XII. WAITING FOR NEWS…

XII. WAITING FOR NEWS

Mark Cray and his wife had not indicated the precise hour of their return: "early in the evening, but not to dinner; have tea ready," had been Mrs. Cray's words to her servants in the letter received by them on Friday morning. Sara Davenal went to the Abbey about five o'clock to wait for them.

Mark and Caroline were beginning as prudently as their best friends could desire; two maid-servants only, engaged under the careful eye of Miss Bettina, comprised their household. The large heavy door of the Abbey opened to a large stone hall; on the left of this was a large sitting-room, with cross-beams in its ceiling and deep-mullioned windows, looking on to the branching lines of rails and the station in the distance; not so pleasant a view as had been the gay Abbey gardens. Indeed, with the doing away of those gardens, the pleasantest part of the Abbey as a residence, had gone. It was a rambling sort of place inside, with very little comfort. This room and the drawing-room above were the only good-sized rooms in the house; four modern rooms might have been put into that drawing-room, and what its carpeting had cost was something to be talked of. The bedchambers were pigeon-holes, the domestic offices dark closets paved with stone; in short the Abbey was a grander place in sound than it was pleasant for use. The Crays, who had lived in it so long, were party-giving people, thinking more of show than comfort; the pigeon-holes were good enough for them; the dark stone kitchens might be made the best of by the servants; the great drawing-room, larger than anybody else's in Hallingham, gladdened their hearts. It was certainly an imposing room when filled with company and lights.

Sara Davenal waited and waited in the downstairs room. She had taken off her things, and made herself at home. Her dress was of dark-blue silk, the bands of her brown hair were smooth and silken, and excitement had brought a colour to her cheeks. She had never before been parted from Caroline since the latter arrived, years ago, from the West Indies. The tea was on the table in readiness, with a cold fowl and tongue, thoughtfully ordered to be provided by Miss Davenal.

Five o'clock; half-past five; six o'clock; half-past six; seven o'clock; and still they had not come. Sara grew impatient--it is of no use to deny it--and blamed them for want of punctuality. They had not bargained for her feverish longing.

She stood at the window, looking still, as she had done since five o'clock. It had grown into night since she stood there; would have grown to dark, but for the brilliant moon that lighted the heavens. A servant came in.

"Shall I bring lights, miss?"

"Not yet. I want to watch for the train."

The maid retired. Sara waited on--waited and waited, until she felt sure that it must be half-past seven; but then she was counting time by her own impatience, not by the clock. Her eyes began to grow weary with the intense and incessant gaze at the station, and she could see a good many people standing at its entrance in the moonlight--stragglers, no doubt, waiting for the train, wondering, like herself, that it was not in, and what had become of it.

As she thus stood, there was a loud ring at the dour-bell. Sara flew into the hall in glee, thinking how stupid she must have been not to observe them crossing the bridge round by the lines; flew into the hall, and was met by her aunt.

Miss Davenal! when she had expected the bridegroom and bride! but Sara had to make the best of it, and she did so in her pleasing, graceful manner, drawing her aunt in by the hand to the dark room.

"They have not come yet, Aunt Bettina."

"Whatever's the meaning of this?" was the surprised question of Miss Davenal. "All in the dark? and where are they?"

"They have not come yet," repeated Sara. "Bring the lights," she added in a low voice to the servant.

"Not come! Where are they stopping?"

"The train is not in, Aunt Bettina."

"The what's not in?"

"The train."

"Why, what has come to it?"

Miss Bettina, all amazed, and scarcely believing the information, went hastily to the window, and looked towards the station. At that moment the other servant, Dorcas, came into the room. She was not a stranger to the family, having once lived with Miss Davenal, before that lady took up her abode with her brother. Dorcas was getting on to be middle-aged,--a sensible-looking woman, with a turned-up nose and reddish hair.

"Miss Sara," she whispered, "they are saying there's been an accident to the train."

Sara Davenal's heart seemed to stand still and then bound on again as if it would break its bounds.

"Who says it?" she gasped.

"I saw the folks standing about, and talking one to the other; so I opened my kitchen winder, and asked what was amiss, and they said the seven o'clock train was not in, that it had met with an accident. Miss Sara"----

But Miss Sara had turned from her. Silently snatching her shawl and bonnet from the sofa where she had laid them, she quitted the room, the unconscious Miss Davenal standing yet at the window. Dorcas followed her, and, by the lights that were now being carried in, she saw how white she looked.

"Miss Sara, I was about to say that it may not be true," continued Dorcas, as Sara hastily flung on her things. "I don't think it is: there'd be more uproar at the station if any news of that sort had been brought in."

"I am going over to see; I cannot remain in this suspense. Not go by myself?" she repeated, in reply to the woman's remonstrance; "nonsense, Dorcas! Everybody knows me: I am Dr. Davenal's daughter. You stay with my aunt Bettina, and be sure don't alarm her if you can help it."

Pulling the door open with her own hand, she passed under the red light of Mr. Cray's professional lamp, and hastened by the side-path and the bridge round to the station. Her face was pale, her pulses were beating. Sara Davenal had a quick imagination, and all the horrors of accidents by rail that she had ever heard seemed to rise up before her.

There was no impediment offered to her entering the station. Several persons were standing about, but they did not appear to notice her, and she passed through the room where the tickets were given, on to the platform. There she found herself in the midst of a crowd. Not a moving crowd but a waiting crowd, whose faces were mostly turned one way--that by which the expected train ought to come. Sara saw a talkative porter, and got near him, a man she knew.

"Has there been an accident?" she asked.

"Well, miss, there's nothing known for certain. It's odd where the train can be; and if anything has happened, it's odder still that the telegraph haven't brought word of it. I remember once she was half an hour late before."

"Who was?" asked Sara, bewildered.

"This here seven o'clock train. 'Twarn't nothing wrong with her then; some of them bothering excursion-trains had blocked up the line. I'd lay, miss, it's the same thing tonight. The doctor ain't gone down the line, is he?"

"No, no. I am expecting my cousin and Mr. Cray."

"It'll be all right, miss. She won't be long. We shall hear her steam directly."

Somewhat reassured, Sara turned, and was pushing her way through the throng, wishing to get clear of it, when she found herself a sort of prisoner. A gentleman had placed his arm before her, and looking up in the moonlight she discerned the features of Oswald Cray. Her heart gave a great bound of satisfaction, of love, and she almost caught at his protecting hand.

It was a curious and exciting scene. The station raising its imposing height to the night sky, so blue and beautiful; the crowd gathered there, unnaturally still in the intensity of awed expectation; the lights and bustle of the town not far away; the noiseless tread of the porters, as they moved restlessly in their suspense;--all made a painfully interesting picture in the bright moonlight.

Oswald Cray was waiting for the incoming train. It was the one he intended to depart by. He drew Sara away from the throng, and gave her his arm. Her heart was beating at the consciousness of his presence; her whole frame had thrilled at the touch of his hand.

"Is there danger, do you fear?" she whispered.

"No, I trust not. I think not. Were anything wrong, the telegraph would have brought the news. It must be some obstruction on the line."

Sara's fear faded away. She had confidence in him. If he, so experienced, the line's own engineer, saw no cause for dread, why should she? Perhaps she could not quite banish one little corner of doubt in her heart; perhaps Mr. Oswald Cray might have some slight corner of fear himself, which he did not deem it expedient to impart to her.

"Did you get frightened, Sara?" he asked, as they walked slowly to and fro in the moonlight.

"I was at the Abbey waiting for them, and Dorcas, one of their new servants, came to me with the news that people in the street were saying there had been an accident. I was very much frightened and came away; ran away, I may say," she added, smiling, "without saying anything to Aunt Bettina."

"Is she at the Abbey?"

"She has just come. She expected they had returned."

"I fear Lady Oswald is waiting for this train at Hildon," he remarked. "She will not like the delay."

"Indeed! Lady Oswald at Hildon!"

He explained to her how it was: that Lady Oswald had gone to Mr. Low's, and was not yet back. "Did you know that I called at your house this afternoon?" he asked.

"No," she said, lifting her head. "Did you call?"

"It was about five o'clock. I have been very busy all day, but I managed to get a minute. You were out, Neal said, and the doctor was out; only Miss Davenal at home, so I did not go in."

"I had come down to the Abbey," said Sara. "I thought they might arrive by an earlier train than this. Are you obliged to go back to London tonight?"

"Quite obliged, if the train shall arrive to take me. What's that?"

Some stir was discernible in the throng. Oswald Cray held his breath, listening for any sound that might indicate the approach of the train; but in the distance he could hear nothing, and the stir, caused perhaps only by the restlessness of waiting, died away. They paced on again.

"Since I saw you, Sara, I have had an offer made me of going abroad."

"To stay long?" she quickly asked. "Where to?"

"To stay a long while, had I accepted it; perhaps for life. In a pecuniary point of view the change would have been an advantageous one: it would have given me a position at once. But the climate is shocking; so I declined."

"Oh, I am glad?" she involuntarily said. "You should not run any of those risks."

"I did not hesitate on my own score. At least, I am not sure that I should have hesitated, but I really did not think of myself at all in the matter. I did not get so far. I should not like to have gone out alone, Sara: and I felt that I had no right to expose another to these chances; one whom I should then be bound to protect and cherish, so far as man's protection goes, from all ill."

He spoke in what may be called general words, in a general tone, but it was impossible for Sara to misunderstand him. Every pulse within her beat in answer, quietly as she continued to walk, calmly as her eyes rested straight before her. She knew it was his intention not to speak openly, until he could speak to some purpose: and she thought he was right.

"So I resolved to continue where I am, and plod on diligently," he continued. "Advancement, though more slow, will be sure. Do you think I did right?"

"Quite right, quite right," she murmured. And, had they been speaking without reserve to each other, she might have added, "Papa would not like me to go abroad."

A silence ensued. They paced together in that quiet spot away from the busy crowd, the silvery moonlight above, the pure passion of love's first dream filling their hearts within. No need of words: the conscious presence of each was all in all.

"Where can this train be?" exclaimed Oswald at length, breaking the charm of the silence.

Almost as the words left his lips one of the porters came hurriedly up, touching his hat as he spoke.

"There has been a mistake in the telegraph-room, sir. Leastways, some bungle. The train was telegraphed from Hildon."

A moment's startled pause on the part of Oswald Cray.

"It was told to me positively that the train had not left, Parker?"

"I know, sir; we all understood it so. But James Eales is come back now, and he says we misunderstood him; that the train was telegraphed at the proper time. There's an accident, sir, for certain; and it's between this and Hildon."

"I think there must be a mistake," murmured Oswald Cray to Sara. "Stay here quietly, away from the crowd."

Giving no further satisfaction to her fears--indeed he could not give it--he walked hastily to the small room used as the telegraph office. The news which the porter had brought to him was spreading elsewhere, and the entrance to it was blocked up with an eager throng. He began to work his way through.

"By your leave, by your leave, good people." And they drew aside so as to give room for him to pass when they saw who it was. Mr. Oswald Cray's right of authority, as being superior to that of any at the station, was known and recognised.

The telegraph clerk was a young man named James Eales. It was his duty to receive the messages, and in due course he ought to have received the one from Hildon, signifying that the expected train (called in familiar terms at Hallingham the seven o'clock train, although it came in five minutes sooner) had duly quitted Hildon. This message was due somewhere about twenty-three minutes to seven, and it came this evening as usual quite punctually. No sooner had it been received than James Eales, who wanted to absent himself for a short while on an errand to the town, asked one of the men to take his place. Other messages might be expected relating to the trains, not to speak of private messages, always liable to come; and the man took the place accordingly. As Eales was going out, the man, whose name was Williams, called after him to know whether the train was signalled. Eales thought he meant the down-train, whose signal was nearly due, and replied, "No, not yet." But in point of fact Williams had alluded to the up-train from Hildon, which had been signalled. That man was an accurate time-keeper; it wanted two or three minutes yet to the signalling of the down-train, and he would not have been likely, from this very accuracy, to inquire whether that message had come, it not being due. Eales, who did not possess the like innate accuracy, and was besides in a hurry to depart, confused the question, and took it to allude to the down-train. It is through these mistakes, which are caused half by carelessness, half by what may be almost called unavoidable misapprehension, that accidents occur. It did not lead to the accident in this case, but it has led to many a one. Williams ought to have said, "Is the up-train signalled!" Saying what he did say, "Is the train signalled?" Eales should have answered, "The up-train is signalled; not the down."

Williams sat down to the desk or bureau, the telegraph indicator being in front of him, above his head. Precisely to time the down telegraph came, a confirmation it may almost be said of the mistake. Williams noted it, and wondered what the up-train was about that its signal did not likewise come. After seven o'clock came and passed, and the up-train did not arrive, the station-master, who had been enjoying a little recreative gossip on his own score, and not attending to his duties quite as closely as he might have been, made his appearance in the telegraph office.

"Where's James Eales?" he demanded.

Williams explained. He had stepped out on an errand, and he, Williams, was taking his place. The station-master made no demur to this: Williams was as capable as Eales, and often worked the telegraph.

"Has the up-train been signalled from Hildon?"

"No, sir."

"Not been signalled!" echoed the station-master, in an accent of disbelief.

"It has not been signalled for certain," was the reply of Williams. "Eales told me the signal had not come when he left, and I am sure it has not come since."

"Where can it be?" exclaimed the station-master. "I suppose some of those monster excursion-trains are blocking up the line somewhere."

A consolatory conclusion, quite doing away with uneasiness or fear. The station-master promulgated the news that the train had not been signalled from Hildon, together with his own suggestive idea of the offending excursion-trains. He told Mr. Oswald Cray it had not been signalled, and he told others: therefore the officials were perfectly at their ease upon the point, whatever the assembled crowed might be.

It was just five-and-twenty minutes past seven when Eales returned. He had stayed longer than he intended, and he dashed into his office head foremost, catching a glimpse of the crowd on the platform, now quickly increasing.

"What do they want, that lot?" he cried to Williams. "Is anything wrong?"

"They are waiting for the up-train. It's preciously behind time tonight, and I suppose some of them are alarmed--have got friends in it, maybe."

"What up-train?" asked Eales.

"The seven o'clock up-train to London." Eales stood confounded. "Why, is that not come up? An accident must have happened."

"Not obliged to," coolly returned Williams. "It's kept back by the excursion-trains, most likely."

"There are no excursion-trains today between this and Hildon," quickly observed Eales.

"It has not got so far yet. It has not passed Hildon."

"It has passed Hildon," replied Eales. "It passed at its proper time, and was signalled up."

Williams turned and stared at Eales with all his might. "Who says it has been signalled up?"

"Who says it! Why, I say it. I got the signal as usual."

"Then how came you to tell me you hadn't had it?" asked Williams.

"I never told you so."

"You did. You'll say black's white next. It was the only question I asked you--whether the up-train had been signalled, and you replied it had not been."

"You said the down-train: you never said the up."

"I meant the up. It's not likely I should ask whether the down-train was signalled, when it wasn't near due! You have done a pretty thing!"

How long they might have continued to dispute, one seeking to lay the blame upon the other, it is impossible to say. But at that moment the station-master came in again, and the mistake was made known to him and to others. The train had left Hildon at its proper time, and therefore the delay, whatever might be its cause, lay very near to them--in the six miles of rail intervening between Hallingham and Hildon; the train must be on some spot of it.

That an accident of some nature had taken place, the most sanguine could now only believe, and a whole shower of verbal missives was hurled upon the two men, Eales and Williams, who did nothing but retort on each other. Each firmly regarded the other as being alone in fault; an impartial judge would have said they were equally culpable. Extricating himself from the confusion, Mr. Oswald Cray returned to Sara. She looked at him with questioning eyes, her heart shrinking; that hubbub in the station had reawakened her fears. He quietly placed her hand within his arm, and began to pace as before.

"I find things do not look quite so well as we fancied"----

"There has been an accident!" she interrupted. "Do not hide it from me, Oswald."

He lightly laid his other hand on hers, an assurance of his truth, "I will hide nothing from you, my dearest," and the never-yet-used term of endearment seemed to slip from him involuntarily, in the moment's need that he should soothe her. "We have not heard that there is any accident, for no tidings of any sort have come up; but the train, it seems, did leave Hildon at its usual time, and something must therefore have occurred to delay it."

A deep, sobbing sigh nearly broke from her, but she coughed it down.

"Do not meet trouble half-way," he said in a lighter tone. "It does not follow that an accident, in the popular sense of the term, must have occurred, because the train is not up. The engine may have broken down and be unable to come on, but the passengers may be as safe and well as we are. There's no doubt the engine is disabled, or it would have come on for assistance."

"Assistance for the wounded?" she quickly rejoined.

"Assistance that may be wanted in anyway. The telegraph is at work to stop all trains, and some of us are going down"----

It was the last collected word they were enabled to speak. The news had spread in the town, and the affrighted people were coming up in shoals. News, at the best, loses nothing in carrying, and the delay was magnified into a dreadful accident, with half the train killed. In the midst of it the guard of the missing train arrived, flying up the line as if for his life, and carrying a lantern.

The engine had run off the line on to the bank, and turned over. A few of the passengers were injured, but he thought not many; some of them were coming on, the field way. It had occurred about midway between the two stations, a little nearer to Hallingham than to the other. An engine was wanted to bring on the train, and it might be as well if a doctor or two went down.

This was the climax for the affrighted crowd, and those who had relatives in the train seemed to well-nigh lose their senses. A scene of inextricable confusion ensued. Some were restrained by force from jumping on the line and setting off to the scene of accident; some strove to get upon the carriage and engine about to start for it. Order was restored with great difficulty, and the carriage and engine rescued from the invaders, who then quitted the station, and set off to run to the scene, through the same fields that, as the guard said, passengers were advancing.

Two medical men, who had been hastily obtained, Mr. Oswald Cray, and sundry officials of the line, took their seats in the carriage to be conveyed to the spot. The engine had given its first puff, and was snorting off, when a loud shout arrested it.

"Stop! stop! One single moment! Here's Dr. Davenal!"

His name, for those poor wounded ones, was a tower of strength--worth all the rest of the surgical skill in Hallingham--and he was pulled into the carriage, having caught a glimpse of the white face of his daughter outside the throng. Sara, terrified and bewildered, wondering what she should do next, was suddenly pounced upon by Miss Davenal.

"You naughty girl! What is it that you are doing here?"

"O Aunt Bettina, there has been an accident to the train! Caroline and Mr. Cray are sure to be in it."

"Caroline and Mr. Cray are what?" cried out Miss Bettina.

"I fear they are in the train. There has been an accident between here and Hildon. An engine has just gone down with assistance."

"I don't want to know about engines," returned Miss Davenal, who had not understood one word in ten. "I ask what you do here alone? Caroline and Mr. Cray can come home, I suppose, without your waiting for them in this public manner. What would your papa say if he saw you?"

"Papa has seen me," replied Sara. "Papa has just come up to the station and is gone down with the engine."

"Gone down with what engine? What do you mean?"

Sara put her lips close to Miss Davenal's ear. "Papa's gone down the line with some more gentlemen, to see about the wounded."

"Wounded!" shrieked Miss Bettina. "Has there been an accident? Who's wounded? Caroline and Mr. Cray?"

"We don't know yet, aunt." And in the best way that she could, Sara strove to make the case comprehensible to her aunt. Miss Davenal understood at last, and was somewhat mollified.

"Sara, I am not very angry with you now. I might have stopped myself. An accident to the train, and the doctors gone down! O those dreadful railways!"

A little longer of suspense, and then the passengers began to arrive. After the shock and fright, it had seemed safer to many of them to walk the three miles of distance than to trust to the rail again and another engine. The path fields were dry, and it was a pleasant walk by moonlight. Miss Bettina, whose eyes were as quick as her hearing was dull, was the first to recognise Mrs. Cray amidst them.

Caroline burst into tears as they laid hold of her, and Sara's heart began to sink. But the tears were only the effect of the fright and excitement she had gone through. She could give no clear account of the accident or what it had brought forth. All she knew was that there was great banging and bumping of the carriage she was in, but it was not overturned. Two other carriages were; and the engine was lying on its side with all its steam coming out of it. She scrambled up the bank in her terror, as did most of the passengers, and came on with them.

"And Mark?" asked Sara, scarcely daring to put the question.

"Mark! He stayed to look after the wounded," was her reply. "He said he thought there was nobody seriously hurt. At any rate, there are no lives lost."

Sara's heart breathed a word of thankfulness. "Did you see Lady Oswald?" she asked. "She went to Hildon this afternoon, and Mr. Oswald Cray thought she must be in this train, returning."

"I did not see her," replied Mrs. Cray. "Lady Oswald in the train! I thought she never travelled by rail."

"She did this afternoon. One of her carriage-horses is ill. How thankful!--how thankful we must all be that it is no worse!" concluded Sara Davenal.

"Well, this is a fine ending to your wedding-jaunt!" exclaimed Miss Bettina. "What about your luggage, Caroline? Is it safe?"

"As if we gave a thought to our luggage, Aunt Bettina! When people's lives are at stake they can't think of their luggage."

"Nor care either, perhaps," sharply answered Miss Bettina, who, for a wonder, had caught the words. "It may be lying soused in the engine-water, for all you know!"

"I daresay it is," equably returned Caroline. "It was in the van next the engine." But the full report had to come up yet; and the excited crowd stopped on.

