New Grub Street Part 10

'Yes,' he said, in a different way, 'that's the worst of it.'

'What is?'

'That you--well, it's no use.'

'That I--what?'

She did not look at him; her lips, after she had spoken, drew in a little.

'That your disposition towards me is being affected by this miserable failure. You keep saying to yourself that I am not what you thought me.

Perhaps you even feel that I have been guilty of a sort of deception. I don't blame you; it's natural enough.'

'I'll tell you quite honestly what I do think,' she replied, after a short silence. 'You are much weaker than I imagined. Difficulties crush you, instead of rousing you to struggle.'

'True. It has always been my fault.'

'But don't you feel it's rather unmanly, this state of things? You say you love me, and I try to believe it. But whilst you are saying so, you let me get nearer and nearer to miserable, hateful poverty. What is to become of me--of us? Shall you sit here day after day until our last s.h.i.+lling is spent?'

'No; of course I must do something.'

'When shall you begin in earnest? In a day or two you must pay this quarter's rent, and that will leave us just about fifteen pounds in the world. Where is the rent at Christmas to come from?

What are we to live upon? There's all sorts of clothing to be bought; there'll be all the extra expenses of winter. Surely it's bad enough that we have had to stay here all the summer; no holiday of any kind. I have done my best not to grumble about it, but I begin to think that it would be very much wiser if I did grumble.'

She squared her shoulders, and gave her head just a little shake, as if a fly had troubled her.

'You bear everything very well and kindly,' said Reardon. 'My behaviour is contemptible; I know that. Good heavens! if I only had some business to go to, something I could work at in any state of mind, and make money out of! Given this chance, I would work myself to death rather than you should lack anything you desire. But I am at the mercy of my brain; it is dry and powerless. How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, they are free to rest and enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one's power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly.'

He turned away in a pa.s.sion of misery.

'How very silly it is to talk like this!' came in Amy's voice, clearly critical. 'Art must be practised as a trade, at all events in our time.

This is the age of trade. Of course if one refuses to be of one's time, and yet hasn't the means to live independently, what can result but breakdown and wretchedness? The fact of the matter is, you could do fairly good work, and work which would sell, if only you would bring yourself to look at things in a more practical way. It's what Mr Milvain is always saying, you know.'

'Milvain's temperament is very different from mine. He is naturally light-hearted and hopeful; I am naturally the opposite.

What you and he say is true enough; the misfortune is that I can't act upon it. I am no uncompromising artistic pedant; I am quite willing to try and do the kind of work that will sell; under the circ.u.mstances it would be a kind of insanity if I refused. But power doesn't answer to the will. My efforts are utterly vain; I suppose the prospect of pennilessness is itself a hindrance; the fear haunts me. With such terrible real things pressing upon me, my imagination can shape nothing substantial. When I have laboured out a story, I suddenly see it in a light of such contemptible triviality that to work at it is an impossible thing.'

'You are ill, that's the fact of the matter. You ought to have had a holiday. I think even now you had better go away for a week or two. Do, Edwin!'

'Impossible! It would be the merest pretence of holiday. To go away and leave you here--no!'

'Shall I ask mother or Jack to lend us some money?'

'That would be intolerable.'

'But this state of things is intolerable!'

Reardon walked the length of the room and back again.

'Your mother has no money to lend, dear, and your brother would do it so unwillingly that we can't lay ourselves under such an obligation.'

'Yet it will come to that, you know,' remarked Amy, calmly.

'No, it shall not come to that. I must and will get something done long before Christmas. If only you--'

He came and took one of her hands.

'If only you will give me more sympathy, dearest. You see, that's one side of my weakness. I am utterly dependent upon you. Your kindness is the breath of life to me. Don't refuse it!'

'But I have done nothing of the kind.'

'You begin to speak very coldly. And I understand your feeling of disappointment. The mere fact of your urging me to do anything that will sell is a proof of bitter disappointment. You would have looked with scorn at anyone who talked to me like that two years ago. You were proud of me because my work wasn't altogether common, and because I had never written a line that was meant to attract the vulgar. All that's over now. If you knew how dreadful it is to see that you have lost your hopes of me!'

'Well, but I haven't--altogether,' Amy replied, meditatively. 'I know very well that, if you had a lot of money, you would do better things than ever.'

'Thank you a thousand times for saying that, my dearest.'

'But, you see, we haven't money, and there's little chance of our getting any. That scrubby old uncle won't leave anything to us; I feel too sure of it. I often feel disposed to go and beg him on my knees to think of us in his will.' She laughed. 'I suppose it's impossible, and would be useless; but I should be capable of it if I knew it would bring money.'

Reardon said nothing.

'I didn't think so much of money when we were married,' Amy continued. 'I had never seriously felt the want of it, you know. I did think--there's no harm in confessing it--that you were sure to be rich some day; but I should have married you all the same if I had known that you would win only reputation.'

'You are sure of that?'

'Well, I think so. But I know the value of money better now. I know it is the most powerful thing in the world. If I had to choose between a glorious reputation with poverty and a contemptible popularity with wealth, I should choose the latter.'

'No!'

'I should.'

'Perhaps you are right.'

He turned away with a sigh.

'Yes, you are right. What is reputation? If it is deserved, it originates with a few score of people among the many millions who would never have recognised the merit they at last applaud. That's the lot of a great genius. As for a mediocrity like me--what ludicrous absurdity to fret myself in the hope that half-a-dozen folks will say I am "above the average!" After all, is there sillier vanity than this? A year after I have published my last book, I shall be practically forgotten; ten years later, I shall be as absolutely forgotten as one of those novelists of the early part of this century, whose names one doesn't even recognise.

What fatuous posing!'

Amy looked askance at him, but replied nothing.

'And yet,' he continued, 'of course it isn't only for the sake of reputation that one tries to do uncommon work. There's the shrinking from conscious insincerity of workmans.h.i.+p--which most of the writers nowadays seem never to feel. "It's good enough for the market"; that satisfies them. And perhaps they are justified.

I can't pretend that I rule my life by absolute ideals; I admit that everything is relative. There is no such thing as goodness or badness, in the absolute sense, of course. Perhaps I am absurdly inconsistent when--though knowing my work can't be first rate--I strive to make it as good as possible. I don't say this in irony, Amy; I really mean it. It may very well be that I am just as foolish as the people I ridicule for moral and religious superst.i.tion. This habit of mine is superst.i.tious.

How well I can imagine the answer of some popular novelist if he heard me speak scornfully of his books. "My dear fellow," he might say, "do you suppose I am not aware that my books are rubbish? I know it just as well as you do. But my vocation is to live comfortably. I have a luxurious house, a wife and children who are happy and grateful to me for their happiness. If you choose to live in a garret, and, what's worse, make your wife and children share it with you, that's your concern." The man would be abundantly right.'

'But,' said Amy, 'why should you a.s.sume that his books are rubbish? Good work succeeds--now and then.'

'I speak of the common kind of success, which is never due to literary merit. And if I speak bitterly, well, I am suffering from my powerlessness. I am a failure, my poor girl, and it isn't easy for me to look with charity on the success of men who deserved it far less than I did, when I was still able to work.'