headachy air. Such profound discouragement possessed her that she could not even maintain the pretence of study; heedless whether anyone observed her, she let her hands fall and her head droop. She kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any mortal could cope with in his lifetime, here was she exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be more than a commodity for the day’s market. What unspeakable folly! To write—was not that the joy and the privilege of one who had an urgent message for the world?
Her father, she knew well, had no such message; he had abandoned all thought of original production, and only wrote about writing.
She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of earning money. And all these people about her, what aim had they save to make new books out of those already existing, that yet newer books might in turn be made out of theirs? This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print—how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit!
Oh, to go forth and labour with one’s hands, to do any poorest, commonest work of which the world had truly need! It was ignoble to sit here and support the paltry pretence of intellectual dignity. A few days ago her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper, headed ‘Literary Machine’; had it then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one. Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for to-day’s consumption.
The fog grew thicker; she looked up at the windows beneath the dome and saw that they were a dusky yellow. Then her eye discerned an official walking along the upper gallery, and in pursuance of her grotesque humour, her mocking misery, she likened him to a black, lost soul, doomed to wander in an eternity of vain research along endless shelves. Or again, the readers who sat here at these radiating lines of desks, what were they but hapless flies caught in a huge web, its nucleus the great circle of the Catalogue? Darker, darker. From the towering wall of volumes seemed to emanate visible motes, intensifying the obscurity; in a moment the book-lined circumference of the room would be but a featureless prison-limit.
But then flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric light, and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of headache. It reminded her how little work she had done to-day; she must, she must force herself to think of the task in hand. A machine has no business to refuse its duty. But the pages were blue and green and yellow before her eyes; the uncertainty of the light was intolerable. Right or wrong she would go home, and hide herself, and let her heart unburden itself of tears.
On her way to return books she encountered Jasper Milvain. Face to face; no possibility of his avoiding her.
And indeed he seemed to have no such wish. His countenance lighted up with unmistakable pleasure.
‘At last we meet, as they say in the melodramas. Oh, do let me help you with those volumes, which won’t even let you shake hands. How do you do? How do you like this weather? And how do you like this light?’
‘It’s very bad.’
‘That’ll do both for weather and light, but not for yourself. How glad I am to see you! Are you just going?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have scarcely been here half-a-dozen times since I came back to London.’
‘But you are writing still?’
‘Oh yes! But I draw upon my genius, and my stores of observation, and the living world.’
Marian received her vouchers for the volumes, and turned to face Jasper again. There was a smile on her lips.
‘The fog is terrible,’ Milvain went on. ‘How do you get home?’
‘By omnibus from Tottenham Court Road.’
‘Then do let me go a part of the way with you. I live in Mornington Road—up yonder, you know. I have only just come in to waste half an hour, and after all I think I should be better at home. Your father is all right, I hope?’
‘He is not quite well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. You are not exactly up to the mark, either. What weather! What a place to live in, this London, in winter! It would be a little better down at Finden.’
‘A good deal better, I should think. If the weather were bad, it would be bad in a natural way; but this is artificial misery.’
‘I don’t let it affect me much,’ said Milvain. ‘Just of late I have been in remarkably good spirits. I’m doing a lot of work. No end of work—more than I’ve ever done.’
‘I am very glad.’
‘Where are your out-of-door things? I think there’s a ladies’ vestry somewhere, isn’t there?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then will you go and get ready? I’ll wait for you in the hall. But, by-the-bye, I am taking it for granted that you were going alone.’
‘I was, quite alone.’
The ‘quite’ seemed excessive; it made Jasper smile.
‘And also,’ he added, ‘that I shall not annoy you by offering my company?’
‘Why should it annoy me?’
‘Good!’
Milvain had only to wait a minute or two. He surveyed Marian from head to foot when she appeared—an
