Works of Ellen Wood, page 244
“Hark at him!” interrupted Mrs. Jenkins. “That’s just like him! He’d be ‘thankful’ to hear that his worst enemy had an uncle to fall back upon. That’s Jenkins all over. But now, what is to be the next movement?” she sharply demanded. “I must get back to my shop. Is he to come with me, or to stop here — a spectacle for every one that comes in?”
But at this moment, before the question could be decided — though you may rest assured Mrs. Jenkins would only allow it to be decided in her own way — hasty footsteps were heard in the passage, and the door was thrown open by Arthur Channing.
CHAPTER LII. — A RELIC FROM THE BURIAL-GROUND.
When Hamish Channing joined the breakfast-table at home that morning at nine o’clock, he mentioned his adventure at the station with Lady Augusta Yorke. It was the first intimation they had received of Roland’s departure; indeed, the first that some of them had heard of his intention to depart.
Arthur laid down his knife and fork. To him alone could the full consequences of the step present themselves, as regarded Mr. Galloway.
“Hamish! he cannot actually have gone?”
“That he is actually off by the train to London, I can certify,” was the reply of Hamish. “Whether he will be off to Port Natal, is another thing. He desired me to tell you, Arthur, that he should write his adieu to you from town.”
“He might have come to see me,” observed Arthur, a shade of resentment in his tone. “I never thought he would really go.”
“I did,” said Hamish, “funds permitting him. If Lord Carrick will supply those, he’ll be off by the first comfortable ship that sails. His mind was so completely bent upon it.”
“What can he think of doing at Port Natal?” inquired Constance, wonderingly.
“Making his fortune.” But Hamish laughed as he said it. “Wherever I may have met him latterly, his whole talk has been of Port Natal. Lady Augusta says he is going to take out frying-pans to begin with.”
“Hamish!”
“She said so, Constance. I have no doubt Roland said so to her. I should like to see the sort of cargo he will lay in for the start.”
“What does Mr. Galloway say to it, I wonder?” exclaimed Arthur, that gentleman’s perplexities presenting themselves to his mind above everything else. “I cannot think what he will do.”
“I have an idea that Mr. Galloway is as yet unaware of it,” said Hamish. “Roland assured me that no person whatever knew of his departure, except Jenkins. He called upon him on his way to the station.”
“Unaware of it!” Arthur fell into consternation great as Mr. Galloway’s, as he repeated the words. Was it possible that Roland had stolen a march on Mr. Galloway? He relapsed into silence and thought.
“What makes you so sad?” Constance asked of Arthur later, when they were dispersing to their several occupations.
“I am not sad, Constance; only thoughtful. I have been carrying on an inward battle,” he added, half laughingly.
“With your conscience?”
“With my spirit. It is a proud one yet, in spite of all I have had to tame it; a great deal more rebellious than I like it to be.”
“Why, what is the matter, Arthur?”
“Constance, I think I ought to come forward and help Mr. Galloway out of this strait. I think my duty lies in doing it.”
“To return to his office, you mean?”
“Yes; until he can see his way out of the wood. But it goes against the grain.”
“Arthur dear, I know you will do it,” she gently said. “Were our duty always pleasant to us, where would be the merit in fulfilling it?”
“I shall do it,” he answered. “To that I have made up my mind. The difficulty is, Constance, to do it with a good grace.”
She looked at him with a loving smile. “Only try. A firm will, Arthur, will conquer even a rebellious spirit.”
Arthur knew it. He knew how to set about it. And a little later, he was on his way to Close Street, with the best grace in the world. Not only in appearance, mind you, but inwardly. It is a GREAT thing, reader, to conquer the risings of a proud spirit! To bring it from its haughty, rebellious pedestal, down to cordiality and love. Have you learnt the way?
Some parchments under his arm, for he had stayed to collect them together, Arthur bounded in to Mr. Galloway’s. The first object his eyes fell on was that shadowy form, coughing and panting. “Oh, Jenkins!” he involuntarily uttered, “what do you do out of your house?”
“Anxiety for me has brought him out,” said Mr. Galloway. “How can I scold him?”
