New Grub Street

‘Most people will take it for fiction. I wish I had inventive power enough to write fiction anything like it. I have published novels, Mr Reardon, but my experience in that branch of literature was peculiar —as I may say it has been in most others to which I have applied myself. My first stories were written for “The Young Lady’s Favourite,” and most remarkable productions they were, I promise you. That was fifteen years ago, in the days of my versatility. I could throw off my supplemental novelette of fifteen thousand words without turning a hair, and immediately after it fall to, fresh as a daisy, on the “Illustrated History of the United States,” which I was then doing for Edward Coghlan. But presently I thought myself too good for the “Favourite”; in an evil day I began to write three-volume novels, aiming at reputation. It wouldn’t do. I persevered for five years, and made about five failures. Then I went back to Bowring. “Take me on again, old man, will you?” Bowring was a man of few words; he said, “Blaze away, my boy.” And I tried to. But it was no use; I had got out of the style; my writing was too literary by a long chalk. For a whole year I deliberately strove to write badly, but Bowring was so pained with the feebleness of my efforts that at last he sternly bade me avoid his sight. “What the devil,” he roared one day, “do you mean by sending me stories about men and women? You ought to know better than that, a fellow of your experience!” So I had to give it up, and there was an end of my career as a writer of fiction.’

He shook his head sadly.

‘Biffen,’ he continued, ‘when I first made his acquaintance, had an idea of writing for the working classes; and what do you think he was going to offer them? Stories about the working classes! Nay, never hang your head for it, old boy; it was excusable in the days of your youth. Why, Mr Reardon, as no doubt you know well enough, nothing can induce working men or women to read stories that treat of their own world. They are the most consumed idealists in creation, especially the women. Again and again work-girls have said to me: “Oh, I don’t like that book; it’s nothing but real life.”’

‘It’s the fault of women in general,’ remarked Reardon.

‘So it is, but it comes out with delicious naivete in the working classes. Now, educated people like to read of scenes that are familiar to them, though I grant you that the picture must be idealised if you’re to appeal to more than one in a thousand. The working classes detest anything that tries to represent their daily life. It isn’t because that life is too painful; no, no; it’s downright snobbishness. Dickens goes down only with the best of them, and then solely because of his strength in farce and his melodrama.’

Presently the three went out together, and had dinner at an a la mode beef shop. Mr Sykes ate little, but took copious libations of porter at twopence a pint. When the meal was over he grew taciturn.

‘Can you walk westwards?’ Biffen asked.

‘I’m afraid not, afraid not. In fact I have an appointment at two—at Aldgate station.’

They parted from him.

‘Now he’ll go and soak till he’s unconscious,’ said Biffen. ‘Poor fellow! Pity he ever earns anything at all. The workhouse would be better, I should think.’

‘No, no! Let a man drink himself to death rather. I have a horror of the workhouse. Remember the clock at Marylebone I used to tell you about.’

‘Unphilosophic. I don’t think I should be unhappy in the workhouse. I should have a certain satisfaction in the thought that I had forced society to support me. And then the absolute freedom from care! Why, it’s very much the same as being a man of independent fortune.’

It was about a week after this, midway in November, that there at length came to Manville Street a letter addressed in Amy’s hand. It arrived at three one afternoon; Reardon heard the postman, but he had ceased to rush out on every such occasion, and to-day he was feeling ill. Lying upon the bed, he had just raised his head wearily when he became aware that someone was mounting to his room. He sprang up, his face and neck flushing.

This time Amy began ‘Dear Edwin’; the sight of those words made his brain swim.

‘You must, of course, have heard [she wrote] that my uncle John has left me ten thousand pounds. It has not yet come into my possession, and I had decided that I would not write to you till that happened, but perhaps you may altogether misunderstand my silence.

‘If this money had come to me when you were struggling so hard to earn a living for us, we should never have spoken the words and thought the thoughts which now make it so difficult for me to write to you. What I wish to say is that, although the property is legally my own, I quite recognise that you have a right to share in it. Since we have lived apart you have sent me far more than you could really afford, believing it your duty to do so; now that things are so different I wish you, as well as myself, to benefit by the change.

‘I said at our last meeting that I should be quite prepared to return to you if you took that position at Croydon. There is now no need for you to pursue a kind of work for which you are quite unfitted, and I repeat that I am willing to live with you as before. If you will tell me where you would like to make a new home I shall gladly agree. I do not think you would care to leave London permanently, and certainly I should not.

‘Please to let me hear from you as soon as possible. In writing like this I feel that I have done what you expressed a wish that I should do. I have asked you to put an end to our separation, and I trust that I have not asked in vain.

‘Yours always,

‘AMY REARDON.’

The letter fell from his hand. It was such a letter as he might have expected, but the beginning misled him, and as his agitation throbbed itself away he suffered an encroachment of despair which made him for a time unable to move or even think.

His reply, written by the dreary twilight which represented sunset, ran thus.

‘Dear Amy,—I thank you for your letter, and I appreciate your motive in writing it. But if you feel that you have “done what I expressed a wish that you should do,” you must have strangely misunderstood me.

‘The only one thing that I wished was, that by some miracle your love for me might be revived. Can I persuade myself that this is the letter of a wife who desires to return to me because in her heart she loves me? If that is the truth you have been most unfortunate in trying to express yourself.

‘You have written because it seemed your duty to do so. But, indeed, a sense of duty such as this is a mistaken one. You have no love for me, and where there is no love there is no mutual obligation in marriage. Perhaps you think that regard for social conventions will necessitate your living with me again. But have more courage; refuse to act falsehoods; tell society it is base and brutal, and that you prefer to live an honest life.

‘I cannot share your wealth, dear. But as you have no longer need of my help—as we are now quite independent of each other—I shall cease to send the money which hitherto I have considered yours. In this way I shall have enough, and more than enough, for my necessities, so that you will never have to trouble yourself with the thought that I am suffering privations. At Christmas I go to Croydon, and I will then write to you again.

‘For we may at all events be friendly. My mind is relieved from ceaseless anxiety on your account. I know now that you are safe from that accursed poverty which is to blame for all our sufferings. You I do not blame, though I have sometimes done so. My own experience teaches me how kindness can be embittered by misfortune. Some great and noble sorrow may have the effect of drawing hearts together, but to struggle against destitution, to be crushed by care about shillings and sixpences—that must always degrade.

‘No other reply than this is possible, so I beg you not to write in this way again. Let me know if you go to live elsewhere. I hope Willie is well, and that his growth is still a delight and happiness to you.

‘EDWIN REARDON.’

That one word ‘dear,’ occurring in the middle of the letter, gave him pause as he read the lines over. Should he not obliterate it, and even in such a way that Amy might see what he had done? His pen was dipped in the ink for that purpose, but after all he held his hand. Amy was still dear to him, say what he might, and if she noted the word—if she pondered over it—

A street gas lamp prevented the room from becoming absolutely dark. When he had closed the envelope he lay down on his bed again, and watched the flickering yellowness upon the ceiling. He ought to have some tea before going to the hospital, but he cared so little for it that the trouble of boiling water was too great.

The flickering light grew fainter; he understood at length that this was caused by fog that had begun to descend. The fog was his enemy; it would be wise to purchase a respirator if this hideous weather continued, for sometimes his throat burned, and there was a rasping in his chest which gave disagreeable admonition.

He fell asleep for half an hour, and on awaking he was feverish, as usual at this time of day. Well, it was time to go to his work. Ugh! That first mouthful of fog!

CHAPTER XXVIII. INTERIM

The rooms which Milvain had taken for himself and his sisters were modest, but more expensive than their old quarters. As the change was on his account he held himself responsible for the extra outlay. But for his immediate prospects this step would have been unwarrantable, as his earnings were only just sufficient for his needs on the previous footing. He had resolved that his marriage must take place before Christmas; till that event he would draw when necessary upon the girls’ little store, and then repay them out of Marian’s dowry.

‘And what are we to do when you are married?’ asked Dora.

The question was put on the first evening of their being all under the same roof. The trio had had supper in the girls’ sitting-room, and it was a moment for frank conversation. Dora rejoiced in the coming marriage; her brother had behaved honourably, and Marian, she trusted, would be very happy, notwithstanding disagreement with her father, which seemed inevitable. Maud was by no means so well pleased, though she endeavoured to wear smiles. It looked to her as if Jasper had been guilty of a kind of weakness not to be expected in him. Marian, as an individual, could not be considered an appropriate wife for such a man with such a future; and as for her five thousand pounds, that was ridiculous. Had it been ten— something can be made of ten thousand; but a paltry five! Maud’s ideas on such subjects had notably expanded of late, and one of the results was that she did not live so harmoniously with her sister as for the first few months of their London career.

‘I have been thinking a good deal about that,’ replied Jasper to the younger girl’s question. He stood with his back to the fire and smoked a cigarette. ‘I thought at first of taking a flat; but then a flat of the kind I should want would be twice the rent of a large house. If we have a house with plenty of room in it you might come and live with us after a time. At first I must find you decent lodgings in our neighbourhood.’

‘You show a good deal of generosity, Jasper,’ said Maud, ‘but pray remember that Marian isn’t bringing you five thousand a year.’

‘I regret to say that she isn’t. What she brings me is five hundred a year for ten years—that’s how I look at it. My own income will make it something between six or seven hundred at first, and before long probably more like a thousand. I am quite cool and collected. I understand exactly where I am, and where I am likely to be ten years hence. Marian’s money is to be spent in obtaining a position for myself. At present I am spoken of as a “smart young fellow,” and that kind of thing; but no one would offer me an editorship, or any other serious help. Wait till I show that I have helped myself and hands will be stretched to me from every side. ‘Tis the way of the world. I shall belong to a club; I shall give nice, quiet little dinners to selected people; I shall let it be understood by all and sundry that I have a social position. Thenceforth I am quite a different man, a man to be taken into account. And what will you bet me that I don’t stand in the foremost rank of literary reputabilities ten years hence?’

‘I doubt whether six or seven hundred a year will be enough for this.’

‘If not, I am prepared to spend a thousand. Bless my soul! As if two or three years wouldn’t suffice to draw out the mean qualities in the kind of people I am thinking of! I say ten, to leave myself a great margin.’

‘Marian approves this?’

‘I haven’t distinctly spoken of it. But she approves whatever I think good.’

The girls laughed at his way of pronouncing this.

‘And let us just suppose that you are so unfortunate as to fail?’

‘There’s no supposing it, unless, of course, I lose my health. I am not presuming on any wonderful development of powers. Such as I am now, I need only to be put on the little pedestal of a decent independence and plenty of people will point fingers of admiration at me. You don’t fully appreciate this. Mind, it wouldn’t do if I had no qualities. I have the qualities; they only need bringing into prominence. If I am an unknown man, and publish a wonderful book, it will make its way very slowly, or not at all. If I, become a known man, publish that very same book, its praise will echo over both hemispheres. I should be within the truth if I had said “a vastly inferior book,” But I am in a bland mood at present. Suppose poor Reardon’s novels had been published in the full light of reputation instead of in the struggling dawn which was never to become day, wouldn’t they have been magnified by every critic? You have to become famous before you can secure the attention which would give fame.’

He delivered this apophthegm with emphasis, and repeated it in another form.

‘You have to obtain reputation before you can get a fair hearing for that which would justify your repute. It’s the old story of the French publisher who said to Dumas: “Make a name, and I’ll publish anything you write.” “But how the diable,” cries the author, “am I to make a name if I can’t get published?” If a man can’t hit upon any other way of attracting attention, let him dance on his head in the middle of the street; after that he may hope to get consideration for his volume of poems. I am speaking of men who wish to win reputation before they are toothless. Of course if your work is strong, and you can afford to wait, the probability is that half a dozen people will at last begin to shout that you have been monstrously neglected, as you have. But that happens when you are hoary and sapless, and when nothing under the sun delights you.’

He lit a new cigarette.

‘Now I, my dear girls, am not a man who can afford to wait. First of all, my qualities are not of the kind which demand the recognition of posterity. My writing is for to-day, most distinctly hodiernal. It has no value save in reference to to-day. The question is: How can I get the eyes of men fixed upon me? The answer: By pretending I am quite independent of their gaze. I shall succeed, without any kind of doubt; and then I’ll have a medal struck to celebrate the day of my marriage.’

But Jasper was not quite so well assured of the prudence of what he was about to do as he wished his sisters to believe. The impulse to which he had finally yielded still kept its force; indeed, was stronger than ever since the intimacy of lovers’ dialogue had revealed to him more of Marian’s heart and mind. Undeniably he was in love. Not passionately, not with the consuming desire which makes every motive seem paltry compared with its own satisfaction; but still quite sufficiently in love to have a great difficulty in pursuing his daily tasks. This did not still the voice which bade him remember all the opportunities and hopes he was throwing aside. Since the plighting of troth with Marian he had been over to Wimbledon, to the house of his friend and patron Mr Horace Barlow, and there he had again met with Miss Rupert. This lady had no power whatever over his emotions, but he felt assured that she regarded him with strong interest. When he imagined the possibility of contracting a marriage with Miss Rupert, who would make him at once a man of solid means, his head drooped, and he wondered at his precipitation. It had to be confessed that he was the victim of a vulgar weakness. He had declared himself not of the first order of progressive men.

The conversation with Amy Reardon did not tend to put his mind at rest. Amy was astonished at so indiscreet a step in a man of his calibre. Ah! if only Amy herself were free, with her ten thousand pounds to dispose of! She, he felt sure, did not view him with indifference. Was there not a touch of pique in the elaborate irony with which she had spoken of his choice?—But it was idle to look in that direction.

He was anxious on his sisters’ account. They were clever girls, and with energy might before long earn a bare subsistence; but it began to be doubtful whether they would persevere in literary work. Maud, it was clear, had conceived hopes of quite another kind. Her intimacy with Mrs Lane was effecting a change in her habits, her dress, even her modes of speech. A few days after their establishment in the new lodgings, Jasper spoke seriously on this subject with the younger girl.

‘I wonder whether you could satisfy my curiosity in a certain matter,’ he said. ‘Do you, by chance, know how much Maud gave for that new jacket in which I saw her yesterday?’

Dora was reluctant to answer.

‘I don’t think it was very much.’

‘That is to say, it didn’t cost twenty guineas. Well, I hope not.

I notice, too, that she has been purchasing a new hat.’

‘Oh, that was very inexpensive. She trimmed it herself.’

‘Did she? Is there any particular, any quite special, reason for this expenditure?’

‘I really can’t say, Jasper.’

‘That’s ambiguous, you know. Perhaps it means you won’t allow yourself to say?’

‘No, Maud doesn’t tell me about things of that kind.’

He took opportunities of investigating the matter, with the result that some ten days after he sought private colloquy with Maud herself. She had asked his opinion of a little paper she was going to send to a ladies’ illustrated weekly, and he summoned her to his own room.

‘I think this will do pretty well,’ he said. ‘There’s rather too much thought in it, perhaps. Suppose you knock out one or two of the less obvious reflections, and substitute a wholesome commonplace? You’ll have a better chance, I assure you.’

‘But I shall make it worthless.’

‘No; you’ll probably make it worth a guinea or so. You must remember that the people who read women’s papers are irritated, simply irritated, by anything that isn’t glaringly obvious. They hate an unusual thought. The art of writing for such papers— indeed, for the public in general—is to express vulgar thought and feeling in a way that flatters the vulgar thinkers and feelers. Just abandon your mind to it, and then let me see it again.’

Maud took up the manuscript and glanced over it with a contemptuous smile. Having observed her for a moment, Jasper threw himself back in the chair and said, as if casually:

‘I am told that Mr Dolomore is becoming a great friend of yours.’

The girl’s face changed. She drew herself up, and looked away towards the window.

‘I don’t know that he is a “great” friend.’

‘Still, he pays enough attention to you to excite remark.’

‘Whose remark?’

‘That of several people who go to Mrs Lane’s.’

‘I don’t know any reason for it,’ said Maud coldly.

‘Look here, Maud, you don’t mind if I give you a friendly warning?’

She kept silence, with a look of superiority to all monition.

‘Dolomore,’ pursued her brother, ‘is all very well in his way, but that way isn’t yours. I believe he has a good deal of money, but he has neither brains nor principle. There’s no harm in your observing the nature and habits of such individuals, but don’t allow yourself to forget that they are altogether beneath you.’

‘There’s no need whatever for you to teach me self-respect,’ replied the girl.

‘I’m quite sure of that; but you are inexperienced. On the whole, I do rather wish that you would go less frequently to Mrs Lane’s.

It was rather an unfortunate choice of yours. Very much better if you could have got on a good footing with the Barnabys. If you are generally looked upon as belonging to the Lanes’ set it will make it difficult for you to get in with the better people.’

Maud was not to be drawn into argument, and Jasper could only hope that his words would have some weight with her. The Mr Dolomore in question was a young man of rather offensive type— athletic, dandiacal, and half-educated. It astonished Jasper that his sister could tolerate such an empty creature for a moment; who has not felt the like surprise with regard to women’s inclinations? He talked with Dora about it, but she was not in her sister’s confidence.

‘I think you ought to have some influence with her,’ Jasper said.

‘Maud won’t allow anyone to interfere in—her private affairs.”It would be unfortunate if she made me quarrel with her.’

‘Oh, surely there isn’t any danger of that?’

‘I don’t know, she mustn’t be obstinate.’

Jasper himself saw a good deal of miscellaneous society at this time. He could not work so persistently as usual, and with wise tactics he used the seasons of enforced leisure to extend his acquaintance. Marian and he were together twice a week, in the evening.

Of his old Bohemian associates he kept up intimate relations with one only, and that was Whelpdale. This was in a measure obligatory, for Whelpdale frequently came to see him, and it would have been difficult to repel a man who was always making known how highly he esteemed the privilege of Milvain’s friendship, and whose company on the whole was agreeable enough. At the present juncture Whelpdale’s cheery flattery was a distinct assistance; it helped to support Jasper in his self-confidence, and to keep the brightest complexion on the prospect to which he had committed himself.

‘Whelpdale is anxious to make Marian’s acquaintance,’ Jasper said to his sisters one day. ‘Shall we have him here tomorrow evening?’

‘Just as you like,’ Maud replied.

‘You won’t object, Dora?’

‘Oh no! I rather like Mr Whelpdale.’

‘If I were to repeat that to him he’d go wild with delight. But don’t be afraid; I shan’t. I’ll ask him to come for an hour, and trust to his discretion not to bore us by staying too long.’

A note was posted to Whelpdale; he was invited to present himself at eight o’clock, by which time Marian would have arrived. Jasper’s room was to be the scene of the assembly, and punctual to the minute the literary adviser appeared. He was dressed with all the finish his wardrobe allowed, and his face beamed with gratification; it was rapture to him to enter the presence of these three girls, one of whom he had, more suo, held in romantic remembrance since his one meeting with her at Jasper’s old lodgings. His eyes melted with tenderness as he approached Dora and saw her smile of gracious recognition. By Maud he was profoundly impressed. Marian inspired him with no awe, but he fully appreciated the charm of her features and her modest gravity. After all, it was to Dora that his eyes turned again most naturally. He thought her exquisite, and, rather than be long without a glimpse of her, he contented himself with fixing his eyes on the hem of her dress and the boot-toe that occasionally peeped from beneath it.

As was to be expected in such a circle, conversation soon turned to the subject of literary struggles.

