AS IRON INTO THE SOUL.
The change in his face was remarkable. It was as though a blight had
passed over it and withered the hopeful life out.
He sat with the journal in his hand--the authoritative "Snarler"--and
read the cruel lines over and over again. When, in the solitude of his
own study, they first met his eager eye, skimming them rapidly, and
their purport was gathered in almost at a glance, a kind of sick
faintness seized upon his heart, and he hastily put away the paper as
though it were some terrible thing he dared not look further upon.
The shock was awful--and the word is not used in its often light
sense; the disappointment something not to be described. After the
departure of his guests, Roland and Gerald, and William Yorke had gone
by his own wish to take home Annabel and to make a late call on Mrs.
Bede Greatorex--if haply that fashionable dame might be found at
home--Hamish Channing had passed into his study; and, there, alone
with himself and his emotions, he once more unfolded the paper. All
the while he had sat with it in his pocket, a sweet tumultuous hope
had been stirring his bosom; he could hardly forbear, in his eagerness
to realize it, telling them to make haste and depart. And when they
were really going, it seemed that they were a month over it. He stood
up wishing them goodnight.
"By the way, Hamish, I should think your book would soon be getting
its reviews," spoke crafty Gerald, who had seen the journal brought
in, and knew what was in it. "I hope you'll get good ones, old
fellow."
And the wish was spoken with so much apparent genuineness, the tone of
the voice had in it so vast an amount of gushing feeling, that Hamish
gratefully wrung the offered hand. After that, even had he been of a
less ingenuous nature, he would have suspected the whole world of
abusing his book, rather than Gerald Yorke.
Shut up in his study, the lamp beside him, he unfolded the paper with
trembling expectation, his heart beating with happiness. It was one of
those moments, and they come in all our lives, which must stamp itself
on the memory for ever. He looked, and looked. And then put the pages
away in a kind of terror.
Never, in this age of bitter reviews, had a more bitter one than that
been penned. But for his intense unsuspicion, for his own upright
single-mindedness, he might possibly have recognized Gerald Yorke's
slashing style. Gerald, as its writer, never once occurred to him.
After awhile, when the first brunt of the shock had passed--and it was
almost as a shock of death--he took up the paper again, and read the
article through.
His hair grew damp with perspiration; his face burnt with a hot shame.
With this apparently candid, but most damnatory review before his
eyes, it seemed to him that his book must be indeed bad. The critique
was ably written, and it attacked him from all sides and on all
points. Gerald Yorke had taken pains with that as he had never taken
pains with any article before. It had been, so to say, days in
construction. One portion would be altered today, one tomorrow; and
the result was that it _told_. The chief characteristic of the whole
was sarcastic mockery. The scholarship of the book was attacked, (and
that scholarship--that is, of its writer--formed the chief point of
envy in a covert corner of Gerald's heart); its taste, its style, its
every thing. The pen had been steeped five fathoms deep in gall.
Rounded periods spoke of the work's utter worthlessness, and
affectionately warned the public against reading it, with quite
fatherly care. It called the author an impudent upstart; it demanded
to know what he meant by fostering such a book on the public; it
wondered how he had found a publisher; it almost prayed the gods, that
preside over literary careers, to deliver unhappy readers from James
Channing. Abuse and ridicule; ridicule and abuse; they rang the
changes one upon another. Hamish read; he turned back and read again;
and the fatal characters burnt themselves into his brain as with a
ruthless fire.
What a reward it was! Speaking only as a recompense for his devotion
and labour, leaving aside for the moment the higher considerations,
how cruel was the return! The devoted lad, read of in history,
concealed a fox in his bosom, and it repaid him by gnawing at his
vitals. That reward was not more remorselessly cruel than this. Where
was the use of Hamish Channing's patient industry, his persevering
endurance, his burning the midnight candle, to bring forth _this_
fruit? To what end the never-ceasing toil and care? While Gerald Yorke
had been flourishing in society, Hamish Channing was toiling. Burning
his candles, so to say, at both ends! The unwearied industry, the
patient continuance in labour, the ever-buoyant, trustful hope!--all
had been his.
Does the public realize what it is, I wonder, to exercise this
brain-work day by day, and often also night by night, week after week,
month after month, year after year? A book is put into the hands of a
reading man--or say a woman, if you will--and he devours it with
ardour or coolness, more or less of either as the case may be, and
makes his comments afterwards with complaisance, and says the book is
a nice book, and seems almost to think it has been brought out for his
special delectation. But does he ever cast a reflection on the toil
that book has cost the writer? Does he look up to him with even a
_thought_ of gratitude? Generally speaking, no. In the midst, perhaps,
of very adverse circumstances, of long-continued sickness, of
headache, heartache, many aches; when the inward spirit is fainting at
life's bitter troubles, and it would seem in vain to struggle more,
the labour must yet be done. Look at Hamish Channing--his is no ideal
case. His day's work over, he got to his work--the night's--and wrote
on, until his mind and body were alike weary. While others played, he
toiled; when others were abroad at their banquetings and revellings,
idling away their hours in what the world calls society, and Gerald
Yorke making one amidst them, he was shut up in his room, labouring on
persistently. And this was his reward!
