GOING INTO SOCIETY.
The year was growing a little later; the evenings were lengthening,
and the light of the setting sun, illumining the west with a golden
radiance, threw some of its cheering brightness even on the streets
and houses of close, smoky London.
It shone on the person of the Reverend Henry William Ollivera, as he
sat at home, taking his frugal meal, a tea-dinner. The room was a good
one, and well furnished in a plain way. The table had been drawn
towards one of the windows, open to the hum of the street; the
rosewood cabinet at the back was handsome with its sheet of
plate-glass and its white marble top; the chairs and sofa were covered
with substantial cloth, the pier-glass over the mantlepiece reflected
back bright ornaments. Mr. Ollivera was of very simple habits, partly
because he really cared little how he lived, partly because the scenes
of distress and privation he met with daily in his ministrations read
him a lesson that he was not slow to take. How could he pamper himself
up with rich food, when so many within a stone's throw were pining for
want of bread? His landlady, Mrs. Jones, gave him sound lectures on
occasion, telling him to his face that he was trying to break down.
Sometimes she prepared nice dinners in spite of him: a fowl, or some
other luxury, and Mr. Ollivera smiled and did not say it was not
enjoyed. The district of his curacy was full of poor; poverty, vice,
misery reigned, and _would_ reign, in spite of what he could do. Some
of the worst phases of London life were ever before him. The great
problem, "What shall be done with these?" arose to his mind day by
day. He had his scripture readers; he had other help; but destitution
both of body and mind reared itself aloft like a many-headed monster,
defying all solution. Sometimes Mr. Ollivera did not come in to dinner
at all, but took a mutton-chop with his tea; as he was doing now.
Four years had elapsed since his brother's mysterious death (surely it
may be called so!) and the conviction on the clergyman's mind, that
the verdict was wholly at variance with the facts, had not abated one
iota. Nay, time had but served to strengthen it. Nothing else had
strengthened it. No discovery had been made, no circumstance, however
minute, had arisen to throw light upon it one way or the other. The
hoped-for, looked-for communication from the police-agent, Butterby,
had never come. In point of fact Mr. Butterby, in regard to this case,
had found himself wholly at sea. Godfrey Pitman did not turn up in
response to the threatened "looking after;" Miss Rye departed for
London with her sister when affairs at the Jones's came to a crash;
and, if the truth must be told, Mr. Butterby veered round to his
original opinion, that the verdict had been a correct one. Once, and
once only, that renowned officer had presented himself at the house of
Greatorex and Greatorex. Happening to be in London, he thought he
would give them a call. But he brought no news. It was but a few weeks
following the occurrence, and there might not have been time for any
to arise. One thing he had requested--to retain in his possession the
scrap of writing found on the table at the death. It might be useful
to him, he said, for of course he should still keep his eyes open: and
Mr. Greatorex readily acquiesced. Since then nothing whatever had been
heard from Mr. Butterby, or from any other quarter; but the sad facts
were rarely out of the clergyman's mind; and the positive conviction,
the _expectation_ of the light, to break in sooner or later, burnt
within him with a steady ray, sure and true as Heaven.
Not of this, however, was Mr. Ollivera's mind filled this evening. His
thoughts were running on the disheartening scenes of the day; the
difficult men and women he had tried to deal with--some of them meek
and resigned, many hard and bad; all wanting help for their sick
bodies or worse souls. There was one case in particular that
interested him sadly. A man named Gisby, discovered shortly before,
lay in a room, dying slowly. He did not want help in kind, as so many
did; but of spiritual help, none could be in greater need. Little by
little, Mr. Ollivera got at his history. It appeared that the man had
once been servant in the house of Kene, the Queen's counsel--Judge
Kene now: he had been raised to the bench in the past year. During his
service there, a silver mug disappeared; circumstances seemed to point
to Gisby as guilty, and he was discharged, getting subsequently other
employment.
But now, the man was not guilty--as he convinced Mr. Ollivera, and the
suspicion appeared to have worked him a great deal of ill, and made
him hard. On this day, when the clergyman sat by his bed-side, reading
and praying, he had turned a deaf ear. "Where's the use?" he roughly
cried, "Sir Thomas thinks me guilty always." It struck Mr. Ollivera
that the man had greatly respected his master, had valued his good
opinion and craved for it still; and the next morning this was
confirmed. "You'll go to him when I'm dead, sir, and tell him the
truth then, that I was not guilty? I never touched the mug, or knew
how or where it went."
