Mr. Galloway was in his office. Mr. Galloway was fuming and fretting at the non-arrival of his clerk, Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins was a punctual man; in fact, more than punctual: his proper time for arriving at the office was half-past nine; but the cathedral clock had rarely struck the quarter-past before Mr. Jenkins would be at his post. Almost any other morning it would not have mattered a straw to Mr. Galloway whether Jenkins was a little after or a little before his time; but on this particular morning he had especial need of him, and had come himself to the office unusually early.
One-two, three-four! chimed the quarters of the cathedral. “There it goes—half-past nine!” ejaculated Mr. Galloway. “WhatdoesJenkins mean by it? He knew he was wanted early.”
A sharp knock at the office door, and there entered a little dark woman, in a black bonnet and a beard. She was Mr. Jenkins’s better half, and had the reputation for being considerably the grey mare.
“Good morning, Mr. Galloway. A pretty kettle of fish, this is!”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Mr. Galloway, surprised at the address. “Where’s Jenkins?”
“Jenkins is in bed with his head plastered up. He’s the greatest booby living, and would positively have come here all the same, but I told him I’d strap him down with cords if he attempted it. A pretty object he’d have looked, staggering through the streets, with his head big enough for two, and held together with white plaster!”
“What has he done to his head?” wondered Mr. Galloway.
“Good gracious! have you not heard?” exclaimed the lady, whose mode of speech was rarely overburdened with polite words, though she meant no disrespect by it. “He got locked up in the cloisters last night with old Ketch and the bishop.”
Mr. Galloway stared at her. He had been dining, the previous evening, with some friends at the other end of the town, and knew nothing of the occurrence. Had he been within hearing when the college bell tolled out at night, he would have run to ascertain the cause as eagerly as any schoolboy. “Locked up in the cloisters with old Ketch and the bishop!” he repeated, in amazement. “I do not understand.”
Mrs. Jenkins proceeded to enlighten him. She gave the explanation of the strange affair of the keys, as it had been given to her by the unlucky Joe. While telling it, Arthur Channing entered, and, almost immediately afterwards, Roland Yorke.
“The bishop, of all people!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “What an untoward thing for his lordship!”
“No more untoward for him than for others,” retorted the lady. “It just serves Jenkins right. What business had he to go dancing through the cloisters with old Ketch and his keys?”
“But how did Jenkins get hurt?” asked Mr. Galloway, for that particular point had not yet been touched upon.
“He is the greatest fool going, is Jenkins,” was the complimentary retort of Jenkins’s wife. “After he had helped to ring out the bell, he must needs go poking and groping into the organ-loft, hunting for matches or some such insane rubbish. He might have known, had he possessed any sense, that candles and matches are not likely to be there in summer-time! Why, if the organist wanted ever so much to stop in after dark, when the college is locked up for the night, he wouldn’t be allowed to do it! It’s only in winter, when he has to light a candle to get through the afternoon service, that they keep matches and dips up there.”
“But about his head?” repeated Mr. Galloway, who was aware of the natural propensity of Mrs. Jenkins to wander from the point under discussion.
“Yes, about his head!” she wrathfully answered. “In attempting to descend the stairs again, he missed his footing, and pitched right down to the bottom of the flight. That’s how his head came in for it. He wants a nurse with him always, does Jenkins, for he is no better than a child in leading-strings.”
“Is he much hurt?”
“And there he’d have lain till morning, but for the bishop,” resumed Mrs. Jenkins, passing over the inquiry. “After his lordship got out, he, finding Jenkins did not come, told Thorpe to go and look for him in the organ-loft. Thorpe said he should have done nothing of the sort, but for the bishop’s order; he was just going to lock the great doors again, and there Jenkins would have been fast! They found him lying at the foot of the stairs, just inside the choir gates, with no more life in him than there is in a dead man.”
“I asked you whether he is seriously hurt, Mrs. Jenkins.”
“Pretty well. He came to his senses as they were bringing him home, and somebody ran for Hurst, the surgeon. He is better this morning.”
“But not well enough to come to business?”
“Hurst told him if he worried himself with business, or anything else to-day, he’d get brain fever as sure as a gun. He ordered him to stop in bed and keep quiet, if he could.”
“Of course he must do so,” observed Mr. Galloway.
“There is no of course in it, when men are the actors,” dissented Mrs. Jenkins. “Hurst did well to say ‘if he could,’ when ordering him to keep quiet. I’d rather have an animal ill in the house, than I’d have a man—they are ten times more reasonable. There has Jenkins been, tormenting himself ever since seven o’clock this morning about coming here; he was wanted particularly, he said. ‘Would you go if you were dead?’ I asked him; and he stood it out that if he were dead it would be a different thing. ‘Not different at all,’ I said. A nice thing it would be to have to nurse him through a brain fever!”
“I am grieved that it should have happened,” said Mr. Galloway, kindly. “Tell him from me, that we can manage very well without him. He must not venture here again, until Mr. Hurst says he may come with safety.”
“I should have told him that, to pacify him, whether you had said it or not,” candidly avowed Mrs. Jenkins. “And now I must go back home on the run. As good have no one to mind my shop as that young house-girl of ours. If a customer comes in for a pair of black stockings, she’ll take and give ‘em a white knitted nightcap. She’s as deficient of common sense as Jenkins is. Your servant, sir. Good morning, young gentlemen!”
“Here, wait a minute!” cried Mr. Galloway, as she was speeding off. “I cannot understand at all. The keys could not have been changed as they lay on the flags.”
“Neither can anybody else understand it,” returned Mrs. Jenkins. “If Jenkins was not a sober man—and he had better let me catch him being anything else!—I should say the two, him and Ketch, had had a drop too much. The bishop himself could make neither top nor tail of it. It’ll teach Jenkins not to go gallivanting again after other folk’s business!”
She finally turned away, and Mr. Galloway set himself to revolve the perplexing narrative. The more he thought, the less he was nearer doing so; like the bishop, he could make neither top nor tail of it. “It is entirely beyond belief!” he remarked to Arthur Channing; “unless Ketch took out the wrong keys!”
