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

to be worn out; I can’t compose, I can’t even think. Look! I have been sitting here for hours, and I have done only that little bit, half a dozen lines. Such poor stuff too! I should burn it, only I can’t afford. I must do my regular quantity every day, no matter what it is.”

The nurse, who was present when he talked in this way, looked to Amy for an explanation.

“My husband is an author,” Amy answered. “Not long ago he was obliged to write when he was ill and ought to have been resting.”

“I always thought it must be hard work writing books,” said the nurse with a shake of her head.

“You don’t understand me,” the voice pursued, dreadful as a voice always is when speaking independently of the will. “You think I am only a poor creature, because I can do nothing better than this. If only I had money enough to rest for a year or two, you should see. Just because I have no money I must sink to this degradation. And I am losing you as well; you don’t love me!”

He began to moan in anguish.

But a happy change presently came over his dreaming. He fell into animated description of his experiences in Greece and Italy, and after talking for a long time, he turned his head and said in a perfectly natural tone:

“Amy, do you know that Biffen and I are going to Greece?”

She believed he spoke consciously, and replied:

“You must take me with you, Edwin.”

He paid no attention to this remark, but went on with the same deceptive accent.

“He deserves a holiday after nearly getting burnt to death to save his novel. Imagine the old fellow plunging headlong into the flames to rescue his manuscript! Don’t say that authors can’t be heroic!”

And he laughed gaily.

Another morning broke. It was possible, said the doctors (a second had been summoned), that a crisis which drew near might bring the favourable turn; but Amy formed her own opinion from the way in which the nurse expressed herself. She felt sure that the gravest fears were entertained. Before noon Reardon awoke from what had seemed natural sleep⁠—save for the rapid breathing⁠—and of a sudden recollected the number of the house in Cleveland Street at which Biffen was now living. He uttered it without explanation. Amy at once conjectured his meaning, and as soon as her surmise was confirmed she despatched a telegram to her husband’s friend.

That evening, as Amy was on the point of returning to the sickroom after having dined at her friend’s house, it was announced that a gentleman named Biffen wished to see her. She found him in the dining-room, and, even amid her distress, it was a satisfaction to her that he presented a far more conventional appearance than in the old days. All the garments he wore, even his hat, gloves, and boots, were new; a surprising state of things, explained by the fact of his commercial brother having sent him a present of ten pounds, a practical expression of sympathy with him in his recent calamity. Biffen could not speak; he looked with alarm at Amy’s pallid face. In a few words she told him of Reardon’s condition.

“I feared this,” he replied under his breath. “He was ill when I saw him off at London Bridge. But Willie is better, I trust?”

Amy tried to answer, but tears filled her eyes and her head drooped. Harold was overcome with a sense of fatality; grief and dread held him motionless.

They conversed brokenly for a few minutes, then left the house, Biffen carrying the handbag with which he had travelled hither. When they reached the hotel he waited apart until it was ascertained whether he could enter the sickroom. Amy rejoined him and said with a faint smile:

“He is conscious, and was very glad to hear that you had come. But don’t let him try to speak much.”

The change that had come over his friend’s countenance was to Harold, of course, far more gravely impressive than to those who had watched at the bedside. In the drawn features, large sunken eyes, thin and discoloured lips, it seemed to him that he read too surely the presage of doom. After holding the shrunken hand for a moment he was convulsed with an agonising sob, and had to turn away.

Amy saw that her husband wished to speak to her; she bent over him.

“Ask him to stay, dear. Give him a room in the hotel.”

“I will.”

Biffen sat down by the bedside, and remained for half an hour. His friend inquired whether he had yet heard about the novel; the answer was a shake of the head. When he rose, Reardon signed to him to bend down, and whispered:

“It doesn’t matter what happens; she is mine again.”

The next day was very cold, but a blue sky gleamed over land and sea. The drives and promenades were thronged with people in exuberant health and spirits. Biffen regarded this spectacle with resentful scorn; at another time it would have moved him merely to mirth, but not even the sound of the breakers when he had wandered as far as possible from human contact could help him to think with resignation of the injustice which triumphs so flagrantly in the destinies of men. Towards Amy he had no shadow of unkindness; the sight of her in tears had impressed him as profoundly, in another way, as that of his friend’s wasted features. She and Reardon were again one, and his love for them both was stronger than any emotion of tenderness he had ever known.

In the afternoon he again sat by the bedside. Every symptom of the sufferer’s condition pointed to an approaching end: a face that had grown cadaverous, livid lips, breath drawn in hurrying gasps. Harold despaired of another look of recognition. But as he sat with his forehead resting on his hand Amy touched him; Reardon had turned his face in their direction, and with a conscious