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Sarah Fielding - "The Governess [The Little Female Academy]"

Ross Kay - "Project Gutenberg's The Go Ahead Boys and Their Racing Motorboat"

Stephen Crane - "The Red Badge of Courage"

Christopher Marlowe - "The Jew of Malta"

New Grub Street

G >> George Gissing >> New Grub Street




These men were capable of better things than they had done or
would ever do; in each case their failure to fulfil youthful
promise was largely explained by the unpresentable wife. They
should have waited; they might have married a social equal at
something between fifty and sixty.

Another old friend was Mr Quarmby. Unwedded he, and perpetually
exultant over men who, as he phrased it, had noosed themselves.
He made a fair living, but, like Dr Johnson, had no passion for
clean linen.

Yule was not disdainful of these old companions, and the fact
that all had a habit of looking up to him increased his pleasure
in their occasional society. If, as happened once or twice in
half a year, several of them were gathered together at his house,
he tasted a sham kind of social and intellectual authority which
he could not help relishing. On such occasions he threw off his
habitual gloom and talked vigorously, making natural display of
his learning and critical ability. The topic, sooner or later,
was that which is inevitable in such a circle--the demerits, the
pretentiousness, the personal weaknesses of prominent
contemporaries in the world of letters. Then did the room ring
with scornful laughter, with boisterous satire, with shouted
irony, with fierce invective. After an evening of that kind Yule
was unwell and miserable for several days.

It was not to be expected that Mr Quarmby, inveterate chatterbox
of the Reading-room and other resorts, should keep silence
concerning what he had heard of Mr Rackett's intentions. The
rumour soon spread that Alfred Yule was to succeed Fadge in the
direction of The Study, with the necessary consequence that Yule
found himself an object of affectionate interest to a great many
people of whom he knew little or nothing. At the same time the
genuine old friends pressed warmly about him, with
congratulations, with hints of their sincere readiness to assist
in filling the columns of the paper. All this was not
disagreeable, but in the meantime Yule had heard nothing whatever
from Mr Rackett himself and his doubts did not diminish as week
after week went by.

The event justified him. At the end of October appeared an
authoritative announcement that Fadge's successor would be--not
Alfred Yule, but a gentleman who till of late had been quietly
working as a sub-editor in the provinces, and who had neither
friendships nor enmities among the people of the London literary
press. A young man, comparatively fresh from the university, and
said to be strong in pure scholarship. The choice, as you are
aware, proved a good one, and The Study became an organ of more
repute than ever.

Yule had been secretly conscious that it was not to men such as
he that positions of this kind are nowadays entrusted. He tried
to persuade himself that he was not disappointed. But when Mr
Quarmby approached him with blank face, he spoke certain wrathful
words which long rankled in that worthy's mind. At home he kept
sullen silence.

No, not to such men as he--poor, and without social
recommendations. Besides, he was growing too old. In literature,
as in most other pursuits, the press of energetic young men was
making it very hard for a veteran even to hold the little
grazing-plot he had won by hard fighting. Still, Quarmby's story
had not been without foundation; it was true that the proprietor
of The Study had for a moment thought of Alfred Yule, doubtless
as the natural contrast to Clement Fadge, whom he would have
liked to mortify if the thing were possible. But counsellors had
proved to Mr Rackett the disadvantages of such a choice.

Mrs Yule and her daughter foresaw but too well the results of
this disappointment, notwithstanding that Alfred announced it to
them with dry indifference. The month that followed was a time of
misery for all in the house. Day after day Yule sat at his meals
in sullen muteness; to his wife he scarcely spoke at all, and his
conversation with Marian did not go beyond necessary questions
and remarks on topics of business. His face became so strange a
colour that one would have thought him suffering from an attack
of jaundice; bilious headaches exasperated his savage mood. Mrs
Yule knew from long experience how worse than useless it was for
her to attempt consolation; in silence was her only safety. Nor
did Marian venture to speak directly of what had happened. But
one evening, when she had been engaged in the study and was now
saying 'Good-night,' she laid her cheek against her father's, an
unwonted caress which had a strange effect upon him. The
expression of sympathy caused his thoughts to reveal themselves
as they never yet had done before his daughter.

