IN THREE CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER II.—TO-DAY—TROUBLE.

Winter came and passed away without anything happening to break the even tenor of existence. Spring came, and with spring the appearance of a new novel of Mr Collingwood Dawson. Having had a considerable share in its manufacture, I felt naturally anxious to know the result of its appearance. I had an encouraging note from Mrs Collingwood Dawson: ‘Much liked—goes off very well:’ and I saw from the advertisements in the papers that the notices of the press were generally favourable. At the head of them all was the following extract from the Hebdomadal Review: ‘High capacity—very good—many readers—enticing interest.’ Tributes of appreciation that were valuable from a periodical rarely given to praise overmuch any one unconnected with the house it represents.

Soon after I had another note from my employer: ‘I am coming over to confer with you on literary and other matters; please make all necessary arrangements. I shall be accompanied by a female friend, but not, alas, by Mr Collingwood Dawson!’

The steamer that plies the Lower Seine in the summer months, came puffing up the river one fine breezy morning, and dropped into a little boat that put off to meet her, two female passengers, a quantity of boxes, and a little white dog. I recognised my expected visitors, and hastened down to the landing-place to meet them. I explained that my house was not big enough to take them in; but that I had secured rooms at the hotel close by, and that my wife and I hoped to have as much of their society as they could give us.

After they had settled down in their new abode, Mrs Collingwood Dawson came over to see me, and was shewn into the pavilion.

‘I am in a good deal of doubt and difficulty,’ she said; ‘and I have come to ask your opinion and discuss matters with you. But as it is no use putting half-confidence in you, and your opinion will be of little good unless you know fully all the circumstances of the case, I mean to tell you everything; and will first begin, if you please, and if it does not bore you too much, with a little sketch of my life.’

I assured her that I should have great pleasure in listening to her, as anything connected with her was of interest to me.

‘I am,’ she began, ‘the daughter of an official of the old India House; and my father, who had held a good position there, and enjoyed a good income, left at his death no other provision for his widow and only child, myself, but the pensions to which we were entitled—a very handsome one indeed for my mother; and for myself some seventy pounds a year, which ceased at my marriage. He had been during his lifetime very fond of good society, especially literary society; and thus from early years I had been acquainted with many people who followed that profession. Consequently it is not surprising that I tried to add to an income sufficiently narrow by literary work, although I confess that I had no particular talent, and certainly no enthusiasm for the task, and met with little success. In this way I became acquainted with several publishers and many authors; among others was my first husband. He was a man of great intellectual power and force of will, but quite without any ballast of judgment or common-sense. Still I was very much enthralled by his influence, and he having formed a violent passion for me, insisted on marrying me. Young and ill-advised, I gave way to his impetuosity, and married we were. I soon had cause to repent the hasty step. He had been a man of most irregular habits; and after a brief period of devotion to me, he resumed them. Our household became a scene of constant jars and quarrels; he wearied out my life, and I must have wearied out his. The beautiful soul that I thought I had recognised as enshrined in his somewhat ill-formed and stunted figure, had no existence for me. He was malignant and detestable, utterly—most utterly.’

Her voice trembled with anger at the retrospect, whilst her eyes filled with indignant tears.

‘It was an ill-assorted match evidently,’ I said. ‘But why did you not agree to separate?’

‘I shrank from mentioning such a thing; with all his faults, I believed that he was still at the bottom devotedly attached to me. Besides, such a step is always distressing and compromising. No; I went on bearing my troubles, not silently indeed, for I have too much spirit, I confess, to make a meek and uncomplaining wife; but I bore them anyhow, although I confess that any affection I ever had for him had been lost in the embroilments of our married life. You may think that I was to blame, and that if there were a real attachment on his part towards me, I ought to have been able to manage him; but I tell you no! There was a certain malignity in his nature that made him spiteful and tormenting even to those whom he loved. Anyhow, life was a sorrowful burden to me whilst he was with me.’

She rose, looking quite overcome by the recital of her troubles. Her eyes were filled with tears; her hands trembled nervously, as she raised them to press the hair back from her forehead. I murmured a few words expressive of sympathy and good-will.

‘Well!’ she said, sitting down and wiping her eyes with a pretty embroidered handkerchief; ‘not to dwell upon my troubles. I was at last relieved from the hateful knot by his death—a death I believe he contrived in a way that should leave me in as cruel and doubtful a position as possible. He left home one day without giving me any intimation that he would stay away—that was his general practice—or leaving me any money to carry on the household expenses. And the next thing I heard of him was from a little village on the coast, that he had been drowned while bathing. I believe that he committed suicide. I ascertained that he had been informing himself most minutely of the set of the tides and currents about the coast, and with fiendish ingenuity had taken to the water at a time when the tide was certain to carry his body far out to sea.’

