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ᐸsamples n="ENG18940"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18940844"ᐳMary dropped her head on her arms. The night was mysteriously still. The breeze had dropped, and an uncanny silence hung about the house. The window was shut now, the blind drawn. The two candles on the dressing-table were burning low in their sockets. When she raised her head again, the eyes were no longer triumphant, they were reproachful. ‘Who am I? Why am I here?’ they asked: ‘To live is to suffer; why do you let me live? Must I go on looking back at you until my eyes are faded, my lashes are grey, until I have run through the gamut of mental and physical pain? I am a living, suffering entity,’ said the woman in the glass, ‘in a world of artificial laws; of laws made for man's convenience and pleasure, not for mine. Have I one thing for which I have longed? Have I a human love, have I the hope of immortality, have I even tasted the intoxication of achievement? Human life is but a moment in the æons of time, and yet one little human lifetime contains an eternity of suffering. Why, since you take joy from me, why do you let me live?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940845"ᐳHere, indeed, was a greater temptation than the one from which she had just escaped. She sprang up, horrified, afraid of the haunting eyes.... Was that to be the end?ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940846"ᐳPacing the room, Mary fell to thinking of her father; of the kind-eyed enthusiast who, in his younger years at least, had little enough joy, and much toil, who had been blamed and reviled and stoned by the public, and who had worked solely and single-heartedly for truth's sake. ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,’ she suddenly said aloud. It was a line she had engraved on her father's tomb at Highgate, a favourite line of his, of that dear worker of whom, even to think, was morally bracing. Yes— ‘It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles; ....but something ere I end— Some work of noble note may yet be done,’ repeated Mary deliberately, as she walked into the little study, pulled up the blind and raised the sash.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940847"ᐳOUTSIDE was the wan light of a wet daybreak. A thin rain flipped her face, cooling her feverish cheeks. The gas-lamps already took on an orange hue, and in the east there flickered a streak of mysterious light. A faint chirruping of birds began, though London still lay mute, but soon the bird-chorus waxed louder, more shrill, more persistent. The terrible night was over. The dawn was at hand.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18940789"ᐳ‘I paint very little. I think this is almost the last open-air thing I ever did,’ she added, taking a wooden panel from under a pile of papers and holding it a little way off. ‘It was down there, you know, in that pine-y, heathery place, at Haslemere, where we went before you sailed—’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940790"ᐳ‘I remember,’ he said, gravely.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940791"ᐳAnd then something tightened at her heart as she stood near him, holding out the sketch. It was the very scene she had so often pictured when she lived here waiting for him to come back. Here was the room, lined with book-shelves; the desk, with Vincent half-turned round, while she held her smudgy little painting up for him to see. Only the years had passed away, and he was another woman's husband, the father of another woman's child....ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940792"ᐳ‘I remember,’ he repeated, softly, taking the little nervous hand that hung close to him, and looking at it intently as he held it in his.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940793"ᐳ‘Why Mary, how thin and white you are!’ he said, suddenly. ‘You can't be well. Have you seen Danby?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940794"ᐳ‘Oh, it's nothing. I'm all right,’ she answered quickly, pulling away her hand. ‘I've been worried about Jimmie. And I've—I've been working rather hard—’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940795"ᐳ‘You can't stand it, you never could,’ he muttered. ‘In the old days you used “to get away—you used to travel with your father.” Good Lord!’ continued Hemming, scrutinising her face with a swift glance which he turned instantly on the chimney stacks opposite, ‘you'll be killing yourself, and for what?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940796"ᐳ‘One works,’ said Mary, absently, ‘because one must. I'm not a person of wealth and leisure like yourself.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940797"ᐳHemming got up and strode up and down the room, his mouth working nervously at the corners as he answered—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940798"ᐳ‘Heaven knows you needn't reproach me about that. If you knew what my life is, Mary,’ he blurted out suddenly, his face turning a dark red, ‘the dreariness, the vulgarity, the commonplace of it.