XXII. THE WILL
Sara Davenal in her sick restlessness was early in the breakfast-room. The disappointment touching her brother was weighing down her heart. Since the arrival of the unsatisfactory note the previous evening, she had felt a conviction similar to Dr. Davenal's, that Edward would not come. Neither had spoken of it to the other; great griefs cannot be talked of; and to Sara this was a grief inexpressible. It seemed that she would give half her remaining years of life for only one five minutes' interview with him.
If he came at all he would come today, Friday; and she got up, hoping against hope; saying to herself aloud, in contradiction to the fear lying upon her heart, and which she would not glance at, "He will be sure to come; he will never embark on that long voyage without first coming. He will remember Richard's fate." For the time being, the eager anxiety to see him almost seemed to deaden that other trouble which lay within her--the trouble that had taken possession of her on the Sunday night, never again to quit its tenement.
"Is the post in?" asked Dr. Davenal, as he entered the breakfast-room.
"No, it is not made," sharply replied Miss Davenal from her presiding place at the table. "Neal has but this minute brought in the urn. I am making it quickly as I can."
"I asked whether the post was in, Bettina. Because, if Edward is not coming, I should think there'd be a letter from him."
Sara looked up eagerly. "Don't you hope he will come, papa? Don't you think he will?"
"Well, Sara, after his letter of last night, my hopes upon the point are not very strong."
"O papa! I want to see him! I must see him before he sails."
"Hush, child!" She had spoken in a distressed tone, and her small white hands were trembling. "Agitating yourself will not bring him."
By and by the letters came in: two. Neal handed one to his master, the other to Sara. Both bore the same handwriting--Captain Davenal's. Sara, in her bitter disappointment, let hers lie by her plate untouched, but the doctor opened his.
Miss Bettina looked up. "Is he coming, Richard?"
"No. He says he can't come. That it is an impossibility."
"What else does he say?"
Dr. Davenal folded his letter and put it in his pocket, to read at his leisure. "Ask Sara what he says," was his answer, "All the gossip is in hers."
"And this is what he calls affection!" exclaimed Miss Bettina. "To leave his native land, his home, without a farewell! That's gratitude! Richard Davenal, were I you, he should carry out my displeasure with him."
"I don't know," said the doctor, his voice sadly subdued. "Send out displeasure with one whom we may never see again! No, Bettina. And it may be as he says--that he is unable to come."
He was looking straight before him as he spoke it, in a far-off, dreamy gaze. His thoughts had flown to one who had gone out under a sort of displeasure, gone out but for a short time--and had never come home again.
The hour for the funeral approached, and the doctor in his black attire stepped into his close carriage to be conveyed to the residence of Lady Oswald. He found all the mourners assembled, for he was late, with the exception of Mark Cray. Sir Philip Oswald and his eldest son; Oswald Cray; the Reverend Mr. Stephenson and his brother Mr. Joseph Stephenson. All were there, now the doctor had come, except Mark. The funeral was to be at the church at eleven.
The time went on. The hearse and mourning coaches stood before the door, the horses restless. It was close upon eleven.
"For whom do we wait?" inquired Sir Philip Oswald.
"For Mr. Cray, Sir Philip," answered the undertaker, who was gliding about, handing gloves and fixing hatbands.
"Mr. Cray?" repeated Sir Philip, as though he did not understand who Mr. Cray was.
"Lady Oswald's late medical attendant, Sir Philip, in conjunction with Dr. Davenal."
"Oh--ah--yes," said Sir Philip. He was very friendly with Dr. Davenal, exceedingly so; and condescended not to ignore Mr. Cray as the doctor's partner. It was the first time that Oswald had ever been in a room with Sir Philip. Sir Philip had bowed to him coldly enough upon his entrance, but the son, Henry Oswald, went up to him and held out his hand in a cordial manner. Oswald, haughtily self-possessed, stood before Sir Philip with his impassive face, looking more of a gentleman than the baronet did.
The clock struck eleven. "I suppose Mr. Cray is coming?" remarked Sir Philip.
He looked at Dr. Davenal. The doctor supposed he was coming as a matter of course: he believed he was coming. He had not seen Mr. Cray that morning.
It was suggested by the undertaker that they should proceed. Mr. Cray, he observed, would possibly join them at the church; he might have been kept back unexpectedly.
So the funeral started. All that remained of poor Lady Oswald was carried out of her house, never more to return to it. Not a week ago yet, on that past Saturday morning, she had gone forth in health and strength, and now--there! What a lessen it told of the uncertainty of life!
The funeral made its way through lines of curious gazers to the church. Mark Cray was not there, and the service was performed without him. At its conclusion the gentlemen returned to the house.
A lawyer from a neighbouring town, Lady Oswald's legal adviser, was there with the will, and they were invited to enter and hear the will read.
"It cannot concern me," remarked Sir Philip. Nevertheless he went in.
"And I am sure it cannot concern me," added Oswald.
The clergyman, Mr. Stephenson, looked up with a crimson hectic on his cheek. It was next to impossible to mistake his eager glance--betraying the hope within him, sure and steadfast, that it did concern him. In point of fact he and that gentleman by his side, his brother, had the chief right to any money she might have left. It may be said the sole right. How they needed it their threadbare clothes and sunken cheeks betrayed. Gentlemen born, they had to keep up an appearance before the world; at least, they strove to keep it. But they were weary with the struggle. The brother was of no particular profession. He had been reared for the church and could never get to college, and he contrived to make a living--that is, he contrived not to starve--by writing articles for any paper or periodical that could be persuaded into taking them. Each was of good repute in the world, bearing up manfully and doing the best he could do with his lot, sanguinely hoping, humbly trusting, that time would better it. They each had a large family, and indulged the vain and wild hope of bringing up their sons as gentlemen, as they themselves had been brought up. Not as gentlemen in the matter of abstaining from labour; that would have been foolish; but they hoped to bring them up educated men, capable of doing their duty in any walk of life they might be called to. How they had looked forward to the prospect of some time possessing this money of Lady Oswald's, their hearts alone knew. If ever the excuse for cherishing such a wish could be pleaded, it surely might be by them.
"I suppose these people, the Stephensons, will chiefly inherit what she has left," whispered the baronet's son confidentially to Oswald Cray. "Perhaps you know? You have seen a good deal of Lady Oswald, I believe."
"I don't at all know how her affairs are left," was the reply of Oswald Cray.
"I should think they will inherit," continued Mr. Oswald. "Shouldn't you?"
"I should think--yes--I---should think they will. Being her only relatives, they have undoubtedly the greatest right to do so."
Why did Oswald Cray hesitate in his answer?--he so generally decisive of speech. Because in the very moment that the acquiescence was leaving his lips there flashed over his mind the words spoken to him by Lady Oswald the previous Saturday. He had not understood those words at the time, did not understand them now: but if he could interpret them at all, they certainly did not point to her nephews, the brothers Stephenson. He remembered them well: at least, their substance. "When my will comes to be read, you may feel surprised at its contents. You may deem that you had more legal claim upon me than he who will inherit: I do not think so. He to whom my money is left has most claim in my judgment: I am happy to know that he will be rewarded, and he knows it."
Not a week ago! not a week ago that she had said it. How little did Oswald foresee that he should so soon be called upon to hear that will read!
But still the words did not seem to point to either of her nephews, with whom she had not lived on any terms of friendship, and Oswald began to feel a little curious as to the inheritor.
They were waiting for the lawyer, who had not yet come into the room. He might be getting the will. His name was Wedderburn, a stout man with a pimpled face. Sir Philip Oswald had a pimpled face too; but he was not stout; he was as thin and as tall as a lath.
Dr. Davenal took out his watch. He found it later than he thought, and turned to Sir Philip.
"I cannot remain longer," he said. "I have a consultation at half-past twelve, and must not miss it. I am not wanted here: there's nothing for me to stay for: so I'll wish you good-morning."
"For that matter, I don't see that any of us are wanted," responded Sir Philip. "I'm sure I am not. Good-morning, doctor."
Nodding his salutation to the room generally, the doctor went out. Soon afterwards Mr. Wedderburn made his appearance, the will in his hand, which he prepared to read. Clearing his voice, he threw his eyes round the room, as if to see that his audience were ready. The absence of one appeared then to strike him, and he pushed his spectacles to the top of his brow and gazed again.
"Where's Dr. Davenal?"
"He is gone," replied Sir Philip Oswald.
"Gone!" repeated the lawyer, in consternation. "Why--he--Dr. Davenal should have stopped, of all people."
"He said he had a consultation. What does it signify?"
"Well, Sir Philip, he--at any rate, I suppose there's no help for it now. It must be read without him."
Not one present but looked at the lawyer with surprise, not one but thought him a strangely punctilious man to suppose Dr. Davenal's presence, as Lady Oswald's medical man and attendant at her funeral, was in any degree essential to the reading of Lady Oswald's will. They soon learned the cause.
First of all, the will bequeathed a few legacies. Very small ones. Twenty pounds to each of her servants; forty pounds and all her clothes to Parkins; fifty pounds each to her nephews John and Joseph Stephenson, with the furniture of her house to be divided between them "amicably;" a beautiful diamond ring and a little plate to Oswald Oswald Cray; the rest of the plate, by far the most valuable portion, to Sir Philip Oswald of Thorndyke; and another diamond ring to Dr. Richard Davenal. So far, so good: but now came the disposal of the bulk of her money. It was bequeathed, the whole of it, to Dr. Davenal, "my faithful friend and medical attendant for so many years."
The will was remarkably short, taking but a few minutes in the reading; and at its conclusion Mr. Wedderburn laid it open on the table that anybody might look at it who chose.
It would be difficult to say which of the countenances around him exhibited the greatest surprise. The lawyer's voice died away in a deep silence. It was broken by the clergyman, the Reverend John Stephenson.
"It is not just! It is not just!"
The wailing tone, not of passion or anger but of meek despair, struck upon them all, and told how bitter was the disappointment. Every heart in the room echoed the cry, the lawyer's probably excepted. Lawyers, as a whole, don't think much of justice. This one took out his snuffbox and inhaled a pinch with equanimity.
"I am ready to answer questions, should any gentleman wish to put them. It was Lady Oswald's desire that I should. When this will was made she said to me, 'Some of them will be for making a fuss, Wedderburn; you can explain my motives if they care to hear them.' Those motives lay in this; her ladyship knew her health and comfort to have been so materially benefited of late years by the skill and kindness of Dr. Davenal, that she considered it her duty in gratitude to reward him."
"Nevertheless it is not just," murmured the poor clergyman again. "Dr. Davenal does not want the money as we want it."
Oswald Cray awoke as from a dream. He took a step forward and addressed the lawyer. "Did Dr. Davenal know that the money was left to him?"
"I am unable to say, sir. Lady Oswald may have told him, or she may not. He did not know it from me."
Oswald Cray said no more. He leaned against the window, half-hidden by the curtain, and plunged into thought.
"Well, I must say I am surprised," remarked Sir Philip. "Not but that Lady Oswald had a perfect right to do as she pleased with her money, and she might have signalled out a less worthy man as inheritor. How much is the amount, Mr. Wedderburn? Do you know?"
"Somewhere between six and seven thousand pounds, I believe, Sir Philip. It would have been considerably more, but that her ladyship, a few years ago, was persuaded by an evil counsellor to sell out a large sum from the funds and invest elsewhere, for the sake of better interest."
"And she lost it?"
"Every shilling," replied the lawyer, with satisfaction: for it was done without his concurrence. "She would have had double the money to leave behind her but for that."
"Ah!" Sir Philip spoke the monosyllable shortly, and dropped the point. Not so very long ago he had been seduced to invest money in some grand and very plausible scheme--one of those to be heard of daily, promising a fortune in twelve months at the most--and he had burnt his fingers. The topic, consequently, was not palatable to his ears.
"Ask him how long this will has been made, John," whispered the literary man to his brother. Of a retiring timid nature himself, he rarely spoke but when he was obliged, and he shrank from putting the question. The clergyman obeyed, and the lawyer pointed to the date of the will.
"Only in April last. Lady Oswald was fond of making wills. Some people are so. I have made her, I should think, half-a-dozen, if I have made one."
"And the bulk of the money was always left to Dr. Davenal?"
"O dear no. It never was left to him until this last was made."
"Was I--were we--was it ever left to us?" asked the poor clergyman, tremblingly.
"Yes it was," replied Mr. Wedderburn. "I don't see why I should not avow it. It can't make any difference, one way or the other. In the first will she ever made after Sir John's death it was left to you. And in the last will preceding this, it was again left to you. Once it was left"--the lawyer looked towards the window--"to Mr. Oswald Cray."
Oswald gave his shoulders a haughty shrug. "I should never have accepted the legacy," he said in a distinct, deliberate tone. "I had no claim whatever to Lady Oswald's money, and should not have taken it."
Henry Oswald laughed; a pleasant, cordial laugh, as he turned to Oswald. "You don't know, Mr. Oswald Cray. We are all so ready to be chivalrous in theory: but when it comes to practice--the best of us are apt to fall off."
"True," quietly remarked Oswald: but he did not pursue the theme.
There was nothing more to be said or done then. Of what profit to remain talking of the wills that had been, while the present one was before them and must be put in force? Sir Philip made the first move; he went out, taking a formal leave; Henry Oswald with a more cordial one. Oswald Cray was the next to leave. He shook hands with the brothers, and spoke a few kind words of sympathy for their disappointment.
"It is the disappointment of a life," replied the clergyman in a low tone. "Our struggle has been continued long; and we had--there's no denying it--looked forward to this. It is a hard trial when relatives find themselves passed over for strangers."
"It is, it is;" said Oswald Cray. "I could wish Lady Oswald had been more mindful of legitimate claims."
As he was going out, Parkins waylaid him in her new mourning. "There will be a dinner ready at five o'clock, sir. Would you be pleased to stay for it?"
"Not today," replied Oswald.
XXIII. NEAL'S VISIT
Causing the sweeping crape to be taken from his hat, for he preferred to depart on foot, Oswald Cray proceeded through the town to the house of his brother. Just as he reached the door Mark rode up on horseback and leaped off with a hasty spring, throwing his bridle to the man who waited.
"Of course I am too late!" he exclaimed.
"Of course you are, by pretty near two hours. How did it happen, Mark?"
"Well--I-can hardly tell how it happened," was the answer of Mark. "I had a patient to see in the country--more than one, in fact--and I thought I could do it all first and be back in time. But I suppose I must have stayed later than I purposed, for before I was ready to return I found it was half-past eleven, and the funeral no doubt over. And then I did not hurry myself."
They were walking across the hall to the dining-room as he said this. Caroline was seated at the table, her workbox before her, doing some embroidery. She flung the work down, rose, and confronted her husband.
"Mark, why did you do this? You went into the country to avoid the funeral!"
"I--I did what?" exclaimed Mark. "Nonsense, Carrie! Why should I wish to avoid the funeral? I have attended plenty of funerals in my time."
Oswald turned quickly and looked at Mark. It was not the accusation of Mrs. Cray that had aroused his attention--that went for nothing; but something peculiar in Mark's tone as he answered it. To Oswald's ears it spoke of evasion. He could not see his face. It was bent, and he was slapping his dusty boots with his riding-whip.
"But why DID you go into the country?" pursued Caroline. "It was half-past ten when you were here, and I warned you then it was getting time to dress. When I saw your horse brought to the door and you gallop off on him, I could not believe my eyes."
"Well, I mistook the time, that's the fact. I am very sorry for it, but it can't be helped now. Of course I should like to have attended and paid her my last respects, poor lady. Not but that I daresay there were enough without me. I was not missed."
"But you were missed," said Oswald, "and waited for too. It threw us pretty nearly half-an-hour behindhand. I should not like to keep a funeral waiting myself, Mark."
"Who was there?" asked Mark.
"The two relatives of Lady Oswald, Sir Philip and his son, Dr. Davenal and myself."
"Davenal was there, then. But of course he would be. Then he served to do duty for me and himself. And so Sir Philip came?"
"I should be surprised had he not come."
"Should you? He is a cranky sort of gentleman: an Oswald all over. You are another of them, Oswald. I wonder if you'll get cranky in your old age."
"Don't listen to him, Oswald," interposed Mrs. Cray. "He seems 'cranky' himself this morning."
Mark laughed good-humouredly, and tossed a late China rose to Caroline which he had brought home in his button-hole. "Did you hear the will read, Oswald?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Short and sweet!" cried Mark, alluding to the monosyllable, which it must be confessed was given in a curt, displeased tone, as if its speaker were himself displeased. "I think it is you who are cranky, Oswald."
Oswald smiled. "A thought was causing me vexation, Mark."
"Vexation at me?"
"Oh, no."
"Well, and who comes in for the money? The Stephensons?"
"No. The Stephensons come in for a very poor portion. It is left to Dr. Davenal."
"To Dr. Davenal!" echoed Mark in his astonishment. "No!"
"The bulk of the money is bequeathed to him. All of it, in fact, with the exception of a few trifling legacies. The Stephensons have fifty pounds each and the furniture."
Caroline had dropped her embroidery again and was gazing at Oswald, apparently unable to take in the news. "Are you telling us this for a joke?" she asked.
"The money is left to Dr. Davenal, Mrs. Cray," repeated Oswald, and certainly there was no sound of joking in his tone. "It surprised us all."
"What a lucky man!" exclaimed Mark. "I wonder if he had any prevision of this yesterday? We were speaking of money, he and I. It was about that field behind the doctor's stables, the one he has so long wanted to buy. The owner's dead, and it is for sale at last. I observed to the doctor that I supposed he'd secure it at once, but he said he should not buy it at all; he had had a heavy loss, and could not afford it----"
"It is not true, Mark!" interrupted his wife.
"It is true, Caroline. But don't you go and repeat it again. He said, moreover, he had great need himself of a thousand or two, and did not know where to turn to for it. Mind you, I believe he was betrayed, as it were, out of the avowal, I had been saying so much about the field: for he brought himself suddenly up as though recollection had come to him, and said, 'Don't talk of this, Mark!'"
And Mark's long tongue had talked of it! Oswald Cray listened to its every word.
"If he could but have foreseen then that this money had dropped to him! And yet--I should think he must have known it from Lady Oswald; or partially known it. How much is it, Oswald?"
"Six or seven thousand pounds. It would have been a great deal more but for certain losses. Wedderburn said she was persuaded to embark money in some speculation; and it failed."
"How stupid of her!" exclaimed free Mark. "I wonder, now whether the doctor did know of this! If he did he'd keep his own counsel. Did he appear surprised, Oswald?"
"He was not there. He left before the will was read, saying he had to attend a consultation."
"Well, so he had," said Mark; "I happen to know that much. It was for half-past twelve."
So far, then, Dr. Davenal had spoken truth. A doubt had been crossing Oswald's mind, amidst many other curious doubts, whether Dr. Davenal had made the excuse to get away, and so avoid hearing the will read, and himself named chief legatee.
He remained some time with Mark and his wife. They asked him to stay for dinner, but he declined. He had ordered a chop to be ready at the "Apple Tree," and was going back to London early in the evening--by that seven o'clock train you have before heard of.
"Had you any particular motive for absenting yourself from Lady Oswald's funeral!" he asked of Mark, as the latter accompanied him to the street-door on his departure.
"Not I," answered Mark, with the most apparent readiness. "It was very bungling of me to mistake the time. Not that I like attending funerals as a matter of taste: I don't know who does. Good-afternoon, Oswald. You must give us a longer visit when you are down next."
He stood at the Abbey door, watching his brother wind round the branching rails, for Oswald was taking the station on his way to his inn. Very cleverly, in Mark's own opinion, had he parried the questions of his purposed absence. His absence was purposed. With that chloroform on his conscience he did not care to attend the funeral of Lady Oswald.
And the afternoon went on.
It was growing dusk, was turned half-past six, and Oswald Cray was beginning to think it time to make ready for his departure. He had not stirred from the chair where he ate his dinner, though the meal was over long ago; had not called for lights; had, in fact, waved John Hamos away when he would have appeared with them. His whole range of thought was absorbed by one topic--his doubts of Dr. Davenal.
Yes, it is of no use to deny it; it had come to that with Oswald Cray--doubts. Doubts he scarcely knew of what, or to what extent; he scarcely knew where these doubts or his own thoughts were carrying him. On the previous night he had for a few moments given the reins to imagination; had allowed himself to suppose, for argument's sake only, that Dr. Davenal had given that chloroform knowing or fancying it might prove fatal, and he had gone so far as to ask what, then, could be his motive. There was no motive; Oswald glanced on each side of him to every point, and could discover no motive whatever, or appearance of motive. Therefore he had thrust the doubts from him, as wanting foundation.
But had the revelations of this day supplied the link that was wanting Had they not supplied it? The death of Lady Oswald brought a fortune to Dr. Davenal.
Almost hating himself for pursuing these thoughts, or rather for the obligation to pursue them, for they would haunt him, and he could not help himself, Oswald Cray sat on in the fading light. Ha said to himself, how absurd, nay how wicked it was of him, and yet he could not shake them off. The more he strove to do so, the more he brought reason to his aid, telling him that Dr. Davenal was a good and honourable and upright man, as he had always believed, the less would reason hold the mastery. Imagination was all too present in its most vivid colouring, and it was chaining him to its will.
What were the simple facts? asked reason. Dr. Davenal had caused Lady Oswald to inhale chloroform, having only some hours previously avowed to Oswald his belief that she was a most unfit subject for it, was one of those few to whom the drug proves fatal. It did prove fatal. There had next been some equivocation on the part of Mark, when questioned about it, and there had been the positive refusal of Dr. Davenal to afford any explanation. Next, there had been the discovery of the day--that Dr. Davenal was the inheritor. Well, it might all be explained away, reason said; it was certainly not enough to attribute to Dr. Davenal the worst social crime contained in the decalogue. But the more Oswald Cray dwelt on this view, or tried to dwell upon it, the more persistently rose up imagination, torturing and twisting facts, and bending them as it pleased.
