"Dear Bede,--Can you tell me whether Sir Thomas Kene is in London? I wish particularly to see him as soon as possible. It is on a little matter connected with my parish work.
"Truly yours
"William Ollivera."
It was a latent thought that induced Mr. Ollivera to add the concluding sentence and the motive shall be told. He and Bede Greatorex had come to an issue twice upon the subject of his so persistently cherishing the notion that the now long-past death was anything but a suicide; or rather, that he should pursue it. Bede heard so much of it from him that he grew vexed, and at length vowed he would listen to him no more. And Mr. Ollivera thought that if Bede fancied he wanted to see Sir Thomas Kene on that subject, he might refuse to answer him.
Ringing the bell, he gave the note to the servant with a request (preferred with deprecation and a plea of his own tired state, for he was one of those who are sensitively chary of giving any extra trouble) that it should be taken to Mr. Bede Greatorex, and an answer waited for.
But when the girl got downstairs, there arose some slight difficulty; she was engaged in a necessary household occupation--ironing--and her mistress did not care that she should quit it. Miss Rye stood by with her things on, about to go out on some errand of her own. Ah me! these apparently trifling chances do not happen accidentally.
"Can'tyoujust step round to Bedford Square, with it, Alletha?" asked Mrs. Jones. "It won't take you far out of your way."
Miss Rye's silent answer--she seemed always silent now--was to pick up the note and go out with it. She knew the house, for she worked occasionally for Mrs. Bede Greatorex, and was passing to the private entrance when she encountered Frank Greatorex, who was coming out at the other door. He wished her good evening, and she told him her errand, showing the note directed to Bede.
"He is in his office still," said Frank, throwing open the door for her. "Walk in. Mr. Brown, attend here, please."
Miss Rye stepped into the semi-lighted room, for there was only a shaded lamp on Mr. Brown's desk; and Frank Greatorex, closing the door, was gone again. Mr. Brown, at work as late as his master, came forward.
"For Mr. Bede Greatorex," said Miss Rye, handing him the note. "I will wait----"
The words were broken off with a faint, sharp cry. A cry, low though it was, of surprise, of terror, of dismay. Both their faces blanched to whiteness, they stood gazing at each other, she with strained eyes and drawnback lips, he with a kind of forced stillness on his features, that nevertheless told of inward emotion.
"Oh, my good heaven!" she breathed in her agitation. "Is ityou?"
Miss Rye had heard speak of Mr. Brown, the managing clerk in the department of Mr. Bede Greatorex. Jenner had mentioned him: Roland Yorke had commented on him and his wig. But that "Mr. Brown" should be the man now standing before her, she had never suspected; no, not in her wildest dreams.
"Sit down, Miss Rye. You are faint."
She put his arm from her, as he would have supported her to a seat, and staggered to one of herself. He followed, and stood by her in silence.
"What are you calledhere?" she began--and, it may be, that in the moment's agitation she forgot his ostensible name and really put it as a question, not in mocking, condemnatory scorn:--"Godfrey Pitman?"
Every instinct of terror the man possessed seemed to rise up within him at sound of the name. He glanced round the room; at the desks; at the walls; as if to assure himself that no ear was there.
"Hush--sh--sh!" with a prolonged note of caution. "Never breathe that name, here or elsewhere."
"What if I were to? To speak it aloud to all who ought to hear it?"
"Why then you would bring a hornet's nest about heads that you little wot of. Their sting might end in worse than death."
"Death for you?"
"No: I should be the hangman."
"What do you mean?"
"Listen, Miss Rye. I cannot tell you what I mean: and your better plan will be never to ask me. If----"
"Better for whom?" she interrupted.
"For--well, for me, for one. The fact is, that certain interests pertaining to myself and others--certain reminiscences of the past," he continued with very strong emphasis, "have become so complicated, so interwoven as it were one with the other, that we must in all probability stand or fall together."
"I do not understand you."
"I can scarcely expect that you should. But--were any proceeding on your part, any word, whether spoken by design or accident, to lead to that fall, you would rue it to the last hour of your life.Thatyou can at least understand."
The faintness was passing off, and Miss Rye rose, steadying herself against the railings of Mr. Hurst's desk. At that moment the inner door was unlatched, and the clerk, recalled to present duties, caught the note from her unresisting hand.
"For Mr. Bede Greatorex," he said aloud, glancing at the superscription. "I will give it to him."
It was Mr. Bede Greatorex who came forth. He took the note, and glanced at Alletha.
"Ah, Miss Rye! Is it you?"
"Our maid was busy, so I brought it down," she explained. "Mr. Ollivera is waiting for an answer."
Bede Greatorex went back to his room, leaving the intervening door open. She sat and waited. Mr. Brown, whose work was in a hurry, wrote on steadily at his desk by the light of a shaded lamp. A minute or two, and Bede Greatorex brought her a bit of paper twisted up, and showed her out himself.
With the errand she had come abroad to execute for herself gone clean out of her head, Alletha Rye went back home, her brain in a whirl. The streets she passed through were crowded with all the bustle and jostle of London life; but, had she been traversing an African desert, she could not have felt more entirely alone. Her life that night lay within her: and it was one of confused tumult.
The note found Mr. Ollivera asleep: as the twilight deepened, he had dropped, in sheer weariness, into an unconscious slumber. Untwisting the scrap of paper, he held it near a lighted candle and read the contents:--
"Dear Henry,--Kene is back, and is coming to us this evening; we expect two or three friends. Louisa will be pleased if you can join us. Faithfully yours,
"B.G."
Mr. Ollivera eschewed gaiety of all kinds, parties included. Over and over again had he been fruitlessly invited to the grand dinners and soirées of Mrs. Bede Greatorex, until they left off asking him. "Two or three friends," he repeated as he put down the note. "I don't mind that, for I must see Kene."
