initial commit of ebook 1709HEADmain

1 files changed, 22766 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1709-0.txt b/1709-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3de0752
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1709-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,22766 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1709 ***
+
+
+
+
+NEW GRUB STREET
+
+By George Gissing
+
+1891
+
+
+
+
+     Part One
+     Chapter I. A Man of his Day
+     Chapter II. The House of Yule
+     Chapter III. Holiday
+     Chapter IV. An Author and his Wife
+     Chapter V. The Way Hither
+     Chapter VI. The Practical Friend
+     Chapter VII. Marian’s Home
+
+     Part Two
+     Chapter VIII. To the Winning Side
+     Chapter IX. Invita Minerva
+     Chapter X. The Friends of the Family
+     Chapter XI. Respite
+     Chapter XII. Work Without Hope
+     Chapter XIII. A Warning
+     Chapter XIV. Recruits
+     Chapter XV. The Last Resource
+
+     Part Three
+     Chapter XVI. Rejection
+     Chapter XVII. The Parting
+     Chapter XVIII. The Old Home
+     Chapter XIX. The Past Revived
+     Chapter XX. The End of Waiting
+     Chapter XXI. Mr Yule leaves Town
+     Chapter XXII. The Legatees
+
+     Part Four
+     Chapter XXIII. A Proposed Investment
+     Chapter XXIV. Jasper’s Magnanimity
+     Chapter XXV. A Fruitless Meeting
+     Chapter XXVI. Married Woman’s Property
+     Chapter XXVII. The Lonely Man
+     Chapter XXVIII. Interim
+     Chapter XXIX. Catastrophe
+
+     Part Five
+     Chapter XXX. Waiting on Destiny
+     Chapter XXXI. A Rescue and a Summons
+     Chapter XXXII. Reardon becomes Practical
+     Chapter XXXIII. The Sunny Way
+     Chapter XXXIV. A Check
+     Chapter XXXV. Fever and Rest
+     Chapter XXXVI. Jasper’s Delicate Case
+     Chapter XXXVII. Rewards
+
+
+
+
+NEW GRUB STREET
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. A MAN OF HIS DAY
+
+As the Milvains sat down to breakfast the clock of Wattleborough parish
+church struck eight; it was two miles away, but the strokes were borne
+very distinctly on the west wind this autumn morning. Jasper, listening
+before he cracked an egg, remarked with cheerfulness:
+
+‘There’s a man being hanged in London at this moment.’
+
+‘Surely it isn’t necessary to let us know that,’ said his sister Maud,
+coldly.
+
+‘And in such a tone, too!’ protested his sister Dora.
+
+‘Who is it?’ inquired Mrs Milvain, looking at her son with pained
+forehead.
+
+‘I don’t know. It happened to catch my eye in the paper yesterday that
+someone was to be hanged at Newgate this morning. There’s a certain
+satisfaction in reflecting that it is not oneself.’
+
+‘That’s your selfish way of looking at things,’ said Maud.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Jasper, ‘seeing that the fact came into my head, what
+better use could I make of it? I could curse the brutality of an age
+that sanctioned such things; or I could grow doleful over the misery of
+the poor fellow. But those emotions would be as little profitable to
+others as to myself. It just happened that I saw the thing in a light of
+consolation. Things are bad with me, but not so bad as THAT. I might be
+going out between Jack Ketch and the Chaplain to be hanged; instead of
+that, I am eating a really fresh egg, and very excellent buttered toast,
+with coffee as good as can be reasonably expected in this part of the
+world.--(Do try boiling the milk, mother.)--The tone in which I spoke
+was spontaneous; being so, it needs no justification.’
+
+He was a young man of five-and-twenty, well built, though a trifle
+meagre, and of pale complexion. He had hair that was very nearly black,
+and a clean-shaven face, best described, perhaps, as of bureaucratic
+type. The clothes he wore were of expensive material, but had seen a
+good deal of service. His stand-up collar curled over at the corners,
+and his necktie was lilac-sprigged.
+
+Of the two sisters, Dora, aged twenty, was the more like him in visage,
+but she spoke with a gentleness which seemed to indicate a different
+character. Maud, who was twenty-two, had bold, handsome features, and
+very beautiful hair of russet tinge; hers was not a face that readily
+smiled. Their mother had the look and manners of an invalid, though she
+sat at table in the ordinary way. All were dressed as ladies, though
+very simply. The room, which looked upon a small patch of garden, was
+furnished with old-fashioned comfort, only one or two objects suggesting
+the decorative spirit of 1882.
+
+‘A man who comes to be hanged,’ pursued Jasper, impartially, ‘has
+the satisfaction of knowing that he has brought society to its last
+resource. He is a man of such fatal importance that nothing will serve
+against him but the supreme effort of law. In a way, you know, that is
+success.’
+
+‘In a way,’ repeated Maud, scornfully.
+
+‘Suppose we talk of something else,’ suggested Dora, who seemed to fear
+a conflict between her sister and Jasper.
+
+Almost at the same moment a diversion was afforded by the arrival of the
+post. There was a letter for Mrs Milvain, a letter and newspaper for
+her son. Whilst the girls and their mother talked of unimportant news
+communicated by the one correspondent, Jasper read the missive addressed
+to himself.
+
+‘This is from Reardon,’ he remarked to the younger girl. ‘Things are
+going badly with him. He is just the kind of fellow to end by poisoning
+or shooting himself.’
+
+‘But why?’
+
+‘Can’t get anything done; and begins to be sore troubled on his wife’s
+account.’
+
+‘Is he ill?’
+
+‘Overworked, I suppose. But it’s just what I foresaw. He isn’t the
+kind of man to keep up literary production as a paying business. In
+favourable circumstances he might write a fairly good book once every
+two or three years. The failure of his last depressed him, and now he
+is struggling hopelessly to get another done before the winter season.
+Those people will come to grief.’
+
+‘The enjoyment with which he anticipates it!’ murmured Maud, looking at
+her mother.
+
+‘Not at all,’ said Jasper. ‘It’s true I envied the fellow, because he
+persuaded a handsome girl to believe in him and share his risks, but I
+shall be very sorry if he goes to the--to the dogs. He’s my one serious
+friend. But it irritates me to see a man making such large demands upon
+fortune. One must be more modest--as I am. Because one book had a sort
+of success he imagined his struggles were over. He got a hundred
+pounds for “On Neutral Ground,” and at once counted on a continuance
+of payments in geometrical proportion. I hinted to him that he couldn’t
+keep it up, and he smiled with tolerance, no doubt thinking “He judges
+me by himself.” But I didn’t do anything of the kind.--(Toast, please,
+Dora.)--I’m a stronger man than Reardon; I can keep my eyes open, and
+wait.’
+
+‘Is his wife the kind of person to grumble?’ asked Mrs Milvain.
+
+‘Well, yes, I suspect that she is. The girl wasn’t content to go into
+modest rooms--they must furnish a flat. I rather wonder he didn’t start
+a carriage for her. Well, his next book brought only another hundred,
+and now, even if he finishes this one, it’s very doubtful if he’ll get
+as much. “The Optimist” was practically a failure.’
+
+‘Mr Yule may leave them some money,’ said Dora.
+
+‘Yes. But he may live another ten years, and he would see them both in
+Marylebone Workhouse before he advanced sixpence, or I’m much mistaken
+in him. Her mother has only just enough to live upon; can’t possibly
+help them. Her brother wouldn’t give or lend twopence halfpenny.’
+
+‘Has Mr Reardon no relatives!’
+
+‘I never heard him make mention of a single one. No, he has done the
+fatal thing. A man in his position, if he marry at all, must take
+either a work-girl or an heiress, and in many ways the work-girl is
+preferable.’
+
+‘How can you say that?’ asked Dora. ‘You never cease talking about the
+advantages of money.’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t mean that for ME the work-girl would be preferable; by
+no means; but for a man like Reardon. He is absurd enough to be
+conscientious, likes to be called an “artist,” and so on. He might
+possibly earn a hundred and fifty a year if his mind were at rest, and
+that would be enough if he had married a decent little dressmaker. He
+wouldn’t desire superfluities, and the quality of his work would be its
+own reward. As it is, he’s ruined.’
+
+‘And I repeat,’ said Maud, ‘that you enjoy the prospect.’
+
+‘Nothing of the kind. If I seem to speak exultantly it’s only because
+my intellect enjoys the clear perception of a fact.--A little marmalade,
+Dora; the home-made, please.’
+
+‘But this is very sad, Jasper,’ said Mrs Milvain, in her half-absent
+way. ‘I suppose they can’t even go for a holiday?’
+
+‘Quite out of the question.’
+
+‘Not even if you invited them to come here for a week?’
+
+‘Now, mother,’ urged Maud, ‘THAT’S impossible, you know very well.’
+
+‘I thought we might make an effort, dear. A holiday might mean
+everything to him.’
+
+‘No, no,’ fell from Jasper, thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think you’d get
+along very well with Mrs Reardon; and then, if her uncle is coming to Mr
+Yule’s, you know, that would be awkward.’
+
+‘I suppose it would; though those people would only stay a day or two,
+Miss Harrow said.’
+
+‘Why can’t Mr Yule make them friends, those two lots of people?’ asked
+Dora. ‘You say he’s on good terms with both.’
+
+‘I suppose he thinks it’s no business of his.’
+
+Jasper mused over the letter from his friend.
+
+‘Ten years hence,’ he said, ‘if Reardon is still alive, I shall be
+lending him five-pound notes.’
+
+A smile of irony rose to Maud’s lips. Dora laughed.
+
+‘To be sure! To be sure!’ exclaimed their brother. ‘You have no faith.
+But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man
+like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man
+of 1882. He won’t make concessions, or rather, he can’t make them;
+he can’t supply the market. I--well, you may say that at present I
+do nothing; but that’s a great mistake, I am learning my business.
+Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may
+succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your
+skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one
+kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new
+and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income.
+Whatever he has to sell he’ll get payment for it from all sorts of
+various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a
+middleman who will make six distinct profits. Now, look you: if I had
+been in Reardon’s place, I’d have made four hundred at least out of
+“The Optimist”; I should have gone shrewdly to work with magazines and
+newspapers and foreign publishers, and--all sorts of people. Reardon
+can’t do that kind of thing, he’s behind his age; he sells a manuscript
+as if he lived in Sam Johnson’s Grub Street. But our Grub Street of
+to-day is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic
+communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of
+the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy.’
+
+‘It sounds ignoble,’ said Maud.
+
+‘I have nothing to do with that, my dear girl. Now, as I tell you, I am
+slowly, but surely, learning the business. My line won’t be novels;
+I have failed in that direction, I’m not cut out for the work. It’s a
+pity, of course; there’s a great deal of money in it. But I have plenty
+of scope. In ten years, I repeat, I shall be making my thousand a year.’
+
+‘I don’t remember that you stated the exact sum before,’ Maud observed.
+
+‘Let it pass. And to those who have shall be given. When I have a decent
+income of my own, I shall marry a woman with an income somewhat larger,
+so that casualties may be provided for.’
+
+Dora exclaimed, laughing:
+
+‘It would amuse me very much if the Reardons got a lot of money at Mr
+Yule’s death--and that can’t be ten years off, I’m sure.’
+
+‘I don’t see that there’s any chance of their getting much,’ replied
+Jasper, meditatively. ‘Mrs Reardon is only his niece. The man’s brother
+and sister will have the first helping, I suppose. And then, if it comes
+to the second generation, the literary Yule has a daughter, and by her
+being invited here I should think she’s the favourite niece. No, no;
+depend upon it they won’t get anything at all.’
+
+Having finished his breakfast, he leaned back and began to unfold the
+London paper that had come by post.
+
+‘Had Mr Reardon any hopes of that kind at the time of his marriage, do
+you think?’ inquired Mrs Milvain.
+
+‘Reardon? Good heavens, no! Would he were capable of such forethought!’
+
+In a few minutes Jasper was left alone in the room. When the servant
+came to clear the table he strolled slowly away, humming a tune.
+
+The house was pleasantly situated by the roadside in a little village
+named Finden. Opposite stood the church, a plain, low, square-towered
+building. As it was cattle-market to-day in the town of Wattleborough,
+droves of beasts and sheep occasionally went by, or the rattle of a
+grazier’s cart sounded for a moment. On ordinary days the road saw few
+vehicles, and pedestrians were rare.
+
+Mrs Milvain and her daughters had lived here for the last seven years,
+since the death of the father, who was a veterinary surgeon. The widow
+enjoyed an annuity of two hundred and forty pounds, terminable with her
+life; the children had nothing of their own. Maud acted irregularly as
+a teacher of music; Dora had an engagement as visiting governess in a
+Wattleborough family. Twice a year, as a rule, Jasper came down from
+London to spend a fortnight with them; to-day marked the middle of his
+autumn visit, and the strained relations between him and his sisters
+which invariably made the second week rather trying for all in the house
+had already become noticeable.
+
+In the course of the morning Jasper had half an hour’s private talk
+with his mother, after which he set off to roam in the sunshine. Shortly
+after he had left the house, Maud, her domestic duties dismissed for the
+time, came into the parlour where Mrs Milvain was reclining on the sofa.
+
+‘Jasper wants more money,’ said the mother, when Maud had sat in
+meditation for a few minutes.
+
+‘Of course. I knew that. I hope you told him he couldn’t have it.’
+
+‘I really didn’t know what to say,’ returned Mrs Milvain, in a feeble
+tone of worry.
+
+‘Then you must leave the matter to me, that’s all. There’s no money for
+him, and there’s an end of it.’
+
+Maud set her features in sullen determination. There was a brief
+silence.
+
+‘What’s he to do, Maud?’
+
+‘To do? How do other people do? What do Dora and I do?’
+
+‘You don’t earn enough for your support, my dear.’
+
+‘Oh, well!’ broke from the girl. ‘Of course, if you grudge us our food
+and lodging--’
+
+‘Don’t be so quick-tempered. You know very well I am far from grudging
+you anything, dear. But I only meant to say that Jasper does earn
+something, you know.’
+
+‘It’s a disgraceful thing that he doesn’t earn as much as he needs. We
+are sacrificed to him, as we always have been. Why should we be pinching
+and stinting to keep him in idleness?’
+
+‘But you really can’t call it idleness, Maud. He is studying his
+profession.’
+
+‘Pray call it trade; he prefers it. How do I know that he’s studying
+anything? What does he mean by “studying”? And to hear him speak
+scornfully of his friend Mr Reardon, who seems to work hard all through
+the year! It’s disgusting, mother. At this rate he will never earn his
+own living. Who hasn’t seen or heard of such men? If we had another
+hundred a year, I would say nothing. But we can’t live on what he leaves
+us, and I’m not going to let you try. I shall tell Jasper plainly that
+he’s got to work for his own support.’
+
+Another silence, and a longer one. Mrs Milvain furtively wiped a tear
+from her cheek.
+
+‘It seems very cruel to refuse,’ she said at length, ‘when another year
+may give him the opportunity he’s waiting for.’
+
+‘Opportunity? What does he mean by his opportunity?’
+
+‘He says that it always comes, if a man knows how to wait.’
+
+‘And the people who support him may starve meanwhile! Now just think
+a bit, mother. Suppose anything were to happen to you, what becomes of
+Dora and me? And what becomes of Jasper, too? It’s the truest kindness
+to him to compel him to earn a living. He gets more and more incapable
+of it.’
+
+‘You can’t say that, Maud. He earns a little more each year. But for
+that, I should have my doubts. He has made thirty pounds already this
+year, and he only made about twenty-five the whole of last. We must
+be fair to him, you know. I can’t help feeling that he knows what he’s
+about. And if he does succeed, he’ll pay us all back.’
+
+Maud began to gnaw her fingers, a disagreeable habit she had in privacy.
+
+‘Then why doesn’t he live more economically?’
+
+‘I really don’t see how he can live on less than a hundred and fifty a
+year. London, you know--’
+
+‘The cheapest place in the world.’
+
+‘Nonsense, Maud!’
+
+‘But I know what I’m saying. I’ve read quite enough about such things.
+He might live very well indeed on thirty shillings a week, even buying
+his clothes out of it.’
+
+‘But he has told us so often that it’s no use to him to live like that.
+He is obliged to go to places where he must spend a little, or he makes
+no progress.’
+
+‘Well, all I can say is,’ exclaimed the girl impatiently, ‘it’s very
+lucky for him that he’s got a mother who willingly sacrifices her
+daughters to him.’
+
+‘That’s how you always break out. You don’t care what unkindness you
+say!’
+
+‘It’s a simple truth.’
+
+‘Dora never speaks like that.’
+
+‘Because she’s afraid to be honest.’
+
+‘No, because she has too much love for her mother. I can’t bear to talk
+to you, Maud. The older I get, and the weaker I get, the more unfeeling
+you are to me.’
+
+Scenes of this kind were no uncommon thing. The clash of tempers lasted
+for several minutes, then Maud flung out of the room. An hour later, at
+dinner-time, she was rather more caustic in her remarks than usual, but
+this was the only sign that remained of the stormy mood.
+
+Jasper renewed the breakfast-table conversation.
+
+‘Look here,’ he began, ‘why don’t you girls write something? I’m
+convinced you could make money if you tried. There’s a tremendous sale
+for religious stories; why not patch one together? I am quite serious.’
+
+‘Why don’t you do it yourself,’ retorted Maud.
+
+‘I can’t manage stories, as I have told you; but I think you could. In
+your place, I’d make a speciality of Sunday-school prize-books; you
+know the kind of thing I mean. They sell like hot cakes. And there’s so
+deuced little enterprise in the business. If you’d give your mind to it,
+you might make hundreds a year.’
+
+‘Better say “abandon your mind to it.”’
+
+‘Why, there you are! You’re a sharp enough girl. You can quote as well
+as anyone I know.’
+
+‘And please, why am I to take up an inferior kind of work?’
+
+‘Inferior? Oh, if you can be a George Eliot, begin at the earliest
+opportunity. I merely suggested what seemed practicable.
+But I don’t think you have genius, Maud. People have got that ancient
+prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads--that one mustn’t write save
+at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business.
+Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday-school prize;
+study them; discover the essential points of such composition; hit upon
+new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day.
+There’s no question of the divine afflatus; that belongs to another
+sphere of life. We talk of literature as a trade, not of Homer, Dante,
+and Shakespeare. If I could only get that into poor Reardon’s head. He
+thinks me a gross beast, often enough. What the devil--I mean what on
+earth is there in typography to make everything it deals with sacred?
+I don’t advocate the propagation of vicious literature; I speak only of
+good, coarse, marketable stuff for the world’s vulgar. You just give it
+a thought, Maud; talk it over with Dora.’
+
+He resumed presently:
+
+‘I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob
+with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a
+spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff.
+Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the best we can of our
+lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the
+trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind
+you: and to deny it is a gross error of the literary pedants. To
+please the vulgar you must, one way or another, incarnate the genius
+of vulgarity. For my own part, I shan’t be able to address the bulkiest
+multitude; my talent doesn’t lend itself to that form. I shall write for
+the upper middle-class of intellect, the people who like to feel
+that what they are reading has some special cleverness, but who can’t
+distinguish between stones and paste. That’s why I’m so slow in warming
+to the work. Every month I feel surer of myself, however.
+
+That last thing of mine in The West End distinctly hit the mark; it
+wasn’t too flashy, it wasn’t too solid. I heard fellows speak of it in
+the train.’
+
+Mrs Milvain kept glancing at Maud, with eyes which desired her attention
+to these utterances. None the less, half an hour after dinner, Jasper
+found himself encountered by his sister in the garden, on her face a
+look which warned him of what was coming.
+
+‘I want you to tell me something, Jasper. How much longer shall you look
+to mother for support? I mean it literally; let me have an idea of how
+much longer it will be.’
+
+He looked away and reflected.
+
+‘To leave a margin,’ was his reply, ‘let us say twelve months.’
+
+‘Better say your favourite “ten years” at once.’
+
+‘No. I speak by the card. In twelve months’ time, if not before, I shall
+begin to pay my debts. My dear girl, I have the honour to be a tolerably
+long-headed individual. I know what I’m about.’
+
+‘And let us suppose mother were to die within half a year?’
+
+‘I should make shift to do very well.’
+
+‘You? And please--what of Dora and me?’
+
+‘You would write Sunday-school prizes.’
+
+Maud turned away and left him.
+
+He knocked the dust out of the pipe he had been smoking, and again set
+off for a stroll along the lanes. On his countenance was just a trace
+of solicitude, but for the most part he wore a thoughtful smile. Now
+and then he stroked his smoothly-shaven jaws with thumb and fingers.
+Occasionally he became observant of wayside details--of the colour of a
+maple leaf, the shape of a tall thistle, the consistency of a fungus. At
+the few people who passed he looked keenly, surveying them from head to
+foot.
+
+On turning, at the limit of his walk, he found himself almost face to
+face with two persons, who were coming along in silent companionship;
+their appearance interested him. The one was a man of fifty, grizzled,
+hard featured, slightly bowed in the shoulders; he wore a grey felt hat
+with a broad brim and a decent suit of broadcloth. With him was a girl
+of perhaps two-and-twenty, in a slate-coloured dress with very little
+ornament, and a yellow straw hat of the shape originally appropriated to
+males; her dark hair was cut short, and lay in innumerable crisp curls.
+Father and daughter, obviously. The girl, to a casual eye, was neither
+pretty nor beautiful, but she had a grave and impressive face, with a
+complexion of ivory tone; her walk was gracefully modest, and she seemed
+to be enjoying the country air.
+
+Jasper mused concerning them. When he had walked a few yards, he looked
+back; at the same moment the unknown man also turned his head.
+
+‘Where the deuce have I seen them--him and the girl too?’ Milvain asked
+himself.
+
+And before he reached home the recollection he sought flashed upon his
+mind.
+
+‘The Museum Reading-room, of course!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE HOUSE OF YULE
+
+‘I think’ said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother and Maud
+were busy with plain needlework, ‘I must have met Alfred Yule and his
+daughter.’
+
+‘How did you recognise them?’ Mrs Milvain inquired.
+
+‘I passed an old buffer and a pale-faced girl whom I know by sight at
+the British Museum. It wasn’t near Yule’s house, but they were taking a
+walk.’
+
+‘They may have come already. When Miss Harrow was here last, she said
+“in about a fortnight.”’
+
+‘No mistaking them for people of these parts, even if I hadn’t
+remembered their faces. Both of them are obvious dwellers in the valley
+of the shadow of books.’
+
+‘Is Miss Yule such a fright then?’ asked Maud.
+
+‘A fright! Not at all. A good example of the modern literary girl. I
+suppose you have the oddest old-fashioned ideas of such people. No,
+I rather like the look of her. Simpatica, I should think, as that ass
+Whelpdale would say. A very delicate, pure complexion, though morbid;
+nice eyes; figure not spoilt yet. But of course I may be wrong about
+their identity.’
+
+Later in the afternoon Jasper’s conjecture was rendered a certainty.
+Maud had walked to Wattleborough, where she would meet Dora on the
+latter’s return from her teaching, and Mrs Milvain sat alone, in a
+mood of depression; there was a ring at the door-bell, and the servant
+admitted Miss Harrow.
+
+This lady acted as housekeeper to Mr John Yule, a wealthy resident in
+this neighbourhood; she was the sister of his deceased wife--a thin,
+soft-speaking, kindly woman of forty-five. The greater part of her life
+she had spent as a governess; her position now was more agreeable, and
+the removal of her anxiety about the future had developed qualities of
+cheerfulness which formerly no one would have suspected her to possess.
+The acquaintance between Mrs Milvain and her was only of twelve months’
+standing; prior to that, Mr Yule had inhabited a house at the end of
+Wattleborough remote from Finden.
+
+‘Our London visitors came yesterday,’ she began by saying.
+
+Mrs Milvain mentioned her son’s encounter an hour or two ago.
+
+‘No doubt it was they,’ said the visitor. ‘Mrs Yule hasn’t come; I
+hardly expected she would, you know. So very unfortunate when there are
+difficulties of that kind, isn’t it?’
+
+She smiled confidentially.
+
+‘The poor girl must feel it,’ said Mrs Milvain.
+
+‘I’m afraid she does. Of course it narrows the circle of her friends at
+home. She’s a sweet girl, and I should so like you to meet her. Do come
+and have tea with us to-morrow afternoon, will you? Or would it be too
+much for you just now?’
+
+‘Will you let the girls call? And then perhaps Miss Yule will be so good
+as to come and see me?’
+
+‘I wonder whether Mr Milvain would like to meet her father? I have
+thought that perhaps it might be some advantage to him. Alfred is so
+closely connected with literary people, you know.’
+
+‘I feel sure he would be glad,’ replied Mrs Milvain. ‘But--what of
+Jasper’s friendship with Mrs Edmund Yule and the Reardons? Mightn’t it
+be a little awkward?’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t think so, unless he himself felt it so. There would be no
+need to mention that, I should say. And, really, it would be so much
+better if those estrangements came to an end. John makes no scruple of
+speaking freely about everyone, and I don’t think Alfred regards Mrs
+Edmund with any serious unkindness. If Mr Milvain would walk over with
+the young ladies to-morrow, it would be very pleasant.’
+
+‘Then I think I may promise that he will. I’m sure I don’t know where he
+is at this moment. We don’t see very much of him, except at meals.’
+
+‘He won’t be with you much longer, I suppose?’
+
+‘Perhaps a week.’
+
+Before Miss Harrow’s departure Maud and Dora reached home. They were
+curious to see the young lady from the valley of the shadow of books,
+and gladly accepted the invitation offered them.
+
+They set out on the following afternoon in their brother’s company. It
+was only a quarter of an hour’s walk to Mr Yule’s habitation, a small
+house in a large garden. Jasper was coming hither for the first time;
+his sisters now and then visited Miss Harrow, but very rarely saw Mr
+Yule himself who made no secret of the fact that he cared little for
+female society. In Wattleborough and the neighbourhood opinions varied
+greatly as to this gentleman’s character, but women seldom spoke
+very favourably of him. Miss Harrow was reticent concerning her
+brother-in-law; no one, however, had any reason to believe that she
+found life under his roof disagreeable. That she lived with him at all
+was of course occasionally matter for comment, certain Wattleborough
+ladies having their doubts regarding the position of a deceased wife’s
+sister under such circumstances; but no one was seriously exercised
+about the relations between this sober lady of forty-five and a man of
+sixty-three in broken health.
+
+A word of the family history.
+
+John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough
+stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at the
+town’s grammar school. The eldest, who was a hot-headed lad, but showed
+capacities for business, worked at first with his father, endeavouring
+to add a bookselling department to the trade in stationery; but the life
+of home was not much to his taste, and at one-and-twenty he obtained a
+clerk’s place in the office of a London newspaper. Three years after,
+his father died, and the small patrimony which fell to him he used
+in making himself practically acquainted with the details of paper
+manufacture, his aim being to establish himself in partnership with an
+acquaintance who had started a small paper-mill in Hertfordshire.
+
+His speculation succeeded, and as years went on he became a thriving
+manufacturer. His brother Alfred, in the meantime, had drifted from work
+at a London bookseller’s into the modern Grub Street, his adventures in
+which region will concern us hereafter.
+
+Edmund carried on the Wattleborough business, but with small success.
+Between him and his eldest brother existed a good deal of affection,
+and in the end John offered him a share in his flourishing paper works;
+whereupon Edmund married, deeming himself well established for life. But
+John’s temper was a difficult one; Edmund and he quarrelled, parted; and
+when the younger died, aged about forty, he left but moderate provision
+for his widow and two children.
+
+Only when he had reached middle age did John marry; the experiment
+could not be called successful, and Mrs Yule died three years later,
+childless.
+
+At fifty-four John Yule retired from active business; he came back to
+the scenes of his early life, and began to take an important part in the
+municipal affairs of Wattleborough. He was then a remarkably robust man,
+fond of out-of-door exercise; he made it one of his chief efforts to
+encourage the local Volunteer movement, the cricket and football clubs,
+public sports of every kind, showing no sympathy whatever with those
+persons who wished to establish free libraries, lectures, and the like.
+At his own expense he built for the Volunteers a handsome drill-shed;
+he founded a public gymnasium; and finally he allowed it to be rumoured
+that he was going to present the town with a park. But by presuming too
+far upon the bodily vigour which prompted these activities, he passed of
+a sudden into the state of a confirmed invalid. On an autumn expedition
+in the Hebrides he slept one night under the open sky, with the result
+that he had an all but fatal attack of rheumatic fever. After that,
+though the direction of his interests was unchanged, he could no longer
+set the example to Wattleborough youth of muscular manliness. The
+infliction did not improve his temper; for the next year or two he was
+constantly at warfare with one or other of his colleagues and friends,
+ill brooking that the familiar control of various local interests should
+fall out of his hands. But before long he appeared to resign himself
+to his fate, and at present Wattleborough saw little of him. It seemed
+likely that he might still found the park which was to bear his name;
+but perhaps it would only be done in consequence of directions in his
+will. It was believed that he could not live much longer.
+
+With his kinsfolk he held very little communication. Alfred Yule, a
+battered man of letters, had visited Wattleborough only twice (including
+the present occasion) since John’s return hither. Mrs Edmund Yule, with
+her daughter--now Mrs Reardon--had been only once, three years ago.
+These two families, as you have heard, were not on terms of amity with
+each other, owing to difficulties between Mrs Alfred and Mrs Edmund; but
+John seemed to regard both impartially. Perhaps the only real warmth of
+feeling he had ever known was bestowed upon Edmund, and Miss Harrow had
+remarked that he spoke with somewhat more interest of Edmund’s daughter,
+Amy, than of Alfred’s daughter, Marian. But it was doubtful whether the
+sudden disappearance from the earth of all his relatives would greatly
+have troubled him. He lived a life of curious self-absorption, reading
+newspapers (little else), and talking with old friends who had stuck to
+him in spite of his irascibility.
+
+Miss Harrow received her visitors in a small and soberly furnished
+drawing-room. She was nervous, probably because of Jasper Milvain, whom
+she had met but once--last spring--and who on that occasion had struck
+her as an alarmingly modern young man. In the shadow of a window-curtain
+sat a slight, simply-dressed girl, whose short curly hair and thoughtful
+countenance Jasper again recognised. When it was his turn to be
+presented to Miss Yule, he saw that she doubted for an instant whether
+or not to give her hand; yet she decided to do so, and there was
+something very pleasant to him in its warm softness. She smiled with a
+slight embarrassment, meeting his look only for a second.
+
+‘I have seen you several times, Miss Yule,’ he said in a friendly way,
+‘though without knowing your name. It was under the great dome.’
+
+She laughed, readily understanding his phrase.
+
+‘I am there very often,’ was her reply.
+
+‘What great dome?’ asked Miss Harrow, with surprise.
+
+‘That of the British Museum Reading-room,’ explained Jasper; ‘known to
+some of us as the valley of the shadow of books. People who often work
+there necessarily get to know each other by sight.
+
+In the same way I knew Miss Yule’s father when I happened to pass him in
+the road yesterday.’
+
+The three girls began to converse together, perforce of trivialities.
+Marian Yule spoke in rather slow tones, thoughtfully, gently; she had
+linked her fingers, and laid her hands, palms downwards, upon her lap--a
+nervous action. Her accent was pure, unpretentious; and she used none of
+the fashionable turns of speech which would have suggested the habit of
+intercourse with distinctly metropolitan society.
+
+‘You must wonder how we exist in this out-of-the-way place,’ remarked
+Maud.
+
+‘Rather, I envy you,’ Marian answered, with a slight emphasis.
+
+The door opened, and Alfred Yule presented himself. He was tall, and his
+head seemed a disproportionate culmination to his meagre body, it was so
+large and massively featured. Intellect and uncertainty of temper were
+equally marked upon his visage; his brows were knitted in a permanent
+expression of severity. He had thin, smooth hair, grizzled whiskers, a
+shaven chin. In the multitudinous wrinkles of his face lay a history of
+laborious and stormy life; one readily divined in him a struggling and
+embittered man. Though he looked older than his years, he had by no
+means the appearance of being beyond the ripeness of his mental vigour.
+
+‘It pleases me to meet you, Mr Milvain,’ he said, as he stretched out
+his bony hand. ‘Your name reminds me of a paper in The Wayside a month
+or two ago, which you will perhaps allow a veteran to say was not ill
+done.’
+
+‘I am grateful to you for noticing it,’ replied Jasper.
+
+There was positively a touch of visible warmth upon his cheek. The
+allusion had come so unexpectedly that it caused him keen pleasure.
+
+Mr Yule seated himself awkwardly, crossed his legs, and began to stroke
+the back of his left hand, which lay on his knee. He seemed to have
+nothing more to say at present, and allowed Miss Harrow and the girls to
+support conversation. Jasper listened with a smile for a minute or two,
+then he addressed the veteran.’Have you seen The Study this week, Mr
+Yule?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Did you notice that it contains a very favourable review of a novel
+which was tremendously abused in the same columns three weeks ago?’
+
+Mr Yule started, but Jasper could perceive at once that his emotion was
+not disagreeable.
+
+‘You don’t say so.’
+
+‘Yes. The novel is Miss Hawk’s “On the Boards.” How will the editor get
+out of this?’
+
+‘H’m! Of course Mr Fadge is not immediately responsible; but it’ll be
+unpleasant for him, decidedly unpleasant.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You hear
+this, Marian?’
+
+‘How is it explained, father?’
+
+‘May be accident, of course; but--well, there’s no knowing. I think
+it very likely this will be the end of Mr Fadge’s tenure of office.
+Rackett, the proprietor, only wants a plausible excuse for making a
+change. The paper has been going downhill for the last year; I know of
+two publishing houses who have withdrawn their advertising from it, and
+who never send their books for review. Everyone foresaw that kind of
+thing from the day Mr Fadge became editor. The tone of his paragraphs
+has been detestable. Two reviews of the same novel, eh? And
+diametrically opposed? Ha! Ha!’
+
+Gradually he had passed from quiet appreciation of the joke to
+undisguised mirth and pleasure. His utterance of the name ‘Mr Fadge’
+sufficiently intimated that he had some cause of personal discontent
+with the editor of The Study.
+
+‘The author,’ remarked Milvain, ‘ought to make a good thing out of
+this.’
+
+‘Will, no doubt. Ought to write at once to the papers, calling attention
+to this sample of critical impartiality. Ha! ha!’
+
+He rose and went to the window, where for several minutes he stood
+gazing at vacancy, the same grim smile still on his face. Jasper in the
+meantime amused the ladies (his sisters had heard him on the subject
+already) with a description of the two antagonistic notices. But he
+did not trust himself to express so freely as he had done at home his
+opinion of reviewing in general; it was more than probable that both
+Yule and his daughter did a good deal of such work.
+
+‘Suppose we go into the garden,’ suggested Miss Harrow, presently. ‘It
+seems a shame to sit indoors on such a lovely afternoon.’
+
+Hitherto there had been no mention of the master of the house. But Mr
+Yule now remarked to Jasper:
+
+‘My brother would be glad if you would come and have a word with him. He
+isn’t quite well enough to leave his room to-day.’
+
+So, as the ladies went gardenwards, Jasper followed the man of letters
+upstairs to a room on the first floor. Here, in a deep cane chair, which
+was placed by the open window, sat John Yule. He was completely dressed,
+save that instead of coat he wore a dressing-gown. The facial
+likeness between him and his brother was very strong, but John’s
+would universally have been judged the finer countenance; illness
+notwithstanding, he had a complexion which contrasted in its pure colour
+with Alfred’s parchmenty skin, and there was more finish about his
+features. His abundant hair was reddish, his long moustache and trimmed
+beard a lighter shade of the same hue.
+
+‘So you too are in league with the doctors,’ was his bluff greeting,
+as he held a hand to the young man and inspected him with a look of
+slighting good-nature.
+
+‘Well, that certainly is one way of regarding the literary profession,’
+admitted Jasper, who had heard enough of John’s way of thinking to
+understand the remark.
+
+‘A young fellow with all the world before him, too. Hang it, Mr Milvain,
+is there no less pernicious work you can turn your hand to?’
+
+‘I’m afraid not, Mr Yule. After all, you know, you must be held in a
+measure responsible for my depravity.’
+
+‘How’s that?’
+
+‘I understand that you have devoted most of your life to the making
+of paper. If that article were not so cheap and so abundant, people
+wouldn’t have so much temptation to scribble.’
+
+Alfred Yule uttered a short laugh.
+
+‘I think you are cornered, John.’
+
+‘I wish,’ answered John, ‘that you were both condemned to write on such
+paper as I chiefly made; it was a special kind of whitey-brown, used by
+shopkeepers.’
+
+He chuckled inwardly, and at the same time reached out for a box of
+cigarettes on a table near him. His brother and Jasper each took one as
+he offered them, and began to smoke.
+
+‘You would like to see literary production come entirely to an end?’
+said Milvain.
+
+‘I should like to see the business of literature abolished.’
+
+‘There’s a distinction, of course. But, on the whole, I should say that
+even the business serves a good purpose.’
+
+‘What purpose?’
+
+‘It helps to spread civilisation.’
+
+‘Civilisation!’ exclaimed John, scornfully. ‘What do you mean by
+civilisation? Do you call it civilising men to make them weak, flabby
+creatures, with ruined eyes and dyspeptic stomachs? Who is it that
+reads most of the stuff that’s poured out daily by the ton from the
+printing-press? Just the men and women who ought to spend their leisure
+hours in open-air exercise; the people who earn their bread by sedentary
+pursuits, and who need to live as soon as they are free from the desk
+or the counter, not to moon over small print. Your Board schools, your
+popular press, your spread of education! Machinery for ruining the
+country, that’s what I call it.’
+
+‘You have done a good deal, I think, to counteract those influences in
+Wattleborough.’
+
+‘I hope so; and if only I had kept the use of my limbs I’d have done a
+good deal more. I have an idea of offering substantial prizes to men
+and women engaged in sedentary work who take an oath to abstain from all
+reading, and keep it for a certain number of years. There’s a good deal
+more need for that than for abstinence from strong liquor. If I could
+have had my way I would have revived prize-fighting.’
+
+His brother laughed with contemptuous impatience.
+
+‘You would doubtless like to see military conscription introduced into
+England?’ said Jasper.
+
+‘Of course I should! You talk of civilising; there’s no such way of
+civilising the masses of the people as by fixed military service. Before
+mental training must come training of the body. Go about the Continent,
+and see the effect of military service on loutish peasants and the
+lowest classes of town population. Do you know why it isn’t even more
+successful? Because the damnable education movement interferes. If
+Germany would shut up her schools and universities for the next quarter
+of a century and go ahead like blazes with military training there’d be
+a nation such as the world has never seen. After that, they might begin
+a little book-teaching again--say an hour and a half a day for everyone
+above nine years old. Do you suppose, Mr Milvain, that society is going
+to be reformed by you people who write for money? Why, you are the very
+first class that will be swept from the face of the earth as soon as the
+reformation really begins!’
+
+Alfred puffed at his cigarette. His thoughts were occupied with Mr
+Fadge and The Study. He was considering whether he could aid in bringing
+public contempt upon that literary organ and its editor. Milvain
+listened to the elder man’s diatribe with much amusement.
+
+‘You, now,’ pursued John, ‘what do you write about?’
+
+‘Nothing in particular. I make a salable page or two out of whatever
+strikes my fancy.’
+
+‘Exactly! You don’t even pretend that you’ve got anything to say. You
+live by inducing people to give themselves mental indigestion--and
+bodily, too, for that matter.’
+
+‘Do you know, Mr Yule, that you have suggested a capital idea to me? If
+I were to take up your views, I think it isn’t at all unlikely that
+I might make a good thing of writing against writing. It should be my
+literary specialty to rail against literature. The reading public should
+pay me for telling them that they oughtn’t to read. I must think it
+over.’
+
+‘Carlyle has anticipated you,’ threw in Alfred.
+
+‘Yes, but in an antiquated way. I would base my polemic on the newest
+philosophy.’
+
+He developed the idea facetiously, whilst John regarded him as he might
+have watched a performing monkey.
+
+‘There again! your new philosophy!’ exclaimed the invalid. ‘Why, it
+isn’t even wholesome stuff, the kind of reading that most of you
+force on the public. Now there’s the man who has married one of my
+nieces--poor lass! Reardon, his name is. You know him, I dare say.
+Just for curiosity I had a look at one of his books; it was called “The
+Optimist.” Of all the morbid trash I ever saw, that beat everything. I
+thought of writing him a letter, advising a couple of anti-bilious pills
+before bedtime for a few weeks.’
+
+Jasper glanced at Alfred Yule, who wore a look of indifference.
+
+‘That man deserves penal servitude in my opinion,’ pursued John. ‘I’m
+not sure that it isn’t my duty to offer him a couple of hundred a year
+on condition that he writes no more.’
+
+Milvain, with a clear vision of his friend in London, burst into
+laughter. But at that point Alfred rose from his chair.
+
+‘Shall we rejoin the ladies?’ he said, with a certain pedantry
+of phrase and manner which often characterised him.
+
+‘Think over your ways whilst you’re still young,’ said John as he shook
+hands with his visitor.
+
+‘Your brother speaks quite seriously, I suppose?’ Jasper remarked when
+he was in the garden with Alfred.
+
+‘I think so. It’s amusing now and then, but gets rather tiresome when
+you hear it often. By-the-bye, you are not personally acquainted with Mr
+Fadge?’
+
+‘I didn’t even know his name until you mentioned it.’
+
+‘The most malicious man in the literary world. There’s no
+uncharitableness in feeling a certain pleasure when he gets into a
+scrape. I could tell you incredible stories about him; but that kind of
+thing is probably as little to your taste as it is to mine.’
+
+Miss Harrow and her companions, having caught sight of the pair, came
+towards them. Tea was to be brought out into the garden.
+
+‘So you can sit with us and smoke, if you like,’ said Miss Harrow to
+Alfred. ‘You are never quite at your ease, I think, without a pipe.’
+
+But the man of letters was too preoccupied for society. In a few minutes
+he begged that the ladies would excuse his withdrawing; he had two or
+three letters to write before post-time, which was early at Finden.
+
+Jasper, relieved by the veteran’s departure, began at once to make
+himself very agreeable company. When he chose to lay aside the topic of
+his own difficulties and ambitions, he could converse with a spontaneous
+gaiety which readily won the good-will of listeners. Naturally
+he addressed himself very often to Marian Yule, whose attention
+complimented him. She said little, and evidently was at no time a free
+talker, but the smile on her face indicated a mood of quiet enjoyment.
+When her eyes wandered, it was to rest on the beauties of the garden,
+the moving patches of golden sunshine, the forms of gleaming cloud.
+Jasper liked to observe her as she turned her head: there seemed to him
+a particular grace in the movement; her head and neck were admirably
+formed, and the short hair drew attention to this.
+
+It was agreed that Miss Harrow and Marian should come on the second
+day after to have tea with the Milvains. And when Jasper took leave of
+Alfred Yule, the latter expressed a wish that they might have a walk
+together one of these mornings.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. HOLIDAY
+
+Jasper’s favourite walk led him to a spot distant perhaps a mile and a
+half from home. From a tract of common he turned into a short lane which
+crossed the Great Western railway, and thence by a stile into certain
+meadows forming a compact little valley. One recommendation of this
+retreat was that it lay sheltered from all winds; to Jasper a wind was
+objectionable. Along the bottom ran a clear, shallow stream, overhung
+with elder and hawthorn bushes; and close by the wooden bridge which
+spanned it was a great ash tree, making shadow for cows and sheep when
+the sun lay hot upon the open field. It was rare for anyone to come
+along this path, save farm labourers morning and evening.
+
+But to-day--the afternoon that followed his visit to John Yule’s
+house--he saw from a distance that his lounging-place on the wooden
+bridge was occupied. Someone else had discovered the pleasure there was
+in watching the sun-flecked sparkle of the water as it flowed over the
+clean sand and stones. A girl in a yellow-straw hat; yes, and precisely
+the person he had hoped, at the first glance, that it might be. He
+made no haste as he drew nearer on the descending path. At length his
+footstep was heard; Marian Yule turned her head and clearly recognised
+him.
+
+She assumed an upright position, letting one of her hands rest upon
+the rail. After the exchange of ordinary greetings, Jasper leaned back
+against the same support and showed himself disposed for talk.
+
+‘When I was here late in the spring,’ he said, ‘this ash was only just
+budding, though everything else seemed in full leaf.’
+
+‘An ash, is it?’ murmured Marian. ‘I didn’t know. I think an oak is the
+only tree I can distinguish. Yet,’ she added quickly, ‘I knew that the
+ash was late; some lines of Tennyson come to my memory.’
+
+‘Which are those?’
+
+     ‘Delaying, as the tender ash delays
+     To clothe herself when all the woods are green,
+
+somewhere in the “Idylls.”’
+
+‘I don’t remember; so I won’t pretend to--though I should do so as a
+rule.’
+
+She looked at him oddly, and seemed about to laugh, yet did not.
+
+‘You have had little experience of the country?’ Jasper continued.
+
+‘Very little. You, I think, have known it from childhood?’
+
+‘In a sort of way. I was born in Wattleborough, and my people have
+always lived here. But I am not very rural in temperament. I have really
+no friends here; either they have lost interest in me, or I in them.
+What do you think of the girls, my sisters?’
+
+The question, though put with perfect simplicity, was embarrassing.
+
+‘They are tolerably intellectual,’ Jasper went on, when he saw that it
+would be difficult for her to answer. ‘I want to persuade them to try
+their hands at literary work of some kind or other. They give lessons,
+and both hate it.’
+
+‘Would literary work be less--burdensome?’ said Marian, without looking
+at him.
+
+‘Rather more so, you think?’
+
+She hesitated.
+
+‘It depends, of course, on--on several things.’
+
+‘To be sure,’ Jasper agreed. ‘I don’t think they have any marked faculty
+for such work; but as they certainly haven’t for teaching, that doesn’t
+matter. It’s a question of learning a business. I am going through my
+apprenticeship, and find it a long affair. Money would shorten it, and,
+unfortunately, I have none.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Marian, turning her eyes upon the stream, ‘money is a help
+in everything.’
+
+‘Without it, one spends the best part of one’s life in toiling for that
+first foothold which money could at once purchase. To have money is
+becoming of more and more importance in a literary career; principally
+because to have money is to have friends. Year by year, such influence
+grows of more account. A lucky man will still occasionally succeed by
+dint of his own honest perseverance, but the chances are dead against
+anyone who can’t make private interest with influential people; his work
+is simply overwhelmed by that of the men who have better opportunities.’
+
+‘Don’t you think that, even to-day, really good work will sooner or
+later be recognised?’
+
+‘Later, rather than sooner; and very likely the man can’t wait; he
+starves in the meantime. You understand that I am not speaking of
+genius; I mean marketable literary work. The quantity turned out is
+so great that there’s no hope for the special attention of the public
+unless one can afford to advertise hugely. Take the instance of a
+successful all-round man of letters; take Ralph Warbury, whose name
+you’ll see in the first magazine you happen to open. But perhaps he is a
+friend of yours?’
+
+‘Oh no!’
+
+‘Well, I wasn’t going to abuse him. I was only going to ask: Is there
+any quality which distinguishes his work from that of twenty struggling
+writers one could name? Of course not. He’s a clever, prolific man; so
+are they. But he began with money and friends; he came from Oxford into
+the thick of advertised people; his name was mentioned in print six
+times a week before he had written a dozen articles. This kind of thing
+will become the rule. Men won’t succeed in literature that they may
+get into society, but will get into society that they may succeed in
+literature.’
+
+‘Yes, I know it is true,’ said Marian, in a low voice.
+
+‘There’s a friend of mine who writes novels,’ Jasper pursued. ‘His
+books are not works of genius, but they are glaringly distinct from the
+ordinary circulating novel. Well, after one or two attempts, he made
+half a success; that is to say, the publishers brought out a second
+edition of the book in a few months. There was his opportunity. But he
+couldn’t use it; he had no friends, because he had no money. A book of
+half that merit, if written by a man in the position of Warbury when
+he started, would have established the reputation of a lifetime. His
+influential friends would have referred to it in leaders, in magazine
+articles, in speeches, in sermons. It would have run through numerous
+editions, and the author would have had nothing to do but to write
+another book and demand his price. But the novel I’m speaking of was
+practically forgotten a year after its appearance; it was whelmed
+beneath the flood of next season’s literature.’
+
+Marian urged a hesitating objection.
+
+‘But, under the circumstances, wasn’t it in the author’s power to make
+friends? Was money really indispensable?’
+
+‘Why, yes--because he chose to marry. As a bachelor he might possibly
+have got into the right circles, though his character would in any case
+have made it difficult for him to curry favour.
+
+But as a married man, without means, the situation was hopeless. Once
+married you must live up to the standard of the society you frequent;
+you can’t be entertained without entertaining in return. Now if his wife
+had brought him only a couple of thousand pounds all might have been
+well. I should have advised him, in sober seriousness, to live for two
+years at the rate of a thousand a year. At the end of that time he would
+have been earning enough to continue at pretty much the same rate of
+expenditure.’
+
+‘Perhaps.’
+
+‘Well, I ought rather to say that the average man of letters would be
+able to do that. As for Reardon--’
+
+He stopped. The name had escaped him unawares.
+
+‘Reardon?’ said Marian, looking up. ‘You are speaking of him?’
+
+‘I have betrayed myself Miss Yule.’
+
+‘But what does it matter? You have only spoken in his favour.’
+
+‘I feared the name might affect you disagreeably.’
+
+Marian delayed her reply.
+
+‘It is true,’ she said, ‘we are not on friendly terms with my cousin’s
+family. I have never met Mr Reardon. But I shouldn’t like you to think
+that the mention of his name is disagreeable to me.’
+
+‘It made me slightly uncomfortable yesterday--the fact that I am well
+acquainted with Mrs Edmund Yule, and that Reardon is my friend. Yet
+I didn’t see why that should prevent my making your father’s
+acquaintance.’
+
+‘Surely not. I shall say nothing about it; I mean, as you uttered the
+name unintentionally.’
+
+There was a pause in the dialogue. They had been speaking almost
+confidentially, and Marian seemed to become suddenly aware of an oddness
+in the situation. She turned towards the uphill path, as if thinking of
+resuming her walk.
+
+‘You are tired of standing still,’ said Jasper. ‘May I walk back a part
+of the way with you?’
+
+‘Thank you; I shall be glad.’
+
+They went on for a few minutes in silence.
+
+‘Have you published anything with your signature, Miss Yule?’ Jasper at
+length inquired.
+
+‘Nothing. I only help father a little.’
+
+The silence that again followed was broken this time by Marian.
+
+‘When you chanced to mention Mr Reardon’s name,’ she said, with a
+diffident smile in which lay that suggestion of humour so delightful
+upon a woman’s face, ‘you were going to say something more about him?’
+
+‘Only that--’ he broke off and laughed. ‘Now, how boyish it was, wasn’t
+it? I remember doing just the same thing once when I came home
+from school and had an exciting story to tell, with preservation of
+anonymities. Of course I blurted out a name in the first minute or two,
+to my father’s great amusement. He told me that I hadn’t the diplomatic
+character. I have been trying to acquire it ever since.
+
+‘But why?’
+
+‘It’s one of the essentials of success in any kind of public life. And
+I mean to succeed, you know. I feel that I am one of the men who do
+succeed. But I beg your pardon; you asked me a question. Really, I was
+only going to say of Reardon what I had said before: that he hasn’t the
+tact requisite for acquiring popularity.’
+
+‘Then I may hope that it isn’t his marriage with my cousin which has
+proved a fatal misfortune?’
+
+‘In no case,’ replied Milvain, averting his look, ‘would he have used
+his advantages.’
+
+‘And now? Do you think he has but poor prospects?’
+
+‘I wish I could see any chance of his being estimated at his right
+value. It’s very hard to say what is before him.’
+
+‘I knew my cousin Amy when we were children,’ said Marian, presently.
+‘She gave promise of beauty.’
+
+‘Yes, she is beautiful.’
+
+‘And--the kind of woman to be of help to such a husband?’
+
+‘I hardly know how to answer, Miss Yule,’ said Jasper, looking frankly
+at her. ‘Perhaps I had better say that it’s unfortunate they are poor.’
+
+Marian cast down her eyes.
+
+‘To whom isn’t it a misfortune?’ pursued her companion. ‘Poverty is the
+root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for the ills that
+arise from wealth. The poor man is a man labouring in fetters. I declare
+there is no word in our language which sounds so hideous to me as
+“Poverty.”’
+
+Shortly after this they came to the bridge over the railway line. Jasper
+looked at his watch.
+
+‘Will you indulge me in a piece of childishness?’ he said. ‘In less than
+five minutes a London express goes by; I have often watched it here, and
+it amuses me. Would it weary you to wait?’
+
+‘I should like to,’ she replied with a laugh.
+
+The line ran along a deep cutting, from either side of which grew hazel
+bushes and a few larger trees. Leaning upon the parapet of the bridge,
+Jasper kept his eye in the westward direction, where the gleaming rails
+were visible for more than a mile. Suddenly he raised his finger.
+
+‘You hear?’
+
+Marian had just caught the far-off sound of the train. She looked
+eagerly, and in a few moments saw it approaching. The front of the
+engine blackened nearer and nearer, coming on with dread force and
+speed. A blinding rush, and there burst against the bridge a great
+volley of sunlit steam. Milvain and his companion ran to the opposite
+parapet, but already the whole train had emerged, and in a few seconds
+it had disappeared round a sharp curve. The leafy branches that grew out
+over the line swayed violently backwards and forwards in the perturbed
+air.
+
+‘If I were ten years younger,’ said Jasper, laughing, ‘I should say that
+was jolly! It enspirits me. It makes me feel eager to go back and plunge
+into the fight again.’
+
+‘Upon me it has just the opposite effect,’ fell from Marian, in very low
+tones.
+
+‘Oh, don’t say that! Well, it only means that you haven’t had enough
+holiday yet. I have been in the country more than a week; a few days
+more and I must be off. How long do you think of staying?’
+
+‘Not much more than a week, I think.’
+
+‘By-the-bye, you are coming to have tea with us to-morrow,’ Jasper
+remarked a propos of nothing. Then he returned to another subject that
+was in his thoughts.
+
+‘It was by a train like that that I first went up to London. Not really
+the first time; I mean when I went to live there, seven years ago.
+What spirits I was in! A boy of eighteen going to live independently in
+London; think of it!’
+
+‘You went straight from school?’
+
+‘I was for two years at Redmayne College after leaving Wattleborough
+Grammar School. Then my father died, and I spent nearly half a year at
+home. I was meant to be a teacher, but the prospect of entering a school
+by no means appealed to me. A friend of mine was studying in London for
+some Civil Service exam., so I declared that I would go and do the same
+thing.’
+
+‘Did you succeed?’
+
+‘Not I! I never worked properly for that kind of thing. I read
+voraciously, and got to know London. I might have gone to the dogs, you
+know; but by when I had been in London a year a pretty clear purpose
+began to form in me. Strange to think that you were growing up there all
+the time. I may have passed you in the street now and then.’
+
+Marian laughed.
+
+‘And I did at length see you at the British Museum, you know.’
+
+They turned a corner of the road, and came full upon Marian’s father,
+who was walking in this direction with eyes fixed upon the ground.
+
+‘So here you are!’ he exclaimed, looking at the girl, and for the moment
+paying no attention to Jasper. ‘I wondered whether I should meet you.’
+Then, more dryly, ‘How do you do, Mr Milvain?’
+
+In a tone of easy indifference Jasper explained how he came to be
+accompanying Miss Yule.
+
+‘Shall I walk on with you, father?’ Marian asked, scrutinising his
+rugged features.
+
+‘Just as you please; I don’t know that I should have gone much further.
+But we might take another way back.’
+
+Jasper readily adapted himself to the wish he discerned in Mr Yule; at
+once he offered leave-taking in the most natural way. Nothing was said
+on either side about another meeting.
+
+The young man proceeded homewards, but, on arriving, did not at once
+enter the house. Behind the garden was a field used for the grazing of
+horses; he entered it by the unfastened gate, and strolled idly hither
+and thither, now and then standing to observe a poor worn-out beast, all
+skin and bone, which had presumably been sent here in the hope that a
+little more labour might still be exacted from it if it were suffered
+to repose for a few weeks. There were sores upon its back and legs; it
+stood in a fixed attitude of despondency, just flicking away troublesome
+flies with its grizzled tail.
+
+It was tea-time when he went in. Maud was not at home, and Mrs Milvain,
+tormented by a familiar headache, kept her room; so Jasper and Dora sat
+down together. Each had an open book on the table; throughout the meal
+they exchanged only a few words.
+
+‘Going to play a little?’ Jasper suggested when they had gone into the
+sitting-room.
+
+‘If you like.’
+
+She sat down at the piano, whilst her brother lay on the sofa, his
+hands clasped beneath his head. Dora did not play badly, but an
+absentmindedness which was commonly observable in her had its effect
+upon the music. She at length broke off idly in the middle of a passage,
+and began to linger on careless chords. Then, without turning her head,
+she asked:
+
+‘Were you serious in what you said about writing storybooks?’
+
+‘Quite. I see no reason why you shouldn’t do something in that way. But
+I tell you what; when I get back, I’ll inquire into the state of the
+market. I know a man who was once engaged at Jolly & Monk’s--the chief
+publishers of that kind of thing, you know; I must look him up--what a
+mistake it is to neglect any acquaintance!--and get some information out
+of him. But it’s obvious what an immense field there is for anyone who
+can just hit the taste of the new generation of Board school children.
+Mustn’t be too goody-goody; that kind of thing is falling out of date.
+But you’d have to cultivate a particular kind of vulgarity.
+
+There’s an idea, by-the-bye. I’ll write a paper on the characteristics
+of that new generation; it may bring me a few guineas, and it would be a
+help to you.’
+
+‘But what do you know about the subject?’ asked Dora doubtfully.
+
+‘What a comical question! It is my business to know something about
+every subject--or to know where to get the knowledge.’
+
+‘Well,’ said Dora, after a pause, ‘there’s no doubt Maud and I ought
+to think very seriously about the future. You are aware, Jasper, that
+mother has not been able to save a penny of her income.’
+
+‘I don’t see how she could have done. Of course I know what you’re
+thinking; but for me, it would have been possible. I don’t mind
+confessing to you that the thought troubles me a little now and then;
+I shouldn’t like to see you two going off governessing in strangers’
+houses. All I can say is, that I am very honestly working for the end
+which I am convinced will be most profitable.
+
+I shall not desert you; you needn’t fear that. But just put your heads
+together, and cultivate your writing faculty. Suppose you could both
+together earn about a hundred a year in Grub Street, it would be better
+than governessing; wouldn’t it?’
+
+‘You say you don’t know what Miss Yule writes?’
+
+‘Well, I know a little more about her than I did yesterday. I’ve had an
+hour’s talk with her this afternoon.’
+
+‘Indeed?’
+
+‘Met her down in the Leggatt fields. I find she doesn’t write
+independently; just helps her father. What the help amounts to I can’t
+say. There’s something very attractive about her. She quoted a line or
+two of Tennyson; the first time I ever heard a woman speak blank verse
+with any kind of decency.’
+
+‘She was walking alone?’
+
+‘Yes. On the way back we met old Yule; he seemed rather grumpy, I
+thought. I don’t think she’s the kind of girl to make a paying business
+of literature. Her qualities are personal. And it’s pretty clear to
+me that the valley of the shadow of books by no means agrees with her
+disposition. Possibly old Yule is something of a tyrant.’
+
+‘He doesn’t impress me very favourably. Do you think you will keep up
+their acquaintance in London?’
+
+‘Can’t say. I wonder what sort of a woman that mother really is? Can’t
+be so very gross, I should think.’
+
+‘Miss Harrow knows nothing about her, except that she was a quite
+uneducated girl.’
+
+‘But, dash it! by this time she must have got decent manners. Of course
+there may be other objections. Mrs Reardon knows nothing against her.’
+
+Midway in the following morning, as Jasper sat with a book in the
+garden, he was surprised to see Alfred Yule enter by the gate.
+
+‘I thought,’ began the visitor, who seemed in high spirits, ‘that you
+might like to see something I received this morning.’
+
+He unfolded a London evening paper, and indicated a long letter from
+a casual correspondent. It was written by the authoress of ‘On the
+Boards,’ and drew attention, with much expenditure of witticism, to the
+conflicting notices of that book which had appeared in The Study. Jasper
+read the thing with laughing appreciation.
+
+‘Just what one expected!’
+
+‘And I have private letters on the subject,’ added Mr Yule.
+
+‘There has been something like a personal conflict between Fadge and the
+man who looks after the minor notices. Fadge, more so, charged the other
+man with a design to damage him and the paper. There’s talk of legal
+proceedings. An immense joke!’
+
+He laughed in his peculiar croaking way.
+
+‘Do you feel disposed for a turn along the lanes, Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘By all means.--There’s my mother at the window; will you come in for a
+moment?’
+
+With a step of quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house.
+He could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a
+laboured account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was
+Alfred’s Yule’s characteristic that he could do nothing lighthandedly.
+He seemed always to converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff
+ungainliness; he walked with a stumbling or sprawling gait.
+
+When he and Jasper set out for their ramble, his loquacity was in strong
+contrast with the taciturn mood he had exhibited yesterday and the day
+before. He fell upon the general aspects of contemporary literature.
+
+‘... The evil of the time is the multiplication of ephemerides. Hence a
+demand for essays, descriptive articles, fragments of criticism, out of
+all proportion to the supply of even tolerable work. The men who have
+an aptitude for turning out this kind of thing in vast quantities are
+enlisted by every new periodical, with the result that their productions
+are ultimately watered down into worthlessness.... Well now, there’s
+Fadge. Years ago some of Fadge’s work was not without a certain--a
+certain conditional promise of--of comparative merit; but now his
+writing, in my opinion, is altogether beneath consideration; how Rackett
+could be so benighted as to give him The Study--especially after a man
+like Henry Hawkridge--passes my comprehension. Did you read a paper of
+his, a few months back, in The Wayside, a preposterous rehabilitation of
+Elkanah Settle? Ha! Ha! That’s what such men are driven to. Elkanah
+Settle! And he hadn’t even a competent acquaintance with his paltry
+subject. Will you credit that he twice or thrice referred to Settle’s
+reply to “Absalom and Achitophel” by the title of “Absalom Transposed,”
+ when every schoolgirl knows that the thing was called “Achitophel
+Transposed”! This was monstrous enough, but there was something still
+more contemptible. He positively, I assure you, attributed the play of
+“Epsom Wells” to Crowne! I should have presumed that every student of
+even the most trivial primer of literature was aware that “Epsom Wells”
+ was written by Shadwell.... Now, if one were to take Shadwell for the
+subject of a paper, one might very well show how unjustly his name has
+fallen into contempt. It has often occurred to me to do this. “But
+Shadwell never deviates into sense.” The sneer, in my opinion, is
+entirely unmerited. For my own part, I put Shadwell very high among the
+dramatists of his time, and I think I could show that his absolute worth
+is by no means inconsiderable. Shadwell has distinct vigour of dramatic
+conception; his dialogue....’
+
+And as he talked the man kept describing imaginary geometrical figures
+with the end of his walking-stick; he very seldom raised his eyes
+from the ground, and the stoop in his shoulders grew more and more
+pronounced, until at a little distance one might have taken him for a
+hunchback. At one point Jasper made a pause to speak of the pleasant
+wooded prospect that lay before them; his companion regarded it
+absently, and in a moment or two asked:
+
+‘Did you ever come across Cottle’s poem on the Malvern Hills? No?
+
+It contains a couple of the richest lines ever put into print:
+
+      It needs the evidence of close deduction
+      To know that I shall ever reach the top.
+
+Perfectly serious poetry, mind you!’
+
+He barked in laughter. Impossible to interest him in anything apart from
+literature; yet one saw him to be a man of solid understanding, and
+not without perception of humour. He had read vastly; his memory was a
+literary cyclopaedia. His failings, obvious enough, were the results
+of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict
+with unpropitious circumstances.
+
+Towards the young man his demeanour varied between a shy cordiality and
+a dignified reserve which was in danger of seeming pretentious. On the
+homeward part of the walk he made a few discreet inquiries regarding
+Milvain’s literary achievements and prospects, and the frank
+self-confidence of the replies appeared to interest him. But he
+expressed no desire to number Jasper among his acquaintances in town,
+and of his own professional or private concerns he said not a word.
+
+‘Whether he could be any use to me or not, I don’t exactly know,’ Jasper
+remarked to his mother and sisters at dinner. ‘I suspect it’s as much as
+he can do to keep a footing among the younger tradesmen. But I think he
+might have said he was willing to help me if he could.’
+
+‘Perhaps,’ replied Maud, ‘your large way of talking made him think any
+such offer superfluous.’
+
+‘You have still to learn,’ said Jasper, ‘that modesty helps a man in no
+department of modern life. People take you at your own valuation. It’s
+the men who declare boldly that they need no help to whom practical
+help comes from all sides. As likely as not Yule will mention my name
+to someone. “A young fellow who seems to see his way pretty clear before
+him.” The other man will repeat it to somebody else, “A young fellow
+whose way is clear before him,” and so I come to the ears of a man who
+thinks “Just the fellow I want; I must look him up and ask him if he’ll
+do such-and-such a thing.” But I should like to see these Yules at home;
+I must fish for an invitation.’
+
+In the afternoon, Miss Harrow and Marian came at the expected hour.
+Jasper purposely kept out of the way until he was summoned to the
+tea-table.
+
+The Milvain girls were so far from effusive, even towards old
+acquaintances, that even the people who knew them best spoke of them
+as rather cold and perhaps a trifle condescending; there were people
+in Wattleborough who declared their airs of superiority ridiculous and
+insufferable. The truth was that nature had endowed them with a larger
+share of brains than was common in their circle, and had added that
+touch of pride which harmonised so ill with the restrictions of
+poverty. Their life had a tone of melancholy, the painful reserve which
+characterises a certain clearly defined class in the present day. Had
+they been born twenty years earlier, the children of that veterinary
+surgeon would have grown up to a very different, and in all probability
+a much happier, existence, for their education would have been
+limited to the strictly needful, and--certainly in the case of the
+girls--nothing would have encouraged them to look beyond the simple life
+possible to a poor man’s offspring. But whilst Maud and Dora were still
+with their homely schoolmistress, Wattleborough saw fit to establish
+a Girls’ High School, and the moderateness of the fees enabled these
+sisters to receive an intellectual training wholly incompatible with the
+material conditions of their life. To the relatively poor (who are so
+much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases
+a mocking cruelty. The burden of their brother’s support made it very
+difficult for Maud and Dora even to dress as became their intellectual
+station; amusements, holidays, the purchase of such simple luxuries as
+were all but indispensable to them, could not be thought of. It resulted
+that they held apart from the society which would have welcomed them,
+for they could not bear to receive without offering in turn. The
+necessity of giving lessons galled them; they felt--and with every
+reason--that it made their position ambiguous. So that, though they
+could not help knowing many people, they had no intimates; they
+encouraged no one to visit them, and visited other houses as little as
+might be.
+
+In Marian Yule they divined a sympathetic nature. She was unlike any
+girl with whom they had hitherto associated, and it was the impulse of
+both to receive her with unusual friendliness. The habit of reticence
+could not be at once overcome, and Marian’s own timidity was an obstacle
+in the way of free intercourse, but Jasper’s conversation at tea helped
+to smooth the course of things.
+
+‘I wish you lived anywhere near us,’ Dora said to their visitor, as the
+three girls walked in the garden afterwards, and Maud echoed the wish.
+
+‘It would be very nice,’ was Marian’s reply. ‘I have no friends of my
+own age in London.’
+
+‘None?’
+
+‘Not one!’
+
+She was about to add something, but in the end kept silence.
+
+‘You seem to get along with Miss Yule pretty well, after all,’ said
+Jasper, when the family were alone again.
+
+‘Did you anticipate anything else?’ Maud asked.
+
+‘It seemed doubtful, up at Yule’s house. Well, get her to come here
+again before I go. But it’s a pity she doesn’t play the piano,’ he
+added, musingly.
+
+For two days nothing was seen of the Yules. Jasper went each afternoon
+to the stream in the valley, but did not again meet Marian. In the
+meanwhile he was growing restless. A fortnight always exhausted his
+capacity for enjoying the companionship of his mother and sisters, and
+this time he seemed anxious to get to the end of his holiday. For all
+that, there was no continuance of the domestic bickering which had
+begun. Whatever the reason, Maud behaved with unusual mildness to her
+brother, and Jasper in turn was gently disposed to both the girls.
+
+On the morning of the third day--it was Saturday--he kept silence
+through breakfast, and just as all were about to rise from the table, he
+made a sudden announcement:
+
+‘I shall go to London this afternoon.’
+
+‘This afternoon?’ all exclaimed. ‘But Monday is your day.’
+
+‘No, I shall go this afternoon, by the 2.45.’
+
+And he left the room. Mrs Milvain and the girls exchanged looks.
+
+‘I suppose he thinks the Sunday will be too wearisome,’ said the mother.
+
+‘Perhaps so,’ Maud agreed, carelessly.
+
+Half an hour later, just as Dora was ready to leave the house for her
+engagements in Wattleborough, her brother came into the hall and took
+his hat, saying:
+
+‘I’ll walk a little way with you, if you don’t mind.’
+
+When they were in the road, he asked her in an offhand manner:
+
+‘Do you think I ought to say good-bye to the Yules? Or won’t it
+signify?’
+
+‘I should have thought you would wish to.’
+
+‘I don’t care about it. And, you see, there’s been no hint of a wish on
+their part that I should see them in London. No, I’ll just leave you to
+say good-bye for me.’
+
+‘But they expect to see us to-day or to-morrow. You told them you were
+not going till Monday, and you don’t know but Mr Yule might mean to say
+something yet.’
+
+‘Well, I had rather he didn’t,’ replied Jasper, with a laugh.
+
+‘Oh, indeed?’
+
+‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he laughed again. ‘I’m afraid of that girl.
+No, it won’t do! You understand that I’m a practical man, and I shall
+keep clear of dangers. These days of holiday idleness put all sorts of
+nonsense into one’s head.’
+
+Dora kept her eyes down, and smiled ambiguously.
+
+‘You must act as you think fit,’ she remarked at length.
+
+‘Exactly. Now I’ll turn back. You’ll be with us at dinner?’
+
+They parted. But Jasper did not keep to the straight way home. First of
+all, he loitered to watch a reaping-machine at work; then he turned into
+a lane which led up the hill on which was John Yule’s house. Even if he
+had purposed making a farewell call, it was still far too early; all he
+wanted to do was to pass an hour of the morning, which threatened to lie
+heavy on his hands. So he rambled on, and went past the house, and took
+the field-path which would lead him circuitously home again.
+
+His mother desired to speak to him. She was in the dining-room; in the
+parlour Maud was practising music.
+
+‘I think I ought to tell you of something I did yesterday, Jasper,’ Mrs
+Milvain began. ‘You see, my dear, we have been rather straitened lately,
+and my health, you know, grows so uncertain, and, all things considered,
+I have been feeling very anxious about the girls. So I wrote to your
+uncle William, and told him that I must positively have that money. I
+must think of my own children before his.’
+
+The matter referred to was this. The deceased Mr Milvain had a brother
+who was a struggling shopkeeper in a Midland town. Some ten years ago,
+William Milvain, on the point of bankruptcy, had borrowed a hundred
+and seventy pounds from his brother in Wattleborough, and this debt was
+still unpaid; for on the death of Jasper’s father repayment of the loan
+was impossible for William, and since then it had seemed hopeless that
+the sum would ever be recovered. The poor shopkeeper had a large family,
+and Mrs Milvain, notwithstanding her own position, had never felt able
+to press him; her relative, however, often spoke of the business, and
+declared his intention of paying whenever he could.
+
+‘You can’t recover by law now, you know,’ said Jasper.
+
+‘But we have a right to the money, law or no law. He must pay it.’
+
+‘He will simply refuse--and be justified. Poverty doesn’t allow of
+honourable feeling, any more than of compassion. I’m sorry you wrote
+like that. You won’t get anything, and you might as well have enjoyed
+the reputation of forbearance.’
+
+Mrs Milvain was not able to appreciate this characteristic remark.
+Anxiety weighed upon her, and she became irritable.
+
+‘I am obliged to say, Jasper, that you seem rather thoughtless. If
+it were only myself. I would make any sacrifice for you; but you must
+remember--’
+
+‘Now listen, mother,’ he interrupted, laying a hand on her shoulder;
+‘I have been thinking about all this, and the fact of the matter is,
+I shall do my best to ask you for no more money. It may or may not be
+practicable, but I’ll have a try. So don’t worry. If uncle writes that
+he can’t pay, just explain why you wrote, and keep him gently in mind of
+the thing, that’s all. One doesn’t like to do brutal things if one can
+avoid them, you know.’
+
+The young man went to the parlour and listened to Maud’s music for
+awhile. But restlessness again drove him forth. Towards eleven o’clock
+he was again ascending in the direction of John Yule’s house. Again
+he had no intention of calling, but when he reached the iron gates he
+lingered.
+
+‘I will, by Jove!’ he said within himself at last. ‘Just to prove I
+have complete command of myself. It’s to be a display of strength, not
+weakness.’
+
+At the house door he inquired for Mr Alfred Yule. That gentleman had
+gone in the carriage to Wattleborough, half an hour ago, with his
+brother.
+
+‘Miss Yule?’
+
+Yes, she was within. Jasper entered the sitting-room, waited a few
+moments, and Marian appeared. She wore a dress in which Milvain had
+not yet seen her, and it had the effect of making him regard her
+attentively. The smile with which she had come towards him passed from
+her face, which was perchance a little warmer of hue than commonly.
+
+‘I’m sorry your father is away, Miss Yule,’ Jasper began, in an animated
+voice. ‘I wanted to say good-bye to him. I return to London in a few
+hours.’
+
+‘You are going sooner than you intended?’
+
+‘Yes, I feel I mustn’t waste any more time. I think the country air is
+doing you good; you certainly look better than when I passed you that
+first day.’
+
+‘I feel better, much.’
+
+‘My sisters are anxious to see you again. I shouldn’t wonder if they
+come up this afternoon.’
+
+Marian had seated herself on the sofa, and her hands were linked upon
+her lap in the same way as when Jasper spoke with her here before, the
+palms downward. The beautiful outline of her bent head was relieved
+against a broad strip of sunlight on the wall behind her.
+
+‘They deplore,’ he continued in a moment, ‘that they should come to know
+you only to lose you again so soon.
+
+‘I have quite as much reason to be sorry,’ she answered, looking at him
+with the slightest possible smile. ‘But perhaps they will let me write
+to them, and hear from them now and then.’
+
+‘They would think it an honour. Country girls are not often invited to
+correspond with literary ladies in London.’
+
+He said it with as much jocoseness as civility allowed, then at once
+rose.
+
+‘Father will be very sorry,’ Marian began, with one quick glance towards
+the window and then another towards the door. ‘Perhaps he might possibly
+be able to see you before you go?’
+
+Jasper stood in hesitation. There was a look on the girl’s face which,
+under other circumstances, would have suggested a ready answer.
+
+‘I mean,’ she added, hastily, ‘he might just call, or even see you at
+the station?’
+
+‘Oh, I shouldn’t like to give Mr Yule any trouble. It’s my own fault,
+for deciding to go to-day. I shall leave by the 2.45.’
+
+He offered his hand.
+
+‘I shall look for your name in the magazines, Miss Yule.’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t think you will ever find it there.’
+
+He laughed incredulously, shook hands with her a second time, and strode
+out of the room, head erect--feeling proud of himself.
+
+When Dora came home at dinner-time, he informed her of what he had done.
+
+‘A very interesting girl,’ he added impartially. ‘I advise you to make
+a friend of her. Who knows but you may live in London some day, and then
+she might be valuable--morally, I mean. For myself, I shall do my best
+not to see her again for a long time; she’s dangerous.’
+
+Jasper was unaccompanied when he went to the station. Whilst waiting on
+the platform, he suffered from apprehension lest Alfred Yule’s seamed
+visage should present itself; but no acquaintance approached him. Safe
+in the corner of his third-class carriage, he smiled at the last glimpse
+of the familiar fields, and began to think of something he had decided
+to write for The West End.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. AN AUTHOR AND HIS WIFE
+
+Eight flights of stairs, consisting alternately of eight and nine steps.
+Amy had made the calculation, and wondered what was the cause of this
+arrangement. The ascent was trying, but then no one could contest the
+respectability of the abode. In the flat immediately beneath resided a
+successful musician, whose carriage and pair came at a regular hour each
+afternoon to take him and his wife for a most respectable drive. In this
+special building no one else seemed at present to keep a carriage, but
+all the tenants were gentlefolk.
+
+And as to living up at the very top, why, there were distinct
+advantages--as so many people of moderate income are nowadays hastening
+to discover. The noise from the street was diminished at this height; no
+possible tramplers could establish themselves above your head; the air
+was bound to be purer than that of inferior strata; finally, one had
+the flat roof whereon to sit or expatiate in sunny weather. True that a
+gentle rain of soot was wont to interfere with one’s comfort out there
+in the open, but such minutiae are easily forgotten in the fervour of
+domestic description. It was undeniable that on a fine day one enjoyed
+extensive views. The green ridge from Hampstead to Highgate, with
+Primrose Hill and the foliage of Regent’s Park in the foreground; the
+suburban spaces of St John’s Wood, Maida Vale, Kilburn; Westminster
+Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, lying low by the side of the hidden
+river, and a glassy gleam on far-off hills which meant the Crystal
+Palace; then the clouded majesty of eastern London, crowned by St Paul’s
+dome. These things one’s friends were expected to admire. Sunset often
+afforded rich effects, but they were for solitary musing.
+
+A sitting-room, a bedroom, a kitchen. But the kitchen was called
+dining-room, or even parlour at need; for the cooking-range lent itself
+to concealment behind an ornamental screen, the walls displayed pictures
+and bookcases, and a tiny scullery which lay apart sufficed for the
+coarser domestic operations. This was Amy’s territory during the hours
+when her husband was working, or endeavouring to work. Of necessity,
+Edwin Reardon used the front room as his study. His writing-table stood
+against the window; each wall had its shelves of serried literature;
+vases, busts, engravings (all of the inexpensive kind) served for
+ornaments.
+
+A maid-servant, recently emancipated from the Board school, came at
+half-past seven each morning, and remained until two o’clock, by which
+time the Reardons had dined; on special occasions, her services were
+enlisted for later hours. But it was Reardon’s habit to begin the
+serious work of the day at about three o’clock, and to continue with
+brief interruptions until ten or eleven; in many respects an awkward
+arrangement, but enforced by the man’s temperament and his poverty.
+
+One evening he sat at his desk with a slip of manuscript paper before
+him. It was the hour of sunset. His outlook was upon the backs of
+certain large houses skirting Regent’s Park, and lights had begun to
+show here and there in the windows: in one room a man was discoverable
+dressing for dinner, he had not thought it worth while to lower the
+blind; in another, some people were playing billiards. The higher
+windows reflected a rich glow from the western sky.
+
+For two or three hours Reardon had been seated in much the same
+attitude. Occasionally he dipped his pen into the ink and seemed about
+to write: but each time the effort was abortive. At the head of the
+paper was inscribed ‘Chapter III.,’ but that was all.
+
+And now the sky was dusking over; darkness would soon fall.
+
+He looked something older than his years, which were two-and-thirty; on
+his face was the pallor of mental suffering. Often he fell into a fit
+of absence, and gazed at vacancy with wide, miserable eyes. Returning
+to consciousness, he fidgeted nervously on his chair, dipped his pen
+for the hundredth time, bent forward in feverish determination to work.
+Useless; he scarcely knew what he wished to put into words, and his
+brain refused to construct the simplest sentence.
+
+The colours faded from the sky, and night came quickly. Reardon threw
+his arms upon the desk, let his head fall forward, and remained so, as
+if asleep.
+
+Presently the door opened, and a young, clear voice made inquiry:
+
+‘Don’t you want the lamp, Edwin?’
+
+The man roused himself, turned his chair a little, and looked towards
+the open door.
+
+‘Come here, Amy.’
+
+His wife approached. It was not quite dark in the room, for a glimmer
+came from the opposite houses.
+
+‘What’s the matter? Can’t you do anything?’
+
+‘I haven’t written a word to-day. At this rate, one goes crazy. Come and
+sit by me a minute, dearest.’
+
+‘I’ll get the lamp.’
+
+‘No; come and talk to me; we can understand each other better.’
+
+‘Nonsense; you have such morbid ideas. I can’t bear to sit in the
+gloom.’
+
+At once she went away, and quickly reappeared with a reading-lamp, which
+she placed on the square table in the middle of the room.
+
+‘Draw down the blind, Edwin.’
+
+She was a slender girl, but not very tall; her shoulders seemed rather
+broad in proportion to her waist and the part of her figure below it.
+The hue of her hair was ruddy gold; loosely arranged tresses made a
+superb crown to the beauty of her small, refined head. Yet the face
+was not of distinctly feminine type; with short hair and appropriate
+clothing, she would have passed unquestioned as a handsome boy of
+seventeen, a spirited boy too, and one much in the habit of giving
+orders to inferiors. Her nose would have been perfect but for ever so
+slight a crook which made it preferable to view her in full face than in
+profile; her lips curved sharply out, and when she straightened them of
+a sudden, the effect was not reassuring to anyone who had counted upon
+her for facile humour. In harmony with the broad shoulders, she had a
+strong neck; as she bore the lamp into the room a slight turn of
+her head showed splendid muscles from the ear downward. It was a
+magnificently clear-cut bust; one thought, in looking at her, of the
+newly-finished head which some honest sculptor has wrought with his own
+hand from the marble block; there was a suggestion of ‘planes’ and of
+the chisel. The atmosphere was cold; ruddiness would have been quite
+out of place on her cheeks, and a flush must have been the rarest thing
+there.
+
+Her age was not quite two-and-twenty; she had been wedded nearly two
+years, and had a child ten months old.
+
+As for her dress, it was unpretending in fashion and colour, but
+of admirable fit. Every detail of her appearance denoted scrupulous
+personal refinement. She walked well; you saw that the foot, however
+gently, was firmly planted. When she seated herself her posture was
+instantly graceful, and that of one who is indifferent about support for
+the back.
+
+‘What is the matter?’ she began. ‘Why can’t you get on with the story?’
+
+It was the tone of friendly remonstrance, not exactly of affection, not
+at all of tender solicitude.
+
+Reardon had risen and wished to approach her, but could not do so
+directly. He moved to another part of the room, then came round to the
+back of her chair, and bent his face upon her shoulder.
+
+‘Amy--’
+
+‘Well.’
+
+‘I think it’s all over with me. I don’t think I shall write any more.’
+
+‘Don’t be so foolish, dear. What is to prevent your writing?’
+
+‘Perhaps I am only out of sorts. But I begin to be horribly afraid.
+My will seems to be fatally weakened. I can’t see my way to the end of
+anything; if I get hold of an idea which seems good, all the sap has
+gone out of it before I have got it into working shape. In these last
+few months, I must have begun a dozen different books; I have been
+ashamed to tell you of each new beginning. I write twenty pages,
+perhaps, and then my courage fails. I am disgusted with the thing, and
+can’t go on with it--can’t! My fingers refuse to hold the pen. In mere
+writing, I have done enough to make much more than three volumes; but
+it’s all destroyed.’
+
+‘Because of your morbid conscientiousness. There was no need to destroy
+what you had written. It was all good enough for the market.’
+
+‘Don’t use that word, Amy. I hate it!’
+
+‘You can’t afford to hate it,’ was her rejoinder, in very practical
+tones. ‘However it was before, you must write for the market now. You
+have admitted that yourself.’
+
+He kept silence.
+
+‘Where are you?’ she went on to ask. ‘What have you actually done?’
+
+‘Two short chapters of a story I can’t go on with. The three volumes lie
+before me like an interminable desert. Impossible to get through them.
+The idea is stupidly artificial, and I haven’t a living character in
+it.’
+
+‘The public don’t care whether the characters are living or not.--Don’t
+stand behind me, like that; it’s such an awkward way of talking. Come
+and sit down.’
+
+He drew away, and came to a position whence he could see her face, but
+kept at a distance.
+
+‘Yes,’ he said, in a different way, ‘that’s the worst of it.’
+
+‘What is?’
+
+‘That you--well, it’s no use.’
+
+‘That I--what?’
+
+She did not look at him; her lips, after she had spoken, drew in a
+little.
+
+‘That your disposition towards me is being affected by this miserable
+failure. You keep saying to yourself that I am not what you thought me.
+Perhaps you even feel that I have been guilty of a sort of deception. I
+don’t blame you; it’s natural enough.’
+
+‘I’ll tell you quite honestly what I do think,’ she replied, after a
+short silence. ‘You are much weaker than I imagined. Difficulties crush
+you, instead of rousing you to struggle.’
+
+‘True. It has always been my fault.’
+
+‘But don’t you feel it’s rather unmanly, this state of things? You say
+you love me, and I try to believe it. But whilst you are saying so, you
+let me get nearer and nearer to miserable, hateful poverty. What is to
+become of me--of us? Shall you sit here day after day until our last
+shilling is spent?’
+
+‘No; of course I must do something.’
+
+‘When shall you begin in earnest? In a day or two you must pay this
+quarter’s rent, and that will leave us just about fifteen pounds in the
+world. Where is the rent at Christmas to come from?
+
+What are we to live upon? There’s all sorts of clothing to be bought;
+there’ll be all the extra expenses of winter. Surely it’s bad enough
+that we have had to stay here all the summer; no holiday of any kind. I
+have done my best not to grumble about it, but I begin to think that it
+would be very much wiser if I did grumble.’
+
+She squared her shoulders, and gave her head just a little shake, as if
+a fly had troubled her.
+
+‘You bear everything very well and kindly,’ said Reardon. ‘My behaviour
+is contemptible; I know that. Good heavens! if I only had some business
+to go to, something I could work at in any state of mind, and make money
+out of! Given this chance, I would work myself to death rather than you
+should lack anything you desire. But I am at the mercy of my brain; it
+is dry and powerless. How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices
+in the morning! There’s the day’s work cut out for them; no question
+of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the
+evening comes, they have earned their wages, they are free to rest and
+enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one’s
+only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time
+prove fatal to one’s power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the
+unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for
+attempting such a brutal folly.’
+
+He turned away in a passion of misery.
+
+‘How very silly it is to talk like this!’ came in Amy’s voice, clearly
+critical. ‘Art must be practised as a trade, at all events in our time.
+This is the age of trade. Of course if one refuses to be of one’s time,
+and yet hasn’t the means to live independently, what can result but
+breakdown and wretchedness? The fact of the matter is, you could do
+fairly good work, and work which would sell, if only you would bring
+yourself to look at things in a more practical way. It’s what Mr Milvain
+is always saying, you know.’
+
+‘Milvain’s temperament is very different from mine. He is naturally
+light-hearted and hopeful; I am naturally the opposite.
+
+What you and he say is true enough; the misfortune is that I can’t act
+upon it. I am no uncompromising artistic pedant; I am quite willing to
+try and do the kind of work that will sell; under the circumstances it
+would be a kind of insanity if I refused. But power doesn’t answer
+to the will. My efforts are utterly vain; I suppose the prospect of
+pennilessness is itself a hindrance; the fear haunts me. With such
+terrible real things pressing upon me, my imagination can shape nothing
+substantial. When I have laboured out a story, I suddenly see it in
+a light of such contemptible triviality that to work at it is an
+impossible thing.’
+
+‘You are ill, that’s the fact of the matter. You ought to have had a
+holiday. I think even now you had better go away for a week or two. Do,
+Edwin!’
+
+‘Impossible! It would be the merest pretence of holiday. To go away and
+leave you here--no!’
+
+‘Shall I ask mother or Jack to lend us some money?’
+
+‘That would be intolerable.’
+
+‘But this state of things is intolerable!’
+
+Reardon walked the length of the room and back again.
+
+‘Your mother has no money to lend, dear, and your brother would do it so
+unwillingly that we can’t lay ourselves under such an obligation.’
+
+‘Yet it will come to that, you know,’ remarked Amy, calmly.
+
+‘No, it shall not come to that. I must and will get something done long
+before Christmas. If only you--’
+
+He came and took one of her hands.
+
+‘If only you will give me more sympathy, dearest. You see, that’s one
+side of my weakness. I am utterly dependent upon you. Your kindness is
+the breath of life to me. Don’t refuse it!’
+
+‘But I have done nothing of the kind.’
+
+‘You begin to speak very coldly. And I understand your feeling of
+disappointment. The mere fact of your urging me to do anything that will
+sell is a proof of bitter disappointment. You would have looked with
+scorn at anyone who talked to me like that two years ago. You were proud
+of me because my work wasn’t altogether common, and because I had never
+written a line that was meant to attract the vulgar. All that’s over
+now. If you knew how dreadful it is to see that you have lost your hopes
+of me!’
+
+‘Well, but I haven’t--altogether,’ Amy replied, meditatively. ‘I know
+very well that, if you had a lot of money, you would do better things
+than ever.’
+
+‘Thank you a thousand times for saying that, my dearest.’
+
+‘But, you see, we haven’t money, and there’s little chance of our
+getting any. That scrubby old uncle won’t leave anything to us; I feel
+too sure of it. I often feel disposed to go and beg him on my knees to
+think of us in his will.’ She laughed. ‘I suppose it’s impossible, and
+would be useless; but I should be capable of it if I knew it would bring
+money.’
+
+Reardon said nothing.
+
+‘I didn’t think so much of money when we were married,’ Amy
+continued. ‘I had never seriously felt the want of it, you know. I did
+think--there’s no harm in confessing it--that you were sure to be rich
+some day; but I should have married you all the same if I had known that
+you would win only reputation.’
+
+‘You are sure of that?’
+
+‘Well, I think so. But I know the value of money better now. I know it
+is the most powerful thing in the world. If I had to choose between
+a glorious reputation with poverty and a contemptible popularity with
+wealth, I should choose the latter.’
+
+‘No!’
+
+‘I should.’
+
+‘Perhaps you are right.’
+
+He turned away with a sigh.
+
+‘Yes, you are right. What is reputation? If it is deserved, it
+originates with a few score of people among the many millions who would
+never have recognised the merit they at last applaud. That’s the lot of
+a great genius. As for a mediocrity like me--what ludicrous absurdity to
+fret myself in the hope that half-a-dozen folks will say I am “above the
+average!” After all, is there sillier vanity than this? A year after I
+have published my last book, I shall be practically forgotten; ten years
+later, I shall be as absolutely forgotten as one of those novelists of
+the early part of this century, whose names one doesn’t even recognise.
+What fatuous posing!’
+
+Amy looked askance at him, but replied nothing.
+
+‘And yet,’ he continued, ‘of course it isn’t only for the sake of
+reputation that one tries to do uncommon work. There’s the shrinking
+from conscious insincerity of workmanship--which most of the writers
+nowadays seem never to feel. “It’s good enough for the market”; that
+satisfies them. And perhaps they are justified.
+
+I can’t pretend that I rule my life by absolute ideals; I admit that
+everything is relative. There is no such thing as goodness or badness,
+in the absolute sense, of course. Perhaps I am absurdly inconsistent
+when--though knowing my work can’t be first rate--I strive to make it as
+good as possible. I don’t say this in irony, Amy; I really mean it. It
+may very well be that I am just as foolish as the people I ridicule for
+moral and religious superstition. This habit of mine is superstitious.
+How well I can imagine the answer of some popular novelist if he heard
+me speak scornfully of his books. “My dear fellow,” he might say, “do
+you suppose I am not aware that my books are rubbish? I know it just
+as well as you do. But my vocation is to live comfortably. I have a
+luxurious house, a wife and children who are happy and grateful to me
+for their happiness. If you choose to live in a garret, and, what’s
+worse, make your wife and children share it with you, that’s your
+concern.” The man would be abundantly right.’
+
+‘But,’ said Amy, ‘why should you assume that his books are rubbish? Good
+work succeeds--now and then.’
+
+‘I speak of the common kind of success, which is never due to
+literary merit. And if I speak bitterly, well, I am suffering from my
+powerlessness. I am a failure, my poor girl, and it isn’t easy for me to
+look with charity on the success of men who deserved it far less than I
+did, when I was still able to work.’
+
+‘Of course, Edwin, if you make up your mind that you are a failure,
+you will end by being so. But I’m convinced there’s no reason that you
+should fail to make a living with your pen. Now let me advise you; put
+aside all your strict ideas about what is worthy and what is unworthy,
+and just act upon my advice. It’s impossible for you to write a
+three-volume novel; very well, then do a short story of a kind that’s
+likely to be popular. You know Mr Milvain is always saying that the long
+novel has had its day, and that in future people will write shilling
+books. Why not try?
+
+Give yourself a week to invent a sensational plot, and then a fortnight
+for the writing. Have it ready for the new season at the end of October.
+If you like, don’t put your name to it; your name certainly would have
+no weight with this sort of public. Just make it a matter of business,
+as Mr Milvain says, and see if you can’t earn some money.’
+
+He stood and regarded her. His expression was one of pained perplexity.
+
+‘You mustn’t forget, Amy, that it needs a particular kind of faculty to
+write stories of this sort. The invention of a plot is just the thing I
+find most difficult.’
+
+‘But the plot may be as silly as you like, providing it holds the
+attention of vulgar readers. Think of “The Hollow Statue”, what could be
+more idiotic? Yet it sells by thousands.’
+
+‘I don’t think I can bring myself to that,’ Reardon said, in a low
+voice.
+
+‘Very well, then will you tell me what you propose to do?’
+
+‘I might perhaps manage a novel in two volumes, instead of three.’
+
+He seated himself at the writing-table, and stared at the blank sheets
+of paper in an anguish of hopelessness.
+
+‘It will take you till Christmas,’ said Amy, ‘and then you will get
+perhaps fifty pounds for it.’
+
+‘I must do my best. I’ll go out and try to get some ideas. I--’
+
+He broke off and looked steadily at his wife.
+
+‘What is it?’ she asked.
+
+‘Suppose I were to propose to you to leave this flat and take cheaper
+rooms?’
+
+He uttered it in a shamefaced way, his eyes falling. Amy kept silence.
+
+‘We might sublet it,’ he continued, in the same tone, ‘for the last year
+of the lease.’
+
+‘And where do you propose to live?’ Amy inquired, coldly.
+
+‘There’s no need to be in such a dear neighbourhood. We could go to one
+of the outer districts. One might find three unfurnished rooms for about
+eight-and-sixpence a week--less than half our rent here.’
+
+‘You must do as seems good to you.’
+
+‘For Heaven’s sake, Amy, don’t speak to me in that way! I can’t stand
+that! Surely you can see that I am driven to think of every possible
+resource. To speak like that is to abandon me. Say you can’t or won’t do
+it, but don’t treat me as if you had no share in my miseries!’
+
+She was touched for the moment.
+
+‘I didn’t mean to speak unkindly, dear. But think what it means, to give
+up our home and position. That is open confession of failure. It would
+be horrible.’
+
+‘I won’t think of it. I have three months before Christmas, and I will
+finish a book!’
+
+‘I really can’t see why you shouldn’t. Just do a certain number of pages
+every day. Good or bad, never mind; let the pages be finished. Now you
+have got two chapters--’
+
+‘No; that won’t do. I must think of a better subject.’
+
+Amy made a gesture of impatience.
+
+‘There you are! What does the subject matter? Get this book finished and
+sold, and then do something better next time.’
+
+‘Give me to-night, just to think. Perhaps one of the old stories I have
+thrown aside will come back in a clearer light. I’ll go out for an hour;
+you don’t mind being left alone?’
+
+‘You mustn’t think of such trifles as that.’
+
+‘But nothing that concerns you in the slightest way is a trifle to
+me--nothing! I can’t bear that you should forget that. Have patience
+with me, darling, a little longer.’
+
+He knelt by her, and looked up into her face.
+
+‘Say only one or two kind words--like you used to!’
+
+She passed her hand lightly over his hair, and murmured something with a
+faint smile.
+
+Then Reardon took his hat and stick and descended the eight flights
+of stone steps, and walked in the darkness round the outer circle
+of Regent’s Park, racking his fagged brain in a hopeless search for
+characters, situations, motives.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE WAY HITHER
+
+Even in mid-rapture of his marriage month he had foreseen this
+possibility; but fate had hitherto rescued him in sudden ways when he
+was on the brink of self-abandonment, and it was hard to imagine that
+this culmination of triumphant joy could be a preface to base miseries.
+
+He was the son of a man who had followed many different pursuits, and
+in none had done much more than earn a livelihood. At the age of
+forty--when Edwin, his only child, was ten years old--Mr Reardon
+established himself in the town of Hereford as a photographer, and there
+he abode until his death, nine years after, occasionally risking some
+speculation not inconsistent with the photographic business, but always
+with the result of losing the little capital he ventured. Mrs Reardon
+died when Edwin had reached his fifteenth year. In breeding and
+education she was superior to her husband, to whom, moreover, she had
+brought something between four and five hundred pounds; her temper was
+passionate in both senses of the word, and the marriage could hardly be
+called a happy one, though it was never disturbed by serious discord.
+The photographer was a man of whims and idealisms; his wife had a
+strong vein of worldly ambition. They made few friends, and it was Mrs
+Reardon’s frequently expressed desire to go and live in London, where
+fortune, she thought, might be kinder to them. Reardon had all but made
+up his mind to try this venture when he suddenly became a widower; after
+that he never summoned energy to embark on new enterprises.
+
+The boy was educated at an excellent local school; at eighteen he had
+a far better acquaintance with the ancient classics than most lads
+who have been expressly prepared for a university, and, thanks to an
+anglicised Swiss who acted as an assistant in Mr Reardon’s business,
+he not only read French, but could talk it with a certain haphazard
+fluency. These attainments, however, were not of much practical use; the
+best that could be done for Edwin was to place him in the office of
+an estate agent. His health was indifferent, and it seemed likely
+that open-air exercise, of which he would have a good deal under the
+particular circumstances of the case, might counteract the effects of
+study too closely pursued.
+
+At his father’s death he came into possession (practically it was put at
+his disposal at once, though he was little more than nineteen) of
+about two hundred pounds--a life-insurance for five hundred had been
+sacrificed to exigencies not very long before. He had no difficulty in
+deciding how to use this money. His mother’s desire to live in London
+had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he
+released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money
+all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook
+himself to the metropolis.
+
+To become a literary man, of course.
+
+His capital lasted him nearly four years, for, notwithstanding his age,
+he lived with painful economy. The strangest life, of almost absolute
+loneliness. From a certain point of Tottenham Court Road there is
+visible a certain garret window in a certain street which runs parallel
+with that thoroughfare; for the greater part of these four years the
+garret in question was Reardon’s home. He paid only three-and-sixpence
+a week for the privilege of living there; his food cost him about a
+shilling a day; on clothing and other unavoidable expenses he laid
+out some five pounds yearly. Then he bought books--volumes which cost
+anything between twopence and two shillings; further than that he durst
+not go. A strange time, I assure you.
+
+When he had completed his twenty-first year, he desired to procure a
+reader’s ticket for the British Museum. Now this was not such a simple
+matter as you may suppose; it was necessary to obtain the signature of
+some respectable householder, and Reardon was acquainted with no such
+person. His landlady was a decent woman enough, and a payer of rates and
+taxes, but it would look odd, to say the least of it, to present oneself
+in Great Russell Street armed with this person’s recommendation. There
+was nothing for it but to take a bold step, to force himself upon the
+attention of a stranger--the thing from which his pride had always
+shrunk. He wrote to a well-known novelist--a man with whose works he had
+some sympathy. ‘I am trying to prepare myself for a literary career.
+I wish to study in the Reading-room of the British Museum, but have
+no acquaintance to whom I can refer in the ordinary way. Will you help
+me--I mean, in this particular only?’ That was the substance of his
+letter. For reply came an invitation to a house in the West-end. With
+fear and trembling Reardon answered the summons. He was so shabbily
+attired; he was so diffident from the habit of living quite alone; he
+was horribly afraid lest it should be supposed that he looked for other
+assistance than he had requested. Well, the novelist was a rotund and
+jovial man; his dwelling and his person smelt of money; he was so happy
+himself that he could afford to be kind to others.
+
+‘Have you published anything?’ he inquired, for the young man’s letter
+had left this uncertain.
+
+‘Nothing. I have tried the magazines, but as yet without success.’
+
+‘But what do you write?’
+
+‘Chiefly essays on literary subjects.’
+
+‘I can understand that you would find a difficulty in disposing of them.
+That kind of thing is supplied either by men of established reputation,
+or by anonymous writers who have a regular engagement on papers and
+magazines. Give me an example of your topics.’
+
+‘I have written something lately about Tibullus.’
+
+‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!--Forgive me, Mr Reardon; my feelings were too much
+for me; those names have been my horror ever since I was a schoolboy.
+Far be it from me to discourage you, if your line is to be solid
+literary criticism; I will only mention, as a matter of fact, that such
+work is indifferently paid and in very small demand. It hasn’t occurred
+to you to try your hand at fiction?’
+
+In uttering the word he beamed; to him it meant a thousand or so a year.
+
+‘I am afraid I have no talent for that.’
+
+The novelist could do no more than grant his genial signature for the
+specified purpose, and add good wishes in abundance. Reardon went home
+with his brain in a whirl. He had had his first glimpse of what was
+meant by literary success. That luxurious study, with its shelves of
+handsomely-bound books, its beautiful pictures, its warm, fragrant
+air--great heavens! what might not a man do who sat at his ease amid
+such surroundings!
+
+He began to work at the Reading-room, but at the same time he thought
+often of the novelist’s suggestion, and before long had written two or
+three short stories. No editor would accept them; but he continued to
+practise himself in that art, and by degrees came to fancy that,
+after all, perhaps he had some talent for fiction. It was significant,
+however, that no native impulse had directed him to novel-writing. His
+intellectual temper was that of the student, the scholar, but strongly
+blended with a love of independence which had always made him think
+with distaste of a teacher’s life. The stories he wrote were scraps
+of immature psychology--the last thing a magazine would accept from an
+unknown man.
+
+His money dwindled, and there came a winter during which he suffered
+much from cold and hunger. What a blessed refuge it was, there under the
+great dome, when he must else have sat in his windy garret with the
+mere pretence of a fire! The Reading-room was his true home; its warmth
+enwrapped him kindly; the peculiar odour of its atmosphere--at first a
+cause of headache--grew dear and delightful to him. But he could not sit
+here until his last penny should be spent. Something practical must be
+done, and practicality was not his strong point.
+
+Friends in London he had none; but for an occasional conversation with
+his landlady he would scarcely have spoken a dozen words in a week.
+His disposition was the reverse of democratic, and he could not make
+acquaintances below his own intellectual level. Solitude fostered
+a sensitiveness which to begin with was extreme; the lack of stated
+occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream and procrastinate
+and hope for the improbable. He was a recluse in the midst of millions,
+and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth to fight for daily
+food.
+
+Little by little he had ceased to hold any correspondence with his
+former friends at Hereford. The only person to whom he still wrote and
+from whom he still heard was his mother’s father--an old man who lived
+at Derby, retired from the business of a draper, and spending his last
+years pleasantly enough with a daughter who had remained single. Edwin
+had always been a favourite with his grandfather, though they had met
+only once or twice during the past eight years. But in writing he did
+not allow it to be understood that he was in actual want, and he felt
+that he must come to dire extremities before he could bring himself to
+beg assistance.
+
+He had begun to answer advertisements, but the state of his wardrobe
+forbade his applying for any but humble positions. Once or twice he
+presented himself personally at offices, but his reception was so
+mortifying that death by hunger seemed preferable to a continuance of
+such experiences. The injury to his pride made him savagely arrogant;
+for days after the last rejection he hid himself in his garret, hating
+the world.
+
+He sold his little collection of books, and of course they brought only
+a trifling sum. That exhausted, he must begin to sell his clothes. And
+then--?
+
+But help was at hand. One day he saw it advertised in a newspaper that
+the secretary of a hospital in the north of London was in need of a
+clerk; application was to be made by letter. He wrote, and two days
+later, to his astonishment, received a reply asking him to wait upon
+the secretary at a certain hour. In a fever of agitation he kept the
+appointment, and found that his business was with a young man in the
+very highest spirits, who walked up and down a little office (the
+hospital was of the ‘special’ order, a house of no great size), and
+treated the matter in hand as an excellent joke.
+
+‘I thought, you know, of engaging someone much younger--quite a lad, in
+fact. But look there! Those are the replies to my advertisement.’
+
+He pointed to a heap of five or six hundred letters, and laughed
+consumedly.
+
+‘Impossible to read them all, you know. It seemed to me that the fairest
+thing would be to shake them together, stick my hand in, and take out
+one by chance. If it didn’t seem very promising, I would try a second
+time. But the first letter was yours, and I thought the fair thing to do
+was at all events to see you, you know. The fact is, I am only able to
+offer a pound a week.’
+
+‘I shall be very glad indeed to take that,’ said Reardon, who was bathed
+in perspiration.
+
+‘Then what about references, and so on?’ proceeded the young man,
+chuckling and rubbing his hands together.
+
+The applicant was engaged. He had barely strength to walk home; the
+sudden relief from his miseries made him, for the first time, sensible
+of the extreme physical weakness into which he had sunk. For the next
+week he was very ill, but he did not allow this to interfere with his
+new work, which was easily learnt and not burdensome.
+
+He held this position for three years, and during that time
+important things happened. When he had recovered from his state of
+semi-starvation, and was living in comfort (a pound a week is a very
+large sum if you have previously had to live on ten shillings), Reardon
+found that the impulse to literary production awoke in him more strongly
+than ever. He generally got home from the hospital about six o’clock,
+and the evening was his own. In this leisure time he wrote a novel in
+two volumes; one publisher refused it, but a second offered to bring it
+out on the terms of half profits to the author. The book appeared, and
+was well spoken of in one or two papers; but profits there were none
+to divide. In the third year of his clerkship he wrote a novel in three
+volumes; for this his publishers gave him twenty-five pounds, with again
+a promise of half the profits after deduction of the sum advanced. Again
+there was no pecuniary success. He had just got to work upon a third
+book, when his grandfather at Derby died and left him four hundred
+pounds.
+
+He could not resist the temptation to recover his freedom. Four hundred
+pounds, at the rate of eighty pounds a year, meant five years of
+literary endeavour. In that period he could certainly determine whether
+or not it was his destiny to live by the pen.
+
+In the meantime his relations with the secretary of the hospital, Carter
+by name, had grown very friendly. When Reardon began to publish books,
+the high-spirited Mr Carter looked upon him with something of awe; and
+when the literary man ceased to be a clerk, there was nothing to prevent
+association on equal terms between him and his former employer. They
+continued to see a good deal of each other, and Carter made Reardon
+acquainted with certain of his friends, among whom was one John Yule,
+an easy-going, selfish, semi-intellectual young man who had a place in
+a Government office. The time of solitude had gone by for Reardon. He
+began to develop the power that was in him.
+
+Those two books of his were not of a kind to win popularity. They dealt
+with no particular class of society (unless one makes a distinct class
+of people who have brains), and they lacked local colour. Their interest
+was almost purely psychological. It was clear that the author had no
+faculty for constructing a story, and that pictures of active life were
+not to be expected of him; he could never appeal to the multitude.
+But strong characterisation was within his scope, and an intellectual
+fervour, appetising to a small section of refined readers, marked all
+his best pages.
+
+He was the kind of man who cannot struggle against adverse conditions,
+but whom prosperity warms to the exercise of his powers. Anything
+like the cares of responsibility would sooner or later harass him into
+unproductiveness. That he should produce much was in any case out of the
+question; possibly a book every two or three years might not prove too
+great a strain upon his delicate mental organism, but for him to attempt
+more than that would certainly be fatal to the peculiar merit of his
+work. Of this he was dimly conscious, and, on receiving his legacy, he
+put aside for nearly twelve months the new novel he had begun. To give
+his mind a rest he wrote several essays, much maturer than those which
+had formerly failed to find acceptance, and two of these appeared in
+magazines.
+
+The money thus earned he spent--at a tailor’s. His friend Carter
+ventured to suggest this mode of outlay.
+
+His third book sold for fifty pounds. It was a great improvement on its
+predecessors, and the reviews were generally favourable. For the story
+which followed, ‘On Neutral Ground,’ he received a hundred pounds. On
+the strength of that he spent six months travelling in the South of
+Europe.
+
+He returned to London at mid-June, and on the second day after his
+arrival befell an incident which was to control the rest of his life.
+Busy with the pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, he heard himself
+addressed in a familiar voice, and on turning he was aware of Mr Carter,
+resplendent in fashionable summer attire, and accompanied by a young
+lady of some charms. Reardon had formerly feared encounters of this
+kind, too conscious of the defects of his attire; but at present there
+was no reason why he should shirk social intercourse. He was passably
+dressed, and the half-year of travel had benefited his appearance in
+no slight degree. Carter presented him to the young lady, of whom the
+novelist had already heard as affianced to his friend.
+
+Whilst they stood conversing, there approached two ladies, evidently
+mother and daughter, whose attendant was another of Reardon’s
+acquaintances, Mr John Yule. This gentleman stepped briskly forward and
+welcomed the returned wanderer.
+
+‘Let me introduce you,’ he said, ‘to my mother and sister. Your fame has
+made them anxious to know you.’
+
+Reardon found himself in a position of which the novelty was
+embarrassing, but scarcely disagreeable. Here were five people
+grouped around him, all of whom regarded him unaffectedly as a man of
+importance; for though, strictly speaking, he had no ‘fame’ at all,
+these persons had kept up with the progress of his small repute,
+and were all distinctly glad to number among their acquaintances an
+unmistakable author, one, too, who was fresh from Italy and Greece. Mrs
+Yule, a lady rather too pretentious in her tone to be attractive to a
+man of Reardon’s refinement, hastened to assure him how well his books
+were known in her house, ‘though for the run of ordinary novels we don’t
+care much.’ Miss Yule, not at all pretentious in speech, and seemingly
+reserved of disposition, was good enough to show frank interest in the
+author. As for the poor author himself, well, he merely fell in love
+with Miss Yule at first sight, and there was an end of the matter.
+
+A day or two later he made a call at their house, in the region
+of Westbourne Park. It was a small house, and rather showily than
+handsomely furnished; no one after visiting it would be astonished to
+hear that Mrs Edmund Yule had but a small income, and that she was often
+put to desperate expedients to keep up the gloss of easy circumstances.
+In the gauzy and fluffy and varnishy little drawing-room Reardon found
+a youngish gentleman already in conversation with the widow and her
+daughter. This proved to be one Mr Jasper Milvain, also a man of
+letters. Mr Milvain was glad to meet Reardon, whose books he had read
+with decided interest.
+
+‘Really,’ exclaimed Mrs Yule, ‘I don’t know how it is that we have had
+to wait so long for the pleasure of knowing you, Mr Reardon. If
+John were not so selfish he would have allowed us a share in your
+acquaintance long ago.’
+
+Ten weeks thereafter, Miss Yule became Mrs Reardon.
+
+It was a time of frantic exultation with the poor fellow. He had always
+regarded the winning of a beautiful and intellectual wife as the crown
+of a successful literary career, but he had not dared to hope that such
+a triumph would be his. Life had been too hard with him on the whole.
+He, who hungered for sympathy, who thought of a woman’s love as the
+prize of mortals supremely blessed, had spent the fresh years of his
+youth in monkish solitude. Now of a sudden came friends and flattery,
+ay, and love itself. He was rapt to the seventh heaven.
+
+Indeed, it seemed that the girl loved him. She knew that he had but a
+hundred pounds or so left over from that little inheritance, that his
+books sold for a trifle, that he had no wealthy relatives from whom he
+could expect anything; yet she hesitated not a moment when he asked her
+to marry him.
+
+‘I have loved you from the first.’
+
+‘How is that possible?’ he urged. ‘What is there lovable in me? I
+am afraid of waking up and finding myself in my old garret, cold and
+hungry.’
+
+‘You will be a great man.’
+
+‘I implore you not to count on that! In many ways I am wretchedly weak.
+I have no such confidence in myself.’
+
+‘Then I will have confidence for both.’
+
+‘But can you love me for my own sake--love me as a man?’
+
+‘I love you!’
+
+And the words sang about him, filled the air with a mad pulsing of
+intolerable joy, made him desire to fling himself in passionate humility
+at her feet, to weep hot tears, to cry to her in insane worship. He
+thought her beautiful beyond anything his heart had imagined; her warm
+gold hair was the rapture of his eyes and of his reverent hand. Though
+slenderly fashioned, she was so gloriously strong. ‘Not a day of illness
+in her life,’ said Mrs Yule, and one could readily believe it.
+
+She spoke with such a sweet decision. Her ‘I love you!’ was a bond with
+eternity. In the simplest as in the greatest things she saw his wish
+and acted frankly upon it. No pretty petulance, no affectation of
+silly-sweet languishing, none of the weaknesses of woman. And so
+exquisitely fresh in her twenty years of maidenhood, with bright young
+eyes that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come.
+
+He went about like one dazzled with excessive light. He talked as he had
+never talked before, recklessly, exultantly, insolently--in the nobler
+sense. He made friends on every hand; he welcomed all the world to his
+bosom; he felt the benevolence of a god.
+
+‘I love you!’ It breathed like music at his ears when he fell asleep
+in weariness of joy; it awakened him on the morrow as with a glorious
+ringing summons to renewed life.
+
+Delay? Why should there be delay? Amy wished nothing but to become his
+wife. Idle to think of his doing any more work until he sat down in the
+home of which she was mistress. His brain burned with visions of the
+books he would henceforth write, but his hand was incapable of anything
+but a love-letter. And what letters! Reardon never published anything
+equal to those. ‘I have received your poem,’ Amy replied to one of them.
+And she was right; not a letter, but a poem he had sent her, with every
+word on fire.
+
+The hours of talk! It enraptured him to find how much she had read, and
+with what clearness of understanding. Latin and Greek, no. Ah! but
+she should learn them both, that there might be nothing wanting in the
+communion between his thought and hers. For he loved the old writers
+with all his heart; they had been such strength to him in his days of
+misery.
+
+They would go together to the charmed lands of the South. No, not now
+for their marriage holiday--Amy said that would be an imprudent
+expense; but as soon as he had got a good price for a book. Will not the
+publishers be kind? If they knew what happiness lurked in embryo within
+their foolish cheque-books!
+
+He woke of a sudden in the early hours of one morning, a week before the
+wedding-day. You know that kind of awaking, so complete in an instant,
+caused by the pressure of some troublesome thought upon the dreaming
+brain. ‘Suppose I should not succeed henceforth? Suppose I could never
+get more than this poor hundred pounds for one of the long books which
+cost me so much labour? I shall perhaps have children to support; and
+Amy--how would Amy bear poverty?’
+
+He knew what poverty means. The chilling of brain and heart, the
+unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame
+and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the world’s
+base indifference. Poverty! Poverty!
+
+And for hours he could not sleep. His eyes kept filling with tears, the
+beating of his heart was low; and in his solitude he called upon Amy
+with pitiful entreaty: ‘Do not forsake me! I love you! I love you!’
+
+But that went by. Six days, five days, four days--will one’s heart burst
+with happiness? The flat is taken, is furnished, up there towards the
+sky, eight flights of stone steps.
+
+‘You’re a confoundedly lucky fellow, Reardon,’ remarked Milvain, who had
+already become very intimate with his new friend. ‘A good fellow, too,
+and you deserve it.’
+
+‘But at first I had a horrible suspicion.’
+
+‘I guess what you mean. No; I wasn’t even in love with her, though I
+admired her. She would never have cared for me in any case; I am not
+sentimental enough.’
+
+‘The deuce!’
+
+‘I mean it in an inoffensive sense. She and I are rather too much alike,
+I fancy.’
+
+‘How do you mean?’ asked Reardon, puzzled, and not very well pleased.
+
+‘There’s a great deal of pure intellect about Miss Yule, you know. She
+was sure to choose a man of the passionate kind.’
+
+‘I think you are talking nonsense, my dear fellow.’
+
+‘Well, perhaps I am. To tell you the truth, I have by no means completed
+my study of women yet. It is one of the things in which I hope to be a
+specialist some day, though I don’t think I shall ever make use of it in
+novels--rather, perhaps, in life.’
