So great a man as Sir Richard Yorke must of course be honoured with a great funeral. He had died on a Thursday; the interment was fixed for the next Friday week: which, taking the heat of the weather and sundry other trifles into consideration, was a little longer than it need have been. Sir Vincent, his new dignity as head of the Yorke family lying upon him with a due and weighty self-importance, was determined (like Jonas Chuzzlewit of wide memory) that the public should see he did not grudge to his late father any honour in the shape of plumes and mutes and coaches and show, that it was in his power to accord to him. There were three costly coffins, one of them of lead, and at the very least three and sixty sets of towering feathers. So that Portland Place was as a gala that day, and windows and pavements were alike filled with sight-gazers.
The Rev. William Yorke, Minor Canon of Helstonleigh Cathedral, Chaplain of Hazledon, and Rector of Coombe Lee, was bidden to it. He was not very nearly related to the deceased (his father and Sir Richard had been second cousins), but he was undoubtedly a rising man in the Church, and Sir Vincent thought fit to remember the connection. The clergyman stood in the relationship of brother-in-law to Hamish Channing; and it was at Hamish's house he stayed during the brief stay--two days--of his sojourn in town.
Another, honoured with an invitation, was Gerald Yorke. Roland was not of a particularly exacting disposition, but he did think he, the eldest, ought not to have been passed over for his younger brother. Oughts don't go for much, however, in some things, as Roland knew. Gerald belonged to the great world: he had, fashionable chambers, fashionable friends, fashionable attire, and a fashionable drawl; his private embarrassments were nothing to Sir Vincent; in fact they might be said to be fashionable too: and so Gerald, the consequential, was bidden to a seat in a mourning-coach, with feathers nodding on the four horses' heads.
Roland was ignored. Not more entirely so than if Sir Vincent had never heard there was such a man in the world. A lawyer's clerk, enjoying a pound a week and a turn-up bedstead, who took copying home to do at twopence a page, and avowed he had just been nearly on the point of turning hot-pie vendor, was clearly not an individual fit to be suffered in contact with a deceased baronet, even though it were only to follow him to the tomb of his forefathers. But, though Roland was not there, his master was Mr. Greatorex. And Mr. Greatorex, as solicitor and confidential man of business to the late Sir Richard, occupied no unimportant post in the procession.
It was late in the afternoon; and the mortal remains, bereft of all their attendant pomp and plumes and scutcheons had been left in their resting-place, when a mourning coach drew up to Mr. Channing's, out of which stepped William and Gerald Yorke. Roland, happening to be there, watched the descent from the drawing-room window side by side with Nelly Channing, and it may be questioned which of the two looked on with the more unsophisticated interest. Mr. Greatorex had not been quite so unmindful of Roland's claims to be considered as Sir Vincent was, and had told him he might take holiday on the day of his uncle's funeral, by remaining away from the office.
Roland obeyed one portion of it literally--the takingholiday. It never occurred to Roland that he might turn the day to profit, by putting his shoulder to the wheel, and his fingers to copying; holiday was holiday, and he took it as such. Rigged out in a handsome new suit of black (made in haste by Lord Carrick's tailor), black gloves, and a band of cloth on his hat, Roland spent the forepart of the day in sightseeing. As many showplaces as could be gone into for nothing, or next to nothing, he went to; beginning with Madame Tussaud's waxwork, for which somebody gave him admission, and ending with a live giantess down in Whitechapel. Late in the afternoon, and a little tired, he arrived at Hamish Channing's, and was rewarded by seeing Annabel. Mrs. Bede Greatorex (gracious that day) had given Miss Channing permission to spend the evening there to meet her sister's husband, the Rev. William Yorke. Hamish, just in from his office, sat with them. Nelly Channing, her nose flattened against the windowpane, shared with Roland the delight of the descent from the coach. Its four black horses and their lofty plumes, struck on the child's mind with a sensation of awe that nearly overpowered the admiration. She wore a white frock with black sash, and had her sleeves tied up with black ribbons. Mrs. Channing, herself in black silk, possessed a large sense of the fitness of things, and deemed it well to put the child in these ribbons today, when two of the mourners would be returning there from the funeral.
They came upstairs, William and Gerald Yorke, and entered the drawing-room, the silk scarves on their shoulders, and the flowing hat-bands of crape sweeping the ground. Nelly backed into a corner, and stood there staring at the attire. It was the first time the clergyman and Roland had met for many years. As may have been gathered during back pages, Roland did not hold his cousin in any particular admiration, but he knew good manners (as he would himself have phrased it) better than to show aught but civility now. In fact, Roland's resentment was very much like that of a great many more of us--more talk than fight. They shook hands, Roland helped him to take off the scarf, and for a few moments they were absorbed in past interests. Whatever Roland's old prejudices might have been he could not deny that the Rev. William Yorke was good-looking as of yore; a tall, slender, handsome man of four-and-thirty now, bearing about him the stamp of a successful one; his fresh countenance was genial and kind, although a touch of the noted Yorke pride sat on it.
That pride, or perhaps a consciousness of his own superiority, for William Yorke was a good man and thought well of himself for it, prevented his being so frankly cordial with Roland as he might have been. Roland's many faults in the old days (as the clergyman had deemed them), and the one great fault which had brought humiliation to him in two ways, were very present to his mind tonight. Slighting remarks made by Gerald on his brother during the day, caused Mr. Yorke to regard Roland as no better than a mauvais sujet, down in the world, and not likely to get up in it. Gerald, on the contrary, he looked upon as a successful and rising man. Mr. Yorke saw only the surface of things, and could but judge accordingly.
"How is Constance?" enquired Roland. "I sent her word not to marry you, you know."
"Constance is well and happy, and charged me to bring you a double share of love and good remembrances," answered the clergyman, slightly laughing.
"Dear old Constance! I say," and Roland dropped his voice to a mysterious whisper, "is not Annabel like her? One might think it the same face."
Mr. Yorke turned and glanced at Annabel--she was talking apart with Gerald. "Yes, there is a good deal of resemblance," he carelessly said, rather preoccupied with marvelling how the young man by his side came to be so well dressed.
Roland, his resentments shallow as the wind, and as fleet in passing, would have shaken hands with Gerald as a matter of course. Gerald managed to evade the honour without any apparent rudeness; he had the room to greet and his silk scarf to unwind, and it really seemed to Roland that it was quite natural he should be overlooked.
"A magnificent funeral," spoke Gerald, glancing askance at Roland's fine suit of mourning, every whit as handsome as his own. "Seven mourning coaches-and-four, and no end of private carriages."
"But I can't say much for their manners, they did not invite me," put in Roland. "I'm older than you, Gerald."
"Aw--ah--by a year or two," croaked Gerald in his worst tone, as to affectation and drawl. "One has, I take it, to--aw--consider the position of a--aw--party on these--aw--occasions, not how old they may be."
"Oh, of course," said Roland, some slight mockery in his good-natured voice. "You are a man of fashion, going in for white-bait and iced champagne, and I'm only an unsuccessful fellow returned like a bad shilling, from Port Natal, and got to work hard for my bread and cheese and beer."