‘But what object could he have had in that, madam?’

‘Don’t you see? The pension which I had lost in marrying revived on my widowhood. But he had contrived that his body should never be found. In vain I applied to the authorities to renew my pension. There had been several cases of attempted personation and fraud about these pensions, and they utterly refused to renew mine without absolute proof of my husband’s death. This I was unable to afford to their satisfaction, his body never having been discovered. Still the circumstantial evidence was most strong, and I was advised to bring an action in the way of a petition of right. A circumstance, however, occurred,’ said the widow with a slight blush, ‘which rendered such a step unnecessary.’

‘Ah! I see,’ I cried; ‘you married again?’

‘Yes; and this time my venture was more fortunate. My second husband was an officer in the army, frank and free and brave. No young couple could have been happier. But alas! we were neither of us prudent in the management of our affairs. We had small means in the present, but great expectations, and we were too sanguine to think of the possibility of disappointment. Life became a series of feasts and fÊtes. My husband sold out of the army, and we lived gaily enough on the proceeds of his commission, till that was all gone, and we saw ourselves brought to the verge of ruin. I must tell you that my husband was also of a literary turn, and wrote military sketches and so on, that brought in a little money, but nothing substantial.

‘We had one resource still left—the house in which we lived; it had been my mother’s, and at her death she left it to me. It was a pretty little house in the neighbourhood of St John’s Wood; but it was leasehold only, and the lease had not more than ten years to run. We had found it under these circumstances impossible to mortgage our interest. We might have sold the lease; and that with the furniture, which had also been my mother’s, would have realised five or six hundred pounds. But when that was gone, where should we look for shelter? Charles’s great expectations’——

‘Pardon me for interrupting you. You have mentioned your husband’s Christian name: it will make your narrative clearer if you tell me also his surname.’

‘Collingwood was his name—Charles Collingwood.’

‘And the name of the first one was Dawson?’

‘You have guessed rightly. To continue. Charles’s great expectations had all come to a bad end. A rich relative, who had brought him up for his heir, took a great dislike to me, and cut him out of his will, for no reason in the world but that he had married me, and that we were very poor. When he died, and we found this out, it seemed that the world had come to an end for us. What was to be done? Live in the most niggardly way we might, but we could not live on nothing. First we began to sell the less essential parts of our belongings. We lived on old china for three months; and then we began on our paintings. We had some good ones by English artists, which my father had left behind him, and these kept us for a while. But this was like burning the planks of the ship to keep the engines going. Charles had tried hard for employment in the meantime. For the governorship of a colony; for a consulship; the post of adjutant of militia; the same thing in a Volunteer regiment; for the chief-constableship of a large town; for the management of a brewery; and ever so many things besides. All of no use.

“We must take in washing,” said Charles; “and I will become a second Mantilini, and turn the mangle.”

‘Lodgers were our next thought, and that seemed more feasible. Then some one advised us to let our house furnished. We put an advertisement in the papers, and by great good luck we had an offer for the whole of the house at once. Six guineas a week for May, June, and July. We made up our minds to take cheap lodgings somewhere on the coast, and spend only half our weekly six guineas, which would thus last us six months instead of three. As we were packing up our belongings and storing away the packages in the lumber-room, Charles stumbled over a lot of old boxes, from which arose a cloud of dust.

“What are these old things?” he cried.

“I don’t know anything about them. They were my first husband’s books and papers.”

“Books, eh?” said Charles. “Let’s have a look at ’em;” and broke open one of the boxes. This, however, turned out to be full of packets of manuscripts. Charles made a wry face over them, but he took out a packet and began to read it. I went on with the work. I had everything to do then, I must tell you, for we had dismissed our servants, and lived in the house by ourselves with only a char-woman to help—quite in picnic style.

‘Well dinner-time came, and Charles, who was still up-stairs reading his manuscript, brought it down with him and laid it beside his plate, and went on again reading directly after dinner.

“I tell you what it is, old woman,” he said, as we went to bed, “I feel muddled with it all, and rather as if I’d been supping off pork chops and Welsh-rabbit; but there’s something in that fellow’s writings, only they are coarse, decidedly coarse.”

