LIFE'S SANDS RUNNING ON.
A cold brisk air, with suspicion of a frost. It was a day or two
previous to the one told of in the last two chapters, when Mr.
Butterby was paying visits. Being convenient to record that renowned
officer's doings first, we yielded him the precedence, and in
consequence have to go back a little.
The brightness of the afternoon was passing. In his writing-room,
leaning back in a large easy-chair before the fire, sat Hamish
Channing. Some papers lay on the table, work of various kinds; but,
looking at Hamish, it almost seemed as though he had done with work
for ever. A face less beautiful than Hamish Channing's would have
appeared painfully thin: his, spite of its wasted aspect, had yet a
wonderful charm. The remark was once made that Hamish Channing's was a
face that would be beautiful always; beautiful to the end; beautiful
in dying. See it now. The perfect contour of the features is shown the
plainer in their attenuation; the skin seems transparent, the cheeks
are delicately flushed, the eyes are very blue and bright. If the
countenance had looked etherealized earlier in the history, and any
cavilled at the word, they would scarcely have cavilled at it now. But
in the strangely spiritual expression, speaking, one knew not how, of
Heaven there was an ever-present sadness, as if trouble had been hard
at work with him; as if all that was of the earth, earthy, had been
_crucified_ away.
Nobody seemed certain of it yet--that he was dying. He bore up
bravely; working still a little at home; but not going to the office;
that was beyond him. The doctors had not said there was no hope: his
wife, though she might inwardly feel how it was, would not speak it.
He sat at the head of his table yet; he was careful of his appearance
as of yore. His smile was genial still; his loving words were
cheerful, sometimes gay; his sweet kindliness to all around was more
marked. Oh, it was not in the face only that the look of Heaven
appeared: if ever a spark of the Divine spirit of love and light had
been vouchsafed to man's soul, it surely had been to that of Hamish
Channing.
He wore a coat of black velvet, a vest of the same, across which his
gold chain passed, with its drooping seal. The ring, formerly Mr.
Channing's, no longer made believe to fit the little finger; it was
worn on the second. His hair, carefully brushed as ever, looked like
threads of dark gold in the sunlight. Certainly it could not be said
that Hamish gave in to his illness. Whatever his complaint might be,
the medical men did not call it by any name; there was a little cough,
a strange want of tone and strength a quick, continual, almost
perceptible wasting. Whether Hamish had cherished visions of recovery
for himself could not be known; most earnestly he had hoped for it. If
only for the sake of his wife and child, he desired to live: and
existence itself, even in the midst of a great and crushing
disappointment, is hard to resign. But the truth, long dawning on his
mind, had shown itself to him fully at last, as it does in similar
cases to most of us; whether Hamish's weakness had taken a stride and
brought conviction of its formidable nature, or whether it might be
that he was temporarily feeling worse, a sadness, as of death itself,
lay upon him this afternoon.
It had been a short life--as men count lives; he had not yet numbered
two and thirty years. But for the awful disappointment that was drying
its fibres away, he might say that it had been a supremely happy one.
Perhaps no man, with the sweet and sunny temperament of Hamish
Channing, possessing the same Christian principles, could be otherwise
than happy. He did not remember ever to have done ill wilfully to
mortal man, in thought, word, or deed. It had been done to him: but he
forgave it. Nevertheless, a sense of injustice, a bitter pang of
disappointment, of hopeless failure as to this world, lay on his
heart, when he recalled what the past few months brought him. Leaning
there on his chair, his sad eyes tracing figures in the fire, he was
recalling things one by one. His never-ceasing, ever-hopeful work, and
the bright dreams of future fame that had made its sunshine. He
remembered, as though it were today, the evening that first review met
his eye--when he had been entertaining his brother-in-law, the
Reverend William Yorke, and others--and the shock it gave him. Think
of it when he would even now, it brought him a sensation of sick
faintness. Older men have become paralyzed from a similar shock. The
first review had been so closely followed by others, equally unjust,
equally cruel, that they all seemed as one blow. After that there
appeared to be a sort of pause in his life, when time and events stood
still, when he moved as one in a dream of misery, when all things
around him were as dead, and he along with them. The brain (as it
seemed) never stopped beating, or the bosom's pain working; or the
sense of humiliation to quit him. And then, as the days went on,
bodily weakness supervened; and--there he was, dying. Dying! going
surely to his God and Saviour; he felt that; but leaving his dear
ones, wife and child, to the frowns of a hard world; alone, without
suitable provision. And the book--the good, scholarly, attractive
book, upon which he had bestowed the best of his bright genius, that
he had written as to Heaven--was lying unread. Wasted!
