A Valiant Ignorance; vol. 3 of 3 / A Novel in Three Volumes

by Mary Angela Dickens

The little street which, for some scores of men and women, formed the picture evoked by a name which, for the shopping population of London, involved a mental vision of a busy thoroughfare and a considerable expanse of plate-glass windows, ran parallel to that thoroughfare, divided from it only by a long block of buildings; and bearing in mind the slight nature of the division between the two, the contrast presented was almost startling. The little street was a thoroughfare inasmuch as it led from one side-street to another; but these streets were very little frequented, and the connecting-link between them was a short cut to nowhere. It represented simply so many back entrances to places of business, and these being to a great extent monopolised by a single firm, the comings and goings at stated times of the hands employed by that firm was often the only movement that broke the quiet from morning until night. In the intervals between these comings and goings there brooded over the street such a silence and stillness as seemed strangely incompatible with the thought of all the labour and effort that it held; with the hard day’s work towards which those coming footsteps in the morning were bent; with the hard day’s work which lay behind those departing footsteps in the evening. The street itself had a squalid, neglected look, too, as though life and activity had passed it by.

The day’s work was not over yet, though the evening light was making long shadows, and the setting sun was turning the upper windows of the opposite houses into ruddy fire; the street was absolutely silent and deserted when Julian turned quickly into it. He pulled up and surveyed his surroundings with a rapid, comprehensive glance.

It was too early yet. He looked at his watch and told himself so with somewhat over-elaborated carelessness, and took out his cigarette-case. He lighted a cigarette; and pacing slowly up and down the pavement on the opposite side of the street to that on which he expected Clemence to emerge, he began to reckon with himself the chances for and against her speedy or tardy appearance.

But such practical, matter-of-fact considerations involved a deliberate mental action on his part, and having gone through it, urged by that curious instinct under which intense excitement always desires to assert itself as absolute calm and sanity, he gradually let himself slip away again from the practical and the actual, and gave himself up to the tide of his exhilarated imaginings.

There is nothing more exciting, nothing that sooner quickens the mental pulses into a very fever of confusion, than the sudden indulgence of an impulse long resisted. The hour that had passed since the idea, of which his presence in that quiet little street was the outcome, had flashed into Julian’s mind and dominated it, had carried him as completely out of himself, and out of touch with realities, as is a man under the influence of absinthe. As a man so exhilarated will be impervious to a considerable amount of physical pain, so Julian was for the time being absolutely unconscious of anything painful or shameful in his position. The circumstances under which he had parted from Clemence; all the bitter pain and longing under which he had smarted and writhed with such fierce rebellion; the attitude towards himself which his conduct might only too justly have created in his wife; were absolutely obliterated from his mind. He was waiting now—husband, master, altogether the superior; triumphant, successful, self-assured—for his mistaken but doubtless submissive wife; conscious, and rather pleased with the consciousness, that he loved her in spite of her faults.

One quarter after another chimed out from a neighbouring clock. He had been waiting nearly an hour, oblivious, in his elation, of tedium or weariness; oblivious of the claim upon him of the life of Queen Anne Street as though it had no existence for him. The slight feeling of impatience with which he realised that the fourth quarter was chiming was entirely unconnected with such externals; and it was an eloquent testimony to his mental attitude that it took the form of a faint sense of irritation with Clemence for delaying so long. A vague feeling of lordly disapproval of her conduct stirred in him, as he paused at the top of the street and glanced across at the still fast-closed doors. He was just looking dubiously at his cigarette-case when the click of a latch, instantly followed by the sound of girls’ voices, made him start violently. He thrust the case hastily into his pocket and walked quickly down the street, until he was standing just opposite the door from which a little stream of girls and women was pouring forth.

Several figures had already detached themselves from the stream and were moving rapidly away, either singly or in pairs; but one quick glance told him that neither of these was Clemence, and he fixed his eyes with eager confidence on the doorway through which she had still to pass. His face was flushed with intense excitement. On came the stream, girls and women following one another in unbroken succession; pretty girls, plain girls, shabby girls, smart girls, some arm in arm, some laughing and talking in loud-voiced groups; several of these groups noticed his waiting figure and commented upon it in giggling whispers, turning back as they passed down the street to look at it again, but Julian only saw that none of these was Clemence. The stream was beginning to dwindle; stragglers followed one another now at irregular intervals; the two girls who had been the last to appear had nearly reached the end of the street, and still Julian’s eyes were riveted on the open doorway.

The girls turned the corner, and down the dim passage into which he was looking there came slowly another figure quite alone. Before it had emerged into the light Julian was across the road, as though that one great throb with which his heart leapt up to meet her had impelled him physically, and as Clemence passed out into the soft dusk of the June evening he spoke her name, eagerly at first, then with a strange break in his voice:

“Clemence! Clemence!”

At the first sound of his voice—evidently the first sign to her that he was near—a low, indescribable cry broke from Clemence; she turned towards him trembling, swaying as she stood, and Julian caught her in his arms lest she should fall.