There is no remedy for our troubles which is uniformly and progressively efficacious. All that we have a right to expect from our religion is that gradually, very gradually, it will assist us to a real victory. After each apparent defeat, if we are bravely in earnest, we gain something on our former position. Baruch was two days on his journey back to town, and as he came nearer home, he recovered himself a little. Suddenly he remembered the bookshop and the book for which he had to call, and that he had intended to ask Marshall something about the bookseller's new assistant.



CHAPTER XX



Madge was a puzzle to Mrs Caffyn. Mrs Caffyn loved her, and when she was ill had behaved like a mother to her. The newly-born child, a healthy girl, was treated by Mrs Caffyn as if it were her own granddaughter, and many little luxuries were bought which never appeared in Mrs Marshall's weekly bill. Naturally, Mrs Caffyn's affection moved a response from Madge, and Mrs Caffyn by degrees heard the greater part of her history; but why she had separated herself from her lover without any apparent reason remained a mystery, and all the greater was the mystery because Mrs Caffyn believed that there were no other facts to be known than those she knew. She longed to bring about a reconciliation. It was dreadful to her that Madge should be condemned to poverty, and that her infant should be fatherless, although there was a gentleman waiting to take them both and make them happy.

'The hair won't be dark like yours, my love,' she said one afternoon, soon after Madge had come downstairs and was lying on the sofa. 'The hair do darken a lot, but hers will never be black. It's my opinion as it'll be fair.'

Madge did not speak, and Mrs Caffyn, who was sitting at the head of the couch, put her work and her spectacles on the table. It was growing dusk; she took Madge's hand, which hung down by her side, and gently lifted it up. Such a delicate hand, Mrs Caffyn thought. She was proud that she had for a friend the owner of such a hand, who behaved to her as an equal. It was delightful to be kissed—no mere formal salutations—by a lady fit to go into the finest drawing-room in London, but it was a greater delight that Madge's talk suited her better than any she had heard at Great Oakhurst. It was natural she should rejoice when she discovered, unconsciously that she had a soul, to which the speech of the stars, though somewhat strange, was not an utterly foreign tongue.

She retained her hold on Madge's hand.

'May be,' she continued, 'it'll be like its father's. In our family all the gals take after the father, and all the boys after the mother. I suppose as HE has lightish hair?'

Still Madge said nothing.

'It isn't easy to believe as the father of that blessed dear could have been a bad lot. I'm sure he isn't, and yet there's that Polesden gal at the farm, she as went wrong with Jim, a great ugly brute, and she herself warnt up to much, well, as I say, her child was the delicatest little angel as I ever saw. It's my belief as God-a-mighty mixes Hisself up in it more nor we think. But there WAS nothing amiss with him, was there, my sweet?'

Mrs Caffyn inclined her head towards Madge.

'Oh, no! Nothing, nothing.'

'Don't you think, my dear, if there's nothing atwixt you, as it was a flyin' in the face of Providence to turn him off? You were reglarly engaged to him, and I have heard you say he was very fond of you. I suppose there were some high words about something, and a kind of a quarrel like, and so you parted, but that's nothing. It might all be made up now, and it ought to be made up. What was it about?'

'There was no quarrel.'

'Well, of course, if you don't like to say anything more to me, I won't ask you. I don't want to hear any secrets as I shouldn't hear. I speak only because I can't abear to see you here when I believe as everything might be put right, and you might have a house of your own, and a good husband, and be happy for the rest of your days. It isn't too late for that now. I know what I know, and as how he'd marry you at once.'

'Oh, my dear Mrs Caffyn, I have no secret from you, who have been so good to me: I can only say I could not love him—not as I ought.'

'If you can't love a man, that's to say if you can't ABEAR him, it's wrong to have him, but if there's a child that does make a difference, for one has to think of the child and of being respectable. There's something in being respectable; although, for that matter, I've see'd respectable people at Great Oakhurst as were ten times worse than those as aren't. Still, a-speaking for myself, I'd put up with a goodish bit to marry the man whose child wor mine.'

'For myself I could, but it wouldn't be just to him.'

'I don't see what you mean.'

'I mean that I could sacrifice myself if I believed it to be my duty, but I should wrong him cruelly if I were to accept him and did not love him with all my heart.'

'My dear, you take my word for it, he isn't so particklar as you are. A man isn't so particklar as a woman. He goes about his work, and has all sorts of things in his head, and if a woman makes him comfortable when he comes home, he's all right. I won't say as one woman is much the same as another to a man—leastways to all men—but still they are NOT particklar. Maybe, though, it isn't quite the same with gentlefolk like yourself,—but there's that blessed baby a- cryin'.'

Mrs Caffyn hastened upstairs, leaving Madge to her reflections. Once more the old dialectic reappeared. 'After all,' she thought, 'it is, as Clara said, a question of degree. There are not a thousand husbands and wives in this great city whose relationship comes near perfection. If I felt aversion my course would be clear, but there is no aversion; on the contrary, our affection for one another is sufficient for a decent household and decent existence undisturbed by catastrophes. No brighter sunlight is obtained by others far better than myself. Ought I to expect a refinement of relationship to which I have no right? Our claims are always beyond our deserts, and we are disappointed if our poor, mean, defective natures do not obtain the homage which belongs to those of ethereal texture. It will be a life with no enthusiasms nor romance, perhaps, but it will be tolerable, and what may be called happy, and my child will be protected and educated. My child! what is there which I ought to put in the balance against her? If our sympathy is not complete, I have my own little oratory: I can keep the candles alight, close the door, and worship there alone.'

So she mused, and her foes again ranged themselves over against her. There was nothing to support her but something veiled, which would not altogether disclose or explain itself. Nevertheless, in a few minutes, her enemies had vanished, like a mist before a sudden wind, and she was once more victorious. Precious and rare are those divine souls, to whom that which is aerial is substantial, the only true substance; those for whom a pale vision possesses an authority they are forced unconditionally to obey.



CHAPTER XXI



Mrs Caffyn was unhappy, and made up her mind that she would talk to Frank herself. She had learned enough about him from the two sisters, especially from Clara, to make her believe that, with a very little management, she could bring him back to Madge. The difficulty was to see him without his father's knowledge. At last she determined to write to him, and she made her son-in-law address the envelope and mark it private. This is what she said:-

'DEAR SIR,—Although unbeknown to you, I take the liberty of telling you as M. H. is alivin' here with me, and somebody else as I think you ought to see, but perhaps I'd better have a word or two with you myself, if not quite ill-convenient to you, and maybe you'll be kind enough to say how that's to be done to your obedient, humble servant,

'MRS CAFFYN.'

She thought this very diplomatic, inasmuch as nobody but Frank could possibly suspect what the letter meant. It went to Stoke Newington, but, alas! he was in Germany, and poor Mrs Caffyn had to wait a week before she received a reply. Frank of course understood it. Although he had thought about Madge continually, he had become calmer. He saw, it is true, that there was no stability in his position, and that he could not possibly remain where he was. Had Madge been the commonest of the common, and his relationship to her the commonest of the common, he could not permit her to cast herself loose from him for ever and take upon herself the whole burden of his misdeed. But he did not know what to do, and, as successive considerations and reconsiderations ended in nothing, and the distractions of a foreign country were so numerous, Madge had for a time been put aside, like a huge bill which we cannot pay, and which staggers us. We therefore docket it, and hide it in the desk, and we imagine we have done something. Once again, however, the flame leapt up out of the ashes, vivid as ever. Once again the thought that he had been so close to Madge, and that she had yielded to him, touched him with peculiar tenderness, and it seemed impossible to part himself from her. To a man with any of the nobler qualities of man it is not only a sense of honour which binds him to a woman who has given him all she has to give. Separation seems unnatural, monstrous, a divorce from himself; it is not she alone, but it is himself whom he abandons. Frank's duty, too, pointed imperiously to the path he ought to take, duty to the child as well as to the mother. He determined to go home, secretly; Mrs Caffyn would not have written if she had not seen good reason for believing that Madge still belonged to him. He made up his mind to start the next day, but when the next day came, instructions to go immediately to Hamburg arrived from his father. There were rumours of the insolvency of a house with which Mr Palmer dealt; inquiries were necessary which could better be made personally, and if these rumours were correct, as Mr Palmer believed them to be, his agency must be transferred to some other firm. There was now no possibility of a journey to England. For a moment he debated whether, when he was at Hamburg, he could not slip over to London, but it would be dangerous. Further orders might come from his father, and the failure to acknowledge them would lead to evasion, and perhaps to discovery. He must, therefore, content himself with a written explanation to Mrs Caffyn why he could not meet her, and there should be one more effort to make atonement to Madge. This was what went to Mrs Caffyn, and to her lodger:-

'DEAR MADAM,—Your note has reached me here. I am very sorry that my engagements are so pressing that I cannot leave Germany at present. I have written to Miss Hopgood. There is one subject which I cannot mention to her—I cannot speak to her about money. Will you please give me full information? I enclose 20 pounds, and I must trust to your discretion. I thank you heartily for all your kindness.—Truly yours,

'FRANK PALMER.'