“And if he took out the wrong keys, how could he have locked the south door?” interrupted Roland Yorke. “I’d lay anybody five shillings that those mischievous scamps of college boys were at the bottom of it; I taxed Gerald with it, and he flew out at me for my pains. But the seniors may not have been in it. You should have heard the bell clank out last night, Mr. Galloway!”
“I suppose it brought out a few,” was Mr. Galloway’s rejoinder.
“It did that,” said Arthur Channing. “Myself for one. When I saw the bishop emerge from the college doors, I could scarcely believe my sight.”
“I’d have given half-a-crown to see him!” cried Roland Yorke. “If there’s any fun going on, it is sure to be my fate to miss it. Cator was at my house, having a cigar with me; and, though we heard the bell, we did not disturb ourselves to see what it might mean.”
“What is your opinion of last night’s work, Arthur?” asked Mr. Galloway, returning to the point.
Arthur’s opinion was a very decided one, but he did not choose to say so. The meeting with the college boys at their stealthy post in the cloisters, when he and Hamish were passing through at dusk, a few nights before, coupled with the hints then thrown out of the “serving out” of Ketch, could leave little doubt as to the culprits. Arthur returned an answer, couched in general terms.
“Could it have been the college boys, think you?” debated Mr. Galloway.
“Not being a college boy, I cannot speak positively, sir,” he said, laughing. “Gaunt knows nothing of it. I met him as I was going home to breakfast from my early hour’s work here, and he told me he did not. There would have been no harm done, after all, but for the accident to Jenkins.”
“One of you gentlemen can just step in to see Jenkins in the course of the day, and reassure him that he is not wanted,” said Mr. Galloway. “I know how necessary it is to keep the mind tranquil in any fear of brain affection.”
No more was said, and the occupation of the day began. A busy day was that at Mr. Galloway’s, much to the chagrin of Roland Yorke, who had an unconquerable objection to doing too much. He broke out into grumblings at Arthur, when the latter came running in from his duty at college.
“I’ll tell you what is, Channing; you ought not to have made the bargain to go to that bothering organ on busy days; and Galloway must have been out of his mind to let you make it. Look at the heap of work there is to do!”
“I will soon make up for the lost hour,” said Arthur, setting to with a will. “Where’s Mr. Galloway?”
“Gone to the bank,” grumbled Roland. “And I have had to answer a dozen callers-in at least, and do all my writing besides. I wonder what possessed Jenkins to go and knock his head to powder?”
Mr. Galloway shortly returned, and sat down to write. It was a thing he rarely did; he left writing to his clerks, unless it was the writing of letters. By one o’clock the chief portion of the work was done, and Mr. Roland Yorke’s spirits recovered their elasticity. He went home to dinner, as usual. Arthur preferred to remain at his post, and get on further, sending the housekeeper’s little maid out for a twopenny roll, which he ate as he wrote. He was of a remarkably conscientious nature, and thought it only fair to sacrifice a little time in case of need, in return for the great favour which had been granted him by Mr. Galloway. Many of the families who had sons in the college school dined at one o’clock, as it was the most convenient hour for the boys. Growing youths are not satisfied with anything less substantial than a dinner in the middle of the day, and two dinners in a household tell heavily upon the house-keeping. The Channings did not afford two, neither did Lady Augusta Yorke; so their hour was one o’clock.
“What a muff you must be to go without your dinner!” cried Roland Yorke to Arthur, when he returned at two o’clock. “I wouldn’t.”
“I have had my dinner,” said Arthur.
“What did you have?” cried Roland, pricking up his ears. “Did Galloway send to the hotel for roast ducks and green peas? That’s what we had at home, and the peas were half-boiled, and the ducks were scorched, and cooked without stuffing. A wretched set of incapables our house turns out! and my lady does not know how to alter it. You have actually finished that deed, Channing?”
“It is finished, you see. It is surprising how much one can do in a quiet hour!”
“Is Galloway out?”
Arthur pointed with his pen to the door of Mr. Galloway’s private room, to indicate that he was in it. “He is writing letters.”
“I say, Channing, there’s positively nothing left to do,” went on Roland, casting his eyes over the desk. “Here are these leases, but they are not wanted until to-morrow. Who says we can’t work in this office?”
Arthur laughed good-naturedly, to think of the small amount, out of that day’s work, which had fallen to Roland’s share.
Some time elapsed. Mr. Galloway came into their room from his own to consult a “Bradshaw,” which lay on the shelf, alongside Jenkins’s desk. He held in his hand a very closely-written letter. It was of large, letter-paper size, and appeared to be filled to the utmost of its four pages. While he was looking at the book, the cathedral clock chimed the three-quarters past two, and the bell rang for divine service.
“It can never be that time of day!” exclaimed Mr. Galloway, in consternation, as he took out his watch. “Sixteen minutes to three! and I am a minute slow! How has the time passed? I ought to have been at—”
Mr. Galloway brought his words to a standstill, apparently too absorbed in the railway guide to conclude them. Roland Yorke, who had a free tongue, even with his master, filled up the pause.
“Were you going out, sir?”
“Is that any business of yours, Mr. Roland? Talking won’t fill in that lease, sir.”
“The lease is not in a hurry, sir,” returned incorrigible Roland. But he held his tongue then, and bent his head over his work.
Mr. Galloway dipped his pen in the ink, and copied something from “Bradshaw” into the closely-written letter, standing at Jenkins’s desk to do it; then he passed the blotting-paper quickly over the words, and folded the letter.
“Channing,” he said, speaking very hastily, “you will see a twenty-pound bank-note on my desk, and the directed envelope of this letter; bring them here.”
Arthur went, and brought forth the envelope and bank-note. Mr. Galloway doubled the note in four and slipped it between the folds of the letter, putting both into the envelope. He had fastened it down, when a loud noise and commotion was heard in the street. Curious as are said to be antiquated maidens, Mr. Galloway rushed to the window and threw it up, his two clerks attending in his wake.
Something very fine, in a white dress, and pink and scarlet flowers on her bonnetless head, as if attired for an evening party, was whirling round the middle of the road in circles: a tall woman, who must once have been beautiful. She appeared to be whirling someone else with her, amid laughter and shrieks, and cries and groans, from the gathering mob.
“It is Mad Nance!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “Poor thing! she really ought to be in confinement.”
