LITMIR.BIZ

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hour, and after all I think I should be better at home. Your father is all right, I hope?’

      ‘He is not quite well.’

      ‘I’m sorry to hear that. You are not exactly up to the mark, either. What weather! What a place to live in, this London, in winter! It would be a little better down at Finden.’

      ‘A good deal better, I should think. If the weather were bad, it would be bad in a natural way; but this is artificial misery.’

      ‘I don’t let it affect me much,’ said Milvain. ‘Just of late I have been in remarkably good spirits. I’m doing a lot of work. No end of work—more than I’ve ever done.’

      ‘I am very glad.’

      ‘Where are your out-of-door things? I think there’s a ladies’ vestry somewhere, isn’t there?’

      ‘Oh yes.’

      ‘Then will you go and get ready? I’ll wait for you in the hall. But, by-the-bye, I am taking it for granted that you were going alone.’

      ‘I was, quite alone.’

      The ‘quite’ seemed excessive; it made Jasper smile.

      ‘And also,’ he added, ‘that I shall not annoy you by offering my company?’

      ‘Why should it annoy me?’

      ‘Good!’

      Milvain had only to wait a minute or two. He surveyed Marian from head to foot when she appeared—an impertinence as unintentional as that occasionally noticeable in his speech—and smiled approval. They went out into the fog, which was not one of London’s densest, but made walking disagreeable enough.

      ‘You have heard from the girls, I think?’ Jasper resumed.

      ‘Your sisters? Yes; they have been so kind as to write to me.’

      ‘Told you all about their great work? I hope it’ll be finished by the end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well indeed. I knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now I want them to think of patching up something or other for The English Girl; you know the paper?’

      ‘I have heard of it.’

      ‘I happen to know Mrs Boston Wright, who edits it. Met her at a house the other day, and told her frankly that she would have to give my sisters something to do. It’s the only way to get on; one has to take it for granted that people are willing to help you. I have made a host of new acquaintances just lately.’

      ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Marian.

      ‘Do you know—but how should you? I am going to write for the new magazine, The Current.’

      ‘Indeed!’

      ‘Edited by that man Fadge.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Your father has no affection for him, I know.’

      ‘He has no reason to have, Mr Milvain.’

      ‘No, no. Fadge is an offensive fellow, when he likes; and I fancy he very often does like. Well, I must make what use of him I can.

      You won’t think worse of me because I write for him?’

      ‘I know that one can’t exercise choice in such things.’

      ‘True. I shouldn’t like to think that you regard me as a Fadge-like individual, a natural Fadgeite.’

      Marian laughed.

      ‘There’s no danger of my thinking that.’

      But the fog was making their eyes water and getting into their throats. By when they reached Tottenham Court Road they were both thoroughly uncomfortable. The ‘bus had to be waited for, and in the meantime they talked scrappily, coughily. In the vehicle things were a little better, but here one could not converse with freedom.

      ‘What pestilent conditions of life!’ exclaimed Jasper, putting his face rather near to Marian’s. ‘I wish to goodness we were back in those quiet fields—you remember?—with the September sun warm about us. Shall you go to Finden again before long?’

      ‘I really don’t know.’

      ‘I’m sorry to say my mother is far from well. In any case I must go at Christmas, but I’m afraid it won’t be a cheerful visit.’

      Arrived in Hampstead Road he offered his hand for good-bye.

      ‘I wanted to talk about all sorts of things. But perhaps I shall find you again some day.’

      He jumped out, and waved his hat in the lurid fog.

      Shortly before the end of December appeared the first number of The Current. Yule had once or twice referred to the forthcoming magazine with acrid contempt, and of course he did not purchase a copy.

      ‘So young Milvain has joined Fadge’s hopeful standard,’ he remarked, a day or two later, at breakfast. ‘They say his paper is remarkably clever; I could wish it had appeared anywhere else.

      Evil communications, &c.’

      ‘But I shouldn’t think there’s any personal connection,’ said Marian.

      ‘Very likely not. But Milvain has been invited to contribute, you see.

      ‘Do you think he ought to have refused?’

      ‘Oh no. It’s nothing to me; nothing whatever.’

      Mrs Yule glanced at her daughter, but Marian seemed unconcerned. The subject was dismissed. In introducing it Yule had had his purpose; there had always been an unnatural avoidance of Milvain’s name in conversation, and he wished to have an end of this. Hitherto he had felt a troublesome uncertainty regarding his position in the matter. From what his wife had told him it seemed pretty certain that Marian was disappointed by the abrupt closing of her brief acquaintance with the young man, and Yule’s affection for his daughter caused him to feel uneasy in the thought that perhaps he had deprived her of a chance of happiness. His conscience readily took hold of an excuse for justifying the course he had followed. Milvain had gone over to the enemy. Whether or not the young man understood how relentless the hostility was between Yule and Fadge mattered little; the probability was that he knew all about it. In any case intimate relations with him could not have survived this alliance with Fadge, so that, after all, there had been wisdom in letting the acquaintance lapse. To be sure, nothing could have come of it. Milvain was the kind of man who weighed opportunities; every step he took would be regulated by considerations of advantage; at all events that was the impression his character had made upon Yule. Any hopes that Marian might have been induced to form would assuredly have ended in disappointment. It was kindness to interpose before things had gone so far.

      Henceforth, if Milvain’s name was unavoidable, it should be mentioned just like that of any other literary man. It seemed very unlikely indeed that Marian would continue to think of him with any special and personal interest. The fact of her having got into correspondence with his sisters was unfortunate, but this kind of thing rarely went on for very long.

      Yule spoke of the matter with his wife that evening.

      ‘By-the-bye, has Marian heard from those girls at Finden lately?’

      ‘She had a letter one afternoon last week.’

      ‘Do you see these letters?’

      ‘No; she told me what was in them at first, but now she doesn’t.’

      ‘She hasn’t spoken to you again of Milvain?’

      ‘Not a word.’

      ‘Well, I understood what I was about,’ Yule remarked, with the confident air of one who doesn’t wish to remember that he had ever felt doubtful. ‘There was no good in having the fellow here.

      He has got in with a set that I don’t at all care for. If she ever says anything—you understand—you can just let me know.’

      Marian had already procured a copy of The Current, and read it privately. Of the cleverness of Milvain’s contribution there could be no

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