CHAPTER XIII. – MAD NANCE
Mr. Galloway was in his office. Mr. Galloway was fuming and fretting at the non-arrival of his clerk, Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Jenkins was a punctual man; in fact, more than punctual: his proper time for arriving at the office was half-past nine; but the cathedral clock had rarely struck the quarter-past before Mr. Jenkins would be at his post. Almost any other morning it would not have mattered a straw to Mr. Galloway whether Jenkins was a little after or a little before his time; but on this particular morning he had especial need of him, and had come himself to the office unusually early.
One-two, three-four! chimed the quarters of the cathedral. “There it goes—half-past nine!” ejaculated Mr. Galloway. “What does Jenkins mean by it? He knew he was wanted early.”
A sharp knock at the office door, and there entered a little dark woman, in a black bonnet and a beard. She was Mr. Jenkins’s better half, and had the reputation for being considerably the grey mare.
“Good morning, Mr. Galloway. A pretty kettle of fish, this is!”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Mr. Galloway, surprised at the address. “Where’s Jenkins?”
“Jenkins is in bed with his head plastered up. He’s the greatest booby living, and would positively have come here all the same, but I told him I’d strap him down with cords if he attempted it. A pretty object he’d have looked, staggering through the streets, with his head big enough for two, and held together with white plaster!”
“What has he done to his head?” wondered Mr. Galloway.
“Good gracious! have you not heard?” exclaimed the lady, whose mode of speech was rarely overburdened with polite words, though she meant no disrespect by it. “He got locked up in the cloisters last night with old Ketch and the bishop.”
Mr. Galloway stared at her. He had been dining, the previous evening, with some friends at the other end of the town, and knew nothing of the occurrence. Had he been within hearing when the college bell tolled out at night, he would have run to ascertain the cause as eagerly as any schoolboy. “Locked up in the cloisters with old Ketch and the bishop!” he repeated, in amazement. “I do not understand.”
Mrs. Jenkins proceeded to enlighten him. She gave the explanation of the strange affair of the keys, as it had been given to her by the unlucky Joe. While telling it, Arthur Channing entered, and, almost immediately afterwards, Roland Yorke.
“The bishop, of all people!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “What an untoward thing for his lordship!”
“No more untoward for him than for others,” retorted the lady. “It just serves Jenkins right. What business had he to go dancing through the cloisters with old Ketch and his keys?”
“But how did Jenkins get hurt?” asked Mr. Galloway, for that particular point had not yet been touched upon.
“He is the greatest fool going, is Jenkins,” was the complimentary retort of Jenkins’s wife. “After he had helped to ring out the bell, he must needs go poking and groping into the organ-loft, hunting for matches or some such insane rubbish. He might have known, had he possessed any sense, that candles and matches are not likely to be there in summer-time! Why, if the organist wanted ever so much to stop in after dark, when the college is locked up for the night, he wouldn’t be allowed to do it! It’s only in winter, when he has to light a candle to get through the afternoon service, that they keep matches and dips up there.”
“But about his head?” repeated Mr. Galloway, who was aware of the natural propensity of Mrs. Jenkins to wander from the point under discussion.
“Yes, about his head!” she wrathfully answered. “In attempting to descend the stairs again, he missed his footing, and pitched right down to the bottom of the flight. That’s how his head came in for it. He wants a nurse with him always, does Jenkins, for he is no better than a child in leading-strings.”
“Is he much hurt?”
“And there he’d have lain till morning, but for the bishop,” resumed Mrs. Jenkins, passing over the inquiry. “After his lordship got out, he, finding Jenkins did not come, told Thorpe to go and look for him in the organ-loft. Thorpe said he should have done nothing of the sort, but for the bishop’s order; he was just going to lock the great doors again, and there Jenkins would have been fast! They found him lying at the foot of the stairs, just inside the choir gates, with no more life in him than there is in a dead man.”
“I asked you whether he is seriously hurt, Mrs. Jenkins.”
“Pretty well. He came to his senses as they were bringing him home, and somebody ran for Hurst, the surgeon. He is better this morning.”
“But not well enough to come to business?”
“Hurst told him if he worried himself with business, or anything else to-day, he’d get brain fever as sure as a gun. He ordered him to stop in bed and keep quiet, if he could.”
“Of course he must do so,” observed Mr. Galloway.
