On a fine afternoon in August—and the month was now drawing towards its close—the 2.25 train from London steamed into the station at Helstonleigh, eight minutes behind time, and came to a standstill. Amongst the passengers who alighted, was a gentleman of middle age, as it is called—in point of fact, he had entered his fiftieth year, as the peerage would have told any curious inquirer. As he stepped out of a first-class carriage, several eyes were drawn towards him, for he was of notable height, towering above every one; even above Roland Yorke, who was of good height himself, and stood on the platform waiting for him.
It was the Earl of Carrick, brother to Lady Augusta Yorke, and much resembling her—a pleasant, high cheek-boned, easy face, betraying more of good humour than of high or keen intellect, and nothing of pride. The pride of the young Yorkes was sometimes talked of in Helstonleigh, but it came from their father’s side, not from Lady Augusta’s. The earl spoke with a slight brogue, and shook both Roland’s hands heartily, as soon as he found that it was to Roland they belonged.
“Sure then! but I didn’t know ye, Roland! If ye had twenty years more on to ye’re head, I should have thought it was ye’re father.”
“Have I grown like him, Uncle Carrick?”
“Ye’ve grown out of knowledge, me boy. And how’s ye’re mother, and how are the rest of ye?”
“Stunning,” responded Roland. “They are all outside. She would bring up the whole caravan. The last time the lot came to the station, the two young ones got upon the line to dance a hornpipe on the rails; so she has kept them by her, and is making Gerald and Tod look after them. Where’s your luggage, Uncle Carrick? Have you brought a servant?”
“Not I,” replied the earl. “Servants are only troubles in other folk’s houses, and me bit of luggage isn’t so much but I can look after it meself. I hope they put it in,” he continued, looking about amid the boxes and portmanteaus, and unable to see his own.
The luggage was found at last, and given in charge of a porter; and Lord Carrick went out to meet his relatives. There were enough of them to meet—the whole caravan, as Roland had expressed it. Lady Augusta sat in her barouche—her two daughters and Constance and Annabel Channing with her. Little Percy and Frank, two most troublesome children, were darting in and out amidst the carriages, flys, and omnibuses; and Gerald and Tod had enough to do to keep them out of danger. It was so like Lady Augusta—bringing them all to the station to welcome their uncle! Warm-hearted and impulsive, she had little more judgment than a child. Constance had in vain protested against herself and Annabel being pressed into the company; but her ladyship looked upon it as a sort of triumphal expedition, and was deaf to remonstrances.
The earl, warm-hearted and impulsive also, kissed them all, Constance included. She could not help herself; before she was aware of the honour intended her, the kiss was given—a hearty smack, as all the rest had. The well-meaning, simple-minded Irishman could not have been made to understand why he should not give a kiss of greeting to Constance as readily as he gave it to his sister, or his sister’s daughters. He protested that he remembered Constance and Annabel well. It may be questioned whether there was not more of Irish politeness than of truth in the assertion, though he had seen them occasionally, during his visit of three years ago.
How were they all to get home? In and on the barouche, as all, except Roland, had come, to the gratification of the curious town? Lord Carrick wished to walk; his long legs were cramped: but Lady Augusta would not hear of it, and pulled him into the carriage, Gerald, Percy, and Frank were fighting for places on the box beside the driver, Tod intending to hang on behind, as he had done in coming, when the deep-toned college bell struck out a quarter to three, and the sound came distinctly to their ears, borne from the distance. It put a stop to the competition, so far as Gerald was concerned. He and Tod, startled half out of their senses, for they had not observed the lapse of time, set off on foot as hard as they could go.
Meanwhile, Roland, putting aside the two young ones with his strong hand, chose to mount the box himself; at which they both began to shriek and roar. Matters were compromised after a while; Percy was taken up by Roland, and Frank was, by some process of packing, stowed away inside. Then the cargo started! Lady Augusta happy as a princess, with her newly-met brother and her unruly children, and not caring in the least for the gaze of the people who stood in the street, or came rushing to their windows and doors to criticise the load.
