New Grub Street · Chapter 29 (2/3)

She faltered, but overcame her weakness.

“You are driving her away from us, Alfred. It isn’t right! Oh, it isn’t right!”

“If she didn’t go I should, so understand that! And if I go, you have seen the last of me. Make your choice, make your choice!”

He had yielded himself to that perverse frenzy which impels a man to acts and utterances most wildly at conflict with reason. His sense of the monstrous irrationality to which he was committed completed what was begun in him by the bitterness of a great frustration.

“If I wasn’t a poor, helpless woman,” replied his wife, sinking upon a chair and crying without raising her hands to her face, “I’d go and live with her till she was married, and then make a home for myself. But I haven’t a penny, and I’m too old to earn my own living; I should only be a burden to her.”

“That shall be no hindrance,” cried Yule. “Go, by all means; you shall have a sufficient allowance as long as I can continue to work, and when I’m past that, your lot will be no harder than mine. Your daughter had the chance of making provision for my old age, at no expense to herself. But that was asking too much of her. Go, by all means, and leave me to make what I can of the rest of my life; perhaps I may save a few years still from the curse brought upon me by my own folly.”

It was idle to address him. Mrs. Yule went into the sitting-room, and there sat weeping for an hour. Then she extinguished the lights, and crept upstairs in silence.

Yule passed the night in the study. Towards morning he slept for an hour or two, just long enough to let the fire go out and to get thoroughly chilled. When he opened his eyes a muddy twilight had begun to show at the window; the sounds of a clapping door within the house, which had probably awakened him, made him aware that the servant was already up.

He drew up the blind. There seemed to be a frost, for the moisture of last night had all disappeared, and the yard upon which the window looked was unusually clean. With a glance at the black grate he extinguished his lamp, and went out into the passage. A few minutes’ groping for his overcoat and hat, and he left the house.

His purpose was to warm himself with a vigorous walk, and at the same time to shake off if possible, the nightmare of his rage and hopelessness. He had no distinct feeling with regard to his behaviour of the past evening; he neither justified nor condemned himself; he did not ask himself whether Marian would today leave her home, or if her mother would take him at his word and also depart. These seemed to be details which his brain was too weary to consider. But he wished to be away from the wretchedness of his house, and to let things go as they would whilst he was absent. As he closed the front door he felt as if he were escaping from an atmosphere that threatened to stifle him.

His steps directing themselves more by habit than with any deliberate choice, he walked towards Camden Road. When he had reached Camden Town railway-station he was attracted by a coffee-stall; a draught of the steaming liquid, no matter its quality, would help his blood to circulate. He laid down his penny, and first warmed his hands by holding them round the cup. Whilst standing thus he noticed that the objects at which he looked had a blurred appearance; his eyesight seemed to have become worse this morning. Only a result of his insufficient sleep perhaps. He took up a scrap of newspaper that lay on the stall; he could read it, but one of his eyes was certainly weaker than the other; trying to see with that one alone, he found that everything became misty.

He laughed, as if the threat of new calamity were an amusement in his present state of mind. And at the same moment his look encountered that of a man who had drawn near to him, a shabbily-dressed man of middle age, whose face did not correspond with his attire.

“Will you give me a cup of coffee?” asked the stranger, in a low voice and with shamefaced manner. “It would be a great kindness.”

The accent was that of good breeding. Yule hesitated in surprise for a moment, then said:

“Have one by all means. Would you care for anything to eat?”

“I am much obliged to you. I think I should be none the worse for one of those solid slices of bread and butter.”

The stall-keeper was just extinguishing his lights; the frosty sky showed a pale gleam of sunrise.

“Hard times, I’m afraid,” remarked Yule, as his beneficiary began to eat the luncheon with much appearance of grateful appetite.

“Very hard times.” He had a small, thin, colourless countenance, with large, pathetic eyes; a slight moustache and curly beard. His clothes were such as would be worn by some very poor clerk. “I came here an hour ago,” he continued, “with the hope of meeting an acquaintance who generally goes from this station at a certain time. I have missed him, and in doing so I missed what I had thought my one chance of a breakfast. When one has neither dined nor supped on the previous day, breakfast becomes a meal of some importance.”

“True. Take another slice.”

“I am greatly obliged to you.”

“Not at all. I have known hard times myself, and am likely to know worse.”

