New Grub Street (28 page)

Since then she had made careful study of his faults. Each
conversation had revealed to her new weakness and follies. With the
result that her love had grown to a reality.

He was so human, and a youth of all but monastic seclusion had
prepared her to love the man who aimed with frank energy at the
joys of life. A taint of pedantry would have repelled her. She did
not ask for high intellect or great attainments; but vivacity,
courage, determination to succeed, were delightful to her senses.
Her ideal would not have been a literary man at all; certainly not
a man likely to be prominent in journalism; rather a man of action,
one who had no restraints of commerce or official routine. But in
Jasper she saw the qualities that attracted her apart from the
accidents of his position. Ideal personages do not descend to girls
who have to labour at the British Museum; it seemed a marvel to
her, and of good augury, that even such a man as Jasper should have
crossed her path.

It was as though years had passed since their first meeting.
Upon her return to London had followed such long periods of
hopelessness. Yet whenever they encountered each other he had look
and speech for her with which surely he did not greet every woman.
From the first his way of regarding her had shown frank interest.
And at length had come the confession of his 'respect,' his desire
to be something more to her than a mere acquaintance. It was
scarcely possible that he should speak as he several times had of
late if he did not wish to draw her towards him.

That was the hopeful side of her thoughts. It was easy to forget
for a time those words of his which one might think were spoken as
distinct warning; but they crept into the memory, unwelcome,
importunate, as soon as imagination had built its palace of joy.
Why did he always recur to the subject of money? 'I shall allow
nothing to come in my way;' he once said that as if meaning,
'certainly not a love affair with a girl who is penniless.' He
emphasised the word 'friend,' as if to explain that he offered and
asked nothing more than friendship.

But it only meant that he would not be in haste to declare
himself. Of a certainty there was conflict between his ambition and
his love, but she recognised her power over him and exulted in it.
She had observed his hesitancy this evening, before he rose to
accompany her from the house; her heart laughed within her as the
desire drew him. And henceforth such meetings would be frequent,
with each one her influence would increase. How kindly fate had
dealt with her in bringing Maud and Dora to London!

It was within his reach to marry a woman who would bring him
wealth. He had that in mind; she understood it too well. But not
one moment's advantage would she relinquish. He must choose her in
her poverty, and be content with what his talents could earn for
him. Her love gave her the right to demand this sacrifice; let him
ask for her love, and the sacrifice would no longer seem one, so
passionately would she reward him.

He would ask it. To-night she was full of a rich confidence,
partly, no doubt, the result of reaction from her miseries. He had
said at parting that her character was so well suited to his; that
he liked her. And then he had pressed her hand so warmly. Before
long he would ask her love.

The unhoped was all but granted her. She could labour on in the
valley of the shadow of books, for a ray of dazzling sunshine might
at any moment strike into its musty gloom.

The past twelve months had added several years to Edwin
Reardon's seeming age; at thirty-three he would generally have been
taken for forty. His bearing, his personal habits, were no longer
those of a young man; he walked with a stoop and pressed noticeably
on the stick he carried; it was rare for him to show the
countenance which tells of present cheerfulness or glad
onward-looking; there was no spring in his step; his voice had
fallen to a lower key, and often he spoke with that hesitation in
choice of words which may be noticed in persons whom defeat has
made self-distrustful. Ceaseless perplexity and dread gave a
wandering, sometimes a wild, expression to his eyes.

He seldom slept, in the proper sense of the word; as a rule he
was conscious all through the night of 'a kind of fighting' between
physical weariness and wakeful toil of the mind. It often happened
that some wholly imaginary obstacle in the story he was writing
kept him under a sense of effort throughout the dark hours; now and
again he woke, reasoned with himself, and remembered clearly that
the torment was without cause, but the short relief thus afforded
soon passed in the recollection of real distress. In his unsoothing
slumber he talked aloud, frequently wakening Amy; generally he
seemed to be holding a dialogue with someone who had imposed an
intolerable task upon him; he protested passionately, appealed,
argued in the strangest way about the injustice of what was
demanded. Once Amy heard him begging for money—positively begging,
like some poor wretch in the street; it was horrible, and made her
shed tears; when he asked what he had been saying, she could not
bring herself to tell him.

When the striking clocks summoned him remorselessly to rise and
work he often reeled with dizziness. It seemed to him that the
greatest happiness attainable would be to creep into some dark,
warm corner, out of the sight and memory of men, and lie there
torpid, with a blessed half-consciousness that death was slowly
overcoming him. Of all the sufferings collected into each
four-and-twenty hours this of rising to a new day was the
worst.

The one-volume story which he had calculated would take him four
or five weeks was with difficulty finished in two months. March
winds made an invalid of him; at one time he was threatened with
bronchitis, and for several days had to abandon even the effort to
work. In previous winters he had been wont to undergo a good deal
of martyrdom from the London climate, but never in such a degree as
now; mental illness seemed to have enfeebled his body.

It was strange that he succeeded in doing work of any kind, for
he had no hope from the result. This one last effort he would make,
just to complete the undeniableness of his failure, and then
literature should be thrown behind him; what other pursuit was
possible to him he knew not, but perhaps he might discover some
mode of earning a livelihood. Had it been a question of gaining a
pound a week, as in the old days, he might have hoped to obtain
some clerkship like that at the hospital, where no commercial
experience or aptitude was demanded; but in his present position
such an income would be useless. Could he take Amy and the child to
live in a garret? On less than a hundred a year it was scarcely
possible to maintain outward decency. Already his own clothing
began to declare him poverty-stricken, and but for gifts from her
mother Amy would have reached the like pass. They lived in dread of
the pettiest casual expense, for the day of pennilessness was again
approaching.

