Far Above Rubies

Nor was Hector left without similar consolation in his life, although passed apart from Annie. For, not to mention the growing pleasure that he derived from poring over Annie's childlike letters—and here I would beg my reader to note the essential distinction betwixt childish and childlike—full of the keenest perceptions and the happiest phrases, he had soon come to make the acquaintance of a kindred spirit, a man whom, indeed, it took a long time really to know, but who, being from the first attracted to him, was soon running down the inclined plane of acquaintanceship with rapidly increasing velocity toward something far better than mere acquaintance: nor was there any check in their steady approach to a thorough knowledge of each other. He was a slightly older man, with a greater experience of men, and a good deal wider range of interests, as could hardly fail to be the case with a Londoner. But the surprising thing to both of them was that they had so many feelings in common, giving rise to many judgments and preferences also in common; so that Hector had now a companion in whom to find the sympathy necessary to the ripening of his taste in such a delicate pursuit as that of verse; and their proclivities being alike, they ran together like two drops on a pane of glass; whence it came that at length, in the confident expectation of understanding and sympathy, Hector found himself submitting to his friend's judgment the poem he had produced when first grown aware that he was in love with Annie Melville; although such was his sensitiveness in the matter of his own productions that hitherto he had not yet ventured on the experiment with Annie herself.

His new friend read, was delighted; read again, and spoke out his pleasure; and then first Hector knew the power of sympathy to double the consciousness of one's own faculty. He took up again the work he had looked upon as finished, and went over it afresh with wider eyes, keener judgment, and clearer purpose; when the result was that, through the criticisms passed upon it by his friend, and the reflection of the poem afresh in his own questioning mind, he found many things that had to be reconsidered; after which he committed the manuscript, carefully and very legibly re-written, once more to his friend, who, having read it yet again, was more thoroughly pleased with it than before, and proposed to Hector to show it to another friend to whom the ear of a certain publisher lay open. The favorable judgment of this second friend was patiently listened to by the publisher, and his promise given that the manuscript should receive all proper attention.

On this part of my story there is no occasion to linger; for, strange thing to tell,—strange, I mean, from the unlikelihood of its happening,—the poem found the sympathetic spot in the heart of the publisher, who had happily not delegated the task to his reader, but read it himself; and he made Hector the liberal offer to undertake all the necessary expenses, giving him a fair share of resulting profits.

Stranger yet, the poem was so far a success that the whole edition, not a large one, was sold, with a result in money necessarily small but far from unsatisfactory to Hector. At the publisher's suggestion, this first volume was soon followed by another; and thus was Hector fairly launched on the uncertain sea of a literary life; happy in this, that he was not entirely dependent on literature for his bodily sustenance, but was in a position otherwise to earn at least his bread and cheese. For some time longer he continued to have no experience of the killing necessity of writing for his daily bread, beneath which so many aspiring spirits sink prematurely exhausted and withered; this was happily postponed, for there are as much Providence and mercy in the orderly arrangement of our trials as in their inevitable arrival.

His reception by what is called the public was by no means so remarkable or triumphant as to give his well-wishers any ground for anxiety as to its possible moral effect upon him; but it was a great joy to him that his father was much interested and delighted in the reception of the poem by the Reviews in general. He was so much gratified, indeed, that he immediately wrote to him stating his intention of supplementing his income by half as much more.

This reflected opinion of others wrought also to the mollifying of his mother's feelings toward him; but those with which she regarded Annie they only served to indurate, as the more revealing the girl's unworthiness of him. And although at first she regarded with favor her husband's kind intention toward Hector, she faced entirely round when he showed her a letter he had from his son thanking him for his generosity, and communicating his intention of begging Annie to come to him and be married at once.

Annie was living at home, feeding on Hector's letters, and strengthened by her mother's sympathy. She was teaching regularly at the High School, and adding a little to their common income by giving a few music lessons, as well as employing her needle in a certain kind of embroidery a good deal sought after, in which she excelled. She had heard nothing of his having begun to distinguish himself, neither had yet seen one of the reviews of his book, for no one had taken the trouble to show her any of them.

