Nearer again, the markets of
Smithfield, Bartholomew's Hospital, the tract of modern deformity,
cleft by a gulf of railway, which spreads between Clerkenwell Road
and Charterhouse Street. Down in Farringdon Street the carts,
waggons, vans, cabs, omnibuses, crossed and intermingled in a
steaming splash-bath of mud; human beings, reduced to their due
paltriness, seemed to toil in exasperation along the strips of
pavement, bound on errands, which were a mockery, driven
automaton-like by forces they neither understood nor could resist.
'Can I go out into a world like that--alone?' was the thought
which made Clara's spirit fail as she stood gazing. 'Can I face life
as it is for women who grow old in earning bare daily bread among
those terrible streets? Year after year to go in and out from some
wretched garret that I call home, with my face hidden, my heart
stabbed with misery till it is cold and bloodless!
Then her eye fell upon the spire of St. James's Church, on
Clerkenwell Green, whose bells used to be so familiar to her. The
memory was only of discontent and futile aspiration, but--Oh, if
it were possible to be again as she was then, and yet keep the
experience with which life had since endowed her! With no moral
condemnation did she view the records of her rebellion; but how easy
to see now that ignorance had been one of the worst obstacles in her
path, and that, like all unadvised purchasers, she had paid a price
that might well have been spared.
Pages:
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552