'And Mrs Reardon?' he asked.

'I'm sorry to say she is far from well,' replied Mrs Yule. 'To-day she has been obliged to keep her room. You can imagine what a shock it has been to her. It came with such extraordinary suddenness. Without a word of warning, her husband announced that he had taken a clerkship and was going to remove immediately to the East-end. Fancy! And this when he had already arranged, as you know, to go to the South Coast and write his next book under the influences of the sea air. He was anything but well; we all knew that, and we had all joined in advising him to spend the summer at the seaside. It seemed better that he should go alone; Mrs Reardon would, of course, have gone down for a few days now and then.

And at a moment's notice everything is changed, and in such a dreadful way! I cannot believe that this is the behaviour of a sane man!'

Jasper understood that an explanation of the matter might have been given in much more homely terms; it was natural that Mrs Yule should leave out of sight the sufficient, but ign.o.ble, cause of her son-in-law's behaviour.

'You see in what a painful position we are placed,' continued the euphemistic lady. 'It is so terrible even to hint that Mr Reardon is not responsible for his actions, yet how are we to explain to our friends this extraordinary state of things?'

'My husband is afraid Mr Reardon may fall seriously ill,' said Mrs Carter. 'And how dreadful! In such a place as that!'

'It would be so kind of you to go and see him, Mr Milvain,' urged Mrs Yule. 'We should be so glad to hear what you think.'

'Certainly, I will go,' replied Jasper. 'Will you give me his address?'

He remained for an hour, and before his departure the subject was discussed with rather more frankness than at first; even the word 'money' was once or twice heard.

'Mr Carter has very kindly promised,' said Mrs Yule, 'to do his best to hear of some position that would be suitable. It seems a most shocking thing that a successful author should abandon his career in this deliberate way; who could have imagined anything of the kind two years ago? But it is clearly quite impossible for him to go on as at present--if there is really no reason for believing his mind disordered.'

A cab was summoned for Mrs Carter, and she took her leave, suppressing her native cheerfulness to the tone of the occasion. A minute or two after, Milvain left the house.

He had walked perhaps twenty yards, almost to the end of the silent street in which his friends' house was situated, when a man came round the corner and approached him. At once he recognised the figure, and in a moment he was face to face with Reardon. Both stopped. Jasper held out his hand, but the other did not seem to notice it.

'You are coming from Mrs Yule's?' said Reardon, with a strange smile.

By the gaslight his face showed pale and sunken, and he met Jasper's look with fixedness.

'Yes, I am. The fact is, I went there to hear of your address. Why haven't you let me know about all this?'

'You went to the flat?'

'No, I was told about you by Whelpdale.'

Reardon turned in the direction whence he had come, and began to walk slowly; Jasper kept beside him.

'I'm afraid there's something amiss between us, Reardon,' said the latter, just glancing at his companion.

'There's something amiss between me and everyone,' was the reply, in an unnatural voice.

'You look at things too gloomily. Am I detaining you, by-the-bye? You were going--'

'Nowhere.'

'Then come to my rooms, and let us see if we can't talk more in the old way.'

'Your old way of talk isn't much to my taste, Milvain. It has cost me too much.'Jasper gazed at him. Was there some foundation for Mrs Yule's seeming extravagance? This reply sounded so meaningless, and so unlike Reardon's manner of speech, that the younger man experienced a sudden alarm.

'Cost you too much? I don't understand you.'

They had turned into a broader thoroughfare, which, however, was little frequented at this hour. Reardon, his hands thrust into the pockets of a shabby overcoat and his head bent forward, went on at a slow pace, observant of nothing. For a moment or two he delayed reply, then said in an unsteady voice:

'Your way of talking has always been to glorify success, to insist upon it as the one end a man ought to keep in view. If you had talked so to me alone, it wouldn't have mattered. But there was generally someone else present. Your words had their effect; I can see that now. It's very much owing to you that I am deserted, now that there's no hope of my ever succeeding.'