Crowded as the carriage was, it was pleasanter to be in it, on that genial day, than to be at work in close rooms, dark shops, or dull offices. Amongst others, who were so confined and hard at work, was Jenkins at Mr. Galloway’s. Poor Jenkins had not improved in health during the week or two that had elapsed since you last saw him. His cough was more troublesome still, and he was thinner and weaker. But Jenkins, humble and conscientious, thinking himself one who was not worth thinking of at all in comparison with others, would have died at his post rather than give in. Certainly, Arthur Channing had been discharged at a most inopportune moment, for Mr. Galloway, as steward to the Dean and Chapter, had more to do about Michaelmas, than at any other time of the year. From that epoch until November, when the yearly audit took place, there was a good deal of business to be gone through.
On this afternoon, Jenkins was particularly busy. Mr. Galloway was away from home for a day or two—on business connected with that scapegrace cousin of his, Roland Yorke proclaimed; though whether Mr. Roland had any foundation for the assertion, except his own fancy, may be doubted—and Jenkins had it all upon his own shoulders. Jenkins, unobtrusive and meek though he was, was perfectly competent to manage, and Mr. Galloway left him with entire trust. But it is one thing to be competent to manage, and another thing to be able to do two persons’ work in one person’s time; and, that, Jenkins was finding this afternoon. He had letters to write; he had callers to answer; he had the general business of the office to attend to; he had the regular deeds to prepare and copy. The copying of those deeds was the work belonging to Roland Yorke. Roland did not seem to be in a hurry to come to them. Jenkins cast towards them an anxious eye, but Jenkins could do no more, for his own work could not be neglected. He felt very unwell that afternoon—oppressed, hot, unable to breathe. He wiped the moisture from his brow three or four times, and then thought he might be the better for a little air, and opened the window. But the breeze, gentle as it was, made him cough, and he shut it again.
Of course, no one, knowing Mr. Roland Yorke, could be surprised at his starting to the station to meet Lord Carrick, instead of to the office to do his work. He had gone home at one o’clock that day, as usual. Not that there was any necessity for his doing so, for the dinner hour was postponed until later, and it would have furthered the business of the office had he remained for once at his post. Had any one suggested to Roland to do so, he would have thought he was going to be worked to death. About twenty minutes past three he came clattering in.
“I say, Jenkins, I want a holiday this afternoon.”
Jenkins, albeit the most accommodating spirit in the world, looked dubious, and cast a glance at the papers on Roland’s desk. “Yes, sir. But what is to be done about the Uphill farm leases?”
“Now, Jenkins, it’s not a bit of good for you to begin to croak! If I gave in to you, you’d get as bad as Galloway. When I have my mind off work, I can’t settle to it again, and it’s of no use trying. Those Uphill deeds are not wanted before to-morrow.”
“But they are wanted by eleven o’clock, sir, so that they must be finished, or nearly finished, to-night. You know, sir, there has been a fuss about them, and early to-morrow, is the very latest time they must be sent in.”
“I’ll get up, and be here in good time and finish them,” said Roland. “Just put it to yourself, Jenkins, if you had an uncle that you’d not seen for seventeen ages, whether you’d like to leave him the minute he puts his foot over the door-sill.”
“I dare say I should not, sir,” said good-natured Jenkins, turning about in his mind how he could make time to do Roland’s work. “His lordship is come, then, Mr. Roland?”
“His lordship’s come, bag and baggage,” returned Roland. “I say, Jenkins, what a thousand shames it is that he’s not rich! He is the best-natured fellow alive, and would do anything in the world for us, if he only had the tin.”
“Is he not rich, sir?”
“Why, of course he’s not,” confidentially returned Roland. “Every one knows the embarrassments of Lord Carrick. When he came into the estates, they had been mortgaged three deep by the last peer, my grandfather—an old guy in a velvet skull-cap, I remember, who took snuff incessantly—and my uncle, on his part, had mortgaged them three deep again, which made six. How Carrick manages to live nobody knows. Sometimes he’s in Ireland, in the tumble-down old homestead, with just a couple of servants to wait upon him; and sometimes he’s on the Continent, en garçon—if you know what that means. Now and then he gets a windfall when any of his tenants can be brought to pay up; but he is the easiest-going coach in life, and won’t press them. Wouldn’t I!”
“Some of those Irish tenants are very poor, sir, I have heard.”
“Poor be hanged! What is a man’s own, ought to be his own. Carrick says there are some years that he does not draw two thousand pounds, all told.”
“Indeed, sir! That is not much for a peer.”