So every one had said for a long time, but no one bestirred themselves to place her in it. This unfortunate creature, Mad Nance, as she was called, was sufficiently harmless to be at large on sufferance, and sufficiently mad at times to put a street in an uproar. In her least sane moments she would appear, as now, in an old dimity white dress, scrupulously washed and ironed, and decorated with innumerable frills; some natural flowers, generally wild ones, in her hair. Dandelions were her favourites; she would make them into a wreath, and fasten it on, letting her entangled hair hang beneath. To-day she had contrived to pick up some geranium blossoms, scarlet and pink.
“Who has she got hold of there?” exclaimed Mr. Galloway. “He does not seem to like it.”
Arthur burst into laughter when he discovered that it was Harper, the lay-clerk. This unlucky gentleman, who had been quietly and inoffensively proceeding up Close Street on his way to service in the cathedral, was seized upon by Mad Nance by the hands. He was a thin, weak little man, a very reed in her strong grasp. She shrieked, she laughed, she danced, she flew with him round and round. He shrieked also; his hat was off, his wig was gone; and it was half the business of Mr. Harper’s life to make that wig appear as his own hair. He talked, he raved, he remonstrated; I am very much afraid that he swore. Mr. Galloway laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
The crowd was parted by an authoritative hand, and the same hand, gentle now, laid its firmness upon the woman and released the prisoner. It was Hamish Channing who had come to the rescue, suppressing his mirth as he best could while he effected it.
“I’ll have the law of her!” panted Harper, as he picked up his hat and wig. “If there’s justice to be got in Helstonleigh, she shall suffer for this! It’s a town’s shame to let her go about, molesting peaceable wayfarers, and shaking the life out of them!”
Something at a distance appeared to attract the attention of the unhappy woman, and she flew away. Hamish and Mr. Harper were left alone in the streets, the latter still exploding with wrath, and vowing all sorts of revenge.
“Put up with it quietly, Harper,” advised Hamish. “She is like a little child, not accountable for her actions.”
“That’s just like you, Mr. Hamish Channing. If they took your head off, you’d put up with it! How would you like your wig flung away in the sight of a whole street?”
“I don’t wear one,” answered Hamish, laughing. “Here’s your hat; not much damaged, apparently.”
Mr. Harper, settling his wig on his head, and composing himself as he best could, continued his way to the cathedral, turning his hat about in his hand, and closely looking at it. Hamish stepped across to Mr. Galloway’s, meeting that gentleman at the door.
“A good thing you came up as you did, Mr. Hamish. Harper will remember Mad Nance for a year to come.”
“I expect he will,” replied Hamish, laughing still. Mr. Galloway laughed also, and walked hastily down the street.
Hamish entered the office. Arthur and Roland Yorke had their heads stretched out of the window, and did not hear his footsteps. He advanced quietly and brought his hands down hastily upon the shoulder of each. Roland started, and knocked his head against the window-frame.
“How you startle a fellow! I thought it was Mad Nance come in to lay hands upon me.”
“She has laid hands upon enough for one day,” said Hamish. “Harper will dream of her to-night.”
“I thought Galloway would have gone into a fit, he laughed so,” cried Arthur. “As for my sides, they’ll ache for an hour.”
Roland Yorke’s lip curled with an angry expression. “My opinion agrees with Harper’s,” he said. “I think Mad Nance ought to be punished. We are none of us safe from her, if this is to be her game.”
“If you punish her to-day, she would do the same again to-morrow, were the fit to come over her,” rejoined Hamish. “It is not often she breaks out like this. The only thing is to steer clear of her.”
“Hamish has a fellow-feeling for Mad Nance,” mockingly spoke Roland Yorke.
“Yes, poor thing! for her story is a sad one. If the same grievous wrong were worked upon some of us, perhaps we might take to dancing for the benefit of the public. Talking of the public, Arthur,” continued Hamish, turning to his brother, “what became of you at dinner-time? The mother was for setting the town-crier to work.”
“I could not get home to-day. We have had double work to do, as Jenkins is away.”
Hamish tilted himself on to the edge of Mr. Jenkins’s desk, and took up the letter, apparently in absence of mind, which Mr. Galloway had left there, ready for the post. “Mr. Robert Galloway, Sea View Terrace, Ventnor, Isle of Wight,” he read aloud. “That must be Mr. Galloway’s cousin,” he remarked: “the one who has run through so much money.”
“Of course it is,” answered Roland Yorke. “Galloway pretty near keeps him: I know there’s a twenty-pound bank-note going to him in that letter. Catch me doing it if I were Galloway.”
“I wish it was going into my pocket instead,” said Hamish, balancing the letter on his fingers, as if wishing to test its weight.
“I wish the clouds would drop sovereigns! But they don’t,” said Roland Yorke.
Hamish put the letter back from whence he had taken it, and jumped off the desk. “I must be walking,” said he. “Stopping here will not do my work. If we—”
“By Jove! there’s Knivett!” uttered Roland Yorke. “Where’s he off to, so fast? I have something that I must tell him.”
Snatching up his hat, Roland darted at full speed out of the office, in search of one who was running at full speed also down the street. Hamish looked out, amused, at the chase; Arthur, who had called after Roland in vain, seemed vexed. “Knivett is one of the fleetest runners in Helstonleigh,” said Hamish. “Yorke will scarcely catch him up.”
“I wish Yorke would allow himself a little thought, and not act upon impulse,” exclaimed Arthur. “I cannot stop three minutes longer: and he knows that! I shall be late for college.”
He was already preparing to go there. Putting some papers in order upon his desk, and locking up others, he carried the letter for Ventnor into Mr. Galloway’s private room and placed it in the letter rack. Two others, ready for the post, were lying there. Then he went to the front door to look out for Yorke. Yorke was not to be seen.
“What a thoughtless fellow he is!” exclaimed Arthur, in his vexation. “What is to be done? Hamish, you will have to stop here.”
“Thank you! what else?” asked Hamish.
“I must be at the college, whatever betide.” This was true: yet neither might the office be left vacant. Arthur grew a little flurried. “Do stay, Hamish: it will not hinder you five minutes, I dare say. Yorke is sure to be in.”
Hamish came to the door, halting on its first step, and looking out over Arthur’s shoulder. He drew his head in again with a sudden movement.
