New Grub Street · Chapter 23 (2/2)

“Name it as you will,” returned her father, hardly suppressing a note of irritation. “True, every commercial enterprise is a speculation. But let me ask you one question, and beg you to reply frankly. Do you distrust my ability to conduct this periodical?”

She did. She knew that he was not in touch with the interests of the day, and that all manner of considerations akin to the prime end of selling his review would make him an untrustworthy editor.

But how could she tell him this?

“My opinion would be worthless,” she replied.

“If Jedwood were disposed to put confidence in me, you also would?”

“There’s no need to talk of that now, father. Indeed, I can’t say anything that would sound like a promise.”

He flashed a glance at her. Then she was more than doubtful?

“But you have no objection, Marian, to talk in a friendly way of a project that would mean so much to me?”

“But I am afraid to encourage you,” she replied, frankly. “It is impossible for me to say whether I can do as you wish, or not.”

“Yes, yes; I perfectly understand that. Heaven forbid that I should regard you as a child to be led independently of your own views and wishes! With so large a sum of money at stake, it would be monstrous if I acted rashly, and tried to persuade you to do the same. The matter will have to be most gravely considered.”

“Yes.” She spoke mechanically.

“But if only it should come to something! You don’t know what it would mean to me, Marian.”

“Yes, father; I know very well how you think and feel about it.”

“Do you?” He leaned forward, his features working under stress of emotion. “If I could see myself the editor of an influential review, all my bygone toils and sufferings would be as nothing; I should rejoice in them as the steps to this triumph. Meminisse juvabit! My dear, I am not a man fitted for subordinate places. My nature is framed for authority. The failure of all my undertakings rankles so in my heart that sometimes I feel capable of every brutality, every meanness, every hateful cruelty. To you I have behaved shamefully. Don’t interrupt me, Marian. I have treated you abominably, my child, my dear daughter⁠—and all the time with a full sense of what I was doing. That’s the punishment of faults such as mine. I hate myself for every harsh word and angry look I have given you; at the time, I hated myself!”

“Father⁠—”

“No, no; let me speak, Marian. You have forgiven me; I know it. You were always ready to forgive, dear. Can I ever forget that evening when I spoke like a brute, and you came afterwards and addressed me as if the wrong had been on your side? It burns in my memory. It wasn’t I who spoke; it was the demon of failure, of humiliation. My enemies sit in triumph, and scorn at me; the thought of it is infuriating. Have I deserved this? Am I the inferior of⁠—of those men who have succeeded and now try to trample on me? No! I am not! I have a better brain and a better heart!”

Listening to this strange outpouring, Marian more than forgave the hypocrisy of the last day or two. Nay, could it be called hypocrisy? It was only his better self declared at the impulse of a passionate hope.

“Why should you think so much of these troubles, father? Is it such a great matter that narrow-minded people triumph over you?”

“Narrow-minded?” He clutched at the word. “You admit they are that?”

“I feel very sure that Mr. Fadge is.”

“Then you are not on his side against me?”

“How could you suppose such a thing?”

“Well, well; we won’t talk of that. Perhaps it isn’t a great matter. No⁠—from a philosophical point of view, such things are unspeakably petty. But I am not much of a philosopher.” He laughed, with a break in his voice. “Defeat in life is defeat, after all; and unmerited failure is a bitter curse. You see, I am not too old to do something yet. My sight is failing, but I can take care of it. If I had my own review, I would write every now and then a critical paper in my very best style. You remember poor old Hinks’s note about me in his book? We laughed at it, but he wasn’t so far wrong. I have many of those qualities. A man is conscious of his own merits as well as of his defects. I have done a few admirable things. You remember my paper on Lord Herbert of Cherbury? No one ever wrote a more subtle piece of criticism; but it was swept aside among the rubbish of the magazines. And it’s just because of my pungent phrases that I have excited so much enmity. Wait! Wait! Let me have my own review, and leisure, and satisfaction of mind⁠—heavens! what I will write! How I will scarify!”

“That is unworthy of you. How much better to ignore your enemies! In such a position, I should carefully avoid every word that betrayed personal feeling.”

