New Grub Street

‘There’s a distinction, of course. But, on the whole, I should say that even the business serves a good purpose.’

‘What purpose?’

‘It helps to spread civilisation.’

‘Civilisation!’ exclaimed John, scornfully. ‘What do you mean by civilisation? Do you call it civilising men to make them weak, flabby creatures, with ruined eyes and dyspeptic stomachs? Who is it that reads most of the stuff that’s poured out daily by the ton from the printing-press? Just the men and women who ought to spend their leisure hours in open-air exercise; the people who earn their bread by sedentary pursuits, and who need to live as soon as they are free from the desk or the counter, not to moon over small print. Your Board schools, your popular press, your spread of education! Machinery for ruining the country, that’s what I call it.’

‘You have done a good deal, I think, to counteract those influences in Wattleborough.’

‘I hope so; and if only I had kept the use of my limbs I’d have done a good deal more. I have an idea of offering substantial prizes to men and women engaged in sedentary work who take an oath to abstain from all reading, and keep it for a certain number of years. There’s a good deal more need for that than for abstinence from strong liquor. If I could have had my way I would have revived prize-fighting.’

His brother laughed with contemptuous impatience.

‘You would doubtless like to see military conscription introduced into England?’ said Jasper.

‘Of course I should! You talk of civilising; there’s no such way of civilising the masses of the people as by fixed military service. Before mental training must come training of the body. Go about the Continent, and see the effect of military service on loutish peasants and the lowest classes of town population. Do you know why it isn’t even more successful? Because the damnable education movement interferes. If Germany would shut up her schools and universities for the next quarter of a century and go ahead like blazes with military training there’d be a nation such as the world has never seen. After that, they might begin a little book-teaching again—say an hour and a half a day for everyone above nine years old. Do you suppose, Mr Milvain, that society is going to be reformed by you people who write for money? Why, you are the very first class that will be swept from the face of the earth as soon as the reformation really begins!’

Alfred puffed at his cigarette. His thoughts were occupied with Mr Fadge and The Study. He was considering whether he could aid in bringing public contempt upon that literary organ and its editor. Milvain listened to the elder man’s diatribe with much amusement.

‘You, now,’ pursued John, ‘what do you write about?’

‘Nothing in particular. I make a salable page or two out of whatever strikes my fancy.’

‘Exactly! You don’t even pretend that you’ve got anything to say. You live by inducing people to give themselves mental indigestion—and bodily, too, for that matter.’

‘Do you know, Mr Yule, that you have suggested a capital idea to me? If I were to take up your views, I think it isn’t at all unlikely that I might make a good thing of writing against writing. It should be my literary specialty to rail against literature. The reading public should pay me for telling them that they oughtn’t to read. I must think it over.’

‘Carlyle has anticipated you,’ threw in Alfred.

‘Yes, but in an antiquated way. I would base my polemic on the newest philosophy.’

He developed the idea facetiously, whilst John regarded him as he might have watched a performing monkey.

‘There again! your new philosophy!’ exclaimed the invalid. ‘Why, it isn’t even wholesome stuff, the kind of reading that most of you force on the public. Now there’s the man who has married one of my nieces—poor lass! Reardon, his name is. You know him, I dare say. Just for curiosity I had a look at one of his books; it was called “The Optimist.” Of all the morbid trash I ever saw, that beat everything. I thought of writing him a letter, advising a couple of anti-bilious pills before bedtime for a few weeks.’

Jasper glanced at Alfred Yule, who wore a look of indifference.

‘That man deserves penal servitude in my opinion,’ pursued John. ‘I’m not sure that it isn’t my duty to offer him a couple of hundred a year on condition that he writes no more.’

Milvain, with a clear vision of his friend in London, burst into laughter. But at that point Alfred rose from his chair.

‘Shall we rejoin the ladies?’ he said, with a certain pedantry of phrase and manner which often characterised him.

‘Think over your ways whilst you’re still young,’ said John as he shook hands with his visitor.

‘Your brother speaks quite seriously, I suppose?’ Jasper remarked when he was in the garden with Alfred.

