A beginner

Miss Jocelyn rings the bell a second time, and pulls down the handle with a vigour that shows that this time she will have it answered, or, like the 30,000 Cornish men, "know the reason why." "If they were at tea, I could understand it," she says;--"no earthquake would stir them while they are at tea! but they must have finished before now." She makes this observation to herself, since her turret room holds at the moment no one else. Having rung, she stands listening, evidently ready to repeat her jerky appeal to the world below her eyrie at no long interval. But that third appeal is not needed. A man's foot is heard hurrying up the corkscrew stairs, and a footman appears.

"I rang twice!" observes she, with less asperity than she had used to herself--in fact, more in sorrow than in anger.

"I am very sorry, 'm. Charles is out with the carriage, and Mr. Baines is in the cellar, and--"

She is a polite young woman, and does not generally interrupt people's speeches; but, in her impatience, she breaks into his apology.

"Has the cart come back from the station yet?"

"I do not think so, 'm; I'll inquire."

He disappears, and she still stands waiting. A second time his foot is heard on the stairs, but she shakes her head.

"They have not come; he is not carrying anything. I can tell by the sound!"

"No, 'm; the cart has not returned yet."

"Oh, thanks! That is all."

There is an ill-stifled disappointment in her tone; and though "they" have not come, and there is no reason why she should remain on her feet expecting them, she is too deeply excited to sit down and seek the calm lent by stitching, or the distraction imparted by a book. She walks to the window, and looks out. Her turret is so high that the eye plunges at once into the tree-tops; but among those tree-tops there is not much happening now in late October; through the thinning leaves one can see the rooks' nests with great distinctness; but their grown-up and gadabout owners, so seldom at home, excite but little of the interest called forth by the "tender Juvenals" of April; nothing to absorb a feverish attention, or make the clock-hands quicken their snail pace. It will be unconscionably inconsiderate to repeat her ring and her question under half an hour. The very instant that that time has elapsed, the former jerk downwards of the bell-handle is repeated, and is answered with promptitude. But before William opens the door, the hope has gone out of Miss Jocelyn's face. "He has not got them! He could not run up if he had! They are not come!"

"Has the cart from the station arrived yet?"

"I do not know, 'm. I'll inquire."

"Servants' heads will never save their heels!" is her inward remark, and then she stands still in the middle of the room, too eagerly listening even to try to distract herself by the sight of the autumn colour outside.

A third time the mounting foot is heard; and this time a smile breaks over the young lady's face.

"He is coming quite slowly! I hear him panting! He has them!"

It will show an unseemly haste to open the door before the labouring messenger has reached the top of the stairs; so with great difficulty she masters her impatience enough to wait till her ear tells her that he is just outside; then she flings her portal wide, and "they," the long-expected, are carried in.

"This parcel has just come by the cart for you, 'm."

He speaks with an unconcealable pant, for "they" are heavy. "They"' are obviously books.

"Oh, indeed!" with a not very successful air of indifference; --"put them down on the sofa; no"--(as she eyes the large proportions of the brown-paper-covered package); "on the floor."

"Shall I undo the string, 'm?"

"No, thanks, I can manage it myself."

He is gone, and at once she flies upon her acquisition. No one who intends to attain great wealth ought ever to cut a bit of string; and in one of the story-books on which the infant minds of the now waning generation were fed, stories with a directer and more knock-me-down moral than the present race of nursery readers would stand, the writer of this tale remembers two boys represented as owing their respective attainment of the Lord Mayoralty and the gallows to their different treatment of this article of commerce. But Miss Jocelyn, recklessly disregarding this golden rule, whips a pair of scissors out of a case, and with two or three vigorous cuts, releases her imprisoned treasure. With only one pleased glance at the publisher's name which surmounts her own on the address--

She repeats it aloud, as if to test it on her ear--"Miching Mallecho." "Yes, surely a good title. It excites curiosity, and tells nothing, and 'By a Beginner.' That must certainly disarm hostility. No critic could be harsh to one who owned herself a beginner. I say 'her,' but I have my hopes that the reviewers may be at fault in that respect, that they may take me for a man. There are one or two passages that--" She turns the pages fondly, seeking for some of those "purple bits" of virile dealing with the passions, and handling the problems of life, which are to turn the hounds of criticism off her track. She reads one or two aloud, as she had done the title, and with the same object of trying their value on the ear; and that ear is so occupied by them as to give no warning of the approach of another intruder upon her bower, until that intruder pushes open the door, and crying "Emma!" enters.

