by Ellen Wood
“But nobody knows it was me,” said Lewis, eagerly.
“Just so: therefore your policy should be to keep still. As you please, though, of course.”
“You won’t tell of me, Mr. Prattleton?”
“Not I, faith! It’s no affair of mine; but I’d not recommend you to attempt it again, Lewis. Good morning; I’m going into the town.”
So early had they been abroad, and all this taken place, that it was not yet very much past seven, and when Henry Arkell reached the master’s house, some of the boys were only going out of it for morning school. The hour for assembling was seven, but in the winter season some irregularity in arriving was winked at, for the best of all possible reasons, that the masters were late themselves; and it was often half past before the senior boy called over the roll. Henry went upstairs to give his face a wash; the man-servant saw him going up, but supposed he had only returned for something he might have forgotten. Neither of the Lewises was in the room, and he found his own bed tumbled as if he had slept in it. This of course had been Lewis’s care; but Henry wondered at it. If Lewis had done it out of good nature, that his absence should not be observed, he must have changed greatly. It must be remembered that he knew nothing of Lewis’s having locked him in the church; he supposed that must have been George Prattleton; but what he had seen tied his tongue from inquiring.
Jocelyn had done calling the roll when Henry got to the college hall. It was so unusual a thing for him to be marked late, that Jocelyn heaved his eyebrows in a sort of lazy surprise. Presently Jocelyn asked him in an undertone where he had been the previous evening.
“You missed me, then?” said Henry.
“Missed you! — we couldn’t help missing you; you had not got back at bed-time. I suppose you were at the deanery — and got home at eleven? It’s fine to be you! How’s Miss Beauclerc?”
“As well as usual,” replied Henry, with a nod and a laugh, to keep up the deception. Jocelyn’s assumed idea was the most convenient one that could have been taken up.
Henry threw his eyes round the school in search of the Lewises. Surely they must know of his night’s absence. The elder one he could not see; but the younger was at his desk with a red and sullen face, the effects of the private beating. He sat down to his lessons, with what courage he had, after his vigil; and presently, happening to look up, he saw Lewis senior.
Lewis senior was stealthily regarding him over the corner of a desk, with as much inward curiosity as though he had risen from the dead. Lewis was in a perplexed state of mystification yet. There Arkell was, sure enough; alive, and apparently well. He had not become an idiot; that, Lewis could see; he had not parted with his arms and legs. How had he got out? But the relief, to find him thus, was so great to Lewis’s mind, that his spirits rose to a reckless height; and he was insolent to Jocelyn when the latter spoke to him about coming in after the roll was called.
At breakfast time Henry went in search of George Prattleton, but could not see him; the probability was that Mr. George had gone to bed again, and was taking out his night’s rest by daylight. He sought him again at dinner-time, and then he had gone out; the two Prattleton boys thought to the billiard rooms. In the afternoon, however, as Henry was passing through the cloisters to the school, after service in the cathedral, he met him.
George Prattleton listened with an air of apparent incredulity to the tale; Henry had got locked up in the church, and seen him and a stranger go into the church at midnight, or thereabouts! — him, George Prattleton! Mr. George denied it in toto; and expressed his belief that Henry must have been dreaming.
“It’s of no use talking like that, George Prattleton,” said Henry, in a vexed tone. “You know quite well you were there. I saw the same man with you in the Grounds, the previous night, when I was going home after the audit-dinner.”
“You must have seen double, then! I don’t know whom you are talking of. Had you been drinking?”
“It won’t do, George Prattleton. I was in full possession of both my sight and senses. You know whom I mean. His name’s Rolls.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“No; but you did. I heard you call him by his name two or three times in the church last night. I want to know what I am to do about it.”
“I don’t know any Rolls; and I was not in the church last night; and my full persuasion is — if you really were locked in, as you say — that you fell asleep and dreamt this story.”
