New Grub Street (29 page)

'And you would leave me without regret? Your only care would be
that you were still bound to me?'

'You must think of me what you like. I don't care to defend
myself.'

'You won't admit, then, that I have anything to complain of? I
seem to you simply in a bad temper without a cause?'

'To tell you the truth, that's just what I do think. I came here
to ask what I had done that you were angry with me, and you break
out furiously with all sorts of vague reproaches. You have much to
endure, I know that, but it's no reason why you should turn against
me. I have never neglected my duty. Is the duty all on my side? I
believe there are very few wives who would be as patient as I have
been.'

Reardon gazed at her for a moment, then turned away. The
distance between them was greater than he had thought, and now he
repented of having given way to an impulse so alien to his true
feelings; anger only estranged her, whereas by speech of a
different kind he might have won the caress for which he
hungered.

Amy, seeing that he would say nothing more, left him to
himself.

It grew late in the night. The fire had gone out, but Reardon
still sat in the cold room. Thoughts of self-destruction were again
haunting him, as they had done during the black months of last
year. If he had lost Amy's love, and all through the mental
impotence which would make it hard for him even to earn bread, why
should he still live? Affection for his child had no weight with
him; it was Amy's child rather than his, and he had more fear than
pleasure in the prospect of Willie's growing to manhood.

He had just heard the workhouse clock strike two, when, without
the warning of a footstep, the door opened. Amy came in; she wore
her dressing-gown, and her hair was arranged for the night.

'Why do you stay here?' she asked.

It was not the same voice as before. He saw that her eyes were
red and swollen.

'Have you been crying, Amy?'

'Never mind. Do you know what time it is?'

He went towards her.

'Why have you been crying?'

'There are many things to cry for.'

'Amy, have you any love for me still, or has poverty robbed me
of it all?'

'I have never said that I didn't love you. Why do you accuse me
of such things?'

He took her in his arms and held her passionately and kissed her
face again and again. Amy's tears broke forth anew.

'Why should we come to such utter ruin?' she sobbed. 'Oh, try,
try if you can't save us even yet! You know without my saying it
that I do love you; it's dreadful to me to think all our happy life
should be at an end, when we thought of such a future together. Is
it impossible? Can't you work as you used to and succeed as we felt
confident you would? Don't despair yet, Edwin; do, do try, whilst
there is still time!'

'Darling, darling—if only I COULD!'

'I have thought of something, dearest. Do as you proposed last
year; find a tenant for the flat whilst we still have a little
money, and then go away into some quiet country place, where you
can get back your health and live for very little, and write
another book—a good book, that'll bring you reputation again. I and
Willie can go and live at mother's for the summer months. Do this!
It would cost you so little, living alone, wouldn't it? You would
know that I was well cared for; mother would be willing to have me
for a few months, and it's easy to explain that your health has
failed, that you're obliged to go away for a time.'

'But why shouldn't you go with me, if we are to let this
place?'

'We shouldn't have enough money. I want to free your mind from
the burden whilst you are writing. And what is before us if we go
on in this way? You don't think you will get much for what you're
writing now, do you?'

Reardon shook his head.

'Then how can we live even till the end of the year? Something
must be done, you know. If we get into poor lodgings, what hope is
there that you'll be able to write anything good?'

'But, Amy, I have no faith in my power of—'

'Oh, it would be different! A few days—a week or a fortnight of
real holiday in this spring weather. Go to some seaside place. How
is it possible that all your talent should have left you? It's only
that you have been so anxious and in such poor health. You say I
don't love you, but I have thought and thought what would be best
for you to do, how you could save yourself. How can you sink down
to the position of a poor clerk in some office? That CAN'T be your
fate, Edwin; it's incredible. Oh, after such bright hopes, make one
more effort! Have you forgotten that we were to go to the South
together—you were to take me to Italy and Greece? How can that ever
be if you fail utterly in literature? How can you ever hope to earn
more than bare sustenance at any other kind of work?'

He all but lost consciousness of her words in gazing at the face
she held up to his.

'You love me? Say again that you love me!'

'Dear, I love you with all my heart. But I am so afraid of the
future. I can't bear poverty; I have found that I can't bear it.
And I dread to think of your becoming only an ordinary man—'

Reardon laughed.

'But I am NOT "only an ordinary man," Amy! If I never write
another line, that won't undo what I have done. It's little enough,
to be sure; but you know what I am. Do you only love the author in
me? Don't you think of me apart from all that I may do or not do?
If I had to earn my living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk
in soul?'

'You shall not fall to that! It would be too bitter a shame to
lose all you have gained in these long years of work. Let me plan
for you; do as I wish. You are to be what we hoped from the first.
Take all the summer months. How long will it be before you can
finish this short book?'

'A week or two.'

'Then finish it, and see what you can get for it. And try at
once to find a tenant to take this place off our hands; that would
be twenty-five pounds saved for the rest of the year. You could
live on so little by yourself, couldn't you?'

'Oh, on ten shillings a week, if need be.'

'But not to starve yourself, you know. Don't you feel that my
plan is a good one? When I came to you to-night I meant to speak of
this, but you were so cruel—'

'Forgive me, dearest love! I was half a madman. You have been so
cold to me for a long time.'

'I have been distracted. It was as if we were drawing nearer and
nearer to the edge of a cataract.'

'Have you spoken to your mother about this?' he asked
uneasily.

'No—not exactly this. But I know she will help us in this
way.'

He had seated himself and was holding her in his arms, his face
laid against hers.

'I shall dread to part from you, Amy. That's such a dangerous
thing to do. It may mean that we are never to live as husband and
wife again.'

