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

a girl of perhaps two-and-twenty, in a slate-coloured dress with very little ornament, and a yellow straw hat of the shape originally appropriated to males; her dark hair was cut short, and lay in innumerable crisp curls. Father and daughter, obviously. The girl, to a casual eye, was neither pretty nor beautiful, but she had a grave and impressive face, with a complexion of ivory tone; her walk was gracefully modest, and she seemed to be enjoying the country air.

Jasper mused concerning them. When he had walked a few yards, he looked back; at the same moment the unknown man also turned his head.

“Where the deuce have I seen them⁠—him and the girl too?” Milvain asked himself.

And before he reached home the recollection he sought flashed upon his mind.

“The Museum Reading-room, of course!”

II The House of Yule

“I think” said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother and Maud were busy with plain needlework, “I must have met Alfred Yule and his daughter.”

“How did you recognise them?” Mrs. Milvain inquired.

“I passed an old buffer and a pale-faced girl whom I know by sight at the British Museum. It wasn’t near Yule’s house, but they were taking a walk.”

“They may have come already. When Miss Harrow was here last, she said ‘in about a fortnight.’ ”

“No mistaking them for people of these parts, even if I hadn’t remembered their faces. Both of them are obvious dwellers in the valley of the shadow of books.”

“Is Miss Yule such a fright then?” asked Maud.

“A fright! Not at all. A good example of the modern literary girl. I suppose you have the oddest old-fashioned ideas of such people. No, I rather like the look of her. Simpatica, I should think, as that ass Whelpdale would say. A very delicate, pure complexion, though morbid; nice eyes; figure not spoilt yet. But of course I may be wrong about their identity.”

Later in the afternoon Jasper’s conjecture was rendered a certainty. Maud had walked to Wattleborough, where she would meet Dora on the latter’s return from her teaching, and Mrs. Milvain sat alone, in a mood of depression; there was a ring at the doorbell, and the servant admitted Miss Harrow.

This lady acted as housekeeper to Mr. John Yule, a wealthy resident in this neighbourhood; she was the sister of his deceased wife⁠—a thin, soft-speaking, kindly woman of forty-five. The greater part of her life she had spent as a governess; her position now was more agreeable, and the removal of her anxiety about the future had developed qualities of cheerfulness which formerly no one would have suspected her to possess. The acquaintance between Mrs. Milvain and her was only of twelve months’ standing; prior to that, Mr. Yule had inhabited a house at the end of Wattleborough remote from Finden.

“Our London visitors came yesterday,” she began by saying.

Mrs. Milvain mentioned her son’s encounter an hour or two ago.

“No doubt it was they,” said the visitor. “Mrs. Yule hasn’t come; I hardly expected she would, you know. So very unfortunate when there are difficulties of that kind, isn’t it?”

She smiled confidentially.

“The poor girl must feel it,” said Mrs. Milvain.

“I’m afraid she does. Of course it narrows the circle of her friends at home. She’s a sweet girl, and I should so like you to meet her. Do come and have tea with us tomorrow afternoon, will you? Or would it be too much for you just now?”

“Will you let the girls call? And then perhaps Miss Yule will be so good as to come and see me?”

“I wonder whether Mr. Milvain would like to meet her father? I have thought that perhaps it might be some advantage to him. Alfred is so closely connected with literary people, you know.”

“I feel sure he would be glad,” replied Mrs. Milvain. “But⁠—what of Jasper’s friendship with Mrs. Edmund Yule and the Reardons? Mightn’t it be a little awkward?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, unless he himself felt it so. There would be no need to mention that, I should say. And, really, it would be so much better if those estrangements came to an end. John makes no scruple of speaking freely about everyone, and I don’t think Alfred regards Mrs. Edmund with any serious unkindness. If Mr. Milvain would walk over with the young ladies tomorrow, it would be very pleasant.”

“Then I think I may promise that he will. I’m sure I don’t know where he is at this moment. We don’t see very much of him, except at meals.”

“He won’t be with you much longer, I suppose?”

“Perhaps a week.”

Before Miss Harrow’s departure Maud and Dora reached home. They were curious to see the young lady from the valley of the shadow of books, and gladly accepted the invitation offered them.

They set out on the following afternoon in their brother’s company. It was only a quarter of an hour’s walk to Mr. Yule’s habitation, a small house in a large garden. Jasper was coming hither for the first time; his sisters now and then visited Miss Harrow, but very rarely saw Mr. Yule himself who made no secret of the fact that he cared little for female society. In Wattleborough and the neighbourhood opinions varied greatly as to this gentleman’s character, but women seldom spoke very favourably of him. Miss Harrow was reticent concerning her brother-in-law; no one, however, had any reason to believe that she found life under his roof disagreeable. That she lived with him at all was of course occasionally matter for comment, certain Wattleborough ladies having their doubts regarding the position of a deceased wife’s sister under such circumstances; but no one was seriously exercised about the relations between this sober lady of forty-five and a man of sixty-three in broken health.

A word of the family history.

John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at the town’s grammar school. The eldest, who was a hotheaded lad, but showed capacities for business, worked at first with his father, endeavouring to add a