1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
1481
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486
1487
1488
1489
1490
1491
1492
1493
1494
1495
1496
1497
1498
1499
1500
1501
1502
1503
1504
1505
1506
1507
1508
1509
1510
1511
1512
1513
1514
1515
1516
1517
1518
1519
1520
1521
1522
1523
1524
1525
1526
1527
1528
1529
1530
1531
1532
1533
1534
1535
1536
1537
1538
1539
1540
1541
1542
1543
1544
1545
1546
1547
1548
1549
1550
1551
1552
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577
1578
1579
1580
1581
1582
1583
1584
1585
1586
1587
1588
1589
1590
1591
1592
1593
1594
1595
1596
1597
1598
1599
1600
1601
1602
1603
1604
1605
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1612
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
1625
1626
1627
1628
1629
1630
1631
1632
1633
1634
1635
1636
1637
1638
1639
1640
1641
1642
1643
1644
1645
1646
1647
1648
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673
1674
1675
1676
1677
1678
1679
1680
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686
1687
1688
1689
1690
1691
1692
1693
1694
1695
1696
1697
1698
1699
1700
1701
1702
1703
1704
1705
1706
1707
1708
1709
1710
1711
1712
1713
1714
1715
1716
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
1722
1723
1724
1725
1726
1727
1728
1729
1730
1731
1732
1733
1734
1735
1736
1737
1738
1739
1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099
2100
2101
2102
2103
2104
2105
2106
2107
2108
2109
2110
2111
2112
2113
2114
2115
2116
2117
2118
2119
2120
2121
2122
2123
2124
2125
2126
2127
2128
2129
2130
2131
2132
2133
2134
2135
2136
2137
2138
2139
2140
2141
2142
2143
2144
2145
2146
2147
2148
2149
2150
2151
2152
2153
2154
2155
2156
2157
2158
2159
2160
2161
2162
2163
2164
2165
2166
2167
2168
2169
2170
2171
2172
2173
2174
2175
2176
2177
2178
2179
2180
2181
2182
2183
2184
2185
2186
2187
2188
2189
2190
2191
2192
2193
2194
2195
2196
2197
2198
2199
2200
2201
2202
2203
2204
2205
2206
2207
2208
2209
2210
2211
2212
2213
2214
2215
2216
2217
2218
2219
2220
2221
2222
2223
2224
2225
2226
2227
2228
2229
2230
2231
2232
2233
2234
2235
2236
2237
2238
2239
2240
2241
2242
2243
2244
2245
2246
2247
2248
2249
2250
2251
2252
2253
2254
2255
2256
2257
2258
2259
2260
2261
2262
2263
2264
2265
2266
2267
2268
2269
2270
2271
2272
2273
2274
2275
2276
2277
2278
2279
2280
2281
2282
2283
2284
2285
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290
2291
2292
2293
2294
2295
2296
2297
2298
2299
2300
2301
2302
2303
2304
2305
2306
2307
2308
2309
2310
2311
2312
2313
2314
2315
2316
2317
2318
2319
2320
2321
2322
2323
2324
2325
2326
2327
2328
2329
2330
2331
2332
2333
2334
2335
2336
2337
2338
2339
2340
2341
2342
2343
2344
2345
2346
2347
2348
2349
2350
2351
2352
2353
2354
2355
2356
2357
2358
2359
2360
2361
2362
2363
2364
2365
2366
2367
2368
2369
2370
2371
2372
2373
2374
2375
2376
2377
2378
2379
2380
2381
2382
2383
2384
2385
2386
2387
2388
2389
2390
2391
2392
2393
2394
2395
2396
2397
2398
2399
2400
2401
2402
2403
2404
2405
2406
2407
2408
2409
2410
2411
2412
2413
2414
2415
2416
2417
2418
2419
2420
2421
2422
2423
2424
2425
2426
2427
2428
2429
2430
2431
2432
2433
2434
2435
2436
2437
2438
2439
2440
2441
2442
2443
2444
2445
2446
2447
2448
2449
2450
2451
2452
2453
2454
2455
2456
2457
2458
2459
2460
2461
2462
2463
2464
2465
2466
2467
2468
2469
2470
2471
2472
2473
2474
2475
2476
2477
2478
2479
2480
2481
2482
2483
2484
2485
2486
2487
2488
2489
2490
2491
2492
2493
2494
2495
2496
2497
2498
2499
2500
2501
2502
2503
2504
2505
2506
2507
2508
2509
2510
2511
2512
2513
2514
2515
2516
2517
2518
2519
2520
2521
2522
2523
2524
2525
2526
2527
2528
2529
2530
2531
2532
2533
2534
2535
2536
2537
2538
2539
2540
2541
2542
2543
2544
2545
2546
2547
2548
2549
2550
2551
2552
2553
2554
2555
2556
2557
2558
2559
2560
2561
2562
2563
2564
2565
2566
2567
2568
2569
2570
2571
2572
2573
2574
2575
2576
2577
2578
2579
2580
2581
2582
2583
2584
2585
2586
2587
2588
2589
2590
2591
2592
2593
2594
2595
2596
2597
2598
2599
2600
2601
2602
2603
2604
2605
2606
2607
2608
2609
2610
2611
2612
2613
2614
2615
2616
2617
2618
2619
2620
2621
2622
2623
2624
2625
2626
2627
2628
2629
2630
2631
2632
2633
2634
2635
2636
2637
2638
2639
2640
2641
2642
2643
2644
2645
2646
2647
2648
2649
2650
2651
2652
2653
2654
2655
2656
2657
2658
2659
2660
2661
2662
2663
2664
2665
2666
2667
2668
2669
2670
2671
2672
2673
2674
2675
2676
2677
2678
2679
2680
2681
2682
2683
2684
2685
2686
2687
2688
2689
2690
2691
2692
2693
2694
2695
2696
2697
2698
2699
2700
2701
2702
2703
2704
2705
2706
2707
2708
2709
2710
2711
2712
2713
2714
2715
2716
2717
2718
2719
2720
2721
2722
2723
2724
2725
2726
2727
2728
2729
2730
2731
2732
2733
2734
2735
2736
2737
2738
2739
2740
2741
2742
2743
2744
2745
2746
2747
2748
2749
2750
2751
2752
2753
2754
2755
2756
2757
2758
2759
2760
2761
2762
2763
2764
2765
2766
2767
2768
2769
2770
2771
2772
2773
2774
2775
2776
2777
2778
2779
2780
2781
2782
2783
2784
2785
2786
2787
2788
2789
2790
2791
2792
2793
2794
2795
2796
2797
2798
2799
2800
2801
2802
2803
2804
2805
2806
2807
2808
2809
2810
2811
2812
2813
2814
2815
2816
2817
2818
2819
2820
2821
2822
2823
2824
2825
2826
2827
2828
2829
2830
2831
2832
2833
2834
2835
2836
2837
2838
2839
2840
2841
2842
2843
2844
2845
2846
2847
2848
2849
2850
2851
2852
2853
2854
2855
2856
2857
2858
2859
2860
2861
2862
2863
2864
2865
2866
2867
2868
2869
2870
2871
2872
2873
2874
2875
2876
2877
2878
2879
2880
2881
2882
2883
2884
2885
2886
2887
2888
2889
2890
2891
2892
2893
2894
2895
2896
2897
2898
2899
2900
2901
2902
2903
2904
2905
2906
2907
2908
2909
2910
2911
2912
2913
2914
2915
2916
2917
2918
2919
2920
2921
2922
2923
2924
2925
2926
2927
2928
2929
2930
2931
2932
2933
2934
2935
2936
2937
2938
2939
2940
2941
2942
2943
2944
2945
2946
2947
2948
2949
2950
2951
2952
2953
2954
2955
2956
2957
2958
2959
2960
2961
2962
2963
2964
2965
2966
2967
2968
2969
2970
2971
2972
2973
2974
2975
2976
2977
2978
2979
2980
2981
2982
2983
2984
2985
2986
2987
2988
2989
2990
2991
2992
2993
2994
2995
2996
2997
2998
2999
3000
3001
3002
3003
3004
3005
3006
3007
3008
3009
3010
3011
3012
3013
3014
3015
3016
3017
3018
3019
3020
3021
3022
3023
3024
3025
3026
3027
3028
3029
3030
3031
3032
3033
3034
3035
3036
3037
3038
3039
3040
3041
3042
3043
3044
3045
3046
3047
3048
3049
3050
3051
3052
3053
3054
3055
3056
3057
3058
3059
3060
3061
3062
3063
3064
3065
3066
3067
3068
3069
3070
3071
3072
3073
3074
3075
3076
3077
3078
3079
3080
3081
3082
3083
3084
3085
3086
3087
3088
3089
3090
3091
3092
3093
3094
3095
3096
3097
3098
3099
3100
3101
3102
3103
3104
3105
3106
3107
3108
3109
3110
3111
3112
3113
3114
3115
3116
3117
3118
3119
3120
3121
3122
3123
3124
3125
3126
3127
3128
3129
3130
3131
3132
3133
3134
3135
3136
3137
3138
3139
3140
3141
3142
3143
3144
3145
3146
3147
3148
3149
3150
3151
3152
3153
3154
3155
3156
3157
3158
3159
3160
3161
3162
3163
3164
3165
3166
3167
3168
3169
3170
3171
3172
3173
3174
3175
3176
3177
3178
3179
3180
3181
3182
3183
3184
3185
3186
3187
3188
3189
3190
3191
3192
3193
3194
3195
3196
3197
3198
3199
3200
3201
3202
3203
3204
3205
3206
3207
3208
3209
3210
3211
3212
3213
3214
3215
3216
3217
3218
3219
3220
3221
3222
3223
3224
3225
3226
3227
3228
3229
3230
3231
3232
3233
3234
3235
3236
3237
3238
3239
3240
3241
3242
3243
3244
3245
3246
3247
3248
3249
3250
3251
3252
3253
3254
3255
3256
3257
3258
3259
3260
3261
3262
3263
3264
3265
3266
3267
3268
3269
3270
3271
3272
3273
3274
3275
3276
3277
3278
3279
3280
3281
3282
3283
3284
3285
3286
3287
3288
3289
3290
3291
3292
3293
3294
3295
3296
3297
3298
3299
3300
3301
3302
3303
3304
3305
3306
3307
3308
3309
3310
3311
3312
3313
3314
3315
3316
3317
3318
3319
3320
3321
3322
3323
3324
3325
3326
3327
3328
3329
3330
3331
3332
3333
3334
3335
3336
3337
3338
3339
3340
3341
3342
3343
3344
3345
3346
3347
3348
3349
3350
3351
3352
3353
3354
3355
3356
3357
3358
3359
3360
3361
3362
3363
3364
3365
3366
3367
3368
3369
3370
3371
3372
3373
3374
3375
3376
3377
3378
3379
3380
3381
3382
3383
3384
3385
3386
3387
3388
3389
3390
3391
3392
3393
3394
3395
3396
3397
3398
3399