“It’s not much for a commoner, let alone a peer,” said Roland, growing fierce. “If I were no better off than Carrick, I’d drop the title; that’s what I’d do. Why, if he could live as a peer ought, do you suppose we should be in the position we are? One a soldier; one (and that’s me) lowered to be a common old proctor; one a parson; and all the rest of it! If Carrick could be as other earls are, and have interest with the Government, and that, we should stand a chance of getting properly provided for. Of course he can make interest with nobody while his estates bring him in next door to nothing.”
“Are there no means of improving his estates, Mr. Roland?” asked Jenkins.
“If there were, he’s not the one to do it. And I don’t know that it would do him any material good, after all,” acknowledged Roland. “If he gets one thousand a year, he spends two; and if he had twenty thousand, he’d spend forty. It might come to the same in the long run, so far as he goes: we might be the better for it, and should be. It’s a shame, though, that we should need to be the better for other folk’s money; if this were not the most unjust world going, everybody would have fortunes of their own.”
After this friendly little bit of confidence touching his uncle’s affairs, Roland prepared to depart. “I’ll be sure to come in good time nn the morning, Jenkins, and set to it like a brick,” was his parting salutation.
Away he went. Jenkins, with his aching head and his harassing cough, applied himself diligently, as he ever did, to the afternoon’s work, and got through it by six o’clock, which was later than usual. There then remained the copying, which Mr. Roland Yorke ought to have done. Knowing the value of Roland’s promises, and knowing also that if he kept this promise ever so strictly, the amount of copying was more than could be completed in time, if left to the morning, Jenkins did as he had been aware he must do, when talking with Roland—took it home with him.
The parchments under his arm, he set out on his walk. What could be the matter with him, that he felt so weak, he asked himself as he went along. It must be, he believed, having gone without his dinner. Jenkins generally went home to dinner at twelve, and returned at one; occasionally, however, he did not go until two, according to the exigencies of the office; this day, he had not gone at all, but had cut a sandwich at breakfast-time and brought it with him in his pocket.
He had proceeded as far as the elm trees in the Boundaries—for Jenkins generally chose the quiet cloister way for his road home—when he saw Arthur Channing advancing towards him. With the ever-ready, respectful, cordial smile with which he was wont to greet Arthur whenever he saw him, Jenkins quickened his steps. But suddenly the smile seemed to fix itself upon his lips; and the parchments fell from his arm, and he staggered against the palings. But that Arthur was at hand to support him, he might have fallen to the ground.
“Why, what is it, Jenkins?” asked Arthur, kindly, when Jenkins was beginning to recover himself.
“Thank you, sir; I don’t know what it could have been. Just as I was looking at you, a mist seemed to come before my eyes, and I felt giddy. I suppose it was a sort of faintness that came over me. I had been thinking that I felt weary. Thank you very much, sir.”
“Take my arm, Jenkins,” said Arthur, as he picked up the parchments, and took possession of them. “I’ll see you home.”
“Oh no, sir, indeed,” protested simple-hearted Jenkins; “I’d not think of such a thing. I should feel quite ashamed, sir, at the thought of your being seen arm-in-arm with me in the street. I can go quite well alone; I can, indeed, sir.”
Arthur burst out laughing. “I wish you wouldn’t be such an old duffer, Jenkins—as the college boys have it! Do you suppose I should let you go home by yourself? Come along.”
Drawing Jenkins’s arm within his own, Arthur turned with him. Jenkins really did not like it. Sensitive to a degree was he: and, to his humble mind, it seemed that Arthur was out of place, walking familiarly with him.
“You must have been doing something to tire yourself,” said Arthur as they went along.
“It has been a pretty busy day, sir, now Mr. Galloway’s away. I did not go home to dinner, for one thing.”
“And Mr. Roland Yorke absent for another, I suppose?”
“Only this afternoon, sir. His uncle, Lord Carrick, has arrived. Oh, sir!” broke off Jenkins, stopping in a panic, “here’s his lordship the bishop coming along! Whatever shall you do?”
“Do!” returned Arthur, scarcely understanding him. “What should I do?”
“To think that he should see you thus with the like of me!”
It amused Arthur exceedingly. Poor, lowly-minded Jenkins! The bishop appeared to divine the state of the case, for he stopped when he came up. Possibly he was struck by the wan hue which overspread Jenkins’s face.
