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Susan Fenimore Cooper - "Female Suffrage"

Andrew Lang - "The Arabian Nights Entertainments, by Andrew Lang"

Rudyard Kipling - "Plain Tales from the Hills"

Edna Lyall - "The Autobiography of a Slander"

New Grub Street

G >> George Gissing >> New Grub Street




'What have you to grumble about?' asked Amy, whose face was
exultant notwithstanding the drawbacks attaching to her good
fortune. 'If Uncle Alfred receives nothing at all, and mother has
nothing, you ought to think yourself very lucky.'

'It's very easy for you to say that, with your ten thousand.'

'But is it her own?' asked Mrs Yule. 'Is it for her separate
use?'

'Of course it is. She gets the benefit of last year's Married
Woman's Property Act. The will was executed in January this year,
and I dare say the old curmudgeon destroyed a former one.

'What a splendid Act of Parliament that is!' cried Amy. 'The only
one worth anything that I ever heard of.'

'But my dear--' began her mother, in a tone of protest. However,
she reserved her comment for a more fitting time and place, and
merely said: 'I wonder whether he had heard what has been going
on?'

'Do you think he would have altered his will if he had?' asked
Amy with a smile of security.

'Why the deuce he should have left you so much in any case is
more than I can understand,' growled her brother. 'What's the use
to me of a paltry thousand or two? It isn't enough to invest;
isn't enough to do anything with.'

'You may depend upon it your cousin Marian thinks her five
thousand good for something,' said Mrs Yule. 'Who was at the
funeral? Don't be so surly, Jack; tell us all about it. I'm sure
if anyone has cause to be ill-tempered it's poor me.'

Thus they talked, amid the rattle of the cab-wheels. By when they
reached home silence had fallen upon them, and each one was
sufficiently occupied with private thoughts.

Mrs Yule's servants had a terrible time of it for the next few
days. Too affectionate to turn her ill-temper against John and
Amy, she relieved herself by severity to the domestic slaves, as
an English matron is of course justified in doing. Her daughter's
position caused her even more concern than before; she constantly
lamented to herself: 'Oh, why didn't he die before she was
married!'--in which case Amy would never have dreamt of wedding a
penniless author. Amy declined to discuss the new aspect of
things until twenty-four hours after John's return; then she
said:

'I shall do nothing whatever until the money is paid to me. And
what I shall do then I don't know.'

'You are sure to hear from Edwin,' opined Mrs Yule.

'I think not. He isn't the kind of man to behave in that way.'

'Then I suppose you are bound to take the first step?'

'That I shall never do.'

She said so, but the sudden happiness of finding herself wealthy
was not without its softening effect on Amy's feelings. Generous
impulses alternated with moods of discontent. The thought of her
husband in his squalid lodgings tempted her to forget injuries
and disillusions, and to play the part of a generous wife. It
would be possible now for them to go abroad and spend a year or
two in healthful travel; the result in Reardon's case might be
wonderful. He might recover all the energy of his imagination,
and resume his literary career from the point he had reached at
the time of his marriage.

On the other hand, was it not more likely that he would lapse
into a life of scholarly self-indulgence, such as he had often
told her was his ideal? In that event, what tedium and regret lay
before her! Ten thousand pounds sounded well, but what did it
represent in reality? A poor four hundred a year, perhaps; mere
decency of obscure existence, unless her husband could glorify it
by winning fame. If he did nothing, she would be the wife of a
man who had failed in literature. She would not be able to take a
place in society. Life would be supported without struggle;
nothing more to be hoped.

This view of the future possessed her strongly when, on the
second day, she went to communicate her news to Mrs Carter. This
amiable lady had now become what she always desired to be, Amy's
intimate friend; they saw each other very frequently, and
conversed of most things with much frankness. It was between
eleven and twelve in the morning when Amy paid her visit, and she
found Mrs Carter on the point of going out.

'I was coming to see you,' cried Edith. 'Why haven't you let me
know of what has happened?'

'You have heard, I suppose?'

'Albert heard from your brother.'

'I supposed he would. And I haven't felt in the mood for talking
about it, even with you.'

They went into Mrs Carter's boudoir, a tiny room full of such
pretty things as can be purchased nowadays by anyone who has a
few shillings to spare, and tolerable taste either of their own
or at second-hand. Had she been left to her instincts, Edith
would have surrounded herself with objects representing a much
earlier stage of artistic development; but she was quick to
imitate what fashion declared becoming. Her husband regarded her
as a remarkable authority in all matters of personal or domestic
ornamentation.

