Have you ever observed a large lake on the approach of a sudden storm?—its unnatural stillness, death-like and ominous; its undercurrent of anger not yet apparent on the surface; and then the breaking forth of fury when the storm has come?
Not inaptly might the cloisters of Helstonleigh be compared to this, that day, when the college boys were let out of school at one o’clock. A strange rumour had been passed about amongst the desks—not reaching that at which sat the seniors—a rumour which shook the equanimity of the school to its centre; and, when one o’clock struck, the boys, instead of clattering out with all the noise of which their legs and lungs were capable, stole down the stairs quietly, and formed into groups of whisperers in the cloisters. It was the calm that precedes a storm.
So unusual a state of affairs was noticed by the senior boy.
“What’s up now?” he asked them, in the phraseology in vogue there and elsewhere. “Are you all going to a funeral? I hope it’s your sins that you are about to bury!”
A heavy silence answered him. Gaunt could not make it out. The other three seniors, attracted by the scene, came back, and waited with Gaunt. By that time the calm was being ruffled by low murmurings, and certain distinct words came from more than one of the groups.
“What do you say?” burst forth Tom Channing, darting forward as the words caught his ear. “You, Jackson! speak up;whatis it?”
Not Jackson’s voice especially, but several other voices arose then; a word from one, a word from another, half sentences, disjointed hints, forming together an unmistakable whole. “The theft of old Galloway’s bank-note has been traced to Arthur Channing.”
“Who says it? Who dares to say it?” flashed Tom, his face flaming, and his hand clenched.
“The police say it. Butterby says it.”
“I don’t care for the police; I don’t care for Butterby,” cried Tom, stamping his foot in his terrible indignation. “I ask, who dares to say it here?”
“I do, then! Come, Mr. Channing, though you are a senior, and can put me up to Pye for punishment upon any false plea that you choose,” answered a tall fellow, Pierce senior, who was chiefly remarkable for getting into fights, and was just now unusually friendly with Mark Galloway, at whose desk he sat.
Quick as lightning, Tom Channing turned and faced him. “Speak out what you have to say,” cried he; “no hints.”
“Whew!” retorted Pierce senior, “do you think I am afraid? I say that Arthur Channing stole the note lost by old Galloway.”
Tom, in uncontrollable temper, raised his hand and struck him. One half-minute’s struggle, nothing more, and Pierce senior was sprawling on the ground, while Tom Channing’s cheek and nose were bleeding. Gaunt had stepped in between them.
“I stop this,” he said. “Pierce, get up! Don’t lie there like a floundering donkey. Channing, what possessed you to forget yourself?”
“You would have done the same, Gaunt, had the insult been offered to you. Let the fellow retract his words, or prove them.”
“Very good. That is how you ought to have met it at first,” said Gaunt. “Now, Mr. Pierce, can you make good your assertion?”
Pierce had floundered up, and was rubbing one of his long legs, which had doubled under him in the fall, while his brother, Pierce junior, was collecting an armful of scattered books, and whispering prognostications of parental vengeance in prospective; for, so surely as Pierce senior fell into a fight at school, to the damage of face or clothes, so surely was it followed up by punishment at home.
“If you want proof, go to Butterby at the police station, and get it from him,” sullenly replied Pierce, who owned a sulky temper as well as a pugnacious one.
“Look here,” interrupted Mark Galloway, springing to the front: “Pierce was a fool to bring it out in that way, but I’ll speak up now it has come to this. I went into my uncle’s, this morning, at nine o’clock, and there was he, shut in with Butterby. Butterby was saying that there was no doubt the theft had been committed by Arthur Channing. Mind, Channing,” Mark added, turning to Tom, “I am not seconding the accusation on my own score; but, that Butterby said it I’ll declare.”
“Pshaw! is that all?” cried Tom Channing, lifting his head with a haughty gesture, and not condescending to notice the blood which trickled from his cheek. “You must have misunderstood him, boy.”
“No, I did not,” replied Mark Galloway. “I heard him as plainly as I hear you now.”
“It is hardly likely that Butterby would say that before you, Galloway,” observed Gaunt.
“Ah, but he didn’t see I was there, or my uncle either,” said Mark. “When he is reading his newspaper of a morning, he can’t bear a noise, and I always go into the room as quiet as mischief. He turned me out again pretty quick, I can tell you; but not till I had heard Butterby say that.”
“You must have misunderstood him,” returned Gaunt, carelessly taking up Tom Channing’s notion; “and you had no right to blurt out such a thing to the school. Arthur Channing is better known and trusted than you, Mr. Mark.”
“I didn’t accuse Arthur Channing to the school. I only repeated to my desk what Butterby said.”
“It is that ‘only repeating’ which does three parts of the mischief in this world,” said Gaunt, giving the boys a little touch of morality gratis, to their intense edification. “As to you, Pierce senior, you’ll get more than you bargain for, some of these days, if you poke your ill-conditioned nose so often into other people’s business.”
Tom Channing had marched away towards his home, head erect, his step ringing firmly and proudly on the cloister flags. Charley ran by his side. But Charley’s face was white, and Tom caught sight of it.
“What are you looking like that for?”
“Tom! you don’t think it’s true, do you?”
Tom turned his scorn upon the boy. “You little idiot! True! A Channing turn thief!Youmay, perhaps—it’s best known to yourself—but never Arthur.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, can it be true that the police suspect him?”
“Oh! that’s what your face becomes milky for? You ought to have been born a girl, Miss Charley. If the police do suspect him, what of that?—they’ll only have the tables turned upon themselves, Butterby might come out and say he suspects me of murder! Should I care? No; I’d prove my innocence, and make him eat his words.”
They were drawing near home. Charley looked up at his brother. “You must wipe your face, Tom.”
