There was something in this remark most irritating to Clara; the word ‘tastes,’ for example, as if the difference between Miranda and the chambermaid were a matter of ‘taste.’ She was annoyed too with Frank’s easy, cheery tones for she felt deeply what she said, and his mitigation and smiling latitudinarianism were more exasperating than direct opposition.
‘I am sure,’ continued Frank, ‘that if we were to take the votes of the audience, Miranda would be the queen of the evening;’ and he put the crown which he had brought away with him on her head again.
Clara was silent. In a few moments they were at the door of their house. It had begun to rain, and Madge, stepping out of the carriage in a hurry, threw a shawl over her head, forgetting the wreath. It fell into the gutter and was splashed with mud. Frank picked it up, wiped it as well as he could with his pocket-handkerchief, took it into the parlour and laid it on a chair.
Thenext morning it still rained, a cold rain from the north-east, a very disagreeable type of weather on the Fenmarket flats. Madge was not awake until late, and when she caught sight of the grey sky and saw her finery tumbled on the floor—no further use for it in any shape save as rags—and the dirty crown, which she had brought upstairs, lying on the heap, the leaves already fading, she felt depressed and miserable. The breakfast was dull, and for the most part all three were silent. Mrs Hopgood and Clara went away to begin their housework, leaving Madge alone.
‘Madge,’ cried Mrs Hopgood, ‘what am I to do with this thing? It is of no use to preserve it; it is dead and covered with dirt.’
‘Throw it down here.’
She took it and rammed it into the fire. At that moment she saw Frank pass. He was evidently about to knock, but she ran to the door and opened it.
‘I did not wish to keep you waiting in the wet.’
‘I am just off but I could not help calling to see how you are. What! burning your laurels, the testimony to your triumph?’
‘Triumph! rather transitory; finishes in smoke,’ and she pushed two or three of the unburnt leaves amongst the ashes and covered them over. He stooped down, picked up a leaf, smoothed it between his fingers, and then raised his eyes. They met hers at that instant, as she lifted them and looked in his face. They were near one another, and his hands strayed towards hers till they touched. She did not withdraw; he clasped the hand, she not resisting; in another moment his arms were round her, his face was on hers, and he was swept into self-forgetfulness. Suddenly the horn of the coach about to start awoke him, and he murmured the line from one of his speeches of the night before—
‘But by immortal Providence she’s mine.’
‘But by immortal Providence she’s mine.’
She released herself a trifle, held her head back as if she desired to survey him apart from her, so that the ecstasy of union might be renewed, and then fell on his neck.
The horn once more sounded, she let him out silently, and he was off. Mrs Hopgood and Clara presently came downstairs.
‘Mr Palmer came in to bid you good-bye, but he heard the coach and was obliged to rush away.’
‘What a pity,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘that you did not call us.’
‘I thought he would be able to stay longer.’
The lines which followed Frank’s quotation came into her head,—
‘Sweet lord, you play me false.’‘No, my dearest love,I would not for the world.’
‘Sweet lord, you play me false.’‘No, my dearest love,I would not for the world.’
‘An omen,’ she said to herself; ‘“he would not for the world.”’
She was in the best of spirits all day long. When the housework was over and they were quiet together, she said,—
‘Now, my dear mother and sister, I want to know how the performance pleased you.’
‘It was as good as it could be,’ replied her mother, ‘but I cannot think why all plays should turn upon lovemaking. I wonder whether the time will ever come when we shall care for a play in which there is no courtship.’
‘What a horrible heresy, mother,’ said Madge.
‘It may be so; it may be that I am growing old, but it seems astonishing to me sometimes that the world does not grow a little weary of endless variations on the same theme.’
‘Never,’ said Madge, ‘as long as it does not weary of the thing itself, and it is not likely to do that. Fancy a young man and a young woman stopping short and exclaiming, “This is just what every son of Adam and daughter of Eve has gone through before; why should we proceed?” Besides, it is the one emotion common to the whole world; we can all comprehend it. Once more, it reveals character. InHamletandOthello, for example, what is interesting is not solely the bare love. The natures of Hamlet and Othello are brought to light through it as they would not have been through any other stimulus. I am sure that no ordinary woman ever shows what she really is, except when she is in love. Can you tell what she is from what she calls her religion, or from her friends, or even from her husband?’
‘Would it not be equally just to say women are more alike in love than in anything else? Mind, I do not say alike, but more alike. Is it not the passion which levels us all?’
‘Oh, mother, mother! did one ever hear such dreadful blasphemy? That the loves, for example, of two such cultivated, exquisite creatures as Clara and myself would be nothing different from those of the barmaids next door?’
‘Well, at anyrate, I do not want to seemychildren in love to understand what they are—to me at least.’
‘Then, if you comprehend us so completely—and let us have no more philosophy—just tell me, should I make a good actress? Oh! to be able to sway a thousand human beings into tears or laughter! It must be divine.’
‘No, I do not think you would,’ replied Clara.
‘Why not, miss?Youropinion, mind, was not asked. Did I not act to perfection last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why are you so decisive?’
‘Try a different part some day. I may be mistaken.’
‘You are very oracular.’
She turned to the piano, played a few chords, closed the instrument, swung herself round on the music stool, and said she should go for a walk.
Itwas 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 ravineIn cataract after cataract to the sea.”
“The long brook falling thro’ the clov’n ravineIn cataract after cataract to the sea.”
Go on with it, Frank.’
‘I cannot.’
‘But you knowŒnone?’
‘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; youmustremember—
“Behind the valley topmost GargarusStands up and takes the morning.”’
“Behind the valley topmost GargarusStands 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 ofŒnone. 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.
Itwas now far into June, and Madge and Frank extended their walks and returned later. He had come down to spend his last Sunday with the Hopgoods before starting with his father for Germany, and on the Monday they were to leave London.
Wordsworth was one of the divinities at Stoke Newington, and just before Frank visited Fenmarket that week, he had heard theIntimations of Immortalityread with great fervour. Thinking that Madge would be pleased with him if she found that he knew something about that famous Ode, and being really smitten with some of the passages in it, he learnt it, and just as they were about to turn homewards one sultry evening he suddenly began to repeat it, and declaimed it to the end with much rhetorical power.