There had been that hint of Neal's too! Oswald Cray honestly believed that Neal was one of those servants incapable of speaking ill for ill's sake; and he could not help wondering what he meant. Neal was not an ignorant man, likely to be deceived, to take up fancies: he was of superior intelligence, quite an educated man for his class of life. If----
Oswald's thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of his landlord. "I don't want lights, John; I told you I did not. I shall be going directly."
"It is not lights, sir. Mr. Neal, Dr. Davenal's servant, is asking to see you."
"Neal! Let him come in."
Neal came forward into the dusky room. He was the bearer of a note from his master. Oswald had a light brought in then, and opened it. It was written in pencil.
"My Dear Mr. Oswald Cray,--
"I very much wish to see you if you can spare me an hour. I thought perhaps you would have dropped in this lonely day and taken a knife and fork with us. Will you come down this evening?--Ever sincerely yours, Richard Davenal."
"Neal, will you tell Dr. Davenal--he is expecting me, I find?"
"I think so, sir. He said to me before dinner that he thought you might be coming in. When he found you did not, and they were sitting down to table, he wrote this in pencil, and bade me call one of the maids to wait, while I brought it up to you."
"Tell the doctor that I am quite unable to come down. I have to return to London by the seven o'clock train."
"Very well, sir."
Neal was leaving the room, but Mr. Oswald Cray stopped him. He had taken a sudden resolution, and he spoke on the spur of the moment, without reflection. The perplexity of his mind may be his excuse.
"Neal, have you any objection to tell me what you meant last night by hinting that Lady Oswald had not come fairly by her death?"
Neal paused. He was a man of caution; he liked to calculate his words and his ways before entering on them. Neal would certainly speak if he dared. He was in a very bitter mood, for the day's doings had not pleased him. The news had reached him that her ladyship's money had been all left to Dr. Davenal; that he, Neal, was not so much as named in the will. And Neal had looked forward as confidently as had the Reverend Mr. Stephenson to the hope of some little remembrance being left to him. In his terrible anger, it seemed to him that the one enemy to prevent it had been the great inheritor, Dr. Davenal.
"Sir, if I speak, would you give me your promise first, to hold what I say sacred to yourself; to let it go no further? I know, sir, it is not the place of a servant to ask this confidence of a gentleman, but I should be afraid to speak without it."
"I will give it you," said Mr. Oswald Cray. "You may rely upon me."
And Neal knew that if there was one man more than another on the face of the earth who would never forfeit his word, upon whom implicit trust might be placed, it was Oswald Cray. Neal set himself to his task. First of all opening the door to make sure they were entirely alone, he dropped his voice to a safe whisper, and described what he had seen and heard on the Sunday night. It was certainly a startling narration, and as Oswald Cray listened to it in that darkened room,--for the one candle, now placed on a side-table behind, only served to throw out the shadows,--listened to the hushed tones, the unexplainable words, a curious feeling of dread began to creep over him. Neal, you may be very sure, did not disclose anything that could bear against himself; he contrived to come out well in it. He was standing outside for a moment before going to bed, hoping the air would remove the sad headache which had suddenly seized him upon hearing of the death of his late lady, when he saw the man come in in the extraordinary manner he had just described. Believing him to be nothing less than a housebreaker (and Watton, who had seen the man from her room upstairs, had come to the same conclusion), or an evil character of some sort, getting in plausibly on false pretences to work harm to Dr. Davenal, he had gone to the window to look in out of anxiety for his master's safety, and there had heard what he had stated, for the window was thrown open. He could not see the visitor, who was seated in the shade: he only heard sufficient to tell him that the business he had come on was Lady Oswald's death; and he heard Dr. Davenal acknowledge that it was murder, and that it must be hushed up at any price, even if it cost him his fortune. He, Neal, described the utterly prostrate condition of his master that night; both before and after the interview with the visitor, he was like one who has some dreadful secret upon the mind, some heavy guilt; Neal had thought so before ever the man, whoever he might have been, entered the house.
Will it be forgiven to Oswald Cray if in that brief confused moment he believed the worst--believed all that Neal said to him? His mind was in a chaos of perplexity, almost, it may be said, of terror. Nothing was clear. He could not analyse, he could not reason: Neal's words, and the doings of the night which the man was describing, seemed to dance before his mind in confused forms, ever changing, as do the bits of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope. Neal continued to speak, but he did not hear him distinctly now; the words reached his senses certainly, but more as if he were in a mazy dream. He heard the man reiterate that, wherever it was his master had gone to that night, remaining away until the Wednesday it was connected with the death of Lady Oswald; he heard him say that, whatever the mystery and the guilt, Miss Sara Davenal had been made the confidant of it by her father, he, Neal, supposed front some imperative motive which he did not pretend to understand. Oswald heard like one in a dream, the words partially glancing off his mind even as they were spoken, only to be recalled afterwards with redoubled force.
In the midst of it he suddenly looked at his watch, suspecting--as he found--that he had barely time to catch the train.
And he went out in a sort of blind confusion, his brain echoing the words of Dr. Davenal, only too accurately remembered and repeated by Neal. "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."
XXIV. DR. DAVENAL'S "FOLLY."
It was startling news to go forth to Hallingham--one of the nine days' wonders read of in social history. Lady Oswald had bequeathed her fortune to her physician, Dr. Davenal! Such things had been known before in the world's experiences, but Hallingham made as much of the fact as if that were the first time it had ever been enacted.
Upon none did the news fall with more complete astonishment than upon the doctor himself. Lady Oswald had more than once in the past few months mysteriously hinted to him that he would be rewarded some time for his care and attention to her; and it must be supposed that she had these hints in her mind when she said to Mr. Oswald Cray that "he" (the named inheritor of her money) knew that he would be rewarded. Upon Dr. Davenal the hints had never made any impression. Of a nature the very reverse of covetous, simple-minded, single-hearted, it never so much as crossed his imagination that she would be leaving her money to him. He would have been the first to repudiate it; to point out to her the injustice of the act.
It is surely not necessary to premise that you, my intelligent and enlightened readers, cannot have fallen into the mistake made by Neal, or drawn that respected domestic's very absurd, though perhaps to a fanciful and prejudiced mind not unnatural deduction, that the night-visit to Dr. Davenal had reference to Lady Oswald's death. Being in the secret of who really did administer that fatal dose of chloroform to Lady Oswald, you will not connect it with Dr. Davenal's trouble. A heavy secret, involving disgrace, much misery, perhaps ruin, had indeed fallen that night on Dr. Davenal, but it was entirely unconnected with the death of Lady Oswald. The words which Neal had heard--and he heard them correctly--would have borne to his mind a very different interpretation had he been enabled to hear the whole--what had preceded them and what followed them. But he did not.
Yes, this unhappy secret, this great misfortune, had nothing to do with Lady Oswald. Far from Dr. Davenal's having caused her to inhale an extra dose of chloroform as an experiment, on the strength that it might prove fatal, and so enable him to drop at once into that very desirable legacy named in her will, and which supposition, I am sure you will agree with me in thinking, belongs rather to the world of idealic wonders than of real life, the doctor had not the faintest suspicion that he should inherit a shilling. When the news was conveyed to him he could not believe it to be true,--did not believe it for some little time.
It was Mr. Wedderburn who carried it to him. When the lawyer's business was over at Lady Oswald's, he proceeded to Dr. Davenal's, and found him just come home from the consultation, to attend which he had hurried away before the reading of the will. Mr. Wedderburn told him the news.
"Left to me?" exclaimed the doctor. "Her money left to me! Nonsense!"
"It is indeed," affirmed Mr. Wedderburn. "After the legacies are paid you take everything--you are residuary legatee."
"You are joking," said the doctor. "What have I to do with the money? I have no right to it."
With some difficulty Dr. Davenal was convinced that he, and he alone, was named the inheritor. It did not give him pleasure. Quite the contrary; he saw in it only a good deal of trouble and law business, which he much disliked at all times to engage in.
Richard Davenal was one of those thoroughly conscientious men--and there are a few such in the world--who could not be content to enjoy money to which another has more right. It was a creed of his--it is not altogether an obsolete one--that money so enjoyed could not bring pleasure in the spending, or good in the end. Lady Oswald had legitimate relations, who had looked for the money, who needed the money, needed it with a far deeper need than Dr. Davenal, and who possessed a claim to it, so far as relationship could give it them. Even as the conviction slowly arose to him that the news was true that he had been made the inheritor, so there arose another conviction, or rather a resolution, with it,--that he would never accept the money, that it should go over to its legitimate owners, no matter what trouble it involved. A resolution from which he never swerved.
Never. Not even in the moment when a tempter's voice arose within him, whispering how well this legacy would serve to replace that great sum, the savings of years, which he had been obliged to part with only that very week. Partly to satisfy a debt of which until then he had known nothing, had he parted with it; partly as hush-money, to keep down that terrible secret whispered to him on the Sunday night. The thought certainly did arise--that it almost seemed as if this money had been sent to him to replace it; but he did not allow it to obtain weight. It would have been simply impossible for Dr. Davenal to act against his conscience.
"I shall refuse the legacy," he remarked to Mr. Wedderburn. "I have no right to it."
"What did you say?" asked the lawyer, believing he did not properly catch the words.
"I shall not accept this money. It is none of mine. It ought to be none of mine. It must go to Lady Oswald's relatives."
"But it is yours, Dr. Davenal. It is bequeathed to you in the will."
"I don't care for the will. I should not care for ten wills, if I had no right to the money they bequeathed me. I have no right to this, and I will not touch a farthing of it."
Mr. Wedderburn's surprise could only expend itself in one long stare. In all his lawyerly experience he had never come across an announcement so savouring of chivalry. The legatees he had had the pleasure of doing business with were only too eager to grasp their good fortune, and if any little inconvenient pricks of conscience were so ill-mannered as to arise, they were speedily despatched back again by the very legal thought--If I do take it I but obey the will.
"There never was such a thing heard of as the refusing of a fortune legally bequeathed," cried the lawyer.
"I daresay there has been, many a time. If not, this will be a precedent."
"You'll be so laughed at," persisted Mr. Wedderburn. "You'll be set down--I'm afraid people will be for setting you down as a lunatic."
"Let them," said the doctor. "They shan't confine me as one without my own certificate. Mr. Wedderburn," he continued in a graver tone, "I am serious in this refusal. I feel that I have no right whatever to this money of Lady Oswald's. She has paid me liberally for my services----"
"If you only knew how many thousands inherit money daily who have no right to it," interrupted Mr. Wedderburn.
"Doubtless they do. I was going to observe that it is not so much my having no right to it, that would cause me to decline, as the fact that others exist who have a right. I----"
"But the will gives you a right," interposed the lawyer, unable to get over his surprise.
"A legal right, I am aware it does. But not a just one. No, I will not accept this legacy."
"What will you do about it, then?"
The doctor was silent for a minute. "I should wish the money to be appropriated just as though there had been no Dr. Davenal in existence. You say this will was made but about six months ago. It must have superseded another will, I presume?"
"It may be said that it superseded several," was the reply. "Lady Oswald was constantly making wills. She had made some half-dozen before this last one."
"And each one disposing of her property differently?" quickly asked the doctor.
"Yea, or nearly so. Twice she bequeathed it to her nephews, the Stephensons. Once it was left to Mr. Oswald Cray; once to charities; once to Sir Philip Oswald. She has been exceedingly capricious."
"All the more reason why I should not take it now," warmly cried Dr. Davenal. "She must have left it to me in a moment of caprice; and had she lived a few months longer this will would have been revoked as the rest have been. Mr. Wedderburn, were I capable of acting upon it, of taking the money, I should lose all self-respect for ever. I could not, as a responsible being, responsible to One who sees and judges all I do, be guilty of so crying an injustice."
Mr. Wedderburn suppressed a shrug of the shoulders. He could only look at these affairs with a lawyer's eye and a lawyer's reasoning. Dr. Davenal resumed--
"What was the tenor of the will which this last one supersede? Do you recollect?"
"Perfectly. We hold the draft of it still. It was as nearly as possible a counterpart of the present one, excepting as relates to your share in this and that of the brothers Stephenson. In that last will they took your place. The furniture was bequeathed to them, as in this, and also the bulk of the property."
"My name not being mentioned in it?"
"Yes, it was. The diamond ring bequeathed to you now was bequeathed then. Nothing more to you."
"Then that's all right. Now, Mr. Wedderburn, listen to me. That diamond ring I will accept with pleasure, as a reminiscence of my poor friend and patient; but I will accept nothing else. Will you be so kind as to destroy this last will, and let the other be acted upon? I am scaring you, I see. If that cannot legally be done, I must let the money come to me, but only in transit for the rightful owners, the Reverend Mr. Stephenson and his brother, and I'll make them a present of it. You will manage this for me. Being at home in law details, you know of course what may and what may not be done. All I beg of you is to effect this, carrying it out in the simplest manner, and in the quickest possible time."
Mr. Wedderburn drew a long face. He had no more cause to wish the money to go to Dr. Davenal than to the clergyman and his brother, but it was altogether so unusual a mode of proceeding, would be so very unprofessional a transaction, that he regarded it as an innovation hardly to be tolerated, a sort of scandal on all recognised notions in the legal world, of which Mr. Wedderburn himself was little better than a machine.
"I cannot undertake it without your giving me instructions in writing, Dr. Davenal," he said glumpily. "I'd not stir a peg in it without."
"You shall have them in full."
"Well, sir, you know best, but the time may come when your children will not thank you for this. It is folly, Dr. Davenal, and nothing less."
"I hope my children will never question any act of mine. I am doing this for the best."
Nevertheless, as Dr. Davenal spoke, there was some pain in his tone. The lawyer detected it, and thought he was coming round. He would not speak immediately, but let the feeling work its way.
"It is a large sum to relinquish," the lawyer presently said; "to throw out of one's hand as if it were so much worthless sand."
"What is the sum?--what has she left?" asked Dr. Davenal, the remark reminding him that he was as yet in ignorance.
"I expect, when all the legacies and other expenses are paid, there will be little over six thousand pounds. There ought to have been double. Lady Oswald lost a large sum a few years ago, quite as much as that. She put it into some prosperous-looking bubble, and it burst. Women should never dabble in business. They are safe to get their fingers burnt."
"Men have burnt theirs sometimes," was the answer of Dr. Davenal, spoken significantly. "Six thousand pounds! I should have thought her worth much more. Well, Mr. Wedderburn, you will carry out my instructions."
"Of course, if you order me. Will you be so kind as to write those instructions to me at your convenience, posting them from this town to my house. I am going back home at once."
"Won't you see Mr. Stephenson and his brother first, and impart to them the fact that I shall not take the money?"
"No," said the lawyer, "I want to go home by the next train. I wish, Dr. Davenal, you would allow me to give you just one word of advice."
"You can give it me," said Dr. Davenal. "I don't promise to take it."
"It might be the better for you if you would," was the reply. "My advice is, say nothing to the Stephensons, or to any one else, today. This is a very strange resolution that you have expressed, and I beg you to sleep upon it. A night's rest may serve to change your mind."
The lawyer departed. It was close upon the hour for Dr. Davenal to receive his indoor patients, and he could not go out then. He went to look for his daughter, and found her in the garden parlour with her aunt. It was not often that Miss Bettina troubled that room--she had been wont to tell Sara and Caroline that its litter set her teeth on edge.
They began to talk to him of the funeral. It was natural they should do so. In a country place these somewhat unusual occurrences of everyday life are made much of. Miss Bettina was curious.
"Were the people from Thorndyke there?" she asked.
"Sir Philip and his eldest son."
"And Oswald Cray?"
"Of course. He came down on purpose."
"My goodness! And so they met! How did they behave, Richard?"
"Just as the rest of us behaved. Did you suppose they'd start a quarrel?"
"I was sure of it. I knew they would never meet without starting one. Nothing less could come of Oswald Cray's proud spirit and the manner they have treated him."
"At sea as usual, Bettina. Do you think they'd quarrel there?--on that solemn occasion? Oswald Cray and Sir Philip are proud enough, both of them; but they are gentlemen--you forget that, Bettina. I think Oswald Cray is about the least likely man to quarrel that I know, whether with Sir Philip or with anybody else. Your proud man washes his hands of people whom he despises; but he does not quarrel with them."
How singularly true were the words in regard to Oswald Cray! It was as though Dr. Davenal had worn in that moment the gift of prevision; "Your proud man washes his hands of people whom he despises."
"And how is her money left?" continued Miss Bettina. "To the Stephensons?"
"No, she has not made a just will. It is left to----to a stranger. A stranger in blood."
"Indeed! To whom? I hope you have been remembered with some little token Richard?"
"To be sure I have been. You know those two splendid diamond rings of hers: I have one, Oswald Cray the other. And that's all he has got, by the way, except a silver coffee-pot, or so. Sara, come with me into the garden, I wish to have a little chat with you."
"You have not told me who the stranger is," shrieked out Miss Bettina.
"I'll tell you by-and-by," called back the doctor.
"I did not think it likely she would leave anything to Oswald Cray, papa," Sara remarked, as they paced the garden path.
"I think I should, had I been in her place. A matter of five hundred pounds, or so, would have helped him on wonderfully. However, there was no obligation, and it is a question whether Oswald would have accepted it."
"You said it was not a just will, papa?"
"I could have gone further than that, Sara, and stigmatised it as a very unjust one. Those poor Stephensons, who have been expecting this money--who had a right to expect it--are cut off with a paltry fifty pounds each and the furniture."
"O papa! And are they not very poor?"
"So poor, that I believe honestly they have not always bread to eat; that is, what people, born as they were, designate as bread; proper food. They carry the signs of it in their countenances."
"And for Lady Oswald to have left her money away from them! To whom has she left it?"
"To one who has no right to it, who never expected it."
"I suppose you mean Sir Philip?"
"No, it is not left to him. But now, give me your opinion, Sara. Let us for argument's sake put ourselves in the position of this fortunate legatee. Suppose--suppose, my dear it were left to you: this money to which you have no claim, no right--to which others have a claim, how should you feel?"
"I should feel uncomfortable," replied Sara. "I should feel that I was enriched at the expense of the Stephensons; I am sure that I should feel almost as though I had committed a fraud. Papa," she added more eagerly, the idea occurring to her, "I should like to give the money back to them."
"That is the very argument I have been using myself. Wedderburn, Lady Oswald's lawyer, has been here, talking of the matter, and I told him that were I the man to whom it was left, I should give it back, every shilling of it, to the channel where it ought at once to have gone--the brothers Stephenson. Wedderburn did not agree with me: he brought forward the argument that the man's children might reproach him afterwards. What do you think?"
"I think, papa, that were I the man you speak of, I should act upon my own judgment, and give it back without reference to the opinion of my children."
"That is precisely what he has resolved to do. Sara, the money is left to me."
Sara Davenal, taken completely by surprise, halted in her walk and looked at the Doctor, not knowing how to believe him.
"It is true, Sara. I find I am the favoured legatee of Lady Oswald: knowing at the same time that I have no more right to be so than have those espalier rose-trees at your side. I have resolved to refuse the money; to repudiate the will altogether, so far as my share in it goes; and to suffer a previous will to be acted upon, which gives the money to the Stephensons. I trust my children will not hereafter turn round and reproach me."
"O papa!"
She spoke the words now almost reproachfully, in reproach that he could ever think it.
"Yes, I shall do it, Sara. And yet," he added, his voice insensibly sinking to a whisper, "I have heavy need for money just now, and the help these thousands would be to me no one but myself knows."
Sara was silent. A shiver passed over her face at the allusion. She did not dare reply to it. The subject was too painful; and, besides, she was kept partially in the dark.
"But I cannot tamper with my conscience," resumed Dr. Davenal. "Were I to take this money, it would only lie like a weight upon it for my whole future life. I believe--and, Sara, I wish you to believe it and treasure it as an assured truth--that money appropriated by ourselves, which in point of right, of justice, belongs to others, never comes home to us with a blessing. However safely the law may give it us and the world deem our claim to it legitimate, if we deprive others of it, whose it is by every moral and--may I say it?--divine right, that money will not bless us or our children. Sara, I speak this from the experience of an observant life."
"I am sure you are right, papa," she murmured. "Do not keep this money."
"I shall not. But, Sara,"--and Dr. Davenal stopped in his walk, and his voice grew solemn in its tone as he laid his hand upon her--"things have changed with me. I cannot now foresee the future. I thought I was laying up a competency for my children; not a great one, it is true, but one that would have kept them above the extreme frowns of the world. This I have had to fling away--my hard-earned savings. It may be that I shall now have to leave you, my cherished daughter, to the world's mercy; perhaps--I know not--compelled to work for your living in it. Should this come to pass, you will not cast back a reflection on your dead father, and reproach him for a rejection of these thousands."
The tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her pleading hand, her loving look, was his first answer. "You could not keep the money, papa. It would not be right in God's sight. Do not hesitate."
"I have not hesitated, Sara. My mind has been made up from the first. But I preferred to speak to you."
Neal came forward to summon Dr. Davenal. His patients were waiting for him. Sara turned to rejoin her aunt.
"You can tell her about this legacy to me, Sara; it will be the talk of the town before the day's out. And explain to her why I decline it."
The afternoon drew to its close. Dr. Davenal, engaged with a succession of patients, scarcely noticed its elapse. A wish was running through his mind to see Mr. Oswald Cray, and he hoped he would be calling. When dinner-time came and he had not come, that note, previously mentioned, was pencilled, and Neal despatched with it.
The man brought the message back in due course "Mr. Oswald Cray was unable to call upon the doctor, as he was departing for London." Dr. Davenal was disappointed; he had wished to explain to Oswald Cray his intentions respecting the money; he considered it due to him, Oswald, to do so.