Tom took out his handkerchief, and gave his face a rub. In his indignation, his carelessness, he would have done nothing of the sort, had he not been reminded by the boy. “Is it off?”
“Yes, it’s off. I am not sure but it will break out again. You must take care.”
“Oh, bother! let it. I should like to have polished off that Pierce senior as he deserves. A little coin of the same sort would do Galloway no harm. Were I senior of the school, and Arthur not my brother, Mr. Mark should hear a little home truth about sneaks. I’ll tell it him in private, as it is; but I can’t put him up for punishment, or act in it as Gaunt could.”
“Arthur is our brother, therefore we feel it more pointedly than Gaunt,” sensibly remarked Charley.
“I’d advise you not to spell forth that sentimental rubbish, though you are a young lady,” retorted Tom. “A senior boy, if he does his duty, should make every boy’s cause his own, and ‘feel’ for him.”
“Tom,” said the younger and more thoughtful of the two, “don’t let us say anything of this at home.”
“Why not?” asked Tom, hotly. He would have run in open-mouthed.
“It would pain mamma to hear it.”
“Boy! do you supposeshewould fear Arthur?”
“You seem to misconstrue all I say, Tom. Of course she would not fear him—you did not fear him; but it stung you, I know, as was proved by your knocking down Pierce.”
“Well, I won’t speak of it before her,” conciliated Tom, somewhat won over, “or before my father, either; but catch me keeping it from the rest.”
As Charles had partially foretold, they had barely entered, when Tom’s face again became ornamented with crimson. Annabel shrieked out, startling Mr. Channing on his sofa. Mrs. Channing, as it happened, was not present; Constance was: Lady Augusta Yorke and her daughters were spending part of the day in the country, therefore Constance had come home at twelve.
“Look at Tom’s face!” cried the child. “What has he been doing?”
“Hold your tongue, little stupid,” returned Tom, hastily bringing his handkerchief into use again; which, being a white one, made the worse exhibition of the two, with its bright red stains. “It’s nothing but a scratch.”
But Annabel’s eyes were sharp, and she had taken in full view of the hurt. “Tom, you have been fighting! I am sure of it!”
“Come to me, Tom,” said Mr. Channing. “Have you been fighting?” he demanded, as Tom crossed the room in obedience, and stood close to him. “Take your handkerchief away, that I may see your face.”
“It could not be called a fight, papa,” said Tom, holding his cheek so that the light from the window fell full upon the hurt. “One of the boys offended me; I hit him, and he gave me this; then I knocked him down, and there it ended. It’s only a scratch.”
“Thomas, was this Christian conduct?”
“I don’t know, papa. It was schoolboy’s.”
Mr. Channing could not forbear a smile. “I know it was a schoolboy’s conduct; that is bad enough: and it is my son’s, that is worse.”
“If I had given him what he deserved, he would have had ten times as much; and perhaps I should, for my temper was up, only Gaunt put in his interference. When I am senior, my rule will be different from Gaunt’s.”
“Ah, Tom! your ‘temper up!’ It is that temper of yours which brings you harm. What was the quarrel about?”
“I would rather not tell you, papa. Not for my own sake,” he added, turning his honest eyes fearlessly on his father; “but I could not tell it without betraying something about somebody, which it may be as well to keep in.”
“After that lucid explanation, you had better go and get some warm water for your face,” said Mr. Channing. “I will speak with you later.”
Constance followed him from the room, volunteering to procure the warm water. They were standing in Tom’s chamber afterwards, Tom bathing his face, and Constance looking on, when Arthur, who had then come in from Mr. Galloway’s, passed by to his own room.
“Hallo!” he called out; “what’s the matter, Tom?”
“Such a row!” answered Tom. “And I wish I could have pitched into Pierce senior as I’d have liked. What do you think, Arthur? The school were taking up the notion that you—you!—had stolen old Galloway’s bank-note. Pierce senior set it afloat; that is, he and Mark Galloway together. Mark said a word, and Pierce said two, and so it went on. I should have paid Pierce out, but for Gaunt.”
A silence. It was filled up by the sound of Tom splashing the water on his face, and by that only. Arthur spoke presently, his tone so calm a one as almost to be unnatural.
“How did the notion arise?”
“Mark Galloway said he heard Butterby talking with his uncle; that Butterby said the theft could only have been committed by Arthur Channing. Mark Galloway’s ears must have played him false; but it was a regular sneak’s trick to come and repeat it to the school. I say, Constance, is my face clean now?”
Constance woke up from a reverie to look at his face. “Quite clean,” she answered.
He dried it, dried his hands, gave a glance at his shirt-front in the glass, which had, however, escaped damage, brushed his hair, and went downstairs. Arthur closed the door and turned to Constance. Her eyes were seeking his, and her lips stood apart. The terrible fear which had fallen upon both the previous day had not yet been spoken out between them. It must be spoken now.
“Constance, there is tribulation before us,” he whispered. “We must school ourselves to bear it, however difficult the task may prove. Whatever betide the rest of us, suspicion must be averted fromhim.”
“What tribulation do you mean?” she murmured.
“The affair has been placed in the hands of the police; and I believe—I believe,” Arthur spoke with agitation, “that they will publicly investigate it. Constance, they suspectme. The college school is right, and Tom is wrong.”
Constance leaned against a chest of drawers to steady herself, and pressed her hand upon her shrinking face. “How have you learnt it?”
“I have gathered it from different trifles; one fact and another. Jenkins said Butterby was with him this morning, asking questions about me. Better that I should be suspected than Hamish. God help me to bear it!”
“But it is so unjust that you should suffer for him.”
“Were it traced home to him, it might be the whole family’s ruin, for my father would inevitably lose his post. He might lose it were only suspicion to stray to Hamish. There is no alternative. I must screen him. Can you be firm, Constance, when you see me accused?”
