第53章 THE FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY(6)

'I shall never,' said Biffen, 'write anything like a dramatic scene. Such things do happen in life, but so very rarely that they are nothing to my purpose. Even when they happen, by-the-bye, it is in a shape that would be useless to the ordinary novelist; he would have to cut away this circumstance, and add that. Why? I should like to know. Such conventionalism results from stage necessities. Fiction hasn't yet outgrown the influence of the stage on which it originated. Whatever a man writes FOR EFFECT is wrong and bad.'

'Only in your view. There may surely exist such a thing as the ART of fiction.'

'It is worked out. We must have a rest from it. You, now--the best things you have done are altogether in conflict with novelistic conventionalities. It was because that blackguard review of "On Neutral Ground" clumsily hinted this that I first thought of you with interest. No, no; let us copy life. When the man and woman are to meet for a great scene of passion, let it all be frustrated by one or other of them having a bad cold in the head, and so on. Let the pretty girl get a disfiguring pimple on her nose just before the ball at which she is going to shine.

Show the numberless repulsive features of common decent life.

Seriously, coldly; not a hint of facetiousness, or the thing becomes different.'

About eight o'clock Reardon heard his wife's knock at the door.

On opening he saw not only Amy and the servant, the latter holding Willie in her arms, but with them Jasper Milvain.

'I have been at Mrs Yule's,' Jasper explained as he came in.

'Have you anyone here?'

'Biffen.'

'Ah, then we'll discuss realism.'

'That's over for the evening. Greek metres also.'

'Thank Heaven!'

The three men seated themselves with joking and laughter, and the smoke of their pipes gathered thickly in the little room. It was half an hour before Amy joined them. Tobacco was no disturbance to her, and she enjoyed the kind of talk that was held on these occasions; but it annoyed her that she could no longer play the hostess at a merry supper-table.

'Why ever are you sitting in your overcoat, Mr Biffen?' were her first words when she entered.

'Please excuse me, Mrs Reardon. It happens to be more convenient this evening.'

She was puzzled, but a glance from her husband warned her not to pursue the subject.

Biffen always behaved to Amy with a sincerity of respect which had made him a favourite with her. To him, poor fellow, Reardon seemed supremely blessed. That a struggling man of letters should have been able to marry, and such a wife, was miraculous in Biffen's eyes. A woman's love was to him the unattainable ideal;already thirty-five years old, he had no prospect of ever being rich enough to assure himself a daily dinner; marriage was wildly out of the question. Sitting here, he found it very difficult not to gaze at Amy with uncivil persistency. Seldom in his life had he conversed with educated women, and the sound of this clear voice was always more delightful to him than any music.

Amy took a place near to him, and talked in her most charming way of such things as she knew interested him. Biffen's deferential attitude as he listened and replied was in strong contrast with the careless ease which marked Jasper Milvain. The realist would never smoke in Amy's presence, but Jasper puffed jovial clouds even whilst she was conversing with him.

'Whelpdale came to see me last night,' remarked Milvain, presently. 'His novel is refused on all hands. He talks of earning a living as a commission agent for some sewing-machine people.'

'I can't understand how his book should be positively refused,'

said Reardon. 'The last wasn't altogether a failure.'

'Very nearly. And this one consists of nothing but a series of conversations between two people. It is really a dialogue, not a novel at all. He read me some twenty pages, and I no longer wondered that he couldn't sell it.'

'Oh, but it has considerable merit,' put in Biffen. 'The talk is remarkably true.'

'But what's the good of talk that leads to nothing?' protested Jasper.

'It's a bit of real life.'

'Yes, but it has no market value. You may write what you like, so long as people are willing to read you. Whelpdale's a clever fellow, but he can't hit a practical line.'

'Like some other people I have heard of;' said Reardon, laughing.

'But the odd thing is, that he always strikes one as practical-minded. Don't you feel that, Mrs Reardon?'

He and Amy talked for a few minutes, and Reardon, seemingly lost in meditation, now and then observed them from the corner of his eye.

At eleven o'clock husband and wife were alone again.

'You don't mean to say,' exclaimed Amy, 'that Biffen has sold his coat?'

'Or pawned it.'

'But why not the overcoat?'

'Partly, I should think, because it's the warmer of the two;partly, perhaps, because the other would fetch more.'

'That poor man will die of starvation, some day, Edwin.'

'I think it not impossible.'

'I hope you gave him something to eat?'

'Oh yes. But I could see he didn't like to take as much as he wanted. I don't think of him with so much pity as I used that's a result of suffering oneself.'

Amy set her lips and sighed.