DAY-DREAMS.
The house was almost within a stone's-throw of Bedford Square; one of
a good street. Its drawing-room windows were thrown open to the fine
evening twilight, and a lady sat at one of them in a musing attitude.
She was very nice looking, with a clear healthy colour on her cheeks,
and soft bright dark eyes that had a thought in them beyond her years,
which may have been six or seven-and-twenty. The features were
well-formed; the shapely mouth, its rather thin and decisive lips, and
the pretty pointed chin, spoke of innate firmness. Her hand,
displaying its wedding-ring and keeper, was raised to support lightly
her head, the slender fingers touching the smooth dark brown hair. She
was perfectly still; not a movement betrayed that she heard or saw
aught but her own thoughts; not a rustle stirred the folds of her soft
silk dress, lying around her.
"Shall I tell him, or not?" she murmured at length. "I have never had
any concealment from him yet, nor he from me; but then I know it will
pain and worry him. He has certainly changed a little: in the old days
it seemed that anxiety could never touch him; that he would always
throw it from him with a light word. Heigho! I suppose it comes with
the cares of life."
A moment's pause, during which she was again still as before, and then
the soliloquy was resumed.
"I _could_ keep it from him, if needs were: the postman gave me the
letter as I was going out, and no one knows of its arrival. But
still--I don't like to begin it; and he might feel vexed afterwards:
for of course he must come to know of it sometime. Oh dear! I never
felt so irresolute before. They used to say at home I was so very
downright. I wonder which would be _right_ to do? If I were sure
he----"
The room door was pushed open with a sudden whirl, and a little child
came flying in with outstretched arms and a shouting, joyous laugh.
"Mamma, mamma!"
"Nelly!"
The arms were entwined together, the golden head with its shower of
silken curls, nestled on the mother's bosom. Oh, but she was of rare
loveliness, this child; with the delicately fair features, the great
blue eyes, the sunny hair, and ever-sunny temperament.
"Now, Nelly! You know you have been told over and over again not to be
so boisterous. Fancy a little lady, just five years old, coming in
like that! It might have been a great rude dog."
Another sweet, joyous laugh in answer, a host of kisses pressed by way
of peace-offering on the gentle face, bent down in reproof more mock
than real.
"Nurse was running to catch me. She says it's bedtime." And, to
confirm the assertion, the French clock on the mantlepiece at that
moment told out eight.
"So it is. Come and say goodnight to papa, Nelly."
Taking the child's hand she went out into what seemed a flood of
light, after the gradually darkening room. The hall-lamp threw its
rays upwards; on the gleaming silk of her pale blue dress, on the
white fairy robes of the child, on the well-carpeted stairs. In the
front room below, the tea stood ready by the evening fire: they went
through to another room; and the mother spoke.
"Nelly has come to wish papa goodnight."
Seated at the table of this inner room was a gentleman writing fast by
a shaded candle. He looked up with a sunny smile of welcome, and you
saw the likeness then between the child and the father. The winning,
beautiful features; the fair, bright complexion; the laughing blue
eyes; the gay, happy temperament: all were the same.
It was James Channing. Sunny Hamish, as he used to be called. He was
but thirty; a tall, well-proportioned, but as yet very slender man;
rising over six feet, altogether attractive, handsome to look upon.
Nelly, forgetting her lecture, flew into his arms with a shout and a
laugh, as she had into those of her mother.
"And what may this young lady have been about that she has not come to
see me before, this evening?" he asked.
"Nurse kept her out rather late, Hamish, for one thing, and I knew you
were busy," came the answer; not from the child, but from Mrs.
Channing.
"Yes, I am very busy. I have not any minutes to give even to my
darling Nelly tonight," he fondly said, kissing the bright hair and
the rosy lips. "Nelly must go to bed and dream of papa instead."
"You'll have time when the ship comes home, papa," said the child.
"Lots of time then."
"The ship is to be a book."
"Ay."
"And it will bring great luck?"
"Yes. Please God."
The last words were murmured in a tone suddenly hushed to reverence;
low and happy; hopeful with a great, glad, assured hope, cheering to
listen to; a trusted hope that lighted up the whole countenance of the
man with its radiance, and shone forth in beams from his blue eyes.