“Well, well; you are of course right, my good girl. And I believe I should do injustice to myself if I made you think that those ignoble motives are the strongest in me. No; it isn’t so. From my boyhood I have had a passionate desire of literary fame, deep down below all the surface faults of my character. The best of my life has gone by, and it drives me to despair when I feel that I have not gained the position due to me. There is only one way of doing this now, and that is by becoming the editor of an important periodical. Only in that way shall I succeed in forcing people to pay attention to my claims. Many a man goes to his grave unrecognised, just because he has never had a fair judgment. Nowadays it is the unscrupulous men of business who hold the attention of the public; they blow their trumpets so loudly that the voices of honest men have no chance of being heard.”

Marian was pained by the humility of his pleading with her⁠—for what was all this but an endeavour to move her sympathies?⁠—and by the necessity she was under of seeming to turn a deaf ear. She believed that there was some truth in his estimate of his own powers; though as an editor he would almost certainly fail, as a man of letters he had probably done far better work than some who had passed him by on their way to popularity. Circumstances might enable her to assist him, though not in the way he proposed. The worst of it was that she could not let him see what was in her mind. He must think that she was simply balancing her own satisfaction against his, when in truth she suffered from the conviction that to yield would be as unwise in regard to her father’s future as it would be perilous to her own prospect of happiness.

“Shall we leave this to be talked of when the money has been paid over to me?” she said, after a silence.

“Yes. Don’t suppose I wish to influence you by dwelling on my own hardships. That would be contemptible. I have only taken this opportunity of making myself better known to you. I don’t readily talk of myself and in general my real feelings are hidden by the faults of my temper. In suggesting how you could do me a great service, and at the same time reap advantage for yourself, I couldn’t but remember how little reason you have to think kindly of me. But we will postpone further talk. You will think over what I have said?”

Marian promised that she would, and was glad to bring the conversation to an end.

When Sunday came, Yule inquired of his daughter if she had any engagement for the afternoon.

“Yes, I have,” she replied, with an effort to disguise her embarrassment.

“I’m sorry. I thought of asking you to come with me to Quarmby’s. Shall you be away through the evening?”

“Till about nine o’clock, I think.”

“Ah! Never mind, never mind.”

He tried to dismiss the matter as if it were of no moment, but Marian saw the shadow that passed over his countenance. This was just after breakfast. For the remainder of the morning she did not meet him, and at the midday dinner he was silent, though he brought no book to the table with him, as he was wont to do when in his dark moods. Marian talked with her mother, doing her best to preserve the appearance of cheerfulness which was natural since the change in Yule’s demeanour.

She chanced to meet her father in the passage just as she was going out. He smiled (it was more like a grin of pain) and nodded, but said nothing.

When the front door closed, he went into the parlour. Mrs. Yule was reading, or, at all events, turning over a volume of an illustrated magazine.

“Where do you suppose she has gone?” he asked, in a voice which was only distant, not offensive.

“To the Miss Milvains, I believe,” Mrs. Yule answered, looking aside.

“Did she tell you so?”

“No. We don’t talk about it.”

He seated himself on the corner of a chair and bent forward, his chin in his hand.

“Has she said anything to you about the review?”

“Not a word.”

She glanced at him timidly, and turned a few pages of her book.

“I wanted her to come to Quarmby’s, because there’ll be a man there who is anxious that Jedwood should start a magazine, and it would be useful for her to hear practical opinions. There’d be no harm if you just spoke to her about it now and then. Of course if she has made up her mind to refuse me it’s no use troubling myself any more. I should think you might find out what’s really going on.”

Only dire stress of circumstances could have brought Alfred Yule to make distinct appeal for his wife’s help. There was no underhand plotting between them to influence their daughter; Mrs. Yule had as much desire for the happiness of her husband as for that of Marian, but she felt powerless to effect anything on either side.

“If ever she says anything, I’ll let you know.”

“But it seems to me that you have a right to question her.”

“I can’t do that, Alfred.”

“Unfortunately, there are a good many things you can’t do.” With that remark, familiar to his wife in substance, though the tone of it was less caustic than usual, he rose and sauntered from the room. He spent a gloomy hour in the study, then went off to join the literary circle at Mr. Quarmby’s.