The change in his face was remarkable. It was as though a blight had passed over it and withered the hopeful life out.
He sat with the journal in his hand--the authoritative "Snarler"--and read the cruel lines over and over again. When, in the solitude of his own study, they first met his eager eye, skimming them rapidly, and their purport was gathered in almost at a glance, a kind of sick faintness seized upon his heart, and he hastily put away the paper as though it were some terrible thing he dared not look further upon.
The shock was awful--and the word is not used in its often light sense; the disappointment something not to be described. After the departure of his guests, Roland and Gerald, and William Yorke had gone by his own wish to take home Annabel and to make a late call on Mrs. Bede Greatorex--if haply that fashionable dame might be found at home--Hamish Channing had passed into his study; and, there, alone with himself and his emotions, he once more unfolded the paper. All the while he had sat with it in his pocket, a sweet tumultuous hope had been stirring his bosom; he could hardly forbear, in his eagerness to realize it, telling them to make haste and depart. And when they were really going, it seemed that they were a month over it. He stood up wishing them goodnight.
"By the way, Hamish, I should think your book would soon be getting its reviews," spoke crafty Gerald, who had seen the journal brought in, and knew what was in it. "I hope you\'ll get good ones, old fellow."
And the wish was spoken with so much apparent genuineness, the tone of the voice had in it so vast an amount of gushing feeling, that Hamish gratefully wrung the offered hand. After that, even had he been of a less ingenuous nature, he would have suspected the whole world of abusing his book, rather than Gerald Yorke.
Shut up in his study, the lamp beside him, he unfolded the paper with trembling expectation, his heart beating with happiness. It was one of those moments, and they come in all our lives, which must stamp itself on the memory for ever. He looked, and looked. And then put the pages away in a kind of terror.
Never, in this age of bitter reviews, had a more bitter one than that been penned. But for his intense unsuspicion, for his own upright single-mindedness, he might possibly have recognized Gerald Yorke\'s slashing style. Gerald, as its writer, never once occurred to him. After awhile, when the first brunt of the shock had passed--and it was almost as a shock of death--he took up the paper again, and read the article through.
His hair grew damp with perspiration; his face burnt with a hot shame. With this apparently candid, but most damnatory review before his eyes, it seemed to him that his book must be indeed bad. The critique was ably written, and it attacked him from all sides and on all points. Gerald Yorke had taken pains with that as he had never taken pains with any article before. It had been, so to say, days in construction. One portion would be altered today, one tomorrow; and the result was that it told. The chief characteristic of the whole was sarcastic mockery. The scholarship of the book was attacked, (and that scholarship--that is, of its writer--formed the chief point of envy in a covert corner of Gerald\'s heart); its taste, its style, its every thing. The pen had been steeped five fathoms deep in gall. Rounded periods spoke of the work\'s utter worthlessness, and affectionately warned the public against reading it, with quite fatherly care. It called the author an impudent upstart; it demanded to know what he meant by fostering such a book on the public; it wondered how he had found a publisher; it almost prayed the gods, that preside over literary careers, to deliver unhappy readers from James Channing. Abuse and ridicule; ridicule and abuse; they rang the changes one upon another. Hamish read; he turned back and read again; and the fatal characters burnt themselves into his brain as with a ruthless fire.
What a reward it was! Speaking only as a recompense for his devotion and labour, leaving aside for the moment the higher considerations, how cruel was the return! The devoted lad, read of in history, concealed a fox in his bosom, and it repaid him by gnawing at his vitals. That reward was not more remorselessly cruel than this. Where was the use of Hamish Channing\'s patient industry, his persevering endurance, his burning the midnight candle, to bring forth this fruit? To what end the never-ceasing toil and care? While Gerald Yorke had been flourishing in society, Hamish Channing was toiling. Burning his candles, so to say, at both ends! The unwearied industry, the patient continuance in labour, the ever-buoyant, trustful hope!--all had been his.
Does the public realize what it is, I wonder, to exercise this brain-work day by day, and often also night by night, week after week, month after month, year after year? A book is put into the hands of a reading man--or say a woman, if you will--and he devours it with ardour or coolness, more or less of either as the case may be, and makes his comments afterwards with complaisance, and says the book is a nice book, and seems almost to think it has been brought out for his special delectation. But does he ever cast a reflection on the toil that book has cost the writer? Does he look up to him with even a thought of gratitude? Generally speaking, no. In the midst, perhaps, of very adverse circumstances, of long-continued sickness, of headache, heartache, many aches; when the inward spirit is fainting at life\'s bitter troubles, and it would seem in vain to struggle more, the labour must yet be done. Look at Hamish Channing--his is no ideal case. His day\'s work over, he got to his work--the night\'s--and wrote on, until his mind and body were alike weary. While others played, he toiled; when others were abroad at their banquetings and revellings, idling away their hours in what the world calls society, and Gerald Yorke making one amidst them, he was shut up in his room, labouring on persistently. And this was his reward!
The best energies of his power and intellect had Hamish Channing given to the book: the great gift of genius, which had certainly been bestowed largely upon him, was exercised and brought to bear. No merit to him for that; he could not help exercising it. It appeared to him, this writing for his fellow men, to be the one special end for which he was sent into the world--where every man has his appointed and peculiar aptitude for someone calling or duty, though it happens that a vast many never find out their own until too late. A man reared, as had been James Channing, to good; anxious to live here in the single-minded fulfilment of every duty, using the world only as a passage to a better, can but write as a responsible agent; whether he may be working at a religious tract or a story of fiction, he does it as to his Creator, imploring day by day that he may be helped in it. Had Hamish been required to write without that sense of responsibility upon him, he would have put aside his pen.
And the disappointment! the rude, pitiless, condemning shock! It might be that such was necessary; that it had been sent direct from heaven. The least sinful man on earth may have need of such discipline.
Again Hamish read the article from beginning to end. Read, and re-read it. It was as if the lines possessed the fatal fascination of the basilisk, attracting him against his will. He writhed under the executioner\'s knife, while he submitted to it. The book was a good and brilliant work, betraying its genius in every line, well conceived, well plotted, ably written. It was one of those that take the whole imagination of the reader captive; one that a man is all the better for reading, and rises up from with a subdued spirit, hushed breath, and a glowing heart. While enchaining man\'s deepest interest, it yet insensibly led his thoughts to Heaven. Simple though it was in its pure Saxon diction, its sentiments were noble, generous, and exalted. Not a thought was there to offend, not a line that, for its parity, might not have been placed in the hands of his child. Modest, as all gifted with true genius are, yet possessing (for that must always be), a latent consciousness of his great power, Hamish had looked forward for success to his book, as surely as he looked for Heaven. That it could be a failure, he had simply never thought of; that it should be badly received, ridiculed, condemned, written down, had not entered his imagination. Had he been told such might be the result, he would have quietly answered that it was impossible.
In all matters where the minds and feelings, the inward, silent hopes and fears, are deeply touched, it cannot be but that we are sensitively alive to the opinions of our fellow men, and swayed by their judgment. As Hamish Channing read and re-read, learning the cruel sentences almost by rote, his heart failed within him. For the time being, he thought he must have erred in supposing the book so good; th............