Mr. Galloway was in his office. Mr. Galloway was fuming and fretting at
the non-arrival of his clerk, Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins was a punctual
man; in fact, more than punctual: his proper time for arriving at the
office was half-past nine; but the cathedral clock had rarely struck the
quarter-past before Mr. Jenkins would be at his post. Almost any other
morning it would not have mattered a straw to Mr. Galloway whether
Jenkins was a little after or a little before his time; but on this
particular morning he had especial need of him, and had come himself to
the office unusually early.
One-two, three-four! chimed the quarters of the cathedral. “There it
goes--half-past nine!” ejaculated Mr. Galloway. “What _does_ Jenkins
mean by it? He knew he was wanted early.”
A sharp knock at the office door, and there entered a little dark woman,
in a black bonnet and a beard. She was Mr. Jenkins’s better half, and
had the reputation for being considerably the grey mare.
“Good morning, Mr. Galloway. A pretty kettle of fish, this is!”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Mr. Galloway, surprised at the address.
“Where’s Jenkins?”
“Jenkins is in bed with his head plastered up. He’s the greatest booby
living, and would positively have come here all the same, but I told him
I’d strap him down with cords if he attempted it. A pretty object he’d
have looked, staggering through the streets, with his head big enough
for two, and held together with white plaster!”
“What has he done to his head?” wondered Mr. Galloway.
“Good gracious! have you not heard?” exclaimed the lady, whose mode of
speech was rarely overburdened with polite words, though she meant no
disrespect by it. “He got locked up in the cloisters last night with old
Ketch and the bishop.”
Mr. Galloway stared at her. He had been dining, the previous evening,
with some friends at the other end of the town, and knew nothing of the
occurrence. Had he been within hearing when the college bell tolled out
at night, he would have run to ascertain the cause as eagerly as any
schoolboy. “Locked up in the cloisters with old Ketch and the bishop!”
he repeated, in amazement. “I do not understand.”
Mrs. Jenkins proceeded to enlighten him. She gave the explanation of the
strange affair of the keys, as it had been given to her by the unlucky
Joe. While telling it, Arthur Channing entered, and, almost immediately
afterwards, Roland Yorke.
“The bishop, of all people!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “What an untoward
thing for his lordship!”
“No more untoward for him than for others,” retorted the lady. “It just
serves Jenkins right. What business had he to go dancing through the
cloisters with old Ketch and his keys?”
“But how did Jenkins get hurt?” asked Mr. Galloway, for that particular
point had not yet been touched upon.
“He is the greatest fool going, is Jenkins,” was the complimentary
retort of Jenkins’s wife. “After he had helped to ring out the bell,
he must needs go poking and groping into the organ-loft, hunting
for matches or some such insane rubbish. He might have known, had he
possessed any sense, that candles and matches are not likely to be there
in summer-time! Why, if the organist wanted ever so much to stop in
after dark, when the college is locked up for the night, he wouldn’t be
allowed to do it! It’s only in winter, when he has to light a candle to
get through the afternoon service, that they keep matches and dips up
there.”
“But about his head?” repeated Mr. Galloway, who was aware of the
natural propensity of Mrs. Jenkins to wander from the point under
discussion.
“Yes, about his head!” she wrathfully answered. “In attempting to
descend the stairs again, he missed his footing, and pitched right down
to the bottom of the flight. That’s how his head came in for it. He
wants a nurse with him always, does Jenkins, for he is no better than a
child in leading-strings.”
“Is he much hurt?”
“And there he’d have lain till morning, but for the bishop,” resumed
Mrs. Jenkins, passing over the inquiry. “After his lordship got out, he,
finding Jenkins did not come, told Thorpe to go and look for him in the
organ-loft. Thorpe said he should have done nothing of the sort, but for
the bishop’s order; he was just going to lock the great doors again, and
there Jenkins would have been fast! They found him lying at the foot of
the stairs, just inside the choir gates, with no more life in him than
there is in a dead man.”
