Works of Ellen Wood, page 865
The tea over, Mrs. Yorke said she must take her departure: the children were weary; she scarcely knew how she should get them back. Hamish had a cab called: when it came he went out and lifted the little ones into it. Winny looked at it dubiously.
“You’ll not tell Gerald that I said he was in a temper about your book, Mr. Channing?” she said pleadingly, as she took her seat.
“I’ll not tell Gerald tales of any sort,” answered Hamish with his gay smile. “Take heart, as Roland tells you to do, and look forward to better days both for you and your husband. Perhaps there is a little glimmer of their dawn already showing itself, though you cannot yet see it.”
“Do you mean through Gerald’s book?” she asked half crossly.
“Oh dear no. What I mean has nothing to do with Gerald’s book. Who has the paper of cakes? — Fredy. All right. Good night. The cab’s paid, Mrs. Yorke.”
Mrs. Yorke burst into tears, leaned forward, and clasped Hamish’s hand. The intimation, as to the cab, had solved a difficulty running through her mind. It was a great relief.
“God bless you, Mr. Channing! You are always kind.”
“Only trust in God,” he whispered gravely. “Trust Him ever, and He will take care of you.”
The cab drove off, and Hamish turned away, to encounter Roland Yorke. That gentleman, making his opportunity, had followed Hamish out; and now poured into his ear the tale he had to tell about himself and Annabel. Hamish did not hear it with altogether the stately dignity that might be expected to attend the reception of an offer of marriage for one’s sister. On the contrary, he burst out laughing in Roland’s face.
“Come now! be honest,” cried Roland, deeply offended. “Is it me you’d despise, Mr. Channing, or the small prospect I can offer her?”
“Neither,” said Hamish, laughing still. “As to yourself, old fellow, if Annabel and the mother approve, I should not object. I never gave a heartier hand-shake to any man than I would to you as my brother-in-law. I like you better than I do the other one, William Yorke; and there’s the truth.”
“Oh — him! you easily might,” answered Roland, jerking his nose into the air, with his usual depreciation of the Reverend William Yorke’s merits. “Then why do you laugh at me?”
“I laughed at the idea of your making two hundred a year at copying deeds.”
“I didn’t say I should. You couldn’t have been listening to me, Hamish — I wish, then, you’d not laugh so, as if you only made game of a fellow! What I said was, that I was putting my shoulder to the wheel in earnest, and had begun with copying, not to waste time. I have been thinking I’d try young Dick Yorke.”
“Try him for what?”
“Why, to get me a post of some sort. I think he’ll do it if he can. I’m sure it’s not much I shall ask for — only a couple of hundreds a year, or so. And if Annabel secures a nice pupil or two, there’d be three hundred a year to start with. You’d not mind her teaching a little, would you, Hamish, while I was waiting for the skies to rain gold?”
“Not I. That would be for her own consideration.”
“And when we shall have got the three hundred a year in secure prospect, you’ll talk to Mrs. Channing of Helstonleigh for me, won’t you?”
Hamish thought he might safely say Yes. The idea of Roland’s “putting his shoulder to the wheel” sufficiently to earn two hundred pounds income, seemed to be amidst the world’s improbabilities. He could not get over his laughing, and it vexed Roland.
“You think I can’t work. You’ll see. I’ll go off to young Dick Yorke this very hour, and sound him.
Nothing like taking time by the forelock. He is likely to be married, I hear.”
“Who is?”
“Young Dick. They call him Vincent now, but before I went to Port Natal ‘Dick’ was good enough for him. My father never spoke of them but as old Dick and young Dick. Not that we had anything to do with the lot: they held themselves aloof from us. I never saw either of them but once, and that was when they came down to Helstonleigh to my father’s funeral. He died in residence, you know, Hamish.”
Hamish nodded: he remembered all the circumstances perfectly. Dr. Yorke’s death had been unexpected until quite the last. Ailing for some time, he had yet been sufficiently well to enter on what was called his close residence of twenty-one days as Prebendary of the cathedral, of which he was also sub-dean. The disease made so rapid progress that before the residence was out he had expired.