Dressing himself; he was on the point of setting out, when a messenger arrived to fetch him to a sick person; so that it was half-past ten when he reached the house of Mr. Greatorex. And then, but for his mission to the Judge, he would have quitted it again without entering the reception-rooms.
Two or three friends! Lining the wide staircase, dotting the handsome landing, crowding the numerous guest-rooms, there they were; a mob of them. Women in the costly and fantastic toilettes of the present day; men bowing and bending with their evening manners on. Mr. Ollivera resented the crowd as a personal wrong.
"'Two or three friends,' you wrote me word, Bede," he reproachfully said, seeing his cousin in a corner near the entrance-door. "You know I do not like these things and never go to them."
"On my word, Henry, I did not know it was going to be this cram," returned Bede Greatorex. "I thought we might be twenty, perhaps, all told."
"How can you put up with this? Is itseemly, Bede--in this once staid and pattern house?"
"Seemly?" repeated Bede Greatorex.
"Forgive me, Bede. I was thinking of the dear old times under your mother's rule. The happy evenings, all hospitality and cheerfulness; the chapter read at bedtime, when the small knot of guests had departed.Friendswere entertained then; but I don't know what you call these."
Perhaps Bede Greatorex had never, amid all his provocations, felt so tempted to avow the truth as now--that he abhorred it with his whole heart and soul. Henry William Ollivera could not hate and despise it more than he. As to the good old days of sunshine and peace thus recalled, a groan well nigh burst from him, at their recollection. It was indeed a contrast, then and now: in more things than this. The world bore a new aspect for Bede Greatorex, and not a happier one.
"Is Kene here, Bede?"
"Not yet. What is it that you want with him?"
Mr. Ollivera gave a brief outline of the case; Bede left him in the middle of it to welcome fresh arrivals. Something awfully fine loomed up, in pink silk and lace, and blazing emeralds. It was Mrs. Bede Greatorex. Her chignon was a mile high, and her gown was below her shoulder-blades. The modest young clergyman turned away at the sight, his cheeks flushing a dusky red. Not in this kind of society of late years, the curiosities of fashionable attire were new to him.
"Is Bede mad?" he inwardly said, "or has he lost all control over his wife's actions?"
Somebody else, not used to society, was staring on with all the eyes of wonder he possessed. And that was Roland Yorke. Leaning against the wall in a new suit of dress-clothes, with a huge pair of white gloves on that would have been quite the proper thing at Port Natal, stood Roland. Mr. Ollivera, trying to get away from everybody, ran against him. The two were great friends now, and Roland was in the habit of running up to Mr. Ollivera's drawing-room at will.
"I say," began Roland, "this is rather strong, is it not?"
"Do you mean the crowd?"
"I mean everything. Some of the girls and women look as if they had forgotten to put their gowns on. Why do they dress in this way?"
"Because they fancy it's the fashion, I suppose," replied Mr. Ollivera, drawing down the corners of his thin lips.
"They must have taken the fashion from the Zulu Kaffirs," returned Roland. "When one has been knocked about amidst that savage lot--fought with 'em, too, men and women--one loses superfluous fastidiousness, Mr. Ollivera; but Idon'tthink this is right."
Mr. Ollivera intimated that there could not be a doubt it was all wrong.
"Down in Helstonleigh, where I come from, they dress themselves decently," observed Roland, forgetting that his reminiscences of the place dated more than seven years back, and that fashion penetrates to all the strongholds of society, whether near or distant. "The girls there are lovely, too. Just look if they are not."
Mr. Ollivera, in some slight surprise, followed the direction of the speaker's eyes, and saw a young lady sitting back in a corner; her white evening dress, her banded hair, the soft, pure flush on her delicate face, all as simple, and genuine, and modest as herself.
"That's what the girls are in my native place, Mr. Ollivera."
"Mrs. Bede Greatorex is a native of Helstonleigh, also," observed the clergyman, dryly. And for a moment Roland was dumb. The pink robe, the tower of monstrous hair, and the shoulder-blades were in full view just then.
"No, she is not," cried he, triumphantly. "The Joliffe girls were born in barracks; they only came among us when the old colonel settled down."
"Who is the young lady?"
"Miss Channing. Her brother and I are old chums. He is the grandest fellow living; the most noble gentleman the world can show. He--why, if I don't believe you know him!" broke off Roland, as a recollection of something he had been told flashed across his mind.
"I!" returned Mr. Ollivera.
"Was Arthur Channing not at a--a certain night funeral?" asked Roland, dropping his voice out of delicacy. "You know. When that precious cousin of mine, Bill Yorke, lent you his surplice."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Ollivera, hastily; "I had forgotten the name. And so that is Arthur Channing's sister!"
"She is governess to that provoking little wretch, Jane Greatorex," said polite Roland, forgetting in his turn that he was speaking of his listener's cousin, "and she ought to be a queen. She ought, Mr. Ollivera, and you would say so if you knew her. She looks one, does she not? She's as like Arthur as two pins, and he's fit for the noblest king in the world."
The clergyman slightly smiled. He had become accustomed to his new friend's impulsive mode of speech.
"Yes, we are both of us down just now, dependents of the Greatorex house--she teacher in it, I office-clerk," went on Roland. "Never mind: luck may turn some day. I told Annabel so just now, but she sent me away. I was talking to her too much, she said, and made people stare. Perhaps it was so: I know her cheeks turned red every other minute."
"And to make them paler, you take up your position here and gaze at her," observed Mr. Ollivera with another smile--and smiles were rare from him.
"Oh, law!" cried Roland. "I'm always doing something wrong. The fact is, there's nobody else worth looking at. See there! a yellow gown and no petticoats under it. If this is fashion I hope my mother and sisters are not going in for it! I shall go back to her," he added, after a moment's pause. "It's a shame she should sit there alone, with nothing to look at but those Models, passing and repassing right before her eyes. If Arthur were here, I believe he'd take her away, I do."
