Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Ellen Channing left him and sat down in the other room to wait; and this will afford the opportunity for a word of explanation. Amidst the very very many people in all classes of life, high and low, on whom a certain recent panic had wrought its disastrous effects, was Hamish Channing. The bank, of which he had been manager in Helstonleigh, was drawn into the vortex by the failure of another bank, and went in its turn. Honourable men had to do with it; they sacrificed their own property in the emergency, and not a creditor suffered; every one was paid in full. It could not be reorganized, and it left Hamish without employment. His wife's father, Mr. Huntley, had been one of the principal shareholders, and on him had fallen the greater weight of the heavy loss. It fell, too, at a time when Mr. Huntley could not afford to sustain it. He possessed a large property in Canada, but it had latterly begun to yield him little or no return. Whether in consequence of local depreciation, or of mismanagement (or perhaps something worse) on the part of his agents there, he knew not, and he sent his son out to see. The young man (he was three or four years younger than Mrs. Channing, and quite inexperienced) seemed not to be able to grapple with the business; he wrote home most confused and perplexing accounts, of which Mr. Huntley could make nothing. At length that gentleman resolved to go out himself; and the letter we have heard Mrs. Channing alluding to today was from him. It was the second news they had received, the first having merely announced his safe arrival: and the accounts this last contained were so gloomy that Ellen Channing would fain have kept them from her husband.

It must be distinctly understood that the failure of the bank in Helstonleigh was in no way connected with ill-management. Had a quorum of the wisest business-men in the world been at its head, they could neither have foreseen its downfall nor averted it. Therefore Hamish Channing came out of that, as he had out of every untoward thing all his life, untarnished in honour and in character. A small secretaryship was offered him in London, which he accepted; and he removed to the great city, with his wife and little daughter, his goods and chattels, there to set up his tent. A very small income had been settled on Ellen when she married; the larger portion of her fortune was to accrue to her on her father's death. Whether it would be much, or little, or any, under the altered state of affairs, it was impossible now to say.

But it was not on the secretaryship that Hamish Channing depended for fame and fortune. A higher and dearer hope was his. That Hamish possessed in a high degree that rarest of all God's gifts, true genius, he had long known. Writers of talent the world has had, and had in abundance, men and women; of real genius but few. Perhaps, after all, the difference is not very distinguishable by the general mass of readers. But, to those who possess it, its characteristics are unmistakable. The divine light (is it too much to call it so?) that lies within them shines as a very beacon, pointing on to fame; to honour; above all, to appreciation: the knowledge that they are different from their fellow-mortals, of a higher and nobler and rarer order, and that the world will sometime recognize the fact and bow down in worship, is never absent from the consciousness of the inner heart.

But, with the gift, James Channing also possessed its almost invariably accompanying attribute: a refined sensitiveness of feeling. And that is a quality not too well calculated to do battle with rude, every-day life. Should the great hope within him ever meet with a stern, crushing disappointment, his inability to bear the shock would in all probability show itself in some very marked degree. No one but himself knew or suspected the extreme sensitiveness of his every feeling; it had been hidden hitherto under the nonchalant ease of manner, the sunny temper which made Hamish Channing's great charm. When the bank was broken up, and with it his home and his greater means of living, it was not felt by him as many another man would have felt it: for it seemed only to render more feasible the great aim of his life--the devoting himself to literature. Years ago he had begun to write: and the efforts were first efforts, somewhat crude, as all first efforts, whether given to the world or not, must of necessity be, but they bore unmistakably the stamp of genius. His appointment to the bank and his marriage interrupted his writing; and his genius and pen had alike lain dormant for some six years. His wife's father, Mr. Huntley, had procured his later appointment to the London secretaryship, and Hamish did not venture to decline it and devote himself wholly to literature, as he would have liked to do. The pay, though small, was sure; Ellen's income was smaller still, and they must live; so he accepted it. His duties there occupied him from nine to four: and all his available time beyond that, early and late, was devoted to writing. The day's employment was regarded as but a temporary clog, to be given up as soon as he found his income from literature would justify it. To accomplish this desirable end, he was doing a great deal more than was good for him and taking too little rest. In point of fact, he had, you see, two occupations, each one of which would have been sufficient for an industrious man. What of that? Hamish never so much as cast a thought to it.

