by Ellen Wood
She took her bonnet in her hand and went slowly up the stairs. It was not a pleasant task, this question that she had to put to her aunt, and she was glad of the little delay of even turning first into her own room to take her things off after her journey. Since the reading of the will yesterday Miss Davenal had been in one of her most chilling moods. She had asked an explanation of Sara what was the meaning of all this, what Dr. Davenal’s secret was, and where the money had gone to. Sara could only evasively put her off; one of the charges enjoined on his daughter by the doctor had been — not to place Edward in the power of his aunt.
It was not that Dr. Davenal feared the loyalty and good faith of his sister; but he knew how bitterly she would judge Edward, and he was willing to spare blame even to his guilty son. It is possible, also, that he deemed the secret safest left to Sara alone. Whatever his motive, he had said to her: “I charge you, keep it from your aunt Bettina and Sara had accepted the charge, and meant to act upon it. But Dr. Davenal might never have left it, had he foreseen the unpleasantness it entailed on Sara.
Very curious, very cross, very deaf was Bettina Davenal, as she sat in the drawing-room at her usual occupation, knitting. Her clinging mourning robes made her figure appear thinner and taller; and that, as you are aware, need not have been. She had seen from the window Sara come in, and she now thought she heard her footfall on the stairs; and her neck was thrown more upright than ever, and her lips were ominously compressed. It was this general displeasure which had chiefly caused the objection she made to Sara’s visiting the boys. Sara had gone, defying her; at least, she looked upon it in that light. Was she about to defy her in all things?
She just looked up when Sara entered the room, and then dropped her eyelids again, never speaking. Sara stood near the window, her head shaded by the half-drawn blind.
“Well, I have been, aunt.”
“Been?” grunted Miss Bettina. “Not anywhere. Where do you suppose I have been? I know propriety better than to be seen streaming abroad to-day.”
Sara drew a chair to the little table on which lay her aunt’s pearl basket of wool, and sat down close to her. Her pale refined face was ominously severe, and Sara’s heart seemed to faint at her task. Not at this one particular task before her, but at the heavy task altogether that her life had become. It was not by fainting, however, that she would get through it, neither was it the line of action she had carved out for herself.
“I observed that I had been to see the boys, Aunt Bettina. They both send their love to you.”
“I daresay they do. Especially that impudent Dick.”
“Mrs. Keen also desired to be remembered,” continued Sara.
“You can send back my thanks for the honour,” ironically spoke Miss Davenal. “The last time she was at Hallingham she passed our house without calling.”
“She spoke of it to-day, Aunt Bettina. She nodded to you at the window, she said, and pointed towards the station: she wished you to understand that she was pressed for time.”
Aunt Bettina made no answer. She was knitting vehemently. Apparently Sara was not getting on very well.
“Mr. Wheatley has been here, aunt.”
“You need not tell it me. He has been dodging in and out like a dog in a fair. Anybody but he might have respected the quiet of the house on the very day after its poor master had been taken from it. He came in and went out again, and then came in again — with you. As he had come, he might have been polite enough to ask for me. Neal said he wanted you. Early times, I think, to begin showing people you are the house’s mistress!”
It was not a promising commencement. Sara could only apply herself to her task in all deprecating meekness.
“Aunt Bettina, he came to speak about the future. I daresay he thought you would not like to be intruded upon to-day, for he wished me to talk things over with you. He was asking when we — you — when we should be ready to vacate the house.”
“To do what?” she repeated shrilly. But she heard very well. Sara was close to her and speaking in low clear tones.
“When we shall be ready to leave the house?”
“Had he not better turn us out of it to-day?” was the retort of the angry lady. “How dare he show this indecent haste?”
“Oh, aunt! You know it is only in accordance with papa’s will that he has to do it. You heard it read. You read it to yourself afterwards.”