“You look ill, Jenkins,” he said, nodding to Arthur Channing. “Keep your hat on, Jenkins—keep your hat on.”
“Thank you, my lord,” replied Jenkins, disregarding the injunction touching his hat. “A sort of faintness came over me just now under the elm trees, and this gentleman insisted upon walking home with me, in spite of my protestations to—”
Jenkins was stopped by a fit of coughing—a long, violent fit, sounding hollow as the grave. The bishop watched him till it was over. Arthur watched him.
“I think you should take better care of yourself, Jenkins,” remarked his lordship. “Is any physician attending you?”
“Oh, my lord, I am not ill enough yet for that. My wife made me go to Mr. Hurst the other day, my lord, and he gave me a bottle of something. But he said it was not medicine that I wanted.”
“I should advise you to go to a physician, Jenkins. A stitch in time saves nine, you know,” the bishop added, in his free good humour.
“So it does, my lord. Thank your lordship for thinking of me,” added Jenkins, as the bishop said good afternoon, and pursued his way. And then, and not till then, did Jenkins put on his hat again.
“Mr. Arthur, would you be so kind as not to say anything to my wife about my being poorly?” asked Jenkins, as they drew near to his home. “She’d be perhaps, for saying I should not go again yet to the office; and a pretty dilemma that would put me in, Mr. Galloway being absent. She’d get so fidgety, too: she kills me with kindness, if she thinks I am ill. The broth and arrowroot, and other messes, sir, that she makes me swallow, are untellable.”
“All right,” said Arthur.
But the intention was frustrated. Who should be standing at the shop-door but Mrs. Jenkins herself. She saw them before they saw her, and she saw that her husband looked like a ghost, and was supported by Arthur. Of course, she drew her own conclusions; and Mrs. Jenkins was one who did not allow her conclusions to be set aside. When Jenkins found that he was seen and suspected, he held out no longer, but honestly confessed the worst—that he had been taken with a giddiness.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Jenkins, as she pushed a chair here and another there, partly in temper, partly to free the narrow passage through the shop to the parlour. “I have been expecting nothing less all day. Every group of footsteps slower than usual, I have thought it was a shutter arriving and you on it, dropped dead from exhaustion. Would you believe”—turning short round on Arthur Channing—“that he has been such a donkey as to fast from breakfast time? And with that cough upon him!”
“Not quite so fast, my dear,” deprecated Jenkins. “I ate the paper of sandwiches.”
“Paper of rubbish!” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “What good do sandwiches do a weakly man? You might eat a ton-load, and be none the better for it. Well, Jenkins, you may take your leave of having your own way.”
Poor Jenkins might have deferentially intimated that he never did have it. Mrs. Jenkins resumed:
“He said he’d carry a sandwich with him this morning, instead of coming home to dinner. I said, ‘No.’ And afterwards I was such a simpleton as to yield! And here’s the effects of it! Sit yourself down in the easy-chair,” she added, taking Jenkins by the arms and pushing him into it. “And I’ll make the tea now,” concluded she, turning to the table where the tea-things were set out. “There’s some broiled fowl coming up for you.”
“I don’t feel as if I could eat this evening,” Jenkins ventured to say.
“Not eat!” she repeated with emphasis. “You had better eat—that’s all. I don’t want to have you falling down exhausted here, as you did in the Boundaries.”
“And as soon as you have had your tea, you should go to bed,” put in Arthur.
“I can’t, sir. I have three or four hours’ work at that deed. It must be done.”
“At this?” returned Arthur, opening the papers he had carried home. “Oh, I see; it is a lease. I’ll copy this for you, Jenkins. I have nothing to do to-night. You take your ease, and go to bed.”
And in spite of their calls, Jenkins’s protestations against taking up his time and trouble, and Mrs. Jenkins’s proffered invitation to partake of tea and broiled fowl, Arthur departed carrying off the work.
“A pretty time o’ day this is to deliver the letters. It’s eleven o’clock!”
“I can’t help it. The train broke down, and was three hours behind its time.”
“I dare say! You letter-men want looking up: that’s what it is. Coming to folks’s houses at eleven o’clock, when they have been waiting and looking ever since breakfast-time!”
“It’s not my fault, I say. Take the letter.”
