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.
‘I shall ask Cohen to come with us,’ said Marshall. ‘He has never seen
Mazzini and would like to know him.’ Cohen accordingly called one Sunday
evening, and the party went together to a dull, dark, little house in a
shabby street of small shops and furnished apartments. When they knocked
at Mazzini’s door Marshall asked for Mr — for, even in England, Mazzini
had an assumed name which was always used when inquiries were made for
him. They were shown upstairs into a rather mean room, and found there a
man, really about forty, but looking older. He had dark hair growing
away from his forehead, dark moustache, dark beard and a singularly
serious face. It was not the face of a conspirator, but that of a saint,
although without that just perceptible touch of silliness which spoils
the faces of most saints. It was the face of a saint of the Reason, of a
man who could be ecstatic for rational ideals, rarest of all endowments.
It was the face, too, of one who knew no fear, or, if he knew it, could
crush it. He was once concealed by a poor woman whose house was
surrounded by Austrian soldiers watching for him. He was determined that
she should not be sacrificed, and, having disguised himself a little,
walked out into the street in broad daylight, went up to the Austrian
sentry, asked for a light for his cigar and escaped. He was cordial in
his reception of his visitors, particularly of Clara, Madge and Cohen,
whom he had not seen before.
‘The English,’ he said, after some preliminary conversation, ‘are a
curious people. As a nation they are what they call practical and have a
contempt for ideas, but I have known some Englishmen who have a religious
belief in them, a nobler belief than I have found in any other nation.
There are English women, also, who have this faith, and one or two are
amongst my dearest friends.’
‘I never,’ said Marshall, ‘quite comprehend you on this point. I should
say that we know as clearly as most folk what we want, and we mean to
have it.’
‘That may be, but it is not Justice, as Justice which inspires you.
Those of you who have not enough, desire to have more, that is all.’
‘If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.’
‘Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ. Whenever any real good
is done it is by a crusade; that is to say, the cross must be raised and
appeal be made to something _above_ the people. No system based on
rights will stand. Never will society be permanent till it is founded on
duty. If we consider our rights exclusively, we extend them over the
rights of our neighbours. If the oppressed classes had the power to
obtain their rights to-morrow, and with the rights came no deeper sense
of duty, the new order, for the simple reason that the oppressed are no
better than their oppressors, would be just as unstable as that which
preceded it.’
‘To put it in my own language,’ said Madge, ‘you believe in God.’
Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.
‘My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no other.’
‘I should like, though,’ said Marshall, ‘to see the church which would
acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit your God to be theirs.’
‘What is essential,’ replied Madge, ‘in a belief in God is absolute
loyalty to a principle we know to have authority.’
‘It may, perhaps,’ said Mazzini, ‘be more to me, but you are right, it is
a belief in the supremacy and ultimate victory of the conscience.’
‘The victory seems distant in Italy now,’ said Baruch. ‘I do not mean
the millennial victory of which you speak, but an approximation to it by
the overthrow of tyranny there.’
‘You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you imagine.’
‘Do you obtain,’ said Clara, ‘any real help from people here? Do you not
find that they merely talk and express what they call their sympathy?’
‘I must not say what help I have received; more than words, though, from
many.’
‘You expect, then,’ said Baruch, ‘that the Italians will answer your
appeal?’
‘If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what faith could survive.’
‘The people are the persons you meet in the street.’
‘A people is not a mere assemblage of uninteresting units, but it is not
a phantom. A spirit lives in each nation which is superior to any
individual in it. It is this which is the true reality, the nation’s
purpose and destiny, it is this for which the patriot lives and dies.’
‘I suppose,’ said Clara, ‘you have no difficulty in obtaining volunteers
for any dangerous enterprise?’
‘None. You would be amazed if I were to tell you how many men and women
at this very moment would go to meet certain death if I were to ask
them.’
‘Women?’
‘Oh, yes; and women are of the greatest use, but it is rather difficult
to find those who have the necessary qualifications.’
‘I suppose you employ them in order to obtain secret information?’
‘Yes; amongst the Austrians.’
