CHAPTER VII. MARIAN'S HOME
Three weeks after her return from the country—which took place a
week later than that of Jasper Milvain—Marian Yule was working
one afternoon at her usual place in the Museum Reading-room. It
was three o'clock, and with the interval of half an hour at
midday, when she went away for a cup of tea and a sandwich, she
had been closely occupied since half-past nine. Her task at
present was to collect materials for a paper on 'French
Authoresses of the Seventeenth Century,' the kind of thing which
her father supplied on stipulated terms for anonymous
publication. Marian was by this time almost able to complete such
a piece of manufacture herself and her father's share in it was
limited to a few hints and corrections. The greater part of the
work by which Yule earned his moderate income was anonymous: volumes and articles which bore his signature dealt with much the same subjects as his unsigned matter, but the writing was laboured with a conscientiousness unusual in men of his position. The result, unhappily, was not correspondent with the efforts. Alfred Yule had made a recognisable name among the critical writers of the day; seeing him in the title-lists of a periodical, most people knew what to expect, but not a few forbore the cutting open of the pages he occupied. He was learned, copious, occasionally mordant in style; but grace had been denied to him. He had of late begun to perceive the fact that those passages of Marian's writing which were printed just as they came from her pen had merit of a kind quite distinct from anything of which he himself was capable, and it began to be a question with him whether it would not be advantageous to let the girl sign these compositions. A matter of business, to be sure— at all events in the first instance.
For a long time Marian had scarcely looked up from the desk, but
at this moment she found it necessary to refer to the invaluable
Larousse. As so often happened, the particular volume of which
she had need was not upon the shelf she turned away, and looked
about her with a gaze of weary disappointment. At a little
distance were standing two young men, engaged, as their faces
showed, in facetious colloquy; as soon as she observed them, Marian's eyes fell, but the next moment she looked again in that direction. Her face had wholly changed; she wore a look of timid expectancy.
The men were moving towards her, still talking and laughing. She
turned to the shelves, and affected to search for a book. The
voices drew near, and one of them was well known to her; now she
could hear every word; now the speakers were gone by. Was it
possible that Mr Milvain had not recognised her? She followed him
with her eyes, and saw him take a seat not far off he must have
passed without even being aware of her.
She went back to her place and for some minutes sat trifling with
a pen. When she made a show of resuming work, it was evident that
she could no longer apply herself as before. Every now and then
she glanced at people who were passing; there were intervals when
she wholly lost herself in reverie. She was tired, and had even a
slight headache. When the hand of the clock pointed to half-past
three, she closed the volume from which she had been copying
extracts, and began to collect her papers.
A voice spoke close behind her.
'Where's your father, Miss Yule?'
The speaker was a man of sixty, short, stout, tonsured by the
hand of time. He had a broad, flabby face, the colour of an
ancient turnip, save where one of the cheeks was marked with a
mulberry stain; his eyes, grey-orbed in a yellow setting, glared
with good-humoured inquisitiveness, and his mouth was that of the
confirmed gossip. For eyebrows he had two little patches of
reddish stubble; for moustache, what looked like a bit of
discoloured tow, and scraps of similar material hanging beneath
his creasy chin represented a beard. His garb must have seen a
great deal of Museum service; it consisted of a jacket, something
between brown and blue, hanging in capacious shapelessness, a
waistcoat half open for lack of buttons and with one of the
pockets coming unsewn, a pair of bronze-hued trousers which had
all run to knee. Necktie he had none, and his linen made distinct
appeal to the laundress.
Marian shook hands with him.
'He went away at half-past two,' was her reply to his question.