“There is no of course in it, when men are the actors,” dissented Mrs. Jenkins. “Hurst did well to say ‘if he could,’ when ordering him to keep quiet. I’d rather have an animal ill in the house, than I’d have a man—they are ten times more reasonable. There has Jenkins been, tormenting himself ever since seven o’clock this morning about coming here; he was wanted particularly, he said. ‘Would you go if you were dead?’ I asked him; and he stood it out that if he were dead it would be a different thing. ‘Not different at all,’ I said. A nice thing it would be to have to nurse him through a brain fever!”
“I am grieved that it should have happened,” said Mr. Galloway, kindly. “Tell him from me, that we can manage very well without him. He must not venture here again, until Mr. Hurst says he may come with safety.”
“I should have told him that, to pacify him, whether you had said it or not,” candidly avowed Mrs. Jenkins. “And now I must go back home on the run. As good have no one to mind my shop as that young house-girl of ours. If a customer comes in for a pair of black stockings, she’ll take and give ‘em a white knitted nightcap. She’s as deficient of common sense as Jenkins is. Your servant, sir. Good morning, young gentlemen!”
“Here, wait a minute!” cried Mr. Galloway, as she was speeding off. “I cannot understand at all. The keys could not have been changed as they lay on the flags.”
“Neither can anybody else understand it,” returned Mrs. Jenkins. “If Jenkins was not a sober man—and he had better let me catch him being anything else!—I should say the two, him and Ketch, had had a drop too much. The bishop himself could make neither top nor tail of it. It’ll teach Jenkins not to go gallivanting again after other folk’s business!”
She finally turned away, and Mr. Galloway set himself to revolve the perplexing narrative. The more he thought, the less he was nearer doing so; like the bishop, he could make neither top nor tail of it. “It is entirely beyond belief!” he remarked to Arthur Channing; “unless Ketch took out the wrong keys!”
“And if he took out the wrong keys, how could he have locked the south door?” interrupted Roland Yorke. “I’d lay anybody five shillings that those mischievous scamps of college boys were at the bottom of it; I taxed Gerald with it, and he flew out at me for my pains. But the seniors may not have been in it. You should have heard the bell clank out last night, Mr. Galloway!”
“I suppose it brought out a few,” was Mr. Galloway’s rejoinder.
“It did that,” said Arthur Channing. “Myself for one. When I saw the bishop emerge from the college doors, I could scarcely believe my sight.”
“I’d have given half-a-crown to see him!” cried Roland Yorke. “If there’s any fun going on, it is sure to be my fate to miss it. Cator was at my house, having a cigar with me; and, though we heard the bell, we did not disturb ourselves to see what it might mean.”
“What is your opinion of last night’s work, Arthur?” asked Mr. Galloway, returning to the point.
Arthur’s opinion was a very decided one, but he did not choose to say so. The meeting with the college boys at their stealthy post in the cloisters, when he and Hamish were passing through at dusk, a few nights before, coupled with the hints then thrown out of the “serving out” of Ketch, could leave little doubt as to the culprits. Arthur returned an answer, couched in general terms.
“Could it have been the college boys, think you?” debated Mr. Galloway.
“Not being a college boy, I cannot speak positively, sir,” he said, laughing. “Gaunt knows nothing of it. I met him as I was going home to breakfast from my early hour’s work here, and he told me he did not. There would have been no harm done, after all, but for the accident to Jenkins.”
“One of you gentlemen can just step in to see Jenkins in the course of the day, and reassure him that he is not wanted,” said Mr. Galloway. “I know how necessary it is to keep the mind tranquil in any fear of brain affection.”
No more was said, and the occupation of the day began. A busy day was that at Mr. Galloway’s, much to the chagrin of Roland Yorke, who had an unconquerable objection to doing too much. He broke out into grumblings at Arthur, when the latter came running in from his duty at college.
“I’ll tell you what is, Channing; you ought not to have made the bargain to go to that bothering organ on busy days; and Galloway must have been out of his mind to let you make it. Look at the heap of work there is to do!”
“I will soon make up for the lost hour,” said Arthur, setting to with a will. “Where’s Mr. Galloway?”
“Gone to the bank,” grumbled Roland. “And I have had to answer a dozen callers-in at least, and do all my writing besides. I wonder what possessed Jenkins to go and knock his head to powder?”