The best energies of his power and intellect had Hamish Channing given
to the book: the great gift of genius, which had certainly been
bestowed largely upon him, was exercised and brought to bear. No merit
to him for that; he could not help exercising it. It appeared to him,
this writing for his fellow men, to be the one special end for which
he was sent into the world--where every man has his appointed and
peculiar aptitude for someone calling or duty, though it happens that
a vast many never find out their own until too late. A man reared,
as had been James Channing, to good; anxious to live here in the
single-minded fulfilment of every duty, using the world only as a
passage to a better, can but write as a responsible agent; whether he
may be working at a religious tract or a story of fiction, he does it
as to his Creator, imploring day by day that he may be helped in it.
Had Hamish been required to write without that sense of responsibility
upon him, he would have put aside his pen.
And the disappointment! the rude, pitiless, condemning shock! It might
be that such was necessary; that it had been sent direct from heaven.
The least sinful man on earth may have need of such discipline.
Again Hamish read the article from beginning to end. Read, and re-read
it. It was as if the lines possessed the fatal fascination of the
basilisk, attracting him against his will. He writhed under the
executioner's knife, while he submitted to it. The book was a good and
brilliant work, betraying its genius in every line, well conceived,
well plotted, ably written. It was one of those that take the whole
imagination of the reader captive; one that a man is all the better
for reading, and rises up from with a subdued spirit, hushed breath,
and a glowing heart. While enchaining man's deepest interest, it yet
insensibly led his thoughts to Heaven. Simple though it was in its
pure Saxon diction, its sentiments were noble, generous, and exalted.
Not a thought was there to offend, not a line that, for its parity,
might not have been placed in the hands of his child. Modest, as all
gifted with true genius are, yet possessing (for that must always be),
a latent consciousness of his great power, Hamish had looked forward
for success to his book, as surely as he looked for Heaven. That it
could be a failure, he had simply never thought of; that it should be
badly received, ridiculed, condemned, written down, had not entered
his imagination. Had he been told such might be the result, he would
have quietly answered that it was impossible.
In all matters where the minds and feelings, the inward, silent hopes
and fears, are deeply touched, it cannot be but that we are
sensitively alive to the opinions of our fellow men, and swayed by
their judgment. As Hamish Channing read and re-read, learning the
cruel sentences almost by rote, his heart failed within him. For the
time being, he thought he must have erred in supposing the book so
good; that it must be a foolish and mistaken book, deserving only of
their sharp criticism; and a sense of humiliation, than which nothing
could be more intensely painful, took possession of his spirit.
But the belief could not remain. The mood changed again. The book
resumed nearly its estimated place in his mind, and the sense of
humiliation was superseded by the smarting conviction of cruel
injustice. What had he or his book done that they should be so
reviled?
"Lord, thou knowest all things! surely I have not deserved this!"
irrepressibly broke from the depths of his anguish.
No, he had not deserved it. As some others have not, who yet have had
to bear it. It is one of the world's hard lessons, one that very few
are appointed to learn. Injustice and evil and oppression exist in the
world, and must exist until its end. Only then shall we understand
wherefore they are permitted. Pardon, reader, if a line or two seem to
be repeated. The many months of toil, the patient night-labour, that
but for the hope-spring rising in the buoyant heart might have been
found too wearing; the self-denial ever exercised; the weary night
watching and working--all had been thrown back upon Hamish Channing,
and rendered, as it were, nugatory. Try and picture to yourselves
what this labour is; its aspirations of reward, its hopes of
appreciation--and for a wickedly disposed man, or simply a carelessly
indifferent man, or a vain, presumptuous man, or a man who has some
petty spite to gratify against author or publisher, or a rival
reviewer, or a man that writes but in wanton idleness, to dash it down
with a few strokes of a pen!
Such things have been. They will be again. But if Gerald Yorke, and
others like him, would consider how they violate the divine law of
enjoined kindness, it might be that the pen would now and then pause.
Would Gerald have to answer for it at the Great Day of Reckoning? Ah,
that is a question very little thought of; one perhaps difficult to
answer. He had set himself deliberately in his foolish envy, in his
ill-conditioned spirit, to work ill to Hamish Channing: to put down
and write down the book that he knew was depended on to bring back its
return, that was loved and cherished almost as life. It was within the
range of possibility that he might work more ill than he bargained
for. Heaven is not in the habit of saying to man by way of reminder
when he gets up in a morning, "I am looking at you:" but it has told
us such a thing as that every secret word and thought and action shall
be brought to light, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Gerald
ignored that, after the fashion of this busy world; and was perfectly
self-complacent under the ignoring.