'MY DEAREST MADGE,—I cannot help saying one more word to you, although, when I last saw you, you told me that it was useless for me to hope. I know, however, that there is now another bond between us, the child is mine as well as yours, and if I am not all that you deserve, ought you to prevent me from doing my duty to it as well as to you? It is true that if we were to marry I could never right you, and perhaps my father would have nothing to do with us, but in time he might relent, and I will come over at once, or, at least, the moment I have settled some business here, and you shall be my wife. Do, my dearest Madge, consent.'

When he came to this point his pen stopped. What he had written was very smooth, but very tame and cold. However, nothing better presented itself; he changed his position, sat back in his chair, and searched himself, but could find nothing. It was not always so. Some months ago there would have been no difficulty, and he would not have known when to come to an end. The same thing would have been said a dozen times, perhaps, but it would not have seemed the same to him, and each succeeding repetition would have been felt with the force of novelty. He took a scrap of paper and tried to draft two or three sentences, altered them several times and made them worse. He then re-read the letter; it was too short; but after all it contained what was necessary, and it must go as it stood. She knew how he felt towards her. So he signed it after giving his address at Hamburg, and it was posted.

Three or four days afterwards Mrs Marshall, in accordance with her usual custom, went to see Madge before she was up. The child lay peacefully by its mother's side and Frank's letter was upon the counterpane. The resolution that no letter from him should be opened had been broken. The two women had become great friends and, within the last few weeks, Madge had compelled Mrs Marshall to call her by her Christian name.

'You've had a letter from Mr Palmer; I was sure it was his handwriting when it came late last night.'

'You can read it; there is nothing private in it.'

She turned round to the child and Mrs Marshall sat down and read. When she had finished she laid the letter on the bed again and was silent.

'Well?' said Madge. 'Would you say "No?"'

'Yes, I would.'

'For your own sake, as well as for his?'

Mrs Marshall took up the letter and read half of it again.

'Yes, you had better say "No." You will find it dull, especially if you have to live in London.'

'Did you find London dull when you came to live in it?'

'Rather; Marshall is away all day long.'

'But scarcely any woman in London expects to marry a man who is not away all day.'

'They ought then to have heaps of work, or they ought to have a lot of children to look after; but, perhaps, being born and bred in the country, I do not know what people in London are. Recollect you were country born and bred yourself, or, at anyrate, you have lived in the country for the most of your life.'

'Dull! we must all expect to be dull.'

'There's nothing worse. I've had rheumatic fever, and I say, give me the fever rather than what comes over me at times here. If Marshall had not been so good to me, I do not know what I should have done with myself.'

Madge turned round and looked Mrs Marshall straight in the face, but she did not flinch.

'Marshall is very good to me, but I was glad when mother and you and your sister came to keep me company when he is not at home. It tired me to have my meals alone: it is bad for the digestion; at least, so he says, and he believes that it was indigestion that was the matter with me. I should be sorry for myself if you were to go away; not that I want to put that forward. Maybe I should never see much more of you: he is rich: you might come here sometimes, but he would not like to have Marshall and mother and me at his house.'

Not a word was spoken for at least a minute.

Suddenly Mrs Marshall took Madge's hand in her own hands, leaned over her, and in that kind of whisper with which we wake a sleeper who is to be aroused to escape from sudden peril, she said in her ear, -

'Madge, Madge: for God's sake leave him!'

'I have left him.'

'Are you sure?'

'Quite.'

'For ever?'

'For ever!'

Mrs Marshall let go Madge's hand, turned her eyes towards her intently for a moment, and again bent over her as if she were about to embrace her. A knock, however, came at the door, and Mrs Caffyn entered with the cup of coffee which she always insisted on bringing before Madge rose. After she and her daughter had left, Madge read the letter once more. There was nothing new in it, but formally it was something, like the tolling of the bell when we know that our friend is dead. There was a little sobbing, and then she kissed her child with such eagerness that it began to cry.

'You'll answer that letter, I suppose?' said Mrs Caffyn, when they were alone.

'No.'

'I'm rather glad. It would worrit you, and there's nothing worse for a baby than worritin' when it's mother's a-feedin it.'

Mr Caffyn wrote as follows:-

'DEAR SIR,—I was sorry as you couldn't come; but I believe now as it was better as you didn't. I am no scollard, and so no more from your obedient, humble servant,

'MRS CAFFYN.

'P.S.—I return the money, having no use for the same.



CHAPTER XXII



Baruch did not obtain any very definite information from Marshall about Clara. He was told that she had a sister; that they were both of them gentlewomen; that their mother and father were dead; that they were great readers, and that they did not go to church nor chapel, but that they both went sometimes to hear a certain Mr A. J. Scott lecture. He was once assistant minister to Irving, but was now heretical, and had a congregation of his own creating at Woolwich.

Baruch called at the shop and found Clara once more alone. The book was packed up and had being lying ready for him for two or three days. He wanted to speak, but hardly knew how to begin. He looked idly round the shelves, taking down one volume after another, and at last he said, -

'I suppose nobody but myself has ever asked for a copy of Robinson?'

'Not since I have been here.'

'I do not wonder at it; he printed only two hundred and fifty; he gave away five-and-twenty, and I am sure nearly two hundred were sold as wastepaper.'

'He is a friend of yours?'

'He was a friend; he is dead; he was an usher in a private school, although you might have supposed, from the title selected, that he was a clerk. I told him it was useless to publish, and his publishers told him the same thing.'

'I should have thought that some notice would have been taken of him; he is so evidently worth it.'

'Yes, but although he was original and reflective, he had no particular talent. His excellence lay in criticism and observation, often profound, on what came to him every day, and he was valueless in the literary market. A talent of some kind is necessary to genius if it is to be heard. So he died utterly unrecognised, save by one or two personal friends who loved him dearly. He was peculiar in the depth and intimacy of his friendships. Few men understand the meaning of the word friendship. They consort with certain companions and perhaps very earnestly admire them, because they possess intellectual gifts, but of friendship, such as we two, Morris and I (for that was his real name) understood it, they know nothing.'

'Do you believe, that the good does not necessarily survive?'

'Yes and no; I believe that power every moment, so far as our eyes can follow it, is utterly lost. I have had one or two friends whom the world has never known and never will know, who have more in them than is to be found in many an English classic. I could take you to a little dissenting chapel not very far from Holborn where you would hear a young Welshman, with no education beyond that provided by a Welsh denominational college, who is a perfect orator and whose depth of insight is hardly to be matched, save by Thomas A Kempis, whom he much resembles. When he dies he will be forgotten in a dozen years. Besides, it is surely plain enough to everybody that there are thousands of men and women within a mile of us, apathetic and obscure, who, if, an object worthy of them had been presented to them, would have shown themselves capable of enthusiasm and heroism. Huge volumes of human energy are apparently annihilated.'

'It is very shocking, worse to me than the thought of the earthquake or the pestilence.'

'I said "yes and no" and there is another side. The universe is so wonderful, so intricate, that it is impossible to trace the transformation of its forces, and when they seem to disappear the disappearance may be an illusion. Moreover, "waste" is a word which is applicable only to finite resources. If the resources are infinite it has no meaning.'

Two customers came in and Baruch was obliged to leave. When he came to reflect, he was surprised to find not only how much he had said, but what he had said. He was usually reserved, and with strangers he adhered to the weather or to passing events. He had spoken, however, to this young woman as if they had been acquainted for years. Clara, too, was surprised. She always cut short attempts at conversation in the shop. Frequently she answered questions and receipted and returned bills without looking in the faces of the people who spoke to her or offered her the money. But to this foreigner, or Jew, she had disclosed something she felt. She was rather abashed, but presently her employer, Mr Barnes, returned and somewhat relieved her.

'The gentleman who bought After Office Hours came for it while you were out?'

'Oh! what, Cohen? Good fellow Cohen is; he it was who recommended you to me. He is brother-in-law to your landlord.' Clara was comforted; he was not a mere 'casual,' as Mr Barnes called his chance customers.



CHAPTER XXIII



About a fortnight afterwards, on a Sunday afternoon, Cohen went to the Marshalls'. He had called there once or twice since his mother- in-law came to London, but had seen nothing of the lodgers. It was just about tea-time, but unfortunately Marshall and his wife had gone out. Mrs Caffyn insisted that Cohen should stay, but Madge could not be persuaded to come downstairs, and Baruch, Mrs Caffyn and Clara had tea by themselves. Baruch asked Mrs Caffyn if she could endure London after living for so long in the country.