Returning home with these words ringing in his ears, Mr. Ollivera
could not get the man out of his mind. So long as the _sense of being
wronged_ lay upon Gisby, so long would he encase himself in his hard
indifference, and refuse to hear. "I must get Kene to go to see the
man," decided Mr. Ollivera. "He must hear with his own ears and see
with his own eyes that he was not guilty, and tell him so; and then
Gisby will come round. I wonder if Kene is back from circuit."
Excessively tired with his day's work, for his frame was not of the
strongest, Mr. Ollivera did not care to go out that evening to Sir
Thomas Kene's distant residence on the chance of not finding him. And
yet, if the judge was back, there ought to be no time lost in
communicating with him, for Gisby was daily getting nearer to death.
"Bede Greatorex will be able to tell me," suddenly thought Mr.
Ollivera, when his tea had been long over and twilight was setting in.
"I'll send and ask him."
Moving to his writing-table, he wrote a short note, reading it over
before enclosing it in an envelope.
"Dear Bede,--Can you tell me whether Sir Thomas Kene is in London? I
wish particularly to see him as soon as possible. It is on a little
matter connected with my parish work.
"Truly yours
"WILLIAM OLLIVERA."
It was a latent thought that induced Mr. Ollivera to add the
concluding sentence and the motive shall be told. He and Bede
Greatorex had come to an issue twice upon the subject of his so
persistently cherishing the notion that the now long-past death was
anything but a suicide; or rather, that he should pursue it. Bede
heard so much of it from him that he grew vexed, and at length vowed
he would listen to him no more. And Mr. Ollivera thought that if Bede
fancied he wanted to see Sir Thomas Kene on that subject, he might
refuse to answer him.
Ringing the bell, he gave the note to the servant with a request
(preferred with deprecation and a plea of his own tired state, for he
was one of those who are sensitively chary of giving any extra
trouble) that it should be taken to Mr. Bede Greatorex, and an answer
waited for.
But when the girl got downstairs, there arose some slight difficulty;
she was engaged in a necessary household occupation--ironing--and her
mistress did not care that she should quit it. Miss Rye stood by with
her things on, about to go out on some errand of her own. Ah me! these
apparently trifling chances do not happen accidentally.
"Can't _you_ just step round to Bedford Square, with it, Alletha?"
asked Mrs. Jones. "It won't take you far out of your way."
Miss Rye's silent answer--she seemed always silent now--was to pick up
the note and go out with it. She knew the house, for she worked
occasionally for Mrs. Bede Greatorex, and was passing to the private
entrance when she encountered Frank Greatorex, who was coming out at
the other door. He wished her good evening, and she told him her
errand, showing the note directed to Bede.
"He is in his office still," said Frank, throwing open the door for
her. "Walk in. Mr. Brown, attend here, please."
Miss Rye stepped into the semi-lighted room, for there was only a
shaded lamp on Mr. Brown's desk; and Frank Greatorex, closing the
door, was gone again. Mr. Brown, at work as late as his master, came
forward.
"For Mr. Bede Greatorex," said Miss Rye, handing him the note. "I will
wait----"
The words were broken off with a faint, sharp cry. A cry, low though
it was, of surprise, of terror, of dismay. Both their faces blanched
to whiteness, they stood gazing at each other, she with strained eyes
and drawnback lips, he with a kind of forced stillness on his
features, that nevertheless told of inward emotion.
"Oh, my good heaven!" she breathed in her agitation. "Is it _you?_"
Miss Rye had heard speak of Mr. Brown, the managing clerk in the
department of Mr. Bede Greatorex. Jenner had mentioned him: Roland
Yorke had commented on him and his wig. But that "Mr. Brown" should be
the man now standing before her, she had never suspected; no, not in
her wildest dreams.
"Sit down, Miss Rye. You are faint."
She put his arm from her, as he would have supported her to a seat,
and staggered to one of herself. He followed, and stood by her in
silence.
