by Ellen Wood
“Now then,” said Roland, stirring up the fire of his own accord, and making himself at home, as he liked to do wherever he might be, “I want to know all about everybody.”
Mrs. Jones turned her chair towards him with a jerk; and Roland put question after question about the old city, which he had so abruptly quitted more than seven years before. It may be that Mrs. Jones recognized in him a kind of fellow-sufferer. Neither of them cared to see Helstonleigh again, unless under the auspices of a more propitious fate than the present. Any way, she was gracious to Roland, and gave him information as fast as he asked for it, repeating some things he had heard before. He persisted in calling her Mrs. Jenkins, saying it came more natural than the other name.
Mr. Channing was dead. His eldest son Hamish was living in London. Arthur was Mr. Galloway’s right hand; Tom was a clergyman, and just made a minor canon of the old cathedral; Charley Mrs. Jones knew nothing about, except that he was in India. The college school had got a new master. Mr. Ketch was reposing in a damp green nook, side by side with old Jenkins the bedesman. Hamish Channing’s bank had come to grief, Mrs. Jenkins did not know how. In the panic, she believed.
“And that beautiful kinsman of mine, William Yorke, reigns at Hazeldon, and old Galloway is flourishing in his office, with his flaxen curls!” burst forth Roland, suddenly struck with a weighty sense of injustice. “The bad people get the luck of it in this world, Mrs. Jenkins; the deserving ones go begging. Hamish Channing’s bank come to grief; — bright Hamish! And look at me! — and you! I never saw such a world as this, with its miserable ups and downs.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Jones with a touch of her native tartness, “it’s a good thing there’s another world to come after. We may find that a better one.”
The prospect (probably from being regarded as rather far-off) did not appear to afford present satisfaction to Roland. He sat pulling at his whiskers, moodily resenting the general blindness of Fortune in regard to merit, and then suddenly wheeled round to his own affairs.
“I say, Mrs. J.” — a compromise between the two names and serving for both— “I want a lodging. Couldn’t you let me come here?”
She looked up briskly. “What kind of a lodging? I mean as to position and price.”
“Oh, something comfortable,” said Roland.
Perhaps for old acquaintance’ sake, perhaps because she had some apartments vacant, Mrs. Jones appeared to regard the proposition with no disfavour, and began to talk of her house’s accommodation.
“The rooms on the first floor are very good and well furnished,” she said. “When I was about it, Mr.
Yorke, I thought I might as well have things nice as not, one finds the return; and the drawing-room floor naturally gets served the best. There’s a piano in the front room, and the bed in the back room is excellent.”
“They’d be just the thing for me,” cried Roland, rising to walk about in pleasurable excitement. “What’s the rent?”
“They are let for a pound a week. Mr.”
“That’ll do; I can pay it,” said he eagerly. “I don’t play the piano myself, but it may be useful if I give a party. You’ll cook for me?”
“Of course we’ll cook,” said Mrs. Jones. “But I was about to tell you that those rooms are let to a clergyman. If you—”
Roland had come to an abrupt anchor at the edge of the table, and the look of blank dismay on his face was such as to cut short Mrs. Jones’s speech. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Mrs. J., I couldn’t give it; I was forgetting. They are to pay me a pound a-week at Greatorex’s; but I can’t spend it all in lodgings, I’m afraid. There’ll be other things wanted.”
“Other things!” ejaculated Mrs. Jones. “I should think there would be other things. Food, and drink, and firing, and light, and wear and tear of clothes, and washing; and a hundred extras beside.”
Roland sat in perplexity. Ways and means seem to have grown dark together.
“Couldn’t you let me one room? A room with a turn-up bedstead in it, Mrs. Jenkins, or something of that? Couldn’t you take the pound a-week, and do for me?”
“I don’t know but I might make some such arrangement, and let you have the front parlour,” she slowly said. “We’ve got a Scripture reader in the back one.”
Roland started up impulsively to look at the front parlour, intending to take it, off-hand. As they quitted the room — which was built out at the back, on the staircase that led down to the kitchen — Roland saw a tall, fair, good-looking young woman, who stopped and asked some question of Mrs. Jones. Which that lady answered sharply.