As the hour of William Yorke's return from the funeral was uncertain, but expected to be a late one, it had been decided that the meal prepared should be a tea-dinner--tea and cold meats with it. Gerald was asked to remain for it. A few minutes, and they were seated in the dining-room at a well-spread board, Mrs. Channing presiding; Hamish, with his bright face, his genial hospitality, and his courtly manners, facing her. Roland and Annabel were on one side, the clergyman and Gerald on the other. Miss Nelly, on a high chair, wedged herself in between her mamma and Roland.
"Treason!" cried Hamish. "Who said little girls were to be at table?"
"Mamma did," answered quick Nelly. "Mamma said I should have a great piece of fowl and some tongue."
"Provided you were silent, and not troublesome," put in Mrs. Channing.
"I'll keep her quiet," said Roland. "Nelly shall whisper only to me."
Miss Nelly's answer was to lay her pretty face close to Roland's. He left some kisses on it.
Gerald sat next to Hamish and opposite to Annabel. Remembering the state of that gentleman's feelings towards Mr. Channing, it may be wondered that he condescended to accept his hospitality. Two reasons induced him to it. Any quarters were more acceptable than his own just now, and he had no invitation for the evening, even had it been decent to show himself in the great world an hour after leaving his uncle in the grave. The other reason was, that he was just now working some ill to Hamish, and, wished to appear extra friendly to avert suspicion.
"I hope you have not dined, Roland," remarked Hamish, supplying him with a large plate of pigeon-pie.
"Well, I have, and I've not," replied Roland, beginning upon the tempting viand. "I bought three sausage-rolls at one o'clock, down east way: it would have been my dinner but for this."
Gerald flicked his delicate cambric handkerchief out of his pocket and held it for a moment to his nose, as if he were warding off some bad odour that brought disgust to him. Sausage-rolls! Whether they, or the unblushing candour of the avowal were the worst, he hardly knew.
"Sausage-rolls must be delicacies!" he observed with a covert sneer. And Roland looked across.
"They are not as good as pigeon-pie. But they cost only twopence apiece: and I had but sixpence with me. I have to regulate my appetite according to my means," he added with a pleasant laugh and his mouth full of crust and gravy.
"Roland--as you have, in a manner touched upon the subject--I should like to ask what you think of doing," interposed William Yorke, in a condescending but kindly tone. "You seem to have no prospects whatever."
"Oh I shall get along," cheerfully answered Roland with a side glance at Miss Channing. "Perhaps you'll see me in housekeeping in a year's time from this."
"In housekeeping!"
"Yes: with a house of my own--and, something else. I'm not afraid. I have begun to put my shoulder to the wheel in earnest. If I don't get on, it shall not be from lack of working for it."
"How have you begun to put your shoulder to the wheel?"
"Well--I take home copying to do in my spare time after office hours. I have been doing it in earnest over three weeks now."
"And how much do you earn at it weekly?" continued William Yorke.
A slight depression from its bright exultation passed over Roland's ingenuous face. Hamish saw it, and laughed. Hamish was quite a confidant, for Roland carried to him all his hopes and their tiresome drawbacks.
"I can tell you: I added it up," said Roland. "Taking the three weeks on the average, it has been two-and-twopence a week."
"Two-and-twopence a week!" echoed William Yorke, who had expected him (after the laudatory introduction) to say at least two pounds two. Roland detected the surprise and disappointment.
"Oh, well, you know, William Yorke, a fellow cannot expect to make pounds just at first. What with mistakes, when the writing has to be begun all over again, and the paying for spoilt paper, which Brown insists upon, two-and-twopence is not so much amiss. One has to make a beginning at everything."
"Are you a good hand at accounts?" enquired Mr. Yorke, possibly in the vague notion that Roland's talents might be turned to something more profitable than the copying of folios.
"I ought to be," said Roland. "If the counting up, over and over and over again, of those frying-pans I carried to Port Natal, could have made a man an accountant, it must have made one of me. I used to be at it morning and evening. You see, I thought they were going to sell for about eight-and-twenty shillings apiece, out there: no wonder I often reckoned them up."
"And they did not!"
"Law, bless you! In the first place nobody wanted frying-pans, and I had to get a Natal store-keeper to house them in his place for me--I couldn't leave them on the quay. But the time came that I was obliged to sell them: they were eating their handles off."
"With rust, I suppose."
"Good gracious, no! withrent, not rust. The fellow (they are regular thieves, over there) charged me an awful rent: so I told him to put them into an auction. Instead of the eight-and-twenty shillings each that I had expected to get, he paid me about eight-and-twenty pence for the lot, case and all. But if you ask whether I am a ready reckoner, William Yorke, I'm sure I must be that."
The Rev. William Yorke privately thought there might be a doubt upon the point. He fancied Roland's present prospects could not be first-rate.
"The copying is nothing but a temporary preliminary," observed Roland. "I am waiting to get a place under Government. Vincent Yorke I expect can put me up for one, now he has come into power; and I don't think he'll want the will, though he did pass me over today."
If ever face expressed condemnatory contempt, Gerald's did, as he turned it fall on his brother. For, this very hope was being cherished by himself. It was he who intended to profit by the interest of Sir Vincent, to be exerted on his behalf. And to have a rival in the same field, although one of so little account as Roland, was not agreeable.
"The best thingyoucan do, is to go off again to Port Natal," he said roughly. "You'll never get along here."
"But I intend to get along, Gerald. Once let me have a fair start--and I have never had it yet--there's not many shall distance me."
"What do you call a fair start?" asked Mrs. Channing, who always enjoyed Roland's sanguine dreams.
"A place where I can bring my abilities into use, and be remunerated accordingly. I don't ask better than to work, and be paid for it. Only let me earn a couple of hundreds a year to begin with, Mrs. Channing, and you'd never hear me ask Vincent Yorke or anybody else for help again."
"You had not used to like the prospect of work, Roland," spoke William Yorke.
"But then I had not had my pride and laziness knocked out of me at Port Natal."
William Yorke lifted his eyes. "Did that happen to you?"
"It did," emphatically answered Roland. "Oh, I shall get into something good by-and-by, where my talents can find play. Of all things, I should best like a farm."
"A farm!"
"A nice little farm. And if I had a few hundred pounds, I'd take one tomorrow. Do you know anything of butter-making, Annabel?" he stopped to ask, dropping his voice.
Annabel bent her blushing face over her plate, and pretended not to hear. Roland thought she was offended.
"I didn't mean make it, you know," he whispered; "I'd not like to see you do such a thing"--bringing his face back again to the general company. "But it's of little good thinking of a farm, you see, William Yorke, when there's no money to the fore."
"You don't know anything of farming," said Mr. Yorke, inwardly wondering whether this appeal to Annabel had meant anything, or was only one of Roland's thoughtless interludes of speech.
"Don't I?" said Roland; "I was on one for ever so long at Port Natal, and had to drive pigs. It is astonishing the sight of experience a fellow picks up over there, and the little he learns to live upon."
