Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Bede Greatorex made no answer. A coincidence! Aye; one of heaven’s sending.

  “Why so much ill-luck should have fallen upon me I cannot tell,” resumed George Winter. “I started in life, hoping and intending to do my duty as conscientiously as most men do it; and I’ve tried to, that’s more. Fate has not been kind to me.”

  “There are others that it has been less kind to,” spoke Bede, his tone marked with ill-suppressed agitation. “Your liabilities in Birmingham? Are they wiped out?”

  “Others’ liabilities you mean, sir; I had none of my own. Yes, I have scraped, and saved, and paid; paid all. I am saving now to repay you the forty-four pounds, and have about twenty towards it. But for having my good old mother on my hands — she lives in Wales — I should have been clear earlier.”

  “You need not trouble yourself about the forty-four pounds,” said Bede, recognising the wondrous obligations he and his were under to this silent, self-denying man.

  “If it were forty-four hundred, sir, I should work on until I paid it, life being granted me.”

  “Very well,” replied Bede. “I may be able to recompense you in another way.”

  If Bede Greatorex thought that any simple order of his would release Miss Rye from custody, he found himself mistaken. Butterby, called into the conference, was almost pleasantly derisive.

  “You’ll assure me she was not guilty! and Mr. Brown there can assure me she was not guilty! And, following them words up, you say, ‘Let her go, Butterby!’ Why, you might about as well tell me to let the stars drop out of the sky, Mr. Bede Greatorex. I’ve no more power over one than I have over the other.”

  “But she is innocent,” reiterated Bede. “Mr. Brown here — you know who he is — can testify to it.” Butterby gave a careless nod in the direction of Mr. Brown — as much as to say that his knowing who he was went for a matter of course. But he was sternly uncompromising.

  “Look here, Mr. Bede Greatorex. It’s all very well for you to say to me, Miss Rye’s innocent; and for that there clever gentleman by your side to say she’s innocent — and himself too, I suppose he’d like to add; but you, as a lawyer, must know that all that is of no manner of use. If you two will bring forward the right party, and say, ‘This is the one that was guilty,’ and prove it to the satisfaction of the law and Mr. Greatorex, that would be another thing. Only in that case can Miss Rye be set at liberty.”

  “You — you do not know what family interests are involved in this, Mr. Butterby,” Bede said in a tone of pain.

  “Can guess at ‘em,” responded Butterby.

  Bede inwardly thought the boast was a mistaken one, but he let it pass.

  “If my father were acquainted with the true facts of the case,” spoke he, “he would never bring it to a public trial; I tell you this on my honour.”

  “You know yourself who the party was; I see that,” said Butterby.

  “I do — Heaven spare me!”

  There was a strange tone of helplessness mingling with the anguish of the avowal, as if Bede could contend with fate no longer. Even the officer felt for him. George Winter looked round at him with a glance of caution, as much as to say there was no necessity to avow too much. Bede bent his head, and strove to see, as well as the hour’s trouble and perplexity would allow him, what might and what might not be done. Butterby, responsible to the magistrates at Helstonleigh who had granted the warrant, would have to be satisfied, as well as Mr. Greatorex.

  Another minute, and Bede went forth to seek an interview with his father, who was alone in his room. Bede, almost as though he were afraid of his courage leaving him, entered upon the matter before he had well closed the door. Not in any torrent of words: he spoke but a few, and those with almost painful calmness: but his breath was laboured, himself perceptibly agitated.

  “Give my authority to Butterby to release Alletha Rye from custody, because you happen to know that she is innocent!” exclaimed Mr. Greatorex in surprise, “Why, what can you mean, Bede?”

  Bede told his tale. Hampered by various doubting fears lest he might drop an unsafe word, it was rather a lame one. Mr. Greatorex leaned back in his chair, and looked up at Bede as he listened. They held, unconsciously, much the same position as they had that March day nearly five years ago in another room, when the tale of the death was first told, Bede having then just got up with it from Helstonleigh: Mr. Greatorex sitting, Bede standing with his arm on the mantle-piece, his face partly turned away. Bede had grown quite into the habit of standing thus, to press his hand on his brow: it seemed as though some weight or pain were always there.