“I asked you whether he is seriously hurt, Mrs. Jenkins.”
“Pretty well. He came to his senses as they were bringing him home, and
somebody ran for Hurst, the surgeon. He is better this morning.”
“But not well enough to come to business?”
“Hurst told him if he worried himself with business, or anything else
to-day, he’d get brain fever as sure as a gun. He ordered him to stop in
bed and keep quiet, if he could.”
“Of course he must do so,” observed Mr. Galloway.
“There is no of course in it, when men are the actors,” dissented Mrs.
Jenkins. “Hurst did well to say ‘if he could,’ when ordering him to
keep quiet. I’d rather have an animal ill in the house, than I’d have
a man--they are ten times more reasonable. There has Jenkins been,
tormenting himself ever since seven o’clock this morning about coming
here; he was wanted particularly, he said. ‘Would you go if you were
dead?’ I asked him; and he stood it out that if he were dead it would be
a different thing. ‘Not different at all,’ I said. A nice thing it would
be to have to nurse him through a brain fever!”
“I am grieved that it should have happened,” said Mr. Galloway, kindly.
“Tell him from me, that we can manage very well without him. He must not
venture here again, until Mr. Hurst says he may come with safety.”
“I should have told him that, to pacify him, whether you had said it or
not,” candidly avowed Mrs. Jenkins. “And now I must go back home on the
run. As good have no one to mind my shop as that young house-girl of
ours. If a customer comes in for a pair of black stockings, she’ll take
and give ‘em a white knitted nightcap. She’s as deficient of common
sense as Jenkins is. Your servant, sir. Good morning, young gentlemen!”
“Here, wait a minute!” cried Mr. Galloway, as she was speeding off. “I
cannot understand at all. The keys could not have been changed as they
lay on the flags.”
“Neither can anybody else understand it,” returned Mrs. Jenkins. “If
Jenkins was not a sober man--and he had better let me catch him being
anything else!--I should say the two, him and Ketch, had had a drop too
much. The bishop himself could make neither top nor tail of it. It’ll
teach Jenkins not to go gallivanting again after other folk’s business!”
She finally turned away, and Mr. Galloway set himself to revolve the
perplexing narrative. The more he thought, the less he was nearer doing
so; like the bishop, he could make neither top nor tail of it. “It is
entirely beyond belief!” he remarked to Arthur Channing; “unless Ketch
took out the wrong keys!”
“And if he took out the wrong keys, how could he have locked the south
door?” interrupted Roland Yorke. “I’d lay anybody five shillings that
those mischievous scamps of college boys were at the bottom of it;
I taxed Gerald with it, and he flew out at me for my pains. But the
seniors may not have been in it. You should have heard the bell clank
out last night, Mr. Galloway!”
“I suppose it brought out a few,” was Mr. Galloway’s rejoinder.
“It did that,” said Arthur Channing. “Myself for one. When I saw the
bishop emerge from the college doors, I could scarcely believe my
sight.”
“I’d have given half-a-crown to see him!” cried Roland Yorke. “If
there’s any fun going on, it is sure to be my fate to miss it. Cator was
at my house, having a cigar with me; and, though we heard the bell, we
did not disturb ourselves to see what it might mean.”
“What is your opinion of last night’s work, Arthur?” asked Mr. Galloway,
returning to the point.
Arthur’s opinion was a very decided one, but he did not choose to say
so. The meeting with the college boys at their stealthy post in the
cloisters, when he and Hamish were passing through at dusk, a few nights
before, coupled with the hints then thrown out of the “serving out” of
Ketch, could leave little doubt as to the culprits. Arthur returned an
answer, couched in general terms.
“Could it have been the college boys, think you?” debated Mr. Galloway.
“Not being a college boy, I cannot speak positively, sir,” he said,
laughing. “Gaunt knows nothing of it. I met him as I was going home to
breakfast from my early hour’s work here, and he told me he did not.
