The morning sun was shining on the house of Greatorex and Greatorex. It was a busy day in April. London was filling; people were flocking to town; the season was fairly inaugurated, the law courts were full of life.
The front door stood open; the inner door, closed, could be pushed back at will. It bore a brass plate with the inscription, "Greatorex and Greatorex, Solicitors," and it had a habit, this inner door, of swinging-to upon clients' heels as they went out, for the spring was sharp. In the passage which the door closed in, was a room on either hand. The one on the left was inscribed outside, "Clerks' Office "; that on the right, "Mr. Bede Greatorex."
Mr. Bede Greatorex was in his room today: not his private room; that lay beyond. It was a moderate-sized apartment, the door in the middle, the fireplace opposite to it. On the right, between the door and the near window, was the desk of Mr. Brown; opposite to it, between the fireplace and far window, stood Mr. Bede Greatorex's desk; two longer desks ran along the walls towards the lower part of the room. At the one, in a line with that of Mr. Bede Greatorex, the fireplace being between them, sat Mr. Hurst, a gentleman who had entered the house for improvement; at the one on the other side the door, in a line with Mr. Brown's, sat little Jenner, a paid clerk. Sundry stools and chairs stood about; a huge map hung above the fireplace; a stone bottle of ink, some letter-scales, and various other articles more useful than ornamental, were on the mantel-shelf: altogether, the room was about as bare and dull as such offices usually are. The door at the end, marked "Private," opened direct to the private room of Mr. Bede Greatorex, where he held consultations with clients.
And he generally sat there also. It was not very often that he came to his desk in the front office: but he chose to be there on occasions, and this was one. This side of the house was understood to comprise the department of Mr. Bede Greatorex; some of the clients of the firm were his exclusively; that is, when they came they saw him, not his father; and Mr. Brown was head-clerk and manager under him.
Bede Greatorex (called generally in the office, "Mr. Bede," in contradistinction to his father, Mr. Greatorex) sat looking over some papers taken out of his locked desk. Four years have gone by since you saw him last, reader; for that prologue to the story with its sad event, was not enacted lately. And the four years have aged him. His father was wont to tell him that he had not got over the shock and grief of John Ollivera's death; Bede's private opinion was that he never should get over it. They had been as close friends, as dear brothers; and Bede had been a changed man since. Apart from this grief and regret and the effect it might have left upon him, suspicions had also arisen latterly that Bede Greatorex's health was failing; in short there were indications, fancied or real, that the inward complaint of which his mother died, might, unless great care were used, creep upon him. Bede had seen a physician, who would pronounce no very positive opinion, but believed on the whole that the fears were without foundation, certainly they were premature.
Another cause that tended to worry Mr. Bede Greatorex, lay in his domestic life. More than three years ago now, he had married Miss Joliffe; and the world, given you know to put itself into everybody's business and whisper scandal of the best of us, said that in marrying her, Bede Greatorex had got his pill. She was wilful as the wind; spent his money right and left; ran him in debt; plunged into gaiety, show, whirl, all of which her husband hated: she was in fact a perfect, grave exemplification of that undesirable but expressive term that threatens to become a household word in our once sober land--"fast." Three parts of Bede's life--the life that lay apart from his profession, his routine of office duties--was spent in striving to keep from his father the extravagance of his wife, and the sums of money he had to draw for personal expenditure. Bede had chivalric ideas upon the point; he had made her his wife, and would jealously have guarded her failings from all: he would have denied, had he been questioned, that she had any. So far as he was able he would indulge her whims and wishes; but there was one of them that he could not and did not: and that related to their place of dwelling. Bede had brought his wife to the home that had been his mother's, to be its sole mistress in his late mother's place. It was a large, convenient, handsome residence (as was previously seen), replete with every comfort; but after a time Mrs. Bede Greatorex grew discontented. She wanted to be in a more fashionable quarter; Hyde Park, Belgrave Square; anywhere amidst the great world. After their marriage Bede had taken her abroad; and they remained so long there that Mr. Greatorex began to indulge a private opinion that Bede was never coming back again. They sojourned in Paris, in Switzerland, in Germany; and though, when they at length did return, Bede laughingly said he could not get Louisa home, he had in point of fact been as ready to linger away from it as she was. The Bedford Square house had been done up beautifully, and for two years Mrs. Bede found no fault with it; she had taken to do that lately, and it seemed to grow upon her like a mania.
Upstairs now, now at this very moment, when her husband is poring over his law-puzzles with bent brow, she is studying the advertisements of desirable houses in theTimes, almost inclined to go out and take one on her own account. A charming one (to judge by the description) was to be had in Park Lane, rent only six hundred a-year, unfurnished. Money was as plentiful as sand in the idea of Mrs. Bede Greatorex.
You can go and see her. Through the passages and the intervening door to the other house; or else go out into the street and make a call of state at the private entrance. Up the wide staircase to the handsome landing-place already told of, with its rich green carpet, its painted windows, its miniature conservatory, and its statues; on all of which the sun is shining as brightly as it was that other day four years ago, when Bede Greatorex came home, fresh from the unhappy scenes connected with the death of Mr. Ollivera. Not into the dining-room; there's no one in it; there's no one in the large and beautiful drawing-room; enter, first of all, a small apartment on the side that they call the study.
