New Grub Street (21 page)

'I'm sure I don't know. Not before the spring.'

'I shall look so anxiously for it. Whenever I meet new people I
always turn the conversation to novels, just for the sake of asking
them if they know your husband's books.'

She laughed merrily.

'Which is seldom the case, I should think,' said Amy, with a
smile of indifference.

'Well, my dear, you don't expect ordinary novel-readers to know
about Mr Reardon. I wish my acquaintances were a better kind of
people; then, of course, I should hear of his books more often. But
one has to make the best of such society as offers. If you and your
husband forsake me, I shall feel it a sad loss; I shall
indeed.'

Amy gave a quick glance at the speaker's face.

'Oh, we must be friends just the same,' she said, more naturally
than she had spoken hitherto. 'But don't ask us to come and dine
just now. All through this winter we shall be very busy, both of
us. Indeed, we have decided not to accept any invitations at
all.'

'Then, so long as you let me come here now and then, I must give
in. I promise not to trouble you with any more complaining. But how
you can live such a life I don't know. I consider myself more of a
reader than women generally are, and I should be mortally offended
if anyone called me frivolous; but I must have a good deal of
society. Really and truly, I can't live without it.'

'No?' said Amy, with a smile which meant more than Edith could
interpret. It seemed slightly condescending.

'There's no knowing; perhaps if I had married a literary man—-'
She paused, smiling and musing. 'But then I haven't, you see.' She
laughed. 'Albert is anything but a bookworm, as you know.'

'You wouldn't wish him to be.'

'Oh no! Not a bookworm. To be sure, we suit each other very well
indeed. He likes society just as much as I do. It would be the
death of him if he didn't spend three-quarters of every day with
lively people.'

'That's rather a large portion. But then you count yourself
among the lively ones.'

They exchanged looks, and laughed together.

'Of course you think me rather silly to want to talk so much
with silly people,' Edith went on. 'But then there's generally some
amusement to be got, you know. I don't take life quite so seriously
as you do. People are people, after all; it's good fun to see how
they live and hear how they talk.'

Amy felt that she was playing a sorry part. She thought of sour
grapes, and of the fox who had lost his tail. Worst of all, perhaps
Edith suspected the truth. She began to make inquiries about common
acquaintances, and fell into an easier current of gossip.

A quarter of an hour after the visitor's departure Reardon came
back. Amy had guessed aright; the necessity of selling his books
weighed upon him so that for the present he could do nothing. The
evening was spent gloomily, with very little conversation.

Next day came the bookseller to make his inspection. Reardon had
chosen out and ranged upon a table nearly a hundred volumes. With a
few exceptions, they had been purchased second-hand. The tradesman
examined them rapidly.

'What do you ask?' he inquired, putting his head aside.

'I prefer that you should make an offer,' Reardon replied, with
the helplessness of one who lives remote from traffic.

'I can't say more than two pounds ten.'

'That is at the rate of sixpence a volume—-?'

'To me that's about the average value of books like these.'

Perhaps the offer was a fair one; perhaps it was not. Reardon
had neither time nor spirit to test the possibilities of the
market; he was ashamed to betray his need by higgling.

'I'll take it,' he said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

A messenger was sent for the books that afternoon. He stowed
them skilfully in two bags, and carried them downstairs to a cart
that was waiting.

Reardon looked at the gaps left on his shelves. Many of those
vanished volumes were dear old friends to him; he could have told
you where he had picked them up and when; to open them recalled a
past moment of intellectual growth, a mood of hope or despondency,
a stage of struggle. In most of them his name was written, and
there were often pencilled notes in the margin. Of course he had
chosen from among the most valuable he possessed; such a multitude
must else have been sold to make this sum of two pounds ten. Books
are cheap, you know. At need, one can buy a Homer for fourpence, a
Sophocles for sixpence. It was not rubbish that he had accumulated
at so small expenditure, but the library of a poor student—battered
bindings, stained pages, supplanted editions. He loved his books,
but there was something he loved more, and when Amy glanced at him
with eyes of sympathy he broke into a cheerful laugh.

'I'm only sorry they have gone for so little. Tell me when the
money is nearly at an end again, and you shall have more. It's all
right; the novel will be done soon.'

And that night he worked until twelve o'clock, doggedly,
fiercely.

The next day was Sunday. As a rule he made it a day of rest, and
almost perforce, for the depressing influence of Sunday in London
made work too difficult. Then, it was the day on which he either
went to see his own particular friends or was visited by them.

'Do you expect anyone this evening?' Amy inquired.

'Biffen will look in, I dare say. Perhaps Milvain.'

'I think I shall take Willie to mother's. I shall be back before
eight.'

'Amy, don't say anything about the books.'

'No, no.'

'I suppose they always ask you when we think of removing over
the way?'

He pointed in a direction that suggested Marylebone Workhouse.
Amy tried to laugh, but a woman with a child in her arms has no
keen relish for such jokes.

'I don't talk to them about our affairs,' she said.

'That's best.'

She left home about three o'clock, the servant going with her to
carry the child.

At five a familiar knock sounded through the flat; it was a
heavy rap followed by half-a-dozen light ones, like a reverberating
echo, the last stroke scarcely audible. Reardon laid down his book,
but kept his pipe in his mouth, and went to the door. A tall, thin
man stood there, with a slouch hat and long grey overcoat. He shook
hands silently, hung his hat in the passage, and came forward into
the study.