Judith received it with a grunt, for it was between her and the postman that the colloquy had taken place. A delay had occurred that morning in the delivery, and Judith was resenting it, feeling half inclined to reject the letter, now that it had come. The letters from Germany arrived irregularly; sometimes by the afternoon post at four, sometimes by the morning; the only two deliveries in Helstonleigh. A letter had been fully expected this morning, and when the time passed over, they supposed there was none.
It was directed to Miss Channing. Judith, who was quite as anxious about her master’s health as the children were, went off at once with it to Lady Augusta Yorke’s, just as she was, without the ceremony of putting on a bonnet. Though she did wear a mob-cap and a check apron, she looked what she was—a respectable servant in a respectable family; and the Boundaries so regarded her, as she passed through them, letter in hand. Martha, Lady Augusta’s housemaid, answered the door, presenting a contrast to Judith. Martha wore a crinoline as big as her lady’s, and a starched-out muslin gown over it, with flounces and frillings, for Martha was “dressed” for the day. Her arms, red and large, were displayed beneath her open sleeves, and something that looked like a bit of twisted lace was stuck on the back of her head. Martha called it a “cap.” Judith was a plain servant, and Martha was a fashionable one; but I know which looked the better of the two.
Judith would not give in the letter. She asked for the young mistress, and Constance came to her in the hall. “Just open it, please, Miss Constance, and tell me how he is,” said she anxiously; and Constance broke the seal of the letter.
“My Dear Child,—Still better and better! The improvement, which I told you in my last week’s letter had begun to take place so rapidly as to make us fear it was only a deceitful one, turns out to have been real. Will you believe it, when I tell you that your papa can walk! With the help of my arm, he can walk across the room and along the passage; and to-morrow he is going to try to get down the first flight of stairs. None but God can know how thankful I am; not even my children. If this change has taken place in the first month (and it is not yet quite that), what may we not expect in the next—and the next? Your papa is writing to Hamish, and will confirm what I say.”
This much Constance read aloud. Judith gave a glad laugh. “It’s just as everybody told the master,” said she. “A fine, strong, handsome man, like him, wasn’t likely to be laid down for life like a baby, when he was hardly middle-aged. These doctors here be just so many muffs. When I get too old for work, I’ll go to Germany myself, Miss Constance, and ask ‘em to make me young again.”
Constance smiled. She was running her eyes over the rest of the letter, which was a long one. She caught sight of Arthur’s name. There were some loving, gentle messages to him, and then these words: “Hamish says Arthur applied at Dove and Dove’s for a clerk’s place, but did not come to terms with them. We are glad that he did not. Papa says he should not like to have one of his boys at Dove and Dove’s.”
“And here’s a little bit for you, Judith,” Constance said aloud. “Tell Judith not to be over-anxious in her place of trust; and not to over-work herself, but to let Sarah take her full share. There is no hurry about the bed-furniture; Sarah can do it in an evening at her leisure.”
Judith received the latter portion of the message with scorn. “‘Tisn’t me that’s going to let her do it! A fine do it would be, Miss Constance! The first thing I shall see, when I go back now, will be her head stretched out at one of the windows, and the kidney beans left to string and cut themselves in the kitchen!”
Judith turned to depart. She never would allow any virtues to her helpmate Sarah, who gave about the same trouble to her that young servants of twenty generally give to old ones. Constance followed her to the door, saying something which had suddenly occurred to her mind about domestic affairs, when who should she meet, coming in, but the Rev. William Yorke! He had just left the Cathedral after morning prayers, and was calling at Lady Augusta’s.
Both were confused; both stopped, face to face, in hesitation. Constance grew crimson; Mr. Yorke pale. It was the first time they had met since the parting. There was an angry feeling against Constance in the mind of Mr. Yorke; he considered that she had not treated him with proper confidence; and in his proud nature—the Yorke blood was his—he was content to resent it. He did not expect to lose Constance eventually; he thought that the present storm would blow over some time, and that things would come right again. We are all too much given to trust to that vague “some time.” In Constance’s mind there existed a soreness against Mr. Yorke. He had doubted her; he had accepted (if he had not provoked) too readily her resignation of him. Unlike him, she saw no prospect of the future setting matters right. Marry him, whilst the cloud lay upon Arthur, she would not, after he had intimated his opinion and sentiments: and that cloud could only be lifted at the expense of another.
