‘I think’ said Jasper, as he entered the room where his mother and Maud
were busy with plain needlework, ‘I must have met Alfred Yule and his
daughter.’
‘How did you recognise them?’ Mrs Milvain inquired.
‘I passed an old buffer and a pale-faced girl whom I know by sight at
the British Museum. It wasn’t near Yule’s house, but they were taking a
walk.’
‘They may have come already. When Miss Harrow was here last, she said
“in about a fortnight.”’
‘No mistaking them for people of these parts, even if I hadn’t
remembered their faces. Both of them are obvious dwellers in the valley
of the shadow of books.’
‘Is Miss Yule such a fright then?’ asked Maud.
‘A fright! Not at all. A good example of the modern literary girl. I
suppose you have the oddest old-fashioned ideas of such people. No,
I rather like the look of her. Simpatica, I should think, as that ass
Whelpdale would say. A very delicate, pure complexion, though morbid;
nice eyes; figure not spoilt yet. But of course I may be wrong about
their identity.’
Later in the afternoon Jasper’s conjecture was rendered a certainty.
Maud had walked to Wattleborough, where she would meet Dora on the
latter’s return from her teaching, and Mrs Milvain sat alone, in a
mood of depression; there was a ring at the door-bell, and the servant
admitted Miss Harrow.
This lady acted as housekeeper to Mr John Yule, a wealthy resident in
this neighbourhood; she was the sister of his deceased wife--a thin,
soft-speaking, kindly woman of forty-five. The greater part of her life
she had spent as a governess; her position now was more agreeable, and
the removal of her anxiety about the future had developed qualities of
cheerfulness which formerly no one would have suspected her to possess.
The acquaintance between Mrs Milvain and her was only of twelve months’
standing; prior to that, Mr Yule had inhabited a house at the end of
Wattleborough remote from Finden.
‘Our London visitors came yesterday,’ she began by saying.
Mrs Milvain mentioned her son’s encounter an hour or two ago.
‘No doubt it was they,’ said the visitor. ‘Mrs Yule hasn’t come; I
hardly expected she would, you know. So very unfortunate when there are
difficulties of that kind, isn’t it?’
She smiled confidentially.
‘The poor girl must feel it,’ said Mrs Milvain.
‘I’m afraid she does. Of course it narrows the circle of her friends at
home. She’s a sweet girl, and I should so like you to meet her. Do come
and have tea with us to-morrow afternoon, will you? Or would it be too
much for you just now?’
‘Will you let the girls call? And then perhaps Miss Yule will be so good
as to come and see me?’
‘I wonder whether Mr Milvain would like to meet her father? I have
thought that perhaps it might be some advantage to him. Alfred is so
closely connected with literary people, you know.’
‘I feel sure he would be glad,’ replied Mrs Milvain. ‘But--what of
Jasper’s friendship with Mrs Edmund Yule and the Reardons? Mightn’t it
be a little awkward?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so, unless he himself felt it so. There would be no
need to mention that, I should say. And, really, it would be so much
better if those estrangements came to an end. John makes no scruple of
speaking freely about everyone, and I don’t think Alfred regards Mrs
Edmund with any serious unkindness. If Mr Milvain would walk over with
the young ladies to-morrow, it would be very pleasant.’
‘Then I think I may promise that he will. I’m sure I don’t know where he
is at this moment. We don’t see very much of him, except at meals.’
‘He won’t be with you much longer, I suppose?’
‘Perhaps a week.’
Before Miss Harrow’s departure Maud and Dora reached home. They were
curious to see the young lady from the valley of the shadow of books,
and gladly accepted the invitation offered them.
They set out on the following afternoon in their brother’s company. It
was only a quarter of an hour’s walk to Mr Yule’s habitation, a small
house in a large garden. Jasper was coming hither for the first time;
his sisters now and then visited Miss Harrow, but very rarely saw Mr
Yule himself who made no secret of the fact that he cared little for
female society. In Wattleborough and the neighbourhood opinions varied
greatly as to this gentleman’s character, but women seldom spoke
very favourably of him. Miss Harrow was reticent concerning her
brother-in-law; no one, however, had any reason to believe that she
found life under his roof disagreeable. That she lived with him at all
was of course occasionally matter for comment, certain Wattleborough
ladies having their doubts regarding the position of a deceased wife’s
sister under such circumstances; but no one was seriously exercised
about the relations between this sober lady of forty-five and a man of
sixty-three in broken health.
