New Grub Street · Chapter 25 (3/3)

“But that is not answering me, Amy.”

“It’s all I can say.”

“Then you mean that you would sacrifice yourself out of⁠—what? Out of pity for me, let us say.”

“Do you wish to see Willie?” asked Amy, instead of replying.

“No. It is you I have come to see. The child is nothing to me, compared with you. It is you, who loved me, who became my wife⁠—you only I care about. Tell me you will try to be as you used to be. Give me only that hope, Amy; I will ask nothing except that, now.”

“I can’t say anything except that I will come to Croydon if you wish it.”

“And reproach me always because you have to live in such a place, away from your friends, without a hope of the social success which was your dearest ambition?”

Her practical denial that she loved him wrung this taunt from his anguished heart. He repented the words as soon as they were spoken.

“What is the good?” exclaimed Amy in irritation, rising and moving away from him. “How can I pretend that I look forward to such a life with any hope?”

He stood in mute misery, inwardly cursing himself and his fate.

“I have said I will come,” she continued, her voice shaken with nervous tension. “Ask me or not, as you please, when you are ready to go there. I can’t talk about it.”

“I shall not ask you,” he replied. “I will have no woman slave dragging out a weary life with me. Either you are my willing wife, or you are nothing to me.”

“I am married to you, and that can’t be undone. I repeat that I shan’t refuse to obey you. I shall say no more.”

She moved to a distance, and there seated herself, half turned from him.

“I shall never ask you to come,” said Reardon, breaking a short silence. “If our married life is ever to begin again it must be of your seeking. Come to me of your own will, and I shall never reject you. But I will die in utter loneliness rather than ask you again.”

He lingered a few moments, watching her; she did not move. Then he took his hat, went in silence from the room, and left the house.

It rained harder than before. As no trains were running at this hour, he walked in the direction where he would be likely to meet with an omnibus. But it was a long time before one passed which was any use to him. When he reached home he was in cheerless plight enough; to make things pleasanter, one of his boots had let in water abundantly.

“The first sore throat of the season, no doubt,” he muttered to himself.

Nor was he disappointed. By Tuesday the cold had firm grip of him. A day or two of influenza or sore throat always made him so weak that with difficulty he supported the least physical exertion; but at present he must go to his work at the hospital. Why stay at home? To what purpose spare himself? It was not as if life had any promise for him. He was a machine for earning so much money a week, and would at least give faithful work for his wages until the day of final breakdown.

But, midway in the week, Carter discovered how ill his clerk was.

“You ought to be in bed, my dear fellow, with gruel and mustard plasters and all the rest of it. Go home and take care of yourself⁠—I insist upon it.”

Before leaving the office, Reardon wrote a few lines to Biffen, whom he had visited on the Monday. “Come and see me if you can. I am down with a bad cold, and have to keep in for the rest of the week. All the same, I feel far more cheerful. Bring a new chapter of your exhilarating romance.”