The party broke up. Baruch manœuvred to walk with Clara, but Marshall
wanted to borrow a book from Mazzini, and she stayed behind for him.
Madge was outside in the street, and Baruch could do nothing but go to
her. She seemed unwilling to wait, and Baruch and she went slowly
homewards, thinking the others would overtake them. The conversation
naturally turned upon Mazzini.
‘Although,’ said Madge, ‘I have never seen him before, I have heard much
about him and he makes me sad.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he has done something worth doing and will do more.’
‘But why should that make you sad?’
‘I do not think there is anything sadder than to know you are able to do
a little good and would like to do it, and yet you are not permitted to
do it. Mazzini has a world open to him large enough for the exercise of
all his powers.’
‘It is worse to have a desire which is intense but not definite, to be
continually anxious to do something, you know not what, and always to
feel, if any distinct task is offered, your incapability of attempting
it.’
‘A man, if he has a real desire to be of any service, can generally
gratify it to some extent; a woman as a rule cannot, although a woman’s
enthusiasm is deeper than a man’s. You can join Mazzini to-morrow, I
suppose, if you like.’
‘It is a supposition not quite justifiable, and if I were free to go I
could not.’
‘Why?’
‘I am not fitted for such work; I have not sufficient faith. When I see
a flag waving, a doubt always intrudes. Long ago I was forced to the
conclusion that I should have to be content with a life which did not
extend outside itself.’
‘I am sure that many women blunder into the wrong path, not because they
are bad, but simply because—if I may say so—they are too good.’
‘Maybe you are right. The inability to obtain mere pleasure has not
produced the misery which has been begotten of mistaken or baffled
self-sacrifice. But do you mean to say that you would like to enlist
under Mazzini?’
‘No!’
Baruch thought she referred to her child, and he was silent.
‘You are a philosopher,’ said Madge, after a pause. ‘Have you never
discovered anything which will enable us to submit to be useless?’
‘That is to say, have I discovered a religion? for the core of religion
is the relationship of the individual to the whole, the faith that the
poorest and meanest of us is a person. That is the real strength of all
religions.’
‘Well, go on; what do you believe?’
‘I can only say it like a creed; I have no demonstration, at least none
such as I would venture to put into words. Perhaps the highest of all
truths is incapable of demonstration and can only be stated. Perhaps,
also, the statement, at least to some of us, is a sufficient
demonstration. I believe that inability to imagine a thing is not a
reason for its non-existence. If the infinite is a conclusion which is
forced upon me, the fact that I cannot picture it does not disprove it.
I believe, also, in thought and the soul, and it is nothing to me that I
cannot explain them by attributes belonging to body. That being so, the
difficulties which arise from the perpetual and unconscious confusion of
the qualities of thought and soul with those of body disappear. Our
imagination represents to itself souls like pebbles, and asks itself what
count can be kept of a million, but number in such a case is
inapplicable. I believe that all thought is a manifestation of the
Being, who is One, whom you may call God if you like, and that, as It
never was created, It will never be destroyed.’
‘But,’ said Madge, interrupting him, ‘although you began by warning me
not to expect that you would prove anything, you can tell me whether you
have any kind of basis for what you say, or whether it is all a dream.’
‘You will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that mathematics, which, of
course, I had to learn for my own business, have supplied something for a
foundation. They lead to ideas which are inconsistent with the notion
that the imagination is a measure of all things. Mind, I do not for a
moment pretend that I have any theory which explains the universe. It is
something, however, to know that the sky is as real as the earth.’
They had now reached Great Ormond Street, and parted. Clara and Marshall
were about five minutes behind them. Madge was unusually cheerful when
they sat down to supper.
‘Clara,’ she said, ‘what made you so silent to-night at Mazzini’s?’
Clara did not reply, but after a pause of a minute or two, she asked Mrs
Caffyn whether it would not be possible for them all to go into the
country on Whitmonday? Whitsuntide was late; it would be warm, and they
could take their food with them and eat it out of doors.
‘Just the very thing, my dear, if we could get anything cheap to take us;
the baby, of course, must go with us.