A word of the family history.
John, Alfred, and Edmund Yule were the sons of a Wattleborough
stationer. Each was well educated, up to the age of seventeen, at the
town’s grammar school. The eldest, who was a hot-headed lad, but showed
capacities for business, worked at first with his father, endeavouring
to add a bookselling department to the trade in stationery; but the life
of home was not much to his taste, and at one-and-twenty he obtained a
clerk’s place in the office of a London newspaper. Three years after,
his father died, and the small patrimony which fell to him he used
in making himself practically acquainted with the details of paper
manufacture, his aim being to establish himself in partnership with an
acquaintance who had started a small paper-mill in Hertfordshire.
His speculation succeeded, and as years went on he became a thriving
manufacturer. His brother Alfred, in the meantime, had drifted from work
at a London bookseller’s into the modern Grub Street, his adventures in
which region will concern us hereafter.
Edmund carried on the Wattleborough business, but with small success.
Between him and his eldest brother existed a good deal of affection,
and in the end John offered him a share in his flourishing paper works;
whereupon Edmund married, deeming himself well established for life. But
John’s temper was a difficult one; Edmund and he quarrelled, parted; and
when the younger died, aged about forty, he left but moderate provision
for his widow and two children.
Only when he had reached middle age did John marry; the experiment
could not be called successful, and Mrs Yule died three years later,
childless.
At fifty-four John Yule retired from active business; he came back to
the scenes of his early life, and began to take an important part in the
municipal affairs of Wattleborough. He was then a remarkably robust man,
fond of out-of-door exercise; he made it one of his chief efforts to
encourage the local Volunteer movement, the cricket and football clubs,
public sports of every kind, showing no sympathy whatever with those
persons who wished to establish free libraries, lectures, and the like.
At his own expense he built for the Volunteers a handsome drill-shed;
he founded a public gymnasium; and finally he allowed it to be rumoured
that he was going to present the town with a park. But by presuming too
far upon the bodily vigour which prompted these activities, he passed of
a sudden into the state of a confirmed invalid. On an autumn expedition
in the Hebrides he slept one night under the open sky, with the result
that he had an all but fatal attack of rheumatic fever. After that,
though the direction of his interests was unchanged, he could no longer
set the example to Wattleborough youth of muscular manliness. The
infliction did not improve his temper; for the next year or two he was
constantly at warfare with one or other of his colleagues and friends,
ill brooking that the familiar control of various local interests should
fall out of his hands. But before long he appeared to resign himself
to his fate, and at present Wattleborough saw little of him. It seemed
likely that he might still found the park which was to bear his name;
but perhaps it would only be done in consequence of directions in his
will. It was believed that he could not live much longer.
With his kinsfolk he held very little communication. Alfred Yule, a
battered man of letters, had visited Wattleborough only twice (including
the present occasion) since John’s return hither. Mrs Edmund Yule, with
her daughter--now Mrs Reardon--had been only once, three years ago.
These two families, as you have heard, were not on terms of amity with
each other, owing to difficulties between Mrs Alfred and Mrs Edmund; but
John seemed to regard both impartially. Perhaps the only real warmth of
feeling he had ever known was bestowed upon Edmund, and Miss Harrow had
remarked that he spoke with somewhat more interest of Edmund’s daughter,
Amy, than of Alfred’s daughter, Marian. But it was doubtful whether the
sudden disappearance from the earth of all his relatives would greatly
have troubled him. He lived a life of curious self-absorption, reading
newspapers (little else), and talking with old friends who had stuck to
him in spite of his irascibility.
