Clara Hopgood Part 11

At last she cried out, literally cried, with a vehemence which startled and terrified Clara, -

'Clara, Clara, you know not what you do! For G.o.d's sake forbear!'

She was again silent, and then she turned round hurriedly, hid her face, and sobbed piteously. It lasted, however, but for a minute; she rose, wiped her eyes, went to the window, came back again, and said, -

'It is beginning to snow.'

The iron pillar bolted to the solid rock had quivered and resounded under the blow, but its vibrations were nothing more than those of the rigid metal; the base was unshaken and, except for an instant, the column had not been deflected a hair's-breadth.

CHAPTER XIX

Mr Cohen, who had obtained the situation indirectly for Clara, thought nothing more about it until, one day, he went to the shop, and he then recollected his recommendation, which had been given solely in faith, for he had never seen the young woman, and had trusted entirely to Marshall. He found her at her dark desk, and as he approached her, she hastily put a mark in a book and closed it.

'Have you sold a little volume called After Office Hours by a man named Robinson?'

'I did not know we had it. I have never seen it.'

'I do not wonder, but I saw it here about six months ago; it was up there,' pointing to a top shelf. Clara was about to mount the ladder, but he stopped her, and found what he wanted. Some of the leaves were torn.

'We can repair those for you; in about a couple of days it shall be ready.'

He lingered a little, and at that moment another customer entered.

Clara went forward to speak to him, and Cohen was able to see that it was the Heroes and Hero Worship she had been studying, a course of lectures which had been given by a Mr Carlyle, of whom Cohen knew something. As the customer showed no signs of departing, Cohen left, saying he would call again.

Before sending Robinson's After Office Hours to the binder, Clara looked at it. It was made up of short essays, about twenty altogether, bound in dark-green cloth, lettered at the side, and published in 1841. They were upon the oddest subjects: such as, Ought Children to learn Rules before Reasons? The Higher Mathematics and Materialism. Ought We to tell Those Whom We love what We think about Them? Deductive Reasoning in Politics. What Troubles ought We to Make Known and What ought We to Keep Secret: Courage as a Science and an Art.

Clara did not read any one essay through, she had no time, but she was somewhat struck with a few sentences which caught her eye; for example--'A mere dream, a vague hope, ought in some cases to be more potent than a certainty in regulating our action. The faintest vision of G.o.d should be more determinative than the grossest earthly a.s.surance.'

'I knew a case in which a man had to encounter three successive trials of all the courage and inventive faculty in him. Failure in one would have been ruin. The odds against him in each trial were desperate, and against ultimate victory were overwhelming.

Nevertheless, he made the attempt, and was triumphant, by the narrowest margin, in every struggle. That which is of most value to us is often obtained in defiance of the laws of probability.'

'What is precious in Quakerism is not so much the doctrine of the Divine voice as that of the preliminary stillness, the closure against other voices and the reduction of the mind to a condition in which it can LISTEN, in which it can discern the merest whisper, inaudible when the world, or interest, or pa.s.sion, are permitted to speak.'

'The acutest syllogiser can never develop the actual consequences of any system of policy, or, indeed, of any change in human relationship, man being so infinitely complex, and the interaction of human forces so incalculable.'

'Many of our speculative difficulties arise from the unauthorised conception of an OMNIPOTENT G.o.d, a conception entirely of our own creation, and one which, if we look at it closely, has no meaning.

It is because G.o.d COULD have done otherwise, and did not, that we are confounded. It may be distressing to think that G.o.d cannot do any better, but it is not so distressing as to believe that He might have done better had He so willed.'

Although these pa.s.sages were disconnected, each of them seemed to Clara to be written in a measure for herself, and her curiosity was excited about the author. Perhaps the man who called would say something about him.

