UNEXPECTED MEETINGS.
"You can go to your dinner, Mr. Yorke."
The clocks were striking one, as Brown, the manager, gave the
semi-order. Roland, to whom dinner was an agreeable interlude,
especially under the circumstances of having money in his pocket to
pay for it, leaped off his stool forthwith, and caught up his hat.
"Are you not coming, Hurst?"
Mr. Hurst shook his head. "Little Jenner goes now. I stay until he
comes back."
Little Jenner had been making preparation to go of his own accord,
brushing his hat, drawing down his waistcoat, pushing gingerly in
order his mass of soft fair hair. He was remarkably small; and these
very small men are often very great dandies. Roland, who had shaken
off the old pride in his rubs with the world, waited for him outside.
"Jenner, d'ye know of a good dining-place about here?" he asked, as
they stood together, looking like a giant and a dwarf.
The clerk hesitated whether to say he did or did not. The place that
he considered good might not appear so to the nephew of Sir Richard
Yorke.
"I generally go to a house in Tottenham Court Road, sir. It's a kind
of cook's shop, clean, and the meat excellent; but one sees all kinds
of people there, and you may not think it up to you."
"Law, bless you!" cried Roland. "When a fellow has been knocked about
for four years in the streets of Port Natal, he doesn't retain much
ceremony. Let's get on to it. Do you know of any lodgings to be let in
these parts, Jenner?" he continued again. "I shall get some as near to
Greatorex's as I can. One does not want a three or four miles' dance
night and morning."
Jenner said he did not know of any, but would help Mr. Yorke to look
for some that evening if he liked. And they had turned into Tottenham
Court Road, when Jenner halted to speak to someone he encountered: a
little woman, very dark, who was bustling by with a black and white
flat basket in her hand.
"How d'ye do, Mrs. Jones? How's Mr. Ollivera?"
"Now, I've not got the time to stand bothering with you, Jenner," was
the tart retort. "Call in any evening you like, as I've told you
before; but I'm up to my eyes in errands now."
Roland Yorke, whose attention had been attracted to something in a
shop-window, wheeled round on his heel at the voice, and stared at the
speaker. Jenner had called her Mrs. Jones; but Roland fully believed
no person in the world could own that voice, save one. A voice that
struck on every chord of his memory, as connected with Helstonleigh.
"It _is_ Mrs. Jenkins!" cried Roland, seizing the stranger's hands.
"What on earth does he mean by calling you Mrs. Jones?"
"Ah," she groaned, "I am Mrs. Jones, more's the shame and pity. Let it
pass for now, young Mr. Yorke. I should have known you anywhere."
"You don't mean to say you are living in London?" returned Roland.
"Yes, I am. In Gower Street. Come and see me, Mr. Yorke; Jenner will
show you the house. Did you make your fortune at Port Natal? You'd
always used to be telling Jenkins, you know, that you should."
"And I thought I _should_," said Roland, with emphasis; "but I got no
luck, and it turned out a failure. _Won't_ I come and see you! I say,
Mrs. Jenkins, do you remember the toasted muffins that Jenkins
wouldn't eat?"
Mrs. Jones nodded twice to the reminiscence. She went bustling on her
way, and they on theirs. Roland for once was rather silent. Mingling
with the satisfaction he experienced in meeting any one from
Helstonleigh, especially one so associated with the old familiar daily
life as Mrs. Jenkins had been, came the thoughts of the years since;
of the defeats and failures; of the mortification that invariably lay
on his heart when he had to tell of them and of what they had brought
him. He had now met two of the old people in one day; Hurst and Mrs.
Jones; or, as Roland still called her, Mrs. Jenkins. Cords would not
have dragged Roland to Helstonleigh: his mother, with the rest of them
at home, had come over to Ireland to stay part of the summer at Lord
Carrick's, soon after Roland's return from Port Natal; but he would
not go to see them at the old home city. With the exception of scraps
of news learnt from Hurst that day, Roland knew nothing about
Helstonleigh's later years.
"Look here, Jenner! What brings her name Jones? It used to be
Jenkins."
"I think I have heard that it was Jenkins once," replied Jenner,
reflectively. "She must have married Jones after Jenkins died. Did you
know him?"