"How any one can live from choice in such a crows' nest!" ejaculates the new-comer between two efforts to recapture her breath, and sitting down with the heaviness of a good many stones and years on the nearest chair; then, looking round with surprise at the emptiness of the room of any one but her niece: "I thought I heard you talking to someone. Were not you talking to someone?"

There are limits to the powers of truthfulness of the most truthful among us; and Emma, though without taste or talent for lying, finds it for the moment physically impossible to explain to a near relation, who is quite ignorant of her literary future, that she has, from pure delight in her own composition, been reading aloud passages out of her maiden novel to no audience but her admiring self.

"I--I was not talking to any one!"

"No? Well, then, it was the wind. How you can stand the tricks it plays round this horrid little aerial pepper-pot--oh, I see the carrier has brought the books at last! I began at length to give up all hopes of them, and thought that my list had got enclosed in someone else's envelope. What are they--anything good? What is that one lying on the floor. It looks like a brand-new copy! I have always rather a weakness for new books, before they have lost their trimness and got loose in their covers."

She stoops as she speaks, and picks up the volume, which, since Emma had sprung to her feet at Mrs. Chantry's entrance, had fallen off her lap on the floor, and, having wriggled out of its outer wrapper, now lies half open, face forward, confessed in all the charms of its cretonne roses and love-knots, at its distracted author's feet.

Her confusion has the effect of discourtesy; she is too paralyzed to pick up the book for her aunt, who, stooping with a slowness born of fifty winters and twelve stone, possesses herself of her prize. She has not her glasses on, which accounts for her not remarking the absence of the Librarian's sign-manual from its exterior.

When she does try to put on her pince-nez, she finds that the thin gold chain on which they hang has become entangled in some part of her dress. To her niece it appears at least an hour before they are set free--astride upon Mrs. Chantry's handsome nose, and applied to the title-page.

"'Mi-ching Mal-le-cho.' What an idiotic title!"

"It is Shakespeare!" says the tortured parent, with a gasp.

"Is it? Then he ought to be ashamed of himself! Whosever it is, it is an idiotic title! 'By a Beginner.' I do not like 'beginners.' Preserve me from 'prentice hands! I am very sure that I never sent for 'Miching Mallecho'" (with a laugh of ridicule); "I should never have dreamt of sending for a book with such a title. You did not send for it, did you? But of course you did not, for I wrote the list myself."

"I did not send for it, but--I--" begins Miss Jocelyn desperately, in a choked voice; but, before her confession is reached, Mrs. Chantry interrupts her.

She has stooped again towards the floor, and is turning over the other seventeen volumes, and making a running commentary as she does so.

"What else has he sent? And why have they come in brown paper instead of a box? And why are they all dressed in white nightgowns?" in a crescendo of surprise; then reaching the culminating point as she reads a second, a third, and a fourth time. "'Miching Mallecho' again! and again! and yet AGAIN! Has the man gone mad? Is it a practical joke? My dear child, have you gone mad and sent for eighteen 'Miching Mallechos'?"

The avowal can no longer be shirked.

"I did not send for the book. But these are presentation copies which the publishers have sent me, because--I wrote it."

Mrs. Chantry's eyes, despite her fifty years, are still very good-sized ones, and at these words they become enormous.

"You--WROTE it?"

"Yes, I wrote it."

"And got it published?"

"And got it published."

"Then you are the 'Beginner'?"

"Yes, I am the 'Beginner.'"

The young author is conscious that she is owning her soft impeachment in the terms of an Ollendorffian parrot; but there is something in her aunt's tone and in her whole look which renders any more expansive form of confession impossible.

"You have written a three-volume novel, called 'Miching Mallecho'?"

"Yes."

"You and Shakespeare--it ought to be good!"