+
+Three days--two days--one day.
+
+Now let every joyous sound which the great globe can utter ring forth
+in one burst of harmony! Is it not well done to make the village-bells
+chant merrily when a marriage is over? Here in London we can have no
+such music; but for us, my dear one, all the roaring life of the great
+city is wedding-hymn. Sweet, pure face under its bridal-veil! The face
+which shall, if fate spare it, be as dear to me many a long year hence
+as now at the culminating moment of my life!
+
+As he trudged on in the dark, his tortured memory was living through
+that time again. The images forced themselves upon him, however much he
+tried to think of quite other things--of some fictitious story on which
+he might set to work. In the case of his earlier books he had waited
+quietly until some suggestive ‘situation,’ some group of congenial
+characters, came with sudden delightfulness before his mind and urged
+him to write; but nothing so spontaneous could now be hoped for. His
+brain was too weary with months of fruitless, harassing endeavour;
+moreover, he was trying to devise a ‘plot,’ the kind of literary
+Jack-in-the-box which might excite interest in the mass of readers, and
+this was alien to the natural working of his imagination. He suffered
+the torments of nightmare--an oppression of the brain and heart which
+must soon be intolerable.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE PRACTICAL FRIEND
+
+When her husband had set forth, Amy seated herself in the study and took
+up a new library volume as if to read. But she had no real intention of
+doing so; it was always disagreeable to her to sit in the manner of one
+totally unoccupied, with hands on lap, and even when she consciously
+gave herself up to musing an open book was generally before her. She did
+not, in truth, read much nowadays; since the birth of her child she had
+seemed to care less than before for disinterested study. If a new
+novel that had succeeded came into her hands she perused it in a very
+practical spirit, commenting to Reardon on the features of the work
+which had made it popular; formerly, she would have thought much more of
+its purely literary merits, for which her eye was very keen. How often
+she had given her husband a thrill of exquisite pleasure by pointing
+to some merit or defect of which the common reader would be totally
+insensible! Now she spoke less frequently on such subjects. Her
+interests were becoming more personal; she liked to hear details of the
+success of popular authors--about their wives or husbands, as the case
+might be, their arrangements with publishers, their methods of work.
+The gossip columns of literary papers--and of some that were not
+literary--had an attraction for her. She talked of questions such
+as international copyright, was anxious to get an insight into the
+practical conduct of journals and magazines, liked to know who ‘read’
+for the publishing-houses. To an impartial observer it might have
+appeared that her intellect was growing more active and mature.
+
+More than half an hour passed. It was not a pleasant train of thought
+that now occupied her. Her lips were drawn together, her brows were
+slightly wrinkled; the self-control which at other times was agreeably
+expressed upon her features had become rather too cold and decided. At
+one moment it seemed to her that she heard a sound in the bedroom--the
+doors were purposely left ajar--and her head turned quickly to listen,
+the look in her eyes instantaneously softening; but all remained quiet.
+The street would have been silent but for a cab that now and then
+passed--the swing of a hansom or the roll of a four-wheeler--and within
+the buildings nothing whatever was audible.
+
+Yes, a footstep, briskly mounting the stone stairs. Not like that of the
+postman. A visitor, perhaps, to the other flat on the topmost landing.
+But the final pause was in this direction, and then came a sharp rat-tat
+at the door. Amy rose immediately and went to open.
+
+Jasper Milvain raised his urban silk hat, then held out his hand with
+the greeting of frank friendship. His inquiries were in so loud a voice
+that Amy checked him with a forbidding gesture.
+
+‘You’ll wake Willie!’
+
+‘By Jove! I always forget,’ he exclaimed in subdued tones. ‘Does the
+infant flourish?’
+
+‘Oh, yes!’
+
+‘Reardon out? I got back on Saturday evening, but couldn’t come round
+before this.’ It was Monday. ‘How close it is in here! I suppose the
+roof gets so heated during the day. Glorious weather in the country! And
+I’ve no end of things to tell you. He won’t be long, I suppose?’
+
+‘I think not.’
+
+He left his hat and stick in the passage, came into the study, and
+glanced about as if he expected to see some change since he was last
+here, three weeks ago.
+
+‘So you have been enjoying yourself?’ said Amy as, after listening for a
+moment at the door, she took a seat.
+
+‘Oh, a little freshening of the faculties. But whose acquaintance do you
+think I have made?’
+
+‘Down there?’
+
+‘Yes. Your uncle Alfred and his daughter were staying at John Yule’s,
+and I saw something of them. I was invited to the house.’
+
+‘Did you speak of us?’
+
+‘To Miss Yule only. I happened to meet her on a walk, and in a
+blundering way I mentioned Reardon’s name. But of course it didn’t
+matter in the least. She inquired about you with a good deal of
+interest--asked if you were as beautiful as you promised to be years
+ago.’
+
+Amy laughed.
+
+‘Doesn’t that proceed from your fertile invention, Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘Not a bit of it! By-the-bye, what would be your natural question
+concerning her? Do you think she gave promise of good looks?’
+
+‘I’m afraid I can’t say that she did. She had a good face, but--rather
+plain.’
+
+‘I see.’ Jasper threw back his head and seemed to contemplate an object
+in memory. ‘Well, I shouldn’t wonder if most people called her a trifle
+plain even now; and yet--no, that’s hardly possible, after all. She has
+no colour. Wears her hair short.’
+
+‘Short?’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t mean the smooth, boyish hair with a parting--not the
+kind of hair that would be lank if it grew long. Curly all over. Looks
+uncommonly well, I assure you. She has a capital head. Odd girl; very
+odd girl! Quiet, thoughtful--not very happy, I’m afraid. Seems to think
+with dread of a return to books.’
+
+‘Indeed! But I had understood that she was a reader.’
+
+‘Reading enough for six people, probably. Perhaps her health is not
+very robust. Oh, I knew her by sight quite well--had seen her at the
+Reading-room. She’s the kind of girl that gets into one’s head, you
+know--suggestive; much more in her than comes out until one knows her
+very well.’
+
+‘Well, I should hope so,’ remarked Amy, with a peculiar smile.
+
+‘But that’s by no means a matter of course. They didn’t invite me to
+come and see them in London.’
+
+‘I suppose Marian mentioned your acquaintance with this branch of the
+family?’
+
+‘I think not. At all events, she promised me she wouldn’t.’
+
+Amy looked at him inquiringly, in a puzzled way.
+
+‘She promised you?’
+
+‘Voluntarily. We got rather sympathetic. Your uncle--Alfred, I mean--is
+a remarkable man; but I think he regarded me as a youth of no particular
+importance. Well, how do things go?’
+
+Amy shook her head.
+
+‘No progress?’
+
+‘None whatever. He can’t work; I begin to be afraid that he is really
+ill. He must go away before the fine weather is over. Do persuade him
+to-night! I wish you could have had a holiday with him.’
+
+‘Out of the question now, I’m sorry to say. I must work savagely. But
+can’t you all manage a fortnight somewhere--Hastings, Eastbourne?’
+
+‘It would be simply rash. One goes on saying, “What does a pound or two
+matter?”--but it begins at length to matter a great deal.’
+
+‘I know, confound it all! Think how it would amuse some rich grocer’s
+son who pitches his half-sovereign to the waiter when he has dined
+himself into good humour! But I tell you what it is: you must really try
+to influence him towards practicality. Don’t you think--?’
+
+He paused, and Amy sat looking at her hands.
+
+‘I have made an attempt,’ she said at length, in a distant undertone.
+
+‘You really have?’
+
+Jasper leaned forward, his clasped hands hanging between his knees. He
+was scrutinising her face, and Amy, conscious of the too fixed regard,
+at length moved her head uneasily.
+
+‘It seems very clear to me,’ she said, ‘that a long book is out of the
+question for him at present. He writes so slowly, and is so fastidious.
+It would be a fatal thing to hurry through something weaker even than
+the last.’
+
+‘You think “The Optimist” weak?’ Jasper asked, half absently.
+
+‘I don’t think it worthy of Edwin; I don’t see how anyone can.
+
+‘I have wondered what your opinion was. Yes, he ought to try a new tack,
+I think.’
+
+Just then there came the sound of a latch-key opening the outer door.
+Jasper lay back in his chair and waited with a smile for his expected
+friend’s appearance; Amy made no movement.
+
+‘Oh, there you are!’ said Reardon, presenting himself with the dazzled
+eyes of one who has been in darkness; he spoke in a voice of genial
+welcome, though it still had the note of depression. ‘When did you get
+back?’
+
+Milvain began to recount what he had told in the first part of his
+conversation with Amy. As he did so, the latter withdrew, and was absent
+for five minutes; on reappearing she said:
+
+‘You’ll have some supper with us, Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘I think I will, please.’
+
+Shortly after, all repaired to the eating-room, where conversation
+had to be carried on in a low tone because of the proximity of the
+bedchamber in which lay the sleeping child. Jasper began to tell of
+certain things that had happened to him since his arrival in town.
+
+‘It was a curious coincidence--but, by-the-bye, have you heard of what
+The Study has been doing?’
+
+‘I should rather think so,’ replied Reardon, his face lighting up. ‘With
+no small satisfaction.’
+
+‘Delicious, isn’t it?’ exclaimed his wife. ‘I thought it too good to be
+true when Edwin heard of it from Mr Biffen.’
+
+All three laughed in subdued chorus. For the moment, Reardon became a
+new man in his exultation over the contradictory reviewers.
+
+‘Oh, Biffen told you, did he? Well,’ continued Jasper, ‘it was an odd
+thing, but when I reached my lodgings on Saturday evening there lay
+a note from Horace Barlow, inviting me to go and see him on Sunday
+afternoon out at Wimbledon, the special reason being that the editor of
+The Study would be there, and Barlow thought I might like to meet him.
+Now this letter gave me a fit of laughter; not only because of those
+precious reviews, but because Alfred Yule had been telling me all about
+this same editor, who rejoices in the name of Fadge. Your uncle, Mrs
+Reardon, declares that Fadge is the most malicious man in the literary
+profession; though that’s saying such a very great deal--well, never
+mind! Of course I was delighted to go and meet Fadge. At Barlow’s I
+found the queerest collection of people, most of them women of the
+inkiest description. The great Fadge himself surprised me; I expected
+to see a gaunt, bilious man, and he was the rosiest and dumpiest little
+dandy you can imagine; a fellow of forty-five, I dare say, with thin
+yellow hair and blue eyes and a manner of extreme innocence. Fadge
+flattered me with confidential chat, and I discovered at length why
+Barlow had asked me to meet him; it’s Fadge that is going to edit
+Culpepper’s new monthly--you’ve heard about it?--and he had actually
+thought it worth while to enlist me among contributors! Now, how’s that
+for a piece of news?’
+
+The speaker looked from Reardon to Amy with a smile of vast
+significance.
+
+‘I rejoice to hear it!’ said Reardon, fervently.
+
+‘You see! you see!’ cried Jasper, forgetting all about the infant in the
+next room, ‘all things come to the man who knows how to wait. But I’m
+hanged if I expected a thing of this kind to come so soon! Why, I’m a
+man of distinction! My doings have been noted; the admirable qualities
+of my style have drawn attention; I’m looked upon as one of the coming
+men! Thanks, I confess, in some measure, to old Barlow; he seems to have
+amused himself with cracking me up to all and sundry. That last thing
+of mine in The West End has done me a vast amount of good, it seems. And
+Alfred Yule himself had noticed that paper in The Wayside. That’s how
+things work, you know; reputation comes with a burst, just when you’re
+not looking for anything of the kind.’
+
+‘What’s the new magazine to be called?’ asked Amy.
+
+‘Why, they propose The Current. Not bad, in a way; though you imagine
+a fellow saying “Have you seen the current Current?” At all events, the
+tone is to be up to date, and the articles are to be short; no padding,
+merum sal from cover to cover. What do you think I have undertaken to
+do, for a start? A paper consisting of sketches of typical readers of
+each of the principal daily and weekly papers. A deuced good idea, you
+know--my own, of course--but deucedly hard to carry out. I shall rise
+to the occasion, see if I don’t. I’ll rival Fadge himself in
+maliciousness--though I must confess I discovered no particular malice
+in the fellow’s way of talking. The article shall make a sensation. I’ll
+spend a whole month on it, and make it a perfect piece of satire.’
+
+‘Now that’s the kind of thing that inspires me with awe and envy,’
+said Reardon. ‘I could no more write such a paper than an article on
+Fluxions.’
+
+‘’Tis my vocation, Hal! You might think I hadn’t experience enough,
+to begin with. But my intuition is so strong that I can make a little
+experience go an immense way. Most people would imagine I had been
+wasting my time these last few years, just sauntering about, reading
+nothing but periodicals, making acquaintance with loafers of every
+description. The truth is, I have been collecting ideas, and ideas
+that are convertible into coin of the realm, my boy; I have the special
+faculty of an extempore writer. Never in my life shall I do anything of
+solid literary value; I shall always despise the people I write for. But
+my path will be that of success. I have always said it, and now I’m sure
+of it.’
+
+‘Does Fadge retire from The Study, then?’ inquired Reardon, when he had
+received this tirade with a friendly laugh.
+
+‘Yes, he does. Was going to, it seems, in any case. Of course I heard
+nothing about the two reviews, and I was almost afraid to smile whilst
+Fadge was talking with me, lest I should betray my thought. Did you know
+anything about the fellow before?’
+
+‘Not I. Didn’t know who edited The Study.’
+
+‘Nor I either. Remarkable what a number of illustrious obscure are going
+about. But I have still something else to tell you. I’m going to set my
+sisters afloat in literature.’
+
+‘How!’
+
+‘Well, I don’t see why they shouldn’t try their hands at a little
+writing, instead of giving lessons, which doesn’t suit them a bit. Last
+night, when I got back from Wimbledon, I went to look up Davies. Perhaps
+you don’t remember my mentioning him; a fellow who was at Jolly and
+Monk’s, the publishers, up to a year ago. He edits a trade journal now,
+and I see very little of him. However, I found him at home, and had
+a long practical talk with him. I wanted to find out the state of the
+market as to such wares as Jolly and Monk dispose of. He gave me some
+very useful hints, and the result was that I went off this morning and
+saw Monk himself--no Jolly exists at present. “Mr Monk,” I began, in my
+blandest tone--you know it--“I am requested to call upon you by a lady
+who thinks of preparing a little volume to be called ‘A Child’s History
+of the English Parliament.’ Her idea is, that”--and so on. Well, I
+got on admirably with Monk, especially when he learnt that I was to be
+connected with Culpepper’s new venture; he smiled upon the project, and
+said he should be very glad to see a specimen chapter; if that pleased
+him, we could then discuss terms.’
+
+‘But has one of your sisters really begun such a book?’ inquired Amy.
+
+‘Neither of them knows anything of the matter, but they are certainly
+capable of doing the kind of thing I have in mind, which will consist
+largely of anecdotes of prominent statesmen. I myself shall write the
+specimen chapter, and send it to the girls to show them what I propose.
+I shouldn’t wonder if they make some fifty pounds out of it. The few
+books that will be necessary they can either get at a Wattleborough
+library, or I can send them.’
+
+‘Your energy is remarkable, all of a sudden,’ said Reardon.
+
+‘Yes. The hour has come, I find. “There is a tide”--to quote something
+that has the charm of freshness.’
+
+The supper--which consisted of bread and butter, cheese, sardines,
+cocoa--was now over, and Jasper, still enlarging on his recent
+experiences and future prospects, led the way back to the sitting-room.
+Not very long after this, Amy left the two friends to their pipes; she
+was anxious that her husband should discuss his affairs privately with
+Milvain, and give ear to the practical advice which she knew would be
+tendered him.
+
+‘I hear that you are still stuck fast,’ began Jasper, when they had
+smoked awhile in silence.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Getting rather serious, I should fear, isn’t it?’
+
+‘Yes,’ repeated Reardon, in a low voice.
+
+‘Come, come, old man, you can’t go on in this way. Would it, or wouldn’t
+it, be any use if you took a seaside holiday?’
+
+‘Not the least. I am incapable of holiday, if the opportunity were
+offered. Do something I must, or I shall fret myself into imbecility.’
+
+‘Very well. What is it to be?’
+
+‘I shall try to manufacture two volumes. They needn’t run to more than
+about two hundred and seventy pages, and those well spaced out.’
+
+‘This is refreshing. This is practical. But look now: let it be
+something rather sensational. Couldn’t we invent a good title--something
+to catch eye and ear? The title would suggest the story, you know.’
+
+Reardon laughed contemptuously, but the scorn was directed rather
+against himself than Milvain.
+
+‘Let’s try,’ he muttered.
+
+Both appeared to exercise their minds on the problem for a few minutes.
+Then Jasper slapped his knee.
+
+‘How would this do: “The Weird Sisters”? Devilish good, eh? Suggests all
+sorts of things, both to the vulgar and the educated. Nothing brutally
+clap-trap about it, you know.’
+
+‘But--what does it suggest to you?’
+
+‘Oh, witch-like, mysterious girls or women. Think it over.’
+
+There was another long silence. Reardon’s face was that of a man in
+blank misery.
+
+‘I have been trying,’ he said at length, after an attempt to speak which
+was checked by a huskiness in his throat, ‘to explain to myself how this
+state of things has come about. I almost think I can do so.’
+
+‘How?’
+
+‘That half-year abroad, and the extraordinary shock of happiness which
+followed at once upon it, have disturbed the balance of my nature.
+It was adjusted to circumstances of hardship, privation, struggle.
+A temperament like mine can’t pass through such a violent change of
+conditions without being greatly affected; I have never since been the
+man I was before I left England. The stage I had then reached was the
+result of a slow and elaborate building up; I could look back and see
+the processes by which I had grown from the boy who was a mere bookworm
+to the man who had all but succeeded as a novelist. It was a perfectly
+natural, sober development. But in the last two years and a half I can
+distinguish no order. In living through it, I have imagined from time
+to time that my powers were coming to their ripest; but that was mere
+delusion. Intellectually, I have fallen back. The probability is that
+this wouldn’t matter, if only I could live on in peace of mind; I should
+recover my equilibrium, and perhaps once more understand myself. But the
+due course of things is troubled by my poverty.’
+
+He spoke in a slow, meditative way, in a monotonous voice, and without
+raising his eyes from the ground.
+
+‘I can understand,’ put in Jasper, ‘that there may be philosophical
+truth in all this. All the same, it’s a great pity that you should
+occupy your mind with such thoughts.’
+
+‘A pity--no! I must remain a reasoning creature. Disaster may end by
+driving me out of my wits, but till then I won’t abandon my heritage of
+thought.’
+
+‘Let us have it out, then. You think it was a mistake to spend those
+months abroad?’
+
+‘A mistake from the practical point of view. That vast broadening of my
+horizon lost me the command of my literary resources. I lived in
+Italy and Greece as a student, concerned especially with the old
+civilisations; I read little but Greek and Latin. That brought me out of
+the track I had laboriously made for myself I often thought with disgust
+of the kind of work I had been doing; my novels seemed vapid stuff, so
+wretchedly and shallowly modern. If I had had the means, I should have
+devoted myself to the life of a scholar. That, I quite believe, is my
+natural life; it’s only the influence of recent circumstances that has
+made me a writer of novels. A man who can’t journalise, yet must earn
+his bread by literature, nowadays inevitably turns to fiction, as the
+Elizabethan men turned to the drama. Well, but I should have got back, I
+think, into the old line of work. It was my marriage that completed what
+the time abroad had begun.’
+
+He looked up suddenly, and added:
+
+‘I am speaking as if to myself. You, of course, don’t misunderstand me,
+and think I am accusing my wife.’
+
+‘No, I don’t take you to mean that, by any means.’
+
+‘No, no; of course not. All that’s wrong is my accursed want of money.
+But that threatens to be such a fearful wrong, that I begin to wish I
+had died before my marriage-day. Then Amy would have been saved. The
+Philistines are right: a man has no business to marry unless he has a
+secured income equal to all natural demands. I behaved with the grossest
+selfishness. I might have known that such happiness was never meant for
+me.’
+
+‘Do you mean by all this that you seriously doubt whether you will ever
+be able to write again?’
+
+‘In awful seriousness, I doubt it,’ replied Reardon, with haggard face.
+
+‘It strikes me as extraordinary. In your position I should work as I
+never had done before.’
+
+‘Because you are the kind of man who is roused by necessity. I am
+overcome by it. My nature is feeble and luxurious. I never in my life
+encountered and overcame a practical difficulty.’
+
+‘Yes; when you got the work at the hospital.’
+
+‘All I did was to write a letter, and chance made it effective.’
+
+‘My view of the case, Reardon, is that you are simply ill.’
+
+‘Certainly I am; but the ailment is desperately complicated. Tell me: do
+you think I might possibly get any kind of stated work to do? Should I
+be fit for any place in a newspaper office, for instance?’
+
+‘I fear not. You are the last man to have anything to do with
+journalism.’
+
+‘If I appealed to my publishers, could they help me?’
+
+‘I don’t see how. They would simply say: Write a book and we’ll buy it.’
+
+‘Yes, there’s no help but that.’
+
+‘If only you were able to write short stories, Fadge might be useful.’
+
+‘But what’s the use? I suppose I might get ten guineas, at most, for
+such a story. I need a couple of hundred pounds at least. Even if
+I could finish a three-volume book, I doubt if they would give me a
+hundred again, after the failure of “The Optimist”; no, they wouldn’t.’
+
+‘But to sit and look forward in this way is absolutely fatal, my
+dear fellow. Get to work at your two-volume story. Call it “The Weird
+Sisters,” or anything better that you can devise; but get it done, so
+many pages a day. If I go ahead as I begin to think I shall, I shall
+soon be able to assure you good notices in a lot of papers. Your
+misfortune has been that you had no influential friends. By-the-bye, how
+has The Study been in the habit of treating you?’
+
+‘Scrubbily.’
+
+‘I’ll make an opportunity of talking about your books to Fadge. I think
+Fadge and I shall get on pretty well together. Alfred Yule hates the man
+fiercely, for some reason or other. By the way, I may as well tell you
+that I broke short off with the Yules on purpose.’
+
+‘Oh?’
+
+‘I had begun to think far too much about the girl. Wouldn’t do, you
+know. I must marry someone with money, and a good deal of it.
+That’s a settled point with me.’
+
+‘Then you are not at all likely to meet them in London?’
+
+‘Not at all. And if I get allied with Fadge, no doubt Yule will involve
+me in his savage feeling. You see how wisely I acted. I have a scent for
+the prudent course.’
+
+They talked for a long time, but again chiefly of Milvain’s affairs.
+Reardon, indeed, cared little to say anything more about his own. Talk
+was mere vanity and vexation of spirit, for the spring of his volition
+seemed to be broken, and, whatever resolve he might utter, he knew that
+everything depended on influences he could not even foresee.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. MARIAN’S HOME
+
+Three weeks after her return from the country--which took place a week
+later than that of Jasper Milvain--Marian Yule was working one afternoon
+at her usual place in the Museum Reading-room. It was three o’clock, and
+with the interval of half an hour at midday, when she went away for a
+cup of tea and a sandwich, she had been closely occupied since half-past
+nine. Her task at present was to collect materials for a paper on
+‘French Authoresses of the Seventeenth Century,’ the kind of thing
+which her father supplied on stipulated terms for anonymous publication.
+Marian was by this time almost able to complete such a piece of
+manufacture herself and her father’s share in it was limited to a few
+hints and corrections. The greater part of the work by which Yule earned
+his moderate income was anonymous: volumes and articles which bore his
+signature dealt with much the same subjects as his unsigned matter, but
+the writing was laboured with a conscientiousness unusual in men of his
+position. The result, unhappily, was not correspondent with the efforts.
+Alfred Yule had made a recognisable name among the critical writers of
+the day; seeing him in the title-lists of a periodical, most people knew
+what to expect, but not a few forbore the cutting open of the pages he
+occupied. He was learned, copious, occasionally mordant in style; but
+grace had been denied to him. He had of late begun to perceive the fact
+that those passages of Marian’s writing which were printed just as they
+came from her pen had merit of a kind quite distinct from anything of
+which he himself was capable, and it began to be a question with
+him whether it would not be advantageous to let the girl sign these
+compositions. A matter of business, to be sure--at all events in the
+first instance.
+
+For a long time Marian had scarcely looked up from the desk, but at this
+moment she found it necessary to refer to the invaluable Larousse. As so
+often happened, the particular volume of which she had need was not upon
+the shelf; she turned away, and looked about her with a gaze of weary
+disappointment. At a little distance were standing two young men,
+engaged, as their faces showed, in facetious colloquy; as soon as she
+observed them, Marian’s eyes fell, but the next moment she looked again
+in that direction. Her face had wholly changed; she wore a look of timid
+expectancy.
+
+The men were moving towards her, still talking and laughing. She turned
+to the shelves, and affected to search for a book. The voices drew near,
+and one of them was well known to her; now she could hear every word;
+now the speakers were gone by. Was it possible that Mr Milvain had not
+recognised her? She followed him with her eyes, and saw him take a seat
+not far off; he must have passed without even being aware of her.
+
+She went back to her place and for some minutes sat trifling with a pen.
+When she made a show of resuming work, it was evident that she could no
+longer apply herself as before. Every now and then she glanced at people
+who were passing; there were intervals when she wholly lost herself in
+reverie. She was tired, and had even a slight headache. When the hand of
+the clock pointed to half-past three, she closed the volume from which
+she had been copying extracts, and began to collect her papers.
+
+A voice spoke close behind her.
+
+‘Where’s your father, Miss Yule?’
+
+The speaker was a man of sixty, short, stout, tonsured by the hand of
+time. He had a broad, flabby face, the colour of an ancient turnip,
+save where one of the cheeks was marked with a mulberry stain; his
+eyes, grey-orbed in a yellow setting, glared with good-humoured
+inquisitiveness, and his mouth was that of the confirmed gossip. For
+eyebrows he had two little patches of reddish stubble; for moustache,
+what looked like a bit of discoloured tow, and scraps of similar
+material hanging beneath his creasy chin represented a beard. His garb
+must have seen a great deal of Museum service; it consisted of a jacket,
+something between brown and blue, hanging in capacious shapelessness,
+a waistcoat half open for lack of buttons and with one of the pockets
+coming unsewn, a pair of bronze-hued trousers which had all run to
+knee. Necktie he had none, and his linen made distinct appeal to the
+laundress.
+
+Marian shook hands with him.
+
+‘He went away at half-past two,’ was her reply to his question.
+
+‘How annoying! I wanted particularly to see him. I have been running
+about all day, and couldn’t get here before. Something important--most
+important. At all events, I can tell you. But I entreat that you won’t
+breathe a word save to your father.’
+
+Mr Quarmby--that was his name--had taken a vacant chair and drawn it
+close to Marian’s. He was in a state of joyous excitement, and talked
+in thick, rather pompous tones, with a pant at the end of a sentence. To
+emphasise the extremely confidential nature of his remarks, he brought
+his head almost in contact with the girl’s, and one of her thin,
+delicate hands was covered with his red, podgy fingers.
+
+‘I’ve had a talk with Nathaniel Walker,’ he continued; ‘a long talk--a
+talk of vast importance. You know Walker? No, no; how should you? He’s a
+man of business; close friend of Rackett’s--Rackett, you know, the owner
+of The Study.’
+
+Upon this he made a grave pause, and glared more excitedly than ever.
+
+‘I have heard of Mr Rackett,’ said Marian.
+
+‘Of course, of course. And you must also have heard that Fadge leaves
+The Study at the end of this year, eh?’
+
+‘Father told me it was probable.’
+
+‘Rackett and he have done nothing but quarrel for months; the paper is
+falling off seriously. Well, now, when I came across Nat Walker this
+afternoon, the first thing he said to me was, “You know Alfred Yule
+pretty well, I think?” “Pretty well,” I answered; “why?” “I’ll tell
+you,” he said, “but it’s between you and me, you understand. Rackett is
+thinking about him in connection with The Study.” “I’m delighted to hear
+it.” “To tell you the truth,” went on Nat, “I shouldn’t wonder if Yule
+gets the editorship; but you understand that it would be altogether
+premature to talk about it.” Now what do you think of this, eh?’
+
+‘It’s very good news,’ answered Marian.
+
+‘I should think so! Ho, ho!’
+
+Mr Quarmby laughed in a peculiar way, which was the result of long years
+of mirth-subdual in the Reading-room.
+
+‘But not a breath to anyone but your father. He’ll be here to-morrow?
+Break it gently to him, you know; he’s an excitable man; can’t take
+things quietly, like I do. Ho, ho!’
+
+His suppressed laugh ended in a fit of coughing--the Reading-room cough.
+When he had recovered from it, he pressed Marian’s hand with paternal
+fervour, and waddled off to chatter with someone else.
+
+Marian replaced several books on the reference-shelves, returned others
+to the central desk, and was just leaving the room, when again a voice
+made demand upon her attention.
+
+‘Miss Yule! One moment, if you please!’
+
+It was a tall, meagre, dry-featured man, dressed with the painful
+neatness of self-respecting poverty: the edges of his coat-sleeves were
+carefully darned; his black necktie and a skull-cap which covered
+his baldness were evidently of home manufacture. He smiled softly and
+timidly with blue, rheumy eyes. Two or three recent cuts on his chin and
+neck were the result of conscientious shaving with an unsteady hand.
+
+‘I have been looking for your father,’ he said, as Marian turned. ‘Isn’t
+he here?’
+
+‘He has gone, Mr Hinks.’
+
+‘Ah, then would you do me the kindness to take a book for him? In fact,
+it’s my little “Essay on the Historical Drama,” just out.’
+
+He spoke with nervous hesitation, and in a tone which seemed to make
+apology for his existence.
+
+‘Oh, father will be very glad to have it.’
+
+‘If you will kindly wait one minute, Miss Yule. It’s at my place over
+there.’
+
+He went off with long strides, and speedily came back panting, in his
+hand a thin new volume.
+
+‘My kind regards to him, Miss Yule. You are quite well, I hope? I won’t
+detain you.’
+
+And he backed into a man who was coming inobservantly this way.
+
+Marian went to the ladies’ cloak-room, put on her hat and jacket, and
+left the Museum. Some one passed out through the swing-door a moment
+before her, and as soon as she had issued beneath the portico, she saw
+that it was Jasper Milvain; she must have followed him through the hall,
+but her eyes had been cast down. The young man was now alone; as he
+descended the steps he looked to left and right, but not behind him.
+Marian followed at a distance of two or three yards. Nearing the
+gateway, she quickened her pace a little, so as to pass out into the
+street almost at the same moment as Milvain. But he did not turn his
+head.
+
+He took to the right. Marian had fallen back again, but she still
+followed at a very little distance. His walk was slow, and she might
+easily have passed him in quite a natural way; in that case he could not
+help seeing her. But there was an uneasy suspicion in her mind that he
+really must have noticed her in the Reading-room. This was the first
+time she had seen him since their parting at Finden. Had he any reason
+for avoiding her? Did he take it ill that her father had shown no desire
+to keep up his acquaintance?
+
+She allowed the interval between them to become greater. In a minute or
+two Milvain turned up Charlotte Street, and so she lost sight of him.
+
+In Tottenham Court Road she waited for an omnibus that would take her
+to the remoter part of Camden Town; obtaining a corner seat, she drew as
+far back as possible, and paid no attention to her fellow-passengers.
+At a point in Camden Road she at length alighted, and after ten
+minutes’ walk reached her destination in a quiet by-way called St Paul’s
+Crescent, consisting of small, decent houses. That at which she paused
+had an exterior promising comfort within; the windows were clean and
+neatly curtained, and the polishable appurtenances of the door gleamed
+to perfection. She admitted herself with a latch-key, and went straight
+upstairs without encountering anyone.
+
+Descending again in a few moments, she entered the front room on the
+ground-floor. This served both as parlour and dining-room; it was
+comfortably furnished, without much attempt at adornment. On the walls
+were a few autotypes and old engravings. A recess between fireplace and
+window was fitted with shelves, which supported hundreds of volumes,
+the overflow of Yule’s library. The table was laid for a meal. It best
+suited the convenience of the family to dine at five o’clock; a long
+evening, so necessary to most literary people, was thus assured.
+Marian, as always when she had spent a day at the Museum, was faint with
+weariness and hunger; she cut a small piece of bread from a loaf on the
+table, and sat down in an easy chair.
+
+Presently appeared a short, slight woman of middle age, plainly dressed
+in serviceable grey. Her face could never have been very comely, and it
+expressed but moderate intelligence; its lines, however, were those of
+gentleness and good feeling. She had the look of one who is making
+a painful effort to understand something; this was fixed upon her
+features, and probably resulted from the peculiar conditions of her
+life.
+
+‘Rather early, aren’t you, Marian?’ she said, as she closed the door and
+came forward to take a seat.
+
+‘Yes; I have a little headache.’
+
+‘Oh, dear! Is that beginning again?’
+
+Mrs Yule’s speech was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not
+flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as
+with hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile
+such propriety of phrase as she owed to years of association with
+educated people. In the same degree did her bearing fall short of that
+which distinguishes a lady. The London work-girl is rarely capable of
+raising herself, or being raised, to a place in life above that to which
+she was born; she cannot learn how to stand and sit and move like a
+woman bred to refinement, any more than she can fashion her tongue
+to graceful speech. Mrs Yule’s behaviour to Marian was marked with a
+singular diffidence; she looked and spoke affectionately, but not with a
+mother’s freedom; one might have taken her for a trusted servant waiting
+upon her mistress. Whenever opportunity offered, she watched the girl
+in a curiously furtive way, that puzzled look on her face becoming very
+noticeable. Her consciousness was never able to accept as a familiar and
+unimportant fact the vast difference between herself and her daughter.
+Marian’s superiority in native powers, in delicacy of feeling, in the
+results of education, could never be lost sight of. Under ordinary
+circumstances she addressed the girl as if tentatively; however sure of
+anything from her own point of view, she knew that Marian, as often
+as not, had quite a different criterion. She understood that the
+girl frequently expressed an opinion by mere reticence, and hence the
+carefulness with which, when conversing, she tried to discover the real
+effect of her words in Marian’s features.
+
+‘Hungry, too,’ she said, seeing the crust Marian was nibbling. ‘You
+really must have more lunch, dear. It isn’t right to go so long; you’ll
+make yourself ill.’
+
+‘Have you been out?’ Marian asked.
+
+‘Yes; I went to Holloway.’
+
+Mrs Yule sighed and looked very unhappy. By ‘going to Holloway’ was
+always meant a visit to her own relatives--a married sister with three
+children, and a brother who inhabited the same house. To her husband
+she scarcely ever ventured to speak of these persons; Yule had
+no intercourse with them. But Marian was always willing to listen
+sympathetically, and her mother often exhibited a touching gratitude for
+this condescension--as she deemed it.
+
+‘Are things no better?’ the girl inquired.
+
+‘Worse, as far as I can see. John has begun his drinking again, and him
+and Tom quarrel every night; there’s no peace in the ‘ouse.’
+
+If ever Mrs Yule lapsed into gross errors of pronunciation or phrase, it
+was when she spoke of her kinsfolk. The subject seemed to throw her back
+into a former condition.
+
+‘He ought to go and live by himself’ said Marian, referring to her
+mother’s brother, the thirsty John.
+
+‘So he ought, to be sure. I’m always telling them so. But there!
+you don’t seem to be able to persuade them, they’re that silly and
+obstinate. And Susan, she only gets angry with me, and tells me not to
+talk in a stuck-up way. I’m sure I never say a word that could offend
+her; I’m too careful for that. And there’s Annie; no doing anything with
+her! She’s about the streets at all hours, and what’ll be the end of
+it no one can say. They’re getting that ragged, all of them. It isn’t
+Susan’s fault; indeed it isn’t. She does all that woman can. But Tom
+hasn’t brought home ten shillings the last month, and it seems to me as
+if he was getting careless. I gave her half-a-crown; it was all I could
+do. And the worst of it is, they think I could do so much more if I
+liked. They’re always hinting that we are rich people, and it’s no good
+my trying to persuade them. They think I’m telling falsehoods, and it’s
+very hard to be looked at in that way; it is, indeed, Marian.’
+
+‘You can’t help it, mother. I suppose their suffering makes them unkind
+and unjust.’
+
+‘That’s just what it does, my dear; you never said anything truer.
+Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why
+there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see.’
+
+‘I suppose father will be back soon?’
+
+‘He said dinner-time.’
+
+‘Mr Quarmby has been telling me something which is wonderfully good news
+if it’s really true; but I can’t help feeling doubtful.
+
+He says that father may perhaps be made editor of The Study at the end
+of this year.’
+
+Mrs Yule, of course, understood, in outline, these affairs of the
+literary world; she thought of them only from the pecuniary point of
+view, but that made no essential distinction between her and the mass of
+literary people.
+
+‘My word!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a thing that would be for us!’
+
+Marian had begun to explain her reluctance to base any hopes on Mr
+Quarmby’s prediction, when the sound of a postman’s knock at the
+house-door caused her mother to disappear for a moment.
+
+‘It’s for you,’ said Mrs Yule, returning. ‘From the country.’
+
+Marian took the letter and examined its address with interest.
+
+‘It must be one of the Miss Milvains. Yes; Dora Milvain.’
+
+After Jasper’s departure from Finden his sisters had seen Marian several
+times, and the mutual liking between her and them had been confirmed by
+opportunity of conversation. The promise of correspondence had hitherto
+waited for fulfilment. It seemed natural to Marian that the younger
+of the two girls should write; Maud was attractive and agreeable, and
+probably clever, but Dora had more spontaneity in friendship.
+
+‘It will amuse you to hear,’ wrote Dora, ‘that the literary project our
+brother mentioned in a letter whilst you were still here is really to
+come to something. He has sent us a specimen chapter, written by himself
+of the “Child’s History of Parliament,” and Maud thinks she could carry
+it on in that style, if there’s no hurry. She and I have both set to
+work on English histories, and we shall be authorities before long.
+Jolly and Monk offer thirty pounds for the little book, if it suits them
+when finished, with certain possible profits in the future. Trust Jasper
+for making a bargain! So perhaps our literary career will be something
+more than a joke, after all. I hope it may; anything rather than a life
+of teaching. We shall be so glad to hear from you, if you still care to
+trouble about country girls.’
+
+And so on. Marian read with a pleased smile, then acquainted her mother
+with the contents.
+
+‘I am very glad,’ said Mrs Yule; ‘it’s so seldom you get a letter.’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+Marian seemed desirous of saying something more, and her mother had a
+thoughtful look, suggestive of sympathetic curiosity.
+
+‘Is their brother likely to call here?’ Mrs Yule asked, with misgiving.
+
+‘No one has invited him to,’ was the girl’s quiet reply.
+
+‘He wouldn’t come without that?’
+
+‘It’s not likely that he even knows the address.’
+
+‘Your father won’t be seeing him, I suppose?’
+
+‘By chance, perhaps. I don’t know.’
+
+It was very rare indeed for these two to touch upon any subject save
+those of everyday interest. In spite of the affection between them,
+their exchange of confidence did not go very far; Mrs Yule, who had
+never exercised maternal authority since Marian’s earliest childhood,
+claimed no maternal privileges, and Marian’s natural reserve had been
+strengthened by her mother’s respectful aloofness. The English fault of
+domestic reticence could scarcely go further than it did in their case;
+its exaggeration is, of course, one of the characteristics of those
+unhappy families severed by differences of education between the old and
+young.
+
+‘I think,’ said Marian, in a forced tone, ‘that father hasn’t much
+liking for Mr Milvain.’
+
+She wished to know if her mother had heard any private remarks on this
+subject, but she could not bring herself to ask directly.
+
+‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ replied Mrs Yule, smoothing her dress. ‘He
+hasn’t said anything to me, Marian.’
+
+An awkward silence. The mother had fixed her eyes on the mantelpiece,
+and was thinking hard.
+
+‘Otherwise,’ said Marian, ‘he would have said something, I should think,
+about meeting in London.’
+
+‘But is there anything in--this gentleman that he wouldn’t like?’
+
+‘I don’t know of anything.’
+
+Impossible to pursue the dialogue; Marian moved uneasily, then rose,
+said something about putting the letter away, and left the room.
+
+Shortly after, Alfred Yule entered the house. It was no uncommon thing
+for him to come home in a mood of silent moroseness, and this evening
+the first glimpse of his face was sufficient warning. He entered the
+dining-room and stood on the hearthrug reading an evening paper. His
+wife made a pretence of straightening things upon the table.
+
+‘Well?’ he exclaimed irritably. ‘It’s after five; why isn’t dinner
+served?’
+
+‘It’s just coming, Alfred.’
+
+Even the average man of a certain age is an alarming creature when
+dinner delays itself; the literary man in such a moment goes beyond all
+parallel. If there be added the fact that he has just returned from a
+very unsatisfactory interview with a publisher, wife and daughter may
+indeed regard the situation as appalling. Marian came in, and at once
+observed her mother’s frightened face.
+
+‘Father,’ she said, hoping to make a diversion, ‘Mr Hinks has sent you
+his new book, and wishes--’
+
+‘Then take Mr Hinks’s new book back to him, and tell him that I have
+quite enough to do without reading tedious trash. He needn’t expect
+that I’m going to write a notice of it. The simpleton pesters me beyond
+endurance. I wish to know, if you please,’ he added with savage calm,
+‘when dinner will be ready. If there’s time to write a few letters, just
+tell me at once, that I mayn’t waste half an hour.’
+
+Marian resented this unreasonable anger, but she durst not reply.
+
+At that moment the servant appeared with a smoking joint, and Mrs
+Yule followed carrying dishes of vegetables. The man of letters seated
+himself and carved angrily. He began his meal by drinking half a glass
+of ale; then he ate a few mouthfuls in a quick, hungry way, his head
+bent closely over the plate. It happened commonly enough that dinner
+passed without a word of conversation, and that seemed likely to be the
+case this evening.
+
+To his wife Yule seldom addressed anything but a curt inquiry or caustic
+comment; if he spoke humanly at table it was to Marian.
+
+Ten minutes passed; then Marian resolved to try any means of clearing
+the atmosphere.
+
+‘Mr Quarmby gave me a message for you,’ she said. ‘A friend of his,
+Nathaniel Walker, has told him that Mr Rackett will very likely offer
+you the editorship of The Study.’
+
+Yule stopped in the act of mastication. He fixed his eyes intently on
+the sirloin for half a minute; then, by way of the beer-jug and the
+salt-cellar, turned them upon Marian’s face.
+
+‘Walker told him that? Pooh!’
+
+‘It was a great secret. I wasn’t to breathe a word to any one but you.’
+
+‘Walker’s a fool and Quarmby’s an ass,’ remarked her father.
+
+But there was a tremulousness in his bushy eyebrows; his forehead half
+unwreathed itself; he continued to eat more slowly, and as if with
+appreciation of the viands.
+
+‘What did he say? Repeat it to me in his words.’
+
+Marian did so, as nearly as possible. He listened with a scoffing
+expression, but still his features relaxed.
+
+‘I don’t credit Rackett with enough good sense for such a proposal,’ he
+said deliberately. ‘And I’m not very sure that I should accept it if it
+were made. That fellow Fadge has all but ruined the paper. It will
+amuse me to see how long it takes him to make Culpepper’s new magazine a
+distinct failure.’
+
+A silence of five minutes ensued; then Yule said of a sudden.
+
+‘Where is Hinks’s book?’
+
+Marian reached it from a side table; under this roof, literature was
+regarded almost as a necessary part of table garnishing.
+
+‘I thought it would be bigger than this,’ Yule muttered, as he opened
+the volume in a way peculiar to bookish men.
+
+A page was turned down, as if to draw attention to some passage. Yule
+put on his eyeglasses, and soon made a discovery which had the effect of
+completing the transformation of his visage. His eyes glinted, his chin
+worked in pleasurable emotion. In a moment he handed the book to Marian,
+indicating the small type of a foot-note; it embodied an effusive
+eulogy--introduced a propos of some literary discussion--of ‘Mr Alfred
+Yule’s critical acumen, scholarly research, lucid style,’ and sundry
+other distinguished merits.
+
+‘That is kind of him,’ said Marian.
+
+‘Good old Hinks! I suppose I must try to get him half-a-dozen readers.’
+
+‘May I see?’ asked Mrs Yule, under her breath, bending to Marian.
+
+Her daughter passed on the volume, and Mrs Yule read the footnote with
+that look of slow apprehension which is so pathetic when it signifies
+the heart’s good-will thwarted by the mind’s defect.
+
+‘That’ll be good for you, Alfred, won’t it?’ she said, glancing at her
+husband.
+
+‘Certainly,’ he replied, with a smile of contemptuous irony. ‘If Hinks
+goes on, he’ll establish my reputation.’
+
+And he took a draught of ale, like one who is reinvigorated for the
+battle of life. Marian, regarding him askance, mused on what seemed to
+her a strange anomaly in his character; it had often surprised her that
+a man of his temperament and powers should be so dependent upon the
+praise and blame of people whom he justly deemed his inferiors.
+
+Yule was glancing over the pages of the work.
+
+‘A pity the man can’t write English.’ What a vocabulary!
+Obstruent--reliable--particularization--fabulosity--different to--averse
+to--did one ever come across such a mixture of antique pedantry and
+modern vulgarism! Surely he has his name from the German hinken--eh,
+Marian?’
+
+With a laugh he tossed the book away again. His mood was wholly changed.
+He gave various evidences of enjoying the meal, and began to talk freely
+with his daughter.
+
+‘Finished the authoresses?’
+
+‘Not quite.’
+
+‘No hurry. When you have time I want you to read Ditchley’s new book,
+and jot down a selection of his worst sentences. I’ll use them for an
+article on contemporary style; it occurred to me this afternoon.’
+
+He smiled grimly. Mrs Yule’s face exhibited much contentment, which
+became radiant joy when her husband remarked casually that the custard
+was very well made to-day. Dinner over, he rose without ceremony and
+went off to his study.
+
+The man had suffered much and toiled stupendously. It was not
+inexplicable that dyspepsia, and many another ill that literary flesh is
+heir to, racked him sore.
+
+Go back to the days when he was an assistant at a bookseller’s in
+Holborn. Already ambition devoured him, and the genuine love of
+knowledge goaded his brain. He allowed himself but three or four hours
+of sleep; he wrought doggedly at languages, ancient and modern; he tried
+his hand at metrical translations; he planned tragedies. Practically he
+was living in a past age; his literary ideals were formed on the study
+of Boswell.
+
+The head assistant in the shop went away to pursue a business which
+had come into his hands on the death of a relative; it was a small
+publishing concern, housed in an alley off the Strand, and Mr Polo (a
+singular name, to become well known in the course of time) had his
+ideas about its possible extension. Among other instances of activity he
+started a penny weekly paper, called All Sorts, and in the pages of
+this periodical Alfred Yule first appeared as an author. Before long he
+became sub-editor of All Sorts, then actual director of the paper. He
+said good-bye to the bookseller, and his literary career fairly began.
+
+Mr Polo used to say that he never knew a man who could work so many
+consecutive hours as Alfred Yule. A faithful account of all that
+the young man learnt and wrote from 1855 to 1860--that is, from his
+twenty-fifth to his thirtieth year--would have the look of burlesque
+exaggeration. He had set it before him to become a celebrated man, and
+he was not unaware that the attainment of that end would cost him
+quite exceptional labour, seeing that nature had not favoured him with
+brilliant parts. No matter; his name should be spoken among men unless
+he killed himself in the struggle for success.
+
+In the meantime he married. Living in a garret, and supplying himself
+with the materials of his scanty meals, he was in the habit of making
+purchases at a little chandler’s shop, where he was waited upon by
+a young girl of no beauty, but, as it seemed to him, of amiable
+disposition. One holiday he met this girl as she was walking with a
+younger sister in the streets; he made her nearer acquaintance, and
+before long she consented to be his wife and share his garret. His
+brothers, John and Edmund, cried out that he had made an unpardonable
+fool of himself in marrying so much beneath him; that he might well have
+waited until his income improved. This was all very well, but they might
+just as reasonably have bidden him reject plain food because a few years
+hence he would be able to purchase luxuries; he could not do without
+nourishment of some sort, and the time had come when he could not do
+without a wife. Many a man with brains but no money has been compelled
+to the same step. Educated girls have a pronounced distaste for
+London garrets; not one in fifty thousand would share poverty with
+the brightest genius ever born. Seeing that marriage is so often
+indispensable to that very success which would enable a man of parts to
+mate equally, there is nothing for it but to look below one’s own level,
+and be grateful to the untaught woman who has pity on one’s loneliness.
+
+Unfortunately, Alfred Yule was not so grateful as he might have been.
+His marriage proved far from unsuccessful; he might have found himself
+united to a vulgar shrew, whereas the girl had the great virtues of
+humility and kindliness. She endeavoured to learn of him, but her
+dulness and his impatience made this attempt a failure; her human
+qualities had to suffice. And they did, until Yule began to lift his
+head above the literary mob. Previously, he often lost his temper with
+her, but never expressed or felt repentance of his marriage; now he
+began to see only the disadvantages of his position, and, forgetting the
+facts of the case, to imagine that he might well have waited for a wife
+who could share his intellectual existence. Mrs Yule had to pass through
+a few years of much bitterness. Already a martyr to dyspepsia, and often
+suffering from bilious headaches of extreme violence, her husband now
+and then lost all control of his temper, all sense of kind feeling,
+even of decency, and reproached the poor woman with her ignorance, her
+stupidity, her low origin. Naturally enough she defended herself with
+such weapons as a sense of cruel injustice supplied. More than once
+the two all but parted. It did not come to an actual rupture, chiefly
+because Yule could not do without his wife; her tendance had become
+indispensable. And then there was the child to consider.
+
+From the first it was Yule’s dread lest Marian should be infected with
+her mother’s faults of speech and behaviour. He would scarcely permit
+his wife to talk to the child. At the earliest possible moment Marian
+was sent to a day-school, and in her tenth year she went as weekly
+boarder to an establishment at Fulham; any sacrifice of money to insure
+her growing up with the tongue and manners of a lady. It can scarcely
+have been a light trial to the mother to know that contact with her was
+regarded as her child’s greatest danger; but in her humility and her
+love for Marian she offered no resistance. And so it came to pass
+that one day the little girl, hearing her mother make some flagrant
+grammatical error, turned to the other parent and asked gravely: ‘Why
+doesn’t mother speak as properly as we do?’ Well, that is one of the
+results of such marriages, one of the myriad miseries that result from
+poverty.
+
+The end was gained at all hazards. Marian grew up everything that her
+father desired. Not only had she the bearing of refinement, but it early
+became obvious that nature had well endowed her with brains. From the
+nursery her talk was of books, and at the age of twelve she was already
+able to give her father some assistance as an amanuensis.
+
+At that time Edmund Yule was still living; he had overcome his
+prejudices, and there was intercourse between his household and that of
+the literary man. Intimacy it could not be called, for Mrs Edmund (who
+was the daughter of a law-stationer) had much difficulty in behaving to
+Mrs Alfred with show of suavity. Still, the cousins Amy and Marian from
+time to time saw each other, and were not unsuitable companions. It was
+the death of Amy’s father that brought these relations to an end; left
+to the control of her own affairs Mrs Edmund was not long in giving
+offence to Mrs Alfred, and so to Alfred himself. The man of letters
+might be inconsiderate enough in his behaviour to his wife, but as
+soon as anyone else treated her with disrespect that was quite another
+matter. Purely on this account he quarrelled violently with his
+brother’s widow, and from that day the two families kept apart.
+
+The chapter of quarrels was one of no small importance in Alfred’s life;
+his difficult temper, and an ever-increasing sense of neglected merit,
+frequently put him at war with publishers, editors, fellow-authors, and
+he had an unhappy trick of exciting the hostility of men who were most
+likely to be useful to him. With Mr Polo, for instance, who held him
+in esteem, and whose commercial success made him a valuable connection,
+Alfred ultimately broke on a trifling matter of personal dignity. Later
+came the great quarrel with Clement Fadge, an affair of considerable
+advantage in the way of advertisement to both the men concerned. It
+happened in the year 1873. At that time Yule was editor of a weekly
+paper called The Balance, a literary organ which aimed high, and failed
+to hit the circulation essential to its existence. Fadge, a younger man,
+did reviewing for The Balance; he was in needy circumstances, and had
+wrought himself into Yule’s good opinion by judicious flattery. But with
+a clear eye for the main chance Mr Fadge soon perceived that Yule
+could only be of temporary use to him, and that the editor of a
+well-established weekly which lost no opportunity of throwing scorn
+upon Yule and all his works would be a much more profitable conquest.
+He succeeded in transferring his services to the more flourishing
+paper, and struck out a special line of work by the free exercise of
+a malicious flippancy which was then without rival in the periodical
+press. When he had thoroughly got his hand in, it fell to Mr Fadge,
+in the mere way of business, to review a volume of his old editor’s,
+a rather pretentious and longwinded but far from worthless essay ‘On
+Imagination as a National Characteristic.’ The notice was a masterpiece;
+its exquisite virulence set the literary circles chuckling. Concerning
+the authorship there was no mystery, and Alfred Yule had the
+indiscretion to make a violent reply, a savage assault upon Fadge, in
+the columns of The Balance. Fadge desired nothing better; the uproar
+which arose--chaff, fury, grave comments, sneering spite--could only
+result in drawing universal attention to his anonymous cleverness, and
+throwing ridicule upon the heavy, conscientious man. Well, you
+probably remember all about it. It ended in the disappearance of Yule’s
+struggling paper, and the establishment on a firm basis of Fadge’s
+reputation.
+
+It would be difficult to mention any department of literary endeavour in
+which Yule did not, at one time or another, try his fortune. Turn to
+his name in the Museum Catalogue; the list of works appended to it
+will amuse you. In his thirtieth year he published a novel; it failed
+completely, and the same result awaited a similar experiment five years
+later. He wrote a drama of modern life, and for some years strove to
+get it acted, but in vain; finally it appeared ‘for the closet’--giving
+Clement Fadge such an opportunity as he seldom enjoyed. The one
+noteworthy thing about these productions, and about others of equally
+mistaken direction, was the sincerity of their workmanship. Had Yule
+been content to manufacture a novel or a play with due disregard for
+literary honour, he might perchance have made a mercantile success; but
+the poor fellow had not pliancy enough for this. He took his efforts
+au grand serieux; thought he was producing works of art; pursued his
+ambition in a spirit of fierce conscientiousness. In spite of all, he
+remained only a journeyman. The kind of work he did best was poorly
+paid, and could bring no fame. At the age of fifty he was still living
+in a poor house in an obscure quarter. He earned enough for his actual
+needs, and was under no pressing fear for the morrow, so long as his
+faculties remained unimpaired; but there was no disguising from himself
+that his life had been a failure. And the thought tormented him.
+
+Now there had come unexpectedly a gleam of hope. If indeed, the man
+Rackett thought of offering him the editorship of The Study he might
+even yet taste the triumphs for which he had so vehemently longed. The
+Study was a weekly paper of fair repute. Fadge had harmed it, no doubt
+of that, by giving it a tone which did not suit the majority of its
+readers--serious people, who thought that the criticism of contemporary
+writing offered an opportunity for something better than a display of
+malevolent wit. But a return to the old earnestness would doubtless set
+all right again. And the joy of sitting in that dictatorial chair! The
+delight of having his own organ once more, of making himself a power in
+the world of letters, of emphasising to a large audience his developed
+methods of criticism!
+
+An embittered man is a man beset by evil temptations. The Study
+contained each week certain columns of flying gossip, and when he
+thought of this, Yule also thought of Clement Fadge, and sundry other
+of his worst enemies. How the gossip column can be used for hostile
+purposes, yet without the least overt offence, he had learnt only too
+well. Sometimes the mere omission of a man’s name from a list of authors
+can mortify and injure. In our day the manipulation of such paragraphs
+has become a fine art; but you recall numerous illustrations. Alfred
+knew well enough how incessantly the tempter would be at his ear;
+he said to himself that in certain instances yielding would be no
+dishonour. He himself had many a time been mercilessly treated; in the
+very interest of the public it was good that certain men should suffer a
+snubbing, and his fingers itched to have hold of the editorial pen. Ha,
+ha! Like the war-horse he snuffed the battle afar off.
+
+No work this evening, though there were tasks which pressed for
+completion. His study--the only room on the ground level except the
+dining-room--was small, and even a good deal of the floor was encumbered
+with books, but he found space for walking nervously hither and thither.
+He was doing this when, about half-past nine, his wife appeared at the
+door, bringing him a cup of coffee and some biscuits, his wonted supper.
+Marian generally waited upon him at this time, and he asked why she had
+not come.
+
+‘She has one of her headaches again, I’m sorry to say,’ Mrs Yule
+replied. ‘I persuaded her to go to bed early.’
+
+Having placed the tray upon the table--books had to be pushed aside--she
+did not seem disposed to withdraw.
+
+‘Are you busy, Alfred?’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘I thought I should like just to speak of something.’
+
+She was using the opportunity of his good humour. Yule spoke to her with
+the usual carelessness, but not forbiddingly.
+
+‘What is it? Those Holloway people, I’ll warrant.’
+
+‘No, no! It’s about Marian. She had a letter from one of those young
+ladies this afternoon.’
+
+‘What young ladies?’ asked Yule, with impatience of this circuitous
+approach.
+
+‘The Miss Milvains.’
+
+‘Well, there’s no harm that I know of. They’re decent people.’
+
+‘Yes; so you told me. But she began to speak about their brother, and--’
+
+‘What about him? Do say what you want to say, and have done with it!’
+
+‘I can’t help thinking, Alfred, that she’s disappointed you didn’t ask
+him to come here.’
+
+Yule stared at her in slight surprise. He was still not angry, and
+seemed quite willing to consider this matter suggested to him so
+timorously.
+
+‘Oh, you think so? Well, I don’t know. Why should I have asked him?
+It was only because Miss Harrow seemed to wish it that I saw him down
+there. I have no particular interest in him. And as for--’
+
+He broke off and seated himself. Mrs Yule stood at a distance.
+
+‘We must remember her age,’ she said.
+
+‘Why yes, of course.’
+
+He mused, and began to nibble a biscuit.
+
+‘And you know, Alfred, she never does meet any young men. I’ve often
+thought it wasn’t right to her.’
+
+‘H’m! But this lad Milvain is a very doubtful sort of customer. To begin
+with, he has nothing, and they tell me his mother for the most part
+supports him. I don’t quite approve of that. She isn’t well off, and he
+ought to have been making a living by now.
+
+He has a kind of cleverness, may do something; but there’s no being sure
+of that.’
+
+These thoughts were not coming into his mind for the first time. On the
+occasion when he met Milvain and Marian together in the country road he
+had necessarily reflected upon the possibilities of such intercourse,
+and with the issue that he did not care to give any particular
+encouragement to its continuance. He of course heard of Milvain’s
+leave-taking call, and he purposely refrained from seeing the young man
+after that. The matter took no very clear shape in his meditations; he
+saw no likelihood that either of the young people would think much of
+the other after their parting, and time enough to trouble one’s head
+with such subjects when they could no longer be postponed. It would
+not have been pleasant to him to foresee a life of spinsterhood for his
+daughter; but she was young, and--she was a valuable assistant.
+
+How far did that latter consideration weigh with him? He put the
+question pretty distinctly to himself now that his wife had broached
+the matter thus unexpectedly. Was he prepared to behave with deliberate
+selfishness? Never yet had any conflict been manifested between his
+interests and Marian’s; practically he was in the habit of counting upon
+her aid for an indefinite period.
+
+If indeed he became editor of The Study, why, in that case her
+assistance would be less needful. And indeed it seemed probable that
+young Milvain had a future before him.
+
+‘But, in any case,’ he said aloud, partly continuing his thoughts,
+partly replying to a look of disappointment on his wife’s face, ‘how do
+you know that he has any wish to come and see Marian?’
+
+‘I don’t know anything about it, of course.’
+
+‘And you may have made a mistake about her. What made you think she--had
+him in mind?’
+
+‘Well, it was her way of speaking, you know. And then, she asked if you
+had got a dislike to him.’
+
+‘She did? H’m! Well, I don’t think Milvain is any good to Marian. He’s
+just the kind of man to make himself agreeable to a girl for the fun of
+the thing.’
+
+Mrs Yule looked alarmed.
+
+‘Oh, if you really think that, don’t let him come. I wouldn’t for
+anything.’
+
+‘I don’t say it for certain.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘I have had
+no opportunity of observing him with much attention. But he’s not the
+kind of man I care for.’
+
+‘Then no doubt it’s better as it is.’
+
+‘Yes. I don’t see that anything could be done now. We shall see whether
+he gets on. I advise you not to mention him to her.’
+
+‘Oh no, I won’t.’
+
+She moved as if to go away, but her heart had been made uneasy by that
+short conversation which followed on Marian’s reading the letter, and
+there were still things she wished to put into words.
+
+‘If those young ladies go on writing to her, I dare say they’ll often
+speak about their brother.’
+
+‘Yes, it’s rather unfortunate.’
+
+‘And you know, Alfred, he may have asked them to do it.’
+
+‘I suppose there’s one subject on which all women can be subtle,’
+muttered Yule, smiling. The remark was not a kind one, but he did not
+make it worse by his tone.
+
+The listener failed to understand him, and looked with her familiar
+expression of mental effort.
+
+‘We can’t help that,’ he added, with reference to her suggestion. ‘If
+he has any serious thoughts, well, let him go on and wait for
+opportunities.’
+
+‘It’s a great pity, isn’t it, that she can’t see more people--of the
+right kind?’
+
+‘No use talking about it. Things are as they are. I can’t see that her
+life is unhappy.’
+
+‘It isn’t very happy.’
+
+‘You think not?’
+
+‘I’m sure it isn’t.’
+
+‘If I get The Study things may be different. Though--But it’s no use
+talking about what can’t be helped. Now don’t you go encouraging her
+to think herself lonely, and so on. It’s best for her to keep close to
+work, I’m sure of that.’
+
+‘Perhaps it is.’
+
+‘I’ll think it over.’
+
+Mrs Yule silently left the room, and went back to her sewing.
+
+She had understood that ‘Though--’ and the ‘what can’t be helped.’ Such
+allusions reminded her of a time unhappier than the present, when she
+had been wont to hear plainer language. She knew too well that, had she
+been a woman of education, her daughter would not now be suffering from
+loneliness.
+
+It was her own choice that she did not go with her husband and Marian to
+John Yule’s. She made an excuse that the house could not be left to
+one servant; but in any case she would have remained at home, for her
+presence must needs be an embarrassment both to father and daughter.
+Alfred was always ashamed of her before strangers; he could not conceal
+his feeling, either from her or from other people who had reason for
+observing him. Marian was not perhaps ashamed, but such companionship
+put restraint upon her freedom. And would it not always be the same?
+Supposing Mr Milvain were to come to this house, would it not repel him
+when he found what sort of person Marian’s mother was?
+
+She shed a few tears over her needlework.
+
+At midnight the study door opened. Yule came to the dining-room to see
+that all was right, and it surprised him to find his wife still sitting
+there.
+
+‘Why are you so late?’
+
+‘I’ve forgot the time.’
+
+‘Forgotten, forgotten. Don’t go back to that kind of language again.
+Come, put the light out.’
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. TO THE WINNING SIDE
+
+Of the acquaintances Yule had retained from his earlier years several
+were in the well-defined category of men with unpresentable wives. There
+was Hinks, for instance, whom, though in anger he spoke of him as a
+bore, Alfred held in some genuine regard. Hinks made perhaps a hundred a
+year out of a kind of writing which only certain publishers can get rid
+of and of this income he spent about a third on books. His wife was the
+daughter of a laundress, in whose house he had lodged thirty years ago,
+when new to London but already long-acquainted with hunger; they lived
+in complete harmony, but Mrs Hinks, who was four years the elder, still
+spoke the laundress tongue, unmitigated and immitigable. Another pair
+were Mr and Mrs Gorbutt. In this case there were no narrow circumstances
+to contend with, for the wife, originally a nursemaid, not long after
+her marriage inherited house property from a relative. Mr Gorbutt deemed
+himself a poet; since his accession to an income he had published, at
+his own expense, a yearly volume of verses; the only result being to
+keep alive rancour in his wife, who was both parsimonious and vain.
+Making no secret of it, Mrs Gorbutt rued the day on which she had wedded
+a man of letters, when by waiting so short a time she would have been
+enabled to aim at a prosperous tradesman, who kept his gig and had
+everything handsome about him. Mrs Yule suspected, not without reason,
+that this lady had an inclination to strong liquors. Thirdly came Mr
+and Mrs Christopherson, who were poor as church mice. Even in a friend’s
+house they wrangled incessantly, and made tragi-comical revelations
+of their home life. The husband worked casually at irresponsible
+journalism, but his chosen study was metaphysics; for many years he had
+had a huge and profound book on hand, which he believed would bring him
+fame, though he was not so unsettled in mind as to hope for anything
+else. When an article or two had earned enough money for immediate
+necessities he went off to the British Museum, and then the difficulty
+was to recall him to profitable exertions. Yet husband and wife had an
+affection for each other. Mrs Christopherson came from Camberwell,
+where her father, once upon a time, was the smallest of small butchers.
+Disagreeable stories were whispered concerning her earlier life, and
+probably the metaphysician did not care to look back in that direction.
+They had had three children; all were happily buried.
+
+These men were capable of better things than they had done or would ever
+do; in each case their failure to fulfil youthful promise was largely
+explained by the unpresentable wife. They should have waited; they might
+have married a social equal at something between fifty and sixty.
+
+Another old friend was Mr Quarmby. Unwedded he, and perpetually exultant
+over men who, as he phrased it, had noosed themselves. He made a fair
+living, but, like Dr Johnson, had no passion for clean linen.
+
+Yule was not disdainful of these old companions, and the fact that
+all had a habit of looking up to him increased his pleasure in their
+occasional society. If, as happened once or twice in half a year,
+several of them were gathered together at his house, he tasted a sham
+kind of social and intellectual authority which he could not help
+relishing. On such occasions he threw off his habitual gloom and talked
+vigorously, making natural display of his learning and critical ability.
+The topic, sooner or later, was that which is inevitable in such a
+circle--the demerits, the pretentiousness, the personal weaknesses of
+prominent contemporaries in the world of letters. Then did the room ring
+with scornful laughter, with boisterous satire, with shouted irony,
+with fierce invective. After an evening of that kind Yule was unwell and
+miserable for several days.
+
+It was not to be expected that Mr Quarmby, inveterate chatterbox of the
+Reading-room and other resorts, should keep silence concerning what he
+had heard of Mr Rackett’s intentions. The rumour soon spread that
+Alfred Yule was to succeed Fadge in the direction of The Study, with the
+necessary consequence that Yule found himself an object of affectionate
+interest to a great many people of whom he knew little or nothing. At
+the same time the genuine old friends pressed warmly about him, with
+congratulations, with hints of their sincere readiness to assist in
+filling the columns of the paper. All this was not disagreeable, but in
+the meantime Yule had heard nothing whatever from Mr Rackett himself and
+his doubts did not diminish as week after week went by.
+
+The event justified him. At the end of October appeared an authoritative
+announcement that Fadge’s successor would be--not Alfred Yule, but a
+gentleman who till of late had been quietly working as a sub-editor in
+the provinces, and who had neither friendships nor enmities among the
+people of the London literary press. A young man, comparatively fresh
+from the university, and said to be strong in pure scholarship. The
+choice, as you are aware, proved a good one, and The Study became an
+organ of more repute than ever.
+
+Yule had been secretly conscious that it was not to men such as he that
+positions of this kind are nowadays entrusted. He tried to persuade
+himself that he was not disappointed. But when Mr Quarmby approached him
+with blank face, he spoke certain wrathful words which long rankled in
+that worthy’s mind. At home he kept sullen silence.
+
+No, not to such men as he--poor, and without social recommendations.
+Besides, he was growing too old. In literature, as in most other
+pursuits, the press of energetic young men was making it very hard for
+a veteran even to hold the little grazing-plot he had won by hard
+fighting. Still, Quarmby’s story had not been without foundation; it was
+true that the proprietor of The Study had for a moment thought of Alfred
+Yule, doubtless as the natural contrast to Clement Fadge, whom he would
+have liked to mortify if the thing were possible. But counsellors had
+proved to Mr Rackett the disadvantages of such a choice.
+
+Mrs Yule and her daughter foresaw but too well the results of this
+disappointment, notwithstanding that Alfred announced it to them with
+dry indifference. The month that followed was a time of misery for all
+in the house. Day after day Yule sat at his meals in sullen muteness; to
+his wife he scarcely spoke at all, and his conversation with Marian did
+not go beyond necessary questions and remarks on topics of business.
+His face became so strange a colour that one would have thought him
+suffering from an attack of jaundice; bilious headaches exasperated his
+savage mood. Mrs Yule knew from long experience how worse than useless
+it was for her to attempt consolation; in silence was her only safety.
+Nor did Marian venture to speak directly of what had happened. But
+one evening, when she had been engaged in the study and was now saying
+‘Good-night,’ she laid her cheek against her father’s, an unwonted
+caress which had a strange effect upon him. The expression of sympathy
+caused his thoughts to reveal themselves as they never yet had done
+before his daughter.
+
+‘It might have been very different with me,’ he exclaimed abruptly, as
+if they had already been conversing on the subject. ‘When you think
+of my failures--and you must often do so now you are grown up and
+understand things--don’t forget the obstacles that have been in my way.
+I don’t like you to look upon your father as a thickhead who couldn’t
+be expected to succeed. Look at Fadge. He married a woman of good social
+position; she brought him friends and influence. But for that he would
+never have been editor of The Study, a place for which he wasn’t in the
+least fit. But he was able to give dinners; he and his wife went into
+society; everybody knew him and talked of him. How has it been with
+me? I live here like an animal in its hole, and go blinking about if
+by chance I find myself among the people with whom I ought naturally to
+associate. If I had been able to come in direct contact with Rackett and
+other men of that kind, to dine with them, and have them to dine with
+me, to belong to a club, and so on, I shouldn’t be what I am at my age.
+My one opportunity--when I edited The Balance--wasn’t worth much; there
+was no money behind the paper; we couldn’t hold out long enough. But
+even then, if I could have assumed my proper social standing, if I could
+have opened my house freely to the right kind of people--How was it
+possible?’
+
+Marian could not raise her head. She recognised the portion of truth in
+what he said, but it shocked her that he should allow himself to speak
+thus. Her silence seemed to remind him how painful it must be to her to
+hear these accusations of her mother, and with a sudden ‘Good-night’ he
+dismissed her.
+
+She went up to her room, and wept over the wretchedness of all their
+lives. Her loneliness had seemed harder to bear than ever since that
+last holiday. For a moment, in the lanes about Finden, there had come to
+her a vision of joy such as fate owed her youth; but it had faded, and
+she could no longer hope for its return. She was not a woman, but a mere
+machine for reading and writing. Did her father never think of this? He
+was not the only one to suffer from the circumstances in which poverty
+had involved him.
+
+She had no friends to whom she could utter her thoughts. Dora Milvain
+had written a second time, and more recently had come a letter from
+Maud; but in replying to them she could not give a true account of
+herself. Impossible, to them. From what she wrote they would imagine her
+contentedly busy, absorbed in the affairs of literature. To no one could
+she make known the aching sadness of her heart, the dreariness of life
+as it lay before her.
+
+That beginning of half-confidence between her and her mother had led to
+nothing. Mrs Yule found no second opportunity of speaking to her husband
+about Jasper Milvain, and purposely she refrained from any further hint
+or question to Marian. Everything must go on as hitherto.
+
+The days darkened. Through November rains and fogs Marian went her usual
+way to the Museum, and toiled there among the other toilers. Perhaps
+once a week she allowed herself to stray about the alleys of the
+Reading-room, scanning furtively those who sat at the desks, but the
+face she might perchance have discovered was not there.
+
+One day at the end of the month she sat with books open before her, but
+by no effort could fix her attention upon them. It was gloomy, and one
+could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew perceptible in the warm,
+headachy air. Such profound discouragement possessed her that she
+could not even maintain the pretence of study; heedless whether anyone
+observed her, she let her hands fall and her head droop. She kept asking
+herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned
+to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than
+any mortal could cope with in his lifetime, here was she exhausting
+herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended
+to be more than a commodity for the day’s market. What unspeakable
+folly! To write--was not that the joy and the privilege of one who had
+an urgent message for the world?
+
+Her father, she knew well, had no such message; he had abandoned all
+thought of original production, and only wrote about writing.
+
+She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of
+earning money. And all these people about her, what aim had they save to
+make new books out of those already existing, that yet newer books
+might in turn be made out of theirs? This huge library, growing into
+unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print--how
+intolerably it weighed upon the spirit!
+
+Oh, to go forth and labour with one’s hands, to do any poorest,
+commonest work of which the world had truly need! It was ignoble to sit
+here and support the paltry pretence of intellectual dignity. A few
+days ago her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper,
+headed ‘Literary Machine’; had it then been invented at last, some
+automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself to
+turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding
+volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be
+physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the
+true automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one.
+Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced,
+blended, modernised into a single one for to-day’s consumption.
+
+The fog grew thicker; she looked up at the windows beneath the dome and
+saw that they were a dusky yellow. Then her eye discerned an official
+walking along the upper gallery, and in pursuance of her grotesque
+humour, her mocking misery, she likened him to a black, lost soul,
+doomed to wander in an eternity of vain research along endless shelves.
+Or again, the readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks,
+what were they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the
+great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering wall of
+volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the obscurity;
+in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room would be but a
+featureless prison-limit.
+
+But then flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric light,
+and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of headache. It
+reminded her how little work she had done to-day; she must, she must
+force herself to think of the task in hand. A machine has no business to
+refuse its duty. But the pages were blue and green and yellow before her
+eyes; the uncertainty of the light was intolerable. Right or wrong she
+would go home, and hide herself, and let her heart unburden itself of
+tears.
+
+On her way to return books she encountered Jasper Milvain. Face to face;
+no possibility of his avoiding her.
+
+And indeed he seemed to have no such wish. His countenance lighted up
+with unmistakable pleasure.
+
+‘At last we meet, as they say in the melodramas. Oh, do let me help you
+with those volumes, which won’t even let you shake hands. How do you do?
+How do you like this weather? And how do you like this light?’
+
+‘It’s very bad.’
+
+‘That’ll do both for weather and light, but not for yourself. How glad I
+am to see you! Are you just going?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘I have scarcely been here half-a-dozen times since I came back to
+London.’
+
+‘But you are writing still?’
+
+‘Oh yes! But I draw upon my genius, and my stores of observation, and
+the living world.’
+
+Marian received her vouchers for the volumes, and turned to face Jasper
+again. There was a smile on her lips.
+
+‘The fog is terrible,’ Milvain went on. ‘How do you get home?’
+
+‘By omnibus from Tottenham Court Road.’
+
+‘Then do let me go a part of the way with you. I live in Mornington
+Road--up yonder, you know. I have only just come in to waste half an
+hour, and after all I think I should be better at home. Your father is
+all right, I hope?’
+
+‘He is not quite well.’
+
+‘I’m sorry to hear that. You are not exactly up to the mark, either.
+What weather! What a place to live in, this London, in winter! It would
+be a little better down at Finden.’
+
+‘A good deal better, I should think. If the weather were bad, it would
+be bad in a natural way; but this is artificial misery.’
+
+‘I don’t let it affect me much,’ said Milvain. ‘Just of late I have
+been in remarkably good spirits. I’m doing a lot of work. No end of
+work--more than I’ve ever done.’
+
+‘I am very glad.’
+
+‘Where are your out-of-door things? I think there’s a ladies’ vestry
+somewhere, isn’t there?’
+
+‘Oh yes.’
+
+‘Then will you go and get ready? I’ll wait for you in the hall. But,
+by-the-bye, I am taking it for granted that you were going alone.’
+
+‘I was, quite alone.’
+
+The ‘quite’ seemed excessive; it made Jasper smile.
+
+‘And also,’ he added, ‘that I shall not annoy you by offering my
+company?’
+
+‘Why should it annoy me?’
+
+‘Good!’
+
+Milvain had only to wait a minute or two. He surveyed Marian from head
+to foot when she appeared--an impertinence as unintentional as that
+occasionally noticeable in his speech--and smiled approval. They went
+out into the fog, which was not one of London’s densest, but made
+walking disagreeable enough.
+
+‘You have heard from the girls, I think?’ Jasper resumed.
+
+‘Your sisters? Yes; they have been so kind as to write to me.’
+
+‘Told you all about their great work? I hope it’ll be finished by the
+end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well indeed. I
+knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now I want them to
+think of patching up something or other for The English Girl; you know
+the paper?’
+
+‘I have heard of it.’
+
+‘I happen to know Mrs Boston Wright, who edits it. Met her at a house
+the other day, and told her frankly that she would have to give my
+sisters something to do. It’s the only way to get on; one has to take it
+for granted that people are willing to help you. I have made a host of
+new acquaintances just lately.’
+
+‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Marian.
+
+‘Do you know--but how should you? I am going to write for the new
+magazine, The Current.’
+
+‘Indeed!’
+
+‘Edited by that man Fadge.’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Your father has no affection for him, I know.’
+
+‘He has no reason to have, Mr Milvain.’
+
+‘No, no. Fadge is an offensive fellow, when he likes; and I fancy he
+very often does like. Well, I must make what use of him I can.
+
+You won’t think worse of me because I write for him?’
+
+‘I know that one can’t exercise choice in such things.’
+
+‘True. I shouldn’t like to think that you regard me as a Fadge-like
+individual, a natural Fadgeite.’
+
+Marian laughed.
+
+‘There’s no danger of my thinking that.’
+
+But the fog was making their eyes water and getting into their throats.
+By when they reached Tottenham Court Road they were both thoroughly
+uncomfortable. The ‘bus had to be waited for, and in the meantime they
+talked scrappily, coughily. In the vehicle things were a little better,
+but here one could not converse with freedom.
+
+‘What pestilent conditions of life!’ exclaimed Jasper, putting his face
+rather near to Marian’s. ‘I wish to goodness we were back in those quiet
+fields--you remember?--with the September sun warm about us. Shall you
+go to Finden again before long?’
+
+‘I really don’t know.’
+
+‘I’m sorry to say my mother is far from well. In any case I must go at
+Christmas, but I’m afraid it won’t be a cheerful visit.’
+
+Arrived in Hampstead Road he offered his hand for good-bye.
+
+‘I wanted to talk about all sorts of things. But perhaps I shall find
+you again some day.’
+
+He jumped out, and waved his hat in the lurid fog.
+
+Shortly before the end of December appeared the first number of The
+Current. Yule had once or twice referred to the forthcoming magazine
+with acrid contempt, and of course he did not purchase a copy.
+
+‘So young Milvain has joined Fadge’s hopeful standard,’ he remarked,
+a day or two later, at breakfast. ‘They say his paper is remarkably
+clever; I could wish it had appeared anywhere else.
+
+Evil communications, &c.’
+
+‘But I shouldn’t think there’s any personal connection,’ said Marian.
+
+‘Very likely not. But Milvain has been invited to contribute, you see.
+
+‘Do you think he ought to have refused?’
+
+‘Oh no. It’s nothing to me; nothing whatever.’
+
+Mrs Yule glanced at her daughter, but Marian seemed unconcerned. The
+subject was dismissed. In introducing it Yule had had his purpose;
+there had always been an unnatural avoidance of Milvain’s name in
+conversation, and he wished to have an end of this. Hitherto he had felt
+a troublesome uncertainty regarding his position in the matter. From
+what his wife had told him it seemed pretty certain that Marian was
+disappointed by the abrupt closing of her brief acquaintance with the
+young man, and Yule’s affection for his daughter caused him to feel
+uneasy in the thought that perhaps he had deprived her of a chance of
+happiness. His conscience readily took hold of an excuse for justifying
+the course he had followed. Milvain had gone over to the enemy. Whether
+or not the young man understood how relentless the hostility was between
+Yule and Fadge mattered little; the probability was that he knew
+all about it. In any case intimate relations with him could not have
+survived this alliance with Fadge, so that, after all, there had been
+wisdom in letting the acquaintance lapse. To be sure, nothing could have
+come of it. Milvain was the kind of man who weighed opportunities; every
+step he took would be regulated by considerations of advantage; at all
+events that was the impression his character had made upon Yule. Any
+hopes that Marian might have been induced to form would assuredly have
+ended in disappointment. It was kindness to interpose before things had
+gone so far.
+
+Henceforth, if Milvain’s name was unavoidable, it should be mentioned
+just like that of any other literary man. It seemed very unlikely indeed
+that Marian would continue to think of him with any special and personal
+interest. The fact of her having got into correspondence with his
+sisters was unfortunate, but this kind of thing rarely went on for very
+long.
+
+Yule spoke of the matter with his wife that evening.
+
+‘By-the-bye, has Marian heard from those girls at Finden lately?’
+
+‘She had a letter one afternoon last week.’
+
+‘Do you see these letters?’
+
+‘No; she told me what was in them at first, but now she doesn’t.’
+
+‘She hasn’t spoken to you again of Milvain?’
+
+‘Not a word.’
+
+‘Well, I understood what I was about,’ Yule remarked, with the confident
+air of one who doesn’t wish to remember that he had ever felt doubtful.
+‘There was no good in having the fellow here.
+
+He has got in with a set that I don’t at all care for. If she ever says
+anything--you understand--you can just let me know.’
+
+Marian had already procured a copy of The Current, and read it
+privately. Of the cleverness of Milvain’s contribution there could be
+no two opinions; it drew the attention of the public, and all notices
+of the new magazine made special reference to this article. With keen
+interest Marian sought after comments of the press; when it was possible
+she cut them out and put them carefully away.
+
+January passed, and February. She saw nothing of Jasper. A letter from
+Dora in the first week of March made announcement that the ‘Child’s
+History of the English Parliament’ would be published very shortly; it
+told her, too, that Mrs Milvain had been very ill indeed, but that she
+seemed to recover a little strength as the weather improved. Of Jasper
+there was no mention.
+
+A week later came the news that Mrs Milvain had suddenly died.
+
+This letter was received at breakfast-time. The envelope was an ordinary
+one, and so little did Marian anticipate the nature of its contents that
+at the first sight of the words she uttered an exclamation of pain.
+Her father, who had turned from the table to the fireside with his
+newspaper, looked round and asked what was the matter.
+
+‘Mrs Milvain died the day before yesterday.’
+
+‘Indeed!’
+
+He averted his face again and seemed disposed to say no more. But in a
+few moments he inquired:
+
+‘What are her daughters likely to do?’
+
+‘I have no idea.’
+
+‘Do you know anything of their circumstances?’
+
+‘I believe they will have to depend upon themselves.’
+
+Nothing more was said. Afterwards Mrs Yule made a few sympathetic
+inquiries, but Marian was very brief in her replies.
+
+Ten days after that, on a Sunday afternoon when Marian and her mother
+were alone in the sitting-room, they heard the knock of a visitor at the
+front door. Yule was out, and there was no likelihood of the visitor’s
+wishing to see anyone but him. They listened; the servant went to the
+door, and, after a murmur of voices, came to speak to her mistress.
+
+‘It’s a gentleman called Mr Milvain,’ the girl reported, in a way that
+proved how seldom callers presented themselves. ‘He asked for Mr Yule,
+and when I said he was out, then he asked for Miss Yule.’ Mother and
+daughter looked anxiously at each other. Mrs Yule was nervous and
+helpless.
+
+‘Show Mr Milvain into the study,’ said Marian, with sudden decision.
+
+‘Are you going to see him there?’ asked her mother in a hurried whisper.
+
+‘I thought you would prefer that to his coming in here.’
+
+‘Yes--yes. But suppose father comes back before he’s gone?’
+
+‘What will it matter? You forget that he asked for father first.’
+
+‘Oh yes! Then don’t wait.’
+
+Marian, scarcely less agitated than her mother, was just leaving the
+room, when she turned back again.
+
+‘If father comes in, you will tell him before he goes into the study?’
+
+‘Yes, I will.’
+
+The fire in the study was on the point of extinction; this was the first
+thing Marian’s eye perceived on entering, and it gave her assurance that
+her father would not be back for some hours. Evidently he had intended
+it to go out; small economies of this kind, unintelligible to people who
+have always lived at ease, had been the life-long rule with him. With a
+sensation of gladness at having free time before her, Marian turned to
+where Milvain was standing, in front of one of the bookcases. He wore no
+symbol of mourning, but his countenance was far graver than usual, and
+rather paler. They shook hands in silence.
+
+‘I am so grieved--’ Marian began with broken voice.
+
+‘Thank you. I know the girls have told you all about it. We knew for the
+last month that it must come before long, though there was a deceptive
+improvement just before the end.’
+
+‘Please to sit down, Mr Milvain. Father went out not long ago, and I
+don’t think he will be back very soon.’
+
+‘It was not really Mr Yule I wished to see,’ said Jasper, frankly. ‘If
+he had been at home I should have spoken with him about what I have
+in mind, but if you will kindly give me a few minutes it will be much
+better.’
+
+Marian glanced at the expiring fire. Her curiosity as to what Milvain
+had to say was mingled with an anxious doubt whether it was not too late
+to put on fresh coals; already the room was growing very chill, and this
+appearance of inhospitality troubled her.
+
+‘Do you wish to save it?’ Jasper asked, understanding her look and
+movement.
+
+‘I’m afraid it has got too low.’
+
+‘I think not. Life in lodgings has made me skilful at this kind of
+thing; let me try my hand.’
+
+He took the tongs and carefully disposed small pieces of coal upon
+the glow that remained. Marian stood apart with a feeling of shame
+and annoyance. But it is so seldom that situations in life arrange
+themselves with dramatic propriety; and, after all, this vulgar
+necessity made the beginning of the conversation easier.
+
+‘That will be all right now,’ said Jasper at length, as little tongues
+of flame began to shoot here and there.
+
+Marian said nothing, but seated herself and waited.
+
+‘I came up to town yesterday,’ Jasper began. ‘Of course we have had a
+great deal to do and think about. Miss Harrow has been very kind indeed
+to the girls; so have several of our old friends in Wattleborough. It
+was necessary to decide at once what Maud and Dora are going to do, and
+it is on their account that I have come to see you.
+
+The listener kept silence, with a face of sympathetic attention.
+
+‘We have made up our minds that they may as well come to London. It’s a
+bold step; I’m by no means sure that the result will justify it. But I
+think they are perhaps right in wishing to try it.’
+
+‘They will go on with literary work?’
+
+‘Well, it’s our hope that they may be able to. Of course there’s no
+chance of their earning enough to live upon for some time. But the
+matter stands like this. They have a trifling sum of money, on which,
+at a pinch, they could live in London for perhaps a year and a half. In
+that time they may find their way to a sort of income; at all events,
+the chances are that a year and a half hence I shall be able to help
+them to keep body and soul together.’
+
+The money of which he spoke was the debt owed to their father by William
+Milvain. In consequence of Mrs Milvain’s pressing application, half of
+this sum had at length been paid and the remainder was promised in a
+year’s time, greatly to Jasper’s astonishment. In addition, there would
+be the trifle realised by the sale of furniture, though most of this
+might have to go in payment of rent unless the house could be relet
+immediately.
+
+‘They have made a good beginning,’ said Marian.
+
+She spoke mechanically, for it was impossible to keep her thoughts under
+control. If Maud and Dora came to live in London it might bring about
+a most important change in her life; she could scarcely imagine the
+happiness of having two such friends always near. On the other hand, how
+would it be regarded by her father? She was at a loss amid conflicting
+emotions.
+
+‘It’s better than if they had done nothing at all,’ Jasper replied to
+her remark. ‘And the way they knocked that trifle together promises
+well. They did it very quickly, and in a far more workmanlike way than I
+should have thought possible.’
+
+‘No doubt they share your own talent.’
+
+‘Perhaps so. Of course I know that I have talent of a kind, though
+I don’t rate it very high. We shall have to see whether they can do
+anything more than mere booksellers’ work; they are both very young,
+you know. I think they may be able to write something that’ll do for The
+English Girl, and no doubt I can hit upon a second idea that will appeal
+to Jolly and Monk. At all events, they’ll have books within reach, and
+better opportunities every way than at Finden.’
+
+‘How do their friends in the country think of it?’
+
+‘Very dubiously; but then what else was to be expected? Of course, the
+respectable and intelligible path marked out for both of them points
+to a lifetime of governessing. But the girls have no relish for that;
+they’d rather do almost anything. We talked over all the aspects of the
+situation seriously enough--it is desperately serious, no doubt of that.
+I told them fairly all the hardships they would have to face--described
+the typical London lodgings, and so on. Still, there’s an adventurous
+vein in them, and they decided for the risk. If it came to the worst I
+suppose they could still find governess work.’
+
+‘Let us hope better things.’
+
+‘Yes. But now, I should have felt far more reluctant to let them come
+here in this way hadn’t it been that they regard you as a friend.
+To-morrow morning you will probably hear from one or both of them.
+Perhaps it would have been better if I had left them to tell you all
+this, but I felt I should like to see you and--put it in my own way. I
+think you’ll understand this feeling, Miss Yule. I wanted, in fact, to
+hear from yourself that you would be a friend to the poor girls.’
+
+‘Oh, you already know that! I shall be so very glad to see them often.’
+
+Marian’s voice lent itself very naturally and sweetly to the expression
+of warm feeling. Emphasis was not her habit; it only needed that she
+should put off her ordinary reserve, utter quietly the emotional thought
+which so seldom might declare itself, and her tones had an exquisite
+womanliness.
+
+Jasper looked full into her face.
+
+‘In that case they won’t miss the comfort of home so much. Of course
+they will have to go into very modest lodgings indeed. I have already
+been looking about. I should like to find rooms for them somewhere near
+my own place; it’s a decent neighbourhood, and the park is at hand,
+and then they wouldn’t be very far from you. They thought it might be
+possible to make a joint establishment with me, but I’m afraid that’s
+out of the question.
+
+The lodgings we should want in that case, everything considered, would
+cost more than the sum of our expenses if we live apart. Besides,
+there’s no harm in saying that I don’t think we should get along very
+well together. We’re all of us rather quarrelsome, to tell the truth,
+and we try each other’s tempers.’
+
+Marian smiled and looked puzzled.
+
+‘Shouldn’t you have thought that?’
+
+‘I have seen no signs of quarrelsomeness.’
+
+‘I’m not sure that the worst fault is on my side. Why should one condemn
+oneself against conscience? Maud is perhaps the hardest to get along
+with. She has a sort of arrogance, an exaggeration of something I am
+quite aware of in myself. You have noticed that trait in me?’
+
+‘Arrogance--I think not. You have self-confidence.’
+
+‘Which goes into extremes now and then. But, putting myself aside, I
+feel pretty sure that the girls won’t seem quarrelsome to you; they
+would have to be very fractious indeed before that were possible.’
+
+‘We shall continue to be friends, I am sure.’
+
+Jasper let his eyes wander about the room.
+
+‘This is your father’s study?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Perhaps it would have seemed odd to Mr Yule if I had come in and begun
+to talk to him about these purely private affairs. He knows me so very
+slightly. But, in calling here for the first time--’
+
+An unusual embarrassment checked him.
+
+‘I will explain to father your very natural wish to speak of these
+things,’ said Marian, with tact.
+
+She thought uneasily of her mother in the next room. To her there
+appeared no reason whatever why Jasper should not be introduced to Mrs
+Yule, yet she could not venture to propose it. Remembering her father’s
+last remarks about Milvain in connection with Fadge’s magazine, she must
+wait for distinct permission before offering the young man encouragement
+to repeat his visit. Perhaps there was complicated trouble in store
+for her; impossible to say how her father’s deep-rooted and rankling
+antipathies might affect her intercourse even with the two girls. But
+she was of independent years; she must be allowed the choice of her
+own friends. The pleasure she had in seeing Jasper under this roof, in
+hearing him talk with such intimate friendliness, strengthened her to
+resist timid thoughts.
+
+‘When will your sisters arrive?’ she asked.
+
+‘I think in a very few days. When I have fixed upon lodgings for them I
+must go back to Finden; then they will return with me as soon as we
+can get the house emptied. It’s rather miserable selling things one has
+lived among from childhood. A friend in Wattleborough will house for us
+what we really can’t bear to part with.’
+
+‘It must be very sad,’ Marian murmured.
+
+‘You know,’ said the other suddenly, ‘that it’s my fault the girls are
+left in such a hard position?’
+
+Marian looked at him with startled eyes. His tone was quite unfamiliar
+to her.
+
+‘Mother had an annuity,’ he continued. ‘It ended with her life, but if
+it hadn’t been for me she could have saved a good deal out of it. Until
+the last year or two I have earned nothing, and I have spent more
+than was strictly necessary. Well, I didn’t live like that in mere
+recklessness; I knew I was preparing myself for remunerative work. But
+it seems too bad now. I’m sorry for it. I wish I had found some way of
+supporting myself. The end of mother’s life was made far more unhappy
+than it need have been. I should like you to understand all this.’
+
+The listener kept her eyes on the ground.
+
+‘Perhaps the girls have hinted it to you?’ Jasper added.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Selfishness--that’s one of my faults. It isn’t a brutal kind of
+selfishness; the thought of it often enough troubles me. If I were rich,
+I should be a generous and good man; I know I should. So would many
+another poor fellow whose worst features come out under hardship. This
+isn’t a heroic type; of course not. I am a civilised man, that’s all.’
+
+Marian could say nothing.
+
+‘You wonder why I am so impertinent as to talk about myself like this.
+I have gone through a good deal of mental pain these last few weeks,
+and somehow I can’t help showing you something of my real thoughts. Just
+because you are one of the few people I regard with sincere respect.
+I don’t know you very well, but quite well enough to respect you. My
+sisters think of you in the same way. I shall do many a base thing in
+life, just to get money and reputation; I tell you this that you mayn’t
+be surprised if anything of that kind comes to your ears. I can’t afford
+to live as I should like to.’
+
+She looked up at him with a smile.
+
+‘People who are going to live unworthily don’t declare it in this way.’
+
+‘I oughtn’t to; a few minutes ago I had no intention of saying such
+things. It means I am rather overstrung, I suppose; but it’s all true,
+unfortunately.’
+
+He rose, and began to run his eye along the shelves nearest to him.
+
+‘Well, now I will go, Miss Yule.’
+
+Marian stood up as he approached.
+
+‘It’s all very well,’ he said, smiling, ‘for me to encourage my sisters
+in the hope that they may earn a living; but suppose I can’t even do it
+myself? It’s by no means certain that I shall make ends meet this year.’
+
+‘You have every reason to hope, I think.’
+
+‘I like to hear people say that, but it’ll mean savage work. When we
+were all at Finden last year, I told the girls that it would be another
+twelve months before I could support myself. Now I am forced to do
+it. And I don’t like work; my nature is lazy. I shall never write for
+writing’s sake, only to make money. All my plans and efforts will have
+money in view--all. I shan’t allow anything to come in the way of my
+material advancement.’
+
+‘I wish you every success,’ said Marian, without looking at him, and
+without a smile.
+
+‘Thank you. But that sounds too much like good-bye. I trust we are to be
+friends, for all that?’
+
+‘Indeed, I hope we may be.’
+
+They shook hands, and he went towards the door. But before opening it,
+he asked:
+
+‘Did you read that thing of mine in The Current?’
+
+‘Yes, I did.’
+
+‘It wasn’t bad, I think?’
+
+‘It seemed to me very clever.’
+
+‘Clever--yes, that’s the word. It had a success, too. I have as good a
+thing half done for the April number, but I’ve felt too heavy-hearted to
+go on with it. The girls shall let you know when they are in town.’
+
+Marian followed him into the passage, and watched him as he opened the
+front door. When it had closed, she went back into the study for a few
+minutes before rejoining her mother.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. INVITA MINERVA
+
+After all, there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself regularly
+at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of manuscript each
+four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips
+of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent--thanks to the
+astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide
+spacing, frequency of blank pages--a passable three-hundred-page volume.
+On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have
+fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five for the completed book.
+
+Forty-five days; an eternity in the looking forward. Yet the calculation
+gave him a faint-hearted encouragement. At that rate he might have
+his book sold by Christmas. It would certainly not bring him a hundred
+pounds; seventy-five perhaps. But even that small sum would enable him
+to pay the quarter’s rent, and then give him a short time, if only two
+or three weeks, of mental rest. If such rest could not be obtained all
+was at an end with him. He must either find some new means of supporting
+himself and his family, or--have done with life and its responsibilities
+altogether.
+
+The latter alternative was often enough before him. He seldom slept for
+more than two or three consecutive hours in the night, and the time
+of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds which marked the
+stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably familiar to him; worst
+torture to his mind was the chiming and striking of clocks. Two of these
+were in general audible, that of Marylebone parish church, and that of
+the adjoining workhouse; the latter always sounded several minutes after
+its ecclesiastical neighbour, and with a difference of note which seemed
+to Reardon very appropriate--a thin, querulous voice, reminding one of
+the community it represented. After lying awake for awhile he would hear
+quarters sounding; if they ceased before the fourth he was glad, for
+he feared to know what time it was. If the hour was complete, he waited
+anxiously for its number. Two, three, even four, were grateful; there
+was still a long time before he need rise and face the dreaded task, the
+horrible four blank slips of paper that had to be filled ere he might
+sleep again. But such restfulness was only for a moment; no sooner had
+the workhouse bell become silent than he began to toil in his weary
+imagination, or else, incapable of that, to vision fearful hazards of
+the future. The soft breathing of Amy at his side, the contact of her
+warm limbs, often filled him with intolerable dread. Even now he did not
+believe that Amy loved him with the old love, and the suspicion was like
+a cold weight at his heart that to retain even her wifely sympathy, her
+wedded tenderness, he must achieve the impossible.
+
+The impossible; for he could no longer deceive himself with a hope of
+genuine success. If he earned a bare living, that would be the utmost.
+And with bare livelihood Amy would not, could not, be content.
+
+If he were to die a natural death it would be well for all. His wife and
+the child would be looked after; they could live with Mrs Edmund Yule,
+and certainly it would not be long before Amy married again, this time a
+man of whose competency to maintain her there would be no doubt. His own
+behaviour had been cowardly selfishness. Oh yes, she had loved him, had
+been eager to believe in him. But there was always that voice of warning
+in his mind; he foresaw--he knew--
+
+And if he killed himself? Not here; no lurid horrors for that poor girl
+and her relatives; but somewhere at a distance, under circumstances
+which would render the recovery of his body difficult, yet would leave
+no doubt of his death. Would that, again, be cowardly? The opposite,
+when once it was certain that to live meant poverty and wretchedness.
+Amy’s grief, however sincere, would be but a short trial compared with
+what else might lie before her. The burden of supporting her and Willie
+would be a very slight one if she went to live in her mother’s house.
+He considered the whole matter night after night, until perchance it
+happened that sleep had pity upon him for an hour before the time of
+rising.
+
+Autumn was passing into winter. Dark days, which were always an
+oppression to his mind, began to be frequent, and would soon succeed
+each other remorselessly. Well, if only each of them represented four
+written slips.
+
+Milvain’s advice to him had of course proved useless. The sensational
+title suggested nothing, or only ragged shapes of incomplete humanity
+that fluttered mockingly when he strove to fix them. But he had decided
+upon a story of the kind natural to him; a ‘thin’ story, and one which
+it would be difficult to spin into three volumes. His own, at all
+events. The title was always a matter for head-racking when the book was
+finished; he had never yet chosen it before beginning.
+
+For a week he got on at the desired rate; then came once more the crisis
+he had anticipated.
+
+A familiar symptom of the malady which falls upon outwearied
+imagination. There were floating in his mind five or six possible
+subjects for a book, all dating back to the time when he first began
+novel-writing, when ideas came freshly to him. If he grasped desperately
+at one of these, and did his best to develop it, for a day or two he
+could almost content himself; characters, situations, lines of motive,
+were laboriously schemed, and he felt ready to begin writing. But
+scarcely had he done a chapter or two when all the structure fell into
+flatness. He had made a mistake. Not this story, but that other one, was
+what he should have taken. The other one in question, left out of mind
+for a time, had come back with a face of new possibility; it invited
+him, tempted him to throw aside what he had already written. Good;
+now he was in more hopeful train. But a few days, and the experience
+repeated itself. No, not this story, but that third one, of which he
+had not thought for a long time. How could he have rejected so hopeful a
+subject?
+
+For months he had been living in this way; endless circling, perpetual
+beginning, followed by frustration. A sign of exhaustion, it of course
+made exhaustion more complete. At times he was on the border-land of
+imbecility; his mind looked into a cloudy chaos, a shapeless whirl of
+nothings. He talked aloud to himself, not knowing that he did so. Little
+phrases which indicated dolorously the subject of his preoccupation
+often escaped him in the street: ‘What could I make of that, now?’
+‘Well, suppose I made him--?’ ‘But no, that wouldn’t do,’ and so on.
+It had happened that he caught the eye of some one passing fixed in
+surprise upon him; so young a man to be talking to himself in evident
+distress!
+
+The expected crisis came, even now that he was savagely determined to
+go on at any cost, to write, let the result be what it would. His will
+prevailed. A day or two of anguish such as there is no describing to the
+inexperienced, and again he was dismissing slip after slip, a sigh of
+thankfulness at the completion of each one. It was a fraction of the
+whole, a fraction, a fraction.
+
+The ordering of his day was thus. At nine, after breakfast, he sat down
+to his desk, and worked till one. Then came dinner, followed by a walk.
+As a rule he could not allow Amy to walk with him, for he had to think
+over the remainder of the day’s toil, and companionship would have been
+fatal. At about half-past three he again seated himself; and wrote until
+half-past six, when he had a meal. Then once more to work from half-past
+seven to ten. Numberless were the experiments he had tried for the day’s
+division. The slightest interruption of the order for the time being put
+him out of gear; Amy durst not open his door to ask however necessary a
+question.
+
+Sometimes the three hours’ labour of a morning resulted in half-a-dozen
+lines, corrected into illegibility. His brain would not work; he could
+not recall the simplest synonyms; intolerable faults of composition
+drove him mad. He would write a sentence beginning thus: ‘She took a
+book with a look of--;’ or thus: ‘A revision of this decision would
+have made him an object of derision.’ Or, if the period were otherwise
+inoffensive, it ran in a rhythmic gallop which was torment to the ear.
+All this, in spite of the fact that his former books had been noticeably
+good in style. He had an appreciation of shapely prose which made him
+scorn himself for the kind of stuff he was now turning out. ‘I can’t
+help it; it must go; the time is passing.’
+
+Things were better, as a rule, in the evening. Occasionally he wrote a
+page with fluency which recalled his fortunate years; and then his heart
+gladdened, his hand trembled with joy.
+
+Description of locality, deliberate analysis of character or motive,
+demanded far too great an effort for his present condition. He kept as
+much as possible to dialogue; the space is filled so much more quickly,
+and at a pinch one can make people talk about the paltriest incidents of
+life.
+
+There came an evening when he opened the door and called to Amy.
+
+‘What is it?’ she answered from the bedroom. ‘I’m busy with Willie.’
+
+‘Come as soon as you are free.’
+
+In ten minutes she appeared. There was apprehension on her face; she
+feared he was going to lament his inability to work. Instead of that, he
+told her joyfully that the first volume was finished.
+
+‘Thank goodness!’ she exclaimed. ‘Are you going to do any more
+to-night?’
+
+‘I think not--if you will come and sit with me.’
+
+‘Willie doesn’t seem very well. He can’t get to sleep.’
+
+‘You would like to stay with him?’
+
+‘A little while. I’ll come presently.’
+
+She closed the door. Reardon brought a high-backed chair to the
+fireside, and allowed himself to forget the two volumes that had still
+to be struggled through, in a grateful sense of the portion that
+was achieved. In a few minutes it occurred to him that it would be
+delightful to read a scrap of the ‘Odyssey’; he went to the shelves on
+which were his classical books, took the desired volume, and opened it
+where Odysseus speaks to Nausicaa:
+
+‘For never yet did I behold one of mortals like to thee, neither man nor
+woman; I am awed as I look upon thee. In Delos once, hard by the altar
+of Apollo, I saw a young palm-tree shooting up with even such a grace.’
+
+Yes, yes; THAT was not written at so many pages a day, with a workhouse
+clock clanging its admonition at the poet’s ear. How it freshened the
+soul! How the eyes grew dim with a rare joy in the sounding of those
+nobly sweet hexameters!
+
+Amy came into the room again.
+
+‘Listen,’ said Reardon, looking up at her with a bright smile. ‘Do you
+remember the first time that I read you this?’
+
+And he turned the speech into free prose. Amy laughed.
+
+‘I remember it well enough. We were alone in the drawing-room; I had
+told the others that they must make shift with the dining-room for that
+evening. And you pulled the book out of your pocket unexpectedly. I
+laughed at your habit of always carrying little books about.’
+
+The cheerful news had brightened her. If she had been summoned to hear
+lamentations her voice would not have rippled thus soothingly. Reardon
+thought of this, and it made him silent for a minute.
+
+‘The habit was ominous,’ he said, looking at her with an uncertain
+smile. ‘A practical literary man doesn’t do such things.’
+
+‘Milvain, for instance. No.’
+
+With curious frequency she mentioned the name of Milvain. Her
+unconsciousness in doing so prevented Reardon from thinking about the
+fact; still, he had noted it.
+
+‘Did you understand the phrase slightingly?’ he asked.
+
+‘Slightingly? Yes, a little, of course. It always has that sense on your
+lips, I think.’
+
+In the light of this answer he mused upon her readily-offered instance.
+True, he had occasionally spoken of Jasper with something less than
+respect, but Amy was not in the habit of doing so.
+
+‘I hadn’t any such meaning just then,’ he said. ‘I meant quite
+simply that my bookish habits didn’t promise much for my success as a
+novelist.’
+
+‘I see. But you didn’t think of it in that way at the time.’
+
+He sighed.
+
+‘No. At least--no.’
+
+‘At least what?’
+
+‘Well, no; on the whole I had good hope.’
+
+Amy twisted her fingers together impatiently.
+
+‘Edwin, let me tell you something. You are getting too fond of speaking
+in a discouraging way. Now, why should you do so? I don’t like it. It
+has one disagreeable effect on me, and that is, when people ask me about
+you, how you are getting on, I don’t quite know how to answer. They
+can’t help seeing that I am uneasy. I speak so differently from what I
+used to.’
+
+‘Do you, really?’
+
+‘Indeed I can’t help it. As I say, it’s very much your own fault.’
+
+‘Well, but granted that I am not of a very sanguine nature, and that I
+easily fall into gloomy ways of talk, what is Amy here for?’
+
+‘Yes, yes. But--’
+
+‘But?’
+
+‘I am not here only to try and keep you in good spirits, am I?’
+
+She asked it prettily, with a smile like that of maidenhood.
+
+‘Heaven forbid! I oughtn’t to have put it in that absolute way. I was
+half joking, you know. But unfortunately it’s true that I can’t be as
+light-spirited as I could wish. Does that make you impatient with me?’
+
+‘A little. I can’t help the feeling, and I ought to try to overcome it.
+But you must try on your side as well. Why should you have said that
+thing just now?’
+
+‘You’re quite right. It was needless.’
+
+‘A few weeks ago I didn’t expect you to be cheerful. Things began
+to look about as bad as they could. But now that you’ve got a volume
+finished, there’s hope once more.’
+
+Hope? Of what quality? Reardon durst not say what rose in his thoughts.
+‘A very small, poor hope. Hope of money enough to struggle through
+another half year, if indeed enough for that.’ He had learnt that Amy
+was not to be told the whole truth about anything as he himself saw it.
+It was a pity. To the ideal wife a man speaks out all that is in him;
+she had infinitely rather share his full conviction than be treated as
+one from whom facts must be disguised. She says: ‘Let us face the worst
+and talk of it together, you and I.’ No, Amy was not the ideal wife
+from that point of view. But the moment after this half-reproach had
+traversed his consciousness he condemned himself; and looked with the
+joy of love into her clear eyes.
+
+‘Yes, there’s hope once more, my dearest. No more gloomy talk to-night!
+I have read you something, now you shall read something to me; it is a
+long time since I delighted myself with listening to you. What shall it
+be?’
+
+‘I feel rather too tired to-night.’
+
+‘Do you?’
+
+‘I have had to look after Willie so much. But read me some more Homer; I
+shall be very glad to listen.’
+
+Reardon reached for the book again, but not readily. His face showed
+disappointment. Their evenings together had never been the same since
+the birth of the child; Willie was always an excuse--valid enough--for
+Amy’s feeling tired. The little boy had come between him and the mother,
+as must always be the case in poor homes, most of all where the poverty
+is relative. Reardon could not pass the subject without a remark, but he
+tried to speak humorously.
+
+‘There ought to be a huge public creche in London. It’s monstrous that
+an educated mother should have to be nursemaid.’
+
+‘But you know very well I think nothing of that. A creche, indeed! No
+child of mine should go to any such place.’
+
+There it was. She grudged no trouble on behalf of the child. That was
+love; whereas--But then maternal love was a mere matter of course.
+
+‘As soon as you get two or three hundred pounds for a book,’ she added,
+laughing, ‘there’ll be no need for me to give so much time.’
+
+‘Two or three hundred pounds!’ He repeated it with a shake of the head.
+‘Ah, if that were possible!’
+
+‘But that’s really a paltry sum. What would fifty novelists you could
+name say if they were offered three hundred pounds for a book? How much
+do you suppose even Markland got for his last?’
+
+‘Didn’t sell it at all, ten to one. Gets a royalty.’
+
+‘Which will bring him five or six hundred pounds before the book ceases
+to be talked of.’
+
+‘Never mind. I’m sick of the word “pounds.”’
+
+‘So am I.’
+
+She sighed, commenting thus on her acquiescence.
+
+‘But look, Amy. If I try to be cheerful in spite of natural dumps,
+wouldn’t it be fair for you to put aside thoughts of money?’
+
+‘Yes. Read some Homer, dear. Let us have Odysseus down in Hades, and
+Ajax stalking past him. Oh, I like that!’
+
+So he read, rather coldly at first, but soon warming. Amy sat with
+folded arms, a smile on her lips, her brows knitted to the epic humour.
+In a few minutes it was as if no difficulties threatened their life.
+Every now and then Reardon looked up from his translating with a
+delighted laugh, in which Amy joined.
+
+When he had returned the book to the shelf he stepped behind his wife’s
+chair, leaned upon it, and put his cheek against hers.
+
+‘Amy!’
+
+‘Yes, dear?’
+
+‘Do you still love me a little?’
+
+‘Much more than a little.’
+
+‘Though I am sunk to writing a wretched pot-boiler?’
+
+‘Is it so bad as all that?’
+
+‘Confoundedly bad. I shall be ashamed to see it in print; the proofs
+will be a martyrdom.’
+
+‘Oh, but why? why?’
+
+‘It’s the best I can do, dearest. So you don’t love me enough to hear
+that calmly.’
+
+‘If I didn’t love you, I might be calmer about it, Edwin. It’s dreadful
+to me to think of what they will say in the reviews.’
+
+‘Curse the reviews!’
+
+His mood had changed on the instant. He stood up with darkened face,
+trembling angrily.
+
+‘I want you to promise me something, Amy. You won’t read a single one
+of the notices unless it is forced upon your attention. Now, promise me
+that. Neglect them absolutely, as I do. They’re not worth a glance of
+your eyes. And I shan’t be able to bear it if I know you read all the
+contempt that will be poured on me.’
+
+‘I’m sure I shall be glad enough to avoid it; but other people, our
+friends, read it. That’s the worst.’
+
+‘You know that their praise would be valueless, so have strength to
+disregard the blame. Let our friends read and talk as much as they like.
+Can’t you console yourself with the thought that I am not contemptible,
+though I may have been forced to do poor work?’
+
+‘People don’t look at it in that way.’
+
+‘But, darling,’ he took her hands strongly in his own, ‘I want you to
+disregard other people. You and I are surely everything to each other?
+Are you ashamed of me, of me myself?’
+
+‘No, not ashamed of you. But I am sensitive to people’s talk and
+opinions.’
+
+‘But that means they make you feel ashamed of me. What else?’
+
+There was silence.
+
+‘Edwin, if you find you are unable to do good work, you mustn’t do bad.
+We must think of some other way of making a living.’
+
+‘Have you forgotten that you urged me to write a trashy sensational
+story?’
+
+She coloured and looked annoyed.
+
+‘You misunderstood me. A sensational story needn’t be trash. And then,
+you know, if you had tried something entirely unlike your usual work,
+that would have been excuse enough if people had called it a failure.’
+
+‘People! People!’
+
+‘We can’t live in solitude, Edwin, though really we are not far
+from it.’ He did not dare to make any reply to this. Amy was so
+exasperatingly womanlike in avoiding the important issue to which he
+tried to confine her; another moment, and his tone would be that of
+irritation. So he turned away and sat down to his desk, as if he had
+some thought of resuming work.
+
+‘Will you come and have some supper?’ Amy asked, rising.
+
+‘I have been forgetting that to-morrow morning’s chapter has still to be
+thought out.’
+
+‘Edwin, I can’t think this book will really be so poor. You couldn’t
+possibly give all this toil for no result.’
+
+‘No; not if I were in sound health. But I am far from it.’
+
+‘Come and have supper with me, dear, and think afterwards.’
+
+He turned and smiled at her.
+
+‘I hope I shall never be able to resist an invitation from you, sweet.’
+
+The result of all this was, of course, that he sat down in anything but
+the right mood to his work next morning. Amy’s anticipation of criticism
+had made it harder than ever for him to labour at what he knew to be
+bad. And, as ill-luck would have it, in a day or two he caught his
+first winter’s cold. For several years a succession of influenzas,
+sore-throats, lumbagoes, had tormented him from October to May; in
+planning his present work, and telling himself that it must be finished
+before Christmas, he had not lost sight of these possible interruptions.
+But he said to himself: ‘Other men have worked hard in seasons of
+illness; I must do the same.’ All very well, but Reardon did not belong
+to the heroic class. A feverish cold now put his powers and resolution
+to the test. Through one hideous day he nailed himself to the desk--and
+wrote a quarter of a page. The next day Amy would not let him rise from
+bed; he was wretchedly ill. In the night he had talked about his work
+deliriously, causing her no slight alarm.
+
+‘If this goes on,’ she said to him in the morning, ‘you’ll have brain
+fever. You must rest for two or three days.’
+
+‘Teach me how to. I wish I could.’
+
+Rest had indeed become out of the question. For two days he could not
+write, but the result upon his mind was far worse than if he had been at
+the desk. He looked a haggard creature when he again sat down with the
+accustomed blank slip before him.
+
+The second volume ought to have been much easier work than the first; it
+proved far harder. Messieurs and mesdames the critics are wont to point
+out the weakness of second volumes; they are generally right, simply
+because a story which would have made a tolerable book (the common run
+of stories) refuses to fill three books. Reardon’s story was in itself
+weak, and this second volume had to consist almost entirely of laborious
+padding. If he wrote three slips a day he did well.
+
+And the money was melting, melting, despite Amy’s efforts at economy.
+She spent as little as she could; not a luxury came into their home;
+articles of clothing all but indispensable were left unpurchased. But
+to what purpose was all this? Impossible, now, that the book should be
+finished and sold before the money had all run out.
+
+At the end of November, Reardon said to his wife one morning:
+
+‘To-morrow I finish the second volume.’
+
+‘And in a week,’ she replied, ‘we shan’t have a shilling left.’
+
+He had refrained from making inquiries, and Amy had forborne to tell
+him the state of things, lest it should bring him to a dead stop in his
+writing. But now they must needs discuss their position.
+
+‘In three weeks I can get to the end,’ said Reardon, with unnatural
+calmness. ‘Then I will go personally to the publishers, and beg them to
+advance me something on the manuscript before they have read it.’
+
+‘Couldn’t you do that with the first two volumes?’
+
+‘No, I can’t; indeed I can’t. The other thing will be bad enough; but to
+beg on an incomplete book, and such a book--I can’t!’
+
+There were drops on his forehead.
+
+‘They would help you if they knew,’ said Amy in a low voice.
+
+‘Perhaps; I can’t say. They can’t help every poor devil. No; I will sell
+some books. I can pick out fifty or sixty that I shan’t much miss.’