'It might have been very different with me,' he exclaimed
abruptly, as if they had already been conversing on the subject.
'When you think of my failures--and you must often do so now you
are grown up and understand things--don't forget the obstacles
that have been in my way. I don't like you to look upon your
father as a thickhead who couldn't be expected to succeed. Look
at Fadge. He married a woman of good social position; she brought
him friends and influence. But for that he would never have been
editor of The Study, a place for which he wasn't in the least
fit. But he was able to give dinners; he and his wife went into
society; everybody knew him and talked of him. How has it been
with me? I live here like an animal in its hole, and go blinking
about if by chance I find myself among the people with whom I
ought naturally to associate. If I had been able to come in
direct contact with Rackett and other men of that kind, to dine
with them, and have them to dine with me, to belong to a club,
and so on, I shouldn't be what I am at my age. My one
opportunity--when I edited The Balance--wasn't worth much; there
was no money behind the paper; we couldn't hold out long enough.
But even then, if I could have assumed my proper social standing,
if I could have opened my house freely to the right kind of
people-- How was it possible?'

Marian could not raise her head. She recognised the portion of
truth in what he said, but it shocked her that he should allow
himself to speak thus. Her silence seemed to remind him how
painful it must be to her to hear these accusations of her
mother, and with a sudden 'Good-night' he dismissed her.

She went up to her room, and wept over the wretchedness of all
their lives. Her loneliness had seemed harder to bear than ever
since that last holiday. For a moment, in the lanes about Finden,
there had come to her a vision of joy such as fate owed her
youth; but it had faded, and she could no longer hope for its
return. She was not a woman, but a mere machine for reading and
writing. Did her father never think of this? He was not the only
one to suffer from the circumstances in which poverty had
involved him.

She had no friends to whom she could utter her thoughts. Dora
Milvain had written a second time, and more recently had come a
letter from Maud; but in replying to them she could not give a
true account of herself. Impossible, to them. From what she wrote
they would imagine her contentedly busy, absorbed in the affairs
of literature. To no one could she make known the aching sadness
of her heart, the dreariness of life as it lay before her.

That beginning of half-confidence between her and her mother had
led to nothing. Mrs Yule found no second opportunity of speaking
to her husband about Jasper Milvain, and purposely she refrained
from any further hint or question to Marian. Everything must go
on as hitherto.

The days darkened. Through November rains and fogs Marian went
her usual way to the Museum, and toiled there among the other
toilers. Perhaps once a week she allowed herself to stray about
the alleys of the Reading-room, scanning furtively those who sat
at the desks, but the face she might perchance have discovered
was not there.

One day at the end of the month she sat with books open before
her, but by no effort could fix her attention upon them. It was
gloomy, and one could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew
perceptible in the warm, headachy air. Such profound
discouragement possessed her that she could not even maintain the
pretence of study; heedless whether anyone observed her, she let
her hands fall and her head droop. She kept asking herself what
was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to
lead. When already there was more good literature in the world
than any mortal could cope with in his lifetime, here was she
exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no
one even pretended to be more than a commodity for the day's
market. What unspeakable folly! To write--was not that the joy
and the privilege of one who had an urgent message for the world?

Her father, she knew well, had no such message; he had abandoned
all thought of original production, and only wrote about writing.

She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of
earning money. And all these people about her, what aim had they
save to make new books out of those already existing, that yet
newer books might in turn be made out of theirs? This huge
library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a
trackless desert of print--how intolerably it weighed upon the
spirit!

Oh, to go forth and labour with one's hands, to do any poorest,
commonest work of which the world had truly need! It was ignoble
to sit here and support the paltry pretence of intellectual
dignity. A few days ago her startled eye had caught an
advertisement in the newspaper, headed 'Literary Machine'; had it
then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of
such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles?
Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently,
that the work of literary manufacture might be physically
lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true
automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one.
Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them
reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for to-day's
consumption.

The fog grew thicker; she looked up at the windows beneath the
dome and saw that they were a dusky yellow. Then her eye
discerned an official walking along the upper gallery, and in
pursuance of her grotesque humour, her mocking misery, she
likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an
eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the
readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were
they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the
great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering
wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the
obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room
would be but a featureless prison-limit.

