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

saying such things. It means I am rather overstrung, I suppose; but it’s all true, unfortunately.”

He rose, and began to run his eye along the shelves nearest to him.

“Well, now I will go, Miss Yule.”

Marian stood up as he approached.

“It’s all very well,” he said, smiling, “for me to encourage my sisters in the hope that they may earn a living; but suppose I can’t even do it myself? It’s by no means certain that I shall make ends meet this year.”

“You have every reason to hope, I think.”

“I like to hear people say that, but it’ll mean savage work. When we were all at Finden last year, I told the girls that it would be another twelve months before I could support myself. Now I am forced to do it. And I don’t like work; my nature is lazy. I shall never write for writing’s sake, only to make money. All my plans and efforts will have money in view⁠—all. I shan’t allow anything to come in the way of my material advancement.”

“I wish you every success,” said Marian, without looking at him, and without a smile.

“Thank you. But that sounds too much like goodbye. I trust we are to be friends, for all that?”

“Indeed, I hope we may be.”

They shook hands, and he went towards the door. But before opening it, he asked:

“Did you read that thing of mine in The Current?”

“Yes, I did.”

“It wasn’t bad, I think?”

“It seemed to me very clever.”

“Clever⁠—yes, that’s the word. It had a success, too. I have as good a thing half done for the April number, but I’ve felt too heavyhearted to go on with it. The girls shall let you know when they are in town.”

Marian followed him into the passage, and watched him as he opened the front door. When it had closed, she went back into the study for a few minutes before rejoining her mother.

IX Invita Minerva

After all, there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself regularly at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of manuscript each four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent⁠—thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages⁠—a passable three-hundred-page volume. On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five for the completed book.

Forty-five days; an eternity in the looking forward. Yet the calculation gave him a fainthearted encouragement. At that rate he might have his book sold by Christmas. It would certainly not bring him a hundred pounds; seventy-five perhaps. But even that small sum would enable him to pay the quarter’s rent, and then give him a short time, if only two or three weeks, of mental rest. If such rest could not be obtained all was at an end with him. He must either find some new means of supporting himself and his family, or⁠—have done with life and its responsibilities altogether.

The latter alternative was often enough before him. He seldom slept for more than two or three consecutive hours in the night, and the time of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds which marked the stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably familiar to him; worst torture to his mind was the chiming and striking of clocks. Two of these were in general audible, that of Marylebone parish church, and that of the adjoining workhouse; the latter always sounded several minutes after its ecclesiastical neighbour, and with a difference of note which seemed to Reardon very appropriate⁠—a thin, querulous voice, reminding one of the community it represented. After lying awake for awhile he would hear quarters sounding; if they ceased before the fourth he was glad, for he feared to know what time it was. If the hour was complete, he waited anxiously for its number. Two, three, even four, were grateful; there was still a long time before he need rise and face the dreaded task, the horrible four blank slips of paper that had to be filled ere he might sleep again. But such restfulness was only for a moment; no sooner had the workhouse bell become silent than he began to toil in his weary imagination, or else, incapable of that, to vision fearful hazards of the future. The soft breathing of Amy at his side, the contact of her warm limbs, often filled him with intolerable dread. Even now he did not believe that Amy loved him with the old love, and the suspicion was like a cold weight at his heart that to retain even her wifely sympathy, her wedded tenderness, he must achieve the impossible.

The impossible; for he could no longer deceive himself with a hope of genuine success. If he earned a bare living, that would be the utmost. And with bare livelihood Amy would not, could not, be content.

If he were to die a natural death it would be well for all. His wife and the child would be looked after; they could live with Mrs. Edmund Yule, and certainly it would not be long before Amy married again, this time a man of whose competency to maintain her there would be no doubt. His own behaviour had been cowardly selfishness. Oh yes, she had loved him, had been eager to believe in him. But there was always that voice of warning in his mind; he foresaw⁠—he knew⁠—

And if he killed himself? Not here; no lurid horrors for that poor girl and her relatives; but somewhere at a distance, under circumstances which would render the recovery of his body difficult, yet would leave no doubt of his death. Would that, again, be cowardly? The opposite, when once it was certain that to live meant poverty and wretchedness. Amy’s grief, however sincere, would be but a short trial compared with what else might