This is not kindly, and Mrs. Chantry knows that it is not; but, like Zimri, of whom we all have heard that it was said "he had his jest, and they had his estate," Mrs. Chantry's jest through life has always gone before her regard for her estate. There is a quiver of malicious laughter about her nostrils as she says it, though in her heart she is feeling sore, so sore that she has scarcely a prick of compunction when she perceives, by a sudden movement on the part of her adopted daughter, that her shot has told. What, indeed, is the use of living with a person unless you can make sure of always placing your arrow in the bull's-eye of his or her foibles and weaknesses? But in the case of the present marksman, the soreness which preceded and caused it survives the joy of successful ill-nature, and in a moment or two she says, in quite another key:

"And so I was not to have been let into the secret? Well, I have always heard that a man's foes are they of his own household. But for an accident I was never to have been told."

"There you are wrong!" says Emma, the anger and mortification which her aunt's sharp jest had called into her face disappearing in a pink flush of self-defence. "I was only going to wait till it had been a success--I think it must succeed--that what came so straight from my heart must go straight to other people's--I was only waiting till I could lay my laurels at your feet, and now perhaps there will be not a twig to lay! And indeed I should have told you long ago--at the very beginning--only you know, you dear thing" (putting a caressing arm round the elder woman's shoulders), "that this is a gossipy neighbourhood, and that you do talk a good deal. What you say is delightful, but" (laughing) "there is a good deal of it."

"Oh yes, I understand," in a half mollified, half offended tone, "I am a blab and a sieve; but I should not have blabbed about 'Miching Mallecho.' In the first place the honour of the family would have stopped me, and, in the second place, I should not have known how to pronounce it."

They both laugh the relieved laugh of two genuinely attached persons who have been on the verge of a quarrel and avoided it.

"And now," asks the aunt, resuming the conversation, and still unable to keep out of her voice a tinge of persiflage as she once more pronounces the obnoxious name--"and now, would you mind telling me what 'Miching Mallecho' means?"

"Shakespeare says, 'It means mischief.'"

"H'm! I now see why you chose to move up to this cock-loft. And may I ask how you got it published?"

"I sent it to one publishing firm after another until I found one who consented to take it."

"Did it travel a good deal?"

"Well, yes," reluctantly; "four or five refused it."

"I am afraid that did not look as if they thought much of it."

"Oh, of course, they did not read it!" hastily, "I believe publishers are so deluged with MSS that they do not attempt to look at a twentieth part of them. The mercy was that their readers did not throw it into the waste-paper basket by mistake!"

Here is another opening which Mrs. Chantry finds almost irresistible, but she commands herself to the extent that it is not her tongue but only her eyebrows which say, "Are you sure that it would have been by mistake?" But her niece understands her eyebrows quite as well as her speech and winces.

"Well, what matter a few shipwrecks if it got into port at last--if it found a comfortable home with Brent and Lockwood!" --reading, "The name does not seem very familiar to me!"

"They have only set up lately. They are quite new, and very enterprising."

"And they took it?"

"Yes."

"And sent you a blank cheque at the same time? No, do not look so angry; I know they did not. But are you to make any money by the transaction?"

"Of course not!" still more hastily. "Any one who understands publishing will tell you that a writer must always make up his mind to make nothing by his first book."

"What a pity, then, that he cannot begin with the second!"

"Of course, I shall make no money by it; not that I care a straw about that! In fact" (reluctantly), "I suppose I ought to tell you that I had to advance fifty pounds to cover possible losses before they would consent to publish it at all."

"Fifty pounds! How did you get hold of fifty pounds? I wish I could afford to treat fifty pounds with the airy lightness you do!"

"I saved some out of my allowance. and Lesbia lent me the rest."

"Oh" (wounded again), "then Lesbia knows! You told Lesbia?"

"I could not help it," in a distressed voice; "she took me by surprise; one day when she drove over, and found no one downstairs, she bounded up here, and caught me in the act. I was very angry with her."

"But you forgave her on condition that she floated the enterprise? I wonder how she managed it! She is generally on the verge of bankruptcy herself."

