THE FIRST WORK.
“Now,” said Agnes, throwing down her pen with a cry of triumph--“now,
look here, everybody--it is done at last.”
And, indeed, there it was upon the fair and legible page, in Agnes’s
best and clearest handwriting, “The End.” She had written it with
girlish delight, and importance worthy the occasion; and with admiring
eyes Mamma and Marian looked upon the momentous words--The End! So now
it was no longer in progress, to be smiled and wondered over, but an
actual thing, accomplished and complete, out of anybody’s power to check
or to alter. The three came together to look at it with a little awe. It
was actually finished--out of hand--an entire and single production. The
last chapter was to be read in the family committee to-night--and then?
They held their breath in sudden excitement. What was to be done with
the Book, which could be smiled at no longer? That momentous question
would have to be settled to-night.
So they piled it up solemnly, sheet by sheet, upon the side-table. Such
a manuscript! Happy the printer into whose fortunate hands fell this
unparalleled _copy_! And we are grieved to confess that, for the whole
afternoon thereafter, Agnes Atheling was about as idle as it is possible
even for a happy girl to be. No one but a girl could have attained to
such a delightful eminence of doing nothing! She was somewhat unsettled,
we admit, and quite uncontrollable,--dancing about everywhere, making
her presence known by involuntary outbursts of singing and sweet
laughter; but sterner lips than Mamma’s would have hesitated to rebuke
that fresh and spontaneous delight. It was not so much that she was glad
to be done, or was relieved by the conclusion of her self-appointed
labour. She did not, indeed, quite know what made her so happy. Like all
primal gladness, it was involuntary and unexplainable; and the event of
the day, vaguely exciting and exhilarating on its own account, was novel
enough to supply that fresh breeze of excitement and change which is so
pleasant always to the free heart of youth.
Then came all the usual routine of the evening--everything in its
appointed time--from Susan, who brought the tea-tray, to Mr Foggo. And
Mr Foggo stayed long, and was somewhat prosy. Agnes and Marian, for
this one night, were sadly tired of the old gentleman, and bade him a
very hasty and abrupt good-night when at last he took his departure.
Even then, with a perverse inclination, Papa clung to his newspaper. The
chances were much in favour of Agnes’s dignified and stately withdrawal
from an audience which showed so little eagerness for what she had to
bestow upon them; but Marian, who was as much excited as Agnes,
interposed. “Papa, Agnes is done--finished--done with her story--do you
hear me, papa?” cried Marian in his ear, shaking him by the shoulder to
give emphasis to her words--“she is going to read the last chapter, if
you would lay down that stupid paper--do you hear, papa?”
Papa heard, but kept his finger at his place, and read steadily in spite
of this interposition. “Be quiet, child,” said the good Mr Atheling; but
the child was not in the humour to be quiet. So after a few minutes,
fairly persecuted out of his paper, Papa gave in, and threw it down; and
the household circle closed round the fireside, and Agnes lifted her
last chapter; but what that last chapter was, we are unable to tell,
without infringing upon the privacy of Number Ten, Bellevue.
It was satisfactory--that was the great matter: everybody was satisfied
with the annihilation of the impossible villain and the triumph of all
the good people--and everybody concurred in thinking that the
winding-up was as nearly perfect as it was in the nature of mortal
winding-up to be. The MS. accordingly was laid aside, crowned with
applauses and laurels;--then there was a pause of solemn
consideration--the wise heads of the house held their peace and
pondered. Marian, who was not wise, but only excited and impatient,
broke the silence with her own eager, sincere, and unsolicited opinion;
and this was the advice of Marian to the family committee of the whole
house: “Mamma, I will tell you what ought to be done. It ought to be
taken to somebody to-morrow, and published every month, like Dickens and
Thackeray. It is quite as good! Everybody would read it, and Agnes would
be a great author. I am quite sure that is the way.”
At which speech Charlie whistled a very long “whew!” in a very low
under-tone; for Mamma had very particular notions on the subject of
“good-breeding,” and kept careful watch over the “manners” even of this
big boy.
“Like Dickens and Thackeray! Marian!” cried Agnes in horror; and then
everybody laughed--partly because it was the grandest and most
magnificent nonsense to place the young author upon this astonishing
level, partly because it was so very funny to think of “our Agnes”
sharing in ever so small a degree the fame of names like these.
“Not quite that,” said Papa, slowly and doubtfully, “yet I think
somebody might publish it. The question is, whom we should take it to. I
think I ought to consult Foggo.”
“Mr Foggo is not a literary man, papa,” said Agnes, somewhat
resentfully. She did not quite choose to receive this old gentleman, who
thought her a child, into her confidence.
