New Grub Street

Indeed, it seemed that the girl loved him. She knew that he had but a hundred pounds or so left over from that little inheritance, that his books sold for a trifle, that he had no wealthy relatives from whom he could expect anything; yet she hesitated not a moment when he asked her to marry him.

‘I have loved you from the first.’

‘How is that possible?’ he urged. ‘What is there lovable in me? I am afraid of waking up and finding myself in my old garret, cold and hungry.’

‘You will be a great man.’

‘I implore you not to count on that! In many ways I am wretchedly weak. I have no such confidence in myself.’

‘Then I will have confidence for both.’

‘But can you love me for my own sake—love me as a man?’

‘I love you!’

And the words sang about him, filled the air with a mad pulsing of intolerable joy, made him desire to fling himself in passionate humility at her feet, to weep hot tears, to cry to her in insane worship. He thought her beautiful beyond anything his heart had imagined; her warm gold hair was the rapture of his eyes and of his reverent hand. Though slenderly fashioned, she was so gloriously strong. ‘Not a day of illness in her life,’ said Mrs Yule, and one could readily believe it.

She spoke with such a sweet decision. Her ‘I love you!’ was a bond with eternity. In the simplest as in the greatest things she saw his wish and acted frankly upon it. No pretty petulance, no affectation of silly-sweet languishing, none of the weaknesses of woman. And so exquisitely fresh in her twenty years of maidenhood, with bright young eyes that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come.

He went about like one dazzled with excessive light. He talked as he had never talked before, recklessly, exultantly, insolently—in the nobler sense. He made friends on every hand; he welcomed all the world to his bosom; he felt the benevolence of a god.

‘I love you!’ It breathed like music at his ears when he fell asleep in weariness of joy; it awakened him on the morrow as with a glorious ringing summons to renewed life.

Delay? Why should there be delay? Amy wished nothing but to become his wife. Idle to think of his doing any more work until he sat down in the home of which she was mistress. His brain burned with visions of the books he would henceforth write, but his hand was incapable of anything but a love-letter. And what letters! Reardon never published anything equal to those. ‘I have received your poem,’ Amy replied to one of them. And she was right; not a letter, but a poem he had sent her, with every word on fire.

The hours of talk! It enraptured him to find how much she had read, and with what clearness of understanding. Latin and Greek, no. Ah! but she should learn them both, that there might be nothing wanting in the communion between his thought and hers. For he loved the old writers with all his heart; they had been such strength to him in his days of misery.

They would go together to the charmed lands of the South. No, not now for their marriage holiday—Amy said that would be an imprudent expense; but as soon as he had got a good price for a book. Will not the publishers be kind? If they knew what happiness lurked in embryo within their foolish cheque-books!

He woke of a sudden in the early hours of one morning, a week before the wedding-day. You know that kind of awaking, so complete in an instant, caused by the pressure of some troublesome thought upon the dreaming brain. ‘Suppose I should not succeed henceforth? Suppose I could never get more than this poor hundred pounds for one of the long books which cost me so much labour? I shall perhaps have children to support; and Amy—how would Amy bear poverty?’

He knew what poverty means. The chilling of brain and heart, the unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the world’s base indifference. Poverty! Poverty!

And for hours he could not sleep. His eyes kept filling with tears, the beating of his heart was low; and in his solitude he called upon Amy with pitiful entreaty: ‘Do not forsake me! I love you! I love you!’

But that went by. Six days, five days, four days—will one’s heart burst with happiness? The flat is taken, is furnished, up there towards the sky, eight flights of stone steps.

‘You’re a confoundedly lucky fellow, Reardon,’ remarked Milvain, who had already become very intimate with his new friend. ‘A good fellow, too, and you deserve it.’

‘But at first I had a horrible suspicion.’

‘I guess what you mean. No; I wasn’t even in love with her, though I admired her. She would never have cared for me in any case; I am not sentimental enough.’

‘The deuce!’

‘I mean it in an inoffensive sense. She and I are rather too much alike, I fancy.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Reardon, puzzled, and not very well pleased.

‘There’s a great deal of pure intellect about Miss Yule, you know. She was sure to choose a man of the passionate kind.’

‘I think you are talking nonsense, my dear fellow.’