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XIII. PAIN

Clear and distinct lay the lines of rail in the cold moonlight. It was a straight bit of line there, without curve or bend, rise or incline; and why the engine should have gone off the rails remained to be proved. It was lying on its side, the steam escaping as from a fizzing, hissing furnace; the luggage-van was overturned, and its contents were scattered; and two carriages were overturned also: a second-class, which had been next the van, a first-class which had followed it.

But now, as good Providence willed it, in that second-class carriage there had only been three passengers. The train was not a crowded one, and people don't go close to the engine as a matter of taste. Of these three passengers, two had thrown themselves flat on the floor of the carriage between the seats, and escaped without injury; the other had a broken arm and a bruised head, not of much moment. The first-class carriage was more fully occupied, and several of the passengers, though not fatally or even extensively, were seriously hurt; and of the driver and stoker, the one had saved himself by leaping from his engine, the other was flung to a distance, and lay there as he fell.

Mark Cray, as you have heard, remained to tend the wounded. The first face he distinguished in the moonlight, lying amidst the débris of the overturned first-class carriage, was that of Lady Oswald: and so completely astonished was he to see it, that he thought either his eyes or the moon must be playing him false. He and Caroline had been in a carriage almost at the back of the train, consequently he had not seen her at the Hildon station: and he had believed that Lady Oswald, of all persons, would have been the last to attempt railway travelling, so much was she averse to rails and trains in general. Groaning and moaning by her side was Parkins; and Mr. Cray could doubt no longer.

With assistance, the passengers were extricated and laid upon the bank. Their injuries were unequal; some, after the first shock, could walk and talk, some could do neither; while the first grumbled and complained of their bruises and abrasions, the last lay still, except for groaning. The only perfectly quiet one was Lady Oswald: she lay with her pale face upturned to the moonlight, her eyes closed. It was natural perhaps that Mark Cray should turn his first attention to her. A gentleman, one of the passengers, asked if she was dead.

"No," said Mark; "she has only fainted. Parkins, suppose you get up and try if you can walk. I'm sure you can't be hurt if you are able to make that noise. That engine appears not to be over steady. Take care it does not raise itself again and come puffing off this way."

Parkins, not detecting the ruse, started up with a shriek, and stood rubbing herself all over. "I think I'm killed," she cried; "I don't believe I have got a whole bone in me."

"I'll see by-and-by," said Mr. Cray. "Meanwhile come and help your lady. I want her bonnet and cap untied."

Parkins limped to the spot stiffly with many groans, but wonderfully well considering the belief she had just expressed. At the same moment some one came up with water, procured from a pond in the field, and the driver, who had just come to his legs, brought a lamp. The lamp was held to Lady Oswald's face, and some of the water poured into her mouth. Between the two she opened her eyes.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Where am I!"

"She's all right," whispered Mr. Cray, his warm tone proving that he had not previously felt so assured of the fact. "Has anybody got a drop of brandy?" he called out to the passengers, who yet stayed at the scene.

"Goodness me! where am I?" cried Lady Oswald, with a faint shriek. "Parkins, is that you? What has happened? Didn't we get into the railway carriage?"

"But we are out of it now, my lady," cried Parkins, sobbing. "There has been an awful upset, my lady, and I don't know anything more, except that it's a mercy we are alive."

"An upset!" repeated Lady Oswald, who appeared to have no recollection whatever of the circumstances. "Is anybody hurt? Are you hurt, Parkins?"

"Every bone in me is broke, my lady, if I may judge by the feel of 'em. This comes of them sheds."

"Be quiet, Parkins," said Mr. Cray, who had succeeded in finding a wicker-cased bottle containing some brandy-and-water. "Help me to raise your lady a little."

Parkins contrived to give her help in spite of the damaged bones, but the moment Lady Oswald was touched she shrieked out terribly.

"Let me alone! let me alone! Is that Mark Cray? How kind you are to come to see after me, Mr. Cray? Did you come from Hallingham?"

"We were in the same train, Lady Oswald; I and Caroline. I am very glad that it happened to be so."

"To be sure; I begin to remember: you were to return tonight. I--I feel very faint."

Mark succeeded in getting her to drink some brandy-and-water, but she positively refused to be touched, though she said she was in no pain. He thought she was exhausted, the effect of the shock, and left her to attend to other sufferers, who perhaps wanted his aid more than Lady Oswald.

Then, after awhile, the carriage came up, bringing the help from Hallingham. Mark Cray saw Dr. Davenal with the greatest pleasure, and he took him at once towards Lady Oswald.

"Are many hurt?" inquired the doctor.

"Astonishingly few," was the reply; "and the hurts are of a very minor character, I fancy. A broken arm is about the worst."

"And what of Lady Oswald?"

"I don't think she's hurt at all: she's suffering from the shock. A little exhausted; but that's natural."

"To a woman of her age such a shock is no light thing, Mark. However, we must do the best we can for everybody."

"There has been enough groaning--if that's anything to judge by," said Mark; "groaning and complaining too."

"Glad to hear it," said the doctor. "When people can complain, the damage is not very extensive."

"Parkins, for one, keeps protesting that every bone's broken. But she ran out of the way pretty quickly when I told her the engine might start up again."

The doctor smiled, and they came up to Lady Oswald. Oswald Cray had found her out, and was sitting on the bank beside her. She spoke just a word or two to him, but seemed, as Mr. Cray had said, exhausted. Oswald Cray rose to resign his place to Dr. Davenal, and he took his brother aside.

"Is she much hurt, Mark?"

"O no," replied Mark. "It has shaken her, of course; but she has been talking as fast as I can."

He spoke with singular confidence. In the first place. Mark Cray was naturally inclined to look on the bright side of things, to feel confident himself in the absence of any palpable grounds for doing so; in the second, he did not think it at all mattered what information on the point was given to Oswald.

Reassured upon the score of Lady Oswald, Oswald quitted Mark, and went amidst the wounded. Proud man though he was accused of being, though he was, never was there a tenderer heart, a softer hand, a gentler voice for the sick and suffering, than his. All the patients appeared to have been attended to in some degree; and they were in good hands now. Oswald halted by the side of the poor stoker, a swarthy honest-faced man, who was moaning out his pain.

"What, is it you, Bigg?" he said, recognising the man. "I did not know you were back on this part of the line again."

"I on'y come on it yesterday, sir. It's just my luck."

"Where are you hurt?"

"I be scalded awful, sir. I never knew what pain was afore tonight. All my lower limbs is"--

"Take care?" shouted Oswald to a stupid fellow who was running along with a plank in his arms. "Can't you see there's a man lying here? What are you about?"

"About my work," was the rough reply, spoken in an insolent tone. It was one of the men just brought down, a workman from Hallingham station, and Oswald knew him well.

"What is that, Wells?" he quietly asked.

Wells looked round now, surprised at being addressed by name. He pretty nearly dropped his load in consternation when he recognised Mr. Oswald Cray. Full as his hands were, he managed to jerk his hat from his head.

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, sir. I thought it was nothing but some idler obstricting of me. One does get beset with idlers at these times, asking one all sorts of questions. I shouldn't have answered that way, sir, if I'd knowed it was you."

"Go on with your work; there's no time to talk. And don't blunder along again without looking where you are going."

"One can't see well in the dark, sir."

"It's not dark; it is as light as it need be. Quite light enough for you to see your way. Do you call that bright moon nothing?"

"He'd ha' been right over my legs, but for you, sir," murmured poor Bigg, the great drops of pain standing out on his brow, black with his occupation. "I don't know how I be to bear this agony. That cursed engine"----

"Hush, Bigg," interrupted Mr. Oswald Cray.

Bigg groaned his contrition. "Heaven forgive me! I know it ain't a right word for me tonight."

"Heaven will help you to bear the pain if you will only let it," said Oswald. "There has been worse pain to bear than even yours, my poor fellow; though I know how hard it is for you now to think so."

"It may be my death-blow, sir. And what's to become o' my wife and little uns? Who'll work for 'em?"

"No, no, Bigg. I hope it is not so bad as that. I do not think it is."

"If one might count by pain, sir"----

"Bigg, I can give you a little comfort on that score," interrupted Oswald Cray. "A friend of mine was very dreadfully burnt, through his bed-clothes catching fire. Awfully burnt: I don't like, even at this distance of time, to think of it. The next day I heard of it, and went to see him. I am not a very good one to witness physical pain, and I remember how I dreaded to witness his, and the spectacle I did not doubt he presented. He was a spectacle, poor fellow--but let that pass. To my great astonishment he saluted me heartily as I went in. 'Holloa, old friend!' were his words, not only cheerfully but merrily spoken. I found that he did not suffer pain: had not felt any from the moment he was burnt. In my ignorance, I set that down as a most favourable symptom, and felt sure he would get well shortly. When I was leaving him, I met the doctor going in, and said how glad I was to find his patient so well. 'Well!' he exclaimed, 'why, what do you judge by!' And I said--by his feeling no pain. 'That's just it,' the doctor observed: 'if he only felt pain there might be a chance for him. I wish I could hear him roar out with it.' Now, Bigg," Mr. Oswald Cray added, "I am no surgeon, but I infer that the same theory must hold good in scalds as in burns: that your pain is as favourable a symptom as his want of it was unfavourable. Do not rebel at your pain again, my poor fellow; rather bear it like a man. Were I scalded or burnt, I think I should be thankful for the pain."

"He was burnt worse, may be, nor me, that there gentleman," remarked Bigg, who had listened with interest.

"Ten times worse," replied Oswald. "Yes, I may say ten times worse," he emphatically repeated. "Indeed, Bigg, I feel sure that yours is but a very slight hurt, in comparison with what it might have been: and I do not say this to you in the half-false light in which one speaks to a child to soothe it, but as one truthful man would speak to another."

"God bless you, sir. My heart was a-failing of me sadly. Did he die, that there gentleman?"

"He died at a week's end: but there had been no hope of him from the first; and there were also certain attendant circumstances in his case, apart from the injury, remarkably unfavourable. In a short while, Bigg, you'll be on your legs again, as good man as ever. I'll ask Dr. Davenal to come and have a look at you."

The name of the far-famed surgeon carried assurance in itself, and Bigg's face lighted up with eagerness. "Is Dr. Davenal here, sir?"

"Yes. I'll go and look for him."

"At the moment that Oswald spoke, Dr. Davenal had left Lady Oswald and encountered Mr. Cray. The latter, whose spirits were rather exalted that night, the effect probably of finding the injuries around him so slight, when he had looked out for all the terrible calamities that flesh is heir to, not to speak of death, stopped to speak to him of Lady Oswald. And he spoke lightly.

"Well? You don't find her hurt, doctor?"

"I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, Mark."

Dr. Davenal's tone was so very grave that Mark Cray stared. He thought--Mark Cray almost thought that there was a shade of reproof in it, meant for him.

"I am sure she has no serious hurt," he exclaimed.

"Well, Mark, I can say nothing positively yet. In the state she is, and in this place, it is not easy to ascertain: but I fear she has."

"My goodness!" cried Mark, conscious that he was but the veriest tyro beside that man of skill, of unerring practice, Richard Davenal, and feeling very little at the moment. "What is the hurt, sir?" he asked in a loud tone.

"Hold your tongue about it," said the doctor. "Time enough to proclaim it abroad when the fact has been ascertained that there is one."

Oswald Cray came up, having distinguished the doctor in the moonlight.

"I wish you'd come and look at a poor fellow, Dr. Davenal, who wants a word of cheering. A word of such from you, you know sends the spirits up. You should have seen the man's face lighten when I said you were here."

"Who is it?" asked the doctor, turning off with alacrity.

"Poor Bigg the fireman. You know him, I daresay. He is badly scalded and bruised."

"Oh, his hurts are nothing," slightingly spoke Mark Cray. "He seems one of those groaners who cry out at a touch of pain."

"Mark," said the doctor, stopping, "allow me to tender you a word of advice--do not fall into that, by some, professed to be entertained idea, that nobody can, or ought, to feel pain; or, if they feel it, that they ought not to show it. It is unnatural, untruthful; and to my mind, particularly unbecoming in a medical man. Pain to some natures is all but an impossibility to bear; it is all that can be imagined of agony; it is as if every moment of its endurance were that of death. The nervous organisation is so sensitively delicate, that even a touch of pain, as you express it, which most people would scarcely feel, would certainly not cry out over, is to them the acutest suffering. As a surgeon and anatomist you ought to know this."

"He's only a fireman," returned Mark. "Nobody expects those rough fellows to be sensitive to pain."

"Let him be a fireman or a waterman, he will feel it as I describe, be his frame thus sensitively organised," was the reply of Dr. Davenal, spoken firmly, if not sternly. "What has a man's condition in life to do with it? It won't change his physical nature. A duke, sleeping on a bed of down, nurtured in refinement and luxury, may be so constituted that pain will be a mere flea-bite to him; should he be destined to endure the worst that's known to earth, he will, so to say, hardly feel it: whereas this poor fireman, inured to hard usage, to labour and privation, may be literally almost unable to bear it. For my own part, when I have to witness this distressing sensibility to pain, perhaps have to inflict it as a surgical necessity, I suffer half as much as the patient does for I know what it is for him. Don't affect to ridicule pain again, Mark."

Mark Cray looked vexed, annoyed. But every syllable that had fallen from Dr. Davenal's lips had found its echo in the heart of Oswald Cray. If there was one quality he admired beyond all else, it was sincere open truthfulness: and to Oswald's mind there was an affectation, a want of sincerity, in the mocking expressions, the shallow opinions, so much in fashion in the present day. There had been a hollow carelessness in Mark's tone when he ridiculed the notion of the poor stoker's possessing a sensitiveness to pain, just as if the man had no right to possess it.

"Well, Bigg, and so you must get tossed in this upset!" began the doctor cheerily. "Oh! you'll do well, by the look of your face; we shall soon have you on the engine again. Let's get a sight of this grand damage. Who has got a lantern?"

It was a bad scald; a shocking scald; there was no question of it; and there was much injury by bruises; but Dr. Davenal spoke the simple truth when he assured the man that the hurts were not dangerous.

"Keep up your heart, Bigg. In an hour's time you will be in the Infirmary, properly attended to. You'll soon get over this."

"I dun know as I can live through the pain, sir," was the wailing answer.

"Ay, it's bad. But when we have got the proper remedies on, you won't feel it as you do now. Bigg, I once scalded my leg badly--at least somebody did it for me--and I remember the pain to this day; so, my poor fellow, I can tell what yours is."

"Mr. Cray said, sir, I oughtn't to feel no pain from a hurt like this, he did. It sounded hard like, for the pain is awful."

"Mr. Cray knows you would be better if you tried not to feel the pain--not to feel it so acutely. He is a doctor, you know, Bigg, and sees worse hurts than yours every day of his life."

"I'd like to ask you, sir, when I shall be well--if you can tell me. I have got a wife and children, sir; and she's sick just now, and can't work for 'em."

"We'll get you up again in three weeks," said Dr. Davenal cheerily, as he hastened away to another sufferer, groaning at a distance.

The term seemed long to the man: almost to startle him: he was thinking of his helpless wife and children.

"Three weeks!" he repeated with a moan. "Three weeks, and nobody to help 'em, and me laid down incapable!"

"Think how much worse it might be, Bigg!" said Mr. Oswald Cray, wishing to get the man to look at his misfortune in a more cheerful spirit. "Suppose Dr. Davenal had said three months?"

"Then, as good he'd said, sir, as I should never be up again."

"Do you think so? I don't. It is a long while to be confined by illness, three months, and to you it seems, no doubt, very long indeed; but it is not so much out of a man's life. I knew one who was ill for three years, and got up again. That would be worse, Bigg."

"Ay, sir, it would be. I haven't got just my right thoughts tonight, what with the pain that's racking me, and what with trouble about my wife and little 'uns."

"Don't trouble about them, Bigg," was the considerate answer. "They shall be taken care of until you can work for them again. If the company don't do it, I will."

A short while longer of confusion, of hasty clearance of the line, of soothing medical aid,--such aid as could be given in that inconvenient spot, where there was only the open bare ground for the sufferers to lie on, the moonlit sky to cover them,--and the return to Hallingham was organised. The injured were lifted into the carriages and placed as well as circumstances permitted. Lady Oswald, who shrieked out much when they raised her, was laid at full length on a pile of rugs collected from the first-class compartments, and the engine started with its load, and steamed gently onwards.

It appeared afterwards that the accident had been caused by the snapping of some part of the machinery of the engine. It was a very unusual occurrence, and could neither have been foreseen nor prevented.

The expectant crowd had not dispersed when Hallingham was reached. Nay, it had considerably increased. Even Miss Bettina Davenal retained her post, and Sara and Caroline were with her.

The invalid train--it might surely be called one in a double sense--came slowly into the station. The platform had been cleared; none were allowed upon it to obstruct the removal of the sufferers from the train to the conveyances that waited, in which they would be transported to their homes, or to the infirmary, as the case might be. But, if the platform was denied them, the excited watchers made up for the discourtesy by blocking up the road and doors outside--a motley group, picturesque enough in the fine moonlight night.

Dr. Davenal, Mr. Cray, and the other medical men were occupied in superintending the removal of their patients, but Mr. Oswald Cray found his way to Miss Davenal, and gave them the good news that the injuries were comparatively slight. A train for London was on the point of starting, and he was going by it. He contrived to obtain a few words with Sara, and she went with him on to the platform.

"I wish I could have remained over tomorrow," he observed to her. "I should like to see and hear how all these poor people get on."

"Are you sure you cannot remain?"

"I am sure that I ought not. You have heard me speak of Frank Allister Sara?"

"Often. The young Scotchman who was with you at Bracknell and Street's for so many years."

"We were articled together. He has become very ill lately; and--and the firm has not behaved quite well to him. I have no voice in that part of its economy, or it should never have been."

"What did they do?" inquired Sara.

"He has not got on as I have. Still he held a tolerably fair post in the house; but his health failed, and he had to absent himself. Mr. Street found out how ill he was, came to the conclusion that he'd be of no use to us again, and wrote him his dismissal. I thought it very hard; and he--he"----

"Yes!" said Sara, eagerly interested.

"He found it harder than he could bear. It put the finishing stroke to his illness, and I don't think he will rally. He has no relatives near, few friends; so I see him all I can, and I gave him a faithful promise to spend tomorrow with him. Time's up, and the guard's impatient, I see."

"Does the guard know you are going?"

"Yes. Don't you see him looking round for me? Fare you well, Sara. I may be down again in a day or two." He had taken her hands for a moment in both his as he stood before her.

"I trust you will get safe to town?" she whispered.

"Ay, indeed! This night has proved to us that safety lies not with ourselves. God bless you, my dearest!"

He crossed the platform and stepped into the carriage, which the guard was holding open. The next moment the train was steaming out of the station, Sara Davenal looking after it with a lingering look, a heart at rest, as that sweet word of endearment rang its echoes on her ear.

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XIV. A WHIM OF LADY OSWALD'S

The medical body, as a whole, is differently estimated by the world. Some look down upon it, others look up to it; and their own position in the scale of society has no bearing or bias on the views of the estimators. It may be that a nobleman will bow to the worth and value of the physician, will regard him as a benefactor of mankind, exercising that calling of all others most important to the welfare of humanity; while a man very far down in the world's social ladder will despise the doctor wherever he sees him.

It is possible that each has in a degree cause for this, so far as he judges by his own experience. The one may have been brought in contact with that perfect surgeon--and there are many such--whose peculiar gifts for the calling were bestowed upon him by the Divine will; he with the lion's heart and woman's hand, whose success, born of patience, courage, judgment, experience, has become by God's blessing an assured fact. Men who have brought all the grand discoveries of earthly science to their aid and help in their study of the art; who have watched Nature day by day, and mastered her intricacies; who have, in fact, attained to that perfection in skill which induces the involuntary remark to break from us--We shall never see his fellow! Before such a man as this, as I look upon it, the world should bow. We have no benefactor like unto him. The highest honours of the land should be open to him; all that we can give of respect and admiration should be his.

But there is a reverse side to the picture. There is the man who has gone into the profession without aptitude for it, who has made it his, although positively incapable of properly learning it and exercising it. He may have acquired the right to use all the empty distinguishing letters attaching to it, and tack them after his name on all convenient occasions, inscribe them in staring characters on his very door-posts--M.D., M.R.C.S.--as many more as there may be to get; but, for all that, he is not capable of exercising the art. His whole career is one terrible mistake. He kills more patients than he cures; slaying them, drenching them to death, with that most pitiful and fatal of all weapons--ignorance. It may not be his fault, in one sense: he does his best: but he has embraced a calling for which nature did not fit him. He goes on in his career, it is true, and his poor patients suffer. More ignorant, of necessity, than he is--for in all that relates to the healing art, we are, take us as a whole, lamentably deficient--they can only blindly resign themselves to his hands, and when they find that there's no restored health for them, that they get worse rather than better, they blame the obstinacy of the malady, not the treatment. Upon his own mind, meanwhile, there rests an ever-perpetual sense of failure, irritating his temper, rendering his treatment experimental and uncertain. Some cannot see where the fault lies--have no conception that it is in their own incapacity. And if a man does see it, what then? He must go on and do his best; he must be a doctor always; it is his only means of living, and he is too old to take to another trade. Rely upon it there are more of these practitioners than the world suspects.