Jasper's first impulse was to meet this accusation with indignant denial, but a sense of compa.s.sion prevailed. It was so painful to see the defeated man wandering at night near the house where his wife and child were comfortably sheltered; and the tone in which he spoke revealed such profound misery.

'That's a most astonishing thing to say,' Jasper replied. 'Of course I know nothing of what has pa.s.sed between you and your wife, but I feel certain that I have no more to do with what has happened than any other of your acquaintances.'

'You may feel as certain as you will, but your words and your example have influenced my wife against me. You didn't intend that; I don't suppose it for a moment. It's my misfortune, that's all.'

'That I intended nothing of the kind, you need hardly say, I should think. But you are deceiving yourself in the strangest way. I'm afraid to speak plainly; I'm afraid of offending you. But can you recall something that I said about the time of your marriage? You didn't like it then, and certainly it won't be pleasant to you to remember it now.

If you mean that your wife has grown unkind to you because you are unfortunate, there's no need to examine into other people's influence for an explanation of that.'

Reardon turned his face towards the speaker.

'Then you have always regarded my wife as a woman likely to fail me in time of need?'

'I don't care to answer a question put in that way. If we are no longer to talk with the old friendliness, it's far better we shouldn't discuss things such as this.'

'Well, practically you have answered. Of course I remember those words of yours that you refer to. Whether you were right or wrong doesn't affect what I say.'

He spoke with a dull doggedness, as though mental fatigue did not allow him to say more.

'It's impossible to argue against such a charge,' said Milvain. 'I am convinced it isn't true, and that's all I can answer. But perhaps you think this extraordinary influence of mine is still being used against you?'

'I know nothing about it,' Reardon replied, in the same unmodulated voice.

'Well, as I have told you, this was my first visit to Mrs Yule's since your wife has been there, and I didn't see her; she isn't very well, and keeps her room. I'm glad it happened so--that I didn't meet her.

Henceforth I shall keep away from the family altogether, so long, at all events, as your wife remains with them. Of course I shan't tell anyone why; that would be impossible. But you shan't have to fear that I am decrying you. By Jove! an amiable figure you make of me!'

'I have said what I didn't wish to say, and what I oughtn't to have said. You must misunderstand me; I can't help it.'

Reardon had been walking for hours, and was, in truth, exhausted.

He became mute. Jasper, whose misrepresentation was wilful, though not maliciously so, also fell into silence; he did not believe that his conversations with Amy had seriously affected the course of events, but he knew that he had often said things to her in private which would scarcely have fallen from his lips if her husband had been present--little depreciatory phrases, wrong rather in tone than in terms, which came of his irresistible desire to a.s.sume superiority whenever it was possible. He, too, was weak, but with quite another kind of weakness than Reardon's. His was the weakness of vanity, which sometimes leads a man to commit treacheries of which he would believe himself incapable. Self-accused, he took refuge in the pretence of misconception, which again was a betrayal of littleness.

They drew near to Westbourne Park station.

'You are living a long way from here,' Jasper said, coldly. 'Are you going by train?'

'No. You said my wife was ill?'

'Oh, not ill. At least, I didn't understand that it was anything serious. Why don't you walk back to the house?'

'I must judge of my own affairs.'

'True; I beg your pardon. I take the train here, so I'll say good-night.'

They nodded to each other, but did not shake hands.

A day or two later, Milvain wrote to Mrs Yule, and told her that he had seen Reardon; he did not describe the circ.u.mstances under which the interview had taken place, but gave it as his opinion that Reardon was in a state of nervous illness, and made by suffering quite unlike himself. That he might be on the way to positive mental disease seemed likely enough. 'Unhappily, I myself can be of no use to him; he has not the same friendly feeling for me as he used to have. But it is very certain that those of his friends who have the power should exert themselves to raise him out of this fearful slough of despond. If he isn't effectually helped, there's no saying what may happen. One thing is certain, I think: he is past helping himself. Sane literary work cannot be expected from him. It seems a monstrous thing that so good a fellow, and one with such excellent brains too, should perish by the way when influential people would have no difficulty in restoring him to health and usefulness.'