New Grub Street (16 page)

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.