‘Bravo!’ said Madge, ‘but, of all Wordsworth’s poems, that is the one for which I believe I care the least.’
Frank’s countenance fell.
‘Oh, me! I thought it was just what would suit you.’
‘No, not particularly. There are some noble lines in it; for example—
“And custom lie upon thee with a weight,Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”
“And custom lie upon thee with a weight,Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”
But the very title—Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood—is unmeaning to me, and as for the verse which is in everybody’s mouth—
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;”
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;”
and still worse the vision of “that immortal sea,” and of the children who “sport upon the shore,” they convey nothing whatever to me. I find though they are much admired by the clergy of the better sort, and by certain religiously-disposed people, to whom thinking is distasteful or impossible. Because they cannot definitely believe, they fling themselves with all the more fervour upon these cloudy Wordsworthian phrases, and imagine they see something solid in the coloured fog.’
It was now growing dark and a few heavy drops of rain began to fall, but in a minute or two they ceased. Frank, contrary to his usual wont, was silent. There was something undiscovered in Madge, a region which he had not visited and perhaps could not enter. She discerned in an instant what she had done, and in an instant repented. He had taken so much pains with a long piece of poetry for her sake: was not that better than agreement in a set of propositions? Scores of persons might think as she thought about the ode, who would not spend a moment in doing anything to gratify her. It was delightful also to reflect that Frank imagined she would sympathise with anything written in that temper. She recalled what she herself had said when somebody gave Clara a copy in ‘Parian’ of a Greek statue, a thing coarse in outline and vulgar. Clara was about to put it in a cupboard in the attic, but Madge had pleaded so pathetically that the donor had in a measure divined what her sister loved, and had done her best, although she had made a mistake, that finally the statue was placed on the bedroom mantelpiece. Madge’s heart overflowed, and Frank had never attracted her so powerfully as at that moment. She took his hand softly in hers.
‘Frank,’ she murmured, as she bent her head towards him, ‘it is really a lovely poem.’
Suddenly there was a flash of forked lightning at some distance, followed in a few seconds by a roll of thunder increasing in intensity until the last reverberation seemed to shake the ground. They took refuge in a little barn and sat down. Madge, who was timid and excited in a thunderstorm, closed her eyes to shield herself from the glare.
The tumult in the heavens lasted for nearly two hours and, when it was over, Madge and Frank walked homewards without speaking a word for a good part of the way.
‘I cannot, cannot go to-morrow,’ he suddenly cried, as they neared the town.
‘Youshallgo,’ she replied calmly.
‘But, Madge, think of me in Germany, think what my dreams and thoughts will be—you here—hundreds of miles between us.’
She had never seen him so shaken with terror.
‘Youshallgo; not another word.’
‘I must say something—what can I say? My God, my God, have mercy on me!’
‘Mercy! mercy!’ she repeated, half unconsciously, and then rousing herself, exclaimed, ‘You shall not say it; I will not hear; now, good-bye.’
They had come to the door; he went inside; she took his face between her hands, left one kiss on his forehead, led him back to the doorway and he heard the bolts drawn. When he recovered himself he went to the ‘Crown and Sceptre’ and tried to write a letter to her, but the words looked hateful, horrible on the paper, and they were not the words he wanted. He dared not go near the house the next morning, but as he passed it on the coach he looked at the windows. Nobody was to be seen, and that night he left England.
‘Did you hear,’ said Clara to her mother at breakfast, ‘that the lightning struck one of the elms in the avenue at Mrs Martin’s yesterday evening and splintered it to the ground?’
Ina few days Madge received the following letter:—
‘Frankfort, O. M.,Hôtel Waidenbusch.‘My dearest Madge,—I do not know how to write to you. I have begun a dozen letters but I cannot bring myself to speak of what lies before me, hiding the whole world from me. Forgiveness! how is any forgiveness possible? But Madge, my dearest Madge, remember that my love is intenser than ever. What has happened has bound you closer to me. Iimploreyou to let me come back. I will find a thousand excuses for returning, and we will marry. We had vowed marriage to each other and why should not our vows be fulfilled? Marriage, marriageat once. You will not, youcannot, no, youcannot, you must see you cannot refuse. My father wishes to make this town his headquarters for ten days. Write by return for mercy’s sake.—Your ever devoted‘Frank.’
‘Frankfort, O. M.,Hôtel Waidenbusch.
‘My dearest Madge,—I do not know how to write to you. I have begun a dozen letters but I cannot bring myself to speak of what lies before me, hiding the whole world from me. Forgiveness! how is any forgiveness possible? But Madge, my dearest Madge, remember that my love is intenser than ever. What has happened has bound you closer to me. Iimploreyou to let me come back. I will find a thousand excuses for returning, and we will marry. We had vowed marriage to each other and why should not our vows be fulfilled? Marriage, marriageat once. You will not, youcannot, no, youcannot, you must see you cannot refuse. My father wishes to make this town his headquarters for ten days. Write by return for mercy’s sake.—Your ever devoted
‘Frank.’
The reply came only a day late.
‘My dear Frank,—Forgiveness! Who is to be forgiven? Not you. You believed you loved me, but I doubted my love, and I know now that no true love for you exists. We must part, and part forever. Whatever wrong may have been done, marriage to avoid disgrace would be a wrong to both of us infinitely greater. I owe you an expiation; your release is all I can offer, and it is insufficient. I can only plead that I was deaf and blind. By some miracle, I cannot tell how, my ears and eyes are opened, and I hear and see. It is not the first time in my life that the truth has been revealed to me suddenly, supernaturally, I may say, as if in a vision, and I know the revelation is authentic. There must be no wavering, no half-measures, and I absolutely forbid another letter from you. If one arrives I must, for the sake of my own peace and resolution, refuse to read it. You have simply to announce to your father that the engagement is at an end, and give no reasons.—Your faithful friend‘Madge Hopgood.’
