DURING THE AUTUMN.
This must be called the third part of the story, if we may reckon the
short commencing prologue as the first. The year had gone on to
October, and that month was quickly passing.
The lapse of time, some three or four months, had not brought any
change worth recording: people and things were in the main very much
in the position that they had been: but a slight summary of progress
must be given.
Bede Greatorex had been on the wing. In early August he went abroad
with his wife, choosing Switzerland as his first halting-ground. Bede
had proposed some place (if that could be found) less frequented by
the English; and Mrs. Bede had retorted that if he wanted to vegetate
in an outlandish desert, he might go to it alone. In the invariable
kindness and consideration Bede observed to her, even to her whims, he
yielded: and they went off in the commotional wake of a shoal of
staring tourists, with another commotional shoal behind them.
Mr. Greatorex it was who had insisted on the holiday for Bede. "You
are getting more incapable of hard work every day," he plainly said to
him: "a rest will, I hope, restore you; and take it you must." Bede
yielded. That he was very much in need of a change of some sort, he
knew. And of rest also--if he could only get it. But the latter might
be more hard to obtain than Mr. Greatorex suspected or imagined.
So they went to Switzerland first: Bede and his wife, and her maid
Tallet. Bede thought the party would have been a vast deal more
compact and comfortable without the lady's-maid, not to speak of the
additional expense, and he gently hinted as much. The hint was quite
lost on Mrs. Bede, who took not the smallest notice of it. In point of
fact, that lady (besides being incorrigibly idle, never doing an
earthly thing for herself) had absolute need of artistic aid in the
matter of making-up: face and shape and hair and attire alike
requiring daily renovation. From Switzerland they went rushing about
to other places, not at all necessary to note, and got back home the
middle of October, after rather more than two months' absence; being
followed by nearly a fourgon of fashions from Paris: for that
seductive capital had been their last resting-place, and Mrs. Bede had
found its magazins as seductive as itself. Bede winced at the cheques
he had to give.
Mr. Greatorex started with alarm when he saw his son. They got home at
night, having come up by the tidal train from Folkestone, which had
been somewhat delayed in consequence of the boat's rough passage.
During their absence, it had been the quietest and happiest home
imaginable: Mr. Greatorex, Annabel Channing, and the little girl
forming it; Frank Greatorex having holiday as well as Bede. For
visitors they had Henry William Ollivera and Roland Yorke, one or the
other dropping in to tea twice or thrice a week. Mr. Greatorex was a
very father to Annabel; and Miss Jane, subjected to regularity and
desirable influences only, was on her best behaviour. The old lawyer,
in the happy quiet, the relief conferred by the absence of noise and
Mrs. Bede, thought the good old times must be coming back again.
All three were sitting together in the drawing-room when Bede and his
wife got in. The chandelier's rays flashed full on Bede's face, and
Mr. Greatorex started. Far from his son's having derived benefit from
the prolonged tour, he looked worse than ever; his cheeks hollow and
hectic, his face altogether worn. Perhaps for the first time it struck
Mr. Greatorex, as he glanced from one to the other, that _she_
likewise looked thin and worn, with restless eyes and hollow cheeks,
hectic also. But in the hectic there was this difference: Bede's was
natural, hers was put on. What would they have been without the rouge?
Bede _said_ he was better. When Mr. Greatorex spoke seriously to him
on the following morning, recommending that there should be a
consultation, Bede laughed. He declared that the rest from business
had done him an immense deal of good. Thin? Oh of course he was thin.
So was Louisa--did Mr. Greatorex not notice it?--Tallet was the same,
for the matter of that: they had gone whirling about from place to
place, a little too fast, he supposed, making a toil of pleasure. And
then the dreadful sea passage!--of course they looked the worse last
night, but they were both all right this morning.
So spoke Bede, and went to work with a will: really with some of his
old energy. He appeared fresh and tolerably well after the night's
rest; and Mr. Greatorex felt reassured.