Constance leaned her head upon her hand, wondering whether she could be firm in the cause. But that she knew where to go for strength, she might have doubted it; for the love of right, the principles of justice were strong within her. “Oh, what could possess him?” she uttered, wringing her hands; “what could possess him? Arthur, is there no loophole, not the faintest loophole for hope of his innocence?”
“None that I see. No one whatever had access to the letter but Hamish and I. He must have yielded to the temptation in a moment of delirium, knowing the money would clear him from some of his pressing debts—as it has done.”
“How could he brave the risk of detection?”
“I don’t know. My head aches, pondering over it. I suppose he concluded that suspicion would fall upon the post-office. It would have done so, but for that seal placed on the letter afterwards. What an unfortunate thing it was, that Roland Yorke mentioned there was money inside the letter in the hearing of Hamish!”
“Did he mention it?” exclaimed Constance.
He said there was a twenty-pound note in the letter, going to the cousin Galloway, and Hamish remarked that he wished it was going into his pocket instead. “Iwish” Arthur uttered, in a sort of frenzy, “I had locked the letter up there and then.”
Constance clasped her hands in pain. “I fear he may have been going wrong for some time,” she breathed. “It has come to my knowledge, through Judith, that he sits up for hours night after night, doing something to the books. Arthur,” she shivered, glancing fearfully round, “I hope those accounts are right?”
The doubt thus given utterance to, blanched even the cheeks of Arthur. “Sits up at the books!” he exclaimed.
“He sits up, that is certain; and at the books, as I conclude. He takes them into his room at night. It may only be that he has not time, or does not make time, to go over them in the day. Itmaybe so.”
“I trust it is; I pray it may be. Mind you, Constance, our duty is plain: we must screen him; screen him at any sacrifice to ourselves, for the father and mother’s sake.”
“Sacrifice to you, you ought to say. What were our other light troubles, compared with this? Arthur, will they publicly accuse you?”
“It may come to that; I have been steeling myself all the morning to meet it.”
He looked into her face as he said it. Constance could see how his brow and heart were aching. At that moment they were called to dinner, and Arthur turned to leave the room. Constance caught his hand, the tears raining from her eyes.
“Arthur,” she whispered, “in the very darkest trouble, God can comfort us. Be assured He will comfort you.”
Hamish did not make his appearance at dinner, and they sat down without him. This was not so very unusual as to cause surprise; he was occasionally detained at the office.
The meal was about half over, when Annabel, in her disregard of the bounds of discipline, suddenly started from her seat and flew to the window.
“Charley, there are two policemen coming here! Whatever can they want?”
“Perhaps to take you,” said Mrs. Channing, jestingly. “A short sojourn at the tread-mill might be of great service to you, Annabel.”
The announcement had struck upon the ear and memory of Tom. “Policemen!” he exclaimed, standing up in his place, and stretching his neck to obtain a view of them. “Why—it never can be that—old Butterby—Arthur, what ails you?”
A sensitive, refined nature, whether implanted in man or woman, is almost sure to betray its emotions on the countenance. Such a nature was Arthur Channing’s. Now that the dread had really come, every drop of blood forsook his cheeks and lips, leaving his face altogether of a deathly whiteness. He was utterly unable to control or help this, and it was this pallor which had given rise to Tom’s concluding exclamation.
Mr. Channing looked at Arthur, Mrs. Channing looked at him; they all looked at him, except Constance, and she bent her head lower over her plate, to hide, as she best might, her own white face and its shrinking terror. “Are you ill, Arthur?” inquired his father.
A low brief reply came; one struggling for calmness. “No, sir.”
Impetuous Tom, forgetting caution, forgetting all except the moment actually present, gave utterance to more than was prudent. “Arthur, you are never fearing what those wretched schoolboys said? The police are not come to arrest you. Butterby wouldn’t be such a fool!”
But the police were in the hall, and Judith had come to the dining-room door. “Master Arthur, you are wanted, please.”
“What is all this?” exclaimed Mr. Channing in astonishment, gazing from Tom to Arthur, from Arthur to the vision of the blue official dress, a glimpse of which he could catch beyond Judith. Tom took up the answer.
“It’s nothing, papa. It’s a trick they are playing for fun, I’ll lay. Theycan’treally suspect Arthur of stealing the bank-note, you know. They’ll never dare to take him up, as they take a felon.”
Charley stole round to Arthur with a wailing cry, and threw his arms round him—as if their weak protection could retain him in its shelter. Arthur gently unwound them, and bent down till his lips touched the yearning face held up to him in its anguish.
“Charley, boy, I am innocent,” he breathed in the boy’s ear. “You won’t doubt that, I know. Don’t keep me. They have come for me, and I must go with them.”
The group would have formed a study for a Wilkie. The disturbed dinner-table; the consternation of those assembled at it; Mr. Channing (whose sofa, wheeled to the table, took up the end opposite his wife) gazing around with a puzzled, stern expression; Mrs. Channing glancing behind her with a sense of undefined dread; the pale,consciouscountenances of Arthur and Constance; Tom standing up in haughty impetuosity, defiant of every one; the lively terror of Charley’s face, as he clung to Arthur; and the wide-opened eyes of Annabel expressive of nothing but surprise—for it took a great deal to alarm that careless young lady; while at the door, holding it open for Arthur, stood Judith in her mob-cap, full of curiosity; and in the background the two policemen. A scene indeed, that Wilkie, in the day of his power, would have rejoiced to paint.