"Did I know him?" echoed Roland, to whom the question sounded a very
superfluous one. "I should just think I did know him. Why, he was
chief clerk for years to Galloway, that cantankerous old proctor I was
with. Jenkins was a good fellow as ever lived, meek and patient, and
of course Mrs. J. put upon him. She'd not allow him to have his will
in the smallest way: he couldn't dress himself in a morning unless she
chose to let him. Which she didn't always."
"Not let him dress himself?"
"It's true," affirmed Roland, diving down into the depth of the old
grievances. "Our office was in an awful state of work at that time;
and because Jenkins had a cough she'd lock up his pantaloons to keep
him at home. It wasn't his fault; he'd have come in his coffin. Jones
whoever he may be, must have had the courage of a wolf to venture on
her. Does he look like one?"
"I never saw him," said Jenner. "I think he's dead, too."
"Couldn't stand it, I suppose? My opinion is, it was her tongue took
off poor Jenkins. He was mild as honey. Not that she's a bad lot at
bottom, mind you, Jenner. I wonder what brought her to London?"
"I don't know anything about her affairs," said Jenner. "The Rev.
Henry William Ollivera has his rooms in her house. And I go to see him
now and then. That's all."
"Who is the Rev. William Ollivera?"
"Curate of a parish hard by. His brother, a barrister, had chambers in
Lincoln's Inn, and I was his clerk. Four years ago he went the Oxford
circuit, and came to his death at Helstonleigh. It was a shocking
affair, and happened in the Joneses' house. They lived at Helstonleigh
then. Mrs. Jones's sister went in one morning and found him dead in
his chair."
"My goodness!" cried Roland. "Was it a fit?"
"Worse than that. He took away his own life. And I have never been
able to understand it from that hour to this, for he was the most
unlikely man living to do such a thing--as people all said. The
Greatorexes interested themselves to get me a fresh place, giving me
some temporary work in their office. It ended in my remaining with
them. They find me useful, and pay me well. It's four years now, sir,
since it happened."
"Just one year before I got home from Natal," casually remarked
Roland.
"He sends for me sometimes," continued Mr. Jenner, pursuing his own
thoughts, which were running on the clergyman. "When any fresh idea
occurs to him, he'll write off for me, post haste; and when I get
there he puts all sorts of questions to me, about the old times in
Lincoln's Inn. You see, he has always held that Mr. Ollivera did not
kill himself, and has been ever since trying to get evidence to prove
he did not. The hope never seems to grow old with him, or to rest; it
is as fresh and near as it was the day he first took it up."
Roland felt a little puzzled. "Did Mr. Ollivera kill himself, or
didn't he? Which do you mean?"
Jenner shook his head. "I think he did, unlikely though it seemed. All
the circumstances proved it, and nobody doubted it except the Rev. Mr.
Ollivera. Bede Greatorex, who was the last person to see him alive,
thinks there can be no doubt whatever; I overheard him say it was just
one of William Ollivera's crotchets, and not the first by a good many
that he had taken up. The clergyman used to be for ever coming into
the office talking of it, saying should he do this or do the other,
until Bede told him he couldn't have it; that it interrupted the
business."
"What has Bede Greatorex to do with it? Why should Ollivera come to
him?"
"Bede Greatorex has nearly as much to do with it as the clergyman. He
and the two Olliveras were cousins. Bede Greatorex was awfully cut at
the death: he'd be glad to see there was doubt attending it; but he,
as a sensible man, can't see it. They buried Mr. Ollivera like a dog."
"What did they do that for?"
"The verdict was felo-de-se. Mr. Hurst can tell you all about it, sir;
he was at Helstonleigh at the time: he says he never saw such a scene
in his life as the funeral. It was a moonlight night, and half the
town was there."
"I'll get it all out of him," quoth Roland, who had not lost in the
smallest degree his propensity to indulge in desultory gossip.
"Don't ask him in the office," advised Jenner. "Brown would stop you
at the first word. He never lets a syllable be dropped upon the
subject. I asked him one day what it was to him, and he answered that
it was not seemly to allude to the affair in the house, as Mr.
Ollivera had been a connection of it. My fancy is that Brown must have
known something of it at the time, and does not like it mentioned on
his own score," confidentially added little Jenner, who was of a
shrewd turn. "I saw him change colour once over it."
"Who _is_ Brown?" questioned Roland.
"That's more than I can say," was the reply. "He's an uncommonly
efficient clerk; but, once out of the office, he keeps himself to
himself, and makes friends with none of us. Here we are, sir."
