“MY DEAR LITTLE CHARLEY,”
“How is it you do not write to mamma? Not a message from you now: not a letter! I am sure you are not forgetting me.”
“Poor boy!” exclaimed Mr. Huntley, handing it back to Hamish. “Poor mother!”
“I did not show it to Constance,” observed Hamish. “It would only distress her. Good night, sir. By the way,” added Hamish, turning as he reached the door: “Mr. Galloway has received that money back again.”
“What money?” cried Mr. Huntley.
“That which was lost. A twenty-pound note came to him in a letter by this afternoon’s post. The letter states that Arthur, and all others who may have been accused, are innocent.”
“Oh, indeed!” cried Mr. Huntley, with cutting sarcasm, as the conviction flashed over him that Hamish, and no other, had been the sender. “The thief has come to his senses at last, has he? So far as to render lame justice to Arthur.”
Hamish left the room. The hall had not yet been lighted, and Hamish could hardly see the outline of a form, crossing it from the staircase to the drawing-room. He knew whose it was, and he caught it to him.
“Ellen,” he whispered, “what has turned your father against me?”
Of course she could not enlighten him; she could not say to Hamish Channing, “He suspects you of being a thief.” Her whole spirit would have revolted from that, as much as it did from the accusation. The subject was a painful one; she was flurried at the sudden meeting—the stealthy meeting, it may be said; and—she burst into tears.
I am quite afraid to say what Mr. Hamish did, this being a sober story. When he left the hall, Ellen Huntley’s cheeks were glowing, and certain sweet words were ringing changes in her ears.
“Ellen! they shall never take you from me!”
CHAPTER XLVIII. – MUFFINS FOR TEA
A week or two passed by, and November was rapidly approaching. Things remained precisely as they were at the close of the last chapter: nothing fresh had occurred; no change had taken place. Tom Channing’s remark, though much cannot be said for its elegance, was indisputable in point of truth—that when a fellow was down, he was kept down, and every dog had a fling at him It was being exemplified in the case of Arthur. The money, so mysteriously conveyed to Mr. Galloway, had proved of little service towards clearing him; in fact, it had the contrary effect; and people openly expressed their opinion that it had come from himself or his friends. He was down; and it would take more than that to lift him up again.
Mr. Galloway kept his thoughts to himself, or had put them into his cash-box with the note, for he said nothing.
Roland Yorke did not imitate his example; he was almost as explosive over the present matter as he had been over the loss. It would have pleased him that Arthur should be declared innocent by public proclamation. Roland was in a most explosive frame of mind on another score, and that was the confinement to the office. In reality, he was not overworked; for Arthur managed to get through a great amount of it at home, which he took in regularly, morning after morning, to Mr. Galloway. Roland, however, thought he was, and his dissatisfaction was becoming unbearable. I do not think that Roland could have done a hard day’s work. To sit steadily to it for only a couple of hours appeared to be an absolute impossibility to his restless temperament. He must look off; he must talk; he must yawn; he must tilt his stool; he must take a slight interlude at balancing the ruler on his nose, or at other similar recreative and intellectual amusements; but, apply himself in earnest, he could not. Therefore there was little fear of Mr. Roland’s being overcome with the amount of work on hand.
But what told upon Roland was the confinement—I don’t mean upon his health, you know, but his temper. It had happened many a day since Jenkins’s absence, that Roland had never stirred from the office, except for his dinner. He must be there in good time in the morning—at the frightfully early hour of nine—and he often was not released until six. When he went to dinner at one, Mr. Galloway would say, “You must be back in half an hour, Yorke; I may have to go out.” Once or twice he had not gone to dinner until two or three o’clock, and then he was half dead with hunger. All this chafed poor Roland nearly beyond endurance.
Another cause was rendering Roland’s life not the most peaceful one. He was beginning to be seriously dunned for money. Careless in that, as he was in other things, improvident as was ever Lady Augusta, Roland rarely paid until he was compelled to do so. A very good hand was he at contracting debts, but a bad one at liquidating them. Roland did not intend to be dishonest. Were all his creditors standing around him, and a roll of bank-notes before him he would freely have paid them all; very probably, in his openheartedness, have made each creditor a present, over and above, for “his trouble.” But, failing the roll of notes, he only staved off the difficulties in the best way he could, and grew cross and ill-tempered on being applied to. His chief failing was his impulsive thoughtlessness. Often, when he had teased or worried Lady Augusta out of money, to satisfy a debt for which he was being pressed, that very money would be spent in some passing folly, arising with the impulse of the moment, before it had had time to reach the creditor. There are too many in the world like Roland Yorke.