Arthur, battling fiercely with his outraged pride, and breathing an inward prayer for strength to go through with his task, for patience to endure, put Charley from him, and went into the hall. He saw not what was immediately around him—the inquiring looks of his father and mother, the necessity of some explanation to them; he saw not Judith and her curious face. A scale was, as it were, before his eyes, blinding them to all outward influences, except one—the officers of justice standing there, and the purpose for which they had come. “What on earth has happened, Master Arthur?” whispered Judith, as he passed her, terrifying the old servant with his pale, agitated face. But he neither heard nor answered; he walked straight up to the men.
“I will go with you quietly,” he said to them, in an undertone. “Do not make a disturbance, to alarm my mother.”
We cannot always have our senses about us, as the saying runs. Some of us, I fear, enjoy that privilege rarely, and the very best lose them on occasion. But that Arthur Channing’s senses had deserted him, he would not have pursued a line of conduct, in that critical moment, which was liable to be construed into an admission, or, at least, a consciousness of guilt. In his anxiety to avert suspicion from Hamish, he lost sight of the precautions necessary to protect himself, so far as was practicable. And yet he had spent time that morning, thinking over what his manner, his bearing must be if it came to this! Had it come upon him unexpectedly he would have met it very differently; with far less outward calmness, but most probably with indignant denial. “I will go with you quietly,” he said to the men.
“All right, sir,” they answered with a nod, and a conviction that he was a cool hand and a guilty one. “It’s always best not to resist the law—it never does no good.”
He need not have resisted, but he ought to have waited until they asked him to go. A dim perception of this had already begun to steal over him. He was taking his hat from its place in the hall, when the voice of Mr. Channing came ringing on his ear.
“Arthur, what is this? Give me an explanation.”
Arthur turned back to the room, passing through the sea of faces to get there; for all; except his helpless father, had come from their seats to gather round and about that strange mystery in the hall, to try to fathom it. Mr. Channing gave one long, keen glance at Arthur’s face—which was very unlike Arthur’s usual face just then; for all its candour seemed to have gone out of it. He did not speak to him; he called in one of the men.
“Will you tell me your business here?” he asked courteously.
“Don’t you know it, sir?” was the reply.
“No, I do not,” replied Mr. Channing.
“Well, sir, it’s an unpleasant accusation that is brought against this young gentleman. But perhaps he’ll be able to make it clear. I hope he will. It don’t give us no pleasure when folks are convicted, especially young ones, and those we have always known to be respectable; we’d rather see ‘em let off.”
Tom interrupted—Tom, in his fiery indignation. “Is it of stealing that bank-note of Galloway’s that you presume to accuse my brother?” he asked, speaking indistinctly in his haste and anger.
“You have said it, sir,” replied the man. “That’s it.”
“Then I say whoever accuses him ought to be—”
“Silence, Thomas,” interrupted Mr. Channing. “Allow me to deal with this. Who brings this accusation against my son?”
“We had our orders from Mr. Butterby, sir. He is acting for Mr. Galloway. He was called in there early this morning.”
“Have you come for my son to go with you to Mr. Galloway’s?”
“Not there, sir. We have to take him straight to the Guildhall. The magistrates are waiting to hear the case.”
A dismayed pause. Even Mr. Channing’s heart, with all its implicit faith in the truth and honour of his children, beat as if it would burst its bounds. Tom’s beat too; but it was with a desire to “pitch into” the policemen, as he had pitched into Pierce senior in the cloisters.
Mr. Channing turned to Arthur. “You have an answer to this, my son?”
The question was not replied to. Mr. Channing spoke again, with the same calm emphasis. “Arthur, you can vouch for your innocence?”
Arthur Channing did the very worst thing that he could have done—he hesitated. Instead of replying readily and firmly “I can,” which he might have done without giving rise to harm, he stopped to ask himself how far, consistently with safety to Hamish, he might defend his own cause. His mind was not collected; he had not, as I have said, his senses about him; and the unbroken silence, waiting for his answer, the expectant faces turned upon him, helped to confuse him and to drive his reason further away. The signs, which certainly did look like signs of guilt, struck a knell on the heart of his father. “Arthur!” he wailed out, in a tone of intense agony, “youareinnocent?”
“Y—es,” replied Arthur, gulping down his rising agitation; his rising words—impassioned words of exculpation, of innocence, of truth. They had bubbled up within him—were hovering on the verge of his burning lips. He beat them down again to repression; but he never afterwards knew how he did it.
Better that he had been still silent, than speak that dubious, indecisive “Y—es.” It told terribly against him. One, conscious of his own innocence, does not proclaim it in indistinct, half-uttered words. Tom’s mouth dropped with dismay, and his astonished eyes seemed as if they could not take themselves from Arthur’s uncertain face. Mrs. Channing staggered against the wall, with a faint cry.
The policeman spoke up: he meant to be kindly. In all Helstonleigh there was not a family more respected than were the Channings; and the man felt a passing sorrow for his task. “I wouldn’t ask no questions, sir, if I was you. Sometimes it’s best not; they tell against the accused.”
“Time’s up,” called out the one who was in the hall, to his fellow. “We can’t stop here all day.”
The hint was taken at once, both by Arthur and the man. Constance had kept herself still, throughout, by main force; but Mrs. Channing could not see him go away like this. She rose and threw her arms round him, in a burst of hysterical feeling, sobbing out, “My boy! my boy!”
“Don’t, mother! don’t unnerve me,” he whispered. “It is bad enough as it is.”
“But you cannot be guilty, Arthur.”
For answer he looked into her eyes for a single moment. His habitual expression had come back to them again—the earnest of truth, which she had ever known and trusted. It spoke calm to her heart now. “You are innocent,” she murmured. “Then go in peace.”
Annabel broke into a storm of sobs. “Oh, Judith! will they hang him? What has he done?”
“I’d hang them two policemen, if I did what I should like to do,” responded Judith. “Yes, you two, I mean,” she added, without ceremony, as the officials turned round at the words. “If I had my will, I’d hang you both up to two of those elm-trees yonder, right in front of one another. Coming to a gentleman’s house on this errand!”