The eating-house, however unsuitable it might have been to one holding
his own as the nephew of an English baronet, to say nothing of an
Irish peer, was welcome as sun in harvest to hungry Roland. He ordered
a magnificent dinner, off-hand: three plates of meat each, three of
tart; vegetables, bread and beer _ad libitum_: paid for the whole,
changing his five-pound note, and gave a shilling to the man who
waited on them. Little Jenner went out with his face shining.
"We must make the best of our way back, Mr. Yorke. Time's up."
"Oh, is it, though," cried Roland. "I'm not going back yet. I shall
take a turn round to see Mrs. Jenkins; there are five hundred things I
want to ask her."
One can only be civil to a man who has just treated one to a good
dinner, and Jenner did not like to tell Roland pointblank that he had
better not go anywhere but to the office.
"They are awfully strict about time in our place," cried he; "and we
are busy just now. I must make haste back, sir."
"All right," said easy Roland. "Say I am coming."
His long legs went flying off in the direction of Gower Street, Jenner
having given him the necessary instructions to find it; and he burst
clattering in upon Mrs. Jones in her sitting-room without the least
ceremony, very much as he used to do in the old days when she was Mrs.
Jenkins. Mrs. Jones had been for some time now given to wish that she
had not changed her name. Doing very well as the widow Jenkins, years
ago, in her little hosier's shop in High Street, Helstonleigh, what
was her mortification to find one day that the large and handsome
house next door, with its shop-windows of plate-glass, had been opened
as another hosier's by a Mr. Richard Jones. Would customers continue
to come to her plain and unpretending mart, when that new one, grand,
imposing, and telling of an unlimited stock within, was staring them
in the face? The widow Jenkins feared not; and fretted herself to
fiddle-strings.
The fear might have had no cause of foundation: the show kept up at
the adjoining house was perhaps founded on artificial bases, rather
than real. Richard Jones (whom the city had already begun to designate
as Dicky) turned out to be of a sociable nature; he made her
acquaintance whether she would or no, and suddenly proposed to her to
unite the two businesses in one, by making herself, and her stock, and
her connection, over to him. Mrs. Jenkins's first impulse was to throw
at his head the nearest parcel that came to hand. Familiarity with an
idea, however, sometimes reconciles the worst adversary; as at length
it did Mrs. Jenkins to this. To give her her due, she took no account
whatever of Mr. Jones in the matter; he went for nothing, a bale of
waste flung in to make weight, she should rule him just as she had
ruled Jenkins; her sole temptation was the flourishing shop, à côté,
and the good, well-furnished house. So Mrs. Jenkins exchanged her name
for that of Jones, and removed, bag and baggage; resigning the
inferior home that had so long sheltered her. It was close upon this,
that one of the barristers, coming in to the summer assizes at
Helstonleigh, took apartments at Mrs. Jones's. That was Mr. Ollivera:
and in the following March, when he again came in, occurred his
tragical ending.
Before this, long before it, Mrs. Jones had grown to realize to
herself the truth of the homely proverb, All's not gold that glitters.
Mr. Jones's connection did not prove to be of the most extensive kind;
far from it; the large, imposing stock turned out to be three parts
dummies; and she grew to believe--to see--that his motive in marrying
her was to uphold his newly-established business by beguiling to it
her old customers. The knowledge did not tend to soothe her naturally
tart temper; neither did the fact that her husband took vast deal of
pleasure abroad, spent money recklessly, and left her to do all the
work. Mr. Jones's debts came out, one after the other; more than could
be paid; and one morning some men of the law walked quietly in and put
themselves in possession of the effects. Things had come to a crisis.
Mr. Jones, after battling out affairs with the bankruptcy
commissioner, started for America; his wife went off to London.
Certain money, her own past savings, she had been wise enough to have
secured to her separate special use, and that could not be touched.
With a portion of it she bought in some of the furniture, and set up
as a letter of lodgings in Gower Street.
But that Roland Yorke had not seen the parlour at Helstonleigh (which
the reader had the satisfaction of once entering with Mr. Butterby),
he would have gone well nigh to think this the same room. The red
carpet on the floor, the small book-shelves, the mahogany sideboard
with its array of glasses, the horsehair chairs, the red cloth on the
centre table, all had been transplanted. When Roland bustled in, he
found Mrs. Jones knitting away at lambs' wool socks, as if for her
life. In the intervals of her home occupation, or when her house was
slack of lodgers, she did these for sale, and realized a very fair
profit.