"She borrowed it from her husband--from Tom."

"Ah, indeed! then Tom knows, too?"

"He did know then; but I have no doubt he has long forgotten; it is not the sort of thing that would stick in his memory for one moment."

"Oh!" and turning over a leaf or two of vol. i. as she speaks, "what sort of a thing is it? What is it about? The 'subject of all work,' I suppose?"

Miss Jocelyn's temperature has not been low throughout the dialogue, judging by the colour of her face, but at this direct interpellation it goes up with a run.

"I know you will laugh at me," she says--"it will not be for the first time--but I thought--I dare say I was mistaken--that I had an idea that was rather new upon the way of treating the passions in fiction--I mean," a slight streak of importance piercing through the shyness of her voice, "their interaction upon each other."

"Good Lord!" after a slight pause; "and may I ask which of the passions you have made interact? The passions in a woman's mouth generally mean one! Is it the usual one?"

"If I answer"--in a tone where mortification and compressed laughter strive for the upper hand--"you will probably say `Good Lord!' again."

"I probably shall! The interaction of the passions! Good--" She breaks off mid-way in the obnoxious ejaculation. "Where did you get hold of such a phrase, and who has been giving you lessons in the subject?"

"In what subject?"

"The interaction of the--"

"Oh, do not repeat it in that staring voice!" cries Emma, bursting into vexed mirth; "you could make the first ten lines of 'Paradise Lost' ridiculous if you repeated them in that key."

Mrs. Chantry complies with her niece's request in so far that she does not reiterate her question either in the same or varied words, but it is doubtful whether the course she takes is much more agreeable to Emma's feelings. She settles herself deliberately in her chair, and, turning to page 1, begins to read with the evident intention of seriously tackling the work of genius so unexpectedly sprung upon her. Her sarcastic lips are shut tight, and there is a flush of annoyed feeling not much inferior to her young companion's on her cheek-bones.

"You are not going to have the inhumanity to read it here--now--under my nose?" cries the girl, in most unvarnished dismay, as the certainty of having at least one reader breaks upon her.

"I undoubtedly am!" replies her aunt firmly; "you meant it to be read, did not you? and you will be able--to begin with--to judge of the effect that the--I believe you had rather I would not repeat the expression--has upon me."

A half-hour that can scarcely be said to be enjoyed by Miss Jocelyn follows. She would like to leave the room, but is detained by a gnawing anxiety as to the effect produced by her beloved offspring upon absolutely the first person submitted to its charm, to learn the impression made by her child upon one to whom she has ever since she could remember stood in that relation. Surely, as Mrs. Chantry reads she will hear some involuntary cry of grandmotherly fondness and admiration over the bantling burst from her. But she waits in vain. No such cry comes. Her aunt's eyes travel steadily down one page after another. Her fingers turn the leaves methodically; but no sound of either appro- or disappro-bation escapes her. Every now and then her eyebrows go up nearly into her hair. The half-hour extends itself to three-quarters, then to an hour, and still the pages turn in continual silence. At least the reader is not skipping, nor has she once yawned. These at least are favourable omens, but, oh, how welcome a few, or even one, less negative would be! The dressing-bell rings, and still she reads. At last she looks up; but her eyes turn to the clock and not towards her niece. Then she rises, and keeping her fore-finger still in the volume, gathers up the other two, and saying, in a cold voice, "You had better go to dress: Tom and Lesbia and the Hatchesons are coming to dinner," prepares to leave the room. But this is more than human nature, or, at least, the little piece of it made up into Emma Jocelyn, can bear.

"You are not going without saying one word about it?"

The elder woman pauses, her hand on the door-handle.

"What would you have me say?" she asks, in a tone made up of annoyance and wonder; "that I think it a pretty story for a girl of twenty-three to have written? You must"--a tinge of vexed and unwilling amusement in her voice--"give me time to get used to the idea that I have been warming a volcano in my bosom!"

"Your metaphor is as bad and mixed as Lord Castlereagh's. Ministers ought not to stand by like crocodiles, with their hands in their breeches pockets'!" retorts Emma, trying to laugh, but her eyes are full of bitter tears.