Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  The dining-room was on the left of the entrance-hall: it was of large proportions. Opposite to it, on the right, was a much smaller apartment, called by way of distinction “Dr. Davenal’s room.” It was in this last the doctor saw his patients, who would go into it from the dining-room, one by one, each in his turn. The two rooms looked to the front, on either side the door, and the window in each was very large. They were not bay windows, but were divided into three compartments, all of which might be opened separately. Dwarf Venetian blinds were carried up to the first pane in both windows, for the house was not sufficiently removed from the street to prevent curious passers-by from gazing in. Behind the doctor’s room was another room, opening from it, the windows of which looked on the evergreens skirting the very narrow path that ran between the side of the house and the railings bordering the lane: a path so narrow that nobody was supposed ever to go down it This second room was Dr. Davenal’s bedchamber, used by him as such ever since the death of his wife. At the back of this chamber was another apartment, partially partitioned into two, one portion being used as a butler’s pantry, the’ other as Neal’s sleeping-closet, which looked to the garden at the rear of the house.

  Neal had an uncommon partiality for that pantry, and would be in it all hours of the day or night, though it was never meant that he should sit in it. It was to all intents and purposes a pantry only, and a very scantily lighted one. It had a high window of four square panes, looking dead on the evergreens, very dense just there, and on nothing else. There was a door by its side, opening on the evergreens also; and one with a slim figure — as slim as Neal’s, for instance — could go out at that door if so disposed, and entwine himself along the narrow path, braving the shrubs, past the windows of Dr. Davenal’s bed-chamber, and emerge in front of the house. It was not at all, however, in Neal’s stipulated duties to do so. Quite the contrary. When Neal entered Dr. Davenal’s service, he was expressly ordered to keep that pantry door always fastened. It was impressed upon him by Miss Davenal that there was no necessity ever to unlock it: his plate was there, she observed, and light-fingered beggars frequented Hallingham, as they frequent most other places.

  On the opposite side, behind the dining-room, was the prettiest apartment in the house. It was called the garden-parlour, and opened to the garden at the back by means of glass doors. The state drawing-room was above, over the hall and dining-room, and the kitchens were down-stairs.

  Dr. Davenal’s room was scantily furnished. A shabby Kidderminster carpet, a square table, some horsehair chairs, and a writing-desk. Nothing else, except some books ranged round the walls, and a plaster bust or two. On the table, which was covered with a green-baize cloth bordered with yellow, lay some writing and blotting paper by the side of a large inkstand, and the desk was underneath the table on the carpet. It was the doctor’s habit to keep the desk there; he could not have told why. If he required to open it, which was very seldom — for he never used it for writing on — he would lift it to the table and put it back when he had done with it. Some of his patients sitting at the table waiting for the doctor to come in, or enlarging on their complaints as he sat before them, had surreptitiously used it as a footstool, and the result was a considerably scratched surface of the polished mahogany; but Dr. Davenal did not move it from its abiding-place.

  Tilting himself on a chair, in a fashion that threatened an overthrow backwards, with his feet on the edge of this very desk, sat a young man, carelessly humming a popular song. You heard Neal tell his master he was there — Mr. Cray. His face was a sufficiently pleasing one, its complexion fair, its eyes a light blue. It was not a remarkable face in any way; might have been a somewhat insipid one, but for these same blue eyes that lighted it up, and a gay smile that was ever ready on it All that Mr. Cray appeared likely to be remarkable for as yet, was a habit of pushing his hair back — rather light hair, of a shade between brown and flaxen, and he pushed it off his forehead inveterately, at all times and seasons. But what with the blue eyes, the winning smile, and a very taking voice and manner, he was beginning to win his way in Hallingham. Dr. Davenal was glad that it should be so. He had taken this young man, Marcus Cray, by the hand, had made him his partner, and he desired nothing better than that he should win his way.

  But to win a way in a town is one thing; to win hearts in it is another; and Dr. Davenal was certainly not prepared to hear, as he was about to do, that Mr. Cray had gained one particular heart, and had come then to ask his, Dr. Davenal’s, approbation to his having done it Neal threw open the door of this room for his master, bowed him in with the air of a groom of the chambers, and Mr. Cray started from his tilting position to find his feet As they stood together his height was somewhat under the doctor’s, and his only reached the middle height “Is it you, Mark?” said the doctor, quietly, rather surprised that he should be there at that hour of the day; for Mr. Cray’s routine of duties did not lie at the house of Dr. Davenal. “Any bad report for me?”

  Mr. Cray had no bad report He entered upon a different sort of report, speaking rapidly, but not in the least agitatedly. He wanted the doctor’s consent to his marriage with Miss Caroline Davenal. Perhaps it was the knowledge that they must so soon be interrupted by three o’clock and the doctor’s country patients, that prompted Mr. Cray to enter upon the subject at that not overseasonable hour. There would be less time for the doctors objections, he may have deemed — not that Mr. Cray was one to anticipate objections to any project he set his fancy on, or to pay much attention to them if they came.

