New Grub Street (22 page)

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 that's a
result of suffering oneself.'

Amy set her lips and sighed.

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.'