'I can! I can!' Her voice trembled for the first time. 'I know that you are so ready to give in to difficulties. Listen to me, and do as I bid you.' She spoke in the strangest tone of command.
It was command, not exhortation, but there was no harshness in her voice. 'Go at once to Mr Carter. Tell him you have made a ludicrous mistake--in a fit of low spirits; anything you like to say. Tell him you of course couldn't dream of becoming his clerk.
To-night; at once! You understand me, Edwin? Go now, this moment.'
'Have you determined to see how weak I am? Do you wish to be able to despise me more completely still?'
'I am determined to be your friend, and to save you from yourself. Go at once! Leave all the rest to me. If I have let things take their course till now, it shan't be so in future. The responsibility shall be with me. Only do as I tell you'
'You know it's impossible--'
'It is not! I will find money. No one shall be allowed to say that we are parting; no one has any such idea yet. You are going away for your health, just three summer months. I have been far more careful of appearances than you imagine, but you give me credit for so little. I will find the money you need, until you have written another book. I promise; I undertake it. Then I will find another home for us, of the proper kind. You shall have no trouble. You shall give yourself entirely to intellectual things.
But Mr Carter must be told at once, before he can spread a report. If he has spoken, he must contradict what he has said.'
'But you amaze me, Amy. Do you mean to say that you look upon it as a veritable disgrace, my taking this clerkship?'
'I do. I can't help my nature. I am ashamed through and through that you should sink to this.'
'But everyone knows that I was a clerk once!'
'Very few people know it. And then that isn't the same thing. It doesn't matter what one has been in the past. Especially a literary man; everyone expects to hear that he was once poor. But to fall from the position you now have, and to take weekly wages --you surely can't know how people of my world regard that.'
'Of your world? I had thought your world was the same as mine, and knew nothing whatever of these imbecilities.'
'It is getting late. Go and see Mr Carter, and afterwards I will talk as much as you like.'
He might perhaps have yielded, but the unemphasised contempt in that last sentence was more than he could bear. It demonstrated to him more completely than set terms could have done what a paltry weakling he would appear in Amy's eyes if he took his hat down from the peg and set out to obey her orders.
'You are asking too much,' he said, with unexpected coldness. 'If my opinions are so valueless to you that you dismiss them like those of a troublesome child, I wonder you think it worth while to try and keep up appearances about me. It is very simple: make known to everyone that you are in no way connected with the disgrace I have brought upon myself. Put an advertisement in the newspapers to that effect, if you like--as men do about their wives' debts. I have chosen my part. I can't stultify myself to please you.'
She knew that this was final. His voice had the true ring of shame in revolt.
'Then go your way, and I will go mine!'
Amy left the room.
When Reardon went into the bedchamber an hour later, he unfolded a chair-bedstead that stood there, threw some rugs upon it, and so lay down to pass the night. He did not close his eyes. Amy slept for an hour or two before dawn, and on waking she started up and looked anxiously about the room. But neither spoke.
There was a pretence of ordinary breakfast; the little servant necessitated that. When she saw her husband preparing to go out, Amy asked him to come into the study.
'How long shall you be away?' she asked, curtly.
'It is doubtful. I am going to look for rooms.'
'Then no doubt I shall be gone when you come back. There's no object, now, in my staying here till to-morrow.'
'As you please.'
'Do you wish Lizzie still to come?'
'No. Please to pay her wages and dismiss her. Here is some money.'
'I think you had better let me see to that.'
He flung the coin on to the table and opened the door. Amy stepped quickly forward and closed it again.
'This is our good-bye, is it?' she asked, her eyes on the ground.
'As you wish it--yes.'
'You will remember that I have not wished it.'
'In that case, you have only to go with me to the new home.'
'I can't.'
'Then you have made your choice.'
She did not prevent his opening the door this time, and he passed out without looking at her.
His return was at three in the afternoon. Amy and the child were gone; the servant was gone. The table in the dining-room was spread as if for one person's meal.
He went into the bedroom. Amy's trunks had disappeared. The child's cot was covered over. In the study, he saw that the sovereign he had thrown on to the table still lay in the same place.
As it was a very cold day he lit a fire. Whilst it burnt up he sat reading a torn portion of a newspaper, and became quite interested in the report of a commercial meeting in the City, a thing he would never have glanced at under ordinary circumstances. The fragment fell at length from his hands; his head drooped; he sank into a troubled sleep.
About six he had tea, then began the packing of the few books that were to go with him, and of such other things as could be enclosed in box or portmanteau. After a couple of hours of this occupation he could no longer resist his weariness, so he went to bed. Before falling asleep he heard the two familiar clocks strike eight; this evening they were in unusual accord, and the querulous notes from the workhouse sounded between the deeper ones from St Marylebone. Reardon tried to remember when he had last observed this; the matter seemed to have a peculiar interest for him, and in dreams he worried himself with a grotesque speculation thence derived.