+
+Amy knew what a wrench this would be. The imminence of distress seemed
+to have softened her.
+
+‘Edwin, let me take those two volumes to the publishers, and ask--’
+
+‘Heavens! no. That’s impossible. Ten to one you will be told that my
+work is of such doubtful value that they can’t offer even a guinea till
+the whole book has been considered. I can’t allow you to go, dearest.
+This morning I’ll choose some books that I can spare, and after dinner
+I’ll ask a man to come and look at them. Don’t worry yourself; I can
+finish in three weeks, I’m sure I can. If I can get you three or four
+pounds you could make it do, couldn’t you?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+She averted her face as she spoke.
+
+‘You shall have that.’ He still spoke very quietly. ‘If the books won’t
+bring enough, there’s my watch--oh, lots of things.’
+
+He turned abruptly away, and Amy went on with her household work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY
+
+It was natural that Amy should hint dissatisfaction with the loneliness
+in which her days were mostly spent. She had never lived in a large
+circle of acquaintances; the narrowness of her mother’s means restricted
+the family to intercourse with a few old friends and such new ones as
+were content with teacup entertainment; but her tastes were social,
+and the maturing process which followed upon her marriage made her more
+conscious of this than she had been before. Already she had allowed her
+husband to understand that one of her strongest motives in marrying
+him was the belief that he would achieve distinction. At the time
+she doubtless thought of his coming fame only--or principally--as it
+concerned their relations to each other; her pride in him was to be one
+phase of her love. Now she was well aware that no degree of distinction
+in her husband would be of much value to her unless she had the pleasure
+of witnessing its effect upon others; she must shine with reflected
+light before an admiring assembly.
+
+The more conscious she became of this requirement of her nature, the
+more clearly did she perceive that her hopes had been founded on an
+error. Reardon would never be a great man; he would never even occupy
+a prominent place in the estimation of the public. The two things, Amy
+knew, might be as different as light and darkness; but in the grief of
+her disappointment she would rather have had him flare into a worthless
+popularity than flicker down into total extinction, which it almost
+seemed was to be his fate.
+
+She knew so well how ‘people’ were talking of him and her. Even her
+unliterary acquaintances understood that Reardon’s last novel had been
+anything but successful, and they must of course ask each other how
+the Reardons were going to live if the business of novel-writing proved
+unremunerative. Her pride took offence at the mere thought of such
+conversations. Presently she would become an object of pity; there would
+be talk of ‘poor Mrs Reardon.’ It was intolerable.
+
+So during the last half year she had withheld as much as possible from
+the intercourse which might have been one of her chief pleasures. And to
+disguise the true cause she made pretences which were a satire upon her
+state of mind--alleging that she had devoted herself to a serious course
+of studies, that the care of house and child occupied all the time she
+could spare from her intellectual pursuits. The worst of it was, she
+had little faith in the efficacy of these fictions; in uttering them she
+felt an unpleasant warmth upon her cheeks, and it was not difficult to
+detect a look of doubt in the eyes of the listener. She grew angry
+with herself for being dishonest, and with her husband for making such
+dishonesty needful.
+
+The female friend with whom she had most trouble was Mrs Carter. You
+remember that on the occasion of Reardon’s first meeting with his future
+wife, at the Grosvenor Gallery, there were present his friend Carter
+and a young lady who was shortly to bear the name of that spirited
+young man. The Carters had now been married about a year; they lived
+in Bayswater, and saw much of a certain world which imitates on a lower
+plane the amusements and affectations of society proper. Mr Carter was
+still secretary to the hospital where Reardon had once earned his twenty
+shillings a week, but by voyaging in the seas of charitable enterprise
+he had come upon supplementary sources of income; for instance, he held
+the post of secretary to the Barclay Trust, a charity whose moderate
+funds were largely devoted to the support of gentlemen engaged in
+administering it. This young man, with his air of pleasing vivacity, had
+early ingratiated himself with the kind of people who were likely to be
+of use to him; he had his reward in the shape of offices which are only
+procured through private influence. His wife was a good-natured, lively,
+and rather clever girl; she had a genuine regard for Amy, and much
+respect for Reardon. Her ambition was to form a circle of distinctly
+intellectual acquaintances, and she was constantly inviting the Reardons
+to her house; a real live novelist is not easily drawn into the world
+where Mrs Carter had her being, and it annoyed her that all attempts to
+secure Amy and her husband for five-o’clock teas and small parties had
+of late failed.
+
+On the afternoon when Reardon had visited a second-hand bookseller with
+a view of raising money--he was again shut up in his study, dolorously
+at work--Amy was disturbed by the sound of a visitor’s rat-tat; the
+little servant went to the door, and returned followed by Mrs Carter.
+
+Under the best of circumstances it was awkward to receive any but
+intimate friends during the hours when Reardon sat at his desk. The
+little dining-room (with its screen to conceal the kitchen range)
+offered nothing more than homely comfort; and then the servant had to
+be disposed of by sending her into the bedroom to take care of Willie.
+Privacy, in the strict sense, was impossible, for the servant
+might listen at the door (one room led out of the other) to all the
+conversation that went on; yet Amy could not request her visitors to
+speak in a low tone. For the first year these difficulties had not
+been felt; Reardon made a point of leaving the front room at his wife’s
+disposal from three to six; it was only when dread of the future began
+to press upon him that he sat in the study all day long. You see how
+complicated were the miseries of the situation; one torment involved
+another, and in every quarter subjects of discontent were multiplied.
+
+Mrs Carter would have taken it ill had she known that Amy did not
+regard her as strictly an intimate. They addressed each other by their
+Christian names, and conversed without ceremony; but Amy was always
+dissatisfied when the well-dressed young woman burst with laughter and
+animated talk into this abode of concealed poverty. Edith was not the
+kind of person with whom one can quarrel; she had a kind heart, and was
+never disagreeably pretentious. Had circumstances allowed it, Amy would
+have given frank welcome to such friendship; she would have been glad
+to accept as many invitations as Edith chose to offer. But at present
+it did her harm to come in contact with Mrs Carter; it made her envious,
+cold to her husband, resentful against fate.
+
+‘Why can’t she leave me alone?’ was the thought that rose in her mind as
+Edith entered. ‘I shall let her see that I don’t want her here.’
+
+‘Your husband at work?’ Edith asked, with a glance in the direction of
+the study, as soon as they had exchanged kisses and greetings.
+
+‘Yes, he is busy.’
+
+‘And you are sitting alone, as usual. I feared you might be out; an
+afternoon of sunshine isn’t to be neglected at this time of year.’
+
+‘Is there sunshine?’ Amy inquired coldly.
+
+‘Why, look! Do you mean to say you haven’t noticed it? What a comical
+person you are sometimes! I suppose you have been over head and ears in
+books all day. How is Willie?’
+
+‘Very well, thank you.’
+
+‘Mayn’t I see him?’
+
+‘If you like.’
+
+Amy stepped to the bedroom door and bade the servant bring Willie for
+exhibition. Edith, who as yet had no child of her own, always showed the
+most flattering admiration of this infant; it was so manifestly sincere
+that the mother could not but be moved to a grateful friendliness
+whenever she listened to its expression. Even this afternoon the usual
+effect followed when Edith had made a pretty and tender fool of herself
+for several minutes. Amy bade the servant make tea.
+
+At this moment the door from the passage opened, and Reardon looked in.
+
+‘Well, if this isn’t marvellous!’ cried Edith. ‘I should as soon have
+expected the heavens to fall!’
+
+‘As what?’ asked Reardon, with a pale smile.
+
+‘As you to show yourself when I am here.’
+
+‘I should like to say that I came on purpose to see you, Mrs Carter,
+but it wouldn’t be true. I’m going out for an hour, so that you can take
+possession of the other room if you like, Amy.’
+
+‘Going out?’ said Amy, with a look of surprise.
+
+‘Nothing--nothing. I mustn’t stay.’
+
+He just inquired of Mrs Carter how her husband was, and withdrew. The
+door of the flat was heard to close after him.
+
+‘Let us go into the study, then,’ said Amy, again in rather a cold
+voice.
+
+On Reardon’s desk were lying slips of blank paper. Edith, approaching on
+tiptoe with what was partly make believe, partly genuine, awe, looked at
+the literary apparatus, then turned with a laugh to her friend.
+
+‘How delightful it must be to sit down and write about people one has
+invented! Ever since I have known you and Mr Reardon I have been tempted
+to try if I couldn’t write a story.’
+
+‘Have you?’
+
+‘And I’m sure I don’t know how you can resist the temptation. I feel
+sure you could write books almost as clever as your husband’s.’
+
+‘I have no intention of trying.’
+
+‘You don’t seem very well to-day, Amy.’
+
+‘Oh, I think I am as well as usual.’
+
+She guessed that her husband was once more brought to a standstill, and
+this darkened her humour again.
+
+‘One of my reasons for coming,’ said Edith, ‘was to beg and entreat and
+implore you and Mr Reardon to dine with us next Wednesday. Now, don’t
+put on such a severe face! Are you engaged that evening?’
+
+‘Yes; in the ordinary way. Edwin can’t possibly leave his work.’
+
+‘But for one poor evening! It’s such ages since we saw you.’
+
+‘I’m very sorry. I don’t think we shall ever be able to accept
+invitations in future.’
+
+Amy spoke thus at the prompting of a sudden impulse. A minute ago, no
+such definite declaration was in her mind.
+
+‘Never?’ exclaimed Edith. ‘But why? Whatever do you mean?’
+
+‘We find that social engagements consume too much time,’ Amy replied,
+her explanation just as much of an impromptu as the announcement had
+been. ‘You see, one must either belong to society or not. Married people
+can’t accept an occasional invitation from friends and never do their
+social duty in return.
+
+We have decided to withdraw altogether--at all events for the present. I
+shall see no one except my relatives.’
+
+Edith listened with a face of astonishment.
+
+‘You won’t even see ME?’ she exclaimed.
+
+‘Indeed, I have no wish to lose your friendship. Yet I am ashamed to ask
+you to come here when I can never return your visits.’
+
+‘Oh, please don’t put it in that way! But it seems so very strange.’
+
+Edith could not help conjecturing the true significance of this resolve.
+But, as is commonly the case with people in easy circumstances, she
+found it hard to believe that her friends were so straitened as to
+have a difficulty in supporting the ordinary obligations of a civilised
+state.
+
+‘I know how precious your husband’s time is,’ she added, as if to remove
+the effect of her last remark. ‘Surely, there’s no harm in my saying--we
+know each other well enough--you wouldn’t think it necessary to devote
+an evening to entertaining us just because you had given us the pleasure
+of your company. I put it very stupidly, but I’m sure you understand me,
+Amy. Don’t refuse just to come to our house now and then.’
+
+‘I’m afraid we shall have to be consistent, Edith.’
+
+‘But do you think this is a WISE thing to do?’
+
+‘Wise?’
+
+‘You know what you once told me, about how necessary it was for a
+novelist to study all sorts of people. How can Mr Reardon do this if he
+shuts himself up in the house? I should have thought he would find it
+necessary to make new acquaintances.’
+
+‘As I said,’ returned Amy, ‘it won’t be always like this. For the
+present, Edwin has quite enough “material.”’
+
+She spoke distantly; it irritated her to have to invent excuses for the
+sacrifice she had just imposed on herself. Edith sipped the tea which
+had been offered her, and for a minute kept silence.
+
+‘When will Mr Reardon’s next book be published?’ she asked at length.
+
+‘I’m sure I don’t know. Not before the spring.’
+
+‘I shall look so anxiously for it. Whenever I meet new people I always
+turn the conversation to novels, just for the sake of asking them if
+they know your husband’s books.’
+
+She laughed merrily.
+
+‘Which is seldom the case, I should think,’ said Amy, with a smile of
+indifference.
+
+‘Well, my dear, you don’t expect ordinary novel-readers to know about Mr
+Reardon. I wish my acquaintances were a better kind of people; then, of
+course, I should hear of his books more often. But one has to make the
+best of such society as offers. If you and your husband forsake me, I
+shall feel it a sad loss; I shall indeed.’
+
+Amy gave a quick glance at the speaker’s face.
+
+‘Oh, we must be friends just the same,’ she said, more naturally than
+she had spoken hitherto. ‘But don’t ask us to come and dine just now.
+All through this winter we shall be very busy, both of us. Indeed, we
+have decided not to accept any invitations at all.’
+
+‘Then, so long as you let me come here now and then, I must give in. I
+promise not to trouble you with any more complaining. But how you can
+live such a life I don’t know. I consider myself more of a reader than
+women generally are, and I should be mortally offended if anyone called
+me frivolous; but I must have a good deal of society. Really and truly,
+I can’t live without it.’
+
+‘No?’ said Amy, with a smile which meant more than Edith could
+interpret. It seemed slightly condescending.
+
+‘There’s no knowing; perhaps if I had married a literary man---’ She
+paused, smiling and musing. ‘But then I haven’t, you see.’ She laughed.
+‘Albert is anything but a bookworm, as you know.’
+
+‘You wouldn’t wish him to be.’
+
+‘Oh no! Not a bookworm. To be sure, we suit each other very well indeed.
+He likes society just as much as I do. It would be the death of him if
+he didn’t spend three-quarters of every day with lively people.’
+
+‘That’s rather a large portion. But then you count yourself among the
+lively ones.’
+
+They exchanged looks, and laughed together.
+
+‘Of course you think me rather silly to want to talk so much with silly
+people,’ Edith went on. ‘But then there’s generally some amusement to
+be got, you know. I don’t take life quite so seriously as you do. People
+are people, after all; it’s good fun to see how they live and hear how
+they talk.’
+
+Amy felt that she was playing a sorry part. She thought of sour grapes,
+and of the fox who had lost his tail. Worst of all, perhaps Edith
+suspected the truth. She began to make inquiries about common
+acquaintances, and fell into an easier current of gossip.
+
+A quarter of an hour after the visitor’s departure Reardon came back.
+Amy had guessed aright; the necessity of selling his books weighed upon
+him so that for the present he could do nothing. The evening was spent
+gloomily, with very little conversation.
+
+Next day came the bookseller to make his inspection. Reardon had
+chosen out and ranged upon a table nearly a hundred volumes. With a few
+exceptions, they had been purchased second-hand. The tradesman examined
+them rapidly.
+
+‘What do you ask?’ he inquired, putting his head aside.
+
+‘I prefer that you should make an offer,’ Reardon replied, with the
+helplessness of one who lives remote from traffic.
+
+‘I can’t say more than two pounds ten.’
+
+‘That is at the rate of sixpence a volume---?’
+
+‘To me that’s about the average value of books like these.’
+
+Perhaps the offer was a fair one; perhaps it was not. Reardon had
+neither time nor spirit to test the possibilities of the market; he was
+ashamed to betray his need by higgling.
+
+‘I’ll take it,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
+
+A messenger was sent for the books that afternoon. He stowed them
+skilfully in two bags, and carried them downstairs to a cart that was
+waiting.
+
+Reardon looked at the gaps left on his shelves. Many of those vanished
+volumes were dear old friends to him; he could have told you where he
+had picked them up and when; to open them recalled a past moment of
+intellectual growth, a mood of hope or despondency, a stage of struggle.
+In most of them his name was written, and there were often pencilled
+notes in the margin. Of course he had chosen from among the most
+valuable he possessed; such a multitude must else have been sold to make
+this sum of two pounds ten. Books are cheap, you know. At need, one can
+buy a Homer for fourpence, a Sophocles for sixpence. It was not rubbish
+that he had accumulated at so small expenditure, but the library of a
+poor student--battered bindings, stained pages, supplanted editions.
+He loved his books, but there was something he loved more, and when Amy
+glanced at him with eyes of sympathy he broke into a cheerful laugh.
+
+‘I’m only sorry they have gone for so little. Tell me when the money
+is nearly at an end again, and you shall have more. It’s all right; the
+novel will be done soon.’
+
+And that night he worked until twelve o’clock, doggedly, fiercely.
+
+The next day was Sunday. As a rule he made it a day of rest, and almost
+perforce, for the depressing influence of Sunday in London made work too
+difficult. Then, it was the day on which he either went to see his own
+particular friends or was visited by them.
+
+‘Do you expect anyone this evening?’ Amy inquired.
+
+‘Biffen will look in, I dare say. Perhaps Milvain.’
+
+‘I think I shall take Willie to mother’s. I shall be back before eight.’
+
+‘Amy, don’t say anything about the books.’
+
+‘No, no.’
+
+‘I suppose they always ask you when we think of removing over the way?’
+
+He pointed in a direction that suggested Marylebone Workhouse. Amy tried
+to laugh, but a woman with a child in her arms has no keen relish for
+such jokes.
+
+‘I don’t talk to them about our affairs,’ she said.
+
+‘That’s best.’
+
+She left home about three o’clock, the servant going with her to carry
+the child.
+
+At five a familiar knock sounded through the flat; it was a heavy rap
+followed by half-a-dozen light ones, like a reverberating echo, the last
+stroke scarcely audible. Reardon laid down his book, but kept his pipe
+in his mouth, and went to the door. A tall, thin man stood there, with a
+slouch hat and long grey overcoat. He shook hands silently, hung his hat
+in the passage, and came forward into the study.
+
+His name was Harold Biffen, and, to judge from his appearance, he did
+not belong to the race of common mortals. His excessive meagreness would
+all but have qualified him to enter an exhibition in the capacity of
+living skeleton, and the garments which hung upon this framework would
+perhaps have sold for three-and-sixpence at an old-clothes dealer’s. But
+the man was superior to these accidents of flesh and raiment. He had
+a fine face: large, gentle eyes, nose slightly aquiline, small and
+delicate mouth. Thick black hair fell to his coat-collar; he wore a
+heavy moustache and a full beard. In his gait there was a singular
+dignity; only a man of cultivated mind and graceful character could move
+and stand as he did.
+
+His first act on entering the room was to take from his pocket a pipe,
+a pouch, a little tobacco-stopper, and a box of matches, all of which
+he arranged carefully on a corner of the central table. Then he drew
+forward a chair and seated himself.
+
+‘Take your top-coat off;’ said Reardon.
+
+‘Thanks, not this evening.’
+
+‘Why the deuce not?’
+
+‘Not this evening, thanks.’
+
+The reason, as soon as Reardon sought for it, was obvious. Biffen had
+no ordinary coat beneath the other. To have referred to this fact would
+have been indelicate; the novelist of course understood it, and smiled,
+but with no mirth.
+
+‘Let me have your Sophocles,’ were the visitor’s next words.
+
+Reardon offered him a volume of the Oxford Pocket Classics.
+
+‘I prefer the Wunder, please.’
+
+‘It’s gone, my boy.’
+
+‘Gone?’
+
+‘Wanted a little cash.’
+
+Biffen uttered a sound in which remonstrance and sympathy were blended.
+
+‘I’m sorry to hear that; very sorry. Well, this must do. Now, I want to
+know how you scan this chorus in the “Oedipus Rex.”’
+
+Reardon took the volume, considered, and began to read aloud with metric
+emphasis.
+
+‘Choriambics, eh?’ cried the other. ‘Possible, of course; but treat them
+as Ionics a minore with an anacrusis, and see if they don’t go better.’
+
+He involved himself in terms of pedantry, and with such delight that his
+eyes gleamed. Having delivered a technical lecture, he began to read in
+illustration, producing quite a different effect from that of the
+rhythm as given by his friend. And the reading was by no means that of a
+pedant, rather of a poet.
+
+For half an hour the two men talked Greek metres as if they lived in a
+world where the only hunger known could be satisfied by grand or sweet
+cadences.
+
+They had first met in an amusing way. Not long after the publication of
+his book ‘On Neutral Ground’ Reardon was spending a week at Hastings.
+A rainy day drove him to the circulating library, and as he was looking
+along the shelves for something readable a voice near at hand asked the
+attendant if he had anything ‘by Edwin Reardon.’ The novelist turned in
+astonishment; that any casual mortal should inquire for his books seemed
+incredible. Of course there was nothing by that author in the library,
+and he who had asked the question walked out again. On the morrow
+Reardon encountered this same man at a lonely part of the shore; he
+looked at him, and spoke a word or two of common civility; they got into
+conversation, with the result that Edwin told the story of yesterday.
+The stranger introduced himself as Harold Biffen, an author in a small
+way, and a teacher whenever he could get pupils; an abusive review had
+interested him in Reardon’s novels, but as yet he knew nothing of them
+but the names.
+
+Their tastes were found to be in many respects sympathetic, and after
+returning to London they saw each other frequently. Biffen was always in
+dire poverty, and lived in the oddest places; he had seen harder trials
+than even Reardon himself. The teaching by which he partly lived was of
+a kind quite unknown to the respectable tutorial world. In these days
+of examinations, numbers of men in a poor position--clerks
+chiefly--conceive a hope that by ‘passing’ this, that, or the other
+formal test they may open for themselves a new career. Not a few such
+persons nourish preposterous ambitions; there are warehouse clerks
+privately preparing (without any means or prospect of them) for a
+call to the Bar, drapers’ assistants who ‘go in’ for the preliminary
+examination of the College of Surgeons, and untaught men innumerable who
+desire to procure enough show of education to be eligible for a curacy.
+Candidates of this stamp frequently advertise in the newspapers for
+cheap tuition, or answer advertisements which are intended to appeal to
+them; they pay from sixpence to half-a-crown an hour--rarely as much as
+the latter sum. Occasionally it happened that Harold Biffen had three or
+four such pupils in hand, and extraordinary stories he could draw from
+his large experience in this sphere.
+
+Then as to his authorship.--But shortly after the discussion of Greek
+metres he fell upon the subject of his literary projects, and, by no
+means for the first time, developed the theory on which he worked.
+
+‘I have thought of a new way of putting it. What I really aim at is an
+absolute realism in the sphere of the ignobly decent. The field, as I
+understand it, is a new one; I don’t know any writer who has treated
+ordinary vulgar life with fidelity and seriousness. Zola writes
+deliberate tragedies; his vilest figures become heroic from the
+place they fill in a strongly imagined drama. I want to deal with the
+essentially unheroic, with the day-to-day life of that vast majority of
+people who are at the mercy of paltry circumstance. Dickens understood
+the possibility of such work, but his tendency to melodrama on the one
+hand, and his humour on the other, prevented him from thinking of it. An
+instance, now. As I came along by Regent’s Park half an hour ago a man
+and a girl were walking close in front of me, love-making; I passed them
+slowly and heard a good deal of their talk--it was part of the situation
+that they should pay no heed to a stranger’s proximity. Now, such
+a love-scene as that has absolutely never been written down; it was
+entirely decent, yet vulgar to the nth power. Dickens would have made
+it ludicrous--a gross injustice. Other men who deal with low-class life
+would perhaps have preferred idealising it--an absurdity. For my
+own part, I am going to reproduce it verbatim, without one single
+impertinent suggestion of any point of view save that of honest
+reporting. The result will be something unutterably tedious. Precisely.
+That is the stamp of the ignobly decent life. If it were anything but
+tedious it would be untrue. I speak, of course, of its effect upon the
+ordinary reader.’
+
+‘I couldn’t do it,’ said Reardon.
+
+‘Certainly you couldn’t. You--well, you are a psychological realist in
+the sphere of culture. You are impatient of vulgar circumstances.’
+
+‘In a great measure because my life has been martyred by them.’
+
+‘And for that very same reason I delight in them,’ cried Biffen.
+‘You are repelled by what has injured you; I am attracted by it. This
+divergence is very interesting; but for that, we should have resembled
+each other so closely. You know that by temper we are rabid idealists,
+both of us.’
+
+‘I suppose so.’
+
+‘But let me go on. I want, among other things, to insist upon the
+fateful power of trivial incidents. No one has yet dared to do this
+seriously. It has often been done in farce, and that’s why farcical
+writing so often makes one melancholy. You know my stock instances
+of the kind of thing I mean. There was poor Allen, who lost the most
+valuable opportunity of his life because he hadn’t a clean shirt to put
+on; and Williamson, who would probably have married that rich girl but
+for the grain of dust that got into his eye, and made him unable to say
+or do anything at the critical moment.’
+
+Reardon burst into a roar of laughter.
+
+‘There you are!’ cried Biffen, with friendly annoyance. ‘You take the
+conventional view. If you wrote of these things you would represent them
+as laughable.’
+
+‘They are laughable,’ asserted the other, ‘however serious to the
+persons concerned. The mere fact of grave issues in life depending on
+such paltry things is monstrously ludicrous. Life is a huge farce, and
+the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to
+defy fate with mocking laughter.’
+
+‘That’s all very well, but it isn’t an original view. I am not lacking
+in sense of humour, but I prefer to treat these aspects of life from
+an impartial standpoint. The man who laughs takes the side of a cruel
+omnipotence, if one can imagine such a thing.
+
+I want to take no side at all; simply to say, Look, this is the kind of
+thing that happens.’
+
+‘I admire your honesty, Biffen,’ said Reardon, sighing. ‘You will
+never sell work of this kind, yet you have the courage to go on with it
+because you believe in it.’
+
+‘I don’t know; I may perhaps sell it some day.’
+
+‘In the meantime,’ said Reardon, laying down his pipe, ‘suppose we eat a
+morsel of something. I’m rather hungry.’
+
+In the early days of his marriage Reardon was wont to offer the friends
+who looked in on Sunday evening a substantial supper; by degrees the
+meal had grown simpler, until now, in the depth of his poverty, he made
+no pretence of hospitable entertainment. It was only because he knew
+that Biffen as often as not had nothing whatever to eat that he did not
+hesitate to offer him a slice of bread and butter and a cup of tea. They
+went into the back room, and over the Spartan fare continued to discuss
+aspects of fiction.
+
+‘I shall never,’ said Biffen, ‘write anything like a dramatic scene.
+Such things do happen in life, but so very rarely that they are nothing
+to my purpose. Even when they happen, by-the-bye, it is in a shape that
+would be useless to the ordinary novelist; he would have to cut away
+this circumstance, and add that. Why? I should like to know. Such
+conventionalism results from stage necessities. Fiction hasn’t yet
+outgrown the influence of the stage on which it originated. Whatever a
+man writes FOR EFFECT is wrong and bad.’
+
+‘Only in your view. There may surely exist such a thing as the ART of
+fiction.’
+
+‘It is worked out. We must have a rest from it. You, now--the best
+things you have done are altogether in conflict with novelistic
+conventionalities. It was because that blackguard review of “On Neutral
+Ground” clumsily hinted this that I first thought of you with interest.
+No, no; let us copy life. When the man and woman are to meet for a
+great scene of passion, let it all be frustrated by one or other of
+them having a bad cold in the head, and so on. Let the pretty girl get
+a disfiguring pimple on her nose just before the ball at which she is
+going to shine. Show the numberless repulsive features of common decent
+life. Seriously, coldly; not a hint of facetiousness, or the thing
+becomes different.’
+
+About eight o’clock Reardon heard his wife’s knock at the door. On
+opening he saw not only Amy and the servant, the latter holding Willie
+in her arms, but with them Jasper Milvain.
+
+‘I have been at Mrs Yule’s,’ Jasper explained as he came in. ‘Have you
+anyone here?’
+
+‘Biffen.’
+
+‘Ah, then we’ll discuss realism.’
+
+‘That’s over for the evening. Greek metres also.’
+
+‘Thank Heaven!’
+
+The three men seated themselves with joking and laughter, and the smoke
+of their pipes gathered thickly in the little room. It was half an
+hour before Amy joined them. Tobacco was no disturbance to her, and
+she enjoyed the kind of talk that was held on these occasions; but
+it annoyed her that she could no longer play the hostess at a merry
+supper-table.
+
+‘Why ever are you sitting in your overcoat, Mr Biffen?’ were her first
+words when she entered.
+
+‘Please excuse me, Mrs Reardon. It happens to be more convenient this
+evening.’
+
+She was puzzled, but a glance from her husband warned her not to pursue
+the subject.
+
+Biffen always behaved to Amy with a sincerity of respect which had made
+him a favourite with her. To him, poor fellow, Reardon seemed supremely
+blessed. That a struggling man of letters should have been able to
+marry, and such a wife, was miraculous in Biffen’s eyes. A woman’s love
+was to him the unattainable ideal; already thirty-five years old, he had
+no prospect of ever being rich enough to assure himself a daily dinner;
+marriage was wildly out of the question. Sitting here, he found it very
+difficult not to gaze at Amy with uncivil persistency. Seldom in his
+life had he conversed with educated women, and the sound of this clear
+voice was always more delightful to him than any music.
+
+Amy took a place near to him, and talked in her most charming way of
+such things as she knew interested him. Biffen’s deferential attitude
+as he listened and replied was in strong contrast with the careless
+ease which marked Jasper Milvain. The realist would never smoke in Amy’s
+presence, but Jasper puffed jovial clouds even whilst she was conversing
+with him.
+
+‘Whelpdale came to see me last night,’ remarked Milvain, presently.
+‘His novel is refused on all hands. He talks of earning a living as a
+commission agent for some sewing-machine people.’
+
+‘I can’t understand how his book should be positively refused,’ said
+Reardon. ‘The last wasn’t altogether a failure.’
+
+‘Very nearly. And this one consists of nothing but a series of
+conversations between two people. It is really a dialogue, not a novel
+at all. He read me some twenty pages, and I no longer wondered that he
+couldn’t sell it.’
+
+‘Oh, but it has considerable merit,’ put in Biffen. ‘The talk is
+remarkably true.’
+
+‘But what’s the good of talk that leads to nothing?’ protested Jasper.
+
+‘It’s a bit of real life.’
+
+‘Yes, but it has no market value. You may write what you like, so long
+as people are willing to read you. Whelpdale’s a clever fellow, but he
+can’t hit a practical line.’
+
+‘Like some other people I have heard of;’ said Reardon, laughing.
+
+‘But the odd thing is, that he always strikes one as practical-minded.
+Don’t you feel that, Mrs Reardon?’
+
+He and Amy talked for a few minutes, and Reardon, seemingly lost in
+meditation, now and then observed them from the corner of his eye.
+
+At eleven o’clock husband and wife were alone again.
+
+‘You don’t mean to say,’ exclaimed Amy, ‘that Biffen has sold his coat?’
+
+‘Or pawned it.’
+
+‘But why not the overcoat?’
+
+‘Partly, I should think, because it’s the warmer of the two; partly,
+perhaps, because the other would fetch more.’
+
+‘That poor man will die of starvation, some day, Edwin.’
+
+‘I think it not impossible.’
+
+‘I hope you gave him something to eat?’
+
+‘Oh yes. But I could see he didn’t like to take as much as he wanted.
+I don’t think of him with so much pity as I used to; that’s a result of
+suffering oneself.’
+
+Amy set her lips and sighed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. RESPITE
+
+The last volume was written in fourteen days. In this achievement
+Reardon rose almost to heroic pitch, for he had much to contend with
+beyond the mere labour of composition. Scarcely had he begun when a
+sharp attack of lumbago fell upon him; for two or three days it was
+torture to support himself at the desk, and he moved about like a
+cripple. Upon this ensued headaches, sore-throat, general enfeeblement.
+And before the end of the fortnight it was necessary to think of raising
+another small sum of money; he took his watch to the pawnbroker’s (you
+can imagine that it would not stand as security for much), and sold a
+few more books. All this notwithstanding, here was the novel at length
+finished. When he had written ‘The End’ he lay back, closed his eyes,
+and let time pass in blankness for a quarter of an hour.
+
+It remained to determine the title. But his brain refused another
+effort; after a few minutes’ feeble search he simply took the name of
+the chief female character, Margaret Home. That must do for the book.
+Already, with the penning of the last word, all its scenes, personages,
+dialogues had slipped away into oblivion; he knew and cared nothing more
+about them.
+
+‘Amy, you will have to correct the proofs for me. Never as long as I
+live will I look upon a page of this accursed novel. It has all but
+killed me.’
+
+‘The point is,’ replied Amy, ‘that here we have it complete. Pack it up
+and take it to the publishers’ to-morrow morning.’
+
+‘I will.’
+
+‘And--you will ask them to advance you a few pounds?’
+
+‘I must.’
+
+But that undertaking was almost as hard to face as a rewriting of
+the last volume would have been. Reardon had such superfluity of
+sensitiveness that, for his own part, he would far rather have gone
+hungry than ask for money not legally his due. To-day there was no
+choice. In the ordinary course of business it would be certainly a month
+before he heard the publishers’ terms, and perhaps the Christmas season
+might cause yet more delay. Without borrowing, he could not provide for
+the expenses of more than another week or two.
+
+His parcel under his arm, he entered the ground-floor office, and
+desired to see that member of the firm with whom he had previously had
+personal relations. This gentleman was not in town; he would be away for
+a few days. Reardon left the manuscript, and came out into the street
+again.
+
+He crossed, and looked up at the publishers’ windows from the opposite
+pavement. ‘Do they suspect in what wretched circumstances I am? Would
+it surprise them to know all that depends upon that budget of paltry
+scribbling? I suppose not; it must be a daily experience with them.
+Well, I must write a begging letter.’
+
+It was raining and windy. He went slowly homewards, and was on the point
+of entering the public door of the flats when his uneasiness became so
+great that he turned and walked past. If he went in, he must at
+once write his appeal for money, and he felt that he could not. The
+degradation seemed too great.
+
+Was there no way of getting over the next few weeks? Rent, of course,
+would be due at Christmas, but that payment might be postponed; it was
+only a question of buying food and fuel. Amy had offered to ask her
+mother for a few pounds; it would be cowardly to put this task upon her
+now that he had promised to meet the difficulty himself. What man in
+all London could and would lend him money? He reviewed the list of his
+acquaintances, but there was only one to whom he could appeal with the
+slightest hope--that was Carter.
+
+Half an hour later he entered that same hospital door through which,
+some years ago, he had passed as a half-starved applicant for work. The
+matron met him.
+
+‘Is Mr Carter here?’
+
+‘No, sir. But we expect him any minute. Will you wait?’
+
+He entered the familiar office, and sat down. At the table where he had
+been wont to work, a young clerk was writing. If only all the events of
+the last few years could be undone, and he, with no soul dependent upon
+him, be once more earning his pound a week in this room! What a happy
+man he was in those days!
+
+Nearly half an hour passed. It is the common experience of beggars
+to have to wait. Then Carter came in with quick step; he wore a heavy
+ulster of the latest fashion, new gloves, a resplendent silk hat; his
+cheeks were rosy from the east wind.
+
+‘Ha, Reardon! How do? how do? Delighted to see you!’
+
+‘Are you very busy?’
+
+‘Well, no, not particularly. A few cheques to sign, and we’re just
+getting out our Christmas appeals. You remember?’
+
+He laughed gaily. There was a remarkable freedom from snobbishness in
+this young man; the fact of Reardon’s intellectual superiority had long
+ago counteracted Carter’s social prejudices.
+
+‘I should like to have a word with you.’
+
+‘Right you are!’
+
+They went into a small inner room. Reardon’s pulse beat at fever-rate;
+his tongue was cleaving to his palate.
+
+‘What is it, old man?’ asked the secretary, seating himself and flinging
+one of his legs over the other. ‘You look rather seedy, do you know. Why
+the deuce don’t you and your wife look us up now and then?’
+
+‘I’ve had a hard pull to finish my novel.’
+
+‘Finished, is it? I’m glad to hear that. When’ll it be out? I’ll send
+scores of people to Mudie’s after it.
+
+‘Thanks; but I don’t think much of it, to tell you the truth.’
+
+‘Oh, we know what that means.’
+
+Reardon was talking like an automaton. It seemed to him that he turned
+screws and pressed levers for the utterance of his next words.
+
+‘I may as well say at once what I have come for. Could you lend me ten
+pounds for a month--in fact, until I get the money for my book?’
+
+The secretary’s countenance fell, though not to that expression of utter
+coldness which would have come naturally under the circumstances to a
+great many vivacious men. He seemed genuinely embarrassed.
+
+‘By Jove! I--confound it! To tell you the truth, I haven’t ten pounds
+to lend. Upon my word, I haven’t, Reardon! These infernal housekeeping
+expenses! I don’t mind telling you, old man, that Edith and I have been
+pushing the pace rather.’ He laughed, and thrust his hands down into
+his trousers-pockets. ‘We pay such a darned rent, you know--hundred and
+twenty-five. We’ve only just been saying we should have to draw it mild
+for the rest of the winter. But I’m infernally sorry; upon my word I
+am.’
+
+‘And I am sorry to have annoyed you by the unseasonable request.’
+
+‘Devilish seasonable, Reardon, I assure you!’ cried the secretary, and
+roared at his joke. It put him into a better temper than ever, and he
+said at length: ‘I suppose a fiver wouldn’t be much use?--For a month,
+you say?--I might manage a fiver, I think.’
+
+‘It would be very useful. But on no account if----’
+
+‘No, no; I could manage a fiver, for a month. Shall I give you a
+cheque?’
+
+‘I’m ashamed----’
+
+‘Not a bit of it! I’ll go and write the cheque.’
+
+Reardon’s face was burning. Of the conversation that followed when
+Carter again presented himself he never recalled a word. The bit of
+paper was crushed together in his hand. Out in the street again, he all
+but threw it away, dreaming for the moment that it was a ‘bus ticket or
+a patent medicine bill.
+
+He reached home much after the dinner-hour. Amy was surprised at his
+long absence.
+
+‘Got anything?’ she asked.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+It was half his intention to deceive her, to say that the publishers had
+advanced him five pounds. But that would be his first word of untruth
+to Amy, and why should he be guilty of it? He told her all that had
+happened. The result of this frankness was something that he had not
+anticipated; Amy exhibited profound vexation.
+
+‘Oh, you SHOULDN’T have done that!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why didn’t you come
+home and tell me? I would have gone to mother at once.’
+
+‘But does it matter?’
+
+‘Of course it does,’ she replied sharply. ‘Mr Carter will tell his wife,
+and how pleasant that is?’
+
+‘I never thought of that. And perhaps it wouldn’t have seemed to me so
+annoying as it does to you.’
+
+‘Very likely not.’
+
+She turned abruptly away, and stood at a distance in gloomy muteness.
+
+‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘there’s no helping it now. Come and have
+your dinner.’
+
+‘You have taken away my appetite.’
+
+‘Nonsense! I suppose you’re dying of hunger.’
+
+They had a very uncomfortable meal, exchanging few words. On Amy’s face
+was a look more resembling bad temper than anything Reardon had ever
+seen there. After dinner he went and sat alone in the study. Amy did
+not come near him. He grew stubbornly angry; remembering the pain he had
+gone through, he felt that Amy’s behaviour to him was cruel. She must
+come and speak when she would.
+
+At six o’clock she showed her face in the doorway and asked if he would
+come to tea.
+
+‘Thank you,’ he replied, ‘I had rather stay here.’
+
+‘As you please.’
+
+And he sat alone until about nine. It was only then he recollected that
+he must send a note to the publishers, calling their attention to the
+parcel he had left. He wrote it, and closed with a request that they
+would let him hear as soon as they conveniently could. As he was
+putting on his hat and coat to go out and post the letter Amy opened the
+dining-room door.
+
+‘You’re going out?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Shall you be long?’
+
+‘I think not.’
+
+He was away only a few minutes. On returning he went first of all into
+the study, but the thought of Amy alone in the other room would not let
+him rest. He looked in and saw that she was sitting without a fire.
+
+‘You can’t stay here in the cold, Amy.’
+
+‘I’m afraid I must get used to it,’ she replied, affecting to be closely
+engaged upon some sewing.
+
+That strength of character which it had always delighted him to read in
+her features was become an ominous hardness. He felt his heart sink as
+he looked at her.
+
+‘Is poverty going to have the usual result in our case?’ he asked,
+drawing nearer.
+
+‘I never pretended that I could be indifferent to it.’
+
+‘Still, don’t you care to try and resist it?’
+
+She gave no answer. As usual in conversation with an aggrieved woman it
+was necessary to go back from the general to the particular.
+
+‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that the Carters already knew pretty well how
+things were going with us.’
+
+‘That’s a very different thing. But when it comes to asking them for
+money--’
+
+‘I’m very sorry. I would rather have done anything if I had known how it
+would annoy you.’
+
+‘If we have to wait a month, five pounds will be very little use to us.’
+
+She detailed all manner of expenses that had to be met--outlay there was
+no possibility of avoiding so long as their life was maintained on its
+present basis.
+
+‘However, you needn’t trouble any more about it. I’ll see to it. Now you
+are free from your book try to rest.’
+
+‘Come and sit by the fire. There’s small chance of rest for me if we are
+thinking unkindly of each other.’
+
+A doleful Christmas. Week after week went by and Reardon knew that Amy
+must have exhausted the money he had given her. But she made no more
+demands upon him, and necessaries were paid for in the usual way. He
+suffered from a sense of humiliation; sometimes he found it difficult to
+look in his wife’s face.
+
+When the publishers’ letter came it contained an offer of seventy-five
+pounds for the copyright of ‘Margaret Home,’ twenty-five more to be
+paid if the sale in three-volume form should reach a certain number of
+copies.
+
+Here was failure put into unmistakable figures. Reardon said to himself
+that it was all over with his profession of authorship. The book could
+not possibly succeed even to the point of completing his hundred pounds;
+it would meet with universal contempt, and indeed deserved nothing
+better.
+
+‘Shall you accept this?’ asked Amy, after dreary silence.
+
+‘No one else would offer terms as good.’
+
+‘Will they pay you at once?’
+
+‘I must ask them to.’
+
+Well, it was seventy-five pounds in hand. The cheque came as soon as
+it was requested, and Reardon’s face brightened for the moment. Blessed
+money! root of all good, until the world invent some saner economy.
+
+‘How much do you owe your mother?’ he inquired, without looking at Amy.
+
+‘Six pounds,’ she answered coldly.
+
+‘And five to Carter; and rent, twelve pounds ten. We shall have a matter
+of fifty pounds to go on with.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. WORK WITHOUT HOPE
+
+The prudent course was so obvious that he marvelled at Amy’s failing
+to suggest it. For people in their circumstances to be paying a rent
+of fifty pounds when a home could be found for half the money was
+recklessness; there would be no difficulty in letting the flat for this
+last year of their lease, and the cost of removal would be trifling. The
+mental relief of such a change might enable him to front with courage
+a problem in any case very difficult, and, as things were, desperate.
+Three months ago, in a moment of profoundest misery, he had proposed
+this step; courage failed him to speak of it again, Amy’s look and voice
+were too vivid in his memory. Was she not capable of such a sacrifice
+for his sake? Did she prefer to let him bear all the responsibility of
+whatever might result from a futile struggle to keep up appearances?
+
+Between him and her there was no longer perfect confidence. Her silence
+meant reproach, and--whatever might have been the case before--there was
+no doubt that she now discussed him with her mother, possibly with other
+people. It was not likely that she concealed his own opinion of the book
+he had just finished; all their acquaintances would be prepared to greet
+its publication with private scoffing or with mournful shaking of the
+head. His feeling towards Amy entered upon a new phase. The stability of
+his love was a source of pain; condemning himself, he felt at the same
+time that he was wronged. A coldness which was far from representing
+the truth began to affect his manner and speech, and Amy did not seem
+to notice it, at all events she made no kind of protest. They no longer
+talked of the old subjects, but of those mean concerns of material life
+which formerly they had agreed to dismiss as quickly as possible. Their
+relations to each other--not long ago an inexhaustible topic--would not
+bear spoken comment; both were too conscious of the danger-signal when
+they looked that way.
+
+In the time of waiting for the publishers’ offer, and now again when he
+was asking himself how he should use the respite granted him, Reardon
+spent his days at the British Museum. He could not read to much purpose,
+but it was better to sit here among strangers than seem to be idling
+under Amy’s glance. Sick of imaginative writing, he turned to the
+studies which had always been most congenial, and tried to shape out a
+paper or two like those he had formerly disposed of to editors. Among
+his unused material lay a mass of notes he had made in a reading of
+Diogenes Laertius, and it seemed to him now that he might make something
+salable out of these anecdotes of the philosophers. In a happier mood he
+could have written delightfully on such a subject--not learnedly, but in
+the strain of a modern man whose humour and sensibility find free play
+among the classic ghosts; even now he was able to recover something of
+the light touch which had given value to his published essays.
+
+Meanwhile the first number of The Current had appeared, and Jasper
+Milvain had made a palpable hit. Amy spoke very often of the article
+called ‘Typical Readers,’ and her interest in its author was freely
+manifested. Whenever a mention of Jasper came under her notice she read
+it out to her husband. Reardon smiled and appeared glad, but he did not
+care to discuss Milvain with the same frankness as formerly.
+
+One evening at the end of January he told Amy what he had been writing
+at the Museum, and asked her if she would care to hear it read.
+
+‘I began to wonder what you were doing,’ she replied.
+
+‘Then why didn’t you ask me?’
+
+‘I was rather afraid to.’
+
+‘Why afraid?’
+
+‘It would have seemed like reminding you that--you know what I mean.’
+
+‘That a month or two more will see us at the same crisis again. Still, I
+had rather you had shown an interest in my doings.’
+
+After a pause Amy asked:
+
+‘Do you think you can get a paper of this kind accepted?’
+
+‘It isn’t impossible. I think it’s rather well done. Let me read you a
+page--’
+
+‘Where will you send it?’ she interrupted.
+
+‘To The Wayside.’
+
+‘Why not try The Current? Ask Milvain to introduce you to Mr Fadge. They
+pay much better, you know.’
+
+‘But this isn’t so well suited for Fadge. And I much prefer to be
+independent, as long as it’s possible.’
+
+‘That’s one of your faults, Edwin,’ remarked his wife, mildly. ‘It’s
+only the strongest men that can make their way independently. You ought
+to use every means that offers.’
+
+‘Seeing that I am so weak?’
+
+‘I didn’t think it would offend you. I only meant---’
+
+‘No, no; you are quite right. Certainly, I am one of the men who need
+all the help they can get. But I assure you, this thing won’t do for The
+Current.’
+
+‘What a pity you will go back to those musty old times! Now think of
+that article of Milvain’s. If only you could do something of that kind!
+What do people care about Diogenes and his tub and his lantern?’
+
+‘My dear girl, Diogenes Laertius had neither tub nor lantern, that I
+know of. You are making a mistake; but it doesn’t matter.’
+
+‘No, I don’t think it does.’ The caustic note was not very pleasant on
+Amy’s lips. ‘Whoever he was, the mass of readers will be frightened by
+his name.’
+
+‘Well, we have to recognise that the mass of readers will never care for
+anything I do.’
+
+‘You will never convince me that you couldn’t write in a popular way if
+you tried. I’m sure you are quite as clever as Milvain--’
+
+Reardon made an impatient gesture.
+
+‘Do leave Milvain aside for a little! He and I are as unlike as two
+men could be. What’s the use of constantly comparing us?’
+
+Amy looked at him. He had never spoken to her so brusquely.
+
+‘How can you say that I am constantly comparing you?’
+
+‘If not in spoken words, then in your thoughts.’
+
+‘That’s not a very nice thing to say, Edwin.’
+
+‘You make it so unmistakable, Amy. What I mean is, that you are always
+regretting the difference between him and me. You lament that I can’t
+write in that attractive way. Well, I lament it myself--for your sake. I
+wish I had Milvain’s peculiar talent, so that I could get reputation and
+money. But I haven’t, and there’s an end of it. It irritates a man to be
+perpetually told of his disadvantages.’
+
+‘I will never mention Milvain’s name again,’ said Amy coldly.
+
+‘Now that’s ridiculous, and you know it.’
+
+‘I feel the same about your irritation. I can’t see that I have given
+any cause for it.’
+
+‘Then we’ll talk no more of the matter.’
+
+Reardon threw his manuscript aside and opened a book. Amy never asked
+him to resume his intention of reading what he had written.
+
+However, the paper was accepted. It came out in The Wayside for March,
+and Reardon received seven pounds ten for it. By that time he had
+written another thing of the same gossipy kind, suggested by Pliny’s
+Letters. The pleasant occupation did him good, but there was no
+possibility of pursuing this course. ‘Margaret Home’ would be published
+in April; he might get the five-and-twenty pounds contingent upon a
+certain sale, yet that could in no case be paid until the middle of the
+year, and long before then he would be penniless. His respite drew to an
+end.
+
+But now he took counsel of no one; as far as it was possible he lived in
+solitude, never seeing those of his acquaintances who were outside the
+literary world, and seldom even his colleagues. Milvain was so busy that
+he had only been able to look in twice or thrice since Christmas, and
+Reardon nowadays never went to Jasper’s lodgings.
+
+He had the conviction that all was over with the happiness of his
+married life, though how the events which were to express this ruin
+would shape themselves he could not foresee. Amy was revealing that
+aspect of her character to which he had been blind, though a practical
+man would have perceived it from the first; so far from helping him to
+support poverty, she perhaps would even refuse to share it with him.
+He knew that she was slowly drawing apart; already there was a divorce
+between their minds, and he tortured himself in uncertainty as to how
+far he retained her affections. A word of tenderness, a caress, no
+longer met with response from her; her softest mood was that of mere
+comradeship. All the warmth of her nature was expended upon the child;
+Reardon learnt how easy it is for a mother to forget that both parents
+have a share in her offspring.
+
+He was beginning to dislike the child. But for Willie’s existence Amy
+would still love him with undivided heart; not, perhaps, so passionately
+as once, but still with lover’s love. And Amy understood--or, at all
+events, remarked--this change in him. She was aware that he seldom asked
+a question about Willie, and that he listened with indifference when she
+spoke of the little fellow’s progress. In part offended, she was also in
+part pleased.
+
+But for the child, mere poverty, he said to himself, should never have
+sundered them. In the strength of his passion he could have overcome all
+her disappointments; and, indeed, but for that new care, he would
+most likely never have fallen to this extremity of helplessness. It is
+natural in a weak and sensitive man to dream of possibilities disturbed
+by the force of circumstance. For one hour which he gave to conflict
+with his present difficulties, Reardon spent many in contemplation of
+the happiness that might have been.
+
+Even yet, it needed but a little money to redeem all. Amy had no
+extravagant aspirations; a home of simple refinement and freedom from
+anxiety would restore her to her nobler self. How could he find fault
+with her? She knew nothing of such sordid life as he had gone through,
+and to lack money for necessities seemed to her degrading beyond
+endurance. Why, even the ordinary artisan’s wife does not suffer such
+privations as hers at the end of the past year. For lack of that little
+money his life must be ruined. Of late he had often thought about the
+rich uncle, John Yule, who might perhaps leave something to Amy; but the
+hope was so uncertain. And supposing such a thing were to happen; would
+it be perfectly easy to live upon his wife’s bounty--perhaps exhausting
+a small capital, so that, some years hence, their position would be
+no better than before? Not long ago, he could have taken anything from
+Amy’s hand; would it be so simple since the change that had come between
+them?
+
+Having written his second magazine-article (it was rejected by two
+editors, and he had no choice but to hold it over until sufficient time
+had elapsed to allow of his again trying The Wayside), he saw that he
+must perforce plan another novel. But this time he was resolute not to
+undertake three volumes. The advertisements informed him that numbers of
+authors were abandoning that procrustean system; hopeless as he was, he
+might as well try his chance with a book which could be written in a
+few weeks. And why not a glaringly artificial story with a sensational
+title? It could not be worse than what he had last written.
+
+So, without a word to Amy, he put aside his purely intellectual work
+and began once more the search for a ‘plot.’ This was towards the end of
+February. The proofs of ‘Margaret Home’ were coming in day by day; Amy
+had offered to correct them, but after all he preferred to keep his
+shame to himself as long as possible, and with a hurried reading he
+dismissed sheet after sheet. His imagination did not work the more
+happily for this repugnant task; still, he hit at length upon a
+conception which seemed absurd enough for the purpose before him.
+Whether he could persevere with it even to the extent of one volume was
+very doubtful. But it should not be said of him that he abandoned his
+wife and child to penury without one effort of the kind that Milvain and
+Amy herself had recommended.
+
+Writing a page or two of manuscript daily, and with several holocausts
+to retard him, he had done nearly a quarter of the story when there came
+a note from Jasper telling of Mrs Milvain’s death. He handed it across
+the breakfast-table to Amy, and watched her as she read it.
+
+‘I suppose it doesn’t alter his position,’ Amy remarked, without much
+interest.
+
+‘I suppose not appreciably. He told me once his mother had a sufficient
+income; but whatever she leaves will go to his sisters, I should think.
+He has never said much to me.’
+
+Nearly three weeks passed before they heard anything more from Jasper
+himself; then he wrote, again from the country, saying that he purposed
+bringing his sisters to live in London. Another week, and one evening he
+appeared at the door.
+
+A want of heartiness in Reardon’s reception of him might have been
+explained as gravity natural under the circumstances. But Jasper had
+before this become conscious that he was not welcomed here quite so
+cheerily as in the old days. He remarked it distinctly on that evening
+when he accompanied Amy home from Mrs Yule’s; since then he had allowed
+his pressing occupations to be an excuse for the paucity of his visits.
+It seemed to him perfectly intelligible that Reardon, sinking into
+literary insignificance, should grow cool to a man entering upon a
+successful career; the vein of cynicism in Jasper enabled him to pardon
+a weakness of this kind, which in some measure flattered him. But he
+both liked and respected Reardon, and at present he was in the mood to
+give expression to his warmer feelings.
+
+‘Your book is announced, I see,’ he said with an accent of pleasure, as
+soon as he had seated himself.
+
+‘I didn’t know it.’
+
+‘Yes. “New novel by the author of ‘On Neutral Ground.’” Down for the
+sixteenth of April. And I have a proposal to make about it. Will you
+let me ask Fadge to have it noticed in “Books of the Month,” in the May
+Current?’
+
+‘I strongly advise you to let it take its chance. The book isn’t worth
+special notice, and whoever undertook to review it for Fadge would
+either have to lie, or stultify the magazine.’
+
+Jasper turned to Amy.
+
+‘Now what is to be done with a man like this? What is one to say to him,
+Mrs Reardon?’
+
+‘Edwin dislikes the book,’ Amy replied, carelessly.
+
+‘That has nothing to do with the matter. We know quite well that in
+anything he writes there’ll be something for a well-disposed reviewer
+to make a good deal of. If Fadge will let me, I should do the thing
+myself.’
+
+Neither Reardon nor his wife spoke.
+
+‘Of course,’ went on Milvain, looking at the former, ‘if you had rather
+I left it alone--’
+
+‘I had much rather. Please don’t say anything about it.’
+
+There was an awkward silence. Amy broke it by saying:
+
+‘Are your sisters in town, Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘Yes. We came up two days ago. I found lodgings for them not far from
+Mornington Road. Poor girls! they don’t quite know where they are, yet.
+Of course they will keep very quiet for a time, then I must try to get
+friends for them. Well, they have one already--your cousin, Miss Yule.
+She has already been to see them.’
+
+‘I’m very glad of that.’
+
+Amy took an opportunity of studying his face. There was again a
+silence as if of constraint. Reardon, glancing at his wife, said with
+hesitation:
+
+‘When they care to see other visitors, I’m sure Amy would be very
+glad--’
+
+‘Certainly!’ his wife added.
+
+‘Thank you very much. Of course I knew I could depend on Mrs Reardon to
+show them kindness in that way. But let me speak frankly of something.
+My sisters have made quite a friend of Miss Yule, since she was down
+there last year. Wouldn’t that’--he turned to Amy--‘cause you a little
+awkwardness?’
+
+Amy had a difficulty in replying. She kept her eyes on the ground.
+
+‘You have had no quarrel with your cousin,’ remarked Reardon.
+
+‘None whatever. It’s only my mother and my uncle.’
+
+‘I can’t imagine Miss Yule having a quarrel with anyone,’ said Jasper.
+Then he added quickly: ‘Well, things must shape themselves naturally. We
+shall see. For the present they will be fully occupied. Of course it’s
+best that they should be. I shall see them every day, and Miss Yule will
+come pretty often, I dare say.’
+
+Reardon caught Amy’s eye, but at once looked away again.
+
+‘My word!’ exclaimed Milvain, after a moment’s meditation. ‘It’s well
+this didn’t happen a year ago. The girls have no income; only a little
+cash to go on with. We shall have our work set. It’s a precious lucky
+thing that I have just got a sort of footing.’
+
+Reardon muttered an assent.
+
+‘And what are you doing now?’ Jasper inquired suddenly.
+
+‘Writing a one-volume story.’
+
+‘I’m glad to hear that. Any special plan for its publication?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Then why not offer it to Jedwood? He’s publishing a series of
+one-volume novels. You know of Jedwood, don’t you? He was Culpepper’s
+manager; started business about half a year ago, and it looks as if he
+would do well. He married that woman--what’s her name?--Who wrote “Mr
+Henderson’s Wives”?’
+
+‘Never heard of it.’
+
+‘Nonsense!--Miss Wilkes, of course. Well, she married this fellow
+Jedwood, and there was a great row about something or other between
+him and her publishers. Mrs Boston Wright told me all about it. An
+astonishing woman that; a cyclopaedia of the day’s small talk. I’m quite
+a favourite with her; she’s promised to help the girls all she can.
+Well, but I was talking about Jedwood. Why not offer him this book of
+yours? He’s eager to get hold of the new writers. Advertises hugely; he
+has the whole back page of The Study about every other week. I suppose
+Miss Wilkes’s profits are paying for it. He has just given Markland two
+hundred pounds for a paltry little tale that would scarcely swell out
+to a volume. Markland told me himself. You know that I’ve scraped an
+acquaintance with him? Oh! I suppose I haven’t seen you since then. He’s
+a dwarfish fellow with only one eye. Mrs Boston Wright cries him up at
+every opportunity.’
+
+‘Who IS Mrs Boston Wright?’ asked Reardon, laughing impatiently.
+
+‘Edits The English Girl, you know. She’s had an extraordinary life.
+Was born in Mauritius--no, Ceylon--I forget; some such place. Married a
+sailor at fifteen. Was shipwrecked somewhere, and only restored to life
+after terrific efforts;--her story leaves it all rather vague. Then she
+turns up as a newspaper correspondent at the Cape. Gave up that, and
+took to some kind of farming, I forget where. Married again (first
+husband lost in aforementioned shipwreck), this time a Baptist minister,
+and began to devote herself to soup-kitchens in Liverpool. Husband
+burned to death, somewhere. She’s next discovered in the thick of
+literary society in London. A wonderful woman, I assure you. Must be
+nearly fifty, but she looks twenty-five.’
+
+He paused, then added impulsively:
+
+‘Let me take you to one of her evenings--nine on Thursday. Do persuade
+him, Mrs Reardon?’
+
+Reardon shook his head.
+
+‘No, no. I should be horribly out of my element.’
+
+‘I can’t see why. You would meet all sorts of well-known people; those
+you ought to have met long ago. Better still, let me ask her to send
+an invitation for both of you. I’m sure you’d like her, Mrs Reardon.
+There’s a good deal of humbug about her, it’s true, but some solid
+qualities as well. No one has a word to say against her. And it’s a
+splendid advertisement to have her for a friend. She’ll talk about your
+books and articles till all is blue.’
+
+Amy gave a questioning look at her husband. But Reardon moved in an
+uncomfortable way.
+
+‘We’ll see about it,’ he said. ‘Some day, perhaps.’
+
+‘Let me know whenever you feel disposed. But about Jedwood: I happen to
+know a man who reads for him.’
+
+‘Heavens!’ cried Reardon. ‘Who don’t you know?’
+
+‘The simplest thing in the world. At present it’s a large part of my
+business to make acquaintances. Why, look you; a man who has to live
+by miscellaneous writing couldn’t get on without a vast variety of
+acquaintances. One’s own brain would soon run dry; a clever fellow knows
+how to use the brains of other people.’
+
+Amy listened with an unconscious smile which expressed keen interest.
+
+‘Oh,’ pursued Jasper, ‘when did you see Whelpdale last?’
+
+‘Haven’t seen him for a long time.’
+
+‘You don’t know what he’s doing? The fellow has set up as a “literary
+adviser.” He has an advertisement in The Study every week. “To Young
+Authors and Literary Aspirants”--something of the kind. “Advice given on
+choice of subjects, MSS. read, corrected, and recommended to publishers.
+Moderate terms.” A fact! And what’s more, he made six guineas in the
+first fortnight; so he says, at all events. Now that’s one of the finest
+jokes I ever heard. A man who can’t get anyone to publish his own books
+makes a living by telling other people how to write!’
+
+‘But it’s a confounded swindle!’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t know. He’s capable of correcting the grammar of “literary
+aspirants,” and as for recommending to publishers--well, anyone can
+recommend, I suppose.’
+
+Reardon’s indignation yielded to laughter.
+
+‘It’s not impossible that he may thrive by this kind of thing.’
+
+‘Not at all,’ assented Jasper.
+
+Shortly after this he looked at his watch.
+
+‘I must be off, my friends. I have something to write before I can go to
+my truckle-bed, and it’ll take me three hours at least.
+Good-bye, old man. Let me know when your story’s finished, and we’ll
+talk about it. And think about Mrs Boston Wright; oh, and about that
+review in The Current. I wish you’d let me do it. Talk it over with your
+guide, philosopher, and friend.’
+
+He indicated Amy, who laughed in a forced way.
+
+When he was gone, the two sat without speaking for several minutes.
+
+‘Do you care to make friends with those girls?’ asked Reardon at length.
+
+‘I suppose in decency I must call upon them?’
+
+‘I suppose so.’
+
+‘You may find them very agreeable.’
+
+‘Oh yes.’
+
+They conversed with their own thoughts for a while. Then Reardon burst
+out laughing.
+
+‘Well, there’s the successful man, you see. Some day he’ll live in a
+mansion, and dictate literary opinions to the universe.’
+
+‘How has he offended you?’
+
+‘Offended me? Not at all. I am glad of his cheerful prospects.’
+
+‘Why should you refuse to go among those people? It might be good for
+you in several ways.’
+
+‘If the chance had come when I was publishing my best work, I dare say I
+shouldn’t have refused. But I certainly shall not present myself as the
+author of “Margaret Home,” and the rubbish I’m now writing.’
+
+‘Then you must cease to write rubbish.’
+
+‘Yes. I must cease to write altogether.’
+
+‘And do what?’
+
+‘I wish to Heaven I knew!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. A WARNING
+
+In the spring list of Mr Jedwood’s publications, announcement was
+made of a new work by Alfred Yule. It was called ‘English Prose in the
+Nineteenth Century,’ and consisted of a number of essays (several of
+which had already seen the light in periodicals) strung into continuity.
+The final chapter dealt with contemporary writers, more especially those
+who served to illustrate the author’s theme--that journalism is the
+destruction of prose style: on certain popular writers of the day there
+was an outpouring of gall which was not likely to be received as though
+it were sweet ointment. The book met with rather severe treatment in
+critical columns; it could scarcely be ignored (the safest mode of
+attack when one’s author has no expectant public), and only the most
+skilful could write of it in a hostile spirit without betraying that
+some of its strokes had told. An evening newspaper which piqued itself
+on independence indulged in laughing appreciation of the polemical
+chapter, and the next day printed a scornful letter from a
+thinly-disguised correspondent who assailed both book and reviewer. For
+the moment people talked more of Alfred Yule than they had done since
+his memorable conflict with Clement Fadge.
+
+The publisher had hoped for this. Mr Jedwood was an energetic and
+sanguine man, who had entered upon his business with a determination to
+rival in a year or so the houses which had slowly risen into commanding
+stability. He had no great capital, but the stroke of fortune which had
+wedded him to a popular novelist enabled him to count on steady profit
+from one source, and boundless faith in his own judgment urged him to an
+initial outlay which made the prudent shake their heads. He talked much
+of ‘the new era,’ foresaw revolutions in publishing and book-selling,
+planned every week a score of untried ventures which should appeal to
+the democratic generation just maturing; in the meantime, was ready to
+publish anything which seemed likely to get talked about.
+
+The May number of The Current, in its article headed ‘Books of the
+Month,’ devoted about half a page to ‘English Prose in the Nineteenth
+Century.’ This notice was a consummate example of the flippant style of
+attack. Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice, was a
+characterising note of Mr Fadge’s periodical; his monthly comments on
+publications were already looked for with eagerness by that growing
+class of readers who care for nothing but what can be made matter of
+ridicule. The hostility of other reviewers was awkward and ineffectual
+compared with this venomous banter, which entertained by showing that in
+the book under notice there was neither entertainment nor any other kind
+of interest. To assail an author without increasing the number of his
+readers is the perfection of journalistic skill, and The Current, had
+it stood alone, would fully have achieved this end. As it was, silence
+might have been better tactics. But Mr Fadge knew that his enemy would
+smart under the poisoned pin-points, and that was something gained.
+
+On the day that The Current appeared, its treatment of Alfred Yule was
+discussed in Mr Jedwood’s private office. Mr Quarmby, who had intimate
+relations with the publisher, happened to look in just as a young man
+(one of Mr Jedwood’s ‘readers’) was expressing a doubt whether Fadge
+himself was the author of the review.
+
+‘But there’s Fadge’s thumb-mark all down the page,’ cried Mr Quarmby.
+
+‘He inspired the thing, of course; but I rather think it was written by
+that fellow Milvain.’
+
+‘Think so?’ asked the publisher.
+
+‘Well, I know with certainty that the notice of Markland’s novel is his
+writing, and I have reasons for suspecting that he did Yule’s book as
+well.’
+
+‘Smart youngster, that,’ remarked Mr Jedwood. ‘Who is he, by-the-bye?’
+
+‘Somebody’s illegitimate son, I believe,’ replied the source of
+trustworthy information, with a laugh. ‘Denham says he met him in New
+York a year or two ago, under another name.
+
+‘Excuse me,’ interposed Mr Quarmby, ‘there’s some mistake in all that.’
+
+He went on to state what he knew, from Yule himself, concerning
+Milvain’s history. Though in this instance a corrector, Mr Quarmby took
+an opportunity, a few hours later, of informing Mr Hinks that the attack
+on Yule in The Current was almost certainly written by young Milvain,
+with the result that when the rumour reached Yule’s ears it was
+delivered as an undoubted and well-known fact.
+
+It was a month prior to this that Milvain made his call upon Marian
+Yule, on the Sunday when her father was absent. When told of the visit,
+Yule assumed a manner of indifference, but his daughter understood that
+he was annoyed. With regard to the sisters who would shortly be living
+in London, he merely said that Marian must behave as discretion directed
+her. If she wished to invite the Miss Milvains to St Paul’s Crescent,
+he only begged that the times and seasons of the household might not be
+disturbed.
+
+As her habit was, Marian took refuge in silence. Nothing could have been
+more welcome to her than the proximity of Maud and Dora, but she foresaw
+that her own home would not be freely open to them; perhaps it might be
+necessary to behave with simple frankness, and let her friends know the
+embarrassments of the situation. But that could not be done in the first
+instance; the unkindness would seem too great. A day after the arrival
+of the girls, she received a note from Dora, and almost at once replied
+to it by calling at her friends’ lodgings. A week after that, Maud and
+Dora came to St Paul’s Crescent; it was Sunday, and Mr Yule purposely
+kept away from home. They had only been once to the house since then,
+again without meeting Mr Yule. Marian, however, visited them at their
+lodgings frequently; now and then she met Jasper there. The latter never
+spoke of her father, and there was no question of inviting him to repeat
+his call.
+
+In the end, Marian was obliged to speak on the subject with her mother.
+Mrs Yule offered an occasion by asking when the Miss Milvains were
+coming again.
+
+‘I don’t think I shall ever ask them again,’ Marian replied.
+
+Her mother understood, and looked troubled.
+
+‘I must tell them how it is, that’s all,’ the girl went on. ‘They are
+sensible; they won’t be offended with me.’
+
+‘But your father has never had anything to say against them,’ urged Mrs
+Yule. ‘Not a word to me, Marian. I’d tell you the truth if he had.’
+
+‘It’s too disagreeable, all the same. I can’t invite them here with
+pleasure. Father has grown prejudiced against them all, and he won’t
+change. No, I shall just tell them.’
+
+‘It’s very hard for you,’ sighed her mother. ‘If I thought I could do
+any good by speaking--but I can’t, my dear.’
+
+‘I know it, mother. Let us go on as we did before.’
+
+The day after this, when Yule came home about the hour of dinner, he
+called Marian’s name from within the study. Marian had not left the
+house to-day; her work had been set, in the shape of a long task
+of copying from disorderly manuscript. She left the sitting-room in
+obedience to her father’s summons.
+
+‘Here’s something that will afford you amusement,’ he said, holding
+to her the new number of The Current, and indicating the notice of his
+book.
+
+She read a few lines, then threw the thing on to the table.
+
+‘That kind of writing sickens me,’ she exclaimed, with anger in her
+eyes. ‘Only base and heartless people can write in that way. You surely
+won’t let it trouble you?’
+
+‘Oh, not for a moment,’ her father answered, with exaggerated show of
+calm. ‘But I am surprised that you don’t see the literary merit of the
+work. I thought it would distinctly appeal to you.’
+
+There was a strangeness in his voice, as well as in the words, which
+caused her to look at him inquiringly. She knew him well enough to
+understand that such a notice would irritate him profoundly; but why
+should he go out of his way to show it her, and with this peculiar
+acerbity of manner?
+
+‘Why do you say that, father?’
+
+‘It doesn’t occur to you who may probably have written it?’
+
+She could not miss his meaning; astonishment held her mute for a moment,
+then she said:
+
+‘Surely Mr Fadge wrote it himself?’
+
+‘I am told not. I am informed on very good authority that one of his
+young gentlemen has the credit of it.’
+
+‘You refer, of course, to Mr Milvain,’ she replied quietly. ‘But I think
+that can’t be true.’
+
+He looked keenly at her. He had expected a more decided protest.
+
+‘I see no reason for disbelieving it.’
+
+‘I see every reason, until I have your evidence.’
+
+This was not at all Marian’s natural tone in argument with him. She was
+wont to be submissive.
+
+‘I was told,’ he continued, hardening face and voice, ‘by someone who
+had it from Jedwood.’
+
+Yule was conscious of untruth in this statement, but his mood would not
+allow him to speak ingenuously, and he wished to note the effect upon
+Marian of what he said. There were two beliefs in him: on the one hand,
+he recognised Fadge in every line of the writing; on the other, he had a
+perverse satisfaction in convincing himself that it was Milvain who had
+caught so successfully the master’s manner. He was not the kind of man
+who can resist an opportunity of justifying, to himself and others, a
+course into which he has been led by mingled feelings, all more or less
+unjustifiable.
+
+‘How should Jedwood know?’ asked Marian.
+
+Yule shrugged his shoulders.
+
+‘As if these things didn’t get about among editors and publishers!’
+
+‘In this case, there’s a mistake.’
+
+‘And why, pray?’ His voice trembled with choler. ‘Why need there be a
+mistake?’
+
+‘Because Mr Milvain is quite incapable of reviewing your book in such a
+spirit.’
+
+‘There is your mistake, my girl. Milvain will do anything that’s asked
+of him, provided he’s well enough paid.’
+
+Marian reflected. When she raised her eyes again they were perfectly
+calm.
+
+‘What has led you to think that?’
+
+‘Don’t I know the type of man? Noscitur ex sociis--have you Latin enough
+for that?’
+
+‘You’ll find that you are misinformed,’ Marian replied, and therewith
+went from the room.
+
+She could not trust herself to converse longer. A resentment such as her
+father had never yet excited in her--such, indeed, as she had seldom, if
+ever, conceived--threatened to force utterance for itself in words which
+would change the current of her whole life. She saw her father in his
+worst aspect, and her heart was shaken by an unnatural revolt from him.
+Let his assurance of what he reported be ever so firm, what right had
+he to make this use of it? His behaviour was spiteful. Suppose he
+entertained suspicions which seemed to make it his duty to warn her
+against Milvain, this was not the way to go about it. A father actuated
+by simple motives of affection would never speak and look thus.
+
+It was the hateful spirit of literary rancour that ruled him; the spirit
+that made people eager to believe all evil, that blinded and maddened.
+Never had she felt so strongly the unworthiness of the existence to
+which she was condemned. That contemptible review, and now her father’s
+ignoble passion--such things were enough to make all literature appear a
+morbid excrescence upon human life.
+
+Forgetful of the time, she sat in her bedroom until a knock at the
+door, and her mother’s voice, admonished her that dinner was waiting. An
+impulse all but caused her to say that she would rather not go down
+for the meal, that she wished to be left alone. But this would be weak
+peevishness. She just looked at the glass to see that her face bore no
+unwonted signs, and descended to take her place as usual.
+
+Throughout the dinner there passed no word of conversation. Yule was at
+his blackest; he gobbled a few mouthfuls, then occupied himself with the
+evening paper. On rising, he said to Marian:
+
+‘Have you copied the whole of that?’
+
+The tone would have been uncivil if addressed to an impertinent servant.
+
+‘Not much more than half,’ was the cold reply.
+
+‘Can you finish it to-night?’
+
+‘I’m afraid not. I am going out.’
+
+‘Then I must do it myself’
+
+And he went to the study.
+
+Mrs Yule was in an anguish of nervousness.
+
+‘What is it, dear?’ she asked of Marian, in a pleading whisper. ‘Oh,
+don’t quarrel with your father! Don’t!’
+
+‘I can’t be a slave, mother, and I can’t be treated unjustly.’
+
+‘What is it? Let me go and speak to him.’
+
+‘It’s no use. We CAN’T live in terror.’
+
+For Mrs Yule this was unimaginable disaster. She had never dreamt that
+Marian, the still, gentle Marian, could be driven to revolt. And it had
+come with the suddenness of a thunderclap. She wished to ask what had
+taken place between father and daughter in the brief interview before
+dinner; but Marian gave her no chance, quitting the room upon those last
+trembling words.
+
+The girl had resolved to visit her friends, the sisters, and tell them
+that in future they must never come to see her at home. But it was no
+easy thing for her to stifle her conscience, and leave her father to
+toil over that copying which had need of being finished. Not her will,
+but her exasperated feeling, had replied to him that she would not do
+the work; already it astonished her that she had really spoken such
+words. And as the throbbing of her pulses subsided, she saw more clearly
+into the motives of this wretched tumult which possessed her. Her
+mind was harassed with a fear lest in defending Milvain she had spoken
+foolishly. Had he not himself said to her that he might be guilty of
+base things, just to make his way? Perhaps it was the intolerable pain
+of imagining that he had already made good his words, which robbed her
+of self-control and made her meet her father’s rudeness with defiance.
+
+Impossible to carry out her purpose; she could not deliberately leave
+the house and spend some hours away with the thought of such wrath and
+misery left behind her. Gradually she was returning to her natural self;
+fear and penitence were chill at her heart.
+
+She went down to the study, tapped, and entered.
+
+‘Father, I said something that I did not really mean. Of course I shall
+go on with the copying and finish it as soon as possible.’
+
+‘You will do nothing of the kind, my girl.’ He was in his usual place,
+already working at Marian’s task; he spoke in a low, thick voice. ‘Spend
+your evening as you choose, I have no need of you.’
+
+‘I behaved very ill-temperedly. Forgive me, father.’
+
+‘Have the goodness to go away. You hear me?’
+
+His eyes were inflamed, and his discoloured teeth showed themselves
+savagely. Marian durst not, really durst not approach him. She
+hesitated, but once more a sense of hateful injustice moved within her,
+and she went away as quietly as she had entered.
+
+She said to herself that now it was her perfect right to go whither
+she would. But the freedom was only in theory; her submissive and timid
+nature kept her at home--and upstairs in her own room; for, if she
+went to sit with her mother, of necessity she must talk about what had
+happened, and that she felt unable to do. Some friend to whom she could
+unbosom all her sufferings would now have been very precious to her, but
+Maud and Dora were her only intimates, and to them she might not make
+the full confession which gives solace.
+
+Mrs Yule did not venture to intrude upon her daughter’s privacy. That
+Marian neither went out nor showed herself in the house proved her
+troubled state, but the mother had no confidence in her power to
+comfort. At the usual time she presented herself in the study with her
+husband’s coffee; the face which was for an instant turned to her did
+not invite conversation, but distress obliged her to speak.
+
+‘Why are you cross with Marian, Alfred?’
+
+‘You had better ask what she means by her extraordinary behaviour.’
+
+A word of harsh rebuff was the most she had expected. Thus encouraged,
+she timidly put another question.
+
+‘How has she behaved?’
+
+‘I suppose you have ears?’
+
+‘But wasn’t there something before that? You spoke so angry to her.’
+
+‘Spoke so angry, did I? She is out, I suppose?’
+
+‘No, she hasn’t gone out.’
+
+‘That’ll do. Don’t disturb me any longer.’
+
+She did not venture to linger.
+
+The breakfast next morning seemed likely to pass without any interchange
+of words. But when Yule was pushing back his chair, Marian--who looked
+pale and ill--addressed a question to him about the work she would
+ordinarily have pursued to-day at the Reading-room. He answered in a
+matter-of-fact tone, and for a few minutes they talked on the subject
+much as at any other time. Half an hour after, Marian set forth for the
+Museum in the usual way. Her father stayed at home.
+
+It was the end of the episode for the present. Marian felt that the
+best thing would be to ignore what had happened, as her father evidently
+purposed doing. She had asked his forgiveness, and it was harsh in him
+to have repelled her; but by now she was able once more to take into
+consideration all his trials and toils, his embittered temper and the
+new wound he had received. That he should resume his wonted manner was
+sufficient evidence of regret on his part. Gladly she would have unsaid
+her resentful words; she had been guilty of a childish outburst of
+temper, and perhaps had prepared worse sufferings for the future.
+
+And yet, perhaps it was as well that her father should be warned. She
+was not all submission, he might try her beyond endurance; there might
+come a day when perforce she must stand face to face with him, and make
+it known she had her own claims upon life. It was as well he should hold
+that possibility in view.
+
+This evening no work was expected of her. Not long after dinner she
+prepared for going out; to her mother she mentioned she should be back
+about ten o’clock.
+
+‘Give my kind regards to them, dear--if you like to,’ said Mrs Yule just
+above her breath.
+
+‘Certainly I will.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. RECRUITS
+
+Marian walked to the nearest point of Camden Road, and there waited for
+an omnibus, which conveyed her to within easy reach of the street where
+Maud and Dora Milvain had their lodgings. This was at the north-east of
+Regent’s Park, and no great distance from Mornington Road, where Jasper
+still dwelt.
+
+On learning that the young ladies were at home and alone, she ascended
+to the second floor and knocked.
+
+‘That’s right!’ exclaimed Dora’s pleasant voice, as the door opened and
+the visitor showed herself. And then came the friendly greeting which
+warmed Marian’s heart, the greeting which until lately no house in
+London could afford her.
+
+The girls looked oddly out of place in this second-floor sitting-room,
+with its vulgar furniture and paltry ornaments. Maud especially so, for
+her fine figure was well displayed by the dress of mourning, and
+her pale, handsome face had as little congruence as possible with a
+background of humble circumstances.
+
+Dora impressed one as a simpler nature, but she too had distinctly the
+note of refinement which was out of harmony with these surroundings.
+They occupied only two rooms, the sleeping-chamber being double-bedded;
+they purchased food for themselves and prepared their own meals,
+excepting dinner. During the first week a good many tears were shed
+by both of them; it was not easy to transfer themselves from the
+comfortable country home to this bare corner of lodgers’ London. Maud,
+as appeared at the first glance, was less disposed than her sister to
+make the best of things; her countenance wore an expression rather of
+discontent than of sorrow, and she did not talk with the same readiness
+as Dora.
+
+On the round table lay a number of books; when disturbed, the sisters
+had been engaged in studious reading.
+
+‘I’m not sure that I do right in coming again so soon,’ said Marian as
+she took off her things. ‘Your time is precious.’
+
+‘So are you,’ replied Dora, laughing. ‘It’s only under protest that we
+work in the evening when we have been hard at it all day.’
+
+‘We have news for you, too,’ said Maud, who sat languidly on an uneasy
+chair.
+
+‘Good, I hope?’
+
+‘Someone called to see us yesterday. I dare say you can guess who it
+was.’
+
+‘Amy, perhaps?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘And how did you like her?’
+
+The sisters seemed to have a difficulty in answering. Dora was the first
+to speak.
+
+‘We thought she was sadly out of spirits. Indeed she told us that she
+hasn’t been very well lately. But I think we shall like her if we come
+to know her better.’
+
+‘It was rather awkward, Marian,’ the elder sister explained. ‘We felt
+obliged to say something about Mr Reardon’s books, but we haven’t read
+any of them yet, you know, so I just said that I hoped soon to read his
+new novel. “I suppose you have seen reviews of it?” she asked at once.
+Of course I ought to have had the courage to say no, but I admitted
+that I had seen one or two--Jasper showed us them. She looked very much
+annoyed, and after that we didn’t find much to talk about.’
+
+‘The reviews are very disagreeable,’ said Marian with a troubled face.
+‘I have read the book since I saw you the other day, and I am afraid it
+isn’t good, but I have seen many worse novels more kindly reviewed.’
+
+‘Jasper says it’s because Mr Reardon has no friends among the
+journalists.’
+
+‘Still,’ replied Marian, ‘I’m afraid they couldn’t have given the book
+much praise, if they wrote honestly. Did Amy ask you to go and see her?’
+
+‘Yes, but she said it was uncertain how long they would be living at
+their present address. And really, we can’t feel sure whether we should
+be welcome or not just now.’
+
+Marian listened with bent head. She too had to make known to her friends
+that they were not welcome in her own home; but she knew not how to
+utter words which would sound so unkind.
+
+‘Your brother,’ she said after a pause, ‘will soon find suitable friends
+for you.’
+
+‘Before long,’ replied Dora, with a look of amusement, ‘he’s going to
+take us to call on Mrs Boston Wright. I hardly thought he was serious at
+first, but he says he really means it.’
+
+Marian grew more and more silent. At home she had felt that it would not
+be difficult to explain her troubles to these sympathetic girls, but now
+the time had come for speaking, she was oppressed by shame and anxiety.
+True, there was no absolute necessity for making the confession this
+evening, and if she chose to resist her father’s prejudice, things might
+even go on in a seemingly natural way. But the loneliness of her life
+had developed in her a sensitiveness which could not endure situations
+such as the present; difficulties which are of small account to
+people who take their part in active social life, harassed her to the
+destruction of all peace. Dora was not long in noticing the dejected
+mood which had come upon her friend.
+
+‘What’s troubling you, Marian?’
+
+‘Something I can hardly bear to speak of. Perhaps it will be the end of
+your friendship for me, and I should find it very hard to go back to my
+old solitude.’
+
+The girls gazed at her, in doubt at first whether she spoke seriously.
+
+‘What can you mean?’ Dora exclaimed. ‘What crime have you been
+committing?’
+
+Maud, who leaned with her elbows on the table, searched Marian’s face
+curiously, but said nothing.
+
+‘Has Mr Milvain shown you the new number of The Current?’ Marian went on
+to ask.
+
+They replied with a negative, and Maud added:
+
+‘He has nothing in it this month, except a review.’
+
+‘A review?’ repeated Marian in a low voice.
+
+‘Yes; of somebody’s novel.’
+
+‘Markland’s,’ supplied Dora.
+
+Marian drew a breath, but remained for a moment with her eyes cast down.
+
+‘Do go on, dear,’ urged Dora. ‘Whatever are you going to tell us?’
+
+‘There’s a notice of father’s book,’ continued the other, ‘a very
+ill-natured one; it’s written by the editor, Mr Fadge. Father and he
+have been very unfriendly for a long time. Perhaps Mr Milvain has told
+you something about it?’
+
+Dora replied that he had.
+
+‘I don’t know how it is in other professions,’ Marian resumed, ‘but I
+hope there is less envy, hatred and malice than in this of ours. The
+name of literature is often made hateful to me by the things I hear
+and read. My father has never been very fortunate, and many things have
+happened to make him bitter against the men who succeed; he has often
+quarrelled with people who were at first his friends, but never so
+seriously with anyone as with Mr Fadge. His feeling of enmity goes so
+far that it includes even those who are in any way associated with Mr
+Fadge. I am sorry to say’--she looked with painful anxiety from one to
+the other of her hearers--‘this has turned him against your brother,
+and--’
+
+Her voice was checked by agitation.
+
+‘We were afraid of this,’ said Dora, in a tone of sympathy.
+
+‘Jasper feared it might be the case,’ added Maud, more coldly, though
+with friendliness.
+
+‘Why I speak of it at all,’ Marian hastened to say, ‘is because I am so
+afraid it should make a difference between yourselves and me.’
+
+‘Oh! don’t think that!’ Dora exclaimed.
+
+‘I am so ashamed,’ Marian went on in an uncertain tone, ‘but I think
+it will be better if I don’t ask you to come and see me. It sounds
+ridiculous; it is ridiculous and shameful. I couldn’t complain if you
+refused to have anything more to do with me.’
+
+‘Don’t let it trouble you,’ urged Maud, with perhaps a trifle more of
+magnanimity in her voice than was needful. We quite understand. Indeed,
+it shan’t make any difference to us.’
+
+But Marian had averted her face, and could not meet these assurances
+with any show of pleasure. Now that the step was taken she felt that
+her behaviour had been very weak. Unreasonable harshness such as her
+father’s ought to have been met more steadily; she had no right to make
+it an excuse for such incivility to her friends. Yet only in some
+such way as this could she make known to Jasper Milvain how her father
+regarded him, which she felt it necessary to do. Now his sisters would
+tell him, and henceforth there would be a clear understanding on both
+sides. That state of things was painful to her, but it was better than
+ambiguous relations.
+
+‘Jasper is very sorry about it,’ said Dora, glancing rapidly at Marian.
+
+‘But his connection with Mr Fadge came about in such a natural way,’
+added the eldest sister. ‘And it was impossible for him to refuse
+opportunities.’
+
+‘Impossible; I know,’ Marian replied earnestly. ‘Don’t think that I
+wish to justify my father. But I can understand him, and it must be very
+difficult for you to do so. You can’t know, as I do, how intensely he
+has suffered in these wretched, ignoble quarrels. If only you will let
+me come here still, in the same way, and still be as friendly to me. My
+home has never been a place to which I could have invited friends
+with any comfort, even if I had had any to invite. There were always
+reasons--but I can’t speak of them.’
+
+‘My dear Marian,’ appealed Dora, ‘don’t distress yourself so! Do believe
+that nothing whatever has happened to change our feeling to you. Has
+there, Maud?’
+
+‘Nothing whatever. We are not unreasonable girls, Marian.’
+
+‘I am more grateful to you than I can say.’
+
+It had seemed as if Marian must give way to the emotions which all but
+choked her voice; she overcame them, however, and presently was able
+to talk in pretty much her usual way, though when she smiled it was
+but faintly. Maud tried to lead her thoughts in another direction by
+speaking of work in which she and Dora were engaged. Already the sisters
+were doing a new piece of compilation for Messrs Jolly and Monk; it was
+more exacting than their initial task for the book market, and would
+take a much longer time.
+
+A couple of hours went by, and Marian had just spoken of taking her
+leave, when a man’s step was heard rapidly ascending the nearest flight
+of stairs.
+
+‘Here’s Jasper,’ remarked Dora, and in a moment there sounded a short,
+sharp summons at the door.
+
+Jasper it was; he came in with radiant face, his eyes blinking before
+the lamplight.
+
+‘Well, girls! Ha! how do you do, Miss Yule? I had just the vaguest sort
+of expectation that you might be here. It seemed a likely night; I
+don’t know why. I say, Dora, we really must get two or three decent
+easy-chairs for your room. I’ve seen some outside a second-hand
+furniture shop in Hampstead Road, about six shillings apiece. There’s no
+sitting on chairs such as these.’
+
+That on which he tried to dispose himself, when he had flung aside his
+trappings, creaked and shivered ominously.
+
+‘You hear? I shall come plump on to the floor, if I don’t mind. My word,
+what a day I have had! I’ve just been trying what I really could do
+in one day if I worked my hardest. Now just listen; it deserves to be
+chronicled for the encouragement of aspiring youth. I got up at 7.30,
+and whilst I breakfasted I read through a volume I had to review. By
+10.30 the review was written--three-quarters of a column of the Evening
+Budget.’
+
+‘Who is the unfortunate author?’ interrupted Maud, caustically.
+
+‘Not unfortunate at all. I had to crack him up; otherwise I couldn’t
+have done the job so quickly. It’s the easiest thing in the world to
+write laudation; only an inexperienced grumbler would declare it was
+easier to find fault. The book was Billington’s “Vagaries”; pompous
+idiocy, of course, but he lives in a big house and gives dinners. Well,
+from 10.30 to 11, I smoked a cigar and reflected, feeling that the day
+wasn’t badly begun. At eleven I was ready to write my Saturday causerie
+for the Will o’ the Wisp; it took me till close upon one o’clock, which
+was rather too long. I can’t afford more than an hour and a half
+for that job. At one, I rushed out to a dirty little eating-house
+in Hampstead Road. Was back again by a quarter to two, having in the
+meantime sketched a paper for The West End. Pipe in mouth, I sat down
+to leisurely artistic work; by five, half the paper was done; the
+other half remains for to-morrow. From five to half-past I read four
+newspapers and two magazines, and from half-past to a quarter to six I
+jotted down several ideas that had come to me whilst reading. At six I
+was again in the dirty eating-house, satisfying a ferocious hunger. Home
+once more at 6.45, and for two hours wrote steadily at a long affair I
+have in hand for The Current. Then I came here, thinking hard all the
+way. What say you to this? Have I earned a night’s repose?’
+
+‘And what’s the value of it all?’ asked Maud.
+
+‘Probably from ten to twelve guineas, if I calculated.’
+
+‘I meant, what was the literary value of it?’ said his sister, with a
+smile.
+
+‘Equal to that of the contents of a mouldy nut.’
+
+‘Pretty much what I thought.’
+
+‘Oh, but it answers the purpose,’ urged Dora, ‘and it does no one any
+harm.’
+
+‘Honest journey-work!’ cried Jasper. ‘There are few men in London
+capable of such a feat. Many a fellow could write more in quantity, but
+they couldn’t command my market. It’s rubbish, but rubbish of a very
+special kind, of fine quality.’
+
+Marian had not yet spoken, save a word or two in reply to Jasper’s
+greeting; now and then she just glanced at him, but for the most part
+her eyes were cast down. Now Jasper addressed her.
+
+‘A year ago, Miss Yule, I shouldn’t have believed myself capable of such
+activity. In fact I wasn’t capable of it then.’
+
+‘You think such work won’t be too great a strain upon you?’ she asked.
+
+‘Oh, this isn’t a specimen day, you know. To-morrow I shall very likely
+do nothing but finish my West End article, in an easy two or three
+hours. There’s no knowing; I might perhaps keep up the high pressure
+if I tried. But then I couldn’t dispose of all the work. Little by
+little--or perhaps rather quicker than that--I shall extend my scope.
+For instance, I should like to do two or three leaders a week for one of
+the big dailies. I can’t attain unto that just yet.’
+
+‘Not political leaders?’
+
+‘By no means. That’s not my line. The kind of thing in which one makes a
+column out of what would fill six lines of respectable prose. You call
+a cigar a “convoluted weed,” and so on, you know; that passes for
+facetiousness. I’ve never really tried my hand at that style yet; I
+shouldn’t wonder if I managed it brilliantly. Some day I’ll write a few
+exercises; just take two lines of some good prose writer, and expand
+them into twenty, in half-a-dozen different ways. Excellent mental
+gymnastics!’
+
+Marian listened to his flow of talk for a few minutes longer, then took
+the opportunity of a brief silence to rise and put on her hat. Jasper
+observed her, but without rising; he looked at his sisters in a
+hesitating way. At length he stood up, and declared that he too must be
+off. This coincidence had happened once before when he met Marian here
+in the evening.
+
+‘At all events, you won’t do any more work to-night,’ said Dora.
+
+‘No; I shall read a page of something or other over a glass of whisky,
+and seek the sleep of a man who has done his duty.’
+
+‘Why the whisky?’ asked Maud.
+
+‘Do you grudge me such poor solace?’
+
+‘I don’t see the need of it.’
+
+‘Nonsense, Maud!’ exclaimed her sister. ‘He needs a little stimulant
+when he works so hard.’
+
+Each of the girls gave Marian’s hand a significant pressure as she took
+leave of them, and begged her to come again as soon as she had a free
+evening. There was gratitude in her eyes.
+
+The evening was clear, and not very cold.
+
+‘It’s rather late for you to go home,’ said Jasper, as they left the
+house. ‘May I walk part of the way with you?’
+
+Marian replied with a low ‘Thank you.’
+
+‘I think you get on pretty well with the girls, don’t you?’
+
+‘I hope they are as glad of my friendship as I am of theirs.’
+
+‘Pity to see them in a place like that, isn’t it? They ought to have a
+good house, with plenty of servants. It’s bad enough for a civilised
+man to have to rough it, but I hate to see women living in a sordid way.
+Don’t you think they could both play their part in a drawing-room, with
+a little experience?’
+
+‘Surely there’s no doubt of it.’
+
+‘Maud would look really superb if she were handsomely dressed. She
+hasn’t a common face, by any means. And Dora is pretty, I think. Well,
+they shall go and see some people before long. The difficulty is, one
+doesn’t like it to be known that they live in such a crib; but I daren’t
+advise them to go in for expense. One can’t be sure that it would repay
+them, though--Now, in my own case, if I could get hold of a few thousand
+pounds I should know how to use it with the certainty of return; it
+would save me, probably, a clear ten years of life; I mean, I should go
+at a jump to what I shall be ten years hence without the help of money.
+But they have such a miserable little bit of capital, and everything is
+still so uncertain. One daren’t speculate under the circumstances.’
+
+Marian made no reply.
+
+‘You think I talk of nothing but money?’ Jasper said suddenly, looking
+down into her face.
+
+‘I know too well what it means to be without money.’
+
+‘Yes, but--you do just a little despise me?’
+
+‘Indeed, I don’t, Mr Milvain.’
+
+‘If that is sincere, I’m very glad. I take it in a friendly sense. I am
+rather despicable, you know; it’s part of my business to be so. But
+a friend needn’t regard that. There is the man apart from his
+necessities.’
+
+The silence was then unbroken till they came to the lower end of Park
+Street, the junction of roads which lead to Hampstead, to Highgate, and
+to Holloway.
+
+‘Shall you take an omnibus?’ Jasper asked.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+‘Or will you give me the pleasure of walking on with you? You are tired,
+perhaps?’
+
+‘Not the least.’
+
+For the rest of her answer she moved forward, and they crossed into the
+obscurity of Camden Road.
+
+‘Shall I be doing wrong, Mr Milvain,’ Marian began in a very low
+voice, ‘if I ask you about the authorship of something in this month’s
+Current?’
+
+‘I’m afraid I know what you refer to. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t
+answer a question of the kind.’
+
+‘It was Mr Fadge himself who reviewed my father’s book?’
+
+‘It was--confound him! I don’t know another man who could have done the
+thing so vilely well.’
+
+‘I suppose he was only replying to my father’s attack upon him and his
+friends.’
+
+‘Your father’s attack is honest and straightforward and justifiable and
+well put. I read that chapter of his book with huge satisfaction.
+But has anyone suggested that another than Fadge was capable of that
+masterpiece?’
+
+‘Yes. I am told that Mr Jedwood, the publisher, has somehow made a
+mistake.’
+
+‘Jedwood? And what mistake?’
+
+‘Father heard that you were the writer.’
+
+‘I?’ Jasper stopped short. They were in the rays of a street-lamp, and
+could see each other’s faces. ‘And he believes that?’
+
+‘I’m afraid so.’
+
+‘And you believe--believed it?’
+
+‘Not for a moment.’
+
+‘I shall write a note to Mr Yule.’
+
+Marian was silent a while, then said:
+
+‘Wouldn’t it be better if you found a way of letting Mr Jedwood know the
+truth?’
+
+‘Perhaps you are right.’
+
+Jasper was very grateful for the suggestion. In that moment he had
+reflected how rash it would be to write to Alfred Yule on such a
+subject, with whatever prudence in expressing himself. Such a letter,
+coming under the notice of the great Fadge, might do its writer serious
+harm.
+
+‘Yes, you are right,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll stop that rumour at its source.
+I can’t guess how it started; for aught I know, some enemy hath done
+this, though I don’t quite discern the motive. Thank you very much for
+telling me, and still more for refusing to believe that I could treat Mr
+Yule in that way, even as a matter of business. When I said that I was
+despicable, I didn’t mean that I could sink quite to such a point as
+that. If only because it was your father--’
+
+He checked himself and they walked on for several yards without
+speaking.
+
+‘In that case,’ Jasper resumed at length, ‘your father doesn’t think of
+me in a very friendly way?’
+
+‘He scarcely could--’
+
+‘No, no. And I quite understand that the mere fact of my working for
+Fadge would prejudice him against me. But that’s no reason, I hope, why
+you and I shouldn’t be friends?’
+
+‘I hope not.’
+
+‘I don’t know that my friendship is worth much,’ Jasper continued,
+talking into the upper air, a habit of his when he discussed his own
+character. ‘I shall go on as I have begun, and fight for some of the
+good things of life. But your friendship is valuable. If I am sure of
+it, I shall be at all events within sight of the better ideals.’
+
+Marian walked on with her eyes upon the ground. To her surprise she
+discovered presently that they had all but reached St Paul’s Crescent.
+
+‘Thank you for having come so far,’ she said, pausing.
+
+‘Ah, you are nearly home. Why, it seems only a few minutes since we left
+the girls. Now I’ll run back to the whisky of which Maud disapproves.’
+
+‘May it do you good!’ said Marian with a laugh.
+
+A speech of this kind seemed unusual upon her lips. Jasper smiled as he
+held her hand and regarded her.
+
+‘Then you can speak in a joking way?’
+
+‘Do I seem so very dull?’
+
+‘Dull, by no means. But sage and sober and reticent--and exactly what
+I like in my friend, because it contrasts with my own habits. All the
+better that merriment lies below it. Goodnight, Miss Yule.’
+
+He strode off and in a minute or two turned his head to look at the
+slight figure passing into darkness.
+
+Marian’s hand trembled as she tried to insert her latch-key. When
+she had closed the door very quietly behind her she went to the
+sitting-room; Mrs Yule was just laying aside the sewing on which she had
+occupied herself throughout the lonely evening.
+
+‘I’m rather late,’ said the girl, in a voice of subdued joyousness.
+
+‘Yes; I was getting a little uneasy, dear.’
+
+‘Oh, there’s no danger.’
+
+‘You have been enjoying yourself, I can see.’
+
+‘I have had a pleasant evening.’
+
+In the retrospect it seemed the pleasantest she had yet spent with her
+friends, though she had set out in such a different mood. Her mind was
+relieved of two anxieties; she felt sure that the girls had not
+taken ill what she told them, and there was no longer the least doubt
+concerning the authorship of that review in The Current.
+
+She could confess to herself now that the assurance from Jasper’s
+lips was not superfluous. He might have weighed profit against other
+considerations, and have written in that way of her father; she had not
+felt that absolute confidence which defies every argument from human
+frailty. And now she asked herself if faith of that unassailable kind is
+ever possible; is it not only the poet’s dream, the far ideal?
+
+Marian often went thus far in her speculation. Her candour was allied
+with clear insight into the possibilities of falsehood; she was not
+readily the victim of illusion; thinking much, and speaking little, she
+had not come to her twenty-third year without perceiving what a distance
+lay between a girl’s dream of life as it might be and life as it is. Had
+she invariably disclosed her thoughts, she would have earned the repute
+of a very sceptical and slightly cynical person.
+
+But with what rapturous tumult of the heart she could abandon herself to
+a belief in human virtues when their suggestion seemed to promise her a
+future of happiness!
+
+Alone in her room she sat down only to think of Jasper Milvain, and
+extract from the memory of his words, his looks, new sustenance for
+her hungry heart. Jasper was the first man who had ever evinced a
+man’s interest in her. Until she met him she had not known a look
+of compliment or a word addressed to her emotions. He was as far as
+possible from representing the lover of her imagination, but from the
+day of that long talk in the fields near Wattleborough the thought of
+him had supplanted dreams. On that day she said to herself: I could love
+him if he cared to seek my love. Premature, perhaps; why, yes, but one
+who is starving is not wont to feel reluctance at the suggestion of
+food. The first man who had approached her with display of feeling and
+energy and youthful self-confidence; handsome too, it seemed to her. Her
+womanhood went eagerly to meet him.
+
+Since then she had made careful study of his faults. Each conversation
+had revealed to her new weakness and follies. With the result that her
+love had grown to a reality.
+
+He was so human, and a youth of all but monastic seclusion had prepared
+her to love the man who aimed with frank energy at the joys of life.
+A taint of pedantry would have repelled her. She did not ask for high
+intellect or great attainments; but vivacity, courage, determination to
+succeed, were delightful to her senses. Her ideal would not have been
+a literary man at all; certainly not a man likely to be prominent
+in journalism; rather a man of action, one who had no restraints of
+commerce or official routine. But in Jasper she saw the qualities that
+attracted her apart from the accidents of his position. Ideal personages
+do not descend to girls who have to labour at the British Museum; it
+seemed a marvel to her, and of good augury, that even such a man as
+Jasper should have crossed her path.
+
+It was as though years had passed since their first meeting. Upon her
+return to London had followed such long periods of hopelessness. Yet
+whenever they encountered each other he had look and speech for her with
+which surely he did not greet every woman. From the first his way of
+regarding her had shown frank interest. And at length had come the
+confession of his ‘respect,’ his desire to be something more to her than
+a mere acquaintance. It was scarcely possible that he should speak as he
+several times had of late if he did not wish to draw her towards him.
+
+That was the hopeful side of her thoughts. It was easy to forget for a
+time those words of his which one might think were spoken as distinct
+warning; but they crept into the memory, unwelcome, importunate, as soon
+as imagination had built its palace of joy. Why did he always recur to
+the subject of money? ‘I shall allow nothing to come in my way;’ he once
+said that as if meaning, ‘certainly not a love affair with a girl who
+is penniless.’ He emphasised the word ‘friend,’ as if to explain that he
+offered and asked nothing more than friendship.
+
+But it only meant that he would not be in haste to declare himself. Of
+a certainty there was conflict between his ambition and his love, but
+she recognised her power over him and exulted in it. She had observed
+his hesitancy this evening, before he rose to accompany her from
+the house; her heart laughed within her as the desire drew him. And
+henceforth such meetings would be frequent, with each one her influence
+would increase. How kindly fate had dealt with her in bringing Maud and
+Dora to London!
+
+It was within his reach to marry a woman who would bring him wealth.
+He had that in mind; she understood it too well. But not one moment’s
+advantage would she relinquish. He must choose her in her poverty, and
+be content with what his talents could earn for him. Her love gave her
+the right to demand this sacrifice; let him ask for her love, and the
+sacrifice would no longer seem one, so passionately would she reward
+him.
+
+He would ask it. To-night she was full of a rich confidence, partly, no
+doubt, the result of reaction from her miseries. He had said at parting
+that her character was so well suited to his; that he liked her. And
+then he had pressed her hand so warmly. Before long he would ask her
+love.
+
+The unhoped was all but granted her. She could labour on in the valley
+of the shadow of books, for a ray of dazzling sunshine might at any
+moment strike into its musty gloom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE LAST RESOURCE
+
+The past twelve months had added several years to Edwin Reardon’s
+seeming age; at thirty-three he would generally have been taken for
+forty. His bearing, his personal habits, were no longer those of a
+young man; he walked with a stoop and pressed noticeably on the stick
+he carried; it was rare for him to show the countenance which tells of
+present cheerfulness or glad onward-looking; there was no spring in his
+step; his voice had fallen to a lower key, and often he spoke with
+that hesitation in choice of words which may be noticed in persons whom
+defeat has made self-distrustful. Ceaseless perplexity and dread gave a
+wandering, sometimes a wild, expression to his eyes.
+
+He seldom slept, in the proper sense of the word; as a rule he was
+conscious all through the night of ‘a kind of fighting’ between physical
+weariness and wakeful toil of the mind. It often happened that some
+wholly imaginary obstacle in the story he was writing kept him under
+a sense of effort throughout the dark hours; now and again he woke,
+reasoned with himself, and remembered clearly that the torment was
+without cause, but the short relief thus afforded soon passed in the
+recollection of real distress. In his unsoothing slumber he talked
+aloud, frequently wakening Amy; generally he seemed to be holding a
+dialogue with someone who had imposed an intolerable task upon him; he
+protested passionately, appealed, argued in the strangest way about
+the injustice of what was demanded. Once Amy heard him begging for
+money--positively begging, like some poor wretch in the street; it
+was horrible, and made her shed tears; when he asked what he had been
+saying, she could not bring herself to tell him.
+
+When the striking clocks summoned him remorselessly to rise and work
+he often reeled with dizziness. It seemed to him that the greatest
+happiness attainable would be to creep into some dark, warm corner, out
+of the sight and memory of men, and lie there torpid, with a blessed
+half-consciousness that death was slowly overcoming him. Of all the
+sufferings collected into each four-and-twenty hours this of rising to a
+new day was the worst.
+
+The one-volume story which he had calculated would take him four or five
+weeks was with difficulty finished in two months. March winds made an
+invalid of him; at one time he was threatened with bronchitis, and for
+several days had to abandon even the effort to work. In previous winters
+he had been wont to undergo a good deal of martyrdom from the London
+climate, but never in such a degree as now; mental illness seemed to
+have enfeebled his body.
+
+It was strange that he succeeded in doing work of any kind, for he had
+no hope from the result. This one last effort he would make, just to
+complete the undeniableness of his failure, and then literature should
+be thrown behind him; what other pursuit was possible to him he knew
+not, but perhaps he might discover some mode of earning a livelihood.
+Had it been a question of gaining a pound a week, as in the old days,
+he might have hoped to obtain some clerkship like that at the hospital,
+where no commercial experience or aptitude was demanded; but in his
+present position such an income would be useless. Could he take Amy
+and the child to live in a garret? On less than a hundred a year it was
+scarcely possible to maintain outward decency. Already his own clothing
+began to declare him poverty-stricken, and but for gifts from her
+mother Amy would have reached the like pass. They lived in dread of
+the pettiest casual expense, for the day of pennilessness was again
+approaching.
+
+Amy was oftener from home than had been her custom.
+
+Occasionally she went away soon after breakfast, and spent the whole day
+at her mother’s house. ‘It saves food,’ she said with a bitter laugh,
+when Reardon once expressed surprise that she should be going again so
+soon.
+
+‘And gives you an opportunity of bewailing your hard fate,’ he returned
+coldly.
+
+The reproach was ignoble, and he could not be surprised that Amy left
+the house without another word to him. Yet he resented that, as he
+had resented her sorrowful jest. The feeling of unmanliness in his own
+position tortured him into a mood of perversity. Through the day he
+wrote only a few lines, and on Amy’s return he resolved not to speak
+to her. There was a sense of repose in this change of attitude; he
+encouraged himself in the view that Amy was treating him with cruel
+neglect. She, surprised that her friendly questions elicited no answer,
+looked into his face and saw a sullen anger of which hitherto Reardon
+had never seemed capable. Her indignation took fire, and she left him to
+himself.
+
+For a day or two he persevered in his muteness, uttering a word only
+when it could not be avoided. Amy was at first so resentful that she
+contemplated leaving him to his ill-temper and dwelling at her mother’s
+house until he chose to recall her. But his face grew so haggard in
+fixed misery that compassion at length prevailed over her injured
+pride. Late in the evening she went to the study, and found him sitting
+unoccupied.
+
+‘Edwin--’
+
+‘What do you want?’ he asked indifferently.
+
+‘Why are you behaving to me like this?’
+
+‘Surely it makes no difference to you how I behave? You can easily
+forget that I exist, and live your own life.’
+
+‘What have I done to make this change in you?’
+
+‘Is it a change?’
+
+‘You know it is.’
+
+‘How did I behave before?’ he asked, glancing at her.
+
+‘Like yourself--kindly and gently.’
+
+‘If I always did so, in spite of things that might have embittered
+another man’s temper, I think it deserved some return of kindness from
+you.’
+
+‘What “things” do you mean?’
+
+‘Circumstances for which neither of us is to blame.’
+
+‘I am not conscious of having failed in kindness,’ said Amy, distantly.
+
+‘Then that only shows that you have forgotten your old self, and utterly
+changed in your feeling to me. When we first came to live here could you
+have imagined yourself leaving me alone for long, miserable days, just
+because I was suffering under misfortunes? You have shown too plainly
+that you don’t care to give me the help even of a kind word. You get
+away from me as often as you can, as if to remind me that we have no
+longer any interests in common. Other people are your confidants; you
+speak of me to them as if I were purposely dragging you down into a mean
+condition.’
+
+‘How can you know what I say about you?’
+
+‘Isn’t it true?’ he asked, flashing an angry glance at her.
+
+‘It is not true. Of course I have talked to mother about our
+difficulties; how could I help it?’
+
+‘And to other people.’
+
+‘Not in a way that you could find fault with.’
+
+‘In a way that makes me seem contemptible to them. You show them that
+I have made you poor and unhappy, and you are glad to have their
+sympathy.’
+
+‘What you mean is, that I oughtn’t to see anyone. There’s no other way
+of avoiding such a reproach as this. So long as I don’t laugh and sing
+before people, and assure them that things couldn’t be more hopeful, I
+shall be asking for their sympathy, and against you. I can’t understand
+your unreasonableness.’
+
+‘I’m afraid there is very little in me that you can understand. So long
+as my prospects seemed bright, you could sympathise readily enough; as
+soon as ever they darkened, something came between us. Amy, you haven’t
+done your duty. Your love hasn’t stood the test as it should have done.
+You have given me no help; besides the burden of cheerless work I have
+had to bear that of your growing coldness. I can’t remember one instance
+when you have spoken to me as a wife might--a wife who was something
+more than a man’s housekeeper.’
+
+The passion in his voice and the harshness of the accusation made her
+unable to reply.
+
+‘You said rightly,’ he went on, ‘that I have always been kind and
+gentle. I never thought I could speak to you or feel to you in any other
+way. But I have undergone too much, and you have deserted me. Surely it
+was too soon to do that. So long as I endeavoured my utmost, and loved
+you the same as ever, you might have remembered all you once said to me.
+You might have given me help, but you haven’t cared to.’
+
+The impulses which had part in this outbreak were numerous and complex.
+He felt all that he expressed, but at the same time it seemed to him
+that he had the choice between two ways of uttering his emotion--the
+tenderly appealing and the sternly reproachful: he took the latter
+course because it was less natural to him than the former. His desire
+was to impress Amy with the bitter intensity of his sufferings; pathos
+and loving words seemed to have lost their power upon her, but perhaps
+if he yielded to that other form of passion she would be shaken out of
+her coldness. The stress of injured love is always tempted to speech
+which seems its contradiction. Reardon had the strangest mixture of pain
+and pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that he had ever
+addressed to Amy; they consoled him under the humiliating sense of his
+weakness, and yet he watched with dread his wife’s countenance as she
+listened to him. He hoped to cause her pain equal to his own, for then
+it would be in his power at once to throw off this disguise and soothe
+her with every softest word his heart could suggest. That she had really
+ceased to love him he could not, durst not, believe; but his nature
+demanded frequent assurance of affection. Amy had abandoned too soon the
+caresses of their ardent time; she was absorbed in her maternity, and
+thought it enough to be her husband’s friend. Ashamed to make appeal
+directly for the tenderness she no longer offered, he accused her of
+utter indifference, of abandoning him and all but betraying him, that in
+self-defence she might show what really was in her heart.
+
+But Amy made no movement towards him.
+
+‘How can you say that I have deserted you?’ she returned, with cold
+indignation. ‘When did I refuse to share your poverty? When did I
+grumble at what we have had to go through?’
+
+‘Ever since the troubles really began you have let me know what your
+thoughts were, even if you didn’t speak them. You have never shared my
+lot willingly. I can’t recall one word of encouragement from you, but
+many, many which made the struggle harder for me.’
+
+‘Then it would be better for you if I went away altogether, and left you
+free to do the best for yourself. If that is what you mean by all this,
+why not say it plainly? I won’t be a burden to you. Someone will give me
+a home.’
+
+‘And you would leave me without regret? Your only care would be that you
+were still bound to me?’
+
+‘You must think of me what you like. I don’t care to defend myself.’
+
+‘You won’t admit, then, that I have anything to complain of? I seem to
+you simply in a bad temper without a cause?’
+
+‘To tell you the truth, that’s just what I do think. I came here to ask
+what I had done that you were angry with me, and you break out furiously
+with all sorts of vague reproaches. You have much to endure, I know
+that, but it’s no reason why you should turn against me. I have never
+neglected my duty. Is the duty all on my side? I believe there are very
+few wives who would be as patient as I have been.’
+
+Reardon gazed at her for a moment, then turned away. The distance
+between them was greater than he had thought, and now he repented of
+having given way to an impulse so alien to his true feelings; anger only
+estranged her, whereas by speech of a different kind he might have won
+the caress for which he hungered.
+
+Amy, seeing that he would say nothing more, left him to himself.
+
+It grew late in the night. The fire had gone out, but Reardon still sat
+in the cold room. Thoughts of self-destruction were again haunting him,
+as they had done during the black months of last year. If he had lost
+Amy’s love, and all through the mental impotence which would make it
+hard for him even to earn bread, why should he still live? Affection for
+his child had no weight with him; it was Amy’s child rather than his,
+and he had more fear than pleasure in the prospect of Willie’s growing
+to manhood.
+
+He had just heard the workhouse clock strike two, when, without the
+warning of a footstep, the door opened. Amy came in; she wore her
+dressing-gown, and her hair was arranged for the night.
+
+‘Why do you stay here?’ she asked.
+
+It was not the same voice as before. He saw that her eyes were red and
+swollen.
+
+‘Have you been crying, Amy?’
+
+‘Never mind. Do you know what time it is?’
+
+He went towards her.
+
+‘Why have you been crying?’
+
+‘There are many things to cry for.’
+
+‘Amy, have you any love for me still, or has poverty robbed me of it
+all?’
+
+‘I have never said that I didn’t love you. Why do you accuse me of such
+things?’
+
+He took her in his arms and held her passionately and kissed her face
+again and again. Amy’s tears broke forth anew.
+
+‘Why should we come to such utter ruin?’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, try, try if
+you can’t save us even yet! You know without my saying it that I do love
+you; it’s dreadful to me to think all our happy life should be at an
+end, when we thought of such a future together. Is it impossible? Can’t
+you work as you used to and succeed as we felt confident you would?
+Don’t despair yet, Edwin; do, do try, whilst there is still time!’
+
+‘Darling, darling--if only I COULD!’
+
+‘I have thought of something, dearest. Do as you proposed last year;
+find a tenant for the flat whilst we still have a little money, and
+then go away into some quiet country place, where you can get back your
+health and live for very little, and write another book--a good book,
+that’ll bring you reputation again. I and Willie can go and live at
+mother’s for the summer months. Do this! It would cost you so little,
+living alone, wouldn’t it? You would know that I was well cared for;
+mother would be willing to have me for a few months, and it’s easy to
+explain that your health has failed, that you’re obliged to go away for
+a time.’
+
+‘But why shouldn’t you go with me, if we are to let this place?’
+
+‘We shouldn’t have enough money. I want to free your mind from the
+burden whilst you are writing. And what is before us if we go on in this
+way? You don’t think you will get much for what you’re writing now, do
+you?’
+
+Reardon shook his head.
+
+‘Then how can we live even till the end of the year? Something must be
+done, you know. If we get into poor lodgings, what hope is there that
+you’ll be able to write anything good?’
+
+‘But, Amy, I have no faith in my power of--’
+
+‘Oh, it would be different! A few days--a week or a fortnight of real
+holiday in this spring weather. Go to some seaside place. How is it
+possible that all your talent should have left you? It’s only that you
+have been so anxious and in such poor health. You say I don’t love you,
+but I have thought and thought what would be best for you to do, how
+you could save yourself. How can you sink down to the position of a poor
+clerk in some office? That CAN’T be your fate, Edwin; it’s incredible.
+Oh, after such bright hopes, make one more effort! Have you forgotten
+that we were to go to the South together--you were to take me to Italy
+and Greece? How can that ever be if you fail utterly in literature? How
+can you ever hope to earn more than bare sustenance at any other kind of
+work?’
+
+He all but lost consciousness of her words in gazing at the face she
+held up to his.
+
+‘You love me? Say again that you love me!’
