第64章

DAD WEEPS ON A TOMBSTONE

The scene at Cremorne Point had suddenly reminded Clara that she was playing with fire.In the beginning she had consented to these meetings to humour the parent of her best pupil,and gradually she had drifted into an intimacy with Jonah without the courage to end it.To her fastidious taste his physical deformity and the flavour of Cardigan Street that still clung about his speech and manners put him out of court as a possible lover;but it had gratified her pride to discover that he was in love with her,and as he never expressed himself more plainly than by furtive glances and sudden inflections in his voice,she felt sure of her power to keep him at a distance.

These outings,indeed,had nearly fallen through,when Jonah,fumbling for words and afraid to say what was on his mind,had touched on a detail of his business.To his surprise Clara caught fire like straw,fascinated at being shown the inner workings of the "Silver Shoe".And from that time a curious attitude had grown between them.Jonah talked of his business,and stared at Clara as she listened,forgetful of him,her mind absorbed in details of profit and loss.She found the position easy to maintain,for Jonah,catching at straws,demanded no positive encouragement.

A chance word or look from her was rich matter for a week's thought,twisted and turned in his mind till it meant all he desired.

She saw clearly and coldly that Jonah had placed her on a pedestal,and she determined never to step down of her own accord,recognizing with the instinct for business that had surprised Jonah that she would lose more than she would gain.And yet the sudden glimpse of passion in Jonah had whetted her appetite for more.It had recalled the days of her engagement with a singular bitterness and pleasure.She thought with a hateful persistence of her first love,the man who had accustomed her to admiration and then shuffled out of the engagement,forced by the attitude of his relatives to her father.But for weeks after the scene at Cremorne Jonah had retired within himself terrified lest he should alarm her and put an end to their outings.So far she had timed their meetings for the daylight out of prudence,but,pricked on by curiosity,she had begun to dally on the return journey,desiring and fearing some token of his adoration.

Meanwhile Jonah swung like a pendulum between hope and despair.He dimly suspected that a bolder man would have had his declaration out and done with long ago,and he waited for a favourable opportunity;but it came and went,and left him speechless.He had accepted Ada as the typical woman,and now found himself as much at sea as if he had discovered a new species,for he never suspected that any other woman had it in her power,given a favourable opportunity,to lead him to this new world of sensation.Women had always been shy of him,and with his abnormal shape and his absorption in business it had been easy for him to miss what lay beneath the surface.

But for the accident of his meeting with Clara,his temperament would have carried him through life,unconscious of love from his own experience and regarding it as a fable of women and poets.

Jonah never spent money willingly,except where Ray was concerned,and Clara in their first meetings had been surprised and chilled by his anxiety to get the value of his money.He had informed her,bluntly,that money was not made by spending it;but for some months he had been surprised by a desire to spend his money to adorn and beautify this woman.Clara,however,maintaining her independence with a wary eye,had refused to take presents from him.He had become more civilized and more human under the weight of his generous emotions,but they could find no outlet.

It was the affair of Hans Paasch that opened his eye to the power for good that she exercised over him.When his shop had closed for want of customers,Paasch found that his failing eyesight and methodical slowness barred him from competing with younger and quicker men,and,his mind weakened and bewildered by disaster,he had turned for help to his first and only love,the violin.For some years he had taught a few pupils who were too poor to pay the fees of the professional teachers,and,persuaded that pupils would flock to him if he gave his whole time to it he took a room and set up as a teacher.In six months he had to choose between starvation by inches or playing dance music in Bob Fenner's hall for fifteen shillings a week.For a while he endured this,playing popular airs that he hated and despised for the larrikins whom he hated and feared,a nightly butt and target for their coarse jests.Then he preferred starvation,and found himself in the gutter with the clothes he stood up in and his fiddle.He had joined the army of mendicant musicians,who scrape a tune in front of hotels and shops,living on charity thinly veiled.

They had passed him one night on their return from Mosman,playing in front of a public-house to an audience of three loafers.The streets had soon dragged him to their level.Unkempt and half starved,he wore the look of the vagrant who sleeps in his clothes for want of bedding.Grown childish in his distress,he had forgotten his lifelong habits of neatness and precision,going to pieces like a man who takes to drink.

Clara,who knew his history,was horrified at the sight.She thought he lived comfortably on a crust of bread by giving lessons.Jonah turned sulky when she reproached him.

"I don't see 'ow I'm ter blame for this any more'n if 'e'd come to the gutter through drink.It was a fair go on the Road,an'if I beat 'im an'the others,it was because I was a better man at the game.I spent nearly all my money in that little shanty where I started,an''im an'the others looked on an''oped I'd starve.Yer talk about me bein'cruel an'callous.