“Yes, I did read it to myself afterwards: I could not believe that my brother Richard would have made such a will, and I chose to satisfy myself by reading it. Everything to be sold, indeed; as if we were so many bankrupts? Hold your tongue, Sara! Do you think I don’t grieve for the loss of the best brother that ever stepped! But there are matters a-gate that I don’t understand.”
“There’s a necessity for the things being sold, Aunt Bettina.”
“He told me so before he died: you need not repeat it to me. Where’s the money to be paid to?”
“And therefore Mr. Wheatley is desirous that there should be no unnecessary delay,” Sara continued, a faint colour tinging her cheek at the consciousness of evading her aunt’s question. “He does not ask us to go out at once, Aunt Bettina: he only wishes to know when we shall be ready to go out.”
“Then tell him from me that I will be no hindrance,” retorted Miss Bettina, her temper rising. “To-morrow — the next day — the day after — any day he pleases, now, or in a month to come. I can get a lodging at an hour’s notice.”
“Aunt, why are you so angry with me?”
The burst came from her in her pain and vexation. She could not help feeling how unjust it was to cast this anger upon her; how little she had done to deserve it. Miss Bettina knitted on more fiercely, declining an answer.
“It is not my fault, aunt. If you knew — if you knew what I have to bear!” —
“It is your fault, Sara Davenal. What I complain of is your fault. You are keeping this secret from me. I don’t complain that they are going to sell the chairs and tables: Richard has willed it so, and there’s no help for it: but I don’t like to be kept in the dark as to the reason, or where the money is to go. Why don’t you tell it me?”
It was a painful position for Sara. She had always been dutiful and submissive to her aunt: far more so than her brothers or Caroline had been.
“Aunt Bettina, I cannot tell you. I wish I could.”
“Do you mean to imply that you do not know it.”
“No, I don’t mean that I do know it At least, I know it partially. Papa did not tell me quite all.”
Miss Bettina’s usually placid chest was heaving with indignation. “And why could he not tell me, instead of you! I think I am more fit to be the depositary of a disgraceful secret than you are, a child! And I expect it is a disgraceful one.”
Ah, how disgraceful Sara knew only too well. She sat in silence, not daring to acknowledge it, not knowing what to answer.
“Once for all — will you confide it to me?”
Sara believed, as it had come to this, that it would be better if she could confide it to her; but the injunction of Dr. Davenal was a bar; and that she felt it her duty religiously to obey. In her deep love for her father she would not cast the onus of refusal upon him, preferring to let it rest on herself.
“Believe me, aunt, I cannot tell you. I am very sorry; I wish I did not know it myself. It — it was papa’s secret, and I must not tell it.”
In the twitching of her hands Miss Bettina contrived to throw down the ball of wool. Sara picked it up, glad of the little interlude. “Aunt Bettina, we could not have stayed on in this large house.”
“Did I say we could?” asked Miss Bettina. “Not now, when all your money’s gone in ducks and drakes.”
“Papa — papa could not help the money going,” she returned, her heart swelling in the eager wish to defend him. “He could not help it, Aunt Bettina.”
“I am not saying that he could. I am not casting reproach on him. It is not to be supposed, had he been able to hel
p it, that he would have let it go. How touchy you are!”
A silence, and then Sara began. She mentioned what Mr. Wheatley had said, that the house might be a good investment for the money of Caroline; and Miss Bettina, not at all a bad woman of business, was struck with the suggestion. She sat revolving it in silence, apparently only intent on her knitting. She supposed it could be so settled on Mark’s wife, but she did not understand much of what the law might be. The thought struck her that this ought to be seen about at once.
“Mr. Wheatley thinks it would be so much better if these things could be taken too by whoever succeeds to the house,” proceeded Sara. “ So as to avoid a public auction.”
