George Gissing
In the Year of Jubilee
CHAPTER 4
The habit of confidence prompted Nancy to seek Mary Woodruff, and show her the long-expected letter. But for Barmby’s visit she would have done so. As it was, her mind sullenly resisted the natural impulse. Forlorn misery, intensified by successive humiliations, whereof the latest was the bitterest, hardened her even against the one, the indubitable friend, to whom she had never looked in vain for help and solace. Of course it was not necessary to let Mary know with what heart-breaking coldness Tarrant had communicated the fact of his return; but she preferred to keep silence altogether. Having sunk so low as to accept, with semblance of gratitude, pompous favours, dishonouring connivance, at the hands of Samuel Barmby, she would now stand alone in her uttermost degradation. Happen what might, she would act and suffer in solitude.
Something she had in mind to do which Mary, if told of it, would regard with disapproval. Mary was not a deserted and insulted wife; she could reason and counsel with the calmness of one who sympathised, but had nothing worse to endure. Even Mary’s sympathy was necessarily imperfect, since she knew not, and should never know, what had passed in the crucial interviews with Beatrice French, with Jessica Morgan, and with Samuel Barmby. Bent on indulging her passionate sense of injury, hungering for a taste of revenge, however poor, Nancy executed with brief delay a project which had come into her head during the hour of torture just elapsed.
She took a sheet of notepaper, and upon it wrote half-a-dozen lines, thus:
‘As your reward for marrying me is still a long way off, and as you tell me that you are in want, I send you as much as I can spare at present. Next month you shall hear from me again.’
Within the paper she folded a five-pound note, and placed both in an envelope, which she addressed to Lionel Tarrant, Esq., at his lodgings in Westminster. Having posted this at the first pillar-box she walked on.
Her only object was to combat mental anguish by bodily exercise, to distract, if possible, the thoughts which hammered upon her brain by moving amid the life of the streets. In Camberwell Road she passed the place of business inscribed with the names ‘Lord and Barmby’; it made her think, not of the man who, from being an object of her good-natured contempt, was now become a hated enemy, but of her father, and she mourned for him with profounder feeling than when her tears flowed over his new-made grave. But for headstrong folly, incredible in the retrospect, that father would have been her dear and honoured companion, her friend in every best sense of the word, her guide and protector. Many and many a time had he invited her affection, her trust. For long years it was in her power to make him happy, and, in doing so, to enrich her own life, to discipline her mind as no study of books, even had it been genuine, ever could. Oh, to have the time back again—the despised privilege—the thwarted embittered love! She was beginning to understand her father, to surmise with mature intelligence the causes of his seeming harshness. To her own boy, when he was old enough, she would talk of him and praise him. Perhaps, even thus late, his spirit of stern truthfulness might bear fruit in her life and in her son’s.
The tender memory and pure resolve did not long possess her. They soon yielded before the potency of present evil, and for an hour or more she walked along the sordid highway, nursing passions which struck their venom into her heart.
It was one of those cold, dry, clouded evenings of autumn, when London streets affect the imagination with a peculiar suggestiveness. New-lit lamps, sickly yellow under the dying day, stretch in immense vistas, unobscured by fog, but exhibit no detail of the track they will presently illumine; one by one the shop-fronts grow radiant on deepening gloom, and show in silhouette the figures numberless that are hurrying past. By accentuating a pause between the life of daytime and that which will begin after dark, this grey hour excites to an unwonted perception of the city’s vastness and of its multifarious labour; melancholy, yet not dismal, the brooding twilight seems to betoken Nature’s compassion for myriad mortals exiled from her beauty and her solace. Noises far and near blend into a muffled murmur, sound’s equivalent of the impression received by the eye; it seems to utter the weariness of unending ineffectual toil.
Nancy had now walked as far as Newington, a district unfamiliar to her, and repulsive. By the Elephant and Castle she stood watching the tumultuous traffic which whirls and roars at this confluence of six highways; she had neither a mind to go on, nor yet to return. The conductor of an omnibus close at hand kept bellowing ‘London Bridge!’ and her thoughts wandered to that day of meeting with Luckworth Crewe, when he took her up the Monument. She had never felt more than an idle interest in Crewe, and whenever she remembered him nowadays, it was only to reflect with bitterness that he doubtless knew a part of her secret,—the part that was known to Beatrice French,—and on that account had ceased to urge his suit; yet at this moment she wished that she had pledged herself to him in good faith. His behaviour argued the steadfast devotion of an honest man, however lacking in refinement. Their long engagement would have been brightened with many hopes; in the end she might have learned to love him, and prosperity would have opened to her a world of satisfactions, for which she could no longer hope.
