Part 38 (2/2)

”What in the world can I do to secure an income?” thought Osborne, as he stood on the hearth-rug, his back to a blazing fire, his cup of coffee sent up in the rare old china that had belonged to the Hall for generations; his dress finished, as dress of Osborne's could hardly fail to be. One could hardly have thought that this elegant young man, standing there in the midst of comfort that verged on luxury, should have been turning over that one great problem in his mind; but so it was. ”What can I do to be sure of a present income?

Things cannot go on as they are. I should need support for two or three years, even if I entered myself at the Temple, or Lincoln's Inn. It would be impossible to live on my pay in the army; besides, I should hate that profession. In fact, there are evils attending all professions--I couldn't bring myself to become a member of any I've ever heard of. Perhaps I'm more fitted to take 'orders' than anything else; but to be compelled to write weekly sermons whether one had anything to say or not, and, probably, doomed only to a.s.sociate with people below one in refinement and education! Yet poor Aimee must have money. I can't bear to compare our dinners here, overloaded with joints and game and sweets, as Morgan will persist in sending them up, with Aimee's two little mutton-chops. Yet what would my father say if he knew I'd married a Frenchwoman? In his present mood he'd disinherit me, if that is possible; and he'd speak about her in a way I couldn't stand. A Roman Catholic, too! Well, I don't repent it. I'd do it again. Only if my mother had been in good health--if she could have heard my story, and known Aimee! As it is I must keep it secret; but where to get money? Where to get money?”

Then he bethought him of his poems--would they sell, and bring him in money? In spite of Milton, he thought they might; and he went to fetch his MSS. out of his room. He sate down near the fire, trying to study them with a critical eye, to represent public opinion as far as he could. He had changed his style since the Mrs. Hemans' days. He was essentially imitative in his poetic faculty; and of late he had followed the lead of a popular writer of sonnets. He turned his poems over: they were almost equivalent to an autobiographical pa.s.sage in his life. Arranging them in their order, they came as follows:--

”To Aimee, Walking with a Little Child.”

”To Aimee, Singing at her Work.”

”To Aimee, Turning away from me while I told my Love.”

”Aimee's Confession.”

”Aimee in Despair.”

”The Foreign Land in which my Aimee dwells.”

”The Wedding Ring.”

”The Wife.”

When he came to this last sonnet he put down his bundle of papers and began to think. ”The wife.” Yes, and a French wife; and a Roman Catholic wife--and a wife who might be said to have been in service! And his father's hatred of the French, both collectively and individually--collectively, as tumultuous brutal ruffians, who murdered their king, and committed all kinds of b.l.o.o.d.y atrocities--individually, as represented by ”Boney,” and the various caricatures of ”Johnny c.r.a.paud” that had been in full circulation about five-and-twenty years before this time, when the Squire had been young and capable of receiving impressions. As for the form of religion in which Mrs. Osborne Hamley had been brought up, it is enough to say that Catholic emanc.i.p.ation had begun to be talked about by some politicians, and that the sullen roar of the majority of Englishmen, at the bare idea of it, was surging in the distance with ominous threatenings; the very mention of such a measure before the Squire was, as...o...b..rne well knew, like shaking a red flag before a bull.

And then he considered that if Aimee had had the unspeakable, the incomparable blessing of being born of English parents, in the very heart of England--Warwicks.h.i.+re, for instance--and had never heard of priests, or ma.s.s, or confession, or the Pope, or Guy Fawkes, but had been born, baptized, and bred in the Church of England, without having ever seen the outside of a dissenting meeting-house, or a papist chapel--even with all these advantages, her having been a (what was the equivalent for ”bonne” in English? 'nursery-governess'

was a term hardly invented) nursery-maid, with wages paid down once a quarter, liable to be dismissed at a month's warning, and having her tea and sugar doled out to her, would be a shock to his father's old ancestral pride that he would hardly ever get over.