“Now look you here, George Prattleton; if you persist in this line of denial, I shall be obliged to tell Mr. Wilberforce. I don’t like to do it; your family and mine are intimate, and we have received many kindnesses from them, and I assure you I’d almost rather cut my tongue out than speak. But I can’t let things go on at this uncertainty. Do you know what that Rolls did?”
“What did he do?” was the mocking rejoinder.
“He cut a leaf out of the register book.”
“No?” shouted George Prattleton, the words scaring him to seriousness.
“I declare he did. When the candle went out, you thought it went out of itself, didn’t you; well, he blew it out. I saw him blow it, and he called out, ‘What a beast of a candle,’ and said it was the damp put it out, and he got you to go for the matches. Was it not so?”
“Well?” said George Prattleton, too much alarmed to heed the half admission.
“Well, you had no sooner gone than he somehow got the candle alight again; I didn’t see how, I suppose he had matches; and he took out a penknife, and put what looked like a thin board behind the leaf he was looking at, and cut it out. I say I’m not sure! but it’s transportation for life to rob a church register.”
George Prattleton wound his arm round one of the cloister pillars: face, heart, senses, alike scared. To give him his due, he would no more have countenanced a thing like this than he would have committed murder. All denial to Henry was over; and he felt half dead as he glanced forward to future consequences, and their effect upon his own reputation.
“You saw all this! Why on earth did you not pounce in upon him? or help me when I got back with the matches?”
“Because I was bewildered — frightened, if you will; and it all passed so quickly. I knew afterwards that it was what I ought to have done; but one can’t do always the right thing at the right time.”
“He put the leaf in his pocket, you say? It may not be destroyed. I — —”
“Do you know what it related to?” interrupted Henry.
“Yes; to some old tithe cause — a dispute in a family he knows; people of the name of Whiffam,” answered George Prattleton. “Some trifling cause, he said.”
“Well, it’s an awfully dangerous thing to do, let it relate to ever so trifling a cause,” observed Henry. “Who is this Rolls? Do you know him well?”
“Three days back I did not know him from Adam,” was the candid admission. “We met at the billiard rooms; and, somehow, we got thick directly. That night, when you saw us in the grounds, he was sounding me on this very thing — whether I could not get him a sight of the register.”
“What’s to be done about it?” asked Henry.
“I don’t know,” returned George Prattleton, flinging up his hands.
“It ought to be told to Mr. Wilberforce!”
“Be still, for heaven’s sake! Would you ruin me? You must give me your promise, Henry Arkell, not to betray this; now, before we part.”
“I don’t wish to betray it; I’d do anything rather than bring trouble upon you. But it ought to be told.”
“Nobody living may be the worse for what Rolls has done; nobody may ever hear of it more. Of course I shall charge him with his duplicity, and get the leaf back from him, if it is not destroyed, and replace it in the book. In that case, nobody can be the worse. Give me your promise.”
Henry did not see what else he could do. If the leaf could be got back, and replaced, to speak of the abstraction might be productive of needless, gratuitous harm to George Prattleton. He p
ut his hand into George’s.
“You have my promise,” he said; “but on one condition. I will never speak of this, so long as I am unaware of any urgent necessity existing for its disclosure. But should that necessity come, then I shall ask you to release me from my promise; and if you decline, I shall consider myself no longer bound by it.”
“Very well; a bargain,” said George Prattleton, after a pause. “And now I’m after that scoundrel Rolls. I’ll tell you a secret before I go — tit for tat. Do you know how you got fastened in the church?”
“I suppose you did it, not knowing I was there.”
“Not I. It was Lewis.”
“Lewis!”
“Lewis senior. For a lark, he said, but I expect he owed you some grudge. By the way, though, I promised him I’d not speak of this; he told it me in confidence. I forgot that.”
“I’ll not speak of it. I can’t, if I am to keep the other a secret. It was only the difficulty of accounting for my getting out of the church, that kept me from asking Hunt how I got locked in.”