Roland was late in the office one Monday evening, he and a lamp sharing it between them. He was in a terrible temper, and sat kicking his feet on the floor, as if the noise, for it might be heard in the street, would while away the time. He had nothing to do; the writing he had been about was positively finished; but he had to remain in, waiting for Mr. Galloway, who was absent, but had not left the office for the evening. He would have given the whole world to take his pipe out of his pocket and begin to smoke; but that pastime was so firmly forbidden in the office, that even Roland dared not disobey.
“There goes six of ‘em!” he uttered, as the cathedral clock rang out the hour, and his boots threatened to stave in the floor. “If I stand this life much longer, I’ll be shot! It’s enough to take the spirit out of a fellow; to wear the flesh off his bones; to afflict him with nervous fever. What an idiot I was to let my lady mother put me here! Better have stuck to those musty old lessons at school, and gone in for a parson! Why can’t Jenkins get well, and come back? He’s shirking it, that’s my belief. And why can’t Galloway have Arthur back? He might, if he pressed it! Talk of solitary confinement driving prisoners mad, at their precious model prisons, what else is this? I wish I could go mad for a week, if old Galloway might be punished for it! It’s worse than any prison, this office! At four o’clock he went out, and now it’s six, and I have not had a blessed soul put his nose inside the door to say, ‘How are you getting on?’ I’m a regular prisoner, and nothing else. Why doesn’t he—”
The complaint was cut short by the entrance of Mr. Galloway. Unconscious of the rebellious feelings of his clerk, he passed through the office to his own room, Roland’s rat-tat-to having ceased at his appearance. To find Roland drumming the floor with his feet was nothing unusual—rather moderate for him; Mr. Galloway had found him doing it with his head. Two or three minutes elapsed, and Mr. Galloway came out again.
“You can shut up, Roland. And then, take these letters to the post. Put the desks straight first; what a mess you get them into. Is that will engrossed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well! Be here in time in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night, sir,” responded Roland. “Yes! it’s all very fine,” he went on, as he opened the desks, and shoved everything in with his hands, indiscriminately, en masse, which was his way of putting things straight. “‘Be here in time!’ Of course! No matter what time I am let off the previous evening. If I stand this long—”
Roland finished his sentence by an emphatic turn of the key of the office-door, which expressed quite as much as words could have done; for he was already out of the room, his hat on his head, and the letters in his hand. Calling out lustily for the housekeeper, he flung the key to her, and bounded off in the direction of the post-office.
His way lay past Mrs. Jenkins’s shop, which the maid had, for the hour, been left to attend to. She was doing it from a leaf taken out of Roland’s own book—standing outside the door, and gazing all ways. It suddenly struck Roland that he could not do better than pay Jenkins a visit, just to ascertain how long he meant to absent himself. In he darted, with his usual absence of hesitation, and went on to the parlour. There was no hurry for the letters; the post did not close until nine.
The little parlour, dark by day, looked very comfortable now. A bright fire, a bright lamp, and a well-spread tea-table, at which Mrs. Jenkins sat. More comfortable than Jenkins himself did, who lay back in his easy-chair, white and wan, meekly enjoying a lecture from his wife. He started from it at the appearance of Roland, bowing in his usual humble fashion, and smiling a glad welcome.
“I say, Jenkins, I have come to know how long you mean to leave us to ourselves?” was Roland’s greeting. “It’s too bad, you know. How d’ye do, Mrs. Jenkins? Don’t you look snug here? It’s a nasty cutting night, and I have to tramp all the way to the post-office.”
Free and easy Roland drew a chair forward on the opposite side of the hearth to Jenkins, Mrs. Jenkins and her good things being in the middle, and warmed his hands over the blaze. “Ugh!” he shivered, “I can’t bear these keen, easterly winds. It’s fine to be you, Jenkins! basking by a blazing fire, and junketing upon plates of buttered muffins!”
“Would you please to condescend to take a cup of tea with us, sir?” was Jenkins’s answer. “It is just ready.”
“I don’t care if I do,” said Roland. “There’s nothing I like better than buttered muffins. We get them sometimes at home; but there’s so many to eat at our house, that before a plate is well in, a dozen hands are snatching at it, and it’s emptied. Lady Augusta knows no more about comfort than a cow does, and she will have the whole tribe of young ones in to meals.”
