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

she felt so strongly the unworthiness of the existence to which she was condemned. That contemptible review, and now her father’s ignoble passion⁠—such things were enough to make all literature appear a morbid excrescence upon human life.

Forgetful of the time, she sat in her bedroom until a knock at the door, and her mother’s voice, admonished her that dinner was waiting. An impulse all but caused her to say that she would rather not go down for the meal, that she wished to be left alone. But this would be weak peevishness. She just looked at the glass to see that her face bore no unwonted signs, and descended to take her place as usual.

Throughout the dinner there passed no word of conversation. Yule was at his blackest; he gobbled a few mouthfuls, then occupied himself with the evening paper. On rising, he said to Marian:

“Have you copied the whole of that?”

The tone would have been uncivil if addressed to an impertinent servant.

“Not much more than half,” was the cold reply.

“Can you finish it tonight?”

“I’m afraid not. I am going out.”

“Then I must do it myself.”

And he went to the study.

Mrs. Yule was in an anguish of nervousness.

“What is it, dear?” she asked of Marian, in a pleading whisper. “Oh, don’t quarrel with your father! Don’t!”

“I can’t be a slave, mother, and I can’t be treated unjustly.”

“What is it? Let me go and speak to him.”

“It’s no use. We can’t live in terror.”

For Mrs. Yule this was unimaginable disaster. She had never dreamt that Marian, the still, gentle Marian, could be driven to revolt. And it had come with the suddenness of a thunderclap. She wished to ask what had taken place between father and daughter in the brief interview before dinner; but Marian gave her no chance, quitting the room upon those last trembling words.

The girl had resolved to visit her friends, the sisters, and tell them that in future they must never come to see her at home. But it was no easy thing for her to stifle her conscience, and leave her father to toil over that copying which had need of being finished. Not her will, but her exasperated feeling, had replied to him that she would not do the work; already it astonished her that she had really spoken such words. And as the throbbing of her pulses subsided, she saw more clearly into the motives of this wretched tumult which possessed her. Her mind was harassed with a fear lest in defending Milvain she had spoken foolishly. Had he not himself said to her that he might be guilty of base things, just to make his way? Perhaps it was the intolerable pain of imagining that he had already made good his words, which robbed her of self-control and made her meet her father’s rudeness with defiance.

Impossible to carry out her purpose; she could not deliberately leave the house and spend some hours away with the thought of such wrath and misery left behind her. Gradually she was returning to her natural self; fear and penitence were chill at her heart.

She went down to the study, tapped, and entered.

“Father, I said something that I did not really mean. Of course I shall go on with the copying and finish it as soon as possible.”

“You will do nothing of the kind, my girl.” He was in his usual place, already working at Marian’s task; he spoke in a low, thick voice. “Spend your evening as you choose, I have no need of you.”

“I behaved very ill-temperedly. Forgive me, father.”

“Have the goodness to go away. You hear me?”

His eyes were inflamed, and his discoloured teeth showed themselves savagely. Marian durst not, really durst not approach him. She hesitated, but once more a sense of hateful injustice moved within her, and she went away as quietly as she had entered.

She said to herself that now it was her perfect right to go whither she would. But the freedom was only in theory; her submissive and timid nature kept her at home⁠—and upstairs in her own room; for, if she went to sit with her mother, of necessity she must talk about what had happened, and that she felt unable to do. Some friend to whom she could unbosom all her sufferings would now have been very precious to her, but Maud and Dora were her only intimates, and to them she might not make the full confession which gives solace.

Mrs. Yule did not venture to intrude upon her daughter’s privacy. That Marian neither went out nor showed herself in the house proved her troubled state, but the mother had no confidence in her power to comfort. At the usual time she presented herself in the study with her husband’s coffee; the face which was for an instant turned to her did not invite conversation, but distress obliged her to speak.

“Why are you cross with Marian, Alfred?”

“You had better ask what she means by her extraordinary behaviour.”

A word of harsh rebuff was the most she had expected. Thus encouraged, she timidly put another question.

“How has she behaved?”

“I suppose you have ears?”

“But wasn’t there something before that? You spoke so angry to her.”

“Spoke so angry, did I? She is out, I suppose?”

“No, she hasn’t gone out.”

“That’ll do. Don’t disturb me any longer.”

She did not venture to linger.

The breakfast next morning seemed likely to pass without any interchange of words. But when Yule was pushing back his chair, Marian⁠—who looked pale and ill⁠—addressed a question to him about the work she would ordinarily have pursued today at the Reading-room. He answered in a matter-of-fact tone, and for a few minutes they talked on the subject much as at any other time. Half an hour after, Marian set forth for the Museum in the usual way. Her father stayed at home.

It was the end of the episode for the present. Marian felt that the best thing would be to ignore what had happened, as her father evidently purposed doing. She had asked his forgiveness,