'And what are you going to do?' she inquired, examining Amy from
head to foot, as if she thought that the inheritance of so
substantial a sum must have produced visible changes in her
friend.

'I am going to do nothing.'

'But surely you're not in low spirits?'

'What have I to rejoice about?'

They talked for a while before Amy brought herself to utter what
she was thinking.

'Isn't it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both
wish to separate can't do so and be quite free again?'

'I suppose it would lead to all sorts of troubles--don't you
think?'

'So people say about every new step in civilisation. What would
have been thought twenty years ago of a proposal to make all
married women independent of their husbands in money matters? All
sorts of absurd dangers were foreseen, no doubt. And it's the
same now about divorce. In America people can get divorced if
they don't suit each other--at all events in some of the States--
and does any harm come of it? Just the opposite I should think.'

Edith mused. Such speculations were daring, but she had grown
accustomed to think of Amy as an 'advanced' woman, and liked to
imitate her in this respect.

'It does seem reasonable,' she murmured.

'The law ought to encourage such separations, instead of
forbidding them,' Amy pursued. 'If a husband and wife find that
they have made a mistake, what useless cruelty it is to condemn
them to suffer the consequences for the whole of their lives!'

'I suppose it's to make people careful,' said Edith, with a
laugh.

'If so, we know that it has always failed, and always will fail;
so the sooner such a profitless law is altered the better. Isn't
there some society for getting that kind of reform? I would
subscribe fifty pounds a year to help it. Wouldn't you?'

'Yes, if I had it to spare,' replied the other.

Then they both laughed, but Edith the more naturally.

'Not on my own account, you know,' she added.

'It's because women who are happily married can't and won't
understand the position of those who are not that there's so much
difficulty in reforming marriage laws.'

'But I understand you, Amy, and I grieve about you. What you are
to do I can't think.'

'Oh, it's easy to see what I shall do. Of course I have no choice
really. And I ought to have a choice; that's the hardship and the
wrong of it. Perhaps if I had, I should find a sort of pleasure
in sacrificing myself.'

There were some new novels on the table; Amy took up a volume
presently, and glanced over a page or two.

'I don't know how you can go on reading that sort of stuff, book
after book,' she exclaimed.

'Oh, but people say this last novel of Markland's is one of his
best.'

'Best or worst, novels are all the same. Nothing but love, love,
love; what silly nonsense it is! Why don't people write about the
really important things of life? Some of the French novelists do;
several of Balzac's, for instance. I have just been reading his
"Cousin Pons," a terrible book, but I enjoyed it ever so much
because it was nothing like a love story. What rubbish is printed
about love!'

'I get rather tired of it sometimes,' admitted Edith with
amusement.

'I should hope you do, indeed. What downright lies are accepted
as indisputable! That about love being a woman's whole life; who
believes it really? Love is the most insignificant thing in most
women's lives. It occupies a few months, possibly a year or two,
and even then I doubt if it is often the first consideration.'

Edith held her head aside, and pondered smilingly.

'I'm sure there's a great opportunity for some clever novelist
who will never write about love at all.'

'But then it does come into life.'

'Yes, for a month or two, as I say. Think of the biographies of
men and women; how many pages are devoted to their love affairs?
Compare those books with novels which profess to be biographies,
and you see how false such pictures are. Think of the very words
"novel," "romance"--what do they mean but exaggeration of one bit
of life?'

'That may be true. But why do people find the subject so
interesting?'

'Because there is so little love in real life. That's the truth
of it. Why do poor people care only for stories about the rich?
The same principle.'

'How clever you are, Amy!'

'Am I? It's very nice to be told so. Perhaps I have some
cleverness of a kind; but what use is it to me? My life is being
wasted. I ought to have a place in the society of clever people.
I was never meant to live quietly in the background. Oh, if I
hadn't been in such a hurry, and so inexperienced!'

'Oh, I wanted to ask you,' said Edith, soon after this. 'Do you
wish Albert to say anything about you--at the hospital?'

'There's no reason why he shouldn't.'

'You won't even write to say--?'

'I shall do nothing.'

