New Grub Street

‘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 absent-mindedness. 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.