“Is not that old Hopper down there?” he asked, in a whisper, the tone sounding as one of fear.
Arthur turned his eyes on a shabby old man who was crossing the end of the street, and saw Hopper, the sheriff’s officer. “Yes, why?”
“It is that old fellow who holds the writ. He may be on the watch for me now. I can’t go out just yet, Arthur; I’ll stay here till Yorke comes back again.”
He returned to the office, sat down and leaned his brow upon his hand. A strange brow of care it was just then, according ill with the gay face of Hamish Channing. Arthur, waiting for no second permission, flew towards the cathedral as fast as his long legs would carry him. The dean and chapter were preparing to leave the chapter-house as he tore past it, through the cloisters. Three o’clock was striking. Arthur’s heart and breath were alike panting when he gained the dark stairs. At that moment, to his excessive astonishment, the organ began to peal forth.
Seated at it was Mr. Williams; and a few words of explanation ensued. The organist said he should remain for the service, which rendered Arthur at liberty to go back again.
He was retracing his steps underneath the elm-trees in the Boundaries at a slower pace than he had recently passed them, when, in turning a corner, he came face to face with the sheriff’s officer. Arthur, whose thoughts were at that moment fixed upon Hamish and his difficulties, started away from the man, with an impulse for which he could not have accounted.
“No need for you to be frightened of me, Mr. Arthur,” said the man, who, in his more palmy days, before he had learnt to take more than was good for him, had been a clerk in Mr. Channing’s office. “I have nothing about me that will bite you.”
He laid a stress upon the “you” in both cases. Arthur understood only too well what was meant, though he would not appear to do so.
“Nor any one else, either, I hope, Hopper. A warm day, is it not!”
Hopper drew close to Arthur, not looking at him, apparently examining with hands and eyes the trunk of the elm-tree underneath which they had halted. “You tell your brother not to put himself in my way,” said he, in a low tone, his lips scarcely moving. “He is in a bit of trouble, as I suppose you know.”
“Yes,” breathed Arthur.
“Well, I don’t want to serve the writ upon him; I won’t serve it unless he makes me, by throwing himself within length of my arm. If he sees me coming up one street, let him cut down another; into a shop; anywhere; I have eyes that only see when I want them to. I come prowling about here once or twice a day for show, but I come at a time when I am pretty sure he can’t be seen; just gone out, or just gone in. I’d rather not harm him.”
“You are not so considerate to all,” said Arthur, after a pause given to revolving the words, and to wondering whether they were spoken in good faith, or with some concealed purpose. He could not decide which.
“No, I am not,” pointedly returned Hopper, in answer. “There are some that I look after, sharp as a ferret looks after a rat, but I’ll never do that by any son of Mr. Channing’s. I can’t forget the old days, sir, when your father was kind to me. He stood by me longer than my own friends did. But for him, I should have starved in that long illness I had, when the office would have me no longer. Why doesn’t Mr. Hamish settle this?” he abruptly added.
“I suppose he cannot,” answered Arthur.
“It is only a bagatelle at the worst, and our folks would not have gone to extremities if he had shown only a disposition to settle. I am sure that if he would go to them now, and pay down a ten-pound note, and say, ‘You shall have the rest as I can get it,’ they’d withdraw proceedings; ay, even for five pounds I believe they would. Tell him to do it, Mr. Arthur; tell him I always know which way the wind blows with our people.”
“I will tell him, but I fear he is very short of money just now. Five or ten pounds may be as impossible to find, sometimes, as five or ten thousand.”
“Better find it than be locked up,” said Hopper. “How would the office get on? Deprive him of the power of management, and it might cost Mr. Channing his place. What use is a man when he is in prison? I was in Mr. Channing’s office for ten years, Mr. Arthur, and I know every trick and turn in it, though I have left it a good while. And now that I have just said this, I’ll go on my way. Mind you tell him.”
“Thank you,” warmly replied Arthur.
“And when you have told him, please to forget that you have heard it. There’s somebody’s eyes peering at me over the deanery blinds. They may peer! I don’t mind them; deaneries don’t trouble themselves with sheriff’s officers.”
He glided away, and Arthur went straight to the office. Hamish was alone; he was seated at Jenkins’s desk, writing a note.
“You here still, Hamish! Where’s Yorke?”
“Echo answers where,” replied Hamish, who appeared to have recovered his full flow of spirits. “I have seen nothing of him.”
“That’s Yorke all over! it is too bad.”
“It would be, were this a busy afternoon with me. But what brings you back, Mr. Arthur? Have you left the organ to play itself?”
“Williams is taking it; he heard of Jenkins’s accident, and thought I might not be able to get away from the office twice today, so he attended himself.”
“Come, that’s good-natured of Williams! A bargain’s a bargain, and, having made the bargain, of course it is your own look-out that you fulfil it. Yes, it was considerate of Williams.”
“Considerate for himself,” laughed Arthur. “He did not come down to give me holiday, but in the fear that Mr. Galloway might prevent my attending. ‘A pretty thing it would have been,’ he said to me, ‘had there been no organist this afternoon; it might have cost me my post.’”
“Moonshine!” said Hamish. “It might have cost him a word of reproof; nothing more.”
“Helstonleigh’s dean is a strict one, remember. I told Williams he might always depend upon me.”
“What should you have done, pray, had I not been here to turn office-keeper?” laughed Hamish.
“Of the two duties I must have obeyed the more important one. I should have locked up the office and given the key to the housekeeper till college was over, or until Yorke returned. He deserves something for this move. Has any one called?”
“No. Arthur, I have been making free with a sheet of paper and an envelope,” said Hamish, completing the note he was writing. “I suppose I am welcome to it?”
“To ten, if you want them,” returned Arthur. “To whom are you writing?”
“As if I should put youau courantof my love-letters!” gaily answered Hamish.
How could Hamish indulge in this careless gaiety with a sword hanging over his head? It was verily a puzzle to Arthur. A light, sunny nature was Hamish Channing’s. This sobering blow which had fallen on it had probably not come before it was needed. Had his bark been sailing for ever in smooth waters, he might have wasted his life, indolently basking on the calm, seductive waves. But the storm rose, the waves ran high, threatening to engulf him, and Hamish knew that his best energies must be put forth to surmount them. Never, never talk of troubles as great, unmitigated evils: to the God-fearing, the God-trusting, they are fraught with hidden love.
