Part 52 (2/2)
”No, it is not gone. And the appointment rests with me. How would you like it?”
”Nay,” said Hamish, half mockingly: ”the question is, should I be honest enough for it?”
Mr. Huntley shook his fist at him. ”If you ever bring that reproach up to me again, I'll--I'll--You had better keep friends with me, you know, sir, on other scores.”
Hamish laughed. ”I should like the post very much indeed, sir.”
”And the house also, I suppose, you would make no objection to?” nodded Mr. Huntley.
”None in the world. I must work away, though, if it is ever to be furnished.”
”How can you tell but that some good spirit might furnish it for you?” cried Mr. Huntley, quaintly.
They were interrupted before anything more was said. Ellen, who had been out with her aunt, came running in, in excitement. ”Oh, papa! such happy news! Charles Channing is found, and--”
She stopped when she saw that she had another auditor. Hamish rose to greet her. He took her hand, released it, and then returned to the fire to Mr. Huntley. Ellen stood by the table, and had grown suddenly timid.
”You will soon be receiving a visit from my mother and Constance,” observed Hamish, looking at her. ”I heard certain arrangements being discussed, in which Miss Ellen Huntley's name bore a part. We are soon to lose Constance.”
Ellen blushed rosy red. Mr. Huntley was the first to speak. ”Yorke has come to his senses, I suppose?”
”Yorke and Constance between them. In a short time she is to be transplanted to Hazledon.”
”It is more than he deserves,” emphatically declared Mr. Huntley. ”I suppose you will be for getting married next, Mr. Hamish, when you come into possession of that house we have been speaking of, and are your own master?”
”I always intended to think of it, sir, as soon as I could do so,” returned saucy Hamish. And Ellen ran out of the room.
That same afternoon Arthur Channing was seated at the organ in pursuance of his duty, when a message came up from the dean. He was desired to change the selected anthem, taken from the thirty-fifth Psalm, for another: ”O taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is!”
It was not an anthem in the cathedral collection, but one recently composed and presented to it by a private individual. It consisted of a treble solo and chorus. Why had the dean specially commanded it for that afternoon? Very rarely indeed did he change the services after they were put up. Had he had Arthur in his mind when he decided upon it? It was impossible to say. Be it as it would, the words found a strange echo in Arthur's heart, as Bywater's sweet voice rang through the cathedral. ”O taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is, blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the Lord, ye that are his saints. for they that fear him lack nothing. The lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good. The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous: and his ears are open unto their prayers. Great are the troubles of the righteous; but the Lord delivereth him out of all. The Lord delivereth the souls of his servants: and all they that put their trust in him shall not be dest.i.tute.”
Every word told upon Arthur's heart, sending it up in thankfulness to the Giver of all good.
He found the dean waiting for him in the nave, when he went down at the conclusion of the service. Dr. Gardner was with him. The dean held out his hand to Arthur.
”I am very glad you are cleared,” he said. ”You have behaved n.o.bly.”
Arthur winced. He did not like to take the faintest meed of praise that was not strictly his due. The dean might have thought he deserved less, did he know that he had been only screening Hamish; but Arthur could not avow that tale in public. He glanced at the dean with a frank smile.
”You see now, sir, that I only spoke the truth when I a.s.sured you of my innocence.”
”I do see it,” said the dean. ”I believed you then.” And once more shaking Arthur's hand, he turned into the cloisters with Dr. Gardner.
”I have already offered my congratulations,” said the canon, good humouredly, nodding to Arthur. This was correct. He had waylaid Arthur as he went into college.
Arthur suffered them to go on a few steps, and then descended to the cloisters. Old Ketch was shuffling along.
”What's this I've been a hearing, about that there drownded boy having come back?” asked he of Arthur, in his usual ungracious fas.h.i.+on.
”I don't know what you may have heard, Ketch. He has come back.”
”And he ain't dead nor drownded?”
”Neither one nor the other. He is alive and well.”
Ketch gave a groan of despair. ”And them horrid young wretches'll escape the hangman! I'd ha' walked ten miles to see em--”
”Gracious, Sir John, what's that you are talking about?” interrupted Bywater, as the choristers trooped up, ”Escaped you! so we have, for once. What an agony of disappointment it must be for you, Mr. Calcraft! Such practice for your old hands, to topple off a dozen or so of us! Besides the pay! How much do you charge a head, Calcraft?”
Ketch answered by a yell.
