Arthur Channing had been walking leisurely down Close Street. Time hung
heavily on his hands. In leaving the cathedral after morning service,
he had joined Mr. Harper, the lay clerk, and went with him, talking,
towards the town; partly because he had nothing to do elsewhere--partly
because out of doors appeared more desirable than home. In the uncertain
state of suspense they were kept in, respecting Charles, the minds of
all, from Hamish down to Annabel, were in a constant state of unrest.
When they rose in the morning the first thought was, “Shall we hear of
Charles to-day?” When they retired at bedtime, “What may not the river
give up this night?” It appeared to them that they were continually
expecting tidings of some sort or other; and, with this expectation,
hope would sometimes mingle itself.
Hope; where could it spring from? The only faint suspicion of it,
indulged at first, that Charley had been rescued in some providential
manner, and conveyed to a house of shelter, had had time to die out. A
few houses there were, half-concealed near the river, as there are near
to most other rivers of traffic, which the police trusted just as far as
they could see, and whose inmates did not boast of shining reputations;
but the police had overhauled these thoroughly, and found no trace of
Charley. Nor was it likely that they would conceal a child. So long as
Charles’s positive fate remained a mystery, suspense could not cease;
and with this suspense there did mingle some faint glimmer of hope.
Suspense leads to exertion; inaction is intolerable to it. Hamish,
Arthur, Tom, all would rather be out of doors now, than in; there
might be something to be heard of, some information to be gathered,
and looking after it was better than staying at home to wait for it.
No wonder, then, that Arthur Channing’s steps would bend unconsciously
towards the town, when he left the cathedral, morning and afternoon.
It was in passing Mr. Galloway’s office, the window of which stood wide
open, that Arthur had found himself called to by Roland Yorke.
“What is it?” he asked, halting at the window.
“You are the very chap I wanted to see,” cried Roland. “Come in! Don’t
be afraid of meeting Galloway: he’s off somewhere.”
The prospect of meeting Mr. Galloway would not have prevented Arthur
from entering. He was conscious of no wrong, and he did not shrink as
though he had committed one. He went in, and Mr. Harper proceeded on his
way.
“Here’s a go!” was Roland’s salutation. “Jenkins is laid up.” It
was nothing but what Arthur had expected. He, like Mr. Galloway, had
observed Jenkins growing ill and more ill. “How shall you manage without
him?” asked Arthur; Mr. Galloway’s dilemma being the first thing that
occurred to his mind.
“Who’s to know?” answered Roland, who was in an explosive temper. “_I_
don’t. If Galloway thinks to put it all on my back, it’s a scandalous
shame! I never could do it, or the half of it. Jenkins worked like a
horse when we were busy. He’d hang his head down over his desk, and
never lift it for two hours at a stretch!--you know he would not. Fancy
my doing that! I should get brain fever before a week was out.”
Arthur smiled at this. “Is Jenkins much worse?” he inquired.
“I don’t believe he’s worse at all,” returned Roland, tartly. “He’d
have come this morning, as usual, fast enough, only she locked up his
clothes.”
“Who?” said Arthur, in surprise.
“She. That agreeable lady who has the felicity of owning Jenkins. She
was here this morning as large as life, giving an account of her doings,
without a blush. She locked up his things, she says, to keep him in bed.
I’d be even with her, I know, were I Jenkins. I’d put on her flounces,
but what I’d come out, if I wanted to. Rather short they’d be for him,
though.”
“I shall go, Roland. My being here only hinders you.”
“As if that made any difference worth counting! Look here!--piles
and piles of parchments! I and Galloway could never get through them,
hindered or not hindered. _I_ am not going to work over hours! _I_ won’t
kill myself with hard labour. There’s Port Natal, thank goodness, if the
screw does get put upon me too much!”
Arthur did not reply. It made little difference to Roland: whether
encouraged or not, talk he would.
“I _have_ heard of folks being worked beyond their strength; and that
will be my case, if one may judge by present appearances. It’s too bad
of Jenkins!”
Arthur spoke up: he did not like to hear blame, even from Roland Yorke,
cast upon patient, hard-working Jenkins. “You should not say it, Roland.
It is not Jenkins’s fault.”
“It is his fault. What does he have such a wife for? She keeps Jenkins
under her thumb, just as Galloway keeps me. She locked up his clothes,
and then told him he might come here without them, if he liked: my
belief is, she’ll be sending him so, some day. Jenkins ought to put her
down. He’s big enough.”