‘My dear Frank,—Forgiveness! Who is to be forgiven? Not you. You believed you loved me, but I doubted my love, and I know now that no true love for you exists. We must part, and part forever. Whatever wrong may have been done, marriage to avoid disgrace would be a wrong to both of us infinitely greater. I owe you an expiation; your release is all I can offer, and it is insufficient. I can only plead that I was deaf and blind. By some miracle, I cannot tell how, my ears and eyes are opened, and I hear and see. It is not the first time in my life that the truth has been revealed to me suddenly, supernaturally, I may say, as if in a vision, and I know the revelation is authentic. There must be no wavering, no half-measures, and I absolutely forbid another letter from you. If one arrives I must, for the sake of my own peace and resolution, refuse to read it. You have simply to announce to your father that the engagement is at an end, and give no reasons.—Your faithful friend
‘Madge Hopgood.’
Another letter did come, but Madge was true to her word, and it was returned unopened.
For a long time Frank was almost incapable of reflection. He dwelt on an event which might happen, but which he dared not name; and if it should happen! Pictures of his father, his home his father’s friends, Fenmarket, the Hopgood household, passed before him with such wild rapidity and intermingled complexity that it seemed as if the reins had dropped out of his hands and he was being hurried away to madness.
He resisted with all his might this dreadful sweep of the imagination, tried to bring himself back into sanity and to devise schemes by which, although he was prohibited from writing to Madge, he might obtain news of her. Her injunction might not be final. There was but one hope for him, one possibility of extrication, one necessity—their marriage. Itmustbe. He dared not think of what might be the consequences if they did not marry.
Hitherto Madge had given no explanation to her mother or sister of the rupture, but one morning—nearly two months had now passed—Clara did not appear at breakfast.
‘Clara is not here,’ said Mrs Hopgood; ‘she was very tired last night, perhaps it is better not to disturb her.’
‘Oh, no! please let her alone. I will see if she still sleeps.’
Madge went upstairs, opened her sister’s door noiselessly, saw that she was not awake, and returned. When breakfast was over she rose, and after walking up and down the room once or twice, seated herself in the armchair by her mother’s side. Her mother drew herself a little nearer, and took Madge’s hand gently in her own.
‘Madge, my child, have you nothing to say to your mother?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Cannot you tell me why Frank and you have parted? Do you not think I ought to know something about such an event in the life of one so close to me?’
‘I broke off the engagement: we were not suited to one another.’
‘I thought as much; I honour you; a thousand times better that you should separate now than find out your mistake afterwards when it is irrevocable. Thank God, He has given you such courage! But you must have suffered—I know you must;’ and she tenderly kissed her daughter.
‘Oh, mother! mother!’ cried Madge, ‘what is the worst—at least to—you—the worst that can happen to a woman?’
Mrs Hopgood did not speak; something presented itself which she refused to recognise, but she shuddered. Before she could recover herself Madge broke out again,—
‘It has happened to me; mother, your daughter has wrecked your peace for ever!’
‘And he has abandoned you?’
‘No, no; I told you it was I who left him.’
It was Mrs Hopgood’s custom, when any evil news was suddenly communicated to her, to withdraw at once if possible to her own room. She detached herself from Madge, rose, and, without a word, went upstairs and locked her door. The struggle was terrible. So much thought, so much care, such an education, such noble qualities, and they had not accomplished what ordinary ignorant Fenmarket mothers and daughters were able to achieve! This fine life, then, was a failure, and a perfect example of literary and artistic training had gone the way of the common wenches whose affiliation cases figured in the county newspaper. She was shaken and bewildered. She was neither orthodox nor secular. She was too strong to be afraid that what she disbelieved could be true, and yet a fatal weakness had been disclosed in what had been set up as its substitute. She could not treat her child as a sinner who was to be tortured into something like madness by immitigable punishment, but, on the other hand, she felt that this sorrow was unlike other sorrows and that it could never be healed. For some time she was powerless, blown this way and that way by contradictory storms, and unable to determine herself to any point whatever. She was not, however, new to the tempest. She had lived and had survived when she thought she must have gone down. She had learned the wisdom which the passage through desperate straits can bring. At last she prayed and in a few minutes a message was whispered to her. She went into the breakfast-room and seated herself again by Madge. Neither uttered a word, but Madge fell down before her, and, with a great cry, buried her face in her mother’s lap. She remained kneeling for some time waiting for a rebuke, but none came. Presently she felt smoothing hands on her head and the soft impress of lips. So was she judged.
Itwas settled that they should leave Fenmarket. Their departure caused but little surprise. They had scarcely any friends, and it was always conjectured that people so peculiar would ultimately find their way to London. They were particularly desirous to conceal their movements, and therefore determined to warehouse their furniture in town, to take furnished apartments there for three months, and then to move elsewhere. Any letters which might arrive at Fenmarket for them during these three months would be sent to them at their new address; nothing probably would come afterwards, and as nobody in Fenmarket would care to take any trouble about them, their trace would become obliterated. They found some rooms near Myddelton Square, Pentonville, not a particularly cheerful place, but they wished to avoid a more distant suburb, and Pentonville was cheap. Fortunately for them they had no difficulty whatever in getting rid of the Fenmarket house for the remainder of their term.
For a little while London diverted them after a fashion, but the absence of household cares told upon them. They had nothing to do but to read and to take dismal walks through Islington and Barnsbury, and the gloom of the outlook thickened as the days became shorter and the smoke began to darken the air. Madge was naturally more oppressed than the others, not only by reason of her temperament, but because she was the author of the trouble which had befallen them. Her mother and Clara did everything to sustain and to cheer her. They possessed the rare virtue of continuous tenderness. The love, which with many is an inspiration, was with them their own selves, from which they could not be separated; a harsh word could not therefore escape from them. It was as impossible as that there should be any failure in the pressure with which the rocks press towards the earth’s centre. Madge at times was very far gone in melancholy. How different this thing looked when it was close at hand; when she personally was to be the victim! She had read about it in history, the surface of which it seemed scarcely to ripple; it had been turned to music in some of her favourite poems and had lent a charm to innumerable mythologies, but the actual fact was nothing like the poetry or mythology, and threatened to ruin her own history altogether. Nor would it be her own history solely, but more or less that of her mother and sister.
