CHAPTER IX. INVITA MINERVA
After all, there came a day when Edwin Reardon found himself
regularly at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum
of manuscript each four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small
hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used
would represent—thanks to the astonishing system which prevails
in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank
pages—a passable three-hundred-page volume. On an average he
could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days
for the volume, and forty-five for the completed book.
Forty-five days; an eternity in the looking forward. Yet the
calculation gave him a faint-hearted encouragement. At that rate
he might have his book sold by Christmas. It would certainly not
bring him a hundred pounds; seventy-five perhaps. But even that
small sum would enable him to pay the quarter's rent, and then
give him a short time, if only two or three weeks, of mental
rest. If such rest could not be obtained all was at an end with
him. He must either find some new means of supporting himself and
his family, or—have done with life and its responsibilities
altogether.
The latter alternative was often enough before him. He seldom
slept for more than two or three consecutive hours in the night, and the time of wakefulness was often terrible. The various sounds which marked the stages from midnight to dawn had grown miserably familiar to him; worst torture to his mind was the chiming and striking of clocks. Two of these were in general audible, that of Marylebone parish church, and that of the adjoining workhouse; the latter always sounded several minutes after its ecclesiastical neighbour, and with a difference of note which seemed to Reardon very appropriate—a thin, querulous voice, reminding one of the community it represented. After lying awake for awhile he would hear quarters sounding; if they ceased before the fourth he was glad, for he feared to know what time it was. If the hour was complete, he waited anxiously for its number. Two, three, even four, were grateful; there was still a long time before he need rise and face the dreaded task, the horrible four blank slips of paper that had to be filled ere he might sleep again. But such restfulness was only for a moment; no sooner had the workhouse bell become silent than he began to toil in his weary imagination, or else, incapable of that, to vision fearful hazards of the future. The soft breathing of Amy at his side, the contact of her warm limbs, often filled him with intolerable dread. Even now he did not believe that Amy loved him with the old love, and the suspicion was like a cold weight at his heart that to retain even her wifely sympathy, her wedded tenderness, he must achieve the impossible.
The impossible; for he could no longer deceive himself with a
hope of genuine success. If he earned a bare living, that would
be the utmost. And with bare livelihood Amy would not, could not, be content.
If he were to die a natural death it would be well for all. His
wife and the child would be looked after; they could live with
Mrs Edmund Yule, and certainly it would not be long before Amy
married again, this time a man of whose competency to maintain
her there would be no doubt. His own behaviour had been cowardly
selfishness. Oh yes, she had loved him, had been eager to believe
in him. But there was always that voice of warning in his mind; he foresaw—he knew—
And if he killed himself? Not here; no lurid horrors for that
poor girl and her relatives; but somewhere at a distance, under
circumstances which would render the recovery of his body
difficult, yet would leave no doubt of his death. Would that, again, be cowardly? The opposite, when once it was certain that to live meant poverty and wretchedness. Amy's grief, however sincere, would be but a short trial compared with what else might lie before her. The burden of supporting her and Willie would be a very slight one if she went to live in her mother's house. He considered the whole matter night after night, until perchance it happened that sleep had pity upon him for an hour before the time of rising.
Autumn was passing into winter. Dark days, which were always an
oppression to his mind, began to be frequent, and would soon
succeed each other remorselessly. Well, if only each of them
represented four written slips.