Maud began to gnaw her fingers, a disagreeable habit she had in privacy.
Then why doesnt he live more economically?
I really dont see how he can live on less than a hundred and fifty a year. London, you know
The cheapest place in the world.
Nonsense, Maud!
But I know what Im saying. Ive read quite enough about such things. He might live very well indeed on thirty shillings a week, even buying his clothes out of it.
But he has told us so often that its no use to him to live like that. He is obliged to go to places where he must spend a little, or he makes no progress.
Well, all I can say is, exclaimed the girl impatiently, its very lucky for him that hes got a mother who willingly sacrifices her daughters to him.
Thats how you always break out. You dont care what unkindness you say!
Its a simple truth.
Dora never speaks like that.
Because shes afraid to be honest.
No, because she has too much love for her mother. I cant bear to talk to you, Maud. The older I get, and the weaker I get, the more unfeeling you are to me.
Scenes of this kind were no uncommon thing. The clash of tempers lasted for several minutes, then Maud flung out of the room. An hour later, at dinner-time, she was rather more caustic in her remarks than usual, but this was the only sign that remained of the stormy mood.
Jasper renewed the breakfast-table conversation.
Look here, he began, why dont you girls write something? Im convinced you could make money if you tried. Theres a tremendous sale for religious stories; why not patch one together? I am quite serious.
Why dont you do it yourself, retorted Maud.
I cant manage stories, as I have told you; but I think you could. In your place, Id make a speciality of Sunday-school prize-books; you know the kind of thing I mean. They sell like hot cakes. And theres so deuced little enterprise in the business. If youd give your mind to it, you might make hundreds a year.
Better say abandon your mind to it.
Why, there you are! Youre a sharp enough girl. You can quote as well as anyone I know.
And please, why am I to take up an inferior kind of work?
Inferior? Oh, if you can be a George Eliot, begin at the earliest opportunity. I merely suggested what seemed practicable. But I dont think you have genius, Maud. People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their headsthat one mustnt write save at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday-school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day. Theres no question of the divine afflatus; that belongs to another sphere of life. We talk of literature as a trade, not of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. If I could only get that into poor Reardons head. He thinks me a gross beast, often enough. What the devilI mean what on earth is there in typography to make everything it deals with sacred? I dont advocate the propagation of vicious literature; I speak only of good, coarse, marketable stuff for the worlds vulgar. You just give it a thought, Maud; talk it over with Dora.
He resumed presently:
I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind you: and to deny it is a gross error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity. For my own part, I shant be able to address the bulkiest multitude; my talent doesnt lend itself to that form. I shall write for the upper middle-class of intellect, the people who like to feel that what they are reading has some special cleverness, but who cant distinguish between stones and paste. Thats why Im so slow in warming to the work. Every month I feel surer of myself, however.
That last thing of mine in The West End distinctly hit the mark; it wasnt too flashy, it wasnt too solid. I heard fellows speak of it in the train.
Mrs Milvain kept glancing at Maud, with eyes which desired her attention to these utterances. None the less, half an hour after dinner, Jasper found himself encountered by his sister in the garden, on her face a look which warned him of what was coming.
I want you to tell me something, Jasper. How much longer shall you look to mother for support? I mean it literally; let me have an idea of how much longer it will be.
He looked away and reflected.
To leave a margin, was his reply, let us say twelve months.
Better say your favourite ten years at once.
No. I speak by the card. In twelve months time, if not before, I shall begin to pay my debts. My dear girl, I have the honour to be a tolerably long-headed individual. I know what Im about.
And let us suppose mother were to die within half a year?
I should make shift to do very well.
You? And pleasewhat of Dora and me?
You would write Sunday-school prizes.
Maud turned away and left him.
He knocked the dust out of the pipe he had been smoking, and again set off for a stroll along the lanes. On his countenance was just a trace of solicitude, but for the most part he wore a thoughtful smile. Now and then he stroked his smoothly-shaven jaws with thumb and fingers. Occasionally he became observant of wayside detailsof the colour of a maple leaf, the shape of a tall thistle, the consistency of a fungus. At the few people who passed he looked keenly, surveying them from head to foot.