Gerald Yorke was another who had taken holiday. Gerald had managed to
get an invitation to cruise in the Honourable Mr. Fuller's yacht; and
Gerald, with two or three other invited guests, went careering off in
it for the space of six weeks. Before starting, he had fully
accomplished his reviewing work with regard to Hamish Channing's
book--but that can be left until later. Gerald enjoyed himself
amazingly. The yacht put into foreign ports on occasion, and they got
a few days' land cruise. The honourable owner treated his friends
right royally, and Gerald had not felt so much at ease since he was a
boy. By a slice of luck, which Gerald hardly believed in at the time,
he had induced Vincent Yorke to lend him fifty pounds before starting,
and he thought himself laudably generous in dividing this with his
wife.
"Now mind, Winny," he said to her on the morning of his departure, "I
shall be away about five weeks. It can't take you five pounds a week
to live and pay rent, so I shall expect you to have a good sum in hand
when I get back. I'll drop you a letter now and then, but you'll not
be able to write to me, as we shall be moving about from place to
place just as the wind or mood takes us."
Therefore, on the score of his wife and children, Gerald was entirely
at ease; and he quite expected, after his charge to Winny, that she
would have something like eight or ten pounds left of the twenty-five;
at least, that she ought to have. He was out of reach of creditors
too; the future he did not allow to trouble him (he never did), and
Gerald gave himself wholly up to the enjoyment of the present.
Little did Gerald Yorke suspect, as he leaned over the side of the
yacht in seductive indolence, smoking his cigar and sipping his iced
Burgundy, that poor Winny's money had come to an end before the second
week was over. It might not have cost him a single moment's care if he
had known it, for Gerald was one upon whom no earthly person's trouble
made the smallest impression, unless it touched him personally.
Effectually out of the way himself, Winny might just have done as she
best could. Gerald would have wished he was at hand to tell her she
deserved a shaking for her folly, and dismissed the matter from his
mind.
The way the money went so soon, was this. Gerald's man-servant in
chambers, just as glad as his master to get a respite from troublesome
creditors, who went well nigh to wear his patience out, informed one
of that ill-used body of men where Mr. Gerald Yorke had gone, on the
very day following the departure--"Cruising over the sea in a lord's
yacht to foreign parts, and likely to be away till winter." Of course
this struck the applicant dumb. He happened to know that Gerald Yorke
had a wife and family in town, and he set himself forthwith to learn
their address; which he found not very difficult of accomplishment.
His own debt was not a very heavy one, rather short of six pounds.
Down he went, demanded an interview with Mrs. Yorke, and so scared her
senses away by insisting upon instant payment there and then, that
Winny handed out the money. Other creditors got to know of this; they
went down too, and insisted upon the same prompt payment on their
score. Winny had many virtues no doubt, but there was one she could
certainly not boast of--courage. In all that related to debt and its
attendant annoyances, she was timid as a fawn. To be pressed for an
account and not pay it if she had the money in her possession, was
simply impossible to Winifred Yorke. But this I think has been hinted
at before. When the last fraction of the twenty-five pounds had left
her (in a payment of four pounds ten to a stern-looking, but by no
means abusive man). Winny burst into tears: saying aloud she did not
expect her husband home for weeks, did not know where to write to him,
and had not a sixpence left for herself and her poor little children.
Upon that the man put the half-sovereign back into Mrs. Yorke's hand
without a word, and departed.
So there was Winny, literally without a sixpence, save for this ten
shillings, and Gerald not quite two weeks gone. But for Hamish
Channing and his wife, she might really have starved; most certainly
she would have been turned out of doors; for the landlady, nearly
tired of Mr. Gerald Yorke's uncertain finances, had never kept her.
Miss Cook said she could not afford to let rooms and get no rent; and
no doubt that was true. Away went Winny with her grief and
helplessness to Mrs. Channing. It was an awkward dilemma, an
embarrassing appeal, and Ellen Channing felt it as such. On the one
hand there was this poor helpless woman, and her not much more
helpless children: on the other, Ellen was aware that Hamish had
already aided her far more extensively than he could afford.
