New Grub Street (5 page)

Marian urged a hesitating objection.

'But, under the circumstances, wasn't it in the author's power
to make friends? Was money really indispensable?'

'Why, yes—because he chose to marry. As a bachelor he might
possibly have got into the right circles, though his character
would in any case have made it difficult for him to curry
favour.

But as a married man, without means, the situation was hopeless.
Once married you must live up to the standard of the society you
frequent; you can't be entertained without entertaining in return.
Now if his wife had brought him only a couple of thousand pounds
all might have been well. I should have advised him, in sober
seriousness, to live for two years at the rate of a thousand a
year. At the end of that time he would have been earning enough to
continue at pretty much the same rate of expenditure.'

'Perhaps.'

'Well, I ought rather to say that the average man of letters
would be able to do that. As for Reardon—'

He stopped. The name had escaped him unawares.

'Reardon?' said Marian, looking up. 'You are speaking of
him?'

'I have betrayed myself Miss Yule.'

'But what does it matter? You have only spoken in his
favour.'

'I feared the name might affect you disagreeably.'

Marian delayed her reply.

'It is true,' she said, 'we are not on friendly terms with my
cousin's family. I have never met Mr Reardon. But I shouldn't like
you to think that the mention of his name is disagreeable to
me.'

'It made me slightly uncomfortable yesterday—the fact that I am
well acquainted with Mrs Edmund Yule, and that Reardon is my
friend. Yet I didn't see why that should prevent my making your
father's acquaintance.'

'Surely not. I shall say nothing about it; I mean, as you
uttered the name unintentionally.'

There was a pause in the dialogue. They had been speaking almost
confidentially, and Marian seemed to become suddenly aware of an
oddness in the situation. She turned towards the uphill path, as if
thinking of resuming her walk.

'You are tired of standing still,' said Jasper. 'May I walk back
a part of the way with you?'

'Thank you; I shall be glad.'

They went on for a few minutes in silence.

'Have you published anything with your signature, Miss Yule?'
Jasper at length inquired.

'Nothing. I only help father a little.'

The silence that again followed was broken this time by
Marian.

'When you chanced to mention Mr Reardon's name,' she said, with
a diffident smile in which lay that suggestion of humour so
delightful upon a woman's face, 'you were going to say something
more about him?'

'Only that—' he broke off and laughed. 'Now, how boyish it was,
wasn't it? I remember doing just the same thing once when I came
home from school and had an exciting story to tell, with
preservation of anonymities. Of course I blurted out a name in the
first minute or two, to my father's great amusement. He told me
that I hadn't the diplomatic character. I have been trying to
acquire it ever since.

'But why?'

'It's one of the essentials of success in any kind of public
life. And I mean to succeed, you know. I feel that I am one of the
men who do succeed. But I beg your pardon; you asked me a question.
Really, I was only going to say of Reardon what I had said before:
that he hasn't the tact requisite for acquiring popularity.'

'Then I may hope that it isn't his marriage with my cousin which
has proved a fatal misfortune?'

'In no case,' replied Milvain, averting his look, 'would he have
used his advantages.'

'And now? Do you think he has but poor prospects?'

'I wish I could see any chance of his being estimated at his
right value. It's very hard to say what is before him.'

'I knew my cousin Amy when we were children,' said Marian,
presently. 'She gave promise of beauty.'

'Yes, she is beautiful.'

'And—the kind of woman to be of help to such a husband?'

'I hardly know how to answer, Miss Yule,' said Jasper, looking
frankly at her. 'Perhaps I had better say that it's unfortunate
they are poor.'

Marian cast down her eyes.

'To whom isn't it a misfortune?' pursued her companion. 'Poverty
is the root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for the
ills that arise from wealth. The poor man is a man labouring in
fetters. I declare there is no word in our language which sounds so
hideous to me as "Poverty."'

Shortly after this they came to the bridge over the railway
line. Jasper looked at his watch.