3400
3401
3402
3403
3404
3405
3406
3407
3408
3409
3410
3411
3412
3413
3414
3415
3416
3417
3418
3419
3420
3421
3422
3423
3424
3425
3426
3427
3428
3429
3430
3431
3432
3433
3434
3435
3436
3437
3438
3439
3440
3441
3442
3443
3444
3445
3446
3447
3448
3449
3450
3451
3452
3453
3454
3455
3456
3457
3458
3459
3460
3461
3462
3463
3464
3465
3466
3467
3468
3469
3470
3471
3472
3473
3474
3475
3476
3477
3478
3479
3480
3481
3482
3483
3484
3485
3486
3487
3488
3489
3490
3491
3492
3493
3494
3495
3496
3497
3498
3499
3500
3501
3502
3503
3504
3505
3506
3507
3508
3509
3510
3511
3512
3513
3514
3515
3516
3517
3518
3519
3520
3521
3522
3523
3524
3525
3526
3527
3528
3529
3530
3531
3532
3533
3534
3535
3536
3537
3538
3539
3540
3541
3542
3543
3544
3545
3546
3547
3548
3549
3550
3551
3552
3553
3554
3555
3556
3557
3558
3559
3560
3561
3562
3563
3564
3565
3566
3567
3568
3569
3570
3571
3572
3573
3574
3575
3576
3577
3578
3579
3580
3581
3582
3583
3584
3585
3586
3587
3588
3589
3590
3591
3592
3593
3594
3595
3596
3597
3598
3599
3600
3601
3602
3603
3604
3605
3606
3607
3608
3609
3610
3611
3612
3613
3614
3615
3616
3617
3618
3619
3620
3621
3622
3623
3624
3625
3626
3627
3628
3629
3630
3631
3632
3633
3634
3635
3636
3637
3638
3639
3640
3641
3642
3643
3644
3645
3646
3647
3648
3649
3650
3651
3652
3653
3654
3655
3656
3657
3658
3659
3660
3661
3662
3663
3664
3665
3666
3667
3668
3669
3670
3671
3672
3673
3674
3675
3676
3677
3678
3679
3680
3681
3682
3683
3684
3685
3686
3687
3688
3689
3690
3691
3692
3693
3694
3695
3696
3697
3698
3699
3700
3701
3702
3703
3704
3705
3706
3707
3708
3709
3710
3711
3712
3713
3714
3715
3716
3717
3718
3719
3720
3721
3722
3723
3724
3725
3726
3727
3728
3729
3730
3731
3732
3733
3734
3735
3736
3737
3738
3739
3740
3741
3742
3743
3744
3745
3746
3747
3748
3749
3750
3751
3752
3753
3754
3755
3756
3757
3758
3759
3760
3761
3762
3763
3764
3765
3766
3767
3768
3769
3770
3771
3772
3773
3774
3775
3776
3777
3778
3779
3780
3781
3782
3783
3784
3785
3786
3787
3788
3789
3790
3791
3792
3793
3794
3795
3796
3797
3798
3799
3800
3801
3802
3803
3804
3805
3806
3807
3808
3809
3810
3811
3812
3813
3814
3815
3816
3817
3818
3819
3820
3821
3822
3823
3824
3825
3826
3827
3828
3829
3830
3831
3832
3833
3834
3835
3836
3837
3838
3839
3840
3841
3842
3843
3844
3845
3846
3847
3848
3849
3850
3851
3852
3853
3854
3855
3856
3857
3858
3859
3860
3861
3862
3863
3864
3865
3866
3867
3868
3869
3870
3871
3872
3873
3874
3875
3876
3877
3878
3879
3880
3881
3882
3883
3884
3885
3886
3887
3888
3889
3890
3891
3892
3893
3894
3895
3896
3897
3898
3899
3900
3901
3902
3903
3904
3905
3906
3907
3908
3909
3910
3911
3912
3913
3914
3915
3916
3917
3918
3919
3920
3921
3922
3923
3924
3925
3926
3927
3928
3929
3930
3931
3932
3933
3934
3935
3936
3937
3938
3939
3940
3941
3942
3943
3944
3945
3946
3947
3948
3949
3950
3951
3952
3953
3954
3955
3956
3957
3958
3959
3960
3961
3962
3963
3964
3965
3966
3967
3968
3969
3970
3971
3972
3973
3974
3975
3976
3977
3978
3979
3980
3981
3982
3983
3984
3985
3986
3987
3988
3989
3990
3991
3992
3993
3994
3995
3996
3997
3998
3999
4000
4001
4002
4003
4004
4005
4006
4007
4008
4009
4010
4011
4012
4013
4014
4015
4016
4017
4018
4019
4020
4021
4022
4023
4024
4025
4026
4027
4028
4029
4030
4031
4032
4033
4034
4035
4036
4037
4038
4039
4040
4041
4042
4043
4044
4045
4046
4047
4048
4049
4050
4051
4052
4053
4054
4055
4056
4057
4058
4059
4060
4061
4062
4063
4064
4065
4066
4067
4068
4069
4070
4071
4072
4073
4074
4075
4076
4077
4078
4079
4080
4081
4082
4083
4084
4085
4086
4087
4088
4089
4090
4091
4092
4093
4094
4095
4096
4097
4098
4099
4100
4101
4102
4103
4104
4105
4106
4107
4108
4109
4110
4111
4112
4113
4114
4115
4116
4117
4118
4119
4120
4121
4122
4123
4124
4125
4126
4127
4128
4129
4130
4131
4132
4133
4134
4135
4136
4137
4138
4139
4140
4141
4142
4143
4144
4145
4146
4147
4148
4149
4150
4151
4152
4153
4154
4155
4156
4157
4158
4159
4160
4161
4162
4163
4164
4165
4166
4167
4168
4169
4170
4171
4172
4173
4174
4175
4176
4177
4178
4179
4180
4181
4182
4183
4184
4185
4186
4187
4188
4189
4190
4191
4192
4193
4194
4195
4196
4197
4198
4199
4200
4201
4202
4203
4204
4205
4206
4207
4208
4209
4210
4211
4212
4213
4214
4215
4216
4217
4218
4219
4220
4221
4222
4223
4224
4225
4226
4227
4228
4229
4230
4231
4232
4233
4234
4235
4236
4237
4238
4239
4240
4241
4242
4243
4244
4245
4246
4247
4248
4249
4250
4251
4252
4253
4254
4255
4256
4257
4258
4259
4260
4261
4262
4263
4264
4265
4266
4267
4268
4269
4270
4271
4272
4273
4274
4275
4276
4277
4278
4279
4280
4281
4282
4283
4284
4285
4286
4287
4288
4289
4290
4291
4292
4293
4294
4295
4296
4297
4298
4299
4300
4301
4302
4303
4304
4305
4306
4307
4308
4309
4310
4311
4312
4313
4314
4315
4316
4317
4318
4319
4320
4321
4322
4323
4324
4325
4326
4327
4328
4329
4330
4331
4332
4333
4334
4335
4336
4337
4338
4339
4340
4341
4342
4343
4344
4345
4346
4347
4348
4349
4350
4351
4352
4353
4354
4355
4356
4357
4358
4359
4360
4361
4362
4363
4364
4365
4366
4367
4368
4369
4370
4371
4372
4373
4374
4375
4376
4377
4378
4379
4380
4381
4382
4383
4384
4385
4386
4387
4388
4389
4390
4391
4392
4393
4394
4395
4396
4397
4398
4399
4400
4401
4402
4403
4404
4405
4406
4407
4408
4409
4410
4411
4412
4413
4414
4415
4416
4417
4418
4419
4420
4421
4422
4423
4424
4425
4426
4427
4428
4429
4430
4431
4432
4433
4434
4435
4436
4437
4438
4439
4440
4441
4442
4443
4444
4445
4446
4447
4448
4449
4450
4451
4452
4453
4454
4455
4456
4457
4458
4459
4460
4461
4462
4463
4464
4465
4466
4467
4468
4469
4470
4471
4472
4473
4474
4475
4476
4477
4478
4479
4480
4481
4482
4483
4484
4485
4486
4487
4488
4489
4490
4491
4492
4493
4494
4495
4496
4497
4498
4499
4500
4501
4502
4503
4504
4505
4506
4507
4508
4509
4510
4511
4512
4513
4514
4515
4516
4517
4518
4519
4520
4521
4522
4523
4524
4525
4526
4527
4528
4529
4530
4531
4532
4533
4534
4535
4536
4537
4538
4539
4540
4541
4542
4543
4544
4545
4546
4547
4548
4549
4550
4551
4552
4553
4554
4555
4556
4557
4558
4559
4560
4561
4562
4563
4564
4565
4566
4567
4568
4569
4570
4571
4572
4573
4574
4575
4576
4577
4578
4579
4580
4581
4582
4583
4584
4585
4586
4587
4588
4589
4590
4591
4592
4593
4594
4595
4596
4597
4598
4599
4600
4601
4602
4603
4604
4605
4606
4607
4608
4609
4610
4611
4612
4613
4614
4615
4616
4617
4618
4619
4620
4621
4622
4623
4624
4625
4626
4627
4628
4629
4630
4631
4632
4633
4634
4635
4636
4637
4638
4639
4640
4641
4642
4643
4644
4645
4646
4647
4648
4649
4650
4651
4652
4653
4654
4655
4656
4657
4658
4659
4660
4661
4662
4663
4664
4665
4666
4667
4668
4669
4670
4671
4672
4673
4674
4675
4676
4677
4678
4679
4680
4681
4682
4683
4684
4685
4686
4687
4688
4689
4690
4691
4692
4693
4694
4695
4696
4697
4698
4699
4700
4701
4702
4703
4704
4705
4706
4707
4708
4709
4710
4711
4712
4713
4714
4715
4716
4717
4718
4719
4720
4721
4722
4723
4724
4725
4726
4727
4728
4729
4730
4731
4732
4733
4734
4735
4736
4737
4738
4739
4740
4741
4742
4743
4744
4745
4746
4747
4748
4749
4750
4751
4752
4753
4754
4755
4756
4757
4758
4759
4760
4761
4762
4763
4764
4765
4766
4767
4768
4769
4770
4771
4772
4773
4774
4775
4776
4777
4778
4779
4780
4781
4782
4783
4784
4785
4786
4787
4788
4789
4790
4791
4792
4793
4794
4795
4796
4797
4798
4799
4800
4801
4802
4803
4804
4805
4806
4807
4808
4809
4810
4811
4812
4813
4814
4815
4816
4817
4818
4819
4820
4821
4822
4823
4824
4825
4826
4827
4828
4829
4830
4831
4832
4833
4834
4835
4836
4837
4838
4839
4840
4841
4842
4843
4844
4845
4846
4847
4848
4849
4850
4851
4852
4853
4854
4855
4856
4857
4858
4859
4860
4861
4862
4863
4864
4865
4866
4867
4868
4869
4870
4871
4872
4873
4874
4875
4876
4877
4878
4879
4880
4881
4882
4883
4884
4885
4886
4887
4888
4889
4890
4891
4892
4893
4894
4895
4896
4897
4898
4899
4900
4901
4902
4903
4904
4905
4906
4907
4908
4909
4910
4911
4912
4913
4914
4915
4916
4917
4918
4919
4920
4921
4922
4923
4924
4925
4926
4927
4928
4929
4930
4931
4932
4933
4934
4935
4936
4937
4938
4939
4940
4941
4942
4943
4944
4945
4946
4947
4948
4949
4950
4951
4952
4953
4954
4955
4956
4957
4958
4959
4960
4961
4962
4963
4964
4965
4966
4967
4968
4969
4970
4971
4972
4973
4974
4975
4976
4977
4978
4979
4980
4981