Oh, it was true. Many and many a little luxury (Gerald would have
called it a necessary) that Hamish required in his failing health--for
it had begun to fail--did he debar himself of for the sake of Gerald
Yorke's wife and children. His heart ached for them. He took not the
smallest pleasure, he often walked where he ought to have rode, he
would eat breed and cheese for his lunch, or a dry roll where he
should have had a chop, that he might give the saved money to Mrs.
Yorke. In those golden dreams of fame and fortune, when his book was
approaching completion, and the realization of its returns had
apparently been drawing very near (months ago now, it seemed to be,
since they were dreamt out), Hamish had cherished a little delightful
plot: of setting Gerald on his legs again anonymously--of putting him
straight with the world, and perhaps something over, that he might see
his way at least a little clearer towards a more satisfactory state of
household matters for himself and Winny jointly. This had been
frustrated through the book's being written down, as already partially
told of, and a corner of the grief in Hamish Manning's weary heart was
sighing itself out for Gerald's sake. Hamish said not a word of the
disappointment to a living soul--we are speaking now in regard to
Gerald--Ellen had been his sole confidant, and he did not allude to it
even to her. To Hamish, it seemed that there was only the more
necessity for helping Gerald, in administering to the necessities of
his forsaken wife.
And Gerald's wife had invented a pleasant fable. As the weeks went on
after Winny came to London, it was not possible but that Gerald should
see someone must help her with money. Put to it for an excuse, one day
that Gerald asked the question point blank, and not daring to say it
was Hamish or Ellen Channing, Winny declared it was her mother. Gerald
stared a little. Mrs. Eales lived somewhere down in Wales, and existed
on an annuity of sixty pounds a-year. But though he wondered how the
good old mère contrived to help Winny so much, or in fact at all, he
inquired no farther. She might be reducing herself to a crust and a
glass of water a day; might be, for aught he knew, forestalling her
income wholesale; Gerald was complacently content to let it be so.
And thus matters had been going on: Winny in want always, and Hamish
taxing himself and his needs to help her. In September, the office he
served offered him a fortnight's holiday, thinking he looked as if he
required it. Hamish thanked them, but declined. He had no spirits for
taking holiday, and the helping of Gerald's family left him no funds
for it.
And when Winny burst into Mrs. Channing's one afternoon, with this
last confession, that she was utterly penniless, save for the
half-sovereign the man threw back, and should be so until Gerald came
home, weeks hence, telling it in the hearing of her three little
girls, her face woe-begone, her tears and sobs fit to choke her, Ellen
Channing felt annoyed and vexed. Mixed with her compassion for
Gerald's wife, there was a feeling that they had already done more for
her than they were justified in doing. Ellen would have liked the
fortnight's holiday very much indeed on her own score. A suspicion had
begun to dawn upon her that her husband was not so strong as he might
be, and one morning she spoke to him. It was only the London heat that
made him feel weak, Hamish answered, perhaps really thinking so. Very
well, argued Ellen, then there was all the more necessity for getting
out of it to the seaside for a change. And he would have been glad
enough to take the change had funds allowed it. Considering that the
small amounts of help incessantly applied to the need of Mrs. Gerald
Yorke would have taken them to the seaside ever so many times over,
Mrs. Channing had _felt_ it. And to have this fresh demand made, when
she had supposed Winny was safe for some weeks to come, to hear the
avowal that she wanted money for everything--food and lodging and
washing and sundries, did strike Mrs. Channing as being a little too
much.
Ellen Channing had been, as Ellen Huntley, reared to liberality. She
was large-hearted by nature, open-handed by habit. To refuse to
continue to aid Mrs. Yorke in her helpless need, would have gone
against her inclination, but to continue to supply her at any cost was
almost equally so. What to do, and what Winny would do, she could not
think. The first thing was, to take Winny's things off and comfort her
for the rest of the day; the next was to send the children to Miss
Nelly in the nursery; the third to wait till Hamish came in.
