Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

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, and 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 tonight, 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 hearthrug as sedately as any old woman. Nelly's boisterous ways and gleeful laugh had left her for awhile: 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.