"Now then," said Roland, stirring up the fire of his own accord, and
making himself at home, as he liked to do wherever he might be, "I
want to know all about everybody."
Mrs. Jones turned her chair towards him with a jerk; and Roland put
question after question about the old city, which he had so abruptly
quitted more than seven years before. It may be that Mrs. Jones
recognized in him a kind of fellow-sufferer. Neither of them cared to
see Helstonleigh again, unless under the auspices of a more propitious
fate than the present. Anyway, she was gracious to Roland, and gave
him information as fast as he asked for it, repeating some things he
had heard before. He persisted in calling her Mrs. Jenkins, saying it
came more natural than the other name.
Mr. Channing was dead. His eldest son Hamish was living in London.
Arthur was Mr. Galloway's right hand; Tom was a clergyman, and just
made a minor canon of the old cathedral; Charley Mrs. Jones knew
nothing about, except that he was in India. The college school had got
a new master. Mr. Ketch was reposing in a damp green nook, side by
side with old Jenkins the bedesman. Hamish Channing's bank had come to
grief, Mrs. Jenkins did not know how. In the panic, she believed.
"And that beautiful kinsman of mine, William Yorke, reigns at
Hazeldon, and old Galloway is flourishing in his office, with his
flaxen curls!" burst forth Roland, suddenly struck with a weighty
sense of injustice. "The bad people get the luck of it in this world,
Mrs. Jenkins; the deserving ones go begging. Hamish Channing's bank
come to grief;--bright Hamish! And look at me!--and you! I never saw
such a world as this with its miserable ups and downs."
"Ah," said Mrs. Jones with a touch of her native tartness, "it's a
good thing there's another world to come after. We may find that a
better one."
The prospect (probably from being regarded as rather far-off) did not
appear to afford present satisfaction to Roland. He sat pulling at his
whiskers, moodily resenting the general blindness of Fortune in regard
to merit, and then suddenly wheeled round to his own affairs.
"I say, Mrs. J."--a compromise between the two names and serving for
both--"I want a lodging. Couldn't you let me come here?"
She looked up briskly. "What kind of a lodging? I mean as to position
and price."
"Oh, something comfortable," said Roland.
Perhaps for old acquaintance' sake, perhaps because she had some
apartments vacant, Mrs. Jones appeared to regard the proposition with
no disfavour; and began to talk of her house's accommodation.
"The rooms on the first floor are very good and well furnished," she
said. "When I was about it, Mr. Yorke, I thought I might as well have
things nice as not, one finds the return; and the drawing-room floor
naturally gets served the best. There's a piano in the front room, and
the bed in the back room is excellent."
"They'd be just the thing for me," cried Roland, rising to walk about
in pleasurable excitement. "What's the rent?"
"They are let for a pound a week. Mr.----"
"That'll do I can pay it," said he eagerly. "I don't play the piano
myself; but it may be useful if I give a party. You'll cook for me?"
"Of course we'll cook," said Mrs. Jones. "But I was about to tell you
that those rooms are let to a clergyman. If you----"
Roland had come to an abrupt anchor at the edge of the table, and the
look of blank dismay on his face was such as to cut short Mrs. Jones's
speech. "What's the matter?" she asked.
"Mrs. J., I couldn't give it; I was forgetting. They are to pay me a
pound a-week at Greatorex's; but I can't spend it all in lodgings, I'm
afraid. There'll be other things wanted."
"Other things!" ejaculated Mrs. Jones. "I should think there would be
other things. Food, and drink, and firing, and light, and wear and
tear of clothes, and washing; and a hundred extras beside."
Roland sat in perplexity. Ways and means seem to have grown dark
together.
"Couldn't you let me one room? A room with a turn-up bedstead in it,
Mrs. Jenkins, or something of that? Couldn't you take the pound
a-week, and do for me?"
"I don't know but I might make some such arrangement, and let you have
the front parlour," she slowly said. "We've got a Scripture reader in
the back one."
Roland started up impulsively to look at the front parlour, intending
to take it, off hand. As they quitted the room--which was built out at
the back, on the staircase that led down to the kitchen--Roland saw a
tall, fair, good-looking young woman, who stopped and asked some
question of Mrs. Jones. Which that lady answered sharply.