"Because he has to do it, I suppose."
"That's the secret. I am earning a pound a week now, regular pay, and make it do for all my wants. You'd not think it, would you, William Yorke?"
"Certainly not, to look at you," said William Yorke, with a smile. "Are clothes included?"
"Oh, Carrick goes bail for all that. I'm afraid he'll find the bills running up; but a fellow, if he's a gentleman, must look decent. I'm as careful as I can be, and sit in my shirtsleeves at home when it's hot."
"Lady Augusta has visions of your walking about London streets in a coat out at elbows. I think it troubles her."
Roland paused, stared, and then started up in impulsive contrition, nearly pulling off the table-cloth.
"What a thoughtless booby I was, never to let her know! The minute you get down home, you go to her, William Yorke. Tell her how it is--that I have the run of Carrick's people for clothes, boots, hats, and all the rest of it. This suit came home at eight this morning, with an apology for not sending it last night--the fellow thought I might be going to the funeral--and a sensible thought too! Look at it!" stretching out his arms, and turning himself about, that Mr. Yorke might get a comprehensive view of the superfine frock-coat and silken linings. "I'm never worse dressed than this: only that my things are not on new every day. You tell the mother this, William Yorke."
He had not done it in vanity; of that Roland possessed as little as any one; but in eager, earnest desire to reassure his mother, and atone to her for his ungrateful forgetfulness. Stooping for his table napkin, he at down again.
"Yes, I am well-dressed, though I do have to work. And for recreation, there's this house to come to; and dear old Hamish and Mrs. Channing receive me with gladness and make much of me, just as though I had always been good, and Nelly jumps into my arms."
"When do you mean to come to Helstonleigh?"
"Never," answered Roland, with prompt decision. "As I can't go back as I wanted to--rich--I shall not go at all. What I wish to ask is, when Arthur Channing is coming up here?"
"Arthur Channing! I cannot tell."
"It is a shame of people to get a fellow's hopes up, and then damp them. Arthur wrote me word--oh, a month ago--that he was coming to London on business for old Galloway. Close nearly upon that, comes a second letter, saying Galloway was not sure that he should require to send him. Ishouldlike to serve him out."
William Yorke smiled. "Serve out Arthur?"
"Arthur! I'd like to draw Arthur round the old city in a car of triumph, as we used to chair our city members. I mean that wretch of a Galloway. He ought to be taken up for an impostor. Why did he go and tell Arthur he should send him to London, if he didn't mean to?"
Gerald Yorke let his fork fall in a semi-passion, and nearly chipped the beautiful plate of Worcester china: wasallthe conversation to be monopolised by Roland and his miserable interests? It was high time to interfere. Picking up the fork with an air, he cleared his throat.
"Sir Vincent comes into about four thousand a-year, entailed property. We went in to hear the will read by old Greatorex. It's not much, is it?"
"Not to one reared to the notions Vincent Yorke has been," said Hamish. "But he has more than that, I presume?"
"Some odds and ends, I believe: I asked Greatorex. And there's the little homestead down in Surrey. Sir Richard's liabilities die with him. Perhaps he had wiped them off beforehand?"
"I'm sure he had," said Roland, with good-natured warmth. "Oh, we hear a good deal in our office. As to four thousand a-year being little for one man, you should have been at Port Natal, Gerald, and you'd estimate it differently."
"To a man about town, like myself, it seems a starvation pittance, considering what Sir Vincent will have to do out of it," returned Gerald loftily, speaking to any at table, rather than to his brother.
"That's just it," said Roland. "If I were a man about town, and had not been out to Port Natal and learnt the value of money, it might seem so to me. Dick won't find it enough, I daresay. I should think a rent of four hundred a-year riches!"
Gerald curled his lip. "No doubt; and some pigs to drive."
"I'd like a pig, Roland," cried Nelly Channing, turning to him, and unconsciously creating a diversion. "A pretty little pig, with blue ribbons."
"As pretty as you," said Roland, squeezing her. "You mean a guinea-pig, little stupid. As to driving pigs, Gerald--it's not a very good employment of course; but you see I had to do what I was put to--or starve."
"I'd rather starve than do it," retorted Gerald. "And so would any one with the instincts of a gentleman."
"You only go out there and try what starving is; you'd t good-humour ell a different tale," said Roland, maintaining his good-humour. "Starving there means starving."
Some one of those turns in conversation, which occur so naturally, brought round the subject to Mr. Ollivera. Roland, imparting sundry revelations of his home-life at Mrs. Jones's--or, as he called her still, Mrs. Jenkins--mentioned the clergyman's name.
"Don't you mean to call and see him?" he asked of William Yorke. "You'd better."
But Mr. Yorke declined. "My time in London is so very short," he said; "I go home tomorrow. Besides, I have really no acquaintance with Mr. Ollivera. We never met but on one occasion."
"When you lent him your surplice," spoke Roland. And William Yorke looked up in surprise.
"What do you know about it?"
"Oh, I know a great deal," returned Roland. "I say--why did you not attend that night yourself? You promised."
"I did not promise. All I said was that I would consider of it. Upon reflection, I thought it better not to go. The circumstances were very peculiar; and the Dean, had he come to know of it, might have taken me to task."
"Not he," said independent Roland. "The Dean's made of sterling gold."
"What sort of a chanter does Tom make?" enquired Hamish.
"Very fair; very fair, indeed," replied William Yorke, some patronage in his tone, meant for the absent young minor canon. Consciously vain of his own excellence in chanting, Mr. Yorke could but accord comparative praise to Tom Channing's. The vanity was not without cause; Mr. Yorke's sweet and sonorous voice was wont to fill the aisles of the old cathedral with its melody.
Just as the tea was over, one of the servants came in with a folded weekly review hot from the press on her silver waiter, and presented it to her master. Hamish opened it with a slight apology, and was glancing at its pages, when he folded it again with a sudden movement and quietly put it in his pocket. His sight, in the moment's happy confusion, partially faded; a bright hectic lighted his cheek; his whole heart leaped up within him, as with a rushing, blissful sense of realized hope. For he had seen that a review of his book was there.
The change in his face was remarkable. It was as though a blight had passed over it and withered the hopeful life out.
He sat with the journal in his hand--the authoritative "Snarler"--and read the cruel lines over and over again. When, in the solitude of his own study, they first met his eager eye, skimming them rapidly, and their purport was gathered in almost at a glance, a kind of sick faintness seized upon his heart, and he hastily put away the paper as though it were some terrible thing he dared not look further upon.
The shock was awful--and the word is not used in its often light sense; the disappointment something not to be described. After the departure of his guests, Roland and Gerald, and William Yorke had gone by his own wish to take home Annabel and to make a late call on Mrs. Bede Greatorex--if haply that fashionable dame might be found at home--Hamish Channing had passed into his study; and, there, alone with himself and his emotions, he once more unfolded the paper. All the while he had sat with it in his pocket, a sweet tumultuous hope had been stirring his bosom; he could hardly forbear, in his eagerness to realize it, telling them to make haste and depart. And when they were really going, it seemed that they were a month over it. He stood up wishing them goodnight.
