New Grub Street (48 page)

'It was very strange.'

'Reardon was in desperate earnest, poor fellow. And, to tell you
the truth, I fear there may have been something in his
complaint.

I told him at once that I should henceforth keep away from Mrs
Edmund Yule's; and so I have done, with the result, of course, that
they suppose I condemn Mrs Reardon's behaviour. The affair was a
nuisance, but I had no choice, I think.'

'You say that perhaps your talk really was harmful to her.'

'It may have been, though such a danger never occurred to
me.'

'Then Amy must be very weak-minded.'

'To be influenced by such a paltry fellow?'

'To be influenced by anyone in such a way.'

'You think the worse of me for this story?' Jasper asked.

'I don't quite understand it. How did you talk to her?'

'As I talk to everyone. You have heard me say the same things
many a time. I simply declare my opinion that the end of literary
work—unless one is a man of genius—is to secure comfort and repute.
This doesn't seem to me very scandalous. But Mrs Reardon was
perhaps too urgent in repeating such views to her husband. She saw
that in my case they were likely to have solid results, and it was
a misery to her that Reardon couldn't or wouldn't work in the same
practical way.

'It was very unfortunate.'

'And you are inclined to blame me?'

'No; because I am so sure that you only spoke in the way natural
to you, without a thought of such consequences.'

Jasper smiled.

'That's precisely the truth. Nearly all men who have their way
to make think as I do, but most feel obliged to adopt a false tone,
to talk about literary conscientiousness, and so on. I simply say
what I think, with no pretences. I should like to be conscientious,
but it's a luxury I can't afford. I've told you all this often
enough, you know.'

'Yes.'

'But it hasn't been morally injurious to you,' he said with a
laugh.

'Not at all. Still I don't like it.'

Jasper was startled. He gazed at her. Ought he, then, to have
dealt with her less frankly? Had he been mistaken in thinking that
the unusual openness of his talk was attractive to her? She spoke
with quite unaccustomed decision; indeed, he had noticed from her
entrance that there was something unfamiliar in her way of
conversing. She was so much more self-possessed than of wont, and
did not seem to treat him with the same deference, the same subdual
of her own personality.

'You don't like it?' he repeated calmly. 'It has become rather
tiresome to you?'

'I feel sorry that you should always represent yourself in an
unfavourable light.'

He was an acute man, but the self-confidence with which he had
entered upon this dialogue, his conviction that he had but to speak
when he wished to receive assurance of Marian's devotion, prevented
him from understanding the tone of independence she had suddenly
adopted. With more modesty he would have felt more subtly at this
juncture, would have divined that the girl had an exquisite
pleasure in drawing back now that she saw him approaching her with
unmistakable purpose, that she wished to be wooed in less off-hand
fashion before confessing what was in her heart. For the moment he
was disconcerted. Those last words of hers had a slight tone of
superiority, the last thing he would have expected upon her
lips.

'Yet I surely haven't always appeared so—to you?' he said.

'No, not always.'

'But you are in doubt concerning the real man?'

'I'm not sure that I understand you. You say that you do really
think as you speak.'

'So I do. I think that there is no choice for a man who can't
bear poverty. I have never said, though, that I had pleasure in
mean necessities; I accept them because I can't help it.'

It was a delight to Marian to observe the anxiety with which he
turned to self-defence. Never in her life had she felt this joy of
holding a position of command. It was nothing to her that Jasper
valued her more because of her money; impossible for it to be
otherwise. Satisfied that he did value her, to begin with, for her
own sake, she was very willing to accept money as her ally in the
winning of his love. He scarcely loved her yet, as she understood
the feeling, but she perceived her power over him, and passion
taught her how to exert it.

'But you resign yourself very cheerfully to the necessity,' she
said, looking at him with merely intellectual eyes.

'You had rather I lamented my fate in not being able to devote
myself to nobly unremunerative work?'

There was a note of irony here. It caused her a tremor, but she
held her position.