'Ah! my dear boy, I have to like it.'

'No, you haven't; what you mean is that, whether you like it, or whether you do not, you have to put up with it.'

'No, I don't mean that. Miss Hopgood, Cohen and me, we are the best of friends, but whenever he comes here, he allus begins to argue with me. Howsomever, arguing isn't everything, is it, my dear? There's some things, after all, as I can do and he can't, but he's just wrong here in his arguing that wasn't what I meant. I meant what I said, as I had to like it.'

'How can you like it if you don't?'

'How can I? That shows you're a man and not a woman. Jess like you men. YOU'D do what you didn't like, I know, for you're a good sort— and everybody would know you didn't like it—but what would be the use of me a-livin' in a house if I didn't like it?—with my daughter and these dear, young women? If it comes to livin', you'd ten thousand times better say at once as you hate bein' where you are than go about all day long, as if you was a blessed saint and put upon.'

Mrs Caffyn twitched at her gown and pulled it down over her knees and brushed the crumbs off with energy. She continued, 'I can't abide people who everlastin' make believe they are put upon. Suppose I were allus a-hankering every foggy day after Great Oakhurst, and yet a-tellin' my daughter as I knew my place was here; if I was she, I should wish my mother at Jericho.'

'Then you really prefer London to Great Oakhurst?' said Clara.

'Why, my dear, of course I do. Don't you think it's pleasanter being here with you and your sister and that precious little creature, and my daughter, than down in that dead-alive place? Not that I don't miss my walk sometimes into Darkin; you remember that way as I took you once, Baruch, across the hill, and we went over Ranmore Common and I showed you Camilla Lacy, and you said as you knew a woman who wrote books who once lived there? You remember them beech-woods? Ah, it was one October! Weren't they a colour—weren't they lovely?'

Baruch remembered them well enough. Who that had ever seen them could forget them?

'And it was I as took you! You wouldn't think it, my dear, though he's always a-arguin', I do believe he'd love to go that walk again, even with an old woman, and see them heavenly beeches. But, Lord, how I do talk, and you've neither of you got any tea.'

'Have you lived long in London, Miss Hopgood?' inquired Baruch.

'Not very long.'

'Do you feel the change?'

'I cannot say I do not.'

'I suppose, however, you have brought yourself to believe in Mrs Caffyn's philosophy?'

'I cannot say that, but I may say that I am scarcely strong enough for mere endurance, and I therefore always endeavour to find something agreeable in circumstances from which there is no escape.'

The recognition of the One in the Many had as great a charm for Baruch as it had for Socrates, and Clara spoke with the ease of a person whose habit it was to deal with principles and generalisations.

'Yes, and mere toleration, to say nothing of opposition, at least so far as persons are concerned, is seldom necessary. It is generally thought that what is called dramatic power is a poetic gift, but it is really an indispensable virtue to all of us if we are to be happy.'

Mrs Caffyn did not take much interest in abstract statements. 'You remember,' she said, turning to Baruch, 'that man Chorley as has the big farm on the left-hand side just afore you come to the common? He wasn't a Surrey man: he came out of the shires.'

'Very well.'

'He's married that Skelton girl; married her the week afore I left. There isn't no love lost there, but the girl's father said he'd murder him if he didn't, and so it come off. How she ever brought herself to it gets over me. She has that big farm-house, and he's made a fine drawing-room out of the livin' room on the left-hand side as you go in, and put a new grate in the kitchen and turned that into the livin' room, and they does the cooking in the back kitchen, but for all that, if I'd been her, I'd never have seen his face no more, and I'd have packed off to Australia.'

'Does anybody go near them?'

'Near them! of course they do, and, as true as I'm a-sittin' here, our parson, who married them, went to the breakfast. It isn't Chorley as I blame so much; he's a poor, snivellin' creature, and he was frightened, but it's the girl. She doesn't care for him no more than me, and then again, although, as I tell you, he's such a poor creature, he's awful cruel and mean, and she knows it. But what was I a-goin' to say? Never shall I forget that wedding. You know as it's a short cut to the church across the farmyard at the back of my house. The parson, he was rather late—I suppose he'd been giving himself a finishin' touch—and, as it had been very dry weather, he went across the straw and stuff just at the edge like of the yard. There was a pig under the straw—pigs, my dear,' turning to Clara, 'nuzzle under the straw so as you can't see them. Just as he came to this pig it started up and upset him, and he fell and straddled across its back, and the Lord have mercy on me if it didn't carry him at an awful rate, as if he was a jockey at Epsom races, till it come to a puddle of dung water, and then down he plumped in it. You never see'd a man in such a pickle! I heer'd the pig a-squeakin' like mad, and I ran to the door, and I called out to him, and I says, "Mr Ormiston, won't you come in here?" and though, as you know, he allus hated me, he had to come. Mussy on us, how he did stink, and he saw me turn up my nose, and he was wild with rage, and he called the pig a filthy beast. I says to him as that was the pig's way and the pig didn't know who it was who was a-ridin' it, and I took his coat off and wiped his stockings, and sent to the rectory for another coat, and he crept up under the hedge to his garden, and went home, and the people at church had to wait for an hour. I was glad I was goin' away from Great Oakhurst, for he never would have forgiven me.'

There was a ring at the front door bell, and Clara went to see who was there. It was a runaway ring, but she took the opportunity of going upstairs to Madge.

'She has a sister?' said Baruch.

'Yes, and I may just as well tell you about her now—leastways what I know—and I believe as I know pretty near everything about her. You'll have to be told if they stay here. She was engaged to be married, and how it came about with a girl like that is a bit beyond me, anyhow, there's a child, and the father's a good sort by what I can make out, but she won't have anything more to do with him.'

'What do you mean by "a girl like that."'

'She isn't one of them as goes wrong; she can talk German and reads books.'

'Did he desert her?'

'No, that's just it. She loves me, although I say it, as if I was her mother, and yet I'm just as much in the dark as I was the first day I saw her as to why she left that man.'

Mrs Caffyn wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron.

'It's gospel truth as I never took to anybody as I've took to her.'

After Baruch had gone, Clara returned.

'He's a curious creature, my dear,' said Mrs Caffyn, 'as good as gold, but he's too solemn by half. It would do him a world of good if he'd somebody with him who'd make him laugh more. He CAN laugh, for I've seen him forced to get up and hold his sides, but he never makes no noise. He's a Jew, and they say as them as crucified our blessed Lord never laugh proper.



CHAPTER XXIV



Baruch was now in love. He had fallen in love with Clara suddenly and totally. His tendency to reflectiveness did not diminish his passion: it rather augmented it. The men and women whose thoughts are here and there continually are not the people to feel the full force of love. Those who do feel it are those who are accustomed to think of one thing at a time, and to think upon it for a long time. 'No man,' said Baruch once, 'can love a woman unless he loves God.' 'I should say,' smilingly replied the Gentile, 'that no man can love God unless he loves a woman.' 'I am right,' said Baruch, 'and so are you.'

But Baruch looked in the glass: his hair, jet black when he was a youth, was marked with grey, and once more the thought came to him— this time with peculiar force—that he could not now expect a woman to love him as she had a right to demand that he should love, and that he must be silent. He was obliged to call upon Barnes in about a fortnight's time. He still read Hebrew, and he had seen in the shop a copy of the Hebrew translation of the Moreh Nevochim of Maimonides, which he greatly coveted, but could not afford to buy. Like every true book-lover, he could not make up his mind when he wished for a book which was beyond his means that he ought once for all to renounce it, and he was guilty of subterfuges quite unworthy of such a reasonable creature in order to delude himself into the belief that he might yield. For example, he wanted a new overcoat badly, but determined it was more prudent to wait, and a week afterwards very nearly came to the conclusion that as he had not ordered the coat he had actually accumulated a fund from which the Moreh Nevochim might be purchased. When he came to the shop he saw Barnes was there, and he persuaded himself he should have a quieter moment or two with the precious volume when Clara was alone. Barnes, of course, gossiped with everybody.

He therefore called again in the evening, about half an hour before closing time, and found that Barnes had gone home. Clara was busy with a catalogue, the proof of which she was particularly anxious to send to the printer that night. He did not disturb her, but took down the Maimonides, and for a few moments was lost in revolving the doctrine, afterwards repeated and proved by a greater than Maimonides, that the will and power of God are co-extensive: that there is nothing which might be and is not. It was familiar to Baruch, but like all ideas of that quality and magnitude—and there are not many of them—it was always new and affected him like a starry night, seen hundreds of times, yet for ever infinite and original.

