New Grub Street Part 29

'That is at the rate of sixpence a volume---?'

'To me that's about the average value of books like these.'

Perhaps the offer was a fair one; perhaps it was not. Reardon had neither time nor spirit to test the possibilities of the market; he was ashamed to betray his need by higgling.

'I'll take it,' he said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

A messenger was sent for the books that afternoon. He stowed them skilfully in two bags, and carried them downstairs to a cart that was waiting.

Reardon looked at the gaps left on his shelves. Many of those vanished volumes were dear old friends to him; he could have told you where he had picked them up and when; to open them recalled a past moment of intellectual growth, a mood of hope or despondency, a stage of struggle.

In most of them his name was written, and there were often pencilled notes in the margin. Of course he had chosen from among the most valuable he possessed; such a mult.i.tude must else have been sold to make this sum of two pounds ten. Books are cheap, you know. At need, one can buy a Homer for fourpence, a Sophocles for sixpence. It was not rubbish that he had acc.u.mulated at so small expenditure, but the library of a poor student--battered bindings, stained pages, supplanted editions.

He loved his books, but there was something he loved more, and when Amy glanced at him with eyes of sympathy he broke into a cheerful laugh.

'I'm only sorry they have gone for so little. Tell me when the money is nearly at an end again, and you shall have more. It's all right; the novel will be done soon.'

And that night he worked until twelve o'clock, doggedly, fiercely.

The next day was Sunday. As a rule he made it a day of rest, and almost perforce, for the depressing influence of Sunday in London made work too difficult. Then, it was the day on which he either went to see his own particular friends or was visited by them.

'Do you expect anyone this evening?' Amy inquired.

'Biffen will look in, I dare say. Perhaps Milvain.'

'I think I shall take Willie to mother's. I shall be back before eight.'

'Amy, don't say anything about the books.'

'No, no.'

'I suppose they always ask you when we think of removing over the way?'

He pointed in a direction that suggested Marylebone Workhouse. Amy tried to laugh, but a woman with a child in her arms has no keen relish for such jokes.

'I don't talk to them about our affairs,' she said.

'That's best.'

She left home about three o'clock, the servant going with her to carry the child.

At five a familiar knock sounded through the flat; it was a heavy rap followed by half-a-dozen light ones, like a reverberating echo, the last stroke scarcely audible. Reardon laid down his book, but kept his pipe in his mouth, and went to the door. A tall, thin man stood there, with a slouch hat and long grey overcoat. He shook hands silently, hung his hat in the pa.s.sage, and came forward into the study.

His name was Harold Biffen, and, to judge from his appearance, he did not belong to the race of common mortals. His excessive meagreness would all but have qualified him to enter an exhibition in the capacity of living skeleton, and the garments which hung upon this framework would perhaps have sold for three-and-sixpence at an old-clothes dealer's. But the man was superior to these accidents of flesh and raiment. He had a fine face: large, gentle eyes, nose slightly aquiline, small and delicate mouth. Thick black hair fell to his coat-collar; he wore a heavy moustache and a full beard. In his gait there was a singular dignity; only a man of cultivated mind and graceful character could move and stand as he did.

His first act on entering the room was to take from his pocket a pipe, a pouch, a little tobacco-stopper, and a box of matches, all of which he arranged carefully on a corner of the central table. Then he drew forward a chair and seated himself.

'Take your top-coat off;' said Reardon.

'Thanks, not this evening.'

'Why the deuce not?'

'Not this evening, thanks.'

The reason, as soon as Reardon sought for it, was obvious. Biffen had no ordinary coat beneath the other. To have referred to this fact would have been indelicate; the novelist of course understood it, and smiled, but with no mirth.

'Let me have your Sophocles,' were the visitor's next words.

Reardon offered him a volume of the Oxford Pocket Cla.s.sics.

'I prefer the Wunder, please.'

'It's gone, my boy.'

'Gone?'

'Wanted a little cash.'

Biffen uttered a sound in which remonstrance and sympathy were blended.

'I'm sorry to hear that; very sorry. Well, this must do. Now, I want to know how you scan this chorus in the "Oedipus Rex."'

Reardon took the volume, considered, and began to read aloud with metric emphasis.

