Once more were the drags thrown into the water. Once more the mob, gentle and simple, crowded its brink. When the college bell tolled out for morning prayers, those, whose duty it was to attend the cathedral, drew themselves away unwillingly. Arthur Channing was one of them. Whatever might be his grief and suspense, engagements must be fulfilled.
Later in the day, when the search was over—for it was thought useless to continue it—and when hope was over, a council was held at Mr. Channing’s house. Mr. and Mrs. Channing must be acquainted with this sad business; but how was it to be done? By letter? by telegraph? or by a special messenger? Constance had suggested writing, and silently hoped that Hamish would take the task upon himself, for she felt unequal to it, in her dire distress. Mr. Galloway, who had been in and out all the morning, suggested the telegraph. Hamish approved of neither, but proposed to despatch Arthur, to make the communication in person.
“I cannot leave Helstonleigh myself,” he said; “therefore it must devolve upon Arthur. Of course his journey will be an expense; but there are times when expense must not be regarded. I consider this one of them.”
“A letter would go more quickly,” said Mr. Galloway.
“Scarcely, in these days of travelling,” was Hamish’s reply. “But that is not the question. A letter, let it be ever so explanatory, will only leave them in suspense. As soon as they have read it, five hundred questions will suggest themselves that they will wish to ask; and, to wait to have them satisfied, will be intolerable, especially to my mother. Arthur’s going will obviate this. He knows as much as we know, and can impart his knowledge to them.”
“There is a great deal in what you say,” mused Mr. Galloway.
“I am sure there is,” spoke Constance through her tears, “though it did not strike me before. In mamma’s anxiety and suspense, she might start for home, to learn further details.”
“And I think it is what she would do,” said Hamish: “if not my father also. It will be better that Arthur should go. He can tell them all they would learn if they returned; and so far as it is possible, that would be satisfactory.”
They were interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Huntley and his daughter. Ellen had begged her father, when she found he was going to the Channings’, to allow her to accompany him, and see Constance in her distress. Mr. Huntley readily acquiesced. The drowning of poor Charley was a serious affliction, in contemplation of which he forgot the inexpediency of her meeting Hamish.
Hamish did not appear to perceive any inexpediency in the matter. He was the first to take Ellen’s hand in his, and bend upon her his sweet smile of welcome. Knowing what Ellen knew of Mr. Huntley’s sentiments, and that he was looking on, it rendered her manner confused and her cheeks crimson. She was glad to turn to Constance, and strive to say a few words of sympathy. “Had Harry been one of those wicked, thoughtless boys to join in this ghost trick, I could never have forgiven him!” she impulsively exclaimed, hot tears running down her cheeks.
The subject under consideration was referred to Mr. Huntley, and his opinion requested: more as a form of courtesy than anything else, for Hamish had made up his mind upon the point. A thoroughly affectionate and dutiful son was Hamish Channing; and he believed that the tidings could be rendered more bearable to his father and mother by a messenger, than by any other mode of communication. The excuse that Constance and Arthur had, throughout, found for Hamish in their hearts was, that he had taken the bank-note out of latent affection to Mr. and Mrs. Channing.
“You are wrong, every one of you,” said Mr. Huntley, when he had listened to what they had to say. “You must send neither letter nor messenger. It will not do.”
Hamish looked at him. “Then what can we send, sir?
“Don’t send at all.”
“Not send at all!” repeated Hamish.
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Huntley. “You have no positive proof as yet that the child is dead. It will be alarming them unnecessarily.”
“Mr. Huntley!” said Constance. “Is it possible that you see any ground for hope?”
“Honestly, my dear, I do not see much ground for hope,” he replied. “But, on the other hand, there are no positive grounds for despair. So long as these grounds are not furnished, I say keep it from Mr. and Mrs. Channing. Answer me one thing: What good end would it serve to tell them?”
“Is it not a duty?”
“I do not see it,” said Mr. Huntley. “Were the poor boy’s fate known, beyond uncertainty, it would be a different matter. If you send to them, what would come of it? The very suspense, the doubt, would have a bad effect upon Mr. Channing. It might bring him home; and the good already effected might be destroyed—his time, purse, hopes, all that he has given to the journey, wasted. On the other hand, allowing that he still remained, the news might delay his cure. No: my strong advice to you is: Suffer them for the present to remain in ignorance of what has happened.”
Hamish began to think Mr. Huntley might be right.
“I know I am right,” said Mr. Huntley. “If putting them in possession of the facts could produce any benefit to themselves, to you, or to Charles, I would go off myself with Arthur this hour. But it could effect nothing; and, to them, it might result in great evil. Until we know something more certain ourselves, let us keep it from them.”
“Yes, I see it,” said Hamish, warmly. “It will be best so.”