Such a man as the first was Dr. Davenal; such a man as the last was Mark Cray. But that Mark was so Dr. Davenal suspected not. Grave cases hitherto, during their short connection, had been treated by the doctor, and for ordinary ailments Mark did well enough. He could write a proper prescription when the liver was out of order, or bring a child through the measles; he could treat old ladies with fanciful ailments to the very acme of perfection. It is true Dr. Davenal had been once or twice rather surprised by downright wrong treatment on the part of Mark, but he had attributed it to inexperience.

When other doctors could not cure, people flew to Dr. Davenal; when there was a critical operation to be performed, involving life or death, Dr. Davenal was prayed to undertake it. His practice consequently was of wide extent; it was not confined to Hallingham and its vicinity, but extended occasionally to the confines of the county. It was not, therefore, surprising that on the morning following the accident Dr. Davenal found himself called out at an early hour to the country on a case of dangerous emergency. And the illness was at Thorndyke.

He responded at once to the call. Never a prompter man than Richard Davenal. Roger had learnt by example to be prompt also, and was ready with his carriage as soon as his master. The arrangements with regard to saving time were well organised at Dr. Davenal's. The bell, communicating from the house down the side-wall of the garden to the man's rooms near the stables was made the means of conveying different orders. If rung once, Roger was wanted indoors to receive his orders by word of mouth; if rung twice--and on those occasions they were always sharp, imperative peals--Roger knew that the carriage was wanted at once, with all the speed that he could get it round.

The calm peaceful quiet of the Sabbath morn was lying on the streets of Hallingham as the doctor was driven through them. The shops were all shut; some of the private houses were not yet opened--servants are apt to lie late on Sunday morning. As they passed the town-hall and the market-place, so void of life then, the church clocks struck eight, and the customary bells, giving token of the future services of the day, broke forth in the clear air.

"Stop at the Abbey, Roger," said the doctor, as they neared it.

The woman, Dorcas, was just opening the parlour shutters. She came to the door when she saw the carriage drawing up to it.

"I want to see your master, Dorcas. I suppose he's up."

"He is up and out, sir," was her reply. "He has been gone about five minutes."

This answer caused the doctor to pause. It should be explained that when the train of sufferers arrived at the station the previous night, Lady Oswald had elected to be accompanied to her home by Mark Cray, not by Dr. Davenal. Whether she was actuated by pure caprice; whether by a better motive--the belief that she was not hurt so much as some other of the sufferers, and that Dr. Davenal's skill would be more needed by them; or whether the recent sudden liking she had taken for Mr. Cray swayed her then, could not be told; never would be told. She seemed to be a little revived at the end of the journey, and she chose that Mark Cray should go home with her. Dr. Davenal had acquiesced, but he whispered a parting word to Mark. "If there is an injury, I suspect it will be found in the ribs, Mark. Look well to it. If you want me, I'm going on to the Infirmary, and shall be at home afterwards."

But, as it appeared, the doctor had not been wanted. At any rate, Mark Cray had not sent for him. And he had stopped now to hear, if he could, Mark's report.

An upper window opened, and Mrs. Cray, completely enveloped in a thick shawl, so that nothing could be seen of her but the tip of her nose, leaned out.

"Good-morning, Uncle Richard."

"Good-morning, my dear. I am glad to see you again. Can you come down for a minute?"

"No, I have not begun to dress. Did you want Mark? He has gone to Lady Oswald's."

"Ah, that's what I wish to ask about. Did you hear Mark say how she was?--whether there was any hurt?"

"He said there was not. But, for one thing, she kept fainting, and refused to be touched. At least, I think he said so, something of that; I was very sleepy when he got home; it was one o'clock. I am sure he said she was not hurt to speak of."

"That's all right then," said Dr. Davenal.

"You are out betimes, Uncle Richard," resumed Caroline. "Are you going far?"

"To Thorndyke. Tell your husband he must see my patients this morning; I shall not be back in time. Drive on, Roger."

"Very well," said Caroline. "Who's ill at Thorndyke?"

But Dr. Davenal's answer, if he gave one, was lost in the distance, and never reached Caroline's ear.

It was a singular coincidence--as was said by gossips afterwards--that one should be taken ill that day at Thorndyke and be in danger of death. It was not, however, one of the Oswald family, but a visitor of Sir Philip's, and it has nothing whatever to do with the story It need not have been mentioned, save to explain what took Dr. Davenal from Hallingham on that critical day.

Dr. Davenal found the patient alarmingly ill, in great need of medical help, and he had to remain at Thorndyke some hours. It was between two and three o'clock when he got back to Hallingham, and he ordered Roger to drive at once to the Infirmary.

The doctor went in and saw his patients. The poor man, Bigg, easier now than he had been the previous night, lay in a slumber: the rest were going on well. One woman had gone. An inmate of the wards for some weeks past, her case, a very painful one, had baffled all skill, all remedy; and she had gone to that better place where sickness and pain cannot enter. Dr. Davenal stood for some little time conversing with the house-surgeon, and then departed on foot to his home: he had dismissed his carriage when he entered the Infirmary.

As he was walking, he met an eager little fellow scuffling along, one who always walked very fast, with his head pushed out, as if he were in a desperate hurry. It was one of the Infirmary pupils, as they were called; young men gathering skill and experience to become in time surgeons themselves, who attended the Infirmary with their masters. This one, Julius Wild, a youth of eighteen, was more particularly attached to the service of Mr. Cray, went round the wards with him as his dresser, and suchlike. No sooner did he see Dr. Davenal than his pace increased to a run, and he came up breathless.

"Oh, if you please, sir, Mr. Cray has been looking for you everywhere"----

"I have been to Thorndyke," interrupted the doctor.

"Yes, sir, but he thought you must have come back, and he sent me to about twenty places to inquire. There's something wrong with Lady Oswald, sir, and he wants to see you about it."

"What is it that's wrong?"

"Mr. Cray didn't explain to me, sir; but he said something about an operation. She's hurt internally, sir, I think."

"Where is Mr. Cray? Do you know?"

"He is gone to your house, sir. Somebody told him, they saw your carriage going along, and Mr. Cray thought you might be at home. He"----

Dr. Davenal waited to hear no more. He made the best of his way towards home, but before he reached it he met Mark Cray.

There in the street, particulars were explained by Mr. Cray to Dr. Davenal, not altogether to the doctor's satisfaction. It appeared that Mark--very carelessly, but he excused himself on the plea of Lady Oswald's fractious refusal to be touched--had omitted to make a proper examination of her state on the previous night. The delay, though not fatal, was inexpedient, rendering the operation which must now be performed one of more difficulty than if it had been done at once; and Dr. Davenal spoke a few sharp words, the only sharp ones he had ever in his life spoken to Mark Cray.

"I told you it was my opinion there was some internal injury. You ought to have ascertained."

He turned his steps and proceeded at once and alone to the house of Lady Oswald. She was in a grievous state of suffering; and that she had not appeared so on the previous night could only be attributed to partial insensibility. Dr. Davenal examined into her hurts with his practised skill, his gentle fingers, and he imparted to her as soothingly as possible the fact that an operation was indispensable. "Not a very grave one," he said with a smile, intended to reassure. "Nothing formidable, like the taking off of an arm or a leg."

But Lady Oswald refused her consent; as fractiously and positively as she had the previous night refused to be touched. She would have no operation performed on her, she said, putting her to torture; they must cure her without it. Some time was lost in this unsatisfactory manner, and Mark Cray arrived while the contention was going on. Dr. Davenal was at length obliged to tell her a hard truth--that unless she submitted to it, her life must fall a sacrifice.

Then there came another phase of the obstinacy. When people are lying in the critical state that was Lady Oswald, hovering between life and death, it is surely unseemly to indulge in whims, in moods of childish caprice. If ever there is a time in the career of life that truth should reign preeminent, it is then: and these wilful caprices are born of a phase of feeling that surely cannot be called truth. Lady Oswald consented to the operation, but only on the condition that Mark Cray should perform it. What foolish caprice may have prompted this it is impossible to say. Mark had been talking to her, very much as he would talk to a child to induce it to have a tooth drawn or a cut finger dressed: protesting that it "would not hurt her to speak of," that it "would be over, so to say, in no time." Dr. Davenal, more honest, held his tongue upon those points: it would not be over in "no time," and he knew that it would hurt her very much indeed. This it may have been that caused the wretched whim to arise, that Mark Cray should be the acting surgeon. And she held to it.

It was necessary that she should be allowed some repose after the state of excitement to which she had put herself, and half-past five was the hour named. Dr. Davenal and Mark appointed to be with her then.

"Mark," asked the doctor, as they walked away together, "are you sure of yourself?"

Dr. Davenal had had no experience hitherto of Mark Cray's skill as a surgeon, except in common cases. All critical operations, both at the Infirmary and in private practice, the doctor took himself. Mark looked at the doctor in surprise as he heard the question.

"Sure! Why, of course I am. It's quite a simple thing, this."

"Simple enough where the hand is experienced and sure," remarked the doctor. "Not so simple where it is not."

"Of course I have not had your experience, Dr. Davenal; but I have had quite sufficient to ensure my accomplishing this, perhaps as skilfully as you could."

Mark spoke in a resentful tone; he did not like the reflection that he thought was cast upon him by the question. Dr. Davenal said no more. He supposed Mark was sure of his hand's skill.

"I shall give her chloroform," resumed Mark.

"No!" burst forth Dr. Davenal. He could not have interrupted more impetuously had he been interposing to dash it from her lips. He believed that Lady Oswald would be a very unfit subject for chloroform; one of those few to whom it is not safe to administer it; and he explained this to Mark Cray.

Mark turned restive. Strange to say, he, who had hitherto been content to follow in the medical steps of Dr. Davenal, watching his treatment, pursuing the same, more as a pupil takes lessons of a master than as a man in practice for himself, seemed inclined to turn restive now. Did Mark Cray, because he had married the doctor's niece, had become connected with him by private ties, was now a more equal partner, fully recognised--did he deem it well to exercise that right of independence which we all love, for it is inherent in the hearts of the best of us, and to stand up for his own ways and his own will?

"I like chloroform," he said. "I consider it one of the most blessed inventions of the age."

"Undoubtedly; where it can be safely used."

"I have used it fifty times," rejoined Mark.

"I have used it fifty and fifty to that," said the doctor, good-humouredly. "But, Mark, I never used it in my life upon a doubtful subject, and I never will use it upon one."

"What do you call a doubtful subject?"

"What do I call a doubtful subject?" repeated the doctor. "You know as well as I. How many patients has chloroform killed? Upon certain natures"----

"Very few," interrupted Mark.

"Very few, as compared to the whole," acquiesced the doctor. "You may administer chloroform with perfect safety to ninety-nine patients, and you cannot to the hundredth. Upon certain natures, as I was about to observe, its effects may be fatal. And where there is this doubt, Mark, it should be acted upon."

"The cases are so rare."

"True. And the important thing for a medical man, in these cases, is to discern where chloroform may be given with safety and where it may not."

"It is impossible that he can do that with any certainty."

"Not at all," said Dr. Davenal. "I never knew my judgment fail. I believe it is a gift, this ability to distinguish the subtle difference in natures. Perhaps I may call it instinct, more than judgment, for I think it could not deceive or lead me to an erroneous decision."

"I am not sure that I understand you," said Mr. Cray. "My belief is, that I possess nothing of the sort. I think you must be talking of a species of second sight."

"Then, Mark," was the half-joking answer, "allow yourself to be guided by my 'second sight.' To speak seriously," the doctor continued, in a graver tone, "I know that there are many practitioners, clever men, who do not possess this peculiar insight into nature. It is a great gift for those who do. It can never be acquired by practice; it must be inherent"----

"I suppose you think I don't possess it," interrupted Mark.

"I don't think you do. But for one of us who possesses it, numbers don't; so it is no disparagement to you to say so. To return to the question: Lady Oswald, in my opinion, would prove an unsafe subject for chloroform."

"She will make so much of the pain."

"Better that she should make much of it--ay, and feel it--than that any risk should be run. I cannot allow chloroform to be given to Lady Oswald."

Mark Cray demurred: not outwardly, for he said not another word; but inwardly. He was of that class of men who disbelieve what they cannot see. Some of us will look into a man's face and read his character, read him for what he is, as surely and unerringly as we read the pages of a book; but others of us, who do not possess this gift, cannot believe that it exists, laugh at and ridicule the very idea of it. Just so was it with Mark Cray. That assertion of Dr. Davenal's, that some faculty or instinct within him enabled him to discern where chloroform might and might not be administered, was utterly scouted by Mark Cray. That subtle instinct into nature, that unerring, rapidly-formed judgment of a sick man's state, the mental grasping instantaneously of the disease and its remedy, Mark Cray possessed not. To the very end of his life he would never learn it. Dr. Davenal said that out of numbers of medical men only one would possess it, and he was right. How many do not possess it, and go on to their career's end unconscious of their deficiency, they themselves will never know. Mark could see no reason why Lady Oswald should not be eased of her pain by the aid of chloroform; he did not for a moment believe the doctor could; he regarded it as a crotchet, and a very foolish one. But he suffered the question to rest, and supposed he must bow to the decision of his senior partner.

"Shall I call for you, Mark?" asked the doctor, as they separated. "I shall go up in the carriage."

"O no, thank you. I'd as soon walk. You intend to be present?"

"Or course I shall be," replied the doctor. "Lady Oswald is my patient, in point of fact--not yours, Mark."

"Then I need not ask Berry. I thought of asking him to be present."

"You can do just as you please about that. If you like him to look on at you, you can have him. Twenty-five minutes after five, remember, punctual. You'll want the full daylight."

As they parted, a feeling was in Mark's heart that he would not have liked to confess to the other, and that perhaps he neither cared to encourage nor to dwell upon. He felt perfectly sure of his own skill; he was not nervous; nobody less so; and yet there was a half-reluctance in his mind to perform that operation in the presence of Dr. Davenal, the skilled and accomplished operator. Surely the reluctance could only spring from a latent doubt of whether he ought to make so sure of himself! A latent doubt; one not suffered to appear down far in the depths of his heart it lay--so deep that perhaps Mark thought it was not there at all, that it was only fancy.

He had a great deal rather have had Berry with him--that he acknowledged openly enough to himself. Surgeon Berry was a man of fair average skill, superior to Mark in experience, and he and Mark were great friends. Did Mark fear that the presence of the more finished and perfect surgeon, with his critical eye, his practised judgment, would render him nervous--as a candidate for the Civil Service examinations will break down, simply because those searching eyes are on him? No, Mark Cray feared nothing of the sort; and he could not have told, had he been pressed, why he would have preferred the absence of Dr. Davenal. He had looked on many a time at the doctor in such cases: but that was a different thing.

His thoughts were interrupted by Julius Wild. The young man accosted him to inquire if there were any orders--whether he should be wanted.

"Yes," said Mr. Cray. "Lady Oswald's case is fixed for this afternoon. You be up there with the dressings and things."

"Very well, sir," replied the young man, feeling some surprise; for he was not in the habit of attending privately with Dr. Davenal "Am I to go to Dr. Davenal's for them?"

"No. You can get them from the Infirmary."

"The Infirmary!" thought Julius Wild to himself. "Can he be going to take the operation?"--for Mr. Cray's surgical apparatus was kept at the Infirmary. He did not ask: his professional master seemed unusually silent--not to say cross.

"What time?" he inquired of Mr. Cray.

"Be at Lady Oswald's a little before half-past----"

The blank above is put intentionally, for it cannot be told with certainty what hour was really said by Mr. Cray. In the discussions upon it that ensued afterwards, Julius Wild declared in the most positive manner that it was six. "A little before half-past six." Mr. Cray asserted, with equal pertinacity, that he had said five. "A little before half-past five." Which of the two was right it was impossible to ascertain. Mark Cray said he should not be likely to make the mistake: the time, half-past five, had been just fixed upon with Dr. Davenal, had been repeated by word of mouth, and he had never thought of the hour six at all. There was plausible reason in that, certainly. On the other hand, Julius Wild was known for a clear-headed, steady, accurate young man, and he protested he could stake his life upon his correctness in this instance. He said the thought crossed his mind, when Mr. Cray named it, that half-past six would be the dusk hour; and he rather wondered within himself that it should have been chosen.

However it may have been, the misapprehension did occur between them.

When Dr. Davenal entered his own home, dinner had been over some time. It was their custom to dine early on Sunday: and the general rule was, by Dr. Davenal's wish, never to keep meals waiting for him. Neal admitted him, and then came for orders. Should he bring up the dinner?

"Not the dinner," said Dr. Davenal; "just a bit of something upon a plate. I am not hungry: I had a late breakfast at Thorndyke. Has anybody been here for me?"

"No, sir. I think Mr. Cray took your patients. He has been here"----

"I know all about that," interrupted the doctor.

He passed Neal, and went on to the garden-parlour, a favourite room of his daughter's. She was there alone, seated before the open glass doors. How peaceful it all looked! The green lawn stretching out in front, the bright hues of the autumn flowers, the calm purity of the dark blue sky lying in the stillness of the Day of Rest. Sara Davenal had that good Book upon her lap: but she was not then reading it. She had closed it in deep thought. Her sweet face was turned upwards, her eyes were filled with tears from the intensity of her gaze; it seemed that she was looking for something in the autumn sky. The extreme calm, the aspect of peace, struck forcibly on the senses of Dr. Davenal, and he remembered it in the days to come. It was the last day of peace for him; it was the last day of peace for Sara; henceforth the world was to change for both of them. Ere the morrow's sun should rise, a great care, a great trouble, would be tugging at their heartstrings; a skeleton would be there to keep; a secret, that must be hidden for very safety's sake, would have taken up its abode there.

Dr. Davenal was upon her so quickly that she could not conceal her glistening eyes. She started up to welcome him, and laid down the book. Owing to that most attentive habit of Neal's, of being on the watch and opening the door before people could get to it, she had not heard him come home.

"O papa, is it you? You have been away a long while."

"Sit down," he said, pressing her into her chair again. "What's the grief, Sara?"

"No grief, papa. I was only thinking."

"What about? The accident last night?"

"O no, not that. I hear that everybody's going on quite well. I was thinking--I was wondering--somehow I often get thinking on these things on a Sunday, when I am sitting alone, and the sky seems so calm and near," she broke off.

"Well, what were you thinking?"

"I was wondering whether they who are gone can look down and see us--see me just as I sit here looking up--whether they can read my thoughts. We seem so divided, papa; you and I and Edward left; mamma and Richard, and the two little ones who were between me and Edward, gone."

"Divided for a short while only, child."

"Yes, I know. The only one I can remember well is Richard. I am beginning to lose almost all recollection of mamma. But Richard--papa, at times I seem to see him before me now!"

Dr. Davenal turned to the window and stood with his back to Sara, looking out. She repented having spoken of her brother; somehow the words had slipped out in the fulness of her thoughts. Rising, she stole her hand into Dr. Davenal's.

"I forgot, papa," she softly whispered.

"Forgot what, my child?" he asked. "Nay, it might be just as well if we all spoke more of Richard, instead of shunning his name. Silence will not bring him back to us."

"Ah no, it will not!"

"And when once griefs can be talked of, their sting becomes less poignant. Did the post bring any letters this morning?" the doctor added, after a pause.

"Not for you, papa. There was one--how could I forget to tell you?--there was one for me from Edward."

"And what does he say?"

"He has not been able to get leave yet. At least, from the tenor of his letter, I don't much think he has asked for it. He says there's a great deal to do; that the preparations are going on very quickly; but no orders have been received yet as to the day for embarking. As soon as they are issued he will let us know."

"But he means to come down?"

"O yes. He will be sure to come, he says, though it should be to arrive by one train and return by the next. He writes in great spirits, and asks me--in a joke you know, papa--if I will pack up my boxes and go out with him."

"He---- What is it, Neal! My dinner?"

"Yes, sir. It is served."

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XV. MARK CRAY'S MISTAKE

Evening came, and Lady Oswald's house was prepared for what was going to take place. Dr. Davenal arrived rather before the time appointed, Mr. Cray five minutes after it. Mr. Cray was in a heat, and had evidently come at much speed, conscious probably that the time had expired. Lady Oswald was in her bedchamber when Mr. Cray came up, Dr. Davenal in the ante-chamber.

"Where's Wild?" exclaimed Mr. Cray, throwing his eyes round the room.

"I have not seen him," replied the doctor.

"It is very inattentive of him not to be here. I told him the hour. Have you seen her?" added Mr. Cray, in a whisper.

"Yes. She is all right. Are you ready?"

"No, I am not ready," replied Mr. Cray. "Wild is bringing up the dressings."

"I have everything with me," said Dr. Davenal "I have brought all."

In the room with Lady Oswald was her maid Parkins. And the very moment that Dr. Davenal set his eyes on Parkins's ashy pale face, he knew that she would be better out of the room than in it. He said something to the effect, but Lady Oswald evidently wished for her, and Parkins avowed her intention of being as brave as need be.

Time was being wasted. Marcus Cray, in a fidgety sort of manner, went down twice after his expected pupil. He opened the hall-door and stood there looking out for him; and he did this twice over, for no sooner did he get upstairs the first time than he went back again. Dr. Davenal could not exactly make him out. Mr. Wild was not required in anyway; and a half-doubt stole over Dr. Davenal whether Mark Cray could be wilfully prolonging the minutes, as people will put off things they do not care to enter upon, from nervousness, dislike, or other causes. And though he threw the doubt from him as an absurd improbability, he began to wish again to be the operator.

"Cray, I had better take this."

Mark fired up, and spoke out at the top of his voice. He would prefer to take it himself, Dr. Davenal permitting him.

