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Gertrude Atherton - "Rezanov, by Gertrude Atherton"

Walter Scott - "Ivanhoe"

George MacDonald - "Sir Gibbie"

Edgar Rice Burroughs - "The People That Time Forgot"

New Grub Street

G >> George Gissing >> New Grub Street




'You are in remarkable spirits, old girl. By-the-by, would you
mind letting me see that letter of yours?'

He held out his hand.

'I left it upstairs,' Dora replied carelessly.

'Rather presumptuous in him, it seems to me.'

'Oh, he writes quite as respectfully to me as he does to you,'
she returned, with a peculiar smile.

'But what business has he to write at all? It's confounded
impertinence, now I come to think of it. I shall give him a hint
to remember his position.'

Dora could not be quite sure whether he spoke seriously or not.
As both of them had begun to eat with an excellent appetite, a
few moments were allowed to pass before the girl again spoke.

'His position is as good as ours,' she said at length.

'As good as ours? The "sub." of a paltry rag like Chit-Chat, and
assistant to a literary agency!'

'He makes considerably more money than we do.'

'Money! What's money?'

Dora was again mirthful.

'Oh, of course money is nothing! We write for honour and glory.
Don't forget to insist on that when you reprove Mr Whelpdale; no
doubt it will impress him.'

Late in the evening of that day, when the brother and sister had
strolled by moonlight up to the windmill which occupies the
highest point of Sark, and as they stood looking upon the pale
expanse of sea, dotted with the gleam of light-houses near and
far, Dora broke the silence to say quietly:

'I may as well tell you that Mr Whelpdale wants to know if I will
marry him.'

'The deuce he does!' cried Jasper, with a start. 'If I didn't
half suspect something of that kind! What astounding impudence!'

'You seriously think so?'

'Well, don't you? You hardly know him, to begin with. And then--
oh, confound it!'

'Very well, I'll tell him that his impudence astonishes me.'

'You will?'

'Certainly. Of course in civil terms. But don't let this make any
difference between you and him. Just pretend to know nothing
about it; no harm is done.'

'You are speaking in earnest?'

'Quite. He has written in a very proper way, and there's no
reason whatever to disturb our friendliness with him. I have a
right to give directions in a matter like this, and you'll please
to obey them.'

Before going to bed Dora wrote a letter to Mr Whelpdale, not,
indeed, accepting his offer forthwith, but conveying to him with
much gracefulness an unmistakable encouragement to persevere.
This was posted on the morrow, and its writer continued to
benefit most remarkably by the sun and breezes and
rock-scrambling of Sark.

Soon after their return to London, Dora had the satisfaction of
paying the first visit to her sister at the Dolomores' house in
Ovington Square. Maud was established in the midst of luxuries,
and talked with laughing scorn of the days when she inhabited
Grub Street; her literary tastes were henceforth to serve as
merely a note of distinction, an added grace which made evident
her superiority to the well-attired and smooth-tongued people
among whom she was content to shine. On the one hand, she had
contact with the world of fashionable literature, on the other
with that of fashionable ignorance. Mrs Lane's house was a
meeting-point of the two spheres.

'I shan't be there very often,' remarked Jasper, as Dora and he
discussed their sister's magnificence. 'That's all very well in
its way, but I aim at something higher.'

'So do I,' Dora replied.

'I'm very glad to hear that. I confess it seemed to me that you
were rather too cordial with Whelpdale yesterday.'

'One must behave civilly. Mr Whelpdale quite understands me.'

'You are sure of that? He didn't seem quite so gloomy as he ought
to have been.'

'The success of Chit-Chat keeps him in good spirits.'

It was perhaps a week after this that Mrs Dolomore came quite
unexpectedly to the house by Regent's Park, as early as eleven
o'clock in the morning. She had a long talk in private with Dora.
Jasper was not at home; when he returned towards evening, Dora
came to his room with a countenance which disconcerted him.