‘I think so. It’s amusing now and then, but gets rather tiresome when you hear it often. By-the-bye, you are not personally acquainted with Mr Fadge?’

‘I didn’t even know his name until you mentioned it.’

‘The most malicious man in the literary world. There’s no uncharitableness in feeling a certain pleasure when he gets into a scrape. I could tell you incredible stories about him; but that kind of thing is probably as little to your taste as it is to mine.’

Miss Harrow and her companions, having caught sight of the pair, came towards them. Tea was to be brought out into the garden.

‘So you can sit with us and smoke, if you like,’ said Miss Harrow to Alfred. ‘You are never quite at your ease, I think, without a pipe.’

But the man of letters was too preoccupied for society. In a few minutes he begged that the ladies would excuse his withdrawing; he had two or three letters to write before post-time, which was early at Finden.

Jasper, relieved by the veteran’s departure, began at once to make himself very agreeable company. When he chose to lay aside the topic of his own difficulties and ambitions, he could converse with a spontaneous gaiety which readily won the good-will of listeners. Naturally he addressed himself very often to Marian Yule, whose attention complimented him. She said little, and evidently was at no time a free talker, but the smile on her face indicated a mood of quiet enjoyment. When her eyes wandered, it was to rest on the beauties of the garden, the moving patches of golden sunshine, the forms of gleaming cloud. Jasper liked to observe her as she turned her head: there seemed to him a particular grace in the movement; her head and neck were admirably formed, and the short hair drew attention to this.

It was agreed that Miss Harrow and Marian should come on the second day after to have tea with the Milvains. And when Jasper took leave of Alfred Yule, the latter expressed a wish that they might have a walk together one of these mornings.

CHAPTER III. HOLIDAY

Jasper’s favourite walk led him to a spot distant perhaps a mile and a half from home. From a tract of common he turned into a short lane which crossed the Great Western railway, and thence by a stile into certain meadows forming a compact little valley. One recommendation of this retreat was that it lay sheltered from all winds; to Jasper a wind was objectionable. Along the bottom ran a clear, shallow stream, overhung with elder and hawthorn bushes; and close by the wooden bridge which spanned it was a great ash tree, making shadow for cows and sheep when the sun lay hot upon the open field. It was rare for anyone to come along this path, save farm labourers morning and evening.

But to-day—the afternoon that followed his visit to John Yule’s house—he saw from a distance that his lounging-place on the wooden bridge was occupied. Someone else had discovered the pleasure there was in watching the sun-flecked sparkle of the water as it flowed over the clean sand and stones. A girl in a yellow-straw hat; yes, and precisely the person he had hoped, at the first glance, that it might be. He made no haste as he drew nearer on the descending path. At length his footstep was heard; Marian Yule turned her head and clearly recognised him.

She assumed an upright position, letting one of her hands rest upon the rail. After the exchange of ordinary greetings, Jasper leaned back against the same support and showed himself disposed for talk.

‘When I was here late in the spring,’ he said, ‘this ash was only just budding, though everything else seemed in full leaf.’

‘An ash, is it?’ murmured Marian. ‘I didn’t know. I think an oak is the only tree I can distinguish. Yet,’ she added quickly, ‘I knew that the ash was late; some lines of Tennyson come to my memory.’

‘Which are those?’

‘Delaying, as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself when all the woods are green,

somewhere in the “Idylls.”’

‘I don’t remember; so I won’t pretend to—though I should do so as a rule.’

She looked at him oddly, and seemed about to laugh, yet did not.

‘You have had little experience of the country?’ Jasper continued.

‘Very little. You, I think, have known it from childhood?’

‘In a sort of way. I was born in Wattleborough, and my people have always lived here. But I am not very rural in temperament. I have really no friends here; either they have lost interest in me, or I in them. What do you think of the girls, my sisters?’

The question, though put with perfect simplicity, was embarrassing.

‘They are tolerably intellectual,’ Jasper went on, when he saw that it would be difficult for her to answer. ‘I want to persuade them to try their hands at literary work of some kind or other. They give lessons, and both hate it.’

‘Would literary work be less—burdensome?’ said Marian, without looking at him.