New Grub Street Part 49

'Oh, let that stand over. It'll be holiday enough to occupy myself in a new way. An old way, too; I shall enjoy it.'

He laughed merrily, relieved beyond measure at having come to what seemed an end of his difficulties. For half an hour they continued to talk over the affair.

'Well, it's a comical idea,' said Carter, as he took his leave, 'but you know your own business best.'

When Amy returned, Reardon allowed her to put the child to bed before he sought any conversation. She came at length and sat down in the study.

'Mother advises us not to sell the furniture,' were her first words.

'I'm glad of that, as I had quite made up my mind not to.' There was a change in his way of speaking which she at once noticed.

'Have you thought of something?'

'Yes. Carter has been here, and he happened to mention that they're opening an out-patient department of the hospital, in the City Road.

He'll want someone to help him there. I asked for the post, and he promised it me.'

The last words were hurried, though he had resolved to speak with deliberation. No more feebleness; he had taken a decision, and would act upon it as became a responsible man.

'The post?' said Amy. 'What post?'

'In plain English, the clerks.h.i.+p. It'll be the same work as I used to have--registering patients, receiving their "letters," and so on. The pay is to be five-and-twenty s.h.i.+llings a week.'

Amy sat upright and looked steadily at him.

'Is this a joke?'

'Far from it, dear. It's a blessed deliverance.'

'You have asked Mr Carter to take you back as a clerk?'

'I have.'

'And you propose that we shall live on twenty-five s.h.i.+llings a week?'

'Oh no! I shall be engaged only three mornings in the week and three evenings. In my free time I shall do literary work, and no doubt I can earn fifty pounds a year by it--if I have your sympathy to help me.

To-morrow I shall go and look for rooms some distance from here; in Islington, I think. We have been living far beyond our means; that must come to an end. We'll have no more keeping up of sham appearances. If I can make my way in literature, well and good; in that case our position and prospects will of course change. But for the present we are poor people, and must live in a poor way. If our friends like to come and see us, they must put aside all sn.o.bbishness, and take us as we are. If they prefer not to come, there'll be an excuse in our remoteness.'

Amy was stroking the back of her hand. After a long silence, she said in a very quiet, but very resolute tone:

'I shall not consent to this.'

'In that case, Amy, I must do without your consent. The rooms will be taken, and our furniture transferred to them.'

'To me that will make no difference,' returned his wife, in the same voice as before. 'I have decided--as you told me to--to go with Willie to mother's next Tuesday. You, of course, must do as you please. I should have thought a summer at the seaside would have been more helpful to you; but if you prefer to live in Islington--'

Reardon approached her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

'Amy, are you my wife, or not?'

'I am certainly not the wife of a clerk who is paid so much a week.'

He had foreseen a struggle, but without certainty of the form Amy's opposition would take. For himself he meant to be gently resolute, calmly regardless of protest. But in a man to whom such self-a.s.sertion is a matter of conscious effort, tremor of the nerves will always interfere with the line of conduct he has conceived in advance.

Already Reardon had spoken with far more bluntness than he proposed; involuntarily, his voice slipped from earnest determination to the note of absolutism, and, as is wont to be the case, the sound of these strange tones instigated him to further utterances of the same kind.

He lost control of himself. Amy's last reply went through him like an electric shock, and for the moment he was a mere husband defied by his wife, the male stung to exertion of his brute force against the physically weaker s.e.x.

'However you regard me, you will do what I think fit. I shall not argue with you. If I choose to take lodgings in Whitechapel, there you will come and live.'

He met Amy's full look, and was conscious of that in it which corresponded to his own brutality. She had become suddenly a much older woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips were bloodlessly hard, there was an unknown furrow along her forehead, and she glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw.

'Do as YOU think fit? Indeed!'

Could Amy's voice sound like that? Great Heaven! With just such accent he had heard a wrangling woman retort upon her husband at the street corner. Is there then no essential difference between a woman of this world and one of that? Does the same nature lie beneath such unlike surfaces?

He had but to do one thing: to seize her by the arm, drag her up from the chair, dash her back again with all his force--there, the transformation would be complete, they would stand towards each other on the natural footing. With an added curse perhaps--Instead of that, he choked, struggled for breath, and shed tears.

Amy turned scornfully away from him. Blows and a curse would have overawed her, at all events for the moment; she would have felt: 'Yes, he is a man, and I have put my destiny into his hands.' His tears moved her to a feeling cruelly exultant; they were the sign of her superiority. It was she who should have wept, and never in her life had she been further from such display of weakness.

This could not be the end, however, and she had no wish to terminate the scene. They stood for a minute without regarding each other, then Reardon faced to her.

'You refuse to live with me, then?'

'Yes, if this is the kind of life you offer me.'

'You would be more ashamed to share your husband's misfortunes than to declare to everyone that you had deserted him?'

'I shall "declare to everyone" the simple truth. You have the opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank of life. I can't and won't consent to that. The disgrace is yours; it's fortunate for me that I have a decent home to go to.'

'Fortunate for you!--you make yourself unutterably contemptible. I have done nothing that justifies you in leaving me. It is for me to judge what I can do and what I can't. A good woman would see no degradation in what I ask of you. But to run away from me just because I am poorer than you ever thought I should be--'

He was incoherent. A thousand pa.s.sionate things that he wished to say clashed together in his mind and confused his speech. Defeated in the attempt to act like a strong man, he could not yet recover standing-ground, knew not how to tone his utterances.

'Yes, of course, that's how you will put it,' said Amy. 'That's how you will represent me to your friends. My friends will see it in a different light.'

'They will regard you as a martyr?'

'No one shall make a martyr of me, you may be sure. I was unfortunate enough to marry a man who had no delicacy, no regard for my feelings.--I am not the first woman who has made a mistake of this kind.'

'No delicacy? No regard for your feelings?--Have I always utterly misunderstood you? Or has poverty changed you to a woman I can't recognise?'

He came nearer, and gazed desperately into her face. Not a muscle of it showed susceptibility to the old influences.

'Do you know, Amy,' he added in a lower voice, 'that if we part now, we part for ever?'

'I'm afraid that is only too likely.'

She moved aside.

'You mean that you wish it. You are weary of me, and care for nothing but how to make yourself free.'