Oh, with what a zest had he re-commenced the writing, laid aside for so long! It was like returning to some glad haven of rest. Joy filled his whole being. The past six years had been heavy with suppressed yearning; the yearning to be about the work for which he knew God had pm-eminently fitted him: but his duties had been onerous, his time nearly fully taken up; and when he would have snatched some moments from night for the dearer work, his wife and his anxious friends had risen up in arms against it, for he was not over-strong, and some delicacy of constitution was preached about. Besides, as Mr. Huntley said, a writing manager might alarm the bank's patronizers. But he had it all his own way now, and made good profit of his writings. Papers on social questions of the day, essays, stories, were in turn written, and taken by different periodicals. They had to be written, apart from other hopes and views, for the style in which they lived required additional means to support it, beyond his salary and his wife's money. It was not much style, after all, no extravagance; three maidservants, and little company; but everybody knows how money seems to melt in London.

He had been at this work now for a year. And his wife was beginning to grow anxious, for she knew he was doing too much, and told him he was wearing himself out. If he could but resign the secretaryship! was ever in her secret hopes and thoughts just as much as his; and she wished her father could get his Canadian affairs well settled, so as to allow the necessary addition to her income. Hamish laughed at this. He was living in a glad dream of future fame and fortune: that it would inevitably come, he felt as sure of as though it lay at hand now, ready to be picked up. He was writing a long work; a work of three volumes; and this was the precious gem on which all his hopes and love and visions were centred. The periodical writing had to be done, for its returns were needed; but every spare moment, apart from that, was devoted to the book. A light of gladness beamed from his eyes; a joy, sweet as the chords of some soothing melody, lay ever on his spirit. Oh, what is there of bliss and love in the world that can compare with this! And it is known to so few; so few: by all else it can never be so much as imagined. Do not mistake it, you who read, for the pleasurable anticipation of a man or woman who may from chance causes have "taken up" the profession of literature, and look for the good, substantial and otherwise, that it is to bring. The two are wholly different; the one is born of heaven, the other of earth. But that man must live, Hamish Channing amidst the rest, the thought of money being one of the returns, would be distasteful; never, as I honestly believe, accepted as such without a blush: the dross of earth mingling with the spiritualized, exalted, pure joy of Eden. It is well that this same gift of genius with its dear pleasures and its attendant after-pains--for they come--should be vouchsafed to a unit amidst tens of thousands!

Mrs. Channing sat waiting for him; the tea standing before her, herself thoughtful. The room was of good size and handsomely furnished, its chairs and curtains of rich purple cloth. Their furniture had been a present from Mr. Huntley when they married, who was not one to do things niggardly. As Mrs. Channing sat, facing the inner door, the windows were behind her; the fireplace, with its ornaments and its large chimney-glass on her left; a piano on one side it, a white marble-topped cabinet with purple silk lining to its glass-doors on the other; and on her right, stood the sideboard, and other furniture. The inner room, used exclusively by Hamish for writing, had horsehair chairs, and a bookcase running all along the side of the wall.

The door opened, and Hamish came in. He had a small bundle in his hand; proof sheets done up for the post, and sent them out at once by the maid, as he sat down to tea. Which he seemed inclined to swallow at a gulp, and to eat his piece of bread-and-butter wholesale, ever anxious to get back to his labour and the glowing visions of promise connected with it.

"Hamish, I do believe you like your writing better than you like me!" Ellen said to him one day almost passionately. And for answer, Mr. Hamish in his sauciness had said he was not sure but he did.

He sat there at tea, now, talking gaily as usual. His wife interrupted him, telling of the letter she had received, and its unfavourable news. He listened with his sunny smile.