New Grub Street. George Gissing

your father,’ he said, as Marian turned. ‘Isn’t he here?’

      ‘He has gone, Mr Hinks.’

      ‘Ah, then would you do me the kindness to take a book for him? In fact, it’s my little “Essay on the Historical Drama,” just out.’

      He spoke with nervous hesitation, and in a tone which seemed to make apology for his existence.

      ‘Oh, father will be very glad to have it.’

      ‘If you will kindly wait one minute, Miss Yule. It’s at my place over there.’

      He went off with long strides, and speedily came back panting, in his hand a thin new volume.

      ‘My kind regards to him, Miss Yule. You are quite well, I hope? I won’t detain you.’

      And he backed into a man who was coming inobservantly this way.

      Marian went to the ladies’ cloak-room, put on her hat and jacket, and left the Museum. Some one passed out through the swing-door a moment before her, and as soon as she had issued beneath the portico, she saw that it was Jasper Milvain; she must have followed him through the hall, but her eyes had been cast down. The young man was now alone; as he descended the steps he looked to left and right, but not behind him. Marian followed at a distance of two or three yards. Nearing the gateway, she quickened her pace a little, so as to pass out into the street almost at the same moment as Milvain. But he did not turn his head.

      He took to the right. Marian had fallen back again, but she still followed at a very little distance. His walk was slow, and she might easily have passed him in quite a natural way; in that case he could not help seeing her. But there was an uneasy suspicion in her mind that he really must have noticed her in the Reading-room. This was the first time she had seen him since their parting at Finden. Had he any reason for avoiding her? Did he take it ill that her father had shown no desire to keep up his acquaintance?

      She allowed the interval between them to become greater. In a minute or two Milvain turned up Charlotte Street, and so she lost sight of him.

      In Tottenham Court Road she waited for an omnibus that would take her to the remoter part of Camden Town; obtaining a corner seat, she drew as far back as possible, and paid no attention to her fellow-passengers. At a point in Camden Road she at length alighted, and after ten minutes’ walk reached her destination in a quiet by-way called St Paul’s Crescent, consisting of small, decent houses. That at which she paused had an exterior promising comfort within; the windows were clean and neatly curtained, and the polishable appurtenances of the door gleamed to perfection. She admitted herself with a latch-key, and went straight upstairs without encountering anyone.

      Descending again in a few moments, she entered the front room on the ground-floor. This served both as parlour and dining-room; it was comfortably furnished, without much attempt at adornment. On the walls were a few autotypes and old engravings. A recess between fireplace and window was fitted with shelves, which supported hundreds of volumes, the overflow of Yule’s library. The table was laid for a meal. It best suited the convenience of the family to dine at five o’clock; a long evening, so necessary to most literary people, was thus assured. Marian, as always when she had spent a day at the Museum, was faint with weariness and hunger; she cut a small piece of bread from a loaf on the table, and sat down in an easy chair.

      Presently appeared a short, slight woman of middle age, plainly dressed in serviceable grey. Her face could never have been very comely, and it expressed but moderate intelligence; its lines, however, were those of gentleness and good feeling. She had the look of one who is making a painful effort to understand something; this was fixed upon her features, and probably resulted from the peculiar conditions of her life.

      ‘Rather early, aren’t you, Marian?’ she said, as she closed the door and came forward to take a seat.

      ‘Yes; I have a little headache.’

      ‘Oh, dear! Is that beginning again?’

      Mrs Yule’s speech was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as with hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile such propriety of phrase as she owed to years of association with educated people. In the same degree did her bearing fall short of that which distinguishes a lady. The London work-girl is rarely capable of raising herself or being raised, to a place in life above that to which she was born; she cannot learn how to stand and sit and move like a woman bred to refinement, any more than she can fashion her tongue to graceful speech. Mrs Yule’s behaviour to Marian was marked with a singular diffidence; she looked and spoke affectionately, but not with a mother’s freedom; one might have taken her for a trusted servant waiting upon her mistress. Whenever opportunity offered, she watched the girl in a curiously furtive way, that puzzled look on her face becoming very noticeable. Her consciousness was never able to accept as a familiar and unimportant fact the vast difference between herself and her daughter. Marian’s superiority in native powers, in delicacy of feeling, in the results of education, could never be lost sight of. Under ordinary circumstances she addressed the girl as if tentatively; however sure of anything from her own point of view, she knew that Marian, as often as not, had quite a different criterion. She understood that the girl frequently expressed an opinion by mere reticence, and hence the carefulness with which, when conversing, she tried to discover the real effect of her words in Marian’s features.

      ‘Hungry, too,’ she said, seeing the crust Marian was nibbling. ‘You really must have more lunch, dear. It isn’t right to go so long; you’ll make yourself ill.’

      ‘Have you been out?’ Marian asked.

      ‘Yes; I went to Holloway.’

      Mrs Yule sighed and looked very unhappy. By ‘going to Holloway’ was always meant a visit to her own relatives — a married sister with three children, and a brother who inhabited the same house. To her husband she scarcely ever ventured to speak of these persons; Yule had no intercourse with them. But Marian was always willing to listen sympathetically, and her mother often exhibited a touching gratitude for this condescension — as she deemed it.

      ‘Are things no better?’ the girl inquired.

      ‘Worse, as far as I can see. John has begun his drinking again, and him and Tom quarrel every night; there’s no peace in the ’ouse.’

      If ever Mrs Yule lapsed into gross errors of pronunciation or phrase, it was when she spoke of her kinsfolk. The subject seemed to throw her back into a former condition.

      ‘He ought to go and live by himself’ said Marian, referring to her mother’s brother, the thirsty John.

      ‘So he ought, to be sure. I’m always telling them so. But there! you don’t seem to be able to persuade them, they’re that silly and obstinate. And Susan, she only gets angry with me, and tells me not to talk in a stuck-up way. I’m sure I never say a word that could offend her; I’m too careful for that. And there’s Annie; no doing anything with her! She’s about the streets at all hours, and what’ll be the end of it no one can say. They’re getting that ragged, all of them. It isn’t Susan’s fault; indeed it isn’t. She does all that woman can. But Tom hasn’t brought home ten shillings the last month, and it seems to me as if he was getting careless. I gave her half-a-crown; it was all I could do. And the worst of it is, they think I could do so much more if I liked. They’re always hinting that we are rich people, and it’s no good my trying to persuade them. They think I’m telling falsehoods, and it’s very hard to be looked at in that way; it is, indeed, Marian.’

      ‘You can’t help it, mother. I suppose their suffering makes them unkind and unjust.’

      ‘That’s just what it does, my dear; you never said anything truer. Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see.’

      ‘I suppose father will be back soon?’

      ‘He said dinner-time.’

      ‘Mr Quarmby has been telling me something which is wonderfully good news