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940799"ᐳ‘You have your—your—wife, your child,’ she said slowly, her eyes fixed on the empty teacup in her hand, ‘and I—I have nothing.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940800"ᐳ‘My wife!’ he said derisively. ‘Yes, I have a wife. Someone who sits opposite me at dinner, who pays the bills with her own cheques, who never misses an opportunity of reminding me that I am a failure. I know—I know I'm a failure. I haven't done what she married me for; she has spent her money for nothing. Mary, the egotism of a vulgar woman is something that you cannot even conceive of.’ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18940715"ᐳ‘Certainly not, certainly not. My poor darling,’ replied the mother, ‘was the picture of health and happiness. Impossible that she should have had any trouble of which I am not aware,’ she announced, with all an old woman's fatuity.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940716"ᐳThe two doctors glanced at each other and said nothing. Mary detained the elder man downstairs.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940717"ᐳ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940718"ᐳ‘My dear young lady, I fear there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that can be done. The patient is sinking rapidly. In all probability she will not live through another day. It would be well if you could break it to her poor mother.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940719"ᐳMary stood still for a minute, leaning against the passage wall, as the two doctors closed the door softly. She heard the two carriages roll away—rolling away to other sick rooms, to pronounce, perhaps, another sentence of death before they reached home. It was nothing to them, she remembered; nothing, nothing, nothing. People died every day. Every day people were born. Some had to go, these men of science would say, to make way for others.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940720"ᐳ‘There seems to be no change—for the better,’ whispered Lady Jane an hour later, as they both stood at the bedside. ‘She is still asleep, and muttering, my poor darling. If we could only rouse her, now. I shall insist on Danby seeing her again,’ she added feverishly, patting her eyes with a lace handkerchief.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940721"ᐳMary looked at the slight figure in the bed.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940722"ᐳ‘Dear Lady Jane,’ she said softly, ‘I don't think we shall ever—be able to rouse her now.’ It struck her as curiously odd that she should be saying this to the woman near her—this woman that she always pictured at dinner-parties and drums, tapping people with her fan, carrying her bare shoulders and her little stories from drawing-room to drawing-room in the eternal monotony of good society. With a thing so poignant, so human, so pitiful as death, it seemed impossible that this charming lady could ever be associated.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940723"ᐳThe mother broke down completely, and had to be led away.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940724"ᐳTowards four o'clock someone knocked at the door, bringing up letters for Mary. They had been sent round from the lodgings in Bulstrode Street. There were several letters: one from Jimmie, one from her bootmaker, and one she saw, with a curious tight feeling at her heart, was from Vincent, and bore a Northborough post-mark. Going to the window, she bent forward in the failing light and broke the seal. Northborough, Dec. 3rd. ‘MY DEAR MARY,—You are perhaps aware that to-morrow is fixed for my marriage, and it is no exaggeration to say that I shall not feel happy when I stand at the altar in the morning unless I have a word of blessing from you, my oldest and most valued friend, on this most auspicious occasion. Although I trust that changed circumstances will not to any great extent separate us, yet I cannot help expressing the hope that such uncommon virtues, intellectual powers and remarkable perseverance [the word ‘virtues’ had been added as an after-thought, and was squeezed in between ‘uncommon’ and ‘intellectual’] as are happily yours, may be speedily and justly rewarded.’—Ever your devoted friend, ‘VINCENT HEMMING.’ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18940536"ᐳ‘Oh, that's all right,’ interrupted the editor. ‘But, my dear young lady,’ he added, ‘you've put the most extraordinary things in this last chapter. Why, there's a young man making love to his friend's wife. I can't print that sort of thing in my paper. The public won't stand it. They want thoroughly healthy reading.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940537"ᐳ‘Do they?’ said Mary, who could not help remembering the columns of unedifying matter which had lain on the breakfast-table that morning, nor the newsboys vending the latest detail of the great scandal, served red-hot at the street corners. ‘I thought,’ she continued quietly, ‘that the public would take anything—in a newspaper.