But he said no more; not even to his wife and his little child could
he speak of the sanguine joy that anticipation wrought within him.
With too many kisses to be counted, with good nights spoken yet and
yet again, Nelly was released and disappeared with her mother. The
child had been trained well. There was some indulgence on the parents'
side--perhaps that is indispensable, in the case of an only child--but
there was neither trouble nor rebellion on hers. Little Nelly Channing
had been taught to obey good laws; and, to do so, came to her
naturally.
Mrs. Channing took her upstairs and turned into her own dressing-room,
as usual. She deemed it well that the child should say her prayers in
solitude, and, always when practicable, in the same place. Nelly sat
down of her own accord by her mother, and was quite still and quiet
while a very few easy verses from the Bible were read to her; and then
she knelt down to say her simple prayers at her mother's knee.
"God bless my darling little Nelly, and make her a good girl!" said
Mrs. Chaining, as she took her out and resigned her to the nurse.
"Are you ready for tea, Hamish?" she asked when she went downstairs
again.
"Quite. But, Ellen, I think I shall have to trouble you to bring it to
me tonight."
"Are you so very busy?"
"Ay. Look here."
He pointed with his pen to some papers on the table. "Those are proof
sheets: and I must get this manuscript in tomorrow, or they will not
insert it in the next month's number."
"Hamish, I hope you are not doing too much," she gravely said. "I
don't like this night-work."
He laughed gleefully. "Too much! I only wish I had too much to do,
Ellen. Never fear, dear."
"I wish you would teach me to correct the proofs."
"What an idea!"
"I shall teach myself, sir."
"It would be waste of time, young lady. I could not let anybody go
over my proofs but myself."
"You vain fellow! I wonder if self-conceit is indigenous to you
literary men? Are they all as vain as Hamish Channing?"
He took up the pen-wiper and threw it at her. But somehow Ellen was
not in a mood for much jesting tonight. She put the pen-wiper--a
rosette of red cloth--on the table again, and went and stood in
silence with her hand on his shoulder. He turned his head.
"What is it, love?"
"Hamish, I would bring in your tea willingly; you know it; but I think
it would do you more good to leave this work, if only for five
minutes. And I have something to say to you."
"Very well. I can't come for a quarter of an hour. You are a regular
martinet."
Ellen Channing left him and sat down in the other room to wait; and
this will afford the opportunity for a word of explanation. Amidst the
very very many people in all classes of life, high and low, on whom a
certain recent panic had wrought its disastrous effects, was Hamish
Channing. The bank, of which he had been manager in Helstonleigh, was
drawn into the vortex by the failure of another bank, and went in its
turn. Honourable men had to do with it; they sacrificed their own
property in the emergency, and not a creditor suffered; every one was
paid in full. It could not be reorganized, and it left Hamish without
employment. His wife's father, Mr. Huntley, had been one of the
principal shareholders, and on him had fallen the greater weight of
the heavy loss. It fell, too, at a time when Mr. Huntley could not
afford to sustain it. He possessed a large property in Canada, but it
had latterly begun to yield him little or no return. Whether in
consequence of local depreciation, or of mismanagement (or perhaps
something worse) on the part of his agents there, he knew not, and he
sent his son out to see. The young man (he was three or four years
younger than Mrs. Channing, and quite inexperienced) seemed not to be
able to grapple with the business; he wrote home most confused and
perplexing accounts, of which Mr. Huntley could make nothing. At
length that gentleman resolved to go out himself; and the letter we
have heard Mrs. Channing alluding to today was from him. It was the
second news they had received, the first having merely announced his
safe arrival: and the accounts this last contained were so gloomy that
Ellen Channing would fain have kept them from her husband.
It must be distinctly understood that the failure of the bank in
Helstonleigh was in no way connected with ill-management. Had a quorum
of the wisest business-men in the world been at its head, they could
neither have foreseen its downfall nor averted it. Therefore Hamish
Channing came out of that, as he had out of every untoward thing all
his life, untarnished in honour and in character. A small
secretaryship was offered him in London, which he accepted; and he
removed to the great city, with his wife and little daughter, his
goods and chattels, there to set up his tent. A very small income had
been settled on Ellen when she married; the larger portion of her
fortune was to accrue to her on her father's death. Whether it would
be much, or little, or _any_, under the altered state of affairs, it
was impossible now to say.
