Winter came and passed away without anything happening to break the
even tenor of existence. Spring came, and with spring the appearance of
a new novel of Mr Collingwood Dawson. Having had a considerable share
in its manufacture, I felt naturally anxious to know the result of its
appearance. I had an encouraging note from Mrs Collingwood Dawson:
‘Much liked—goes off very well:’ and I saw from the advertisements in
the papers that the notices of the press were generally favourable. At
the head of them all was the following extract from the _Hebdomadal
Review_: ‘High capacity—very good—many readers—enticing interest.’
Tributes of appreciation that were valuable from a periodical rarely
given to praise overmuch any one unconnected with the house it
represents.
Soon after I had another note from my employer: ‘I am coming over
to confer with you on literary and other matters; please make all
necessary arrangements. I shall be accompanied by a female friend, but
not, alas, by Mr Collingwood Dawson!’
The steamer that plies the Lower Seine in the summer months, came
puffing up the river one fine breezy morning, and dropped into a little
boat that put off to meet her, two female passengers, a quantity of
boxes, and a little white dog. I recognised my expected visitors, and
hastened down to the landing-place to meet them. I explained that my
house was not big enough to take them in; but that I had secured rooms
at the hotel close by, and that my wife and I hoped to have as much of
their society as they could give us.
After they had settled down in their new abode, Mrs Collingwood Dawson
came over to see me, and was shewn into the pavilion.
‘I am in a good deal of doubt and difficulty,’ she said; ‘and I have
come to ask your opinion and discuss matters with you. But as it is no
use putting half-confidence in you, and your opinion will be of little
good unless you know fully all the circumstances of the case, I mean
to tell you everything; and will first begin, if you please, and if it
does not bore you too much, with a little sketch of my life.’
I assured her that I should have great pleasure in listening to her, as
anything connected with her was of interest to me.
‘I am,’ she began, ‘the daughter of an official of the old India
House; and my father, who had held a good position there, and enjoyed
a good income, left at his death no other provision for his widow and
only child, myself, but the pensions to which we were entitled—a very
handsome one indeed for my mother; and for myself some seventy pounds
a year, which ceased at my marriage. He had been during his lifetime
very fond of good society, especially literary society; and thus from
early years I had been acquainted with many people who followed that
profession. Consequently it is not surprising that I tried to add to
an income sufficiently narrow by literary work, although I confess
that I had no particular talent, and certainly no enthusiasm for the
task, and met with little success. In this way I became acquainted with
several publishers and many authors; among others was my first husband.
He was a man of great intellectual power and force of will, but quite
without any ballast of judgment or common-sense. Still I was very much
enthralled by his influence, and he having formed a violent passion
for me, insisted on marrying me. Young and ill-advised, I gave way to
his impetuosity, and married we were. I soon had cause to repent the
hasty step. He had been a man of most irregular habits; and after a
brief period of devotion to me, he resumed them. Our household became
a scene of constant jars and quarrels; he wearied out my life, and I
must have wearied out his. The beautiful soul that I thought I had
recognised as enshrined in his somewhat ill-formed and stunted figure,
had no existence for me. He was malignant and detestable, utterly—most
utterly.’
Her voice trembled with anger at the retrospect, whilst her eyes filled
with indignant tears.
‘It was an ill-assorted match evidently,’ I said. ‘But why did you not
agree to separate?’
‘I shrank from mentioning such a thing; with all his faults, I believed
that he was still at the bottom devotedly attached to me. Besides, such
a step is always distressing and compromising. No; I went on bearing my
troubles, not silently indeed, for I have too much spirit, I confess,
to make a meek and uncomplaining wife; but I bore them anyhow, although
I confess that any affection I ever had for him had been lost in the
embroilments of our married life. You may think that I was to blame,
and that if there were a real attachment on his part towards me, I
ought to have been able to manage him; but I tell you no! There was a
certain malignity in his nature that made him spiteful and tormenting
even to those whom he loved. Anyhow, life was a sorrowful burden to me
whilst he was with me.’