“I have no time to talk about trifles now, Alletha.”
“Who’s that?” cried Roland, as they entered the parlour: a small room with a dark paper and faded red curtains.
“It’s my sister, Mr. Yorke.”
“I say, Mrs. J., this is a stunning room,” exclaimed Roland, who was in that eager mood, of his, when all things looked couleur-de-rose. “Can I come in today?”
“You can come to-morrow, if we agree. That sofa lets out into a bedstead at night. You must not get into my debt, though, Mr. Yorke,” she added, in the plain, straightforward way that was habitual with her. “I couldn’t afford it, and I tell you so beforehand.”
“I’ll never do that,” said Roland, impulsively earnest in his sincerity. “I’ll bring you home the pound each week, and then I shan’t be tempted to change it. Look here” — taking two sovereigns from his pocket— “that’s to steer on ahead with. Does she live here?” he added, going back without ceremony to the subject of Miss Rye. “Alletha, do you call her? What an odd name!”
“The name was a mistake of the parson’s when she was christened. It was to have been Allethea. I’ve had her with me four or five years now. She is a dressmaker, Mr. Yorke, and works sometimes at home, and sometimes out.”
“She’d be uncommonly good-looking if she were not such a shadow,” commented Roland with candour.
Mrs. Jones gave her head a toss, as if the topic displeased her. “Shadow, indeed! Yes, and she’s likely to be one. Never was any pig more obstinate than she.”
“Pigs!” cried Roland with energy, “you should see the obstinacy of Natal pigs, Mrs. J. I have. Drove ’em too.”
“It couldn’t equal hers,” disputed Mrs. J., with intense acrimony. “She is wedded to the memory of a runaway villain, Mr. Yorke, that’s what she is! A good opportunity presented itself to her lately of settling, but she’d not take it. She’d sooner fret out her life after him, than look upon an honest man. Tie two pigs together by the tail, and let ’em pull two ways till they drop, they’d not equal her. And for a runaway; a man that disgraced himself!”
“What did he do?” asked curious Roland.
“It’s not very good to repeat,” said Mrs. Jones tartly. “She lived in Birmingham, our native place, till the mother died, and then she came to me at Helstonleigh. First thing she tells me was, that she was engaged to be married to some young man in an office there, George Winter: and over she goes to Birmingham the next Christmas on a visit to her aunt, on purpose to meet him: stays there a week, and comes home again. Well, Mr. Yorke, this grand young man, this George Winter, about whom I had my doubts, though I’d never seen him, got into trouble before three more months had gone by: he and a fellow-clerk did something wrong with the money, and Winter decamped.”
“I wonder if he went to Port Natal?” mused Roland. “We had some queer people over there.”
“It don’t much matter where he went,” returned Mrs. Jones, hotly. “He did go, and he never came back, and he took Alletha’s common sense away with him: what with him and what with the dreadful affair at our house of that poor Mr. Ollivera, she has never been herself since. It both happened about the same time.”
Roland recalled what he had recently heard from Jenner regarding the death of the barrister, and felt a little at sea. “What was Ollivera to her?” he asked.
“What! why, nothing,” said M
rs. Jones. “And she’s no better than a lunatic to have taken it as she did. Whether it’s that, or whether it’s the pining after the other precious runaway, I don’t know, but one of the two’s preying upon her. There’s Mr. Ollivera!”
Roland went to the window. In the street, talking, stood a dark, small man in the garb of a clergyman, with a grave but not unpleasant face, and sad dark eyes.
“Oh, that’s Mr. Ollivera, is it?” quoth Roland. “He looks another shadow.”
“And it is another case of obstinacy,” rejoined Mrs. Jones. “He has refused all along to believe that his brother killed himself; you could as soon make him think the sun never shone. He comes to my parlour and talks to me about it by the hour together, with his note-case in his hand, till Alletha can’t sit any longer, and goes rushing off with her work like any mad woman.”
“Why should she rush off? What harm does it do to her?”