"I have no time to talk about trifles now, Alletha."
"Who's that?" cried Roland, as they entered the parlour: a small room
with a dark paper and faded red curtains.
"It's my sister, Mr. Yorke."
"I say, Mrs. J., this is a stunning room," exclaimed Roland, who was
in that eager mood, of his, when all things looked couleur-de-rose.
"Can I come in today?"
"You can tomorrow, if we agree. That sofa lets out into a bedstead at
night. You must not get into my debt, though, Mr. Yorke," she added,
in the plain, straightforward way that was habitual with her. "I
couldn't afford it, and I tell you so beforehand."
"I'll never do that," said Roland, impulsively earnest in his
sincerity. "I'll bring you home the pound each week, and then I shan't
be tempted to change it. Look here"--taking two sovereigns from his
pocket--"that's to steer on ahead with. Does she live here?" he
added, going back without ceremony to the subject of Miss Rye.
"Alletha, do you call her? what an odd name!"
"The name was a mistake of the parson's when she was christened. It
was to have been Allethea. I've had her with me four or five years
now. She is a dressmaker, Mr. Yorke, and works sometimes at home, and
sometimes out."
"She'd be uncommonly good-looking if she were not such a shadow,"
commented Roland with candour.
Mrs. Jones gave her head a toss, as if the topic displeased her.
"Shadow, indeed! Yes, and she's likely to be one. Never was any pig
more obstinate than she."
"Pigs!" cried Roland with energy, "you should see the obstinacy of
Natal pigs, Mrs. J. _I_ have. Drove 'em too."
"It couldn't equal hers," disputed Mrs. J., with intense acrimony.
"She is wedded to the memory of a runaway villain, Mr. Yorke, that's
what she is! A good opportunity presented itself to her lately of
settling, but she'd not take it. She'd sooner fret out her life after
_him_, than look upon an honest man. The two pigs together by the
tail, and let 'em pull two ways till they drop, they'd not equal her.
And for a runaway; a man that disgraced himself!"
"What did he do?" asked curious Roland.
"It's not very good to repeat," said Mrs. Jones tartly. "She lived in
Birmingham, our native place, till the mother died, and then she came
to me at Helstonleigh. First thing she tells me was, that she was
engaged to be married to some young man in an office there, George
Winter: and over she goes to Birmingham the next Christmas on a visit
to her aunt, on purpose to meet him: stays there a week, and comes
home again. Well, Mr. Yorke, this grand young man, this George Winter,
about whom I had _my_ doubts, though I'd never seen him, got into
trouble before three months had gone by: he and a fellow-clerk did
something wrong with the money, and Winter decamped."
"I wonder if he went to Port Natal?" mused Roland. "We had some queer
people over there."
"It don't much matter where he went," returned Mrs. Jones, hotly. "He
did go, and he never came back, and he took Alletha's common sense
away with him: what with him and what with the dreadful affair at our
house of that poor Mr. Ollivera, she has never been herself since. It
both happened about the same time."
Roland recalled what he had recently heard from Jenner regarding the
death of the barrister, and felt a little at sea.
"What was Ollivera to her?" he asked.
"What! why, nothing," said Mrs. Jones. "And she's no better than a
lunatic to have taken it as she did. Whether it's that, or whether
it's the pining after the other precious runaway, _I_ don't know, but
one of the two's preying upon her. There's Mr. Ollivera!"
Roland went to the window. In the street, talking, stood a dark, small
man in the garb of a clergyman, with a grave but not unpleasant face,
and sad dark eyes.
"Oh, that's Mr. Ollivera, is it?" quoth Roland. "He looks another
shadow."
"And it is another case of obstinacy," rejoined Mrs. Jones. "He has
refused all along to believe that his brother killed himself; you
could as soon make him think the sun never shone. He comes to my
parlour and talks to me about it by the hour together, with his
note-case in his hand, till Alletha can't sit any longer, and goes
rushing off with her work like any mad woman."
"Why should she rush off? What harm does it do to her?"
