That same evening, just as suddenly as Detective Butterby had shot into the entry, did he seem to shoot into the private room of Mr. Bede Greatorex. The clerks had just left the office for the evening; Bede, putting things straight on his desk, was thinking of going upstairs to dinner. To be thus silently invaded was not pleasing: but Bede could only resign himself to his fate.
In a spirit of reproach Mr. Butterby entered on the business of the interview, stating certain facts. Bede took alarm. Better, as he thought, that the earth should be arrested in its orbit, than that the part Godfrey Pitman played in connection with his cousin's death at Helstonleigh should be brought to light.
"It is the very charge, above all others, that I gave you, Mr. Butterby--the keeping secret what you had learnt about the identity of Godfrey Pitman," broke forth Bede.
"And it is because I obeyed you and did keep it, that headquarters have put it into others' hands and are hauling me over the coals," spoke Mr. Butterby in an injured tone.
"Have you told them that it was by my desire you remained passive?"
"I have told them nothing," was the answer. "I let 'em think that I was looking after Godfrey Pitman still myself, everywhere that I could look, high and low."
"Then they don't know yet that he and my clerk Brown are the same?" said Bede, very eagerly.
"Not a bit on't. There's not a living soul of the lot has been sharp enough to turn that page yet, Mr. Bede Greatorex."
"And it must be our business to keep it closed," whispered Bede. "I will give you any reward if you can manage to do it."
"Look here, sir," spoke Butterby. "I am willing to oblige you as far as I can in reason; I've showed you that I am; but to fill you up with hopes that that secret will be a secret long, would be nothing but wilful deceit: and deceit's a thing that don't answer in the long run. When I want to throw people off a scent, or worm things out of 'em for the law's purposes, I send their notions off on all sorts of air journeys, and think it no wrong: but to let you suppose I can keep from the world what I can't keep, and take your thanks and rewards for doing it, is just the opposite case. As sure as us two be a talking here, this matter won't stand at its present page; there'll be more leaves turned in it afore many days is gone over."
Leaning forward, his face and eyes wearing their gravest look, his elbow on the table that was between them, his finger and thumb pointed to give force to his argument, there was that altogether in the speaker's aspect, in his words, that carried a shiver of conviction to the mind of Bede Greatorex. His heart grew faint, his face was white with a sickly moisture.
"You may think to stop it and I may think to stop it, Mr. Bede Greatorex: but, take my word, it won't be stopped. There's no longer a chance of it."
"If you--could get--Brown out of the way?" spoke Bede, scarcely knowing what it was he said, and speaking in a whisper. Mr. Butterby received the suggestion with severity.
"It's not to me, sir, that you should venture to say such a thing. I've been willing to help your views when it didn't lie against my position and duty to do it; but I don't think you've seen anything in me to suppose I would go beyond that. As good step into Scotland Yard and askthemto help a criminal to escape, as ask me. We'll let that drop, sir; and I'll go on to a question I should like to put. What do you want Godfrey Pitman out of the way for?"
Bede did not answer. His hand was pressed upon his brow, his eyes wore their saddest and most dreamy look.
"If Pitman had any share in the business at Helstonleigh, you ought to be the one to give him into custody, sir."
"For the love of Heaven, don't pursue Pitman!" spoke Bede earnestly. "I have told you before, Mr. Butterby, that it was not he. So far as I believe, he never lifted his hand against John Ollivera; he did not hurt a hair of his head. Accuse any one in the world that you please, but don't accuse him."
"What if I accuse a woman?" spoke Mr. Butterby, when he had gazed at Bede to his satisfaction.
Their eyes met. Bede's face, or the detective fancied it, was growing whiter.
"Who?--What woman?" asked Bede, scarcely above his breath.
"Alletha Rye."
With a sadden movement, looking like one of relief, Bede Greatorex dropped his hand and leaned back in his chair. It was as if some kind of rest had come to him.
"Why should you bring in Alletha Rye's name? Do you suspect her?"
"I'm not clear that I do; I'm not clear that I don't. Anyhow, I think she stands a chance of getting accused of it, Mr. Bede Greatorex."
"Better accuse her than Pitman," said Bede, who seemed to be again speaking out of his uncomfortable dream.
Mr. Butterby, inwardly wondering at various matters and not just yet able to make them meet in his official mind, rose to conclude the interview. A loud bell was ringing upstairs; most probably the announcement of dinner.
"Just a parting word, sir. What I chiefly stepped in to say, was this. So long as the case rested in my hands, and Mr. Godfrey Pitman was supposed to have finally disappeared from the world, I was willing to oblige you, and let it, and him, and the world be. But from the moment that the affair shall be stirred publicly, in short, that action is forced upon me by others, I shall take it up again. Counsellor Ollivera's case belongs of right to me, and must be mine to the end."