Spoke out so loud that he was heard by Lady Oswald. She interrupted the discussion--if discussion it might be called--and settled it. "It should be only done by Mr. Cray."

"Very well," said Dr. Davenal in a low tone to his partner. "Be it so. But why do you wait, Mark?"

"I want that fellow to be here."

"He is not required. We shall have Lady Oswald get exhausted."

And Mark Cray, seeing the wisdom of the plea, made no further delay.

You will not wish to be present at this operation, or to have it details transcribed. Hallingham did not know them for many a long day. But one or two things must be mentioned.

At the very instant of its commencement, when Mark Cray was bending over Lady Oswald, there came something falling forward to the ground and brushed against him. It was brave Parkins, gone down in a fainting-fit Lady Oswald became agitated; she shrieked out, and would have risen had it been in her power. Dr. Davenal moved round, and bore the senseless Parkins from the room.

He could not throw her down outside like a log. He had to call some of the household and tell them what to do with her. Then she began to start and kick in incipient convulsions: altogether it was three or four minutes before Dr. Davenal got back to the room. It seemed to be delay after delay, as if the operation was fated not to be begun that day.

The operation however, was begun, he found. When he got back, Mark had plunged into it. Dr. Davenal stepped up to him, and stood overlooking him with his unerring eye; that eye which Mark had dreaded.

Was it in consequence of that, that Mark Cray lost--what shall we call it?--his presence of mind?--his surgical skill? A suppressed sound, half indignation, half dismay, escaped the lips of Dr. Davenal, and he pushed Mark aside with an authoritative hand and took his place. What could have taken Mark?--what ailed him? Lady Oswald was offering no opposition, for she lay perfectly still.

So still, so voiceless, that in the midst of his work it struck strangely on the senses of Dr. Davenal. He paused a moment to regard her attentively, and then glanced at Mark, one single word only escaping him.

"Chloroform?"

"Yes," said Mark. "I judged it best."

It was all that passed. Whatever Dr. Davenal may have felt, he could express neither doubt nor remonstrance then. His whole attention had to be concentrated on the work he was performing. Mark stood by and watched, saying nothing.

At length it was over; admirably performed, as all operations were performed, undertaken by Dr. Davenal. But Lady Oswald still lay without sense or motion; and they could not arouse her.

"You must have given her a great deal," observed Dr. Davenal, who was still occupied.

Which Mark Cray did not attempt to deny. "She required it. The fall of that stupid woman excited her terribly. The first lot made no impression on her: she did not seem to inhale it."

"But--good heavens? you could not have waited long enough to see. Mark Cray, this is a mistake, and an awful one."

Mark made no reply. Mark was doing all in his power to undo his work and arouse Lady Oswald. But he could not. Dr. Davenal touched his shoulder, and spoke upon a different subject.

"You told me you were sure of yourself."

Mark scarcely knew what he answered. Something to the effect that he always had been sure, until now: but his words were very indistinct.

"What incapacity came over you? What was its cause?"

It was impossible for Mark Cray to deny that incapacity had attacked him; that Lady Oswald under his hands would have been in the greatest danger. Its cause he could not account for: but that common expression, "losing all presence of mind," would best describe it as it really was, and as it had appeared to Dr. Davenal. The drops of sweat stood out on his brow now as large as peas.

"The woman's fall startled me," he attempted to say. "At such a moment it takes but little to unnerve a man."

"Then, if so, he is not fit for a surgeon," returned Dr. Davenal. "Mark Cray," he continued, gravely and firmly, but not unkindly, "you must never in my presence attempt a critical operation again. Recollect that."

Meanwhile their whole attention was being given to Lady Oswald; their best efforts exerted to arouse her from the effects of the chloroform. All in vain, all useless; it had done its work too effectually.

By degrees the horror of the conviction that she could not be aroused--never more would be aroused--came pressing upon them deeper and deeper. Mark Cray wiped his hot face, and felt that he would give all he was worth to recall that one act of his--the surreptitiously conveying the chloroform to the house, which he had himself so successfully accomplished, and regarded as a cause of self-congratulation. Why had he not attended to the experienced opinion of Dr. Davenal--that Lady Oswald was one of those upon whom chloroform was not unlikely to be fatal? That it would be fatal in this case, Mark felt as certain now as if the breath had actually passed for ever from her body. A horrible fear came over him, and he once more lost all calmness, all self-possession.

"Dr. Davenal, for the love of God, do not betray me! Do not let it go forth to the world as my wilful act--one you warned me against. It was a dreadful mistake. I shall carry it about with me in my heart for ever; but do not betray me to the world!"

He had seized the doctor's hands, and was pressing them nervously in his. His troubled face gazed imploringly upwards; his wailing tone of repentance struck sadly on the ear. Dr. Davenal did not immediately speak, and Mark Cray resumed.

"For Caroline's sake," he entreated. "If this mistake becomes known in all its unhappy details, my professional doom is sealed. Never again, so long as I live, as you and I are together, will I attempt to act on my opinion in opposition to yours. Be merciful to us, Dr. Davenal, and, for her and my sake, conceal it from the condemning world!"

And Dr. Davenal yielded. Ever merciful, ever striving to act in accordance with those great precepts of love and mercy which One came down eighteen hundred years ago to teach, he yielded to the prayer of the unhappy and agitated man before him. His own partner--Caroline's husband; no, he could not, would not, bring upon him the obloquy of the world.

"I will keep the secret, Mark Cray. Be easy. You have my promise."

The unhappy tidings were made known to the household--that their mistress could not yet be aroused from the effect of the chloroform which had been administered with a view of saving her pain; and they came flocking in. She was not dead; but she was lying still and motionless: and the means for recalling life went on. Mark Cray continued his efforts when all hope was gone, trying every means, probable and improbable, in his madness. Had a battery been at hand he would have essayed galvanism.

Alas! they might as well have sought to arouse a stone statue. Never more would there be any arousing for poor Lady Oswald in this world. Death was claiming her: uncompromising, not-to-be-denied death!

Parkins, considerably recovered from her own attack, but in a shaky and tearful state, had come into the room with the rest. Parkins seemed inclined to rebel at the state of things; to question everybody, to cast blame somewhere.

"Why should chloroform have been given to her!" she asked of Mr. Cray.

"It was given with a view to deaden the pain," was Mark's short answer.

"But, sir, the operation was all but begun, if not begun, when I--when I---fainted: and there had been no question then of giving her chloroform."

"No, and it was your fainting that did three parts of the mischief," savagely returned Mr. Cray, who felt it the greatest relief to be able to lay the blame upon somebody. "It put her into a most undesirable state of agitation. I should think you must have heard her shriek, in spite of your fainting-fit."

The words, the angry tone, completely did for Parkins, and she subsided into tears again. A few minutes, and Dr. Davenal turned from the ill-fated lady to her servants standing there.

"It is all over. She is gone."

And the doctor looked at his watch, and found that only one poor hour had elapsed since he had entered the house to perform that operation which had altogether terminated so fatally.

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XVI. NEAL'S DISMAY

Dr. Davenal and Mr. Cray went forth together. Outside the hall-door stood Julius Wild. It now wanted twenty minutes to seven. The Infirmary pupil had arrived a quarter of an hour before, and had waited patiently ever since to be let in. He had rung the bell in vain. In the confusion and distress of the house, it had, perhaps, not been heard, certainly had not been attended to. His rings had been but gentle ones: Julius Wild knew better than to make a noise at a house when illness was inside it: and he waited patiently enough, wondering whether the servants were asleep, whether Lady Oswald was worse, and believing the doctors had not yet come.

When they came forth, he was excessively surprised, marvelling greatly at his non-admittance.

"I have been ringing this quarter of an hour," he said, by way of explanation and apology. "I can't think what the servants can have been about."

"What have you been about?" thundered Mark Cray, giving way to anger, although he had come straight from the presence of the dead.

Mr. Wild was astonished. "I say, sir, I have been waiting here. I have been here this quarter of an hour, and could not get let in."

"And, pray, what kept you? Why were you not here to time?"

"I was here to time, sir," was the deprecating answer; and the young man marvelled much what had so put out his good-tempered medical master. "You told me to be here a little before half-past six, sir, and I got here five minutes before it."

Then began that dispute which was never satisfactorily settled; each, to this very day, believing himself to be in the right. Mr. Cray held to it that he had told him half-past five; Julius Wild earnestly protested that he had said half-past six. The wrangling continued for some minutes, or rather the difference of opinion, for of course the pupil did not presume to wrangle with his superior. A few sharp words from Mark, peremptorily ordering him to hold his tongue, concluded it. The young man walked close by the two doctors, just a little behind them--for they had been walking down from Lady Oswald's all along, had not stayed for one minute at the door. He had wondered at first whether the operation had taken place, and why they should leave the house just about the time fixed for it: now that he heard of this misapprehension with regard to the hour, he supposed it was over, and that Mr. Cray's vexation arose from the fact of his not having arrived for it. But he was a young man of curiosity, fond of sociability in a general way, and of asking questions, so he thought he would ask one now, and make sure.

"Is the operation over, sir?"

"Yes," curtly answered Mark.

"Was it successful?"

"When did you ever know Dr. Davenal unsuccessful?" retorted Mr. Cray. "That was successful enough."

It never occurred to Julius Wild that the stress upon the word "that" implied, or could imply, that though the operation had been successful, something else was not. Perhaps it was half a subterfuge in Mark Cray to have said it. The young man asked no more questions. Finding himself so snubbed, he desisted, and walked behind in silence. Neither of them told the unhappy truth to him. Dr. Davenal may have been too pained, too shocked to speak; Mark Cray's conscience too suggestive. Nay, Dr. Davenal may not have seen his way clear to speak at all. If he was to conceal the culpability of Mark Cray, the less he opened his mouth upon the point, even by a word, the better.

Suddenly Mark turned round. "You are not wanted, Mr. Wild. There's nothing more tonight."

The young man took the hint at once, wished them good-evening, and walked off to the Infirmary, there to leave certain articles that he had been carrying. He observed that Dr. Davenal, usually so courteous, never answered him, never gave him the good-evening in reply to his.

The two surgeons walked on in silence. The streets were nearly deserted; and the sound of praise and prayer came upon their ears from the lighted places of worship as they passed them. The evening was a warm one, and the doors of the churches and chapels stood open. They never spoke a word, one to the other. Mark Cray felt as he had probably never felt in his life--ashamed, repentant, grieved, humble. He was guilty of the blood of a fellow-creature. He called it a "mistake." A mistake in one sense it undoubtedly was, but a wicked and a wilful one. Dr. Davenal felt it to be both: felt that the giving of the chloroform stealthily, in direct opposition to his expressed opinion, deserved a worse name; and, though he had promised not to betray Mark, he could not just yet subdue his own feelings, and speak to him in a friendly tone. Thus in silence they reached the doctor's gate.

"Goodnight," said he, turning in at it.

"Goodnight," replied Mark, continuing his way. But--and he felt it--there had been no invitation to him to enter, no pleasant look, no shake of the hand.

Neal was at the door, airing himself and watching the scanty passers-by in the dusky street, the rest of the household being at church. Dr. Davenal went into his study, and lifted his hat from his brow as if a heavy weight were there. He had no light, save what came in from the street gas-lamp.

He leaned against the window in thought. Two hours before, Lady Oswald had been, so to say, as full of life as he was, and now----dead. Killed. There was no mincing the matter to himself; she had been killed. Killed by Mark Cray.

Had he done right in undertaking to screen Mark Cray?--to keep his culpability a secret?--to suffer the world to assume his innocence. The reader may deem it a grave question: Dr. Davenal was asking it of himself. Had Mark's been purely an error in judgment; had he administered the chloroform, believing it to be the right and proper thing to do, leaving the issue with God, it had been different. But he had given it in direct opposition to an opinion of more value than his own; in, as was much to be feared, a spirit of obstinate defiance. It is true he had not intended to kill; he had probably been over-confident of the result. How Dr. Davenal condemned him he alone could tell; but--was it his, the doctor's place, to hold him forth to the condemnation of the world? No; he, the merciful man, thought it could not be. One strong point on the side of this mercy was--that the proclaiming the facts could be productive of no good result; they could not recall the mistaken act; they could not bring the unfortunate lady back to life. It might be said that it should be made known as a warning to others not to trust Mark Cray; but the very occurrence itself with its tragical end, would, if the doctor knew anything of human nature, be its own warning for Mark Cray's whole lifetime. He did not think much of the surgical failure; at least he was not dwelling on it. Probably the worst calamity had in a measure eclipsed the other in his mind. Young surgeons had turned nervous before now, as Dr. Davenal knew; and the fall of the maid Parkins might certainly have startled him. It was not that that was troubling him; he had arrested Mark's shaking hands, and replaced them with his own sure ones, and carried the matter through successfully; it was the other.

He thought it over and over, and could not bring himself to see that he had done wrong in promising to hide the facts. If he went that hour and stood in the market-place and shouted them forth to all hearers, it could not bring back the forfeited life; it could not remedy the past in the remotest degree. He thought of his dead brother, Caroline's father; he remembered the words he had sent out to him to soothe his dying bed--"The child shall be to me as a daughter." He could not, on the very threshold of her wedded life, bring obloquy on the husband of her choice, and blight his good name, his fair prospects. And so he resolved to keep the secret--to guard the fatal mistake from the knowledge of the world. Only their own two selves were privy to it; therefore Mark was perfectly safe--save for him. The administering the chloroform must be looked upon as an error in judgment, of his own as well as of Mark's: and yet scarcely an error, for perhaps nine surgeons out of ten would so have administered it to a patient under similar circumstances, and have made no exception in Lady Oswald. He, Dr. Davenal, must suffer this to be assumed, saying himself as little as was possible upon the matter to any one: in a case where the termination had been so unfortunate his reticence would be excused.

He leaned his head upon his hand in the dark twilight, and pondered over the circumstances: he could not keep his mind from dwelling upon them almost morbidly. A strange fatality seemed to have attended the affair altogether. There had beat the obstinate persistence of Lady Oswald to see her landlord, in spite of common-sense and of Mr. Oswald Cray's representation that it could not possibly serve her; there had been the sudden falling lame of the carriage horse, for which the coachman had been unable to account; and then there had been the accident to the train. Parkins had had told him a confused tale--confused through her own grief, poor woman--of their having gone by mistake, she and her mistress, to the wrong side of the station at Hildon to take the return train, and had thereby lost a train. They went, naturally enough perhaps to inexperienced travellers, to the side of the platform on which they had descended on going; and it was not until a train came up to the other side, took in the passengers waiting on that side of the platform, and went on to Hallingham, that they discovered their mistake. But for that, they would have been at Hallingham safe and sound when the accident happened to the late train. Then there was the fact of Mark Cray's having been in the train, of his having been the first to see Lady Oswald. When brought afterwards to the home terminus, she had said, "Mr. Cray will go home with me:" and later she had insisted on his taking the operation. He himself had been called out to Thorndyke, had been kept there while the long hours of the best part of the day had flitted away: had he not been called out, why the operation would, beyond all question, have been performed in the morning, probably by himself, for he should have seen her early and detected its need. There was the absence of the pupil, Julius Wild, through what appeared an unaccountable mistake: had that pupil been present, to him would have fallen the task of getting Parkins from the room, and the chloroform could not have been administered. A curious chapter of accidents--or what are called such--and Dr. Davenal lost himself in the chain of thought. "O merciful Father, forgive him! forgive him this night's work!" he murmured. "And mayst Thou have taken that poor woman to her rest!"

A great light and Neal's smooth voice broke upon Dr. Davenal. "Shall I get you anything, sir? Tea, or"----

"I don't want anything, I don't want the gas lighted," interrupted Dr. Davenal, starting from his chair. "Wait until you are called."

Neal, after a moment's stare, shot back again. It was not so much the sharp words, more imperative than any commonly used by his master, but the wailing tone of pain in which they were spoken, that struck Neal: nay, it almost seemed as if his entrance had brought a sort of terror to the doctor.

It was not terror. Neal was mistaken. But Dr. Davenal had been so completely buried in thoughts, not altogether of this world, that the abrupt interruption, with its commonplace excuse, had seemed to him singularly inopportune, causing him to wave away abruptly the man and his words.

He sat on in the dark again, and Neal took his place at the front door, and stood there looking out. Not a soul was in the house save himself and his master; and it may have seemed a more cheering way of passing the evening, to Neal, than to be shut up indoors.

It grew darker. Neal strolled along by the skirting shrubs of the garden, and took his stand at the front gate, ready to exchange courtesies with the people who would soon be going home from church or chapel. The moon did not give much light yet, but the night promised to be as clear and bright as the previous one had been.

"Holloa!" cried Neal, as a man he knew came up quickly. "You are in a hurry tonight."

"I have been out on business, Mr. Neal," replied the man, who was in fact an assistant to a carpenter and undertaker. "Our work can't always wait for the Sabbath to go by before it is seen to."

"Is anybody dead?" asked Neal.

"Lady Oswald. The message came down to us best part of an hour ago; so I've been up there."

It has been observed that Neal was too well trained a gentleman both in manners and nerves to express much surprise, but this answer caused him the very greatest shock. He was so startled as to take refuge in disbelief.

"Lady Oswald, did you say? But she's not dead!"

"But she is," replied the man. "I ought to know. I've just come from her."

"Why, what has she died of? They said the railway accident had not materially hurt her."

"She haven't died of the accident. She have died of that--that--what-you-call-it--as is give to folks to take the pain out of 'em."

Neal did not understand. "To take the pain out of them?" he repeated, looking questioningly at the speaker.

"That stuff that have come into fashion of late years. The doctors will give it you while you have a tooth took out, if you'll let 'em."

"Do you mean chloroform?"

"That's it. I never can remember the name. But I'd rather call it poison, for my part--killing folks dead off without a warning."

"Who gave it to Lady Oswald?"

"Your master," replied the man, lowering his voice to a whisper as he glanced at the windows of the house. "The servants was in the room with me up there, and they told me about it. There was something to be done to my lady--some bones to be set, I believe--and the doctors went this afternoon, and they give her this stuff, and it killed her. I wonder Parliament don't make a law again its use, for my part."

"I am sorry to hear this," exclaimed Neal. "My lady was very friendly to me."

"Ay. The servants be cut up like anything. And enough to make 'em! It's a shocking thing. The lady's maid says she can't think why they should have give her the stuff, for Mr. Cray himself told her, when he was there in the afternoon, that what they had to do wouldn't hurt my lady no more than a flea-bite. Anyway, she's dead. But I can't stop here, I must get along back with the measure. Goodnight, Mr. Neal."

"Goodnight," replied Neal.

He leaned on the gate, watching the man hurrying onwards with his fleet steps, and thinking over what he had heard. Perhaps it is not too much to say that Mr. Neal would have preferred to hear of the death of any other person in Hallingham than of Lady Oswald's. Lady Oswald had been a great friend to him, and it had been Neal's intention to put her friendliness to the test in a very short period of time. Neal was a subtle schemer, and he had been perfecting a plan by which at one bold stroke Lady Oswald's mind should be disabused of that suspicion against himself imparted to her by Dr. Davenal the day of Miss Caroline's marriage, to which he had been an unsuspected listener, and by which he should also be effectually served. Neal had begun to feel that his tenure in his present situation was no longer sure, and he intended by the help of Lady Oswald to secure to himself a situation of a different nature.

Now this grand scheme was destroyed. As the rising waves dash away the "houses" built by children on the sands at the sea-shore, so this château en Espagne of Neal's was dashed down by the death of Lady Oswald. If Neal's cold and selfish heart could like any one, it had liked her. She had kept up friendly relations with Neal, as a former retainer of Sir John and Thorndyke; had shown more consideration to Neal than to her own servants--had treated him in fact as superior to her servants. When Neal waited on her at her residence to pay his respects, as he did occasionally, she would ring the bell on his departure and say sharply, "Show Mr. Neal out"--as much as to remind her household that he had not been a common servant at Thorndyke: he was groom of the chambers. She had also been liberal in her presents to Neal. Altogether, Neal in his discomfiture felt very much, as though her ladyship's death was a grievance personally inflicted on himself.

Jessy the housemaid was the first of the servants to return. The moment she entered, Neal took his hat and went up to Lady Oswald's with a view of learning particulars. The news had been so sudden, so unexpected, that some faint feeling or hope almost seemed to be in the man's mind that he should find it untrue.

He found it too true. He was allowed to see Lady Oswald, and he listened to the details given by the servants, gathering them into his mind to be turned over and examined afterwards. Parkins spoke with him privately. She was very bitter against the chloroform: she said to him that she should always look upon the administering it as an underhand trick not to be understood. There was no question of chloroform when she was in the room, and that was up to the very last moment; there was no chloroform present that she saw, and the doctors must have got it concealed in their pockets and produced it when her back was turned. She didn't blame Mr. Cray; she was certain it was not Mr. Cray; for he had told her privately in the afternoon that the operation would be a mere nothing, a flea-bite--and she could only wonder at Dr. Davenal's not having exercised more caution. One of the servants downstairs had had some experience in chloroform, she added, and her opinion was, that an over-quantity must have been given: that Dr. Davenal had mistook the dose, and given too much. At any rate, if ever there was a murdered woman, it was her mistress.