Since the parting from her husband, there had proceeded in Amy a
noticeable maturing of intellect. Probably the one thing was a
consequence of the other. During that last year in the flat her
mind was held captive by material cares, and this arrest of her
natural development doubtless had much to do with the appearance
of acerbity in a character which had displayed so much sweetness,
so much womanly grace. Moreover, it was arrest at a critical
point. When she fell in love with Edwin Reardon her mind had
still to undergo the culture of circumstances; though a woman in
years she had seen nothing of life but a few phases of artificial
society, and her education had not progressed beyond the final
schoolgirl stage. Submitting herself to Reardon's influence, she
passed through what was a highly useful training of the
intellect; but with the result that she became clearly conscious
of the divergence between herself and her husband. In
endeavouring to imbue her with his own literary tastes, Reardon
instructed Amy as to the natural tendencies of her mind, which
till then she had not clearly understood. When she ceased to read
with the eyes of passion, most of the things which were Reardon's
supreme interests lost their value for her. A sound intelligence
enabled her to think and feel in many directions, but the special
line of her growth lay apart from that in which the novelist and
classical scholar had directed her.

When she found herself alone and independent, her mind acted like
a spring when pressure is removed. After a few weeks of
desoeuvrement she obeyed the impulse to occupy herself with a
kind of reading alien to Reardon's sympathies. The solid
periodicals attracted her, and especially those articles which
dealt with themes of social science. Anything that savoured of
newness and boldness in philosophic thought had a charm for her
palate. She read a good deal of that kind of literature which may
be defined as specialism popularised; writing which addresses
itself to educated, but not strictly studious, persons, and which
forms the reservoir of conversation for society above the sphere
of turf and west-endism. Thus, for instance, though she could not
undertake the volumes of Herbert Spencer, she was intelligently
acquainted with the tenor of their contents; and though she had
never opened one of Darwin's books, her knowledge of his main
theories and illustrations was respectable. She was becoming a
typical woman of the new time, the woman who has developed
concurrently with journalistic enterprise.

Not many days after that conversation with Edith Carter, she had
occasion to visit Mudie's, for the new number of some periodical
which contained an appetising title. As it was a sunny and warm
day she walked to New Oxford Street from the nearest Metropolitan
station. Whilst waiting at the library counter, she heard a
familiar voice in her proximity; it was that of Jasper Milvain,
who stood talking with a middle-aged lady. As Amy turned to look
at him his eye met hers; clearly he had been aware of her. The
review she desired was handed to her; she moved aside, and turned
over the pages. Then Milvain walked up.

He was armed cap-a-pie in the fashions of suave society; no
Bohemianism of garb or person, for Jasper knew he could not
afford that kind of economy. On her part, Amy was much better
dressed than usual, a costume suited to her position of bereaved
heiress.

'What a time since we met!' said Jasper, taking her delicately
gloved hand and looking into her face with his most effective
smile.

'And why?' asked Amy.

'Indeed, I hardly know. I hope Mrs Yule is well?'

'Quite, thank you.'

It seemed as if he would draw back to let her pass, and so make
an end of the colloquy. But Amy, though she moved forward, added
a remark:

'I don't see your name in any of this month's magazines.'

'I have nothing signed this month. A short review in The Current,
that's all.'

'But I suppose you write as much as ever?'

'Yes; but chiefly in weekly papers just now. You don't see the
Will-o'-the-Wisp?'

'Oh yes. And I think I can generally recognise your hand.'

They issued from the library.

'Which way are you going?' Jasper inquired, with something more
of the old freedom.

'I walked from Gower Street station, and I think, as it's so
fine, I shall walk back again.'

He accompanied her. They turned up Museum Street, and Amy, after
a short silence, made inquiry concerning his sisters.

'I am sorry I saw them only once, but no doubt you thought it
better to let the acquaintance end there.'

'I really didn't think of it in that way at all,' Jasper
replied.'We naturally understood it so, when you even ceased to
call, yourself.'

'But don't you feel that there would have been a good deal of
awkwardness in my coming to Mrs Yule's?'

'Seeing that you looked at things from my husband's point of
view?'

'Oh, that's a mistake! I have only seen your husband once since
he went to Islington.'

Amy gave him a look of surprise.

'You are not on friendly terms with him?'

'Well, we have drifted apart. For some reason he seemed to think
that my companionship was not very profitable. So it was better,
on the whole, that I should see neither you nor him.'

Amy was wondering whether he had heard of her legacy. He might
have been informed by a Wattleborough correspondent, even if no
one in London had told him.

'Do your sisters keep up their friendship with my cousin Marian?'
she asked, quitting the previous difficult topic.

'Oh yes!' He smiled. 'They see a great deal of each other.'

'Then of course you have heard of my uncle's death?'

'Yes. I hope all your difficulties are now at an end.'

Amy delayed a moment, then said: 'I hope so,' without any
emphasis.