"Papa, shall I put on her blue frock or her green? She is going out
for a walk."
This interruption came from Miss Nelly, who sat on the hearthrug,
dressing her doll. There was no reply, and Nelly looked up: she wore a
blue frock herself; its sleeves and the white pinafore tied together
with blue ribbon. Her pretty little feet in their shoes and socks were
stretched out, and her curls fell in a golden shower.
"Shall baby wear her blue frock or her green, papa? Papa, then! Which
is prettiest?"
Hamish, aroused, looked down on the child with a smile. "The blue, I
think; and then baby-doll will be like Nelly."
But Mrs. Channing, sewing at the window, turned her head. Something in
her husband's face or in his weary tone struck her.
"Do you feel worse, Hamish?"
"No, love. Not particularly."
Sadder yet, the voice; a kind of hopeless, weary sadness, depressing
to hear. Ellen quitted her seat, and came to him. "What is it?" she
whispered.
"Not much, dear. The future has cleared itself; that's all."
"The future?"
"I cannot struggle any longer, Ellen. I have preached faith and
patience to others, but they seem to have deserted me. I--I almost
think the very strife itself is helping on the end."
Sharp though the pang was, that pierced her breast, she would not show
it. Miss Nelly chattered below, asking questions of her doll, and
making believe to answer.
"The----_end_, Hamish!"
He took her hand and looked straight in her face as she stood by him.
"Have you not seen it, Ellen?"
With a heart and bosom that alike quivered,--with a standing still of
all her pulses,--with a catching-up of breath, as a sob, Mrs. Churning
was conscious of a stab of pain. Oh yes--yes--she had seen it; and the
persuading herself that she had not, had been but a sickly, miserable
pretence at cheating.
"But for leaving you and the little one, Ellen, there would be no
strife," he whispered, letting his forehead rest for a moment on her
arm. "It is a long while now that my dreams--I had almost said my
visions--have been of that world to which we are all journeying, which
every one of us must enter sooner or later. There will be no pain, or
trouble, or weariness _there_. Only the other night, as I lay between
sleep and wake, I seemed to have passed its portals into a soft,
bright, soothing light, a haven of joyous peace and rest."
"And if dolly's good, and does not spoil her new blue frock, she shall
go out for a walk," was heard from the hearthrug. Hamish put his
elbow on the arm of the chair, and covered his face with his slender
fingers.
"But when I think of my wife and child--and I am always thinking of
them, Ellen,--when I realize the bitter truth that I must leave them,
why then at times it seems as if my heart must break with its intense
pain. Ellen, my darling, I would not, even yet, have spoken, but that
I know you must have been waiting for it."
"I could have borne any trouble better than this," she answered,
pressing her hands together.
"It will be softened to you, I am sure, Ellen. I am ever praying that
it may."
"But----"
Visitors in the drawing-room: Mrs. Bede Greatorex and Miss Joliffe. A
servant came to announce them. She had said that her mistress was at
home, and Ellen had to go up. Hamish, with his remaining strength,
lifted Miss Nelly on his knee, doll and all.
"Hush, papa, please! Baby is fatigued with making her toilette. She
wants to go to sleep."
"What would Nelly say if papa told her he also wanted to go to sleep?"
Miss Nelly lay back in papa's arms while she considered the question,
the doll hushed in hers. Ah me, it is ever thus! We clasp and love our
children: they love others, who are more to them than we are.
"Why? Are you tired, papa?"
"A little weary, dear."
"Then go to sleep. Doll shall be quiet."
"The sleep's not coming just yet, Nelly. And--when it does come--papa
may not awake from it."
"Not ever, ever, ever?" asked Nelly, opening her blue eyes in wonder,
but not taking in at all the true sense of the question.
"Not ever--here."
"The princess went into a sleep in my tale-book, and lay on the bed
with roses in her hair, and never awoke, never, never, till the good
old fairy came and touched her," said Miss Nelly.
There ensued a pause. Hamish Channing's lip quivered a little; but no
one, save himself, could have guessed how every fibre of his heart was
aching.
"Nelly," he resumed, his voice and manner alike gravely earnest, his
eyes reading hers, "I want to give you a charge. Should papa have to
go on a long journey, you would be all that mamma has left. Take you
care, my child, to be ever dutiful to her; to be obedient to her
slightest wish, and to love her with a double love."
