The money thus earned he spentat a tailors. His friend Carter ventured to suggest this mode of outlay.
His third book sold for fifty pounds. It was a great improvement on its predecessors, and the reviews were generally favourable. For the story which followed, On Neutral Ground, he received a hundred pounds. On the strength of that he spent six months travelling in the South of Europe.
He returned to London at mid-June, and on the second day after his arrival befell an incident which was to control the rest of his life. Busy with the pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, he heard himself addressed in a familiar voice, and on turning he was aware of Mr Carter, resplendent in fashionable summer attire, and accompanied by a young lady of some charms. Reardon had formerly feared encounters of this kind, too conscious of the defects of his attire; but at present there was no reason why he should shirk social intercourse. He was passably dressed, and the half-year of travel had benefited his appearance in no slight degree. Carter presented him to the young lady, of whom the novelist had already heard as affianced to his friend.
Whilst they stood conversing, there approached two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, whose attendant was another of Reardons acquaintances, Mr John Yule. This gentleman stepped briskly forward and welcomed the returned wanderer.
Let me introduce you, he said, to my mother and sister. Your fame has made them anxious to know you.
Reardon found himself in a position of which the novelty was embarrassing, but scarcely disagreeable. Here were five people grouped around him, all of whom regarded him unaffectedly as a man of importance; for though, strictly speaking, he had no fame at all, these persons had kept up with the progress of his small repute, and were all distinctly glad to number among their acquaintances an unmistakable author, one, too, who was fresh from Italy and Greece. Mrs Yule, a lady rather too pretentious in her tone to be attractive to a man of Reardons refinement, hastened to assure him how well his books were known in her house, though for the run of ordinary novels we dont care much. Miss Yule, not at all pretentious in speech, and seemingly reserved of disposition, was good enough to show frank interest in the author. As for the poor author himself, well, he merely fell in love with Miss Yule at first sight, and there was an end of the matter.
A day or two later he made a call at their house, in the region of Westbourne Park. It was a small house, and rather showily than handsomely furnished; no one after visiting it would be astonished to hear that Mrs Edmund Yule had but a small income, and that she was often put to desperate expedients to keep up the gloss of easy circumstances. In the gauzy and fluffy and varnishy little drawing-room Reardon found a youngish gentleman already in conversation with the widow and her daughter. This proved to be one Mr Jasper Milvain, also a man of letters. Mr Milvain was glad to meet Reardon, whose books he had read with decided interest.
Really, exclaimed Mrs Yule, I dont know how it is that we have had to wait so long for the pleasure of knowing you, Mr Reardon. If John were not so selfish he would have allowed us a share in your acquaintance long ago.
Ten weeks thereafter, Miss Yule became Mrs Reardon.
It was a time of frantic exultation with the poor fellow. He had always regarded the winning of a beautiful and intellectual wife as the crown of a successful literary career, but he had not dared to hope that such a triumph would be his. Life had been too hard with him on the whole. He, who hungered for sympathy, who thought of a womans love as the prize of mortals supremely blessed, had spent the fresh years of his youth in monkish solitude. Now of a sudden came friends and flattery, ay, and love itself. He was rapt to the seventh heaven.
Indeed, it seemed that the girl loved him. She knew that he had but a hundred pounds or so left over from that little inheritance, that his books sold for a trifle, that he had no wealthy relatives from whom he could expect anything; yet she hesitated not a moment when he asked her to marry him.
I have loved you from the first.
How is that possible? he urged. What is there lovable in me? I am afraid of waking up and finding myself in my old garret, cold and hungry.
You will be a great man.
I implore you not to count on that! In many ways I am wretchedly weak. I have no such confidence in myself.
Then I will have confidence for both.
But can you love me for my own sakelove me as a man?
I love you!
And the words sang about him, filled the air with a mad pulsing of intolerable joy, made him desire to fling himself in passionate humility at her feet, to weep hot tears, to cry to her in insane worship. He thought her beautiful beyond anything his heart had imagined; her warm gold hair was the rapture of his eyes and of his reverent hand. Though slenderly fashioned, she was so gloriously strong. Not a day of illness in her life, said Mrs Yule, and one could readily believe it.
