New Grub Street Part 114

'On no account! I couldn't be civil to her.'

Jasper's brows blackened.

'This is idiotic prejudice, Dora. I think I have some claim upon you; I have shown some kindness--'

'You have, and I am not ungrateful. But I dislike Mrs Reardon, and I couldn't bring myself to be friendly with her.'

'You don't know her.'

'Too well. You yourself have taught me to know her. Don't compel me to say what I think of her.'

'She is beautiful, and high-minded, and warm-hearted. I don't know a womanly quality that she doesn't possess. You will offend me most seriously if you speak a word against her.'

'Then I will be silent. But you must never ask me to meet her.'

'Never?'

'Never!'

'Then we shall quarrel. I haven't deserved this, Dora. If you refuse to meet my wife on terms of decent friendliness, there's no more intercourse between your house and mine. You have to choose. Persist in this fatuous obstinacy, and I have done with you!'

'So be it!'

'That is your final answer?'

Dora, who was now as angry as he, gave a short affirmative, and Jasper at once left her.

But it was very unlikely that things should rest at this pa.s.s. The brother and sister were bound by a strong mutual affection, and Whelpdale was not long in effecting a compromise.

'My dear wife,' he exclaimed, in despair at the threatened calamity, 'you are right, a thousand times, but it's impossible for you to be on ill terms with Jasper. There's no need for you to see much of Mrs Reardon--'

'I hate her! She killed her husband; I am sure of it.'

'My darling!'

'I mean by her base conduct. She is a cold, cruel, unprincipled creature! Jasper makes himself more than ever contemptible by marrying her.'

All the same, in less than three weeks Mrs Whelpdale had called upon Amy, and the call was returned. The two women were perfectly conscious of reciprocal dislike, but they smothered the feeling beneath conventional suavities. Jasper was not backward in making known his grat.i.tude for Dora's concession, and indeed it became clear to all his intimates that this marriage would be by no means one of mere interest; the man was in love at last, if he had never been before.

Let lapse the ensuing twelve months, and come to an evening at the end of July, 1886. Mr and Mrs Milvain are entertaining a small and select party of friends at dinner. Their house in Bayswater is neither large nor internally magnificent, but it will do very well for the temporary sojourn of a young man of letters who has much greater things in confident expectation, who is a good deal talked of, who can gather clever and worthy people at his table, and whose matchless wife would attract men of taste to a very much poorer abode.

Jasper had changed considerably in appearance since that last holiday that he spent in his mother's house at Finden. At present he would have been taken for five-and-thirty, though only in his twenty-ninth year; his hair was noticeably thinning; his moustache had grown heavier; a wrinkle or two showed beneath his eyes; his voice was softer, yet firmer. It goes without saying that his evening uniform lacked no point of perfection, and somehow it suggested a more elaborate care than that of other men in the room. He laughed frequently, and with a throwing back of the head which seemed to express a spirit of triumph.

Amy looked her years to the full, but her type of beauty, as you know, was independent of youthfulness. That suspicion of masculinity observable in her when she became Reardon's wife impressed one now only as the consummate grace of a perfectly-built woman. You saw that at forty, at fifty, she would be one of the stateliest of dames. When she bent her head towards the person with whom she spoke, it was an act of queenly favour. Her words were uttered with just enough deliberation to give them the value of an opinion; she smiled with a delicious shade of irony; her glance intimated that nothing could be too subtle for her understanding.

The guests numbered six, and no one of them was insignificant. Two of the men were about Jasper's age, and they had already made their mark in literature; the third was a novelist of circulating fame, spirally crescent. The three of the stronger s.e.x were excellent modern types, with sweet lips attuned to epigram, and good broad brows.

The novelist at one point put an interesting question to Amy.

'Is it true that Fadge is leaving The Current?'

'It is rumoured, I believe.'

'Going to one of the quarterlies, they say,' remarked a lady. 'He is getting terribly autocratic. Have you heard the delightful story of his telling Mr Rowland to persevere, as his last work was one of considerable promise?'

Mr Rowland was a man who had made a merited reputation when Fadge was still on the lower rungs of journalism. Amy smiled and told another anecdote of the great editor. Whilst speaking, she caught her husband's eye, and perhaps this was the reason why her story, at the close, seemed rather amiably pointless--not a common fault when she narrated.

When the ladies had withdrawn, one of the younger men, in a conversation about a certain magazine, remarked:

'Thomas always maintains that it was killed by that solemn old stager, Alfred Yule. By the way, he is dead himself, I hear.'

Jasper bent forward.

'Alfred Yule is dead?'

'So Jedwood told me this morning. He died in the country somewhere, blind and fallen on evil days, poor old fellow.'

All the guests were ignorant of any tie of kindred between their host and the man spoken of.

'I believe,' said the novelist, 'that he had a clever daughter who used to do all the work he signed. That used to be a current bit of scandal in Fadge's circle.'

'Oh, there was much exaggeration in that,' remarked Jasper, blandly.

'His daughter a.s.sisted him, doubtless, but in quite a legitimate way.

One used to see her at the Museum.'

The subject was dropped.

An hour and a half later, when the last stranger had taken his leave, Jasper examined two or three letters which had arrived since dinner-time and were lying on the hall table. With one of them open in his hand, he suddenly sprang up the stairs and leaped, rather than stepped, into the drawing-room. Amy was reading an evening paper.

'Look at this!' he cried, holding the letter to her.

It was a communication from the publishers who owned The Current; they stated that the editors.h.i.+p of that review would shortly be resigned by Mr Fadge, and they inquired whether Milvain would feel disposed to a.s.sume the vacant chair.

Amy sprang up and threw her arms about her husband's neck, uttering a cry of delight.

'So soon! Oh, this is great! this is glorious!'

'Do you think this would have been offered to me but for the s.p.a.cious life we have led of late? Never! Was I right in my calculations, Amy?'

'Did I ever doubt it?'

He returned her embrace ardently, and gazed into her eyes with profound tenderness.

'Doesn't the future brighten?'

'It has been very bright to me, Jasper, since I became your wife.'

'And I owe my fortune to you, dear girl. Now the way is smooth!'