They exchanged a confused greeting; neither of them conscious how it passed. Mr. Yorke’s attention was then caught by the open letter in her hand—by the envelope bearing the foreign post-marks. “How is Mr. Channing?” he asked.
“So much better that it seems little short of a miracle,” replied Constance. “Mamma says,” glancing at the letter, “that he can walk, leaning on her arm.”
“I am so glad to hear it! Hamish told me last week that he was improving. I trust it may go on to a cure.”
“Thank you,” replied Constance. And she made him a pretty little state curtsey as she turned away, not choosing to see the hand he would fain have offered her.
Mr. Yorke’s voice brought a head and shoulders out at the breakfast-room door. They belonged to Lord Carrick. He and Lady Augusta were positively at breakfast at that hour of the day. His lordship’s eyes followed the pretty form of Constance as she disappeared up the staircase on her return to the schoolroom. William Yorke’s were cast in the same direction. Then their eyes—the peer’s and the clergyman’s—met.
“Ye have given her up, I understand, Master William?”
“Master William” vouchsafed no reply. He deemed it a little piece of needless impertinence.
“Bad taste!” continued Lord Carrick. “If I were only twenty years younger, and she’d not turn up her nose at me for a big daft of an Irishman, you’d not get her, me lad. She’s the sweetest little thing I have come across this many a day.”
To which the Rev. William Yorke condescended no answer, unless a haughty gesture expressive of indignation might be called one, as he brushed past Lord Carrick into the breakfast-room.
At that very hour, and in a breakfast-room also—though all signs of the meal had long been removed—were Mr. Huntley and his daughter. The same praise, just bestowed by Lord Carrick upon Constance Channing, might with equal justice be given to Ellen Huntley. She was a lovely girl, three or four years older than Harry, with pretty features and soft dark eyes. What is more, she was a good girl—a noble, generous-hearted girl, although (you know no one is perfection) with a spice of self-will. For the latter quality I think Ellen was more indebted to circumstances than to Nature. Mrs. Huntley was dead, and a maiden sister of Mr. Huntley’s, older than himself, resided with them and ruled Ellen; ruled her with a tight hand; not a kind one, or a judicious one; and that had brought out Miss Ellen’s self-will. Miss Huntley was very starched, prim, and stiff—very unnatural, in short—and she wished to make Ellen the same. Ellen rebelled, for she much disliked everything artificial. She was truthful, honest, straightforward; not unlike the character of Tom Channing. Miss Huntley complained that she was too straightforward to be ladylike; Ellen said she was sure she should never be otherwise than straightforward, so it was of no use trying. Then Miss Huntley would take offence, and threaten Ellen with “altering her will,” and that would vex Ellen more than anything. Young ladies rarely care for money, especially when they have plenty of it; and Ellen Huntley would have that, from her father. “As if I cared for my aunt’s money!” she would say. “I wish she may not leave it to me.” And she was sincere in the wish. Their controversies frequently amused Mr. Huntley. Agreeing in heart and mind with his daughter, he would yet make a playful show of taking his sister’s part. Miss Huntley knew it to be show—done to laugh at her—and would grow as angry with him as she was with Ellen.
Mr. Huntley was not laughing, however, this morning. On the contrary, he appeared to be in a very serious, not to say solemn mood. He slowly paced the room, as was his custom when anything disturbed him, stopping at moments to reflect, buried in thought. Ellen sat at a table by the window, drawing. The house was Mr. Huntley’s own—a white villa with a sloping lawn in front. It was situated outside the town, on a gentle eminence, and commanded a view of the charming scenery for which the county was famous.
Ellen, who had glanced up two or three times, concerned to see the very stern, perplexed look on her father’s face, at length spoke, “Is anything the matter, papa?”
Mr. Huntley did not answer. He was standing close to the table then, apparently looking at Ellen, at her white morning dress and its blue ribbons: it, and she altogether, a fair picture. Probably he saw neither her nor her dress—he was too deeply absorbed.
“You are not ill, are you, papa?”
“Ill!” he answered, rousing himself. “No, Ellen, I am not ill.”
“Then you have had something to vex you, papa?”
“I have,” emphatically replied Mr. Huntley. “And the worst is, that my vexation will not be confined to myself, I believe. It may extend to you, Ellen.”
