by Ellen Wood
“Papa, if—”
“Hush, child! Let me finish this part while I can speak. He confessed all in its fullest extent The ice once broken he told the whole. Indeed, he had no choice but to tell it, for it was only by knowing it entirely that I could help him. Had he concealed the half of it he might as well have concealed all: and he might have stood at his country’s bar to answer for his crime.”
Sara gave a great cry. Terrible as her vague doubts had been, pointing sometimes to the very darkest sin that is comprised in the decalogue, the one which Oswald Cray had even dared to whisper in her ear, it was so much worse to hear those doubts confirmed.
“At his country’s bar?”
“Child, yes. Don’t I tell you what the punishment would have been for it not many years ago? What could I do but save him? Had it been necessary to part with every stick and stone I possessed in the world, I must have parted with them — anything, everything, so as to save him. I told him what I would do; that I would start before morning light — for speed was necessary — and get to London and stop the danger. On his part he had to go back by the train that passes through here at midnight, and so be at quarters by the morrow, that his absence might not be known. Before he went he begged to see you. I think that he then — Sara, I think it now, and have for some little time — that he then had made up his mind not to come down again: or else he fancied that he should not be able to come. However that may have been, he begged to see you; and I, seeing I must confess no reason for it, called you down. And the rest you know.”
“I don’t know one thing,” she whispered. “Papa, I don’t know what it was — the crime.”
“And better that you should not,” he answered with a vehemence surprising in his weak state. “I would not have adverted to it at all, but for what I have to explain to you. Listen, Sara, for there are directions that I must give you now.”
Pausing, he held his hand up for an instant as if to bespeak her attention, and then resumed.
“I shall startle you if I say that the money I was called upon to find was no less than eight thousand pounds. Ah! you may well lift your head, child! And this imprudent, sinful man was your brother and my son, and Heaven only knows how dearly I love him still! Five thousand of it I paid at once, and the rest I arranged to pay later, at different periods. This very Christmas, I have paid another five hundred, leaving two thousand five hundred yet to pay. I have directed that whatever I die possessed of shall be sold, and the money paid over to you, ‘my daughter, Sara Davenal.’ The terms of the will may excite curiosity; people will marvel why I did not appoint trustees; and you, my darling, must be content to let them marvel. The residue, after my debts are paid, will be, as I judge, about three thousand pounds. And of this, Sara, two thousand five hundred must be given to these people, who hold Edward’s safety in their hands.”
Again she was startled. “Do they hold it still?”
“They do. They hold his — I may almost say life — in their hands. Once they are paid, the danger will have passed. You will make no unnecessary delay?”
“No,” she said with a shudder. “The very hour the money is in my hands it shall be paid to them.”
“In my desk, in the private compartment, you will find a sealed paper addressed to yourself. It contains full directions how you must accomplish this, and who the parties are. I thought it well to write this down for you, that there might be no mistake or forgetfulness. Inside this paper you will find a letter addressed to these people, and that I wish you to post with your own hands — with your own hands! — within four-and-twenty hours after my death. Do you clearly understand?”
Yes, she clearly understood, she answered; answered from the depths of her quivering heart “And I think that is all, so far as that unhappy business is concerned. Oh, my child, my child! if I could but have left you better off!”
“Papa, don’t grieve for that!” she said in the midst of her choking sobs. “I shall do very well.”
“You will have your home with your aunt And Mark Cray is to pay you a certain sum for five years, which must be invested for you. Bettina will take care of you: but she is not of a cheering temper. If I could but have left you in a happier home!”
Looking forward, she felt that all homes would be pretty much alike to her with her load of grief and care. Surely the sorrows of life had fallen upon her early!
“I began to think, just about the time of Caroline’s marriage, or a little before it, that Oswald Cray was growing to like you very much,” resumed Dr. Davenal. “But it may have been only my own fancy. I was mistaken with regard to him once before; perhaps I also was again?”
She sat silent, her head down, the fingers of her hands nervously entwining themselves one within the other.
“You don’t answer me, Sara. It may be the last time I shall ask you anything.”
“It is all over, papa,” she said, lifting her streaming eyes.
“Then there was! What has ended it?”
Ought she to tell him? Could she tell him? Would it be right or wise to do so — to increase the sense of ill, wrought by her unhappy brother, already lying with so bitter a weight, in spite of his love, on Dr. Davenal’s spirit! No, she thought she ought not Her sense of right as well as her reticence of feeling shrunk from the task.
“Child, have you no answer for me?”
“Something — unpleasant — arose between us,” she said, in a faltering whisper. “And so we parted. It was neither his fault nor mine; it — it was the fault of circumstances.”
“Ah!” said the doctor, “a foolish quarrel But I had thought both of you superior to it Should the cloud ever pass away, and he wish to make you his wife, remember that you have my full and free approbation — that my blessing would go with it In spite of his pride and his caprice, I like Oswald Cray.”
“It never will pass away,” she interrupted, almost with vehemence. “It is a thing impossible. We have bidden adieu to all that for ever.”
“Well, you know best. I only say, if it should be. Is it this that has kept him from the house?”