How is it that there are times when an idea, without any apparent cause to lead to it, any reason to justify it, takes sudden possession of the mind? Even as Neal spoke, such an idea seated itself in Dr. Davenal's. He fancied that Oswald Cray was in some way not pleased at the disposition of Lady Oswald's property, as regarded Dr. Davenal; was in a degree, more or less, resenting it. It only made the doctor doubly desirous of seeing him.
But there was no chance of it at present, Oswald Cray having left Hallingham. Dr. Davenal put on his hat and went out to take a walk as far as Lady Oswald's.
He found the Rev. Mr. Stephenson alone. His brother had departed. The clergyman received him somewhat awkwardly. He had been brooding over his disappointment all by himself; had been thinking what a crying wrong it was that the money should be left to the flourishing and wealthy physician, Dr. Davenal, who put as many guineas into his pocket daily as would keep him and his family in their humble way for months. He was casting his anxious thoughts to the future, wondering how his children were to be educated, foreseeing nothing but embarrassment and struggle to the very end of his life; and I am not sure that his heart at that moment towards that one man was not full of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Ministers of the gospel are but human, swayed at times by evil passions, just as we are.
But, being in this frame of mind, it a little confused the reverend gentleman to see the object of his envy standing before him. Dr. Davenal drew forward a seat.
"I daresay, Mr. Stephenson, if the truth were known, you were at this very moment bestowing upon me plenty of hard names."
It was so exceedingly like what Mr. Stephenson had been doing, that all the reply he could make was a confused stammer. Dr. Davenal, who, for the interview, appeared to have put away from the surface his hidden care, resumed in a frank, free tone--
"I have no right to the money, have I? It ought to have gone to you and your brother?"
"Well, sir--perhaps you had been led to expect it by Lady Oswald," was the clergyman's answer. Of a timid and refined nature, he could not, to Dr. Davenal's face, express his sense of the wrong. With Dr. Davenal before him, cordial and open, he began to think the wrong less. That is, that it was not so much the doctor's fault as he had been angrily deeming.
"No, she never led me to expect anything of the sort; and you cannot be more surprised than I am at its being left to me," said the doctor. "When Mr. Wedderburn came to me with the news, I could not believe him. However, it appears to be the fact."
"Yes," meekly rejoined the clergyman; "it is."
"And I have now come to inform you, that I shall not take the money, Mr. Stephenson. Not a stiver of it. The will, so far as it concerns me, may be regarded as a dead letter, for all practical use. I have desired Mr. Wedderburn to transfer the money to you and your brother; and if this may not legally be, if I must, despite myself, accept the money, I only take it to restore it to you. You will not be too proud to accept it from me?"
Was he listening to fact?--or was he in a dream? The words, to the minister's ear, did not savour of reality. His pale face grew moist with emotion, his trembling hands entwined their thin fingers together. He did not dare to ask, Was it real? lest the answer should dissolve the spell, and prove it but illusion.
"I could not accept of this great sum to the prejudice of others who have a right to it," resumed Dr. Davenal. "I should fear its proving something like ill-gotten gains, that bring evil with them, instead of good. The money shall be yours and your brother's, Mr. Stephenson, just as surely as though it had been left to you by Lady Oswald. The diamond ring I shall keep and value, but not a shilling of the money. I thought I would come up and tell you this."
The tears were welling into that poor gentleman's eyes, as he rose and clasped the hand of Dr. Davenal. "If you could see what I have suffered; if you could only imagine the struggle life has been to me, you would know what I feel at this moment. Heaven send its blessings on your generosity!"
The doctor quitted him. He had found a heavy heart, he left a glad one. He quitted him and went forth into the stillness of the autumn night.
He glanced towards the bright stars as he walked along, thinking of the future. And a prayer went up from his heart to the throne of heaven--that, if it was God's will, his children might not feel hereafter the sacrifice he had made--that God would bless them and be merciful to them when he should be gone. The last few days had been sufficient to teach Dr. Davenal, had he never known it before, in how great need the apparently safest amongst us stand of this ever-loving mercy.
XXV. COMPANY FOR MR. OSWALD CRAY
For some days subsequent to the interview with Neal, and that valuable servant's startling communication, Mr. Oswald Cray remained in what may be called a sea of confusion. The unhappy circumstances attendant on Lady Oswald's death never left his mind, the strange suspicions first arising naturally, as they did arise, and then augmented by Neal's disclosure, seemed to be ever waging hot war within him, for they were entirely antagonistic to sober reason, to his life-long experience of Dr. Davenal.
It cannot be denied that Oswald Cray, calm of temperament though he was, sound of judgment, did fall into the snare that the web of events had woven around him; and, in the midnight watches, when things wear to our senses a weird, ghost-like hue, the disagreeable word murder suggested itself to him oftener than he would have cared to confess in broad matter-of-fact daylight. But as the days went on his senses came to him. Reason reasserted her empire, and he flung the dark doubt from him, as unworthy of himself and the present enlightened age. It was impossible to connect such a crime with Dr. Davenal.
But still, though he shook off the worst view, he could not shake off the circumstances and their suspicion. Perhaps it was next to impossible, knowing what he did know of the doctor's sentiments as to chloroform, hearing, as he had heard, Neal's account of the words spoken at the midnight interview, that he should shake them off. They turned and twisted themselves about in his mind in spite of his will; he would have given much to get rid of them, but he could not. Now taking one phase, now another, now looking dark, now light, there they were, like so many phantoms, ever springing up from different corners of his mind, and putting legitimate thoughts out of it. Up and in bed, at work or at rest, were those conflicting arguments ever dancing attendance on him, until, from sheer perplexity, his brain would seem to lose its subtle powers, and grow dull from very weariness. But the worst aspect of the affair gradually lost its impression, and reason drove away the high colours of imagination.
The conclusion to which he at length came, and in which he finally settled down, was that Dr. Davenal had been in a partial degree guilty. He could not think that he had given that chloroform to Lady Oswald with the deliberate view of taking her life, as some of our worst criminals have taken lives: but he did believe there was some hidden culpability attached to it. Could it have been given in forgetfulness?--or by way of experiment?--or carelessly? Oswald Cray asked himself those questions ten times in a day. No, no, reason answered; Dr. Davenal was not a man to forget, or to experimentalise, or to do things carelessly. And then, with the answer, rose the one dark, awful doubt again, tormenting him not less with its shadows than with its preposterous absurdity.
What clung to his mind more than all the rest was, that he could see no solution, or chance of solution, to the question of why chloroform was administered, why even it was taken to the house. Had Dr. Davenal frankly answered him when questioned, "I thought, in spite of my conversation with you, that chloroform might be ventured upon with safety, that it would ease her sufferings, and was absolutely necessary to calm her state of excitement," why he could have had no more to say, however lamenting the fatal effects. But Dr. Davenal had answered nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he had been mysterious over it, and at length flatly refused to satisfy him at all. So far as Oswald Cray could see, there was no other solution, then or ever, that could be arrived at, save that the chloroform had been administered wilfully and deliberately. If so, then with what view had Dr. Davenal----
At this point Oswald Cray always pulled his thoughts up, or strove to do so, and plunged desperately into another phase of the affair as if he would run away from dangerous ground. Once he caught himself wondering whether, if the doctor had been deliberately guilty, it lay in his duty--his, Oswald Cray's--to bring him to account for it. No living being save himself, so far as he trusted, had been cognisant of Dr. Davenal's strong opinion of chloroform as applied to Lady Oswald. Ought he, then, not only in the obligation which lies upon all honest men to bring crime to light, but as a connection of Lady Oswald's, ought he to be the Nemesis, and denounce----
With a quicker beating of the heart, with a burning flush upon his brow, Oswald Cray started from the train of thought. Into what strange gulf was it carrying him? Ah, not though it had been his fate to see the crime committed, and to know that it was a crime, would he be the one to bring it home to Richard Davenal! The man whom he had so respected; the father of her who possessed his best love, and who would possess it, in spite of his efforts to withdraw it, for all time? No; not against him could his hand be raised in judgment.
In spite of his efforts to withdraw his love? Had it come to that with Oswald Cray? Indeed it had. He could not fathom the affair, it remained to him utterly incomprehensible, but that Dr. Davenal was in some way or other compromised by it, terribly compromised, seemed as plain as the sun at noonday. And Mr. Oswald Cray, in his haughty spirit, his besetting pride, decided that he could no longer be on terms of friendship with him, and that Sara Davenal must be no wife of his.
What it cost him to come to this resolution of casting her adrift, none save Heaven knew. The struggle remained on his memory for years afterwards as the sorest pain life had ever brought him. It was the bitter turning-point which too many of us have to arrive at, and pass; the dividing link which dashes away the sunny meads, the flowery paths of life's young romance, and sends us stumbling and shivering down the stony road of reality. None knew, none ever would know, what that struggle was to Oswald Cray.
Not a struggle as to the course he should pursue--the breaking off intimacy with her: never for a single moment did he hesitate in that. The struggle lay with his feelings, with his own heart, where she was entwined with its every fibre, part and parcel of its very self. He strove to put her out thence, and she would not be put out. There she remained, and he was conscious that there she would remain for many a dreary year to come.
But for his overweening pride, how different things might have been! He was too just a man to include Sara in the doctor's--dare he say it?--crime. Although Neal had said that Miss Sara Davenal had been made cognisant of it, Oswald did not visit upon her one iota of blame. She was no more responsible for the doctor's acts than he was, neither could she help them. No, he did not cast a shadow of reproach upon her; she had done nothing to forfeit his love; but she was her father's daughter, and therefore no fit wife for him. One whose pride was less in the ascendant than Mr. Oswald Cray's, whose self-esteem was less sensitively fastidious, might have acted upon this consciousness of her immunity from blame, and set himself to see whether there was not a way out of the dilemma rather than have given her up, off-hand, at the very first onset. He might have gone in his candour to Dr. Davenal and said, "I love your daughter; I had wished to make her my wife; tell me confidentially, is there a reason why I, an honourable man, should not?" Not so Mr. Oswald Cray and his haughty pride. Without a single moment of hesitation he shook himself free from all future contact with the daughter of Dr. Davenal, just as he was trying to shake her from his heart. Never more, never more, might he look forward to the life of happiness he had been wont to picture.
It was a cruel struggle, cruel to him; and the red flush of shame mantled on his brow as he thought of the binding words he had spoken to her, and the dishonour that must accrue to him in breaking them. There was not a man on the face of the earth whose sense of honour was more keen than Oswald Cray's, who was less capable of wilfully doing aught to tarnish it; and yet that tarnishing was thrust upon him. Anyway, it seemed that a great stain must fall upon it. To take one to be his wife whose father was a suspected man would be a blot indeed; and to slip through the words he had spoken, never more to take notice of her or them, was scarcely less so. He felt it keenly; he, the man of unblemished conduct, and, it may be said, of unblemished heart.
But still he did not for a moment hesitate. Great as the pain was to himself, little as she, in her innocence, deserved that the slight should be inflicted on her, he never wavered in that which he knew must be. The only question that arose to him was, how it should be best done. Should he speak to her?--or should he gradually drop all intimacy and let the fact become known to her in that way? Which would be the kinder course? That the separation would be productive of the utmost pain to her as to him, that she loved him with all the fervour of a first and pure attachment, he knew; and he felt for her to his very heart's core. He hated himself for having to inflict this pain, and he heartily wished, as things had turned out, that he had never yielded to the pleasure of becoming intimate at Dr. Davenal's. Well, which should be his course? Oswald Cray sat over his fire one cold evening after business was over, and deliberated upon it. Some weeks had gone on then. He leaned his elbow on the arm of his chair, and bent his cheek on his hand, and gazed abstractedly on the blaze. He shrank from the very idea of speaking to her. No formal engagement existed between them: it had been implied more than spoken; and he would be scarcely justified in say to her, "I cannot marry you now," considering that he had never in so many words asked her to marry him at all. She might regard it as a gratuitous insult.
But, putting that aside, he did not see his way clear to speak to her. What reason could he give for his withdrawal He could not set it down to his own caprice; and he could not--no, he could not--put forth to her the plea of her father's misdoing. He began to think it might be better to maintain silence, and so let the past and its words die away. If----
He was aroused from his train of thought by the entrance of a woman--a woman in a black bonnet, and sleeves turned up to the elbow, with a rather crusty expression of face. This was Mrs. Benn the housekeeper, cleaner, cook of the house. It did not lie in Mrs. Benn's province to wait on Mr. Oswald Cray, or she would probably have attired herself more in accordance with her duty. It lay in her husband's, and he had been sent out this evening by Mr. Oswald Cray on business connected with the firm. On cleaning days--and they occurred twice in the week--Mrs. Benn was wont to descend in, the morning in the black bonnet, and keep it on until she went to bed. It was not worn as bonnets are worn usually; the crown behind and the brim before; but was perched right on the top of her head, brim downwards and Mrs. Benn was under a firm persuasion that this kept her hair and her cap free from the dust she was wont to raise in sweeping. She was about forty, but looked, fifty, and her face had got a patch of black-lead upon it, and a nail had torn a rent in her check apron.
"Wouldn't you like the things taken away, sir?" she asked in a tone as crusty as her look. "I'm waiting to wash 'em up."
This recalled Oswald Cray's notice to the fact that the remains of his dinner were yet upon the table. He believed he had rung for them to be taken away when he turned to the fire; and there he had sat with his back to them since, never noticing that nobody had come to do it. It was now a little past seven, and Mrs. Benn had grown angry and indignant at the waiting.
"I declare I thought they had gone away," he said. "I suppose the bell did not ring. I am sure I touched it."
"No bell have rung at all," returned Mrs. Benn resentfully. "I stood down there with my hands afore me till the clock had gone seven, and then I thought I'd come up and see what was keeping 'em. You haven't ate much this evening, sir," she added, looking at the dish of steak and the potatoes. "I don't think you have eat much lately. Don't you feel well?"
"Well! I am very well," he replied carelessly, rising from his chair and stretching himself. "Is Benn not back yet?"
"No, he is not back," she returned, her tone becoming rather an explosive one, boding no good for the absent Mr. Benn. "He don't seem to hurry himself, he don't, though he knows if he didn't get back I should have to come up here: and very fit I be on my cleaning days to appear before a gentleman."
"Is it necessary to clean in a bonnet?" asked Oswald quietly.
"It's necessary to clean in something, sir, to protect one's head from the fluff and stuff that collects. One would wonder where it comes from, all in a week. I used to tie a apron over my cap, but it was always coming off, or else blowing its corners into the way of one's eyes."
Oswald laughed. He remembered the apron era, and the guy Mrs. Benn looked. For twelve years had she and her husband been the servants of that house. Formerly Mr. Bracknell, an old bachelor, had lived in it, and Benn and his wife waited on him, as they now did on Mr. Oswald Cray.
"Would you like tea this evening, sir?" she inquired. For sometimes Oswald took tea and sometimes he did not.
"Yes; if you bring it up directly. I am going out."
She went away with her tray of things. Down the first flight of stairs, past the offices, and down again to the kitchen. The ground floor of this house in Parliament Street was occupied by the offices of the firm, and partially so the floors above. Oswald Cray had two or three rooms for his own use; his sitting-room, not a very large one, being on the first floor.
His train of thought had been broken by the woman, and he did not recall it. He stepped into an adjoining apartment, lighted a shaded lamp, sat down, and began examining a drawing of some complicated plans. Pencil in hand, he was deep in the various mysteries pertaining to engineering, when he heard Mrs. Benn and the tea-tray. He finished marking off certain lines and strokes on a blank sheet of paper--which he did after a queer fashion, his eyes fixed on the drawing, and his fingers only appearing to guide the pencil--before he went in.
He had not hurried himself, and the tea must be getting cold. Mrs. Benn was in the habit of making it downstairs, so that he had no trouble. It was by no means a handsome tea equipage--party belonging, in fact, to Mrs. Benn herself. The black teapot had a chipped spout, and the black milk-jug had a fray on its handle, and the china tea-cup was cracked across. Oswald's china tea-service had been handsome once--or rather Mr. Bracknell's, for it was to that gentleman the things in the house belonged; but Mrs. Benn had what she herself called a "heavy hand at breakage," and two or three cups and saucers were all that remained. Oswald determined to buy himself a decent tea-set, but somehow he never thought of it, and the elegant equipage came up still.
He poured himself out a cup, stirred it, and then went for the sheet of paper on which he had been making the strokes and scrawls. Mrs. Benn knew her master well. He had said he was going out, but he was just as likely to remain over these strokes all the evening as to go out; perhaps, even, in forgetfulness keep her tea-things up until ten o'clock, or until she went for them. Oswald Cray was one whose heart was in his profession, and work was more pleasant to him than idleness.
He was busy still over this paper, neglecting his tea, when Mrs. Benn came in again. He thought she had come very soon for her tea-tray tonight. But she had not come for that.
"Here's company now, sir! A young lady wants to see you."
"A young lady!" repeated Oswald. "To see me?"
"Well, I suppose she's a young lady--from what one can see of her through her black veil; but she come to my kitchen bell only, when the knocker was a-staring her right in the face," returned Mrs. Benn. "She asked for you, sir. I said, was it any message I could take up, but she says she wants to speak to you herself."
"You can show her up."
Mrs. Benn accomplished this process in a summary manner. Going down the stairs to the hall, where she had left the applicant, she briefly said to her, "You can go up. First door you come to that's open"--and then left the lady to find her way. Had her husband, Benn, been at home, he would have asked her what she meant by introducing a visitor in that fashion to Mr. Oswald Cray; and he would probably have got for answer a sharp order to mind his own business. In point of fact, Mrs. Benn, on those two dark interludes of her weekly existence, cleaning days, had neither time nor temper to waste on superfluous ceremony.
Oswald Cray had bent over his paper again, attaching little importance to the advent of the visitor; he supposed it might be some messenger from one or other of the clerks. The footfall on the stairs was soft and light; Oswald's back was to the door, and his lines and marks were absorbing his attention.
"Mr. Oswald Cray?"
It was a sweet and pleasant and sensible voice, with a Scotch accent very perceptible to English ears. It was the voice of a lady, and Oswald Cray started up hastily, pencil in hand.
A short, slight, very young-looking woman, with a fair face and blue eyes, stood before him. Strictly speaking, there was no beauty whatever in the face, but it was so fair, so frank, so honest, with its steady good sense and its calm blue eyes, that Oswald Cray warmed to it at once. She was dressed plainly in black, and she threw back her crape veil to speak--as most sensible women like to do. To Oswald's eyes, seeing her by that light, she looked about one or two and twenty, as she had to Mrs. Benn: her light complexion, her small features, and her slight figure were all of that type that remain young a long while. In his surprise he did not for the moment speak, and she repeated the words, not as a question this time--
"You are Mr. Oswald Cray."
"That is my name," he answered, recovering his equanimity. "May I----"
"I come to you from my brother, Frank Allister," she interrupted. "I am Jane Allister."
She pronounced the name "Jean" as she had in fact been christened, but it generally gets corrupted into Jane by English ears and English tongues. Oswald so interpreted it. His whole face lighted up with a smile of welcome; it may be said of recognition. He had heard so much of this good sister from his friend Frank Allister.
"I am so glad you have come to him!" he warmly exclaimed, taking her hand. "Frank has almost pined for you: but he did not expect you yet. I seem to know you quite well: he has talked to me of you so much."
"Thank you; I'll take it," she said, in answer to the chair he offered. "And I will take off my fur," she added, unwinding a boa from her neck, and untying her bonnet-strings. "Your room feels very warm to one coming in from the keen air outside."
There was something in her frank manners that struck most pleasingly on the mind of Oswald. She sat there as confidingly in his room as though he had been her brother: a good, modest, single-minded woman, whom even a bad man could not do otherwise than respect.
"Yes, I came before Frank expected me;" she said. "I did not think I could have come so soon; but my friends kindly released me. You know my situation--why I could not come to him before."
"I know that you are"--Oswald hesitated for a moment, and then went bravely on. Before that clear eye of plain good sense there was no need to mince the matter, and pretend ignorance.
"I know that you are companion-attendant to a lady. And that you could not leave her."
"I have been companion and maid to her all in one," said Miss Allister. "When I and Frank had to go out into the world and do the best we could for ourselves, I was obliged to look out for what I was most fitted for. Our dead mother's brother offered to help Frank, and he paid the premium with him to this house, and assisted him otherwise, and I was very glad it should be so----"
"You mean Mr. Brown?" interrupted Oswald.
"Yes. He lived in London. My mother was English born and reared. He was a good friend to us so long as he lived. It was necessary that I should go out; and a situation offered in a lady's family, Mrs. Graham. She wanted some one who would be her companion, sit with her, read to her, some one well reared, of whom she might make an equal, but who would at the same time act as maid; and I took it. But perhaps you have heard all this from Frank?"
"No, not these past details. Though he has talked of you very much. He has told me"--Oswald broke into a frank smile as he said it--"that his sister Jane was worth her weight in gold."
"I should be sorry to think that most sisters are not worth as much as I am," she gravely answered. "I have but done my duty, so far as I could do it, and the worst of us ought to do no less. When Frank found I acted as maid to Mrs. Graham he was very much put out, and wanted me to give up the situation and seek a different one. But I laughed at him for a proud boy, and I have stayed on until now. What am I the worse for it? I dressed her, and served her, and when of late years she got ill and helpless, I nursed and fed her. I had become so useful to her--I must say, so indispensable--that when news reached me of Frank's illness, I could not quit her to come to him. I tried to see which way my duty lay; to leave her for my sick brother, or to leave my brother to strangers, and stay with my dying and helpless friend and mistress, Every week we expected would be her last; she has been slowly dying for these three months; and I felt that it would be wrong to abandon her. That, you see, is why I could not come to Frank."
"Is she dead?" asked Oswald.