But was it Maimonides which kept him till the porter began to put up the shutters? Was he pondering exclusively upon God as the folio lay open before him? He did think about Him, but whether he would have thought about Him for nearly twenty minutes if Clara had not been there is another matter.

'Do you walk home alone?' he said as she gave the proof to the boy who stood waiting.

'Yes, always.'

'I am going to see Marshall to-night, but I must go to Newman Street first. I shall be glad to walk with you, if you do not mind diverging a little.'

She consented and they went along Oxford Street without speaking, the roar of the carriages and waggons preventing a word.

They turned, however, into Bloomsbury, and were able to hear one another. He had much to say and he could not begin to say it. There was a great mass of something to be communicated pent up within him, and he would have liked to pour it all out before her at once. It is just at such times that we often take up as a means of expression and relief that which is absurdly inexpressive and irrelevant.

'I have not seen your sister yet; I hope I may see her this evening.'

'I hope you may, but she frequently suffers from headache and prefers to be alone.'

'How do you like Mr Barnes?'

The answer is not worth recording, nor is any question or answer which was asked or returned for the next quarter of an hour worth recording, although they were so interesting then. When they were crossing Bedford Square on their return Clara happened to say amongst other commonplaces, -

'What a relief a quiet space in London is.'

'I do not mind the crowd if I am by myself.'

'I do not like crowds; I dislike even the word, and dislike "the masses" still more. I do not want to think of human beings as if they were a cloud of dust, and as if each atom had no separate importance. London is often horrible to me for that reason. In the country it was not quite so bad.'

'That is an illusion,' said Baruch after a moment's pause.

'I do not quite understand you, but if it be an illusion it is very painful. In London human beings seem the commonest, cheapest things in the world, and I am one of them. I went with Mr Marshall not long ago to a Free Trade Meeting, and more than two thousand people were present. Everybody told me it was magnificent, but it made me very sad.' She was going on, but she stopped. How was it, she thought again, that she could be so communicative? How was it? How is it that sometimes a stranger crosses our path, with whom, before we have known him for more than an hour, we have no secrets? An hour? we have actually known him for centuries.

She could not understand it, and she felt as if she had been inconsistent with her constant professions of wariness in self- revelation.

'It is an illusion, nevertheless—an illusion of the senses. It is difficult to make what I mean clear, because insight is not possible beyond a certain point, and clearness does not come until penetration is complete and what we acquire is brought into a line with other acquisitions. It constantly happens that we are arrested short of this point, but it would be wrong to suppose that our conclusions, if we may call them so, are of no value.'

She was silent, and he did not go on. At last he said, -

'The illusion lies in supposing that number, quantity and terms of that kind are applicable to any other than sensuous objects, but I cannot go further, at least not now. After all, it is possible here in London for one atom to be of eternal importance to another.'

They had gone quite round Bedford Square without entering Great Russell Street, which was the way eastwards. A drunken man was holding on by the railings of the Square. He had apparently been hesitating for some time whether he could reach the road, and, just as Baruch and Clara came up to him, he made a lurch towards it, and nearly fell over them. Clara instinctively seized Baruch's arm in order to avoid the poor, staggering mortal; they went once more to the right, and began to complete another circuit. Somehow her arm had been drawn into Baruch's, and there it remained.

'Have you any friends in London?' said Baruch.

'There are Mrs Caffyn, her son and daughter, and there is Mr A. J. Scott. He was a friend of my father.'

'You mean the Mr Scott who was Irving's assistant?'

'Yes.'

'An addition—' he was about to say, 'an additional bond' but he corrected himself. 'A bond between us; I know Mr Scott.'

'Do you really? I suppose you know many interesting people in London, as you are in his circle.'

'Very few; weeks, months have passed since anybody has said as much to me as you have.'

His voice quivered a little, for he was trembling with an emotion quite inexplicable by mere intellectual relationship. Something came through Clara's glove as her hand rested on his wrist which ran through every nerve and sent the blood into his head.

Clara felt his excitement and dreaded lest he should say something to which she could give no answer, and when they came opposite Great Russell Street, she withdrew her arm from his, and began to cross to the opposite pavement. She turned the conversation towards some indifferent subject, and in a few minutes they were at Great Ormond Street. Baruch would not go in as he had intended; he thought it was about to rain, and he was late. As he went along he became calmer, and when he was fairly indoors he had passed into a despair entirely inconsistent—superficially—with the philosopher Baruch, as inconsistent as the irrational behaviour in Bedford Square. He could well enough interpret, so he believed, Miss Hopgood's suppression of him. Ass that he was not to see what he ought to have known so well, that he was playing the fool to her; he, with a grown-up son, to pretend to romance with a girl! At that moment she might be mocking him, or, if she was too good for mockery, she might be contriving to avoid or to quench him. The next time he met her, he would be made to understand that he was PITIED, and perhaps he would then learn the name of the youth who was his rival, and had won her. He would often meet her, no doubt, but of what value would anything he could say be to her. She could not be expected to make fine distinctions, and there was a class of elderly men, to which of course he would be assigned, but the thought was too horrible.

Perhaps his love for Clara might be genuine; perhaps it was not. He had hoped that as he grew older he might be able really to SEE a woman, but he was once more like one of the possessed. It was not Clara Hopgood who was before him, it was hair, lips, eyes, just as it was twenty years ago, just as it was with the commonest shop-boy he met, who had escaped from the counter, and was waiting at an area gate. It was terrible to him to find that he had so nearly lost his self-control, but upon this point he was unjust to himself, for we are often more distinctly aware of the strength of the temptation than of the authority within us, which falteringly, but decisively, enables us at last to resist it.

Then he fell to meditating how little his studies had done for him. What was the use of them? They had not made him any stronger, and he was no better able than other people to resist temptation. After twenty years continuous labour he found himself capable of the vulgarest, coarsest faults and failings from which the remotest skiey influence in his begetting might have saved him.

Clara was not as Baruch. No such storm as that which had darkened and disheartened him could pass over her, but she could love, perhaps better than he, and she began to love him. It was very natural to a woman such as Clara, for she had met a man who had said to her that what she believed was really of some worth. Her father and mother had been very dear to her; her sister was very dear to her, but she had never received any such recognition as that which had now been offered to her: her own self had never been returned to her with such honour. She thought, too—why should she not think it?—of the future, of the release from her dreary occupation, of a happy home with independence, and she thought of the children that might be. She lay down without any misgiving. She was sure he was in love with her; she did not know much of him, certainly, in the usual meaning of the word, but she knew enough. She would like to find out more of his history; perhaps without exciting suspicion she might obtain it from Mrs Caffyn.



CHAPTER XXV



Mr Frank Palmer was back again in England. He was much distressed when he received that last letter from Mrs Caffyn, and discovered that Madge's resolution not to write remained unshaken. He was really distressed, but he was not the man upon whom an event, however deeply felt at the time, could score a furrow which could not be obliterated. If he had been a dramatic personage, what had happened to him would have been the second act leading to a fifth, in which the Fates would have appeared, but life seldom arranges itself in proper poetic form. A man determines that he must marry; he makes the shop-girl an allowance, never sees her or her child again, transforms himself into a model husband, is beloved by his wife and family; the woman whom he kissed as he will never kiss his lawful partner, withdraws completely, and nothing happens to him.

Frank was sure he could never love anybody as he had loved Madge, nor could he cut indifferently that other cord which bound him to her. Nobody in society expects the same paternal love for the offspring of a housemaid or a sempstress as for the child of the stockbroker's or brewer's daughter, and nobody expects the same obligations, but Frank was not a society youth, and Madge was his equal. A score of times, when his fancy roved, the rope checked him as suddenly as if it were the lasso of a South American Gaucho. But what could he do? that was the point. There were one or two things which he could have done, perhaps, and one or two things which he could not have done if he had been made of different stuff; but there was nothing more to be done which Frank Palmer could do. After all, it was better that Madge should be the child's mother than that it should belong to some peasant. At least it would be properly educated. As to money, Mrs Caffyn had told him expressly that she did not want it. That might be nothing but pride, and he resolved, without very clearly seeing how, and without troubling himself for the moment as to details, that Madge should be entirely and handsomely supported by him. Meanwhile it was of great importance that he should behave in such a manner as to raise no suspicion. He did not particularly care for some time after his return from Germany to go out to the musical parties to which he was constantly invited, but he went as a duty, and wherever he went he met his charming cousin. They always sang together; they had easy opportunities of practising together, and Frank, although nothing definite was said to him, soon found that his family and hers considered him destined for her. He could not retreat, and there was no surprise manifested by anybody when it was rumoured that they were engaged. His story may as well be finished at once. He and Miss Cecilia Morland were married. A few days before the wedding, when some legal arrangements and settlements were necessary, Frank made one last effort to secure an income for Madge, but it failed. Mrs Caffyn met him by appointment, but he could not persuade her even to be the bearer of a message to Madge. He then determined to confess his fears. To his great relief Mrs Caffyn of her own accord assured him that he never need dread any disturbance or betrayal.