Only upon such a mind as Hamish Channing's, with his nervous
attributes of genius, his refined sensitiveness, could the review have
brought home its worst bitterness. Fortunately such minds are very
rare. Gerald Yorke had little conception of the extent of its fruit.
_He_ would have set on and sworn off his anger, and called the writer,
who could thus stab in the dark, a false coward, and sent him by
wishes to all kinds of unorthodox places, and vowed aloud to his
friends that he should like to horsewhip or shoot him. Thus the brunt,
with him, would have been worked off; never so much as touched the
vital feelings, if Gerald possessed any. It was another thing with
Hamish Channing. He could almost have died, rather than have spoken of
the attack to any living man; and if forced to it, as we are sometimes
forced to unwelcome things, it would have brought the red blush of
shame to his sensitive brow, to his shrinking spirit.
He sat on; on, with his aching heart. One hand was pressed upon his
chest: a dull pain had seated itself there. Never again, as it seemed
to him, should he look up from the blow. More and more the cruelty and
the injustice struck upon him. Does it so strike upon you, reader? The
book was not perfection (I never met with one that was, in spite of
what the reviews chose to affirm of Mr. Gerald Yorke's), but it was at
least written in an earnest, truthful spirit, to the utmost of the
abilities God had given him. How had it invoked this requital? Hamish
pondered the question, and could not answer it. What had he done to be
shown up to the public; a butt for any, that would, to pitch scorn at?
There was no appeal; there could be no redress. The book had been held
forth to the world--at least to the thousands of it that would read
the "Snarler"--as a bad and incapable book, one they must avoid as the
work of a miserably presumptive and incapable man.
A slight movement in the next room, and Mrs. Channing came in with
Nelly. Miss Nelly, in consideration of the late substantial tea, had
not been sent to bed at the customary hour. Hamish slipped the review
inside his table-desk, and greeted them with a smile, sweet-tempered
as ever under the blow. But his wife saw that some change lay on his
face.
"Is anything the matter, Hamish? You look--worn; as if you had
received some ill news."
"Do I? I am a little tired, Ellen. It has been very hot today."
"I thought you were not going to work tonight."
"Oh, I'm not working. Well, young lady, what now?"
Miss Nelly had climbed on his knees. She had been brought in to say
goodnight.
"When's the ship coming home, papa?"
He suddenly bent down and hid his face on the child's bright one.
Heaven alone knew what the moment's suffering was and how he contrived
not to betray it.
"Will it come tomorrow, papa?"
"We shall see, darling. I don't know."
The subdued, patient tone had something of hopelessness in it. Mrs.
Channing thought he must be very tired.
"Come, Nelly," she said. "It is late, you know."
He kissed the child tenderly as ever, but so quietly, and whispered a
prayer for God to bless her; his tone sounding like one of subdued
pain, almost as though his heart were breaking. And Nelly went dancing
out, talking of the ship and the good things it was to bring.
Quite immediately, a gentleman was shown in. It was the publisher of
the book. Late though the hour was, he had come in some perturbation,
bringing a copy of the "Snarler."
"Have you any enemy, Mr. Channing?" was nearly the first question he
asked, when he found Hamish had seen the article.
"Not one in the wide world, so far as I know."
"The review of your book is so remarkably unjust, so entirely at
variance with fact and truth, that I should say only an enemy could
have done it," persisted the publisher. "Look, besides, at the rancour
of its language, its evident animus; I scarcely ever read so
aggravated an attack."
But still Hamish could only reiterate his conviction. "I have no
enemy."
"Well, it is a great pity; a calamity, in short. When once an author's
reputation is made and he is a favourite with the public, bad reviews
cannot harm him: but to a first book, where the author is unknown,
they are sometimes fatal."
"Yes, I suppose they are," acquiesced Hamish.
"We must wait now for the others, Mr. Channing. And hope that they
will be the reverse of this. But it is a sad thing--and, I must say, a
barefaced injustice."
Nothing more could be said, nothing done. The false review was in the
hands of the public, and Hamish and his publisher were alike powerless
to arrest or remedy the evil. The gentleman went out, leaving Hamish
alone.
Alone with his blow and its anguish. He felt like one who, living all
night in a sweet dream, has been rudely awakened to some terrible
reality. The sanguine hopes of years were dashed away; life's future
prospects had broken themselves up. If ever the iron entered into the
soul of man, it had surely passed into that of James Channing.
The injustice told upon him worse than all; the unmerited stab-wound
would damage him for aye. In his bosom's bitter strife, he almost
dared to ask how men could be permitted thus to prey one upon another,
and not be checked by Heaven's lightning. But, to that there might be
no answer: others have asked it before him.
"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under
the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had
no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power: but
they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already
dead more than the living which are yet alive."
Involuntarily, with a strange force, these words passed through the
mind of James Channing.
But the wise King of Israel--and God had given him more than earthly
wisdom--could give no explanation of why this should be.
PART THE THIRD.