She rose, looking quite overcome by the recital of her troubles. Her
eyes were filled with tears; her hands trembled nervously, as she
raised them to press the hair back from her forehead. I murmured a few
words expressive of sympathy and good-will.
‘Well!’ she said, sitting down and wiping her eyes with a pretty
embroidered handkerchief; ‘not to dwell upon my troubles. I was at
last relieved from the hateful knot by his death—a death I believe
he contrived in a way that should leave me in as cruel and doubtful
a position as possible. He left home one day without giving me any
intimation that he would stay away—that was his general practice—or
leaving me any money to carry on the household expenses. And the next
thing I heard of him was from a little village on the coast, that he
had been drowned while bathing. I believe that he committed suicide. I
ascertained that he had been informing himself most minutely of the set
of the tides and currents about the coast, and with fiendish ingenuity
had taken to the water at a time when the tide was certain to carry his
body far out to sea.’
‘But what object could he have had in that, madam?’
‘Don’t you see? The pension which I had lost in marrying revived on my
widowhood. But he had contrived that his body should never be found. In
vain I applied to the authorities to renew my pension. There had been
several cases of attempted personation and fraud about these pensions,
and they utterly refused to renew mine without absolute proof of my
husband’s death. This I was unable to afford to their satisfaction, his
body never having been discovered. Still the circumstantial evidence
was most strong, and I was advised to bring an action in the way of a
petition of right. A circumstance, however, occurred,’ said the widow
with a slight blush, ‘which rendered such a step unnecessary.’
‘Ah! I see,’ I cried; ‘you married again?’
‘Yes; and this time my venture was more fortunate. My second husband
was an officer in the army, frank and free and brave. No young couple
could have been happier. But alas! we were neither of us prudent in the
management of our affairs. We had small means in the present, but great
expectations, and we were too sanguine to think of the possibility of
disappointment. Life became a series of feasts and fêtes. My husband
sold out of the army, and we lived gaily enough on the proceeds of his
commission, till that was all gone, and we saw ourselves brought to the
verge of ruin. I must tell you that my husband was also of a literary
turn, and wrote military sketches and so on, that brought in a little
money, but nothing substantial.
‘We had one resource still left—the house in which we lived; it had
been my mother’s, and at her death she left it to me. It was a pretty
little house in the neighbourhood of St John’s Wood; but it was
leasehold only, and the lease had not more than ten years to run. We
had found it under these circumstances impossible to mortgage our
interest. We might have sold the lease; and that with the furniture,
which had also been my mother’s, would have realised five or six
hundred pounds. But when that was gone, where should we look for
shelter? Charles’s great expectations’——
‘Pardon me for interrupting you. You have mentioned your husband’s
Christian name: it will make your narrative clearer if you tell me also
his surname.’
‘Collingwood was his name—Charles Collingwood.’
‘And the name of the first one was Dawson?’
‘You have guessed rightly. To continue. Charles’s great expectations
had all come to a bad end. A rich relative, who had brought him up for
his heir, took a great dislike to me, and cut him out of his will,
for no reason in the world but that he had married me, and that we
were very poor. When he died, and we found this out, it seemed that
the world had come to an end for us. What was to be done? Live in the
most niggardly way we might, but we could not live on nothing. First
we began to sell the less essential parts of our belongings. We lived
on old china for three months; and then we began on our paintings.
We had some good ones by English artists, which my father had left
behind him, and these kept us for a while. But this was like burning
the planks of the ship to keep the engines going. Charles had tried
hard for employment in the meantime. For the governorship of a colony;
for a consulship; the post of adjutant of militia; the same thing in a
Volunteer regiment; for the chief-constableship of a large town; for
the management of a brewery; and ever so many things besides. All of no
use.
“We must take in washing,” said Charles; “and I will become a second
Mantilini, and turn the mangle.”
‘Lodgers were our next thought, and that seemed more feasible. Then
some one advised us to let our house furnished. We put an advertisement
in the papers, and by great good luck we had an offer for the whole of
the house at once. Six guineas a week for May, June, and July. We made
up our minds to take cheap lodgings somewhere on the coast, and spend
only half our weekly six guineas, which would thus last us six months
instead of three. As we were packing up our belongings and storing away
the packages in the lumber-room, Charles stumbled over a lot of old
boxes, from which arose a cloud of dust.