‘I should like above everything to go to Great Oakhurst.’
‘What, five of us—twenty miles there and twenty miles back! Besides,
although I love the place, it isn’t exactly what one would go to see just
for a day. No! Letherhead or Mickleham or Darkin would be ever so much
better. They are too far, though, and, then, that man Baruch must go
with us. He’d be company for Marshall, and he sticks up in Clerkenwell
and never goes nowhere. You remember as Marshall said as he must ask him
the next time we had an outing.’
Clara had not forgotten it.
‘Ah,’ continued Mrs Caffyn, ‘I should just love to show you Mickleham.’
Mrs Caffyn’s heart yearned after her Surrey land. The man who is born in
a town does not know what it is to be haunted through life by lovely
visions of the landscape which lay about him when he was young. The
village youth leaves the home of his childhood for the city, but the
river doubling on itself, the overhanging alders and willows, the fringe
of level meadow, the chalk hills bounding the river valley and rising
against the sky, with here and there on their summits solitary clusters
of beech, the light and peace of the different seasons, of morning,
afternoon and evening, never forsake him. To think of them is not a mere
luxury; their presence modifies the whole of his life.
‘I don’t see how it is to be managed,’ she mused; ‘and yet there’s
nothing near London as I’d give two pins to see. There’s Richmond as we
went to one Sunday; it was no better, to my way of thinking, than looking
at a picture. I’d ever so much sooner be a-walking across the turnips by
the footpath from Darkin home.’
‘Couldn’t we, for once in a way, stay somewhere over-night?’
‘It might as well be two,’ said Mrs Marshall; ‘Saturday and Sunday.’
‘Two,’ said Madge; ‘I vote for two.’
‘Wait a bit, my dears, we’re a precious awkward lot to fit in—Marshall
and his wife me and you and Miss Clara and the baby; and then there’s
Baruch, who’s odd man, so to speak; that’s three bedrooms. We sha’n’t do
it—Otherwise, I was a-thinking—’
‘What were you thinking?’ said Marshall.
‘I’ve got it,’ said Mrs Caffyn, joyously. ‘Miss Clara and me will go to
Great Oakhurst on the Friday. We can easy enough stay at my old shop.
Marshall and Sarah, Miss Madge, the baby and Baruch can go to Letherhead
on the Saturday morning. The two women and the baby can have one of the
rooms at Skelton’s, and Marshall and Baruch can have the other. Then, on
Sunday morning, Miss Clara and me we’ll come over for you, and we’ll all
walk through Norbury Park. That’ll be ever so much better in many ways.
Miss Clara and me, we’ll go by the coach. Six of us, not reckoning the
baby, in that heavy ginger-beer cart of Masterman’s would be too much.’
‘An expensive holiday, rather,’ said Marshall.
‘Leave that to me; that’s my business. I ain’t quite a beggar, and if we
can’t take our pleasure once a year, it’s a pity. We aren’t like some
folk as messes about up to Hampstead every Sunday, and spends a fortune
on shrimps and donkeys. No; when I go away, it _is_ away, maybe it’s
only for a couple of days, where I can see a blessed ploughed field; no
shrimps nor donkeys for me.’
