by Ellen Wood
The matter with him? Ellen Channing told the brief story in a few words. The cruel reviews had broken his heart. Gerald listened, and felt himself turn into a white heat inside and out.
“The reviews!” he exclaimed. “I don’t understand you, Mrs. Channing.”
“Of course you read them, Gerald, and must know their bitter, shameful injustice,” she explained. “They were such that might have struck a blow even to a strong man: they struck a fatal one to Hamish. He had staked his whole heart and hope upon the book; he devoted to it the great and good abilities with which God had gifted him; he made it worthy of all praise; and false men rose up and blasted it. A strong word you may deem that, Gerald, for me to use; but it is a true one. They rose up, and — in envy, as I believe — set themselves to write and work out a deliberate lie: they got it sent forth to the world in effectual channels, and killed the book. Perhaps they did not intend also to kill the writer.”
Gerald’s white face looked whiter than usual. His eyes, in their hard stare, were very ugly.
“Still I can’t understand,” he said. “The critiques were, of course, rather severe: but how can critiques kill a man?”
“And if you, being a reviewer yourself, Gerald, could only get to find out who the false-hearted hound was, — for it’s thought to have been one fellow who penned the lot — you’d oblige me,” put in Roland. “I’d repay him, as I’ve seen it done at Port Natal. His howling would be something fine.”
“You do not yet entirely understand, I see, Gerald,” sadly answered Ellen, paying no attention to Roland’s interruption, while Gerald turned his shoulder upon him. “In one sense the reviews did not kill. They did not, for instance, strike Hamish dead at once, or break his heart with a stroke. In fact, you may think the expression, a broken heart, but a figure of speech; and in a degree of course it is so. But there are some natures, and his is one, which are so sensitively organized that a cruel blow shatters them. Had Hamish been stronger he might have borne it, have got over it in time; but he had been working beyond his strength; and I think also his strangely eager hope in regard to the book must have helped to wear out his frame. It was his first work, you know. When the blow came he had not strength to rally from it; mind and body were alike stricken down, and so the weakness set in and laid hold of him.”
“What are these natures good for?” fiercely demanded Gerald, in a tone as if he were resenting some personal injury.
“Only for Heaven, as it seems to me,” she gently answered.
Gerald rubbed his face; he could not get any colour into it, and there ensued a pause. Presently Ellen spoke again.
“I remember, when I was quite a girl, reading of a somewhat similar case in one of Bulwer Lytton’s novels. A young artist painted a great picture — great to him — and insisted on being concealed in the room while a master came to judge of it. The judgment was adverse; not, perhaps, particularly harsh and cruel in itself, only sounding so to the painter; and it killed him. Not at the moment, Gerald; I don’t mean that; he lived to become ill, and he went to Italy for his health, his heart gradually breaking. He never spoke of what the blow had been to him, or that it had crushed out his hope and life, but died hiding it. Hamish has never spoken.”
“What I want to know is, where’s the use of people being like this?” pursued Gerald. “What are they made for?”
“Scarcely for earth,” she answered. “The too-exquisitely-refined gold is not meant for the world’s coinage.”
“I’d rather be a bit of brittle china, than made so that I couldn’t stand a review,” said Gerald. “It’s to be hoped there’s not many such people.”
“Only one in tens of thousands, Gerald.”
“Does it — trouble him?” asked Gerald, hesitatingly.
“The advance of death? — yes, in a degree. Not for the death, Gerald: but the quitting me and Nelly.”
“I’m not yet what Hamish and Arthur are, safe to be heard up there when they ask for a thing,” again interrupted Roland, jerking his head upwards: “but I do pray that from the day that bad base man hears of Hamish Channing’s death, he’ll be haunted by his ghost for ever. My goodness! I’d not like to have murder on my conscience. It’s as bad as the fellow who killed Mr. Ollivera.”
Gerald Yorke rose. Ellen asked him to wait and see Hamish, but he answered, in what seemed a desperate hurry, that he had an engagement.
“You might like to take a peep at him, Gerald,” spoke Roland. “His face looks as peaceful as if it were sainted.”
Gerald’s answer was to turn tail and go off. Roland, who had some copying on hand that was being waited for, stayed to shake hands with Mrs. Channing.
