New Grub Street by George Gissing Read Free Book Online Page A

a moment or two asked:
    'Did you ever come across Cottle's poem on the Malvern Hills?
No?
    It contains a couple of the richest lines ever put into
print:
It needs the evidence of close deduction
     To know that I shall ever reach the top.
    Perfectly serious poetry, mind you!'
    He barked in laughter. Impossible to interest him in anything
apart from literature; yet one saw him to be a man of solid
understanding, and not without perception of humour. He had read
vastly; his memory was a literary cyclopaedia. His failings,
obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic
individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious
circumstances.
    Towards the young man his demeanour varied between a shy
cordiality and a dignified reserve which was in danger of seeming
pretentious. On the homeward part of the walk he made a few
discreet inquiries regarding Milvain's literary achievements and
prospects, and the frank self-confidence of the replies appeared to
interest him. But he expressed no desire to number Jasper among his
acquaintances in town, and of his own professional or private
concerns he said not a word.
    'Whether he could be any use to me or not, I don't exactly
know,' Jasper remarked to his mother and sisters at dinner. 'I
suspect it's as much as he can do to keep a footing among the
younger tradesmen. But I think he might have said he was willing to
help me if he could.'
    'Perhaps,' replied Maud, 'your large way of talking made him
think any such offer superfluous.'
    'You have still to learn,' said Jasper, 'that modesty helps a
man in no department of modern life. People take you at your own
valuation. It's the men who declare boldly that they need no help
to whom practical help comes from all sides. As likely as not Yule
will mention my name to someone. "A young fellow who seems to see
his way pretty clear before him." The other man will repeat it to
somebody else, "A young fellow whose way is clear before him," and
so I come to the ears of a man who thinks "Just the fellow I want;
I must look him up and ask him if he'll do such-and-such a thing."
But I should like to see these Yules at home; I must fish for an
invitation.'
    In the afternoon, Miss Harrow and Marian came at the expected
hour. Jasper purposely kept out of the way until he was summoned to
the tea-table.
    The Milvain girls were so far from effusive, even towards old
acquaintances, that even the people who knew them best spoke of
them as rather cold and perhaps a trifle condescending; there were
people in Wattleborough who declared their airs of superiority
ridiculous and insufferable. The truth was that nature had endowed
them with a larger share of brains than was common in their circle,
and had added that touch of pride which harmonised so ill with the
restrictions of poverty. Their life had a tone of melancholy, the
painful reserve which characterises a certain clearly defined class
in the present day. Had they been born twenty years earlier, the
children of that veterinary surgeon would have grown up to a very
different, and in all probability a much happier, existence, for
their education would have been limited to the strictly needful,
and—certainly in the case of the girls—nothing would have
encouraged them to look beyond the simple life possible to a poor
man's offspring. But whilst Maud and Dora were still with their
homely schoolmistress, Wattleborough saw fit to establish a Girls'
High School, and the moderateness of the fees enabled these sisters
to receive an intellectual training wholly incompatible with the
material conditions of their life. To the relatively poor (who are
so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most
cases a mocking cruelty. The burden of their brother's support made
it very difficult for Maud and Dora even to dress as became their
intellectual station; amusements, holidays, the purchase of such
simple luxuries as were all but indispensable to them, could not be
thought of. It resulted