New Grub Street Part 89

She went into the sitting-room, where Mrs Yule was awaiting the result of the interview.

'Mother,' she said, with stern gentleness, 'this house can no longer be a home for me. I shall go away to-morrow, and live in lodgings until the time of my marriage.'

Mrs Yule uttered a cry of pain, and started up.

'Oh, don't do that, Marian! What has he said to you? Come and talk to me, darling--tell me what he's said--don't look like that!'

She clung to the girl despairingly, terrified by a transformation she would have thought impossible.

'He says that if I marry Mr Milvain he hopes never to see my face again.

I can't stay here. You shall come and see me, and we will be the same to each other as always. But father has treated me too unjustly. I can't live near him after this.'

'He doesn't mean it,' sobbed her mother. 'He says what he's sorry for as soon as the words are spoken. He loves you too much, my darling, to drive you away like that. It's his disappointment, Marian; that's all it is. He counted on it so much. I've heard him talk of it in his sleep; he made so sure that he was going to have that new magazine, and the disappointment makes him that he doesn't know what he's saying. Only wait and see; he'll tell you he didn't mean it, I know he will. Only leave him alone till he's had time to get over it. Do forgive him this once.'

'It's like a madman to talk in that way,' said the girl, releasing herself. 'Whatever his disappointment, I can't endure it. I have worked hard for him, very hard, ever since I was old enough, and he owes me some kindness, some respect. It would be different if he had the least reason for his hatred of Jasper. It is nothing but insensate prejudice, the result of his quarrels with other people. What right has he to insult me by representing my future husband as a scheming hypocrite?'

'My love, he has had so much to bear--it's made him so quick-tempered.'

'Then I am quick-tempered too, and the sooner we are apart the better, as he said himself.'

'Oh, but you have always been such a patient girl.'

'My patience is at an end when I am treated as if I had neither rights nor feelings. However wrong the choice I had made, this was not the way to behave to me. His disappointment? Is there a natural law, then, that a daughter must be sacrificed to her father? My husband will have as much need of that money as my father has, and he will be able to make far better use of it. It was wrong even to ask me to give my money away like that. I have a right to happiness, as well as other women.'

She was shaken with hysterical pa.s.sion, the natural consequence of this outbreak in a nature such as hers. Her mother, in the meantime, grew stronger by force of profound love that at length had found its opportunity of expression. Presently she persuaded Marian to come upstairs with her, and before long the overburdened breast was relieved by a flow of tears. But Marian's purpose remained unshaken.

'It is impossible for us to see each other day after day,' she said when calmer. 'He can't control his anger against me, and I suffer too much when I am made to feel like this. I shall take a lodging not far off where you can see me often.'

'But you have no money, Marian,' replied Mrs Yule, miserably.

'No money? As if I couldn't borrow a few pounds until all my own comes to me! Dora Milvain can lend me all I shall want; it won't make the least difference to her. I must have my money very soon now.'

At about half-past eleven Mrs Yule went downstairs, and entered the study.

'If you are coming to speak about Marian,' said her husband, turning upon her with savage eyes, 'you can save your breath. I won't hear her name mentioned.'

She faltered, but overcame her weakness.

'You are driving her away from us, Alfred. It isn't right! Oh, it isn't right!'

'If she didn't go I should, so understand that! And if I go, you have seen the last of me. Make your choice, make your choice!'

He had yielded himself to that perverse frenzy which impels a man to acts and utterances most wildly at conflict with reason. His sense of the monstrous irrationality to which he was committed completed what was begun in him by the bitterness of a great frustration.

'If I wasn't a poor, helpless woman,' replied his wife, sinking upon a chair and crying without raising her hands to her face, 'I'd go and live with her till she was married, and then make a home for myself. But I haven't a penny, and I'm too old to earn my own living; I should only be a burden to her.'

'That shall be no hindrance,' cried Yule. 'Go, by all means; you shall have a sufficient allowance as long as I can continue to work, and when I'm past that, your lot will be no harder than mine. Your daughter had the chance of making provision for my old age, at no expense to herself.

But that was asking too much of her. Go, by all means, and leave me to make what I can of the rest of my life; perhaps I may save a few years still from the curse brought upon me by my own folly.'

It was idle to address him. Mrs Yule went into the sitting-room, and there sat weeping for an hour. Then she extinguished the lights, and crept upstairs in silence.