Baruch Cohen was now a little over forty. He was half a Jew, for his father was a Jew and his mother a Gentile. The father had broken with Judaism, but had not been converted to any Christian church or sect. He was a diamond-cutter, originally from Holland, came over to England and married the daughter of a mathematical instrument maker, at whose house he lodged in Clerkenwell. The son was apprenticed to his maternal grandfather's trade, became very skilful at it, worked at it himself, employed a man and a boy, and supplied London shops, which sold his instruments at about three times the price he obtained for them. Baruch, when he was very young, married Marshall's elder sister, but she died at the birth of her first child and he had been a widower now for nineteen years. He had often thought of taking another wife, and had seen, during these nineteen years, two or three women with whom he had imagined himself to be really in love, and to whom he had been on the verge of making proposals, but in each case he had hung back, and when he found that a second and a third had awakened the same ardour for a time as the first, he distrusted its genuineness. He was now, too, at a time of life when a man has to make the unpleasant discovery that he is beginning to lose the right to expect what he still eagerly desires, and that he must beware of being ridiculous. It is indeed a very unpleasant discovery. If he has done anything well which was worth doing, or has made himself a name, he may be treated by women with respect or adulation, but any pa.s.sable boy of twenty is really more interesting to them, and, unhappily, there is perhaps so much of the man left in him that he would rather see the eyes of a girl melt when she looked at him than be adored by all the drawing-rooms in London as the author of the greatest poem since Paradise Lost, or as the conqueror of half a continent. Baruch's life during the last nineteen years had been such that he was still young, and he desired more than ever, because not so blindly as he desired it when he was a youth, the tender, intimate sympathy of a woman's love. It was singular that, during all those nineteen years, he should not once have been overcome. It seemed to him as if he had been held back, not by himself, but by some external power, which refused to give any reasons for so doing.

There was now less chance of yielding than ever; he was reserved and self-respectful, and his manner towards women distinctly announced to them that he knew what he was and that he had no claims whatever upon them. He was something of a philosopher, too; he accepted, therefore, as well as he could, without complaint, the inevitable order of nature, and he tried to acquire, although often he failed, that blessed art of taking up lightly and even with a smile whatever he was compelled to handle. 'It is possible,' he said once, 'to consider death too seriously.' He was naturally more than half a Jew; his features were Jewish, his thinking was Jewish, and he believed after a fashion in the Jewish sacred books, or, at anyrate, read them continuously, although he had added to his armoury defensive weapons of another type. In nothing was he more Jewish than in a tendency to dwell upon the One, or what he called G.o.d, clinging still to the expression of his forefathers although departing so widely from them. In his ethics and system of life, as well as in his religion, there was the same intolerance of a multiplicity which was not reducible to unity. He seldom explained his theory, but everybody who knew him recognised the difference which it wrought between him and other men. There was a certain concord in everything he said and did, as if it were directed by some enthroned but secret principle.

He had encountered no particular trouble since his wife's death, but his life had been unhappy. He had no friends, much as he longed for friendship, and he could not give any reasons for his failure. He saw other persons more successful, but he remained solitary. Their needs were not so great as his, for it is not those who have the least but those who have the most to give who most want sympathy. He had often made advances; people had called on him and had appeared interested in him, but they had dropped away. The cause was chiefly to be found in his nationality. The ordinary Englishman disliked him simply as a Jew, and the better sort were repelled by a lack of geniality and by his inability to manifest a healthy interest in personal details. Partly also the cause was that those who care to speak about what is nearest to them are very rare, and most persons find conversation easy in proportion to the remoteness of its topics from them. Whatever the reasons may have been, Baruch now, no matter what the pressure from within might be, generally kept himself to himself. It was a mistake and he ought not to have retreated so far upon repulse. A word will sometimes, when least expected, unlock a heart, a soul is gained for ever, and at once there is much more than a recompense for the indifference of years.

After the death of his wife, Baruch's affection spent itself upon his son Benjamin, whom he had apprenticed to a firm of optical instrument makers in York. The boy was not very much like his father. He was indifferent to that religion by which his father lived, but he inherited an apt.i.tude for mathematics, which was very necessary in his trade. Benjamin also possessed his father's rect.i.tude, trusted him, and looked to him for advice to such a degree that even Baruch, at last, thought it would be better to send him away from home in order that he might become a little more self-reliant and independent. It was the sorest of trials to part with him, and, for some time after he left, Baruch's loneliness was intolerable. It was, however, relieved by a visit to York perhaps once in four or five months, for whenever business could be alleged as an excuse for going north, he managed, as he said, 'to take York on his way.'

The day after he met Clara he started for Birmingham, and although York was certainly not 'on his way,' he pushed forward to the city and reached it on a Sat.u.r.day 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 a.s.sented. He wished to go to the cathedral in the morning, but thought his father had better rest after dinner. Baruch somewhat resented the insinuation of possible fatigue consequent on advancing years.

'What do you mean?' he said; 'you know well enough I enjoy a walk in the afternoon; besides, I shall not see much of you, and do not want to lose what little time I have.'

About three, therefore, they started, and presently a girl met them, who was introduced simply as 'Miss Masters.'