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940538"ᐳFor a minute the editor looked perplexed. Then, frowning slightly, he went on: ‘Not in fiction—not in fiction. Must be fit to go into every parsonage in England. Remember that you write chiefly for healthy English homes.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940539"ᐳ‘But even the people in the country parsonage must occasionally see life as it is—or do they go about with their eyes shut?’ ventured Mary quietly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940540"ᐳ‘Well, we're not going to encourage that sort of thing,’ he said conclusively, getting up and putting his mouth to the telephone.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940541"ᐳ‘Hullo! Richards! No. Yes, of course. Not got the portrait of Lady Blaythewaite? What? Spoiled? Take another kodak into court, then. Eh? Yes. See that it's a good likeness. All the co-respondents for this week's issue. And see that they're touched up. What? Yes, yes. A couple of pages of drawings.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940542"ᐳThe editor sat down again. Their eyes met.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940543"ᐳ‘The fact is,’ he said, looking rather foolish, ‘novels are—er—well—novels. The British public doesn't expect them to be like life. And if you take my advice, Miss Erle, and cultivate your talents in the right way, you will be able to make a—a—comfortable income. Only there must be a thoroughly breezy, healthy tone.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940544"ᐳ‘Oh, as to breezy,’ said Mary, in a tired voice, ‘I never somehow feel like that. I don't know how it is, but I can't help seeing things as they are, and the truth is so supremely attractive.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940545"ᐳ‘But it is just what the public won't stand,’ repeated the editor. ‘Now take this chapter back and reconsider it. This young man, now—he isn't a principal character in the story—couldn't you make him her cousin—or her brother?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18940546"ᐳ‘Oh, anything you like,’ said Mary, taking the manuscript; ‘but I did like that chapter. I took so much trouble over it. It was a little bit of real observation.’ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG1894086"ᐳ‘Oh, there is a baby?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1894087"ᐳ‘Why, of course. A poor waxen little thing that screams all day long. I've put it out to nurse in a crêche that a friend of mine has started in Kentish Town. And now I'm trying to cultivate a sense of humour in Evelina.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1894088"ᐳ‘It will be difficult, won't it?’ said Mary, trying hard to take an interest.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1894089"ᐳ‘Never mind. It's what women ought to cultivate above all other things, especially the poorer classes. With a keen sense of the ridiculous, they would never fall in love at all; and as to improvident marriages, they simply wouldn't exist. If you could see the baby's father!—a pudding-faced boy, who helps in a tiny cheesemonger's shop down there. She “walked out” with him for two years. He is now nearly nineteen. It is all very well to smile, but it is terrible—for the woman. In the evening, when she has done her work, she lights the lamp in my little sitting-room (everything thing is quite simple, you know; only I've got a few books, and the tiny Corot from my den at Ives Court, and the Rossetti drawings), and then I read aloud while she knits. I read comic things—Dickens, Mark Twain, and so on; and when the poor girl laughs, I feel that I have scored. She isn't much more than a child, you know, and she has such a good heart. I think she likes to talk to me: she tells me her little story.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1894090"ᐳ‘A story,’ repeated Mary; ‘she has a story, then?’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1894091"ᐳ‘Oh! a common one enough down there,’ answered Alison. ‘She drifted into the East-end from Essex, about three years ago, and became a drudge-of-all-work in a family of ten, in the Mile End Road. Her master was pleased to make love to her when his wife and the eight children had gone for the day to South-end; Evelina ran out of the house, leaving her box behind, and never dared to go back. Mary, these London idylls are not pretty. She is, however, beginning to show a faint sense of the ridiculous. I believe I shall make a sensible person of Evelina.’ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1894092"ᐳMary raised her head, for she had been listening mechanically, with her eyes fixed on the ink-spots on her father's desk, the desk on which his hand had so often rested. But it was impossible not to feel cheered by Alison's whimsical yet energetic personality. She looked so bright, so alert, so capable, as she stood there, in her pretty black gown and her rakish hat, a little askew with the wind.ᐸ/pᐳ
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