With a civil goodnight, Mr. Butterby departed, leaving Bede Greatorex to his thoughts and reveries. More unhappy ones have rarely been entertained in this world. Men cannot strive against fate forever, and the battle had well nigh warn him out. It almost seemed that he could struggle no longer, that he had no power of resistance left within him. Mind and body were alike weary; the spirit fainted, the heart was sick. Life had long been a burden to Bede Greatorex, but never did its weight lie heavier than tonight in its refined and exquisite pain.
He had to bear it alone, you see. To lock the miserable secret, whatever might be its precise nature, and whoever might have been guilty, within his own bosom. Could he but have spoken of it to another, its anguish had been less keen; for, when once a great trouble can be imparted--be it of grief, or apprehension, or remorse; be it connected with ourselves, or (worse) one very near and dear to us--it is lightened of half its sting.
But that relief was denied to Bede Greatorex.
It had been the dinner-bell. Bede did not answer to it; but that was not altogether unusual.
They sat around the brilliantly-lighted, well-appointed banquet. Where Mrs. Bede Greatorex procured her fresh hothouse flowers from daily, and at what cost, she alone knew. They were always beautiful, charming to the eye, odoriferously pleasant to the senses. At the head of the table tonight was she, wearing amber silk, her shoulders very bare, her back partially shaded by the horse's tail that drooped from her remarkable chignon. It was not a dinner-party; but Mrs. Bede was going out later, and had dressed beforehand.
The place at her left-hand was vacant--Bede's--who never took the foot of the table when his father was present. Mr. Greatorex supposed his son was detained in the office, and sent a servant to see. Judge Kene sat on the right of Mrs. Bede; he had called in, and stayed to dinner without ceremony. Clare Joliffe and Miss Channing sat on either side Mr. Greatorex. Frank was dining out. Clare was returning to France for Christmas, after her many months' stay in the country. Her chignon was more fashionable than a quartern loaf, and certainly larger, but lacking that great achievement, the tail. Annabel's quiet head presented a contrast to those two of the mode.
Bede came up. Shaking hands with Sir Thomas Kene, he passed round to his chair; his manner was restless, his thin cheeks were hectic. The judge had not seen him for some little time. Gazing at him across the table, he wondered what malady he could be suffering from, and how much more like a shadow he would be able to become--and live. Mr. Greatorex, anxiously awake to every minute glance or motion bearing on his son's health, spoke.
"Are you thinking Bede looks worse, Sir Thomas?"
"He does not look better," was the reply. "You should see a doctor and take some tonics, Bede."
"I'm all right, Judge, thank you," was Bede's answer, as he turned a whole lot of croûtons into his purée de pois--and would afterwards send it away nearly untested.
Dinner was just over when a servant whispered to Mr. Greatorex that he was wanted. Going down at once to his room he found Henry William Ollivera.
"Why did you not come up, William? Kene is there."
"I am in no fit mood for company, uncle," was the clergyman's reply. "The trouble has come at last."
In all the phases of agitation displayed by Henry Ollivera, and when speaking of the affair he generally displayed more or less, Mr. Greatorex never saw him so much moved as now. Leaning forward on his chair, his eyes bright, his cheeks burning as with the red of an autumn leaf, his hands feverish, his voice sunk to a whisper, he entered on the tale he had to tell.
"Do you remember my saying to you one day in the dining-room above, that I thought it was a woman? Do you remember it, uncle?"
"Quite well."
"In the weeks that have gone by since, the suspicion has only gained ground in my mind. Without cause: I am bound to say it, without further cause. Nay almost in the teeth of what might have served to diminish suspicion. For, if Godfrey Pitman be really somewhere in existence, and hiding himself, the natural supposition would be, as Jelf thinks, thathewas the one."
Mr. Greatorex nodded assent. "And yet you suspect the woman! Can you not say who she is, Henry?
"Yes, I can say now. I have come here to say it--Alletha Rye!"
Mr. Greatorex evinced no surprise. He had fancied it might be upon her that his nephew's doubts had been running. And he deemed it a crotchet indeed.
"I think you must be entirely mistaken," he said with emphasis. "What little I know of the young woman, tends to give me a very high opinion of her. She appears to be almost the last person in the world capable of such a crime as that, or of any crime."
"She might have done it in a moment's passion; she might have been playing with the pistol and fired it accidentally, and then was afraid to avow it; but shedidit, uncle."
"Go on."