“Old Dick made some promises to George that day, saying he’d get him on: because George was the eldest, I suppose; he took little notice of the rest of us,” resumed Roland. “It was after we came in from the funeral, in our crape scarfs and hat-bands. But he never did an earthly thing for him, Hamish — as poor George could tell you, if he were alive. My father always said his brother Dick was selfish.”
“You may find young Dick the same,” said Hamish. “So I should if it were his pocket I wanted to touch. But it’s not, you know. And now I’ll be off to him. I had intended to spend this evening at my copying, but I left the paper in the office, and there was likely to be a hitch about my getting it. I’ll make up for it to-morrow night. I shall be back in time to tell you of my success, and to help you take Annabel home.”
Roland’s way of taking time by the forelock was to dash through the streets at his utmost speed, no matter what impediments he might have to overthrow in his way, and into the fashionable club-house frequented by Vincent Yorke, who dined there quite as often as he did at his father’s house in Portland Place. Roland was in luck, and met him coming out.
“I say, Vincent, do stay and hear me for a minute or two. It is something of consequence.”
Vincent Yorke, not altogether approving of this familiar mode of salutation from Roland, although fate had made them cousins, did not yet quite see his way to refuse the request. As Roland had said, young Dick was sufficiently good-natured where his pocket was not attacked. He led the way to a corner in a room where they could be private, sat down, and offered a chair to Roland.
It was declined. Roland was a great deal too excited and too eager to sit. He poured forth his wants and hopes — that he wished to work honestly for just bread and cheese, and to get his own living, and be beholden to nobody: would he, Dick, help him to a place? He did not mind how hard he worked; till his shirt-sleeves were wet with honest sweat, if need be; and live on potatoes and half a pint of beer a day; so that he might just get on a little, and make a sum of two hundred pounds a year: or one hundred to begin with.
The word “Dick” slipped out inadvertently in Roland’s heat. Not a man living so little capable, as he, of remembering conventionalities when thus executed. Vincent Yorke, detecting the earnest purpose, the sanguine hope, the real single-mindedness of the applicant, could but stare and laugh, and excuse mistakes under the circumstances. The very boldness of the request, preferred with straightforward candour and without the slightest reticence, told on him favourably, because it was so opposite to the crafty diplomacy that most men would have brought to bear on such an application. Favourably only, you understand, in so far as that he did not return a haughty repulse offhand, but condescended to answer civilly.
“Such things are not in my line,” he said, and — face to face with that realistic Port Natal traveller, he for once put aside his beloved fashionable attribute, the mincing lisp. “I don’t go in for politics; never did go in for ‘em; and Government places are not likely to come in my way. You should have applied to Sir Richard. He knows one or two of the Cabinet Ministers.”
“I did apply to him once,” replied Roland, “and he sent me off with a flea in my ear. I said then I’d never ask him for any thing again, though it were to keep me from starving.”
Vincent Yorke smiled. “Look here,” said he; “you take him in his genial moods. Go up to him now; he’ll just have dined. If anything can be got out of him, that’s the time.”
Mr. Vincent Yorke hit upon this quite as much to get rid of Roland, as in any belief in its efficacy. In the main what he said was true — that Sir Richard’s after-dinner moods were his genial ones; but that Roland had not the ghost of a chance of being helped, he very well knew. That unsophisticated voyager, however, took it all in.
“I’ll run up at once,” he said. “I’m so much obliged to you, Vincent. I say, are you not soon going to be married? I heard so.”
“Eh — yes,” replied Vincent, with frigid coldness, relapsing into himself and the fine gentleman.
“I wish you the best of good luck,” returned Roland, heartily shaking the somewhat unwilling hand with a grip that he might have learned at Port Natal. “And I hope she’ll make you as good a wife as I know somebody else will make me. Good night, Vincent, I’m off.”
Vincent nodded. It struck him that, with all his drawbacks and deficiencies, Roland was rather a nice young fellow.
