New Grub Street (34 page)

'However you regard me, you will do what I think fit. I shall
not argue with you. If I choose to take lodgings in Whitechapel,
there you will come and live.'

He met Amy's full look, and was conscious of that in it which
corresponded to his own brutality. She had become suddenly a much
older woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips
were bloodlessly hard, there was an unknown furrow along her
forehead, and she glared like the animal that defends itself with
tooth and claw.

'Do as YOU think fit? Indeed!'

Could Amy's voice sound like that? Great Heaven! With just such
accent he had heard a wrangling woman retort upon her husband at
the street corner. Is there then no essential difference between a
woman of this world and one of that? Does the same nature lie
beneath such unlike surfaces?

He had but to do one thing: to seize her by the arm, drag her up
from the chair, dash her back again with all his force—there, the
transformation would be complete, they would stand towards each
other on the natural footing. With an added curse perhaps—Instead
of that, he choked, struggled for breath, and shed tears.

Amy turned scornfully away from him. Blows and a curse would
have overawed her, at all events for the moment; she would have
felt: 'Yes, he is a man, and I have put my destiny into his hands.'
His tears moved her to a feeling cruelly exultant; they were the
sign of her superiority. It was she who should have wept, and never
in her life had she been further from such display of weakness.

This could not be the end, however, and she had no wish to
terminate the scene. They stood for a minute without regarding each
other, then Reardon faced to her.

'You refuse to live with me, then?'

'Yes, if this is the kind of life you offer me.'

'You would be more ashamed to share your husband's misfortunes
than to declare to everyone that you had deserted him?'

'I shall "declare to everyone" the simple truth. You have the
opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation.
You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a
lower rank of life. I can't and won't consent to that. The disgrace
is yours; it's fortunate for me that I have a decent home to go
to.'

'Fortunate for you!—you make yourself unutterably contemptible.
I have done nothing that justifies you in leaving me. It is for me
to judge what I can do and what I can't. A good woman would see no
degradation in what I ask of you. But to run away from me just
because I am poorer than you ever thought I should be—'

He was incoherent. A thousand passionate things that he wished
to say clashed together in his mind and confused his speech.
Defeated in the attempt to act like a strong man, he could not yet
recover standing-ground, knew not how to tone his utterances.

'Yes, of course, that's how you will put it,' said Amy. 'That's
how you will represent me to your friends. My friends will see it
in a different light.'

'They will regard you as a martyr?'

'No one shall make a martyr of me, you may be sure. I was
unfortunate enough to marry a man who had no delicacy, no regard
for my feelings.—I am not the first woman who has made a mistake of
this kind.'

'No delicacy? No regard for your feelings?—Have I always utterly
misunderstood you? Or has poverty changed you to a woman I can't
recognise?'

He came nearer, and gazed desperately into her face. Not a
muscle of it showed susceptibility to the old influences.

'Do you know, Amy,' he added in a lower voice, 'that if we part
now, we part for ever?'

'I'm afraid that is only too likely.'

She moved aside.

'You mean that you wish it. You are weary of me, and care for
nothing but how to make yourself free.'

'I shall argue no more. I am tired to death of it.'

'Then say nothing, but listen for the last time to my view of
the position we have come to. When I consented to leave you for a
time, to go away and try to work in solitude, I was foolish and
even insincere, both to you and to myself. I knew that I was
undertaking the impossible. It was just putting off the evil day,
that was all—putting off the time when I should have to say
plainly: "I can't live by literature, so I must look out for some
other employment." I shouldn't have been so weak but that I knew
how you would regard such a decision as that. I was afraid to tell
the truth—afraid. Now, when Carter of a sudden put this opportunity
before me, I saw all the absurdity of the arrangements we had made.
It didn't take me a moment to make up my mind. Anything was to be
chosen rather than a parting from you on false pretences, a
ridiculous affectation of hope where there was no hope.'

He paused, and saw that his words had no effect upon her.

'And a grievous share of the fault lies with you, Amy. You
remember very well when I first saw how dark the future was. I was
driven even to say that we ought to change our mode of living; I
asked you if you would be willing to leave this place and go into
cheaper rooms. And you know what your answer was. Not a sign in you
that you would stand by me if the worst came. I knew then what I
had to look forward to, but I durst not believe it. I kept saying
to myself: "She loves me, and as soon as she really understands—"
That was all self-deception. If I had been a wise man, I should
have spoken to you in a way you couldn't mistake. I should have
told you that we were living recklessly, and that I had determined
to alter it. I have no delicacy? No regard for your feelings? Oh,
if I had had less! I doubt whether you can even understand some of
the considerations that weighed with me, and made me
cowardly—though I once thought there was no refinement of
sensibility that you couldn't enter into. Yes, I was absurd enough
to say to myself: "It will look as if I had consciously deceived
her; she may suffer from the thought that I won her at all hazards,
knowing that I should soon expose her to poverty and all sorts of
humiliation." Impossible to speak of that again; I had to struggle
desperately on, trying to hope. Oh! if you knew—'

His voice gave way for an instant.

'I don't understand how you could be so thoughtless and
heartless. You knew that I was almost mad with anxiety at times.
Surely, any woman must have had the impulse to give what help was
in her power. How could you hesitate? Had you no suspicion of what
a relief and encouragement it would be to me, if you said: "Yes, we
must go and live in a simpler way?" If only as a proof that you
loved me, how I should have welcomed that! You helped me in
nothing. You threw all the responsibility upon me—always bearing in
mind, I suppose, that there was a refuge for you. Even now, I
despise myself for saying such things of you, though I know so
bitterly that they are true. It takes a long time to see you as
such a different woman from the one I worshipped. In passion, I can
fling out violent words, but they don't yet answer to my actual
feeling. It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously
of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the
image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last comes the
darkness.'