  “I don’t understand you, Bede,” spoke Mr. Greatorex frankly. “You tell me that you know of your own cognisance Alletha Rye was innocent? That you knew it at the time?”

  “Almost of my own cognisance,” corrected Bede.

  “Which must be equivalent to saying that you know who was guilty.”

  “No; I don’t know that,” murmured Bede, his face growing damp with the conscious lie.

  “Then what do you know, that you should wish to interfere? You have always said it was a case of suicide.”

  “It was not that, father,” was Bede’s low, shrinking answer. But he looked into his father’s eyes with thrilling earnestness as he gave it.

  Mr. Greatorex began to feel slightly uncomfortable. He detested mystery of all kinds; and there was something unpleasantly mysterious in Bede’s voice and looks and words and manner.

  “Did you know at the time that it was not suicide?” pursued Mr. Greatorex.

  How should Bede get through this? say what he must say, and yet not say too much? He inwardly asked himself the question.

  “There was just a suspicion of it on my mind, sir. Any way, Alletha Rye must be set at liberty.”

  “I do not understand what you say, Bede; I do not understand you. Your manner on this subject has always been an enigma. William Ollivera holds the opinion that you must be screening some one.”

  A terrible temptation, hard to battle with, assailed Bede Greatorex at the charge — to avow to his father who and what he had been screening ever since the death. He forced himself to silence until it had passed. —

  “What is troubling you, Bede?”

  Mr. Greatorex might well ask it; with that sad countenance in front of him, working with its pain. In his grievous perplexity, Bede gave the true answer.

  “I was thinking if it were possible for Pitman’s explanation to be avoided, father.”

  “What! Is Pitman found?”

  “Yes, he is found,” quietly answered Bede. “He —— —”

  The room door was opening to admit some visitors, and Bede turned. Surely the propitious star to the House of Greatorex could not be in the ascendant! For they were Judge Kene and Henry William Ollivera.

  And the concealment that he had striven and toiled for, and worn out his health and life to keep; fighting ever, mentally or bodily, against Fate’s relentless hand, was felt to be at an end by Bede Greatorex.

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  Nearer and Nearer.

  ON a sofa, drawn at right angles with the fire lay Hamish Channing; his bright head raised high, a crimson coverlid of eider down thrown over his feet. In the last day or two he had grown perceptibly worse; that is, weaker. The most sanguine amidst his friends, medical or others, could not say there was hope now. But, as long as he could keep up, Hamish would not give in to his illness: he rose in the morning and made a pretence of going about the house; and when he was tired, lay on the sofa that had been put into his writing-room. It was the room he felt most at home in, and he seemed to cling to it.

  On the other side the hearth, bending forward in his chair, staring at Hamish with sad eyes, and pulling at his whiskers in grievous gloom, sat Roland Yorke. Roland had abandoned his home-copying for the past two days, and spent all his spare time with Hamish. Mrs. Jones, snatching a moment to go and visit Mr. Channing for old association’s sake, had been very much struck with what she saw in him, a
nd carried home the news that he was certainly dying. Roland, believing Mrs. J. to be as correct in Judgment as she was tart in speech, had been looking out for death from that moment. Previously he was given to waver; one moment in despair; the next, up in the skies with exultation and thinking recovery had set in. The wind could not be more variable than Roland.