She spoke with such a sweet decision. Her I love you! was a bond with eternity. In the simplest as in the greatest things she saw his wish and acted frankly upon it. No pretty petulance, no affectation of silly-sweet languishing, none of the weaknesses of woman. And so exquisitely fresh in her twenty years of maidenhood, with bright young eyes that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come.
He went about like one dazzled with excessive light. He talked as he had never talked before, recklessly, exultantly, insolentlyin the nobler sense. He made friends on every hand; he welcomed all the world to his bosom; he felt the benevolence of a god.
I love you! It breathed like music at his ears when he fell asleep in weariness of joy; it awakened him on the morrow as with a glorious ringing summons to renewed life.
Delay? Why should there be delay? Amy wished nothing but to become his wife. Idle to think of his doing any more work until he sat down in the home of which she was mistress. His brain burned with visions of the books he would henceforth write, but his hand was incapable of anything but a love-letter. And what letters! Reardon never published anything equal to those. I have received your poem, Amy replied to one of them. And she was right; not a letter, but a poem he had sent her, with every word on fire.
The hours of talk! It enraptured him to find how much she had read, and with what clearness of understanding. Latin and Greek, no. Ah! but she should learn them both, that there might be nothing wanting in the communion between his thought and hers. For he loved the old writers with all his heart; they had been such strength to him in his days of misery.
They would go together to the charmed lands of the South. No, not now for their marriage holidayAmy said that would be an imprudent expense; but as soon as he had got a good price for a book. Will not the publishers be kind? If they knew what happiness lurked in embryo within their foolish cheque-books!
He woke of a sudden in the early hours of one morning, a week before the wedding-day. You know that kind of awaking, so complete in an instant, caused by the pressure of some troublesome thought upon the dreaming brain. Suppose I should not succeed henceforth? Suppose I could never get more than this poor hundred pounds for one of the long books which cost me so much labour? I shall perhaps have children to support; and Amyhow would Amy bear poverty?
He knew what poverty means. The chilling of brain and heart, the unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the worlds base indifference. Poverty! Poverty!
He woke of a sudden in the early hours of one morning, a week before the wedding-day. You know that kind of awaking, so complete in an instant, caused by the pressure of some troublesome thought upon the dreaming brain. Suppose I should not succeed henceforth? Suppose I could never get more than this poor hundred pounds for one of the long books which cost me so much labour? I shall perhaps have children to support; and Amyhow would Amy bear poverty?
He knew what poverty means. The chilling of brain and heart, the unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the worlds base indifference. Poverty! Poverty!
And for hours he could not sleep. His eyes kept filling with tears, the beating of his heart was low; and in his solitude he called upon Amy with pitiful entreaty: Do not forsake me! I love you! I love you!
But that went by. Six days, five days, four dayswill ones heart burst with happiness? The flat is taken, is furnished, up there towards the sky, eight flights of stone steps.
Youre a confoundedly lucky fellow, Reardon, remarked Milvain, who had already become very intimate with his new friend. A good fellow, too, and you deserve it.
But at first I had a horrible suspicion.
I guess what you mean. No; I wasnt even in love with her, though I admired her. She would never have cared for me in any case; I am not sentimental enough.
The deuce!
I mean it in an inoffensive sense. She and I are rather too much alike, I fancy.
How do you mean? asked Reardon, puzzled, and not very well pleased.
Theres a great deal of pure intellect about Miss Yule, you know. She was sure to choose a man of the passionate kind.
I think you are talking nonsense, my dear fellow.
Well, perhaps I am. To tell you the truth, I have by no means completed my study of women yet. It is one of the things in which I hope to be a specialist some day, though I dont think I shall ever make use of it in novelsrather, perhaps, in life.
Three daystwo daysone day.