His name was Harold Biffen, and, to judge from his appearance,
he did not belong to the race of common mortals. His excessive
meagreness would all but have qualified him to enter an exhibition
in the capacity of living skeleton, and the garments which hung
upon this framework would perhaps have sold for three-and-sixpence
at an old-clothes dealer's. But the man was superior to these
accidents of flesh and raiment. He had a fine face: large, gentle
eyes, nose slightly aquiline, small and delicate mouth. Thick black
hair fell to his coat-collar; he wore a heavy moustache and a full
beard. In his gait there was a singular dignity; only a man of
cultivated mind and graceful character could move and stand as he
did.

His first act on entering the room was to take from his pocket a
pipe, a pouch, a little tobacco-stopper, and a box of matches, all
of which he arranged carefully on a corner of the central table.
Then he drew forward a chair and seated himself.

'Take your top-coat off;' said Reardon.

'Thanks, not this evening.'

'Why the deuce not?'

'Not this evening, thanks.'

The reason, as soon as Reardon sought for it, was obvious.
Biffen had no ordinary coat beneath the other. To have referred to
this fact would have been indelicate; the novelist of course
understood it, and smiled, but with no mirth.

'Let me have your Sophocles,' were the visitor's next words.

Reardon offered him a volume of the Oxford Pocket Classics.

'I prefer the Wunder, please.'

'It's gone, my boy.'

'Gone?'

'Wanted a little cash.'

Biffen uttered a sound in which remonstrance and sympathy were
blended.

'I'm sorry to hear that; very sorry. Well, this must do. Now, I
want to know how you scan this chorus in the "Oedipus Rex."'

Reardon took the volume, considered, and began to read aloud
with metric emphasis.

'Choriambics, eh?' cried the other. 'Possible, of course; but
treat them as Ionics a minore with an anacrusis, and see if they
don't go better.'

He involved himself in terms of pedantry, and with such delight
that his eyes gleamed. Having delivered a technical lecture, he
began to read in illustration, producing quite a different effect
from that of the rhythm as given by his friend. And the reading was
by no means that of a pedant, rather of a poet.

For half an hour the two men talked Greek metres as if they
lived in a world where the only hunger known could be satisfied by
grand or sweet cadences.

They had first met in an amusing way. Not long after the
publication of his book 'On Neutral Ground' Reardon was spending a
week at Hastings. A rainy day drove him to the circulating library,
and as he was looking along the shelves for something readable a
voice near at hand asked the attendant if he had anything 'by Edwin
Reardon.' The novelist turned in astonishment; that any casual
mortal should inquire for his books seemed incredible. Of course
there was nothing by that author in the library, and he who had
asked the question walked out again. On the morrow Reardon
encountered this same man at a lonely part of the shore; he looked
at him, and spoke a word or two of common civility; they got into
conversation, with the result that Edwin told the story of
yesterday. The stranger introduced himself as Harold Biffen, an
author in a small way, and a teacher whenever he could get pupils;
an abusive review had interested him in Reardon's novels, but as
yet he knew nothing of them but the names.

Their tastes were found to be in many respects sympathetic, and
after returning to London they saw each other frequently. Biffen
was always in dire poverty, and lived in the oddest places; he had
seen harder trials than even Reardon himself. The teaching by which
he partly lived was of a kind quite unknown to the respectable
tutorial world. In these days of examinations, numbers of men in a
poor position—clerks chiefly—conceive a hope that by 'passing'
this, that, or the other formal test they may open for themselves a
new career. Not a few such persons nourish preposterous ambitions;
there are warehouse clerks privately preparing (without any means
or prospect of them) for a call to the Bar, drapers' assistants who
'go in' for the preliminary examination of the College of Surgeons,
and untaught men innumerable who desire to procure enough show of
education to be eligible for a curacy. Candidates of this stamp
frequently advertise in the newspapers for cheap tuition, or answer
advertisements which are intended to appeal to them; they pay from
sixpence to half-a-crown an hour—rarely as much as the latter sum.
Occasionally it happened that Harold Biffen had three or four such
pupils in hand, and extraordinary stories he could draw from his
large experience in this sphere.

Then as to his authorship.—But shortly after the discussion of
Greek metres he fell upon the subject of his literary projects,
and, by no means for the first time, developed the theory on which
he worked.

'I have thought of a new way of putting it. What I really aim at
is an absolute realism in the sphere of the ignobly decent. The
field, as I understand it, is a new one; I don't know any writer
who has treated ordinary vulgar life with fidelity and seriousness.
Zola writes deliberate tragedies; his vilest figures become heroic
from the place they fill in a strongly imagined drama. I want to
deal with the essentially unheroic, with the day-to-day life of
that vast majority of people who are at the mercy of paltry
circumstance. Dickens understood the possibility of such work, but
his tendency to melodrama on the one hand, and his humour on the
other, prevented him from thinking of it. An instance, now. As I
came along by Regent's Park half an hour ago a man and a girl were
walking close in front of me, love-making; I passed them slowly and
heard a good deal of their talk—it was part of the situation that
they should pay no heed to a stranger's proximity. Now, such a
love-scene as that has absolutely never been written down; it was
entirely decent, yet vulgar to the nth power. Dickens would have
made it ludicrous—a gross injustice. Other men who deal with
low-class life would perhaps have preferred idealising it—an
absurdity. For my own part, I am going to reproduce it verbatim,
without one single impertinent suggestion of any point of view save
that of honest reporting. The result will be something unutterably
tedious. Precisely. That is the stamp of the ignobly decent life.
If it were anything but tedious it would be untrue. I speak, of
course, of its effect upon the ordinary reader.'

'I couldn't do it,' said Reardon.

'Certainly you couldn't. You—well, you are a psychological
realist in the sphere of culture. You are impatient of vulgar
circumstances.'

'In a great measure because my life has been martyred by
them.'

'And for that very same reason I delight in them,' cried Biffen.
'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.'