“Look here,” he whispered to her. “Don’t you let him worry his mind about you and Nelly: in the way of money, you know. I shall be sure to get into something good soon; Vincent will see to that; and I’ll take care of both of you. Good-bye.”
Poor, penniless, good-hearted Roland! He would have “taken care” of all the world.
With a run he caught up Gerald, who was striding along rapidly. Oblivious of all save the present distress, even of Gerald’s past coldness, Roland attempted to take his arm, and got repulsed for his pains.
“My way does not lie the same as yours, I think,” was Gerald’s haughty remark. Roland would not resent it.
“I say, Ger, is it not enough to make one sad? It wouldn’t have mattered much had it been you or me to be taken: but Hamish Channing! we can’t afford to lose such a one as him.”
“Thank you,” said Gerald. “Speak for yourself.”
“And with Hamish the bread and cheese dies. She has but little money. Perhaps she’ll not feel the want of it, though. I’d work my arms off for that darling little Nelly — and for her too, for Hamish’s sake.”
“I don’t believe he is dying at all,” said Gerald. “Reviews kill him, indeed! it’s altogether preposterous. Women talk wretched nonsense in this world.”
Without so much as a parting Good-night, Gerald struck across the street and disappeared. By the time he arrived at his chambers, his mind had fully persuaded itself that there was nothing serious the matter with Hamish Channing: and he felt that he could like to shake Winny (who had been his informant) for alarming him.
His servant brought him a letter as he entered, and Gerald tore it open. It proved to be from Sir Vincent Yorke, inviting Gerald down to Sunny Mead on the morrow for a couple of days’ shooting.
“Hurrah!” shouted Gerald. “Vin’s coming round, is he! I’ll go, and get out of him a hundred or so, to bring back with me to town. That’s good. Hurrah!”
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Gerald Yorke at a Shooting Party.
IT was a pretty place; its name, Sunny Mead, an appropriate one. For the bright sun (not far yet above the horizon) of the clear and cold December day, shone on it cheerily: on the walls of the dwelling-house — on the green grass of the spreading lawn, with its groups of flowering laurestina and encompassing trees, that in summer cast a grateful shade. The house was small, but compact; the prospect from the windows, with its expanse of wood and hill and dale, a charming one. At its best it was a simple, unpretending place, but as pleasant a homestead for moderate desires as could be found in the county of Surrey.
In a snug room, its fire blazing in the grate, its snowy breakfast cloth, laden with china and silver, drawn near the large window that looked upon the lawn, sat the owner, Sir Vincent Yorke, and his cousin Gerald. As soon as breakfast should be over, they were going out shooting; but the baronet was by no means one who liked to disturb his morning’s comfort by starting at dawn: shooting, as well as everything else in life, he liked to take easily. Gerald had arrived the previous night: it was the first time Gerald had seen Sunny Mead; and the very unpretending rank it took amidst baronets’ dwelling-places, surprised him, Sir Vincent’s marriage was fixed for the following month. January; and he gratified Gerald much by saying that he thought of asking him to be groomsman.
“Aw! — very happy �
�� immensely so,” responded Gerald with his most fashionable drawl, that so grated on a true and honest ear.
“Sunny Mead has this advantage; one can come to it and be quiet,” observed Sir Vincent. “There’s not room for more than three or four servants in it. My father used to call it the homestead: that’s just what it is, and it doesn’t pretend to be aught else. More coffee? Try that partridge pie. Have you seen Roland lately?”
The cynical expression of disparagement that pervaded Gerald’s face at the question, made Sir Vincent smile.
“Aw — I say, don’t you spoil my breakfast by bringing up him,” spoke Gerald. “The best thing he can do is to go out to Port Natal again. A capital pie!”
“This devilled turkey’s good, too. You’ll try it presently?” spoke the baronet. “How is Hamish Channing?”
Gerald’s skin turned of a dark hue. Was Sir Vincent purposely annoying him? Catching up his coffee-cup to take a long draught, he did not answer.
“I never saw so fine a fellow in all my life,” resumed Sir Vincent. “Never was so taken with a face at first sight as with his. William Yorke was staying there at the time of my father’s funeral, and I went next day to call. That’s how I saw Channing. He promised to come and see me; but somebody told me the other day he was ill.”
