clerkship, it will relieve me from the necessity of perpetually writing novels; I shall be better for it in every way. You know that I’m equal to the job; you can trust me; and I dare say I shall be more useful than most clerks you could get.’
It was done, most happily done, on the first impulse. A minute more of pause, and he could not have faced the humiliation. His face burned, his tongue was parched.
‘I’m floored!’ cried Carter. ‘I shouldn’t have thought—but of course, if you really want it. I can hardly believe yet that you’re serious, Reardon.’
‘Why not? Will you promise me the work?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘When shall I have to begin?’
‘The place’ll be opened tomorrow week. But how about your holiday?’
‘Oh, let that stand over. It’ll be holiday enough to occupy myself in a new way. An old way, too; I shall enjoy it.’
He laughed merrily, relieved beyond measure at having come to what seemed an end of his difficulties. For half an hour they continued to talk over the affair.
‘Well, it’s a comical idea,’ said Carter, as he took his leave, ‘but you know your own business best.’
When Amy returned, Reardon allowed her to put the child to bed before he sought any conversation. She came at length and sat down in the study.
‘Mother advises us not to sell the furniture,’ were her first words.
‘I’m glad of that, as I had quite made up my mind not to.’ There was a change in his way of speaking which she at once noticed.
‘Have you thought of something?’
‘Yes. Carter has been here, and he happened to mention that they’re opening an out-patient department of the hospital, in the City Road. He’ll want someone to help him there. I asked for the post, and he promised it me.’
The last words were hurried, though he had resolved to speak with deliberation. No more feebleness; he had taken a decision, and would act upon it as became a responsible man.
‘The post?’ said Amy. ‘What post?’
‘In plain English, the clerkship. It’ll be the same work as I used to have—registering patients, receiving their “letters,” and so on. The pay is to be five-and-twenty shillings a week.’
Amy sat upright and looked steadily at him.
‘Is this a joke?’
‘Far from it, dear. It’s a blessed deliverance.’
‘You have asked Mr Carter to take you back as a clerk?’
‘I have.’
‘And you propose that we shall live on twenty-five shillings a week?’
‘Oh no! I shall be engaged only three mornings in the week and three evenings. In my free time I shall do literary work, and no doubt I can earn fifty pounds a year by it—if I have your sympathy to help me. Tomorrow I shall go and look for rooms some distance from here; in Islington, I think. We have been living far beyond our means; that must come to an end. We’ll have no more keeping up of sham appearances. If I can make my way in literature, well and good; in that case our position and prospects will of course change. But for the present we are poor people, and must live in a poor way. If our friends like to come and see us, they must put aside all snobbishness, and take us as we are. If they prefer not to come, there’ll be an excuse in our remoteness.’
Amy was stroking the back of her hand. After a long silence, she said in a very quiet, but very resolute tone:
‘I shall not consent to this.’
‘In that case, Amy, I must do without your consent. The rooms will be taken, and our furniture transferred to them.’
‘To me that will make no difference,’ returned his wife, in the same voice as before. ‘I have decided—as you told me to—to go with Willie to mother’s next Tuesday. You, of course, must do as you please. I should have thought a summer at the seaside would have been more helpful to you; but if you prefer to live in Islington—’
Reardon approached her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
‘Amy, are you my wife, or not?’
‘I am certainly not the wife of a clerk who is paid so much a week.’
He had foreseen a struggle, but without certainty of the form Amy’s opposition would take. For himself he meant to be gently resolute, calmly regardless of protest. But in a man to whom such self-assertion is a matter of conscious effort, tremor of the nerves will always interfere with the line of conduct he has conceived in advance. Already Reardon had spoken with far more bluntness than he proposed; involuntarily, his voice slipped from earnest determination to the note of absolutism, and, as is wont to be the case, the sound of these strange tones instigated him to further utterances of the same kind. He lost control of himself. Amy’s last reply went through him like an electric shock, and for the moment he was a mere husband defied by his wife, the male stung to exertion of his brute force against the physically weaker sex.
‘However you regard me, you will do what I think fit. I shall not argue with you. If I choose to take lodgings in Whitechapel, there you will come and live.’
He met Amy’s full look, and was conscious of that in it which corresponded to his own brutality. She had become suddenly a much older woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips were bloodlessly hard,