“I could not rest, sir, knowing my master was alone in his need,” cried Jenkins to Arthur. “What is to become of the office, sir, with no one in it?”
“But he is not alone,” said Arthur; and, if he had wanted a reward for coming forward, that moment would have supplied it, in satisfying poor Jenkins. “If you will allow me, sir,” Arthur added, turning frankly to Mr. Galloway, “I will take my place here, until you shall be suited.”
“Thank you,” emphatically replied Mr. Galloway. “It will relieve me from a serious embarrassment.”
Arthur went to his old desk, and sat down on his old stool, and began settling the papers and other things on it, just as though he had not been absent an hour. “I must still attend the cathedral as usual, sir,” he observed to Mr. Galloway; “but I can give you the whole of my remaining time. I shall be better for you than no one.”
“I would rather have you here than any one else, Channing; he” — laying his hand on Jenkins’s shoulder— “excepted. I offered that you should return before.”
“I know you did, sir,” replied Arthur, in a brief tone — one that seemed to intimate he would prefer not to pursue the subject.
“And now are you satisfied?” struck in Mrs. Jenkins to her husband.
“I am more than satisfied,” answered Jenkins, clasping his hands. “With Mr. Arthur in the office, I shall have no fear of its missing me, and I can go home in peace, to die.”
“Please just to hold your tongue about dying,” reprimanded Mrs. Jenkins. “Your business is to get well, if you can. And now I am going to see after a fly. A pretty dance I should have had here, if he had persisted in stopping, bringing him messes and cordials every half-hour! Which would have worn out first, I wonder — the pavement or my shoes?”
“Channing,” said Mr. Galloway, “let us understand each other. Have you come here to do anything there may be to do — out of doors as well as in? In short, to be my clerk as heretofore?”
“Of course I have, sir; until” — Arthur spoke very distinctly— “you shall be able to suit yourself; not longer.”
“Then take this paper round to Deering’s office, and get it signed. You will have time to do it before college.”
Arthur’s answer was to put on his hat, and vault away with the paper. Jenkins turned to Mr. Galloway as soon as they were alone. “Oh, sir, keep him in your office!” he earnestly said. “He will soon be of more value to you than I have ever been!”
“That he will not, Jenkins. Nor any one else.”
“Yes, he will, sir! He will be able to replace you in the chapter house upon any emergency, and I never could do that, you know, sir, not being a gentleman. When you have him to yourself alone, sir, you will see his value; and I shall not be missed. He is steady and thoughtful beyond his years, sir, and every day will make him older.”
“You forget the charge against him, Jenkins. Until he shall be cleared of that — if he can be cleared of it — he will not be of great value to any one; certainly not to me.”
“Sir,” said Jenkins, raising his wan face, its hectic deepening, find his eye lighting, while his voice sunk to a whisper, so deep as to savour of solemnity, “that time will come! He never did it, and he will as surely be cleared, as that I am now saying it! Sir, I have thought much about this accusation; it has troubled me in sleep; but I know that God will bring the right to light for those who trust in Him. If any one ever trusted in God, it is Mr. Arthur Channing. I lie and think of all this, sir. I seem to be so near God, now,” Jenkins went on dreamily, “that I know the right must come to light; that it will come in God’s own good time. And I believe I shall live to see it!”
“You have certainly firm faith in his innocence, Jenkins. How then do you account for his very suspicious manner?”
“It does not weigh with me, sir. I could as soon believe a good wholesome apple-tree would bring forth poison, as that Mr. Arthur would be guilty of a deliberately bad action. Sometimes I have thought, sir, when puzzling over it, that he may be screening another. There’s no telling how it was. I hear, sir, that the money has been returned to you.”
“Yes. Was it he who told you?”
“It was Mr. Roland Yorke who told me, sir. Mr. Roland is another, sir, who has had firm faith in his innocence from the first.”
“Much his faith goes for!” ejaculated Mr. Galloway, as he came back from his private room with a letter, which he handed to Jenkins, who was skilled in caligraphy. “What do you make of it?” he asked. “It is the letter which came with the returned money.”
“It is a disguised hand, sir — there’s no doubt of that,” replied Jenkins, when he had surveyed it critically. “I do not remember to have seen any person write like it.”