But then flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric
light, and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of
headache. It reminded her how little work she had done to-day;
she must, she must force herself to think of the task in hand. A
machine has no business to refuse its duty. But the pages were
blue and green and yellow before her eyes; the uncertainty of the
light was intolerable. Right or wrong she would go home, and hide
herself, and let her heart unburden itself of tears.

On her way to return books she encountered Jasper Milvain. Face
to face; no possibility of his avoiding her.

And indeed he seemed to have no such wish. His countenance
lighted up with unmistakable pleasure.

'At last we meet, as they say in the melodramas. Oh, do let me
help you with those volumes, which won't even let you shake
hands. How do you do? How do you like this weather? And how do
you like this light?'

'It's very bad.'

'That'll do both for weather and light, but not for yourself. How
glad I am to see you! Are you just going?'

'Yes.'

'I have scarcely been here half-a-dozen times since I came back
to London.'

'But you are writing still?'

'Oh yes! But I draw upon my genius, and my stores of observation,
and the living world.'

Marian received her vouchers for the volumes, and turned to face
Jasper again. There was a smile on her lips.

'The fog is terrible,' Milvain went on. 'How do you get home?'

'By omnibus from Tottenham Court Road.'

'Then do let me go a part of the way with you. I live in
Mornington Road--up yonder, you know. I have only just come in to
waste half an hour, and after all I think I should be better at
home. Your father is all right, I hope?'

'He is not quite well.'

'I'm sorry to hear that. You are not exactly up to the mark,
either. What weather! What a place to live in, this London, in
winter! It would be a little better down at Finden.'

'A good deal better, I should think. If the weather were bad, it
would be bad in a natural way; but this is artificial misery.'

'I don't let it affect me much,' said Milvain. 'Just of late I
have been in remarkably good spirits. I'm doing a lot of work. No
end of work--more than I've ever done.'

'I am very glad.'

'Where are your out-of-door things? I think there's a ladies'
vestry somewhere, isn't there?'

'Oh yes.'

'Then will you go and get ready? I'll wait for you in the hall.
But, by-the-bye, I am taking it for granted that you were going
alone.'

'I was, quite alone.'

The 'quite' seemed excessive; it made Jasper smile.

'And also,' he added, 'that I shall not annoy you by offering my
company?'

'Why should it annoy me?'

'Good!'

Milvain had only to wait a minute or two. He surveyed Marian from
head to foot when she appeared--an impertinence as unintentional
as that occasionally noticeable in his speech--and smiled
approval. They went out into the fog, which was not one of
London's densest, but made walking disagreeable enough.

'You have heard from the girls, I think?' Jasper resumed.

'Your sisters? Yes; they have been so kind as to write to me.'

'Told you all about their great work? I hope it'll be finished by
the end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well
indeed. I knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now
I want them to think of patching up something or other for The
English Girl; you know the paper?'

'I have heard of it.'

'I happen to know Mrs Boston Wright, who edits it. Met her at a
house the other day, and told her frankly that she would have to
give my sisters something to do. It's the only way to get on; one
has to take it for granted that people are willing to help you. I
have made a host of new acquaintances just lately.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' said Marian.

'Do you know--but how should you? I am going to write for the new
magazine, The Current.'

'Indeed!'

'Edited by that man Fadge.'

'Yes.'

'Your father has no affection for him, I know.'

'He has no reason to have, Mr Milvain.'

'No, no. Fadge is an offensive fellow, when he likes; and I fancy
he very often does like. Well, I must make what use of him I can.

You won't think worse of me because I write for him?'

'I know that one can't exercise choice in such things.'

'True. I shouldn't like to think that you regard me as a Fadge-
like individual, a natural Fadgeite.'

Marian laughed.

'There's no danger of my thinking that.'

But the fog was making their eyes water and getting into their
throats. By when they reached Tottenham Court Road they were both
thoroughly uncomfortable. The 'bus had to be waited for, and in
the meantime they talked scrappily, coughily. In the vehicle
things were a little better, but here one could not converse with
freedom.

