The Channings

“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!”

CHAPTER XLV. – A NEW SUSPICION

Arthur Channing had been walking leisurely down Close Street. Time hung heavily on his hands. In leaving the cathedral after morning service, he had joined Mr. Harper, the lay clerk, and went with him, talking, towards the town; partly because he had nothing to do elsewhere—partly because out of doors appeared more desirable than home. In the uncertain state of suspense they were kept in, respecting Charles, the minds of all, from Hamish down to Annabel, were in a constant state of unrest. When they rose in the morning the first thought was, “Shall we hear of Charles to-day?” When they retired at bedtime, “What may not the river give up this night?” It appeared to them that they were continually expecting tidings of some sort or other; and, with this expectation, hope would sometimes mingle itself.

Hope; where could it spring from? The only faint suspicion of it, indulged at first, that Charley had been rescued in some providential manner, and conveyed to a house of shelter, had had time to die out. A few houses there were, half-concealed near the river, as there are near to most other rivers of traffic, which the police trusted just as far as they could see, and whose inmates did not boast of shining reputations; but the police had overhauled these thoroughly, and found no trace of Charley. Nor was it likely that they would conceal a child. So long as Charles’s positive fate remained a mystery, suspense could not cease; and with this suspense there did mingle some faint glimmer of hope. Suspense leads to exertion; inaction is intolerable to it. Hamish, Arthur, Tom, all would rather be out of doors now, than in; there might be something to be heard of, some information to be gathered, and looking after it was better than staying at home to wait for it. No wonder, then, that Arthur Channing’s steps would bend unconsciously towards the town, when he left the cathedral, morning and afternoon.

It was in passing Mr. Galloway’s office, the window of which stood wide open, that Arthur had found himself called to by Roland Yorke.

“What is it?” he asked, halting at the window.

“You are the very chap I wanted to see,” cried Roland. “Come in! Don’t be afraid of meeting Galloway: he’s off somewhere.”

The prospect of meeting Mr. Galloway would not have prevented Arthur from entering. He was conscious of no wrong, and he did not shrink as though he had committed one. He went in, and Mr. Harper proceeded on his way.

“Here’s a go!” was Roland’s salutation. “Jenkins is laid up.” It was nothing but what Arthur had expected. He, like Mr. Galloway, had observed Jenkins growing ill and more ill. “How shall you manage without him?” asked Arthur; Mr. Galloway’s dilemma being the first thing that occurred to his mind.

“Who’s to know?” answered Roland, who was in an explosive temper. “I don’t. If Galloway thinks to put it all on my back, it’s a scandalous shame! I never could do it, or the half of it. Jenkins worked like a horse when we were busy. He’d hang his head down over his desk, and never lift it for two hours at a stretch!—you know he would not. Fancy my doing that! I should get brain fever before a week was out.”

Arthur smiled at this. “Is Jenkins much worse?” he inquired.

“I don’t believe he’s worse at all,” returned Roland, tartly. “He’d have come this morning, as usual, fast enough, only she locked up his clothes.”

“Who?” said Arthur, in surprise.

“She. That agreeable lady who has the felicity of owning Jenkins. She was here this morning as large as life, giving an account of her doings, without a blush. She locked up his things, she says, to keep him in bed. I’d be even with her, I know, were I Jenkins. I’d put on her flounces, but what I’d come out, if I wanted to. Rather short they’d be for him, though.”

“I shall go, Roland. My being here only hinders you.”

“As if that made any difference worth counting! Look here!—piles and piles of parchments! I and Galloway could never get through them, hindered or not hindered. I am not going to work over hours! I won’t kill myself with hard labour. There’s Port Natal, thank goodness, if the screw does get put upon me too much!”

Arthur did not reply. It made little difference to Roland: whether encouraged or not, talk he would.

“I have heard of folks being worked beyond their strength; and that will be my case, if one may judge by present appearances. It’s too bad of Jenkins!”

Arthur spoke up: he did not like to hear blame, even from Roland Yorke, cast upon patient, hard-working Jenkins. “You should not say it, Roland. It is not Jenkins’s fault.”

“It is his fault. What does he have such a wife for? She keeps Jenkins under her thumb, just as Galloway keeps me. She locked up his clothes, and then told him he might come here without them, if he liked: my belief is, she’ll be sending him so, some day. Jenkins ought to put her down. He’s big enough.”

“He would be sure to come here, if he were equal to it,” said Arthur.

“He! Of course he would!” angrily retorted Roland. “He’d crawl here on all fours, but what he’d come; only she won’t let him. She knows it too. She said this morning that he’d come when he was in his coffin! I should like to see it arrive!”

