"For, then, you see," she said to her husband, as they went home, "I shall be able to take it back to her this very evening and ask her for the half-crown she offered me for doing it, which I should not have had the face to do with eleven more of them still in my possession. I have no doubt of her being satisfied with my work; and in a week I shall have finished the half of them, and we shall be getting on swimmingly."
Throughout the winter Hector wrote steadily every night, and every night Annie sat by his side and embroidered--though her embroidery was not _all_ for other people. Many a time in after years did their thoughts go back to that period as the type of the happy life they were having together.
The next time Hector went to see Mr. Gillespie, that gentleman suggested that he should give a course of lectures to ladies upon English Poetry, beginning with the Anglo-Saxon poets, of whom Gillespie said he knew nothing, but would be glad to learn a great deal. He knew also, he said, some ladies in the neighborhood willing to pay a guinea each for a course of, say, half-a-dozen such lectures. They would not cost Hector much time to prepare, and would at once bring in a little money.
Coleridge himself, he suggested, had done that kind of thing.
"Yes," said Hector, "but he was Coleridge. I have nothing to say worth saying."
"Leave your hearers to judge of that," returned Gillespie. "Do your best, and take your chance. I promise you two pupils at least not over-critical--my wife and myself. It is amazing how little those even who imagine they love it know about English poetry."
"But where should I find a room?" Hector still objected.
"Would not this drawing room do?" asked his friend.
"Splendidly!" answered Hector. "But what will Mrs. Gillespie say to it?"
"She and I are generally of one mind--about people, at least."
"Then I will go home at once and set about finding what to say."
"And I will go out at once and begin hunting you up an audience."
Gillespie succeeded even better than he had antic.i.p.ated; and there was at the first lecture a very fair gathering indeed. When it was over, the one that knew most of the subject was the young lecturer"s wife. The first course was followed by two more, the third at the request of almost all his hearers. And the result; was that, before the legacy fell due, Annie had paid all their debts and had not contracted a single new one.
But when the happy day dawned Annie was not able to go with her husband to receive the money; neither did Hector wish that she had been able, for he was glad to go alone. By her side lay a lovely woman-child peacefully asleep. Hector declared her the very image of the child the rainbow left behind as it vanished.
One day, when the mother was a little stronger, she called Hector to her bedside, and playfully claimed the right to be the child"s G.o.dmother, and to give it her name.
"And who else can have so good a right?" answered Hector. Yet he wondered just a little that Annie should want the child named after herself, and not after her mother.
But when the time for the child"s baptism came, Annie, who would hold the little one herself, whispered in the ear of the clergyman:
"The child"s name is Iris."
I have told my little story. But perhaps my readers will have patience with me while I add just one little inch to the tail of the mouse my mountain has borne.
Hector"s next book, although never so popular as in any outward sense to be called a success, yet was not quite a failure even in regard to the money it brought him, and even at the present day has not ceased to bring in something. Doubtless it has faults not a few, but, happily, the man who knows them best is he who wrote it, and he has never had to repent that he did write it. And now he has an audience on which he can depend to welcome whatever he writes. That he has enemies as well goes without saying, but they are rather scorners than revilers, and they have not yet caused him to retaliate once by criticising any work of theirs. Neither, I believe, has he ever failed to recognize what of genuine and good work most of them have produced. One of the best results to himself of his constant endeavor to avoid jealousy is that he is still able to write verse, and continues to take more pleasure in it than in telling his tales. And still his own test of the success of any of his books is the degree to which he enjoyed it himself while writing it.
His legacy has long been spent, and he has often been in straits since; but he has always gathered good from those straits, and has never again felt as if slow walls were closing in upon him to crush him. And he has hopes by G.o.d"s help, and with Annie"s, of getting through at last, without ever having dishonored his high calling.
The last time I saw him, he introduced his wife to me--having just been telling me his and her story--with the rather enigmatical words:
"This is my wife. You cannot see her very well, for, like Hamlet, I wear her "in my heart"s core, aye, in my heart of hearts!""