One day, however, as she stood waiting a moment for something she wanted in the principal bookshop of the town, a little old lady, rather shabbily dressed, came in, whom she heard say to the shopman, in a gentle voice, and with the loveliest smile:

"Have you another copy of this new poem by your townsman, young Macintosh?"

"I am sorry I have not, ma'am," answered the shopman; "but I can get you one by return of post."

"Do, if you please, and send it me at once. I am very glad to hear it promises to be a great success. I am sure it quite deserves it. I have already read it through twice. You may remember you got me a copy the other day. I cannot help thinking it an altogether remarkable production, especially for so young a man. He is quite young, I believe?"

"Yes, ma'am—to have already published a book. But as to any wonderful success, there is so little sale for poetry nowadays. I believe the one you had yourself, my lady, is the only one we have been asked for."

"Much will depend," said the lady, "on whether it finds a channel of its own soon enough. But get me another copy, anyhow—and as soon as you can, please. I want to send it to my daughter. There is matter between those Quaker-like boards that I have found nowhere else. I want my daughter to have it, and I cannot part with my own copy," concluded the old lady, and with the words she walked out of the shop, leaving Annie bewildered, and with the strange feeling of a surprise, which yet she had been expecting. For what else but such success could come to Hector? Had it not been drawing nearer and nearer all the time? And for a moment she seemed again to stand, a much younger child than now, amid the gusty whirling of the dead leaves about her feet, once more on the point of stooping to pick up what might prove a withered leaf, but was in reality a pound-note, the thing which had wrought her so much misery, and was now filling her cup of joy to the very brim. The book the old lady had talked of could be no other than Hector's book. No other than Hector could have written it. What a treasure there was in the world that she had never seen! How big was it? what was it like? She was sure to know it the moment her eyes fell upon it. But why had he never told her about it? He might have wanted to surprise her, but she was not the least surprised. She had known it all the time! He had never talked about what he was writing, and still less would he talk of what he was going to write. Intentions were not worthy of his beautiful mouth! Perhaps he did not want her to read it yet. When he did, he would send her a copy. And, oh! when would her mother be able to read it? Was it a very dear book? There could be no thought of their buying it! Between them, she and her mother could not have shillings enough for that. When the right time came, he would send it. Then it would be twice as much hers as if she had bought it for herself.

The next day she met Mr. and Mrs. Macintosh, and the former actually congratulated her on what Hector had done and what people thought of him for it; but the latter only gave a sniff. And the next post brought the book itself, and with it a petition from Hector that she would fix the day to join him in London.

Annie made haste, therefore, to get ready the dress of white linen in which she meant to be married, and a lady, the sister of Hector's friend, meeting her in London, they were married the next day, and went together to Hector's humble lodgings in a northern suburb.

Hector's new volume, larger somewhat, but made up of smaller poems, did not attract the same amount of attention as the former, and the result gave no encouragement to the publisher to make a third venture. One reason possibly was that the subjects of most of the poems, even the gayest of them, were serious, and another may have been that the common tribe of reviewers, searching like other parasites, discovered in them material for ridicule—which to them meant food, and as such they made use of it. At the same time he was not left without friends: certain of his readers, who saw what he meant and cared to understand it, continued his readers; and his influence on such was slowly growing, while those that admired, feeling the power of his work, held by him the more when the scoffers at him grew insolent. Still, few copies were sold, and Hector found it well that he had other work and was not altogether dependent on his pen, which would have been simple starvation. And, from the first, Annie was most careful in her expenditure.

Among the simple people whom husband brought her to know, she speedily became a great favorite, and this circle widened more rapidly after she joined it. For her simple truth, which even to Hector had occasionally seemed some what overdriven, now revealed itself as the ground of her growing popularity. She welcomed all, was faithful to all, and sympathetic with all. Nor was it longer before her husband began to study her in order to understand her—and that the more that he could find in her neither plan nor system, nothing but straightforward, foldless simplicity. Nor did she ever come to believe less in the foreseeing care of God. She ceased perhaps to attribute so much to the ministry of the angels as when she took the fiercer blast that rescued from the flames the greasy note and blew it uncharred up the roaring chimney for the sudden waft of an angel's wing; but she came to meet them oftener in daily life, clothed in human form, though still they were rare indeed, and often, like the angel that revealed himself to Manoah, disappeared upon recognition.