“Yes. O papa, when you were blaming him for fairing foolish and unjust offence against Lady Oswald’s will, I wish you could have known what a mistake it was.”
“And, Sara, I have urged on Caroline, as you heard me, that that money should be secured to herself,” he continued, passing to a different subject. “I have spoken to your aunt; I have written of it to Oswald Cray — for that is the purport of my note to him. My dear, do you reiterate the same to them by word of mouth; and say that I urged it again with my dying breath. I don’t know why the necessity for this should cling to my mind so strongly,” he continued in a dreamy tone. “Unless it is because I dreamt a night or two ago that Mark had run through all his means, and Caroline was lying in some strange place, ill, and in grievous poverty. It was a vivid dream; and is as present to me now as it was when I dreamt it.”
Sara pressed her hands upon her face. The effort to sustain her calmness was getting beyond her strength.
“Say that I urged it again with my dying breath! And give my love to the two little boys, Sara. Tell them that Uncle Richard would have sent for them to take a last farewell, had death not come upon him so suddenly. But there’s no time; and tell them we shall meet again in that far-off land, when their toils and mine shall be alike over. Charge them to be ever working on for it.”
She could not contain herself longer. Her very heart was breaking. And she turned with choking sobs, and hid her face upon his breast “Don’t, my darling! Don’t grieve hopelessly. It is God’s will to take me, and therefore we should not sorrow as those without hope. I have tried of late to live very near Him, to resign myself to Him in all things. My life had become one long weary trouble, Sara — perhaps he is taking me from it in love.”
“O papa! But I shall be left!”
“Ah, child, but you are young; life for you is only in its morning, and though clouds have gathered overhead, they may clear away a
gain, leaving only brightness behind them. Think what it has been for me! To wake from troubled sleep in a night of pain to the dread that ere the day closed the name of my only remaining son might be in the mouths of men — a felon! Child, no wonder that I am dying.”
Sara could not speak. She lifted her arm and let it fall across him. Dr. Davenal laid his hand lovingly on the bowed head.
“Yes, I am resigned to die. I would have lived on longer if I could; but that is denied me, and God has reconciled me to the decree. When you shall come to be as old as I am, Sara, you will have learnt how full of mercy are the darkest troubles, if we will but open our eyes to look for it.”
Sara Davenal, in her keen distress, could not see where the mercy lay for her. To lose her father seemed to be the very consummation of all earthly misery. How many more of us have so felt when stem death was taking one we loved better than life! —
“I am so glad I gave that money of Lady Oswald’s back to the rightful owners!” he resumed, after a pause. “It has brought its comfort to me now. I am glad, too, that I have lived to see them in possession of it; that no vexatious delays were made to intervene. Had it not been settled before I died, there’s no knowing what might have arisen. Sara, remember that our past acts find us out on our dying bed. Whether they have been good or evil, they come home to us then.”
His voice had grown so faint that it was more by guessing than by hearing that she understood the words. Presently she looked up and saw that his eyes were closed; but his lips were in motion, and she though he was praying. She began to wish he would get into bed, but when she attempted to move, his hand tightened around her.
“No: stay where you are. God bless you! God bless you always, my child!”
She remained on as before, her cheek resting on the dressing-gown. Presently Miss Bettina came in.
“It is the most wrong thing for you to sit up like this, Richard!” she was beginning, when she caught sight of his closed eyes. “Is he asleep, Sara? How could you let him go to sleep in his chair at this hour? He ought — What’s the matter?”
Miss Bettina — calm, cold, impassive Miss Bettina — broke off with a shriek as she spoke the last words. She went closer to him and touched his forehead.
Sara rose; and a bewildering look of hopeless terror took possession of her own face as she saw that white one lying there. Richard Davenal had passed to his rest.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
SORROW.
To describe the sorrow, the consternation that fell on all Hallingham in the loss of Dr. Davenal, would be a fruitless task. People could not believe that he was really dead. It had been asserted that the danger was past, and he was getting better rapidly. They looked at each other in a bewildered sort of way, and asked what he had died of? Of a neglected cold, was the answer of those who knew best, or supposed they knew — the medical body of Hallingham. And indeed there was little doubt that they were correct: the immediate malady which had deprived the town of that valuable life was a very simple thing — a cold, neglected at the onset Sara Davenal was stunned: stunned with the weight of the calamity, with the grief it brought And yet it probably fell upon her with less startling intensity than it would have done had she been in the full suntide of prosperity. She had been recently living in nothing but sorrow. The grief and terror brought to her by that nights unhappy secret (which you now know was connected with her brother), had been succeeded by the withdrawal of the friendship — to call it by a light name — of Oswald Cray. She had believed that the world could bring no other calamity that could add to her misery: she had not thought of that most grievous one — a father’s death.