"What are you called _here?_" she began--and, it may be, that in the
moment's agitation she forgot his ostensible name and really put it as
a question, not in mocking, condemnatory scorn:--"Godfrey Pitman?"
Every instinct of terror the man possessed seemed to rise up within
him at sound of the name. He glanced round the room; at the desks; at
the walls; as if to assure himself that no ear was there.
"Hush--sh--sh!" with a prolonged note of caution. "Never breathe that
name, here or elsewhere."
"What if I were to? To speak it aloud to all who ought to hear it?"
"Why then you would bring a hornet's nest about heads that you little
wot of. Their sting might end in worse than death."
"Death for you?"
"No: I should be the hangman."
"What do you mean?"
"Listen, Miss Rye. I cannot tell you what I mean: and your better plan
will be never to ask me. If----"
"Better for whom?" she interrupted.
"For--well, for me, for one. The fact is, that certain interests
pertaining to myself and others--_certain reminiscences of the past_,"
he continued with very strong emphasis, "have become so complicated,
so interwoven as it were one with the other, that we must in all
probability stand or fall together."
"I do not understand you."
"I can scarcely expect that you should. But--were any proceeding on
your part, any word, whether spoken by design or accident, to lead to
that fall, you would rue it to the last hour of your life. _That_ you
can at least understand."
The faintness was passing off, and Miss Rye rose, steadying herself
against the railings of Mr. Hurst's desk. At that moment the inner
door was unlatched, and the clerk, recalled to present duties, caught
the note from her unresisting hand.
"For Mr. Bede Greatorex," he said aloud, glancing at the
superscription. "I will give it to him."
It was Mr. Bede Greatorex who came forth. He took the note, and
glanced at Alletha.
"Ah, Miss Rye! Is it you?"
"Our maid was busy, so I brought it down," she explained. "Mr.
Ollivera is waiting for an answer."
Bede Greatorex went back to his room, leaving the intervening door
open. She sat and waited. Mr. Brown, whose work was in a hurry, wrote
on steadily at his desk by the light of a shaded lamp. A minute or
two, and Bede Greatorex brought her a bit of paper twisted up, and
showed her out himself.
With the errand she had come abroad to execute for herself gone clean
out of her head, Alletha Rye went back home, her brain in a whirl. The
streets she passed through were crowded with all the bustle and jostle
of London life; but, had she been traversing an African desert, she
could not have felt more entirely alone. Her life that night lay
within her: and it was one of confused tumult.
The note found Mr. Ollivera asleep: as the twilight deepened, he had
dropped, in sheer weariness, into an unconscious slumber. Untwisting
the scrap of paper, he held it near a lighted candle and read the
contents:--
"Dear Henry,--Kene is back, and is coming to us this evening; we
expect two or three friends. Louisa will be pleased if you can join
us. Faithfully yours,
"B.G."
Mr. Ollivera eschewed gaiety of all kinds, parties included. Over and
over again had he been fruitlessly invited to the grand dinners and
soirées of Mrs. Bede Greatorex, until they left off asking him. "Two
or three friends," he repeated as he put down the note. "I don't mind
that, for I must see Kene."
Dressing himself; he was on the point of setting out, when a messenger
arrived to fetch him to a sick person; so that it was half-past ten
when he reached the house of Mr. Greatorex. And then, but for his
mission to the Judge, he would have quitted it again without entering
the reception-rooms.
Two or three friends! Lining the wide staircase, dotting the handsome
landing, crowding the numerous guest-rooms, there they were; a mob of
them. Women in the costly and fantastic toilettes of the present day;
men bowing and bending with their evening manners on. Mr. Ollivera
resented the crowd as a personal wrong.
"'Two or three friends,' you wrote me word, Bede," he reproachfully
said, seeing his cousin in a corner near the entrance-door. "You know
I do not like these things and never go to them."
"On my word, Henry, I did not know it was going to be this cram,"
returned Bede Greatorex. "I thought we might be twenty, perhaps, all
told."
"How can you put up with this? Is it _seemly_, Bede--in this once
staid and pattern house?"
"Seemly?" repeated Bede Greatorex.