Had she believed in the common creed, her attention would have been concentrated on the salvation of her own soul; she would have found her Redeemer and would have been comparatively at peace; she would have acknowledged herself convicted of infinite sin, and hell would have been opened before her, but above the sin and the hell she would have seen the distinct image of the Mediator abolishing both. Popular theology makes personal salvation of such immense importance that, in comparison therewith, we lose sight of the consequences to others of our misdeeds. The sense of cruel injustice to those who loved her remained with Madge perpetually.
To obtain relief she often went out of London for the day; sometimes her mother and sister went with her; sometimes she insisted on going alone. One autumn morning, she found herself at Letherhead, the longest trip she had undertaken, for there were scarcely any railways then. She wandered about till she discovered a footpath which took her to a mill-pond, which spread itself out into a little lake. It was fed by springs which burst up through the ground. She watched at one particular point, and saw the water boil up with such force that it cleared a space of a dozen yards in diameter from every weed, and formed a transparent pool just tinted with that pale azure which is peculiar to the living fountains which break out from the bottom of the chalk. She was fascinated for a moment by the spectacle, and reflected upon it, but she passed on. In about three-quarters of an hour she found herself near a church, larger than an ordinary village church, and, as she was tired, and the gate of the church porch was open, she entered and sat down. The sun streamed in upon her, and some sheep which had strayed into the churchyard from the adjoining open field came almost close to her, unalarmed, and looked in her face. The quiet was complete, and the air so still, that a yellow leaf dropping here and there from the churchyard elms—just beginning to turn—fell quiveringly in a straight path to the earth. Sick at heart and despairing, she could not help being touched, and she thought to herself how strange the world is—so transcendent both in glory and horror; a world capable of such scenes as those before her, and a world in which such suffering as hers could be; a world infinite both ways. The porch gate was open because the organist was about to practise, and in another instant she was listening to theKyriefrom Beethoven’s Mass in C. She knew it; Frank had tried to give her some notion of it on the piano, and since she had been in London she had heard it at St Mary’s, Moorfields. She broke down and wept, but there was something new in her sorrow, and it seemed as if a certain Pity overshadowed her.
She had barely recovered herself when she saw a woman, apparently about fifty, coming towards her with a wicker basket on her arm. She sat down beside Madge, put her basket on the ground, and wiped her face with her apron.
‘Marnin’ miss! its rayther hot walkin’, isn’t it? I’ve come all the way from Darkin, and I’m goin’ to Great Oakhurst. That’s a longish step there and back again; not that this is the nearest way, but I don’t like climbing them hills, and then when I get to Letherhead I shall have a lift in a cart.’
Madge felt bound to say something as the sunburnt face looked kind and motherly.
‘I suppose you live at Great Oakhurst?’
‘Yes. I do: my husband, God bless him! he was a kind of foreman at The Towers, and when he died I was left alone and didn’t know what to be at, as both my daughters were out and one married; so I took the general shop at Great Oakhurst, as Longwood used to have, but it don’t pay for I ain’t used to it, and the house is too big for me, and there isn’t nobody proper to mind it when I goes over to Darkin for anything.’
‘Are you going to leave?’
‘Well, I don’t quite know yet, miss, but I thinks I shall live with my daughter in London. She’s married a cabinetmaker in Great Ormond Street: they let lodgings, too. Maybe you know that part?’
‘No, I do not.’
‘You don’t live in London, then?’
‘Yes, I do. I came from London this morning.’
‘The Lord have mercy on us, did you though! I suppose, then, you’re a-visitin’ here. I know most of the folk hereabouts.’
‘No: I am going back this afternoon.’
Her interrogator was puzzled and her curiosity stimulated. Presently she looked in Madge’s face.
‘Ah! my poor dear, you’ll excuse me, I don’t mean to be forward, but I see you’ve been a-cryin’: there’s somebody buried here.’
‘No.’
That was all she could say. The walk from Letherhead, and the excitement had been too much for her and she fainted. Mrs Caffyn, for that was her name, was used to fainting fits. She was often ‘a bit faint’ herself, and she instantly loosened Madge’s gown, brought out some smelling-salts and also a little bottle of brandy and water. Something suddenly struck her. She took up Madge’s hand: there was no wedding ring on it.
Presently her patient recovered herself.
‘Look you now, my dear; you aren’t noways fit to go back to London to-day. If you was my child you shouldn’t do it for all the gold in the Indies, no, nor you sha’n’t now. I shouldn’t have a wink of sleep this night if I let you go, and if anything were to happen to you it would be me as ’ud have to answer for it.’
‘But I must go; my mother and sister will not know what has become of me.’
‘You leave that to me; I tell you again as you can’t go. I’ve been a mother myself, and I haven’t had children for nothing. I was just a-goin’ to send a little parcel up to my daughter by the coach, and her husband’s a-goin’ to meet it. She’d left something behind last week when she was with me, and I thought I’d get a bit of fresh butter here for her and put along with it. They make better butter in the farm in the bottom there, than they do at Great Oakhurst. A note inside now will get to your mother all right; you have a bit of something to eat and drink here, and you’ll be able to walk along of me just into Letherhead, and then you can ride to Great Oakhurst; it’s only about two miles, and you can stay there all night.’
Madge was greatly touched; she took Mrs Caffyn’s hands in hers, pressed them both and consented. She was very weary, and the stamp on Mrs Caffyn’s countenance was indubitable; it was evidently no forgery, but of royal mintage. They walked slowly to Letherhead, and there they found the carrier’s cart, which took them to Great Oakhurst.