There would have been no harm done, after all, but for the accident to
Jenkins.”
“One of you gentlemen can just step in to see Jenkins in the course of
the day, and reassure him that he is not wanted,” said Mr. Galloway. “I
know how necessary it is to keep the mind tranquil in any fear of brain
affection.”
No more was said, and the occupation of the day began. A busy day was
that at Mr. Galloway’s, much to the chagrin of Roland Yorke, who had an
unconquerable objection to doing too much. He broke out into grumblings
at Arthur, when the latter came running in from his duty at college.
“I’ll tell you what is, Channing; you ought not to have made the bargain
to go to that bothering organ on busy days; and Galloway must have been
out of his mind to let you make it. Look at the heap of work there is to
do!”
“I will soon make up for the lost hour,” said Arthur, setting to with a
will. “Where’s Mr. Galloway?”
“Gone to the bank,” grumbled Roland. “And I have had to answer a dozen
callers-in at least, and do all my writing besides. I wonder what
possessed Jenkins to go and knock his head to powder?”
Mr. Galloway shortly returned, and sat down to write. It was a thing he
rarely did; he left writing to his clerks, unless it was the writing of
letters. By one o’clock the chief portion of the work was done, and
Mr. Roland Yorke’s spirits recovered their elasticity. He went home to
dinner, as usual. Arthur preferred to remain at his post, and get on
further, sending the housekeeper’s little maid out for a twopenny roll,
which he ate as he wrote. He was of a remarkably conscientious nature,
and thought it only fair to sacrifice a little time in case of need, in
return for the great favour which had been granted him by Mr. Galloway.
Many of the families who had sons in the college school dined at one
o’clock, as it was the most convenient hour for the boys. Growing youths
are not satisfied with anything less substantial than a dinner in the
middle of the day, and two dinners in a household tell heavily upon
the house-keeping. The Channings did not afford two, neither did Lady
Augusta Yorke; so their hour was one o’clock.
“What a muff you must be to go without your dinner!” cried Roland Yorke
to Arthur, when he returned at two o’clock. “I wouldn’t.”
“I have had my dinner,” said Arthur.
“What did you have?” cried Roland, pricking up his ears. “Did Galloway
send to the hotel for roast ducks and green peas? That’s what we had at
home, and the peas were half-boiled, and the ducks were scorched, and
cooked without stuffing. A wretched set of incapables our house turns
out! and my lady does not know how to alter it. You have actually
finished that deed, Channing?”
“It is finished, you see. It is surprising how much one can do in a
quiet hour!”
“Is Galloway out?”
Arthur pointed with his pen to the door of Mr. Galloway’s private room,
to indicate that he was in it. “He is writing letters.”
“I say, Channing, there’s positively nothing left to do,” went on
Roland, casting his eyes over the desk. “Here are these leases, but they
are not wanted until to-morrow. Who says we can’t work in this office?”
Arthur laughed good-naturedly, to think of the small amount, out of that
day’s work, which had fallen to Roland’s share.
Some time elapsed. Mr. Galloway came into their room from his own to
consult a “Bradshaw,” which lay on the shelf, alongside Jenkins’s desk.
He held in his hand a very closely-written letter. It was of large,
letter-paper size, and appeared to be filled to the utmost of its four
pages. While he was looking at the book, the cathedral clock chimed the
three-quarters past two, and the bell rang for divine service.
“It can never be that time of day!” exclaimed Mr. Galloway, in
consternation, as he took out his watch. “Sixteen minutes to three! and
I am a minute slow! How has the time passed? I ought to have been at--”
Mr. Galloway brought his words to a standstill, apparently too absorbed
in the railway guide to conclude them. Roland Yorke, who had a free
tongue, even with his master, filled up the pause.
“Were you going out, sir?”
“Is that any business of yours, Mr. Roland? Talking won’t fill in that
lease, sir.”