‘I always feel it rather humiliating,’ said Jasper, ‘that I have gone through no very serious hardships. It must be so gratifying to say to young fellows who are just beginning:

“Ah, I remember when I was within an ace of starving to death,” and then come out with Grub Street reminiscences of the most appalling kind. Unfortunately, I have always had enough to eat.’

‘I haven’t,’ exclaimed Whelpdale. ‘I have lived for five days on a few cents’ worth of pea-nuts in the States.’

‘What are pea-nuts, Mr Whelpdale?’ asked Dora.

Delighted with the question, Whelpdale described that undesirable species of food.

‘It was in Troy,’ he went on, ‘Troy, N.Y. To think that a man should live on pea-nuts in a town called Troy!’

‘Tell us those adventures,’ cried Jasper. ‘It’s a long time since I heard them, and the girls will enjoy it vastly.’

Dora looked at him with such good-humoured interest that the traveller needed no further persuasion.

‘It came to pass in those days,’ he began, ‘that I inherited from my godfather a small, a very small, sum of money. I was making strenuous efforts to write for magazines, with absolutely no encouragement. As everybody was talking just then of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, I conceived the brilliant idea of crossing the Atlantic, in the hope that I might find valuable literary material at the Exhibition—or Exposition, as they called it—and elsewhere. I won’t trouble you with an account of how I lived whilst I still had money; sufficient that no one would accept the articles I sent to England, and that at last I got into perilous straits. I went to New York, and thought of returning home, but the spirit of adventure was strong in me. “I’ll go West,” I said to myself. “There I am bound to find material.” And go I did, taking an emigrant ticket to Chicago. It was December, and I should like you to imagine what a journey of a thousand miles by an emigrant train meant at that season. The cars were deadly cold, and what with that and the hardness of the seats I found it impossible to sleep; it reminded me of tortures I had read about; I thought my brain would have burst with the need of sleeping. At Cleveland, in Ohio, we had to wait several hours in the night; I left the station and wandered about till I found myself on the edge of a great cliff that looked over Lake Erie. A magnificent picture! Brilliant moonlight, and all the lake away to the horizon frozen and covered with snow. The clocks struck two as I stood there.’

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant who brought coffee.

‘Nothing could be more welcome,’ cried Dora. ‘Mr Whelpdale makes one feel quite chilly.’

There was laughter and chatting whilst Maud poured out the beverage. Then Whelpdale pursued his narrative.

‘I reached Chicago with not quite five dollars in my pockets, and, with a courage which I now marvel at, I paid immediately four dollars and a half for a week’s board and lodging. “Well,” I said to myself, “for a week I am safe. If I earn nothing in that time, at least I shall owe nothing when I have to turn out into the streets.” It was a rather dirty little boarding-house, in Wabash Avenue, and occupied, as I soon found, almost entirely by actors. There was no fireplace in my bedroom, and if there had been I couldn’t have afforded a fire. But that mattered little; what I had to do was to set forth and discover some way of making money. Don’t suppose that I was in a desperate state of mind; how it was, I don’t quite know, but I felt decidedly cheerful. It was pleasant to be in this new region of the earth, and I went about the town like a tourist who has abundant resources.’

He sipped his coffee.

‘I saw nothing for it but to apply at the office of some newspaper, and as I happened to light upon the biggest of them first of all, I put on a bold face, marched in, asked if I could see the editor. There was no difficulty whatever about this; I was told to ascend by means of the “elevator” to an upper storey, and there I walked into a comfortable little room where a youngish man sat smoking a cigar at a table covered with print and manuscript. I introduced myself, stated my business. “Can you give me work of any kind on your paper?” “Well, what experience have you had?” “None whatever.” The editor smiled. “I’m very much afraid you would be no use to us. But what do you think you could do?” Well now, there was but one thing that by any possibility I could do. I asked him: “Do you publish any fiction—short stories?” “Yes, we’re always glad of a short story, if it’s good.” This was a big daily paper; they have weekly supplements of all conceivable kinds of matter. “Well,” I said, “if I write a story of English life, will you consider it?” “With pleasure.” I left him, and went out as if my existence were henceforth provided for.’

He laughed heartily, and was joined by his hearers.

‘It was a great thing to be permitted to write a story, but then- -what story? I went down to the shore of Lake Michigan; walked there for half an hour in an icy wind. Then I looked for a stationer’s shop, and laid out a few of my remaining cents in the purchase of pen, ink, and paper—my stock of all these things was at an end when I left New York. Then back to the boarding-house. Impossible to write in my bedroom, the temperature was below zero; there was no choice but to sit down in the common room, a place like the smoke-room of a poor commercial hotel in England. A dozen men were gathered about the fire, smoking, talking, quarrelling. Favourable conditions, you see, for literary effort. But the story had to be written, and write it I did, sitting there at the end of a deal table; I finished it in less than a couple of days, a good long story, enough to fill three columns of the huge paper. I stand amazed at my power of concentration as often as I think of it!’

‘And was it accepted?’ asked Dora.

‘You shall hear. I took my manuscript to the editor, and he told me to come and see him again next morning. I didn’t forget the appointment. As I entered he smiled in a very promising way, and said, “I think your story will do. I’ll put it into the Saturday supplement. Call on Saturday morning and I’ll remunerate you.” How well I remember that word “remunerate”! I have had an affection for the word ever since. And remunerate me he did; scribbled something on a scrap of paper, which I presented to the cashier. The sum was eighteen dollars. Behold me saved!’

He sipped his coffee again.

‘I have never come across an English editor who treated me with anything like that consideration and general kindliness. How the man had time, in his position, to see me so often, and do things in such a human way, I can’t understand. Imagine anyone trying the same at the office of a London newspaper! To begin with, one couldn’t see the editor at all. I shall always think with profound gratitude of that man with the peaked brown beard and pleasant smile.’

‘But did the pea-nuts come after that!’ inquired Dora.

‘Alas! they did. For some months I supported myself in Chicago, writing for that same paper, and for others. But at length the flow of my inspiration was checked; I had written myself out. And I began to grow home-sick, wanted to get back to England. The result was that I found myself one day in New York again, but without money enough to pay for a passage home. I tried to write one more story. But it happened, as I was looking over newspapers in a reading-room, that I saw one of my Chicago tales copied into a paper published at Troy. Now Troy was not very far off; and it occurred to me that, if I went there, the editor of this paper might be disposed to employ me, seeing he had a taste for my fiction. And I went, up the Hudson by steamboat. On landing at Troy I was as badly off as when I reached Chicago; I had less than a dollar. And the worst of it was I had come on a vain errand; the editor treated me with scant courtesy, and no work was to be got. I took a little room, paying for it day by day, and in the meantime I fed on those loathsome pea-nuts, buying a handful in the street now and then. And I assure you I looked starvation in the face.’

‘What sort of a town is Troy?’ asked Marian, speaking for the first time.

‘Don’t ask me. They make straw hats there principally, and they sell pea-nuts. More I remember not.’

‘But you didn’t starve to death,’ said Maud.

‘No, I just didn’t. I went one afternoon into a lawyer’s office, thinking I might get some copying work, and there I found an odd-looking old man, sitting with an open Bible on his knees. He explained to me that he wasn’t the lawyer; that the lawyer was away on business, and that he was just guarding the office. Well, could he help me? He meditated, and a thought occurred to him. “Go,” he said, “to such-and-such a boarding-house, and ask for Mr Freeman Sterling. He is just starting on a business tour, and wants a young man to accompany him.” I didn’t dream of asking what the business was, but sped, as fast as my trembling limbs would carry me, to the address he had mentioned. I asked for Mr Freeman Sterling, and found him. He was a photographer, and his business at present was to go about getting orders for the reproducing of old portraits. A good-natured young fellow. He said he liked the look of me, and on the spot engaged me to assist him in a house-to-house visitation. He would pay for my board and lodging, and give me a commission on all the orders I obtained. Forthwith I sat down to a “square meal,” and ate—my conscience, how I ate!’

‘You were not eminently successful in that pursuit, I think?’ said Jasper.

‘I don’t think I got half-a-dozen orders. Yet that good Samaritan supported me for five or six weeks, whilst we travelled from Troy to Boston. It couldn’t go on; I was ashamed of myself; at last I told him that we must part. Upon my word, I believe he would have paid my expenses for another month; why, I can’t understand. But he had a vast respect for me because I had written in newspapers, and I do seriously think that he didn’t like to tell me I was a useless fellow. We parted on the very best of terms in Boston.’

‘And you again had recourse to pea-nuts?’ asked Dora.

‘Well, no. In the meantime I had written to someone in England, begging the loan of just enough money to enable me to get home. The money came a day after I had seen Sterling off by train.’

An hour and a half quickly passed, and Jasper, who wished to have a few minutes of Marian’s company before it was time for her to go, cast a significant glance at his sisters. Dora said innocently:

‘You wished me to tell you when it was half-past nine, Marian.’

And Marian rose. This was a signal Whelpdale could not disregard. Immediately he made ready for his own departure, and in less than five minutes was gone, his face at the last moment expressing blended delight and pain.

‘Too good of you to have asked me to come,’ he said with gratitude to Jasper, who went to the door with him. ‘You are a happy man, by Jove! A happy man!’

When Jasper returned to the room his sisters had vanished. Marian stood by the fire. He drew near to her, took her hands, and repeated laughingly Whelpdale’s last words.

‘Is it true?’ she asked.

‘Tolerably true, I think.’

‘Then I am as happy as you are.’

He released her hands, and moved a little apart.

‘Marian, I have been thinking about that letter to your father. I had better get it written, don’t you think?’

She gazed at him with troubled eyes.

‘Perhaps you had. Though we said it might be delayed until—’

‘Yes, I know. But I suspect you had rather I didn’t wait any longer. Isn’t that the truth?’

‘Partly. Do just as you wish, Jasper.’

‘I’ll go and see him, if you like.’

‘I am so afraid— No, writing will be better.’

‘Very well. Then he shall have the letter tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Don’t let it come before the last post. I had so much rather not. Manage it, if you can.’

‘Very well. Now go and say good-night to the girls. It’s a vile night, and you must get home as soon as possible.’

She turned away, but again came towards him, murmuring:

‘Just a word or two more.’

‘About the letter?’

‘No. You haven’t said—’

He laughed.

‘And you couldn’t go away contentedly unless I repeated for the hundredth time that I love you?’

Marian searched his countenance.

‘Do you think it foolish? I live only on those words.’

‘Well, they are better than pea-nuts.’

‘Oh don’t! I can’t bear to—’

Jasper was unable to understand that such a jest sounded to her like profanity. She hid her face against him, and whispered the words that would have enraptured her had they but come from his lips. The young man found it pleasant enough to be worshipped, but he could not reply as she desired. A few phrases of tenderness, and his love-vocabulary was exhausted; he even grew weary when something more—the indefinite something—was vaguely required of him.

‘You are a dear, good, tender-hearted girl,’ he said, stroking her short, soft hair, which was exquisite to the hand. ‘Now go and get ready.’

She left him, but stood for a few moments on the landing before going to the girls’ room.

CHAPTER XXIX. CATASTROPHE

Marian had finished the rough draft of a paper on James Harrington, author of ‘Oceana.’ Her father went through it by the midnight lamp, and the next morning made his comments. A black sky and sooty rain strengthened his inclination to sit by the study fire and talk at large in a tone of flattering benignity.

‘Those paragraphs on the Rota Club strike me as singularly happy,’ he

said, tapping the manuscript with the mouthpiece of his pipe. ‘Perhaps you might say a word or two more about Cyriac Skinner; one mustn’t be too allusive with general readers, their ignorance is incredible. But there is so little to add to this paper—so little to alter—that I couldn’t feel justified in sending it as my own work. I think it is altogether too good to appear anonymously. You must sign it, Marian, and have the credit that is due to you.’

‘Oh, do you think it’s worth while?’ answered the girl, who was far from easy under this praise. Of late there had been too much of it; it made her regard her father with suspicions which increased her sense of trouble in keeping a momentous secret from him.

‘Yes, yes; you had better sign it. I’ll undertake there’s no other girl of your age who could turn out such a piece of work. I think we may fairly say that your apprenticeship is at an end. Before long,’ he smiled anxiously, ‘I may be counting upon you as a valued contributor. And that reminds me; would you be disposed to call with me on the Jedwoods at their house next Sunday?’

Marian understood the intention that lay beneath this proposal. She saw that her father would not allow himself to seem discouraged by the silence she maintained on the great subject which awaited her decision. He was endeavouring gradually to involve her in his ambitions, to carry her forward by insensible steps. It pained her to observe the suppressed eagerness with which he looked for her reply.

‘I will go if you wish, father, but I had rather not.’

‘I feel sure you would like Mrs Jedwood. One has no great opinion of her novels, but she is a woman of some intellect. Let me book you for next Sunday; surely I have a claim to your companionship now and then.’

Marian kept silence. Yule puffed at his pipe, then said with a speculative air:

‘I suppose it has never even occurred to you to try your hand at fiction?’

‘I haven’t the least inclination that way.’

‘You would probably do something rather good if you tried. But I don’t urge it. My own efforts in that line were a mistake, I’m disposed to think. Not that the things were worse than multitudes of books which nowadays go down with the many-headed. But I never quite knew what I wished to be at in fiction. I wasn’t content to write a mere narrative of the exciting kind, yet I couldn’t hit upon subjects of intellectual cast that altogether satisfied me. Well, well; I have tried my hand at most kinds of literature. Assuredly I merit the title of man of letters.’

‘You certainly do.’

‘By-the-by, what should you think of that title for a review— Letters? It has never been used, so far as I know. I like the word “letters.” How much better “a man of letters” than “a literary man”! And apropos of that, when was the word “literature” first used in our modern sense to signify a body of writing? In Johnson’s day it was pretty much the equivalent of our “culture.” You remember his saying, “It is surprising how little literature people have.” His dictionary, I believe, defines the word as “learning, skill in letters”—nothing else.’

It was characteristic of Yule to dwell with gusto on little points such as this; he prosed for a quarter of an hour, with a pause every now and then whilst he kept his pipe alight.

‘I think Letters wouldn’t be amiss,’ he said at length, returning to the suggestion which he wished to keep before Marian’s mind. ‘It would clearly indicate our scope. No articles on bimetallism, as Quarmby said—wasn’t it Quarmby?’

He laughed idly.

‘Yes, I must ask Jedwood how he likes the name.’

Though Marian feared the result, she was glad when Jasper made up his mind to write to her father. Since it was determined that her money could not be devoted to establishing a review, the truth ought to be confessed before Yule had gone too far in nursing his dangerous hope. Without the support of her love and all the prospects connected with it, she would hardly have been capable of giving a distinct refusal when her reply could no longer be postponed; to hold the money merely for her own benefit would have seemed to her too selfish, however slight her faith in the project on which her father built so exultantly. When it was declared that she had accepted an offer of marriage, a sacrifice of that kind could no longer be expected of her. Opposition must direct itself against the choice she had made. It would be stern, perhaps relentless; but she felt able to face any extremity of wrath. Her nerves quivered, but in her heart was an exhaustless source of courage.

That a change had somehow come about in the girl Yule was aware. He observed her with the closest study day after day. Her health seemed to have improved; after a long spell of work she had not the air of despondent weariness which had sometimes irritated him, sometimes made him uneasy. She was more womanly in her bearing and speech, and exercised an independence, appropriate indeed to her years, but such as had not formerly declared itself The question with her father was whether these things resulted simply from her consciousness of possessing what to her seemed wealth, or something else had happened of the nature that he dreaded. An alarming symptom was the increased attention she paid to her personal appearance; its indications were not at all prominent, but Yule, on the watch for such things, did not overlook them. True, this also might mean nothing but a sense of relief from narrow means; a girl would naturally adorn herself a little under the circumstances.

His doubts came to an end two days after that proposal of a title for the new review. As he sat in his study the servant brought him a letter delivered by the last evening post. The handwriting was unknown to him; the contents were these:

‘DEAR MR YULE,—It is my desire to write to you with perfect frankness and as simply as I can on a subject which has the deepest interest for me, and which I trust you will consider in that spirit of kindness with which you received me when we first met at Finden.

‘On the occasion of that meeting I had the happiness of being presented to Miss Yule. She was not totally a stranger to me; at that time I used to work pretty regularly in the Museum Reading-room, and there I had seen Miss Yule, had ventured to observe her at moments with a young man’s attention, and had felt my interest aroused, though I did not know her name. To find her at Finden seemed to me a very unusual and delightful piece of good fortune.

When I came back from my holiday I was conscious of a new purpose in life, a new desire and a new motive to help me on in my chosen career.

‘My mother’s death led to my sisters’ coming to live in London. Already there had been friendly correspondence between Miss Yule and the two girls, and now that the opportunity offered they began to see each other frequently. As I was often at my sisters’ lodgings it came about that I met Miss Yule there from time to time. In this way was confirmed my attachment to your daughter. The better I knew her, the more worthy I found her of reverence and love.

‘Would it not have been natural for me to seek a renewal of the acquaintance with yourself which had been begun in the country? Gladly I should have done so. Before my sisters’ coming to London I did call one day at your house with the desire of seeing you, but unfortunately you were not at home. Very soon after that I learnt to my extreme regret that my connection with The Current and its editor would make any repetition of my visit very distasteful to you. I was conscious of nothing in my literary life that could justly offend you—and at this day I can say the same—but I shrank from the appearance of importunity, and for some months I was deeply distressed by the fear that what I most desired in life had become unattainable. My means were very slight; I had no choice but to take such work as offered, and mere chance had put me into a position which threatened ruin to the hope that you would some day regard me as a not unworthy suitor for your daughter’s hand.

‘Circumstances have led me to a step which at that time seemed impossible. Having discovered that Miss Yule returned the feeling I entertained for her, I have asked her to be my wife, and she has consented. It is now my hope that you will permit me to call upon you. Miss Yule is aware that I am writing this letter; will you not let her plead for me, seeing that only by an unhappy chance have I been kept aloof from you? Marian and I are equally desirous that you should approve our union; without that approval, indeed, something will be lacking to the happiness for which we hope.

‘Believe me to be sincerely yours,

‘JASPER MILVAIN.’

Half an hour after reading this Yule was roused from a fit of the gloomiest brooding by Marian’s entrance. She came towards him timidly, with pale countenance. He had glanced round to see who it was, but at once turned his head again.

‘Will you forgive me for keeping this secret from you, father?’

‘Forgive you?’ he replied in a hard, deliberate voice. ‘I assure you it is a matter of perfect indifference to me. You are long since of age, and I have no power whatever to prevent your falling a victim to any schemer who takes your fancy. It would be folly in me to discuss the question. I recognise your right to have as many secrets as may seem good to you. To talk of forgiveness is the merest affectation.’

‘No, I spoke sincerely. If it had seemed possible I should gladly have let you know about this from the first. That would have been natural and right. But you know what prevented me.’

‘I do. I will try to hope that even a sense of shame had something to do with it.’

‘That had nothing to do with it,’ said Marian, coldly. ‘I have never had reason to feel ashamed.’

‘Be it so. I trust you may never have reason to feel repentance. May I ask when you propose to be married?’

‘I don’t know when it will take place.’

‘As soon, I suppose, as your uncle’s executors have discharged a piece of business which is distinctly germane to the matter?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Does your mother know?’

‘I have just told her.’

