New Grub Street · Chapter 21 (2/3)

“I think it was better you should tell me. It can’t go on like this; I feel that just as you do. I must tell father that he is making our lives a burden to us.”

“Oh, you mustn’t speak to him like that, Marian! I wouldn’t for anything make unkindness between you and your father; that would be the worst thing I’d done yet. I’d rather go away and work for my own living than make trouble between you and him.”

“It isn’t you who make trouble; it’s father. I ought to have spoken to him before this; I had no right to stand by and see how much you suffered from his ill-temper.”

The longer they talked, the firmer grew Marian’s resolve to front her father’s tyrannous ill-humour, and in one way or another to change the intolerable state of things. She had been weak to hold her peace so long; at her age it was a simple duty to interfere when her mother was treated with such flagrant injustice. Her father’s behaviour was unworthy of a thinking man, and he must be made to feel that.

Yule did not return. Dinner was delayed for half an hour, then Marian declared that they would wait no longer. They two made a sorry meal, and afterwards went together into the sitting-room. At eight o’clock they heard the front door open, and Yule’s footstep in the passage. Marian rose.

“Don’t speak till tomorrow!” whispered her mother, catching at the girl’s arm. “Let it be till tomorrow, Marian!”

“I must speak! We can’t live in this terror.”

She reached the study just as her father was closing the door behind him. Yule, seeing her enter, glared with bloodshot eyes; shame and sullen anger were blended on his countenance.

“Will you tell me what is wrong, father?” Marian asked, in a voice which betrayed her nervous suffering, yet indicated the resolve with which she had come.

“I am not at all disposed to talk of the matter,” he replied, with the awkward rotundity of phrase which distinguished him in his worst humour. “For information you had better go to Mrs. Goby⁠—or a person of some such name⁠—in Holloway Road. I have nothing more to do with it.”

“It was very unfortunate that the woman came and troubled you about such things. But I can’t see that mother was to blame; I don’t think you ought to be so angry with her.”

It cost Marian a terrible effort to address her father in these terms. When he turned fiercely upon her, she shrank back and felt as if strength must fail her even to stand.

“You can’t see that she was to blame? Isn’t it entirely against my wish that she keeps up any intercourse with those low people? Am I to be exposed to insulting disturbance in my very study, because she chooses to introduce girls of bad character as servants to vulgar women?”

“I don’t think Annie Rudd can be called a girl of bad character, and it was very natural that mother should try to do something for her. You have never actually forbidden her to see her relatives.”

“A thousand times I have given her to understand that I utterly disapproved of such association. She knew perfectly well that this girl was as likely as not to discredit her. If she had consulted me, I should at once have forbidden anything of the kind; she was aware of that. She kept it secret from me, knowing that it would excite my displeasure. I will not be drawn into such squalid affairs; I won’t have my name spoken in such connection. Your mother has only herself to blame if I am angry with her.”

“Your anger goes beyond all bounds. At the very worst, mother behaved imprudently, and with a very good motive. It is cruel that you should make her suffer as she is doing.”

Marian was being strengthened to resist. Her blood grew hot; the sensation which once before had brought her to the verge of conflict with her father possessed her heart and brain.

“You are not a suitable judge of my behaviour,” replied Yule, severely.

“I am driven to speak. We can’t go on living in this way, father. For months our home has been almost ceaselessly wretched, because of the ill-temper you are always in. Mother and I must defend ourselves; we can’t bear it any longer. You must surely feel how ridiculous it is to make such a thing as happened this morning the excuse for violent anger. How can I help judging your behaviour? When mother is brought to the point of saying that she would rather leave home and everything than endure her misery any longer, I should be wrong if I didn’t speak to you. Why are you so unkind? What serious cause has mother ever given you?”

“I refuse to argue such questions with you.”

“Then you are very unjust. I am not a child, and there’s nothing wrong in my asking you why home is made a place of misery, instead of being what home ought to be.”

“You prove that you are a child, in asking for explanations which ought to be clear enough to you.”

“You mean that mother is to blame for everything?”

“The subject is no fit one to be discussed between a father and his daughter. If you cannot see the impropriety of it, be so good as to go away and reflect, and leave me to my occupations.”

Marian came to a pause. But she knew that his rebuke was mere unworthy evasion; she saw that her father could not meet her look, and this perception of shame in him impelled her to finish what she had begun.

“I will say nothing of mother, then, but speak only for myself. I suffer too much from your unkindness; you ask too much endurance.”