Constance felt her arm touched, and coloured with emotion when she found it was Mr. William Yorke. In this day of distress, people seemed to come in and go out without ceremony. Mr. Yorke had entered with Tom Channing. He completely accepted the new view of the matter, and strongly advised that it should not be allowed to reach the ears of Mr. and Mrs. Channing.
Mr. Galloway, when he was departing, beckoned Constance into the hall. It was only to give her a word of friendly sympathy, of advice—not to be overwhelmed, but to cling to hope. She thanked him, but it was with an aching heart, for Constance could not feel this hope.
“Will you grant me the favour of a minute’s private interview?” asked Mr. Yorke stiffly, meeting her in the hall.
Constance hesitated a moment. He was asking what she felt he had no right to ask. She coloured, bowed, and stepped towards the drawing-room. Mr. Yorke threw open the door for her, and followed her in.
Then he became agitated. Whatever his pride or his temper may have been, whether the parting between them was his fault or Constance’s, it was certain that he loved her with an enduring love. Until that morning he had never contemplated losing Constance; he had surely looked forward to some indefinite future when she should be his; and the words spoken by Roland had almost driven him mad. Which was precisely what Mr. Roland hoped they would do.
“I would not speak to you to-day, when you are in distress, when you may deem it an unfitting time for me to speak,” he began, “but I cannot live in this suspense. Let me confess that what brought me here was to obtain this interview with you, quite as much as this other unhappy business. You will forgive me?”
“Mr. Yorke, I do not know what you can have to speak about,” she answered, with dignity. “My distress is great, but I can hear what you wish to say.”
“I heard—I heard”—he spoke with emotion, and went plunging abruptly into his subject—“I heard this morning that Lord Carrick was soliciting you to become his wife.”
Constance could have laughed, but for her own distress, agitated though he was. “Well, sir?” she coldly said, in a little spirit of mischief.
“Constance, you cannot do it,” he passionately retorted. “You cannot so perjure yourself!”
“Mr. Yorke! Have you the right to tell me I shall or shall not marry Lord Carrick?”
“You can’t do it, Constance!” he repeated, laying his hand upon her shoulder, and speaking hoarsely. “You know that your whole affection was given to me! It is mine still; I feel that it is. You have not transferred it to another in this short time. You do not love and forget so lightly.”
“Is this all you have to say to me?”
“No, it is not all,” he answered, with emotion. “I want you to be my wife, Constance, not his. I want you to forget this miserable estrangement that has come between us, and come home to me at Hazledon.”
“Listen, Mr. Yorke,” she said; but it was with the utmost difficulty she retained her indifferent manner, and kept back her tears: she would have liked to be taken then to his sheltering arms, never to have left them. “The cause which led to our parting, was the suspicion that fell upon Arthur, coupled with something that you were not pleased with in my own manner relating to it. That suspicion is upon him still; and my course of conduct would be precisely the same, were it to come over again. I am sorry you should have reaped up this matter, for it can only end as it did before.”
“Will you not marry me?” he resumed.
“No. So long as circumstances look darkly on my brother.”
“Constance! that may be for ever!”
“Yes,” she sadly answered, knowing what she did know; “they may never be brighter than they are now. Were I tempted to become your wife, you might reproach me afterwards for allying you to disgrace; and that, I think, would kill me. I beg you not to speak of this again.”
“And you refuse me for Lord Carrick! You will go and marry him!” exclaimed Mr. Yorke, struggling between reproach, affection, and temper.
“You must allow me to repeat that you have no right to question me,” she said, moving to the door. “When our engagement was forfeited, that right was forfeited with it.”
She opened the door to leave the room. Mr. Yorke might have wished further to detain her, but Judy came bustling up. “Lady Augusta’s here, Miss Constance.”
Lady Augusta Yorke met Constance in the hall, and seized both her hands. “I had a bad headache, and lay in bed, and never heard of it until an hour ago!” she uttered with the same impulsive kindness that sometimes actuated Roland. “Is it true that he is drowned? Is it true that Tod was in it?—Gerald says he was. William, are you here?”
Constance took Lady Augusta into the general sitting-room, into the presence of the other guests. Lady Augusta asked a hundred questions, at the least; and they acquainted her with the different points, so far as they were cognizant of them. She declared that Tod should be kept upon bread and water for a week, and she would go to the school and request Mr. Pye to flog him. She overwhelmed Constance with kindness, wishing she and Annabel would come to her house and remain there for a few days. Constance thanked her, and found some difficulty in being allowed to refuse.
“Here is his exercise-book,” observed Constance, tears filling her eyes; “here is the very place in which he laid his pen. Every other moment I think it cannot be true that he is gone—that it must be all a dream.”
Lady Augusta took up the pen and kissed it: it was her impulsive way of showing sympathy. Mr. Huntley smiled. “Where’s William gone to?” asked Lady Augusta.