It grew cold. She allowed the movements of a group of people to direct her steps, and went eastward along New Kent Road. But when the shops were past, and only a dreary prospect of featureless dwellings lay before her, she felt her heart sink, and paused in vacillating wretchedness.
From a house near by sounded a piano; a foolish jingle, but it smote her with a longing for companionship, for friendly, cheerful talk. And then of a sudden she determined that this life of intolerable isolation should come to an end. Her efforts to find employment that would bring her among people had failed simply because she applied to strangers, who knew nothing of her capabilities, and cared nothing for her needs. But a way offered itself if she could overcome the poor lingering vestiges of pride and shame which hitherto had seemed to render it impossible. In this hour her desolate spirit rejected everything but the thought of relief to be found in new occupation, fresh society. She had endured to the limit of strength. Under the falling night, before the grey vision of a city which, by its alien business and pleasure, made her a mere outcast, she all at once found hope in a resource which till now had signified despair.
Summoning the first empty cab, she gave an address known to her only by hearsay, that of the South London Fashionable Dress Supply Association, and was driven thither in about a quarter of an hour. The shop, with its windows cunningly laid out to allure the female eye, spread a brilliant frontage between two much duller places of business; at the doorway stood a commissionaire, distributing some newly printed advertisements to the persons who entered, or who paused in passing. Nancy accepted a paper without thinking about it, and went through the swing doors held open for her by a stripling in buttons; she approached a young woman at the nearest counter, and in a low voice asked whether Miss. French was on the premises.
‘I’m not sure, madam. I will inquire at once.’
‘She calls me “madam,”’ said Nancy to herself whilst waiting. ‘So do shopkeepers generally. I suppose I look old.’
The young person (she honeyed a Cockney twang) speedily came back to report that Miss. French had left about half-an-hour ago, and was not likely to return.
‘Can you give me her private address?’
Not having seen Miss. French since the latter’s unwelcome call in Grove Lane, she only knew that Beatrice had left De Crespigny Park to inhabit a flat somewhere or other.
‘I wish to see her particularly, on business.’
‘Excuse me a moment, madam.’
On returning, the young person requested Nancy to follow her up the shop, and led into a glass-partitioned office, where, at a table covered with fashion-plates, sat a middle-aged man, with a bald head of peculiar lustre. He rose and bowed; Nancy repeated her request.
‘Could I despatch a message for you, madam?’
‘My business is private.’
The bald-headed man coughed urbanely, and begged to know her name.
‘Miss. Lord—of Grove Lane.’
Immediately his countenance changed from deprecating solemnity to a broad smile of recognition.
‘Miss. Lord! Oh, to be sure; I will give you the address at once. Pray pardon my questions; we have to be so very careful. So many people desire private interviews with Miss. French. I will jot down the address.’
He did so on the back of an advertisement, and added verbal directions. Nancy hurried away.
Another cab conveyed her to Brixton, and set her down before a block of recently built flats. She ascended to the second floor, pressed the button of a bell, and was speedily confronted by a girl of the natty parlour-maid species. This time she began by giving her name, and had only a moment to wait before she was admitted to a small drawing-room, furnished with semblance of luxury. A glowing fire and the light of an amber-shaded lamp showed as much fashionable upholstery and bric-a-brac as could be squeezed into the narrow space. Something else was perceptible which might perhaps have been dispensed with; to wit, the odour of a very savoury meal, a meal in which fried onions had no insignificant part. But before the visitor could comment to herself upon this disadvantage attaching to flats, Beatrice joined her.
‘I could hardly believe it! So you have really looked me up? Awfully jolly of you! I’m quite alone; we’ll have a bit of dinner together.’
Miss. French was in her most expansive mood. She understood the call as one of simple friendliness.
‘I wasn’t sure that you knew the address. Got it at the shop? They don’t go telling everybody, I hope—’
‘Some one there seemed to know my name,’ said Nancy, whom the warmth and light and cheery welcome encouraged in the step she had taken. And she explained.
‘Ah, Mr. Clatworthy—rum old cove, when you get to know him. Yes, yes; no doubt he has heard me speak of you—in a general way, you know. Come into my snooze-corner, and take your things off.’