He arrived at the usual hour, his face a little brighter than it had
been of late. However James Channing might strive to conceal the
curious pain--not physical yet, only mental--always gnawing at his
heart-strings, and to put on a brave smile before his wife and the
world, she detected that all was not right with him. Leaving Winny, on
the plea that she would see whether the children were at tea yet, Mrs.
Channing followed her husband into his dressing-room.
He had just dried his hands when she entered, and was turning to the
glass to brush his hair. She stood by while telling him of Winny's
piteous state, and the impossibility, as it seemed, that they could do
much for her.
"Yes we can, Ellen," he said, turning to her with his bright smile
when the recital was over. "I have had a slice of luck today."
"A slice of luck!"
"Even so. You remember Martin Pope, poor fellow, who somehow got down
in the world at Helstonleigh, and borrowed a little money from me to
get him up in it again?"
"Yes, I remember. It was sixty pounds."
"Well, Ellen, he has been rather long getting up, but it is really
coming at last. He called in at the office this morning, and repaid me
the half of the loan. Poor Martin! he is honourable as the day. He
says the not being able to repay me when the bank went worried him
terribly; and all the more so, because I never bothered him."
"Did you ask him for it then?"
"No. I was sure he had it not in his power to refund, and so left him
in peace. Ellen, if I were dying for money--if I saw my wife and child
dying for it--I think I could not be harsh with those who owed it me,
where I knew they were helpless in means, though good in will, to
pay."
He had put down the brush, and was taking a small packet of notes from
his pocketbook, laughing rather gaily.
"I'm like a schoolboy showing his treasures. See, love. Six five-pound
notes. We can help Mrs. Winny."
Ellen's fair fresh face broke into dimples. "And we can take a holiday
too, Hamish?"
"Ah no. At least I can't. That's over."
"But why?"
"Because when I declined the holiday, the clerk under me was allowed
to take one, and another of them is ill. I must stick to my post this
year."
The dimples hid themselves: the expectant face clouded over. He
noticed it.
"I am very sorry, Ellen. If you would like to go, and take Nelly and
nurse----"
"Oh, Hamish, you know I would not," she interrupted, vexed that he
should even suggest such a thing. "I only care for it for your sake;
for the rest it would be to you."
"I don't care about it for myself, love."
He drew her to him as she passed on her way to quit the room, and
kissed her fondly. Ellen let her hand rest for a moment on his neck;
she never looked at him now, but a feeling of apprehension darted
through her, that he was not as strong as he ought to be.
Hamish closed the door after her, finished his toilet, and then stood
looking from the open window. The world had changed to him for some
little time now; the sunshine had gone out of it. That one bitter,
cruel review, had been followed up by others more cruel, if possible,
more bitter. The leading papers were all against him. How he battled
with it at the time _and made no sign_, he hardly knew. To heart and
spirit it was a death-blow; for both seemed alike to have had their
very life crushed out. He went on his way still, fulfilling every duty
every daily obligation in kindly courteousness as of yore, believing
that the world saw nothing. In good truth the world did not. Save that
his sunny smile had always a tinge of sadness in it, that he seemed to
get a trifle thinner, that his voice, though sweet as ever, was low
and subdued, the world noticed nothing. Ellen alone saw it; saw that a
blight had fallen upon the inward spirit.
But she little guessed to what extent. Hamish himself did not. All he
knew was, that a more cruel blow had been dealt to him than he had
supposed it possible to be experienced in this life. When by chance
his eye would fall on a volume of his work, his very soul seemed to
turn sick and faint. It was as if he had cast his whole hopes upon a
die, and lost it. His dreams of fame, his visions of that best reward,
appreciation, had faded away, and left him nothing but darkness.