At the table sat Jane Greatorex, grown into a damsel of twelve, but exceedingly little and childlike in appearance. She was writing French dictation. By her side, speaking the words in a slow, distinct tone, with a good and pure accent, sat a young lady, her face one of the sweetest it was ever man's lot to look upon. The hazel eyes were deep, honest, steady; the auburn hair lay lightly away from delicate and well-carved features; the complexion was pure and bright. A slender girl of middle height, and gentle, winning manners, whose simple morning dress of light cashmere sat well upon her.
Surely that modest, good, thoughtful young woman could not be Mrs. Bede Greatorex! No: you must wait yet an instant for introduction to her. That is only Miss Jane's governess, a young lady who has but recently entered on her duties as such, and is striving to perform them conscientiously. She is very patient, although the little girl is excessively tiresome, with a strong will of her own, and a decided objection to lessons of all kinds. She is the more patient because she remembers what a tiresome child she was herself, at that age, and the vast amount of trouble she gave wilfully to her sister-governess.
"No, Jane; it is notfacture; it isfacteur. We are speaking of a postman, you know. The two words are essentially different; different in meaning, in spelling, and in sound. I explained this to you yesterday."
"I don't like doing dictation, Miss Channing," came the answering response.
"Go on, please. Le facteur, qui----"
"I'm tired to death. I know I've done a whole page."
"You have done three lines. One of these days I will give you a whole page to do, and then you'll know what a whole page is. Le facteur, qui arrive----"
Miss Jane Greatorex suddenly took a large penful of ink, and shook it deliberately on the copy-book. Leaving them to the contest, in which be you very sure the governess would conquer, for she was calm, kind, and firm, we will go to an opposite room, one that Mrs. Bede called her boudoir. A beautiful room, its paper and panelling of white and gold, its velvet carpet of delicate tints, its silk curtains of a soft rose-colour. But neither Mrs. Bede Greatorex, who sat there, nor her attire was in accordance with the room.
And, to say the truth, she had only come down from her chamber to get something left in it the night before: it was her favourite morning room, but Mrs. Bede was not wont to take up her position in it until made up for the day. And that was not yet accomplished. Her dark hair was untidy, her face pale and pasty, her dressing-gown, of a dull red with gold sprigs on it, sat loose. Seeing theTimeson the table, she had caught it up, and thrown herself back in a reclining chair of satin-wood and pink velvet, while she looked over the advertisements. Mrs. Bede Greatorex was tall and showy, and there her beauty ended. As Louisa Joliffe, she had exercised a charm of manner that fascinated many, but she kept it for rare occasions now; and, they, always public ones. She had no children, and her whole life and being were wrapt in fashion, frivolity, and heartlessness. The graver duties of existence were wholly neglected by Louisa Greatorex: she seemed to live in ignorance that such things were. She never so much as glanced at the solemn thought that there must come a life after this life; she never for a moment strove to work on for it, or to help another on the pilgrimage: had she chosen to search her memory, it could not have returned to her the satisfaction of having ever performed a kind action.
One little specimen of her selfishness, her utter disregard for the claims and feelings of others, shall be given, for it occurred opportunely. As she sat, newspaper in hand, a young woman opened the door, and asked leave to speak to her. She was the lady's-maid, and, as Mrs. Bede looked at her, knitting her brow at the request, she saw tears stealing down from the petitioning eyes.
"Could you please let me go out, madam? A messenger has come to say that my mother is taken suddenly worse: they think she is dying."
"You can go when I am dressed," replied Mrs. Bede Greatorex.
"Oh, madam, if you could please to let me go at once! I may not be in time to see her. Eliz a says she will take my place this morning, if you will allow her."
"You can go when I am dressed," was the reiterated, cold, and decisive answer. "You hear me, Tallet. Shut the door." And the maid withdrew, her face working with its vain yearning.
"She's always wanting to go out to her mother," harshly spoke Mrs. Bede Greatorex, as she settled herself to the newspaper again.
"One; two; three; four; five. Five houses that seem desirable. Bede may say what he chooses: in this miserable old house, with its professional varnish, we don't stay. I'll write at once for particulars," she added, going to her writing-table, a costly piece of furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
The writing for particulars took her some little time, three-quarters of an hour about, and then she went up to be dressed; which ceremony occupied nearly an hour longer. Tallet might depart then. And thus you have a specimen of the goodness of heart of Louisa Greatorex.
But this has been a digression from the morning's business, and we must return to the husband, whose wish and will she would have liked to defy, and to the office where he sat. The room was very quiet; nothing to be heard in it but the scratching of three pens; Mr. Brown's, Mr. Hurst's, and Mr. Jenner's. This room was not entered indiscriminately by callers; the opposite door inscribed "Clerks' Office," was on the swing perpetually. This room was a very sedate one: as a matter of course so in the presence of Mr. Bede Greatorex; and the head of it in his absence, Mr. Brown, allowed no opportunity for discursive gossip. He was as efficient a clerk as Greatorex and Greatorex had ever possessed; young yet: a tall, slender, silent man, devoted to his business; about three years, or so, with them now. He wore a wig of reddish brown, and his whiskers and the hair on his chin were sandy.