The snooze-corner, commonly called a bedroom, lacked one detail of comfort—pure air. The odour of dinner blending with toilet perfumes made an atmosphere decidedly oppressive. Beatrice remarked on the smallness of the chamber, adding archly, ‘But I sleep single.’
‘What’s your brother doing?’ she asked, while helping to remove Nancy’s jacket. ‘I passed him in Oxford Street the other day, and he either didn’t see me, or didn’t want to. Thought he looked rather dissipated.’
‘I know very little about him,’ answered the visitor, who spoke and acted without reflection, conscious chiefly at this moment of faintness induced by fatigue and hunger.
‘Fanny’s in Paris,’ pursued Miss. French. ‘Writes as if she was amusing herself. I think I shall run over and have a look at her. Seen Ada? She’s been playing the fool as usual. Found out that Arthur had taken the kid to his sister’s at Canterbury; went down and made a deuce of a kick-up; they had to chuck her out of the house. Of course she cares no more about the child than I do; it’s only to spite her husband. She’s going to law with him, she says. She won’t leave the house in De Crespigny Park, and she’s running up bills—you bet!’
Nancy tried to laugh. The effort, and its semi-success, indicated surrender to her companion’s spirit rather than any attention to the subject spoken of.
They returned to the drawing-room, but had not time to begin a conversation before the servant summoned them to dinner. A very satisfying meal it proved; not badly cooked, as cooking is understood in Brixton, and served with more of ceremony than the guest had expected. Fried scallops, rump steak smothered in onions, an apple tart, and very sound Stilton cheese. Such fare testified to the virile qualities of Beatrice’s mind; she was above the feminine folly of neglecting honest victuals. Moreover, there appeared two wines, sherry and claret.
‘Did you ever try this kind of thing?’ said the hostess finally, reaching a box of cigarettes.
‘I?—Of course not,’ Nancy replied, with a laugh.
‘It’s expected of a sensible woman now-a-days. I’ve got to like it. Better try; no need to make yourself uncomfortable. Just keep the smoke in your mouth for half-a-minute, and blow it out prettily. I buy these in the Haymarket; special brand for women.’
‘And you dine like this, by yourself, every day?’
‘Like this, but not always alone. Some one or other drops in. Luckworth Crewe was here yesterday.’
Speaking, she watched Nancy, who bore the regard with carelessness, and replied lightly:
‘It’s an independent sort of life, at all events.’
‘Just the kind of life that suits me. I’m my own mistress.’
There was a suggested allusion in the sly tone of the last phrase; but Nancy, thinking her own thoughts, did not perceive it. As the servant had left them alone, they could now talk freely. Beatrice, by her frequent glance of curiosity, seemed to await some explanation of a visit so unlooked-for.
‘How are things going with you?’ she asked at length, tapping the ash of her cigarette over a plate.
‘I want something to do,’ was the blunt reply.
‘Too much alone—isn’t that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just what I thought. You don’t see him often?’
Nancy had ceased her pretence of smoking, and leaned back. A flush on her face, and something unwonted in the expression of her eyes,—something like a smile, yet touched with apathy,—told of physical influences which assisted her resolve to have done with scruple and delicacy. She handled her wine-glass, which was half full, and, before answering, raised it to her lips.
‘No, I don’t see him often.’
‘Well, I told you to come to me if I could be any use. What’s your idea?’
‘Do you know of anything I could do? It isn’t so much to earn money, as to—to be occupied, and escape from loneliness. But I must have two afternoons in the week to myself.’
Beatrice nodded and smiled.
‘No,—not for that,’ Nancy added hastily. ‘To see my boy.’
The other appeared to accept this correction.
‘All right. I think I can find you something. We’re opening a branch.’ She mentioned the locality. ‘There’ll be a club-room, like at headquarters, and we shall want some one ladylike to sit there and answer questions. You wouldn’t be likely to see any one that knows you, and you’d get a good deal of fun out of it. Hours from ten to five, but Saturday afternoon off, and Wednesday after three, if that would do?’
‘Yes, that would do very well. Any payment, at first?’
‘Oh, we wouldn’t be so mean as all that. Say ten shillings a week till Christmas, and afterwards we could see’—she laughed—‘whether you’re worth more.’
‘I know nothing about fashions.’
‘You can learn all you need to know in an hour. It’s the ladylike appearance and talk more than anything else.’