'Do you think of spending this winter abroad?'

It was the nearest he could come to a question concerning the
future of Amy and her husband.

'Everything is still quite uncertain. But tell me something about
our old acquaintances. How does Mr Biffen get on?'

'I scarcely ever see him, but I think he pegs away at an
interminable novel, which no one will publish when it's done.
Whelpdale I meet occasionally.'

He talked of the latter's projects and achievements in a lively
strain.

'Your own prospects continue to brighten, no doubt,' said Amy.

'I really think they do. Things go fairly well. And I have lately
received a promise of very valuable help.'

'From whom?'

'A relative of yours.'

Amy turned to interrogate him with a look.

'A relative? You mean--?'

'Yes; Marian.'

They were passing Bedford Square. Amy glanced at the trees, now
almost bare of foliage; then her eyes met Jasper's, and she
smiled significantly.

'I should have thought your aim would have been far more
ambitious,' she said, with distinct utterance.

'Marian and I have been engaged for some time--practically.'

'Indeed? I remember now how you once spoke of her. And you will
be married soon?'

'Probably before the end of the year. I see that you are
criticising my motives. I am quite prepared for that in everyone
who knows me and the circumstances. But you must remember that I
couldn't foresee anything of this kind. It enables us to marry
sooner, that's all.'

'I am sure your motives are unassailable,' replied Amy, still
with a smile. 'I imagined that you wouldn't marry for years, and
then some distinguished person. This throws new light upon your
character.'

'You thought me so desperately scheming and cold-blooded?'

'Oh dear no! But--well, to be sure, I can't say that I know
Marian. I haven't seen her for years and years. She may be
admirably suited to you.'

'Depend upon it, I think so.'

'She's likely to shine in society? She is a brilliant girl, full
of tact and insight?'

'Scarcely all that, perhaps.'

He looked dubiously at his companion.

'Then you have abandoned your old ambitions?' Amy pursued.

'Not a bit of it. I am on the way to achieve them.'

'And Marian is the ideal wife to assist you?'

'From one point of view, yes. Pray, why all this ironic
questioning?'

'Not ironic at all.'

'It sounded very much like it, and I know from of old that you
have a tendency that way.'

'The news surprised me a little, I confess. But I see that I am
in danger of offending you.'

'Let us wait another five years, and then I will ask your opinion
as to the success of my marriage. I don't take a step of this
kind without maturely considering it. Have I made many blunders
as yet?'

'As yet, not that I know of.'

'Do I impress you as one likely to commit follies?'

'I had rather wait a little before answering that.'

'That is to say, you prefer to prophesy after the event. Very
well, we shall see.'

In the length of Gower Street they talked of several other things
less personal. By degrees the tone of their conversation had
become what it was used to be, now and then almost confidential.

'You are still at the same lodgings?' asked Amy, as they drew
near to the railway station.

'I moved yesterday, so that the girls and I could be under the
same roof--until the next change.'

'You will let us know when that takes place?'

He promised, and with exchange of smiles which were something
like a challenge they took leave of each other.



CHAPTER XXVII. THE LONELY MAN

A touch of congestion in the right lung was a warning to Reardon
that his half-year of insufficient food and general waste of
strength would make the coming winter a hard time for him, worse
probably than the last. Biffen, responding in person to the
summons, found him in bed, waited upon by a gaunt, dry,
sententious woman of sixty--not the landlady, but a lodger who
was glad to earn one meal a day by any means that offered.

'It wouldn't be very nice to die here, would it?' said the
sufferer, with a laugh which was cut short by a cough. 'One would
like a comfortable room, at least. Why, I don't know. I dreamt
last night that I was in a ship that had struck something and was
going down; and it wasn't the thought of death that most
disturbed me, but a horror of being plunged in the icy water. In
fact, I have had just the same feeling on shipboard. I remember
waking up midway between Corfu and Brindisi, on that shaky tub of
a Greek boat; we were rolling a good deal, and I heard a sort of
alarmed rush and shouting up on deck. It was so warm and
comfortable in the berth, and I thought with intolerable horror
of the possibility of sousing into the black depths.'

'Don't talk, my boy,' advised Biffen. 'Let me read you the new
chapter of "Mr Bailey." It may induce a refreshing slumber.'

Reardon was away from his duties for a week; he returned to them
with a feeling of extreme shakiness, an indisposition to exert
himself, and a complete disregard of the course that events were
taking. It was fortunate that he had kept aside that small store
of money designed for emergencies; he was able to draw on it now
to pay his doctor, and provide himself with better nourishment
than usual. He purchased new boots, too, and some articles of
warm clothing of which he stood in need--an alarming outlay.