Roland, vegetating in that unfashionable region, Port Natal, had not yet become accustomed to the exigencies of modern days; and he spoke freely. Just then the throng was great in front of him, and he remained where he was. Taller than almost any one in the room, he could look at Annabel at will; Mr. Ollivera, about up to Roland's shoulder, could get but occasional glimpses of her. Many a one glanced at Roland with interest, wondering who the fine, strong young man was, leaning against the wall there, with the big white gloves on, and the good-natured face, unsophisticated as a boy's.
Elbowing his way presently across the room something after the manner he might have elbowed through a crowd on the quay at Durban, Roland once more took up his position by Miss Channing. The old playfellows had become new friends, and Roland contrived that they should often meet. When Miss Channing was walking in the Square with her pupil, he was safe to run up, and stay talking; quite oblivious to the exigencies of the office waiting for his services. Jane Greatorex had learned to look for him, and would walk where she was likely to see him, in defiance of Miss Channing. In spite of Roland's early fever to quit his native place, in spite of his prolonged rovings, he was essentially a home-bird, and could have been content to talk of the old days and the old people with Annabel for ever.
"Where's Jane tonight?" he began, as he joined her.
"In bed. She was very naughty this evening, and for once Mr. Bede Greatorex interfered and sent her."
"Poor child! She is awfully troublesome, though, and one gets tired of that in the long run. If you--Halloa!"
Roland stopped. He was gazing in surprise at someone standing near: a man nearly his own age, tall and strong, and bearing altogether a general resemblance to himself. But the other's face had a cynical cast, expressive of ill-nature, and the lips were disagreeably full. Roland recognized him for his brother, although they had not met for more than seven years.
"That's Gerald, if ever I saw him in my life."
"Yes, it is Gerald," said Miss Channing, quietly. "He generally comes to Mrs. Bede's soirées."
"Isn't he got up!"
Roland's expression was an apt one. Gerald Yorke was in the very pink of male fashion. His manners were easy; entirely those of a man at home in society.
"He does it grand, does he not?" cried Roland, who had made one advance towards making friends with his brother since coming to London, and was not responded to in kind.
Miss Channing laughed. Gerald Yorke had entered on some kind of public career and was very prosperous, she believed, moving amidst the great ones of the land. Roland, quite forgetting where he was, or perhaps not caring, set up a whistle by way of attracting the attention of Gerald, who turned amidst others at the strange sound.
"How d'ye do, Gerald, old boy? Come and shake hands."
The voice was loud, glad, hearty; the great hand, with its great white glove drawn up over it, minus a button, was stretched above intervening heads. Gerald Yorke's face grew dark with the light of annoyance, and he hesitated before making the best of the situation, and getting near enough to shake the offered hand.
He would far rather have become conveniently deaf, and walked off in an opposite direction. Alike though the brothers were in general personal resemblance, no contrast could be greater than they presented in other respects. Gerald, fine and fashionable, with his aristocratic air and his slow, affected drawl, was the very type of all that is false of that insincerity and heartlessness obtaining in what is called society. Roland, hot, thoughtless, never weighing a word before he spoke it, impulsive, genuine, utterly unsophisticated as to the usages and manners that go to make up the meetings of fashionable life, was just as single-hearted and true.
Gerald, as Roland put it, "went in" for grandeur, and he was already prejudiced against his brother. In a communication from Lord Carrick, apologizing for not being able to answer satisfactorily Gerald's appeal for a loan, that nobleman had confidentially avowed that he could not at present assist even Roland effectually, and had got him a place as clerk temporarily, to save him from embarking in the hot-pie line. It may therefore be readily understood that Gerald did not consider an intimacy with Roland likely to conduce to his own advancement (to say nothing of respectability) and his annoyance and surprise at seeing him now where he did were about equally great.
The hands were shaken, and a few words of greeting passed; warm and open on Roland's part, cool and cautious on Gerald's. A friend of Gerald's, the Honourable Mr. Somebody, who was by his side and begged for an introduction, was more cordial than he.
"I have not seen him since we parted seven years ago, when I went off to Port Natal," explained Roland with his accustomed candour. "Haven't I had ups and downs since then, Gerald!" he continued, turning his beaming face upon his brother. "You have heard of them I dare say, through Carrick."
"You did not make a fortune," drawled Gerald, wishing he could get away.
"A fortune! Law bless you, Ger! I was glad to work on the port with the Kaffirs, unloading boats; and to serve in stores, and to drive cattle and pigs; anything for bread. You can't think how strange all this seems to me"--pointing to the waving crowd in the room, several of whom had gathered round, attracted by this fraternal meeting.
"Aw! Surprised to see you amidst them," minced Gerald, who could not resist the little ill-natured hint, in his growing rage.
"Mrs. Greatorex invited me," said Roland, his honest simplicity detecting not the undercurrent of sarcasm. "I am in Greatorex's office; I don't suppose you knew it, Gerald. They give me twenty shillings a week; and Carrick goes bail for my rigging out. I got this coat from his tailor's tonight."
The crowd laughed, the Honourable roared, and Gerald Yorke was half mad.
"I'd notacknowledgeit, at any rate, if I were you," he said, imprudently, his affectation lost in a gust of temper. "After all you were born a Yorke."
"Acknowledge what, Ger?" returned Roland.
"The--the--the shame of taking a common clerkship at twenty shillings a week; and all the rest of the degradation," burst forth Gerald, setting conventionality at defiance. "My uncle, Lord Carrick, warned me of this; my mother, Lady Augusta, spoke of it in a recent letter to me," he added for the benefit of the ears around.