Nancy sipped again from her wine-glass.
‘When could I begin?’
‘The place ‘ll be ready on Monday week. Next week you might put in a few hours with us. Just sit and watch and listen, that’s all; to get the hang of the thing.’
‘Thank you for being so ready to help me.’
‘Not a bit of it. I haven’t done yet. There’s a condition. If I fix up this job for you, will you tell me something I want to know?’
Nancy turned her eyes apprehensively.
‘You can guess what it is. I quite believe what you told me some time ago, but I shan’t feel quite easy until I know—’
She finished the sentence with a look. Nancy’s eyes fell.
‘Curiosity, nothing else,’ added the other. ‘Just to make quite sure it isn’t anybody I’ve thought of.’
There was a long silence. Leaning forward upon the table, Nancy turned her wine-glass about and about. She now had a very high colour, and breathed quickly.
‘Is it off, then?’ said Beatrice, in an indifferent tone.
Thereupon Nancy disclosed the name of her husband—her lover, as Miss. French thought him. Plied with further questions, she told where he was living, but gave no account of the circumstances that had estranged them. Abundantly satisfied, Beatrice grew almost affectionate, and talked merrily.
Nancy wished to ask whether Luckworth Crewe had any knowledge of her position. It was long before her lips could utter the words, but at length they were spoken. And Beatrice assured her that Crewe, good silly fellow, did not even suspect the truth.
CHAPTER 5
‘For a man,’ said Tarrant, ‘who can pay no more than twelve and sixpence a week, it’s the best accommodation to be found in London. There’s an air of civilisation about the house. Look; a bath, and a little book-case, and an easy-chair such as can be used by a man who respects himself. You feel you are among people who tub o’ mornings and know the meaning of leisure. Then the view!’
He was talking to his friend Harvey Munden, the journalist. The room in which they stood might with advantage have been larger, but as a bed-chamber it served well enough, and only the poverty of its occupant, who put it to the additional use of sitting-room and study, made the lack of space particularly noticeable. The window afforded a prospect pleasant enough to eyes such as theirs. Above the lower houses on the opposite side of the way appeared tall trees, in the sere garb of later autumn, growing by old Westminster School; and beyond them, grey in twilight, rose the towers of the Abbey. From this point of view no vicinage of modern brickwork spoilt their charm; the time-worn monitors stood alone against a sky of ruddy smoke-drift and purple cloud.
‘The old Adam is stronger than ever in me,’ he pursued. ‘If I were condemned for life to the United States, I should go mad, and perish in an attempt to swim the Atlantic.’
‘Then why did you stay so long?’
‘I could have stayed with advantage even longer. It’s something to have studied with tolerable thoroughness the most hateful form of society yet developed. I saw it at first as a man does who is living at his ease; at last, as a poor devil who is thankful for the institution of free lunches. I went first-class, and I came back as a steerage passenger. It has been a year well spent.’
It had made him, in aspect, more than a twelve-month older. His lounging attitude, the spirit of his talk, showed that he was unchanged in bodily and mental habits; but certain lines new-graven upon his visage, and an austerity that had taken the place of youthful self-consciousness, signified a more than normal progress in experience.
‘Do you know,’ said Munden slyly, ‘that you have brought back a trans-Atlantic accent?’
‘Accent? The devil! I don’t believe it.’
‘Intonation, at all events.’
Tarrant professed a serious annoyance.
‘If that’s true, I’ll go and live for a month in Limerick.’
‘It would be cheaper to join a Socialist club in the East End. But just tell me how you stand. How long can you hold out in these aristocratic lodgings?’
‘Till Christmas. I’m ashamed to say how I’ve got the money, so don’t ask. I reached London with empty pockets. And I’ll tell you one thing I have learnt, Munden. There’s no villainy, no scoundrelism, no baseness conceivable, that isn’t excused by want of money. I understand the whole “social question.” The man who has never felt the perspiration come out on his forehead in asking himself how he is going to keep body and soul together, has no right to an opinion on the greatest question of the day.’
‘What particular scoundrelism or baseness have you committed?’ asked the other.
Tarrant averted his eyes.
‘I said I could understand such things.’
‘One sees that you have been breathed upon by democracy.’
‘I loathe the word and the thing even more than I did, which is saying a good deal.’
‘Be it so. You say you are going to work?’