"I have been distracted with doubt. Distracted," emphatically repeated Mr. Ollivera. "For of course I knew that my suspicions of her, strong though they have been growing, did not prove her guilty. But tonight I have heard her avow it with her own lips."
"Avow what?"
"That she murdered John!"
"What!--has she confessed to you?" exclaimed Mr. Greatorex.
"No. I heard it accidentally. Perhaps I ought to say surreptitiously. And, hearing it in that manner, the question arises in my mind whether or not I should make use of the knowledge so gained. I cannot bear anything like dishonourable or underhand dealing; no, not even in this cause, uncle."
Mr. Greatorex made no reply. He was taken up with noting the strangely eager gaze fixed upon him. Something in it, he knew not what, recalled to his memory a dead face, lying alone on the border of a distant churchyard.
"It is some few weeks ago now that Mrs. Jones gave me a latchkey," resumed Mr. Ollivera. "In fact, I asked her for it. Coming in so often, and sometimes detained out late at night with the sick, I felt that it would be a convenience to me, and save trouble to the maid. This evening upon letting myself in with it about tea-time, I found the passage in darkness; the girl, I supposed, had delayed to light the lamp. My movements are not noisy at any time, as you know, and I went groping on in silence, feeling my way: not from any wish to be stealthy--such a thought never entered my head--but because Mr. Roland Yorke is given to leaving all kinds of articles about and I was afraid of stumbling over something. I was making for the table at the end of the passage, on which matches are generally kept, sometimes a chamber-candle. Feeling for these, I heard a voice in Mrs. Jones's parlour that I have not heard many times in my life, but nevertheless I knew it instantly--Butterby's, the detective."
"Butterby's!" exclaimed Mr. Greatorex. "I did not know he was in London."
"Uncle! It was Alletha Rye's voice that answered him. Her voice and no other's, disguised with agitation though it was. I heard her say that it was herself who killed my brother; that Godfrey Pitman had never raised a hand against him."
"You--really heard her say this, William?" breathed Mr. Greatorex.
"It is true as that I am a living man. It seemed to me that the officer must have been accusing Godfrey Pitman of the crime. I heard the man's surprised answer, 'You, Miss Rye!' 'Yes, I,' she said, 'I, Alletha Rye,notGodfrey Pitman.' I heard her go on to tell Butterby that he might do his best and his worst."
Mr. Greatorex sat like one bereft of motion. "This confounds me, William," he presently said.
"It confounded me," replied Mr. Ollivera. "Nearly took my senses from me, for I'm sure I had no rational reason left. The first thought that came to me was, that they had better not see me there, or discover they had been overheard until I had decided what my course should be. So I stepped silently up to my room, and the detective went away; and, close upon that, Mrs. Jones and the maid came in together. Mrs. Jones called her sister to account for not having lighted the hall-lamp, little thinking how the darkness had served me."
"But for you telling me this yourself, William, I had not believed it."
"It is true as Heaven's gospel," spoke the clergyman in his painful earnestness. "I sat a short while in my room, unable to decide what I ought to do, and then I came down here to tell you of it, uncle. It is very awful."
"Awful that it should have been Alletha Rye, you mean?"
"Yes. I have been praying, seeking, working for this discovery ever since John died; and, now that it has come in this most sudden manner, it brings nothing but perplexity with it. Oh, poor helpless mortals that we are!" added the clergyman, clasping his hands. "We set our hearts upon some longed-for end, spend our days toiling for it, our nights supplicating for it; and when God answers us according to our short-sighted wish, the result is but as the apples of Sodom, filling our mouths with ashes. Anybody but Alletha Rye; almost anybody; and I had not hesitated a moment. But I have lived under the same roof with her, in pleasant, friendly intercourse; I have preached to her on Sundays; I have given her Christ's Holy Sacrament with my own hands: in a serious illness that she had, I used to go and pray by her bed-side. Oh, Uncle Greatorex, I cannot see where my duty lies; I am torn with conflicting doubt!"
To the last words Mr. Ollivera had a listener that he had not bargained for--Judge Kene. About to take his departure, the Judge had come in without ceremony to say Goodnight to Mr. Greatorex.
"Why, what is amiss?" he cried, noting the signs of agitation as well as the words.
And they told him; told him all; there was no reason why it should be kept from him; and Mr. Ollivera begged for his counsel and advice. The Judge gave it, and most emphatically; decidingasa Judge more than as a humane man--and Thomas Kene was that.
"You cannot hesitate, Ollivera. This poor unhappy woman, Alletha Rye, must be brought to answer for her crime. Think ofhim, your brother, and my once dear friend, lying unavenged in his shameful grave! Humanity is a great and a good virtue, but John's memory must outweigh it."