‘Well, perhaps I am. To tell you the truth, I have by no means completed my study of women yet. It is one of the things in which I hope to be a specialist some day, though I don’t think I shall ever make use of it in novels—rather, perhaps, in life.’

Three days—two days—one day.

Now let every joyous sound which the great globe can utter ring forth in one burst of harmony! Is it not well done to make the village-bells chant merrily when a marriage is over? Here in London we can have no such music; but for us, my dear one, all the roaring life of the great city is wedding-hymn. Sweet, pure face under its bridal-veil! The face which shall, if fate spare it, be as dear to me many a long year hence as now at the culminating moment of my life!

As he trudged on in the dark, his tortured memory was living through that time again. The images forced themselves upon him, however much he tried to think of quite other things—of some fictitious story on which he might set to work. In the case of his earlier books he had waited quietly until some suggestive ‘situation,’ some group of congenial characters, came with sudden delightfulness before his mind and urged him to write; but nothing so spontaneous could now be hoped for. His brain was too weary with months of fruitless, harassing endeavour; moreover, he was trying to devise a ‘plot,’ the kind of literary Jack-in-the-box which might excite interest in the mass of readers, and this was alien to the natural working of his imagination. He suffered the torments of nightmare—an oppression of the brain and heart which must soon be intolerable.

CHAPTER VI. THE PRACTICAL FRIEND

When her husband had set forth, Amy seated herself in the study and took up a new library volume as if to read. But she had no real intention of doing so; it was always disagreeable to her to sit in the manner of one totally unoccupied, with hands on lap, and even when she consciously gave herself up to musing an open book was generally before her. She did not, in truth, read much nowadays; since the birth of her child she had seemed to care less than before for disinterested study. If a new novel that had succeeded came into her hands she perused it in a very practical spirit, commenting to Reardon on the features of the work which had made it popular; formerly, she would have thought much more of its purely literary merits, for which her eye was very keen. How often she had given her husband a thrill of exquisite pleasure by pointing to some merit or defect of which the common reader would be totally insensible! Now she spoke less frequently on such subjects. Her interests were becoming more personal; she liked to hear details of the success of popular authors—about their wives or husbands, as the case might be, their arrangements with publishers, their methods of work. The gossip columns of literary papers—and of some that were not literary—had an attraction for her. She talked of questions such as international copyright, was anxious to get an insight into the practical conduct of journals and magazines, liked to know who ‘read’ for the publishing-houses. To an impartial observer it might have appeared that her intellect was growing more active and mature.

More than half an hour passed. It was not a pleasant train of thought that now occupied her. Her lips were drawn together, her brows were slightly wrinkled; the self-control which at other times was agreeably expressed upon her features had become rather too cold and decided. At one moment it seemed to her that she heard a sound in the bedroom—the doors were purposely left ajar—and her head turned quickly to listen, the look in her eyes instantaneously softening; but all remained quiet. The street would have been silent but for a cab that now and then passed—the swing of a hansom or the roll of a four-wheeler—and within the buildings nothing whatever was audible.

Yes, a footstep, briskly mounting the stone stairs. Not like that of the postman. A visitor, perhaps, to the other flat on the topmost landing. But the final pause was in this direction, and then came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Amy rose immediately and went to open.

Jasper Milvain raised his urban silk hat, then held out his hand with the greeting of frank friendship. His inquiries were in so loud a voice that Amy checked him with a forbidding gesture.

‘You’ll wake Willie!’

‘By Jove! I always forget,’ he exclaimed in subdued tones. ‘Does the infant flourish?’

‘Oh, yes!’

‘Reardon out? I got back on Saturday evening, but couldn’t come round before this.’ It was Monday. ‘How close it is in here! I suppose the roof gets so heated during the day. Glorious weather in the country! And I’ve no end of things to tell you. He won’t be long, I suppose?’

‘I think not.’

He left his hat and stick in the passage, came into the study, and glanced about as if he expected to see some change since he was last here, three weeks ago.

‘So you have been enjoying yourself?’ said Amy as, after listening for a moment at the door, she took a seat.

‘Oh, a little freshening of the faculties. But whose acquaintance do you think I have made?’

‘Down there?’

‘Yes. Your uncle Alfred and his daughter were staying at John Yule’s, and I saw something of them. I was invited to the house.’

‘Did you speak of us?’