"Forgive me, Bede. I was thinking of the dear old times under your
mother's rule. The happy evenings, all hospitality and cheerfulness;
the chapter read at bedtime, when the small knot of guests had
departed. _Friends_ were entertained then; but I don't know what you
call these."
Perhaps Bede Greatorex had never, amid all his provocations, felt so
tempted to avow the truth as now--that he abhorred it with his whole
heart and soul. Henry William Ollivera could not hate and despise it
more than he. As to the good old days of sunshine and peace thus
recalled, a groan well nigh burst from him, at their recollection. It
was indeed a contrast, then and now: in more things than this. The
world bore a new aspect for Bede Greatorex, and not a happier one.
"Is Kene here, Bede?"
"Not yet. What is it that you want with him?"
Mr. Ollivera gave a brief outline of the case; Bede left him in the
middle of it to welcome fresh arrivals. Something awfully fine loomed
up, in pink silk and lace, and blazing emeralds. It was Mrs. Bede
Greatorex. Her chignon was a mile high, and her gown was below her
shoulder-blades. The modest young clergyman turned away at the sight,
his cheeks flushing a dusky red. Not in this kind of society of late
years, the curiosities of fashionable attire were new to him.
"Is Bede mad?" he inwardly said, "or has he lost all control over his
wife's actions?"
Somebody else, not used to society, was staring on with all the eyes
of wonder he possessed. And that was Roland Yorke. Leaning against the
wall in a new suit of dress-clothes, with a huge pair of white gloves
on that would have been quite the proper thing at Port Natal, stood
Roland. Mr. Ollivera, trying to get away from everybody, ran against
him. The two were great friends now, and Roland was in the habit of
running up to Mr. Ollivera's drawing-room at will.
"I say," began Roland, "this is rather strong, is it not?"
"Do you mean the crowd?"
"I mean everything. Some of the girls and women look as if they had
forgotten to put their gowns on. Why do they dress in this way?"
"Because they fancy it's the fashion, I suppose," replied Mr.
Ollivera, drawing down the corners of his thin lips.
"They must have taken the fashion from the Zulu Kaffirs," returned
Roland. "When one has been knocked about amidst that savage
lot--fought with 'em, too, men and women--one loses superfluous
fastidiousness, Mr. Ollivera; but I _don't_ think this is right."
Mr. Ollivera intimated that there could not be a doubt it was all
wrong.
"Down in Helstonleigh, where I come from, they dress themselves
decently," observed Roland, forgetting that his reminiscences of the
place dated more than seven years back, and that fashion penetrates to
all the strongholds of society, whether near or distant. "The girls
there are lovely, too. Just look if they are not."
Mr. Ollivera, in some slight surprise, followed the direction of the
speaker's eyes, and saw a young lady sitting back in a corner; her
white evening dress, her banded hair, the soft, pure flush on her
delicate face, all as simple, and genuine, and modest as herself.
"That's what the girls are in my native place, Mr. Ollivera."
"Mrs. Bede Greatorex is a native of Helstonleigh, also," observed the
clergyman, dryly. And for a moment Roland was dumb. The pink robe, the
tower of monstrous hair, and the shoulder-blades were in full view
just then.
"No, she is not," cried he, triumphantly. "The Joliffe girls were born
in barracks; they only came among us when the old colonel settled
down."
"Who is the young lady?"
"Miss Channing. Her brother and I are old chums. He is the grandest
fellow living; the most noble gentleman the world can show. He--why,
if I don't believe you know him!" broke off Roland, as a recollection
of something he had been told flashed across his mind.
"I!" returned Mr. Ollivera.
"Was Arthur Channing not at a--a certain night funeral?" asked Roland,
dropping his voice out of delicacy. "You know. When that precious
cousin of mine, Bill Yorke, lent you his surplice."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Ollivera, hastily; "I had forgotten the name. And
so that is Arthur Channing's sister!"
"She is governess to that provoking little wretch, Jane Greatorex,"
said polite Roland, forgetting in his turn that he was speaking of his
listener's cousin, "and she ought to be a queen. She ought, Mr.
Ollivera, and you would say so if you knew her. She looks one, does
she not? She's as like Arthur as two pins, and he's fit for the
noblest king in the world."
