by Ellen Wood
Had he died with that weight of guilt upon him? How weighty was it I how far did it extend? It seemed strange that he should so soon have followed Lady Oswald. Had remorse hastened his death? But, in spite of these thoughts, which Oswald called not up willingly, he did feel a deep sense of regret, of sorrow for Dr. Davenal, and wished that his life might have been spared to him.
It was incumbent on him to answer the other note, and he sat down to his writing-table and drew a sheet of paper towards him, and began:
“MY DEAR—”
There he stopped. How should he address her? My dear Miss Davenal? — or My dear Sara! The one seemed too formal, considering how long he had called her Sara, considering that the present moment of deep sorrow should make all her friends especially tender to her. But yet — My dear Sara — better perhaps that he should not So he finally began:
“MY DEAR MISS DAVENAL, “I do indeed heartily sympathise with you in your great affliction. I wish for your sake and his that the doctor’s life had been spared. You do not give me any particulars — and I could not at such a moment expect them — but I fear his death must have been sudden. Will you allow me to exercise the privilege of a friend, in begging you to endeavour to bear up as bravely as it is possible for you to do, in these the first keen moments of grief. When next at Hallingham I will, with your permission, call on you and Miss Davenal, and express to you in person my heartfelt sympathy. Meanwhile believe me now and always your truly sincere friend, “O. OSWALD CRAY.
“Miss Sara Davenal.”
“Of course Mark must settle it upon her!” he said to himself as he glanced again at the contents of the doctor’s note to him. “It is not to be supposed he would do otherwise. However, I’ll mention it when I go next to Hallingham.”
And, gathering the papers together, he locked them in his private desk, and went down to enter on his day’s work, carrying the rest of the letters in his hand.
On the day subsequent to the interment of Dr. Davenal, Sara told her aunt she should go and see the two little boys. It had been her wish that they should be sent for to attend the funeral, but Miss Davenal objected: they were over young, she considered. Sara was too really miserable to care about it: of what little moment do trifles seem when the mind is ill at ease!
Miss Davenal again objected to her visit In fact, had lookers-on been gifted with prevision, they might have seen that the opinions and course of herself and niece would be henceforth somewhat antagonistic to each other. She objected to Sara’s proposed visit, recommending her to defer it for a week or two.
“But, aunt, I want to see them,” urged Sara. “I know how grieved they have been: though Dick is random and light-headed, he has a most tender heart And papa gave me a dying message to deliver to them.”
“I say that it is too soon to go,” repeated Miss Davenal. “A pretty thing for you to be seen gadding about out of doors the very day after your poor papa is taken from the house.”
“O aunt! Gadding! I” for a moment she struggled with her tears: the thought of the terrible weight of sorrow she must carry out with her wherever she went presented such a contrast to the word. At home or out, she was ever living in her breaking heart: and it appeared of little consequence what the world might say. She believed it was her duty to see the boys as soon as possible, and she had fully resolved that her duty, in all ways, should be performed to the uttermost, Heaven helping her.
“I must go, aunt,” she said; “I think I am doing right.”
She walked in her deep mourning, with her crape veil over her face, to the station. One of the porters got her ticket for her and saw her into the carriage. Whether by the good-feeling of the man, or not, she did not know, but no one else was put into the same compartment She felt quite grateful to the man, as the train steamed on, and she lay back on the well-padded seat The train was express, and she reached the station where she was to descend in less than an hour and a half. Dr. Keen’s house was very near. To gain its front entrance she had to pass the large playground. The boys were out for their mid-day play, and Dick Davenal’s roving eye caught sight of her. He climbed over the railings, in spite of rules, and burst into tears as he laid hold of her. Sara had pictured the two boys in apple-pie order in their new mourning, quiet and subdued; but here they were in their ordinary clothes, dirty and dusty, and Dick had a woeful rent in one knee.
“O Sara! is it all true? Is he really dead and buried? Couldn’t he cure himself?”