+
+‘Dear, I love you with all my heart. But I am so afraid of the future.
+I can’t bear poverty; I have found that I can’t bear it. And I dread to
+think of your becoming only an ordinary man--’
+
+Reardon laughed.
+
+‘But I am NOT “only an ordinary man,” Amy! If I never write another
+line, that won’t undo what I have done. It’s little enough, to be sure;
+but you know what I am. Do you only love the author in me? Don’t you
+think of me apart from all that I may do or not do? If I had to earn my
+living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk in soul?’
+
+‘You shall not fall to that! It would be too bitter a shame to lose all
+you have gained in these long years of work. Let me plan for you; do as
+I wish. You are to be what we hoped from the first. Take all the summer
+months. How long will it be before you can finish this short book?’
+
+‘A week or two.’
+
+‘Then finish it, and see what you can get for it. And try at once
+to find a tenant to take this place off our hands; that would be
+twenty-five pounds saved for the rest of the year. You could live on so
+little by yourself, couldn’t you?’
+
+‘Oh, on ten shillings a week, if need be.’
+
+‘But not to starve yourself, you know. Don’t you feel that my plan is a
+good one? When I came to you to-night I meant to speak of this, but you
+were so cruel--’
+
+‘Forgive me, dearest love! I was half a madman. You have been so cold to
+me for a long time.’
+
+‘I have been distracted. It was as if we were drawing nearer and nearer
+to the edge of a cataract.’
+
+‘Have you spoken to your mother about this?’ he asked uneasily.
+
+‘No--not exactly this. But I know she will help us in this way.’
+
+He had seated himself and was holding her in his arms, his face laid
+against hers.
+
+‘I shall dread to part from you, Amy. That’s such a dangerous thing to
+do. It may mean that we are never to live as husband and wife again.’
+
+‘But how could it? It’s just to prevent that danger. If we go on here
+till we have no money--what’s before us then? Wretched lodgings at the
+best. And I am afraid to think of that. I can’t trust myself if that
+should come to pass.’
+
+‘What do you mean?’ he asked anxiously.
+
+‘I hate poverty so. It brings out all the worst things in me; you know I
+have told you that before, Edwin?’
+
+‘But you would never forget that you are my wife?’
+
+‘I hope not. But--I can’t think of it; I can’t face it! That would be
+the very worst that can befall us, and we are going to try our utmost to
+escape from it. Was there ever a man who did as much as you have done in
+literature and then sank into hopeless poverty?’
+
+‘Oh, many!’
+
+‘But at your age, I mean. Surely not at your age?’
+
+‘I’m afraid there have been such poor fellows. Think how often one hears
+of hopeful beginnings, new reputations, and then--you hear no more. Of
+course it generally means that the man has gone into a different career;
+but sometimes, sometimes--’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘The abyss.’ He pointed downward. ‘Penury and despair and a miserable
+death.’
+
+‘Oh, but those men haven’t a wife and child! They would struggle--’
+
+‘Darling, they do struggle. But it’s as if an ever-increasing weight
+were round their necks; it drags them lower and lower. The world has no
+pity on a man who can’t do or produce something it thinks worth money.
+You may be a divine poet, and if some good fellow doesn’t take pity on
+you you will starve by the roadside. Society is as blind and brutal as
+fate. I have no right to complain of my own ill-fortune; it’s my own
+fault (in a sense) that I can’t continue as well as I began; if I could
+write books as good as the early ones I should earn money. For all that,
+it’s hard that I must be kicked aside as worthless just because I don’t
+know a trade.’
+
+‘It shan’t be! I have only to look into your face to know that you will
+succeed after all. Yours is the kind of face that people come to know in
+portraits.’
+
+He kissed her hair, and her eyes, and her mouth.
+
+‘How well I remember your saying that before! Why have you grown so good
+to me all at once, my Amy? Hearing you speak like that I feel there’s
+nothing beyond my reach. But I dread to go away from you. If I find that
+it is hopeless; if I am alone somewhere, and know that the effort is all
+in vain--’
+
+‘Then?’
+
+‘Well, I can leave you free. If I can’t support you, it will be only
+just that I should give you back your freedom.’
+
+‘I don’t understand--’
+
+She raised herself and looked into his eyes.
+
+‘We won’t talk of that. If you bid me go on with the struggle, I shall
+do so.’
+
+Amy had hidden her face, and lay silently in his arms for a minute or
+two. Then she murmured:
+
+‘It is so cold here, and so late. Come!’
+
+‘So early. There goes three o’clock.’
+
+The next day they talked much of this new project. As there was sunshine
+Amy accompanied her husband for his walk in the afternoon; it was long
+since they had been out together. An open carriage that passed, followed
+by two young girls on horseback, gave a familiar direction to Reardon’s
+thoughts.
+
+‘If one were as rich as those people! They pass so close to us; they see
+us, and we see them; but the distance between is infinity. They don’t
+belong to the same world as we poor wretches. They see everything in a
+different light; they have powers which would seem supernatural if we
+were suddenly endowed with them.’
+
+‘Of course,’ assented his companion with a sigh.
+
+‘Just fancy, if one got up in the morning with the thought that no
+reasonable desire that occurred to one throughout the day need remain
+ungratified! And that it would be the same, any day and every day, to
+the end of one’s life! Look at those houses; every detail, within and
+without, luxurious. To have such a home as that!’
+
+‘And they are empty creatures who live there.’
+
+‘They do live, Amy, at all events. Whatever may be their faculties, they
+all have free scope. I have often stood staring at houses like these
+until I couldn’t believe that the people owning them were mere human
+beings like myself. The power of money is so hard to realise; one who
+has never had it marvels at the completeness with which it transforms
+every detail of life. Compare what we call our home with that of rich
+people; it moves one to scornful laughter. I have no sympathy with the
+stoical point of view; between wealth and poverty is just the difference
+between the whole man and the maimed. If my lower limbs are paralysed
+I may still be able to think, but then there is such a thing in life as
+walking. As a poor devil I may live nobly; but one happens to be made
+with faculties of enjoyment, and those have to fall into atrophy. To be
+sure, most rich people don’t understand their happiness; if they did,
+they would move and talk like gods--which indeed they are.’
+
+Amy’s brow was shadowed. A wise man, in Reardon’s position, would not
+have chosen this subject to dilate upon.
+
+‘The difference,’ he went on, ‘between the man with money and the man
+without is simply this: the one thinks, “How shall I use my life?” and
+the other, “How shall I keep myself alive?” A physiologist ought to be
+able to discover some curious distinction between the brain of a person
+who has never given a thought to the means of subsistence, and that of
+one who has never known a day free from such cares. There must be some
+special cerebral development representing the mental anguish kept up by
+poverty.’
+
+‘I should say,’ put in Amy, ‘that it affects every function of the
+brain. It isn’t a special point of suffering, but a misery that colours
+every thought.’
+
+‘True. Can I think of a single subject in all the sphere of my
+experience without the consciousness that I see it through the medium of
+poverty? I have no enjoyment which isn’t tainted by that thought, and I
+can suffer no pain which it doesn’t increase. The curse of poverty is to
+the modern world just what that of slavery was to the ancient. Rich and
+destitute stand to each other as free man and bond. You remember the
+line of Homer I have often quoted about the demoralising effect of
+enslavement; poverty degrades in the same way.’
+
+‘It has had its effect upon me--I know that too well,’ said Amy, with
+bitter frankness.
+
+Reardon glanced at her, and wished to make some reply, but he could not
+say what was in his thoughts.
+
+He worked on at his story. Before he had reached the end of it,
+‘Margaret Home’ was published, and one day arrived a parcel containing
+the six copies to which an author is traditionally entitled. Reardon was
+not so old in authorship that he could open the packet without a slight
+flutter of his pulse. The book was tastefully got up; Amy exclaimed with
+pleasure as she caught sight of the cover and lettering:
+
+‘It may succeed, Edwin. It doesn’t look like a book that fails, does
+it?’
+
+She laughed at her own childishness. But Reardon had opened one of the
+volumes, and was glancing over the beginning of a chapter.
+
+‘Good God!’ he cried. ‘What hellish torment it was to write that page!
+I did it one morning when the fog was so thick that I had to light the
+lamp. It brings cold sweat to my forehead to read the words. And to
+think that people will skim over it without a suspicion of what it
+cost the writer!--What execrable style! A potboy could write better
+narrative.’
+
+‘Who are to have copies?’
+
+‘No one, if I could help it. But I suppose your mother will expect one?’
+
+‘And--Milvain?’
+
+‘I suppose so,’ he replied indifferently. ‘But not unless he asks for
+it. Poor old Biffen, of course; though it’ll make him despise me. Then
+one for ourselves. That leaves two--to light the fire with. We have
+been rather short of fire-paper since we couldn’t afford our daily
+newspaper.’
+
+‘Will you let me give one to Mrs Carter?’
+
+‘As you please.’
+
+He took one set and added it to the row of his productions which stood
+on a topmost shelf Amy laid her hand upon his shoulder and contemplated
+the effect of this addition.
+
+‘The works of Edwin Reardon,’ she said, with a smile.
+
+‘The work, at all events--rather a different thing, unfortunately. Amy,
+if only I were back at the time when I wrote “On Neutral Ground,” and
+yet had you with me! How full my mind was in those days! Then I had only
+to look, and I saw something; now I strain my eyes, but can make out
+nothing more than nebulous grotesques. I used to sit down knowing
+so well what I had to say; now I strive to invent, and never come at
+anything. Suppose you pick up a needle with warm, supple fingers; try to
+do it when your hand is stiff and numb with cold; there’s the difference
+between my manner of work in those days and what it is now.’
+
+‘But you are going to get back your health. You will write better than
+ever.’
+
+‘We shall see. Of course there was a great deal of miserable struggle
+even then, but I remember it as insignificant compared with the hours of
+contented work. I seldom did anything in the mornings except think and
+prepare; towards evening I felt myself getting ready, and at last I sat
+down with the first lines buzzing in my head. And I used to read a great
+deal at the same time. Whilst I was writing “On Neutral Ground” I went
+solidly through the “Divina Commedia,” a canto each day. Very often I
+wrote till after midnight, but occasionally I got my quantum finished
+much earlier, and then I used to treat myself to a ramble about the
+streets. I can recall exactly the places where some of my best ideas
+came to me. You remember the scene in Prendergast’s lodgings? That
+flashed on me late one night as I was turning out of Leicester Square
+into the slum that leads to Clare Market; ah, how well I remember! And
+I went home to my garret in a state of delightful fever, and scribbled
+notes furiously before going to bed.’
+
+‘Don’t trouble; it’ll all come back to you.’
+
+‘But in those days I hadn’t to think of money. I could look forward and
+see provision for my needs. I never asked myself what I should get for
+the book; I assure you, that never came into my head--never. The work
+was done for its own sake. No hurry to finish it; if I felt that I
+wasn’t up to the mark, I just waited till the better mood returned. “On
+Neutral Ground” took me seven months; now I have to write three volumes
+in nine weeks, with the lash stinging on my back if I miss a day.’
+
+He brooded for a little.
+
+‘I suppose there must be some rich man somewhere who has read one or two
+of my books with a certain interest. If only I could encounter him and
+tell him plainly what a cursed state I am in, perhaps he would help me
+to some means of earning a couple of pounds a week. One has heard of
+such things.’
+
+‘In the old days.’
+
+‘Yes. I doubt if it ever happens now. Coleridge wouldn’t so easily meet
+with his Gillman nowadays. Well, I am not a Coleridge, and I don’t ask
+to be lodged under any man’s roof; but if I could earn money enough to
+leave me good long evenings unspoilt by fear of the workhouse--’
+
+Amy turned away, and presently went to look after her little boy.
+
+A few days after this they had a visit from Milvain. He came about ten
+o’clock in the evening.
+
+‘I’m not going to stay,’ he announced. ‘But where’s my copy of “Margaret
+Home”? I am to have one, I suppose?’
+
+‘I have no particular desire that you should read it,’ returned Reardon.
+
+‘But I HAVE read it, my dear fellow. Got it from the library on the day
+of publication; I had a suspicion that you wouldn’t send me a copy. But
+I must possess your opera omnia.’
+
+‘Here it is. Hide it away somewhere.--You may as well sit down for a few
+minutes.’
+
+‘I confess I should like to talk about the book, if you don’t mind.
+It isn’t so utterly and damnably bad as you make out, you know. The
+misfortune was that you had to make three volumes of it. If I had leave
+to cut it down to one, it would do you credit.
+
+The motive is good enough.’
+
+‘Yes. Just good enough to show how badly it’s managed.’
+
+Milvain began to expatiate on that well-worn topic, the evils of the
+three-volume system.
+
+‘A triple-headed monster, sucking the blood of English novelists.
+One might design an allegorical cartoon for a comic literary paper.
+By-the-bye, why doesn’t such a thing exist?--a weekly paper treating of
+things and people literary in a facetious spirit. It would be caviare
+to the general, but might be supported, I should think. The editor would
+probably be assassinated, though.’
+
+‘For anyone in my position,’ said Reardon, ‘how is it possible to
+abandon the three volumes? It is a question of payment. An author of
+moderate repute may live on a yearly three-volume novel--I mean the man
+who is obliged to sell his book out and out, and who gets from one to
+two hundred pounds for it. But he would have to produce four one-volume
+novels to obtain the same income; and I doubt whether he could get so
+many published within the twelve months. And here comes in the benefit
+of the libraries; from the commercial point of view the libraries are
+indispensable. Do you suppose the public would support the present
+number of novelists if each book had to be purchased? A sudden change to
+that system would throw three-fourths of the novelists out of work.’
+
+‘But there’s no reason why the libraries shouldn’t circulate novels in
+one volume.’
+
+‘Profits would be less, I suppose. People would take the minimum
+subscription.’
+
+‘Well, to go to the concrete, what about your own one-volume?’
+
+‘All but done.’
+
+‘And you’ll offer it to Jedwood? Go and see him personally. He’s a very
+decent fellow, I believe.’
+
+Milvain stayed only half an hour. The days when he was wont to sit and
+talk at large through a whole evening were no more; partly because of
+his diminished leisure, but also for a less simple reason--the growth of
+something like estrangement between him and Reardon.
+
+‘You didn’t mention your plans,’ said Amy, when the visitor had been
+gone some time.
+
+‘No.’
+
+Reardon was content with the negative, and his wife made no further
+remark.
+
+The result of advertising the flat was that two or three persons called
+to make inspection. One of them, a man of military appearance, showed
+himself anxious to come to terms; he was willing to take the tenement
+from next quarter-day (June), but wished, if possible, to enter upon
+possession sooner than that.
+
+‘Nothing could be better,’ said Amy in colloquy with her husband. ‘If he
+will pay for the extra time, we shall be only too glad.’
+
+Reardon mused and looked gloomy. He could not bring himself to regard
+the experiment before him with hopefulness, and his heart sank at the
+thought of parting from Amy.
+
+‘You are very anxious to get rid of me,’ he answered, trying to smile.
+
+‘Yes, I am,’ she exclaimed; ‘but simply for your own good, as you know
+very well.’
+
+‘Suppose I can’t sell this book?’
+
+‘You will have a few pounds. Send your “Pliny” article to The Wayside.
+If you come to an end of all your money, mother shall lend you some.’
+
+‘I am not very likely to do much work in that case.’
+
+‘Oh, but you will sell the book. You’ll get twenty pounds for it, and
+that alone would keep you for three months. Think--three months of the
+best part of the year at the seaside! Oh, you will do wonders!’
+
+The furniture was to be housed at Mrs Yule’s. Neither of them durst
+speak of selling it; that would have sounded too ominous. As for the
+locality of Reardon’s retreat, Amy herself had suggested Worthing, which
+she knew from a visit a few years ago; the advantages were its proximity
+to London, and the likelihood that very cheap lodgings could be found
+either in the town or near it. One room would suffice for the hapless
+author, and his expenses, beyond a trifling rent, would be confined to
+mere food.
+
+Oh yes, he might manage on considerably less than a pound a week.
+
+Amy was in much better spirits than for a long time; she appeared to
+have convinced herself that there was no doubt of the issue of this
+perilous scheme; that her husband would write a notable book, receive a
+satisfactory price for it, and so re-establish their home. Yet her moods
+varied greatly. After all, there was delay in the letting of the flat,
+and this caused her annoyance. It was whilst the negotiations were still
+pending that she made her call upon Maud and Dora Milvain; Reardon did
+not know of her intention to visit them until it had been carried out.
+She mentioned what she had done in almost a casual manner.
+
+‘I had to get it over,’ she said, when Reardon exhibited surprise, ‘and
+I don’t think I made a very favourable impression.’
+
+‘You told them, I suppose, what we are going to do?’
+
+‘No; I didn’t say a word of it.’
+
+‘But why not? It can’t be kept a secret. Milvain will have heard of it
+already, I should think, from your mother.’
+
+‘From mother? But it’s the rarest thing for him to go there. Do you
+imagine he is a constant visitor? I thought it better to say nothing
+until the thing is actually done. Who knows what may happen?’
+
+She was in a strange, nervous state, and Reardon regarded her uneasily.
+He talked very little in these days, and passed hours in dark reverie.
+His book was finished, and he awaited the publisher’s decision.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. REJECTION
+
+One of Reardon’s minor worries at this time was the fear that by chance
+he might come upon a review of ‘Margaret Home.’ Since the publication of
+his first book he had avoided as far as possible all knowledge of what
+the critics had to say about him; his nervous temperament could not bear
+the agitation of reading these remarks, which, however inept, define
+an author and his work to so many people incapable of judging for
+themselves. No man or woman could tell him anything in the way of praise
+or blame which he did not already know quite well; commendation was
+pleasant, but it so often aimed amiss, and censure was for the most part
+so unintelligent. In the case of this latest novel he dreaded the
+sight of a review as he would have done a gash from a rusty knife.
+The judgments could not but be damnatory, and their expression in
+journalistic phrase would disturb his mind with evil rancour. No one
+would have insight enough to appreciate the nature and cause of his
+book’s demerits; every comment would be wide of the mark; sneer,
+ridicule, trite objection, would but madden him with a sense of
+injustice.
+
+His position was illogical--one result of the moral weakness which was
+allied with his aesthetic sensibility. Putting aside the worthlessness
+of current reviewing, the critic of an isolated book has of course
+nothing to do with its author’s state of mind and body any more than
+with the condition of his purse. Reardon would have granted this, but he
+could not command his emotions. He was in passionate revolt against
+the base necessities which compelled him to put forth work in no way
+representing his healthy powers, his artistic criterion. Not he had
+written this book, but his accursed poverty. To assail him as the author
+was, in his feeling, to be guilty of brutal insult. When by ill-hap a
+notice in one of the daily papers came under his eyes, it made his blood
+boil with a fierceness of hatred only possible to him in a profoundly
+morbid condition; he could not steady his hand for half an hour after.
+Yet this particular critic only said what was quite true--that the novel
+contained not a single striking scene and not one living character;
+Reardon had expressed himself about it in almost identical terms. But
+he saw himself in the position of one sickly and all but destitute man
+against a relentless world, and every blow directed against him appeared
+dastardly. He could have cried ‘Coward!’ to the writer who wounded him.
+
+The would-be sensational story which was now in Mr Jedwood’s hands had
+perhaps more merit than ‘Margaret Home’; its brevity, and the fact that
+nothing more was aimed at than a concatenation of brisk events, made it
+not unreadable. But Reardon thought of it with humiliation. If it
+were published as his next work it would afford final proof to such
+sympathetic readers as he might still retain that he had hopelessly
+written himself out, and was now endeavouring to adapt himself to an
+inferior public. In spite of his dire necessities he now and then hoped
+that Jedwood might refuse the thing.
+
+At moments he looked with sanguine eagerness to the three or four months
+he was about to spend in retirement, but such impulses were the mere
+outcome of his nervous disease. He had no faith in himself under
+present conditions; the permanence of his sufferings would mean the sure
+destruction of powers he still possessed, though they were not at
+his command. Yet he believed that his mind was made up as to the
+advisability of trying this last resource; he was impatient for the day
+of departure, and in the interval merely killed time as best he might.
+He could not read, and did not attempt to gather ideas for his next
+book; the delusion that his mind was resting made an excuse to him for
+the barrenness of day after day. His ‘Pliny’ article had been despatched
+to The Wayside, and would possibly be accepted. But he did not trouble
+himself about this or other details; it was as though his mind could do
+nothing more than grasp the bald fact of impending destitution; with the
+steps towards that final stage he seemed to have little concern.
+
+One evening he set forth to make a call upon Harold Biffen, whom he had
+not seen since the realist called to acknowledge the receipt of a copy
+of ‘Margaret Home’ left at his lodgings when he was out. Biffen resided
+in Clipstone Street, a thoroughfare discoverable in the dim district
+which lies between Portland Place and Tottenham Court Road. On knocking
+at the door of the lodging-house, Reardon learnt that his friend was at
+home. He ascended to the third storey and tapped at a door which allowed
+rays of lamplight to issue from great gaps above and below. A sound of
+voices came from within, and on entering he perceived that Biffen was
+engaged with a pupil.
+
+‘They didn’t tell me you had a visitor,’ he said. ‘I’ll call again
+later.’
+
+‘No need to go away,’ replied Biffen, coming forward to shake hands.
+‘Take a book for a few minutes. Mr Baker won’t mind.’
+
+It was a very small room, with a ceiling so low that the tall lodger
+could only just stand upright with safety; perhaps three inches
+intervened between his head and the plaster, which was cracked, grimy,
+cobwebby. A small scrap of weedy carpet lay in front of the fireplace;
+elsewhere the chinky boards were unconcealed. The furniture consisted of
+a round table, which kept such imperfect balance on its central support
+that the lamp entrusted to it looked in a dangerous position, of three
+small cane-bottomed chairs, a small wash-hand-stand with sundry rude
+appurtenances, and a chair-bedstead which the tenant opened at the hour
+of repose and spread with certain primitive trappings at present kept
+in a cupboard. There was no bookcase, but a few hundred battered volumes
+were arranged some on the floor and some on a rough chest. The weather
+was too characteristic of an English spring to make an empty grate
+agreeable to the eye, but Biffen held it an axiom that fires were
+unseasonable after the first of May.
+
+The individual referred to as Mr Baker, who sat at the table in the
+attitude of a student, was a robust, hard-featured, black-haired young
+man of two-or three-and-twenty; judging from his weather-beaten cheeks
+and huge hands, as well as from the garb he wore, one would have
+presumed that study was not his normal occupation. There was something
+of the riverside about him; he might be a dockman, or even a bargeman.
+He looked intelligent, however, and bore himself with much modesty.
+
+‘Now do endeavour to write in shorter sentences,’ said Biffen, who sat
+down by him and resumed the lesson, Reardon having taken up a volume.
+‘This isn’t bad--it isn’t bad at all, I assure you; but you have put all
+you had to say into three appalling periods, whereas you ought to have
+made about a dozen.’
+
+‘There it is, sir; there it is!’ exclaimed the man, smoothing his wiry
+hair. ‘I can’t break it up. The thoughts come in a lump, if I may say
+so. To break it up--there’s the art of compersition.’
+
+Reardon could not refrain from a glance at the speaker, and Biffen,
+whose manner was very grave and kindly, turned to his friend with an
+explanation of the difficulties with which the student was struggling.
+
+‘Mr Baker is preparing for the examination of the outdoor Customs
+Department. One of the subjects is English composition, and really, you
+know, that isn’t quite such a simple matter as some people think.’
+
+Baker beamed upon the visitor with a homely, good-natured smile.
+
+‘I can make headway with the other things, sir,’ he said, striking the
+table lightly with his clenched fist. ‘There’s handwriting, there’s
+orthography, there’s arithmetic; I’m not afraid of one of ‘em, as Mr
+Biffen’ll tell you, sir. But when it comes to compersition, that brings
+out the sweat on my forehead, I do assure you.
+
+‘You’re not the only man in that case, Mr Baker,’ replied Reardon.
+
+‘It’s thought a tough job in general, is it, sir?’
+
+‘It is indeed.’
+
+‘Two hundred marks for compersition,’ continued the man. ‘Now how many
+would they have given me for this bit of a try, Mr Biffen?’
+
+‘Well, well; I can’t exactly say. But you improve; you improve,
+decidedly. Peg away for another week or two.’
+
+‘Oh, don’t fear me, sir! I’m not easily beaten when I’ve set my mind on
+a thing, and I’ll break up the compersition yet, see if I don’t!’
+
+Again his fist descended upon the table in a way that reminded one of
+the steam-hammer cracking a nut.
+
+The lesson proceeded for about ten minutes, Reardon, under pretence of
+reading, following it with as much amusement as anything could excite
+in him nowadays. At length Mr Baker stood up, collected his papers and
+books, and seemed about to depart; but, after certain uneasy movements
+and glances, he said to Biffen in a subdued voice:
+
+‘Perhaps I might speak to you outside the door a minute, sir?’
+
+He and the teacher went out, the door closed, and Reardon heard sounds
+of muffled conversation. In a minute or two a heavy footstep descended
+the stairs, and Biffen re-entered the room.
+
+‘Now that’s a good, honest fellow,’ he said, in an amused tone. ‘It’s
+my pay-night, but he didn’t like to fork out money before you. A very
+unusual delicacy in a man of that standing. He pays me sixpence for an
+hour’s lesson; that brings me two shillings a week. I sometimes feel a
+little ashamed to take his money, but then the fact is he’s a good deal
+better off than I am.’
+
+‘Will he get a place in the Customs, do you think?’
+
+‘Oh, I’ve no doubt of it. If it seemed unlikely, I should have told him
+so before this. To be sure, that’s a point I have often to consider,
+and once or twice my delicacy has asserted itself at the expense of my
+pocket. There was a poor consumptive lad came to me not long ago and
+wanted Latin lessons; talked about going in for the London Matric., on
+his way to the pulpit. I couldn’t stand it. After a lesson or two I told
+him his cough was too bad, and he had no right to study until he got
+into better health; that was better, I think, than saying plainly he had
+no chance on earth. But the food I bought with his money was choking me.
+Oh yes, Baker will make his way right enough. A good, modest fellow.
+
+You noticed how respectfully he spoke to me? It doesn’t make any
+difference to him that I live in a garret like this; I’m a man of
+education, and he can separate this fact from my surroundings.’
+
+‘Biffen, why don’t you get some decent position? Surely you might.’
+
+‘What position? No school would take me; I have neither credentials
+nor conventional clothing. For the same reason I couldn’t get a private
+tutorship in a rich family. No, no; it’s all right. I keep myself alive,
+and I get on with my work.--By-the-bye, I’ve decided to write a book
+called “Mr Bailey, Grocer.”’
+
+‘What’s the idea?’
+
+‘An objectionable word, that. Better say: “What’s the reality?” Well, Mr
+Bailey is a grocer in a little street by here. I have dealt with him
+for a long time, and as he’s a talkative fellow I’ve come to know a good
+deal about him and his history. He’s fond of talking about the struggle
+he had in his first year of business. He had no money of his own, but
+he married a woman who had saved forty-five pounds out of a cat’s-meat
+business. You should see that woman! A big, coarse, squinting creature;
+at the time of the marriage she was a widow and forty-two years old.
+Now I’m going to tell the true story of Mr Bailey’s marriage and of his
+progress as a grocer. It’ll be a great book--a great book!’
+
+He walked up and down the room, fervid with his conception.
+
+‘There’ll be nothing bestial in it, you know. The decently ignoble--as
+I’ve so often said. The thing’ll take me a year at least. I shall do
+it slowly, lovingly. One volume, of course; the length of the ordinary
+French novel. There’s something fine in the title, don’t you think? “Mr
+Bailey, Grocer”!’
+
+‘I envy you, old fellow,’ said Reardon, sighing. ‘You have the right
+fire in you; you have zeal and energy. Well, what do you think I have
+decided to do?’
+
+‘I should like to hear.’
+
+Reardon gave an account of his project. The other listened gravely,
+seated across a chair with his arms on the back.
+
+‘Your wife is in agreement with this?’
+
+‘Oh yes.’ He could not bring himself to say that Amy had suggested it.
+‘She has great hopes that the change will be just what I need.’
+
+‘I should say so too--if you were going to rest. But if you have to set
+to work at once it seems to me very doubtful.’
+
+‘Never mind. For Heaven’s sake don’t discourage me! If this fails I
+think--upon my soul, I think I shall kill myself.’
+
+‘Pooh!’ exclaimed Biffen, gently. ‘With a wife like yours?’
+
+‘Just because of that.’
+
+‘No, no; there’ll be some way out of it. By-the-bye, I passed Mrs
+Reardon this morning, but she didn’t see me. It was in Tottenham Court
+Road, and Milvain was with her. I felt myself too seedy in appearance to
+stop and speak.’
+
+‘In Tottenham Court Road?’
+
+That was not the detail of the story which chiefly held Reardon’s
+attention, yet he did not purposely make a misleading remark. His mind
+involuntarily played this trick.
+
+‘I only saw them just as they were passing,’ pursued Biffen. ‘Oh, I knew
+I had something to tell you! Have you heard that Whelpdale is going to
+be married?’
+
+Reardon shook his head in a preoccupied way.
+
+‘I had a note from him this morning, telling me. He asked me to look him
+up to-night, and he’d let me know all about it. Let’s go together, shall
+we?’
+
+‘I don’t feel much in the humour for Whelpdale. I’ll walk with you, and
+go on home.’
+
+‘No, no; come and see him. It’ll do you good to talk a little.--But I
+must positively eat a mouthful before we go. I’m afraid you won’t care
+to join?’
+
+He opened his cupboard, and brought out a loaf of bread and a saucer of
+dripping, with salt and pepper.
+
+‘Better dripping this than I’ve had for a long time. I get it at Mr
+Bailey’s--that isn’t his real name, of course. He assures me it comes
+from a large hotel where his wife’s sister is a kitchen-maid, and that
+it’s perfectly pure; they very often mix flour with it, you know, and
+perhaps more obnoxious things that an economical man doesn’t care
+to reflect upon. Now, with a little pepper and salt, this bread and
+dripping is as appetising food as I know. I often make a dinner of it.’
+
+‘I have done the same myself before now. Do you ever buy pease-pudding?’
+
+‘I should think so! I get magnificent pennyworths at a shop in Cleveland
+Street, of a very rich quality indeed. Excellent faggots they have
+there, too. I’ll give you a supper of them some night before you go.’
+
+Biffen rose to enthusiasm in the contemplation of these dainties.
+
+He ate his bread and dripping with knife and fork; this always made the
+fare seem more substantial.
+
+‘Is it very cold out?’ he asked, rising from the table. ‘Need I put my
+overcoat on?’
+
+This overcoat, purchased second-hand three years ago, hung on a
+door-nail. Comparative ease of circumstances had restored to the
+realist his ordinary indoor garment--a morning coat of the cloth called
+diagonal, rather large for him, but in better preservation than the
+other articles of his attire.
+
+Reardon judging the overcoat necessary, his friend carefully brushed it
+and drew it on with a caution which probably had reference to
+starting seams. Then he put into the pocket his pipe, his pouch, his
+tobacco-stopper, and his matches, murmuring to himself a Greek iambic
+line which had come into his head a propos of nothing obvious.
+
+‘Go out,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll extinguish the lamp. Mind the second
+step down, as usual.’
+
+They issued into Clipstone Street, turned northward, crossed Euston
+Road, and came into Albany Street, where, in a house of decent exterior,
+Mr Whelpdale had his present abode. A girl who opened the door requested
+them to walk up to the topmost storey.
+
+A cheery voice called to them from within the room at which they
+knocked. This lodging spoke more distinctly of civilisation than that
+inhabited by Biffen; it contained the minimum supply of furniture needed
+to give it somewhat the appearance of a study, but the articles were in
+good condition. One end of the room was concealed by a chintz curtain;
+scrutiny would have discovered behind the draping the essential
+equipments of a bedchamber.
+
+Mr Whelpdale sat by the fire, smoking a cigar. He was a plain-featured
+but graceful and refined-looking man of thirty, with wavy chestnut
+hair and a trimmed beard which became him well. At present he wore a
+dressing-gown and was without collar.
+
+‘Welcome, gents both!’ he cried facetiously. ‘Ages since I saw you,
+Reardon. I’ve been reading your new book. Uncommonly good things in it
+here and there--uncommonly good.’
+
+Whelpdale had the weakness of being unable to tell a disagreeable
+truth, and a tendency to flattery which had always made Reardon rather
+uncomfortable in his society. Though there was no need whatever of his
+mentioning ‘Margaret Home,’ he preferred to frame smooth fictions rather
+than keep a silence which might be construed as unfavourable criticism.
+
+‘In the last volume,’ he went on, ‘I think there are one or two things
+as good as you ever did; I do indeed.’
+
+Reardon made no acknowledgment of these remarks. They irritated him, for
+he knew their insincerity. Biffen, understanding his friend’s silence,
+struck in on another subject.
+
+‘Who is this lady of whom you write to me?’
+
+‘Ah, quite a story! I’m going to be married, Reardon. A serious
+marriage. Light your pipes, and I’ll tell you all about it. Startled
+you, I suppose, Biffen? Unlikely news, eh? Some people would call it a
+rash step, I dare say. We shall just take another room in this house,
+that’s all. I think I can count upon an income of a couple of guineas
+a week, and I have plans without end that are pretty sure to bring in
+coin.’
+
+Reardon did not care to smoke, but Biffen lit his pipe and waited with
+grave interest for the romantic narrative. Whenever he heard of a poor
+man’s persuading a woman to share his poverty he was eager of details;
+perchance he himself might yet have that heavenly good fortune.
+
+‘Well,’ began Whelpdale, crossing his legs and watching a wreath he had
+just puffed from the cigar, ‘you know all about my literary advisership.
+The business goes on reasonably well. I’m going to extend it in ways
+I’ll explain to you presently. About six weeks ago I received a letter
+from a lady who referred to my advertisements, and said she had the
+manuscript of a novel which she would like to offer for my opinion. Two
+publishers had refused it, but one with complimentary phrases, and she
+hoped it mightn’t be impossible to put the thing into acceptable shape.
+Of course I wrote optimistically, and the manuscript was sent to me.
+
+Well, it wasn’t actually bad--by Jove! you should have seen some of
+the things I have been asked to recommend to publishers! It wasn’t
+hopelessly bad by any means, and I gave serious thought to it. After
+exchange of several letters I asked the authoress to come and see me,
+that we might save postage stamps and talk things over. She hadn’t
+given me her address: I had to direct to a stationer’s in Bayswater. She
+agreed to come, and did come. I had formed a sort of idea, but of course
+I was quite wrong. Imagine my excitement when there came in a
+very beautiful girl, a tremendously interesting girl, about
+one-and-twenty--just the kind of girl that most strongly appeals to
+me; dark, pale, rather consumptive-looking, slender--no, there’s no
+describing her; there really isn’t! You must wait till you see her.’
+
+‘I hope the consumption was only a figure of speech,’ remarked Biffen in
+his grave way.
+
+‘Oh, there’s nothing serious the matter, I think. A slight cough, poor
+girl.’
+
+‘The deuce!’ interjected Reardon.
+
+‘Oh, nothing, nothing! It’ll be all right. Well, now, of course we
+talked over the story--in good earnest, you know. Little by little I
+induced her to speak of herself--this, after she’d come two or three
+times--and she told me lamentable things. She was absolutely alone in
+London, and hadn’t had sufficient food for weeks; had sold all she could
+of her clothing; and so on. Her home was in Birmingham; she had been
+driven away by the brutality of a stepmother; a friend lent her a few
+pounds, and she came to London with an unfinished novel. Well, you know,
+this kind of thing would be enough to make me soft-hearted to any girl,
+let alone one who, to begin with, was absolutely my ideal. When she
+began to express a fear that I was giving too much time to her, that she
+wouldn’t be able to pay my fees, and so on, I could restrain myself
+no longer. On the spot I asked her to marry me. I didn’t practise any
+deception, mind. I told her I was a poor devil who had failed as a
+realistic novelist and was earning bread in haphazard ways; and I
+explained frankly that I thought we might carry on various kinds of
+business together: she might go on with her novel-writing, and--so on.
+But she was frightened; I had been too abrupt. That’s a fault of mine,
+you know; but I was so confoundedly afraid of losing her. And I told her
+as much, plainly.’
+
+Biffen smiled.
+
+‘This would be exciting,’ he said, ‘if we didn’t know the end of the
+story.’
+
+‘Yes. Pity I didn’t keep it a secret. Well, she wouldn’t say yes, but
+I could see that she didn’t absolutely say no. “In any case,” I said,
+“you’ll let me see you often? Fees be hanged! I’ll work day and night
+for you. I’ll do my utmost to get your novel accepted.” And I implored
+her to let me lend her a little money. It was very difficult to persuade
+her, but at last she accepted a few shillings. I could see in her face
+that she was hungry. Just imagine! A beautiful girl absolutely hungry;
+it drove me frantic!
+
+But that was a great point gained. After that we saw each other almost
+every day, and at last--she consented! Did indeed! I can hardly believe
+it yet. We shall be married in a fortnight’s time.’
+
+‘I congratulate you,’ said Reardon.
+
+‘So do I,’ sighed Biffen.
+
+‘The day before yesterday she went to Birmingham to see her father and
+tell him all about the affair. I agreed with her it was as well; the old
+fellow isn’t badly off; and he may forgive her for running away, though
+he’s under his wife’s thumb, it appears. I had a note yesterday. She had
+gone to a friend’s house for the first day. I hoped to have heard again
+this morning--must to-morrow, in any case. I live, as you may imagine,
+in wild excitement. Of course, if the old man stumps up a wedding
+present, all the better. But I don’t care; we’ll make a living somehow.
+What do you think I’m writing just now? An author’s Guide. You know the
+kind of thing; they sell splendidly. Of course I shall make it a good
+advertisement of my business. Then I have a splendid idea. I’m going to
+advertise: “Novel-writing taught in ten lessons!” What do you think
+of that? No swindle; not a bit of it. I am quite capable of giving the
+ordinary man or woman ten very useful lessons. I’ve been working out the
+scheme; it would amuse you vastly, Reardon. The first lesson deals with
+the question of subjects, local colour--that kind of thing. I gravely
+advise people, if they possibly can, to write of the wealthy middle
+class; that’s the popular subject, you know. Lords and ladies are all
+very well, but the real thing to take is a story about people who have
+no titles, but live in good Philistine style. I urge study of horsey
+matters especially; that’s very important. You must be well up, too,
+in military grades, know about Sandhurst, and so on. Boating is an
+important topic. You see? Oh, I shall make a great thing of this. I
+shall teach my wife carefully, and then let her advertise lessons to
+girls; they’ll prefer coming to a woman, you know.’
+
+Biffen leant back and laughed noisily.
+
+‘How much shall you charge for the course?’ asked Reardon.
+
+‘That’ll depend. I shan’t refuse a guinea or two; but some people may be
+made to pay five, perhaps.’
+
+Someone knocked at the door, and a voice said:
+
+‘A letter for you, Mr Whelpdale.’
+
+He started up, and came back into the room with face illuminated.
+
+‘Yes, it’s from Birmingham; posted this morning. Look what an exquisite
+hand she writes!’
+
+He tore open the envelope. In delicacy Reardon and Biffen averted their
+eyes. There was silence for a minute, then a strange ejaculation from
+Whelpdale caused his friends to look up at him. He had gone pale, and
+was frowning at the sheet of paper which trembled in his hand.
+
+‘No bad news, I hope?’ Biffen ventured to say.
+
+Whelpdale let himself sink into a chair.
+
+‘Now if this isn’t too bad!’ he exclaimed in a thick voice. ‘If
+this isn’t monstrously unkind! I never heard anything so gross as
+this--never!’
+
+The two waited, trying not to smile.
+
+‘She writes--that she has met an old lover--in Birmingham--that it was
+with him she had quarrelled-not with her father at all--that she ran
+away to annoy him and frighten him--that she has made it up again, and
+they’re going to be married!’
+
+He let the sheet fall, and looked so utterly woebegone that his friends
+at once exerted themselves to offer such consolation as the case
+admitted of. Reardon thought better of Whelpdale for this emotion; he
+had not believed him capable of it.
+
+‘It isn’t a case of vulgar cheating!’ cried the forsaken one presently.
+‘Don’t go away thinking that. She writes in real distress and
+penitence--she does indeed. Oh, the devil! Why did I let her go to
+Birmingham? A fortnight more, and I should have had her safe. But it’s
+just like my luck. Do you know that this is the third time I’ve been
+engaged to be married?--no, by Jove, the fourth! And every time the girl
+has got out of it at the last moment. What an unlucky beast I am! A girl
+who was positively my ideal! I haven’t even a photograph of her to show
+you; but you’d be astonished at her face. Why, in the devil’s name, did
+I let her go to Birmingham?’
+
+The visitors had risen. They felt uncomfortable, for it seemed as if
+Whelpdale might find vent for his distress in tears.
+
+‘We had better leave you,’ suggested Biffen. ‘It’s very hard--it is
+indeed.’
+
+‘Look here! Read the letter for yourselves! Do!’
+
+They declined, and begged him not to insist.
+
+‘But I want you to see what kind of girl she is. It isn’t a case of
+farcical deceiving--not a bit of it! She implores me to forgive her, and
+blames herself no end. Just my luck! The third--no, the fourth time, by
+Jove! Never was such an unlucky fellow with women. It’s because I’m so
+damnably poor; that’s it, of course!’
+
+Reardon and his companion succeeded at length in getting away, though
+not till they had heard the virtues and beauty of the vanished girl
+described again and again in much detail. Both were in a state of
+depression as they left the house.
+
+‘What think you of this story?’ asked Biffen. ‘Is this possible in a
+woman of any merit?’
+
+‘Anything is possible in a woman,’ Reardon replied, harshly.
+
+They walked in silence as far as Portland Road Station. There, with an
+assurance that he would come to a garret-supper before leaving London,
+Reardon parted from his friend and turned westward.
+
+As soon as he had entered, Amy’s voice called to him:
+
+‘Here’s a letter from Jedwood, Edwin!’
+
+He stepped into the study.
+
+‘It came just after you went out, and it has been all I could do to
+resist the temptation to open it.’
+
+‘Why shouldn’t you have opened it?’ said her husband, carelessly.
+
+He tried to do so himself, but his shaking hand thwarted him at first.
+Succeeding at length, he found a letter in the publisher’s own writing,
+and the first word that caught his attention was ‘regret.’ With an angry
+effort to command himself he ran through the communication, then held it
+out to Amy.
+
+She read, and her countenance fell. Mr Jedwood regretted that the story
+offered to him did not seem likely to please that particular public to
+whom his series of one-volume novels made appeal. He hoped it would
+be understood that, in declining, he by no means expressed an adverse
+judgment on the story itself &c.
+
+‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ said Reardon. ‘I believe he is quite right.
+The thing is too empty to please the better kind of readers, yet not
+vulgar enough to please the worse.’
+
+‘But you’ll try someone else?’
+
+‘I don’t think it’s much use.’
+
+They sat opposite each other, and kept silence. Jedwood’s letter slipped
+from Amy’s lap to the ground.
+
+‘So,’ said Reardon, presently, ‘I don’t see how our plan is to be
+carried out.’
+
+‘Oh, it must be!’
+
+‘But how?’
+
+‘You’ll get seven or eight pounds from The Wayside. And--hadn’t we
+better sell the furniture, instead of--’
+
+His look checked her.
+
+‘It seems to me, Amy, that your one desire is to get away from me, on
+whatever terms.’
+
+‘Don’t begin that over again!’ she exclaimed, fretfully. ‘If you don’t
+believe what I say--’
+
+They were both in a state of intolerable nervous tension. Their voices
+quivered, and their eyes had an unnatural brightness.
+
+‘If we sell the furniture,’ pursued Reardon, ‘that means you’ll never
+come back to me. You wish to save yourself and the child from the hard
+life that seems to be before us.’
+
+‘Yes, I do; but not by deserting you. I want you to go and work for us
+all, so that we may live more happily before long. Oh, how wretched this
+is!’
+
+She burst into hysterical weeping. But Reardon, instead of attempting to
+soothe her, went into the next room, where he sat for a long time in
+the dark. When he returned Amy was calm again; her face expressed a cold
+misery.
+
+‘Where did you go this morning?’ he asked, as if wishing to talk of
+common things.
+
+‘I told you. I went to buy those things for Willie.’
+
+‘Oh yes.’
+
+There was a silence.
+
+‘Biffen passed you in Tottenham Court Road,’ he added.
+
+‘I didn’t see him.’
+
+‘No; he said you didn’t.’
+
+‘Perhaps,’ said Amy, ‘it was just when I was speaking to Mr Milvain.’
+
+‘You met Milvain?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
+
+‘I’m sure I don’t know. I can’t mention every trifle that happens.’
+
+‘No, of course not.’
+
+Amy closed her eyes, as if in weariness, and for a minute or two Reardon
+observed her countenance.
+
+‘So you think we had better sell the furniture.’
+
+‘I shall say nothing more about it. You must do as seems best to you,
+Edwin.’
+
+‘Are you going to see your mother to-morrow?’
+
+‘Yes. I thought you would like to come too.’
+
+‘No; there’s no good in my going.’
+
+He again rose, and that night they talked no more of their difficulties,
+though on the morrow (Sunday) it would be necessary to decide their
+course in every detail.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. THE PARTING
+
+Amy did not go to church. Before her marriage she had done so as a mere
+matter of course, accompanying her mother, but Reardon’s attitude with
+regard to the popular religion speedily became her own; she let the
+subject lapse from her mind, and cared neither to defend nor to attack
+where dogma was concerned. She had no sympathies with mysticism; her
+nature was strongly practical, with something of zeal for intellectual
+attainment superadded.
+
+This Sunday morning she was very busy with domestic minutiae. Reardon
+noticed what looked like preparations for packing, and being as little
+disposed for conversation as his wife, he went out and walked for a
+couple of hours in the Hampstead region. Dinner over, Amy at once made
+ready for her journey to Westbourne Park.
+
+‘Then you won’t come?’ she said to her husband.
+
+‘No. I shall see your mother before I go away, but I don’t care to till
+you have settled everything.’
+
+It was half a year since he had met Mrs Yule. She never came to their
+dwelling, and Reardon could not bring himself to visit her.
+
+‘You had very much rather we didn’t sell the furniture?’ Amy asked.
+
+‘Ask your mother’s opinion. That shall decide.’
+
+‘There’ll be the expense of moving it, you know. Unless money comes from
+The Wayside, you’ll only have two or three pounds left.’
+
+Reardon made no reply. He was overcome by the bitterness of shame.
+
+‘I shall say, then,’ pursued Amy, who spoke with averted face, ‘that I
+am to go there for good on Tuesday? I mean, of course, for the summer
+months.’
+
+‘I suppose so.’
+
+Then he turned suddenly upon her.
+
+‘Do you really imagine that at the end of the summer I shall be a rich
+man? What do you mean by talking in this way? If the furniture is sold
+to supply me with a few pounds for the present, what prospect is there
+that I shall be able to buy new?’
+
+‘How can we look forward at all?’ replied Amy. ‘It has come to the
+question of how we are to subsist. I thought you would rather get money
+in this way than borrow of mother--when she has the expense of keeping
+me and Willie.’
+
+‘You are right,’ muttered Reardon. ‘Do as you think best.’ Amy was in
+her most practical mood, and would not linger for purposeless talk. A
+few minutes, and Reardon was left alone.
+
+He stood before his bookshelves and began to pick out the volumes which
+he would take away with him. Just a few, the indispensable companions of
+a bookish man who still clings to life--his Homer, his Shakespeare--
+
+The rest must be sold. He would get rid of them to-morrow morning. All
+together they might bring him a couple of sovereigns.
+
+Then his clothing. Amy had fulfilled all the domestic duties of a wife;
+his wardrobe was in as good a state as circumstances allowed. But there
+was no object in burdening himself with winter garments, for, if he
+lived through the summer at all, he would be able to repurchase such few
+poor things as were needful; at present he could only think of how to
+get together a few coins. So he made a heap of such things as might be
+sold.
+
+The furniture? If it must go, the price could scarcely be more than ten
+or twelve pounds; well, perhaps fifteen. To be sure, in this way his
+summer’s living would be abundantly provided for.
+
+He thought of Biffen enviously. Biffen, if need be, could support life
+on three or four shillings a week, happy in the thought that no mortal
+had a claim upon him. If he starved to death--well, many another lonely
+man has come to that end. If he preferred to kill himself, who would be
+distressed? Spoilt child of fortune!
+
+The bells of St Marylebone began to clang for afternoon service. In
+the idleness of dull pain his thoughts followed their summons, and he
+marvelled that there were people who could imagine it a duty or find it
+a solace to go and sit in that twilight church and listen to the droning
+of prayers. He thought of the wretched millions of mankind to whom life
+is so barren that they must needs believe in a recompense beyond the
+grave. For that he neither looked nor longed. The bitterness of his
+lot was that this world might be a sufficing paradise to him if only he
+could clutch a poor little share of current coin. He had won the world’s
+greatest prize--a woman’s love--but could not retain it because his
+pockets were empty.
+
+That he should fail to make a great name, this was grievous
+disappointment to Amy, but this alone would not have estranged her. It
+was the dread and shame of penury that made her heart cold to him. And
+he could not in his conscience scorn her for being thus affected by the
+vulgar circumstances of life; only a few supreme natures stand unshaken
+under such a trial, and though his love of Amy was still passionate, he
+knew that her place was among a certain class of women, and not on the
+isolated pinnacle where he had at first visioned her. It was entirely
+natural that she shrank at the test of squalid suffering. A little
+money, and he could have rested secure in her love, for then he would
+have been able to keep ever before her the best qualities of his heart
+and brain. Upon him, too, penury had its debasing effect; as he now
+presented himself he was not a man to be admired or loved. It was all
+simple and intelligible enough--a situation that would be misread only
+by shallow idealism.
+
+Worst of all, she was attracted by Jasper Milvain’s energy and promise
+of success. He had no ignoble suspicions of Amy, but it was impossible
+for him not to see that she habitually contrasted the young journalist,
+who laughingly made his way among men, with her grave, dispirited
+husband, who was not even capable of holding such position as he had
+gained. She enjoyed Milvain’s conversation, it put her into a good
+humour; she liked him personally, and there could be no doubt that she
+had observed a jealous tendency in Reardon’s attitude to his former
+friend--always a harmful suggestion to a woman. Formerly she had
+appreciated her husband’s superiority; she had smiled at Milvain’s
+commoner stamp of mind and character. But tedious repetition of failure
+had outwearied her, and now she saw Milvain in the sunshine of progress,
+dwelt upon the worldly advantages of gifts and a temperament such as
+his. Again, simple and intelligible enough.
+
+Living apart from her husband, she could not be expected to forswear
+society, and doubtless she would see Milvain pretty often. He called
+occasionally at Mrs Yule’s, and would not do so less often when he knew
+that Amy was to be met there. There would be chance encounters like that
+of yesterday, of which she had chosen to keep silence.
+
+A dark fear began to shadow him. In yielding thus passively to stress of
+circumstances, was he not exposing his wife to a danger which outweighed
+all the ills of poverty? As one to whom she was inestimably dear, was
+he right in allowing her to leave him, if only for a few months? He knew
+very well that a man of strong character would never have entertained
+this project. He had got into the way of thinking of himself as too weak
+to struggle against the obstacles on which Amy insisted, and of looking
+for safety in retreat; but what was to be the end of this weakness if
+the summer did not at all advance him? He knew better than Amy could how
+unlikely it was that he should recover the energies of his mind in
+so short a time and under such circumstances; only the feeble man’s
+temptation to postpone effort had made him consent to this step, and
+now that he was all but beyond turning back, the perils of which he had
+thought too little forced themselves upon his mind.
+
+He rose in anguish, and stood looking about him as if aid might
+somewhere be visible.
+
+Presently there was a knock at the front door, and on opening he beheld
+the vivacious Mr Carter. This gentleman had only made two or three calls
+here since Reardon’s marriage; his appearance was a surprise.
+
+‘I hear you are leaving town for a time,’ he exclaimed. ‘Edith told me
+yesterday, so I thought I’d look you up.’
+
+He was in spring costume, and exhaled fresh odours. The contrast between
+his prosperous animation and Reardon’s broken-spirited quietness could
+not have been more striking.
+
+‘Going away for your health, they tell me. You’ve been working too hard,
+you know. You mustn’t overdo it. And where do you think of going to?’
+
+‘It isn’t at all certain that I shall go,’ Reardon replied. ‘I thought
+of a few weeks--somewhere at the seaside.’
+
+‘I advise you to go north,’ went on Carter cheerily. ‘You want a tonic,
+you know. Get up into Scotland and do some boating and fishing--that
+kind of thing. You’d come back a new man. Edith and I had a turn up
+there last year, you know; it did me heaps of good.’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t think I should go so far as that.’
+
+‘But that’s just what you want--a regular change, something bracing. You
+don’t look at all well, that’s the fact. A winter in London tries any
+man--it does me, I know. I’ve been seedy myself these last few weeks.
+Edith wants me to take her over to Paris at the end of this month, and
+I think it isn’t a bad idea; but I’m so confoundedly busy. In the autumn
+we shall go to Norway, I think; it seems to be the right thing to do
+nowadays. Why shouldn’t you have a run over to Norway? They say it can
+be done very cheaply; the steamers take you for next to nothing.’
+
+He talked on with the joyous satisfaction of a man whose income is
+assured, and whose future teems with a succession of lively holidays.
+Reardon could make no answer to such suggestions; he sat with a fixed
+smile on his face.
+
+‘Have you heard,’ said Carter, presently, ‘that we’re opening a branch
+of the hospital in the City Road?’
+
+‘No; I hadn’t heard of it.’
+
+‘It’ll only be for out-patients. Open three mornings and three evenings
+alternately.’
+
+‘Who’ll represent you there?’
+
+‘I shall look in now and then, of course; there’ll be a clerk, like at
+the old place.’
+
+He talked of the matter in detail--of the doctors who would attend, and
+of certain new arrangements to be tried.
+
+‘Have you engaged the clerk?’ Reardon asked.
+
+‘Not yet. I think I know a man who’ll suit me, though.’
+
+‘You wouldn’t be disposed to give me the chance?’
+
+Reardon spoke huskily, and ended with a broken laugh.
+
+‘You’re rather above my figure nowadays, old man!’ exclaimed Carter,
+joining in what he considered the jest.
+
+‘Shall you pay a pound a week?’
+
+‘Twenty-five shillings. It’ll have to be a man who can be trusted to
+take money from the paying patients.’
+
+‘Well, I am serious. Will you give me the place?’
+
+Carter gazed at him, and checked another laugh.
+
+‘What the deuce do you mean?’
+
+‘The fact is,’ Reardon replied, ‘I want variety of occupation. I can’t
+stick at writing for more than a month or two at a time. It’s because I
+have tried to do so that--well, practically, I have broken down. If you
+will give me this clerkship, it will relieve me from the necessity of
+perpetually writing novels; I shall be better for it in every way. You
+know that I’m equal to the job; you can trust me; and I dare say I shall
+be more useful than most clerks you could get.’
+
+It was done, most happily done, on the first impulse. A minute more of
+pause, and he could not have faced the humiliation. His face burned, his
+tongue was parched.
+
+‘I’m floored!’ cried Carter. ‘I shouldn’t have thought--but of course,
+if you really want it. I can hardly believe yet that you’re serious,
+Reardon.’
+
+‘Why not? Will you promise me the work?’
+
+‘Well, yes.’
+
+‘When shall I have to begin?’
+
+‘The place’ll be opened to-morrow week. But how about your holiday?’
+
+‘Oh, let that stand over. It’ll be holiday enough to occupy myself in a
+new way. An old way, too; I shall enjoy it.’
+
+He laughed merrily, relieved beyond measure at having come to what
+seemed an end of his difficulties. For half an hour they continued to
+talk over the affair.
+
+‘Well, it’s a comical idea,’ said Carter, as he took his leave, ‘but you
+know your own business best.’
+
+When Amy returned, Reardon allowed her to put the child to bed before he
+sought any conversation. She came at length and sat down in the study.
+
+‘Mother advises us not to sell the furniture,’ were her first words.
+
+‘I’m glad of that, as I had quite made up my mind not to.’ There was a
+change in his way of speaking which she at once noticed.
+
+‘Have you thought of something?’
+
+‘Yes. Carter has been here, and he happened to mention that they’re
+opening an out-patient department of the hospital, in the City Road.
+He’ll want someone to help him there. I asked for the post, and he
+promised it me.’
+
+The last words were hurried, though he had resolved to speak with
+deliberation. No more feebleness; he had taken a decision, and would act
+upon it as became a responsible man.
+
+‘The post?’ said Amy. ‘What post?’
+
+‘In plain English, the clerkship. It’ll be the same work as I used to
+have--registering patients, receiving their “letters,” and so on. The
+pay is to be five-and-twenty shillings a week.’
+
+Amy sat upright and looked steadily at him.
+
+‘Is this a joke?’
+
+‘Far from it, dear. It’s a blessed deliverance.’
+
+‘You have asked Mr Carter to take you back as a clerk?’
+
+‘I have.’
+
+‘And you propose that we shall live on twenty-five shillings a week?’
+
+‘Oh no! I shall be engaged only three mornings in the week and three
+evenings. In my free time I shall do literary work, and no doubt I can
+earn fifty pounds a year by it--if I have your sympathy to help me.
+To-morrow I shall go and look for rooms some distance from here; in
+Islington, I think. We have been living far beyond our means; that must
+come to an end. We’ll have no more keeping up of sham appearances. If I
+can make my way in literature, well and good; in that case our position
+and prospects will of course change. But for the present we are poor
+people, and must live in a poor way. If our friends like to come and see
+us, they must put aside all snobbishness, and take us as we are. If they
+prefer not to come, there’ll be an excuse in our remoteness.’
+
+Amy was stroking the back of her hand. After a long silence, she said in
+a very quiet, but very resolute tone:
+
+‘I shall not consent to this.’
+
+‘In that case, Amy, I must do without your consent. The rooms will be
+taken, and our furniture transferred to them.’
+
+‘To me that will make no difference,’ returned his wife, in the same
+voice as before. ‘I have decided--as you told me to--to go with Willie
+to mother’s next Tuesday. You, of course, must do as you please. I
+should have thought a summer at the seaside would have been more helpful
+to you; but if you prefer to live in Islington--’
+
+Reardon approached her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
+
+‘Amy, are you my wife, or not?’
+
+‘I am certainly not the wife of a clerk who is paid so much a week.’
+
+He had foreseen a struggle, but without certainty of the form Amy’s
+opposition would take. For himself he meant to be gently resolute,
+calmly regardless of protest. But in a man to whom such self-assertion
+is a matter of conscious effort, tremor of the nerves will always
+interfere with the line of conduct he has conceived in advance.
+Already Reardon had spoken with far more bluntness than he proposed;
+involuntarily, his voice slipped from earnest determination to the
+note of absolutism, and, as is wont to be the case, the sound of these
+strange tones instigated him to further utterances of the same kind.
+He lost control of himself. Amy’s last reply went through him like an
+electric shock, and for the moment he was a mere husband defied by
+his wife, the male stung to exertion of his brute force against the
+physically weaker sex.
+
+‘However you regard me, you will do what I think fit. I shall not argue
+with you. If I choose to take lodgings in Whitechapel, there you will
+come and live.’
+
+He met Amy’s full look, and was conscious of that in it which
+corresponded to his own brutality. She had become suddenly a much
+older woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips were
+bloodlessly hard, there was an unknown furrow along her forehead, and
+she glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw.
+
+‘Do as YOU think fit? Indeed!’
+
+Could Amy’s voice sound like that? Great Heaven! With just such accent
+he had heard a wrangling woman retort upon her husband at the street
+corner. Is there then no essential difference between a woman of this
+world and one of that? Does the same nature lie beneath such unlike
+surfaces?
+
+He had but to do one thing: to seize her by the arm, drag her up
+from the chair, dash her back again with all his force--there, the
+transformation would be complete, they would stand towards each other
+on the natural footing. With an added curse perhaps--Instead of that, he
+choked, struggled for breath, and shed tears.
+
+Amy turned scornfully away from him. Blows and a curse would have
+overawed her, at all events for the moment; she would have felt: ‘Yes,
+he is a man, and I have put my destiny into his hands.’ His tears
+moved her to a feeling cruelly exultant; they were the sign of her
+superiority. It was she who should have wept, and never in her life had
+she been further from such display of weakness.
+
+This could not be the end, however, and she had no wish to terminate
+the scene. They stood for a minute without regarding each other, then
+Reardon faced to her.
+
+‘You refuse to live with me, then?’
+
+‘Yes, if this is the kind of life you offer me.’
+
+‘You would be more ashamed to share your husband’s misfortunes than to
+declare to everyone that you had deserted him?’
+
+‘I shall “declare to everyone” the simple truth. You have the
+opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You
+refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank
+of life. I can’t and won’t consent to that. The disgrace is yours; it’s
+fortunate for me that I have a decent home to go to.’
+
+‘Fortunate for you!--you make yourself unutterably contemptible. I have
+done nothing that justifies you in leaving me. It is for me to judge
+what I can do and what I can’t. A good woman would see no degradation in
+what I ask of you. But to run away from me just because I am poorer than
+you ever thought I should be--’
+
+He was incoherent. A thousand passionate things that he wished to say
+clashed together in his mind and confused his speech. Defeated in
+the attempt to act like a strong man, he could not yet recover
+standing-ground, knew not how to tone his utterances.
+
+‘Yes, of course, that’s how you will put it,’ said Amy. ‘That’s how you
+will represent me to your friends. My friends will see it in a different
+light.’
+
+‘They will regard you as a martyr?’
+
+‘No one shall make a martyr of me, you may be sure. I was unfortunate
+enough to marry a man who had no delicacy, no regard for my feelings.--I
+am not the first woman who has made a mistake of this kind.’
+
+‘No delicacy? No regard for your feelings?--Have I always utterly
+misunderstood you? Or has poverty changed you to a woman I can’t
+recognise?’
+
+He came nearer, and gazed desperately into her face. Not a muscle of it
+showed susceptibility to the old influences.
+
+‘Do you know, Amy,’ he added in a lower voice, ‘that if we part now, we
+part for ever?’
+
+‘I’m afraid that is only too likely.’
+
+She moved aside.
+
+‘You mean that you wish it. You are weary of me, and care for nothing
+but how to make yourself free.’
+
+‘I shall argue no more. I am tired to death of it.’
+
+‘Then say nothing, but listen for the last time to my view of the
+position we have come to. When I consented to leave you for a time, to
+go away and try to work in solitude, I was foolish and even insincere,
+both to you and to myself. I knew that I was undertaking the impossible.
+It was just putting off the evil day, that was all--putting off the time
+when I should have to say plainly: “I can’t live by literature, so I
+must look out for some other employment.” I shouldn’t have been so weak
+but that I knew how you would regard such a decision as that. I was
+afraid to tell the truth--afraid. Now, when Carter of a sudden put this
+opportunity before me, I saw all the absurdity of the arrangements we
+had made. It didn’t take me a moment to make up my mind. Anything was
+to be chosen rather than a parting from you on false pretences, a
+ridiculous affectation of hope where there was no hope.’
+
+He paused, and saw that his words had no effect upon her.
+
+‘And a grievous share of the fault lies with you, Amy. You remember very
+well when I first saw how dark the future was. I was driven even to say
+that we ought to change our mode of living; I asked you if you would be
+willing to leave this place and go into cheaper rooms. And you know what
+your answer was. Not a sign in you that you would stand by me if the
+worst came. I knew then what I had to look forward to, but I durst not
+believe it. I kept saying to myself: “She loves me, and as soon as she
+really understands--” That was all self-deception. If I had been a wise
+man, I should have spoken to you in a way you couldn’t mistake. I should
+have told you that we were living recklessly, and that I had determined
+to alter it. I have no delicacy? No regard for your feelings? Oh, if
+I had had less! I doubt whether you can even understand some of the
+considerations that weighed with me, and made me cowardly--though I once
+thought there was no refinement of sensibility that you couldn’t enter
+into. Yes, I was absurd enough to say to myself: “It will look as if I
+had consciously deceived her; she may suffer from the thought that I won
+her at all hazards, knowing that I should soon expose her to poverty and
+all sorts of humiliation.” Impossible to speak of that again; I had to
+struggle desperately on, trying to hope. Oh! if you knew--’
+
+His voice gave way for an instant.
+
+‘I don’t understand how you could be so thoughtless and heartless. You
+knew that I was almost mad with anxiety at times. Surely, any woman must
+have had the impulse to give what help was in her power. How could you
+hesitate? Had you no suspicion of what a relief and encouragement it
+would be to me, if you said: “Yes, we must go and live in a simpler
+way?” If only as a proof that you loved me, how I should have welcomed
+that! You helped me in nothing. You threw all the responsibility upon
+me--always bearing in mind, I suppose, that there was a refuge for you.
+Even now, I despise myself for saying such things of you, though I know
+so bitterly that they are true. It takes a long time to see you as such
+a different woman from the one I worshipped. In passion, I can fling out
+violent words, but they don’t yet answer to my actual feeling. It will
+be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that
+when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows
+before your eyes. But at last comes the darkness.’
+
+Amy turned towards him once more.
+
+‘Instead of saying all this, you might be proving that I am wrong. Do
+so, and I will gladly confess it.’
+
+‘That you are wrong? I don’t see your meaning.’
+
+‘You might prove that you are willing to do your utmost to save me from
+humiliation.’
+
+‘Amy, I have done my utmost. I have done more than you can imagine.’
+
+‘No. You have toiled on in illness and anxiety--I know that. But a
+chance is offered you now of working in a better way. Till that is
+tried, you have no right to give all up and try to drag me down with
+you.’
+
+‘I don’t know how to answer. I have told you so often--You can’t
+understand me!’
+
+‘I can! I can!’ Her voice trembled for the first time. ‘I know that you
+are so ready to give in to difficulties. Listen to me, and do as I bid
+you.’ She spoke in the strangest tone of command.
+
+It was command, not exhortation, but there was no harshness in her
+voice. ‘Go at once to Mr Carter. Tell him you have made a ludicrous
+mistake--in a fit of low spirits; anything you like to say. Tell him you
+of course couldn’t dream of becoming his clerk. To-night; at once! You
+understand me, Edwin? Go now, this moment.’
+
+‘Have you determined to see how weak I am? Do you wish to be able to
+despise me more completely still?’
+
+‘I am determined to be your friend, and to save you from yourself. Go at
+once! Leave all the rest to me. If I have let things take their course
+till now, it shan’t be so in future. The responsibility shall be with
+me. Only do as I tell you.’
+
+‘You know it’s impossible--’
+
+‘It is not! I will find money. No one shall be allowed to say that we
+are parting; no one has any such idea yet. You are going away for
+your health, just three summer months. I have been far more careful of
+appearances than you imagine, but you give me credit for so little. I
+will find the money you need, until you have written another book. I
+promise; I undertake it. Then I will find another home for us, of the
+proper kind. You shall have no trouble. You shall give yourself entirely
+to intellectual things.
+
+But Mr Carter must be told at once, before he can spread a report. If he
+has spoken, he must contradict what he has said.’
+
+‘But you amaze me, Amy. Do you mean to say that you look upon it as a
+veritable disgrace, my taking this clerkship?’
+
+‘I do. I can’t help my nature. I am ashamed through and through that you
+should sink to this.’
+
+‘But everyone knows that I was a clerk once!’
+
+‘Very few people know it. And then that isn’t the same thing. It
+doesn’t matter what one has been in the past. Especially a literary man;
+everyone expects to hear that he was once poor. But to fall from the
+position you now have, and to take weekly wages--you surely can’t know
+how people of my world regard that.’
+
+‘Of your world? I had thought your world was the same as mine, and knew
+nothing whatever of these imbecilities.’
+
+‘It is getting late. Go and see Mr Carter, and afterwards I will talk as
+much as you like.’
+
+He might perhaps have yielded, but the unemphasised contempt in that
+last sentence was more than he could bear. It demonstrated to him more
+completely than set terms could have done what a paltry weakling he
+would appear in Amy’s eyes if he took his hat down from the peg and set
+out to obey her orders.
+
+‘You are asking too much,’ he said, with unexpected coldness. ‘If my
+opinions are so valueless to you that you dismiss them like those of a
+troublesome child, I wonder you think it worth while to try and keep up
+appearances about me. It is very simple: make known to everyone that you
+are in no way connected with the disgrace I have brought upon myself.
+Put an advertisement in the newspapers to that effect, if you like--as
+men do about their wives’ debts. I have chosen my part. I can’t stultify
+myself to please you.’
+
+She knew that this was final. His voice had the true ring of shame in
+revolt.
+
+‘Then go your way, and I will go mine!’
+
+Amy left the room.
+
+When Reardon went into the bedchamber an hour later, he unfolded a
+chair-bedstead that stood there, threw some rugs upon it, and so lay
+down to pass the night. He did not close his eyes. Amy slept for an hour
+or two before dawn, and on waking she started up and looked anxiously
+about the room. But neither spoke.
+
+There was a pretence of ordinary breakfast; the little servant
+necessitated that. When she saw her husband preparing to go out, Amy
+asked him to come into the study.
+
+‘How long shall you be away?’ she asked, curtly.
+
+‘It is doubtful. I am going to look for rooms.’
+
+‘Then no doubt I shall be gone when you come back. There’s no object,
+now, in my staying here till to-morrow.’
+
+‘As you please.’
+
+‘Do you wish Lizzie still to come?’
+
+‘No. Please to pay her wages and dismiss her. Here is some money.’
+
+‘I think you had better let me see to that.’
+
+He flung the coin on to the table and opened the door. Amy stepped
+quickly forward and closed it again.
+
+‘This is our good-bye, is it?’ she asked, her eyes on the ground.
+
+‘As you wish it--yes.’
+
+‘You will remember that I have not wished it.’
+
+‘In that case, you have only to go with me to the new home.’
+
+‘I can’t.’
+
+‘Then you have made your choice.’
+
+She did not prevent his opening the door this time, and he passed out
+without looking at her.
+
+His return was at three in the afternoon. Amy and the child were gone;
+the servant was gone. The table in the dining-room was spread as if for
+one person’s meal.
+
+He went into the bedroom. Amy’s trunks had disappeared. The child’s cot
+was covered over. In the study, he saw that the sovereign he had thrown
+on to the table still lay in the same place.
+
+As it was a very cold day he lit a fire. Whilst it burnt up he sat
+reading a torn portion of a newspaper, and became quite interested in
+the report of a commercial meeting in the City, a thing he would never
+have glanced at under ordinary circumstances. The fragment fell at
+length from his hands; his head drooped; he sank into a troubled sleep.
+
+About six he had tea, then began the packing of the few books that were
+to go with him, and of such other things as could be enclosed in box
+or portmanteau. After a couple of hours of this occupation he could no
+longer resist his weariness, so he went to bed. Before falling asleep
+he heard the two familiar clocks strike eight; this evening they were
+in unusual accord, and the querulous notes from the workhouse sounded
+between the deeper ones from St Marylebone. Reardon tried to remember
+when he had last observed this; the matter seemed to have a peculiar
+interest for him, and in dreams he worried himself with a grotesque
+speculation thence derived.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. THE OLD HOME
+
+Before her marriage Mrs Edmund Yule was one of seven motherless sisters
+who constituted the family of a dentist slenderly provided in the matter
+of income. The pinching and paring which was a chief employment of her
+energies in those early days had disagreeable effects upon a character
+disposed rather to generosity than the reverse; during her husband’s
+lifetime she had enjoyed rather too eagerly all the good things which he
+put at her command, sometimes forgetting that a wife has duties as
+well as claims, and in her widowhood she indulged a pretentiousness
+and querulousness which were the natural, but not amiable, results of
+suddenly restricted circumstances.
+
+Like the majority of London people, she occupied a house of which the
+rent absurdly exceeded the due proportion of her income, a pleasant
+foible turned to such good account by London landlords. Whereas she
+might have lived with a good deal of modest comfort, her existence was a
+perpetual effort to conceal the squalid background of what was meant for
+the eyes of her friends and neighbours. She kept only two servants, who
+were so ill paid and so relentlessly overworked that it was seldom they
+remained with her for more than three months. In dealings with other
+people whom she perforce employed, she was often guilty of incredible
+meanness; as, for instance, when she obliged her half-starved dressmaker
+to purchase material for her, and then postponed payment alike for
+that and for the work itself to the last possible moment. This was not
+heartlessness in the strict sense of the word; the woman not only knew
+that her behaviour was shameful, she was in truth ashamed of it and
+sorry for her victims. But life was a battle. She must either crush or
+be crushed. With sufficient means, she would have defrauded no one, and
+would have behaved generously to many; with barely enough for her needs,
+she set her face and defied her feelings, inasmuch as she believed there
+was no choice.
+
+She would shed tears over a pitiful story of want, and without shadow of
+hypocrisy. It was hard, it was cruel; such things oughtn’t to be allowed
+in a world where there were so many rich people. The next day she would
+argue with her charwoman about halfpence, and end by paying the poor
+creature what she knew was inadequate and unjust. For the simplest
+reason: she hadn’t more to give, without submitting to privations which
+she considered intolerable.
+
+But whilst she could be a positive hyena to strangers, to those who were
+akin to her, and those of whom she was fond, her affectionate kindness
+was remarkable. One observes this peculiarity often enough; it reminds
+one how savage the social conflict is, in which those little groups of
+people stand serried against their common enemies; relentless to all
+others, among themselves only the more tender and zealous because of
+the ever-impending danger. No mother was ever more devoted. Her son, a
+gentleman of quite noteworthy selfishness, had board and lodging beneath
+her roof on nominal terms, and under no stress of pecuniary trouble had
+Mrs Yule called upon him to make the slightest sacrifice on her behalf.
+Her daughter she loved with profound tenderness, and had no will that
+was opposed to Amy’s. And it was characteristic of her that her children
+were never allowed to understand of what baseness she often became
+guilty in the determination to support appearances. John Yule naturally
+suspected what went on behind the scenes; on one occasion--since Amy’s
+marriage--he had involuntarily overheard a dialogue between his mother
+and a servant on the point of departing which made even him feel
+ashamed. But from Amy every paltriness and meanness had always been
+concealed with the utmost care; Mrs Yule did not scruple to lie
+heroically when in danger of being detected by her daughter.
+
+Yet this energetic lady had no social ambitions that pointed above her
+own stratum. She did not aim at intimacy with her superiors; merely at
+superiority among her intimates. Her circle was not large, but in that
+circle she must be regarded with the respect due to a woman of refined
+tastes and personal distinction. Her little dinners might be of rare
+occurrence, but to be invited must be felt a privilege. ‘Mrs Edmund
+Yule’ must sound well on people’s lips; never be the occasion of those
+peculiar smiles which she herself was rather fond of indulging at the
+mention of other people’s names.
+
+The question of Amy’s marriage had been her constant thought from the
+time when the little girl shot into a woman grown. For Amy no common
+match, no acceptance of a husband merely for money or position. Few men
+who walked the earth were mates for Amy. But years went on, and the man
+of undeniable distinction did not yet present himself. Suitors offered,
+but Amy smiled coldly at their addresses, in private not seldom
+scornfully, and her mother, though growing anxious, approved. Then of a
+sudden appeared Edwin Reardon.
+
+A literary man? Well, it was one mode of distinction. Happily, a
+novelist; novelists now and then had considerable social success.
+
+Mr Reardon, it was true, did not impress one as a man likely to push
+forward where the battle called for rude vigour, but Amy soon assured
+herself that he would have a reputation far other than that of the
+average successful storyteller. The best people would regard him; he
+would be welcomed in the penetralia of culture; superior persons would
+say: ‘Oh, I don’t read novels as a rule, but of course Mr Reardon’s--’
+If that really were to be the case, all was well; for Mrs Yule could
+appreciate social and intellectual differences.
+
+Alas! alas! What was the end of those shining anticipations?
+
+First of all, Mrs Yule began to make less frequent mention of ‘my
+son-in-law, Mr Edwin Reardon.’ Next, she never uttered his name save
+when inquiries necessitated it. Then, the most intimate of her intimates
+received little hints which were not quite easy to interpret.
+‘Mr Reardon is growing so very eccentric--has an odd distaste for
+society--occupies himself with all sorts of out-of-the-way interests.
+No, I’m afraid we shan’t have another of his novels for some time.
+I think he writes anonymously a good deal. And really, such curious
+eccentricities!’ Many were the tears she wept after her depressing
+colloquies with Amy; and, as was to be expected, she thought severely
+of the cause of these sorrows. On the last occasion when he came to
+her house she received him with such extreme civility that Reardon
+thenceforth disliked her, whereas before he had only thought her a
+good-natured and silly woman.
+
+Alas for Amy’s marriage with a man of distinction! From step to step of
+descent, till here was downright catastrophe. Bitter enough in itself,
+but most lamentable with reference to the friends of the family. How was
+it to be explained, this return of Amy to her home for several months,
+whilst her husband was no further away than Worthing? The bald, horrible
+truth--impossible! Yet Mr Milvain knew it, and the Carters must guess
+it. What colour could be thrown upon such vulgar distress?
+
+The worst was not yet. It declared itself. this May morning, when, quite
+unexpectedly, a cab drove up to the house, bringing Amy and her child,
+and her trunks, and her band-boxes, and her what-nots.
+
+From the dining-room window Mrs Yule was aware of this arrival, and in a
+few moments she learnt the unspeakable cause.
+
+She burst into tears, genuine as ever woman shed.
+
+‘There’s no use in that, mother,’ said Amy, whose temper was in a
+dangerous state. ‘Nothing worse can happen, that’s one consolation.’
+
+‘Oh, it’s disgraceful! disgraceful!’ sobbed Mrs Yule. ‘What we are to
+say I can NOT think.’
+
+‘I shall say nothing whatever. People can scarcely have the impertinence
+to ask us questions when we have shown that they are unwelcome.’
+
+‘But there are some people I can’t help giving some explanation to. My
+dear child, he is not in his right mind. I’m convinced of it, there! He
+is not in his right mind.’
+
+‘That’s nonsense, mother. He is as sane as I am.’
+
+‘But you have often said what strange things he says and does; you know
+you have, Amy. That talking in his sleep; I’ve thought a great deal of
+it since you told me about that. And--and so many other things. My love,
+I shall give it to be understood that he has become so very odd in his
+ways that--’
+
+‘I can’t have that,’ replied Amy with decision. ‘Don’t you see that in
+that case I should be behaving very badly?’
+
+‘I can’t see that at all. There are many reasons, as you know very well,
+why one shouldn’t live with a husband who is at all suspected of mental
+derangement. You have done your utmost for him. And this would be some
+sort of explanation, you know. I am so convinced that there is truth in
+it, too.’
+
+‘Of course I can’t prevent you from saying what you like, but I think it
+would be very wrong to start a rumour of this kind.’
+
+There was less resolve in this utterance. Amy mused, and looked
+wretched.
+
+‘Come up to the drawing-room, dear,’ said her mother, for they had held
+their conversation in the room nearest to the house-door. ‘What a state
+your mind must be in! Oh dear! Oh dear!’
+
+She was a slender, well-proportioned woman, still pretty in face, and
+dressed in a way that emphasised her abiding charms. Her voice had
+something of plaintiveness, and altogether she was of frailer type than
+her daughter.
+
+‘Is my room ready?’ Amy inquired on the stairs.
+
+‘I’m sorry to say it isn’t, dear, as I didn’t expect you till tomorrow.
+But it shall be seen to immediately.’
+
+This addition to the household was destined to cause grave difficulties
+with the domestic slaves. But Mrs Yule would prove equal to the
+occasion. On Amy’s behalf she would have worked her servants till they
+perished of exhaustion before her eyes.
+
+‘Use my room for the present,’ she added. ‘I think the girl has finished
+up there. But wait here; I’ll just go and see to things.’
+
+‘Things’ were not quite satisfactory, as it proved. You should have
+heard the change that came in that sweetly plaintive voice when it
+addressed the luckless housemaid. It was not brutal; not at all. But
+so sharp, hard, unrelenting--the voice of the goddess Poverty herself
+perhaps sounds like that.
+
+Mad? Was he to be spoken of in a low voice, and with finger pointing to
+the forehead? There was something ridiculous, as well as repugnant, in
+such a thought; but it kept possession of Amy’s mind. She was brooding
+upon it when her mother came into the drawing-room.
+
+‘And he positively refused to carry out the former plan?’
+
+‘Refused. Said it was useless.’
+
+‘How could it be useless? There’s something so unaccountable in his
+behaviour.’
+
+‘I don’t think it unaccountable,’ replied Amy. ‘It’s weak and selfish,
+that’s all. He takes the first miserable employment that offers rather
+than face the hard work of writing another book.’
+
+She was quite aware that this did not truly represent her husband’s
+position. But an uneasiness of conscience impelled her to harsh speech.
+
+‘But just fancy!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘What can he mean by asking you
+to go and live with him on twenty-five shillings a week? Upon my word.
+if his mind isn’t disordered he must have made a deliberate plan to get
+rid of you.’
+
+Amy shook her head.
+
+‘You mean,’ asked Mrs Yule, ‘that he really thinks it possible for all
+of you to be supported on those wages?’
+
+The last word was chosen to express the utmost scorn.
+
+‘He talked of earning fifty pounds a year by writing.’
+
+‘Even then it could only make about a hundred a year. My dear child,
+it’s one of two things: either he is out of his mind, or he has
+purposely cast you off.’
+
+Amy laughed, thinking of her husband in the light of the latter
+alternative.
+
+‘There’s no need to seek so far for explanations,’ she said. ‘He has
+failed, that’s all; just like a man might fail in any other business. He
+can’t write like he used to. It may be all the result of ill-health; I
+don’t know. His last book, you see, is positively refused. He has made
+up his mind that there’s nothing but poverty before him, and he can’t
+understand why I should object to live like the wife of a working-man.’
+
+‘Well, I only know that he has placed you in an exceedingly difficult
+position. If he had gone away to Worthing for the summer we might have
+made it seem natural; people are always ready to allow literary men to
+do rather odd things--up to a certain point. We should have behaved as
+if there were nothing that called for explanation. But what are we to do
+now?’
+
+Like her multitudinous kind, Mrs Yule lived only in the opinions of
+other people. What others would say was her ceaseless preoccupation.
+She had never conceived of life as something proper to the individual;
+independence in the directing of one’s course seemed to her only
+possible in the case of very eccentric persons, or of such as were
+altogether out of society. Amy had advanced, intellectually, far beyond
+this standpoint, but lack of courage disabled her from acting upon her
+convictions.
+
+‘People must know the truth, I suppose,’ she answered dispiritedly.
+
+Now, confession of the truth was the last thing that would occur to Mrs
+Yule when social relations were concerned. Her whole existence was based
+on bold denial of actualities. And, as is natural in such persons, she
+had the ostrich instinct strongly developed; though very acute in
+the discovery of her friends’ shams and lies, she deceived herself
+ludicrously in the matter of concealing her own embarrassments.
+
+‘But the fact is, my dear,’ she answered, ‘we don’t know the truth
+ourselves. You had better let yourself be directed by me. It will be
+better, at first, if you see as few people as possible. I suppose you
+must say something or other to two or three of your own friends; if you
+take my advice you’ll be rather mysterious. Let them think what they
+like; anything is better than to say plainly. “My husband can’t support
+me, and he has gone to work as a clerk for weekly wages.” Be mysterious,
+darling; depend upon it, that’s the safest.’
+
+The conversation was pursued, with brief intervals, all through the
+day. In the afternoon two ladies paid a call, but Amy kept out of
+sight. Between six and seven John Yule returned from his gentlemanly
+occupations. As he was generally in a touchy temper before dinner had
+soothed him, nothing was said to him of the latest development of his
+sister’s affairs until late in the evening; he was allowed to suppose
+that Reardon’s departure for the seaside had taken place a day sooner
+than had been arranged.
+
+Behind the dining-room was a comfortable little chamber set apart as
+John’s sanctum; here he smoked and entertained his male friends, and
+contemplated the portraits of those female ones who would not have been
+altogether at their ease in Mrs Yule’s drawing-room. Not long after
+dinner his mother and sister came to talk with him in this retreat.
+
+With some nervousness Mrs Yule made known to him what had taken place.
+Amy, the while, stood by the table, and glanced over a magazine that she
+had picked up.
+
+‘Well, I see nothing to be surprised at,’ was John’s first remark. ‘It
+was pretty certain he’d come to this. But what I want to know is, how
+long are we to be at the expense of supporting Amy and her youngster?’
+
+This was practical, and just what Mrs Yule had expected from her son.
+
+‘We can’t consider such things as that,’ she replied. ‘You don’t wish, I
+suppose, that Amy should go and live in a back street at Islington, and
+be hungry every other day, and soon have no decent clothes?’
+
+‘I don’t think Jack would be greatly distressed,’ Amy put in quietly.
+
+‘This is a woman’s way of talking,’ replied John. ‘I want to know what
+is to be the end of it all? I’ve no doubt it’s uncommonly pleasant for
+Reardon to shift his responsibilities on to our shoulders. At this rate
+I think I shall get married, and live beyond my means until I can hold
+out no longer, and then hand my wife over to her relatives, with my
+compliments. It’s about the coolest business that ever came under my
+notice.’
+
+‘But what is to be done?’ asked Mrs Yule. ‘It’s no use talking
+sarcastically, John, or making yourself disagreeable.’
+
+‘We are not called upon to find a way out of the difficulty. The fact of
+the matter is, Reardon must get a decent berth. Somebody or other must
+pitch him into the kind of place that suits men who can do nothing in
+particular. Carter ought to be able to help, I should think.’
+
+‘You know very well,’ said Amy, ‘that places of that kind are not to be
+had for the asking. It may be years before any such opportunity offers.’
+
+‘Confound the fellow! Why the deuce doesn’t he go on with his
+novel-writing? There’s plenty of money to be made out of novels.’
+
+‘But he can’t write, Jack. He has lost his talent.’
+
+‘That’s all bosh, Amy. If a fellow has once got into the swing of it he
+can keep it up if he likes. He might write his two novels a year easily
+enough, just like twenty other men and women. Look here, I could do it
+myself if I weren’t too lazy. And that’s what’s the matter with Reardon.
+He doesn’t care to work.’
+
+‘I have thought that myself;’ observed Mrs Yule. ‘It really is too
+ridiculous to say that he couldn’t write some kind of novels if he
+chose. Look at Miss Blunt’s last book; why, anybody could have written
+that. I’m sure there isn’t a thing in it I couldn’t have imagined
+myself.’
+
+‘Well, all I want to know is, what’s Amy going to do if things don’t
+alter?’
+
+‘She shall never want a home as long as I have one to share with her.’
+
+John’s natural procedure, when beset by difficulties, was to find
+fault with everyone all round, himself maintaining a position of
+irresponsibility.
+
+‘It’s all very well, mother, but when a girl gets married she takes her
+husband, I have always understood, for better or worse, just as a man
+takes his wife. To tell the truth, it seems to me Amy has put herself in
+the wrong. It’s deuced unpleasant to go and live in back streets, and
+to go without dinner now and then, but girls mustn’t marry if they’re
+afraid to face these things.’
+
+‘Don’t talk so monstrously, John!’ exclaimed his mother. ‘How could Amy
+possibly foresee such things? The case is quite an extraordinary one.’
+
+‘Not so uncommon, I assure you. Some one was telling me the other day of
+a married lady--well educated and blameless--who goes to work at a shop
+somewhere or other because her husband can’t support her.’
+
+‘And you wish to see Amy working in a shop?’
+
+‘No, I can’t say I do. I’m only telling you that her bad luck isn’t
+unexampled. It’s very fortunate for her that she has good-natured
+relatives.’
+
+Amy had taken a seat apart. She sat with her head leaning on her hand.
+
+‘Why don’t you go and see Reardon?’ John asked of his mother.
+
+‘What would be the use? Perhaps he would tell me to mind my own
+business.’
+
+‘By jingo! precisely what you would be doing. I think you ought to see
+him and give him to understand that he’s behaving in a confoundedly
+ungentlemanly way. Evidently he’s the kind of fellow that wants stirring
+up. I’ve half a mind to go and see him myself. Where is this slum that
+he’s gone to live in?’
+
+‘We don’t know his address yet.’
+
+‘So long as it’s not the kind of place where one would be afraid of
+catching a fever, I think it wouldn’t be amiss for me to look him up.’
+
+‘You’ll do no good by that,’ said Amy, indifferently.
+
+‘Confound it! It’s just because nobody does anything that things have
+come to this pass!’
+
+The conversation was, of course, profitless. John could only return
+again and again to his assertion that Reardon must get ‘a decent berth.’
+At length Amy left the room in weariness and disgust.
+
+‘I suppose they have quarrelled terrifically,’ said her brother, as soon
+as she was gone.
+
+‘I am afraid so.’
+
+‘Well, you must do as you please. But it’s confounded hard lines that
+you should have to keep her and the kid. You know I can’t afford to
+contribute.’
+
+‘My dear, I haven’t asked you to.’
+
+‘No, but you’ll have the devil’s own job to make ends meet; I know that
+well enough.’
+
+‘I shall manage somehow.’
+
+‘All right; you’re a plucky woman, but it’s too bad. Reardon’s a humbug,
+that’s my opinion. I shall have a talk with Carter about him. I suppose
+he has transferred all their furniture to the slum?’
+
+‘He can’t have removed yet. It was only this morning that he went to
+search for lodgings.’
+
+‘Oh, then I tell you what it is: I shall look in there the first thing
+to-morrow morning, and just talk to him in a fatherly way. You needn’t
+say anything to Amy. But I see he’s just the kind of fellow that,
+if everyone leaves him alone, he’ll be content with Carter’s
+five-and-twenty shillings for the rest of his life, and never trouble
+his head about how Amy is living.’
+
+To this proposal Mrs Yule readily assented. On going upstairs she found
+that Amy had all but fallen asleep upon a settee in the drawing-room.
+
+‘You are quite worn out with your troubles,’ she said. ‘Go to bed, and
+have a good long sleep.’
+
+‘Yes, I will.’
+
+The neat, fresh bedchamber seemed to Amy a delightful haven of rest. She
+turned the key in the door with an enjoyment of the privacy thus secured
+such as she had never known in her life; for in maidenhood safe solitude
+was a matter of course to her, and since marriage she had not passed a
+night alone. Willie was fast asleep in a little bed shadowed by her own.
+In an impulse of maternal love and gladness she bent over the child and
+covered his face with kisses too gentle to awaken him.
+
+How clean and sweet everything was! It is often said, by people who are
+exquisitely ignorant of the matter, that cleanliness is a luxury within
+reach even of the poorest. Very far from that; only with the utmost
+difficulty, with wearisome exertion, with harassing sacrifice, can
+people who are pinched for money preserve a moderate purity in their
+persons and their surroundings. By painful degrees Amy had accustomed
+herself to compromises in this particular which in the early days of her
+married life would have seemed intensely disagreeable, if not revolting.
+A housewife who lives in the country, and has but a patch of back
+garden, or even a good-sized kitchen, can, if she thinks fit, take her
+place at the wash-tub and relieve her mind on laundry matters; but to
+the inhabitant of a miniature flat in the heart of London anything of
+that kind is out of the question.
+
+When Amy began to cut down her laundress’s bill, she did it with a
+sense of degradation. One grows accustomed, however, to such unpleasant
+necessities, and already she had learnt what was the minimum of
+expenditure for one who is troubled with a lady’s instincts.
+
+No, no; cleanliness is a costly thing, and a troublesome thing when
+appliances and means have to be improvised. It was, in part, the
+understanding she had gained of this side of the life of poverty that
+made Amy shrink in dread from the still narrower lodgings to which
+Reardon invited her. She knew how subtly one’s self-respect can be
+undermined by sordid conditions. The difference between the life of
+well-to-do educated people and that of the uneducated poor is not
+greater in visible details than in the minutiae of privacy, and Amy
+must have submitted to an extraordinary change before it would have been
+possible for her to live at ease in the circumstances which satisfy a
+decent working-class woman. She was prepared for final parting from her
+husband rather than try to effect that change in herself.
+
+She undressed at leisure, and stretched her limbs in the cold, soft,
+fragrant bed. A sigh of profound relief escaped her. How good it was to
+be alone!
+
+And in a quarter of an hour she was sleeping as peacefully as the child
+who shared her room.
+
+At breakfast in the morning she showed a bright, almost a happy face. It
+was long, long since she had enjoyed such a night’s rest, so undisturbed
+with unwelcome thoughts on the threshold of sleep and on awaking. Her
+life was perhaps wrecked, but the thought of that did not press upon
+her; for the present she must enjoy her freedom. It was like a recovery
+of girlhood. There are few married women who would not, sooner or later,
+accept with joy the offer of some months of a maidenly liberty. Amy
+would not allow herself to think that her wedded life was at an end.
+With a woman’s strange faculty of closing her eyes against facts that
+do not immediately concern her, she tasted the relief of the present and
+let the future lie unregarded. Reardon would get out of his difficulties
+sooner or later; somebody or other would help him; that was the dim
+background of her agreeable sensations.
+
+He suffered, no doubt. But then it was just as well that he should.
+Suffering would perhaps impel him to effort. When he communicated to her
+his new address--he could scarcely neglect to do that--she would send a
+not unfriendly letter, and hint to him that now was his opportunity for
+writing a book, as good a book as those which formerly issued from his
+garret-solitude. If he found that literature was in truth a thing of the
+past with him, then he must exert himself to obtain a position worthy of
+an educated man. Yes, in this way she would write to him, without a word
+that could hurt or offend.
+
+She ate an excellent breakfast, and made known her enjoyment of it.
+
+‘I am so glad!’ replied her mother. ‘You have been getting quite thin
+and pale.’
+
+‘Quite consumptive,’ remarked John, looking up from his newspaper.
+‘Shall I make arrangements for a daily landau at the livery stables
+round here?’
+
+‘You can if you like,’ replied his sister; ‘it would do both mother and
+me good, and I have no doubt you could afford it quite well.’
+
+‘Oh, indeed! You’re a remarkable young woman, let me tell you.
+By-the-bye, I suppose your husband is breakfasting on bread and water?’
+
+‘I hope not, and I don’t think it very likely.’
+
+‘Jack, Jack!’ interposed Mrs Yule, softly.
+
+Her son resumed his paper, and at the end of the meal rose with an
+unwonted briskness to make his preparations for departure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. THE PAST REVIVED
+
+Nor would it be true to represent Edwin Reardon as rising to the new day
+wholly disconsolate. He too had slept unusually well, and with returning
+consciousness the sense of a burden removed was more instant than that
+of his loss and all the dreary circumstances attaching to it. He had no
+longer to fear the effects upon Amy of such a grievous change as from
+their homelike flat to the couple of rooms he had taken in Islington;
+for the moment, this relief helped him to bear the pain of all that had
+happened and the uneasiness which troubled him when he reflected that
+his wife was henceforth a charge to her mother.
+
+Of course for the moment only. He had no sooner begun to move about, to
+prepare his breakfast (amid the relics of last evening’s meal), to think
+of all the detestable work he had to do before to-morrow night, than his
+heart sank again. His position was well-nigh as dolorous as that of any
+man who awoke that morning to the brutal realities of life. If only for
+the shame of it! How must they be speaking of him, Amy’s relatives,
+and her friends? A novelist who couldn’t write novels; a husband
+who couldn’t support his wife and child; a literate who made eager
+application for illiterate work at paltry wages--how interesting it
+would all sound in humorous gossip! And what hope had he that things
+would ever be better with him?
+
+Had he done well? Had he done wisely? Would it not have been better to
+have made that one last effort? There came before him a vision of quiet
+nooks beneath the Sussex cliffs, of the long lines of green breakers
+bursting into foam; he heard the wave-music, and tasted the briny
+freshness of the sea-breeze. Inspiration, after all, would perchance
+have come to him.
+
+If Amy’s love had but been of more enduring quality; if she had
+strengthened him for this last endeavour with the brave tenderness of
+an ideal wife! But he had seen such hateful things in her eyes. Her love
+was dead, and she regarded him as the man who had spoilt her hopes of
+happiness. It was only for her own sake that she urged him to strive on;
+let his be the toil, that hers might be the advantage if he succeeded.
+
+‘She would be glad if I were dead. She would be glad.’
+
+He had the conviction of it. Oh yes, she would shed tears; they come so
+easily to women. But to have him dead and out of her way; to be saved
+from her anomalous position; to see once more a chance in life; she
+would welcome it.
+
+But there was no time for brooding. To-day he had to sell all the things
+that were superfluous, and to make arrangements for the removal of his
+effects to-morrow. By Wednesday night, in accordance with his agreement,
+the flat must be free for the new occupier.
+
+He had taken only two rooms, and fortunately as things were. Three would
+have cost more than he was likely to be able to afford for a long time.
+The rent of the two was to be six-and-sixpence; and how, if Amy had
+consented to come, could he have met the expenses of their living out
+of his weekly twenty-five shillings? How could he have pretended to do
+literary work in such cramped quarters, he who had never been able to
+write a line save in strict seclusion? In his despair he had faced the
+impossible. Amy had shown more wisdom, though in a spirit of unkindness.
+
+Towards ten o’clock he was leaving the flat to go and find people who
+would purchase his books and old clothing and other superfluities; but
+before he could close the door behind him, an approaching step on
+the stairs caught his attention. He saw the shining silk hat of a
+well-equipped gentleman. It was John Yule.
+
+‘Ha! Good-morning!’ John exclaimed, looking up. ‘A minute or two and I
+should have been too late, I see.’
+
+He spoke in quite a friendly way, and, on reaching the landing, shook
+hands.
+
+‘Are you obliged to go at once? Or could I have a word with you?’
+
+‘Come in.’
+
+They entered the study, which was in some disorder; Reardon made no
+reference to circumstances, but offered a chair, and seated himself.
+
+‘Have a cigarette?’ said Yule, holding out a box of them.
+
+‘No, thank you; I don’t smoke so early.’
+
+‘Then I’ll light one myself; it always makes talk easier to me. You’re
+on the point of moving, I suppose?’
+
+‘Yes, I am.’
+
+Reardon tried to speak in quite a simple way, with no admission of
+embarrassment. He was not successful, and to his visitor the tone seemed
+rather offensive.
+
+‘I suppose you’ll let Amy know your new address?’
+
+‘Certainly. Why should I conceal it?’
+
+‘No, no; I didn’t mean to suggest that. But you might be taking it for
+granted that--that the rupture was final, I thought.’
+
+There had never been any intimacy between these two men. Reardon
+regarded his wife’s brother as rather snobbish and disagreeably selfish;
+John Yule looked upon the novelist as a prig, and now of late as
+a shuffling, untrustworthy fellow. It appeared to John that his
+brother-in-law was assuming a manner wholly unjustifiable, and he had a
+difficulty in behaving to him with courtesy. Reardon, on the other hand,
+felt injured by the turn his visitor’s remarks were taking, and began to
+resent the visit altogether.
+
+‘I take nothing for granted,’ he said coldly. ‘But I’m afraid nothing is
+to be gained by a discussion of our difficulties. The time for that is
+over.
+
+‘I can’t quite see that. It seems to me that the time has just come.’
+
+‘Please tell me, to begin with, do you come on Amy’s behalf?’
+
+‘In a way, yes. She hasn’t sent me, but my mother and I are so
+astonished at what is happening that it was necessary for one or other
+of us to see you.’
+
+‘I think it is all between Amy and myself.’
+
+‘Difficulties between husband and wife are generally best left to
+the people themselves, I know. But the fact is, there are peculiar
+circumstances in the present case. It can’t be necessary for me to
+explain further.’
+
+Reardon could find no suitable words of reply. He understood what Yule
+referred to, and began to feel the full extent of his humiliation.
+
+‘You mean, of course--’ he began; but his tongue failed him.
+
+‘Well, we should really like to know how long it is proposed that Amy
+shall remain with her mother.’
+
+John was perfectly self-possessed; it took much to disturb his
+equanimity. He smoked his cigarette, which was in an amber mouthpiece,
+and seemed to enjoy its flavour. Reardon found himself observing the
+perfection of the young man’s boots and trousers.
+
+‘That depends entirely on my wife herself;’ he replied mechanically.
+
+‘How so?’
+
+‘I offer her the best home I can.’
+
+Reardon felt himself a poor, pitiful creature, and hated the
+well-dressed man who made him feel so.
+
+‘But really, Reardon,’ began the other, uncrossing and recrossing his
+legs, ‘do you tell me in seriousness that you expect Amy to live in such
+lodgings as you can afford on a pound a week?’
+
+‘I don’t. I said that I had offered her the best home I could. I know
+it’s impossible, of course.’
+
+Either he must speak thus, or break into senseless wrath. It was hard to
+hold back the angry words that were on his lips, but he succeeded, and
+he was glad he had done so.
+
+‘Then it doesn’t depend on Amy,’ said John.
+
+‘I suppose not.’
+
+‘You see no reason, then, why she shouldn’t live as at present for an
+indefinite time?’
+
+To John, whose perspicacity was not remarkable, Reardon’s changed
+tone conveyed simply an impression of bland impudence. He eyed his
+brother-in-law rather haughtily.
+
+‘I can only say,’ returned the other, who was become wearily
+indifferent, ‘that as soon as I can afford a decent home I shall give my
+wife the opportunity of returning to me.’
+
+‘But, pray, when is that likely to be?’
+
+John had passed the bounds; his manner was too frankly contemptuous.
+
+‘I see no right you have to examine me in this fashion,’ Reardon
+exclaimed. ‘With Mrs Yule I should have done my best to be patient if
+she had asked these questions; but you are not justified in putting
+them, at all events not in this way.’
+
+‘I’m very sorry you speak like this, Reardon,’ said the other, with calm
+insolence. ‘It confirms unpleasant ideas, you know.’
+
+‘What do you mean?’
+
+‘Why, one can’t help thinking that you are rather too much at your ease
+under the circumstances. It isn’t exactly an everyday thing, you know,
+for a man’s wife to be sent back to her own people--’
+
+Reardon could not endure the sound of these words. He interrupted hotly.
+
+‘I can’t discuss it with you. You are utterly unable to comprehend me
+and my position, utterly! It would be useless to defend myself. You must
+take whatever view seems to you the natural one.’
+
+John, having finished his cigarette, rose.
+
+‘The natural view is an uncommonly disagreeable one,’ he said. ‘However,
+I have no intention of quarrelling with you. I’ll only just say that,
+as I take a share in the expenses of my mother’s house, this question
+decidedly concerns me; and I’ll add that I think it ought to concern you
+a good deal more than it seems to.’
+
+Reardon, ashamed already of his violence, paused upon these remarks.
+
+‘It shall,’ he uttered at length, coldly. ‘You have put it clearly
+enough to me, and you shan’t have spoken in vain. Is there anything else
+you wish to say?’
+
+‘Thank you; I think not.’
+
+They parted with distant civility, and Reardon closed the door behind
+his visitor.
+
+He knew that his character was seen through a distorting medium by Amy’s
+relatives, to some extent by Amy herself; but hitherto the reflection
+that this must always be the case when a man of his kind is judged by
+people of the world had strengthened him in defiance. An endeavour
+to explain himself would be maddeningly hopeless; even Amy did not
+understand aright the troubles through which his intellectual and moral
+nature was passing, and to speak of such experiences to Mrs Yule or to
+John would be equivalent to addressing them in alien tongues; he and
+they had no common criterion by reference to which he could make
+himself intelligible. The practical tone in which John had explained the
+opposing view of the situation made it impossible for him to proceed as
+he had purposed. Amy would never come to him in his poor lodgings; her
+mother, her brother, all her advisers would regard such a thing as out
+of the question. Very well; recognising this, he must also recognise his
+wife’s claim upon him for material support. It was not in his power to
+supply her with means sufficient to live upon, but what he could afford
+she should have.
+
+When he went out, it was with a different purpose from that of half
+an hour ago. After a short search in the direction of Edgware Road, he
+found a dealer in second-hand furniture, whom he requested to come as
+soon as possible to the flat on a matter of business. An hour later the
+man kept his appointment. Having brought him into the study, Reardon
+said:
+
+‘I wish to sell everything in this flat, with a few exceptions that I’ll
+point out to you’.
+
+‘Very good, sir,’ was the reply. ‘Let’s have a look through the rooms.’
+
+That the price offered would be strictly a minimum Reardon knew well
+enough. The dealer was a rough and rather dirty fellow, with the
+distrustful glance which distinguishes his class. Men of Reardon’s type,
+when hapless enough to be forced into vulgar commerce, are doubly at a
+disadvantage; not only their ignorance, but their sensitiveness, makes
+them ready victims of even the least subtle man of business. To deal
+on equal terms with a person you must be able to assert with calm
+confidence that you are not to be cheated; Reardon was too well aware
+that he would certainly be cheated, and shrank scornfully from the
+higgling of the market. Moreover, he was in a half-frenzied state of
+mind, and cared for little but to be done with the hateful details of
+this process of ruin.
+
+He pencilled a list of the articles he must retain for his own use; it
+would of course be cheaper to take a bare room than furnished
+lodgings, and every penny he could save was of importance to him. The
+chair-bedstead, with necessary linen and blankets, a table, two chairs,
+a looking-glass--strictly the indispensable things; no need to complete
+the list. Then there were a few valuable wedding-presents, which
+belonged rather to Amy than to him; these he would get packed and send
+to Westbourne Park.
+
+The dealer made his calculation, with many side-glances at the vendor.
+
+‘And what may you ask for the lot?’
+
+‘Please to make an offer.’
+
+‘Most of the things has had a good deal of wear--’
+
+‘I know, I know. Just let me hear what you will give.’
+
+‘Well, if you want a valuation, I say eighteen pound ten.’
+
+It was more than Reardon had expected, though much less than a man who
+understood such affairs would have obtained.
+
+‘That’s the most you can give?’
+
+‘Wouldn’t pay me to give a sixpence more. You see--’
+
+He began to point out defects, but Reardon cut him short.
+
+‘Can you take them away at once?’
+
+‘At wunst? Would two o’clock do?’
+
+‘Yes, it would.’
+
+‘And might you want these other things takin’ anywheres?’
+
+‘Yes, but not till to-morrow. They have to go to Islington. What would
+you do it for?’
+
+This bargain also was completed, and the dealer went his way. Thereupon
+Reardon set to work to dispose of his books; by half-past one he had
+sold them for a couple of guineas. At two came the cart that was to take
+away the furniture, and at four o’clock nothing remained in the flat
+save what had to be removed on the morrow.
+
+The next thing to be done was to go to Islington, forfeit a week’s rent
+for the two rooms he had taken, and find a single room at the lowest
+possible cost. On the way, he entered an eating-house and satisfied his
+hunger, for he had had nothing since breakfast. It took him a couple of
+hours to discover the ideal garret; it was found at length in a narrow
+little by-way running out of Upper Street. The rent was half-a-crown a
+week.
+
+At seven o’clock he sat down in what once was called his study, and
+wrote the following letter:
+
+‘Enclosed in this envelope you will find twenty pounds. I have been
+reminded that your relatives will be at the expense of your support;
+it seemed best to me to sell the furniture, and now I send you all
+the money I can spare at present. You will receive to-morrow a box
+containing several things I did not feel justified in selling. As soon
+as I begin to have my payment from Carter, half of it shall be sent
+to you every week. My address is: 5 Manville Street, Upper Street,
+Islington.--EDWIN REARDON.’
+
+He enclosed the money, in notes and gold, and addressed the envelope to
+his wife. She must receive it this very night, and he knew not how to
+ensure that save by delivering it himself. So he went to Westbourne Park
+by train, and walked to Mrs Yule’s house.
+
+At this hour the family were probably at dinner; yes, the window of the
+dining-room showed lights within, whilst those of the drawing-room were
+in shadow. After a little hesitation he rang the servants’ bell. When
+the door opened, he handed his letter to the girl, and requested that it
+might be given to Mrs Reardon as soon as possible. With one more hasty
+glance at the window--Amy was perhaps enjoying her unwonted comfort--he
+walked quickly away.
+
+As he re-entered what had been his home, its bareness made his heart
+sink. An hour or two had sufficed for this devastation; nothing remained
+upon the uncarpeted floors but the needments he would carry with him
+into the wilderness, such few evidences of civilisation as the poorest
+cannot well dispense with. Anger, revolt, a sense of outraged love--all
+manner of confused passions had sustained him throughout this day of
+toil; now he had leisure to know how faint he was. He threw himself upon
+his chair-bedstead, and lay for more than an hour in torpor of body and
+mind.
+
+But before he could sleep he must eat. Though it was cold, he could
+not exert himself to light a fire; there was some food still in the
+cupboard, and he consumed it in the fashion of a tired labourer, with
+the plate on his lap, using his fingers and a knife. What had he to do
+with delicacies?
+
+He felt utterly alone in the world. Unless it were Biffen, what mortal
+would give him kindly welcome under any roof? These stripped rooms
+were symbolical of his life; losing money, he had lost everything. ‘Be
+thankful that you exist, that these morsels of food are still granted
+you. Man has a right to nothing in this world that he cannot pay for.
+Did you imagine that love was an exception? Foolish idealist! Love is
+one of the first things to be frightened away by poverty. Go and live
+upon your twelve-and-sixpence a week, and on your memories of the past.’
+
+In this room he had sat with Amy on their return from the wedding
+holiday. ‘Shall you always love me as you do now?’--‘For ever! for
+ever!’--‘Even if I disappointed you? If I failed?’--‘How could that
+affect my love?’ The voices seemed to be lingering still, in a sad,
+faint echo, so short a time it was since those words were uttered.
+
+His own fault. A man has no business to fail; least of all can he expect
+others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if he sink under
+the stress of conflict. Those behind will trample over his body; they
+can’t help it; they themselves are borne onwards by resistless pressure.
+
+He slept for a few hours, then lay watching the light of dawn as it
+revealed his desolation.
+
+The morning’s post brought him a large heavy envelope, the aspect of
+which for a moment puzzled him. But he recognised the handwriting, and
+understood. The editor of The Wayside, in a pleasantly-written note,
+begged to return the paper on Pliny’s Letters which had recently
+been submitted to him; he was sorry it did not strike him as quite so
+interesting as the other contributions from Reardon’s pen.
+
+This was a trifle. For the first time he received a rejected piece of
+writing without distress; he even laughed at the artistic completeness
+of the situation. The money would have been welcome, but on that very
+account he might have known it would not come.
+
+The cart that was to transfer his property to the room in Islington
+arrived about mid-day. By that time he had dismissed the last details of
+business in relation to the flat, and was free to go back to the obscure
+world whence he had risen. He felt that for two years and a half he had
+been a pretender. It was not natural to him to live in the manner of
+people who enjoy an assured income; he belonged to the class of casual
+wage-earners. Back to obscurity!
+
+Carrying a bag which contained a few things best kept in his own care,
+he went by train to King’s Cross, and thence walked up Pentonville
+Hill to Upper Street and his own little by-way. Manville Street was not
+unreasonably squalid; the house in which he had found a home was not
+alarming in its appearance, and the woman who kept it had an honest
+face. Amy would have shrunk in apprehension, but to one who had
+experience of London garrets this was a rather favourable specimen of
+its kind. The door closed more satisfactorily than poor Biffen’s, for
+instance, and there were not many of those knot-holes in the floor which
+gave admission to piercing little draughts; not a pane of the window
+was cracked, not one. A man might live here comfortably--could memory be
+destroyed.
+
+‘There’s a letter come for you,’ said the landlady as she admitted him.
+‘You’ll find it on your mantel.’
+
+He ascended hastily. The letter must be from Amy, as no one else knew
+his address. Yes, and its contents were these:
+
+‘As you have really sold the furniture, I shall accept half this money
+that you send. I must buy clothing for myself and Willie. But the other
+ten pounds I shall return to you as soon as possible. As for your
+offer of half what you are to receive from Mr Carter, that seems to me
+ridiculous; in any case, I cannot take it. If you seriously abandon
+all further hope from literature, I think it is your duty to make every
+effort to obtain a position suitable to a man of your education.--AMY
+REARDON.’
+
+Doubtless Amy thought it was her duty to write in this way. Not a word
+of sympathy; he must understand that no one was to blame but himself;
+and that her hardships were equal to his own.
+
+In the bag he had brought with him there were writing materials.
+Standing at the mantelpiece, he forthwith penned a reply to this letter:
+
+‘The money is for your support, as far as it will go. If it comes back
+to me I shall send it again. If you refuse to make use of it, you
+will have the kindness to put it aside and consider it as belonging
+to Willie. The other money of which I spoke will be sent to you once a
+month. As our concerns are no longer between us alone, I must protect
+myself against anyone who would be likely to accuse me of not giving you
+what I could afford. For your advice I thank you, but remember that in
+withdrawing from me your affection you have lost all right to offer me
+counsel.’
+
+He went out and posted this at once.
+
+By three o’clock the furniture of his room was arranged. He had not kept
+a carpet; that was luxury, and beyond his due. His score of volumes must
+rank upon the mantelpiece; his clothing must be kept in the trunk. Cups,
+plates, knives, forks, and spoons would lie in the little open cupboard,
+the lowest section of which was for his supply of coals. When everything
+was in order he drew water from a tap on the landing and washed himself;
+then, with his bag, went out to make purchases. A loaf of bread, butter,
+sugar, condensed milk; a remnant of tea he had brought with him. On
+returning, he lit as small a fire as possible, put on his kettle, and
+sat down to meditate.
+
+How familiar it all was to him! And not unpleasant, for it brought
+back the days when he had worked to such good purpose. It was like a
+restoration of youth.
+
+Of Amy he would not think. Knowing his bitter misery, she could write
+to him in cold, hard words, without a touch even of womanly feeling. If
+ever they were to meet again, the advance must be from her side. He had
+no more tenderness for her until she strove to revive it.
+
+Next morning he called at the hospital to see Carter. The secretary’s
+peculiar look and smile seemed to betray a knowledge of what had been
+going on since Sunday, and his first words confirmed this impression of
+Reardon’s.
+
+‘You have removed, I hear?’
+
+‘Yes; I had better give you my new address.’
+
+Reardon’s tone was meant to signify that further remark on the subject
+would be unwelcome. Musingly, Carter made a note of the address.
+
+‘You still wish to go on with this affair?’
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+‘Come and have some lunch with me, then, and afterwards we’ll go to the
+City Road and talk things over on the spot.’
+
+The vivacious young man was not quite so genial as of wont, but he
+evidently strove to show that the renewal of their relations as employer
+and clerk would make no difference in the friendly intercourse which
+had since been established; the invitation to lunch evidently had this
+purpose.
+
+‘I suppose,’ said Carter, when they were seated in a restaurant, ‘you
+wouldn’t object to anything better, if a chance turned up?’
+
+‘I should take it, to be sure.’
+
+‘But you don’t want a job that would occupy all your time? You’re going
+on with writing, of course?’
+
+‘Not for the present, I think.’
+
+‘Then you would like me to keep a look-out? I haven’t anything in
+view--nothing whatever. But one hears of things sometimes.’
+
+‘I should be obliged to you if you could help me to anything
+satisfactory.’
+
+Having brought himself to this admission, Reardon felt more at ease. To
+what purpose should he keep up transparent pretences? It was manifestly
+his duty to earn as much money as he could, in whatever way. Let the
+man of letters be forgotten; he was seeking for remunerative employment,
+just as if he had never written a line.
+
+Amy did not return the ten pounds, and did not write again. So,
+presumably, she would accept the moiety of his earnings; he was glad
+of it. After paying half-a-crown for rent, there would be left ten
+shillings. Something like three pounds that still remained to him he
+would not reckon; this must be for casualties.
+
+Half-a-sovereign was enough for his needs; in the old times he had
+counted it a competency which put his mind quite at rest.
+
+The day came, and he entered upon his duties in City Road. It needed but
+an hour or two, and all the intervening time was cancelled; he was
+back once more in the days of no reputation, a harmless clerk, a decent
+wage-earner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. THE END OF WAITING
+
+It was more than a fortnight after Reardon’s removal to Islington when
+Jasper Milvain heard for the first time of what had happened. He was
+coming down from the office of the Will-o’-the-Wisp one afternoon,
+after a talk with the editor concerning a paragraph in his last week’s
+causerie which had been complained of as libellous, and which would
+probably lead to the ‘case’ so much desired by everyone connected with
+the paper, when someone descending from a higher storey of the building
+overtook him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw
+Whelpdale.