"O yes. This mourning that I am wearing is for her. And as soon as it was possible after the funeral I came away. We had a long and bad passage, two days, and I did not reach Frank until three o'clock this afternoon."
"You should have come by land," observed Oswald.
"Nay, but that would have cost more," she simply answered. "And I know that Frank was better, so as to be in no vital hurry for my presence. I have come to you, sir, this evening, to ask your opinion of his state. Will you be so kind as to give it me?"
"First of all will you permit me to invite you to take a cup of tea?" replied Oswald, turning round to look at the tray, which was on the opposite side of the table, next the door.
"No, I thank you," she replied, "I gave Frank his tea before I came out, and took some with him. But will you let me pour out a cup for you? I saw that I interrupted you."
Before Oswald could decline, she had taken her gloves off, and was round at the tray, putting it in order. That a bachelor had been doing the honours of the ceremony was only too apparent. The teapot was stuck on the side of the tray, spout forwards; the milk-jug was not on the tray at all, but ever so far away on the table. Jane Allister had put all this to rights in a twinkling, and was pouring the slop of cold tea out of his tea-cup into the basin.
"Not for me," said Oswald, feeling as if he had known her for years. "You are very kind, but I have taken all I wish."
"Nay, not kind at all," she said, looking at him with some surprise. "I'd have been glad to do it for you."
Oswald had risen, and she came back from the tea-tray, and stood by him on the hearth-rug. Her bonnet still untied, her gloves off, her face and attitude full of repose, she looked like one in her own home.
"You'll tell me freely what you think of Frank?"
There was not the slightest shade of doubt in her voice; she evidently expected that he would tell it her; tell it her freely, as she asked for it. She stood with her fair face raised, her candid blue eyes thrown full up to his.
Oswald drew her chair forward for her, and took his own, pausing before he spoke. In good truth, he scarcely now knew what was his opinion of Frank Allister. It was one of those cases where the patient seems at death's door, and then, to the surprise of all, the disease takes a sudden turn, and appears to be almost gone. In the previous month, October, Oswald Cray had believed that a few days must see the end of Frank Allister; this, the close of November, he was apparently getting well all one way.
"I do not quite know how to answer you," Oswald began. "Five or six weeks ago Frank was so ill that I did not think there remained the least chance for him, but he has changed in a wonderful manner. But for the deceitfulness that is so characteristic of the disease, I should believe him to be getting well. Remembering that, I can only look upon it as a false improvement."
Jane Allister paused. "I suppose there is no doubt that his symptoms are those of consumption?"
"None."
"And consumption, if it does come on, is rarely if ever cured. Do you think it is?"
"Very rarely, I fear."
"But again, I have known patients who have displayed every symptom of consumption, have suffered much, and who have eventually got strong and hearty, and continued so."
"That is true," he assented. "There have been such instances. I wish I could satisfy you better, but indeed I do not know what to think. Mr. Bracknell asked me a day or two ago how Allister was getting on, and I answered as I answer you--that I really could not tell him."
"When I reached my brother's today and saw how well he appeared to be, so different from what I had expected to find him, I could not help expressing my surprise," said Miss Allister. "Frank gaily told me that his illness and its supposed danger had been all a mistake, and he had taken a new lease of life. I did not know what to think, what to believe; and I determined to come here and ask your opinion. I could not, you know, ask you before him."
"And I cannot give you a decisive one," repeated Oswald. "I can only hope that this improvement may go on to a complete restoration: and I should think it, but for the treacherous nature of the disease. Frank does certainly appear wonderfully strong and well. Even the doctor cannot say that it will not end in recovery."
"Frank wrote me word that you had caused him to see one of the great London physicians, and that the opinion was unfavourable. But that was when he was at the worst. You have been truly kind to him, Mr. Oswald Cray, and when I came here tonight I felt that I was coming to a friend."
"I should like to be your friend always," returned Oswald, in an unusual impulse. "I seem to have been so a long while, Frank has talked to me so much of you."
"Do you come to see him daily?"
"Not daily; but as often as I can. It is some distance from here."
"It is a long way. But I got misdirected.
"You surely did not walk?" exclaimed Oswald.
"To be sure I walked. How else should I come?"
"There are conveyances--cabs and omnibuses."
"But they cost money," she answered, with that frank, open plainness, which, in her, seemed so great a charm. "I am not come away to England devoid of means, but they will find plenty of outlets in necessary things, without being spent in superfluities. Anyway, they must be made to last both for me and Frank, until I can leave him and go out again. I'd not speak of these things to you, Mr. Oswald Cray, but that you must know all the particulars of our position."
She had risen as she spoke, and was now tying her bonnet-strings. Oswald picked up a glove which she dropped.
"And now I'll wish you goodnight," she continued, putting her hand frankly into his. "And I'd like to thank you with all my heart for what you have done for Frank; for the good friend you have been to him. You have brought to him help and comfort when there was nobody else in the world to bring it. I shall always thank you in my heart, Mr. Oswald Cray."
Oswald laughed the words off, and attended her downstairs, catching up his hat as he went through the hall. Mrs. Benn and her black bonnet came up the kitchen stairs.
"Goodnight," repeated Jane Allister.
"I am going with you," said Oswald.
She resisted the suggestion at first, saying she could find her way back quite well; but Oswald quietly carried his point.
He closed the door behind him, and offered his arm. She took it at once, thanking him in a staid old-fashioned manner. Mrs. Benn drew the door open and looked after them.
"Arm-in-arm!" ejaculated that lady. "And he bending of his head down to her to talk! Who on earth can she be?--coming after him to his house--and stopping up there in the parlour--and keeping up of the tea-things! It looks uncommon like as if he had took on a sweetheart. Only----So it's you at last, is it, Joe Benn! And what do you mean by stopping out like this?"
The concluding sentences were addressed to a respectable-looking man who approached the door. It was Joseph Benn, her husband, and the faithful servant of the firm.
"I couldn't make more haste," he quietly answered.
"Not make more haste! Don't tell me. Mr. Oswald Cray expected you were home an hour ago."
"Mr. Oswald Cray will be quite satisfied that I have not wasted my time when I tell him where I've been. Is he upstairs?"
"No, he is not," she sharply answered. "Satisfied, indeed! Yes, he looked satisfied when he saw me going up to wait upon him in this guise, and to show in his company? And me waiting a good mortal hour for his dinner-things, which he forgot was up which couldn't have happened if you'd been at your post to wait at table. You go and stop out again at his dinner-time, Joe Benn."
Joe Benn made no rejoinder; experience had taught him that it was best not. He passed her, and she shut the door with a bang.
XXVI. MORE INSTILLED DOUBT
The air was keen and frosty, and the flags of the streets were white and clean--not a common feature in November--as they walked forth. Oswald could but admire this straightforward Scotch girl, with her open speech and her plain good sense. She was so young in appearance that he could only think of her as a girl, though she had herself reminded him that she was older than Frank. This, as he knew, must bring her to a year or two past thirty: and in steadiness of manner and solid independence she was two-and-forty.
Reared in her Highland home, in every comfort for the earlier years of her life, she had since had to buffet with the world. Her mother, a widow since Frank was two years old, had enjoyed a good income, but it died with her. The uncle in London took Frank, who was then a youth; and Jane had to seek a situation. It was not easy to find. For a governess she was not qualified, so many of what are called accomplishments are essential nowadays, and Jane Allister had not learnt them. She had received a good education, but a strictly plain one.
Waiting and waiting! No situation offered itself; and when she heard of Mrs. Graham's she was well-nigh wearied out with the worst of all weariness--that of long-continued disappointment, of hope deferred. But for that weariness she might not have accepted a place where she was to be personal attendant as well as companion. She took it, determined to do her duty in it, to make the very best of it; and when her brother Frank wrote to her in a commotion from his distant home in London, where he was then with Bracknell and Street, she began by making the very best of it to him, gaily and lightly. Frank had the letter yet, in which she had jokingly called him--as she had just related to Mr. Oswald Cray--a proud boy, and recommended him to "bring down" his notions. Frank Allister had never been reconciled to it yet. Jane had grown to like it; and she had remained there all these years, conscientiously doing her duty.
"Have you lost a friend lately?" she inquired, in allusion to the crape band on Oswald's hat.
"Yes," he briefly answered, wincing at the question, could Jane Allister have seen it. All that past time of Lady Oswald's death, and the events attending it, caused an inward shiver whenever they were brought to his mind.
"It is a grievous thing to lose relatives when they are dear to us," remarked Jane. "There is an expression in your countenance at times that tells me you have some source of sorrow."
Whatever the expression she had noticed on his countenance, she would have seen a very marked one now, had they been, as before, face to face near a table-lamp. The old haughty pride came into it, and his brow flushed blood-red. Oswald Cray was one of the very last to tolerate that his secret feelings should be observed or commented upon. As she spoke it seemed to him as if the pain at his heart was read, his hopeless love for Sara Davenal laid bare.
"You are drawing a wrong inference, Miss Allister," he coldly said. "The friend I lost was neither near nor very dear to me. She was an old lady; a connection of my mother's family--Lady Oswald."
Jane marked the changed tone. She concluded the loss was one of pain to him, though he did not choose to say so, and she gathered her deductions that he was a man of great reticence of feeling. That he was a brave man and a good man, one in every way worthy of trust, of esteem, she knew from Frank long ago.
"Why, Neal! Is it you?"
Mr. Oswald Cray came to an abrupt halt in his surprise. Turning out of the door of a house that they were passing, so quickly as nearly to brush against him, was Dr. Davenal's manservant. Neal did not appear in the least taken to. He touched his hat and stood still with just the same equanimity that he would have done had he been waiting there for the passing of Mr. Oswald Cray.
"What has brought you to London, Neal? You have surely not left Dr. Davenal?"
"O no, sir, I have not left. A brother of mine, sir, has returned to England after an absence from it of many years, and a little property of ours, that couldn't be touched while he was away, is now being divided. I spoke to Dr. Davenal, and he gave me leave to come."
"Have you been up long?"
"Only three days, sir."
"Are they all well at Hallingham?"
"Quite well, sir. Mr. Cray hurt his arm as he was getting out of the doctor's carriage, and it was bound up for a week. But it is better."
"How did he manage that?"
"I don't think he knew, sir. His foot slipped as he was stepping out, and he swung round in some way, keeping hold of the carriage with his hand bent behind. It was rather a bad sprain."
"Miss Davenal is quite well?"
"Yes, sir. Miss Sara has had a cold lately, and is looking ill. The captain went abroad, sir, without coming to Hallingham, and they all felt it much."
Oswald bade the man goodnight, and walked on. He did not care, in his fastidious sensitiveness, to hear the looks of Sara Davenal commented on. If she did look ill, was it for his, Oswald's, sake!--or was she haunted with that unhappy secret which Neal had once so darkly hinted at?
Neal stood within the shade of the house looking after Mr. Oswald Cray, or rather after the young lady leaning on his arm. Neal was very curious as to this young lady, for young she looked in Neal's eyes. While apparently his whole attention was absorbed by his conversation with Mr. Oswald Cray, he had been studying the face turned to him; a fair and sensible face, as Mr. Neal could read, though less good-looking than Miss Sara Davenal's. What with Neal's legitimate observation and his illegitimate ferreting habits, he had contrived to arrive at a very ingenious conjecture of the tacit relations which had existed between Mr. Oswald Cray and Dr. Davenal's daughter; and Neal had of late been entertaining a rather shrew guess that Mr. Oswald Cray intended those relations to cease. He judged by the fact that the gentleman had never once, since Lady Oswald's funeral, been inside the doctor's doors. A formal call and a left card during one of his visits to Hallingham, had comprised all the notice taken. Tolerably safe appearances these, from which Neal drew his conclusions; and it perhaps may be pardoned one of Neal's conclusion-drawing mind, that he asked himself whether this young lady had superseded Miss Sara.
"It looks uncommonly like it," he repeated to himself, as his gaze followed them in the distance. "I should like to be certain, and to know who she is. She looks like a lady--and he'd not take up with anybody that was not one. Suppose I just see where they go? I have nothing particular on my hands this evening."
Gingerly treading the streets, as one who knows he is bent upon some surreptitious expedition is apt to tread them, Neal stepped along, keeping Mr. Oswald Cray and his companion sufficiently in view not to lose them. After a sufficiently long walk, they entered a house on the confines of Chelsea, bordering upon Brompton; the middle one of a row of moderate-sized houses, with small gardens before the doors. Neal saw Mr. Oswald Cray knock; and a young servant-maid admitted them.
But this left Neal as wise as before. He could see the house, could read the name of the Terrace, "Bangalore Terrace," in large black letters at either end; but this did not tell the name of the lady, or who she was; and Bangalore Terrace, though sufficiently respectable-looking, was certainly not the class of terrace to which it might be expected Mr. Oswald Cray would go for a wife.
Neal might have remained in his ignorance until now but for a fortunate accident. He was taking a last look at the house ere he turned away, at the light which shone behind the blinds of the first-floor windows, when the same servant who had opened the door came running out, her bonnet just perched on her head, its strings flying, and a jug and latch-key in her hand. As she passed Neal, the unsecured bonnet flew off, and Neal gallantly picked it up.
"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, sir," she said, civilly. "Nasty tilting things these new-fangled bonnets be! One doesn't know whether to fix 'em atop of the back hair or under it."
"Can you tell me where a Miss-- Miss---- It is very unfortunate," broke off Neal in a tone of vexation. "I am in search of a young lady on a little matter of business, and I have forgotten her number. I think she lives at number five, but I am not sure."
"Number five's our house," said the girl, falling readily into the trap. "There ain't no young lady living there. There's three young ladies at number six, sir; perhaps its one o' them."
"No young lady living at number five!" repeated Neal
"No, there isn't. There's only my missis, and me, and two sons, and the gentleman what's ill on the first-floor. But perhaps you mean the sick gentleman's sister?" she added, the thought striking her. "She came to our house today, after a long journey all the way from Scotland, and she's going to stop with him."
Neal hardly thought this could apply. The young lady did not look as though she had just come off a long journey. "I don't know," said he. "What is her name!"
"Her name's the same as her brother's--Allister. If you'd been here two minutes sooner, sir, you might have seen her, for she's just come in with Mr. Oswald Cray. He's a gentleman who comes to see Mr. Allister."
"Allister!" The name was conclusive without the other testimony. Neal had once heard Mr. Oswald Cray describe his friend Allister's symptoms to Dr. Davenal. This fair girl with the pleasant face was Miss Allister, then!
"Ah, it's not the same," said he cautiously. "I must come down by daylight and look out. Goodnight, young woman; I am sorry to have detained you," he said as he walked away.
"Miss Allister!" repeated Neal to himself. "And so the brother's not dead yet I remember Mr. Oswald Cray saying he could not live a week, and that's three months ago."
Frank Allister was sitting between the fire and the table, reading by the light of the lamp, when they entered. He was slight and short, with a fair skin like his sister's, and a long thin neck. The room was very small, as the drawing-rooms (as they are called) in these unpretending suburban houses mostly are. What with the smallness of the room and the heavy closeness of the Brompton air, Jane Allister had felt stifled ever since she arrived that day. Frank, without rising from his seat, turned round and held his thin white fingers towards Oswald Cray, who grasped them.
"Jane, where have you been? I fancied you went out for but a few minutes' walk."
"I thought I would go as far as Mr. Oswald Cray's, Frank, and thank him for his attention to you," was her answer. "He has been so kind as to walk back with me."
"But how did you find your way?" cried Frank, wonderingly.
"I inquired. But I suppose I was stupid at understanding, for I went out of my way. What a busy place London is! I should get bewildered if I lived in it long."
Oswald Cray laughed. "It would be just the contrary, Miss Allister. The longer you lived in it the less bewildered you would be."
"Ah, yes," she answered; "use reconciles us to most things."
She had laid her bonnet and black shawl on a chair, and was going noiselessly from one part of the room to another, putting in order things that Frank had disturbed since her departure. He had wanted a particular book, and to get it had displaced two whole shelves of the cheffonier. The coal-box stood in the middle of the room, and a fancy china inkstand, the centre ornament of the cheffonier, lay on a chair. But the room, in its present general neatness and order, looked different from anything Oswald had ever seen it. Sometimes there had not been, as the saying runs, a place to sit upon. Frank ill, perhaps careless, had paid little heed to how his room went, and his landlady and his landlady's young maid had not much bestirred themselves in the matter. When Jane arrived she had taken in all the discomfort at the first glance, and did not sit down until it was remedied. Frank's bedchamber was at the back, opening from it, and there was a small room--a closet, in fact--at the bend of the stairs, which was to be Jane's.
Oswald followed her with his eyes, as she moved about in her simple usefulness. Perhaps he wished that he had such a sister to make his home a prettier place than it was made by Mrs. Benn. She was very small in figure, and the folds of her soft black dress scarcely added to its fulness. Her light hair was carried rather low on the cheeks, and twisted into a coil on her neck behind. Without her outdoor things she looked, if anything, younger than she did in them.
"And so you went to Mr. Oswald Cray's, inquiring your way!" cried Frank. "I say, young lady, that's not the fashion of doing things in London."
"May be not," answered Jane. "I daresay I and London shall not agree in our notions of fashion. Have you taken your milk, Frank!"
"I should think so. It was smoked again."
"Smoked!" cried Jane, turning round and looking at him.
"It generally is smoked," continued Frank. "I think their saucepans downstairs must be constructed on the plan of letting the smoke in."
Jane said no more. She inwardly resolved that neither Frank's milk nor anything else that he took should be smoked in future.
"Why don't you sit down, Oswald. Are you afraid of Jane?"
"Not very much," Oswald answered, looking round at her with a smile. "The fact is, Frank, I have some work to do at home tonight, and must get back."
"Plans to go over?"
"That and other things."
"I shall soon be well enough to come out again and go to work," resumed Frank Allister; and his confident tone proved how firm was his belief in his own words. "Will Bracknell and Street take me on again?"
"I think you will soon be out if you go on improving at this rate," answered Oswald, ignoring the last portion of Frank's words. "You look better this evening than you have looked yet."
"Oh, I am all right. But of course I look better, now Jane's here. Nearly the first thing she did was to part and brush my hair, and make me put on a clean collar. Only fancy her coming upon me today without warning! When the girl came up to say there was a lady at the door in a cab for Mr. Allister, I thought of anybody rather than Jane."
Oswald Cray wished them goodnight, and walked leisurely home. He really had some work to do, but he could have remained longer with them, only that he thought they might prefer to be alone on this the first evening of the sister's arrival. They had been apart for so many years.
Oswald let himself in with his latch-key. It must be supposed that Mrs. Benn heard him; for she came running up the kitchen stairs, and held put something to him under the light of the hall lamp. It appeared to be a piece of narrow black ribbon, about a third of a yard in length.
"When I had got the tea-tray down in the kitchen, sir, I found this a-hanging to it. I suppose the young lady that was with you upstairs left it here."
There was little doubt that Jane had left it. A wrist-ribbon probably, inadvertently untied in pulling off her glove. Oswald looked at the woman--at her crusty face, where the pert curiosity induced by the visit was not yet subdued. A curiosity he judged it well to satisfy.
"Did you know who that lady was, Mrs. Benn?"
"No, sir."
"It was poor Mr. Allister's sister. She has come all the way from Scotland to nurse him." The crustiness disappeared; the face lighted up with a better feeling. Mr. Allister had been a favourite of Mrs. Benn's, and if she could be sorry for anybody's illness, she was sorry for his.
"Mr. Allister's sister! If I had but known it, sir! What a pleasant-speaking young lady she is." Following his wife up the kitchen stairs, had come Benn. He waited until this colloquy was over, and then began to speak on his own account.
"A gentleman is waiting for you in your sitting-room, sir."
"Who is it?" asked Oswald.
"I think he's a stranger, sir. I don't remember to have seen him before."
Oswald proceeded upstairs. Standing at the side of the room, facing the door as he opened it, his gloves on and his hat in his hand, was Neal. And so much like a gentleman did he really look that Mr. Joseph Benn's mistake was a perfectly natural one.
"I have taken the liberty of intruding upon you, sir, and of asking to wait until you returned, to inquire whether I can convey anything for you to Hallingham. You had hardly left me, sir, in the street, when I remembered how very remiss it was in me not to ask you. Unless I have a letter from the doctor tomorrow morning, according me a day or two's more grace, which I have written for, I shall leave tomorrow evening. If I can do anything there for you, sir, or be of use to you in anyway, you may command me."
"Thank you, Neal; there's nothing I want done. I expect to go down myself next week. Come to the fire and warm yourself this cold night. Sit down."
Neal came forward nearer the fire; but he did not avail himself of the invitation to sit. Oswald inquired if he would like some refreshment, but he declined.
"Have they heard from Captain Davenal yet, do you know?" Oswald asked.
"I think not, sir. I believe they were expecting letters from Malta when I left."
"I wish he could have gone down for a short while. I am sure the doctor felt it."
"There's no doubt he did, sir, very much," returned Neal, with warm sympathy in his low, respectful tone. "I grieve to say, sir, that the doctor appears to be very much changed. He is more like one suffering from some inward painful illness than anything else."
"Of body or of mind?" involuntarily asked Oswald, speaking on the moment's impulse. And however he may have regretted the question, he could not recall it.
"I should say of mind, sir. Since the night of--of Lady Oswald's death, he has been a changed man."
Mr. Oswald Cray made no answer whatever to the allusion; he evidently declined to enter upon that unsatisfactory topic. Neal resumed.
"There are going to be changes in our house, sir; it is to be conducted with more regard to economy. Watton is to leave, and I am not sure but I am also. Miss Davenal does not wish any changes to be made, but the doctor says it is necessary."
"On the score of economy?"
"Yes, sir, on the score of economy. I heard him talking of it to Miss Sara; he said if the present rate of expense was to go on, together with the heavy sum that must now go from him yearly as hush-money, he should not keep his head above water. Miss Davenal, who does not understand why any retrenchment should be made, opposes it entirely."