"By the way, Hamish, I should think your book would soon be getting its reviews," spoke crafty Gerald, who had seen the journal brought in, and knew what was in it. "I hope you'll get good ones, old fellow."
And the wish was spoken with so much apparent genuineness, the tone of the voice had in it so vast an amount of gushing feeling, that Hamish gratefully wrung the offered hand. After that, even had he been of a less ingenuous nature, he would have suspected the whole world of abusing his book, rather than Gerald Yorke.
Shut up in his study, the lamp beside him, he unfolded the paper with trembling expectation, his heart beating with happiness. It was one of those moments, and they come in all our lives, which must stamp itself on the memory for ever. He looked, and looked. And then put the pages away in a kind of terror.
Never, in this age of bitter reviews, had a more bitter one than that been penned. But for his intense unsuspicion, for his own upright single-mindedness, he might possibly have recognized Gerald Yorke's slashing style. Gerald, as its writer, never once occurred to him. After awhile, when the first brunt of the shock had passed--and it was almost as a shock of death--he took up the paper again, and read the article through.
His hair grew damp with perspiration; his face burnt with a hot shame. With this apparently candid, but most damnatory review before his eyes, it seemed to him that his book must be indeed bad. The critique was ably written, and it attacked him from all sides and on all points. Gerald Yorke had taken pains with that as he had never taken pains with any article before. It had been, so to say, days in construction. One portion would be altered today, one tomorrow; and the result was that ittold. The chief characteristic of the whole was sarcastic mockery. The scholarship of the book was attacked, (and that scholarship--that is, of its writer--formed the chief point of envy in a covert corner of Gerald's heart); its taste, its style, its every thing. The pen had been steeped five fathoms deep in gall. Rounded periods spoke of the work's utter worthlessness, and affectionately warned the public against reading it, with quite fatherly care. It called the author an impudent upstart; it demanded to know what he meant by fostering such a book on the public; it wondered how he had found a publisher; it almost prayed the gods, that preside over literary careers, to deliver unhappy readers from James Channing. Abuse and ridicule; ridicule and abuse; they rang the changes one upon another. Hamish read; he turned back and read again; and the fatal characters burnt themselves into his brain as with a ruthless fire.
What a reward it was! Speaking only as a recompense for his devotion and labour, leaving aside for the moment the higher considerations, how cruel was the return! The devoted lad, read of in history, concealed a fox in his bosom, and it repaid him by gnawing at his vitals. That reward was not more remorselessly cruel than this. Where was the use of Hamish Channing's patient industry, his persevering endurance, his burning the midnight candle, to bring forththisfruit? To what end the never-ceasing toil and care? While Gerald Yorke had been flourishing in society, Hamish Channing was toiling. Burning his candles, so to say, at both ends! The unwearied industry, the patient continuance in labour, the ever-buoyant, trustful hope!--all had been his.
Does the public realize what it is, I wonder, to exercise this brain-work day by day, and often also night by night, week after week, month after month, year after year? A book is put into the hands of a reading man--or say a woman, if you will--and he devours it with ardour or coolness, more or less of either as the case may be, and makes his comments afterwards with complaisance, and says the book is a nice book, and seems almost to think it has been brought out for his special delectation. But does he ever cast a reflection on the toil that book has cost the writer? Does he look up to him with even athoughtof gratitude? Generally speaking, no. In the midst, perhaps, of very adverse circumstances, of long-continued sickness, of headache, heartache, many aches; when the inward spirit is fainting at life's bitter troubles, and it would seem in vain to struggle more, the labour must yet be done. Look at Hamish Channing--his is no ideal case. His day's work over, he got to his work--the night's--and wrote on, until his mind and body were alike weary. While others played, he toiled; when others were abroad at their banquetings and revellings, idling away their hours in what the world calls society, and Gerald Yorke making one amidst them, he was shut up in his room, labouring on persistently. And this was his reward!
The best energies of his power and intellect had Hamish Channing given to the book: the great gift of genius, which had certainly been bestowed largely upon him, was exercised and brought to bear. No merit to him for that; he could not help exercising it. It appeared to him, this writing for his fellow men, to be the one special end for which he was sent into the world--where every man has his appointed and peculiar aptitude for someone calling or duty, though it happens that a vast many never find out their own until too late. A man reared, as had been James Channing, to good; anxious to live here in the single-minded fulfilment of every duty, using the world only as a passage to a better, can but write as a responsible agent; whether he may be working at a religious tract or a story of fiction, he does it as to his Creator, imploring day by day that he may be helped in it. Had Hamish been required to write without that sense of responsibility upon him, he would have put aside his pen.
And the disappointment! the rude, pitiless, condemning shock! It might be that such was necessary; that it had been sent direct from heaven. The least sinful man on earth may have need of such discipline.
Again Hamish read the article from beginning to end. Read, and re-read it. It was as if the lines possessed the fatal fascination of the basilisk, attracting him against his will. He writhed under the executioner's knife, while he submitted to it. The book was a good and brilliant work, betraying its genius in every line, well conceived, well plotted, ably written. It was one of those that take the whole imagination of the reader captive; one that a man is all the better for reading, and rises up from with a subdued spirit, hushed breath, and a glowing heart. While enchaining man's deepest interest, it yet insensibly led his thoughts to Heaven. Simple though it was in its pure Saxon diction, its sentiments were noble, generous, and exalted. Not a thought was there to offend, not a line that, for its parity, might not have been placed in the hands of his child. Modest, as all gifted with true genius are, yet possessing (for that must always be), a latent consciousness of his great power, Hamish had looked forward for success to his book, as surely as he looked for Heaven. That it could be a failure, he had simply never thought of; that it should be badly received, ridiculed, condemned, written down, had not entered his imagination. Had he been told such might be the result, he would have quietly answered that it was impossible.
In all matters where the minds and feelings, the inward, silent hopes and fears, are deeply touched, it cannot be but that we are sensitively alive to the opinions of our fellow men, and swayed by their judgment. As Hamish Channing read and re-read, learning the cruel sentences almost by rote, his heart failed within him. For the time being, he thought he must have erred in supposing the book so good; that it must be a foolish and mistaken book, deserving only of their sharp criticism; and a sense of humiliation, than which nothing could be more intensely painful, took possession of his spirit.
But the belief could not remain. The mood changed again. The book resumed nearly its estimated place in his mind, and the sense of humiliation was superseded by the smarting conviction of cruel injustice. What had he or his book done that they should be so reviled?
"Lord, thou knowest all things! surely I have not deserved this!" irrepressibly broke from the depths of his anguish.
