By-and-by it seemed certain that, if ever Hector had had anything of
what the world counts success, it had now come to a pause. For a long
time he wrote nothing that, had it been published, could have produced
any impression like that of his first book; it seemed as if the first
had forestalled the success of those that should follow. That had been
of a new sort, and the so-called Public, innocent little
personification, was not yet grown ready for anything more of a similar
kind, which, indeed, seemed to lack elements of attraction and interest;
and the readers to whom the same man will tell even new things are apt
to grow weary of his mode of saying, even though that mode have improved
in directness and force; the tide of his small repute had already begun
to take the other direction. Those who understood and prized his work,
still holding by him, and declaring that they found in him what they
found in no other writer, remained stanch in their friendship, and among
them the little old lady who had at once welcomed his first poem to her
heart and whose name and position were now well known to Hector. But the
reviewers, seeming to have forgotten their first favorable reception of
him, now began to find nothing but faults in his work, pointing out only
what they judged ill contrived and worse executed in his conceptions,
and that in a tone to convey the impression that he had somehow wheedled
certain of them into their former friendly utterances concerning him.
And about the same time it so happened that business began to fall away
rapidly from the bank of which his father held the chief country agency,
so that he was no longer able to continue to Hector his former subsidy,
the announcement of which discouraging fact was accompanied by a lecture
on the desirableness of a change in his choice of subject as well as in
his style; if he continued to write as he had been doing of late, no one
would be left, his father said, to read what he wrote!
And now it began to be evident what a happy thing it was for Hector that
Annie was now at his side to help him. For, as his courage sank, and he
saw Annie began to feel straitened in her housekeeping, he saw also how
her courage arose and shone. But he grew more and more discouraged,
until it was all that Annie could do to hold him back from despair. At
length, however, she began to feel that possibly there might be some
truth in what his father had written to him, and a new departure ought
to be attempted. She could not herself believe that her husband was
limited to any style or subject for the embodiment of his thoughts; he
who had written so well in one fashion might write at least well, if not
as well, in another! Had she not heard him say that verse was the best
practice for writing prose?
Gently, therefore, and cautiously she approached the matter with him,
only to find at first, as she had expected, that he but recoiled from
the suggestion with increase of discouragement. Still, taking no delight
in obstinacy, and feeling the necessity of some fresh attempt grow daily
more pressing, he turned his brains about, and sending them foraging, at
length bethought him of a certain old Highland legend with which at one
time he had been a good deal taken, from the discovery in it of certain
symbolical possibilities. This legend he proceeded to rewrite and
remodel, doing his best endeavor to preserve in it the old Celtic aroma
and aerial suggestion, while taking care neither to lose nor reproduce
too manifestly its half-apparent, still evanishing symbolism. Urged by
fear and enfeebled by doubt, he wrote feverously, and, after three days
of laborious and unnatural toil, submitted the result to Annie, who was
now his only representative of the outer world, and the only person for
whose criticism he seemed now to care. She, greatly in doubt of her own
judgment, submitted it to his friend; and together they agreed on this
verdict: That, while it certainly proved he could write as well in prose
as in verse, people would not be attracted by it, and that it would be
found lacking in human interest. His friend saw in it also too much of
the Celtic tendency to the mystical and allegorical, as distinguished
from the factual and storial.
Upon learning this their decision, poor Hector fell once more into a
state of great discouragement, not feeling in him the least power of
adopting another way; there seemed to him but one mode, the way things
came to him. And in this surely he was right--only might not things
come, or be sent to him in some other way? His friend suggested that he
might, changing the outward occurrences, and the description of the
persons to whom they happened, in such fashion that there could be no
identification of them, tell the very tale of how Annie and he came to
know and love each other, taking especial care to muffle up to
shapelessness, or at least featurelessness, the part his mother had
taken in their story. This seeming to Hector a thing possible, he took
courage, and set about it at once, gathering interest as he proceeded,
and writing faster and faster as he grew in hope of success. At the same
time it was not favorable to the result that he felt constantly behind
him, the darkly lowering necessity that, urging him on, yet debilitated
every motion of the generating spirit.
It took him a long time to get the story into a condition that he dared
to consider even passable; and the longer that he had not the delight
that verse would have brought with it in the process of its production.
