Clara Hopgood Part 17

'Have you read Sh.e.l.ley?' 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, un.o.bserved, 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 t.i.tle. '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.