Mr. Huntley’s manner was so serious, his look so peculiar as he gazed at her, that Ellen felt a rush of discomfort, and the colour spread itself over her fair face. She jumped to the conclusion that she had been giving offence in some way—that Miss Huntley must have been complaining of her.
“Has my aunt been telling you about last night, papa? Harry had two of the college boys here, and I unfortunately laughed and talked with them, and she said afterwards I had done it on purpose to annoy her. But I assure you, papa—”
“Never mind assuring me, child,” interrupted Mr. Huntley. “Your aunt has said nothing to me; and if she had, it would go in at one ear and out at the other. It is worse business than any complaint that she could bring.”
Ellen laid down her pencil, and gazed at her father, awe-struck at his strange tone. “What is it?” she breathed.
But Mr. Huntley did not answer. He remained perfectly still for a few moments, absorbed in thought: and then, without a word of any sort to Ellen, turned round to leave the room, took his hat as he passed through the hall, and left the house.
Can you guess what it was that was troubling Mr. Huntley? Very probably, if you can put, as the saying runs, this and that together.
Convinced, as he was, that Arthur Channing was not, could not be guilty of taking the bank-note, yet puzzled by the strangely tame manner in which he met the charge—confounded by the behaviour both of Arthur and Constance relating to it—Mr. Huntley had resolved, if possible, to dive into the mystery. He had his reasons for it. A very disagreeable, a very improbable suspicion, called forth by the facts, had darted across his mind; therefore he resolved to penetrate to it. And he set to work. He questioned Mr. Galloway, he questioned Butterby, he questioned Jenkins, and he questioned Roland Yorke. He thus became as thoroughly conversant with the details of the transaction as it was possible for any one, except the actual thief, to be; and he drew his own deductions. Very reluctantly, very slowly, very cautiously, were they drawn, but very surely. The behaviour of Arthur and Constance could only have one meaning: they were screening the real culprit. And that culprit must be Hamish Channing.
Unwilling as Mr. Huntley was to admit it, he had no resource but to do so. He grew as certain of it as he was of his own life. He had loved and respected Hamish in no measured degree. He had observed the attachment springing up between him and his daughter, and he had been content to observe it. None were so worthy of her, in Mr. Huntley’s eyes, as Hamish Channing, in all respects save one—wealth; and, of that, Ellen would have plenty. Mr. Huntley had known of the trifling debts that were troubling Hamish, and he found that those debts, immediately on the loss of the bank-note, had been partially satisfied. That the stolen money must have been thus applied, and that it had been taken for that purpose, he could not doubt.
Hamish! It nearly made Mr. Huntley’s hair stand on end. That he must be silent over it, as were Hamish’s own family, he knew—silent for Mr. Channing’s sake. And what about Ellen?
There was the sad, very sad grievance. Whether Hamish went wrong, or whether Hamish went right, it was not of so much consequence to Mr. Huntley; but it might be to Ellen—in fact, he thought it would be. He had risen that morning resolved to hint to Ellen that any particular intimacy with Hamish must cease. But he was strangely undecided about it. Now that the moment was come, he almost doubted, himself, Hamish’s guilt. All the improbabilities of the case rose up before him in marked colours; he lost sight of the condemning facts; and it suddenly occurred to him that it was scarcely fair to judge Hamish so completely without speaking to him. “Perhaps he can account to me for the possession of the money which he applied to those debts,” thought Mr. Huntley. “If so, in spite of appearances, I will not deem him guilty.”
He went out, on the spur of the moment, straight down to the office in Guild Street. Hamish was alone, not at all busy, apparently. He was standing up by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantelpiece, a letter from Mr. Channing (no doubt the one alluded to in Mrs. Channing’s letter to Constance) in his hand. He received Mr. Huntley with his cordial, sunny smile; spoke of the good news the letter brought, spoke of the accident which had caused the delay of the mail, and finally read out part of the letter, as Constance had to Judith.
It was all very well; but this only tended to embarrass Mr. Huntley. He did not like his task, and the more confidential they grew over Mr. Channing’s health, the worse it made it for him to enter upon. As chance had it, Hamish himself paved the way. He began telling of an incident which had taken place that morning, to the scandal of the town. A young man, wealthy but improvident, had been arrested for debt. Mr. Huntley had not yet heard of it.