Miss Harrow received her visitors in a small and soberly furnished
drawing-room. She was nervous, probably because of Jasper Milvain, whom
she had met but once--last spring--and who on that occasion had struck
her as an alarmingly modern young man. In the shadow of a window-curtain
sat a slight, simply-dressed girl, whose short curly hair and thoughtful
countenance Jasper again recognised. When it was his turn to be
presented to Miss Yule, he saw that she doubted for an instant whether
or not to give her hand; yet she decided to do so, and there was
something very pleasant to him in its warm softness. She smiled with a
slight embarrassment, meeting his look only for a second.
‘I have seen you several times, Miss Yule,’ he said in a friendly way,
‘though without knowing your name. It was under the great dome.’
She laughed, readily understanding his phrase.
‘I am there very often,’ was her reply.
‘What great dome?’ asked Miss Harrow, with surprise.
‘That of the British Museum Reading-room,’ explained Jasper; ‘known to
some of us as the valley of the shadow of books. People who often work
there necessarily get to know each other by sight.
In the same way I knew Miss Yule’s father when I happened to pass him in
the road yesterday.’
The three girls began to converse together, perforce of trivialities.
Marian Yule spoke in rather slow tones, thoughtfully, gently; she had
linked her fingers, and laid her hands, palms downwards, upon her lap--a
nervous action. Her accent was pure, unpretentious; and she used none of
the fashionable turns of speech which would have suggested the habit of
intercourse with distinctly metropolitan society.
‘You must wonder how we exist in this out-of-the-way place,’ remarked
Maud.
‘Rather, I envy you,’ Marian answered, with a slight emphasis.
The door opened, and Alfred Yule presented himself. He was tall, and his
head seemed a disproportionate culmination to his meagre body, it was so
large and massively featured. Intellect and uncertainty of temper were
equally marked upon his visage; his brows were knitted in a permanent
expression of severity. He had thin, smooth hair, grizzled whiskers, a
shaven chin. In the multitudinous wrinkles of his face lay a history of
laborious and stormy life; one readily divined in him a struggling and
embittered man. Though he looked older than his years, he had by no
means the appearance of being beyond the ripeness of his mental vigour.
‘It pleases me to meet you, Mr Milvain,’ he said, as he stretched out
his bony hand. ‘Your name reminds me of a paper in The Wayside a month
or two ago, which you will perhaps allow a veteran to say was not ill
done.’
‘I am grateful to you for noticing it,’ replied Jasper.
There was positively a touch of visible warmth upon his cheek. The
allusion had come so unexpectedly that it caused him keen pleasure.
Mr Yule seated himself awkwardly, crossed his legs, and began to stroke
the back of his left hand, which lay on his knee. He seemed to have
nothing more to say at present, and allowed Miss Harrow and the girls to
support conversation. Jasper listened with a smile for a minute or two,
then he addressed the veteran.’Have you seen The Study this week, Mr
Yule?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you notice that it contains a very favourable review of a novel
which was tremendously abused in the same columns three weeks ago?’
Mr Yule started, but Jasper could perceive at once that his emotion was
not disagreeable.
‘You don’t say so.’
‘Yes. The novel is Miss Hawk’s “On the Boards.” How will the editor get
out of this?’
‘H’m! Of course Mr Fadge is not immediately responsible; but it’ll be
unpleasant for him, decidedly unpleasant.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You hear
this, Marian?’
‘How is it explained, father?’
‘May be accident, of course; but--well, there’s no knowing. I think
it very likely this will be the end of Mr Fadge’s tenure of office.
Rackett, the proprietor, only wants a plausible excuse for making a
change. The paper has been going downhill for the last year; I know of
two publishing houses who have withdrawn their advertising from it, and
who never send their books for review. Everyone foresaw that kind of
thing from the day Mr Fadge became editor. The tone of his paragraphs
has been detestable. Two reviews of the same novel, eh? And
diametrically opposed? Ha! Ha!’
Gradually he had passed from quiet appreciation of the joke to
undisguised mirth and pleasure. His utterance of the name ‘Mr Fadge’
sufficiently intimated that he had some cause of personal discontent
with the editor of The Study.
‘The author,’ remarked Milvain, ‘ought to make a good thing out of
this.’
‘Will, no doubt. Ought to write at once to the papers, calling attention
to this sample of critical impartiality. Ha! ha!’