Parkins's eyes were alight when she said this, and Parkins's cheeks aflame. Her grief for the loss of her mistress was merging into anger at its cause. Like Neal, she was beginning to consider it as a personal grievance inflicted on herself, and to resent it as such. Self-interest sways the best of us more or less: and Parkins felt that through this she had lost a better place than she should ever find again. Neal asked her a few questions on his own score, and hurried away with the information he had garnered.

He hastened home with the utmost speed that his legs would carry him. He had a reason--at least he thought he might have one in future--for not wishing it known at home that he had paid that visit to Lady Oswald's. The late returners from church were but in the streets when he went back, slowly pacing along in the lovely autumn night. He whisked in just in time to admit the ladies.

"Is papa in, Neal?"

"Yes," answered Neal, haphazard, for he was of course not positive upon the point. "I fancy he is in his room, Miss Sara."

Sara knocked at the consulting-room door and entered. As she went forward, Neal contrived to obtain a passing view of the interior. It was still in darkness, and Dr. Davenal was leaning his back against the window-frame his arms folded, his head bowed, as one will stand when under the weight of care.

"It looks just as though he had purposely killed her," was Neal's comment to himself.

Not that Neal thought it then. No, no. But Neal was in a state of terrible vexation and disappointment; in that precise mood when it is a vast relief to vent one's trouble upon anybody.

"How sad you look, papa!" cried Sara, as she noted his depressed attitude. "And you are all in the dark!"

Dr. Davenal aroused himself, put his hand on his daughter, and turned round to face the street. At that moment the death-bell rang out.

Accustomed now to the darkness of the room--not that it was entirely dark, for the doctor had thrown open the Venetian blind, and the gas-lamp cast in its rays brightly--Sara could see how sad and clouded was his face. The death-bell was striking out its quick sharp strokes.

"Do you know who the bell is tolling for, papa? I never heard it ring out so late as this."

"I expect it is tolling for Lady Oswald."

"Papa! For Lady Oswald?" She quite shrieked as she said it in her startled surprise.

"She is dead, child," he said, his subdued voice a contrast to hers.

"O papa! Was it the operation? Did she die under it?"

"Yes--in one sense. The operation was successfully accomplished, but--chloroform was exhibited, and she never rallied from it."

Sara stood still, her heart beating. It seemed that a hundred regrets were crowding upon her, a hundred questions. "O papa, why did you administer chloroform?" she exclaimed, scarcely knowing what she said.

For a single moment the temptation came over Dr. Davenal to tell his daughter the truth, and he had unclosed his lips to speak; but he checked himself in time. Sara was trustworthy--he knew that; but it was impossible to answer for chance or inadvertent words, even from her; and for Mark's sake it might be better to leave her in equal ignorance with the rest of the world.

"My dear," he said--and the words to her ear sounded strangely solemn--"I have striven to do the best always for my patients, under God. Had I been able to save Lady Oswald's life, I would have saved it."

"O yes yes, papa, I know that. We all know it. Did she die quite suddenly? Was she sensible of her state?"

"People who die under the influence of chloroform seldom know anything after inhaling it. She did not. Sara, it is a painful subject; I would rather not speak of it. I feel it greatly--greatly."

She quitted him and went upstairs to take off her things. When she came down again Dr. Davenal was in the dining-room, and the tray, as was usual when they dined early, was on the table with some slight refreshment.

"Not anything for me," said the doctor to his sister. "I cannot eat tonight."

He did not sit down: he was pacing the carpet with thoughtful, measured tread. Neal stole a glance at him from under the corner of his eyes.

"Shall I light the gas in your study, sir, tonight?"

"No. Yes, you may light one burner," the doctor added after a moment's pause.

"What's the matter, Richard?" asked Miss Davenal. "You seem cut up. Have you had a hard day's work today?"

"Pretty well," called out the doctor.

"Do you know who it is that's dead? Very queer that the passing-bell should toll out at night!"

"You can tell your aunt, Sara," the doctor quietly said, as he stepped to the door of the room, and vanished.

"Well, I'm sure!" angrily cried Miss Davenal. "My brother is polite tonight. He might have answered me."

Sara pushed from her the piece of cake she had been trying to eat, and went close to her aunt, speaking in her slowest and most distinct tones.

"Don't you see that papa has had a great shock--a blow, Aunt Bettina? Lady Oswald is dead."

Poor Miss Davenal, never very quick at comprehending, confused the information together in the most helpless manner. "What do you say? Lady Oswald has had a blow? Who's dead?"

"Aunt, aunt, you will understand me if you won't be impatient. Lady Oswald is dead. And I say it is a great blow to papa. I can see that it is."

Miss Davenal heard now, and looked perfectly scared. "Lady Oswald dead! It cannot be, Sara."

"She had to undergo some operation in consequence of the accident, and papa gave her chloroform, hoping of course to lighten the pain, and she never rallied from it."

Miss Davenal seized Sara's hands in her dismay. Her senses were sharpened and she had heard perfectly; her face had turned white. Neal, who had come in, looked at her as he stood near the door, and wondered whether she was going to faint.

"Sara, I don't like that chloroform. I have told the doctor so, often and often. They should never try it upon me. Who gave it her?"

"Papa," replied Sara, never dreaming but she was correct in saying so. "Aunt Bettina, he gave it her for the best."

"Best! of course he gave it for the best--nobody disputes that. But I don't like it: I never did like it. Chloroform is come into fashion now--an improvement on the old state of things, they call it, as they call the railways--and I don't deny that it spares pain; but I do not like it."

By and by Sara went to the consulting-room. The doctor was pacing it uneasily.

"I have come to say goodnight, papa."

"You are going to bed early, is it ten o'clock?"

"Yes, I think it is past ten. Goodnight, dear papa. I hope you will be better in the morning."

"I have felt nothing like it since the death of Richard. Goodnight, my child."

It was not so much the death in itself that was affecting Dr. Davenal, as the appalling reflection that it had been, in a manner, wilfully caused. The knowledge weighed on his heart like a stone.

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XVII. THE NIGHT VISITOR TO DR. DAVENAL

The bedchamber of Sara Davenal was over the doctor's study, on the opposite side of the landing to the drawing-room. It was not a large room, but longer than it was wide, and the bed was placed at the far end of the room--the back. The chamber behind it was larger, and occupied by Miss Davenal. The room opposite Miss Davenal's, and behind the drawing-room, had been the bedchamber of Dr. Davenal in his wife's lifetime; since her death it had been kept as a spare room for chance visitors.

Sara did not begin to undress immediately upon entering the room. She put out the light, and sat down at the open window to indulge in a little quiet thought: it was rather a habit of hers to do so when the night was fine and she came up early. She liked to sit there and think of many things, to glance up at the clear sky in the bright moonlight. With all her practical good sense--and she had her full portion of it--she was of a somewhat dreamy, imaginative temperament; and since Richard's death she had grown to think more of that other home to which he was gone, the same to which we are all hastening, than it is perhaps usual for girls of Sara's age to think of it. As she had said to Dr. Davenal in the afternoon, she would wonder whether Richard and her lost mother--whom she but imperfectly remembered--could look down upon her: she was fond of fancying that they were looking down upon her: and she would lose herself in a maze of visionary imaginings.

Not on this night, however, did her thoughts turn to Richard. They were full of Lady Oswald and her unhappy death. That this fatal chloroform had been administered for the best, in accordance with Dr. Davenal's experienced judgment, Sara assumed as a matter of course; she never so much as thought of casting a doubt to it: but she knew enough of him to be sure that the fatal termination would cause him to repent of having given it--to blame himself bitterly, and she felt for him to the very depth of her heart. An uncomfortable sensation, as if her father had been guilty of some deliberate wrong, was pervading her, and she could not shake it off.

It should be observed that although Sara sat close to the open window, she was not liable to be seen by the passers-by in the street, did any cast their eyes that way. A small stand or ledge had been constructed round the window (a bay window, as was the one answering to it on the other side, the drawing-room), and this was filled with pots in flower. Geraniums of many species, fuchsias, heliotropes, heaths, wild thyme, the fine flowering cactus, and many others, raised their heads proudly, and formed a screen behind which Sara was securely sheltered from observation, and also from the rays of the gas-lamp at the gate, which otherwise would have lighted her up. So that, although she could see out perfectly well, sitting as she now was, she could not be seen. If she chose to stand at the window and lean out, her head was above the flowers; but at the same time they entirely prevented her from seeing anything immediately below her window. The ground for a yard or two beyond Dr. Davenal's study window was as completely hidden from her as though it had been a hundred miles off; and it is necessary to mention this. The bedroom above Sara's, occupied by Watton the upper maid, had a flat window, and its view underneath was in like manner obstructed by the extending bow and the plants in it of Sara's. These flowers at Miss Sara Davenal's window were quite the admiration of the pedestrian portion of Hallingham, and many a one would halt at the front railings to take a passing gaze at them. They were really beautiful, and Sara took a pride in them and liked to tend them.

She liked to inhale their sweet perfume, as she was doing now, sweeter and stronger in the night air than in the garish day. Perhaps the heliotrope was of all the most powerful scent: and somehow that heliotrope had become associated in her mind with Mr. Oswald Cray. She could not have told why or wherefore; she had never attempted to analyse the cause: she only knew that when she approached that window, and the perfume of the heliotrope was wafted to her senses, the image of Oswald Cray was, in like manner, by some mysterious instinct, wafted to her mind.

Perhaps it did not require any extraneous aid to bring him to her memory. He was already too securely seated there. For the last twelvemonth, since Oswald Cray had become intimate at their house, her love for him had been gradually growing into being: that subtle understanding, never to be explained or accounted for, which draws together two human hearts, and only those two, the one for the other, of all the whole world, life finding life, had arisen between them. Oswald Cray had never spoken or hinted at his feelings until the time when Dr. Davenal honestly avowed to him that he had fancied he cared for Caroline: that had brought forth the one word--and it was little more--to Sara. But she had known it just as surely as though he had spoken out all along.

Save for that shrinking reticence which would fain hide the secret, as the modest snowdrop hides its head, and which must always accompany the feeling if it be genuine, there was nothing to be ashamed of in this love. It is true that it had become entwined with every fibre of her heart, was a part and parcel of her very being. It would perhaps have been impossible--at least, it would have been very improbable--for Sara Davenal, with her right feeling, her powers of discernment, which she possessed in a high degree, and her sound good sense, to fall in love with an unworthy man. She could not have met with a more worthy one than Oswald Cray. He had his faults--ay, who has not?--but they were faults of what may be called a high order; not mean, drivelling, scandalising faults, that abound in the world. Each was suited and suitable to the other, in taste, in position, in moral goodness: and their love had been given for aye; beyond the power of circumstances or time to change. They might never be more to each than they were now. Untoward fate might separate them; the world's bitter tongues, expediency, the poison of misunderstanding; any one of these separating causes might part them; Sara's unbending principle, Oswald's wrong-headed pride--it was impossible to foretell: but of one thing both might rest assured, that unto their dying day that love could never be wholly extinguished in either heart, so as to give place to another.

Somehow the thoughts of Sara Davenal had wandered from the painful subject of Lady Oswald to this brighter one: wandered unwittingly, against her will. She would not have chosen to dwell upon her love that sad night, or on the one sweet word of Oswald when he last parted from her: but there it was, sounding in her ears and her heart: and she lost herself in one of the sweetest reveries that ever maiden pictured of the future.

Suddenly she was aroused from it. Not by any thought of poor Lady Oswald, or of her father's sorrow, or of the minutes that were hurrying on, or that it was time she prepared for bed; but by the sight of some one coming in at the front gate. It was nothing unusual for that gate to be invaded at night, by messengers summoning Dr. Davenal to some urgent bed of sickness. But this intruder had something peculiar about him, or about his movements, which attracted her eye.

He was a tall man, wearing a cap and a grey Scotch plaid scarf. The cap, which had a peak to it, appeared to be tied down over his ears, and the scarf was worn in a droll fashion, one at least that Sara had never seen in Hallingham. It was put lengthways over the shoulders, as a lady puts on a scarf; it came down to the waist behind, and was held very much up to the neck in front. Sara naturally looked at the man, looked keenly with a view of distinguishing his features. In her sympathy with the sick, she thought to learn, by him, who was ill that night and wanted her father. But she was unable to do this, and the first thought that struck upon her as curious was, that a man should be so completely wrapped up on that genial night. The next curious thing that struck her was--the man's movements.

He had come up to the gate with very quick steps--as messengers from the sick often did come--opened it, and gave a sort of dart or spring to his right, which brought him under the shade of the laurels and hid him from the moonlight. There he stopped, reconnoitring the house, so far as could be seen, but really it required a quick eye to distinguish him at all from the dark shrubs. That was not precisely the way in which night applicants came to Dr. Davenal's house; and Sara, very much astonished, rose quietly from her seat, to see the better.

He came on at last, creeping close to the shrubs, stooping under their shade, until he gained Dr. Davenal's window. With all Sara's endeavours to look, she there lost sight of him, because he was beneath, but she heard a gentle tapping at the window. Not the quick imperative noise of one in haste, demanding instant attention, but a covert, stealthy tapping, which seemed afraid of being heard. More and more astonished, Sara leaned out further; but she could not lean far enough to see.

The window was opened instantly; therefore it was to be supposed that Dr. Davenal had not retired from the room; that his light had probably guided the stranger to apply at the window, instead of at the door. The first sound, after the opening of the window, was a warning hush-sh-sh-sh! but whether it came from the applicant or from her father she could not tell. A short colloquy followed, only a word or two in the most covert tones, and then Dr. Davenal went to the front door and admitted the visitor. Sara sat down overwhelmed with amazement.

Somebody else was overwhelmed with amazement unfortunately--or perhaps the better word for him would be curiosity--and that was Mr. Neal. Neal had been a witness to it all. When it struck half-past ten--and this mysterious visit occurred some five minutes subsequent to that time--Dr. Davenal had opened his study door, called to Neal, and told him to put the gas out. Which was equivalent to telling him to go to bed: the putting out of the gas being the last service usually required of Neal. Neal came forward and did as he was bid--he put out the hall-lamp and any other burners that might be alight, with the exception of the one in the doctor's study. Dr. Davenal always took that upon himself, and he put out the burner as he spoke to Neal, and lighted his candle for bed, no gas being laid on in the bedrooms. Neal then went downstairs and turned the gas off at the main; so the house was safe.

But Neal, as a matter of taste was not fond of retiring early. And when he came up again, and had shut himself into his pantry, instead of passing into his sleeping-room he blew out his candle, opened the door on the side, and, dexterously avoiding contact with the shrubs, he stole to the front. There he stood, amidst the shrubs, near the doctor's window, with a view possibly of giving himself a little fresh air.

He glanced at the window; the half-shutters were not drawn up, a thing the doctor did himself the very last thing, and he could see the wax candle on the table through the Venetian blinds. The upper shutters of the window were closed; Neal always closed those when he lighted the gas; but his orders were to leave the lower ones open. It was a fancy of the doctor's the being able to take a look out at the street until the last, if he chose to do so. The upper shutters being closed did not prevent the window being opened at will. It is as well to give these details, for this was an eventful night in the existence of Dr. Davenal: and of others besides.

Neal could see the candle, and he could see his master. Dr. Davenal was seated at the table, his head leaning on his hand. Whether he was reading, or whether he had merely bent his head in thought, Neal could not discern, but he thought he had never in his life seen a countenance so troubled.

There was nothing in all that, however, to afford particular gratification to Neal's curiosity, and he drew cautiously away from the window, and turned his attention on the street. It was necessary to be cautious, for the least stir of the shrubs would have been heard by Dr. Davenal on that still night; sitting as he did with the window a little open, his custom until he retired. Neal stood watching the passers-by. Stay; watching for any passers-by; but he had not seen one yet. Sunday evening hours were early at Hallingham, and people were mostly indoors and abed. Now, in point of fact, Neal had no particular motive in stealing out and standing there; he was not expecting any one or anything; but he had a habit of peering about him a great deal more than most people have, and Neal rarely went finally to rest without coming out to take a general glance round, and see anything there might be to see.

Little did Neal anticipate the reward his curiosity was to receive this night. He was taking a last look previous to retreating, thinking it rather slow work standing there with nothing to see, not even a passing passenger on that quiet Sunday night, when the man who had so surprised Sara Davenal darted in at the gate. Neal strained his eyes in a vain attempt to discover who it was, and backed into safe quarters.

He heard the covert tapping at the window; he heard the warning hush when the doctor opened it, and he could not say for certain, any more than Sara could, which of the two it was who had given that warning hush; and then after a short whispering, the purport of which he was entirely unable to make out, the doctor's tones were a little raised:

"I will open the door for you."

The stranger made his way to the front door. Neal, in the swift, unerring, covert manner which practice had rendered facile, stole back to his pantry with incredible speed, and was in time to peep out of it, and to see the visitor admitted.

But he gained nothing by his movement. The hall was in the dark: Dr. Davenal had not brought his candle out, and Neal could not see more than the very faintest outline of their forms. They passed into the room in silence, and Neal heard the door closed quietly and cautiously; another minute and the bolt was slipped. He took off his shoes and stole on tiptoe in his stockings to the door, and put his ear to it.

No, not a word could he hear. That door was a sound door, a close-fitting one: Neal had tried it before in his life, and obtained no more result than he was obtaining now. He made his way back through the pantry to the window again, and there Neal could have groaned in impotent rage had he dared, for Dr. Davenal had shut it.

But he had not closed the shutters. Neal, if it was any good to him, could still get a glimpse in through the upright staves of the green dwarf blinds. It was but a glimpse, for they were turned all but close together, the one stave nearly lying on the other, and it did not afford him satisfaction, for he could see neither Dr. Davenal nor his visitor, who were seated at the side of the room close together where the angle of view obtainable by Neal would not reach them. A very faint hum of voices penetrated his ear, and he was not sure whether that was not fancy. Their conversation was being carried on in the lowest tones.

Unsatisfactory as was this result as a whole, Neal waited with patience. Such men as Neal are always patient The clock struck eleven, and the clock struck half-past eleven, and Neal was still there.

Then there occurred a change. Dr. Davenal rose from his seat and began pacing the room. His whole face was working with agitation. Neal caught a sight of it occasionally as he paced, and was struck by the troubled expression, nay, by the dread that pervaded it. Neal had long ago made up his mind as to the purport of the visit--that it was in some way connected with the catastrophe of the evening, the death of Lady Oswald.

Suddenly Neal was startled. His nose was uncommonly close to the window, and the window was abruptly raised; raised without the slightest warning some half-dozen inches. Neal believed his nose was off.

When he came to himself, which he really did not for a few minutes, some words in a wailing tone were issuing from the lips of Dr. Davenal. "Silence must be purchased at any price; at any price. If it takes the whole of my fortune, I must purchase silence." Neal pricked up his ears.

Dr. Davenal was walking still; the visitor, whoever he might be, never moved from his seat. It was only when the doctor came near the window that Neal caught an occasional word. "Yes, Lady Oswald herself. She wished it," were the next words he heard, and then there was another temporary lull.

"I am aware of that. Murder? yes, the world would look upon it as such. I felt certain that Lady Oswald was one to whom chloroform, if administered, would prove fatal. Heaven help me! What have I done that the trials of this day should fall upon my head?"

Dr. Davenal was standing at the window as he said this, had halted there with his voice close to Neal's face, and Neal's hair stood on end as he heard it. From that moment the man believed--fully believed in his inmost heart--that his master had purposely destroyed Lady Oswald. Perhaps the belief, judging from these disconnected and certainly ominous words, was excusable.

For a short while Neal heard no more. His master had halted opposite the stranger and was talking fast, but nothing came to Neal but a confused sound. Then he advanced again.

"I tell you it shall be done. If it costs every penny piece that I have saved, this horrible secret must be bought up--if money will buy it. I shall never know another happy moment: I shall live as with a sword of disgrace hanging over me, ever expecting it to fall."

Some murmured words came from the stranger, and Neal stretched his ear to its utmost tension. Whether in doing so he made the least noise, touched the window, rustled the shrubs, he could not tell, but Dr. Davenal turned and shut the window down as swiftly and suddenly as he had put it up.

So, hearing was cut off. But Neal could see still--just a glimpse. He saw Dr. Davenal go out of the room with the candle and bring back a plate of biscuits and a decanter of wine. He knew he must have gone to the dining-room sideboard for them. A wish crossed Neal's mind to go indoors, make the excuse that he had heard his master stirring, and dash into the study on the pretence of inquiring if he could do anything. But he did not dare. Neal would have given a whole year's wages to get one good look at the visitor. Presently all sight was cut off. Barely had Dr. Davenal put down the decanter and biscuits than he turned to the window and pulled up the shutters.

It was a checkmate for Neal. He went in and stood just outside his pantry, hesitating whether to go close to the room door or not. A good thing he did not, for Dr. Davenal came out almost immediately, and went upstairs to his daughter's room.

Neal heard him knock at it very softly; he heard him ask in a whisper whether she was in bed yet. That she was not in bed the immediate opening of the door proved.

Dr. Davenal went in and closed the door. Neal could hear the murmur of his voice, as if he were explaining something to his daughter, and then they came down together, treading softly, not to arouse the house. Neal could see that she was fully dressed, in the same silk she had worn in the day. They went in, and the door was closed, and the bolt slipped as before.

Ten minutes, and Sara came out again alone. Neal could tell who it was by the rustling of the silk, but there was no light. She returned upstairs to her room, but not before Neal thought he had caught the sound of a sob.