“Do not take me publicly through the streets,” said Arthur to his keepers. “I give you my word to make no resistance: I will go to the Guildhall, or anywhere else that you please, as freely as if I were bound thither on my own pleasure. You need not betray that I am in custody.”
They saw that they might trust him. One of the policemen went to the opposite side of the way, as if pacing his beat; the other continued by the side of Arthur; not closely enough to give rise to suspicion in those they met. A few paces from the door Tom Channing came pelting up, and put his arm within Arthur’s.
“Guilty, or not guilty, it shall never be said that a Channing was deserted by his brothers!” quoth he, “I wish Hamish could have been here.”
“Tom, you are thinking me guilty?” Arthur said, in a quiet, tone, which did not reach the ears of his official escort.
“Well—I am in a fix,” avowed Tom. “If you are guilty, I shall never believe in anything again. I have always thought that building a cathedral: well and good; but if it turns out to be a myth, I shan’t be surprised, after this.Areyou guilty?”
“No, lad.”
The denial was simple, and calmly expressed; but there was sufficient in its tone to make Tom Channing’s heart give a great leap within him.
“Thank God! What a fool I was! But, I say, Arthur, why did you not deny it, out-and-out? Your manner frightened us. I suppose the police scared you?”
Tom, all right now, walked along, his head up, escorting Arthur with as little shame to public examination, as he would have done to a public crowning. It was not the humiliation of undeserved suspicion that could daunt the Channings: the consciousness of guilt could alone effect that. Hitherto, neither guilt nor its shadow had fallen upon them.
“Tom,” asked Arthur, when they had reached the hall, and were about to enter: “will you do me a little service?”
“Won’t I, though! what is it?”
“Make the best of your way to Mr. Williams’s, and tell him I am prevented from taking the organ this afternoon.”
“I shan’t tell him the reason,” said Tom.
“Why not? In an hour’s time it will be known from one end of Helstonleigh to the other.”
The magistrates sat on the bench in the town-hall of Helstonleigh. But, before the case was called on—for the police had spoken too fast in saying they were waiting for it—Arthur became acquainted with one great fact: that it was not Mr. Galloway who had driven matters to this extremity. Neither was he aware that Arthur had been taken into custody. Mr. Butterby had assumed the responsibility, and acted upon it. Mr. Butterby, since his interview with Mr. Galloway in the morning, had gathered, as he believed, sufficiently corroborating facts to establish, or nearly so, the guilt of Arthur Channing. He supposed that this was all Mr. Galloway required to remove his objection to stern measures; and, in procuring the warrant for the capture, Mr. Butterby had acted as for Mr. Galloway.
When Arthur was placed in the spot where he had often seen criminals standing, his face again wore the livid hue which had overspread it in his home. In a few moments this had changed to crimson; brow and cheeks were glowing with it. It was a painful situation, and Arthur felt it to the very depths of his naturally proud spirit. I don’t think you or I should have liked it.
The circumstances were stated to the magistrates just as they have been stated to you. The placing of the bank-note and letter in the envelope by Mr. Galloway, his immediately fastening it down by means of the gum, the extraction of the note, between that time and the period when the seal was placed on it later in the day, and the fact that Arthur Channing alone had access to it. “Except Mr. Hamish Channing, for a few minutes,” Mr. Butterby added, “who kindly remained in the office while his brother proceeded as far as the cathedral and back again; the other clerks, Joseph Jenkins and Roland Yorke, being absent that afternoon.”
A deeper dye flushed Arthur’s face when Hamish’s name and share in the afternoon’s doings were mentioned, and he bent his eyes on the floor at his feet, and kept them there. Had Hamish not been implicated, he would have stood there with a clear eye and a serene brow. It was that, the all too vivid consciousness of the sin of Hamish, which took all spirit out of him, and drove him to stand there as one under the brand of guilt. He scarcely dared look up, lest it should be read in his countenance that he was innocent, and Hamish guilty; he scarcely dared to pronounce, in ever so faltering a tone, the avowal “I did it not.” Had it been to save his life from the scaffold, he could not have spoken out boldly and freely that day. There was the bitter shock of the crime, felt for Hamish’s own sake: Hamish whom they had all so loved, so looked up to: and there was the dread of the consequences to Mr. Channing in the event of discovery. Had the penalty been hanging, I believe that Arthur would have gone to it, rather than betray Hamish. But you must not suppose he did notfeelit for himself; there were moments when he feared lest he should not carry it through.
Mr. Butterby was waiting for a witness—Mr. Galloway himself: and meanwhile, he entertained the bench with certain scraps, anecdotal and other, premising what would be proved before them. Jenkins would show that the prisoner had avowed in his presence, it would take a twenty-pound note to clear him from his debts, or hard upon it—
“No,” interrupted the hitherto silent prisoner, to the surprise of those present, “that is not true. It is correct that I did make use of words to that effect, but I spoke them in jest. I and Roland Yorke were one day speaking of debts, and I jokingly said a twenty-pound note would pay mine, and leave me something out of it. Jenkins was present, and he may have supposed I spoke in earnest. In point of fact I did not owe anything.”
It was an assertion more easily made than proved. Arthur Channing might have large liabilities upon him, for all that appeared in that court to the contrary. Mr. Butterby handed the seal to the bench, who examined it curiously.
“I could have understood this case better had any stranger or strangers approached the letter,” observed one of the magistrates, who knew the Channings personally, and greatly respected their high character. “You are sure you are not mistaken in supposing no one came in?” he added, looking kindly at Arthur.
“Certainly no one came in whilst I was alone in the office, sir,” was the unhesitating answer.