'Is it true,' she asked abruptly, standing before him with her
hands strained together, 'that you have been representing
yourself as no longer engaged to Marian?'

'Who has told you so?'

'That doesn't matter. I have heard it, and I want to know from
you that it is false.'

Jasper thrust his hands into his pockets and walked apart.

'I can take no notice,' he said with indifference, 'of anonymous
gossip.'

'Well, then, I will tell you how I have heard. Maud came this
morning, and told me that Mrs Betterton had been asking her about
it. Mrs Betterton had heard from Mrs Lane.'

'From Mrs Lane? And from whom did she hear, pray?'

'That I don't know. Is it true or not?'

'I have never told anyone that my engagement was at an end,'
replied Jasper, deliberately.

The girl met his eyes.

'Then I was right,' she said. 'Of course I told Maud that it was
impossible to believe this for a moment. But how has it come to
be said?'

'You might as well ask me how any lie gets into circulation among
people of that sort. I have told you the truth, and there's an
end of it.'

Dora lingered for a while, but left the room without saying
anything more.

She sat up late, mostly engaged in thinking, though at times an
open book was in her hand. It was nearly half-past twelve when a
very light rap at the door caused her to start. She called, and
Jasper came in.

'Why are you still up?' he asked, avoiding her look as he moved
forward and took a leaning attitude behind an easy-chair.

'Oh, I don't know. Do you want anything?'

There was a pause; then Jasper said in an unsteady voice:

'I am not given to lying, Dora, and I feel confoundedly
uncomfortable about what I said to you early this evening. I
didn't lie in the ordinary sense; it's true enough that I have
never told anyone that my engagement was at an end. But I have
acted as if it were, and it's better I should tell you.'

His sister gazed at him with indignation.

'You have acted as if you were free?'

'Yes. I have proposed to Miss Rupert. How Mrs Lane and that lot
have come to know anything about this I don't understand. I am
not aware of any connecting link between them and the Ruperts, or
the Barlows either. Perhaps there are none; most likely the
rumour has no foundation in their knowledge. Still, it is better
that I should have told you. Miss Rupert has never heard that I
was engaged, nor have her friends the Barlows--at least I don't
see how they could have done. She may have told Mrs Barlow of my
proposal--probably would; and this may somehow have got round to
those other people. But Maud didn't make any mention of Miss
Rupert, did she?'

Dora replied with a cold negative.

'Well, there's the state of things. It isn't pleasant, but that's
what I have done.'

'Do you mean that Miss Rupert has accepted you?'

'No. I wrote to her. She answered that she was going to Germany
for a few weeks, and that I should have her reply whilst she was
away. I am waiting.'

'But what name is to be given to behaviour such as this?'

'Listen: didn't you know perfectly well that this must be the end
of it?'

'Do you suppose I thought you utterly shameless and cruel beyond
words?'

'I suppose I am both. It was a moment of desperate temptation,
though. I had dined at the Ruperts'--you remember--and it seemed
to me there was no mistaking the girl's manner.'

'Don't call her a girl!' broke in Dora, scornfully. 'You say she
is several years older than yourself.'

'Well, at all events, she's intellectual, and very rich. I
yielded to the temptation.'

'And deserted Marian just when she has most need of help and
consolation? It's frightful!'

Jasper moved to another chair and sat down. He was much
perturbed.

'Look here, Dora, I regret it; I do, indeed. And, what's more, if
that woman refuses me--as it's more than likely she will--I will
go to Marian and ask her to marry me at once. I promise that.'

His sister made a movement of contemptuous impatience.

'And if the woman doesn't refuse you?'

'Then I can't help it. But there's one thing more I will say.
Whether I marry Marian or Miss Rupert, I sacrifice my strongest
feelings--in the one case to a sense of duty, in the other to
worldly advantage. I was an idiot to write that letter, for I
knew at the time that there was a woman who is far more to me
than Miss Rupert and all her money--a woman I might, perhaps,
marry. Don't ask any questions; I shall not answer them. As I
have said so much, I wished you to understand my position fully.
You know the promise I have made. Don't say anything to Marian;
if I am left free I shall marry her as soon as possible.'