+
+‘What brings you on these premises?’ he asked, as they shook hands.
+
+‘A man I know has just been made sub-editor of Chat, upstairs. He has
+half promised to let me do a column of answers to correspondents.’
+
+‘Cosmetics? Fashions? Cookery?’
+
+‘I’m not so versatile as all that, unfortunately. No, the general
+information column. “Will you be so good as to inform me, through the
+medium of your invaluable paper, what was the exact area devastated
+by the Great Fire of London?”--that kind of thing, you know.
+Hopburn--that’s the fellow’s name--tells me that his predecessor always
+called the paper Chat-moss, because of the frightful difficulty he had
+in filling it up each week. By-the-bye, what a capital column that is of
+yours in Will-o’-the-Wisp. I know nothing like it in English journalism;
+upon my word I don’t!’
+
+‘Glad you like it. Some people are less fervent in their admiration.’
+
+Jasper recounted the affair which had just been under discussion in the
+office.
+
+‘It may cost a couple of thousands, but the advertisement is worth that,
+Patwin thinks. Barlow is delighted; he wouldn’t mind paying double the
+money to make those people a laughing-stock for a week or two.’
+
+They issued into the street, and walked on together; Milvain, with
+his keen eye and critical smile, unmistakably the modern young man who
+cultivates the art of success; his companion of a less pronounced type,
+but distinguished by a certain subtlety of countenance, a blending of
+the sentimental and the shrewd.
+
+‘Of course you know all about the Reardons?’ said Whelpdale.
+
+‘Haven’t seen or heard of them lately. What is it?’
+
+‘Then you don’t know that they have parted?’
+
+‘Parted?’
+
+‘I only heard about it last night; Biffen told me. Reardon is doing
+clerk’s work at a hospital somewhere in the East-end, and his wife has
+gone to live at her mother’s house.’
+
+‘Ho, ho!’ exclaimed Jasper, thoughtfully. ‘Then the crash has come. Of
+course I knew it must be impending. I’m sorry for Reardon.’
+
+‘I’m sorry for his wife.’
+
+‘Trust you for thinking of women first, Whelpdale.’
+
+‘It’s in an honourable way, my dear fellow. I’m a slave to women, true,
+but all in an honourable way. After that last adventure of mine most
+men would be savage and cynical, wouldn’t they, now? I’m nothing of the
+kind. I think no worse of women--not a bit. I reverence them as much as
+ever. There must be a good deal of magnanimity in me, don’t you think?’
+
+Jasper laughed unrestrainedly.
+
+‘But it’s the simple truth,’ pursued the other. ‘You should have
+seen the letter I wrote to that girl at Birmingham--all charity and
+forgiveness. I meant it, every word of it. I shouldn’t talk to everyone
+like this, you know; but it’s as well to show a friend one’s best
+qualities now and then.’
+
+‘Is Reardon still living at the old place?’
+
+‘No, no. They sold up everything and let the flat. He’s in lodgings
+somewhere or other. I’m not quite intimate enough with him to go and see
+him under the circumstances. But I’m surprised you know nothing about
+it.’
+
+‘I haven’t seen much of them this year. Reardon--well, I’m afraid he
+hasn’t very much of the virtue you claim for yourself. It rather annoys
+him to see me going ahead.’
+
+‘Really? His character never struck me in that way.’
+
+‘You haven’t come enough in contact with him. At all events, I can’t
+explain his change of manner in any other way. But I’m sorry for him;
+I am, indeed. At a hospital? I suppose Carter has given him the old job
+again?’
+
+‘Don’t know. Biffen doesn’t talk very freely about it; there’s a good
+deal of delicacy in Biffen, you know. A thoroughly good-hearted fellow.
+And so is Reardon, I believe, though no doubt he has his weaknesses.’
+
+‘Oh, an excellent fellow! But weakness isn’t the word. Why, I foresaw
+all this from the very beginning. The first hour’s talk I ever had
+with him was enough to convince me that he’d never hold his own. But he
+really believed that the future was clear before him; he imagined he’d
+go on getting more and more for his books. An extraordinary thing that
+that girl had such faith in him!’
+
+They parted soon after this, and Milvain went homeward, musing upon what
+he had heard. It was his purpose to spend the whole evening on some
+work which pressed for completion, but he found an unusual difficulty
+in settling to it. About eight o’clock he gave up the effort, arrayed
+himself in the costume of black and white, and journeyed to Westbourne
+Park, where his destination was the house of Mrs Edmund Yule. Of the
+servant who opened to him he inquired if Mrs Yule was at home, and
+received an answer in the affirmative.
+
+‘Any company with her?’
+
+‘A lady--Mrs Carter.’
+
+‘Then please to give my name, and ask if Mrs Yule can see me.’
+
+He was speedily conducted to the drawing-room, where he found the lady
+of the house, her son, and Mrs Carter. For Mrs Reardon his eye sought in
+vain.
+
+‘I’m so glad you have come,’ said Mrs Yule, in a confidential tone. ‘I
+have been wishing to see you. Of course, you know of our sad trouble?’
+
+‘I have heard of it only to-day.’
+
+‘From Mr Reardon himself?’
+
+‘No; I haven’t seen him.’
+
+‘I do wish you had! We should have been so anxious to know how he
+impressed you.’
+
+‘How he impressed me?’
+
+‘My mother has got hold of the notion,’ put in John Yule, ‘that he’s not
+exactly compos mentis. I’ll admit that he went on in a queer sort of way
+the last time I saw him.’
+
+‘And my husband thinks he is rather strange,’ remarked Mrs Carter.
+
+‘He has gone back to the hospital, I understand--’
+
+‘To a new branch that has just been opened in the City Road,’ replied
+Mrs Yule. ‘And he’s living in a dreadful place--one of the most shocking
+alleys in the worst part of Islington. I should have gone to see him,
+but I really feel afraid; they give me such an account of the place.
+And everyone agrees that he has such a very wild look, and speaks so
+strangely.’
+
+‘Between ourselves,’ said John, ‘there’s no use in exaggerating. He’s
+living in a vile hole, that’s true, and Carter says he looks miserably
+ill, but of course he may be as sane as we are.
+
+Jasper listened to all this with no small astonishment.
+
+‘And Mrs Reardon?’ he asked.
+
+‘I’m sorry to say she is far from well,’ replied Mrs Yule. ‘To-day she
+has been obliged to keep her room. You can imagine what a shock it has
+been to her. It came with such extraordinary suddenness. Without a word
+of warning, her husband announced that he had taken a clerkship and was
+going to remove immediately to the East-end. Fancy! And this when he had
+already arranged, as you know, to go to the South Coast and write his
+next book under the influences of the sea air. He was anything but well;
+we all knew that, and we had all joined in advising him to spend the
+summer at the seaside. It seemed better that he should go alone; Mrs
+Reardon would, of course, have gone down for a few days now and then.
+And at a moment’s notice everything is changed, and in such a dreadful
+way! I cannot believe that this is the behaviour of a sane man!’
+
+Jasper understood that an explanation of the matter might have been
+given in much more homely terms; it was natural that Mrs Yule
+should leave out of sight the sufficient, but ignoble, cause of her
+son-in-law’s behaviour.
+
+‘You see in what a painful position we are placed,’ continued the
+euphemistic lady. ‘It is so terrible even to hint that Mr Reardon is not
+responsible for his actions, yet how are we to explain to our friends
+this extraordinary state of things?’
+
+‘My husband is afraid Mr Reardon may fall seriously ill,’ said Mrs
+Carter. ‘And how dreadful! In such a place as that!’
+
+‘It would be so kind of you to go and see him, Mr Milvain,’ urged Mrs
+Yule. ‘We should be so glad to hear what you think.’
+
+‘Certainly, I will go,’ replied Jasper. ‘Will you give me his address?’
+
+He remained for an hour, and before his departure the subject was
+discussed with rather more frankness than at first; even the word
+‘money’ was once or twice heard.
+
+‘Mr Carter has very kindly promised,’ said Mrs Yule, ‘to do his best to
+hear of some position that would be suitable. It seems a most shocking
+thing that a successful author should abandon his career in this
+deliberate way; who could have imagined anything of the kind two
+years ago? But it is clearly quite impossible for him to go on as
+at present--if there is really no reason for believing his mind
+disordered.’
+
+A cab was summoned for Mrs Carter, and she took her leave, suppressing
+her native cheerfulness to the tone of the occasion. A minute or two
+after, Milvain left the house.
+
+He had walked perhaps twenty yards, almost to the end of the silent
+street in which his friends’ house was situated, when a man came round
+the corner and approached him. At once he recognised the figure, and in
+a moment he was face to face with Reardon. Both stopped. Jasper held out
+his hand, but the other did not seem to notice it.
+
+‘You are coming from Mrs Yule’s?’ said Reardon, with a strange smile.
+
+By the gaslight his face showed pale and sunken, and he met Jasper’s
+look with fixedness.
+
+‘Yes, I am. The fact is, I went there to hear of your address. Why
+haven’t you let me know about all this?’
+
+‘You went to the flat?’
+
+‘No, I was told about you by Whelpdale.’
+
+Reardon turned in the direction whence he had come, and began to walk
+slowly; Jasper kept beside him.
+
+‘I’m afraid there’s something amiss between us, Reardon,’ said the
+latter, just glancing at his companion.
+
+‘There’s something amiss between me and everyone,’ was the reply, in an
+unnatural voice.
+
+‘You look at things too gloomily. Am I detaining you, by-the-bye? You
+were going--’
+
+‘Nowhere.’
+
+‘Then come to my rooms, and let us see if we can’t talk more in the old
+way.’
+
+‘Your old way of talk isn’t much to my taste, Milvain. It has cost me
+too much.’
+
+Jasper gazed at him. Was there some foundation for Mrs Yule’s seeming
+extravagance? This reply sounded so meaningless, and so unlike Reardon’s
+manner of speech, that the younger man experienced a sudden alarm.
+
+‘Cost you too much? I don’t understand you.’
+
+They had turned into a broader thoroughfare, which, however, was little
+frequented at this hour. Reardon, his hands thrust into the pockets of
+a shabby overcoat and his head bent forward, went on at a slow pace,
+observant of nothing. For a moment or two he delayed reply, then said in
+an unsteady voice:
+
+‘Your way of talking has always been to glorify success, to insist upon
+it as the one end a man ought to keep in view. If you had talked so to
+me alone, it wouldn’t have mattered. But there was generally someone
+else present. Your words had their effect; I can see that now. It’s very
+much owing to you that I am deserted, now that there’s no hope of my
+ever succeeding.’
+
+Jasper’s first impulse was to meet this accusation with indignant
+denial, but a sense of compassion prevailed. It was so painful to see
+the defeated man wandering at night near the house where his wife
+and child were comfortably sheltered; and the tone in which he spoke
+revealed such profound misery.
+
+‘That’s a most astonishing thing to say,’ Jasper replied. ‘Of course I
+know nothing of what has passed between you and your wife, but I feel
+certain that I have no more to do with what has happened than any other
+of your acquaintances.’
+
+‘You may feel as certain as you will, but your words and your example
+have influenced my wife against me. You didn’t intend that; I don’t
+suppose it for a moment. It’s my misfortune, that’s all.’
+
+‘That I intended nothing of the kind, you need hardly say, I should
+think. But you are deceiving yourself in the strangest way. I’m afraid
+to speak plainly; I’m afraid of offending you. But can you recall
+something that I said about the time of your marriage? You didn’t like
+it then, and certainly it won’t be pleasant to you to remember it now.
+If you mean that your wife has grown unkind to you because you are
+unfortunate, there’s no need to examine into other people’s influence
+for an explanation of that.’
+
+Reardon turned his face towards the speaker.
+
+‘Then you have always regarded my wife as a woman likely to fail me in
+time of need?’
+
+‘I don’t care to answer a question put in that way. If we are no longer
+to talk with the old friendliness, it’s far better we shouldn’t discuss
+things such as this.’
+
+‘Well, practically you have answered. Of course I remember those words
+of yours that you refer to. Whether you were right or wrong doesn’t
+affect what I say.’
+
+He spoke with a dull doggedness, as though mental fatigue did not allow
+him to say more.
+
+‘It’s impossible to argue against such a charge,’ said Milvain. ‘I am
+convinced it isn’t true, and that’s all I can answer. But perhaps you
+think this extraordinary influence of mine is still being used against
+you?’
+
+‘I know nothing about it,’ Reardon replied, in the same unmodulated
+voice.
+
+‘Well, as I have told you, this was my first visit to Mrs Yule’s since
+your wife has been there, and I didn’t see her; she isn’t very well,
+and keeps her room. I’m glad it happened so--that I didn’t meet her.
+Henceforth I shall keep away from the family altogether, so long, at all
+events, as your wife remains with them. Of course I shan’t tell anyone
+why; that would be impossible. But you shan’t have to fear that I am
+decrying you. By Jove! an amiable figure you make of me!’
+
+‘I have said what I didn’t wish to say, and what I oughtn’t to have
+said. You must misunderstand me; I can’t help it.’
+
+Reardon had been walking for hours, and was, in truth, exhausted.
+
+He became mute. Jasper, whose misrepresentation was wilful, though not
+maliciously so, also fell into silence; he did not believe that his
+conversations with Amy had seriously affected the course of events,
+but he knew that he had often said things to her in private which
+would scarcely have fallen from his lips if her husband had been
+present--little depreciatory phrases, wrong rather in tone than in
+terms, which came of his irresistible desire to assume superiority
+whenever it was possible. He, too, was weak, but with quite another
+kind of weakness than Reardon’s. His was the weakness of vanity, which
+sometimes leads a man to commit treacheries of which he would believe
+himself incapable. Self-accused, he took refuge in the pretence of
+misconception, which again was a betrayal of littleness.
+
+They drew near to Westbourne Park station.
+
+‘You are living a long way from here,’ Jasper said, coldly. ‘Are you
+going by train?’
+
+‘No. You said my wife was ill?’
+
+‘Oh, not ill. At least, I didn’t understand that it was anything
+serious. Why don’t you walk back to the house?’
+
+‘I must judge of my own affairs.’
+
+‘True; I beg your pardon. I take the train here, so I’ll say
+good-night.’
+
+They nodded to each other, but did not shake hands.
+
+A day or two later, Milvain wrote to Mrs Yule, and told her that he
+had seen Reardon; he did not describe the circumstances under which the
+interview had taken place, but gave it as his opinion that Reardon
+was in a state of nervous illness, and made by suffering quite unlike
+himself. That he might be on the way to positive mental disease seemed
+likely enough. ‘Unhappily, I myself can be of no use to him; he has
+not the same friendly feeling for me as he used to have. But it is
+very certain that those of his friends who have the power should exert
+themselves to raise him out of this fearful slough of despond. If he
+isn’t effectually helped, there’s no saying what may happen. One thing
+is certain, I think: he is past helping himself. Sane literary work
+cannot be expected from him. It seems a monstrous thing that so good a
+fellow, and one with such excellent brains too, should perish by the
+way when influential people would have no difficulty in restoring him to
+health and usefulness.’
+
+All the months of summer went by. Jasper kept his word, and never
+visited Mrs Yule’s house; but once in July he met that lady at the
+Carters’, and heard then, what he knew from other sources, that the
+position of things was unchanged. In August, Mrs Yule spent a fortnight
+at the seaside, and Amy accompanied her. Milvain and his sisters
+accepted an invitation to visit friends at Wattleborough, and were out
+of town about three weeks, the last ten days being passed in the Isle of
+Wight; it was an extravagant holiday, but Dora had been ailing, and her
+brother declared that they would all work better for the change. Alfred
+Yule, with his wife and daughter, rusticated somewhere in Kent. Dora and
+Marian exchanged letters, and here is a passage from one written by the
+former:
+
+‘Jasper has shown himself in an unusually amiable light since we left
+town. I looked forward to this holiday with some misgivings, as I know
+by experience that it doesn’t do for him and us to be too much together;
+he gets tired of our company, and then his selfishness--believe me, he
+has a good deal of it--comes out in a way we don’t appreciate. But I
+have never known him so forbearing. To me he is particularly kind, on
+account of my headaches and general shakiness. It isn’t impossible that
+this young man, if all goes well with him, may turn out far better than
+Maud and I ever expected. But things will have to go very well, if the
+improvement is to be permanent. I only hope he may make a lot of money
+before long. If this sounds rather gross to you, I can only say that
+Jasper’s moral nature will never be safe as long as he is exposed to
+the risks of poverty. There are such people, you know. As a poor man, I
+wouldn’t trust him out of my sight; with money, he will be a tolerable
+creature--as men go.’
+
+Dora, no doubt, had her reasons for writing in this strain. She would
+not have made such remarks in conversation with her friend, but took the
+opportunity of being at a distance to communicate them in writing.
+
+On their return, the two girls made good progress with the book they
+were manufacturing for Messrs Jolly and Monk, and early in October it
+was finished. Dora was now writing little things for The English Girl,
+and Maud had begun to review an occasional novel for an illustrated
+paper. In spite of their poor lodgings, they had been brought into
+social relations with Mrs Boston Wright and a few of her friends; their
+position was understood, and in accepting invitations they had no fear
+lest unwelcome people should pounce down upon them in their shabby
+little sitting-room. The younger sister cared little for society such
+as Jasper procured them; with Marian Yule for a companion she would have
+been quite content to spend her evenings at home. But Maud relished the
+introduction to strangers. She was admired, and knew it. Prudence
+could not restrain her from buying a handsomer dress than those she had
+brought from her country home, and it irked her sorely that she might
+not reconstruct all her equipment to rival the appearance of well-to-do
+girls whom she studied and envied. Her disadvantages, for the present,
+were insuperable. She had no one to chaperon her; she could not form
+intimacies because of her poverty. A rare invitation to luncheon, a
+permission to call at the sacred hour of small-talk--this was all she
+could hope for.
+
+‘I advise you to possess your soul in patience,’ Jasper said to her,
+as they talked one day on the sea-shore. ‘You are not to blame that you
+live without conventional protection, but it necessitates your being
+very careful. These people you are getting to know are not rigid about
+social observances, and they won’t exactly despise you for poverty; all
+the same, their charity mustn’t be tested too severely. Be very quiet
+for the present; let it be seen that you understand that your position
+isn’t quite regular--I mean, of course, do so in a modest and nice
+way. As soon as ever it’s possible, we’ll arrange for you to live with
+someone who will preserve appearances. All this is contemptible,
+of course; but we belong to a contemptible society, and can’t help
+ourselves. For Heaven’s sake, don’t spoil your chances by rashness; be
+content to wait a little, till some more money comes in.’
+
+Midway in October, about half-past eight one evening, Jasper received
+an unexpected visit from Dora. He was in his sitting-room, smoking and
+reading a novel.
+
+‘Anything wrong?’ he asked, as his sister entered.
+
+‘No; but I’m alone this evening, and I thought I would see if you were
+in.
+
+‘Where’s Maud, then?’
+
+‘She went to see the Lanes this afternoon, and Mrs Lane invited her
+to go to the Gaiety to-night; she said a friend whom she had invited
+couldn’t come, and the ticket would be wasted. Maud went back to dine
+with them. She’ll come home in a cab.’
+
+‘Why is Mrs Lane so affectionate all at once? Take your things off; I
+have nothing to do.’
+
+‘Miss Radway was going as well.’
+
+‘Who’s Miss Radway?’
+
+‘Don’t you know her? She’s staying with the Lanes. Maud says she writes
+for The West End.’
+
+‘And will that fellow Lane be with them?’
+
+‘I think not.’
+
+Jasper mused, contemplating the bowl of his pipe.
+
+‘I suppose she was in rare excitement?’
+
+‘Pretty well. She has wanted to go to the Gaiety for a long time.
+There’s no harm, is there?’
+
+Dora asked the question with that absent air which girls are wont to
+assume when they touch on doubtful subjects.
+
+‘Harm, no. Idiocy and lively music, that’s all. It’s too late, or I’d
+have taken you, for the joke of the thing. Confound it! she ought to
+have better dresses.’
+
+‘Oh, she looked very nice, in that best.’
+
+‘Pooh! But I don’t care for her to be running about with the Lanes. Lane
+is too big a blackguard; it reflects upon his wife to a certain extent.’
+
+They gossiped for half an hour, then a tap at the door interrupted them;
+it was the landlady.
+
+‘Mr Whelpdale has called to see you, sir. I mentioned as Miss Milvain
+was here, so he said he wouldn’t come up unless you sent to ask him.’
+
+Jasper smiled at Dora, and said in a low voice.
+
+‘What do you say? Shall he come up? He can behave himself.’
+
+‘Just as you please, Jasper.’
+
+‘Ask him to come up, Mrs Thompson, please.’
+
+Mr Whelpdale presented himself. He entered with much more ceremony than
+when Milvain was alone; on his visage was a grave respectfulness, his
+step was light, his whole bearing expressed diffidence and pleasurable
+anticipation.
+
+‘My younger sister, Whelpdale,’ said Jasper, with subdued amusement.
+
+The dealer in literary advice made a bow which did him no discredit, and
+began to speak in a low, reverential tone not at all disagreeable to the
+ear. His breeding, in truth, had been that of a gentleman, and it was
+only of late years that he had fallen into the hungry region of New Grub
+Street.
+
+‘How’s the “Manual” going off?’ Milvain inquired.
+
+‘Excellently! We have sold nearly six hundred.’
+
+‘My sister is one of your readers. I believe she has studied the book
+with much conscientiousness.’
+
+‘Really? You have really read it, Miss Milvain?’
+
+Dora assured him that she had, and his delight knew no bounds.
+
+‘It isn’t all rubbish, by any means,’ said Jasper, graciously. ‘In the
+chapter on writing for magazines, there are one or two very good hints.
+What a pity you can’t apply your own advice, Whelpdale!’
+
+‘Now that’s horribly unkind of you!’ protested the other. ‘You might
+have spared me this evening. But unfortunately it’s quite true, Miss
+Milvain. I point the way, but I haven’t been able to travel it myself.
+You mustn’t think I have never succeeded in getting things published;
+but I can’t keep it up as a profession.
+
+Your brother is the successful man. A marvellous facility! I envy him.
+Few men at present writing have such talent.’
+
+‘Please don’t make him more conceited than he naturally is,’ interposed
+Dora.
+
+‘What news of Biffen?’ asked Jasper, presently.
+
+‘He says he shall finish “Mr Bailey, Grocer,” in about a month. He read
+me one of the later chapters the other night. It’s really very fine;
+most remarkable writing, it seems to me. It will be scandalous if he
+can’t get it published; it will, indeed.’
+
+‘I do hope he may!’ said Dora, laughing. ‘I have heard so much of “Mr
+Bailey,” that it will be a great disappointment if I am never to read
+it.’
+
+‘I’m afraid it would give you very little pleasure,’ Whelpdale replied,
+hesitatingly. ‘The matter is so very gross.’
+
+‘And the hero grocer!’ shouted Jasper, mirthfully. ‘Oh, but it’s quite
+decent; only rather depressing. The decently ignoble--or, the ignobly
+decent? Which is Biffen’s formula? I saw him a week ago, and he looked
+hungrier than ever.’
+
+‘Ah, but poor Reardon! I passed him at King’s Cross not long ago.
+
+He didn’t see me--walks with his eyes on the ground always--and I hadn’t
+the courage to stop him. He’s the ghost of his old self. He can’t live
+long.’
+
+Dora and her brother exchanged a glance. It was a long time since Jasper
+had spoken to his sisters about the Reardons; nowadays he seldom heard
+either of husband or wife.
+
+The conversation that went on was so agreeable to Whelpdale, that he
+lost consciousness of time. It was past eleven o’clock when Jasper felt
+obliged to remind him.
+
+‘Dora, I think I must be taking you home.’
+
+The visitor at once made ready for departure, and his leave-taking was
+as respectful as his entrance had been. Though he might not say what
+he thought, there was very legible upon his countenance a hope that he
+would again be privileged to meet Miss Dora Milvain.
+
+‘Not a bad fellow, in his way,’ said Jasper, when Dora and he were alone
+again.
+
+‘Not at all.’
+
+She had heard the story of Whelpdale’s hapless wooing half a year ago,
+and her recollection of it explained the smile with which she spoke.
+
+‘Never get on, I’m afraid,’ Jasper pursued. ‘He has his allowance of
+twenty pounds a year, and makes perhaps fifty or sixty more. If I were
+in his position, I should go in for some kind of regular business; he
+has people who could help him. Good-natured fellow; but what’s the use
+of that if you’ve no money?’
+
+They set out together, and walked to the girls’ lodgings. Dora was about
+to use her latch-key, but Jasper checked her. ‘No. There’s a light in
+the kitchen still; better knock, as we’re so late.’
+
+‘But why?’
+
+‘Never mind; do as I tell you.’
+
+The landlady admitted them, and Jasper spoke a word or two with her,
+explaining that he would wait until his elder sister’s return; the
+darkness of the second-floor windows had shown that Maud was not yet
+back.
+
+‘What strange fancies you have!’ remarked Dora, when they were upstairs.
+
+‘So have people in general, unfortunately.’
+
+A letter lay on the table. It was addressed to Maud, and Dora recognised
+the handwriting as that of a Wattleborough friend.
+
+‘There must be some news here,’ she said. ‘Mrs Haynes wouldn’t write
+unless she had something special to say.
+
+Just upon midnight, a cab drew up before the house. Dora ran down to
+open the door to her sister, who came in with very bright eyes and more
+colour than usual on her cheeks.
+
+‘How late for you to be here!’ she exclaimed, on entering the
+sitting-room and seeing Jasper.
+
+‘I shouldn’t have felt comfortable till I knew that you were back all
+right.’
+
+‘What fear was there?’
+
+She threw off her wraps, laughing.
+
+‘Well, have you enjoyed yourself?’
+
+‘Oh yes!’ she replied, carelessly. ‘This letter for me? What has Mrs
+Haynes got to say, I wonder?’
+
+She opened the envelope, and began to glance hurriedly over the sheet of
+paper. Then her face changed.
+
+‘What do you think? Mr Yule is dead!’
+
+Dora uttered an exclamation; Jasper displayed the keenest interest.
+
+‘He died yesterday--no, it would be the day before yesterday. He had a
+fit of some kind at a public meeting, was taken to the hospital because
+it was nearest, and died in a few hours. So that has come, at last! Now
+what’ll be the result of it, I wonder?’
+
+‘When shall you be seeing Marian?’ asked her brother.
+
+‘She might come to-morrow evening.’
+
+‘But won’t she go to the funeral?’ suggested Dora.
+
+‘Perhaps; there’s no saying. I suppose her father will, at all events.
+The day before yesterday? Then the funeral will be on Saturday, I should
+think.’
+
+‘Ought I to write to Marian?’ asked Dora.
+
+‘No; I wouldn’t,’ was Jasper’s reply. ‘Better wait till she lets you
+hear. That’s sure to be soon. She may have gone to Wattleborough this
+afternoon, or be going to-morrow morning.’
+
+The letter from Mrs Haynes was passed from hand to hand. ‘Everybody
+feels sure,’ it said, ‘that a great deal of his money will be left for
+public purposes. The ground for the park being already purchased, he is
+sure to have made provision for carrying out his plans connected with
+it. But I hope your friends in London may benefit.’
+
+It was some time before Jasper could put an end to the speculative
+conversation and betake himself homewards. And even on getting back to
+his lodgings he was little disposed to go to bed. This event of John
+Yule’s death had been constantly in his mind, but there was always a
+fear that it might not happen for long enough; the sudden announcement
+excited him almost as much as if he were a relative of the deceased.
+
+‘Confound his public purposes!’ was the thought upon which he at length
+slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. MR YULE LEAVES TOWN
+
+Since the domestic incidents connected with that unpleasant review in
+The Current, the relations between Alfred Yule and his daughter had
+suffered a permanent change, though not in a degree noticeable by any
+one but the two concerned. To all appearances, they worked together and
+conversed very much as they had been wont to do; but Marian was made
+to feel in many subtle ways that her father no longer had complete
+confidence in her, no longer took the same pleasure as formerly in the
+skill and conscientiousness of her work, and Yule on his side perceived
+too clearly that the girl was preoccupied with something other than
+her old wish to aid and satisfy him, that she had a new life of her own
+alien to, and in some respects irreconcilable with, the existence
+in which he desired to confirm her. There was no renewal of open
+disagreement, but their conversations frequently ended by tacit mutual
+consent, at a point which threatened divergence; and in Yule’s case
+every such warning was a cause of intense irritation. He feared to
+provoke Marian, and this fear was again a torture to his pride.
+
+Beyond the fact that his daughter was in constant communication with
+the Miss Milvains, he knew, and could discover, nothing of the terms on
+which she stood with the girls’ brother, and this ignorance was harder
+to bear than full assurance of a disagreeable fact would have been. That
+a man like Jasper Milvain, whose name was every now and then forced
+upon his notice as a rising periodicalist and a faithful henchman of
+the unspeakable Fadge--that a young fellow of such excellent prospects
+should seriously attach himself to a girl like Marian seemed to him
+highly improbable, save, indeed, for the one consideration, that
+Milvain, who assuredly had a very keen eye to chances, might regard the
+girl as a niece of old John Yule, and therefore worth holding in view
+until it was decided whether or not she would benefit by her uncle’s
+decease. Fixed in his antipathy to the young man, he would not allow
+himself to admit any but a base motive on Milvain’s side, if, indeed,
+Marian and Jasper were more to each other than slight acquaintances; and
+he persuaded himself that anxiety for the girl’s welfare was at least
+as strong a motive with him as mere prejudice against the ally of Fadge,
+and, it might be, the reviewer of ‘English Prose.’ Milvain was quite
+capable of playing fast and loose with a girl, and Marian, owing to the
+peculiar circumstances of her position, would easily be misled by the
+pretence of a clever speculator.
+
+That she had never spoken again about the review in The Current might
+receive several explanations. Perhaps she had not been able to convince
+herself either for or against Milvain’s authorship; perhaps she had
+reason to suspect that the young man was the author; perhaps she merely
+shrank from reviving a discussion in which she might betray what she
+desired to keep secret. This last was the truth. Finding that her father
+did not recur to the subject, Marian concluded that he had found himself
+to be misinformed. But Yule, though he heard the original rumour denied
+by people whom in other matters he would have trusted, would not lay
+aside the doubt that flattered his prejudices. If Milvain were not the
+writer of the review, he very well might have been; and what certainty
+could be arrived at in matters of literary gossip?
+
+There was an element of jealousy in the father’s feeling. If he did not
+love Marian with all the warmth of which a parent is capable, at least
+he had more affection for her than for any other person, and of this he
+became strongly aware now that the girl seemed to be turning from him.
+If he lost Marian, he would indeed be a lonely man, for he considered
+his wife of no account.
+
+Intellectually again, he demanded an entire allegiance from his
+daughter; he could not bear to think that her zeal on his behalf was
+diminishing, that perhaps she was beginning to regard his work as futile
+and antiquated in comparison with that of the new generation. Yet this
+must needs be the result of frequent intercourse with such a man as
+Milvain. It seemed to him that he remarked it in her speech and manner,
+and at times he with difficulty restrained himself from a reproach or a
+sarcasm which would have led to trouble.
+
+Had he been in the habit of dealing harshly with Marian, as with her
+mother, of course his position would have been simpler. But he had
+always respected her, and he feared to lose that measure of respect with
+which she repaid him. Already he had suffered in her esteem, perhaps
+more than he liked to think, and the increasing embitterment of his
+temper kept him always in danger of the conflict he dreaded. Marian was
+not like her mother; she could not submit to tyrannous usage. Warned
+of that, he did his utmost to avoid an outbreak of discord, constantly
+hoping that he might come to understand his daughter’s position, and
+perhaps discover that his greatest fear was unfounded.
+
+Twice in the course of the summer he inquired of his wife whether she
+knew anything about the Milvains. But Mrs Yule was not in Marian’s
+confidence.
+
+‘I only know that she goes to see the young ladies, and that they do
+writing of some kind.’
+
+‘She never even mentions their brother to you?’
+
+‘Never. I haven’t heard his name from her since she told me the Miss
+Milvains weren’t coming here again.’
+
+He was not sorry that Marian had taken the decision to keep her friends
+away from St Paul’s Crescent, for it saved him a recurring annoyance;
+but, on the other hand, if they had continued to come, he would not
+have been thus completely in the dark as to her intercourse with Jasper;
+scraps of information must now and then have been gathered by his wife
+from the girls’ talk.
+
+Throughout the month of July he suffered much from his wonted bilious
+attacks, and Mrs Yule had to endure a double share of his ill-temper,
+that which was naturally directed against her, and that of which Marian
+was the cause. In August things were slightly better; but with the
+return to labour came a renewal of Yule’s sullenness and savageness.
+Sundry pieces of ill-luck of a professional kind--warnings, as he too
+well understood, that it was growing more and more difficult for him
+to hold his own against the new writers--exasperated his quarrel with
+destiny. The gloom of a cold and stormy September was doubly wretched
+in that house on the far borders of Camden Town, but in October the sun
+reappeared and it seemed to mollify the literary man’s mood. Just when
+Mrs Yule and Marian began to hope that this long distemper must surely
+come to an end, there befell an incident which, at the best of times,
+would have occasioned misery, and which in the present juncture proved
+disastrous.
+
+It was one morning about eleven. Yule was in his study; Marian was at
+the Museum; Mrs Yule had gone shopping. There came a sharp knock at
+the front door, and the servant, on opening, was confronted with a
+decently-dressed woman, who asked in a peremptory voice if Mrs Yule was
+at home.
+
+‘No? Then is Mr Yule?’
+
+‘Yes, mum, but I’m afraid he’s busy.’
+
+‘I don’t care, I must see him. Say that Mrs Goby wants to see him at
+once.’
+
+The servant, not without apprehensions, delivered this message at the
+door of the study.
+
+‘Mrs Goby? Who is Mrs Goby?’ exclaimed the man of letters, irate at the
+disturbance.
+
+There sounded an answer out of the passage, for the visitor had followed
+close.
+
+‘I am Mrs Goby, of the ‘Olloway Road, wife of Mr C. O. Goby,
+‘aberdasher. I just want to speak to you, Mr Yule, if you please, seeing
+that Mrs Yule isn’t in.’
+
+Yule started up in fury, and stared at the woman, to whom the servant
+had reluctantly given place.
+
+‘What business can you have with me? If you wish to see Mrs Yule, come
+again when she is at home.’
+
+‘No, Mr Yule, I will not come again!’ cried the woman, red in the face.
+‘I thought I might have had respectable treatment here, at all events;
+but I see you’re pretty much like your relations in the way of behaving
+to people, though you do wear better clothes, and--I s’pose--call
+yourself a gentleman. I won’t come again, and you shall just hear what
+I’ve got to say.
+
+She closed the door violently, and stood in an attitude of robust
+defiance.
+
+‘What’s all this about?’ asked the enraged author, overcoming an impulse
+to take Mrs Goby by the shoulders and throw her out--though he might
+have found some difficulty in achieving this feat. ‘Who are you? And why
+do you come here with your brawling?’
+
+‘I’m the respectable wife of a respectable man--that’s who I am, Mr
+Yule, if you want to know. And I always thought Mrs Yule was the same,
+from the dealings we’ve had with her at the shop, though not knowing any
+more of her, it’s true, except that she lived in St Paul’s Crezzent.
+And so she may be respectable, though I can’t say as her husband behaves
+himself very much like what he pretends to be. But I can’t say as much
+for her relations in Perker Street, ‘Olloway, which I s’pose they’re
+your relations as well, at least by marriage. And if they think they’re
+going to insult me, and use their blackguard tongues--’
+
+‘What are you talking about?’ shouted Yule, who was driven to frenzy by
+the mention of his wife’s humble family. ‘What have I to do with these
+people?’
+
+‘What have you to do with them? I s’pose they’re your relations, ain’t
+they? And I s’pose the girl Annie Rudd is your niece, ain’t she? At
+least, she’s your wife’s niece, and that comes to the same thing, I’ve
+always understood, though I dare say a gentleman as has so many books
+about him can correct me if I’ve made a mistake.’
+
+She looked scornfully, though also with some surprise, round the volumed
+walls.
+
+‘And what of this girl? Will you have the goodness to say what your
+business is?’
+
+‘Yes, I will have the goodness! I s’pose you know very well that I took
+your niece Annie Rudd as a domestic servant’--she repeated this precise
+definition--‘as a domestic servant, because Mrs Yule ‘appened to ‘arst
+me if I knew of a place for a girl of that kind, as hadn’t been out
+before, but could be trusted to do her best to give satisfaction to a
+good mistress? I s’pose you know that?’
+
+‘I know nothing of the kind. What have I to do with servants?’
+
+‘Well, whether you’ve much to do with them or little, that’s how it
+was. And nicely she’s paid me out, has your niece, Miss Rudd. Of all the
+trouble I ever had with a girl! And now when she’s run away back ‘ome,
+and when I take the trouble to go arfter her, I’m to be insulted and
+abused as never was! Oh, they’re a nice respectable family, those Rudds!
+Mrs Rudd--that’s Mrs Yule’s sister--what a nice, polite-spoken lady she
+is, to be sure? If I was to repeat the language--but there, I wouldn’t
+lower myself. And I’ve been a brute of a mistress; I ill-use my
+servants, and I don’t give ‘em enough to eat, and I pay ‘em worse than
+any woman in London! That’s what I’ve learnt about myself by going to
+Perker Street, ‘Olloway. And when I come here to ask Mrs Yule what she
+means by recommending such a creature, from such a ‘ome, I get insulted
+by her gentleman husband.’
+
+Yule was livid with rage, but the extremity of his scorn withheld him
+from utterance of what he felt.
+
+‘As I said, all this has nothing to do with me. I will let Mrs Yule know
+that you have called. I have no more time to spare.’
+
+Mrs Goby repeated at still greater length the details of her grievance,
+but long before she had finished Yule was sitting again at his desk in
+ostentatious disregard of her. Finally, the exasperated woman flung open
+the door, railed in a loud voice along the passage, and left the house
+with an alarming crash.
+
+It was not long before Mrs Yule returned. Before taking off her things,
+she went down into the kitchen with certain purchases, and there she
+learnt from the servant what had happened during her absence. Fear and
+trembling possessed her--the sick, faint dread always excited by her
+husband’s wrath--but she felt obliged to go at once to the study. The
+scene that took place there was one of ignoble violence on Yule’s part,
+and, on that of his wife, of terrified self-accusation, changing at
+length to dolorous resentment of the harshness with which she was
+treated. When it was over, Yule took his hat and went out.
+
+He did not return for the mid-day meal, and when Marian, late in the
+afternoon, came back from the Museum, he was still absent.
+
+Not finding her mother in the parlour, Marian called at the head of the
+kitchen stairs. The servant answered, saying that Mrs Yule was up in
+her bedroom, and that she didn’t seem well. Marian at once went up and
+knocked at the bedroom door. In a moment or two her mother came out,
+showing a face of tearful misery.
+
+‘What is it, mother? What’s the matter?’
+
+They went into Marian’s room, where Mrs Yule gave free utterance to her
+lamentations.
+
+‘I can’t put up with it, Marian! Your father is too hard with me.
+I was wrong, I dare say, and I might have known what would have come of
+it, but he couldn’t speak to me worse if I did him all the harm I could
+on purpose. It’s all about Annie, because I found a place for her at Mrs
+Goby’s in the ‘Olloway Road; and now Mrs Goby’s been here and seen your
+father, and told him she’s been insulted by the Rudds, because Annie
+went off home, and she went after her to make inquiries. And your
+father’s in such a passion about it as never was. That woman Mrs Goby
+rushed into the study when he was working; it was this morning, when I
+happened to be out. And she throws all the blame on me for recommending
+her such a girl. And I did it for the best, that I did! Annie promised
+me faithfully she’d behave well, and never give me trouble, and she
+seemed thankful to me, because she wasn’t happy at home. And now to
+think of her causing all this disturbance! I oughtn’t to have done
+such a thing without speaking about it to your father; but you know how
+afraid I am to say a word to him about those people. And my sister’s
+told me so often I ought to be ashamed of myself never helping her and
+her children; she thinks I could do such a lot if I only liked. And now
+that I did try to do something, see what comes of it!’
+
+Marian listened with a confusion of wretched feelings. But her
+sympathies were strongly with her mother; as well as she could
+understand the broken story, her father seemed to have no just cause
+for his pitiless rage, though such an occasion would be likely enough to
+bring out his worst faults.
+
+‘Is he in the study?’ she asked.
+
+‘No, he went out at twelve o’clock, and he’s never been back since. I
+feel as if I must do something; I can’t bear with it, Marian. He tells
+me I’m the curse of his life--yes, he said that. I oughtn’t to tell you,
+I know I oughtn’t; but it’s more than I can bear. I’ve always tried to
+do my best, but it gets harder and harder for me. But for me he’d
+never be in these bad tempers; it’s because he can’t look at me without
+getting angry. He says I’ve kept him back all through his life; but for
+me he might have been far better off than he is. It may be true; I’ve
+often enough thought it. But I can’t bear to have it told me like that,
+and to see it in his face every time he looks at me. I shall have to do
+something. He’d be glad if only I was out of his way.’
+
+‘Father has no right to make you so unhappy,’ said Marian. ‘I can’t see
+that you did anything blameworthy; it seems to me that it was your duty
+to try and help Annie, and if it turned out unfortunately, that can’t be
+helped. You oughtn’t to think so much of what father says in his anger;
+I believe he hardly knows what he does say. Don’t take it so much to
+heart, mother.’
+
+‘I’ve tried my best, Marian,’ sobbed the poor woman, who felt that even
+her child’s sympathy could not be perfect, owing to the distance put
+between them by Marian’s education and refined sensibilities. ‘I’ve
+always thought it wasn’t right to talk to you about such things, but
+he’s been too hard with me to-day.’
+
+‘I think it was better you should tell me. It can’t go on like this; I
+feel that just as you do. I must tell father that he is making our lives
+a burden to us.’
+
+‘Oh, you mustn’t speak to him like that, Marian! I wouldn’t for anything
+make unkindness between you and your father; that would be the worst
+thing I’d done yet. I’d rather go away and work for my own living than
+make trouble between you and him.’
+
+‘It isn’t you who make trouble; it’s father. I ought to have spoken
+to him before this; I had no right to stand by and see how much you
+suffered from his ill-temper.’
+
+The longer they talked, the firmer grew Marian’s resolve to front her
+father’s tyrannous ill-humour, and in one way or another to change the
+intolerable state of things. She had been weak to hold her peace so
+long; at her age it was a simple duty to interfere when her mother
+was treated with such flagrant injustice. Her father’s behaviour was
+unworthy of a thinking man, and he must be made to feel that.
+
+Yule did not return. Dinner was delayed for half an hour, then Marian
+declared that they would wait no longer. They two made a sorry meal, and
+afterwards went together into the sitting-room. At eight o’clock they
+heard the front door open, and Yule’s footstep in the passage. Marian
+rose.
+
+‘Don’t speak till to-morrow!’ whispered her mother, catching at the
+girl’s arm. ‘Let it be till to-morrow, Marian!’
+
+‘I must speak! We can’t live in this terror.’
+
+She reached the study just as her father was closing the door behind
+him. Yule, seeing her enter, glared with bloodshot eyes; shame and
+sullen anger were blended on his countenance.
+
+‘Will you tell me what is wrong, father?’ Marian asked, in a voice which
+betrayed her nervous suffering, yet indicated the resolve with which she
+had come.
+
+‘I am not at all disposed to talk of the matter,’ he replied, with the
+awkward rotundity of phrase which distinguished him in his worst humour.
+‘For information you had better go to Mrs Goby--or a person of some such
+name--in Holloway Road. I have nothing more to do with it.’
+
+‘It was very unfortunate that the woman came and troubled you about
+such things. But I can’t see that mother was to blame; I don’t think you
+ought to be so angry with her.’
+
+It cost Marian a terrible effort to address her father in these terms.
+When he turned fiercely upon her, she shrank back and felt as if
+strength must fail her even to stand.
+
+‘You can’t see that she was to blame? Isn’t it entirely against my wish
+that she keeps up any intercourse with those low people? Am I to be
+exposed to insulting disturbance in my very study, because she chooses
+to introduce girls of bad character as servants to vulgar women?’
+
+‘I don’t think Annie Rudd can be called a girl of bad character, and
+it was very natural that mother should try to do something for her. You
+have never actually forbidden her to see her relatives.’
+
+‘A thousand times I have given her to understand that I utterly
+disapproved of such association. She knew perfectly well that this girl
+was as likely as not to discredit her. If she had consulted me, I should
+at once have forbidden anything of the kind; she was aware of that. She
+kept it secret from me, knowing that it would excite my displeasure. I
+will not be drawn into such squalid affairs; I won’t have my name spoken
+in such connection. Your mother has only herself to blame if I am angry
+with her.’
+
+‘Your anger goes beyond all bounds. At the very worst, mother behaved
+imprudently, and with a very good motive. It is cruel that you should
+make her suffer as she is doing.’
+
+Marian was being strengthened to resist. Her blood grew hot; the
+sensation which once before had brought her to the verge of conflict
+with her father possessed her heart and brain.
+
+‘You are not a suitable judge of my behaviour,’ replied Yule, severely.
+
+‘I am driven to speak. We can’t go on living in this way, father. For
+months our home has been almost ceaselessly wretched, because of the
+ill-temper you are always in. Mother and I must defend ourselves; we
+can’t bear it any longer. You must surely feel how ridiculous it is to
+make such a thing as happened this morning the excuse for violent anger.
+How can I help judging your behaviour? When mother is brought to the
+point of saying that she would rather leave home and everything than
+endure her misery any longer, I should be wrong if I didn’t speak to
+you. Why are you so unkind? What serious cause has mother ever given
+you?’
+
+‘I refuse to argue such questions with you.’
+
+‘Then you are very unjust. I am not a child, and there’s nothing wrong
+in my asking you why home is made a place of misery, instead of being
+what home ought to be.’
+
+‘You prove that you are a child, in asking for explanations which ought
+to be clear enough to you.’
+
+‘You mean that mother is to blame for everything?’
+
+‘The subject is no fit one to be discussed between a father and his
+daughter. If you cannot see the impropriety of it, be so good as to go
+away and reflect, and leave me to my occupations.’
+
+Marian came to a pause. But she knew that his rebuke was mere unworthy
+evasion; she saw that her father could not meet her look, and this
+perception of shame in him impelled her to finish what she had begun.
+
+‘I will say nothing of mother, then, but speak only for myself. I suffer
+too much from your unkindness; you ask too much endurance.’
+
+‘You mean that I exact too much work from you?’ asked her father, with a
+look which might have been directed to a recalcitrant clerk.
+
+‘No. But that you make the conditions of my work too hard. I live in
+constant fear of your anger.’
+
+‘Indeed? When did I last ill-use you, or threaten you?’
+
+‘I often think that threats, or even ill-usage, would be easier to bear
+than an unchanging gloom which always seems on the point of breaking
+into violence.’
+
+‘I am obliged to you for your criticism of my disposition and manner,
+but unhappily I am too old to reform. Life has made me what I am, and I
+should have thought that your knowledge of what my life has been would
+have gone far to excuse a lack of cheerfulness in me.’
+
+The irony of this laborious period was full of self-pity. His voice
+quavered at the close, and a tremor was noticeable in his stiff frame.
+
+‘It isn’t lack of cheerfulness that I mean, father. That could never
+have brought me to speak like this.’
+
+‘If you wish me to admit that I am bad-tempered, surly, irritable--I
+make no difficulty about that. The charge is true enough. I can only ask
+you again: What are the circumstances that have ruined my temper? When
+you present yourself here with a general accusation of my behaviour, I
+am at a loss to understand what you ask of me, what you wish me to say
+or do. I must beg you to speak plainly. Are you suggesting that I should
+make provision for the support of you and your mother away from my
+intolerable proximity? My income is not large, as I think you are aware,
+but of course, if a demand of this kind is seriously made, I must do my
+best to comply with it.’
+
+‘It hurts me very much that you can understand me no better than this.’
+
+‘I am sorry. I think we used to understand each other, but that was
+before you were subjected to the influence of strangers.’
+
+In his perverse frame of mind he was ready to give utterance to any
+thought which confused the point at issue. This last allusion was
+suggested to him by a sudden pang of regret for the pain he was causing
+Marian; he defended himself against self-reproach by hinting at the true
+reason of much of his harshness.
+
+‘I am subjected to no influence that is hostile to you,’ Marian replied.
+
+‘You may think that. But in such a matter it is very easy for you to
+deceive yourself.’
+
+‘Of course I know what you refer to, and I can assure you that I don’t
+deceive myself.’
+
+Yule flashed a searching glance at her.
+
+‘Can you deny that you are on terms of friendship with a--a person who
+would at any moment rejoice to injure me?’
+
+‘I am friendly with no such person. Will you say whom you are thinking
+of?’
+
+‘It would be useless. I have no wish to discuss a subject on which we
+should only disagree unprofitably.’
+
+Marian kept silence for a moment, then said in a low, unsteady voice:
+
+‘It is perhaps because we never speak of that subject that we are so
+far from understanding each other. If you think that Mr Milvain is
+your enemy, that he would rejoice to injure you, you are grievously
+mistaken.’
+
+‘When I see a man in close alliance with my worst enemy, and looking to
+that enemy for favour, I am justified in thinking that he would injure
+me if the right kind of opportunity offered. One need not be very deeply
+read in human nature to have assurance of that.’
+
+‘But I know Mr Milvain!’
+
+‘You know him?’
+
+‘Far better than you can, I am sure. You draw conclusions from general
+principles; but I know that they don’t apply in this case.’
+
+‘I have no doubt you sincerely think so. I repeat that nothing can be
+gained by such a discussion as this.’
+
+‘One thing I must tell you. There was no truth in your suspicion that Mr
+Milvain wrote that review in The Current. He assured me himself that he
+was not the writer, that he had nothing to do with it.’
+
+Yule looked askance at her, and his face displayed solicitude, which
+soon passed, however, into a smile of sarcasm.
+
+‘The gentleman’s word no doubt has weight with you.’
+
+‘Father, what do you mean?’ broke from Marian, whose eyes of a sudden
+flashed stormily. ‘Would Mr Milvain tell me a lie?’
+
+‘I shouldn’t like to say that it is impossible,’ replied her father in
+the same tone as before.
+
+‘But--what right have you to insult him so grossly?’
+
+‘I have every right, my dear child, to express an opinion about him
+or any other man, provided I do it honestly. I beg you not to strike
+attitudes and address me in the language of the stage. You insist on my
+speaking plainly, and I have spoken plainly. I warned you that we were
+not likely to agree on this topic.’
+
+‘Literary quarrels have made you incapable of judging honestly in
+things such as this. I wish I could have done for ever with the hateful
+profession that so poisons men’s minds.’
+
+‘Believe me, my girl,’ said her father, incisively, ‘the simpler thing
+would be to hold aloof from such people as use the profession in a
+spirit of unalloyed selfishness, who seek only material advancement, and
+who, whatever connection they form, have nothing but self-interest in
+view.’
+
+And he glared at her with much meaning. Marian--both had remained
+standing all through the dialogue--cast down her eyes and became lost in
+brooding.
+
+‘I speak with profound conviction,’ pursued her father, ‘and, however
+little you credit me with such a motive, out of desire to guard you
+against the dangers to which your inexperience is exposed. It is perhaps
+as well that you have afforded me this--’
+
+There sounded at the house-door that duplicated double-knock which
+generally announces the bearer of a telegram. Yule interrupted himself,
+and stood in an attitude of waiting. The servant was heard to go along
+the passage, to open the door, and then return towards the study. Yes,
+it was a telegram. Such despatches rarely came to this house; Yule tore
+the envelope, read its contents, and stood with gaze fixed upon the slip
+of paper until the servant inquired if there was any reply for the boy
+to take with him.
+
+‘No reply.’
+
+He slowly crumpled the envelope, and stepped aside to throw it into the
+paper-basket. The telegram he laid on his desk. Marian stood all
+the time with bent head; he now looked at her with an expression of
+meditative displeasure.
+
+‘I don’t know that there’s much good in resuming our conversation,’ he
+said, in quite a changed tone, as if something of more importance had
+taken possession of his thoughts and had made him almost indifferent to
+the past dispute. ‘But of course I am quite willing to hear anything you
+would still like to say.
+
+Marian had lost her vehemence. She was absent and melancholy.
+
+‘I can only ask you,’ she replied, ‘to try and make life less of a
+burden to us.’
+
+‘I shall have to leave town to-morrow for a few days; no doubt it will
+be some satisfaction to you to hear that.’
+
+Marian’s eyes turned involuntarily towards the telegram.
+
+‘As for your occupation in my absence,’ he went on, in a hard tone which
+yet had something tremulous, emotional, making it quite different from
+the voice he had hitherto used, ‘that will be entirely a matter for your
+own judgment. I have felt for some time that you assisted me with less
+good-will than formerly, and now that you have frankly admitted it, I
+shall of course have very little satisfaction in requesting your aid. I
+must leave it to you; consult your own inclination.’
+
+It was resentful, but not savage; between the beginning and the end of
+his speech he softened to a sort of self-satisfied pathos.
+
+‘I can’t pretend,’ replied Marian, ‘that I have as much pleasure in the
+work as I should have if your mood were gentler.’
+
+‘I am sorry. I might perhaps have made greater efforts to appear at ease
+when I was suffering.’
+
+‘Do you mean physical suffering?’
+
+‘Physical and mental. But that can’t concern you. During my absence I
+will think of your reproof. I know that it is deserved, in some degree.
+If it is possible, you shall have less to complain of in future.’
+
+He looked about the room, and at length seated himself; his eyes were
+fixed in a direction away from Marian.
+
+‘I suppose you had dinner somewhere?’ Marian asked, after catching a
+glimpse of his worn, colourless face.
+
+‘Oh, I had a mouthful of something. It doesn’t matter.’
+
+It seemed as if he found some special pleasure in assuming this tone of
+martyrdom just now. At the same time he was becoming more absorbed in
+thought.
+
+‘Shall I have something brought up for you, father?’
+
+‘Something--? Oh no, no; on no account.’
+
+He rose again impatiently, then approached his desk, and laid a hand on
+the telegram. Marian observed this movement, and examined his face; it
+was set in an expression of eagerness.
+
+‘You have nothing more to say, then?’ He turned sharply upon her.
+
+‘I feel that I haven’t made you understand me, but I can say nothing
+more.’
+
+‘I understand you very well--too well. That you should misunderstand and
+mistrust me, I suppose, is natural. You are young, and I am old. You are
+still full of hope, and I have been so often deceived and defeated that
+I dare not let a ray of hope enter my mind. Judge me; judge me as hardly
+as you like. My life has been one long, bitter struggle, and if now--. I
+say,’ he began a new sentence, ‘that only the hard side of life has been
+shown to me; small wonder if I have become hard myself. Desert me;
+go your own way, as the young always do. But bear in mind my warning.
+Remember the caution I have given you.’
+
+He spoke in a strangely sudden agitation. The arm with which he leaned
+upon the table trembled violently. After a moment’s pause he added, in a
+thick voice:
+
+‘Leave me. I will speak to you again in the morning.’
+
+Impressed in a way she did not understand, Marian at once obeyed, and
+rejoined her mother in the parlour. Mrs Yule gazed anxiously at her as
+she entered.
+
+‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Marian, with difficulty bringing herself to
+speak. ‘I think it will be better.’
+
+‘Was that a telegram that came?’ her mother inquired after a silence.
+
+‘Yes. I don’t know where it was from. But father said he would have to
+leave town for a few days.’
+
+They exchanged looks.
+
+‘Perhaps your uncle is very ill,’ said the mother in a low voice.
+
+‘Perhaps so.’
+
+The evening passed drearily. Fatigued with her emotions, Marian went
+early to bed; she even slept later than usual in the morning, and on
+descending she found her father already at the breakfast-table. No
+greeting passed, and there was no conversation during the meal. Marian
+noticed that her mother kept glancing at her in a peculiarly grave way;
+but she felt ill and dejected, and could fix her thoughts on no subject.
+As he left the table Yule said to her:
+
+‘I want to speak to you for a moment. I shall be in the study.’
+
+She joined him there very soon. He looked coldly at her, and said in a
+distant tone:
+
+‘The telegram last night was to tell me that your uncle is dead.’
+
+‘Dead!’
+
+‘He died of apoplexy, at a meeting in Wattleborough. I shall go down
+this morning, and of course remain till after the funeral. I see no
+necessity for your going, unless, of course, it is your desire to do
+so.’
+
+‘No; I should do as you wish.’
+
+‘I think you had better not go to the Museum whilst I am away. You will
+occupy yourself as you think fit.’
+
+‘I shall go on with the Harrington notes.’
+
+‘As you please. I don’t know what mourning it would be decent for you to
+wear; you must consult with your mother about that. That is all I wished
+to say.’
+
+His tone was dismissal. Marian had a struggle with herself but she could
+find nothing to reply to his cold phrases. And an hour or two afterwards
+Yule left the house without leave-taking.
+
+Soon after his departure there was a visitor’s rat-tat at the door;
+it heralded Mrs Goby. In the interview which then took place Marian
+assisted her mother to bear the vigorous onslaughts of the haberdasher’s
+wife. For more than two hours Mrs Goby related her grievances, against
+the fugitive servant, against Mrs Yule, against Mr Yule; meeting with no
+irritating opposition, she was able in this space of time to cool down
+to the temperature of normal intercourse, and when she went forth from
+the house again it was in a mood of dignified displeasure which she felt
+to be some recompense for the injuries of yesterday.
+
+A result of this annoyance was to postpone conversation between mother
+and daughter on the subject of John Yule’s death until a late hour of
+the afternoon. Marian was at work in the study, or endeavouring to work,
+for her thoughts would not fix themselves on the matter in hand for
+many minutes together, and Mrs Yule came in with more than her customary
+diffidence.
+
+‘Have you nearly done for to-day, dear?’
+
+‘Enough for the present, I think.’
+
+She laid down her pen, and leant back in the chair.
+
+‘Marian, do you think your father will be rich?’
+
+‘I have no idea, mother. I suppose we shall know very soon.’
+
+Her tone was dreamy. She seemed to herself to be speaking of something
+which scarcely at all concerned her, of vague possibilities which did
+not affect her habits of thought.
+
+‘If that happens,’ continued Mrs Yule, in a low tone of distress, ‘I
+don’t know what I shall do.’
+
+Marian looked at her questioningly.
+
+‘I can’t wish that it mayn’t happen,’ her mother went on; ‘I can’t, for
+his sake and for yours; but I don’t know what I shall do. He’d think me
+more in his way than ever. He’d wish to have a large house, and live
+in quite a different way; and how could I manage then? I couldn’t show
+myself; he’d be too much ashamed of me. I shouldn’t be in my place; even
+you’d feel ashamed of me.’
+
+‘You mustn’t say that, mother. I have never given you cause to think
+that.’
+
+‘No, my dear, you haven’t; but it would be only natural. I couldn’t live
+the kind of life that you’re fit for. I shall be nothing but a hindrance
+and a shame to both of you.’
+
+‘To me you would never be either hindrance or shame; be quite sure of
+that. And as for father, I am all but certain that, if he became rich,
+he would be a very much kinder man, a better man in every way. It is
+poverty that has made him worse than he naturally is; it has that effect
+on almost everybody. Money does harm, too, sometimes; but never, I
+think, to people who have a good heart and a strong mind. Father is
+naturally a warm-hearted man; riches would bring out all the best in
+him. He would be generous again, which he has almost forgotten how to
+be among all his disappointments and battlings. Don’t be afraid of that
+change, but hope for it.’
+
+Mrs Yule gave a troublous sigh, and for a few minutes pondered
+anxiously.
+
+‘I wasn’t thinking so much about myself’ she said at length. ‘It’s the
+hindrance I should be to father. Just because of me, he mightn’t be able
+to use his money as he’d wish. He’d always be feeling that if it wasn’t
+for me things would be so much better for him and for you as well.’
+
+‘You must remember,’ Marian replied, ‘that at father’s age people don’t
+care to make such great changes. His home life, I feel sure, wouldn’t be
+so very different from what it is now; he would prefer to use his money
+in starting a paper or magazine. I know that would be his first thought.
+If more acquaintances came to his house, what would that matter? It
+isn’t as if he wished for fashionable society. They would be literary
+people, and why ever shouldn’t you meet with them?’
+
+‘I’ve always been the reason why he couldn’t have many friends.’
+
+‘That’s a great mistake. If father ever said that, in his bad temper, he
+knew it wasn’t the truth. The chief reason has always been his poverty.
+It costs money to entertain friends; time as well. Don’t think in this
+anxious way, mother. If we are to be rich, it will be better for all of
+us.’
+
+Marian had every reason for seeking to persuade herself that this was
+true. In her own heart there was a fear of how wealth might affect her
+father, but she could not bring herself to face the darker prospect. For
+her so much depended on that hope of a revival of generous feeling under
+sunny influences.
+
+It was only after this conversation that she began to reflect on all the
+possible consequences of her uncle’s death. As yet she had been too much
+disturbed to grasp as a reality the event to which she had often looked
+forward, though as to something still remote, and of quite uncertain
+results. Perhaps at this moment, though she could not know it, the
+course of her life had undergone the most important change. Perhaps
+there was no more need for her to labour upon this ‘article’ she was
+manufacturing.
+
+She did not think it probable that she herself would benefit directly by
+John Yule’s will. There was no certainty that even her father would, for
+he and his brother had never been on cordial terms. But on the whole it
+seemed likely that he would inherit money enough to free him from the
+toil of writing for periodicals. He himself anticipated that. What else
+could be the meaning of those words in which (and it was before
+the arrival of the news) he had warned her against ‘people who made
+connections only with self-interest in view?’ This threw a sudden light
+upon her father’s attitude towards Jasper Milvain. Evidently he thought
+that Jasper regarded her as a possible heiress, sooner or later.
+That suspicion was rankling in his mind; doubtless it intensified the
+prejudice which originated in literary animosity.
+
+Was there any truth in his suspicion? She did not shrink from admitting
+that there might be. Jasper had from the first been so frank with her,
+had so often repeated that money was at present his chief need. If her
+father inherited substantial property, would it induce Jasper to declare
+himself more than her friend? She could view the possibility of that,
+and yet not for a moment be shaken in her love. It was plain that
+Jasper could not think of marrying until his position and prospects were
+greatly improved; practically, his sisters depended upon him. What folly
+it would be to draw back if circumstances led him to avow what hitherto
+he had so slightly disguised! She had the conviction that he valued her
+for her own sake; if the obstacle between them could only be removed,
+what matter how?
+
+Would he be willing to abandon Clement Fadge, and come over to her
+father’s side? If Yule were able to found a magazine?
+
+Had she read or heard of a girl who went so far in concessions, Marian
+would have turned away, her delicacy offended. In her own case she could
+indulge to the utmost that practicality which colours a woman’s thought
+even in mid passion. The cold exhibition of ignoble scheming will repel
+many a woman who, for her own heart’s desire, is capable of that same
+compromise with her strict sense of honour.
+
+Marian wrote to Dora Milvain, telling her what had happened. But she
+refrained from visiting her friends.
+
+Each night found her more restless, each morning less able to employ
+herself. She shut herself in the study merely to be alone with her
+thoughts, to be able to walk backwards and forwards, or sit for hours in
+feverish reverie. From her father came no news. Her mother was suffering
+dreadfully from suspense, and often had eyes red with weeping. Absorbed
+in her own hopes and fears, whilst every hour harassed her more
+intolerably, Marian was unable to play the part of an encourager; she
+had never known such exclusiveness of self-occupation.
+
+Yule’s return was unannounced. Early in the afternoon, when he had been
+absent five days, he entered the house, deposited his travelling-bag in
+the passage, and went upstairs. Marian had come out of the study just
+in time to see him up on the first landing; at the same moment Mrs Yule
+ascended from the kitchen.
+
+‘Wasn’t that father?’
+
+‘Yes, he has gone up.’
+
+‘Did he say anything?’
+
+Marian shook her head. They looked at the travelling-bag, then went into
+the parlour and waited in silence for more than a quarter of an hour.
+Yule’s foot was heard on the stairs; he came down slowly, paused in the
+passage, entered the parlour with his usual grave, cold countenance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. THE LEGATEES
+
+Each day Jasper came to inquire of his sisters if they had news from
+Wattleborough or from Marian Yule. He exhibited no impatience, spoke of
+the matter in a disinterested tone; still, he came daily.
+
+One afternoon he found Dora working alone. Maud, he was told, had gone
+to lunch at Mrs Lane’s.
+
+‘So soon again? She’s getting very thick with those people. And why
+don’t they ask you?’
+
+‘Maud has told them that I don’t care to go out.’
+
+‘It’s all very well, but she mustn’t neglect her work. Did she write
+anything last night or this morning?’
+
+Dora bit the end of her pen and shook her head.
+
+‘Why not?’
+
+‘The invitation came about five o’clock, and it seemed to unsettle her.’
+
+‘Precisely. That’s what I’m afraid of. She isn’t the kind of girl to
+stick at work if people begin to send her invitations. But I tell you
+what it is, you must talk seriously to her; she has to get her living,
+you know. Mrs Lane and her set are not likely to be much use, that’s the
+worst of it; they’ll merely waste her time, and make her discontented.’
+
+His sister executed an elaborate bit of cross-hatching on some waste
+paper. Her lips were drawn together, and her brows wrinkled. At length
+she broke the silence by saying:
+
+‘Marian hasn’t been yet.’
+
+Jasper seemed to pay no attention; she looked up at him, and saw that he
+was in thought.
+
+‘Did you go to those people last night?’ she inquired.
+
+‘Yes. By-the-bye, Miss Rupert was there.’
+
+He spoke as if the name would be familiar to his hearer, but Dora seemed
+at a loss.
+
+‘Who is Miss Rupert?’
+
+‘Didn’t I tell you about her? I thought I did. Oh, I met her first of
+all at Barlow’s, just after we got back from the seaside. Rather an
+interesting girl. She’s a daughter of Manton Rupert, the advertising
+agent. I want to get invited to their house; useful people, you know.’
+
+‘But is an advertising agent a gentleman?’
+
+Jasper laughed.
+
+‘Do you think of him as a bill-poster? At all events he is enormously
+wealthy, and has a magnificent house at Chislehurst. The girl goes about
+with her stepmother. I call her a girl, but she must be nearly thirty,
+and Mrs Rupert looks only two or three years older. I had quite a long
+talk with her--Miss Rupert, I mean--last night. She told me she was
+going to stay next week with the Barlows, so I shall have a run out to
+Wimbledon one afternoon.’
+
+Dora looked at him inquiringly.
+
+‘Just to see Miss Rupert?’ she asked, meeting his eyes.
+
+‘To be sure. Why not?’
+
+‘Oh!’ ejaculated his sister, as if the question did not concern her.
+
+‘She isn’t exactly good-looking,’ pursued Jasper, meditatively, with a
+quick glance at the listener, ‘but fairly intellectual. Plays very well,
+and has a nice contralto voice; she sang that new thing of Tosti’s--what
+do you call it? I thought her rather masculine when I first saw her, but
+the impression wears off when one knows her better. She rather takes to
+me, I fancy.’
+
+‘But--’ began Dora, after a minute’s silence.
+
+‘But what?’ inquired her brother with an air of interest.
+
+‘I don’t quite understand you.’
+
+‘In general, or with reference to some particular?’
+
+‘What right have you to go to places just to see this Miss Rupert?’
+
+‘What right?’ He laughed. ‘I am a young man with my way to make. I can’t
+afford to lose any opportunity. If Miss Rupert is so good as to take an
+interest in me, I have no objection. She’s old enough to make friends
+for herself.’
+
+‘Oh, then you consider her simply a friend?’
+
+‘I shall see how things go on.’
+
+‘But, pray, do you consider yourself perfectly free?’ asked Dora, with
+some indignation.
+
+‘Why shouldn’t I?’
+
+‘Then I think you have been behaving very strangely.’
+
+Jasper saw that she was in earnest. He stroked the back of his head and
+smiled at the wall.
+
+‘With regard to Marian, you mean?’
+
+‘Of course I do.’
+
+‘But Marian understands me perfectly. I have never for a moment tried
+to make her think that--well, to put it plainly, that I was in love with
+her. In all our conversations it has been my one object to afford her
+insight into my character, and to explain my position. She has no excuse
+whatever for misinterpreting me. And I feel assured that she has done
+nothing of the kind.’
+
+‘Very well, if you feel satisfied with yourself--’
+
+‘But come now, Dora; what’s all this about? You are Marian’s friend,
+and, of course, I don’t wish you to say a word about her.
+
+But let me explain myself. I have occasionally walked part of the way
+home with Marian, when she and I have happened to go from here at the
+same time; now there was nothing whatever in our talk at such times that
+anyone mightn’t have listened to. We are both intellectual people, and
+we talk in an intellectual way. You seem to have rather old-fashioned
+ideas--provincial ideas. A girl like Marian Yule claims the new
+privileges of woman; she would resent it if you supposed that she
+couldn’t be friendly with a man without attributing “intentions” to
+him--to use the old word. We don’t live in Wattleborough, where liberty
+is rendered impossible by the cackling of gossips.’
+
+‘No, but--’
+
+‘Well?’
+
+‘It seems to me rather strange, that’s all. We had better not talk about
+it any more.’
+
+‘But I have only just begun to talk about it; I must try to make
+my position intelligible to you. Now, suppose--a quite impossible
+thing--that Marian inherited some twenty or thirty thousand pounds; I
+should forthwith ask her to be my wife.’
+
+‘Oh indeed!’
+
+‘I see no reason for sarcasm. It would be a most rational proceeding.
+I like her very much; but to marry her (supposing she would have me)
+without money would he a gross absurdity, simply spoiling my career, and
+leading to all sorts of discontents.’
+
+‘No one would suggest that you should marry as things are.’
+
+‘No; but please to bear in mind that to obtain money somehow or
+other--and I see no other way than by marriage--is necessary to me, and
+that with as little delay as possible. I am not at all likely to get a
+big editorship for some years to come, and I don’t feel disposed to make
+myself prematurely old by toiling for a few hundreds per annum in the
+meantime. Now all this I have frankly and fully explained to Marian. I
+dare say she suspects what I should do if she came into possession of
+money; there’s no harm in that. But she knows perfectly well that, as
+things are, we remain intellectual friends.’
+
+‘Then listen to me, Jasper. If we hear that Marian gets nothing from her
+uncle, you had better behave honestly, and let her see that you haven’t
+as much interest in her as before.’
+
+‘That would be brutality.’
+
+‘It would be honest.’
+
+‘Well, no, it wouldn’t. Strictly speaking, my interest in Marian
+wouldn’t suffer at all. I should know that we could be nothing but
+friends, that’s all. Hitherto I haven’t known what might come to pass;
+I don’t know yet. So far from following your advice, I shall let Marian
+understand that, if anything, I am more her friend than ever, seeing
+that henceforth there can be no ambiguities.’
+
+‘I can only tell you that Maud would agree with me in what I have been
+saying.’
+
+‘Then both of you have distorted views.’
+
+‘I think not. It’s you who are unprincipled.’
+
+‘My dear girl, haven’t I been showing you that no man could be more
+above-board, more straightforward?’
+
+‘You have been talking nonsense, Jasper.’
+
+‘Nonsense? Oh, this female lack of logic! Then my argument has been
+utterly thrown away. Now that’s one of the things I like in Miss Rupert;
+she can follow an argument and see consequences. And for that matter so
+can Marian. I only wish it were possible to refer this question to her.’
+
+There was a tap at the door. Dora called ‘Come in!’ and Marian herself
+appeared.
+
+‘What an odd thing!’ exclaimed Jasper, lowering his voice. ‘I was that
+moment saying I wished it were possible to refer a question to you.’
+
+Dora reddened, and stood in an embarrassed attitude.
+
+‘It was the old dispute whether women in general are capable of logic.
+But pardon me, Miss Yule; I forget that you have been occupied with sad
+things since I last saw you.’
+
+Dora led her to a chair, asking if her father had returned.
+
+‘Yes, he came back yesterday.’
+
+Jasper and his sister could not think it likely that Marian had suffered
+much from grief at her uncle’s death; practically John Yule was a
+stranger to her. Yet her face bore the signs of acute mental trouble,
+and it seemed as if some agitation made it difficult for her to speak.
+The awkward silence that fell upon the three was broken by Jasper, who
+expressed a regret that he was obliged to take his leave.
+
+‘Maud is becoming a young lady of society,’ he said--just for the sake
+of saying something--as he moved towards the door. ‘If she comes back
+whilst you are here, Miss Yule, warn her that that is the path of
+destruction for literary people.’
+
+‘You should bear that in mind yourself’ remarked Dora, with a
+significant look.
+
+‘Oh, I am cool-headed enough to make society serve my own ends.’
+
+Marian turned her head with a sudden movement which was checked before
+she had quite looked round to him. The phrase he uttered last appeared
+to have affected her in some way; her eyes fell, and an expression of
+pain was on her brows for a moment.
+
+‘I can only stay a few minutes,’ she said, bending with a faint smile
+towards Dora, as soon as they were alone. ‘I have come on my way from
+the Museum.’
+
+‘Where you have tired yourself to death as usual, I can see.’
+
+‘No; I have done scarcely anything. I only pretended to read; my mind is
+too much troubled. Have you heard anything about my uncle’s will?’
+
+‘Nothing whatever.’
+
+‘I thought it might have been spoken of in Wattleborough, and some
+friend might have written to you. But I suppose there has hardly been
+time for that. I shall surprise you very much. Father receives nothing,
+but I have a legacy of five thousand pounds.’
+
+Dora kept her eyes down.
+
+‘Then--what do you think?’ continued Marian. ‘My cousin Amy has ten
+thousand pounds.’
+
+‘Good gracious! What a difference that will make!’
+
+‘Yes, indeed. And her brother John has six thousand. But nothing to
+their mother. There are a good many other legacies, but most of
+the property goes to the Wattleborough park--“Yule Park” it will be
+called--and to the volunteers, and things of that kind. They say he
+wasn’t as rich as people thought.’
+
+‘Do you know what Miss Harrow gets?’
+
+‘She has the house for her life, and fifteen hundred pounds.’
+
+‘And your father nothing whatever?’
+
+‘Nothing. Not a penny. Oh I am so grieved! I think it so unkind, so
+wrong. Amy and her brother to have sixteen thousand pounds and father
+nothing! I can’t understand it. There was no unkind feeling between him
+and father. He knew what a hard life father has had. Doesn’t it seem
+heartless?’
+
+‘What does your father say?’
+
+‘I think he feels the unkindness more than he does the disappointment;
+of course he must have expected something. He came into the room where
+mother and I were, and sat down, and began to tell us about the will
+just as if he were speaking to strangers about something he had read in
+the newspaper--that’s the only way I can describe it. Then he got up and
+went away into the study. I waited a little, and then went to him there;
+he was sitting at work, as if he hadn’t been away from home at all. I
+tried to tell him how sorry I was, but I couldn’t say anything. I began
+to cry foolishly. He spoke kindly to me, far more kindly than he has
+done for a long time; but he wouldn’t talk about the will, and I had to
+go away and leave him. Poor mother! for all she was afraid that we were
+going to be rich, is broken-hearted at his disappointment.’
+
+‘Your mother was afraid?’ said Dora.
+
+‘Because she thought herself unfitted for life in a large house, and
+feared we should think her in our way.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Poor mother!
+she is so humble and so good. I do hope that father will be kinder to
+her. But there’s no telling yet what the result of this may be. I feel
+guilty when I stand before him.’
+
+‘But he must feel glad that you have five thousand pounds.’
+
+Marian delayed her reply for a moment, her eyes down.
+
+‘Yes, perhaps he is glad of that.’
+
+‘Perhaps!’
+
+‘He can’t help thinking, Dora, what use he could have made of it.
+It has always been his greatest wish to have a literary paper of his
+own--like The Study, you know. He would have used the money in that way,
+I am sure.’
+
+‘But, all the same, he ought to feel pleasure in your good fortune.’
+
+Marian turned to another subject.
+
+‘Think of the Reardons; what a change all at once! What will they do, I
+wonder? Surely they won’t continue to live apart?’
+
+‘We shall hear from Jasper.’
+
+Whilst they were discussing the affairs of that branch of the family,
+Maud returned. There was ill-humour on her handsome face, and she
+greeted Marian but coldly. Throwing off her hat and gloves and mantle
+she listened to the repeated story of John Yule’s bequests.
+
+‘But why ever has Mrs Reardon so much more than anyone else?’ she asked.
+
+‘We can only suppose it is because she was the favourite child of the
+brother he liked best. Yet at her wedding he gave her nothing, and spoke
+contemptuously of her for marrying a literary man.’
+
+‘Fortunate for her poor husband that her uncle was able to forgive her.
+I wonder what’s the date of the will? Who knows but he may have rewarded
+her for quarrelling with Mr Reardon.’
+
+This excited a laugh.
+
+‘I don’t know when the will was made,’ said Marian. ‘And I don’t know
+whether uncle had even heard of the Reardons’ misfortunes. I suppose he
+must have done. My cousin John was at the funeral, but not my aunt. I
+think it most likely father and John didn’t speak a word to each other.
+Fortunately the relatives were lost sight of in the great crowd of
+Wattleborough people; there was an enormous procession, of course.’
+
+Maud kept glancing at her sister. The ill-humour had not altogether
+passed from her face, but it was now blended with reflectiveness.
+
+A few moments more, and Marian had to hasten home. When she was gone the
+sisters looked at each other.
+
+‘Five thousand pounds,’ murmured the elder. ‘I suppose that is
+considered nothing.’
+
+‘I suppose so.--He was here when Marian came, but didn’t stay.’
+
+‘Then you’ll take him the news this evening?’
+
+‘Yes,’ replied Dora. Then, after musing, ‘He seemed annoyed that you
+were at the Lanes’ again.’
+
+Maud made a movement of indifference.
+
+‘What has been putting you out?’
+
+‘Things were rather stupid. Some people who were to have come didn’t
+turn up. And--well, it doesn’t matter.’
+
+She rose and glanced at herself in the little oblong mirror over the
+mantelpiece.
+
+‘Did Jasper ever speak to you of a Miss Rupert?’ asked Dora.
+
+‘Not that I remember.’
+
+‘What do you think? He told me in the calmest way that he didn’t see
+why Marian should think of him as anything but the most ordinary
+friend--said he had never given her reason to think anything else.’
+
+‘Indeed! And Miss Rupert is someone who has the honour of his
+preference?’
+
+‘He says she is about thirty, and rather masculine, but a great heiress.
+Jasper is shameful!’
+
+‘What do you expect? I consider it is your duty to let Marian know
+everything he says. Otherwise you help to deceive her. He has no sense
+of honour in such things.’
+
+Dora was so impatient to let her brother have the news that she left
+the house as soon as she had had tea on the chance of finding Jasper
+at home. She had not gone a dozen yards before she encountered him in
+person.
+
+‘I was afraid Marian might still be with you,’ he said, laughing.
+‘I should have asked the landlady. Well?’
+
+‘We can’t stand talking here. You had better come in.’
+
+He was in too much excitement to wait.
+
+‘Just tell me. What has she?’
+
+Dora walked quickly towards the house, looking annoyed.
+
+‘Nothing at all? Then what has her father?’
+
+‘He has nothing,’ replied his sister, ‘and she has five thousand
+pounds.’
+
+Jasper walked on with bent head. He said nothing more until he was
+upstairs in the sitting-room, where Maud greeted him carelessly.
+
+‘Mrs Reardon anything?’
+
+Dora informed him.
+
+‘What?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Ten thousand? You don’t say so!’
+
+He burst into uproarious laughter.
+
+‘So Reardon is rescued from the slum and the clerk’s desk! Well, I’m
+glad; by Jove, I am. I should have liked it better if Marian had had the
+ten thousand and he the five, but it’s an excellent joke. Perhaps the
+next thing will be that he’ll refuse to have anything to do with his
+wife’s money; that would be just like him.’ After amusing himself with
+this subject for a few minutes more, he turned to the window and stood
+there in silence.
+
+‘Are you going to have tea with us?’ Dora inquired.
+
+He did not seem to hear her. On a repetition of the inquiry, he answered
+absently:
+
+‘Yes, I may as well. Then I can go home and get to work.’
+
+During the remainder of his stay he talked very little, and as Maud also
+was in an abstracted mood, tea passed almost in silence. On the point of
+departing he asked:
+
+‘When is Marian likely to come here again?’
+
+‘I haven’t the least idea,’ answered Dora.
+
+He nodded, and went his way.
+
+It was necessary for him to work at a magazine article which he had
+begun this morning, and on reaching home he spread out his papers in
+the usual businesslike fashion. The subject out of which he was
+manufacturing ‘copy’ had its difficulties, and was not altogether
+congenial to him; this morning he had laboured with unwonted effort to
+produce about a page of manuscript, and now that he tried to resume the
+task his thoughts would not centre upon it. Jasper was too young to have
+thoroughly mastered the art of somnambulistic composition; to write,
+he was still obliged to give exclusive attention to the matter under
+treatment. Dr Johnson’s saying, that a man may write at any time if he
+will set himself doggedly to it, was often upon his lips, and had even
+been of help to him, as no doubt it has to many another man obliged to
+compose amid distracting circumstances; but the formula had no efficacy
+this evening. Twice or thrice he rose from his chair, paced the room
+with a determined brow, and sat down again with vigorous clutch of the
+pen; still he failed to excogitate a single sentence that would serve
+his purpose.
+
+‘I must have it out with myself before I can do anything,’ was his
+thought as he finally abandoned the endeavour. ‘I must make up my mind.’
+
+To this end he settled himself in an easy-chair and began to smoke
+cigarettes. Some dozen of these aids to reflection only made him so
+nervous that he could no longer remain alone. He put on his hat and
+overcoat and went out--to find that it was raining heavily. He returned
+for an umbrella, and before long was walking aimlessly about the Strand,
+unable to make up his mind whether to turn into a theatre or not.
+Instead of doing so, he sought a certain upper room of a familiar
+restaurant, where the day’s papers were to be seen, and perchance an
+acquaintance might be met. Only half-a-dozen men were there, reading and
+smoking, and all were unknown to him. He drank a glass of lager beer,
+skimmed the news of the evening, and again went out into the bad
+weather.
+
+After all it was better to go home. Everything he encountered had an
+unsettling effect upon him, so that he was further than ever from the
+decision at which he wished to arrive. In Mornington Road he came upon
+Whelpdale, who was walking slowly under an umbrella.
+
+‘I’ve just called at your place.’
+
+‘All right; come back if you like.’
+
+‘But perhaps I shall waste your time?’ said Whelpdale, with unusual
+diffidence.
+
+Reassured, he gladly returned to the house. Milvain acquainted him
+with the fact of John Yule’s death, and with its result so far as it
+concerned the Reardons. They talked of how the couple would probably
+behave under this decisive change of circumstances.
+
+‘Biffen professes to know nothing about Mrs Reardon,’ said Whelpdale. ‘I
+suspect he keeps his knowledge to himself, out of regard for Reardon. It
+wouldn’t surprise me if they live apart for a long time yet.’
+
+‘Not very likely. It was only want of money.’
+
+‘They’re not at all suited to each other. Mrs Reardon, no doubt, repents
+her marriage bitterly, and I doubt whether Reardon cares much for his
+wife.’
+
+‘As there’s no way of getting divorced they’ll make the best of it. Ten
+thousand pounds produce about four hundred a year; it’s enough to live
+on.’
+
+‘And be miserable on--if they no longer love each other.’
+
+‘You’re such a sentimental fellow!’ cried Jasper. ‘I believe you
+seriously think that love--the sort of frenzy you understand by
+it--ought to endure throughout married life. How has a man come to your
+age with such primitive ideas?’
+
+‘Well, I don’t know. Perhaps you err a little in the opposite
+direction.’
+
+‘I haven’t much faith in marrying for love, as you know. What’s more,
+I believe it’s the very rarest thing for people to be in love with each
+other. Reardon and his wife perhaps were an instance; perhaps--I’m
+not quite sure about her. As a rule, marriage is the result of a mild
+preference, encouraged by circumstances, and deliberately heightened
+into strong sexual feeling. You, of all men, know well enough that the
+same kind of feeling could be produced for almost any woman who wasn’t
+repulsive.’
+
+‘The same kind of feeling; but there’s vast difference of degree.’
+
+‘To be sure. I think it’s only a matter of degree. When it rises to the
+point of frenzy people may strictly be said to be in love; and, as I
+tell you, I think that comes to pass very rarely indeed. For my own
+part, I have no experience of it, and think I never shall have.’
+
+‘I can’t say the same.’
+
+They laughed.
+
+‘I dare say you have imagined yourself in love--or really been so for
+aught I know--a dozen times. How the deuce you can attach any importance
+to such feeling where marriage is concerned I don’t understand.’
+
+‘Well, now,’ said Whelpdale, ‘I have never upheld the theory--at least
+not since I was sixteen--that a man can be in love only once, or that
+there is one particular woman if he misses whom he can never be happy.
+There may be thousands of women whom I could love with equal sincerity.’
+
+‘I object to the word “love” altogether. It has been vulgarised. Let us
+talk about compatibility. Now, I should say that, no doubt, and speaking
+scientifically, there is one particular woman supremely fitted to
+each man. I put aside consideration of circumstances; we know that
+circumstances will disturb any degree of abstract fitness. But in the
+nature of things there must be one woman whose nature is specially well
+adapted to harmonise with mine, or with yours. If there were any means
+of discovering this woman in each case, then I have no doubt it would
+be worth a man’s utmost effort to do so, and any amount of erotic
+jubilation would be reasonable when the discovery was made. But
+the thing is impossible, and, what’s more, we know what ridiculous
+fallibility people display when they imagine they have found the best
+substitute for that indiscoverable. This is what makes me impatient with
+sentimental talk about marriage. An educated man mustn’t play so into
+the hands of ironic destiny. Let him think he wants to marry a woman;
+but don’t let him exaggerate his feelings or idealise their nature.’
+
+‘There’s a good deal in all that,’ admitted Whelpdale, though
+discontentedly.
+
+‘There’s more than a good deal; there’s the last word on the subject.
+The days of romantic love are gone by. The scientific spirit has put
+an end to that kind of self-deception. Romantic love was inextricably
+blended with all sorts of superstitions--belief in personal immortality,
+in superior beings, in--all the rest of it. What we think of now is
+moral and intellectual and physical compatibility; I mean, if we are
+reasonable people.’
+
+‘And if we are not so unfortunate as to fall in love with an
+incompatible,’ added Whelpdale, laughing.
+
+‘Well, that is a form of unreason--a blind desire which science could
+explain in each case. I rejoice that I am not subject to that form of
+epilepsy.’
+
+‘You positively never were in love!’
+
+‘As you understand it, never. But I have felt a very distinct
+preference.’
+
+‘Based on what you think compatibility?’
+
+‘Yes. Not strong enough to make me lose sight of prudence and advantage.
+No, not strong enough for that.’
+
+He seemed to be reassuring himself.
+
+‘Then of course that can’t be called love,’ said Whelpdale.
+
+‘Perhaps not. But, as I told you, a preference of this kind can be
+heightened into emotion, if one chooses. In the case of which I am
+thinking it easily might be. And I think it very improbable indeed that
+I should repent it if anything led me to indulge such an impulse.’
+
+Whelpdale smiled.
+
+‘This is very interesting. I hope it may lead to something.’
+
+‘I don’t think it will. I am far more likely to marry some woman for
+whom I have no preference, but who can serve me materially.’
+
+‘I confess that amazes me. I know the value of money as well as you do,
+but I wouldn’t marry a rich woman for whom I had no preference. By Jove,
+no!’
+
+‘Yes, yes. You are a consistent sentimentalist.’
+
+‘Doomed to perpetual disappointment,’ said the other, looking
+disconsolately about the room.
+
+‘Courage, my boy! I have every hope that I shall see you marry and
+repent.’
+
+‘I admit the danger of that. But shall I tell you something I have
+observed? Each woman I fall in love with is of a higher type than the
+one before.’
+
+Jasper roared irreverently, and his companion looked hurt.
+
+‘But I am perfectly serious, I assure you. To go back only three or four
+years. There was the daughter of my landlady in Barham Street; well, a
+nice girl enough, but limited, decidedly limited.
+
+Next came that girl at the stationer’s--you remember? She was distinctly
+an advance, both in mind and person. Then there was Miss Embleton; yes,
+I think she made again an advance. She had been at Bedford College,
+you know, and was really a girl of considerable attainments; morally,
+admirable. Afterwards--’
+
+He paused.
+
+‘The maiden from Birmingham, wasn’t it?’ said Jasper, again exploding.
+
+‘Yes, it was. Well, I can’t be quite sure. But in many respects that
+girl was my ideal; she really was.’
+
+‘As you once or twice told me at the time.’
+
+‘I really believe she would rank above Miss Embleton--at all events from
+my point of view. And that’s everything, you know. It’s the effect a
+woman produces on one that has to be considered.’
+
+‘The next should be a paragon,’ said Jasper.
+
+‘The next?’
+
+Whelpdale again looked about the room, but added nothing, and fell into
+a long silence.
+
+When left to himself Jasper walked about a little, then sat down at his
+writing-table, for he felt easier in mind, and fancied that he might
+still do a couple of hours’ work before going to bed. He did in fact
+write half-a-dozen lines, but with the effort came back his former mood.
+Very soon the pen dropped, and he was once more in the throes of anxious
+mental debate.
+
+He sat till after midnight, and when he went to his bedroom it was with
+a lingering step, which proved him still a prey to indecision.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOUR
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. A PROPOSED INVESTMENT
+
+Alfred Yule’s behaviour under his disappointment seemed to prove that
+even for him the uses of adversity could be sweet. On the day after his
+return home he displayed a most unwonted mildness in such remarks as
+he addressed to his wife, and his bearing towards Marian was gravely
+gentle. At meals he conversed, or rather monologised, on literary
+topics, with occasionally one of his grim jokes, pointed for Marian’s
+appreciation. He became aware that the girl had been overtaxing her
+strength of late, and suggested a few weeks of recreation among new
+novels. The coldness and gloom which had possessed him when he made a
+formal announcement of the news appeared to have given way before the
+sympathy manifested by his wife and daughter; he was now sorrowful, but
+resigned.
+
+He explained to Marian the exact nature of her legacy. It was to be paid
+out of her uncle’s share in a wholesale stationery business, with which
+John Yule had been connected for the last twenty years, but from which
+he had not long ago withdrawn a large portion of his invested capital.
+This house was known as ‘Turberville & Co.,’ a name which Marian now
+heard for the first time.
+
+‘I knew nothing of his association with them,’ said her father. ‘They
+tell me that seven or eight thousand pounds will be realised from that
+source; it seems a pity that the investment was not left to you intact.
+Whether there will be any delay in withdrawing the money I can’t say.’
+
+The executors were two old friends of the deceased, one of them a former
+partner in his paper-making concern.
+
+On the evening of the second day, about an hour after dinner was over,
+Mr Hinks called at the house; as usual, he went into the study. Before
+long came a second visitor, Mr Quarmby, who joined Yule and Hinks. The
+three had all sat together for some time, when Marian, who happened to
+be coming down stairs, saw her father at the study door.
+
+‘Ask your mother to let us have some supper at a quarter to ten,’ he
+said urbanely. ‘And come in, won’t you? We are only gossiping.’
+
+It had not often happened that Marian was invited to join parties of
+this kind.
+
+‘Do you wish me to come?’ she asked.
+
+‘Yes, I should like you to, if you have nothing particular to do.’
+
+Marian informed Mrs Yule that the visitors would have supper, and then
+went to the study. Mr Quarmby was smoking a pipe; Mr Hinks, who on
+grounds of economy had long since given up tobacco, sat with his hands
+in his trouser pockets, and his long, thin legs tucked beneath the
+chair; both rose and greeted Marian with more than ordinary warmth.
+
+‘Will you allow me five or six more puffs?’ asked Mr Quarmby, laying one
+hand on his ample stomach and elevating his pipe as if it were a glass
+of beaded liquor. ‘I shall then have done.’
+
+‘As many more as you like,’ Marian replied.
+
+The easiest chair was placed for her, Mr Hinks hastening to perform this
+courtesy, and her father apprised her of the topic they were discussing.
+
+‘What’s your view, Marian? Is there anything to be said for the
+establishment of a literary academy in England?’
+
+Mr Quarmby beamed benevolently upon her, and Mr Hinks, his scraggy neck
+at full length, awaited her reply with a look of the most respectful
+attention.
+
+‘I really think we have quite enough literary quarrelling as it is,’ the
+girl replied, casting down her eyes and smiling.
+
+Mr Quarmby uttered a hollow chuckle, Mr Hinks laughed thinly and
+exclaimed, ‘Very good indeed! Very good!’ Yule affected to applaud with
+impartial smile.
+
+‘It wouldn’t harmonise with the Anglo-Saxon spirit,’ remarked Mr Hinks,
+with an air of diffident profundity.
+
+Yule held forth on the subject for a few minutes in laboured phrases.
+Presently the conversation turned to periodicals, and the three men were
+unanimous in an opinion that no existing monthly or quarterly could be
+considered as representing the best literary opinion.
+
+‘We want,’ remarked Mr Quarmby, ‘we want a monthly review which
+shall deal exclusively with literature. The Fortnightly, the
+Contemporary--they are very well in their way, but then they are mere
+miscellanies. You will find one solid literary article amid a confused
+mass of politics and economics and general clap-trap.’
+
+‘Articles on the currency and railway statistics and views of
+evolution,’ said Mr Hinks, with a look as if something were grating
+between his teeth.
+
+‘The quarterlies?’ put in Yule. ‘Well, the original idea of the
+quarterlies was that there are not enough important books published to
+occupy solid reviewers more than four times a year. That may be true,
+but then a literary monthly would include much more than professed
+reviews. Hinks’s essays on the historical drama would have come out in
+it very well; or your “Spanish Poets,” Quarmby.’
+
+‘I threw out the idea to Jedwood the other day,’ said Mr Quarmby, ‘and
+he seemed to nibble at it.’
+
+‘Yes, yes,’ came from Yule; ‘but Jedwood has so many irons in the fire.
+I doubt if he has the necessary capital at command just now. No doubt
+he’s the man, if some capitalist would join him.’
+
+‘No enormous capital needed,’ opined Mr Quarmby. ‘The thing would
+pay its way almost from the first. It would take a place between the
+literary weeklies and the quarterlies. The former are too academic,
+the latter too massive, for multitudes of people who yet have strong
+literary tastes. Foreign publications should be liberally dealt with.
+But, as Hinks says, no meddling with the books that are no books--biblia
+abiblia; nothing about essays on bimetallism and treatises for or
+against vaccination.’
+
+Even here, in the freedom of a friend’s study, he laughed his
+Reading-room laugh, folding both hands upon his expansive waistcoat.
+
+‘Fiction? I presume a serial of the better kind might be admitted?’ said
+Yule.
+
+‘That would be advisable, no doubt. But strictly of the better kind.’
+
+‘Oh, strictly of the better kind,’ chimed in Mr Hinks.
+
+They pursued the discussion as if they were an editorial committee
+planning a review of which the first number was shortly to appear.
+It occupied them until Mrs Yule announced at the door that supper was
+ready.
+
+During the meal Marian found herself the object of unusual attention;
+her father troubled to inquire if the cut of cold beef he sent her was
+to her taste, and kept an eye on her progress. Mr Hinks talked to her in
+a tone of respectful sympathy, and Mr Quarmby was paternally jovial when
+he addressed her. Mrs Yule would have kept silence, in her ordinary way,
+but this evening her husband made several remarks which he had adapted
+to her intellect, and even showed that a reply would be graciously
+received.
+
+Mother and daughter remained together when the men withdrew to their
+tobacco and toddy. Neither made allusion to the wonderful change, but
+they talked more light-heartedly than for a long time.
+
+On the morrow Yule began by consulting Marian with regard to the
+disposition of matter in an essay he was writing. What she said he
+weighed carefully, and seemed to think that she had set his doubts at
+rest.
+
+‘Poor old Hinks!’ he said presently, with a sigh. ‘Breaking up, isn’t
+he? He positively totters in his walk. I’m afraid he’s the kind of
+man to have a paralytic stroke; it wouldn’t astonish me to hear at any
+moment that he was lying helpless.’
+
+‘What ever would become of him in that case?’
+
+‘Goodness knows! One might ask the same of so many of us. What would
+become of me, for instance, if I were incapable of work?’
+
+Marian could make no reply.
+
+‘There’s something I’ll just mention to you,’ he went on in a lowered
+tone, ‘though I don’t wish you to take it too seriously. I’m beginning
+to have a little trouble with my eyes.’
+
+She looked at him, startled.
+
+‘With your eyes?’
+
+‘Nothing, I hope; but--well, I think I shall see an oculist. One doesn’t
+care to face a prospect of failing sight, perhaps of cataract, or
+something of that kind; still, it’s better to know the facts, I should
+say.’
+
+‘By all means go to an oculist,’ said Marian, earnestly.
+
+‘Don’t disturb yourself about it. It may be nothing at all. But in any
+case I must change my glasses.’
+
+He rustled over some slips of manuscript, whilst Marian regarded him
+anxiously.
+
+‘Now, I appeal to you, Marian,’ he continued: ‘could I possibly save
+money out of an income that has never exceeded two hundred and fifty
+pounds, and often--I mean even in latter years--has been much less?’
+
+‘I don’t see how you could.’
+
+‘In one way, of course, I have managed it. My life is insured for five
+hundred pounds. But that is no provision for possible disablement. If I
+could no longer earn money with my pen, what would become of me?’
+
+Marian could have made an encouraging reply, but did not venture to
+utter her thoughts.
+
+‘Sit down,’ said her father. ‘You are not to work for a few days, and I
+myself shall be none the worse for a morning’s rest. Poor old Hinks!
+I suppose we shall help him among us, somehow. Quarmby, of course, is
+comparatively flourishing. Well, we have been companions for a quarter
+of a century, we three. When I first met Quarmby I was a Grub Street
+gazetteer, and I think he was even poorer than I. A life of toil! A life
+of toil!’
+
+‘That it has been, indeed.’
+
+‘By-the-bye’--he threw an arm over the back of his chair--‘what did
+you think of our imaginary review, the thing we were talking about last
+night?’
+
+‘There are so many periodicals,’ replied Marian, doubtfully.
+
+‘So many? My dear child, if we live another ten years we shall see the
+number trebled.’
+
+‘Is it desirable?’
+
+‘That there should be such growth of periodicals? Well, from one point
+of view, no. No doubt they take up the time which some people would
+give to solid literature. But, on the other hand, there’s a far greater
+number of people who would probably not read at all, but for the
+temptations of these short and new articles; and they may be induced to
+pass on to substantial works. Of course it all depends on the quality of
+the periodical matter you offer. Now, magazines like’--he named two or
+three of popular stamp--‘might very well be dispensed with, unless one
+regards them as an alternative to the talking of scandal or any other
+vicious result of total idleness. But such a monthly as we projected
+would be of distinct literary value. There can be no doubt that someone
+or other will shortly establish it.’
+
+‘I am afraid,’ said Marian, ‘I haven’t so much sympathy with literary
+undertakings as you would like me to have.’
+
+Money is a great fortifier of self-respect. Since she had become really
+conscious of her position as the owner of five thousand pounds, Marian
+spoke with a steadier voice, walked with firmer step; mentally she felt
+herself altogether a less dependent being. She might have confessed this
+lukewarmness towards literary enterprise in the anger which her father
+excited eight or nine days ago, but at that time she could not have
+uttered her opinion calmly, deliberately, as now. The smile which
+accompanied the words was also new; it signified deliverance from
+pupilage.
+
+‘I have felt that,’ returned her father, after a slight pause to command
+his voice, that it might be suave instead of scornful. ‘I greatly fear
+that I have made your life something of a martyrdom----’
+
+‘Don’t think I meant that, father. I am speaking only of the general
+question. I can’t be quite so zealous as you are, that’s all. I love
+books, but I could wish people were content for a while with those we
+already have.’
+
+‘My dear Marian, don’t suppose that I am out of sympathy with you here.
+Alas! how much of my work has been mere drudgery, mere labouring for a
+livelihood! How gladly I would have spent much more of my time among
+the great authors, with no thought of making money of them! If I speak
+approvingly of a scheme for a new periodical, it is greatly because of
+my necessities.’
+
+He paused and looked at her. Marian returned the look.
+
+‘You would of course write for it,’ she said.
+
+‘Marian, why shouldn’t I edit it? Why shouldn’t it be your property?’
+
+‘My property--?’
+
+She checked a laugh. There came into her mind a more disagreeable
+suspicion than she had ever entertained of her father. Was this
+the meaning of his softened behaviour? Was he capable of calculated
+hypocrisy? That did not seem consistent with his character, as she knew
+it.
+
+‘Let us talk it over,’ said Yule. He was in visible agitation and his
+voice shook. ‘The idea may well startle you at first. It will seem to
+you that I propose to make away with your property before you have even
+come into possession of it.’ He laughed. ‘But, in fact, what I have in
+mind is merely an investment for your capital, and that an admirable
+one. Five thousand pounds at three per cent.--one doesn’t care to reckon
+on more--represents a hundred and fifty a year. Now, there can be very
+little doubt that, if it were invested in literary property such as I
+have in mind, it would bring you five times that interest, and before
+long perhaps much more. Of course I am now speaking in the roughest
+outline. I should have to get trustworthy advice; complete and detailed
+estimates would be submitted to you. At present I merely suggest to you
+this form of investment.’
+
+He watched her face eagerly, greedily. When Marian’s eyes rose to his he
+looked away.
+
+‘Then, of course,’ she said, ‘you don’t expect me to give any decided
+answer.’
+
+‘Of course not--of course not. I merely put before you the chief
+advantages of such an investment. As I am a selfish old fellow, I’ll
+talk about the benefit to myself first of all. I should be editor of the
+new review; I should draw a stipend sufficient to all my needs--quite
+content, at first, to take far less than another man would ask, and to
+progress with the advance of the periodical. This position would enable
+me to have done with mere drudgery; I should only write when I felt
+called to do so--when the spirit moved me.’ Again he laughed, as though
+desirous of keeping his listener in good humour. ‘My eyes would be
+greatly spared henceforth.’
+
+He dwelt on that point, waiting its effect on Marian. As she said
+nothing he proceeded:
+
+‘And suppose I really were doomed to lose my sight in the course of a
+few years, am I wrong in thinking that the proprietor of this periodical
+would willingly grant a small annuity to the man who had firmly
+established it?’
+
+‘I see the force of all that,’ said Marian; ‘but it takes for granted
+that the periodical will be successful.’
+
+‘It does. In the hands of a publisher like Jedwood--a vigorous man of
+the new school--its success could scarcely be doubtful.’
+
+‘Do you think five thousand pounds would be enough to start such a
+review?’
+
+‘Well, I can say nothing definite on that point. For one thing, the
+coat must be made according to the cloth; expenditure can be largely
+controlled without endangering success. Then again, I think Jedwood
+would take a share in the venture. These are details. At present I only
+want to familiarise you with the thought that an investment of this sort
+will very probably offer itself to you.’
+
+‘It would be better if we called it a speculation,’ said Marian, smiling
+uneasily.
+
+Her one object at present was to oblige her father to understand that
+the suggestion by no means lured her. She could not tell him that what
+he proposed was out of the question, though as yet that was the light in
+which she saw it. His subtlety of approach had made her feel justified
+in dealing with him in a matter-of-fact way. He must see that she was
+not to be cajoled. Obviously, and in the nature of the case, he was
+urging a proposal in which he himself had all faith; but Marian knew
+his judgment was far from infallible. It mitigated her sense of behaving
+unkindly to reflect that in all likelihood this disposal of her money
+would be the worst possible for her own interests, and therefore for
+his. If, indeed, his dark forebodings were warranted, then upon her
+would fall the care of him, and the steadiness with which she faced that
+responsibility came from a hope of which she could not speak.
+
+‘Name it as you will,’ returned her father, hardly suppressing a note of
+irritation. ‘True, every commercial enterprise is a speculation. But let
+me ask you one question, and beg you to reply frankly. Do you distrust
+my ability to conduct this periodical?’
+
+She did. She knew that he was not in touch with the interests of the
+day, and that all manner of considerations akin to the prime end of
+selling his review would make him an untrustworthy editor.
+
+But how could she tell him this?
+
+‘My opinion would be worthless,’ she replied.
+
+‘If Jedwood were disposed to put confidence in me, you also would?’
+
+‘There’s no need to talk of that now, father. Indeed, I can’t say
+anything that would sound like a promise.’
+
+He flashed a glance at her. Then she was more than doubtful?
+
+‘But you have no objection, Marian, to talk in a friendly way of a
+project that would mean so much to me?’
+
+‘But I am afraid to encourage you,’ she replied, frankly. ‘It is
+impossible for me to say whether I can do as you wish, or not.’
+
+‘Yes, yes; I perfectly understand that. Heaven forbid that I should
+regard you as a child to be led independently of your own views and
+wishes! With so large a sum of money at stake, it would be monstrous
+if I acted rashly, and tried to persuade you to do the same. The matter
+will have to be most gravely considered.’
+
+‘Yes.’ She spoke mechanically.
+
+‘But if only it should come to something! You don’t know what it would
+mean to me, Marian.’
+
+‘Yes, father; I know very well how you think and feel about it.’
+
+‘Do you?’ He leaned forward, his features working under stress of
+emotion. ‘If I could see myself the editor of an influential review, all
+my bygone toils and sufferings would be as nothing; I should rejoice in
+them as the steps to this triumph. Meminisse juvabit! My dear, I am not
+a man fitted for subordinate places. My nature is framed for authority.
+The failure of all my undertakings rankles so in my heart that sometimes
+I feel capable of every brutality, every meanness, every hateful
+cruelty. To you I have behaved shamefully. Don’t interrupt me, Marian.
+I have treated you abominably, my child, my dear daughter--and all the
+time with a full sense of what I was doing. That’s the punishment of
+faults such as mine. I hate myself for every harsh word and angry look I
+have given you; at the time, I hated myself!’
+
+‘Father--’
+
+‘No, no; let me speak, Marian. You have forgiven me; I know it. You were
+always ready to forgive, dear. Can I ever forget that evening when I
+spoke like a brute, and you came afterwards and addressed me as if the
+wrong had been on your side? It burns in my memory. It wasn’t I who
+spoke; it was the demon of failure, of humiliation. My enemies sit
+in triumph, and scorn at me; the thought of it is infuriating. Have I
+deserved this? Am I the inferior of--of those men who have succeeded
+and now try to trample on me? No! I am not! I have a better brain and a
+better heart!’
+
+Listening to this strange outpouring, Marian more than forgave the
+hypocrisy of the last day or two. Nay, could it be called hypocrisy? It
+was only his better self declared at the impulse of a passionate hope.
+
+‘Why should you think so much of these troubles, father? Is it such a
+great matter that narrow-minded people triumph over you?’
+
+‘Narrow-minded?’ He clutched at the word. ‘You admit they are that?’
+
+‘I feel very sure that Mr Fadge is.’
+
+‘Then you are not on his side against me?’
+
+‘How could you suppose such a thing?’
+
+‘Well, well; we won’t talk of that. Perhaps it isn’t a great matter.
+No--from a philosophical point of view, such things are unspeakably
+petty. But I am not much of a philosopher.’ He laughed, with a break in
+his voice. ‘Defeat in life is defeat, after all; and unmerited failure
+is a bitter curse. You see, I am not too old to do something yet. My
+sight is failing, but I can take care of it. If I had my own review, I
+would write every now and then a critical paper in my very best style.
+You remember poor old Hinks’s note about me in his book? We laughed at
+it, but he wasn’t so far wrong. I have many of those qualities. A man is
+conscious of his own merits as well as of his defects. I have done a few
+admirable things. You remember my paper on Lord Herbert of Cherbury? No
+one ever wrote a more subtle piece of criticism; but it was swept aside
+among the rubbish of the magazines. And it’s just because of my pungent
+phrases that I have excited so much enmity. Wait! Wait! Let me have my
+own review, and leisure, and satisfaction of mind--heavens! what I will
+write! How I will scarify!’
+
+‘That is unworthy of you. How much better to ignore your enemies!
+In such a position, I should carefully avoid every word that betrayed
+personal feeling.’
+
+‘Well, well; you are of course right, my good girl. And I believe I
+should do injustice to myself if I made you think that those ignoble
+motives are the strongest in me. No; it isn’t so. From my boyhood I
+have had a passionate desire of literary fame, deep down below all the
+surface faults of my character. The best of my life has gone by, and it
+drives me to despair when I feel that I have not gained the position due
+to me. There is only one way of doing this now, and that is by becoming
+the editor of an important periodical. Only in that way shall I succeed
+in forcing people to pay attention to my claims. Many a man goes to
+his grave unrecognised, just because he has never had a fair judgment.
+Nowadays it is the unscrupulous men of business who hold the attention
+of the public; they blow their trumpets so loudly that the voices of
+honest men have no chance of being heard.’
+
+Marian was pained by the humility of his pleading with her--for what was
+all this but an endeavour to move her sympathies?--and by the necessity
+she was under of seeming to turn a deaf ear. She believed that there
+was some truth in his estimate of his own powers; though as an editor
+he would almost certainly fail, as a man of letters he had probably
+done far better work than some who had passed him by on their way to
+popularity. Circumstances might enable her to assist him, though not in
+the way he proposed. The worst of it was that she could not let him see
+what was in her mind. He must think that she was simply balancing
+her own satisfaction against his, when in truth she suffered from the
+conviction that to yield would be as unwise in regard to her father’s
+future as it would be perilous to her own prospect of happiness.
+
+‘Shall we leave this to be talked of when the money has been paid over
+to me?’ she said, after a silence.
+
+‘Yes. Don’t suppose I wish to influence you by dwelling on my
+own hardships. That would be contemptible. I have only taken this
+opportunity of making myself better known to you. I don’t readily talk
+of myself and in general my real feelings are hidden by the faults of
+my temper. In suggesting how you could do me a great service, and at the
+same time reap advantage for yourself I couldn’t but remember how little
+reason you have to think kindly of me. But we will postpone further
+talk. You will think over what I have said?’
+
+Marian promised that she would, and was glad to bring the conversation
+to an end.
+
+When Sunday came, Yule inquired of his daughter if she had any
+engagement for the afternoon.
+
+‘Yes, I have,’ she replied, with an effort to disguise her
+embarrassment.
+
+‘I’m sorry. I thought of asking you to come with me to Quarmby’s. Shall
+you be away through the evening?’
+
+‘Till about nine o’clock, I think.’
+
+‘Ah! Never mind, never mind.’
+
+He tried to dismiss the matter as if it were of no moment, but Marian
+saw the shadow that passed over his countenance. This was just after
+breakfast. For the remainder of the morning she did not meet him, and at
+the mid-day dinner he was silent, though he brought no book to the table
+with him, as he was wont to do when in his dark moods. Marian
+talked with her mother, doing her best to preserve the appearance of
+cheerfulness which was natural since the change in Yule’s demeanour.
+
+She chanced to meet her father in the passage just as she was going
+out. He smiled (it was more like a grin of pain) and nodded, but said
+nothing.
+
+When the front door closed, he went into the parlour. Mrs Yule was
+reading, or, at all events, turning over a volume of an illustrated
+magazine.
+
+‘Where do you suppose she has gone?’ he asked, in a voice which was only
+distant, not offensive.
+
+‘To the Miss Milvains, I believe,’ Mrs Yule answered, looking aside.
+
+‘Did she tell you so?’
+
+‘No. We don’t talk about it.’
+
+He seated himself on the corner of a chair and bent forward, his chin in
+his hand.
+
+‘Has she said anything to you about the review?’
+
+‘Not a word.’
+
+She glanced at him timidly, and turned a few pages of her book.
+
+‘I wanted her to come to Quarmby’s, because there’ll be a man there who
+is anxious that Jedwood should start a magazine, and it would be useful
+for her to hear practical opinions. There’d be no harm if you just spoke
+to her about it now and then. Of course if she has made up her mind
+to refuse me it’s no use troubling myself any more. I should think you
+might find out what’s really going on.’
+
+Only dire stress of circumstances could have brought Alfred Yule to make
+distinct appeal for his wife’s help. There was no underhand plotting
+between them to influence their daughter; Mrs Yule had as much desire
+for the happiness of her husband as for that of Marian, but she felt
+powerless to effect anything on either side.
+
+‘If ever she says anything, I’ll let you know.’
+
+‘But it seems to me that you have a right to question her.’
+
+‘I can’t do that, Alfred.’
+
+‘Unfortunately, there are a good many things you can’t do.’ With that
+remark, familiar to his wife in substance, though the tone of it was
+less caustic than usual, he rose and sauntered from the room. He spent
+a gloomy hour in the study, then went off to join the literary circle at
+Mr Quarmby’s.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. JASPER’S MAGNANIMITY
+
+Occasionally Milvain met his sisters as they came out of church on
+Sunday morning, and walked home to have dinner with them. He did so
+to-day, though the sky was cheerless and a strong north-west wind made
+it anything but agreeable to wait about in open spaces.
+
+‘Are you going to Mrs Wright’s this afternoon?’ he asked, as they went
+on together.
+
+‘I thought of going,’ replied Maud. ‘Marian will be with Dora.’
+
+‘You ought both to go. You mustn’t neglect that woman.’
+
+He said nothing more just then, but when presently he was alone with
+Dora in the sitting-room for a few minutes, he turned with a peculiar
+smile and remarked quietly:
+
+‘I think you had better go with Maud this afternoon.’
+
+‘But I can’t. I expect Marian at three.’
+
+‘That’s just why I want you to go.’
+
+She looked her surprise.
+
+‘I want to have a talk with Marian. We’ll manage it in this way. At a
+quarter to three you two shall start, and as you go out you can tell the
+landlady that if Miss Yule comes she is to wait for you, as you won’t be
+long. She’ll come upstairs, and I shall be there. You see?’
+
+Dora turned half away, disturbed a little, but not displeased.
+
+‘And what about Miss Rupert?’ she asked.
+
+‘Oh, Miss Rupert may go to Jericho for all I care. I’m in a magnanimous
+mood.’
+
+‘Very, I’ve no doubt.’
+
+‘Well, you’ll do this? One of the results of poverty, you see; one can’t
+even have a private conversation with a friend without plotting to get
+the use of a room. But there shall be an end of this state of things.’
+
+He nodded significantly. Thereupon Dora left the room to speak with her
+sister.
+
+The device was put into execution, and Jasper saw his sisters depart
+knowing that they were not likely to return for some three hours. He
+seated himself comfortably by the fire and mused. Five minutes had
+hardly gone by when he looked at his watch, thinking Marian must be
+unpunctual. He was nervous, though he had believed himself secure
+against such weakness. His presence here with the purpose he had in his
+mind seemed to him distinctly a concession to impulses he ought to have
+controlled; but to this resolve he had come, and it was now too late to
+recommence the arguments with himself. Too late? Well, not strictly so;
+he had committed himself to nothing; up to the last moment of freedom he
+could always--
+
+That was doubtless Marian’s knock at the front door. He jumped up,
+walked the length of the room, sat down on another chair, returned to
+his former seat. Then the door opened and Marian came in.
+
+She was not surprised; the landlady had mentioned to her that Mr Milvain
+was upstairs, waiting the return of his sisters.
+
+‘I am to make Dora’s excuses,’ Jasper said. ‘She begged you would
+forgive her--that you would wait.’
+
+‘Oh yes.’
+
+‘And you were to be sure to take off your hat,’ he added in a laughing
+tone; ‘and to let me put your umbrella in the corner--like that.’
+
+He had always admired the shape of Marian’s head, and the beauty of her
+short, soft, curly hair. As he watched her uncovering it, he was pleased
+with the grace of her arms and the pliancy of her slight figure.
+
+‘Which is usually your chair?’
+
+‘I’m sure I don’t know.’