The next to come forth was the visitor, without a candle still. Dr. Davenal opened the hall door and let him out. Neal, with his quick movements, glided round to his post of observation in the front garden, and was just in time to see him go through the gate, the cap drawn over his face, and the grey woollen scarf muffled around him.

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XVIII. AFTER THE VISITOR'S DEPARTURE

If ever the signs of misery, of despair, of terror, were depicted on a human face, they were on Dr. Davenal's as he sat that night in his study. He was as a man who has received some great shock; a shock that strikes a species of paralysis alike to the heart and to the frame. His arms hung down listlessly, his head was bent, his fixed eyes had a wild anxious look, most foreign to the usually calm orbs of the composed surgeon. An hour and a quarter had he thus sat since the departure of that midnight visitor who had brought with him so much apparent mystery, so much woe, and the house clock was striking one. The sound did not arouse Dr. Davenal; he sat on with his face of terrified despair.

The wax taper, unheeded, unlooked at, stood on a side-table where it had been accidentally put. It had burnt nearly to the socket, and it now began to spurt and gutter with a great light; the signs of its end. That awoke Dr. Davenal from his reverie. The prospect of being left in the dark was not a convenient one; and he tore a bit of paper from a journal lying near and essayed to light the gas, completely forgetting that it had been turned off at the main.

Finding his mistake, he stood a moment with his hand to his temples, as if endeavouring to collect thought, and then opened the door of his bedroom. Candles always stood there on the mantelpiece ready for lighting, and he brought one forward and succeeded in catching a light for it from the dying taper.

This had the effect of effectually arousing him. He looked at his watch, and then held the candle to a book-shelf, whence he selected a local railway guide, and sat down to the table to consult it.

"Nothing until the morning!" he exclaimed in a tone that might have been one of vexation but for its deeper pain. "Stay, though! Yes, there is. There's the train that passes here at 3.20 for Merton: and I should find a train on from thence. Then I must go by it: there's no time to be lost, once the morrow has dawned, if this unhappy business is to be suppressed. Twenty minutes past three; and now it is one; I can lie down for an hour and a half."

He went at once into his bedroom, took off his coat, and lay down on the outside of the bed. There was no fear of his oversleeping himself; sleep for a troubled mind in its first shock, troubled as was Dr. Davenal's, is out of the question.

Rest also seemed to be. He could not lie. He tossed and turned on the uneasy counterpane, and finally sprang off it with a wail of agony, and took to pacing the room. Neal, who was regaling his ear at the chamber door, could hear every footfall of the slippers, every groan of the distressed heart. Never more, never more in this world, would the heart of Richard Davenal lose its care.

Neal was not in the habit, with all his ferreting propensities, of sitting up at night to pursue them; but this night was an exceptional one. To say that Neal had been astonished, confounded at what had taken place, at the knowledge he believed he had acquired, would be saying little, in comparison with its effect upon his mind. He did not love his master; he did not like him; it may not be going too far to say that he hated him; for Neal's instinct had taught him that his master partially saw through him, partially suspected him to be the villain that he was; but to believe him capable of deliberately destroying one of his patients, was in truth almost too great a stretch for even Neal. Until that night, Neal could not have believed him capable of any wrong act: he gave him credit, for he could not help doing so, for his honour and his virtues, while he disliked him: but he did in truth now believe that Dr. Davenal had wilfully killed Lady Oswald. That is, that he had given her the chloroform deliberately, knowing it would probably take her life.

The faintest possible doubt of this had been first caught from the words of Parkins. Not real doubt, but a sort of angry feeling of the extreme imprudence of the doctor in having given it: Neal no more believed then that Dr. Davenal had done it, or was capable of doing it, than he could have believed the most monstrous improbability in the world. Still the idea had been admitted: and when that strange visitor was with his master afterwards, and Neal heard, with his own ears, the suspicious words that fell, he could put upon them but one interpretation--that, incredible as it seemed, his master was guilty, and not unintentionally, of the death of Lady Oswald. Neal hoped to arrive at the why and the wherefore, and he thought nothing of sitting up the night to do it: if by that means he might gain any satisfactory solution. Neal, it must be confessed, was utterly stunned with the affair, with the belief; and could hot see or understand yet with any clearness: like a man who is struck violently on the head, and looks around him in stupid helpless maze, as if he had a dead wall before him. A shock to the head and a shock to the mind will bear for the passing moment the same apparent result.

Dr. Davenal paced his room, his two rooms in fact, for the door was open between them, and he passed from one to the other in his restless wanderings, his mental agony. Soon after two he began to wash and dress himself; that is, he changed some of his clothes, and poured out a wash-hand basin of cold water and splashed his face with it. He put on a pair of boots; he searched for his gloves; he looked out an overcoat; and then he stood for a few minutes and thought.

Lifting the writing-desk from underneath the table, where you may remember it was kept, he unlocked it, and was for some little time examining certain papers it contained. Some of these he put in his pocket, and then he locked the desk and replaced it. Next he sat down to write a note; just a line or two.

It was getting on past the half-hour then. He opened the door and went forth from his room. Neal, who had heard him coming, peeped from his pantry and saw him turn to the stairs, the candle in one hand, a note held in the other. Neal cautiously stole forward a step or two, and looked and listened.

He was downstairs again instantly; he had only gone to the first floor, and had not opened any door, or Neal must have heard it: had not, in fact, been long enough to open one. The note was gone from his hand, and Neal wondered where he had left it.

He went into the study, and came out without the light, an overcoat on, and his hat in his hand. The moonlight shone in now through the fan-light over the front door, and Neal could see so much. He appeared to be coming towards the pantry; Neal silently closed the door and slipped the noiseless bolt. Neal took very good care to keep his own locks and bolts well oiled.

Dr. Davenal essayed to open the pantry-door and found it fastened. He shook it, knocked at it, not over gently. Neal, too great a diplomatist to be taken at a loss, flung off his coat, waistcoat, and slippers, threw back his braces, rumpled his hair, and opened the door to his master with the air of a man just aroused from his bed.

"Why do you sleep with the door locked, Neal?"--and the question was put in an imperative tone.

"I--it is but very rare that I do, sir. I must have shot the bolt last night without thinking of it."

"I won't have it done. Nobody shall sleep in my house with a locked door. It is a dangerous habit. Were a fire to take place, and the sleeper a heavy one, he might not be aroused in time. Don't do it again. Neal," he continued, changing his tone, "I am summoned out farther away than usual. I don't care to disturb Miss Davenal--you can tell them tomorrow morning. I shall not be home all day."

"Have you to go far, sir?" inquired Neal.

"Yes. I don't expect to be home all day, I tell you, and that's why I bid you inform them. Nobody is to sit up for me tomorrow night; I may be detained longer. Tell Miss Davenal so."

"Very well, sir," replied Neal. "Is the carriage ready for you?"

Neal put this cunningly. He felt sure his master was not going in the carriage.

"I don't require the carriage. That's all, Neal; you can go to bed again. I was obliged to disturb you."

Dr. Davenal turned, walked straight to the front door, and let himself out at it, closing it securely after him. Neal waited a moment, rearranged his attire a little, and then stepped also to the front door and drew the heavy bolt across it. No danger now of his master's coming in with his latch-key to pounce upon him.

Neal got a light, went into the study, and took a leisurely survey. He was scarcely rewarded. There was nothing whatever about, more than on other mornings: no signs remained of the stranger's visit, not a trace that could betray any disturbance on the part of Dr. Davenal. The sherry and biscuits were put up: Neal walked across to the dining-room and found them in the sideboard, just as he had left them on the previous night. The glass, used, stood on it. Neal solaced himself with some of the sherry, and went back to the study.

The old cloth was undisturbed on the table, the blotting-book and inkstand lying on it. Neal looked through the book, but received no satisfaction. He examined the pens, and saw that in one the ink was not yet dry. In the bedroom the clothes which his master had taken off lay about; Mr. Neal en passant visited the pockets and found them empty; and the bed was pressed on the outside, but had not been slept in. That curious visit in the night might have been a dream, for all there was left to tell of it.

"But there's that note yet," thought Neal. "What did he take it upstairs for, and where did he leave it?"

Stealing up the stairs in his stockinged feet, shading the light in his hand, Neal came to the vestibule, and looked on the table. He looked on the stand which held a beautiful statue in marble, he looked up even at the frames of the pictures; he looked everywhere. But there was no letter.

"I'm positive he did not stop long enough to open a door!" ejaculated Neal, rather at a nonplus.

A bright thought struck him. He bent down, shading still the light with his hand, and peered under Miss Sara Davenal's door. And then came Neal's reward. He saw the corner of something white quite close to him, not pushed entirely beyond the door. Dr. Davenal, not to disturb his daughter, had pushed his letter to her in that way.

Neal took out his penknife, and, with its help, by dint of perseverance and ingenuity, succeeded in drawing back the note, which he stole downstairs with, and into his own chamber. A little more ingenuity with the penknife, and the envelope, not yet fully dry, came open. Neal had obtained an insight into some secrets in his life, but never one so weighty as this, never one had touched on that ugly word "murder" which was running through Neal's mind: and his usually impassive face grew streaked with scarlet in excitement.

"My Dear Child,

"Business connected with this most unhappy secret obliges me to go out for a day, perhaps two. I shall leave a message with Neal. Do not appear to know anything when he delivers it: hear it as though you were a stranger to everything. Don't talk of my absence to any one if you can help it. People will conclude I have gone to see some patient at a distance, as will your aunt: it is not necessary to undeceive them. R. D."

There was not so very much to be made out of that, and the scarlet streaks faded again from Neal's disappointed face. "This most unhappy secret," he repeated over twice, as if the words bore some euphonious sound. Whatever it might be, the secret, it was evident that Miss Sara Davenal had been made cognisant of it; and Neal rather rejoiced in the pill it must be for her, for he liked his young mistress not one whit better than he liked his master. He read the note again, refastened it in the envelope, stole upstairs to push it under the door, and then retired to his late bed.

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XIX. COMMOTION

Meanwhile Dr. Davenal was walking along the streets of the town, lying so calm, so still in the moonlight. Not with any hurried tread; rather with a slow one. In his restlessness of mind, he had come out sooner than he need have come; but bodily action is a relief to mental anguish.

"Goodnight, doctor! or rather morning--for that's what it is."

The salutation came from one of the general practitioners of the town, a hard-worked apothecary, whose business took him abroad a good deal at night. He was hastening up a side street, near the town-hall, and Dr. Davenal had not observed him.

"Ah, is it you, Smithson? A fine night, is it not?"

"All nights are pretty near the same to me," returned Mr. Smithson. "I see too much of them. I wish folks would be so accommodating as to choose the day to be ill in. I don't know who'd be one of us. It's not often that we see you abroad at night, though, doctor?"

"Not often. We can't help it sometimes, you know. Goodnight."

They were bound different ways. The doctor had walked on his, when Mr. Smithson came running back.

"Dr. Davenal, what is the truth about Lady Oswald? I hear she's dead."

"She is--unhappily."

"And the report going about is, that she died from the effects of chloroform! Could not rally after inhaling it."

"Ah, it's a sad thing," replied the doctor; "a grievous thing. There's the dark side in these new discoveries of our practice: sacrificing the few while blessing the many. Goodnight, I say. I can't stop."

"It's true, then, that it was the chloroform?"

"Yes, it's true." Dr. Davenal increased his pace: he was in no mood for questioning, and this in particular was painful to him. A short while, and he stood before the Abbey, looking up at its windows. He was sorry to disturb Mark, but he deemed it was necessary, and he rang the night bell.

A new bell which Mark Cray had caused to be placed in the house since he took it, and which rang himself up, not his household. Dr. Davenal waited, but the ring was unanswered, and he rang again, with the like result.

A third summons brought Mark to the window, which he threw up, half-asleep still. "If that's the way you are going to let your night applicants ring, Mark Cray, almost as good not put up the bell."

Mark Cray could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw who was the speaker. "I was in a heavy sleep," he answered. "Did you ring more than once?"

A heavy sleep! Truly Dr. Davenal marvelled at the words. He marvelled that sleep could have visited Mark Cray that night, after his share in its fatal work.

"What is the matter?" asked Mark. "Am I wanted?"

"It is I who want you," said the doctor. "I must say a word to you if you'll come down. I am called out of town."

Mark attired himself sufficiently to descend, which he did in a state of wonder. He had never received a night visit from Dr. Davenal; it was quite out of the usual order of things, and he would about as soon have expected to see a live kangaroo wait upon him. He opened the front door, and they stepped into the large parlour.

"Who is ill?" inquired Mark. "Are you called out far?"

"I am going out on a little private business of my own. The train for Merton will be through presently, and I shall take it. If"----

"Why did you not tell me last night?" interrupted Mark.

"Because I did not then know I should have to go. You must take my patients for me. What I wished particularly to say to you was about the inquest. They can't call it for tomorrow--that is, today--Monday; but I think they are sure to hold it on Tuesday. If I am not back"----

"What inquest?" interrupted Mark, wonderingly.

"The inquest on Lady Oswald."

"My goodness! Do you think they'll get up an inquest over her?"

"Of course they will. What are you dreaming of? The remote cause of her death was the accident to the train. I am not quite sure of being back. I expect to be home on Tuesday morning early; but it is possible I may be detained a little longer. If I am not back, Mark, you will be the only witness--at least the only one who can speak to the facts of the death. Let me advise you to say as little as possible. Volunteer no information; answer their questions briefly; and don't get into a long-winded narration, as you are apt to do, otherwise you may betray yourself. You will not mistake me;" Dr. Davenal added. "I have always been open, truthful, candid as the day; and if I so speak now it is in your interest. I was thinking this over a great deal last evening after I left you, and I see that it is essential for your good name in your profession that the facts of the case should not be made known. Do not suppose I advise you to a direct deviation from the truth; nothing of the sort. 'Chloroform was exhibited with a view to lessen her sufferings, and she never rallied from it,' is all you need say. Similar cases are unhappily not unknown; I fear not very uncommon; and the coroner will not be likely to exact minute particulars, or inquire whether you gave it her, or whether I did. He will assume that we acted in concert."

Mark Cray nodded. He was nervously and incessantly pushing back his hair.

"I know how fond you are of talking," resumed Dr. Davenal, "therefore I deemed it well to give you this caution. To tell you the truth, I had rather not be at the inquest, and shall not be sorry if I can't get back."

"Are you going away on purpose?" suddenly asked Mark, who was much given to leap to conclusions.

"Certainly not. I am going on an important matter of my own. Look here, Mark Cray: one good turn deserves another. It will be concluded in the town that I am called to a patient at a long distance: as I have been before, you know, and detained out two or three days. People will be sure to think it now, and there's no necessity to undeceive them. You will oblige me in this. I don't want the town to concern itself with my private affairs: let people think I am with a patient. They don't know to the contrary at home."

"I shan't say anything to the contrary," said Mark. "Let people think what they will; they are a set of busybodies at the best."

Dr. Davenal departed. And Mr. Cray went back to his room, sleepy still, but wondering in the midst of it what could have called away the doctor suddenly to a distance. No letter could have arrived in the middle of the night, Mark argued: and a suspicion crossed his mind that he was, in spite of his denial, going away to avoid the inquest.

The doctor walked over to the station, there to await the train. He had given this caution, as to Mark's testimony at the inquest, entirely in his good feeling towards him, his solicitude for his welfare. For himself, he did hope he should not be back for it. Inconvenient questions might be asked, and he did not relish the idea of standing up and avowing that he had so far helped on Lady Oswald's death as to have joined in giving her the chloroform; he could not avow it without testifying to a deliberate falsehood: yet he must do it, or betray Mark Cray. But he had a matter of greater importance to think of than the inquest: a matter that was weighing down his heart with its dread. Of all the passengers that train contained, soon to be whirling on its way to Merton, not one had the sickening care to battle with that was distracting the flourishing and envied physician.

The first to enter the breakfast-room that morning at his residence was his sister. The meal was always laid in the dining-room. Miss Davenal wore her usual morning costume, a gown of that once fashionable but nearly obsolete material called nankin--or nankeen, as some spell it. It was not made up fashionably, but in the old scant style, and it made Miss Davenal's tall spare form look taller and sparer. She wore it for breakfast only, generally dressing for the day as soon as the meal was over. Sara followed, in a flowing dress of delicate sprigged muslin, and she took her seat at once at the breakfast-table.

"Is your papa out of his room yet, do you know?"

"I have not seen him," replied Sara, a faint red tinging her pale face at the half-evasive answer. Very pale she looked: ominously pale. Had Miss Bettina been gifted with preternatural penetration, she might have detected that some great dread was upon her.

But Miss Bettina was on that morning especially self-occupied. On the previous Saturday Dr. Davenal had told her that certain country friends were coming into Hallingham on that day, Monday, and he should invite them to dinner; or else that he had invited them: in her deafness she did not catch which. She had replied by asking him what he would have for dinner, and he said they would settle all that on Monday morning. Monday morning was now come; and Miss Bettina, a punctilious housekeeper, choosing to have everything in order and to treat visitors liberally, was on the fidget to make the arrangements, and waited impatiently for Dr. Davenal Watton, a fidget also in the domestic department, liking at any rate to get her orders in time, had come in with Miss Davenal.

Miss Davenal rang the bell: an intimation to Neal that they were ready for the coffee. She turned to the table, and the first thing that struck her sharp eyes in its arrangements was, that only two breakfast cups were on it.

"What is Neal thinking of this morning?" she exclaimed.

"I don't fancy my master is stirring yet," observed Watton. "I have not heard him."

"Nonsense!" returned her mistress. "When did you ever know your master not stirring at eight o'clock?"

"Not often, ma'am, it's true," was Watton's answer. "But it might happen. I know he was disturbed in the night."

Sara glanced up with a half-frightened glance. She dropped her head again, and began making scores on the cloth with her silver fork.

"It was the oddest thing," began Watton--and she was speaking in the low clear tones which made every word distinct to Miss Davenal. "Last night I was undressing with the blind up, without a candle, for the moon was light as day, when I saw a man turn in at the gate, and I said to myself, 'Here comes somebody bothering for master!' He made a spring to the side, and crouched himself amid the laurels that skirt the rails by the lane, and stopped there looking at the house. 'Very strange!' I said to myself again; 'that's not the way sick folk's messengers come in.' After a minute he walked on, brushing close to the shrubs, afraid I suppose of being seen, and I heard him tap at the window of the doctor's consulting-room. Ma'am, if ever I thought of a robber in my life, I thought of one then, and if it hadn't been for my presence of mind, I should have rose the house with my screams"----

"Be silent, Watton!" sharply interrupted Miss Davenal. "Look there! You are frightening her to death."

She had extended her finger, pointing at Sara. Sara, her face more like death than life, in its ghastly whiteness, was gazing at Watton, her eyes strained, her lips apart, as one under the influence of some great terror. Was she afraid of what might be coming? It looked so.

"There's nothing to be alarmed at, Miss Sara"----

"Don't tell it; don't tell it," gasped Sara, putting up her hands. "It does frighten me."

"But indeed there is nothing to be frightened at, as you'll hear, Miss Sara," persisted the woman. "It's a fact that I was a little frightened myself; one does hear of housebreakers getting into houses in so strange a manner; and I went out of my room and leaned over the banisters and listened. It was all right, for I heard the doctor open the hall door and take the man into his consulting-room, and shut himself in with him. How long the man stopped, and who he was, I can't tell; he did not go away while I was awake--but, ma'am, that's how I know my master was disturbed in the night."

"Watton!"--and as Sara spoke her cheeks became crimson, her voice imperative,--"do you deem it lies in your service here to watch the movements of your master, and to comment upon them afterwards?"

The moment the words had left her lips she felt how unwise they were; but she had so spoken in her perplexity, her soreness of heart. Watton turned her eyes on her young mistress in sheer amazement.

"Watch my master's movements! Why, Miss Sara, you can't think I'd do such a thing. I watched to--if I may so express it--protect my master; to protect the house, lest harm should be meant it. Decent folk don't come in at night as that man came in."

Neal had entered, and was disposing his eatables on the table. Miss Davenal drew his attention to the shortness of the cups.

"It is quite right; ma'am. The doctor went out in the middle of the night; at least about two in the morning; and he charged me to tell you he should not be at home all day; perhaps not all night. Nobody is to sit up for him."

"Where's he gone?" asked Miss Bettina.

Neal could not tell. His master had said he was going to a distance. But Miss Bettina could not make it out at all, and she asked question upon question. How had he gone?--the carriage was not out. Walked away on foot, and said he was going to a distance, and might not be home for a day and a night? It was the most mysterious, extraordinary proceeding she ever heard of. "Did you see or hear anything of a strange man coming in in the night?" she asked of Neal.

"No, ma'am," replied Neal, with his usual impassability. "I see my master's bed has not been slept in; and he has taken an overcoat with him."

Sara lifted her burning face. It was as one stricken with fever.

"Let it rest; let it rest, Aunt Bettina! Wait until papa is home, and ask particulars of him. If patients require him at a distance, it is his duty to go to them."

The last words were spoken defiantly; not at her aunt, but at the servants. She felt on the very verge of desperation. What disastrous consequences might not this proclamation of the night's work bring forth!

"Let it rest!" retorted Miss Bettina. "Yes, that is what you young and careless ones would like to do. Look at my position! The responsible mistress of this house, and left at an uncertainty whether people are coming to dinner or whether they are not. Your papa must have gone clean out of his wits to go off and not leave word."

"You can fix upon a dinner as well as papa can, Aunt Bettina."