“You’ll find these muffins different from what you get at home,” said Mrs. Jenkins, in her curt, snappish, but really not inhospitable way, as she handed the muffins to Roland. “I know what it is when things are left to servants, as they are at your place; they turn out uneatable—soddened things, with rancid butter, nine times out of ten, instead of good, wholesome fresh. Servants’ cooking won’t do for Jenkins now, and it never did for me.”
“These are good, though!” exclaimed Roland, eating away with intense satisfaction. “Have you got any more downstairs? Mrs. Jenkins, don’t I wish you could always toast muffins for me! Is that some ham?”
His eyes had caught a small dish of ham, in delicate slices, put there to tempt poor Jenkins. But he was growing beyond such tempting now, for his appetite wholly failed him. It was upon this point he had been undergoing Mrs. Jenkins’s displeasure when Roland interrupted them. The question led to an excellent opportunity for renewing the grievance, and she was too persistent a diplomatist to let it slip. Catching up the dish, and leaving her chair, she held it out before Roland’s eyes.
“Young Mr. Yorke, do you see anything the matter with that ham? Please to tell me.”
“I see that it looks uncommonly good,” replied Roland.
“Do you hear?” sharply ejaculated Mrs. Jenkins, turning short round upon her husband.
“My dear, I never said a word but what it was good; I never had any other thought,” returned he, with deprecation. “I only said that I could not eat it. I can’t—indeed, I can’t! My appetite is gone.”
Mrs. Jenkins put the dish down upon the table with a jerk. “That’s how he goes on,” said she to Roland. “It’s enough to wear a woman’s patience out! I get him muffins, I get him ham, I get him fowls, I get him fish, I get him puddings, I get him every conceivable nicety that I can think of, and not a thing will he touch. All the satisfaction I can get from him is, that ‘his stomach turns against food!’”
“I wish I could eat,” interposed Jenkins, mildly. “I have tried to do it till I can try no longer. I wish I could.”
“Will you take some of this ham, young Mr. Yorke?” she asked. “He won’t. He wants to know what scarcity of food is!”
“I’ll take it all, if you like,” said Roland. “If it’s going begging.”
Mrs. Jenkins accommodated him with a plate and knife and fork, and with some more muffins. Roland did ample justice to the whole, despatching it down with about six cups of good tea, well sugared and creamed. Jenkins looked on with satisfaction, and Mrs. Jenkins appeared to regard it in the light of a personal compliment, as chief of the commissariat department.
“And now,” said Roland, turning back to the fire, “when are you coming out again, Jenkins?”
Jenkins coughed—more in hesitation for an answer, than of necessity. “I am beginning to think, sir, that I shall not get out again at all,” he presently said.
“Holloa! I say, Jenkins, don’t go and talk that rubbish!” was Roland’s reply. “You know what I told you once, about that dropsy. I heard of a man that took it into his head to fancy himself dead. And he ordered a coffin, and lay down in it, and stopped in it for six days, only getting up at night to steal the bread and cheese! His folks couldn’t think, at first, where the loaves went to. You’ll be fancying the same, if you don’t mind!”
“If I could only get a little stronger, sir, instead of weaker, I should soon be at my duty again. I am anxious enough sir, as you may imagine, for there’s my salary, sir, coming to me as usual, and I doing nothing for it.”
“It’s just this, Jenkins, that if you don’t come back speedily, I shall take French leave, and be off some fine morning. I can’t stand it much longer. I can’t tell you how many blessed hours at a stretch am I in that office with no one to speak to. I wish I was at Port Natal!”
“Sir,” said Jenkins, thinking he would say a word of warning, in his kindly spirit: “I have heard that there’s nothing more deceptive than those foreign parts that people flock to when the rage arises for them. Many a man only goes out to starve and die.”
“Many a muff, you mean!” returned self-complaisant Roland. “I say, Jenkins, isn’t it a shame about Arthur Channing? Galloway has his money back from the very thief himself, as the letter said, and yet the old grumbler won’t speak out like a man, and say, ‘Shake hands, old fellow,’ and ‘I know you are innocent, and come back to the office again.’ Arthur would return, if he said that. See if I don’t start for Port Natal!”
“I wish Mr. Arthur was back again, sir. It would make me easier.”
“He sits, and stews, and frets, and worries his brains about that office, and how it gets on without him!” tartly interposed Mrs. Jenkins. “A sick man can’t expect to grow better, if he is to fret himself into fiddlestrings!”