+
+‘When one goes to see a friend frequently, one gets into regular
+habits in these matters. In Biffen’s garret I used to have the most
+uncomfortable chair it was ever my lot to sit upon; still, I came to
+feel an affection for it. At Reardon’s I always had what was supposed to
+be the most luxurious seat, but it was too small for me, and I eyed it
+resentfully on sitting down and rising.’
+
+‘Have you any news about the Reardons?’
+
+‘Yes. I am told that Reardon has had the offer of a secretaryship to a
+boys’ home, or something of the kind, at Croydon. But I suppose there’ll
+be no need for him to think of that now.’
+
+‘Surely not!’
+
+‘Oh there’s no saying.’
+
+‘Why should he do work of that kind now?’
+
+‘Perhaps his wife will tell him that she wants her money all for
+herself.’
+
+Marian laughed. It was very rarely that Jasper had heard her laugh at
+all, and never so spontaneously as this. He liked the music.
+
+‘You haven’t a very good opinion of Mrs Reardon,’ she said.
+
+‘She is a difficult person to judge. I never disliked her, by any means;
+but she was decidedly out of place as the wife of a struggling author.
+Perhaps I have been a little prejudiced against her since Reardon
+quarrelled with me on her account.’
+
+Marian was astonished at this unlooked-for explanation of the rupture
+between Milvain and his friend. That they had not seen each other for
+some months she knew from Jasper himself but no definite cause had been
+assigned.
+
+‘I may as well let you know all about it,’ Milvain continued, seeing
+that he had disconcerted the girl, as he meant to. ‘I met Reardon not
+long after they had parted, and he charged me with being in great part
+the cause of his troubles.’
+
+The listener did not raise her eyes.
+
+‘You would never imagine what my fault was. Reardon declared that the
+tone of my conversation had been morally injurious to his wife. He said
+I was always glorifying worldly success, and that this had made her
+discontented with her lot. Sounds rather ludicrous, don’t you think?’
+
+‘It was very strange.’
+
+‘Reardon was in desperate earnest, poor fellow. And, to tell you the
+truth, I fear there may have been something in his complaint.
+
+I told him at once that I should henceforth keep away from Mrs Edmund
+Yule’s; and so I have done, with the result, of course, that they
+suppose I condemn Mrs Reardon’s behaviour. The affair was a nuisance,
+but I had no choice, I think.’
+
+‘You say that perhaps your talk really was harmful to her.’
+
+‘It may have been, though such a danger never occurred to me.’
+
+‘Then Amy must be very weak-minded.’
+
+‘To be influenced by such a paltry fellow?’
+
+‘To be influenced by anyone in such a way.’
+
+‘You think the worse of me for this story?’ Jasper asked.
+
+‘I don’t quite understand it. How did you talk to her?’
+
+‘As I talk to everyone. You have heard me say the same things many a
+time. I simply declare my opinion that the end of literary work--unless
+one is a man of genius--is to secure comfort and repute. This doesn’t
+seem to me very scandalous. But Mrs Reardon was perhaps too urgent in
+repeating such views to her husband. She saw that in my case they were
+likely to have solid results, and it was a misery to her that Reardon
+couldn’t or wouldn’t work in the same practical way.
+
+‘It was very unfortunate.’
+
+‘And you are inclined to blame me?’
+
+‘No; because I am so sure that you only spoke in the way natural to you,
+without a thought of such consequences.’
+
+Jasper smiled.
+
+‘That’s precisely the truth. Nearly all men who have their way to make
+think as I do, but most feel obliged to adopt a false tone, to talk
+about literary conscientiousness, and so on. I simply say what I think,
+with no pretences. I should like to be conscientious, but it’s a luxury
+I can’t afford. I’ve told you all this often enough, you know.’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘But it hasn’t been morally injurious to you,’ he said with a laugh.
+
+‘Not at all. Still I don’t like it.’
+
+Jasper was startled. He gazed at her. Ought he, then, to have dealt
+with her less frankly? Had he been mistaken in thinking that the
+unusual openness of his talk was attractive to her? She spoke with quite
+unaccustomed decision; indeed, he had noticed from her entrance that
+there was something unfamiliar in her way of conversing. She was so much
+more self-possessed than of wont, and did not seem to treat him with the
+same deference, the same subdual of her own personality.
+
+‘You don’t like it?’ he repeated calmly. ‘It has become rather tiresome
+to you?’
+
+‘I feel sorry that you should always represent yourself in an
+unfavourable light.’
+
+He was an acute man, but the self-confidence with which he had entered
+upon this dialogue, his conviction that he had but to speak when he
+wished to receive assurance of Marian’s devotion, prevented him from
+understanding the tone of independence she had suddenly adopted. With
+more modesty he would have felt more subtly at this juncture, would have
+divined that the girl had an exquisite pleasure in drawing back now that
+she saw him approaching her with unmistakable purpose, that she wished
+to be wooed in less off-hand fashion before confessing what was in her
+heart. For the moment he was disconcerted. Those last words of hers had
+a slight tone of superiority, the last thing he would have expected upon
+her lips.
+
+‘Yet I surely haven’t always appeared so--to you?’ he said.
+
+‘No, not always.’
+
+‘But you are in doubt concerning the real man?’
+
+‘I’m not sure that I understand you. You say that you do really think as
+you speak.’
+
+‘So I do. I think that there is no choice for a man who can’t bear
+poverty. I have never said, though, that I had pleasure in mean
+necessities; I accept them because I can’t help it.’
+
+It was a delight to Marian to observe the anxiety with which he turned
+to self-defence. Never in her life had she felt this joy of holding a
+position of command. It was nothing to her that Jasper valued her more
+because of her money; impossible for it to be otherwise. Satisfied that
+he did value her, to begin with, for her own sake, she was very willing
+to accept money as her ally in the winning of his love. He scarcely
+loved her yet, as she understood the feeling, but she perceived her
+power over him, and passion taught her how to exert it.
+
+‘But you resign yourself very cheerfully to the necessity,’ she said,
+looking at him with merely intellectual eyes.
+
+‘You had rather I lamented my fate in not being able to devote myself to
+nobly unremunerative work?’
+
+There was a note of irony here. It caused her a tremor, but she held her
+position.
+
+‘That you never do so would make one think--but I won’t speak unkindly.’
+
+‘That I neither care for good work nor am capable of it,’ Jasper
+finished her sentence. ‘I shouldn’t have thought it would make you think
+so.’
+
+Instead of replying she turned her look towards the door. There was a
+footstep on the stairs, but it passed.
+
+‘I thought it might be Dora,’ she said.
+
+‘She won’t be here for another couple of hours at least,’ replied Jasper
+with a slight smile.
+
+‘But you said--?’
+
+‘I sent her to Mrs Boston Wright’s that I might have an opportunity of
+talking to you. Will you forgive the stratagem?’
+
+Marian resumed her former attitude, the faintest smile hovering about
+her lips.
+
+‘I’m glad there’s plenty of time,’ he continued. ‘I begin to suspect
+that you have been misunderstanding me of late. I must set that right.’
+
+‘I don’t think I have misunderstood you.’
+
+‘That may mean something very disagreeable. I know that some people whom
+I esteem have a very poor opinion of me, but I can’t allow you to be one
+of them. What do I seem to you? What is the result on your mind of all
+our conversations?’
+
+‘I have already told you.’
+
+‘Not seriously. Do you believe I am capable of generous feeling?’
+
+‘To say no, would be to put you in the lowest class of men, and that a
+very small one.’
+
+‘Good! Then I am not among the basest. But that doesn’t give me very
+distinguished claims upon your consideration. Whatever I am, I am high
+in some of my ambitions.’
+
+‘Which of them?’
+
+‘For instance, I have been daring enough to hope that you might love
+me.’
+
+Marian delayed for a moment, then said quietly:
+
+‘Why do you call that daring?’
+
+‘Because I have enough of old-fashioned thought to believe that a woman
+who is worthy of a man’s love is higher than he, and condescends in
+giving herself to him.’
+
+His voice was not convincing; the phrase did not sound natural on his
+lips. It was not thus that she had hoped to hear him speak. Whilst he
+expressed himself thus conventionally he did not love her as she desired
+to be loved.
+
+‘I don’t hold that view,’ she said.
+
+‘It doesn’t surprise me. You are very reserved on all subjects, and we
+have never spoken of this, but of course I know that your thought is
+never commonplace. Hold what view you like of woman’s position, that
+doesn’t affect mine.’
+
+‘Is yours commonplace, then?’
+
+‘Desperately. Love is a very old and common thing, and I believe I love
+you in the old and common way. I think you beautiful, you seem to me
+womanly in the best sense, full of charm and sweetness. I know myself a
+coarse being in comparison. All this has been felt and said in the same
+way by men infinite in variety. Must I find some new expression before
+you can believe me?’
+
+Marian kept silence.
+
+‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said. ‘The thought is as inevitable
+as my consciousness of it.’
+
+For an instant she looked at him.
+
+‘Yes, you look the thought. Why have I not spoken to you in this
+way before? Why have I waited until you are obliged to suspect my
+sincerity?’
+
+‘My thought is not so easily read, then,’ said Marian.
+
+‘To be sure it hasn’t a gross form, but I know you wish--whatever your
+real feeling towards me--that I had spoken a fortnight ago. You would
+wish that of any man in my position, merely because it is painful to you
+to see a possible insincerity. Well, I am not insincere. I have thought
+of you as of no other woman for some time. But--yes, you shall have the
+plain, coarse truth, which is good in its way, no doubt. I was afraid to
+say that I loved you. You don’t flinch; so far, so good. Now what harm
+is there in this confession? In the common course of things I shouldn’t
+be in a position to marry for perhaps three or four years, and even then
+marriage would mean difficulties, restraints, obstacles. I have always
+dreaded the thought of marriage with a poor income. You remember?
+
+     Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
+     Is--Love forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust.
+
+You know that is true.’
+
+‘Not always, I dare say.’
+
+‘But for the vast majority of mortals. There’s the instance of the
+Reardons. They were in love with each other, if ever two people were;
+but poverty ruined everything. I am not in the confidence of either of
+them, but I feel sure each has wished the other dead. What else was
+to be expected? Should I have dared to take a wife in my present
+circumstances--a wife as poor as myself?’
+
+‘You will be in a much better position before long,’ said Marian.
+‘If you loved me, why should you have been afraid to ask me to have
+confidence in your future?’
+
+‘It’s all so uncertain. It may be another ten years before I can count
+on an income of five or six hundred pounds--if I have to struggle on in
+the common way.’
+
+‘But tell me, what is your aim in life? What do you understand by
+success?’
+
+‘Yes, I will tell you. My aim is to have easy command of all the
+pleasures desired by a cultivated man. I want to live among beautiful
+things, and never to be troubled by a thought of vulgar difficulties.
+I want to travel and enrich my mind in foreign countries. I want to
+associate on equal terms with refined and interesting people. I want to
+be known, to be familiarly referred to, to feel when I enter a room that
+people regard me with some curiosity.’
+
+He looked steadily at her with bright eyes.
+
+‘And that’s all?’ asked Marian.
+
+‘That is very much. Perhaps you don’t know how I suffer in feeling
+myself at a disadvantage. My instincts are strongly social, yet I can’t
+be at my ease in society, simply because I can’t do justice to myself.
+Want of money makes me the inferior of the people I talk with, though
+I might be superior to them in most things. I am ignorant in many
+ways, and merely because I am poor. Imagine my never having been out of
+England! It shames me when people talk familiarly of the Continent. So
+with regard to all manner of amusements and pursuits at home. Impossible
+for me to appear among my acquaintances at the theatre, at concerts.
+I am perpetually at a disadvantage; I haven’t fair play. Suppose me
+possessed of money enough to live a full and active life for the next
+five years; why, at the end of that time my position would be secure. To
+him that hath shall be given--you know how universally true that is.’
+
+‘And yet,’ came in a low voice from Marian, ‘you say that you love me.’
+
+‘You mean that I speak as if no such thing as love existed. But you
+asked me what I understood by success. I am speaking of worldly things.
+Now suppose I had said to you:
+
+My one aim and desire in life is to win your love. Could you have
+believed me? Such phrases are always untrue; I don’t know how it
+can give anyone pleasure to hear them. But if I say to you: All the
+satisfactions I have described would be immensely heightened if they
+were shared with a woman who loved me--there is the simple truth.’
+
+Marian’s heart sank. She did not want truth such as this; she would have
+preferred that he should utter the poor, common falsehoods. Hungry for
+passionate love, she heard with a sense of desolation all this calm
+reasoning. That Jasper was of cold temperament she had often feared; yet
+there was always the consoling thought that she did not see with perfect
+clearness into his nature. Now and then had come a flash, a hint of
+possibilities. She had looked forward with trembling eagerness to some
+sudden revelation; but it seemed as if he knew no word of the language
+which would have called such joyous response from her expectant soul.
+
+‘We have talked for a long time,’ she said, turning her head as if his
+last words were of no significance. ‘As Dora is not coming, I think I
+will go now.’
+
+She rose, and went towards the chair on which lay her out-of-door
+things. At once Jasper stepped to her side.
+
+‘You will go without giving me any answer?’
+
+‘Answer? To what?’
+
+‘Will you be my wife?’
+
+‘It is too soon to ask me that.’
+
+‘Too soon? Haven’t you known for months that I thought of you with far
+more than friendliness?’
+
+‘How was it possible I should know that? You have explained to me why
+you would not let your real feelings be understood.’
+
+The reproach was merited, and not easy to be outfaced. He turned away
+for an instant, then with a sudden movement caught both her hands.
+
+‘Whatever I have done or said or thought in the past, that is of no
+account now. I love you, Marian. I want you to be my wife. I have never
+seen any other girl who impressed me as you did from the first. If I had
+been weak enough to try to win anyone but you, I should have known that
+I had turned aside from the path of my true happiness. Let us forget for
+a moment all our circumstances. I hold your hands, and look into your
+face, and say that I love you. Whatever answer you give, I love you!’
+
+Till now her heart had only fluttered a little; it was a great part of
+her distress that the love she had so long nurtured seemed shrinking
+together into some far corner of her being whilst she listened to
+the discourses which prefaced Jasper’s declaration. She was nervous,
+painfully self-conscious, touched with maidenly shame, but could not
+abandon herself to that delicious emotion which ought to have been the
+fulfilment of all her secret imaginings. Now at length there began a
+throbbing in her bosom. Keeping her face averted, her eyes cast down,
+she waited for a repetition of the note that was in that last ‘I love
+you.’ She felt a change in the hands that held hers--a warmth, a moist
+softness; it caused a shock through her veins.
+
+He was trying to draw her nearer, but she kept at full arm’s length and
+looked irresponsive.
+
+‘Marian?’
+
+She wished to answer, but a spirit of perversity held her tongue.
+
+‘Marian, don’t you love me? Or have I offended you by my way of
+speaking?’
+
+Persisting, she at length withdrew her hands. Jasper’s face expressed
+something like dismay.
+
+‘You have not offended me,’ she said. ‘But I am not sure that you don’t
+deceive yourself in thinking, for the moment, that I am necessary to
+your happiness.’
+
+The emotional current which had passed from her flesh to his whilst
+their hands were linked, made him incapable of standing aloof from her.
+He saw that her face and neck were warmer hued, and her beauty became
+more desirable to him than ever yet.
+
+‘You are more to me than anything else in the compass of life!’ he
+exclaimed, again pressing forward. ‘I think of nothing but you--you
+yourself--my beautiful, gentle, thoughtful Marian!’
+
+His arm captured her, and she did not resist. A sob, then a strange
+little laugh, betrayed the passion that was at length unfolded in her.
+
+‘You do love me, Marian?’
+
+‘I love you.’
+
+And there followed the antiphony of ardour that finds its first
+utterance--a subdued music, often interrupted, ever returning upon the
+same rich note.
+
+Marian closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the luxury of the dream.
+It was her first complete escape from the world of intellectual routine,
+her first taste of life. All the pedantry of her daily toil slipped away
+like a cumbrous garment; she was clad only in her womanhood. Once or
+twice a shudder of strange self-consciousness went through her, and
+she felt guilty, immodest; but upon that sensation followed a surge of
+passionate joy, obliterating memory and forethought.
+
+‘How shall I see you?’ Jasper asked at length. ‘Where can we meet?’
+
+It was a difficulty. The season no longer allowed lingerings under
+the open sky, but Marian could not go to his lodgings, and it seemed
+impossible for him to visit her at her home.
+
+‘Will your father persist in unfriendliness to me?’
+
+She was only just beginning to reflect on all that was involved in this
+new relation.
+
+‘I have no hope that he will change,’ she said sadly.
+
+‘He will refuse to countenance your marriage?’
+
+‘I shall disappoint him and grieve him bitterly. He has asked me to use
+my money in starting a new review.’
+
+‘Which he is to edit?’
+
+‘Yes. Do you think there would be any hope of its success?’
+
+Jasper shook his head.
+
+‘Your father is not the man for that, Marian. I don’t say it
+disrespectfully; I mean that he doesn’t seem to me to have that kind of
+aptitude. It would be a disastrous speculation.’
+
+‘I felt that. Of course I can’t think of it now.’
+
+She smiled, raising her face to his.
+
+‘Don’t trouble,’ said Jasper. ‘Wait a little, till I have made myself
+independent of Fadge and a few other men, and your father shall see
+how heartily I wish to be of use to him. He will miss your help, I’m
+afraid?’
+
+‘Yes. I shall feel it a cruelty when I have to leave him. He has only
+just told me that his sight is beginning to fail. Oh, why didn’t his
+brother leave him a little money? It was such unkindness! Surely he had
+a much better right than Amy, or than myself either. But literature has
+been a curse to father all his life. My uncle hated it, and I suppose
+that was why he left father nothing.’
+
+‘But how am I to see you often? That’s the first question. I know what I
+shall do. I must take new lodgings, for the girls and myself, all in
+the same house. We must have two sitting-rooms; then you will come to my
+room without any difficulty. These astonishing proprieties are so easily
+satisfied after all.’
+
+‘You will really do that?’
+
+‘Yes. I shall go and look for rooms to-morrow. Then when you come you
+can always ask for Maud or Dora, you know. They will be very glad of a
+change to more respectable quarters.’
+
+‘I won’t stay to see them now, Jasper,’ said Marian, her thoughts
+turning to the girls.
+
+‘Very well. You are safe for another hour, but to make certain you shall
+go at a quarter to five. Your mother won’t be against us?’
+
+‘Poor mother--no. But she won’t dare to justify me before father.’
+
+‘I feel as if I should play a mean part in leaving it to you to tell
+your father. Marian, I will brave it out and go and see him.’
+
+‘Oh, it would be better not to.’
+
+‘Then I will write to him--such a letter as he can’t possibly take in
+ill part.’
+
+Marian pondered this proposal.
+
+‘You shall do that, Jasper, if you are willing. But not yet; presently.’
+
+‘You don’t wish him to know at once?’
+
+‘We had better wait a little. You know,’ she added laughing, ‘that my
+legacy is only in name mine as yet. The will hasn’t been proved. And
+then the money will have to be realised.’
+
+She informed him of the details; Jasper listened with his eyes on the
+ground.
+
+They were now sitting on chairs drawn close to each other. It was with
+a sense of relief that Jasper had passed from dithyrambs to conversation
+on practical points; Marian’s excited sensitiveness could not but
+observe this, and she kept watching the motions of his countenance. At
+length he even let go her hand.
+
+‘You would prefer,’ he said reflectively, ‘that nothing should be said
+to your father until that business is finished?’
+
+‘If you consent to it.’
+
+‘Oh, I have no doubt it’s as well.’
+
+Her little phrase of self-subjection, and its tremulous tone, called for
+another answer than this. Jasper fell again into thought, and clearly it
+was thought of practical things.
+
+‘I think I must go now, Jasper,’ she said.
+
+‘Must you? Well, if you had rather.’
+
+He rose, though she was still seated. Marian moved a few steps away, but
+turned and approached him again.
+
+‘Do you really love me?’ she asked, taking one of his hands and folding
+it between her own.
+
+‘I do indeed love you, Marian. Are you still doubtful?’
+
+‘You’re not sorry that I must go?’
+
+‘But I am, dearest. I wish we could sit here undisturbed all through the
+evening.’
+
+Her touch had the same effect as before. His blood warmed again, and he
+pressed her to his side, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead.
+
+‘Are you sorry I wear my hair short?’ she asked, longing for more praise
+than he had bestowed on her.
+
+‘Sorry? It is perfect. Everything else seems vulgar compared with this
+way of yours. How strange you would look with plaits and that kind of
+thing!’
+
+‘I am so glad it pleases you.’
+
+‘There is nothing in you that doesn’t please me, my thoughtful girl.’
+
+‘You called me that before. Do I seem so very thoughtful?’
+
+‘So grave, and sweetly reserved, and with eyes so full of meaning.’
+
+She quivered with delight, her face hidden against his breast.
+
+‘I seem to be new-born, Jasper. Everything in the world is new to me,
+and I am strange to myself. I have never known an hour of happiness till
+now, and I can’t believe yet that it has come to me.’
+
+She at length attired herself, and they left the house together, of
+course not unobserved by the landlady. Jasper walked about half the way
+to St Paul’s Crescent. It was arranged that he should address a letter
+for her to the care of his sisters; but in a day or two the change of
+lodgings would be effected.
+
+When they had parted, Marian looked back. But Jasper was walking quickly
+away, his head bent, in profound meditation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. A FRUITLESS MEETING
+
+Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that
+spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders. In certain natures
+the extreme of self-pity is intolerable, and leads to self-destruction;
+but there are less fortunate beings whom the vehemence of their revolt
+against fate strengthens to endure in suffering. These latter are rather
+imaginative than passionate; the stages of their woe impress them as
+the acts of a drama, which they cannot bring themselves to cut short, so
+various are the possibilities of its dark motive. The intellectual man
+who kills himself is most often brought to that decision by conviction
+of his insignificance; self-pity merges in self-scorn, and the
+humiliated soul is intolerant of existence. He who survives under like
+conditions does so because misery magnifies him in his own estimate.
+
+It was by force of commiserating his own lot that Edwin Reardon
+continued to live through the first month after his parting from Amy.
+Once or twice a week, sometimes early in the evening, sometimes at
+midnight or later, he haunted the street at Westbourne Park where his
+wife was dwelling, and on each occasion he returned to his garret with
+a fortified sense of the injustice to which he was submitted, of revolt
+against the circumstances which had driven him into outer darkness, of
+bitterness against his wife for saving her own comfort rather than
+share his downfall. At times he was not far from that state of sheer
+distraction which Mrs Edmund Yule preferred to suppose that he had
+reached. An extraordinary arrogance now and then possessed him; he stood
+amid his poor surroundings with the sensations of an outraged exile, and
+laughed aloud in furious contempt of all who censured or pitied him.
+
+On hearing from Jasper Milvain that Amy had fallen ill, or at all
+events was suffering in health from what she had gone through, he felt
+a momentary pang which all but determined him to hasten to her side. The
+reaction was a feeling of distinct pleasure that she had her share of
+pain, and even a hope that her illness might become grave; he pictured
+himself summoned to her sick chamber, imagined her begging his
+forgiveness. But it was not merely, nor in great part, a malicious
+satisfaction; he succeeded in believing that Amy suffered because she
+still had a remnant of love for him. As the days went by and he heard
+nothing, disappointment and resentment occupied him. At length he ceased
+to haunt the neighbourhood. His desires grew sullen; he became fixed in
+the resolve to hold entirely apart and doggedly await the issue.
+
+At the end of each month he sent half the money he had received from
+Carter, simply enclosing postal orders in an envelope addressed to his
+wife. The first two remittances were in no way acknowledged; the third
+brought a short note from Amy:
+
+‘As you continue to send these sums of money, I had perhaps better let
+you know that I cannot use them for any purposes of my own. Perhaps a
+sense of duty leads you to make this sacrifice, but I am afraid it
+is more likely that you wish to remind me every month that you are
+undergoing privations, and to pain me in this way. What you have sent I
+have deposited in the Post Office Savings’ Bank in Willie’s name, and I
+shall continue to do so.--A.R.’
+
+For a day or two Reardon persevered in an intention of not replying, but
+the desire to utter his turbid feelings became in the end too strong. He
+wrote:
+
+‘I regard it as quite natural that you should put the worst
+interpretation on whatever I do. As for my privations, I think very
+little of them; they are a trifle in comparison with the thought that
+I am forsaken just because my pocket is empty. And I am far indeed from
+thinking that you can be pained by whatever I may undergo; that would
+suppose some generosity in your nature.’
+
+This was no sooner posted than he would gladly have recalled it. He knew
+that it was undignified, that it contained as many falsehoods as lines,
+and he was ashamed of himself for having written so. But he could not
+pen a letter of retractation, and there remained with him a new cause of
+exasperated wretchedness.
+
+Excepting the people with whom he came in contact at the hospital, he
+had no society but that of Biffen. The realist visited him once a
+week, and this friendship grew closer than it had been in the time of
+Reardon’s prosperity. Biffen was a man of so much natural delicacy, that
+there was a pleasure in imparting to him the details of private sorrow;
+though profoundly sympathetic, he did his best to oppose Reardon’s
+harsher judgments of Amy, and herein he gave his friend a satisfaction
+which might not be avowed.
+
+‘I really do not see,’ he exclaimed, as they sat in the garret one night
+of midsummer, ‘how your wife could have acted otherwise. Of course I
+am quite unable to judge the attitude of her mind, but I think, I can’t
+help thinking, from what I knew of her, that there has been strictly a
+misunderstanding between you.
+
+It was a hard and miserable thing that she should have to leave you for
+a time, and you couldn’t face the necessity in a just spirit. Don’t you
+think there’s some truth in this way of looking at it?’
+
+‘As a woman, it was her part to soften the hateful necessity; she made
+it worse.’
+
+‘I’m not sure that you don’t demand too much of her. Unhappily, I know
+little or nothing of delicately-bred women, but I have a suspicion that
+one oughtn’t to expect heroism in them, any more than in the women of
+the lower classes. I think of women as creatures to be protected. Is a
+man justified in asking them to be stronger than himself?’
+
+‘Of course,’ replied Reardon, ‘there’s no use in demanding more than
+a character is capable of. But I believed her of finer stuff. My
+bitterness comes of the disappointment.’
+
+‘I suppose there were faults of temper on both sides, and you saw at
+last only each other’s weaknesses.’
+
+‘I saw the truth, which had always been disguised from me.’ Biffen
+persisted in looking doubtful, and in secret Reardon thanked him for it.
+
+As the realist progressed with his novel, ‘Mr Bailey, Grocer,’ he read
+the chapters to Reardon, not only for his own satisfaction, but in great
+part because he hoped that this example of productivity might in the end
+encourage the listener to resume his own literary tasks. Reardon found
+much to criticise in his friend’s work; it was noteworthy that he
+objected and condemned with much less hesitation than in his better
+days, for sensitive reticence is one of the virtues wont to be assailed
+by suffering, at all events in the weaker natures. Biffen purposely
+urged these discussions as far as possible, and doubtless they benefited
+Reardon for the time; but the defeated novelist could not be induced to
+undertake another practical illustration of his own views. Occasionally
+he had an impulse to plan a story, but an hour’s turning it over in his
+mind sufficed to disgust him. His ideas seemed barren, vapid; it would
+have been impossible for him to write half a dozen pages, and the mere
+thought of a whole book overcame him with the dread of insurmountable
+difficulties, immeasurable toil.
+
+In time, however, he was able to read. He had a pleasure in
+contemplating the little collection of sterling books that alone
+remained to him from his library; the sight of many volumes would have
+been a weariness, but these few--when he was again able to think
+of books at all--were as friendly countenances. He could not read
+continuously, but sometimes he opened his Shakespeare, for instance,
+and dreamed over a page or two. From such glimpses there remained in
+his head a line or a short passage, which he kept repeating to himself
+wherever he went; generally some example of sweet or sonorous metre
+which had a soothing effect upon him.
+
+With odd result on one occasion. He was walking in one of the back
+streets of Islington, and stopped idly to gaze into the window of some
+small shop. Standing thus, he forgot himself and presently recited
+aloud:
+
+     ‘Caesar, ‘tis his schoolmaster:
+     An argument that he is pluck’d, when hither
+     He sends so poor a pinion of his wing,
+     Which had superfluous kings for messengers
+     Not many moons gone by.’
+
+The last two lines he uttered a second time, enjoying their magnificent
+sound, and then was brought back to consciousness by the loud mocking
+laugh of two men standing close by, who evidently looked upon him as a
+strayed lunatic.
+
+He kept one suit of clothes for his hours of attendance at the hospital;
+it was still decent, and with much care would remain so for a long time.
+That which he wore at home and in his street wanderings declared poverty
+at every point; it had been discarded before he left the old abode. In
+his present state of mind he cared nothing how disreputable he looked to
+passers-by. These seedy habiliments were the token of his degradation,
+and at times he regarded them (happening to see himself in a shop
+mirror) with pleasurable contempt. The same spirit often led him for a
+meal to the poorest of eating-houses, places where he rubbed elbows with
+ragged creatures who had somehow obtained the price of a cup of coffee
+and a slice of bread and butter. He liked to contrast himself with these
+comrades in misfortune. ‘This is the rate at which the world esteems
+me; I am worth no better provision than this.’ Or else, instead of
+emphasising the contrast, he defiantly took a place among the miserables
+of the nether world, and nursed hatred of all who were well-to-do.
+
+One of these he desired to regard with gratitude, but found it difficult
+to support that feeling. Carter, the vivacious, though at first
+perfectly unembarrassed in his relations with the City Road clerk,
+gradually exhibited a change of demeanour. Reardon occasionally found
+the young man’s eye fixed upon him with a singular expression, and the
+secretary’s talk, though still as a rule genial, was wont to suffer
+curious interruptions, during which he seemed to be musing on something
+Reardon had said, or on some point of his behaviour. The explanation of
+this was that Carter had begun to think there might be a foundation for
+Mrs Yule’s hypothesis--that the novelist was not altogether in his sound
+senses. At first he scouted the idea, but as time went on it seemed
+to him that Reardon’s countenance certainly had a gaunt wildness which
+suggested disagreeable things. Especially did he remark this after his
+return from an August holiday in Norway. On coming for the first time
+to the City Road branch he sat down and began to favour Reardon with
+a lively description of how he had enjoyed himself abroad; it never
+occurred to him that such talk was not likely to inspirit the man
+who had passed his August between the garret and the hospital, but he
+observed before long that his listener was glancing hither and thither
+in rather a strange way.
+
+‘You haven’t been ill since I saw you?’ he inquired.
+
+‘Oh no!’
+
+‘But you look as if you might have been. I say, we must manage for you
+to have a fortnight off, you know, this month.’
+
+‘I have no wish for it,’ said Reardon. ‘I’ll imagine I have been to
+Norway. It has done me good to hear of your holiday.’
+
+‘I’m glad of that; but it isn’t quite the same thing, you know, as
+having a run somewhere yourself.’
+
+‘Oh, much better! To enjoy myself may be mere selfishness, but to enjoy
+another’s enjoyment is the purest satisfaction, good for body and soul.
+I am cultivating altruism.’
+
+‘What’s that?’
+
+‘A highly rarefied form of happiness. The curious thing about it is
+that it won’t grow unless you have just twice as much faith in it as is
+required for assent to the Athanasian Creed.’
+
+‘Oh!’
+
+Carter went away more than puzzled. He told his wife that evening that
+Reardon had been talking to him in the most extraordinary fashion--no
+understanding a word he said.
+
+All this time he was on the look-out for employment that would be more
+suitable to his unfortunate clerk. Whether slightly demented or not,
+Reardon gave no sign of inability to discharge his duties; he was
+conscientious as ever, and might, unless he changed greatly, be relied
+upon in positions of more responsibility than his present one. And at
+length, early in October, there came to the secretary’s knowledge an
+opportunity with which he lost no time in acquainting Reardon. The
+latter repaired that evening to Clipstone Street, and climbed to
+Biffen’s chamber. He entered with a cheerful look, and exclaimed:
+
+‘I have just invented a riddle; see if you can guess it. Why is a London
+lodging-house like the human body?’
+
+Biffen looked with some concern at his friend, so unwonted was a sally
+of this kind.
+
+‘Why is a London lodging-house--? Haven’t the least idea.’
+
+‘Because the brains are always at the top. Not bad, I think, eh?’
+
+‘Well, no; it’ll pass. Distinctly professional though. The general
+public would fail to see the point, I’m afraid. But what has come to
+you?’
+
+‘Good tidings. Carter has offered me a place which will be a decided
+improvement. A house found--or rooms, at all events--and salary a
+hundred and fifty a year.
+
+‘By Plutus! That’s good hearing. Some duties attached, I suppose?’
+
+‘I’m afraid that was inevitable, as things go. It’s the secretaryship of
+a home for destitute boys at Croydon. The post is far from a sinecure,
+Carter assures me. There’s a great deal of purely secretarial work,
+and there’s a great deal of practical work, some of it rather rough,
+I fancy. It seems doubtful whether I am exactly the man. The present
+holder is a burly fellow over six feet high, delighting in gymnastics,
+and rather fond of a fight now and then when opportunity offers. But he
+is departing at Christmas--going somewhere as a missionary; and I can
+have the place if I choose.’
+
+‘As I suppose you do?’
+
+‘Yes. I shall try it, decidedly.’
+
+Biffen waited a little, then asked:
+
+‘I suppose your wife will go with you?’
+
+‘There’s no saying.’
+
+Reardon tried to answer indifferently, but it could be seen that he was
+agitated between hopes and fears.
+
+‘You’ll ask her, at all events?’
+
+‘Oh yes,’ was the half-absent reply.
+
+‘But surely there can be no doubt that she’ll come. A hundred and fifty
+a year, without rent to pay. Why, that’s affluence!’
+
+‘The rooms I might occupy are in the home itself. Amy won’t take very
+readily to a dwelling of that kind. And Croydon isn’t the most inviting
+locality.’
+
+‘Close to delightful country.’
+
+‘Yes, yes; but Amy doesn’t care about that.’
+
+‘You misjudge her, Reardon. You are too harsh. I implore you not to lose
+the chance of setting all right again! If only you could be put into my
+position for a moment, and then be offered the companionship of such a
+wife as yours!’
+
+Reardon listened with a face of lowering excitement.
+
+‘I should be perfectly within my rights,’ he said sternly, ‘if I merely
+told her when I have taken the position, and let her ask me to take her
+back--if she wishes.’
+
+‘You have changed a great deal this last year,’ replied Biffen, shaking
+his head, ‘a great deal. I hope to see you your old self again before
+long. I should have declared it impossible for you to become so rugged.
+Go and see your wife, there’s a good fellow.’
+
+‘No; I shall write to her.’
+
+‘Go and see her, I beg you! No good ever came of letter-writing between
+two people who have misunderstood each other. Go to Westbourne Park
+to-morrow. And be reasonable; be more than reasonable. The happiness
+of your life depends on what you do now. Be content to forget whatever
+wrong has been done you. To think that a man should need persuading to
+win back such a wife!’
+
+In truth, there needed little persuasion. Perverseness, one of the forms
+or issues of self-pity, made him strive against his desire, and caused
+him to adopt a tone of acerbity in excess of what he felt; but already
+he had made up his mind to see Amy. Even if this excuse had not
+presented itself he must very soon have yielded to the longing for
+a sight of his wife’s face which day by day increased among all the
+conflicting passions of which he was the victim. A month or two ago,
+when the summer sunshine made his confinement to the streets a daily
+torture, he convinced himself that there remained in him no trace of his
+love for Amy; there were moments when he thought of her with repugnance,
+as a cold, selfish woman, who had feigned affection when it seemed her
+interest to do so, but brutally declared her true self when there was
+no longer anything to be hoped from him. That was the self-deception of
+misery. Love, even passion, was still alive in the depths of his being;
+the animation with which he sped to his friend as soon as a new hope had
+risen was the best proof of his feeling.
+
+He went home and wrote to Amy.
+
+‘I have a reason for wishing to see you. Will you have the kindness to
+appoint an hour on Sunday morning when I can speak with you in private?
+It must be understood that I shall see no one else.’
+
+She would receive this by the first post to-morrow, Saturday, and
+doubtless would let him hear in reply some time in the afternoon.
+Impatience allowed him little sleep, and the next day was a long
+weariness of waiting. The evening he would have to spend at the
+hospital; if there came no reply before the time of his leaving home, he
+knew not how he should compel himself to the ordinary routine of work.
+Yet the hour came, and he had heard nothing. He was tempted to go at
+once to Westbourne Park, but reason prevailed with him. When he again
+entered the house, having walked at his utmost speed from the City Road,
+the letter lay waiting for him; it had been pushed beneath his door, and
+when he struck a match he found that one of his feet was upon the white
+envelope.
+
+Amy wrote that she would be at home at eleven to-morrow morning. Not
+another word.
+
+In all probability she knew of the offer that had been made to him; Mrs
+Carter would have told her. Was it of good or of ill omen that she wrote
+only these half-dozen words? Half through the night he plagued himself
+with suppositions, now thinking that her brevity promised a welcome,
+now that she wished to warn him against expecting anything but a cold,
+offended demeanour. At seven he was dressed; two hours and a half had
+to be killed before he could start on his walk westward. He would have
+wandered about the streets, but it rained.
+
+He had made himself as decent as possible in appearance, but he must
+necessarily seem an odd Sunday visitor at a house such as Mrs Yule’s.
+His soft felt hat, never brushed for months, was a greyish green, and
+stained round the band with perspiration. His necktie was discoloured
+and worn. Coat and waistcoat might pass muster, but of the trousers the
+less said the better. One of his boots was patched, and both were all
+but heelless.
+
+Very well; let her see him thus. Let her understand what it meant to
+live on twelve and sixpence a week.
+
+Though it was cold and wet he could not put on his overcoat. Three
+years ago it had been a fairly good ulster; at present, the edges of the
+sleeves were frayed, two buttons were missing, and the original hue of
+the cloth was indeterminable.
+
+At half-past nine he set out and struggled with his shabby umbrella
+against wind and rain. Down Pentonville Hill, up Euston Road, all
+along Marylebone Road, then north-westwards towards the point of his
+destination. It was a good six miles from the one house to the other,
+but he arrived before the appointed time, and had to stray about until
+the cessation of bell-clanging and the striking of clocks told him it
+was eleven. Then he presented himself at the familiar door.
+
+On his asking for Mrs Reardon, he was at once admitted and led up to the
+drawing-room; the servant did not ask his name.
+
+Then he waited for a minute or two, feeling himself a squalid wretch
+amid the dainty furniture. The door opened. Amy, in a simple but very
+becoming dress, approached to within a yard of him; after the first
+glance she had averted her eyes, and she did not offer to shake hands.
+He saw that his muddy and shapeless boots drew her attention.
+
+‘Do you know why I have come?’ he asked.
+
+He meant the tone to be conciliatory, but he could not command his
+voice, and it sounded rough, hostile.
+
+‘I think so,’ Amy answered, seating herself gracefully. She would have
+spoken with less dignity but for that accent of his.
+
+‘The Carters have told you?’
+
+‘Yes; I have heard about it.’
+
+There was no promise in her manner. She kept her face turned away, and
+Reardon saw its beautiful profile, hard and cold as though in marble.
+
+‘It doesn’t interest you at all?’
+
+‘I am glad to hear that a better prospect offers for you.’
+
+He did not sit down, and was holding his rusty hat behind his back.
+
+‘You speak as if it in no way concerned yourself. Is that what you wish
+me to understand?’
+
+‘Won’t it be better if you tell me why you have come here? As you are
+resolved to find offence in whatever I say, I prefer to keep silence.
+Please to let me know why you have asked to see me.’
+
+Reardon turned abruptly as if to leave her, but checked himself at a
+little distance.
+
+Both had come to this meeting prepared for a renewal of amity, but in
+these first few moments each was so disagreeably impressed by the look
+and language of the other that a revulsion of feeling undid all the more
+hopeful effects of their long severance. On entering, Amy had meant to
+offer her hand, but the unexpected meanness of Reardon’s aspect shocked
+and restrained her. All but every woman would have experienced that
+shrinking from the livery of poverty. Amy had but to reflect, and she
+understood that her husband could in no wise help this shabbiness;
+when he parted from her his wardrobe was already in a long-suffering
+condition, and how was he to have purchased new garments since then?
+None the less such attire degraded him in her eyes; it symbolised the
+melancholy decline which he had suffered intellectually. On Reardon his
+wife’s elegance had the same repellent effect, though this would not
+have been the case but for the expression of her countenance. Had it
+been possible for them to remain together during the first five minutes
+without exchange of words, sympathies might have prevailed on both
+sides; the first speech uttered would most likely have harmonised with
+their gentler thoughts. But the mischief was done so speedily.
+
+A man must indeed be graciously endowed if his personal appearance can
+defy the disadvantage of cheap modern clothing worn into shapelessness.
+Reardon had no such remarkable physique, and it was not wonderful that
+his wife felt ashamed of him. Strictly ashamed; he seemed to her a
+social inferior; the impression was so strong that it resisted all
+memory of his spiritual qualities. She might have anticipated this state
+of things, and have armed herself to encounter it, but somehow she had
+not done so. For more than five months she had been living among people
+who dressed well; the contrast was too suddenly forced upon her. She was
+especially susceptible in such matters, and had become none the less
+so under the demoralising influence of her misfortunes. True, she soon
+began to feel ashamed of her shame, but that could not annihilate the
+natural feeling and its results.
+
+‘I don’t love him. I can’t love him.’ Thus she spoke to herself, with
+immutable decision. She had been doubtful till now, but all doubt was at
+an end. Had Reardon been practical man enough to procure by hook or
+by crook a decent suit of clothes for this interview, that ridiculous
+trifle might have made all the difference in what was to result.
+
+He turned again, and spoke with the harshness of a man who feels that he
+is despised, and is determined to show an equal contempt.
+
+‘I came to ask you what you propose to do in case I go to Croydon.’
+
+‘I have no proposal to make whatever.’
+
+‘That means, then, that you are content to go on living here?’
+
+‘If I have no choice, I must make myself content.’
+
+‘But you have a choice.’
+
+‘None has yet been offered me.’
+
+‘Then I offer it now,’ said Reardon, speaking less aggressively. ‘I
+shall have a dwelling rent free, and a hundred and fifty pounds a
+year--perhaps it would be more in keeping with my station if I say that
+I shall have something less than three pounds a week. You can either
+accept from me half this money, as up to now, or come and take your
+place again as my wife. Please to decide what you will do.’
+
+‘I will let you know by letter in a few days.’
+
+It seemed impossible to her to say she would return, yet a refusal to
+do so involved nothing less than separation for the rest of their lives.
+Postponement of decision was her only resource.
+
+‘I must know at once,’ said Reardon.
+
+‘I can’t answer at once.’
+
+‘If you don’t, I shall understand you to mean that you refuse to come
+to me. You know the circumstances; there is no reason why you should
+consult with anyone else. You can answer me immediately if you will.’
+
+‘I don’t wish to answer you immediately,’ Amy replied, paling slightly.
+
+‘Then that decides it. When I leave you we are strangers to each other.’
+
+Amy made a rapid study of his countenance. She had never entertained for
+a moment the supposition that his wits were unsettled, but none the less
+the constant recurrence of that idea in her mother’s talk had subtly
+influenced her against her husband. It had confirmed her in thinking
+that his behaviour was inexcusable. And now it seemed to her that
+anyone might be justified in holding him demented, so reckless was his
+utterance.
+
+It was difficult to know him as the man who had loved her so devotedly,
+who was incapable of an unkind word or look.
+
+‘If that is what you prefer,’ she said, ‘there must be a formal
+separation. I can’t trust my future to your caprice.’
+
+‘You mean it must be put into the hands of a lawyer?’
+
+‘Yes, I do.’
+
+‘That will be the best, no doubt.’
+
+‘Very well; I will speak with my friends about it.’
+
+‘Your friends!’ he exclaimed bitterly. ‘But for those friends of yours,
+this would never have happened. I wish you had been alone in the world
+and penniless.’
+
+‘A kind wish, all things considered.’
+
+‘Yes, it is a kind wish. Then your marriage with me would have been
+binding; you would have known that my lot was yours, and the knowledge
+would have helped your weakness. I begin to see how much right there is
+on the side of those people who would keep women in subjection. You have
+been allowed to act with independence, and the result is that you have
+ruined my life and debased your own. If I had been strong enough to
+treat you as a child, and bid you follow me wherever my own fortunes
+led, it would have been as much better for you as for me. I was weak,
+and I suffer as all weak people do.’
+
+‘You think it was my duty to share such a home as you have at present?’
+
+‘You know it was. And if the choice had lain between that and earning
+your own livelihood you would have thought that even such a poor home
+might be made tolerable. There were possibilities in you of better
+things than will ever come out now.’
+
+There followed a silence. Amy sat with her eyes gloomily fixed on the
+carpet; Reardon looked about the room, but saw nothing. He had thrown
+his hat into a chair, and his fingers worked nervously together behind
+his back.
+
+‘Will you tell me,’ he said at length, ‘how your position is regarded
+by these friends of yours? I don’t mean your mother and brother, but the
+people who come to this house.’
+
+‘I have not asked such people for their opinion.’
+
+‘Still, I suppose some sort of explanation has been necessary in your
+intercourse with them. How have you represented your relations with me?’
+
+‘I can’t see that that concerns you.’
+
+‘In a manner it does. Certainly it matters very little to me how I am
+thought of by people of this kind, but one doesn’t like to be reviled
+without cause. Have you allowed it to be supposed that I have made life
+with me intolerable for you?’
+
+‘No, I have not. You insult me by asking the question, but as you
+don’t seem to understand feelings of that kind I may as well answer you
+simply.’
+
+‘Then have you told them the truth? That I became so poor you couldn’t
+live with me?’
+
+‘I have never said that in so many words, but no doubt it is understood.
+It must be known also that you refused to take the step which might have
+helped you out of your difficulties.’
+
+‘What step?’
+
+She reminded him of his intention to spend half a year in working at the
+seaside.
+
+‘I had utterly forgotten it,’ he returned with a mocking laugh. ‘That
+shows how ridiculous such a thing would have been.’
+
+‘You are doing no literary work at all?’ Amy asked.
+
+‘Do you imagine that I have the peace of mind necessary for anything of
+that sort?’
+
+This was in a changed voice. It reminded her so strongly of her husband
+before his disasters that she could not frame a reply.
+
+‘Do you think I am able to occupy myself with the affairs of imaginary
+people?’
+
+‘I didn’t necessarily mean fiction.’
+
+‘That I can forget myself, then, in the study of literature?--I wonder
+whether you really think of me like that. How, in Heaven’s name, do you
+suppose I spend my leisure time?’
+
+She made no answer.
+
+‘Do you think I take this calamity as light-heartedly as you do, Amy?’
+
+‘I am far from taking it light-heartedly.’
+
+‘Yet you are in good health. I see no sign that you have suffered.’
+
+She kept silence. Her suffering had been slight enough, and chiefly due
+to considerations of social propriety; but she would not avow this, and
+did not like to make admission of it to herself. Before her friends she
+frequently affected to conceal a profound sorrow; but so long as her
+child was left to her she was in no danger of falling a victim to
+sentimental troubles.
+
+‘And certainly I can’t believe it,’ he continued, ‘now you declare your
+wish to be formally separated from me.’
+
+‘I have declared no such wish.’
+
+‘Indeed you have. If you can hesitate a moment about returning to me
+when difficulties are at an end, that tells me you would prefer final
+separation.’
+
+‘I hesitate for this reason,’ Amy said after reflecting. ‘You are so
+very greatly changed from what you used to be, that I think it doubtful
+if I could live with you.’
+
+‘Changed?--Yes, that is true, I am afraid. But how do you think this
+change will affect my behaviour to you?’
+
+‘Remember how you have been speaking to me.’
+
+‘And you think I should treat you brutally if you came into my power?’
+
+‘Not brutally, in the ordinary sense of the word. But with faults of
+temper which I couldn’t bear. I have my own faults. I can’t behave as
+meekly as some women can.’
+
+It was a small concession, but Reardon made much of it.
+
+‘Did my faults of temper give you any trouble during the first year of
+our married life?’ he asked gently.
+
+‘No,’ she admitted.
+
+‘They began to afflict you when I was so hard driven by difficulties
+that I needed all your sympathy, all your forbearance. Did I receive
+much of either from you, Amy?’
+
+‘I think you did--until you demanded impossible things of me.’
+
+‘It was always in your power to rule me. What pained me worst, and
+hardened me against you, was that I saw you didn’t care to exert your
+influence. There was never a time when I could have resisted a word of
+yours spoken out of your love for me. But even then, I am afraid, you no
+longer loved me, and now--’
+
+He broke off, and stood watching her face.
+
+‘Have you any love for me left?’ burst from his lips, as if the words
+all but choked him in the utterance.
+
+Amy tried to shape some evasive answer, but could say nothing.
+
+‘Is there ever so small a hope that I might win some love from you
+again?’
+
+‘If you wish me to come and live with you when you go to Croydon I will
+do so.’
+
+‘But that is not answering me, Amy.’
+
+‘It’s all I can say.’
+
+‘Then you mean that you would sacrifice yourself out of--what? Out of
+pity for me, let us say.’
+
+‘Do you wish to see Willie?’ asked Amy, instead of replying.
+
+‘No. It is you I have come to see. The child is nothing to me, compared
+with you. It is you, who loved me, who became my wife--you only I care
+about. Tell me you will try to be as you used to be. Give me only that
+hope, Amy; I will ask nothing except that, now.’
+
+‘I can’t say anything except that I will come to Croydon if you wish
+it.’
+
+‘And reproach me always because you have to live in such a place, away
+from your friends, without a hope of the social success which was your
+dearest ambition?’
+
+Her practical denial that she loved him wrung this taunt from his
+anguished heart. He repented the words as soon as they were spoken.
+
+‘What is the good?’ exclaimed Amy in irritation, rising and moving away
+from him. ‘How can I pretend that I look forward to such a life with any
+hope?’
+
+He stood in mute misery, inwardly cursing himself and his fate.
+
+‘I have said I will come,’ she continued, her voice shaken with nervous
+tension. ‘Ask me or not, as you please, when you are ready to go there.
+I can’t talk about it.’
+
+‘I shall not ask you,’ he replied. ‘I will have no woman slave dragging
+out a weary life with me. Either you are my willing wife, or you are
+nothing to me.’
+
+‘I am married to you, and that can’t be undone. I repeat that I shan’t
+refuse to obey you. I shall say no more.’
+
+She moved to a distance, and there seated herself, half turned from him.
+
+‘I shall never ask you to come,’ said Reardon, breaking a short silence.
+‘If our married life is ever to begin again it must be of your seeking.
+Come to me of your own will, and I shall never reject you. But I will
+die in utter loneliness rather than ask you again.’
+
+He lingered a few moments, watching her; she did not move. Then he took
+his hat, went in silence from the room, and left the house.
+
+It rained harder than before. As no trains were running at this hour,
+he walked in the direction where he would be likely to meet with an
+omnibus. But it was a long time before one passed which was any use to
+him. When he reached home he was in cheerless plight enough; to make
+things pleasanter, one of his boots had let in water abundantly.
+
+‘The first sore throat of the season, no doubt,’ he muttered to himself.
+
+Nor was he disappointed. By Tuesday the cold had firm grip of him. A
+day or two of influenza or sore throat always made him so weak that with
+difficulty he supported the least physical exertion; but at present he
+must go to his work at the hospital. Why stay at home? To what purpose
+spare himself? It was not as if life had any promise for him. He was
+a machine for earning so much money a week, and would at least give
+faithful work for his wages until the day of final breakdown.
+
+But, midway in the week, Carter discovered how ill his clerk was.
+
+‘You ought to be in bed, my dear fellow, with gruel and mustard plasters
+and all the rest of it. Go home and take care of yourself--I insist upon
+it.’
+
+Before leaving the office, Reardon wrote a few lines to Biffen, whom he
+had visited on the Monday. ‘Come and see me if you can. I am down with a
+bad cold, and have to keep in for the rest of the week. All the same,
+I feel far more cheerful. Bring a new chapter of your exhilarating
+romance.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. MARRIED WOMAN’S PROPERTY
+
+On her return from church that Sunday Mrs Edmund Yule was anxious to
+learn the result of the meeting between Amy and her husband. She hoped
+fervently that Amy’s anomalous position would come to an end now that
+Reardon had the offer of something better than a mere clerkship. John
+Yule never ceased to grumble at his sister’s permanence in the house,
+especially since he had learnt that the money sent by Reardon each month
+was not made use of; why it should not be applied for household expenses
+passed his understanding.
+
+‘It seems to me,’ he remarked several times, ‘that the fellow only does
+his bare duty in sending it. What is it to anyone else whether he
+lives on twelve shillings a week or twelve pence? It is his business
+to support his wife; if he can’t do that, to contribute as much to her
+support as possible. Amy’s scruples are all very fine, if she could
+afford them; it’s very nice to pay for your delicacies of feeling out of
+other people’s pockets.’
+
+‘There’ll have to be a formal separation,’ was the startling
+announcement with which Amy answered her mother’s inquiry as to what had
+passed.
+
+‘A separation? But, my dear--!’
+
+Mrs Yule could not express her disappointment and dismay.
+
+‘We couldn’t live together; it’s no use trying.’
+
+‘But at your age, Amy! How can you think of anything so shocking? And
+then, you know it will be impossible for him to make you a sufficient
+allowance.’
+
+‘I shall have to live as well as I can on the seventy-five pounds a
+year. If you can’t afford to let me stay with you for that, I must go
+into cheap lodgings in the country, like poor Mrs Butcher did.’
+
+This was wild talking for Amy. The interview had upset her, and for the
+rest of the day she kept apart in her own room. On the morrow Mrs Yule
+succeeded in eliciting a clear account of the conversation which had
+ended so hopelessly.
+
+‘I would rather spend the rest of my days in the workhouse than beg him
+to take me back,’ was Amy’s final comment, uttered with the earnestness
+which her mother understood but too well.
+
+‘But you are willing to go back, dear?’
+
+‘I told him so.’
+
+‘Then you must leave this to me. The Carters will let us know how things
+go on, and when it seems to be time I must see Edwin myself.’
+
+‘I can’t allow that. Anything you could say on your own account would be
+useless, and there is nothing to say from me.’
+
+Mrs Yule kept her own counsel. She had a full month before her during
+which to consider the situation, but it was clear to her that these
+young people must be brought together again. Her estimate of Reardon’s
+mental condition had undergone a sudden change from the moment when she
+heard that a respectable post was within his reach; she decided that
+he was ‘strange,’ but then all men of literary talent had marked
+singularities, and doubtless she had been too hasty in interpreting the
+peculiar features natural to a character such as his.
+
+A few days later arrived the news of their relative’s death at
+Wattleborough.
+
+This threw Mrs Yule into a commotion. At first she decided to accompany
+her son and be present at the funeral; after changing her mind twenty
+times, she determined not to go. John must send or bring back the news
+as soon as possible. That it would be of a nature sensibly to affect
+her own position, if not that of her children, she had little doubt;
+her husband had been the favourite brother of the deceased, and on that
+account there was no saying how handsome a legacy she might receive. She
+dreamt of houses in South Kensington, of social ambitions gratified even
+thus late.
+
+On the morning after the funeral came a postcard announcing John’s
+return by a certain train, but no scrap of news was added.
+
+‘Just like that irritating boy! We must go to the station to meet him.
+You’ll come, won’t you, Amy?’
+
+Amy readily consented, for she too had hopes, though circumstances
+blurred them. Mother and daughter were walking about the platform
+half an hour before the train was due; their agitation would have been
+manifest to anyone observing them. When at length the train rolled in
+and John was discovered, they pressed eagerly upon him.
+
+‘Don’t you excite yourself,’ he said gruffly to his mother. ‘There’s no
+reason whatever.’
+
+Mrs Yule glanced in dismay at Amy. They followed John to a cab, and took
+places with him.
+
+‘Now don’t be provoking, Jack. Just tell us at once.’
+
+‘By all means. You haven’t a penny.’
+
+‘I haven’t? You are joking, ridiculous boy!’
+
+‘Never felt less disposed to, I assure you.’
+
+After staring out of the window for a minute or two, he at length
+informed Amy of the extent to which she profited by her uncle’s decease,
+then made known what was bequeathed to himself. His temper grew worse
+every moment, and he replied savagely to each successive question
+concerning the other items of the will.
+
+‘What have you to grumble about?’ asked Amy, whose face was exultant
+notwithstanding the drawbacks attaching to her good fortune. ‘If Uncle
+Alfred receives nothing at all, and mother has nothing, you ought to
+think yourself very lucky.’
+
+‘It’s very easy for you to say that, with your ten thousand.’
+
+‘But is it her own?’ asked Mrs Yule. ‘Is it for her separate use?’
+
+‘Of course it is. She gets the benefit of last year’s Married Woman’s
+Property Act. The will was executed in January this year, and I dare say
+the old curmudgeon destroyed a former one.
+
+‘What a splendid Act of Parliament that is!’ cried Amy. ‘The only one
+worth anything that I ever heard of.’
+
+‘But my dear--’ began her mother, in a tone of protest. However, she
+reserved her comment for a more fitting time and place, and merely said:
+‘I wonder whether he had heard what has been going on?’
+
+‘Do you think he would have altered his will if he had?’ asked Amy with
+a smile of security.
+
+‘Why the deuce he should have left you so much in any case is more
+than I can understand,’ growled her brother. ‘What’s the use to me of
+a paltry thousand or two? It isn’t enough to invest; isn’t enough to do
+anything with.’
+
+‘You may depend upon it your cousin Marian thinks her five thousand
+good for something,’ said Mrs Yule. ‘Who was at the funeral? Don’t be
+so surly, Jack; tell us all about it. I’m sure if anyone has cause to be
+ill-tempered it’s poor me.’
+
+Thus they talked, amid the rattle of the cab-wheels. By when they
+reached home silence had fallen upon them, and each one was sufficiently
+occupied with private thoughts.
+
+Mrs Yule’s servants had a terrible time of it for the next few days. Too
+affectionate to turn her ill-temper against John and Amy, she relieved
+herself by severity to the domestic slaves, as an English matron is of
+course justified in doing. Her daughter’s position caused her even more
+concern than before; she constantly lamented to herself: ‘Oh, why didn’t
+he die before she was married!’--in which case Amy would never have
+dreamt of wedding a penniless author. Amy declined to discuss the new
+aspect of things until twenty-four hours after John’s return; then she
+said:
+
+‘I shall do nothing whatever until the money is paid to me. And what I
+shall do then I don’t know.’
+
+‘You are sure to hear from Edwin,’ opined Mrs Yule.
+
+‘I think not. He isn’t the kind of man to behave in that way.’
+
+‘Then I suppose you are bound to take the first step?’
+
+‘That I shall never do.’
+
+She said so, but the sudden happiness of finding herself wealthy was
+not without its softening effect on Amy’s feelings. Generous impulses
+alternated with moods of discontent. The thought of her husband in his
+squalid lodgings tempted her to forget injuries and disillusions, and to
+play the part of a generous wife. It would be possible now for them to
+go abroad and spend a year or two in healthful travel; the result in
+Reardon’s case might be wonderful. He might recover all the energy of
+his imagination, and resume his literary career from the point he had
+reached at the time of his marriage.
+
+On the other hand, was it not more likely that he would lapse into a
+life of scholarly self-indulgence, such as he had often told her was
+his ideal? In that event, what tedium and regret lay before her! Ten
+thousand pounds sounded well, but what did it represent in reality? A
+poor four hundred a year, perhaps; mere decency of obscure existence,
+unless her husband could glorify it by winning fame. If he did nothing,
+she would be the wife of a man who had failed in literature. She would
+not be able to take a place in society. Life would be supported without
+struggle; nothing more to be hoped.
+
+This view of the future possessed her strongly when, on the second day,
+she went to communicate her news to Mrs Carter. This amiable lady had
+now become what she always desired to be, Amy’s intimate friend; they
+saw each other very frequently, and conversed of most things with much
+frankness. It was between eleven and twelve in the morning when Amy paid
+her visit, and she found Mrs Carter on the point of going out.
+
+‘I was coming to see you,’ cried Edith. ‘Why haven’t you let me know of
+what has happened?’
+
+‘You have heard, I suppose?’
+
+‘Albert heard from your brother.’
+
+‘I supposed he would. And I haven’t felt in the mood for talking about
+it, even with you.’
+
+They went into Mrs Carter’s boudoir, a tiny room full of such pretty
+things as can be purchased nowadays by anyone who has a few shillings
+to spare, and tolerable taste either of their own or at second-hand. Had
+she been left to her instincts, Edith would have surrounded herself with
+objects representing a much earlier stage of artistic development; but
+she was quick to imitate what fashion declared becoming. Her husband
+regarded her as a remarkable authority in all matters of personal or
+domestic ornamentation.
+
+‘And what are you going to do?’ she inquired, examining Amy from head
+to foot, as if she thought that the inheritance of so substantial a sum
+must have produced visible changes in her friend.
+
+‘I am going to do nothing.’
+
+‘But surely you’re not in low spirits?’
+
+‘What have I to rejoice about?’
+
+They talked for a while before Amy brought herself to utter what she was
+thinking.
+
+‘Isn’t it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both wish to
+separate can’t do so and be quite free again?’
+
+‘I suppose it would lead to all sorts of troubles--don’t you think?’
+
+‘So people say about every new step in civilisation. What would have
+been thought twenty years ago of a proposal to make all married women
+independent of their husbands in money matters? All sorts of absurd
+dangers were foreseen, no doubt. And it’s the same now about divorce.
+In America people can get divorced if they don’t suit each other--at
+all events in some of the States--and does any harm come of it? Just the
+opposite I should think.’
+
+Edith mused. Such speculations were daring, but she had grown accustomed
+to think of Amy as an ‘advanced’ woman, and liked to imitate her in this
+respect.
+
+‘It does seem reasonable,’ she murmured.
+
+‘The law ought to encourage such separations, instead of forbidding
+them,’ Amy pursued. ‘If a husband and wife find that they have made
+a mistake, what useless cruelty it is to condemn them to suffer the
+consequences for the whole of their lives!’
+
+‘I suppose it’s to make people careful,’ said Edith, with a laugh.
+
+‘If so, we know that it has always failed, and always will fail; so the
+sooner such a profitless law is altered the better. Isn’t there some
+society for getting that kind of reform? I would subscribe fifty pounds
+a year to help it. Wouldn’t you?’
+
+‘Yes, if I had it to spare,’ replied the other.
+
+Then they both laughed, but Edith the more naturally.
+
+‘Not on my own account, you know,’ she added.
+
+‘It’s because women who are happily married can’t and won’t understand
+the position of those who are not that there’s so much difficulty in
+reforming marriage laws.’
+
+‘But I understand you, Amy, and I grieve about you. What you are to do I
+can’t think.’
+
+‘Oh, it’s easy to see what I shall do. Of course I have no choice
+really. And I ought to have a choice; that’s the hardship and the wrong
+of it. Perhaps if I had, I should find a sort of pleasure in sacrificing
+myself.’
+
+There were some new novels on the table; Amy took up a volume presently,
+and glanced over a page or two.
+
+‘I don’t know how you can go on reading that sort of stuff, book after
+book,’ she exclaimed.
+
+‘Oh, but people say this last novel of Markland’s is one of his best.’
+
+‘Best or worst, novels are all the same. Nothing but love, love, love;
+what silly nonsense it is! Why don’t people write about the really
+important things of life? Some of the French novelists do; several of
+Balzac’s, for instance. I have just been reading his “Cousin Pons,” a
+terrible book, but I enjoyed it ever so much because it was nothing like
+a love story. What rubbish is printed about love!’
+
+‘I get rather tired of it sometimes,’ admitted Edith with amusement.
+
+‘I should hope you do, indeed. What downright lies are accepted as
+indisputable! That about love being a woman’s whole life; who believes
+it really? Love is the most insignificant thing in most women’s lives.
+It occupies a few months, possibly a year or two, and even then I doubt
+if it is often the first consideration.’
+
+Edith held her head aside, and pondered smilingly.
+
+‘I’m sure there’s a great opportunity for some clever novelist who will
+never write about love at all.’
+
+‘But then it does come into life.’
+
+‘Yes, for a month or two, as I say. Think of the biographies of men and
+women; how many pages are devoted to their love affairs? Compare those
+books with novels which profess to be biographies, and you see how false
+such pictures are. Think of the very words “novel,” “romance”--what do
+they mean but exaggeration of one bit of life?’
+
+‘That may be true. But why do people find the subject so interesting?’
+
+‘Because there is so little love in real life. That’s the truth of
+it. Why do poor people care only for stories about the rich? The same
+principle.’
+
+‘How clever you are, Amy!’
+
+‘Am I? It’s very nice to be told so. Perhaps I have some cleverness of a
+kind; but what use is it to me? My life is being wasted. I ought to
+have a place in the society of clever people. I was never meant to live
+quietly in the background. Oh, if I hadn’t been in such a hurry, and so
+inexperienced!’
+
+‘Oh, I wanted to ask you,’ said Edith, soon after this. ‘Do you wish
+Albert to say anything about you--at the hospital?’
+
+‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t.’
+
+‘You won’t even write to say--?’
+
+‘I shall do nothing.’
+
+Since the parting from her husband, there had proceeded in Amy
+a noticeable maturing of intellect. Probably the one thing was a
+consequence of the other. During that last year in the flat her mind
+was held captive by material cares, and this arrest of her natural
+development doubtless had much to do with the appearance of acerbity
+in a character which had displayed so much sweetness, so much womanly
+grace. Moreover, it was arrest at a critical point. When she fell in
+love with Edwin Reardon her mind had still to undergo the culture of
+circumstances; though a woman in years she had seen nothing of life but
+a few phases of artificial society, and her education had not progressed
+beyond the final schoolgirl stage. Submitting herself to Reardon’s
+influence, she passed through what was a highly useful training of the
+intellect; but with the result that she became clearly conscious of the
+divergence between herself and her husband. In endeavouring to imbue her
+with his own literary tastes, Reardon instructed Amy as to the natural
+tendencies of her mind, which till then she had not clearly understood.
+When she ceased to read with the eyes of passion, most of the things
+which were Reardon’s supreme interests lost their value for her. A sound
+intelligence enabled her to think and feel in many directions, but the
+special line of her growth lay apart from that in which the novelist and
+classical scholar had directed her.
+
+When she found herself alone and independent, her mind acted like a
+spring when pressure is removed. After a few weeks of desoeuvrement she
+obeyed the impulse to occupy herself with a kind of reading alien
+to Reardon’s sympathies. The solid periodicals attracted her, and
+especially those articles which dealt with themes of social science.
+Anything that savoured of newness and boldness in philosophic thought
+had a charm for her palate. She read a good deal of that kind of
+literature which may be defined as specialism popularised; writing which
+addresses itself to educated, but not strictly studious, persons, and
+which forms the reservoir of conversation for society above the sphere
+of turf and west-endism. Thus, for instance, though she could not
+undertake the volumes of Herbert Spencer, she was intelligently
+acquainted with the tenor of their contents; and though she had never
+opened one of Darwin’s books, her knowledge of his main theories and
+illustrations was respectable. She was becoming a typical woman of the
+new time, the woman who has developed concurrently with journalistic
+enterprise.
+
+Not many days after that conversation with Edith Carter, she had
+occasion to visit Mudie’s, for the new number of some periodical which
+contained an appetising title. As it was a sunny and warm day she walked
+to New Oxford Street from the nearest Metropolitan station. Whilst
+waiting at the library counter, she heard a familiar voice in her
+proximity; it was that of Jasper Milvain, who stood talking with a
+middle-aged lady. As Amy turned to look at him his eye met hers; clearly
+he had been aware of her. The review she desired was handed to her; she
+moved aside, and turned over the pages. Then Milvain walked up.
+
+He was armed cap-a-pie in the fashions of suave society; no Bohemianism
+of garb or person, for Jasper knew he could not afford that kind of
+economy. On her part, Amy was much better dressed than usual, a costume
+suited to her position of bereaved heiress.
+
+‘What a time since we met!’ said Jasper, taking her delicately gloved
+hand and looking into her face with his most effective smile.
+
+‘And why?’ asked Amy.
+
+‘Indeed, I hardly know. I hope Mrs Yule is well?’
+
+‘Quite, thank you.’
+
+It seemed as if he would draw back to let her pass, and so make an end
+of the colloquy. But Amy, though she moved forward, added a remark:
+
+‘I don’t see your name in any of this month’s magazines.’
+
+‘I have nothing signed this month. A short review in The Current, that’s
+all.’
+
+‘But I suppose you write as much as ever?’
+
+‘Yes; but chiefly in weekly papers just now. You don’t see the
+Will-o’-the-Wisp?’
+
+‘Oh yes. And I think I can generally recognise your hand.’
+
+They issued from the library.
+
+‘Which way are you going?’ Jasper inquired, with something more of the
+old freedom.
+
+‘I walked from Gower Street station, and I think, as it’s so fine, I
+shall walk back again.’
+
+He accompanied her. They turned up Museum Street, and Amy, after a short
+silence, made inquiry concerning his sisters.
+
+‘I am sorry I saw them only once, but no doubt you thought it better to
+let the acquaintance end there.’
+
+‘I really didn’t think of it in that way at all,’ Jasper replied.
+
+’We naturally understood it so, when you even ceased to call, yourself.’
+
+‘But don’t you feel that there would have been a good deal of
+awkwardness in my coming to Mrs Yule’s?’
+
+‘Seeing that you looked at things from my husband’s point of view?’
+
+‘Oh, that’s a mistake! I have only seen your husband once since he went
+to Islington.’
+
+Amy gave him a look of surprise.
+
+‘You are not on friendly terms with him?’
+
+‘Well, we have drifted apart. For some reason he seemed to think that my
+companionship was not very profitable. So it was better, on the whole,
+that I should see neither you nor him.’
+
+Amy was wondering whether he had heard of her legacy. He might have been
+informed by a Wattleborough correspondent, even if no one in London had
+told him.
+
+‘Do your sisters keep up their friendship with my cousin Marian?’ she
+asked, quitting the previous difficult topic.
+
+‘Oh yes!’ He smiled. ‘They see a great deal of each other.’
+
+‘Then of course you have heard of my uncle’s death?’
+
+‘Yes. I hope all your difficulties are now at an end.’
+
+Amy delayed a moment, then said: ‘I hope so,’ without any emphasis.
+
+‘Do you think of spending this winter abroad?’
+
+It was the nearest he could come to a question concerning the future of
+Amy and her husband.
+
+‘Everything is still quite uncertain. But tell me something about our
+old acquaintances. How does Mr Biffen get on?’
+
+‘I scarcely ever see him, but I think he pegs away at an interminable
+novel, which no one will publish when it’s done. Whelpdale I meet
+occasionally.’
+
+He talked of the latter’s projects and achievements in a lively strain.
+
+‘Your own prospects continue to brighten, no doubt,’ said Amy.
+
+‘I really think they do. Things go fairly well. And I have lately
+received a promise of very valuable help.’
+
+‘From whom?’
+
+‘A relative of yours.’
+
+Amy turned to interrogate him with a look.
+
+‘A relative? You mean--?’
+
+‘Yes; Marian.’
+
+They were passing Bedford Square. Amy glanced at the trees, now
+almost bare of foliage; then her eyes met Jasper’s, and she smiled
+significantly.
+
+‘I should have thought your aim would have been far more ambitious,’ she
+said, with distinct utterance.
+
+‘Marian and I have been engaged for some time--practically.’
+
+‘Indeed? I remember now how you once spoke of her. And you will be
+married soon?’
+
+‘Probably before the end of the year. I see that you are criticising my
+motives. I am quite prepared for that in everyone who knows me and the
+circumstances. But you must remember that I couldn’t foresee anything of
+this kind. It enables us to marry sooner, that’s all.’
+
+‘I am sure your motives are unassailable,’ replied Amy, still with a
+smile. ‘I imagined that you wouldn’t marry for years, and then some
+distinguished person. This throws new light upon your character.’
+
+‘You thought me so desperately scheming and cold-blooded?’
+
+‘Oh dear no! But--well, to be sure, I can’t say that I know Marian. I
+haven’t seen her for years and years. She may be admirably suited to
+you.’
+
+‘Depend upon it, I think so.’
+
+‘She’s likely to shine in society? She is a brilliant girl, full of tact
+and insight?’
+
+‘Scarcely all that, perhaps.’
+
+He looked dubiously at his companion.
+
+‘Then you have abandoned your old ambitions?’ Amy pursued.
+
+‘Not a bit of it. I am on the way to achieve them.’
+
+‘And Marian is the ideal wife to assist you?’
+
+‘From one point of view, yes. Pray, why all this ironic questioning?’
+
+‘Not ironic at all.’
+
+‘It sounded very much like it, and I know from of old that you have a
+tendency that way.’
+
+‘The news surprised me a little, I confess. But I see that I am in
+danger of offending you.’
+
+‘Let us wait another five years, and then I will ask your opinion as
+to the success of my marriage. I don’t take a step of this kind without
+maturely considering it. Have I made many blunders as yet?’
+
+‘As yet, not that I know of.’
+
+‘Do I impress you as one likely to commit follies?’
+
+‘I had rather wait a little before answering that.’
+
+‘That is to say, you prefer to prophesy after the event. Very well, we
+shall see.’
+
+In the length of Gower Street they talked of several other things less
+personal. By degrees the tone of their conversation had become what it
+was used to be, now and then almost confidential.
+
+‘You are still at the same lodgings?’ asked Amy, as they drew near to
+the railway station.
+
+‘I moved yesterday, so that the girls and I could be under the same
+roof--until the next change.’
+
+‘You will let us know when that takes place?’
+
+He promised, and with exchange of smiles which were something like a
+challenge they took leave of each other.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. THE LONELY MAN
+
+A touch of congestion in the right lung was a warning to Reardon that
+his half-year of insufficient food and general waste of strength would
+make the coming winter a hard time for him, worse probably than the
+last. Biffen, responding in person to the summons, found him in bed,
+waited upon by a gaunt, dry, sententious woman of sixty--not the
+landlady, but a lodger who was glad to earn one meal a day by any means
+that offered.
+
+‘It wouldn’t be very nice to die here, would it?’ said the sufferer,
+with a laugh which was cut short by a cough. ‘One would like a
+comfortable room, at least. Why, I don’t know. I dreamt last night that
+I was in a ship that had struck something and was going down; and it
+wasn’t the thought of death that most disturbed me, but a horror of
+being plunged in the icy water. In fact, I have had just the same
+feeling on shipboard. I remember waking up midway between Corfu and
+Brindisi, on that shaky tub of a Greek boat; we were rolling a good
+deal, and I heard a sort of alarmed rush and shouting up on deck. It
+was so warm and comfortable in the berth, and I thought with intolerable
+horror of the possibility of sousing into the black depths.’
+
+‘Don’t talk, my boy,’ advised Biffen. ‘Let me read you the new chapter
+of “Mr Bailey.” It may induce a refreshing slumber.’
+
+Reardon was away from his duties for a week; he returned to them with a
+feeling of extreme shakiness, an indisposition to exert himself, and
+a complete disregard of the course that events were taking. It was
+fortunate that he had kept aside that small store of money designed
+for emergencies; he was able to draw on it now to pay his doctor, and
+provide himself with better nourishment than usual. He purchased new
+boots, too, and some articles of warm clothing of which he stood in
+need--an alarming outlay.
+
+A change had come over him; he was no longer rendered miserable by
+thoughts of Amy--seldom, indeed, turned his mind to her at all.
+His secretaryship at Croydon was a haven within view; the income of
+seventy-five pounds (the other half to go to his wife) would support him
+luxuriously, and for anything beyond that he seemed to care little. Next
+Sunday he was to go over to Croydon and see the institution.
+
+One evening of calm weather he made his way to Clipstone Street and
+greeted his friend with more show of light-heartedness than he had been
+capable of for at least two years.
+
+‘I have been as nearly as possible a happy man all to-day,’ he said,
+when his pipe was well lit. ‘Partly the sunshine, I suppose. There’s
+no saying if the mood will last, but if it does all is well with me. I
+regret nothing and wish for nothing.’
+
+‘A morbid state of mind,’ was Biffen’s opinion.
+
+‘No doubt of that, but I am content to be indebted to morbidness. One
+must have a rest from misery somehow. Another kind of man would have
+taken to drinking; that has tempted me now and then, I assure you. But
+I couldn’t afford it. Did you ever feel tempted to drink merely for the
+sake of forgetting trouble?’
+
+‘Often enough. I have done it. I have deliberately spent a certain
+proportion of the money that ought to have gone for food in the cheapest
+kind of strong liquor.’
+
+‘Ha! that’s interesting. But it never got the force of a habit you had
+to break?’
+
+‘No. Partly, I dare say, because I had the warning of poor Sykes before
+my eyes.’
+
+‘You never see that poor fellow?’
+
+‘Never. He must be dead, I think. He would die either in the hospital or
+the workhouse.’
+
+‘Well,’ said Reardon, musing cheerfully, ‘I shall never become a
+drunkard; I haven’t that diathesis, to use your expression. Doesn’t it
+strike you that you and I are very respectable persons? We really have
+no vices. Put us on a social pedestal, and we should be shining lights
+of morality. I sometimes wonder at our inoffensiveness. Why don’t we run
+amuck against law and order? Why, at the least, don’t we become savage
+revolutionists, and harangue in Regent’s Park of a Sunday?’
+
+‘Because we are passive beings, and were meant to enjoy life very
+quietly. As we can’t enjoy, we just suffer quietly, that’s all.
+By-the-bye, I want to talk about a difficulty in one of the Fragments of
+Euripides. Did you ever go through the Fragments?’
+
+This made a diversion for half an hour. Then Reardon returned to his
+former line of thought.
+
+‘As I was entering patients yesterday, there came up to the table a
+tall, good-looking, very quiet girl, poorly dressed, but as neat as
+could be. She gave me her name, then I asked “Occupation?” She said
+at once, “I’m unfortunate, sir.” I couldn’t help looking up at her in
+surprise; I had taken it for granted she was a dressmaker or something
+of the kind. And, do you know, I never felt so strong an impulse to
+shake hands, to show sympathy, and even respect, in some way. I should
+have liked to say, “Why, I am unfortunate, too!” such a good, patient
+face she had.’
+
+‘I distrust such appearances,’ said Biffen in his quality of realist.
+
+‘Well, so do I, as a rule. But in this case they were convincing. And
+there was no need whatever for her to make such a declaration; she might
+just as well have said anything else; it’s the merest form. I shall
+always hear her voice saying, “I’m unfortunate, sir.” She made me feel
+what a mistake it was for me to marry such a girl as Amy. I ought to
+have looked about for some simple, kind-hearted work-girl; that was
+the kind of wife indicated for me by circumstances. If I had earned a
+hundred a year she would have thought we were well-to-do. I should have
+been an authority to her on everything under the sun--and above it. No
+ambition would have unsettled her. We should have lived in a couple of
+poor rooms somewhere, and--we should have loved each other.’
+
+‘What a shameless idealist you are!’ said Biffen, shaking his head. ‘Let
+me sketch the true issue of such a marriage. To begin with, the girl
+would have married you in firm persuasion that you were a “gentleman”
+ in temporary difficulties, and that before long you would have plenty
+of money to dispose of. Disappointed in this hope, she would have grown
+sharp-tempered, querulous, selfish. All your endeavours to make her
+understand you would only have resulted in widening the impassable
+gulf. She would have misconstrued your every sentence, found food for
+suspicion in every harmless joke, tormented you with the vulgarest forms
+of jealousy. The effect upon your nature would have been degrading. In
+the end, you must have abandoned every effort to raise her to your own
+level, and either have sunk to hers or made a rupture. Who doesn’t know
+the story of such attempts? I myself ten years ago, was on the point of
+committing such a folly, but, Heaven be praised! an accident saved me.’
+
+‘You never told me that story.’
+
+‘And don’t care to now. I prefer to forget it.’
+
+‘Well, you can judge for yourself but not for me. Of course I might have
+chosen the wrong girl, but I am supposing that I had been fortunate. In
+any case there would have been a much better chance than in the marriage
+that I made.’
+
+‘Your marriage was sensible enough, and a few years hence you will be a
+happy man again.’
+
+‘You seriously think Amy will come back to me?’
+
+‘Of course I do.’
+
+‘Upon my word, I don’t know that I desire it.’
+
+‘Because you are in a strangely unhealthy state.’
+
+‘I rather think I regard the matter more sanely than ever yet. I
+am quite free from sexual bias. I can see that Amy was not my fit
+intellectual companion, and all emotion at the thought of her has gone
+from me. The word “love” is a weariness to me. If only our idiotic laws
+permitted us to break the legal bond, how glad both of us would be!’
+
+‘You are depressed and anaemic. Get yourself in flesh, and view things
+like a man of this world.’
+
+‘But don’t you think it the best thing that can happen to a man if he
+outgrows passion?’
+
+‘In certain circumstances, no doubt.’
+
+‘In all and any. The best moments of life are those when we contemplate
+beauty in the purely artistic spirit--objectively. I have had such
+moments in Greece and Italy; times when I was a free spirit, utterly
+remote from the temptations and harassings of sexual emotion. What we
+call love is mere turmoil. Who wouldn’t release himself from it for
+ever, if the possibility offered?’
+
+‘Oh, there’s a good deal to be said for that, of course.’
+
+Reardon’s face was illumined with the glow of an exquisite memory.
+
+‘Haven’t I told you,’ he said, ‘of that marvellous sunset at Athens? I
+was on the Pnyx; had been rambling about there the whole afternoon. For
+I dare say a couple of hours I had noticed a growing rift of light in
+the clouds to the west; it looked as if the dull day might have a rich
+ending. That rift grew broader and brighter--the only bit of light in
+the sky. On Parnes there were white strips of ragged mist, hanging very
+low; the same on Hymettus, and even the peak of Lycabettus was just
+hidden. Of a sudden, the sun’s rays broke out. They showed themselves
+first in a strangely beautiful way, striking from behind the seaward
+hills through the pass that leads to Eleusis, and so gleaming on the
+nearer slopes of Aigaleos, making the clefts black and the rounded parts
+of the mountain wonderfully brilliant with golden colour. All the rest
+of the landscape, remember, was untouched with a ray of light. This
+lasted only a minute or two, then the sun itself sank into the open
+patch of sky and shot glory in every direction; broadening beams smote
+upwards over the dark clouds, and made them a lurid yellow. To the left
+of the sun, the gulf of Aegina was all golden mist, the islands floating
+in it vaguely. To the right, over black Salamis, lay delicate strips of
+pale blue--indescribably pale and delicate.’
+
+‘You remember it very clearly.’
+
+‘As if I saw it now! But wait. I turned eastward, and there to my
+astonishment was a magnificent rainbow, a perfect semicircle, stretching
+from the foot of Parnes to that of Hymettus, framing Athens and its
+hills, which grew brighter and brighter--the brightness for which
+there is no name among colours. Hymettus was of a soft misty warmth, a
+something tending to purple, its ridges marked by exquisitely soft
+and indefinite shadows, the rainbow coming right down in front. The
+Acropolis simply glowed and blazed. As the sun descended all these
+colours grew richer and warmer; for a moment the landscape was nearly
+crimson. Then suddenly the sun passed into the lower stratum of cloud,
+and the splendour died almost at once, except that there remained the
+northern half of the rainbow, which had become double. In the west, the
+clouds were still glorious for a time; there were two shaped like great
+expanded wings, edged with refulgence.’
+
+‘Stop!’ cried Biffen, ‘or I shall clutch you by the throat. I warned you
+before that I can’t stand those reminiscences.’
+
+‘Live in hope. Scrape together twenty pounds, and go there, if you die
+of hunger afterwards.’
+
+‘I shall never have twenty shillings,’ was the despondent answer.
+
+‘I feel sure you will sell “Mr Bailey.”’
+
+‘It’s kind of you to encourage me; but if “Mr Bailey” is ever sold I
+don’t mind undertaking to eat my duplicate of the proofs.’
+
+‘But now, you remember what led me to that. What does a man care for any
+woman on earth when he is absorbed in contemplation of that kind?’
+
+‘But it is only one of life’s satisfactions.’
+
+‘I am only maintaining that it is the best, and infinitely preferable to
+sexual emotion. It leaves, no doubt, no bitterness of any kind. Poverty
+can’t rob me of those memories. I have lived in an ideal world that was
+not deceitful, a world which seems to me, when I recall it, beyond the
+human sphere, bathed in diviner light.’
+
+It was four or five days after this that Reardon, on going to his work
+in City Road, found a note from Carter. It requested him to call at
+the main hospital at half-past eleven the next morning. He supposed the
+appointment had something to do with his business at Croydon, whither
+he had been in the mean time. Some unfavourable news, perhaps; any
+misfortune was likely.
+
+He answered the summons punctually, and on entering the general office
+was requested by the clerk to wait in Mr Carter’s private room; the
+secretary had not yet arrived. His waiting lasted some ten minutes, then
+the door opened and admitted, not Carter, but Mrs Edmund Yule.
+
+Reardon stood up in perturbation. He was anything but prepared, or
+disposed, for an interview with this lady. She came towards him with
+hand extended and a countenance of suave friendliness.
+
+‘I doubted whether you would see me if I let you know,’ she said.
+‘Forgive me this little bit of scheming, will you? I have something so
+very important to speak to you about.’
+
+He said nothing, but kept a demeanour of courtesy.
+
+‘I think you haven’t heard from Amy?’ Mrs Yule asked.
+
+‘Not since I saw her.’
+
+‘And you don’t know what has come to pass?’
+
+‘I have heard of nothing.’
+
+‘I am come to see you quite on my own responsibility, quite. I took Mr
+Carter into my confidence, but begged him not to let Mrs Carter know,
+lest she should tell Amy; I think he will keep his promise. It seemed to
+me that it was really my duty to do whatever I could in these sad, sad
+circumstances.’
+
+Reardon listened respectfully, but without sign of feeling.
+
+‘I had better tell you at once that Amy’s uncle at Wattleborough is
+dead, and that in his will he has bequeathed her ten thousand pounds.’
+
+Mrs Yule watched the effect of this. For a moment none was visible,
+but she saw at length that Reardon’s lips trembled and his eyebrows
+twitched.
+
+‘I am glad to hear of her good fortune,’ he said distantly and in even
+tones.
+
+‘You will feel, I am sure,’ continued his mother-in-law, ‘that this must
+put an end to your most unhappy differences.’
+
+‘How can it have that result?’
+
+‘It puts you both in a very different position, does it not? But for
+your distressing circumstances, I am sure there would never have been
+such unpleasantness--never. Neither you nor Amy is the kind of person to
+take a pleasure in disagreement. Let me beg you to go and see her again.
+Everything is so different now. Amy has not the faintest idea that I
+have come to see you, and she mustn’t on any account be told, for her
+worst fault is that sensitive pride of hers. And I’m sure you won’t
+be offended, Edwin, if I say that you have very much the same failing.
+Between two such sensitive people differences might last a lifetime,
+unless one could be persuaded to take the first step. Do be generous!
+A woman is privileged to be a little obstinate, it is always said.
+Overlook the fault, and persuade her to let bygones be bygones.’
+
+There was an involuntary affectedness in Mrs Yule’s speech which
+repelled Reardon. He could not even put faith in her assurance that
+Amy knew nothing of this intercession. In any case it was extremely
+distasteful to him to discuss such matters with Mrs Yule.
+
+‘Under no circumstances could I do more than I already have done,’ he
+replied. ‘And after what you have told me, it is impossible for me to go
+and see her unless she expressly invites me.’
+
+‘Oh, if only you would overcome this sensitiveness!’
+
+‘It is not in my power to do so. My poverty, as you justly say, was the
+cause of our parting; but if Amy is no longer poor, that is very far
+from a reason why I should go to her as a suppliant for forgiveness.’
+
+‘But do consider the facts of the case, independently of feeling.
+
+I really think I don’t go too far in saying that at least some--some
+provocation was given by you first of all. I am so very, very far from
+wishing to say anything disagreeable--I am sure you feel that--but
+wasn’t there some little ground for complaint on Amy’s part? Wasn’t
+there, now?’
+
+Reardon was tortured with nervousness. He wished to be alone, to think
+over what had happened, and Mrs Yule’s urgent voice rasped upon his
+ears. Its very smoothness made it worse.
+
+‘There may have been ground for grief and concern,’ he answered, ‘but
+for complaint, no, I think not.’
+
+‘But I understand’--the voice sounded rather irritable now--‘that you
+positively reproached and upbraided her because she was reluctant to go
+and live in some very shocking place.’
+
+‘I may have lost my temper after Amy had shown--But I can’t review our
+troubles in this way.’
+
+‘Am I to plead in vain?’
+
+‘I regret very much that I can’t possibly do as you wish. It is all
+between Amy and myself. Interference by other people cannot do any
+good.’
+
+‘I am sorry you should use such a word as “interference,”’ replied Mrs
+Yule, bridling a little. ‘Very sorry, indeed. I confess it didn’t occur
+to me that my good-will to you could be seen in that light.’
+
+‘Believe me that I didn’t use the word offensively.’
+
+‘Then you refuse to take any step towards a restoration of good
+feeling?’
+
+‘I am obliged to, and Amy would understand perfectly why I say so.’
+
+His earnestness was so unmistakable that Mrs Yule had no choice but
+to rise and bring the interview to an end. She commanded herself
+sufficiently to offer a regretful hand.
+
+‘I can only say that my daughter is very, very unfortunate.’
+
+Reardon lingered a little after her departure, then left the hospital
+and walked at a rapid pace in no particular direction.
+
+Ah! if this had happened in the first year of his marriage, what more
+blessed man than he would have walked the earth! But it came after
+irreparable harm. No amount of wealth could undo the ruin caused by
+poverty.
+
+It was natural for him, as soon as he could think with deliberation, to
+turn towards his only friend. But on calling at the house in Clipstone
+Street he found the garret empty, and no one could tell him when its
+occupant was likely to be back. He left a note, and made his way back
+to Islington. The evening had to be spent at the hospital, but on his
+return Biffen sat waiting for him.
+
+‘You called about twelve, didn’t you?’ the visitor inquired.
+
+‘Half-past.’
+
+‘I was at the police-court. Odd thing--but it always happens so--that
+I should have spoken of Sykes the other night. Last night I came upon
+a crowd in Oxford Street, and the nucleus of it was no other than Sykes
+himself very drunk and disorderly, in the grip of two policemen. Nothing
+could be done for him; I was useless as bail; he e’en had to sleep in
+the cell. But I went this morning to see what would become of him. Such
+a spectacle when they brought him forward! It was only five shillings
+fine, and to my astonishment he produced the money. I joined him
+outside--it required a little courage--and had a long talk with him.
+He’s writing a London Letter for some provincial daily, and the first
+payment had thrown him off his balance.’
+
+Reardon laughed gaily, and made inquiries about the eccentric gentleman.
+Only when the subject was exhausted did he speak of his own concerns,
+relating quietly what he had learnt from Mrs Yule. Biffen’s eyes
+widened.
+
+‘So,’ Reardon cried with exultation, ‘there is the last burden off my
+mind! Henceforth I haven’t a care! The only thing that still troubled
+me was my inability to give Amy enough to live upon. Now she is provided
+for in secula seculorum. Isn’t this grand news?’
+
+‘Decidedly. But if she is provided for, so are you.’
+
+‘Biffen, you know me better. Could I accept a farthing of her
+money? This has made our coming together again for ever impossible,
+unless--unless dead things can come to life. I know the value of money,
+but I can’t take it from Amy.’
+
+The other kept silence.
+
+‘No! But now everything is well. She has her child, and can devote
+herself to bringing the boy up. And I--but I shall be rich on my own
+account. A hundred and fifty a year; it would be a farce to offer
+Amy her share of it. By all the gods of Olympus, we will go to Greece
+together, you and I!’
+
+‘Pooh!’
+
+‘I swear it! Let me save for a couple of years, and then get a good
+month’s holiday, or more if possible, and, as Pallas Athene liveth!
+we shall find ourselves at Marseilles, going aboard some boat of the
+Messageries. I can’t believe yet that this is true. Come, we will have a
+supper to-night. Come out into Upper Street, and let us eat, drink, and
+be merry!’
+
+‘You are beside yourself. But never mind; let us rejoice by all means.
+There’s every reason.’
+
+‘That poor girl! Now, at last, she’ll be at ease.’
+
+‘Who?’
+
+‘Amy, of course! I’m delighted on her account. Ah! but if it had come
+a long time ago, in the happy days! Then she, too, would have gone to
+Greece, wouldn’t she? Everything in life comes too soon or too late.
+What it would have meant for her and for me! She would never have hated
+me then, never. Biffen, am I base or contemptible? She thinks so. That’s
+how poverty has served me. If you had seen her, how she looked at
+me, when we met the other day, you would understand well enough why I
+couldn’t live with her now, not if she entreated me to. That would make
+me base if you like. Gods! how ashamed I should be if I yielded to such
+a temptation! And once--’
+
+He had worked himself to such intensity of feeling that at length his
+voice choked and tears burst from his eyes.
+
+‘Come out, and let us have a walk,’ said Biffen.
+
+On leaving the house they found themselves in a thick fog, through which
+trickled drops of warm rain. Nevertheless, they pursued their purpose,
+and presently were seated in one of the boxes of a small coffee-shop.
+Their only companion in the place was a cab-driver, who had just
+finished a meal, and was now nodding into slumber over his plate and
+cup. Reardon ordered fried ham and eggs, the luxury of the poor, and
+when the attendant woman was gone away to execute the order, he burst
+into excited laughter.
+
+‘Here we sit, two literary men! How should we be regarded by--’
+
+He named two or three of the successful novelists of the day.
+
+‘With what magnificent scorn they would turn from us and our squalid
+feast! They have never known struggle; not they. They are public-school
+men, University men, club men, society men. An income of less than three
+or four hundred a year is inconceivable to them; that seems the minimum
+for an educated man’s support. It would be small-minded to think of them
+with rancour, but, by Apollo! I know that we should change places with
+them if the work we have done were justly weighed against theirs.’
+
+‘What does it matter? We are different types of intellectual workers. I
+think of them savagely now and then, but only when hunger gets a
+trifle too keen. Their work answers a demand; ours--or mine at all
+events--doesn’t. They are in touch with the reading multitude; they have
+the sentiments of the respectable; they write for their class. Well, you
+had your circle of readers, and, if things hadn’t gone against you, by
+this time you certainly could have counted on your three or four hundred
+a year.’
+
+‘It’s unlikely that I should ever have got more than two hundred pounds
+for a book; and, to have kept at my best, I must have been content to
+publish once every two or three years. The position was untenable with
+no private income. And I must needs marry a wife of dainty instincts!
+What astounding impudence! No wonder Fate pitched me aside into the
+gutter.’
+
+They ate their ham and eggs, and exhilarated themselves with a cup
+of chicory--called coffee. Then Biffen drew from the pocket of his
+venerable overcoat the volume of Euripides he had brought, and their
+talk turned once more to the land of the sun. Only when the coffee-shop
+was closed did they go forth again into the foggy street, and at the
+top of Pentonville Hill they stood for ten minutes debating a metrical
+effect in one of the Fragments.
+
+Day after day Reardon went about with a fever upon him. By evening his
+pulse was always rapid, and no extremity of weariness brought him a
+refreshing sleep. In conversation he seemed either depressed or
+excited, more often the latter. Save when attending to his duties at the
+hospital, he made no pretence of employing himself; if at home, he sat
+for hours without opening a book, and his walks, excepting when they led
+him to Clipstone Street, were aimless.
+
+The hours of postal delivery found him waiting in an anguish of
+suspense. At eight o’clock each morning he stood by his window,
+listening for the postman’s knock in the street. As it approached he
+went out to the head of the stairs, and if the knock sounded at the door
+of his house, he leaned over the banisters, trembling in expectation.
+But the letter was never for him. When his agitation had subsided he
+felt glad of the disappointment, and laughed and sang.
+
+One day Carter appeared at the City Road establishment, and made an
+opportunity of speaking to his clerk in private.
+
+‘I suppose,’ he said with a smile, ‘they’ll have to look out for someone
+else at Croydon?’
+
+‘By no means! The thing is settled. I go at Christmas.’
+
+‘You really mean that?’
+
+‘Undoubtedly.’
+
+Seeing that Reardon was not disposed even to allude to private
+circumstances, the secretary said no more, and went away convinced that
+misfortunes had turned the poor fellow’s brain.
+
+Wandering in the city, about this time, Reardon encountered his friend
+the realist.
+
+‘Would you like to meet Sykes?’ asked Biffen. ‘I am just going to see
+him.’
+
+‘Where does he live?’
+
+‘In some indiscoverable hole. To save fuel, he spends his mornings at
+some reading-rooms; the admission is only a penny, and there he can see
+all the papers and do his writing and enjoy a grateful temperature.’
+
+They repaired to the haunt in question. A flight of stairs brought them
+to a small room in which were exposed the daily newspapers; another
+ascent, and they were in a room devoted to magazines, chess, and
+refreshments; yet another, and they reached the department of weekly
+publications; lastly, at the top of the house, they found a lavatory,
+and a chamber for the use of those who desired to write. The walls
+of this last retreat were of blue plaster and sloped inwards from the
+floor; along them stood school desks with benches, and in one place was
+suspended a ragged and dirty card announcing that paper and envelopes
+could be purchased downstairs. An enormous basket full of waste-paper,
+and a small stove, occupied two corners; ink blotches, satirical
+designs, and much scribbling in pen and pencil served for mural
+adornment. From the adjacent lavatory came sounds of splashing and
+spluttering, and the busy street far below sent up its confused noises.
+
+Two persons only sat at the desks. One was a hunger-bitten, out-of-work
+clerk, evidently engaged in replying to advertisements; in front of him
+lay two or three finished letters, and on the ground at his feet were
+several crumpled sheets of note-paper, representing abortive essays in
+composition. The other man, also occupied with the pen, looked about
+forty years old, and was clad in a very rusty suit of tweeds; on the
+bench beside him lay a grey overcoat and a silk hat which had for
+some time been moulting. His face declared the habit to which he was a
+victim, but it had nothing repulsive in its lineaments and expression;
+on the contrary, it was pleasing, amiable, and rather quaint. At this
+moment no one would have doubted his sobriety. With coat-sleeve turned
+back, so as to give free play to his right hand and wrist, revealing
+meanwhile a flannel shirt of singular colour, and with his collar
+unbuttoned (he wore no tie) to leave his throat at ease as he bent
+myopically over the paper, he was writing at express speed, evidently
+in the full rush of the ardour of composition. The veins of his forehead
+were dilated, and his chin pushed forward in a way that made one think
+of a racing horse.
+
+‘Are you too busy to talk?’ asked Biffen, going to his side.
+
+‘I am! Upon my soul I am!’ exclaimed the other looking up in alarm. ‘For
+the love of Heaven don’t put me out! A quarter of an hour!’
+
+‘All right. I’ll come up again.’
+
+The friends went downstairs and turned over the papers.
+
+‘Now let’s try him again,’ said Biffen, when considerably more than
+the requested time had elapsed. They went up, and found Mr Sykes in an
+attitude of melancholy meditation. He had turned back his coat
+sleeve, had buttoned his collar, and was eyeing the slips of completed
+manuscript. Biffen presented his companion, and Mr Sykes greeted the
+novelist with much geniality.
+
+‘What do you think this is?’ he exclaimed, pointing to his work. ‘The
+first instalment of my autobiography for the “Shropshire Weekly Herald.”
+ Anonymous, of course, but strictly veracious, with the omission of
+sundry little personal failings which are nothing to the point. I call
+it “Through the Wilds of Literary London.” An old friend of mine edits
+the “Herald,” and I’m indebted to him for the suggestion.’
+
+His voice was a trifle husky, but he spoke like a man of education.
+
+‘Most people will take it for fiction. I wish I had inventive power
+enough to write fiction anything like it. I have published novels, Mr
+Reardon, but my experience in that branch of literature was peculiar--as
+I may say it has been in most others to which I have applied myself. My
+first stories were written for “The Young Lady’s Favourite,” and most
+remarkable productions they were, I promise you. That was fifteen years
+ago, in the days of my versatility. I could throw off my supplemental
+novelette of fifteen thousand words without turning a hair, and
+immediately after it fall to, fresh as a daisy, on the “Illustrated
+History of the United States,” which I was then doing for Edward
+Coghlan. But presently I thought myself too good for the “Favourite”; in
+an evil day I began to write three-volume novels, aiming at reputation.
+It wouldn’t do. I persevered for five years, and made about five
+failures. Then I went back to Bowring. “Take me on again, old man, will
+you?” Bowring was a man of few words; he said, “Blaze away, my boy.” And
+I tried to. But it was no use; I had got out of the style; my writing
+was too literary by a long chalk. For a whole year I deliberately strove
+to write badly, but Bowring was so pained with the feebleness of my
+efforts that at last he sternly bade me avoid his sight. “What the
+devil,” he roared one day, “do you mean by sending me stories about
+men and women? You ought to know better than that, a fellow of your
+experience!” So I had to give it up, and there was an end of my career
+as a writer of fiction.’
+
+He shook his head sadly.
+
+‘Biffen,’ he continued, ‘when I first made his acquaintance, had an idea
+of writing for the working classes; and what do you think he was going
+to offer them? Stories about the working classes! Nay, never hang your
+head for it, old boy; it was excusable in the days of your youth. Why,
+Mr Reardon, as no doubt you know well enough, nothing can induce working
+men or women to read stories that treat of their own world. They are
+the most consumed idealists in creation, especially the women. Again
+and again work-girls have said to me: “Oh, I don’t like that book; it’s
+nothing but real life.”’
+
+‘It’s the fault of women in general,’ remarked Reardon.
+
+‘So it is, but it comes out with delicious naivete in the working
+classes. Now, educated people like to read of scenes that are familiar
+to them, though I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you’re
+to appeal to more than one in a thousand. The working classes detest
+anything that tries to represent their daily life. It isn’t because that
+life is too painful; no, no; it’s downright snobbishness. Dickens goes
+down only with the best of them, and then solely because of his strength
+in farce and his melodrama.’
+
+Presently the three went out together, and had dinner at an a la mode
+beef shop. Mr Sykes ate little, but took copious libations of porter at
+twopence a pint. When the meal was over he grew taciturn.
+
+‘Can you walk westwards?’ Biffen asked.
+
+‘I’m afraid not, afraid not. In fact I have an appointment at two--at
+Aldgate station.’
+
+They parted from him.
+
+‘Now he’ll go and soak till he’s unconscious,’ said Biffen. ‘Poor
+fellow! Pity he ever earns anything at all. The workhouse would be
+better, I should think.’
+
+‘No, no! Let a man drink himself to death rather. I have a horror of the
+workhouse. Remember the clock at Marylebone I used to tell you about.’
+
+‘Unphilosophic. I don’t think I should be unhappy in the workhouse.
+I should have a certain satisfaction in the thought that I had forced
+society to support me. And then the absolute freedom from care! Why,
+it’s very much the same as being a man of independent fortune.’
+
+It was about a week after this, midway in November, that there at length
+came to Manville Street a letter addressed in Amy’s hand. It arrived
+at three one afternoon; Reardon heard the postman, but he had ceased to
+rush out on every such occasion, and to-day he was feeling ill. Lying
+upon the bed, he had just raised his head wearily when he became aware
+that someone was mounting to his room. He sprang up, his face and neck
+flushing.
+
+This time Amy began ‘Dear Edwin’; the sight of those words made his
+brain swim.
+
+‘You must, of course, have heard [she wrote] that my uncle John has left
+me ten thousand pounds. It has not yet come into my possession, and
+I had decided that I would not write to you till that happened, but
+perhaps you may altogether misunderstand my silence.
+
+‘If this money had come to me when you were struggling so hard to earn
+a living for us, we should never have spoken the words and thought the
+thoughts which now make it so difficult for me to write to you. What I
+wish to say is that, although the property is legally my own, I quite
+recognise that you have a right to share in it. Since we have lived
+apart you have sent me far more than you could really afford, believing
+it your duty to do so; now that things are so different I wish you, as
+well as myself, to benefit by the change.
+
+‘I said at our last meeting that I should be quite prepared to return to
+you if you took that position at Croydon. There is now no need for you
+to pursue a kind of work for which you are quite unfitted, and I repeat
+that I am willing to live with you as before. If you will tell me where
+you would like to make a new home I shall gladly agree. I do not think
+you would care to leave London permanently, and certainly I should not.
+
+‘Please to let me hear from you as soon as possible. In writing like
+this I feel that I have done what you expressed a wish that I should
+do. I have asked you to put an end to our separation, and I trust that I
+have not asked in vain.
+
+‘Yours always,
+
+‘AMY REARDON.’
+
+The letter fell from his hand. It was such a letter as he might have
+expected, but the beginning misled him, and as his agitation throbbed
+itself away he suffered an encroachment of despair which made him for a
+time unable to move or even think.
+
+His reply, written by the dreary twilight which represented sunset, ran
+thus.
+
+‘Dear Amy,--I thank you for your letter, and I appreciate your motive in
+writing it. But if you feel that you have “done what I expressed a wish
+that you should do,” you must have strangely misunderstood me.
+
+‘The only one thing that I wished was, that by some miracle your love
+for me might be revived. Can I persuade myself that this is the letter
+of a wife who desires to return to me because in her heart she loves me?
+If that is the truth you have been most unfortunate in trying to express
+yourself.
+
+‘You have written because it seemed your duty to do so. But, indeed, a
+sense of duty such as this is a mistaken one. You have no love for me,
+and where there is no love there is no mutual obligation in marriage.
+Perhaps you think that regard for social conventions will necessitate
+your living with me again. But have more courage; refuse to act
+falsehoods; tell society it is base and brutal, and that you prefer to
+live an honest life.
+
+‘I cannot share your wealth, dear. But as you have no longer need of my
+help--as we are now quite independent of each other--I shall cease to
+send the money which hitherto I have considered yours. In this way I
+shall have enough, and more than enough, for my necessities, so that you
+will never have to trouble yourself with the thought that I am suffering
+privations. At Christmas I go to Croydon, and I will then write to you
+again.
+
+‘For we may at all events be friendly. My mind is relieved from
+ceaseless anxiety on your account. I know now that you are safe from
+that accursed poverty which is to blame for all our sufferings. You I do
+not blame, though I have sometimes done so. My own experience teaches
+me how kindness can be embittered by misfortune. Some great and noble
+sorrow may have the effect of drawing hearts together, but to struggle
+against destitution, to be crushed by care about shillings and
+sixpences--that must always degrade.
+
+‘No other reply than this is possible, so I beg you not to write in this
+way again. Let me know if you go to live elsewhere. I hope Willie is
+well, and that his growth is still a delight and happiness to you.
+
+‘EDWIN REARDON.’
+
+That one word ‘dear,’ occurring in the middle of the letter, gave him
+pause as he read the lines over. Should he not obliterate it, and even
+in such a way that Amy might see what he had done? His pen was dipped in
+the ink for that purpose, but after all he held his hand. Amy was
+still dear to him, say what he might, and if she noted the word--if she
+pondered over it--
+
+A street gas lamp prevented the room from becoming absolutely dark. When
+he had closed the envelope he lay down on his bed again, and watched the
+flickering yellowness upon the ceiling. He ought to have some tea before
+going to the hospital, but he cared so little for it that the trouble of
+boiling water was too great.
+
+The flickering light grew fainter; he understood at length that this was
+caused by fog that had begun to descend. The fog was his enemy; it would
+be wise to purchase a respirator if this hideous weather continued, for
+sometimes his throat burned, and there was a rasping in his chest which
+gave disagreeable admonition.
+
+He fell asleep for half an hour, and on awaking he was feverish, as
+usual at this time of day. Well, it was time to go to his work. Ugh!
+That first mouthful of fog!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. INTERIM
+
+The rooms which Milvain had taken for himself and his sisters were
+modest, but more expensive than their old quarters. As the change was
+on his account he held himself responsible for the extra outlay. But for
+his immediate prospects this step would have been unwarrantable, as
+his earnings were only just sufficient for his needs on the previous
+footing. He had resolved that his marriage must take place before
+Christmas; till that event he would draw when necessary upon the girls’
+little store, and then repay them out of Marian’s dowry.
+
+‘And what are we to do when you are married?’ asked Dora.
+
+The question was put on the first evening of their being all under the
+same roof. The trio had had supper in the girls’ sitting-room, and
+it was a moment for frank conversation. Dora rejoiced in the coming
+marriage; her brother had behaved honourably, and Marian, she trusted,
+would be very happy, notwithstanding disagreement with her father, which
+seemed inevitable. Maud was by no means so well pleased, though she
+endeavoured to wear smiles. It looked to her as if Jasper had been
+guilty of a kind of weakness not to be expected in him. Marian, as an
+individual, could not be considered an appropriate wife for such a
+man with such a future; and as for her five thousand pounds, that was
+ridiculous. Had it been ten--something can be made of ten thousand; but
+a paltry five! Maud’s ideas on such subjects had notably expanded of
+late, and one of the results was that she did not live so harmoniously
+with her sister as for the first few months of their London career.
+
+‘I have been thinking a good deal about that,’ replied Jasper to the
+younger girl’s question. He stood with his back to the fire and smoked a
+cigarette. ‘I thought at first of taking a flat; but then a flat of the
+kind I should want would be twice the rent of a large house. If we have
+a house with plenty of room in it you might come and live with us after
+a time. At first I must find you decent lodgings in our neighbourhood.’
+
+‘You show a good deal of generosity, Jasper,’ said Maud, ‘but pray
+remember that Marian isn’t bringing you five thousand a year.’
+
+‘I regret to say that she isn’t. What she brings me is five hundred a
+year for ten years--that’s how I look at it. My own income will make
+it something between six or seven hundred at first, and before long
+probably more like a thousand. I am quite cool and collected. I
+understand exactly where I am, and where I am likely to be ten years
+hence. Marian’s money is to be spent in obtaining a position for myself.
+At present I am spoken of as a “smart young fellow,” and that kind of
+thing; but no one would offer me an editorship, or any other serious
+help. Wait till I show that I have helped myself and hands will be
+stretched to me from every side. ‘Tis the way of the world. I shall
+belong to a club; I shall give nice, quiet little dinners to selected
+people; I shall let it be understood by all and sundry that I have a
+social position. Thenceforth I am quite a different man, a man to be
+taken into account. And what will you bet me that I don’t stand in the
+foremost rank of literary reputabilities ten years hence?’
+
+‘I doubt whether six or seven hundred a year will be enough for this.’
+
+‘If not, I am prepared to spend a thousand. Bless my soul! As if two or
+three years wouldn’t suffice to draw out the mean qualities in the kind
+of people I am thinking of! I say ten, to leave myself a great margin.’
+
+‘Marian approves this?’
+
+‘I haven’t distinctly spoken of it. But she approves whatever I think
+good.’
+
+The girls laughed at his way of pronouncing this.
+
+‘And let us just suppose that you are so unfortunate as to fail?’
+
+‘There’s no supposing it, unless, of course, I lose my health. I am not
+presuming on any wonderful development of powers. Such as I am now, I
+need only to be put on the little pedestal of a decent independence and
+plenty of people will point fingers of admiration at me. You don’t fully
+appreciate this. Mind, it wouldn’t do if I had no qualities. I have the
+qualities; they only need bringing into prominence. If I am an unknown
+man, and publish a wonderful book, it will make its way very slowly, or
+not at all. If I, become a known man, publish that very same book, its
+praise will echo over both hemispheres. I should be within the truth
+if I had said “a vastly inferior book,” But I am in a bland mood at
+present. Suppose poor Reardon’s novels had been published in the full
+light of reputation instead of in the struggling dawn which was never to
+become day, wouldn’t they have been magnified by every critic? You have
+to become famous before you can secure the attention which would give
+fame.’
+
+He delivered this apophthegm with emphasis, and repeated it in another
+form.
+
+‘You have to obtain reputation before you can get a fair hearing for
+that which would justify your repute. It’s the old story of the French
+publisher who said to Dumas: “Make a name, and I’ll publish anything you
+write.” “But how the diable,” cries the author, “am I to make a name
+if I can’t get published?” If a man can’t hit upon any other way of
+attracting attention, let him dance on his head in the middle of the
+street; after that he may hope to get consideration for his volume of
+poems. I am speaking of men who wish to win reputation before they are
+toothless. Of course if your work is strong, and you can afford to wait,
+the probability is that half a dozen people will at last begin to shout
+that you have been monstrously neglected, as you have. But that happens
+when you are hoary and sapless, and when nothing under the sun delights
+you.’
+
+He lit a new cigarette.
+
+‘Now I, my dear girls, am not a man who can afford to wait. First of
+all, my qualities are not of the kind which demand the recognition of
+posterity. My writing is for to-day, most distinctly hodiernal. It has
+no value save in reference to to-day. The question is: How can I get
+the eyes of men fixed upon me? The answer: By pretending I am quite
+independent of their gaze. I shall succeed, without any kind of doubt;
+and then I’ll have a medal struck to celebrate the day of my marriage.’
+
+But Jasper was not quite so well assured of the prudence of what he was
+about to do as he wished his sisters to believe. The impulse to which he
+had finally yielded still kept its force; indeed, was stronger than
+ever since the intimacy of lovers’ dialogue had revealed to him more of
+Marian’s heart and mind. Undeniably he was in love. Not passionately,
+not with the consuming desire which makes every motive seem paltry
+compared with its own satisfaction; but still quite sufficiently in love
+to have a great difficulty in pursuing his daily tasks. This did not
+still the voice which bade him remember all the opportunities and hopes
+he was throwing aside. Since the plighting of troth with Marian he had
+been over to Wimbledon, to the house of his friend and patron Mr Horace
+Barlow, and there he had again met with Miss Rupert. This lady had no
+power whatever over his emotions, but he felt assured that she
+regarded him with strong interest. When he imagined the possibility of
+contracting a marriage with Miss Rupert, who would make him at once
+a man of solid means, his head drooped, and he wondered at his
+precipitation. It had to be confessed that he was the victim of a vulgar
+weakness. He had declared himself not of the first order of progressive
+men.
+
+The conversation with Amy Reardon did not tend to put his mind at rest.
+Amy was astonished at so indiscreet a step in a man of his calibre. Ah!
+if only Amy herself were free, with her ten thousand pounds to dispose
+of! She, he felt sure, did not view him with indifference. Was there not
+a touch of pique in the elaborate irony with which she had spoken of his
+choice?--But it was idle to look in that direction.
+
+He was anxious on his sisters’ account. They were clever girls, and with
+energy might before long earn a bare subsistence; but it began to be
+doubtful whether they would persevere in literary work. Maud, it was
+clear, had conceived hopes of quite another kind. Her intimacy with Mrs
+Lane was effecting a change in her habits, her dress, even her modes of
+speech. A few days after their establishment in the new lodgings, Jasper
+spoke seriously on this subject with the younger girl.
+
+‘I wonder whether you could satisfy my curiosity in a certain matter,’
+he said. ‘Do you, by chance, know how much Maud gave for that new jacket
+in which I saw her yesterday?’
+
+Dora was reluctant to answer.
+
+‘I don’t think it was very much.’
+
+‘That is to say, it didn’t cost twenty guineas. Well, I hope not.
+
+I notice, too, that she has been purchasing a new hat.’
+
+‘Oh, that was very inexpensive. She trimmed it herself.’
+
+‘Did she? Is there any particular, any quite special, reason for this
+expenditure?’
+
+‘I really can’t say, Jasper.’
+
+‘That’s ambiguous, you know. Perhaps it means you won’t allow yourself
+to say?’
+
+‘No, Maud doesn’t tell me about things of that kind.’
+
+He took opportunities of investigating the matter, with the result that
+some ten days after he sought private colloquy with Maud herself. She
+had asked his opinion of a little paper she was going to send to a
+ladies’ illustrated weekly, and he summoned her to his own room.
+
+‘I think this will do pretty well,’ he said. ‘There’s rather too much
+thought in it, perhaps. Suppose you knock out one or two of the less
+obvious reflections, and substitute a wholesome commonplace? You’ll have
+a better chance, I assure you.’
+
+‘But I shall make it worthless.’
