New Grub Street Part 30

'You are repelled by what has injured you; I am attracted by it. This divergence is very interesting; but for that, we should have resembled each other so closely. You know that by temper we are rabid idealists, both of us.'

'I suppose so.'

'But let me go on. I want, among other things, to insist upon the fateful power of trivial incidents. No one has yet dared to do this seriously. It has often been done in farce, and that's why farcical writing so often makes one melancholy. You know my stock instances of the kind of thing I mean. There was poor Allen, who lost the most valuable opportunity of his life because he hadn't a clean shirt to put on; and Williamson, who would probably have married that rich girl but for the grain of dust that got into his eye, and made him unable to say or do anything at the critical moment.'

Reardon burst into a roar of laughter.

'There you are!' cried Biffen, with friendly annoyance. 'You take the conventional view. If you wrote of these things you would represent them as laughable.'

'They are laughable,' a.s.serted the other, 'however serious to the persons concerned. The mere fact of grave issues in life depending on such paltry things is monstrously ludicrous. Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.'

'That's all very well, but it isn't an original view. I am not lacking in sense of humour, but I prefer to treat these aspects of life from an impartial standpoint. The man who laughs takes the side of a cruel omnipotence, if one can imagine such a thing.

I want to take no side at all; simply to say, Look, this is the kind of thing that happens.'

'I admire your honesty, Biffen,' said Reardon, sighing. 'You will never sell work of this kind, yet you have the courage to go on with it because you believe in it.'

'I don't know; I may perhaps sell it some day.'

'In the meantime,' said Reardon, laying down his pipe, 'suppose we eat a morsel of something. I'm rather hungry.'

In the early days of his marriage Reardon was wont to offer the friends who looked in on Sunday evening a substantial supper; by degrees the meal had grown simpler, until now, in the depth of his poverty, he made no pretence of hospitable entertainment. It was only because he knew that Biffen as often as not had nothing whatever to eat that he did not hesitate to offer him a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter and a cup of tea. They went into the back room, and over the Spartan fare continued to discuss aspects of fiction.

'I shall never,' said Biffen, 'write anything like a dramatic scene.

Such things do happen in life, but so very rarely that they are nothing to my purpose. Even when they happen, by-the-bye, it is in a shape that would be useless to the ordinary novelist; he would have to cut away this circ.u.mstance, and add that. Why? I should like to know. Such conventionalism results from stage necessities. Fiction hasn't yet outgrown the influence of the stage on which it originated. Whatever a man writes FOR EFFECT is wrong and bad.'

'Only in your view. There may surely exist such a thing as the ART of fiction.'

'It is worked out. We must have a rest from it. You, now--the best things you have done are altogether in conflict with novelistic conventionalities. It was because that blackguard review of "On Neutral Ground" clumsily hinted this that I first thought of you with interest.

No, no; let us copy life. When the man and woman are to meet for a great scene of pa.s.sion, let it all be frustrated by one or other of them having a bad cold in the head, and so on. Let the pretty girl get a disfiguring pimple on her nose just before the ball at which she is going to shine. Show the numberless repulsive features of common decent life. Seriously, coldly; not a hint of facetiousness, or the thing becomes different.'

About eight o'clock Reardon heard his wife's knock at the door. On opening he saw not only Amy and the servant, the latter holding Willie in her arms, but with them Jasper Milvain.

'I have been at Mrs Yule's,' Jasper explained as he came in. 'Have you anyone here?'

'Biffen.'

'Ah, then we'll discuss realism.'

'That's over for the evening. Greek metres also.'

'Thank Heaven!'

The three men seated themselves with joking and laughter, and the smoke of their pipes gathered thickly in the little room. It was half an hour before Amy joined them. Tobacco was no disturbance to her, and she enjoyed the kind of talk that was held on these occasions; but it annoyed her that she could no longer play the hostess at a merry supper-table.

'Why ever are you sitting in your overcoat, Mr Biffen?' were her first words when she entered.

'Please excuse me, Mrs Reardon. It happens to be more convenient this evening.'

She was puzzled, but a glance from her husband warned her not to pursue the subject.

Biffen always behaved to Amy with a sincerity of respect which had made him a favourite with her. To him, poor fellow, Reardon seemed supremely blessed. That a struggling man of letters should have been able to marry, and such a wife, was miraculous in Biffen's eyes. A woman's love was to him the unattainable ideal; already thirty-five years old, he had no prospect of ever being rich enough to a.s.sure himself a daily dinner; marriage was wildly out of the question. Sitting here, he found it very difficult not to gaze at Amy with uncivil persistency. Seldom in his life had he conversed with educated women, and the sound of this clear voice was always more delightful to him than any music.

Amy took a place near to him, and talked in her most charming way of such things as she knew interested him. Biffen's deferential att.i.tude as he listened and replied was in strong contrast with the careless ease which marked Jasper Milvain. The realist would never smoke in Amy's presence, but Jasper puffed jovial clouds even whilst she was conversing with him.

'Whelpdale came to see me last night,' remarked Milvain, presently.

'His novel is refused on all hands. He talks of earning a living as a commission agent for some sewing-machine people.'

'I can't understand how his book should be positively refused,' said Reardon. 'The last wasn't altogether a failure.'

'Very nearly. And this one consists of nothing but a series of conversations between two people. It is really a dialogue, not a novel at all. He read me some twenty pages, and I no longer wondered that he couldn't sell it.'

'Oh, but it has considerable merit,' put in Biffen. 'The talk is remarkably true.'

'But what's the good of talk that leads to nothing?' protested Jasper.

'It's a bit of real life.'

'Yes, but it has no market value. You may write what you like, so long as people are willing to read you. Whelpdale's a clever fellow, but he can't hit a practical line.'

'Like some other people I have heard of;' said Reardon, laughing.

'But the odd thing is, that he always strikes one as practical-minded.

Don't you feel that, Mrs Reardon?'

He and Amy talked for a few minutes, and Reardon, seemingly lost in meditation, now and then observed them from the corner of his eye.

At eleven o'clock husband and wife were alone again.

'You don't mean to say,' exclaimed Amy, 'that Biffen has sold his coat?'

'Or p.a.w.ned it.'

'But why not the overcoat?'

'Partly, I should think, because it's the warmer of the two; partly, perhaps, because the other would fetch more.'

'That poor man will die of starvation, some day, Edwin.'

'I think it not impossible.'

'I hope you gave him something to eat?'

'Oh yes. But I could see he didn't like to take as much as he wanted.

I don't think of him with so much pity as I used that's a result of suffering oneself.'

Amy set her lips and sighed.