Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

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

  “There’s nothing to be alarmed at, Miss Sara” —

  “Don’t tell it; don’t tell it,” gasped Sara, putting up her hands. “It does frighten me.”

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

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

  The moment the words had left her lips she felt how unwise they were; but she had so spoken in her perplexity, her soreness of heart. Watton turned her eyes on her young mistress in sheer amazement “Watch my master’s movements! Why, Miss Sara, you can’t think I’d do such a thing. I watched to — if I may so express it — protect my master; to protect the house, lest harm should be meant it Decent folk don’t come in at night as that man came in.”

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

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

  “Where’s he gone?” asked Miss Bettina.

  Neal could not tell. His master had said he was going to a distance. But Miss Bettina could not make it out at all, and she asked question upon question. How had he gone? — the carriage was not out. Walked away on foot, and said he was going to a distance, and might not be home for a day and a night? It was the most mysterious, extraordinary proceeding she ever heard of. “Did you see or hear anything of a strange man coming in in the night?” she asked of Neal “No, ma’am,” replied Neal, with his usual impassability. “I see my master’s bed has not been slept in; and he has taken an overcoat with him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER XX.

  GOING DOWN TO THE FUNERAL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Her funeral to-morrow!” ejaculated Oswald. “Then she must have died almost immediately. Perhaps the very night I came up. Why couldn’t somebody write?”

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

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

  “Good-evening, sir. My wife said you’d be down to-night or in the morning. We were sure you’d attend the burying. A sad thing, sir, is it not?”

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

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

  “Died from — what did you say?” asked Oswald, staring at the man.

  “From chloroform, sir.”

  “From chloroform!” he repeated, “ I don’t understand.”

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

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

  “Who gave her the chloroform?”

  “Dr. Davenal.”

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

  “What, sir?”

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

  “It could not have been Dr. Davenal.”

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

  “But he did not give the chloroform?”

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

  “Who said that at the inquest? Dr. Davenal?”

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

  “And she never rallied from the chloroform?”

  “Never at all, sir. She died under it.”

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

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

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

  How strange are the incidents, the small events that shape the course of human destiny! But for that accidental conversation — and may it not be called accidental? — half the trouble that is about to be related never would have taken place. And the cruel shadow, that was waiting to spread its wings over the days of more than one wayfarer on the path of life, would have found no spot to darken with its evil Dr. Davenal spoke his opinion freely to Oswald Cray with regard to chloroform. He did not deny its great boon, sparing pain to many whose sufferings would otherwise be almost intolerable; but he said that there were some few to whom he would as soon give poison as chloroform, for the one would be just as fatal as the other. And he instanced Lady Oswald.

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

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

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

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

  He quitted the “Apple Tree” and bent his steps to Lady Oswald’s. Parkins came to him in a burst of grief. Parkins was — it has been said so before — genuinely grieved at her lady’s death, and it showed itself chiefly by breaking into a shower of tears with every fresh person she saw. One of the first questions put to her by Mr. Oswald Cray was as to her not having written to inform him of the death. He wished to know why she had not. “I don’t know why, sir,” she sobbed, “except that I have been bewildered ever since it happened. I have been as one out of my mind, sir, with the shock and the grief. I’m sure I beg your pardon for the neglect, but it never so much as struck me till yesterday, when the undertaker was here about the funeral. He asked who was to be invited to it, and then it came into my mind that you ought to have been wrote to, but I said perhaps Mr. Cray had done it.”