"A long, long, long journey?" demanded Miss Nelly.
"Very long."
"And when would you come back again to this house?"
"Not ever."
"Where would it be to, papa?"
"Heaven," he softly whispered.
Nelly rose up in his arms, the blue eyes more wondering than before.
"But that would be to die!"
"And if it were?"
Down fell the doll unheeded. The child's fears were aroused. She threw
her little arms about his neck.
"Oh papa, papa, don't die! Don't die!"
"But if I must, Ellen?"
Only once in her whole life could she remember that he had called her
by her true name, and that was when her grandpa died. She began to
tremble.
"Who would take care of me, papa?"
"God."
She hid her face upon his velvet waistcoat, strangely still.
"He would guide, and guard, and love you ever, Ellen. Loving Him you
would be His dear child always, and He would bring you in time to me.
Look up, my dear one."
"_Must_ you go the journey?"
"I fear so."
"Oh, papa!--and don't you care--don't you care for mamma and me, that
you must leave us?"
"Care!"
He could say no more; the word seemed to put the finishing stroke to
his breaking heart. Sobs broke from his lips; tears, such as man
rarely sheds, streamed down on the little nestling head. A cry of
anguish, patient and imploring, that the parting might be soothed to
them all, went up aloft to his Father in Heaven.
After dusk came on, when the visitors were got rid of,--for Clare
Joliffe had stayed an unconscionable time, talking over old interests
at Helstonleigh--Mrs. Channing found her husband asleep in his chair.
Closing the door softly on him, she sat down by the dining-room fire,
and the long pent-up tears burst forth. Hamish Channing's wife was a
brave woman but there are griefs that go well-nigh, when they fall, to
shatter the bravest of us. Miss Nelly, captured ever so long ago by
nurse, was at tea in the nursery.
Roland Yorke surprised Mrs. Channing in her sorrow. Roland never came
into the house with a clatter now (at least when he thought of its
master's sick state), but with as softly decorous a step as his boots
could be controlled to. Down he sat in silence, on the opposite side
of the hearth, and saw the reflection of Mrs. Channing's tears in the
firelight.
"Is he worse?" asked Roland, when he had stared a little.
"No," she answered, scarcely making a pretence to conceal her grief.
"I fear there will not be very much 'worse' in it at all, Roland: a
little more weakness perhaps, and that will be all. I am afraid the
end is very near. I fancy he thinks so."
Roland grew hot and cold; a dart took him under his waistcoat.
"Let's understand, Mrs. Channing. Don't play with a fellow. Do you
mean that Hamish is--going--to die?"
"Yes, I am sure there is no more hope."
"My goodness!"--and Roland rubbed his hot and woe-stricken face. "Why
he was better yesterday. He was laughing and talking like anything."
"Not really better. It is as I say, Roland."
"If ever I saw such a miserable world as this!" exclaimed Roland:
who, though indulging at times some private despondency upon the case,
had perhaps not realized its utter hopelessness until now, when the
words put it unmistakably before him. "I never thought--at least,
much--but what he'd get well again: the fine, good, handsome man. I'd
like to know why he couldn't, and what has killed him."
"The reviews have done it," said Ellen, in a low tone.
Roland groaned. A suspicion, that they must have had something to do
with the decay, had been upon himself. Hamish had never been quite the
same after they appeared: his spirit had seemed to fade away in a
subdued sadness, and subsequently his health followed it.
"The cruel reviews broke his heart," resumed Mrs. Channing. "I am
certain of it, Roland. A less sensitive man would not have felt it
vitally; a man, physically stronger, could not have suffered in
health. But he is sensitive amidst the most sensitive; and he never,
with all his bright face and fine form, was physically strong. And
so--he could not bear the blow, and it has killed him."
Roland sat pulling at his whiskers in desperate gloom. Mrs. Channing
shaded her eyes with her hand.
"If I could but pitch into the reviewers!" he cried. "Were I rich, I'd
offer a thousand pounds' reward to anybody who would bring me their
names. Hang the lot! And if you were not by, Mrs. Channing, it's a
worse word than that I'd say."
She shook her head. "Pitching into the reviewers, Roland, would not
give him back his life. The publisher thinks that one man wrote them
all: or got them written. Some one who must have had a grudge against
Hamish. It does seem like it."
