‘Impossible; I know,’ Marian replied earnestly. ‘Don’t think that I wish to justify my father. But I can understand him, and it must be very difficult for you to do so. You can’t know, as I do, how intensely he has suffered in these wretched, ignoble quarrels. If only you will let me come here still, in the same way, and still be as friendly to me. My home has never been a place to which I could have invited friends with any comfort, even if I had had any to invite. There were always reasons—but I can’t speak of them.’
‘My dear Marian,’ appealed Dora, ‘don’t distress yourself so! Do believe that nothing whatever has happened to change our feeling to you. Has there, Maud?’
‘Nothing whatever. We are not unreasonable girls, Marian.’
‘I am more grateful to you than I can say.’
It had seemed as if Marian must give way to the emotions which all but choked her voice; she overcame them, however, and presently was able to talk in pretty much her usual way, though when she smiled it was but faintly. Maud tried to lead her thoughts in another direction by speaking of work in which she and Dora were engaged. Already the sisters were doing a new piece of compilation for Messrs Jolly and Monk; it was more exacting than their initial task for the book market, and would take a much longer time.
A couple of hours went by, and Marian had just spoken of taking her leave, when a man’s step was heard rapidly ascending the nearest flight of stairs.
‘Here’s Jasper,’ remarked Dora, and in a moment there sounded a short, sharp summons at the door.
Jasper it was; he came in with radiant face, his eyes blinking before the lamplight.
‘Well, girls! Ha! how do you do, Miss Yule? I had just the vaguest sort of expectation that you might be here. It seemed a likely night; I don’t know why. I say, Dora, we really must get two or three decent easy-chairs for your room. I’ve seen some outside a second-hand furniture shop in Hampstead Road, about six shillings apiece. There’s no sitting on chairs such as these.’
That on which he tried to dispose himself, when he had flung aside his trappings, creaked and shivered ominously.
‘You hear? I shall come plump on to the floor, if I don’t mind. My word, what a day I have had! I’ve just been trying what I really could do in one day if I worked my hardest. Now just listen; it deserves to be chronicled for the encouragement of aspiring youth. I got up at 7.30, and whilst I breakfasted I read through a volume I had to review. By 10.30 the review was written—three-quarters of a column of the Evening Budget.’
‘Who is the unfortunate author?’ interrupted Maud, caustically.
‘Not unfortunate at all. I had to crack him up; otherwise I couldn’t have done the job so quickly. It’s the easiest thing in the world to write laudation; only an inexperienced grumbler would declare it was easier to find fault. The book was Billington’s “Vagaries”; pompous idiocy, of course, but he lives in a big house and gives dinners. Well, from 10.30 to 11, I smoked a cigar and reflected, feeling that the day wasn’t badly begun. At eleven I was ready to write my Saturday causerie for the Will o’ the Wisp; it took me till close upon one o’clock, which was rather too long. I can’t afford more than an hour and a half for that job. At one, I rushed out to a dirty little eating-house in Hampstead Road. Was back again by a quarter to two, having in the meantime sketched a paper for The West End. Pipe in mouth, I sat down to leisurely artistic work; by five, half the paper was done; the other half remains for tomorrow. From five to half-past I read four newspapers and two magazines, and from half-past to a quarter to six I jotted down several ideas that had come to me whilst reading. At six I was again in the dirty eating-house, satisfying a ferocious hunger. Home once more at 6.45, and for two hours wrote steadily at a long affair I have in hand for The Current. Then I came here, thinking hard all the way. What say you to this? Have I earned a night’s repose?’
‘And what’s the value of it all?’ asked Maud.
‘Probably from ten to twelve guineas, if I calculated.’
‘I meant, what was the literary value of it?’ said his sister, with a smile.
‘Equal to that of the contents of a mouldy nut.’
‘Pretty much what I thought.’
‘Oh, but it answers the purpose,’ urged Dora, ‘and it does no one any harm.’
‘Honest journey-work!’ cried Jasper. ‘There are few men in London capable of such a feat. Many a fellow could write more in quantity, but they couldn’t command my market. It’s rubbish, but rubbish of a very special kind, of fine quality.’
Marian had not yet spoken, save a word or two in reply to Jasper’s greeting; now and then she just glanced at him, but for the most part her eyes were cast down. Now Jasper addressed her.
‘A year ago, Miss Yule, I shouldn’t have believed myself capable of such activity. In fact I wasn’t capable of it then.’
‘You think such work won’t be too great a strain upon you?’ she asked.
‘Oh, this isn’t a specimen day, you know. Tomorrow I shall very likely do nothing but finish my West End article, in an easy two or three hours. There’s no knowing; I might perhaps keep up the high pressure if I tried. But then I couldn’t dispose of all the work. Little by little—or perhaps rather quicker than that—I shall extend my scope. For instance, I should like to do two or three leaders a week for one of the big dailies. I can’t attain unto that just yet.’
‘Not political leaders?’
‘By no means. That’s not my line. The kind of thing in which one makes a column out of what would fill six lines of respectable prose. You call a cigar a “convoluted weed,” and so on, you know; that passes for facetiousness. I’ve never really tried my hand at that style yet; I shouldn’t wonder if I managed it brilliantly. Some day I’ll write a few exercises; just take two lines of some good prose writer, and expand them into twenty, in half-a-dozen different ways. Excellent mental gymnastics!’
Marian listened to his flow of talk for a few minutes longer, then took the opportunity of a brief silence to rise and put on her hat. Jasper observed her, but without rising; he looked at his sisters in a hesitating way. At length he stood up, and declared that he too must be off. This coincidence had happened once before when he met Marian here in the evening.