Bede Greatorex shut some papers into his desk with a click, and began opening another parchment. "Did you get an answer yesterday, from Garnett's people, Mr. Hurst?" he suddenly asked.
"No, sir. I could not see them."
"Their clerk came in last evening to say we should hear from them today," interposed Mr. Brown, looking up from his writing to speak.
It was in these moments--when the clerk's eyes unexpectedly met those of Mr. Bede Greatorex--that the latter would feel a kind of disagreeable sensation shoot through him. Over and over again had it occurred: the first time when Mr. Brown had been in the office but a day. They were standing talking together on that occasion, when a sudden fancy took Bede that he had seen the man somewhere before. It was not to be called a recognition; but a kind of semi-recognition, vague, indefinite, uncertain, and accompanied by a disagreeable feeling, which had its rise perhaps in the very uncertainty.
"Have we ever met before?" Mr. Bede Greatorex had questioned; but Mr. Brown shook his head, and could not say. A hundred times since then, when he met the steady gaze of those remarkably light grey eyes (nearly always bent on their work), had Bede stealthily continued to study the man; but the puzzle was always there.
Mr. Brown's eyes and face were bent on his desk again today. His master, holding a sheet of parchment up before him, as if to study the writing better, suffered his gaze to wander over its top and fix itself on Mr. Brown. The clerk, happening to glance up unguardedly, caught it.
He was one of the most observant men living, quiet though he seemed, and could not fail to be aware that he was thus occasionally subjected to the scrutiny of his master--but he never appeared to see it.
"Did you speak, sir?" he asked, as if he had looked up to put the question.
"I was about to speak," said Mr. Bede Greatorex. "There's a new clerk coming in today to replace Parkinson. Nine o'clock was the hour fixed, and now it is half-past ten. If this is a specimen of his habits of punctuality, I fear he'll not do much good. You will place him at Mr. Hurst's desk."
"Very good, sir," replied Mr. Brown, making no comment. The out-going clerk, Parkinson, had been at Jenner's desk.
"I am going over to Westminster," continued Mr. Bede Greatorex, gathering some papers in his hand. "If Garnett's people come in, they must wait for me. By the way, what about that deed----"
The words were cut short by a clatter. A clatter and bustle of feet and doors; someone was dashing in from the street in a desperate hurry, with a vast deal of unnecessary noise. First the swing-door gave a bang, then the clerks' door opened and banged; now this one was sent back with a breeze; and a tall fine-looking young man came bustling in, head foremost--Mr. Roland Yorke.
Not so very young, either. For more than seven years have elapsed since he was of age, and went careering off on a certain hopeful voyage of his to Port Natal, told of in history. He is changed since then. The overgrown young fellow of twenty-one, angular and awkward, has become quite a noble-looking man in his great strength and height. The face is a fine one, good-nature the predominant expression of the somewhat rough features, which are pale and clear and healthy: the indecision that might once have been detected in his countenance, has given place to earnestness now. Of regular beauty in his face, as many people count beauty, there is none; but you would scarcely pass him in the street without turning to look at him. In manner he is nearly as much of a boy as a grown man can be, just as he ever was, hasty, thoughtless, and impulsive.
"I know I'm late," he began. "How d'ye do, Mr. Greatorex?"
"Yes, you are late, Mr. Yorke," was the response of Mr. Bede Greatorex, submitting to the hearty handshake offered. "Nine was the hour named."
"It was the boat's fault," returned Roland, speaking with loud independence, just as he might had he been a ten thousand a-year client of the house. "I went down to see Carrick off at eight o'clock, and if you'll believe me, the vessel never got away before ten. They were putting horses on board. Carrick says they'll lose their tide over yonder; but he didn't complain, he's as easy as an old shoe. Since then I've had a pitch out of a hansom cab."
"Indeed!"
"I told the fellow to drive like mad; which he did; and down went the horse, and I out atop of him, and the man atop-faced of me. There was no damage, only it all served to hinder. But I'm ready for work now, Mr. Greatorex. Which is to be my place?"
To witness a new clerk announce himself in this loud, familiar kind of way, to see him grasp and shake the hand of Mr. Bede Greatorex: above all to hear him speak unceremoniously of the Earl of Carrick, one of the house's noble clients, as if the two were hail-fellow-well-met, caused the whole office to look up, even work-absorbed Mr. Brown. Bede Greatorex indicated the appointed desk.
"This is where you will be, by the side of Mr. Hurst, a gentleman who is with us for improvement. Mr. Brown, the manager in this room"--pointing out the clerk with the end of his pen--"will assign you your work. Mr. Hurst, Mr. Roland Yorke."
Roland took his seat at once, and turned up his coat-cuffs as a preliminary step to industry. Mr. Bede Greatorex, saying no more, passed through to his private room, and after a minute was heard to go out.
"What's to do?" asked Roland.
Mr. Brown was already giving him something; a deed to be copied. He spoke a few instructions in a concise, quiet tone, and Roland Yorke set to work.
"What ink d'ye call this?" began Roland.
"It is the proper ink," said Mr. Brown.
"It's uncommon bad."