“Hamish, were I threatened with worry, as you are, I could not be otherwise than oppressed and serious.”
“Where would be the use of that?” cried gay Hamish. “Care killed a cat. Look here, Arthur, you and your grave face! Did you ever know care do a fellow good? I never did: but a great deal of harm. I shall manage to scramble out of the pit somehow. You’ll see.” He put the note into his pocket, as he spoke, and took up his hat to depart.
“Stop an instant longer, Hamish. I have just met Hopper.”
“He did not convert you into a writ-server, I hope. I don’t think it would be legal.”
“There you are, joking again! Hamish, he has the writ, but he does not wish to serve it. You are to keep out of his way, he says, and he will not seek to put himself in yours. My father was kind to him in days gone by, and he remembers it now.”
“He’s a regular trump! I’ll send him half-a-crown in a parcel,” exclaimed Hamish.
“I wish you would hear me out. He says a ten-pound note, perhaps a five-pound note, on account, would induce ‘his people’—suppose you understand the phrase—to stay proceedings, and to give you time. He strongly advises it to be done. That’s all.”
Not only all Arthur had to say upon the point, but all he had time to say. At that moment, the barouche of Lady Augusta Yorke drove up to the door, and they both went out to it. Lady Augusta, her daughter Fanny, and Constance Channing were in it. She was on her way to attend a missionary meeting at the Guildhall, and had called for Roland, that he might escort her into the room.
“Roland is not to be found, Lady Augusta,” said Hamish, raising his hat with one of his sunny smiles. “He darted off, it is impossible to say where, thereby making me a prisoner. My brother had to attend the cathedral, and there was no one to keep office.”
“Then I think I must make a prisoner of you in turn, Mr. Hamish Channing,” graciously said Lady Augusta. “Will you accompany us?”
Hamish shook his head. “I wish I could; but I have already wasted more time than I ought to have done.”
“It will not cost you five minutes more,” urged Lady Augusta. “You shall only just take us into the hall; I will release you then, if you must be released. Three ladies never can go in alone—fancy how we should be stared at!”
Constance bent her pretty face forward. “Do, Hamish, if you can!”
He suffered himself to be persuaded, stepped into the barouche, and took his seat by Lady Augusta. As they drove away, Arthur thought the greatest ornament the carriage contained had been added to it in handsome Hamish.
A full hour Arthur worked on at his deeds and leases, and Roland Yorke never returned. Mr. Galloway came in then. “Where’s Yorke?” was his first question.
Arthur replied that he did not know; he had “stepped out” somewhere. Arthur Channing was not one to make mischief, or get another into trouble. Mr. Galloway asked no further; he probably inferred that Yorke had only just gone. He sat down at Jenkins’s desk, and began to read over a lease.
“Can I have the stamps, sir, for this deed?” Arthur presently asked.
“They are not ready. Have the letters gone to the post?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“You can take them now, then. And, Arthur, suppose you step in, as you return, and see how Jenkins is.”
“Very well, sir.” He went into Mr. Galloway’s room, and brought forth the three letters from the rack. “Is this one not to be sealed?” he inquired of Mr. Galloway, indicating the one directed to Ventnor, for it was Mr. Galloway’s invariable custom to seal letters which contained money, after they had been gummed down. “It is doubly safe,” he would say.
“Ay, to be sure,” replied Mr. Galloway. “I went off in a hurry, and did not do it. Bring me the wax.”
Arthur handed him the wax and a light. Mr. Galloway sealed the letter, stamping it with the seal hanging to his watch-chain. He then held out his hand for another of the letters, and sealed that. “And this one also?” inquired Arthur, holding out the third.
“No. You can take them now.”
Arthur departed. A few paces from the door he met Roland Yorke, coming along in a white heat.
“Channing, I could not help it—I could not, upon my honour. I had to go somewhere with Knivett, and we were kept till now. Galloway’s in an awful rage, I suppose?”
“He has only just come in. You had no right to play me this trick, Yorke. But for Hamish, I must have locked up the office. Don’t you do it again, or Mr. Galloway may hear of it.”
“It is all owing to that confounded Jenkins!” flashed Roland. “Why did he go and get his head smashed? You are a good fellow, Arthur. I’ll do you a neighbourly turn, some time.”
He sped into the office, and Arthur walked to the post with the letters. Coming back, he turned into Mrs. Jenkins’s shop in the High Street.
Mrs. Jenkins was behind the counter. “Oh, go up! go up and see him!” she cried, in a tone of suppressed passion. “His bedroom’s front, up the two-pair flight, and I’ll take my affidavit that there’s been fifty folks here this day to see him, if there has been one. I could sow a peck of peas on the stairs! You’ll find other company up there.”
Arthur groped his way up the stairs; they were dark too, coming in from the sunshine. He found the room, and entered. Jenkins lay in bed, his bandaged head upon the pillow; and, seated by his side, his apron falling, and his clerical hat held between his knees, was the Bishop of Helstonleigh.
Amongst other facts, patent to common and uncommon sense, is the very obvious one that a man cannot be in two places at once. In like manner, no author, that I ever heard of, was able to relate two different portions of his narrative at one and the same time. Thus you will readily understand, that if I devoted the last chapter to Mr. Galloway, his clerks and their concerns generally, it could not be given to Mr. Ketch andhisconcerns; although in the strict order of time and sequence, the latter gentleman might have claimed an equal, if not a premier right.
Mr. Ketch stood in his lodge, leaning for support upon the shut-up press-bedstead, which, by day, looked like a high chest of drawers with brass handles, his eyes fixed on the keys, hanging on the opposite nail. His state of mind may be best expressed by the strong epithet, “savage.” Mr. Ketch had not a pleasant face at the best of times: it was yellow and withered; and his small bright eyes were always dropping water; and the two or three locks of hair, which he still possessed, were faded, and stood out, solitary and stiff, after the manner of those pictures you have seen of heathens who decorate their heads with upright tails. At this moment his countenance looked particularly unpleasant.
Mr. Ketch had spent part of the night and the whole of this morning revolving the previous evening’s affair of the cloisters. The more he thought of it, the less he liked it, and the surer grew his conviction that the evil had been the work of his enemies, the college boys.
