Clara Hopgood Part 14

'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 circ.u.mstances 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 ap.r.o.n.

'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 pa.s.sion: 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 G.o.d.'

'I should say,' smilingly replied the Gentile, 'that no man can love G.o.d unless he loves a woman.' 'I am right,' said Baruch, 'and so are you.'

But Baruch looked in the gla.s.s: 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 acc.u.mulated 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 ma.s.s 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, -