‘But I am tiring you,’ said Mrs Collingwood, looking up with a smile.

‘Not at all. I am highly interested. Go on, please.’

‘We went away to the sea-side, and Charles took several packets of manuscript with him to amuse him, as he said, during the long days.

“Do you know,” he said to me one evening, “I think one could make something out of these things. If we cut out the objectionable passages which I expect were in the way of their publication”——

“My dear Charles,” I said, “these were his religion, and he would not have touched a word for worlds to make them more acceptable.”

“And died a martyr to the faith, eh?” said Charles. “Well, I shan’t be so very particular. There’s enough for a three-volume novel here, and I shall expurgate it and try its luck.”

‘Charles was never much of a penman, but I was a neat quick writer, and thus the copying fell upon me. Charlie did the botching and patching, and dictated as I copied. But what a task it was! I am sure the mere writing of it was worth all we were destined to get for it, let alone the author’s work and our amendments. Then we got a lot of the most taking three-volume novels from the library, and counted the words and lines, so as to get ours about the right length. It was finished at last, just as our house became vacant; and as soon as we got back to town I took it to a publisher. It was agreed that I was to do all this part of the work, for my poor Charlie used to say that if anything happened to him, I should find the use of these habits of business.’ Here she paused.

I coughed doubtfully. My knowledge of human nature led me to attribute the arrangement to shyness and laziness on his part. I did not, however, venture to disturb Mrs Collingwood’s illusions.

She resumed: ‘To our surprise and joy, after a delay of not more than three or four months, we heard from the publishers accepting our novel. We did not get any large sum for it, it is true, but it was highly thought of, and was to be well advertised; and that was the chief point. Whenever the author was inquired for, I gave out that he was my husband, but that he was an invalid. Charlie really was poorly at the time,’ she said blushing. ‘Ah, you shake your head; but in these days, my dear M——, it is necessary to be rusÉ as well as clever.’

‘But why not have given it out as the work of a deceased author?’

‘Ah, that would never have done! A publisher takes a first novel because he hopes for another and a better. Of what use is it to puff the one golden egg of a dead goose? No; we were right there—events have shewn it. Well, our novel was, as you know, a success. It went off like wild-fire, and our publishers fed the flame adroitly by issuing one edition after another—all of the same impression. All this time we were at work upon another, which also went down, although not so much relished as the first. I think we had purified it a little too much. Avoiding this error in a third, we again made a hit. Our fortune was now made and publishers were at our feet. But we were in this strait: we had come to an end of our finished works; all that were left now were mere sketches and outlines, many too vague, and others too extravagant to be of much use to us. Charles had good judgment and some critical power, but he had no creative faculty, neither had I. Happily we did not deceive ourselves on this point. The question to be solved was how to supply the want. To Charles the idea first suggested itself of trying to secure assistance from outside. It was quite evident that it would be useless to think of any person well known in the world of letters. We set ourselves to study the more obscure literature of the day.’

I bowed politely, but with some inward mortification.

‘Oh, don’t think you are in question now,’ said the lady with an arch smile; ‘wait to the end of the story. My husband came home one day in a state of great excitement. He had in his pocket a copy of the Weekly Dredger, which contained an instalment of a serial story just commenced.

“Read that,” he cried. When I had finished: “Now, what do you think?”

‘But I was trembling all over with terror.

“What’s the matter?” he cried.

“O Charles!” I said, “if I did not know it was impossible, I should say that no one but my late husband could have written this.”

‘So strongly was I penetrated with this idea, that for a long time I forbade him to make any inquiry after the author. At last we were so pressed to supply another novel that I consented that he should make inquiries. The story in the Weekly Dredger, we found, had become so grotesque and bizarre, that finally the editor brought it to an abrupt close himself, refusing to take any more of it; and he made no difficulty whatever about telling our business agent in confidence the name of the writer. I must tell you we had found it necessary to employ an agent, Mr Smith, who has served us faithfully enough, but who was never permitted to see my husband. Well, Charles wrote cautiously to the author of this queer story, who, it seemed, lived in France; asking him to send specimens of his stories, and specifying the quantity required for possible publication, with his terms. We had in reply a pile of manuscript. Judge of the relief I felt when I found that the handwriting was quite unfamiliar to me. His terms were so low that we had no difficulty in undertaking to accept all his work. For some seventy pounds a year we secured everything he wrote. A great deal of the stuff was utterly useless to us, but every now and then he gave us the framework of a powerful story. Well, all of a sudden he turns sulky and refuses to send any more. Charlie would have found some one to supply his place, no doubt. But now I come to the great misfortune of my life’—with faltering voice—‘the death of my dear husband.’