“It’s as safe as day,” he wrathfully soliloquized. “There be the right keys,” nodding to the two on the wall, “and there be the wrong ones,” nodding towards an old knife-tray, into which he had angrily thrown the rusty keys, upon entering his lodge last night, accompanied by the crowd. “They meant to lock me up all night in the cloisters, the wicked cannibals! I hope the dean’ll expel ‘em! I’ll make my complaint to the head-master, I will! Drat all college schools! there’s never no good done in ‘em!”
“How are you this morning, Ketch?”
The salutation proceeded from Stephen Bywater, who, in the boisterous manner peculiar to himself and his tribe, had flung open the door without the ceremony of knocking.
“I’m none the better for seeing you,” growled Ketch.
“You need not be uncivil,” returned Bywater, with great suavity. “I am only making a morning call upon you, after the fashion of gentlefolks; the public delights to pay respect to its officials, you know. Howdoyou feel after that mishap last night? We can’t think, any of us, how you came to make the mistake.”
“I’ll ‘mistake’ you!” shrieked Ketch. “I kep’ a nasty old, rusty brace o’ keys in my lodge to take out, instead o’ the right ones, didn’t I?”
“How uncommonly stupid it was of you to do so!” said Bywater, pretending to take the remark literally. “Iwould not keep a duplicate pair of keys by me—I should make sure they’d bring me to grief. What do you say? You didnotkeep duplicate keys—they were false ones! Why, that’s just what we all told you last night. The bishop told you so. He said he knew you had made a mistake, and taken out the wrong keys for the right. My belief is, that you went out without any keys at all. You left them hanging upon the nail, and you found them there. You had not got a second pair!”
“You just wait!” raved old Ketch. “I’m a-coming round to the head-master, and I’ll bring the keys with me. He’ll let you boys know whether there’s two pairs, or one. Horrid old rusty things they be; as rusty as you!”
“Who says they are rusty?”
“Who says it! Theyarerusty!” shrieked the old man. “You’d like to get me into a madhouse, you boys would, worrying me! I’ll show you whether they’re rusty! I’ll show you whether there’s a second brace o’ keys or not. I’ll show ‘em to the head-master! I’ll show ‘em to the dean! I’ll show ‘em again to his lordship the bi—What’s gone of the keys?”
The last sentence was uttered in a different tone and in apparent perplexity. With shaking hands, excited by passion, Mr. Ketch was rummaging the knife-box—an old, deep, mahogany tray, dark with age, divided by a partition—rummaging for the rusty keys. He could not find them. He searched on this side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the false keys, and, finally, he made a snatch at the tray, and turned it upside down. The keys were not there.
When he had fully taken in the fact—it cost him some little time to do it—he turned his anger upon Bywater.
“You have took ‘em, you have! you have turned thief, and stole ‘em! I put ‘em here in the knife-box, and they are gone! What have you done with ‘em?”
“Come, that’s good!” exclaimed Bywater, in too genuine a tone to admit a suspicion of its truth. “I have not been near your knife-box; I have not put my foot inside the door.”
In point of fact, Bywater had not. He had stood outside, bending his head and body inwards, his hands grasping either door-post.
“What’s gone with ‘em? who ‘as took ‘em off? I’ll swear I put ‘em there, and I have never looked at ‘em nor touched ‘em since! There’s an infamous conspiracy forming against me! I’m going to be blowed up, like Guy Fawkes!”
“If you did put them there—‘if,’ you know—some of your friends must have taken them,” cried Bywater, in a tone midway between reason and irony.
“There haven’t a soul been nigh the place,” shrieked Ketch.
“Except the milk, and he gave me my ha’porth through the winder.”
“Hurrah!” said Bywater, throwing up his trencher. “It’s a clear case of dreams. You dreamt you had a second pair of keys, Ketch, and couldn’t get rid of the impression on awaking. Mr. Ketch, D.H., Dreamer-in-chief to Helstonleigh!”
Bywater commenced an aggravating dance. Ketch was aggravated sufficiently without it. “What d’ye call me?” he asked, in a state of concentrated temper that turned his face livid. “‘D?’ What d’ye mean by ‘D?’ D stands for that bad sperit as is too near to you college boys; he’s among you always, like a ranging lion. It’s like your impedence to call me by his name.”
“My dear Mr. Ketch! callyouby his name! I never thought of such a thing,” politely retorted Bywater. “You are not promoted to that honour yet. D.H., stands for Deputy-Hangman. Isn’t it affixed to the cathedral roll, kept amid the archives in the chapter-house”—John Ketch, D.H., porter to the cloisters! “I hope you don’t omit the distinguishing initials when you sign your letters?”
Ketch foamed. Bywater danced. The former could not find words. The latter found plenty.
“I say, though, Mr. Calcraft, don’t you make a similar mistake when you are going on public duty. If you were to gothere, dreaming you had the right apparatus, and find, in the last moment, that you had brought the wrong, you don’t know what the consequences might be. The real victim might escape, rescued by the enraged crowd, and they might put the nightcap upon you, and operate upon you instead! So, be careful. We couldn’t afford to lose you. Only think, what a lot of money it would cost to put the college into mourning!”
Ketch gave a great gasp of agony, threw an iron ladle at his tormentor, which, falling short of its aim, came clanking down on the red-brick floor, and banged the door in Bywater’s face. Bywater withdrew to a short distance, under cover of the cathedral wall, and bent his body backwards and forwards with the violence of his laughter, unconscious that the Bishop of Helstonleigh was standing near him, surveying him with an exceedingly amused expression. His lordship had been an ear-witness to part of the colloquy, very much to his edification.
“What is your mirth, Bywater?”
Bywater drew himself straight, and turned round as if he had been shot. “I was only laughing, my lord,” he said, touching his trencher.
“I see you were; you will lose your breath altogether some day, if you laugh in that violent manner. What were you and Ketch quarrelling about?”
“We were not quarrelling, my lord. I was only chaff—teasing him,” rejoined Bywater, substituting one word for the other, as if fearing the first might not altogether be suited to the bishop’s ears; “and Ketch fell into a passion.”