"Yes, yes; I am thinking of him always," murmured the clergyman, his face lighting.
The initiative was taken by Mr. Greatorex. On the departure of the Judge and the clergyman, who went out together, Mr. Greatorex dropped a line to Scotland Yard. Butterby happened to be there, and answered it in person. Shortly and concisely Mr. Greatorex gave his orders.
"And I have no resource but to act upon them," coolly observed the imperturbable Butterby. "But I don't think the party was Alletha Rye."
"You don't!" exclaimed Mr. Greatorex.
"No, sir, I don't. Leastways, to my mind, there's grave reasons against it. The whole affair, from beginning to end, seems encompassed with nothing but doubts; and that's the blessed truth."
"I would like to ask you if Alletha Rye has or has not made a confession to you this evening, Mr. Butterby--to the effect that she was the one who killed Mr. Ollivera?"
"If nobody was in the house but her--as she said--she's been talking," thought the detective. "Confound these women for simpletons! They'd prate their necks away."
But Mr. Greatorex ins looking at him, waiting for the answer.
"I was with Alletha Rye this evening; I went there for my own purposes, to see what I could get out of her; little suspecting she'd say what she did. But I don't believe her any the more for having said it. The fact is Mr. Greatorex, that in this case there's wheels within wheels, a'most more than any I've ever had to do with. I can't yet disclose what they are even to you; but I'm trying to work them round and make one spoke fit into another."
"Do youknowthat Alletha Rye was not guilty of it?"
"No, sir, I do not."
"Very good. Lose no time. Get a warrant to apprehend Alletha Rye, and execute it. If you telegraph to Helstonleigh at once, the warrant may be up, and she in custody before midday tomorrow."
No more dallying with the law or with fate now. That was over. Mr. Butterby went straight to the telegraph office, and sent a message flying to Helstonleigh.
And Bede Greatorex went out to take part in an evening's gaiety with his wife, and came home to his rest, and rose the next morning to go about his occupation, unconscious of what the day was destined to bring forth.
A cold brisk air, with suspicion of a frost. It was a day or two previous to the one told of in the last two chapters, when Mr. Butterby was paying visits. Being convenient to record that renowned officer's doings first, we yielded him the precedence, and in consequence have to go back a little.
The brightness of the afternoon was passing. In his writing-room, leaning back in a large easy-chair before the fire, sat Hamish Channing. Some papers lay on the table, work of various kinds; but, looking at Hamish, it almost seemed as though he had done with work for ever. A face less beautiful than Hamish Channing's would have appeared painfully thin: his, spite of its wasted aspect, had yet a wonderful charm. The remark was once made that Hamish Channing's was a face that would be beautiful always; beautiful to the end; beautiful in dying. See it now. The perfect contour of the features is shown the plainer in their attenuation; the skin seems transparent, the cheeks are delicately flushed, the eyes are very blue and bright. If the countenance had looked etherealized earlier in the history, and any cavilled at the word, they would scarcely have cavilled at it now. But in the strangely spiritual expression, speaking, one knew not how, of Heaven there was an ever-present sadness, as if trouble had been hard at work with him; as if all that was of the earth, earthy, had beencrucifiedaway.
Nobody seemed certain of it yet--that he was dying. He bore up bravely; working still a little at home; but not going to the office; that was beyond him. The doctors had not said there was no hope: his wife, though she might inwardly feel how it was, would not speak it. He sat at the head of his table yet; he was careful of his appearance as of yore. His smile was genial still; his loving words were cheerful, sometimes gay; his sweet kindliness to all around was more marked. Oh, it was not in the face only that the look of Heaven appeared: if ever a spark of the Divine spirit of love and light had been vouchsafed to man's soul, it surely had been to that of Hamish Channing.
He wore a coat of black velvet, a vest of the same, across which his gold chain passed, with its drooping seal. The ring, formerly Mr. Channing's, no longer made believe to fit the little finger; it was worn on the second. His hair, carefully brushed as ever, looked like threads of dark gold in the sunlight. Certainly it could not be said that Hamish gave in to his illness. Whatever his complaint might be, the medical men did not call it by any name; there was a little cough, a strange want of tone and strength a quick, continual, almost perceptible wasting. Whether Hamish had cherished visions of recovery for himself could not be known; most earnestly he had hoped for it. If only for the sake of his wife and child, he desired to live: and existence itself, even in the midst of a great and crushing disappointment, is hard to resign. But the truth, long dawning on his mind, had shown itself to him fully at last, as it does in similar cases to most of us; whether Hamish's weakness had taken a stride and brought conviction of its formidable nature, or whether it might be that he was temporarily feeling worse, a sadness, as of death itself, lay upon him this afternoon.
