Part 11 (2/2)

Amy made a gesture of impatience.

'There you are! What does the subject matter? Get this book finished and sold, and then do something better next time.'

'Give me to-night, just to think. Perhaps one of the old stories I have thrown aside will come back in a clearer light. I'll go out for an hour; you don't mind being left alone?'

'You mustn't think of such trifles as that.'

'But nothing that concerns you in the slightest way is a trifle to me--nothing! I can't bear that you should forget that. Have patience with me, darling, a little longer.'

He knelt by her, and looked up into her face.

'Say only one or two kind words--like you used to!'

She pa.s.sed her hand lightly over his hair, and murmured something with a faint smile.

Then Reardon took his hat and stick and descended the eight flights of stone steps, and walked in the darkness round the outer circle of Regent's Park, racking his f.a.gged brain in a hopeless search for characters, situations, motives.

CHAPTER V. THE WAY HITHER

Even in mid-rapture of his marriage month he had foreseen this possibility; but fate had hitherto rescued him in sudden ways when he was on the brink of self-abandonment, and it was hard to imagine that this culmination of triumphant joy could be a preface to base miseries.

He was the son of a man who had followed many different pursuits, and in none had done much more than earn a livelihood. At the age of forty--when Edwin, his only child, was ten years old--Mr Reardon established himself in the town of Hereford as a photographer, and there he abode until his death, nine years after, occasionally risking some speculation not inconsistent with the photographic business, but always with the result of losing the little capital he ventured. Mrs Reardon died when Edwin had reached his fifteenth year. In breeding and education she was superior to her husband, to whom, moreover, she had brought something between four and five hundred pounds; her temper was pa.s.sionate in both senses of the word, and the marriage could hardly be called a happy one, though it was never disturbed by serious discord.

The photographer was a man of whims and idealisms; his wife had a strong vein of worldly ambition. They made few friends, and it was Mrs Reardon's frequently expressed desire to go and live in London, where fortune, she thought, might be kinder to them. Reardon had all but made up his mind to try this venture when he suddenly became a widower; after that he never summoned energy to embark on new enterprises.

The boy was educated at an excellent local school; at eighteen he had a far better acquaintance with the ancient cla.s.sics than most lads who have been expressly prepared for a university, and, thanks to an anglicised Swiss who acted as an a.s.sistant in Mr Reardon's business, he not only read French, but could talk it with a certain haphazard fluency. These attainments, however, were not of much practical use; the best that could be done for Edwin was to place him in the office of an estate agent. His health was indifferent, and it seemed likely that open-air exercise, of which he would have a good deal under the particular circ.u.mstances of the case, might counteract the effects of study too closely pursued.

At his father's death he came into possession (practically it was put at his disposal at once, though he was little more than nineteen) of about two hundred pounds--a life-insurance for five hundred had been sacrificed to exigencies not very long before. He had no difficulty in deciding how to use this money. His mother's desire to live in London had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook himself to the metropolis.

To become a literary man, of course.

His capital lasted him nearly four years, for, notwithstanding his age, he lived with painful economy. The strangest life, of almost absolute loneliness. From a certain point of Tottenham Court Road there is visible a certain garret window in a certain street which runs parallel with that thoroughfare; for the greater part of these four years the garret in question was Reardon's home. He paid only three-and-sixpence a week for the privilege of living there; his food cost him about a s.h.i.+lling a day; on clothing and other unavoidable expenses he laid out some five pounds yearly. Then he bought books--volumes which cost anything between twopence and two s.h.i.+llings; further than that he durst not go. A strange time, I a.s.sure you.

When he had completed his twenty-first year, he desired to procure a reader's ticket for the British Museum. Now this was not such a simple matter as you may suppose; it was necessary to obtain the signature of some respectable householder, and Reardon was acquainted with no such person. His landlady was a decent woman enough, and a payer of rates and taxes, but it would look odd, to say the least of it, to present oneself in Great Russell Street armed with this person's recommendation. There was nothing for it but to take a bold step, to force himself upon the attention of a stranger--the thing from which his pride had always shrunk. He wrote to a well-known novelist--a man with whose works he had some sympathy. 'I am trying to prepare myself for a literary career.

I wish to study in the Reading-room of the British Museum, but have no acquaintance to whom I can refer in the ordinary way. Will you help me--I mean, in this particular only?' That was the substance of his letter. For reply came an invitation to a house in the West-end. With fear and trembling Reardon answered the summons. He was so shabbily attired; he was so diffident from the habit of living quite alone; he was horribly afraid lest it should be supposed that he looked for other a.s.sistance than he had requested. Well, the novelist was a rotund and jovial man; his dwelling and his person smelt of money; he was so happy himself that he could afford to be kind to others.

'Have you published anything?' he inquired, for the young man's letter had left this uncertain.

'Nothing. I have tried the magazines, but as yet without success.'

'But what do you write?'

'Chiefly essays on literary subjects.'

'I can understand that you would find a difficulty in disposing of them.

That kind of thing is supplied either by men of established reputation, or by anonymous writers who have a regular engagement on papers and magazines. Give me an example of your topics.'

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