yourself a week to invent a sensational plot, and then a fortnight for the writing. Have it ready for the new season at the end of October. If you like, don’t put your name to it; your name certainly would have no weight with this sort of public. Just make it a matter of business, as Mr Milvain says, and see if you can’t earn some money.’
He stood and regarded her. His expression was one of pained perplexity.
‘You mustn’t forget, Amy, that it needs a particular kind of faculty to write stories of this sort. The invention of a plot is just the thing I find most difficult.’
‘But the plot may be as silly as you like, providing it holds the attention of vulgar readers. Think of “The Hollow Statue”, what could be more idiotic? Yet it sells by thousands.’
‘I don’t think I can bring myself to that,’ Reardon said, in a low voice.
‘Very well, then will you tell me what you propose to do?’
‘I might perhaps manage a novel in two volumes, instead of three.’
He seated himself at the writing-table, and stared at the blank sheets of paper in an anguish of hopelessness.
‘It will take you till Christmas,’ said Amy, ‘and then you will get perhaps fifty pounds for it.’
‘I must do my best. I’ll go out and try to get some ideas. I— ’
He broke off and looked steadily at his wife.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Suppose I were to propose to you to leave this flat and take cheaper rooms?’
He uttered it in a shamefaced way, his eyes falling. Amy kept silence.
‘We might sublet it,’ he continued, in the same tone, ‘for the last year of the lease.’
‘And where do you propose to live?’ Amy inquired, coldly.
‘There’s no need to be in such a dear neighbourhood. We could go to one of the outer districts. One might find three unfurnished rooms for about eight-and-sixpence a week — less than half our rent here.’
‘You must do as seems good to you.’
‘For Heaven’s sake, Amy, don’t speak to me in that way! I can’t stand that! Surely you can see that I am driven to think of every possible resource. To speak like that is to abandon me. Say you can’t or won’t do it, but don’t treat me as if you had no share in my miseries!’
She was touched for the moment.
‘I didn’t mean to speak unkindly, dear. But think what it means, to give up our home and position. That is open confession of failure. It would be horrible.’
‘I won’t think of it. I have three months before Christmas, and I will finish a book!’
‘I really can’t see why you shouldn’t. Just do a certain number of pages every day. Good or bad, never mind; let the pages be finished. Now you have got two chapters — ’
‘No; that won’t do. I must think of a better subject.’
Amy made a gesture of impatience.
‘There you are! What does the subject matter? Get this book finished and sold, and then do something better next time.’
‘Give me to-night, just to think. Perhaps one of the old stories I have thrown aside will come back in a clearer light. I’ll go out for an hour; you don’t mind being left alone?’
‘You mustn’t think of such trifles as that.’
‘But nothing that concerns you in the slightest way is a trifle to me — nothing! I can’t bear that you should forget that. Have patience with me, darling, a little longer.’
He knelt by her, and looked up into her face.
‘Say only one or two kind words — like you used to!’
She passed her hand lightly over his hair, and murmured something with a faint smile.
Then Reardon took his hat and stick and descended the eight flights of stone steps, and walked in the darkness round the outer circle of Regent’s Park, racking his fagged brain in a hopeless search for characters, situations, motives.
Chapter 5
The Way Hither
Even in mid-rapture of his marriage month he had foreseen this possibility; but fate had hitherto rescued him in sudden ways when he was on the brink of self-abandonment, and it was hard to imagine that this culmination of triumphant joy could be a preface to base miseries.
He was the son of a man who had followed many different pursuits, and in none had done much more than earn a livelihood. At the age of forty — when Edwin, his only child, was ten years old — Mr Reardon established himself in the town of Hereford as a photographer, and there he abode until his death, nine years after, occasionally risking some speculation not inconsistent with the photographic business, but always with the result of losing the little capital he ventured. Mrs Reardon died when Edwin had reached his fifteenth year. In breeding and education she was superior to her husband, to whom, moreover, she had brought something between four and five hundred pounds; her temper was passionate in both senses of the word, and the marriage could hardly be called a happy one, though it was never disturbed by serious discord. The photographer was a man of whims and idealisms; his wife had a strong vein of worldly ambition. They made few friends, and it was Mrs Reardon’s frequently expressed desire to go and live in London, where fortune, she thought, might be kinder to them. Reardon had all but made up his mind to try this venture when he suddenly became a widower; after that he never summoned energy to embark on new enterprises.
The boy was educated at an excellent local school; at eighteen he had a far better acquaintance with the ancient classics than most lads who have been expressly prepared for a university, and, thanks to an anglicised Swiss who acted as an assistant in Mr Reardon’s business, he not only read French, but could talk it with a certain haphazard fluency. These attainments, however, were not of much practical use; the best that could be done for Edwin was to place him in the office of an estate agent. His health was indifferent, and it seemed likely that open-air exercise, of which he would have a good deal under the particular circumstances of the case, might counteract the effects of study too closely pursued.
At his father’s death he came into possession (practically it was put at his disposal at once, though he was little more than nineteen) of about two hundred pounds — a life-insurance for five hundred had been sacrificed to exigencies not very long before. He had no difficulty in deciding how to use this money. His mother’s desire to live in London had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook himself to the metropolis.
To become a literary man, of course.
His capital lasted him nearly four years, for, notwithstanding
