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(Library of the University of California)
[Illustration: Frontcover]
[Frontispiece: Shot in the Leg.]
ROLAND YORKE.
A Sequel to
"THE CHANNINGS."
BY
MRS. HENRY WOOD,
AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
_TENTH EDITION_.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1880.
[_All Rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved_.]
"And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair,
And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
'A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'"
Longfellow.
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE.
CHAP.
I. In the Moonlight.
II. Up to the Monday Evening.
III. Before the Coroner.
IV. Going Home with the News.
V. Mr. Butterby in Private Life.
VI. GODFREY PITMAN.
PART THE SECOND.
The Story.
VII. In the Office.
VIII. Arrival from Port Natal.
IX. Unexpected Meetings.
X. Going into Society.
XI. Day Dreams.
XII. Commotion in the Office of Greatorex and Greatorex.
XIII. Taking the Place of Jelf.
XIV. Gerald Yorke in a Dilemma.
XV. Visitors for Mrs. Jones.
XVI. Winny.
XVII. At Fault.
XVIII. Mr. Brown at Home.
XIX. A Fountain Shivered.
XX. Grand Reviews.
XXI. Roland Yorke's Shoulder to the Wheel.
XXII. A Little More Light.
XXIII. Laid with his Forefathers.
XXIV. As Iron into the Soul.
PART THE THIRD.
XXV. During the Autumn.
XXVI. Arriving at Euston Square.
XXVII. A Private Interview.
XXVIII. Disappeared.
XXIX. Restless Wanderings.
XXX. A New Idea for Mr. Ollivera.
XXXI. Mr. Galloway Invaded.
XXXII. In the Cathedral.
XXXIII. A Startling Avowal.
XXXIV. A Telegram To Helstonleigh.
XXXV. Life's Sands Running on.
XXXVI. Gerald Yorke at a Shooting Party.
XXXVII. In Custody.
XXXVIII. Between Bede and his Clerk.
XXXIX. Nearer and Nearer.
XL. Godfrey Pitma's Tale.
XLI. A Telegram for Roland Yorke.
XLII. A Wide Black Band on Roland's Hat.
XLIII. Dreams Realized.
XLIV. Conclusion.
ROLAND YORKE.
-------------
Prologue.
CHAPTER I.
IN THE MOONLIGHT.
The scene of this Prologue to the story about to be written was a
certain cathedral town, of which most of you have heard before, and
the time close upon midnight.
It was a warm night at the beginning of March. The air was calm and
still; the bright moon was shedding her pure light with unusual
brilliancy on the city, lying directly underneath her beams. On the
pinnacles of the time-honoured cathedral; on the church-spire, whose
tapering height has made itself a name; on the clustering roofs of
houses; on the trees of what people are pleased to call the Park; on
the river, silently winding its course along beneath the city walls;
and on the white pavement of its streets: all were steeped in the soft
and beautiful light of the Queen of Night.
Surely at that late hour people ought to have been asleep in their
beds, and the town hushed to silence! Not so. A vast number of
men--and women too, for the matter of that--were awake and abroad. At
least, it looked a good number, stealing quietly in one direction
along the principal street. A few persons, comparatively speaking,
assembled together by daylight, will look like a crowd at night. They
went along for the most part in silence, one group glancing round at
another, and being glanced at, back again: whether drawn out by
curiosity, by sympathy, by example, all seemed very much as if they
were half ashamed to be seen there.
Straight through the town, past the new law-courts, past the squares
and the good houses built in more recent years, past the pavements and
the worn highway, telling of a city's bustle, into the open country,
to where a churchyard abuts upon a side-road. A rural, not much
frequented churchyard, dotted with old graves, its small, grey church
standing in the middle. People were not buried there now. On one side
of the church yard, open to the side way, the boundary hedge had
disappeared, partly through neglect. The entrance was on the other
side, facing the city; and where was the use of raising up again the
trodden-down hedge, destroyed gradually and in process of time by boys
and girls at play? So, at least, argued the authorities--when they
argued about it at all.