CHARTER XXIX
SO it was settled, and on the Friday Clara and Mrs Caffyn journeyed to
Great Oakhurst. They were both tired, and went to bed very early, in
order that they might enjoy the next day. Clara, always a light sleeper,
woke between three and four, rose and went to the little casement window
which had been open all night. Below her, on the left, the church was
just discernible, and on the right, the broad chalk uplands leaned to the
south, and were waving with green barley and wheat. Underneath her lay
the cottage garden, with its row of beehives in the north-east corner,
sheltered from the cold winds by the thick hedge. It had evidently been
raining a little, for the drops hung on the currant bushes, but the
clouds had been driven by the south-westerly wind into the eastern sky,
where they lay in a long, low, grey band. Not a sound was to be heard,
save every now and then the crow of a cock or the short cry of a
just-awakened thrush. High up on the zenith, the approach of the sun to
the horizon was proclaimed by the most delicate tints of rose-colour, but
the cloud-bank above him was dark and untouched, although the blue which
was over it, was every moment becoming paler. Clara watched; she was
moved even to tears by the beauty of the scene, but she was stirred by
something more than beauty, just as he who was in the Spirit and beheld a
throne and One sitting thereon, saw something more than loveliness,
although He was radiant with the colour of jasper and there was a rainbow
round about Him like an emerald to look upon. In a few moments the
highest top of the cloud-rampart was kindled, and the whole wavy outline
became a fringe of flame. In a few moments more the fire just at one
point became blinding, and in another second the sun emerged, the first
arrowy shaft passed into her chamber, the first shadow was cast, and it
was day. She put her hands to her face; the tears fell faster, but she
wiped them away and her great purpose was fixed. She crept back into
bed, her agitation ceased, a strange and almost supernatural peace
overshadowed her and she fell asleep not to wake till the sound of the
scythe had ceased in the meadow just beyond the rick-yard that came up to
one side of the cottage, and the mowers were at their breakfast.
Neither Mrs Caffyn nor Clara thought of seeing the Letherhead party on
Saturday. They could not arrive before the afternoon, and it was
considered hardly worth while to walk from Great Oakhurst to Letherhead
merely for the sake of an hour or two. In the morning Mrs Caffyn was so
busy with her old friends that she rather tired herself, and in the
evening Clara went for a stroll. She did not know the country, but she
wandered on until she came to a lane which led down to the river. At the
bottom of the lane she found herself at a narrow, steep, stone bridge.
She had not been there more than three or four minutes before she
descried two persons coming down the lane from Letherhead. When they
were about a couple of hundred yards from her they turned into the meadow
over the stile, and struck the river-bank some distance below the point
where she was. It was impossible to mistake them; they were Madge and
Baruch. They sauntered leisurely; presently Baruch knelt down over the
water, apparently to gather something which he gave to Madge. They then
crossed another stile and were lost behind the tall hedge which stopped
further view of the footpath in that direction.
‘The message then was authentic,’ she said to herself. ‘I thought I
could not have misunderstood it.’
On Sunday morning Clara wished to stay at home. She pleaded that she
preferred rest, but Mrs Caffyn vowed there should be no Norbury Park if
Clara did not go, and the kind creature managed to persuade a pig-dealer
to drive them over to Letherhead for a small sum, notwithstanding it was
Sunday. The whole party then set out; the baby was drawn in a borrowed
carriage which also took the provisions, and they were fairly out of the
town before the Letherhead bells had ceased ringing for church. It was
one of the sweetest of Sundays, sunny, but masses of white clouds now and
then broke the heat. The park was reached early in the forenoon, and it
was agreed that dinner should be served under one of the huge beech trees
at the lower end, as the hill was a little too steep for the
baby-carriage in the hot sun.
‘This is very beautiful,’ said Marshall, when dinner was over, ‘but it is
not what we came to see. We ought to move upwards to the Druid’s grove.’
‘Yes, you be off, the whole lot of you,’ said Mrs Caffyn. ‘I know every
tree there, and I ain’t going there this afternoon. Somebody must stay
here to look after the baby; you can’t wheel her, you’ll have to carry
her, and you won’t enjoy yourselves much more for moiling along with her
up that hill.’
‘I will stay with you,’ said Clara.
Everybody protested, but Clara was firm. She was tired, and the sun had
given her a headache. Madge pleaded that it was she who ought to remain
behind, but at last gave way for her sister looked really fatigued.
‘There’s a dear child,’ said Clara, when Madge consented to go. ‘I shall
lie on the grass and perhaps go to sleep.’
‘It is a pity,’ said Baruch to Madge as they went away, ‘that we are
separated; we must come again.’
‘Yes, I am sorry, but perhaps it is better she should be where she is;
she is not particularly strong, and is obliged to be very careful.’
In due time they all came to the famous yews, and sat down on one of the
seats overlooking that wonderful gate in the chalk downs through which
the Mole passes northwards.