But it was not on the secretaryship that Hamish Channing depended for
fame and fortune. A higher and dearer hope was his. That Hamish
possessed in a high degree that rarest of all God's gifts, true
genius, he had long known. Writers of talent the world has had, and
had in abundance, men and women; of real genius but few. Perhaps,
after all, the difference is not very distinguishable by the general
mass of readers. But, to those who possess it, its characteristics are
unmistakable. The divine light (is it too much to call it so?) that
lies within them shines as a very beacon, pointing on to fame; to
honour; above all, to appreciation: the knowledge that they are
different from their fellow-mortals, of a higher and nobler and rarer
order, and that the world will sometime recognize the fact and bow
down in worship, is never absent from the consciousness of the inner
heart.
But, with the gift, James Channing also possessed its almost
invariably accompanying attribute: a refined sensitiveness of feeling.
And that is a quality not too well calculated to do battle with rude,
every-day life. Should the great hope within him ever meet with a
stern, crushing disappointment, his inability to bear the shock would
in all probability show itself in some very marked degree. No one but
himself knew or suspected the extreme sensitiveness of his every
feeling; it had been hidden hitherto under the nonchalant ease of
manner, the sunny temper which made Hamish Channing's great charm.
When the bank was broken up, and with it his home and his greater
means of living, it was not felt by him as many another man would have
felt it: for it seemed only to render more feasible the great aim of
his life--the devoting himself to literature. Years ago he had begun
to write: and the efforts were first efforts, somewhat crude, as all
first efforts, whether given to the world or not, must of necessity
be, but they bore unmistakably the stamp of genius. His appointment to
the bank and his marriage interrupted his writing; and his genius and
pen had alike lain dormant for some six years. His wife's father, Mr.
Huntley, had procured his later appointment to the London
secretaryship, and Hamish did not venture to decline it and devote
himself wholly to literature, as he would have liked to do. The pay,
though small, was sure; Ellen's income was smaller still, and they
must live; so he accepted it. His duties there occupied him from nine
to four: and all his available time beyond that, early and late, was
devoted to writing. The day's employment was regarded as but a
temporary clog, to be given up as soon as he found his income from
literature would justify it. To accomplish this desirable end, he was
doing a great deal more than was good for him and taking too little
rest. In point of fact, he had, you see, two occupations, each one of
which would have been sufficient for an industrious man. What of that?
Hamish never so much as cast a thought to it.
Oh, with what a zest had he re-commenced the writing, laid aside for
so long! It was like returning to some glad haven of rest. Joy filled
his whole being. The past six years had been heavy with suppressed
yearning; the yearning to be about the work for which he knew God had
pm-eminently fitted him: but his duties had been onerous, his time
nearly fully taken up; and when he would have snatched some moments
from night for the dearer work, his wife and his anxious friends had
risen up in arms against it, for he was not over-strong, and some
delicacy of constitution was preached about. Besides, as Mr. Huntley
said, a writing manager might alarm the bank's patronizers. But he had
it all his own way now, and made good profit of his writings. Papers
on social questions of the day, essays, stories, were in turn written,
and taken by different periodicals. They _had_ to be written, apart
from other hopes and views, for the style in which they lived required
additional means to support it, beyond his salary and his wife's
money. It was not much style, after all, no extravagance; three
maidservants, and little company; but everybody knows how money seems
to melt in London.
He had been at this work now for a year. And his wife was beginning to
grow anxious, for she knew he was doing too much, and told him he was
wearing himself out. If he could but resign the secretaryship! was
ever in her secret hopes and thoughts just as much as his; and she
wished her father could get his Canadian affairs well settled, so as
to allow the necessary addition to her income. Hamish laughed at this.