The clergyman slightly smiled. He had become accustomed to his new
friend's impulsive mode of speech.
"Yes, we are both of us down just now, dependents of the Greatorex
house--she teacher in it, I office-clerk," went on Roland. "Never
mind: luck may turn some day. I told Annabel so just now, but she sent
me away. I was talking to her too much, she said, and made people
stare. Perhaps it was so: I know her cheeks turned red every other
minute."
"And to make them paler, you take up your position here and gaze at
her," observed Mr. Ollivera with another smile--and smiles were rare
from him.
"Oh, law!" cried Roland. "I'm always doing something wrong. The fact
is, there's nobody else worth looking at. See there! a yellow gown and
no petticoats under it. If this is fashion I hope my mother and
sisters are not going in for it! I shall go back to her," he added,
after a moment's pause. "It's a shame she should sit there alone, with
nothing to look at but those Models, passing and repassing right
before her eyes. If Arthur were here, I believe he'd take her away, I
do."
Roland, vegetating in that unfashionable region, Port Natal, had not
yet become accustomed to the exigencies of modern days; and he spoke
freely. Just then the throng was great in front of him, and he
remained where he was. Taller than almost any one in the room, he
could look at Annabel at will; Mr. Ollivera, about up to Roland's
shoulder, could get but occasional glimpses of her. Many a one glanced
at Roland with interest, wondering who the fine, strong young man was,
leaning against the wall there, with the big white gloves on, and the
good-natured face, unsophisticated as a boy's.
Elbowing his way presently across the room something after the manner
he might have elbowed through a crowd on the quay at Durban, Roland
once more took up his position by Miss Channing. The old playfellows
had become new friends, and Roland contrived that they should often
meet. When Miss Channing was walking in the Square with her pupil, he
was safe to run up, and stay talking; quite oblivious to the
exigencies of the office waiting for his services. Jane Greatorex had
learned to look for him, and would walk where she was likely to see
him, in defiance of Miss Channing. In spite of Roland's early fever to
quit his native place, in spite of his prolonged rovings, he was
essentially a home-bird, and could have been content to talk of the
old days and the old people with Annabel for ever.
"Where's Jane tonight?" he began, as he joined her.
"In bed. She was very naughty this evening, and for once Mr. Bede
Greatorex interfered and sent her."
"Poor child! She is awfully troublesome, though, and one gets tired of
that in the long run. If you--Halloa!"
Roland stopped. He was gazing in surprise at someone standing near: a
man nearly his own age, tall and strong, and bearing altogether a
general resemblance to himself. But the other's face had a cynical
cast, expressive of ill-nature, and the lips were disagreeably full.
Roland recognized him for his brother, although they had not met for
more than seven years.
"That's Gerald, if ever I saw him in my life."
"Yes, it is Gerald," said Miss Channing, quietly. "He generally comes
to Mrs. Bede's soirées."
"Isn't he got up!"
Roland's expression was an apt one. Gerald Yorke was in the very pink
of male fashion. His manners were easy; entirely those of a man at
home in society.
"He does it grand, does he not?" cried Roland, who had made one
advance towards making friends with his brother since coming to
London, and was not responded to in kind.
Miss Channing laughed. Gerald Yorke had entered on some kind of public
career and was very prosperous, she believed, moving amidst the great
ones of the land. Roland, quite forgetting where he was, or perhaps
not caring, set up a whistle by way of attracting the attention of
Gerald, who turned amidst others at the strange sound.
"How d'ye do, Gerald, old boy? Come and shake hands."
The voice was loud, glad, hearty; the great hand, with its great white
glove drawn up over it, minus a button, was stretched above
intervening heads. Gerald Yorke's face grew dark with the light of
annoyance, and he hesitated before making the best of the situation,
and getting near enough to shake the offered hand.
He would far rather have become conveniently deaf, and walked off in
an opposite direction. Alike though the brothers were in general
personal resemblance, no contrast could be greater than they presented
in other respects. Gerald, fine and fashionable, with his aristocratic
air and his slow, affected drawl, was the very type of all that is
false of that insincerity and heartlessness obtaining in what is
called society. Roland, hot, thoughtless, never weighing a word before
he spoke it, impulsive, genuine, utterly unsophisticated as to the
usages and manners that go to make up the meetings of fashionable
life, was just as single-hearted and true.
