IT was Mr Palmer’s design to send Frank abroad as soon as he understood
the home trade. It was thought it would be an advantage to him to learn
something of foreign manufacturing processes. Frank had gladly agreed to
go, but he was now rather in the mood for delay. Mr Palmer conjectured a
reason for it, and the conjecture was confirmed when, after two or three
more visits to Fenmarket, perfectly causeless, so far as business was
concerned, Frank asked for the paternal sanction to his engagement with
Madge. Consent was willingly given, for Mr Palmer knew the family well;
letters passed between him and Mrs Hopgood, and it was arranged that
Frank’s visit to Germany should be postponed till the summer. He was now
frequently at Fenmarket as Madge’s accepted suitor, and, as the spring
advanced, their evenings were mostly spent by themselves out of doors.
One afternoon they went for a long walk, and on their return they rested
by a stile. Those were the days when Tennyson was beginning to stir the
hearts of the young people in England, and the two little green volumes
had just become a treasure in the Hopgood household. Mr Palmer, senior,
knew them well, and Frank, hearing his father speak so enthusiastically
about them, thought Madge would like them, and had presented them to her.
He had heard one or two read aloud at home, and had looked at one or two
himself, but had gone no further. Madge, her mother, and her sister had
read and re-read them.
‘Oh,’ said Madge, ‘for that Vale in Ida. Here in these fens how I long
for something that is not level! Oh, for the roar of—
“The long brook falling thro’ the clov’n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.”
Go on with it, Frank.’
‘I cannot.’
‘But you know _Œnone_?’
‘I cannot say I do. I began it—’
‘Frank, how could you begin it and lay it down unfinished? Besides,
those lines are some of the first; you _must_ remember—
“Behind the valley topmost Gargarus
Stands up and takes the morning.”’
‘No, I do not recollect, but I will learn them; learn them for your
sake.’
‘I do not want you to learn them for my sake.’
‘But I shall.’
She had taken off her hat and his hand strayed to her neck. Her head
fell on his shoulder and she had forgotten his ignorance of _Œnone_.
Presently she awoke from her delicious trance and they moved homewards in
silence. Frank was a little uneasy.
‘I do greatly admire Tennyson,’ he said.
‘What do you admire? You have hardly looked at him.’
‘I saw a very good review of him. I will look that review up, by the
way, before I come down again. Mr Maurice was talking about it.’
Madge had a desire to say something, but she did not know what to say, a
burden lay upon her chest. It was that weight which presses there when
we are alone with those with whom we are not strangers, but with whom we
are not completely at home, and she actually found herself impatient and
half-desirous of solitude. This must be criminal or disease, she thought
to herself, and she forcibly recalled Frank’s virtues. She was so far
successful that when they parted and he kissed her, she was more than
usually caressing, and her ardent embrace, at least for the moment,
relieved that unpleasant sensation in the region of the heart. When he
had gone she reasoned with herself. What a miserable counterfeit of
love, she argued, is mere intellectual sympathy, a sympathy based on
books! What did Miranda know about Ferdinand’s ‘views’ on this or that
subject? Love is something independent of ‘views.’ It is an attraction
which has always been held to be inexplicable, but whatever it may be it
is not ‘views.’ She was becoming a little weary, she thought, of what
was called ‘culture.’ These creatures whom we know through Shakespeare
and Goethe are ghostly. What have we to do with them? It is idle work
to read or even to talk fine things about them. It ends in nothing.
What we really have to go through and that which goes through it are
interesting, but not circumstances and character impossible to us. When
Frank spoke of his business, which he understood, he was wise, and some
observations which he made the other day, on the management of his
workpeople, would have been thought original if they had been printed.
The true artist knows that his hero must be a character shaping events
and shaped by them, and not a babbler about literature. Frank, also, was
so susceptible. He liked to hear her read to him, and her enthusiasm
would soon be his. Moreover, how gifted he was, unconsciously, with all
that makes a man admirable, with courage, with perfect unselfishness!
How handsome he was, and then his passion for her! She had read
something of passion, but she never knew till now what the white
intensity of its flame in a man could be. She was committed, too,
happily committed; it was an engagement.
Thus, whenever doubt obtruded itself, she poured a self-raised tide over
it and concealed it. Alas! it could not be washed away; it was a little
sharp rock based beneath the ocean’s depths, and when the water ran low
its dark point reappeared. She was more successful, however, than many
women would have been, for, although her interest in ideas was deep,
there was fire in her blood, and Frank’s arm around her made the world
well nigh disappear; her surrender was entire, and if Sinai had thundered
in her ears she would not have heard. She was destitute of that power,
which her sister possessed, of surveying herself from a distance. On the
contrary, her emotion enveloped her, and the safeguard of reflection on
it was impossible to her.
As to Frank, no doubt ever approached him. He was intoxicated, and
beside himself. He had been brought up in a clean household, knowing
nothing of the vice by which so many young men are overcome, and woman
hitherto had been a mystery to him. Suddenly he found himself the
possessor of a beautiful creature, whose lips it was lawful to touch and
whose heartbeats he could feel as he pressed her to his breast. It was
permitted him to be alone with her, to sit on the floor and rest his head
on her knees, and he had ventured to capture one of her slippers and
carry it off to London, where he kept it locked up amongst his treasures.
If he had been drawn over Fenmarket sluice in a winter flood he would not
have been more incapable of resistance.
Every now and then Clara thought she discerned in Madge that she was not
entirely content, but the cloud-shadows swept past so rapidly and were
followed by such dazzling sunshine that she was perplexed and hoped that
her sister’s occasional moodiness might be due to parting and absence, or
the anticipation of them. She never ventured to say anything about Frank
to Madge, for there was something in her which forbade all approach from
that side. Once when he had shown his ignorance of what was so familiar
to the Hopgoods, and Clara had expected some sign of dissatisfaction from
her sister, she appeared ostentatiously to champion him against
anticipated criticism. Clara interpreted the warning and was silent,
but, after she had left the room with her mother in order that the lovers
might be alone, she went upstairs and wept many tears. Ah! it is a sad
experience when the nearest and dearest suspects that we are aware of
secret disapproval, knows that it is justifiable, throws up a rampart and
becomes defensively belligerent. From that moment all confidence is at
an end. Without a word, perhaps, the love and friendship of years
disappear, and in the place of two human beings transparent to each
other, there are two who are opaque and indifferent. Bitter, bitter! If
the cause of separation were definite disagreement upon conduct or
belief, we could pluck up courage, approach and come to an understanding,
but it is impossible to bring to speech anything which is so close to the
heart, and there is, therefore, nothing left for us but to submit and be
dumb.