“I trust not. This is the first time that I have positively begged. I should have been too much ashamed to beg of the kind of men who are usually at these places; they certainly have no money to spare. I was thinking of making an appeal at a baker’s shop, but it is very likely I should have been handed over to a policeman. Indeed I don’t know what I should have done; the last point of endurance was almost reached. I have no clothes but these I wear, and they are few enough for the season. Still, I suppose the waistcoat must have gone.”

He did not talk like a beggar who is trying to excite compassion, but with a sort of detached curiosity concerning the difficulties of his position.

“You can find nothing to do?” said the man of letters.

“Positively nothing. By profession I am a surgeon, but it’s a long time since I practised. Fifteen years ago I was comfortably established at Wakefield; I was married and had one child. But my capital ran out, and my practice, never anything to boast of, fell to nothing. I succeeded in getting a place as an assistant to a man at Chester. We sold up, and started on the journey.”

He paused, looking at Yule in a strange way.

“What happened then?”

“You probably don’t remember a railway accident that took place near Crewe in that year⁠—it was 1869? I and my wife and child were alone in a carriage that was splintered. One moment I was talking with them, in fairly good spirits, and my wife was laughing at something I had said; the next, there were two crushed, bleeding bodies at my feet. I had a broken arm, that was all. Well, they were killed on the instant; they didn’t suffer. That has been my one consolation.”

Yule kept the silence of sympathy.

“I was in a lunatic asylum for more than a year after that,” continued the man. “Unhappily, I didn’t lose my senses at the moment; it took two or three weeks to bring me to that pass. But I recovered, and there has been no return of the disease. Don’t suppose that I am still of unsound mind. There can be little doubt that poverty will bring me to that again in the end; but as yet I am perfectly sane. I have supported myself in various ways. No, I don’t drink; I see the question in your face. But I am physically weak, and, to quote Mrs. Gummidge, ‘things go contrary with me.’ There’s no use lamenting; this breakfast has helped me on, and I feel in much better spirits.”

“Your surgical knowledge is no use to you?”

The other shook his head and sighed.

“Did you ever give any special attention to diseases of the eyes?”

“Special, no. But of course I had some acquaintance with the subject.”

“Could you tell by examination whether a man was threatened with cataract, or anything of that kind?”

“I think I could.”

“I am speaking of myself.”

The stranger made a close scrutiny of Yule’s face, and asked certain questions with reference to his visual sensations.

“I hardly like to propose it,” he said at length, “but if you were willing to accompany me to a very poor room that I have not far from here, I could make the examination formally.”

“I will go with you.”

They turned away from the stall, and the ex-surgeon led into a by-street. Yule wondered at himself for caring to seek such a singular consultation, but he had a pressing desire to hear some opinion as to the state of his eyes. Whatever the stranger might tell him, he would afterwards have recourse to a man of recognised standing; but just now companionship of any kind was welcome, and the poor hungry fellow, with his dolorous life-story, had made appeal to his sympathies. To give money under guise of a fee would be better than merely offering alms.

“This is the house,” said his guide, pausing at a dirty door. “It isn’t inviting, but the people are honest, so far as I know. My room is at the top.”

“Lead on,” answered Yule.

In the room they entered was nothing noticeable; it was only the poorest possible kind of bedchamber, or all but the poorest possible. Daylight had now succeeded to dawn, yet the first thing the stranger did was to strike a match and light a candle.

“Will you kindly place yourself with your back to the window?” he said. “I am going to apply what is called the catoptric test. You have probably heard of it?”

“My ignorance of scientific matters is fathomless.”

The other smiled, and at once offered a simple explanation of the term. By the appearance of the candle as it reflected itself in the patient’s eye it was possible, he said, to decide whether cataract had taken hold upon the organ.

For a minute or two he conducted his experiment carefully, and Yule was at no loss to read the result upon his face.

“How long have you suspected that something was wrong?” the surgeon asked, as he put down the candle.

“For several months.”

“You haven’t consulted anyone?”

“No one. I have kept putting it off. Just tell me what you have discovered.”

“The back of the right lens is affected beyond a doubt.”

“That means, I take it, that before very long I shall be practically blind?”

“I don’t like to speak with an air of authority. After all, I am only a surgeon who has bungled himself into pauperdom. You must see a competent man; that much I can tell you in all earnestness. Do you use your eyes much?”

“Fourteen hours a day, that’s all.”

“H’m! You are a literary man, I think?”

“I am. My name is Alfred Yule.”

He had some faint hope that the name might be recognised; that would have gone far, for the moment, to counteract his trouble. But not even this poor satisfaction was to be granted him; to his hearer the name evidently conveyed nothing.

