Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

“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 time, and 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 well 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. Ala
s 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 than fraud: 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 was bad, Mr. Yorke; one that was certain to fail signally.”

  “No I didn’t,” roared Gerald.

  “Well, I’d recommend you never to attempt another. That field 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 is your fault. 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.

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  Arriving at Euston Square.

  ROLAND YORKE had stuck to his copying. During this autumn, now rapidly passing, when all the world and his wife were off on the wing, spending their money, and taking out their fling at pleasure — which Roland thought uncommonly hard on him — he had really put his shoulder to the wheel and drudged on at his evening work. The office had him by day, the folios by night. And if he hindered an evening or two a week by dropping in upon Mr. Greatorex and somebody else who was in Mr. Greatorex’s house, he sat up at his work when he got home. Truly Roland had learnt a lesson at Port Natal, for this was very different from what he would have done in the old days at Helstonleigh. It could not be said that he was gaining a fortune. The writing came to grief sometimes; Roland was as fond of talking as ever, by way of recreative accompaniment to labour, and the result would be that words were left out in places and wrong ones penned in others: upon which fresh paper had to be got, and the sheet begun again. Therefore he was advancing rather more surely than swiftly: his present earnings amounting in the aggregate to two sovereigns! And these were deposited for safety in Mrs. Jones’s hands.

  But Roland is not writing this October evening: which, all things considered, was destined to turn out rather a notable one. A remark was made in a former chapter, that Roland, from the state of ecstatic delight he was thrown into by the news that Arthur Channing was about to visit London, did not quite know whether he stood on his head or his heels. Most assuredly that same remark might be applied to him this evening. Upon dashing into his room, a little before six o’clock, Roland found on his tea-table a letter awaiting him that had come by the day-mail from Helstonleigh. Recognizing Arthur’s handwriting, he tore it open, read the few lines it contained, and burst forth into a shout so boisterous and prolonged, that the Reverend Mr. Ollivera, quietly reading in the drawing-room above, leaped off his seat with consternation, fully believing that somebody was on fire.

  Arthur Channing was coming to London! Then. That same evening. Almost at that very hour he ought to be arriving at the Euston Square Station. Roland did not give himself leisure to digest the why and the wherefore of the journey, or to speculate upon why the station should be Euston Square and not Paddington. Arthur was coming, and that was sufficient for him.

  Neglecting his tea, brushing himself up, startling Mrs. Jones with the suddenness of the tidings, which he burst into her room to deliver, Roland set off for the Euston Square terminus. As usual, he had not a fraction of money. That was no impediment to his arriving in time: and the extraordinary manner in which he pushed his way along the streets, striding over or through all impediments, caused a crowd of ragamuffins to collect and follow him on the run, believing that, like Johnny Gilpin, he was doing it for a wager.

  Charles, the youngest of the Channing family, was coming home overland, viâ Marseilles, from India, where he had an excellent appointment. He had gone to it at eighteen, two years ago, and been very well until recently. All at once his health failed, and he was ordered home for a six months’ sojourn. It was to meet him in London, where he might be expected in a day or two, and take him down to Helstonleigh, that Arthur Channing was now coming.

  Panting and breathless with haste, looking wild with excitement, Roland went striding on to the platform just as the train came steadily in. It was a mercy he did not get killed. Catching sight of the well-remembered face — though it was aged and altered now, for the former stripling of nineteen had grown into the fine man of seven-and-twenty — Roland sprang forward and held on to the carriage. Porters shouted, guards flew, passengers screamed — it was all one to him.

  They stood together on the platform, hand locked in hand: but that French customs do not prevail with us, Roland might have hugged Arthur’s life out. The tears were in his eyes with the genuineness of his emotion. Roland’s love for his early friend, who had once suffered so much for his sake, was no simulated one. The spectators spared a minute to turn and gaze on them — the two noteable young men. Arthur was nearly as tall as Roland, very noble and distinguished. His face had not the singular beauty — as beauty — of Hamish’s, but it was good, calm, handsome: one of those that thoughtful men like to look upon. His grey eyes were dark and deep, his hair auburn.

  “Arthur, old friend, I could die of joy. If you only knew how often I have dreamt of this!”

  Arthur laughed, pressing his hand warmly, and more warmly, ere he released it. “I must see after my luggage at once, Roland. I think I have lost it.”

  “Lost your luggage?”

  “Yes; in so far as that it has not come with me. This,” showing a rather high basket, whose top was a mound of tissue-paper, that he brought out of the carriage with his umbrella and a small parcel, “is something Lady Augusta asked me to convey to Gerald.”

  “What is it?”

  “Grapes, I fancy. She charged me not to let it be crushed. I sent my portmanteau on to the station by Galloway’s man, and when I arrived there myself could not see him anywhere. When we reached Birmingham it was not to be found, and I telegraphed to Helstonleigh. The guard said if it came to Birmingham in time he would put it in the van. I only got back to the station as the train was starting, and had no time to look.”

  “But what took you round by Birmingham?”

  “Business for Galloway. I had three or four hours work to do for him there.”

  “Bother Galloway! How are the two mothers?” continued Roland, as they walked arm-in-arm down the platform. “How’s everybody?”

  “Yours is very well; mine is not. She has never seemed quite the thing since my father’s death, Roland. Everybody else is well; and I have no end of messages for you.”

  They stood round the luggage-van until it was emptied. Nothing had been turned out belonging
to Arthur Channing. It was as he feared — the portmanteau was not there.

  “They will be sure to send it on from Birmingham by the next train,” he remarked. “I shall get it in the morning.”

  “Where was the good of your coining by this duffing train?” cried Roland. “It’s as slow as an old cart-horse. I should have taken the express.”

  “I could not get away before this one, Roland. Galloway made a point of my doing all there was to do.”

  “The cantankerous, exacting old beauty! Are his curls flourishing?”

  Arthur smiled. “Charming still; but growing a little thin.”

  “And you are getting on well, Arthur?”

  “Very. My salary is handsome; and I believe the business, or part of it, will be mine some day. We had better take a cab, Roland. I’ll get rid of Gerald’s parcel first. This small one is for Hamish. Stay a moment, though.”

  He wrote down the name of a private hotel in the Strand, where he intended to stay, requesting that the portmanteau should be sent there on its arrival.

  Jumping into a hansom, Roland, who had not recovered his head, gave the address of Gerald’s chambers. As they were beginning to spin along the lighted streets, however, he impulsively arrested the man, without warning to Arthur, and substituted Mrs. Gerald Yorke’s lodgings. They were close at hand; but that was not his motive.

  “If we leave the grapes at the chambers, Ger will only entertain his cronies with them — a lot of fast men like himself,” explained Roland. “By taking them to Winny’s, those poor meek little mites may stand a chance of getting a few. I don’t believe they’d ever taste anything good at all but for Mrs. Hamish Channing.”

  Arthur Charming did not understand. Roland enlightened him. Gerald kept up, as might be said, two establishments: chambers for himself and lodgings for his wife.

  “But that must be expensive,” observed Arthur.

  “Of course it is. Ger goes in for expense and fashion. All well and good if he can do it — and keep it up. I think he has had a windfall from some quarter, for he is launching out uncommonly just now. It can’t be from work; he has been taking his ease all the autumn in Tom Fuller’s yacht.”