"Why, Ger, where's the use of being put out?" retorted Roland, but with no symptom of ill-humour in his good-natured tone. "I was down, and had nobody to help me. Carrick couldn't; old Dick Yorke wouldn't; Lady Augusta said she had all of you pulling at her: and so Carrick talked to Greatorex and Greatorex, and they put me into the place. The pound a week keeps me; in clover too; you should hear what I sometimes was reduced to live on at Port Natal. There was an opening for a hot-pie man down at Poplar, and the place was offered me; if I had gone into that line you might have grumbled."
The ladies and gentlemen shrieked with merriment: they began to think the fine young fellow, who looked every whit as independent a man as his fastidious brother, was chaffing them all. Gerald ground his teeth and tried to get away.
"You'll come and see me, old fellow?" said Roland. "I've a stunning room, bedroom and sitting-room in one, the bedstead's let out at night. It is at Mother Jones's; poor soft Jenkins's widow, you know, that we used to wot of in the days gone by."
Gerald made good his escape: and when they were quiet again. Roland had leisure to look at Miss Channing. Her bent face shone like a peony, the effect of vexation and suppressed laughter.
"Why, what's the matter>" he asked.
"You should not say such things, Roland. It was quite out of place in a room like this."
"What things?"
"About yourself. It is so different, you know, from anything young men experience here."
"But it is all true," returned Roland, unable to see the argument.
"Still it need not be proclaimed to an indiscriminate crowd. You might show more tact. Gerald was fit to die of mortification. And you who used to have so much pride!"
Roland Yorke, honestly willing to please everybody and vex none, stood looking ruefully. "As to pride, Annabel, if a fellow wants that knocked out of him, he had better go over to Port Natal, and get buffeted as I did," he concluded. "I left it all behind me there, I'm afraid. And, of tact, I don't think I ever possessed any."
Which was perfectly true.
Meanwhile Mr. Ollivera, waiting in vain to see Sir Thomas Kene enter, grew sick of the ever-changing, ever-moving panorama that jostled him, and went downstairs to his uncle's small and comfortable room, leaving word with the servants where he might be found if the Judge came in. Mr. Greatorex very rarely joined these large parties. He was sitting in quiet now, a bit of bright fire in the grate, for the evenings were still chilly, and a reading-lamp, newspapers, and books on the table. Slender, active, upright still, he scarcely looked his age, sixty-two: his face was fresh yet, and not a thread of grey mingled with the smooth brown hair.
"Henry, is it you!" he exclaimed; for he was surprised to see his nephew enter at that late hour. And Mr. Ollivera, as he took a chair, apologized for interrupting him, but said he had grown so weary of the turmoil above.
"You don't mean to sayyouhave been making one of them!"
"I have for once, uncle. It will serve me for ten years to come. People say to me sometimes, 'Why don't you go into society?' Good heavens! to think that rational beings, God's people who have souls to be saved, can waste their precious hours in such, evening after evening! The women for the most part are unseemly to behold; their bodies half dressed, their faces powdered and painted, their heads monstrosities, their attire sinfully lavish. The men affect to be heartless, drawling coxcombs. It is a bad phase of life, this that we have drifted into, rotten at its core; men and women alike artificial. Doyoulike this in your house, Uncle Greatorex?"
"When Bede married, I resigned to him the mastership of the house, so far as these things were concerned," replied Mr. Greatorex.
"I know. Does Bede like it?"
"He countenances it. For myself, I trouble them but little now. Even my dinner I often cause to be served here. Bede's wife was civil enough to come down this evening and press me to join them."
"Bede looks more worried than usual--and that need not be," observed William Ollivera. "What is it, I wonder? To me he has the air of a man silently fretting himself into his grave."
"You know what it is, William," said Mr. Greatorex, in a low tone, and calling his nephew as he often did, by his second Christian name. "Bede's wife is a great worry. But there's another."
"What is it?"
"Illness," breathed Mr. Greatorex. "Symptoms that we don't like have shown themselves in him lately. However--they may pass away. The doctors think they will."
"I came here to meet Kene, whom I very particularly wish to see," resumed the clergyman, after a pause. "Bede said he expected him."
"Ay; some magnet must have drawn you, apart fromthat," pointing his thumb at the rooms above. And Mr. Ollivera explained why he was seeking the Judge.
"I thought something fresh might have arisen in the old case; or at least that you fancied it," observed Mr. Greatorex. "You must be coming round to our way of thinking, William. Time goes on, butthatstands still."
"I shall never come round to it."
"John has been dead four years and two months, now," pursued Mr. Greatorex. "And it has stood still all that time."
William Ollivera, leaned forward in his chair, and the fire and the lamp alike played on his wasted face, on the bright flush of emotion that rose in his thin cheeks.
"Uncle! Uncle Greatorex! it is as fresh in my mind now as it was the first day I went down to Helstonleigh, and saw him lying white and cold and dead, with the ban of the coroner's verdict upon him. I cannot shake it off: and of late I am not sure but I have tried to do so, in the sheer weariness of prolonged disappointment. 'Tarry yet awhile, and wait,' a voice seems saying ever to me: and I am content to wait. I cannot rest; I find no peace. When I wake in the morning, I say, 'This day may bring forth fruit;' when I go to rest at night, the thought, that it has not, is the last upon me. There will be neither rest nor peace for me until I have solved the enigma of my brother's death; and I am always working on for it."
"Sir Thomas Kene has come, sir," interrupted a servant at this juncture, opening the door.
Henry Ollivera rose; and, wishing Mr. Greatorex good night, went forth to his interview with the Judge.
The house was almost within a stone's-throw of Bedford Square; one of a good street. Its drawing-room windows were thrown open to the fine evening twilight, and a lady sat at one of them in a musing attitude. She was very nice looking, with a clear healthy colour on her cheeks, and soft bright dark eyes that had a thought in them beyond her years, which may have been six or seven-and-twenty. The features were well-formed; the shapely mouth, its rather thin and decisive lips, and the pretty pointed chin, spoke of innate firmness. Her hand, displaying its wedding-ring and keeper, was raised to support lightly her head, the slender fingers touching the smooth dark brown hair. She was perfectly still; not a movement betrayed that she heard or saw aught but her own thoughts; not a rustle stirred the folds of her soft silk dress, lying around her.