4982
4983
4984
4985
4986
4987
4988
4989
4990
4991
4992
4993
4994
4995
4996
4997
4998
4999
5000
5001
5002
5003
5004
5005
5006
5007
5008
5009
5010
5011
5012
5013
5014
5015
5016
5017
5018
5019
5020
5021
5022
5023
5024
5025
5026
5027
5028
5029
5030
5031
5032
5033
5034
5035
5036
5037
5038
5039
5040
5041
5042
5043
5044
5045
5046
5047
5048
5049
5050
5051
5052
5053
5054
5055
5056
5057
5058
5059
5060
5061
5062
5063
5064
5065
5066
5067
5068
5069
5070
5071
5072
5073
5074
5075
5076
5077
5078
5079
5080
5081
5082
5083
5084
5085
5086
5087
5088
5089
5090
5091
5092
5093
5094
5095
5096
5097
5098
5099
5100
5101
5102
5103
5104
5105
5106
5107
5108
5109
5110
5111
5112
5113
5114
5115
5116
5117
5118
5119
5120
5121
5122
5123
5124
5125
5126
5127
5128
5129
5130
5131
5132
5133
5134
5135
5136
5137
5138
5139
5140
5141
5142
5143
5144
5145
5146
5147
5148
5149
5150
5151
5152
5153
5154
5155
5156
5157
5158
5159
5160
5161
5162
5163
5164
5165
5166
5167
5168
5169
5170
5171
5172
5173
5174
5175
5176
5177
5178
5179
5180
5181
5182
5183
5184
5185
5186
5187
5188
5189
5190
5191
5192
5193
5194
5195
5196
5197
5198
5199
5200
5201
5202
5203
5204
5205
5206
5207
5208
5209
5210
5211
5212
5213
5214
5215
5216
5217
5218
5219
5220
5221
5222
5223
5224
5225
5226
5227
5228
5229
5230
5231
5232
5233
5234
5235
5236
5237
5238
5239
5240
5241
5242
5243
5244
5245
5246
5247
5248
5249
5250
5251
5252
5253
5254
5255
5256
5257
5258
5259
5260
5261
5262
5263
5264
5265
5266
5267
5268
5269
5270
5271
5272
5273
5274
5275
5276
5277
5278
5279
5280
5281
5282
5283
5284
5285
5286
5287
5288
5289
5290
5291
5292
5293
5294
5295
5296
5297
5298
5299
5300
5301
5302
5303
5304
5305
5306
5307
5308
5309
5310
5311
5312
5313
5314
5315
5316
5317
5318
5319
5320
5321
5322
5323
5324
5325
5326
5327
5328
5329
5330
5331
5332
5333
5334
5335
5336
5337
5338
5339
5340
5341
5342
5343
5344
5345
5346
5347
5348
5349
5350
5351
5352
5353
5354
5355
5356
5357
5358
5359
5360
5361
5362
5363
5364
5365
5366
5367
5368
5369
5370
5371
5372
5373
5374
5375
5376
5377
5378
5379
5380
5381
5382
5383
5384
5385
5386
5387
5388
5389
5390
5391
5392
5393
5394
5395
5396
5397
5398
5399
5400
5401
5402
5403
5404
5405
5406
5407
5408
5409
5410
5411
5412
5413
5414
5415
5416
5417
5418
5419
5420
5421
5422
5423
5424
5425
5426
5427
5428
5429
5430
5431
5432
5433
5434
5435
5436
5437
5438
5439
5440
5441
5442
5443
5444
5445
5446
5447
5448
5449
5450
5451
5452
5453
5454
5455
5456
5457
5458
5459
5460
5461
5462
5463
5464
5465
5466
5467
5468
5469
5470
5471
5472
5473
5474
5475
5476
5477
5478
5479
5480
5481
5482
5483
5484
5485
5486
5487
5488
5489
5490
5491
5492
5493
5494
5495
5496
5497
5498
5499
5500
5501
5502
5503
5504
5505
5506
5507
5508
5509
5510
5511
5512
5513
5514
5515
5516
5517
5518
5519
5520
5521
5522
5523
5524
5525
5526
5527
5528
5529
5530
5531
5532
5533
5534
5535
5536
5537
5538
5539
5540
5541
5542
5543
5544
5545
5546
5547
5548
5549
5550
5551
5552
5553
5554
5555
5556
5557
5558
5559
5560
5561
5562
5563
5564
5565
5566
5567
5568
5569
5570
5571
5572
5573
5574
5575
5576
5577
5578
5579
5580
5581
5582
5583
5584
5585
5586
5587
5588
5589
5590
5591
5592
5593
5594
5595
5596
5597
5598
5599
5600
5601
5602
5603
5604
5605
5606
5607
5608
5609
5610
5611
5612
5613
5614
5615
5616
5617
5618
5619
5620
5621
5622
5623
5624
5625
5626
5627
5628
5629
5630
5631
5632
5633
5634
5635
5636
5637
5638
5639
5640
5641
5642
5643
5644
5645
5646
5647
5648
5649
5650
5651
5652
5653
5654
5655
5656
5657
5658
5659
5660
5661
5662
5663
5664
5665
5666
5667
5668
5669
5670
5671
5672
5673
5674
5675
5676
5677
5678
5679
5680
5681
5682
5683
5684
5685
5686
5687
5688
5689
5690
5691
5692
5693
5694
5695
5696
5697
5698
5699
5700
5701
5702
5703
5704
5705
5706
5707
5708
5709
5710
5711
5712
5713
5714
5715
5716
5717
5718
5719
5720
5721
5722
5723
5724
5725
5726
5727
5728
5729
5730
5731
5732
5733
5734
5735
5736
|
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
<title>Clara Hopgood, by Mark Rutherford</title>
<style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */
<!--
P { margin-top: .75em;
margin-bottom: .75em;
}
P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;}
P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; }
.GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; }
H1, H2 {
text-align: center;
margin-top: 2em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
}
H3, H4, H5 {
text-align: center;
margin-top: 1em;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
BODY{margin-left: 10%;
margin-right: 10%;
}
table { border-collapse: collapse; }
table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;}
td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;}
td p { margin: 0.2em; }
.blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */
.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;}
.pagenum {position: absolute;
left: 92%;
font-size: small;
text-align: right;
font-weight: normal;
color: gray;
}
img { border: none; }
img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; }
p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; }
div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; }
div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;}
div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%;
border-top: 1px solid; }
div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%;
border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;}
div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%;
margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid;
border-bottom: 1px solid; }
div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%;
margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid;
border-bottom: 1px solid;}
div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%;
border-top: 1px solid; }
.citation {vertical-align: super;
font-size: .8em;
text-decoration: none;}
img.floatleft { float: left;
margin-right: 1em;
margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
img.floatright { float: right;
margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
img.clearcenter {display: block;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em;
margin-bottom: 0.5em}
-->
/* XML end ]]>*/
</style>
</head>
<body>
<pre>
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Clara Hopgood, by Mark Rutherford
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Clara Hopgood
Author: Mark Rutherford
Release Date: July 15, 2014 [eBook #5986]
[This file was first posted on October 8, 2002]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARA HOPGOOD***
</pre>
<p>Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
<img alt=
"Book cover"
title=
"Book cover"
src="images/covers.jpg" />
</a></p>
<h1><span class="smcap">Clara Hopgood</span></h1>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
/>
MARK RUTHERFORD</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">EDITED BY
HIS FRIEND</span><br />
REUBEN SHAPCOTT</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>THIRD IMPRESSION</i></p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><b>LONDON</b><br />
<b>T. FISHER UNWIN</b><br />
<b>ADELPHI TERRACE</b></p>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p><i>First Edition</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>March</i> 1896</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Second Impression</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>June</i> 1896</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><i>Third Impression</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>July</i> 1907</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">About</span> 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.</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’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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Both</span> 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 <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 ‘body’ was an affliction to
the soul, a means of ‘probation,’ our principal duty
