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

he had again met with Miss Rupert. This lady had no power whatever over his emotions, but he felt assured that she regarded him with strong interest. When he imagined the possibility of contracting a marriage with Miss Rupert, who would make him at once a man of solid means, his head drooped, and he wondered at his precipitation. It had to be confessed that he was the victim of a vulgar weakness. He had declared himself not of the first order of progressive men.

The conversation with Amy Reardon did not tend to put his mind at rest. Amy was astonished at so indiscreet a step in a man of his calibre. Ah! if only Amy herself were free, with her ten thousand pounds to dispose of! She, he felt sure, did not view him with indifference. Was there not a touch of pique in the elaborate irony with which she had spoken of his choice?⁠—But it was idle to look in that direction.

He was anxious on his sisters’ account. They were clever girls, and with energy might before long earn a bare subsistence; but it began to be doubtful whether they would persevere in literary work. Maud, it was clear, had conceived hopes of quite another kind. Her intimacy with Mrs. Lane was effecting a change in her habits, her dress, even her modes of speech. A few days after their establishment in the new lodgings, Jasper spoke seriously on this subject with the younger girl.

“I wonder whether you could satisfy my curiosity in a certain matter,” he said. “Do you, by chance, know how much Maud gave for that new jacket in which I saw her yesterday?”

Dora was reluctant to answer.

“I don’t think it was very much.”

“That is to say, it didn’t cost twenty guineas. Well, I hope not. I notice, too, that she has been purchasing a new hat.”

“Oh, that was very inexpensive. She trimmed it herself.”

“Did she? Is there any particular, any quite special, reason for this expenditure?”

“I really can’t say, Jasper.”

“That’s ambiguous, you know. Perhaps it means you won’t allow yourself to say?”

“No, Maud doesn’t tell me about things of that kind.”

He took opportunities of investigating the matter, with the result that some ten days after he sought private colloquy with Maud herself. She had asked his opinion of a little paper she was going to send to a ladies’ illustrated weekly, and he summoned her to his own room.

“I think this will do pretty well,” he said. “There’s rather too much thought in it, perhaps. Suppose you knock out one or two of the less obvious reflections, and substitute a wholesome commonplace? You’ll have a better chance, I assure you.”

“But I shall make it worthless.”

“No; you’ll probably make it worth a guinea or so. You must remember that the people who read women’s papers are irritated, simply irritated, by anything that isn’t glaringly obvious. They hate an unusual thought. The art of writing for such papers⁠—indeed, for the public in general⁠—is to express vulgar thought and feeling in a way that flatters the vulgar thinkers and feelers. Just abandon your mind to it, and then let me see it again.”

Maud took up the manuscript and glanced over it with a contemptuous smile. Having observed her for a moment, Jasper threw himself back in the chair and said, as if casually:

“I am told that Mr. Dolomore is becoming a great friend of yours.”

The girl’s face changed. She drew herself up, and looked away towards the window.

“I don’t know that he is a ‘great’ friend.”

“Still, he pays enough attention to you to excite remark.”

“Whose remark?”

“That of several people who go to Mrs. Lane’s.”

“I don’t know any reason for it,” said Maud coldly.

“Look here, Maud, you don’t mind if I give you a friendly warning?”

She kept silence, with a look of superiority to all monition.

“Dolomore,” pursued her brother, “is all very well in his way, but that way isn’t yours. I believe he has a good deal of money, but he has neither brains nor principle. There’s no harm in your observing the nature and habits of such individuals, but don’t allow yourself to forget that they are altogether beneath you.”

“There’s no need whatever for you to teach me self-respect,” replied the girl.

“I’m quite sure of that; but you are inexperienced. On the whole, I do rather wish that you would go less frequently to Mrs. Lane’s. It was rather an unfortunate choice of yours. Very much better if you could have got on a good footing with the Barnabys. If you are generally looked upon as belonging to the Lanes’ set it will make it difficult for you to get in with the better people.”

Maud was not to be drawn into argument, and Jasper could only hope that his words would have some weight with her. The Mr. Dolomore in question was a young man of rather offensive type⁠—athletic, dandiacal, and half-educated. It astonished Jasper that his sister could tolerate such an empty creature for a moment; who has not felt the like surprise with regard to women’s inclinations? He talked with Dora about it, but she was not in her sister’s confidence.

“I think you ought to have some influence with her,” Jasper said.

“Maud won’t allow anyone to interfere in⁠—her private affairs.”

“It would be unfortunate if she made me quarrel with her.”

“Oh, surely there isn’t any danger of that?”

“I don’t know, she mustn’t be obstinate.”

Jasper himself saw a good deal of miscellaneous society at this time. He could not work so persistently as usual, and with wise tactics he used the seasons of enforced leisure to extend his acquaintance. Marian and he were together twice a week, in the evening.

Of his old Bohemian associates he kept up intimate relations with one only, and that was Whelpdale. This was in a measure obligatory, for Whelpdale frequently came to see him, and it would have been difficult to repel a man who was always making known how highly he esteemed the privilege of Milvain’s friendship, and whose company on the whole was agreeable