‘Very well, then it seems to me that there’s nothing more to be said.’

‘Do you refuse to see Mr Milvain?’

‘Most decidedly I do. You will have the goodness to inform him that that is my reply to his letter.’

‘I don’t think that is the behaviour of a gentleman,’ said Marian, her eyes beginning to gleam with resentment.

‘I am obliged to you for your instruction.’

‘Will you tell me, father, in plain words, why you dislike Mr Milvain?’

‘I am not inclined to repeat what I have already fruitlessly told you. For the sake of a clear understanding, however, I will let you know the practical result of my dislike. From the day of your marriage with that man you are nothing to me. I shall distinctly forbid you to enter my house. You make your choice, and go your own way. I shall hope never to see your face again.’

Their eyes met, and the look of each seemed to fascinate the other.

‘If you have made up your mind to that,’ said Marian in a shaking voice, ‘I can remain here no longer. Such words are senselessly cruel. Tomorrow I shall leave the house.’

‘I repeat that you are of age, and perfectly independent. It can be nothing to me how soon you go. You have given proof that I am of less than no account to you, and doubtless the sooner we cease to afflict each other the better.’

It seemed as if the effect of these conflicts with her father were to develop in Marian a vehemence of temper which at length matched that of which Yule was the victim. Her face, outlined to express a gentle gravity, was now haughtily passionate; nostrils and lips thrilled with wrath, and her eyes were magnificent in their dark fieriness.

‘You shall not need to tell me that again,’ she answered, and immediately left him.

She went into the sitting-room, where Mrs Yule was awaiting the result of the interview.

‘Mother,’ she said, with stern gentleness, ‘this house can no longer be a home for me. I shall go away tomorrow, and live in lodgings until the time of my marriage.’

Mrs Yule uttered a cry of pain, and started up.

‘Oh, don’t do that, Marian! What has he said to you? Come and talk to me, darling—tell me what he’s said—don’t look like that!’

She clung to the girl despairingly, terrified by a transformation she would have thought impossible.

‘He says that if I marry Mr Milvain he hopes never to see my face again. I can’t stay here. You shall come and see me, and we will be the same to each other as always. But father has treated me too unjustly. I can’t live near him after this.’

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ sobbed her mother. ‘He says what he’s sorry for as soon as the words are spoken. He loves you too much, my darling, to drive you away like that. It’s his disappointment, Marian; that’s all it is. He counted on it so much. I’ve heard him talk of it in his sleep; he made so sure that he was going to have that new magazine, and the disappointment makes him that he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Only wait and see; he’ll tell you he didn’t mean it, I know he will. Only leave him alone till he’s had time to get over it. Do forgive him this once.’

‘It’s like a madman to talk in that way,’ said the girl, releasing herself. ‘Whatever his disappointment, I can’t endure it. I have worked hard for him, very hard, ever since I was old enough, and he owes me some kindness, some respect. It would be different if he had the least reason for his hatred of Jasper. It is nothing but insensate prejudice, the result of his quarrels with other people. What right has he to insult me by representing my future husband as a scheming hypocrite?’

‘My love, he has had so much to bear—it’s made him so quick-tempered.’

‘Then I am quick-tempered too, and the sooner we are apart the better, as he said himself’

‘Oh, but you have always been such a patient girl.’

‘My patience is at an end when I am treated as if I had neither rights nor feelings. However wrong the choice I had made, this was not the way to behave to me. His disappointment? Is there a natural law, then, that a daughter must be sacrificed to her father? My husband will have as much need of that money as my father has, and he will be able to make far better use of it. It was wrong even to ask me to give my money away like that. I have a right to happiness, as well as other women.’

She was shaken with hysterical passion, the natural consequence of this outbreak in a nature such as hers. Her mother, in the meantime, grew stronger by force of profound love that at length had found its opportunity of expression. Presently she persuaded Marian to come upstairs with her, and before long the overburdened breast was relieved by a flow of tears. But Marian’s purpose remained unshaken.

‘It is impossible for us to see each other day after day,’ she said when calmer. ‘He can’t control his anger against me, and I suffer too much when I am made to feel like this. I shall take a lodging not far off where you can see me often.’

‘But you have no money, Marian,’ replied Mrs Yule, miserably.

‘No money? As if I couldn’t borrow a few pounds until all my own comes to me! Dora Milvain can lend me all I shall want; it won’t make the least difference to her. I must have my money very soon now.’

At about half-past eleven Mrs Yule went downstairs, and entered the study.

‘If you are coming to speak about Marian,’ said her husband, turning upon her with savage eyes, ‘you can save your breath. I won’t hear her name mentioned.’

She faltered, but overcame her weakness.

‘You are driving her away from us, Alfred. It isn’t right! Oh, it isn’t right!’

‘If she didn’t go I should, so understand that! And if I go, you have seen the last of me. Make your choice, make your choice!’

He had yielded himself to that perverse frenzy which impels a man to acts and utterances most wildly at conflict with reason. His sense of the monstrous irrationality to which he was committed completed what was begun in him by the bitterness of a great frustration.

‘If I wasn’t a poor, helpless woman,’ replied his wife, sinking upon a chair and crying without raising her hands to her face, ‘I’d go and live with her till she was married, and then make a home for myself. But I haven’t a penny, and I’m too old to earn my own living; I should only be a burden to her.’

‘That shall be no hindrance,’ cried Yule. ‘Go, by all means; you shall have a sufficient allowance as long as I can continue to work, and when I’m past that, your lot will be no harder than mine. Your daughter had the chance of making provision for my old age, at no expense to herself. But that was asking too much of her. Go, by all means, and leave me to make what I can of the rest of my life; perhaps I may save a few years still from the curse brought upon me by my own folly.’

It was idle to address him. Mrs Yule went into the sitting-room, and there sat weeping for an hour. Then she extinguished the lights, and crept upstairs in silence.

Yule passed the night in the study. Towards morning he slept for an hour or two, just long enough to let the fire go out and to get thoroughly chilled. When he opened his eyes a muddy twilight had begun to show at the window; the sounds of a clapping door within the house, which had probably awakened him, made him aware that the servant was already up.

He drew up the blind. There seemed to be a frost, for the moisture of last night had all disappeared, and the yard upon which the window looked was unusually clean. With a glance at the black grate he extinguished his lamp, and went out into the passage. A few minutes’ groping for his overcoat and hat, and he left the house.

His purpose was to warm himself with a vigorous walk, and at the same time to shake off if possible, the nightmare of his rage and hopelessness. He had no distinct feeling with regard to his behaviour of the past evening; he neither justified nor condemned himself; he did not ask himself whether Marian would to-day leave her home, or if her mother would take him at his word and also depart. These seemed to be details which his brain was too weary to consider. But he wished to be away from the wretchedness of his house, and to let things go as they would whilst he was absent. As he closed the front door he felt as if he were escaping from an atmosphere that threatened to stifle him.

His steps directing themselves more by habit than with any deliberate choice, he walked towards Camden Road. When he had reached Camden Town railway-station he was attracted by a coffee-stall; a draught of the steaming liquid, no matter its quality, would help his blood to circulate. He laid down his penny, and first warmed his hands by holding them round the cup. Whilst standing thus he noticed that the objects at which he looked had a blurred appearance; his eyesight seemed to have become worse this morning. Only a result of his insufficient sleep perhaps. He took up a scrap of newspaper that lay on the stall; he could read it, but one of his eyes was certainly weaker than the other; trying to see with that one alone, he found that everything became misty.

He laughed, as if the threat of new calamity were an amusement in his present state of mind. And at the same moment his look encountered that of a man who had drawn near to him, a shabbily-dressed man of middle age, whose face did not correspond with his attire.

‘Will you give me a cup of coffee?’ asked the stranger, in a low voice and with shamefaced manner. ‘It would be a great kindness.’

The accent was that of good breeding. Yule hesitated in surprise for a moment, then said:

‘Have one by all means. Would you care for anything to eat?’

‘I am much obliged to you. I think I should be none the worse for one of those solid slices of bread and butter.’

The stall-keeper was just extinguishing his lights; the frosty sky showed a pale gleam of sunrise.

‘Hard times, I’m afraid,’ remarked Yule, as his beneficiary began to eat the luncheon with much appearance of grateful appetite.

‘Very hard times.’ He had a small, thin, colourless countenance, with large, pathetic eyes; a slight moustache and curly beard. His clothes were such as would be worn by some very poor clerk. ‘I came here an hour ago,’ he continued, ‘with the hope of meeting an acquaintance who generally goes from this station at a certain time. I have missed him, and in doing so I missed what I had thought my one chance of a breakfast. When one has neither dined nor supped on the previous day, breakfast becomes a meal of some importance.’

‘True. Take another slice.’

‘I am greatly obliged to you.’

‘Not at all. I have known hard times myself, and am likely to know worse.’

‘I trust not. This is the first time that I have positively begged. I should have been too much ashamed to beg of the kind of men who are usually at these places; they certainly have no money to spare. I was thinking of making an appeal at a baker’s shop, but it is very likely I should have been handed over to a policeman. Indeed I don’t know what I should have done; the last point of endurance was almost reached. I have no clothes but these I wear, and they are few enough for the season. Still, I suppose the waistcoat must have gone.’

He did not talk like a beggar who is trying to excite compassion, but with a sort of detached curiosity concerning the difficulties of his position.

‘You can find nothing to do?’ said the man of letters.

‘Positively nothing. By profession I am a surgeon, but it’s a long time since I practised. Fifteen years ago I was comfortably established at Wakefield; I was married and had one child. But my capital ran out, and my practice, never anything to boast of, fell to nothing. I succeeded in getting a place as an assistant to a man at Chester. We sold up, and started on the journey.’

He paused, looking at Yule in a strange way.

‘What happened then?’

‘You probably don’t remember a railway accident that took place near Crewe in that year—it was 1869? I and my wife and child were alone in a carriage that was splintered. One moment I was talking with them, in fairly good spirits, and my wife was laughing at something I had said; the next, there were two crushed, bleeding bodies at my feet. I had a broken arm, that was all. Well, they were killed on the instant; they didn’t suffer. That has been my one consolation.’

Yule kept the silence of sympathy.

‘I was in a lunatic asylum for more than a year after that,’ continued the man. ‘Unhappily, I didn’t lose my senses at the moment; it took two or three weeks to bring me to that pass. But I recovered, and there has been no return of the disease. Don’t suppose that I am still of unsound mind. There can be little doubt that poverty will bring me to that again in the end; but as yet I am perfectly sane. I have supported myself in various ways.

No, I don’t drink; I see the question in your face. But I am physically weak, and, to quote Mrs Gummidge, “things go contrairy with me.” There’s no use lamenting; this breakfast has helped me on, and I feel in much better spirits.’

‘Your surgical knowledge is no use to you?’

The other shook his head and sighed.

‘Did you ever give any special attention to diseases of the eyes?’

‘Special, no. But of course I had some acquaintance with the subject.’

‘Could you tell by examination whether a man was threatened with cataract, or anything of that kind?’

‘I think I could.’

‘I am speaking of myself.’

The stranger made a close scrutiny of Yule’s face, and asked certain questions with reference to his visual sensations.

‘I hardly like to propose it,’ he said at length, ‘but if you were willing to accompany me to a very poor room that I have not far from here, I could make the examination formally.’

‘I will go with you.’

They turned away from the stall, and the ex-surgeon led into a by-street. Yule wondered at himself for caring to seek such a singular consultation, but he had a pressing desire to hear some opinion as to the state of his eyes. Whatever the stranger might tell him, he would afterwards have recourse to a man of recognised standing; but just now companionship of any kind was welcome, and the poor hungry fellow, with his dolorous life-story, had made appeal to his sympathies. To give money under guise of a fee would be better than merely offering alms.

‘This is the house,’ said his guide, pausing at a dirty door. ‘It isn’t inviting, but the people are honest, so far as I know. My room is at the top.’

‘Lead on,’ answered Yule.

In the room they entered was nothing noticeable; it was only the poorest possible kind of bedchamber, or all but the poorest possible. Daylight had now succeeded to dawn, yet the first thing the stranger did was to strike a match and light a candle.

‘Will you kindly place yourself with your back to the window?’ he said. ‘I am going to apply what is called the catoptric test. You have probably heard of it?’

‘My ignorance of scientific matters is fathomless.’

The other smiled, and at once offered a simple explanation of the term. By the appearance of the candle as it reflected itself in the patient’s eye it was possible, he said, to decide whether cataract had taken hold upon the organ.

For a minute or two he conducted his experiment carefully, and Yule was at no loss to read the result upon his face.

‘How long have you suspected that something was wrong?’ the surgeon asked, as he put down the candle.

‘For several months.’

‘You haven’t consulted anyone?’

‘No one. I have kept putting it off. Just tell me what you have discovered.’

‘The back of the right lens is affected beyond a doubt.’

‘That means, I take it, that before very long I shall be practically blind?’

‘I don’t like to speak with an air of authority. After all, I am only a surgeon who has bungled himself into pauperdom. You must see a competent man; that much I can tell you in all earnestness.

Do you use your eyes much?’

‘Fourteen hours a day, that’s all.’

‘H’m! You are a literary man, I think?’

‘I am. My name is Alfred Yule.’

He had some faint hope that the name might be recognised; that would have gone far, for the moment, to counteract his trouble. But not even this poor satisfaction was to be granted him; to his hearer the name evidently conveyed nothing.

‘See a competent man, Mr Yule. Science has advanced rapidly since the days when I was a student; I am only able to assure you of the existence of disease.’

They talked for half an hour, until both were shaking with cold. Then Yule thrust his hand into his pocket.

‘You will of course allow me to offer such return as I am able,’ he said. ‘The information isn’t pleasant, but I am glad to have it.’

He laid five shillings on the chest of drawers—there was no table. The stranger expressed his gratitude.

‘My name is Duke,’ he said, ‘and I was christened Victor— possibly because I was doomed to defeat in life. I wish you could have associated the memory of me with happier circumstances.’

They shook hands, and Yule quitted the house.

He came out again by Camden Town station. The coffee-stall had disappeared; the traffic of the great highway was growing uproarious. Among all the strugglers for existence who rushed this way and that, Alfred Yule felt himself a man chosen for fate’s heaviest infliction. He never questioned the accuracy of the stranger’s judgment, and he hoped for no mitigation of the doom it threatened. His life was over—and wasted.

He might as well go home, and take his place meekly by the fireside. He was beaten. Soon to be a useless old man, a burden and annoyance to whosoever had pity on him.

It was a curious effect of the imagination that since coming into the open air again his eyesight seemed to be far worse than before. He irritated his nerves of vision by incessant tests, closing first one eye then the other, comparing his view of nearer objects with the appearance of others more remote, fancying an occasional pain—which could have had no connection with his disease. The literary projects which had stirred so actively in his mind twelve hours ago were become an insubstantial memory; to the one crushing blow had succeeded a second, which was fatal. He could hardly recall what special piece of work he had been engaged upon last night. His thoughts were such as if actual blindness had really fallen upon him.

At half-past eight he entered the house. Mrs Yule was standing at the foot of the stairs; she looked at him, then turned away towards the kitchen. He went upstairs. On coming down again he found breakfast ready as usual, and seated himself at the table. Two letters waited for him there; he opened them.

When Mrs Yule came into the room a few moments later she was astonished by a burst of loud, mocking laughter from her husband, excited, as it appeared, by something he was reading.

‘Is Marian up?’ he asked, turning to her.

‘Yes.’

‘She is not coming to breakfast?’

‘No.’

‘Then just take that letter to her, and ask her to read it.’

Mrs Yule ascended to her daughter’s bedroom. She knocked, was bidden enter, and found Marian packing clothes in a trunk. The girl looked as if she had been up all night; her eyes bore the traces of much weeping.

‘He has come back, dear,’ said Mrs Yule, in the low voice of apprehension, ‘and he says you are to read this letter.’

Marian took the sheet, unfolded it, and read. As soon as she had reached the end she looked wildly at her mother, seemed to endeavour vainly to speak, then fell to the floor in unconsciousness. The mother was only just able to break the violence of her fall. Having snatched a pillow and placed it beneath Marian’s head, she rushed to the door and called loudly for her husband, who in a moment appeared.

‘What is it?’ she cried to him. ‘Look, she has fallen down in a faint. Why are you treating her like this?’

‘Attend to her,’ Yule replied roughly. ‘I suppose you know better than I do what to do when a person faints.’

The swoon lasted for several minutes.

‘What’s in the letter?’ asked Mrs Yule whilst chafing the lifeless hands.

‘Her money’s lost. The people who were to pay it have just failed.’

‘She won’t get anything?’

‘Most likely nothing at all.’

The letter was a private communication from one of John Yule’s executors. It seemed likely that the demand upon Turberville & Co. for an account of the deceased partner’s share in their business had helped to bring about a crisis in affairs that were already unstable. Something might be recovered in the legal proceedings that would result, but there were circumstances which made the outlook very doubtful.

As Marian came to herself her father left the room. An hour afterwards Mrs Yule summoned him again to the girl’s chamber; he went, and found Marian lying on the bed, looking like one who had been long ill.

‘I wish to ask you a few questions,’ she said, without raising herself. ‘Must my legacy necessarily be paid out of that investment?’

‘It must. Those are the terms of the will.’

‘If nothing can be recovered from those people, I have no remedy?’

‘None whatever that I can see.’

‘But when a firm is bankrupt they generally pay some portion of their debts?’

‘Sometimes. I know nothing of the case.’

‘This of course happens to me,’ Marian said, with intense bitterness. ‘None of the other legatees will suffer, I suppose?’

‘Someone must, but to a very small extent.’

‘Of course. When shall I have direct information?’

‘You can write to Mr Holden; you have his address.’

‘Thank you. That’s all.’

He was dismissed, and went quietly away.

PART FIVE

CHAPTER XXX. WAITING ON DESTINY

Throughout the day Marian kept her room. Her intention to leave the house was, of course, abandoned; she was the prisoner of fate. Mrs Yule would have tended her with unremitting devotion, but the girl desired to be alone. At times she lay in silent anguish; frequently her tears broke forth, and she sobbed until weariness overcame her. In the afternoon she wrote a letter to Mr Holden, begging that she might be kept constantly acquainted with the progress of things.

At five her mother brought tea.

‘Wouldn’t it be better if you went to bed now, Marian?’ she suggested.

‘To bed? But I am going out in an hour or two.’

‘Oh, you can’t, dear! It’s so bitterly cold. It wouldn’t be good for you.’

‘I have to go out, mother, so we won’t speak of it.’

It was not safe to reply. Mrs Yule sat down, and watched the girl raise the cup to her mouth with trembling hand.

‘This won’t make any difference to you—in the end, my darling,’ the mother ventured to say at length, alluding for the first time to the effect of the catastrophe on Marian’s immediate prospects.

‘Of course not,’ was the reply, in a tone of self-persuasion.

‘Mr Milvain is sure to have plenty of money before long.’

‘Yes.’

‘You feel much better now, don’t you?’

‘Much. I am quite well again.’

At seven, Marian went out. Finding herself weaker than she had thought, she stopped an empty cab that presently passed her, and so drove to the Milvains’ lodgings. In her agitation she inquired for Mr Milvain, instead of for Dora, as was her habit; it mattered very little, for the landlady and her servants were of course under no misconception regarding this young lady’s visits.