  It was the twilight hour of the winter’s day. The room was not lighted yet, but the blaze from the fire played on Hamish’s face as he lay. There was a change in it to-night, and it told upon Roland: for it looked like the shadow of death. Things seemed to have been rather at sixes and sevens in the office that afternoon: Mr. Brown was absent, Hurst had gone home for Christmas, Bede Greatorex did not show himself, and there was nobody to tell Roland what work to be about. Of course it presented to that gentleman’s mind a most valuable opportunity for enjoying a spell of recreation, and he took French leave to abandon it to itself and little Jenner. Rushing home in the first place, to see what might be doing there — for it was the day that Miss Rye had been captured by Butterby. Roland had his run for his pains. There was nothing doing, and his curiosity and good nature alike suffered. Miss Rye was a prisoner still; she, and Mrs. Jones, and the policeman left in charge, being shut up in the parlour together. “It’s an awful shame of old Butterby!” cried Roland, to himself, as he sped along to Hamish’s. There he took up his station in his favourite chair, and watched the face that was fading so rapidly away. With an etherealized look in it that spoke of heaven, with a placid calm that seemed to partake of the fast approaching rest; with a sweet smile that told of altogether inward peace, there the face lay; and Roland thought he had never seen one on earth so like an angel’s.

  Hamish had dropped into a doze; as he often did, at the close of day, when darkness is silently spreading over the light. Nelly Channing, who had learnt — by that subtle warning that sometimes steals, we know not how, over the instinct of little ones about to be made orphans — that some great and sad change was looming in the air, sat on a stool on the hearth-rug as sedately as any old woman. Nelly’s boisterous ways and gleeful laugh had left her for a while: example perhaps taught her to be still, and she largely profited by it.

  On her lap lay a story book: papa had bought it for her yesterday: that is, had given the money to Miss Nelly and nurse when they went out, and wrote down the title of the book they were to buy, and the shop they might get it at, with his own trembling fingers, out of which the strength had nearly gone. It was one of those exquisite story books that ought to be in all children’s hands, Mrs. Sherwood’s; belonging of course to a past day, but nothing has since been written like them.

  With every leaf that she silently turned, Nelly looked to see that it did not wake the invalid. When she grew tired, and her face was roasted to a red heat, she went to Roland, resting the open book upon his knee. He lifted her up.

  “It is such a pretty book, Roland.”

  “All right. Don’t you make a noise, Nelly.”

  “Margaret went to heaven in the book: she was buried under the great yew tree,” whispered Nelly. “Papa’s going there.”

  Roland caught the little head to him, and bent his face on the golden hair. He knew that what she said was true: but it was a shock nevertheless to have it repeated openly to him even by this young child.

  “Papa talks to me about it. It will be so beautiful; he will never be tired there, or have any sorrow or pain. Oh, Roland; I wish I was going with him!”

  Her eyes were filled with tears as she looked up; Roland’s were filled in sympathy. He had cried like a schoolboy more than once of late. All on a sudden, happening to glance across, he saw Hamish looking on with a smile.

  “You be off, Nelly,” said arbitrary Roland, carrying her to the door and shutting it upon her and her book. “I’m sure your tea must be ready in the nursery.”

  “Don’t grieve, Roland,” said Hamish, when he sat down again.

  “I wish you could get well,” returned Roland, seeing the fire through a mist.

  “And I have nearly ceased to wish it, Roland. It’s all for the best.”

  “Ceased to wish it! How’s that?”

  “Through God’s mercy, I think.”

  The words silenced Roland. When anything of this kind was mentioned it turned him into a child, so far as his feelings went; simple as Miss Nelly, was he, and a vast deal more humble-minded.

  “Things are being cleared for me so wonderfully, Roland. But for leaving some who are dear to me, the pain would be over.”

  “I wish I could come across that fiend who wrote the reviews!” was Roland’s muttered answer to this. “I wish I could!”

  “What?” said Hamish, not catching the words.

  “I will say it, then; I don’t care,” cried impetuous Roland — for no one had ever spoken before Hamish of what was supposed to have caused him the cruel pain. Roland blurted it all out now in his explosive fashion; his own long-suppressed wrath, and what he held in store for the anonymous reviewer, when he should have the good fortune to come across him.

  A minute’s silence when he ceased, a wild hectic spreading itself into the hollow cheeks — that it should so stir him even yet! Hamish held out his hand, and Roland came across to take it. The good sweet eyes looked into his.