In all pain there must be a reaction: the very violence of the first grief induces it; and it came sooner to Sara Davenal than it does to most sufferers. Or, it may be, that the grave, the real nature of the grief brought its own effects. Had it been simple mourning alone, the natural sorrow for the loss of a good and loving father, she might have gone on weeping for months: but there was behind it that heritage of terror on her brothers account, there was the consciousness that with her the heavy secret was left, and the completion of its purchase. The blinding tears ceased, the lively grief settled down into one long, inward, dull agony; and ere many days went over, she had become, in manner, almost unnaturally cold and calm. “How well his daughter bears it,” the town said, when it had an opportunity of seeing her. In her subdued manner, her still face, her low measured tones which never trembled, they read only serene resignation. Ah! how few of us think to remember in every-day life that it is the silent grief that does its work within.
She was obliged so soon to set about her responsibilities. Dr. Davenal’s request to her had been to post a certain letter that she would find in his desk within four-and-twenty hours of his decease: to post it herself. On the afternoon of the day following the death, she carried the desk to her own room and examined it. There was the letter to Edward, there was the letter to Oswald Cray; both were lying where she had placed them; and there was the packet addressed to herself. The letter it enclosed was directed “Mr. Alfred King, care of Messrs. Jones and Green, Essex Street, Strand, London.”
The directions to herself were very dear. As soon as the money was realised she was to write and appoint an interview with Mr. Alfred King, and pay over to him the two thousand five hundred pounds upon his delivering up to her certain papers, copies of which were enclosed. This interview might take place at Hallingham if Mr. Alfred King would journey to it: if he declined, she would be under the necessity of going to London and meeting him at Messrs. Jones and Green’s. But on no account was she to pay the money by deputy or by letter, because it was essential that she should examine the papers that would be delivered to her, and see that they tallied with the copies written down. Mr. Alfred King would then have to sign a receipt, which the doctor had written and sealed up, and which, he added, she had better not unseal until the moment came for signing it. The receipt and one or two of the papers she was afterwards to re-seal and keep until the return of Edward Davenal. If Edward died abroad, then they were to be burnt.
Sara re-locked the desk; and still she could not form any very definite idea of what Edward’s crime had been. The letter to Mr. Alfred King and the letter to Oswald Gray she kept out, for they must be posted ere the day should close. She went out herself at dusk and posted them; whatever duty lay before her, she felt that she must go about it, shrinking from none. Girl though she was in years, she was beginning to feel old in sorrow: no teacher is like unto it There are woes that bring more experience to the heart in the first night of their falling than will half a lifetime of smooth years.
It was through the letter sent to him that Oswald Cray first learnt the death of Dr. Davenal. He was seated at his breakfast-table in Parliament Street, eyes and thoughts buried in the “Times,” when Benn came in with the letters, a whole stack of them, and laid them down by his side. There Oswald let them lie: and it was only in gathering them up later to take down and open in his business-room, that his eye fell on one in particular, rather a large envelope, with a black border and a black seal. He knew the writing well, and a flush of emotion rose to his face as he opened it. Two notes were enclosed.
“MY DEAR MR. OSWALD CRAY,
“I do not know whether I shall be the first to tell you of the death of my dear father. He died last night, about ten o’clock. An hour or two previously he penned the enclosed note to you; and he bade me add a few lines when I forwarded it, to explain that when he attempted it he was almost past writing. But that he made this an especial request, I would not have troubled you with anything from myself: indeed I am scarcely capable of writing coherently to-day, for my grief is very great
“Believe me very sincerely yours,
— — “SARA DAVENAL.”
The first rapid gathering-in of the general sense over, he leaned his elbow on the table and read the words deliberately. It was just the note that her good sense would prompt her to write, under the altered re
lations between them. He felt that it was — but he had not witnessed her hesitation and the doubt whether she should not rather address him formally than as a friend. If those dandy clerks in the rooms below, if those grave gentlemen with whom he would be brought in contact during the day, had but seen him press those two words, “Sara Davenal,” to his lips! He, the reserved, self-possessed man of business, he of the cold, proud spirit! he kissed the name as fervently as any schoolboy kisses that in his first love-letter.
And then he recollected himself; and as his wits, which had certainly gone wool-gathering, came back to him, another flush dyed his face far deeper than the last had dyed it; a flush of shame that he should have been betrayed into the folly. Besides, that was not the way to help him to forget her; as it was imperative on him that he should forget.
He took up the note of the doctor. And he could scarcely believe that that weak, scrawling writing was traced by the once bold, clear hand of Dr. Davenal. It ran as follows: —
“MY DEAR FRIEND, — I call you so in spite of the coolness that has come between us. I would that all should be friends with me in my dying hour. —
“The expected money, as you probably know, is at last to come to Caroline. I shall — not be — spared — to urge its — settlement upon herself, but do you — urge it. As soon as it shall — be paid over, let Mark secure it to Caroline absolutely, so that she and her children may have something to fall back upon in case of need. They are both young, both thoughtless, and, if left to themselves in the matter, will be almost sure to waste the money, so that it would do no real good to either. If Mark —— I cannot write more: sight is failing.
“Fare you well, My Friend,— “R. D.”
And he — was — dead! — For a — few moments, Oswald forgot all his doubts and — fears of the man, and leaped — back in memory to the time when he had respected him more than anybody in the world.
