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. Channin............