Part 10 (2/2)

'Yet it will come to that, you know,' remarked Amy, calmly.

'No, it shall not come to that. I must and will get something done long before Christmas. If only you--'

He came and took one of her hands.

'If only you will give me more sympathy, dearest. You see, that's one side of my weakness. I am utterly dependent upon you. Your kindness is the breath of life to me. Don't refuse it!'

'But I have done nothing of the kind.'

'You begin to speak very coldly. And I understand your feeling of disappointment. The mere fact of your urging me to do anything that will sell is a proof of bitter disappointment. You would have looked with scorn at anyone who talked to me like that two years ago. You were proud of me because my work wasn't altogether common, and because I had never written a line that was meant to attract the vulgar. All that's over now. If you knew how dreadful it is to see that you have lost your hopes of me!'

'Well, but I haven't--altogether,' Amy replied, meditatively. 'I know very well that, if you had a lot of money, you would do better things than ever.'

'Thank you a thousand times for saying that, my dearest.'

'But, you see, we haven't money, and there's little chance of our getting any. That scrubby old uncle won't leave anything to us; I feel too sure of it. I often feel disposed to go and beg him on my knees to think of us in his will.' She laughed. 'I suppose it's impossible, and would be useless; but I should be capable of it if I knew it would bring money.'

Reardon said nothing.

'I didn't think so much of money when we were married,' Amy continued. 'I had never seriously felt the want of it, you know. I did think--there's no harm in confessing it--that you were sure to be rich some day; but I should have married you all the same if I had known that you would win only reputation.'

'You are sure of that?'

'Well, I think so. But I know the value of money better now. I know it is the most powerful thing in the world. If I had to choose between a glorious reputation with poverty and a contemptible popularity with wealth, I should choose the latter.'

'No!'

'I should.'

'Perhaps you are right.'

He turned away with a sigh.

'Yes, you are right. What is reputation? If it is deserved, it originates with a few score of people among the many millions who would never have recognised the merit they at last applaud. That's the lot of a great genius. As for a mediocrity like me--what ludicrous absurdity to fret myself in the hope that half-a-dozen folks will say I am ”above the average!” After all, is there sillier vanity than this? A year after I have published my last book, I shall be practically forgotten; ten years later, I shall be as absolutely forgotten as one of those novelists of the early part of this century, whose names one doesn't even recognise.

What fatuous posing!'

Amy looked askance at him, but replied nothing.

'And yet,' he continued, 'of course it isn't only for the sake of reputation that one tries to do uncommon work. There's the shrinking from conscious insincerity of workmans.h.i.+p--which most of the writers nowadays seem never to feel. ”It's good enough for the market”; that satisfies them. And perhaps they are justified.

I can't pretend that I rule my life by absolute ideals; I admit that everything is relative. There is no such thing as goodness or badness, in the absolute sense, of course. Perhaps I am absurdly inconsistent when--though knowing my work can't be first rate--I strive to make it as good as possible. I don't say this in irony, Amy; I really mean it. It may very well be that I am just as foolish as the people I ridicule for moral and religious superst.i.tion. This habit of mine is superst.i.tious.

How well I can imagine the answer of some popular novelist if he heard me speak scornfully of his books. ”My dear fellow,” he might say, ”do you suppose I am not aware that my books are rubbish? I know it just as well as you do. But my vocation is to live comfortably. I have a luxurious house, a wife and children who are happy and grateful to me for their happiness. If you choose to live in a garret, and, what's worse, make your wife and children share it with you, that's your concern.” The man would be abundantly right.'

'But,' said Amy, 'why should you a.s.sume that his books are rubbish? Good work succeeds--now and then.'

'I speak of the common kind of success, which is never due to literary merit. And if I speak bitterly, well, I am suffering from my powerlessness. I am a failure, my poor girl, and it isn't easy for me to look with charity on the success of men who deserved it far less than I did, when I was still able to work.'

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