People were not buried there now: and yet a grave was being dug. At
the remotest corner of this open side of the churchyard, so close to
the consecrated ground that you could scarcely tell whether they were
on it or off it, two men with torches were working at the nearly
finished, shallow, hastily-made grave. A pathway, made perhaps more of
custom than of plan, led right over it into the churchyard--if any
careless person chose to enter it by so unorthodox a route--and the
common side-road, wide enough to admit of carts and other vehicles,
crossed it on the exact spot where the grave was being dug. So that a
spectator might have said the grave's destined occupant was to lie in
a cross-road.
Up to this spot came the groups, winding round the front hedge
silently, save from the inevitable hum which attends a number, their
footsteps grating and shuffling on the still air. That there was some
kind of _reverence_ attaching to the feeling in general, was proved by
the absence of all jokes and light words; it may be almost said by the
absence of conversation altogether, for what little they said was
spoken in whispers. The open space beyond the grave was a kind of
common, stretching out into the country, so that there was room and to
spare for these people to congregate around, without pressing
inconveniently on the sides of the shallow grave. Not but what
every soul went close to give a look in, taking a longer or shorter
time in the gaze as curiosity was slow or quick to satisfy itself.
The men threw out the last spadeful, patted the sides well, and
ascended to the level of the earth. Not a minute too soon. As they
stamped their feet, like men who have been in a cramped position, and
put their tools away back, the clock of the old grey church struck
twelve. It was a loud striker at all times; it sounded like a gong in
the stillness of the night, and a movement ran through the startled
spectators.
With the first stroke of the clock there came up a wayfarer. Some
traveller who had missed his train at Bromsgrove, and had to walk the
distance. He advanced with a jaunty though somewhat tired step along
the highway, and did not discern the crowd until close upon them, for
the road wound just there. To say that he was astonished would be
saying little. He stood still, and stared, and rubbed his eyes, almost
questioning whether the unusual scene could be real.
"What on earth's the matter?" demanded he of someone near him. "What
does it all mean?"
The man addressed turned at the question, and recognized the speaker
for Mr. Richard Jones, an inhabitant of the town.
At least he was nearly sure it was he, but he knew him by sight but
slightly. If it was Mr. Jones, why this same crowd and commotion had
to do with him, in one sense of the word. Its cause had a great deal
to do with his home.
"Can't you answer a body?" continued Mr. Jones, finding he got no
reply.
"Hush!" breathed the other man. "Look there."
Along the middle of the turnpike-road, on their way from the city,
came eight men with measured and even tread, bearing a coffin on their
shoulders. It was covered with what looked like a black cloth shawl,
whose woollen fringe was clearly discernible in the moonlight. Mr.
Jones had halted at the turning up to the churchyard, where he first
saw the assembly of people; consequently the men bearing the coffin,
whose heavy tread and otherwise silent presence seemed to exhale a
kind of unpleasant thrill, passed round by Mr. Jones, nearly touching
him.
"What _is_ it?" he repeated in a few seconds, nearly wild to have his
understanding enlightened.
"Don't you see what it is?--a coffin. It's going to be buried in that
there cross grave up yonder."
"But who is in the coffin?"
"A gentleman who died by his own hand. The jury brought it in
self-murder, and so he's got to be put away without burial service."
"Lawk a mercy!" exclaimed Mr. Jones, who though a light shallow,
unstable man, given to make impromptu excursions from his home and
wife, and to spend too much money in doing it, was not on the whole a
bad-hearted one. "Poor gentleman! Who was it?"
"One of them law men in wigs that come in to the 'sizes."
Mr. Jones might have asked more but for two reasons. The first was,
that his neighbour moved away in the wake of those who were beginning
to press forward to see as much as they could get to see of the
closing ceremony; the next was, that in a young woman who just then
walked past him, he recognized his wife's sister. Again Mr. Jones
rubbed his eyes, mentally questioning whether this second vision might
be real. For she, Miss Rye, was a steady, good, superior young woman,
not at all likely to come out of her home at midnight after a sight of
any sort, whether it might be a burying or a wedding. Mr. Jones really
doubted whether his sight and the moonlight had not played him false.
