New Grub Street (72 page)

Ten minutes saw him in the street again, vowing that he would
never approach Amy more. Not that he found fault with her; the
blame was entirely his own.

He lived on the third floor of a house in Goodge Street, above a
baker's shop. The bequest of Reardon's furniture was a great
advantage to him, as he had only to pay rent for a bare room; the
books, too, came as a godsend, since the destruction of his own. He
had now only one pupil, and was not exerting himself to find
others; his old energy had forsaken him.

For the failure of his book he cared nothing. It was no more
than he anticipated. The work was done—the best he was capable
of—and this satisfied him.

It was doubtful whether he loved Amy, in the true sense of
exclusive desire. She represented for him all that is lovely in
womanhood; to his starved soul and senses she was woman, the
complement of his frustrate being. Circumstance had made her the
means of exciting in him that natural force which had hitherto
either been dormant or had yielded to the resolute will.

Companionless, inert, he suffered the tortures which are so
ludicrous and contemptible to the happily married. Life was barren
to him, and would soon grow hateful; only in sleep could he cast
off the unchanging thoughts and desires which made all else
meaningless. And rightly meaningless: he revolted against the
unnatural constraints forbidding him to complete his manhood.

By what fatality was he alone of men withheld from the winning
of a woman's love?

He could not bear to walk the streets where the faces of
beautiful women would encounter him. When he must needs leave the
house, he went about in the poor, narrow ways, where only
spectacles of coarseness, and want, and toil would be presented to
him. Yet even here he was too often reminded that the
poverty-stricken of the class to which poverty is natural were not
condemned to endure in solitude. Only he who belonged to no class,
who was rejected alike by his fellows in privation and by his
equals in intellect, must die without having known the touch of a
loving woman's hand.

The summer went by, and he was unconscious of its warmth and
light. How his days passed he could not have said.

One evening in early autumn, as he stood before the book-stall
at the end of Goodge Street, a familiar voice accosted him. It was
Whelpdale's. A month or two ago he had stubbornly refused an
invitation to dine with Whelpdale and other acquaintances—you
remember what the occasion was—and since then the prosperous young
man had not crossed his path.

'I've something to tell you,' said the assailer, taking hold of
his arm. 'I'm in a tremendous state of mind, and want someone to
share my delight. You can walk a short way, I hope? Not too busy
with some new book?'

Biffen gave no answer, but went whither he was led.

'You are writing a new book, I suppose? Don't be discouraged,
old fellow. "Mr Bailey" will have his day yet; I know men who
consider it an undoubted work of genius. What's the next to deal
with?'

'I haven't decided yet,' replied Harold, merely to avoid
argument. He spoke so seldom that the sound of his own voice was
strange to him.

'Thinking over it, I suppose, in your usual solid way. Don't be
hurried. But I must tell you of this affair of mine. You know Dora
Milvain? I have asked her to marry me, and, by the Powers! she has
given me an encouraging answer. Not an actual yes, but encouraging!
She's away in the Channel Islands, and I wrote—'

He talked on for a quarter of an hour. Then, with a sudden
movement, the listener freed himself.

'I can't go any farther,' he said hoarsely. 'Good-bye!'

Whelpdale was disconcerted.

'I have been boring you. That's a confounded fault of mine; I
know it.'

Biffen had waved his hand, and was gone.

A week or two more would see him at the end of his money. He had
no lessons now, and could not write; from his novel nothing was to
be expected. He might apply again to his brother, but such
dependence was unjust and unworthy. And why should he struggle to
preserve a life which had no prospect but of misery?

It was in the hours following his encounter with Whelpdale that
he first knew the actual desire of death, the simple longing for
extinction. One must go far in suffering before the innate
will-to-live is thus truly overcome; weariness of bodily anguish
may induce this perversion of the instincts; less often, that
despair of suppressed emotion which had fallen upon Harold. Through
the night he kept his thoughts fixed on death in its aspect of
repose, of eternal oblivion. And herein he had found solace.