Mrs Caffyn’shouse was a roomy old cottage near the church, with a bow-window in which were displayed bottles of ‘suckers,’ and of Day & Martin’s blacking, cotton stuffs, a bag of nuts and some mugs, cups and saucers. Inside were salt butter, washing-blue, drapery, treacle, starch, tea, tobacco and snuff, cheese, matches, bacon, and a few drugs, such as black draught, magnesia, pills, sulphur, dill-water, Dalby’s Carminative, and steel-drops. There was also a small stock of writing-paper, string and tin ware. A boy was behind the counter. When Mrs Caffyn was out he always asked the customers who desired any article, the sale of which was in any degree an art, to call again when she returned. He went as far as those things which were put up in packets, such as what were called ‘grits’ for making gruel, and he was also authorised to venture on pennyworths of liquorice and peppermints, but the sale of half-a-dozen yards of cotton print was as much above him as the negotiation of a treaty of peace would be to a messenger in the Foreign Office. In fact, nobody, excepting children, went into the shop when Mrs Caffyn was not to be seen there, and, if she had to go to Dorking or Letherhead on business, she always chose the middle of the day, when the folk were busy at their homes or in the fields. Poor woman! she was much tried. Half the people who dealt with her were in her debt, but she could not press them for her money. During winter-time they were discharged by the score from their farms, but as they were not sufficiently philosophic, or sufficiently considerate for their fellows to hang or drown themselves, they were obliged to consume food, and to wear clothes, for which they tried to pay by instalments during spring, summer and autumn. Mrs Caffyn managed to make both ends meet by the help of two or three pigs, by great economy, and by letting some of her superfluous rooms. Great Oakhurst was not a show place nor a Spa, but the Letherhead doctor had once recommended her to a physician in London, who occasionally sent her a patient who wanted nothing but rest and fresh air. She also, during the shooting-season, was often asked to find a bedroom for visitors to The Towers.
She might have done better had she been on thoroughly good terms with the parson. She attended church on Sunday morning with tolerable regularity. She never went inside a dissenting chapel, and was not heretical on any definite theological point, but the rector and she were not friends. She had lived in Surrey ever since she was a child, but she was not Surrey born. Both her father and mother came from the north country, and migrated southwards when she was very young. They were better educated than the southerners amongst whom they came; and although their daughter had no schooling beyond what was obtainable in a Surrey village of that time, she was distinguished by a certain superiority which she had inherited or acquired from her parents. She was never subservient to the rector after the fashion of her neighbours; she never curtsied to him, and if he passed and nodded she said ‘Marnin’, sir,’ in just the same tone as that in which she said it to the smallest of the Great Oakhurst farmers. Her church-going was an official duty incumbent upon her as the proprietor of the only shop in the parish. She had nothing to do with church matters except on Sunday, and she even went so far as to neglect to send for the rector when one of her children lay dying. She was attacked for the omission, but she defended herself.
‘What was the use when the poor dear was only seven year old? What call was there for him to come to a blessed innocent like that? I did tell him to look in when my husband was took, for I know as before we were married there was something atween him and that gal Sanders. He never would own up to me about it, and I thought as he might to a clergyman, and, if he did, it would ease his mind and make it a bit better for him afterwards; but, Lord! it warn’t no use, for he went off and we didn’t so much as hear her name, not even when he was a-wandering. I says to myself when the parson left, “What’s the good of having you?”’
Mrs Caffyn was a Christian, but she was a disciple of St James rather than of St Paul. She believed, of course, the doctrines of the Catechism, in the sense that she denied none, and would have assented to all if she had been questioned thereon; but her belief that ‘faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone,’ was something very vivid and very practical.
Her estimate, too, of the relative values of the virtues and of the relative sinfulness of sins was original, and the rector therefore told all his parishioners that she was little better than a heathen. The common failings in that part of the country amongst the poor were Saturday-night drunkenness and looseness in the relations between the young men and young women. Mrs Caffyn’s indignation never rose to the correct boiling point against these crimes. The rector once ventured to say, as the case was next door to her,—
‘It is very sad, is it not, Mrs Caffyn, that Polesden should be so addicted to drink. I hope he did not disturb you last Saturday night. I have given the constable directions to look after the street more closely on Saturday evening, and if Polesden again offends he must be taken up.’
Mrs Caffyn was behind her own counter. She had just served a customer with two ounces of Dutch cheese, and she sat down on her stool. Being rather a heavy woman she always sat down when she was not busy, and she never rose merely to talk.
‘Yes, it is sad, sir, and Polesden isn’t no particular friend of mine, but I tell you what’s sad too, sir, and that’s the way them people are mucked up in that cottage. Why, their living room opens straight on the road, and the wind comes in fit to blow your head off, and when he goes home o’ nights, there’s them children a-squalling, and he can’t bide there and do nothing.’
‘I am afraid, though, Mrs Caffyn, there must be something radically wrong with that family. I suppose you know all about the eldest daughter?’
‘Yes, sir, Ihaveheard it: it wouldn’t be Great Oakhurst if I hadn’t, but p’r’aps, sir, you’ve never been upstairs in that house, and yet a house it isn’t. There’s just two sleeping-rooms, that’s all; it’s shameful, it isn’t decent. Well, that gal, she goes away to service. Maybe, sir, them premises at the farm are also unbeknown to you. In the back kitchen there’s a broadish sort of shelf as Jim climbs into o’ nights, and it has a rail round it to keep you from a-falling out, and there’s a ladder as they draws up in the day as goes straight up from that kitchen to the gal’s bedroom door. It’s downright disgraceful, and I don’t believe the Lord A’mighty would be marciful to neither ofusif we was tried like that.’
Mrs Caffyn bethought herself of the ‘us’ and was afraid that even she had gone a little too far; ‘leastways, speaking for myself, sir,’ she added.
The rector turned rather red, and repented his attempt to enlist Mrs Caffyn.
‘If the temptations are so great, Mrs Caffyn, that is all the more reason why those who are liable to them should seek the means which are provided in order that they may be overcome. I believe the Polesdens are very lax attendants at church, and I don’t think they ever communicated.’
Mrs Polesden at that moment came in for an ounce of tea, and as Mrs Caffyn rose to weigh it, the rector departed with a stiff ‘good-morning,’ made to do duty for both women.
Mrs Caffynpersuaded Madge to go to bed at once, after giving her ‘something to comfort her.’ In the morning her kind hostess came to her bedside.
‘You’ve got a mother, haven’t you—leastways, I know you have, because you wrote to her.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, and you lives with her and she looks after you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And she’s fond of you, maybe?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘That’s a marcy; well then, my dear, you shall go back in the cart to Letherhead, and you’ll catch the Darkin coach to London.’
‘You have been very good to me; what have I to pay you?’
‘Pay? Nothing! why, if I was to let you pay, it would just look as if I’d trapped you here to get something out of you. Pay! no, not a penny.’
