him at once?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, certainly not.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think the risk tremendous.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But there is just as much risk the other way.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Your reason was
+not meant for that kind of work.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood at this moment came downstairs and asked when in the
+name of fortune they meant to have the tea ready.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Frank Palmer, the gentleman whom we saw descend from the coach, was
+the eldest son of a wholesale and manufacturing chemist in London.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s
+training, which was begun at St Paul&rsquo;s school, was completed there.&nbsp;
+He lived at home, going to school in the morning and returning in the
+evening.&nbsp; He was surrounded by every influence which was pure and
+noble.&nbsp; Mr Maurice and Mr Sterling were his father&rsquo;s guests,
+and hence it may be inferred that there was an altar in the house, and
+that the sacred flame burnt thereon.&nbsp; Mr Palmer almost worshipped
+Mr Maurice, and his admiration was not blind, for Maurice connected
+the Bible with what was rational in his friend.&nbsp; &lsquo;What! still
+believable: no need then to pitch it overboard: here after all is the
+Eternal Word!&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The boy&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+He was not particularly reflective, but he was generous and courageous,
+perfectly straightforward, a fair specimen of thousands of English public-school
+boys.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Mr Palmer, senior, sometimes recoiled into intolerance
+and orthodoxy, and bewildered his son who, to use one of his own phrases,
+&lsquo;hardly knew where his father was.&rsquo;&nbsp; Partly the reaction
+was due to the oscillation which accompanies serious and independent
+thought, but mainly it was caused by Mr Palmer&rsquo;s discontent with
+Frank&rsquo;s appropriation of a sentiment or doctrine of which he was
+not the lawful owner.&nbsp; Frank, however, was so hearty, so affectionate,
+and so cheerful, that it was impossible not to love him dearly.</p>
+<p>In his visits to Fenmarket, Frank had often noticed Madge, for the
+&lsquo;Crown and Sceptre&rsquo; was his headquarters, and Madge was
+well enough aware that she had been noticed.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He did not fail
+to ask his father about this friend, and to obtain an introduction to
+the widow.&nbsp; He had now brought it to Fenmarket, and within half
+an hour after he had alighted, he had presented it.</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood, of course, recollected Mr Palmer perfectly, and the
+welcome to Frank was naturally very warm.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Clara and Madge, too, were both excited and pleased.&nbsp; To say nothing
+of Frank&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>Madge was particularly gay that evening.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Still she was very charming, and it must be confessed that sometimes
+her spontaneity was truer than the limitations of speech more carefully
+weighed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What makes you stay in Fenmarket, Mrs Hopgood?&nbsp; How I
+wish you would come to London!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; Rent and living are cheaper here
+than in town.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would you not like to live in London, Miss Hopgood?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara hesitated for a few seconds.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not sure - certainly not by myself.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To the scenery round Fenmarket,&rsquo; interrupted Madge;
+&lsquo;it is so romantic, so mountainous, so interesting in every way.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was thinking of people, strange as it may appear.&nbsp;
+In London nobody really cares for anybody, at least, not in the sense
+in which I should use the words.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Now, if
+I had a talent, I should not be satisfied with admiration or respect
+because of it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Certainly,&rsquo; said Madge, laughing, &lsquo;for the love
+of <i>such</i> a sister.&nbsp; But, Mr Palmer, I like London.&nbsp;
+I like the people, just the people, although I do not know a soul, and
+not a soul cares a brass farthing about me.&nbsp; I am not half so stupid
+in London as in the country.&nbsp; I never have a thought of my own
+down here.&nbsp; How should I?&nbsp; But in London there is plenty of
+talk about all kinds of things, and I find I too have something in me.&nbsp;
+It is true, as Clara says, that nobody is anything particular to anybody,
+but that to me is rather pleasant.&nbsp; I do not want too much of profound
+and eternal attachments.&nbsp; They are rather a burden.&nbsp; They
+involve profound and eternal attachment on my part; and I have always
+to be at my best; such watchfulness and such jealousy!&nbsp; I prefer
+a dressing-gown and slippers and bonds which are not so tight.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge, Madge, I wish you would sometimes save me the trouble
+of laboriously striving to discover what you really mean.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr Palmer, you see both town and country - which do you prefer?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh!&nbsp; I hardly know; the country in summer-time, perhaps,
+and town in the winter.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your father, I remember, loves music.&nbsp; I suppose you
+inherit his taste, and it is impossible to hear good music in the country.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am very fond of music.&nbsp; Have you heard &ldquo;St Paul?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+I was at Birmingham when it was first performed in this country.&nbsp;
+Oh! it <i>is</i> lovely,&rsquo; and he began humming &lsquo;<i>Be thou
+faithful unto death</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank did really care for music.&nbsp; He went wherever good music
+was to be had; he belonged to a choral society and was in great request
+amongst his father&rsquo;s friends at evening entertainments.&nbsp;
+He could also play the piano, so far as to be able to accompany himself
+thereon.&nbsp; He sang to himself when he was travelling, and often
+murmured favourite airs when people around him were talking.&nbsp; He
+had lessons from an old Italian, a little, withered, shabby creature,
+who was not very proud of his pupil.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is a talent,&rsquo;
+said the Signor, &lsquo;and he will amuse himself; good for a ballad
+at a party, but a musician? no!&rsquo; and like all mere &lsquo;talents&rsquo;
+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.&nbsp; There
+was a curious lack in him also of correspondence between his music and
+the rest of himself.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+He went into raptures over the slow movement in the <i>C minor</i> Symphony,
+but no <i>C minor</i> slow movement was discernible in his character.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What on earth can be found in &ldquo;St Paul&rdquo; which
+can be put to music?&rsquo; said Madge.&nbsp; &lsquo;Fancy a chapter
+in the Epistle to the Romans turned into a duet!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge!&nbsp; Madge!&nbsp; I am ashamed of you,&rsquo; said
+her mother.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, mother,&rsquo; said Clara, &lsquo;I am sure that some
+of the settings by your divinity, Handel, are absurd.&nbsp; &ldquo;<i>For
+as in Adam all die</i>&rdquo; may be true enough, and the harmonies
+are magnificent, but I am always tempted to laugh when I hear it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank hummed the familiar apostrophe &lsquo;<i>Be not afraid</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is that a bit of &ldquo;St Paul&rdquo;?&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, it goes like this,&rsquo; and Frank went up to the little
+piano and sang the song through.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is no fault to be found with that,&rsquo; said Madge,
+&lsquo;so far as the coincidence of sense and melody is concerned, but
+I do not care much for oratorios.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+An oratorio, to me, is never quite natural.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood was accustomed to her daughter&rsquo;s extravagance,
+but she was, nevertheless, a little uncomfortable.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said Frank, who had not moved from the piano, and
+he struck the first two bars of &lsquo;<i>Adelaide</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, please,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;go on, go on,&rsquo;
+but Frank could not quite finish it.</p>
+<p>She was sitting on the little sofa, and she put her feet up, lay
+and listened with her eyes shut.&nbsp; There was a vibration in Mr Palmer&rsquo;s
+voice not perceptible during his vision of the crown of life and of
+fidelity to death.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you going to stay over Sunday?&rsquo; inquired Mrs Hopgood.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not quite sure; I ought to be back on Sunday evening.&nbsp;
+My father likes me to be at home on that day.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is there not a Mr Maurice who is a friend of your father?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes, a great friend.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is not High Church nor Low Church?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, not exactly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is he, then?&nbsp; What does he believe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, I can hardly say; he does not believe that anybody will
+be burnt in a brimstone lake for ever.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is what he does not believe,&rsquo; interposed Clara.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp;
+I think that is glorious, don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, but that also is something he does not believe.&nbsp;
+What is there in him which is positive?&nbsp; What has he distinctly
+won from the unknown?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, Miss Hopgood, you ought to hear him yourself; he is wonderful.&nbsp;
+I do admire him so much; I am sure you would like him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you do not go home on Saturday,&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood,
+&lsquo;we shall be pleased if you will have dinner with us on Sunday;
+we generally go for a walk in the afternoon.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank hesitated, but at that moment Madge rose from the sofa.&nbsp;
+Her hair was disarranged, and she pushed its thick folds backward.&nbsp;
+It grew rather low down on her forehead and stood up a little on her
+temples, a mystery of shadow and dark recess.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you, Mrs Hopgood,&rsquo; looking at Madge and meeting
+her eyes, &lsquo;I think it very likely I shall stay, and if I do I
+will most certainly accept your kind invitation.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>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.&nbsp; At half-past one he presented himself at Mrs Hopgood&rsquo;s
+house.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have had a letter from London,&rsquo; said Clara to Frank,
+&lsquo;telling me a most extraordinary story, and I should like to know
+what you think of it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Moreover, the child was visibly improving,
+and it was probable that the disturbance in her health would be speedily
+outgrown.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The
+few purchases they had to make at the draper&rsquo;s were completed,
+and they went out into the street.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The next
+moment a hand was on his shoulder.&nbsp; It was that of an assistant,
+who requested that they would both return for a few minutes.&nbsp; As
+they walked the half dozen steps back, the father&rsquo;s resolution
+was taken.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am sixty,&rdquo; he thought to himself, &ldquo;and
+she is fourteen.&rdquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s
+statement, for it was a man&rsquo;s handkerchief and the bag was in
+his hands.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The father was accordingly
+prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+It was remarkable that it never occurred to her that she might have
+been guilty, but her father&rsquo;s confession, as already stated, was
+apparently so sincere that she could do nothing but believe him.&nbsp;
+You will wonder how the facts were discovered.&nbsp; After his death
+a sealed paper disclosing them was found, with the inscription, &ldquo;<i>Not
+to be opened during my daughter&rsquo;s life, and if she should have
+children or a husband who may survive her, it is to be burnt</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+She had no children, and when she died as an old woman, her husband
+also being dead, the seal was broken.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Probably,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;nobody except his daughter
+believed he was not a thief.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wonder,&rsquo; said Frank, &lsquo;that he did not admit
+that it was his daughter who had taken the handkerchief, and excuse
+her on the ground of her ailment.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He could not do that,&rsquo; replied Madge.&nbsp; &lsquo;The
+object of his life was to make as little of the ailment as possible.&nbsp;
+What would have been the effect on her if she had been made aware of
+its fearful consequences?&nbsp; Furthermore, would he have been believed?&nbsp;
+And then - awful thought, the child might have suspected him of attempting
+to shield himself at her expense!&nbsp; Do you think you could be capable
+of such sacrifice, Mr Palmer?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank hesitated.&nbsp; &lsquo;It would - &rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The question is not fair, Madge,&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood,
+interrupting him.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are asking for a decision when all
+the materials to make up a decision are not present.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I often fear lest, if such-and-such a trial were
+to befall me, I should miserably fail.&nbsp; So I should, furnished
+as I now am, but not as I should be under stress of the trial.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is the use,&rsquo; said Clara, &lsquo;of speculating
+whether we can, or cannot, do this or that?&nbsp; It <i>is</i> now an
+interesting subject for discussion whether the lie was a sin.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;a thousand times no.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brief and decisive.&nbsp; Well, Mr Palmer, what do you say?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is rather an awkward question.&nbsp; A lie is a lie.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But not,&rsquo; broke in Madge, vehemently, &lsquo;to save
+anybody whom you love.&nbsp; Is a contemptible little two-foot measuring-tape
+to be applied to such an action as that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The consequences of such a philosophy, though, my dear,&rsquo;
+said Mrs Hopgood, &lsquo;are rather serious.&nbsp; The moment you dispense
+with a fixed standard, you cannot refuse permission to other people
+to dispense with it also.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah, yes, I know all about that, but I am not going to give
+up my instinct for the sake of a rule.&nbsp; Do what you feel to be
+right, and let the rule go hang.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As for my poor self,&rsquo; said Clara, &lsquo;I do not profess
+to know, without the rule, what is right and what is not.&nbsp; We are
+always trying to transcend the rule by some special pleading, and often
+in virtue of some fancied superiority.&nbsp; Generally speaking, the
+attempt is fatal.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge,&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood, &lsquo;your dogmatic decision
+may have been interesting, but it prevented the expression of Mr Palmer&rsquo;s
+opinion.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge bent forward and politely inclined her head to the embarrassed
+Frank.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not know what to say.&nbsp; I have never thought much
+about such matters.&nbsp; Is not what they call casuistry a science
+among Roman Catholics?&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then you would do, not what you thought right yourself, but
+what I thought right.&nbsp; The worth of the right to you is that it
+is your right, and that you arrive at it in your own way.&nbsp; Besides,
+you might not have time to consult anybody.&nbsp; Were you never compelled
+to settle promptly a case of this kind?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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 &ldquo;Carrots&rdquo; on it.&nbsp; That was the master&rsquo;s
+nickname, for he was red-haired.&nbsp; Scarcely was the word finished,
+when Carpenter heard him coming along the passage.&nbsp; There was just
+time partially to rub out some of the big letters, but CAR remained,
+and Carpenter was standing at the board when &ldquo;Carrots&rdquo; came
+in.&nbsp; He was an excitable man, and he knew very well what the boys
+called him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What have you been writing on the board, sir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Carpenter, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The master examined the board.&nbsp; The upper half of the
+second R was plainly perceptible, but it might possibly have been a
+P.&nbsp; He turned round, looked steadily at Carpenter for a moment,
+and then looked at us.&nbsp; Carpenter was no favourite, but not a soul
+spoke.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Go to your place, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Carpenter went to his place, the letters were erased and the
+lesson was resumed.&nbsp; I was greatly perplexed; I had acquiesced
+in a cowardly falsehood.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+I did not know what else to do.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The company laughed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We cannot,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;all of us come to terms
+after this fashion with our consciences, but we have had enough of these
+discussions on morality.&nbsp; Let us go out.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Go on, go on,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;make for the plank.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+The women fled, but Frank remained.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+The creature was dazed, it stopped and staggered, and in another instant
+Frank was across the bridge in safety.&nbsp; There was a little hysterical
+sobbing, but it was soon over.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, Mr Palmer,&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood, &lsquo;what presence
+of mind and what courage!&nbsp; We should have been killed without you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The feat is not original, Mrs Hopgood.&nbsp; I saw it done
+by a tough little farmer last summer on a bull that was really mad.&nbsp;
+There was no ditch for him though, poor fellow, and he had to jump a
+hedge.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You did not find it difficult,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;to
+settle your problem when it came to you in the shape of a wild ox.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because there was nothing to settle,&rsquo; said Frank, laughing;
+&lsquo;there was only one thing to be done.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So you believed, or rather, so you saw,&rsquo; said Clara.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I should have seen half-a-dozen things at once - that is to say,
+nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And I,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;should have settled it the
+wrong way: I am sure I should, even if I had been a man.&nbsp; I should
+have bolted.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank stayed to tea, and the evening was musical.&nbsp; He left about
+ten, but just as the door had shut he remembered he had forgotten his
+stick.&nbsp; He gave a gentle rap and Madge appeared.&nbsp; She gave
+him his stick.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good-bye again.&nbsp; Thanks for my life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank cursed himself that he could not find the proper word.&nbsp;
+He knew there was something which might be said and ought to be said,
+but he could not say it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He went to the &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre&rsquo;
+and was soon in bed, but not to sleep.&nbsp; Strange, that the moment
+we lie down in the dark, images, which were half obscured, should become
+so intensely luminous!&nbsp; Madge hovered before Frank with almost
+tangible distinctness, and he felt his fingers moving in her heavy,
+voluptuous tresses.&nbsp; Her picture at last became almost painful
+to him and shamed him, so that he turned over from side to side to avoid
+it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+At last he fell asleep and did not wake till late in the morning.&nbsp;
+He had just time to eat his breakfast, pay one more business visit in
+the town, and catch the coach due at eleven o&rsquo;clock from Lincoln
+to London.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; When the coach, however, began to move, he turned
+round and looked behind him, and a hand was waved to him.&nbsp; He took
+off his hat, and in five minutes he was clear of the town.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+What was she doing? talking to other people, existing for others, laughing
+with others!&nbsp; There were miles between himself and Fenmarket.&nbsp;
+Life! what was life?&nbsp; A few moments of living and long, dreary
+gaps between.&nbsp; All this, however, is a vain attempt to delineate
+what was shapeless.&nbsp; It was an intolerable, unvanquishable oppression.&nbsp;
+This was Love; this was the blessing which the god with the ruddy wings
+had bestowed on him.&nbsp; It was a relief to him when the coach rattled
+through Islington, and in a few minutes had landed him at the &lsquo;Angel.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>There was to be a grand entertainment in the assembly room of the
+&lsquo;Crown and Sceptre&rsquo; in aid of the County Hospital.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; On her way she met the brewer&rsquo;s
+wife, who was more aggrieved than she was when Mrs Martin&rsquo;s carriage
+swept past her in the dusty, narrow lane which led to the Hall.&nbsp;
+Mrs Martin could also afford to recognise in a measure the claims of