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.

But alas! what if the obligation of a live soul went farther than this life? What if a man was bound, by the fact that he lived, to live on, and do everything possible to keep the life alive in him? There his heart sank, and the depths of the sea covered it! Did God require of him that, sooner than die, he should beg the food to keep him alive? Would he be guilty of forsaking his post, if he but refused to ask, and waited for Death? Was he bound to beg? If he was, he must begin at once by refusing to accept the smallest credit! To all they must tell the truth of their circumstances, and refuse aught but charity. But was there not something yet he could try before begging? He had had a good education, had both knowledge and the power of imparting it; this was still worth money in the world's market. And doubtless therein his friend could do something for him.

Therewithal his new dread was gone; one possibility was yet left him in store! To his wife he must go, and talk the thing over with her. He had still, he believed, threepence in his pocket to pay for the omnibus.

It began to move; and then first, waking up, he saw that he had seated himself between a poor woman and a little girl, evidently her daughter.

"I am very sorry to incommode you, ma'am," he said apologetically to the white-faced woman, whose little tartan shawl scarcely covered her shoulders, painfully conscious of his dripping condition, as he took off his hat, and laid it on the floor between his equally soaking feet. But, instead of moving away from him to a drier position beyond, the woman, with a feeble smile, moved closer up to him, saying to her daughter on his other side:

"Sit closer to the gentleman, Jessie, and help to keep him warm. She's quite clean, sir," she added. "We have plenty of water in our place, and I gave her a bath myself this morning, because we were going to the hospital to see my husband. He had a bad accident yesterday, but thank God! not so bad as it might have been. I'm afraid you're feeling very cold, sir," she added, for Hector had just given an involuntary shiver.

"My husband he's a bricklayer," she went on; "he has been in good work, and I have a few shillings in hand, thank God! Times are sure to mend, for they seldom turns out so bad as they looks."

Involuntarily Hector's hand moved to his trouser pocket, but dropped by his side as he remembered the fare. She saw his movement, and broke into a sad little laugh.

"Don't mistake me, sir," she resumed. "I told you true when I said I wasn't without money; and, before the pinch comes, wages, I dare say, will show their color again. Besides, our week's rent is paid. And he's in good quarters, poor fellow, though with a bad pain to keep him company, I'm afraid."

"Where do you live?" asked Hector "But," he went on, "why should I ask? I am as poor as you—poorer, perhaps, for I have no trade to fall back upon. But I have a good wife like you, and I don't doubt she'll think of something."

"Trust to that, sir! A good woman like I'm sure she is 'll be sure to think of many a thing before she'll give in. My husband, he was brought up to religion, and he always says there's one as know's and don't forget." But now the omnibus had reached the spot where Hector must leave it. He got up, fumbling for his threepenny-piece, but failed to find it.

"Don't forget your hat, sir; it'll come all right when it's dry," said the woman, as she handed it to him. But he stood, the conductor waiting, and seemed unable to take it from her: he could not find the little coin!

"There, there, sir!" interposed the woman, as she made haste and handed him three coppers; "I have plenty for both of us, and wish for your sake it was a hundred times as much. Take it, sir," she insisted, while Hector yet hesitated and fumbled; "you won't refuse such a small service from another of God's creatures! I mean it well."

But the conductor, apparently affected with the same generosity, pushed back the woman's hand, saying, "No, no, ma'am, thank you! The gentleman 'll pay me another day."

Hector pulled out an old silver watch, and offered it.

"I cannot be so sure about that," he said. "Better take this: it's of little use to me now."

"I'll be damned if I do!" cried the conductor fiercely, and down he jumped and stood ready to help Hector from the omnibus.