On turning, at the limit of his walk, he found himself almost face to face with two persons, who were coming along in silent companionship; their appearance interested him. The one was a man of fifty, grizzled, hard featured, slightly bowed in the shoulders; he wore a grey felt hat with a broad brim and a decent suit of broadcloth. With him was a girl of perhaps two-and-twenty, in a slate-coloured dress with very little ornament, and a yellow straw hat of the shape originally appropriated to males; her dark hair was cut short, and lay in innumerable crisp curls. Father and daughter, obviously. The girl, to a casual eye, was neither pretty nor beautiful, but she had a grave and impressive face, with a complexion of ivory tone; her walk was gracefully modest, and she seemed to be enjoying the country air.
Jasper mused concerning them. When he had walked a few yards, he looked back; at the same moment the unknown man also turned his head.
Where the deuce have I seen themhim and the girl too? Milvain asked himself.
And before he reached home the recollection he sought flashed upon his mind.
The Museum Reading-room, of course!
Chapter 2. The House Of Yule
I think said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother and Maud were busy with plain needlework, I must have met Alfred Yule and his daughter.
How did you recognise them? Mrs Milvain inquired.
I passed an old buffer and a pale-faced girl whom I know by sight at the British Museum. It wasnt near Yules house, but they were taking a walk.
I think said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother and Maud were busy with plain needlework, I must have met Alfred Yule and his daughter.
How did you recognise them? Mrs Milvain inquired.
I passed an old buffer and a pale-faced girl whom I know by sight at the British Museum. It wasnt near Yules house, but they were taking a walk.
They may have come already. When Miss Harrow was here last, she said in about a fortnight.
No mistaking them for people of these parts, even if I hadnt remembered their faces. Both of them are obvious dwellers in the valley of the shadow of books.
Is Miss Yule such a fright then? asked Maud.
A fright! Not at all. A good example of the modern literary girl. I suppose you have the oddest old-fashioned ideas of such people. No, I rather like the look of her. Simpatica, I should think, as that ass Whelpdale would say. A very delicate, pure complexion, though morbid; nice eyes; figure not spoilt yet. But of course I may be wrong about their identity.
Later in the afternoon Jaspers conjecture was rendered a certainty. Maud had walked to Wattleborough, where she would meet Dora on the latters return from her teaching, and Mrs Milvain sat alone, in a mood of depression; there was a ring at the door-bell, and the servant admitted Miss Harrow.
This lady acted as housekeeper to Mr John Yule, a wealthy resident in this neighbourhood; she was the sister of his deceased wifea thin, soft-speaking, kindly woman of forty-five. The greater part of her life she had spent as a governess; her position now was more agreeable, and the removal of her anxiety about the future had developed qualities of cheerfulness which formerly no one would have suspected her to possess. The acquaintance between Mrs Milvain and her was only of twelve months standing; prior to that, Mr Yule had inhabited a house at the end of Wattleborough remote from Finden.
Our London visitors came yesterday, she began by saying.
Mrs Milvain mentioned her sons encounter an hour or two ago.
No doubt it was they, said the visitor. Mrs Yule hasnt come; I hardly expected she would, you know. So very unfortunate when there are difficulties of that kind, isnt it?
She smiled confidentially.
The poor girl must feel it, said Mrs Milvain.
Im afraid she does. Of course it narrows the circle of her friends at home. Shes a sweet girl, and I should so like you to meet her. Do come and have tea with us to-morrow afternoon, will you? Or would it be too much for you just now?
Will you let the girls call? And then perhaps Miss Yule will be so good as to come and see me?
I wonder whether Mr Milvain would like to meet her father? I have thought that perhaps it might be some advantage to him. Alfred is so closely connected with literary people, you know.