'But how could it? It's just to prevent that danger. If we go on
here till we have no money—what's before us then? Wretched lodgings
at the best. And I am afraid to think of that. I can't trust myself
if that should come to pass.'

'What do you mean?' he asked anxiously.

'I hate poverty so. It brings out all the worst things in me;
you know I have told you that before, Edwin?'

'But you would never forget that you are my wife?'

'I hope not. But—I can't think of it; I can't face it! That
would be the very worst that can befall us, and we are going to try
our utmost to escape from it. Was there ever a man who did as much
as you have done in literature and then sank into hopeless
poverty?'

'Oh, many!'

'But at your age, I mean. Surely not at your age?'

'I'm afraid there have been such poor fellows. Think how often
one hears of hopeful beginnings, new reputations, and then—you hear
no more. Of course it generally means that the man has gone into a
different career; but sometimes, sometimes—'

'What?'

'The abyss.' He pointed downward. 'Penury and despair and a
miserable death.'

'Oh, but those men haven't a wife and child! They would
struggle—'

'Darling, they do struggle. But it's as if an ever-increasing
weight were round their necks; it drags them lower and lower. The
world has no pity on a man who can't do or produce something it
thinks worth money. You may be a divine poet, and if some good
fellow doesn't take pity on you you will starve by the roadside.
Society is as blind and brutal as fate. I have no right to complain
of my own ill-fortune; it's my own fault (in a sense) that I can't
continue as well as I began; if I could write books as good as the
early ones I should earn money. For all that, it's hard that I must
be kicked aside as worthless just because I don't know a
trade.'

'It shan't be! I have only to look into your face to know that
you will succeed after all. Yours is the kind of face that people
come to know in portraits.'

He kissed her hair, and her eyes, and her mouth.

'How well I remember your saying that before! Why have you grown
so good to me all at once, my Amy? Hearing you speak like that I
feel there's nothing beyond my reach. But I dread to go away from
you. If I find that it is hopeless; if I am alone somewhere, and
know that the effort is all in vain—'

'Then?'

'Well, I can leave you free. If I can't support you, it will be
only just that I should give you back your freedom.'

'I don't understand—'

She raised herself and looked into his eyes.

'We won't talk of that. If you bid me go on with the struggle, I
shall do so.'

Amy had hidden her face, and lay silently in his arms for a
minute or two. Then she murmured:

'It is so cold here, and so late. Come!'

'So early. There goes three o'clock.'

The next day they talked much of this new project. As there was
sunshine Amy accompanied her husband for his walk in the afternoon;
it was long since they had been out together. An open carriage that
passed, followed by two young girls on horseback, gave a familiar
direction to Reardon's thoughts.

'If one were as rich as those people! They pass so close to us;
they see us, and we see them; but the distance between is infinity.
They don't belong to the same world as we poor wretches. They see
everything in a different light; they have powers which would seem
supernatural if we were suddenly endowed with them.'

'Of course,' assented his companion with a sigh.

'Just fancy, if one got up in the morning with the thought that
no reasonable desire that occurred to one throughout the day need
remain ungratified! And that it would be the same, any day and
every day, to the end of one's life! Look at those houses; every
detail, within and without, luxurious. To have such a home as
that!'

'And they are empty creatures who live there.'

'They do live, Amy, at all events. Whatever may be their
faculties, they all have free scope. I have often stood staring at
houses like these until I couldn't believe that the people owning
them were mere human beings like myself. The power of money is so
hard to realise; one who has never had it marvels at the
completeness with which it transforms every detail of life. Compare
what we call our home with that of rich people; it moves one to
scornful laughter. I have no sympathy with the stoical point of
view; between wealth and poverty is just the difference between the
whole man and the maimed. If my lower limbs are paralysed I may
still be able to think, but then there is such a thing in life as
walking. As a poor devil I may live nobly; but one happens to be
made with faculties of enjoyment, and those have to fall into
atrophy. To be sure, most rich people don't understand their
happiness; if they did, they would move and talk like gods—which
indeed they are.'

Amy's brow was shadowed. A wise man, in Reardon's position,
would not have chosen this subject to dilate upon.

'The difference,' he went on, 'between the man with money and
the man without is simply this: the one thinks, "How shall I use my
life?" and the other, "How shall I keep myself alive?" A
physiologist ought to be able to discover some curious distinction
between the brain of a person who has never given a thought to the
means of subsistence, and that of one who has never known a day
free from such cares. There must be some special cerebral
development representing the mental anguish kept up by
poverty.'

'I should say,' put in Amy, 'that it affects every function of
the brain. It isn't a special point of suffering, but a misery that
colours every thought.'

'True. Can I think of a single subject in all the sphere of my
experience without the consciousness that I see it through the
medium of poverty? I have no enjoyment which isn't tainted by that
thought, and I can suffer no pain which it doesn't increase. The
curse of poverty is to the modern world just what that of slavery
was to the ancient. Rich and destitute stand to each other as free
man and bond. You remember the line of Homer I have often quoted
about the demoralising effect of enslavement; poverty degrades in
the same way.'

'It has had its effect upon me—I know that too well,' said Amy,
with bitter frankness.

Reardon glanced at her, and wished to make some reply, but he
could not say what was in his thoughts.

He worked on at his story. Before he had reached the end of it,
'Margaret Home' was published, and one day arrived a parcel
containing the six copies to which an author is traditionally
entitled. Reardon was not so old in authorship that he could open
the packet without a slight flutter of his pulse. The book was
tastefully got up; Amy exclaimed with pleasure as she caught sight
of the cover and lettering:

'It may succeed, Edwin. It doesn't look like a book that fails,
does it?'