It had been a short life--as men count lives; he had not yet numbered two and thirty years. But for the awful disappointment that was drying its fibres away, he might say that it had been a supremely happy one. Perhaps no man, with the sweet and sunny temperament of Hamish Channing, possessing the same Christian principles, could be otherwise than happy. He did not remember ever to have done ill wilfully to mortal man, in thought, word, or deed. It had been done to him: but he forgave it. Nevertheless, a sense of injustice, a bitter pang of disappointment, of hopeless failure as to this world, lay on his heart, when he recalled what the past few months brought him. Leaning there on his chair, his sad eyes tracing figures in the fire, he was recalling things one by one. His never-ceasing, ever-hopeful work, and the bright dreams of future fame that had made its sunshine. He remembered, as though it were today, the evening that first review met his eye--when he had been entertaining his brother-in-law, the Reverend William Yorke, and others--and the shock it gave him. Think of it when he would even now, it brought him a sensation of sick faintness. Older men have become paralyzed from a similar shock. The first review had been so closely followed by others, equally unjust, equally cruel, that they all seemed as one blow. After that there appeared to be a sort of pause in his life, when time and events stood still, when he moved as one in a dream of misery, when all things around him were as dead, and he along with them. The brain (as it seemed) never stopped beating, or the bosom's pain working; or the sense of humiliation to quit him. And then, as the days went on, bodily weakness supervened; and--there he was, dying. Dying! going surely to his God and Saviour; he felt that; but leaving his dear ones, wife and child, to the frowns of a hard world; alone, without suitable provision. And the book--the good, scholarly, attractive book, upon which he had bestowed the best of his bright genius, that he had written as to Heaven--was lying unread. Wasted!
"Papa, shall I put on her blue frock or her green? She is going out for a walk."
This interruption came from Miss Nelly, who sat on the hearthrug, dressing her doll. There was no reply, and Nelly looked up: she wore a blue frock herself; its sleeves and the white pinafore tied together with blue ribbon. Her pretty little feet in their shoes and socks were stretched out, and her curls fell in a golden shower.
"Shall baby wear her blue frock or her green, papa? Papa, then! Which is prettiest?"
Hamish, aroused, looked down on the child with a smile. "The blue, I think; and then baby-doll will be like Nelly."
But Mrs. Channing, sewing at the window, turned her head. Something in her husband's face or in his weary tone struck her.
"Do you feel worse, Hamish?"
"No, love. Not particularly."
Sadder yet, the voice; a kind of hopeless, weary sadness, depressing to hear. Ellen quitted her seat, and came to him. "What is it?" she whispered.
"Not much, dear. The future has cleared itself; that's all."
"The future?"
"I cannot struggle any longer, Ellen. I have preached faith and patience to others, but they seem to have deserted me. I--I almost think the very strife itself is helping on the end."
Sharp though the pang was, that pierced her breast, she would not show it. Miss Nelly chattered below, asking questions of her doll, and making believe to answer.
"The----end, Hamish!"
He took her hand and looked straight in her face as she stood by him. "Have you not seen it, Ellen?"
With a heart and bosom that alike quivered,--with a standing still of all her pulses,--with a catching-up of breath, as a sob, Mrs. Churning was conscious of a stab of pain. Oh yes--yes--she had seen it; and the persuading herself that she had not, had been but a sickly, miserable pretence at cheating.
"But for leaving you and the little one, Ellen, there would be no strife," he whispered, letting his forehead rest for a moment on her arm. "It is a long while now that my dreams--I had almost said my visions--have been of that world to which we are all journeying, which every one of us must enter sooner or later. There will be no pain, or trouble, or wearinessthere. Only the other night, as I lay between sleep and wake, I seemed to have passed its portals into a soft, bright, soothing light, a haven of joyous peace and rest."
"And if dolly's good, and does not spoil her new blue frock, she shall go out for a walk," was heard from the hearthrug. Hamish put his elbow on the arm of the chair, and covered his face with his slender fingers.
"But when I think of my wife and child--and I am always thinking of them, Ellen,--when I realize the bitter truth that I must leave them, why then at times it seems as if my heart must break with its intense pain. Ellen, my darling, I would not, even yet, have spoken, but that I know you must have been waiting for it."
"I could have borne any trouble better than this," she answered, pressing her hands together.
"It will be softened to you, I am sure, Ellen. I am ever praying that it may."
"But----"
Visitors in the drawing-room: Mrs. Bede Greatorex and Miss Joliffe. A servant came to announce them. She had said that her mistress was at home, and Ellen had to go up. Hamish, with his remaining strength, lifted Miss Nelly on his knee, doll and all.
