New Grub Street (75 page)

'On no account! I couldn't be civil to her.'

Jasper's brows blackened.

'This is idiotic prejudice, Dora. I think I have some claim upon
you; I have shown some kindness—'

'You have, and I am not ungrateful. But I dislike Mrs Reardon,
and I couldn't bring myself to be friendly with her.'

'You don't know her.'

'Too well. You yourself have taught me to know her. Don't compel
me to say what I think of her.'

'She is beautiful, and high-minded, and warm-hearted. I don't
know a womanly quality that she doesn't possess. You will offend me
most seriously if you speak a word against her.'

'Then I will be silent. But you must never ask me to meet
her.'

'Never?'

'Never!'

'Then we shall quarrel. I haven't deserved this, Dora. If you
refuse to meet my wife on terms of decent friendliness, there's no
more intercourse between your house and mine. You have to choose.
Persist in this fatuous obstinacy, and I have done with you!'

'So be it!'

'That is your final answer?'

Dora, who was now as angry as he, gave a short affirmative, and
Jasper at once left her.

But it was very unlikely that things should rest at this pass.
The brother and sister were bound by a strong mutual affection, and
Whelpdale was not long in effecting a compromise.

'My dear wife,' he exclaimed, in despair at the threatened
calamity, 'you are right, a thousand times, but it's impossible for
you to be on ill terms with Jasper. There's no need for you to see
much of Mrs Reardon—'

'I hate her! She killed her husband; I am sure of it.'

'My darling!'

'I mean by her base conduct. She is a cold, cruel, unprincipled
creature! Jasper makes himself more than ever contemptible by
marrying her.'

All the same, in less than three weeks Mrs Whelpdale had called
upon Amy, and the call was returned. The two women were perfectly
conscious of reciprocal dislike, but they smothered the feeling
beneath conventional suavities. Jasper was not backward in making
known his gratitude for Dora's concession, and indeed it became
clear to all his intimates that this marriage would be by no means
one of mere interest; the man was in love at last, if he had never
been before.

Let lapse the ensuing twelve months, and come to an evening at
the end of July, 1886. Mr and Mrs Milvain are entertaining a small
and select party of friends at dinner. Their house in Bayswater is
neither large nor internally magnificent, but it will do very well
for the temporary sojourn of a young man of letters who has much
greater things in confident expectation, who is a good deal talked
of, who can gather clever and worthy people at his table, and whose
matchless wife would attract men of taste to a very much poorer
abode.

Jasper had changed considerably in appearance since that last
holiday that he spent in his mother's house at Finden. At present
he would have been taken for five-and-thirty, though only in his
twenty-ninth year; his hair was noticeably thinning; his moustache
had grown heavier; a wrinkle or two showed beneath his eyes; his
voice was softer, yet firmer. It goes without saying that his
evening uniform lacked no point of perfection, and somehow it
suggested a more elaborate care than that of other men in the room.
He laughed frequently, and with a throwing back of the head which
seemed to express a spirit of triumph.

Amy looked her years to the full, but her type of beauty, as you
know, was independent of youthfulness. That suspicion of
masculinity observable in her when she became Reardon's wife
impressed one now only as the consummate grace of a perfectly-built
woman. You saw that at forty, at fifty, she would be one of the
stateliest of dames. When she bent her head towards the person with
whom she spoke, it was an act of queenly favour. Her words were
uttered with just enough deliberation to give them the value of an
opinion; she smiled with a delicious shade of irony; her glance
intimated that nothing could be too subtle for her
understanding.

The guests numbered six, and no one of them was insignificant.
Two of the men were about Jasper's age, and they had already made
their mark in literature; the third was a novelist of circulating
fame, spirally crescent. The three of the stronger sex were
excellent modern types, with sweet lips attuned to epigram, and
good broad brows.

The novelist at one point put an interesting question to
Amy.

'Is it true that Fadge is leaving The Current?'

'It is rumoured, I believe.'

'Going to one of the quarterlies, they say,' remarked a lady.
'He is getting terribly autocratic. Have you heard the delightful
story of his telling Mr Rowland to persevere, as his last work was
one of considerable promise?'

Mr Rowland was a man who had made a merited reputation when
Fadge was still on the lower rungs of journalism. Amy smiled and
told another anecdote of the great editor. Whilst speaking, she
caught her husband's eye, and perhaps this was the reason why her
story, at the close, seemed rather amiably pointless—not a common
fault when she narrated.

When the ladies had withdrawn, one of the younger men, in a
conversation about a certain magazine, remarked:

'Thomas always maintains that it was killed by that solemn old
stager, Alfred Yule. By the way, he is dead himself, I hear.'