He was living in a glad dream of future fame and fortune: that it
would inevitably come, he felt as sure of as though it lay at hand
now, ready to be picked up. He was writing a long work; a work of
three volumes; and this was the precious gem on which all his hopes
and love and visions were centred. The periodical writing had to be
done, for its returns were needed; but every spare moment, apart from
that, was devoted to the book. A light of gladness beamed from his
eyes; a joy, sweet as the chords of some soothing melody, lay ever on
his spirit. Oh, what is there of bliss and love in the world that can
compare with this! And it is known to so few; so few: by all else it
can never be so much as imagined. Do not mistake it, you who read, for
the pleasurable anticipation of a man or woman who may from chance
causes have "taken up" the profession of literature, and look for the
good, substantial and otherwise, that it is to bring. The two are
wholly different; the one is born of heaven, the other of earth. But
that man must live, Hamish Channing amidst the rest, the thought of
_money_ being one of the returns, would be distasteful; never, as I
honestly believe, accepted as such without a blush: the dross of earth
mingling with the spiritualized, exalted, pure joy of Eden. It is well
that this same gift of genius with its dear pleasures and its
attendant after-pains--for they come--should be vouchsafed to a unit
amidst tens of thousands!
Mrs. Channing sat waiting for him; the tea standing before her,
herself thoughtful. The room was of good size and handsomely
furnished, its chairs and curtains of rich purple cloth. Their
furniture had been a present from Mr. Huntley when they married, who
was not one to do things niggardly. As Mrs. Channing sat, facing the
inner door, the windows were behind her; the fireplace, with its
ornaments and its large chimney-glass on her left; a piano on one side
it, a white marble-topped cabinet with purple silk lining to its
glass-doors on the other; and on her right, stood the sideboard, and
other furniture. The inner room, used exclusively by Hamish for
writing, had horsehair chairs, and a bookcase running all along the
side of the wall.
The door opened, and Hamish came in. He had a small bundle in his
hand; proof sheets done up for the post, and sent them out at once by
the maid, as he sat down to tea. Which he seemed inclined to swallow
at a gulp, and to eat his piece of bread-and-butter wholesale, ever
anxious to get back to his labour and the glowing visions of promise
connected with it.
"Hamish, I do believe you like your writing better than you like me!"
Ellen said to him one day almost passionately. And for answer, Mr.
Hamish in his sauciness had said he was not sure but he did.
He sat there at tea, now, talking gaily as usual. His wife interrupted
him, telling of the letter she had received, and its unfavourable
news. He listened with his sunny smile.
"I had great mind not to tell you at all, Hamish," she confessed.
"Papa's temperament is nearly as sanguine as yours; and if he writes
in poor spirits, saying he fears it may turn out that he is a ruined
man, I know things must be very bad."
"But why have hesitated to tell me, Ellen?"
"To save you anxiety. Don't you see what it implies? If papa loses his
property, the fortune that would have been mine sometime will be lost
too."
Had she been speaking of the probable loss of some mere trifle, he
could scarcely have heard it with more equanimity. It seemed to Hamish
that the future was, according to human foresight, in his own hands.
"Never mind, Ellen, we have a resource that cannot be lost. I will
take care of you, Heaven aiding me; you shall have every needful and
substantial good in abundance."
"Yes, that is just it. You work too much already: you would work more
then."
Hamish laughed. "Do you know what I wish, Ellen? I wish the day were
four-and-twenty hours long instead of twelve, and that I had two sets
of brains and hands."
"How are you getting on?"
"Oh, so well. It is all right, my darling. And will be."
They were interrupted by a visitor--Mr. Roland Yorke. There had been a
casual meeting once or twice, but this was the first time he had been
there. They invited him to come; but Roland had the grace to be
ashamed of a certain escapade of his in the days gone by, which
brought disgrace for the time being on Arthur Channing, and he had
rather held back from appearing. This he partially confessed.
"It would have been so different, you know, Hamish, had I returned
with a few millions from Port Natal, and gone home to atone to Arthur
in the face and eyes of all the town, and done honour to him for what
he is, the best man living, and heaped a fortune upon him. But I have
not been able to do that. I'd rather rush off again to Port Natal and
its troubles, than I'd go within miles of Helstonleigh."
"And so, to mend it, you thought you would keep miles away from me,"
said Hamish, with his glad smile of welcome. "I think there's only one
person in the world would be more glad to see you than I, and that's
Arthur himself."