"Fix upon a dinner! It's not that. It is the not knowing whether there's to be a dinner fixed upon; whether people are invited, or not, to eat it."

When Miss Davenal was put out about domestic arrangements, it took a great deal to put her in again. Neal and Watton were questioned and cross-questioned as to the events of the night, and breakfast was got over in a commotion. Sara shivered with a nameless fear, and wondered whether that dreadful secret might not become known.

A secret which bore for Sara Davenal all the more terror from the fact that she was but imperfectly acquainted with its nature. Dr. Davenal had seen fit for certain reasons to call her down to his room, and she had there seen the ominous visitor: but the particulars had been kept from her. That there existed a secret, and a terrible one, which might burst at any hour over their heads, bringing with it disgrace as well as misery, she had been obliged to learn; but its precise nature she was not told; was not allowed, it may be said, to guess at. Dr. Davenal so far spared her. He spared her from the best of motives, forgetting that suspense is, of all human pain, the worst to bear.

With the exception of what that little note told her, which she saw lying inside her door when she rose in the morning, she knew nothing of the motives of her father's journey; where he had gone, or why he had gone. She only knew it was imperative that that night's visit to the house should remain a secret, uncommented upon, unglanced at. And now the servants knew of it--had seen the stranger come in--might talk about it indoors and out! No wonder that Sara Davenal shivered!--that she grew sick at heart!

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XX. GOING DOWN TO THE FUNERAL

The commotion in the town rose that morning to its height: it equalled the commotion at Miss Davenal's breakfast-table. But not from the same exciting cause. The one was led to by the curious absence of Dr. Davenal; the other had its source in the death of Lady Oswald.

She had lived so long amongst them--had been, so to say, the head of the social and visiting community of Hallingham! A great lady once, the Lady Oswald of Thorndyke. Had she died in the common course of nature, after weeks or months of illness, it would still have created a stir; but to have died from the inhaling of chloroform consequent upon the railway accident, did cause very great and unwonted excitement. People were shocked at her death: they mourned for the somewhat eccentric old lady who had been seen driven through their streets in her close carriage for years; but they never cast so much as a shadow of reproach towards the doctors who might be said to be, however unwittingly, the authors of it. They railed at the chloroform, calling it uncertain, dangerous stuff; but not the slightest reflection was thrown on the judgment which had caused her to inhale it.

Mark Cray was beset with questions and remarks, especially from his medical brethren in the town. In Dr. Davenal's absence, people flew to him for particulars. He remembered the doctor's caution, and said as little as possible. It was an unpleasant subject to speak of, he observed to them--they could understand that. But the curious questioners only understood it partially, and rather wondered why Mr. Cray should be so chary of his information.

The inquest took place on the Tuesday, as Dr. Davenal had surmised it would. It was held quite as a matter of course--not with a view to elicit the cause of death; that was already known--simply because the law rendered an inquest obligatory.

The doctor was not back for it, and Mr. Cray was the principal witness. The operation had been most satisfactorily performed by Dr. Davenal, he testified, but Lady Oswald did not rally from the effects of the chloroform. They had tried every means to arouse her without result. The coroner presumed the chloroform had been administered with all due caution: he felt persuaded it would be by so experienced a surgeon as Dr. Davenal. Certainly, was the answer of Mark Cray. It was given her with the best of motives: to spare her acute suffering: and no one could more bitterly regret the result than they did. It was impossible to foresee, he continued, that this great blessing--yes, he must still call it so--to suffering humanity, which had spared anguish to thousands, perhaps he might say had spared lives, would have an opposite effect upon Lady Oswald, and bring death to her instead of relief. He had never for one moment in his own judgment doubted the expediency of giving it to her: were the thing to come over again (the result being hidden from him) he should do the same.

Not a word that Mark Cray said but had its weight, and was appreciated. The death was regarded as a pure misfortune, a sort of accident that could not be prevented by poor human foresight, and for which blame was attachable to no one. And the verdict was in accordance with this.

The only one on whom the facts were yet destined to make an unpleasant and not satisfactory impression was Mr. Oswald Cray The first intimation of Lady Oswald's death reached him through the "Times" newspaper. As junior in the firm, he lived in the house in Parliament Street, the senior partners preferring residences out of town. The chief part of the house was devoted to their business purposes, and Mr. Oswald Cray had but two or three rooms for his private use. On the Thursday morning, the "Times" was brought to him as usual while he was at breakfast. It was folded with the supplement outside, the deaths uppermost; and on putting it aside to open the more important parts his eye caught the word Oswald.

He looked further: and nothing could exceed his surprise. He gazed at the announcement with a feeling of disbelief, almost as though he was in a dream: "At her residence in Hallingham, Susan Hannah Lady Oswald, aged seventy-one, widow of Sir John Oswald Thorndyke."

The date of her death, probably by an oversight, had not been put in, and Oswald Cray was left to conjecture it. Certainly he did not suppose it had occurred so far back as on the previous Sunday, the day after he left Hallingham.

What had killed her? The accident? He had been given to understand that night that she was not materially injured: he now supposed she must have been. Why had nobody written to acquaint him? He would have been glad to see her for a final farewell; would have thought nothing of his time and trouble in going down for it. Mark might have written: he could not remember having corresponded with Mark in all his life, half-brothers though they were; but still Mark might have gone out of his way to drop him a line now. Parkins might have written; in fact he considered it was Parkins' duty to have written, and he should tell her so: and Dr. Davenal might have written. Of the three mentioned, Oswald Cray would soonest have expected the doctor to write, and the omission struck him as being somewhat singular.

The post brought news. Amidst the mass of letters that came for the firm was one to himself, He saw the Hallingham postmark, and opened it at once.

A look of blank disappointment, mingled with surprise, settled on his face as he read. It was not from Dr. Davenal, from Mark Cray, or from Parkins; it gave him no details, any more than if he had been the greatest stranger to Lady Oswald. It was a formal intimation from the undertaker that her late ladyship's funeral would take place on Friday at eleven o'clock, and requesting his attendance at it, if convenient.

"Her funeral tomorrow!" ejaculated Oswald. "Then she must have died almost immediately. Perhaps the very night I came up. Why couldn't somebody write?"

He arranged business matters so as to go down that afternoon, and arrived at Hallingham between six and seven o'clock. Giving his portmanteau to a porter, he went on to his usual place of sojourn, the "Apple Tree." It was near to the terminus, a little beyond the town, one of the quiet country inns now nearly obsolete. An old-fashioned, plain, roomy house, whose swinging sign-board stood out before its door, and whose productive garden of vegetables and fruit stretched out behind it. No fashionable person would look at it twice. Oswald Cray had been recommended to it long ago as his place of sojourn in Hallingham, where his stay seldom lasted more than two days: and he had found himself so comfortable, so quiet, so entirely at home, that he would not have exchanged it for the grandest hotel in Hallingham, had the said hotel graciously intimated that it would receive him for nothing.

The host, whose name was John Hamos, came forward to receive him; a respectable, worthy man, with a portly person and red face, who might be seen occasionally in a white apron washing up glasses, and who waited on his guests himself. He and Oswald were the best of friends.

"Good-evening, sir. My wife said you'd be down tonight or in the morning. We were sure you'd attend the burying. A sad thing, sir, is it not?"

"It is a very sad thing, John," returned Oswald; "I seem as if I could not believe it. It was only this morning that I received the tidings. What did she die of? The accident to the train?"

"No, sir, she didn't die of that. Leastways, that was not the immediate cause of death, though of course it must be said to have led to it. She died from the effects of chloroform."

"Died from--what did you say?" asked Oswald, staring at the man.

"From chloroform, sir."

"From chloroform!" he repeated, "I don't understand."

And he looked as if he did not. As if it were impossible to take in the words or their sense. John Hamos continued.

"It seems, sir, that on the Sunday it was discovered that her ladyship had sustained some internal injury--to the ribs, I believe, or near-abouts--and she had to submit to an operation. Chloroform was given her while it was performed, and she never rallied from it."

"Who gave her the chloroform?"

"Dr. Davenal"

"Dr. Davenal!" echoed Mr. Oswald Cray, and his accent of astonishment was so great, so unmistakable, that the landlord looked at him in surprise. "Why, he--he----"

"What, sir?"

Oswald had brought his words to a sudden stand-still. His face was one picture of doubt, of bewilderment.

"It could not have been Dr. Davenal."

"Yes it was, sir," repeated John Hamos. "Who else would be likely to undertake the operation but him? He and Mr. Cray were together, but it was the doctor who performed it. As of course it would be."

"But he did not give the chloroform?"

"Why, yes he did, sir. He gave it for the best. As was said afterwards at the inquest, they could not possibly foresee that what saved pain and was a blessing to thousands, would prove fatal to her ladyship."

"Who said that at the inquest? Dr. Davenal?"

"Mr. Cray, sir. The doctor wasn't present at the inquest; he was away from the town. He went away in the night, somebody said, just after the death: was fetched out to some patient at a distance, and didn't get back here till--Wednesday morning, I think it was."

"And she never rallied from the chloroform?"

"Never at all, sir. She died under it."

Oswald Cray said no more. He went up to the bedroom that he always used, there to wash off some of the travelling dust. But instead of proceeding at once to do so, he stood in thought with folded arms and bent brow, John Hamos's information respecting the chloroform troubling his brain.

Why should it trouble him? Could not he believe, as others did, that it was given in all due hope and confidence, according to the best judgment of the surgeons? No, he could not believe it, so far as regarded the chief surgeon, Dr. Davenal: and the reason was this.

On the night of the accident, when Dr. Davenal jumped into the carriage that was about to proceed to the scene, he jumped into a seat by the side of Oswald Cray. They entered into conversation, and the topic of it was, not unnaturally, accidents in general. It led to the subject of chloroform, and Dr. Davenal expressed his opinion upon that new-fashioned aid to science just as freely as he afterwards expressed it to Mark Cray.

How strange are the incidents, the small events that shape the course of human destiny. But for that accidental conversation--and may it not be called accidental?--half the trouble that is about to be related never would have taken place. And the cruel shadow, that was waiting to spread its wings over the days of more than one wayfarer on the path of life, would have found no spot to darken with its evil.

Dr. Davenal spoke his opinion freely to Oswald Cray with regard to chloroform. He did not deny its great boon, sparing pain to many whose sufferings would otherwise be almost intolerable; but he said that there were some few to whom he would as soon give poison as chloroform, for the one would be just as fatal as the other. And he instanced Lady Oswald.

The unfortunate fact of Lady Oswald being in the disabled train to which they were hastening, possibly one of its wounded, no doubt suggested her name to Dr. Davenal as his example. There were other people whom he attended--a slight few--to whom he deemed chloroform would be as pernicious as to Lady Oswald: but she was in question, as it were, that night, and he cited her. There must have been some fatality in it.

"She is one, if I am any judge, who could not bear it; who would be almost certain not to survive its effects," were the words he used to Oswald. "I would as soon give Lady Oswald a dose of poison as suffer her to come near chloroform."

The words, spoken to Oswald only, not to the other inmates of the carriage who were busy talking on their own score, had not made any particular impression upon him at the time, but they returned to his memory now with awakened force. He asked himself what it could mean. Dr. Davenal had distinctly told him, or equivalent to it, that the inhaling of chloroform would be as poison to Lady Oswald; he was now assured by John Hamos that, not four-and-twenty hours subsequent to that conversation, he, Dr. Davenal, had himself administered chloroform to her. And the result was death. Death--as Dr. Davenal had expressed his firm conviction it would be.

Mr. Oswald Cray could only come to the conclusion that there must be some mistake in the statement of the facts to him. It was impossible to arrive at any other conclusion. That there was no mistake on his own part, as to the opinion expressed to him by the doctor, he knew; he recalled the very words in which it was spoken; spoken deliberately and elaborately; not a mere allusion or sentence. About that there was no doubt; but he felt that a mistake must lie somewhere. The chloroform could not have been given by Dr. Davenal; perhaps he had not even been present at the operation.

He quitted the "Apple Tree," and bent his steps to Lady Oswald's. Parkins came to him in a burst of grief. Parkins was--it has been said so before--genuinely grieved at her lady's death, and it showed itself chiefly by breaking into a shower of tears with every fresh person she saw. One of the first questions put to her by Mr. Oswald Cray was as to her not having written to inform him of the death. He wished to know why she had not.

"I don't know why, sir," she sobbed, "except that I have been bewildered ever since it happened. I have been as one out of my mind, sir, with the shock and the grief. I'm sure I beg your pardon for the neglect, but it never so much as struck me till yesterday, when the undertaker was here about the funeral. He asked who was to be invited to it, and then it came into my mind that you ought to have been wrote to, but I said perhaps Mr. Cray had done it."

"Well, sit down while you talk, Parkins," he said in a kind tone. "I can understand that you have been very much shocked by it. Are any of Lady Oswald's relatives here?"

"There's that nephew of hers, sir, the parson; the poor gentleman that she'd send a little money to sometimes. He heard of it accidental, he says, and came off at once with his brother. They got here this morning. Very nice people, both of them, sir, but they seem poor. They think no doubt that my lady's money is left to them, as I daresay it is. She----"

"I wish to ask you a question or two about the death, Parkins," he interrupted in a pointed manner. None could check undue topics with more dignity than he. "When was it discovered that Lady Oswald was seriously injured?"

"Not until the Sunday, sir. When Mr. Cray came home with her here on the return from Hildon, he wanted to examine into her state, but she was very obstinate, and persisted in saying she'd not be touched that night; that she wasn't hurt. I fancy Dr. Davenal thought it was wrong of Mr. Cray not to have insisted upon it--but Mr. Cray himself did not think there was any grave injury: he told me so then. The next morning I thought they'd both be here, Dr. Davenal and Mr. Cray; but Mr. Cray came alone, the doctor it appeared had been sent for to Thorndyke----"

"To Thorndyke?" involuntarily interrupted Oswald.

"Yes, sir, somebody was ill there. However, he, the doctor, was back and up here in the afternoon. He had seen Mr. Cray, and he came to examine into her state for himself: for it had been discovered then that she was worse injured than they thought. At first my lady said she'd not submit to the operation, which Mr. Cray had already told her must take place; but Dr. Davenal talked to her, and she consented, and they fixed half-past five in the afternoon. Have you heard how she died, sir?" broke off Parkins abruptly.

"I have heard since I got here this evening that she died from the effects of chloroform."

"And so she did, sir. And it's a thing that I shall never understand to my dying day."

Parkins spoke the last words with a vehemence that superseded the sobs. Mr. Oswald Cray thought he did not understand it either; but he did not say so.

"In what way don t you understand it?" he asked quietly.

"How it was they came to give her the chloroform. I am quite certain, sir, that up to the very moment that the operation was ready to be begun, there was no thought of chloroform. It was not as much as mentioned, and if any chloroform had been in the room amidst the preparations, I must have seen it."

"Were you present during the operation?"

"I was to have been present, sir; but at the last moment I fainted dead off, and had to be taken from the room. We knew no more, any of us, till it was all over. Then we were called to by the gentlemen, and told what was the matter: that my lady was sinking under the influence of the chloroform they had administered, and could not be rallied from it. And, a few minutes after, she died."

Oswald Cray remained for some moments silent. "Was it Dr. Davenal who administered it?" he resumed.

"No doubt it was, sir; they were together. It was Dr. Davenal who performed the operation. My lady said nobody should do it but Mr. Cray, and it was settled that it should be done by him; but I suppose they thought at last it would be better to entrust it to the doctor. Anyway, it was he who performed it."

"What did Dr. Davenal--did Dr. Davenal say anything about the chloroform afterwards, or why they had used it?"

"He didn't say much, sir. He said what had been done was done for the best: but he seemed dreadfully cut up. And so did Mr. Cray. The strangest thing to me is, why they used chloroform, when I saw no signs of their attempting to use it."

"But they must have had it with them?"

"Well, of course they must, sir. It was not produced, though, while I was there. They said my lady grew agitated--it was Mr. Cray said that--that my falling down helped to agitate her; but it will take a great deal to make me believe there was any need for them to use chloroform. It has cost a good lady her life; I know that. She had her little tempers and her fidgety ways, poor dear lady, but she was one of the best of mistresses. It's just as if they had done it to kill her."

Did the words grate on the ear of Oswald Cray?--as though they bore all too significant a meaning. Not yet; not quite yet. This testimony of the maid's had confirmed beyond doubt that Dr. Davenal had been the chief and acting surgeon: how then reconcile that fact with the opinion expressed to him not many hours before the death? He could not tell; he could not think; he could not account for it by any reasoning of any sort, subtle or simple. He was as one in a mazy dream, seeing nothing distinctly.

When he quitted the house, he turned again and bent his steps to the Abbey. Possibly he deemed Mark could solve his difficulties. Mark was not in, however, when he got there, only Caroline.

Mrs. Cray was in the large drawing-room. She and the tea-table, at which she sat waiting for Mark, looked quite lost in its space. The thought struck Oswald as he entered. It had been the home of his early childhood, the scene of occasional visits since that period, but Oswald always thought that room larger and larger every time he entered it. It was at its window that he, a baby in arms, had been held by the side of his mother, when the grand people from Thorndyke in their carriage and four, her father and mother, would drive past and cast up their faces of stone. He had been too young to know anything then, but afterwards, when he could begin to understand, these stories of the passing by of Sir Oswald Oswald were impressed upon him by his nurse. They remained amidst his most vivid recollections. But that he knew it was impossible to have been so--for his mother had died when he was too young, and there was no more standing there after her death to watch for Sir Oswald--he could have affirmed now that he remembered those times in all their full detail: the steady pace of the fine horses, the bedizened carriage--in those days it was the fashion to have carriages bedizened--the servants in their claret liveries, the impassive faces of Sir Oswald and his lady. The fact was, it had all been described so often and minutely to the young child Oswald, that it remained on his memory as a thing seen, not heard.

Mrs. Cray, gay in attire, wearied in countenance, was quite alone. She wore a low evening dress of blue silk, with lace and fringes and trimmings; and blue ribbons in her hair. Rather more dress than is necessary for a quiet evening at home; but she was young and pretty and a bride, and--very fond of finery in any shape. Her weary face lighted up with smiles as she saw Oswald and rose to greet him: very, very pretty did she look then.

"I am so glad to see you! I had grown tired, waiting for Mark. He went out the moment he had swallowed his dinner--before he had swallowed it, I think--and he is not in yet. Shall I tell you a secret, Oswald?"

"Yes, if you please."

"I am quite disappointed. I shan't at all like being a doctor's wife."

Her dark blue eyes were dancing with smiles as she spoke. Oswald smiled too--at the joke.

"It is true, Mr. Oswald Cray. I don't speak against my own dear Mark: I'd not part with him: but I do wish he was not a doctor. You don't know how little I see of him. He is in just at meals, and not always to them."

Oswald smiled still. "You had lived in a doctor's house, Mrs. Cray, and knew the routine of it."

"My uncle's house was not like this. Who can compare the great Dr. Davenal at the top of the tree, waiting at home for his patients to come to him, to poor Mark Cray at the bottom, just beginning to climb it? It's not the same thing, Mr. Oswald Cray. Mark has to be out, here and there and everywhere. At the Infirmary, dancing attendance on interminable rows of beds one hour; in some obscure corner of the town another, setting somebody's leg, or watching a case of fever. Mark says it won't go on quite as bad as it has begun. This has been an unusually busy week with him, owing to the doctor's absence. He left home on Sunday night, and was not back until Wednesday. A great portion of Sunday also the doctor passed at Thorndyke."

"His patient must have been very ill to keep him away from Sunday until Wednesday," remarked Oswald.

"To tell you the truth," said Caroline, dropping her voice in a manner that sounded rather mysterious, "we don't think he was with a patient. We can't quite make out why he went or where he went. He came here in the middle of the night and rang up Mark. It was the night subsequent to Lady Oswald's death--oh, Oswald! was not her death a shocking thing?"

"Very," was the answer, gravely spoken.

"When Mark came home that Sunday evening and told me Lady Oswald was dead, I cannot describe to you how I felt. At first I could not believe it; and then I went--I went into hysterics. It was very foolish of course, for hysterics do no good, but I could not help it. You have come down to attend the funeral tomorrow, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Well--I was telling you about my uncle. He came here in the middle of the night and rang up Mark, who went down to him. When Mark came upstairs again, he said Dr. Davenal was going away on some private errand which he had made a sort of secret of to Mark. I fancy Mark was only half-awake and did not hear him clearly; all he understood was, that the doctor was going somewhere by train unexpectedly; and Mark was to let it be assumed in the town that he was visiting a patient at a distance. Mark declared that he believed the doctor was only absenting himself to avoid attending the coroner's inquest."

"Why should Mark think that?--Why should Dr. Davenal wish to avoid attending it?" reiterated Oswald, strangely interested, he scarcely knew why.

"I cannot tell you. I fancy the admission slipped from Mark inadvertently, for he would not say a syllable more. The next day, Monday, I saw Sara. I asked her point-blank where my uncle had gone, remarking that there seemed to be some little mystery connected with it, and she turned as white as the grave and whispered to me not to talk so, to hold my tongue for the love of Heaven. You'll take some tea, won't you; Oswald? I shall be so glad of an excuse for making it."

Oswald, almost mechanically, said he would take some, and she rang the bell for the urn. He began to think all this strange and more strange; to ask himself: what it tended to. Dr. Davenal had gone away to avoid the inquest?--and his daughter when spoken to upon the subject had turned as white as the grave? What did it mean?