'Will you indulge me in a piece of childishness?' he said. 'In
less than five minutes a London express goes by; I have often
watched it here, and it amuses me. Would it weary you to wait?'

'I should like to,' she replied with a laugh.

The line ran along a deep cutting, from either side of which
grew hazel bushes and a few larger trees. Leaning upon the parapet
of the bridge, Jasper kept his eye in the westward direction, where
the gleaming rails were visible for more than a mile. Suddenly he
raised his finger.

'You hear?'

Marian had just caught the far-off sound of the train. She
looked eagerly, and in a few moments saw it approaching. The front
of the engine blackened nearer and nearer, coming on with dread
force and speed. A blinding rush, and there burst against the
bridge a great volley of sunlit steam. Milvain and his companion
ran to the opposite parapet, but already the whole train had
emerged, and in a few seconds it had disappeared round a sharp
curve. The leafy branches that grew out over the line swayed
violently backwards and forwards in the perturbed air.

'If I were ten years younger,' said Jasper, laughing, 'I should
say that was jolly! It enspirits me. It makes me feel eager to go
back and plunge into the fight again.'

'Upon me it has just the opposite effect,' fell from Marian, in
very low tones.

'Oh, don't say that! Well, it only means that you haven't had
enough holiday yet. I have been in the country more than a week; a
few days more and I must be off. How long do you think of
staying?'

'Not much more than a week, I think.'

'By-the-bye, you are coming to have tea with us to-morrow,'
Jasper remarked a propos of nothing. Then he returned to another
subject that was in his thoughts.

'It was by a train like that that I first went up to London. Not
really the first time; I mean when I went to live there, seven
years ago. What spirits I was in! A boy of eighteen going to live
independently in London; think of it!'

'You went straight from school?'

'I was for two years at Redmayne College after leaving
Wattleborough Grammar School. Then my father died, and I spent
nearly half a year at home. I was meant to be a teacher, but the
prospect of entering a school by no means appealed to me. A friend
of mine was studying in London for some Civil Service exam., so I
declared that I would go and do the same thing.'

'Did you succeed?'

'Not I! I never worked properly for that kind of thing. I read
voraciously, and got to know London. I might have gone to the dogs,
you know; but by when I had been in London a year a pretty clear
purpose began to form in me. Strange to think that you were growing
up there all the time. I may have passed you in the street now and
then.'

Marian laughed.

'And I did at length see you at the British Museum, you
know.'

They turned a corner of the road, and came full upon Marian's
father, who was walking in this direction with eyes fixed upon the
ground.

'So here you are!' he exclaimed, looking at the girl, and for
the moment paying no attention to Jasper. 'I wondered whether I
should meet you.' Then, more dryly, 'How do you do, Mr
Milvain?'

In a tone of easy indifference Jasper explained how he came to
be accompanying Miss Yule.

'Shall I walk on with you, father?' Marian asked, scrutinising
his rugged features.

'Just as you please; I don't know that I should have gone much
further. But we might take another way back.'

Jasper readily adapted himself to the wish he discerned in Mr
Yule; at once he offered leave-taking in the most natural way.
Nothing was said on either side about another meeting.

The young man proceeded homewards, but, on arriving, did not at
once enter the house. Behind the garden was a field used for the
grazing of horses; he entered it by the unfastened gate, and
strolled idly hither and thither, now and then standing to observe
a poor worn-out beast, all skin and bone, which had presumably been
sent here in the hope that a little more labour might still be
exacted from it if it were suffered to repose for a few weeks.
There were sores upon its back and legs; it stood in a fixed
attitude of despondency, just flicking away troublesome flies with
its grizzled tail.

It was tea-time when he went in. Maud was not at home, and Mrs
Milvain, tormented by a familiar headache, kept her room; so Jasper
and Dora sat down together. Each had an open book on the table;
throughout the meal they exchanged only a few words.

'Going to play a little?' Jasper suggested when they had gone
into the sitting-room.