Arthur had been casting a glance at the papers. They were unusually numerous, and he began to think with Roland that he and Mr. Galloway would not be able to get through them unaided. Most certainly they would not, at Roland’s present rate of work. “It is a pity you are not a quick copyist,” he said.

“I dare say it is!” sarcastically rejoined Roland, beginning to play at ball with the wafer-box. “I never was made for work; and if—”

“You will have to do it, though, sir,” thundered Mr. Galloway, who had come up, and was enjoying a survey of affairs through the open window. Mr. Roland, somewhat taken to, dropped his head and the wafer-box together, and went on with his writing as meekly as poor Jenkins would have done; and Mr. Galloway entered.

“Good day,” said he to Arthur, shortly enough.

“Good day, sir,” was the response. Mr. Galloway turned to his idle clerk.

“Roland Yorke, you must either work or say you will not. There is no time for playing and fooling; no time, sir! do you hear? Who put that window stark staring open?”

“I did, sir,” said incorrigible Roland. “I thought the office might be the better for a little air, when there was so much to do in it.”

Mr. Galloway shut it with a bang. Arthur, who would not leave without some attempt at a passing courtesy, let it be ever so slight, made a remark to Mr. Galloway, that he was sorry to hear Jenkins was worse.

“He is so much worse,” was the response of Mr. Galloway, spoken sharply, for the edification of Roland Yorke, “that I doubt whether he will ever enter this room again. Yes, sir, you may look; but it is the truth!”

Roland did look, looked with considerable consternation. “How on earth will the work get done, then?” he muttered. With all his grumbling, he had not contemplated Jenkins being away more than a day or two.

“I do not know how it will get done, considering that the clerk upon whom I have to depend is Roland Yorke,” answered Mr. Galloway, with severity. “One thing appears pretty evident, that Jenkins will not be able to help to do it.”

Mr. Galloway, more perplexed at the news brought by Mrs. Jenkins than he had allowed to appear (for, although he chose to make a show of depending upon Roland, he knew how much dependence there was in reality to be placed upon him—none knew better), had deemed it advisable to see Jenkins personally, and judge for himself of his state of health. Accordingly, he proceeded thither, and arrived at an inopportune moment for his hopes. Jenkins was just recovering from a second fainting fit, and appeared altogether so ill, so debilitated, that Mr. Galloway was struck with dismay. There would be no more work from Jenkins—as he believed—for him. He mentioned this now in his own office, and Roland received it with blank consternation.

An impulse came to Arthur, and he spoke upon it. “If I can be of any use to you, sir, in this emergency, you have only to command me.”

“What sort of use?” asked Mr. Galloway.

Arthur pointed to the parchments. “I could draw out these deeds, and any others that may follow them. My time is my own, sir, except the two hours devoted to the cathedral, and I am at a loss how to occupy it. I have been idle ever since I left you.”

“Why don’t you get into an office?” said Mr. Galloway.

Arthur’s colour deepened. “Because, sir, no one will take me.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Galloway, drily, “a good name is easier lost than won.”

“Yes, it is,” freely replied Arthur. “However, sir, to return to the question. I shall be glad to help you, if you have no one better at hand. I could devote several hours a day to it, and you know that I am thoroughly to be trusted with the work. I might take some home now.”

“Home!” returned Mr. Galloway. “Did you mean that you could do it at home?”

“Certainly, sir; I did not think of doing it here,” was the pointed reply of Arthur. “I can do it at home just as well as I could here; perhaps better, for I should shut myself up alone, and there would be nothing to interrupt me, or to draw off my attention.”

It cannot be denied that this was a most welcome proposition to Mr. Galloway; indeed, his thoughts had turned to Arthur from the first. Arthur would be far better than a strange clerk, looked for and brought in on the spur of the moment—one who might answer well or answer badly, according to chance. Yet that such must have been his resource, Mr. Galloway knew.

“It will be an accommodation to me, your taking part of the work,” he frankly said. “But you had better come to the office and do it.”

“No, sir; I would rather—”

“Do, Channing!” cried out Roland Yorke, springing up as if he were electrified. “The office will be bearable if you come back again.”

“I would prefer to do it at home, sir,” continued Arthur to Mr. Galloway, while that gentleman pointed imperiously to Yorke, as a hint to him to hold his tongue and mind his own business.

“You may come back here and do it,” said Mr. Galloway.

“Thank you, I cannot come back,” was the reply of Arthur.

“Of course you can’t!” said angry Roland, who cared less for Mr. Galloway’s displeasure than he did for displaying his own feelings when they were aroused. “You won’t, you mean! I’d not show myself such a duffer as you, Channing, if I were paid for it in gold!”

“You’ll get paid in something, presently, Roland Yorke, but it won’t be in gold!” reproved Mr. Galloway. “You will do a full day’s work to-day, sir, if you stop here till twelve o’clock at night.”