"Have you ever been used to the kind of work, Mr. Yorke?" inquired the manager, wondering whether the new comer might be a qualified solicitor, brought to grief, or a gentleman-embryo just entering on his noviciate.
"Oh, haven't I!" returned Mr. Yorke; "I was in a proctor's office once, where I was worked to death."
"Then you'll soon find that to be good ink."
"I had all the care of the office on my shoulders," resumed Roland, holding the pen in the air, and sitting back on his stool while he addressed Mr. Brown. "There were three of us in the place altogether, not counting the old proctor himself, and we had enough work for six. Well, circumstances occurred to take the other two out of the office, and I, who was left, had to do it all. What do you think of that?"
Mr. Brown did not say what he thought. He was writing steadily, giving no encouragement for the continuance of the conversation. Mr. Hurst, his elbow on the desk, had his face turned to the speaker, surveying him at leisure.
"I couldn't stand it; I should have been in my grave in no time; and so I thought I'd try a part of the world that might be more desirable--Port Natal. I say, what are you staring at?"
This was to Mr. Hurst. The latter dropped his elbow as he answered.
"I was looking whether you were much altered. You are: and yet I think I should hare known you, after a bit, for Roland Yorke. When the name was mentioned I might have been at fault, but for your speaking of Lord Carrick."
"He's my uncle," said Roland. "Who are you?"
"Jos Hurst, from Helstonleigh. Have you forgotten me? I was at the college school with your brothers, Gerald and Tod."
Roland stared. He had not forgotten Josiah Hurst; but the rather short and very broad young man by his side, as broad as he was high, bore no resemblance to the once slim college boy. Roland never doubted: he got off his stool, upsetting it in the process, to shake heartily the meeting hand. Mr. Brown began to think the quiet of the office would not be much enhanced through its new inmate.
"My goodness! you are the first of the old fellows I've seen. And what are you, Hurst,--a lawyer?"
"Yes; I've passed. But the old doctor (at home, you know) won't buy me a practice, or let me set up for myself, or anything, until I've had some experience: and so I've come to Greatorex and Greatorex to get it," concluded Mr. Hurst, ruefully.
"And who's he?" continued Roland, pointing to Jenner. "Greatorex said nothing about him."
He was one of the least men ever seen, but he had a vast amount of work in him. Mr. Hurst explained that Jenner was only a clerk, but a very efficient one.
"He'd do twice the amount of work that I could, Yorke: I'm slow and sure; Jenner is sure and quick. How long have you been home from Port Natal?"
"Don't bother about that now," said Roland.
"Did you make your fortune out there?"
"What a senseless question! If I'd made a fortune there, it stands to reason I should not have come into an office here."
"How was I to know? You might have made a fortune and dissipated it?"
"Dissipated it in what?" cried Roland, with wide-open eyes. And to Mr. Hurst, who had gained some knowledge of what is called life, the look and the question bore earnest that Roland Yorke, in spite of his travelling experiences, was not much tainted by the world and its ways.
"Oh, in many things. Horse-racing, for instance."
Roland threw back his head in the old emphatic manner. "If ever Idoget a fortune, Jos,--which appears about as likely as that Port Natal and Ireland should join hands and spin a waltz with each other--I'll take care of it."
Possibly in the notion occurring to him that idleness was certainly not the best way to acquire a fortune, Roland tilted his stool on its even legs, and began to work in earnest. When he had accomplished two lines, he took it to the manager.
"Will this do, Mr. Brown? I'm rather out of practice."
Mr. Brown signified that it would. He knew his business better than to give anything of much consequence to an unknown and untried clerk.
"Are you related to Sir Richard Yorke?" he asked of Roland.
"Yes, I am; and I'm ashamed of him. Old Dick's my uncle, my late father's brother; and his son and heir, young Dick, is my cousin. Old Dick is the greatest screw alive; he'd not help a fellow to save him from hanging. He's as poor as Carrick; but I don't call that an excuse for him; his estate is mortgaged up to the neck."
Mr. Brown needed not the additional information, which Roland proffered so candidly. His nature had not changed a whit. Nay, perhaps the free and easy life at Port Natal, about which we may hear somewhat later, had only tended to render him less reticent, if that were possible. Greatorex and Greatorex were the confidential solicitors to Sir Richard Yorke, and Mr. Brown was better acquainted than Roland with the baronet's finances.
"I thought it must be so," remarked Mr. Brown. "I knew there was some connection between Sir Richard and Lord Garrick. Are you likely to stay in our office long?" he questioned, inwardly wondering that Roland with two uncles so puissant should be there at all.
"I am likely to stay for ever, for all I know. They are going to give me twenty shillings a week. I say, Mr. Brown, why do you wear a wig?"
Doubtless Mr. Brown thought the question a tolerably pointed one upon so brief an acquaintance. He settled to his work again without answering it. A hint that the clerk, just come under his wing, might return and settle to his. Which was not taken.
"My hair is as plentiful as ever it was," said Roland, giving his dark hair a push backwards. "I don't want a wig; and you can't be so very much my senior; six or seven years, perhaps. I am eight-and-twenty."
"And I am three-and-thirty, sir. My hair came off in a fever a few years back, and it does not grow again. Be so good as to get on with what you have to do, Mr. Yorke."