Every fibre in Oswald Cray's heart resented the words--he could not bear that such should be spoken out boldly to him, no matter what their truth might be. Neal's innocent eyes noticed the sudden flush upon his face.
"I think you must be mistaken, Neal. Hush-money! Dr. Davenal would scarcely use the term to his daughter."
"Not that precise term, perhaps, sir, but certainly something equivalent to it. There is a rumour in the town, sir, that he intends to resign to the relatives the legacy left to him by my lady, or part of it."
"Indeed?"
"People have talked a great deal, I fancy, sir, and it has reached the doctor's ears. Perhaps, sir, if I may venture to say it to you, he may be afraid to keep it. The injustice of the bequest might lead to some investigation which--which would be inconvenient to Dr. Davenal."
"Neal, I'd rather not enter upon these topics," said Oswald, in a clear, resolute tone. "Things which appear dubious to us may be explainable by Dr. Davenal. At any rate, it is neither your business nor mine."
And by those firm words Neal knew that Mr. Oswald Cray had, so to say, washed his hands of the affair, and did not mean to take it up in anyway. Neal's hopes had tended to the contrary, and it was a little checkmate.
"I thought I would presume to ask you, sir, whether you might not be soon requiring a personal attendant," he resumed, sliding easily out of his disappointment, and giving no token of it, "Should I be leaving the doctor, it would afford me greater pleasure to serve you, sir, than any one else, now my late lady's gone."
Oswald laughed--he could not help it. "A valet for me, Neal! No, that would never do under present circumstances. You will be at no fault for a good place, rely upon it, should you leave Dr. Davenal. The good places will be only too glad to contend for you."
Neal did not dispute the assertion. What his precise motive might have been for wishing to serve Mr. Oswald Cray, when he could no doubt dispose of himself so much more advantageously, was best known to himself. He made his adieu in his usual quiet and respectful fashion, and took his departure, leaving Oswald Cray to the reminiscences of the interview. Oswald sat over the fire as oblivious of the work he had to do as he had been of the dinner-things earlier in the evening. Will it be believed that the hint dropped by Neal--that Dr. Davenal might be giving up the money because he dared not risk the danger of any investigation--was grating unpleasantly on the brain of Oswald? To do Neal justice so far, he himself fully believed that such was the motive of Dr. Davenal, and he had spoken for once with an earnest truthfulness that is never without its weight.
It was unfortunate that this aspect of the affair should have been the first given to Oswald Cray. Had he simply heard that Dr. Davenal was declining the bequest in his generous consideration for the Stephensons, it might perhaps have shaken his doubts of that other dark story, since the only motive the doctor could possibly have had throughout (as Oswald's mind had argued), was the acquirement of the money. But if he was declining the money through fear, it only served to make these doubts the greater. It was most unfortunate, I say, that this aspect of the affair should have been imparted to him; for we all know how little, how very little, will serve to strengthen suspicions once aroused.
He sat on with his unhappy thoughts far into the night, the image of Sara Davenal ever before him. Never had his love for her been more ardently tender, never had the cruelty of their obligatory separation been so keenly present to his soul.
XXVII. AN INCLEMENT AFTERNOON
December came in with a drizzling rain, which lasted a day or two. A cold, bleak, windy rain, rendering outdoor life miserable. As Sara Davenal sat at her chamber window, looking into the street, the shivering and uncomfortable appearance presented by the few passers-by might have excited her compassion.
But it did not. Truth to say, Sara Davenal had too much need of compassion herself just now to waste it upon street passengers. The greatest blight that can possibly fall upon the inward life of a woman had fallen upon hers. Oswald Cray was faithless. She knew not how, she knew not why; she only judged by his conduct that it must be so. He had been two or three times to Hallingham, and had shunned her; had shunned them altogether. There could be no better proof. One of the visits he had remained three days; therefore he had not want of time to plead as his excuse. He had called at the door, inquired for Miss Davenal, and upon Neal's answering that Miss Davenal was out, he had handed in cards. For Sara he had not asked at all, and he had not been near the house since.
Sara could do nothing. She could only accept this change in him and bear it in silence. Had she been asked to pin her faith on the truth and honour of any living man, she would have pinned it on Oswald Cray's. Not because she loved him, not because it was to her his allegiance was certainly due, but because she believed him to be, of all others, the very soul of chivalrous integrity. But that he had changed to her there could not be a shadow of doubt: his conduct proved it. He had silently broken off all relations with her, and given no token of what his motive could be.
That some cause, just or unjust, had led to it, she yet did him the justice to believe; he was the last man so to act from caprice, or from a totally unworthy motive. And she knew he had loved her. In vain she asked herself what this cause could be; but there were moments when a doubt of whether the terrible secret, which had been imparted that past night to Dr. Davenal, could have become known to Oswald Cray. If so--why, then, in his high honour, his sensitive pride, he had perhaps decided that she was no fit wife for him. And Sara could not say that he had so decided unjustifiably. Whatever the cause, they were separated.
They were separated. And the sunshine of her life was over. Oh, the bitter anguish that it cost! There is no pain, no anguish, that this world and its many troubles can bring, like unto it--the finding one false, upon whom love, in all the freshness of its first feeling, has been lavished. The bright green of life's verdure is gone; the rich blue has faded from the wintry sky.
Sara said nothing, but the doctor spoke openly of the strange conduct of Mr. Oswald Cray.
"I know nothing that can have offended him," he observed; "unless he has chosen to take umbrage at the money's having been left to me."
"Nonsense," said Miss Davenal; "it's not that. Mr. Oswald Cray did not want the money for himself; would not, it is said, have accepted it. It is not that."
And "It is not that," echoed Sarah Davenal's heart.
"What else is it, then?" said the doctor. "Nobody in this house has done anything to offend him. You have not, I suppose, Sara,"--suddenly turning upon her, as a faint doubt flashed into his mind, never before admitted to it.
The question brought to her she knew not what of emotion. She answered it with an outward appearance of calmness, save for the burning red that dyed her face.
"Nothing, papa. The last time I spoke to Mr. Oswald Cray was the night of the accident. We parted quite good friends--as we always had parted."
And the sweet words whispered by Oswald rose up before her as she spoke. What a contrast! that time and this!
"Just so," replied the doctor. "There has been nothing whatever to cause this coolness on his part, except the business of the money. Well, as I give it back to the family, perhaps my gentleman will come round. Rely upon it, that pride of his has been touched in some manner or other?"
But the weeks had gone on, and December was in, and the gentleman had not "come round" yet. Sara Davenal sat at her bedroom window, all her shivering misery only too palpably present to her, as she watched the cold rain falling on the wet streets, in the gloomy twilight of the afternoon.
She saw Roger bring the carriage round. She saw her father go out from the house and step into it. It was the open carriage, but the head was up, and Roger and his master were sheltered from the rain. It was not the usual hour of Dr. Davenal's going out, but the bad day had kept patients from calling on him, and a message had just been delivered saying that a lady whom he attended, Mrs. Scott, was worse.
Sara heard the house clock strike four, and the lamps were already lighted in the streets. Night was coming on earlier than usual. The gleaming of the pools of water in the rays of the gas lamps did not tend to add to the cheerfulness of the scene; and Sara, with a shiver that she could not suppress, quitted her room and went downstairs.
The blaze and warmth of the dining-room, as seen through the open door, was a welcome sight. She went in, and knelt down before the fire on the hearth-rug, and laid her aching head for shelter against the side of the marble mantlepiece, and stayed there until disturbed by the entrance of Miss Davenal.
"Neal's come home," announced Miss Davenal.
"Is he?" apathetically answered Sara.
"I saw him go by with his portmanteau. What are you down there for, Sara, roasting your face? Have you no regard for your complexion?"
"I am not roasting it, aunt. My face is quite in the shade."
"But you are roasting it. What's the use of telling me that? Had I allowed the fire to burn my face at your age, do you suppose I should have retained any delicacy of akin? Get up from the fire."
Sara rose wearily. She sat down in a chair opposite to the one her aunt had taken, and let her hands fall listlessly in her lap.
"Have any patients been here this afternoon?"
"I think not, Aunt Bettina. I suppose it was too wet for them to come out."
"Have you been drawing?"
"Not this gloomy day. I like a good light for it."
"It strikes me you have become very idle lately, Miss Sara Davenal! Do you think that time was bestowed upon us to be wasted?"
A faint blush rose to Sara's cheek. In these, the early days of her bitter sorrow, she feared she had been idle. What with the shock brought upon her by that ominous secret, and the cruel pain caused by the falsity of Oswald Cray, her tribulation had been well-nigh greater than she could bear.
"Ring the bell," said Miss Davenal.
Sara rose from her chair and rang it. It was answered by Jessy.
"Tell Neal I shall be glad to see him."
Neal appeared in answer to the summons. His London journey had been prolonged by the permission of the doctor, and he had but now returned. In he came, just the same as usual, his white necktie spotless, his black clothes without a crease.
"So you are back, Neal?" said Miss Davenal. "I am very glad to see you. And pray have you arranged all your business satisfactorily?--secured your share of the money?"
"Entirely so, thank you, ma'am," replied Neal, advancing nearer to his mistress that he might be heard. "I am pleased to find all well at home, ma'am."
"You have been away longer than you intended to be, Neal."
"Yes, ma'am. I wrote to my master stating why it was necessary that I should, if possible, prolong my stay, and he kindly permitted it. I saw Mr. Oswald Cray, ma'am, while I was in London," Neal added as a gratuitous piece of information.
"You did what?" asked Miss Davenal, while Sara turned and stood with her back to them, looking at the fire.
"I saw Mr. Oswald Cray, ma'am."
"Oh, indeed. And where did you see him?"
"I met him one night in London, ma'am. He was walking with a young lady."
"Saw him walking at night with a young lady?" repeated Miss Bettina, in rather a snappish tone; for as a general rule she did not approve of young ladies and gentlemen walking together, especially at night.
"She seemed a very nice young lady, ma'am, young and pretty," continued Neal, who was getting a little exasperated at the face at Miss Sara Davenal being hidden from his view. "I believe it was Miss Allister, the sister of a gentleman with whom Mr. Oswald Cray is very intimate."
"Well, I am glad you are back, Neal," concluded Miss Davenal. "Things have gone all at sixes and sevens without you."
Neal retired. And Sara, in her still attitude before the fire, repeated the words over and over again to her beating heart. A lady young and pretty! walking with him in the evening hours--the sister of the friend with whom he was so intimate! She laid her hand upon her bosom, if that might still the tumult within, in all the sickness of incipient jealousy. Until that moment Sara Davenal had never known how she had clung to hope in her heart of hearts. While saying to herself, He is lost to me for ever, this undercurrent of hope had been ever ready to breathe a whisper that the cloud might some time be cleared up, that he might return. Now the scales were rudely torn from her eyes, and reason suggested that his slighting treatment of her might proceed from a different cause than any she had ever glanced at.
"What was it Neal said, Sara? That the pretty lady walking with Oswald Cray was somebody's sister?"
Sara turned in her pain to answer her aunt. "Mr. Allister's sister, he said."
"Who's Mr. Allister?"
"A sick gentleman who used to be at Bracknell and Street's. I remember that night of the railway accident Mr. Oswald Cray was obliged to return to town because he had promised to spend--to spend the Sunday with him."
An idea darting into her brain had caused her to hesitate. Had Oswald Cray's anxiety to return to town been prompted by the wish to be with the sister as well as the brother? Sara felt her brow turn moist and cold.
"Young and pretty!" repeated Miss Davenal. "Who knows but they may be engaged? Ah! it's Caroline who should have had Oswald Cray."
Meanwhile Dr. Davenal had been driven to the house of Mrs. Scott. It was not very far from his own home, about two streets only. Time had been, and not so far back, when Dr. Davenal would not have thought of ordering his carriage for so short a distance, would have braved the inclemencies of the weather, the drifting rain, the cutting wind, and walked it. But the doctor had been growing ill both in body and mind; since the night of that fatal revelation, whatever it may have been, he seemed to have become in feelings like an old man, needing all the care and help of one. As he had looked from his window that afternoon, a sort of shudder at the outdoor weather came over him; a feeling as if he could not and ought not to venture out in it. And he told Roger to bring round the carriage.
He stepped out of the carriage and entered Mrs. Scott's, leaving Roger snugly ensconced under the shelter of the head and the horses steaming in the rain. But when the doctor reached his patient's bed, he found her so considerably and alarmingly worse that he could not yet think of leaving her. She was a great and real sufferer; not as poor Lady Oswald had been, an imaginary one; and in the last week or two her symptoms had assumed a dangerous character. The doctor thought of Roger and his horses, and went down.
"I shall not be ready to come home this hour, Roger. Better go back and put the horses up. You can come for me at five." So Roger, nothing loth, turned his horses round and went home. And Dr. Davenal, with another shudder, and a very perceptible one, hastened indoors from the beating rain.
"What's the matter with me this afternoon?" he asked, half angry that any such sort of sensation should come over him.
Is the body at times more sensitive to outward influences than it is at others, rendering it susceptible to take any ill that may be abroad? Is it more liable to cold, to fever, to other ailments? Or can it be that the mind has so great an influence over the body that the very fact of dreading these ills predisposes us to take them? If ever Dr. Davenal sensibly shrank from an encounter with the outdoor weather, it was on that afternoon. He could not remember so to have shrunk from it in all his life.
Mrs. Scott's room was hot. The fire was large, every breath of air excluded, and two large gas-burners flamed away, adding to the heat. As Dr. Davenal sat there he became first at ease in the genial warmth, then hot, and subsequently as moist as though he were breathing the atmosphere of a baker's oven. He had had many a battle with this same Mrs. Scott over the heated rooms she loved to indulge in, but he had not conquered yet.
It was not much above half-past four when the doctor was beckoned out of the room. He was wanted downstairs. There stood Julius Wild, and Mr. Julius Wild was in as white a heat with running as Dr. Davenal was with that pernicious atmosphere above.
"I have been about everywhere, sir, trying to find you," he began out of breath. "At last I bethought myself of asking your coachman at the stables if he knew, and he said you were at Mrs. Scott's. You are wanted in the accident-ward, sir, as quick as you can get there."
"What has come in?" inquired Dr. Davenal.
"A young man fell on his head from the very top of that scaffolding in High Street, sir. It is a dreadful case, and the house-surgeon does not think he can be saved, even with the operation. The top of the head is crushed in. Mr. Berry and Dr. Ford and some more are there, but they wish for you." Dr. Davenal did not delay a moment. In a case of real necessity he threw aside all thought of precaution for himself. If human skill could save the life of this poor young man, he knew that his could, and he knew that perhaps his was the only hand in Hallingham which could successfully carry through the critical and delicate operation he suspected must be performed.
He had no greatcoat with him, and he started off at once with Julius Wild, heated as he was. The rain beat against him in a torrent, for it poured now; the wind whirled itself in eddies about his person. No umbrella could live in it; one which the doctor had borrowed from the hall of Mrs. Scott was turned inside out ere he had taken many steps.
"A rough night, sir," remarked the young embryo surgeon, as he kept by his side.
"It is that," said Dr. Davenal.
Away they splashed through the muddy pools in the streets. It was quite dark now, with the unusually gloomy evening, and the gas lamps only served to mislead their eyesight in the haste they had to make. There could be no waiting to pick the way. The Infirmary was at a considerable distance from Mrs. Scott's, and ere they reached it the cold had struck to one of them. The one was not Julius Wild.
When they came in view of the Infirmary, Julius Wild ran forward to give notice that the doctor was approaching. Two or three of the medical men were in the great hall looking out for him; Mark Cray was one of them. The news of the accident had travelled in the town, and the surgeons attached to the Infirmary were collecting there.
"We began to despair of you," cried Dr. Ford, "and there's no time to be lost. I was just recommending Mr. Cray to be the one to officiate." Dr. Davenal turned his eye with an eagle glance on Mark Cray ere the words had well left Dr. Ford's lips. The look, the warning conveyed in it, was involuntary. Had Mark actually acceded to the recommendation, the look could scarcely have been sterner. Mark coloured under it, and his thoughts went back to Lady Oswald. Never, in Dr. Davenal's presence, must he attempt to try his skill again.
XXVIII. THE LAST MEETING
The night's work told on Dr. Davenal. The soaking rain, the chilling wind, had struck inward the perspiration which Mrs. Scott's heated room had induced. On the next day he was visibly ill. Sara noticed it, and begged him not to go out.
"Not go out, child? I must go out."
"But you are not in a state for it. I am sure you are very ill."
"I caught cold last night; that's what it is. It will go off in a day or two."
"Yes if you will lie by and nurse yourself. Not if you go out to make it worse."
"I have never lain by in all my life, Sara. A doctor has no time for it. What would become of my patients?"
He went out to his carriage, then waiting for him. The close carriage. Bright as the day was--for the weather had changed--it was the close carriage that had been ordered round by the doctor.
"Is master ill, I wonder?" thought Roger, when he found it was only to pay the daily round of near visits.
As the doctor went out at the gate it happened that Oswald Cray was passing. And Mr. Oswald Cray quite started when he saw Dr. Davenal, the change in him was so great.
It was impossible for either of them to pass the other, had they so wished it, without being guilty of absolute rudeness, and they stopped simultaneously.
"You are ill, Dr. Davenal?" exclaimed Oswald, speaking impulsively.
"Middling. I have got a cold hanging about me. We have had some bad weather here."
It cannot be denied that Dr. Davenal's tone and manner betrayed a coldness never yet offered to Oswald Cray. Generous man though he was by nature, as little prone to take offence as most people, he did think that Oswald Cray's slighting conduct had been unjustifiable, and he could not help showing his sense of it.
They stood a moment in silence, Oswald marking the ravages illness or something else had made on the doctor's face and form. His figure was drooping now, his face was careworn; but the sickness looked to be of mind more than of body. Unfortunately those miserable suspicions instilled into Oswald Cray's brain arose now with redoubled force, and a question suggested itself--could anything save remorse change a man as he had changed, in the short space of time?
"You are a stranger now, Mr. Oswald Cray. What has kept you from us?"
"The last time I called you were all out," he answered, somewhat evasively.
"And you could not call again! As you please, of course," continued the doctor, as Oswald's feet, took a somewhat repellant turn, and the Oswald pride became rather too conspicuous. "I had wished to say a word or two to you with regard to the will made by Lady Oswald; but perhaps you do not care to hear it."
"Anything that you, or I, or any one else can say, will not alter the will, Dr. Davenal. And it does not in the least concern me."
"But I think you are resenting it in your heart, for all that."
Ah, what cross-purposes they were at! Oswald had not resented that; and all his fiery pride rose up to boiling heat at being accused of it. He had deemed that to make Dr. Davenal the inheritor was unjust to the nephews of Lady Oswald, and he had felt for them; but he had not resented it, even at heart. He spoke the literal truth when he said it was a matter that did not concern him. If the heavy cloud of misapprehension between them could but have cleared itself away!
"Will you be kind enough to understand me once for all, Dr. Davenal?" he haughtily said. "Lady Oswald's money, either before her death or after it, never was, nor could be, any concern of mine. I do not claim a right to give so much as an opinion upon her acts in regard to it; in fact I have no such right. Had she chosen to fling the money into the sea, to benefit nobody, she might have done so, for any wish of mine upon the point. I felt a passing sorrow for the Stephensons when I saw their disappointment, but I did not permit myself to judge so far as to say that Lady Oswald had done wrong. It was no affair of mine," he emphatically added, "and I did not make it one."
In spite of his impressive denial, Dr. Davenal did not believe him. Whence, else, the haughty resentment that shone forth from every line of his features? Whence, else, his studied absence from the house, his altogether slighting conduct? Dr. Davenal made one more effort at concession, at subduing his unfounded prejudices.
"I can assure you I resented the will--if I may so say it. I resented it for the Stephensons' sake, and felt myself a pitiful usurper. Nothing would have induced me to accept that money, Mr. Oswald Cray; and steps are being taken to refund it, every shilling, to the Stephensons."
"Ah," remarked Oswald, "I heard something of that. Had it been willed to me I should have done the same."
He held himself rigidly erect as he said it. There was no unbending of the hard brow, there was no faint smile to break the haughty curve of the lip. That poisonous hint dropped by Neal--that the money was about to be restored through fear--was uncomfortably present to Oswald then. Dr. Davenal saw that the resentment, whatever its cause, was immovable, and he stepped into his carriage without shaking hands.
"Good-morning to you, Mr. Oswald Cray."
And then the reaction set in in Oswald Cray's mind, and he began to blush for his discourtesy. The careworn face, the feeble form, haunted him throughout the day, and he began to ask himself, what if all his premises were wrong--if appearances and Neal's tale had been deceitful--if he had done the doctor grievous ill in his heart I It was but the reaction, I say, the repentance arising from his own haughty discourtesy, which he felt had been more offensively palpable than it need have been; but it clung to him for hours, haunting him in all the business that he had to transact.
It was somewhat strange that just when this new feeling was upon him he should encounter Sara Davenal. They met in a lonely place--the once-famed graveyard at the back of the Abbey.
His business for the day over, Oswald Cray was going to pay a visit to Mark and his wife. He was nearer the back of the Abbey than the front, and, ignoring ceremony, intended to enter by the small grated door, a relic of the old Abbey, which divided the graveyard from one of the long Abbey passages. In passing the tombstone already mentioned, Oswald turned his eyes down upon it: in the bright moonlight---for never had the moon been brighter--he could almost trace the letters: the next moment a noise in front attracted his attention--the closing of the grated door. There stood Sara Davenal. She had stayed with Mrs. Cray later than she intended, and was hastening home to dinner: in leaving the Abbey by this back entrance a few minutes of the road were saved.