"Shall I tell him, or not?" she murmured at length. "I have never had any concealment from him yet, nor he from me; but then I know it will pain and worry him. He has certainly changed a little: in the old days it seemed that anxiety could never touch him; that he would always throw it from him with a light word. Heigho! I suppose it comes with the cares of life."
A moment's pause, during which she was again still as before, and then the soliloquy was resumed.
"Icouldkeep it from him, if needs were: the postman gave me the letter as I was going out, and no one knows of its arrival. But still--I don't like to begin it; and he might feel vexed afterwards: for of course he must come to know of it sometime. Oh dear! I never felt so irresolute before. They used to say at home I was so very downright. I wonder which would berightto do? If I were sure he----"
The room door was pushed open with a sudden whirl, and a little child came flying in with outstretched arms and a shouting, joyous laugh.
"Mamma, mamma!"
"Nelly!"
The arms were entwined together, the golden head with its shower of silken curls, nestled on the mother's bosom. Oh, but she was of rare loveliness, this child; with the delicately fair features, the great blue eyes, the sunny hair, and ever-sunny temperament.
"Now, Nelly! You know you have been told over and over again not to be so boisterous. Fancy a little lady, just five years old, coming in like that! It might have been a great rude dog."
Another sweet, joyous laugh in answer, a host of kisses pressed by way of peace-offering on the gentle face, bent down in reproof more mock than real.
"Nurse was running to catch me. She says it's bedtime." And, to confirm the assertion, the French clock on the mantlepiece at that moment told out eight.
"So it is. Come and say goodnight to papa, Nelly."
Taking the child's hand she went out into what seemed a flood of light, after the gradually darkening room. The hall-lamp threw its rays upwards; on the gleaming silk of her pale blue dress, on the white fairy robes of the child, on the well-carpeted stairs. In the front room below, the tea stood ready by the evening fire: they went through to another room; and the mother spoke.
"Nelly has come to wish papa goodnight."
Seated at the table of this inner room was a gentleman writing fast by a shaded candle. He looked up with a sunny smile of welcome, and you saw the likeness then between the child and the father. The winning, beautiful features; the fair, bright complexion; the laughing blue eyes; the gay, happy temperament: all were the same.
It was James Channing. Sunny Hamish, as he used to be called. He was but thirty; a tall, well-proportioned, but as yet very slender man; rising over six feet, altogether attractive, handsome to look upon. Nelly, forgetting her lecture, flew into his arms with a shout and a laugh, as she had into those of her mother.
"And what may this young lady have been about that she has not come to see me before, this evening?" he asked.
"Nurse kept her out rather late, Hamish, for one thing, and I knew you were busy," came the answer; not from the child, but from Mrs. Channing.
"Yes, I am very busy. I have not any minutes to give even to my darling Nelly tonight," he fondly said, kissing the bright hair and the rosy lips. "Nelly must go to bed and dream of papa instead."
"You'll have time when the ship comes home, papa," said the child.
"Lots of time then."
"The ship is to be a book."
"Ay."
"And it will bring great luck?"
"Yes. Please God."
The last words were murmured in a tone suddenly hushed to reverence; low and happy; hopeful with a great, glad, assured hope, cheering to listen to; a trusted hope that lighted up the whole countenance of the man with its radiance, and shone forth in beams from his blue eyes. But he said no more; not even to his wife and his little child could he speak of the sanguine joy that anticipation wrought within him.
With too many kisses to be counted, with good nights spoken yet and yet again, Nelly was released and disappeared with her mother. The child had been trained well. There was some indulgence on the parents' side--perhaps that is indispensable, in the case of an only child--but there was neither trouble nor rebellion on hers. Little Nelly Channing had been taught to obey good laws; and, to do so, came to her naturally.
Mrs. Channing took her upstairs and turned into her own dressing-room, as usual. She deemed it well that the child should say her prayers in solitude, and, always when practicable, in the same place. Nelly sat down of her own accord by her mother, and was quite still and quiet while a very few easy verses from the Bible were read to her; and then she knelt down to say her simple prayers at her mother's knee.
"God bless my darling little Nelly, and make her a good girl!" said Mrs. Chaining, as she took her out and resigned her to the nurse.
"Are you ready for tea, Hamish?" she asked when she went downstairs again.
"Quite. But, Ellen, I think I shall have to trouble you to bring it to me tonight."
"Are you so very busy?"
"Ay. Look here."
He pointed with his pen to some papers on the table. "Those are proof sheets: and I must get this manuscript in tomorrow, or they will not insert it in the next month's number."
"Hamish, I hope you are not doing too much," she gravely said. "I don't like this night-work."
He laughed gleefully. "Too much! I only wish I had too much to do, Ellen. Never fear, dear."
"I wish you would teach me to correct the proofs."
"What an idea!"
"I shall teach myself, sir."
"It would be waste of time, young lady. I could not let anybody go over my proofs but myself."
"You vain fellow! I wonder if self-conceit is indigenous to you literary men? Are they all as vain as Hamish Channing?"
He took up the pen-wiper and threw it at her. But somehow Ellen was not in a mood for much jesting tonight. She put the pen-wiper--a rosette of red cloth--on the table again, and went and stood in silence with her hand on his shoulder. He turned his head.
"What is it, love?"
"Hamish, I would bring in your tea willingly; you know it; but I think it would do you more good to leave this work, if only for five minutes. And I have something to say to you."
"Very well. I can't come for a quarter of an hour. You are a regular martinet."