They parted. Mr. George Prattleton went in search of his friend Rolls, and Henry tore along the cloisters with all his might, anticipating he knew not what of reprimand from the head master for lingering on his way from college. It was close upon four o’clock, and his desk had some Greek to do yet; but the afternoon lessons were less regularly performed in winter than in summer.
CHAPTER XVII.
A SHADOW OF THE FUTURE.
On the second of December, Peter Arkell and his family came home, looking blooming. Eva Prattleton, who had stayed with them all the time, was blooming; as was Lucy; as was, for her, Mrs. Arkell. Even Peter himself looked quite a different man from the one who had gone away in July. Ah, my friends, there’s nothing like running away from home to restore health and looks, if you can only leave care behind.
Quite a small crowd had assembled to meet them at the station. Nearly all the Prattleton family, including Mr. George, who was dreadfully in want just now of some distraction for his long hours. The two young Prattletons and Henry Arkell had rushed up, books in hand, just as they came out of school; and Travice Arkell, he was there. Handsome Travice! the best-looking young man in Westerbury when Frederick St. John was out of it.
“How have you been, Lucy?” he whispered, quietly coming near her, when he had done greeting the rest.
She shyly looked up at him as he took her hand. Scarcely a word was spoken. His head was bent for a moment over her blushing cheeks, and Travice looked as if he would very much have liked to take a kiss from the red ripe lips. It was impossible there; perhaps impossible elsewhere. Peter came up.
“Travice, I wish you’d see to the luggage, and that; and put my wife in a fly. There’s enough of you here without me. I shall walk quietly on.”
Just the same shy, awkward, incapable Peter Arkell as of yore. In usefulness his daughter Lucy was worth ten of him. He slipped out of the station by the least-frequented way, and walked on towards home. As he was going along, he met Kenneth, Mr. Fauntleroy’s confidential clerk; and the latter stopped.
“I’m glad I met you,” said Kenneth; “it will save me a journey to your house to-day, for we heard you’d be at home. How is it you have never sent us any money, Mr. Arkell?”
“Because I couldn’t send it,” returned Peter. “I wrote to Mr. Fauntleroy, telling him how impossible it was. I suppose he has managed it. He could if he liked, you know; it all lies in his hands.”
“Ah, but he couldn’t,” answered Kenneth. “He had been too easy in one or two matters (I don’t allude to your affairs), and had got involved in a good deal of expense through it; and the consequence is, he has been obliged to adopt a stricter policy in general.”
“Mr. Fauntleroy knows how I was situated. In a strange place, you have to pay for everything as it comes in. I got a little teaching down there, and that helped; but it was not much.”
“Well, Mr. Fauntleroy thought you ought to have sent him some money,” persisted Kenneth. “And I’m not sure but he would have enforced it, had he not got it elsewhere.”
“Got it elsewhere! On my account? What do you mean, Kenneth?”
“Mr. Arkell gave him ten pounds.”
“Mr. Arkell gave him ten pounds!” almost shouted Peter. “How did that come about? Who said anything to Mr. Arkell?”
“I believe Mr. Fauntleroy happened to mention it accidentally. Or whether it was that he asked him for your exact address at the place, and said he was going to worry you for money, I’m not sure. I know Mr. Arkell said, better let you be quiet while you were there, and advanced the ten pounds.”
“Mr. Fauntleroy had no right to speak to my cousin about it at all, Mr. Kenneth. I regard it as a breach of good faith. I wrote and asked Mr. Fauntleroy to wait, and he might have done so. As to the address, he knew that, for I gave it him.”
“I’m in a hurry,” said Mr. Kenneth. “I thought I’d speak to you, because I know Mr. Fauntleroy intended to send to you as soon as you came home. Here’s another instalment due, now December’s come in.”
He went on his way. Peter Arkell looked after him for a minute, and then went on his. “Home to care! home to care!” he murmured with a sigh of pain.