‘We must go,’ said Marshall, ‘a little bit further and see the oak.’
‘Not another step,’ said his wife. ‘You can go it you like.’
‘Content; nothing could be pleasanter than to sit here,’ and he pulled
out his pipe; ‘but really, Miss Madge, to leave Norbury without paying a
visit to the oak is a pity.’
He did not offer, however, to accompany her.
‘It is the most extraordinary tree in these parts,’ said Baruch; ‘of
incalculable age and with branches spreading into a tent big enough to
cover a regiment. Marshall is quite right.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Not above a couple of hundred yards further; just round the corner.’
Madge rose and looked.
‘No; it is not visible here; it stands a little way back. If you come a
little further you will catch a glimpse of it.’
She followed him and presently the oak came in view. They climbed up the
bank and went nearer to it. The whole vale was underneath them and part
of the weald with the Sussex downs blue in the distance. Baruch was not
much given to raptures over scenery, but the indifference of Nature to
the world’s turmoil always appealed to him.
‘You are not now discontented because you cannot serve under Mazzini?’
‘Not now.’
There was nothing in her reply on the face of it of any particular
consequence to Baruch. She might simply have intended that the beauty of
the fair landscape extinguished her restlessness, or that she saw her own
unfitness, but neither of these interpretations presented itself to him.
‘I have sometimes thought,’ continued Baruch, slowly, ‘that the love of
any two persons in this world may fulfil an eternal purpose which is as
necessary to the Universe as a great revolution.’
Madge’s eyes moved round from the hills and they met Baruch’s. No
syllable was uttered, but swiftest messages passed, question and answer.
There was no hesitation on his part now, no doubt, the woman and the
moment had come. The last question was put, the final answer was given;
he took her hand in his and came closer to her.
‘Stop!’ she whispered, ‘do you know my history?’
He did not reply, but fell upon her neck. This was the goal to which
both had been journeying all these years, although with much weary
mistaking of roads; this was what from the beginning was designed for
both! Happy Madge! happy Baruch! There are some so closely akin that
the meaning of each may be said to lie in the other, who do not approach
till it is too late. They travel towards one another, but are waylaid
and detained, and just as they are within greeting, one of them drops and
dies.
They left the tree and went back to the Marshalls, and then down the hill
to Mrs Caffyn and Clara. Clara was much better for her rest, and early
in the evening the whole party returned to Letherhead, Clara and Mrs
Caffyn going on to Great Oakhurst. Madge kept close to her sister till
they separated, and the two men walked together. On Whitmonday morning
the Letherhead people came over to Great Oakhurst. They had to go back
to London in the afternoon, but Mrs Caffyn and Clara were to stay till
Tuesday, as they stood a better chance of securing places by the coach on
that day. Mrs Caffyn had as much to show them as if the village had been
the Tower of London. The wonder of wonders, however, was a big house,
where she was well known, and its hot-houses. Madge wanted to speak to
Clara, but it was difficult to find a private opportunity. When they
were in the garden, however, she managed to take Clara unobserved down
one of the twisted paths, under pretence of admiring an ancient mulberry
tree.
‘Clara,’ she said, ‘I want a word with you. Baruch Cohen loves me.’
‘Do you love him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without a shadow of a doubt?’
‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’
Clara put her arm round her sister, kissed her tenderly and said,—
‘Then I am perfectly happy.’
‘Did you suspect it?’
‘I knew it.’
Mrs Caffyn called them; it was time to be moving, and soon afterwards
those who had to go to London that afternoon left for Letherhead. Clara
stood at the gate for a long time watching them along the straight, white
road. They came to the top of the hill; she could just discern them
against the sky; they passed over the ridge and she went indoors. In the
evening a friend called to see Mrs Caffyn, and Clara went to the stone
bridge which she had visited on Saturday. The water on the upper side of
the bridge was dammed up and fell over the little sluice gates under the
arches into a clear and deep basin about forty or fifty feet in diameter.