'Choriambics, eh?' cried the other. 'Possible, of course; but treat them as Ionics a minore with an anacrusis, and see if they don't go better.'

He involved himself in terms of pedantry, and with such delight that his eyes gleamed. Having delivered a technical lecture, he began to read in ill.u.s.tration, producing quite a different effect from that of the rhythm as given by his friend. And the reading was by no means that of a pedant, rather of a poet.

For half an hour the two men talked Greek metres as if they lived in a world where the only hunger known could be satisfied by grand or sweet cadences.

They had first met in an amusing way. Not long after the publication of his book 'On Neutral Ground' Reardon was spending a week at Hastings.

A rainy day drove him to the circulating library, and as he was looking along the shelves for something readable a voice near at hand asked the attendant if he had anything 'by Edwin Reardon.' The novelist turned in astonishment; that any casual mortal should inquire for his books seemed incredible. Of course there was nothing by that author in the library, and he who had asked the question walked out again. On the morrow Reardon encountered this same man at a lonely part of the sh.o.r.e; he looked at him, and spoke a word or two of common civility; they got into conversation, with the result that Edwin told the story of yesterday.

The stranger introduced himself as Harold Biffen, an author in a small way, and a teacher whenever he could get pupils; an abusive review had interested him in Reardon's novels, but as yet he knew nothing of them but the names.

Their tastes were found to be in many respects sympathetic, and after returning to London they saw each other frequently. Biffen was always in dire poverty, and lived in the oddest places; he had seen harder trials than even Reardon himself. The teaching by which he partly lived was of a kind quite unknown to the respectable tutorial world. In these days of examinations, numbers of men in a poor position--clerks chiefly--conceive a hope that by 'pa.s.sing' this, that, or the other formal test they may open for themselves a new career. Not a few such persons nourish preposterous ambitions; there are warehouse clerks privately preparing (without any means or prospect of them) for a call to the Bar, drapers' a.s.sistants who 'go in' for the preliminary examination of the College of Surgeons, and untaught men innumerable who desire to procure enough show of education to be eligible for a curacy.

Candidates of this stamp frequently advertise in the newspapers for cheap tuition, or answer advertis.e.m.e.nts which are intended to appeal to them; they pay from sixpence to half-a-crown an hour--rarely as much as the latter sum. Occasionally it happened that Harold Biffen had three or four such pupils in hand, and extraordinary stories he could draw from his large experience in this sphere.

Then as to his authors.h.i.+p.--But shortly after the discussion of Greek metres he fell upon the subject of his literary projects, and, by no means for the first time, developed the theory on which he worked.

'I have thought of a new way of putting it. What I really aim at is an absolute realism in the sphere of the ign.o.bly decent. The field, as I understand it, is a new one; I don't know any writer who has treated ordinary vulgar life with fidelity and seriousness. Zola writes deliberate tragedies; his vilest figures become heroic from the place they fill in a strongly imagined drama. I want to deal with the essentially unheroic, with the day-to-day life of that vast majority of people who are at the mercy of paltry circ.u.mstance. d.i.c.kens understood the possibility of such work, but his tendency to melodrama on the one hand, and his humour on the other, prevented him from thinking of it. An instance, now. As I came along by Regent's Park half an hour ago a man and a girl were walking close in front of me, love-making; I pa.s.sed them slowly and heard a good deal of their talk--it was part of the situation that they should pay no heed to a stranger's proximity. Now, such a love-scene as that has absolutely never been written down; it was entirely decent, yet vulgar to the nth power. d.i.c.kens would have made it ludicrous--a gross injustice. Other men who deal with low-cla.s.s life would perhaps have preferred idealising it--an absurdity. For my own part, I am going to reproduce it verbatim, without one single impertinent suggestion of any point of view save that of honest reporting. The result will be something unutterably tedious. Precisely.

That is the stamp of the ign.o.bly decent life. If it were anything but tedious it would be untrue. I speak, of course, of its effect upon the ordinary reader.'

'I couldn't do it,' said Reardon.

'Certainly you couldn't. You--well, you are a psychological realist in the sphere of culture. You are impatient of vulgar circ.u.mstances.'

'In a great measure because my life has been martyred by them.'

'And for that very same reason I delight in them,' cried Biffen.