The magistrate spoke in an under-tone to those beside him. “That avowal is in his favour. Had he taken the note, one might suppose he would be anxious to make it appear that strangers did enter, and so throw suspicion off himself.”
“I have made very close inquiry, and cannot find that the office was entered at all that afternoon,” observed Mr. Butterby. Mr. Butterbyhadmade close inquiry; and, to do him justice, he did not seek to throw one shade more of guilt upon Arthur than he thought the case deserved. “Mr. Hamish Channing also—”
Mr. Butterby stopped. There, standing within the door, was Hamish himself. In passing along the street he had seen an unusual commotion around the town-hall; and, upon inquiring its cause, was told that Arthur Channing was under examination, on suspicion of having stolen the bank-note, lost by Mr. Galloway.
To look at Hamish you would have believed him innocent and unconscious as the day. He strode into the justice-room, his eye flashing, his brow haughty, his colour high. Never had gay Hamish looked so scornfully indignant. He threw his glance round the crowded court in search of Arthur, and it found him.
Their eyes met. A strange gaze it was, going out from the one to the other; a gaze which the brothers had never in all their lives exchanged. Arthur’s spoke of shame all too palpably—he could not help it in that bitter moment—shame for his brother. And Hamish shrank under it. If ever one cowered visibly in this world, Hamish Channing did then. A low, suppressed cry went up from Arthur’s heart: whatever fond, faint doubt may have lingered in his mind, it died out from that moment.
Others noticed the significant look exchanged between them; but they, not in the secret, saw only, on the part of Hamish, what they took for vexation at his brother’s position. It was suggested that it would save time to take the evidence of Mr. Hamish Channing at once. Mr. Galloway’s might be received later.
“What evidence?” demanded Hamish, standing before the magistrates in a cold, uncompromising manner, and speaking in a cold, uncompromising tone. “I have none to give. I know nothing of the affair.”
“Not much, we are aware; but what little you do know must be spoken, Mr. Hamish Channing.”
They did not swear him. These were only informal, preliminary proceedings. Country courts of law are not always conducted according to orthodox rules, nor was that of Helstonleigh. There would be another and a more formal examination before the committal of the prisoner for trial—if committed he should be.
A few unimportant questions were put to Hamish, and then he was asked whether he saw the letter in question.
“I saw a letter which I suppose to have been the one,” he replied. “It was addressed to Mr. Robert Galloway, at Ventnor.”
“Did you observe your brother take it into Mr. Galloway’s private room?”
“Yes,” answered Hamish. “In putting the desks straight before departing for college, my brother carried the letter into Mr. Galloway’s room and left it there. I distinctly remember his doing so.”
“Did you see the letter after that?”
“No.”
“How long did you remain alone while your brother was away?”
“I did not look at my watch,” irritably returned Hamish, who had spoken resentfully throughout, as if some great wrong were being inflicted upon him in having to speak at all.
“But you can guess at the time?”
“No, I can’t,” shortly retorted Hamish. “And ‘guesses’ are not evidence.”
“Was it ten minutes?”
“It may have been. I know he seemed to be back almost as soon as he had gone.”
“Did any person—clerk, or stranger, or visitor, or otherwise—come into the office during his absence from it?”
“No.”
“No person whatever?”
“No person whatever. I think,” continued Hamish, volunteering an opinion upon the subject, although he knew it was out of all rule and precedent to do so, “that there is a great deal of unprofitable fuss being made about the matter. The money must have been lost in going through the post; it is impossible to suppose otherwi—”
Hamish was stopped by a commotion. Clattering along the outer hall, and bursting in at the court door, his black hair disordered, his usually pale cheeks scarlet, his nostrils working with excitement, came Roland Yorke. He was in a state of fierce emotion. Learning, as he had done by accident, that Arthur had been arrested upon the charge, he took up the cause hotly, gave vent to a burst of passionate indignation (in which he abused every one under the sun, except Arthur), and tore off to the town-hall. Elbowing the crowd right and left, in his impetuosity, pushing one policeman here and another there, who would have obstructed his path, he came up to Arthur and ranged himself by his side, linking his arm within his in an outburst of kindly generosity.
“Old fellow, who has done this?”
“Mr. Roland Yorke!” exclaimed the bench, indignantly. “What do you mean by this behaviour? Stand away, if you please, sir.”
“I’ll stand away when Arthur Channing stands away,” retorted Yorke, apparently ignoring whose presence he was in. “Who accuses him? Mr. Galloway does not. This is your doing, Butterby.”
“Take care that their worships don’t commit you for contempt of court,” retorted Mr. Butterby. “You are going on for it, Roland Yorke.”
“Let them commit me, if they will,” foamed Roland. “I am not going to see a friend falsely accused, and not stand up for him. Channing no more touched that money than any of you did. The post-office must have had it.”
“A moment, Mr. Roland Yorke: if you can calm yourself sufficiently to answer as a rational being,” interposed the magistrate who had addressed Arthur. “Have you any proof to urge in support of your assertion that the prisoner did not touch it?”
“Proof, sir!” returned Roland, subsiding, however, into a tone of more respect: “does it want proof to establish the innocence of Arthur Channing? Every action of his past life is proof. He is honest as the day.”
“This warm feeling does you credit, in one sense—”
“It does me no credit at all,” fiercely interrupted Roland. “I don’t defend him because he is my friend; I don’t defend him because we are in the same office, and sit side by side at the same desk; I do it, because I know him to be innocent.”
“How do you know it?”
“Hecouldnot be guilty. He is incapable of it. Better accuse me, or Jenkins, than accuse him!”
“You and Jenkins were not at the office during the suspected time.”
“Well, I know we were not,” acknowledged Roland, lowering his voice to a more reasonable tone. “And, just because it happened, by some cross-grained luck, that Channing was, Butterby pitches upon him, and accuses him of the theft. He never did it! and I’ll say it with my last breath.”