“Aw — yes,” drawled Gerald. “Seedy, I believe.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Temper,” said Gerald. “Wrote a book, and had some reviews upon it, and it put him out, I hear.”
“But it was a first-rate book, Gerald; I read it, and the reviews were all wrong: suppose some contemptible raven of envy scrawled them. The book’s working its way upwards as fast as it can now.”
“Who says so?” cried Gerald.
“I do. I had the information from a reliable source. By-the-way, is there anything in that story of Roland’s — that he is engaged to Channing’s sister? or is it fancy?”
“I do wish you’d let the fellow’s name be; he’s not so very good to talk of,” retorted Gerald, in a rage.
But Roland was not so easily put out of the conversation. As luck had it, when the servant brought Sir Vincent’s letters in, there was one from Roland amidst them. Vincent laughed outright as he read it: —
“DEAR VINCENT, “I happened to overhear old Greatorex say yesterday that Sir Vincent Yorke wanted a working bailiff for the land at Sunny Mead. I! wish! to! offer! myself! for! the! situation! There! I put it strong that you may not mistake. Of course, I am a relative, which I can’t help being; and a working bailiff is but a kind of upper servant. But I’ll be very glad of the place if you’ll give it me, and will do my duty in it as far as I can, putting my best shoulder to the wheel; and I’ll never presume upon our being cousins to go into your house uninvited, or put myself in your way; and my wife would not call on Lady Yorke if she did not wish it. I’ll be the bailiff — you the master.
“I don’t tell you I am a first hand at farming; but, if perseverance and sticking to work can teach, I shall soon learn it. I picked up some experience at Port Natal; and had to drive waggons and other animals. I’m great in pigs. The droves I had to manage of the grunting, obstinate wretches, out there, taught me enough of them. Of course I know all about haymaking; and I’d used to be one of the company at old Pierce’s harvest homes, on his farm near Helstonleigh. I don’t suppose you’d want me to thresh the Wheat myself; but I’m strong to do it, and would not mind. I would be always up before dawn in spring to see to the young lambs; and I’d soon acquire the ins and outs of manuring and draining. Do try me, Vincent! I’ll put my shoulder to the wheel in earnest for you. There’d be one advantage in taking me — that I should be honest and true to your interests. Whereas some bailiffs like to serve themselves better than their masters.
“As to wages, I’d leave that to you. You’d not give less than a hundred a year to begin with; and at the twelvemonth’s end, when I had made myself qualified, you might make it two. Perhaps you’d give the two hundred at once. I don’t wish to presume because I am a relative; and if the two hundred would be too much at first (for, to tell the truth, I don’t know how bailiffs’ pay runs), please excuse my having named it. I expect there are lots of pretty cottages to be hired down there; may be there’s one on the estate appropriated to the bailiff. I may as well mention that I am a first-rate horseman, and could gallop about like a fire-engine; having nearly lost my life more times than one, learning to ride the wild cattle when up the country at Port Natal.
“I think that’s all I have to say. Only try me! If you do, you will find how willing I am. Besides being strong, I am naturally active, with plenty of energy: the land should not go to ruin for the want of being looked after. My object in life now is to get a certainty that will bring me in something tolerably good to begin, and go on to three hundred a year, or more; for I should not like Annabel to take pupils always. I don’t know whether a bailiff ever gets as much.
“Bede Greatorex can give you a good character of me for steadiness and industry. And if I have stuck to this work, I should do better by yours; for writing I hate, and knocking about a farm I’d like better than anything.
“You’ll let me have an answer as soon as convenient. If you take me I shall have to order leggings and other suitable toggery from Carrick’s tailor; and he might be getting on with the things.
“Wishing you a merry Christmas, which will soon be here (don’t I recollect one of mine at Port Natal, when I had nothing for dinner and the same for supper), I remain, dear Vincent, “Yours truly, “ROLAND YORKE.”
“Sir Vincent Yorke.”
To watch the curl of Gerald’s lips, the angry sarcasm of his face, as he perused this document, which the baronet handed to him with a laugh, was amusing. It might have made a model of scorn for a painter’s easel. Dropping the letter from his fingers, as if there were contamination in its very touch, he flicked it across the table.
