Chapter 28

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.’

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THE END

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_Colston & Company_, _Ltd._, _Printers_, _Edinburgh_.