She subdued her own emotion — it was only in accordance with the line she had laid down for herself. She kissed the boy in the face of the sea of eyes peering through the rails, and held him near as they advanced to the house. Leo, less daring than Dick, had gone round by the gate, and Sara drew him on her other side as he came running up.
She sat down in the room to which she was shown, holding the sobbing boys to her. As she had said to her aunt, Dick had a tender heart, and his sobs were loud and passionate. Leo cried with him. She waited to let their emotion have vent, holding their hands, bending now and again her face against theirs.
“Couldn’t he be cured, Sara?”
“No, dears, he could not be cured. It was God’s will to take him.”
“Why didn’t you have us home? Why didn’t you let us say good-bye to him?”
“There was no time. We thought he was getting better, and it was only quite at the very last we knew he was dying. He did not forget you and Leo, Dick. He bade me tell you — they were his own words — that Uncle Richard would have sent for you to take a last farewell, but that death came upon him too suddenly. He bade me tell you that you will meet him in that far-off land where your toils and his will be alike over; and — listen, children! — he charged you to be ever working on for it.”
Their sobs came forth again. Leo was the first to speak. “Have you written to Barbadoes to tell papa?”
“Aunt Bettina has. See, dears, here are two silver pencil-cases; they were both your Uncle Richard’s. The one has his crest on it; the other his initials, R. D. I thought you would like to have some little remembrance of him, and I brought them. Which will you choose, Dick? You are the eldest.”
Dick took the pencils in his hand and decided on the largest, the one that bore the initials. The stone was a beautiful one, a sapphire.
“Is it real, Sara?”
“O yes. This is the best for you, as the initials would not stand for Leo. The other stone is real, too, Leo; opal. Try and not lose them.”
“I’ll never lose mine,” avowed Dick. Leo only shook his head in answer, as he put the momento in his pocket.
The gifts had created a diversion, and the tears began to dry upon their faces; schoolboys’ tears are not very deep. Sara spoke of their mourning, inquiring why it was not on.
“We wore it yesterday,” said Dick. “ And we had holiday, we two, and stopped in Mrs. Keen’s parlour instead of going into school. But the housekeeper told us to put our other clothes on this morning; she said if we wore our black suit every day, it would be done for in a week.”
Not unlikely — by the specimen of the present suit Mr. Dick wore. Sara pointed to the rent in the knee.
“I know,” said Dick, looking carelessly down at it. “I did it only just before I saw you, wrestling with a fellow. He says he’s stronger than I am, but he isn’t, so we were trying which was best man. All in good part, you know. I say, Sara, shall we come home for the holidays now, as we used to?”
“My dears, I don’t know yet much about the future. It will be Aunt Bettina’s home now. I think she will be sure to have you as usual.”
“Why won’t it be your home?” cried Dick, quickly. “ I shall live with Aunt Bettina. It will not be the same home for either of us — not the same house, I mean. I think — I don’t know yet, but I think it likely Mr. Cray and Caroline will come to it. Perhaps Aunt Bettina will go to one of her own houses.”
“Why can’t you and Aunt Bettina stop in that?”
“It is too large for us. An
d the things are going to be sold.”
“The things going to be sold!” repeated Dick, lifting his eyes and voice in amazement “Papa has so directed in his will. You know — at least I daresay you have heard — that Aunt Bettina has a great deal of very nice furniture which has been lying by in a warehouse ever since she came to live with us. I can’t tell you yet how things will be settled.”
“I say, Sara, how slow and quiet you speak! And how pale you are!”
Sara swallowed down a lump in her throat. “Papa was all I had left to me, Dick. Leo, my dear, you are quiet and pale, too!”
“I say, Sara — never mind Leo, he’s all right — have you got a great fortune left you? The boys here were saying you’d have such a lot: you and the captain between you.”
“The boys were mistaken, Dick. Papa has not died rich. He died something else, Dick — a good man. That is better than dying rich.”
