by Ellen Wood
“Oh, Mr. Channing! do you think he is not going to forgive me! It is so cruel of him to send us into this strange place all alone.”
“He had an engagement, you know,” answered Hamish, his tone taking, perhaps unconsciously, the same kind of soothing persuasion that he would have used to a child. “London engagements are sometimes not to be put off.”
“I wish I was back in Gloucestershire!” she bewailed.
“It will be all right, Mrs. Yorke,” he returned gaily. “One always feels unhappy in a fresh place. The night Ellen first slept in London she cried to be back at Helstonleigh.”
A servant, who looked untidy enough to have a world full of work upon her back, showed Hamish out, In answer to a question, she said that she was the only one kept, and would have to wait on the new lodgers. Hamish slipped some money into the girl’s hand and bade her do all she could for the lady and the little children.
And so, leaving Gerald’s wife in her new home, he went back to his work.
He, Hamish Channing, with his good looks and his courtly presence, was treading the streets gaily on the following morning. Many a man, pressing on to business, spared a moment to turn and glance at him, wondering who the fine, handsome fellow was, with the bright and good face. It was a face that would be bright always, bright in dying; but it had more than two shades of care on it to-day. For if any one living man hated, more than another, to inflict pain and disappointment, it was Hamish Channing. He was carrying back Gerald’s manuscript, and had no good report to give of it.
However clever Gerald might be at dashing off slashing articles in the review line, he would never be able to succeed in fiction. This first attempt proved it indisputably to Hamish Channing. The story was unconnected, the plot scarcely distinguishable, and there were very grave faults besides, offending against morality and good taste. Not one reader in fifty, and that must be some school-girl, inveterate after novels, could get through the first volume. Certainly, in plunging into a long work of fiction, Gerald Yorke had mistaken his vocation. How entirely different this crude and worthless book was from the high-class work Hamish was writing, his cheeks glowed to contemplate. Not in triumph over Gerald; never a tarnish of such a feeling could lie in his generous heart; but at the consciousness of his own capability, the gift given him by God, and what the work would be to the public. But that he deemed it lay in his duty, in all kindliness, not to deceive Gerald, he would not have told him the truth; no, in spite of the promise exacted of him to give a just, unvarnished report.
Gerald sat at breakfast, in a flowery dressing-gown, in the rooms he was pleased to call his chambers, his breakfast and its appointments perfect. Silver glittered on the table, its linen was of the fairest damask, the chocolate and cream sent its aroma aloft. Gerald’s taste was luxurious: he could not have lived upon a sovereign a-week as Roland was doing: perhaps Roland had never learnt to do it but for that renowned voyage of his.
“Halloa, Hamish, old fellow! What brings you here so early?”
“Oh, one or two matters,” answered Hamish, keeping the manuscript out of sight at first, for he really shrank from having to report of it. “I was not sure you would be up.”
“I had to be up early this morning. Tell your news out, Hamish; I suppose the gist of it is that Winny is in a state of rebellion. Stay! I’ll send the things away. One has no appetite after a Star-and-Garter dinner and pipes to wind up with till three in the morning. You have breakfasted?”
“An hour ago.”
“It is an awfully provoking step for Winny to have taken,” said Gerald, as his servant disappeared with the breakfast-tray. “She has no doubt been grumbling to you and Mrs. Channing about her ‘wrongs’ — it’s what she called it yesterday — but I know mine are worse. Fancy her taking such a mad start! What on earth I am to do with them in town, I can’t guess. You’ve not got her outside, I suppose? You know, Hamish, I couldn’t help myself; I had to leave her.”
“Qui s’excuse s’accuse,” returned Hamish, with one of his sunny smiles, chancing on the very common French proverb that Mr. Bede Greatorex had applied but recently to Gerald’s brother.
“Oh bother,” said Gerald. “Did Winny strike last night, and refuse to go into lodgings?”
“She went all right enough; but she didn’t like your leaving her to go in alone. My wife seized hold of the occasion to read me a lecture, saying she should not like it at all; I’m not sure but she said ‘not put up with it.’”