Jasper was at home, and working. He had but to look at Marian to see that something wretched had been going on at her home; naturally he supposed it the result of his letter to Mr Yule.

‘Your father has been behaving brutally,’ he said, holding her hands and gazing anxiously at her.

‘There is something far worse than that, Jasper.’

‘Worse?’

She threw off her outdoor things, then took the fatal letter from her pocket and handed it to him. Jasper gave a whistle of consternation, and looked vacantly from the paper to Marian’s countenance.

‘How the deuce comes this about?’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, wasn’t your uncle aware of the state of things?’

‘Perhaps he was. He may have known that the legacy was a mere form.’

‘You are the only one affected?’

‘So father says. It’s sure to be the case.’

‘This has upset you horribly, I can see. Sit down, Marian. When did the letter come?’

‘This morning.’

‘And you have been fretting over it all day. But come, we must keep up our courage; you may get something substantial out of the scoundrels still.’

Even whilst he spoke his eyes wandered absently. On the last word his voice failed, and he fell into abstraction. Marian’s look was fixed upon him, and he became conscious of it. He tried to smile.

‘What were you writing?’ she asked, making involuntary diversion from the calamitous theme.

‘Rubbish for the Will-o’-the-Wisp. Listen to this paragraph about English concert audiences.’

It was as necessary to him as to her to have a respite before the graver discussion began. He seized gladly the opportunity she offered, and read several pages of manuscript, slipping from one topic to another. To hear him one would have supposed that he was in his ordinary mood; he laughed at his own jokes and points.

‘They’ll have to pay me more,’ was the remark with which he closed. ‘I only wanted to make myself indispensable to them, and at the end of this year I shall feel pretty sure of that. They’ll have to give me two guineas a column; by Jove! they will.’

‘And you may hope for much more than that, mayn’t you, before long?’

‘Oh, I shall transfer myself to a better paper presently. It seems to me I must be stirring to some purpose.’

He gave her a significant look.

‘What shall we do, Jasper?’

‘Work and wait, I suppose.’

‘There’s something I must tell you. Father said I had better sign that Harrington article myself. If I do that, I shall have a right to the money, I think. It will at least be eight guineas. And why shouldn’t I go on writing for myself—for us? You can help me to think of subjects.’

‘First of all, what about my letter to your father? We are forgetting all about it.’

‘He refused to answer.’

Marian avoided closer description of what had happened. It was partly that she felt ashamed of her father’s unreasoning wrath, and feared lest Jasper’s pride might receive an injury from which she in turn would suffer; partly that she was unwilling to pain her lover by making display of all she had undergone.

‘Oh, he refused to reply! Surely that is extreme behaviour.’

What she dreaded seemed to be coming to pass. Jasper stood rather stiffly, and threw his head back.

‘You know the reason, dear. That prejudice has entered into his very life. It is not you he dislikes; that is impossible. He thinks of you only as he would of anyone connected with Mr Fadge.’

‘Well, well; it isn’t a matter of much moment. But what I have in mind is this. Will it be possible for you, whilst living at home, to take a position of independence, and say that you are going to work for your own profit?’

‘At least I might claim half the money I can earn. And I was thinking more of—’

‘Of what?’

‘When I am your wife, I may be able to help. I could earn thirty or forty pounds a year, I think. That would pay the rent of a small house.’

She spoke with shaken voice, her eyes fixed upon his face.

‘But, my dear Marian, we surely oughtn’t to think of marrying so long as expenses are so nicely fitted as all that?’

‘No. I only meant—’

She faltered, and her tongue became silent as her heart sank.

‘It simply means,’ pursued Jasper, seating himself and crossing his legs, ‘that I must move heaven and earth to improve my position. You know that my faith in myself is not small; there’s no knowing what I might do if I used every effort. But, upon my word, I don’t see much hope of our being able to marry for a year or two under the most favourable circumstances.’

‘No; I quite understand that.’

‘Can you promise to keep a little love for me all that time?’ he asked with a constrained smile.

‘You know me too well to fear.’

‘I thought you seemed a little doubtful.’

His tone was not altogether that which makes banter pleasant between lovers. Marian looked at him fearfully. Was it possible for him in truth so to misunderstand her? He had never satisfied her heart’s desire of infinite love; she never spoke with him but she was oppressed with the suspicion that his love was not as great as hers, and, worse still, that he did not wholly comprehend the self-surrender which she strove to make plain in every word.

‘You don’t say that seriously, Jasper?’

‘But answer seriously.’

‘How can you doubt that I would wait faithfully for you for years if it were necessary?’

‘It mustn’t be years, that’s very certain. I think it preposterous for a man to hold a woman bound in that hopeless way.’

‘But what question is there of holding me bound? Is love dependent on fixed engagements? Do you feel that, if we agreed to part, your love would be at once a thing of the past?’

‘Why no, of course not.’

‘Oh, but how coldly you speak, Jasper!’

She could not breathe a word which might be interpreted as fear lest the change of her circumstances should make a change in his feeling. Yet that was in her mind. The existence of such a fear meant, of course, that she did not entirely trust him, and viewed his character as something less than noble. Very seldom indeed is a woman free from such doubts, however absolute her love; and perhaps it is just as rare for a man to credit in his heart all the praises he speaks of his beloved. Passion is compatible with a great many of these imperfections of intellectual esteem. To see more clearly into Jasper’s personality was, for Marian, to suffer the more intolerable dread lest she should lose him.

She went to his side. Her heart ached because, in her great misery, he had not fondled her, and intoxicated her senses with loving words.

‘How can I make you feel how much I love you?’ she murmured.

‘You mustn’t be so literal, dearest. Women are so desperately matter-of-fact; it comes out even in their love-talk.’

Marian was not without perception of the irony of such an opinion on Jasper’s lips.

‘I am content for you to think so,’ she said. ‘There is only one fact in my life of any importance, and I can never lose sight of it.’

‘Well now, we are quite sure of each other. Tell me plainly, do you think me capable of forsaking you because you have perhaps lost your money?’

The question made her wince. If delicacy had held her tongue, it had no control of HIS.

‘How can I answer that better,’ she said, ‘than by saying I love you?’

It was no answer, and Jasper, though obtuse compared with her, understood that it was none. But the emotion which had prompted his words was genuine enough. Her touch, the perfume of her passion, had their exalting effect upon him. He felt in all sincerity that to forsake her would be a baseness, revenged by the loss of such a wife.

‘There’s an uphill fight before me, that’s all,’ he said, ‘instead of the pretty smooth course I have been looking forward to. But I don’t fear it, Marian. I’m not the fellow to be beaten.

You shall be my wife, and you shall have as many luxuries as if you had brought me a fortune.’

‘Luxuries! Oh, how childish you seem to think me!’

‘Not a bit of it. Luxuries are a most important part of life. I had rather not live at all than never possess them. Let me give you a useful hint; if ever I seem to you to flag, just remind me of the difference between these lodgings and a richly furnished house. Just hint to me that So-and-so, the journalist, goes about in his carriage, and can give his wife a box at the theatre. Just ask me, casually, how I should like to run over to the Riviera when London fogs are thickest. You understand? That’s the way to keep me at it like a steam-engine.’

‘You are right. All those things enable one to live a better and fuller life. Oh, how cruel that I—that we are robbed in this way! You can have no idea how terrible a blow it was to me when I read that letter this morning.’

She was on the point of confessing that she had swooned, but something restrained her.

‘Your father can hardly be sorry,’ said Jasper.

‘I think he speaks more harshly than he feels. The worst was, that until he got your letter he had kept hoping that I would let him have the money for a new review.’

‘Well, for the present I prefer to believe that the money isn’t all lost. If the blackguards pay ten shillings in the pound you will get two thousand five hundred out of them, and that’s something. But how do you stand? Will your position be that of an ordinary creditor?’

‘I am so ignorant. I know nothing of such things.’

‘But of course your interests will be properly looked after. Put yourself in communication with this Mr Holden. I’ll have a look into the law on the subject. Let us hope as long as we can. By Jove! There’s no other way of facing it.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘Mrs Reardon and the rest of them are safe enough, I suppose?’

‘Oh, no doubt.’

‘Confound them!—It grows upon one. One doesn’t take in the whole of such a misfortune at once. We must hold on to the last rag of hope, and in the meantime I’ll half work myself to death. Are you going to see the girls?’

‘Not to-night. You must tell them.’

‘Dora will cry her eyes out. Upon my word, Maud’ll have to draw in her horns. I must frighten her into economy and hard work.’

He again lost himself in anxious reverie.

‘Marian, couldn’t you try your hand at fiction?’

She started, remembering that her father had put the same question so recently.

‘I’m afraid I could do nothing worth doing.’

‘That isn’t exactly the question. Could you do anything that would sell? With very moderate success in fiction you might make three times as much as you ever will by magazine pot-boilers. A girl like you. Oh, you might manage, I should think.’

‘A girl like me?’

‘Well, I mean that love-scenes, and that kind of thing, would be very much in your line.’Marian was not given to blushing; very few girls are, even on strong provocation. For the first time Jasper saw her cheeks colour deeply, and it was with anything but pleasure. His words were coarsely inconsiderate, and wounded her.

‘I think that is not my work,’ she said coldly, looking away.

‘But surely there’s no harm in my saying—’ he paused in astonishment. ‘I meant nothing that could offend you.’

‘I know you didn’t, Jasper. But you make me think that—’

‘Don’t be so literal again, my dear girl. Come here and forgive me.’

She did not approach, but only because the painful thought he had excited kept her to that spot.

‘Come, Marian! Then I must come to you.’

He did so and held her in his arms.

‘Try your hand at a novel, dear, if you can possibly make time. Put me in it, if you like, and make me an insensible masculine. The experiment is worth a try I’m certain. At all events do a few chapters, and let me see them. A chapter needn’t take you more than a couple of hours I should think.’

Marian refrained from giving any promise. She seemed irresponsive to his caresses. That thought which at times gives trouble to all women of strong emotions was working in her: had she been too demonstrative, and made her love too cheap? Now that Jasper’s love might be endangered, it behoved her to use any arts which nature prompted. And so, for once, he was not wholly satisfied with her, and at their parting he wondered what subtle change had affected her manner to him.

‘Why didn’t Marian come to speak a word?’ said Dora, when her brother entered the girls’ sitting-room about ten o’clock.

‘You knew she was with me, then?’

‘We heard her voice as she was going away.’

‘She brought me some enspiriting news, and thought it better I should have the reporting of it to you.’

With brevity he made known what had befallen.

‘Cheerful, isn’t it? The kind of thing that strengthens one’s trust in Providence.’

The girls were appalled. Maud, who was reading by the fireside, let her book fall to her lap, and knit her brows darkly.

‘Then your marriage must be put off, of course?’ said Dora.

‘Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if that were found necessary,’ replied her brother caustically. He was able now to give vent to the feeling which in Marian’s presence was suppressed, partly out of consideration for her, and partly owing to her influence.

‘And shall we have to go back to our old lodgings again?’ inquired Maud.

Jasper gave no answer, but kicked a footstool savagely out of his way and paced the room.

‘Oh, do you think we need?’ said Dora, with unusual protest against economy.

‘Remember that it’s a matter for your own consideration,’ Jasper replied at length. ‘You are living on your own resources, you know.’

Maud glanced at her sister, but Dora was preoccupied.

‘Why do you prefer to stay here?’ Jasper asked abruptly of the younger girl.

‘It is so very much nicer,’ she replied with some embarrassment.

He bit the ends of his moustache, and his eyes glared at the impalpable thwarting force that to imagination seemed to fill the air about him.

‘A lesson against being over-hasty,’ he muttered, again kicking the footstool.

‘Did you make that considerate remark to Marian?’ asked Maud.

‘There would have been no harm if I had done. She knows that I shouldn’t have been such an ass as to talk of marriage without the prospect of something to live upon.’

‘I suppose she’s wretched?’ said Dora.

‘What else can you expect?’

‘And did you propose to release her from the burden of her engagement?’ Maud inquired.

‘It’s a confounded pity that you’re not rich, Maud,’ replied her brother with an involuntary laugh. ‘You would have a brilliant reputation for wit.’

He walked about and ejaculated splenetic phrases on the subject of his ill-luck.

‘We are here, and here we must stay,’ was the final expression of his mood. ‘I have only one superstition that I know of and that forbids me to take a step backward. If I went into poorer lodgings again I should feel it was inviting defeat. I shall stay as long as the position is tenable. Let us get on to Christmas, and then see how things look. Heavens! Suppose we had married, and after that lost the money!’

‘You would have been no worse off than plenty of literary men,’ said Dora.

‘Perhaps not. But as I have made up my mind to be considerably better off than most literary men that reflection wouldn’t console me much. Things are in statu quo, that’s all. I have to rely upon my own efforts. What’s the time? Half-past ten; I can get two hours’ work before going to bed.’

And nodding a good-night he left them.

When Marian entered the house and went upstairs, she was followed by her mother. On Mrs Yule’s countenance there was a new distress, she had been crying recently.

‘Have you seen him?’ the mother asked.

‘Yes. We have talked about it.’

‘What does he wish you to do, dear?’

‘There’s nothing to be done except wait.’

‘Father has been telling me something, Marian,’ said Mrs Yule after a long silence. ‘He says he is going to be blind. There’s something the matter with his eyes, and he went to see someone about it this afternoon. He’ll get worse and worse, until there has been an operation; and perhaps he’ll never be able to use his eyes properly again.’

The girl listened in an attitude of despair.

‘He has seen an oculist?—a really good doctor?’

‘He says he went to one of the best.’

‘And how did he speak to you?’

‘He doesn’t seem to care much what happens. He talked of going to the workhouse, and things like that. But it couldn’t ever come to that, could it, Marian? Wouldn’t somebody help him?’

‘There’s not much help to be expected in this world,’ answered the girl.

Physical weariness brought her a few hours of oblivion as soon as she had lain down, but her sleep came to an end in the early morning, when the pressure of evil dreams forced her back to consciousness of real sorrows and cares. A fog-veiled sky added its weight to crush her spirit; at the hour when she usually rose it was still all but as dark as midnight. Her mother’s voice at the door begged her to lie and rest until it grew lighter, and she willingly complied, feeling indeed scarcely capable of leaving her bed.

The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low-spirited languor even in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colourless as the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake, in blank extremity of woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture chamber.

Midway in the morning, when it was still necessary to use artificial light, she went down to the sitting-room. The course of household life had been thrown into confusion by the disasters of the last day or two; Mrs Yule, who occupied herself almost exclusively with questions of economy, cleanliness, and routine, had not the heart to pursue her round of duties, and this morning, though under normal circumstances she would have been busy in ‘turning out’ the dining-room, she moved aimlessly and despondently about the house, giving the servant contradictory orders and then blaming herself for her absentmindedness. In the troubles of her husband and her daughter she had scarcely greater share—so far as active participation went—than if she had been only a faithful old housekeeper; she could only grieve and lament that such discord had come between the two whom she loved, and that in herself was no power even to solace their distresses. Marian found her standing in the passage, with a duster in one hand and a hearth-brush in the other.

‘Your father has asked to see you when you come down,’ Mrs Yule whispered.

‘I’ll go to him.’

Marian entered the study. Her father was not in his place at the writing-table, nor yet seated in the chair which he used when he had leisure to draw up to the fireside; he sat in front of one of the bookcases, bent forward as if seeking a volume, but his chin was propped upon his hand, and he had maintained this position for a long time. He did not immediately move. When he raised his head Marian saw that he looked older, and she noticed—or fancied she did—that there was some unfamiliar peculiarity about his eyes.

‘I am obliged to you for coming,’ he began with distant formality. ‘Since I saw you last I have learnt something which makes a change in my position and prospects, and it is necessary to speak on the subject. I won’t detain you more than a few minutes.’

He coughed, and seemed to consider his next words.

‘Perhaps I needn’t repeat what I have told your mother. You have learnt it from her, I dare say.’

‘Yes, with much grief.’

‘Thank you, but we will leave aside that aspect of the matter. For a few more months I may be able to pursue my ordinary work, but before long I shall certainly be disabled from earning my livelihood by literature. Whether this will in any way affect your own position I don’t know. Will you have the goodness to tell me whether you still purpose leaving this house?’

‘I have no means of doing so.’

‘Is there any likelihood of your marriage taking place, let us say, within four months?’

‘Only if the executors recover my money, or a large portion of it.’

‘I understand. My reason for asking is this. My lease of this house terminates at the end of next March, and I shall certainly not be justified in renewing it. If you are able to provide for yourself in any way it will be sufficient for me to rent two rooms after that. This disease which affects my eyes may be only temporary; in due time an operation may render it possible for me to work again. In hope of that I shall probably have to borrow a sum of money on the security of my life insurance, though in the first instance I shall make the most of what I can get for the furniture of the house and a large part of my library; your mother and I could live at very slight expense in lodgings. If the disease prove irremediable, I must prepare myself for the worst. What I wish to say is, that it will be better if from to-day you consider yourself as working for your own subsistence. So long as I remain here this house is of course your home; there can be no question between us of trivial expenses. But it is right that you should understand what my prospects are. I shall soon have no home to offer you; you must look to your own efforts for support.’

‘I am prepared to do that, father.’

‘I think you will have no great difficulty in earning enough for yourself. I have done my best to train you in writing for the periodicals, and your natural abilities are considerable. If you marry, I wish you a happy life. The end of mine, of many long years of unremitting toil, is failure and destitution.’

Marian sobbed.

‘That’s all I had to say,’ concluded her father, his voice tremulous with self-compassion. ‘I will only beg that there may be no further profitless discussion between us. This room is open to you, as always, and I see no reason why we should not converse on subjects disconnected with our personal differences.’

‘Is there no remedy for cataract in its early stages?’ asked Marian.

‘None. You can read up the subject for yourself at the British Museum. I prefer not to speak of it.’

‘Will you let me be what help to you I can?’

‘For the present the best you can do is to establish a connection for yourself with editors. Your name will be an assistance to you. My advice is, that you send your “Harrington” article forthwith to Trenchard, writing him a note. If you desire my help in the suggestion of new subjects, I will do my best to be of use.’

Marian withdrew. She went to the sitting-room, where an ochreous daylight was beginning to diffuse itself and to render the lamp superfluous. With the dissipation of the fog rain had set in; its splashing upon the muddy pavement was audible.

Mrs Yule, still with a duster in her hand, sat on the sofa. Marian took a place beside her. They talked in low, broken tones, and wept together over their miseries.

CHAPTER XXXI. A RESCUE AND A SUMMONS

The chances are that you have neither understanding nor sympathy for men such as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. They merely provoke you. They seem to you inert, flabby, weakly envious, foolishly obstinate, impiously mutinous, and many other things. You are made angrily contemptuous by their failure to get on; why don’t they bestir themselves, push and bustle, welcome kicks so long as halfpence follow, make place in the world’s eye—in short, take a leaf from the book of Mr Jasper Milvain?

But try to imagine a personality wholly unfitted for the rough and tumble of the world’s labour-market. From the familiar point of view these men were worthless; view them in possible relation to a humane order of Society, and they are admirable citizens. Nothing is easier than to condemn a type of character which is unequal to the coarse demands of life as it suits the average man. These two were richly endowed with the kindly and the imaginative virtues; if fate threw them amid incongruous circumstances, is their endowment of less value? You scorn their passivity; but it was their nature and their merit to be passive.

