No, he had not deserved it. As some others have not, who yet have had to bear it. It is one of the world's hard lessons, one that very few are appointed to learn. Injustice and evil and oppression exist in the world, and must exist until its end. Only then shall we understand wherefore they are permitted. Pardon, reader, if a line or two seem to be repeated. The many months of toil, the patient night-labour, that but for the hope-spring rising in the buoyant heart might have been found too wearing; the self-denial ever exercised; the weary night watching and working--all had been thrown back upon Hamish Channing, and rendered, as it were, nugatory. Try and picture to yourselves what this labour is; its aspirations of reward, its hopes of appreciation--and for a wickedly disposed man, or simply a carelessly indifferent man, or a vain, presumptuous man, or a man who has some petty spite to gratify against author or publisher, or a rival reviewer, or a man that writes but in wanton idleness, to dash it down with a few strokes of a pen!
Such things have been. They will be again. But if Gerald Yorke, and others like him, would consider how they violate the divine law of enjoined kindness, it might be that the pen would now and then pause.
Would Gerald have to answer for it at the Great Day of Reckoning? Ah, that is a question very little thought of; one perhaps difficult to answer. He had set himself deliberately in his foolish envy, in his ill-conditioned spirit, to work ill to Hamish Channing: to put down and write down the book that he knew was depended on to bring back its return, that was loved and cherished almost as life. It was within the range of possibility that he might work more ill than he bargained for. Heaven is not in the habit of saying to man by way of reminder when he gets up in a morning, "I am looking at you:" but it has told us such a thing as that every secret word and thought and action shall be brought to light, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Gerald ignored that, after the fashion of this busy world; and was perfectly self-complacent under the ignoring.
Only upon such a mind as Hamish Channing's, with his nervous attributes of genius, his refined sensitiveness, could the review have brought home its worst bitterness. Fortunately such minds are very rare. Gerald Yorke had little conception of the extent of its fruit. He would have set on and sworn off his anger, and called the writer, who could thus stab in the dark, a false coward, and sent him by wishes to all kinds of unorthodox places, and vowed aloud to his friends that he should like to horsewhip or shoot him. Thus the brunt, with him, would have been worked off; never so much as touched the vital feelings, if Gerald possessed any. It was another thing with Hamish Channing. He could almost have died, rather than have spoken of the attack to any living man; and if forced to it, as we are sometimes forced to unwelcome things, it would have brought the red blush of shame to his sensitive brow, to his shrinking spirit.
He sat on; on, with his aching heart. One hand was pressed upon his chest: a dull pain had seated itself there. Never again, as it seemed to him, should he look up from the blow. More and more the cruelty and the injustice struck upon him. Does it so strike upon you, reader? The book was not perfection (I never met with one that was, in spite of what the reviews chose to affirm of Mr. Gerald Yorke's), but it was at least written in an earnest, truthful spirit, to the utmost of the abilities God had given him. How had it invoked this requital? Hamish pondered the question, and could not answer it. What had he done to be shown up to the public; a butt for any, that would, to pitch scorn at? There was no appeal; there could be no redress. The book had been held forth to the world--at least to the thousands of it that would read the "Snarler"--as a bad and incapable book, one they must avoid as the work of a miserably presumptive and incapable man.
A slight movement in the next room, and Mrs. Channing came in with Nelly. Miss Nelly, in consideration of the late substantial tea, had not been sent to bed at the customary hour. Hamish slipped the review inside his table-desk, and greeted them with a smile, sweet-tempered as ever under the blow. But his wife saw that some change lay on his face.
"Is anything the matter, Hamish? You look--worn; as if you had received some ill news."
"Do I? I am a little tired, Ellen. It has been very hot today."
"I thought you were not going to work tonight."
"Oh, I'm not working. Well, young lady, what now?"