“What are these old things?” he cried.
“I don’t know anything about them. They were my first husband’s books
and papers.”
“Books, eh?” said Charles. “Let’s have a look at ’em;” and broke open
one of the boxes. This, however, turned out to be full of packets of
manuscripts. Charles made a wry face over them, but he took out a
packet and began to read it. I went on with the work. I had everything
to do then, I must tell you, for we had dismissed our servants, and
lived in the house by ourselves with only a char-woman to help—quite in
picnic style.
‘Well dinner-time came, and Charles, who was still up-stairs reading
his manuscript, brought it down with him and laid it beside his plate,
and went on again reading directly after dinner.
“I tell you what it is, old woman,” he said, as we went to bed, “I feel
muddled with it all, and rather as if I’d been supping off pork chops
and Welsh-rabbit; but there’s something in that fellow’s writings, only
they are coarse, decidedly coarse.”
‘But I am tiring you,’ said Mrs Collingwood, looking up with a smile.
‘Not at all. I am highly interested. Go on, please.’
‘We went away to the sea-side, and Charles took several packets of
manuscript with him to amuse him, as he said, during the long days.
“Do you know,” he said to me one evening, “I think one could make
something out of these things. If we cut out the objectionable passages
which I expect were in the way of their publication”——
“My dear Charles,” I said, “these were his religion, and he would not
have touched a word for worlds to make them more acceptable.”
“And died a martyr to the faith, eh?” said Charles. “Well, I shan’t be
so very particular. There’s enough for a three-volume novel here, and I
shall expurgate it and try its luck.”
‘Charles was never much of a penman, but I was a neat quick writer, and
thus the copying fell upon me. Charlie did the botching and patching,
and dictated as I copied. But what a task it was! I am sure the mere
writing of it was worth all we were destined to get for it, let alone
the author’s work and our amendments. Then we got a lot of the most
taking three-volume novels from the library, and counted the words and
lines, so as to get ours about the right length. It was finished at
last, just as our house became vacant; and as soon as we got back to
town I took it to a publisher. It was agreed that I was to do all this
part of the work, for my poor Charlie used to say that if anything
happened to him, I should find the use of these habits of business.’
Here she paused.
I coughed doubtfully. My knowledge of human nature led me to attribute
the arrangement to shyness and laziness on his part. I did not,
however, venture to disturb Mrs Collingwood’s illusions.
She resumed: ‘To our surprise and joy, after a delay of not more than
three or four months, we heard from the publishers accepting our novel.
We did not get any large sum for it, it is true, but it was highly
thought of, and was to be well advertised; and that was the chief
point. Whenever the author was inquired for, I gave out that he was my
husband, but that he was an invalid. Charlie really was poorly at the
time,’ she said blushing. ‘Ah, you shake your head; but in these days,
my dear M——, it is necessary to be _rusé_ as well as clever.’
‘But why not have given it out as the work of a deceased author?’
‘Ah, that would never have done! A publisher takes a first novel
because he hopes for another and a better. Of what use is it to puff
the one golden egg of a dead goose? No; we were right there—events have
shewn it. Well, our novel was, as you know, a success. It went off
like wild-fire, and our publishers fed the flame adroitly by issuing
one edition after another—all of the same impression. All this time we
were at work upon another, which also went down, although not so much
relished as the first. I think we had purified it a little too much.
Avoiding this error in a third, we again made a hit. Our fortune was
now made and publishers were at our feet. But we were in this strait:
we had come to an end of our finished works; all that were left
now were mere sketches and outlines, many too vague, and others too
extravagant to be of much use to us. Charles had good judgment and some
critical power, but he had no creative faculty, neither had I. Happily
we did not deceive ourselves on this point. The question to be solved
was how to supply the want. To Charles the idea first suggested itself
of trying to secure assistance from outside. It was quite evident that
it would be useless to think of any person well known in the world of
letters. We set ourselves to study the more obscure literature of the
day.’