Gifted with independent means, each of them would have taken quite a different aspect in your eyes. The sum of their faults was their inability to earn money; but, indeed, that inability does not call for unmingled disdain.

It was very weak of Harold Biffen to come so near perishing of hunger as he did in the days when he was completing his novel. But he would have vastly preferred to eat and be satisfied had any method of obtaining food presented itself to him. He did not starve for the pleasure of the thing, I assure you. Pupils were difficult to get just now, and writing that he had sent to magazines had returned upon his hands. He pawned such of his possessions as he could spare, and he reduced his meals to the minimum. Nor was he uncheerful in his cold garret and with his empty stomach, for ‘Mr Bailey, Grocer,’ drew steadily to an end.

He worked very slowly. The book would make perhaps two volumes of ordinary novel size, but he had laboured over it for many months, patiently, affectionately, scrupulously. Each sentence was as good as he could make it, harmonious to the ear, with words of precious meaning skilfully set. Before sitting down to a chapter he planned it minutely in his mind; then he wrote a rough draft of it; then he elaborated the thing phrase by phrase. He had no thought of whether such toil would be recompensed in coin of the realm; nay, it was his conviction that, if with difficulty published, it could scarcely bring him money. The work must be significant, that was all he cared for. And he had no society of admiring friends to encourage him. Reardon understood the merit of the workmanship, but frankly owned that the book was repulsive to him. To the public it would be worse than repulsive—tedious, utterly uninteresting. No matter; it drew to its end.

The day of its completion was made memorable by an event decidedly more exciting, even to the author.

At eight o’clock in the evening there remained half a page to be written. Biffen had already worked about nine hours, and on breaking off to appease his hunger he doubted whether to finish to-night or to postpone the last lines till tomorrow. The discovery that only a small crust of bread lay in the cupboard decided him to write no more; he would have to go out to purchase a loaf and that was disturbance.

But stay; had he enough money? He searched his pockets. Two pence and two farthings; no more.

You are probably not aware that at bakers’ shops in the poor quarters the price of the half-quartern loaf varies sometimes from week to week. At present, as Biffen knew, it was twopence three-farthings, a common figure. But Harold did not possess three farthings, only two. Reflecting, he remembered to have passed yesterday a shop where the bread was marked twopence halfpenny; it was a shop in a very obscure little street off Hampstead Road, some distance from Clipstone Street. Thither he must repair. He had only his hat and a muffler to put on, for again he was wearing his overcoat in default of the under one, and his ragged umbrella to take from the corner; so he went forth.

To his delight the twopence halfpenny announcement was still in the baker’s window. He obtained a loaf wrapped it in the piece of paper he had brought—small bakers decline to supply paper for this purpose—and strode joyously homeward again.

Having eaten, he looked longingly at his manuscript. But half a page more. Should he not finish it to-night? The temptation was irresistible. He sat down, wrought with unusual speed, and at half-past ten wrote with magnificent flourish ‘The End.’

His fire was out and he had neither coals nor wood. But his feet were frozen into lifelessness. Impossible to go to bed like this; he must take another turn in the streets. It would suit his humour to ramble a while. Had it not been so late he would have gone to see Reardon, who expected the communication of this glorious news.

So again he locked his door. Half-way downstairs he stumbled over something or somebody in the dark.

‘Who is that?’ he cried.

The answer was a loud snore. Biffen went to the bottom of the house and called to the landlady.

‘Mrs Willoughby! Who is asleep on the stairs?’

‘Why, I ‘spect it’s Mr Briggs,’ replied the woman, indulgently. ‘Don’t you mind him, Mr Biffen. There’s no ‘arm: he’s only had a little too much. I’ll go up an’ make him go to bed as soon as I’ve got my ‘ands clean.’

‘The necessity for waiting till then isn’t obvious,’ remarked the realist with a chuckle, and went his way.

He walked at a sharp pace for more than an hour, and about midnight drew near to his own quarter again. He had just turned up by the Middlesex Hospital, and was at no great distance from Clipstone Street, when a yell and scamper caught his attention; a group of loafing blackguards on the opposite side of the way had suddenly broken up, and as they rushed off he heard the word ‘Fire!’ This was too common an occurrence to disturb his equanimity; he wondered absently in which street the fire might be, but trudged on without a thought of making investigation. Repeated yells and rushes, however, assailed his apathy. Two women came tearing by him, and he shouted to them: ‘Where is it?’

‘In Clipstone Street, they say,’ one screamed back.

He could no longer be unconcerned. If in his own street the conflagration might be in the very house he inhabited, and in that case— He set off at a run. Ahead of him was a thickening throng, its position indicating the entrance to Clipstone Street. Soon he found his progress retarded; he had to dodge this way and that, to force progress, to guard himself against overthrows by the torrent of ruffiandom which always breaks forth at the cry of fire. He could now smell the smoke, and all at once a black volume of it, bursting from upper windows, alarmed his sight. At once he was aware that, if not his own dwelling, it must be one of those on either side that was in flames. As yet no engine had arrived, and straggling policemen were only just beginning to make their way to the scene of uproar. By dint of violent effort Biffen moved forward yard by yard. A tongue of flame which suddenly illumined the fronts of the houses put an end to his doubt.

‘Let me get past!’ he shouted to the gaping and swaying mass of people in front of him. ‘I live there! I must go upstairs to save something!’

His educated accent moved attention. Repeating the demand again and again he succeeded in getting forward, and at length was near enough to see that people were dragging articles of furniture out on to the pavement.

‘That you, Mr Biffen?’ cried someone to him.

He recognised the face of a fellow-lodger.

‘Is it possible to get up to my room?’ broke frantically from his lips.

‘You’ll never get up there. It’s that— Briggs’—the epithet was alliterative—”as upset his lamp, and I ‘ope he’ll—well get roasted to death.’

Biffen leaped on to the threshold, and crashed against Mrs Willoughby, the landlady, who was carrying a huge bundle of household linen.

‘I told you to look after that drunken brute;’ he said to her. ‘Can I get upstairs?’

‘What do I care whether you can or not!’ the woman shrieked. ‘My God! And all them new chairs as I bought—!’

He heard no more, but bounded over a confusion of obstacles, and in a moment was on the landing of the first storey. Here he encountered a man who had not lost his head, a stalwart mechanic engaged in slipping clothes on to two little children.

‘If somebody don’t drag that fellow Briggs down he’ll be dead,’ observed the man. ‘He’s layin’ outside his door. I pulled him out, but I can’t do no more for him.’

Smoke grew thick on the staircase. Burning was as yet confined to that front room on the second floor tenanted by Briggs the disastrous, but in all likelihood the ceiling was ablaze, and if so it would be all but impossible for Biffen to gain his own chamber, which was at the back on the floor above. No one was making an attempt to extinguish the fire; personal safety and the rescue of their possessions alone occupied the thoughts of such people as were still in the house. Desperate with the dread of losing his manuscript, his toil, his one hope, the realist scarcely stayed to listen to a warning that the fumes were impassable; with head bent he rushed up to the next landing. There lay Briggs, perchance already stifled, and through the open door Biffen had a horrible vision of furnace fury. To go yet higher would have been madness but for one encouragement: he knew that on his own storey was a ladder giving access to a trap-door, by which he might issue on to the roof, whence escape to the adjacent houses would be practicable. Again a leap forward!

In fact, not two minutes elapsed from his commencing the ascent of the stairs to the moment when, all but fainting, he thrust the key into his door and fell forward into purer air. Fell, for he was on his knees, and had begun to suffer from a sense of failing power, a sick whirling of the brain, a terror of hideous death. His manuscript was on the table, where he had left it after regarding and handling it with joyful self-congratulation; though it was pitch dark in the room, he could at once lay his hand on the heap of paper. Now he had it; now it was jammed tight under his left arm; now he was out again on the landing, in smoke more deadly than ever.

He said to himself: ‘If I cannot instantly break out by the trap-door it’s all over with me.’ That the exit would open to a vigorous thrust he knew, having amused himself not long ago by going on to the roof. He touched the ladder, sprang upwards, and felt the trap above him. But he could not push it back. ‘I’m a dead man,’ flashed across his mind, ‘and all for the sake of “Mr Bailey, Grocer.”’ A frenzied effort, the last of which his muscles were capable, and the door yielded. His head was now through the aperture, and though the smoke swept up about him, that gasp of cold air gave him strength to throw himself on the flat portion of the roof that he had reached.

So for a minute or two he lay. Then he was able to stand, to survey his position, and to walk along by the parapet. He looked down upon the surging and shouting crowd in Clipstone Street, but could see it only at intervals, owing to the smoke that rolled from the front windows below him.

What he had now to do he understood perfectly. This roof was divided from those on either hand by a stack of chimneys; to get round the end of these stacks was impossible, or at all events too dangerous a feat unless it were the last resource, but by climbing to the apex of the slates he would be able to reach the chimney-pots, to drag himself up to them, and somehow to tumble over on to the safer side. To this undertaking he forthwith addressed himself. Without difficulty he reached the ridge; standing on it he found that only by stretching his arm to the utmost could he grip the top of a chimney-pot. Had he the strength necessary to raise himself by such a hold? And suppose the pot broke?

His life was still in danger; the increasing volumes of smoke warned him that in a few minutes the uppermost storey might be in flames. He took off his overcoat to allow himself more freedom of action; the manuscript, now an encumbrance, must precede him over the chimney-stack, and there was only one way of effecting that. With care he stowed the papers into the pockets of the coat; then he rolled the garment together, tied it up in its own sleeves, took a deliberate aim—and the bundle was for the present in safety.

Now for the gymnastic endeavour. Standing on tiptoe, he clutched the rim of the chimney-pot, and strove to raise himself. The hold was firm enough, but his arms were far too puny to perform such work, even when death would be the penalty of failure. Too long he had lived on insufficient food and sat over the debilitating desk. He swung this way and that, trying to throw one of his knees as high as the top of the brickwork, but there was no chance of his succeeding. Dropping on to the slates, he sat there in perturbation.

He must cry for help. In front it was scarcely possible to stand by the parapet, owing to the black clouds of smoke, now mingled with sparks; perchance he might attract the notice of some person either in the yards behind or at the back windows of other houses. The night was so obscure that he could not hope to be seen; voice alone must be depended upon, and there was no certainty that it would be heard far enough. Though he stood in his shirt-sleeves in a bitter wind no sense of cold affected him; his face was beaded with perspiration drawn forth by his futile struggle to climb. He let himself slide down the rear slope, and, holding by the end of the chimney brickwork, looked into the yards. At the same instant a face appeared to him—that of a man who was trying to obtain a glimpse of this roof from that of the next house by thrusting out his head beyond the block of chimneys.

‘Hollo!’ cried the stranger. ‘What are you doing there?’

‘Trying to escape, of course. Help me to get on to your roof.’

‘By God! I expected to see the fire coming through already. Are you the— as upset his lamp an’ fired the bloomin’ ‘ouse?’

‘Not I! He’s lying drunk on the stairs; dead by this time.’

‘By God! I wouldn’t have helped you if you’d been him. How are you coming round? Blest if I see! You’ll break your bloomin’ neck if you try this corner. You’ll have to come over the chimneys; wait till I get a ladder.’

‘And a rope,’ shouted Biffen.

The man disappeared for five minutes. To Biffen it seemed half an hour; he felt, or imagined he felt, the slates getting hot beneath him, and the smoke was again catching his breath. But at length there was a shout from the top of the chimney-stack. The rescuer had seated himself on one of the pots, and was about to lower on Biffen’s side a ladder which had enabled him to ascend from the other. Biffen planted the lowest rung very carefully on the ridge of the roof, climbed as lightly as possible, got a footing between two pots; the ladder was then pulled over, and both men descended in safety.

‘Have you seen a coat lying about here?’ was Biffen’s first question. ‘I threw mine over.’

‘What did you do that for?’

‘There are some valuable papers in the pockets.’

They searched in vain; on neither side of the roof was the coat discoverable.

‘You must have pitched it into the street,’ said the man.

This was a terrible blow; Biffen forgot his rescue from destruction in lament for the loss of his manuscript. He would have pursued the fruitless search, but his companion, who feared that the fire might spread to adjoining houses, insisted on his passing through the trap-door and descending the stairs.’If the coat fell into the street,’ Biffen said, when they were down on the ground floor, ‘of course it’s lost; it would be stolen at once. But may not it have fallen into your back yard?’

He was standing in the midst of a cluster of alarmed people, who stared at him in astonishment, for the reek through which he had fought his way had given him the aspect of a sweep. His suggestion prompted someone to run into the yard, with the result that a muddy bundle was brought in and exhibited to him.

‘Is this your coat, Mister?’

‘Heaven be thanked! That’s it! There are valuable papers in the pockets.’

He unrolled the garment, felt to make sure that ‘Mr Bailey’ was safe, and finally put it on.

‘Will anyone here let me sit down in a room and give me a drink of water?’ he asked, feeling now as if he must drop with exhaustion.

The man who had rescued him performed this further kindness, and for half an hour, whilst tumult indescribable raged about him, Biffen sat recovering his strength. By that time the firemen were hard at work, but one floor of the burning house had already fallen through, and it was probable that nothing but the shell would be saved. After giving a full account of himself to the people among whom he had come, Harold declared his intention of departing; his need of repose was imperative, and he could not hope for it in this proximity to the fire. As he had no money, his only course was to inquire for a room at some house in the immediate neighbourhood, where the people would receive him in a charitable spirit.

With the aid of the police he passed to where the crowd was thinner, and came out into Cleveland Street. Here most of the house-doors were open, and he made several applications for hospitality, but either his story was doubted or his grimy appearance predisposed people against him. At length, when again his strength was all but at an end, he made appeal to a policeman.

‘Surely you can tell,’ he protested, after explaining his position, ‘that I don’t want to cheat anybody. I shall have money tomorrow. If no one will take me in you must haul me on some charge to the police-station; I shall have to lie down on the pavement in a minute.’

The officer recognised a man who was standing half-dressed on a threshold close by; he stepped up to him and made representations which were successful. In a few minutes Biffen took possession of an underground room furnished as a bedchamber, which he agreed to rent for a week. His landlord was not ungracious, and went so far as to supply him with warm water, that he might in a measure cleanse himself. This operation rapidly performed, the hapless author flung himself into bed, and before long was fast asleep.

When he went upstairs about nine o’clock in the morning he discovered that his host kept an oil-shop.

‘Lost everything, have you?’ asked the man sympathetically.

‘Everything, except the clothes I wear and some papers that I managed to save. All my books burnt!’

Biffen shook his head dolorously.

‘Your account-books!’ cried the dealer in oil. ‘Dear, dear!—and what might your business be?’

The author corrected this misapprehension. In the end he was invited to break his fast, which he did right willingly. Then, with assurances that he would return before nightfall, he left the house. His steps were naturally first directed to Clipstone Street; the familiar abode was a gruesome ruin, still smoking. Neighbours informed him that Mr Briggs’s body had been brought forth in a horrible condition; but this was the only loss of life that had happened.

Thence he struck eastward, and at eleven came to Manville Street, Islington. He found Reardon by the fireside, looking very ill, and speaking with hoarseness.

‘Another cold?’

‘It looks like it. I wish you would take the trouble to go and buy me some vermin-killer. That would suit my case.’

‘Then what would suit mine? Behold me, undeniably a philosopher; in the literal sense of the words omnia mea mecum porto.’

He recounted his adventures, and with such humorous vivacity that when he ceased the two laughed together as if nothing more amusing had ever been heard.

‘Ah, but my books, my books!’ exclaimed Biffen, with a genuine groan. ‘And all my notes! At one fell swoop! If I didn’t laugh, old friend, I should sit down and cry; indeed I should. All my classics, with years of scribbling in the margins! How am I to buy them again?’

‘You rescued “Mr Bailey.” He must repay you.’

Biffen had already laid the manuscript on the table; it was dirty and crumpled, but not to such an extent as to render copying necessary. Lovingly he smoothed the pages and set them in order, then he wrapped the whole in a piece of brown paper which Reardon supplied, and wrote upon it the address of a firm of publishers.

‘Have you note-paper? I’ll write to them; impossible to call in my present guise.’

Indeed his attire was more like that of a bankrupt costermonger than of a man of letters. Collar he had none, for the griminess of that he wore last night had necessitated its being thrown aside; round his throat was a dirty handkerchief. His coat had been brushed, but its recent experiences had brought it one stage nearer to that dissolution which must very soon be its fate. His grey trousers were now black, and his boots looked as if they had not been cleaned for weeks.

‘Shall I say anything about the character of the book?’ he asked, seating himself with pen and paper. ‘Shall I hint that it deals with the ignobly decent?’

‘Better let them form their own judgment,’ replied Reardon, in his hoarse voice.

‘Then I’ll just say that I submit to them a novel of modern life, the scope of which is in some degree indicated by its title. Pity they can’t know how nearly it became a holocaust, and that I risked my life to save it. If they’re good enough to accept it I’ll tell them the story. And now, Reardon, I’m ashamed of myself, but can you without inconvenience lend me ten shillings?’

‘Easily.’

‘I must write to two pupils, to inform them of my change of address—from garret to cellar. And I must ask help from my prosperous brother. He gives it me unreluctantly, I know, but I am always loth to apply to him. May I use your paper for these purposes?’

The brother of whom he spoke was employed in a house of business at Liverpool; the two had not met for years, but they corresponded, and were on terms such as Harold indicated. When he had finished his letters, and had received the half-sovereign from Reardon, he went his way to deposit the brown-paper parcel at the publishers’. The clerk who received it from his hands probably thought that the author might have chosen a more respectable messenger.

Two days later, early in the evening, the friends were again enjoying each other’s company in Reardon’s room. Both were invalids, for Biffen had of course caught a cold from his exposure in shirt-sleeves on the roof, and he was suffering from the shock to his nerves; but the thought that his novel was safe in the hands of publishers gave him energy to resist these influences. The absence of the pipe, for neither had any palate for tobacco at present, was the only external peculiarity of this meeting. There seemed no reason why they should not meet frequently before the parting which would come at Christmas; but Reardon was in a mood of profound sadness, and several times spoke as if already he were bidding his friend farewell.

‘I find it difficult to think,’ he said, ‘that you will always struggle on in such an existence as this. To every man of mettle there does come an opportunity, and it surely is time for yours to present itself. I have a superstitious faith in “Mr Bailey.” If he leads you to triumph, don’t altogether forget me.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense.’

‘What ages it seems since that day when I saw you in the library at Hastings, and heard you ask in vain for my book! And how grateful I was to you! I wonder whether any mortal ever asks for my books nowadays? Some day, when I am well established at Croydon, you shall go to Mudie’s, and make inquiry if my novels ever by any chance leave the shelves, and then you shall give me a true and faithful report of the answer you get. “He is quite forgotten,” the attendant will say; be sure of it.’

‘I think not.’

‘To have had even a small reputation, and to have outlived it, is a sort of anticipation of death. The man Edwin Reardon, whose name was sometimes spoken in a tone of interest, is really and actually dead. And what remains of me is resigned to that. I have an odd fancy that it will make death itself easier; it is as if only half of me had now to die.’

Biffen tried to give a lighter turn to the gloomy subject.