‘Yes, I have come back to work. Even now, it’s difficult to realise that I must work or starve. I understand how fellows who have unexpectedly lost their income go through life sponging on relatives and friends. I understand how an educated man goes sinking through all the social grades, down to the common lodging-house and the infirmary. And I honestly believe there’s only one thing that saves me from doing likewise.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘I can’t tell you—not yet, at all events.’
‘I always thought you a very fine specimen of the man born to do nothing,’ said Munden, with that smile which permitted him a surprising candour in conversation.
‘And you were quite right,’ returned Tarrant, with a laugh. ‘I am a born artist in indolence. It’s the pity of pities that circumstances will frustrate Nature’s purpose.’
‘You think you can support yourself by journalism?’
‘I must try.—Run your eye over that.’
He took from the table a slip of manuscript, headed, ‘A Reverie in Wall Street.’ Munden read it, sat thoughtful for a moment, and laughed.
‘Devilish savage. Did you write it after a free lunch?’
‘Wrote it this morning. Shall I try one of the evening papers with it,—or one of the weeklies?’
Munden suggested a few alterations, and mentioned the journal which he thought might possibly find room for such a bit of satire.
‘Done anything else?’
‘Here’s a half-finished paper—“The Commercial Prospects of the Bahamas.”’
‘Let me look.’
After reading a page or two with critically wrinkled forehead, Munden laid it down.
‘Seems pretty solid,—libellous, too, I should say. You’ve more stuff in you than I thought. All right: go ahead.—Come and dine with me to-morrow, to meet a man who may be useful.’
‘To-morrow I can’t. I dine at Lady Pollard’s.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Didn’t you know Pollard of Trinity?—the only son of his mother, and she a widow.’
‘Next day, then.’
‘Can’t. I dine with some people at Bedford Park.’
Munden lifted his eyebrows.
‘At this rate, you may live pretty well on a dress suit. Any more engagements?’
‘None that I know of. But I shall accept all that offer. I’m hungry for the society of decent English people. I used to neglect my acquaintances; I know better now. Go and live for a month in a cheap New York boarding-house, and you’ll come out with a wholesome taste for English refinement.’
To enable his friend to read, Tarrant had already lit a lamp. Munden, glancing about the room, said carelessly:
‘Do you still possess the furniture of the old place?’
‘No,’ was the answer, given with annoyance. ‘Vawdrey had it sold for me.’
‘Pictures, books, and all the nick-nacks?’
‘Everything.—Of course I’m sorry for it; but I thought at the time that I shouldn’t return to England for some years.’
‘You never said anything of that kind to me.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ the other replied gloomily. And all at once he fell into so taciturn a mood, that his companion, after a few more remarks and inquiries, rose from his chair to leave.
From seven to nine Tarrant sat resolutely at his table, and covered a few pages with the kind of composition which now came most easily to him,—a somewhat virulent sarcasm. He found pleasure in the work; but after nine o’clock his thoughts strayed to matters of personal interest, and got beyond control. Would the last post of the evening bring him an answer to a letter he had despatched this morning? At length he laid down his pen, and listened nervously for that knock which, at one time or another, is to all men a heart-shaking sound.
It came at the street door, and was quickly followed by a tap at his own. Nancy had lost no time in replying. What her letter might contain he found it impossible to conjecture. Reproaches? Joyous welcome? Wrath? Forgiveness? He knew her so imperfectly, that he could not feel sure even as to the probabilities of the case. And his suspense was abundantly justified. Her answer came upon him with the force of a shock totally unexpected.
He read the lines again and again; he stared at the bank-note. His first sensation was one of painful surprise; thereupon succeeded fiery resentment. Reason put in a modest word, hinting that he had deserved no better; but he refused to listen. Nothing could excuse so gross an insult. He had not thought Nancy capable of this behaviour. Tested, she betrayed the vice of birth. Her imputation upon his motive in marrying her was sheer vulgar abuse, possible only on vulgar lips. Well and good; now he knew her; all the torment of conscience he had suffered was needless. And for the moment he experienced a great relief.
In less than ten minutes letter and bank-note were enclosed in a new envelope, and addressed back again to the sender. With no word of comment; she must interpret him as she could, and would. He went out, and threw the offensive packet into the nearest receptacle for such things.
Work was over for to-night. After pacing in the obscurity of Dean’s Yard until his pulse had recovered a normal beat, he issued into the peopled ways, and turned towards Westminster Bridge.