"I know. I know what a good fellow you always were. But I hadn't the
face to come, you see. It was Annabel made me now."
Suddenly shaking both their hands in the heartiest manner, with a grip
that brought pain to Mrs. Channing, who wore rings, Roland fell to at
the tea. Hamish, remembering his appetite of old, rang the bell for
some good things to be brought in; and Roland was speedily in the
midst of the most comfortable enjoyment, mentally and bodily. He gave
them his own confidence without the least reserve, both as to present
and past; gravely telling everything, including the nearly embraced
hot-pie scheme of commerce, which made Hamish hold his sides, and the
having met Gerald at Mrs. Bede Greatorex's party.
"I rather expect Gerald here this evening," remarked Hamish.
"Do you?" said Roland, his mouth full of savoury pie. "He won't be too
pleased to see me; he means to cut me, I'm nearly sure. Do you see
much of him, Hamish?"
Hamish explained that he did. They were both in the literary line; and
Gerald had some good engagements as a reviewer.
"Where's his wife?" asked Roland. "Yes, please, Mrs. Channing, another
cup; plenty of milk and sugar.
"In the country; somewhere in Gloucestershire. Gerald is not too
communicative on that score."
"Don't you think, Hamish, he must have been a great duffer to go and
marry before he knew how he could keep a wife?"
Hamish raised his eyebrows with the good-natured indifferent manner
that Roland so well remembered in the days gone by; but answer made he
none. Where Hamish Channing could not praise, he would not blame. Even
by his immediate relatives Gerald's imprudent marriage was tacitly
ignored, and the Lady Augusta Yorke had threatened to box Roland's
ears in Ireland, when he persisted in asking about it.
"I always knew Gerald would not go into the Church," remarked Roland.
"I wouldn't; they say Tod threatened to run off to sea if they talked
to _him_ of it: somehow we boys have a prejudice against following my
father's calling. I'll tell you a secret, Hamish: if a fellow wants to
be _made_, to have his nonsense knocked out of him, he must go to Port
Natal. Do you remember the morning you saw me decamping off for London
on my way to it?"
"Don't I," said Hamish, his lips parting with merriment at the
remembrance. "There was commotion that day at Helstonleigh, Roland; in
Galloway's office especially."
"And dear old Arthur buried his wrongs and went to the rescue; and
poor dying Jenkins got out of his bed to help. He was nothing but a
calf, poor fellow, a reed in Mrs. J.'s hands, but he was good as gold.
I say, _she's_ altered."
"Is she?"
Roland nodded. "The going to Port Natal made me, Hamish," he resumed;
and Hamish was slightly surprised at the serious tone. "I should have
been one of the idlest of the family batch but for the lesson I got
read to me there. I went out to make my fortune; instead of making it,
I had to battle with ill-fate, and ill-fate won the day. They call it
names of course; a mistaken enterprise, a miserable failure; but it
was just the best thing that could have happened for me. I was proud,
stuck-up ignoramus; I should have depended on Carrick, or anybody
else, to get my living for me; but I mean now to earn it for myself."
When Hamish went to his work later, leaving Ellen to entertain their
guest, Roland followed him with his eyes.
There was a change in Hamish Channing, apparent to one even as
unobservant as Roland. The face was thinner than of yore; its refined
features were paler; they looked etherealized, as it seemed to Roland.
The sweet-natured temperament was there still, but some of its once
gay lightness had given place to thought. The very frequent mocking
tone had been nearly entirely laid aside for one of loving
considerateness to all.
"What are you looking at?" questioned Ellen, struck with Roland's
fixed gaze and unusual seriousness.
"At him. He is so changed."
"Older, do you mean?"
"Law bless you, no. Of course he is older by more than seven years;
but he is very young-looking still; he does not look so old as I do,
and I am two years his junior. I used to think Hamish Channing the
handsomest fellow living, but he was nothing then to what he is now. I
hope you won't consider it's wrong of me to say it, Mrs. Channing, but
there's something in his face now that makes one think of Heaven."
"Mr. Yorke!"