'We are going to your side of the water,' said the son; 'you may as well cross with us.'

They came to a point where a boat was moored, and a man was in it.

There was no regular ferry, but on Sundays he earned a trifle by taking people to the opposite meadow, and thus enabling them to vary their return journey to the city. When they were about two-thirds of the way over, Benjamin observed that if they stood up they could see the Minster. They all three rose, and without an instant's warning-- they could not tell afterwards how it happened--the boat half capsized, and they were in eight or nine feet of water. Baruch could not swim and went down at once, but on coming up close to the gunwale he caught at it and held fast. Looking round, he saw that Benjamin, who could swim well, had made for Miss Masters, and, having caught her by the back of the neck, was taking her ash.o.r.e. The boatman, who could also swim, called out to Baruch to hold on, gave the boat three or four vigorous strokes from the stern, and Baruch felt the ground under his feet. The boatman's little cottage was not far off, and, when the party reached it, Benjamin earnestly desired Miss Masters to take off her wet clothes and occupy the bed which was offered her.

He himself would run home--it was not half-a-mile--and, after having changed, would go to her house and send her sister with what was wanted. He was just off when it suddenly struck him that his father might need some attention.

'Oh, father--' he began, but the boatman's wife interposed.

'He can't be left like that, and he can't go home; he'll catch his death o' cold, and there isn't but one more bed in the house, and that isn't quite fit to put a gentleman in. Howsomever, he must turn in there, and my husband, he can go into the back-kitchen and rub himself down. You won't do yourself no good, Mr Cohen,' addressing the son, whom she knew, 'by going back; you'd better stay here and get into bed with your father.'

In a few minutes the boatman would have gone on the errand, but Benjamin could not lose the opportunity of sacrificing himself for Miss Masters. He rushed off, and in three-quarters of an hour had returned with the sister. Having learned, after anxious inquiry, that Miss Masters, so far as could be discovered, had not caught a chill, he went to his father.

'Well, father, I hope you are none the worse for the ducking,' he said gaily. 'The next time you come to York you'd better bring another suit of clothes with you.'

Baruch turned round uneasily and did not answer immediately. He had had a narrow escape from drowning.

'Nothing of much consequence. Is your friend all right?'

'Oh, yes; I was anxious about her, for she is not very strong, but I do not think she will come to much harm. I made them light a fire in her room.'

'Are they drying my clothes?'

'I'll go and see.'

He went away and encountered the elder Miss Masters, who told him that her sister, feeling no ill effects from the plunge, had determined to go home at once, and in fact was nearly ready.

Benjamin waited, and presently she came downstairs, smiling.

'Nothing the matter. I owe it to you, however, that I am not now in another world.'

Benjamin was in an ecstasy, and considered himself bound to accompany her to her door.

Meanwhile, Baruch lay upstairs alone in no very happy temper. He heard the conversation below, and knew that his son had gone. In all genuine love there is something of ferocious selfishness. The perfectly divine nature knows how to keep it in check, and is even capable--supposing it to be a woman's nature--of contentment if the loved one is happy, no matter with what or with whom; but the nature only a little less than divine cannot, without pain, endure the thought that it no longer owns privately and exclusively that which it loves, even when it loves a child, and Baruch was particularly excusable, considering his solitude. Nevertheless, he had learned a little wisdom, and, what was of much greater importance, had learned how to use it when he needed it. It had been forced upon him; it was an adjustment to circ.u.mstances, the wisest wisdom. It was not something without any particular connection with him; it was rather the external protection built up from within to shield him where he was vulnerable; it was the answer to questions which had been put to HIM, and not to those which had been put to other people. So it came to pa.s.s that, when he said bitterly to himself that, if he were at that moment lying dead at the bottom of the river, Benjamin would have found consolation very near at hand, he was able to reflect upon the folly of self-laceration, and to rebuke himself for a complaint against what was simply the order of Nature, and not a personal failure.

His self-conquest, however, was not very permanent. When he left York the next morning, he fancied his son was not particularly grieved, and he was pa.s.sive under the thought that an epoch in his life had come, that the milestones now began to show the distance to the place to which he travelled, and, still worse, that the boy who had been so close to him, and upon whom he had so much depended, had gone from him.

There is no remedy for our troubles which is uniformly and progressively efficacious. All that we have a right to expect from our religion is that gradually, very gradually, it will a.s.sist 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 a.s.sistant.

CHAPTER XX