The Reverend William Yorke had quitted the house, shaking the dust from his shoes in anger, as he crossed the threshold. Anger as much at himself, for having ever given her up, as at Constance Channing; and still most at the Right Honourable the Earl of Carrick.
CHAPTER XLIV. – MR. JENKINS IN A DILEMMA
I don’t know what you will say to me for introducing you into the privacy of Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins’s bed-chamber, but it is really necessary to do so. We cannot very well get on without it.
A conjugal dispute had occurred that morning when Mrs. Jenkins got up. She was an early riser; as was Jenkins also, in a general way; but since his illness, he had barely contrived to come down in time for breakfast. On this morning—which was not the one following the application of mustard to his chest, but one about a week after that medicinal operation—Mrs. Jenkins, on preparing to descend, peremptorily ordered him to remain in bed. Nothing need be recorded of the past week, except two facts: Charles Channing had not been discovered, either in life or in death; and the Earl of Carrick had terminated his visit, and left Helstonleigh.
“I’ll bring up your breakfast,” said Mrs. Jenkins.
“It is of no use to say that,” Jenkins ventured meekly to remonstrate. “You know I must get up.”
“I say you shall not get up. Here you are, growing weaker and worse every day, and yet you won’t take care of yourself! Where’s the use of your taking a bottle a-day of cough-mixture—where’s the use of your making the market scarce of cod-liver oil—where’s the use of wasting mustard, if it’s all to do you no good? Does it do you any good?”
“I am afraid it has not, as yet,” confessed Jenkins.
“And never will, so long as you give your body and brains no rest. Out you go by nine o’clock, in all weathers, ill or well, and there you are at your business till evening; stooping yourself double over the writing, dancing abroad on errands, wearing out your lungs with answers to callers! There’s no sense in it.”
“But, my dear, the office must be attended to,” said Jenkins, with much deference.
“There’s no ‘must’ in the case, as far as you are concerned. If I say you shan’t go to it, why, you shan’t. What’s the office, pray, in comparison with a man’s life?”
“But I am not so ill as to remain away. I can still go and do my work.”
“You’d be for going, if you were in your coffin!” was Mrs. Jenkins’s wrathful answer. “Could you do any good then, pray?”
“But I am not in my coffin,” mildly suggested Jenkins.
“Don’t I say you’d go, if you were?” reiterated Mrs. Jenkins, who sometimes, in her heat, lost sight of the precise point under dispute. “You know you would! you know there’s nothing in the whole world that you think of, but that office! Office—office—office, it is with you from morning till night. When you are in your coffin, through it, you’ll be satisfied.”
“But it is my duty to go as long as I can, my dear.”
“It’s my duty to do a great many things that I don’t do!” was the answer; “and one of my duties which I haven’t done yet, is to keep you indoors for a bit, and nurse you up. I shall begin from to-day, and see if I can’t get you well, that way.”
“But—”
“Hold your tongue, Jenkins. I never say a thing but you are sure to put in a ‘but.’ You lie in bed this morning,—do you hear?—and I’ll bring up your breakfast.”
Mrs. Jenkins left the room with the last order, and that ended the discussion. Had Jenkins been a free agent—free from work—he had been only too glad to obey her. In his present state of health, the duties of the office had become almost too much for him; it was with difficulty that he went to it and performed them. Even the walk, short as it was, in the early morning, was almost beyond his strength; even the early rising was beginning to tell upon him. And though he had little hope that nursing himself up indoors would prove of essential service, he felt that the rest it brought would be to him an inestimable boon.
But Jenkins was one who thought of duty before he thought of himself; and, therefore, to remain away from the office, if he could drag himself to it, appeared to him little less than a sin. He was paid for his time and services—fairly paid—liberally paid, some might have said—and they belonged to his master. But it was not so much from this point of view that Jenkins regarded the necessity of going—conscientious though he was—as at the thought of what the office would do without him; for there was no one to replace him but Roland Yorke. Jenkins knew what he was; and so do we.
To lie in bed, or remain indoors, under these circumstances, Jenkins felt to be impossible; and when his watch gave him warning that the breakfast hour was approaching, up he got. Behold him sitting on the side of the bed, trying to dress himself—trying to do it. Never had Jenkins felt weaker, or less able to battle with his increasing illness, than on this morning; and when Mrs. Jenkins dashed in—for her quick ears had caught the sounds of his stirring—he sat there still, stockings in hand, unable to help himself.
“So you were going to trick me, were you! Are you not ashamed of yourself, Jenkins?”
Jenkins gasped twice before he could reply. A giddiness seemed to be stealing over him, as it had done that other evening, under the elm trees. “My dear, it is of no use your talking; I must go to the office,” he panted.
“You shan’t go—if I lock you up! There!”
