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

her no slight alarm.

“If this goes on,” she said to him in the morning, “you’ll have brain fever. You must rest for two or three days.”

“Teach me how to. I wish I could.”

Rest had indeed become out of the question. For two days he could not write, but the result upon his mind was far worse than if he had been at the desk. He looked a haggard creature when he again sat down with the accustomed blank slip before him.

The second volume ought to have been much easier work than the first; it proved far harder. Messieurs and mesdames the critics are wont to point out the weakness of second volumes; they are generally right, simply because a story which would have made a tolerable book (the common run of stories) refuses to fill three books. Reardon’s story was in itself weak, and this second volume had to consist almost entirely of laborious padding. If he wrote three slips a day he did well.

And the money was melting, melting, despite Amy’s efforts at economy. She spent as little as she could; not a luxury came into their home; articles of clothing all but indispensable were left unpurchased. But to what purpose was all this? Impossible, now, that the book should be finished and sold before the money had all run out.

At the end of November, Reardon said to his wife one morning:

“Tomorrow I finish the second volume.”

“And in a week,” she replied, “we shan’t have a shilling left.”

He had refrained from making inquiries, and Amy had forborne to tell him the state of things, lest it should bring him to a dead stop in his writing. But now they must needs discuss their position.

“In three weeks I can get to the end,” said Reardon, with unnatural calmness. “Then I will go personally to the publishers, and beg them to advance me something on the manuscript before they have read it.”

“Couldn’t you do that with the first two volumes?”

“No, I can’t; indeed I can’t. The other thing will be bad enough; but to beg on an incomplete book, and such a book⁠—I can’t!”

There were drops on his forehead.

“They would help you if they knew,” said Amy in a low voice.

“Perhaps; I can’t say. They can’t help every poor devil. No; I will sell some books. I can pick out fifty or sixty that I shan’t much miss.”

Amy knew what a wrench this would be. The imminence of distress seemed to have softened her.

“Edwin, let me take those two volumes to the publishers, and ask⁠—”

“Heavens! no. That’s impossible. Ten to one you will be told that my work is of such doubtful value that they can’t offer even a guinea till the whole book has been considered. I can’t allow you to go, dearest. This morning I’ll choose some books that I can spare, and after dinner I’ll ask a man to come and look at them. Don’t worry yourself; I can finish in three weeks, I’m sure I can. If I can get you three or four pounds you could make it do, couldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

She averted her face as she spoke.

“You shall have that.” He still spoke very quietly. “If the books won’t bring enough, there’s my watch⁠—oh, lots of things.”

He turned abruptly away, and Amy went on with her household work.

X The Friends of the Family

It was natural that Amy should hint dissatisfaction with the loneliness in which her days were mostly spent. She had never lived in a large circle of acquaintances; the narrowness of her mother’s means restricted the family to intercourse with a few old friends and such new ones as were content with teacup entertainment; but her tastes were social, and the maturing process which followed upon her marriage made her more conscious of this than she had been before. Already she had allowed her husband to understand that one of her strongest motives in marrying him was the belief that he would achieve distinction. At the time she doubtless thought of his coming fame only⁠—or principally⁠—as it concerned their relations to each other; her pride in him was to be one phase of her love. Now she was well aware that no degree of distinction in her husband would be of much value to her unless she had the pleasure of witnessing its effect upon others; she must shine with reflected light before an admiring assembly.

The more conscious she became of this requirement of her nature, the more clearly did she perceive that her hopes had been founded on an error. Reardon would never be a great man; he would never even occupy a prominent place in the estimation of the public. The two things, Amy knew, might be as different as light and darkness; but in the grief of her disappointment she would rather have had him flare into a worthless popularity than flicker down into total extinction, which it almost seemed was to be his fate.

She knew so well how “people” were talking of him and her. Even her unliterary acquaintances understood that Reardon’s last novel had been anything but successful, and they must of course ask each other how the Reardons were going to live if the business of novel-writing proved unremunerative. Her pride took offence at the mere thought of such conversations. Presently she would become an object of pity; there would be talk of “poor Mrs. Reardon.” It was intolerable.

So during the last half year she had withheld as much as possible from the intercourse which might have been one of her chief pleasures. And to disguise the true cause she made pretences which were a satire upon her state of mind⁠—alleging that she had devoted herself to a serious course of studies, that the care of house and child occupied all the time she could spare from her intellectual pursuits. The worst of it was, she had little faith in the efficacy of these fictions; in uttering them she felt an unpleasant warmth