"Hush, papa, please! Baby is fatigued with making her toilette. She wants to go to sleep."
"What would Nelly say if papa told her he also wanted to go to sleep?"
Miss Nelly lay back in papa's arms while she considered the question, the doll hushed in hers. Ah me, it is ever thus! We clasp and love our children: they love others, who are more to them than we are.
"Why? Are you tired, papa?"
"A little weary, dear."
"Then go to sleep. Doll shall be quiet."
"The sleep's not coming just yet, Nelly. And--when it does come--papa may not awake from it."
"Not ever, ever, ever?" asked Nelly, opening her blue eyes in wonder, but not taking in at all the true sense of the question.
"Not ever--here."
"The princess went into a sleep in my tale-book, and lay on the bed with roses in her hair, and never awoke, never, never, till the good old fairy came and touched her," said Miss Nelly.
There ensued a pause. Hamish Channing's lip quivered a little; but no one, save himself, could have guessed how every fibre of his heart was aching.
"Nelly," he resumed, his voice and manner alike gravely earnest, his eyes reading hers, "I want to give you a charge. Should papa have to go on a long journey, you would be all that mamma has left. Take you care, my child, to be ever dutiful to her; to be obedient to her slightest wish, and to love her with a double love."
"A long, long, long journey?" demanded Miss Nelly.
"Very long."
"And when would you come back again to this house?"
"Not ever."
"Where would it be to, papa?"
"Heaven," he softly whispered.
Nelly rose up in his arms, the blue eyes more wondering than before.
"But that would be to die!"
"And if it were?"
Down fell the doll unheeded. The child's fears were aroused. She threw her little arms about his neck.
"Oh papa, papa, don't die! Don't die!"
"But if I must, Ellen?"
Only once in her whole life could she remember that he had called her by her true name, and that was when her grandpa died. She began to tremble.
"Who would take care of me, papa?"
"God."
She hid her face upon his velvet waistcoat, strangely still.
"He would guide, and guard, and love you ever, Ellen. Loving Him you would be His dear child always, and He would bring you in time to me. Look up, my dear one."
"Mustyou go the journey?"
"I fear so."
"Oh, papa!--and don't you care--don't you care for mamma and me, that you must leave us?"
"Care!"
He could say no more; the word seemed to put the finishing stroke to his breaking heart. Sobs broke from his lips; tears, such as man rarely sheds, streamed down on the little nestling head. A cry of anguish, patient and imploring, that the parting might be soothed to them all, went up aloft to his Father in Heaven.
After dusk came on, when the visitors were got rid of,--for Clare Joliffe had stayed an unconscionable time, talking over old interests at Helstonleigh--Mrs. Channing found her husband asleep in his chair. Closing the door softly on him, she sat down by the dining-room fire, and the long pent-up tears burst forth. Hamish Channing's wife was a brave woman but there are griefs that go well-nigh, when they fall, to shatter the bravest of us. Miss Nelly, captured ever so long ago by nurse, was at tea in the nursery.
Roland Yorke surprised Mrs. Channing in her sorrow. Roland never came into the house with a clatter now (at least when he thought of its master's sick state), but with as softly decorous a step as his boots could be controlled to. Down he sat in silence, on the opposite side of the hearth, and saw the reflection of Mrs. Channing's tears in the firelight.
"Is he worse?" asked Roland, when he had stared a little.
"No," she answered, scarcely making a pretence to conceal her grief. "I fear there will not be very much 'worse' in it at all, Roland: a little more weakness perhaps, and that will be all. I am afraid the end is very near. I fancy he thinks so."
Roland grew hot and cold; a dart took him under his waistcoat.
"Let's understand, Mrs. Channing. Don't play with a fellow. Do you mean that Hamish is--going--to die?"
"Yes, I am sure there is no more hope."
"My goodness!"--and Roland rubbed his hot and woe-stricken face. "Why he was better yesterday. He was laughing and talking like anything."
"Not really better. It is as I say, Roland."
"If ever I saw such a miserable world as this!" exclaimed Roland: who, though indulging at times some private despondency upon the case, had perhaps not realized its utter hopelessness until now, when the words put it unmistakably before him. "I never thought--at least, much--but what he'd get well again: the fine, good, handsome man. I'd like to know why he couldn't, and what has killed him."
"The reviews have done it," said Ellen, in a low tone.
Roland groaned. A suspicion, that they must have had something to do with the decay, had been upon himself. Hamish had never been quite the same after they appeared: his spirit had seemed to fade away in a subdued sadness, and subsequently his health followed it.