+education and talent.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The exhibition had been
+provided in order to extinguish a debt incurred in repairing the church,
+but the rector&rsquo;s wife, and the brewer&rsquo;s wife, after consultation,
+decided that they must leave the lecturer to return to his inn.&nbsp;
+Mrs Martin, however, invited him to supper.&nbsp; Of course she knew
+Mr Hopgood well, and knew that he was no ordinary man.&nbsp; She knew
+also something of Mrs Hopgood and the daughters, and that they were
+no ordinary women.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;therefore,&rsquo;
+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.&nbsp; Mrs Martin could
+not make friends with the Hopgoods, nor enter the cottage.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Clearly, however, the Hopgoods could be requested
+to co-operate at the &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre;&rsquo; in fact, it would
+be impolitic not to put some of the townsfolk on the list of patrons.&nbsp;
+So it came about that Mrs Hopgood was included, and that she was made
+responsible for the provision of one song and one recitation.&nbsp;
+For the song it was settled that Frank Palmer should be asked, as he
+would be in Fenmarket.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The recitation Madge undertook.</p>
+<p>The evening arrived, the room was crowded and a dozen private carriages
+stood in the &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre&rsquo; courtyard.&nbsp; Frank
+called for the Hopgoods.&nbsp; Mrs Hopgood and Clara sat with presentation
+tickets in the second row, amongst the fashionable folk; Frank and Madge
+were upon the platform.&nbsp; Frank was loudly applauded in &lsquo;<i>Il
+Mio Tesoro</i>,&rsquo; but the loudest applause of the evening was reserved
+for Madge, who declaimed Byron&rsquo;s &lsquo;<i>Destruction of Sennacherib</i>&rsquo;
+with much energy.&nbsp; She certainly looked very charming in her red
+gown, harmonising with her black hair.&nbsp; The men in the audience
+were vociferous for something more, and would not be contented until
+she again came forward.&nbsp; The truth is, that the wily young woman
+had prepared herself beforehand for possibilities, but she artfully
+concealed her preparation.&nbsp; Looking on the ground and hesitating,
+she suddenly raised her head as if she had just remembered something,
+and then repeated Sir Henry Wotton&rsquo;s &lsquo;<i>Happy Life</i>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Mrs Martin was obliged to be
+very careful.&nbsp; She certainly was on the list at the Lord Lieutenant&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+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 &lsquo;assist in some festivities&rsquo;
+at the Hall in about two months&rsquo; time, which were to be given
+in celebration of the twenty-first birthday of Mrs Martin&rsquo;s third
+son.&nbsp; The scene from the &lsquo;<i>Tempest</i>,&rsquo; where Ferdinand
+and Miranda are discovered playing chess, was suggested, and it was
+proposed that Madge should be Miranda, and Mr Palmer Ferdinand.&nbsp;
+Mrs Martin concluded with a hope that Mrs Hopgood and her eldest daughter
+would &lsquo;witness the performance.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank joyously consented, for amateur theatricals had always attracted
+him, and in a few short weeks he was again at Fenmarket.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>At last the eventful night arrived, and a carriage was hired next
+door to take the party.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+They had gone early in order to accommodate Frank and Madge, and they
+found themselves alone.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Presently two
+or three fiddlers were seen, who began to tune their instruments.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Quite at the back were the servants.&nbsp; At five
+minutes to eight the band struck up the overture to &lsquo;<i>Zampa</i>,&rsquo;
+and in the midst of it in sailed Mrs Martin and a score or two of fashionably-dressed
+people, male and female.&nbsp; The curtain ascended and Prospero&rsquo;s
+cell was seen.&nbsp; Alonso and his companions were properly grouped,
+and Prospero began, -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lsquo;Behold, Sir King,<br />The wronged Duke
+of Milan, Prospero.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The audience applauded him vigorously when he came to the end of
+his speech, but there was an instantaneous cry of &lsquo;hush!&rsquo;
+when Prospero disclosed the lovers.&nbsp; It was really very pretty.&nbsp;
+Miranda wore a loose, simple, white robe, and her wonderful hair was
+partly twisted into a knot, and partly strayed down to her waist.&nbsp;
+The dialogue between the two was spoken with much dramatic feeling,
+and when Ferdinand came to the lines -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lsquo;Sir, she is mortal,<br />But by immortal
+Providence she&rsquo;s mine,&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>old Boston, a worthy and wealthy farmer, who sat next to Mrs Hopgood,
+cried out &lsquo;hear, hear!&rsquo; but was instantly suppressed.</p>
+<p>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, -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;And a precious lucky chap he is.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>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 &lsquo;hear, hear!&rsquo; 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.</p>
+<p>The curtain fell, but there were loud calls for the performers.&nbsp;
+It rose, and they presented themselves, Alonso still holding the hands
+of the happy pair.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Again the curtain fell, the band struck up some dance music and the
+audience were treated to &lsquo;something light,&rsquo; 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; &lsquo;wondered
+what he meant;&rsquo; sang an audacious song recounting her many exploits,
+and finished with a <i>pas-seul.</i></p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+On their way back, Clara broke out against the juxtaposition of Shakespeare
+and such vulgarity.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Much better,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;to have left the Shakespeare
+out altogether.&nbsp; The lesson of the sequence is that each is good
+in its way, a perfectly hateful doctrine to me.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, Miss Hopgood, Mrs Martin had to suit all tastes; we must
+not be too severe upon her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There was something in this remark most irritating to Clara; the
+word &lsquo;tastes,&rsquo; for example, as if the difference between
+Miranda and the chambermaid were a matter of &lsquo;taste.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+She was annoyed too with Frank&rsquo;s easy, cheery tones for she felt
+deeply what she said, and his mitigation and smiling latitudinarianism
+were more exasperating than direct opposition.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am sure,&rsquo; continued Frank, &lsquo;that if we were
+to take the votes of the audience, Miranda would be the queen of the
+evening;&rsquo; and he put the crown which he had brought away with
+him on her head again.</p>
+<p>Clara was silent.&nbsp; In a few moments they were at the door of
+their house.&nbsp; It had begun to rain, and Madge, stepping out of
+the carriage in a hurry, threw a shawl over her head, forgetting the
+wreath.&nbsp; It fell into the gutter and was splashed with mud.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The next morning it still rained, a cold rain from the north-east,
+a very disagreeable type of weather on the Fenmarket flats.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The breakfast was dull, and for the most part all three
+were silent.&nbsp; Mrs Hopgood and Clara went away to begin their housework,
+leaving Madge alone.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge,&rsquo; cried Mrs Hopgood, &lsquo;what am I to do with
+this thing?&nbsp; It is of no use to preserve it; it is dead and covered
+with dirt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Throw it down here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She took it and rammed it into the fire.&nbsp; At that moment she
+saw Frank pass.&nbsp; He was evidently about to knock, but she ran to
+the door and opened it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I did not wish to keep you waiting in the wet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am just off but I could not help calling to see how you
+are.&nbsp; What! burning your laurels, the testimony to your triumph?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Triumph! rather transitory; finishes in smoke,&rsquo; and
+she pushed two or three of the unburnt leaves amongst the ashes and
+covered them over.&nbsp; He stooped down, picked up a leaf, smoothed
+it between his fingers, and then raised his eyes.&nbsp; They met hers
+at that instant, as she lifted them and looked in his face.&nbsp; They
+were near one another, and his hands strayed towards hers till they
+touched.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;But by immortal Providence she&rsquo;s mine.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>The horn once more sounded, she let him out silently, and he was
+off.&nbsp; Mrs Hopgood and Clara presently came downstairs.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr Palmer came in to bid you good-bye, but he heard the coach
+and was obliged to rush away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What a pity,&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood, &lsquo;that you did
+not call us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I thought he would be able to stay longer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The lines which followed Frank&rsquo;s quotation came into her head,
+-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;Sweet lord, you play me false.&rsquo;<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lsquo;No,
+my dearest love,<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I would not for the world.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;An omen,&rsquo; she said to herself; &lsquo;&ldquo;he would
+not for the world.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She was in the best of spirits all day long.&nbsp; When the housework
+was over and they were quiet together, she said, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, my dear mother and sister, I want to know how the performance
+pleased you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was as good as it could be,&rsquo; replied her mother,
+&lsquo;but I cannot think why all plays should turn upon lovemaking.&nbsp;
+I wonder whether the time will ever come when we shall care for a play
+in which there is no courtship.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What a horrible heresy, mother,&rsquo; said Madge.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Never,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;as long as it does not weary
+of the thing itself, and it is not likely to do that.&nbsp; Fancy a
+young man and a young woman stopping short and exclaiming, &ldquo;This
+is just what every son of Adam and daughter of Eve has gone through
+before; why should we proceed?&rdquo;&nbsp; Besides, it is the one emotion
+common to the whole world; we can all comprehend it.&nbsp; Once more,
+it reveals character.&nbsp; In <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Othello</i>, for
+example, what is interesting is not solely the bare love.&nbsp; The
+natures of Hamlet and Othello are brought to light through it as they
+would not have been through any other stimulus.&nbsp; I am sure that
+no ordinary woman ever shows what she really is, except when she is
+in love.&nbsp; Can you tell what she is from what she calls her religion,
+or from her friends, or even from her husband?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would it not be equally just to say women are more alike in
+love than in anything else?&nbsp; Mind, I do not say alike, but more
+alike.&nbsp; Is it not the passion which levels us all?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, mother, mother! did one ever hear such dreadful blasphemy?&nbsp;
+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?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, at anyrate, I do not want to see <i>my</i> children
+in love to understand what they are - to me at least.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then, if you comprehend us so completely - and let us have
+no more philosophy - just tell me, should I make a good actress?&nbsp;
+Oh! to be able to sway a thousand human beings into tears or laughter!&nbsp;
+It must be divine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, I do not think you would,&rsquo; replied Clara.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why not, miss?<i>&nbsp; Your</i> opinion, mind, was not asked.&nbsp;
+Did I not act to perfection last night?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then why are you so decisive?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Try a different part some day.&nbsp; I may be mistaken.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are very oracular.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was Mr Palmer&rsquo;s design to send Frank abroad as soon as he
+understood the home trade.&nbsp; It was thought it would be an advantage
+to him to learn something of foreign manufacturing processes.&nbsp;
+Frank had gladly agreed to go, but he was now rather in the mood for
+delay.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Consent was willingly given,
+for Mr Palmer knew the family well; letters passed between him and Mrs
+Hopgood, and it was arranged that Frank&rsquo;s visit to Germany should
+be postponed till the summer.&nbsp; He was now frequently at Fenmarket
+as Madge&rsquo;s accepted suitor, and, as the spring advanced, their
+evenings were mostly spent by themselves out of doors.&nbsp; One afternoon
+they went for a long walk, and on their return they rested by a stile.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He had heard one or two read aloud at home, and had looked
+at one or two himself, but had gone no further.&nbsp; Madge, her mother,
+and her sister had read and re-read them.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;for that Vale in Ida.&nbsp;
+Here in these fens how I long for something that is not level!&nbsp;
+Oh, for the roar of -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;The long brook falling thro&rsquo; the clov&rsquo;n ravine<br />In
+cataract after cataract to the sea.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Go on with it, Frank.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But you know <i>&OElig;none</i>?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot say I do.&nbsp; I began it - &rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Frank, how could you begin it and lay it down unfinished?&nbsp;
+Besides, those lines are some of the first; you <i>must</i> remember
+-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Behind the valley topmost Gargarus<br />Stands up and takes
+the morning.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;No, I do not recollect, but I will learn them; learn them
+for your sake.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not want you to learn them for my sake.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But I shall.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She had taken off her hat and his hand strayed to her neck.&nbsp;
+Her head fell on his shoulder and she had forgotten his ignorance of
+<i>&OElig;none</i>.&nbsp; Presently she awoke from her delicious trance
+and they moved homewards in silence.&nbsp; Frank was a little uneasy.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do greatly admire Tennyson,&rsquo; he said.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you admire?&nbsp; You have hardly looked at him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I saw a very good review of him.&nbsp; I will look that review
+up, by the way, before I come down again.&nbsp; Mr Maurice was talking
+about it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge had a desire to say something, but she did not know what to
+say, a burden lay upon her chest.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This must be criminal
+or disease, she thought to herself, and she forcibly recalled Frank&rsquo;s
+virtues.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; When he had gone she reasoned with herself.&nbsp;
+What a miserable counterfeit of love, she argued, is mere intellectual
+sympathy, a sympathy based on books!&nbsp; What did Miranda know about
+Ferdinand&rsquo;s &lsquo;views&rsquo; on this or that subject?&nbsp;
+Love is something independent of &lsquo;views.&rsquo;&nbsp; It is an
+attraction which has always been held to be inexplicable, but whatever
+it may be it is not &lsquo;views.&rsquo;&nbsp; She was becoming a little
+weary, she thought, of what was called &lsquo;culture.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+These creatures whom we know through Shakespeare and Goethe are ghostly.&nbsp;
+What have we to do with them?&nbsp; It is idle work to read or even
+to talk fine things about them.&nbsp; It ends in nothing.&nbsp; What
+we really have to go through and that which goes through it are interesting,
+but not circumstances and character impossible to us.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The true
+artist knows that his hero must be a character shaping events and shaped
+by them, and not a babbler about literature.&nbsp; Frank, also, was
+so susceptible.&nbsp; He liked to hear her read to him, and her enthusiasm
+would soon be his.&nbsp; Moreover, how gifted he was, unconsciously,
+with all that makes a man admirable, with courage, with perfect unselfishness!&nbsp;
+How handsome he was, and then his passion for her!&nbsp; She had read
+something of passion, but she never knew till now what the white intensity
+of its flame in a man could be.&nbsp; She was committed, too, happily
+committed; it was an engagement.</p>
+<p>Thus, whenever doubt obtruded itself, she poured a self-raised tide
+over it and concealed it.&nbsp; Alas! it could not be washed away; it
+was a little sharp rock based beneath the ocean&rsquo;s depths, and
+when the water ran low its dark point reappeared.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+She was destitute of that power, which her sister possessed, of surveying
+herself from a distance.&nbsp; On the contrary, her emotion enveloped
+her, and the safeguard of reflection on it was impossible to her.</p>
+<p>As to Frank, no doubt ever approached him.&nbsp; He was intoxicated,
+and beside himself.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; If he had been drawn over Fenmarket
+sluice in a winter flood he would not have been more incapable of resistance.</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s occasional moodiness might be due to parting
+and absence, or the anticipation of them.&nbsp; She never ventured to
+say anything about Frank to Madge, for there was something in her which
+forbade all approach from that side.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+From that moment all confidence is at an end.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Bitter, bitter!&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was now far into June, and Madge and Frank extended their walks
+and returned later.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Wordsworth was one of the divinities at Stoke Newington, and just
+before Frank visited Fenmarket that week, he had heard the <i>Intimations
+of Immortality</i> read with great fervour.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Bravo!&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;but, of all Wordsworth&rsquo;s
+poems, that is the one for which I believe I care the least.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank&rsquo;s countenance fell.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, me!&nbsp; I thought it was just what would suit you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, not particularly.&nbsp; There are some noble lines in
+it; for example -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;And custom lie upon thee with a weight,<br />Heavy as frost,
+and deep almost as life!&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>But the very title - <i>Intimations of Immortality from Recollections
+of Early Childhood</i> - is unmeaning to me, and as for the verse which
+is in everybody&rsquo;s mouth -</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>and still worse the vision of &ldquo;that immortal sea,&rdquo; and
+of the children who &ldquo;sport upon the shore,&rdquo; they convey
+nothing whatever to me.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was now growing dark and a few heavy drops of rain began to fall,
+but in a minute or two they ceased.&nbsp; Frank, contrary to his usual
+wont, was silent.&nbsp; There was something undiscovered in Madge, a
+region which he had not visited and perhaps could not enter.&nbsp; She
+discerned in an instant what she had done, and in an instant repented.&nbsp;
+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?&nbsp; Scores
+of persons might think as she thought about the ode, who would not spend
+a moment in doing anything to gratify her.&nbsp; It was delightful also
+to reflect that Frank imagined she would sympathise with anything written
+in that temper.&nbsp; She recalled what she herself had said when somebody
+gave Clara a copy in &lsquo;Parian&rsquo; of a Greek statue, a thing
+coarse in outline and vulgar.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Madge&rsquo;s heart overflowed, and Frank had never
+attracted her so powerfully as at that moment.&nbsp; She took his hand
+softly in hers.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Frank,&rsquo; she murmured, as she bent her head towards him,
+&lsquo;it is really a lovely poem.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; They
+took refuge in a little barn and sat down.&nbsp; Madge, who was timid
+and excited in a thunderstorm, closed her eyes to shield herself from
+the glare.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot, cannot go to-morrow,&rsquo; he suddenly cried, as
+they neared the town.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You <i>shall</i> go,&rsquo; she replied calmly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, Madge, think of me in Germany, think what my dreams and
+thoughts will be - you here - hundreds of miles between us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She had never seen him so shaken with terror.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You <i>shall</i> go; not another word.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must say something - what can I say?&nbsp; My God, my God,
+have mercy on me!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mercy! mercy!&rsquo; she repeated, half unconsciously, and
+then rousing herself, exclaimed, &lsquo;You shall not say it; I will
+not hear; now, good-bye.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; When he recovered himself he went
+to the &lsquo;Crown and Sceptre&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; He dared not go near the house the next
+morning, but as he passed it on the coach he looked at the windows.&nbsp;
+Nobody was to be seen, and that night he left England.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did you hear,&rsquo; said Clara to her mother at breakfast,
+&lsquo;that the lightning struck one of the elms in the avenue at Mrs