Jenkins was spared the trouble of a reply. The giddiness had increased to faintness, his sight left him, and he fell back on to the bed in a state of unconsciousness. Mrs. Jenkins rather looked upon it as a triumph. She put him into bed, and tucked him up.
“This comes of your attempting to disobey me!” said she, when he had come round again. “I wonder what would become of you poor, soft mortals of men, if you were let have your own way! There’s no office for you to day, Jenkins.”
Very peremptorily spoke she. But, lest he should attempt the same again, she determined to put it out of his power. Opening a closet, she thrust every article of his clothing into it, not leaving him so much as a waistcoat, turned the key, and put it into her pocket. Poor Jenkins watched her with despairing eyes, not venturing to remonstrate.
“There,” said she, speaking amiably in her glow of satisfaction: “you can go to the office now—if you like. I’ll not stop you; but you’ll have to march through the streets leaving your clothes in that closet.”
Under these difficulties Jenkins did not quite see his way to get there. Mrs. Jenkins went instead, catching Mr. Roland Yorke just upon his arrival.
“What’s up, that Jenkins is not here?” began Roland, before she could speak.
“Jenkins is not in a fit state to get out of his bed, and I have come to tell Mr. Galloway so,” replied she.
Roland Yorke’s face grew to twice its usual length at the news. “I say, though, that will never do, Mrs. Jenkins. What’s to become of this office?”
“The office must do the best it can without him. He’s not coming to it.”
“I can’t manage it,” said Roland, in consternation. “I should go dead, if I had to do Jenkins’s work, and my own as well.”
“He’ll go dead, unless he takes some rest in time, and gets a little good nursing. I should like to know how I am to nurse him, if he is down here all day?”
“That’s not the question,” returned Roland, feeling excessively blank. “The question is, how the office, and I, and Galloway are to get on without him? Couldn’t he come in a sedan?”
“Yes, he can; if he likes to come without his clothes,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “I have taken care to lock them up.”
“Locked his clothes up!” repeated Roland, in wonder. “What’s that for?”
“Because, as long as he has a bit of life in him, he’ll use it to drag himself down here,” answered Mrs. Jenkins, tartly. “That’s why. He was getting up to come this morning, defying me and every word I said against it, when he fell down on the bed in a fainting fit. I thought it time to lock his things up then.”
“Upon my word, I don’t know what’s to be done,” resumed Roland, growing quite hot with dismay and perplexity, at the prospect of some extra work for himself. “Look here!” exhibiting the parchments on Jenkins’s desk, all so neatly left—“here’s an array! Jenkins did not intend to stay away, when he left those last night, I know.”
“He intend to stay away! catch him thinking of it,” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “It is as I have just told him—that he’d come in his coffin. And it’s my firm belief that if he knew a week’s holiday would save him from his coffin, he’d not take it, unless I was at his back to make him. It’s well he has somebody to look after him that’s not quite deficient of common sense!”
“Well, this is a plague!” grumbled Roland.
“So it is—for me, I know, if for nobody else,” was Mrs. Jenkins’s reply. “But there’s some plagues in the world that we must put up with, and make the best of, whether we like ‘em or not; and this is one of them. You’ll tell Mr. Galloway, please; it will save me waiting.”
However, as Mrs. Jenkins was departing, she encountered Mr. Galloway, and told him herself. He was both vexed and grieved to hear it; grieved on Jenkins’s score, vexed on his own. That Jenkins was growing very ill, he believed from his own observation, and it could not have happened at a more untoward time. Involuntarily, Mr. Galloway’s thoughts turned to Arthur Channing, and he wished he had him in the office still.
“You must turn over a new leaf from this very hour, Roland Yorke,” he observed to that gentleman, when he entered. “We must both of us buckle-to, if we are to get through the work.”
“It’s not possible, sir, that I can do Jenkins’s share and mine,” said Roland.
“If you only do Jenkins’s, I’ll do yours,” replied Mr. Galloway, significantly. “Understand me, Roland: I shall expect you to show yourself equal to this emergency. Put aside frivolity and idleness, and apply yourself in earnest. Jenkins has been in the habit of taking part of your work upon himself, as I believe no clerk living would have done; and, in return, you must now take his. I hope in a few days he may be with us again. Poor fellow, we shall feel his loss!”
Mr. Galloway had to go out in the course of the morning, and Roland was left alone to the cares and work of the office. It occurred to him that, as a preliminary step, he could not do better than open the window, that the sight of people passing (especially any of his acquaintances, with whom he might exchange greetings) should cheer him on at his hard work. Accordingly, he threw it up to its utmost extent, and went on with his writing, giving alternately one look to his task, and two to the street. Not many minutes had he been thus spurring on his industry, when he saw Arthur Channing pass.
“Hist—st—st!” called out Roland, by way of attracting his attention. “Come in, old fellow, will you? Here’s such a game!”