'What pestilent conditions of life!' exclaimed Jasper, putting
his face rather near to Marian's. 'I wish to goodness we were
back in those quiet fields--you remember?--with the September sun
warm about us. Shall you go to Finden again before long?'

'I really don't know.'

'I'm sorry to say my mother is far from well. In any case I must
go at Christmas, but I'm afraid it won't be a cheerful visit.'

Arrived in Hampstead Road he offered his hand for good-bye.

'I wanted to talk about all sorts of things. But perhaps I shall
find you again some day.'

He jumped out, and waved his hat in the lurid fog.

Shortly before the end of December appeared the first number of
The Current. Yule had once or twice referred to the forthcoming
magazine with acrid contempt, and of course he did not purchase a
copy.

'So young Milvain has joined Fadge's hopeful standard,' he
remarked, a day or two later, at breakfast. 'They say his paper
is remarkably clever; I could wish it had appeared anywhere else.

Evil communications, &c.'

'But I shouldn't think there's any personal connection,' said
Marian.

'Very likely not. But Milvain has been invited to contribute, you
see.

'Do you think he ought to have refused?'

'Oh no. It's nothing to me; nothing whatever.'

Mrs Yule glanced at her daughter, but Marian seemed unconcerned.
The subject was dismissed. In introducing it Yule had had his
purpose; there had always been an unnatural avoidance of
Milvain's name in conversation, and he wished to have an end of
this. Hitherto he had felt a troublesome uncertainty regarding
his position in the matter. From what his wife had told him it
seemed pretty certain that Marian was disappointed by the abrupt
closing of her brief acquaintance with the young man, and Yule's
affection for his daughter caused him to feel uneasy in the
thought that perhaps he had deprived her of a chance of
happiness. His conscience readily took hold of an excuse for
justifying the course he had followed. Milvain had gone over to
the enemy. Whether or not the young man understood how relentless
the hostility was between Yule and Fadge mattered little; the
probability was that he knew all about it. In any case intimate
relations with him could not have survived this alliance with
Fadge, so that, after all, there had been wisdom in letting the
acquaintance lapse. To be sure, nothing could have come of it.
Milvain was the kind of man who weighed opportunities; every step
he took would be regulated by considerations of advantage; at all
events that was the impression his character had made upon Yule.
Any hopes that Marian might have been induced to form would
assuredly have ended in disappointment. It was kindness to
interpose before things had gone so far.

Henceforth, if Milvain's name was unavoidable, it should be
mentioned just like that of any other literary man. It seemed
very unlikely indeed that Marian would continue to think of him
with any special and personal interest. The fact of her having
got into correspondence with his sisters was unfortunate, but
this kind of thing rarely went on for very long.

Yule spoke of the matter with his wife that evening.

'By-the-bye, has Marian heard from those girls at Finden lately?'

'She had a letter one afternoon last week.'

'Do you see these letters?'

'No; she told me what was in them at first, but now she doesn't.'

'She hasn't spoken to you again of Milvain?'

'Not a word.'

'Well, I understood what I was about,' Yule remarked, with the
confident air of one who doesn't wish to remember that he had
ever felt doubtful. 'There was no good in having the fellow here.

He has got in with a set that I don't at all care for. If she
ever says anything--you understand--you can just let me know.'

Marian had already procured a copy of The Current, and read it
privately. Of the cleverness of Milvain's contribution there
could be no two opinions; it drew the attention of the public,
and all notices of the new magazine made special reference to
this article. With keen interest Marian sought after comments of
the press; when it was possible she cut them out and put them
carefully away.

January passed, and February. She saw nothing of Jasper. A letter
from Dora in the first week of March made announcement that the
'Child's History of the English Parliament' would be published
very shortly; it told her, too, that Mrs Milvain had been very
ill indeed, but that she seemed to recover a little strength as
the weather improved. Of Jasper there was no mention.

A week later came the news that Mrs Milvain had suddenly died.

This letter was received at breakfast-time. The envelope was an
ordinary one, and so little did Marian anticipate the nature of
its contents that at the first sight of the words she uttered an
exclamation of pain. Her father, who had turned from the table to
the fireside with his newspaper, looked round and asked what was
the matter.

'Mrs Milvain died the day before yesterday.'