Nevertheless he would now and then come to a passage in writing which
the old emotion would seem to revive; but in reading these, Annie,
modest and doubtful as she always was of her own judgment, especially
where her husband's work was concerned, seemed to recognize a certain
element of excitement that gave it a glow, or rather, glamour of
unreality, or rather, unnaturalness, which affected her as inharmonious,
therefore unfit, or out of place. She thought it better, however, to say
little or nothing of any such paragraph, and tried to regard it as of
small significance, and probably carrying little influence in respect of
the final judgment.
The narrative, such as it might prove, was at length finished, and had
been read, at least with pleasure and hope, by his friend, who was still
the only critic on whose judgment he dared depend, for he could not help
regarding Annie as prejudiced in his favor, although her approval
continued for him absolutely essential. The sole portions to which his
friend took any exception were the same concerning which Annie had
already doubted, and which he found too poetical in their tone--not, he
took care to say, in their meaning, for that could not be too poetical,
but in their expression, which must impinge too sharply upon prosaic
ears that cared only for the narrative, and would recoil from any
reflection, however just in itself, that might be woven into it.
But, alas, now came what Hector felt the last and final blow to the
possibility of farther endeavor in the way of literature!
The bank to which Hector had been introduced by his father, and in which
he had been employed ever since, had of late found it necessary to look
more closely to its outlay and reduce its expenses; therefore, believing
that Hector had abundance of other resources, its managers decided on
giving him notice first of all that they must in future deprive
themselves of the pleasure of his services. And this announcement came
at a time when Annie was already in no small difficulty to make the ends
of her expenditure meet those of her income. In fact, she had no longer
any income. For a considerable time she had, by the stinting of what had
before that seemed necessities, been making a shilling do the work of
eighteenpence, and now she knew nothing beyond, except to go without.
But how allow Hector to go without? He must die if she did! Already he
had begun to shrink in his clothes from lack of proper nourishment.
A rumor reaching him of a certain post as librarian, in the gift of an
old corporation, being vacant, Hector at once made application for it,
but only to receive the answer that Pegasus must not be put in harness:
poor Pegasus, on a false pretense of respect, must be kept out of the
shafts! His fat friends would not permit him to degrade himself earning
his bread by work he could have done very well; he must rather starve!
He tried for many posts, one after the other. Heavier and heavier fell
upon him each following disappointment. Annie had in her heart been
greatly disappointed that no prospect appeared of a child to sanctify
their union; but for that she had learned more than to console herself
with the reflection that at least there was no such heavenly visitor for
whose earthly sojourn to provide; and now how gladly would she have
labored for the child in the hope that such a joy and companionship
might lift him up out of his despondency! Then he would be able to enjoy
and assimilate the poor food she was able to get for him. It is true he
always seemed quite content; but, then, he would often, she believed,
pretend not to be hungry, and certainly ate less and less. Hitherto she
had fought with all her might against running in debt to the
tradespeople, for, more than all else, she feared debt. Now, at last,
however, her resolution was in danger of giving way, when, happily,
Hector bethought himself of his precious books; to what better use could
he put them than sell them to buy food--wherein the books he had written
had failed him? Parcel by parcel in a leather strap, he carried them to
the nearest secondhand bookseller, where he had so often bought; now he
wanted to sell, but, unhappily, he soon found that books, like many
other things, are worth much less to the seller than to the buyer, and
where Hector had calculated on pounds, only shillings were forthcoming.
Yet by their sale, notwithstanding, they managed to keep a little longer
out of debt.
And in these days Annie had at length finished her fair copy of Hector's
last book, writing it out in her own lovelily legible hand--not such as
ladies in general count legible, because they can easily read it
themselves; she could do better than that, she could write so that
others could not fail to read. For Hector had always believed that the
acceptance of his first volume had been owing not a little to the fact
that he had written it out most legibly, and he held that what reveals
itself at once and without possibility of mistake may justly hope for a
better reception than what from the first moment annoys the reader with
a sense of ill-treatment. It is no wonder, he said, if such a manuscript
be at once tossed aside with an imprecation. Legibility is the first and
intelligibility the only other thing rendered due by the submission of a
manuscript to any publisher.