With some trouble: threatenings on the part of the court; and more explosions from himself: Mr. Roland Yorke was persuaded to retire. He went as far as the back of the room, and there indulged in under-currents of wrath, touching injustice and Mr. Butterby, to a select circle who gathered round him. Warm-hearted and generous, by fits and starts, was Roland Yorke; he had inherited it with his Irish blood from Lady Augusta.
But meanwhile, where was Mr. Galloway? He did not make his appearance, and it was said he could not be found. Messenger after messenger was despatched to his office, to his house; and at length Mr. Butterby went himself. All in vain; his servants knew nothing about him. Jenkins, who had the office to himself, thought he must be “somewhere in the town,” as he had not said he was going out of it. Mr. Butterby went back crest-fallen, and confessed that, not to take up longer the time of their worships unnecessarily, the case must be remanded to the morrow.
“We will take bail,” said the magistrates, before the application was made. “One surety will be sufficient; fifty pounds.”
At that, Mr. Roland, who by this time was standing in a sullen manner against a pillar of the court, his violence gone, and biting his nails moodily, made a rush to the front again, heeding little who he knocked down in the process. “I’ll be bail,” he cried eagerly. “That is, Lady Augusta will—as I am not a householder. I’ll hunt her up and bring her here.”
He was turning in impetuous haste to “hunt up” Lady Augusta, when Hamish Channing imperatively waved to him to be still, and spoke to the bench.
“My father’s security will be sufficient, I presume?”
“Quite so.”
Since Mr. Channing’s incapacity, power to sign and to act for him had been vested in Hamish; and the matter was concluded at once. The court poured out its crowd. Hamish was on the point of taking Arthur’s arm, but was pushed aside by Roland Yorke, who seized upon it as if he could never make enough of him.
“The miserable idiots! to bring such a charge against you, Arthur! I have been half mad ever since I heard of it.”
“Thank you, Yorke. You are very kind—”
“‘Kind!’ Don’t talk that school-girl rubbish!” passionately interrupted Roland. “If I were taken up upon a false charge, wouldn’t you stand by me?”
“That I would; were it false or true.”
“I’ll pay that Butterby out, if it’s ten years hence! And you, knowing your own innocence, could stand before them there, meek-faced as a tame cat, letting Butterby and the bench have it their own way! A calm temper, such as yours, Arthur, may be very—what do they call it?—Christian; but I’m blest if it’s useful! I should have made their ears tingle, had they put me there, as they have not tingled for many a day.”
“Who do you suppose took the note?” inquired Hamish of Roland Yorke, speaking for the first time.
“Bother the note!” was the rejoinder of Mr. Roland. “It’s nothing to us who took it. Arthur didn’t. Go and ask the post-office.”
“But the seal?” Hamish was beginning in a friendly tone of argument. Roland bore him down.
“Who cares for the seal? I don’t. If Galloway had stuck himself upon the letter, instead of his seal, and never got off till it reached the cousin Galloway’s hand, I wouldn’t care. It tells nothing. Do youwantto find your brother guilty?” he continued, in a tone of scorn. “You did not half stand up for him, Hamish Channing, as I’d expect a brother to stand up for me. Now then, you people! Are you thinking we are live kangaroos escaped from a menagerie? Be off about your own business! Don’t come after us.”
The last was addressed to a crowd, who had followed upon their heels from the court, staring, with that innate delicacy for which the English are remarkable. They had seen Arthur Channing a thousand times before, every one of them, but, as he had been arrested, they must look at him again. Yorke’s scornful reproach and fierce face somewhat scattered them.
“If it had been Galloway’s doings, I’d never have put my foot inside his confounded old office again!” went on Roland. “No! and my lady might have tried her best to force me. Lugging a fellow up for a pitiful, paltry sum of twenty pounds!—who is as much a gentleman as himself!—who, as his own senses might tell him, wouldn’t touch it with the end of his finger! But it was that Butterby’s handiwork, not Galloway’s.”
“Galloway must have given Butterby his instructions,” observed Hamish.
“He didn’t, then,” snapped Roland. “Jenkins says he knows he did not, by the remarks Galloway made to him this morning. And Galloway has been away ever since eleven o’clock, we can’t tell where. It is nobody but that evil, mischief-making Butterby, and I’d give a crown out of my pocket to have a good duck at him in the river!”
With regard to Mr. Galloway’s knowing nothing of the active proceedings taken against Arthur, Roland was right. Mr. Butterby had despatched a note to Mr. Galloway’s office at one o’clock, stating what he had done, and requesting him to be at the office at two, for the examination—and the note had been lying there ever since.
It was being opened now. Now—at the exact moment that Mr. Roland Yorke was giving vent to that friendly little wish, about the river and Mr. Butterby. Mr. Galloway had met a friend in the town, and had gone with him a few miles by rail into the country, on unexpected business. He had just returned to find the note, and to hear Jenkins’ account of Arthur’s arrest.
“I am vexed at this,” he exclaimed, his tone betraying excessive annoyance. “Butterby has exceeded his orders.”
Jenkins thought he might venture to put in a word for Arthur. He had been intensely surprised, indeed grieved, at the whole affair; and not the less so that he feared what he had unconsciously repeated, about a twenty-pound note paying Arthur’s debts, might have helped it on.
“I feel as sure as can be, sir, that it was not Mr. Arthur Channing,” he deferentially said. “I have not been in this office with him for more than twelve months without learning something of his principles.”
“The principles of all the Channings are well known,” returned Mr. Galloway. “No; whatever may be the apparent proofs, I cannot bring myself to think it could be Arthur Channing. Although—” Mr. Galloway did not say althoughwhat, but changed the topic abruptly. “Are they in court now?”