The shortest way to solve this doubt would have been to accost the
young woman, but while he had been wondering, she disappeared. In
truth it was Miss Rye, and she had followed the coffin from whence it
was brought, as a vast many more had followed it. Not mixing with
them; walking apart and alone, close to the houses, in the deep
shade cast by their walls. She was a comely young woman of about
seven-and-twenty, tall and fair, with steady blue eyes, good features,
and a sensible countenance. In deep mourning for her mother, she wore
on this night a black merino dress, soft and fine, and a black shawl
trimmed with crape, that she held closely round her. But she had
disappeared; and amidst so many Mr. Jones thought it would be useless
to go looking for her.
A certain official personage or two, perhaps deputies from the
coroner, or from the parish, or from the undertaker furnishing the
coffin and the two sets of bearers--who can tell?--whose mission it
was to see the appointed proceedings carried out, cleared by their
hands and gestures a space around the grave. The people fell back
obediently. They pressed and elbowed each other no doubt, and grumbled
at others crushing them; but they kept themselves back in their
places. A small knot, gentlemen evidently, and probably friends of the
deceased, were allowed to approach the grave. The grave-diggers stood
near, holding the torches. But for those flaring torches, the crowd
would have seen better: they saw well enough, however, in the bright
moonlight.
In the churchyard, having taken up his station there behind an upright
tombstone, where tombstones were thick, stood an officer connected
with the police. He was in plain clothes--in fact, nobody remembered
to have seen him in other ones--and had come out tonight not
officially but to gratify himself personally. Ensconced behind the
stone, away from everybody, he could look on at leisure through its
upper fretwork and take his own observations, not only of the ceremony
about to be performed, but of those who were attending it. He was a
middle-sized, spare man, with a pale face, deeply sunk green eyes,
that had a habit of looking steadily at people, and a small, sharp,
turned-up nose. Silent by nature and by habit, he imparted the idea of
possessing a vast amount of astute keenness as a detector of crime: in
his own opinion he had not in that respect an equal. Nobody could
discern him, and he did not intend they should.
Amidst a dead silence, save for the creaking of the cords, amidst a
shiver of sympathy, of pity, of awful thoughts from a great many of
the spectators, the black covering was thrown aside and the coffin was
lowered. There was a general lifting off of hats; a pause; and then a
rush. One in the front rank--a fat woman, who had fought for her
place--stepped forward in her irrepressible curiosity to take a last
look inside the grave; another followed her; the movement was
contagious, and there was a commotion. Upon which the men holding the
torches swept them round; it threw out the flame rather dangerously,
and the rushers drew back again with half a cry. Not quite all. A few,
more adventurous than the rest, slipped round to the safer side, and
were in time to read the inscription on the lid:
"JOHN OLLIVERA.
Aged 28."
Short enough, and simple enough, for the sad death. Only a moment
after the cords were drawn away did it remain visible; for the
grave-diggers, flinging their torches aside, threw in the earth,
spadeful upon spadeful, and covered it up from sight.
The shallow grave was soon filled in; the grave-diggers flattened it
down level with spades and feet: no ceremony accorded, you see, to
such an end as this poor man had made. Before it was quite
accomplished, those officially connected with the burial, or with the
buried, left the ground and departed. Not so the mob of people: they
stayed to see the last; and would have stayed had it been until
morning light. And they talked freely now, one with another, but were
orderly and subdued still.
Mr. Jones stayed. He had not mixed with the people, but stood apart in
the churchyard, under the shade of the great yew-tree. Soon he began
to move away, and came unexpectedly upon the detective officer
standing yet behind the gravestone. Mr. Jones halted in surprise.
"Halloo!" cried he. "Mr. Butterby!"
"Just look at them idiots!" rejoined Mr. Butterby, with marked
composure, as if he had seen Richard Jones from the first, and
expected the address. "So _you_ are back!" he added, turning his head
sharply on the traveller.
"I come in from Bromsgrove on my legs; missed the last train there,"
said Mr. Jones, rather addicted to a free-and-easy kind of grammar in
private life: as indeed was the renowned gentleman he spoke to. "When
I got past the last turning and see these here folks, I thought the
world must be gone mad."
"Did you come back on account of it?" asked Mr. Butterby. "Did they
write for you?"
"On account of what? As to writing for me, they'd be clever to do
that, seeing I left 'em no address to write to. I have been going
about from place to place; today there, tomorrow yonder."