'There are three of us,' she said, 'as knows you—Miss Madge, Miss Clara and myself—and, as far as you are concerned, we are dead and buried. I can't say as I was altogether of Miss Madge's way of looking at it at first, and I thought it ought to have been different, though I believe now as she's right, but,' and the old woman suddenly fired up as if some bolt from heaven had kindled her, 'I pity you, sir—you, sir, I say—more nor I do her. You little know what you've lost, the blessedest, sweetest, ah, and the cleverest creature, too, as ever I set eyes on.'

'But, Mrs Caffyn,' said Frank, with much emotion, 'it was not I who left her, you know it was not, and, and even—'

The word 'now' was coming, but it did not come.

'Ah,' said Mrs Caffyn, with something like scorn, 'I know, yes, I do know. It was she, you needn't tell me that, but, God-a-mighty in heaven, if I'd been you, I'd have laid myself on the ground afore her, I'd have tore my heart out for her, and I'd have said, "No other woman in this world but you"—but there, what a fool I am! Goodbye, Mr Palmer.'

She marched away, leaving Frank very miserable, and, as he imagined, unsettled, but he was not so. The fit lasted all day, but when he was walking home that evening, he met a poor friend whose wife was dying.

'I am so grieved,' said Frank 'to hear of your trouble—no hope?'

'None, I am afraid.'

'It is very dreadful.'

'Yes, it is hard to bear, but to what is inevitable we must submit.'

This new phrase struck Frank very much, and it seemed very philosophic to him, a maxim, for guidance through life. It did not strike him that it was generally either a platitude or an excuse for weakness, and that a nobler duty is to find out what is inevitable and what is not, to declare boldly that what the world oftentimes affirms to be inevitable is really evitable, and heroically to set about making it so. Even if revolt be perfectly useless, we are not particularly drawn to a man who prostrates himself too soon and is incapable of a little cursing.

As it was impossible to provide for Madge and the child now, Frank considered whether he could not do something for them in the will which he had to make before his marriage. He might help his daughter if he could not help the mother.

But his wife would perhaps survive him, and the discovery would cause her and her children much misery; it would damage his character with them and inflict positive moral mischief. The will, therefore, did not mention Madge, and it was not necessary to tell his secret to his solicitor.

The wedding took place amidst much rejoicing; everybody thought the couple were most delightfully matched; the presents were magnificent; the happy pair went to Switzerland, came back and settled in one of the smaller of the old, red brick houses in Stoke Newington, with a lawn in front, always shaved and trimmed to the last degree of smoothness and accuracy, with paths on whose gravel not the smallest weed was ever seen, and with a hot-house that provided the most luscious black grapes. There was a grand piano in the drawing-room, and Frank and Cecilia became more musical than ever, and Waltham Lodge was the headquarters of a little amateur orchestra which practised Mozart and Haydn, and gave local concerts. A twelvemonth after the marriage a son was born and Frank's father increased Frank's share in the business. Mr Palmer had long ceased to take any interest in the Hopgoods. He considered that Madge had treated Frank shamefully in jilting him, but was convinced that he was fortunate in his escape. It was clear that she was unstable; she probably threw him overboard for somebody more attractive, and she was not the woman to be a wife to his son.

One day Cecilia was turning out some drawers belonging to her husband, and she found a dainty little slipper wrapped up in white tissue paper. She looked at it for a long time, wondering to whom it could have belonged, and had half a mind to announce her discovery to Frank, but she was a wise woman and forbore. It lay underneath some neckties which were not now worn, two or three silk pocket handkerchiefs also discarded, and some manuscript books containing school themes. She placed them on the top of the drawers as if they had all been taken out in a lump and the slipper was at the bottom.

'Frank my dear,' she said after dinner, 'I emptied this morning one of the drawers in the attic. I wish you would look over the things and decide what you wish to keep. I have not examined them, but they seem to be mostly rubbish.'

He went upstairs after he had smoked his cigar and read his paper. There was the slipper! It all came back to him, that never-to-be- forgotten night, when she rebuked him for the folly of kissing her foot, and he begged the slipper and determined to preserve it for ever, and thought how delightful it would be to take it out and look at it when he was an old man. Even now he did not like to destroy it, but Cecilia might have seen it and might ask him what he had done with it, and what could he say? Finally he decided to burn it. There was no fire, however, in the room, and while he stood meditating, Cecilia called him. He replaced the slipper in the drawer. He could not return that evening, but he intended to go back the next morning, take the little parcel away in his pocket and burn it at his office. At breakfast some letters came which put everything else out of mind. The first thing he did that evening was to revisit the garret, but the slipper had gone. Cecilia had been there and had found it carefully folded up in the drawer. She pulled it out, snipped and tore it into fifty pieces, carried them downstairs, threw them on the dining-room fire, sat down before it, poking them further and further into the flames, and watched them till every vestige had vanished. Frank did not like to make any inquiries; Cecilia made none, and thence-forward no trace existed at Waltham Lodge of Madge Hopgood.



CHAPTER XXVI



Baruch went neither to Barnes's shop nor to the Marshalls for nearly a month. One Sunday morning he was poring over the Moreh Nevochim, for it had proved too powerful a temptation for him, and he fell upon the theorem that without God the Universe could not continue to exist, for God is its Form. It was one of those sayings which may be nothing or much to the reader. Whether it be nothing or much depends upon the quality of his mind.

There was certainly nothing in it particularly adapted to Baruch's condition at that moment, but an antidote may be none the less efficacious because it is not direct. It removed him to another region. It was like the sight and sound of the sea to the man who has been in trouble in an inland city. His self-confidence was restored, for he to whom an idea is revealed becomes the idea, and is no longer personal and consequently poor.

His room seemed too small for him; he shut his book and went to Great Ormond Street. He found there Marshall, Mrs Caffyn, Clara and a friend of Marshall's named Dennis.

'Where is your wife?' said Baruch to Marshall.

'Gone with Miss Madge to the Catholic chapel to hear a mass of Mozart's.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Caffyn. 'I tell them they'll turn Papists if they do not mind. They are always going to that place, and there's no knowing, so I've hear'd, what them priests can do. They aren't like our parsons. Catch that man at Great Oakhurst a-turnin' anybody.'

'I suppose,' said Baruch to Clara, 'it is the music takes your sister there?'

'Mainly, I believe, but perhaps not entirely.'

'What other attraction can there be?'

'I am not in the least disposed to become a convert. Once for all, Catholicism is incredible and that is sufficient, but there is much in its ritual which suits me. There is no such intrusion of the person of the minister as there is in the Church of England, and still worse amongst dissenters. In the Catholic service the priest is nothing; it is his office which is everything; he is a mere means of communication. The mass, in so far as it proclaims that miracle is not dead, is also very impressive to me.'

'I do not quite understand you,' said Marshall, 'but if you once chuck your reason overboard, you may just as well be Catholic as Protestant. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the Protestant objection, on the ground of absurdity, to the story of the saint walking about with his head under his arm.'

The tea things had been cleared away, and Marshall was smoking. Both he and Dennis were Chartists, and Baruch had interrupted a debate upon a speech delivered at a Chartist meeting that morning by Henry Vincent.

Frederick Dennis was about thirty, tall and rather loose-limbed. He wore loose clothes, his neck-cloth was tied in a big, loose knot, his feet were large and his boots were heavy. His face was quite smooth, and his hair, which was very thick and light brown, fell across his forehead in a heavy wave with just two complete undulations in it from the parting at the side to the opposite ear. It had a trick of tumbling over his eyes, so that his fingers were continually passed through it to brush it away. He was a wood engraver, or, as he preferred to call himself, an artist, but he also wrote for the newspapers, and had been a contributor to the Northern Star. He was well brought up and was intended for the University, but he did not stick to his Latin and Greek, and as he showed some talent for drawing he was permitted to follow his bent. His work, however, was not of first-rate quality, and consequently orders were not abundant. This was the reason why he had turned to literature. When he had any books to illustrate he lived upon what they brought him, and when there were no books he renewed his acquaintance with politics. If books and newspapers both failed, he subsisted on a little money which had been left him, stayed with friends as long as he could, and amused himself by writing verses which showed much command over rhyme.

'I cannot stand Vincent,' said Marshall, 'he is too flowery for me, and he does not belong to the people. He is middle-class to the backbone.'

'He is deficient in ideas,' said Dennis.

'It is odd,' continued Marshall, turning to Cohen, 'that your race never takes any interest in politics.'