“I expect so, sir. Mr. Yorke is not back yet.”
Mr. Galloway walked to the outer door, deliberating what his course should be. The affair grieved him more than he could express; it angered him; chiefly for his old friend Mr. Channing’s sake. “I had better go up to the Guildhall,” he soliloquized, “and see if—”
There they were, turning the corner of the street; Roland Yorke, Hamish, and Arthur; and the followers behind. Mr. Galloway waited till they came up. Hamish did not enter, or stop, but went straight home. “They will be so anxious for news,” he exclaimed. Not a word had been exchanged between the brothers. “No wonder that he shuns coming in!” thought Arthur. Roland Yorke threw his hat from him in silence, and sat down in his place at the desk. Mr. Galloway touched Arthur with his finger, motioned him towards the private room, and stood there facing him, speaking gravely.
“Tell me the truth, as before God. Are you innocent or guilty? What you say shall not be used against you.”
Quick as lightning, in all solemn earnestness, the word “innocent” was on Arthur’s lips. It had been better for him, perhaps, that he had spoken it. But, alas! that perplexity, as to how far he might venture to assert his own innocence, was upon him still. What impression could this hesitation, coupled with the suspicious circumstances, make upon the mind of Mr. Galloway?
“Have younoanswer?” emphatically asked Mr. Galloway.
“I am not guilty, sir.”
Meanwhile, what do you suppose were the sensations of Mr. Channing? We all know that anguish of mind is far more painful to bear when the body is quiescent, than when it is in motion. In any great trouble, any terrible suspense, look at our sleepless nights! We lie, and toss, and turn; and say, When will the night be gone? In the day we can partially shake it off, walking hither and thither; the keenness of the anguish is lost in exertion.
Mr. Channing could not take this exertion. Lying there always, his days were little better to him than nights, and this strange blow, which had fallen so suddenly and unexpectedly, nearly overwhelmed him. Until that afternoon he would have confidently said that his son might have been trusted with a room full of untold gold. He would have said it still, but for Arthur’s manner: it was that which staggered him. More than one urgent message had been despatched for Mr. Galloway, but that gentleman was unable to go to him until late in the evening.
“My friend,” said Mr. Galloway, bending over the sofa, when they were alone, “I am more grieved at this than you can be.”
Mr. Channing clasped his hand. “Tell me what you think yourself; the simple truth; I ask it, Galloway, by our long friendship. Do you think him innocent or guilty?”
There might be no subterfuge in answer to words so earnest, and Mr. Galloway did not attempt any. He bent lower, and spoke in a whisper. “I believe him to be guilty.”
Mr. Channing closed his eyes, and his lips momentarily moved. A word of prayer, to be helpedto bear, was going up to the throne of God.
“But, never think that it was I who instituted these proceedings against him,” resumed Mr. Galloway. “When I called in Butterby to my aid this morning, I had no more notion that it was Arthur Channing who was guilty, than I had that it was that sofa of yours. Butterby would have cast suspicion to him then, but I repelled it. He afterwards acted upon his own responsibility while my back was turned. It is as I say often to my office people: I can’t stir out for a few hours but something goes wrong! You know the details of the loss?”
“Ay; by heart,” replied Mr. Channing. “They are suspicious against Arthur only in so far as that he was alone with the letter. Sufficient time must have been taken, as I conclude, to wet the envelope and unfasten the gum; and it would appear that he alone had that time. This apparent suspicion would have been nothing to my mind, knowing Arthur as I do, had it not been coupled with a suspicious manner.”
“There it is,” assented Mr. Galloway, warmly. “It is that manner which leaves no room for doubt. I had him with me privately when the examination was over, and begged him to tell me, as before God: innocent or guilty. He could not. He stood like a statue, confused, his eyes down, and his colour varying. He is badly constituted for the commission of crime, for he cannot brave it out. One, knowing himself wrongfully accused, would lay his hand upon his heart, with an upright countenance, and say, I am innocent of this, so help me Heaven! I must confess I did not like his manner yesterday, when he heard me say I should place it in the hands of the police,” continued Mr. Galloway. “He grew suddenly agitated, and begged I would not do so.”
“Ay!” cried Mr. Channing, with a groan of pain he could not wholly suppress. “It is an incredible mystery. What could he want with the money? The tale told about his having debts has no foundation in fact; he has positively none.”
Mr. Galloway shook his head; he would not speak out his thoughts. He knew that Hamish was in debt; he knew that Master Roland Yorke indulged in expensive habits whenever he had the opportunity, and he now thought it likely that Arthur, between the two examples, might have been drawn in. “I shall not allow my doubts of him to go further than you,” he said aloud. “And I shall put a summary stop to the law proceedings.”
“How will you do that, now that they are publicly entered upon?” asked Mr. Channing.
“I’ll manage it,” was the reply. “We’ll see which is strongest, I or Butterby.”
When they were gathering together for the reading, that night, Arthur took his place as usual. Mr. Channing looked at him sternly, and spoke sternly—in the presence of them all. “Will your conscience allow you to join in this?”
How it stung him! Knowing himself innocent; seeing Hamish, the real culprit, basking there in their love and respect, as usual; the unmerited obloquy cast upon him was almost too painful to bear. He did not answer; he was battling down his rebellious spirit; and the gentle voice of Mrs. Channing rose instead.
“James, there is all the more need for him to join in it, if things are as you fear.” And Mr. Channing applied himself to the reading.
“My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for temptation. Set thy heart aright, and constantly endure, and make not haste in time of trouble.”
It was a portion of Scripture rarely chosen, and, perhaps for that reason, it fell upon Arthur with greater force. As he listened, the words brought healing with them; and his sore spirit was soothed, and grew trusting and peaceful as that of a little child.