Far Above Rubies — Part Five

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.

But his kindness was more than Hector could stand; he walked away, unable to thank him.

“I wonder now,” muttered the conductor to himself when Hector was gone, “if that was a put-up job between him and the woman?

I don’t think so.

Anyhow, it’s no great loss to anybody.

I won’t put it down; the company ’ll have to cover that.

” Hector turned down a street that led westward, drying his eyes, and winking hard to make them swallow the tears which sought to hide from him a spectacle that was calling aloud to be seen.

For lo!

the street-end was filled with the glory of a magnificent rainbow.

All across its opening stretched and stood the wide arch of a wonderful rainbow.

Hector could not see the sun; he saw only what it was making;

and the old story came back to him, how the men of ancient time took the heavenly bow for a promise that there should no more be such a flood as again to destroy the world.

And therefore even now the poets called the rainbow the bow of hope.

Nor, even in these days of question and unbelief, is it matter of wonder that, at sight of the harmony of blended and mingling, yet always individual, and never confused colors, and notwithstanding his knowledge of optics, and of how the supreme unity of the light was secerned into its decreed chord, the imaginative faith of the troubled poet should so work in him as to lift his head for a moment above the waters of that other flood that threatened to overwhelm his microcosm, and the bow should seem to him a new promise, given to him then and individually, of the faithfulness of an unseen Power of whom he had been assured, by one whom he dared not doubt, that He numbered the very hairs of his head.

Once more his spirit rose upon the wave of a hope which he could neither logically justify nor dare to refuse; for hope is hope whencesoever it spring, and needs no justification of its self-existence or of its sudden marvelous birth.

The very hope was in itself enough for itself.

And now he was near his home; his Annie was waiting for him; and in another instant his misery would be shared and comforted by her!

He was walking toward the wonder-sign in the heavens.

But even as he walked with it full in view, he saw it gradually fade and dissolve into the sky, until not a thread of its loveliness remained to show where it had spanned the infinite with its promise of good.

And yet, was not the sky itself a better thing, and the promise of a yet greater good?

He must walk onward yet, in tireless hope!

And the resolve itself endured--or fading, revived, and came again, and ever yet again.

For ere he had passed the few yards that lay between him and Annie yet another wonder befell: as if the rainbow had condensed, and taken shape as it melted away, there on the pathway, in the thickening twilight of the swift-descending November night, stood a creature, surely not of the night, but rather of the early morn, a lovely little child--whether wandered from the open door of some neighboring house, or left by the vanished rainbow, how was he to tell?

Endeavoring afterward to recall every point of her appearance, he could remember nothing of her feet, or even of the frock she wore.

Only her face remained to him, with its cerulean eyes--the eyes of Annie, looking up from under the cloud of her dark hair, which also was Annie’s. She looked then as she stood, in his memory of her, as if she were saying, “I trust in you; will you not trust in Him who made the rainbow?

” For a moment he seemed to stand regarding her, but even while he looked he must have forgotten that she was there before him, for when again he knew that he saw her, though he did not seem ever to have looked away from her, she had changed in the gathering darkness to the phantasm of a daisy, which still gazed up in his face trustingly, and, indeed, went with him to his own door, seeming all the time to say, “It was no child; it was me you saw, and nothing but me; only I saw the sun--I mean, the man that was making the rainbow.

” And never more could he in his mind separate the child, whom I cannot but think he had verily seen, from the daisy which certainly he had not seen, except in the atmosphere of his troubled and confused soul.

It may help my reader to understand its confusion if I recall to him the fact that Hector had that day eaten nothing.

Nor must my wife reader think hardly of Annie for having let him leave the house without any food, for he had stolen softly away, and closed the door as softly behind him, thinking how merrily they would eat together when he came back with his good news.

And now he was bringing nothing to her but the story of a poor woman and her child who had warmed him, and of an omnibus-conductor who had trusted him for his fare, and of a rainbow and a child and a daisy.