‘I can afford very well to pay, but if it vexes you I will not offer anything. I don’t know how to thank you enough.’
Madge took Mrs Caffyn’s hand in hers and pressed it firmly.
‘Besides, my dear,’ said Mrs Caffyn, smoothing the sheets a little, ‘you won’t mind my saying it, I expex you are in trouble. There’s something on your mind, and I believe as I knows pretty well what it is.’
Madge turned round in the bed so as no longer to face the light; Mrs Caffyn sat between her and the window.
‘Look you here, my dear; don’t you suppose I meant to say anything to hurt you. The moment I looked on you I was drawed to you like; I couldn’t help it. I see’d what was the matter, but I was all the more drawed, and I just wanted you to know as it makes no difference. That’s like me; sometimes I’m drawed that way and sometimes t’other way, and it’s never no use for me to try to go against it. I ain’t a-going to say anything more to you; God-A’mighty, He’s above us all; but p’r’aps you may be comm’ this way again some day, and then you’ll look in.’
Madge turned again to the light, and again caught Mrs Caffyn’s hand, but was silent.
The next morning, after Madge’s return, Mrs Cork, the landlady, presented herself at the sitting-room door and ‘wished to speak with Mrs Hopgood for a minute.’
‘Come in, Mrs Cork.’
‘Thank you, ma’am, but I prefer as you should come downstairs.’
Mrs Cork was about forty, a widow with no children. She had a face of which it was impossible to recollect, when it had been seen even a dozen times, any feature except the eyes, which were steel-blue, a little bluer than the faceted head of the steel poker in her parlour, but just as hard. She lived in the basement with a maid, much like herself but a little more human. Although the front underground room was furnished Mrs Cork never used it, except on the rarest occasions, and a kind of apron of coloured paper hung over the fireplace nearly all the year. She was a woman of what she called regular habits. No lodger was ever permitted to transgress her rules, or to have meals ten minutes before or ten minutes after the appointed time. She had undoubtedly been married, but who Cork could have been was a marvel. Why he died, and why there were never any children were no marvels. At two o’clock her grate was screwed up to the narrowest possible dimensions, and the ashes, potato peelings, tea leaves and cabbage stalks were thrown on the poor, struggling coals. No meat, by the way, was ever roasted—it was considered wasteful—everything was baked or boiled. After half-past four not a bit of anything that was not cold was allowed till the next morning, and, indeed, from the first of April to the thirty-first of October the fire was raked out the moment tea was over. Mrs Hopgood one night was not very well and Clara wished to give her mother something warm. She rang the bell and asked for hot water. Maria came up and disappeared without a word after receiving the message. Presently she returned.
‘Mrs Cork, miss, wishes me to tell you as it was never understood as ’ot water would be required after tea, and she hasn’t got any.’
Mrs Hopgood had a fire, although it was not yet the thirty-first of October, for it was very damp and raw. She had with much difficulty induced Mrs Cork to concede this favour (which probably would not have been granted if the coals had not yielded a profit of threepence a scuttleful), and Clara, therefore, asked if she could not have the kettle upstairs. Again Maria disappeared and returned.
‘Mrs Cork says, miss, as it’s very ill-convenient as the kettle is cleaned up agin to-morrow, and if you can do without it she will be obliged.’
It was of no use to continue the contest, and Clara bethought herself of a little ‘Etna’ she had in her bedroom. She went to the druggist’s, bought some methylated spirit, and obtained what she wanted.
Mrs Cork had one virtue and one weakness. Her virtue was cleanliness, but she persecuted the ‘blacks,’ not because she objected to dirt as dirt, but because it was unauthorised, appeared without permission at irregular hours, and because the glittering polish on varnished paint and red mahogany was a pleasure to her. She liked the dirt, too, in a way, for she enjoyed the exercise of her ill-temper on it and the pursuit of it to destruction. Her weakness was an enormous tom-cat which had a bell round its neck and slept in a basket in the kitchen, the best-behaved and most moral cat in the parish. At half-past nine every evening it was let out into the back-yard and vanished. At ten precisely it was heard to mew and was immediately admitted. Not once in a twelvemonth did that cat prolong its love making after five minutes to ten.
Mrs Hopgood went upstairs to her room, Mrs Cork following and closing the door.
‘If you please, ma’am, I wish to give you notice to leave this day week.’
‘What is the matter, Mrs Cork?’
‘Well, ma’am, for one thing, I didn’t know as you’d bring a bird with you.’
It was a pet bird belonging to Madge.
‘But what harm does the bird do? It gives no trouble; my daughter attends to it.’
‘Yes, ma’am, but it worrits my Joseph—the cat, I mean. I found him the other mornin’ on the table eyin’ it, and I can’t a-bear to see him urritated.’
‘I should hardly have thought that a reason for parting with good lodgers.’
Mrs Hopgood had intended to move, as before explained, but she did not wish to go till the three months had expired.
‘I don’t say as that is everything, but if you wish me to tell you the truth, Miss Madge is not a person as I like to keep in the house. I wish you to know’—Mrs Cork suddenly became excited and venomous—‘that I’m a respectable woman, and have always let my apartments to respectable people, and do you think I should ever let them to respectable people again if it got about as I had had anybody as wasn’t respectable? Where was she last night? And do you suppose as me as has been a married woman can’t see the condition she’s in? I say as you, Mrs Hopgood, ought to be ashamed of yourself for bringing of such a person into a house like mine, and you’ll please vacate these premises on the day named.’ She did not wait for an answer, but banged the door after her, and went down to her subterranean den.
Mrs Hopgood did not tell her children the true reason for leaving. She merely said that Mrs Cork had been very impertinent, and that they must look out for other rooms. Madge instantly recollected Great Ormond Street, but she did not know the number, and oddly enough she had completely forgotten Mrs Caffyn’s name. It was a peculiar name, she had heard it only once, she had not noticed it over the door, and her exhaustion may have had something to do with her loss of memory. She could not therefore write, and Mrs Hopgood determined that she herself would go to Great Oakhurst. She had another reason for her journey. She wished her kind friend there to see that Madge had really a mother who cared for her. She was anxious to confirm Madge’s story, and Mrs Caffyn’s confidence. Clara desired to go also, but Mrs Hopgood would not leave Madge alone, and the expense of a double fare was considered unnecessary.