'My race is not a nation, or, if a nation, has no national home. It took an interest in politics when it was in its own country, and produced some rather remarkable political writing.'

'But why do you care so little for what is going on now?'

'I do care, but all people are not born to be agitators, and, furthermore, I have doubts if the Charter will accomplish all you expect.'

'I know what is coming'—Marshall took the pipe out of his mouth and spoke with perceptible sarcasm—'the inefficiency of merely external remedies, the folly of any attempt at improvement which does not begin with the improvement of individual character, and that those to whom we intend to give power are no better than those from whom we intend to take it away. All very well, Mr Cohen. My answer is that at the present moment the stockingers in Leicester are earning four shillings and sixpence a week. It is not a question whether they are better or worse than their rulers. They want something to eat, they have nothing, and their masters have more than they can eat.'

'Apart altogether from purely material reasons,' said Dennis, 'we have rights; we are born into this planet without our consent, and, therefore, we may make certain demands.'

'Do you not think,' said Clara, 'that the repeal of the corn laws will help you?'

Dennis smiled and was about to reply, but Marshall broke out savagely, -

'Repeal of the corn laws is a contemptible device of manufacturing selfishness. It means low wages. Do you suppose the great Manchester cotton lords care one straw for their hands? Not they! They will face a revolution for repeal because it will enable them to grind an extra profit out of us.'

'I agree with you entirely,' said Dennis, turning to Clara, 'that a tax upon food is wrong; it is wrong in the abstract. The notion of taxing bread, the fruit of the earth, is most repulsive; but the point is—what is our policy to be? If a certain end is to be achieved, we must neglect subordinate ends, and, at times, even contradict what our own principles would appear to dictate. That is the secret of successful leadership.'

He took up the poker and stirred the fire.

'That will do, Dennis,' said Marshall, who was evidently fidgety. 'The room is rather warm. There's nothing in Vincent which irritates me more than those bits of poetry with which he winds up.

"God made the man—man made the slave,"

and all that stuff. If God made the man, God made the slave. I know what Vincent's little game is, and it is the same game with all his set. They want to keep Chartism religious, but we shall see. Let us once get the six points, and the Established Church will go, and we shall have secular education, and in a generation there will not be one superstition left.'

'Theological superstition, you mean?' said Clara.

'Yes, of course, what others are there worth notice?'

'A few. The superstition of the ordinary newspaper reader is just as profound, and the tyranny of the majority may be just as injurious as the superstition of a Spanish peasant, or the tyranny of the Inquisition.'

'Newspapers will not burn people as the priests did and would do again if they had the power, and they do not insult us with fables and a hell and a heaven.'

'I maintain,' said Clara with emphasis, 'that if a man declines to examine, and takes for granted what a party leader or a newspaper tells him, he has no case against the man who declines to examine, or takes for granted what the priest tells him. Besides, although, as you know, I am not a convert myself, I do lose a little patience when I hear it preached as a gospel to every poor conceited creature who goes to your Sunday evening atheist lecture, that he is to believe nothing on one particular subject which his own precious intellect cannot verify, and the next morning he finds it to be his duty to swallow wholesale anything you please to put into his mouth. As to the tyranny, the day may come, and I believe is approaching, when the majority will be found to be more dangerous than any ecclesiastical establishment which ever existed.'

Baruch's lips moved, but he was silent. He was not strong in argument. He was thinking about Marshall's triumphant inquiry whether God is not responsible for slavery. He would have liked to say something on that subject, but he had nothing ready.

'Practical people,' said Dennis, who had not quite recovered from the rebuke as to the warmth of the room, 'are often most unpractical and injudicious. Nothing can be more unwise than to mix up politics and religion. If you DO,' Dennis waved his hand, 'you will have all the religious people against you. My friend Marshall, Miss Hopgood, is under the illusion that the Church in this country is tottering to its fall. Now, although I myself belong to no sect, I do not share his illusion; nay, more, I am not sure'—Mr Dennis spoke slowly, rubbed his chin and looked up at the ceiling—'I am not sure that there is not something to be said in favour of State endowment—at least, in a country like Ireland.'

'Come along, Dennis, we shall be late,' said Marshall, and the two forthwith took their departure in order to attend another meeting.

'Much either of 'em knows about it,' said Mrs Caffyn when they had gone. 'There's Marshall getting two pounds a week reg'lar, and goes on talking about people at Leicester, and he has never been in Leicester in his life; and, as for that Dennis, he knows less than Marshall, for he does nothing but write for newspapers and draw for picture-books, never nothing what you may call work, and he does worrit me so whenever he begins about poor people that I can't sit still. I do know what the poor is, having lived at Great Oakhurst all these years.'

'You are not a Chartist, then?' said Baruch.

'Me—me a Chartist? No, I ain't, and yet, maybe, I'm something worse. What would be the use of giving them poor creatures votes? Why, there isn't one of them as wouldn't hold up his hand for anybody as would give him a shilling. Quite right of 'em, too, for the one thing they have to think about from morning to night is how to get a bit of something to fill their bellies, and they won't fill them by voting.'

'But what would you do for them?'

'Ah! that beats me! Hang somebody, but I don't know who it ought to be. There's a family by the name of Longwood, they live just on the slope of the hill nigh the Dower Farm, and there's nine of them, and the youngest when I left was a baby six months old, and their living- room faces the road so that the north wind blows in right under the door, and I've seen the snow lie in heaps inside. As reg'lar as winter comes Longwood is knocked off—no work. I've knowed them not have a bit of meat for weeks together, and him a-loungin' about at the corner of the street. Wasn't that enough to make him feel as if somebody ought to be killed? And Marshall and Dennis say as the proper thing to do is to give him a vote, and prove to him there was never no Abraham nor Isaac, and that Jonah never was in a whale's belly, and that nobody had no business to have more children than he could feed. And what goes on, and what must go on, inside such a place as Longwood's, with him and his wife, and with them boys and gals all huddled together—But I'd better hold my tongue. We'll let the smoke out of this room, I think, and air it a little.'

She opened the window, and Baruch rose and went home.

Whenever Mrs Caffyn talked about the labourers at Great Oakhurst, whom she knew so well, Clara always felt as if all her reading had been a farce, and, indeed, if we come into close contact with actual life, art, poetry and philosophy seem little better than trifling. When the mist hangs over the heavy clay land in January, and men and women shiver in the bitter cold and eat raw turnips, to indulge in fireside ecstasies over the divine Plato or Shakespeare is surely not such a virtue as we imagine it to be.



CHAPTER XXVII



Baruch sat and mused before he went to bed. He had gone out stirred by an idea, but it was already dead. Then he began to think about Clara. Who was this Dennis who visited the Marshalls and the Hopgoods? Oh! for an hour of his youth! Fifteen years ago the word would have come unbidden if he had seen Clara, but now, in place of the word, there was hesitation, shame. He must make up his mind to renounce for ever. But, although this conclusion had forced itself upon him overnight as inevitable, he could not resist the temptation when he rose the next morning of plotting to meet Clara, and he walked up and down the street opposite the shop door that evening nearly a quarter of an hour, just before closing time, hoping that she might come out and that he might have the opportunity of overtaking her apparently by accident. At last, fearing he might miss her, he went in and found she had a companion whom he instantly knew, before any induction, to be her sister. Madge was not now the Madge whom we knew at Fenmarket. She was thinner in the face and paler. Nevertheless, she was not careless; she was even more particular in her costume, but it was simpler. If anything, perhaps, she was a little prouder. She was more attractive, certainly, than she had ever been, although her face could not be said to be handsomer. The slight prominence of the cheek-bone, the slight hollow underneath, the loss of colour, were perhaps defects, but they said something which had a meaning in it superior to that of the tint of the peach. She had been reading a book while Clara was balancing her cash, and she attempted to replace it. The shelf was a little too high, and the volume fell upon the ground. It contained Shelley's Revolt of Islam.

'Have you read Shelley?' said Baruch.

'Every line—when I was much younger.'

'Do you read him now?'

'Not much. I was an enthusiast for him when I was nineteen, but I find that his subject matter is rather thin, and his themes are a little worn. He was entirely enslaved by the ideals of the French Revolution. Take away what the French Revolution contributed to his poetry, and there is not much left.'

'As a man he is not very attractive to me.'

'Nor to me; I never shall forgive his treatment of Harriet.'

'I suppose he had ceased to love her, and he thought, therefore, he was justified in leaving her.'

Madge turned and fixed her eyes, unobserved, on Baruch. He was looking straight at the bookshelves. There was not, and, indeed, how could there be, any reference to herself.

'I should put it in this way,' she said, 'that he thought he was justified in sacrificing a woman for the sake of an IMPULSE. Call this a defect or a crime—whichever you like—it is repellent to me. It makes no difference to me to know that he believed the impulse to be divine.'