Thus admonished, Roland obediently sought his place. And what with renewed questions to Mr. Brown--that came ringing out at the most unexpected moments--what with a few anecdotes of life at Port Natal with which he confidently regaled Mr. Hurst, what with making the acquaintance of little Jenner, which Roland accomplished with great affability, and what with slight interludes of writing, a line here and a line there, the morning wore away agreeably.
Mr. Roland Yorke's emigration to Port Natal cannot be said to have turned out a success. He had gone off in high spirits, a chief cabin passenger, Lord Carrick having paid the passage money, forty pounds. He had carried with him, from the same good-natured source, fifty pounds, to begin life with when he should land, a small but sufficient outfit, and a case of merchandize consisting of frying-pans. Seven years, before, when Roland resolved to emigrate and run away from work at home, he became imbued with the conviction (whence derived, he scarcely knew, but it lay on his mind as a positive certainty) that frying-pans formed the best and most staple article on which to commence trading at Port Natal, invariably the foundation of a fortune. Some friend of his, a Mr. Bagshaw, who had previously emigrated, had imparted this secret to him; at least, Roland was impressed with the belief that he had; a belief which nothing could shake. Frying-pans and fortune were associated together in his dreams. He stood out strongly for the taking out forty dozen, but Lord Carrick declined to furnish them, allowing only the miserable number of four-and-twenty. "When ye see for ye'reself out there that there's a market for them, send me word, and I'll dispatch loads to ye by the first steamer, me boy," said his lordship sensibly; and Roland was fain to put up with the advice and with the two dozen accorded. He arrived at Port Natal, all youth and joy and buoyancy. Seen from the deck of the vessel, when she anchored in the beautiful harbour, calm as a lake, Natal looked a very paradise. Ranges of hills on the west of the fair town were dotted with charming houses and pleasure grounds; and Roland landed fresh and full of hope as a summer's morning: just as too many an emigrant from the dear old mother-country does land, at other parts besides Natal. And he bought experience as they do.
In the first place, Roland began life there as he had been accustomed to do it in England; that is, as a gentleman. In the second place there proved to be no especial market for frying-pans. That useful culinary article might be bought in sufficient abundance, he found, when inquired for, without bringing into requisition the newly-arrived supply. The frying-pans being thus left upon his hands, lying like a dead weight on them, metaphorically speaking, brought the first check to his hopes; for they had been relied upon (as the world knows) to inaugurate and establish the great enterprizes, commercial or otherwise, that had floated in rose-coloured visions through Roland's brain. He quitted the port town, Durban, and went to Maritzburg, fifty miles off, and then came back to Durban. Thrown upon his own resources (through the failure of the frying-pans), Roland had leisure to look about him, for some other fertile source in which to embark his genius and energy, and lead him on to speedy fortune. Such resources did not appear to be going begging; they were coyly shy; or at least came not flowing in Roland's way; and meanwhile his money melted. Partly in foolish expenditure on his own account, partly in helping sundry poor wights, distressed steerage passengers with whom he had made acquaintance on board (for Roland had brought out his good-nature with him), the money came to a summary end. One fine morning, Roland woke up from a dream of idle carelessness, to find himself changing the last sovereign of all the fifty. It did not dismay him very much: all he said was, "I must set about money-making in earnest now."
Of course the great problem was--how to do it. You, my reader, may be, even now, trying to solve it. Thousands of us are, every day. Roland Yorke made but one more of a very common experience; and he had to encounter the usual rubs incidental to the process. He came to great grief and was reduced to a crust; nay, to the not knowing where the crust could be picked up from. The frying-pans went first, disposed of in a job lot, almost literally for an old song. Some man who owned a shed had, for a consideration, housed the case that contained them, and they were eating their handles off. Roland's wardrobe went next, piece-meal; and things fell to the pass that Roland was not sure but he himself would have to go after it. It came to one of two things--starvation or work. To do Roland justice, he was ready and willing to work; but he knew no mechanical trade; he had never done an hour's hard labour, and in that lay the difficulty of getting it. He would rush about from office to store, hunger giving him earnestness, from store to workshop, from workshop to bench, and say, Employ me. For the most part, the answer would be that he was not wanted; the labour market of all kinds was overstocked; but if the application appeared, by rare chance, likely to be entertained, and Roland was questioned of his experience and capabilities, rejection was sure to follow. He was too honest, too shallow in the matter of tact, to say he had been accustomed to work when he had not; and the experience in copying which he acknowledged and put forth, was somehow never required to be tested. To hear Roland tell of what he had accomplished in this line at home, must have astonished the natives of Port Natal.
Well, time went on; it does not stand still for any one; and Roland went on with it, down and down and down. Years went on; and one rainy day, when about four winters had gone by from the date of his departure, Roland returned to England. He landed in St. Katharine's Docks, his coat out at elbows and ninepence in his pocket: as an old friend of his, Mr. Galloway, had once prophesied he would land, if he lived to get back at all.
Mr. Roland Yorke had sailed for Port Natal in style, a first-class cabin passenger; he came home in the steerage, paying twelve pounds for the passage, and working out part of that. From thence he made his way to Lord Carrick in Ireland, very much like a bale of returned goods.