being to ‘war’ against it.</p>
<p>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 <i>Family Expositor</i> 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!</p>
<p>The very next night she began,—</p>
<p>‘I suppose your father is a foreigner?’</p>
<p>‘No, he is an Englishman.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, he is an Englishman,’ said Madge,
smiling.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘No, he is certainly not a Jew.’</p>
<p>‘What is he, then?’</p>
<p>‘He is my papa and a very honest, good man.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I can only tell you again that he is honest and
good.’</p>
<p>Selina was confounded. 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. 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>dangerous</i> 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.</p>
<p>‘Bootmaker!’ said Miss Hannah with great
scorn. ‘I am surprised that you venture to hint the
remotest possibility of such a contingency.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, what is to be done?’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘We have no excuse for dismissing the other.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. She considered it
especially her duty not only to look after the children’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. 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.</p>
<p>As to Madge, she enjoyed her expulsion as a great joke, and
her Brighton experiences were the cause of much laughter.
She had learned a good deal while she was away from home, not
precisely what it was intended she should learn, and she came
back with a strong, insurgent tendency, which was even more
noticeable when she returned from Germany. Neither of the
sisters lived at the school in Weimar, but at the house of a lady
who had been recommended to Mrs Hopgood, and by this lady they
were introduced to the great German classics. She herself
was an enthusiast for Goethe, whom she well remembered in his old
age, and Clara and Madge, each of them in turn, learned to know
the poet as they would never have known him in England.
Even the town taught them much about him, for in many ways it was
expressive of him and seemed as if it had shaped itself for
him. It was a delightful time for them. They enjoyed
the society and constant mental stimulus; they loved the
beautiful park; not a separate enclosure walled round like an
English park, but suffering the streets to end in it, and in
summer time there were excursions into the Thüringer Wald,
generally to some point memorable in history, or for some
literary association. The drawback was the contrast, when
they went home, with Fenmarket, with its dulness and its complete
isolation from the intellectual world. At Weimar, in the
evening, they could see Egmont or hear Fidelio, or talk with
friends about the last utterance upon the Leben Jesu; but the
Fenmarket Egmont was a travelling wax-work show, its Fidelio
psalm tunes, or at best some of Bishop’s glees, performed
by a few of the tradesfolk, who had never had an hour’s
instruction in music; and for theological criticism there were
the parish church and Ram Lane Chapel. They did their best;
they read their old favourites and subscribed for a German as
well as an English literary weekly newspaper, but at times they
were almost beaten. Madge more than Clara was liable to
depression.</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 ‘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.’</p>
<p>‘But, papa,’ said Miss Tubbs, ‘you know Mrs
Hopgood’s maiden name; we found that out. It was
Molyneux.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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>
<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Clara</span> 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>‘Check!’ said Clara.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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?”’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘The planning and the forecasting are the soul of the
game. I should like to be a general, and play against
armies and calculate the consequences of
manœuvres.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Then what makes the difference between the good and the
bad player?’</p>
<p>‘It is a gift, an instinct, I suppose.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I have heard you use it, and say you instinctively like
this person or that.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. 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
<i>Defiance</i> 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.</p>
<p>‘Let me see—check, you said, but it is not
mate.’</p>
<p>She put her elbows on the table, rested her head between her
hands, and appeared to contemplate the game profoundly.</p>
<p>‘Now, then, what do you say to that?’</p>
<p>It was really a very lucky move, and Clara, whose thoughts
perhaps were elsewhere, was presently most unaccountably
defeated. Madge was triumphant.</p>
<p>‘Where are all your deep-laid schemes? Baffled by
a poor creature who can hardly put two and two
together.’</p>
<p>‘Perhaps your schemes were better than mine.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘You are very much mistaken if you suppose that, because
of one failure, or of twenty failures, I would give up a
principle.’</p>
<p>‘Clara, you are a strange creature. Don’t
let us talk any more about chess.’</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>‘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”?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Ah, well, <i>I</i> believe in Shakespeare. His
lovers fall in love at first sight.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Clara smiled. Although this impetuosity was foreign to
her, she loved it for the good which accompanied it.</p>
<p>‘You do not mean to say you would accept or reject him
at once?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I think the risk tremendous.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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>
<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Frank Palmer</span>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘What makes you stay in Fenmarket, Mrs Hopgood?
How I wish you would come to London!’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Would you not like to live in London, Miss
Hopgood?’</p>
<p>Clara hesitated for a few seconds.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘To the scenery round Fenmarket,’ interrupted
Madge; ‘it is so romantic, so mountainous, so interesting
in every way.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Certainly,’ said Madge, laughing, ‘for the
love of <i>such</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘Madge, Madge, I wish you would sometimes save me the
trouble of laboriously striving to discover what you really
mean.’</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>‘Mr Palmer, you see both town and country—which do
you prefer?’</p>
<p>‘Oh! I hardly know; the country in summer-time,
perhaps, and town in the winter.’</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>‘Your father, I remember, loves music. I suppose
you inherit his taste, and it is impossible to hear good music in
the country.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>is</i> lovely,’
and he began humming ‘<i>Be thou faithful unto
death</i>.’</p>
<p>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 <i>C minor</i> Symphony, but no <i>C minor</i>
slow movement was discernible in his character.</p>
<p>‘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!’</p>
<p>‘Madge! Madge! I am ashamed of you,’
said her mother.</p>
<p>‘Well, mother,’ said Clara, ‘I am sure that
some of the settings by your divinity, Handel, are absurd.