He rose and went to the window, where for several minutes he stood
gazing at vacancy, the same grim smile still on his face. Jasper in the
meantime amused the ladies (his sisters had heard him on the subject
already) with a description of the two antagonistic notices. But he
did not trust himself to express so freely as he had done at home his
opinion of reviewing in general; it was more than probable that both
Yule and his daughter did a good deal of such work.
‘Suppose we go into the garden,’ suggested Miss Harrow, presently. ‘It
seems a shame to sit indoors on such a lovely afternoon.’
Hitherto there had been no mention of the master of the house. But Mr
Yule now remarked to Jasper:
‘My brother would be glad if you would come and have a word with him. He
isn’t quite well enough to leave his room to-day.’
So, as the ladies went gardenwards, Jasper followed the man of letters
upstairs to a room on the first floor. Here, in a deep cane chair, which
was placed by the open window, sat John Yule. He was completely dressed,
save that instead of coat he wore a dressing-gown. The facial
likeness between him and his brother was very strong, but John’s
would universally have been judged the finer countenance; illness
notwithstanding, he had a complexion which contrasted in its pure colour
with Alfred’s parchmenty skin, and there was more finish about his
features. His abundant hair was reddish, his long moustache and trimmed
beard a lighter shade of the same hue.
‘So you too are in league with the doctors,’ was his bluff greeting,
as he held a hand to the young man and inspected him with a look of
slighting good-nature.
‘Well, that certainly is one way of regarding the literary profession,’
admitted Jasper, who had heard enough of John’s way of thinking to
understand the remark.
‘A young fellow with all the world before him, too. Hang it, Mr Milvain,
is there no less pernicious work you can turn your hand to?’
‘I’m afraid not, Mr Yule. After all, you know, you must be held in a
measure responsible for my depravity.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I understand that you have devoted most of your life to the making
of paper. If that article were not so cheap and so abundant, people
wouldn’t have so much temptation to scribble.’
Alfred Yule uttered a short laugh.
‘I think you are cornered, John.’
‘I wish,’ answered John, ‘that you were both condemned to write on such
paper as I chiefly made; it was a special kind of whitey-brown, used by
shopkeepers.’
He chuckled inwardly, and at the same time reached out for a box of
cigarettes on a table near him. His brother and Jasper each took one as
he offered them, and began to smoke.
‘You would like to see literary production come entirely to an end?’
said Milvain.
‘I should like to see the business of literature abolished.’
‘There’s a distinction, of course. But, on the whole, I should say that
even the business serves a good purpose.’
‘What purpose?’
‘It helps to spread civilisation.’
‘Civilisation!’ exclaimed John, scornfully. ‘What do you mean by
civilisation? Do you call it civilising men to make them weak, flabby
creatures, with ruined eyes and dyspeptic stomachs? Who is it that
reads most of the stuff that’s poured out daily by the ton from the
printing-press? Just the men and women who ought to spend their leisure
hours in open-air exercise; the people who earn their bread by sedentary
pursuits, and who need to live as soon as they are free from the desk
or the counter, not to moon over small print. Your Board schools, your
popular press, your spread of education! Machinery for ruining the
country, that’s what I call it.’
‘You have done a good deal, I think, to counteract those influences in
Wattleborough.’
‘I hope so; and if only I had kept the use of my limbs I’d have done a
good deal more. I have an idea of offering substantial prizes to men
and women engaged in sedentary work who take an oath to abstain from all
reading, and keep it for a certain number of years. There’s a good deal
more need for that than for abstinence from strong liquor. If I could
have had my way I would have revived prize-fighting.’
His brother laughed with contemptuous impatience.
‘You would doubtless like to see military conscription introduced into
England?’ said Jasper.
‘Of course I should! You talk of civilising; there’s no such way of
civilising the masses of the people as by fixed military service. Before
mental training must come training of the body. Go about the Continent,
and see the effect of military service on loutish peasants and the
lowest classes of town population. Do you know why it isn’t even more
successful? Because the damnable education movement interferes. If
Germany would shut up her schools and universities for the next quarter
of a century and go ahead like blazes with military training there’d be
a nation such as the world has never seen. After that, they might begin
a little book-teaching again--say an hour and a half a day for everyone
above nine years old. Do you suppose, Mr Milvain, that society is going
to be reformed by you people who write for money? Why, you are the very
first class that will be swept from the face of the earth as soon as the
reformation really begins!’