Jasper bent forward.

'Alfred Yule is dead?'

'So Jedwood told me this morning. He died in the country
somewhere, blind and fallen on evil days, poor old fellow.'

All the guests were ignorant of any tie of kindred between their
host and the man spoken of.

'I believe,' said the novelist, 'that he had a clever daughter
who used to do all the work he signed. That used to be a current
bit of scandal in Fadge's circle.'

'Oh, there was much exaggeration in that,' remarked Jasper,
blandly. 'His daughter assisted him, doubtless, but in quite a
legitimate way. One used to see her at the Museum.'

The subject was dropped.

An hour and a half later, when the last stranger had taken his
leave, Jasper examined two or three letters which had arrived since
dinner-time and were lying on the hall table. With one of them open
in his hand, he suddenly sprang up the stairs and leaped, rather
than stepped, into the drawing-room. Amy was reading an evening
paper.

'Look at this!' he cried, holding the letter to her.

It was a communication from the publishers who owned The
Current; they stated that the editorship of that review would
shortly be resigned by Mr Fadge, and they inquired whether Milvain
would feel disposed to assume the vacant chair.

Amy sprang up and threw her arms about her husband's neck,
uttering a cry of delight.

'So soon! Oh, this is great! this is glorious!'

'Do you think this would have been offered to me but for the
spacious life we have led of late? Never! Was I right in my
calculations, Amy?'

'Did I ever doubt it?'

He returned her embrace ardently, and gazed into her eyes with
profound tenderness.

'Doesn't the future brighten?'

'It has been very bright to me, Jasper, since I became your
wife.'

'And I owe my fortune to you, dear girl. Now the way is
smooth!'

They placed themselves on a settee, Jasper with an arm about his
wife's waist, as if they were newly plighted lovers. When they had
talked for a long time, Milvain said in a changed tone:

'I am told that your uncle is dead.'

He mentioned how the news had reached him.

'I must make inquiries to-morrow. I suppose there will be a
notice in The Study and some of the other papers. I hope somebody
will make it an opportunity to have a hit at that ruffian Fadge.
By-the-by, it doesn't much matter now how you speak of Fadge; but I
was a trifle anxious when I heard your story at dinner.'

'Oh, you can afford to be more independent.—What are you
thinking about?'

'Nothing.'

'Why do you look sad?—Yes, I know, I know. I'll try to forgive
you.'

'I can't help thinking at times of the poor girl, Amy. Life will
be easier for her now, with only her mother to support. Someone
spoke of her this evening, and repeated Fadge's lie that she used
to do all her father's writing.'

'She was capable of doing it. I must seem to you rather a
poor-brained woman in comparison. Isn't it true?'

'My dearest, you are a perfect woman, and poor Marian was only a
clever school-girl. Do you know, I never could help imagining that
she had ink-stains on her fingers. Heaven forbid that I should say
it unkindly! It was touching to me at the time, for I knew how
fearfully hard she worked.'

'She nearly ruined your life; remember that.'

Jasper was silent.

'You will never confess it, and that is a fault in you.'

'She loved me, Amy.'

'Perhaps! as a school-girl loves. But you never loved her.'

'No.'

Amy examined his face as he spoke.

'Her image is very faint before me,' Jasper pursued, 'and soon I
shall scarcely be able to recall it. Yes, you are right; she nearly
ruined me. And in more senses than one. Poverty and struggle, under
such circumstances, would have made me a detestable creature. As it
is, I am not such a bad fellow, Amy.'

She laughed, and caressed his cheek.

'No, I am far from a bad fellow. I feel kindly to everyone who
deserves it. I like to be generous, in word and deed. Trust me,
there's many a man who would like to be generous, but is made
despicably mean by necessity. What a true sentence that is of
Landor's: "It has been repeated often enough that vice leads to
misery; will no man declare that misery leads to vice?" I have much
of the weakness that might become viciousness, but I am now far
from the possibility of being vicious. Of course there are men,
like Fadge, who seem only to grow meaner the more prosperous they
are; but these are exceptions. Happiness is the nurse of
virtue.'

'And independence the root of happiness.'

'True. "The glorious privilege of being independent"—yes, Burns
understood the matter. Go to the piano, dear, and play me
something. If I don't mind, I shall fall into Whelpdale's vein, and
talk about my "blessedness". Ha! isn't the world a glorious
place?'

'For rich people.'

'Yes, for rich people. How I pity the poor devils!—Play
anything. Better still if you will sing, my nightingale!'

So Amy first played and then sang, and Jasper lay back in dreamy
bliss.

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