“As he often does, I fear,” remarked his lordship. “I fancy you boys provoke him unjustifiably.”
“My lord,” said Bywater, turning his red, impudent, but honest face full upon the prelate, “I don’t deny that we do provoke him; but you can have no idea what an awful tyrant he is to us. I can’t believe any one was ever born with such a cross-grained temper. He vents it upon every one: not only upon the college boys, but upon all who come in his way. If your lordship were not the bishop,” added bold Bywater, “he would vent it upon you.”
“Would he?” said the bishop, who was a dear lover of candour, and would have excused a whole bushel of mischief, rather than one little grain of falsehood.
“Not a day passes, but he sets upon us with his tongue. He would keep us out of the cloisters; he would keep us out of our own schoolroom. He goes to the head-master with the most unfounded cram—stories, and when the master declines to notice them (for he knows Ketch of old), then he goes presumingly to the dean. If he let us alone, we should let him alone. I am not speaking this in the light of a complaint to your lordship,” Bywater added, throwing his head back. “I don’t want to get him into a row, tyrant though he is; and the college boys can hold their own against Ketch.”
“I expect they can,” significantly replied the bishop. “He would keep you out of the cloisters, would he?”
“He is aiming at it,” returned Bywater. “There never would have been a word said about our playing there, but for him. If the dean shuts us out, it will be Ketch’s doings. The college boys have played in the cloisters since the school was founded.”
“He would keep you out of the cloisters; so, by way of retaliation, you lock him into them—an uncomfortable place of abode for a night, Bywater.”
“My lord!” cried Bywater.
“Sir!” responded his lordship.
“Does your lordship think it was I who played that trick on Ketch?”
“Yes, I do—speaking of you conjointly with the school.”
Bywater’s eyes and his good-humoured countenance fell before the steady gaze of the prelate. But in the gaze there was an earnest—if Bywater could read it aright—of good feeling, of excuse for the mischief, rather than of punishment in store. The boy’s face was red enough at all times, but it turned to scarlet now. If the bishop had before suspected the share played in the affair by the college boys, it had by this time been converted into a certainty.
“Boy,” said he, “confess it if you like, be silent if you like; but do not tell me a lie.”
Bywater turned up his face again. His free, fearless eyes—free in the cause of daring, but fearless in that of truth—looked straight into those of the bishop. “I never do tell lies,” he answered. “There’s not a boy in the school punished oftener than I am; and I don’t say but I generally deserve it! but it is never for telling a lie. If I did tell them, I should slip out of many a scrape that I am punished for now.”
The bishop could read truth as well as any one—better than many—and he saw that it was being told to him now. “Which of you must be punished for this trick as ringleader?” he asked.
“I, my lord, if any one must be,” frankly avowed Bywater. “We should have let him out at ten o’clock. We never meant to keep him there all night. If I am punished, I hope your lordship will be so kind as allow it to be put down to your own account, not to Ketch’s. I should not like it to be thought that I caught it forhim. I heartily beg your pardon, my lord, for having been so unfortunate as to include you in the locking-up. We are all as sorry as can be, that it should have happened. I am ready to take any punishment, for that, that you may order me.”
“Ah!” said the bishop, “had you known that I was in the cloisters, your friend Ketch would have come off scot free!”
“Yes, that he would, until—”
“Until what?” asked the bishop, for Bywater had brought his words to a standstill.
“Until a more convenient night, I was going to say, my lord.”
“Well, that’s candid,” said the bishop. “Bywater,” he gravely added, “you have spoken the truth to me freely. Had you equivocated in the slightest degree, I should have punished you for the equivocation. As it is, I shall look upon this as a confidential communication, andnotorder you punishment. But we will not have any more tricks played at locking up Ketch. You understand?”
“All right, my lord. Thank you a hundred times.”
Bywater, touching his trencher, leaped off. The bishop turned to enter his palace gates, which were close by, and encountered Ketch talking to the head-master. The latter had been passing the lodge, when he was seen and pounced upon by Ketch, who thought it a good opportunity to make his complaint.
“I am as morally sure it was them, sir, as I am that I be alive.” he was saying when the bishop came up. “And I don’t know who they has dealings with; but, for certain, they have sperited away them rusty keys what did the mischief, without so much as putting one o’ their noses inside my lodge. I placed ‘em safe in the knife-box last night, and they’re gone this morning. I hope, sir, you’ll punish them as they deserve. I am nothing, of course. If they had locked me up, and kept me there till I was worn to a skeleton, it might be thought light of; but his lordship, the bishop”—bowing sideways to the prelate—“was a sufferer by their wickedness.”
“To be sure I was,” said the bishop, in a grave tone, but with a twinkle in his eye; “and therefore the complaint to Mr. Pye must be preferred by me, Ketch. We will talk of it when I have leisure,” he added to Mr. Pye, with a pleasant nod, as he went through the palace gates.
The head-master bowed to the bishop, and walked away, leaving Ketch on the growl.
Meanwhile, Bywater, flying through the cloisters, came upon Hurst, and two or three more of the conspirators. The time was between nine and ten o’clock. The boys had been home for breakfast after early school, and were now reassembling, but they did not go into school until a quarter before ten.
“He is such a glorious old trump, that bishop!” burst forth Bywater. “He knows all about it, and is not going to put us up for punishment. Let’s cut round to the palace gates and cheer him.”
“Knows that it was us!” echoed the startled boys. “How did it come out to him?” asked Hurst.
“He guessed it, I think,” said Bywater, “and he taxed me with it. So I couldn’t help myself, and told him I’d take the punishment; and he said he’d excuse us, but there was to be no locking up of Mr. Calcraft again. I’d lay a hundred guineas the bishop went in for scrapes himself, when he was a boy!” emphatically added Bywater. “I’ll be bound he thinks we only served the fellow right. Hurrah for the bishop!”
“Hurrah for the bishop!” shouted Hurst, with the other chorus of voices. “Long life to him! He’s made of the right sort of stuff! I say, though, Jenkins is the worst,” added Hurst, his note changing. “My father says he doesn’t know but what brain fever will come on.”
“Moonshine!” laughed the boys.
“Upon my word and honour, it is not. He pitched right upon his head; it might have cost him his life had he fallen upon the edge of the stone step, but they think he alighted flat. My father was round with him this morning at six o’clock.”