No, he had not deserved it. As some others have not, who yet have had to bear it. It is one of the world's hard lessons, one that very few are appointed to learn. Injustice and evil and oppression exist in the world, and must exist until its end. Only then shall we understand wherefore they are permitted. Pardon, reader, if a line or two seem to be repeated. The many months of toil, the patient night-labour, that but for the hope-spring rising in the buoyant heart might have been found too wearing; the self-denial ever exercised; the weary night watching and working--all had been thrown back upon Hamish Channing, and rendered, as it were, nugatory. Try and picture to yourselves what this labour is; its aspirations of reward, its hopes of appreciation--and for a wickedly disposed man, or simply a carelessly indifferent man, or a vain, presumptuous man, or a man who has some petty spite to gratify against author or publisher, or a rival reviewer, or a man that writes but in wanton idleness, to dash it down with a few strokes of a pen!
Such things have been. They will be again. But if Gerald Yorke, and others like him, would consider how they violate the divine law of enjoined kindness, it might be that the pen would now and then pause.
Would Gerald have to answer for it at the Great Day of Reckoning? Ah, that is a question very little thought of; one perhaps difficult to answer. He had set himself deliberately in his foolish envy, in his ill-conditioned spirit, to work ill to Hamish Channing: to put down and write down the book that he knew was depended on to bring back its return, that was loved and cherished almost as life. It was within the range of possibility that he might work more ill than he bargained for. Heaven is not in the habit of saying to man by way of reminder when he gets up in a morning, "I am looking at you:" but it has told us such a thing as that every secret word and thought and action shall be brought to light, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Gerald ignored that, after the fashion of this busy world; and was perfectly self-complacent under the ignoring.
Only upon such a mind as Hamish Channing's, with his nervous attributes of genius, his refined sensitiveness, could the review have brought home its worst bitterness. Fortunately such minds are very rare. Gerald Yorke had little conception of the extent of its fruit.Hewould have set on and sworn off his anger, and called the writer, who could thus stab in the dark, a false coward, and sent him by wishes to all kinds of unorthodox places, and vowed aloud to his friends that he should like to horsewhip or shoot him. Thus the brunt, with him, would have been worked off; never so much as touched the vital feelings, if Gerald possessed any. It was another thing with Hamish Channing. He could almost have died, rather than have spoken of the attack to any living man; and if forced to it, as we are sometimes forced to unwelcome things, it would have brought the red blush of shame to his sensitive brow, to his shrinking spirit.
He sat on; on, with his aching heart. One hand was pressed upon his chest: a dull pain had seated itself there. Never again, as it seemed to him, should he look up from the blow. More and more the cruelty and the injustice struck upon him. Does it so strike upon you, reader? The book was not perfection (I never met with one that was, in spite of what the reviews chose to affirm of Mr. Gerald Yorke's), but it was at least written in an earnest, truthful spirit, to the utmost of the abilities God had given him. How had it invoked this requital? Hamish pondered the question, and could not answer it. What had he done to be shown up to the public; a butt for any, that would, to pitch scorn at? There was no appeal; there could be no redress. The book had been held forth to the world--at least to the thousands of it that would read the "Snarler"--as a bad and incapable book, one they must avoid as the work of a miserably presumptive and incapable man.
A slight movement in the next room, and Mrs. Channing came in with Nelly. Miss Nelly, in consideration of the late substantial tea, had not been sent to bed at the customary hour. Hamish slipped the review inside his table-desk, and greeted them with a smile, sweet-tempered as ever under the blow. But his wife saw that some change lay on his face.
"Is anything the matter, Hamish? You look--worn; as if you had received some ill news."
"Do I? I am a little tired, Ellen. It has been very hot today."
"I thought you were not going to work tonight."
"Oh, I'm not working. Well, young lady, what now?"
Miss Nelly had climbed on his knees. She had been brought in to say goodnight.
"When's the ship coming home, papa?"
He suddenly bent down and hid his face on the child's bright one. Heaven alone knew what the moment's suffering was and how he contrived not to betray it.
"Will it come tomorrow, papa?"
"We shall see, darling. I don't know."
The subdued, patient tone had something of hopelessness in it. Mrs. Channing thought he must be very tired.
"Come, Nelly," she said. "It is late, you know."
He kissed the child tenderly as ever, but so quietly, and whispered a prayer for God to bless her; his tone sounding like one of subdued pain, almost as though his heart were breaking. And Nelly went dancing out, talking of the ship and the good things it was to bring.
Quite immediately, a gentleman was shown in. It was the publisher of the book. Late though the hour was, he had come in some perturbation, bringing a copy of the "Snarler."
"Have you any enemy, Mr. Channing?" was nearly the first question he asked, when he found Hamish had seen the article.
"Not one in the wide world, so far as I know."
"The review of your book is so remarkably unjust, so entirely at variance with fact and truth, that I should say only an enemy could have done it," persisted the publisher. "Look, besides, at the rancour of its language, its evident animus; I scarcely ever read so aggravated an attack."
But still Hamish could only reiterate his conviction. "I have no enemy."
"Well, it is a great pity; a calamity, in short. When once an author's reputation is made and he is a favourite with the public, bad reviews cannot harm him: but to a first book, where the author is unknown, they are sometimes fatal."
"Yes, I suppose they are," acquiesced Hamish.
"We must wait now for the others, Mr. Channing. And hope that they will be the reverse of this. But it is a sad thing--and, I must say, a barefaced injustice."
Nothing more could be said, nothing done. The false review was in the hands of the public, and Hamish and his publisher were alike powerless to arrest or remedy the evil. The gentleman went out, leaving Hamish alone.
Alone with his blow and its anguish. He felt like one who, living all night in a sweet dream, has been rudely awakened to some terrible reality. The sanguine hopes of years were dashed away; life's future prospects had broken themselves up. If ever the iron entered into the soul of man, it had surely passed into that of James Channing.
The injustice told upon him worse than all; the unmerited stab-wound would damage him for aye. In his bosom's bitter strife, he almost dared to ask how men could be permitted thus to prey one upon another, and not be checked by Heaven's lightning. But, to that there might be no answer: others have asked it before him.
"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power: but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive."
Involuntarily, with a strange force, these words passed through the mind of James Channing.
But the wise King of Israel--and God had given him more than earthly wisdom--could give no explanation of why this should be.
This must be called the third part of the story, if we may reckon the short commencing prologue as the first. The year had gone on to October, and that month was quickly passing.
The lapse of time, some three or four months, had not brought any change worth recording: people and things were in the main very much in the position that they had been: but a slight summary of progress must be given.
Bede Greatorex had been on the wing. In early August he went abroad with his wife, choosing Switzerland as his first halting-ground. Bede had proposed some place (if that could be found) less frequented by the English; and Mrs. Bede had retorted that if he wanted to vegetate in an outlandish desert, he might go to it alone. In the invariable kindness and consideration Bede observed to her, even to her whims, he yielded: and they went off in the commotional wake of a shoal of staring tourists, with another commotional shoal behind them.
Mr. Greatorex it was who had insisted on the holiday for Bede. "You are getting more incapable of hard work every day," he plainly said to him: "a rest will, I hope, restore you; and take it you must." Bede yielded. That he was very much in need of a change of some sort, he knew. And of rest also--if he could only get it. But the latter might be more hard to obtain than Mr. Greatorex suspected or imagined.