“You mean that I exact too much work from you?” asked her father, with a look which might have been directed to a recalcitrant clerk.

“No. But that you make the conditions of my work too hard. I live in constant fear of your anger.”

“Indeed? When did I last ill-use you, or threaten you?”

“I often think that threats, or even ill-usage, would be easier to bear than an unchanging gloom which always seems on the point of breaking into violence.”

“I am obliged to you for your criticism of my disposition and manner, but unhappily I am too old to reform. Life has made me what I am, and I should have thought that your knowledge of what my life has been would have gone far to excuse a lack of cheerfulness in me.”

The irony of this laborious period was full of self-pity. His voice quavered at the close, and a tremor was noticeable in his stiff frame.

“It isn’t lack of cheerfulness that I mean, father. That could never have brought me to speak like this.”

“If you wish me to admit that I am bad-tempered, surly, irritable⁠—I make no difficulty about that. The charge is true enough. I can only ask you again: What are the circumstances that have ruined my temper? When you present yourself here with a general accusation of my behaviour, I am at a loss to understand what you ask of me, what you wish me to say or do. I must beg you to speak plainly. Are you suggesting that I should make provision for the support of you and your mother away from my intolerable proximity? My income is not large, as I think you are aware, but of course, if a demand of this kind is seriously made, I must do my best to comply with it.”

“It hurts me very much that you can understand me no better than this.”

“I am sorry. I think we used to understand each other, but that was before you were subjected to the influence of strangers.”

In his perverse frame of mind he was ready to give utterance to any thought which confused the point at issue. This last allusion was suggested to him by a sudden pang of regret for the pain he was causing Marian; he defended himself against self-reproach by hinting at the true reason of much of his harshness.

“I am subjected to no influence that is hostile to you,” Marian replied.

“You may think that. But in such a matter it is very easy for you to deceive yourself.”

“Of course I know what you refer to, and I can assure you that I don’t deceive myself.”

Yule flashed a searching glance at her.

“Can you deny that you are on terms of friendship with a⁠—a person who would at any moment rejoice to injure me?”

“I am friendly with no such person. Will you say whom you are thinking of?”

“It would be useless. I have no wish to discuss a subject on which we should only disagree unprofitably.”

Marian kept silence for a moment, then said in a low, unsteady voice:

“It is perhaps because we never speak of that subject that we are so far from understanding each other. If you think that Mr. Milvain is your enemy, that he would rejoice to injure you, you are grievously mistaken.”

“When I see a man in close alliance with my worst enemy, and looking to that enemy for favour, I am justified in thinking that he would injure me if the right kind of opportunity offered. One need not be very deeply read in human nature to have assurance of that.”

“But I know Mr. Milvain!”

“You know him?”

“Far better than you can, I am sure. You draw conclusions from general principles; but I know that they don’t apply in this case.”

“I have no doubt you sincerely think so. I repeat that nothing can be gained by such a discussion as this.”

“One thing I must tell you. There was no truth in your suspicion that Mr. Milvain wrote that review in The Current. He assured me himself that he was not the writer, that he had nothing to do with it.”

Yule looked askance at her, and his face displayed solicitude, which soon passed, however, into a smile of sarcasm.

“The gentleman’s word no doubt has weight with you.”

“Father, what do you mean?” broke from Marian, whose eyes of a sudden flashed stormily. “Would Mr. Milvain tell me a lie?”

“I shouldn’t like to say that it is impossible,” replied her father in the same tone as before.

“But⁠—what right have you to insult him so grossly?”

“I have every right, my dear child, to express an opinion about him or any other man, provided I do it honestly. I beg you not to strike attitudes and address me in the language of the stage. You insist on my speaking plainly, and I have spoken plainly. I warned you that we were not likely to agree on this topic.”

“Literary quarrels have made you incapable of judging honestly in things such as this. I wish I could have done forever with the hateful profession that so poisons men’s minds.”

“Believe me, my girl,” said her father, incisively, “the simpler thing would be to hold aloof from such people as use the profession in a spirit of unalloyed selfishness, who seek only material advancement, and who, whatever connection they form, have nothing but self-interest in view.”

And he glared at her with much meaning. Marian⁠—both had remained standing all through the dialogue⁠—cast down her eyes and became lost in brooding.