'Indeed!'

He averted his face again and seemed disposed to say no more. But
in a few moments he inquired:

'What are her daughters likely to do?'

'I have no idea.'

'Do you know anything of their circumstances?'

'I believe they will have to depend upon themselves.'

Nothing more was said. Afterwards Mrs Yule made a few sympathetic
inquiries, but Marian was very brief in her replies.

Ten days after that, on a Sunday afternoon when Marian and her
mother were alone in the sitting-room, they heard the knock of a
visitor at the front door. Yule was out, and there was no
likelihood of the visitor's wishing to see anyone but him. They
listened; the servant went to the door, and, after a murmur of
voices, came to speak to her mistress.

'It's a gentleman called Mr Milvain,' the girl reported, in a way
that proved how seldom callers presented themselves. 'He asked
for Mr Yule, and when I said he was out, then he asked for Miss
Yule.' Mother and daughter looked anxiously at each other. Mrs
Yule was nervous and helpless.

'Show Mr Milvain into the study,' said Marian, with sudden
decision.

'Are you going to see him there?' asked her mother in a hurried
whisper.

'I thought you would prefer that to his coming in here.'

'Yes--yes. But suppose father comes back before he's gone?'

'What will it matter? You forget that he asked for father first.'

'Oh yes! Then don't wait.'

Marian, scarcely less agitated than her mother, was just leaving
the room, when she turned back again.

'If father comes in, you will tell him before he goes into the
study?'

'Yes, I will.'

The fire in the study was on the point of extinction; this was
the first thing Marian's eye perceived on entering, and it gave
her assurance that her father would not be back for some hours.
Evidently he had intended it to go out; small economies of this
kind, unintelligible to people who have always lived at ease, had
been the life-long rule with him. With a sensation of gladness at
having free time before her, Marian turned to where Milvain was
standing, in front of one of the bookcases. He wore no symbol of
mourning, but his countenance was far graver than usual, and
rather paler. They shook hands in silence.

'I am so grieved--' Marian began with broken voice.

'Thank you. I know the girls have told you all about it. We knew
for the last month that it must come before long, though there
was a deceptive improvement just before the end.'

'Please to sit down, Mr Milvain. Father went out not long ago,
and I don't think he will be back very soon.'

'It was not really Mr Yule I wished to see,' said Jasper,
frankly. 'If he had been at home I should have spoken with him
about what I have in mind, but if you will kindly give me a few
minutes it will be much better.'

Marian glanced at the expiring fire. Her curiosity as to what
Milvain had to say was mingled with an anxious doubt whether it
was not too late to put on fresh coals; already the room was
growing very chill, and this appearance of inhospitality troubled
her.

'Do you wish to save it?' Jasper asked, understanding her look
and movement.

'I'm afraid it has got too low.'

'I think not. Life in lodgings has made me skilful at this kind
of thing; let me try my hand.'

He took the tongs and carefully disposed small pieces of coal
upon the glow that remained. Marian stood apart with a feeling of
shame and annoyance. But it is so seldom that situations in life
arrange themselves with dramatic propriety; and, after all, this
vulgar necessity made the beginning of the conversation easier.

'That will be all right now,' said Jasper at length, as little
tongues of flame began to shoot here and there.

Marian said nothing, but seated herself and waited.

'I came up to town yesterday,' Jasper began. 'Of course we have
had a great deal to do and think about. Miss Harrow has been very
kind indeed to the girls; so have several of our old friends in
Wattleborough. It was necessary to decide at once what Maud and
Dora are going to do, and it is on their account that I have come
to see you.

The listener kept silence, with a face of sympathetic attention.

'We have made up our minds that they may as well come to London.
It's a bold step; I'm by no means sure that the result will
justify it. But I think they are perhaps right in wishing to try
it.'

'They will go on with literary work?'

'Well, it's our hope that they may be able to. Of course there's
no chance of their earning enough to live upon for some time. But
the matter stands like this. They have a trifling sum of money,
on which, at a pinch, they could live in London for perhaps a
year and a half. In that time they may find their way to a sort
of income; at all events, the chances are that a year and a half
hence I shall be able to help them to keep body and soul
together.'

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