So they went to Switzerland first: Bede and his wife, and her maid Tallet. Bede thought the party would have been a vast deal more compact and comfortable without the lady's-maid, not to speak of the additional expense, and he gently hinted as much. The hint was quite lost on Mrs. Bede, who took not the smallest notice of it. In point of fact, that lady (besides being incorrigibly idle, never doing an earthly thing for herself) had absolute need of artistic aid in the matter of making-up: face and shape and hair and attire alike requiring daily renovation. From Switzerland they went rushing about to other places, not at all necessary to note, and got back home the middle of October, after rather more than two months' absence; being followed by nearly a fourgon of fashions from Paris: for that seductive capital had been their last resting-place, and Mrs. Bede had found its magazins as seductive as itself. Bede winced at the cheques he had to give.
Mr. Greatorex started with alarm when he saw his son. They got home at night, having come up by the tidal train from Folkestone, which had been somewhat delayed in consequence of the boat's rough passage. During their absence, it had been the quietest and happiest home imaginable: Mr. Greatorex, Annabel Channing, and the little girl forming it; Frank Greatorex having holiday as well as Bede. For visitors they had Henry William Ollivera and Roland Yorke, one or the other dropping in to tea twice or thrice a week. Mr. Greatorex was a very father to Annabel; and Miss Jane, subjected to regularity and desirable influences only, was on her best behaviour. The old lawyer, in the happy quiet, the relief conferred by the absence of noise and Mrs. Bede, thought the good old times must be coming back again.
All three were sitting together in the drawing-room when Bede and his wife got in. The chandelier's rays flashed full on Bede's face, and Mr. Greatorex started. Far from his son's having derived benefit from the prolonged tour, he looked worse than ever; his cheeks hollow and hectic, his face altogether worn. Perhaps for the first time it struck Mr. Greatorex, as he glanced from one to the other, thatshelikewise looked thin and worn, with restless eyes and hollow cheeks, hectic also. But in the hectic there was this difference: Bede's was natural, hers was put on. What would they have been without the rouge?
Bedesaidhe was better. When Mr. Greatorex spoke seriously to him on the following morning, recommending that there should be a consultation, Bede laughed. He declared that the rest from business had done him an immense deal of good. Thin? Oh of course he was thin. So was Louisa--did Mr. Greatorex not notice it?--Tallet was the same, for the matter of that: they had gone whirling about from place to place, a little too fast, he supposed, making a toil of pleasure. And then the dreadful sea passage!--of course they looked the worse last night, but they were both all right this morning.
So spoke Bede, and went to work with a will: really with some of his old energy. He appeared fresh and tolerably well after the night's rest; and Mr. Greatorex felt reassured.
Gerald Yorke was another who had taken holiday. Gerald had managed to get an invitation to cruise in the Honourable Mr. Fuller's yacht; and Gerald, with two or three other invited guests, went careering off in it for the space of six weeks. Before starting, he had fully accomplished his reviewing work with regard to Hamish Channing's book--but that can be left until later. Gerald enjoyed himself amazingly. The yacht put into foreign ports on occasion, and they got a few days' land cruise. The honourable owner treated his friends right royally, and Gerald had not felt so much at ease since he was a boy. By a slice of luck, which Gerald hardly believed in at the time, he had induced Vincent Yorke to lend him fifty pounds before starting, and he thought himself laudably generous in dividing this with his wife.
"Now mind, Winny," he said to her on the morning of his departure, "I shall be away about five weeks. It can't take you five pounds a week to live and pay rent, so I shall expect you to have a good sum in hand when I get back. I'll drop you a letter now and then, but you'll not be able to write to me, as we shall be moving about from place to place just as the wind or mood takes us."
Therefore, on the score of his wife and children, Gerald was entirely at ease; and he quite expected, after his charge to Winny, that she would have something like eight or ten pounds left of the twenty-five; at least, that she ought to have. He was out of reach of creditors too; the future he did not allow to trouble him (he never did), and Gerald gave himself wholly up to the enjoyment of the present.
Little did Gerald Yorke suspect, as he leaned over the side of the yacht in seductive indolence, smoking his cigar and sipping his iced Burgundy, that poor Winny's money had come to an end before the second week was over. It might not have cost him a single moment's care if he had known it, for Gerald was one upon whom no earthly person's trouble made the smallest impression, unless it touched him personally. Effectually out of the way himself, Winny might just have done as she best could. Gerald would have wished he was at hand to tell her she deserved a shaking for her folly, and dismissed the matter from his mind.
The way the money went so soon, was this. Gerald's man-servant in chambers, just as glad as his master to get a respite from troublesome creditors, who went well nigh to wear his patience out, informed one of that ill-used body of men where Mr. Gerald Yorke had gone, on the very day following the departure--"Cruising over the sea in a lord's yacht to foreign parts, and likely to be away till winter." Of course this struck the applicant dumb. He happened to know that Gerald Yorke had a wife and family in town, and he set himself forthwith to learn their address; which he found not very difficult of accomplishment. His own debt was not a very heavy one, rather short of six pounds. Down he went, demanded an interview with Mrs. Yorke, and so scared her senses away by insisting upon instant payment there and then, that Winny handed out the money. Other creditors got to know of this; they went down too, and insisted upon the same prompt payment on their score. Winny had many virtues no doubt, but there was one she could certainly not boast of--courage. In all that related to debt and its attendant annoyances, she was timid as a fawn. To be pressed for an account and not pay it if she had the money in her possession, was simply impossible to Winifred Yorke. But this I think has been hinted at before. When the last fraction of the twenty-five pounds had left her (in a payment of four pounds ten to a stern-looking, but by no means abusive man). Winny burst into tears: saying aloud she did not expect her husband home for weeks, did not know where to write to him, and had not a sixpence left for herself and her poor little children. Upon that the man put the half-sovereign back into Mrs. Yorke's hand without a word, and departed.
So there was Winny, literally without a sixpence, save for this ten shillings, and Gerald not quite two weeks gone. But for Hamish Channing and his wife, she might really have starved; most certainly she would have been turned out of doors; for the landlady, nearly tired of Mr. Gerald Yorke's uncertain finances, had never kept her. Miss Cook said she could not afford to let rooms and get no rent; and no doubt that was true. Away went Winny with her grief and helplessness to Mrs. Channing. It was an awkward dilemma, an embarrassing appeal, and Ellen Channing felt it as such. On the one hand there was this poor helpless woman, and her not much more helpless children: on the other, Ellen was aware that Hamish had already aided her far more extensively than he could afford.