+
+‘No; you’ll probably make it worth a guinea or so. You must remember
+that the people who read women’s papers are irritated, simply irritated,
+by anything that isn’t glaringly obvious. They hate an unusual
+thought. The art of writing for such papers--indeed, for the public in
+general--is to express vulgar thought and feeling in a way that flatters
+the vulgar thinkers and feelers. Just abandon your mind to it, and then
+let me see it again.’
+
+Maud took up the manuscript and glanced over it with a contemptuous
+smile. Having observed her for a moment, Jasper threw himself back in
+the chair and said, as if casually:
+
+‘I am told that Mr Dolomore is becoming a great friend of yours.’
+
+The girl’s face changed. She drew herself up, and looked away towards
+the window.
+
+‘I don’t know that he is a “great” friend.’
+
+‘Still, he pays enough attention to you to excite remark.’
+
+‘Whose remark?’
+
+‘That of several people who go to Mrs Lane’s.’
+
+‘I don’t know any reason for it,’ said Maud coldly.
+
+‘Look here, Maud, you don’t mind if I give you a friendly warning?’
+
+She kept silence, with a look of superiority to all monition.
+
+‘Dolomore,’ pursued her brother, ‘is all very well in his way, but
+that way isn’t yours. I believe he has a good deal of money, but he
+has neither brains nor principle. There’s no harm in your observing
+the nature and habits of such individuals, but don’t allow yourself to
+forget that they are altogether beneath you.’
+
+‘There’s no need whatever for you to teach me self-respect,’ replied the
+girl.
+
+‘I’m quite sure of that; but you are inexperienced. On the whole, I do
+rather wish that you would go less frequently to Mrs Lane’s.
+It was rather an unfortunate choice of yours. Very much better if you
+could have got on a good footing with the Barnabys. If you are generally
+looked upon as belonging to the Lanes’ set it will make it difficult for
+you to get in with the better people.’
+
+Maud was not to be drawn into argument, and Jasper could only hope that
+his words would have some weight with her. The Mr Dolomore in question
+was a young man of rather offensive type--athletic, dandiacal, and
+half-educated. It astonished Jasper that his sister could tolerate such
+an empty creature for a moment; who has not felt the like surprise with
+regard to women’s inclinations? He talked with Dora about it, but she
+was not in her sister’s confidence.
+
+‘I think you ought to have some influence with her,’ Jasper said.
+
+‘Maud won’t allow anyone to interfere in--her private affairs.’
+
+‘It would be unfortunate if she made me quarrel with her.’
+
+‘Oh, surely there isn’t any danger of that?’
+
+‘I don’t know, she mustn’t be obstinate.’
+
+Jasper himself saw a good deal of miscellaneous society at this time. He
+could not work so persistently as usual, and with wise tactics he used
+the seasons of enforced leisure to extend his acquaintance. Marian and
+he were together twice a week, in the evening.
+
+Of his old Bohemian associates he kept up intimate relations with one
+only, and that was Whelpdale. This was in a measure obligatory, for
+Whelpdale frequently came to see him, and it would have been difficult
+to repel a man who was always making known how highly he esteemed the
+privilege of Milvain’s friendship, and whose company on the whole was
+agreeable enough. At the present juncture Whelpdale’s cheery flattery
+was a distinct assistance; it helped to support Jasper in his
+self-confidence, and to keep the brightest complexion on the prospect to
+which he had committed himself.
+
+‘Whelpdale is anxious to make Marian’s acquaintance,’ Jasper said to his
+sisters one day. ‘Shall we have him here tomorrow evening?’
+
+‘Just as you like,’ Maud replied.
+
+‘You won’t object, Dora?’
+
+‘Oh no! I rather like Mr Whelpdale.’
+
+‘If I were to repeat that to him he’d go wild with delight. But don’t
+be afraid; I shan’t. I’ll ask him to come for an hour, and trust to his
+discretion not to bore us by staying too long.’
+
+A note was posted to Whelpdale; he was invited to present himself at
+eight o’clock, by which time Marian would have arrived. Jasper’s room
+was to be the scene of the assembly, and punctual to the minute the
+literary adviser appeared. He was dressed with all the finish his
+wardrobe allowed, and his face beamed with gratification; it was rapture
+to him to enter the presence of these three girls, one of whom he had,
+_more suo_, held in romantic remembrance since his one meeting with her at
+Jasper’s old lodgings. His eyes melted with tenderness as he approached
+Dora and saw her smile of gracious recognition. By Maud he was
+profoundly impressed. Marian inspired him with no awe, but he fully
+appreciated the charm of her features and her modest gravity. After all,
+it was to Dora that his eyes turned again most naturally. He thought
+her exquisite, and, rather than be long without a glimpse of her, he
+contented himself with fixing his eyes on the hem of her dress and the
+boot-toe that occasionally peeped from beneath it.
+
+As was to be expected in such a circle, conversation soon turned to the
+subject of literary struggles.
+
+‘I always feel it rather humiliating,’ said Jasper, ‘that I have gone
+through no very serious hardships. It must be so gratifying to say to
+young fellows who are just beginning:
+
+“Ah, I remember when I was within an ace of starving to death,” and
+then come out with Grub Street reminiscences of the most appalling kind.
+Unfortunately, I have always had enough to eat.’
+
+‘I haven’t,’ exclaimed Whelpdale. ‘I have lived for five days on a few
+cents’ worth of pea-nuts in the States.’
+
+‘What are pea-nuts, Mr Whelpdale?’ asked Dora.
+
+Delighted with the question, Whelpdale described that undesirable
+species of food.
+
+‘It was in Troy,’ he went on, ‘Troy, N.Y. To think that a man should
+live on pea-nuts in a town called Troy!’
+
+‘Tell us those adventures,’ cried Jasper. ‘It’s a long time since I
+heard them, and the girls will enjoy it vastly.’
+
+Dora looked at him with such good-humoured interest that the traveller
+needed no further persuasion.
+
+‘It came to pass in those days,’ he began, ‘that I inherited from my
+godfather a small, a very small, sum of money. I was making strenuous
+efforts to write for magazines, with absolutely no encouragement.
+As everybody was talking just then of the Centennial Exhibition at
+Philadelphia, I conceived the brilliant idea of crossing the Atlantic,
+in the hope that I might find valuable literary material at the
+Exhibition--or Exposition, as they called it--and elsewhere. I won’t
+trouble you with an account of how I lived whilst I still had money;
+sufficient that no one would accept the articles I sent to England,
+and that at last I got into perilous straits. I went to New York, and
+thought of returning home, but the spirit of adventure was strong in me.
+“I’ll go West,” I said to myself. “There I am bound to find material.”
+ And go I did, taking an emigrant ticket to Chicago. It was December, and
+I should like you to imagine what a journey of a thousand miles by an
+emigrant train meant at that season. The cars were deadly cold, and what
+with that and the hardness of the seats I found it impossible to sleep;
+it reminded me of tortures I had read about; I thought my brain would
+have burst with the need of sleeping. At Cleveland, in Ohio, we had to
+wait several hours in the night; I left the station and wandered about
+till I found myself on the edge of a great cliff that looked over Lake
+Erie. A magnificent picture! Brilliant moonlight, and all the lake away
+to the horizon frozen and covered with snow. The clocks struck two as I
+stood there.’
+
+He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant who brought coffee.
+
+‘Nothing could be more welcome,’ cried Dora. ‘Mr Whelpdale makes one
+feel quite chilly.’
+
+There was laughter and chatting whilst Maud poured out the beverage.
+Then Whelpdale pursued his narrative.
+
+‘I reached Chicago with not quite five dollars in my pockets, and, with
+a courage which I now marvel at, I paid immediately four dollars and a
+half for a week’s board and lodging. “Well,” I said to myself, “for a
+week I am safe. If I earn nothing in that time, at least I shall owe
+nothing when I have to turn out into the streets.” It was a rather dirty
+little boarding-house, in Wabash Avenue, and occupied, as I soon found,
+almost entirely by actors. There was no fireplace in my bedroom, and
+if there had been I couldn’t have afforded a fire. But that mattered
+little; what I had to do was to set forth and discover some way of
+making money. Don’t suppose that I was in a desperate state of mind;
+how it was, I don’t quite know, but I felt decidedly cheerful. It was
+pleasant to be in this new region of the earth, and I went about the
+town like a tourist who has abundant resources.’
+
+He sipped his coffee.
+
+‘I saw nothing for it but to apply at the office of some newspaper, and
+as I happened to light upon the biggest of them first of all, I put on
+a bold face, marched in, asked if I could see the editor. There was no
+difficulty whatever about this; I was told to ascend by means of the
+“elevator” to an upper storey, and there I walked into a comfortable
+little room where a youngish man sat smoking a cigar at a table covered
+with print and manuscript. I introduced myself, stated my business. “Can
+you give me work of any kind on your paper?” “Well, what experience have
+you had?” “None whatever.” The editor smiled. “I’m very much afraid you
+would be no use to us. But what do you think you could do?” Well now,
+there was but one thing that by any possibility I could do. I asked him:
+“Do you publish any fiction--short stories?” “Yes, we’re always glad
+of a short story, if it’s good.” This was a big daily paper; they have
+weekly supplements of all conceivable kinds of matter. “Well,” I said,
+“if I write a story of English life, will you consider it?” “With
+pleasure.” I left him, and went out as if my existence were henceforth
+provided for.’
+
+He laughed heartily, and was joined by his hearers.
+
+‘It was a great thing to be permitted to write a story, but then--what
+story? I went down to the shore of Lake Michigan; walked there for half
+an hour in an icy wind. Then I looked for a stationer’s shop, and
+laid out a few of my remaining cents in the purchase of pen, ink, and
+paper--my stock of all these things was at an end when I left New York.
+Then back to the boarding-house. Impossible to write in my bedroom, the
+temperature was below zero; there was no choice but to sit down in the
+common room, a place like the smoke-room of a poor commercial hotel in
+England. A dozen men were gathered about the fire, smoking, talking,
+quarrelling. Favourable conditions, you see, for literary effort. But
+the story had to be written, and write it I did, sitting there at the
+end of a deal table; I finished it in less than a couple of days, a
+good long story, enough to fill three columns of the huge paper. I stand
+amazed at my power of concentration as often as I think of it!’
+
+‘And was it accepted?’ asked Dora.
+
+‘You shall hear. I took my manuscript to the editor, and he told me to
+come and see him again next morning. I didn’t forget the appointment.
+As I entered he smiled in a very promising way, and said, “I think
+your story will do. I’ll put it into the Saturday supplement. Call on
+Saturday morning and I’ll remunerate you.” How well I remember that
+word “remunerate”! I have had an affection for the word ever since. And
+remunerate me he did; scribbled something on a scrap of paper, which
+I presented to the cashier. The sum was eighteen dollars. Behold me
+saved!’
+
+He sipped his coffee again.
+
+‘I have never come across an English editor who treated me with anything
+like that consideration and general kindliness. How the man had time, in
+his position, to see me so often, and do things in such a human way,
+I can’t understand. Imagine anyone trying the same at the office of a
+London newspaper! To begin with, one couldn’t see the editor at all. I
+shall always think with profound gratitude of that man with the peaked
+brown beard and pleasant smile.’
+
+‘But did the pea-nuts come after that!’ inquired Dora.
+
+‘Alas! they did. For some months I supported myself in Chicago, writing
+for that same paper, and for others. But at length the flow of my
+inspiration was checked; I had written myself out. And I began to grow
+home-sick, wanted to get back to England. The result was that I found
+myself one day in New York again, but without money enough to pay for a
+passage home. I tried to write one more story. But it happened, as I was
+looking over newspapers in a reading-room, that I saw one of my Chicago
+tales copied into a paper published at Troy. Now Troy was not very far
+off; and it occurred to me that, if I went there, the editor of this
+paper might be disposed to employ me, seeing he had a taste for my
+fiction. And I went, up the Hudson by steamboat. On landing at Troy I
+was as badly off as when I reached Chicago; I had less than a dollar.
+And the worst of it was I had come on a vain errand; the editor treated
+me with scant courtesy, and no work was to be got. I took a little room,
+paying for it day by day, and in the meantime I fed on those loathsome
+pea-nuts, buying a handful in the street now and then. And I assure you
+I looked starvation in the face.’
+
+‘What sort of a town is Troy?’ asked Marian, speaking for the first
+time.
+
+‘Don’t ask me. They make straw hats there principally, and they sell
+pea-nuts. More I remember not.’
+
+‘But you didn’t starve to death,’ said Maud.
+
+‘No, I just didn’t. I went one afternoon into a lawyer’s office,
+thinking I might get some copying work, and there I found an odd-looking
+old man, sitting with an open Bible on his knees. He explained to me
+that he wasn’t the lawyer; that the lawyer was away on business,
+and that he was just guarding the office. Well, could he help me?
+He meditated, and a thought occurred to him. “Go,” he said, “to
+such-and-such a boarding-house, and ask for Mr Freeman Sterling. He is
+just starting on a business tour, and wants a young man to accompany
+him.” I didn’t dream of asking what the business was, but sped, as fast
+as my trembling limbs would carry me, to the address he had mentioned. I
+asked for Mr Freeman Sterling, and found him. He was a photographer,
+and his business at present was to go about getting orders for the
+reproducing of old portraits. A good-natured young fellow. He said he
+liked the look of me, and on the spot engaged me to assist him in a
+house-to-house visitation. He would pay for my board and lodging, and
+give me a commission on all the orders I obtained. Forthwith I sat down
+to a “square meal,” and ate--my conscience, how I ate!’
+
+‘You were not eminently successful in that pursuit, I think?’ said
+Jasper.
+
+‘I don’t think I got half-a-dozen orders. Yet that good Samaritan
+supported me for five or six weeks, whilst we travelled from Troy to
+Boston. It couldn’t go on; I was ashamed of myself; at last I told
+him that we must part. Upon my word, I believe he would have paid my
+expenses for another month; why, I can’t understand. But he had a vast
+respect for me because I had written in newspapers, and I do seriously
+think that he didn’t like to tell me I was a useless fellow. We parted
+on the very best of terms in Boston.’
+
+‘And you again had recourse to pea-nuts?’ asked Dora.
+
+‘Well, no. In the meantime I had written to someone in England, begging
+the loan of just enough money to enable me to get home. The money came a
+day after I had seen Sterling off by train.’
+
+An hour and a half quickly passed, and Jasper, who wished to have a few
+minutes of Marian’s company before it was time for her to go, cast a
+significant glance at his sisters. Dora said innocently:
+
+‘You wished me to tell you when it was half-past nine, Marian.’
+
+And Marian rose. This was a signal Whelpdale could not disregard.
+Immediately he made ready for his own departure, and in less than five
+minutes was gone, his face at the last moment expressing blended delight
+and pain.
+
+‘Too good of you to have asked me to come,’ he said with gratitude to
+Jasper, who went to the door with him. ‘You are a happy man, by Jove! A
+happy man!’
+
+When Jasper returned to the room his sisters had vanished. Marian
+stood by the fire. He drew near to her, took her hands, and repeated
+laughingly Whelpdale’s last words.
+
+‘Is it true?’ she asked.
+
+‘Tolerably true, I think.’
+
+‘Then I am as happy as you are.’
+
+He released her hands, and moved a little apart.
+
+‘Marian, I have been thinking about that letter to your father. I had
+better get it written, don’t you think?’
+
+She gazed at him with troubled eyes.
+
+‘Perhaps you had. Though we said it might be delayed until--’
+
+‘Yes, I know. But I suspect you had rather I didn’t wait any longer.
+Isn’t that the truth?’
+
+‘Partly. Do just as you wish, Jasper.’
+
+‘I’ll go and see him, if you like.’
+
+‘I am so afraid--No, writing will be better.’
+
+‘Very well. Then he shall have the letter to-morrow afternoon.’
+
+‘Don’t let it come before the last post. I had so much rather not.
+Manage it, if you can.’
+
+‘Very well. Now go and say good-night to the girls. It’s a vile night,
+and you must get home as soon as possible.’
+
+She turned away, but again came towards him, murmuring:
+
+‘Just a word or two more.’
+
+‘About the letter?’
+
+‘No. You haven’t said--’
+
+He laughed.
+
+‘And you couldn’t go away contentedly unless I repeated for the
+hundredth time that I love you?’
+
+Marian searched his countenance.
+
+‘Do you think it foolish? I live only on those words.’
+
+‘Well, they are better than pea-nuts.’
+
+‘Oh don’t! I can’t bear to--’
+
+Jasper was unable to understand that such a jest sounded to her like
+profanity. She hid her face against him, and whispered the words that
+would have enraptured her had they but come from his lips. The young man
+found it pleasant enough to be worshipped, but he could not reply as
+she desired. A few phrases of tenderness, and his love-vocabulary
+was exhausted; he even grew weary when something more--the indefinite
+something--was vaguely required of him.
+
+‘You are a dear, good, tender-hearted girl,’ he said, stroking her
+short, soft hair, which was exquisite to the hand. ‘Now go and get
+ready.’
+
+She left him, but stood for a few moments on the landing before going to
+the girls’ room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX. CATASTROPHE
+
+Marian had finished the rough draft of a paper on James Harrington,
+author of ‘Oceana.’ Her father went through it by the midnight lamp,
+and the next morning made his comments. A black sky and sooty rain
+strengthened his inclination to sit by the study fire and talk at large
+in a tone of flattering benignity.
+
+‘Those paragraphs on the Rota Club strike me as singularly happy,’ he
+said, tapping the manuscript with the mouthpiece of his pipe. ‘Perhaps
+you might say a word or two more about Cyriac Skinner; one mustn’t be
+too allusive with general readers, their ignorance is incredible. But
+there is so little to add to this paper--so little to alter--that I
+couldn’t feel justified in sending it as my own work. I think it is
+altogether too good to appear anonymously. You must sign it, Marian, and
+have the credit that is due to you.’
+
+‘Oh, do you think it’s worth while?’ answered the girl, who was far from
+easy under this praise. Of late there had been too much of it; it made
+her regard her father with suspicions which increased her sense of
+trouble in keeping a momentous secret from him.
+
+‘Yes, yes; you had better sign it. I’ll undertake there’s no other girl
+of your age who could turn out such a piece of work. I think we may
+fairly say that your apprenticeship is at an end. Before long,’ he
+smiled anxiously, ‘I may be counting upon you as a valued contributor.
+And that reminds me; would you be disposed to call with me on the
+Jedwoods at their house next Sunday?’
+
+Marian understood the intention that lay beneath this proposal. She
+saw that her father would not allow himself to seem discouraged by the
+silence she maintained on the great subject which awaited her decision.
+He was endeavouring gradually to involve her in his ambitions, to carry
+her forward by insensible steps. It pained her to observe the suppressed
+eagerness with which he looked for her reply.
+
+‘I will go if you wish, father, but I had rather not.’
+
+‘I feel sure you would like Mrs Jedwood. One has no great opinion of her
+novels, but she is a woman of some intellect. Let me book you for next
+Sunday; surely I have a claim to your companionship now and then.’
+
+Marian kept silence. Yule puffed at his pipe, then said with a
+speculative air:
+
+‘I suppose it has never even occurred to you to try your hand at
+fiction?’
+
+‘I haven’t the least inclination that way.’
+
+‘You would probably do something rather good if you tried. But I don’t
+urge it. My own efforts in that line were a mistake, I’m disposed to
+think. Not that the things were worse than multitudes of books which
+nowadays go down with the many-headed. But I never quite knew what I
+wished to be at in fiction. I wasn’t content to write a mere narrative
+of the exciting kind, yet I couldn’t hit upon subjects of intellectual
+cast that altogether satisfied me. Well, well; I have tried my hand
+at most kinds of literature. Assuredly I merit the title of man of
+letters.’
+
+‘You certainly do.’
+
+‘By-the-by, what should you think of that title for a review--Letters?
+It has never been used, so far as I know. I like the word “letters.”
+ How much better “a man of letters” than “a literary man”! And apropos of
+that, when was the word “literature” first used in our modern sense
+to signify a body of writing? In Johnson’s day it was pretty much the
+equivalent of our “culture.” You remember his saying, “It is surprising
+how little literature people have.” His dictionary, I believe, defines
+the word as “learning, skill in letters”--nothing else.’
+
+It was characteristic of Yule to dwell with gusto on little points such
+as this; he prosed for a quarter of an hour, with a pause every now and
+then whilst he kept his pipe alight.
+
+‘I think Letters wouldn’t be amiss,’ he said at length, returning to
+the suggestion which he wished to keep before Marian’s mind. ‘It would
+clearly indicate our scope. No articles on bimetallism, as Quarmby
+said--wasn’t it Quarmby?’
+
+He laughed idly.
+
+‘Yes, I must ask Jedwood how he likes the name.’
+
+Though Marian feared the result, she was glad when Jasper made up his
+mind to write to her father. Since it was determined that her money
+could not be devoted to establishing a review, the truth ought to be
+confessed before Yule had gone too far in nursing his dangerous hope.
+Without the support of her love and all the prospects connected with it,
+she would hardly have been capable of giving a distinct refusal when her
+reply could no longer be postponed; to hold the money merely for her own
+benefit would have seemed to her too selfish, however slight her faith
+in the project on which her father built so exultantly. When it was
+declared that she had accepted an offer of marriage, a sacrifice of that
+kind could no longer be expected of her. Opposition must direct itself
+against the choice she had made. It would be stern, perhaps relentless;
+but she felt able to face any extremity of wrath. Her nerves quivered,
+but in her heart was an exhaustless source of courage.
+
+That a change had somehow come about in the girl Yule was aware. He
+observed her with the closest study day after day. Her health seemed
+to have improved; after a long spell of work she had not the air of
+despondent weariness which had sometimes irritated him, sometimes
+made him uneasy. She was more womanly in her bearing and speech, and
+exercised an independence, appropriate indeed to her years, but such
+as had not formerly declared itself The question with her father
+was whether these things resulted simply from her consciousness of
+possessing what to her seemed wealth, or something else had happened
+of the nature that he dreaded. An alarming symptom was the increased
+attention she paid to her personal appearance; its indications were
+not at all prominent, but Yule, on the watch for such things, did not
+overlook them. True, this also might mean nothing but a sense of relief
+from narrow means; a girl would naturally adorn herself a little under
+the circumstances.
+
+His doubts came to an end two days after that proposal of a title for
+the new review. As he sat in his study the servant brought him a letter
+delivered by the last evening post. The handwriting was unknown to him;
+the contents were these:
+
+‘DEAR MR YULE,--It is my desire to write to you with perfect frankness
+and as simply as I can on a subject which has the deepest interest for
+me, and which I trust you will consider in that spirit of kindness with
+which you received me when we first met at Finden.
+
+‘On the occasion of that meeting I had the happiness of being presented
+to Miss Yule. She was not totally a stranger to me; at that time I used
+to work pretty regularly in the Museum Reading-room, and there I had
+seen Miss Yule, had ventured to observe her at moments with a young
+man’s attention, and had felt my interest aroused, though I did not
+know her name. To find her at Finden seemed to me a very unusual and
+delightful piece of good fortune.
+
+When I came back from my holiday I was conscious of a new purpose in
+life, a new desire and a new motive to help me on in my chosen career.
+
+‘My mother’s death led to my sisters’ coming to live in London. Already
+there had been friendly correspondence between Miss Yule and the two
+girls, and now that the opportunity offered they began to see each other
+frequently. As I was often at my sisters’ lodgings it came about that
+I met Miss Yule there from time to time. In this way was confirmed my
+attachment to your daughter. The better I knew her, the more worthy I
+found her of reverence and love.
+
+‘Would it not have been natural for me to seek a renewal of the
+acquaintance with yourself which had been begun in the country? Gladly I
+should have done so. Before my sisters’ coming to London I did call one
+day at your house with the desire of seeing you, but unfortunately you
+were not at home. Very soon after that I learnt to my extreme regret
+that my connection with The Current and its editor would make any
+repetition of my visit very distasteful to you. I was conscious of
+nothing in my literary life that could justly offend you--and at this
+day I can say the same--but I shrank from the appearance of importunity,
+and for some months I was deeply distressed by the fear that what I most
+desired in life had become unattainable. My means were very slight; I
+had no choice but to take such work as offered, and mere chance had put
+me into a position which threatened ruin to the hope that you would some
+day regard me as a not unworthy suitor for your daughter’s hand.
+
+‘Circumstances have led me to a step which at that time seemed
+impossible. Having discovered that Miss Yule returned the feeling
+I entertained for her, I have asked her to be my wife, and she has
+consented. It is now my hope that you will permit me to call upon you.
+Miss Yule is aware that I am writing this letter; will you not let her
+plead for me, seeing that only by an unhappy chance have I been kept
+aloof from you? Marian and I are equally desirous that you should
+approve our union; without that approval, indeed, something will be
+lacking to the happiness for which we hope.
+
+‘Believe me to be sincerely yours,
+
+‘JASPER MILVAIN.’
+
+Half an hour after reading this Yule was roused from a fit of the
+gloomiest brooding by Marian’s entrance. She came towards him timidly,
+with pale countenance. He had glanced round to see who it was, but at
+once turned his head again.
+
+‘Will you forgive me for keeping this secret from you, father?’
+
+‘Forgive you?’ he replied in a hard, deliberate voice. ‘I assure you it
+is a matter of perfect indifference to me. You are long since of age,
+and I have no power whatever to prevent your falling a victim to any
+schemer who takes your fancy. It would be folly in me to discuss the
+question. I recognise your right to have as many secrets as may seem
+good to you. To talk of forgiveness is the merest affectation.’
+
+‘No, I spoke sincerely. If it had seemed possible I should gladly have
+let you know about this from the first. That would have been natural and
+right. But you know what prevented me.’
+
+‘I do. I will try to hope that even a sense of shame had something to do
+with it.’
+
+‘That had nothing to do with it,’ said Marian, coldly. ‘I have never had
+reason to feel ashamed.’
+
+‘Be it so. I trust you may never have reason to feel repentance. May I
+ask when you propose to be married?’
+
+‘I don’t know when it will take place.’
+
+‘As soon, I suppose, as your uncle’s executors have discharged a piece
+of business which is distinctly germane to the matter?’
+
+‘Perhaps.’
+
+‘Does your mother know?’
+
+‘I have just told her.’
+
+‘Very well, then it seems to me that there’s nothing more to be said.’
+
+‘Do you refuse to see Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘Most decidedly I do. You will have the goodness to inform him that that
+is my reply to his letter.’
+
+‘I don’t think that is the behaviour of a gentleman,’ said Marian, her
+eyes beginning to gleam with resentment.
+
+‘I am obliged to you for your instruction.’
+
+‘Will you tell me, father, in plain words, why you dislike Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘I am not inclined to repeat what I have already fruitlessly told you.
+For the sake of a clear understanding, however, I will let you know the
+practical result of my dislike. From the day of your marriage with that
+man you are nothing to me. I shall distinctly forbid you to enter my
+house. You make your choice, and go your own way. I shall hope never to
+see your face again.’
+
+Their eyes met, and the look of each seemed to fascinate the other.
+
+‘If you have made up your mind to that,’ said Marian in a shaking
+voice, ‘I can remain here no longer. Such words are senselessly cruel.
+To-morrow I shall leave the house.’
+
+‘I repeat that you are of age, and perfectly independent. It can be
+nothing to me how soon you go. You have given proof that I am of less
+than no account to you, and doubtless the sooner we cease to afflict
+each other the better.’
+
+It seemed as if the effect of these conflicts with her father were to
+develop in Marian a vehemence of temper which at length matched that
+of which Yule was the victim. Her face, outlined to express a gentle
+gravity, was now haughtily passionate; nostrils and lips thrilled with
+wrath, and her eyes were magnificent in their dark fieriness.
+
+‘You shall not need to tell me that again,’ she answered, and
+immediately left him.
+
+She went into the sitting-room, where Mrs Yule was awaiting the result
+of the interview.
+
+‘Mother,’ she said, with stern gentleness, ‘this house can no longer be
+a home for me. I shall go away to-morrow, and live in lodgings until the
+time of my marriage.’
+
+Mrs Yule uttered a cry of pain, and started up.
+
+‘Oh, don’t do that, Marian! What has he said to you? Come and talk to
+me, darling--tell me what he’s said--don’t look like that!’
+
+She clung to the girl despairingly, terrified by a transformation she
+would have thought impossible.
+
+‘He says that if I marry Mr Milvain he hopes never to see my face again.
+I can’t stay here. You shall come and see me, and we will be the same
+to each other as always. But father has treated me too unjustly. I can’t
+live near him after this.’
+
+‘He doesn’t mean it,’ sobbed her mother. ‘He says what he’s sorry for
+as soon as the words are spoken. He loves you too much, my darling, to
+drive you away like that. It’s his disappointment, Marian; that’s all it
+is. He counted on it so much. I’ve heard him talk of it in his sleep;
+he made so sure that he was going to have that new magazine, and the
+disappointment makes him that he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Only
+wait and see; he’ll tell you he didn’t mean it, I know he will. Only
+leave him alone till he’s had time to get over it. Do forgive him this
+once.’
+
+‘It’s like a madman to talk in that way,’ said the girl, releasing
+herself. ‘Whatever his disappointment, I can’t endure it. I have worked
+hard for him, very hard, ever since I was old enough, and he owes me
+some kindness, some respect. It would be different if he had the least
+reason for his hatred of Jasper. It is nothing but insensate prejudice,
+the result of his quarrels with other people. What right has he to
+insult me by representing my future husband as a scheming hypocrite?’
+
+‘My love, he has had so much to bear--it’s made him so quick-tempered.’
+
+‘Then I am quick-tempered too, and the sooner we are apart the better,
+as he said himself.’
+
+‘Oh, but you have always been such a patient girl.’
+
+‘My patience is at an end when I am treated as if I had neither rights
+nor feelings. However wrong the choice I had made, this was not the way
+to behave to me. His disappointment? Is there a natural law, then, that
+a daughter must be sacrificed to her father? My husband will have as
+much need of that money as my father has, and he will be able to make
+far better use of it. It was wrong even to ask me to give my money away
+like that. I have a right to happiness, as well as other women.’
+
+She was shaken with hysterical passion, the natural consequence of this
+outbreak in a nature such as hers. Her mother, in the meantime,
+grew stronger by force of profound love that at length had found its
+opportunity of expression. Presently she persuaded Marian to come
+upstairs with her, and before long the overburdened breast was relieved
+by a flow of tears. But Marian’s purpose remained unshaken.
+
+‘It is impossible for us to see each other day after day,’ she said when
+calmer. ‘He can’t control his anger against me, and I suffer too much
+when I am made to feel like this. I shall take a lodging not far off;
+where you can see me often.’
+
+‘But you have no money, Marian,’ replied Mrs Yule, miserably.
+
+‘No money? As if I couldn’t borrow a few pounds until all my own comes
+to me! Dora Milvain can lend me all I shall want; it won’t make the
+least difference to her. I must have my money very soon now.’
+
+At about half-past eleven Mrs Yule went downstairs, and entered the
+study.
+
+‘If you are coming to speak about Marian,’ said her husband, turning
+upon her with savage eyes, ‘you can save your breath. I won’t hear her
+name mentioned.’
+
+She faltered, but overcame her weakness.
+
+‘You are driving her away from us, Alfred. It isn’t right! Oh, it isn’t
+right!’
+
+‘If she didn’t go I should, so understand that! And if I go, you have
+seen the last of me. Make your choice, make your choice!’
+
+He had yielded himself to that perverse frenzy which impels a man to
+acts and utterances most wildly at conflict with reason. His sense of
+the monstrous irrationality to which he was committed completed what was
+begun in him by the bitterness of a great frustration.
+
+‘If I wasn’t a poor, helpless woman,’ replied his wife, sinking upon a
+chair and crying without raising her hands to her face, ‘I’d go and live
+with her till she was married, and then make a home for myself. But I
+haven’t a penny, and I’m too old to earn my own living; I should only be
+a burden to her.’
+
+‘That shall be no hindrance,’ cried Yule. ‘Go, by all means; you shall
+have a sufficient allowance as long as I can continue to work, and when
+I’m past that, your lot will be no harder than mine. Your daughter had
+the chance of making provision for my old age, at no expense to herself.
+But that was asking too much of her. Go, by all means, and leave me to
+make what I can of the rest of my life; perhaps I may save a few years
+still from the curse brought upon me by my own folly.’
+
+It was idle to address him. Mrs Yule went into the sitting-room, and
+there sat weeping for an hour. Then she extinguished the lights, and
+crept upstairs in silence.
+
+Yule passed the night in the study. Towards morning he slept for an hour
+or two, just long enough to let the fire go out and to get thoroughly
+chilled. When he opened his eyes a muddy twilight had begun to show at
+the window; the sounds of a clapping door within the house, which had
+probably awakened him, made him aware that the servant was already up.
+
+He drew up the blind. There seemed to be a frost, for the moisture
+of last night had all disappeared, and the yard upon which the window
+looked was unusually clean. With a glance at the black grate he
+extinguished his lamp, and went out into the passage. A few minutes’
+groping for his overcoat and hat, and he left the house.
+
+His purpose was to warm himself with a vigorous walk, and at the
+same time to shake off if possible, the nightmare of his rage and
+hopelessness. He had no distinct feeling with regard to his behaviour of
+the past evening; he neither justified nor condemned himself; he did not
+ask himself whether Marian would to-day leave her home, or if her mother
+would take him at his word and also depart. These seemed to be details
+which his brain was too weary to consider. But he wished to be away from
+the wretchedness of his house, and to let things go as they would
+whilst he was absent. As he closed the front door he felt as if he were
+escaping from an atmosphere that threatened to stifle him.
+
+His steps directing themselves more by habit than with any deliberate
+choice, he walked towards Camden Road. When he had reached Camden Town
+railway-station he was attracted by a coffee-stall; a draught of
+the steaming liquid, no matter its quality, would help his blood to
+circulate. He laid down his penny, and first warmed his hands by holding
+them round the cup. Whilst standing thus he noticed that the objects at
+which he looked had a blurred appearance; his eyesight seemed to have
+become worse this morning. Only a result of his insufficient sleep
+perhaps. He took up a scrap of newspaper that lay on the stall; he could
+read it, but one of his eyes was certainly weaker than the other; trying
+to see with that one alone, he found that everything became misty.
+
+He laughed, as if the threat of new calamity were an amusement in his
+present state of mind. And at the same moment his look encountered that
+of a man who had drawn near to him, a shabbily-dressed man of middle
+age, whose face did not correspond with his attire.
+
+‘Will you give me a cup of coffee?’ asked the stranger, in a low voice
+and with shamefaced manner. ‘It would be a great kindness.’
+
+The accent was that of good breeding. Yule hesitated in surprise for a
+moment, then said:
+
+‘Have one by all means. Would you care for anything to eat?’
+
+‘I am much obliged to you. I think I should be none the worse for one of
+those solid slices of bread and butter.’
+
+The stall-keeper was just extinguishing his lights; the frosty sky
+showed a pale gleam of sunrise.
+
+‘Hard times, I’m afraid,’ remarked Yule, as his beneficiary began to eat
+the luncheon with much appearance of grateful appetite.
+
+‘Very hard times.’ He had a small, thin, colourless countenance, with
+large, pathetic eyes; a slight moustache and curly beard. His clothes
+were such as would be worn by some very poor clerk. ‘I came here an
+hour ago,’ he continued, ‘with the hope of meeting an acquaintance who
+generally goes from this station at a certain time. I have missed
+him, and in doing so I missed what I had thought my one chance of a
+breakfast. When one has neither dined nor supped on the previous day,
+breakfast becomes a meal of some importance.’
+
+‘True. Take another slice.’
+
+‘I am greatly obliged to you.’
+
+‘Not at all. I have known hard times myself, and am likely to know
+worse.’
+
+‘I trust not. This is the first time that I have positively begged.
+I should have been too much ashamed to beg of the kind of men who are
+usually at these places; they certainly have no money to spare. I was
+thinking of making an appeal at a baker’s shop, but it is very likely I
+should have been handed over to a policeman. Indeed I don’t know what I
+should have done; the last point of endurance was almost reached. I have
+no clothes but these I wear, and they are few enough for the season.
+Still, I suppose the waistcoat must have gone.’
+
+He did not talk like a beggar who is trying to excite compassion, but
+with a sort of detached curiosity concerning the difficulties of his
+position.
+
+‘You can find nothing to do?’ said the man of letters.
+
+‘Positively nothing. By profession I am a surgeon, but it’s a long time
+since I practised. Fifteen years ago I was comfortably established at
+Wakefield; I was married and had one child. But my capital ran out, and
+my practice, never anything to boast of, fell to nothing. I succeeded
+in getting a place as an assistant to a man at Chester. We sold up, and
+started on the journey.’
+
+He paused, looking at Yule in a strange way.
+
+‘What happened then?’
+
+‘You probably don’t remember a railway accident that took place near
+Crewe in that year--it was 1869? I and my wife and child were alone in
+a carriage that was splintered. One moment I was talking with them, in
+fairly good spirits, and my wife was laughing at something I had said;
+the next, there were two crushed, bleeding bodies at my feet. I had a
+broken arm, that was all. Well, they were killed on the instant; they
+didn’t suffer. That has been my one consolation.’
+
+Yule kept the silence of sympathy.
+
+‘I was in a lunatic asylum for more than a year after that,’ continued
+the man. ‘Unhappily, I didn’t lose my senses at the moment; it took two
+or three weeks to bring me to that pass. But I recovered, and there has
+been no return of the disease. Don’t suppose that I am still of unsound
+mind. There can be little doubt that poverty will bring me to that again
+in the end; but as yet I am perfectly sane. I have supported myself in
+various ways.
+
+No, I don’t drink; I see the question in your face. But I am physically
+weak, and, to quote Mrs Gummidge, “things go contrary with me.” There’s
+no use lamenting; this breakfast has helped me on, and I feel in much
+better spirits.’
+
+‘Your surgical knowledge is no use to you?’
+
+The other shook his head and sighed.
+
+‘Did you ever give any special attention to diseases of the eyes?’
+
+‘Special, no. But of course I had some acquaintance with the subject.’
+
+‘Could you tell by examination whether a man was threatened with
+cataract, or anything of that kind?’
+
+‘I think I could.’
+
+‘I am speaking of myself.’
+
+The stranger made a close scrutiny of Yule’s face, and asked certain
+questions with reference to his visual sensations.
+
+‘I hardly like to propose it,’ he said at length, ‘but if you were
+willing to accompany me to a very poor room that I have not far from
+here, I could make the examination formally.’
+
+‘I will go with you.’
+
+They turned away from the stall, and the ex-surgeon led into a
+by-street. Yule wondered at himself for caring to seek such a singular
+consultation, but he had a pressing desire to hear some opinion as to
+the state of his eyes. Whatever the stranger might tell him, he would
+afterwards have recourse to a man of recognised standing; but just now
+companionship of any kind was welcome, and the poor hungry fellow, with
+his dolorous life-story, had made appeal to his sympathies. To give
+money under guise of a fee would be better than merely offering alms.
+
+‘This is the house,’ said his guide, pausing at a dirty door. ‘It isn’t
+inviting, but the people are honest, so far as I know. My room is at the
+top.’
+
+‘Lead on,’ answered Yule.
+
+In the room they entered was nothing noticeable; it was only the poorest
+possible kind of bed-chamber, or all but the poorest possible. Daylight
+had now succeeded to dawn, yet the first thing the stranger did was to
+strike a match and light a candle.
+
+‘Will you kindly place yourself with your back to the window?’ he
+said. ‘I am going to apply what is called the catoptric test. You have
+probably heard of it?’
+
+‘My ignorance of scientific matters is fathomless.’
+
+The other smiled, and at once offered a simple explanation of the term.
+By the appearance of the candle as it reflected itself in the patient’s
+eye it was possible, he said, to decide whether cataract had taken hold
+upon the organ.
+
+For a minute or two he conducted his experiment carefully, and Yule was
+at no loss to read the result upon his face.
+
+‘How long have you suspected that something was wrong?’ the surgeon
+asked, as he put down the candle.
+
+‘For several months.’
+
+‘You haven’t consulted anyone?’
+
+‘No one. I have kept putting it off. Just tell me what you have
+discovered.’
+
+‘The back of the right lens is affected beyond a doubt.’
+
+‘That means, I take it, that before very long I shall be practically
+blind?’
+
+‘I don’t like to speak with an air of authority. After all, I am only a
+surgeon who has bungled himself into pauperdom. You must see a competent
+man; that much I can tell you in all earnestness.
+
+Do you use your eyes much?’
+
+‘Fourteen hours a day, that’s all.’
+
+‘H’m! You are a literary man, I think?’
+
+‘I am. My name is Alfred Yule.’
+
+He had some faint hope that the name might be recognised; that would
+have gone far, for the moment, to counteract his trouble. But not even
+this poor satisfaction was to be granted him; to his hearer the name
+evidently conveyed nothing.
+
+‘See a competent man, Mr Yule. Science has advanced rapidly since the
+days when I was a student; I am only able to assure you of the existence
+of disease.’
+
+They talked for half an hour, until both were shaking with cold. Then
+Yule thrust his hand into his pocket.
+
+‘You will of course allow me to offer such return as I am able,’ he
+said. ‘The information isn’t pleasant, but I am glad to have it.’
+
+He laid five shillings on the chest of drawers--there was no table. The
+stranger expressed his gratitude.
+
+‘My name is Duke,’ he said, ‘and I was christened Victor--possibly
+because I was doomed to defeat in life. I wish you could have associated
+the memory of me with happier circumstances.’
+
+They shook hands, and Yule quitted the house.
+
+He came out again by Camden Town station. The coffee-stall had
+disappeared; the traffic of the great highway was growing uproarious.
+Among all the strugglers for existence who rushed this way and that,
+Alfred Yule felt himself a man chosen for fate’s heaviest infliction. He
+never questioned the accuracy of the stranger’s judgment, and he hoped
+for no mitigation of the doom it threatened. His life was over--and
+wasted.
+
+He might as well go home, and take his place meekly by the fireside.
+He was beaten. Soon to be a useless old man, a burden and annoyance to
+whosoever had pity on him.
+
+It was a curious effect of the imagination that since coming into the
+open air again his eyesight seemed to be far worse than before. He
+irritated his nerves of vision by incessant tests, closing first one eye
+then the other, comparing his view of nearer objects with the appearance
+of others more remote, fancying an occasional pain--which could have had
+no connection with his disease. The literary projects which had stirred
+so actively in his mind twelve hours ago were become an insubstantial
+memory; to the one crushing blow had succeeded a second, which was
+fatal. He could hardly recall what special piece of work he had been
+engaged upon last night. His thoughts were such as if actual blindness
+had really fallen upon him.
+
+At half-past eight he entered the house. Mrs Yule was standing at the
+foot of the stairs; she looked at him, then turned away towards the
+kitchen. He went upstairs. On coming down again he found breakfast ready
+as usual, and seated himself at the table. Two letters waited for him
+there; he opened them.
+
+When Mrs Yule came into the room a few moments later she was astonished
+by a burst of loud, mocking laughter from her husband, excited, as it
+appeared, by something he was reading.
+
+‘Is Marian up?’ he asked, turning to her.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘She is not coming to breakfast?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Then just take that letter to her, and ask her to read it.’
+
+Mrs Yule ascended to her daughter’s bedroom. She knocked, was bidden
+enter, and found Marian packing clothes in a trunk. The girl looked as
+if she had been up all night; her eyes bore the traces of much weeping.
+
+‘He has come back, dear,’ said Mrs Yule, in the low voice of
+apprehension, ‘and he says you are to read this letter.’
+
+Marian took the sheet, unfolded it, and read. As soon as she had reached
+the end she looked wildly at her mother, seemed to endeavour vainly to
+speak, then fell to the floor in unconsciousness. The mother was only
+just able to break the violence of her fall. Having snatched a pillow
+and placed it beneath Marian’s head, she rushed to the door and called
+loudly for her husband, who in a moment appeared.
+
+‘What is it?’ she cried to him. ‘Look, she has fallen down in a faint.
+Why are you treating her like this?’
+
+‘Attend to her,’ Yule replied roughly. ‘I suppose you know better than I
+do what to do when a person faints.’
+
+The swoon lasted for several minutes.
+
+‘What’s in the letter?’ asked Mrs Yule whilst chafing the lifeless
+hands.
+
+‘Her money’s lost. The people who were to pay it have just failed.’
+
+‘She won’t get anything?’
+
+‘Most likely nothing at all.’
+
+The letter was a private communication from one of John Yule’s
+executors. It seemed likely that the demand upon Turberville & Co. for
+an account of the deceased partner’s share in their business had helped
+to bring about a crisis in affairs that were already unstable. Something
+might be recovered in the legal proceedings that would result, but there
+were circumstances which made the outlook very doubtful.
+
+As Marian came to herself her father left the room. An hour afterwards
+Mrs Yule summoned him again to the girl’s chamber; he went, and found
+Marian lying on the bed, looking like one who had been long ill.
+
+‘I wish to ask you a few questions,’ she said, without raising herself.
+‘Must my legacy necessarily be paid out of that investment?’
+
+‘It must. Those are the terms of the will.’
+
+‘If nothing can be recovered from those people, I have no remedy?’
+
+‘None whatever that I can see.’
+
+‘But when a firm is bankrupt they generally pay some portion of their
+debts?’
+
+‘Sometimes. I know nothing of the case.’
+
+‘This of course happens to me,’ Marian said, with intense bitterness.
+‘None of the other legatees will suffer, I suppose?’
+
+‘Someone must, but to a very small extent.’
+
+‘Of course. When shall I have direct information?’
+
+‘You can write to Mr Holden; you have his address.’
+
+‘Thank you. That’s all.’
+
+He was dismissed, and went quietly away.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIVE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX. WAITING ON DESTINY
+
+Throughout the day Marian kept her room. Her intention to leave the
+house was, of course, abandoned; she was the prisoner of fate. Mrs Yule
+would have tended her with unremitting devotion, but the girl desired to
+be alone. At times she lay in silent anguish; frequently her tears broke
+forth, and she sobbed until weariness overcame her. In the afternoon she
+wrote a letter to Mr Holden, begging that she might be kept constantly
+acquainted with the progress of things.
+
+At five her mother brought tea.
+
+‘Wouldn’t it be better if you went to bed now, Marian?’ she suggested.
+
+‘To bed? But I am going out in an hour or two.’
+
+‘Oh, you can’t, dear! It’s so bitterly cold. It wouldn’t be good for
+you.’
+
+‘I have to go out, mother, so we won’t speak of it.’
+
+It was not safe to reply. Mrs Yule sat down, and watched the girl raise
+the cup to her mouth with trembling hand.
+
+‘This won’t make any difference to you--in the end, my darling,’ the
+mother ventured to say at length, alluding for the first time to the
+effect of the catastrophe on Marian’s immediate prospects.
+
+‘Of course not,’ was the reply, in a tone of self-persuasion.
+
+‘Mr Milvain is sure to have plenty of money before long.’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘You feel much better now, don’t you?’
+
+‘Much. I am quite well again.’
+
+At seven, Marian went out. Finding herself weaker than she had thought,
+she stopped an empty cab that presently passed her, and so drove to
+the Milvains’ lodgings. In her agitation she inquired for Mr Milvain,
+instead of for Dora, as was her habit; it mattered very little, for
+the landlady and her servants were of course under no misconception
+regarding this young lady’s visits.
+
+Jasper was at home, and working. He had but to look at Marian to see
+that something wretched had been going on at her home; naturally he
+supposed it the result of his letter to Mr Yule.
+
+‘Your father has been behaving brutally,’ he said, holding her hands and
+gazing anxiously at her.
+
+‘There is something far worse than that, Jasper.’
+
+‘Worse?’
+
+She threw off her outdoor things, then took the fatal letter from her
+pocket and handed it to him. Jasper gave a whistle of consternation, and
+looked vacantly from the paper to Marian’s countenance.
+
+‘How the deuce comes this about?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, wasn’t your uncle
+aware of the state of things?’
+
+‘Perhaps he was. He may have known that the legacy was a mere form.’
+
+‘You are the only one affected?’
+
+‘So father says. It’s sure to be the case.’
+
+‘This has upset you horribly, I can see. Sit down, Marian. When did the
+letter come?’
+
+‘This morning.’
+
+‘And you have been fretting over it all day. But come, we must keep up
+our courage; you may get something substantial out of the scoundrels
+still.’
+
+Even whilst he spoke his eyes wandered absently. On the last word his
+voice failed, and he fell into abstraction. Marian’s look was fixed upon
+him, and he became conscious of it. He tried to smile.
+
+‘What were you writing?’ she asked, making involuntary diversion from
+the calamitous theme.
+
+‘Rubbish for the Will-o’-the-Wisp. Listen to this paragraph about
+English concert audiences.’
+
+It was as necessary to him as to her to have a respite before the graver
+discussion began. He seized gladly the opportunity she offered, and read
+several pages of manuscript, slipping from one topic to another. To hear
+him one would have supposed that he was in his ordinary mood; he laughed
+at his own jokes and points.
+
+‘They’ll have to pay me more,’ was the remark with which he closed. ‘I
+only wanted to make myself indispensable to them, and at the end of
+this year I shall feel pretty sure of that. They’ll have to give me two
+guineas a column; by Jove! they will.’
+
+‘And you may hope for much more than that, mayn’t you, before long?’
+
+‘Oh, I shall transfer myself to a better paper presently. It seems to me
+I must be stirring to some purpose.’
+
+He gave her a significant look.
+
+‘What shall we do, Jasper?’
+
+‘Work and wait, I suppose.’
+
+‘There’s something I must tell you. Father said I had better sign that
+Harrington article myself. If I do that, I shall have a right to the
+money, I think. It will at least be eight guineas. And why shouldn’t I
+go on writing for myself--for us? You can help me to think of subjects.’
+
+‘First of all, what about my letter to your father? We are forgetting
+all about it.’
+
+‘He refused to answer.’
+
+Marian avoided closer description of what had happened. It was partly
+that she felt ashamed of her father’s unreasoning wrath, and feared
+lest Jasper’s pride might receive an injury from which she in turn
+would suffer; partly that she was unwilling to pain her lover by making
+display of all she had undergone.
+
+‘Oh, he refused to reply! Surely that is extreme behaviour.’
+
+What she dreaded seemed to be coming to pass. Jasper stood rather
+stiffly, and threw his head back.
+
+‘You know the reason, dear. That prejudice has entered into his very
+life. It is not you he dislikes; that is impossible. He thinks of you
+only as he would of anyone connected with Mr Fadge.’
+
+‘Well, well; it isn’t a matter of much moment. But what I have in mind
+is this. Will it be possible for you, whilst living at home, to take a
+position of independence, and say that you are going to work for your
+own profit?’
+
+‘At least I might claim half the money I can earn. And I was thinking
+more of--’
+
+‘Of what?’
+
+‘When I am your wife, I may be able to help. I could earn thirty or
+forty pounds a year, I think. That would pay the rent of a small house.’
+
+She spoke with shaken voice, her eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+‘But, my dear Marian, we surely oughtn’t to think of marrying so long as
+expenses are so nicely fitted as all that?’
+
+‘No. I only meant--’
+
+She faltered, and her tongue became silent as her heart sank.
+
+‘It simply means,’ pursued Jasper, seating himself and crossing his
+legs, ‘that I must move heaven and earth to improve my position. You
+know that my faith in myself is not small; there’s no knowing what I
+might do if I used every effort. But, upon my word, I don’t see much
+hope of our being able to marry for a year or two under the most
+favourable circumstances.’
+
+‘No; I quite understand that.’
+
+‘Can you promise to keep a little love for me all that time?’ he asked
+with a constrained smile.
+
+‘You know me too well to fear.’
+
+‘I thought you seemed a little doubtful.’
+
+His tone was not altogether that which makes banter pleasant between
+lovers. Marian looked at him fearfully. Was it possible for him in truth
+so to misunderstand her? He had never satisfied her heart’s desire of
+infinite love; she never spoke with him but she was oppressed with the
+suspicion that his love was not as great as hers, and, worse still, that
+he did not wholly comprehend the self-surrender which she strove to make
+plain in every word.
+
+‘You don’t say that seriously, Jasper?’
+
+‘But answer seriously.’
+
+‘How can you doubt that I would wait faithfully for you for years if it
+were necessary?’
+
+‘It mustn’t be years, that’s very certain. I think it preposterous for a
+man to hold a woman bound in that hopeless way.’
+
+‘But what question is there of holding me bound? Is love dependent on
+fixed engagements? Do you feel that, if we agreed to part, your love
+would be at once a thing of the past?’
+
+‘Why no, of course not.’
+
+‘Oh, but how coldly you speak, Jasper!’
+
+She could not breathe a word which might be interpreted as fear lest
+the change of her circumstances should make a change in his feeling.
+Yet that was in her mind. The existence of such a fear meant, of
+course, that she did not entirely trust him, and viewed his character as
+something less than noble. Very seldom indeed is a woman free from such
+doubts, however absolute her love; and perhaps it is just as rare for
+a man to credit in his heart all the praises he speaks of his beloved.
+Passion is compatible with a great many of these imperfections of
+intellectual esteem. To see more clearly into Jasper’s personality was,
+for Marian, to suffer the more intolerable dread lest she should lose
+him.
+
+She went to his side. Her heart ached because, in her great misery, he
+had not fondled her, and intoxicated her senses with loving words.
+
+‘How can I make you feel how much I love you?’ she murmured.
+
+‘You mustn’t be so literal, dearest. Women are so desperately
+matter-of-fact; it comes out even in their love-talk.’
+
+Marian was not without perception of the irony of such an opinion on
+Jasper’s lips.
+
+‘I am content for you to think so,’ she said. ‘There is only one fact in
+my life of any importance, and I can never lose sight of it.’
+
+‘Well now, we are quite sure of each other. Tell me plainly, do you
+think me capable of forsaking you because you have perhaps lost your
+money?’
+
+The question made her wince. If delicacy had held her tongue, it had no
+control of HIS.
+
+‘How can I answer that better,’ she said, ‘than by saying I love you?’
+
+It was no answer, and Jasper, though obtuse compared with her,
+understood that it was none. But the emotion which had prompted his
+words was genuine enough. Her touch, the perfume of her passion, had
+their exalting effect upon him. He felt in all sincerity that to forsake
+her would be a baseness, revenged by the loss of such a wife.
+
+‘There’s an uphill fight before me, that’s all,’ he said, ‘instead of
+the pretty smooth course I have been looking forward to. But I don’t
+fear it, Marian. I’m not the fellow to be beaten.
+
+You shall be my wife, and you shall have as many luxuries as if you had
+brought me a fortune.’
+
+‘Luxuries! Oh, how childish you seem to think me!’
+
+‘Not a bit of it. Luxuries are a most important part of life. I had
+rather not live at all than never possess them. Let me give you a useful
+hint; if ever I seem to you to flag, just remind me of the difference
+between these lodgings and a richly furnished house. Just hint to me
+that So-and-so, the journalist, goes about in his carriage, and can give
+his wife a box at the theatre. Just ask me, casually, how I should
+like to run over to the Riviera when London fogs are thickest. You
+understand? That’s the way to keep me at it like a steam-engine.’
+
+‘You are right. All those things enable one to live a better and fuller
+life. Oh, how cruel that I--that we are robbed in this way! You can have
+no idea how terrible a blow it was to me when I read that letter this
+morning.’
+
+She was on the point of confessing that she had swooned, but something
+restrained her.
+
+‘Your father can hardly be sorry,’ said Jasper.
+
+‘I think he speaks more harshly than he feels. The worst was, that until
+he got your letter he had kept hoping that I would let him have the
+money for a new review.’
+
+‘Well, for the present I prefer to believe that the money isn’t all
+lost. If the blackguards pay ten shillings in the pound you will get two
+thousand five hundred out of them, and that’s something. But how do you
+stand? Will your position be that of an ordinary creditor?’
+
+‘I am so ignorant. I know nothing of such things.’
+
+‘But of course your interests will be properly looked after. Put
+yourself in communication with this Mr Holden. I’ll have a look into the
+law on the subject. Let us hope as long as we can. By Jove! There’s no
+other way of facing it.’
+
+‘No, indeed.’
+
+‘Mrs Reardon and the rest of them are safe enough, I suppose?’
+
+‘Oh, no doubt.’
+
+‘Confound them!--It grows upon one. One doesn’t take in the whole of
+such a misfortune at once. We must hold on to the last rag of hope, and
+in the meantime I’ll half work myself to death. Are you going to see the
+girls?’
+
+‘Not to-night. You must tell them.’
+
+‘Dora will cry her eyes out. Upon my word, Maud’ll have to draw in her
+horns. I must frighten her into economy and hard work.’
+
+He again lost himself in anxious reverie.
+
+‘Marian, couldn’t you try your hand at fiction?’
+
+She started, remembering that her father had put the same question so
+recently.
+
+‘I’m afraid I could do nothing worth doing.’
+
+‘That isn’t exactly the question. Could you do anything that would sell?
+With very moderate success in fiction you might make three times as much
+as you ever will by magazine pot-boilers. A girl like you. Oh, you might
+manage, I should think.’
+
+‘A girl like me?’
+
+‘Well, I mean that love-scenes, and that kind of thing, would be very
+much in your line.’
+
+Marian was not given to blushing; very few girls are, even on strong
+provocation. For the first time Jasper saw her cheeks colour deeply,
+and it was with anything but pleasure. His words were coarsely
+inconsiderate, and wounded her.
+
+‘I think that is not my work,’ she said coldly, looking away.
+
+‘But surely there’s no harm in my saying--’ he paused in astonishment.
+‘I meant nothing that could offend you.’
+
+‘I know you didn’t, Jasper. But you make me think that--’
+
+‘Don’t be so literal again, my dear girl. Come here and forgive me.’
+
+She did not approach, but only because the painful thought he had
+excited kept her to that spot.
+
+‘Come, Marian! Then I must come to you.’
+
+He did so and held her in his arms.
+
+‘Try your hand at a novel, dear, if you can possibly make time. Put me
+in it, if you like, and make me an insensible masculine. The experiment
+is worth a try I’m certain. At all events do a few chapters, and let
+me see them. A chapter needn’t take you more than a couple of hours I
+should think.’
+
+Marian refrained from giving any promise. She seemed irresponsive to
+his caresses. That thought which at times gives trouble to all women of
+strong emotions was working in her: had she been too demonstrative, and
+made her love too cheap? Now that Jasper’s love might be endangered, it
+behoved her to use any arts which nature prompted. And so, for once, he
+was not wholly satisfied with her, and at their parting he wondered what
+subtle change had affected her manner to him.
+
+‘Why didn’t Marian come to speak a word?’ said Dora, when her brother
+entered the girls’ sitting-room about ten o’clock.
+
+‘You knew she was with me, then?’
+
+‘We heard her voice as she was going away.’
+
+‘She brought me some enspiriting news, and thought it better I should
+have the reporting of it to you.’
+
+With brevity he made known what had befallen.
+
+‘Cheerful, isn’t it? The kind of thing that strengthens one’s trust in
+Providence.’
+
+The girls were appalled. Maud, who was reading by the fireside, let her
+book fall to her lap, and knit her brows darkly.
+
+‘Then your marriage must be put off, of course?’ said Dora.
+
+‘Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if that were found necessary,’ replied
+her brother caustically. He was able now to give vent to the feeling
+which in Marian’s presence was suppressed, partly out of consideration
+for her, and partly owing to her influence.
+
+‘And shall we have to go back to our old lodgings again?’ inquired Maud.
+
+Jasper gave no answer, but kicked a footstool savagely out of his way
+and paced the room.
+
+‘Oh, do you think we need?’ said Dora, with unusual protest against
+economy.
+
+‘Remember that it’s a matter for your own consideration,’ Jasper replied
+at length. ‘You are living on your own resources, you know.’
+
+Maud glanced at her sister, but Dora was preoccupied.
+
+‘Why do you prefer to stay here?’ Jasper asked abruptly of the younger
+girl.
+
+‘It is so very much nicer,’ she replied with some embarrassment.
+
+He bit the ends of his moustache, and his eyes glared at the impalpable
+thwarting force that to imagination seemed to fill the air about him.
+
+‘A lesson against being over-hasty,’ he muttered, again kicking the
+footstool.
+
+‘Did you make that considerate remark to Marian?’ asked Maud.
+
+‘There would have been no harm if I had done. She knows that I shouldn’t
+have been such an ass as to talk of marriage without the prospect of
+something to live upon.’
+
+‘I suppose she’s wretched?’ said Dora.
+
+‘What else can you expect?’
+
+‘And did you propose to release her from the burden of her engagement?’
+Maud inquired.
+
+‘It’s a confounded pity that you’re not rich, Maud,’ replied her brother
+with an involuntary laugh. ‘You would have a brilliant reputation for
+wit.’
+
+He walked about and ejaculated splenetic phrases on the subject of his
+ill-luck.
+
+‘We are here, and here we must stay,’ was the final expression of his
+mood. ‘I have only one superstition that I know of and that forbids me
+to take a step backward. If I went into poorer lodgings again I should
+feel it was inviting defeat. I shall stay as long as the position is
+tenable. Let us get on to Christmas, and then see how things look.
+Heavens! Suppose we had married, and after that lost the money!’
+
+‘You would have been no worse off than plenty of literary men,’ said
+Dora.
+
+‘Perhaps not. But as I have made up my mind to be considerably better
+off than most literary men that reflection wouldn’t console me much.
+Things are in statu quo, that’s all. I have to rely upon my own efforts.
+What’s the time? Half-past ten; I can get two hours’ work before going
+to bed.’
+
+And nodding a good-night he left them.
+
+When Marian entered the house and went upstairs, she was followed by her
+mother. On Mrs Yule’s countenance there was a new distress, she had been
+crying recently.
+
+‘Have you seen him?’ the mother asked.
+
+‘Yes. We have talked about it.’
+
+‘What does he wish you to do, dear?’
+
+‘There’s nothing to be done except wait.’
+
+‘Father has been telling me something, Marian,’ said Mrs Yule after a
+long silence. ‘He says he is going to be blind. There’s something
+the matter with his eyes, and he went to see someone about it this
+afternoon. He’ll get worse and worse, until there has been an operation;
+and perhaps he’ll never be able to use his eyes properly again.’
+
+The girl listened in an attitude of despair.
+
+‘He has seen an oculist?--a really good doctor?’
+
+‘He says he went to one of the best.’
+
+‘And how did he speak to you?’
+
+‘He doesn’t seem to care much what happens. He talked of going to the
+workhouse, and things like that. But it couldn’t ever come to that,
+could it, Marian? Wouldn’t somebody help him?’
+
+‘There’s not much help to be expected in this world,’ answered the girl.
+
+Physical weariness brought her a few hours of oblivion as soon as she
+had lain down, but her sleep came to an end in the early morning, when
+the pressure of evil dreams forced her back to consciousness of real
+sorrows and cares. A fog-veiled sky added its weight to crush her
+spirit; at the hour when she usually rose it was still all but as dark
+as midnight. Her mother’s voice at the door begged her to lie and
+rest until it grew lighter, and she willingly complied, feeling indeed
+scarcely capable of leaving her bed.
+
+The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be
+smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low-spirited languor even
+in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very
+reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colourless as
+the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake, in blank extremity of
+woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was
+shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture
+chamber.
+
+Midway in the morning, when it was still necessary to use artificial
+light, she went down to the sitting-room. The course of household life
+had been thrown into confusion by the disasters of the last day or two;
+Mrs Yule, who occupied herself almost exclusively with questions of
+economy, cleanliness, and routine, had not the heart to pursue her round
+of duties, and this morning, though under normal circumstances she would
+have been busy in ‘turning out’ the dining-room, she moved aimlessly and
+despondently about the house, giving the servant contradictory orders
+and then blaming herself for her absent-mindedness. In the troubles of
+her husband and her daughter she had scarcely greater share--so far
+as active participation went--than if she had been only a faithful old
+housekeeper; she could only grieve and lament that such discord had come
+between the two whom she loved, and that in herself was no power even to
+solace their distresses. Marian found her standing in the passage, with
+a duster in one hand and a hearth-brush in the other.
+
+‘Your father has asked to see you when you come down,’ Mrs Yule
+whispered.
+
+‘I’ll go to him.’
+
+Marian entered the study. Her father was not in his place at the
+writing-table, nor yet seated in the chair which he used when he had
+leisure to draw up to the fireside; he sat in front of one of the
+bookcases, bent forward as if seeking a volume, but his chin was propped
+upon his hand, and he had maintained this position for a long time. He
+did not immediately move. When he raised his head Marian saw that he
+looked older, and she noticed--or fancied she did--that there was some
+unfamiliar peculiarity about his eyes.
+
+‘I am obliged to you for coming,’ he began with distant formality.
+‘Since I saw you last I have learnt something which makes a change in my
+position and prospects, and it is necessary to speak on the subject. I
+won’t detain you more than a few minutes.’
+
+He coughed, and seemed to consider his next words.
+
+‘Perhaps I needn’t repeat what I have told your mother. You have learnt
+it from her, I dare say.’
+
+‘Yes, with much grief.’
+
+‘Thank you, but we will leave aside that aspect of the matter. For a few
+more months I may be able to pursue my ordinary work, but before long
+I shall certainly be disabled from earning my livelihood by literature.
+Whether this will in any way affect your own position I don’t know. Will
+you have the goodness to tell me whether you still purpose leaving this
+house?’
+
+‘I have no means of doing so.’
+
+‘Is there any likelihood of your marriage taking place, let us say,
+within four months?’
+
+‘Only if the executors recover my money, or a large portion of it.’
+
+‘I understand. My reason for asking is this. My lease of this house
+terminates at the end of next March, and I shall certainly not be
+justified in renewing it. If you are able to provide for yourself in
+any way it will be sufficient for me to rent two rooms after that. This
+disease which affects my eyes may be only temporary; in due time an
+operation may render it possible for me to work again. In hope of that I
+shall probably have to borrow a sum of money on the security of my life
+insurance, though in the first instance I shall make the most of what I
+can get for the furniture of the house and a large part of my library;
+your mother and I could live at very slight expense in lodgings. If the
+disease prove irremediable, I must prepare myself for the worst. What
+I wish to say is, that it will be better if from to-day you consider
+yourself as working for your own subsistence. So long as I remain here
+this house is of course your home; there can be no question between us
+of trivial expenses. But it is right that you should understand what my
+prospects are. I shall soon have no home to offer you; you must look to
+your own efforts for support.’
+
+‘I am prepared to do that, father.’
+
+‘I think you will have no great difficulty in earning enough for
+yourself. I have done my best to train you in writing for the
+periodicals, and your natural abilities are considerable. If you
+marry, I wish you a happy life. The end of mine, of many long years of
+unremitting toil, is failure and destitution.’
+
+Marian sobbed.
+
+‘That’s all I had to say,’ concluded her father, his voice tremulous
+with self-compassion. ‘I will only beg that there may be no further
+profitless discussion between us. This room is open to you, as always,
+and I see no reason why we should not converse on subjects disconnected
+with our personal differences.’
+
+‘Is there no remedy for cataract in its early stages?’ asked Marian.
+
+‘None. You can read up the subject for yourself at the British Museum. I
+prefer not to speak of it.’
+
+‘Will you let me be what help to you I can?’
+
+‘For the present the best you can do is to establish a connection for
+yourself with editors. Your name will be an assistance to you. My advice
+is, that you send your “Harrington” article forthwith to Trenchard,
+writing him a note. If you desire my help in the suggestion of new
+subjects, I will do my best to be of use.’
+
+Marian withdrew. She went to the sitting-room, where an ochreous
+daylight was beginning to diffuse itself and to render the lamp
+superfluous. With the dissipation of the fog rain had set in; its
+splashing upon the muddy pavement was audible.
+
+Mrs Yule, still with a duster in her hand, sat on the sofa. Marian took
+a place beside her. They talked in low, broken tones, and wept together
+over their miseries.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI. A RESCUE AND A SUMMONS
+
+The chances are that you have neither understanding nor sympathy for men
+such as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. They merely provoke you.
+They seem to you inert, flabby, weakly envious, foolishly obstinate,
+impiously mutinous, and many other things. You are made angrily
+contemptuous by their failure to get on; why don’t they bestir
+themselves, push and bustle, welcome kicks so long as halfpence follow,
+make place in the world’s eye--in short, take a leaf from the book of Mr
+Jasper Milvain?
+
+But try to imagine a personality wholly unfitted for the rough and
+tumble of the world’s labour-market. From the familiar point of view
+these men were worthless; view them in possible relation to a humane
+order of Society, and they are admirable citizens. Nothing is easier
+than to condemn a type of character which is unequal to the coarse
+demands of life as it suits the average man. These two were richly
+endowed with the kindly and the imaginative virtues; if fate threw them
+amid incongruous circumstances, is their endowment of less value? You
+scorn their passivity; but it was their nature and their merit to be
+passive.
+
+Gifted with independent means, each of them would have taken quite
+a different aspect in your eyes. The sum of their faults was their
+inability to earn money; but, indeed, that inability does not call for
+unmingled disdain.
+
+It was very weak of Harold Biffen to come so near perishing of hunger as
+he did in the days when he was completing his novel. But he would have
+vastly preferred to eat and be satisfied had any method of obtaining
+food presented itself to him. He did not starve for the pleasure of the
+thing, I assure you. Pupils were difficult to get just now, and writing
+that he had sent to magazines had returned upon his hands. He pawned
+such of his possessions as he could spare, and he reduced his meals to
+the minimum. Nor was he uncheerful in his cold garret and with his empty
+stomach, for ‘Mr Bailey, Grocer,’ drew steadily to an end.
+
+He worked very slowly. The book would make perhaps two volumes of
+ordinary novel size, but he had laboured over it for many months,
+patiently, affectionately, scrupulously. Each sentence was as good as
+he could make it, harmonious to the ear, with words of precious meaning
+skilfully set. Before sitting down to a chapter he planned it minutely
+in his mind; then he wrote a rough draft of it; then he elaborated the
+thing phrase by phrase. He had no thought of whether such toil would be
+recompensed in coin of the realm; nay, it was his conviction that, if
+with difficulty published, it could scarcely bring him money. The work
+must be significant, that was all he cared for. And he had no society of
+admiring friends to encourage him. Reardon understood the merit of the
+workmanship, but frankly owned that the book was repulsive to him.
+To the public it would be worse than repulsive--tedious, utterly
+uninteresting. No matter; it drew to its end.
+
+The day of its completion was made memorable by an event decidedly more
+exciting, even to the author.
+
+At eight o’clock in the evening there remained half a page to be
+written. Biffen had already worked about nine hours, and on breaking
+off to appease his hunger he doubted whether to finish to-night or to
+postpone the last lines till tomorrow. The discovery that only a small
+crust of bread lay in the cupboard decided him to write no more; he
+would have to go out to purchase a loaf and that was disturbance.
+
+But stay; had he enough money? He searched his pockets. Two pence and
+two farthings; no more.
+
+You are probably not aware that at bakers’ shops in the poor quarters
+the price of the half-quartern loaf varies sometimes from week to week.
+At present, as Biffen knew, it was twopence three-farthings, a
+common figure. But Harold did not possess three farthings, only two.
+Reflecting, he remembered to have passed yesterday a shop where the
+bread was marked twopence halfpenny; it was a shop in a very obscure
+little street off Hampstead Road, some distance from Clipstone Street.
+Thither he must repair. He had only his hat and a muffler to put on, for
+again he was wearing his overcoat in default of the under one, and his
+ragged umbrella to take from the corner; so he went forth.
+
+To his delight the twopence halfpenny announcement was still in the
+baker’s window. He obtained a loaf wrapped it in the piece of paper he
+had brought--small bakers decline to supply paper for this purpose--and
+strode joyously homeward again.
+
+Having eaten, he looked longingly at his manuscript. But half a page
+more. Should he not finish it to-night? The temptation was irresistible.
+He sat down, wrought with unusual speed, and at half-past ten wrote with
+magnificent flourish ‘The End.’
+
+His fire was out and he had neither coals nor wood. But his feet were
+frozen into lifelessness. Impossible to go to bed like this; he must
+take another turn in the streets. It would suit his humour to ramble a
+while. Had it not been so late he would have gone to see Reardon, who
+expected the communication of this glorious news.
+
+So again he locked his door. Half-way downstairs he stumbled over
+something or somebody in the dark.
+
+‘Who is that?’ he cried.
+
+The answer was a loud snore. Biffen went to the bottom of the house and
+called to the landlady.
+
+‘Mrs Willoughby! Who is asleep on the stairs?’
+
+‘Why, I ‘spect it’s Mr Briggs,’ replied the woman, indulgently. ‘Don’t
+you mind him, Mr Biffen. There’s no ‘arm: he’s only had a little too
+much. I’ll go up an’ make him go to bed as soon as I’ve got my ‘ands
+clean.’
+
+‘The necessity for waiting till then isn’t obvious,’ remarked the
+realist with a chuckle, and went his way.
+
+He walked at a sharp pace for more than an hour, and about midnight drew
+near to his own quarter again. He had just turned up by the Middlesex
+Hospital, and was at no great distance from Clipstone Street, when a
+yell and scamper caught his attention; a group of loafing blackguards on
+the opposite side of the way had suddenly broken up, and as they rushed
+off he heard the word ‘Fire!’ This was too common an occurrence to
+disturb his equanimity; he wondered absently in which street the fire
+might be, but trudged on without a thought of making investigation.
+Repeated yells and rushes, however, assailed his apathy. Two women came
+tearing by him, and he shouted to them: ‘Where is it?’
+
+‘In Clipstone Street, they say,’ one screamed back.
+
+He could no longer be unconcerned. If in his own street the
+conflagration might be in the very house he inhabited, and in that
+case---- He set off at a run. Ahead of him was a thickening throng, its
+position indicating the entrance to Clipstone Street. Soon he found his
+progress retarded; he had to dodge this way and that, to force progress,
+to guard himself against overthrows by the torrent of ruffiandom which
+always breaks forth at the cry of fire. He could now smell the smoke,
+and all at once a black volume of it, bursting from upper windows,
+alarmed his sight. At once he was aware that, if not his own dwelling,
+it must be one of those on either side that was in flames. As yet no
+engine had arrived, and straggling policemen were only just beginning to
+make their way to the scene of uproar. By dint of violent effort Biffen
+moved forward yard by yard. A tongue of flame which suddenly illumined
+the fronts of the houses put an end to his doubt.
+
+‘Let me get past!’ he shouted to the gaping and swaying mass of people
+in front of him. ‘I live there! I must go upstairs to save something!’
+
+His educated accent moved attention. Repeating the demand again and
+again he succeeded in getting forward, and at length was near enough
+to see that people were dragging articles of furniture out on to the
+pavement.
+
+‘That you, Mr Biffen?’ cried someone to him.
+
+He recognised the face of a fellow-lodger.
+
+‘Is it possible to get up to my room?’ broke frantically from his lips.
+
+‘You’ll never get up there. It’s that--Briggs’--the epithet was
+alliterative--‘’as upset his lamp, and I ‘ope he’ll--well get roasted to
+death.’
+
+Biffen leaped on to the threshold, and crashed against Mrs Willoughby,
+the landlady, who was carrying a huge bundle of household linen.
+
+‘I told you to look after that drunken brute;’ he said to her. ‘Can I
+get upstairs?’
+
+‘What do I care whether you can or not!’ the woman shrieked. ‘My God!
+And all them new chairs as I bought--!’
+
+He heard no more, but bounded over a confusion of obstacles, and in a
+moment was on the landing of the first storey. Here he encountered a
+man who had not lost his head, a stalwart mechanic engaged in slipping
+clothes on to two little children.
+
+‘If somebody don’t drag that fellow Briggs down he’ll be dead,’ observed
+the man. ‘He’s layin’ outside his door. I pulled him out, but I can’t do
+no more for him.’
+
+Smoke grew thick on the staircase. Burning was as yet confined to that
+front room on the second floor tenanted by Briggs the disastrous, but
+in all likelihood the ceiling was ablaze, and if so it would be all but
+impossible for Biffen to gain his own chamber, which was at the back on
+the floor above. No one was making an attempt to extinguish the fire;
+personal safety and the rescue of their possessions alone occupied the
+thoughts of such people as were still in the house. Desperate with the
+dread of losing his manuscript, his toil, his one hope, the realist
+scarcely stayed to listen to a warning that the fumes were impassable;
+with head bent he rushed up to the next landing. There lay Briggs,
+perchance already stifled, and through the open door Biffen had a
+horrible vision of furnace fury. To go yet higher would have been
+madness but for one encouragement: he knew that on his own storey was a
+ladder giving access to a trap-door, by which he might issue on to the
+roof, whence escape to the adjacent houses would be practicable. Again a
+leap forward!
+
+In fact, not two minutes elapsed from his commencing the ascent of the
+stairs to the moment when, all but fainting, he thrust the key into his
+door and fell forward into purer air. Fell, for he was on his knees, and
+had begun to suffer from a sense of failing power, a sick whirling of
+the brain, a terror of hideous death. His manuscript was on the table,
+where he had left it after regarding and handling it with joyful
+self-congratulation; though it was pitch dark in the room, he could at
+once lay his hand on the heap of paper. Now he had it; now it was jammed
+tight under his left arm; now he was out again on the landing, in smoke
+more deadly than ever.
+
+He said to himself: ‘If I cannot instantly break out by the trap-door
+it’s all over with me.’ That the exit would open to a vigorous thrust
+he knew, having amused himself not long ago by going on to the roof. He
+touched the ladder, sprang upwards, and felt the trap above him. But he
+could not push it back. ‘I’m a dead man,’ flashed across his mind, ‘and
+all for the sake of “Mr Bailey, Grocer.”’ A frenzied effort, the last of
+which his muscles were capable, and the door yielded. His head was now
+through the aperture, and though the smoke swept up about him, that gasp
+of cold air gave him strength to throw himself on the flat portion of
+the roof that he had reached.
+
+So for a minute or two he lay. Then he was able to stand, to survey
+his position, and to walk along by the parapet. He looked down upon the
+surging and shouting crowd in Clipstone Street, but could see it only at
+intervals, owing to the smoke that rolled from the front windows below
+him.
+
+What he had now to do he understood perfectly. This roof was divided
+from those on either hand by a stack of chimneys; to get round the end
+of these stacks was impossible, or at all events too dangerous a feat
+unless it were the last resource, but by climbing to the apex of the
+slates he would be able to reach the chimney-pots, to drag himself up
+to them, and somehow to tumble over on to the safer side. To this
+undertaking he forthwith addressed himself. Without difficulty he
+reached the ridge; standing on it he found that only by stretching his
+arm to the utmost could he grip the top of a chimney-pot. Had he the
+strength necessary to raise himself by such a hold? And suppose the pot
+broke?
+
+His life was still in danger; the increasing volumes of smoke warned him
+that in a few minutes the uppermost storey might be in flames. He
+took off his overcoat to allow himself more freedom of action; the
+manuscript, now an encumbrance, must precede him over the chimney-stack,
+and there was only one way of effecting that. With care he stowed
+the papers into the pockets of the coat; then he rolled the garment
+together, tied it up in its own sleeves, took a deliberate aim--and the
+bundle was for the present in safety.
+
+Now for the gymnastic endeavour. Standing on tiptoe, he clutched the
+rim of the chimney-pot, and strove to raise himself. The hold was firm
+enough, but his arms were far too puny to perform such work, even
+when death would be the penalty of failure. Too long he had lived on
+insufficient food and sat over the debilitating desk. He swung this way
+and that, trying to throw one of his knees as high as the top of the
+brickwork, but there was no chance of his succeeding. Dropping on to the
+slates, he sat there in perturbation.
+
+He must cry for help. In front it was scarcely possible to stand by the
+parapet, owing to the black clouds of smoke, now mingled with sparks;
+perchance he might attract the notice of some person either in the yards
+behind or at the back windows of other houses. The night was so obscure
+that he could not hope to be seen; voice alone must be depended upon,
+and there was no certainty that it would be heard far enough. Though he
+stood in his shirt-sleeves in a bitter wind no sense of cold affected
+him; his face was beaded with perspiration drawn forth by his futile
+struggle to climb. He let himself slide down the rear slope, and,
+holding by the end of the chimney brickwork, looked into the yards. At
+the same instant a face appeared to him--that of a man who was trying to
+obtain a glimpse of this roof from that of the next house by thrusting
+out his head beyond the block of chimneys.
+
+‘Hollo!’ cried the stranger. ‘What are you doing there?’
+
+‘Trying to escape, of course. Help me to get on to your roof.’
+
+‘By God! I expected to see the fire coming through already. Are you
+the--as upset his lamp an’ fired the bloomin’ ‘ouse?’
+
+‘Not I! He’s lying drunk on the stairs; dead by this time.’
+
+‘By God! I wouldn’t have helped you if you’d been him. How are you
+coming round? Blest if I see! You’ll break your bloomin’ neck if you try
+this corner. You’ll have to come over the chimneys; wait till I get a
+ladder.’
+
+‘And a rope,’ shouted Biffen.
+
+The man disappeared for five minutes. To Biffen it seemed half an hour;
+he felt, or imagined he felt, the slates getting hot beneath him, and
+the smoke was again catching his breath. But at length there was a shout
+from the top of the chimney-stack. The rescuer had seated himself on one
+of the pots, and was about to lower on Biffen’s side a ladder which had
+enabled him to ascend from the other. Biffen planted the lowest rung
+very carefully on the ridge of the roof, climbed as lightly as possible,
+got a footing between two pots; the ladder was then pulled over, and
+both men descended in safety.
+
+‘Have you seen a coat lying about here?’ was Biffen’s first question. ‘I
+threw mine over.’
+
+‘What did you do that for?’
+
+‘There are some valuable papers in the pockets.’
+
+They searched in vain; on neither side of the roof was the coat
+discoverable.
+
+‘You must have pitched it into the street,’ said the man.
+
+This was a terrible blow; Biffen forgot his rescue from destruction
+in lament for the loss of his manuscript. He would have pursued the
+fruitless search, but his companion, who feared that the fire might
+spread to adjoining houses, insisted on his passing through the
+trap-door and descending the stairs.’If the coat fell into the street,’
+Biffen said, when they were down on the ground floor, ‘of course it’s
+lost; it would be stolen at once. But may not it have fallen into your
+back yard?’
+
+He was standing in the midst of a cluster of alarmed people, who stared
+at him in astonishment, for the reek through which he had fought his way
+had given him the aspect of a sweep. His suggestion prompted someone to
+run into the yard, with the result that a muddy bundle was brought in
+and exhibited to him.
+
+‘Is this your coat, Mister?’
+
+‘Heaven be thanked! That’s it! There are valuable papers in the
+pockets.’
+
+He unrolled the garment, felt to make sure that ‘Mr Bailey’ was safe,
+and finally put it on.
+
+‘Will anyone here let me sit down in a room and give me a drink of
+water?’ he asked, feeling now as if he must drop with exhaustion.
+
+The man who had rescued him performed this further kindness, and for
+half an hour, whilst tumult indescribable raged about him, Biffen sat
+recovering his strength. By that time the firemen were hard at work, but
+one floor of the burning house had already fallen through, and it was
+probable that nothing but the shell would be saved. After giving a full
+account of himself to the people among whom he had come, Harold declared
+his intention of departing; his need of repose was imperative, and he
+could not hope for it in this proximity to the fire. As he had no money,
+his only course was to inquire for a room at some house in the immediate
+neighbourhood, where the people would receive him in a charitable
+spirit.
+
+With the aid of the police he passed to where the crowd was thinner, and
+came out into Cleveland Street. Here most of the house-doors were open,
+and he made several applications for hospitality, but either his story
+was doubted or his grimy appearance predisposed people against him. At
+length, when again his strength was all but at an end, he made appeal to
+a policeman.
+
+‘Surely you can tell,’ he protested, after explaining his position,
+‘that I don’t want to cheat anybody. I shall have money to-morrow. If
+no one will take me in you must haul me on some charge to the
+police-station; I shall have to lie down on the pavement in a minute.’
+
+The officer recognised a man who was standing half-dressed on a
+threshold close by; he stepped up to him and made representations
+which were successful. In a few minutes Biffen took possession of an
+underground room furnished as a bedchamber, which he agreed to rent for
+a week. His landlord was not ungracious, and went so far as to supply
+him with warm water, that he might in a measure cleanse himself. This
+operation rapidly performed, the hapless author flung himself into bed,
+and before long was fast asleep.
+
+When he went upstairs about nine o’clock in the morning he discovered
+that his host kept an oil-shop.
+
+‘Lost everything, have you?’ asked the man sympathetically.
+
+‘Everything, except the clothes I wear and some papers that I managed to
+save. All my books burnt!’
+
+Biffen shook his head dolorously.
+
+‘Your account-books!’ cried the dealer in oil. ‘Dear, dear!--and what
+might your business be?’
+
+The author corrected this misapprehension. In the end he was invited to
+break his fast, which he did right willingly. Then, with assurances
+that he would return before nightfall, he left the house. His steps were
+naturally first directed to Clipstone Street; the familiar abode was a
+gruesome ruin, still smoking. Neighbours informed him that Mr Briggs’s
+body had been brought forth in a horrible condition; but this was the
+only loss of life that had happened.
+
+Thence he struck eastward, and at eleven came to Manville Street,
+Islington. He found Reardon by the fireside, looking very ill, and
+speaking with hoarseness.
+
+‘Another cold?’
+
+‘It looks like it. I wish you would take the trouble to go and buy me
+some vermin-killer. That would suit my case.’
+
+‘Then what would suit mine? Behold me, undeniably a philosopher; in the
+literal sense of the words omnia _mea mecum porto_.’
+
+He recounted his adventures, and with such humorous vivacity that when
+he ceased the two laughed together as if nothing more amusing had ever
+been heard.
+
+‘Ah, but my books, my books!’ exclaimed Biffen, with a genuine groan.
+‘And all my notes! At one fell swoop! If I didn’t laugh, old friend, I
+should sit down and cry; indeed I should. All my classics, with years of
+scribbling in the margins! How am I to buy them again?’
+
+‘You rescued “Mr Bailey.” He must repay you.’
+
+Biffen had already laid the manuscript on the table; it was dirty and
+crumpled, but not to such an extent as to render copying necessary.
+Lovingly he smoothed the pages and set them in order, then he wrapped
+the whole in a piece of brown paper which Reardon supplied, and wrote
+upon it the address of a firm of publishers.
+
+‘Have you note-paper? I’ll write to them; impossible to call in my
+present guise.’
+
+Indeed his attire was more like that of a bankrupt costermonger than of
+a man of letters. Collar he had none, for the griminess of that he wore
+last night had necessitated its being thrown aside; round his throat
+was a dirty handkerchief. His coat had been brushed, but its recent
+experiences had brought it one stage nearer to that dissolution which
+must very soon be its fate. His grey trousers were now black, and his
+boots looked as if they had not been cleaned for weeks.
+
+‘Shall I say anything about the character of the book?’ he asked,
+seating himself with pen and paper. ‘Shall I hint that it deals with the
+ignobly decent?’
+
+‘Better let them form their own judgment,’ replied Reardon, in his
+hoarse voice.
+
+‘Then I’ll just say that I submit to them a novel of modern life, the
+scope of which is in some degree indicated by its title. Pity they can’t
+know how nearly it became a holocaust, and that I risked my life to save
+it. If they’re good enough to accept it I’ll tell them the story. And
+now, Reardon, I’m ashamed of myself, but can you without inconvenience
+lend me ten shillings?’
+
+‘Easily.’
+
+‘I must write to two pupils, to inform them of my change of
+address--from garret to cellar. And I must ask help from my prosperous
+brother. He gives it me unreluctantly, I know, but I am always loth to
+apply to him. May I use your paper for these purposes?’
+
+The brother of whom he spoke was employed in a house of business at
+Liverpool; the two had not met for years, but they corresponded,
+and were on terms such as Harold indicated. When he had finished his
+letters, and had received the half-sovereign from Reardon, he went his
+way to deposit the brown-paper parcel at the publishers’. The clerk who
+received it from his hands probably thought that the author might have
+chosen a more respectable messenger.
+
+Two days later, early in the evening, the friends were again enjoying
+each other’s company in Reardon’s room. Both were invalids, for Biffen
+had of course caught a cold from his exposure in shirt-sleeves on the
+roof, and he was suffering from the shock to his nerves; but the thought
+that his novel was safe in the hands of publishers gave him energy to
+resist these influences. The absence of the pipe, for neither had any
+palate for tobacco at present, was the only external peculiarity of
+this meeting. There seemed no reason why they should not meet frequently
+before the parting which would come at Christmas; but Reardon was in a
+mood of profound sadness, and several times spoke as if already he were
+bidding his friend farewell.
+
+‘I find it difficult to think,’ he said, ‘that you will always struggle
+on in such an existence as this. To every man of mettle there does come
+an opportunity, and it surely is time for yours to present itself. I
+have a superstitious faith in “Mr Bailey.” If he leads you to triumph,
+don’t altogether forget me.’
+
+‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
+
+‘What ages it seems since that day when I saw you in the library at
+Hastings, and heard you ask in vain for my book! And how grateful I was
+to you! I wonder whether any mortal ever asks for my books nowadays?
+Some day, when I am well established at Croydon, you shall go to
+Mudie’s, and make inquiry if my novels ever by any chance leave the
+shelves, and then you shall give me a true and faithful report of the
+answer you get. “He is quite forgotten,” the attendant will say; be sure
+of it.’
+
+‘I think not.’
+
+‘To have had even a small reputation, and to have outlived it, is a
+sort of anticipation of death. The man Edwin Reardon, whose name was
+sometimes spoken in a tone of interest, is really and actually dead. And
+what remains of me is resigned to that. I have an odd fancy that it will
+make death itself easier; it is as if only half of me had now to die.’
+
+Biffen tried to give a lighter turn to the gloomy subject.
+
+‘Thinking of my fiery adventure,’ he said, in his tone of dry
+deliberation, ‘I find it vastly amusing to picture you as a witness at
+the inquest if I had been choked and consumed. No doubt it would have
+been made known that I rushed upstairs to save some particular piece of
+property--several people heard me say so--and you alone would be able to
+conjecture what this was. Imagine the gaping wonderment of the coroner’s
+jury! The Daily Telegraph would have made a leader out of me. “This poor
+man was so strangely deluded as to the value of a novel in manuscript,
+which it appears he had just completed, that he positively sacrificed
+his life in the endeavour to rescue it from the flames.” And
+the Saturday would have had a column of sneering jocosity on the
+irrepressibly sanguine temperament of authors. At all events, I should
+have had my day of fame.’
+
+‘But what an ignoble death it would have been!’ he pursued. ‘Perishing
+in the garret of a lodging-house which caught fire by the overturning of
+a drunkard’s lamp! One would like to end otherwise.’
+
+‘Where would you wish to die?’ asked Reardon, musingly.
+
+‘At home,’ replied the other, with pathetic emphasis. ‘I have never had
+a home since I was a boy, and am never likely to have one. But to die at
+home is an unreasoning hope I still cherish.’
+
+‘If you had never come to London, what would you have now been?’
+
+‘Almost certainly a schoolmaster in some small town. And one might be
+worse off than that, you know.’
+
+‘Yes, one might live peaceably enough in such a position. And I--I
+should be in an estate-agent’s office, earning a sufficient salary, and
+most likely married to some unambitious country girl.
+
+I should have lived an intelligible life, instead of only trying to
+live, aiming at modes of life beyond my reach. My mistake was that of
+numberless men nowadays. Because I was conscious of brains, I thought
+that the only place for me was London. It’s easy enough to understand
+this common delusion. We form our ideas of London from old literature;
+we think of London as if it were still the one centre of intellectual
+life; we think and talk like Chatterton. But the truth is that
+intellectual men in our day do their best to keep away from London--when
+once they know the place. There are libraries everywhere; papers and
+magazines reach the north of Scotland as soon as they reach Brompton;
+it’s only on rare occasions, for special kinds of work, that one is
+bound to live in London. And as for recreation, why, now that no English
+theatre exists, what is there in London that you can’t enjoy in almost
+any part of England? At all events, a yearly visit of a week would be
+quite sufficient for all the special features of the town. London is
+only a huge shop, with an hotel on the upper storeys. To be sure, if you
+make it your artistic subject, that’s a different thing. But neither you
+nor I would do that by deliberate choice.’
+
+‘I think not.’
+
+‘It’s a huge misfortune, this will-o’-the-wisp attraction exercised
+by London on young men of brains. They come here to be degraded, or to
+perish, when their true sphere is a life of peaceful remoteness. The
+type of man capable of success in London is more or less callous and
+cynical. If I had the training of boys, I would teach them to think of
+London as the last place where life can be lived worthily.’
+
+‘And the place where you are most likely to die in squalid
+wretchedness.’
+
+‘The one happy result of my experiences,’ said Reardon, ‘is that they
+have cured me of ambition. What a miserable fellow I should be if I were
+still possessed with the desire to make a name! I can’t even recall
+very clearly that state of mind. My strongest desire now is for peaceful
+obscurity. I am tired out; I want to rest for the remainder of my life.’
+
+‘You won’t have much rest at Croydon.’
+
+‘Oh, it isn’t impossible. My time will be wholly occupied in a round of
+all but mechanical duties, and I think that will be the best medicine
+for my mind. I shall read very little, and that only in the classics.
+I don’t say that I shall always be content in such a position; in a few
+years perhaps something pleasanter will offer. But in the meantime
+it will do very well. Then there is our expedition to Greece to look
+forward to. I am quite in earnest about that. The year after next, if we
+are both alive, assuredly we go.’
+
+‘The year after next.’ Biffen smiled dubiously.
+
+‘I have demonstrated to you mathematically that it is possible.’
+
+‘You have; but so are a great many other things that one does not dare
+to hope for.’
+
+Someone knocked at the door, opened it, and said:
+
+‘Here’s a telegram for you, Mr Reardon.’
+
+The friends looked at each other, as if some fear had entered the minds
+of both. Reardon opened the despatch. It was from his wife, and ran
+thus:
+
+‘Willie is ill of diphtheria. Please come to us at once. I am staying
+with Mrs Carter, at her mother’s, at Brighton.’
+
+The full address was given.
+
+‘You hadn’t heard of her going there?’ said Biffen, when he had read the
+lines.
+
+‘No. I haven’t seen Carter for several days, or perhaps he would
+have told me. Brighton, at this time of year? But I believe there’s
+a fashionable “season” about now, isn’t there? I suppose that would
+account for it.’
+
+He spoke in a slighting tone, but showed increasing agitation.
+
+‘Of course you will go?’
+
+‘I must. Though I’m in no condition for making a journey.’
+
+His friend examined him anxiously.
+
+‘Are you feverish at all this evening?’
+
+Reardon held out a hand that the other might feel his pulse. The beat
+was rapid to begin with, and had been heightened since the arrival of
+the telegram.
+
+‘But go I must. The poor little fellow has no great place in my heart,
+but, when Amy sends for me, I must go. Perhaps things are at the worst.’
+
+‘When is there a train? Have you a time table?’
+
+Biffen was despatched to the nearest shop to purchase one, and in the
+meanwhile Reardon packed a few necessaries in a small travelling-bag,
+ancient and worn, but the object of his affection because it had
+accompanied him on his wanderings in the South. When Harold returned,
+his appearance excited Reardon’s astonishment--he was white from head to
+foot.
+
+‘Snow?’
+
+‘It must have been falling heavily for an hour or more.’
+
+‘Can’t be helped; I must go.’
+
+The nearest station for departure was London Bridge, and the next train
+left at 7.20. By Reardon’s watch it was now about five minutes to seven.
+
+‘I don’t know whether it’s possible,’ he said, in confused hurry, ‘but I
+must try. There isn’t another train till ten past nine. Come with me to
+the station, Biffen.’
+
+Both were ready. They rushed from the house, and sped through the soft,
+steady fall of snowflakes into Upper Street. Here they were several
+minutes before they found a disengaged cab. Questioning the driver,
+they learnt what they would have known very well already but for their
+excitement: impossible to get to London Bridge Station in a quarter of
+an hour.
+
+‘Better to go on, all the same,’ was Reardon’s opinion. ‘If the snow
+gets deep I shall perhaps not be able to have a cab at all. But you had
+better not come; I forgot that you are as much out of sorts as I am.’
+
+‘How can you wait a couple of hours alone? In with you!’
+
+‘Diphtheria is pretty sure to be fatal to a child of that age, isn’t
+it?’ Reardon asked when they were speeding along City Road.
+
+‘I’m afraid there’s much danger.’
+
+‘Why did she send?’
+
+‘What an absurd question! You seem to have got into a thoroughly morbid
+state of mind about her. Do be human, and put away your obstinate
+folly.’
+
+‘In my position you would have acted precisely as I have done. I have
+had no choice.’
+
+‘I might; but we have both of us too little practicality. The art
+of living is the art of compromise. We have no right to foster
+sensibilities, and conduct ourselves as if the world allowed of ideal
+relations; it leads to misery for others as well as ourselves. Genial
+coarseness is what it behoves men like you and me to cultivate. Your
+reply to your wife’s last letter was preposterous. You ought to have
+gone to her of your own accord as soon as ever you heard she was
+rich; she would have thanked you for such common-sense disregard of
+delicacies. Let there be an end of this nonsense, I implore you!’
+
+Reardon stared through the glass at the snow that fell thicker and
+thicker.
+
+‘What are we--you and I?’ pursued the other. ‘We have no belief in
+immortality; we are convinced that this life is all; we know that human
+happiness is the origin and end of all moral considerations. What
+right have we to make ourselves and others miserable for the sake of an
+obstinate idealism? It is our duty to make the best of circumstances.
+Why will you go cutting your loaf with a razor when you have a
+serviceable bread-knife?’
+
+Still Reardon did not speak. The cab rolled on almost silently.
+
+‘You love your wife, and this summons she sends is proof that her
+thought turns to you as soon as she is in distress.’
+
+‘Perhaps she only thought it her duty to let the child’s father know--’
+
+‘Perhaps--perhaps--perhaps!’ cried Biffen, contemptuously. ‘There goes
+the razor again! Take the plain, human construction of what happens. Ask
+yourself what the vulgar man would do, and do likewise; that’s the only
+safe rule for you.’
+
+They were both hoarse with too much talking, and for the last half of
+the drive neither spoke.
+
+At the railway-station they ate and drank together, but with poor
+pretence of appetite. As long as possible they kept within the warmed
+rooms. Reardon was pale, and had anxious, restless eyes; he could not
+remain seated, though when he had walked about for a few minutes the
+trembling of his limbs obliged him to sink down. It was an unutterable
+relief to both when the moment of the train’s starting approached.
+
+They clasped hands warmly, and exchanged a few last requests and
+promises.
+
+‘Forgive my plain speech, old fellow,’ said Biffen. ‘Go and be happy!’
+
+Then he stood alone on the platform, watching the red light on the last
+carriage as the train whirled away into darkness and storm.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII. REARDON BECOMES PRACTICAL
+
+Reardon had never been to Brighton, and of his own accord never would
+have gone; he was prejudiced against the place because its name has
+become suggestive of fashionable imbecility and the snobbishness which
+tries to model itself thereon; he knew that the town was a mere portion
+of London transferred to the sea-shore, and as he loved the strand and
+the breakers for their own sake, to think of them in such connection
+could be nothing but a trial of his temper. Something of this species of
+irritation affected him in the first part of his journey, and disturbed
+the mood of kindliness with which he was approaching Amy; but towards
+the end he forgot this in a growing desire to be beside his wife in her
+trouble. His impatience made the hour and a half seem interminable.
+
+The fever which was upon him had increased. He coughed frequently; his
+breathing was difficult; though constantly moving, he felt as if, in
+the absence of excitement, his one wish would have been to lie down and
+abandon himself to lethargy. Two men who sat with him in the third-class
+carriage had spread a rug over their knees and amused themselves with
+playing cards for trifling sums of money; the sight of their foolish
+faces, the sound of their laughs, the talk they interchanged,
+exasperated him to the last point of endurance; but for all that he
+could not draw his attention from them. He seemed condemned by some
+spiritual tormentor to take an interest in their endless games, and to
+observe their visages until he knew every line with a hateful intimacy.
+One of the men had a moustache of unusual form; the ends curved upward
+with peculiar suddenness, and Reardon was constrained to speculate as
+to the mode of training by which this singularity had been produced. He
+could have shed tears of nervous distraction in his inability to turn
+his thoughts upon other things.
+
+On alighting at his journey’s end he was seized with a fit of shivering,
+an intense and sudden chill which made his teeth chatter. In an
+endeavour to overcome this he began to run towards the row of cabs, but
+his legs refused such exercise, and coughing compelled him to pause for
+breath. Still shaking, he threw himself into a vehicle and was driven to
+the address Amy had mentioned. The snow on the ground lay thick, but no
+more was falling.
+
+Heedless of the direction which the cab took, he suffered his physical
+and mental unrest for another quarter of an hour, then a stoppage told
+him that the house was reached. On his way he had heard a clock strike
+eleven.
+
+The door opened almost as soon as he had rung the bell. He mentioned
+his name, and the maid-servant conducted him to a drawing-room on the
+ground-floor. The house was quite a small one, but seemed to be well
+furnished. One lamp burned on the table, and the fire had sunk to a red
+glow. Saying that she would inform Mrs Reardon at once, the servant left
+him alone.
+
+He placed his bag on the floor, took off his muffler, threw back his
+overcoat, and sat waiting. The overcoat was new, but the garments
+beneath it were his poorest, those he wore when sitting in his garret,
+for he had neither had time to change them, nor thought of doing so.
+
+He heard no approaching footstep but Amy came into the room in a way
+which showed that she had hastened downstairs. She looked at him, then
+drew near with both hands extended, and laid them on his shoulders, and
+kissed him. Reardon shook so violently that it was all he could do to
+remain standing; he seized one of her hands, and pressed it against his
+lips.
+
+‘How hot your breath is!’ she said. ‘And how you tremble! Are you ill?’
+
+‘A bad cold, that’s all,’ he answered thickly, and coughed. ‘How is
+Willie?’
+
+‘In great danger. The doctor is coming again to-night; we thought that
+was his ring.’
+
+‘You didn’t expect me to-night?’
+
+‘I couldn’t feel sure whether you would come.’
+
+‘Why did you send for me, Amy? Because Willie was in danger, and you
+felt I ought to know about it?’
+
+‘Yes--and because I--’
+
+She burst into tears. The display of emotion came very suddenly; her
+words had been spoken in a firm voice, and only the pained knitting of
+her brows had told what she was suffering.
+
+‘If Willie dies, what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?’ broke forth
+between her sobs.
+
+Reardon took her in his arms, and laid his hand upon her head in the old
+loving way.
+
+‘Do you wish me to go up and see him, Amy?’
+
+‘Of course. But first, let me tell you why we are here. Edith--Mrs
+Carter--was coming to spend a week with her mother, and she pressed
+me to join her. I didn’t really wish to; I was unhappy, and felt how
+impossible it was to go on always living away from you. Oh, that I had
+never come! Then Willie would have been as well as ever.’
+
+‘Tell me when and how it began.’
+
+She explained briefly, then went on to tell of other circumstances.
+
+‘I have a nurse with me in the room. It’s my own bedroom, and this house
+is so small it will be impossible to give you a bed here, Edwin. But
+there’s an hotel only a few yards away.’
+
+‘Yes, yes; don’t trouble about that.’
+
+‘But you look so ill--you are shaking so. Is it a cold you have had
+long?’
+
+‘Oh, my old habit; you remember. One cold after another, all through the
+accursed winter. What does that matter when you speak kindly to me once
+more? I had rather die now at your feet and see the old gentleness when
+you look at me, than live on estranged from you. No, don’t kiss me, I
+believe these vile sore-throats are contagious.’
+
+‘But your lips are so hot and parched! And to think of your coming this
+journey, on such a night!’
+
+‘Good old Biffen came to the station with me. He was angry because I had
+kept away from you so long. Have you given me your heart again, Amy?’
+
+‘Oh, it has all been a wretched mistake! But we were so poor. Now all
+that is over; if only Willie can be saved to me! I am so anxious for
+the doctor’s coming; the poor little child can hardly draw a breath. How
+cruel it is that such suffering should come upon a little creature who
+has never done or thought ill!’
+
+‘You are not the first, dearest, who has revolted against nature’s
+cruelty.’
+
+‘Let us go up at once, Edwin. Leave your coat and things here. Mrs
+Winter--Edith’s mother--is a very old lady; she has gone to bed. And I
+dare say you wouldn’t care to see Mrs Carter to-night?’
+
+‘No, no! only you and Willie.’
+
+‘When the doctor comes hadn’t you better ask his advice for yourself?’
+
+‘We shall see. Don’t trouble about me.’
+
+They went softly up to the first floor, and entered a bedroom.
+Fortunately the light here was very dim, or the nurse who sat by the
+child’s bed must have wondered at the eccentricity with which her
+patient’s father attired himself. Bending over the little sufferer,
+Reardon felt for the first time since Willie’s birth a strong fatherly
+emotion; tears rushed to his eyes, and he almost crushed Amy’s hand as
+he held it during the spasm of his intense feeling.
+
+He sat here for a long time without speaking. The warmth of the chamber
+had the reverse of an assuaging effect upon his difficult breathing and
+his frequent short cough--it seemed to oppress and confuse his brain. He
+began to feel a pain in his right side, and could not sit upright on the
+chair.
+
+Amy kept regarding him, without his being aware of it.
+
+‘Does your head ache?’ she whispered.
+
+He nodded, but did not speak.
+
+‘Oh, why doesn’t the doctor come? I must send in a few minutes.’
+
+But as soon as she had spoken a bell rang in the lower part of the
+house. Amy had no doubt that it announced the promised visit.
+
+She left the room, and in a minute or two returned with the medical
+man. When the examination of the child was over, Reardon requested a few
+words with the doctor in the room downstairs.
+
+‘I’ll come back to you,’ he whispered to Amy.
+
+The two descended together, and entered the drawing-room.
+
+‘Is there any hope for the little fellow?’ Reardon asked.
+
+Yes, there was hope; a favourable turn might be expected.
+
+‘Now I wish to trouble you for a moment on my own account. I shouldn’t
+be surprised if you tell me that I have congestion of the lungs.’
+
+The doctor, a suave man of fifty, had been inspecting his interlocutor
+with curiosity. He now asked the necessary questions, and made an
+examination.
+
+‘Have you had any lung trouble before this?’ he inquired gravely.
+
+‘Slight congestion of the right lung not many weeks ago.’
+
+‘I must order you to bed immediately. Why have you allowed your symptoms
+to go so far without--’
+
+‘I have just come down from London,’ interrupted Reardon.
+
+‘Tut, tut, tut! To bed this moment, my dear sir! There is inflammation,
+and--’
+
+‘I can’t have a bed in this house; there is no spare room. I must go to
+the nearest hotel.’
+
+‘Positively? Then let me take you. My carriage is at the door.’
+
+‘One thing--I beg you won’t tell my wife that this is serious. Wait till
+she is out of her anxiety about the child.’
+
+‘You will need the services of a nurse. A most unfortunate thing that
+you are obliged to go to the hotel.’
+
+‘It can’t be helped. If a nurse is necessary, I must engage one.’
+
+He had the strange sensation of knowing that whatever was needful could
+be paid for; it relieved his mind immensely. To the rich, illness has
+none of the worst horrors only understood by the poor.
+
+‘Don’t speak a word more than you can help,’ said the doctor as he
+watched Reardon withdraw.
+
+Amy stood on the lower stairs, and came down as soon as her husband
+showed himself.
+
+‘The doctor is good enough to take me in his carriage,’ he whispered.
+‘It is better that I should go to bed, and get a good night’s rest. I
+wish I could have sat with you, Amy.’
+
+‘Is it anything? You look worse than when you came, Edwin.’
+
+‘A feverish cold. Don’t give it a thought, dearest. Go to Willie.
+Good-night!’
+
+She threw her arms about him.
+
+‘I shall come to see you if you are not able to be here by nine in the
+morning,’ she said, and added the name of the hotel to which he was to
+go.
+
+At this establishment the doctor was well known. By midnight Reardon
+lay in a comfortable room, a huge cataplasm fixed upon him, and other
+needful arrangements made. A waiter had undertaken to visit him at
+intervals through the night, and the man of medicine promised to return
+as soon as possible after daybreak.
+
+What sound was that, soft and continuous, remote, now clearer, now
+confusedly murmuring? He must have slept, but now he lay in sudden
+perfect consciousness, and that music fell upon his ears. Ah! of course
+it was the rising tide; he was near the divine sea.
+
+The night-light enabled him to discern the principal objects in the
+room, and he let his eyes stray idly hither and thither. But this moment
+of peacefulness was brought to an end by a fit of coughing, and he
+became troubled, profoundly troubled, in mind. Was his illness really
+dangerous? He tried to draw a deep breath, but could not. He found that
+he could only lie on his right side with any ease. And with the effort
+of turning he exhausted himself; in the course of an hour or two all
+his strength had left him. Vague fears flitted harassingly through his
+thoughts. If he had inflammation of the lungs--that was a disease of
+which one might die, and speedily. Death? No, no, no; impossible at such
+a time as this, when Amy, his own dear wife, had come back to him, and
+had brought him that which would insure their happiness through all the
+years of a long life.
+
+He was still quite a young man; there must be great reserves of strength
+in him. And he had the will to live, the prevailing will, the passionate
+all-conquering desire of happiness.
+
+How he had alarmed himself! Why, now he was calmer again, and again
+could listen to the music of the breakers. Not all the folly and
+baseness that paraded along this strip of the shore could change the
+sea’s eternal melody. In a day or two he would walk on the sands with
+Amy, somewhere quite out of sight of the repulsive town. But Willie was
+ill; he had forgotten that. Poor little boy! In future the child should
+be more to him; though never what the mother was, his own love, won
+again and for ever.
+
+Again an interval of unconsciousness, brought to an end by that aching
+in his side. He breathed very quickly; could not help doing so. He had
+never felt so ill as this, never. Was it not near morning?
+
+Then he dreamt. He was at Patras, was stepping into a boat to be rowed
+out to the steamer which would bear him away from Greece. A magnificent
+night, though at the end of December; a sky of deep blue, thick set with
+stars. No sound but the steady splash of the oars, or perhaps a voice
+from one of the many vessels that lay anchored in the harbour, each
+showing its lantern-gleams. The water was as deep a blue as the sky, and
+sparkled with reflected radiance.
+
+And now he stood on deck in the light of early morning. Southward lay
+the Ionian Islands; he looked for Ithaca, and grieved that it had been
+passed in the hours of darkness. But the nearest point of the main shore
+was a rocky promontory; it reminded him that in these waters was fought
+the battle of Actium.
+
+The glory vanished. He lay once more a sick man in a hired chamber,
+longing for the dull English dawn.
+
+At eight o’clock came the doctor. He would allow only a word or two to
+be uttered, and his visit was brief. Reardon was chiefly anxious to have
+news of the child, but for this he would have to wait.
+
+At ten Amy entered the bedroom. Reardon could not raise himself, but he
+stretched out his hand and took hers, and gazed eagerly at her. She must
+have been weeping, he felt sure of that, and there was an expression on
+her face such as he had never seen there.
+
+‘How is Willie?’
+
+‘Better, dear; much better.’
+
+He still searched her face.
+
+‘Ought you to leave him?’
+
+‘Hush! You mustn’t speak.’
+
+Tears broke from her eyes, and Reardon had the conviction that the child
+was dead.
+
+‘The truth, Amy!’
+
+She threw herself on her knees by the bedside, and pressed her wet cheek
+against his hand.
+
+‘I am come to nurse you, dear husband,’ she said a moment after,
+standing up again and kissing his forehead. ‘I have only you now.’
+
+His heart sank, and for a moment so great a terror was upon him that he
+closed his eyes and seemed to pass into utter darkness. But those
+last words of hers repeated themselves in his mind, and at length they
+brought a deep solace. Poor little Willie had been the cause of the
+first coldness between him and Amy; her love for him had given place to
+a mother’s love for the child. Now it would be as in the first days of
+their marriage; they would again be all in all to each other.
+
+‘You oughtn’t to have come, feeling so ill,’ she said to him. ‘You
+should have let me know, dear.’
+
+He smiled and kissed her hand.
+
+‘And you kept the truth from me last night, in kindness.’
+
+She checked herself, knowing that agitation must be harmful to him. She
+had hoped to conceal the child’s death, but the effort was too much for
+her overstrung nerves. And indeed it was only possible for her to remain
+an hour or two by this sick-bed, for she was exhausted by her night
+of watching, and the sudden agony with which it had concluded. Shortly
+after Amy’s departure, a professional nurse came to attend upon what the
+doctor had privately characterised as a very grave case.
+
+By the evening its gravity was in no respect diminished. The sufferer
+had ceased to cough and to make restless movements, and had become
+lethargic; later, he spoke deliriously, or rather muttered, for his
+words were seldom intelligible. Amy had returned to the room at four
+o’clock, and remained till far into the night; she was physically
+exhausted, and could do little but sit in a chair by the bedside
+and shed silent tears, or gaze at vacancy in the woe of her sudden
+desolation. Telegrams had been exchanged with her mother, who was to
+arrive in Brighton to-morrow morning; the child’s funeral would probably
+be on the third day from this.
+
+When she rose to go away for the night, leaving the nurse in attendance,
+Reardon seemed to lie in a state of unconsciousness, but just as she was
+turning from the bed, he opened his eyes and pronounced her name.
+
+‘I am here, Edwin,’ she answered, bending over him.
+
+‘Will you let Biffen know?’ he said in low but very clear tones.
+
+‘That you are ill dear? I will write at once, or telegraph, if you like.
+What is his address?’
+
+He had closed his eyes again, and there came no reply. Amy repeated her
+question twice; she was turning from him in hopelessness when his voice
+became audible.
+
+‘I can’t remember his new address. I know it, but I can’t remember.’
+
+She had to leave him thus.
+
+The next day his breathing was so harassed that he had to be raised
+against pillows. But throughout the hours of daylight his mind was
+clear, and from time to time he whispered words of tenderness in reply
+to Amy’s look. He never willingly relinquished her hand, and repeatedly
+he pressed it against his cheek or lips. Vainly he still endeavoured to
+recall his friend’s address.
+
+‘Couldn’t Mr Carter discover it for you?’ Amy asked.
+
+‘Perhaps. You might try.’
+
+She would have suggested applying to Jasper Milvain, but that name must
+not be mentioned. Whelpdale, also, would perchance know where Biffen
+lived, but Whelpdale’s address he had also forgotten.
+
+At night there were long periods of delirium; not mere confused
+muttering, but continuous talk which the listeners could follow
+perfectly.
+
+For the most part the sufferer’s mind was occupied with revival of the
+distress he had undergone whilst making those last efforts to write
+something worthy of himself. Amy’s heart was wrung as she heard him
+living through that time of supreme misery--misery which she might have
+done so much to alleviate, had not selfish fears and irritated pride
+caused her to draw further and further from him. Hers was the kind of
+penitence which is forced by sheer stress of circumstances on a nature
+which resents any form of humiliation; she could not abandon herself to
+unreserved grief for what she had done or omitted, and the sense of this
+defect made a great part of her affliction. When her husband lay in mute
+lethargy, she thought only of her dead child, and mourned the loss; but
+his delirious utterances constrained her to break from that bittersweet
+preoccupation, to confuse her mourning with self-reproach and with
+fears.
+
+Though unconsciously, he was addressing her: ‘I can do no more, Amy. My
+brain seems to be worn out; I can’t compose, I can’t even think. Look! I
+have been sitting here for hours, and I have done only that little bit,
+half a dozen lines. Such poor stuff too! I should burn it, only I can’t
+afford. I must do my regular quantity every day, no matter what it is.’
+
+The nurse, who was present when he talked in this way, looked to Amy for
+an explanation.
+
+‘My husband is an author,’ Amy answered. ‘Not long ago he was obliged to
+write when he was ill and ought to have been resting.’
+
+‘I always thought it must be hard work writing books,’ said the nurse
+with a shake of her head.
+
+‘You don’t understand me,’ the voice pursued, dreadful as a voice always
+is when speaking independently of the will. ‘You think I am only a poor
+creature, because I can do nothing better than this. If only I had money
+enough to rest for a year or two, you should see. Just because I have no
+money I must sink to this degradation. And I am losing you as well; you
+don’t love me!’
+
+He began to moan in anguish.