“You’ll send it back to him in a blank envelope, won’t you?”
“No; why should I?” returned Sir Vincent, who was good-natured in the main, easy on the whole. “I’ll answer him when I’ve time. Do you know, Gerald, I think you rather disparage Roland.”
Gerald opened his astonished eyes. “Disparage him! How can he be disparaged? — he is just as low as he can be. An awful blot, and nothing else, on the family escutcheon.”
“The family don’t seem to be troubled much by him — saving me. He appears to regard me as a sheet-anchor — who can provide for the world, himself included. I rather like the young fellow; he is so genuine.”
“Don’t call him young,” reproved Gerald; “he’ll be twenty-nine next May.”
“And in mind and manners he is nineteen!”
“He talks of pigs — see what he has brought his to,” exclaimed Gerald, somewhat forgetting his fashion. “The — aw — low kind of work he condescends to do — the mean way he is not ashamed to confess he lives in! Every bit of family pride has gone out of him, and given place to vulgar instincts.”
“As Roland has tumbled into the mire, better for him to be honest and work,” returned Sir Vincent, mincing with his dry toast and one poached egg, for he was delicate in appetite. “What else could he do? Of course there’s the credit system and periodical whitewashings, but I should not care to go in for that kind of thing myself.”
“Are you in want of a bailiff?” growled Gerald, wondering whether the last remarks were meant to be personal.
“Greatorex has engaged one for me. How are you getting on yourself, Gerald?”
“Not — aw — at all. I’m awfully hard up.”
“You always are, Ger, according to your story,” was the baronet’s remark, laughing slightly.
And somehow the laugh sounded in Gerald’s ear as a hard laugh — as one that boded no good results to the petition he meant to prefer before his departure — that Sir Vincent would accommodate him with a loan.
“He’s close-fisted as a miser,” was Gerald’s mental c
omment. “His father all over again. Neither of them would part with a shilling save for self-gratification: and both could spend enough on that. I’ll ask him for a hundred, point blank, before I leave; more, if I can feel my way to do it. Fortune is shamefully unequal in this life. There’s Vin with his baronetcy, and his nice little place here and every comfort in it, and his town house, and his clear four thousand a year, and no end of odds and ends of money besides, nest eggs of various shapes and sizes, and his future wife a seventy thousand pounder in her own right; and here’s myself by his side, a better man than he any day, with not a coin of my own in the whole world, nor likely to drop into one by inheritance, and afraid to venture about London for fear of being nabbed! Curse the whole thing! He is shabby in trifles too. To give me a miserable two days’ invitation. Two days! I’ll remain twenty if I can.”
“You don’t eat, Gerald.”
“I’ve made a famous breackfast, thank you. Do you spend Christmas down here, Vincent?”
“Not I. The day after to-morrow, when you leave me, I start for Paris.”
“For Paris!” echoed Gerald, his mouth falling at the sudden failure of his pleasant scheme.
“Miss Trehern and her father are there. We shall remain for the jour de l’an, see the bonbon shops, and all that, and then come back again.”
“And I hope the bonbon shops will choke him!” thought kindly Gerald.
Sir Vincent Yorke did not himself go in for keepers and dogs. There was little game on his land, and he was too effeminate to be much of a sportsman. He owned two guns, and that comprised the whole of his shooting paraphernalia. Breakfast over, he had his guns brought, and desired Gerald to take his choice.
Now the handling and understanding of guns did not rank amidst Gerald Yorke’s accomplishments. Brought up in the cathedral town, only away from it on occassions at Dr. Yorke’s living (and that happened to be in a town also), the young Yorkes were not made familiar with out-door sports. Dr. Yorke had never followed them himself, and saw no necessity for training his sons to them. Even riding they were not very familiar with. Roland’s letter has just informed Sir Vincent that he had nearly lost his life learning to ride the wild horses when up the country at Pot Natal. Probably he had learnt also to understand something about guns: we may be very sure of one thing, that if he did not understand them, he would have voluntarily avowed it. Not so Gerald. Gerald, made up of artificialisms — for nothing seemed real about him but his ill-temper — touched the guns here, and fingered the guns there, and critically examined them everywhere, as if he were the greatest connoisseur alive, and had invented a breech-loader himself; and finally said he would take this one.