Part 35 (1/2)
”Lillian, you blind beetle.”
I dropped his arm--”Never, as I live!”
He started back, and burst into a horse-laugh.
”Hullo! my eye and Betty Martin! You don't mean to say that I have the honour of finding a rival in my talented cousin?”
I made no answer.
”Come, come, my dear fellow, this is too ridiculous. You and I are very good friends, and we may help each other, if we choose, like kith and kin in this here wale. So if you're fool enough to quarrel with me, I warn you I'm not fool enough to return the compliment. Only” (lowering his voice), ”just bear one little thing in mind--that I am, unfortunately, of a somewhat determined humour; and if folks will get in my way, why it's not my fault if I drive over them. You understand? Well, if you intend to be sulky, I don't. So good morning, till you feel yourself better.”
And he turned gaily down a side-street and disappeared, looking taller, handsomer, manfuller than ever.
I returned home miserable; I now saw in my cousin not merely a rival, but a tyrant; and I began to hate him with that bitterness which fear alone can inspire. The eleven pounds still remained unpaid. Between three and four pounds was the utmost which I had been able to h.o.a.rd up that autumn, by dint of scribbling and stinting; there was no chance of profit from my book for months to come--if indeed it ever got published, which I hardly dare believe it would; and I knew him too well to doubt that neither pity nor delicacy would restrain him from using his power over me, if I dared even to seem an obstacle in his way.
I tried to write, but could not. I found it impossible to direct my thoughts, even to sit still; a vague spectre of terror and degradation crushed me. Day after day I sat over the fire, and jumped up and went into the shop, to find something which I did not want, and peep listlessly into a dozen books, one after the other, and then wander back again to the fireside, to sit mooning and moping, starting at that horrible incubus of debt--a devil which may give mad strength to the strong, but only paralyses the weak. And I was weak, as every poet is, more or less. There was in me, as I have somewhere read that there is in all poets, that feminine vein--a receptive as well as a creative faculty--which kept up in me a continual thirst after beauty, rest, enjoyment. And here was circ.u.mstance after circ.u.mstance goading me onward, as the gadfly did Io, to continual wanderings, never ceasing exertions; every hour calling on me to do, while I was only longing to be--to sit and observe, and fancy, and build freely at my own will. And then--as if this necessity of perpetual petty exertion was not in itself sufficient torment--to have that accursed debt--that knowledge that I was in a rival's power, rising up like a black wall before me, to cripple, and render hopeless, for aught I knew, the very exertions to which it compelled me! I hated the bustle--the crowds; the ceaseless roar of the street outside maddened me. I longed in vain for peace--for one day's freedom--to be one hour a shepherd-boy, and lie looking up at the blue sky, without a thought beyond the rushes that I was plaiting! ”Oh!
that I had wings as a dove!--then would I flee away, and be at rest!”--
And then, more than once or twice either, the thoughts of suicide crossed me; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and dallied with it, as a last chance in reserve. And then the thought of Lillian came, and drove away the fiend. And then the thought of my cousin came, and paralysed me again; for it told me that one hope was impossible. And then some fresh instance of misery or oppression forced itself upon me, and made me feel the awful sacredness of my calling, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice of deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I recollected how I had betrayed my suffering brothers.--How, for the sake of vanity and patronage, I had consented to hide the truth about their rights--their wrongs. And so on through weary weeks of moping melancholy--”a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways?”
At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterwards, had been watching all along my altered mood, contrived to worm my secret out of me. I had dreaded, that whole autumn, having to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket; and my pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and sealed my lips. But now this fresh discovery--the knowledge that it was not only in my cousin's power to crush me, but also his interest to do so--had utterly unmanned me; and after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out came the truth with tears of bitter shame.
The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering me, opened his table drawer, and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers.
”No! no! no! best, n.o.blest of friends! I will not burden you with the fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I will starve, go to gaol sooner than take your money. If you offer it me I will leave the house, bag and baggage, this moment.” And I rose to put my threat into execution.
”I havena at present ony sic intention,” answered he, deliberately, ”seeing that there's na necessity for paying debits twice owre, when ye ha' the stampt receipt for them.” And he put into my hands, to my astonishment and rapture, a receipt in full for the money, signed by my cousin.
Not daring to believe my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at it, looked at him--there was nothing but clear, smiling a.s.surance in his beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then relieved himself by rus.h.i.+ng at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with tobacco till he burst the bowl.
Yes; it was no dream!--the money was paid, and I was free! The sudden relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been; and, like a prisoner suddenly loosed from off the rack, my whole spirit seemed suddenly to collapse, and I sank with my head upon the table to faint even for grat.i.tude.
But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I ”suld ken better than he.” But when he found that I was really utterly at a loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he a.s.sured me, by way of comfort, that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his circ.u.mlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks back he had received an anonymous letter, ”a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast o' phizog,” containing a bank note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the writer's suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that Mr.
Mackaye, ”o' whose uprightness and generosity they were pleased to confess themselves no that ignorant,” should write to George, ascertain the sum, and pay it without my knowledge, handing over the balance, if any, to me, when he thought fit--”Sae there's the remnant--aucht pounds, sax s.h.i.+llings, an' saxpence; tippence being deduckit for expense o' twa letters anent the same transaction.”
”But what sort of handwriting was it?” asked I, almost disregarding the welcome coin.
”Ou, then--aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was no chirographosophic himsel--an' he had na curiosity anent ony sic pa.s.sage o' aristocratic romance.”
”But what was the postmark of the letter?”
”Why for suld I speired? Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown, they'd ha' sign't their names upon the doc.u.ment. An' gin they didna sae intend, wad it be coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers an' seals?”
”But where is the cover?”
”Ou, then,” he went on, with the same provoking coolness, ”white paper's o'
geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare it up--aiblins for pipe-lights--I canna mind at this time.”
”And why,” asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to confess--”why did you not tell me before?”