“Foggo knows a little of everything,--he has a wonderful head for
business,” said Mr Atheling. “As for a literary man, we do not know such
a person, Agnes; and I can’t see what better we should be if we did.
Depend upon it, business is everything. If they think they can make
money by this story of yours, they will take it, but not otherwise; for,
of course, people trade in books as they trade in cotton, and are not a
bit more generous in one than another, take my word for that.”
“Very well, my dear,” said Mamma, roused to assert her dignity, “but we
do not wish any one to be generous to Agnes--of course not!--that would
be out of the question; and nobody, you know, could look at that book
without feeling sure of everybody else liking it. Why, William, it is so
natural! You may speak of Thackeray and Dickens as you like; I know
they are very clever--but I am sure I never read anything of theirs like
that scene--that last scene with Helen and her mother. I feel as if I
had been present there my own self.”
Which was not so very wonderful after all, seeing that the mother in
Agnes’s book was but a delicate, shy, half-conscious sketch of this
dearest mother of her own.
“I think it ought to be taken to somebody to-morrow,” repeated Marian
stoutly, “and published every month with pictures. How strange it would
be to read in the newspapers how everybody wondered about the new book,
and who wrote it!--such fun!--for nobody but _us_ would know.”
Agnes all this time remained very silent, receiving everybody’s
opinion--and Charlie also locked up his wisdom in his own breast. There
was a pause, for Papa, feeling that his supreme opinion was urgently
called for, took time to ponder upon it, and was rather afraid of giving
a deliverance. The silence, however, was broken by the abrupt
intervention, when nobody expected it, of the big boy.
“Make it up into a parcel,” said Master Charlie with business-like
distinctness, “and look in the papers what name you’ll send it to, and
I’ll take it to-morrow.”
This was so sudden, startling, and decisive, that the audience were
electrified. Mr Atheling looked blankly in his son’s face; the young
gentleman had completely cut the ground from under the feet of his papa.
After all, let any one advise or reason, or argue the point at his
pleasure, this was the only practical conclusion to come at. Charlie
stopped the full-tide of the family argument; they might have gone on
till midnight discussing and wondering; but the big boy made it up into
a parcel, and finished it on the spot. After that they all commenced a
most ignorant and innocent discussion concerning “the trade;” these good
people knew nothing whatever of that much contemned and long-suffering
race who publish books. Two ideal types of them were present to the
minds of the present speculators. One was that most fatal and fictitious
savage, the Giant Despair of an oppressed literature, who sits in his
den for ever grinding the bones of those dismal unforgettable hacks of
Grub Street, whose memory clings unchangeably to their profession; the
other was that bland and genial imagination, equally fictitious, the
author’s friend--he who brings the neglected genius into the full
sunshine of fame and prosperity, seeking only the immortality of such a
connection with the immortal. If one could only know which of these
names in the newspapers belonged to this last wonder of nature! This
discussion concerning people of whom absolutely nothing but the names
were known to the disputants, was a very comical argument; and it was
not concluded when eleven o’clock struck loudly on the kitchen clock,
and Susan, very slumbrous, and somewhat resentful, appeared at the door
to see if anything was wanted. Everybody rose immediately, as Susan
intended they should, with guilt and confusion: eleven o’clock! the
innocent family were ashamed of themselves.
And this little room up-stairs, as you do not need to be told, is the
bower of Agnes and of Marian. There are two small white beds in it,
white and fair and simple, draped with the purest dimity, and covered
with the whitest coverlids. If Agnes, by chance or in haste--and Agnes
is very often “in a great hurry”--should leave her share of the
apartment in a less orderly condition than became a young lady’s room,
Marian never yielded to such a temptation. Marian was the completest
woman in all her simple likings; their little mirror, their
dressing-table, everything which would bear such fresh and inexpensive
decoration, was draped with pretty muslin, the work of these pretty
fingers. And there hung their little shelf of books over Agnes’s head,
and here upon the table was their Bible. Yet in spite of the quiet night
settling towards midnight--in spite of the unbroken stillness of
Bellevue, where every candle was extinguished, and all the world at
rest, the girls could not subdue all at once their eager anticipations,
hopes, and wondering. Marian let down all her beautiful hair over her
shoulders, and pretended to brush it, looking all the time out of the
shining veil, and throwing the half-curled locks from her face, when
something occurred to her bearing upon the subject. Agnes, with both her
hands supporting her forehead, leaned over the table with downcast
eyes--seeing nothing, thinking nothing, with a faint glow on her soft
cheek, and a vague excitement at her heart. Happy hearts! it was so easy
to stir them to this sweet tumult of hope and fancy; and so small a
reason was sufficient to wake these pure imaginations to all-indefinite
glory and delight.