Now let every joyous sound which the great globe can utter ring forth in one burst of harmony! Is it not well done to make the village-bells chant merrily when a marriage is over? Here in London we can have no such music; but for us, my dear one, all the roaring life of the great city is wedding-hymn. Sweet, pure face under its bridal-veil! The face which shall, if fate spare it, be as dear to me many a long year hence as now at the culminating moment of my life!
As he trudged on in the dark, his tortured memory was living through that time again. The images forced themselves upon him, however much he tried to think of quite other thingsof some fictitious story on which he might set to work. In the case of his earlier books he had waited quietly until some suggestive situation, some group of congenial characters, came with sudden delightfulness before his mind and urged him to write; but nothing so spontaneous could now be hoped for. His brain was too weary with months of fruitless, harassing endeavour; moreover, he was trying to devise a plot, the kind of literary Jack-in-the-box which might excite interest in the mass of readers, and this was alien to the natural working of his imagination. He suffered the torments of nightmarean oppression of the brain and heart which must soon be intolerable.
Chapter 6. The Practical Friend
When her husband had set forth, Amy seated herself in the study and took up a new library volume as if to read. But she had no real intention of doing so; it was always disagreeable to her to sit in the manner of one totally unoccupied, with hands on lap, and even when she consciously gave herself up to musing an open book was generally before her. She did not, in truth, read much nowadays; since the birth of her child she had seemed to care less than before for disinterested study. If a new novel that had succeeded came into her hands she perused it in a very practical spirit, commenting to Reardon on the features of the work which had made it popular; formerly, she would have thought much more of its purely literary merits, for which her eye was very keen. How often she had given her husband a thrill of exquisite pleasure by pointing to some merit or defect of which the common reader would be totally insensible! Now she spoke less frequently on such subjects. Her interests were becoming more personal; she liked to hear details of the success of popular authorsabout their wives or husbands, as the case might be, their arrangements with publishers, their methods of work. The gossip columns of literary papersand of some that were not literaryhad an attraction for her. She talked of questions such as international copyright, was anxious to get an insight into the practical conduct of journals and magazines, liked to know who read for the publishing-houses. To an impartial observer it might have appeared that her intellect was growing more active and mature.
More than half an hour passed. It was not a pleasant train of thought that now occupied her. Her lips were drawn together, her brows were slightly wrinkled; the self-control which at other times was agreeably expressed upon her features had become rather too cold and decided. At one moment it seemed to her that she heard a sound in the bedroomthe doors were purposely left ajarand her head turned quickly to listen, the look in her eyes instantaneously softening; but all remained quiet. The street would have been silent but for a cab that now and then passedthe swing of a hansom or the roll of a four-wheelerand within the buildings nothing whatever was audible.
Yes, a footstep, briskly mounting the stone stairs. Not like that of the postman. A visitor, perhaps, to the other flat on the topmost landing. But the final pause was in this direction, and then came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Amy rose immediately and went to open.
Jasper Milvain raised his urban silk hat, then held out his hand with the greeting of frank friendship. His inquiries were in so loud a voice that Amy checked him with a forbidding gesture.
Youll wake Willie!
By Jove! I always forget, he exclaimed in subdued tones. Does the infant flourish?
Oh, yes!
Reardon out? I got back on Saturday evening, but couldnt come round before this. It was Monday. How close it is in here! I suppose the roof gets so heated during the day. Glorious weather in the country! And Ive no end of things to tell you. He wont be long, I suppose?
I think not.
He left his hat and stick in the passage, came into the study, and glanced about as if he expected to see some change since he was last here, three weeks ago.
So you have been enjoying yourself? said Amy as, after listening for a moment at the door, she took a seat.
Oh, a little freshening of the faculties. But whose acquaintance do you think I have made?
Down there?
Yes. Your uncle Alfred and his daughter were staying at John Yules, and I saw something of them. I was invited to the house.
Did you speak of us?
To Miss Yule only. I happened to meet her on a walk, and in a blundering way I mentioned Reardons name. But of course it didnt matter in the least. She inquired about you with a good deal of interestasked if you were as beautiful as you promised to be years ago.
Amy laughed.
Doesnt that proceed from your fertile invention, Mr Milvain?