The next night it was the same. Moving about among common needs
and occupations, he knew not a moment's cessation of heart-ache,
but when he lay down in the darkness a hopeful summons whispered to
him. Night, which had been the worst season of his pain, had now
grown friendly; it came as an anticipation of the sleep that is
everlasting.

A few more days, and he was possessed by a calm of spirit such
as he had never known. His resolve was taken, not in a moment of
supreme conflict, but as the result of a subtle process by which
his imagination had become in love with death. Turning from
contemplation of life's one rapture, he looked with the same
intensity of desire to a state that had neither fear nor hope.

One afternoon he went to the Museum Reading-room, and was busy
for a few minutes in consultation of a volume which he took from
the shelves of medical literature. On his way homeward he entered
two or three chemists' shops. Something of which he had need could
be procured only in very small quantities; but repetition of his
demand in different places supplied him sufficiently. When he
reached his room, he emptied the contents of sundry little bottles
into one larger, and put this in his pocket. Then he wrote rather a
long letter, addressed to his brother at Liverpool.

It had been a beautiful day, and there wanted still a couple of
hours before the warm, golden sunlight would disappear. Harold
stood and looked round his room. As always, it presented a neat,
orderly aspect, but his eye caught sight of a volume which stood
upside down, and this fault—particularly hateful to a bookish
man—he rectified. He put his blotting-pad square on the table,
closed the lid of the inkstand, arranged his pens. Then he took his
hat and stick, locked the door behind him, and went downstairs. At
the foot he spoke to his landlady, and told her that he should not
return that night. As soon as possible after leaving the house he
posted his letter.

His direction was westward; walking at a steady, purposeful
pace, with cheery countenance and eyes that gave sign of pleasure
as often as they turned to the sun-smitten clouds, he struck across
Kensington Gardens, and then on towards Fulham, where he crossed
the Thames to Putney. The sun was just setting; he paused a few
moments on the bridge, watching the river with a quiet smile, and
enjoying the splendour of the sky. Up Putney Hill he walked slowly;
when he reached the top it was growing dark, but an unwonted effect
in the atmosphere caused him to turn and look to the east. An
exclamation escaped his lips, for there before him was the
new-risen moon, a perfect globe, vast and red. He gazed at it for a
long time.

When the daylight had entirely passed, he went forward on to the
heath, and rambled, as if idly, to a secluded part, where trees and
bushes made a deep shadow under the full moon. It was still quite
warm, and scarcely a breath of air moved among the reddening
leaves.

Sure at length that he was remote from all observation, he
pressed into a little copse, and there reclined on the grass,
leaning against the stem of a tree. The moon was now hidden from
him, but by looking upward he could see its light upon a long,
faint cloud, and the blue of the placid sky. His mood was one of
ineffable peace. Only thoughts of beautiful things came into his
mind; he had reverted to an earlier period of life, when as yet no
mission of literary realism had been imposed upon him, and when his
passions were still soothed by natural hope. The memory of his
friend Reardon was strongly present with him, but of Amy he thought
only as of that star which had just come into his vision above the
edge of dark foliage—beautiful, but infinitely remote.

Recalling Reardon's voice, it brought to him those last words
whispered by his dying companion. He remembered them now:

We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is
rounded with a sleep.

Only when he received Miss Rupert's amiably-worded refusal to
become his wife was Jasper aware how firmly he had counted on her
accepting him. He told Dora with sincerity that his proposal was a
piece of foolishness; so far from having any regard for Miss
Rupert, he felt towards her with something of antipathy, and at the
same time he was conscious of ardent emotions, if not love, for
another woman who would be no bad match even from the commercial
point of view. Yet so strong was the effect upon him of
contemplating a large fortune, that, in despite of reason and
desire, he lived in eager expectation of the word which should make
him rich. And for several hours after his disappointment he could
not overcome the impression of calamity.