"On account of _that_," answered the detective, nodding his head in
the direction of the grave, to which the men were then giving the last
finishing strokes and treads of flattening.
To Mr. Jones's ear there was something so obscure in the words that he
only stared at their speaker, almost wondering whether the grave
officer had condescended to a joke.
"I don't understand you, sir."
Mr. Butterby saw at once how the matter stood: that Dicky Jones--the
familiar title mostly accorded him in the city--was ignorant of recent
events.
"The poor unfortunate man just put in there, Jones,"--with another nod
to the grave--"was Mr. Ollivera, the counsel."
"Mr. Ollivera!" exclaimed the startled Jones.
"And he took his life away at your house."
"Lawk a mercy!" cried Mr. Jones, repeating his favourite expression,
one he was addicted to when overwhelmed with surprise. "Whatever did
he do it for?"
"Ah, that's just what we can't tell. Perhaps he didn't know himself
what."
"How was it, sir? Poison?"
"Shot himself with his own pistol," briefly responded the officer.
"And did it knowingly?--intentional?"
"Intentional for sure, or he'd not have been put in here tonight. They
couldn't have buried a dog with much less ceremony."
"Well, I never knew such a thing as this," cried Mr. Jones, scarcely
taking in the news yet. "When I went away Mr. Ollivera, hadn't come;
he was expected; and my wife----Halloa!"
The cause of the concluding exclamation was a new surprise, great as
any the speaker had met with yet. Mr. Butterby, his keen eyes strained
forward from their enclosed depths, touched him on the arm with
authority to enjoin silence.
The young woman--it would be no offence against taste to call her a
lady, with her good looks, her good manners, her usually calm
demeanour--whom Mr. Jones had recognized as his wife's sister, had
come forward to the grave. Kneeling down, she bent her face in her
hands, perhaps praying; then lifted it, rose, and seemed about to
address the crowd. Her hands were clasped and raised before her; her
bonnet had fallen back from her face and her bright flaxen hair.
"It _is_ Alletha Rye, isn't it, sir?" he dubiously cried.
"Hold your noise!" said Mr. Butterby.
"I think it would be a wicked thing to let you disperse this night
with a false belief on your minds," began Miss Rye, her clear voice
sounding quite loud and distinct in the hushed silence. "Wicked in the
sight of God; unkind and unjust to the dead. Listen to my words,
please, all you who hear me. I believe that a dreadful injury has been
thrown upon Mr. Ollivera's memory; I solemnly believe that _he did not
die by his own hand_. Heaven hears me assert it."
The solemn tone, the strange words, the fair appearance of the young
woman, with her good and refined face deathly pale now, and the
moonlight playing on her light hair, awed the listeners into something
like statues. The silence continued unbroken until Miss Rye moved
away, which she did at once and with a rather quick step in the
direction of the road, pulling her bonnet on her head as she went,
drawing her shawl round her. Even Mr. Jones made neither sound nor
movement until she had disappeared, so entire was his astonishment.
"Was there ever heard the like of that?" he exclaimed, when he at
length drew breath. "Do you think she's off her head, sir?"
He received no answer, and turned to look at Mr. Butterby. That
gentleman had his note-book out, and was pencilling something down in
it by moonlight.
"I never see such a start as this--take it for all in all," continued
Mr. Jones to himself and the air, thus thrown upon his own
companionship.
"And I'd not swear that you've seen the last of it," remarked Mr.
Butterby, closing his note-case with a click.
"Well, sir, goodnight to you," concluded Mr. Jones. "I must make my
way home afore the house is locked up, or I shall get a wigging from
my wife. Sure to get that in any case, now this has happened," he
continued, ruefully. "She'll say I'm always away when I'm wanted at
home in particular."
He went lightly enough over the graves to the opposite and more
frequented side of the churchyard, thus avoiding the assemblage; and
took his departure. There being nothing more to see, the people began
to take theirs. Having gazed their fill at the grave--just as if the
silent, undemonstrative earth could give them back a response--they
slowly made their way down the side-path to the high-road, and turned
towards the city, one group after another.
By one o'clock the last straggler had gone, and Mr. Butterby came
forth from his post behind the sheltering gravestone. He had his
reasons, perhaps, for remaining behind the rest, and for wishing to
walk home alone.