“I don’t know: it’s one of the puzzles to be found out. His coming here was a curious thing, Mr. Yorke. One day I was standing at the front door, and saw a young clergyman passing. He looked at me, and stopped; and I knew him for Henry Ollivera, though we had only met at the time of the death. When I told him I had rooms to let, and very nice ones, for it struck me that perhaps he might be able to recommend them, he looked out in that thoughtful, dreamy way he has, (look at his eyes now, Mr. Yorke!) seeing nothing, I’m certain; and then said he’d go up and look at the rooms; and we went up. Would you believe that he took them for himself on the spot?”
“What a brick!” cried Roland, who was following out suggested ideas but imperfectly. “I’ll take this one.”
“Alletha gave a great cry when she heard he was coming, and said it was Fate. I demanded what she meant by that, but she’d not open her lips further. Talk of Natal pigs, forsooth, she’s worse. He took possession of the rooms within the week; and I say, Mr. Yorke, that, Fate or not Fate, he never had but one object in coming — the sifting of that past calamity. His poor mistaken mind is ever on the rack to bring some discovery to light. It’s like that search one reads of, after the philosopher’s stone.”
Roland laughed. He was not very profound himself, but the philosopher’s stone and Mrs. Jones seemed utterly at variance.
“It does,” she said. “For there’s no stone to be found in the one case, and no discovery to be made in the other, beyond what has been made. I don’t say this to the parson, Mr. Yorke; I listen to him and humour him for the sake of his dead brother.”
“Well, I shan’t bother you about dead people, Mrs. J., so you let me the room.”
The bargain was not difficult. Every suggestion made by Mrs. Jones, he acceded to before it had well left her lips. He had fallen into good hands. Whatever might be Mrs. Jones’s faults of manner and temper, she was strictly just, regarding Roland’s interests at least in an equal degree with her own.
“Do you know,” said Roland, nursing his knee as the bargain concluded, “I have never felt so much at home since I left it, as I did just now by your fire, Mrs. J.? I’m uncommon glad I came here.”
He was genuine in what he said: indeed Roland could but be genuine always, too much so sometimes. Mrs. J. — as he called her — brought back so vividly the old home life of his boyhood, now gone by for ever, that it was like being at Helstonleigh again.
“My eldest brother, George, is dead,” said Roland. “Gerald is grand with his chambers and his club, and is married besides, but I’ve not seen him. Tod is in the army: do you remember him? an awful young scamp he was, his face all manner of colours from fighting, and his clothes torn to that degree that Lady Augusta used to threaten to send him to school without any. Where’s your husband, number two, Mrs. J.?”
“It is to be hoped he is where he will never come away from; he went sailing off three years ago from Liverpool,” she answered sharply; for, of all sore subjects, this of her second marriage was the worst. “Any way, I have made myself and my goods secure from him.”
“Perhaps he’s at Port Natal, driving pigs. He’ll find out what they are if he is.”
Mr. Ollivera was turning to the house. Roland opened the parlour door when he had passed it; to look after him.
Some one else was there. Peering out from a dark nook in the passage, her lips slightly apart, her eyes strained after the clergyman with a strange kind of fear in their depths, stood Alletha Rye. Mr. Ollivera suddenly turned back, as though he had forgotten something, and she shrank out of sight. Mrs. Jones introduced Roland. “Mr. Roland Yorke.”
Mr. Ollivera’s face was thin; his dark brown eyes shone with a flashing, restless, feverish light. Be you very sure when that peculiar light is seen, it betokens a mind ill at rest. The eyes fixed themselves on Roland: and perhaps there was something in the tall, fine form, in the good-nature of the strong-featured countenance, that recalled a memory to Mr. Ollivera. “Any relative of the Yorkes of Helstonleigh?”
“I should think so,” said Roland, “I am a Yorke of Helstonleigh. But I’ve not been there since I went to Port Natal, seven years and more ago. Do you know them, Mr. Ollivera?”
“I know a little of the minor-canon, William Yorke, and—”
“Oh! he!” curtly interrupted Roland, with a vast amount of scorn. “He is a beauty to know, he is.”
The remark, so like a flash of boyish resentment, excited a slight smile in Mr. Ollivera.