“I wish,” repeated poor Jenkins in a dreamy sort of mood, his eyes fixed on the fire, and his thin hands clasped upon his knees: “I do wish Mr. Arthur was back. In a little while he’d quite replace me, and I should not be missed.”
“Hear him!” uttered Mrs. Jenkins. “That’s how he goes on!”
“Well,” concluded Roland, rising, and gathering up his letters, which he had deposited upon a side table, “if this is not a nice part of the world to live in, I don’t know what is! Arthur Channing kept down under Galloway’s shameful injustice; Jenkins making out that things are all over with him; and I driven off my head doing everybody’s work! Good night, Jenkins. Good night, Mrs. J. That was a stunning tea! I’ll come in again some night, when you have toasted muffins!”
CHAPTER XLIX. – A CHÂTEAU EN ESPAGNE
A keen wind, blowing from the east, was booming through the streets of Helstonleigh, striking pitilessly the eyes and cheeks of the wayfarers, cutting thin forms nearly in two, and taking stout ones off their legs.
Blinded by the sharp dust, giving hard words to the wind, to the cold, to the post-office for not being nearer, to anything and everything, Roland Yorke dashed along, suffering nothing and no one to impede his progress. He flung the letters into the box at the post-office, when he reached that establishment, and then set off at the same pace back again.
Roland was in a state of inward commotion. He thought himself the most injured, the most hard-worked, the most-to-be-pitied fellow under the sun. The confinement in the office, with the additional work he had to get through there, was his chief grievance; and a grievance it really was to one of Roland’s temperament. When he had Arthur Channing and Jenkins for his companions in it, to whom he could talk as he pleased, and who did all the work, allowing Roland to do all the play, it had been tolerably bearable; but that state of things was changed, and Roland was feeling that he could bear it no longer.
Another thing that Roland would perhaps be allowed to bear no longer was—immunity from his debts. They had grown on him latterly, as much as the work had. Careless Roland saw no way out of that difficulty, any more than he did out of the other, except by an emigration to that desired haven which had stereotyped itself on the retina of his imagination in colours of the brightest phantasy—Port Natal. For its own sake, Roland was hurrying to get to it, as well as that it might be convenient to do so.
“Look here,” said he to himself, as he tore along, “even if Carrick were to set me all clear and straight—and I dare say he might, if I told him the bother I am in—where would be the good? It would not forward me. I wouldn’t stop at Galloway’s another month to be made into a royal duke. If he’d take back Arthur with honours, and Jenkins came out of his cough and his thinness and returned, I don’t know but I might do violence to my inclination and remain. I can’t, as it is. I should go dead with the worry and the work.”
Roland paused, fighting for an instant with a puff of wind and dust. Then he resumed:
“I’d pay my debts if I could; but, if I can’t, what am I to do but leave them unpaid? Much better get the money from Carrick to start me off to Port Natal, and set me going there. Then, when I have made enough, I’ll send the cash to Arthur, and get him to settle up for me. I don’t want to cheat the poor wretches out of their money; I’d rather pay ‘em double than do that. Some of them work hard enough to get it: almost as hard as I do at Galloway’s; and they have a right to their own. In three months’ time after landing, I shall be able to do the thing liberally. I’ll make up my mind from to-night, and go: I know it will be all for the best. Besides, there’s the other thing.”
What the “other thing” might mean, Mr. Roland did not state more explicitly. He came to another pause, and then went on again.
“That’s settled. I’ll tell my lady to-night, and I’ll tell Galloway in the morning; and I’ll fix on the time for starting, and be off to London, and see what I can do with Carrick. Let’s see! I shall want to take out lots of things. I can get them in London. When Bagshaw went, he told me of about a thousand. I think I dotted them down somewhere: I must look. Rum odds and ends they were: I know frying-pans were amongst them, Carrick will go with me to buy them, if I ask him; and then he’ll pay, if it’s only out of politeness. Nobody sticks out for politeness more than Carrick. He—”
Roland’s castles in the air were suddenly cut short. He was passing a dark part near the cathedral, when a rough hand—rough in texture, not in motion—was laid upon his shoulder, and a peculiar piece of paper thrust upon him. The assailant was Hopper, the sheriff’s officer.
Roland flew into one of his passions. He divined what it was, perfectly well: nothing less than one of those little mandates from our Sovereign Lady the Queen, which, a short time back, had imperilled Hamish Channing. He repaid Hopper with a specimen of his tongue, and flung the writ back at him.
