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Updated: June 24, 2025
But if you have to set to work at once it seems to me very doubtful. 'Never mind. For Heaven's sake don't discourage me! If this fails I think upon my soul, I think I shall kill myself. 'Pooh! exclaimed Biffen, gently. 'With a wife like yours? 'Just because of that. 'No, no; there'll be some way out of it. By-the-bye, I passed Mrs Reardon this morning, but she didn't see me.
Marian took a place beside her. They talked in low, broken tones, and wept together over their miseries. The chances are that you have neither understanding nor sympathy for men such as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. They merely provoke you. They seem to you inert, flabby, weakly envious, foolishly obstinate, impiously mutinous, and many other things.
'So, Reardon cried with exultation, 'there is the last burden off my mind! Henceforth I haven't a care! The only thing that still troubled me was my inability to give Amy enough to live upon. Now she is provided for in secula seculorum. Isn't this grand news? 'Decidedly. But if she is provided for, so are you. 'Biffen, you know me better. Could I accept a farthing of her money?
'It must have been falling heavily for an hour or more. 'Can't be helped; I must go. The nearest station for departure was London Bridge, and the next train left at 7.20. By Reardon's watch it was now about five minutes to seven. 'I don't know whether it's possible, he said, in confused hurry, 'but I must try. There isn't another train till ten past nine. Come with me to the station, Biffen.
When he entered the drawing-room Amy was sitting there alone; she rose with an exclamation of frank pleasure. 'I have often thought of you lately, Mr Biffen. How kind to come and see me! He could scarcely speak; her beauty, as she stood before him in the graceful black dress, was anguish to his excited nerves, and her voice was so cruel in its conventional warmth.
'I distrust such appearances, said Biffen in his quality of realist. 'Well, so do I, as a rule. But in this case they were convincing. And there was no need whatever for her to make such a declaration; she might just as well have said anything else; it's the merest form. I shall always hear her voice saying, "I'm unfortunate, sir."
But I believed her of finer stuff. My bitterness comes of the disappointment. 'I suppose there were faults of temper on both sides, and you saw at last only each other's weaknesses. 'I saw the truth, which had always been disguised from me. Biffen persisted in looking doubtful, and in secret Reardon thanked him for it.
So I had to give it up, and there was an end of my career as a writer of fiction. He shook his head sadly. 'Biffen, he continued, 'when I first made his acquaintance, had an idea of writing for the working classes; and what do you think he was going to offer them? Stories about the working classes! Nay, never hang your head for it, old boy; it was excusable in the days of your youth.
The ignobly decent, as poor Biffen calls it, is so very far from that sphere in which you are naturally at home. There was some slight affectation in his language, but the tone attested sincere feeling. Jasper was watching him with half an eye, and glancing occasionally at Dora.
'Two hundred marks for compersition, continued the man. 'Now how many would they have given me for this bit of a try, Mr Biffen? 'Well, well; I can't exactly say. But you improve; you improve, decidedly. Peg away for another week or two. 'Oh, don't fear me, sir! I'm not easily beaten when I've set my mind on a thing, and I'll break up the compersition yet, see if I don't!
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