Hector spent a day or two in remodeling and modifying the passages
remarked upon by his wife and his friend, and then, with hope reviving
in both their hearts, the manuscript was sent in, acknowledged, and the
day appointed when an answer would be ready.
Upon a certain dark morning, therefore, in November, having nothing else
whatever to do, Hector set out in his much-worn Inverness cape to call
upon his former publisher in the City, with whom of late he had had no
communication. The weather was cold and damp, threatening rain. But
Hector was too much of a Scotchman to care about weather, and too full
of anxiety to mind either cold or wet. He had, indeed, almost always
felt gloomy weather exciting rather than depressing. For one thing, it
seemed, when he was indoors, to close him about with protection from
uncongenial interruption, leaving the freer his inventive faculty; and
now that he was abroad in it, and no inventive faculty left awake, it
seemed to clothe him with congenial sympathy, for the weather was just
the same inside him. And now, as he strode along with his eyes on the
ground, he scarcely saw any of the objects about him, but sought only
the heart of the City, where he hoped to find the publisher in his
office, ready to print his manuscript, and advance him a small sum in
anticipation of possible profit. So absorbed was he in thought
undefined, and so sunk in anxiety as to the answer he was about to
receive, that more than once he was nearly run over by the cart of some
reckless tradesman--seeming to him, in its over-taking suddenness, the
type of prophetic fate already at his heels.
At length, however, he arrived safe in the outer shop, where the books
of the firm were exposed to sight, in process of being subscribed for by
the trade. There a pert young man asked him to take a seat, while he
carried his name to the publisher, and there for some time he waited,
reading titles he found himself unable to lay hold of; and there, while
he waited, the threatened rain began, and, ere he was admitted to the
inner premises, such a black deluge came pouring down as, for blackness
at least, comes down nowhere save in London. With this accompaniment, he
was ushered at length into a dingy office, deep in the recesses of the
house, where a young man whom he saw for the first time had evidently,
while Hector waited in the shop, been glancing at the manuscript he had
left. Little as he could have read, however, it had been enough, aided
perhaps by the weather, to bring him to an unfavorable decision; his
rejection was precise and definite, leaving no room for Hector to say
anything, for he did not seem ever to have heard of him before. Hector
rose at once, gathered up his papers from the table where they lay
scattered, said "Good-morning," and went out into the sooty rain.
Not knowing whitherward to point his foot, he stopped at the corner of
King William Street, close to the money-shops of the old Lombards, and
there stood still, in vain endeavor to realize the blow that had stunned
him. There he stood and stood, with bowed head, like an outcast beggar,
watching the rain that dropped black from the rim of his saturated hat.
Becoming suddenly conscious, however, that the few wayfarers glanced
somewhat curiously at him as they passed, he started to walk on, not
knowing whither, but trying to look as if he had a purpose somewhere
inside him, whereas he had still a question to settle--whether to buy a
bun, and, on the strength of that, walk home, or spend his few remaining
pence on an omnibus, as far as it would take him for the money, and walk
the rest of the way.
Then, suddenly, as if out of the depths of despair, arose in him an
assurance of help on the way to him, and with it a strength to look in
the face the worst that could befall him; he might at least starve in
patience. Therewith he drew himself up, crossed the street to the corner
of the Mansion House, and got into an omnibus waiting there.
If only he could creep into his grave and have done! Why should that
hostelry of refuge stand always shut? Surely he was but walking in his
own funeral! Were not the mourners already going about the street before
ever the silver cord was loosed or the golden bowl broken? Might he not
now at length feel at liberty to end the life he had ceased to value?
But there was Annie! He would go home to her; she would comfort
him--yes, she would die with him! There was no other escape; there was
no sign of coming deliverance. All was black within and around them.
That was the rain on the gravestones. He was in a hearse, on his way to
the churchyard. There the mourners were already gathered. They were
before him, waiting his arrival. No! He would go home to Annie! He would
not be a coward soldier! He would not kill himself to escape the enemy!
He would stand up to the Evil One, and take his blows without flinching.
He and his Annie would take them together, and fight to the last. Then,
if they must die, it was well, and would be better.