The best account he gave of his travels to Lord Carrick, perhaps the best account he could give, was that he had been "knocking about." Luck had not been with him, he said; and there really did seem to have been a good deal in that. To hear him tell of his adventures was something rich; not consecutively as a history, he never did that: but these chance recollections were so frequent and diffuse, that a history of his career at Natal might have been compiled from them. The Earl would hold his sides, laughing at Roland's lamentations for the failure and sacrifice of his frying-pans, and at the reminiscences in general. A life of adventure one week, a life of starvation the next. Roland said he had tried all kinds of things. He had served in stores; at bars where liquor was dispensed; he had been a hired waiter at half the hotels in Natal; he had worked on the shore with the half-naked Zulu Kaffirs at lading and unlading boats; once, for a whole week, when he was very hard up, or perhaps very lowdown, he had cried hot potatoes in the streets. He had been a farmer's labourer and driven a waggon, pigs, and cattle. He had been sub-editor in a newspaper office,The Natal Mercury, and one unlucky day sent the journal out with its letters printed upside down. He had hired himself out as chemist's assistant, and half ruined his master by his hopeless inability to distinguish between senna and tincture of laudanum, so that the antidotes obliged to be supplied to the hapless customers who came rushing for them, quite outweighed the profits. Occasionally he met with friends who assisted him, and then Roland was at ease--for his propensity to live as a gentleman was for ever cropping up. Up and down; down and up; now fortune smiling a little, but for the most part showing herself very grim, and frowning terribly. Roland had gone (as he called it) up the country, and amidst other agreeable incidents came to a fight with the Kaffirs. He took out a licence, the cost thirty shillings, and opened a retail store for pickled pork, candles, and native leeches, the only articles he could get supplied him on trust. His fine personal appearance, ready address, evident scholarship, and hearty frank manners, obtained for him a clerkship in the Commercial and Agricultural Bank, recently opened, and he got into so hopeless a maze with the books and cash by the week's end, that he was turned off without pay. Architecture was tried next. Roland sent in a graphic plan as competitor for the erection of a public building; and the drawing--which he had copied from a model, just as he used to copy cribs in the college school at Helstonleigh--looked so well upon paper that the arbitrators were struck with admiration at the constructive talent displayed, until one of them made the abrupt discovery that there were no staircases and no room left to build any. So, that hope was abandoned for a less exalted one; and Roland was glad to become young man at a general store, where the work was light: alternating between dispensing herrings and treacle (called there golden syrup) to customers over the counter, and taking out parcels in a wheelbarrow.
But there was good in Roland. And a great deal of it too, in spite of his ill-luck and his careless improvidence. The very fact of his remaining away four years, striving manfully with this unsatisfactory life of toil and semi-starvation, proved it. The brown bread and pea-soup Mr. Galloway had foreseen he would be reduced to live on, was often hungered for by Roland in vain. He put up with it all; and not until every chance seemed to have failed, would he go home to tax his uncle's pocket, and to disappoint his mother. A sense of shame, of keen, stinging mortification, no doubt lay at the bottom of this feeling against return. He had been so sanguine, as some of my readers may remember; and as he, sitting one day on a roadside stone in the sand, towards the close of his stay in Natal, recalled; so full of hopeful, glowing visions in the old home, that his mother, the Lady Augusta Yorke, had caught their reflection. Roland's castles in the air cannot have slipped yet out of people's memory. He had represented to his mother; aye, and believed it too; that Port Natal was a kind of Spanish El Dorado, where energetic young men might line their pockets in a short while, and come home millionaires for life. He had indulged large visions and made magnificent promises on the strength of them, beginning with a case of diamonds to his mother, and ending--nobody but Roland could have any conception where. Old debts were to be paid, friends benefited, enemies made to eat humble-pie. Mr. Galloway was to be passed in the street by Mr. Roland Yorke, the millionaire; the Reverend William Yorke to have the cold shoulder turned upon him. Arthur Channing was to be honoured; Jenkins, the hard-working clerk, who had thought nothing of doing Roland's work as well as his own, to be largely patronised; within three months after his arrival in Port Natal, funds were to be dispatched home to settle claims that might be standing against Roland in Helstonleigh. That there could be the slightest doubt he should come back "worth millions," Roland never supposed; he had talked of it everywhere--and talked faithfully. Poor Jenkins had long gone where worldly patronage and gifts could not follow him, but others had not. Roland remembered how his confident anticipations had so won upon his mother, that she went to bed and dreamt of driving about a charming city, whose streets were paved with Malachite marble.
And so, recalling these visions and promises, Roland, for very disappointment and shame, was not in a hurry to go back, but rather lingered on in Port Natal, struggling manfully with his ill-luck, as he called it. Pride and good-feeling alike prevented him. To appear before Lady Augusta, poor, starving, hatless, and bootless, would be undoubtedly a worse blow to her than that other alternative which he (forgetting his height and weight) had laid before her view: the one, he said, might happen if he didnotget to Port Natal--the riding as a jockey on Helstonleigh race-course, in a pink silk jacket and yellow breeches.