”Now, don't excite yourself, I beg,” went on aggravating Bywater. ”We are thinking of getting up a pet.i.tion to the dean, to console you for your disappointment, praying that he'll allow you to wear a cap we have ordered for you! It's made of scarlet cloth, with long ears and a set of bells! Its device is a cross beam and a cord, and we wish you health to wear it out! I say, let's wish Mr. Calcraft health! What's tripe a pound to-day, Calcraft?”
The choristers, in various stages of delight, entered on their aggravating shouts, their mocking dance. When they had driven Mr. Ketch to the very verge of insanity, they decamped to the schoolroom.
I need not enlarge on the evening of thankfulness it was at Mr. Channing's. Not one, but had special cause for grat.i.tude--except, perhaps, Annabel. Mr. Channing restored to health and strength; Mrs. Channing's anxiety removed; Hamish secure in his new prospects-for Mr. Huntley had made them certain; heaviness removed from the heart of Constance; the cloud lifted from Arthur; Tom on the pedestal he thought he had lost, sure also of the Oxford exhibition; Charley amongst them again! They could trace the finger of G.o.d in all; and were fond of doing it.
Soon after tea, Arthur rose. ”I must drop in and see Jenkins,” he observed. ”He will have heard the items of news from twenty people, there's little doubt; but he will like me to go to him with particulars. No one in Helstonleigh has been more anxious that things should turn out happily, than poor Jenkins.”
”Tell him he has my best wishes for his recovery, Arthur,” said Mr. Channing.
”I will tell him,” replied Arthur. ”But I fear all hope of recovery for Jenkins is past.”
It was more decidedly past than even Arthur suspected when he spoke. A young woman was attending to Mrs. Jenkins's shop when Arthur pa.s.sed through it. Her face was strange to him; but from a certain peculiarity in the eyes and mouth, he inferred it to be Mrs. Jenkins's sister. In point of fact, that lady, finding that her care of Jenkins and her care of the shop rather interfered with each other, had sent for her sister from the country to attend temporarily on the latter. Lydia went up to Jenkins's sick-room, and said a gentleman was waiting: and Mrs. Jenkins came down.
”Oh, it's you!” quoth she. ”I hope he'll be at rest now. He has been bothering his mind over you all day. My opinion is, he'd never have come to this state if he had taken things easy, like sensible people.”
”Is he in his room?” inquired Arthur.
”He is in his room, and in his bed. And what's more, young Mr. Channing, h.e.l.l never get out of it alive.”
”Then he is worse?”
”He has been worse this four days. And I only get him up now to have his bed made. I said to him yesterday, 'Jenkins, you may put on your things, and go down to the office if you like.' 'My dear,' said he, 'I couldn't get up, much less get down to the office;' which I knew was the case, before I spoke. I wish I had had my wits about me!” somewhat irascibly went on Mrs. Jenkins: ”I should have had his bed brought down to the parlour here, before he was so ill. I don't speak for the shop, I have somebody to attend to that; but it's such a toil and a trapes up them two pair of stairs for every little thing that's wanted.”
”I suppose I can go up, Mrs. Jenkins?”
”You can go up,” returned she; ”but mind you don't get worrying him. I won't have him worried. He worries himself, without any one else doing it gratis. If it's not about one thing, it's about another. Sometimes it's his master and the office, how they'll get along; sometimes it's me, what I shall do without him; sometimes it's his old father. He don't need any outside things to put him up.”
”I am sorry he is so much worse,” remarked Arthur.
”So am I,” said Mrs. Jenkins, tartly. ”I have been doing all I could for him from the first, and it has been like working against hope. If care could have cured him, or money could have cured him, he'd be well now. I have a trifle of savings in the bank, young Mr. Channing, and I have not spared them. If they had ordered him medicine at a guinea a bottle, I'd have had it for him. If they said he must have wine, or delicacies brought from the other ends of the earth, they should have been brought. Jenkins isn't good for much, in point of spirit, as all the world knows; but he's my husband, and I have strove to do my duty by him. Now, if you want to go up, you can go,” added she, after an imperceptible pause. ”There's a light on the stairs, and you know his room. I'll take the opportunity to give an eye to the kitchen; I don't care to leave him by himself now. Finely it's going on, I know!”
Mrs. Jenkins whisked down the kitchen stairs, and Arthur proceeded up. Jenkins was lying in bed, his head raised by pillows. Whatever may have been Mrs. Jenkins's faults of manner, her efficiency as a nurse and manager could not be called into question. A bright fire burnt in the well-ventilated though small room, the bed was snowy white, the apartment altogether thoroughly comfortable. But--Jenkins!
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