However that might be, he gave their progress a good margin of space,
for it was ten minutes past one when he turned out of the churchyard.
He had just gained the houses, when he saw before him a small knot of
people emerge from a side-turning, as if they had not taken the direct
route in coming from the heart of the city. Mr. Butterby recognized
one or two of them, and whisked into a friendly doorway until they had
passed by.
Letting them get on well ahead, he turned back and followed in their
wake. That they were on their way to the grave, appeared evident: and
the acute officer wondered why. A thought crossed him that possibly
they might be about to take up what had been laid there.
He went into the churchyard by the front gate, and made his way
cautiously across it, keeping under the shadow of the grey church
walls. Thence, stooping as he crossed the open ground, and dodging
behind first one grave then another, he took up his former position
against the high stone. They were at the grave now, and he began to
deliberate whether, if his thought should prove correct, he should or
should not officially interrupt proceedings. Getting his eyes to the
open fretwork of the stone, Mr. Butterby looked out. And what he saw
struck him with a surprise equal to any recently exhibited by Mr.
Jones: he, the experienced police official, who knew the world so
thoroughly as to be surprised at little or nothing.
Standing at the head of the grave was a clergyman in his surplice and
hood. Four men were grouped around him, one of whom held a lantern so
that its light fell upon the clergyman's book. He was beginning to
read the burial service. They stood with bowed heads, their hats off.
The night had grown cold, but Mr. Butterby took off his.
"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth
and believeth in me shall never die."
The solemn words doubly solemn at that time and place, came distinctly
to the official ears. Perhaps in all the times he had heard them
during his whole life--many and many that it had been--they had never
so impressed him. But habit is strong; and Mr. Butterby found himself
taking observations ere the psalm had well commenced, even while he
was noticing how heartily the alternate verses were given by the
spectators.
Three of them around the grave he recognized; the other one and the
clergyman he did not. Of those three, one was a tall, fine man of
forty years, Kene, the barrister; the next was a cousin of the
deceased, Frank Greatorex, whom Mr. Butterby only knew by seeing him
in the inquest-room, where he tendered some slight evidence; the third
was a gentleman of the city. Neither the clergyman nor the one who
held the light did Mr. Butterby remember to have seen before. The
elder and other cousin of the deceased was not present, though Mr.
Butterby looked for him; he had been the principal witness on the
inquest--Mr. Bede Greatorex.
The officer could but notice also how singularly solemn, slow, and
impressive was the clergyman's voice as he read those portions of the
service that relate more particularly to the deceased and the faith in
which he has died. "In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to
eternal life." He almost made a pause between each word, as if he
would impress on his hearers that it was his own belief the deceased
had so died. And again, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."
And towards the end, in the collect, in the beseeching prayer that
when we depart this life we may rest in Christ, "as our hope is this
our brother doth." It was not to be mistaken that the clergyman, at
least, held firm faith in the absence of guilt of the deceased in
regard to his own death. As indeed the reading of the service over him
proved.
With the Amen of the concluding benediction, there ensued a silence;
every head was bowed in prayer. The clergyman was the first to look
up. He waited until the rest did.
"Allow me to say a word ere we depart," he began then, in a low tone;
which nevertheless quick-eared Mr. Butterby distinctly caught. "From
the bottom of my heart, I believe a foul deed of murder to have been
committed on my good and dear brother. It shall be the business of my
life to endeavour to bring it to light, to clear his name from the
cruel stain pronounced upon it; and my whole time apart from what must
be spent in my appointed duties, shall be devoted to this end. So help
me, Heaven!"
"Amen!" responded the young man who stood by Mr. Kene.
"So! he's the deceased man's brother" was Mr. Butterby's comment on
the clergyman, as he saw him take off his surplice and roll it up.
Blowing out the light in the lantern, they silently took their
departure. Mr. Butterby watched them away, and then finally took his,
his mind in full work.
"Just the same thing that the girl, Alletha Rye, said! It's odd. I
didn't see any doubt about the business: in spite of what Kene said at
the inquest; neither did the coroner; and I'm sure the jury didn't.
Dicky Jones was right, though. Take it for all in all, it's the
queerest start we've had in this town for many a day."