New Grub Street - George Gissing (e book reader free TXT) 📗

for fifty pounds. It was a great improvement on its predecessors, and the reviews were generally favourable. For the story which followed, On Neutral Ground, he received a hundred pounds. On the strength of that he spent six months travelling in the South of Europe.

He returned to London at mid-June, and on the second day after his arrival befell an incident which was to control the rest of his life. Busy with the pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, he heard himself addressed in a familiar voice, and on turning he was aware of Mr. Carter, resplendent in fashionable summer attire, and accompanied by a young lady of some charms. Reardon had formerly feared encounters of this kind, too conscious of the defects of his attire; but at present there was no reason why he should shirk social intercourse. He was passably dressed, and the half-year of travel had benefited his appearance in no slight degree. Carter presented him to the young lady, of whom the novelist had already heard as affianced to his friend.

Whilst they stood conversing, there approached two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, whose attendant was another of Reardon’s acquaintances, Mr. John Yule. This gentleman stepped briskly forward and welcomed the returned wanderer.

“Let me introduce you,” he said, “to my mother and sister. Your fame has made them anxious to know you.”

Reardon found himself in a position of which the novelty was embarrassing, but scarcely disagreeable. Here were five people grouped around him, all of whom regarded him unaffectedly as a man of importance; for though, strictly speaking, he had no “fame” at all, these persons had kept up with the progress of his small repute, and were all distinctly glad to number among their acquaintances an unmistakable author, one, too, who was fresh from Italy and Greece. Mrs. Yule, a lady rather too pretentious in her tone to be attractive to a man of Reardon’s refinement, hastened to assure him how well his books were known in her house, “though for the run of ordinary novels we don’t care much.” Miss Yule, not at all pretentious in speech, and seemingly reserved of disposition, was good enough to show frank interest in the author. As for the poor author himself, well, he merely fell in love with Miss Yule at first sight, and there was an end of the matter.

A day or two later he made a call at their house, in the region of Westbourne Park. It was a small house, and rather showily than handsomely furnished; no one after visiting it would be astonished to hear that Mrs. Edmund Yule had but a small income, and that she was often put to desperate expedients to keep up the gloss of easy circumstances. In the gauzy and fluffy and varnishy little drawing-room Reardon found a youngish gentleman already in conversation with the widow and her daughter. This proved to be one Mr. Jasper Milvain, also a man of letters. Mr. Milvain was glad to meet Reardon, whose books he had read with decided interest.

“Really,” exclaimed Mrs. Yule, “I don’t know how it is that we have had to wait so long for the pleasure of knowing you, Mr. Reardon. If John were not so selfish he would have allowed us a share in your acquaintance long ago.”

Ten weeks thereafter, Miss Yule became Mrs. Reardon.

It was a time of frantic exultation with the poor fellow. He had always regarded the winning of a beautiful and intellectual wife as the crown of a successful literary career, but he had not dared to hope that such a triumph would be his. Life had been too hard with him on the whole. He, who hungered for sympathy, who thought of a woman’s love as the prize of mortals supremely blessed, had spent the fresh years of his youth in monkish solitude. Now of a sudden came friends and flattery, ay, and love itself. He was rapt to the seventh heaven.

Indeed, it seemed that the girl loved him. She knew that he had but a hundred pounds or so left over from that little inheritance, that his books sold for a trifle, that he had no wealthy relatives from whom he could expect anything; yet she hesitated not a moment when he asked her to marry him.

“I have loved you from the first.”

“How is that possible?” he urged. “What is there lovable in me? I am afraid of waking up and finding myself in my old garret, cold and hungry.”

“You will be a great man.”

“I implore you not to count on that! In many ways I am wretchedly weak. I have no such confidence in myself.”

“Then I will have confidence for both.”

“But can you love me for my own sake⁠—love me as a man?”

“I love you!”

And the words sang about him, filled the air with a mad pulsing of intolerable joy, made him desire to fling himself in passionate humility at her feet, to weep hot tears, to cry to her in insane worship. He thought her beautiful beyond anything his heart had imagined; her warm gold hair was the rapture of his eyes and of his reverent hand. Though slenderly fashioned, she was so gloriously strong. “Not a day of illness in her life,” said Mrs. Yule, and one could readily believe it.

She spoke with such a sweet decision. Her “I love you!” was a bond with eternity. In the simplest as in the greatest things she saw his wish and acted frankly upon it. No pretty petulance, no affectation of silly-sweet languishing, none of the weaknesses of woman. And so exquisitely fresh in her twenty years of maidenhood, with bright young eyes that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come.

He went about like one dazzled with excessive light. He talked as he had never talked before, recklessly, exultantly, insolently⁠—in the nobler sense. He made friends on every hand; he welcomed all the world to his bosom; he felt the benevolence of a god.

“I love you!” It breathed like music at his ears when he fell asleep