When Mrs Hopgood came to Letherhead on her return, the coach was full inside, and she was obliged to ride outside, although the weather was cold and threatening. In about half an hour it began to rain heavily, and by the time she was in Pentonville she was wet through. The next morning she ought to have lain in bed, but she came down at her accustomed hour as Mrs Cork was more than usually disagreeable, and it was settled that they would leave at once if the rooms in Great Ormond Street were available. Clara went there directly after breakfast, and saw Mrs Marshall, who had already received an introductory letter from her mother.
TheMarshall family included Marshall and his wife. He was rather a small man, with blackish hair, small lips, and with a nose just a little turned up at the tip. As we have been informed, he was a cabinet-maker. He worked for very good shops, and earned about two pounds a week. He read books, but he did not know their value, and often fancied he had made a great discovery on a bookstall of an author long ago superseded and worthless. He belonged to a mechanic’s institute, and was fond of animal physiology; heard courses of lectures on it at the institute, and had studied two or three elementary handbooks. He found in a second-hand dealer’s shop a model, which could be taken to pieces, of the inside of the human body. He had also bought a diagram of a man, showing the circulation, and this he had hung in his bedroom, his mother-in-law objecting most strongly on the ground that its effect on his wife was injurious. He had a notion that the world might be regenerated if men and women were properly instructed in physiological science, and if before marriage they would study their own physical peculiarities, and those of their intended partners. The crossing of peculiarities nevertheless presented difficulties. A man with long legs surely ought to choose a woman with short legs, but if a man who was mathematical married a woman who was mathematical, the result might be a mathematical prodigy. On the other hand the parents of the prodigy might each have corresponding qualities, which, mixed with the mathematical tendency, would completely nullify it. The path of duty therefore was by no means plain. However, Marshall was sure that great cities dwarfed their inhabitants, and as he himself was not so tall as his father, and, moreover, suffered from bad digestion, and had a tendency to ‘run to head,’ he determined to select as his wife a ‘daughter of the soil,’ to use his own phrase, above the average height, with a vigorous constitution and plenty of common sense. She need not be bookish, ‘he could supply all that himself.’ Accordingly, he married Sarah Caffyn. His mother and Mrs Caffyn had been early friends. He was not mistaken in Sarah. She was certainly robust; she was a shrewd housekeeper, and she never read anything, except now and then a paragraph or two in the weekly newspaper, notwithstanding (for there were no children), time hung rather heavily on her hands. One child had been born, but to Marshall’s surprise and disappointment it was a poor, rickety thing, and died before it was a twelvemonth old.
Mrs Marshall was not a very happy woman. Marshall was a great politician and spent many of his evenings away from home at political meetings. He never informed her what he had been doing, and if he had told her, she would neither have understood nor cared anything about it. At Great Oakhurst she heard everything and took an interest in it, and she often wished with all her heart that the subject which occupied Marshall’s thoughts was not Chartism but the draining of that heavy, rush-grown bit of rough pasture that lay at the bottom of the village. He was very good and kind to her, and she never imagined, before marriage, that he ought to be more. She was sure that at Great Oakhurst she would have been quite comfortable with him but somehow, in London, it was different. ‘I don’t know how it is,’ she said one day, ‘the sort of husband as does for the country doesn’t do for London.’
At Great Oakhurst, where the doors were always open into the yard and the garden, where every house was merely a covered bit of the open space, where people were always in and out, and women never sat down, except to their meals, or to do a little stitching or sewing, it was really not necessary, as Mrs Caffyn observed, that husband and wife should ‘hit it so fine.’ Mrs Marshall hated all the conveniences of London. She abominated particularly the taps, and longed to be obliged in all weathers to go out to the well and wind up the bucket. She abominated also the dust-bin, for it was a pleasure to be compelled—so at least she thought it now—to walk down to the muck-heap and throw on it what the pig could not eat. Nay, she even missed that corner of the garden against the elder-tree, where the pig-stye was, for ‘you could smell the elder-flowers there in the spring-time, and the pig-stye wasn’t as bad as the stuffy back room in Great Ormond Street when three or four men were in it.’ She did all she could to spend her energy on her cooking and cleaning, but ‘there was no satisfaction in it,’ and she became much depressed, especially after the child died. This was the main reason why Mrs Caffyn determined to live with her. Marshall was glad she resolved to come. His wife had her full share of the common sense he desired, but the experiment had not altogether succeeded. He knew she was lonely, and he was sorry for her, although he did not see how he could mend matters. He reflected carefully, nothing had happened which was a surprise to him, the relationship was what he had supposed it would be, excepting that the child did not live and its mother was a little miserable. There was nothing he would not do for her, but he really had nothing more to offer her.
Although Mrs Marshall had made up her mind that husbands and wives could not be as contented with one another in the big city as they would be in a village, a suspicion crossed her mind one day that, even in London, the relationship might be different from her own. She was returning from Great Oakhurst after a visit to her mother. She had stayed there for about a month after her child’s death, and she travelled back to town with a Letherhead woman, who had married a journeyman tanner, who formerly worked in the Letherhead tan-yard, and had now moved to Bermondsey, a horrid hole, worse than Great Ormond Street. Both Marshall and the tanner were at the ‘Swan with Two Necks’ to meet the covered van, and the tanner’s wife jumped out first.
‘Hullo, old gal, here you are,’ cried the tanner, and clasped her in his brown, bark-stained arms, giving her, nothing loth, two or three hearty kisses. They were so much excited at meeting one another, that they forgot their friends, and marched off without bidding them good-bye. Mrs Marshall was welcomed in quieter fashion.
‘Ah!’ she thought to herself. ‘Red Tom,’ as the tanner was called, ‘is not used to London ways. They are, perhaps, correct for London, but Marshall might now and then remember that I have not been brought up to them.’