Mr. Galloway took it back to his room, and presently a fly drove up with Mrs. Jenkins inside it. Jenkins stood at the office door, hat in hand, his face turned upon the room. Mrs. Jenkins came up and seized his arm, to marshal him to the fly.
“I was but taking a farewell of things, sir,” he observed to Mr. Galloway. “I shall never see the old spot again.”
Arthur arrived just as Jenkins was safely in. He put his hand over the door. “Make yourself easy, Jenkins; it will all go on smoothly here. Good-bye, old fellow! I’ll come and see you very soon.”
“How he breaks, does he not, sir?” exclaimed Arthur to Mr. Galloway.
“Ay! he’s not long for this world!”
The fly proceeded on its way; Mrs. Jenkins, with her snappish manner, though really not unkind heart, lecturing Jenkins on his various shortcomings until it drew up at their own door. As Jenkins was being helped down from it, one of the college boys passed at a great speed; a railroad was nothing to it. It was Stephen Bywater. Something, legitimate or illegitimate, had detained him, and now the college bell was going.
He caught sight of Jenkins, and, hurried as he was, much of punishment as he was bargaining for, it had such an effect upon him, that he pulled up short. Was it Jenkins, or his ghost? Bywater had never been so struck with any sight before.
The most appropriate way in which it occurred to him to give vent to his surprise, was to prop his back against the shop door, and indulge in a soft, prolonged whistle. He could not take his eyes from Jenkins’s face. “Is it you, or your shadow, Jenkins?” he asked, making room for the invalid to pass.
“It’s myself, sir, thank you. I hope you are well, sir.”
“Oh, I’m always jolly,” replied Bywater, and then he began to whistle again.
He followed Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins into the shop with his eyes; that is, they followed Jenkins. Bywater had heard, as a matter of necessity, of Jenkins’s illness, and had given as much thought to it as he would have done if told Jenkins had a headache; but to fancy him like this had never occurred to Bywater.
Now somewhere beneath Bywater’s waistcoat, there really was a little bit of heart; and, as he thus looked, a great fear began to thump against it. He followed Jenkins into the parlour. Mrs. Jenkins, after divesting Jenkins of his coat, and her boa, planted him right before the fire in his easy-chair, with a pillow at his back, and was now whisking down into the kitchen, regardless of certain customers waiting in the shop to be served.
Bywater, unasked, sat himself in a chair near to poor Jenkins and his panting breath, and indulged in another long stare. “I say, Jenkins,” said he, “what’s the matter with you?”
Jenkins took the question literally. “I believe it may be called a sort of decline, sir. I don’t know any other name for it.”
“Shan’t you get well?”
“Oh no, sir! I don’t look for that, now.”
The fear thumped at Bywater’s heart worse than before. A past vision of locking up old Ketch in the cloisters, through which pastime Jenkins had come to a certain fall, was uncomfortably present to Bywater just then. He had been the ringleader.
“What brought it on?” asked he.
“Well, sir, I suppose it was to come,” meekly replied Jenkins. “I have had a bad cough, spring and autumn, for a long while now, Master Bywater. My brother went off just the same, sir, and so did my mother.”
Bywater pushed his honest, red face, forward; but it did not look quite so impudent as usual. “Jenkins,” said he, plunging headlong into the fear, “DID — THAT — FALL — DO — IT?”
“Fall, sir! What fall?”
“That fall down from the organ loft. Because that was my fault. I had the most to do with locking up the cloisters, that night.”
“Oh, bless you, sir, no! Never think that. Master Bywater” — lowering his voice till it was as grave as Bywater’s— “that fall did me good — good, sir, instead of harm.”
“How do you make out that?” asked Bywater, drawing his breath a little easier.
“Because, sir, in the few days’ quiet that I had in bed, my thoughts seemed in an unaccountable manner to be drawn to thinking of heaven. I can’t rightly describe, sir, how or why it could have been. I remember his lordship, the bishop, talked to me a little bit in his pleasant, affable way, about the necessity of always, being prepared; and my wife’s Bible lay on the drawers by my bed’s head, and I used to pick up that. But I don’t think it was either of those causes much; I believe, sir, that it was God Himself working in my heart. I believe He sent the fall in His mercy. After I got up, I seemed to know that I should soon go to Him; and — I hope it is not wrong to say it — I seemed to wish to go.”