“He would be sure to come here, if he were equal to it,” said Arthur.
“He! Of course he would!” angrily retorted Roland. “He’d crawl here on
all fours, but what he’d come; only she won’t let him. She knows it too.
She said this morning that he’d come when he was in his coffin! I should
like to see it arrive!”
Arthur had been casting a glance at the papers. They were unusually
numerous, and he began to think with Roland that he and Mr. Galloway
would not be able to get through them unaided. Most certainly they would
not, at Roland’s present rate of work. “It is a pity you are not a quick
copyist,” he said.
“I dare say it is!” sarcastically rejoined Roland, beginning to play at
ball with the wafer-box. “I never was made for work; and if--”
“You will have to do it, though, sir,” thundered Mr. Galloway, who had
come up, and was enjoying a survey of affairs through the open window.
Mr. Roland, somewhat taken to, dropped his head and the wafer-box
together, and went on with his writing as meekly as poor Jenkins would
have done; and Mr. Galloway entered.
“Good day,” said he to Arthur, shortly enough.
“Good day, sir,” was the response. Mr. Galloway turned to his idle
clerk.
“Roland Yorke, you must either work or say you will not. There is no
time for playing and fooling; no time, sir! do you hear? Who put that
window stark staring open?”
“I did, sir,” said incorrigible Roland. “I thought the office might be
the better for a little air, when there was so much to do in it.”
Mr. Galloway shut it with a bang. Arthur, who would not leave without
some attempt at a passing courtesy, let it be ever so slight, made a
remark to Mr. Galloway, that he was sorry to hear Jenkins was worse.
“He is so much worse,” was the response of Mr. Galloway, spoken sharply,
for the edification of Roland Yorke, “that I doubt whether he will ever
enter this room again. Yes, sir, you may look; but it is the truth!”
Roland did look, looked with considerable consternation. “How on earth
will the work get done, then?” he muttered. With all his grumbling, he
had not contemplated Jenkins being away more than a day or two.
“I do not know how it will get done, considering that the clerk upon
whom I have to depend is Roland Yorke,” answered Mr. Galloway, with
severity. “One thing appears pretty evident, that Jenkins will not be
able to help to do it.”
Mr. Galloway, more perplexed at the news brought by Mrs. Jenkins than
he had allowed to appear (for, although he chose to make a show of
depending upon Roland, he knew how much dependence there was in reality
to be placed upon him--none knew better), had deemed it advisable to
see Jenkins personally, and judge for himself of his state of health.
Accordingly, he proceeded thither, and arrived at an inopportune moment
for his hopes. Jenkins was just recovering from a second fainting fit,
and appeared altogether so ill, so debilitated, that Mr. Galloway was
struck with dismay. There would be no more work from Jenkins--as he
believed--for him. He mentioned this now in his own office, and Roland
received it with blank consternation.
An impulse came to Arthur, and he spoke upon it. “If I can be of any use
to you, sir, in this emergency, you have only to command me.”
“What sort of use?” asked Mr. Galloway.
Arthur pointed to the parchments. “I could draw out these deeds, and
any others that may follow them. My time is my own, sir, except the two
hours devoted to the cathedral, and I am at a loss how to occupy it. I
have been idle ever since I left you.”
“Why don’t you get into an office?” said Mr. Galloway.
Arthur’s colour deepened. “Because, sir, no one will take me.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Galloway, drily, “a good name is easier lost than won.”
“Yes, it is,” freely replied Arthur. “However, sir, to return to the
question. I shall be glad to help you, if you have no one better at
hand. I could devote several hours a day to it, and you know that I am
thoroughly to be trusted with the work. I might take some home now.”
“Home!” returned Mr. Galloway. “Did you mean that you could do it at
home?”
“Certainly, sir; I did not think of doing it here,” was the pointed
reply of Arthur. “I can do it at home just as well as I could here;
perhaps better, for I should shut myself up alone, and there would be
nothing to interrupt me, or to draw off my attention.”
It cannot be denied that this was a most welcome proposition to Mr.
Galloway; indeed, his thoughts had turned to Arthur from the first.
Arthur would be far better than a strange clerk, looked for and brought
in on the spur of the moment--one who might answer well or answer badly,
according to chance. Yet that such must have been his resource, Mr.
Galloway knew.
