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

Reardon gazed at her for a moment, then turned away. The distance between them was greater than he had thought, and now he repented of having given way to an impulse so alien to his true feelings; anger only estranged her, whereas by speech of a different kind he might have won the caress for which he hungered.

Amy, seeing that he would say nothing more, left him to himself.

It grew late in the night. The fire had gone out, but Reardon still sat in the cold room. Thoughts of self-destruction were again haunting him, as they had done during the black months of last year. If he had lost Amy’s love, and all through the mental impotence which would make it hard for him even to earn bread, why should he still live? Affection for his child had no weight with him; it was Amy’s child rather than his, and he had more fear than pleasure in the prospect of Willie’s growing to manhood.

He had just heard the workhouse clock strike two, when, without the warning of a footstep, the door opened. Amy came in; she wore her dressing-gown, and her hair was arranged for the night.

“Why do you stay here?” she asked.

It was not the same voice as before. He saw that her eyes were red and swollen.

“Have you been crying, Amy?”

“Never mind. Do you know what time it is?”

He went towards her.

“Why have you been crying?”

“There are many things to cry for.”

“Amy, have you any love for me still, or has poverty robbed me of it all?”

“I have never said that I didn’t love you. Why do you accuse me of such things?”

He took her in his arms and held her passionately and kissed her face again and again. Amy’s tears broke forth anew.

“Why should we come to such utter ruin?” she sobbed. “Oh, try, try if you can’t save us even yet! You know without my saying it that I do love you; it’s dreadful to me to think all our happy life should be at an end, when we thought of such a future together. Is it impossible? Can’t you work as you used to and succeed as we felt confident you would? Don’t despair yet, Edwin; do, do try, whilst there is still time!”

“Darling, darling⁠—if only I could!”

“I have thought of something, dearest. Do as you proposed last year; find a tenant for the flat whilst we still have a little money, and then go away into some quiet country place, where you can get back your health and live for very little, and write another book⁠—a good book, that’ll bring you reputation again. I and Willie can go and live at mother’s for the summer months. Do this! It would cost you so little, living alone, wouldn’t it? You would know that I was well cared for; mother would be willing to have me for a few months, and it’s easy to explain that your health has failed, that you’re obliged to go away for a time.”

“But why shouldn’t you go with me, if we are to let this place?”

“We shouldn’t have enough money. I want to free your mind from the burden whilst you are writing. And what is before us if we go on in this way? You don’t think you will get much for what you’re writing now, do you?”

Reardon shook his head.

“Then how can we live even till the end of the year? Something must be done, you know. If we get into poor lodgings, what hope is there that you’ll be able to write anything good?”

“But, Amy, I have no faith in my power of⁠—”

“Oh, it would be different! A few days⁠—a week or a fortnight of real holiday in this spring weather. Go to some seaside place. How is it possible that all your talent should have left you? It’s only that you have been so anxious and in such poor health. You say I don’t love you, but I have thought and thought what would be best for you to do, how you could save yourself. How can you sink down to the position of a poor clerk in some office? That can’t be your fate, Edwin; it’s incredible. Oh, after such bright hopes, make one more effort! Have you forgotten that we were to go to the South together⁠—you were to take me to Italy and Greece? How can that ever be if you fail utterly in literature? How can you ever hope to earn more than bare sustenance at any other kind of work?”

He all but lost consciousness of her words in gazing at the face she held up to his.

“You love me? Say again that you love me!”

“Dear, I love you with all my heart. But I am so afraid of the future. I can’t bear poverty; I have found that I can’t bear it. And I dread to think of your becoming only an ordinary man⁠—”

Reardon laughed.

“But I am not ‘only an ordinary man,’ Amy! If I never write another line, that won’t undo what I have done. It’s little enough, to be sure; but you know what I am. Do you only love the author in me? Don’t you think of me apart from all that I may do or not do? If I had to earn my living as a clerk, would that make me a clerk in soul?”

“You shall not fall to that! It would be too bitter a shame to lose all you have gained in these long years of work. Let me plan for you; do as I wish. You are to be what we hoped from the first. Take all the summer months. How long will it be before you can finish this short book?”

“A week or two.”

“Then finish it, and see what you can get for it. And try at once to find a tenant to take this place off our hands; that would be twenty-five pounds saved for the rest of