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

of all peace. Dora was not long in noticing the dejected mood which had come upon her friend.

“What’s troubling you, Marian?”

“Something I can hardly bear to speak of. Perhaps it will be the end of your friendship for me, and I should find it very hard to go back to my old solitude.”

The girls gazed at her, in doubt at first whether she spoke seriously.

“What can you mean?” Dora exclaimed. “What crime have you been committing?”

Maud, who leaned with her elbows on the table, searched Marian’s face curiously, but said nothing.

“Has Mr. Milvain shown you the new number of The Current?” Marian went on to ask.

They replied with a negative, and Maud added:

“He has nothing in it this month, except a review.”

“A review?” repeated Marian in a low voice.

“Yes; of somebody’s novel.”

“Markland’s,” supplied Dora.

Marian drew a breath, but remained for a moment with her eyes cast down.

“Do go on, dear,” urged Dora. “Whatever are you going to tell us?”

“There’s a notice of father’s book,” continued the other, “a very ill-natured one; it’s written by the editor, Mr. Fadge. Father and he have been very unfriendly for a long time. Perhaps Mr. Milvain has told you something about it?”

Dora replied that he had.

“I don’t know how it is in other professions,” Marian resumed, “but I hope there is less envy, hatred and malice than in this of ours. The name of literature is often made hateful to me by the things I hear and read. My father has never been very fortunate, and many things have happened to make him bitter against the men who succeed; he has often quarrelled with people who were at first his friends, but never so seriously with anyone as with Mr. Fadge. His feeling of enmity goes so far that it includes even those who are in any way associated with Mr. Fadge. I am sorry to say”⁠—she looked with painful anxiety from one to the other of her hearers⁠—“this has turned him against your brother, and⁠—”

Her voice was checked by agitation.

“We were afraid of this,” said Dora, in a tone of sympathy.

“Jasper feared it might be the case,” added Maud, more coldly, though with friendliness.

“Why I speak of it at all,” Marian hastened to say, “is because I am so afraid it should make a difference between yourselves and me.”

“Oh! don’t think that!” Dora exclaimed.

“I am so ashamed,” Marian went on in an uncertain tone, “but I think it will be better if I don’t ask you to come and see me. It sounds ridiculous; it is ridiculous and shameful. I couldn’t complain if you refused to have anything more to do with me.”

“Don’t let it trouble you,” urged Maud, with perhaps a trifle more of magnanimity in her voice than was needful. “We quite understand. Indeed, it shan’t make any difference to us.”

But Marian had averted her face, and could not meet these assurances with any show of pleasure. Now that the step was taken she felt that her behaviour had been very weak. Unreasonable harshness such as her father’s ought to have been met more steadily; she had no right to make it an excuse for such incivility to her friends. Yet only in some such way as this could she make known to Jasper Milvain how her father regarded him, which she felt it necessary to do. Now his sisters would tell him, and henceforth there would be a clear understanding on both sides. That state of things was painful to her, but it was better than ambiguous relations.

“Jasper is very sorry about it,” said Dora, glancing rapidly at Marian.

“But his connection with Mr. Fadge came about in such a natural way,” added the eldest sister. “And it was impossible for him to refuse opportunities.”

“Impossible; I know,” Marian replied earnestly. “Don’t think that I wish to justify my father. But I can understand him, and it must be very difficult for you to do so. You can’t know, as I do, how intensely he has suffered in these wretched, ignoble quarrels. If only you will let me come here still, in the same way, and still be as friendly to me. My home has never been a place to which I could have invited friends with any comfort, even if I had had any to invite. There were always reasons⁠—but I can’t speak of them.”

“My dear Marian,” appealed Dora, “don’t distress yourself so! Do believe that nothing whatever has happened to change our feeling to you. Has there, Maud?”

“Nothing whatever. We are not unreasonable girls, Marian.”

“I am more grateful to you than I can say.”

It had seemed as if Marian must give way to the emotions which all but choked her voice; she overcame them, however, and presently was able to talk in pretty much her usual way, though when she smiled it was but faintly. Maud tried to lead her thoughts in another direction by speaking of work in which she and Dora were engaged. Already the sisters were doing a new piece of compilation for Messrs Jolly and Monk; it was more exacting than their initial task for the book market, and would take a much longer time.

A couple of hours went by, and Marian had just spoken of taking her leave, when a man’s step was heard rapidly ascending the nearest flight of stairs.

“Here’s Jasper,” remarked Dora, and in a moment there sounded a short, sharp summons at the door.

Jasper it was; he came in with radiant face, his eyes blinking before the lamplight.

“Well, girls! Ha! how do you do, Miss Yule? I had just the vaguest sort of expectation that you might be here. It seemed a likely night; I don’t know why. I say, Dora, we really must get two or three decent easy-chairs for your room. I’ve seen some outside a secondhand furniture shop in Hampstead Road, about six shillings apiece. There’s no sitting on chairs such as these.”

That on which he tried to dispose himself, when he had flung aside his trappings, creaked and shivered ominously.

“You hear? I shall