Darkness, and worse than darkness; for out of it loomed mortification
and humiliation and shame. The contrast alone went well nigh to kill
him. In the pursuit of his high artistic ideal, he had lived and moved
and almost had his being. The ills of life had touched him not; the
glorious, expectant aspirations that made his world, shielded him from
life's frowns. It is ever so with those rare few whom the Divine gift
of genius has made its own. As the grand hope of fruition drew nearer
and nearer, it had seemed to Hamish, at moments, that realization had
actually come. The laurel-crown seemed to rest upon his head; the
longed-for prize all but touched his expectant lips. No wonder, when
the knell of all this light and hope and blessedness boomed suddenly
out, that the better part of Hamish Channing's life, his vitality,
went with it.
He worked on still. His papers for the magazines were got up as
before, for he could not afford to let them cease. Gerald Yorke,
borrowing here, borrowing there, might go careering off in yachts, and
pass weeks in idleness, sending work and care to his friend the Deuce;
but Hamish and Gerald were essentially different men. Even this
evening, after Hamish should have dined, he must get to his toilsome
work. It was felt as a toil now: the weary pain, never quitting his
bosom, took all energy from him.
He stood holding the window-curtain in his rather fragile hand; more
fragile than it used to be. The sky that evening was very lovely.
Bright purple clouds, bordered with an edge of shining gold, were
crowding the west; a brighter sheet of gold underneath them seemed as
if it must be flooding the other side of the world, to which the sun
was swiftly passing, with its dazzling dawn of burnished radiance.
Hamish could but notice it: it is not often that a sunset is so
beautiful. Insensibly, as he gazed, thoughts stole over him of that
OTHER world, where there shall be no need of the sun to lighten it:
where there shall be no more bitter tears or breaking hearts; where
sorrow and trouble shall have passed away. These same thoughts came to
him very often now, and always with a kind of yearning.
As he took his hand from the curtain, with that deep, sobbing sigh, or
rather involuntary catching of the breath, which is a sure token of
some long-concealed enduring sorrow--for else it is never heard--the
signet-ring fell from his little finger. It had grown too large for
him--as we are all apt to say. If I don't take care, I shall lose it,
thought Hamish. And that would have been regarded as a misfortune, for
it had been his father's, the one Mr. Channing always wore and used.
This was the third time it had slipped off with a run.
Hamish saw his wife's work-box on a table, looked in it, and found
some black sewing-silk. This he wound round and round the ring
hastily, for he knew dinner must be ready. Thus secured, he put it on
again, and left the room. The children heard his step, and came
bounding out of the nursery, Miss Nelly springing into his arms.
He kissed her very tenderly; he lovingly put back her golden hair. He
took up the other little things and kissed them in turn, asking if
they had had love-letters from papa. Looking into the nursery, he
inquired whether they had plenty of jam and such-like good things on
the tea-table, telling nurse to see that little Rosy, who could not
fight for herself, got her share. And then, leaving them with his
pleasant nod, his sunny smile, he went to the drawing-room, and gave
their mother his arm to take her down to dinner, whispering to
her--for she seemed in a low state, her tears on the point of bursting
out--that he would make it all right for her until her husband came
home. And it was that husband, that father, who had worked him all the
ill! Hamish suspected it not. Cowards and malicious ones, such as
Gerald, stab in the dark.
And so September went on, and October drew near, and by and bye Mr.
Gerald Yorke arrived at home again. Winny, who had no more tact than
her youngest infant, the little Rosy, greeted her husband with a flood
of tears, and the news of how she had been obliged to pay away the
twenty-five pounds in settling his bills. Gerald called her a fool to
her face, and frowned awfully. Winny only sobbed. Next he demanded,
with a few more ugly words that might have been left out, how the
devil she had managed to go on. Between choking and shrinking, the
answer was nearly inaudible, and Gerald bent his head to catch it: she
had had a little more help from "mamma."