The river, for some reason of its own, had bitten into the western bank,
and had scooped out a great piece of it into an island. The main current
went round the island with a shallow, swift ripple, instead of going
through the pool, as it might have done, for there was a clear channel
for it. The centre and the region under the island were deep and still,
but at the farther end, where the river in passing called to the pool, it
broke into waves as it answered the appeal, and added its own
contribution to the stream, which went away down to the mill and onwards
to the big Thames. On the island were aspens and alders. The floods had
loosened the roots of the largest tree, and it hung over heavily in the
direction in which it had yielded to the rush of the torrent, but it
still held its grip, and the sap had not forsaken a single branch. Every
one was as dense with foliage as if there had been no struggle for life,
and the leaves sang their sweet song, just perceptible for a moment every
now and then in the variations of the louder music below them. It is
curious that the sound of a weir is never uniform, but is perpetually
changing in the ear even of a person who stands close by it. One of the
arches of the bridge was dry, and Clara went down into it, stood at the
edge and watched that wonderful sight—the plunge of a smooth, pure stream
into the great cup which it has hollowed out for itself. Down it went,
with a dancing, foamy fringe playing round it just where it met the
surface; a dozen yards away it rose again, bubbling and exultant.
She came up from the arch and went home as the sun was setting. She
found Mrs Caffyn alone.
‘I have news to tell you,’ she said. ‘Baruch Cohen is in love with my
sister, and she is in love with him.’
‘The Lord, Miss Clara! I thought sometimes that perhaps it might be you;
but there, it’s better, maybe, as it is, for—’
‘For what?’
‘Why, my dear, because somebody’s sure to turn up who’ll make you happy,
but there aren’t many men like Baruch. You see what I mean, don’t you?
He’s always a-reading books, and, therefore, he don’t think so much of
what some people would make a fuss about. Not as anything of that kind
would ever stop me, if I were a man and saw such a woman as Miss Madge.
He’s really as good a creature as ever was born, and with that child she
might have found it hard to get along, and now it will be cared for, and
so will she be to the end of their lives.’
The evening after their return to Great Ormond Street, Mazzini was
surprised by a visit from Clara alone.
‘When I last saw you,’ she said, ‘you told us that you had been helped by
women. I offer myself.’
‘But, my dear madam, you hardly know what the qualifications are. To
begin with, there must be a knowledge of three foreign languages, French,
German and Italian, and the capacity and will to endure great privation,
suffering and, perhaps, death.’
‘I was educated abroad, I can speak German and French. I do not know
much Italian, but when I reach Italy I will soon learn.’
‘Pardon me for asking you what may appear a rude question. Is it a
personal disappointment which sends you to me, or love for the cause? It
is not uncommon to find that young women, when earthly love is
impossible, attempt to satisfy their cravings with a love for that which
is impersonal.’
‘Does it make any difference, so far as their constancy is concerned?’
‘I cannot say that it does. The devotion of many of the martyrs of the
Catholic church was repulsion from the world as much as attraction to
heaven. You must understand that I am not prompted by curiosity. If you
are to be my friend, it is necessary that I should know you thoroughly.’
‘My motive is perfectly pure.’
They had some further talk and parted. After a few more interviews,
Clara and another English lady started for Italy. Madge had letters from
her sister at intervals for eighteen months, the last being from Venice.
Then they ceased, and shortly afterwards Mazzini told Baruch that his
sister-in-law was dead.
All efforts to obtain more information from Mazzini were in vain, but one
day when her name was mentioned, he said to Madge,—
‘The theologians represent the Crucifixion as the most sublime fact in
the world’s history. It was sublime, but let us reverence also the
Eternal Christ who is for ever being crucified for our salvation.’
‘Father,’ said a younger Clara to Baruch some ten years later as she sat
on his knee, ‘I had an Aunt Clara once, hadn’t I?’
‘Yes, my child.’
‘Didn’t she go to Italy and die there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did she go?’
‘Because she wanted to free the poor people of Italy who were slaves.’
* * * * *
THE END
* * * * *
* * * * *
_Colston & Company_, _Ltd._, _Printers_, _Edinburgh_.