“<i>For as in Adam all die</i>” may be true enough,
and the harmonies are magnificent, but I am always tempted to
laugh when I hear it.’</p>
<p>Frank hummed the familiar apostrophe ‘<i>Be not
afraid</i>.’</p>
<p>‘Is that a bit of “St Paul”?’ said Mrs
Hopgood.</p>
<p>‘Yes, it goes like this,’ and Frank went up to the
little piano and sang the song through.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Mrs Hopgood was accustomed to her daughter’s
extravagance, but she was, nevertheless, a little
uncomfortable.</p>
<p>‘Ah!’ said Frank, who had not moved from the
piano, and he struck the first two bars of
‘<i>Adelaide</i>.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, please,’ said Madge, ‘go on, go
on,’ 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. There was a vibration
in Mr Palmer’s voice not perceptible during his vision of
the crown of life and of fidelity to death.</p>
<p>‘Are you going to stay over Sunday?’ inquired Mrs
Hopgood.</p>
<p>‘I am not quite sure; I ought to be back on Sunday
evening. My father likes me to be at home on that
day.’</p>
<p>‘Is there not a Mr Maurice who is a friend of your
father?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, yes, a great friend.’</p>
<p>‘He is not High Church nor Low Church?’</p>
<p>‘No, not exactly.’</p>
<p>‘What is he, then? What does he
believe?’</p>
<p>‘Well, I can hardly say; he does not believe that
anybody will be burnt in a brimstone lake for ever.’</p>
<p>‘That is what he does not believe,’ interposed
Clara.</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Sunday</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘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,
“<i>Not to be opened during my daughter’s life</i>,
<i>and if she should have children or a husband who may survive
her</i>, <i>it is to be burnt</i>.” She had no
children, and when she died as an old woman, her husband also
being dead, the seal was broken.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>Frank hesitated. ‘It would—’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘What is the use,’ said Clara, ‘of
speculating whether we can, or cannot, do this or that? It
<i>is</i> now an interesting subject for discussion whether the
lie was a sin.’</p>
<p>‘No,’ said Madge, ‘a thousand times
no.’</p>
<p>‘Brief and decisive. Well, Mr Palmer, what do you
say?’</p>
<p>‘That is rather an awkward question. A lie is a
lie.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Madge,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘your dogmatic
decision may have been interesting, but it prevented the
expression of Mr Palmer’s opinion.’</p>
<p>Madge bent forward and politely inclined her head to the
embarrassed Frank.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘“What have you been writing on the board,
sir?”</p>
<p>‘“Carpenter, sir.”</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘“Go to your place, sir.”</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>The company laughed.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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.
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>‘Go on, go on,’ he cried, ‘make for the
plank.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘Oh, Mr Palmer,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘what
presence of mind and what courage! We should have been
killed without you.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘You did not find it difficult,’ said Madge,
‘to settle your problem when it came to you in the shape of
a wild ox.’</p>
<p>‘Because there was nothing to settle,’ said Frank,
laughing; ‘there was only one thing to be done.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Good-bye again. Thanks for my life.’</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">There</span> 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.</p>
<p>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 ‘<i>Il Mio
Tesoro</i>,’ but the loudest applause of the evening was
reserved for Madge, who declaimed Byron’s
‘<i>Destruction of Sennacherib</i>’ 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 ‘<i>Happy Life</i>.’ 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 ‘<i>Tempest</i>,’ 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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 ‘<i>Zampa</i>,’ 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,—</p>
<blockquote><p> ‘Behold,
Sir King,<br />
The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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—</p>
<blockquote><p> ‘Sir,
she is mortal,<br />
But by immortal Providence she’s mine,’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>old Boston, a worthy and wealthy farmer, who sat next to Mrs
Hopgood, cried out ‘hear, hear!’ 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>
<p>‘And a precious lucky chap he is.’</p>
<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 ‘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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <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. On their way back, Clara broke out
against the juxtaposition of Shakespeare and such vulgarity.</p>
<p>‘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.</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>‘But, Miss Hopgood, Mrs Martin had to suit all tastes;
we must not be too severe upon her.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Throw it down here.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘I did not wish to keep you waiting in the
wet.’</p>
<p>‘I am just off but I could not help calling to see how
you are. What! burning your laurels, the testimony to your
triumph?’</p>
<p>‘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—</p>
<blockquote><p>‘But by immortal Providence she’s
mine.’</p>
</blockquote>
<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. Mrs Hopgood and Clara presently came
downstairs.</p>
<p>‘Mr Palmer came in to bid you good-bye, but he heard the
coach and was obliged to rush away.’</p>
<p>‘What a pity,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘that you
did not call us.’</p>
<p>‘I thought he would be able to stay longer.’</p>
<p>The lines which followed Frank’s quotation came into her
head,—</p>
<blockquote><p>‘Sweet lord, you play me false.’<br />
‘No, my dearest love,<br />
I would not for the world.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>‘An omen,’ she said to herself; ‘“he
would not for the world.”’</p>
<p>She was in the best of spirits all day long. When the
housework was over and they were quiet together, she
said,—</p>
<p>‘Now, my dear mother and sister, I want to know how the
performance pleased you.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘What a horrible heresy, mother,’ said Madge.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Othello</i>, 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?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘Well, at anyrate, I do not want to see <i>my</i>
children in love to understand what they are—to me at
least.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘No, I do not think you would,’ replied Clara.</p>
<p>‘Why not, miss? <i>Your</i> opinion, mind, was not
asked. Did I not act to perfection last night?’</p>
<p>‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘Then why are you so decisive?’</p>
<p>‘Try a different part some day. I may be
mistaken.’</p>
<p>‘You are very oracular.’</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>
<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘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—</p>
<blockquote><p>“The long brook falling thro’ the
clov’n ravine<br />
In cataract after cataract to the sea.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Go on with it, Frank.’</p>
<p>‘I cannot.’</p>
<p>‘But you know <i>Œnone</i>?’</p>
<p>‘I cannot say I do. I began it—’</p>
<p>‘Frank, how could you begin it and lay it down
unfinished? Besides, those lines are some of the first; you
<i>must</i> remember—</p>
<blockquote><p>“Behind the valley topmost Gargarus<br />
Stands up and takes the morning.”’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>‘No, I do not recollect, but I will learn them; learn
them for your sake.’</p>
<p>‘I do not want you to learn them for my sake.’</p>
<p>‘But I shall.’</p>
<p>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 <i>Œnone</i>. Presently she awoke
from her delicious trance and they moved homewards in
silence. Frank was a little uneasy.</p>
<p>‘I do greatly admire Tennyson,’ he said.</p>
<p>‘What do you admire? You have hardly looked at
him.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</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’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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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.</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.
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>‘Bravo!’ said Madge, ‘but, of all
Wordsworth’s poems, that is the one for which I believe I
care the least.’</p>
<p>Frank’s countenance fell.</p>
<p>‘Oh, me! I thought it was just what would suit
you.’</p>
<p>‘No, not particularly. There are some noble lines
in it; for example—</p>
<blockquote><p>“And custom lie upon thee with a weight,<br
/>
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”</p>
</blockquote>
<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’s
mouth—</p>
<blockquote><p>“Our birth is but a sleep and a
forgetting;”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘Frank,’ she murmured, as she bent her head
towards him, ‘it is really a lovely poem.’</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. 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.</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>‘I cannot, cannot go to-morrow,’ he suddenly
cried, as they neared the town.</p>
<p>‘You <i>shall</i> go,’ she replied calmly.</p>
<p>‘But, Madge, think of me in Germany, think what my
dreams and thoughts will be—you here—hundreds of
miles between us.’</p>
<p>She had never seen him so shaken with terror.</p>
<p>‘You <i>shall</i> go; not another word.’</p>
<p>‘I must say something—what can I say? My
God, my God, have mercy on me!’</p>
<p>‘Mercy! mercy!’ she repeated, half unconsciously,
and then rousing herself, exclaimed, ‘You shall not say it;
I will not hear; now, good-bye.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">In</span> a few days Madge received the
following letter:—</p>
<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">‘<span
class="smcap">Frankfort</span>, O. M.,<br />
<span class="smcap">Hôtel Waidenbusch</span>.</p>
<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dearest Madge</span>,—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 <i>implore</i> 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 <i>at
once</i>. You will not, you <i>cannot</i>, no, you
<i>cannot</i>, 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</p>
<p style="text-align: right">‘<span
class="smcap">Frank</span>.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The reply came only a day late.</p>
<blockquote><p>‘<span class="smcap">My dear
Frank</span>,—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</p>
<p style="text-align: right">‘<span class="smcap">Madge
Hopgood</span>.’</p>
</blockquote>
<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. 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.</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. Her injunction might
not be final. There was but one hope for him, one
possibility of extrication, one necessity—their
marriage. It <i>must</i> be. 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>‘Clara is not here,’ said Mrs Hopgood; ‘she
was very tired last night, perhaps it is better not to disturb
her.’</p>
<p>‘Oh, no! please let her alone. I will see if she
still sleeps.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Madge, my child, have you nothing to say to your
mother?’</p>
<p>‘Nothing.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘I broke off the engagement: we were not suited to one
another.’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘Oh, mother! mother!’ cried Madge, ‘what is
the worst—at least to—you—the worst that can
happen to a woman?’</p>
<p>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,—</p>
<p>‘It has happened to me; mother, your daughter has
wrecked your peace for ever!’</p>
<p>‘And he has abandoned you?’</p>
<p>‘No, no; I told you it was I who left him.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</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. 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.</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. 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 <i>Kyrie</i> 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.</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. She sat down beside Madge, put her basket on
