New Grub Street (2 page)

Having finished his breakfast, he leaned back and began to
unfold the London paper that had come by post.

'Had Mr Reardon any hopes of that kind at the time of his
marriage, do you think?' inquired Mrs Milvain.

'Reardon? Good heavens, no! Would he were capable of such
forethought!'

In a few minutes Jasper was left alone in the room. When the
servant came to clear the table he strolled slowly away, humming a
tune.

The house was pleasantly situated by the roadside in a little
village named Finden. Opposite stood the church, a plain, low,
square-towered building. As it was cattle-market to-day in the town
of Wattleborough, droves of beasts and sheep occasionally went by,
or the rattle of a grazier's cart sounded for a moment. On ordinary
days the road saw few vehicles, and pedestrians were rare.

Mrs Milvain and her daughters had lived here for the last seven
years, since the death of the father, who was a veterinary surgeon.
The widow enjoyed an annuity of two hundred and forty pounds,
terminable with her life; the children had nothing of their own.
Maud acted irregularly as a teacher of music; Dora had an
engagement as visiting governess in a Wattleborough family. Twice a
year, as a rule, Jasper came down from London to spend a fortnight
with them; to-day marked the middle of his autumn visit, and the
strained relations between him and his sisters which invariably
made the second week rather trying for all in the house had already
become noticeable.

In the course of the morning Jasper had half an hour's private
talk with his mother, after which he set off to roam in the
sunshine. Shortly after he had left the house, Maud, her domestic
duties dismissed for the time, came into the parlour where Mrs
Milvain was reclining on the sofa.

'Jasper wants more money,' said the mother, when Maud had sat in
meditation for a few minutes.

'Of course. I knew that. I hope you told him he couldn't have
it.'

'I really didn't know what to say,' returned Mrs Milvain, in a
feeble tone of worry.

'Then you must leave the matter to me, that's all. There's no
money for him, and there's an end of it.'

Maud set her features in sullen determination. There was a brief
silence.

'What's he to do, Maud?'

'To do? How do other people do? What do Dora and I do?'

'You don't earn enough for your support, my dear.'

'Oh, well!' broke from the girl. 'Of course, if you grudge us
our food and lodging—'

'Don't be so quick-tempered. You know very well I am far from
grudging you anything, dear. But I only meant to say that Jasper
does earn something, you know.'

'It's a disgraceful thing that he doesn't earn as much as he
needs. We are sacrificed to him, as we always have been. Why should
we be pinching and stinting to keep him in idleness?'

'But you really can't call it idleness, Maud. He is studying his
profession.'

'Pray call it trade; he prefers it. How do I know that he's
studying anything? What does he mean by "studying"? And to hear him
speak scornfully of his friend Mr Reardon, who seems to work hard
all through the year! It's disgusting, mother. At this rate he will
never earn his own living. Who hasn't seen or heard of such men? If
we had another hundred a year, I would say nothing. But we can't
live on what he leaves us, and I'm not going to let you try. I
shall tell Jasper plainly that he's got to work for his own
support.'

Another silence, and a longer one. Mrs Milvain furtively wiped a
tear from her cheek.

'It seems very cruel to refuse,' she said at length, 'when
another year may give him the opportunity he's waiting for.'

'Opportunity? What does he mean by his opportunity?'

'He says that it always comes, if a man knows how to wait.'

'And the people who support him may starve meanwhile! Now just
think a bit, mother. Suppose anything were to happen to you, what
becomes of Dora and me? And what becomes of Jasper, too? It's the
truest kindness to him to compel him to earn a living. He gets more
and more incapable of it.'

'You can't say that, Maud. He earns a little more each year. But
for that, I should have my doubts. He has made thirty pounds
already this year, and he only made about twenty-five the whole of
last. We must be fair to him, you know. I can't help feeling that
he knows what he's about. And if he does succeed, he'll pay us all
back.'

Maud began to gnaw her fingers, a disagreeable habit she had in
privacy.

'Then why doesn't he live more economically?'

'I really don't see how he can live on less than a hundred and
fifty a year. London, you know—'

'The cheapest place in the world.'

'Nonsense, Maud!'

'But I know what I'm saying. I've read quite enough about such
things. He might live very well indeed on thirty shillings a week,
even buying his clothes out of it.'

'But he has told us so often that it's no use to him to live
like that. He is obliged to go to places where he must spend a
little, or he makes no progress.'

'Well, all I can say is,' exclaimed the girl impatiently, 'it's
very lucky for him that he's got a mother who willingly sacrifices
her daughters to him.'

'That's how you always break out. You don't care what unkindness
you say!'

'It's a simple truth.'

'Dora never speaks like that.'

'Because she's afraid to be honest.'

'No, because she has too much love for her mother. I can't bear
to talk to you, Maud. The older I get, and the weaker I get, the
more unfeeling you are to me.'

Scenes of this kind were no uncommon thing. The clash of tempers
lasted for several minutes, then Maud flung out of the room. An
hour later, at dinner-time, she was rather more caustic in her
remarks than usual, but this was the only sign that remained of the
stormy mood.

Jasper renewed the breakfast-table conversation.

'Look here,' he began, 'why don't you girls write something? I'm
convinced you could make money if you tried. There's a tremendous
sale for religious stories; why not patch one together? I am quite
serious.'

'Why don't you do it yourself,' retorted Maud.

'I can't manage stories, as I have told you; but I think you
could. In your place, I'd make a speciality of Sunday-school
prize-books; you know the kind of thing I mean. They sell like hot
cakes. And there's so deuced little enterprise in the business. If
you'd give your mind to it, you might make hundreds a year.'

'Better say "abandon your mind to it."'

'Why, there you are! You're a sharp enough girl. You can quote
as well as anyone I know.'

'And please, why am I to take up an inferior kind of work?'

