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

off the evil day, that was all⁠—putting off the time when I should have to say plainly: ‘I can’t live by literature, so I must look out for some other employment.’ I shouldn’t have been so weak but that I knew how you would regard such a decision as that. I was afraid to tell the truth⁠—afraid. Now, when Carter of a sudden put this opportunity before me, I saw all the absurdity of the arrangements we had made. It didn’t take me a moment to make up my mind. Anything was to be chosen rather than a parting from you on false pretences, a ridiculous affectation of hope where there was no hope.”

He paused, and saw that his words had no effect upon her.

“And a grievous share of the fault lies with you, Amy. You remember very well when I first saw how dark the future was. I was driven even to say that we ought to change our mode of living; I asked you if you would be willing to leave this place and go into cheaper rooms. And you know what your answer was. Not a sign in you that you would stand by me if the worst came. I knew then what I had to look forward to, but I durst not believe it. I kept saying to myself: ‘She loves me, and as soon as she really understands⁠—’ That was all self-deception. If I had been a wise man, I should have spoken to you in a way you couldn’t mistake. I should have told you that we were living recklessly, and that I had determined to alter it. I have no delicacy? No regard for your feelings? Oh, if I had had less! I doubt whether you can even understand some of the considerations that weighed with me, and made me cowardly⁠—though I once thought there was no refinement of sensibility that you couldn’t enter into. Yes, I was absurd enough to say to myself: ‘It will look as if I had consciously deceived her; she may suffer from the thought that I won her at all hazards, knowing that I should soon expose her to poverty and all sorts of humiliation.’ Impossible to speak of that again; I had to struggle desperately on, trying to hope. Oh! if you knew⁠—”

His voice gave way for an instant.

“I don’t understand how you could be so thoughtless and heartless. You knew that I was almost mad with anxiety at times. Surely, any woman must have had the impulse to give what help was in her power. How could you hesitate? Had you no suspicion of what a relief and encouragement it would be to me, if you said: ‘Yes, we must go and live in a simpler way?’ If only as a proof that you loved me, how I should have welcomed that! You helped me in nothing. You threw all the responsibility upon me⁠—always bearing in mind, I suppose, that there was a refuge for you. Even now, I despise myself for saying such things of you, though I know so bitterly that they are true. It takes a long time to see you as such a different woman from the one I worshipped. In passion, I can fling out violent words, but they don’t yet answer to my actual feeling. It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last comes the darkness.”

Amy turned towards him once more.

“Instead of saying all this, you might be proving that I am wrong. Do so, and I will gladly confess it.”

“That you are wrong? I don’t see your meaning.”

“You might prove that you are willing to do your utmost to save me from humiliation.”

“Amy, I have done my utmost. I have done more than you can imagine.”

“No. You have toiled on in illness and anxiety⁠—I know that. But a chance is offered you now of working in a better way. Till that is tried, you have no right to give all up and try to drag me down with you.”

“I don’t know how to answer. I have told you so often⁠—You can’t understand me!”

“I can! I can!” Her voice trembled for the first time. “I know that you are so ready to give in to difficulties. Listen to me, and do as I bid you.” She spoke in the strangest tone of command.

It was command, not exhortation, but there was no harshness in her voice. “Go at once to Mr. Carter. Tell him you have made a ludicrous mistake⁠—in a fit of low spirits; anything you like to say. Tell him you of course couldn’t dream of becoming his clerk. Tonight; at once! You understand me, Edwin? Go now, this moment.”

“Have you determined to see how weak I am? Do you wish to be able to despise me more completely still?”

“I am determined to be your friend, and to save you from yourself. Go at once! Leave all the rest to me. If I have let things take their course till now, it shan’t be so in future. The responsibility shall be with me. Only do as I tell you.”

“You know it’s impossible⁠—”

“It is not! I will find money. No one shall be allowed to say that we are parting; no one has any such idea yet. You are going away for your health, just three summer months. I have been far more careful of appearances than you imagine, but you give me credit for so little. I will find the money you need, until you have written another book. I promise; I undertake it. Then I will find another home for us, of the proper kind. You shall have no trouble. You shall give yourself entirely to intellectual things. But Mr. Carter must be told at once, before he can spread a report. If he has spoken, he must contradict what he has said.”

“But you