“The lease is not in a hurry, sir,” returned incorrigible Roland. But he
held his tongue then, and bent his head over his work.
Mr. Galloway dipped his pen in the ink, and copied something from
“Bradshaw” into the closely-written letter, standing at Jenkins’s desk
to do it; then he passed the blotting-paper quickly over the words, and
folded the letter.
“Channing,” he said, speaking very hastily, “you will see a twenty-pound
bank-note on my desk, and the directed envelope of this letter; bring
them here.”
Arthur went, and brought forth the envelope and bank-note. Mr. Galloway
doubled the note in four and slipped it between the folds of the letter,
putting both into the envelope. He had fastened it down, when a loud
noise and commotion was heard in the street. Curious as are said to be
antiquated maidens, Mr. Galloway rushed to the window and threw it up,
his two clerks attending in his wake.
Something very fine, in a white dress, and pink and scarlet flowers on
her bonnetless head, as if attired for an evening party, was whirling
round the middle of the road in circles: a tall woman, who must once
have been beautiful. She appeared to be whirling someone else with her,
amid laughter and shrieks, and cries and groans, from the gathering mob.
“It is Mad Nance!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “Poor thing! she really ought
to be in confinement.”
So every one had said for a long time, but no one bestirred themselves
to place her in it. This unfortunate creature, Mad Nance, as she was
called, was sufficiently harmless to be at large on sufferance, and
sufficiently mad at times to put a street in an uproar. In her least
sane moments she would appear, as now, in an old dimity white dress,
scrupulously washed and ironed, and decorated with innumerable frills;
some natural flowers, generally wild ones, in her hair. Dandelions were
her favourites; she would make them into a wreath, and fasten it on,
letting her entangled hair hang beneath. To-day she had contrived to
pick up some geranium blossoms, scarlet and pink.
“Who has she got hold of there?” exclaimed Mr. Galloway. “He does not
seem to like it.”
Arthur burst into laughter when he discovered that it was Harper,
the lay-clerk. This unlucky gentleman, who had been quietly and
inoffensively proceeding up Close Street on his way to service in the
cathedral, was seized upon by Mad Nance by the hands. He was a thin,
weak little man, a very reed in her strong grasp. She shrieked, she
laughed, she danced, she flew with him round and round. He shrieked
also; his hat was off, his wig was gone; and it was half the business of
Mr. Harper’s life to make that wig appear as his own hair. He talked,
he raved, he remonstrated; I am very much afraid that he swore. Mr.
Galloway laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
The crowd was parted by an authoritative hand, and the same hand, gentle
now, laid its firmness upon the woman and released the prisoner. It was
Hamish Channing who had come to the rescue, suppressing his mirth as he
best could while he effected it.
“I’ll have the law of her!” panted Harper, as he picked up his hat and
wig. “If there’s justice to be got in Helstonleigh, she shall suffer
for this! It’s a town’s shame to let her go about, molesting peaceable
wayfarers, and shaking the life out of them!”
Something at a distance appeared to attract the attention of the unhappy
woman, and she flew away. Hamish and Mr. Harper were left alone in the
streets, the latter still exploding with wrath, and vowing all sorts of
revenge.
“Put up with it quietly, Harper,” advised Hamish. “She is like a little
child, not accountable for her actions.”
“That’s just like you, Mr. Hamish Channing. If they took your head off,
you’d put up with it! How would you like your wig flung away in the
sight of a whole street?”
“I don’t wear one,” answered Hamish, laughing. “Here’s your hat; not
much damaged, apparently.”
Mr. Harper, settling his wig on his head, and composing himself as he
best could, continued his way to the cathedral, turning his hat about
in his hand, and closely looking at it. Hamish stepped across to Mr.
Galloway’s, meeting that gentleman at the door.
“A good thing you came up as you did, Mr. Hamish. Harper will remember
Mad Nance for a year to come.”
“I expect he will,” replied Hamish, laughing still. Mr. Galloway laughed
also, and walked hastily down the street.