“See a competent man, Mr. Yule. Science has advanced rapidly since the days when I was a student; I am only able to assure you of the existence of disease.”

They talked for half an hour, until both were shaking with cold. Then Yule thrust his hand into his pocket.

“You will of course allow me to offer such return as I am able,” he said. “The information isn’t pleasant, but I am glad to have it.”

He laid five shillings on the chest of drawers⁠—there was no table. The stranger expressed his gratitude.

“My name is Duke,” he said, “and I was christened Victor⁠—possibly because I was doomed to defeat in life. I wish you could have associated the memory of me with happier circumstances.”

They shook hands, and Yule quitted the house.

He came out again by Camden Town station. The coffee-stall had disappeared; the traffic of the great highway was growing uproarious. Among all the strugglers for existence who rushed this way and that, Alfred Yule felt himself a man chosen for fate’s heaviest infliction. He never questioned the accuracy of the stranger’s judgment, and he hoped for no mitigation of the doom it threatened. His life was over⁠—and wasted.

He might as well go home, and take his place meekly by the fireside. He was beaten. Soon to be a useless old man, a burden and annoyance to whosoever had pity on him.

It was a curious effect of the imagination that since coming into the open air again his eyesight seemed to be far worse than before. He irritated his nerves of vision by incessant tests, closing first one eye then the other, comparing his view of nearer objects with the appearance of others more remote, fancying an occasional pain⁠—which could have had no connection with his disease. The literary projects which had stirred so actively in his mind twelve hours ago were become an insubstantial memory; to the one crushing blow had succeeded a second, which was fatal. He could hardly recall what special piece of work he had been engaged upon last night. His thoughts were such as if actual blindness had really fallen upon him.

At half-past eight he entered the house. Mrs. Yule was standing at the foot of the stairs; she looked at him, then turned away towards the kitchen. He went upstairs. On coming down again he found breakfast ready as usual, and seated himself at the table. Two letters waited for him there; he opened them.

When Mrs. Yule came into the room a few moments later she was astonished by a burst of loud, mocking laughter from her husband, excited, as it appeared, by something he was reading.

“Is Marian up?” he asked, turning to her.

“Yes.”

“She is not coming to breakfast?”

“No.”

“Then just take that letter to her, and ask her to read it.”

Mrs. Yule ascended to her daughter’s bedroom. She knocked, was bidden enter, and found Marian packing clothes in a trunk. The girl looked as if she had been up all night; her eyes bore the traces of much weeping.

“He has come back, dear,” said Mrs. Yule, in the low voice of apprehension, “and he says you are to read this letter.”

Marian took the sheet, unfolded it, and read. As soon as she had reached the end she looked wildly at her mother, seemed to endeavour vainly to speak, then fell to the floor in unconsciousness. The mother was only just able to break the violence of her fall. Having snatched a pillow and placed it beneath Marian’s head, she rushed to the door and called loudly for her husband, who in a moment appeared.

“What is it?” she cried to him. “Look, she has fallen down in a faint. Why are you treating her like this?”

“Attend to her,” Yule replied roughly. “I suppose you know better than I do what to do when a person faints.”

The swoon lasted for several minutes.

“What’s in the letter?” asked Mrs. Yule whilst chafing the lifeless hands.

“Her money’s lost. The people who were to pay it have just failed.”

“She won’t get anything?”

“Most likely nothing at all.”

The letter was a private communication from one of John Yule’s executors. It seemed likely that the demand upon Turberville & Co. for an account of the deceased partner’s share in their business had helped to bring about a crisis in affairs that were already unstable. Something might be recovered in the legal proceedings that would result, but there were circumstances which made the outlook very doubtful.

As Marian came to herself her father left the room. An hour afterwards Mrs. Yule summoned him again to the girl’s chamber; he went, and found Marian lying on the bed, looking like one who had been long ill.

“I wish to ask you a few questions,” she said, without raising herself. “Must my legacy necessarily be paid out of that investment?”

“It must. Those are the terms of the will.”

“If nothing can be recovered from those people, I have no remedy?”

“None whatever that I can see.”

“But when a firm is bankrupt they generally pay some portion of their debts?”

“Sometimes. I know nothing of the case.”

“This of course happens to me,” Marian said, with intense bitterness. “None of the other legatees will suffer, I suppose?”

“Someone must, but to a very small extent.”

“Of course. When shall I have direct information?”

“You can write to Mr. Holden; you have his address.”

“Thank you. That’s all.”