The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (1.1894)

144 Two Sketches

had been a happy life, he could have forgotten its uselessness ; but
it had been both useless and unhappy. He had done nothing for
others, he had won nothing for himself. Oh, but he had tried,
he had tried. When he had left Oxford people expected great
things of him ; he had expected great things of himself. He was
admitted to be clever, to be gifted ; he was ambitious, he was in
earnest. He wished to make a name, he wished to justify his
existence by fruitful work. And he had worked hard. He had
put all his knowledge, all his talent, all his energy, into his work ;
he had not spared himself; he had passed laborious days and
studious nights. And what remained to show for it ? Three or
four volumes upon Political Economy, that had been read in their
day a little, discussed a little, and then quite forgotten—super-
seded by the books of newer men. " Pulped, pulped," he reflected
bitterly. Except for a stray dozen of copies scattered here and
there—in the British Museum, in his College library, on his own
bookshelves—his published writings had by this time (he could
not doubt) met with the common fate of unsuccessful literature,
and been " pulped."

" Pulped—pulped ; pulped—pulped." The hateful word beat
rhythmically again and again in his tired brain ; and for a little
while that was all he was conscious of.

So much for the work of his life. And for the rest ? The
play ? The living ? Oh, he had nothing to recall but failure.
It had sufficed that he should desire a thing, for him to miss it;
that he should set his heart upon a thing, for it to be removed
beyond the sphere of his possible acquisition. It had been so
from the beginning ; it had been so always. He sat motionless as
a stone, and allowed his thoughts to drift listlessly hither and
thither in the current of memory, Everywhere they encountered
wreckage, derelicts: defeated aspirations, broken hopes. Languidly

he