the ground, and wiped her face with her apron.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Madge felt bound to say something as the sunburnt face looked
kind and motherly.</p>
<p>‘I suppose you live at Great Oakhurst?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Are you going to leave?’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘No, I do not.’</p>
<p>‘You don’t live in London, then?’</p>
<p>‘Yes, I do. I came from London this
morning.’</p>
<p>‘The Lord have mercy on us, did you though! I
suppose, then, you’re a-visitin’ here. I know
most of the folk hereabouts.’</p>
<p>‘No: I am going back this afternoon.’</p>
<p>Her interrogator was puzzled and her curiosity
stimulated. Presently she looked in Madge’s face.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘No.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Presently her patient recovered herself.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘But I must go; my mother and sister will not know what
has become of me.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Mrs Caffyn’s</span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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?”’</p>
<p>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.</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. 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,—</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I am afraid, though, Mrs Caffyn, there must be
something radically wrong with that family. I suppose you
know all about the eldest daughter?’</p>
<p>‘Yes, sir, I <i>have</i> 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 <i>us</i> if we was tried like
that.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The rector turned rather red, and repented his attempt to
enlist Mrs Caffyn.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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
‘good-morning,’ made to do duty for both women.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Mrs Caffyn</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘You’ve got a mother, haven’t
you—leastways, I know you have, because you wrote to
her.’</p>
<p>‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘Well, and you lives with her and she looks after
you?’</p>
<p>‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘And she’s fond of you, maybe?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, yes.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘You have been very good to me; what have I to pay
you?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Madge took Mrs Caffyn’s hand in hers and pressed it
firmly.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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>‘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.’</p>
<p>Madge turned again to the light, and again caught Mrs
Caffyn’s hand, but was silent.</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>‘Come in, Mrs Cork.’</p>
<p>‘Thank you, ma’am, but I prefer as you should come
downstairs.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Mrs Hopgood went upstairs to her room, Mrs Cork following and
closing the door.</p>
<p>‘If you please, ma’am, I wish to give you notice
to leave this day week.’</p>
<p>‘What is the matter, Mrs Cork?’</p>
<p>‘Well, ma’am, for one thing, I didn’t know
as you’d bring a bird with you.’</p>
<p>It was a pet bird belonging to Madge.</p>
<p>‘But what harm does the bird do? It gives no
trouble; my daughter attends to it.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I should hardly have thought that a reason for parting
with good lodgers.’</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>‘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.</p>
<p>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.</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. 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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p>
<p>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.’</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 ‘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.</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Frank</span> 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.</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. 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, <i>if</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘What a long time it is, Frank, since you and I sang
that duet together. We have seen nothing of you
lately.’</p>
<p>‘Of course not; I was in Germany.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Frank remembered that evening well.</p>
<p>‘You sang better than you did to-night. You did
not keep time: what were you dreaming about?’</p>
<p>‘How hot the room is! Do you not feel it
oppressive? Let us go into the conservatory for a
minute.’</p>
<p>The door was behind them and they slipped in and sat down,
just inside, and under the orange tree.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>He did not reply, but he stooped down, plucked a blood-red
begonia, and gave it to her.</p>
<p>‘That is a pledge. It is very good of
you.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, I will come.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p><i>Play me false</i>! It was as if there were some
stoppage in a main artery to his brain. <i>Play me
false</i>! 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.</p>
<p>One of Mr Palmer’s favourite ballads was <i>The Three
Ravens</i>. Its pathos unfits it for an ordinary
drawing-room, but as the music at Mr Palmer’s was not of
the common kind, <i>The Three Ravens</i> was put on the list for
that night.</p>
<blockquote><p>‘<i>She was dead herself ere evensong
time</i>. <i>With a down</i>, <i>hey down</i>, <i>hey
down</i>,<br />
<i>God send every gentleman</i><br />
<i>Such hawks</i>, <i>such hounds</i>, <i>and such a
leman</i>. <i>With down</i>, <i>hey down</i>, <i>hey
down</i>.’</p>
</blockquote>
<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. 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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘You was here the other day, sir, asking where them
Hopgoods had gone.’</p>
<p>‘Yes,’ said Frank, eagerly, ‘do you know
what has become of them?’</p>
<p>‘I helped the cabman with the boxes, and I heard Mrs
Hopgood say “Great Ormond Street,” but I have
forgotten the number.’</p>
<p>‘Thank you very much.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. 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. 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.’</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. 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,—</p>
<p>‘Now, <i>Cissy</i>, once more.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Do you think so? Why?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘What kind of person is he with whom you <i>could</i> be
without making him happy?’</p>
<p>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.</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. 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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">When</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘Madge, Madge,’ he cried, ‘I want to speak
to you. I must speak with you.’</p>
<p>‘Better not; let me go.’</p>
<p>‘I say I <i>must</i> speak to you.’</p>
<p>‘We cannot talk here; let me go.’</p>
<p>‘I must! I must! come with me.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Oh, Madge,’ he began, ‘I implore you to
take me back. I love you. I do love you,
and—and—I cannot leave you.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘I cannot,’ he repeated. ‘I
<i>ought</i> not. What will become of me?’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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? <i>Ought</i> you not,
I say, to listen?’</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘It would be a crime.’</p>
<p>‘A crime, but I—’ She stopped him.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was clear that these two women
could not live in London on seventy-five pounds a year, most
certainly not with the prospect before them, and Clara cast about
for something to do. Marshall had a brother-in-law, a
certain Baruch Cohen, a mathematical instrument maker in
Clerkenwell, and to him Marshall accidentally one day talked
about Clara, and said that she desired an occupation. Cohen
himself could not give Clara any work, but he knew a second-hand
bookseller, an old man who kept a shop in Holborn, who wanted a
clerk, and Clara thus found herself earning another pound a
week. With this addition she and her sister could manage to
pay their way and provide what Madge would want. The hours
were long, the duties irksome and wearisome, and, worst of all,
the conditions under which they were performed, were not only as
bad as they could be, but their badness was of a kind to which
Clara had never been accustomed, so that she felt every particle
of it in its full force. The windows of the shop were, of
course, full of books, and the walls were lined with them.
In the middle of the shop also was a range of shelves, and books
were stacked on the floor, so that the place looked like a huge
cubical block of them through which passages had been
bored. At the back the shop became contracted in width to
about eight feet, and consequently the central shelves were not
continued there, but just where they ended, and overshadowed by
them were a little desk and a stool. All round the desk
more books were piled, and some manœuvring was necessary in
order to sit down. This was Clara’s station.
Occasionally, on a brilliant, a very brilliant day in summer, she
could write without gas, but, perhaps, there were not a dozen
such days in the year. By twisting herself sideways she
could just catch a glimpse of a narrow line of sky over some
heavy theology which was not likely to be disturbed, and was
therefore put at the top of the window, and once when somebody
bought the <i>Calvin Joann</i>. <i>Opera Omnia</i>, 9
<i>vol. folio</i>, <i>Amst.</i> 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.</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. 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 <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. 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 <i>History of Surrey</i>. Yes, he
had a copy, and he pointed to the three handsome, tall
folios.</p>
<p>‘What is the price?’</p>
<p>‘Twelve pounds ten.’</p>
<p>‘I think I will have them.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Oh! very well,’ and she departed.</p>
<p>‘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.</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>‘I met him once.’</p>
<p>‘Madge, do you mean that he found out where we are
living, and that he came to see you?’</p>
<p>‘No, it was just round the corner as I was going towards
Holborn.’</p>
<p>‘Nothing could have brought him here but
yourself,’ said Clara, slowly.</p>
<p>‘Clara, you doubt?’</p>
<p>‘No, no! I doubt you? Never!’</p>
<p>‘But you hesitate; you reflect. Speak
out.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Which is as much as to say that the prophet is to break
no idols.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Clara was silent for a minute.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>At last she cried out, literally cried, with a vehemence which
startled and terrified Clara,—</p>
<p>‘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,—</p>
<p>‘It is beginning to snow.’</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’s-breadth.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Mr Cohen</span>, 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.</p>
<p>‘Have you sold a little volume called <i>After Office
Hours</i> by a man named Robinson?’</p>
<p>‘I did not know we had it. I have never seen
it.’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘We can repair those for you; in about a couple of days
it shall be ready.’</p>
<p>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 <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. As the customer
showed no signs of departing, Cohen left, saying he would call
again.</p>
<p>Before sending Robinson’s <i>After Office Hours</i> 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, <i>Ought Children to learn Rules
before Reasons</i>? <i>The Higher Mathematics and
Materialism</i>. <i>Ought We to tell Those Whom We love
what We think about Them</i>? <i>Deductive Reasoning in
Politics</i>. <i>What Troubles ought We to Make Known and