Over and over again had Peter Arkell — not cursed, he was too good a man for that — but repented the day that placed him in the power of Mr. Fauntleroy. Some years previous to this, in a moment of great embarrassment, Peter Arkell had gone to Mr. Fauntleroy with his tale of woes. “Won’t you help me?” he asked; “I once helped you.” And Mr. Fauntleroy, entirely indifferent to his fellow-creature’s woes though he was at heart, had not the face to refuse, with the recollection of that past obligation upon him. He helped him in this way. He advanced Peter Arkell two or three hundred pounds at a heavy rate of interest. It was not his own money, he said — he really had none to spare — it was the money of a client who had left it in his hands to make some profitable use of. Of course Peter Arkell understood it: at least he believed he did — that the money was Mr. Fauntleroy’s own, and the plea of the client only put forth that the interest might be exacted — and his simple, honourable nature blushed for Mr. Fauntleroy. But he accepted it — he was too much in need of the assistance not to do it — and as the months and years went on he found himself unable to pay the interest. Things went on with some discomfort for a long time, and then Mr. Fauntleroy insisted on what he called some final arrangement being come to — that is, he said his client insisted upon it. The result was that Peter Arkell undertook to pay ten pounds every three months off the debt, interest, and costs, without the smallest notion how he could accomplish it. He had some learned book coming out, and if that turned up a trump card, he might be able to do it and more. But, when the book did come out it did not turn out a trump. The first ten pounds was due on the first of June last, and Peter had managed to pay it. The second ten was due on the first of September, and he wrote to Mr. Fauntleroy for grace. He now heard it had been paid by his cousin William Arkell. The third ten had been due the previous day, for this was the second of December. He would be able to pay this, for he had some money coming to him yet from the people who had rented his house, and, so far, that would be got rid of.
Peter might have paid it in another way. The first thing he saw on entering his home was a letter from his sister Mildred, and on opening it he found it contained a ten-pound note. These windfalls would come from Mildred now and then; and without them Peter had not an idea how he should have got along.
But not to his necessities did he appropriate this. The most prominent feeling swaying him then, was vexation that William Arkell should have been troubled about the matter — William, who had ever been so good to him — who had helped him out of more difficulties than the world knew of. In the impulse of the moment, without stopping to sit down, he went out again, carrying the note. He could not remember the day when he had been able to pay anything to his cousin, but at least he could do this.
Things were no
t prospering with the city, or with William Arkell. That the trade was going gradually down to ruin, to all but total extermination, he felt sure of now; and he bitterly regretted that Travice had cast in his lot with it. He had designed to send Travice to Oxford, to cause him to embrace one of the learned professions; but Travice had elected to follow his father, and Mr. Arkell had yielded — all just as it had been with himself in his own youth. None, save William Arkell himself, knew the care that was upon him, or how his property was dwindling down. Ever and anon there would come flashing a gleam of improvement in the trade, and rather large orders would come in, whispering hope for the future; but the orders and the hope soon faded again.
Peter entered the iron gates, and was turning to the left to the manufactory, when he saw Mr. Arkell at the dining-room window; so he went across to the house.
“No need to look for me abroad to-day, Peter,” said his cousin, opening the dining-room door and meeting him in the hall. “I am not well enough to go out.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Peter.
“I don’t know; I have had shivering fits all the morning — can do nothing but sit over this hot fire. Charlotte thinks it must be some sort of illness coming on; but I suppose it’s only a cold. So you have got back at last?”
“Now, just,” answered Peter, sitting down on the other side of the fire; “Travice said nothing about your illness; he was at the station.”
“Was he? I did not know he had gone out. Oh, he thinks it’s nothing, I dare say; I hope it will be nothing. What’s this?”
Peter had handed him the ten-pound note. “It is what you paid to Mr. Fauntleroy while I was away; and bitterly vexed I am, to think he should have applied to you. I met Kenneth in leaving the station, and heard of it from him. But, William, I want to know why you paid it. Did Fauntleroy hold out any threats to you?”
“Something to that effect. He spoke of putting an execution into your house: it would not have done at all, you know, while strangers were in it. I never knew that he had got judgment.”