And so he left the room.

For a fortnight and more he remained in uncertainty. His life was
very uncomfortable, for Dora would only speak to him when
necessity compelled her; and there were two meetings with Marian,
at which he had to act his part as well as he could. At length
came the expected letter. Very nicely expressed, very friendly,
very complimentary, but--a refusal.

He handed it to Dora across the breakfast-table, saying with a
pinched smile:

'Now you can look cheerful again. I am doomed.'



CHAPTER XXXV. FEVER AND REST

Milvain's skilful efforts notwithstanding, 'Mr Bailey, Grocer,'
had no success. By two publishers the book had been declined; the
firm which brought it out offered the author half profits and
fifteen pounds on account, greatly to Harold Biffen's
satisfaction. But reviewers in general were either angry or
coldly contemptuous. 'Let Mr Biffen bear in mind,' said one of
these sages, 'that a novelist's first duty is to tell a story.'
'Mr Biffen,' wrote another, 'seems not to understand that a work
of art must before everything else afford amusement.' 'A
pretentious book of the genre ennuyant,' was the brief comment of
a Society journal. A weekly of high standing began its short
notice in a rage: 'Here is another of those intolerable
productions for which we are indebted to the spirit of grovelling
realism. This author, let it be said, is never offensive, but
then one must go on to describe his work by a succession of
negatives; it is never interesting, never profitable, never--'
and the rest. The eulogy in The West End had a few timid echoes.
That in The Current would have secured more imitators, but
unfortunately it appeared when most of the reviewing had already
been done. And, as Jasper truly said, only a concurrence of
powerful testimonials could have compelled any number of people
to affect an interest in this book. 'The first duty of a novelist
is to tell a story:' the perpetual repetition of this phrase is a
warning to all men who propose drawing from the life. Biffen only
offered a slice of biography, and it was found to lack flavour.

He wrote to Mrs Reardon: 'I cannot thank you enough for this very
kind letter about my book; I value it more than I should the
praises of all the reviewers in existence. You have understood my
aim. Few people will do that, and very few indeed could express
it with such clear conciseness.'

If Amy had but contented herself with a civil acknowledgment of
the volumes he sent her! She thought it a kindness to write to
him so appreciatively, to exaggerate her approval. The poor
fellow was so lonely. Yes, but his loneliness only became
intolerable when a beautiful woman had smiled upon him, and so
forced him to dream perpetually of that supreme joy of life which
to him was forbidden.

It was a fatal day, that on which Amy put herself under his
guidance to visit Reardon's poor room at Islington. In the old
times, Harold had been wont to regard his friend's wife as the
perfect woman; seldom in his life had he enjoyed female society,
and when he first met Amy it was years since he had spoken with
any woman above the rank of a lodging-house keeper or a
needle-plier. Her beauty seemed to him of a very high order, and
her mental endowments filled him with an exquisite delight, not
to be appreciated by men who have never been in his position.
When the rupture came between Amy and her husband, Harold could
not believe that she was in any way to blame; held to Reardon by
strong friendship, he yet accused him of injustice to Amy. And
what he saw of her at Brighton confirmed him in this judgment.
When he accompanied her to Manville Street, he allowed her, of
course, to remain alone in the room where Reardon had lived; but
Amy presently summoned him, and asked him questions. Every tear
she shed watered a growth of passionate tenderness in the
solitary man's heart. Parting from her at length, he went to hide
his face in darkness and think of her--think of her.

A fatal day. There was an end of all his peace, all his capacity
for labour, his patient endurance of penury. Once, when he was
about three-and-twenty, he had been in love with a girl of gentle
nature and fair intelligence; on account of his poverty, he could
not even hope that his love might be returned, and he went away
to bear the misery as best he might. Since then the life he had
led precluded the forming of such attachments; it would never
have been possible for him to support a wife of however humble
origin. At intervals he felt the full weight of his loneliness,
but there were happily long periods during which his Greek
studies and his efforts in realistic fiction made him indifferent
to the curse laid upon him. But after that hour of intimate
speech with Amy, he never again knew rest of mind or heart.