What ought We to Keep Secret</i>: <i>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—‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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. It is because God <i>could</i>
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.’</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. Perhaps the man who
called would say something about him.</p>
<p>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 <i>Paradise Lost</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>About three, therefore, they started, and presently a girl met
them, who was introduced simply as ‘Miss
Masters.’</p>
<p>‘We are going to your side of the water,’ said the
son; ‘you may as well cross with us.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Oh, father—’ he began, but the
boatman’s wife interposed.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Baruch turned round uneasily and did not answer
immediately. He had had a narrow escape from drowning.</p>
<p>‘Nothing of much consequence. Is your friend all
right?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Are they drying my clothes?’</p>
<p>‘I’ll go and see.’</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. Benjamin waited, and presently she came downstairs,
smiling.</p>
<p>‘Nothing the matter. I owe it to you, however,
that I am not now in another world.’</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. 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 <i>him</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Madge</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>She retained her hold on Madge’s hand.</p>
<p>‘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 <i>he</i> has lightish hair?’</p>
<p>Still Madge said nothing.</p>
<p>‘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 <i>was</i> nothing amiss with him, was there, my
sweet?’</p>
<p>Mrs Caffyn inclined her head towards Madge.</p>
<p>‘Oh, no! Nothing, nothing.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘There was no quarrel.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘If you can’t love a man, that’s to say if
you can’t <i>abear</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘For myself I could, but it wouldn’t be just to
him.’</p>
<p>‘I don’t see what you mean.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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 <i>not</i> particklar. Maybe,
though, it isn’t quite the same with gentlefolk like
yourself,—but there’s that blessed baby
a-cryin’.’</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>So she mused, and her foes again ranged themselves over
against her. There was nothing to support her but something
veiled, which would not altogether disclose or explain
itself. Nevertheless, in a few minutes, her enemies had
vanished, like a mist before a sudden wind, and she was once more
victorious. Precious and rare are those divine souls, to
whom that which is aërial is substantial, the only true
substance; those for whom a pale vision possesses an authority
they are forced unconditionally to obey.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Mrs Caffyn</span> 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:—</p>
<blockquote><p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear
Sir</span>,—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,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">‘<span class="smcap">Mrs
Caffyn</span>.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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:—</p>
<blockquote><p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear
Madam</span>,—Your note has reached me here. I am
very sorry that my engagements are so pressing that I cannot
leave Germany at present. I have written to Miss
Hopgood. There is one subject which I cannot mention to
her—I cannot speak to her about money. Will you
please give me full information? I enclose £20, and I
must trust to your discretion. I thank you heartily for all
your kindness.—Truly yours,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">‘<span class="smcap">Frank
Palmer</span>.’</p>
<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dearest Madge</span>,—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.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘You’ve had a letter from Mr Palmer; I was sure it
was his handwriting when it came late last night.’</p>
<p>‘You can read it; there is nothing private in
it.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Well?’ said Madge. ‘Would you say
“No?”’</p>
<p>‘Yes, I would.’</p>
<p>‘For your own sake, as well as for his?’</p>
<p>Mrs Marshall took up the letter and read half of it again.</p>
<p>‘Yes, you had better say “No.” You
will find it dull, especially if you have to live in
London.’</p>
<p>‘Did you find London dull when you came to live in
it?’</p>
<p>‘Rather; Marshall is away all day long.’</p>
<p>‘But scarcely any woman in London expects to marry a man
who is not away all day.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Dull! we must all expect to be dull.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Madge turned round and looked Mrs Marshall straight in the
face, but she did not flinch.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Not a word was spoken for at least a minute.</p>
<p>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,—</p>
<p>‘Madge, Madge: for God’s sake leave
him!’</p>
<p>‘I have left him.’</p>
<p>‘Are you sure?’</p>
<p>‘Quite.’</p>
<p>‘For ever?’</p>
<p>‘For ever!’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘You’ll answer that letter, I suppose?’ said
Mrs Caffyn, when they were alone.</p>
<p>‘No.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Mr Caffyn wrote as follows:—</p>
<blockquote><p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear
Sir</span>,—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,</p>
<p style="text-align: right">‘<span class="smcap">Mrs
Caffyn</span>.</p>
<p>‘<i>P.S.</i>—I return the money, having no use for
the same.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Baruch</span> 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.</p>
<p>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,—</p>
<p>‘I suppose nobody but myself has ever asked for a copy
of Robinson?’</p>
<p>‘Not since I have been here.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘He is a friend of yours?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I should have thought that some notice would have been
taken of him; he is so evidently worth it.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Do you believe, that the good does not necessarily
survive?’</p>
<p>‘Yes and no; I believe that power every moment, so far
as our eyes can follow it, is utterly lost. I have had one
or two friends whom the world has never known and never will
know, who have more in them than is to be found in many an
English classic. I could take you to a little dissenting
chapel not very far from Holborn where you would hear a young
Welshman, with no education beyond that provided by a Welsh
denominational college, who is a perfect orator and whose depth
of insight is hardly to be matched, save by Thomas À
Kempis, whom he much resembles. When he dies he will be
forgotten in a dozen years. Besides, it is surely plain
enough to everybody that there are thousands of men and women
within a mile of us, apathetic and obscure, who, if, an object
worthy of them had been presented to them, would have shown
themselves capable of enthusiasm and heroism. Huge volumes
of human energy are apparently annihilated.’</p>
<p>‘It is very shocking, worse to me than the thought of
the earthquake or the pestilence.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘The gentleman who bought <i>After Office Hours</i> came
for it while you were out?’</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">About</span> 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.</p>
<p>‘Ah! my dear boy, I have to like it.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘How can you like it if you don’t?’</p>
<p>‘How can I? That shows you’re a man and not
a woman. Jess like you men. <i>You’d</i> 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.’</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>‘Then you really prefer London to Great Oakhurst?’
said Clara.</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>Baruch remembered them well enough. Who that had ever
seen them could forget them?</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Have you lived long in London, Miss Hopgood?’
inquired Baruch.</p>
<p>‘Not very long.’</p>
<p>‘Do you feel the change?’</p>
<p>‘I cannot say I do not.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose, however, you have brought yourself to
believe in Mrs Caffyn’s philosophy?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>‘Very well.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Does anybody go near them?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘She has a sister?’ said Baruch.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘What do you mean by “a girl like
that.”’</p>
<p>‘She isn’t one of them as goes wrong; she can talk
German and reads books.’</p>
<p>‘Did he desert her?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Mrs Caffyn wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron.</p>
<p>‘It’s gospel truth as I never took to anybody as
I’ve took to her.’</p>
<p>After Baruch had gone, Clara returned.</p>
<p>‘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
<i>can</i> 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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Baruch</span> 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.’</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. 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 <i>Moreh Nevochim</i> 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 <i>Moreh Nevochim</i>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Do you walk home alone?’ he said as she gave the
proof to the boy who stood waiting.</p>
<p>‘Yes, always.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘I have not seen your sister yet; I hope I may see her
this evening.’</p>
<p>‘I hope you may, but she frequently suffers from
headache and prefers to be alone.’</p>
<p>‘How do you like Mr Barnes?’</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. When they were crossing Bedford Square on their
return Clara happened to say amongst other
commonplaces,—</p>
<p>‘What a relief a quiet space in London is.’</p>
<p>‘I do not mind the crowd if I am by myself.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘That is an illusion,’ said Baruch after a
moment’s pause.</p>
<p>‘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.</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>‘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.’</p>
<p>She was silent, and he did not go on. At last he
said,—</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Have you any friends in London?’ said Baruch.</p>
<p>‘There are Mrs Caffyn, her son and daughter, and there
is Mr A. J. Scott. He was a friend of my father.’</p>
<p>‘You mean the Mr Scott who was Irving’s
assistant?’</p>
<p>‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘An addition—’ he was about to say,
‘an additional bond’ but he corrected himself.
‘A bond between us; I know Mr Scott.’</p>
<p>‘Do you really? I suppose you know many
interesting people in London, as you are in his
circle.’</p>
<p>‘Very few; weeks, months have passed since anybody has
said as much to me as you have.’</p>
<p>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.</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. 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 <i>pitied</i>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <i>see</i> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Mr Frank Palmer</span> 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.</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘But, Mrs Caffyn,’ said Frank, with much emotion,
‘it was not I who left her, you know it was not, and, and
even—’</p>
<p>The word ‘now’ was coming, but it did not
come.</p>
<p>‘Ah,’ said Mrs Caffyn, with something like scorn,
‘<i>I</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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘I am so grieved,’ said Frank ‘to hear of
your trouble—no hope?’</p>
<p>‘None, I am afraid.’</p>
<p>‘It is very dreadful.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, it is hard to bear, but to what is inevitable we
must submit.’</p>
<p>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.</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. 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.
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.
