New Grub Street Part 32

'I never thought of that. And perhaps it wouldn't have seemed to me so annoying as it does to you.'

'Very likely not.'

She turned abruptly away, and stood at a distance in gloomy muteness.

'Well,' she said at length, 'there's no helping it now. Come and have your dinner.'

'You have taken away my appet.i.te.'

'Nonsense! I suppose you're dying of hunger.'

They had a very uncomfortable meal, exchanging few words. On Amy's face was a look more resembling bad temper than anything Reardon had ever seen there. After dinner he went and sat alone in the study. Amy did not come near him. He grew stubbornly angry; remembering the pain he had gone through, he felt that Amy's behaviour to him was cruel. She must come and speak when she would.

At six o'clock she showed her face in the doorway and asked if he would come to tea.

'Thank you,' he replied, 'I had rather stay here.'

'As you please.'

And he sat alone until about nine. It was only then he recollected that he must send a note to the publishers, calling their attention to the parcel he had left. He wrote it, and closed with a request that they would let him hear as soon as they conveniently could. As he was putting on his hat and coat to go out and post the letter Amy opened the dining-room door.

'You're going out?'

'Yes.'

'Shall you be long?'

'I think not.'

He was away only a few minutes. On returning he went first of all into the study, but the thought of Amy alone in the other room would not let him rest. He looked in and saw that she was sitting without a fire.

'You can't stay here in the cold, Amy.'

'I'm afraid I must get used to it,' she replied, affecting to be closely engaged upon some sewing.

That strength of character which it had always delighted him to read in her features was become an ominous hardness. He felt his heart sink as he looked at her.

'Is poverty going to have the usual result in our case?' he asked, drawing nearer.

'I never pretended that I could be indifferent to it.'

'Still, don't you care to try and resist it?'

She gave no answer. As usual in conversation with an aggrieved woman it was necessary to go back from the general to the particular.

'I'm afraid,' he said, 'that the Carters already knew pretty well how things were going with us.'

'That's a very different thing. But when it comes to asking them for money--'

'I'm very sorry. I would rather have done anything if I had known how it would annoy you.'

'If we have to wait a month, five pounds will be very little use to us.'

She detailed all manner of expenses that had to be met--outlay there was no possibility of avoiding so long as their life was maintained on its present basis.

'However, you needn't trouble any more about it. I'll see to it. Now you are free from your book try to rest.'

'Come and sit by the fire. There's small chance of rest for me if we are thinking unkindly of each other.'

A doleful Christmas. Week after week went by and Reardon knew that Amy must have exhausted the money he had given her. But she made no more demands upon him, and necessaries were paid for in the usual way. He suffered from a sense of humiliation; sometimes he found it difficult to look in his wife's face.

When the publishers' letter came it contained an offer of seventy-five pounds for the copyright of 'Margaret Home,' twenty-five more to be paid if the sale in three-volume form should reach a certain number of copies.

Here was failure put into unmistakable figures. Reardon said to himself that it was all over with his profession of authors.h.i.+p. The book could not possibly succeed even to the point of completing his hundred pounds; it would meet with universal contempt, and indeed deserved nothing better.

'Shall you accept this?' asked Amy, after dreary silence.

'No one else would offer terms as good.'

'Will they pay you at once?'

'I must ask them to.'

Well, it was seventy-five pounds in hand. The cheque came as soon as it was requested, and Reardon's face brightened for the moment. Blessed money! root of all good, until the world invent some saner economy.

'How much do you owe your mother?' he inquired, without looking at Amy.

'Six pounds,' she answered coldly.

'And five to Carter; and rent, twelve pounds ten. We shall have a matter of fifty pounds to go on with.'

CHAPTER XII. WORK WITHOUT HOPE

The prudent course was so obvious that he marvelled at Amy's failing to suggest it. For people in their circ.u.mstances to be paying a rent of fifty pounds when a home could be found for half the money was recklessness; there would be no difficulty in letting the flat for this last year of their lease, and the cost of removal would be trifling. The mental relief of such a change might enable him to front with courage a problem in any case very difficult, and, as things were, desperate.

Three months ago, in a moment of profoundest misery, he had proposed this step; courage failed him to speak of it again, Amy's look and voice were too vivid in his memory. Was she not capable of such a sacrifice for his sake? Did she prefer to let him bear all the responsibility of whatever might result from a futile struggle to keep up appearances?

Between him and her there was no longer perfect confidence. Her silence meant reproach, and--whatever might have been the case before--there was no doubt that she now discussed him with her mother, possibly with other people. It was not likely that she concealed his own opinion of the book he had just finished; all their acquaintances would be prepared to greet its publication with private scoffing or with mournful shaking of the head. His feeling towards Amy entered upon a new phase. The stability of his love was a source of pain; condemning himself, he felt at the same time that he was wronged. A coldness which was far from representing the truth began to affect his manner and speech, and Amy did not seem to notice it, at all events she made no kind of protest. They no longer talked of the old subjects, but of those mean concerns of material life which formerly they had agreed to dismiss as quickly as possible. Their relations to each other--not long ago an inexhaustible topic--would not bear spoken comment; both were too conscious of the danger-signal when they looked that way.

In the time of waiting for the publishers' offer, and now again when he was asking himself how he should use the respite granted him, Reardon spent his days at the British Museum. He could not read to much purpose, but it was better to sit here among strangers than seem to be idling under Amy's glance. Sick of imaginative writing, he turned to the studies which had always been most congenial, and tried to shape out a paper or two like those he had formerly disposed of to editors. Among his unused material lay a ma.s.s of notes he had made in a reading of Diogenes Laertius, and it seemed to him now that he might make something salable out of these anecdotes of the philosophers. In a happier mood he could have written delightfully on such a subject--not learnedly, but in the strain of a modern man whose humour and sensibility find free play among the cla.s.sic ghosts; even now he was able to recover something of the light touch which had given value to his published essays.

Meanwhile the first number of The Current had appeared, and Jasper Milvain had made a palpable hit. Amy spoke very often of the article called 'Typical Readers,' and her interest in its author was freely manifested. Whenever a mention of Jasper came under her notice she read it Out to her husband. Reardon smiled and appeared glad, but he did not care to discuss Milvain with the same frankness as formerly.

One evening at the end of January he told Amy what he had been writing at the Museum, and asked her if she would care to hear it read.

'I began to wonder what you were doing,' she replied.

'Then why didn't you ask me?'