'That you never do so would make one think—but I won't speak
unkindly.'

'That I neither care for good work nor am capable of it,' Jasper
finished her sentence. 'I shouldn't have thought it would make you
think so.'

Instead of replying she turned her look towards the door. There
was a footstep on the stairs, but it passed.

'I thought it might be Dora,' she said.

'She won't be here for another couple of hours at least,'
replied Jasper with a slight smile.

'But you said—?'

'I sent her to Mrs Boston Wright's that I might have an
opportunity of talking to you. Will you forgive the stratagem?'

Marian resumed her former attitude, the faintest smile hovering
about her lips.

'I'm glad there's plenty of time,' he continued. 'I begin to
suspect that you have been misunderstanding me of late. I must set
that right.'

'I don't think I have misunderstood you.'

'That may mean something very disagreeable. I know that some
people whom I esteem have a very poor opinion of me, but I can't
allow you to be one of them. What do I seem to you? What is the
result on your mind of all our conversations?'

'I have already told you.'

'Not seriously. Do you believe I am capable of generous
feeling?'

'To say no, would be to put you in the lowest class of men, and
that a very small one.''Good! Then I am not among the basest. But
that doesn't give me very distinguished claims upon your
consideration. Whatever I am, I am high in some of my
ambitions.'

'Which of them?'

'For instance, I have been daring enough to hope that you might
love me.'

Marian delayed for a moment, then said quietly:

'Why do you call that daring?'

'Because I have enough of old-fashioned thought to believe that
a woman who is worthy of a man's love is higher than he, and
condescends in giving herself to him.'

His voice was not convincing; the phrase did not sound natural
on his lips. It was not thus that she had hoped to hear him speak.
Whilst he expressed himself thus conventionally he did not love her
as she desired to be loved.

'I don't hold that view,' she said.

'It doesn't surprise me. You are very reserved on all subjects,
and we have never spoken of this, but of course I know that your
thought is never commonplace. Hold what view you like of woman's
position, that doesn't affect mine.'

'Is yours commonplace, then?'

'Desperately. Love is a very old and common thing, and I believe
I love you in the old and common way. I think you beautiful, you
seem to me womanly in the best sense, full of charm and sweetness.
I know myself a coarse being in comparison. All this has been felt
and said in the same way by men infinite in variety. Must I find
some new expression before you can believe me?'

Marian kept silence.

'I know what you are thinking,' he said. 'The thought is as
inevitable as my consciousness of it.'

For an instant she looked at him.

'Yes, you look the thought. Why have I not spoken to you in this
way before? Why have I waited until you are obliged to suspect my
sincerity?'

'My thought is not so easily read, then,' said Marian.

'To be sure it hasn't a gross form, but I know you wish—whatever
your real feeling towards me—that I had spoken a fortnight ago. You
would wish that of any man in my position, merely because it is
painful to you to see a possible insincerity. Well, I am not
insincere. I have thought of you as of no other woman for some
time. But—yes, you shall have the plain, coarse truth, which is
good in its way, no doubt. I was afraid to say that I loved you.
You don't flinch; so far, so good. Now what harm is there in this
confession? In the common course of things I shouldn't be in a
position to marry for perhaps three or four years, and even then
marriage would mean difficulties, restraints, obstacles. I have
always dreaded the thought of marriage with a poor income. You
remember?

Love in a hut, with water and a crust, Is—Love forgive
us!—cinders, ashes, dust.

You know that is true.'

'Not always, I dare say.'

'But for the vast majority of mortals. There's the instance of
the Reardons. They were in love with each other, if ever two people
were; but poverty ruined everything. I am not in the confidence of
either of them, but I feel sure each has wished the other dead.
What else was to be expected? Should I have dared to take a wife in
my present circumstances—a wife as poor as myself?'

'You will be in a much better position before long,' said
Marian. 'If you loved me, why should you have been afraid to ask me
to have confidence in your future?'

'It's all so uncertain. It may be another ten years before I can
count on an income of five or six hundred pounds—if I have to
struggle on in the common way.'