“Your wife is a different woman from mine,” growled Gerald; for Hamish’s gay, half mocking tone, covering a kinder and deeper feeling, jarred somewhat on his perplexed mind. “You knew what Winny is before to-day. I shall go down and see her by-and-by.”
“Shall you keep these chambers on?”
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I “Keep these chambers on!” echoed Gerald, “why, of course I must keep them on. And live at them too, in a general way. Though how I shall afford the cost of the two places, the devil only knows.”
“You have been affording it hitherto. Winny has had a separate home.”
“What keeps a cottage down yonder, won’t pay lodgings in London. You must know that, Hamish.” Hamish did not immediately speak: if he could not agree, he would not disagree. He did not see why Gerald should not take either a small house, or apartments sufficiently commodious, in a neighbourhood good enough for his fashionable friends not to be ashamed to resort to. Hamish and Gerald understood things in so different a light: Gerald estimated people (and fashion) by their drawl, and dress, and assumption of fast life: Hamish knew that all good men, no matter though they were of the very highest rank, were proud to respect worth and intellect and sincere nature in a poor little home, as in a palace perched aloft on Hyde Park gates. Ah me! I think one must be coming near to quit this world and its frivolity, ere the curtain of dazzling gauze that falls before our eyes is lifted.
“Are you getting on with my manuscript, Hamish?”
“I have brought it,” said Hamish, taking it from his pocket. “I put away my own work—”
“Oh, thank you, old fellow,” was the quick interruption.
“Now don’t thank me for nothing, Gerald. I was about to say that one can judge so much better of a book in reading it without breaks given to other work, that I stretched a point; for my own pleasure, you know,”
Gerald drew the parcel towards him, and opened it tenderly, undoing the string as if it fastened some rare treasure. Hamish saw the feeling, the glad expectation, and his fine blue eyes took a tinge of sadness. Gerald looked up.
“I think I’ll tell you how it is, Hamish. Upon this manuscript—”
What was it that happened? Gerald broke off abruptly and looked at the door; his mouth slightly opened, his ear was cocked in the attitude of one, listening anxiously. Hamish, unused to the sounds of the place, heard nothing whatever.
“Say I’m out, Hamish, old fellow; say I’m out,” whispered Gerald, disappearing noiselessly within an invisible closet; invisible from being papered like the walls and opening with a nob no bigger than a nut. Hamish sat in a trance of inward astonishment, easy as ever outwardly, a half smile upon his face.
He opened the door in answer to a knock. A respectable-looking man at once stepped inside, asking to see Mr. Yorke.
Hamish with a gesture of his hand pointed to the empty room, indicating that Mr, Yorke was not there to be seen. The applicant looked round it curiously; and at that moment Gerald’s servant came up with a rush, and glanced round as keenly as the applicant.
“My master’s gone out for the day, Mr. Brookes.”
“How many more times am I to have that answer given me?” demanded Mr. Brookes. “It’s hardly likely he’d be gone out so soon as this.”
“Likely or not, he’s gone,” said the servant, speaking with easy indifference.
“Well, look here; there’s the account, delivered once more and for the last time,” said Mr. Brookes, handing in a paper. “If it
’s not paid within four-and-twenty hours, I shall summons him to the county-court.”
“And he means it,” emphatically whispered the servant in Hamish’s hearing, as Mr. Brookes’s descending footsteps echoed on the stairs.
Hamish pulled back the closet-door by the knob to release Gerald. He came forth like a whirlwind — if a furious passion may be called one. Hamish had not heard so much abuse lavished on one person for many a day as Gerald gave his servant. The man had been momentarily off his usual vigilant guard, and so allowed Gerald’s sanctum (and all but his person) to be invaded by an enemy.
“I owe the fellow a trifle for boots,” said Gerald, when he had driven his servant from the room. “He is an awful dun, and will not be put off much longer. Seven pounds ten shillings,” — dashing open the bill. “And for that paltry sum he’ll county-court me!”