“It will be an accommodation to me, your taking part of the work,” he
frankly said. “But you had better come to the office and do it.”
“No, sir; I would rather--”
“Do, Channing!” cried out Roland Yorke, springing up as if he were
electrified. “The office will be bearable if you come back again.”
“I would prefer to do it at home, sir,” continued Arthur to Mr.
Galloway, while that gentleman pointed imperiously to Yorke, as a hint
to him to hold his tongue and mind his own business.
“You _may_ come back here and do it,” said Mr. Galloway.
“Thank you, I cannot come back,” was the reply of Arthur.
“Of course you can’t!” said angry Roland, who cared less for Mr.
Galloway’s displeasure than he did for displaying his own feelings when
they were aroused. “You won’t, you mean! I’d not show myself such a
duffer as you, Channing, if I were paid for it in gold!”
“You’ll get paid in something, presently, Roland Yorke, but it won’t be
in gold!” reproved Mr. Galloway. “You will do a full day’s work to-day,
sir, if you stop here till twelve o’clock at night.”
“Oh, of course I expect to do that, sir,” retorted Roland, tartly.
“Considering what’s before me, on this desk and on Jenkins’s, there’s
little prospect of my getting home on this side four in the morning.
They needn’t sit up for me--I can go in with the milk. I wonder who
invented writing? I wish I had the fingering of him just now!”
Arthur turned to the parchments. He was almost as much at home with them
as Jenkins. Mr. Galloway selected two that were most pressing, and gave
them to him, with the requisite materials for copying. “You will keep
them secure, you know,” he remarked.
“Perfectly so, sir; I shall sit quite alone.”
He carried them off with alacrity. Mr. Galloway’s face cleared as
he looked after him, and he made a remark aloud, expressive of his
satisfaction. “There’s some pleasure in giving out work when you know it
will be done. No play--no dilatoriness--finished to the minute that it’s
looked for! You should take a leaf out of his book, Yorke.”
“Yes, sir,” freely answered Roland. “When you drove Arthur Channing out
of this office, you parted with the best clerk you ever had. Jenkins is
all very well for work, but he is nothing but a muff in other things.
Arthur’s a gentleman, and he’d have served you well. Jenkins himself
says so. He is honourable, he is honest, he--”
“I know enough of your sentiments with respect to his honesty,”
interrupted Mr. Galloway. “We need not go over that tale again.”
“I hope every one knows them,” rejoined Roland. “I have never concealed
my opinion that the accusation was infamous; that, of all of us in this
office, from its head down to Jenkins, none was less likely to finger
the note than Arthur Channing. But of course my opinion goes for
nothing.”
“You are bold, young man.”
“I fear it is my nature to be so,” cried Roland. “If it should ever turn
up how the note went, you’ll be sorry, no doubt, for having visited it
upon Arthur. Mr. Channing will be sorry; the precious magistrates will
be sorry; that blessed dean, who wanted to turn him from the college,
will be sorry. Not a soul of them but believes him guilty; and I hope
they’ll be brought to repentance for it, in sackcloth and ashes.”
“Go on with your work,” said Mr. Galloway, angrily.
Roland made a show of obeying. But his tongue was like a steam-engine:
once set going, it couldn’t readily be stopped, and he presently looked
up again.
“I am not uncharitable: at least, to individuals. I always said the
post-office helped itself to the note, and I’d lay my last half-crown
upon it. But there _are_ people in the town who think it could only have
gone in another way. You’d go into a passion with me, sir, perhaps, if I
mentioned it.”
Mr. Galloway--it has been before mentioned that he possessed an
unbounded amount of curiosity, and also a propensity to gossip--so far
forgot the force of good example as to ask Roland what he meant. Roland
wanted no further encouragement.
“Well, sir, there are people who, weighing well all the probabilities of
the case, have come to the conclusion that the note could only have been
abstracted from the letter by the person to whom it was addressed. None
but he broke the seal of it.”
“Do you allude to my cousin, Mr. Robert Galloway?” ejaculated Mr.
Galloway, as soon as indignation and breath allowed him to speak.
“Others do,” said Roland. “I say it was the post-office.”
“How dare you repeat so insolent a suspicion to my face, Roland Yorke?”
“I said I should catch it!” cried Roland, speaking partly to himself. “I
am sure to get in for it, one way or another, do what I will. It’s not
my fault, sir, if I have heard it whispered in the town.”