A part of that impression was due to the engagement which he
must now fulfil. He had pledged his word to ask Marian to marry him
without further delay. To shuffle out of this duty would make him
too ignoble even in his own eyes. Its discharge meant, as he had
expressed it, that he was 'doomed'; he would deliberately be
committing the very error always so flagrant to him in the case of
other men who had crippled themselves by early marriage with a
penniless woman. But events had enmeshed him; circumstances had
proved fatal. Because, in his salad days, he dallied with a girl
who had indeed many charms, step by step he had come to the
necessity of sacrificing his prospects to that raw attachment. And,
to make it more irritating, this happened just when the way began
to be much clearer before him.

Unable to think of work, he left the house and wandered gloomily
about Regent's Park. For the first time in his recollection the
confidence which was wont to inspirit him gave way to an attack of
sullen discontent. He felt himself ill-used by destiny, and
therefore by Marian, who was fate's instrument. It was not in his
nature that this mood should last long, but it revealed to him
those darker possibilities which his egoism would develop if it
came seriously into conflict with overmastering misfortune. A hope,
a craven hope, insinuated itself into the cracks of his infirm
resolve. He would not examine it, but conscious of its existence he
was able to go home in somewhat better spirits.

He wrote to Marian. If possible she was to meet him at half-past
nine next morning at Gloucester Gate. He had reasons for wishing
this interview to take place on neutral ground.

Early in the afternoon, when he was trying to do some work,
there arrived a letter which he opened with impatient hand; the
writing was Mrs Reardon's, and he could not guess what she had to
communicate.

'DEAR MR MILVAIN,—I am distressed beyond measure to read in this
morning's newspaper that poor Mr Biffen has put an end to his life.
Doubtless you can obtain more details than are given in this bare
report of the discovery of his body. Will you let me hear, or come
and see me?'

He read and was astonished. Absorbed in his own affairs, he had
not opened the newspaper to-day; it lay folded on a chair. Hastily
he ran his eye over the columns, and found at length a short
paragraph which stated that the body of a man who had evidently
committed suicide by taking poison had been found on Putney Heath;
that papers in his pockets identified him as one Harold Biffen,
lately resident in Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road; and that an
inquest would be held, &c. He went to Dora's room, and told her
of the event, but without mentioning the letter which had brought
it under his notice.

'I suppose there was no alternative between that and starvation.
I scarcely thought of Biffen as likely to kill himself. If Reardon
had done it, I shouldn't have felt the least surprise.'

'Mr Whelpdale will be bringing us information, no doubt,' said
Dora, who, as she spoke, thought more of that gentleman's visit
than of the event that was to occasion it.

'Really, one can't grieve. There seemed no possibility of his
ever earning enough to live decently upon. But why the deuce did he
go all the way out there? Consideration for the people in whose
house he lived, I dare say; Biffen had a good deal of native
delicacy.'

Dora felt a secret wish that someone else possessed more of that
desirable quality.

Leaving her, Jasper made a rapid, though careful, toilet, and
was presently on his way to Westbourne Park. It was his hope that
he should reach Mrs Yule's house before any ordinary afternoon
caller could arrive; and so he did. He had not been here since that
evening when he encountered Reardon on the road and heard his
reproaches. To his great satisfaction, Amy was alone in the
drawing-room; he held her hand a trifle longer than was necessary,
and returned more earnestly the look of interest with which she
regarded him.

'I was ignorant of this affair when your letter came,' he began,
'and I set out immediately to see you.'

'I hoped you would bring me some news. What can have driven the
poor man to such extremity?'

'Poverty, I can only suppose. But I will see Whelpdale. I hadn't
come across Biffen for a long time.'

'Was he still so very poor?' asked Amy, compassionately.

'I'm afraid so. His book failed utterly.'

'Oh, if I had imagined him still in such distress, surely I
might have done something to help him!'—So often the regretful
remark of one's friends, when one has been permitted to perish.