“Does your father know about it?”
“Not he. What next?” cried Hurst. “Should I stand before him, and take my trencher off, with a bow, and say, ‘If you please, sir, it was the college boys who served out old Ketch!’ That would be a nice joke! He said, at breakfast, this morning, that that fumbling old Ketch must have got hold of the wrong keys. ‘Of course, sir!’ answered I.”
“Oh, what do you think, though!” interrupted Bywater. “Ketch can’t find the keys. He put them into a knife-box, he says, and this morning they are gone. He intended to take them round to Pye, and I left him going rampant over the loss. Didn’t I chaff him?”
Hurst laughed. He unbuttoned the pocket of his trousers, and partially exhibited two rusty keys. “I was not going to leave them to Ketch for witnesses,” said he. “I saw him throw them into the tray last night, and I walked them out again, while he was talking to the crowd.”
“I say, Hurst, don’t be such a ninny as to keep them about you!” exclaimed Berkeley, in a fright. “Suppose Pye should go in for a search this morning, and visit our pockets? You’d floor us at once!”
“The truth is, I don’t know where to put them,” ingenuously acknowledged Hurst. “If I hid them at home, they’d be found; if I dropped them in the street, some hullaballoo might arise from it.”
“Let’s carry them back to the old-iron shop, and get the fellow to buy them back at half-price!”
“Catch him doing that! Besides, the trick is sure to get wind in the town; he might be capable of coming forward and declaring that we bought the keys at his shop.”
“Let’s throw ‘em down old Pye’s well!”
“They’d come up again in the bucket, as ghosts do!”
“Couldn’t we make a railway parcel of them, and direct it to ‘Mr. Smith, London?’”
“‘Two pounds to pay; to be kept till called for,’” added Mark Galloway, improving upon the suggestion. “They’d put it in their fire-proof safe, and it would never come out again.”
“Throw them into the river,” said Stephen Bywater. “That’s the only safe place for them: they’d lie at the bottom for ever. We have time to do it now. Come along.”
Acting upon the impulse, as schoolboys usually do, they went galloping out of the cloisters, running against the head-master, who was entering, and nearly overturning his equilibrium. He gave them an angry word of caution; they touched their caps in reply, and somewhat slackened their speed, resuming the gallop when he was out of hearing.
Inclosing the cathedral and its precincts on the western side, was a wall, built of red stone. It was only breast high, standing on the cathedral side; but on the other side it descended several feet, to the broad path which ran along the banks of the river. The boys made for this wall and gained it, their faces hot, and their breath gone.
“Who’ll pitch ‘em in?” cried Hurst, who did not altogether relish being chief actor himself, for windows looked on to that particular spot from various angles and corners of the Boundaries. “You shall do it, Galloway!”
“Oh shall I, though!” returned young Galloway, not relishing it either.
“You precious rebel! Take the keys, and do as I order you!”
Young Galloway was under Hurst. He no more dared to disobey him than he could have disobeyed the head-master. Had Hurst ordered him to jump into the river he must have done it. He took the keys tendered him by Hurst, and was raising them for the pitch, when Bywater laid his hand upon them and struck them down with a sudden movement, clutching them to him.
“You little wretch, you are as deaf as a donkey!” he uttered. “There’s somebody coming up. Turn your head, and look who it is.”
It proved to be Fordham, the dean’s servant. He was accidentally passing. The boys did not fear him; nevertheless, it was only prudent to remain still, until he had gone by. They stood, all five, leaning upon the wall, soiling their waistcoats and jackets, in apparent contemplation of the view beyond. A pleasant view! The river wound peacefully between its green banks; meadows and cornfields were stretched out beyond; while an opening afforded a glimpse of that lovely chain of hills, and the white houses nestled at their base. A barge, drawn by a horse, was appearing slowly from underneath the city bridge, blue smoke ascending from its chimney. A woman on board was hanging out linen to dry—a shirt, a pair of stockings, and a handkerchief—her husband’s change for the coming Sunday. A young girl was scraping potatoes beside her; and a man, probably the husband, sat steering, his pipe in his mouth. The boys fixed their eyes upon the boat.
“I shouldn’t mind such a life as that fellow’s yonder!” exclaimed young Berkeley, who was fonder of idleness than he was of Latin. “I’ll turn bargeman when other trades fail. It must be rather jolly to sit steering a boat all day, and do nothing but smoke.”
“Fordham’s gone, and be hanged to him! Now for it, Galloway!”
“Stop a bit,” said Bywater. “They must be wrapped up, or else tied close together. Better wrap them up, and then no matter who sees. They can’t swear there are keys inside. Who has any paper about him?”
One of the boys, Hall, had his exercise-book with him. They tore a sheet or two out of it, and folded it round the keys, Hurst producing some string. “I’ll fling them in,” said Bywater.
“Make haste, then, or we shall have to wait till the barge has gone by.”
Bywater took a cautious look round, saw nobody, and flung the parcel into the middle of the river. “Rari nantes in gurgite vasto!” ejaculated he.
“Now, you gents, what be you throwing into the river?”
The words came from Hudson, the porter to the Boundaries, who appeared to have sprung up from the ground. In reality, he had been standing on the steps leading to the river, but the boat-house had hidden him from their view. He was a very different man from the cloister porter; was afraid of the college boys, rather than otherwise, and addressed them individually as “sir.” The keeper of the boat-house heard this, and came up the steps.
“If you gentlemen have been throwing anything into the river you know that it’s against the rules.”
“Don’t bother!” returned Hurst, to the keeper.
“But you know itiswrong, gentlemen,” remonstrated the keeper. “What was it you threw in? It made a dreadful splash.”
“Ah! what was it?” coolly answered Hurst. “What should you say to a dead cat? Hudson, have the goodness to mindyourbusiness, unless you would like to get reported for interfering with what does not concern you.”
“There’s a quarter to ten!” exclaimed Bywater, as the college clock chimed the three-quarters. “We shall be marked late, every soul of us!”
They flew away, their feet scarcely touching the ground, clattered up the schoolroom stairs, and took their places. Gaunt was only beginning to call over the roll, and they escaped the “late” mark.
“It’s better to be born lucky than rich,” said saucy Bywater.