I feel sure he would be glad, replied Mrs Milvain. Butwhat of Jaspers friendship with Mrs Edmund Yule and the Reardons? Mightnt it be a little awkward?
Oh, I dont think so, unless he himself felt it so. There would be no need to mention that, I should say. And, really, it would be so much better if those estrangements came to an end. John makes no scruple of speaking freely about everyone, and I dont think Alfred regards Mrs Edmund with any serious unkindness. If Mr Milvain would walk over with the young ladies to-morrow, it would be very pleasant.
Then I think I may promise that he will. Im sure I dont know where he is at this moment. We dont see very much of him, except at meals.
He wont be with you much longer, I suppose?
Perhaps a week.
Before Miss Harrows departure Maud and Dora reached home. They were curious to see the young lady from the valley of the shadow of books, and gladly accepted the invitation offered them.
They set out on the following afternoon in their brothers company. It was only a quarter of an hours walk to Mr Yules habitation, a small house in a large garden. Jasper was coming hither for the first time; his sisters now and then visited Miss Harrow, but very rarely saw Mr Yule himself who made no secret of the fact that he cared little for female society. In Wattleborough and the neighbourhood opinions varied greatly as to this gentlemans character, but women seldom spoke very favourably of him. Miss Harrow was reticent concerning her brother-in-law; no one, however, had any reason to believe that she found life under his roof disagreeable. That she lived with him at all was of course occasionally matter for comment, certain Wattleborough ladies having their doubts regarding the position of a deceased wifes sister under such circumstances; but no one was seriously exercised about the relations between this sober lady of forty-five and a man of sixty-three in broken health.
A word of the family history.
John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at the towns grammar school. The eldest, who was a hot-headed lad, but showed capacities for business, worked at first with his father, endeavouring to add a bookselling department to the trade in stationery; but the life of home was not much to his taste, and at one-and-twenty he obtained a clerks place in the office of a London newspaper. Three years after, his father died, and the small patrimony which fell to him he used in making himself practically acquainted with the details of paper manufacture, his aim being to establish himself in partnership with an acquaintance who had started a small paper-mill in Hertfordshire.
His speculation succeeded, and as years went on he became a thriving manufacturer. His brother Alfred, in the meantime, had drifted from work at a London booksellers into the modern Grub Street, his adventures in which region will concern us hereafter.
Edmund carried on the Wattleborough business, but with small success. Between him and his eldest brother existed a good deal of affection, and in the end John offered him a share in his flourishing paper works; whereupon Edmund married, deeming himself well established for life. But Johns temper was a difficult one; Edmund and he quarrelled, parted; and when the younger died, aged about forty, he left but moderate provision for his widow and two children.
Only when he had reached middle age did John marry; the experiment could not be called successful, and Mrs Yule died three years later, childless.
At fifty-four John Yule retired from active business; he came back to the scenes of his early life, and began to take an important part in the municipal affairs of Wattleborough. He was then a remarkably robust man, fond of out-of-door exercise; he made it one of his chief efforts to encourage the local Volunteer movement, the cricket and football clubs, public sports of every kind, showing no sympathy whatever with those persons who wished to establish free libraries, lectures, and the like. At his own expense he built for the Volunteers a handsome drill-shed; he founded a public gymnasium; and finally he allowed it to be rumoured that he was going to present the town with a park. But by presuming too far upon the bodily vigour which prompted these activities, he passed of a sudden into the state of a confirmed invalid. On an autumn expedition in the Hebrides he slept one night under the open sky, with the result that he had an all but fatal attack of rheumatic fever. After that, though the direction of his interests was unchanged, he could no longer set the example to Wattleborough youth of muscular manliness. The infliction did not improve his temper; for the next year or two he was constantly at warfare with one or other of his colleagues and friends, ill brooking that the familiar control of various local interests should fall out of his hands. But before long he appeared to resign himself to his fate, and at present Wattleborough saw little of him. It seemed likely that he might still found the park which was to bear his name; but perhaps it would only be done in consequence of directions in his will. It was believed that he could not live much longer.