+
+But a happy change presently came over his dreaming. He fell into
+animated description of his experiences in Greece and Italy, and after
+talking for a long time, he turned his head and said in a perfectly
+natural tone:
+
+‘Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?’
+
+She believed he spoke consciously, and replied:
+
+‘You must take me with you, Edwin.’
+
+He paid no attention to this remark, but went on with the same deceptive
+accent.
+
+‘He deserves a holiday after nearly getting burnt to death to save
+his novel. Imagine the old fellow plunging headlong into the flames to
+rescue his manuscript! Don’t say that authors can’t be heroic!’
+
+And he laughed gaily.
+
+Another morning broke. It was possible, said the doctors (a second had
+been summoned), that a crisis which drew near might bring the favourable
+turn; but Amy formed her own opinion from the way in which the
+nurse expressed herself. She felt sure that the gravest fears were
+entertained. Before noon Reardon awoke from what had seemed natural
+sleep--save for the rapid breathing--and of a sudden recollected the
+number of the house in Cleveland Street at which Biffen was now living.
+He uttered it without explanation. Amy at once conjectured his meaning,
+and as soon as her surmise was confirmed she despatched a telegram to
+her husband’s friend.
+
+That evening, as Amy was on the point of returning to the sick-room
+after having dined at her friend’s house, it was announced that
+a gentleman named Biffen wished to see her. She found him in the
+dining-room, and, even amid her distress, it was a satisfaction to her
+that he presented a far more conventional appearance than in the old
+days. All the garments he wore, even his hat, gloves, and boots,
+were new; a surprising state of things, explained by the fact of his
+commercial brother having sent him a present of ten pounds, a practical
+expression of sympathy with him in his recent calamity. Biffen could
+not speak; he looked with alarm at Amy’s pallid face. In a few words she
+told him of Reardon’s condition.
+
+‘I feared this,’ he replied under his breath. ‘He was ill when I saw him
+off at London Bridge. But Willie is better, I trust?’
+
+Amy tried to answer, but tears filled her eyes and her head drooped.
+Harold was overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and dread held him
+motionless.
+
+They conversed brokenly for a few minutes, then left the house, Biffen
+carrying the hand-bag with which he had travelled hither. When they
+reached the hotel he waited apart until it was ascertained whether he
+could enter the sick-room. Amy rejoined him and said with a faint smile:
+
+‘He is conscious, and was very glad to hear that you had come. But don’t
+let him try to speak much.’
+
+The change that had come over his friend’s countenance was to Harold, of
+course, far more gravely impressive than to those who had watched at the
+bedside. In the drawn features, large sunken eyes, thin and discoloured
+lips, it seemed to him that he read too surely the presage of doom.
+After holding the shrunken hand for a moment he was convulsed with an
+agonising sob, and had to turn away.
+
+Amy saw that her husband wished to speak to her; she bent over him.
+
+‘Ask him to stay, dear. Give him a room in the hotel.’
+
+‘I will.’
+
+Biffen sat down by the bedside, and remained for half an hour. His
+friend inquired whether he had yet heard about the novel; the answer was
+a shake of the head. When he rose, Reardon signed to him to bend down,
+and whispered:
+
+‘It doesn’t matter what happens; she is mine again.’
+
+The next day was very cold, but a blue sky gleamed over land and sea.
+The drives and promenades were thronged with people in exuberant health
+and spirits. Biffen regarded this spectacle with resentful scorn; at
+another time it would have moved him merely to mirth, but not even the
+sound of the breakers when he had wandered as far as possible from human
+contact could help him to think with resignation of the injustice which
+triumphs so flagrantly in the destinies of men. Towards Amy he had no
+shadow of unkindness; the sight of her in tears had impressed him as
+profoundly, in another way, as that of his friend’s wasted features. She
+and Reardon were again one, and his love for them both was stronger than
+any emotion of tenderness he had ever known.
+
+In the afternoon he again sat by the bedside. Every symptom of the
+sufferer’s condition pointed to an approaching end: a face that had
+grown cadaverous, livid lips, breath drawn in hurrying gasps. Harold
+despaired of another look of recognition. But as he sat with his
+forehead resting on his hand Amy touched him; Reardon had turned his
+face in their direction, and with a conscious gaze.
+
+‘I shall never go with you to Greece,’ he said distinctly.
+
+There was silence again. Biffen did not move his eyes from the deathly
+mask; in a minute or two he saw a smile soften its lineaments, and
+Reardon again spoke:
+
+‘How often you and I have quoted it!--“We are such stuff as dreams are
+made on, and our--“’
+
+The remaining words were indistinguishable, and, as if the effort of
+utterance had exhausted him, his eyes closed, and he sank into lethargy.
+
+When he came down from his bedroom on the following morning, Biffen was
+informed that his friend had died between two and three o’clock. At the
+same time he received a note in which Amy requested him to come and see
+her late in the afternoon. He spent the day in a long walk along the
+eastward cliffs; again the sun shone brilliantly, and the sea was
+flecked with foam upon its changing green and azure. It seemed to him
+that he had never before known solitude, even through all the years of
+his lonely and sad existence.
+
+At sunset he obeyed Amy’s summons. He found her calm, but with the signs
+of long weeping.
+
+‘At the last moment,’ she said, ‘he was able to speak to me, and you
+were mentioned. He wished you to have all that he has left in his room
+at Islington. When I come back to London, will you take me there and let
+me see the room just as when he lived in it? Let the people in the house
+know what has happened, and that I am responsible for whatever will be
+owing.’
+
+Her resolve to behave composedly gave way as soon as Harold’s broken
+voice had replied. Hysterical sobbing made further speech from her
+impossible, and Biffen, after holding her hand reverently for a moment,
+left her alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SUNNY WAY
+
+On an evening of early summer, six months after the death of Edwin
+Reardon, Jasper of the facile pen was bending over his desk, writing
+rapidly by the warm western light which told that sunset was near. Not
+far from him sat his younger sister; she was reading, and the book in
+her hand bore the title, ‘Mr Bailey, Grocer.’
+
+‘How will this do?’ Jasper exclaimed, suddenly throwing down his pen.
+
+And he read aloud a critical notice of the book with which Dora was
+occupied; a notice of the frankly eulogistic species, beginning with:
+‘It is seldom nowadays that the luckless reviewer of novels can draw
+the attention of the public to a new work which is at once powerful and
+original;’ and ending: ‘The word is a bold one, but we do not hesitate
+to pronounce this book a masterpiece.’
+
+‘Is that for The Current?’ asked Dora, when he had finished.
+
+‘No, for The West End. Fadge won’t allow anyone but himself to be lauded
+in that style. I may as well do the notice for The Current now, as I’ve
+got my hand in.’
+
+He turned to his desk again, and before daylight failed him had produced
+a piece of more cautious writing, very favourable on the whole, but with
+reserves and slight censures. This also he read to Dora.
+
+‘You wouldn’t suspect they were written by the same man, eh?’
+
+‘No. You have changed the style very skilfully.’
+
+‘I doubt if they’ll be much use. Most people will fling the book down
+with yawns before they’re half through the first volume. If I knew a
+doctor who had many cases of insomnia in hand, I would recommend “Mr
+Bailey” to him as a specific.’
+
+‘Oh, but it is really clever, Jasper!’
+
+‘Not a doubt of it. I half believe what I have written. And if only we
+could get it mentioned in a leader or two, and so on, old Biffen’s fame
+would be established with the better sort of readers. But he won’t
+sell three hundred copies. I wonder whether Robertson would let me do a
+notice for his paper?’
+
+‘Biffen ought to be grateful to you, if he knew,’ said Dora, laughing.
+
+‘Yet, now, there are people who would cry out that this kind of thing is
+disgraceful. It’s nothing of the kind. Speaking seriously, we know that
+a really good book will more likely than not receive fair treatment from
+two or three reviewers; yes, but also more likely than not it will be
+swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and
+won’t have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute.
+The struggle for existence among books is nowadays as severe as among
+men. If a writer has friends connected with the press, it is the plain
+duty of those friends to do their utmost to help him. What matter if
+they exaggerate, or even lie? The simple, sober truth has no chance
+whatever of being listened to, and it’s only by volume of shouting that
+the ear of the public is held. What use is it to Biffen if his work
+struggles to slow recognition ten years hence? Besides, as I say, the
+growing flood of literature swamps everything but works of primary
+genius. If a clever and conscientious book does not spring to success
+at once, there’s precious small chance that it will survive. Suppose it
+were possible for me to write a round dozen reviews of this book, in as
+many different papers, I would do it with satisfaction. Depend upon
+it, this kind of thing will be done on that scale before long. And
+it’s quite natural. A man’s friends must be helped, by whatever means,
+_quocunque modo_, as Biffen himself would say.’
+
+‘I dare say he doesn’t even think of you as a friend now.’
+
+‘Very likely not. It’s ages since I saw him. But there’s much
+magnanimity in my character, as I have often told you. It delights me to
+be generous, whenever I can afford it.’
+
+Dusk was gathering about them. As they sat talking, there came a tap at
+the door, and the summons to enter was obeyed by Mr Whelpdale.
+
+‘I was passing,’ he said in his respectful voice, ‘and couldn’t resist
+the temptation.’
+
+Jasper struck a match and lit the lamp. In this clearer light Whelpdale
+was exhibited as a young man of greatly improved exterior; he wore a
+cream-coloured waistcoat, a necktie of subtle hue, and delicate gloves;
+prosperity breathed from his whole person. It was, in fact, only a
+moderate prosperity to which he had as yet attained, but the future
+beckoned to him flatteringly.
+
+Early in this year, his enterprise as ‘literary adviser’ had brought
+him in contact with a man of some pecuniary resources, who proposed to
+establish an agency for the convenience of authors who were not skilled
+in disposing of their productions to the best advantage. Under the name
+of Fleet & Co., this business was shortly set on foot, and Whelpdale’s
+services were retained on satisfactory terms. The birth of the syndicate
+system had given new scope to literary agencies, and Mr Fleet was a man
+of keen eye for commercial opportunities.
+
+‘Well, have you read Biffen’s book?’ asked Jasper.
+
+‘Wonderful, isn’t it! A work of genius, I am convinced. Ha! you have it
+there, Miss Dora. But I’m afraid it is hardly for you.’
+
+‘And why not, Mr Whelpdale?’
+
+‘You should only read of beautiful things, of happy lives. This book
+must depress you.’
+
+‘But why will you imagine me such a feeble-minded person?’ asked Dora.
+‘You have so often spoken like this. I have really no ambition to be a
+doll of such superfine wax.’
+
+The habitual flatterer looked deeply concerned.
+
+‘Pray forgive me!’ he murmured humbly, leaning forwards towards the girl
+with eyes which deprecated her displeasure. ‘I am very far indeed from
+attributing weakness to you. It was only the natural, unreflecting
+impulse; one finds it so difficult to associate you, even as merely a
+reader, with such squalid scenes.
+
+The ignobly decent, as poor Biffen calls it, is so very far from that
+sphere in which you are naturally at home.’
+
+There was some slight affectation in his language, but the tone attested
+sincere feeling. Jasper was watching him with half an eye, and glancing
+occasionally at Dora.
+
+‘No doubt,’ said the latter, ‘it’s my story in The English Girl that
+inclines you to think me a goody-goody sort of young woman.’
+
+‘So far from that, Miss Dora, I was only waiting for an opportunity to
+tell you how exceedingly delighted I have been with the last two weeks’
+instalments. In all seriousness, I consider that story of yours the best
+thing of the kind that ever came under my notice. You seem to me to
+have discovered a new genre; such writing as this has surely never been
+offered to girls, and all the readers of the paper must be immensely
+grateful to you. I run eagerly to buy the paper each week; I assure you
+I do. The stationer thinks I purchase it for a sister, I suppose. But
+each section of the story seems to be better than the last. Mark the
+prophecy which I now make: when this tale is published in a volume its
+success will be great. You will be recognised, Miss Dora, as the new
+writer for modern English girls.’
+
+The subject of this panegyric coloured a little and laughed.
+Unmistakably she was pleased.
+
+‘Look here, Whelpdale,’ said Jasper, ‘I can’t have this; Dora’s conceit,
+please to remember, is, to begin with, only a little less than my own,
+and you will make her unendurable. Her tale is well enough in its way,
+but then its way is a very humble one.’
+
+‘I deny it!’ cried the other, excitedly. ‘How can it be called a humble
+line of work to provide reading, which is at once intellectual and
+moving and exquisitely pure, for the most important part of the
+population--the educated and refined young people who are just passing
+from girlhood to womanhood?’
+
+‘The most important fiddlestick!’
+
+‘You are grossly irreverent, my dear Milvain. I cannot appeal to your
+sister, for she’s too modest to rate her own sex at its true value, but
+the vast majority of thoughtful men would support me. You yourself do,
+though you affect this profane way of speaking. And we know,’ he looked
+at Dora, ‘that he wouldn’t talk like this if Miss Yule were present.’
+
+Jasper changed the topic of conversation, and presently Whelpdale was
+able to talk with more calmness. The young man, since his association
+with Fleet & Co., had become fertile in suggestions of literary
+enterprise, and at present he was occupied with a project of special
+hopefulness.
+
+‘I want to find a capitalist,’ he said, ‘who will get possession of that
+paper Chat, and transform it according to an idea I have in my head. The
+thing is doing very indifferently, but I am convinced it might be made
+splendid property, with a few changes in the way of conducting it.’
+
+‘The paper is rubbish,’ remarked Jasper, ‘and the kind of rubbish--oddly
+enough--which doesn’t attract people.’
+
+‘Precisely, but the rubbish is capable of being made a very valuable
+article, if it were only handled properly. I have talked to the people
+about it again and again, but I can’t get them to believe what I say.
+Now just listen to my notion. In the first place, I should slightly
+alter the name; only slightly, but that little alteration would in
+itself have an enormous effect. Instead of Chat I should call it
+Chit-Chat!’
+
+Jasper exploded with mirth.
+
+‘That’s brilliant!’ he cried. ‘A stroke of genius!’
+
+‘Are you serious? Or are you making fun of me? I believe it is a stroke
+of genius. Chat doesn’t attract anyone, but Chit-Chat would sell like
+hot cakes, as they say in America. I know I am right; laugh as you
+will.’
+
+‘On the same principle,’ cried Jasper, ‘if The Tatler were changed to
+Tittle-Tattle, its circulation would be trebled.’
+
+Whelpdale smote his knee in delight.
+
+‘An admirable idea! Many a true word uttered in joke, and this is an
+instance! Tittle-Tattle--a magnificent title; the very thing to catch
+the multitude.’
+
+Dora was joining in the merriment, and for a minute or two nothing but
+bursts of laughter could be heard.
+
+‘Now do let me go on,’ implored the man of projects, when the noise
+subsided. ‘That’s only one change, though a most important one. What
+I next propose is this:--I know you will laugh again, but I will
+demonstrate to you that I am right. No article in the paper is to
+measure more than two inches in length, and every inch must be broken
+into at least two paragraphs.’
+
+‘Superb!’
+
+‘But you are joking, Mr Whelpdale!’ exclaimed Dora.
+
+‘No, I am perfectly serious. Let me explain my principle. I would have
+the paper address itself to the quarter-educated; that is to say, the
+great new generation that is being turned out by the Board schools, the
+young men and women who can just read, but are incapable of sustained
+attention. People of this kind want something to occupy them in trains
+and on ‘buses and trams. As a rule they care for no newspapers except
+the Sunday ones; what they want is the lightest and frothiest of
+chit-chatty information--bits of stories, bits of description, bits of
+scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. Am I not
+right? Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost; their
+attention can’t sustain itself beyond two inches. Even chat is too solid
+for them: they want chit-chat.’
+
+Jasper had begun to listen seriously.
+
+‘There’s something in this, Whelpdale,’ he remarked.
+
+‘Ha! I have caught you?’ cried the other delightedly. ‘Of course there’s
+something in it?’
+
+‘But--’ began Dora, and checked herself.
+
+‘You were going to say--’ Whelpdale bent towards her with deference.
+
+‘Surely these poor, silly people oughtn’t to be encouraged in their
+weakness.’
+
+Whelpdale’s countenance fell. He looked ashamed of himself. But Jasper
+came speedily to the rescue.
+
+‘That’s twaddle, Dora. Fools will be fools to the world’s end. Answer
+a fool according to his folly; supply a simpleton with the reading he
+craves, if it will put money in your pocket. You have discouraged poor
+Whelpdale in one of the most notable projects of modern times.’
+
+‘I shall think no more of it,’ said Whelpdale, gravely. ‘You are right,
+Miss Dora.’
+
+Again Jasper burst into merriment. His sister reddened, and looked
+uncomfortable. She began to speak timidly:
+
+‘You said this was for reading in trains and ‘buses?’
+
+Whelpdale caught at hope.
+
+‘Yes. And really, you know, it may be better at such times to read
+chit-chat than to be altogether vacant, or to talk unprofitably. I am
+not sure; I bow to your opinion unreservedly.’
+
+‘So long as they only read the paper at such times,’ said Dora, still
+hesitating. ‘One knows by experience that one really can’t fix one’s
+attention in travelling; even an article in a newspaper is often too
+long.’
+
+‘Exactly! And if you find it so, what must be the case with the mass
+of untaught people, the quarter-educated? It might encourage in some of
+them a taste for reading--don’t you think?’
+
+‘It might,’ assented Dora, musingly. ‘And in that case you would be
+doing good!’
+
+‘Distinct good!’
+
+They smiled joyfully at each other. Then Whelpdale turned to Jasper:
+
+‘You are convinced that there is something in this?’
+
+‘Seriously, I think there is. It would all depend on the skill of the
+fellows who put the thing together every week. There ought always to be
+one strongly sensational item--we won’t call it article. For instance,
+you might display on a placard: “What the Queen eats!” or “How
+Gladstone’s collars are made!”--things of that kind.’
+
+‘To be sure, to be sure. And then, you know,’ added Whelpdale, glancing
+anxiously at Dora, ‘when people had been attracted by these devices,
+they would find a few things that were really profitable. We would give
+nicely written little accounts of exemplary careers, of heroic
+deeds, and so on. Of course nothing whatever that could be really
+demoralising--_cela va sans dire_. Well, what I was going to say was this:
+would you come with me to the office of Chat, and have a talk with my
+friend Lake, the sub-editor? I know your time is very valuable, but
+then you’re often running into the Will-o’-the-Wisp, and Chat is just
+upstairs, you know.’
+
+‘What use should I be?’
+
+‘Oh, all the use in the world. Lake would pay most respectful attention
+to your opinion, though he thinks so little of mine. You are a man of
+note, I am nobody. I feel convinced that you could persuade the
+Chat people to adopt my idea, and they might be willing to give me a
+contingent share of contingent profits, if I had really shown them the
+way to a good thing.’
+
+Jasper promised to think the matter over. Whilst their talk still ran on
+this subject, a packet that had come by post was brought into the room.
+Opening it, Milvain exclaimed:
+
+‘Ha! this is lucky. There’s something here that may interest you,
+Whelpdale.’
+
+‘Proofs?’
+
+‘Yes. A paper I have written for The Wayside.’ He looked at Dora, who
+smiled. ‘How do you like the title?--“The Novels of Edwin Reardon!”’
+
+‘You don’t say so!’ cried the other. ‘What a good-hearted fellow you
+are, Milvain! Now that’s really a kind thing to have done. By Jove!
+I must shake hands with you; I must indeed! Poor Reardon! Poor old
+fellow!’
+
+His eyes gleamed with moisture. Dora, observing this, looked at him so
+gently and sweetly that it was perhaps well he did not meet her eyes;
+the experience would have been altogether too much for him.
+
+‘It has been written for three months,’ said Jasper, ‘but we have held
+it over for a practical reason. When I was engaged upon it, I went to
+see Mortimer, and asked him if there was any chance of a new edition of
+Reardon’s books. He had no idea the poor fellow was dead, and the news
+seemed really to affect him. He promised to consider whether it would be
+worth while trying a new issue, and before long I heard from him that
+he would bring out the two best books with a decent cover and so on,
+provided I could get my article on Reardon into one of the monthlies.
+This was soon settled. The editor of The Wayside answered at once, when
+I wrote to him, that he should be very glad to print what I proposed,
+as he had a real respect for Reardon. Next month the books will be
+out--“Neutral Ground,” and “Hubert Reed.” Mortimer said he was sure
+these were the only ones that would pay for themselves. But we shall
+see. He may alter his opinion when my article has been read.’
+
+‘Read it to us now, Jasper, will you?’ asked Dora.
+
+The request was supported by Whelpdale, and Jasper needed no pressing.
+He seated himself so that the lamplight fell upon the pages, and read
+the article through. It was an excellent piece of writing (see The
+Wayside, June 1884), and in places touched with true emotion. Any
+intelligent reader would divine that the author had been personally
+acquainted with the man of whom he wrote, though the fact was nowhere
+stated. The praise was not exaggerated, yet all the best points of
+Reardon’s work were admirably brought out. One who knew Jasper might
+reasonably have doubted, before reading this, whether he was capable of
+so worthily appreciating the nobler man.
+
+‘I never understood Reardon so well before,’ declared Whelpdale, at the
+close. ‘This is a good thing well done. It’s something to be proud of,
+Miss Dora.’
+
+‘Yes, I feel that it is,’ she replied.
+
+‘Mrs Reardon ought to be very grateful to you, Milvain. By-the-by, do
+you ever see her?’
+
+‘I have met her only once since his death--by chance.’
+
+‘Of course she will marry again. I wonder who’ll be the fortunate man?’
+
+‘Fortunate, do you think?’ asked Dora quietly, without looking at him.
+
+‘Oh, I spoke rather cynically, I’m afraid,’ Whelpdale hastened to reply.
+‘I was thinking of her money. Indeed, I knew Mrs Reardon only very
+slightly.’
+
+‘I don’t think you need regret it,’ Dora remarked.
+
+‘Oh, well, come, come!’ put in her brother. ‘We know very well that
+there was little enough blame on her side.’
+
+‘There was great blame!’ Dora exclaimed. ‘She behaved shamefully!
+
+I wouldn’t speak to her; I wouldn’t sit down in her company!’
+
+‘Bosh! What do you know about it? Wait till you are married to a man
+like Reardon, and reduced to utter penury.’
+
+‘Whoever my husband was, I would stand by him, if I starved to death.’
+
+‘If he ill-used you?’
+
+‘I am not talking of such cases. Mrs Reardon had never anything of the
+kind to fear. It was impossible for a man such as her husband to behave
+harshly. Her conduct was cowardly, faithless, unwomanly!’
+
+‘Trust one woman for thinking the worst of another,’ observed Jasper
+with something like a sneer.
+
+Dora gave him a look of strong disapproval; one might have suspected
+that brother and sister had before this fallen into disagreement on the
+delicate topic. Whelpdale felt obliged to interpose, and had of course
+no choice but to support the girl.
+
+‘I can only say,’ he remarked with a smile, ‘that Miss Dora takes a very
+noble point of view. One feels that a wife ought to be staunch. But
+it’s so very unsafe to discuss matters in which one cannot know all the
+facts.’
+
+‘We know quite enough of the facts,’ said Dora, with delightful
+pertinacity.
+
+‘Indeed, perhaps we do,’ assented her slave. Then, turning to her
+brother, ‘Well, once more I congratulate you. I shall talk of your
+article incessantly, as soon as it appears. And I shall pester every one
+of my acquaintances to buy Reardon’s books--though it’s no use to him,
+poor fellow. Still, he would have died more contentedly if he could have
+foreseen this. By-the-by, Biffen will be profoundly grateful to you, I’m
+sure.’
+
+‘I’m doing what I can for him, too. Run your eye over these slips.’
+
+Whelpdale exhausted himself in terms of satisfaction.
+
+‘You deserve to get on, my dear fellow. In a few years you will be the
+Aristarchus of our literary world.’
+
+When the visitor rose to depart, Jasper said he would walk a short
+distance with him. As soon as they had left the house, the future
+Aristarchus made a confidential communication.
+
+‘It may interest you to know that my sister Maud is shortly to be
+married.’
+
+‘Indeed! May I ask to whom?’
+
+‘A man you don’t know. His name is Dolomore--a fellow in society.’
+
+‘Rich, then, I hope?’
+
+‘Tolerably well-to-do. I dare say he has three or four thousand a year!’
+
+‘Gracious heavens! Why, that’s magnificent.’
+
+But Whelpdale did not look quite so much satisfaction as his words
+expressed.
+
+‘Is it to be soon?’ he inquired.
+
+‘At the end of the season. Make no difference to Dora and me, of
+course.’
+
+‘Oh? Really? No difference at all? You will let me come and see
+you--both--just in the old way, Milvain?’
+
+‘Why the deuce shouldn’t you?’
+
+‘To be sure, to be sure. By Jove! I really don’t know how I should get
+on if I couldn’t look in of an evening now and then. I have got so much
+into the habit of it. And--I’m a lonely beggar, you know. I don’t go
+into society, and really--’
+
+He broke off, and Jasper began to speak of other things.
+
+When Milvain re-entered the house, Dora had gone to her own
+sitting-room. It was not quite ten o’clock. Taking one set of the proofs
+of his ‘Reardon’ article, he put it into a large envelope; then he
+wrote a short letter, which began ‘Dear Mrs Reardon,’ and ended ‘Very
+sincerely yours,’ the communication itself being as follows:
+
+‘I venture to send you the proofs of a paper which is to appear in next
+month’s Wayside, in the hope that it may seem to you not badly done, and
+that the reading of it may give you pleasure. If anything occurs to you
+which you would like me to add, or if you desire any omission, will you
+do me the kindness to let me know of it as soon as possible, and your
+suggestion shall at once be adopted. I am informed that the new edition
+of “On Neutral Ground” and “Hubert Reed” will be ready next month. Need
+I say how glad I am that my friend’s work is not to be forgotten?’
+
+This note he also put into the envelope, which he made ready for
+posting. Then he sat for a long time in profound thought.
+
+Shortly after eleven his door opened, and Maud came in. She had been
+dining at Mrs Lane’s. Her attire was still simple, but of quality which
+would have signified recklessness, but for the outlook whereof Jasper
+spoke to Whelpdale. The girl looked very beautiful. There was a flush of
+health and happiness on her cheek, and when she spoke it was in a voice
+that rang quite differently from her tones of a year ago; the pride
+which was natural to her had now a firm support; she moved and uttered
+herself in queenly fashion.
+
+‘Has anyone been?’ she asked.
+
+‘Whelpdale.’
+
+‘Oh! I wanted to ask you, Jasper: do you think it wise to let him come
+quite so often?’
+
+‘There’s a difficulty, you see. I can hardly tell him to sheer off. And
+he’s really a decent fellow.’
+
+‘That may be. But--I think it’s rather unwise. Things are changed. In a
+few months, Dora will be a good deal at my house, and will see all sorts
+of people.’
+
+‘Yes; but what if they are the kind of people she doesn’t care anything
+about? You must remember, old girl, that her tastes are quite different
+from yours. I say nothing, but--perhaps it’s as well they should be.’
+
+‘You say nothing, but you add an insult,’ returned Maud, with a smile of
+superb disregard. ‘We won’t reopen the question.’
+
+‘Oh dear no! And, by-the-by, I have a letter from Dolomore. It came just
+after you left.’
+
+‘Well?’
+
+‘He is quite willing to settle upon you a third of his income from
+the collieries; he tells me it will represent between seven and eight
+hundred a year. I think it rather little, you know; but I congratulate
+myself on having got this out of him.’
+
+‘Don’t speak in that unpleasant way! It was only your abruptness that
+made any kind of difficulty.’
+
+‘I have my own opinion on that point, and I shall beg leave to keep it.
+Probably he will think me still more abrupt when I request, as I am now
+going to do, an interview with his solicitors.’
+
+‘Is that allowable?’ asked Maud, anxiously. ‘Can you do that with any
+decency?’
+
+‘If not, then I must do it with indecency. You will have the goodness
+to remember that if I don’t look after your interests, no one else will.
+It’s perhaps fortunate for you that I have a good deal of the man of
+business about me. Dolomore thought I was a dreamy, literary fellow.
+I don’t say that he isn’t entirely honest, but he shows something of a
+disposition to play the autocrat, and I by no means intend to let
+him. If you had a father, Dolomore would have to submit his affairs to
+examination.
+
+I stand to you in loco parentis, and I shall bate no jot of my rights.’
+
+‘But you can’t say that his behaviour hasn’t been perfectly
+straightforward.’
+
+‘I don’t wish to. I think, on the whole, he has behaved more honourably
+than was to be expected of a man of his kind. But he must treat me with
+respect. My position in the world is greatly superior to his. And, by
+the gods! I will be treated respectfully! It wouldn’t be amiss, Maud, if
+you just gave him a hint to that effect.’
+
+‘All I have to say is, Jasper, don’t do me an irreparable injury. You
+might, without meaning it.’
+
+‘No fear whatever of it. I can behave as a gentleman, and I only expect
+Dolomore to do the same.’
+
+Their conversation lasted for a long time, and when he was again left
+alone Jasper again fell into a mood of thoughtfulness.
+
+By a late post on the following day he received this letter:
+
+‘DEAR MR MILVAIN,--I have received the proofs, and have just read them;
+I hasten to thank you with all my heart. No suggestion of mine could
+possibly improve this article; it seems to me perfect in taste, in
+style, in matter. No one but you could have written this, for no one
+else understood Edwin so well, or had given such thought to his work. If
+he could but have known that such justice would be done to his memory!
+But he died believing that already he was utterly forgotten, that his
+books would never again be publicly spoken of. This was a cruel fate. I
+have shed tears over what you have written, but they were not only tears
+of bitterness; it cannot but be a consolation to me to think that, when
+the magazine appears, so many people will talk of Edwin and his books.
+I am deeply grateful to Mr Mortimer for having undertaken to republish
+those two novels; if you have an opportunity, will you do me the great
+kindness to thank him on my behalf? At the same time, I must remember
+that it was you who first spoke to him on this subject. You say that it
+gladdens you to think Edwin will not be forgotten, and I am very sure
+that the friendly office you have so admirably performed will in itself
+reward you more than any poor expression of gratitude from me. I write
+hurriedly, anxious to let you hear as soon as possible.
+
+‘Believe me, dear Mr Milvain,
+
+‘Yours sincerely,
+
+‘AMY REARDON.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV. A CHECK
+
+Marian was at work as usual in the Reading-room. She did her best,
+during the hours spent here, to convert herself into the literary
+machine which it was her hope would some day be invented for
+construction in a less sensitive material than human tissue. Her eyes
+seldom strayed beyond the limits of the desk; and if she had occasion to
+rise and go to the reference shelves, she looked at no one on the way.
+Yet she herself was occasionally an object of interested regard. Several
+readers were acquainted with the chief facts of her position; they knew
+that her father was now incapable of work, and was waiting till his
+diseased eyes should be ready for the operator; it was surmised,
+moreover, that a good deal depended upon the girl’s literary exertions.
+Mr Quarmby and his gossips naturally took the darkest view of things;
+they were convinced that Alfred Yule could never recover his sight,
+and they had a dolorous satisfaction in relating the story of Marian’s
+legacy. Of her relations with Jasper Milvain none of these persons had
+heard; Yule had never spoken of that matter to any one of his friends.
+
+Jasper had to look in this morning for a hurried consultation of certain
+encyclopaedic volumes, and it chanced that Marian was standing before
+the shelves to which his business led him. He saw her from a little
+distance, and paused; it seemed as if he would turn back; for a moment
+he wore a look of doubt and worry. But after all he proceeded. At the
+sound of his ‘Good-morning,’ Marian started--she was standing with an
+open book in hand--and looked up with a gleam of joy on her face.
+
+‘I wanted to see you to-day,’ she said, subduing her voice to the tone
+of ordinary conversation. ‘I should have come this evening.’
+
+‘You wouldn’t have found me at home. From five to seven I shall be
+frantically busy, and then I have to rush off to dine with some people.’
+
+‘I couldn’t see you before five?’
+
+‘Is it something important?’
+
+‘Yes, it is.’
+
+‘I tell you what. If you could meet me at Gloucester Gate at four, then
+I shall be glad of half an hour in the park. But I mustn’t talk now; I’m
+driven to my wits’ end. Gloucester Gate, at four sharp. I don’t think
+it’ll rain.’
+
+He dragged out a tome of the ‘Britannica.’ Marian nodded, and returned
+to her seat.
+
+At the appointed hour she was waiting near the entrance of Regent’s
+Park which Jasper had mentioned. Not long ago there had fallen a light
+shower, but the sky was clear again. At five minutes past four she
+still waited, and had begun to fear that the passing rain might have
+led Jasper to think she would not come. Another five minutes, and from a
+hansom that rattled hither at full speed, the familiar figure alighted.
+
+‘Do forgive me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t possibly get here before. Let
+us go to the right.’
+
+They betook themselves to that tree-shadowed strip of the park which
+skirts the canal.
+
+‘I’m so afraid that you haven’t really time,’ said Marian, who was
+chilled and confused by this show of hurry. She regretted having made
+the appointment; it would have been much better to postpone what she had
+to say until Jasper was at leisure. Yet nowadays the hours of leisure
+seemed to come so rarely.
+
+‘If I get home at five, it’ll be all right,’ he replied. ‘What have you
+to tell me, Marian?’
+
+‘We have heard about the money, at last.’
+
+‘Oh?’ He avoided looking at her. ‘And what’s the upshot?’
+
+‘I shall have nearly fifteen hundred pounds.’
+
+‘So much as that? Well, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’
+
+‘Very much better.’
+
+They walked on in silence. Marian stole a glance at her companion.
+
+‘I should have thought it a great deal,’ she said presently, ‘before I
+had begun to think of thousands.’
+
+‘Fifteen hundred. Well, it means fifty pounds a year, I suppose.’
+
+He chewed the end of his moustache.
+
+‘Let us sit down on this bench. Fifteen hundred--h’m! And nothing more
+is to be hoped for?’
+
+‘Nothing. I should have thought men would wish to pay their debts, even
+after they had been bankrupt; but they tell us we can’t expect anything
+more from these people.’
+
+‘You are thinking of Walter Scott, and that kind of thing’--Jasper
+laughed. ‘Oh, that’s quite unbusinesslike; it would be setting a
+pernicious example nowadays. Well, and what’s to be done?’
+
+Marian had no answer for such a question. The tone of it was a new stab
+to her heart, which had suffered so many during the past half-year.
+
+‘Now, I’ll ask you frankly,’ Jasper went on, ‘and I know you will reply
+in the same spirit: would it be wise for us to marry on this money?’
+
+‘On this money?’
+
+She looked into his face with painful earnestness.
+
+‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that it can’t be spared for that purpose?’
+
+What she really meant was uncertain even to herself. She had wished to
+hear how Jasper would receive the news, and thereby to direct her own
+course. Had he welcomed it as offering a possibility of their marriage,
+that would have gladdened her, though it would then have been necessary
+to show him all the difficulties by which she was beset; for some time
+they had not spoken of her father’s position, and Jasper seemed willing
+to forget all about that complication of their troubles. But marriage
+did not occur to him, and he was evidently quite prepared to hear that
+she could no longer regard this money as her own to be freely disposed
+of. This was on one side a relief but on the other it confirmed her
+fears. She would rather have heard him plead with her to neglect her
+parents for the sake of being his wife. Love excuses everything, and his
+selfishness would have been easily lost sight of in the assurance that
+he still desired her.
+
+‘You say,’ she replied, with bent head, ‘that it would bring us fifty
+pounds a year. If another fifty were added to that, my father and mother
+would be supported in case the worst comes. I might earn fifty pounds.’
+
+‘You wish me to understand, Marian, that I mustn’t expect that you will
+bring me anything when we are married.’
+
+His tone was that of acquiescence; not by any means of displeasure. He
+spoke as if desirous of saying for her something she found a difficulty
+in saying for herself.
+
+‘Jasper, it is so hard for me! So hard for me! How could I help
+remembering what you told me when I promised to be your wife?’
+
+‘I spoke the truth rather brutally,’ he replied, in a kind voice. ‘Let
+all that be unsaid, forgotten. We are in quite a different position now.
+Be open with me, Marian; surely you can trust my common sense and good
+feeling. Put aside all thought of things I have said, and don’t be
+restrained by any fear lest you should seem to me unwomanly--you can’t
+be that. What is your own wish? What do you really wish to do, now that
+there is no uncertainty calling for postponements?’
+
+Marian raised her eyes, and was about to speak as she regarded him; but
+with the first accent her look fell.
+
+‘I wish to be your wife.’
+
+He waited, thinking and struggling with himself.
+
+‘Yet you feel that it would be heartless to take and use this money for
+our own purposes?’
+
+‘What is to become of my parents, Jasper?’
+
+‘But then you admit that the fifteen hundred pounds won’t support them.
+You talk of earning fifty pounds a year for them.’
+
+‘Need I cease to write, dear, if we were married? Wouldn’t you let me
+help them?’
+
+‘But, my dear girl, you are taking for granted that we shall have enough
+for ourselves.’
+
+‘I didn’t mean at once,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘In a short time--in
+a year. You are getting on so well. You will soon have a sufficient
+income, I am sure.’
+
+Jasper rose.
+
+‘Let us walk as far as the next seat. Don’t speak. I have something to
+think about.’
+
+Moving on beside him, she slipped her hand softly within his arm; but
+Jasper did not put the arm into position to support hers, and her hand
+fell again, dropped suddenly. They reached another bench, and again
+became seated.
+
+‘It comes to this, Marian,’ he said, with portentous gravity. ‘Support
+you, I could--I have little doubt of that. Maud is provided for, and
+Dora can make a living for herself. I could support you and leave you
+free to give your parents whatever you can earn by your own work. But--’
+
+He paused significantly. It was his wish that Marian should supply the
+consequence, but she did not speak.
+
+‘Very well,’ he exclaimed. ‘Then when are we to be married?’
+
+The tone of resignation was too marked. Jasper was not good as a
+comedian; he lacked subtlety.
+
+‘We must wait,’ fell from Marian’s lips, in the whisper of despair.
+
+‘Wait? But how long?’ he inquired, dispassionately.
+
+‘Do you wish to be freed from your engagement, Jasper?’
+
+He was not strong enough to reply with a plain ‘Yes,’ and so have done
+with his perplexities. He feared the girl’s face, and he feared his own
+subsequent emotions.
+
+‘Don’t talk in that way, Marian. The question is simply this: Are we
+to wait a year, or are we to wait five years? In a year’s time, I shall
+probably be able to have a small house somewhere out in the suburbs. If
+we are married then, I shall be happy enough with so good a wife, but my
+career will take a different shape. I shall just throw overboard certain
+of my ambitions, and work steadily on at earning a livelihood. If we
+wait five years, I may perhaps have obtained an editorship, and in that
+case I should of course have all sorts of better things to offer you.’
+
+‘But, dear, why shouldn’t you get an editorship all the same if you are
+married?’
+
+‘I have explained to you several times that success of that kind is
+not compatible with a small house in the suburbs and all the ties of a
+narrow income. As a bachelor, I can go about freely, make acquaintances,
+dine at people’s houses, perhaps entertain a useful friend now and
+then--and so on. It is not merit that succeeds in my line; it is merit
+plus opportunity. Marrying now, I cut myself off from opportunity,
+that’s all.’
+
+She kept silence.
+
+‘Decide my fate for me, Marian,’ he pursued, magnanimously. ‘Let us make
+up our minds and do what we decide to do. Indeed, it doesn’t concern me
+so much as yourself. Are you content to lead a simple, unambitious life?
+Or should you prefer your husband to be a man of some distinction?’
+
+‘I know so well what your own wish is. But to wait for years--you will
+cease to love me, and will only think of me as a hindrance in your way.’
+
+‘Well now, when I said five years, of course I took a round number.
+Three--two might make all the difference to me.’
+
+‘Let it be just as you wish. I can bear anything rather than lose your
+love.’
+
+‘You feel, then, that it will decidedly be wise not to marry whilst we
+are still so poor?’
+
+‘Yes; whatever you are convinced of is right.’
+
+He again rose, and looked at his watch.
+
+‘Jasper, you don’t think that I have behaved selfishly in wishing to let
+my father have the money?’
+
+‘I should have been greatly surprised if you hadn’t wished it. I
+certainly can’t imagine you saying: “Oh, let them do as best they can!”
+ That would have been selfish with a vengeance.’
+
+‘Now you are speaking kindly! Must you go, Jasper?’
+
+‘I must indeed. Two hours’ work I am bound to get before seven o’clock.’
+
+‘And I have been making it harder for you, by disturbing your mind.’
+
+‘No, no; it’s all right now. I shall go at it with all the more energy,
+now we have come to a decision.’
+
+‘Dora has asked me to go to Kew on Sunday. Shall you be able to come,
+dear?’
+
+‘By Jove, no! I have three engagements on Sunday afternoon. I’ll try and
+keep the Sunday after; I will indeed.’
+
+‘What are the engagements?’ she asked timidly.
+
+As they walked back towards Gloucester Gate, he answered her question,
+showing how unpardonable it would be to neglect the people concerned.
+Then they parted, Jasper going off at a smart pace homewards.
+
+Marian turned down Park Street, and proceeded for some distance along
+Camden Road. The house in which she and her parents now lived was not
+quite so far away as St Paul’s Crescent; they rented four rooms, one
+of which had to serve both as Alfred Yule’s sitting-room and for
+the gatherings of the family at meals. Mrs Yule generally sat in
+the kitchen, and Marian used her bedroom as a study. About half the
+collection of books had been sold; those that remained were still a
+respectable library, almost covering the walls of the room where their
+disconsolate possessor passed his mournful days.
+
+He could read for a few hours a day, but only large type, and fear of
+consequences kept him well within the limit of such indulgence laid down
+by his advisers. Though he inwardly spoke as if his case were hopeless,
+Yule was very far from having resigned himself to this conviction;
+indeed, the prospect of spending his latter years in darkness and
+idleness was too dreadful to him to be accepted so long as a glimmer of
+hope remained. He saw no reason why the customary operation should not
+restore him to his old pursuits, and he would have borne it ill if his
+wife or daughter had ever ceased to oppose the despair which it pleased
+him to affect.
+
+On the whole, he was noticeably patient. At the time of their removal to
+these lodgings, seeing that Marian prepared herself to share the change
+as a matter of course, he let her do as she would without comment; nor
+had he since spoken to her on the subject which had proved so dangerous.
+Confidence between them there was none; Yule addressed his daughter in
+a grave, cold, civil tone, and Marian replied gently, but without
+tenderness. For Mrs Yule the disaster to the family was distinctly a
+gain; she could not but mourn her husband’s affliction, yet he no longer
+visited her with the fury or contemptuous impatience of former days.
+Doubtless the fact of needing so much tendance had its softening
+influence on the man; he could not turn brutally upon his wife when
+every hour of the day afforded him some proof of her absolute devotion.
+Of course his open-air exercise was still unhindered, and in this season
+of the returning sun he walked a great deal, decidedly to the advantage
+of his general health--which again must have been a source of benefit
+to his temper. Of evenings, Marian sometimes read to him. He never
+requested this, but he did not reject the kindness.
+
+This afternoon Marian found her father examining a volume of prints
+which had been lent him by Mr Quarmby. The table was laid for dinner
+(owing to Marian’s frequent absence at the Museum, no change had been
+made in the order of meals), and Yule sat by the window, his book
+propped on a second chair. A whiteness in his eyes showed how the
+disease was progressing, but his face had a more wholesome colour than a
+year ago.
+
+‘Mr Hinks and Mr Gorbutt inquired very kindly after you to-day,’ said
+the girl, as she seated herself.
+
+‘Oh, is Hinks out again?’
+
+‘Yes, but he looks very ill.’
+
+They conversed of such matters until Mrs Yule--now her own
+servant--brought in the dinner. After the meal, Marian was in her
+bedroom for about an hour; then she went to her father, who sat in
+idleness, smoking.
+
+‘What is your mother doing?’ he asked, as she entered.
+
+‘Some needlework.’
+
+‘I had perhaps better say’--he spoke rather stiffly, and with averted
+face--‘that I make no exclusive claim to the use of this room. As I
+can no longer pretend to study, it would be idle to keep up the show
+of privacy that mustn’t be disturbed. Perhaps you will mention to your
+mother that she is quite at liberty to sit here whenever she chooses.’
+
+It was characteristic of him that he should wish to deliver this
+permission by proxy. But Marian understood how much was implied in such
+an announcement.
+
+‘I will tell mother,’ she said. ‘But at this moment I wished to speak to
+you privately. How would you advise me to invest my money?’
+
+Yule looked surprised, and answered with cold dignity.
+
+‘It is strange that you should put such a question to me. I should have
+supposed your interests were in the hands of--of some competent person.’
+
+‘This will be my private affair, father. I wish to get as high a rate of
+interest as I safely can.’
+
+‘I really must decline to advise, or interfere in any way. But, as you
+have introduced this subject, I may as well put a question which is
+connected with it. Could you give me any idea as to how long you are
+likely to remain with us?’
+
+‘At least a year,’ was the answer, ‘and very likely much longer.’
+
+‘Am I to understand, then, that your marriage is indefinitely
+postponed?’
+
+‘Yes, father.’
+
+‘And will you tell me why?’
+
+‘I can only say that it has seemed better--to both of us.’
+
+Yule detected the sorrowful emotion she was endeavouring to suppress.
+His conception of Milvain’s character made it easy for him to form a
+just surmise as to the reasons for this postponement; he was gratified
+to think that Marian might learn how rightly he had judged her wooer,
+and an involuntary pity for the girl did not prevent his hoping that
+the detestable alliance was doomed. With difficulty he refrained from
+smiling.
+
+‘I will make no comment on that,’ he remarked, with a certain emphasis.
+‘But do you imply that this investment of which you speak is to be
+solely for your own advantage?’
+
+‘For mine, and for yours and mother’s.’
+
+There was a silence of a minute or two. As yet it had not been necessary
+to take any steps for raising money, but a few months more would see the
+family without resources, save those provided by Marian, who, without
+discussion, had been simply setting aside what she received for her
+work.
+
+‘You must be well aware,’ said Yule at length, ‘that I cannot consent to
+benefit by any such offer. When it is necessary, I shall borrow on the
+security of--’
+
+‘Why should you do that, father?’ Marian interrupted. ‘My money is
+yours. If you refuse it as a gift, then why may not I lend to you
+as well as a stranger? Repay me when your eyes are restored. For the
+present, all our anxieties are at an end. We can live very well until
+you are able to write again.’
+
+For his sake she put it in his way. Supposing him never able to earn
+anything, then indeed would come a time of hardship; but she could
+not contemplate that. The worst would only befall them in case she was
+forsaken by Jasper, and if that happened all else would be of little
+account.
+
+‘This has come upon me as a surprise,’ said Yule, in his most reserved
+tone. ‘I can give no definite reply; I must think of it.’
+
+‘Should you like me to ask mother to bring her sewing here now?’ asked
+Marian, rising.
+
+‘Yes, you may do so.’
+
+In this way the awkwardness of the situation was overcome, and when
+Marian next had occasion to speak of money matters no serious objection
+was offered to her proposal.
+
+Dora Milvain of course learnt what had come to pass; to anticipate
+criticism, her brother imparted to her the decision at which Marian and
+he had arrived. She reflected with an air of discontent.
+
+‘So you are quite satisfied,’ was her question at length, ‘that Marian
+should toil to support her parents as well as herself?’
+
+‘Can I help it?’
+
+‘I shall think very ill of you if you don’t marry her in a year at
+latest.’
+
+‘I tell you, Marian has made a deliberate choice. She understands me
+perfectly, and is quite satisfied with my projects. You will have the
+kindness, Dora, not to disturb her faith in me.’
+
+‘I agree to that; and in return I shall let you know when she begins to
+suffer from hunger. It won’t be very long till then, you may be sure.
+How do you suppose three people are going to live on a hundred a year?
+And it’s very doubtful indeed whether Marian can earn as much as fifty
+pounds. Never mind; I shall let you know when she is beginning to
+starve, and doubtless that will amuse you.’
+
+At the end of July Maud was married. Between Mr Dolomore and
+Jasper existed no superfluous kindness, each resenting the other’s
+self-sufficiency; but Jasper, when once satisfied of his proposed
+brother-in-law’s straightforwardness, was careful not to give offence to
+a man who might some day serve him. Provided this marriage resulted in
+moderate happiness to Maud, it was undoubtedly a magnificent stroke of
+luck. Mrs Lane, the lady who has so often been casually mentioned, took
+upon herself those offices in connection with the ceremony which
+the bride’s mother is wont to perform; at her house was held the
+wedding-breakfast, and such other absurdities of usage as recommend
+themselves to Society. Dora of course played the part of a bridesmaid,
+and Jasper went through his duties with the suave seriousness of a man
+who has convinced himself that he cannot afford to despise anything that
+the world sanctions.
+
+About the same time occurred another event which was to have more
+importance for this aspiring little family than could as yet be
+foreseen. Whelpdale’s noteworthy idea triumphed; the weekly paper called
+Chat was thoroughly transformed, and appeared as Chit-Chat. From the
+first number, the success of the enterprise was beyond doubt; in a
+month’s time all England was ringing with the fame of this noble
+new development of journalism; the proprietor saw his way to a solid
+fortune, and other men who had money to embark began to scheme imitative
+publications. It was clear that the quarter-educated would soon be
+abundantly provided with literature to their taste.
+
+Whelpdale’s exultation was unbounded, but in the fifth week of the life
+of Chit-Chat something happened which threatened to overturn his sober
+reason. Jasper was walking along the Strand one afternoon, when he
+saw his ingenious friend approaching him in a manner scarcely to be
+accounted for, unless Whelpdale’s abstemiousness had for once given way
+before convivial invitation. The young man’s hat was on the back of his
+head, and his coat flew wildly as he rushed forwards with perspiring
+face and glaring eyes. He would have passed without observing Jasper,
+had not the latter called to him; then he turned round, laughed
+insanely, grasped his acquaintance by the wrists, and drew him aside
+into a court.
+
+‘What do you think?’ he panted. ‘What do you think has happened?’
+
+‘Not what one would suppose, I hope. You seem to have gone mad.’
+
+‘I’ve got Lake’s place on Chit-Chat!’ cried the other hoarsely. ‘Two
+hundred and fifty a year! Lake and the editor quarrelled--pummelled each
+other--neither know nor care what it was about. My fortune’s made!’
+
+‘You’re a modest man,’ remarked Jasper, smiling.
+
+‘Certainly I am. I have always admitted it. But remember that there’s
+my connection with Fleet as well; no need to give that up. Presently I
+shall be making a clear six hundred, my dear sir!
+
+A clear six hundred, if a penny!’
+
+‘Satisfactory, so far.’
+
+‘But you must remember that I’m not a big gun, like you! Why, my dear
+Milvain, a year ago I should have thought an income of two hundred a
+glorious competence. I don’t aim at such things as are fit for you. You
+won’t be content till you have thousands; of course I know that. But I’m
+a humble fellow. Yet no; by Jingo, I’m not! In one way I’m not--I must
+confess it.’
+
+‘In what instance are you arrogant?’
+
+‘I can’t tell you--not yet; this is neither time nor place. I say,
+when will you dine with me? I shall give a dinner to half a dozen of my
+acquaintances somewhere or other. Poor old Biffen must come. When can
+you dine?’
+
+‘Give me a week’s notice, and I’ll fit it in.’
+
+That dinner came duly off. On the day that followed, Jasper and Dora
+left town for their holiday; they went to the Channel Islands, and spent
+more than half of the three weeks they had allowed themselves in Sark.
+Passing over from Guernsey to that island, they were amused to see a
+copy of Chit-Chat in the hands of an obese and well-dressed man.
+
+‘Is he one of the quarter-educated?’ asked Dora, laughing.
+
+‘Not in Whelpdale’s sense of the word. But, strictly speaking, no doubt
+he is. The quarter-educated constitute a very large class indeed; how
+large, the huge success of that paper is demonstrating. I’ll write to
+Whelpdale, and let him know that his benefaction has extended even to
+Sark.’
+
+This letter was written, and in a few days there came a reply.
+
+‘Why, the fellow has written to you as well!’ exclaimed Jasper, taking
+up a second letter; both were on the table of their sitting-room when
+they came to their lodgings for lunch. ‘That’s his hand.’
+
+‘It looks like it.’
+
+Dora hummed an air as she regarded the envelope, then she took it away
+with her to her room upstairs.
+
+‘What had he to say?’ Jasper inquired, when she came down again and
+seated herself at the table.
+
+‘Oh, a friendly letter. What does he say to you?’
+
+Dora had never looked so animated and fresh of colour since leaving
+London; her brother remarked this, and was glad to think that the air of
+the Channel should be doing her so much good. He read Whelpdale’s letter
+aloud; it was facetious, but oddly respectful.
+
+‘The reverence that fellow has for me is astonishing,’ he observed with
+a laugh. ‘The queer thing is, it increases the better he knows me.’
+
+Dora laughed for five minutes.
+
+‘Oh, what a splendid epigram!’ she exclaimed. ‘It is indeed a queer
+thing, Jasper! Did you mean that to be a good joke, or was it better
+still by coming out unintentionally?’
+
+‘You are in remarkable spirits, old girl. By-the-by, would you mind
+letting me see that letter of yours?’
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+‘I left it upstairs,’ Dora replied carelessly.
+
+‘Rather presumptuous in him, it seems to me.’
+
+‘Oh, he writes quite as respectfully to me as he does to you,’ she
+returned, with a peculiar smile.
+
+‘But what business has he to write at all? It’s confounded impertinence,
+now I come to think of it. I shall give him a hint to remember his
+position.’
+
+Dora could not be quite sure whether he spoke seriously or not. As both
+of them had begun to eat with an excellent appetite, a few moments were
+allowed to pass before the girl again spoke.
+
+‘His position is as good as ours,’ she said at length.
+
+‘As good as ours? The “sub.” of a paltry rag like Chit-Chat, and
+assistant to a literary agency!’
+
+‘He makes considerably more money than we do.’
+
+‘Money! What’s money?’
+
+Dora was again mirthful.
+
+‘Oh, of course money is nothing! We write for honour and glory. Don’t
+forget to insist on that when you reprove Mr Whelpdale; no doubt it will
+impress him.’
+
+Late in the evening of that day, when the brother and sister had
+strolled by moonlight up to the windmill which occupies the highest
+point of Sark, and as they stood looking upon the pale expanse of sea,
+dotted with the gleam of light-houses near and far, Dora broke the
+silence to say quietly:
+
+‘I may as well tell you that Mr Whelpdale wants to know if I will marry
+him.’
+
+‘The deuce he does!’ cried Jasper, with a start. ‘If I didn’t half
+suspect something of that kind! What astounding impudence!’
+
+‘You seriously think so?’
+
+‘Well, don’t you? You hardly know him, to begin with. And then--oh,
+confound it!’
+
+‘Very well, I’ll tell him that his impudence astonishes me.’
+
+‘You will?’
+
+‘Certainly. Of course in civil terms. But don’t let this make any
+difference between you and him. Just pretend to know nothing about it;
+no harm is done.’
+
+‘You are speaking in earnest?’
+
+‘Quite. He has written in a very proper way, and there’s no reason
+whatever to disturb our friendliness with him. I have a right to give
+directions in a matter like this, and you’ll please to obey them.’
+
+Before going to bed Dora wrote a letter to Mr Whelpdale, not,
+indeed, accepting his offer forthwith, but conveying to him with much
+gracefulness an unmistakable encouragement to persevere. This was posted
+on the morrow, and its writer continued to benefit most remarkably by
+the sun and breezes and rock-scrambling of Sark.
+
+Soon after their return to London, Dora had the satisfaction of paying
+the first visit to her sister at the Dolomores’ house in Ovington
+Square. Maud was established in the midst of luxuries, and talked with
+laughing scorn of the days when she inhabited Grub Street; her literary
+tastes were henceforth to serve as merely a note of distinction, an
+added grace which made evident her superiority to the well-attired and
+smooth-tongued people among whom she was content to shine. On the one
+hand, she had contact with the world of fashionable literature, on
+the other with that of fashionable ignorance. Mrs Lane’s house was a
+meeting-point of the two spheres.
+
+‘I shan’t be there very often,’ remarked Jasper, as Dora and he
+discussed their sister’s magnificence. ‘That’s all very well in its way,
+but I aim at something higher.’
+
+‘So do I,’ Dora replied.
+
+‘I’m very glad to hear that. I confess it seemed to me that you were
+rather too cordial with Whelpdale yesterday.’
+
+‘One must behave civilly. Mr Whelpdale quite understands me.’
+
+‘You are sure of that? He didn’t seem quite so gloomy as he ought to
+have been.’
+
+‘The success of Chit-Chat keeps him in good spirits.’
+
+It was perhaps a week after this that Mrs Dolomore came quite
+unexpectedly to the house by Regent’s Park, as early as eleven o’clock
+in the morning. She had a long talk in private with Dora. Jasper was not
+at home; when he returned towards evening, Dora came to his room with a
+countenance which disconcerted him.
+
+‘Is it true,’ she asked abruptly, standing before him with her hands
+strained together, ‘that you have been representing yourself as no
+longer engaged to Marian?’
+
+‘Who has told you so?’
+
+‘That doesn’t matter. I have heard it, and I want to know from you that
+it is false.’
+
+Jasper thrust his hands into his pockets and walked apart.
+
+‘I can take no notice,’ he said with indifference, ‘of anonymous
+gossip.’
+
+‘Well, then, I will tell you how I have heard. Maud came this morning,
+and told me that Mrs Betterton had been asking her about it. Mrs
+Betterton had heard from Mrs Lane.’
+
+‘From Mrs Lane? And from whom did she hear, pray?’
+
+‘That I don’t know. Is it true or not?’
+
+‘I have never told anyone that my engagement was at an end,’ replied
+Jasper, deliberately.
+
+The girl met his eyes.
+
+‘Then I was right,’ she said. ‘Of course I told Maud that it was
+impossible to believe this for a moment. But how has it come to be
+said?’
+
+‘You might as well ask me how any lie gets into circulation among people
+of that sort. I have told you the truth, and there’s an end of it.’
+
+Dora lingered for a while, but left the room without saying anything
+more.
+
+She sat up late, mostly engaged in thinking, though at times an open
+book was in her hand. It was nearly half-past twelve when a very light
+rap at the door caused her to start. She called, and Jasper came in.
+
+‘Why are you still up?’ he asked, avoiding her look as he moved forward
+and took a leaning attitude behind an easy-chair.
+
+‘Oh, I don’t know. Do you want anything?’
+
+There was a pause; then Jasper said in an unsteady voice:
+
+‘I am not given to lying, Dora, and I feel confoundedly uncomfortable
+about what I said to you early this evening. I didn’t lie in the
+ordinary sense; it’s true enough that I have never told anyone that
+my engagement was at an end. But I have acted as if it were, and it’s
+better I should tell you.’
+
+His sister gazed at him with indignation.
+
+‘You have acted as if you were free?’
+
+‘Yes. I have proposed to Miss Rupert. How Mrs Lane and that lot have
+come to know anything about this I don’t understand. I am not aware of
+any connecting link between them and the Ruperts, or the Barlows either.
+Perhaps there are none; most likely the rumour has no foundation in
+their knowledge. Still, it is better that I should have told you. Miss
+Rupert has never heard that I was engaged, nor have her friends the
+Barlows--at least I don’t see how they could have done. She may have
+told Mrs Barlow of my proposal--probably would; and this may somehow
+have got round to those other people. But Maud didn’t make any mention
+of Miss Rupert, did she?’
+
+Dora replied with a cold negative.
+
+‘Well, there’s the state of things. It isn’t pleasant, but that’s what I
+have done.’
+
+‘Do you mean that Miss Rupert has accepted you?’
+
+‘No. I wrote to her. She answered that she was going to Germany for a
+few weeks, and that I should have her reply whilst she was away. I am
+waiting.’
+
+‘But what name is to be given to behaviour such as this?’
+
+‘Listen: didn’t you know perfectly well that this must be the end of
+it?’
+
+‘Do you suppose I thought you utterly shameless and cruel beyond words?’
+
+‘I suppose I am both. It was a moment of desperate temptation, though.
+I had dined at the Ruperts’--you remember--and it seemed to me there was
+no mistaking the girl’s manner.’
+
+‘Don’t call her a girl!’ broke in Dora, scornfully. ‘You say she is
+several years older than yourself.’
+
+‘Well, at all events, she’s intellectual, and very rich. I yielded to
+the temptation.’
+
+‘And deserted Marian just when she has most need of help and
+consolation? It’s frightful!’
+
+Jasper moved to another chair and sat down. He was much perturbed.
+
+‘Look here, Dora, I regret it; I do, indeed. And, what’s more, if that
+woman refuses me--as it’s more than likely she will--I will go to Marian
+and ask her to marry me at once. I promise that.’
+
+His sister made a movement of contemptuous impatience.
+
+‘And if the woman doesn’t refuse you?’
+
+‘Then I can’t help it. But there’s one thing more I will say. Whether I
+marry Marian or Miss Rupert, I sacrifice my strongest feelings--in the
+one case to a sense of duty, in the other to worldly advantage. I was
+an idiot to write that letter, for I knew at the time that there was a
+woman who is far more to me than Miss Rupert and all her money--a woman
+I might, perhaps, marry. Don’t ask any questions; I shall not answer
+them. As I have said so much, I wished you to understand my position
+fully. You know the promise I have made. Don’t say anything to Marian;
+if I am left free I shall marry her as soon as possible.’
+
+And so he left the room.
+
+For a fortnight and more he remained in uncertainty. His life was very
+uncomfortable, for Dora would only speak to him when necessity compelled
+her; and there were two meetings with Marian, at which he had to act
+his part as well as he could. At length came the expected letter. Very
+nicely expressed, very friendly, very complimentary, but--a refusal.
+
+He handed it to Dora across the breakfast-table, saying with a pinched
+smile:
+
+‘Now you can look cheerful again. I am doomed.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV. FEVER AND REST
+
+Milvain’s skilful efforts notwithstanding, ‘Mr Bailey, Grocer,’ had no
+success. By two publishers the book had been declined; the firm which
+brought it out offered the author half profits and fifteen pounds on
+account, greatly to Harold Biffen’s satisfaction. But reviewers in
+general were either angry or coldly contemptuous. ‘Let Mr Biffen bear in
+mind,’ said one of these sages, ‘that a novelist’s first duty is to tell
+a story.’ ‘Mr Biffen,’ wrote another, ‘seems not to understand that
+a work of art must before everything else afford amusement.’ ‘A
+pretentious book of the genre _ennuyant_,’ was the brief comment of a
+Society journal. A weekly of high standing began its short notice in a
+rage: ‘Here is another of those intolerable productions for which we
+are indebted to the spirit of grovelling realism. This author, let it be
+said, is never offensive, but then one must go on to describe his work
+by a succession of negatives; it is never interesting, never profitable,
+never--’ and the rest. The eulogy in The West End had a few timid
+echoes. That in The Current would have secured more imitators, but
+unfortunately it appeared when most of the reviewing had already
+been done. And, as Jasper truly said, only a concurrence of powerful
+testimonials could have compelled any number of people to affect an
+interest in this book. ‘The first duty of a novelist is to tell a
+story:’ the perpetual repetition of this phrase is a warning to all
+men who propose drawing from the life. Biffen only offered a slice of
+biography, and it was found to lack flavour.
+
+He wrote to Mrs Reardon: ‘I cannot thank you enough for this very kind
+letter about my book; I value it more than I should the praises of all
+the reviewers in existence. You have understood my aim. Few people
+will do that, and very few indeed could express it with such clear
+conciseness.’
+
+If Amy had but contented herself with a civil acknowledgment of the
+volumes he sent her! She thought it a kindness to write to him so
+appreciatively, to exaggerate her approval. The poor fellow was so
+lonely. Yes, but his loneliness only became intolerable when a beautiful
+woman had smiled upon him, and so forced him to dream perpetually of
+that supreme joy of life which to him was forbidden.
+
+It was a fatal day, that on which Amy put herself under his guidance
+to visit Reardon’s poor room at Islington. In the old times, Harold had
+been wont to regard his friend’s wife as the perfect woman; seldom in
+his life had he enjoyed female society, and when he first met Amy it
+was years since he had spoken with any woman above the rank of a
+lodging-house keeper or a needle-plier. Her beauty seemed to him of a
+very high order, and her mental endowments filled him with an exquisite
+delight, not to be appreciated by men who have never been in his
+position. When the rupture came between Amy and her husband, Harold
+could not believe that she was in any way to blame; held to Reardon by
+strong friendship, he yet accused him of injustice to Amy. And what
+he saw of her at Brighton confirmed him in this judgment. When he
+accompanied her to Manville Street, he allowed her, of course, to remain
+alone in the room where Reardon had lived; but Amy presently summoned
+him, and asked him questions. Every tear she shed watered a growth of
+passionate tenderness in the solitary man’s heart. Parting from her at
+length, he went to hide his face in darkness and think of her--think of
+her.
+
+A fatal day. There was an end of all his peace, all his capacity
+for labour, his patient endurance of penury. Once, when he was about
+three-and-twenty, he had been in love with a girl of gentle nature and
+fair intelligence; on account of his poverty, he could not even hope
+that his love might be returned, and he went away to bear the misery as
+best he might. Since then the life he had led precluded the forming of
+such attachments; it would never have been possible for him to support
+a wife of however humble origin. At intervals he felt the full weight
+of his loneliness, but there were happily long periods during which his
+Greek studies and his efforts in realistic fiction made him indifferent
+to the curse laid upon him. But after that hour of intimate speech with
+Amy, he never again knew rest of mind or heart.
+
+Accepting what Reardon had bequeathed to him, he removed the books and
+furniture to a room in that part of the town which he had found most
+convenient for his singular tutorial pursuits. The winter did not pass
+without days of all but starvation, but in March he received his fifteen
+pounds for ‘Mr Bailey,’ and this was a fortune, putting him beyond the
+reach of hunger for full six months. Not long after that he yielded to
+a temptation that haunted him day and night, and went to call upon Amy,
+who was still living with her mother at Westbourne Park. When he
+entered the drawing-room Amy was sitting there alone; she rose with an
+exclamation of frank pleasure.
+
+‘I have often thought of you lately, Mr Biffen. How kind to come and see
+me!’
+
+He could scarcely speak; her beauty, as she stood before him in the
+graceful black dress, was anguish to his excited nerves, and her voice
+was so cruel in its conventional warmth. When he looked at her eyes,
+he remembered how their brightness had been dimmed with tears, and the
+sorrow he had shared with her seemed to make him more than an ordinary
+friend. When he told her of his success with the publishers, she was
+delighted.
+
+‘Oh, when is it to come out? I shall watch the advertisements so
+anxiously.’
+
+‘Will you allow me to send you a copy, Mrs Reardon?’
+
+‘Can you really spare one?’
+
+Of the half-dozen he would receive, he scarcely knew how to dispose of
+three. And Amy expressed her gratitude in the most charming way. She had
+gained much in point of manner during the past twelve months; her ten
+thousand pounds inspired her with the confidence necessary to a perfect
+demeanour. That slight hardness which was wont to be perceptible in
+her tone had altogether passed away; she seemed to be cultivating
+flexibility of voice.
+
+Mrs Yule came in, and was all graciousness. Then two callers presented
+themselves. Biffen’s pleasure was at an end as soon as he had to adapt
+himself to polite dialogue; he escaped as speedily as possible.
+
+He was not the kind of man that deceives himself as to his own aspect
+in the eyes of others. Be as kind as she might, Amy could not set him
+strutting Malvolio-wise; she viewed him as a poor devil who often had
+to pawn his coat--a man of parts who would never get on in the world--a
+friend to be thought of kindly because her dead husband had valued
+him. Nothing more than that; he understood perfectly the limits of her
+feeling. But this could not put restraint upon the emotion with which
+he received any most trifling utterance of kindness from her. He did not
+think of what was, but of what, under changed circumstances, might be.
+To encourage such fantasy was the idlest self-torment, but he had gone
+too far in this form of indulgence. He became the slave of his inflamed
+imagination.
+
+In that letter with which he replied to her praises of his book,
+perchance he had allowed himself to speak too much as he thought.
+
+He wrote in reckless delight, and did not wait for the prudence of a
+later hour. When it was past recall, he would gladly have softened
+many of the expressions the letter contained. ‘I value it more than the
+praises of all the reviewers in existence’--would Amy be offended at
+that? ‘Yours in gratitude and reverence,’ he had signed himself--the
+kind of phrase that comes naturally to a passionate man, when he would
+fain say more than he dares. To what purpose this half-revelation?
+Unless, indeed, he wished to learn once and for ever, by the gentlest
+of repulses, that his homage was only welcome so long as it kept well
+within conventional terms.
+
+He passed a month of distracted idleness, until there came a day
+when the need to see Amy was so imperative that it mastered every
+consideration. He donned his best clothes, and about four o’clock
+presented himself at Mrs Yule’s house. By ill luck there happened to be
+at least half a dozen callers in the drawing-room; the strappado would
+have been preferable, in his eyes, to such an ordeal as this. Moreover,
+he was convinced that both Amy and her mother received him with far less
+cordiality than on the last occasion. He had expected it, but he bit
+his lips till the blood came. What business had he among people of this
+kind? No doubt the visitors wondered at his comparative shabbiness, and
+asked themselves how he ventured to make a call without the regulation
+chimney-pot hat. It was a wretched and foolish mistake.
+
+Ten minutes saw him in the street again, vowing that he would never
+approach Amy more. Not that he found fault with her; the blame was
+entirely his own.
+
+He lived on the third floor of a house in Goodge Street, above a baker’s
+shop. The bequest of Reardon’s furniture was a great advantage to him,
+as he had only to pay rent for a bare room; the books, too, came as a
+godsend, since the destruction of his own. He had now only one pupil,
+and was not exerting himself to find others; his old energy had forsaken
+him.
+
+For the failure of his book he cared nothing. It was no more than he
+anticipated. The work was done--the best he was capable of--and this
+satisfied him.
+
+It was doubtful whether he loved Amy, in the true sense of exclusive
+desire. She represented for him all that is lovely in womanhood; to his
+starved soul and senses she was woman, the complement of his frustrate
+being. Circumstance had made her the means of exciting in him that
+natural force which had hitherto either been dormant or had yielded to
+the resolute will.
+
+Companionless, inert, he suffered the tortures which are so ludicrous
+and contemptible to the happily married. Life was barren to him, and
+would soon grow hateful; only in sleep could he cast off the unchanging
+thoughts and desires which made all else meaningless. And rightly
+meaningless: he revolted against the unnatural constraints forbidding
+him to complete his manhood.
+
+By what fatality was he alone of men withheld from the winning of a
+woman’s love?
+
+He could not bear to walk the streets where the faces of beautiful women
+would encounter him. When he must needs leave the house, he went about
+in the poor, narrow ways, where only spectacles of coarseness, and
+want, and toil would be presented to him. Yet even here he was too often
+reminded that the poverty-stricken of the class to which poverty is
+natural were not condemned to endure in solitude. Only he who belonged
+to no class, who was rejected alike by his fellows in privation and by
+his equals in intellect, must die without having known the touch of a
+loving woman’s hand.
+
+The summer went by, and he was unconscious of its warmth and light. How
+his days passed he could not have said.
+
+One evening in early autumn, as he stood before the book-stall at the
+end of Goodge Street, a familiar voice accosted him. It was Whelpdale’s.
+A month or two ago he had stubbornly refused an invitation to dine
+with Whelpdale and other acquaintances--you remember what the occasion
+was--and since then the prosperous young man had not crossed his path.
+
+‘I’ve something to tell you,’ said the assailer, taking hold of his
+arm. ‘I’m in a tremendous state of mind, and want someone to share my
+delight. You can walk a short way, I hope? Not too busy with some new
+book?’
+
+Biffen gave no answer, but went whither he was led.
+
+‘You are writing a new book, I suppose? Don’t be discouraged, old
+fellow. “Mr Bailey” will have his day yet; I know men who consider it an
+undoubted work of genius. What’s the next to deal with?’
+
+‘I haven’t decided yet,’ replied Harold, merely to avoid argument. He
+spoke so seldom that the sound of his own voice was strange to him.
+
+‘Thinking over it, I suppose, in your usual solid way. Don’t be hurried.
+But I must tell you of this affair of mine. You know Dora Milvain? I
+have asked her to marry me, and, by the Powers! she has given me an
+encouraging answer. Not an actual yes, but encouraging! She’s away in
+the Channel Islands, and I wrote--’
+
+He talked on for a quarter of an hour. Then, with a sudden movement, the
+listener freed himself.
+
+‘I can’t go any farther,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Good-bye!’
+
+Whelpdale was disconcerted.
+
+‘I have been boring you. That’s a confounded fault of mine; I know it.’
+
+Biffen had waved his hand, and was gone.
+
+A week or two more would see him at the end of his money. He had no
+lessons now, and could not write; from his novel nothing was to be
+expected. He might apply again to his brother, but such dependence was
+unjust and unworthy. And why should he struggle to preserve a life which
+had no prospect but of misery?
+
+It was in the hours following his encounter with Whelpdale that he first
+knew the actual desire of death, the simple longing for extinction. One
+must go far in suffering before the innate will-to-live is thus truly
+overcome; weariness of bodily anguish may induce this perversion of
+the instincts; less often, that despair of suppressed emotion which
+had fallen upon Harold. Through the night he kept his thoughts fixed on
+death in its aspect of repose, of eternal oblivion. And herein he had
+found solace.
+
+The next night it was the same. Moving about among common needs and
+occupations, he knew not a moment’s cessation of heart-ache, but when
+he lay down in the darkness a hopeful summons whispered to him. Night,
+which had been the worst season of his pain, had now grown friendly; it
+came as an anticipation of the sleep that is everlasting.
+
+A few more days, and he was possessed by a calm of spirit such as he had
+never known. His resolve was taken, not in a moment of supreme conflict,
+but as the result of a subtle process by which his imagination had
+become in love with death. Turning from contemplation of life’s one
+rapture, he looked with the same intensity of desire to a state that had
+neither fear nor hope.
+
+One afternoon he went to the Museum Reading-room, and was busy for a few
+minutes in consultation of a volume which he took from the shelves
+of medical literature. On his way homeward he entered two or three
+chemists’ shops. Something of which he had need could be procured only
+in very small quantities; but repetition of his demand in different
+places supplied him sufficiently. When he reached his room, he emptied
+the contents of sundry little bottles into one larger, and put this in
+his pocket. Then he wrote rather a long letter, addressed to his brother
+at Liverpool.
+
+It had been a beautiful day, and there wanted still a couple of hours
+before the warm, golden sunlight would disappear. Harold stood and
+looked round his room. As always, it presented a neat, orderly aspect,
+but his eye caught sight of a volume which stood upside down, and this
+fault--particularly hateful to a bookish man--he rectified. He put
+his blotting-pad square on the table, closed the lid of the inkstand,
+arranged his pens. Then he took his hat and stick, locked the door
+behind him, and went downstairs. At the foot he spoke to his landlady,
+and told her that he should not return that night. As soon as possible
+after leaving the house he posted his letter.
+
+His direction was westward; walking at a steady, purposeful pace, with
+cheery countenance and eyes that gave sign of pleasure as often as they
+turned to the sun-smitten clouds, he struck across Kensington Gardens,
+and then on towards Fulham, where he crossed the Thames to Putney. The
+sun was just setting; he paused a few moments on the bridge, watching
+the river with a quiet smile, and enjoying the splendour of the sky.
+Up Putney Hill he walked slowly; when he reached the top it was growing
+dark, but an unwonted effect in the atmosphere caused him to turn and
+look to the east. An exclamation escaped his lips, for there before him
+was the new-risen moon, a perfect globe, vast and red. He gazed at it
+for a long time.
+
+When the daylight had entirely passed, he went forward on to the heath,
+and rambled, as if idly, to a secluded part, where trees and bushes made
+a deep shadow under the full moon. It was still quite warm, and scarcely
+a breath of air moved among the reddening leaves.
+
+Sure at length that he was remote from all observation, he pressed into
+a little copse, and there reclined on the grass, leaning against the
+stem of a tree. The moon was now hidden from him, but by looking upward
+he could see its light upon a long, faint cloud, and the blue of the
+placid sky. His mood was one of ineffable peace. Only thoughts of
+beautiful things came into his mind; he had reverted to an earlier
+period of life, when as yet no mission of literary realism had been
+imposed upon him, and when his passions were still soothed by natural
+hope. The memory of his friend Reardon was strongly present with him,
+but of Amy he thought only as of that star which had just come into his
+vision above the edge of dark foliage--beautiful, but infinitely remote.
+
+Recalling Reardon’s voice, it brought to him those last words whispered
+by his dying companion. He remembered them now:
+
+     We are such stuff
+     As dreams are made on, and our little life
+     Is rounded with a sleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI. JASPER’S DELICATE CASE
+
+Only when he received Miss Rupert’s amiably-worded refusal to become his
+wife was Jasper aware how firmly he had counted on her accepting him. He
+told Dora with sincerity that his proposal was a piece of foolishness;
+so far from having any regard for Miss Rupert, he felt towards her with
+something of antipathy, and at the same time he was conscious of ardent
+emotions, if not love, for another woman who would be no bad match even
+from the commercial point of view. Yet so strong was the effect upon him
+of contemplating a large fortune, that, in despite of reason and desire,
+he lived in eager expectation of the word which should make him rich.
+And for several hours after his disappointment he could not overcome the
+impression of calamity.
+
+A part of that impression was due to the engagement which he must now
+fulfil. He had pledged his word to ask Marian to marry him without
+further delay. To shuffle out of this duty would make him too ignoble
+even in his own eyes. Its discharge meant, as he had expressed it, that
+he was ‘doomed’; he would deliberately be committing the very error
+always so flagrant to him in the case of other men who had crippled
+themselves by early marriage with a penniless woman. But events had
+enmeshed him; circumstances had proved fatal. Because, in his salad
+days, he dallied with a girl who had indeed many charms, step by step
+he had come to the necessity of sacrificing his prospects to that raw
+attachment. And, to make it more irritating, this happened just when the
+way began to be much clearer before him.
+
+Unable to think of work, he left the house and wandered gloomily about
+Regent’s Park. For the first time in his recollection the confidence
+which was wont to inspirit him gave way to an attack of sullen
+discontent. He felt himself ill-used by destiny, and therefore by
+Marian, who was fate’s instrument. It was not in his nature that this
+mood should last long, but it revealed to him those darker possibilities
+which his egoism would develop if it came seriously into conflict with
+overmastering misfortune. A hope, a craven hope, insinuated itself into
+the cracks of his infirm resolve. He would not examine it, but conscious
+of its existence he was able to go home in somewhat better spirits.
+
+He wrote to Marian. If possible she was to meet him at half-past
+nine next morning at Gloucester Gate. He had reasons for wishing this
+interview to take place on neutral ground.
+
+Early in the afternoon, when he was trying to do some work, there
+arrived a letter which he opened with impatient hand; the writing was
+Mrs Reardon’s, and he could not guess what she had to communicate.
+
+‘DEAR MR MILVAIN,--I am distressed beyond measure to read in this
+morning’s newspaper that poor Mr Biffen has put an end to his life.
+Doubtless you can obtain more details than are given in this bare report
+of the discovery of his body. Will you let me hear, or come and see me?’
+
+He read and was astonished. Absorbed in his own affairs, he had not
+opened the newspaper to-day; it lay folded on a chair. Hastily he ran
+his eye over the columns, and found at length a short paragraph which
+stated that the body of a man who had evidently committed suicide by
+taking poison had been found on Putney Heath; that papers in his pockets
+identified him as one Harold Biffen, lately resident in Goodge Street,
+Tottenham Court Road; and that an inquest would be held, &c. He went
+to Dora’s room, and told her of the event, but without mentioning the
+letter which had brought it under his notice.
+
+‘I suppose there was no alternative between that and starvation. I
+scarcely thought of Biffen as likely to kill himself. If Reardon had
+done it, I shouldn’t have felt the least surprise.’
+
+‘Mr Whelpdale will be bringing us information, no doubt,’ said Dora,
+who, as she spoke, thought more of that gentleman’s visit than of the
+event that was to occasion it.
+
+‘Really, one can’t grieve. There seemed no possibility of his ever
+earning enough to live decently upon. But why the deuce did he go all
+the way out there? Consideration for the people in whose house he lived,
+I dare say; Biffen had a good deal of native delicacy.’
+
+Dora felt a secret wish that someone else possessed more of that
+desirable quality.
+
+Leaving her, Jasper made a rapid, though careful, toilet, and was
+presently on his way to Westbourne Park. It was his hope that he should
+reach Mrs Yule’s house before any ordinary afternoon caller could
+arrive; and so he did. He had not been here since that evening when he
+encountered Reardon on the road and heard his reproaches. To his great
+satisfaction, Amy was alone in the drawing-room; he held her hand a
+trifle longer than was necessary, and returned more earnestly the look
+of interest with which she regarded him.
+
+‘I was ignorant of this affair when your letter came,’ he began, ‘and I
+set out immediately to see you.’
+
+‘I hoped you would bring me some news. What can have driven the poor man
+to such extremity?’
+
+‘Poverty, I can only suppose. But I will see Whelpdale. I hadn’t come
+across Biffen for a long time.’
+
+‘Was he still so very poor?’ asked Amy, compassionately.
+
+‘I’m afraid so. His book failed utterly.’
+
+‘Oh, if I had imagined him still in such distress, surely I might have
+done something to help him!’--So often the regretful remark of one’s
+friends, when one has been permitted to perish.
+
+With Amy’s sorrow was mingled a suggestion of tenderness which came of
+her knowledge that the dead man had worshipped her. Perchance his death
+was in part attributable to that hopeless love.
+
+‘He sent me a copy of his novel,’ she said, ‘and I saw him once or twice
+after that. But he was much better dressed than in former days, and I
+thought--’
+
+Having this subject to converse upon put the two more quickly at ease
+than could otherwise have been the case. Jasper was closely observant
+of the young widow; her finished graces made a strong appeal to his
+admiration, and even in some degree awed him. He saw that her beauty had
+matured, and it was more distinctly than ever of the type to which he
+paid reverence. Amy might take a foremost place among brilliant women.
+At a dinner-table, in grand toilet, she would be superb; at polite
+receptions people would whisper: ‘Who is that?’
+
+Biffen fell out of the dialogue.
+
+‘It grieved me very much,’ said Amy, ‘to hear of the misfortune that
+befell my cousin.’
+
+‘The legacy affair? Why, yes, it was a pity. Especially now that her
+father is threatened with blindness.’
+
+‘Is it so serious? I heard indirectly that he had something the matter
+with his eyes, but I didn’t know--’
+
+‘They may be able to operate before long, and perhaps it will be
+successful. But in the meantime Marian has to do his work.’
+
+‘This explains the--the delay?’ fell from Amy’s lips, as she smiled.
+
+Jasper moved uncomfortably. It was a voluntary gesture.
+
+‘The whole situation explains it,’ he replied, with some show of
+impulsiveness. ‘I am very much afraid Marian is tied during her father’s
+life.’
+
+‘Indeed? But there is her mother.’
+
+‘No companion for her father, as I think you know. Even if Mr Yule
+recovers his sight, it is not at all likely that he will be able to work
+as before. Our difficulties are so grave that--’
+
+He paused, and let his hand fail despondently.
+
+‘I hope it isn’t affecting your work--your progress?’
+
+‘To some extent, necessarily. I have a good deal of will, you remember,
+and what I have set my mind upon, no doubt, I shall some day achieve.
+But--one makes mistakes.’
+
+There was silence.
+
+‘The last three years,’ he continued, ‘have made no slight difference
+in my position. Recall where I stood when you first knew me. I have done
+something since then, I think, and by my own steady effort.’
+
+‘Indeed, you have.’
+
+‘Just now I am in need of a little encouragement. You don’t notice any
+falling off in my work recently?’
+
+‘No, indeed.’
+
+‘Do you see my things in The Current and so on, generally?’
+
+‘I don’t think I miss many of your articles. Sometimes I believe I have
+detected you when there was no signature.’
+
+‘And Dora has been doing well. Her story in that girls’ paper has
+attracted attention. It’s a great deal to have my mind at rest about
+both the girls. But I can’t pretend to be in very good spirits.’ He
+rose. ‘Well, I must try to find out something more about poor Biffen.’
+
+‘Oh, you are not going yet, Mr Milvain?’
+
+‘Not, assuredly, because I wish to. But I have work to do.’ He stepped
+aside, but came back as if on an impulse. ‘May I ask you for your advice
+in a very delicate matter?’
+
+Amy was a little disturbed, but she collected herself and smiled in a
+way that reminded Jasper of his walk with her along Gower Street.
+
+‘Let me hear what it is.’
+
+He sat down again, and bent forward.
+
+‘If Marian insists that it is her duty to remain with her father, am I
+justified or not in freely consenting to that?’
+
+‘I scarcely understand. Has Marian expressed a wish to devote herself in
+that way?’
+
+‘Not distinctly. But I suspect that her conscience points to it. I am in
+serious doubt. On the one hand,’ he explained in a tone of candour, ‘who
+will not blame me if our engagement terminates in circumstances such as
+these? On the other--you are aware, by-the-by, that her father objects
+in the strongest way to this marriage?’
+
+‘No, I didn’t know that.’
+
+‘He will neither see me nor hear of me. Merely because of my connection
+with Fadge. Think of that poor girl thus situated. And I could so easily
+put her at rest by renouncing all claim upon her.’
+
+‘I surmise that--that you yourself would also be put at rest by such a
+decision?’
+
+‘Don’t look at me with that ironical smile,’ he pleaded. ‘What you have
+said is true. And really, why should I not be glad of it? I couldn’t go
+about declaring that I was heartbroken, in any event; I must be content
+for people to judge me according to their disposition, and judgments are
+pretty sure to be unfavourable. What can I do? In either case I must to
+a certain extent be in the wrong. To tell the truth, I was wrong from
+the first.’
+
+There was a slight movement about Amy’s lips as these words were
+uttered: she kept her eyes down, and waited before replying.
+
+‘The case is too delicate, I fear, for my advice.’
+
+‘Yes, I feel it; and perhaps I oughtn’t to have spoken of it at all.
+Well, I’ll go back to my scribbling. I am so very glad to have seen you
+again.’
+
+‘It was good of you to take the trouble to come--whilst you have so much
+on your mind.’
+
+Again Jasper held the white, soft hand for a superfluous moment.
+
+The next morning it was he who had to wait at the rendezvous; he was
+pacing the pathway at least ten minutes before the appointed time.
+When Marian joined him, she was panting from a hurried walk, and this
+affected Jasper disagreeably; he thought of Amy Reardon’s air of repose,
+and how impossible it would be for that refined person to fall into such
+disorder. He observed, too, with more disgust than usual, the signs in
+Marian’s attire of encroaching poverty--her unsatisfactory gloves, her
+mantle out of fashion. Yet for such feelings he reproached himself, and
+the reproach made him angry.
+
+They walked together in the same direction as when they met here before.
+Marian could not mistake the air of restless trouble on her companion’s
+smooth countenance. She had divined that there was some grave reason
+for this summons, and the panting with which she had approached was half
+caused by the anxious beats of her heart. Jasper’s long silence again
+was ominous. He began abruptly:
+
+‘You’ve heard that Harold Biffen has committed suicide?’
+
+‘No!’ she replied, looking shocked.
+
+‘Poisoned himself. You’ll find something about it in today’s Telegraph.’
+
+He gave her such details as he had obtained, then added:
+
+‘There are two of my companions fallen in the battle. I ought to think
+myself a lucky fellow, Marian. What?’
+
+‘You are better fitted to fight your way, Jasper.’
+
+‘More of a brute, you mean.’
+
+‘You know very well I don’t. You have more energy and more intellect.’
+
+‘Well, it remains to be seen how I shall come out when I am weighted
+with graver cares than I have yet known.’
+
+She looked at him inquiringly, but said nothing.
+
+‘I have made up my mind about our affairs,’ he went on presently.
+‘Marian, if ever we are to be married, it must be now.’
+
+The words were so unexpected that they brought a flush to her cheeks and
+neck.
+
+‘Now?’
+
+‘Yes. Will you marry me, and let us take our chance?’
+
+Her heart throbbed violently.
+
+‘You don’t mean at once, Jasper? You would wait until I know what
+father’s fate is to be?’
+
+‘Well, now, there’s the point. You feel yourself indispensable to your
+father at present?’
+
+‘Not indispensable, but--wouldn’t it seem very unkind? I should be so
+afraid of the effect upon his health, Jasper. So much depends, we are
+told, upon his general state of mind and body. It would be dreadful if I
+were the cause of--’
+
+She paused, and looked up at him touchingly.
+
+‘I understand that. But let us face our position. Suppose the operation
+is successful; your father will certainly not be able to use his eyes
+much for a long time, if ever; and perhaps he would miss you as much
+then as now. Suppose he does not regain his sight; could you then leave
+him?’
+
+‘Dear, I can’t feel it would be my duty to renounce you because my
+father had become blind. And if he can see pretty well, I don’t think I
+need remain with him.’
+
+‘Has one thing occurred to you? Will he consent to receive an allowance
+from a person whose name is Mrs Milvain?’
+
+‘I can’t be sure,’ she replied, much troubled.
+
+‘And if he obstinately refuses--what then? What is before him?’
+
+Marian’s head sank, and she stood still.
+
+‘Why have you changed your mind so, Jasper?’ she inquired at length.
+
+‘Because I have decided that the indefinitely long engagement would be
+unjust to you--and to myself. Such engagements are always dangerous;
+sometimes they deprave the character of the man or woman.’
+
+She listened anxiously and reflected.
+
+‘Everything,’ he went on, ‘would be simple enough but for your domestic
+difficulties. As I have said, there is the very serious doubt whether
+your father would accept money from you when you are my wife. Then
+again, shall we be able to afford such an allowance?’
+
+‘I thought you felt sure of that?’
+
+‘I’m not very sure of anything, to tell the truth. I am harassed.
+
+I can’t get on with my work.’
+
+‘I am very, very sorry.’
+
+‘It isn’t your fault, Marian, and--Well, then, there’s only one thing
+to do. Let us wait, at all events, till your father has undergone the
+operation. Whichever the result, you say your own position will be the
+same.’
+
+‘Except, Jasper, that if father is helpless, I must find means of
+assuring his support.’
+
+‘In other words, if you can’t do that as my wife, you must remain Marian
+Yule.’
+
+After a silence, Marian regarded him steadily.
+
+‘You see only the difficulties in our way,’ she said, in a colder voice.
+‘They are many, I know. Do you think them insurmountable?’
+
+‘Upon my word, they almost seem so,’ Jasper exclaimed, distractedly.
+
+‘They were not so great when we spoke of marriage a few years hence.’
+
+‘A few years!’ he echoed, in a cheerless voice. ‘That is just what I
+have decided is impossible. Marian, you shall have the plain truth. I
+can trust your faith, but I can’t trust my own. I will marry you now,
+but--years hence--how can I tell what may happen? I don’t trust myself.’
+
+‘You say you “will” marry me now; that sounds as if you had made up your
+mind to a sacrifice.’
+
+‘I didn’t mean that. To face difficulties, yes.’
+
+Whilst they spoke, the sky had grown dark with a heavy cloud, and now
+spots of rain began to fall. Jasper looked about him in annoyance as he
+felt the moisture, but Marian did not seem aware of it.
+
+‘But shall you face them willingly?’
+
+‘I am not a man to repine and grumble. Put up your umbrella, Marian.’
+
+‘What do I care for a drop of rain,’ she exclaimed with passionate
+sadness, ‘when all my life is at stake! How am I to understand you?
+Every word you speak seems intended to dishearten me. Do you no longer
+love me? Why need you conceal it, if that is the truth? Is that what you
+mean by saying you distrust yourself?
+
+If you do so, there must be reason for it in the present. Could I
+distrust myself? Can I force myself in any manner to believe that I
+shall ever cease to love you?’
+
+Jasper opened his umbrella.
+
+‘We must see each other again, Marian. We can’t stand and talk in the
+rain--confound it! Cursed climate, where you can never be sure of a
+clear sky for five minutes!’
+
+‘I can’t go till you have spoken more plainly, Jasper! How am I to live
+an hour in such uncertainty as this? Do you love me or not? Do you wish
+me to be your wife, or are you sacrificing yourself?’
+
+‘I do wish it!’ Her emotion had an effect upon him, and his voice
+trembled. ‘But I can’t answer for myself--no, not for a year. And how
+are we to marry now, in face of all these--’
+
+‘What can I do? What can I do?’ she sobbed. ‘Oh, if I were but heartless
+to everyone but to you! If I could give you my money, and leave my
+father and mother to their fate! Perhaps some could do that. There is
+no natural law that a child should surrender everything for her parents.
+You know so much more of the world than I do; can’t you advise me? Is
+there no way of providing for my father?’
+
+‘Good God! This is frightful, Marian. I can’t stand it. Live as you are
+doing. Let us wait and see.’
+
+‘At the cost of losing you?’
+
+‘I will be faithful to you!’
+
+‘And your voice says you promise it out of pity.’
+
+He had made a pretence of holding his umbrella over her, but Marian
+turned away and walked to a little distance, and stood beneath the
+shelter of a great tree, her face averted from him. Moving to follow, he
+saw that her frame was shaken by soundless sobbing. When his footsteps
+came close to her, she again looked at him.
+
+‘I know now,’ she said, ‘how foolish it is when they talk of love being
+unselfish. In what can there be more selfishness? I feel as if I could
+hold you to your promise at any cost, though you have made me understand
+that you regard our engagement as your great misfortune. I have felt it
+for weeks--oh, for months! But I couldn’t say a word that would seem to
+invite such misery as this. You don’t love me, Jasper, and that’s an end
+of everything.
+
+I should be shamed if I married you.’
+
+‘Whether I love you or not, I feel as if no sacrifice would be too great
+that would bring you the happiness you deserve.’
+
+‘Deserve!’ she repeated bitterly. ‘Why do I deserve it? Because I long
+for it with all my heart and soul? There’s no such thing as deserving.
+Happiness or misery come to us by fate.’
+
+‘Is it in my power to make you happy?’
+
+‘No; because it isn’t in your power to call dead love to life again. I
+think perhaps you never loved me. Jasper, I could give my right hand if
+you had said you loved me before--I can’t put it into words; it sounds
+too base, and I don’t wish to imply that you behaved basely. But if you
+had said you loved me before that, I should have it always to remember.’
+
+‘You will do me no wrong if you charge me with baseness,’ he replied
+gloomily. ‘If I believe anything, I believe that I did love you. But I
+knew myself and I should never have betrayed what I felt, if for once in
+my life I could have been honourable.’
+
+The rain pattered on the leaves and the grass, and still the sky
+darkened.
+
+‘This is wretchedness to both of us,’ Jasper added. ‘Let us part now,
+Marian. Let me see you again.’
+
+‘I can’t see you again. What can you say to me more than you have said
+now? I should feel like a beggar coming to you. I must try and keep some
+little self-respect, if I am to live at all.’
+
+‘Then let me help you to think of me with indifference. Remember me as a
+man who disregarded priceless love such as yours to go and make himself
+a proud position among fools and knaves--indeed that’s what it comes to.
+It is you who reject me, and rightly. One who is so much at the mercy
+of a vulgar ambition as I am, is no fit husband for you. Soon enough you
+would thoroughly despise me, and though I should know it was merited,
+my perverse pride would revolt against it. Many a time I have tried to
+regard life practically as I am able to do theoretically, but it always
+ends in hypocrisy. It is men of my kind who succeed; the conscientious,
+and those who really have a high ideal, either perish or struggle on in
+neglect.’
+
+Marian had overcome her excess of emotion.
+
+‘There is no need to disparage yourself’ she said. ‘What can be simpler
+than the truth? You loved me, or thought you did, and now you love me
+no longer. It is a thing that happens every day, either in man or woman,
+and all that honour demands is the courage to confess the truth. Why
+didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew that I was burdensome to you?’
+
+‘Marian, will you do this?--will you let our engagement last for another
+six months, but without our meeting during that time?’
+
+‘But to what purpose?’
+
+‘Then we would see each other again, and both would be able to speak
+calmly, and we should both know with certainty what course we ought to
+pursue.’
+
+‘That seems to me childish. It is easy for you to contemplate months of
+postponement. There must be an end now; I can bear it no longer.’
+
+The rain fell unceasingly, and with it began to mingle an autumnal mist.
+Jasper delayed a moment, then asked calmly:
+
+‘Are you going to the Museum?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Go home again for this morning, Marian. You can’t work--’
+
+‘I must; and I have no time to lose. Good-bye!’
+
+She gave him her hand. They looked at each other for an instant, then
+Marian left the shelter of the tree, opened her umbrella, and walked
+quickly away. Jasper did not watch her; he had the face of a man who is
+suffering a severe humiliation.
+
+A few hours later he told Dora what had come to pass, and without
+extenuation of his own conduct. His sister said very little, for she
+recognised genuine suffering in his tones and aspect. But when it was
+over, she sat down and wrote to Marian.
+
+‘I feel far more disposed to congratulate you than to regret what has
+happened. Now that there is no necessity for silence, I will tell you
+something which will help you to see Jasper in his true light. A few
+weeks ago he actually proposed to a woman for whom he does not pretend
+to have the slightest affection, but who is very rich, and who seemed
+likely to be foolish enough to marry him. Yesterday morning he received
+her final answer--a refusal. I am not sure that I was right in keeping
+this a secret from you, but I might have done harm by interfering. You
+will understand (though surely you need no fresh proof) how utterly
+unworthy he is of you. You cannot, I am sure you cannot, regard it as a
+misfortune that all is over between you. Dearest Marian, do not cease to
+think of me as your friend because my brother has disgraced himself. If
+you can’t see me, at least let us write to each other. You are the only
+friend I have of my own sex, and I could not bear to lose you.’
+
+And much more of the same tenor.
+
+Several days passed before there came a reply. It was written with
+undisturbed kindness of feeling, but in few words.
+
+‘For the present we cannot see each other, but I am very far from
+wishing that our friendship should come to an end. I must only ask that
+you will write to me without the least reference to these troubles; tell
+me always about yourself, and be sure that you cannot tell me too much.
+I hope you may soon be able to send me the news which was foreshadowed
+in our last talk--though “foreshadowed” is a wrong word to use of coming
+happiness, isn’t it? That paper I sent to Mr Trenchard is accepted, and
+I shall be glad to have your criticism when it comes out; don’t spare
+my style, which needs a great deal of chastening. I have been thinking:
+couldn’t you use your holiday in Sark for a story? To judge from your
+letters, you could make an excellent background of word-painting.’
+
+Dora sighed, and shook her little head, and thought of her brother with
+unspeakable disdain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII. REWARDS
+
+When the fitting moment arrived, Alfred Yule underwent an operation
+for cataract, and it was believed at first that the result would be
+favourable. This hope had but short duration; though the utmost prudence
+was exercised, evil symptoms declared themselves, and in a few months’
+time all prospect of restoring his vision was at an end. Anxiety, and
+then the fatal assurance, undermined his health; with blindness, there
+fell upon him the debility of premature old age.
+
+The position of the family was desperate. Marian had suffered much all
+the winter from attacks of nervous disorder, and by no effort of will
+could she produce enough literary work to supplement adequately the
+income derived from her fifteen hundred pounds. In the summer of 1885
+things were at the worst; Marian saw no alternative but to draw upon her
+capital, and so relieve the present at the expense of the future. She
+had a mournful warning before her eyes in the case of poor Hinks and his
+wife, who were now kept from the workhouse only by charity. But at this
+juncture the rescuer appeared. Mr Quarmby and certain of his friends
+were already making a subscription for the Yules’ benefit, when one of
+their number--Mr Jedwood, the publisher--came forward with a proposal
+which relieved the minds of all concerned. Mr Jedwood had a brother who
+was the director of a public library in a provincial town, and by this
+means he was enabled to offer Marian Yule a place as assistant in that
+institution; she would receive seventy-five pounds a year, and thus,
+adding her own income, would be able to put her parents beyond the reach
+of want. The family at once removed from London, and the name of Yule
+was no longer met with in periodical literature.
+
+By an interesting coincidence, it was on the day of this departure that
+there appeared a number of The West End in which the place of honour,
+that of the week’s Celebrity, was occupied by Clement Fadge. A coloured
+portrait of this illustrious man challenged the admiration of all who
+had literary tastes, and two columns of panegyric recorded his career
+for the encouragement of aspiring youth. This article, of course
+unsigned, came from the pen of Jasper Milvain.
+
+It was only by indirect channels that Jasper learnt how Marian and her
+parents had been provided for. Dora’s correspondence with her friend
+soon languished; in the nature of things this could not but happen; and
+about the time when Alfred Yule became totally blind the girls ceased to
+hear anything of each other. An event which came to pass in the spring
+sorely tempted Dora to write, but out of good feeling she refrained.
+
+For it was then that she at length decided to change her name for
+that of Whelpdale. Jasper could not quite reconcile himself to this
+condescension; in various discourses he pointed out to his sister how
+much higher she might look if she would only have a little patience.
+
+‘Whelpdale will never be a man of any note. A good fellow, I admit, but
+borne in all senses. Let me impress upon you, my dear girl, that I have
+a future before me, and that there is no reason--with your charm of
+person and mind--why you should not marry brilliantly. Whelpdale can
+give you a decent home, I admit, but as regards society he will be a
+drag upon you.’
+
+‘It happens, Jasper, that I have promised to marry him,’ replied Dora,
+in a significant tone.
+
+‘Well, I regret it, but--you are of course your own mistress. I shall
+make no unpleasantness. I don’t dislike Whelpdale, and I shall remain on
+friendly terms with him.’
+
+‘That is very kind of you,’ said his sister suavely.
+
+Whelpdale was frantic with exultation. When the day of the wedding had
+been settled, he rushed into Jasper’s study and fairly shed tears before
+he could command his voice.
+
+‘There is no mortal on the surface of the globe one-tenth so happy as
+I am!’ he gasped. ‘I can’t believe it! Why in the name of sense and
+justice have I been suffered to attain this blessedness? Think of the
+days when I all but starved in my Albany Street garret, scarcely better
+off than poor, dear old Biffen! Why should I have come to this, and
+Biffen have poisoned himself in despair? He was a thousand times a
+better and cleverer fellow than I. And poor old Reardon, dead in misery!
+Could I for a moment compare with him?’
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ said Jasper, calmly, ‘compose yourself and be logical.
+In the first place, success has nothing whatever to do with moral
+deserts; and then, both Reardon and Biffen were hopelessly unpractical.
+In such an admirable social order as ours, they were bound to go to the
+dogs. Let us be sorry for them, but let us recognise causas rerum, as
+Biffen would have said. You have exercised ingenuity and perseverance;
+you have your reward.’
+
+‘And when I think that I might have married fatally on thirteen or
+fourteen different occasions. By-the-by, I implore you never to tell
+Dora those stories about me. I should lose all her respect. Do you
+remember the girl from Birmingham?’ He laughed wildly. ‘Heaven be
+praised that she threw me over! Eternal gratitude to all and sundry of
+the girls who have plunged me into wretchedness!’
+
+‘I admit that you have run the gauntlet, and that you have had
+marvellous escapes. But be good enough to leave me alone for the
+present. I must finish this review by midday.’
+
+‘Only one word. I don’t know how to thank Dora, how to express my
+infinite sense of her goodness. Will you try to do so for me? You can
+speak to her with calmness. Will you tell her what I have said to you?’
+
+‘Oh, certainly.--I should recommend a cooling draught of some kind. Look
+in at a chemist’s as you walk on.’
+
+The heavens did not fall before the marriage-day, and the wedded pair
+betook themselves for a few weeks to the Continent. They had been back
+again and established in their house at Earl’s Court for a month, when
+one morning about twelve o’clock Jasper dropped in, as though casually.
+Dora was writing; she had no thought of entirely abandoning literature,
+and had in hand at present a very pretty tale which would probably
+appear in The English Girl. Her boudoir, in which she sat, could
+not well have been daintier and more appropriate to the charming
+characteristics of its mistress.
+
+Mrs Whelpdale affected no literary slovenliness; she was dressed in
+light colours, and looked so lovely that even Jasper paused on the
+threshold with a smile of admiration.
+
+‘Upon my word,’ he exclaimed, ‘I am proud of my sisters! What did you
+think of Maud last night? Wasn’t she superb?’
+
+‘She certainly did look very well. But I doubt if she’s very happy.’
+
+‘That is her own look out; I told her plainly enough my opinion of
+Dolomore. But she was in such a tremendous hurry.’
+
+‘You are detestable, Jasper! Is it inconceivable to you that a man or
+woman should be disinterested when they marry?’
+
+‘By no means.’
+
+‘Maud didn’t marry for money any more than I did.’
+
+‘You remember the Northern Farmer: “Doan’t thou marry for money, but
+go where money is.” An admirable piece of advice. Well, Maud made a
+mistake, let us say. Dolomore is a clown, and now she knows it. Why,
+if she had waited, she might have married one of the leading men of the
+day. She is fit to be a duchess, as far as appearance goes; but I was
+never snobbish. I care very little about titles; what I look to is
+intellectual distinction.’
+
+‘Combined with financial success.’
+
+‘Why, that is what distinction means.’ He looked round the room with a
+smile. ‘You are not uncomfortable here, old girl. I wish mother could
+have lived till now.’
+
+‘I wish it very, very often,’ Dora replied in a moved voice.
+
+‘We haven’t done badly, drawbacks considered. Now, you may speak of
+money as scornfully as you like; but suppose you had married a man who
+could only keep you in lodgings! How would life look to you?’
+
+‘Who ever disputed the value of money? But there are things one mustn’t
+sacrifice to gain it.’
+
+‘I suppose so. Well, I have some news for you, Dora. I am thinking of
+following your example.’
+
+Dora’s face changed to grave anticipation.
+
+‘And who is it?’
+
+‘Amy Reardon.’
+
+His sister turned away, with a look of intense annoyance.
+
+‘You see, I am disinterested myself,’ he went on. ‘I might find a wife
+who had wealth and social standing. But I choose Amy deliberately.’
+
+‘An abominable choice!’
+
+‘No; an excellent choice. I have never yet met a woman so well fitted
+to aid me in my career. She has a trifling sum of money, which will be
+useful for the next year or two--’
+
+‘What has she done with the rest of it, then?’
+
+‘Oh, the ten thousand is intact, but it can’t be seriously spoken of. It
+will keep up appearances till I get my editorship and so on. We shall be
+married early in August, I think. I want to ask you if you will go and
+see her.’
+
+‘On no account! I couldn’t be civil to her.’
+
+Jasper’s brows blackened.
+
+‘This is idiotic prejudice, Dora. I think I have some claim upon you; I
+have shown some kindness--’
+
+‘You have, and I am not ungrateful. But I dislike Mrs Reardon, and I
+couldn’t bring myself to be friendly with her.’
+
+‘You don’t know her.’
+
+‘Too well. You yourself have taught me to know her. Don’t compel me to
+say what I think of her.’
+
+‘She is beautiful, and high-minded, and warm-hearted. I don’t know
+a womanly quality that she doesn’t possess. You will offend me most
+seriously if you speak a word against her.’
+
+‘Then I will be silent. But you must never ask me to meet her.’
+
+‘Never?’
+
+‘Never!’
+
+‘Then we shall quarrel. I haven’t deserved this, Dora. If you refuse
+to meet my wife on terms of decent friendliness, there’s no more
+intercourse between your house and mine. You have to choose. Persist in
+this fatuous obstinacy, and I have done with you!’
+
+‘So be it!’
+
+‘That is your final answer?’
+
+Dora, who was now as angry as he, gave a short affirmative, and Jasper
+at once left her.
+
+But it was very unlikely that things should rest at this pass. The
+brother and sister were bound by a strong mutual affection, and
+Whelpdale was not long in effecting a compromise.
+
+‘My dear wife,’ he exclaimed, in despair at the threatened calamity,
+‘you are right, a thousand times, but it’s impossible for you to be
+on ill terms with Jasper. There’s no need for you to see much of Mrs
+Reardon--’
+
+‘I hate her! She killed her husband; I am sure of it.’
+
+‘My darling!’
+
+‘I mean by her base conduct. She is a cold, cruel, unprincipled
+creature! Jasper makes himself more than ever contemptible by marrying
+her.’
+
+All the same, in less than three weeks Mrs Whelpdale had called upon
+Amy, and the call was returned. The two women were perfectly conscious
+of reciprocal dislike, but they smothered the feeling beneath
+conventional suavities. Jasper was not backward in making known his
+gratitude for Dora’s concession, and indeed it became clear to all his
+intimates that this marriage would be by no means one of mere interest;
+the man was in love at last, if he had never been before.
+
+Let lapse the ensuing twelve months, and come to an evening at the end
+of July, 1886. Mr and Mrs Milvain are entertaining a small and select
+party of friends at dinner. Their house in Bayswater is neither large
+nor internally magnificent, but it will do very well for the temporary
+sojourn of a young man of letters who has much greater things in
+confident expectation, who is a good deal talked of, who can gather
+clever and worthy people at his table, and whose matchless wife would
+attract men of taste to a very much poorer abode.
+
+Jasper had changed considerably in appearance since that last holiday
+that he spent in his mother’s house at Finden. At present he would have
+been taken for five-and-thirty, though only in his twenty-ninth year;
+his hair was noticeably thinning; his moustache had grown heavier;
+a wrinkle or two showed beneath his eyes; his voice was softer, yet
+firmer. It goes without saying that his evening uniform lacked no point
+of perfection, and somehow it suggested a more elaborate care than that
+of other men in the room. He laughed frequently, and with a throwing
+back of the head which seemed to express a spirit of triumph.
+
+Amy looked her years to the full, but her type of beauty, as you
+know, was independent of youthfulness. That suspicion of masculinity
+observable in her when she became Reardon’s wife impressed one now only
+as the consummate grace of a perfectly-built woman. You saw that at
+forty, at fifty, she would be one of the stateliest of dames. When she
+bent her head towards the person with whom she spoke, it was an act of
+queenly favour. Her words were uttered with just enough deliberation to
+give them the value of an opinion; she smiled with a delicious shade
+of irony; her glance intimated that nothing could be too subtle for her
+understanding.
+
+The guests numbered six, and no one of them was insignificant. Two of
+the men were about Jasper’s age, and they had already made their mark
+in literature; the third was a novelist of circulating fame, spirally
+crescent. The three of the stronger sex were excellent modern types,
+with sweet lips attuned to epigram, and good broad brows.
+
+The novelist at one point put an interesting question to Amy.
+
+‘Is it true that Fadge is leaving The Current?’
+
+‘It is rumoured, I believe.’
+
+‘Going to one of the quarterlies, they say,’ remarked a lady. ‘He is
+getting terribly autocratic. Have you heard the delightful story of
+his telling Mr Rowland to persevere, as his last work was one of
+considerable promise?’
+
+Mr Rowland was a man who had made a merited reputation when Fadge was
+still on the lower rungs of journalism. Amy smiled and told another
+anecdote of the great editor. Whilst speaking, she caught her husband’s
+eye, and perhaps this was the reason why her story, at the close, seemed
+rather amiably pointless--not a common fault when she narrated.
+
+When the ladies had withdrawn, one of the younger men, in a conversation
+about a certain magazine, remarked:
+
+‘Thomas always maintains that it was killed by that solemn old stager,
+Alfred Yule. By the way, he is dead himself, I hear.’
+
+Jasper bent forward.
+
+‘Alfred Yule is dead?’
+
+‘So Jedwood told me this morning. He died in the country somewhere,
+blind and fallen on evil days, poor old fellow.’
+
+All the guests were ignorant of any tie of kindred between their host
+and the man spoken of.
+
+‘I believe,’ said the novelist, ‘that he had a clever daughter who used
+to do all the work he signed. That used to be a current bit of scandal
+in Fadge’s circle.’
+
+‘Oh, there was much exaggeration in that,’ remarked Jasper, blandly.
+‘His daughter assisted him, doubtless, but in quite a legitimate way.
+One used to see her at the Museum.’
+
+The subject was dropped.
+
+An hour and a half later, when the last stranger had taken his leave,
+Jasper examined two or three letters which had arrived since dinner-time
+and were lying on the hall table. With one of them open in his hand, he
+suddenly sprang up the stairs and leaped, rather than stepped, into the
+drawing-room. Amy was reading an evening paper.
+
+‘Look at this!’ he cried, holding the letter to her.
+
+It was a communication from the publishers who owned The Current; they
+stated that the editorship of that review would shortly be resigned
+by Mr Fadge, and they inquired whether Milvain would feel disposed to
+assume the vacant chair.
+
+Amy sprang up and threw her arms about her husband’s neck, uttering a
+cry of delight.
+
+‘So soon! Oh, this is great! this is glorious!’
+
+‘Do you think this would have been offered to me but for the spacious
+life we have led of late? Never! Was I right in my calculations, Amy?’
+
+‘Did I ever doubt it?’
+
+He returned her embrace ardently, and gazed into her eyes with profound
+tenderness.
+
+‘Doesn’t the future brighten?’
+
+‘It has been very bright to me, Jasper, since I became your wife.’
+
+‘And I owe my fortune to you, dear girl. Now the way is smooth!’
+
+They placed themselves on a settee, Jasper with an arm about his wife’s
+waist, as if they were newly plighted lovers. When they had talked for a
+long time, Milvain said in a changed tone:
+
+‘I am told that your uncle is dead.’
+
+He mentioned how the news had reached him.
+
+‘I must make inquiries to-morrow. I suppose there will be a notice in
+The Study and some of the other papers. I hope somebody will make it an
+opportunity to have a hit at that ruffian Fadge. By-the-by, it doesn’t
+much matter now how you speak of Fadge; but I was a trifle anxious when
+I heard your story at dinner.’
+
+‘Oh, you can afford to be more independent.--What are you thinking
+about?’
+
+‘Nothing.’
+
+‘Why do you look sad?--Yes, I know, I know. I’ll try to forgive you.’
+
+‘I can’t help thinking at times of the poor girl, Amy. Life will be
+easier for her now, with only her mother to support. Someone spoke of
+her this evening, and repeated Fadge’s lie that she used to do all her
+father’s writing.’
+
+‘She was capable of doing it. I must seem to you rather a poor-brained
+woman in comparison. Isn’t it true?’
+
+‘My dearest, you are a perfect woman, and poor Marian was only a clever
+school-girl. Do you know, I never could help imagining that she had
+ink-stains on her fingers. Heaven forbid that I should say it unkindly!
+It was touching to me at the time, for I knew how fearfully hard she
+worked.’
+
+‘She nearly ruined your life; remember that.’
+
+Jasper was silent.
+
+‘You will never confess it, and that is a fault in you.’
+
+‘She loved me, Amy.’
+
+‘Perhaps! as a school-girl loves. But you never loved her.’
+
+‘No.’
+
+Amy examined his face as he spoke.
+
+‘Her image is very faint before me,’ Jasper pursued, ‘and soon I shall
+scarcely be able to recall it. Yes, you are right; she nearly ruined
+me. And in more senses than one. Poverty and struggle, under such
+circumstances, would have made me a detestable creature. As it is, I am
+not such a bad fellow, Amy.’
+
+She laughed, and caressed his cheek.
+
+‘No, I am far from a bad fellow. I feel kindly to everyone who deserves
+it. I like to be generous, in word and deed. Trust me, there’s many
+a man who would like to be generous, but is made despicably mean by
+necessity. What a true sentence that is of Landor’s: “It has been
+repeated often enough that vice leads to misery; will no man declare
+that misery leads to vice?” I have much of the weakness that might
+become viciousness, but I am now far from the possibility of being
+vicious. Of course there are men, like Fadge, who seem only to grow
+meaner the more prosperous they are; but these are exceptions. Happiness
+is the nurse of virtue.’
+
+‘And independence the root of happiness.’
+
+‘True. “The glorious privilege of being independent”--yes, Burns
+understood the matter. Go to the piano, dear, and play me something.
+If I don’t mind, I shall fall into Whelpdale’s vein, and talk about my
+“blessedness”. Ha! isn’t the world a glorious place?’
+
+‘For rich people.’
+
+‘Yes, for rich people. How I pity the poor devils!--Play anything.
+Better still if you will sing, my nightingale!’
+
+So Amy first played and then sang, and Jasper lay back in dreamy bliss.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1709 ***