"There! I knew what it would be. Mr. Ollivera flies out at me when I
say wrong things. Other people don't say them. It must have been that
Port Natal. I thought I was dead once, over there," added Roland,
passing on to another topic with his usual abruptness.
Ellen smiled; she had spoken in surprise only. Roland Yorke, who had
brought his chair round to the fire, sat opposite to her, his elbow on
his knee, his head bent forward.
"I don't mean that it makes one think he is going to Heaven--going to
die before his time; you need not be afraid, Mrs. Channing. It was not
that kind of thought at all; only that the angels and people about, up
there, must have just such faces as Hamish's; good, and pure, and
beautiful; and just the same sweet expression, and the same
loving-kindness in the tone of voice."
Roland stopped and pulled at his dark whiskers. Mrs. Channing began to
think _he_ had also changed for the better.
"Many a one, remembering the past, would have just turned their backs
upon me, Mrs. Channing. Instead of that, he is as glad to see me, and
makes me as cordially welcome as if I were a lord, or a prize pig sent
him at Christmas. What did I nearly die of? you ask. Well, of fever;
but I got all sorts of horrid torments. I had the eye-epidemic; it's
caused by the dust, and I thought I was going blind. Then I had what
they call Natal sores, a kind of boil; then I nearly had a sun-stroke;
the heat's something awful, you know. And I got the ticks
everlastingly."
"Do you mean the tic-douloureux?"
"Law bless you! A Port Natal tick is an insect. It sits on the top of
the grass waiting for you to pass by and darts into your legs; and no
earthly thing will get it off again, except tugging at it with
tweezers. They have no wings or mouth, nothing but a pair of lancets
and a kind of pipe for a body, covered with spikes. Oh, they are nice
things. When I set up that store for leeches and candles and pickled
pork, I used to go and get the leeches myself, to save buying; lots of
them grow in the rivulets round about; but I would bring home a vast
many more ticks than leeches, and that didn't pay, you know. Where's
the little thing?"
"Nelly? She has gone to bed."
"She is the prettiest child I ever saw."
"She is just like her papa," said Mrs. Channing, whose cheeks were
flushing softly with pardonable love and pride at the praise of her
child.
"So she is. When will his book be out?"
"Ah, I don't know. He is getting on quickly, he tells me. I think he
is a ready writer."
"I suppose most men of genius are that," remarked Roland. "He does not
talk much about it, does he?"
"Not at all. A very little to me. These wonderful hopes and dreams
that lie down deep within us, and go to make up the concealed inner
life of our dearest feelings, cannot be spoken of to the world. I have
none," she added, slightly laughing; "I am more practical."
"Hamish is so hopeful! It is his temperament."
"Hopeful!" repeated Mrs. Channing; "indeed he is: like nothing I ever
saw. You have heard of day-dreams, Mr. Yorke; well, this book is his
day-dream. He works at it late and early, almost night and day. I tell
him sometimes he must be wearing himself out."
"One never does really wear out from work, Mrs. Channing. I used to
think I was wearing out at old Galloway's; but I didn't know what work
was until I got to Natal. I learnt it then."
"Did You sit up to work at night at Port Natal?"
"Only when I had not got a bed to go to," answered candid Roland.
"Mine was not that kind of work, sitting up to burn the midnight oil;
it lay in knocking about."
"That's quite different."
"What puzzles me more than anything is, that Gerald should have turned
author," resumed Roland. "Henry Ollivera was talking about genius at
our place the other day. Why, according to what he described it to be,
Gerald Yorke must have about as much genius as a walking gander."
Ellen laughed. "Hamish says Gerald has no real genius," she said. "But
he has a good deal of talent. He is what may be called a dashing
writer."
"Well, I don't know," disputed Roland, who was hard of belief in these
alleged qualities of his brother. "I remember in the old days at home,
when Gerald was at the college-school, he couldn't be got to write a
letter. If Lady Augusta wanted him to write a letter to Carrick, or to
George out in India, she would have to din at him for six months. He
hated it like poison."
"That may have been idleness."
"Oh, we all went in for that," acknowledged Roland. "I should have
been a very lazy beggar to the end of time but for the emigration to
Port Natal."