New Grub Street (12 page)

'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.

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?