“Oh, of course I expect to do that, sir,” retorted Roland, tartly. “Considering what’s before me, on this desk and on Jenkins’s, there’s little prospect of my getting home on this side four in the morning. They needn’t sit up for me—I can go in with the milk. I wonder who invented writing? I wish I had the fingering of him just now!”

Arthur turned to the parchments. He was almost as much at home with them as Jenkins. Mr. Galloway selected two that were most pressing, and gave them to him, with the requisite materials for copying. “You will keep them secure, you know,” he remarked.

“Perfectly so, sir; I shall sit quite alone.”

He carried them off with alacrity. Mr. Galloway’s face cleared as he looked after him, and he made a remark aloud, expressive of his satisfaction. “There’s some pleasure in giving out work when you know it will be done. No play—no dilatoriness—finished to the minute that it’s looked for! You should take a leaf out of his book, Yorke.”

“Yes, sir,” freely answered Roland. “When you drove Arthur Channing out of this office, you parted with the best clerk you ever had. Jenkins is all very well for work, but he is nothing but a muff in other things. Arthur’s a gentleman, and he’d have served you well. Jenkins himself says so. He is honourable, he is honest, he—”

“I know enough of your sentiments with respect to his honesty,” interrupted Mr. Galloway. “We need not go over that tale again.”

“I hope every one knows them,” rejoined Roland. “I have never concealed my opinion that the accusation was infamous; that, of all of us in this office, from its head down to Jenkins, none was less likely to finger the note than Arthur Channing. But of course my opinion goes for nothing.”

“You are bold, young man.”

“I fear it is my nature to be so,” cried Roland. “If it should ever turn up how the note went, you’ll be sorry, no doubt, for having visited it upon Arthur. Mr. Channing will be sorry; the precious magistrates will be sorry; that blessed dean, who wanted to turn him from the college, will be sorry. Not a soul of them but believes him guilty; and I hope they’ll be brought to repentance for it, in sackcloth and ashes.”

“Go on with your work,” said Mr. Galloway, angrily.

Roland made a show of obeying. But his tongue was like a steam-engine: once set going, it couldn’t readily be stopped, and he presently looked up again.

“I am not uncharitable: at least, to individuals. I always said the post-office helped itself to the note, and I’d lay my last half-crown upon it. But there are people in the town who think it could only have gone in another way. You’d go into a passion with me, sir, perhaps, if I mentioned it.”

Mr. Galloway—it has been before mentioned that he possessed an unbounded amount of curiosity, and also a propensity to gossip—so far forgot the force of good example as to ask Roland what he meant. Roland wanted no further encouragement.

“Well, sir, there are people who, weighing well all the probabilities of the case, have come to the conclusion that the note could only have been abstracted from the letter by the person to whom it was addressed. None but he broke the seal of it.”

“Do you allude to my cousin, Mr. Robert Galloway?” ejaculated Mr. Galloway, as soon as indignation and breath allowed him to speak.

“Others do,” said Roland. “I say it was the post-office.”

“How dare you repeat so insolent a suspicion to my face, Roland Yorke?”

“I said I should catch it!” cried Roland, speaking partly to himself. “I am sure to get in for it, one way or another, do what I will. It’s not my fault, sir, if I have heard it whispered in the town.”

“Apply yourself to your work, sir, and hold your tongue. If you say another word, Roland Yorke, I shall feel inclined also to turn you away, as one idle and incorrigible, of whom nothing can be made.”

“Wouldn’t it be a jolly excuse for Port Natal!” exclaimed Roland, but not in the hearing of his master, who had gone into his own room in much wrath. Roland laughed aloud; there was nothing he enjoyed so much as to be in opposition to Mr. Galloway; it had been better for the advancement of that gentleman’s work, had he habitually kept a tighter rein over his pupil. It was perfectly true, however, that the new phase of suspicion, regarding the loss of the note, had been spoken of in the town, and Roland only repeated what he had heard.

Apparently, Mr. Galloway did not like this gratuitous suggestion. He presently came back again. A paper was in his hand, and he began comparing it with one on Roland’s desk. “Where did you hear that unjustifiable piece of scandal?” he inquired, as he was doing it.

“The first person I heard speak of it was my mother, sir. She came home one day from calling upon people, and said she had heard it somewhere. And it was talked of at Knivett’s last night. He had a bachelors’ party, and the subject was brought up. Some of us ridiculed the notion; others thought it might have grounds.”

“And pray, which did you favour?” sarcastically asked Mr. Galloway.

“I? I said then, as I have said all along, that there was no one to thank for it but the post-office. If you ask me, sir, who first set the notion afloat in the town, I cannot satisfy you. All I know is, the rumour is circulating.”