'Inferior? Oh, if you can be a George Eliot, begin at the
earliest opportunity. I merely suggested what seemed
practicable.

But I don't think you have genius, Maud. People have got that
ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads—that one mustn't
write save at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing
is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the
Sunday-school prize; study them; discover the essential points of
such composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work
methodically, so many pages a day. There's no question of the
divine afflatus; that belongs to another sphere of life. We talk of
literature as a trade, not of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. If I
could only get that into poor Reardon's head. He thinks me a gross
beast, often enough. What the devil—I mean what on earth is there
in typography to make everything it deals with sacred? I don't
advocate the propagation of vicious literature; I speak only of
good, coarse, marketable stuff for the world's vulgar. You just
give it a thought, Maud; talk it over with Dora.'

He resumed presently:

'I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying
the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit
down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only
commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the
best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce
novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand
copies. But it needs skill, mind you: and to deny it is a gross
error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one
way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity. For my own part,
I shan't be able to address the bulkiest multitude; my talent
doesn't lend itself to that form. I shall write for the upper
middle-class of intellect, the people who like to feel that what
they are reading has some special cleverness, but who can't
distinguish between stones and paste. That's why I'm so slow in
warming to the work. Every month I feel surer of myself,
however.

That last thing of mine in The West End distinctly hit the mark;
it wasn't too flashy, it wasn't too solid. I heard fellows speak of
it in the train.'

Mrs Milvain kept glancing at Maud, with eyes which desired her
attention to these utterances. None the less, half an hour after
dinner, Jasper found himself encountered by his sister in the
garden, on her face a look which warned him of what was coming.

'I want you to tell me something, Jasper. How much longer shall
you look to mother for support? I mean it literally; let me have an
idea of how much longer it will be.'

He looked away and reflected.

'To leave a margin,' was his reply, 'let us say twelve
months.'

'Better say your favourite "ten years" at once.'

'No. I speak by the card. In twelve months' time, if not before,
I shall begin to pay my debts. My dear girl, I have the honour to
be a tolerably long-headed individual. I know what I'm about.'

'And let us suppose mother were to die within half a year?'

'I should make shift to do very well.'

'You? And please—what of Dora and me?'

'You would write Sunday-school prizes.'

Maud turned away and left him.

He knocked the dust out of the pipe he had been smoking, and
again set off for a stroll along the lanes. On his countenance was
just a trace of solicitude, but for the most part he wore a
thoughtful smile. Now and then he stroked his smoothly-shaven jaws
with thumb and fingers. Occasionally he became observant of wayside
details—of the colour of a maple leaf, the shape of a tall thistle,
the consistency of a fungus. At the few people who passed he looked
keenly, surveying them from head to foot.

On turning, at the limit of his walk, he found himself almost
face to face with two persons, who were coming along in silent
companionship; their appearance interested him. The one was a man
of fifty, grizzled, hard featured, slightly bowed in the shoulders;
he wore a grey felt hat with a broad brim and a decent suit of
broadcloth. With him was a girl of perhaps two-and-twenty, in a
slate-coloured dress with very little ornament, and a yellow straw
hat of the shape originally appropriated to males; her dark hair
was cut short, and lay in innumerable crisp curls. Father and
daughter, obviously. The girl, to a casual eye, was neither pretty
nor beautiful, but she had a grave and impressive face, with a
complexion of ivory tone; her walk was gracefully modest, and she
seemed to be enjoying the country air.

Jasper mused concerning them. When he had walked a few yards, he
looked back; at the same moment the unknown man also turned his
head.

'Where the deuce have I seen them—him and the girl too?' Milvain
asked himself.

And before he reached home the recollection he sought flashed
upon his mind.

'The Museum Reading-room, of course!'

'I think' said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother
and Maud were busy with plain needlework, 'I must have met Alfred
Yule and his daughter.'

'How did you recognise them?' Mrs Milvain inquired.

'I passed an old buffer and a pale-faced girl whom I know by
sight at the British Museum. It wasn't near Yule's house, but they
were taking a walk.'

'They may have come already. When Miss Harrow was here last, she
said "in about a fortnight."'

'No mistaking them for people of these parts, even if I hadn't
remembered their faces. Both of them are obvious dwellers in the
valley of the shadow of books.'

'Is Miss Yule such a fright then?' asked Maud.

'A fright! Not at all. A good example of the modern literary
girl. I suppose you have the oddest old-fashioned ideas of such
people. No, I rather like the look of her. Simpatica, I should
think, as that ass Whelpdale would say. A very delicate, pure
complexion, though morbid; nice eyes; figure not spoilt yet. But of
course I may be wrong about their identity.'

Later in the afternoon Jasper's conjecture was rendered a
certainty. Maud had walked to Wattleborough, where she would meet
Dora on the latter's return from her teaching, and Mrs Milvain sat
alone, in a mood of depression; there was a ring at the door-bell,
and the servant admitted Miss Harrow.

This lady acted as housekeeper to Mr John Yule, a wealthy
resident in this neighbourhood; she was the sister of his deceased
wife—a thin, soft-speaking, kindly woman of forty-five. The greater
part of her life she had spent as a governess; her position now was
more agreeable, and the removal of her anxiety about the future had
developed qualities of cheerfulness which formerly no one would
have suspected her to possess. The acquaintance between Mrs Milvain
and her was only of twelve months' standing; prior to that, Mr Yule
had inhabited a house at the end of Wattleborough remote from
Finden.

'Our London visitors came yesterday,' she began by saying.

Mrs Milvain mentioned her son's encounter an hour or two
ago.

'No doubt it was they,' said the visitor. 'Mrs Yule hasn't come;
I hardly expected she would, you know. So very unfortunate when
there are difficulties of that kind, isn't it?'