Now that was one of the sore points troubling Miss Davenal — the prospect of selling the things by public auction. She had a most inveterate hatred to any such step, looking upon all sales of furniture, no matter what the cause of sale, as a humiliation. Hence the motive which had induced her to warehouse her handsome furniture instead of selling it, when, years ago, she gave up housekeeping to take up her abode at Dr. Davenal’s.
“Others knew that, before Mr. Wheatley,” she said ungraciously. “A public auction in this house! I would not stop in the town to see it. Has old Wheatley spoken to Mark?”
“It struck me he was going to Mark’s when he left here,” replied Sara. “I am not sure.”
Miss Davenal grunted as she went on with her knitting. She herself always liked to be “sure:” so far as her deafness allowed her. Turning to glance at the timepiece, she crossed the room and opened the door. There stood Neal.
Neal at his eaves-dropping, of course. And the black robes of his mistress were so soft, her footfall so noiseless on the rich carpet, that Neal’s ear for once failed him. But he was not one to allow himself to be caught. He had the coal-box in his hand, and was apparently stooping to pick up a bit of coal that had fallen on the ground. Miss Davenal would as soon have suspected herself capable of listening at doors, as that estimable servant Neal.
“Let the dinner be on the table to the moment, Neal,” were her orders. “And I shall want you to attend me abroad afterwards.” Are you going out, Aunt Bettina?” Sara ventured to inquire.
“Yes, I am,” was the sharp answer. “But not until the shades of night shall be upon the streets.”
Sara understood the covert reproach. Her aunt’s manners towards her had settled into a cold, chilling reserve. Sara wondered if they would ever thaw again.
Miss Davenal made her dinner deliberately: she never hurried over anything: and went out afterwards on foot, attended by Neal. Sara judged that she was going to the Abbey, but she did not dare to ask. She, Sara, went to the drawing-room, from old custom; shivering as she stepped up the wide staircase: not from cold, but from the loneliness that seemed to pervade the house. She had not got over that sense of strange nameless dread which the presence of the dead imparts and leaves behind it. The drawing-room was lighted as usual: no alteration had been made in the habits of the house; but as Sara glanced round its space, a nervous superstition began to creep over her. Perhaps the bravest of us have at times experienced such. A moment after, Watton appeared showing in a visitor: Mr. Oswald Cray.
Every pulse of her body stood still, and then bounded onwards; every thrill of her heart went out to him in a joyous greeting. In this dreadful sorrow and sadness he had but been growing all the dearer.
He was still in deep mourning for Lady Oswald. He looked taller, finer, more noble than of yore, or she fancied it, as he bent a little to her and took her hand, and kept it. He saw the quiver of the slight frame; he saw the red rose that dyed the pale cheeks with blushes, and Mr. Oswald Cray knew that he was not forgotten by her, any more than she was by him. But he knew also that both of them had only one thing to do — to bury these feelings now, to condemn them to oblivion for the future. The daughter of Dr. Davenal dead could be no more a wife for him, Oswald Cray, than the daughter of Dr. Davenal «living, and most certainly he was the last man to be betrayed into forgetting that uncompromising fact.
The rose-blush faded away, and he saw how weak and worn was her cheek; young, fragile, almost childish she looked in her evening dress of black, the jet chain on her white shoulders. Insensibly his voice assumed a tenderness rarely used to her, as he apologised for calling at that hour: but he was only passing through the town and would leave it again that night “I see how it is he cried, “you are suffering more than is good for you.”
But for the very greatest effort, the tears she had believed to have put under permanent control would have dropped then. A moment’s pause for calmness, and she remembered that her hand was lying in his, withdrew it, and sat down quietly in a chair, pointing to one for him. But the forced calmness brought a sickness to her heart, a pallor to her aching brow.
“How shall I tell you of my sympathy in your deep sorrow? I cannot express it; but you will believe me when I say that I feel it almost as you can do. It is indeed a trying time for you; a grief which has come to you all too early.”
“Yes,” she gently answered, swallowing the lump that kept rising in her throat “I have a good deal to bear.”