‘Your husband dead!’ I cried, quite unprepared for the announcement.

‘Yes, he is dead; and unhappy me, I have not been able to mourn his loss except in secret and with precautions. The funeral even was conducted with as much caution as if he had been a felon, and we had been ashamed of having to own that he had belonged to us. And he was the kindest, most affectionate——

‘But it was his own wish,’ she went on after a pause. ‘He planned out everything. You see that although our writings—compilations should I call them?’ she said with a faint attempt at a smile—‘brought us in a nice income, yet we were pleasure-loving people, and had always been accustomed to plenty of society, and we had saved nothing out of it. We have two children, a boy at Rugby, and a daughter at an expensive school; and there is poor Charlie’s sister, the lady who accompanies me, and she has no one else to depend upon but me. Besides, as Charlie urged before he died: “I am not Collingwood Dawson,” he said; “why should my death be the cause of his? Keep him alive, old woman, to be a support to you and the children and Lizzie.” Those were almost his last words, dear brave fellow!’ She rose and left the room, overcome by uncontrollable emotion.

My thoughts, after Mrs Collingwood quitted me, were rather of a serious turn. I reflected that my own interests were bound up in the same cause, and that my own livelihood hung very much upon keeping up Mr Collingwood Dawson as a going concern. It was too late to go back now. If I had gained experience I had lost connection. My own place had been filled up. Mr Collingwood Dawson had become as necessary to me as to the widow and her family. Still the idea of a person who never died, who enjoyed a sort of corporate existence, or like the living Buddha, transferred his identity from one body to another, a being who could go on writing novels and publishing them till the crack of doom, struck one with a kind of awe.

As a relief to the troubled current of my thoughts I took up a newspaper which Mrs Collingwood had brought with her. It was the Hebdomadal Review, the number containing the review of Collingwood Dawson’s last novel. I turned to the page with a kind of pleased excitement, for the short abstract that I had seen in the advertisement, as you have seen, was calculated to give me the impression that the critique was an appreciative one. It was so short that I have no scruple in giving it in extenso: ‘If it be necessary, and we suppose it is, that silly ill-educated people should be supplied with the morbid trash suited to their high capacity, there is no reason why Mr Collingwood Dawson should not cater for their wants. We can say of his novel that it is very good stuff of the kind. The pity is that there should be so many readers for this kind of stuff. We only hope that young ladies of the class who find Mr Dawson’s compilations acceptable, will not be unduly led away from the paramount claims of seam and gusset and band by the enticing interest of his story.’

Satire like this does not hit very hard, however, and my only feeling after the first disappointment was of amusement at the ingenuity that had been able to extract the sting from it and secure the latent honey. One word, however, seemed dangerous—‘compilations.’ Was it possible that the critic had discovered the composite nature of Mr Collingwood Dawson?

‘Can you lend me five pounds?’ said a gruff voice behind me. I turned and saw the squat figure of M. Houlot close to my chair.

It was an embarrassing question. There was nothing in M. Houlot’s appearance to invite confidence—at all events to the extent of five pounds. At the same time, M. Houlot had in my mind loomed into considerable importance, for since I had heard Mrs Collingwood’s story, I had identified him with the third portion of Mr Collingwood Dawson.

‘Oh, if it requires consideration, don’t think about it,’ said Houlot roughly. ‘I won’t trouble you.’

‘Stop a minute,’ I replied; ‘wait. I don’t know whether I have the money. I must ask my wife.’

‘Oh, you are one of the wretched slaves of a petticoat, are you?’ said Houlot with a rasping laugh. ‘I should have thought you had lived through that stage of your development.’

‘As she will be the principal sufferer if the money should not be returned, she is entitled to a voice in the matter.’

‘Look here! If it comes to asking your wife, I’ll withdraw my request. I know what that means, well enough. But if you are afraid of not getting your money back, I’ll give you security.—What security? Why, manuscripts worth ten, twenty pounds. I should say, if I were some people—of priceless value.’

‘Ah!’ I said to myself, ‘there is Houlot, who has quarrelled with his bread-and-butter, and now he comes to me to borrow money to go on with. Would it not be better to send for Mrs Collingwood, to see if this is really the man who supplies her with her plots; and if so, to make the peace between them, and get him to continue the supply?’