'If you like.'

She sat down at the piano, whilst her brother lay on the sofa,
his hands clasped beneath his head. Dora did not play badly, but an
absentmindedness which was commonly observable in her had its
effect upon the music. She at length broke off idly in the middle
of a passage, and began to linger on careless chords. Then, without
turning her head, she asked:

'Were you serious in what you said about writing
storybooks?'

'Quite. I see no reason why you shouldn't do something in that
way. But I tell you what; when I get back, I'll inquire into the
state of the market. I know a man who was once engaged at Jolly
& Monk's—the chief publishers of that kind of thing, you know;
I must look him up—what a mistake it is to neglect any
acquaintance!—and get some information out of him. But it's obvious
what an immense field there is for anyone who can just hit the
taste of the' new generation of Board school children. Mustn't be
too goody-goody; that kind of thing is falling out of date. But
you'd have to cultivate a particular kind of vulgarity.

There's an idea, by-the-bye. I'll write a paper on the
characteristics of that new generation; it may bring me a few
guineas, and it would be a help to you.'

'But what do you know about the subject?' asked Dora
doubtfully.

'What a comical question! It is my business to know something
about every subject—or to know where to get the knowledge.'

'Well,' said Dora, after a pause, 'there's no doubt Maud and I
ought to think very seriously about the future. You are aware,
Jasper, that mother has not been able to save a penny of her
income.'

'I don't see how she could have done. Of course I know what
you're thinking; but for me, it would have been possible. I don't
mind confessing to you that the thought troubles me a little now
and then; I shouldn't like to see you two going off governessing in
strangers' houses. All I can say is, that I am very honestly
working for the end which I am convinced will be most
profitable.

I shall not desert you; you needn't fear that. But just put your
heads together, and cultivate your writing faculty. Suppose you
could both together earn about a hundred a year in Grub Street, it
would be better than governessing; wouldn't it?'

'You say you don't know what Miss Yule writes?'

'Well, I know a little more about her than I did yesterday. I've
had an hour's talk with her this afternoon.'

'Indeed?'

'Met her down in the Leggatt fields. I find she doesn't write
independently; just helps her father. What the help amounts to I
can't say. There's something very attractive about her. She quoted
a line or two of Tennyson; the first time I ever heard a woman
speak blank verse with any kind of decency.'

'She was walking alone?'

'Yes. On the way back we met old Yule; he seemed rather grumpy,
I thought. I don't think she's the kind of girl to make a paying
business of literature. Her qualities are personal. And it's pretty
clear to me that the valley of the shadow of books by no means
agrees with her disposition. Possibly old Yule is something of a
tyrant.'

'He doesn't impress me very favourably. Do you think you will
keep up their acquaintance in London?'

'Can't say. I wonder what sort of a woman that mother really is?
Can't be so very gross, I should think.'

'Miss Harrow knows nothing about her, except that she was a
quite uneducated girl.'

'But, dash it! by this time she must have got decent manners. Of
course there may be other objections. Mrs Reardon knows nothing
against her.'

Midway in the following morning, as Jasper sat with a book in
the garden, he was surprised to see Alfred Yule enter by the
gate.

'I thought,' began the visitor, who seemed in high spirits,
'that you might like to see something I received this morning.'

He unfolded a London evening paper, and indicated a long letter
from a casual correspondent. It was written by the authoress of 'On
the Boards,' and drew attention, with much expenditure of
witticism, to the conflicting notices of that book which had
appeared in The Study. Jasper read the thing with laughing
appreciation.

'Just what one expected!'

'And I have private letters on the subject,' added Mr Yule.

'There has been something like a personal conflict between Fadge
and the man who looks after the minor notices. Fadge, more so,
charged the other man with a design to damage him and the paper.
There's talk of legal proceedings. An immense joke!'

He laughed in his peculiar croaking way.

'Do you feel disposed for a turn along the lanes, Mr
Milvain?'