Roland's picture might have been taken as an emblem of Despair.
Suddenly the face brightened a little, the sanguine temperament
resumed its sway.
"Don't you lose heart, Mrs. Channing. I'll tell you something that
happened to me at Port Natal. Uncommon hard-up, I was, and lying in a
place with a strong fever upon me. I thought I was dying; I did
indeed. I was dreaming of Helstonleigh and all the old people there; I
seemed to see Arthur and Hamish, and Hamish smiled at me in his bright
way, and said, 'Cheer up, it will be all right, old friend.' Upon
that, somebody was standing by the bed--which was nothing but a sack
of sand that you roll off unpleasantly--laying hold of my pulse and
looking down at me. I mean really, you know. A chap in the room said
it was a doctor; perhaps it was; but he got me nothing but some
herb-tea to drink. 'Take courage,' says he to me, 'it's half the
battle!' I got well in time, and so may Hamish. _You_ take courage,
Mrs. Channing."
She smiled a little. "My taking courage would not help my husband,
Roland."
"Well--no; perhaps it mightn't," acknowledged Roland, resuming his
gloom. "Where is he?"
She pointed to the other room. "Asleep before the fire."
Roland softly opened the door and looked in. The firelight played on
Hamish Channing's wasted features; and his dreams seemed to be of a
pleasant nature, for a smile sat on the delicate lips: lips that had
always shown so plainly the man's remarkable refinement. Nevertheless,
sleeping and dreaming peacefully, there was something in the face that
spoke of coming death. And Roland could have burst into sobs as he
stood there.
Going back again, and closing the door quietly, Roland found the
company augmented in the person of his brother Gerald. For some time
past Gerald Yorke had heard from one and another of Hamish Channing's
increased illness, which made no impression upon him, except a
slightly favourable one; for, if Hamish were incapacitated from
writing, it would be a rival removed from Gerald's path. This
afternoon he was told that Hamish was thought to be past recovery; in
fact, dying. That did arouse him a little; the faint spark of
conscience Gerald Yorke possessed took a twinge, and he thought as he
was near the house he'd give a call in.
"You are quite a stranger," Mrs. Channing was saying, meeting Gerald
with a cordial hand and a grasp of welcome. "What has kept you away?"
"Aw--been busy of late; and--aw--worried," answered Gerald, according
a distant nod to Roland. "What's this I hear about Hamish?--That he is
dying!"
"Well, I don't think you need blurt out that strong word to Mrs.
Channing, Gerald," interposed hot Roland. "Dying, indeed! Do you call
it manners? I don't."
"I beg Mrs. Channing's pardon," Gerald was beginning, half cynically;
but Ellen's voice rose to interrupt.
"It makes no difference, Roland," she kindly said. "It is the truth,
you know; and I am not blind to it.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Gerald.
The matter with him? Ellen Channing told the brief story in a few
words. The cruel reviews had broken his heart. Gerald listened, and
felt himself turned into a white heat inside and out.
"The reviews!" he exclaimed. "I don't understand yon, Mrs. Channing."
"Of course you read them, Gerald, and must know their bitter, shameful
injustice," she explained. "They were such that might have struck a
blow even to a strong man: they struck a fatal one to Hamish. He had
staked his whole heart and hope upon the book; he devoted to it the
great and good abilities with which God had gifted him; he made it
worthy of all praise; and false men rose up and blasted it. A strong
word you may deem that, Gerald, for me to use; but it is a true one.
They rose up, and--in envy, as I believe--set themselves to write and
work out a deliberate lie: they got it sent forth to the world in
effectual channels, and _killed_ the book. Perhaps they did not intend
also to kill the writer."
Gerald's white face looked whiter than usual. His eyes, in their hard
stare, were very ugly.
"Still I can't understand," he said. "The critiques were, of course
rather severe: but how can critiques kill a man?"
"And if you, being a reviewer yourself, Gerald, could only get to find
out who the false-hearted hound was,--for it's thought to have been
one fellow who penned the lot--you'd oblige me," put in Roland. "I'd
_repay_ him, as I've seen it done at Port Natal. His howling would be
something fine."
"You do not yet entirely understand, I see, Gerald," sadly answered
Ellen, paying no attention to Roland's interruption, while Gerald
turned his shoulder upon him. "In one sense the reviews did not kill.