‘Thinking of my fiery adventure,’ he said, in his tone of dry deliberation, ‘I find it vastly amusing to picture you as a witness at the inquest if I had been choked and consumed. No doubt it would have been made known that I rushed upstairs to save some particular piece of property—several people heard me say so—and you alone would be able to conjecture what this was. Imagine the gaping wonderment of the coroner’s jury! The Daily Telegraph would have made a leader out of me. “This poor man was so strangely deluded as to the value of a novel in manuscript, which it appears he had just completed, that he positively sacrificed his life in the endeavour to rescue it from the flames.” And the Saturday would have had a column of sneering jocosity on the irrepressibly sanguine temperament of authors. At all events, I should have had my day of fame.’

‘But what an ignoble death it would have been!’ he pursued. ‘Perishing in the garret of a lodging-house which caught fire by the overturning of a drunkard’s lamp! One would like to end otherwise.’

‘Where would you wish to die?’ asked Reardon, musingly.

‘At home,’ replied the other, with pathetic emphasis. ‘I have never had a home since I was a boy, and am never likely to have one. But to die at home is an unreasoning hope I still cherish.’

‘If you had never come to London, what would you have now been?’

‘Almost certainly a schoolmaster in some small town. And one might be worse off than that, you know.’

‘Yes, one might live peaceably enough in such a position. And I— I should be in an estate-agent’s office, earning a sufficient salary, and most likely married to some unambitious country girl.

I should have lived an intelligible life, instead of only trying to live, aiming at modes of life beyond my reach. My mistake was that of numberless men nowadays. Because I was conscious of brains, I thought that the only place for me was London. It’s easy enough to understand this common delusion. We form our ideas of London from old literature; we think of London as if it were still the one centre of intellectual life; we think and talk like Chatterton. But the truth is that intellectual men in our day do their best to keep away from London—when once they know the place. There are libraries everywhere; papers and magazines reach the north of Scotland as soon as they reach Brompton; it’s only on rare occasions, for special kinds of work, that one is bound to live in London. And as for recreation, why, now that no English theatre exists, what is there in London that you can’t enjoy in almost any part of England? At all events, a yearly visit of a week would be quite sufficient for all the special features of the town. London is only a huge shop, with an hotel on the upper storeys. To be sure, if you make it your artistic subject, that’s a different thing. But neither you nor I would do that by deliberate choice.’

‘I think not.’

‘It’s a huge misfortune, this will-o’-the-wisp attraction exercised by London on young men of brains. They come here to be degraded, or to perish, when their true sphere is a life of peaceful remoteness. The type of man capable of success in London is more or less callous and cynical. If I had the training of boys, I would teach them to think of London as the last place where life can be lived worthily.’

‘And the place where you are most likely to die in squalid wretchedness.’

‘The one happy result of my experiences,’ said Reardon, is that they have cured me of ambition. What a miserable fellow I should be if I were still possessed with the desire to make a name! I can’t even recall very clearly that state of mind. My strongest desire now is for peaceful obscurity. I am tired out; I want to rest for the remainder of my life.’

‘You won’t have much rest at Croydon.’

‘Oh, it isn’t impossible. My time will be wholly occupied in a round of all but mechanical duties, and I think that will be the best medicine for my mind. I shall read very little, and that only in the classics. I don’t say that I shall always be content in such a position; in a few years perhaps something pleasanter will offer. But in the meantime it will do very well. Then there is our expedition to Greece to look forward to. I am quite in earnest about that. The year after next, if we are both alive, assuredly we go.’

‘The year after next.’ Biffen smiled dubiously.

‘I have demonstrated to you mathematically that it is possible.’

‘You have; but so are a great many other things that one does not dare to hope for.’

Someone knocked at the door, opened it, and said:

‘Here’s a telegram for you, Mr Reardon.’

The friends looked at each other, as if some fear had entered the minds of both. Reardon opened the despatch. It was from his wife, and ran thus:

‘Willie is ill of diphtheria. Please come to us at once. I am staying with Mrs Carter, at her mother’s, at Brighton.’

The full address was given.

‘You hadn’t heard of her going there?’ said Biffen, when he had read the lines.

‘No. I haven’t seen Carter for several days, or perhaps he would have told me. Brighton, at this time of year? But I believe there’s a fashionable “season” about now, isn’t there? I suppose that would account for it.’

He spoke in a slighting tone, but showed increasing agitation.

‘Of course you will go?’

‘I must. Though I’m in no condition for making a journey.’

His friend examined him anxiously.

‘Are you feverish at all this evening?’

Reardon held out a hand that the other might feel his pulse. The beat was rapid to begin with, and had been heightened since the arrival of the telegram.

‘But go I must. The poor little fellow has no great place in my heart, but, when Amy sends for me, I must go. Perhaps things are at the worst.’

‘When is there a train? Have you a time table?’

Biffen was despatched to the nearest shop to purchase one, and in the meanwhile Reardon packed a few necessaries in a small travelling-bag, ancient and worn, but the object of his affection because it had accompanied him on his wanderings in the South. When Harold returned, his appearance excited Reardon’s astonishment—he was white from head to foot.

‘Snow?’

‘It must have been falling heavily for an hour or more.’

‘Can’t be helped; I must go.’

The nearest station for departure was London Bridge, and the next train left at 7.20. By Reardon’s watch it was now about five minutes to seven.

‘I don’t know whether it’s possible,’ he said, in confused hurry, ‘but I must try. There isn’t another train till ten past nine. Come with me to the station, Biffen.’

Both were ready. They rushed from the house, and sped through the soft, steady fall of snowflakes into Upper Street. Here they were several minutes before they found a disengaged cab. Questioning the driver, they learnt what they would have known very well already but for their excitement: impossible to get to London Bridge Station in a quarter of an hour.

‘Better to go on, all the same,’ was Reardon’s opinion. ‘If the snow gets deep I shall perhaps not be able to have a cab at all. But you had better not come; I forgot that you are as much out of sorts as I am.’

‘How can you wait a couple of hours alone? In with you!’

‘Diphtheria is pretty sure to be fatal to a child of that age, isn’t it?’ Reardon asked when they were speeding along City Road.

‘I’m afraid there’s much danger.’

‘Why did she send?’

‘What an absurd question! You seem to have got into a thoroughly morbid state of mind about her. Do be human, and put away your obstinate folly.’

‘In my position you would have acted precisely as I have done. I have had no choice.’

‘I might; but we have both of us too little practicality. The art of living is the art of compromise. We have no right to foster sensibilities, and conduct ourselves as if the world allowed of ideal relations; it leads to misery for others as well as ourselves. Genial coarseness is what it behoves men like you and me to cultivate. Your reply to your wife’s last letter was preposterous. You ought to have gone to her of your own accord as soon as ever you heard she was rich; she would have thanked you for such common-sense disregard of delicacies. Let there be an end of this nonsense, I implore you!’

Reardon stared through the glass at the snow that fell thicker and thicker.

‘What are we—you and I?’ pursued the other. ‘We have no belief in immortality; we are convinced that this life is all; we know that human happiness is the origin and end of all moral considerations. What right have we to make ourselves and others miserable for the sake of an obstinate idealism? It is our duty to make the best of circumstances. Why will you go cutting your loaf with a razor when you have a serviceable bread-knife?’

Still Reardon did not speak. The cab rolled on almost silently.

‘You love your wife, and this summons she sends is proof that her thought turns to you as soon as she is in distress.’

‘Perhaps she only thought it her duty to let the child’s father know—’

‘Perhaps—perhaps—perhaps!’ cried Biffen, contemptuously. ‘There goes the razor again! Take the plain, human construction of what happens. Ask yourself what the vulgar man would do, and do likewise; that’s the only safe rule for you.’

They were both hoarse with too much talking, and for the last half of the drive neither spoke.

At the railway-station they ate and drank together, but with poor pretence of appetite. As long as possible they kept within the warmed rooms. Reardon was pale, and had anxious, restless eyes; he could not remain seated, though when he had walked about for a few minutes the trembling of his limbs obliged him to sink down. It was an unutterable relief to both when the moment of the train’s starting approached.

They clasped hands warmly, and exchanged a few last requests and promises.

‘Forgive my plain speech, old fellow,’ said Biffen. ‘Go and be happy!’

Then he stood alone on the platform, watching the red light on the last carriage as the train whirled away into darkness and storm.

CHAPTER XXXII. REARDON BECOMES PRACTICAL

Reardon had never been to Brighton, and of his own accord never would have gone; he was prejudiced against the place because its name has become suggestive of fashionable imbecility and the snobbishness which tries to model itself thereon; he knew that the town was a mere portion of London transferred to the sea-shore, and as he loved the strand and the breakers for their own sake, to think of them in such connection could be nothing but a trial of his temper. Something of this species of irritation affected him in the first part of his journey, and disturbed the mood of kindliness with which he was approaching Amy; but towards the end he forgot this in a growing desire to be beside his wife in her trouble. His impatience made the hour and a half seem interminable.

The fever which was upon him had increased. He coughed frequently; his breathing was difficult; though constantly moving, he felt as if, in the absence of excitement, his one wish would have been to lie down and abandon himself to lethargy. Two men who sat with him in the third-class carriage had spread a rug over their knees and amused themselves with playing cards for trifling sums of money; the sight of their foolish faces, the sound of their laughs, the talk they interchanged, exasperated him to the last point of endurance; but for all that he could not draw his attention from them. He seemed condemned by some spiritual tormentor to take an interest in their endless games, and to observe their visages until he knew every line with a hateful intimacy. One of the men had a moustache of unusual form; the ends curved upward with peculiar suddenness, and Reardon was constrained to speculate as to the mode of training by which this singularity had been produced. He could have shed teats of nervous distraction in his inability to turn his thoughts upon other things.

On alighting at his journey’s end he was seized with a fit of shivering, an intense and sudden chill which made his teeth chatter. In an endeavour to overcome this he began to run towards the row of cabs, but his legs refused such exercise, and coughing compelled him to pause for breath. Still shaking, he threw himself into a vehicle and was driven to the address Amy had mentioned. The snow on the ground lay thick, but no more was falling.

Heedless of the direction which the cab took, he suffered his physical and mental unrest for another quarter of an hour, then a stoppage told him that the house was reached. On his way he had heard a clock strike eleven.

The door opened almost as soon as he had rung the bell. He mentioned his name, and the maid-servant conducted him to a drawing-room on the ground-floor. The house was quite a small one, but seemed to be well furnished. One lamp burned on the table, and the fire had sunk to a red glow. Saying that she would inform Mrs Reardon at once, the servant left him alone.

He placed his bag on the floor, took off his muffler, threw back his overcoat, and sat waiting. The overcoat was new, but the garments beneath it were his poorest, those he wore when sitting in his garret, for he had neither had time to change them, nor thought of doing so.

He heard no approaching footstep but Amy came into the room in a way which showed that she had hastened downstairs. She looked at him, then drew near with both hands extended, and laid them on his shoulders, and kissed him. Reardon shook so violently that it was all he could do to remain standing; he seized one of her hands, and pressed it against his lips.

‘How hot your breath is!’ she said. ‘And how you tremble! Are you ill?’

‘A bad cold, that’s all,’ he answered thickly, and coughed. ‘How is Willie?’

‘In great danger. The doctor is coming again to-night; we thought that was his ring.’

‘You didn’t expect me to-night?’

‘I couldn’t feel sure whether you would come.’

‘Why did you send for me, Amy? Because Willie was in danger, and you felt I ought to know about it?’

‘Yes—and because I—’

She burst into tears. The display of emotion came very suddenly; her words had been spoken in a firm voice, and only the pained knitting of her brows had told what she was suffering.

‘If Willie dies, what shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?’ broke forth between her sobs.

Reardon took her in his arms, and laid his hand upon her head in the old loving way.

‘Do you wish me to go up and see him, Amy?’

‘Of course. But first, let me tell you why we are here. Edith— Mrs Carter—was coming to spend a week with her mother, and she pressed me to join her. I didn’t really wish to; I was unhappy, and felt how impossible it was to go on always living away from you. Oh, that I had never come! Then Willie would have been as well as ever.’

‘Tell me when and how it began.’

She explained briefly, then went on to tell of other circumstances.

‘I have a nurse with me in the room. It’s my own bedroom, and this house is so small it will be impossible to give you a bed here, Edwin. But there’s an hotel only a few yards away.’

‘Yes, yes; don’t trouble about that.’

‘But you look so ill—you are shaking so. Is it a cold you have had long?’

‘Oh, my old habit; you remember. One cold after another, all through the accursed winter. What does that matter when you speak kindly to me once more? I had rather die now at your feet and see the old gentleness when you look at me, than live on estranged from you. No, don’t kiss me, I believe these vile sore-throats are contagious.’

‘But your lips are so hot and parched! And to think of your coming this journey, on such a night!’

‘Good old Biffen came to the station with me. He was angry because I had kept away from you so long. Have you given me your heart again, Amy?’

‘Oh, it has all been a wretched mistake! But we were so poor. Now all that is over; if only Willie can be saved to me! I am so anxious for the doctor’s coming; the poor little child can hardly draw a breath. How cruel it is that such suffering should come upon a little creature who has never done or thought ill!’

‘You are not the first, dearest, who has revolted against nature’s cruelty.’

‘Let us go up at once, Edwin. Leave your coat and things here. Mrs Winter—Edith’s mother—is a very old lady; she has gone to bed. And I dare say you wouldn’t care to see Mrs Carter to-night?’

‘No, no! only you and Willie.’

‘When the doctor comes hadn’t you better ask his advice for yourself?’

‘We shall see. Don’t trouble about me.’

They went softly up to the first floor, and entered a bedroom. Fortunately the light here was very dim, or the nurse who sat by the child’s bed must have wondered at the eccentricity with which her patient’s father attired himself. Bending over the little sufferer, Reardon felt for the first time since Willie’s birth a strong fatherly emotion; tears rushed to his eyes, and he almost crushed Amy’s hand as he held it during the spasm of his intense feeling.

He sat here for a long time without speaking. The warmth of the chamber had the reverse of an assuaging effect upon his difficult breathing and his frequent short cough—it seemed to oppress and confuse his brain. He began to feel a pain in his right side, and could not sit upright on the chair.

Amy kept regarding him, without his being aware of it.

‘Does your head ache?’ she whispered.

He nodded, but did not speak.

‘Oh, why doesn’t the doctor come? I must send in a few minutes.’

But as soon as she had spoken a bell rang in the lower part of the house. Amy had no doubt that it announced the promised visit.

She left the room, and in a minute or two returned with the medical man. When the examination of the child was over, Reardon requested a few words with the doctor in the room downstairs.

‘I’ll come back to you,’ he whispered to Amy.

The two descended together, and entered the drawing-room.

‘Is there any hope for the little fellow?’ Reardon asked.

Yes, there was hope; a favourable turn might be expected.

‘Now I wish to trouble you for a moment on my own account. I shouldn’t be surprised if you tell me that I have congestion of the lungs.’

The doctor, a suave man of fifty, had been inspecting his interlocutor with curiosity. He now asked the necessary questions, and made an examination.

‘Have you had any lung trouble before this?’ he inquired gravely.

‘Slight congestion of the right lung not many weeks ago.’

‘I must order you to bed immediately. Why have you allowed your symptoms to go so far without—’

‘I have just come down from London,’ interrupted Reardon.

‘Tut, tut, tut! To bed this moment, my dear sir! There is inflammation, and—’

‘I can’t have a bed in this house; there is no spare room. I must go to the nearest hotel.’

‘Positively? Then let me take you. My carriage is at the door.’

‘One thing—I beg you won’t tell my wife that this is serious. Wait till she is out of her anxiety about the child.’

‘You will need the services of a nurse. A most unfortunate thing that you are obliged to go to the hotel.’

‘It can’t be helped. If a nurse is necessary, I must engage one.’

He had the strange sensation of knowing that whatever was needful could be paid for; it relieved his mind immensely. To the rich, illness has none of the worst horrors only understood by the poor.

‘Don’t speak a word more than you can help,’ said the doctor as he watched Reardon withdraw.

Amy stood on the lower stairs, and came down as soon as her husband showed himself.

‘The doctor is good enough to take me in his carriage,’ he whispered. ‘It is better that I should go to bed, and get a good night’s rest. I wish I could have sat with you, Amy.’

‘Is it anything? You look worse than when you came, Edwin.’

‘A feverish cold. Don’t give it a thought, dearest. Go to Willie. Goodnight!’

She threw her arms about him.

‘I shall come to see you if you are not able to be here by nine in the morning,’ she said, and added the name of the hotel to which he was to go.

At this establishment the doctor was well known. By midnight Reardon lay in a comfortable room, a huge cataplasm fixed upon him, and other needful arrangements made. A waiter had undertaken to visit him at intervals through the night, and the man of medicine promised to return as soon as possible after daybreak.

What sound was that, soft and continuous, remote, now clearer, now confusedly murmuring? He must have slept, but now he lay in sudden perfect consciousness, and that music fell upon his ears. Ah! of course it was the rising tide; he was near the divine sea.

The night-light enabled him to discern the principal objects in the room, and he let his eyes stray idly hither and thither. But this moment of peacefulness was brought to an end by a fit of coughing, and he became troubled, profoundly troubled, in mind. Was his illness really dangerous? He tried to draw a deep breath, but could not. He found that he could only lie on his right side with any ease. And with the effort of turning he exhausted himself; in the course of an hour or two all his strength had left him. Vague fears flitted harassingly through his thoughts. If he had inflammation of the lungs—that was a disease of which one might die, and speedily. Death? No, no, no; impossible at such a time as this, when Amy, his own dear wife, had come back to him, and had brought him that which would insure their happiness through all the years of a long life.

He was still quite a young man; there must be great reserves of strength in him. And he had the will to live, the prevailing will, the passionate all-conquering desire of happiness.

How he had alarmed himself! Why, now he was calmer again, and again could listen to the music of the breakers. Not all the folly and baseness that paraded along this strip of the shore could change the sea’s eternal melody. In a day or two he would walk on the sands with Amy, somewhere quite out of sight of the repulsive town. But Willie was ill; he had forgotten that. Poor little boy! In future the child should be more to him; though never what the mother was, his own love, won again and for ever.

Again an interval of unconsciousness, brought to an end by that aching in his side. He breathed very quickly; could not help doing so. He had never felt so ill as this, never. Was it not near morning?

Then he dreamt. He was at Patras, was stepping into a boat to be rowed out to the steamer which would bear him away from Greece. A magnificent night, though at the end of December; a sky of deep blue, thick set with stars. No sound but the steady splash of the oars, or perhaps a voice from one of the many vessels that lay anchored in the harbour, each showing its lantern-gleams. The water was as deep a blue as the sky, and sparkled with reflected radiance.

And now he stood on deck in the light of early morning. Southward lay the Ionian Islands; he looked for Ithaca, and grieved that it had been passed in the hours of darkness. But the nearest point of the main shore was a rocky promontory; it reminded him that in these waters was fought the battle of Actium.

The glory vanished. He lay once more a sick man in a hired chamber, longing for the dull English dawn.

At eight o’clock came the doctor. He would allow only a word or two to be uttered, and his visit was brief. Reardon was chiefly anxious to have news of the child, but for this he would have to wait.

At ten Amy entered the bedroom. Reardon could not raise himself, but he stretched out his hand and took hers, and gazed eagerly at her. She must have been weeping, he felt sure of that, and there was an expression on her face such as he had never seen there.

‘How is Willie?’

‘Better, dear; much better.’

He still searched her face.

‘Ought you to leave him?’