Mr. Galloway shortly returned, and sat down to write. It was a thing he rarely did; he left writing to his clerks, unless it was the writing of letters. By one o’clock the chief portion of the work was done, and Mr. Roland Yorke’s spirits recovered their elasticity. He went home to dinner, as usual. Arthur preferred to remain at his post, and get on further, sending the housekeeper’s little maid out for a twopenny roll, which he ate as he wrote. He was of a remarkably conscientious nature, and thought it only fair to sacrifice a little time in case of need, in return for the great favour which had been granted him by Mr. Galloway. Many of the families who had sons in the college school dined at one o’clock, as it was the most convenient hour for the boys. Growing youths are not satisfied with anything less substantial than a dinner in the middle of the day, and two dinners in a household tell heavily upon the house-keeping. The Channings did not afford two, neither did Lady Augusta Yorke; so their hour was one o’clock.
“What a muff you must be to go without your dinner!” cried Roland Yorke to Arthur, when he returned at two o’clock. “I wouldn’t.”
“I have had my dinner,” said Arthur.
“What did you have?” cried Roland, pricking up his ears. “Did Galloway send to the hotel for roast ducks and green peas? That’s what we had at home, and the peas were half-boiled, and the ducks were scorched, and cooked without stuffing. A wretched set of incapables our house turns out! and my lady does not know how to alter it. You have actually finished that deed, Channing?”
“It is finished, you see. It is surprising how much one can do in a quiet hour!”
“Is Galloway out?”
Arthur pointed with his pen to the door of Mr. Galloway’s private room, to indicate that he was in it. “He is writing letters.”
“I say, Channing, there’s positively nothing left to do,” went on Roland, casting his eyes over the desk. “Here are these leases, but they are not wanted until to-morrow. Who says we can’t work in this office?”
Arthur laughed good-naturedly, to think of the small amount, out of that day’s work, which had fallen to Roland’s share.
Some time elapsed. Mr. Galloway came into their room from his own to consult a “Bradshaw,” which lay on the shelf, alongside Jenkins’s desk. He held in his hand a very closely-written letter. It was of large, letter-paper size, and appeared to be filled to the utmost of its four pages. While he was looking at the book, the cathedral clock chimed the three-quarters past two, and the bell rang for divine service.
“It can never be that time of day!” exclaimed Mr. Galloway, in consternation, as he took out his watch. “Sixteen minutes to three! and I am a minute slow! How has the time passed? I ought to have been at—”
Mr. Galloway brought his words to a standstill, apparently too absorbed in the railway guide to conclude them. Roland Yorke, who had a free tongue, even with his master, filled up the pause.
“Were you going out, sir?”
“Is that any business of yours, Mr. Roland? Talking won’t fill in that lease, sir.”
“The lease is not in a hurry, sir,” returned incorrigible Roland. But he held his tongue then, and bent his head over his work.
Mr. Galloway dipped his pen in the ink, and copied something from “Bradshaw” into the closely-written letter, standing at Jenkins’s desk to do it; then he passed the blotting-paper quickly over the words, and folded the letter.
“Channing,” he said, speaking very hastily, “you will see a twenty-pound bank-note on my desk, and the directed envelope of this letter; bring them here.”
Arthur went, and brought forth the envelope and bank-note. Mr. Galloway doubled the note in four and slipped it between the folds of the letter, putting both into the envelope. He had fastened it down, when a loud noise and commotion was heard in the street. Curious as are said to be antiquated maidens, Mr. Galloway rushed to the window and threw it up, his two clerks attending in his wake.
Something very fine, in a white dress, and pink and scarlet flowers on her bonnetless head, as if attired for an evening party, was whirling round the middle of the road in circles: a tall woman, who must once have been beautiful. She appeared to be whirling someone else with her, amid laughter and shrieks, and cries and groans, from the gathering mob.
“It is Mad Nance!” uttered Mr. Galloway. “Poor thing! she really ought to be in confinement.”
So every one had said for a long time, but no one bestirred themselves to place her in it. This unfortunate creature, Mad Nance, as she was called, was sufficiently harmless to be at large on sufferance, and sufficiently mad at times to put a street in an uproar. In her least sane moments she would appear, as now, in an old dimity white dress, scrupulously washed and ironed, and decorated with innumerable frills; some natural flowers, generally wild ones, in her hair. Dandelions were her favourites; she would make them into a wreath, and fasten it on, letting her entangled hair hang beneath. To-day she had contrived to pick up some geranium blossoms, scarlet and pink.
“Who has she got hold of there?” exclaimed Mr. Galloway. “He does not seem to like it.”