+Martin&rsquo;s yesterday evening and splintered it to the ground?&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>In a few days Madge received the following letter:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;FRANKFORT, O. M.,<br />H&Ocirc;TEL WAIDENBUSCH.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dearest Madge, - I do not know how to write to you.&nbsp;
+I have begun a dozen letters but I cannot bring myself to speak of what
+lies before me, hiding the whole world from me.&nbsp; Forgiveness! how
+is any forgiveness possible?&nbsp; But Madge, my dearest Madge, remember
+that my love is intenser than ever.&nbsp; What has happened has bound
+you closer to me.&nbsp; I <i>implore</i> you to let me come back.&nbsp;
+I will find a thousand excuses for returning, and we will marry.&nbsp;
+We had vowed marriage to each other and why should not our vows be fulfilled?&nbsp;
+Marriage, marriage <i>at once</i>.&nbsp; You will not, you <i>cannot</i>,
+no, you <i>cannot</i>, you must see you cannot refuse.&nbsp; My father
+wishes to make this town his headquarters for ten days.&nbsp; Write
+by return for mercy&rsquo;s sake. - Your ever devoted</p>
+<p>&lsquo;FRANK.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The reply came only a day late.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear Frank, - Forgiveness!&nbsp; Who is to be forgiven?&nbsp;
+Not you.&nbsp; You believed you loved me, but I doubted my love, and
+I know now that no true love for you exists.&nbsp; We must part, and
+part forever.&nbsp; Whatever wrong may have been done, marriage to avoid
+disgrace would be a wrong to both of us infinitely greater.&nbsp; I
+owe you an expiation; your release is all I can offer, and it is insufficient.&nbsp;
+I can only plead that I was deaf and blind.&nbsp; By some miracle, I
+cannot tell how, my ears and eyes are opened, and I hear and see.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; There must be no wavering, no
+half-measures, and I absolutely forbid another letter from you.&nbsp;
+If one arrives I must, for the sake of my own peace and resolution,
+refuse to read it.&nbsp; You have simply to announce to your father
+that the engagement is at an end, and give no reasons. - Your faithful
+friend</p>
+<p>&lsquo;MADGE HOPGOOD.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Another letter did come, but Madge was true to her word, and it was
+returned unopened.</p>
+<p>For a long time Frank was almost incapable of reflection.&nbsp; He
+dwelt on an event which might happen, but which he dared not name; and
+if it should happen!&nbsp; Pictures of his father, his home his father&rsquo;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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Her injunction might not be final.&nbsp; There was but
+one hope for him, one possibility of extrication, one necessity - their
+marriage.&nbsp; It <i>must</i> be.&nbsp; He dared not think of what
+might be the consequences if they did not marry.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Clara is not here,&rsquo; said Mrs Hopgood; &lsquo;she was
+very tired last night, perhaps it is better not to disturb her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, no! please let her alone.&nbsp; I will see if she still
+sleeps.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge went upstairs, opened her sister&rsquo;s door noiselessly,
+saw that she was not awake, and returned.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s side.&nbsp; Her mother
+drew herself a little nearer, and took Madge&rsquo;s hand gently in
+her own.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge, my child, have you nothing to say to your mother?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Cannot you tell me why Frank and you have parted?&nbsp; Do
+you not think I ought to know something about such an event in the life
+of one so close to me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I broke off the engagement: we were not suited to one another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; Thank God, He has given you such courage!&nbsp;
+But you must have suffered - I know you must;&rsquo; and she tenderly
+kissed her daughter.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, mother! mother!&rsquo; cried Madge, &lsquo;what is the
+worst - at least to - you - the worst that can happen to a woman?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood did not speak; something presented itself which she refused
+to recognise, but she shuddered.&nbsp; Before she could recover herself
+Madge broke out again, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It has happened to me; mother, your daughter has wrecked your
+peace for ever!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And he has abandoned you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, no; I told you it was I who left him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was Mrs Hopgood&rsquo;s custom, when any evil news was suddenly
+communicated to her, to withdraw at once if possible to her own room.&nbsp;
+She detached herself from Madge, rose, and, without a word, went upstairs
+and locked her door.&nbsp; The struggle was terrible.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She was shaken and bewildered.&nbsp; She was neither
+orthodox nor secular.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+For some time she was powerless, blown this way and that way by contradictory
+storms, and unable to determine herself to any point whatever.&nbsp;
+She was not, however, new to the tempest.&nbsp; She had lived and had
+survived when she thought she must have gone down.&nbsp; She had learned
+the wisdom which the passage through desperate straits can bring.&nbsp;
+At last she prayed and in a few minutes a message was whispered to her.&nbsp;
+She went into the breakfast-room and seated herself again by Madge.&nbsp;
+Neither uttered a word, but Madge fell down before her, and, with a
+great cry, buried her face in her mother&rsquo;s lap.&nbsp; She remained
+kneeling for some time waiting for a rebuke, but none came.&nbsp; Presently
+she felt smoothing hands on her head and the soft impress of lips.&nbsp;
+So was she judged.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It was settled that they should leave Fenmarket.&nbsp; Their departure
+caused but little surprise.&nbsp; They had scarcely any friends, and
+it was always conjectured that people so peculiar would ultimately find
+their way to London.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Fortunately for them they had
+no difficulty whatever in getting rid of the Fenmarket house for the
+remainder of their term.</p>
+<p>For a little while London diverted them after a fashion, but the
+absence of household cares told upon them.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Her
+mother and Clara did everything to sustain and to cheer her.&nbsp; They
+possessed the rare virtue of continuous tenderness.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was as impossible as that there should be
+any failure in the pressure with which the rocks press towards the earth&rsquo;s
+centre.&nbsp; Madge at times was very far gone in melancholy.&nbsp;
+How different this thing looked when it was close at hand; when she
+personally was to be the victim!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Nor would it
+be her own history solely, but more or less that of her mother and sister.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Popular
+theology makes personal salvation of such immense importance that, in
+comparison therewith, we lose sight of the consequences to others of
+our misdeeds.&nbsp; The sense of cruel injustice to those who loved
+her remained with Madge perpetually.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; One autumn morning, she found herself at Letherhead, the
+longest trip she had undertaken, for there were scarcely any railways
+then.&nbsp; She wandered about till she discovered a footpath which
+took her to a mill-pond, which spread itself out into a little lake.&nbsp;
+It was fed by springs which burst up through the ground.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She was fascinated for a moment by the spectacle, and
+reflected upon it, but she passed on.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The
+porch gate was open because the organist was about to practise, and
+in another instant she was listening to the <i>Kyrie</i> from Beethoven&rsquo;s
+Mass in C.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s, Moorfields.&nbsp; She broke down and wept, but there
+was something new in her sorrow, and it seemed as if a certain Pity
+overshadowed her.</p>
+<p>She had barely recovered herself when she saw a woman, apparently
+about fifty, coming towards her with a wicker basket on her arm.&nbsp;
+She sat down beside Madge, put her basket on the ground, and wiped her
+face with her apron.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Marnin&rsquo; miss! its rayther hot walkin&rsquo;, isn&rsquo;t
+it?&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve come all the way from Darkin, and I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo;
+to Great Oakhurst.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s a longish step there and back
+again; not that this is the nearest way, but I don&rsquo;t like climbing
+them hills, and then when I get to Letherhead I shall have a lift in
+a cart.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge felt bound to say something as the sunburnt face looked kind
+and motherly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose you live at Great Oakhurst?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;t pay for I ain&rsquo;t used to it, and the house is
+too big for me, and there isn&rsquo;t nobody proper to mind it when
+I goes over to Darkin for anything.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you going to leave?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t quite know yet, miss, but I thinks I shall
+live with my daughter in London.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s married a cabinetmaker
+in Great Ormond Street: they let lodgings, too.&nbsp; Maybe you know
+that part?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, I do not.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You don&rsquo;t live in London, then?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, I do.&nbsp; I came from London this morning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The Lord have mercy on us, did you though!&nbsp; I suppose,
+then, you&rsquo;re a-visitin&rsquo; here.&nbsp; I know most of the folk
+hereabouts.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No: I am going back this afternoon.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Her interrogator was puzzled and her curiosity stimulated.&nbsp;
+Presently she looked in Madge&rsquo;s face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! my poor dear, you&rsquo;ll excuse me, I don&rsquo;t mean
+to be forward, but I see you&rsquo;ve been a-cryin&rsquo;: there&rsquo;s
+somebody buried here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>That was all she could say.&nbsp; The walk from Letherhead, and the
+excitement had been too much for her and she fainted.&nbsp; Mrs Caffyn,
+for that was her name, was used to fainting fits.&nbsp; She was often
+&lsquo;a bit faint&rsquo; herself, and she instantly loosened Madge&rsquo;s
+gown, brought out some smelling-salts and also a little bottle of brandy
+and water.&nbsp; Something suddenly struck her.&nbsp; She took up Madge&rsquo;s
+hand: there was no wedding ring on it.</p>
+<p>Presently her patient recovered herself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Look you now, my dear; you aren&rsquo;t noways fit to go back
+to London to-day.&nbsp; If you was my child you shouldn&rsquo;t do it
+for all the gold in the Indies, no, nor you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t now.&nbsp;
+I shouldn&rsquo;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 &rsquo;ud have to
+answer for it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But I must go; my mother and sister will not know what has
+become of me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You leave that to me; I tell you again as you can&rsquo;t
+go.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve been a mother myself, and I haven&rsquo;t had children
+for nothing.&nbsp; I was just a-goin&rsquo; to send a little parcel
+up to my daughter by the coach, and her husband&rsquo;s a-goin&rsquo;
+to meet it.&nbsp; She&rsquo;d left something behind last week when she
+was with me, and I thought I&rsquo;d get a bit of fresh butter here
+for her and put along with it.&nbsp; They make better butter in the
+farm in the bottom there, than they do at Great Oakhurst.&nbsp; A note
+inside now will get to your mother all right; you have a bit of something
+to eat and drink here, and you&rsquo;ll be able to walk along of me
+just into Letherhead, and then you can ride to Great Oakhurst; it&rsquo;s
+only about two miles, and you can stay there all night.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge was greatly touched; she took Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s hands in hers,
+pressed them both and consented.&nbsp; She was very weary, and the stamp
+on Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s countenance was indubitable; it was evidently
+no forgery, but of royal mintage.&nbsp; They walked slowly to Letherhead,
+and there they found the carrier&rsquo;s cart, which took them to Great
+Oakhurst.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s house was a roomy old cottage near the church,
+with a bow-window in which were displayed bottles of &lsquo;suckers,&rsquo;
+and of Day &amp; Martin&rsquo;s blacking, cotton stuffs, a bag of nuts
+and some mugs, cups and saucers.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s Carminative, and steel-drops.&nbsp; There was also a small
+stock of writing-paper, string and tin ware.&nbsp; A boy was behind
+the counter.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He went as far as those things
+which were put up in packets, such as what were called &lsquo;grits&rsquo;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Poor woman! she was much
+tried.&nbsp; Half the people who dealt with her were in her debt, but
+she could not press them for her money.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She also, during the shooting-season, was
+often asked to find a bedroom for visitors to The Towers.</p>
+<p>She might have done better had she been on thoroughly good terms
+with the parson.&nbsp; She attended church on Sunday morning with tolerable
+regularity.&nbsp; She never went inside a dissenting chapel, and was
+not heretical on any definite theological point, but the rector and
+she were not friends.&nbsp; She had lived in Surrey ever since she was
+a child, but she was not Surrey born.&nbsp; Both her father and mother
+came from the north country, and migrated southwards when she was very
+young.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;Marnin&rsquo;, sir,&rsquo; in just the same tone as
+that in which she said it to the smallest of the Great Oakhurst farmers.&nbsp;
+Her church-going was an official duty incumbent upon her as the proprietor
+of the only shop in the parish.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She was
+attacked for the omission, but she defended herself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What was the use when the poor dear was only seven year old?&nbsp;
+What call was there for him to come to a blessed innocent like that?&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;t no use, for he
+went off and we didn&rsquo;t so much as hear her name, not even when
+he was a-wandering.&nbsp; I says to myself when the parson left, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
+the good of having you?&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn was a Christian, but she was a disciple of St James rather
+than of St Paul.&nbsp; 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 &lsquo;faith,
+if it hath not works, is dead, being alone,&rsquo; was something very
+vivid and very practical.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s indignation never
+rose to the correct boiling point against these crimes.&nbsp; The rector
+once ventured to say, as the case was next door to her, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is very sad, is it not, Mrs Caffyn, that Polesden should
+be so addicted to drink.&nbsp; I hope he did not disturb you last Saturday
+night.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn was behind her own counter.&nbsp; She had just served
+a customer with two ounces of Dutch cheese, and she sat down on her
+stool.&nbsp; Being rather a heavy woman she always sat down when she
+was not busy, and she never rose merely to talk.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, it is sad, sir, and Polesden isn&rsquo;t no particular
+friend of mine, but I tell you what&rsquo;s sad too, sir, and that&rsquo;s
+the way them people are mucked up in that cottage.&nbsp; 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&rsquo; nights, there&rsquo;s
+them children a-squalling, and he can&rsquo;t bide there and do nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am afraid, though, Mrs Caffyn, there must be something radically
+wrong with that family.&nbsp; I suppose you know all about the eldest
+daughter?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir, I <i>have</i> heard it: it wouldn&rsquo;t be Great
+Oakhurst if I hadn&rsquo;t, but p&rsquo;r&rsquo;aps, sir, you&rsquo;ve
+never been upstairs in that house, and yet a house it isn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+There&rsquo;s just two sleeping-rooms, that&rsquo;s all; it&rsquo;s
+shameful, it isn&rsquo;t decent.&nbsp; Well, that gal, she goes away
+to service.&nbsp; Maybe, sir, them premises at the farm are also unbeknown
+to you.&nbsp; In the back kitchen there&rsquo;s a broadish sort of shelf
+as Jim climbs into o&rsquo; nights, and it has a rail round it to keep
+you from a-falling out, and there&rsquo;s a ladder as they draws up
+in the day as goes straight up from that kitchen to the gal&rsquo;s
+bedroom door.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s downright disgraceful, and I don&rsquo;t
+believe the Lord A&rsquo;mighty would be marciful to neither of <i>us</i>
+if we was tried like that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn bethought herself of the &lsquo;us&rsquo; and was afraid
+that even she had gone a little too far; &lsquo;leastways, speaking
+for myself, sir,&rsquo; she added.</p>
+<p>The rector turned rather red, and repented his attempt to enlist
+Mrs Caffyn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; I believe the
+Polesdens are very lax attendants at church, and I don&rsquo;t think
+they ever communicated.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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 &lsquo;good-morning,&rsquo;
+made to do duty for both women.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn persuaded Madge to go to bed at once, after giving her
+&lsquo;something to comfort her.&rsquo;&nbsp; In the morning her kind
+hostess came to her bedside.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You&rsquo;ve got a mother, haven&rsquo;t you - leastways,
+I know you have, because you wrote to her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, and you lives with her and she looks after you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And she&rsquo;s fond of you, maybe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s a marcy; well then, my dear, you shall go back
+in the cart to Letherhead, and you&rsquo;ll catch the Darkin coach to
+London.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have been very good to me; what have I to pay you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pay?&nbsp; Nothing! why, if I was to let you pay, it would
+just look as if I&rsquo;d trapped you here to get something out of you.&nbsp;
+Pay! no, not a penny.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can afford very well to pay, but if it vexes you I will
+not offer anything.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know how to thank you enough.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge took Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s hand in hers and pressed it firmly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Besides, my dear,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn, smoothing the sheets
+a little, &lsquo;you won&rsquo;t mind my saying it, I expex you are
+in trouble.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s something on your mind, and I believe
+as I knows pretty well what it is.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge turned round in the bed so as no longer to face the light;
+Mrs Caffyn sat between her and the window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Look you here, my dear; don&rsquo;t you suppose I meant to
+say anything to hurt you.&nbsp; The moment I looked on you I was drawed
+to you like; I couldn&rsquo;t help it.&nbsp; I see&rsquo;d what was
+the matter, but I was all the more drawed, and I just wanted you to
+know as it makes no difference.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s like me; sometimes
+I&rsquo;m drawed that way and sometimes t&rsquo;other way, and it&rsquo;s
+never no use for me to try to go against it.&nbsp; I ain&rsquo;t a-going
+to say anything more to you; God-A&rsquo;mighty, He&rsquo;s above us
+all; but p&rsquo;r&rsquo;aps you may be comm&rsquo; this way again some
+day, and then you&rsquo;ll look in.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge turned again to the light, and again caught Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s
+hand, but was silent.</p>
+<p>The next morning, after Madge&rsquo;s return, Mrs Cork, the landlady,
+presented herself at the sitting-room door and &lsquo;wished to speak
+with Mrs Hopgood for a minute.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come in, Mrs Cork.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you, ma&rsquo;am, but I prefer as you should come downstairs.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Cork was about forty, a widow with no children.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She lived in the basement with a maid, much
+like herself but a little more human.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She was a woman of what she called regular habits.&nbsp;
+No lodger was ever permitted to transgress her rules, or to have meals
+ten minutes before or ten minutes after the appointed time.&nbsp; She
+had undoubtedly been married, but who Cork could have been was a marvel.&nbsp;
+Why he died, and why there were never any children were no marvels.&nbsp;
+At two o&rsquo;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.&nbsp; No meat, by the way,
+was ever roasted - it was considered wasteful - everything was baked
+or boiled.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Mrs Hopgood one night was not very well and Clara
+wished to give her mother something warm.&nbsp; She rang the bell and
+asked for hot water.&nbsp; Maria came up and disappeared without a word
+after receiving the message.&nbsp; Presently she returned.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mrs Cork, miss, wishes me to tell you as it was never understood
+as &rsquo;ot water would be required after tea, and she hasn&rsquo;t
+got any.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood had a fire, although it was not yet the thirty-first
+of October, for it was very damp and raw.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Again Maria disappeared and returned.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mrs Cork says, miss, as it&rsquo;s very ill-convenient as
+the kettle is cleaned up agin to-morrow, and if you can do without it