“If he wasn’t rich, why did he give back that money that Lady Oswald left him?”
“O Dick! Do you know that the remembrance of having given back that money was one of his consolations in dying. Dick, dear, he hoped you would work on always for that better world. But the acquiring money wrongfully, or the keeping it unjustly, would not, I think, help you on your road to it.”
They were interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Keen, a kind, motherly woman. She insisted on Sara’s taking off her bonnet and partaking of some refreshment. Sara yielded: choosing bread-and-butter and a cup of coffee. And Mrs. Keen and Dick and Leo afterwards walked with her back to the station.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
WORK FOR THE FUTURE.
THE clocks were striking four when Sara Davenal was walking through the streets of Hallingham on her return. She stepped along rapidly, her crape veil over her face, and was molested by none with greetings or condolences: but she stopped of her own accord on meeting the poor market-woman, Mrs. Hundley. The woman, her face broken by sorrow, flung up her hands before Sara could speak.
“To think that he should have been the first to go! — before my poor boy, whose life, as may be said, he had been keeping in him! The one a-dying for months past, the other a hale gentleman as seemed to have health in him for a lifetime. Oh, miss! what will the sick do without him?”
“How is your son?” was all Sara’s answer.
“He has come nearly to his last, miss. Another week’ll see the end. When the news come out to us that the good Dr. Davenal was gone, we couldn’t believe it: and my boy, he says, ‘Mother, it can’t be; it can’t never be.’ And he set on and sobbed like a child.”
In spite of her efforts the tears overflowed Sara’s eyes. To have it thus brought palpably before her was more than she could bear with equanimity. “Papa is better off,” was all she murmured.
“Ay, he’s better off: if ever a man had done his best in this world, miss, it was him. But who’ll be found to take his place?”
With the full sense of the last question echoing on her ear, Sara continued her way. At the top of the lane contiguous to their residence was Roger, standing in disconsolate idleness. With the death of his master Roger’s occupation was gone.
Sara spoke a kind word to him in passing, and met Mr. Wheatley coming out at the gate, her father’s close friend of many years. A surgeon once, but retired from the profession now. He it was who was named the sole executor to the doctor’s will.
The will, which was causing surprise to the curious in Hallingham, had been made in the doctor’s recent illness. It directed that all property he died possessed of should be sold, and the money realised be paid at once to his daughter. Everything was left to her. In the previous will, destroyed to make room for this, Edward Davenal’s name had been associated with Mr. Wheatley’s: in this Mr. Wheatley was left sole executor; in fact, Edward’s name was not so much as mentioned in it “Have you been calling on my aunt, Mr. Wheatley?”
“No, my visit was to you,” he answered, as he turned indoors with her.
“I have been to see Dick and Leo,” she explained. “My aunt thought I ought not to go out so soon; that people might remark upon it But I am glad I went, poor boys!”
“People remark upon it!” echoed Mr. Wheatley. “I should like to hear them. What is there to remark upon in that? Miss Sara, I have gone through life just doing the thing I pleased according to my own notions of right, without reference to what other folks might think, and I have found it answer. You do the same, and never fear.”
She led the way into the dining-room and closed the door. She understood he wished to speak with her. The fire was burning itself out to an empty room, Miss Davenal being up-stairs. Ah, how changed the house was only in the short week or two! It would never more be alive with the tread of patients coming to consult Dr. Davenal; never more be cheered with his voice echoing through the corridors. The dwelling’s occupation, like Roger’s, had gone.
Mr. Wheatley sat down in the chair that had once been the doctor’s, and Sara untied her bonnet-strings, and took a seat near him. The fresh newspapers, not unfolded, lay on the table as of yore: the whilom readers of them, the waiting sick, had ceased their visits forever.