Amy was oftener from home than had been her custom.

Occasionally she went away soon after breakfast, and spent the
whole day at her mother's house. 'It saves food,' she said with a
bitter laugh, when Reardon once expressed surprise that she should
be going again so soon.

'And gives you an opportunity of bewailing your hard fate,' he
returned coldly.

The reproach was ignoble, and he could not be surprised that Amy
left the house without another word to him. Yet he resented that,
as he had resented her sorrowful jest. The feeling of unmanliness
in his own position tortured him into a mood of perversity. Through
the day he wrote only a few lines, and on Amy's return he resolved
not to speak to her. There was a sense of repose in this change of
attitude; he encouraged himself in the view that Amy was treating
him with cruel neglect. She, surprised that her friendly questions
elicited no answer, looked into his face and saw a sullen anger of
which hitherto Reardon had never seemed capable. Her indignation
took fire, and she left him to himself.

For a day or two he persevered in his muteness, uttering a word
only when it could not be avoided. Amy was at first so resentful
that she contemplated leaving him to his ill-temper and dwelling at
her mother's house until he chose to recall her. But his face grew
so haggard in fixed misery that compassion at length prevailed over
her injured pride. Late in the evening she went to the study, and
found him sitting unoccupied.

'Edwin—'

'What do you want?' he asked indifferently.

'Why are you behaving to me like this?'

'Surely it makes no difference to you how I behave? You can
easily forget that I exist, and live your own life.'

'What have I done to make this change in you?'

'Is it a change?'

'You know it is.'

'How did I behave before?' he asked, glancing at her.

'Like yourself—kindly and gently.'

'If I always did so, in spite of things that might have
embittered another man's temper, I think it deserved some return of
kindness from you.'

'What "things" do you mean?'

'Circumstances for which neither of us is to blame.'

'I am not conscious of having failed in kindness,' said Amy,
distantly.

'Then that only shows that you have forgotten your old self, and
utterly changed in your feeling to me. When we first came to live
here could you have imagined yourself leaving me alone for long,
miserable days, just because I was suffering under misfortunes? You
have shown too plainly that you don't care to give me the help even
of a kind word. You get away from me as often as you can, as if to
remind me that we have no longer any interests in common. Other
people are your confidants; you speak of me to them as if I were
purposely dragging you down into a mean condition.'

'How can you know what I say about you?'

'Isn't it true?' he asked, flashing an angry glance at her.

'It is not true. Of course I have talked to mother about our
difficulties; how could I help it?'

'And to other people.'

'Not in a way that you could find fault with.'

'In a way that makes me seem contemptible to them. You show them
that I have made you poor and unhappy, and you are glad to have
their sympathy.'

'What you mean is, that I oughtn't to see anyone. There's no
other way of avoiding such a reproach as this. So long as I don't
laugh and sing before people, and assure them that things couldn't
be more hopeful, I shall be asking for their sympathy, and against
you. I can't understand your unreasonableness.'

'I'm afraid there is very little in me that you can understand.
So long as my prospects seemed bright, you could sympathise readily
enough; as soon as ever they darkened, something came between us.
Amy, you haven't done your duty. Your love hasn't stood the test as
it should have done. You have given me no help; besides the burden
of cheerless work I have had to bear that of your growing coldness.
I can't remember one instance when you have spoken to me as a wife
might—a wife who was something more than a man's housekeeper.'

The passion in his voice and the harshness of the accusation
made her unable to reply.

'You said rightly,' he went on, 'that I have always been kind
and gentle. I never thought I could speak to you or feel to you in
any other way. But I have undergone too much, and you have deserted
me. Surely it was too soon to do that. So long as I endeavoured my
utmost, and loved you the same as ever, you might have remembered
all you once said to me. You might have given me help, but you
haven't cared to.'

The impulses which had part in this outbreak were numerous and
complex. He felt all that he expressed, but at the same time it
seemed to him that he had the choice between two ways of uttering
his emotion—the tenderly appealing and the sternly reproachful: he
took the latter course because it was less natural to him than the
former. His desire was to impress Amy with the bitter intensity of
his sufferings; pathos and loving words seemed to have lost their
power upon her, but perhaps if he yielded to that other form of
passion she would be shaken out of her coldness. The stress of
injured love is always tempted to speech which seems its
contradiction. Reardon had the strangest mixture of pain and
pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that he had
ever addressed to Amy; they consoled him under the humiliating
sense of his weakness, and yet he watched with dread his wife's
countenance as she listened to him. He hoped to cause her pain
equal to his own, for then it would be in his power at once to
throw off this disguise and soothe her with every softest word his
heart could suggest. That she had really ceased to love him he
could not, durst not, believe; but his nature demanded frequent
assurance of affection. Amy had abandoned too soon the caresses of
their ardent time; she was absorbed in her maternity, and thought
it enough to be her husband's friend. Ashamed to make appeal
directly for the tenderness she no longer offered, he accused her
of utter indifference, of abandoning him and all but betraying him,
that in self-defence she might show what really was in her
heart.

But Amy made no movement towards him.

'How can you say that I have deserted you?' she returned, with
cold indignation. 'When did I refuse to share your poverty? When
did I grumble at what we have had to go through?'

'Ever since the troubles really began you have let me know what
your thoughts were, even if you didn't speak them. You have never
shared my lot willingly. I can't recall one word of encouragement
from you, but many, many which made the struggle harder for
me.'

'Then it would be better for you if I went away altogether, and
left you free to do the best for yourself. If that is what you mean
by all this, why not say it plainly? I won't be a burden to you.
Someone will give me a home.'