No. He did try heartily with all his might and main; tried at it for four mortal years. Beyond a scrap of writing he now and again sent home, in which he always said he was "well, and happy, and keeping straight, and getting on," but which never contained a request for home news, or an address to which it might be sent, Lady Augusta heard nothing. Nobody else heard. One letter, indeed, reached a bosom friend of his, Arthur Channing, which was burnt when read, as requested, and Arthur looked grieved for a month after. He had told Arthur the truth; that he was not getting on; but under an injunction of secrecy, and giving no details. Beyond that, no news reached home of Roland.
His fourth year of trial at Port Natal was drawing to a close when illness seized hold of him, and for the first time Roland felt as if he were losing heart. It was not serious illness, only such as is apt to attack visitors to the country, and from which Roland's strength of frame, sound constitution, and good habits--for he had no bad ones, unless a great appetite might be called such--had hitherto preserved him. But, what with the wear and tear of his chequered life, its uncertain food, a plentiful dinner today, bread and beans tomorrow, nothing the following one, and its harassing and continuous disappointments, Roland felt the illness as a depressing calamity; and he began to say he could not make head against the tide any longer, and must get away from it. He might have to eat humble-pie on landing in England; but humble-pie seems tolerable or nauseous according to the existing state of mind; and it is never utterly poisonous to one of the elastic temperament of Roland Yorke. In a fit of impulse he went down to the ships and made the best bargain for getting home that circumstances allowed. He had been away more than four years, and never once, during that time, had he written home for money.
And so, behold him, out at pocket (except for ninepence) and out at elbows, but wonderfully improved in tone and physique, arriving in London early one rainy morning from Port Natal, and landing in the docks.
The first thing he did was to divide the ninepence with one who was poorer than he; the second was to get a cup of coffee and a slice of bread at a street coffee-stall; the third was to hasten to Lord Carrick's tailor--and a tremendous walk it was, but that was nothing to Roland--and get rigged out in any second-hand suit of clothes returned on hand that might be decent. There ill news awaited him; it was the time of year when Lord Carrick might, as a rule, be found in London; but he had not come; he was, the tailor believed, in Ireland. Roland at once knew, as sure as though it had been told him, that his uncle was in some kind of pecuniary hot water. Borrowing the very smallest amount of money that would take him to Ireland, he went off down the Thames in a return cattleboat that very day.
Since that period, hard upon three years, he had been almost equally "knocking about," and experienced nearly as many ups and downs in Ireland as at Port Natal. Sometimes living in clover with Lord Carrick, at others thrown on his own resources and getting on somehow. Lord Carrick's will was good to help him, but not always his ability; now and again it had happened that his lordship (who was really more improvident than his nephew, and had to take flights to the Continent on abrupt emergencies and without a day's warning) was lost to society for a time, even to Roland. Roland hired himself out as a kind of overlooker to some absentee's estate, but he could not get paid for it. This part of his career need not be traced; on the whole, he did still strive to do something for himself as strenuously as he had at Port Natal, and not to be a burthen to anybody, even to Lord Carrick.
To this end he came over to London, and presented himself one day to his late father's brother, Sir Richard Yorke, and boldly asked him if he could not "put him into something." The request caused Sir Richard (an old gentleman with a fat face) to stare immensely; he was very poor and very selfish, and had persistently held himself aloof from his late brother's needy family, keeping them always at arm's length. His son and heir had been content to do the same: in truth, the cousins did not know each other by sight. Sir Richard's estate was worth four thousand a-year, all told; and as he was wont to live at the rate of six, it will be understood that he was never in funds. Neither had he patronage or influence in anyway. To be thus summarily applied to by a stalwart young man, who announced himself as his nephew, took the baronet aback; and if he did not exactly turn Roland out of the house, his behaviour was equivalent to it "I'll be shot if I ever go near him again," cried Roland. "I'd rather cry hot pies in Poplar streets."
A day or two previously, in sauntering about parts of London least frequented by men of the higher class--for when we are very much down in the world we don't exactly choose the region of St. James's for our promenades, or the sunny side of Regent Street--Roland had accidentally met one of the steerage passengers with whom he had voyaged home from Port Natal. Ever open-hearted, he had frankly avowed the reason of being unable to treat his friend; namely, empty pockets: he was not sure, he added, but he must take to crossing-sweeping for a living; he heard folks made fortunes at it. Upon this the gentleman, who wore no coat and very indifferent pantaloons, confided to him the intelligence that there was a first-rate opening in the perambulating hot-pie trade, down in Poplar, for an energetic young man with a sonorous voice. Roland, being great in the latter gift, thought he might entertain it.
Things were at a low ebb just then with Roland. Lord Carrick, as usual, was totally destitute of ready money; and Roland, desperately anxious though he was to get along of his own accord, was fain to write to his mother for a little temporary help. One cannot live upon air in London, however that desirable state of things may be accomplished at Port Natal. But the application was made at an inopportune moment. Every individual boy Lady Augusta possessed was then tugging at her purse-strings; and she returned a sharp answer to Roland, telling him he ought to be ashamed of himself not to be helping her, now that he was the eldest, instead of wanting her to keep him. George, the eldest son, had died in India, which brought Roland first.
