New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕

“It isn’t impossible. I think it’s rather well done. Let me read you a page⁠—”

“Where will you send it?” she interrupted.

“To The Wayside.”

“Why not try The Current? Ask Milvain to introduce you to Mr. Fadge. They pay much better, you know.”

“But this isn’t so well suited for Fadge. And I much prefer to be independent, as long as it’s possible.”

“That’s one of your faults, Edwin,” remarked his wife, mildly. “It’s only the strongest men that can make their way independently. You ought to use every means that offers.”

“Seeing that I am so weak?”

“I didn’t think it would offend you. I only meant⁠—”

“No, no; you are quite right. Certainly, I am one of the men who need all the help they can get. But I assure you, this thing won’t do for The Current.”

“What a pity you will go back to those musty old times! Now think of that article of Milvain’s. If only you could do something of that kind! What do people care about Diogenes and his tub and his lantern?”

“My dear girl, Diogenes Laertius had neither tub nor lantern, that I know of. You are making a mistake; but it doesn’t matter.”

“No, I don’t think it does.” The caustic note was not very pleasant on Amy’s lips. “Whoever he was, the mass of readers will be frightened by his name.”

“Well, we have to recognise that the mass of readers will never care for anything I do.”

“You will never convince me that you couldn’t write in a popular way if you tried. I’m sure you are quite as clever as Milvain⁠—”

Reardon made an impatient gesture.

“Do leave Milvain aside for a little! He and I are as unlike as two men could be. What’s the use of constantly comparing us?”

Amy looked at him. He had never spoken to her so brusquely.

“How can you say that I am constantly comparing you?”

“If not in spoken words, then in your thoughts.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, Edwin.”

“You make it so unmistakable, Amy. What I mean is, that you are always regretting the difference between him and me. You lament that I can’t write in that attractive way. Well, I lament it myself⁠—for your sake. I wish I had Milvain’s peculiar talent, so that I could get reputation and money. But I haven’t, and there’s an end of it. It irritates a man to be perpetually told of his disadvantages.”

“I will never mention Milvain’s name again,” said Amy coldly.

“Now that’s ridiculous, and you know it.”

“I feel the same about your irritation. I can’t see that I have given any cause for it.”

“Then we’ll talk no more of the matter.”

Reardon threw his manuscript aside and opened a book. Amy never asked him to resume his intention of reading what he had written.

However, the paper was accepted. It came out in The Wayside for March, and Reardon received seven pounds ten for it. By that time he had written another thing of the same gossipy kind, suggested by Pliny’s Letters. The pleasant occupation did him good, but there was no possibility of pursuing this course. Margaret Home would be published in April; he might get the five-and-twenty pounds contingent upon a certain sale, yet that could in no case be paid until the middle of the year, and long before then he would be penniless. His respite drew to an end.

But now he took counsel of no one; as far as it was possible he lived in solitude, never seeing those of his acquaintances who were outside the literary world, and seldom even his colleagues. Milvain was so busy that he had only been able to look in twice or thrice since Christmas, and Reardon nowadays never went to Jasper’s lodgings.

He had the conviction that all was over with the happiness of his married life, though how the events which were to express this ruin would shape themselves he could not foresee. Amy was revealing that aspect of her character to which he had been blind, though a practical man would have perceived it from the first; so far from helping him to support poverty, she perhaps would even refuse to share it with him. He knew that she was slowly drawing apart; already there was a divorce between their minds, and he tortured himself in uncertainty as to how far he retained her affections. A word of tenderness, a caress, no longer met with response from her; her softest mood was that of mere comradeship. All the warmth of her nature was expended upon the child; Reardon learnt how easy it is for a mother to forget that both parents have a share in her offspring.

He was beginning to dislike the child. But for Willie’s existence Amy would still love him with undivided heart; not, perhaps, so passionately as once, but still with lover’s love. And Amy understood⁠—or, at all events, remarked⁠—this change in him. She was aware that he seldom asked a question about Willie, and that he listened with indifference when she spoke of the little fellow’s progress. In part offended, she was also in part pleased.

But for the child, mere poverty, he said to himself, should never have sundered them. In the strength of his passion he could have overcome all her disappointments; and, indeed, but for that new care, he would most likely never have fallen to this extremity of helplessness. It is natural in a weak and sensitive man to dream of possibilities disturbed by the force of circumstance. For one hour which he gave to conflict with his present difficulties, Reardon spent many in contemplation of the happiness that might have been.

Even yet, it needed but a little money to redeem all. Amy had no extravagant aspirations; a home of simple refinement and freedom from anxiety would restore her to her nobler self. How could he find fault with her? She knew nothing of such sordid life as he had gone through, and to lack money