+she will be obliged.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was of no use to continue the contest, and Clara bethought herself
+of a little &lsquo;Etna&rsquo; she had in her bedroom.&nbsp; She went
+to the druggist&rsquo;s, bought some methylated spirit, and obtained
+what she wanted.</p>
+<p>Mrs Cork had one virtue and one weakness.&nbsp; Her virtue was cleanliness,
+but she persecuted the &lsquo;blacks,&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; At half-past
+nine every evening it was let out into the back-yard and vanished.&nbsp;
+At ten precisely it was heard to mew and was immediately admitted.&nbsp;
+Not once in a twelvemonth did that cat prolong its love making after
+five minutes to ten.</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood went upstairs to her room, Mrs Cork following and closing
+the door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you please, ma&rsquo;am, I wish to give you notice to leave
+this day week.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is the matter, Mrs Cork?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am, for one thing, I didn&rsquo;t know as you&rsquo;d
+bring a bird with you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was a pet bird belonging to Madge.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But what harm does the bird do?&nbsp; It gives no trouble;
+my daughter attends to it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, ma&rsquo;am, but it worrits my Joseph - the cat, I mean.&nbsp;
+I found him the other mornin&rsquo; on the table eyin&rsquo; it, and
+I can&rsquo;t a-bear to see him urritated.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should hardly have thought that a reason for parting with
+good lodgers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood had intended to move, as before explained, but she did
+not wish to go till the three months had expired.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;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.&nbsp; I wish you to know&rsquo; - Mrs Cork suddenly became
+excited and venomous - &lsquo;that I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t respectable?&nbsp; Where was she last
+night?&nbsp; And do you suppose as me as has been a married woman can&rsquo;t
+see the condition she&rsquo;s in?&nbsp; 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&rsquo;ll please vacate these premises on the day
+named.&rsquo;&nbsp; She did not wait for an answer, but banged the door
+after her, and went down to her subterranean den.</p>
+<p>Mrs Hopgood did not tell her children the true reason for leaving.&nbsp;
+She merely said that Mrs Cork had been very impertinent, and that they
+must look out for other rooms.&nbsp; Madge instantly recollected Great
+Ormond Street, but she did not know the number, and oddly enough she
+had completely forgotten Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s name.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+She could not therefore write, and Mrs Hopgood determined that she herself
+would go to Great Oakhurst.&nbsp; She had another reason for her journey.&nbsp;
+She wished her kind friend there to see that Madge had really a mother
+who cared for her.&nbsp; She was anxious to confirm Madge&rsquo;s story,
+and Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s confidence.&nbsp; Clara desired to go also, but
+Mrs Hopgood would not leave Madge alone, and the expense of a double
+fare was considered unnecessary.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; In about half an hour it began to rain
+heavily, and by the time she was in Pentonville she was wet through.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Clara went there directly after
+breakfast, and saw Mrs Marshall, who had already received an introductory
+letter from her mother.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The Marshall family included Marshall and his wife.&nbsp; He was
+rather a small man, with blackish hair, small lips, and with a nose
+just a little turned up at the tip.&nbsp; As we have been informed,
+he was a cabinet-maker.&nbsp; He worked for very good shops, and earned
+about two pounds a week.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He belonged to
+a mechanic&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He found in a second-hand dealer&rsquo;s
+shop a model, which could be taken to pieces, of the inside of the human
+body.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; The crossing of peculiarities nevertheless
+presented difficulties.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+On the other hand the parents of the prodigy might each have corresponding
+qualities, which, mixed with the mathematical tendency, would completely
+nullify it.&nbsp; The path of duty therefore was by no means plain.&nbsp;
+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 &lsquo;run to head,&rsquo;
+he determined to select as his wife a &lsquo;daughter of the soil,&rsquo;
+to use his own phrase, above the average height, with a vigorous constitution
+and plenty of common sense.&nbsp; She need not be bookish, &lsquo;he
+could supply all that himself.&rsquo;&nbsp; Accordingly, he married
+Sarah Caffyn.&nbsp; His mother and Mrs Caffyn had been early friends.&nbsp;
+He was not mistaken in Sarah.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; One
+child had been born, but to Marshall&rsquo;s surprise and disappointment
+it was a poor, rickety thing, and died before it was a twelvemonth old.</p>
+<p>Mrs Marshall was not a very happy woman.&nbsp; Marshall was a great
+politician and spent many of his evenings away from home at political
+meetings.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He was very good and kind to her, and she never
+imagined, before marriage, that he ought to be more.&nbsp; She was sure
+that at Great Oakhurst she would have been quite comfortable with him
+but somehow, in London, it was different.&nbsp; &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know how it is,&rsquo; she said one day, &lsquo;the sort of husband
+as does for the country doesn&rsquo;t do for London.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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 &lsquo;hit it so fine.&rsquo;&nbsp; Mrs Marshall hated all the
+conveniences of London.&nbsp; She abominated particularly the taps,
+and longed to be obliged in all weathers to go out to the well and wind
+up the bucket.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Nay, she even missed that corner of the garden against the elder-tree,
+where the pig-stye was, for &lsquo;you could smell the elder-flowers
+there in the spring-time, and the pig-stye wasn&rsquo;t as bad as the
+stuffy back room in Great Ormond Street when three or four men were
+in it.&rsquo;&nbsp; She did all she could to spend her energy on her
+cooking and cleaning, but &lsquo;there was no satisfaction in it,&rsquo;
+and she became much depressed, especially after the child died.&nbsp;
+This was the main reason why Mrs Caffyn determined to live with her.&nbsp;
+Marshall was glad she resolved to come.&nbsp; His wife had her full
+share of the common sense he desired, but the experiment had not altogether
+succeeded.&nbsp; He knew she was lonely, and he was sorry for her, although
+he did not see how he could mend matters.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There was nothing he would
+not do for her, but he really had nothing more to offer her.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; She
+was returning from Great Oakhurst after a visit to her mother.&nbsp;
+She had stayed there for about a month after her child&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Both Marshall and the tanner were at the &lsquo;Swan with
+Two Necks&rsquo; to meet the covered van, and the tanner&rsquo;s wife
+jumped out first.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hullo, old gal, here you are,&rsquo; cried the tanner, and
+clasped her in his brown, bark-stained arms, giving her, nothing loth,
+two or three hearty kisses.&nbsp; They were so much excited at meeting
+one another, that they forgot their friends, and marched off without
+bidding them good-bye.&nbsp; Mrs Marshall was welcomed in quieter fashion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; she thought to herself.&nbsp; &lsquo;Red Tom,&rsquo;
+as the tanner was called, &lsquo;is not used to London ways.&nbsp; They
+are, perhaps, correct for London, but Marshall might now and then remember
+that I have not been brought up to them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>To return, however, to the Hopgoods.&nbsp; Before the afternoon they
+were in their new quarters, happily for them, for Mrs Hopgood became
+worse.&nbsp; On the morrow she was seriously ill, inflammation of the
+lungs appeared, and in a week she was dead.&nbsp; What Clara and Madge
+suffered cannot be told here.&nbsp; Whenever anybody whom we love dies,
+we discover that although death is commonplace it is terribly original.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; They were grown-up women accustomed to act
+for themselves, but they felt unsteady, and as if deprived of customary
+support.&nbsp; The reference to her had been constant, although it was
+often silent, and they were not conscious of it.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Three parts of Mrs Hopgood&rsquo;s little income was mainly an annuity,
+and Clara and Madge found that between them they had but seventy-five
+pounds a year.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Frank could not rest.&nbsp; He wrote again to Clara at Fenmarket;
+the letter went to Mrs Cork&rsquo;s, and was returned to him.&nbsp;
+He saw that the Hopgoods had left Fenmarket, and suspecting the reason,
+he determined at any cost to go home.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He
+went immediately to the address in Pentonville which he found on the
+envelope, but was very shortly informed by Mrs Cork that &lsquo;she
+knew nothing whatever about them.&rsquo;&nbsp; He walked round Myddelton
+Square, hopeless, for he had no clue whatever.</p>
+<p>What had happened to him would scarcely, perhaps, have caused some
+young men much uneasiness, but with Frank the case was altogether different.&nbsp;
+There was a chance of discovery, and if his crime should come to light
+his whole future life would be ruined.&nbsp; He pictured his excommunication,
+his father&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+Immediately he asked himself, however, <i>if</i> he could live with
+his father and wear a mask, and never betray his dreadful secret.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>That evening it happened that there was a musical party at his father&rsquo;s
+house; and, of course, he was expected to assist.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality
+like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing.&nbsp;
+She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was
+usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer&rsquo;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.&nbsp; He escorted her amidst applause to a corner of the
+room, and the two sat down side by side.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What a long time it is, Frank, since you and I sang that duet
+together.&nbsp; We have seen nothing of you lately.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of course not; I was in Germany.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, but I think you deserted us before then.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp;
+I recollect you and I tried together that very duet for the first time
+with the old lodging-house piano.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank remembered that evening well.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You sang better than you did to-night.&nbsp; You did not keep
+time: what were you dreaming about?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How hot the room is!&nbsp; Do you not feel it oppressive?&nbsp;
+Let us go into the conservatory for a minute.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The door was behind them and they slipped in and sat down, just inside,
+and under the orange tree.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You must not be away so long again.&nbsp; Now mind, we have
+a musical evening this day fortnight.&nbsp; You will come?&nbsp; Promise;
+and we must sing that duet again, and sing it properly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He did not reply, but he stooped down, plucked a blood-red begonia,
+and gave it to her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is a pledge.&nbsp; It is very good of you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She tried to fasten it in her gown, underneath the locket, but she
+dropped a little black pin.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We had better go back now,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, I will come.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Good boy; no apologies like those you sent the last time.&nbsp;
+No bad throat.&nbsp; Play me false, and there will be a pretty rebuke
+for you - a dead flower.&rsquo;</p>
+<p><i>Play me false</i>!&nbsp; It was as if there were some stoppage
+in a main artery to his brain.&nbsp; <i>Play me false</i>!&nbsp; It
+rang in his ears, and for a moment he saw nothing but the scene at the
+Hall with Miranda.&nbsp; Fortunately for him, somebody claimed Cecilia,
+and he slunk back into the greenhouse.</p>
+<p>One of Mr Palmer&rsquo;s favourite ballads was <i>The Three Ravens</i>.&nbsp;
+Its pathos unfits it for an ordinary drawing-room, but as the music
+at Mr Palmer&rsquo;s was not of the common kind, <i>The Three Ravens</i>
+was put on the list for that night.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>She was dead herself ere evensong time.&nbsp; With a down,
+hey down, hey down,<br />God send every gentleman<br />Such hawks, such
+hounds, and such a leman.&nbsp; With down, hey down, hey down</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The song ceased, and one for
+him stood next.&nbsp; He heard voices calling him, but he passed out
+into the garden and went down to the further end, hiding himself behind
+the shrubs.&nbsp; Presently the inquiry for him ceased, and he was relieved
+by hearing an instrumental piece begin.</p>
+<p>Following on that presentation of Madge came self-torture for his
+unfaithfulness.&nbsp; He scourged himself into what he considered to
+be his duty.&nbsp; He recalled with an effort all Madge&rsquo;s charms,
+mental and bodily, and he tried to break his heart for her.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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!&nbsp; It was not the betrayal of that thunderstorm
+which now tormented him.&nbsp; He could have represented that as a failure
+to be surmounted; he could have repented it.&nbsp; 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?</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The next morning found Frank once more in Myddelton Square.&nbsp;
+He looked up at the house; the windows were all shut, and the blinds
+were drawn down.&nbsp; He had half a mind to call again, but Mrs Cork&rsquo;s
+manner had been so offensive and repellent that he desisted.&nbsp; Presently
+the door opened, and Maria, the maid, came out to clean the doorsteps.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Accordingly, when he passed her, she
+looked up and said, - &lsquo;Good-morning.&rsquo;&nbsp; Frank stopped,
+and returned her greeting.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You was here the other day, sir, asking where them Hopgoods
+had gone.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Frank, eagerly, &lsquo;do you know what has
+become of them?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I helped the cabman with the boxes, and I heard Mrs Hopgood
+say &ldquo;Great Ormond Street,&rdquo; but I have forgotten the number.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you very much.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Frank gave the astonished and grateful Maria half-a-crown, and went
+off to Great Ormond Street at once.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His quest
+was not renewed that week.&nbsp; What was there to be gained by going
+over the ground again?&nbsp; Perhaps they might have found the lodgings
+unsuitable and have moved elsewhere.&nbsp; At church on Sunday he met
+his cousin Cecilia, who reminded him of his promise.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;See,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;here is the begonia.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; You will have it sent to you if you are faithless.&nbsp;
+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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>The evening came, he sang with Cecilia, and it was observed, and
+he himself observed it, how completely their voices harmonised.&nbsp;
+He was not without a competitor, a handsome young baritone, who was
+much commended.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Frank was sitting
+next to her, and she added, so as to be heard by him alone, &lsquo;He
+is no particular favourite of mine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Cecilia&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She always called him Frank,
+for although they were not first cousins, they were cousins.&nbsp; He
+generally called her Cecilia, but she was Cissy in her own house.&nbsp;
+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, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, <i>Cissy</i>, once more.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She looked at him with just a little start of surprise, and a smile
+spread itself over her face.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wonder,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;if being happy in a thing
+is a sign of being born to do it.&nbsp; If it is, I am born to be a
+musician.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should say it is; if two people are quite happy in one another&rsquo;s
+company, it is as a sign they were born for one another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, if they are sure they are happy.&nbsp; It is easier for
+me to be sure that I am happier with a thing than with a person.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you think so?&nbsp; Why?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is the uncertainty whether the person is happy with
+me.&nbsp; I cannot be altogether happy with anybody unless I know I
+make him happy.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What kind of person is he with whom you <i>could</i> be without
+making him happy?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The baritone rose to the upper F with a clash of chords on the piano,
+and the company broke up.&nbsp; Frank went home with but one thought
+in his head - the thought of Cecilia.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He looked out,
+and saw reflected on the low clouds the dull glare of the distant city.&nbsp;
+Just over there was Great Ormond Street, and underneath that dim, red
+light, like the light of a great house burning, was Madge Hopgood.&nbsp;
+He lay down, turning over from side to side in the vain hope that by
+change of position he might sleep.&nbsp; After about an hour&rsquo;s
+feverish tossing, he just lost himself, but not in that oblivion which
+slumber usually brought him.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+He could not lie down again, and rose and dressed himself.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>When Frank came downstairs to breakfast the conversation turned upon
+his return to Germany.&nbsp; He did not object to going, although it
+can hardly be said that he willed to go.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He could not leave, however, in complete ignorance
+of Madge, and with no certainty as to her future.&nbsp; He resolved
+therefore to make one more effort to discover the house.&nbsp; That
+was all which he determined to do.&nbsp; What was to happen when he
+had found it, he did not know.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; He
+accordingly stationed himself in Great Ormond Street at about half-past
+nine, and kept watch from the Lamb&rsquo;s Conduit Street end, shifting
+his position as well as he could, in order to escape notice.&nbsp; He
+had not been there half an hour when he saw a door open, and Madge came
+out and went westwards.&nbsp; She turned down Devonshire Street as if
+on her way to Holborn.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge, Madge,&rsquo; he cried, &lsquo;I want to speak to you.&nbsp;
+I must speak with you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Better not; let me go.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I say I <i>must</i> speak to you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We cannot talk here; let me go.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must!&nbsp; I must! come with me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She pitied him, and although she did not consent she did not refuse.&nbsp;
+He called a cab, and in ten minutes, not a word having been spoken during
+those ten minutes, they were at St Paul&rsquo;s.&nbsp; The morning service
+had just begun, and they sat down in a corner far away from the worshippers.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, Madge,&rsquo; he began, &lsquo;I implore you to take me
+back.&nbsp; I love you.&nbsp; I do love you, and - and - I cannot leave
+you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She was side by side with the father of her child about to be born.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+The thought of what had passed between them, and of the child, his and
+hers, almost overpowered her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot,&rsquo; he repeated.&nbsp; &lsquo;I <i>ought</i>
+not.&nbsp; What will become of me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She felt herself stronger; he was excited, but his excitement was
+not contagious.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Partly, at
+least, it was the voice of what he considered to be duty, of superstition
+and alarm.&nbsp; She was silent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;ought you to refuse?&nbsp;
+You have some love for me.&nbsp; Is it not greater than the love which
+thousands feel for one another.&nbsp; Will you blast your future and
+mine, and, perhaps, that of someone besides, who may be very dear to
+you?&nbsp; <i>Ought</i> you not, I say, to listen?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+Madge recognised the well-known St Ann&rsquo;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.&nbsp; When the
+music ceased she spoke.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It would be a crime.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A crime, but I - &rsquo;&nbsp; She stopped him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know what you are going to say.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I must go.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+She rose and began to move towards the door.</p>
+<p>He walked silently by her side till they were in St Paul&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; With this addition she and her sister
+could manage to pay their way and provide what Madge would want.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; The windows of the shop were, of course, full
+of books, and the walls were lined with them.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; All round the desk more books
+were piled, and some man&oelig;uvring was necessary in order to sit
+down.&nbsp; This was Clara&rsquo;s station.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 <i>Calvin Joann.&nbsp; Opera Omnia, 9 vol. folio, Amst</i>.