They met face to face. Sara's heart stood still, and her countenance changed from white to red with emotion. And Oswald?--all the love that he had been endeavouring to suppress returned in its deepest force.
Ah, it is of no use! Try as we may, we cannot evade the laws of nature; we cannot bend them to our own will. In spite of the previous resolutions of weeks to forget her, Oswald Cray stood there knowing that he loved her above everything on earth.
"How are you, Sara?"
He put out his hand to her in all calm self-possession; he spoke the salutation with quiet equanimity; but as Sara looked in his face she knew that his agitation was not in reality less than hers. She said a few confused words in explanation of her being there at that hour, and alone. On calling that afternoon she had found Caroline not well, and had stayed with her to the last moment, as Mark was in the country.
Then for a whole minute there was a silence. Perhaps neither could speak. Sara put an end to it by turning towards the gate.
"You will let me see you home, as you are alone?"
"No, thank you," she answered. "There is nothing to hurt me. It is as light as day."
He did not press it. He seemed half-paralysed with indecision. Sara wished him good night, and he responded to it, and once more shook hands, all mechanically.
But as she was going through the gate, she turned to speak, a question having occurred to her. One moment longer, and he had arrested her progress.
"There are two or three books at our house belonging to you," she said. "What is to be done with them? Shall they be sent to the Apple Tree?"
He caught her hands; he drew her from the gate into the bright moonlight. He could not let her go without a word of explanation; the cruelty of visiting upon her her father's sin was very present to him then.
"Are we to part thus for ever, Sara?"
Surely that question was cruel! It was not she who had instituted the parting; it was himself. She did not so much as know its cause.
"May we not meet once in a way, as friends?" he continued. "I dare not ask for more now."
That he loved her still was all too evident. And Sara took courage to gasp forth a question. In these moments of agitation the cold conventionalities of the world are sometimes set aside.
"What has been the matter? How have we offended you?"
"You have not offended me," he answered, his agitation almost irrepressible. "I love you more than I ever did; this one moment of meeting has proved it to me. I could lay down my life for you, Sara; I could sacrifice all, save honour, for you. And you? You have not changed?--you love me still?"
"Yes," she gasped, unable to deny the truth, too miserable to care to suppress it.
"And yet we must part! we must go forth on our separate paths, striving to forget. But when our lives shall end, Sara, we shall neither of us have loved another as we love now."
Her very heart seemed to shiver; the fiat was all too plainly expressed. But she stood there quietly, waiting for more, her hand in his.
"I would have forfeited half my future life, I would have given all its benefits to be able to call you mine. The blow upon me has been very bitter."
"What blow?" she murmured.
"I cannot tell it you," he cried, after a struggle. "Not to you can I speak of it."
"But you must," she rejoined, the words breaking from her in her agony. "You have said too much, or too little."
"I have--Heaven help me! Can you not guess what it is that has caused this?"
"N--o," she faltered. But even as the word left her lips there rose up before her the secret of that dreadful night--with the suspicion that Oswald had in some unaccountable manner become cognisant of it.
"I loved you as I believe man never yet loved, Sara; I looked forward to years of happiness with you; I expected you to be my wife. And--and--I cannot go on!" he broke off. "I cannot speak of this to you."
The tears were rolling down her pale face. "You must not leave me in suspense, Oswald. It may be better for us both that you should speak out freely."
Yes, it might be better for them both; at any rate he felt that no choice was left to him now. He drew nearer to her and lowered his voice to a whisper.
"Is there no--Heaven pardon me for speaking the word to you, Sara!--disgraceful secret attaching now to--to your family? One which would render it impossible for a man of honour to----"
He would not say more; he had said enough; and he felt the words to his heart's core. Whatever pain they may have brought to her, they inflicted tenfold more upon him. With a low cry, she flung her hands before her face.
"Is it so, Sara?"
"It is. How did you hear of it?"
"The whisper came to me. Some people might--might--call it murder."
"No, no!" she broke forth in her pain. "It surely was not so bad as that. They kept the details from me, Oswald; but it could not have been so bad as that."
The words fell on his heart like an ice-bolt. Unconsciously to himself he had been hoping that she might disprove the tale. For that purpose he had whispered to her of the worst: but it seemed that she could not deny it. It was quite enough, and he quitted the subject abruptly.
"God bless you, my darling, for ever and for ever," he said, taking her hands in his. "I do not respect or love you less; but I cannot--I cannot--you know what I would say. It is a cruel fate upon me, as upon you; and for the present, for both our sakes, it may be better that our paths in life should lie apart. After awhile we may meet again, as friends, and continue to be such throughout life."
The tears had dried on her face, as it was lifted in the moonlight, its expression one living agony. But there was no resentment in it; on the contrary, she fully justified him. Her hands lingered in his with a farewell pressure, and she strove to re-echo the blessing he had given.
They parted, each going a different way. Oswald Cray, in no mood for the Abbey now, struck off towards the "Apple Tree;" Sara, drawing her veil over her face, went on to her home.
And so the dream was over. The dream which she had long been unconsciously cherishing of what a meeting between them might bring about, was over; and Sara Davenal had been rudely awakened to stern reality.
XXIX. A SPECIAL FAVOUR FOR NEAL
The whole night subsequent to the meeting in the Abbey graveyard with Oswald Cray, did Sara lie awake, striving to battle with her pain. It was very sore to bear. She knew now the cause of his absenting himself; and she knew that they were lost to each other for ever. It is the worst pain that a woman can be called upon to endure; no subsequent tribulation in life can equal its keen anguish.
Ten times in the night she prayed for help--for strength to support, and live, through her mind's trouble. She did not pray that it might be taken from her; that was hopeless; she knew that weeks and months must elapse before even the first brunt would lose its force; that years must roll on before tranquillity could come.
She did not blame Oswald Cray. She believed that that unhappy secret, of the precise nature of which she was yet in ignorance, had become known to him: how, she could not conjecture. Perhaps he knew it in all its terrible details--and that these were terrible, she doubted less now than ever. Were they not--ay, she fully believed it?--shortening her father's life? What had been that awful word spoken by Oswald Cray?--though she could not believe it to be so bad as that. But she knew that it was something to bring disgrace and danger in its train; and she fully justified Oswald Cray in the step he had taken. Still she thought that he should have come to her in the first onset and plainly said, "Such and such a thing has come to my knowledge, and therefore we must part." He had not done this; he had left her for weeks to the slow torture of suspense--and yet that very suspense was more tolerable than the certainty now arrived at. Oh, the dull dead pain that lay on her heart!--never for a long, long while to be lifted from it.
She strove to reason calmly with herself; she essayed to mark out what her future course should be. She knew that there was nothing at present but to bear her burden and hide it from the world's eye; but she would do her duty all the same, Heaven helping her, in all the relations of life; she would strive nobly to take her full part in life's battle, whatever the inward struggle.
There is no doubt that in that night of tribulation she looked at the future in its very darkest aspect. It was well perhaps, that it should be so, for the horizon might clear a little as she went on. That Mr. Oswald Cray would in time marry, she had no right to doubt--a word or two of his had almost seemed to hint at it: man forgets more easily than woman.
Towards morning she dropped into a heavy sleep, and had slept longer than usual. This caused her to be late in dressing, and brought upon her the reproof of punctual Miss Bettina. She looked at herself in the glass ere she went down; at her pale face, her heavy eyelids; hoping, trusting they would escape observation. What a happy thing it is that others cannot read our faces as we read them! Miss Bettina was at the head of the breakfast-table. She was suffering from a cold; but, ill or well, she was sure to be at her post and Dr. Davenal stood at the fire, his elbow on the mantelpiece, his forehead leaning on his hand.
Sara went up to him, and he seemed to rouse himself from a reverie as he kissed her. She noticed how ill he looked.
"Papa, I am sure you are worse!"
"I don't feel very well, child."
"If you would but stay at home for a day or two and nurse yourself!"
"Ah! I have not time. There's a great deal of sickness about, and my patients must not be neglected."
"Mark Cray can attend to them."
"To the light cases he could. Not the serious ones; I wouldn't trust them to him."
"Not trust them to him?" echoed Sara.
The surprised tone of the question aroused Dr. Davenal; he had spoken out too heedlessly his real thoughts. "People dangerously ill have naturally more confidence in me than in a young man," he said, by way of doing away with the impression his avowal might make.
They took their places at the breakfast-table, neither of then able to eat; the doctor from sickness of body, for he was really ill, Sara from sickness of mind.
"Aunt Bettina, I tell papa he ought not to go out today."
"Not going out today?" repeated Miss Bettina. "Why not? What's he going to do, then?"
"I say he ought not to go out. He is not well enough."
Miss Bettina heard this time. She raised her eyes and gazed at the doctor. It was impossible not to see that he did look ill.
"What's the matter with you, Richard?"
"It is only my cold," said the doctor. "It has settled here," touching his chest.
"That's just where mine is settling," grimly returned Aunt Bettina.
"Papa's eating nothing," said Sara.
"As if I could eat, with the skin off my throat and chest!" retorted Miss Bettina, mistaking the words, as usual. "It seems that nobody's eating this morning; you are not: we might as well not have had the breakfast laid. Toast was made to be eaten, Miss Sara Davenal, not to be wastefully crumbled into bits on the plate. I suppose you have not got a cold?"
Sara began to pick up the crumbs and the pieces, and to swallow them as she best could. Anything to escape particular observation.
"I wonder how Mrs. Cray is this morning?" she presently observed, having ransacked her brains for a subject to speak upon. Miss Bettina heard all awry.
"Oswald Cray! Why should you wonder how he is? Is he ill?"
"I said Mrs. Cray, aunt;" and she would have given much to hide the sharp bright blush that the other name brought to her face. "I told you last evening Caroline was not well. I think you always mistake what I say."
"No, I don't mistake. But you have got into a habit of speaking most indistinctly. My belief is, you did say Oswald Cray. He is in town," fiercely added Miss Bettina, as if the fact strengthened her proposition.
"Yes, he is in town," assented Sara, for her aunt was staring so very fixedly at her that she felt herself obliged to say something. "At least he was in town yesterday."
"Where did you see him, Sara?" asked the doctor.
"I met him as I was leaving the Abbey last evening, papa," she replied, not daring to look up as she said it.
"I met him yesterday also," observed Dr. Davenal. "He was passing the gate here just its I was about to step into the carriage. He is a puzzle to me."
Miss Bettina bent her ear. "What's a puzzle to you, doctor?"
"Oswald Cray is. I had the very highest opinion of that man. I could have answered for his being the soul of honour, one entirely above the petty prejudices of the world in ordinary. But he has lost caste in my eyes: has gone down nearly cent per cent."
"It's his pride that's in fault," cried Miss Bettina. "He's the proudest man living, old Sir Philip of Thorndyke excepted."
"What has his pride to do with it?" returned the doctor. "I should say rather his selfishness. He has chosen to take umbrage at Lady Oswald's having left her money to me; and very foolish it was of her, poor thing, to do it! But why he should visit his displeasure----"
"He has not taken umbrage at that, papa," interrupted Sara.
"Yes, he has," said Dr. Davenal. "I spoke to him yesterday of the will, and he declined in the most abrupt manner to hear anything of the matter. His tone in its haughty coldness was half-insulting. Why he should have taken it up so cavalierly, I cannot conceive."
Sara remained silent. She did not again dare to dissent, lest Dr. Davenal should question her more closely. Better let it rest at that; far better let it be thought that Mr. Oswald Cray had taken umbrage at the disposal of the property, than that the real truth should be known.
"I suppose Oswald Cray felt hurt at not being left executor to the will," sagely remarked Miss Bettina. "As to the money, I never will believe that he, with his independent spirit, wanted that."
"He wants his independent spirit shaken out of him, if it is to show itself in this offensive manner," was the doctor's severe remark. "What did he say to you, Sara?"
"Say----?" she stammered, the remembrance of what had really been said between them occurring startlingly to her.
Dr. Davenal noted the hesitating words, he noted the crimsoned cheeks; and a doubt which had once before risen up within him, rose again now. But he let it pass in silence.
"Does he intend to come here again, Sara?" asked Miss Bettina.
"I don't know, aunt," was poor Sara's answer. "I suppose he will come again some time."
And in good truth she did suppose he would come again "some time," when the pain of their separation should have worn away.
Sara quitted her seat as she spoke, throwing down a fork with the movement, and hastened to the window.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Miss Bettina.
"It is the postman, aunt."
"The postman!" echoed Miss Bettina, sharply, wondering what possessed her niece that morning. "If it is the postman, you need not fly from the breakfast-table in that way, upsetting the things. Do you call that manners?"
"O papa," cried Sara, turning round, unmindful of the reproof in her flush of excitement, "I do think here are letters from Edward! Some foreign mail must be in, for the man has an unusual number of letters in his hand, and some of them look like foreign ones."
She turned from the window, and stood gazing at the room door. But no letters appeared. The postman went out again with his quick step, and Sara, feeling grievously disappointed, returned slowly to her seat.
"Is he gone?" presently asked the doctor.
"O yes, papa. He is half-way down the street by this time. He came, I suppose, for one of the servants."
"He didn't ring."
"No. He seemed to go straight to your consulting-room window. Perhaps Neal is there, putting the room to rights."
But Dr. Davenal did not rest so easily satisfied. He opened the door and called down the passage in an imperative voice.
"Neal! Are there no letters?"
Neal came gliding into the room from his pantry, two letters in his hand.
"Why did you not bring them in at once?" somewhat sternly asked the doctor as he took them, certain past suspicions regarding Neal and such missives arising forcibly to his mind.
"I was looking for my waiter, sir: I have mislaid it somewhere. Oh, I left it here, I see."
The silver waiter was on a side-table; not at all where it ought to be; as if it had been put down heedlessly and forgotten. Neal caught it up and retired. It might have been as he said--that the delay was caused by looking for it, and by that only; and Dr. Davenal, more inclined to be charitable than suspicious, thought no more of the matter.
In the keen disappointment which had come over him, he nearly lost sight of other things. Neither of the two letters was from his son; and he had so fully expected to hear from him by the present mail.
Sara's heart was beating. "Are they not from Edward, papa?"
The doctor shook his head as he laid the letters down. "They are both from Dick, I expect His holiday letters." The two letters were respectively addressed to Miss Davenal, and Miss Sara Davenal. The address to Miss Davenal bore evident marks of care in the writing; it was a clear, regular hand, though easily recognisable as a schoolboy's. The address to Sara was a scrawl scarcely legible. Upon opening the letter, hers, Sara found it beautifully written. Until she came to its close she had no suspicion but that it was really written to herself; she supposed it to be a sort of general holiday letter.
"My dear and respected Aunt and Relatives-- As the joyful epoch of Christmas approaches, marking the close of another half-year, we feel how valuable is that time which the best of us are only inclined to regard too lightly. Yet I hope it will be found that I have not wholly wasted the share of it bestowed on me, but have used it to the best of my power and abilities. When you witness the progress made in each branch of my various studies, to which I have earnestly and assiduously devoted my days and hours, I trust that you will find cause to deem I have been no thoughtless pupil, but have done my best to merit your favour and the approbation of my masters. In Greek especially--which Dr. Keen saw fit to promote me to at Midsummer--I flatter myself you will be satisfied with my advancement: it is a delightful study.
"Deeply sensible of the inestimable value of the talents entrusted to me, anxious that not one of them should lie fallow through fault of mine, it has been my constant and earnest endeavour to improve them, so that they may be turned to profitable use in the after-business of life. By industry, by perseverance, and by unflagging attention I have striven to progress, and I may say that it is with regret I part with my beloved studies, even for a temporary period.
"I am desired to present Dr. Keen's compliments to you and my uncle, and to convey to you the intelligence that our winter recess will commence on the 16th of this month, on which day I and Leopold shall hope to return to Hallingham, and to meet you in good health. Leopold regrets sensibly that he will not be able this year to write you his vacation letter: it is a great disappointment to him. He has had a fester on the thumb of his right hand; it is getting better, but still painful. He begs to offer his affectionate duty to yourself, my uncle, Sara, and Mrs. Cray. And trusting you will accept the same from me,
"I am, my dear Aunt,
"Your most sincere and respectful Nephew,
"Richard John Davenal.
"Miss Davenal."
A smile stole across Sara's features at the wording of the letter, so unlike Dick, and she turned over the envelope.
"Yes, 'Miss Sara Davenal!' Dick has made a mistake in the address. It is written to you, Aunt Bettina?"
But Miss Bettina's eyes were glued to her own letter, which she hell open before her. Her lips had drawn themselves in ominously.
"Is it the holiday letter, Sara?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, papa: Richard's. But it is not written to me."
Dr. Davenal took up the letter. Its writing, almost as beautiful as copper-plate, was as easily read as a book: Master Richard must have taken the greatest pains with it. Miss Davenal's was not so easily read, for it seemed to have been dashed off with a skewer. She threw it on the table in considerable temper when she came to its end, and laid her hand solemnly upon it.
"Dr. Davenal, if you do not return this letter instantly to Dr. Keen, I shall. It is a disgrace to have come out of any respectable school."
"Who is it from?" questioned the doctor in surprise.
"Who is it from?--from that wicked nephew of yours--Dick. And you to encourage him!" she added, directing her severe glance at Sara. "It is meant, I suppose, for you." In point of fact, Master Dick Davenal had misdirected his letters, sending his holiday letter to Sara, and one intended exclusively for Sara's eyes to his aunt. Dr. Davenal, in some curiosity, drew towards him the offending letter.
"Dear Old Girl,
"We come home the end of next week hurray! old Keen was for keeping us till the week after and shouldn't we have turned rusty but its all fixed now, the 16th is the joyful day and on the 15th we mean to have a bonfire out of bounds and shouldnt we like to burn up all our books in it you cant think how sick we are of them. Jopper says hed give all Ime sure I would, I hate learning and that's the truth and I havent tried to get on a bit for I know its of no use trying, Greak's horrid, and our greak master is an awful stick and keeps us to it till we feel fit to bufett him its the most hateful bothering languidge you can imagine and I shall never master a line of it and if it werent for cribs I should get a caneing everyday, latin was bad enougff, but greak caps it. We all got into a row which I'll tell you about when I come home and we had our Wensday and saturday holidays stoped for three weeks, it was all threw the writing master a shokking sneek who comes four days a week and found out something and took and told Keen but we have served him out, we have had some good games this half taking things together and if we could berry our books and never do another lesson Keens house wouldnt be so bad, Leo and some more of us were trying to wrench open farmer Clupps stable to get at his poney when he ran a rusty nale into his thumb, old clupp was off to a cattle fair by rail and we knew hed be none the wiser if we exercised the poney up and down the common, and a jolly time of it I can tell you we had only we couldnt find the sadle, well leos thum got bad and he hasnt been abel to write for ever so long and hes uncomon glad of it now for it saves him his holiday letter, had to write mine five times over before it did and I nearly flung it in the fire before Keens face, I never was so sick of anything in my life, its going to aunt Bett this time Keen said it went to uncle Richard at midsummer, good buy till next week darling Sara love to Carry and mind you get a jolly lot of mince pies ready for us.
"Dick Davenal.
"p. s. hows old Betts deafness, its so cold we hope all the ponds will be froze to ice tomorrow."
Dr. Davenal burst into a fit of laughter. The contrast between the genuine letter of the boy and the formal one dictated by the master was so rich. Miss Davenal's brow wore its heaviest frown: the letter was bad enough altogether, but the insult to herself, the "old Bett," could not be forgiven.
"I'll have this letter sent back, Dr. Davenal."
"Tush, Bettina! Send it back, indeed! We were schoolboys and schoolgirls ourselves once. Why, what's this?--here's the postman coming in again! He must have omitted to leave all the letters." It was even so. The postman by inadvertence had carried away a letter addressed to the house, and had now come back with it.
But that mistake was a great piece of good luck for Neal; and in truth its occurring on this morning was a singular coincidence. You will agree with me in saying that it was quite a different sort of luck from any deserved by Neal. Poor Dick Davenal's "sneek" of a writing-master could not stand for honours beside the real sneak, Neal.
Neal had not been at Dr. Davenal's window when the postman came in the first time, as Sara had surmised; Neal was standing in his favourite corner outside, amid the shrubs, having a mind to give himself an airing. It was to this corner the postman had gone, and he delivered three letters into his hands. Neal carried them to his pantry and proceeded to examine the outside with his usual curiosity. Two of them were those he subsequently carried into the breakfast-room; on the third he saw the foreign postmark, and recognised the handwriting of Captain Davenal. And, as Neal turned this about in his hand, he became aware of a curious fact--that it was open. The envelope was not fastened down. The captain's seal was upon it in wax, but it did not serve to fasten it. Whether that young officer, who was given to carelessness, had sealed it in this insecure manner, or whether it had come open in the transit, was of no consequence: it was certainly not closed now.
The temptation proved too strong for Mr. Neal. It happened that he had a motive, a particular motive, apart from his ordinary curiosity, for wishing to see the contents of this letter. He had chanced to overhear a few words spoken between the doctor and his daughter some days previously--words which Neal could, as he expressed himself, make neither top nor tail of; but they referred to Captain Davenal, and created the strongest possible wish in Neal's mind to take a peep at the first letter that should arrive from the gallant officer. Neal had not seen his way to do this at all clear; but it appeared now that fortune had graciously dropped the means into his hands. And the temptation was too strong to be resisted.
Hastily reasoning within himself (the best of us are too prone to reason on our own side of the question, ignoring the other) that in all probability the breakfast-room had not seen or heard the postman, as the man had kept on his side the garden, and had not rung the door-bell, Neal risked it, and carefully drew the letter from the envelope.
A small thin note, addressed to Miss Sara Davenal, dropped out of it. Neal was too busy to pick it up; his eyes were feasting on the opening words of Captain Davenal's letter to his father.
"Neal, are there no letters?"
