BARUCH sat and mused before he went to bed. He had gone out stirred by
an idea, but it was already dead. Then he began to think about Clara.
Who was this Dennis who visited the Marshalls and the Hopgoods? Oh! for
an hour of his youth! Fifteen years ago the word would have come
unbidden if he had seen Clara, but now, in place of the word, there was
hesitation, shame. He must make up his mind to renounce for ever. But,
although this conclusion had forced itself upon him overnight as
inevitable, he could not resist the temptation when he rose the next
morning of plotting to meet Clara, and he walked up and down the street
opposite the shop door that evening nearly a quarter of an hour, just
before closing time, hoping that she might come out and that he might
have the opportunity of overtaking her apparently by accident. At last,
fearing he might miss her, he went in and found she had a companion whom
he instantly knew, before any induction, to be her sister. Madge was not
now the Madge whom we knew at Fenmarket. She was thinner in the face and
paler. Nevertheless, she was not careless; she was even more particular
in her costume, but it was simpler. If anything, perhaps, she was a
little prouder. She was more attractive, certainly, than she had ever
been, although her face could not be said to be handsomer. The slight
prominence of the cheek-bone, the slight hollow underneath, the loss of
colour, were perhaps defects, but they said something which had a meaning
in it superior to that of the tint of the peach. She had been reading a
book while Clara was balancing her cash, and she attempted to replace it.
The shelf was a little too high, and the volume fell upon the ground. It
contained Shelley’s _Revolt of Islam_.
‘Have you read Shelley?’ 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, unobserved, 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 title. ‘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.