"The cruel reviews broke his heart," resumed Mrs. Channing. "I am certain of it, Roland. A less sensitive man would not have felt it vitally; a man, physically stronger, could not have suffered in health. But he is sensitive amidst the most sensitive; and he never, with all his bright face and fine form, was physically strong. And so--he could not bear the blow, and it has killed him."
Roland sat pulling at his whiskers in desperate gloom. Mrs. Channing shaded her eyes with her hand.
"If I could but pitch into the reviewers!" he cried. "Were I rich, I'd offer a thousand pounds' reward to anybody who would bring me their names. Hang the lot! And if you were not by, Mrs. Channing, it's a worse word than that I'd say."
She shook her head. "Pitching into the reviewers, Roland, would not give him back his life. The publisher thinks that one man wrote them all: or got them written. Some one who must have had a grudge against Hamish. It does seem like it."
Roland's picture might have been taken as an emblem of Despair. Suddenly the face brightened a little, the sanguine temperament resumed its sway.
"Don't you lose heart, Mrs. Channing. I'll tell you something that happened to me at Port Natal. Uncommon hard-up, I was, and lying in a place with a strong fever upon me. I thought I was dying; I did indeed. I was dreaming of Helstonleigh and all the old people there; I seemed to see Arthur and Hamish, and Hamish smiled at me in his bright way, and said, 'Cheer up, it will be all right, old friend.' Upon that, somebody was standing by the bed--which was nothing but a sack of sand that you roll off unpleasantly--laying hold of my pulse and looking down at me. I mean really, you know. A chap in the room said it was a doctor; perhaps it was; but he got me nothing but some herb-tea to drink. 'Take courage,' says he to me, 'it's half the battle!' I got well in time, and so may Hamish.Youtake courage, Mrs. Channing."
She smiled a little. "My taking courage would not help my husband, Roland."
"Well--no; perhaps it mightn't," acknowledged Roland, resuming his gloom. "Where is he?"
She pointed to the other room. "Asleep before the fire."
Roland softly opened the door and looked in. The firelight played on Hamish Channing's wasted features; and his dreams seemed to be of a pleasant nature, for a smile sat on the delicate lips: lips that had always shown so plainly the man's remarkable refinement. Nevertheless, sleeping and dreaming peacefully, there was something in the face that spoke of coming death. And Roland could have burst into sobs as he stood there.
Going back again, and closing the door quietly, Roland found the company augmented in the person of his brother Gerald. For some time past Gerald Yorke had heard from one and another of Hamish Channing's increased illness, which made no impression upon him, except a slightly favourable one; for, if Hamish were incapacitated from writing, it would be a rival removed from Gerald's path. This afternoon he was told that Hamish was thought to be past recovery; in fact, dying. That did arouse him a little; the faint spark of conscience Gerald Yorke possessed took a twinge, and he thought as he was near the house he'd give a call in.
"You are quite a stranger," Mrs. Channing was saying, meeting Gerald with a cordial hand and a grasp of welcome. "What has kept you away?"
"Aw--been busy of late; and--aw--worried," answered Gerald, according a distant nod to Roland. "What's this I hear about Hamish?--That he is dying!"
"Well, I don't think you need blurt out that strong word to Mrs. Channing, Gerald," interposed hot Roland. "Dying, indeed! Do you call it manners? I don't."
"I beg Mrs. Channing's pardon," Gerald was beginning, half cynically; but Ellen's voice rose to interrupt.
"It makes no difference, Roland," she kindly said. "It is the truth, you know; and I am not blind to it.
"What's the matter with him?" asked Gerald.
The matter with him? Ellen Channing told the brief story in a few words. The cruel reviews had broken his heart. Gerald listened, and felt himself turned into a white heat inside and out.
"The reviews!" he exclaimed. "I don't understand yon, Mrs. Channing."
"Of course you read them, Gerald, and must know their bitter, shameful injustice," she explained. "They were such that might have struck a blow even to a strong man: they struck a fatal one to Hamish. He had staked his whole heart and hope upon the book; he devoted to it the great and good abilities with which God had gifted him; he made it worthy of all praise; and false men rose up and blasted it. A strong word you may deem that, Gerald, for me to use; but it is a true one. They rose up, and--in envy, as I believe--set themselves to write and work out a deliberate lie: they got it sent forth to the world in effectual channels, andkilledthe book. Perhaps they did not intend also to kill the writer."
Gerald's white face looked whiter than usual. His eyes, in their hard stare, were very ugly.
"Still I can't understand," he said. "The critiques were, of course rather severe: but how can critiques kill a man?"
"And if you, being a reviewer yourself, Gerald, could only get to find out who the false-hearted hound was,--for it's thought to have been one fellow who penned the lot--you'd oblige me," put in Roland. "I'drepayhim, as I've seen it done at Port Natal. His howling would be something fine."
