New Grub Street, George Gissing [10 best books of all time TXT] 📗

distance one might have taken him for a hunchback. At one point Jasper made a pause to speak of the pleasant wooded prospect that lay before them; his companion regarded it absently, and in a moment or two asked:

“Did you ever come across Cottle’s poem on the Malvern Hills? No? It contains a couple of the richest lines ever put into print:

It needs the evidence of close deduction
To know that I shall ever reach the top.

Perfectly serious poetry, mind you!”

He barked in laughter. Impossible to interest him in anything apart from literature; yet one saw him to be a man of solid understanding, and not without perception of humour. He had read vastly; his memory was a literary cyclopaedia. His failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances.

Towards the young man his demeanour varied between a shy cordiality and a dignified reserve which was in danger of seeming pretentious. On the homeward part of the walk he made a few discreet inquiries regarding Milvain’s literary achievements and prospects, and the frank self-confidence of the replies appeared to interest him. But he expressed no desire to number Jasper among his acquaintances in town, and of his own professional or private concerns he said not a word.

“Whether he could be any use to me or not, I don’t exactly know,” Jasper remarked to his mother and sisters at dinner. “I suspect it’s as much as he can do to keep a footing among the younger tradesmen. But I think he might have said he was willing to help me if he could.”

“Perhaps,” replied Maud, “your large way of talking made him think any such offer superfluous.”

“You have still to learn,” said Jasper, “that modesty helps a man in no department of modern life. People take you at your own valuation. It’s the men who declare boldly that they need no help to whom practical help comes from all sides. As likely as not Yule will mention my name to someone. ‘A young fellow who seems to see his way pretty clear before him.’ The other man will repeat it to somebody else, ‘A young fellow whose way is clear before him,’ and so I come to the ears of a man who thinks ‘Just the fellow I want; I must look him up and ask him if he’ll do such-and-such a thing.’ But I should like to see these Yules at home; I must fish for an invitation.”

In the afternoon, Miss Harrow and Marian came at the expected hour. Jasper purposely kept out of the way until he was summoned to the tea-table.

The Milvain girls were so far from effusive, even towards old acquaintances, that even the people who knew them best spoke of them as rather cold and perhaps a trifle condescending; there were people in Wattleborough who declared their airs of superiority ridiculous and insufferable. The truth was that nature had endowed them with a larger share of brains than was common in their circle, and had added that touch of pride which harmonised so ill with the restrictions of poverty. Their life had a tone of melancholy, the painful reserve which characterises a certain clearly defined class in the present day. Had they been born twenty years earlier, the children of that veterinary surgeon would have grown up to a very different, and in all probability a much happier, existence, for their education would have been limited to the strictly needful, and⁠—certainly in the case of the girls⁠—nothing would have encouraged them to look beyond the simple life possible to a poor man’s offspring. But whilst Maud and Dora were still with their homely schoolmistress, Wattleborough saw fit to establish a Girls’ High School, and the moderateness of the fees enabled these sisters to receive an intellectual training wholly incompatible with the material conditions of their life. To the relatively poor (who are so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases a mocking cruelty. The burden of their brother’s support made it very difficult for Maud and Dora even to dress as became their intellectual station; amusements, holidays, the purchase of such simple luxuries as were all but indispensable to them, could not be thought of. It resulted that they held apart from the society which would have welcomed them, for they could not bear to receive without offering in turn. The necessity of giving lessons galled them; they felt⁠—and with every reason⁠—that it made their position ambiguous. So that, though they could not help knowing many people, they had no intimates; they encouraged no one to visit them, and visited other houses as little as might be.

In Marian Yule they divined a sympathetic nature. She was unlike any girl with whom they had hitherto associated, and it was the impulse of both to receive her with unusual friendliness. The habit of reticence could not be at once overcome, and Marian’s own timidity was an obstacle in the way of free intercourse, but Jasper’s conversation at tea helped to smooth the course of things.

“I wish you lived anywhere near us,” Dora said to their visitor, as the three girls walked in the garden afterwards, and Maud echoed the wish.

“It would be very nice,” was Marian’s reply. “I have no friends of my own age in London.”

“None?”

“Not one!”

She was about to add something, but in the end kept silence.

“You seem to get along with Miss Yule pretty well, after all,” said Jasper, when the family were alone again.

“Did you anticipate anything else?” Maud asked.

“It seemed doubtful, up at Yule’s house. Well, get her to come here again before I go. But it’s a pity she doesn’t play the piano,” he added, musingly.

For two days nothing was seen of the Yules. Jasper went each afternoon to the stream in the valley, but did not again meet Marian. In the meanwhile he was growing restless. A fortnight always exhausted his capacity for enjoying the