Ellen Channing left him and sat down in the other room to wait; and this will afford the opportunity for a word of explanation. Amidst the very very many people in all classes of life, high and low, on whom a certain recent panic had wrought its disastrous effects, was Hamish Channing. The bank, of which he had been manager in Helstonleigh, was drawn into the vortex by the failure of another bank, and went in its turn. Honourable men had to do with it; they sacrificed their own property in the emergency, and not a creditor suffered; every one was paid in full. It could not be reorganized, and it left Hamish without employment. His wife's father, Mr. Huntley, had been one of the principal shareholders, and on him had fallen the greater weight of the heavy loss. It fell, too, at a time when Mr. Huntley could not afford to sustain it. He possessed a large property in Canada, but it had latterly begun to yield him little or no return. Whether in consequence of local depreciation, or of mismanagement (or perhaps something worse) on the part of his agents there, he knew not, and he sent his son out to see. The young man (he was three or four years younger than Mrs. Channing, and quite inexperienced) seemed not to be able to grapple with the business; he wrote home most confused and perplexing accounts, of which Mr. Huntley could make nothing. At length that gentleman resolved to go out himself; and the letter we have heard Mrs. Channing alluding to today was from him. It was the second news they had received, the first having merely announced his safe arrival: and the accounts this last contained were so gloomy that Ellen Channing would fain have kept them from her husband.
It must be distinctly understood that the failure of the bank in Helstonleigh was in no way connected with ill-management. Had a quorum of the wisest business-men in the world been at its head, they could neither have foreseen its downfall nor averted it. Therefore Hamish Channing came out of that, as he had out of every untoward thing all his life, untarnished in honour and in character. A small secretaryship was offered him in London, which he accepted; and he removed to the great city, with his wife and little daughter, his goods and chattels, there to set up his tent. A very small income had been settled on Ellen when she married; the larger portion of her fortune was to accrue to her on her father's death. Whether it would be much, or little, orany, under the altered state of affairs, it was impossible now to say.
But it was not on the secretaryship that Hamish Channing depended for fame and fortune. A higher and dearer hope was his. That Hamish possessed in a high degree that rarest of all God's gifts, true genius, he had long known. Writers of talent the world has had, and had in abundance, men and women; of real genius but few. Perhaps, after all, the difference is not very distinguishable by the general mass of readers. But, to those who possess it, its characteristics are unmistakable. The divine light (is it too much to call it so?) that lies within them shines as a very beacon, pointing on to fame; to honour; above all, to appreciation: the knowledge that they are different from their fellow-mortals, of a higher and nobler and rarer order, and that the world will sometime recognize the fact and bow down in worship, is never absent from the consciousness of the inner heart.
But, with the gift, James Channing also possessed its almost invariably accompanying attribute: a refined sensitiveness of feeling. And that is a quality not too well calculated to do battle with rude, every-day life. Should the great hope within him ever meet with a stern, crushing disappointment, his inability to bear the shock would in all probability show itself in some very marked degree. No one but himself knew or suspected the extreme sensitiveness of his every feeling; it had been hidden hitherto under the nonchalant ease of manner, the sunny temper which made Hamish Channing's great charm. When the bank was broken up, and with it his home and his greater means of living, it was not felt by him as many another man would have felt it: for it seemed only to render more feasible the great aim of his life--the devoting himself to literature. Years ago he had begun to write: and the efforts were first efforts, somewhat crude, as all first efforts, whether given to the world or not, must of necessity be, but they bore unmistakably the stamp of genius. His appointment to the bank and his marriage interrupted his writing; and his genius and pen had alike lain dormant for some six years. His wife's father, Mr. Huntley, had procured his later appointment to the London secretaryship, and Hamish did not venture to decline it and devote himself wholly to literature, as he would have liked to do. The pay, though small, was sure; Ellen's income was smaller still, and they must live; so he accepted it. His duties there occupied him from nine to four: and all his available time beyond that, early and late, was devoted to writing. The day's employment was regarded as but a temporary clog, to be given up as soon as he found his income from literature would justify it. To accomplish this desirable end, he was doing a great deal more than was good for him and taking too little rest. In point of fact, he had, you see, two occupations, each one of which would have been sufficient for an industrious man. What of that? Hamish never so much as cast a thought to it.
Oh, with what a zest had he re-commenced the writing, laid aside for so long! It was like returning to some glad haven of rest. Joy filled his whole being. The past six years had been heavy with suppressed yearning; the yearning to be about the work for which he knew God had pm-eminently fitted him: but his duties had been onerous, his time nearly fully taken up; and when he would have snatched some moments from night for the dearer work, his wife and his anxious friends had risen up in arms against it, for he was not over-strong, and some delicacy of constitution was preached about. Besides, as Mr. Huntley said, a writing manager might alarm the bank's patronizers. But he had it all his own way now, and made good profit of his writings. Papers on social questions of the day, essays, stories, were in turn written, and taken by different periodicals. Theyhadto be written, apart from other hopes and views, for the style in which they lived required additional means to support it, beyond his salary and his wife's money. It was not much style, after all, no extravagance; three maidservants, and little company; but everybody knows how money seems to melt in London.
He had been at this work now for a year. And his wife was beginning to grow anxious, for she knew he was doing too much, and told him he was wearing himself out. If he could but resign the secretaryship! was ever in her secret hopes and thoughts just as much as his; and she wished her father could get his Canadian affairs well settled, so as to allow the necessary addition to her income. Hamish laughed at this. He was living in a glad dream of future fame and fortune: that it would inevitably come, he felt as sure of as though it lay at hand now, ready to be picked up. He was writing a long work; a work of three volumes; and this was the precious gem on which all his hopes and love and visions were centred. The periodical writing had to be done, for its returns were needed; but every spare moment, apart from that, was devoted to the book. A light of gladness beamed from his eyes; a joy, sweet as the chords of some soothing melody, lay ever on his spirit. Oh, what is there of bliss and love in the world that can compare with this! And it is known to so few; so few: by all else it can never be so much as imagined. Do not mistake it, you who read, for the pleasurable anticipation of a man or woman who may from chance causes have "taken up" the profession of literature, and look for the good, substantial and otherwise, that it is to bring. The two are wholly different; the one is born of heaven, the other of earth. But that man must live, Hamish Channing amidst the rest, the thought ofmoneybeing one of the returns, would be distasteful; never, as I honestly believe, accepted as such without a blush: the dross of earth mingling with the spiritualized, exalted, pure joy of Eden. It is well that this same gift of genius with its dear pleasures and its attendant after-pains--for they come--should be vouchsafed to a unit amidst tens of thousands!