“Pay him,” said Hamish.
“Pay him! I should like to pay him,” returned Gerald, gloomily. “I’d pay him to-day and have done with him, if I could, and think it the best money ever laid out. I’m awfully hard up, Hamish, and that’s a fact.”
Hamish began mentally to deliberate whether he was able to help him. Gerald stood on the hearthrug, very savage with the world in general.
“I’d move heaven and earth to avoid the county-court,” he said. “It would be sure to get about. Everything is contrary and cross-grained just now:
Carrick’s not to the fore; Vincent Yorke says he has neither cross nor coin to bless himself with, let alone me. I never got but one loan from the fellow in my life, and be hanged to him!”
“Your expenses are so heavy, Gerald.”
“Who the devil is to make them lighter?” fiercely demanded Gerald. “One can’t live as a hermit. I beg your pardon, old fellow, I’m cross, I know, but I have so much to worry me. Things come upon one all at once. Because I had not enough ways for my ready money just now, Winny must come up and want a heap.”
“What is pressing you particularly?”
“That,” said Gerald, flicking his hand in the direction of the boot bill. “There’s nothing else very much at the present moment.” But the “present moment” with Gerald meant the present actual hour that was passing.
“About my manuscript,” he resumed, his tone brightening a little as he sat down to the table to face Hamish.
Still, for an instant or two, Hamish hesitated. He drew the sheets towards him and turned them over, as if in deliberation what to say.
“You charged me to tell you the truth, Gerald.”
“Of course I did,” loudly answered Gerald. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Well, Gerald, I should not but for your earnest wish, and that it is I suppose the more real kindness to do so, as it may prevent you from wasting time upon another. I am afraid it won’t do, old friend.”
“What won’t do?” asked Gerald, with wide-open eyes that showed the wonder in them.
Delicately, gently, considerately, as he could have imparted ill news to the dearest friend he had on earth, Hamish Channing told him the story would not do, would not, at least, be a success, and pointed out why he thought so. The book was full of mistakes and faults; these for the most part he passed lightly over: speaking rather of the defects of the work as a whole.
“Go on; let’s have it all,” said Gerald, when there was a pause: and Hamish saw nothing of the suppressed passion, or of the irony that lay at the bottom of the following words. “You think I cannot succeed in fiction?”
“Not in a long work—”
“Why the work’s a short one,” interrupted Gerald.
“Very short indeed. Some writers of fiction (and as a rule they are the best, Gerald) put as much in a volume and a half as you have written for the three volumes. I don’t think you could write a successful work of fiction in even one volume, Gerald — as I count success. It must have a plot; it must have consecutiveness in the working out; it must have—”
“It must have, in short, just the qualities that my work lacks,” interposed Gerald with a laugh: and Hamish felt relieved that he was receiving things so easily.
“If I thought that any hints or help of mine would enable you to accomplish a work likely to be successful, I would heartily put myself at your service, Gerald. But I don’t. I am sure you have mistaken your vocation in attempting a work of fiction.”
“Thank you,” said Gerald. “Four work has not been tried yet. That’s sure to prove a success, I suppose?”
The bright glow of anticipation lighted Hamish Channing’s sensitive face. It would have betrayed the all-powerful hope lying within him, apart from the involuntary smile, checked on his lips.
“I could hardly bring myself to make the report, Gerald. And should not, I think, but that I care for your interests as for those of my own brothers. You know I do, and therefore will not mistake me. I debated whether I should not get up some excuse for giving no opinion, except that you had better submit it to a publisher. Of course you can do that still.”
“Let me understand you,” said Gerald. “You wish to inform me that no publisher would be likely to take it.”
Hamish paused slightly. “I do not say that. Publishers take all kinds of works. The chief embarrassment on my mind is this, Gerald: that, if published, it could not bring you much honour or credit; or — I think — returns.”
