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

to tell you all this, but I felt I should like to see you and⁠—put it in my own way. I think you’ll understand this feeling, Miss Yule. I wanted, in fact, to hear from yourself that you would be a friend to the poor girls.”

“Oh, you already know that! I shall be so very glad to see them often.”

Marian’s voice lent itself very naturally and sweetly to the expression of warm feeling. Emphasis was not her habit; it only needed that she should put off her ordinary reserve, utter quietly the emotional thought which so seldom might declare itself, and her tones had an exquisite womanliness.

Jasper looked full into her face.

“In that case they won’t miss the comfort of home so much. Of course they will have to go into very modest lodgings indeed. I have already been looking about. I should like to find rooms for them somewhere near my own place; it’s a decent neighbourhood, and the park is at hand, and then they wouldn’t be very far from you. They thought it might be possible to make a joint establishment with me, but I’m afraid that’s out of the question. The lodgings we should want in that case, everything considered, would cost more than the sum of our expenses if we live apart. Besides, there’s no harm in saying that I don’t think we should get along very well together. We’re all of us rather quarrelsome, to tell the truth, and we try each other’s tempers.”

Marian smiled and looked puzzled.

“Shouldn’t you have thought that?”

“I have seen no signs of quarrelsomeness.”

“I’m not sure that the worst fault is on my side. Why should one condemn oneself against conscience? Maud is perhaps the hardest to get along with. She has a sort of arrogance, an exaggeration of something I am quite aware of in myself. You have noticed that trait in me?”

“Arrogance⁠—I think not. You have self-confidence.”

“Which goes into extremes now and then. But, putting myself aside, I feel pretty sure that the girls won’t seem quarrelsome to you; they would have to be very fractious indeed before that were possible.”

“We shall continue to be friends, I am sure.”

Jasper let his eyes wander about the room.

“This is your father’s study?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps it would have seemed odd to Mr. Yule if I had come in and begun to talk to him about these purely private affairs. He knows me so very slightly. But, in calling here for the first time⁠—”

An unusual embarrassment checked him.

“I will explain to father your very natural wish to speak of these things,” said Marian, with tact.

She thought uneasily of her mother in the next room. To her there appeared no reason whatever why Jasper should not be introduced to Mrs. Yule, yet she could not venture to propose it. Remembering her father’s last remarks about Milvain in connection with Fadge’s magazine, she must wait for distinct permission before offering the young man encouragement to repeat his visit. Perhaps there was complicated trouble in store for her; impossible to say how her father’s deep-rooted and rankling antipathies might affect her intercourse even with the two girls. But she was of independent years; she must be allowed the choice of her own friends. The pleasure she had in seeing Jasper under this roof, in hearing him talk with such intimate friendliness, strengthened her to resist timid thoughts.

“When will your sisters arrive?” she asked.

“I think in a very few days. When I have fixed upon lodgings for them I must go back to Finden; then they will return with me as soon as we can get the house emptied. It’s rather miserable selling things one has lived among from childhood. A friend in Wattleborough will house for us what we really can’t bear to part with.”

“It must be very sad,” Marian murmured.

“You know,” said the other suddenly, “that it’s my fault the girls are left in such a hard position?”

Marian looked at him with startled eyes. His tone was quite unfamiliar to her.

“Mother had an annuity,” he continued. “It ended with her life, but if it hadn’t been for me she could have saved a good deal out of it. Until the last year or two I have earned nothing, and I have spent more than was strictly necessary. Well, I didn’t live like that in mere recklessness; I knew I was preparing myself for remunerative work. But it seems too bad now. I’m sorry for it. I wish I had found some way of supporting myself. The end of mother’s life was made far more unhappy than it need have been. I should like you to understand all this.”

The listener kept her eyes on the ground.

“Perhaps the girls have hinted it to you?” Jasper added.

“No.”

“Selfishness⁠—that’s one of my faults. It isn’t a brutal kind of selfishness; the thought of it often enough troubles me. If I were rich, I should be a generous and good man; I know I should. So would many another poor fellow whose worst features come out under hardship. This isn’t a heroic type; of course not. I am a civilised man, that’s all.”

Marian could say nothing.

“You wonder why I am so impertinent as to talk about myself like this. I have gone through a good deal of mental pain these last few weeks, and somehow I can’t help showing you something of my real thoughts. Just because you are one of the few people I regard with sincere respect. I don’t know you very well, but quite well enough to respect you. My sisters think of you in the same way. I shall do many a base thing in life, just to get money and reputation; I tell you this that you mayn’t be surprised if anything of that kind comes to your ears. I can’t afford to live as I should like to.”

She looked up at him with a smile.

“People who are going to live unworthily don’t declare it in this way.”

“I oughtn’t to; a few minutes ago I had no intention of