“Bill Yorke showed himself a cur once in his life, and it’s not me that’s going to forget it. He’d have cared for my telling him of it, too, had I come back worth a few millions from Port Natal, and gone about Helstonleigh in my carriage and four.”
Mr. Ollivera said some courteous words about hoping to make Roland’s better acquaintance, and departed. Roland suddenly remembered the claims of his office, and tore away at full speed.
Never slackening it until he reached the house of Greatorex and Greatorex; and there he very nearly knocked down a little girl who had just come out of the private entrance. Roland turned to apologise; but the words died on his lips, and he stood like one suddenly struck dumb, staring in silence.
In the pretty young lady, one of two who were talking together in the passage, and looked round at the commotion, Roland thought he recognised an old friend, now the wife of his cousin William Yorke. He bounded in, and seized her hands.
“You are Constance Channing?”
“No,” replied the young lady, with wondering eyes, “I am Annabel.”
Mr. Roland Yorke’s first movement was to take the sweet face between his hands, and kiss it tenderly. Struggling, blushing, almost weeping, the young lady drew back against the wall.
“How dare you?” she demanded in bitter resentment. “Are you out of your mind, sir?”
“Good gracious, Annabel, don’t you know me? I am your old playfellow, Roland Yorke.”
“Does that give you any right to insult me? I might have known it was no one else,” she added in the moment’s anger.
“Why, Annabel, it was only done in my great joy. I had used to kiss you, you remember: you were but a little mite then, and I was a great big tease. Oh, I am so glad to see you! I’d rather have met you than all the world. You can’t be angry with me. Shake hands and be friends.”
To remain long at variance with Roland was one of the impossibilities of social life. He possessed himself of Annabel Channing’s hand and nearly shook it off. What with his hearty words, and what (may it be confessed, even of Annabel) with the flattery of his praises and genuine admiration, Annabel’s smiles broke forth amidst her blushes. Roland’s eyes looked as if they would devour her.
“I say, I never saw anybody so pretty in all my life. It is the nicest face; just like what Constance’s used to be. I thought it was Constance, you know. Was she not daft, though, to go and take up again with that miserable William Yorke?”
Standing by, having looked on with a smile of grand pity mingled with amusement, was a lady in most fashionable attire, the amount of hair on her head something marvellous
to look at.
“I should have known Roland Yorke anywhere,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Why, if I don’t believe it’s one of the Joliffes!”
“Hush, Roland,” said Annabel, hastening to stop his freedom, and the tone proved that she had nearly forgiven him on her own score. “This is Mrs. Bede Greatorex.”
“Formerly Louisa Joliffe,” put in that lady. “Now do you know me?”
“Well, I never met with such a strange thing,” cried Roland. “That makes three — four — of the old Helstonleigh people I have met to-day. Hurst, Mrs. J., and now you two. I think there must be magic in it.”
“You must come and see me soon, Roland,” said Mrs. Greatorex as she went out. Miss Channing waited for the little girl, Jane Greatorex, who had run in her wilful manner into her uncle Bede’s office. Roland offered to fetch her.
“Thank you,” said Miss Channing. “Do you know which is the office?”
“Know! law bless you!” cried Roland. “What do you suppose I am, Annabel? Clerk to Greatorex and Greatorex.”
Her cheeks flushed with surprise. “Clerk to Greatorex and Greatorex! I thought you went to Port Natal to make your fortune.”
“But I did not make it. It has been nothing but knocking about; then and since. Carrick is a trump, as he always was, but he gets floored himself sometimes; and that’s his case now. If they had not given me a stool here (which he got for me) I’m not sure but I should have gone into the hot-pie line.”
“The — what?”
“The hot-pie line; crying them in the streets, you know, with a basket and a white cloth, and a paper cap on. There’s a fine opening for it down in Poplar.”
Miss Channing burst out laughing.
“It would be nothing to a fellow who has been over yonder,” avowed Roland, jerking his head in the direction Port Natal might be supposed to lie. And then leaping to a widely different subject in his volatile lightness, he said something that brought the tears to her eyes, the drooping tremor to her lips.