  Dr. Davenal stood against the wall near the window, looking very grave in his surprise and, it may be said, vexation. He had never dreamt of this. Mr. Cray had certainly been intimate with his family; many an evening when the doctor had been out professionally, Mr. Cray had spent with them; but he had never given a thought to anything of this sort arising from it His connection with Mr. Cray was a professional connection, and perhaps that fact had blinded his eyes and kept his thoughts from glancing to the possibility that anything different might supervene.

  “You look grave, Dr. Davenal,” said Mr. Cray, breaking the silence, and retaining, in a remarkable degree, his self-possession.

  “Yes,” replied the doctor, “for Caroline’s sake. Mark, I believe I had cherished more ambitious dreams for her.”

  “Ambitious dreams!” repeated Mr. Cray. “She will at least occupy a position as good as yours, sir.”

  “As good as mine!” echoed the doctor. “But when, Mark? — when?” he added after a pause.

  “In time.”

  “Ay — in time. There it is. How long must you wait for it?”

  “We shall rub on until then, doctor. As others do.”

  “Mark, I do not think Caroline is one to rub on, as you call it, so smoothly as some might, unless fortune is smooth about her. Remember what your income is.”

  “It is two hundred a-year,” said Mark, pushing his hair from his brow, and speaking with as much equanimity as though he had said two thousand. “But I thought perhaps you might be induced to increase it — for her sake.”

  Dr. Davenal pulled open the green Venetian blind and threw the window higher up, as if the air of the room were growing too hot for him. It was the window — or rather the compartment of it — nearest to the lane, and the doctor was fond of keeping it a little raised. Summer and winter would the passers-by see that window raised behind the green staves of the blind.

  “Were I to double your income, Mark, and make it four hundred a-year — a thing which you have no right to expect me to do at present, or to ask me to do — it would still be an inadequate income for Caroline Davenal,” resumed the doctor, closing the blind again, and setting his back against it “I don’t believe — it is my opinion, Mark, and I only give it you as such — that she is one to make the best of a small income, or to be happy on it.”

  Mr. Cray had caught up one of the doctor’s pens, and stood opposite to him picking the feather-end of it off bit by bit His attitude was a c
areless one, and his eyes were bent upon the pen, as if to pick those pieces off and litter the carpet were of more consequence than looking at Dr. Davenal. Mr. Cray was inclined to be easy over most things, to take life coolly, and he was characteristically easy over this.

  “Four hundred a-year is not so small an income,” he observed.

  “That depends,” said Dr. Davenal. “Incomes are large or small in comparison; in accordance with the requirements, the habits, the notions if you will, of those who have to live upon them. Caroline has enjoyed the advantages derivable from one amounting to three times four.”

  “She may come into that fortune yet,” said Mr. Cray.

  The first gleam of real displeasure shone now in the eyes of the doctor as he threw them searchingly on his partner. “Have you been counting upon that? — Is it the inducement which has called forth this proposal?”

  “No,” burst forth Mr. Cray, feeling vexed in his turn and speaking impulsively, as he flung the dilapidated pen back in the inkstand and drew nearer the doctor. “I declare that I never thought of the money or the suit; it did not so much as cross my mind; and were Carine never to have a penny-piece to the end of her life, it would make no difference. It is her I want; not money.”

  Dr. Davenal drew in his lips. “Carine!” They must have become tolerably intimate for him familiarly to call her that. “Pretty Carine” was her fond name in the household.

  “It was Caroline herself who spoke of the money,” resumed Mark Cray. “We were consulting together as to how far my two hundred a-year would keep us, and she remembered the Chancery suit. ‘Mark,’ she said, ‘that fortune may come to me, and then we should have no care.’ It was not I who thought of it, Dr. Davenal. And I am sure I don’t count upon it: Caroline herself would be wise not to do so. Chancery suits generally absorb the oyster and leave the shell for the claimants.”

  “Ton have spoken to Caroline, then?” questioned Dr. Davenal. Mark pushed off his hair again. “O dear yes.”

  “May I ask when?”

  “Well — I don’t know,” answered Mr. Cray, after considering the point “I have been — I have been” —

  “What?” cried Dr. Davenal, surprised at the unusual hesitation. “Speak out, Mark.”

  “I was going to say I have been making love to her ever so long,” continued Mark, with a laugh. “ In fact, sir, we have understood each other for some time past; but as to the precise period that I actually spoke out to her by words, I am not sure when it was.”

  The contrast between the two men was observable in the silence that ensued. Dr. Davenal grave, absorbed, full of thought and care; Mr. Cray self-satisfied, looking as if neither thought nor care had ever come to him, or could come. He lightly watched the passers-by in the street, over the Venetian blind of the middle window, nodding and smiling to any acquaintances that happened to appear. Mr. Cray had made up his mind to marry Miss Caroline Davenal, and it was entirely out of his creed to suppose that any insurmountable objection could supervene.

  “Mark,” said Dr. Davenal, interrupting the gentleman as he was flourishing his hand to somebody, “you must be aware that circumstances render it imperative upon me to be more than commonly watchful over the interests of Caroline.”

  “Do you think so? But, Dr. Davenal, I would be sure to make her happy. I would spend my life in it: none would make her as happy as I.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Dr. Davenal.

