straightforward,foldless simplicity. Nor did she ever come to believe less in theforeseeing care of God. She ceased perhaps to attribute so much to theministry of the angels as when she took the fiercer blast that rescuedfrom the flames the greasy note and blew it uncharred up the roaringchimney for the sudden waft of an angel's wing; but she came to meetthem oftener in daily life, clothed in human form, though still theywere rare indeed, and often, like the angel that revealed himself toManoah, disappeared upon recognition.
By-and-by it seemed certain that, if ever Hector had had anything ofwhat the world counts success, it had now come to a pause. For a longtime he wrote nothing that, had it been published, could have producedany impression like that of his first book; it seemed as if the firsthad forestalled the success of those that should follow. That had beenof a new sort, and the so-called Public, innocent littlepersonification, was not yet grown ready for anything more of a similarkind, which, indeed, seemed to lack elements of attraction and interest;and the readers to whom the same man will tell even new things are aptto grow weary of his mode of saying, even though that mode have improvedin directness and force; the tide of his small repute had already begunto take the other direction. Those who understood and prized his work,still holding by him, and declaring that they found in him what theyfound in no other writer, remained stanch in their friendship, and amongthem the little old lady who had at once welcomed his first poem to herheart and whose name and position were now well known to Hector. But thereviewers, seeming to have forgotten their first favorable reception ofhim, now began to find nothing but faults in his work, pointing out onlywhat they judged ill contrived and worse executed in his conceptions,and that in a tone to convey the impression that he had somehow wheedledcertain of them into their former friendly utterances concerning him.
And about the same time it so happened that business began to fall awayrapidly from the bank of which his father held the chief country agency,so that he was no longer able to continue to Hector his former subsidy,the announcement of which discouraging fact was accompanied by a lectureon the desirableness of a change in his choice of subject as well as inhis style; if he continued to write as he had been doing of late, no onewould be left, his father said, to read what he wrote!
And now it began to be evident what a happy thing it was for Hector thatAnnie was now at his side to help him. For, as his courage sank, and hesaw Annie began to feel straitened in her housekeeping, he saw also howher courage arose and shone. But he grew more and more discouraged,until it was all that Annie could do to hold him back from despair. Atlength, however, she began to feel that possibly there might be sometruth in what his father had written to him, and a new departure oughtto be attempted. She could not herself believe that her husband waslimited to any style or subject for the embodiment of his thoughts; hewho had written so well in one fashion might write at least well, if notas well, in another! Had she not heard him say that verse was the bestpractice for writing prose?
Gently, therefore, and cautiously she approached the matter with him,only to find at first, as she had expected, that he but recoiled fromthe suggestion with increase of discouragement. Still, taking no delightin obstinacy, and feeling the necessity of some fresh attempt grow dailymore pressing, he turned his brains about, and sending them foraging, atlength bethought him of a certain old Highland legend with which at onetime he had been a good deal taken, from the discovery in it of certainsymbolical possibilities. This legend he proceeded to rewrite andremodel, doing his best endeavor to preserve in it the old Celtic aromaand aerial suggestion, while taking care neither to lose nor reproducetoo manifestly its half-apparent, still evanishing symbolism. Urged byfear and enfeebled by doubt, he wrote feverously, and, after three daysof laborious and unnatural toil, submitted the result to Annie, who wasnow his only representative of the outer world, and the only person forwhose criticism he seemed now to care. She, greatly in doubt of her ownjudgment, submitted it to his friend; and together they agreed on thisverdict: That, while it certainly proved he could write as well in proseas in verse, people would not be attracted by it, and that it would befound lacking in human interest. His friend saw in it also too much ofthe Celtic tendency to the mystical and allegorical, as distinguishedfrom the factual and storial.