A change had come over him; he was no longer rendered miserable
by thoughts of Amy--seldom, indeed, turned his mind to her at
all. His secretaryship at Croydon was a haven within view; the
income of seventy-five pounds (the other half to go to his wife)
would support him luxuriously, and for anything beyond that he
seemed to care little. Next Sunday he was to go over to Croydon
and see the institution.

One evening of calm weather he made his way to Clipstone Street
and greeted his friend with more show of light-heartedness than
he had been capable of for at least two years.

'I have been as nearly as possible a happy man all to-day,' he
said, when his pipe was well lit. 'Partly the sunshine, I
suppose. There's no saying if the mood will last, but if it does
all is well with me. I regret nothing and wish for nothing.'

'A morbid state of mind,' was Biffen's opinion.

'No doubt of that, but I am content to be indebted to morbidness.
One must have a rest from misery somehow. Another kind of man
would have taken to drinking; that has tempted me now and then, I
assure you. But I couldn't afford it. Did you ever feel tempted
to drink merely for the sake of forgetting trouble?'

'Often enough. I have done it. I have deliberately spent a
certain proportion of the money that ought to have gone for food
in the cheapest kind of strong liquor.'

'Ha! that's interesting. But it never got the force of a habit
you had to break?'

'No. Partly, I dare say, because I had the warning of poor Sykes
before my eyes.'

'You never see that poor fellow?'

'Never. He must be dead, I think. He would die either in the
hospital or the workhouse.'

'Well,' said Reardon, musing cheerfully, 'I shall never become a
drunkard; I haven't that diathesis, to use your expression.
Doesn't it strike you that you and I are very respectable
persons? We really have no vices. Put us on a social pedestal,
and we should be shining lights of morality. I sometimes wonder
at our inoffensiveness. Why don't we run amuck against law and
order? Why, at the least, don't we become savage revolutionists,
and harangue in Regent's Park of a Sunday?'

'Because we are passive beings, and were meant to enjoy life very
quietly. As we can't enjoy, we just suffer quietly, that's all.
By-the-bye, I want to talk about a difficulty in one of the
Fragments of Euripides. Did you ever go through the Fragments?'

This made a diversion for half an hour. Then Reardon returned to
his former line of thought.

'As I was entering patients yesterday, there came up to the table
a tall, good-looking, very quiet girl, poorly dressed, but as
neat as could be. She gave me her name, then I asked
"Occupation?" She said at once, "I'm unfortunate, sir." I
couldn't help looking up at her in surprise; I had taken it for
granted she was a dressmaker or something of the kind. And, do
you know, I never felt so strong an impulse to shake hands, to
show sympathy, and even respect, in some way. I should have liked
to say, "Why, I am unfortunate, too!" such a good, patient face
she had.'

'I distrust such appearances,' said Biffen in his quality of
realist.

'Well, so do I, as a rule. But in this case they were convincing.
And there was no need whatever for her to make such a
declaration; she might just as well have said anything else; it's
the merest form. I shall always hear her voice saying, "I'm
unfortunate, sir." She made me feel what a mistake it was for me
to marry such a girl as Amy. I ought to have looked about for
some simple, kind-hearted work-girl; that was the kind of wife
indicated for me by circumstances. If I had earned a hundred a
year she would have thought we were well-to-do. I should have
been an authority to her on everything under the sun--and above
it. No ambition would have unsettled her. We should have lived in
a couple of poor rooms somewhere, and--we should have loved each
other.'

'What a shameless idealist you are!' said Biffen, shaking his
head. 'Let me sketch the true issue of such a marriage. To begin
with, the girl would have married you in firm persuasion that you
were a "gentleman" in temporary difficulties, and that before
long you would have plenty of money to dispose of. Disappointed
in this hope, she would have grown sharp-tempered, querulous,
selfish. All your endeavours to make her understand you would
only have resulted in widening the impassable gulf. She would
have misconstrued your every sentence, found food for suspicion
in every harmless joke, tormented you with the vulgarest forms of
jealousy. The effect upon your nature would have been degrading.
In the end, you must have abandoned every effort to raise her to
your own level, and either have sunk to hers or made a rupture.
Who doesn't know the story of such attempts? I myself ten years
ago, was on the point of committing such a folly, but, Heaven be
praised! an accident saved me.'

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