Despite his neglect of Nancy, he had never ceased to think of her with a tenderness which, in his own judgment, signified something more than the simple fidelity of a married man. Faithful in the technical sense he had not been, but the casual amours of a young man caused him no self-reproach; Nancy’s image remained without rival in his mind; he had continued to acknowledge her claims upon him, and, from time to time, to think of her with a lover’s longing. As he only wrote when prompted by such a mood, his letters, however unsatisfying, were sincere. Various influences conflicted with this amiable and honourable sentiment. The desire of independence which had speeded him away from England still accompanied him on his return; he had never ceased to regret his marriage, and it seemed to him that, without this legal bondage, it would have been much easier to play a manly part at the time of Nancy’s becoming a mother. Were she frankly his mistress, he would not be keeping thus far away when most she needed the consolation of his presence. The secret marriage condemned him to a course of shame, and the more he thought of it, the more he marvelled at his deliberate complicity in such a fraud. When poverty began to make itself felt, when he was actually hampered in his movements by want of money, this form of indignity, more than any galling to his pride, intensified the impatience with which he remembered that he could no longer roam the world as an adventurer. Any day some trivial accident might oppress him with the burden of a wife and child who looked to him for their support. Tarrant the married man, unless he were content to turn simple rogue and vagabond, must make for himself a place in the money-earning world. His indolence had no small part in his revolt against the stress of such a consideration. The climate of the Bahamas by no means tended to invigorate him, and in the United States he found so much to observe,—even to enjoy,—that the necessity of effort was kept out of sight as long as, by one expedient and another, he succeeded in procuring means to live upon without working.
During the homeward voyage—a trial such as he had never known, amid squalid discomforts which enraged even more than they disgusted him—his heart softened in anticipation of a meeting with Nancy, and of the sight of his child. Apart from his fellow-travellers,—in whom he could perceive nothing but coarseness and vileness,—he spent the hours in longing for England and for the home he would make there, in castigating the flagrant faults of his character, moderating his ambitions, and endeavouring to find a way out of the numerous grave difficulties with which his future was beset.
Landed, he rather forgot than discarded these wholesome meditations. What he had first to do was so very unpleasant, and taxed so rudely his self-respect, that he insensibly fell back again into the rebellious temper. Choice there was none; reaching London with a few shillings in his pocket, of necessity he repaired forthwith to Mr Vawdrey’s office in the City, and made known the straits into which he had fallen.
‘Now, my dear fellow,’ said Mr. Vawdrey, with his usual good-humour, ‘how much have you had of me since you started for the Bahamas?’
‘That is hardly a fair question,’ Tarrant replied, endeavouring not to hang his head like an everyday beggar. ‘I went out on a commission—’
‘True. But after you ceased to be a commissioner?’
‘You have lent me seventy pounds. Living in the States is expensive. What I got for my furniture has gone as well, yet I certainly haven’t been extravagant; and for the last month or two I lived like a tramp. Will you make my debt to you a round hundred? It shall be repaid, though I may be a year or two about it.’
The loan was granted, but together with a great deal of unpalatable counsel. Having found his lodging, Tarrant at once invested ten pounds in providing himself with a dress suit, and improving his ordinary attire,—he had sold every garment he could spare in New York. For the dress suit he had an immediate use; on the very platform of Euston Station, at his arrival, a chance meeting with one of his old college friends resulted in an invitation to dine, and, even had not policy urged him to make the most of such acquaintances, he was in no mood for rejecting a summons back into the world of civilisation. Postponing the purposed letter to Nancy (which, had he written it sooner, would have been very unlike the letter he subsequently sent), he equipped himself once more as a gentleman, and spent several very enjoyable hours in looking up the members of his former circle—Hodiernals and others. Only to Harvey Munden did he confide something of the anxieties which lay beneath his assumed lightheartedness. Munden was almost the only man he knew for whom he had a genuine respect.
Renewal of intercourse with people of good social standing made him more than ever fretful in the thought that he had clogged himself with marriage. Whatever Nancy’s reply to his announcement that he was home again, he would have read it with discontent. To have the fact forced upon him (a fact he seriously believed it) that his wife could not be depended upon even for elementary generosity of thought, was at this moment especially disastrous; it weighed the balance against his feelings of justice and humanity, hitherto, no matter how he acted, always preponderant over the baser issues of character and circumstance.