Gerald, as Roland put it, "went in" for grandeur, and he was already
prejudiced against his brother. In a communication from Lord Carrick,
apologizing for not being able to answer satisfactorily Gerald's
appeal for a loan, that nobleman had confidentially avowed that he
could not at present assist even Roland effectually, and had got him a
place as clerk temporarily, to save him from embarking in the hot-pie
line. It may therefore be readily understood that Gerald did not
consider an intimacy with Roland likely to conduce to his own
advancement (to say nothing of respectability) and his annoyance and
surprise at seeing him now where he did were about equally great.
The hands were shaken, and a few words of greeting passed; warm and
open on Roland's part, cool and cautious on Gerald's. A friend of
Gerald's, the Honourable Mr. Somebody, who was by his side and begged
for an introduction, was more cordial than he.
"I have not seen him since we parted seven years ago, when I went off
to Port Natal," explained Roland with his accustomed candour. "Haven't
I had ups and downs since then, Gerald!" he continued, turning his
beaming face upon his brother. "You have heard of them I dare say,
through Carrick."
"You did not make a fortune," drawled Gerald, wishing he could get
away.
"A fortune! Law bless you, Ger! I was glad to work on the port with
the Kaffirs, unloading boats; and to serve in stores, and to drive
cattle and pigs; anything for bread. You can't think how strange all
this seems to me"--pointing to the waving crowd in the room, several
of whom had gathered round, attracted by this fraternal meeting.
"Aw! Surprised to see you amidst them," minced Gerald, who could not
resist the little ill-natured hint, in his growing rage.
"Mrs. Greatorex invited me," said Roland, his honest simplicity
detecting not the undercurrent of sarcasm. "I am in Greatorex's
office; I don't suppose you knew it, Gerald. They give me twenty
shillings a week; and Carrick goes bail for my rigging out. I got this
coat from his tailor's tonight."
The crowd laughed, the Honourable roared, and Gerald Yorke was half
mad.
"I'd not _acknowledge_ it, at any rate, if I were you," he said,
imprudently, his affectation lost in a gust of temper. "After all you
were born a Yorke."
"Acknowledge what, Ger?" returned Roland.
"The--the--the shame of taking a common clerkship at twenty shillings
a week; and all the rest of the degradation," burst forth Gerald,
setting conventionality at defiance. "My uncle, Lord Carrick, warned
me of this; my mother, Lady Augusta, spoke of it in a recent letter to
me," he added for the benefit of the ears around.
"Why, Ger, where's the use of being put out?" retorted Roland, but
with no symptom of ill-humour in his good-natured tone. "I was down,
and had nobody to help me. Carrick couldn't; old Dick Yorke wouldn't;
Lady Augusta said she had all of you pulling at her: and so Carrick
talked to Greatorex and Greatorex, and they put me into the place. The
pound a week keeps me; in clover too; you should hear what I sometimes
was reduced to live on at Port Natal. There was an opening for a
hot-pie man down at Poplar, and the place was offered me; if I had
gone into that line you might have grumbled."
The ladies and gentlemen shrieked with merriment: they began to think
the fine young fellow, who looked every whit as independent a man as
his fastidious brother, was chaffing them all. Gerald ground his teeth
and tried to get away.
"You'll come and see me, old fellow?" said Roland. "I've a stunning
room, bedroom and sitting-room in one, the bedstead's let out at
night. It is at Mother Jones's; poor soft Jenkins's widow, you know,
that we used to wot of in the days gone by."
Gerald made good his escape: and when they were quiet again. Roland
had leisure to look at Miss Channing. Her bent face shone like a
peony, the effect of vexation and suppressed laughter.
"Why, what's the matter>" he asked.
"You should not say such things, Roland. It was quite out of place in
a room like this."
"What things?"
"About yourself. It is so different, you know, from anything young men
experience here."
"But it is all true," returned Roland, unable to see the argument.
"Still it need not be proclaimed to an indiscriminate crowd. You might
show more tact. Gerald was fit to die of mortification. And you who
used to have so much pride!"