‘Hush! You mustn’t speak.’

Tears broke from her eyes, and Reardon had the conviction that the child was dead.

‘The truth, Amy!’

She threw herself on her knees by the bedside, and pressed her wet cheek against his hand.

‘I am come to nurse you, dear husband,’ she said a moment after, standing up again and kissing his forehead. ‘I have only you now.’

His heart sank, and for a moment so great a terror was upon him that he closed his eyes and seemed to pass into utter darkness. But those last words of hers repeated themselves in his mind, and at length they brought a deep solace. Poor little Willie had been the cause of the first coldness between him and Amy; her love for him had given place to a mother’s love for the child. Now it would be as in the first days of their marriage; they would again be all in all to each other.

‘You oughtn’t to have come, feeling so ill,’ she said to him. ‘You should have let me know, dear.’

He smiled and kissed her hand.

‘And you kept the truth from me last night, in kindness.’

She checked herself, knowing that agitation must be harmful to him. She had hoped to conceal the child’s death, but the effort was too much for her overstrung nerves. And indeed it was only possible for her to remain an hour or two by this sick-bed, for she was exhausted by her night of watching, and the sudden agony with which it had concluded. Shortly after Amy’s departure, a professional nurse came to attend upon what the doctor had privately characterised as a very grave case.

By the evening its gravity was in no respect diminished. The sufferer had ceased to cough and to make restless movements, and had become lethargic; later, he spoke deliriously, or rather muttered, for his words were seldom intelligible. Amy had returned to the room at four o’clock, and remained till far into the night; she was physically exhausted, and could do little but sit in a chair by the bedside and shed silent tears, or gaze at vacancy in the woe of her sudden desolation. Telegrams had been exchanged with her mother, who was to arrive in Brighton tomorrow morning; the child’s funeral would probably be on the third day from this.

When she rose to go away for the night, leaving the nurse in attendance, Reardon seemed to lie in a state of unconsciousness, but just as she was turning from the bed, he opened his eyes and pronounced her name.

‘I am here, Edwin,’ she answered, bending over him.

‘Will you let Biffen know?’ he said in low but very clear tones.

‘That you are ill dear? I will write at once, or telegraph, if you like. What is his address?’

He had closed his eyes again, and there came no reply. Amy repeated her question twice; she was turning from him in hopelessness when his voice became audible.

‘I can’t remember his new address. I know it, but I can’t remember.’

She had to leave him thus.

The next day his breathing was so harassed that he had to be raised against pillows. But throughout the hours of daylight his mind was clear, and from time to time he whispered words of tenderness in reply to Amy’s look. He never willingly relinquished her hand, and repeatedly he pressed it against his cheek or lips. Vainly he still endeavoured to recall his friend’s address.

‘Couldn’t Mr Carter discover it for you?’ Amy asked.

‘Perhaps. You might try.’

She would have suggested applying to Jasper Milvain, but that name must not be mentioned. Whelpdale, also, would perchance know where Biffen lived, but Whelpdale’s address he had also forgotten.

At night there were long periods of delirium; not mere confused muttering, but continuous talk which the listeners could follow perfectly.

For the most part the sufferer’s mind was occupied with revival of the distress he had undergone whilst making those last efforts to write something worthy of himself. Amy’s heart was wrung as she heard him living through that time of supreme misery—misery which she might have done so much to alleviate, had not selfish fears and irritated pride caused her to draw further and further from him. Hers was the kind of penitence which is forced by sheer stress of circumstances on a nature which resents any form of humiliation; she could not abandon herself to unreserved grief for what she had done or omitted, and the sense of this defect made a great part of her affliction. When her husband lay in mute lethargy, she thought only of her dead child, and mourned the loss; but his delirious utterances constrained her to break from that bittersweet preoccupation, to confuse her mourning with self-reproach and with fears.

Though unconsciously, he was addressing her: ‘I can do no more, Amy. My brain seems to be worn out; I can’t compose, I can’t even think. Look! I have been sitting here for hours, and I have done only that little bit, half a dozen lines. Such poor stuff too! I should burn it, only I can’t afford. I must do my regular quantity every day, no matter what it is.’

The nurse, who was present when he talked in this way, looked to Amy for an explanation.

‘My husband is an author,’ Amy answered. ‘Not long ago he was obliged to write when he was ill and ought to have been resting.’

‘I always thought it must be hard work writing books,’ said the nurse with a shake of her head.

‘You don’t understand me,’ the voice pursued, dreadful as a voice always is when speaking independently of the will. ‘You think I am only a poor creature, because I can do nothing better than this. If only I had money enough to rest for a year or two, you should see. Just because I have no money I must sink to this degradation. And I am losing you as well; you don’t love me!’

He began to moan in anguish.

But a happy change presently came over his dreaming. He fell into animated description of his experiences in Greece and Italy, and after talking for a long time, he turned his head and said in a perfectly natural tone:

‘Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?’

She believed he spoke consciously, and replied:

‘You must take me with you, Edwin.’

He paid no attention to this remark, but went on with the same deceptive accent.

‘He deserves a holiday after nearly getting burnt to death to save his novel. Imagine the old fellow plunging headlong into the flames to rescue his manuscript! Don’t say that authors can’t be heroic!’

And he laughed gaily.

Another morning broke. It was possible, said the doctors (a second had been summoned), that a crisis which drew near might bring the favourable turn; but Amy formed her own opinion from the way in which the nurse expressed herself. She felt sure that the gravest fears were entertained. Before noon Reardon awoke from what had seemed natural sleep—save for the rapid breathing- -and of a sudden recollected the number of the house in Cleveland Street at which Biffen was now living. He uttered it without explanation. Amy at once conjectured his meaning, and as soon as her surmise was confirmed she despatched a telegram to her husband’s friend.

That evening, as Amy was on the point of returning to the sick-room after having dined at her friend’s house, it was announced that a gentleman named Biffen wished to see her. She found him in the dining-room, and, even amid her distress, it was a satisfaction to her that he presented a far more conventional appearance than in the old days. All the garments he wore, even his hat, gloves, and boots, were new; a surprising state of things, explained by the fact of his commercial brother having sent him a present of ten pounds, a practical expression of sympathy with him in his recent calamity. Biffen could not speak; he looked with alarm at Amy’s pallid face. In a few words she told him of Reardon’s condition.

‘I feared this,’ he replied under his breath. ‘He was ill when I saw him off at London Bridge. But Willie is better, I trust?’

Amy tried to answer, but tears filled her eyes and her head drooped. Harold was overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and dread held him motionless.

They conversed brokenly for a few minutes, then left the house, Biffen carrying the hand-bag with which he had travelled hither. When they reached the hotel he waited apart until it was ascertained whether he could enter the sick-room. Amy rejoined him and said with a faint smile:

‘He is conscious, and was very glad to hear that you had come. But don’t let him try to speak much.’

The change that had come over his friend’s countenance was to Harold, of course, far more gravely impressive than to those who had watched at the bedside. In the drawn features, large sunken eyes, thin and discoloured lips, it seemed to him that he read too surely the presage of doom. After holding the shrunken hand for a moment he was convulsed with an agonising sob, and had to turn away.

Amy saw that her husband wished to speak to her; she bent over him.

‘Ask him to stay, dear. Give him a room in the hotel.’

‘I will.’

Biffen sat down by the bedside, and remained for half an hour. His friend inquired whether he had yet heard about the novel; the answer was a shake of the head. When he rose, Reardon signed to him to bend down, and whispered:

‘It doesn’t matter what happens; she is mine again.’

The next day was very cold, but a blue sky gleamed over land and sea. The drives and promenades were thronged with people in exuberant health and spirits. Biffen regarded this spectacle with resentful scorn; at another time it would have moved him merely to mirth, but not even the sound of the breakers when he had wandered as far as possible from human contact could help him to think with resignation of the injustice which triumphs so flagrantly in the destinies of men. Towards Amy he had no shadow of unkindness; the sight of her in tears had impressed him as profoundly, in another way, as that of his friend’s wasted features. She and Reardon were again one, and his love for them both was stronger than any emotion of tenderness he had ever known.

In the afternoon he again sat by the bedside. Every symptom of the sufferer’s condition pointed to an approaching end: a face that had grown cadaverous, livid lips, breath drawn in hurrying gasps. Harold despaired of another look of recognition. But as he sat with his forehead resting on his hand Amy touched him; Reardon had turned his face in their direction, and with a conscious gaze.

‘I shall never go with you to Greece,’ he said distinctly.

There was silence again. Biffen did not move his eyes from the deathly mask; in a minute or two he saw a smile soften its lineaments, and Reardon again spoke:

‘How often you and I have quoted it!—”We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our—”’

The remaining words were indistinguishable, and, as if the effort of utterance had exhausted him, his eyes closed, and he sank into lethargy.

When he came down from his bedroom on the following morning, Biffen was informed that his friend had died between two and three o’clock. At the same time he received a note in which Amy requested him to come and see her late in the afternoon. He spent the day in a long walk along the eastward cliffs; again the sun shone brilliantly, and the sea was flecked with foam upon its changing green and azure. It seemed to him that he had never before known solitude, even through all the years of his lonely and sad existence.

At sunset he obeyed Amy’s summons. He found her calm, but with the signs of long weeping.

‘At the last moment,’ she said, ‘he was able to speak to me, and you were mentioned. He wished you to have all that he has left in his room at Islington. When I come back to London, will you take me there and let me see the room just as when he lived in it? Let the people in the house know what has happened, and that I am responsible for whatever will be owing.’

Her resolve to behave composedly gave way as soon as Harold’s broken voice had replied. Hysterical sobbing made further speech from her impossible, and Biffen, after holding her hand reverently for a moment, left her alone.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SUNNY WAY

On an evening of early summer, six months after the death of Edwin Reardon, Jasper of the facile pen was bending over his desk, writing rapidly by the warm western light which told that sunset was near. Not far from him sat his younger sister; she was reading, and the book in her hand bore the title, ‘Mr Bailey, Grocer.’

‘How will this do?’ Jasper exclaimed, suddenly throwing down his pen.

And he read aloud a critical notice of the book with which Dora was occupied; a notice of the frankly eulogistic species, beginning with: ‘It is seldom nowadays that the luckless reviewer of novels can draw the attention of the public to a new work which is at once powerful and original;’ and ending: ‘The word is a bold one, but we do not hesitate to pronounce this book a masterpiece.’

‘Is that for The Current?’ asked Dora, when he had finished.

‘No, for The West End. Fadge won’t allow anyone but himself to be lauded in that style. I may as well do the notice for The Current now, as I’ve got my hand in.’

He turned to his desk again, and before daylight failed him had produced a piece of more cautious writing, very favourable on the whole, but with reserves and slight censures. This also he read to Dora.

‘You wouldn’t suspect they were written by the same man, eh?’

‘No. You have changed the style very skilfully.’

‘I doubt if they’ll be much use. Most people will fling the book down with yawns before they’re half through the first volume. If I knew a doctor who had many cases of insomnia in hand, I would recommend “Mr Bailey” to him as a specific.’

‘Oh, but it is really clever, Jasper!’

‘Not a doubt of it. I half believe what I have written. And if only we could get it mentioned in a leader or two, and so on, old Biffen’s fame would be established with the better sort of readers. But he won’t sell three hundred copies. I wonder whether Robertson would let me do a notice for his paper?’

‘Biffen ought to be grateful to you, if he knew,’ said Dora, laughing.

‘Yet, now, there are people who would cry out that this kind of thing is disgraceful. It’s nothing of the kind. Speaking seriously, we know that a really good book will more likely than not receive fair treatment from two or three reviewers; yes, but also more likely than not it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and won’t have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute. The struggle for existence among books is nowadays as severe as among men. If a writer has friends connected with the press,. it is the plain duty of those friends to do their utmost to help him. What matter if they exaggerate, or even lie? The simple, sober truth has no chance whatever of being listened to, and it’s only by volume of shouting that the ear of the public is held. What use is it to Biffen if his work struggles to slow recognition ten years hence? Besides, as I say, the growing flood of literature swamps everything but works of primary genius. If a clever and conscientious book does not spring to success at once, there’s precious small chance that it will survive. Suppose it were possible for me to write a round dozen reviews of this book, in as many different papers, I would do it with satisfaction. Depend upon it, this kind of thing will be done on that scale before long. And it’s quite natural. A man’s friends must be helped, by whatever means, quocunque modo, as Biffen himself would say.’

‘I dare say he doesn’t even think of you as a friend now.’

‘Very likely not. It’s ages since I saw him. But there’s much magnanimity in my character, as I have often told you. It delights me to be generous, whenever I can afford it.’

Dusk was gathering about them. As they sat talking, there came a tap at the door, and the summons to enter was obeyed by Mr Whelpdale.

‘I was passing,’ he said in his respectful voice, ‘and couldn’t resist the temptation.’

Jasper struck a match and lit the lamp. In this clearer light Whelpdale was exhibited as a young man of greatly improved exterior; he wore a cream-coloured waistcoat, a necktie of subtle hue, and delicate gloves; prosperity breathed from his whole person. It was, in fact, only a moderate prosperity to which he had as yet attained, but the future beckoned to him flatteringly.

Early in this year, his enterprise as ‘literary adviser’ had brought him in contact with a man of some pecuniary resources, who proposed to establish an agency for the convenience of authors who were not skilled in disposing of their productions to the best advantage. Under the name of Fleet & Co., this business was shortly set on foot, and Whelpdale’s services were retained on satisfactory terms. The birth of the syndicate system had given new scope to literary agencies, and Mr Fleet was a man of keen eye for commercial opportunities.

‘Well, have you read Biffen’s book?’ asked Jasper.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it! A work of genius, I am convinced. Ha! you have it there, Miss Dora. But I’m afraid it is hardly for you.’

‘And why not, Mr Whelpdale?’

‘You should only read of beautiful things, of happy lives. This book must depress you.’

‘But why will you imagine me such a feeble-minded person?’ asked Dora. ‘You have so often spoken like this. I have really no ambition to be a doll of such superfine wax.’

The habitual flatterer looked deeply concerned.

‘Pray forgive me!’ he murmured humbly, leaning forwards towards the girl with eyes which deprecated her displeasure. ‘I am very far indeed from attributing weakness to you. It was only the natural, unreflecting impulse; one finds it so difficult to associate you, even as merely a reader, with such squalid scenes.

The ignobly decent, as poor Biffen calls it, is so very far from that sphere in which you are naturally at home.’

There was some slight affectation in his language, but the tone attested sincere feeling. Jasper was watching him with half an eye, and glancing occasionally at Dora.

‘No doubt,’ said the latter, ‘it’s my story in The English Girl that inclines you to think me a goody-goody sort of young woman.’

‘So far from that, Miss Dora, I was only waiting for an opportunity to tell you how exceedingly delighted I have been with the last two weeks’ instalments. In all seriousness, I consider that story of yours the best thing of the kind that ever came under my notice. You seem to me to have discovered a new genre; such writing as this has surely never been offered to girls, and all the readers of the paper must be immensely grateful to you. I run eagerly to buy the paper each week; I assure you I do. The stationer thinks I purchase it for a sister, I suppose. But each section of the story seems to be better than the last. Mark the prophecy which I now make: when this tale is published in a volume its success will be great. You will be recognised, Miss Dora, as the new writer for modern English girls.’

The subject of this panegyric coloured a little and laughed. Unmistakably she was pleased.

‘Look here, Whelpdale,’ said Jasper, ‘I can’t have this; Dora’s conceit, please to remember, is, to begin with, only a little less than my own, and you will make her unendurable. Her tale is well enough in its way, but then its way is a very humble one.’

‘I deny it!’ cried the other, excitedly. ‘How can it be called a humble line of work to provide reading, which is at once intellectual and moving and exquisitely pure, for the most important part of the population—the educated and refined young people who are just passing from girlhood to womanhood?’

‘The most important fiddlestick!’

‘You are grossly irreverent, my dear Milvain. I cannot appeal to your sister, for she’s too modest to rate her own sex at its true value, but the vast majority of thoughtful men would support me. You yourself do, though you affect this profane way of speaking. And we know,’ he looked at Dora, ‘that he wouldn’t talk like this if Miss Yule were present.’

Jasper changed the topic of conversation, and presently Whelpdale was able to talk with more calmness. The young man, since his association with Fleet & Co., had become fertile in suggestions of literary enterprise, and at present he was occupied with a project of special hopefulness.

‘I want to find a capitalist,’ he said, ‘who will get possession of that paper Chat, and transform it according to an idea I have in my head. The thing is doing very indifferently, but I am convinced it might be made splendid property, with a few changes in the way of conducting it.’

‘The paper is rubbish,’ remarked Jasper, ‘and the kind of rubbish—oddly enough—which doesn’t attract people.’

‘Precisely, but the rubbish is capable of being made a very valuable article, if it were only handled properly. I have talked to the people about it again and again, but I can’t get them to believe what I say. Now just listen to my notion. In the first place, I should slightly alter the name; only slightly, but that little alteration would in itself have an enormous effect. Instead of Chat I should call it Chit-Chat!’

Jasper exploded with mirth.

‘That’s brilliant!’ he cried. ‘A stroke of genius!’

‘Are you serious? Or are you making fun of me? I believe it is a stroke of genius. Chat doesn’t attract anyone, but Chit-Chat would sell like hot cakes, as they say in America. I know I am right; laugh as you will.’

‘On the same principle,’ cried Jasper, ‘if The Tatler were changed to Tittle-Tattle, its circulation would be trebled.’

Whelpdale smote his knee in delight.

‘An admirable idea! Many a true word uttered in joke, and this is an instance! Tittle-Tattle—a magnificent title; the very thing to catch the multitude.’

Dora was joining in the merriment, and for a minute or two nothing but bursts of laughter could be heard.

‘Now do let me go on,’ implored the man of projects, when the noise subsided. ‘That’s only one change, though a most important one. What I next propose is this:—I know you will laugh again, but I will demonstrate to you that I am right. No article in the paper is to measure more than two inches in length, and every inch must be broken into at least two paragraphs.’

‘Superb!’

‘But you are joking, Mr Whelpdale!’ exclaimed Dora.

‘No, I am perfectly serious. Let me explain my principle. I would have the paper address itself to the quarter-educated; that is to say, the great new generation that is being turned out by the Board schools, the young men and women who can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention. People of this kind want something to occupy them in trains and on ‘buses and trams. As a rule they care for no newspapers except the Sunday ones; what they want is the lightest and frothiest of chit-chatty information—bits of stories, bits of description, bits of scandal, bits of jokes, bits of statistics, bits of foolery. Am I not right? Everything must be very short, two inches at the utmost; their attention can’t sustain itself beyond two inches. Even chat is too solid for them: they want chit-chat.’

Jasper had begun to listen seriously.

‘There’s something in this, Whelpdale,’ he remarked.

‘Ha! I have caught you?’ cried the other delightedly. ‘Of course there’s something in it?’

‘But—’ began Dora, and checked herself.

‘You were going to say—’ Whelpdale bent towards her with deference.

‘Surely these poor, silly people oughtn’t to be encouraged in their weakness.’

Whelpdale’s countenance fell. He looked ashamed of himself. But Jasper came speedily to the rescue.

‘That’s twaddle, Dora. Fools will be fools to the world’s end. Answer a fool according to his folly; supply a simpleton with the reading he craves, if it will put money in your pocket. You have discouraged poor Whelpdale in one of the most notable projects of modern times.’