"I don't know: it's one of the puzzles to be found out. His coming
here was a curious thing, Mr. Yorke. One day I was standing at the
front door, and saw a young clergyman passing. He looked at me, and
stopped; and I knew him for Henry Ollivera, though we had only met at
the time of the death. When I told him I had rooms to let, and very
nice ones, for it struck me that perhaps he might be able to recommend
them, he looked out in that thoughtful, dreamy way he has, (look at
his eyes now, Mr. Yorke!) seeing nothing, I'm certain; and then said
he'd go up and look at the rooms; and we went up. Would you believe
that he took them for himself on the spot?"
"What a brick!" cried Roland, who was following out suggested ideas
but imperfectly. "I'll take this one."
"Alletha gave a great cry when she heard he was coming, and said it
was Fate. I demanded what she meant by that, but she'd not open her
lips further. Talk of Natal pigs, forsooth, she's worse. He took
possession of the rooms within the week; and I say, Mr. Yorke, that,
Fate or not Fate, he never had but one object in coming--the sifting
of that past calamity. His poor mistaken mind is ever on the rack to
bring some discovery to light. It's like that search one reads of,
after the philosopher's stone."
Roland laughed. He was not very profound himself, but the
philosopher's stone and Mrs. Jones seemed utterly at variance.
"It does," she said. "For there's no stone to be found in the one
case, and no discovery to be made in the other, beyond what has been
made. I don't say this to the parson, Mr. Yorke; I listen to him and
humour him for the sake of his dead brother."
"Well, I shan't bother you about dead people, Mrs. J., so you let me
the room."
The bargain was not difficult. Every suggestion made by Mrs. Jones, he
acceded to before it had well left her lips. He had fallen into good
hands. Whatever might be Mrs. Jones's faults of manner and temper, she
was strictly just, regarding Roland's interests at least in an equal
degree with her own.
"Do you know," said Roland, nursing his knee as the bargain concluded,
"I have never felt so much at home since I left it, as I did just now
by your fire, Mrs. J.? I'm uncommon glad I came here."
He was genuine in what he said: indeed Roland could but be genuine
always, too much so sometimes. Mrs. J.--as he called her--brought back
so vividly the old home life of his boyhood, now gone by for ever,
that it was like being at Helstonleigh again.
"My eldest brother, George, is dead," said Roland. "Gerald is grand
with his chambers and his club, and is married besides, but I've not
seen him. Tod is in the army: do you remember him? an awful young
scamp he was, his face all manner of colours from fighting, and his
clothes torn to that degree that Lady Augusta used to threaten to send
him to school without any. Where's your husband number two, Mrs. J.?"
"It is to be hoped he is where he will never come away from; he went
sailing off three years ago from Liverpool," she answered sharply;
for, of all sore subjects, this of her second marriage was the worst.
"Anyway, I have made myself and my goods secure from him."
"Perhaps _he's_ at Port Natal, driving pigs. He'll find out what they
are if he is."
Mr. Ollivera was turning to the house. Roland opened the parlour door
when he had passed it; to look after him.
Some one else was there. Peering out from a dark nook in the passage,
her lips slightly apart, her eyes strained after the clergyman with a
strange kind of fear in their depths, stood Alletha Rye. Mr. Ollivera
suddenly turned back, as though he had forgotten something, and she
shrank out of sight. Mrs. Jones introduced Roland: "Mr. Roland Yorke."
Mr. Ollivera's face was thin; his dark brown eyes shone with a
flashing, restless, feverish light. Be you very sure when that
peculiar light is seen, it betokens a mind ill at rest. The eyes fixed
themselves on Roland: and perhaps there was something in the tall,
fine form, in the good-nature of the strong-featured countenance, that
recalled a memory to Mr. Ollivera.
"Any relative of the Yorkes of Helstonleigh?"
"I should think so," said Roland, "I am a Yorke of Helstonleigh. But
I've not been there since I went to Port Natal, seven years and more
ago. Do you know them, Mr. Ollivera?"
"I know a little of the minor-canon, William Yorke, and----"
"Oh! he!" curtly interrupted Roland, with a vast amount of scorn. "He
is a beauty to know, he is."
The remark, so like a flash of boyish resentment, excited a slight
smile in Mr. Ollivera.
"Bill Yorke showed himself a cur once in his life, and it's not me
that's going to forget it. He'd have cared for my telling him of it,
too, had I come back worth a few millions from Port Natal, and gone
about Helstonleigh in my carriage and four."
Mr. Ollivera said some courteous words about hoping to make Roland's
better acquaintance, and departed. Roland suddenly remembered the
claims of his office, and tore away at full speed.