"You do not yet entirely understand, I see, Gerald," sadly answered Ellen, paying no attention to Roland's interruption, while Gerald turned his shoulder upon him. "In one sense the reviews did not kill. They did not, for instance, strike Hamish dead at once, or break his heart with a stroke. In fact, you may think the expression, a broken heart, but a figure of speech, and in a degree of course it is so. But there are some natures, and his is one, which are so sensitively organized that a cruel blow shatters them. Had Hamish been stronger he might have borne it, have got over it in time; but he had been working beyond his strength; and I think also his strangely eager hope in regard to the book must have helped to wear out his frame. It was his first work, you know. When the blow came he had not strength to rally from it; mind and body were alike stricken down, and so the weakness set in and laid hold of him."
"What are these natures good for?" fiercely demanded Gerald, in a tone as if he were resenting some personal injury.
"Only for Heaven, as it seems to me," she gently answered.
Gerald rubbed his face; he could not get any colour into it, and there ensued a pause. Presently Ellen spoke again.
"I remember, when I was quite a girl, reading of a somewhat similar case in one of Bulwer Lytton's novels. A young artist painted a great picture--great to him--and insisted on being concealed in the room while a master came to judge of it. The judgment was adverse; not, perhaps, particularly harsh and cruel in itself, only sounding so to the painter; and it killed him. Not at the moment, Gerald; I don't mean that; he lived to become ill, and he went to Italy for his health, his heart gradually breaking. He never spoke of what the blow had been to him, or that it had crushed out his hope and life, but died hiding it. Hamish has never spoken."
"What I want to know is, where's the use of people being like this?" pursued Gerald. "What are they made for?"
"Scarcely for earth," she answered. "The too-exquisitely-refined gold is not meant for the world's coinage."
"I'd rather be a bit of brittle china, than made so that I couldn't stand a review," said Gerald. "It's to be hoped there's not many such people."
"Only one in tens of thousands, Gerald."
"Does it--trouble him?" asked Gerald, hesitatingly.
"The advance of death?--yes, in a degree. Not for the death, Gerald: but the quitting me and Nelly."
"I'm not yet what Hamish and Arthur are, safe to be heard up there when they ask for a thing," again interrupted Roland, jerking his head upwards: "but I do pray that from the day that bad base man hears of Hamish Channing's death, he'll be haunted by his ghost for ever. My goodness! I'd not like to have murder onmyconscience. It's as bad as the fellow who killed Mr. Ollivera."
Gerald Yorke rose. Ellen asked him to wait and see Hamish, but he answered, in what seemed a desperate hurry, that he had an engagement.
"You might like to take a peep at him, Gerald," spoke Roland. "His face looks as peaceful as if it were sainted."
Gerald's answer was to turn tail and go off. Roland, who had some copying on hand that was being waited for, stayed to shake hands with Mrs. Channing.
"Look here," he whispered to her. "Don't you let him worry his mind about you and Nelly: in the way of money, you know. I shall be sure to get into something good soon; Vincent will see to that; and I'll take care of both of you. Goodbye."
Poor, penniless, good-hearted Roland! He would have "taken care" of all the world.
With a run he caught up Gerald, who was striding along rapidly. Oblivious of all save the present distress, even of Gerald's past coldness, Roland attempted to take his arm, and got repulsed for his pains.
"My way does not lie the same as yours, I think," was Gerald's haughty remark. Roland would not resent it.
"I say, Ger, is it not enough to make one sad? It wouldn't have mattered much had it been you or me to be taken: but Hamish Channing! we can't afford to lose such a one as him."
"Thank you," said Gerald. "Speak for yourself."
"And with Hamish the bread and cheese dies. She has but little money. Perhaps she'll not feel the want of it, though. I'd work my arms off for that darling little Nelly and for her too, for Hamish's sake."
"I don't believe he is dying at all," said Gerald. "Reviews kill him, indeed! it's altogether preposterous. Women talk wretched nonsense in this world."
Without so much as a parting Goodnight, Gerald struck across the street and disappeared. By the time he arrived at chambers, his mind had fully persuaded itself that there was nothing serious the matter with Hamish Channing; and he felt that he could like to shake Winny (who had beenhisinformant) for alarming him.
His servant brought him a letter as he entered, and Gerald tore it open. It proved to be from Sir Vincent Yorke, inviting Gerald down to Sunny Mead on the morrow for a couple of days' shooting.
"Hurrah!" shouted Gerald. "Vin's coming round, is he! I'll go, and get out of him a hundred or so, to bring back with me to town. That's good. Hurrah!"