Roland Yorke, honestly willing to please everybody and vex none, stood
looking ruefully. "As to pride, Annabel, if a fellow wants that
knocked out of him, he had better go over to Port Natal, and get
buffeted as I did," he concluded. "I left it all behind me there, I'm
afraid. And, of tact, I don't think I ever possessed any."
Which was perfectly true.
Meanwhile Mr. Ollivera, waiting in vain to see Sir Thomas Kene enter,
grew sick of the ever-changing, ever-moving panorama that jostled him,
and went downstairs to his uncle's small and comfortable room, leaving
word with the servants where he might be found if the Judge came in.
Mr. Greatorex very rarely joined these large parties. He was sitting
in quiet now, a bit of bright fire in the grate, for the evenings were
still chilly, and a reading-lamp, newspapers, and books on the table.
Slender, active, upright still, he scarcely looked his age, sixty-two:
his face was fresh yet, and not a thread of grey mingled with the
smooth brown hair.
"Henry, is it you!" he exclaimed; for he was surprised to see his
nephew enter at that late hour. And Mr. Ollivera, as he took a chair,
apologized for interrupting him, but said he had grown so weary of the
turmoil above.
"You don't mean to say _you_ have been making one of them!"
"I have for once, uncle. It will serve me for ten years to come.
People say to me sometimes, 'Why don't you go into society?' Good
heavens! to think that rational beings, God's people who have souls to
be saved, can waste their precious hours in such, evening after
evening! The women for the most part are unseemly to behold; their
bodies half dressed, their faces powdered and painted, their heads
monstrosities, their attire sinfully lavish. The men affect to be
heartless, drawling coxcombs. It is a bad phase of life, this that we
have drifted into, rotten at its core; men and women alike artificial.
Do _you_ like this in your house, Uncle Greatorex?"
"When Bede married, I resigned to him the mastership of the house, so
far as these things were concerned," replied Mr. Greatorex.
"I know. Does Bede like it?"
"He countenances it. For myself, I trouble them but little now. Even
my dinner I often cause to be served here. Bede's wife was civil
enough to come down this evening and press me to join them."
"Bede looks more worried than usual--and that need not be," observed
William Ollivera. "What is it, I wonder? To me he has the air of a man
silently fretting himself into his grave."
"You know what it is, William," said Mr. Greatorex, in a low tone, and
calling his nephew as he often did, by his second Christian name.
"Bede's wife is a great worry. But there's another."
"What is it?"
"Illness," breathed Mr. Greatorex. "Symptoms that we don't like have
shown themselves in him lately. However--they may pass away. The
doctors think they will."
"I came here to meet Kene, whom I very particularly wish to see,"
resumed the clergyman, after a pause. "Bede said he expected him."
"Ay; some magnet must have drawn you, apart from _that_," pointing his
thumb at the rooms above. And Mr. Ollivera explained why he was
seeking the Judge.
"I thought something fresh might have arisen in the old case; or at
least that you fancied it," observed Mr. Greatorex. "You must be
coming round to our way of thinking, William. Time goes on, but _that_
stands still."
"I shall never come round to it."
"John has been dead four years and two months, now," pursued Mr.
Greatorex. "And it has stood still all that time."
William Ollivera, leaned forward in his chair, and the fire and the
lamp alike played on his wasted face, on the bright flush of emotion
that rose in his thin cheeks.
"Uncle! Uncle Greatorex! it is as fresh in my mind now as it was the
first day I went down to Helstonleigh, and saw him lying white and
cold and dead, with the ban of the coroner's verdict upon him. I
cannot shake it off: and of late I am not sure but I have tried to do
so, in the sheer weariness of prolonged disappointment. 'Tarry yet
awhile, and wait,' a voice seems saying ever to me: and I am content
to wait. I cannot rest; I find no peace. When I wake in the morning, I
say, 'This day may bring forth fruit;' when I go to rest at night, the
thought, that it has not, is the last upon me. There will be neither
rest nor peace for me until I have solved the enigma of my brother's
death; and I am always working on for it."
"Sir Thomas Kene has come, sir," interrupted a servant at this
juncture, opening the door.
Henry Ollivera rose; and, wishing Mr. Greatorex good night, went forth
to his interview with the Judge.