"Do you know the particulars of Lady Oswald's death?" he inquired as he stirred his tea.

"Yes. Don't you! She died from chloroform. They deemed it necessary to give it her, and she never rallied from it."

"Who gave it to her? Which of them?"

"Which of them?" repeated Caroline, lifting her eyes, thinking no doubt the question a superfluous one. "They were both present; they would act in concert one with the other. If you mean to cast blame on them, Oswald, I should say you must cast it conjointly. But they acted for the best."

"I do not cast blame on them," he answered. "I don't understand the affair sufficiently yet to cast blame anywhere. It is a riddle to me."

"What is a riddle?"

"How Dr.--how they came to use chloroform at all."

"Why, it is in almost universal use now!" exclaimed Mrs. Cray, surprised at the remark. "There is no riddle in that."

Oswald did not press it. In his opinion there was a riddle; one he began to think would not be easy of solution. He finished his tea in silence. By and by Mrs. Cray resumed.

"Mark seems not to like to talk of it. I asked him a great many questions, as was natural, but he put me off, saying I should be falling into hysterics again. I told him that was nonsense, now the shock was over; but he would not talk of it, seemed quite to wince when I pressed it. It was not a pleasant subject for him, he said. And of course it is not: and still less so for my uncle, whose authority sways Mark. However good their intentions were, it did kill her."

"Will Mark be long, do you suppose?" inquired Oswald, breaking another long pause.

"As if I could tell, Oswald! I have been expecting him every minute this hour past. When I grumble at Mark for staying out so, he tells me I must blame his patients. Nay, but you are not going yet?" she added, as he rose. "Mark is sure to be in soon."

"I cannot well stay longer now," he answered. "I shall see Mark in the morning. I suppose he attends the funeral?"

"Of course he will. They will both attend it. I wish you would not hurry away!"

He repeated his apology, and Caroline rang the bell. In point of fact he wanted to call on Dr. Davenal.

Scarcely had the servant closed the door on Mr. Oswald Cray than he met his brother. Mark was coming along at a quick pace.

"Oswald, is it you? Have you been to the Abbey?"

"I have been taking tea with your wife, and waiting for you. She is nearly out of patience. Mark!" he continued, passing his arm within his brother's and leading him a few steps away while he talked, "what a shocking thing this is about Lady Oswald!"

"Ay, it is that. So unexpected. Won't you come in?"

"Not again tonight. I want to know, Mark, how it was that chloroform was given to her!"

"If we had not deemed it for the best, we should not have given it," was Mark's answer.

"But--surely Dr. Davenal did not deem it would be for the best?"

Mark turned and looked at him: a quick, sharp glance. "What do you know about it?" he asked.

"I? I know nothing about it: I want to know," replied Oswald, thinking the remark strange. "I wish you would give me the full particulars, Mark. I cannot understand--I have a reason for not being able to understand--why chloroform should have been given to Lady Oswald----"

"We use chloroform very much now," interrupted Mark.

"Why it should have been given to Lady Oswald," went on Oswald, with pointed emphasis.

"It was given to her as it is given to others--to deaden pain."

"Who performed the operation?"

"The doctor."

There was a pause. When Oswald Cray broke it his voice was low, his manner hesitating. "Mark, will you pardon me if I ask you a peculiar question?--Do you believe from your very heart that when Dr. Davenal administered that chloroform to Lady Oswald he did think it would be for the best?"

Hesitating as Oswald's manner had been. Mark's was worse. He grew on a sudden flushed and embarrassed.

"Won't you answer me, Mark?"

"I--yes--of course we thought it would be for the best."

"I asked, did he think it?"

Mark plunged into an untruth. Somewhat afraid of Oswald at the best of times, conscious that he was of a far higher standard in moral and intellectual excellence than himself, he desired to stand well with him, to enjoy his good opinion; and perhaps there was not a single man in Hallingham to whom Mark would not have preferred his unhappy mistake in all its wilfulness to become known than to his brother. They were also playing at cross-purposes: Oswald was seeking to learn how far Dr. Davenal had been to blame. Mark believed it was his own share of blame that was sought to be arrived at.

"Yes, he thought it. Dr. Davenal would not use chloroform, or anything else, unless he believed it would be beneficial," rapidly went on Mark. "I never knew a man more successful in his treatment in a general way than he." But for all the apparent readiness of the words, they bore a certain evasion to Oswald's ears.

"Tell me the truth, Mark; tell it me frankly," he rejoined. "Is there not some--some secret--I don't know what else to call it--connected with this business? Something wrong about it!"

For a moment Mark Cray had to deliberate. He was driven at bay by the straightforward questions of his brother. And his brother saw the hesitation.

"Oswald, it is of no use to press me upon this matter. You will readily conceive how sore a one it is to myself and to Dr. Davenal. Had it been some poor rubbishing patient who had died through it, that poor stoker at the Infirmary for instance, it would not have been of so much account: but"----

"Be silent, Mark!" burst from Oswald with a flash of anger. "I will not listen to such doctrine. The lives of the poor are every whit as valuable as are the lives of the rich. You did not learn that from Dr. Davenal."

"What I meant was, that there'd not be half the public fuss," said Mark, looking little, and doing his best to explain away the impression given by his words. "I'm sure there has been enough fuss in the town since her death was known, but I have not heard of one single person in it casting blame on us. Why should you seek to cast it? Errors in judgment are committed now and then in medical practice, just as they are in everything else and there's no help for it; they happen to the very best of us. If we could see the end of a thing at the beginning it would be different: but we can't. Could its effects on Lady Oswald have been anticipated, we'd have seen chloroform in the sea before it should have been given her. It was done for the best."

"You think, then, that Dr. Davenal believed the giving it her would be for the best?" persisted Oswald, after listening patiently to the excited answer.

Again came the perceptible hesitation in the manner of Mark; again the flush of embarrassment rose to his cheek. Oswald noted it.

"I am quite sure that all the doctor ever did for Lady Oswald he did for the best," and Mark Cray plucked up courage and spirit as he said it: "that night as well as other nights which had gone before it I cannot think what you are driving at, Oswald."

Oswald Cray determined to "drive" no more. He believed it would be useless, so far as Mark was concerned. He could not quite make him out: but he believed it would be useless. That there was something concealed, something not quite open, he saw; Mark's manner alone would have told him that: and he came rapidly to the conclusion that Mark had been cognisant also of his partner's opinion of chloroform as connected with Lady Oswald, and could not tell why he had tried it upon her, but did suppose, in spite of the face of affairs, that he had done it for the best. All Mark's embarrassment, his evasion, his crusty unwillingness to speak frankly, Oswald set down to an anxiety to screen Dr. Davenal from the reproach of imprudence. One more remark he did make. It arose to his mind as he was about to depart, and he spoke it on the spur of the thought.

"I understand you fancy that Dr. Davenal absented himself from Hallingham to avoid attending the coroner's inquest."

"Where on earth did you hear that?" shouted Mark, with a stare of surprise.

"Your wife mentioned it to me just now."

Mark Cray waxed wroth. "What idiots women are! The very best of them! I shan't be able to think my own thoughts next. Caroline knows I did not wish that repeated: it slipped from me without reflection."

"It is quite safe with me, Mark. She looks upon me, I suppose, as one of yourselves. But why should Dr. Davenal have wished not to attend the inquest?"

"Oh, for nothing, only he thought they'd be putting all sorts of questions," carelessly replied Mark. "It was a disagreeable thing altogether, and one of us was quite enough to attend. But, mind you, Oswald, I don't really suppose he went for that: I make no doubt he had business out."

"Well, goodnight, Mark."

"Goodnight. I wish you had come in."

Mark Cray stepped on to his house, and let himself in with his latch-key, thinking how much better the world would go on if women had not been endowed with tongues, and wondering excessively what possessed Oswald to be taking up the death of Lady Oswald and putting these mysterious questions upon it.

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XXI. THE INTERVIEW WITH THE DOCTOR

Dr. Davenal was alone in his study, pacing the carpet with heavy steps and a face that seemed to have all the care of the world marked on it, when Mr. Oswald Cray was shown in. Oswald could not avoid being struck with that expression of care; he had never seen the like upon the countenance of Dr. Davenal.

Turning his head, he looked at Oswald for the space of a minute as if not recognising him. He was too deeply buried in his own thoughts immediately to awake from them to everyday life.

"Good-evening, Dr. Davenal."

He took Oswald's outstretched hand, and was himself again. Oswald sat down and the doctor too. But after a few words, he rose, apparently in restlessness, and began to pace the room as before.

"Are you in any grief, doctor?"

"Well--yes I am," was the reply. "Or perhaps I should rather say in vexation, for that is chiefly it. We have had a line from Edward by the day post, and he expresses a doubt whether he shall be able to get down to say farewell. These young soldiers grow careless of home ties, Mr. Oswald Cray."

"Not soldiers in particular, do they, sir? It is a reproach that can be cast upon many others who live in the world."

"And get enslaved by it. True."

"I did not mean altogether that, Dr. Davenal. When does your son sail?"

"On Sunday morning, he says. He does not positively say he is not coming down, only gives a hint that he fears he cannot. What did I do with the letter?" continued the doctor, looking round. "I brought it in with me after dinner. Oh, there it is," he added, seeing it on a side table, and giving it to Oswald. "You can read what he says. Sara won't mind. It is written for us all as well as for her, I expect Edward was never a voluminous correspondent; his letters are generally pro bono publico."

Oswald saw it was addressed to Miss Sara Davenal, and began to read it. It was dated the previous evening.

"My Darling Sister,--" We are in all the bustle and hurry of the start. Orders have come at last, and we embark from Southampton on Sunday morning. I hope I shall get down to you to say goodbye. I am not unmindful of my promise to do so, and will do all I can to keep it; poor Dick used to tell me that I knew how to break promises better than I knew how to make them, but it shall not be my fault if you have to east that on me as a last reproach. To absent one's-self, even for an hour, is a difficult task now, but I will manage it, if possible. We have been worked off our heads and legs for the last few days.

"Love to all. I suppose Carry is fairly installed at the Abbey; wish her all good luck for me.--Ever yours, in much haste,

"E. F. Davenal."

"You see," said the doctor, halting and pointing to the letter, "he emphasises the word 'hope.' 'I hope I shall get down.' That very fact is sufficient to tell me that he knows he shall not get down, and these lines have been sent as a sort of preparation for the final disappointment. And he is going out for years! But I won't blame him; perhaps it is an impossibility to him to get away. He should have remained longer when he came down for the wedding--have made it his farewell visit. I said so then."

Dr. Davenal began his walk to and fro again,--a very slow, thoughtful walk. Oswald folded the letter and laid it on the table.

"I have ever loved my children--I was going to say passionately, Mr. Oswald Cray. I believe few parents can love as I have loved. I have made--I have made sacrifices for them which the world little reeks of, and anything like ingratitude touches me to the heart's core. But in the midst of it I am the first to find excuses for them, and I say that Edward may not be at all to blame in this."

"I think it very likely that he is quite unable to get away, however much he may wish it," observed Oswald.

"I think so too. I say I don't blame him. Only one feels these things."

There ensued a silence. A feeling of dislike had come over Oswald (and he could not trace it to any particular cause) to enter upon the subject of Lady Oswald. But he was not one to give way to these fanciful phases of feeling which appear to arise without rhyme or reason, and he was about to speak when the doctor forestalled him.

"Lady Oswald's death has brought you down, I presume?"

"Yes. I was in ignorance of it until this morning, when a formal invitation to attend the funeral reached me from the undertaker. I had just read the announcement of the death in the 'Times.' How shocked I was, I cannot well express to you."

"It has shocked us all."

"Of course its reaching me in that abrupt manner, in the public column of deaths, did not tend to lessen the shock. I rather wonder you did not drop me a line yourself, Dr. Davenal."

"I was away afterwards. Called out to a distance, I did not get back for a day or two. Did Mark not write?"

"Nobody wrote. Neither Mark nor Parkins; nor anybody else. As to Mark, he is careless as the wind; and Parkins excuses herself on the plea of having been so bewildered. I can readily believe her. Dr. Davenal, she died, as I am given to understand, from the effects of chloroform!"

"We thought, on the night of the accident, you know, that she was not seriously injured," said Dr. Davenal. "At least, Mark thought it: I had my doubts: but I left him to see to her at her own desire. Unfortunately I was called out early on Sunday morning. I was wanted at Thorndyke: and when I got back the injury had been ascertained, and an operation found necessary. It was under that operation she died."

"But the operation was performed successfully?"

"Quite so."

"And what she died of was the inhaling of the chloroform?"

"It was."

"But--I cannot understand why chloroform should have been given to her?" deliberately proceeded Oswald.

"It was given to her," was all the reply he obtained.

"But--pardon me for recalling it to you, Dr. Davenal--do you remember the very decided opinion you expressed to me, when we were going down to the scene of accident, against giving chloroform to Lady Oswald? We were speaking of its opposite effects upon different natures, and you cited Lady Oswald as one to whom, in your opinion, it might prove dangerous. You stated that, so far as you believed, it would be neither better nor worse to her than poison."

Oswald waited for a reply, but the doctor made none. He was pacing the small room with his measured tread, his hands in his pockets, his eyes bent on the carpet.

"Have you any objection to explain to me this apparent contradiction? It is impossible to believe that one, whose opinion of chloroform in relation to her was so fatal, would in a few hours cause her to inhale it."

Dr. Davenal stopped in his walk and confronted Oswald.

"Have you seen Mark since you came down?"

"Yes."

"And what does he say?"

"Well, I don't fancy he understands it much better than I do. He reiterates that it was given her for the best. In his opinion it may have been. But it surely could not have been in yours, Dr. Davenal."

Dr. Davenal turned from Oswald to his pacing again. A strong temptation was upon him to tell Oswald the truth. O that he had! that he had!

There were few people in the world whom he esteemed as he esteemed Oswald Cray. There was no one else in the world to whom he had expressed this opinion of the unfitness of Lady Oswald as a subject for chloroform, and the wish to explain, to exonerate himself, arose forcibly within him. The next moment he asked himself why Mark Cray himself had not spoken. As he had not, it seemed to Dr. Davenal that it would be a breach of friendship, of partnership, for him to speak. Oswald was connected, too, with Lady Oswald, and might take up the matter warmly. No, he felt in his ever-considerate heart that he could not betray Mark, could not set one brother against the other. And he put the temptation from him.

Oswald watched him as he walked, wondering at the silence. A silence which the doctor evidently did not feel inclined to break.

"Do you remember expressing this opinion to me, Dr. Davenal?"

"Yes, I believe I did so express it."

"And yet you acted in diametrical opposition to it immediately afterwards, and caused Lady Oswald to inhale chloroform? Will you forgive me for again asking how it could have been?"

"The very best of us are led into error sometimes," replied Dr. Davenal.

"Why, that is one of the remarks Mark has just made to me in connection with this case! I cannot recognise it as applying to it. You spoke so firmly, so positively, that I should have believed there was no room for error to creep in. I feel that there is something to be explained, Dr. Davenal."

Dr. Davenal wheeled round in his walk and confronted Oswald.

"There are circumstances connected with this case, Mr. Oswald Cray, which I cannot explain to the world; which I cannot explain even to you; although I would rather tell them to you than to any one. Let it suffice to know that I could not save Lady Oswald. It was not in my power."

"But you could have saved--you could have helped giving her the chloroform?" returned Oswald, wonderingly.

A slight pause. "Will you oblige me by asking no further questions on the subject--by allowing it to drop, to me and to others? Believe me, I have no selfish motive in pressing this. No one living can regret more than I the fatal result to Lady Oswald; perhaps nobody regrets it so keenly. Could I have saved her, no care, no skill, no labour, should have been spared. But I could not. I can only ask you to be satisfied with this meagre assurance, Mr. Oswald Cray and to believe me when I state that I have private reasons for declining to pursue the topic."

"And--pardon me--one more question: To what am I to attribute her death in my own mind? Or rather this giving of the chloroform?"

"You must look upon it as an error in judgment. It was such."

It was impossible for Oswald Cray, as a gentleman, to press further the matter. Dr. Davenal was an old man compared with him; one of high reputation, skill, position. He could not understand it, but he could only bow to the request--nay, to the demand--and let the subject sink into silence. An awkward pause ensued. The doctor had not resumed his promenade, but stood under the gas-lamp, twirling a quill pen in his fingers which he had taken up.

"How are the other sufferers from the accident getting on?" inquired Oswald, when the silence was beginning to be heard.

"Oh, quite well. Poor Bigg the fireman is nearly the only one of them left in the Infirmary, and he will soon be out of it. The rest came off mostly with a few cuts and bruises. There's a summons for me, I suppose."

The doctor alluded to a knock at the hall-door. Neal came in.

"Mr. Wheatley, sir. He wishes to know if you can spare him ten minutes."

"Yes," replied the doctor, and Oswald rose.

"Will you walk upstairs and see them?"

"Not tonight, thank you."

"I won't press you," said the doctor. "Sara is cut up about this news from Edward, terribly disappointed; and Aunt Bett is as cross as two sticks. She is fond of Edward, with all her ungraciousness to him, and she looks upon this hint of not coming down as a slight to herself. In manner she was always ungracious to the boys, from some idea I believe that it tended to keep them in order. But she loved them at heart. Goodnight."

Dr. Davenal clasped his hand with a warm pressure, warmer than usual; Oswald could not but feel it, and he went out perfectly mystified.

Neal stepped on to open the front gate. Neal was always remarkably courteous and deferent to Mr. Oswald Cray. Oswald, who had only seen the best side of Neal, and never suspected there was a reverse one, looked upon him as a man to be respected, a faithful old retainer of the Oswald family. Lady Oswald had sung his praises times out of number in Oswald's ear, and she once told Oswald to try for Neal should he ever require a servant about his person, for he would find Neal a man of fidelity, worth his weight in gold. Oswald believed her. He believed Neal to be faithful and true; one whom doubt could not touch.

"This death of your late mistress is a very sad thing, Neal."

"O sir! I can't express to you how I have felt it. I'm sure I can say that my lady was a true friend to me, the only one I had left."

"No, no, Neal. Not the only one. You may count a friend in me--if only in respect to the regard you were, I know, held in by Lady Oswald."

"Thank you, sir, greatly;" and honest Neal's eyes swam in tears as he turned them to Mr. Oswald Cray under the light of his master's professional gas-lamp. "Sir," he added, swaying forward the gate and dropping his voice as he approached nearer to Oswald, "how came that poison, that chloroform, to be given to her?"

"I cannot tell; I cannot understand," replied Oswald, speaking upon impulse, not upon reflection.

"Sir, if I might dare to say a word"--and Neal glanced round with caution on all sides as he spoke--"I'd ask whether it was given in fairness?"

"What do you mean, Neal?"

"There's not a person in the world I'd venture to whisper such a thing to, sir, except yourself; but I doubt whether it was given in fairness. I have a reason for doubting it, sir; a particular reason. It makes me sick, sir, to think that there was some unfair play brought to work, and that it took her life."

"Unfair play on the part of whom?" asked Oswald.

"I am not sure that I dare say, sir, even to you. And it might be looked upon as--as--fancy on my part. One thing is certain, sir, that but for that chloroform being given to her, she'd be alive now."

"Dr. Davenal and Mr. Cray gave the chloroform, Neal," observed Mr. Oswald Cray, in a somewhat distant tone--for it was not to Neal he would admit any doubt, scarcely condescend to hear any, of the judgment of the surgeons. "They know better about such things than we do."

"Yes, sir," answered Neal, as drily as he dared. "Mr. Cray, I am sure, did his best, but he has not had the judgment and experience of my master. Anyway, it seems it was the chloroform that killed her."

"As it has killed others before her--when administered in all deliberate judgment by surgeons of as high repute and practice as Dr. Davenal. The issues of life and death are not even in a doctor's hands, Neal. Goodnight."

"Goodnight to you, sir."

Oswald Cray walked slowly towards his temporary home, the "Apple Tree," half bewildered with the conjectural views opened out to him, and not the least with that last hint of Neal's. He could not get over that giving of the chloroform by Dr. Davenal in the very teeth of his expressed opinion against it. He had supposed, when he first heard of the cause of death, that this contradiction would be explained away: but, instead of that it was more unexplainable than before. There was Mark's confused manner, his covert attempts to avoid inquiry; there was Dr. Davenal's positive denial to satisfy it; there was the man Neal's curious hint. Oswald Cray felt as one in a maze, trying to get at something which eluded his grasp.

How the imagination runs riot, how utterly unamenable it is to the rules and regulations of sober control, we most of us know.

Oswald found his mind balancing the question, "Did Richard Davenal give that chloroform in his calm deliberate senses, believing that it might take her life? If so, where was the motive?" Men don't do such things in these days without a motive; the greatest criminal must have that. Oswald Cray could see none. There was no motive, or shadow of motive, for Dr. Davenal's wishing for the death of Lady Oswald. Quite the contrary; it was his interest--if so worldly a plea may be brought into proximity with these solemn thoughts--to keep her in life. Of all his patients, she perhaps was the most profitable, paying him a good sum yearly. Then--with the want of motive, those dark doubts, born of his imagination, fell to the ground, and he had the good sense to see that they did.

They fell to the ground. And Oswald Cray, as he awoke with a start, and shook himself clear of them, pinched his arms to see whether he was awake. Surely only in his sleep could doubts such as those have arisen of Dr. Davenal!

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