Amy turned towards him once more.

'Instead of saying all this, you might be proving that I am
wrong. Do so, and I will gladly confess it.'

'That you are wrong? I don't see your meaning.'

'You might prove that you are willing to do your utmost to save
me from humiliation.'

'Amy, I have done my utmost. I have done more than you can
imagine.'

'No. You have toiled on in illness and anxiety—I know that. But
a chance is offered you now of working in a better way. Till that
is tried, you have no right to give all up and try to drag me down
with you.'

'I don't know how to answer. I have told you so often—You can't
understand me!'

'I can! I can!' Her voice trembled for the first time. 'I know
that you are so ready to give in to difficulties. Listen to me, and
do as I bid you.' She spoke in the strangest tone of command.

It was command, not exhortation, but there was no harshness in
her voice. 'Go at once to Mr Carter. Tell him you have made a
ludicrous mistake—in a fit of low spirits; anything you like to
say. Tell him you of course couldn't dream of becoming his clerk.
To-night; at once! You understand me, Edwin? Go now, this
moment.'

'Have you determined to see how weak I am? Do you wish to be
able to despise me more completely still?'

'I am determined to be your friend, and to save you from
yourself. Go at once! Leave all the rest to me. If I have let
things take their course till now, it shan't be so in future. The
responsibility shall be with me. Only do as I tell you.'

'You know it's impossible—'

'It is not! I will find money. No one shall be allowed to say
that we are parting; no one has any such idea yet. You are going
away for your health, just three summer months. I have been far
more careful of appearances than you imagine, but you give me
credit for so little. I will find the money you need, until you
have written another book. I promise; I undertake it. Then I will
find another home for us, of the proper kind. You shall have no
trouble. You shall give yourself entirely to intellectual
things.

But Mr Carter must be told at once, before he can spread a
report. If he has spoken, he must contradict what he has said.'

'But you amaze me, Amy. Do you mean to say that you look upon it
as a veritable disgrace, my taking this clerkship?'

'I do. I can't help my nature. I am ashamed through and through
that you should sink to this.'

'But everyone knows that I was a clerk once!'

'Very few people know it. And then that isn't the same thing. It
doesn't matter what one has been in the past. Especially a literary
man; everyone expects to hear that he was once poor. But to fall
from the position you now have, and to take weekly wages—you surely
can't know how people of my world regard that.'

'Of your world? I had thought your world was the same as mine,
and knew nothing whatever of these imbecilities.'

'It is getting late. Go and see Mr Carter, and afterwards I will
talk as much as you like.'

He might perhaps have yielded, but the unemphasised contempt in
that last sentence was more than he could bear. It demonstrated to
him more completely than set terms could have done what a paltry
weakling he would appear in Amy's eyes if he took his hat down from
the peg and set out to obey her orders.

'You are asking too much,' he said, with unexpected coldness.
'If my opinions are so valueless to you that you dismiss them like
those of a troublesome child, I wonder you think it worth while to
try and keep up appearances about me. It is very simple: make known
to everyone that you are in no way connected with the disgrace I
have brought upon myself. Put an advertisement in the newspapers to
that effect, if you like—as men do about their wives' debts. I have
chosen my part. I can't stultify myself to please you.'

She knew that this was final. His voice had the true ring of
shame in revolt.

'Then go your way, and I will go mine!'

Amy left the room.

When Reardon went into the bedchamber an hour later, he unfolded
a chair-bedstead that stood there, threw some rugs upon it, and so
lay down to pass the night. He did not close his eyes. Amy slept
for an hour or two before dawn, and on waking she started up and
looked anxiously about the room. But neither spoke.

There was a pretence of ordinary breakfast; the little servant
necessitated that. When she saw her husband preparing to go out,
Amy asked him to come into the study.

'How long shall you be away?' she asked, curtly.

'It is doubtful. I am going to look for rooms.'

'Then no doubt I shall be gone when you come back. There's no
object, now, in my staying here till to-morrow.'

'As you please.'

'Do you wish Lizzie still to come?'

'No. Please to pay her wages and dismiss her. Here is some
money.'

'I think you had better let me see to that.'

He flung the coin on to the table and opened the door. Amy
stepped quickly forward and closed it again.

'This is our good-bye, is it?' she asked, her eyes on the
ground.

'As you wish it—yes.'

'You will remember that I have not wished it.'

'In that case, you have only to go with me to the new home.'

'I can't.'

'Then you have made your choice.'

She did not prevent his opening the door this time, and he
passed out without looking at her.

His return was at three in the afternoon. Amy and the child were
gone; the servant was gone. The table in the dining-room was spread
as if for one person's meal.

He went into the bedroom. Amy's trunks had disappeared. The
child's cot was covered over. In the study, he saw that the
sovereign he had thrown on to the table still lay in the same
place.

As it was a very cold day he lit a fire. Whilst it burnt up he
sat reading a torn portion of a newspaper, and became quite
interested in the report of a commercial meeting in the City, a
thing he would never have glanced at under ordinary circumstances.
The fragment fell at length from his hands; his head drooped; he
sank into a troubled sleep.

About six he had tea, then began the packing of the few books
that were to go with him, and of such other things as could be
enclosed in box or portmanteau. After a couple of hours of this
occupation he could no longer resist his weariness, so he went to
bed. Before falling asleep he heard the two familiar clocks strike
eight; this evening they were in unusual accord, and the querulous
notes from the workhouse sounded between the deeper ones from St
Marylebone. Reardon tried to remember when he had last observed
this; the matter seemed to have a peculiar interest for him, and in
dreams he worried himself with a grotesque speculation thence
derived.