'I wish,' interrupted Clara, 'you two would choose less exciting subjects of conversation; my totals will not come right.'

They were silent, and Baruch, affecting to study a Rollin's Ancient History, wondered, especially when he called to mind Mrs Caffyn's report, what this girl's history could have been. He presently recovered himself, and it occurred to him that he ought to give some reason why he had called. Before, however, he was able to offer any excuse, Clara closed her book.

'Now, it is right,' she said, 'and I am ready.'

Just at that moment Barnes appeared, hot with hurrying.

'Very sorry, Miss Hopgood, to ask you to stay for a few minutes. I recollected after I left that the doctor particularly wanted those books sent off to-night. I should not like to disappoint him. I have been to the booking-office, and the van will be here in about twenty minutes. If you will make out the invoice and check me, I will pack them.'

'I will be off,' said Madge. 'The shop will be shut if I do not make haste.'

'You are not going alone, are you?' said Baruch. 'May I not go with you, and cannot we both come back for your sister?'

'It is very kind of you.'

Clara looked up from her desk, watched them as they went out at the door and, for a moment, seemed lost. Barnes turned round.

'Now, Miss Hopgood.' She started.

'Yes, sir.'

'Fabricius, J. A. Bibliotheca Ecclesiastica in qua continentur.'

'I need not put in the last three words.'

'Yes, yes.' Barnes never liked to be corrected in a title. 'There's another Fabricius Bibliotheca or Bibliographia. Go on—Basili opera ad MSS. codices, 3 vols.'

Clara silently made the entries a little more scholarly. In a quarter of an hour the parcel was ready and Cohen returned.

'Your sister would not allow me to wait. She met Mrs Marshall; they said they should have something to carry, and that it was not worth while to bring it here. I will walk with you, if you will allow me. We may as well avoid Holborn.'

They turned into Gray's Inn, and, when they were in comparative quietude, he said, -

'Any Chartist news?' and then without waiting for an answer, 'By the way, who is your friend Dennis?'

'He is no particular friend of mine. He is a wood-engraver, and writes also, I believe, for the newspapers.'

'He can talk as well as write.'

'Yes, he can talk very well.'

'Do you not think there was something unreal about what he said?'

'I do not believe he is actually insincere. I have noticed that men who write or read much often appear somewhat shadowy.'

'How do you account for it?'

'What they say is not experience.'

'I do not quite understand. A man may think much which can never become an experience in your sense of the word, and be very much in earnest with what he thinks; the thinking is an experience.'

'Yes, I suppose so, but it is what a person has gone through which I like to hear. Poor Dennis has suffered much. You are perhaps surprised, but it is true, and when he leaves politics alone he is a different creature.'

'I am afraid I must be very uninteresting to you?'

'I did not mean that I care for nothing but my friend's aches and pains, but that I do not care for what he just takes up and takes on.'

'It is my misfortune that my subjects are not very—I was about to say—human. Perhaps it is because I am a Jew.'

'I do not know quite what you mean by your "subjects," but if you mean philosophy and religion, they are human.'

'If they are, very few people like to hear anything about them. Do you know, Miss Hopgood, I can never talk to anybody as I can to you.'

Clara made no reply. A husband was to be had for a look, for a touch, a husband whom she could love, a husband who could give her all her intellect demanded. A little house rose before her eyes as if by Arabian enchantment; there was a bright fire on the hearth, and there were children round it; without the look, the touch, there would be solitude, silence and a childless old age, so much more to be feared by a woman than by a man. Baruch paused, waiting for her answer, and her tongue actually began to move with a reply, which would have sent his arm round her, and made them one for ever, but it did not come. Something fell and flashed before her like lightning from a cloud overhead, divinely beautiful, but divinely terrible.

'I remember,' she said, 'that I have to call in Lamb's Conduit Street to buy something for my sister. I shall just be in time.' Baruch went as far as Lamb's Conduit Street with her. He, too, would have determined his own destiny if she had uttered the word, but the power to proceed without it was wanting and he fell back. He left her at the door of the shop. She bid him good-bye, obviously intending that he should go no further with her, and he shook hands with her, taking her hand again and shaking it again with a grasp which she knew well enough was too fervent for mere friendship. He then wandered back once more to his old room at Clerkenwell. The fire was dead, he stirred it, the cinders fell through the grate and it dropped out all together. He made no attempt to rekindle it, but sat staring at the black ashes, not thinking, but dreaming. Thirty years more perhaps with no change! The last chance that he could begin a new life had disappeared. He cursed himself that nothing drove him out of himself with Marshall and his fellowmen; that he was not Chartist nor revolutionary; but it was impossible to create in himself enthusiasm for a cause. He had tried before to become a patriot and had failed, and was conscious, during the trial, that he was pretending to be something he was not and could not be. There was nothing to be done but to pace the straight road in front of him, which led nowhere, so far as he could see.



CHAPTER XXVIII



A month afterwards Marshall announced that he intended to pay a visit.

'I am going,' he said, 'to see Mazzini. Who will go with me?'

Clara and Madge were both eager to accompany him. Mrs Caffyn and Mrs Marshall chose to stay at home.

'I shall ask Cohen to come with us,' said Marshall. 'He has never seen Mazzini and would like to know him.' Cohen accordingly called one Sunday evening, and the party went together to a dull, dark, little house in a shabby street of small shops and furnished apartments. When they knocked at Mazzini's door Marshall asked for Mr —- for, even in England, Mazzini had an assumed name which was always used when inquiries were made for him. They were shown upstairs into a rather mean room, and found there a man, really about forty, but looking older. He had dark hair growing away from his forehead, dark moustache, dark beard and a singularly serious face. It was not the face of a conspirator, but that of a saint, although without that just perceptible touch of silliness which spoils the faces of most saints. It was the face of a saint of the Reason, of a man who could be ecstatic for rational ideals, rarest of all endowments. It was the face, too, of one who knew no fear, or, if he knew it, could crush it. He was once concealed by a poor woman whose house was surrounded by Austrian soldiers watching for him. He was determined that she should not be sacrificed, and, having disguised himself a little, walked out into the street in broad daylight, went up to the Austrian sentry, asked for a light for his cigar and escaped. He was cordial in his reception of his visitors, particularly of Clara, Madge and Cohen, whom he had not seen before.

'The English,' he said, after some preliminary conversation, 'are a curious people. As a nation they are what they call practical and have a contempt for ideas, but I have known some Englishmen who have a religious belief in them, a nobler belief than I have found in any other nation. There are English women, also, who have this faith, and one or two are amongst my dearest friends.'

'I never,' said Marshall, 'quite comprehend you on this point. I should say that we know as clearly as most folk what we want, and we mean to have it.'

'That may be, but it is not Justice, as Justice which inspires you. Those of you who have not enough, desire to have more, that is all.'

'If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.'

'Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ. Whenever any real good is done it is by a crusade; that is to say, the cross must be raised and appeal be made to something ABOVE the people. No system based on rights will stand. Never will society be permanent till it is founded on duty. If we consider our rights exclusively, we extend them over the rights of our neighbours. If the oppressed classes had the power to obtain their rights to-morrow, and with the rights came no deeper sense of duty, the new order, for the simple reason that the oppressed are no better than their oppressors, would be just as unstable as that which preceded it.'

'To put it in my own language,' said Madge, 'you believe in God.'

Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.

'My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no other.'

'I should like, though,' said Marshall, 'to see the church which would acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit your God to be theirs.'

'What is essential,' replied Madge, 'in a belief in God is absolute loyalty to a principle we know to have authority.'

'It may, perhaps,' said Mazzini, 'be more to me, but you are right, it is a belief in the supremacy and ultimate victory of the conscience.'

'The victory seems distant in Italy now,' said Baruch. 'I do not mean the millennial victory of which you speak, but an approximation to it by the overthrow of tyranny there.'

'You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you imagine.'

'Do you obtain,' said Clara, 'any real help from people here? Do you not find that they merely talk and express what they call their sympathy?'

'I must not say what help I have received; more than words, though, from many.'

'You expect, then,' said Baruch, 'that the Italians will answer your appeal?'

'If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what faith could survive.'

'The people are the persons you meet in the street.'

'A people is not a mere assemblage of uninteresting units, but it is not a phantom. A spirit lives in each nation which is superior to any individual in it. It is this which is the true reality, the nation's purpose and destiny, it is this for which the patriot lives and dies.'

'I suppose,' said Clara, 'you have no difficulty in obtaining volunteers for any dangerous enterprise?'

'None. You would be amazed if I were to tell you how many men and women at this very moment would go to meet certain death if I were to ask them.'

'Women?'

