Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Mr. Greatorex started with alarm when he saw his son. They got home at night, having come up by the tidal train from Folkestone, which had been somewhat delayed in consequence of the boat's rough passage. During their absence, it had been the quietest and happiest home imaginable: Mr. Greatorex, Annabel Channing, and the little girl forming it; Frank Greatorex having holiday as well as Bede. For visitors they had Henry William Ollivera and Roland Yorke, one or the other dropping in to tea twice or thrice a week. Mr. Greatorex was a very father to Annabel; and Miss Jane, subjected to regularity and desirable influences only, was on her best behaviour. The old lawyer, in the happy quiet, the relief conferred by the absence of noise and Mrs. Bede, thought the good old times must be coming back again.

All three were sitting together in the drawing-room when Bede and his wife got in. The chandelier's rays flashed full on Bede's face, and Mr. Greatorex started. Far from his son's having derived benefit from the prolonged tour, he looked worse than ever; his cheeks hollow and hectic, his face altogether worn. Perhaps for the first time it struck Mr. Greatorex, as he glanced from one to the other, that she likewise looked thin and worn, with restless eyes and hollow cheeks, hectic also. But in the hectic there was this difference: Bede's was natural, hers was put on. What would they have been without the rouge?

Bede said he was better. When Mr. Greatorex spoke seriously to him on the following morning, recommending that there should be a consultation, Bede laughed. He declared that the rest from business had done him an immense deal of good. Thin? Oh of course he was thin. So was Louisa--did Mr. Greatorex not notice it?--Tallet was the same, for the matter of that: they had gone whirling about from place to place, a little too fast, he supposed, making a toil of pleasure. And then the dreadful sea passage!--of course they looked the worse last night, but they were both all right this morning.

So spoke Bede, and went to work with a will: really with some of his old energy. He appeared fresh and tolerably well after the night's rest; and Mr. Greatorex felt reassured.

Gerald Yorke was another who had taken holiday. Gerald had managed to get an invitation to cruise in the Honourable Mr. Fuller's yacht; and Gerald, with two or three other invited guests, went careering off in it for the space of six weeks. Before starting, he had fully accomplished his reviewing work with regard to Hamish Channing's book--but that can be left until later. Gerald enjoyed himself amazingly. The yacht put into foreign ports on occasion, and they got a few days' land cruise. The honourable owner treated his friends right royally, and Gerald had not felt so much at ease since he was a boy. By a slice of luck, which Gerald hardly believed in at the time, he had induced Vincent Yorke to lend him fifty pounds before starting, and he thought himself laudably generous in dividing this with his wife.

"Now mind, Winny," he said to her on the morning of his departure, "I shall be away about five weeks. It can't take you five pounds a week to live and pay rent, so I shall expect you to have a good sum in hand when I get back. I'll drop you a letter now and then, but you'll not be able to write to me, as we shall be moving about from place to place just as the wind or mood takes us."

Therefore, on the score of his wife and children, Gerald was entirely at ease; and he quite expected, after his charge to Winny, that she would have something like eight or ten pounds left of the twenty-five; at least, that she ought to have. He was out of reach of creditors too; the future he did not allow to trouble him (he never did), and Gerald gave himself wholly up to the enjoyment of the present.

Little did Gerald Yorke suspect, as he leaned over the side of the yacht in seductive indolence, smoking his cigar and sipping his iced Burgundy, that poor Winny's money had come to an end before the second week was over. It might not have cost him a single moment's care if he had known it, for Gerald was one upon whom no earthly person's trouble made the smallest impression, unless it touched him personally. Effectually out of the way himself, Winny might just have done as she best could. Gerald would have wished he was at hand to tell her she deserved a shaking for her folly, and dismissed the matter from his mind.

The way the money went so soon, was this. Gerald's man-servant in chambers, just as glad as his master to get a respite from troublesome creditors, who went well nigh to wear his patience out, informed one of that ill-used body of men where Mr. Gerald Yorke had gone, on the very day following the departure--"Cruising over the sea in a lord's yacht to foreign parts, and likely to be away till winter." Of course this struck the applicant dumb. He happened to know that Gerald Yorke had a wife and family in town, and he set himself forthwith to learn their address; which he found not very difficult of accomplishment. His own debt was not a very heavy one, rather short of six pounds. Down he went, demanded an interview with Mrs. Yorke, and so scared her senses away by insisting upon instant payment there and then, that Winny handed out the money. Other creditors got to know of this; they went down too, and insisted upon the same prompt payment on their score. Winny had many virtues no doubt, but there was one she could certainly not boast of--courage. In all that related to debt and its attendant annoyances, she was timid as a fawn. To be pressed for an account and not pay it if she had the money in her possession, was simply impossible to Winifred Yorke. But this I think has been hinted at before. When the last fraction of the twenty-five pounds had left her (in a payment of four pounds ten to a stern-looking, but by no means abusive man). Winny burst into tears: saying aloud she did not expect her husband home for weeks, did not know where to write to him, and had not a sixpence left for herself and her poor little children. Upon that the man put the half-sovereign back into Mrs. Yorke's hand without a word, and departed.

So there was Winny, literally without a sixpence, save for this ten shillings, and Gerald not quite two weeks gone. But for Hamish Channing and his wife, she might really have starved; most certainly she would have been turned out of doors; for the landlady, nearly tired of Mr. Gerald Yorke's uncertain finances, had never kept her. Miss Cook said she could not afford to let rooms and get no rent; and no doubt that was true. Away went Winny with her grief and helplessness to Mrs. Channing. It was an awkward dilemma, an embarrassing appeal, and Ellen Channing felt it as such. On the one hand there was this poor helpless woman, and her not much more helpless children: on the other, Ellen was aware that Hamish had already aided her far more extensively than he could afford.