+1671 - it was very clear that afternoon - she actually descried towards
+seven o&rsquo;clock a blessed star exactly in the middle of the gap
+the Calvin had left.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Worse, perhaps, than the eternal gloom was the
+dirt.&nbsp; She was naturally fastidious, and as her skin was thin and
+sensitive, dust was physically a discomfort.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was a real misery
+to her and made her almost ill.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The smuts began to
+gather again the moment she went upstairs, but she strove to arm herself
+with a little philosophy against them.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is there in
+life,&rsquo; she moralised, smiling at her sermonising, &lsquo;which
+once won is for ever won?&nbsp; It is always being won and always being
+lost.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was really a <i>gentle</i>man in the true
+sense of that much misused word, and not a mere <i>trades</i>man; that
+is to say, he loved his business, not altogether for the money it brought
+him, but as an art.&nbsp; He was known far and wide, and literary people
+were glad to gossip with him.&nbsp; He never pushed his wares, and he
+hated to sell them to anybody who did not know their value.&nbsp; He
+amused Clara one afternoon when a carriage stopped at the door, and
+a lady inquired if he had a Manning and Bray&rsquo;s <i>History of Surrey</i>.&nbsp;
+Yes, he had a copy, and he pointed to the three handsome, tall folios.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is the price?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Twelve pounds ten.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think I will have them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madam, you will pardon me, but, if I were you, I would not.&nbsp;
+I think something much cheaper will suit you better.&nbsp; If you will
+allow me, I will look out for you and will report in a few days.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh! very well,&rsquo; and she departed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The wife of a brassfounder,&rsquo; he said to Clara; &lsquo;made
+a lot of money, and now he has bought a house at Dulwich and is setting
+up a library.&nbsp; Somebody has told him that he ought to have a county
+history, and that Manning and Bray is the book.&nbsp; Manning and Bray!&nbsp;
+What he wants is a Dulwich and Denmark Hill Directory.&nbsp; No, no,&rsquo;
+and he took down one of the big volumes, blew the dust off the top edges
+and looked at the old book-plate inside, &lsquo;you won&rsquo;t go there
+if I can help it.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I met him once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge, do you mean that he found out where we are living,
+and that he came to see you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, it was just round the corner as I was going towards Holborn.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing could have brought him here but yourself,&rsquo; said
+Clara, slowly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Clara, you doubt?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, no!&nbsp; I doubt you?&nbsp; Never!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But you hesitate; you reflect.&nbsp; Speak out.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;God forbid I should utter a word which would induce you to
+disbelieve what you know to be right.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Besides, each person&rsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Which is as much as to say that the prophet is to break no
+idols.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know I do not mean that, and you know, too, how incapable
+I am of defending myself in argument.&nbsp; I never can stand up for
+anything I say.&nbsp; I can now and then say something, but, when I
+have said it, I run away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dearest Clara,&rsquo; Madge put her arm over her sister&rsquo;s
+shoulder as they sat side by side, &lsquo;do not run away now; tell
+me just what you think of me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara was silent for a minute.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have sometimes wondered whether you have not demanded a
+little too much of yourself and Frank.&nbsp; It is always a question
+of how much.&nbsp; There is no human truth which is altogether true,
+no love which is altogether perfect.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Frank loved you,
+Madge.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge did not reply; she withdrew her arm from her sister&rsquo;s
+neck, threw herself back in her chair and closed her eyes.&nbsp; She
+saw again the Fenmarket roads, that summer evening, and she felt once
+more Frank&rsquo;s burning caresses.&nbsp; She thought of him as he
+left St Paul&rsquo;s, perhaps broken-hearted.&nbsp; Stronger than every
+other motive to return to him, and stronger than ever, was the movement
+towards him of that which belonged to him.</p>
+<p>At last she cried out, literally cried, with a vehemence which startled
+and terrified Clara, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Clara, Clara, you know not what you do!&nbsp; For God&rsquo;s
+sake forbear!&rsquo;&nbsp; She was again silent, and then she turned
+round hurriedly, hid her face, and sobbed piteously.&nbsp; It lasted,
+however, but for a minute; she rose, wiped her eyes, went to the window,
+came back again, and said, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is beginning to snow.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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&rsquo;s-breadth.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+He found her at her dark desk, and as he approached her, she hastily
+put a mark in a book and closed it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you sold a little volume called <i>After Office Hours</i>
+by a man named Robinson?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I did not know we had it.&nbsp; I have never seen it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not wonder, but I saw it here about six months ago; it
+was up there,&rsquo; pointing to a top shelf.&nbsp; Clara was about
+to mount the ladder, but he stopped her, and found what he wanted.&nbsp;
+Some of the leaves were torn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We can repair those for you; in about a couple of days it
+shall be ready.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He lingered a little, and at that moment another customer entered.&nbsp;
+Clara went forward to speak to him, and Cohen was able to see that it
+was the <i>Heroes and Hero Worship</i> she had been studying, a course
+of lectures which had been given by a Mr Carlyle, of whom Cohen knew
+something.&nbsp; As the customer showed no signs of departing, Cohen
+left, saying he would call again.</p>
+<p>Before sending Robinson&rsquo;s <i>After Office Hours</i> to the
+binder, Clara looked at it.&nbsp; It was made up of short essays, about
+twenty altogether, bound in dark-green cloth, lettered at the side,
+and published in 1841.&nbsp; They were upon the oddest subjects: such
+as, <i>Ought Children to learn Rules before Reasons?&nbsp; The Higher
+Mathematics and Materialism.&nbsp; Ought We to tell Those Whom We love
+what We think about Them?&nbsp; Deductive Reasoning in Politics.&nbsp;
+What Troubles ought We to Make Known and What ought We to Keep Secret:
+Courage as a Science and an Art.</i></p>
+<p>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
+- &lsquo;A mere dream, a vague hope, ought in some cases to be more
+potent than a certainty in regulating our action.&nbsp; The faintest
+vision of God should be more determinative than the grossest earthly
+assurance.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I knew a case in which a man had to encounter three successive
+trials of all the courage and inventive faculty in him.&nbsp; Failure
+in one would have been ruin.&nbsp; The odds against him in each trial
+were desperate, and against ultimate victory were overwhelming.&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, he made the attempt, and was triumphant, by the narrowest
+margin, in every struggle.&nbsp; That which is of most value to us is
+often obtained in defiance of the laws of probability.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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 <i>listen</i>, in which it can discern the merest whisper,
+inaudible when the world, or interest, or passion, are permitted to
+speak.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Many of our speculative difficulties arise from the unauthorised
+conception of an <i>omnipotent</i> God, a conception entirely of our
+own creation, and one which, if we look at it closely, has no meaning.&nbsp;
+It is because God <i>could</i> have done otherwise, and did not, that
+we are confounded.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Perhaps the man who called would say
+something about him.</p>
+<p>Baruch Cohen was now a little over forty.&nbsp; He was half a Jew,
+for his father was a Jew and his mother a Gentile.&nbsp; The father
+had broken with Judaism, but had not been converted to any Christian
+church or sect.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The son was apprenticed
+to his maternal grandfather&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Baruch, when he was very young, married Marshall&rsquo;s
+elder sister, but she died at the birth of her first child and he had
+been a widower now for nineteen years.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It is indeed a very unpleasant discovery.&nbsp;
+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
+<i>Paradise Lost</i>, or as the conqueror of half a continent.&nbsp;
+Baruch&rsquo;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&rsquo;s love.&nbsp; It was singular that, during all those
+nineteen years, he should not once have been overcome.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It is possible,&rsquo; he said once, &lsquo;to consider death
+too seriously.&rsquo;&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He seldom
+explained his theory, but everybody who knew him recognised the difference
+which it wrought between him and other men.&nbsp; There was a certain
+concord in everything he said and did, as if it were directed by some
+enthroned but secret principle.</p>
+<p>He had encountered no particular trouble since his wife&rsquo;s death,
+but his life had been unhappy.&nbsp; He had no friends, much as he longed
+for friendship, and he could not give any reasons for his failure.&nbsp;
+He saw other persons more successful, but he remained solitary.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+He had often made advances; people had called on him and had appeared
+interested in him, but they had dropped away.&nbsp; The cause was chiefly
+to be found in his nationality.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Whatever the reasons may have been, Baruch now, no matter what the pressure
+from within might be, generally kept himself to himself.&nbsp; It was
+a mistake and he ought not to have retreated so far upon repulse.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>After the death of his wife, Baruch&rsquo;s affection spent itself
+upon his son Benjamin, whom he had apprenticed to a firm of optical
+instrument makers in York.&nbsp; The boy was not very much like his
+father.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Benjamin also possessed his father&rsquo;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.&nbsp; It was the sorest of trials to part with him, and,
+for some time after he left, Baruch&rsquo;s loneliness was intolerable.&nbsp;
+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, &lsquo;to take York on his way.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The day after he met Clara he started for Birmingham, and although
+York was certainly not &lsquo;on his way,&rsquo; he pushed forward to
+the city and reached it on a Saturday evening.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; To
+this suggestion Benjamin partially assented.&nbsp; He wished to go to
+the cathedral in the morning, but thought his father had better rest
+after dinner.&nbsp; Baruch somewhat resented the insinuation of possible
+fatigue consequent on advancing years.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you mean?&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>About three, therefore, they started, and presently a girl met them,
+who was introduced simply as &lsquo;Miss Masters.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We are going to your side of the water,&rsquo; said the son;
+&lsquo;you may as well cross with us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They came to a point where a boat was moored, and a man was in it.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; When they were about two-thirds of
+the way over, Benjamin observed that if they stood up they could see
+the Minster.&nbsp; They all three rose, and without an instant&rsquo;s
+warning - they could not tell afterwards how it happened - the boat
+half capsized, and they were in eight or nine feet of water.&nbsp; Baruch
+could not swim and went down at once, but on coming up close to the
+gunwale he caught at it and held fast.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The boatman&rsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was just off when it suddenly
+struck him that his father might need some attention.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, father - &rsquo; he began, but the boatman&rsquo;s wife
+interposed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He can&rsquo;t be left like that, and he can&rsquo;t go home;
+he&rsquo;ll catch his death o&rsquo; cold, and there isn&rsquo;t but
+one more bed in the house, and that isn&rsquo;t quite fit to put a gentleman
+in.&nbsp; Howsomever, he must turn in there, and my husband, he can
+go into the back-kitchen and rub himself down.&nbsp; You won&rsquo;t
+do yourself no good, Mr Cohen,&rsquo; addressing the son, whom she knew,
+&lsquo;by going back; you&rsquo;d better stay here and get into bed
+with your father.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+He rushed off, and in three-quarters of an hour had returned with the
+sister.&nbsp; Having learned, after anxious inquiry, that Miss Masters,
+so far as could be discovered, had not caught a chill, he went to his
+father.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, father, I hope you are none the worse for the ducking,&rsquo;
+he said gaily.&nbsp; &lsquo;The next time you come to York you&rsquo;d
+better bring another suit of clothes with you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Baruch turned round uneasily and did not answer immediately.&nbsp;
+He had had a narrow escape from drowning.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing of much consequence.&nbsp; Is your friend all right?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes; I was anxious about her, for she is not very strong,
+but I do not think she will come to much harm.&nbsp; I made them light
+a fire in her room.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are they drying my clothes?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll go and see.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; Benjamin waited,
+and presently she came downstairs, smiling.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing the matter.&nbsp; I owe it to you, however, that I
+am not now in another world.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Benjamin was in an ecstasy, and considered himself bound to accompany
+her to her door.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Baruch lay upstairs alone in no very happy temper.&nbsp;
+He heard the conversation below, and knew that his son had gone.&nbsp;
+In all genuine love there is something of ferocious selfishness.&nbsp;
+The perfectly divine nature knows how to keep it in check, and is even
+capable - supposing it to be a woman&rsquo;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.&nbsp; Nevertheless, he had learned a little
+wisdom, and, what was of much greater importance, had learned how to
+use it when he needed it.&nbsp; It had been forced upon him; it was
+an adjustment to circumstances, the wisest wisdom.&nbsp; 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
+<i>him</i>, and not to those which had been put to other people.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>His self-conquest, however, was not very permanent.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>There is no remedy for our troubles which is uniformly and progressively
+efficacious.&nbsp; All that we have a right to expect from our religion
+is that gradually, very gradually, it will assist us to a real victory.&nbsp;
+After each apparent defeat, if we are bravely in earnest, we gain something
+on our former position.&nbsp; Baruch was two days on his journey back
+to town, and as he came nearer home, he recovered himself a little.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s
+new assistant.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Madge was a puzzle to Mrs Caffyn.&nbsp; Mrs Caffyn loved her, and
+when she was ill had behaved like a mother to her.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s weekly bill.&nbsp; Naturally, Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;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.&nbsp; She longed to
+bring about a reconciliation.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The hair won&rsquo;t be dark like yours, my love,&rsquo; she
+said one afternoon, soon after Madge had come downstairs and was lying
+on the sofa.&nbsp; &lsquo;The hair do darken a lot, but hers will never
+be black.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s my opinion as it&rsquo;ll be fair.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; It
+was growing dusk; she took Madge&rsquo;s hand, which hung down by her
+side, and gently lifted it up.&nbsp; Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn
+thought.&nbsp; She was proud that she had for a friend the owner of
+such a hand, who behaved to her as an equal.&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s talk suited her better than any she had heard at Great
+Oakhurst.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>She retained her hold on Madge&rsquo;s hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;May be,&rsquo; she continued, &lsquo;it&rsquo;ll be like its
+father&rsquo;s.&nbsp; In our family all the gals take after the father,
+and all the boys after the mother.&nbsp; I suppose as <i>he</i> has
+lightish hair?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Still Madge said nothing.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t easy to believe as the father of that blessed
+dear could have been a bad lot.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m sure he isn&rsquo;t,
+and yet there&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+It&rsquo;s my belief as God-a-mighty mixes Hisself up in it more nor
+we think.&nbsp; But there <i>was</i> nothing amiss with him, was there,
+my sweet?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn inclined her head towards Madge.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, no!&nbsp; Nothing, nothing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t you think, my dear, if there&rsquo;s nothing atwixt
+you, as it was a flyin&rsquo; in the face of Providence to turn him
+off?&nbsp; You were reglarly engaged to him, and I have heard you say
+he was very fond of you.&nbsp; I suppose there were some high words
+about something, and a kind of a quarrel like, and so you parted, but
+that&rsquo;s nothing.&nbsp; It might all be made up now, and it ought
+to be made up.&nbsp; What was it about?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There was no quarrel.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, of course, if you don&rsquo;t like to say anything more
+to me, I won&rsquo;t ask you.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t want to hear any secrets
+as I shouldn&rsquo;t hear.&nbsp; I speak only because I can&rsquo;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.&nbsp; It isn&rsquo;t too late for that now.&nbsp;
+I know what I know, and as how he&rsquo;d marry you at once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you can&rsquo;t love a man, that&rsquo;s to say if you
+can&rsquo;t <i>abear</i> him, it&rsquo;s wrong to have him, but if there&rsquo;s
+a child that does make a difference, for one has to think of the child
+and of being respectable.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s something in being respectable;
+although, for that matter, I&rsquo;ve see&rsquo;d respectable people
+at Great Oakhurst as were ten times worse than those as aren&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+Still, a-speaking for myself, I&rsquo;d put up with a goodish bit to
+marry the man whose child wor mine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For myself I could, but it wouldn&rsquo;t be just to him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see what you mean.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear, you take my word for it, he isn&rsquo;t so particklar
+as you are.&nbsp; A man isn&rsquo;t so particklar as a woman.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;s all
+right.&nbsp; I won&rsquo;t say as one woman is much the same as another
+to a man - leastways to all men - but still they are <i>not</i> particklar.&nbsp;
+Maybe, though, it isn&rsquo;t quite the same with gentlefolk like yourself,
+- but there&rsquo;s that blessed baby a-cryin&rsquo;.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn hastened upstairs, leaving Madge to her reflections.&nbsp;
+Once more the old dialectic reappeared.&nbsp; &lsquo;After all,&rsquo;
+she thought, &lsquo;it is, as Clara said, a question of degree.&nbsp;
+There are not a thousand husbands and wives in this great city whose
+relationship comes near perfection.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; No brighter sunlight is obtained
+by others far better than myself.&nbsp; Ought I to expect a refinement
+of relationship to which I have no right?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; My child! what is there which
+I ought to put in the balance against her?&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>So she mused, and her foes again ranged themselves over against her.&nbsp;
+There was nothing to support her but something veiled, which would not
+altogether disclose or explain itself.&nbsp; Nevertheless, in a few
+minutes, her enemies had vanished, like a mist before a sudden wind,
+and she was once more victorious.&nbsp; Precious and rare are those
+divine souls, to whom that which is a&euml;rial is substantial, the
+only true substance; those for whom a pale vision possesses an authority
+they are forced unconditionally to obey.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn was unhappy, and made up her mind that she would talk
+to Frank herself.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The difficulty
+was to see him without his father&rsquo;s knowledge.&nbsp; At last she
+determined to write to him, and she made her son-in-law address the
+envelope and mark it private.&nbsp; This is what she said:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;DEAR SIR, - Although unbeknown to you, I take the liberty
+of telling you as M. H. is alivin&rsquo; here with me, and somebody
+else as I think you ought to see, but perhaps I&rsquo;d better have
+a word or two with you myself, if not quite ill-convenient to you, and
+maybe you&rsquo;ll be kind enough to say how that&rsquo;s to be done
+to your obedient, humble servant,</p>
+<p>&lsquo;MRS CAFFYN.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>She thought this very diplomatic, inasmuch as nobody but Frank could
+possibly suspect what the letter meant.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Frank of course understood it.&nbsp;
+Although he had thought about Madge continually, he had become calmer.&nbsp;
+He saw, it is true, that there was no stability in his position, and
+that he could not possibly remain where he was.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; We therefore
+docket it, and hide it in the desk, and we imagine we have done something.&nbsp;
+Once again, however, the flame leapt up out of the ashes, vivid as ever.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Separation
+seems unnatural, monstrous, a divorce from himself; it is not she alone,
+but it is himself whom he abandons.&nbsp; Frank&rsquo;s duty, too, pointed
+imperiously to the path he ought to take, duty to the child as well
+as to the mother.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There was now no possibility of a journey to
+England.&nbsp; For a moment he debated whether, when he was at Hamburg,
+he could not slip over to London, but it would be dangerous.&nbsp; Further
+orders might come from his father, and the failure to acknowledge them
+would lead to evasion, and perhaps to discovery.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; This was what went to Mrs Caffyn, and to her lodger:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;DEAR MADAM, - Your note has reached me here.&nbsp; I am very
+sorry that my engagements are so pressing that I cannot leave Germany
+at present.&nbsp; I have written to Miss Hopgood.&nbsp; There is one
+subject which I cannot mention to her - I cannot speak to her about
+money.&nbsp; Will you please give me full information?&nbsp; I enclose
+&pound;20, and I must trust to your discretion.&nbsp; I thank you heartily
+for all your kindness. - Truly yours,</p>