  A smile hovered on the young surgeon’s lips. “Because she cares for me, sir; and for none other in the wide world.”

  “I had thought — I had thought that another cared for her,” returned Dr. Davenal, speaking impulsively. “At least, a doubt of it has sometimes crossed me.”

  Mark Cray opened his eyes widely in his astonishment “ Who?” he asked.

  But Dr. Davenal did not satisfy him: not that he had any particular motive for observing reticence on the point “It is of no consequence. I must have been mistaken,” was all he said.

  “You will not forbid her to me, sir?” pleaded Mr. Cray.

  A spasm of pain passed across the face of Dr. Davenal; the words had called up bitter recollections.

  “So long as I live I shall never forbid a marriage to any over whom I hold control,” he said, in a tone of subdued anguish; and Mark Cray knew where the sting had pointed, and wished in his goodnature he had not put the question. “I will urge all reflection, caution, prudence in my power to urge; but I will not forbid. Least of all have I a right to do so by Caroline.”

  The younger man’s face lighted up. “Then you will give her to me, Dr. Davenal?”

  “I give you no promise,” was the doctor’s answer. “I most have leisure to reflect on this; it has taken me entirely by surprise. And I must speak to Caroline. There’s plenty of time. To marry yet would indeed be premature.”

  “Premature?” echoed Mr. Cray.

  “Premature in the extreme. A man who does not know how to wait for good things, Mark, does not deserve them.”

  A lady, with a slow walk and pale face, turned in at the front gate. It was patient the first Dr. Davenal made no observation; he scarcely saw her, so deeply had he plunged into thought. Mr. Cray, who stood closer to the window than a doctor expecting patients generally does stand, smiled and bowed.

  “It is Mrs, Scott,” he observed, as the knocker sounded. “She looks very ill to-day.”

  Attentive Neal was heard to come forth instantly from his pantry, open the door, and show the lady into the dining-room. Then he made his appearance in his master’s room.

  “Mrs. Scott, sir!” —

  Instead of the “Show her in,” as Neal expected, Dr. Davenal merely nodded. Mr. Cray made a movement to depart, glancing as he did so, at the very grave face of his senior partner.

  “I have vexed you, sir?”

  “I feel vexed in this first moment, Mark; I can’t deny it,” was the candid answer. “It is not altogether that Caroline might have been expected to do better; it is not exclusively that I think her peculiarly unfitted for a making-shift life, or that with regard to her I feel my responsibility is weighty: but it is a mixture of all three.”

  “You consider, perhaps, I have done wrong to ask for her?”

  “I consider you have done wrong to ask for her so prematurely. In your place, I think I should have waited a little while, until circumstances had been more propitious.”

  “And perhaps have lost Caroline!”

  “Nay,” said the doctor; “a girl that cannot wait, and be true while she waits, is not worth a brass button.”

  He quitted the room as he spoke. At the risk of keeping his patients waiting, he must find and question Caroline. His mind was not at ease.

  Mr. Cray went out at the hall-door. Before Neal, who was on the alert, had shut it, a carriage drove up to the gate, and stopped with a clatter. A well-appointed close carriage, its servants in claret-coloured livery, and its claret-coloured panels bearing the insignia of England’s baronetage — the bloody hand.

  The footman leaped down for his orders. Mr. Cray, stepping across the lawn, in too much haste to wind round it by means of the gravel-path, held onto his hand with a smile to its only inmate — a little, grey, nervous-looking woman, in an old-fashioned purple silk dress.

  “How are you to-day, Lady Oswald?”

  And Neal, with his quiet, cat-like steps, had followed in the wake of Mr. Gray, unseen by that gentleman, and stood behind him in his respectful attention: there might be some message to carry in to his master — leaving three patients, who had entered the gate together, to show themselves in alone.

  CHAPTER II.

  LADY OSWALD’S LETTER.

  THE room at the back, looking into the garden, on the opposite side of the passage to Neal’s pantry, was the most charming apartment in all the house. Not for its grandeur; it was small and very simple indeed, compared to the grand drawing-room up stairs: not for its orderly neatness, for it was usually in a litter; a fascinating, pleasant-lo
oking litter; and perhaps that made its charm. It was called the garden-parlour. The great drawing-room was kept sacred by its presiding mistress, to whom you will soon have the honour of an introduction: sacred, and uncomfortably tidy. Not so much as a pocket-handkerchief must be laid for an instant on one of its handsome tables, its luxurious satin sofas and ottomans; not a footstool must be drawn from its appointed place, let tired legs be hanging down with weariness; not a hand-screen must be removed from the handsomely-famished mantel-piece, were lovely cheeks being roasted to crimson. Methodically proper, everything in its appointed spot, must that room be kept: a book put down in the wrong place was treason; a speck of dust all but warning to Jessy, the unhappy housemaid. The dining-room was tidy, too; no extraneous things were allowed there, it must be kept free for the reception of the patients: the “Times” newspaper and the newest local journal lay daily on the large mahogany table, and there the litter ended. Perhaps, therefore, it was no wonder that that other room was not always in the order it might have been.