Yule pa.s.sed the night in the study. Towards morning he slept for an hour or two, just long enough to let the fire go out and to get thoroughly chilled. When he opened his eyes a muddy twilight had begun to show at the window; the sounds of a clapping door within the house, which had probably awakened him, made him aware that the servant was already up.

He drew up the blind. There seemed to be a frost, for the moisture of last night had all disappeared, and the yard upon which the window looked was unusually clean. With a glance at the black grate he extinguished his lamp, and went out into the pa.s.sage. A few minutes'

groping for his overcoat and hat, and he left the house.

His purpose was to warm himself with a vigorous walk, and at the same time to shake off if possible, the nightmare of his rage and hopelessness. He had no distinct feeling with regard to his behaviour of the past evening; he neither justified nor condemned himself; he did not ask himself whether Marian would to-day leave her home, or if her mother would take him at his word and also depart. These seemed to be details which his brain was too weary to consider. But he wished to be away from the wretchedness of his house, and to let things go as they would whilst he was absent. As he closed the front door he felt as if he were escaping from an atmosphere that threatened to stifle him.

His steps directing themselves more by habit than with any deliberate choice, he walked towards Camden Road. When he had reached Camden Town railway-station he was attracted by a coffee-stall; a draught of the steaming liquid, no matter its quality, would help his blood to circulate. He laid down his penny, and first warmed his hands by holding them round the cup. Whilst standing thus he noticed that the objects at which he looked had a blurred appearance; his eyesight seemed to have become worse this morning. Only a result of his insufficient sleep perhaps. He took up a sc.r.a.p of newspaper that lay on the stall; he could read it, but one of his eyes was certainly weaker than the other; trying to see with that one alone, he found that everything became misty.

He laughed, as if the threat of new calamity were an amus.e.m.e.nt in his present state of mind. And at the same moment his look encountered that of a man who had drawn near to him, a shabbily-dressed man of middle age, whose face did not correspond with his attire.

'Will you give me a cup of coffee?' asked the stranger, in a low voice and with shamefaced manner. 'It would be a great kindness.'

The accent was that of good breeding. Yule hesitated in surprise for a moment, then said:

'Have one by all means. Would you care for anything to eat?'

'I am much obliged to you. I think I should be none the worse for one of those solid slices of bread and b.u.t.ter.'

The stall-keeper was just extinguishing his lights; the frosty sky showed a pale gleam of sunrise.

'Hard times, I'm afraid,' remarked Yule, as his beneficiary began to eat the luncheon with much appearance of grateful appet.i.te.

'Very hard times.' He had a small, thin, colourless countenance, with large, pathetic eyes; a slight moustache and curly beard. His clothes were such as would be worn by some very poor clerk. 'I came here an hour ago,' he continued, 'with the hope of meeting an acquaintance who generally goes from this station at a certain time. I have missed him, and in doing so I missed what I had thought my one chance of a breakfast. When one has neither dined nor supped on the previous day, breakfast becomes a meal of some importance.'

'True. Take another slice.'

'I am greatly obliged to you.'

'Not at all. I have known hard times myself, and am likely to know worse.'

'I trust not. This is the first time that I have positively begged.

I should have been too much ashamed to beg of the kind of men who are usually at these places; they certainly have no money to spare. I was thinking of making an appeal at a baker's shop, but it is very likely I should have been handed over to a policeman. Indeed I don't know what I should have done; the last point of endurance was almost reached. I have no clothes but these I wear, and they are few enough for the season.

Still, I suppose the waistcoat must have gone.'

He did not talk like a beggar who is trying to excite compa.s.sion, but with a sort of detached curiosity concerning the difficulties of his position.

'You can find nothing to do?' said the man of letters.

'Positively nothing. By profession I am a surgeon, but it's a long time since I practised. Fifteen years ago I was comfortably established at Wakefield; I was married and had one child. But my capital ran out, and my practice, never anything to boast of, fell to nothing. I succeeded in getting a place as an a.s.sistant to a man at Chester. We sold up, and started on the journey.'

He paused, looking at Yule in a strange way.

'What happened then?'

'You probably don't remember a railway accident that took place near Crewe in that year--it was 1869? I and my wife and child were alone in a carriage that was splintered. One moment I was talking with them, in fairly good spirits, and my wife was laughing at something I had said; the next, there were two crushed, bleeding bodies at my feet. I had a broken arm, that was all. Well, they were killed on the instant; they didn't suffer. That has been my one consolation.'

Yule kept the silence of sympathy.