Outside the club door stood a hansom. Roland, in his eagerness and haste, was only kept from bolting into it by the slight deterrent accident of having no change in his pocket to pay the fare. He did not lose much. The speed at which he tore up Regent Street might have kept pace with the wheels of most cabs; and the resounding knock and ring he gave at Sir Richard’s door in Portland Place, must surely have caused the establishment to think it announced the arrival of a fire-escape.
The door was flung open on the instant, as if to an expected visitor. But that Roland was not the one waited for, was proved by the surprise of the servant. He arrested the further entrance.
“You are not the doctor!”
“Doctor!” said Roland, “I am no doctor. Let me pass if you please. I am Mr. Roland Yorke.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the man, recognizing the name as one borne by a nephew of the house. “You can go up, sir, of course if you please, but my master is just taken ill. He has got a stroke.”
“Bless me!” cried Roland, in concern. “Is it a bad one?”
“I’m afraid it is for death, sir,” whispered the man. “We left him at his wine after dinner, all comfortable; and when we went in a few minutes ago, there he was, drawed together so that you couldn’t know him, and no breath in his body that we could hear. The nearest doctor’s coming, and James is running to fifteen likely places to see if he can find Mr. Vincent.”
“I’ll go for him; I know where he is,” cried Roland. And without further reflection he hailed another hansom that happened to be passing, jumped into it and ordered it to the club-house. Vincent was only then coming down the steps. He took Roland’s place, and galloped home.
“I hope he’ll be in time,” thought Roland. “Poor old Dick!”
He was not in time. And the next morning London woke up to the news of Sir Richard Yorke’s sudden death from an attack of apoplexy. And his son, the third baronet, had succeeded to the family estates and honours as Sir Vincent Yorke.
PART THE SECOND.
(CONTINUED.)
CHAPTER XXII.
A little more Light.
SOMETHING fresh, though not much, had turned up, relating to the case of the late Mr. Ollivera. That it should do so after so many years had elapsed — or, rather, that it should not have done so before — was rather remarkable. But as it bears very little upon the history in its present stage, it may be dismissed in a chapter.
When John Ollivera departed on the circuit which was destined to bring him his death, a young man of the name of Willett accompanied the bar. He had been “called,” but in point of fact only went as clerk to one of the leading counsel. There are barristers and barristers; just as there are young men and young men. Mr. Charles Willett had been of vast trouble to his family; and one of his elder brothers, Edmund, who was home from India on a temporary sojourn to recruit his health, had taken up the cause against him rather sharply: which induced a quarrel between them and lasting ill-feeling.
An intimacy had sprung up between Edmund Willett and John Ollivera, and they had become the closest of friends. They took a (supposed) final leave of each other when Mr. Ollivera departed on his circuit, for Mr. Willett was on the point of returning to India. His health had not improved, but he was obliged to go back; he was in a merchant’s house in Calcutta; and the probabilities certainly were that he would not live to come home again. However, contrary to his own and general expectations, as is sometimes the case, the result proved that everybody’s opinion was mistaken. He not only did not die, but he grew better, and finally lived: and he had now come to England on business matters. The minute details attendant on John Ollivera’s death had never reached him, either through letters or newspapers, and he became acquainted with them for the first time in an interview with the Rev. Mr. Ollivera. When the unfinished letter was mentioned, and the fact that they had never been able to trace out the smallest information as to whom it was intended for, Mr. Willett at once said that it must have been intended for himself. He had charged John Ollivera (rather against the latter’s will) to carry out, if possible, an arrangement with Charles Willett upon a certain disagreeable matter which had only come recently to the knowledge of his family, and to get that young man’s written promise to arrest himself in, at least, one of his downward courses towards ruin. The letter to Mr. Ollivera, urging the request, was written and posted in London on the Saturday; Mr. Ollivera (receiving it on Sunday morning at Helstonleigh) would no doubt see Charles Willett in the course of Monday. That this was the “disagreeable commission” he had spoken of to Mr. Kene, as having been entrusted to him, and which he had left the Court at half-past three o’clock to enter upon, there could be no manner of doubt. Mr. Willett had expected an answer from him on Tuesday morning — it was the last day of his stay in London, for he would take his departure by the Dover mail in the evening — which answer never came. That Mr. Ollivera was writing the letter for the nine o’clock night despatch from Helstonleigh, and that the words in the commencing lines, “should I never see you again,” referred solely to Mr. Willett’s precarious health, and to the belief that he would not live to return again from India, also appeared to be indisputable. If this were so, why then, the first part of the letter, at any rate, was the sane work of a perfectly sane man, and no more pointed at self-destruction than it did at self-shampooing. The clergyman and Mr. Willett, arriving at this most natural conclusion, sat and looked at each other for a few moments in painful silence. That unexplained and apparently unexplainable letter had been the one sole stumbling-block in Henry William Ollivera’s otherwise perfect belief.
