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

“No, thank you; I don’t smoke so early.”

“Then I’ll light one myself; it always makes talk easier to me. You’re on the point of moving, I suppose?”

“Yes, I am.”

Reardon tried to speak in quite a simple way, with no admission of embarrassment. He was not successful, and to his visitor the tone seemed rather offensive.

“I suppose you’ll let Amy know your new address?”

“Certainly. Why should I conceal it?”

“No, no; I didn’t mean to suggest that. But you might be taking it for granted that⁠—that the rupture was final, I thought.”

There had never been any intimacy between these two men. Reardon regarded his wife’s brother as rather snobbish and disagreeably selfish; John Yule looked upon the novelist as a prig, and now of late as a shuffling, untrustworthy fellow. It appeared to John that his brother-in-law was assuming a manner wholly unjustifiable, and he had a difficulty in behaving to him with courtesy. Reardon, on the other hand, felt injured by the turn his visitor’s remarks were taking, and began to resent the visit altogether.

“I take nothing for granted,” he said coldly. “But I’m afraid nothing is to be gained by a discussion of our difficulties. The time for that is over.”

“I can’t quite see that. It seems to me that the time has just come.”

“Please tell me, to begin with, do you come on Amy’s behalf?”

“In a way, yes. She hasn’t sent me, but my mother and I are so astonished at what is happening that it was necessary for one or other of us to see you.”

“I think it is all between Amy and myself.”

“Difficulties between husband and wife are generally best left to the people themselves, I know. But the fact is, there are peculiar circumstances in the present case. It can’t be necessary for me to explain further.”

Reardon could find no suitable words of reply. He understood what Yule referred to, and began to feel the full extent of his humiliation.

“You mean, of course⁠—” he began; but his tongue failed him.

“Well, we should really like to know how long it is proposed that Amy shall remain with her mother.”

John was perfectly self-possessed; it took much to disturb his equanimity. He smoked his cigarette, which was in an amber mouthpiece, and seemed to enjoy its flavour. Reardon found himself observing the perfection of the young man’s boots and trousers.

“That depends entirely on my wife herself;” he replied mechanically.

“How so?”

“I offer her the best home I can.”

Reardon felt himself a poor, pitiful creature, and hated the well-dressed man who made him feel so.

“But really, Reardon,” began the other, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, “do you tell me in seriousness that you expect Amy to live in such lodgings as you can afford on a pound a week?”

“I don’t. I said that I had offered her the best home I could. I know it’s impossible, of course.”

Either he must speak thus, or break into senseless wrath. It was hard to hold back the angry words that were on his lips, but he succeeded, and he was glad he had done so.

“Then it doesn’t depend on Amy,” said John.

“I suppose not.”

“You see no reason, then, why she shouldn’t live as at present for an indefinite time?”

To John, whose perspicacity was not remarkable, Reardon’s changed tone conveyed simply an impression of bland impudence. He eyed his brother-in-law rather haughtily.

“I can only say,” returned the other, who was become wearily indifferent, “that as soon as I can afford a decent home I shall give my wife the opportunity of returning to me.”

“But, pray, when is that likely to be?”

John had passed the bounds; his manner was too frankly contemptuous.

“I see no right you have to examine me in this fashion,” Reardon exclaimed. “With Mrs. Yule I should have done my best to be patient if she had asked these questions; but you are not justified in putting them, at all events not in this way.”

“I’m very sorry you speak like this, Reardon,” said the other, with calm insolence. “It confirms unpleasant ideas, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, one can’t help thinking that you are rather too much at your ease under the circumstances. It isn’t exactly an everyday thing, you know, for a man’s wife to be sent back to her own people⁠—”

Reardon could not endure the sound of these words. He interrupted hotly.

“I can’t discuss it with you. You are utterly unable to comprehend me and my position, utterly! It would be useless to defend myself. You must take whatever view seems to you the natural one.”

John, having finished his cigarette, rose.

“The natural view is an uncommonly disagreeable one,” he said. “However, I have no intention of quarrelling with you. I’ll only just say that, as I take a share in the expenses of my mother’s house, this question decidedly concerns me; and I’ll add that I think it ought to concern you a good deal more than it seems to.”

Reardon, ashamed already of his violence, paused upon these remarks.

“It shall,” he uttered at length, coldly. “You have put it clearly enough to me, and you shan’t have spoken in vain. Is there anything else you wish to say?”

“Thank you; I think not.”

They parted with distant civility, and Reardon closed the door behind his visitor.

He knew that his character was seen through a distorting medium by Amy’s relatives, to some extent by Amy herself; but hitherto the reflection that this must always be the case when a man of his kind is judged by people of the world had strengthened him in defiance. An endeavour to explain himself would be maddeningly hopeless; even Amy did not understand aright the troubles through which his intellectual and moral nature was passing, and to speak of such experiences to Mrs. Yule or to John would be equivalent to addressing them in alien tongues; he and they had no common criterion by reference to which he could make himself intelligible. The practical tone in which John had explained the opposing view of the situation