"It's true," said Roland, in a reflective mood, "I ought to be helping her. I wonder if Carrick could put me into anything, as old Dick won't. Once let me get a start, I'm bound to go on, and the mother should be the first to benefit by it."
A short while after this, and when Roland was far more at his wits' end for a shilling than he had ever been at Port Natal--for there he had no appearance to keep up, and here he had; there he could encamp out in the sand, here he couldn't--Lord Carrick arrived suddenly in London, in a little trouble as usual. Some warm-hearted friend had induced his good-natured lordship to accept a short bill, and afterwards treacherously left him to meet it. So Lord Carrick was again en route for the Continent, until his men of business, Greatorex and Greatorex, could arrange the affair for him by finding the necessary money. Halting in London a couple of days, to confer with them on that and other matters--for Lord Carrick's affairs altogether were complicated and could not be touched upon in an hour--Roland seized on the opportunity to prefer the application. And this brings us to the present time.
When under a cloud, and not quite certain that the streets were safe, the Earl was wont to eschew his hotel at the west end, and put up at a private one in a more obscure part. Roland, having had notice of his arrival, clattered in to breakfast with him on the morning of the second day, and entered on his petition forthwith--to be put into something.
"Anything for a start, Uncle Carrick," he urged. "No matter how low I begin: I'll soon go along swimmingly, once I get the start. I can't go about here, you know, with my toes out, as I have over yonder. It's awful work getting a dinner only once a week. I've had thoughts of crying hot pies in Poplar."
To judge by the breakfast Roland was eating, he had been a week without that meal as well as dinner. Lord Carrick, looking at the appetite with admiration, sat pulling his white whiskers in perplexity; for the grey hair of seven years ago had become white now. His heart was good to give Roland the post of Prime Minister, or any other trifling office, but he did not see his way clear to accomplish it.
"Me boy, there's only one thing I can do for ye just now," he said after silently turning the matter about in all its bearings, and hearing the explanation of the Poplar project. "Ye know I must be off tomorrow by the early French steamer, and I can't go about looking after places today, even if I knew where they could be picked up, which I don't. I must leave ye to Greatorex and Greatorex."
"What will they do?" asked Roland.
"You can come along with me there, and see."
Accordingly, when the Earl of Carrick went forth to his appointed interview that day with Mr. Greatorex, he presented Roland; and simply told the old lawyer that he must put him in a way of getting along, until he, Lord Carrick, was in funds again. Candid and open as ever Roland could be, the Earl made no secret whatever of that gentleman's penniless state, enlarging on the fact that to go dinnerless, as a rule, could not be good for him, and that he should not exactly like to see him set up as a hot-pie man in Poplar. Mr. Greatorex, perhaps nearly as much taken to as Sir Richard Yorke had been on a similar occasion, glanced at his son Bede who was present, and hesitated. He did not refuse point blank--as he might have done by almost anybody else. Lord Carrick was a valuable client, his business yearly bringing in a good share of feathers to the Greatorex nest, and old Mr. Greatorex was sensible of the fact. Still, he did not see what he could do for one who, like Roland, was in the somewhat anomalous position of being nephew to an earl and a baronet, but reduced to contemplate the embarking in the hot-pie trade.
"We might give him a stool in our office, Lord Carrick, for it happens that we are a clerk short: and pay him--pay him--twenty shillings a week. As a temporary thing, of course."
To one who had not had a dinner for days, twenty shillings a week seems an ample fortune; and Roland started up and grasped the elder lawyer's hand.
"I'll earn it," he said, his tone and eyes alike beaming with gratitude. "I'll work for you till I drop."
Mr. Greatorex smiled. "The work will not be difficult, Mr. Yorke; writing, and going on errands occasionally. If you do come," he pointedly added, "you must be ready to perform anything you may be directed to do, just as a regular clerk does."
"Ready and willing too," responded Roland.
"We have room for a certain number of clerks only," proceeded Mr. Greatorex, who was desirous that there should be no misunderstanding in the bargain; "each one has his appointed work and must get through it. Can you copy deeds?"
"Can'tI," unceremoniously replied Roland. "I was nearly worked to death with old Galloway, of Helstonleigh."
"Were you ever with him?" cried Mr. Greatorex in surprise to whom Mr. Galloway was known.
"Yes, for years; and part of the time had all the care of the office on my shoulders," was Roland's ready answer. "There was only Galloway then, beside myself, andhewas not good for much. Why! the amount of copying I had to do was so great, I thought I should have dropped into my grave. Lord Carrick knows it."
Lord Carrick did, in so far as that he had heard Roland repeatedly assert it, and nodded assent. Mr. Greatorex thought the services of so experienced a clerk must be invaluable to any house, and felt charmed to have secured them.
And that is how it arose that Roland Yorke, as you have seen, was entering the office of Greatorex and Greatorex. He was to be a clerk there to all intents and purposes; just as he had been in the old days at Mr. Galloway's; and yet, when he came in that morning, after his summerset out of the hansom cab, with a five-pound note in his pocket that Lord Carrick had contrived to spare for him, and an order for unlimited credit at his lordship's tailor's, hatter's, and bootmaker's, Roland's buoyant heart and fate were alike radiant, as if he had suddenly come into a fortune.