Arthur burst into laughter when he discovered that it was Harper, the lay-clerk. This unlucky gentleman, who had been quietly and inoffensively proceeding up Close Street on his way to service in the cathedral, was seized upon by Mad Nance by the hands. He was a thin, weak little man, a very reed in her strong grasp. She shrieked, she laughed, she danced, she flew with him round and round. He shrieked also; his hat was off, his wig was gone; and it was half the business of Mr. Harper’s life to make that wig appear as his own hair. He talked, he raved, he remonstrated; I am very much afraid that he swore. Mr. Galloway laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
The crowd was parted by an authoritative hand, and the same hand, gentle now, laid its firmness upon the woman and released the prisoner. It was Hamish Channing who had come to the rescue, suppressing his mirth as he best could while he effected it.
“I’ll have the law of her!” panted Harper, as he picked up his hat and wig. “If there’s justice to be got in Helstonleigh, she shall suffer for this! It’s a town’s shame to let her go about, molesting peaceable wayfarers, and shaking the life out of them!”
Something at a distance appeared to attract the attention of the unhappy woman, and she flew away. Hamish and Mr. Harper were left alone in the streets, the latter still exploding with wrath, and vowing all sorts of revenge.
“Put up with it quietly, Harper,” advised Hamish. “She is like a little child, not accountable for her actions.”
“That’s just like you, Mr. Hamish Channing. If they took your head off, you’d put up with it! How would you like your wig flung away in the sight of a whole street?”
“I don’t wear one,” answered Hamish, laughing. “Here’s your hat; not much damaged, apparently.”
Mr. Harper, settling his wig on his head, and composing himself as he best could, continued his way to the cathedral, turning his hat about in his hand, and closely looking at it. Hamish stepped across to Mr. Galloway’s, meeting that gentleman at the door.
“A good thing you came up as you did, Mr. Hamish. Harper will remember Mad Nance for a year to come.”
“I expect he will,” replied Hamish, laughing still. Mr. Galloway laughed also, and walked hastily down the street.
CHAPTER XIV. – KEEPING OFFICE
Hamish entered the office. Arthur and Roland Yorke had their heads stretched out of the window, and did not hear his footsteps. He advanced quietly and brought his hands down hastily upon the shoulder of each. Roland started, and knocked his head against the window-frame.
“How you startle a fellow! I thought it was Mad Nance come in to lay hands upon me.”
“She has laid hands upon enough for one day,” said Hamish. “Harper will dream of her to-night.”
“I thought Galloway would have gone into a fit, he laughed so,” cried Arthur. “As for my sides, they’ll ache for an hour.”
Roland Yorke’s lip curled with an angry expression. “My opinion agrees with Harper’s,” he said. “I think Mad Nance ought to be punished. We are none of us safe from her, if this is to be her game.”
“If you punish her to-day, she would do the same again to-morrow, were the fit to come over her,” rejoined Hamish. “It is not often she breaks out like this. The only thing is to steer clear of her.”
“Hamish has a fellow-feeling for Mad Nance,” mockingly spoke Roland Yorke.
“Yes, poor thing! for her story is a sad one. If the same grievous wrong were worked upon some of us, perhaps we might take to dancing for the benefit of the public. Talking of the public, Arthur,” continued Hamish, turning to his brother, “what became of you at dinner-time? The mother was for setting the town-crier to work.”
“I could not get home to-day. We have had double work to do, as Jenkins is away.”
Hamish tilted himself on to the edge of Mr. Jenkins’s desk, and took up the letter, apparently in absence of mind, which Mr. Galloway had left there, ready for the post. “Mr. Robert Galloway, Sea View Terrace, Ventnor, Isle of Wight,” he read aloud. “That must be Mr. Galloway’s cousin,” he remarked: “the one who has run through so much money.”
“Of course it is,” answered Roland Yorke. “Galloway pretty near keeps him: I know there’s a twenty-pound bank-note going to him in that letter. Catch me doing it if I were Galloway.”
“I wish it was going into my pocket instead,” said Hamish, balancing the letter on his fingers, as if wishing to test its weight.
“I wish the clouds would drop sovereigns! But they don’t,” said Roland Yorke.
Hamish put the letter back from whence he had taken it, and jumped off the desk. “I must be walking,” said he. “Stopping here will not do my work. If we—”
“By Jove! there’s Knivett!” uttered Roland Yorke. “Where’s he off to, so fast? I have something that I must tell him.”
Snatching up his hat, Roland darted at full speed out of the office, in search of one who was running at full speed also down the street. Hamish looked out, amused, at the chase; Arthur, who had called after Roland in vain, seemed vexed. “Knivett is one of the fleetest runners in Helstonleigh,” said Hamish. “Yorke will scarcely catch him up.”