‘To Miss Yule only. I happened to meet her on a walk, and in a blundering way I mentioned Reardon’s name. But of course it didn’t matter in the least. She inquired about you with a good deal of interest—asked if you were as beautiful as you promised to be years ago.’

Amy laughed.

‘Doesn’t that proceed from your fertile invention, Mr Milvain?’

‘Not a bit of it! By-the-bye, what would be your natural question concerning her? Do you think she gave promise of good looks?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t say that she did. She had a good face, but—rather plain.’

‘I see.’ Jasper threw back his head and seemed to contemplate an object in memory. ‘Well, I shouldn’t wonder if most people called her a trifle plain even now; and yet—no, that’s hardly possible, after all. She has no colour. Wears her hair short.’

‘Short?’

‘Oh, I don’t mean the smooth, boyish hair with a parting—not the kind of hair that would be lank if it grew long. Curly all over. Looks uncommonly well, I assure you. She has a capital head. Odd girl; very odd girl! Quiet, thoughtful—not very happy, I’m afraid. Seems to think with dread of a return to books.’

‘Indeed! But I had understood that she was a reader.’

‘Reading enough for six people, probably. Perhaps her health is not very robust. Oh, I knew her by sight quite well—had seen her at the Reading-room. She’s the kind of girl that gets into one’s head, you know—suggestive; much more in her than comes out until one knows her very well.’

‘Well, I should hope so,’ remarked Amy, with a peculiar smile.

‘But that’s by no means a matter of course. They didn’t invite me to come and see them in London.’

‘I suppose Marian mentioned your acquaintance with this branch of the family?’

‘I think not. At all events, she promised me she wouldn’t.’

Amy looked at him inquiringly, in a puzzled way.

‘She promised you?’

‘Voluntarily. We got rather sympathetic. Your uncle—Alfred, I mean—is a remarkable man; but I think he regarded me as a youth of no particular importance. Well, how do things go?’

Amy shook her head.

‘No progress?’

‘None whatever. He can’t work; I begin to be afraid that he is really ill. He must go away before the fine weather is over. Do persuade him to-night! I wish you could have had a holiday with him.’

‘Out of the question now, I’m sorry to say. I must work savagely. But can’t you all manage a fortnight somewhere—Hastings, Eastbourne?’

‘It would be simply rash. One goes on saying, “What does a pound or two matter?”—but it begins at length to matter a great deal.’

‘I know, confound it all! Think how it would amuse some rich grocer’s son who pitches his half-sovereign to the waiter when he has dined himself into good humour! But I tell you what it is: you must really try to influence him towards practicality. Don’t you think—?’

He paused, and Amy sat looking at her hands.

‘I have made an attempt,’ she said at length, in a distant undertone.

‘You really have?’

Jasper leaned forward, his clasped hands hanging between his knees. He was scrutinising her face, and Amy, conscious of the too fixed regard, at length moved her head uneasily.

‘It seems very clear to me,’ she said, ‘that a long book is out of the question for him at present. He writes so slowly, and is so fastidious. It would be a fatal thing to hurry through something weaker even than the last.’

‘You think “The Optimist” weak?’ Jasper asked, half absently.

‘I don’t think it worthy of Edwin; I don’t see how anyone can.

‘I have wondered what your opinion was. Yes, he ought to try a new tack, I think.’

Just then there came the sound of a latch-key opening the outer door. Jasper lay back in his chair and waited with a smile for his expected friend’s appearance; Amy made no movement.

‘Oh, there you are!’ said Reardon, presenting himself with the dazzled eyes of one who has been in darkness; he spoke in a voice of genial welcome, though it still had the note of depression. ‘When did you get back?’

Milvain began to recount what he had told in the first part of his conversation with Amy. As he did so, the latter withdrew, and was absent for five minutes; on reappearing she said:

‘You’ll have some supper with us, Mr Milvain?’

‘I think I will, please.’

Shortly after, all repaired to the eating-room, where conversation had to be carried on in a low tone because of the proximity of the bedchamber in which lay the sleeping child. Jasper began to tell of certain things that had happened to him since his arrival in town.

‘It was a curious coincidence—but, by-the-bye, have you heard of what The Study has been doing?’

‘I should rather think so,’ replied Reardon, his face lighting up. ‘With no small satisfaction.’