They did not, for instance, strike Hamish dead at once, or break his
heart with a stroke. In fact, you may think the expression, a broken
heart, but a figure of speech, and in a degree of course it is so. But
there are some natures, and his is one, which are so sensitively
organized that a cruel blow shatters them. Had Hamish been stronger he
might have borne it, have got over it in time; but he had been working
beyond his strength; and I think also his strangely eager hope in
regard to the book must have helped to wear out his frame. It was his
first work, you know. When the blow came he had not strength to rally
from it; mind and body were alike stricken down, and so the weakness
set in and laid hold of him."
"What are these natures good for?" fiercely demanded Gerald, in a tone
as if he were resenting some personal injury.
"Only for Heaven, as it seems to me," she gently answered.
Gerald rubbed his face; he could not get any colour into it, and there
ensued a pause. Presently Ellen spoke again.
"I remember, when I was quite a girl, reading of a somewhat similar
case in one of Bulwer Lytton's novels. A young artist painted a great
picture--great to him--and insisted on being concealed in the room
while a master came to judge of it. The judgment was adverse; not,
perhaps, particularly harsh and cruel in itself, only sounding so to
the painter; and it killed him. Not at the moment, Gerald; I don't
mean that; he lived to become ill, and he went to Italy for his
health, his heart gradually breaking. He never spoke of what the blow
had been to him, or that it had crushed out his hope and life, but
died hiding it. Hamish has never spoken."
"What I want to know is, where's the use of people being like this?"
pursued Gerald. "What are they made for?"
"Scarcely for earth," she answered. "The too-exquisitely-refined gold
is not meant for the world's coinage."
"I'd rather be a bit of brittle china, than made so that I couldn't
stand a review," said Gerald. "It's to be hoped there's not many such
people."
"Only one in tens of thousands, Gerald."
"Does it--trouble him?" asked Gerald, hesitatingly.
"The advance of death?--yes, in a degree. Not for the death, Gerald:
but the quitting me and Nelly."
"I'm not yet what Hamish and Arthur are, safe to be heard up there
when they ask for a thing," again interrupted Roland, jerking his head
upwards: "but I do pray that from the day that bad base man hears of
Hamish Channing's death, he'll be haunted by his ghost for ever. My
goodness! I'd not like to have murder on _my_ conscience. It's as bad
as the fellow who killed Mr. Ollivera."
Gerald Yorke rose. Ellen asked him to wait and see Hamish, but he
answered, in what seemed a desperate hurry, that he had an engagement.
"You might like to take a peep at him, Gerald," spoke Roland. "His
face looks as peaceful as if it were sainted."
Gerald's answer was to turn tail and go off. Roland, who had some
copying on hand that was being waited for, stayed to shake hands with
Mrs. Channing.
"Look here," he whispered to her. "Don't you let him worry his mind
about you and Nelly: in the way of money, you know. I shall be sure to
get into something good soon; Vincent will see to that; and I'll take
care of both of you. Goodbye."
Poor, penniless, good-hearted Roland! He would have "taken care" of
all the world.
With a run he caught up Gerald, who was striding along rapidly.
Oblivious of all save the present distress, even of Gerald's past
coldness, Roland attempted to take his arm, and got repulsed for his
pains.
"My way does not lie the same as yours, I think," was Gerald's haughty
remark. Roland would not resent it.
"I say, Ger, is it not enough to make one sad? It wouldn't have
mattered much had it been you or me to be taken: but Hamish Channing!
we can't afford to lose such a one as him."
"Thank you," said Gerald. "Speak for yourself."
"And with Hamish the bread and cheese dies. She has but little money.
Perhaps she'll not feel the want of it, though. I'd work my arms off
for that darling little Nelly and for her too, for Hamish's sake."
"I don't believe he is dying at all," said Gerald. "Reviews kill him,
indeed! it's altogether preposterous. Women talk wretched nonsense in
this world."
Without so much as a parting Goodnight, Gerald struck across the
street and disappeared. By the time he arrived at chambers, his mind
had fully persuaded itself that there was nothing serious the matter
with Hamish Channing; and he felt that he could like to shake Winny
(who had been _his_ informant) for alarming him.
His servant brought him a letter as he entered, and Gerald tore it
open. It proved to be from Sir Vincent Yorke, inviting Gerald down to
Sunny Mead on the morrow for a couple of days' shooting.
"Hurrah!" shouted Gerald. "Vin's coming round, is he! I'll go, and get
out of him a hundred or so, to bring back with me to town. That's
good. Hurrah!"