Never slackening it until he reached the house of Greatorex and
Greatorex; and there he very nearly knocked down a little girl who had
just come out of the private entrance. Roland turned to apologise; but
the words died on his lips, and he stood like one suddenly struck
dumb, staring in silence.
In the pretty young lady, one of two who were talking together in the
passage, and looked round at the commotion, Roland thought he
recognised an old friend, now the wife of his cousin William Yorke. He
bounded in and seized her hands.
"You are Constance Channing?"
"No," replied the young lady, with wondering eyes, "I am Annabel."
Mr. Roland Yorke's first movement was to take the sweet face between
his hands, and kiss it tenderly. Struggling, blushing, almost weeping,
the young lady drew back against the wall.
"How dare you?" she demanded in bitter resentment. "Are you out of
your mind, sir?"
"Good gracious, Annabel, don't you know me? I am your old playfellow,
Roland Yorke."
"Does that give you any right to insult me? I might have known it was
no one else," she added in the moment's anger.
"Why, Annabel, it was only done in great joy. I had used to kiss you,
you remember: you were but a little mite then, and I was a big tease.
Oh, I am so glad to see you! I'd rather have met you than all the
world. You can't be angry with me. Shake hands and be friends."
To remain long at variance with Roland was one of the impossibilities
of social life. He possessed himself of Annabel Channing's hand and
nearly shook it off. What with his hearty words, and what (may it be
confessed, even of Annabel) with the flattery of his praises and
general admiration, Annabel's smiles broke forth amidst her blushes.
Roland's eyes looked as if they would devour her.
"I say, I never saw anybody so pretty in all my life. It is the nicest
face; just what Constance's used to be. I thought it was Constance,
you know. Was she not daft, though, to go and take up again with that
miserable William Yorke?"
Standing by, having looked on with a smile of grand pity mingled with
amusement, was a lady in the most fashionable attire, the amount of
hair on her head something marvellous to look at.
"I should have known Roland Yorke anywhere," she said, holding out her
hand.
"Why, if I don't believe it's one of the Joliffes!"
"Hush, Roland," said Annabel, hastening to stop his freedom, and the
tone proved that she had nearly forgiven him on her own score. "This
is Mrs. Bede Greatorex."
"Formerly Louisa Joliffe," put in that lady. "Now do you know me?"
"Well, I never met with such a strange thing," cried Roland. "That
makes three--four--of the old Helstonleigh people I have met today.
Hurst, Mrs. J., and now you two. I think there must be magic in it."
"You must come and see me soon, Roland," said Mrs. Greatorex as she
went out. Miss Channing waited for the little girl, Jane Greatorex,
who had run in her wilful manner into her uncle Bede's office. Roland
offered to fetch her.
"Thank you," said Miss Channing. "Do you know which is the office?"
"Know! law bless you!" cried Roland. "What do you suppose I am,
Annabel? Clerk to Greatorex and Greatorex."
Her cheeks flushed with surprise. "Clerk to Greatorex and Greatorex! I
thought you went to Port Natal to make your fortune."
"But I did not make it. It has been nothing but knocking about; then
and since. Carrick is a trump, as he always was, but he gets floored
himself sometimes; and that's his case now. If they had not given me a
stool here (which he got for me) I'm not sure but I should have gone
into the hot-pie line."
"The--what?"
"The hot-pie line; crying them in the streets, you know, with a basket
and a white cloth, and a paper cap on. There's a fine opening for it
down in Poplar."
Miss Channing burst out laughing.
"It would be nothing to a fellow who has been over yonder," avowed
Roland, jerking his head in the direction Port Natal might be supposed
to lie. And then leaping to a widely different subject in his volatile
lightness, he said something that brought the tears to her eyes, the
drooping tremor to her lips.
"It was so good in the old days; all of us children together; we were
no better. And Mr. Channing is gone, I hear! Oh, I am so sorry,
Annabel!"
"Two years last February," she said in a hushed tone. "We have just
put off our mourning for him. Mamma is in the dear old house, and
Arthur and Tom live with her. Will you please look for the little
girl, Mr. Yorke?"
"Now I vow!"--burst forth Roland in a heat. "I'll not stand that, you
know. One would think you had put on stilts. If ever you call me 'Mr.
Yorke' again, I'll go back to Port Natal."