+<p>&lsquo;FRANK PALMER.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Do, my dearest Madge, consent.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>When he came to this point his pen stopped.&nbsp; What he had written
+was very smooth, but very tame and cold.&nbsp; However, nothing better
+presented itself; he changed his position, sat back in his chair, and
+searched himself, but could find nothing.&nbsp; It was not always so.&nbsp;
+Some months ago there would have been no difficulty, and he would not
+have known when to come to an end.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He took a scrap of paper and tried to draft two or
+three sentences, altered them several times and made them worse.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; She knew how he
+felt towards her.&nbsp; So he signed it after giving his address at
+Hamburg, and it was posted.</p>
+<p>Three or four days afterwards Mrs Marshall, in accordance with her
+usual custom, went to see Madge before she was up.&nbsp; The child lay
+peacefully by its mother&rsquo;s side and Frank&rsquo;s letter was upon
+the counterpane.&nbsp; The resolution that no letter from him should
+be opened had been broken.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You&rsquo;ve had a letter from Mr Palmer; I was sure it was
+his handwriting when it came late last night.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You can read it; there is nothing private in it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She turned round to the child and Mrs Marshall sat down and read.&nbsp;
+When she had finished she laid the letter on the bed again and was silent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well?&rsquo; said Madge.&nbsp; &lsquo;Would you say &ldquo;No?&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, I would.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For your own sake, as well as for his?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Marshall took up the letter and read half of it again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, you had better say &ldquo;No.&rdquo;&nbsp; You will find
+it dull, especially if you have to live in London.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did you find London dull when you came to live in it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Rather; Marshall is away all day long.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But scarcely any woman in London expects to marry a man who
+is not away all day.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; Recollect
+you were country born and bred yourself, or, at anyrate, you have lived
+in the country for the most of your life.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Dull! we must all expect to be dull.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There&rsquo;s nothing worse.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve had rheumatic
+fever, and I say, give me the fever rather than what comes over me at
+times here.&nbsp; If Marshall had not been so good to me, I do not know
+what I should have done with myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge turned round and looked Mrs Marshall straight in the face,
+but she did not flinch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; I should be sorry for myself if you were to
+go away; not that I want to put that forward.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Not a word was spoken for at least a minute.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Mrs Marshall took Madge&rsquo;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, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Madge, Madge: for God&rsquo;s sake leave him!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have left him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you sure?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Quite.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For ever?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For ever!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Marshall let go Madge&rsquo;s hand, turned her eyes towards her
+intently for a moment, and again bent over her as if she were about
+to embrace her.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; After she and her daughter had left, Madge
+read the letter once more.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There was a little sobbing, and then she kissed
+her child with such eagerness that it began to cry.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You&rsquo;ll answer that letter, I suppose?&rsquo; said Mrs
+Caffyn, when they were alone.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;m rather glad.&nbsp; It would worrit you, and there&rsquo;s
+nothing worse for a baby than worritin&rsquo; when it&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s
+a-feedin it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr Caffyn wrote as follows:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;DEAR SIR, - I was sorry as you couldn&rsquo;t come; but I
+believe now as it was better as you didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; I am no scollard,
+and so no more from your obedient, humble servant,</p>
+<p>&lsquo;MRS CAFFYN.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>P.S</i>. - I return the money, having no use for the same.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Baruch did not obtain any very definite information from Marshall
+about Clara.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+He was once assistant minister to Irving, but was now heretical, and
+had a congregation of his own creating at Woolwich.</p>
+<p>Baruch called at the shop and found Clara once more alone.&nbsp;
+The book was packed up and had being lying ready for him for two or
+three days.&nbsp; He wanted to speak, but hardly knew how to begin.&nbsp;
+He looked idly round the shelves, taking down one volume after another,
+and at last he said, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose nobody but myself has ever asked for a copy of Robinson?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not since I have been here.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is a friend of yours?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; I told him it was useless to publish, and his
+publishers told him the same thing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should have thought that some notice would have been taken
+of him; he is so evidently worth it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, but although he was original and reflective, he had no
+particular talent.&nbsp; His excellence lay in criticism and observation,
+often profound, on what came to him every day, and he was valueless
+in the literary market.&nbsp; A talent of some kind is necessary to
+genius if it is to be heard.&nbsp; So he died utterly unrecognised,
+save by one or two personal friends who loved him dearly.&nbsp; He was
+peculiar in the depth and intimacy of his friendships.&nbsp; Few men
+understand the meaning of the word friendship.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you believe, that the good does not necessarily survive?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes and no; I believe that power every moment, so far as our
+eyes can follow it, is utterly lost.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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 &Agrave; Kempis,
+whom he much resembles.&nbsp; When he dies he will be forgotten in a
+dozen years.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Huge volumes of human energy are apparently annihilated.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is very shocking, worse to me than the thought of the earthquake
+or the pestilence.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I said &ldquo;yes and no&rdquo; and there is another side.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Moreover, &ldquo;waste&rdquo;
+is a word which is applicable only to finite resources.&nbsp; If the
+resources are infinite it has no meaning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Two customers came in and Baruch was obliged to leave.&nbsp; When
+he came to reflect, he was surprised to find not only how much he had
+said, but what he had said.&nbsp; He was usually reserved, and with
+strangers he adhered to the weather or to passing events.&nbsp; He had
+spoken, however, to this young woman as if they had been acquainted
+for years.&nbsp; Clara, too, was surprised.&nbsp; She always cut short
+attempts at conversation in the shop.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But to
+this foreigner, or Jew, she had disclosed something she felt.&nbsp;
+She was rather abashed, but presently her employer, Mr Barnes, returned
+and somewhat relieved her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The gentleman who bought <i>After Office Hours</i> came for
+it while you were out?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh! what, Cohen?&nbsp; Good fellow Cohen is; he it was who
+recommended you to me.&nbsp; He is brother-in-law to your landlord.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Clara was comforted; he was not a mere &lsquo;casual,&rsquo; as Mr Barnes
+called his chance customers.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>About a fortnight afterwards, on a Sunday afternoon, Cohen went to
+the Marshalls&rsquo;.&nbsp; He had called there once or twice since
+his mother-in-law came to London, but had seen nothing of the lodgers.&nbsp;
+It was just about tea-time, but unfortunately Marshall and his wife
+had gone out.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Baruch asked Mrs Caffyn if she
+could endure London after living for so long in the country.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! my dear boy, I have to like it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, you haven&rsquo;t; what you mean is that, whether you
+like it, or whether you do not, you have to put up with it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, I don&rsquo;t mean that.&nbsp; Miss Hopgood, Cohen and
+me, we are the best of friends, but whenever he comes here, he allus
+begins to argue with me.&nbsp; Howsomever, arguing isn&rsquo;t everything,
+is it, my dear?&nbsp; There&rsquo;s some things, after all, as I can
+do and he can&rsquo;t, but he&rsquo;s just wrong here in his arguing
+that wasn&rsquo;t what I meant.&nbsp; I meant what I said, as I had
+to like it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How can you like it if you don&rsquo;t?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How can I?&nbsp; That shows you&rsquo;re a man and not a woman.&nbsp;
+Jess like you men.&nbsp; <i>You&rsquo;d</i> do what you didn&rsquo;t
+like, I know, for you&rsquo;re a good sort - and everybody would know
+you didn&rsquo;t like it - but what would be the use of me a-livin&rsquo;
+in a house if I didn&rsquo;t like it? - with my daughter and these dear,
+young women?&nbsp; If it comes to livin&rsquo;, you&rsquo;d ten thousand
+times better say at once as you hate bein&rsquo; where you are than
+go about all day long, as if you was a blessed saint and put upon.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn twitched at her gown and pulled it down over her knees
+and brushed the crumbs off with energy.&nbsp; She continued, &lsquo;I
+can&rsquo;t abide people who everlastin&rsquo; make believe they are
+put upon.&nbsp; Suppose I were allus a-hankering every foggy day after
+Great Oakhurst, and yet a-tellin&rsquo; my daughter as I knew my place
+was here; if I was she, I should wish my mother at Jericho.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then you really prefer London to Great Oakhurst?&rsquo; said
+Clara.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, my dear, of course I do.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t you think
+it&rsquo;s pleasanter being here with you and your sister and that precious
+little creature, and my daughter, than down in that dead-alive place?&nbsp;
+Not that I don&rsquo;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?&nbsp; You remember them
+beech-woods?&nbsp; Ah, it was one October!&nbsp; Weren&rsquo;t they
+a colour - weren&rsquo;t they lovely?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Baruch remembered them well enough.&nbsp; Who that had ever seen
+them could forget them?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And it was I as took you!&nbsp; You wouldn&rsquo;t think it,
+my dear, though he&rsquo;s always a-arguin&rsquo;, I do believe he&rsquo;d
+love to go that walk again, even with an old woman, and see them heavenly
+beeches.&nbsp; But, Lord, how I do talk, and you&rsquo;ve neither of
+you got any tea.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you lived long in London, Miss Hopgood?&rsquo; inquired
+Baruch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not very long.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you feel the change?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot say I do not.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose, however, you have brought yourself to believe in
+Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s philosophy?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, and mere toleration, to say nothing of opposition, at
+least so far as persons are concerned, is seldom necessary.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn did not take much interest in abstract statements.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You remember,&rsquo; she said, turning to Baruch, &lsquo;that
+man Chorley as has the big farm on the left-hand side just afore you
+come to the common?&nbsp; He wasn&rsquo;t a Surrey man: he came out
+of the shires.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Very well.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s married that Skelton girl; married her the week
+afore I left.&nbsp; There isn&rsquo;t no love lost there, but the girl&rsquo;s
+father said he&rsquo;d murder him if he didn&rsquo;t, and so it come
+off.&nbsp; How she ever brought herself to it gets over me.&nbsp; She
+has that big farm-house, and he&rsquo;s made a fine drawing-room out
+of the livin&rsquo; room on the left-hand side as you go in, and put
+a new grate in the kitchen and turned that into the livin&rsquo; room,
+and they does the cooking in the back kitchen, but for all that, if
+I&rsquo;d been her, I&rsquo;d never have seen his face no more, and
+I&rsquo;d have packed off to Australia.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Does anybody go near them?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Near them! of course they do, and, as true as I&rsquo;m a-sittin&rsquo;
+here, our parson, who married them, went to the breakfast.&nbsp; It
+isn&rsquo;t Chorley as I blame so much; he&rsquo;s a poor, snivellin&rsquo;
+creature, and he was frightened, but it&rsquo;s the girl.&nbsp; She
+doesn&rsquo;t care for him no more than me, and then again, although,
+as I tell you, he&rsquo;s such a poor creature, he&rsquo;s awful cruel
+and mean, and she knows it.&nbsp; But what was I a-goin&rsquo; to say?&nbsp;
+Never shall I forget that wedding.&nbsp; You know as it&rsquo;s a short
+cut to the church across the farmyard at the back of my house.&nbsp;
+The parson, he was rather late - I suppose he&rsquo;d been giving himself
+a finishin&rsquo; touch - and, as it had been very dry weather, he went
+across the straw and stuff just at the edge like of the yard.&nbsp;
+There was a pig under the straw - pigs, my dear,&rsquo; turning to Clara,
+&lsquo;nuzzle under the straw so as you can&rsquo;t see them.&nbsp;
+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&rsquo;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.&nbsp;
+You never see&rsquo;d a man in such a pickle!&nbsp; I heer&rsquo;d the
+pig a-squeakin&rsquo; like mad, and I ran to the door, and I called
+out to him, and I says, &ldquo;Mr Ormiston, won&rsquo;t you come in
+here?&rdquo; and though, as you know, he allus hated me, he had to come.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; I says
+to him as that was the pig&rsquo;s way and the pig didn&rsquo;t know
+who it was who was a-ridin&rsquo; 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.&nbsp; I was glad I was goin&rsquo; away from
+Great Oakhurst, for he never would have forgiven me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There was a ring at the front door bell, and Clara went to see who
+was there.&nbsp; It was a runaway ring, but she took the opportunity
+of going upstairs to Madge.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She has a sister?&rsquo; said Baruch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp;
+You&rsquo;ll have to be told if they stay here.&nbsp; She was engaged
+to be married, and how it came about with a girl like that is a bit
+beyond me, anyhow, there&rsquo;s a child, and the father&rsquo;s a good
+sort by what I can make out, but she won&rsquo;t have anything more
+to do with him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What do you mean by &ldquo;a girl like that.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She isn&rsquo;t one of them as goes wrong; she can talk German
+and reads books.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did he desert her?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, that&rsquo;s just it.&nbsp; She loves me, although I say
+it, as if I was her mother, and yet I&rsquo;m just as much in the dark
+as I was the first day I saw her as to why she left that man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s gospel truth as I never took to anybody as I&rsquo;ve
+took to her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>After Baruch had gone, Clara returned.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a curious creature, my dear,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn,
+&lsquo;as good as gold, but he&rsquo;s too solemn by half.&nbsp; It
+would do him a world of good if he&rsquo;d somebody with him who&rsquo;d
+make him laugh more.&nbsp; He <i>can</i> laugh, for I&rsquo;ve seen
+him forced to get up and hold his sides, but he never makes no noise.&nbsp;
+He&rsquo;s a Jew, and they say as them as crucified our blessed Lord
+never laugh proper.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Baruch was now in love.&nbsp; He had fallen in love with Clara suddenly
+and totally.&nbsp; His tendency to reflectiveness did not diminish his
+passion: it rather augmented it.&nbsp; The men and women whose thoughts
+are here and there continually are not the people to feel the full force
+of love.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;No man,&rsquo; said Baruch once, &lsquo;can love a woman unless
+he loves God.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I should say,&rsquo; smilingly replied
+the Gentile, &lsquo;that no man can love God unless he loves a woman.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I am right,&rsquo; said Baruch, &lsquo;and so are you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He was obliged to call upon Barnes in about
+a fortnight&rsquo;s time.&nbsp; He still read Hebrew, and he had seen
+in the shop a copy of the Hebrew translation of the <i>Moreh Nevochim</i>
+of Maimonides, which he greatly coveted, but could not afford to buy.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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 <i>Moreh Nevochim</i> might be purchased.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Barnes, of course, gossiped with everybody.</p>
+<p>He therefore called again in the evening, about half an hour before
+closing time, and found that Barnes had gone home.&nbsp; Clara was busy
+with a catalogue, the proof of which she was particularly anxious to
+send to the printer that night.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>But was it Maimonides which kept him till the porter began to put
+up the shutters?&nbsp; Was he pondering exclusively upon God as the
+folio lay open before him?&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you walk home alone?&rsquo; he said as she gave the proof
+to the boy who stood waiting.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, always.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am going to see Marshall to-night, but I must go to Newman
+Street first.&nbsp; I shall be glad to walk with you, if you do not
+mind diverging a little.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She consented and they went along Oxford Street without speaking,
+the roar of the carriages and waggons preventing a word.</p>
+<p>They turned, however, into Bloomsbury, and were able to hear one
+another.&nbsp; He had much to say and he could not begin to say it.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have not seen your sister yet; I hope I may see her this
+evening.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I hope you may, but she frequently suffers from headache and
+prefers to be alone.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How do you like Mr Barnes?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; When they were crossing
+Bedford Square on their return Clara happened to say amongst other commonplaces,
+-</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What a relief a quiet space in London is.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not mind the crowd if I am by myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not like crowds; I dislike even the word, and dislike
+&ldquo;the masses&rdquo; still more.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; London is often horrible to me for that
+reason.&nbsp; In the country it was not quite so bad.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That is an illusion,&rsquo; said Baruch after a moment&rsquo;s
+pause.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not quite understand you, but if it be an illusion it
+is very painful.&nbsp; In London human beings seem the commonest, cheapest
+things in the world, and I am one of them.&nbsp; I went with Mr Marshall
+not long ago to a Free Trade Meeting, and more than two thousand people
+were present.&nbsp; Everybody told me it was magnificent, but it made
+me very sad.&rsquo;&nbsp; She was going on, but she stopped.&nbsp; How
+was it, she thought again, that she could be so communicative?&nbsp;
+How was it?&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; An hour? we have actually known him for centuries.</p>
+<p>She could not understand it, and she felt as if she had been inconsistent
+with her constant professions of wariness in self-revelation.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is an illusion, nevertheless - an illusion of the senses.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She was silent, and he did not go on.&nbsp; At last he said, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; After all, it is possible
+here in London for one atom to be of eternal importance to another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They had gone quite round Bedford Square without entering Great Russell
+Street, which was the way eastwards.&nbsp; A drunken man was holding
+on by the railings of the Square.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Clara instinctively seized Baruch&rsquo;s arm in order to
+avoid the poor, staggering mortal; they went once more to the right,
+and began to complete another circuit.&nbsp; Somehow her arm had been
+drawn into Baruch&rsquo;s, and there it remained.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you any friends in London?&rsquo; said Baruch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There are Mrs Caffyn, her son and daughter, and there is Mr
+A. J. Scott.&nbsp; He was a friend of my father.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You mean the Mr Scott who was Irving&rsquo;s assistant?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;An addition - &rsquo; he was about to say, &lsquo;an additional
+bond&rsquo; but he corrected himself.&nbsp; &lsquo;A bond between us;
+I know Mr Scott.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you really?&nbsp; I suppose you know many interesting people
+in London, as you are in his circle.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Very few; weeks, months have passed since anybody has said
+as much to me as you have.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>His voice quivered a little, for he was trembling with an emotion
+quite inexplicable by mere intellectual relationship.&nbsp; Something
+came through Clara&rsquo;s glove as her hand rested on his wrist which
+ran through every nerve and sent the blood into his head.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; She turned the conversation towards some
+indifferent subject, and in a few minutes they were at Great Ormond
+Street.&nbsp; Baruch would not go in as he had intended; he thought
+it was about to rain, and he was late.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+He could well enough interpret, so he believed, Miss Hopgood&rsquo;s
+suppression of him.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The next time he met
+her, he would be made to understand that he was <i>pitied</i>, and perhaps
+he would then learn the name of the youth who was his rival, and had
+won her.&nbsp; He would often meet her, no doubt, but of what value
+would anything he could say be to her.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Perhaps his love for Clara might be genuine; perhaps it was not.&nbsp;
+He had hoped that as he grew older he might be able really to <i>see</i>
+a woman, but he was once more like one of the possessed.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Then he fell to meditating how little his studies had done for him.&nbsp;
+What was the use of them?&nbsp; They had not made him any stronger,
+and he was no better able than other people to resist temptation.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>Clara was not as Baruch.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She