“I wish Yorke would allow himself a little thought, and not act upon impulse,” exclaimed Arthur. “I cannot stop three minutes longer: and he knows that! I shall be late for college.”
He was already preparing to go there. Putting some papers in order upon his desk, and locking up others, he carried the letter for Ventnor into Mr. Galloway’s private room and placed it in the letter rack. Two others, ready for the post, were lying there. Then he went to the front door to look out for Yorke. Yorke was not to be seen.
“What a thoughtless fellow he is!” exclaimed Arthur, in his vexation. “What is to be done? Hamish, you will have to stop here.”
“Thank you! what else?” asked Hamish.
“I must be at the college, whatever betide.” This was true: yet neither might the office be left vacant. Arthur grew a little flurried. “Do stay, Hamish: it will not hinder you five minutes, I dare say. Yorke is sure to be in.”
Hamish came to the door, halting on its first step, and looking out over Arthur’s shoulder. He drew his head in again with a sudden movement.
“Is not that old Hopper down there?” he asked, in a whisper, the tone sounding as one of fear.
Arthur turned his eyes on a shabby old man who was crossing the end of the street, and saw Hopper, the sheriff’s officer. “Yes, why?”
“It is that old fellow who holds the writ. He may be on the watch for me now. I can’t go out just yet, Arthur; I’ll stay here till Yorke comes back again.”
He returned to the office, sat down and leaned his brow upon his hand. A strange brow of care it was just then, according ill with the gay face of Hamish Channing. Arthur, waiting for no second permission, flew towards the cathedral as fast as his long legs would carry him. The dean and chapter were preparing to leave the chapter-house as he tore past it, through the cloisters. Three o’clock was striking. Arthur’s heart and breath were alike panting when he gained the dark stairs. At that moment, to his excessive astonishment, the organ began to peal forth.
Seated at it was Mr. Williams; and a few words of explanation ensued. The organist said he should remain for the service, which rendered Arthur at liberty to go back again.
He was retracing his steps underneath the elm-trees in the Boundaries at a slower pace than he had recently passed them, when, in turning a corner, he came face to face with the sheriff’s officer. Arthur, whose thoughts were at that moment fixed upon Hamish and his difficulties, started away from the man, with an impulse for which he could not have accounted.
“No need for you to be frightened of me, Mr. Arthur,” said the man, who, in his more palmy days, before he had learnt to take more than was good for him, had been a clerk in Mr. Channing’s office. “I have nothing about me that will bite you.”
He laid a stress upon the “you” in both cases. Arthur understood only too well what was meant, though he would not appear to do so.
“Nor any one else, either, I hope, Hopper. A warm day, is it not!”
Hopper drew close to Arthur, not looking at him, apparently examining with hands and eyes the trunk of the elm-tree underneath which they had halted. “You tell your brother not to put himself in my way,” said he, in a low tone, his lips scarcely moving. “He is in a bit of trouble, as I suppose you know.”
“Yes,” breathed Arthur.
“Well, I don’t want to serve the writ upon him; I won’t serve it unless he makes me, by throwing himself within length of my arm. If he sees me coming up one street, let him cut down another; into a shop; anywhere; I have eyes that only see when I want them to. I come prowling about here once or twice a day for show, but I come at a time when I am pretty sure he can’t be seen; just gone out, or just gone in. I’d rather not harm him.”
“You are not so considerate to all,” said Arthur, after a pause given to revolving the words, and to wondering whether they were spoken in good faith, or with some concealed purpose. He could not decide which.
“No, I am not,” pointedly returned Hopper, in answer. “There are some that I look after, sharp as a ferret looks after a rat, but I’ll never do that by any son of Mr. Channing’s. I can’t forget the old days, sir, when your father was kind to me. He stood by me longer than my own friends did. But for him, I should have starved in that long illness I had, when the office would have me no longer. Why doesn’t Mr. Hamish settle this?” he abruptly added.
“I suppose he cannot,” answered Arthur.
“It is only a bagatelle at the worst, and our folks would not have gone to extremities if he had shown only a disposition to settle. I am sure that if he would go to them now, and pay down a ten-pound note, and say, ‘You shall have the rest as I can get it,’ they’d withdraw proceedings; ay, even for five pounds I believe they would. Tell him to do it, Mr. Arthur; tell him I always know which way the wind blows with our people.”
“I will tell him, but I fear he is very short of money just now. Five or ten pounds may be as impossible to find, sometimes, as five or ten thousand.”