Bywater felt somewhat puzzled. “I am not speaking about your heart and religion, and all that, Jenkins. I want to know if the fall helped to bring on this illness?”
“No, sir; it had nothing to do with it. The fall hurt my head a little — nothing more; and I got well from it directly. This illness, which has been taking me off, must have been born with me.”
“Hoo—” Bywater’s shout, as he tossed up his trencher, was broken in upon by Mrs. Jenkins. She had been beating up an egg with sugar and wine, and now brought it in in a tumbler.
“My dear,” said Jenkins, “I don’t feel to want it.”
“Not want it!” said Mrs. Jenkins resolutely. And in two seconds she had taken hold of him, and it was down his throat. “I can’t stop parleying here all day, with my shop full of customers.” Bywater laughed, and she retreated.
“If I could eat gold, sir, she’d get it for me,” said Jenkins; “but my appetite fails. She’s a good wife, Master Bywater.”
“Stunning,” acquiesced Bywater. “I wouldn’t mind a wife myself, if she’d feed me up with eggs and wine.”
“But for her care, sir, I should not have lasted so long. She has had great experience with the sick.”
Bywater did not answer. Rising to go, his eyes had fixed themselves upon some object on the mantelpiece as pertinaciously as they had previously been fixed upon Jenkins’s face. “I say, Jenkins, where did you get this?” he exclaimed.
“That, sir? Oh, I remember. My old father brought it in yesterday. He had cut his hand with it. Where now did he say he found it? In the college burial-ground, I think, Master Bywater.”
It was part of a small broken phial, of a peculiar shape, which had once apparently contained ink; an elegant shape, it may be said, not unlike a vase. Bywater began turning it about in his fingers; he was literally feasting his eyes upon it.
“Do you want to keep it, Jenkins?”
“Not at all, sir. I wonder my wife did not throw it away before this.”
“I’ll take it, then,” said Bywater, slipping it into his pocket. “And now I’m off. Hope you’ll get better, Jenkins.”
“Thank you, sir. Let me put the broken bottle in paper, Master Bywater. You will cut your fingers if you carry it loose in your pocket.”
“Oh, that be bothered!” answered Bywater. “Who cares for cut fingers?”
He pushed himself through Mrs. Jenkins’s customers, with as little ceremony as Roland Yorke might have used, and went flying towards the cathedral. The bell ceased as he entered. The organ pealed forth; and the dean and chapter, preceded by some of the bedesmen, were entering from the opposite door. Bywater ensconced himself behind a pillar, until they should have traversed the body, crossed the nave, and were safe in the choir. Then he came out, and made his way to old Jenkins the bedesman.
The old man, in his black gown, stood near the bell ropes, for he had been one of the ringers that day. Bywater noticed that his left hand was partially tied up in a handkerchief.
“Holloa, old Jenkins,” said he, sotte voce, “what have you done with your hand?”
“I gave it a nasty cut yesterday, sir, just in the ball of the thumb. I wrapped my handkerchief round it just now, for fear of opening it again, while I was ringing the bell. See,” said he, taking off the handkerchief and showing the cut to Bywater.
“What an old muff you must be, to cut yourself like that!”
“But I didn’t do it on purpose,” returned the old man. “We was ordered into the burial-ground to put it a bit to rights, and I fell down with my hand on a broken phial. I ain’t as active as I was. I say, though, sir, do you know that service has begun?”
“Let it begin,” returned careless Bywater. “This was the bottle you fell over, was it not? I found it on Joe’s mantelpiece, just now.”
“Ay, that was it. It must have laid there some time. A good three months, I know.”
Bywater nodded his head. He returned the bottle to his pocket, and went to the vestry for his surplice. Then he slid into college under the severe eyes of the Reverend Mr. Pye, which were bent upon him from the chanting-desk, and ascended, his stall just in time to take his part in the Venite, exultemus Domino.