Upon learning this their decision, poor Hector fell once more into astate of great discouragement, not feeling in him the least power ofadopting another way; there seemed to him but one mode, the way thingscame to him. And in this surely he was right--only might not thingscome, or be sent to him in some other way? His friend suggested that hemight, changing the outward occurrences, and the description of thepersons to whom they happened, in such fashion that there could be noidentification of them, tell the very tale of how Annie and he came toknow and love each other, taking especial care to muffle up toshapelessness, or at least featurelessness, the part his mother hadtaken in their story. This seeming to Hector a thing possible, he tookcourage, and set about it at once, gathering interest as he proceeded,and writing faster and faster as he grew in hope of success. At the sametime it was not favorable to the result that he felt constantly behindhim, the darkly lowering necessity that, urging him on, yet debilitatedevery motion of the generating spirit.
It took him a long time to get the story into a condition that he daredto consider even passable; and the longer that he had not the delightthat verse would have brought with it in the process of its production.Nevertheless he would now and then come to a passage in writing whichthe old emotion would seem to revive; but in reading these, Annie,modest and doubtful as she always was of her own judgment, especiallywhere her husband's work was concerned, seemed to recognize a certainelement of excitement that gave it a glow, or rather, glamour ofunreality, or rather, unnaturalness, which affected her as inharmonious,therefore unfit, or out of place. She thought it better, however, to saylittle or nothing of any such paragraph, and tried to regard it as ofsmall significance, and probably carrying little influence in respect ofthe final judgment.
The narrative, such as it might prove, was at length finished, and hadbeen read, at least with pleasure and hope, by his friend, who was stillthe only critic on whose judgment he dared depend, for he could not helpregarding Annie as prejudiced in his favor, although her approvalcontinued for him absolutely essential. The sole portions to which hisfriend took any exception were the same concerning which Annie hadalready doubted, and which he found too poetical in their tone--not, hetook care to say, in their meaning, for that could not be too poetical,but in their expression, which must impinge too sharply upon prosaicears that cared only for the narrative, and would recoil from anyreflection, however just in itself, that might be woven into it.
But, alas, now came what Hector felt the last and final blow to thepossibility of farther endeavor in the way of literature!
The bank to which Hector had been introduced by his father, and in whichhe had been employed ever since, had of late found it necessary to lookmore closely to its outlay and reduce its expenses; therefore, believingthat Hector had abundance of other resources, its managers decided ongiving him notice first of all that they must in future deprivethemselves of the pleasure of his services. And this announcement cameat a time when Annie was already in no small difficulty to make the endsof her expenditure meet those of her income. In fact, she had no longerany income. For a considerable time she had, by the stinting of what hadbefore that seemed necessities, been making a shilling do the work ofeighteenpence, and now she knew nothing beyond, except to go without.But how allow Hector to go without? He must die if she did! Already hehad begun to shrink in his clothes from lack of proper nourishment.
A rumor reaching him of a certain post as librarian, in the gift of anold corporation, being vacant, Hector at once made application for it,but only to receive the answer that Pegasus must not be put in harness:poor Pegasus, on a false pretense of respect, must be kept out of theshafts! His fat friends would not permit him to degrade himself earninghis bread by work he could have do
ne very well; he must rather starve!He tried for many posts, one after the other. Heavier and heavier fellupon him each following disappointment. Annie had in her heart beengreatly disappointed that no prospect appeared of a child to sanctifytheir union; but for that she had learned more than to console herselfwith the reflection that at least there was no such heavenly visitor forwhose earthly sojourn to provide; and now how gladly would she havelabored for the child in the hope that such a joy and companionshipmight lift him up out of his despondency! Then he would be able to enjoyand assimilate the poor food she was able to get for him. It is true healways seemed quite content; but, then, he would often, she believed,pretend not to be hungry, and certainly ate less and less. Hitherto shehad fought with all her might against running in debt to thetradespeople, for, more than all else, she feared debt. Now, at last,however, her resolution was in danger of giving way, when, happily,Hector bethought himself of his precious books; to
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