Oh, it was true. Many and many a little luxury (Gerald would have called it a necessary) that Hamish required in his failing health--for it had begun to fail--did he debar himself of for the sake of Gerald Yorke's wife and children. His heart ached for them. He took not the smallest pleasure, he often walked where he ought to have rode, he would eat breed and cheese for his lunch, or a dry roll where he should have had a chop, that he might give the saved money to Mrs. Yorke. In those golden dreams of fame and fortune, when his book was approaching completion, and the realization of its returns had apparently been drawing very near (months ago now, it seemed to be, since they were dreamt out), Hamish had cherished a little delightful plot: of setting Gerald on his legs again anonymously--of putting him straight with the world, and perhaps something over, that he might see his way at least a little clearer towards a more satisfactory state of household matters for himself and Winny jointly. This had been frustrated through the book's being written down, as already partially told of, and a corner of the grief in Hamish Manning's weary heart was sighing itself out for Gerald's sake. Hamish said not a word of the disappointment to a living soul--we are speaking now in regard to Gerald--Ellen had been his sole confidant, and he did not allude to it even to her. To Hamish, it seemed that there was only the more necessity for helping Gerald, in administering to the necessities of his forsaken wife.
And Gerald's wife had invented a pleasant fable. As the weeks went on after Winny came to London, it was not possible but that Gerald should see someone must help her with money. Put to it for an excuse, one day that Gerald asked the question point blank, and not daring to say it was Hamish or Ellen Channing, Winny declared it was her mother. Gerald stared a little. Mrs. Eales lived somewhere down in Wales, and existed on an annuity of sixty pounds a-year. But though he wondered how the good old mère contrived to help Winny so much, or in fact at all, he inquired no farther. She might be reducing herself to a crust and a glass of water a day; might be, for aught he knew, forestalling her income wholesale; Gerald was complacently content to let it be so.
And thus matters had been going on: Winny in want always, and Hamish taxing himself and his needs to help her. In September, the office he served offered him a fortnight's holiday, thinking he looked as if he required it. Hamish thanked them, but declined. He had no spirits for taking holiday, and the helping of Gerald's family left him no funds for it.
And when Winny burst into Mrs. Channing's one afternoon, with this last confession, that she was utterly penniless, save for the half-sovereign the man threw back, and should be so until Gerald came home, weeks hence, telling it in the hearing of her three little girls, her face woe-begone, her tears and sobs fit to choke her, Ellen Channing felt annoyed and vexed. Mixed with her compassion for Gerald's wife, there was a feeling that they had already done more for her than they were justified in doing. Ellen would have liked the fortnight's holiday very much indeed on her own score. A suspicion had begun to dawn upon her that her husband was not so strong as he might be, and one morning she spoke to him. It was only the London heat that made him feel weak, Hamish answered, perhaps really thinking so. Very well, argued Ellen, then there was all the more necessity for getting out of it to the seaside for a change. And he would have been glad enough to take the change had funds allowed it. Considering that the small amounts of help incessantly applied to the need of Mrs. Gerald Yorke would have taken them to the seaside ever so many times over, Mrs. Channing hadfeltit. And to have this fresh demand made, when she had supposed Winny was safe for some weeks to come, to hear the avowal that she wanted money for everything--food and lodging and washing and sundries, did strike Mrs. Channing as being a little too much.
Ellen Channing had been, as Ellen Huntley, reared to liberality. She was large-hearted by nature, open-handed by habit. To refuse to continue to aid Mrs. Yorke in her helpless need, would have gone against her inclination, but to continue to supply her at any cost was almost equally so. What to do, and what Winny would do, she could not think. The first thing was, to take Winny's things off and comfort her for the rest of the day; the next was to send the children to Miss Nelly in the nursery; the third to wait till Hamish came in.
He arrived at the usual hour, his face a little brighter than it had been of late. However James Channing might strive to conceal the curious pain--not physical yet, only mental--always gnawing at his heart-strings, and to put on a brave smile before his wife and the world, she detected that all was not right with him. Leaving Winny, on the plea that she would see whether the children were at tea yet, Mrs. Channing followed her husband into his dressing-room.
He had just dried his hands when she entered, and was turning to the glass to brush his hair. She stood by while telling him of Winny's piteous state, and the impossibility, as it seemed, that they could do much for her.
"Yes we can, Ellen," he said, turning to her with his bright smile when the recital was over. "I have had a slice of luck today."
"A slice of luck!"
"Even so. You remember Martin Pope, poor fellow, who somehow got down in the world at Helstonleigh, and borrowed a little money from me to get him up in it again?"
"Yes, I remember. It was sixty pounds."
"Well, Ellen, he has been rather long getting up, but it is really coming at last. He called in at the office this morning, and repaid me the half of the loan. Poor Martin! he is honourable as the day. He says the not being able to repay me when the bank went worried him terribly; and all the more so, because I never bothered him."
"Did you ask him for it then?"
"No. I was sure he had it not in his power to refund, and so left him in peace. Ellen, if I were dying for money--if I saw my wife and child dying for it--I think I could not be harsh with those who owed it me, where I knew they were helpless in means, though good in will, to pay."
He had put down the brush, and was taking a small packet of notes from his pocketbook, laughing rather gaily.
"I'm like a schoolboy showing his treasures. See, love. Six five-pound notes. We can help Mrs. Winny."
Ellen's fair fresh face broke into dimples. "And we can take a holiday too, Hamish?"
"Ah no. At least I can't. That's over."
"But why?"
"Because when I declined the holiday, the clerk under me was allowed to take one, and another of them is ill. I must stick to my post this year."
The dimples hid themselves: the expectant face clouded over. He noticed it.
"I am very sorry, Ellen. If you would like to go, and take Nelly and nurse----"
"Oh, Hamish, you know I would not," she interrupted, vexed that he should even suggest such a thing. "I only care for it for your sake; for the rest it would be to you."
"I don't care about it for myself, love."
He drew her to him as she passed on her way to quit the room, and kissed her fondly. Ellen let her hand rest for a moment on his neck; she never looked at him now, but a feeling of apprehension darted through her, that he was not as strong as he ought to be.
Hamish closed the door after her, finished his toilet, and then stood looking from the open window. The world had changed to him for some little time now; the sunshine had gone out of it. That one bitter, cruel review, had been followed up by others more cruel, if possible, more bitter. The leading papers were all against him. How he battled with it at the timeand made no sign, he hardly knew. To heart and spirit it was a death-blow; for both seemed alike to have had their very life crushed out. He went on his way still, fulfilling every duty every daily obligation in kindly courteousness as of yore, believing that the world saw nothing. In good truth the world did not. Save that his sunny smile had always a tinge of sadness in it, that he seemed to get a trifle thinner, that his voice, though sweet as ever, was low and subdued, the world noticed nothing. Ellen alone saw it; saw that a blight had fallen upon the inward spirit.
But she little guessed to what extent. Hamish himself did not. All he knew was, that a more cruel blow had been dealt to him than he had supposed it possible to be experienced in this life. When by chance his eye would fall on a volume of his work, his very soul seemed to turn sick and faint. It was as if he had cast his whole hopes upon a die, and lost it. His dreams of fame, his visions of that best reward, appreciation, had faded away, and left him nothing but darkness. Darkness, and worse than darkness; for out of it loomed mortification and humiliation and shame. The contrast alone went well nigh to kill him. In the pursuit of his high artistic ideal, he had lived and moved and almost had his being. The ills of life had touched him not; the glorious, expectant aspirations that made his world, shielded him from life's frowns. It is ever so with those rare few whom the Divine gift of genius has made its own. As the grand hope of fruition drew nearer and nearer, it had seemed to Hamish, at moments, that realization had actually come. The laurel-crown seemed to rest upon his head; the longed-for prize all but touched his expectant lips. No wonder, when the knell of all this light and hope and blessedness boomed suddenly out, that the better part of Hamish Channing's life, his vitality, went with it.
