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

and her child, and her trunks, and her bandboxes, and her what-nots.

From the dining-room window Mrs. Yule was aware of this arrival, and in a few moments she learnt the unspeakable cause.

She burst into tears, genuine as ever woman shed.

“There’s no use in that, mother,” said Amy, whose temper was in a dangerous state. “Nothing worse can happen, that’s one consolation.”

“Oh, it’s disgraceful! disgraceful!” sobbed Mrs. Yule. “What we are to say I can not think.”

“I shall say nothing whatever. People can scarcely have the impertinence to ask us questions when we have shown that they are unwelcome.”

“But there are some people I can’t help giving some explanation to. My dear child, he is not in his right mind. I’m convinced of it, there! He is not in his right mind.”

“That’s nonsense, mother. He is as sane as I am.”

“But you have often said what strange things he says and does; you know you have, Amy. That talking in his sleep; I’ve thought a great deal of it since you told me about that. And⁠—and so many other things. My love, I shall give it to be understood that he has become so very odd in his ways that⁠—”

“I can’t have that,” replied Amy with decision. “Don’t you see that in that case I should be behaving very badly?”

“I can’t see that at all. There are many reasons, as you know very well, why one shouldn’t live with a husband who is at all suspected of mental derangement. You have done your utmost for him. And this would be some sort of explanation, you know. I am so convinced that there is truth in it, too.”

“Of course I can’t prevent you from saying what you like, but I think it would be very wrong to start a rumour of this kind.”

There was less resolve in this utterance. Amy mused, and looked wretched.

“Come up to the drawing-room, dear,” said her mother, for they had held their conversation in the room nearest to the house-door. “What a state your mind must be in! Oh dear! Oh dear!”

She was a slender, well-proportioned woman, still pretty in face, and dressed in a way that emphasised her abiding charms. Her voice had something of plaintiveness, and altogether she was of frailer type than her daughter.

“Is my room ready?” Amy inquired on the stairs.

“I’m sorry to say it isn’t, dear, as I didn’t expect you till tomorrow. But it shall be seen to immediately.”

This addition to the household was destined to cause grave difficulties with the domestic slaves. But Mrs. Yule would prove equal to the occasion. On Amy’s behalf she would have worked her servants till they perished of exhaustion before her eyes.

“Use my room for the present,” she added. “I think the girl has finished up there. But wait here; I’ll just go and see to things.”

“Things” were not quite satisfactory, as it proved. You should have heard the change that came in that sweetly plaintive voice when it addressed the luckless housemaid. It was not brutal; not at all. But so sharp, hard, unrelenting⁠—the voice of the goddess Poverty herself perhaps sounds like that.

Mad? Was he to be spoken of in a low voice, and with finger pointing to the forehead? There was something ridiculous, as well as repugnant, in such a thought; but it kept possession of Amy’s mind. She was brooding upon it when her mother came into the drawing-room.

“And he positively refused to carry out the former plan?”

“Refused. Said it was useless.”

“How could it be useless? There’s something so unaccountable in his behaviour.”

“I don’t think it unaccountable,” replied Amy. “It’s weak and selfish, that’s all. He takes the first miserable employment that offers rather than face the hard work of writing another book.”

She was quite aware that this did not truly represent her husband’s position. But an uneasiness of conscience impelled her to harsh speech.

“But just fancy!” exclaimed her mother. “What can he mean by asking you to go and live with him on twenty-five shillings a week? Upon my word, if his mind isn’t disordered he must have made a deliberate plan to get rid of you.”

Amy shook her head.

“You mean,” asked Mrs. Yule, “that he really thinks it possible for all of you to be supported on those wages?”

The last word was chosen to express the utmost scorn.

“He talked of earning fifty pounds a year by writing.”

“Even then it could only make about a hundred a year. My dear child, it’s one of two things: either he is out of his mind, or he has purposely cast you off.”

Amy laughed, thinking of her husband in the light of the latter alternative.

“There’s no need to seek so far for explanations,” she said. “He has failed, that’s all; just like a man might fail in any other business. He can’t write like he used to. It may be all the result of ill-health; I don’t know. His last book, you see, is positively refused. He has made up his mind that there’s nothing but poverty before him, and he can’t understand why I should object to live like the wife of a workingman.”

“Well, I only know that he has placed you in an exceedingly difficult position. If he had gone away to Worthing for the summer we might have made it seem natural; people are always ready to allow literary men to do rather odd things⁠—up to a certain point. We should have behaved as if there were nothing that called for explanation. But what are we to do now?”

Like her multitudinous kind, Mrs. Yule lived only in the opinions of other people. What others would say was her ceaseless preoccupation. She had never conceived of life as something proper to the individual; independence in the directing of one’s course seemed to her only possible in the case of very eccentric persons, or of such as were altogether out of society. Amy had advanced, intellectually, far beyond this standpoint, but lack of courage disabled her from acting upon her convictions.

“People must know the truth, I