“Apply yourself to your work, sir, and hold your tongue. If you say
another word, Roland Yorke, I shall feel inclined also to turn you away,
as one idle and incorrigible, of whom nothing can be made.”
“Wouldn’t it be a jolly excuse for Port Natal!” exclaimed Roland, but
not in the hearing of his master, who had gone into his own room in much
wrath. Roland laughed aloud; there was nothing he enjoyed so much as to
be in opposition to Mr. Galloway; it had been better for the advancement
of that gentleman’s work, had he habitually kept a tighter rein over his
pupil. It was perfectly true, however, that the new phase of suspicion,
regarding the loss of the note, had been spoken of in the town, and
Roland only repeated what he had heard.
Apparently, Mr. Galloway did not like this gratuitous suggestion.
He presently came back again. A paper was in his hand, and he began
comparing it with one on Roland’s desk. “Where did you hear that
unjustifiable piece of scandal?” he inquired, as he was doing it.
“The first person I heard speak of it was my mother, sir. She came home
one day from calling upon people, and said she had heard it somewhere.
And it was talked of at Knivett’s last night. He had a bachelors’ party,
and the subject was brought up. Some of us ridiculed the notion; others
thought it might have grounds.”
“And pray, which did you favour?” sarcastically asked Mr. Galloway.
“I? I said then, as I have said all along, that there was no one to
thank for it but the post-office. If you ask me, sir, who first set
the notion afloat in the town, I cannot satisfy you. All I know is, the
rumour is circulating.”
“If I could discover the primary author of it, I would take legal
proceedings against him,” warmly concluded Mr. Galloway.
“I’d help,” said undaunted Roland. “Some fun might arise out of that.”
Mr. Galloway carried the probate of a will to his room, and sat down to
examine it. But his thoughts were elsewhere. This suspicion, mentioned
by Roland Yorke, had laid hold of his mind most unpleasantly, in spite
of his show of indignation before Roland. He had no reason to think his
cousin otherwise than honest; it was next to impossible to suppose he
could be guilty of playing him such a trick; but somehow Mr. Galloway
could not feel so sure upon the point as he would have wished. His
cousin was a needy man--one who had made ducks and drakes of his own
property, and was for ever appealing to Mr. Galloway for assistance. Mr.
Galloway did not shut his eyes to the fact that if this _should_ have
been the case, Robert Galloway had had forty pounds from him instead
of twenty--a great help to a man at his wits’ ends for money. He had
forwarded a second twenty-pound note, upon receiving information of the
loss of the first. What he most disliked, looking at it from this point
of view, was, not the feeling that he had been cleverly deceived and
laughed at, but that Arthur Channing should have suffered unjustly. If
the lad _was_ innocent, why, how cruel had been his own conduct towards
him! But with these doubts came back the remembrance of Arthur’s
unsatisfactory behaviour with respect to the loss; his non-denial; his
apparent guilt; his strange shrinking from investigation. Busy as
Mr. Galloway was, that day, he could not confine his thoughts to his
business. He would willingly have given another twenty-pound note out of
his pocket to know, beyond doubt, whether or not Arthur was guilty.
Arthur, meanwhile, had commenced his task. He took possession of the
study, where he was secure from interruption, and applied himself
diligently to it. How still the house seemed! How still it had seemed
since the loss of Charles! Even Annabel and Tom were wont to hush their
voices; ever listening, as it were, for tidings to be brought of him.
Excepting the two servants, Arthur was alone in it. Hamish was abroad,
at his office; Constance and Annabel were at Lady Augusta’s; Tom was in
school; and Charles was not. Judith’s voice would be heard now and then,
wafted from the kitchen regions, directing or reproving Sarah; but there
was no other sound. Arthur thought of the old days when the sun had
shone; when he was free and upright in the sight of men; when Constance
was happy in her future prospects of wedded life; when Tom looked forth
certainly to the seniorship; when Charley’s sweet voice and sweeter face
might be seen and heard; when Hamish--oh, bitter thought, of all!--when
Hamish had not fallen from his pedestal. It had all changed--changed
to darkness and to gloom; and Arthur may be pardoned for feeling gloomy
with it. But in the very midst of this gloom, there arose suddenly,
without effort of his, certain words spoken by the sweet singer of
Israel; and Arthur _knew_ that he had but to trust to them:--
“For his wrath endureth but the twinkling of an eye, and in his pleasure
is life; heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning.”