Was Mrs. Gerald Yorke's deceit excusable? Even under the circumstances
few may think it so. And yet--it was a choice between this help, and
the very worst discomfort that could fall upon her: debt. Winny was
shrewd in some things: she knew all about her husband's ill-feeling to
Mr. Channing: she knew about the reviews; and she really did believe
that if Gerald got to hear whence her help had come, he would shake
her as he shook Kitty. In her utter lack of moral courage, she could
but keep up the deception.
But Gerald Yorke had come home in feather, a prize-rose in his
button-hole. By dint of plausible statements to Mr. Fuller, he had got
that honourable friend to lend him two hundred pounds. Or rather,
strictly speaking, to get it lent to him. With this money safely
buttoned up in his pocket, Winny's penniless state was not quite so
harshly condemned as it might otherwise have been: but when Winny
timidly asked for some money to "pay mamma back," Gerald shortly
answered that he had none, mamma must wait.
And so, at this, the opening of the third part of the story, Gerald
Yorke was flourishing. A great man he, in his chambers again, free
from duns for a time, giving his wine parties, entering into the
gaieties of social life, with all their waste of time and money. Winny
got her rent paid now, regularly, and some new bonnets for herself and
the children.
"I am so glad to hear you are more at ease, Gerald," Hamish Channing
said, meeting him one day accidentally, and speaking with genuine
kindness, but never hinting at any debt that might be due to himself.
"How have you managed it, old friend?"
"Oh--aw--I--paid the harpies a--aw--trifle, and have--aw--got some
credit again," answered Gerald, evading the offered hand. "Good day.
I'm in a hurry."
But Gerald Yorke, though flourishing in funds, was not flourishing in
temper. Upon one subject it was chronically bad, and he just as angry
and mortified as he could be. And that was in regard to his future
prospects in the field, of literature. Three or four days after his
return, he paid a visit to his publishers, sanguinely hoping there
might be a good round sum coming to him, the proceeds of his book.
Alas for sublunary expectations! The acting partner met him with a
severely cold face and very ill news. The flashing laudatory reviews,
written (as may be remembered) by Gerald himself or his bosom friends,
had not much served the book, after all, in the long run. When they
appeared, it caused demands for it to flow in, and a considerable
number of copies went out. But when the public got the book, they
could not or would not read it; and the savage libraries returned the
copies to the publishers, wholly refusing to pay for them. They sent
them back in shoals: they vowed that the puffing of an utterly
miserable book in the extraordinary style this one had been puffed,
was nothing less than _fraud_: some went so far as to say that the
publishers and the author and the reviewers ought all to be indicted
together for conspiracy. In short, the practical result was, that the
book might almost be said to be withdrawn, so few copies remained in
circulation. In all respects it was an utter failure. No wonder the
unhappy publisher, knowing himself wholly innocent in the matter,
smarting under a considerable loss, besides the fifty pounds that
ought to have been advanced by Gerald, and never yet had been, no
wonder he met Mr. Gerald Yorke with a severe face. The only
gratification afforded him lay in telling this, and enlarging rather
insultingly on the worthlessness of the book.
"You, a reviewer, could not have failed to know it was _bad_, Mr.
Yorke; one that was certain to fail signally."
"No I didn't," roared Gerald.
"Well, I'd recommend you never to attempt another. _That_ field is
closed to you."
"What the devil do you mean?--how dare you presume to give me such
advice? I shall write books without end if I think fit. My firm belief
is that the failure is _your_ fault. You must have managed badly, and
not properly pushed the book."
"Perhaps it is my fault that the public can't read the book and won't
put up with it," retorted the publisher.
Gerald flung away in a temper. A hazy doubt, augmenting his
mortification and anger, kept making itself heard: whether this
expressed opinion of the book's merits might not be the true one?
Hamish Channing, though softening the fiat, had said just the same.
Gerald would very much have liked to pitch publisher and public into
the sea, and Hamish Channing with them.