But, to leave no loop-hole of uncertainty, Charles Willett was sought out. When found (with slippers down at heel, a short pipe in his mouth, and a pewter pint-pot at his elbow) he avowed, without the smallest reticence, that John Ollivera’s appointment for halfpast three on that long-past Monday afternoon in Helstonleigh, had been with him; and that, in answer to Mr. Ollivera’s interference in his affairs, he had desired him to mind his own business and to send word to his brother to do the same.
This left no doubt whatever on the clergyman’s mind that the commenced letter had been as sensible and ordinary a letter as any man could sit down to pen, and that the blotted words were appended to it by a different hand — that of the murderer.
In the full flush of his newly-acquired information, he went straight to the house of Mr. Greatorex, to pour the story into his uncle’s ear. It happened to be the very day alluded to in the last chapter — in the evening of which you had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Roland Yorke industriously putting his shoulder to the wheel, after the ordinary hours of office work were over.
Mr. Greatorex had been slightly discomposed that day in regard to business matters. It seemed to him that something or other was perpetually arising to cause annoyance to the firm. Their connection was on the increase, requiring the unwearied, active energies of its three heads more fully than it had ever done; whereas one of those heads was less efficient in management than he used to be — the second of them, Bede Greatorex. Mr. Greatorex, a remarkably capable man, always had more hard, sterling, untiring work in him than Bede, and he had it still. With his mother’s warm Spanish blood, Bede had inherited the smallest modicum of temperamental indolence. As he had inherited (so ran the suspicion), the disease which had proved fatal to her.
“I cannot reproach him as I would,” thought Mr. Greatorex, throwing himself into a chair in his room, when he quitted the office for the day, urged to despair almost at this recent negligence, or whatever it was, that had been brought home to them, and which had been traced to some forgetfulness of Bede’s. “With that wan, weary look in his face, just as his mother’s wore when her sickness was coming on, it goes against me to blow him up harshly, as I should Frank. He must be very ill; he could not, else, look as he does; perhaps already nearly past hope: it was only when she was past hope that she suddenly failed in her round of duties and broke down. And he has one misery that his mother had not — trouble of mind, with that wife of his.”
It was at this juncture that Mr. Greatorex was broken in upon by Henry William Ollivera. The clergyman, standing so that the bright slanting rays of the hot evening sun, falling across his face, lighted up its pallor and its suppressed eagerness, imparted the tale that he had come to tell: the discovery that he and Edmund Willett had that day made.
It a little excited Mr. Greatorex. Truth to say, he had always looked upon that unfinished letter as a nearly certain proof that his nephew’s death had been in accordance with the verdict of the jury. To him, as well as to the dead man’s brother, the apparent impossibility of discovering any cause for its having been penned, or person for whom it could have been intended, had remained the great gulf of difficulty which could not be bridged over.
In this, the first moment of the disclosure, it seemed to him a great discovery. We all know how exaggerated a view we sometimes take of matters, when they are unexpectedly presented to us. Mr. Greatorex went forth, calling aloud for his son Bede: who came down, in return to the call, in dinner attire. As Bede entered, his eye fell on his cousin Henry — or William, as Mr.