They shook hands; and Hamish, who would be late at his office, departed, leaving Gerald alone. He went along with a light, glad step, wondering whether he could afford to help Gerald out of the money difficulty of the day. Sixteen guineas were due to him for literary work; if he got it paid, he would enclose the receipt for the boot-bill to Gerald, saying nothing.
Leaving Gerald alone. Alone with his bitter anger; with an evil look on his face, and revenge at his heart There was only one thing could have exceeded Gerald Yorke’s astonishment at the veto pronounced and that was the utter incredulity with which he received it. He had looked upon his book as a rara avis, a black swan: just as we all look on our productions, whether they may be bad or good. The bad ones perhaps are thought most of: they are more trusted to bring back substantial reward. Of course, therefore, Gerald Yorke could but regard the judgment as a deliberately false one, spoken in jealous envy; tendered to keep him back from fame. He made the great mistake that many another has made before him, when receiving honest advice in a similar case, and many will make again. And the book gained in his opinion, rather than lost.
“Curse him for his insolence! curse him for a false, self-sufficient puppy!” foamed Gerald, rapping out unorthodox words in his passion. “‘Ware to yourself, Mr. Hamish Channing! you shall find, sooner or later, what it is to make an enemy of me.”
But Gerald received some balm ere the day was over, for Mr. Brookes’s receipted bill came to him by post in a blank envelope. Arid he wondered who on earth had been civil enough to pay the money.
CHAPTER XVII.
At Fault.
IT was easier for Mr. Bede Greatorex to say to the police-agents “Drop the investigation,” than it was for them to do it. Had he been the sole person to whom they were responsible, the thing would have lain in a nut-shell; but their employer was his father. And Mr. Greatorex was pushing discovery to an issue as he had never pushed anything yet. He looked up details himself; he went backwards and forwards to Scotland Yard; he was altogether troublesome.
As the days went on, and Mr. Butterby brought forth no result, only presented himself once in a way to say there was none to bring, Mr. Greatorex grew angry. Surely such a thing was never heard of! — as for a cheque to be stolen out of one of their desks at midday, carried to the bank and openly cashed, and for the police to say they could not trace the offender! Mr. Greatorex avowed that the police ought to be ashamed to confess it; that, in his opinion, they must be getting incapable of their duties.
One thing had struck Mr. Greatorex in the matter — that his son Bede seemed not to be eager for the investigation: if he did n
ot retard it, he certainly did not push it. Perhaps the best word to express Bede’s state of mind in regard to it, as it appeared to Mr. Greatorex, was indifference. Why was this? Bede ought to be as anxious as himself. Nay, more so: it was from his possession and his desk that the cheque was taken. Mr. Greatorex supposed that the laxity in regard to business affairs, which appeared latterly to have been creeping upon his son, must be extending itself even to the stealing of money. Was he more seriously ill than he allowed them to know? The fear, that it might be so, crossed the mind of Mr. Greatorex.
The solicitor sat one morning in his private room, Jonas Butterby opposite to him. The detective was there in answer to a peremptory mandate sent by Mr. Greatorex to Scotland Yard the previous day. Whether Mr. Butterby was responsible to himself alone for the progress or non-progress of the investigation; or, if not, whether he had imparted a hint at head-quarters of Bede Greatorex’s private communication to him, was locked up within his own breast. One thing appeared clear — that he was at liberty to do as he pleased.
“It is not the loss of the money; it is not that the sum of forty-four pounds is of so much moment to me that I must needs trace it out, and if possible regain it,” Mr. Greatorex urged, his fine, fresh, honest face bent full on the detective, sternness in its every line. “It is the unpleasantness of knowing that we have a thief about us: it is the feeling of insecurity; the fear that the loss will not stop here. Every night of my life, when the offices close, I seem to prepare myself for the discovery that some other one has taken place during the day.”
“Not at all an unlikely thing to happen,” acknowledged Mr. Butterby, who probably felt himself less free under existing circumstances than he usually was, and therefore spoke with deprecation.
“That the cheque must have been taken by one of the clerks attached to my son’s room, I think there can be little doubt of. The difficulty is—”