“Now, Miss Sara, I’m left sole executor to this will, as you heard read out yesterday,” he began. “It states — I daresay you noted it — that things were to be disposed of with all convenient dispatch. Did you observe that clause?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. Besides that, in the last interview I held with my poor friend — it was the afternoon of the day he died, as you may remember — he enjoined the same thing upon me; no delay. There was a necessity, he said, for your being put in possession of the money as soon as possible.”
Sara had no ready answer at hand. She believed there might be that necessity, but did not like to acknowledge it She took off her bonnet, and laid it beside her on the table, as if at a loss for something to do.
“Now I don’t want to inquire into reasons and motives,” went on Mr. Wheatley. “I’d rather not inquire into them or hear them; what your father did not see fit to tell me, I’d prefer that nobody else should tell me. I am sure of one thing: that he kept it from me either out of necessity or to spare me pain. That things had not gone very straight with him, he told me; and that, coupled with the curious will, leaving everything to you without the protection of trustees or else, does of course force me to see that there’s something behind the scenes. But while I admit so much, I repeat that I do not speculate upon what it may be, even in my own mind; nor do I wish to do so. One question I must ask you — were you in your father’s confidence?”
“Yes. At least, if not quite entirely, sufficiently so to carry out all his directions and wishes. But, indeed, I may say I was in his confidence,” she added with less hesitation. “He talked to me a great deal the night of his death.”
“And you will be at no loss what to do with the money that shall be realised.”
“None.” —
“That’s all straight, then, and I know how to set to work. My dear, it was necessary that I should just say so far, for it would not have been well for us to work at cross-purposes, and I am sure you do not misunderstand me. There’s something behind which is no more your secret than it is mine; it was the doctor’s; and we need not further allude to it I’ll carry out his will, and you’ll carry out his wishes afterwards: he hinted to me that the money would have an ulterior destination. Any suggestion you may have to make to me, you will now do with more ease than if you had supposed I was under the impression that the money was only going to you. Don’t you think it was better that I should speak?”
“Indeed it was, and I thank you.”
“Well, now to business. As I understand it, there’s a necessity, perhaps an imperative one — in fact, the doctor told me so, for immediate action. The first consideration then is, when shall you be prepared to leave the house? Measures will be taken to put it up for sale, and there’s not the least doubt of its finding a ready purchaser, for it’s one of the best
houses in Hallingham, and in its best part. That will be easy. The next thing will be the sale of the effects. Of course the sooner you leave the house, the sooner they can be sold.”
It quite wrung her heart to hear him speak of all this in the dry tone of a man of business. She did what she could to bring her mind to bear it equably, heedless of the pain.
“It depends upon my aunt, Mr. Wheatley. So far as I am concerned I could be out in a few days; but she will have her home to fix upon. I had better speak to her. Papa said, when he was dying, that he thought Mark Cray ought to leave the Abbey and come here.”
“Mark Cray? Well, he has the most right to do so; he was your father’s partner. I never thought of him. Of course he will; he’ll not let it slip through his fingers. The mere taking this house would be a certain practice for any one. Mark Cray has his practice ready cut and dried to his hand, but he’ll not let the house go by him.”
“Mr. Cray has just furnished the Abbey.”
“But perhaps he — however, it will be well that somebody should see him, and ascertain what his wishes may be. It is a pity but he had money: he might purchase the house. By the way, there’s that Chancery money come or coming to his wife.”
Sara shook her head. “That money is to be settled upon her. It was one of papa’s last injunctions.”
“Well; and how can that be better done than by buying freehold property, such as this? It will be the very thing for them, I should say. Let them buy this house and settle it upon her; it will be a capital investment As to the furniture, if they don’t care to buy that, it must be sold. Suppose you ask Miss Davenal when she shall be ready to vacate it: and meanwhile I’ll see Mr. Cray.”
He was a man of prompt action, this old friend of Dr. Davenal’s, and he rose as he spoke, shook hands with Sara, and bustled out so hastily that even attentive Neal did not catch him up in time to close the hall-door behind him. Sara supposed he was going then and there to Mark Cray’s.
