Clara Hopgood Part 15

'What a relief a quiet s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.ses" 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, quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sistant?'

'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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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. a.s.s 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 cla.s.s of elderly men, to which of course he would be a.s.signed, 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, coa.r.s.est 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 pa.s.s 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.

n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 la.s.so 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 a.s.sured 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, G.o.d-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 plat.i.tude or an excuse for weakness, and that a n.o.bler 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 ma.n.u.script 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 G.o.d the Universe could not continue to exist, for G.o.d 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.