  “If ever you do ‘come across’ him, Roland, say that I forgive,” came the low, earnest whisper. “I did think it cruel at the time; well nigh too hard to bear; but, like most other crosses, I seem to see now that it came to me direct from heaven.”

  “That is good, Hamish! Come!”

  “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom,” whispered Hamish, looking up at him with a yearning smile. “You have in all probability a long life before you, Roland: but the time may come when you will realise the truth of those words.”

  Roland swallowed down a lump in his throat as he turned to the fire again. Hamish resumed, changing his tone for one almost of gaiety.

  “I have had good news to-day. Our friend the publisher called; and what do you think he told me, Roland? That my book was finding its way at last.”

  “Of course it will. Everybody always thought it must. If you could but have put off for a time your bother over the reviews, Hamish!” Roland added piteously.

  “Ay. He says that in three months’ time from this, the book will be in every one’s hands. In the satisfaction of the news, I sat down and eat some luncheon with him and Ellen,”

  “Don’t you think the news might be enough to cure you?” asked sanguine Roland.

  Hamish shook his head. “If I were able to feel joy now as I felt the sorrow, it might perhaps go a little way towards it. But that is over, Roland. The capability of feeling either in any degree was crushed out of me.”

  Roland rubbed up his hair. If he had but that enemy of his under his hand, and a spacious arena that admitted of pitching-in!

  “And now for some more good news, Roland. You must know how I have been troubled at the thought of leaving Ellen and the child unprovided for—”

  “I say, don’t you! Don’t you trouble, Hamish,” came the impulsive interruption. “I’ll work for them. I’ll do my very best for them, as well as for Annabel.”

  “It won’t be needed, dear old friend,” and Hamish’s face, with its bright, grateful smile, almost looked like the sunny one of old. “Ellen’s father, Mr. Huntley, is regaining the wealth he feared he had lost. As an earnest of it, he has sent Ellen two hundred pounds. It was paid her to-day.” —

  “Oh, now isn’t that good, Hamish!”

  “Very good!” answered Hamish, reverently and softly, as certain words ran through his mind: ‘So great is His mercy towards them that trust in Him.’ “And so, Roland, all things are working round pleasantly that I may die in peace.”

  Mrs. Channing, coming in with her things on, for she had been out on some necessary business, interrupted the conversation. She mentioned to Roland that she had seen Gerald drive up to his wife’s rooms, and that he had promised
to come round.

  “Why I thought he was at Sunny Mead with Dick!”

  “He told me he had just returned from it,” said Mrs. Channing.

  “I say, Hamish, who knows but he may have brought me up a message!” cried Roland.

  Hamish smiled. Roland had disclosed the feet in family conclave, of his having applied for the place of bailiff to Sir Vincent; Annabel being present. He had recited, so far as he could remember them, the very words of the letter, over which Hamish had laughed himself into a coughing-fit.

  “To be sure,” answered Hamish, with a touch of his old jesting spirit. “Gerald may have brought up your appointment, Roland.”

  That was quite enough. “I’ll go and ask him,” said Roland eagerly. “Any way he may be able to tell me how Dick received it.”

  Away went Roland, on the spur of the moment. It was a dear, cold evening, the air sharp and frosty; and Roland ran all the way to Mrs. Gerald Yorke’s.

  That lady was not in tears this evening; but her mood was a gloomy one, her face fractious. The tea was on the table, and she was cutting thick bread-and-butter for the three little girls sitting so quietly round it, before their cups of milk-and-water. Gerald had gone out again; she did not know where, whether temporarily, or to his chamber for the night, or anything about him.

  “I think something must have gone wrong at Sunny Mead,” observed Winny. “When I asked what brought him back so soon, he only swore. Perhaps Sir Vincent refused to lend money, and they had a quarrel. I know Gerald meant to ask him: he is in dreadful embarrassment.”