“It stopped his day’s pleasure,” laughed Hamish. “He was going along with his gun and dogs, intending to pop at the partridges, when he got popped upon himself, instead. Poor fellow! it was too bad to spoil his sport. Had I been a rich man, I should have felt inclined to bail him out.”
“The effect of running in debt,” remarked Mr. Huntley. “By the way, Master Hamish, is there no fear of a similar catastrophe for you?” he added, in a tone which Hamish might, if he liked, take for a jesting one.
“For me, sir?” returned Hamish.
“When I left Helstonleigh in June, a certain young friend of mine was not quite free from a suspicion of such liabilities,” rejoined Mr. Huntley.
Hamish flushed rosy red. Of all people in the world, Mr. Huntley was the one from whom he would, if possible, have kept that knowledge, but he spoke up readily.
“I did owe a thing or two, it can’t be denied,” acknowledged he. “Men, better and wiser and richer than I, have owed money before me, Mr. Huntley.”
“Suppose they serve you as they have served Jenner this morning?”
“They will not do that,” laughed Hamish, seeming very much inclined to make a joke of the matter. “I have squared up some sufficiently to be on the safe side of danger, and I shall square up the rest.”
Mr. Huntley fixed his eyes upon him. “How did you get the money to do it, Hamish?”
Perhaps it was the plain, unvarnished manner in which the question was put; perhaps it was the intent gaze with which Mr. Huntley regarded him; but, certain it is, that the flush on Hamish’s face deepened to crimson, and he turned it from Mr. Huntley, saying nothing.
“Hamish, I have a reason for wishing to know.”
“To know what, sir?” asked Hamish, as if he would temporize, or avoid the question.
“Where did you obtain the money that you applied to liquidate, or partially to liquidate, your debts?”
“I cannot satisfy you, sir. The affair concerns no one but myself. I did get it, and that is sufficient.”
Hamish had come out of his laughing tone, and spoke as firmly as Mr. Huntley; but, that the question had embarrassed him, was palpably evident. Mr. Huntley said good morning, and left the office without shaking hands. All his doubts were confirmed.
He went straight home. Ellen was where he had left her, still alone. Mr. Huntley approached her and spoke abruptly. “Are you willing to give up all intimacy with Hamish Channing?”
She gazed at him in surprise, her complexion changing, her voice faltering. “Oh, papa! what have they done?”
“Ellen, did I say ‘they!’ The Channings are my dear friends, and I hope ever to call them such. They have done nothing unworthy of my friendship or of yours. I said Hamish.”
Ellen rose from her seat, unable to subdue her emotion, and stood with her hands clasped before Mr. Huntley. Hamish was far dearer to her than the world knew.
“I will leave it to your good sense, my dear,” Mr. Huntley whispered, glancing round, as if not caring that even the walls should hear. “I have liked Hamish very much, or you may be sure he would not have been allowed to come here so frequently. But he has forfeited my regard now, as he must forfeit that of all good men.”
She trembled excessively, almost to impede her utterance, when she would have asked what it was that he had done.
“I scarcely dare breathe it to you,” said Mr. Huntley, “for it is a thing that we must hush up, as the family are hushing it up. When that bank-note was lost, suspicion fell on Arthur.”
“Well, papa?” wonderingly resumed Ellen.
“It was not Arthur who took it. It was Hamish. And Arthur is bearing the stigma of it for his father’s sake.”
Ellen grew pale. “Papa, who says it?”
“No one says it, Ellen. But the facts leave no room for doubt. Hamish’s own manner—I have just left him—leaves no room for it. He is indisputably guilty.”
Then Ellen’s anger, her straightforwardness, broke forth. She clasped her hands in pain, and her face grew crimson. “He is not guilty, papa. I would answer for it with my own life. How dare they accuse him! how dare they asperse him? Is he not Hamish Channing?”
“Ellen! Ellen!”
Ellen burst into a passionate flood of tears. “Forgive me, papa. If he has no one else to take his part, I will do it. I do not wish to be undutiful; and if you bid me never to see or speak to Hamish Channing again, I will implicitly obey you; but, hear him spoken of as guilty, I will not. I wish I could stand up for him against the world.”
“After that, Miss Ellen Huntley, I think you had better sit down.”
Ellen sat down, and cried until she was calm.