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.</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. 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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Baruch</span> went neither to
Barnes’s shop nor to the Marshalls for nearly a
month. 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. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Where is your wife?’ said Baruch to Marshall.</p>
<p>‘Gone with Miss Madge to the Catholic chapel to hear a
mass of Mozart’s.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose,’ said Baruch to Clara, ‘it is
the music takes your sister there?’</p>
<p>‘Mainly, I believe, but perhaps not entirely.’</p>
<p>‘What other attraction can there be?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Northern
Star</i>. 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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘He is deficient in ideas,’ said Dennis.</p>
<p>‘It is odd,’ continued Marshall, turning to Cohen,
‘that your race never takes any interest in
politics.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘But why do you care so little for what is going on
now?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Do you not think,’ said Clara, ‘that the
repeal of the corn laws will help you?’</p>
<p>Dennis smiled and was about to reply, but Marshall broke out
savagely,—</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>He took up the poker and stirred the fire.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<blockquote><p>“God made the man—man made the
slave,”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>‘Theological superstition, you mean?’ said
Clara.</p>
<p>‘Yes, of course, what others are there worth
notice?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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 <i>do</i>,’ 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.’</p>
<p>‘Come along, Dennis, we shall be late,’ said
Marshall, and the two forthwith took their departure in order to
attend another meeting.</p>
<p>‘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>I</i> do know what the poor is,
having lived at Great Oakhurst all these years.’</p>
<p>‘You are not a Chartist, then?’ said Baruch.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘But what would you do for them?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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. 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>
<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Baruch</span> 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 <i>Revolt of Islam</i>.</p>
<p>‘Have you read Shelley?’ said Baruch.</p>
<p>‘Every line—when I was much younger.’</p>
<p>‘Do you read him now?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘As a man he is not very attractive to me.’</p>
<p>‘Nor to me; I never shall forgive his treatment of
Harriet.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose he had ceased to love her, and he thought,
therefore, he was justified in leaving her.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘I should put it in this way,’ she said,
‘that he thought he was justified in sacrificing a woman
for the sake of an <i>impulse</i>. 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.’</p>
<p>‘I wish,’ interrupted Clara, ‘you two would
choose less exciting subjects of conversation; my totals will not
come right.’</p>
<p>They were silent, and Baruch, affecting to study a
Rollin’s <i>Ancient History</i>, 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.</p>
<p>‘Now, it is right,’ she said, ‘and I am
ready.’</p>
<p>Just at that moment Barnes appeared, hot with hurrying.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I will be off,’ said Madge. ‘The shop
will be shut if I do not make haste.’</p>
<p>‘You are not going alone, are you?’ said
Baruch. ‘May I not go with you, and cannot we both
come back for your sister?’</p>
<p>‘It is very kind of you.’</p>
<p>Clara looked up from her desk, watched them as they went out
at the door and, for a moment, seemed lost. Barnes turned
round.</p>
<p>‘Now, Miss Hopgood.’ She started.</p>
<p>‘Yes, sir.’</p>
<p>‘<i>Fabricius</i>, <i>J. A.</i> <i>Bibliotheca
Ecclesiastica in qua continentur</i>.’</p>
<p>‘I need not put in the last three words.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, yes.’ Barnes never liked to be
corrected in a title. ‘There’s another
<i>Fabricius Bibliotheca</i> or <i>Bibliographia</i>. Go
on—<i>Basili opera ad MSS. codices</i>, 3 vols.’</p>
<p>Clara silently made the entries a little more scholarly.
In a quarter of an hour the parcel was ready and Cohen
returned.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>They turned into Gray’s Inn, and, when they were in
comparative quietude, he said,—</p>
<p>‘Any Chartist news?’ and then without waiting for
an answer, ‘By the way, who is your friend
Dennis?’</p>
<p>‘He is no particular friend of mine. He is a
wood-engraver, and writes also, I believe, for the
newspapers.’</p>
<p>‘He can talk as well as write.’</p>
<p>‘Yes, he can talk very well.’</p>
<p>‘Do you not think there was something unreal about what
he said?’</p>
<p>‘I do not believe he is actually insincere. I have
noticed that men who write or read much often appear somewhat
shadowy.’</p>
<p>‘How do you account for it?’</p>
<p>‘What they say is not experience.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I am afraid I must be very uninteresting to
you?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘It is my misfortune that my subjects are not
very—I was about to say—human. Perhaps it is
because I am a Jew.’</p>
<p>‘I do not know quite what you mean by your
“subjects,” but if you mean philosophy and religion,
they are human.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
<p>A <span class="smcap">month</span> afterwards Marshall
announced that he intended to pay a visit.</p>
<p>‘I am going,’ he said, ‘to see
Mazzini. Who will go with me?’</p>
<p>Clara and Madge were both eager to accompany him. Mrs
Caffyn and Mrs Marshall chose to stay at home.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people
understand.’</p>
<p>‘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
<i>above</i> 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.’</p>
<p>‘To put it in my own language,’ said Madge,
‘you believe in God.’</p>
<p>Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.</p>
<p>‘My dear young friend, without that belief I should have
no other.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘What is essential,’ replied Madge, ‘in a
belief in God is absolute loyalty to a principle we know to have
authority.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you
imagine.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘I must not say what help I have received; more than
words, though, from many.’</p>
<p>‘You expect, then,’ said Baruch, ‘that the
Italians will answer your appeal?’</p>
<p>‘If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what
faith could survive.’</p>
<p>‘The people are the persons you meet in the
street.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose,’ said Clara, ‘you have no
difficulty in obtaining volunteers for any dangerous
enterprise?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Women?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, yes; and women are of the greatest use, but it is
rather difficult to find those who have the necessary
qualifications.’</p>
<p>‘I suppose you employ them in order to obtain secret
information?’</p>
<p>‘Yes; amongst the Austrians.’</p>
<p>The party broke up. Baruch manœuvred to walk with
Clara, but Marshall wanted to borrow a book from Mazzini, and she
stayed behind for him. Madge was outside in the street, and
Baruch could do nothing but go to her. She seemed unwilling
to wait, and Baruch and she went slowly homewards, thinking the
others would overtake them. The conversation naturally
turned upon Mazzini.</p>
<p>‘Although,’ said Madge, ‘I have never seen
him before, I have heard much about him and he makes me
sad.’</p>
<p>‘Why?’</p>
<p>‘Because he has done something worth doing and will do
more.’</p>
<p>‘But why should that make you sad?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘It is a supposition not quite justifiable, and if I
were free to go I could not.’</p>
<p>‘Why?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘No!’</p>
<p>Baruch thought she referred to her child, and he was
silent.</p>
<p>‘You are a philosopher,’ said Madge, after a
pause. ‘Have you never discovered anything which will
enable us to submit to be useless?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Well, go on; what do you believe?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.</p>
<p>‘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>‘I should like above everything to go to Great
Oakhurst.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>Clara had not forgotten it.</p>
<p>‘Ah,’ continued Mrs Caffyn, ‘I should just
love to show you Mickleham.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Couldn’t we, for once in a way, stay somewhere
over-night?’</p>
<p>‘It might as well be two,’ said Mrs Marshall;
‘Saturday and Sunday.’</p>
<p>‘Two,’ said Madge; ‘I vote for
two.’</p>
<p>‘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—’</p>
<p>‘What were you thinking?’ said Marshall.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘An expensive holiday, rather,’ said Marshall.</p>
<p>‘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 <i>is</i> away, maybe it’s only for a couple of
days, where I can see a blessed ploughed field; no shrimps nor
donkeys for me.’</p>
<h2>CHARTER XXIX</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">So</span> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘The message then was authentic,’ she said to
herself. ‘I thought I could not have misunderstood
it.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘I will stay with you,’ said Clara.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘There’s a dear child,’ said Clara, when
Madge consented to go. ‘I shall lie on the grass and
perhaps go to sleep.’</p>
<p>‘It is a pity,’ said Baruch to Madge as they went
away, ‘that we are separated; we must come
again.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</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>‘We must go,’ said Marshall, ‘a little bit
further and see the oak.’</p>
<p>‘Not another step,’ said his wife.
‘You can go it you like.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>He did not offer, however, to accompany her.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Where is it?’</p>
<p>‘Not above a couple of hundred yards further; just round
the corner.’</p>
<p>Madge rose and looked.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘You are not now discontented because you cannot serve
under Mazzini?’</p>
<p>‘Not now.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Stop!’ she whispered, ‘do you know my
history?’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>‘Clara,’ she said, ‘I want a word with
you. Baruch Cohen loves me.’</p>
<p>‘Do you love him?’</p>
<p>‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘Without a shadow of a doubt?’</p>
<p>‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’</p>
<p>Clara put her arm round her sister, kissed her tenderly and
said,—</p>
<p>‘Then I am perfectly happy.’</p>
<p>‘Did you suspect it?’</p>
<p>‘I knew it.’</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. 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.</p>
<p>She came up from the arch and went home as the sun was
setting. She found Mrs Caffyn alone.</p>
<p>‘I have news to tell you,’ she said.
‘Baruch Cohen is in love with my sister, and she is in love
with him.’</p>
<p>‘The Lord, Miss Clara! I thought sometimes that
perhaps it might be you; but there, it’s better, maybe, as
it is, for—’</p>
<p>‘For what?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>The evening after their return to Great Ormond Street, Mazzini
was surprised by a visit from Clara alone.</p>
<p>‘When I last saw you,’ she said, ‘you told
us that you had been helped by women. I offer
myself.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘Does it make any difference, so far as their constancy
is concerned?’</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘My motive is perfectly pure.’</p>
<p>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.</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>‘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.’</p>
<p>‘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?’</p>
<p>‘Yes, my child.’</p>
<p>‘Didn’t she go to Italy and die there?’</p>
<p>‘Yes.’</p>
<p>‘Why did she go?’</p>
<p>‘Because she wanted to free the poor people of Italy who
were slaves.’</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>THE END</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<div class="gapshortline"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><i>Colston & Company</i>,
<i>Ltd.</i>, <i>Printers</i>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p>
<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARA HOPGOOD***</p>
<pre>
***** This file should be named 5986-h.htm or 5986-h.zip******
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/9/8/5986
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809
North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email
contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
gbnewby@pglaf.org
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
</pre></body>
</html>
|