To return, however, to the Hopgoods. Before the afternoon they were in their new quarters, happily for them, for Mrs Hopgood became worse. On the morrow she was seriously ill, inflammation of the lungs appeared, and in a week she was dead. What Clara and Madge suffered cannot be told here. Whenever anybody whom we love dies, we discover that although death is commonplace it is terribly original. We may have thought about it all our lives, but if it comes close to us, it is quite a new, strange thing to us, for which we are entirely unprepared. It may, perhaps, not be the bare loss so much as the strength of the bond which is broken that is the surprise, and we are debtors in a way to death for revealing something in us which ordinary life disguises. Long after the first madness of their grief had passed, Clara and Madge were astonished to find how dependent they had been on their mother. They were grown-up women accustomed to act for themselves, but they felt unsteady, and as if deprived of customary support. The reference to her had been constant, although it was often silent, and they were not conscious of it. A defence from the outside waste desert had been broken down, their mother had always seemed to intervene between them and the world, and now they were exposed and shelterless.
Three parts of Mrs Hopgood’s little income was mainly an annuity, and Clara and Madge found that between them they had but seventy-five pounds a year.
Frankcould not rest. He wrote again to Clara at Fenmarket; the letter went to Mrs Cork’s, and was returned to him. He saw that the Hopgoods had left Fenmarket, and suspecting the reason, he determined at any cost to go home. He accordingly alleged ill-health, a pretext not altogether fictitious, and within a few days after the returned letter reached him he was back at Stoke Newington. He went immediately to the address in Pentonville which he found on the envelope, but was very shortly informed by Mrs Cork that ‘she knew nothing whatever about them.’ He walked round Myddelton Square, hopeless, for he had no clue whatever.
What had happened to him would scarcely, perhaps, have caused some young men much uneasiness, but with Frank the case was altogether different. There was a chance of discovery, and if his crime should come to light his whole future life would be ruined. He pictured his excommunication, his father’s agony, and it was only when it seemed possible that the water might close over the ghastly thing thrown in it, and no ripple reveal what lay underneath, that he was able to breathe again. Immediately he asked himself, however,ifhe could live with his father and wear a mask, and never betray his dreadful secret. So he wandered homeward in the most miserable of all conditions; he was paralysed by the intricacy of the coil which enveloped and grasped him.
That evening it happened that there was a musical party at his father’s house; and, of course, he was expected to assist. It would have suited his mood better if he could have been in his own room, or out in the streets, but absence would have been inconsistent with his disguise, and might have led to betrayal. Consequently he was present, and the gaiety of the company and the excitement of his favourite exercise, brought about for a time forgetfulness of his trouble. Amongst the performers was a distant cousin, Cecilia Morland, a young woman rather tall and fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich pulsations. She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing. She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer’s house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could not restrain his eyes from straying every now and then a way from his music to her shoulders, and once nearly lost himself, during a solo which required a little unusual exertion, in watching the movement of a locket and of what was for a moment revealed beneath it. He escorted her amidst applause to a corner of the room, and the two sat down side by side.
‘What a long time it is, Frank, since you and I sang that duet together. We have seen nothing of you lately.’
‘Of course not; I was in Germany.’
‘Yes, but I think you deserted us before then. Do you remember that summer when we were all together at Bonchurch, and the part songs which astonished our neighbours just as it was growing dark? I recollect you and I tried together that very duet for the first time with the old lodging-house piano.’
Frank remembered that evening well.
‘You sang better than you did to-night. You did not keep time: what were you dreaming about?’
‘How hot the room is! Do you not feel it oppressive? Let us go into the conservatory for a minute.’
The door was behind them and they slipped in and sat down, just inside, and under the orange tree.
‘You must not be away so long again. Now mind, we have a musical evening this day fortnight. You will come? Promise; and we must sing that duet again, and sing it properly.’
He did not reply, but he stooped down, plucked a blood-red begonia, and gave it to her.
‘That is a pledge. It is very good of you.’
She tried to fasten it in her gown, underneath the locket, but she dropped a little black pin. He went down on his knees to find it; rose, and put the flower in its proper place himself, and his head nearly touched her neck, quite unnecessarily.
‘We had better go back now,’ she said, ‘but mind, I shall keep this flower for a fortnight and a day, and if you make any excuses I shall return it faded and withered.’
‘Yes, I will come.’
‘Good boy; no apologies like those you sent the last time. No bad throat. Play me false, and there will be a pretty rebuke for you—a dead flower.’
Play me false! It was as if there were some stoppage in a main artery to his brain.Play me false! It rang in his ears, and for a moment he saw nothing but the scene at the Hall with Miranda. Fortunately for him, somebody claimed Cecilia, and he slunk back into the greenhouse.
One of Mr Palmer’s favourite ballads wasThe Three Ravens. Its pathos unfits it for an ordinary drawing-room, but as the music at Mr Palmer’s was not of the common kind,The Three Ravenswas put on the list for that night.
‘She was dead herself ere evensong time.With a down,hey down,hey down,God send every gentlemanSuch hawks,such hounds,and such a leman.With down,hey down,hey down.’
‘She was dead herself ere evensong time.With a down,hey down,hey down,God send every gentlemanSuch hawks,such hounds,and such a leman.With down,hey down,hey down.’
Frank knew well the prayer of that melody, and, as he listened, he painted to himself, in the vividest colours, Madge in a mean room, in a mean lodging, and perhaps dying. The song ceased, and one for him stood next. He heard voices calling him, but he passed out into the garden and went down to the further end, hiding himself behind the shrubs. Presently the inquiry for him ceased, and he was relieved by hearing an instrumental piece begin.
Following on that presentation of Madge came self-torture for his unfaithfulness. He scourged himself into what he considered to be his duty. He recalled with an effort all Madge’s charms, mental and bodily, and he tried to break his heart for her. He was in anguish because he found that in order to feel as he ought to feel some effort was necessary; that treason to her was possible, and because he had looked with such eyes upon his cousin that evening. He saw himself as something separate from himself, and although he knew what he saw to be flimsy and shallow, he could do nothing to deepen it, absolutely nothing! It was not the betrayal of that thunderstorm which now tormented him. He could have represented that as a failure to be surmounted; he could have repented it. It was his own inner being from which he revolted, from limitations which are worse than crimes, for who, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?