Mrs. Channing sat waiting for him; the tea standing before her, herself thoughtful. The room was of good size and handsomely furnished, its chairs and curtains of rich purple cloth. Their furniture had been a present from Mr. Huntley when they married, who was not one to do things niggardly. As Mrs. Channing sat, facing the inner door, the windows were behind her; the fireplace, with its ornaments and its large chimney-glass on her left; a piano on one side it, a white marble-topped cabinet with purple silk lining to its glass-doors on the other; and on her right, stood the sideboard, and other furniture. The inner room, used exclusively by Hamish for writing, had horsehair chairs, and a bookcase running all along the side of the wall.
The door opened, and Hamish came in. He had a small bundle in his hand; proof sheets done up for the post, and sent them out at once by the maid, as he sat down to tea. Which he seemed inclined to swallow at a gulp, and to eat his piece of bread-and-butter wholesale, ever anxious to get back to his labour and the glowing visions of promise connected with it.
"Hamish, I do believe you like your writing better than you like me!" Ellen said to him one day almost passionately. And for answer, Mr. Hamish in his sauciness had said he was not sure but he did.
He sat there at tea, now, talking gaily as usual. His wife interrupted him, telling of the letter she had received, and its unfavourable news. He listened with his sunny smile.
"I had great mind not to tell you at all, Hamish," she confessed. "Papa's temperament is nearly as sanguine as yours; and if he writes in poor spirits, saying he fears it may turn out that he is a ruined man, I know things must be very bad."
"But why have hesitated to tell me, Ellen?"
"To save you anxiety. Don't you see what it implies? If papa loses his property, the fortune that would have been mine sometime will be lost too."
Had she been speaking of the probable loss of some mere trifle, he could scarcely have heard it with more equanimity. It seemed to Hamish that the future was, according to human foresight, in his own hands.
"Never mind, Ellen, we have a resource that cannot be lost. I will take care of you, Heaven aiding me; you shall have every needful and substantial good in abundance."
"Yes, that is just it. You work too much already: you would work more then."
Hamish laughed. "Do you know what I wish, Ellen? I wish the day were four-and-twenty hours long instead of twelve, and that I had two sets of brains and hands."
"How are you getting on?"
"Oh, so well. It is all right, my darling. And will be."
They were interrupted by a visitor--Mr. Roland Yorke. There had been a casual meeting once or twice, but this was the first time he had been there. They invited him to come; but Roland had the grace to be ashamed of a certain escapade of his in the days gone by, which brought disgrace for the time being on Arthur Channing, and he had rather held back from appearing. This he partially confessed.
"It would have been so different, you know, Hamish, had I returned with a few millions from Port Natal, and gone home to atone to Arthur in the face and eyes of all the town, and done honour to him for what he is, the best man living, and heaped a fortune upon him. But I have not been able to do that. I'd rather rush off again to Port Natal and its troubles, than I'd go within miles of Helstonleigh."
"And so, to mend it, you thought you would keep miles away from me," said Hamish, with his glad smile of welcome. "I think there's only one person in the world would be more glad to see you than I, and that's Arthur himself."
"I know. I know what a good fellow you always were. But I hadn't the face to come, you see. It was Annabel made me now."
Suddenly shaking both their hands in the heartiest manner, with a grip that brought pain to Mrs. Channing, who wore rings, Roland fell to at the tea. Hamish, remembering his appetite of old, rang the bell for some good things to be brought in; and Roland was speedily in the midst of the most comfortable enjoyment, mentally and bodily. He gave them his own confidence without the least reserve, both as to present and past; gravely telling everything, including the nearly embraced hot-pie scheme of commerce, which made Hamish hold his sides, and the having met Gerald at Mrs. Bede Greatorex's party.
"I rather expect Gerald here this evening," remarked Hamish.
"Do you?" said Roland, his mouth full of savoury pie. "He won't be too pleased to see me; he means to cut me, I'm nearly sure. Do you see much of him, Hamish?"
Hamish explained that he did. They were both in the literary line; and Gerald had some good engagements as a reviewer.
"Where's his wife?" asked Roland. "Yes, please, Mrs. Channing, another cup; plenty of milk and sugar.
"In the country; somewhere in Gloucestershire. Gerald is not too communicative on that score."
"Don't you think, Hamish, he must have been a great duffer to go and marry before he knew how he could keep a wife?"
Hamish raised his eyebrows with the good-natured indifferent manner that Roland so well remembered in the days gone by; but answer made he none. Where Hamish Channing could not praise, he would not blame. Even by his immediate relatives Gerald's imprudent marriage was tacitly ignored, and the Lady Augusta Yorke had threatened to box Roland's ears in Ireland, when he persisted in asking about it.
"I always knew Gerald would not go into the Church," remarked Roland. "I wouldn't; they say Tod threatened to run off to sea if they talked tohimof it: somehow we boys have a prejudice against following my father's calling. I'll tell you a secret, Hamish: if a fellow wants to bemade, to have his nonsense knocked out of him, he must go to Port Natal. Do you remember the morning you saw me decamping off for London on my way to it?"