'Oh, yes; and women are of the greatest use, but it is rather difficult to find those who have the necessary qualifications.'

'I suppose you employ them in order to obtain secret information?'

'Yes; amongst the Austrians.'

The party broke up. Baruch manoeuvred to walk with Clara, but Marshall wanted to borrow a book from Mazzini, and she stayed behind for him. Madge was outside in the street, and Baruch could do nothing but go to her. She seemed unwilling to wait, and Baruch and she went slowly homewards, thinking the others would overtake them. The conversation naturally turned upon Mazzini.

'Although,' said Madge, 'I have never seen him before, I have heard much about him and he makes me sad.'

'Why?'

'Because he has done something worth doing and will do more.'

'But why should that make you sad?'

'I do not think there is anything sadder than to know you are able to do a little good and would like to do it, and yet you are not permitted to do it. Mazzini has a world open to him large enough for the exercise of all his powers.'

'It is worse to have a desire which is intense but not definite, to be continually anxious to do something, you know not what, and always to feel, if any distinct task is offered, your incapability of attempting it.'

'A man, if he has a real desire to be of any service, can generally gratify it to some extent; a woman as a rule cannot, although a woman's enthusiasm is deeper than a man's. You can join Mazzini to- morrow, I suppose, if you like.'

'It is a supposition not quite justifiable, and if I were free to go I could not.'

'Why?'

'I am not fitted for such work; I have not sufficient faith. When I see a flag waving, a doubt always intrudes. Long ago I was forced to the conclusion that I should have to be content with a life which did not extend outside itself.'

'I am sure that many women blunder into the wrong path, not because they are bad, but simply because—if I may say so—they are too good.'

'Maybe you are right. The inability to obtain mere pleasure has not produced the misery which has been begotten of mistaken or baffled self-sacrifice. But do you mean to say that you would like to enlist under Mazzini?'

'No!'

Baruch thought she referred to her child, and he was silent.

'You are a philosopher,' said Madge, after a pause. 'Have you never discovered anything which will enable us to submit to be useless?'

'That is to say, have I discovered a religion? for the core of religion is the relationship of the individual to the whole, the faith that the poorest and meanest of us is a person. That is the real strength of all religions.'

'Well, go on; what do you believe?'

'I can only say it like a creed; I have no demonstration, at least none such as I would venture to put into words. Perhaps the highest of all truths is incapable of demonstration and can only be stated. Perhaps, also, the statement, at least to some of us, is a sufficient demonstration. I believe that inability to imagine a thing is not a reason for its non-existence. If the infinite is a conclusion which is forced upon me, the fact that I cannot picture it does not disprove it. I believe, also, in thought and the soul, and it is nothing to me that I cannot explain them by attributes belonging to body. That being so, the difficulties which arise from the perpetual and unconscious confusion of the qualities of thought and soul with those of body disappear. Our imagination represents to itself souls like pebbles, and asks itself what count can be kept of a million, but number in such a case is inapplicable. I believe that all thought is a manifestation of the Being, who is One, whom you may call God if you like, and that, as It never was created, It will never be destroyed.'

'But,' said Madge, interrupting him, 'although you began by warning me not to expect that you would prove anything, you can tell me whether you have any kind of basis for what you say, or whether it is all a dream.'

'You will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that mathematics, which, of course, I had to learn for my own business, have supplied something for a foundation. They lead to ideas which are inconsistent with the notion that the imagination is a measure of all things. Mind, I do not for a moment pretend that I have any theory which explains the universe. It is something, however, to know that the sky is as real as the earth.'

They had now reached Great Ormond Street, and parted. Clara and Marshall were about five minutes behind them. Madge was unusually cheerful when they sat down to supper.

'Clara,' she said, 'what made you so silent to-night at Mazzini's?' Clara did not reply, but after a pause of a minute or two, she asked Mrs Caffyn whether it would not be possible for them all to go into the country on Whitmonday? Whitsuntide was late; it would be warm, and they could take their food with them and eat it out of doors.

'Just the very thing, my dear, if we could get anything cheap to take us; the baby, of course, must go with us.

'I should like above everything to go to Great Oakhurst.'

'What, five of us—twenty miles there and twenty miles back! Besides, although I love the place, it isn't exactly what one would go to see just for a day. No! Letherhead or Mickleham or Darkin would be ever so much better. They are too far, though, and, then, that man Baruch must go with us. He'd be company for Marshall, and he sticks up in Clerkenwell and never goes nowhere. You remember as Marshall said as he must ask him the next time we had an outing.'

Clara had not forgotten it.

'Ah,' continued Mrs Caffyn, 'I should just love to show you Mickleham.'

Mrs Caffyn's heart yearned after her Surrey land. The man who is born in a town does not know what it is to be haunted through life by lovely visions of the landscape which lay about him when he was young. The village youth leaves the home of his childhood for the city, but the river doubling on itself, the overhanging alders and willows, the fringe of level meadow, the chalk hills bounding the river valley and rising against the sky, with here and there on their summits solitary clusters of beech, the light and peace of the different seasons, of morning, afternoon and evening, never forsake him. To think of them is not a mere luxury; their presence modifies the whole of his life.

'I don't see how it is to be managed,' she mused; 'and yet there's nothing near London as I'd give two pins to see. There's Richmond as we went to one Sunday; it was no better, to my way of thinking, than looking at a picture. I'd ever so much sooner be a-walking across the turnips by the footpath from Darkin home.'

'Couldn't we, for once in a way, stay somewhere over-night?'

'It might as well be two,' said Mrs Marshall; 'Saturday and Sunday.'

'Two,' said Madge; 'I vote for two.'

'Wait a bit, my dears, we're a precious awkward lot to fit in— Marshall and his wife me and you and Miss Clara and the baby; and then there's Baruch, who's odd man, so to speak; that's three bedrooms. We sha'n't do it—Otherwise, I was a-thinking—'

'What were you thinking?' said Marshall.

'I've got it,' said Mrs Caffyn, joyously. 'Miss Clara and me will go to Great Oakhurst on the Friday. We can easy enough stay at my old shop. Marshall and Sarah, Miss Madge, the baby and Baruch can go to Letherhead on the Saturday morning. The two women and the baby can have one of the rooms at Skelton's, and Marshall and Baruch can have the other. Then, on Sunday morning, Miss Clara and me we'll come over for you, and we'll all walk through Norbury Park. That'll be ever so much better in many ways. Miss Clara and me, we'll go by the coach. Six of us, not reckoning the baby, in that heavy ginger-beer cart of Masterman's would be too much.'

'An expensive holiday, rather,' said Marshall.

'Leave that to me; that's my business. I ain't quite a beggar, and if we can't take our pleasure once a year, it's a pity. We aren't like some folk as messes about up to Hampstead every Sunday, and spends a fortune on shrimps and donkeys. No; when I go away, it IS away, maybe it's only for a couple of days, where I can see a blessed ploughed field; no shrimps nor donkeys for me.'



CHARTER XXIX



So it was settled, and on the Friday Clara and Mrs Caffyn journeyed to Great Oakhurst. They were both tired, and went to bed very early, in order that they might enjoy the next day. Clara, always a light sleeper, woke between three and four, rose and went to the little casement window which had been open all night. Below her, on the left, the church was just discernible, and on the right, the broad chalk uplands leaned to the south, and were waving with green barley and wheat. Underneath her lay the cottage garden, with its row of beehives in the north-east corner, sheltered from the cold winds by the thick hedge. It had evidently been raining a little, for the drops hung on the currant bushes, but the clouds had been driven by the south-westerly wind into the eastern sky, where they lay in a long, low, grey band. Not a sound was to be heard, save every now and then the crow of a cock or the short cry of a just-awakened thrush. High up on the zenith, the approach of the sun to the horizon was proclaimed by the most delicate tints of rose-colour, but the cloud-bank above him was dark and untouched, although the blue which was over it, was every moment becoming paler. Clara watched; she was moved even to tears by the beauty of the scene, but she was stirred by something more than beauty, just as he who was in the Spirit and beheld a throne and One sitting thereon, saw something more than loveliness, although He was radiant with the colour of jasper and there was a rainbow round about Him like an emerald to look upon. In a few moments the highest top of the cloud-rampart was kindled, and the whole wavy outline became a fringe of flame. In a few moments more the fire just at one point became blinding, and in another second the sun emerged, the first arrowy shaft passed into her chamber, the first shadow was cast, and it was day. She put her hands to her face; the tears fell faster, but she wiped them away and her great purpose was fixed. She crept back into bed, her agitation ceased, a strange and almost supernatural peace overshadowed her and she fell asleep not to wake till the sound of the scythe had ceased in the meadow just beyond the rick-yard that came up to one side of the cottage, and the mowers were at their breakfast.