‘Delicious, isn’t it?’ exclaimed his wife. ‘I thought it too good to be true when Edwin heard of it from Mr Biffen.’

All three laughed in subdued chorus. For the moment, Reardon became a new man in his exultation over the contradictory reviewers.

‘Oh, Biffen told you, did he? Well,’ continued Jasper, ‘it was an odd thing, but when I reached my lodgings on Saturday evening there lay a note from Horace Barlow, inviting me to go and see him on Sunday afternoon out at Wimbledon, the special reason being that the editor of The Study would be there, and Barlow thought I might like to meet him. Now this letter gave me a fit of laughter; not only because of those precious reviews, but because Alfred Yule had been telling me all about this same editor, who rejoices in the name of Fadge. Your uncle, Mrs Reardon, declares that Fadge is the most malicious man in the literary profession; though that’s saying such a very great deal—well, never mind! Of course I was delighted to go and meet Fadge. At Barlow’s I found the queerest collection of people, most of them women of the inkiest description. The great Fadge himself surprised me; I expected to see a gaunt, bilious man, and he was the rosiest and dumpiest little dandy you can imagine; a fellow of forty-five, I dare say, with thin yellow hair and blue eyes and a manner of extreme innocence. Fadge flattered me with confidential chat, and I discovered at length why Barlow had asked me to meet him; it’s Fadge that is going to edit Culpepper’s new monthly—you’ve heard about it?—and he had actually thought it worth while to enlist me among contributors! Now, how’s that for a piece of news?’

The speaker looked from Reardon to Amy with a smile of vast significance.

‘I rejoice to hear it!’ said Reardon, fervently.

‘You see! you see!’ cried Jasper, forgetting all about the infant in the next room, ‘all things come to the man who knows how to wait. But I’m hanged if I expected a thing of this kind to come so soon! Why, I’m a man of distinction! My doings have been noted; the admirable qualities of my style have drawn attention; I’m looked upon as one of the coming men! Thanks, I confess, in some measure, to old Barlow; he seems to have amused himself with cracking me up to all and sundry. That last thing of mine in The West End has done me a vast amount of good, it seems. And Alfred Yule himself had noticed that paper in The Wayside. That’s how things work, you know; reputation comes with a burst, just when you’re not looking for anything of the kind.’

‘What’s the new magazine to be called?’ asked Amy.

‘Why, they propose The Current. Not bad, in a way; though you imagine a fellow saying “Have you seen the current Current?” At all events, the tone is to be up to date, and the articles are to be short; no padding, merum sal from cover to cover. What do you think I have undertaken to do, for a start? A paper consisting of sketches of typical readers of each of the principal daily and weekly papers. A deuced good idea, you know—my own, of course—but deucedly hard to carry out. I shall rise to the occasion, see if I don’t. I’ll rival Fadge himself in maliciousness—though I must confess I discovered no particular malice in the fellow’s way of talking. The article shall make a sensation. I’ll spend a whole month on it, and make it a perfect piece of satire.’

‘Now that’s the kind of thing that inspires me with awe and envy,’ said Reardon. ‘I could no more write such a paper than an article on Fluxions.’

‘’Tis my vocation, Hal! You might think I hadn’t experience enough, to begin with. But my intuition is so strong that I can make a little experience go an immense way. Most people would imagine I had been wasting my time these last few years, just sauntering about, reading nothing but periodicals, making acquaintance with loafers of every description. The truth is, I have been collecting ideas, and ideas that are convertible into coin of the realm, my boy; I have the special faculty of an extempore writer. Never in my life shall I do anything of solid literary value; I shall always despise the people I write for. But my path will be that of success. I have always said it, and now I’m sure of it.’

‘Does Fadge retire from The Study, then?’ inquired Reardon, when he had received this tirade with a friendly laugh.

‘Yes, he does. Was going to, it seems, in any case. Of course I heard nothing about the two reviews, and I was almost afraid to smile whilst Fadge was talking with me, lest I should betray my thought. Did you know anything about the fellow before?’

‘Not I. Didn’t know who edited The Study.’

‘Nor I either. Remarkable what a number of illustrious obscure are going about. But I have still something else to tell you. I’m going to set my sisters afloat in literature.’

‘How!’