He worked on still. His papers for the magazines were got up as before, for he could not afford to let them cease. Gerald Yorke, borrowing here, borrowing there, might go careering off in yachts, and pass weeks in idleness, sending work and care to his friend the Deuce; but Hamish and Gerald were essentially different men. Even this evening, after Hamish should have dined, he must get to his toilsome work. It was felt as a toil now: the weary pain, never quitting his bosom, took all energy from him.
He stood holding the window-curtain in his rather fragile hand; more fragile than it used to be. The sky that evening was very lovely. Bright purple clouds, bordered with an edge of shining gold, were crowding the west; a brighter sheet of gold underneath them seemed as if it must be flooding the other side of the world, to which the sun was swiftly passing, with its dazzling dawn of burnished radiance. Hamish could but notice it: it is not often that a sunset is so beautiful. Insensibly, as he gazed, thoughts stole over him of that OTHER world, where there shall be no need of the sun to lighten it: where there shall be no more bitter tears or breaking hearts; where sorrow and trouble shall have passed away. These same thoughts came to him very often now, and always with a kind of yearning.
As he took his hand from the curtain, with that deep, sobbing sigh, or rather involuntary catching of the breath, which is a sure token of some long-concealed enduring sorrow--for else it is never heard--the signet-ring fell from his little finger. It had grown too large for him--as we are all apt to say. If I don't take care, I shall lose it, thought Hamish. And that would have been regarded as a misfortune, for it had been his father's, the one Mr. Channing always wore and used. This was the third time it had slipped off with a run.
Hamish saw his wife's work-box on a table, looked in it, and found some black sewing-silk. This he wound round and round the ring hastily, for he knew dinner must be ready. Thus secured, he put it on again, and left the room. The children heard his step, and came bounding out of the nursery, Miss Nelly springing into his arms.
He kissed her very tenderly; he lovingly put back her golden hair. He took up the other little things and kissed them in turn, asking if they had had love-letters from papa. Looking into the nursery, he inquired whether they had plenty of jam and such-like good things on the tea-table, telling nurse to see that little Rosy, who could not fight for herself, got her share. And then, leaving them with his pleasant nod, his sunny smile, he went to the drawing-room, and gave their mother his arm to take her down to dinner, whispering to her--for she seemed in a low state, her tears on the point of bursting out--that he would make it all right for her until her husband came home. And it was that husband, that father, who had worked him all the ill! Hamish suspected it not. Cowards and malicious ones, such as Gerald, stab in the dark.
And so September went on, and October drew near, and by and bye Mr. Gerald Yorke arrived at home again. Winny, who had no more tact than her youngest infant, the little Rosy, greeted her husband with a flood of tears, and the news of how she had been obliged to pay away the twenty-five pounds in settling his bills. Gerald called her a fool to her face, and frowned awfully. Winny only sobbed. Next he demanded, with a few more ugly words that might have been left out, how the devil she had managed to go on. Between choking and shrinking, the answer was nearly inaudible, and Gerald bent his head to catch it: she had had a little more help from "mamma."
Was Mrs. Gerald Yorke's deceit excusable? Even under the circumstances few may think it so. And yet--it was a choice between this help, and the very worst discomfort that could fall upon her: debt. Winny was shrewd in some things: she knew all about her husband's ill-feeling to Mr. Channing: she knew about the reviews; and she really did believe that if Gerald got to hear whence her help had come, he would shake her as he shook Kitty. In her utter lack of moral courage, she could but keep up the deception.
But Gerald Yorke had come home in feather, a prize-rose in his button-hole. By dint of plausible statements to Mr. Fuller, he had got that honourable friend to lend him two hundred pounds. Or rather, strictly speaking, to get it lent to him. With this money safely buttoned up in his pocket, Winny's penniless state was not quite so harshly condemned as it might otherwise have been: but when Winny timidly asked for some money to "pay mamma back," Gerald shortly answered that he had none, mamma must wait.
And so, at this, the opening of the third part of the story, Gerald Yorke was flourishing. A great man he, in his chambers again, free from duns for a time, giving his wine parties, entering into the gaieties of social life, with all their waste of time and money. Winny got her rent paid now, regularly, and some new bonnets for herself and the children.
"I am so glad to hear you are more at ease, Gerald," Hamish Channing said, meeting him one day accidentally, and speaking with genuine kindness, but never hinting at any debt that might be due to himself. "How have you managed it, old friend?"
"Oh--aw--I--paid the harpies a--aw--trifle, and have--aw--got some credit again," answered Gerald, evading the offered hand. "Good day. I'm in a hurry."
But Gerald Yorke, though flourishing in funds, was not flourishing in temper. Upon one subject it was chronically bad, and he just as angry and mortified as he could be. And that was in regard to his future prospects in the field, of literature. Three or four days after his return, he paid a visit to his publishers, sanguinely hoping there might be a good round sum coming to him, the proceeds of his book. Alas for sublunary expectations! The acting partner met him with a severely cold face and very ill news. The flashing laudatory reviews, written (as may be remembered) by Gerald himself or his bosom friends, had not much served the book, after all, in the long run. When they appeared, it caused demands for it to flow in, and a considerable number of copies went out. But when the public got the book, they could not or would not read it; and the savage libraries returned the copies to the publishers, wholly refusing to pay for them. They sent them back in shoals: they vowed that the puffing of an utterly miserable book in the extraordinary style this one had been puffed, was nothing less thanfraud: some went so far as to say that the publishers and the author and the reviewers ought all to be indicted together for conspiracy. In short, the practical result was, that the book might almost be said to be withdrawn, so few copies remained in circulation. In all respects it was an utter failure. No wonder the unhappy publisher, knowing himself wholly innocent in the matter, smarting under a considerable loss, besides the fifty pounds that ought to have been advanced by Gerald, and never yet had been, no wonder he met Mr. Gerald Yorke with a severe face. The only gratification afforded him lay in telling this, and enlarging rather insultingly on the worthlessness of the book.
"You, a reviewer, could not have failed to know it wasbad, Mr. Yorke; one that was certain to fail signally."
"No I didn't," roared Gerald.
"Well, I'd recommend you never to attempt another.Thatfield is closed to you."
"What the devil do you mean?--how dare you presume to give me such advice? I shall write books without end if I think fit. My firm belief is that the failure isyourfault. You must have managed badly, and not properly pushed the book."
"Perhaps it is my fault that the public can't read the book and won't put up with it," retorted the publisher.
Gerald flung away in a temper. A hazy doubt, augmenting his mortification and anger, kept making itself heard: whether this expressed opinion of the book's merits might not be the true one? Hamish Channing, though softening the fiat, had said just the same. Gerald would very much have liked to pitch publisher and public into the sea, and Hamish Channing with them.