“Now, sir, where’s the good of your abusing me, as if it was my fault?” returned the man, in a tone of remonstrance. “I have had it in my pocket this three weeks, Mr. Yorke, and not a day but I could have served it on you: but I’m loth to trouble young gentlemen such as you, as I’m sure many of you in this town could say. I have got into displeasure with our folk about the delay in this very paper, and—in short, sir, I have not done it, till I was obliged.”
“You old preacher!” foamed Roland. “I have not tipped you with half-a-crown lately, and therefore you can see me!”
“Mr. Yorke,” said the man, earnestly, “if you had filled my hands with half-crowns yesterday, I must have done this to-day. I tell you, sir, I have got into a row with our people over it; and it’s the truth. Why don’t you, sir—if I may presume to give advice—tell your little embarrassments to your mother, the Lady Augusta? She’d be sure to see you through them.”
“How dare you mention the Lady Augusta to me?” thundered haughty Roland. “Is it fitting that the Lady Augusta’s name should be bandied in such transactions as these? Do you think I don’t know what’s due to her better than that? If I have got into embarrassment, I shall not drag my mother into it.”
“Well, sir, you know best. I did not mean to offend you, but the contrary. Mind, Mr. Roland Yorke!” added Hopper, pointing to the writ, which still lay where it had been flung: “you can leave it there if you choose, sir, but I have served it upon you.”
Hopper went his way. Roland caught up the paper, tore it to pieces with his strong hands, and tossed them after the man. The wind took up the quarrel, and scattered the pieces indiscriminately, right and left. Roland strode on.
“What a mercy that there’s a Port Natal to be off to!” was his comment.
Things were not particularly promising at home, when Roland entered, looking at them from a quiet, sociable point of view. Lady Augusta was spending the evening at the deanery, and the children, from Gerald downwards, were turning the general parlour into a bear-garden. Romping, quarrelling, shouting and screaming, they were really as unrestrained as so many young bears. It would often be no better when Lady Augusta was at home. How Gerald and Tod contrived to do their lessons amidst it was a marvel to every one. Roland administered a few cuffs, to enjoin silence, and then went out again, he did not much care where. His feet took him to the house of his friend, Knivett, with whom he spent a pleasant evening, the topics of conversation turning chiefly upon the glories of Port Natal, and Roland’s recent adventure with Hopper. Had anything been wanted to put the finishing touch to Roland’s resolution, that little adventure would have supplied it.
It was past ten when he returned home. The noisy throng had dispersed then, all except Gerald. Gerald had just accomplished his tasks, and was now gracefully enjoying a little repose before the fire; his head on the back of my lady’s low embroidered chair, and his feet extended on either hob.
“What’s for supper?” asked Roland, turning his eyes on the cloth, which bore traces that a party, and not a scrupulously tidy one, had already partaken of that meal.
“Bones,” said Gerald.
“Bones?” echoed Roland.
“Bones,” rejoined Gerald. “They made a show of broiling some downstairs, but they took good care to cut off the meat first. Where all the meat goes to in this house, I can’t think. If a good half of the leg of mutton didn’t go down from dinner to-day, I possessed no eyes.”
“They are not going to put me off with bones,” said Roland, ringing the bell. “When a man’s worked within an ace of his life, he must eat. Martha,”—when the maid appeared—“I want some supper.”
“There’s no meat in the house, sir. There were some broiled bo—”
“You may eat the bones yourself,” interrupted Roland. “I never saw such a house as this! Loads of provisions come into it, and yet there’s rarely anything to be had when it’s wanted. You must go and order me some oysters. Get four dozen. I am famished. If I hadn’t had a substantial tea, supplied me out of charity, I should be fainting before this! It’s a shame! I wonder my lady puts up with you two incapable servants.”
“There are no oysters to be had at this time, Mr. Roland,” returned Martha, who was accustomed to these interludes touching the housekeeping. “The shop shuts up at ten.”
Roland beat on the floor with the heel of his boot. Then he turned round fiercely to Martha. “Is there nothing in the house that’s eatable?”
“There’s an apple pie, sir.”
“Bring that, then. And while I am going into it, the cook can do me some eggs and ham.”
Gerald had turned round at this, angry in his turn, “If there’s an apple pie, Martha, why could you not have produced it for our supper? You know we were obliged to put up with cheese and butter!”
“Cook told me not to bring it up, Master Gerald. My lady gave no orders. Cook says if she made ten pies a day they’d get eaten, once you young gentlemen knew of their being in the house.”