Accepting what Reardon had bequeathed to him, he removed the
books and furniture to a room in that part of the town which he
had found most convenient for his singular tutorial pursuits. The
winter did not pass without days of all but starvation, but in
March he received his fifteen pounds for 'Mr Bailey,' and this
was a fortune, putting him beyond the reach of hunger for full
six months. Not long after that he yielded to a temptation that
haunted him day and night, and went to call upon Amy, who was
still living with her mother at Westbourne Park. When he entered
the drawing-room Amy was sitting there alone; she rose with an
exclamation of frank pleasure.

'I have often thought of you lately, Mr Biffen. How kind to come
and see me!'

He could scarcely speak; her beauty, as she stood before him in
the graceful black dress, was anguish to his excited nerves, and
her voice was so cruel in its conventional warmth. When he looked
at her eyes, he remembered how their brightness had been dimmed
with tears, and the sorrow he had shared with her seemed to make
him more than an ordinary friend. When he told her of his success
with the publishers, she was delighted.

'Oh, when is it to come out? I shall watch the advertisements so
anxiously.'

'Will you allow me to send you a copy, Mrs Reardon?'

'Can you really spare one?'

Of the half-dozen he would receive, he scarcely knew how to
dispose of three. And Amy expressed her gratitude in the most
charming way. She had gained much in point of manner during the
past twelve months; her ten thousand pounds inspired her with the
confidence necessary to a perfect demeanour. That slight hardness
which was wont to be perceptible in her tone had altogether
passed away; she seemed to be cultivating flexibility of voice.

Mrs Yule came in, and was all graciousness. Then two callers
presented themselves. Biffen's pleasure was at an end as soon as
he had to adapt himself to polite dialogue; he escaped as
speedily as possible.

He was not the kind of man that deceives himself as to his own
aspect in the eyes of others. Be as kind as she might, Amy could
not set him strutting Malvolio-wise; she viewed him as a poor
devil who often had to pawn his coat--a man of parts who would
never get on in the world--a friend to be thought of kindly
because her dead husband had valued him. Nothing more than that;
he understood perfectly the limits of her feeling. But this could
not put restraint upon the emotion with which he received any
most trifling utterance of kindness from her. He did not think of
what was, but of what, under changed circumstances, might be. To
encourage such fantasy was the idlest self-torment, but he had
gone too far in this form of indulgence. He became the slave of
his inflamed imagination.

In that letter with which he replied to her praises of his book,
perchance he had allowed himself to speak too much as he thought.

He wrote in reckless delight, and did not wait for the prudence
of a later hour. When it was past recall, he would gladly have
softened many of the expressions the letter contained. 'I value
it more than the praises of all the reviewers in existence'--
would Amy be offended at that? 'Yours in gratitude and
reverence,' he had signed himself--the kind of phrase that comes
naturally to a passionate man, when he would fain say more than
he dares. To what purpose this half-revelation? Unless, indeed,
he wished to learn once and for ever, by the gentlest of
repulses, that his homage was only welcome so long as it kept
well within conventional terms.

He passed a month of distracted idleness, until there came a day
when the need to see Amy was so imperative that it mastered every
consideration. He donned his best clothes, and about four o'clock
presented himself at Mrs Yule's house. By ill luck there happened
to be at least half a dozen callers in the drawing-room; the
strappado would have been preferable, in his eyes, to such an
ordeal as this. Moreover, he was convinced that both Amy and her
mother received him with far less cordiality than on the last
occasion. He had expected it, but he bit his lips till the blood
came. What business had he among people of this kind? No doubt
the visitors wondered at his comparative shabbiness, and asked
themselves how he ventured to make a call without the regulation
chimney-pot hat. It was a wretched and foolish mistake.

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.

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