‘I shall think no more of it,’ said Whelpdale, gravely. ‘You are right, Miss Dora.’

Again Jasper burst into merriment. His sister reddened, and looked uncomfortable. She began to speak timidly:

‘You said this was for reading in trains and ‘buses?’

Whelpdale caught at hope.

‘Yes. And really, you know, it may be better at such times to read chit-chat than to be altogether vacant, or to talk unprofitably. I am not sure; I bow to your opinion unreservedly.’

‘So long as they only read the paper at such times,’ said Dora, still hesitating. ‘One knows by experience that one really can’t fix one’s attention in travelling; even an article in a newspaper is often too long.’

‘Exactly! And if you find it so, what must be the case with the mass of untaught people, the quarter-educated? It might encourage in some of them a taste for reading—don’t you think?’

‘It might,’ assented Dora, musingly. ‘And in that case you would be doing good!’

‘Distinct good!’

They smiled joyfully at each other. Then Whelpdale turned to Jasper:

‘You are convinced that there is something in this?’

‘Seriously, I think there is. It would all depend on the skill of the fellows who put the thing together every week. There ought always to be one strongly sensational item—we won’t call it article. For instance, you might display on a placard: “What the Queen eats!” or “How Gladstone’s collars are made!”—things of that kind.’

‘To be sure, to be sure. And then, you know,’ added Whelpdale, glancing anxiously at Dora, ‘when people had been attracted by these devices, they would find a few things that were really profitable. We would give nicely written little accounts of exemplary careers, of heroic deeds, and so on. Of course nothing whatever that could be really demoralising—cela va sans dire. Well, what I was going to say was this: would you come with me to the office of Chat, and have a talk with my friend Lake, the sub-editor? I know your time is very valuable, but then you’re often running into the Will-o’-the-Wisp, and Chat is just upstairs, you know.’

‘What use should I be?’

‘Oh, all the use in the world. Lake would pay most respectful attention to your opinion, though he thinks so little of mine. You are a man of note, I am nobody. I feel convinced that you could persuade the Chat people to adopt my idea, and they might be willing to give me a contingent share of contingent profits, if I had really shown them the way to a good thing.’

Jasper promised to think the matter over. Whilst their talk still ran on this subject, a packet that had come by post was brought into the room. Opening it, Milvain exclaimed:

‘Ha! this is lucky. There’s something here that may interest you, Whelpdale.’

‘Proofs?’

‘Yes. A paper I have written for The Wayside.’ He looked at Dora, who smiled. ‘How do you like the title?—”The Novels of Edwin Reardon!”’

‘You don’t say so!’ cried the other. ‘What a good-hearted fellow you are, Milvain! Now that’s really a kind thing to have done. By Jove! I must shake hands with you; I must indeed! Poor Reardon! Poor old fellow!’

His eyes gleamed with moisture. Dora, observing this, looked at him so gently and sweetly that it was perhaps well he did not meet her eyes; the experience would have been altogether too much for him.

‘It has been written for three months,’ said Jasper, ‘but we have held it over for a practical reason. When I was engaged upon it, I went to see Mortimer, and asked him if there was any chance of a new edition of Reardon’s books. He had no idea the poor fellow was dead, and the news seemed really to affect him. He promised to consider whether it would be worth while trying a new issue, and before long I heard from him that he would bring out the two best books with a decent cover and so on, provided I could get my article on Reardon into one of the monthlies. This was soon settled. The editor of The Wayside answered at once, when I wrote to him, that he should be very glad to print what I proposed, as he had a real respect for Reardon. Next month the books will be out—”Neutral Ground,” and “Hubert Reed.” Mortimer said he was sure these were the only ones that would pay for themselves. But we shall see. He may alter his opinion when my article has been read.’

‘Read it to us now, Jasper, will you?’ asked Dora.

The request was supported by Whelpdale, and Jasper needed no pressing. He seated himself so that the lamplight fell upon the pages, and read the article through. It was an excellent piece of writing (see The Wayside, June 1884), and in places touched with true emotion. Any intelligent reader would divine that the author had been personally acquainted with the man of whom he wrote, though the fact was nowhere stated. The praise was not exaggerated, yet all the best points of Reardon’s work were admirably brought out. One who knew Jasper might reasonably have doubted, before reading this, whether he was capable of so worthily appreciating the nobler man.

‘I never understood Reardon so well before,’ declared Whelpdale, at the close. ‘This is a good thing well done. It’s something to be proud of, Miss Dora.’

‘Yes, I feel that it is,’ she replied.

‘Mrs Reardon ought to be very grateful to you, Milvain. By-the- by, do you ever see her?’

‘I have met her only once since his death—by chance.’

‘Of course she will marry again. I wonder who’ll be the fortunate man?’

‘Fortunate, do you think?’ asked Dora quietly, without looking at him.

‘Oh, I spoke rather cynically, I’m afraid,’ Whelpdale hastened to reply. ‘I was thinking of her money. Indeed, I knew Mrs Reardon only very slightly.’

‘I don’t think you need regret it,’ Dora remarked.

‘Oh, well, come, come!’ put in her brother. ‘We know very well that there was little enough blame on her side.’

‘There was great blame!’ Dora exclaimed. ‘She behaved shamefully!

I wouldn’t speak to her; I wouldn’t sit down in her company!’

‘Bosh! What do you know about it? Wait till you are married to a man like Reardon, and reduced to utter penury.’

‘Whoever my husband was, I would stand by him, if I starved to death.’

‘If he illused you?’

‘I am not talking of such cases. Mrs Reardon had never anything of the kind to fear. It was impossible for a man such as her husband to behave harshly. Her conduct was cowardly, faithless, unwomanly!’

‘Trust one woman for thinking the worst of another,’ observed Jasper with something like a sneer.

Dora gave him a look of strong disapproval; one might have suspected that brother and sister had before this fallen into disagreement on the delicate topic. Whelpdale felt obliged to interpose, and had of course no choice but to support the girl.

‘I can only say,’ he remarked with a smile, ‘that Miss Dora takes a very noble point of view. One feels that a wife ought to be staunch. But it’s so very unsafe to discuss matters in which one cannot know all the facts.’

‘We know quite enough of the facts,’ said Dora, with delightful pertinacity.

‘Indeed, perhaps we do,’ assented her slave. Then, turning to her brother, ‘Well, once more I congratulate you. I shall talk of your article incessantly, as soon as it appears. And I shall pester every one of my acquaintances to buy Reardon’s books— though it’s no use to him, poor fellow. Still, he would have died more contentedly if he could have foreseen this. By-the-by, Biffen will be profoundly grateful to you, I’m sure.’

‘I’m doing what I can for him, too. Run your eye over these slips.’

Whelpdale exhausted himself in terms of satisfaction.

‘You deserve to get on, my dear fellow. In a few years you will be the Aristarchus of our literary world.’

When the visitor rose to depart, Jasper said he would walk a short distance with him. As soon as they had left the house, the future Aristarchus made a confidential communication.

‘It may interest you to know that my sister Maud is shortly to be married.’

‘Indeed! May I ask to whom?’

‘A man you don’t know. His name is Dolomore—a fellow in society.’

‘Rich, then, I hope?’

‘Tolerably well-to-do. I dare say he has three or four thousand a year!’

‘Gracious heavens! Why, that’s magnificent.’

But Whelpdale did not look quite so much satisfaction as his words expressed.

‘Is it to be soon?’ he inquired.

‘At the end of the season. Make no difference to Dora and me, of course.’

‘Oh? Really? No difference at all? You will let me come and see you—both—just in the old way, Milvain?’

‘Why the deuce shouldn’t you?’

‘To be sure, to be sure. By Jove! I really don’t know how I should get on if I couldn’t look in of an evening now and then. I have got so much into the habit of it. And—I’m a lonely beggar, you know. I don’t go into society, and really—’

He broke off, and Jasper began to speak of other things.

When Milvain re-entered the house, Dora had gone to her own sitting-room. It was not quite ten o’clock. Taking one set of the proofs of his ‘Reardon’ article, he put it into a large envelope; then he wrote a short letter, which began ‘Dear Mrs Reardon,’ and ended ‘Very sincerely yours,’ the communication itself being as follows:

‘I venture to send you the proofs of a paper which is to appear in next month’s Wayside, in the hope that it may seem to you not badly done, and that the reading of it may give you pleasure. If anything occurs to you which you would like me to add, or if you desire any omission, will you do me the kindness to let me know of it as soon as possible, and your suggestion shall at once be adopted. I am informed that the new edition of “On Neutral Ground” and “Hubert Reed” will be ready next month. Need I say how glad I am that my friend’s work is not to be forgotten?’

This note he also put into the envelope, which he made ready for posting. Then he sat for a long time in profound thought.

Shortly after eleven his door opened, and Maud came in. She had been dining at Mrs Lane’s. Her attire was still simple, but of quality which would have signified recklessness, but for the outlook whereof Jasper spoke to Whelpdale. The girl looked very beautiful. There was a flush of health and happiness on her cheek, and when she spoke it was in a voice that rang quite differently from her tones of a year ago; the pride which was natural to her had now a firm support; she moved and uttered herself in queenly fashion.

‘Has anyone been?’ she asked.

‘Whelpdale.’

‘Oh! I wanted to ask you, Jasper: do you think it wise to let him come quite so often?’

‘There’s a difficulty, you see. I can hardly tell him to sheer off. And he’s really a decent fellow.’

‘That may be. But—I think it’s rather unwise. Things are changed. In a few months, Dora will be a good deal at my house, and will see all sorts of people.’

‘Yes; but what if they are the kind of people she doesn’t care anything about? You must remember, old girl, that her tastes are quite different from yours. I say nothing, but—perhaps it’s as well they should be.’

‘You say nothing, but you add an insult,’ returned Maud, with a smile of superb disregard. ‘We won’t reopen the question.’

‘Oh dear no! And, by-the-by, I have a letter from Dolomore. It came just after you left.’

‘Well?’

‘He is quite willing to settle upon you a third of his income from the collieries; he tells me it will represent between seven and eight hundred a year. I think it rather little, you know; but I congratulate myself on having got this out of him.’

‘Don’t speak in that unpleasant way! It was only your abruptness that made any kind of difficulty.’

‘I have my own opinion on that point, and I shall beg leave to keep it. Probably he will think me still more abrupt when I request, as I am now going to do, an interview with his solicitors.’

‘Is that allowable?’ asked Maud, anxiously. ‘Can you do that with any decency?’

‘If not, then I must do it with indecency. You will have the goodness to remember that if I don’t look after your interests, no one else will. It’s perhaps fortunate for you that I have a good deal of the man of business about me. Dolomore thought I was a dreamy, literary fellow. I don’t say that he isn’t entirely honest, but he shows something of a disposition to play the autocrat, and I by no means intend to let him. If you had a father, Dolomore would have to submit his affairs to examination.

I stand to you in loco parentis, and I shall bate no jot of my rights.’

‘But you can’t say that his behaviour hasn’t been perfectly straightforward.’

‘I don’t wish to. I think, on the whole, he has behaved more honourably than was to be expected of a man of his kind. But he must treat me with respect. My position in the world is greatly superior to his. And, by the gods! I will be treated respectfully! It wouldn’t be amiss, Maud, if you just gave him a hint to that effect.’

‘All I have to say is, Jasper, don’t do me an irreparable injury. You might, without meaning it.’

‘No fear whatever of it. I can behave as a gentleman, and I only expect Dolomore to do the same.’

Their conversation lasted for a long time, and when he was again left alone Jasper again fell into a mood of thoughtfulness.

By a late post on the following day he received this letter:

‘DEAR MR MILVAIN,—I have received the proofs, and have just read them; I hasten to thank you with all my heart. No suggestion of mine could possibly improve this article; it seems to me perfect in taste, in style, in matter. No one but you could have written this, for no one else understood Edwin so well, or had given such thought to his work. If he could but have known that such justice would be done to his memory! But he died believing that already he was utterly forgotten, that his books would never again be publicly spoken of. This was a cruel fate. I have shed tears over what you have written, but they were not only tears of bitterness; it cannot but be a consolation to me to think that, when the magazine appears, so many people will talk of Edwin and his books. I am deeply grateful to Mr Mortimer for having undertaken to republish those two novels; if you have an opportunity, will you do me the great kindness to thank him on my behalf? At the same time, I must remember that it was you who first spoke to him on this subject. You say that it gladdens you to think Edwin will not be forgotten, and I am very sure that the friendly office you have so admirably performed will in itself reward you more than any poor expression of gratitude from me. I write hurriedly, anxious to let you hear as soon as possible.

‘Believe me, dear Mr Milvain,

‘Yours sincerely,

‘AMY REARDON.’

CHAPTER XXXIV. A CHECK

Marian was at work as usual in the Reading-room. She did her best, during the hours spent here, to convert herself into the literary machine which it was her hope would some day be invented for construction in a less sensitive material than human tissue. Her eyes seldom strayed beyond the limits of the desk; and if she had occasion to rise and go to the reference shelves, she looked at no one on the way. Yet she herself was occasionally an object of interested regard. Several readers were acquainted with the chief facts of her position; they knew that her father was now incapable of work, and was waiting till his diseased eyes should be ready for the operator; it was surmised, moreover, that a good deal depended upon the girl’s literary exertions. Mr Quarmby and his gossips naturally took the darkest view of things; they were convinced that Alfred Yule could never recover his sight, and they had a dolorous satisfaction in relating the story of Marian’s legacy. Of her relations with Jasper Milvain none of these persons had heard; Yule had never spoken of that matter to any one of his friends.

Jasper had to look in this morning for a hurried consultation of certain encyclopaedic volumes, and it chanced that Marian was standing before the shelves to which his business led him. He saw her from a little distance, and paused; it seemed as if he would turn back; for a moment he wore a look of doubt and worry. But after all he proceeded. At the sound of his ‘Good-morning,’ Marian started—she was standing with an open book in hand—and looked up with a gleam of joy on her face.

‘I wanted to see you to-day,’ she said, subduing her voice to the tone of ordinary conversation. ‘I should have come this evening.’

‘You wouldn’t have found me at home. From five to seven I shall be frantically busy, and then I have to rush off to dine with some people.’

‘I couldn’t see you before five?’

‘Is it something important?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I tell you what. If you could meet me at Gloucester Gate at four, then I shall be glad of half an hour in the park. But I mustn’t talk now; I’m driven to my wits’ end. Gloucester Gate, at four sharp. I don’t think it’ll rain.’

He dragged out a tome of the ‘Britannica.’ Marian nodded, and returned to her seat.

At the appointed hour she was waiting near the entrance of Regent’s Park which Jasper had mentioned. Not long ago there had fallen a light shower, but the sky was clear again. At five minutes past four she still waited, and had begun to fear that the passing rain might have led Jasper to think she would not come. Another five minutes, and from a hansom that rattled hither at full speed, the familiar figure alighted.

‘Do forgive me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I couldn’t possibly get here before. Let us go to the right.’

They betook themselves to that tree-shadowed strip of the park which skirts the canal.

‘I’m so afraid that you haven’t really time,’ said Marian, who was chilled and confused by this show of hurry. She regretted having made the appointment; it would have been much better to postpone what she had to say until Jasper was at leisure. Yet nowadays the hours of leisure seemed to come so rarely.

‘If I get home at five, it’ll be all right,’ he replied. ‘What have you to tell me, Marian?’

‘We have heard about the money, at last.’

‘Oh?’ He avoided looking at her. ‘And what’s the upshot?’

‘I shall have nearly fifteen hundred pounds.’

‘So much as that? Well, that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’

‘Very much better.’

They walked on in silence. Marian stole a glance at her companion.

‘I should have thought it a great deal,’ she said presently, ‘before I had begun to think of thousands.’

‘Fifteen hundred. Well, it means fifty pounds a year, I suppose.’

He chewed the end of his moustache.

‘Let us sit down on this bench. Fifteen hundred—h’m! And nothing more is to be hoped for?’

‘Nothing. I should have thought men would wish to pay their debts, even after they had been bankrupt; but they tell us we can’t expect anything more from these people.’

‘You are thinking of Walter Scott, and that kind of thing’— Jasper laughed. ‘Oh, that’s quite unbusinesslike; it would be setting a pernicious example nowadays. Well, and what’s to be done?’

Marian had no answer for such a question. The tone of it was a new stab to her heart, which had suffered so many during the past half-year.

‘Now, I’ll ask you frankly,’ Jasper went on, ‘and I know you will reply in the same spirit: would it be wise for us to marry on this money?’

‘On this money?’

She looked into his face with painful earnestness.

‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that it can’t be spared for that purpose?’

What she really meant was uncertain even to herself. She had wished to hear how Jasper would receive the news, and thereby to direct her own course. Had he welcomed it as offering a possibility of their marriage, that would have gladdened her, though it would then have been necessary to show him all the difficulties by which she was beset; for some time they had not spoken of her father’s position, and Jasper seemed willing to forget all about that complication of their troubles. But marriage did not occur to him, and he was evidently quite prepared to hear that she could no longer regard this money as her own to be freely disposed of. This was on one side a relief but on the other it confirmed her fears. She would rather have heard him plead with her to neglect her parents for the sake of being his wife. Love excuses everything, and his selfishness would have been easily lost sight of in the assurance that he still desired her.

‘You say,’ she replied, with bent head, ‘that it would bring us fifty pounds a year. If another fifty were added to that, my father and mother would be supported in case the worst comes. I might earn fifty pounds.’

‘You wish me to understand, Marian, that I mustn’t expect that you will bring me anything when we are married.’

His tone was that of acquiescence; not by any means of displeasure. He spoke as if desirous of saying for her something she found a difficulty in saying for herself.

‘Jasper, it is so hard for me! So hard for me! How could I help remembering what you told me when I promised to be your wife?’

‘I spoke the truth rather brutally,’ he replied, in a kind voice. ‘Let all that be unsaid, forgotten. We are in quite a different position now. Be open with me, Marian; surely you can trust my common sense and good feeling. Put aside all thought of things I have said, and don’t be restrained by any fear lest you should seem to me unwomanly—you can’t be that. What is your own wish? What do you really wish to do, now that there is no uncertainty calling for postponements?’

Marian raised her eyes, and was about to speak as she regarded him; but with the first accent her look fell.

‘I wish to be your wife.’

He waited, thinking and struggling with himself.

‘Yet you feel that it would be heartless to take and use this money for our own purposes?’

‘What is to become of my parents, Jasper?’

‘But then you admit that the fifteen hundred pounds won’t support them. You talk of earning fifty pounds a year for them.’

‘Need I cease to write, dear, if we were married? Wouldn’t you let me help them?’

‘But, my dear girl, you are taking for granted that we shall have enough for ourselves.’

‘I didn’t mean at once,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘In a short time—in a year. You are getting on so well. You will soon have a sufficient income, I am sure.’

Jasper rose.

‘Let us walk as far as the next seat. Don’t speak. I have something to think about.’

Moving on beside him, she slipped her hand softly within his arm; but Jasper did not put the arm into position to support hers, and her hand fell again, dropped suddenly. They reached another bench, and again became seated.

‘It comes to this, Marian,’ he said, with portentous gravity. ‘Support you, I could—I have little doubt of that. Maud is provided for, and Dora can make a living for herself. I could support you and leave you free to give your parents whatever you can earn by your own work. But—’