“Better find it than be locked up,” said Hopper. “How would the office get on? Deprive him of the power of management, and it might cost Mr. Channing his place. What use is a man when he is in prison? I was in Mr. Channing’s office for ten years, Mr. Arthur, and I know every trick and turn in it, though I have left it a good while. And now that I have just said this, I’ll go on my way. Mind you tell him.”
“Thank you,” warmly replied Arthur.
“And when you have told him, please to forget that you have heard it. There’s somebody’s eyes peering at me over the deanery blinds. They may peer! I don’t mind them; deaneries don’t trouble themselves with sheriff’s officers.”
He glided away, and Arthur went straight to the office. Hamish was alone; he was seated at Jenkins’s desk, writing a note.
“You here still, Hamish! Where’s Yorke?”
“Echo answers where,” replied Hamish, who appeared to have recovered his full flow of spirits. “I have seen nothing of him.”
“That’s Yorke all over! it is too bad.”
“It would be, were this a busy afternoon with me. But what brings you back, Mr. Arthur? Have you left the organ to play itself?”
“Williams is taking it; he heard of Jenkins’s accident, and thought I might not be able to get away from the office twice today, so he attended himself.”
“Come, that’s good-natured of Williams! A bargain’s a bargain, and, having made the bargain, of course it is your own look-out that you fulfil it. Yes, it was considerate of Williams.”
“Considerate for himself,” laughed Arthur. “He did not come down to give me holiday, but in the fear that Mr. Galloway might prevent my attending. ‘A pretty thing it would have been,’ he said to me, ‘had there been no organist this afternoon; it might have cost me my post.’”
“Moonshine!” said Hamish. “It might have cost him a word of reproof; nothing more.”
“Helstonleigh’s dean is a strict one, remember. I told Williams he might always depend upon me.”
“What should you have done, pray, had I not been here to turn office-keeper?” laughed Hamish.
“Of the two duties I must have obeyed the more important one. I should have locked up the office and given the key to the housekeeper till college was over, or until Yorke returned. He deserves something for this move. Has any one called?”
“No. Arthur, I have been making free with a sheet of paper and an envelope,” said Hamish, completing the note he was writing. “I suppose I am welcome to it?”
“To ten, if you want them,” returned Arthur. “To whom are you writing?”
“As if I should put you au courant of my love-letters!” gaily answered Hamish.
How could Hamish indulge in this careless gaiety with a sword hanging over his head? It was verily a puzzle to Arthur. A light, sunny nature was Hamish Channing’s. This sobering blow which had fallen on it had probably not come before it was needed. Had his bark been sailing for ever in smooth waters, he might have wasted his life, indolently basking on the calm, seductive waves. But the storm rose, the waves ran high, threatening to engulf him, and Hamish knew that his best energies must be put forth to surmount them. Never, never talk of troubles as great, unmitigated evils: to the God-fearing, the God-trusting, they are fraught with hidden love.
“Hamish, were I threatened with worry, as you are, I could not be otherwise than oppressed and serious.”
“Where would be the use of that?” cried gay Hamish. “Care killed a cat. Look here, Arthur, you and your grave face! Did you ever know care do a fellow good? I never did: but a great deal of harm. I shall manage to scramble out of the pit somehow. You’ll see.” He put the note into his pocket, as he spoke, and took up his hat to depart.
“Stop an instant longer, Hamish. I have just met Hopper.”
“He did not convert you into a writ-server, I hope. I don’t think it would be legal.”
“There you are, joking again! Hamish, he has the writ, but he does not wish to serve it. You are to keep out of his way, he says, and he will not seek to put himself in yours. My father was kind to him in days gone by, and he remembers it now.”
“He’s a regular trump! I’ll send him half-a-crown in a parcel,” exclaimed Hamish.
“I wish you would hear me out. He says a ten-pound note, perhaps a five-pound note, on account, would induce ‘his people’—suppose you understand the phrase—to stay proceedings, and to give you time. He strongly advises it to be done. That’s all.”
Not only all Arthur had to say upon the point, but all he had time to say. At that moment, the barouche of Lady Augusta Yorke drove up to the door, and they both went out to it. Lady Augusta, her daughter Fanny, and Constance Channing were in it. She was on her way to attend a missionary meeting at the Guildhall, and had called for Roland, that he might escort her into the room.
“Roland is not to be found, Lady Augusta,” said Hamish, raising his hat with one of his sunny smiles. “He darted off, it is impossible to say where, thereby making me a prisoner. My brother had to attend the cathedral, and there was no one to keep office.”