‘Well, I don’t see why they shouldn’t try their hands at a little writing, instead of giving lessons, which doesn’t suit them a bit. Last night, when I got back from Wimbledon, I went to look up Davies. Perhaps you don’t remember my mentioning him; a fellow who was at Jolly and Monk’s, the publishers, up to a year ago. He edits a trade journal now, and I see very little of him. However, I found him at home, and had a long practical talk with him. I wanted to find out the state of the market as to such wares as Jolly and Monk dispose of. He gave me some very useful hints, and the result was that I went off this morning and saw Monk himself—no Jolly exists at present. “Mr Monk,” I began, in my blandest tone—you know it—“I am requested to call upon you by a lady who thinks of preparing a little volume to be called ‘A Child’s History of the English Parliament.’ Her idea is, that”—and so on. Well, I got on admirably with Monk, especially when he learnt that I was to be connected with Culpepper’s new venture; he smiled upon the project, and said he should be very glad to see a specimen chapter; if that pleased him, we could then discuss terms.’

‘But has one of your sisters really begun such a book?’ inquired Amy.

‘Neither of them knows anything of the matter, but they are certainly capable of doing the kind of thing I have in mind, which will consist largely of anecdotes of prominent statesmen. I myself shall write the specimen chapter, and send it to the girls to show them what I propose. I shouldn’t wonder if they make some fifty pounds out of it. The few books that will be necessary they can either get at a Wattleborough library, or I can send them.’

‘Your energy is remarkable, all of a sudden,’ said Reardon.

‘Yes. The hour has come, I find. “There is a tide”—to quote something that has the charm of freshness.’

The supper—which consisted of bread and butter, cheese, sardines, cocoa—was now over, and Jasper, still enlarging on his recent experiences and future prospects, led the way back to the sitting-room. Not very long after this, Amy left the two friends to their pipes; she was anxious that her husband should discuss his affairs privately with Milvain, and give ear to the practical advice which she knew would be tendered him.

‘I hear that you are still stuck fast,’ began Jasper, when they had smoked awhile in silence.

‘Yes.’

‘Getting rather serious, I should fear, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ repeated Reardon, in a low voice.

‘Come, come, old man, you can’t go on in this way. Would it, or wouldn’t it, be any use if you took a seaside holiday?’

‘Not the least. I am incapable of holiday, if the opportunity were offered. Do something I must, or I shall fret myself into imbecility.’

‘Very well. What is it to be?’

‘I shall try to manufacture two volumes. They needn’t run to more than about two hundred and seventy pages, and those well spaced out.’

‘This is refreshing. This is practical. But look now: let it be something rather sensational. Couldn’t we invent a good title—something to catch eye and ear? The title would suggest the story, you know.’

Reardon laughed contemptuously, but the scorn was directed rather against himself than Milvain.

‘Let’s try,’ he muttered.

Both appeared to exercise their minds on the problem for a few minutes. Then Jasper slapped his knee.

‘How would this do: “The Weird Sisters”? Devilish good, eh? Suggests all sorts of things, both to the vulgar and the educated. Nothing brutally clap-trap about it, you know.’

‘But—what does it suggest to you?’

‘Oh, witch-like, mysterious girls or women. Think it over.’

There was another long silence. Reardon’s face was that of a man in blank misery.

‘I have been trying,’ he said at length, after an attempt to speak which was checked by a huskiness in his throat, ‘to explain to myself how this state of things has come about. I almost think I can do so.’

‘How?’

‘That half-year abroad, and the extraordinary shock of happiness which followed at once upon it, have disturbed the balance of my nature. It was adjusted to circumstances of hardship, privation, struggle. A temperament like mine can’t pass through such a violent change of conditions without being greatly affected; I have never since been the man I was before I left England. The stage I had then reached was the result of a slow and elaborate building up; I could look back and see the processes by which I had grown from the boy who was a mere bookworm to the man who had all but succeeded as a novelist. It was a perfectly natural, sober development. But in the last two years and a half I can distinguish no order. In living through it, I have imagined from time to time that my powers were coming to their ripest; but that was mere delusion. Intellectually, I have fallen back. The probability is that this wouldn’t matter, if only I could live on in peace of mind; I should recover my equilibrium, and perhaps once more understand myself. But the due course of things is troubled by my poverty.’