The interrupting voice was the doctor's: and Neal, in an awful fluster, popped the open letter and the thin one under a dish-cover. There was no help for it; he might not delay; he dared not take the letter in open. So he carried in the other two in his hand, having looked in vain for his customary waiter.
It passed off well enough. Neal returned to the pantry, and finished the perusal of the captain's letter. Then he refolded it, placed the note, which he had not opened, inside as before, and amended the fastening with a modicum of sealing-wax, dropped artistically underneath the old seal.
He was at his wit's end how to convey the letter to the doctor, so that no suspicion might rest upon himself. Suppress it he dare not, for the postman could have testified to its delivery when inquiries were made. He was coming to the conclusion that the best way would be to put it amidst the shrubs, as if he or the postman had dropped it, and let somebody find it and convey it to Dr. Davenal, when the postman's knock at the hall door aroused him.
"I don't know how I came to overlook this," said the man, handing in a letter. "It had got slipped among the others somehow, and I didn't find it till I was ever so far down the street." If ever Neal believed in the descent of special favours from the clouds, he believed in it then. The letter brought back by the postman was directed to Watton. Neal carried it to his panty, deposited the other upon his silver waiter, and took it to the breakfast-room.
"How's this?" cried the doctor.
"The letter-man carried it away with him, sir, by some mistake, he says," answered Neal with a steady tongue and unflinching eye.
"Stupid fellow!" cried the doctor. But he spoke in a good-natured tone. None, save he, knew how welcome a sight was the handwriting of his son.
And when Neal carried down the breakfast-things he coolly told Watton there was a letter for her lying in his pantry, which had come by the morning post.
"You might have brought it down," was Watton's answer.
"So I might," civilly remarked Neal. "I laid it there and forgot it."
XXX. THE DOCTOR'S BIRTHDAY
The dead of the winter passed. That is, Christmas was turned, and January had come in, and was drawing to a close.
Dr. Davenal's state of health was beginning to attract attention. It cannot be said that absolute fears were excited, but people said to each other and to him that he ought to take more care. Especial care of himself he certainly did not take, and he seemed to take cold upon cold. It must not be thought that Dr. Davenal was recklessly neglectful, supinely careless. It was not that at all. But he was one of the many who seemed to have an assured trust in their own constitution; almost believing their state of good health immutable. Other folks are liable to ailments, but they have no fear of themselves. This is sometimes notably the case with those who have never experienced illness, who have passed an active life with neither an ache nor a pain.
As had Dr. Davenal. Of a naturally good constitution, temperate in his habits, taking a good deal of exercise one way or another, his mind always occupied, he did not know what it was to have a day's illness. The great blow which had fallen upon him in the death of his son told upon his mind more than upon his body. If it had bent his shoulders and left lines of care upon his face, it had not made him ill. It was reserved for the later calamity to do that--that terrible secret whose particulars none save the doctor knew. That had nearly prostrated him--it had re-acted on the body; and when the cold fastened on him the day he had to hasten from Mrs. Scott's hot room to the Infirmary, it laid hold of him for ever.
He could not shake it off. Miss Davenal told him somewhat crossly that he kept catching cold upon cold; but the doctor himself knew that it was that first cold hanging about him. He apprehended no real danger: he did not pay much attention to it. Had he possessed a mind at rest, he might have thought more of the body's ailments, but with that great burden of despair--and, in truth, it was little else--weighing him down, what in comparison was any sickness of body? As to lying by, he never so much as gave it a thought. So long as he could go about, he would go about. He thought of others before himself; he was one who strove hard to do his duty in the sight of God; and he would have deemed it little else than a sin selfishly to stop indoors to nurse himself, when there might be fellow-creatures dying for the want of his aid. It was very easy to say other doctors might attend for him; we all know how valuable in illness is the presence of the physician we trust; and none in Hallingham was trusted as was Dr. Davenal.
And so, with his aching mind and his aching body, he went about his work. It is just possible that a fortnight or so's rest might have saved him but he did not take it. He went about his work as usual--nay, with more than his wonted activity, for it was a season of much sickness at Hallingham, as it was that winter in many other places. He bore on, never flagging; but he grew weaker day by day, and everybody remarked how poorly the doctor was looking. No fears for his state were aroused indoors. Sara attributed all she saw amiss in him to the burden of that great secret, of which she had had only partial cognisance; and Miss Davenal felt cross with him.
For Bettina Davenal suspected neither illness of body nor illness of mind. How should she connect the latter with the prosperous physician? She knew that he had been grieved at the going abroad of his son Edward, a grief in which she by no means joined, deeming that a little roughing it out in the world would be found of wholesome benefit to the indulged son and brave captain; and she rather despised the doctor for regretting him. He was silent, and thin, and worn; he had no appetite; his spirits seemed gone; she saw all this, but never supposed it was caused by anything but the departure of his son.
His not eating was made the worst grievance of by Miss Bettina. Once before, in an unusual season of sickness, the doctor had--not, perhaps, lost his appetite, but allowed himself no time for his meals. Miss Bettina believed that this was a similar case; that his patients were absorbing his appetite and his energies; and she gave him a good sound lecturing, as she might have given to Dick. Get what she would for the table, plain food or dainties, it seemed all one to the doctor: he would taste, perhaps, to please her, but he could not eat.
"I can't help it," he said to her one day. "I suppose I am worse than you think."
For the truth, or rather a suspicion of it, had at length dawned on Dr. Davenal--that he was more seriously ill than he had allowed himself to imagine. Unfavourable symptoms connected with his chest and lungs had forced themselves upon his notice on that very morning, and he asked himself what they meant, and what they boded. Had he neglected himself too long?
It was the 24th of January, a notable day in the doctor's household, for it was his birthday, and was always kept amongst themselves. Dick and Leo made the day a plea for the extension of their holidays. The school generally reopened about a week earlier, but of course, as they told their uncle, they could not go back with his birthday so near: they must stay to wish him many happy returns of it. Miss Davenal saw no reason in the plea, and was severe when the doctor allowed it--as he always did; she would never keep boys at home a single hour after the school opened. But with Uncle Richard to back them, Dick and Leo did not care for Aunt Bettina.
Yes, it was on this morning that Dr. Davenal awoke to the serious state of his own health. If what he suspected was true, he feared he should not be long in this world.
He said nothing. He went out as usual in his close carriage, which he had latterly used, and forgot not a single call. But he said to himself that perhaps in a few days, when he should have brought through, if Heaven willed, one or two patients who were lying in extreme danger, he might make arrangements for stopping at home and nursing himself.
On this same day the doctor again saw Oswald Cray. He had occasion to give some directions to Mark, missed seeing him at the Infirmary, and told Roger to drive to the Abbey. Upon entering, he found not Mark but Oswald. Oswald, it appeared, had just called, and was waiting for Mrs. Cray to come down. Mark was out.
Dr. Davenal cherished no resentment. He deemed that Oswald Cray had behaved to him badly, but he had never been of a retaliating spirit, and least of all was he inclined to it now.
The doctor pressed Oswald Cray's hand cordially as he shook it. The thought flashed over him that he would make one more effort towards a reconciliation. A few moments given to commonplace salutations, and then he spoke.
"This is my birthday, Mr. Oswald Cray. Mark and Caroline are coming to dine with us: will you join them?"
"You are very kind. But I must go up to London by the seven train."
Not a word of "wishing" he could come, or regret that he could not. The doctor noticed that; he noticed also that his tone was more polite than warm. But he did not yet give him up.
"It may be the last birthday I shall see. We shall be glad to welcome you."
"I hope you will see many yet; but I am obliged to return to town. Thank you all the same."
Coldly courteous still! Dr. Davenal, who would not wait, as Mark was out, again offered his hand in parting.
"Some estrangement has come between us which I do not understand, Mr. Oswald Cray. Remember what I say, should this be the last time we speak together, that it is you who have to answer for it, not I."
"One word, Dr. Davenal," for the doctor was turning away to regain his carriage. "Believe at least this much, that none can regret the estrangement more than I regret it."
"Is it explainable?"
"Not by me," replied Oswald, somewhat of his old hauteur coming upon him. He honestly believed in his heart that Dr. Davenal, in saying these few words, was but acting a part.
"Fare you well," said the doctor as he went out.
"Farewell," repeated Oswald. And they were the last words ever spoken between them.
It was a social family dinner that evening at Dr. Davenal's, and for some of its partakers a right merry one. Mark Cray and his wife were merry as heart could wish, the two boys boisterously so, Miss Davenal gracious. Sara was quiet, the doctor was ill, and a gentleman whom the doctor had invited after Oswald Cray declined, was grieving over the alteration so conspicuously visible in Dr. Davenal.
This was the Rev. John Stephenson. He was at Hallingham on business, had called that afternoon on Dr. Davenal, and the doctor had pressed him to stay dinner.
When the cloth was removed, and Mr. Stephenson had said grace, and Dick and Leo were up to their eyes in nuts and oranges, Mark Cray stood in his place and made a natty little speech. Mark was fond of making speeches they were a great deal more to his taste than surgical operations. His present effort lasted five minutes, and wound up with wishing the doctor many happy returns of the day.
"Hurrah!" shouted Dick. "Uncle Richard, I hope you'll have a hundred birthdays yet!"
"And plenty of good things for you to eat as they come round, eh, Dick?" rejoined the doctor with a smile.
"Oh, of course," cried Dick, his eyes sparkling. "It always does come in the Christmas holidays, you know."
The doctor slightly rose from his chair, leaning with both hands on the table. His manner was subdued, his voice inexpressibly gentle and loving.
"My dear friends, I thank you for your kindness; I thank you from my very heart. I am not well, and you must accept these few words in answer to Mark's more elaborate speech. It may be the last time I shall be here to receive your good wishes or to thank you for them. May God bless you!"--and he raised his hands slowly and solemnly--"May God bless and love you all when I shall be gone!"
The words took them utterly by surprise. Sara bent her head, and pressed her hands upon her bosom as if to press down the sudden sobs that seemed as if they would choke her; Dick and Leo stared; Miss Bettina complacently nodded her acknowledgments, she knew not why, for she had failed to hear; and Caroline looked up in wonder. Mark Cray was the first to speak.
"Do you feel ill, sir?"
"Not particularly; not much more so than I have felt lately. I don't think I am very well, Mark."
"You are overworked, sir. You must take some rest"
"Rest may be nearer for me than we think, Mark."
"O papa, don't!" wailed Sara. "Don't speak so, unless you would break my heart!"
Her emotion had become uncontrollable, and the anguish had spoken out. Never until that moment had the prospect of losing her father been brought palpably before Sara, and it was more than she well knew how to bear. In spite of her natural reticence of feeling, of the presence of a stranger, she quite shook with her hysterical sobs.
Miss Davenal was frightened, and somewhat indignant: she bent her head forward. "What on earth's the matter with Sara?"
"Hush, Aunt Bettina," called out Mrs. Cray. "Don't scold her. Uncle Richard has been talking gloomily. He says he is ill."
"Ill! of course he is ill," retorted Miss Bettina, who had contrived to hear. "He won't eat. He is out and about with his patients from morning till night, and then comes in too tired to eat anything. He has not swallowed a couple of ounces of meat all the last week. What can he expect but to be ill? But there's no cause for Sara to burst into a violent fit of crying over it. Will you be so kind as to excuse it, sir?" she added, in her stately courtesy, to the clergyman who was sitting at her right hand.
He bowed. A man who has known long-continued adversity can feel for sorrow, and his heart was aching for the grief of the child, and for the serious change he saw in the father, his benefactor. Mark turned to Miss Davenal.
"It is just what I say, Miss Bettina, that the doctor is overworked. He wants a week or two's rest."
"And what are you good for if you can't contrive that he should have it?" was her answer. "I think you might see his patients for him."
"So I could," answered Mark. "Only he won't let me."
Sara's emotion was subsiding: she sat very still now, her head a little bent, as if ashamed of having betrayed it; the tears dried upon her cheeks, but an uncontrollable sob broke from her now and then. Dr. Davenal had taken her hand under the table, for she sat next to him, and was holding it in his.
"You foolish child!" he fondly whispered.
"Papa, if--if anything were to happen to you--if you were to go and leave me here alone, I should die," was the answer, uttered passionately.
"Hush, hush! My darling, you and I are alike in the hands of a loving God."
She laid her fingers again upon her bosom. How violently it was beating, how difficult it was to still its throbs of pain, she alone knew.
"I met that gentleman this afternoon, the connection of Lady Oswald's whom I saw for the first time the day of the funeral," spoke up the clergyman, breaking the silence which had fallen upon the room. "Mr. Oswald Cray."
"I met him, too," said the doctor. "It was at your house, Mark. I asked him to come here today, but he declined."
"He is gone back to town, I think," said Mark.
"He said he was going."
"Did you ask him to dine here, Uncle Richard?" cried Leo.
"I did, my boy."
"And wouldn't he!" rejoined Mark.
"No, he wouldn't. And, mind, I think he wouldn't; although Ac declined upon the plea of having to get back to town."
"My! what a stupid duff he was!" exclaimed Richard. "Did he know there was going to be a turkey and plum-pudding?"
"I didn't tell him that, Dick. My impression is, that he never means to enter our house again," the doctor added in a low tone to his daughter.
"But why?" exclaimed Caroline, who sat on the other side the doctor, and caught the words. "There must be something extraordinary at the bottom of all this."
"Never mind going into it now, Carine," whispered the doctor. "His grievance is connected with Lady Oswald's will, but we need not say so before Mr. Stephenson."
Sara looked up hastily, impulsive words rising to her lips; but she recollected herself, and bent her head again in silence. Not even to her father dared she to say that his conclusion was a mistaken one.
"Uncle Richard, now that I look at you, it does appear to me that you are changed for the worse," remarked Mrs. Cray. "You must nurse yourself, as Mark says. Hallingham would not understand your being ill, you know."
"True," laughed the doctor.
Caroline Cray, seeing her uncle daily, or nearly so, had not perceived the great change which had been gradually going on in him. But to Mr. Stephenson, who had not met him since the time of Lady Oswald's death, it was all too palpable; as it had been that day to Oswald Cray.
"We must not forget the captain today, doctor," spoke up Mark. "Have you heard from him again?"
"O yes."
"How does he like his Maltese quarters?"
"I am not sure that he has said. It is not of much consequence whether he liked them or not. The regiment was ordered on to India."
"To India!"
"Yes." It was impossible not to note the sad tone in which the monosyllable was spoken. Dr. Davenal had begun to know that he and his son should never again meet on earth: the son whom he so loved!
Somehow, what with one thing and another, that birthday evening was a sadder one than they had been accustomed to spend. Mark Cray, as he walked home with his wife afterwards, remarked that it was "slow." But nobody dreamt of anything like fear for the doctor, save his daughter and the Reverend Mr. Stephenson.
"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, sir," murmured the clergyman, as he was leaving. "Neither can my brother. You have done for us what I believe no other man living would have done. May Heaven reward you, and restore you to health and strength!"
"I did but my duty," answered the doctor. "The money belonged to you, not to me. I am only glad there were no vexatious legal obstacles brought up to obstruct the transfer. I shall always be glad to see you, remember, when you come to Hallingham."
Mr. Stephenson thanked him. But as he went out, the impression was strong upon his mind that the doctor himself would not long be in Hallingham.
And Sara? What must it have been for her! Her mind was one chaos of tumultuous emotion. She seemed to have accepted the fear as a certainty, to have been obliged to accept it. Oh, what would save him?--could not the whole faculty restore his precious life? She passed another night of anguish, like unto the one she had passed nearly two months before, after parting with Oswald Cray in the Abbey graveyard--like it, but more apprehensively painful; and she wondered how she got through it.
With the morning, things did not wear so intensely gloomy an aspect. The broad daylight, the avocations and bustle of daily life, are an antidote to gloom, and the worst prospect loses some of its darkness then. Sara tried to reason with herself that he could not have become so ill on a sudden as to be past recovery, she tried to say that it was foolish even to think it.
But her mind could not be at rest, her state of suspense was intolerable, and before entering the breakfast-room she knocked at her father's study-door, and entered. Dr. Davenal was closing the Bible.
"What is it, my dear?"
"O papa"--and the words came forth with a burst of pent-up anguish--"I cannot live in this suspense. What did you mean last night? What is it that is the matter with you?"
"I scarcely know, Sara. Only that I feel ill."
"But--you--cannot--be going to die?"
"Hush, my child! You must not agitate yourself in this way. Die? Well, no, I hope not," he added, quite in a joking manner. "I feel ten per cent better this morning than I did yesterday."
"Do you!" she eagerly cried. "But--what you said last night?----"
"Last night I felt gloomy--oppressed. Serious thoughts do intrude themselves sometimes on one's birthday. And I was really ill yesterday. I feel quite a different man today."
Her fears were growing wonderfully calmer. "You are sure, papa?"
"Sure of what? That I am better?--I am sure I feel so. I shall be all right, child, I hope."
"Won't you have advice, papa?" she imploringly said.
"Advice? That's a compliment to myself, young lady. Hallingham would tell you that there's no advice better than Dr. Davenal's own."
"But, papa--I mean different advice. I thought of the clever London doctors. You must have them down to see you."
"Some of the clever London doctors would be glad of the countryman Richard Davenal's advice. Seriously speaking, my dear, though I say it in all modesty, I don't believe there's a man in Europe more skilful than myself."
"But they might suggest remedies that you would not think of. O papa! if there's a necessity, do summon them."
"Be assured of one thing, Sara, and set your mind at rest. Should the necessity arise, I will not fail to seek any one or anything that I think may help me. My life has not of late been a happy one, but I am not quite tired of it; I wish I may live long, not only for your sake, but for--for other interests. There's a double necessity for it now."
"And you will not go out today, papa?"
"Today I must. I have not made arrangements to the contrary. But I do mean to give myself a rest, perhaps beginning with tomorrow. I feel a great deal better today--quite another man."
How the words lightened her heart! Dr. Davenal really did feel much better, and the saddened spirit, the almost ominous feeling, which had clung to him the night before, had vanished. But he spoke more lightly of his illness than he would have done had he not seen how it was affecting her.
Dick came drumming at the door, and then pushed it open with a bang.
"Breakfast's waiting, Uncle Richard. And Aunt Bett---- Why! are you there?" broke off the young gentleman as his eyes fell upon Sara. "I'm afraid you'll catch it. Aunt Bett thinks you are not down, and it's ten minutes past eight."
"Are you ready for school, Dick?" asked his uncle. "Elated at the prospect of returning?"
Dick pulled a long face. The two boys were going back that day. A sore trial to Dick, who it must be confessed, had been born with an innate antipathy to books.
"You'll have us home at Easter, Uncle Richard?" he pleaded in a piteous tone.
"Not if I know it, Dick. Holidays twice a-year were thought quite enough in my schooldays, and I see no reason for their not being thought enough now."
"Half the boys go home at Easter--and stop a fortnight: bemoaned Dick.
"Very likely. If half the boys have friends who prefer play to work for them, I'm only glad the other half set a better example. Dicky, boy, you'll enjoy your Midsummer holidays all the more keenly for having none at Easter."
The doctor caught hold of the boy and wound his arm affectionately round him as they proceeded across the hall to the breakfast-room. Miss Davenal greeted Sara with one of her severest aspects, but before she could begin her lecture, Mark Cray had burst in upon them.
"Have you heard the news?" he exclaimed, in a state of excitement never yet witnessed in easy Mark Cray. "Doctor, have you had letters yet?"
"What news? What letters?" asked the doctor.
"Caroline has got her money."
"Caroline got her money?" repeated Dr. Davenal, understanding no better than the rest did.
"The Chancery case is decided," explained Mark. "Judgment was given yesterday, and it is in their favour. She'll get the money directly now."
"How do you know this, Mark?"
"It is in the evening papers--reported in full. I call for my letters sometimes if I am passing the post-office, and I did so this morning and got this paper. White, the lawyer, sent it, I expect, and we shall no doubt hear by this evening's post."
"Well, Mark, I am very glad. Justice lay on Caroline's side; therefore it is right that she should have it. You must settle it upon her as soon as you touch the money."
"Oh, of course," said Mark.
XXXI. BAD NEWS FOR HALLINGHAM
"I say, Neal, what sort of a place is St. Paul's Churchyard?"
The questioner was Watton. She sat in the servants' room near the window, against which the rain was pattering, some household sewing in her hand. Neal, who had entered to get a glass he wanted was rather taken with surprise, but he was not one to show it in his manner.
"Did you never see it?" he asked.
"I saw it in a picture once. I couldn't see it elseways; I've never been to London?"
"It is a large space of land with houses round it and the cathedral in the middle," explained Neal, who seemed always ready to oblige his fellow-servants, especially Watton. "It's a thoroughfare, you know; the road from Ludgate Hill to Cheapside winds round on each side the cathedral, between it and the houses."
"Is it very noisy?"
"Pretty well for that. But the London people don't seem to care for noise. I expect they are so used to it that they don't hear it."
"The houses round St. Paul's are warehouses, aren't they?"
"Warehouses and shops. The shops are mostly on one side and the warehouses on the other."
"Do you know a place called Cannon Street?"
"I should think I do! It leads down from St. Paul's to King William Street. Why do you ask?"
"Well," said Watton slowly, as if she mere deliberating something in her mind, "I am not sure but I am going to live there."
"To live in St. Paul's Churchyard?" repeated Neal.
"I have had a place offered me there, and it seems to me to be a very eligible one," said Watton. "It's to go as housekeeper in a house of business; some large wholesale place, by what I can understand. I should have two or three servants under me, and twenty-five pounds a-year. It seems good, doesn't it?"
"Capital," assented Neal. "Is it in St. Paul's Churchyard?"
"It's either in St. Paul's Churchyard or Cannon Street. She isn't quite sure which, she says. Anyway, it's close to St. Paul's."
