Roland Yorke / A Sequel to "The Channings"

by Mrs. Henry Wood

And that one was Mr. Brown.

[CHAPTER X.]

GOING INTO SOCIETY.

The year was growing a little later; the evenings were lengthening, and the light of the setting sun, illumining the west with a golden radiance, threw some of its cheering brightness even on the streets and houses of close, smoky London.

It shone on the person of the Reverend Henry William Ollivera, as he sat at home, taking his frugal meal, a tea-dinner. The room was a good one, and well furnished in a plain way. The table had been drawn towards one of the windows, open to the hum of the street; the rosewood cabinet at the back was handsome with its sheet of plate-glass and its white marble top; the chairs and sofa were covered with substantial cloth, the pier-glass over the mantlepiece reflected back bright ornaments. Mr. Ollivera was of very simple habits, partly because he really cared little how he lived, partly because the scenes of distress and privation he met with daily in his ministrations read him a lesson that he was not slow to take. How could he pamper himself up with rich food, when so many within a stone's throw were pining for want of bread? His landlady, Mrs. Jones, gave him sound lectures on occasion, telling him to his face that he was trying to break down. Sometimes she prepared nice dinners in spite of him: a fowl, or some other luxury, and Mr. Ollivera smiled and did not say it was not enjoyed. The district of his curacy was full of poor; poverty, vice, misery reigned, and would reign, in spite of what he could do. Some of the worst phases of London life were ever before him. The great problem, "What shall be done with these?" arose to his mind day by day. He had his scripture readers; he had other help; but destitution both of body and mind reared itself aloft like a many-headed monster, defying all solution. Sometimes Mr. Ollivera did not come in to dinner at all, but took a mutton-chop with his tea; as he was doing now.

Four years had elapsed since his brother's mysterious death (surely it may be called so!) and the conviction on the clergyman's mind, that the verdict was wholly at variance with the facts, had not abated one iota. Nay, time had but served to strengthen it. Nothing else had strengthened it. No discovery had been made, no circumstance, however minute, had arisen to throw light upon it one way or the other. The hoped-for, looked-for communication from the police-agent, Butterby, had never come. In point of fact Mr. Butterby, in regard to this case, had found himself wholly at sea. Godfrey Pitman did not turn up in response to the threatened "looking after;" Miss Rye departed for London with her sister when affairs at the Jones's came to a crash; and, if the truth must be told, Mr. Butterby veered round to his original opinion, that the verdict had been a correct one. Once, and once only, that renowned officer had presented himself at the house of Greatorex and Greatorex. Happening to be in London, he thought he would give them a call. But he brought no news. It was but a few weeks following the occurrence, and there might not have been time for any to arise. One thing he had requested--to retain in his possession the scrap of writing found on the table at the death. It might be useful to him, he said, for of course he should still keep his eyes open: and Mr. Greatorex readily acquiesced. Since then nothing whatever had been heard from Mr. Butterby, or from any other quarter; but the sad facts were rarely out of the clergyman's mind; and the positive conviction, the expectation of the light, to break in sooner or later, burnt within him with a steady ray, sure and true as Heaven.

Not of this, however, was Mr. Ollivera's mind filled this evening. His thoughts were running on the disheartening scenes of the day; the difficult men and women he had tried to deal with--some of them meek and resigned, many hard and bad; all wanting help for their sick bodies or worse souls. There was one case in particular that interested him sadly. A man named Gisby, discovered shortly before, lay in a room, dying slowly. He did not want help in kind, as so many did; but of spiritual help, none could be in greater need. Little by little, Mr. Ollivera got at his history. It appeared that the man had once been servant in the house of Kene, the Queen's counsel--Judge Kene now: he had been raised to the bench in the past year. During his service there, a silver mug disappeared; circumstances seemed to point to Gisby as guilty, and he was discharged, getting subsequently other employment.

But now, the man was not guilty--as he convinced Mr. Ollivera, and the suspicion appeared to have worked him a great deal of ill, and made him hard. On this day, when the clergyman sat by his bed-side, reading and praying, he had turned a deaf ear. "Where's the use?" he roughly cried, "Sir Thomas thinks me guilty always." It struck Mr. Ollivera that the man had greatly respected his master, had valued his good opinion and craved for it still; and the next morning this was confirmed. "You'll go to him when I'm dead, sir, and tell him the truth then, that I was not guilty? I never touched the mug, or knew how or where it went."

Returning home with these words ringing in his ears, Mr. Ollivera could not get the man out of his mind. So long as the sense of being wronged lay upon Gisby, so long would he encase himself in his hard indifference, and refuse to hear. "I must get Kene to go to see the man," decided Mr. Ollivera. "He must hear with his own ears and see with his own eyes that he was not guilty, and tell him so; and then Gisby will come round. I wonder if Kene is back from circuit."

Excessively tired with his day's work, for his frame was not of the strongest, Mr. Ollivera did not care to go out that evening to Sir Thomas Kene's distant residence on the chance of not finding him. And yet, if the judge was back, there ought to be no time lost in communicating with him, for Gisby was daily getting nearer to death. "Bede Greatorex will be able to tell me," suddenly thought Mr. Ollivera, when his tea had been long over and twilight was setting in. "I'll send and ask him."