“Well?” said Gerald. “She doesn’t provide them out of her own pocket.”
Roland paid his court to the apple pie, Gerald joining him. After it was finished, they kept the cook employed some time with the eggs and ham. Then Gerald, who had to be up betimes for morning school, went to bed; and I only hope he did not suffer from nightmare.
Roland took up his place before the fire, in the same chair and position vacated by Gerald. Thus he waited for Lady Augusta. It was not long before she came in.
“Come and sit down a bit, good mother,” said Roland. “I want to talk to you.”
“My dear, I am not in a talking humour,” she answered. “My head aches, and I shall be glad to get to bed. It was a stupid, humdrum evening.”
She was walking to the side table to light her bed-candle, but Roland interposed. He drew the couch close to the fire, settled his mother in it, and took his seat with her. She asked him what he had to say so particularly that night.
“I am going to tell you what it is. But don’t you fly out at me, mother dear,” he coaxingly added. “I find I can’t get along here at all, mother, and I shall be off to Port Natal.”
Lady Augusta did fly out—with a scream, and a start from her seat. Roland pulled her into it again.
“Now, mother, just listen to me quietly. I can’t bear my life at Galloway’s. I can’t do the work. If I stopped at it, I’m not sure but I should do something desperate. You wouldn’t like to see your son turn jockey, and ride in a pink silk jacket and yellow breeches on the race-course; and you wouldn’t like to see him enlist for a soldier, or run away for a sailor! Well, worse than that might come, if I stopped at Galloway’s. Taking it at the very best, I should only be worked into my grave.”
“I will not hear another word, Roland,” interrupted Lady Augusta. “How can you be so wicked and ungrateful?”
“What is there wicked in it?” asked Roland. “Besides, you don’t know all. I can’t tell you what I don’t owe in Helstonleigh, and I’ve not a sixpence to pay it with. You wouldn’t like to see me marched off to prison, mother.”
Lady Augusta gave another shriek.
“And there’s a third reason why I wish to be away,” went on Roland, drowning the noise. “But I’ll not go into that, because it concerns myself alone.”
Of course the announcement that it concerned himself alone, only made my lady the more inquisitive to hear it. She peremptorily ordered Roland to disclose it to her.
But Roland could be as peremptory as she, and he declined, in positive terms, to explain further.
“It would not afford you any pleasure, mother,” he said, “and I should not have mentioned it but as an additional reason why I must be off.”
“You unhappy boy! You have been doing something dreadful!”
“It’s not over-good,” acknowledged Roland. “Perhaps I’ll write you word all about it from London. I’ve not smothered William Yorke, or set old Galloway’s office on fire, and those respected gentlemen are my two bêtes noires. So don’t look so scared, mother.”
“Roland!” uttered Lady Augusta, as the fact struck her, “if you go off in this manner, all the money that was paid with you to Mr. Galloway will be lost! I might as well have sent it down the gutter.”
“So I said at the time,” answered cool Roland. “Never mind that, mother. What’s that paltry hundred or two, compared with the millions I shall make? And as to these folks that I owe money to—”
“They’ll be coming upon me,” interposed Lady Augusta. “Heaven knows, I have enough to pay.”
“They will do nothing of the sort,” said Roland. “You have no legal right to pay my debts. Not one of them but has been contracted since I was of age. If they come to you, tell them so.”
“Roland, Lord Carrick gave you money once or twice when he was here,” resumed Lady Augusta, “I know he did. What have you done with it all?”
“Money melts,” responded Roland. “Upon my word of honour, I do believe it must melt at times; it vanishes so quickly.”
My lady could not cavil at the assertion. She was only too much given to the same belief herself. Roland continued:
“In a little while—about three months, as I calculate—after my arrival at Port Natal, I shall be in a position to send funds home to pay what I owe; and be assured, I will faithfully send them. There is the finest opening, mother, at Port Natal! Fortunes are being made there daily. In a few years’ time I shall come home with my pockets lined, and shall settle down by you for life.”
“If I could only think the prospect was so good a one!” exclaimed Lady Augusta.
“It is good,” said Roland emphatically. “Why, mother, Port Natal is all the rage: hundreds are going out. Were there no reasons to urge me away, you would be doing the most unwise thing possible to stand in the light of my going. If I were at something that I liked, that I was not worked to death at; if I did not owe a shilling; if my prospects here, in short, were first-rate, and my life a bower of rose-leaves, I should do well to throw it all up for Port Natal.”