Mrs Collingwood saved me the trouble of sending for her. I saw her coming across the garden to the pavilion. She was composed now and cheerful; she led one of my girls by the hand, and was telling her a story, I fancy, in which the child seemed uncommonly interested.

Houlot was standing leaning against the mantelpiece with his back to the doorway, and under his arm his stick, which he was rubbing with the point of his hook, as was his custom when vexed. I saw Mrs Collingwood coming in at the doorway—door and windows were wide open. All of a sudden her face whitened all over, and she tottered backwards. I ran to her assistance; but when I reached the garden, she had already disappeared within the house.

‘Am I a hobgoblin, that I frighten people?’ said Houlot savagely, coming to the door. ‘Where’s that woman who ran away?’

I made no reply; and he went on rubbing his stick with the iron hook, apparently in a very evil temper.

‘I want that money particularly. I want to go to England and expose this Collingwood Dawson, to strip him of his borrowed plumes, and shew the British public what a daw this fellow is whom they admire. Come; give me this five pounds, and let me go.’

‘I can’t say anything more to you just now,’ I replied. ‘I will let you know to-morrow.’

‘That will lose me two days; I want to start to-morrow.’

‘I can’t help it. I can’t let you have the money now.’

Houlot saw that I was in some flurry and confusion, and thought probably that I was afraid of him, and that by bullying me a little he should get what he wanted.

‘Come now!’ he cried; ‘go and get me that money. I know what I know, and I am not to be stopped for a paltry five-pound note.’

My reply was to shew him the door. He scowled at me, fingered his stick as if he had a mind to hit me, thought better of it seemingly, and went out growling inarticulately.

‘Where is he, that man?’ cried Mrs Collingwood meeting me in the doorway of the house, looking quite livid with fear. ‘What do you know of him? Where does he come from?’

‘He is your correspondent, the author of your plots.’

‘Ah, then is he my husband!’ she cried in a voice that, though low and subdued, was full of anguish. ‘What a wretched being am I, to have seen him!’

‘It would have been worse still had he seen you,’ I muttered. ‘Come, Mrs Collingwood—come into the garden, into the open air; you will be better there. Take my arm; keep up your heart; all will be well yet.’

‘Where is he? where is he?’ was all she could say.

‘He is gone; you are quite safe.’

We began to pace up and down the garden together, she wringing her hands and writhing with pain and emotion.

‘Do consider,’ I said, ‘that he has kept out of the way all these years, and that he is not likely to trouble you now.’

‘Oh! I can’t bear to think. The children—poor Charlie, what will become of us all?’

‘The children will take no harm,’ I said, ‘if you act prudently. All will be well; and your late husband is out of the reach of any trouble.’

‘Ah yes, poor Charlie! I wish I had died with him. Even now he may be reproaching me! How dreadful, dreadful it all is!’

I could not give her much consolation; for besides these troubles of the heart, other and less manageable difficulties I saw were impending.

At the first blush it was impossible to say what would become of us all in this imbroglio. Certainly if any one were entitled to be considered Collingwood Dawson, it was the man who had originated the works by which he had obtained his fame. On the other hand, he would never have had any success himself. No publisher would have looked twice at books which were so violent and coarse. All the labour and pains that had been taken in bringing his writings into an acceptable form, were they to go for nothing? And was it to be allowed that a man who had thrown off all ties and abandoned his place in the world, should resume them when other people had made them worth possessing? It seemed not; and yet the law would be on his side.

There was only one consoling feature in the position—the man had no money. He could not move without that; and if he had been able to obtain it from any other source, he would hardly have come to borrow from a stranger; but this was a very frail barrier after all. He might, if he were determined to get back to England, find his way to the nearest port, and get passed home by the consul as a distressed British subject. Why he had not gone over to England when he first discovered the use that had been made of his talents, was probably because he waited to complete some work he had in hand, which might serve as an introduction to the publishers, and a sort of voucher for his claim.

Was there, however, no possibility of mistake? Was it perfectly certain that this was the missing husband? Mrs Collingwood had no hope that there was any error. She knew him perfectly. It was impossible that there should be two such people in the world together, identical in mind and in person. That his handwriting had so completely changed, seemed to her unaccountable; but it did not move her faith in his identity. And an explanation was soon found for this; for he had lost his right hand since his flight, and consequently wrote with his left.

I said just now that I could give Mrs Collingwood no comfort; but there was one thing that bound us all together and insured sympathy between us: we were so to speak all in the same boat. Our livelihood depended upon keeping up the integrity of Collingwood Dawson.