“I speak with profound conviction,” pursued her father, “and, however little you credit me with such a motive, out of desire to guard you against the dangers to which your inexperience is exposed. It is perhaps as well that you have afforded me this⁠—”

There sounded at the house-door that duplicated double-knock which generally announces the bearer of a telegram. Yule interrupted himself, and stood in an attitude of waiting. The servant was heard to go along the passage, to open the door, and then return towards the study. Yes, it was a telegram. Such despatches rarely came to this house; Yule tore the envelope, read its contents, and stood with gaze fixed upon the slip of paper until the servant inquired if there was any reply for the boy to take with him.

“No reply.”

He slowly crumpled the envelope, and stepped aside to throw it into the paper-basket. The telegram he laid on his desk. Marian stood all the time with bent head; he now looked at her with an expression of meditative displeasure.

“I don’t know that there’s much good in resuming our conversation,” he said, in quite a changed tone, as if something of more importance had taken possession of his thoughts and had made him almost indifferent to the past dispute. “But of course I am quite willing to hear anything you would still like to say.”

Marian had lost her vehemence. She was absent and melancholy.

“I can only ask you,” she replied, “to try and make life less of a burden to us.”

“I shall have to leave town tomorrow for a few days; no doubt it will be some satisfaction to you to hear that.”

Marian’s eyes turned involuntarily towards the telegram.

“As for your occupation in my absence,” he went on, in a hard tone which yet had something tremulous, emotional, making it quite different from the voice he had hitherto used, “that will be entirely a matter for your own judgment. I have felt for some time that you assisted me with less goodwill than formerly, and now that you have frankly admitted it, I shall of course have very little satisfaction in requesting your aid. I must leave it to you; consult your own inclination.”

It was resentful, but not savage; between the beginning and the end of his speech he softened to a sort of self-satisfied pathos.

“I can’t pretend,” replied Marian, “that I have as much pleasure in the work as I should have if your mood were gentler.”

“I am sorry. I might perhaps have made greater efforts to appear at ease when I was suffering.”

“Do you mean physical suffering?”

“Physical and mental. But that can’t concern you. During my absence I will think of your reproof. I know that it is deserved, in some degree. If it is possible, you shall have less to complain of in future.”

He looked about the room, and at length seated himself; his eyes were fixed in a direction away from Marian.

“I suppose you had dinner somewhere?” Marian asked, after catching a glimpse of his worn, colourless face.

“Oh, I had a mouthful of something. It doesn’t matter.”

It seemed as if he found some special pleasure in assuming this tone of martyrdom just now. At the same time he was becoming more absorbed in thought.

“Shall I have something brought up for you, father?”

“Something⁠—? Oh no, no; on no account.”

He rose again impatiently, then approached his desk, and laid a hand on the telegram. Marian observed this movement, and examined his face; it was set in an expression of eagerness.

“You have nothing more to say, then?” He turned sharply upon her.

“I feel that I haven’t made you understand me, but I can say nothing more.”

“I understand you very well⁠—too well. That you should misunderstand and mistrust me, I suppose, is natural. You are young, and I am old. You are still full of hope, and I have been so often deceived and defeated that I dare not let a ray of hope enter my mind. Judge me; judge me as hardly as you like. My life has been one long, bitter struggle, and if now⁠—. I say,” he began a new sentence, “that only the hard side of life has been shown to me; small wonder if I have become hard myself. Desert me; go your own way, as the young always do. But bear in mind my warning. Remember the caution I have given you.”

He spoke in a strangely sudden agitation. The arm with which he leaned upon the table trembled violently. After a moment’s pause he added, in a thick voice:

“Leave me. I will speak to you again in the morning.”

Impressed in a way she did not understand, Marian at once obeyed, and rejoined her mother in the parlour. Mrs. Yule gazed anxiously at her as she entered.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Marian, with difficulty bringing herself to speak. “I think it will be better.”

“Was that a telegram that came?” her mother inquired after a silence.

“Yes. I don’t know where it was from. But father said he would have to leave town for a few days.”

They exchanged looks.

“Perhaps your uncle is very ill,” said the mother in a low voice.

“Perhaps so.”

The evening passed drearily. Fatigued with her emotions, Marian went early to bed; she even slept later than usual in the morning, and on descending she found her father already at the breakfast-table. No greeting passed, and there was no conversation during the meal. Marian noticed that her mother kept glancing at her in a peculiarly grave way; but she felt ill and dejected, and could fix her thoughts on no subject. As he left the table Yule said to her:

“I want to speak to you for a moment. I shall be in the study.”