”If he saw her!” thought Osborne. ”If he could but see her!” But if the Squire were to see Aimee, he would also hear her speak her pretty broken English--precious to her husband, as it was in it that she had confessed brokenly with her English tongue, that she loved him soundly with her French heart--and Squire Hamley piqued himself on being a good hater of the French. ”She would make such a loving, sweet, docile little daughter to my father--she would go as near as any one could towards filling up the blank void in this house, if he would but have her; but he won't; he never would; and he sha'n't have the opportunity of scouting her. Yet if I called her 'Lucy' in these sonnets; and if they made a great effect--were praised in _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_--and all the world was agog to find out the author; and I told him my secret--I could if I were successful--I think then he would ask who Lucy was, and I could tell him all then.

If--how I hate 'ifs.' 'If me no ifs.' My life has been based on 'whens;' and first they have turned to 'ifs,' and then they have vanished away. It was 'when Osborne gets honours,' and then 'if Osborne,' and then a failure altogether. I said to Aimee, 'when my mother sees you,' and now it is 'if my father saw her,' with a very faint prospect of its ever coming to pa.s.s.” So he let the evening hours flow on and disappear in reveries like these; winding up with a sudden determination to try the fate of his poems with a publisher, with the direct expectation of getting money for them, and an ulterior fancy that, if successful, they might work wonders with his father.

When Roger came home Osborne did not let a day pa.s.s before telling his brother of his plans. He never did conceal anything long from Roger; the feminine part of his character made him always desirous of a confidant, and as sweet sympathy as he could extract. But Roger's opinion had no effect on Osborne's actions; and Roger knew this full well. So when Osborne began with--”I want your advice on a plan I have got in my head,” Roger replied: ”Some one told me that the Duke of Wellington's maxim was never to give advice unless he could enforce its being carried into effect; now I can't do that; and you know, old boy, you don't follow out my advice when you've got it.”

”Not always, I know. Not when it doesn't agree with my own opinion.

You're thinking about this concealment of my marriage; but you're not up in all the circ.u.mstances. You know how fully I meant to have done it, if there hadn't been that row about my debts; and then my mother's illness and death. And now you've no conception how my father is changed--how irritable he has become! Wait till you've been at home a week! Robinson, Morgan--it's the same with them all; but worst of all with me.”

”Poor fellow!” said Roger; ”I thought he looked terribly changed: shrunken, and his ruddiness of complexion altered.”

”Why, he hardly takes half the exercise he used to do, so it's no wonder. He has turned away all the men off the new works, which used to be such an interest to him; and because the roan cob stumbled with him one day, and nearly threw him, he won't ride it; and yet he won't sell it and buy another, which would be the sensible plan; so there are two old horses eating their heads off, while he is constantly talking about money and expense. And that brings me to what I was going to say. I'm desperately hard up for money, and so I've been collecting my poems--weeding them well, you know--going over them quite critically, in fact; and I want to know if you think Deighton would publish them. You've a name in Cambridge, you know; and I daresay he would look at them if you offered them to him.”

”I can but try,” said Roger; ”but I'm afraid you won't get much by them.”

”I don't expect much. I'm a new man, and must make my name. I should be content with a hundred. If I'd a hundred pounds I'd set myself to do something. I might keep myself and Aimee by my writings while I studied for the bar; or, if the worst came to the worst, a hundred pounds would take us to Australia.”

”Australia! Why, Osborne, what could you do there? And leave my father! I hope you'll never get your hundred pounds, if that's the use you're to make of it! Why, you'd break the Squire's heart.”

”It might have done once,” said Osborne, gloomily, ”but it wouldn't now. He looks at me askance, and s.h.i.+es away from conversation with me. Let me alone for noticing and feeling this kind of thing. It's this very susceptibility to outward things that gives me what faculty I have; and it seems to me as if my bread, and my wife's too, were to depend upon it. You'll soon see for yourself the terms which I am on with my father!”

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