The Channings. Henry Wood
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