Alfred puffed at his cigarette. His thoughts were occupied with Mr
Fadge and The Study. He was considering whether he could aid in bringing
public contempt upon that literary organ and its editor. Milvain
listened to the elder man’s diatribe with much amusement.
‘You, now,’ pursued John, ‘what do you write about?’
‘Nothing in particular. I make a salable page or two out of whatever
strikes my fancy.’
‘Exactly! You don’t even pretend that you’ve got anything to say. You
live by inducing people to give themselves mental indigestion--and
bodily, too, for that matter.’
‘Do you know, Mr Yule, that you have suggested a capital idea to me? If
I were to take up your views, I think it isn’t at all unlikely that
I might make a good thing of writing against writing. It should be my
literary specialty to rail against literature. The reading public should
pay me for telling them that they oughtn’t to read. I must think it
over.’
‘Carlyle has anticipated you,’ threw in Alfred.
‘Yes, but in an antiquated way. I would base my polemic on the newest
philosophy.’
He developed the idea facetiously, whilst John regarded him as he might
have watched a performing monkey.
‘There again! your new philosophy!’ exclaimed the invalid. ‘Why, it
isn’t even wholesome stuff, the kind of reading that most of you
force on the public. Now there’s the man who has married one of my
nieces--poor lass! Reardon, his name is. You know him, I dare say.
Just for curiosity I had a look at one of his books; it was called “The
Optimist.” Of all the morbid trash I ever saw, that beat everything. I
thought of writing him a letter, advising a couple of anti-bilious pills
before bedtime for a few weeks.’
Jasper glanced at Alfred Yule, who wore a look of indifference.
‘That man deserves penal servitude in my opinion,’ pursued John. ‘I’m
not sure that it isn’t my duty to offer him a couple of hundred a year
on condition that he writes no more.’
Milvain, with a clear vision of his friend in London, burst into
laughter. But at that point Alfred rose from his chair.
‘Shall we rejoin the ladies?’ he said, with a certain pedantry
of phrase and manner which often characterised him.
‘Think over your ways whilst you’re still young,’ said John as he shook
hands with his visitor.
‘Your brother speaks quite seriously, I suppose?’ Jasper remarked when
he was in the garden with Alfred.
‘I think so. It’s amusing now and then, but gets rather tiresome when
you hear it often. By-the-bye, you are not personally acquainted with Mr
Fadge?’
‘I didn’t even know his name until you mentioned it.’
‘The most malicious man in the literary world. There’s no
uncharitableness in feeling a certain pleasure when he gets into a
scrape. I could tell you incredible stories about him; but that kind of
thing is probably as little to your taste as it is to mine.’
Miss Harrow and her companions, having caught sight of the pair, came
towards them. Tea was to be brought out into the garden.
‘So you can sit with us and smoke, if you like,’ said Miss Harrow to
Alfred. ‘You are never quite at your ease, I think, without a pipe.’
But the man of letters was too preoccupied for society. In a few minutes
he begged that the ladies would excuse his withdrawing; he had two or
three letters to write before post-time, which was early at Finden.
Jasper, relieved by the veteran’s departure, began at once to make
himself very agreeable company. When he chose to lay aside the topic of
his own difficulties and ambitions, he could converse with a spontaneous
gaiety which readily won the good-will of listeners. Naturally
he addressed himself very often to Marian Yule, whose attention
complimented him. She said little, and evidently was at no time a free
talker, but the smile on her face indicated a mood of quiet enjoyment.
When her eyes wandered, it was to rest on the beauties of the garden,
the moving patches of golden sunshine, the forms of gleaming cloud.
Jasper liked to observe her as she turned her head: there seemed to him
a particular grace in the movement; her head and neck were admirably
formed, and the short hair drew attention to this.
It was agreed that Miss Harrow and Marian should come on the second
day after to have tea with the Milvains. And when Jasper took leave of
Alfred Yule, the latter expressed a wish that they might have a walk
together one of these mornings.