"Don't I," said Hamish, his lips parting with merriment at the remembrance. "There was commotion that day at Helstonleigh, Roland; in Galloway's office especially."
"And dear old Arthur buried his wrongs and went to the rescue; and poor dying Jenkins got out of his bed to help. He was nothing but a calf, poor fellow, a reed in Mrs. J.'s hands, but he was good as gold. I say,she'saltered."
"Is she?"
Roland nodded. "The going to Port Natal made me, Hamish," he resumed; and Hamish was slightly surprised at the serious tone. "I should have been one of the idlest of the family batch but for the lesson I got read to me there. I went out to make my fortune; instead of making it, I had to battle with ill-fate, and ill-fate won the day. They call it names of course; a mistaken enterprise, a miserable failure; but it was just the best thing that could have happened for me. I was proud, stuck-up ignoramus; I should have depended on Carrick, or anybody else, to get my living for me; but I mean now to earn it for myself."
When Hamish went to his work later, leaving Ellen to entertain their guest, Roland followed him with his eyes.
There was a change in Hamish Channing, apparent to one even as unobservant as Roland. The face was thinner than of yore; its refined features were paler; they looked etherealized, as it seemed to Roland. The sweet-natured temperament was there still, but some of its once gay lightness had given place to thought. The very frequent mocking tone had been nearly entirely laid aside for one of loving considerateness to all.
"What are you looking at?" questioned Ellen, struck with Roland's fixed gaze and unusual seriousness.
"At him. He is so changed."
"Older, do you mean?"
"Law bless you, no. Of course he is older by more than seven years; but he is very young-looking still; he does not look so old as I do, and I am two years his junior. I used to think Hamish Channing the handsomest fellow living, but he was nothing then to what he is now. I hope you won't consider it's wrong of me to say it, Mrs. Channing, but there's something in his face now that makes one think of Heaven."
"Mr. Yorke!"
"There! I knew what it would be. Mr. Ollivera flies out at me when I say wrong things. Other people don't say them. It must have been that Port Natal. I thought I was dead once, over there," added Roland, passing on to another topic with his usual abruptness.
Ellen smiled; she had spoken in surprise only. Roland Yorke, who had brought his chair round to the fire, sat opposite to her, his elbow on his knee, his head bent forward.
"I don't mean that it makes one think he is going to Heaven--going to die before his time; you need not be afraid, Mrs. Channing. It was not that kind of thought at all; only that the angels and people about, up there, must have just such faces as Hamish's; good, and pure, and beautiful; and just the same sweet expression, and the same loving-kindness in the tone of voice."
Roland stopped and pulled at his dark whiskers. Mrs. Channing began to thinkhehad also changed for the better.
"Many a one, remembering the past, would have just turned their backs upon me, Mrs. Channing. Instead of that, he is as glad to see me, and makes me as cordially welcome as if I were a lord, or a prize pig sent him at Christmas. What did I nearly die of? you ask. Well, of fever; but I got all sorts of horrid torments. I had the eye-epidemic; it's caused by the dust, and I thought I was going blind. Then I had what they call Natal sores, a kind of boil; then I nearly had a sun-stroke; the heat's something awful, you know. And I got the ticks everlastingly."
"Do you mean the tic-douloureux?"
"Law bless you! A Port Natal tick is an insect. It sits on the top of the grass waiting for you to pass by and darts into your legs; and no earthly thing will get it off again, except tugging at it with tweezers. They have no wings or mouth, nothing but a pair of lancets and a kind of pipe for a body, covered with spikes. Oh, they are nice things. When I set up that store for leeches and candles and pickled pork, I used to go and get the leeches myself, to save buying; lots of them grow in the rivulets round about; but I would bring home a vast many more ticks than leeches, and that didn't pay, you know. Where's the little thing?"
"Nelly? She has gone to bed."
"She is the prettiest child I ever saw."
"She is just like her papa," said Mrs. Channing, whose cheeks were flushing softly with pardonable love and pride at the praise of her child.
"So she is. When will his book be out?"
"Ah, I don't know. He is getting on quickly, he tells me. I think he is a ready writer."
"I suppose most men of genius are that," remarked Roland. "He does not talk much about it, does he?"
"Not at all. A very little to me. These wonderful hopes and dreams that lie down deep within us, and go to make up the concealed inner life of our dearest feelings, cannot be spoken of to the world. I have none," she added, slightly laughing; "I am more practical."
"Hamish is so hopeful! It is his temperament."
"Hopeful!" repeated Mrs. Channing; "indeed he is: like nothing I ever saw. You have heard of day-dreams, Mr. Yorke; well, this book is his day-dream. He works at it late and early, almost night and day. I tell him sometimes he must be wearing himself out."
"One never does really wear out from work, Mrs. Channing. I used to think I was wearing out at old Galloway's; but I didn't know what work was until I got to Natal. I learnt it then."
"Did You sit up to work at night at Port Natal?"
"Only when I had not got a bed to go to," answered candid Roland. "Mine was not that kind of work, sitting up to burn the midnight oil; it lay in knocking about."
"That's quite different."
"What puzzles me more than anything is, that Gerald should have turned author," resumed Roland. "Henry Ollivera was talking about genius at our place the other day. Why, according to what he described it to be, Gerald Yorke must have about as much genius as a walking gander."
Ellen laughed. "Hamish says Gerald has no real genius," she said. "But he has a good deal of talent. He is what may be called a dashing writer."
"Well, I don't know," disputed Roland, who was hard of belief in these alleged qualities of his brother. "I remember in the old days at home, when Gerald was at the college-school, he couldn't be got to write a letter. If Lady Augusta wanted him to write a letter to Carrick, or to George out in India, she would have to din at him for six months. He hated it like poison."
"That may have been idleness."
"Oh, we all went in for that," acknowledged Roland. "I should have been a very lazy beggar to the end of time but for the emigration to Port Natal."