New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕

upon his countenance a hope that he would again be privileged to meet Miss Dora Milvain.

“Not a bad fellow, in his way,” said Jasper, when Dora and he were alone again.

“Not at all.”

She had heard the story of Whelpdale’s hapless wooing half a year ago, and her recollection of it explained the smile with which she spoke.

“Never get on, I’m afraid,” Jasper pursued. “He has his allowance of twenty pounds a year, and makes perhaps fifty or sixty more. If I were in his position, I should go in for some kind of regular business; he has people who could help him. Good-natured fellow; but what’s the use of that if you’ve no money?”

They set out together, and walked to the girls’ lodgings. Dora was about to use her latchkey, but Jasper checked her. “No. There’s a light in the kitchen still; better knock, as we’re so late.”

“But why?”

“Never mind; do as I tell you.”

The landlady admitted them, and Jasper spoke a word or two with her, explaining that he would wait until his elder sister’s return; the darkness of the second-floor windows had shown that Maud was not yet back.

“What strange fancies you have!” remarked Dora, when they were upstairs.

“So have people in general, unfortunately.”

A letter lay on the table. It was addressed to Maud, and Dora recognised the handwriting as that of a Wattleborough friend.

“There must be some news here,” she said. “Mrs. Haynes wouldn’t write unless she had something special to say.”

Just upon midnight, a cab drew up before the house. Dora ran down to open the door to her sister, who came in with very bright eyes and more colour than usual on her cheeks.

“How late for you to be here!” she exclaimed, on entering the sitting-room and seeing Jasper.

“I shouldn’t have felt comfortable till I knew that you were back all right.”

“What fear was there?”

She threw off her wraps, laughing.

“Well, have you enjoyed yourself?”

“Oh yes!” she replied, carelessly. “This letter for me? What has Mrs. Haynes got to say, I wonder?”

She opened the envelope, and began to glance hurriedly over the sheet of paper. Then her face changed.

“What do you think? Mr. Yule is dead!”

Dora uttered an exclamation; Jasper displayed the keenest interest.

“He died yesterday⁠—no, it would be the day before yesterday. He had a fit of some kind at a public meeting, was taken to the hospital because it was nearest, and died in a few hours. So that has come, at last! Now what’ll be the result of it, I wonder?”

“When shall you be seeing Marian?” asked her brother.

“She might come tomorrow evening.”

“But won’t she go to the funeral?” suggested Dora.

“Perhaps; there’s no saying. I suppose her father will, at all events. The day before yesterday? Then the funeral will be on Saturday, I should think.”

“Ought I to write to Marian?” asked Dora.

“No; I wouldn’t,” was Jasper’s reply. “Better wait till she lets you hear. That’s sure to be soon. She may have gone to Wattleborough this afternoon, or be going tomorrow morning.”

The letter from Mrs. Haynes was passed from hand to hand. “Everybody feels sure,” it said, “that a great deal of his money will be left for public purposes. The ground for the park being already purchased, he is sure to have made provision for carrying out his plans connected with it. But I hope your friends in London may benefit.”

It was some time before Jasper could put an end to the speculative conversation and betake himself homewards. And even on getting back to his lodgings he was little disposed to go to bed. This event of John Yule’s death had been constantly in his mind, but there was always a fear that it might not happen for long enough; the sudden announcement excited him almost as much as if he were a relative of the deceased.

“Confound his public purposes!” was the thought upon which he at length slept.

XXI Mr. Yule Leaves Town

Since the domestic incidents connected with that unpleasant review in The Current, the relations between Alfred Yule and his daughter had suffered a permanent change, though not in a degree noticeable by anyone but the two concerned. To all appearances, they worked together and conversed very much as they had been wont to do; but Marian was made to feel in many subtle ways that her father no longer had complete confidence in her, no longer took the same pleasure as formerly in the skill and conscientiousness of her work, and Yule on his side perceived too clearly that the girl was preoccupied with something other than her old wish to aid and satisfy him, that she had a new life of her own alien to, and in some respects irreconcilable with, the existence in which he desired to confirm her. There was no renewal of open disagreement, but their conversations frequently ended by tacit mutual consent, at a point which threatened divergence; and in Yule’s case every such warning was a cause of intense irritation. He feared to provoke Marian, and this fear was again a torture to his pride.

Beyond the fact that his daughter was in constant communication with the Miss Milvains, he knew, and could discover, nothing of the terms on which she stood with the girls’ brother, and this ignorance was harder to bear than full assurance of a disagreeable fact would have been. That a man like Jasper Milvain, whose name was every now and then forced upon his notice as a rising periodicalist and a faithful henchman of the unspeakable Fadge⁠—that a young fellow of such excellent prospects should seriously attach himself to a girl like Marian seemed to him highly improbable, save, indeed, for the one consideration, that Milvain, who assuredly had a very keen eye to chances, might regard the girl as a niece of old John Yule, and therefore worth holding in view until it was decided whether or not she would benefit by her uncle’s decease. Fixed in his antipathy to the young man, he would not