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.
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.