She laughed a little pleasant laugh of embarrassment. "But, please, I
want my pupil. I cannot go myself into the offices to look for her."
At that moment Jane Greatorex came dancing up, and was secured. Roland
stood at the door to watch them away, exchanged a few light words with
a clerk then entering, and finally bustled into the office.
"Am I late?" began Roland, with characteristic indifference. "I'm very
sorry, Mr. Brown. I was looking at some lodgings; and I met an old
friend or two. It all served to hinder me, but I'll soon make up for
it."
"You have been away two hours and a half, Mr. Yorke."
"It's more, I think," said Roland. "I assure you I did my best to get
back. You'll soon find what I can get through, Mr. Brown."
Mr. Brown made no reply whatever. Jenner was absent, but Hurst was at
his post, writing, and the faint hum of voices in the adjoining room,
told that some client was holding conference with Mr. Bede Greatorex.
Roland resumed his copying where he had left off, and wrote for a
quarter of an hour without speaking. Diligence unheard of! At the end
of that time he looked off for a little relaxation.
"Hurst, where do you think I am going to lodge?"
"How should I know?" responded Mr. Hurst. And Roland told him where in
an undertone.
"Jenner and I were going along Tottenham Court Road, and met her," he
resumed presently, after a short interlude of writing. "She looks
twenty years older."
"That's through her tongue," suggested Mr. Hurst.
"In the old days down there, I'd as soon have gone to live in a
Tartar's house as in hers. But weren't her teas and toasted muffins
good! Here, in this desert of a place--and it's worse of a desert to
me than Port Natal--to get into her house will seem like getting into
home again."
Mr. Brown, looking off his work to refer to a paper by his side, took
the opportunity to direct a glance at the opposite desk. Whether
Roland took it to himself or not, he applied sedulously for a couple
of minutes to his writing.
"I say, Hurst, what a row there is about that dead Mr. Ollivera!"
"Where's the row?"
"Well, it seems to crop up everywhere. Jenner talked of it; she talked
of it; I hear that other Mr. Ollivera talks of it. You were in the
thick of it, they say."
Hurst nodded. "My father was the surgeon fetched to him when he was
found dead, and had to give evidence at the inquest. I went to see him
buried; it _was_ a scene. They stole a march on us, though."
"Who did?"
"They let us all disperse, and then went and read the burial service
over the grave; Ollivera the clergyman, and three or four more. Arthur
Channing was one."
"Arthur Channing!"
Had any close observer been in the office, he might perchance have
noticed that while Mr. Brown's eyes still sought his work, his pen had
ceased to play. His lips were slightly parted; his ears were cocked;
the tale evidently bore for him as great an interest as it did for the
speakers--an interest he did not choose should be seen. Had they been
speaking aloud, he would have checked the conversation at once with an
intimation that it could not concern anybody: as they spoke covertly,
he listened at leisure. Mr. Hurst resumed.
"Yes, Arthur Channing. The rumour ran that William Yorke had promised
to be present, but declined at the last moment, and Arthur Channing
voluntarily took his place out of sympathy for the feelings of the
dead man's brother."
"Bravo, old Arthur! he's the trump he always was. That's the Reverend
Bill all over."
"The Reverend Bill let them have his surplice. And there they stood,
and read the burial service over the poor fellow by stealth, just as
the old Scotch covenanters held their secret services in caves.
Altogether a vast deal of romance encircled the affair, and some
mystery. One Godfrey Pitman's name was mixed up in it."
"Who was Godfrey Pitman?"
Hurst dipped his pen slowly into the ink. "Nobody ever knew. He was
lodging in the house, and went away mysteriously the same evening.
Helstonleigh got to say in joke that there must have been two Godfrey
Pitmans. The people of the house swore through thick and thin that the
real Godfrey Pitman left at half-past four o'clock and went away by
rail at five; others saw him quit the house at dark, and depart by the
eight o'clock train. It got to a regular dispute."
"But had Godfrey Pitman anything to do with Mr. Ollivera?"
"Not he."
"Then where was the good of bringing him up?" cried Roland.
"I am only telling you of the different interests that were brought to
bear upon it. It _was_ an affair, that death was!"
The entrance of Mr. Frank Greatorex broke up the colloquy, recalling
the clerks to their legitimate work. But the attention of one of them
had become so absorbed that it was with difficulty he could get
himself back again to passing life.
And that one was Mr. Brown.