The Three Clerks

by Anthony Trollope

We all of us acknowledge that the educated man who breaks the laws is justly liable to a heavier punishment than he who has been born in ignorance, and bred, as it were, in the lap of sin; but we hardly realize how much greater is the punishment which, when he be punished, the educated man is forced to undergo. Confinement to the man whose mind has never been lifted above vacancy is simply remission from labour. Confinement, with labour, is simply the enforcement of that which has hitherto been his daily lot. But what must a prison be to him whose intellect has received the polish of the world's poetry, who has known what it is to feed more than the belly, to require other aliment than bread and meat?

And then, what does the poor criminal lose? His all, it will be said; and the rich can lose no more. But this is not so. No man loses his all by any sentence which a human judge can inflict. No man so loses anything approaching to his all, however much he may have lost before. But the one man has too often had no self-respect to risk; the other has stood high in his own esteem, has held his head proudly before the world, has aspired to walk in some way after the fashion of a god. Alaric had so aspired, and how must he have felt during those prison days! Of what nature must his thoughts have been when they turned to Gertrude and his child! His sin had indeed been heavy, and heavy was the penalty which he suffered. When they had been thus living for about three months, Gertrude's second child was born. Mrs. Woodward was with her at the time, and she had suffered but little except that for three weeks she was unable to see her husband; then, in the teeth of all counsel, and in opposition to all medical warning, she could resist no longer, and carried the newborn stranger to his father.

'Poor little wretch!' said Alaric, as he stooped to kiss him.

'Wretch!' said Gertrude, looking up to him with a smile upon her face—'he is no wretch. He is a sturdy little man, that shall yet live to make your heart dance with joy.'

Mrs. Woodward came often to see her. She did not stay, for there was no bed in which she could have slept; but the train put her down at Vauxhall, and she had but to pass the bridge, and she was close to Gertrude's lodgings. And now the six months had nearly gone by, when, by appointment, she brought Norman with her. At this time he had given up his clerkship at the Weights and Measures, and was about to go to Normansgrove for the remainder of the winter. Both Alaric and Norman had shown a great distaste to meet each other. But Harry's heart softened towards Gertrude. Her conduct during her husband's troubles had been so excellent, that he could not but forgive her the injuries which he fancied he owed to her.

Everything was now prepared for their departure. They were to sail on the very day after Alaric's liberation, so as to save him from the misery of meeting those who might know him. And now Harry came with Mrs. Woodward to bid farewell, probably for ever on this side the grave, to her whom he had once looked on as his own. How different were their lots now! Harry was Mr. Norman of Normansgrove, immediately about to take his place as the squire of his parish, to sit among brother magistrates, to decide about roads and poachers, parish rates and other all-absorbing topics, to be a rural magistrate, and fill a place among perhaps the most fortunate of the world's inhabitants. Gertrude was the wife of a convicted felon, who was about to come forth from his prison in utter poverty, a man who, in such a catalogue as the world makes of its inhabitants, would be ranked among the very lowest.

And did Gertrude even now regret her choice? No, not for a moment! She still felt certain in her heart of hearts that she had loved the one who was the most worthy of a woman's love. We cannot, probably, all agree in her opinion; but we will agree in this, at least, that she was now right to hold such opinion. Had Normansgrove stretched from one boundary of the county to the other, it would have weighed as nothing. Had Harry's virtues been as bright as burnished gold—and indeed they had been bright—they would have weighed as nothing. A nobler stamp of manhood was on her husband—so at least Gertrude felt;—and manhood is the one virtue which in a woman's breast outweighs all others.

They had not met since the evening on which Gertrude had declared to him that she never could love him; and Norman, as he got out of the cab with Mrs. Woodward, at No. 5, Paradise Row, Millbank, felt his heart beat within him almost as strongly as he had done when he was about to propose to her. He followed Mrs. Woodward into the dingy little house, and immediately found himself in Gertrude's presence.

I should exaggerate the fact were I to say that he would not have known her; but had he met her elsewhere, met her where he did not expect to meet her, he would have looked at her more than once before he felt assured that he was looking at Gertrude Woodward. It was not that she had grown pale, or worn, or haggard; though, indeed, her face had on it that weighty look of endurance which care will always give; it was not that she had lost her beauty, and become unattractive in his eyes; but that the whole nature of her mien and form, the very trick of her gait was changed. Her eye was as bright as ever, but it was steady, composed, and resolved; her lips were set and compressed, and there was no playfulness round her mouth. Her hair was still smooth and bright, but it was more brushed off from her temples than it had been of yore, and was partly covered by a bit of black lace, which we presume we must call a cap; here and there, too, through it, Norman's quick eye detected a few grey hairs. She was stouter too than she had been, or else she seemed to be so from the changes in her dress. Her step fell heavier on the floor than it used to do, and her voice was quicker and more decisive in its tones. When she spoke to her mother, she did so as one sister might do to another; and, indeed, Mrs. Woodward seemed to exercise over her very little of the authority of a parent. The truth was that Gertrude had altogether ceased to be a girl, had altogether become a woman. Linda, with whom Norman at once compared her, though but one year younger, was still a child in comparison with her elder sister. Happy, happy Linda!

Gertrude had certainly proved herself to be an excellent wife; but perhaps she might have made herself more pleasing to others if she had not so entirely thrown off from herself all traces of juvenility. Could she, in this respect, have taken a lesson from her mother, she would have been a wiser woman. We have said that she consorted with Mrs. Woodward as though they had been sisters; but one might have said that Gertrude took on herself the manners of the elder sister. It is true that she had hard duties to perform, a stern world to overcome, an uphill fight before her with poverty, distress, and almost, nay, absolutely, with degradation. It was well for her and Alaric that she could face it all with the true courage of an honest woman. But yet those who had known her in her radiant early beauty could not but regret that the young freshness of early years should all have been laid aside so soon.