'But tell me, what is your aim in life? What do you understand
by success?'

'Yes, I will tell you. My aim is to have easy command of all the
pleasures desired by a cultivated man. I want to live among
beautiful things, and never to be troubled by a thought of vulgar
difficulties. I want to travel and enrich my mind in foreign
countries. I want to associate on equal terms with refined and
interesting people. I want to be known, to be familiarly referred
to, to feel when I enter a room that people regard me with some
curiosity.'

He looked steadily at her with bright eyes.

'And that's all?' asked Marian.

'That is very much. Perhaps you don't know how I suffer in
feeling myself at a disadvantage. My instincts are strongly social,
yet I can't be at my ease in society, simply because I can't do
justice to myself. Want of money makes me the inferior of the
people I talk with, though I might be superior to them in most
things. I am ignorant in many ways, and merely because I am poor.
Imagine my never having been out of England! It shames me when
people talk familiarly of the Continent. So with regard to all
manner of amusements and pursuits at home. Impossible for me to
appear among my acquaintances at the theatre, at concerts. I am
perpetually at a disadvantage; I haven't fair play. Suppose me
possessed of money enough to live a full and active life for the
next five years; why, at the end of that time my position would be
secure. To him that hath shall be given—you know how universally
true that is.'

'And yet,' came in a low voice from Marian, 'you say that you
love me.'

'You mean that I speak as if no such thing as love existed. But
you asked me what I understood by success. I am speaking of worldly
things. Now suppose I had said to you:

My one aim and desire in life is to win your love. Could you
have believed me? Such phrases are always untrue; I don't know how
it can give anyone pleasure to hear them. But if I say to you: All
the satisfactions I have described would be immensely heightened if
they were shared with a woman who loved me—there is the simple
truth.'

Marian's heart sank. She did not want truth such as this; she
would have preferred that he should utter the poor, common
falsehoods. Hungry for passionate love, she heard with a sense of
desolation all this calm reasoning. That Jasper was of cold
temperament she had often feared; yet there was always the
consoling thought that she did not see with perfect clearness into
his nature. Now and then had come a flash, a hint of possibilities.
She had looked forward with trembling eagerness to some sudden
revelation; but it seemed as if he knew no word of the language
which would have called such joyous response from her expectant
soul.

'We have talked for a long time,' she said, turning her head as
if his last words were of no significance. 'As Dora is not coming,
I think I will go now.'

She rose, and went towards the chair on which lay her
out-of-door things. At once Jasper stepped to her side.

'You will go without giving me any answer?'

'Answer? To what?'

'Will you be my wife?'

'It is too soon to ask me that.'

'Too soon? Haven't you known for months that I thought of you
with far more than friendliness?'

'How was it possible I should know that? You have explained to
me why you would not let your real feelings be understood.'

The reproach was merited, and not easy to be outfaced. He turned
away for an instant, then with a sudden movement caught both her
hands.

'Whatever I have done or said or thought in the past, that is of
no account now. I love you, Marian. I want you to be my wife. I
have never seen any other girl who impressed me as you did from the
first. If I had been weak enough to try to win anyone but you, I
should have known that I had turned aside from the path of my true
happiness. Let us forget for a moment all our circumstances. I hold
your hands, and look into your face, and say that I love you.
Whatever answer you give, I love you!'

Till now her heart had only fluttered a little; it was a great
part of her distress that the love she had so long nurtured seemed
shrinking together into some far corner of her being whilst she
listened to the discourses which prefaced Jasper's declaration. She
was nervous, painfully self-conscious, touched with maidenly shame,
but could not abandon herself to that delicious emotion which ought
to have been the fulfilment of all her secret imaginings. Now at
length there began a throbbing in her bosom. Keeping her face
averted, her eyes cast down, she waited for a repetition of the
note that was in that last 'I love you.' She felt a change in the
hands that held hers—a warmth, a moist softness; it caused a shock
through her veins.