+lay down without any misgiving.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She would like to find out more
+of his history; perhaps without exciting suspicion she might obtain
+it from Mrs Caffyn.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Mr Frank Palmer was back again in England.&nbsp; He was much distressed
+when he received that last letter from Mrs Caffyn, and discovered that
+Madge&rsquo;s resolution not to write remained unshaken.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+Nobody in society expects the same paternal love for the offspring of
+a housemaid or a sempstress as for the child of the stockbroker&rsquo;s
+or brewer&rsquo;s daughter, and nobody expects the same obligations,
+but Frank was not a society youth, and Madge was his equal.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; But what could
+he do? that was the point.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; After all, it was
+better that Madge should be the child&rsquo;s mother than that it should
+belong to some peasant.&nbsp; At least it would be properly educated.&nbsp;
+As to money, Mrs Caffyn had told him expressly that she did not want
+it.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Meanwhile it was of great importance that he should behave
+in such a manner as to raise no suspicion.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He could not retreat,
+and there was no surprise manifested by anybody when it was rumoured
+that they were engaged.&nbsp; His story may as well be finished at once.&nbsp;
+He and Miss Cecilia Morland were married.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+Mrs Caffyn met him by appointment, but he could not persuade her even
+to be the bearer of a message to Madge.&nbsp; He then determined to
+confess his fears.&nbsp; To his great relief Mrs Caffyn of her own accord
+assured him that he never need dread any disturbance or betrayal.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There are three of us,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;as knows you
+- Miss Madge, Miss Clara and myself - and, as far as you are concerned,
+we are dead and buried.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t say as I was altogether
+of Miss Madge&rsquo;s way of looking at it at first, and I thought it
+ought to have been different, though I believe now as she&rsquo;s right,
+but,&rsquo; and the old woman suddenly fired up as if some bolt from
+heaven had kindled her, &lsquo;I pity you, sir - you, sir, I say - more
+nor I do her.&nbsp; You little know what you&rsquo;ve lost, the blessedest,
+sweetest, ah, and the cleverest creature, too, as ever I set eyes on.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, Mrs Caffyn,&rsquo; said Frank, with much emotion, &lsquo;it
+was not I who left her, you know it was not, and, and even - &rsquo;</p>
+<p>The word &lsquo;now&rsquo; was coming, but it did not come.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn, with something like scorn, &lsquo;<i>I</i>
+know, yes, I do know.&nbsp; It was she, you needn&rsquo;t tell me that,
+but, God-a-mighty in heaven, if I&rsquo;d been you, I&rsquo;d have laid
+myself on the ground afore her, I&rsquo;d have tore my heart out for
+her, and I&rsquo;d have said, &ldquo;No other woman in this world but
+you&rdquo; - but there, what a fool I am!&nbsp; Goodbye, Mr Palmer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She marched away, leaving Frank very miserable, and, as he imagined,
+unsettled, but he was not so.&nbsp; The fit lasted all day, but when
+he was walking home that evening, he met a poor friend whose wife was
+dying.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am so grieved,&rsquo; said Frank &lsquo;to hear of your
+trouble - no hope?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;None, I am afraid.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is very dreadful.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, it is hard to bear, but to what is inevitable we must
+submit.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This new phrase struck Frank very much, and it seemed very philosophic
+to him, a maxim, for guidance through life.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; He might help his daughter
+if he could not help the mother.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; The will, therefore,
+did not mention Madge, and it was not necessary to tell his secret to
+his solicitor.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; A twelvemonth after the marriage a son was born
+and Frank&rsquo;s father increased Frank&rsquo;s share in the business.&nbsp;
+Mr Palmer had long ceased to take any interest in the Hopgoods.&nbsp;
+He considered that Madge had treated Frank shamefully in jilting him,
+but was convinced that he was fortunate in his escape.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Frank my dear,&rsquo; she said after dinner, &lsquo;I emptied
+this morning one of the drawers in the attic.&nbsp; I wish you would
+look over the things and decide what you wish to keep.&nbsp; I have
+not examined them, but they seem to be mostly rubbish.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He went upstairs after he had smoked his cigar and read his paper.&nbsp;
+There was the slipper!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; Finally he decided to burn it.&nbsp; There was no
+fire, however, in the room, and while he stood meditating, Cecilia called
+him.&nbsp; He replaced the slipper in the drawer.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+At breakfast some letters came which put everything else out of mind.&nbsp;
+The first thing he did that evening was to revisit the garret, but the
+slipper had gone.&nbsp; Cecilia had been there and had found it carefully
+folded up in the drawer.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Frank did not
+like to make any inquiries; Cecilia made none, and thence-forward no
+trace existed at Waltham Lodge of Madge Hopgood.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Baruch went neither to Barnes&rsquo;s shop nor to the Marshalls for
+nearly a month.&nbsp; One Sunday morning he was poring over the <i>Moreh
+Nevochim</i>, 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.&nbsp; It was one of those sayings which
+may be nothing or much to the reader.&nbsp; Whether it be nothing or
+much depends upon the quality of his mind.</p>
+<p>There was certainly nothing in it particularly adapted to Baruch&rsquo;s
+condition at that moment, but an antidote may be none the less efficacious
+because it is not direct.&nbsp; It removed him to another region.&nbsp;
+It was like the sight and sound of the sea to the man who has been in
+trouble in an inland city.&nbsp; His self-confidence was restored, for
+he to whom an idea is revealed becomes the idea, and is no longer personal
+and consequently poor.</p>
+<p>His room seemed too small for him; he shut his book and went to Great
+Ormond Street.&nbsp; He found there Marshall, Mrs Caffyn, Clara and
+a friend of Marshall&rsquo;s named Dennis.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where is your wife?&rsquo; said Baruch to Marshall.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Gone with Miss Madge to the Catholic chapel to hear a mass
+of Mozart&rsquo;s.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn.&nbsp; &lsquo;I tell them they&rsquo;ll
+turn Papists if they do not mind.&nbsp; They are always going to that
+place, and there&rsquo;s no knowing, so I&rsquo;ve hear&rsquo;d, what
+them priests can do.&nbsp; They aren&rsquo;t like our parsons.&nbsp;
+Catch that man at Great Oakhurst a-turnin&rsquo; anybody.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose,&rsquo; said Baruch to Clara, &lsquo;it is the music
+takes your sister there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mainly, I believe, but perhaps not entirely.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What other attraction can there be?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not in the least disposed to become a convert.&nbsp;
+Once for all, Catholicism is incredible and that is sufficient, but
+there is much in its ritual which suits me.&nbsp; There is no such intrusion
+of the person of the minister as there is in the Church of England,
+and still worse amongst dissenters.&nbsp; In the Catholic service the
+priest is nothing; it is his office which is everything; he is a mere
+means of communication.&nbsp; The mass, in so far as it proclaims that
+miracle is not dead, is also very impressive to me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not quite understand you,&rsquo; said Marshall, &lsquo;but
+if you once chuck your reason overboard, you may just as well be Catholic
+as Protestant.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The tea things had been cleared away, and Marshall was smoking.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>Frederick Dennis was about thirty, tall and rather loose-limbed.&nbsp;
+He wore loose clothes, his neck-cloth was tied in a big, loose knot,
+his feet were large and his boots were heavy.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It had a trick
+of tumbling over his eyes, so that his fingers were continually passed
+through it to brush it away.&nbsp; 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 <i>Northern Star</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; His work, however, was not
+of first-rate quality, and consequently orders were not abundant.&nbsp;
+This was the reason why he had turned to literature.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot stand Vincent,&rsquo; said Marshall, &lsquo;he is
+too flowery for me, and he does not belong to the people.&nbsp; He is
+middle-class to the backbone.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is deficient in ideas,&rsquo; said Dennis.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is odd,&rsquo; continued Marshall, turning to Cohen, &lsquo;that
+your race never takes any interest in politics.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My race is not a nation, or, if a nation, has no national
+home.&nbsp; It took an interest in politics when it was in its own country,
+and produced some rather remarkable political writing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But why do you care so little for what is going on now?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know what is coming&rsquo; - Marshall took the pipe out
+of his mouth and spoke with perceptible sarcasm - &lsquo;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.&nbsp; All very well, Mr Cohen.&nbsp;
+My answer is that at the present moment the stockingers in Leicester
+are earning four shillings and sixpence a week.&nbsp; It is not a question
+whether they are better or worse than their rulers.&nbsp; They want
+something to eat, they have nothing, and their masters have more than
+they can eat.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Apart altogether from purely material reasons,&rsquo; said
+Dennis, &lsquo;we have rights; we are born into this planet without
+our consent, and, therefore, we may make certain demands.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you not think,&rsquo; said Clara, &lsquo;that the repeal
+of the corn laws will help you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Dennis smiled and was about to reply, but Marshall broke out savagely,
+-</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Repeal of the corn laws is a contemptible device of manufacturing
+selfishness.&nbsp; It means low wages.&nbsp; Do you suppose the great
+Manchester cotton lords care one straw for their hands?&nbsp; Not they!&nbsp;
+They will face a revolution for repeal because it will enable them to
+grind an extra profit out of us.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I agree with you entirely,&rsquo; said Dennis, turning to
+Clara, &lsquo;that a tax upon food is wrong; it is wrong in the abstract.&nbsp;
+The notion of taxing bread, the fruit of the earth, is most repulsive;
+but the point is - what is our policy to be?&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+That is the secret of successful leadership.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He took up the poker and stirred the fire.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That will do, Dennis,&rsquo; said Marshall, who was evidently
+fidgety.&nbsp; &lsquo;The room is rather warm.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s nothing
+in Vincent which irritates me more than those bits of poetry with which
+he winds up.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;God made the man - man made the slave,&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>and all that stuff.&nbsp; If God made the man, God made the slave.&nbsp;
+I know what Vincent&rsquo;s little game is, and it is the same game
+with all his set.&nbsp; They want to keep Chartism religious, but we
+shall see.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Theological superstition, you mean?&rsquo; said Clara.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, of course, what others are there worth notice?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A few.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I maintain,&rsquo; said Clara with emphasis, &lsquo;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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Baruch&rsquo;s lips moved, but he was silent.&nbsp; He was not strong
+in argument.&nbsp; He was thinking about Marshall&rsquo;s triumphant
+inquiry whether God is not responsible for slavery.&nbsp; He would have
+liked to say something on that subject, but he had nothing ready.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Practical people,&rsquo; said Dennis, who had not quite recovered
+from the rebuke as to the warmth of the room, &lsquo;are often most
+unpractical and injudicious.&nbsp; Nothing can be more unwise than to
+mix up politics and religion.&nbsp; If you <i>do</i>,&rsquo; Dennis
+waved his hand, &lsquo;you will have all the religious people against
+you.&nbsp; My friend Marshall, Miss Hopgood, is under the illusion that
+the Church in this country is tottering to its fall.&nbsp; Now, although
+I myself belong to no sect, I do not share his illusion; nay, more,
+I am not sure&rsquo; - Mr Dennis spoke slowly, rubbed his chin and looked
+up at the ceiling - &lsquo;I am not sure that there is not something
+to be said in favour of State endowment - at least, in a country like
+Ireland.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come along, Dennis, we shall be late,&rsquo; said Marshall,
+and the two forthwith took their departure in order to attend another
+meeting.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Much either of &rsquo;em knows about it,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn
+when they had gone.&nbsp; &lsquo;There&rsquo;s Marshall getting two
+pounds a week reg&rsquo;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&rsquo;t
+sit still.&nbsp; <i>I</i> do know what the poor is, having lived at
+Great Oakhurst all these years.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are not a Chartist, then?&rsquo; said Baruch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Me - me a Chartist?&nbsp; No, I ain&rsquo;t, and yet, maybe,
+I&rsquo;m something worse.&nbsp; What would be the use of giving them
+poor creatures votes?&nbsp; Why, there isn&rsquo;t one of them as wouldn&rsquo;t
+hold up his hand for anybody as would give him a shilling.&nbsp; Quite
+right of &rsquo;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&rsquo;t fill them by voting.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But what would you do for them?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! that beats me!&nbsp; Hang somebody, but I don&rsquo;t
+know who it ought to be.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s a family by the name of
+Longwood, they live just on the slope of the hill nigh the Dower Farm,
+and there&rsquo;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&rsquo;ve seen the snow lie
+in heaps inside.&nbsp; As reg&rsquo;lar as winter comes Longwood is
+knocked off - no work.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve knowed them not have a bit of
+meat for weeks together, and him a-loungin&rsquo; about at the corner
+of the street.&nbsp; Wasn&rsquo;t that enough to make him feel as if
+somebody ought to be killed?&nbsp; 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&rsquo;s
+belly, and that nobody had no business to have more children than he
+could feed.&nbsp; And what goes on, and what must go on, inside such
+a place as Longwood&rsquo;s, with him and his wife, and with them boys
+and gals all huddled together - But I&rsquo;d better hold my tongue.&nbsp;
+We&rsquo;ll let the smoke out of this room, I think, and air it a little.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She opened the window, and Baruch rose and went home.</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Baruch sat and mused before he went to bed.&nbsp; He had gone out
+stirred by an idea, but it was already dead.&nbsp; Then he began to
+think about Clara.&nbsp; Who was this Dennis who visited the Marshalls
+and the Hopgoods?&nbsp; Oh! for an hour of his youth!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He must
+make up his mind to renounce for ever.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Madge was not now the Madge whom
+we knew at Fenmarket.&nbsp; She was thinner in the face and paler.&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, she was not careless; she was even more particular in
+her costume, but it was simpler.&nbsp; If anything, perhaps, she was
+a little prouder.&nbsp; She was more attractive, certainly, than she
+had ever been, although her face could not be said to be handsomer.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+She had been reading a book while Clara was balancing her cash, and
+she attempted to replace it.&nbsp; The shelf was a little too high,
+and the volume fell upon the ground.&nbsp; It contained Shelley&rsquo;s
+<i>Revolt of Islam.</i></p>
+<p>&lsquo;Have you read Shelley?&rsquo; said Baruch.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Every line - when I was much younger.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you read him now?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not much.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was entirely enslaved by the ideals of the French
+Revolution.&nbsp; Take away what the French Revolution contributed to
+his poetry, and there is not much left.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As a man he is not very attractive to me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nor to me; I never shall forgive his treatment of Harriet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose he had ceased to love her, and he thought, therefore,
+he was justified in leaving her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge turned and fixed her eyes, unobserved, on Baruch.&nbsp; He
+was looking straight at the bookshelves.&nbsp; There was not, and, indeed,
+how could there be, any reference to herself.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should put it in this way,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;that
+he thought he was justified in sacrificing a woman for the sake of an
+<i>impulse</i>.&nbsp; Call this a defect or a crime - whichever you
+like - it is repellent to me.&nbsp; It makes no difference to me to
+know that he believed the impulse to be divine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wish,&rsquo; interrupted Clara, &lsquo;you two would choose
+less exciting subjects of conversation; my totals will not come right.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They were silent, and Baruch, affecting to study a Rollin&rsquo;s
+<i>Ancient History</i>, wondered, especially when he called to mind
+Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s report, what this girl&rsquo;s history could have
+been.&nbsp; He presently recovered himself, and it occurred to him that
+he ought to give some reason why he had called.&nbsp; Before, however,
+he was able to offer any excuse, Clara closed her book.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, it is right,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;and I am ready.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Just at that moment Barnes appeared, hot with hurrying.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Very sorry, Miss Hopgood, to ask you to stay for a few minutes.&nbsp;
+I recollected after I left that the doctor particularly wanted those
+books sent off to-night.&nbsp; I should not like to disappoint him.&nbsp;
+I have been to the booking-office, and the van will be here in about
+twenty minutes.&nbsp; If you will make out the invoice and check me,
+I will pack them.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will be off,&rsquo; said Madge.&nbsp; &lsquo;The shop will
+be shut if I do not make haste.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are not going alone, are you?&rsquo; said Baruch.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;May I not go with you, and cannot we both come back for your
+sister?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is very kind of you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara looked up from her desk, watched them as they went out at the
+door and, for a moment, seemed lost.&nbsp; Barnes turned round.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Now, Miss Hopgood.&rsquo;&nbsp; She started.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, sir.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>Fabricius</i>, <i>J. A.&nbsp; Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica
+in qua continentur</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I need not put in the last three words.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, yes.&rsquo;&nbsp; Barnes never liked to be corrected
+in a title.&nbsp; &lsquo;There&rsquo;s another <i>Fabricius Bibliotheca</i>
+or <i>Bibliographia</i>.&nbsp; Go on - <i>Basili opera ad MSS. codices</i>,
+3 vols.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara silently made the entries a little more scholarly.&nbsp; In
+a quarter of an hour the parcel was ready and Cohen returned.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your sister would not allow me to wait.&nbsp; She met Mrs
+Marshall; they said they should have something to carry, and that it
+was not worth while to bring it here.&nbsp; I will walk with you, if
+you will allow me.&nbsp; We may as well avoid Holborn.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They turned into Gray&rsquo;s Inn, and, when they were in comparative
+quietude, he said, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Any Chartist news?&rsquo; and then without waiting for an
+answer, &lsquo;By the way, who is your friend Dennis?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He is no particular friend of mine.&nbsp; He is a wood-engraver,
+and writes also, I believe, for the newspapers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He can talk as well as write.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, he can talk very well.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you not think there was something unreal about what he
+said?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not believe he is actually insincere.&nbsp; I have noticed
+that men who write or read much often appear somewhat shadowy.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How do you account for it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What they say is not experience.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not quite understand.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, I suppose so, but it is what a person has gone through
+which I like to hear.&nbsp; Poor Dennis has suffered much.&nbsp; You
+are perhaps surprised, but it is true, and when he leaves politics alone
+he is a different creature.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am afraid I must be very uninteresting to you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I did not mean that I care for nothing but my friend&rsquo;s
+aches and pains, but that I do not care for what he just takes up and
+takes on.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is my misfortune that my subjects are not very - I was
+about to say - human.&nbsp; Perhaps it is because I am a Jew.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I do not know quite what you mean by your &ldquo;subjects,&rdquo;
+but if you mean philosophy and religion, they are human.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If they are, very few people like to hear anything about them.&nbsp;
+Do you know, Miss Hopgood, I can never talk to anybody as I can to you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara made no reply.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Something fell and flashed before her like lightning
+from a cloud overhead, divinely beautiful, but divinely terrible.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I remember,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;that I have to call in
+Lamb&rsquo;s Conduit Street to buy something for my sister.&nbsp; I
+shall just be in time.&rsquo;&nbsp; Baruch went as far as Lamb&rsquo;s
+Conduit Street with her.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He left her at the door of the
+shop.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He then wandered back once more
+to his old room at Clerkenwell.&nbsp; The fire was dead, he stirred
+it, the cinders fell through the grate and it dropped out all together.&nbsp;
+He made no attempt to rekindle it, but sat staring at the black ashes,
+not thinking, but dreaming.&nbsp; Thirty years more perhaps with no