"Who's 'she'?" questioned Neal.
"My sister. Her husband is in this establishment, a traveller, or something of that. He has got on well: he was only day assistant in a shop when she married him, fifteen years ago, and now he gets two or three hundred a year. When Miss Bettina told me I should have to leave, I wrote to my sister and asked her to look out for me, and she has sent me word of this."
"But can she get the place for you?" inquired Neal, who was prompt at weighing probabilities and improbabilities in his mind.
"It is in this way. The present housekeeper has been there a good while, and is much respected by the masters, and they have asked her to look out for somebody to take her place. My sister's intimate with her, and has spoken to her about me."
"Why is she going to leave, herself?" questioned Neal, liking to come to the bottom of everything.
Watton laughed. "She is going to begin life on her own score: she's about to be married. I think it's rather venturesome those middle-aged persons marrying: I wouldn't, I know."
"Wait until you are asked," returned Neal, not over gallantly.
"I have been asked more than once in my life," said Watton. "But I didn't see my way clear. It's all a venture. A good many risk it, and a few don't. I'd rather be one of the few. My goodness! how it rains!"
"When do you leave here?"
"When I get a comfortable place. Miss Bettina said I was not to hurry. It isn't as if I were leaving for any fault, or to make room for another. She doesn't like my leaving at all, you know."
Neal nodded. "I heard her grumbling to the doctor, like anything, about it. She talks loud, and one can't shut one's ears at will."
"She need not grumble to the doctor. It is not his fault. He spoke to me himself, saying how sorry he was to part with me, but he could not help it. 'He had had a severe loss of money,' he said, which rendered it necessary that he should alter the rate of his expenditure. I wonder," added Watton, musingly, "how he came to lose it?"
Neal coughed. "Perhaps some bank broke."
"Perhaps it did," answered Watton. "They are ticklish things, those banks. I say, Neal, there's the doctor's bell."
Neal heard the bell for himself, and quitted the room to answer it. Watton got up, put down her work, shook a few threads from her gown, opened a drawer and took out a letter.
She was going upstairs to Miss Bettina to show her the letter she had received, and to ask her advice upon the situation mentioned in it. She felt very much inclined to try for it; only she felt a shrinking doubt of London. Many persons do who have lived to middle age in the country.
Neal entered the room in answer to the ring. The doctor had been out that morning, but returned earlier than usual, for it was not much past twelve. It was the day subsequent to the departure for school of Dick and Leo.
"What a poor fire you have got here, Neal!" said the doctor. "Bring a few sticks and pile the coal on. I feel chilly."
"I hope you have not taken a fresh cold, sir," respectfully observed Neal, as he stirred up the fire preparatory to getting the sticks.
Whether Neal was right or not as to the fresh cold, certain it was, that before night unfavourable symptoms began to manifest themselves in Dr. Davenal. And they increased rapidly.
A few hours and the news went forth to the town--Dr. Davenal was in danger. The consternation it excited cannot well be described--and if described would scarcely be believed. Numbers upon numbers in that town looked upon Dr. Davenal in the light of a public benefactor: they honestly believed that his death would be one of the greatest calamities that could befall them; they believed that, if he went, nobody else could bring them through danger, should it come upon them.
They hastened to the door with their anxious inquiries; they saw the medical men of Hallingham pouring in. What was the matter with him? they eagerly asked. How was he seized?
It was inflammation of the chest, or lungs, or both, they were told. It was in fact an increase of the cold which had been so long hanging upon him, and which he had neglected. Oh, only a cold! they repeated carelessly as they listened--what a mercy that it was nothing worse! And they went away reassured.
A day or two, and there came down a physician from London in answer to a telegraphic dispatch. A day or two more and an ominous whisper went forth to the town--that hope was over. The saddened inhabitants paced to and fro, collected in groups about the door, and glanced up at the doctor's windows, fearing if perchance the blind should have been drawn since they last looked. They watched the medical men glide in and out; they saw a lawyer go in with a bustling step, and came to the conclusion that he went to make the will. Altogether Hallingham was in a fever of excitement.
But there occurred a change; contrary to even the most sanguine expectation a change seemed to take place for the better. Dr. Davenal rallied. The most painful symptoms left him, and some of those around him said he was getting well.
One evening at dusk Neal was observed to come out of the house with a quick movement and hasten up the street. As usual he was instantly surrounded, waylaid by anxious inquirers.
Yes, it was perfectly true, Neal answered, his master was so much better as to surprise all who saw him. The change took place early that morning, and he had been mending ever since. He was well enough to sit up: was sitting up then.
Then there was a hope that he'd recover? the questioners rejoined, scarcely daring to speak the joyful words.
O yes, there seemed every hope of it now. Mr. Cray, who had just gone out, remarked to him, Neal, that he looked upon his master as cured. But Neal couldn't stop to talk more with them then, he said; he was hastening to the chemist's for a draught which the doctor himself had sent him for.
Neal got the draught, imparted the news of the doctor's wonderful improvement to the crowd collecting at the chemist's, for no end of gossipers pressed into the shop when they saw Neal there--retraced the streets with his soft tread, and arrived at home. Entering the consulting-room, where the fire in the grate was getting low, he passed on to his master's bedchamber. Quite a bright chamber for an invalid's. The fire was blazing in the grate, and a handsome lamp, shining through the ornamental pink shade that covered its globe, stood on the small round table. The bed was at the far end of the room in a corner, and Dr. Davenal sat in an easy chair near the fire. He was dressed, all but his coat; in place of that he wore a warm quilted dressing-gown of soft rich silk; one of those rarely handsome dressing-gowns that seem made to be looked at, not to be worn.
He did not appear very ill. Wan and worn certainly, but not so ill as might have been expected. His breath and voice were the worst: both were painfully weak. The table had been drawn close to him, and he was writing at it. A tolerably long letter it looked like, covering three sides of large note-paper. Perhaps if the truth had been declared, he had got up purposely to write this letter.
Sara sat on the other side the fireplace, ready to wait upon him. How she had borne the agony of the last few days and been calm, she did not know, she never would know: it was one of the sharp lessons learnt from life's necessities. "You may be with him," the physician in London bad said to her, "provided you can maintain composure in his presence. The witnessing of a child's grief is sometimes the worst agony that the dying have to bear. I cannot sanction your being in the room unless you can promise to be calm."
"I will promise it," replied Sara in a low tone; but that one expression "the dying" had turned her whole heart to sickness.
Yes, it was one of the lessons that must be learnt in the stern school of life--the maintaining a composed exterior when the heart is breaking. That she was given to reticence of feeling by nature, was of service to Sara Davenal then. But surely the trials that had latterly fallen upon her were very bitter; the battle just now was sharp and keen.
She sat there in her soft dress of violet merino, so quiet and unobtrusive in the sick-room, with its little white lace collar and the narrow lace cuffs turned up on the bands of the sleeves at the wrist. The first day of his illness she had on a silk dress rustling against the chairs and tables, and she had the good sense to go and change it. The chair she sat in was an elbow one, and her hot cheek rested on her fingers as she strove to drive back the inward question that would intrude itself, whether this improvement was for good, or only a fallacious one. She sat perfectly still, her eyes following the motion of his feeble fingers, and it was thus that Neal interrupted them.
"The draught, sir," he said, laying it on the table.
"Set a wine-glass by it," said the doctor. "That will do."
So slowly and feebly! The voice seemed to come from deep down in his chest, and not to be the doctor's voice at all; Neal put the wine-glass as desired, and quitted the room; and the doctor wrote on.
Only for a minute or two: the letter was drawing to a close. Dr. Davenal pressed it with the blotting-paper, read it to himself slowly, and then folded it and put it in an envelope. In all this, his fingers seemed scarcely able to perform their office. He fastened it down, and wrote on the outside his son's name. Then he looked at Sara, touching the letter with his finger.
"My dear, when the next mail goes out, should you have occasion to write of me, let this be enclosed."
"To write of you, papa?" she repeated in a faltering tone. But she need not have asked the question--its meaning had only too surely penetrated to her.
"Should the worst have happened."
"Oh, but--papa--you are getting better!"
She checked the wailing tone; she remembered how necessary, as she had been warned, was calmness in that room; she remembered her promise to maintain it. She pressed her hands upon her bosom and remained still.
"I will take that draught now, Sara, if you will pour it out."
She rose from her seat, undid the paper, poured the contents of the small bottle into the glass, and handed it to him. The doctor drank it, and gave her back the glass with a smile.
"Not one of those clever fellows thought of ordering me this; yet it's the best thing for anybody suffering as I am. Ah! they have got something to learn yet. I don't know how they'll get on without me?"
"Papa, you may get well yet!" she interrupted; anti she could not prevent the anguished sound with which the words were spoken.
He turned and looked at her; he seemed to have fallen into a momentary reverie. But he made no direct answer.
"Can you draw the table away, Sara? I don't want it so close now. Gently; take care of the lamp."
"Where shall I put this, papa?" she asked, referring to the letter.
"In my desk in the next room. You'll know where to find it in case of need. My keys are here, on the mantelpiece."
She stopped to ask one question which seemed to be wrung from her in her pain. "Is it to go all the same if you get better, papa?"
"No. Not if I get better."
Passing into the other room, which was lighted only by the fire, she drew the desk from underneath the table, knelt down, unlocked it, and put in the letter. It was addressed: "For my son, Edward Davenal." Sara was locking the desk again, when some one entered the room and came round the table to where she knelt.
"My goodness! are you saying your prayers?"
Wrapped in silks and ermine, her lovely face peeping out from a charming pink bonnet, was Mrs. Cray. The doctor had expressed a wish to Mark Cray that afternoon that Caroline would come to him, and Mark had delivered the message when he got home.
"Mark says Uncle Richard wants to see me," she explained, "so I thought I'd run down at once. I can't stop; Berry and another friend or two are going to dine with us. I am so delighted to hear of the improvement in Uncle Richard! Mark says the danger is quite over."
"If I could but be sure it was!" was Sara's answer.
"There you are, with your doubts and fears! Never was anybody like you, Sara. Don't I tell you Mark says it is? Yes, I'll take my cloak off for the few minutes that I stop."
She threw off her bonnet, and let the cloak slip from her shoulders, displaying her evening attire, for she had dressed before she came out: a silk, so light as to look almost white, that stood on end with richness and rustled as she walked; the dazzling necklace, given by Captain Davenal, on her white neck; a dewdropped pink rose in her gleaming hair.
Utterly unaccordant looked she with the chamber of the dying, as she stepped into the other room. Dr. Davenal's eyes were fixed on her for a moment in simple wonder, as if he saw a vision. Then he recognised her, and held out his hand, a glad look pervading his countenance.
"Well, Uncle Richard! I am so rejoiced that you are getting better. You'll come and dance at our housewarming yet."
"Are you going to hold one?" asked the doctor, as he held her hand in his, and gazed up at her beauty.
"Mark and I are thinking of it. We can do everything, you know, now that that money's coming to me."
"Ah," said the doctor, "it's about that money I want to talk to you. Sit down, Caroline. How smart you are, my dear!"
"Nay, I think it's you who are smart uncle," she returned with a gay laugh. "So it has come into use at last!"
Caroline touched the dressing-gown as she spoke. There had always been a joke about this dressing-gown. A patient of the doctor's, as fanciful as Lady Oswald and nearly as old, had made it with her own hands and sent it to him. It had remained unused. For one thing, the doctor was too plain in his habits and too busy a man to require a dressing-gown at all; for another he had looked upon the garment as extravagantly fine.
"Yes," said he, in answer to Caroline's remark, "I have found it useful today. It is very warm and comfortable. Caroline, I have been talking again to Mark about the money."
"Well, uncle?"
"I don't know that it is well. Mark does not appear inclined to make me any promise that it shall be settled upon you when it comes. I urged it upon him very strongly this afternoon, and he answered me in his light careless manner, 'Of course. O yes doctor, I'll remember;' but he did not give a specific promise; whether by accident or design, I cannot say. So I told him to send you down to me."
"Yes, uncle," she said, thinking more of the weakness of the voice to which she was listening, than of the import of the words.
"This money must be settled upon you, Caroline, the instant that you touch it. It is essential that a married woman should, if possible, have some settlement. If I recover, I shall take care that this is so settled, but----"
"If you recover!" she interrupted. "Why, Uncle Richard, you are getting well as fast as you can. Mark says so. You are sitting up!"
"True; I am sitting up; and I could not have sat up two or three days ago. Still, I am not sure about the getting well."
"But Mark says so; he says you are," reiterated Caroline.
"And Mark's opinion, as a medical man, must be infallible, you think?" rejoined the doctor, with a momentary look in his face that Caroline did not understand. "At any rate, my dear, it is well to remember all contingencies. 'Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst,' was one of your grandpapa Davenal's favourite maxims. You must have the money settled upon you----"
"But, Uncle Richard, are you quite sure that it would be for the best?" she interposed. "If the money is settled in that way, it would be all tied up, and do us no good after all."
"You would enjoy the interest."
"That's not over much," said Caroline slightingly. "I and Mark have been planning a hundred things that we might do with the money. Refurnish the Abbey splendidly for one."
"You and Mark are a couple of simpletons," retorted the doctor, regaining momentarily his energy of voice. But the effort was too much, and he lay panting for several minutes afterwards. Caroline sat gazing at him, her finger unconsciously raised to her neck, playing with the gleaming toy there. Which should she trust to, these signs of illness, or Mark's opinion?
"Caroline, I insist that the money be settled upon you. Were you and Mark to waste it in nonsense, it would be nothing less than a fraud upon your West Indian relatives from whom it is derived. You may tell Mark so from me. That money, Carine, secured to you, would at least keep the wolf from coming quite in, should he ever approach your door."
Caroline sat aghast, wondering whether the doctor had lost his senses. "The wolf at the door for us, Uncle Richard. As if that could ever be."
"Ah, Carine, I have lived to know that there is no permanent certainty in the brightest lot," he answered with a sigh. "My dear, more experience has been forced upon me in the past year or two than I had learned in the whole course of my previous life. Understand me once for all, this money must be secured to you."
"Very well, Uncle Richard," she answered with ready acquiescence. "It shall be so, as you seem so much to wish it. I'll tell Mark all you say."
A few minutes longer, and Caroline rose. Dr. Davenal was surprised that she should be going again so very soon, and looked inquiringly at her. "Can't you stay a little longer, Caroline?"
"I wish I could; but I shall hardly get back to dinner, and we expect some friends today. Goodnight, Uncle Richard."
He drew her face down to his, murmuring his farewell. Little did Caroline Cray think it would be his last.
Sara went out with her cousin, and saw her depart with the servant who had waited for her. When she returned to the chamber, the doctor was in deep thought.
"I think you must bring the table near to me again, Sara," he said. "There's another word or two I should like to write."
"Yes, papa. Do you want Edward's letter?"
"No, no; it's not to him. There. Dip the pen in the ink for me."
It was a tacit confession of weakness that she did not like to hear; and she saw that even in the short space of time that had elapsed since he wrote before his strength had visibly declined. He was scarcely able to guide the pen.
"That will do," when he had traced a few lines. "Sara, should you have occasion to send this, enclose it in a note from yourself, explaining my state when I penned it; that I was almost past writing. Will you remember?"
"Yes, papa," she answered, her heart beating painfully at the words.
"Fold it for me."
Honourable in all her thoughts and actions, Sara folded the note with the writing turned from her. It is just possible some children might have been sufficiently actuated by curiosity to glance at least at the name at the commencement of the note. Not so Sara Davenal. She placed it in an envelope and fastened it down.
"I think I can direct it, Sara. Just the name."
She gave him the pen, and he traced the name in uneven, doubtful letters. Sara noted it with surprise, and perhaps her pulses quickened. "O. Oswald Cray, Esquire."
"Put it in my desk with Edward's, my dear. If you have occasion to send the one, you will the other." As she unlocked the desk again her tears were raining down fast. In all that her father was saying and doing there seemed to be a foreshadowing in his own mind of his approaching death. She quitted the room for a few minutes that her emotion might spend itself, and in the interval Miss Davenal entered. The soft rustling of Miss Bettina's sweeping silks aroused the doctor, who had fallen into a dose. She went up and took his hand.
"Richard, how are you tonight?"
"I hardly know. Middling."
"Sara is fancying you are not so well."
"Is she?"
"But she always was given to fancies, you know. Is it right that you should sit up so long the first time of leaving your bed?"
"Yes, I like the change. I was tired of bed. Sit down, Bettina. There are one or two things I want to say to you."
"Are you finding yourself worse?"
"Bettina, I have not been better."
"The doctors have thought you so," she said, after a pause.
"Ay, but I know more of my own state than they can tell me. When the suffering and its signs passed, they leaped to the conclusion that the disease had left me. In a measure, so it has, but they should have remembered in how many of such cases the apparent improvement is all deceit, the forerunner of the end."
Bettina Davenal fully understood the words and what they implied. But she was not a demonstrative woman, and the rubbing together of her white and somewhat bony hands was the sole sign of the inward aching heart.
"And I am thankful for the improvement," added the doctor. "It is not all who are permitted this freedom from pain in their dying hours."
"O Richard! is there no hope?"
"I fear not," he gravely answered. "I am accustomed to impress upon my patients the great truth that while there is life there is hope, and I should be worse than a heathen to ignore it in my own case. But, all I can say is, I cannot trust to it."
She had laid one of her hands upon the folds of the dressing-gown, and the doctor could feel the twitching of the fingers. He had asked her to sit down, but she preferred to stand. Close to him, with her head bent, she could hear his low words without much misapprehension, so deliberately were they spoken between the panting breath.
"Bettina, I don't go to my grave as I thought I should have gone, providing for my children. I have been obliged to sacrifice all I had put by. It was not a great deal, it's true, for I am but what's called a middle-aged man, and my expenses have been high. Could I have foreseen my early death, I should have lived at half the rate. And this sacrifice will not die with me. The house--I daresay I shall shock you, Bettina--is mortgaged; not, however, to its full value. I have directed in my will that it shall be sold; and the residue, after the mortgage is paid--can you hear me?" he broke off to ask.
"Every word."
"The residue and the proceeds of the furniture, and those two small cottages of mine, and other effects which will be likewise sold, will make a fair sum. There's money owing to me in the town, too. Altogether I expect there will not be much less than three thousand pounds----"
"Richard!" shrieked out Miss Bettina, in her emotion. "Three thousand! I thought you were worth ten at least."
"No, it was not so much as that altogether. I had four or five thousand put by. Never mind: I say I have had to sacrifice it. I feel how imprudent I have been, now that it is too late."
"To what have you had to sacrifice it?"
The doctor paused before he replied. "A sudden claim came upon me of which I knew nothing: a claim for thousands. No, Bettina, I know what you wish to say--believe me, I could not resist it: to pay it was obligatory. The worst is, I could not pay it all: and the sum which the property will realise will have to be applied to liquidate it."
"But you can tell me what the claim was for?"
"No, I cannot. It is not altogether my secret, Bettina, and you must not inquire into it. I need not have mentioned it at all to you, but for speaking of Sara. My poor children must suffer. Edward has his day, and he will have to make it suffice: Sara has nothing. Bettina, you will give her a home?"
"There's no necessity for you to ask it," was Bettina Davenal's answer. But she spoke crossly; for the want of confidence in not intrusting to her the nature of this secret was hurting her feelings bitterly. "Should anything happen to you, Sara will naturally find a home with me--if she can put up with its plainness. I shall make her as welcome, and consider it as obligatory on me to do so, as though she were my own child."
The doctor lay back for a moment in his chair, panting. His fingers clasped themselves over hers in token of thanks.
"Richard, surely you might place more confidence in me! If you have been called upon to pay this money in consequence of--of any bygone trouble or debt contracted in your youth--and I conclude it must be something of that sort--do you suppose I cannot be true and keep your counsel? I know what follies the young plunge into!"
"Follies? Crimes, rather!" And the words broke from Dr. Davenal with a groan which told of the deepest mental anguish. It pained even the dull ear that was bent to it.
"Bettina, I say that you must not ask me. If it concerned myself alone you should know as much as I do, but I could not tell you without betraying another; and--and there might be danger. Let it rest. Better for you that it should do so, for it would disturb your peace as it has disturbed mine."
"It's a dreadful sum," said Miss Bettina.
"It is that. And my poor children must be left beggars. I have enjoined Mark Cray to pay three hundred pounds yearly to Sara for five years, out of the proceeds of the practice. He can well afford to do it: and if you will give her a home, this had better be invested for her, Bettina."
"Of course. But what's three hundred for five years? You might make better terms with Mark Cray than that."
"Mark has promised faithfully to do it. I have been talking with him this afternoon about that and other things. I asked him what sum he would feel inclined to pay to Sara out of the business, and for what term. He said he thought he could give three hundred a-year, and would continue it for five years."
"Considering all things, it is not a very generous offer," persisted Miss Bettina. "Had your life been spared, Mark could not have expected to step into the whole of the practice these twenty years."
"It is very fair, I think, Bettina. Mark must acquire experience, remember, must work his way up to the public confidence, before people trust him as they have trusted me. He will not have his rooms filled daily with patients at a guinea a head. This has come upon me suddenly, or all things might have been managed differently. I think it would be a good plan for Mark to leave the Abbey for this house; I have told him so; but he will be the best judge of that." Miss Bettina quitted her stooping posture by the doctor and sat down, revolving all that had been said. She sat slowly rubbing her hands the one over the other, as was her habit when anything troubled her.
"I cannot realise it," she said, in a half whisper, "Richard, I cannot realise it. Surely you are not going from us!"
"I am but going to those who have preceded me, Bettina," he answered. "My wife, and Richard, and others, who have gone on before, are waiting for me, and I in my turn shall wait for you. This fretting life is over. How poor!--how poor!"--he added more emphatically, as he clasped his hands--"do even its best interests now seem beside eternity!"