+change!&nbsp; The last chance that he could begin a new life had disappeared.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>A month afterwards Marshall announced that he intended to pay a visit.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am going,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;to see Mazzini.&nbsp; Who
+will go with me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara and Madge were both eager to accompany him.&nbsp; Mrs Caffyn
+and Mrs Marshall chose to stay at home.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I shall ask Cohen to come with us,&rsquo; said Marshall.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;He has never seen Mazzini and would like to know him.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; When they knocked at Mazzini&rsquo;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.&nbsp; They
+were shown upstairs into a rather mean room, and found there a man,
+really about forty, but looking older.&nbsp; He had dark hair growing
+away from his forehead, dark moustache, dark beard and a singularly
+serious face.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was the face of a saint of
+the Reason, of a man who could be ecstatic for rational ideals, rarest
+of all endowments.&nbsp; It was the face, too, of one who knew no fear,
+or, if he knew it, could crush it.&nbsp; He was once concealed by a
+poor woman whose house was surrounded by Austrian soldiers watching
+for him.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; He was cordial in his reception of his
+visitors, particularly of Clara, Madge and Cohen, whom he had not seen
+before.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The English,&rsquo; he said, after some preliminary conversation,
+&lsquo;are a curious people.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; There are English women, also, who have this
+faith, and one or two are amongst my dearest friends.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I never,&rsquo; said Marshall, &lsquo;quite comprehend you
+on this point.&nbsp; I should say that we know as clearly as most folk
+what we want, and we mean to have it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That may be, but it is not Justice, as Justice which inspires
+you.&nbsp; Those of you who have not enough, desire to have more, that
+is all.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ.&nbsp; 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 <i>above</i> the people.&nbsp;
+No system based on rights will stand.&nbsp; Never will society be permanent
+till it is founded on duty.&nbsp; If we consider our rights exclusively,
+we extend them over the rights of our neighbours.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To put it in my own language,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;you
+believe in God.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no
+other.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should like, though,&rsquo; said Marshall, &lsquo;to see
+the church which would acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit
+your God to be theirs.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is essential,&rsquo; replied Madge, &lsquo;in a belief
+in God is absolute loyalty to a principle we know to have authority.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It may, perhaps,&rsquo; said Mazzini, &lsquo;be more to me,
+but you are right, it is a belief in the supremacy and ultimate victory
+of the conscience.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The victory seems distant in Italy now,&rsquo; said Baruch.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I do not mean the millennial victory of which you speak, but
+an approximation to it by the overthrow of tyranny there.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you imagine.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you obtain,&rsquo; said Clara, &lsquo;any real help from
+people here?&nbsp; Do you not find that they merely talk and express
+what they call their sympathy?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must not say what help I have received; more than words,
+though, from many.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You expect, then,&rsquo; said Baruch, &lsquo;that the Italians
+will answer your appeal?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what faith could
+survive.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The people are the persons you meet in the street.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A people is not a mere assemblage of uninteresting units,
+but it is not a phantom.&nbsp; A spirit lives in each nation which is
+superior to any individual in it.&nbsp; It is this which is the true
+reality, the nation&rsquo;s purpose and destiny, it is this for which
+the patriot lives and dies.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose,&rsquo; said Clara, &lsquo;you have no difficulty
+in obtaining volunteers for any dangerous enterprise?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;None.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Women?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, yes; and women are of the greatest use, but it is rather
+difficult to find those who have the necessary qualifications.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I suppose you employ them in order to obtain secret information?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes; amongst the Austrians.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The party broke up.&nbsp; Baruch man&oelig;uvred to walk with Clara,
+but Marshall wanted to borrow a book from Mazzini, and she stayed behind
+for him.&nbsp; Madge was outside in the street, and Baruch could do
+nothing but go to her.&nbsp; She seemed unwilling to wait, and Baruch
+and she went slowly homewards, thinking the others would overtake them.&nbsp;
+The conversation naturally turned upon Mazzini.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Although,&rsquo; said Madge, &lsquo;I have never seen him
+before, I have heard much about him and he makes me sad.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because he has done something worth doing and will do more.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But why should that make you sad?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; Mazzini has a world open to him large enough
+for the exercise of all his powers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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&rsquo;s
+enthusiasm is deeper than a man&rsquo;s.&nbsp; You can join Mazzini
+to-morrow, I suppose, if you like.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is a supposition not quite justifiable, and if I were free
+to go I could not.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am not fitted for such work; I have not sufficient faith.&nbsp;
+When I see a flag waving, a doubt always intrudes.&nbsp; Long ago I
+was forced to the conclusion that I should have to be content with a
+life which did not extend outside itself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Maybe you are right.&nbsp; The inability to obtain mere pleasure
+has not produced the misery which has been begotten of mistaken or baffled
+self-sacrifice.&nbsp; But do you mean to say that you would like to
+enlist under Mazzini?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Baruch thought she referred to her child, and he was silent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are a philosopher,&rsquo; said Madge, after a pause.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Have you never discovered anything which will enable us to submit
+to be useless?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; That is
+the real strength of all religions.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, go on; what do you believe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can only say it like a creed; I have no demonstration, at
+least none such as I would venture to put into words.&nbsp; Perhaps
+the highest of all truths is incapable of demonstration and can only
+be stated.&nbsp; Perhaps, also, the statement, at least to some of us,
+is a sufficient demonstration.&nbsp; I believe that inability to imagine
+a thing is not a reason for its non-existence.&nbsp; If the infinite
+is a conclusion which is forced upon me, the fact that I cannot picture
+it does not disprove it.&nbsp; I believe, also, in thought and the soul,
+and it is nothing to me that I cannot explain them by attributes belonging
+to body.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But,&rsquo; said Madge, interrupting him, &lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&nbsp; They lead to ideas which are inconsistent
+with the notion that the imagination is a measure of all things.&nbsp;
+Mind, I do not for a moment pretend that I have any theory which explains
+the universe.&nbsp; It is something, however, to know that the sky is
+as real as the earth.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They had now reached Great Ormond Street, and parted.&nbsp; Clara
+and Marshall were about five minutes behind them.&nbsp; Madge was unusually
+cheerful when they sat down to supper.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Clara,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;what made you so silent to-night
+at Mazzini&rsquo;s?&rsquo;&nbsp; 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?&nbsp; Whitsuntide
+was late; it would be warm, and they could take their food with them
+and eat it out of doors.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Just the very thing, my dear, if we could get anything cheap
+to take us; the baby, of course, must go with us.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I should like above everything to go to Great Oakhurst.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What, five of us - twenty miles there and twenty miles back!&nbsp;
+Besides, although I love the place, it isn&rsquo;t exactly what one
+would go to see just for a day.&nbsp; No!&nbsp; Letherhead or Mickleham
+or Darkin would be ever so much better.&nbsp; They are too far, though,
+and, then, that man Baruch must go with us.&nbsp; He&rsquo;d be company
+for Marshall, and he sticks up in Clerkenwell and never goes nowhere.&nbsp;
+You remember as Marshall said as he must ask him the next time we had
+an outing.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara had not forgotten it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah,&rsquo; continued Mrs Caffyn, &lsquo;I should just love
+to show you Mickleham.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Caffyn&rsquo;s heart yearned after her Surrey land.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+To think of them is not a mere luxury; their presence modifies the whole
+of his life.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see how it is to be managed,&rsquo; she mused;
+&lsquo;and yet there&rsquo;s nothing near London as I&rsquo;d give two
+pins to see.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s Richmond as we went to one Sunday;
+it was no better, to my way of thinking, than looking at a picture.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;d ever so much sooner be a-walking across the turnips by the
+footpath from Darkin home.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Couldn&rsquo;t we, for once in a way, stay somewhere over-night?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It might as well be two,&rsquo; said Mrs Marshall; &lsquo;Saturday
+and Sunday.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Two,&rsquo; said Madge; &lsquo;I vote for two.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Wait a bit, my dears, we&rsquo;re a precious awkward lot to
+fit in - Marshall and his wife me and you and Miss Clara and the baby;
+and then there&rsquo;s Baruch, who&rsquo;s odd man, so to speak; that&rsquo;s
+three bedrooms.&nbsp; We sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t do it - Otherwise, I was
+a-thinking - &rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What were you thinking?&rsquo; said Marshall.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I&rsquo;ve got it,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn, joyously.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Miss Clara and me will go to Great Oakhurst on the Friday.&nbsp;
+We can easy enough stay at my old shop.&nbsp; Marshall and Sarah, Miss
+Madge, the baby and Baruch can go to Letherhead on the Saturday morning.&nbsp;
+The two women and the baby can have one of the rooms at Skelton&rsquo;s,
+and Marshall and Baruch can have the other.&nbsp; Then, on Sunday morning,
+Miss Clara and me we&rsquo;ll come over for you, and we&rsquo;ll all
+walk through Norbury Park.&nbsp; That&rsquo;ll be ever so much better
+in many ways.&nbsp; Miss Clara and me, we&rsquo;ll go by the coach.&nbsp;
+Six of us, not reckoning the baby, in that heavy ginger-beer cart of
+Masterman&rsquo;s would be too much.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;An expensive holiday, rather,&rsquo; said Marshall.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Leave that to me; that&rsquo;s my business.&nbsp; I ain&rsquo;t
+quite a beggar, and if we can&rsquo;t take our pleasure once a year,
+it&rsquo;s a pity.&nbsp; We aren&rsquo;t like some folk as messes about
+up to Hampstead every Sunday, and spends a fortune on shrimps and donkeys.&nbsp;
+No; when I go away, it <i>is</i> away, maybe it&rsquo;s only for a couple
+of days, where I can see a blessed ploughed field; no shrimps nor donkeys
+for me.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHARTER XXIX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>So it was settled, and on the Friday Clara and Mrs Caffyn journeyed
+to Great Oakhurst.&nbsp; They were both tired, and went to bed very
+early, in order that they might enjoy the next day.&nbsp; Clara, always
+a light sleeper, woke between three and four, rose and went to the little
+casement window which had been open all night.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp;
+In a few moments the highest top of the cloud-rampart was kindled, and
+the whole wavy outline became a fringe of flame.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She put her hands to her
+face; the tears fell faster, but she wiped them away and her great purpose
+was fixed.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>Neither Mrs Caffyn nor Clara thought of seeing the Letherhead party
+on Saturday.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; She did not know the country,
+but she wandered on until she came to a lane which led down to the river.&nbsp;
+At the bottom of the lane she found herself at a narrow, steep, stone
+bridge.&nbsp; She had not been there more than three or four minutes
+before she descried two persons coming down the lane from Letherhead.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; It was impossible to mistake them;
+they were Madge and Baruch.&nbsp; They sauntered leisurely; presently
+Baruch knelt down over the water, apparently to gather something which
+he gave to Madge.&nbsp; They then crossed another stile and were lost
+behind the tall hedge which stopped further view of the footpath in
+that direction.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The message then was authentic,&rsquo; she said to herself.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I thought I could not have misunderstood it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>On Sunday morning Clara wished to stay at home.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; It was one of the sweetest of Sundays, sunny, but
+masses of white clouds now and then broke the heat.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This is very beautiful,&rsquo; said Marshall, when dinner
+was over, &lsquo;but it is not what we came to see.&nbsp; We ought to
+move upwards to the Druid&rsquo;s grove.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, you be off, the whole lot of you,&rsquo; said Mrs Caffyn.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I know every tree there, and I ain&rsquo;t going there this afternoon.&nbsp;
+Somebody must stay here to look after the baby; you can&rsquo;t wheel
+her, you&rsquo;ll have to carry her, and you won&rsquo;t enjoy yourselves
+much more for moiling along with her up that hill.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will stay with you,&rsquo; said Clara.</p>
+<p>Everybody protested, but Clara was firm.&nbsp; She was tired, and
+the sun had given her a headache.&nbsp; Madge pleaded that it was she
+who ought to remain behind, but at last gave way for her sister looked
+really fatigued.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There&rsquo;s a dear child,&rsquo; said Clara, when Madge
+consented to go.&nbsp; &lsquo;I shall lie on the grass and perhaps go
+to sleep.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is a pity,&rsquo; said Baruch to Madge as they went away,
+&lsquo;that we are separated; we must come again.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;We must go,&rsquo; said Marshall, &lsquo;a little bit further
+and see the oak.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not another step,&rsquo; said his wife.&nbsp; &lsquo;You can
+go it you like.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Content; nothing could be pleasanter than to sit here,&rsquo;
+and he pulled out his pipe; &lsquo;but really, Miss Madge, to leave
+Norbury without paying a visit to the oak is a pity.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He did not offer, however, to accompany her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is the most extraordinary tree in these parts,&rsquo; said
+Baruch; &lsquo;of incalculable age and with branches spreading into
+a tent big enough to cover a regiment.&nbsp; Marshall is quite right.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where is it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not above a couple of hundred yards further; just round the
+corner.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge rose and looked.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No; it is not visible here; it stands a little way back.&nbsp;
+If you come a little further you will catch a glimpse of it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She followed him and presently the oak came in view.&nbsp; They climbed
+up the bank and went nearer to it.&nbsp; The whole vale was underneath
+them and part of the weald with the Sussex downs blue in the distance.&nbsp;
+Baruch was not much given to raptures over scenery, but the indifference
+of Nature to the world&rsquo;s turmoil always appealed to him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are not now discontented because you cannot serve under
+Mazzini?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not now.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There was nothing in her reply on the face of it of any particular
+consequence to Baruch.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have sometimes thought,&rsquo; continued Baruch, slowly,
+&lsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Madge&rsquo;s eyes moved round from the hills and they met Baruch&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+No syllable was uttered, but swiftest messages passed, question and
+answer.&nbsp; There was no hesitation on his part now, no doubt, the
+woman and the moment had come.&nbsp; The last question was put, the
+final answer was given; he took her hand in his and came closer to her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Stop!&rsquo; she whispered, &lsquo;do you know my history?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He did not reply, but fell upon her neck.&nbsp; 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!&nbsp; Happy Madge! happy Baruch!&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; They travel towards one another,
+but are waylaid and detained, and just as they are within greeting,
+one of them drops and dies.</p>
+<p>They left the tree and went back to the Marshalls, and then down
+the hill to Mrs Caffyn and Clara.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Madge kept close
+to her sister till they separated, and the two men walked together.&nbsp;
+On Whitmonday morning the Letherhead people came over to Great Oakhurst.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; Mrs Caffyn had as much to show
+them as if the village had been the Tower of London.&nbsp; The wonder
+of wonders, however, was a big house, where she was well known, and
+its hot-houses.&nbsp; Madge wanted to speak to Clara, but it was difficult
+to find a private opportunity.&nbsp; 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.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Clara,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;I want a word with you.&nbsp;
+Baruch Cohen loves me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you love him?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Without a shadow of a doubt?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Without a shadow of a doubt.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Clara put her arm round her sister, kissed her tenderly and said,
+-</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Then I am perfectly happy.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Did you suspect it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I knew it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>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.&nbsp;
+Clara stood at the gate for a long time watching them along the straight,
+white road.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+In the evening a friend called to see Mrs Caffyn, and Clara went to
+the stone bridge which she had visited on Saturday.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+On the island were aspens and alders.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;
+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.</p>
+<p>She came up from the arch and went home as the sun was setting.&nbsp;
+She found Mrs Caffyn alone.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have news to tell you,&rsquo; she said.&nbsp; &lsquo;Baruch
+Cohen is in love with my sister, and she is in love with him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The Lord, Miss Clara!&nbsp; I thought sometimes that perhaps
+it might be you; but there, it&rsquo;s better, maybe, as it is, for
+- &rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For what?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, my dear, because somebody&rsquo;s sure to turn up who&rsquo;ll
+make you happy, but there aren&rsquo;t many men like Baruch.&nbsp; You
+see what I mean, don&rsquo;t you?&nbsp; He&rsquo;s always a-reading
+books, and, therefore, he don&rsquo;t think so much of what some people
+would make a fuss about.&nbsp; Not as anything of that kind would ever
+stop me, if I were a man and saw such a woman as Miss Madge.&nbsp; He&rsquo;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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The evening after their return to Great Ormond Street, Mazzini was
+surprised by a visit from Clara alone.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When I last saw you,&rsquo; she said, &lsquo;you told us that
+you had been helped by women.&nbsp; I offer myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, my dear madam, you hardly know what the qualifications
+are.&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I was educated abroad, I can speak German and French.&nbsp;
+I do not know much Italian, but when I reach Italy I will soon learn.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Pardon me for asking you what may appear a rude question.&nbsp;
+Is it a personal disappointment which sends you to me, or love for the
+cause?&nbsp; 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.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Does it make any difference, so far as their constancy is
+concerned?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot say that it does.&nbsp; The devotion of many of the
+martyrs of the Catholic church was repulsion from the world as much
+as attraction to heaven.&nbsp; You must understand that I am not prompted
+by curiosity.&nbsp; If you are to be my friend, it is necessary that
+I should know you thoroughly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My motive is perfectly pure.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>They had some further talk and parted.&nbsp; After a few more interviews,
+Clara and another English lady started for Italy.&nbsp; Madge had letters
+from her sister at intervals for eighteen months, the last being from
+Venice.&nbsp; Then they ceased, and shortly afterwards Mazzini told
+Baruch that his sister-in-law was dead.</p>
+<p>All efforts to obtain more information from Mazzini were in vain,
+but one day when her name was mentioned, he said to Madge, -</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The theologians represent the Crucifixion as the most sublime
+fact in the world&rsquo;s history.&nbsp; It was sublime, but let us
+reverence also the Eternal Christ who is for ever being crucified for
+our salvation.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Father,&rsquo; said a younger Clara to Baruch some ten years
+later as she sat on his knee, &lsquo;I had an Aunt Clara once, hadn&rsquo;t
+I?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes, my child.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Didn&rsquo;t she go to Italy and die there?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why did she go?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because she wanted to free the poor people of Italy who were
+slaves.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CLARA HOPGOOD ***</p>
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