“There is only one comfort to be felt at these times — and that the mourner can but rarely feel,” he said, drawing his chair near to her. “It lies in the knowledge, the recollection, that Time, the great healer, will bind up the sorest wounds.”
“It can never bind up mine,” she said, speaking in the moment’s impulse. “But you are very kind; you are very kind to try to cheer me.”
“I wish I could cheer you, I wish I could remove every sorrow under which you suffer! No one living would be a truer friend to you than I should like to be. How is Miss Davenal?” he continued, possibly fancying he might be saying too much, or at least that a construction he never intended might appear to belong to his words. “Watton said she was out I suppose, in point of fact, she will not see me to-night. I know what war I wage with etiquette in being here so soon, and at this hour, and Miss Davenal is a close observer of it Will you forgive me?”
“Indeed I am glad to see you,” said Sara, simply. “I am doubly glad, for I feel almost ashamed to confess I was getting too nervous to be alone. My aunt is out; she went to the Abbey as soon as dinner was over. I am glad to see you thus early,” she added, “because I have a word to say to you from — from papa.”
“Yes,” said Oswald, lifting his head with slight eagerness, an unusual thing for him to do.
“In the letter he wrote to you, and which I sent — the letter you received,” she continued, looking at him and pausing.
“Yes?”
“He spoke of Mrs. Cray’s money in it, as he told me. He wished you to interest yourself and see that it was settled upon her. When he wrote that letter he was almost past exertion, and had to conclude it abruptly, not having said so much as he wished to say. Therefore he enjoined me to urge it upon you from him. He thought — I believe he thought that Mark Cray was inclined to be careless, and that the money might be wasted unless some one interfered. That was all.”
“I shall speak to Mark. Most certainly I will urge the settlement of the money on his wife, should there be occasion for it; but I imagine Mark will naturally so settle it without any urging. It is quite incumbent on him to do so, both as a matter of prudence and that it is his wife’s money, not his.”
“I don’t think Mark has much notion of prudence,” she rejoined. “I don’t think he has, in a general way. But the most careless would surely act in accordance with its dictates in a case like this. I am going to the Abbey presently.”
“I fancy that papa thought — or wished — that you would be one of the trustees, should trustees be required.”
“I should have no objection,” said Oswald, after a pause. “But — to go to another subject, if you can bear me to touch upon it — was not Dr. Davenal’s death sudden at the last?”
“Quite at the last it was. He had some days of dangerous illness, and he rallied from it, as we all su
pposed. It was thought he was out of danger, and he sat up: he sat up for several hours — and died.”
She spoke the words quietly, almost as she might have told of the death of one not related to her, her hands clasped on her lap, her face a little bent, her eyelids drooping. But Oswald Cray saw that it was the calmness that proceeds from that stem schooling of the heart which can only be enforced by those heavy-laden with hopeless pain.
“He died sitting up?”
“Yes. It was getting late, but he would not return to bed. He had been talking to me about many things; I was on a low seat, my head leaning against him. He died with his arm round me.”
“What a trial! What a shock it must have been!”
“I had no idea he was dead. He ceased talking, and I remained quiet, not to disturb him. My aunt Bettina came in, and saw what had happened.”
He scarcely knew what to say in answer. All comments at such a time are so grievously inadequate. He murmured some words of pity for the fate of Dr. Davenal, of compassion for her.
“It is Hallingham that deserves, perhaps, most of real pity,” she resumed, speaking in this matter-of-fact way that she might succeed in retaining her composure. “I do not know who will replace my father: no one, I fear, for a long while. If you knew how he is mourned—”
She stopped, perhaps at a loss for words.
“Did he suffer much?” asked Mr. Oswald Cray.
“He suffered here” — touching her chest—” but the pain ceased the last day or two, and the breathing got better. He had a great deal of pain of mind — as — perhaps — you — know. He was quite resigned to die: he said God was taking him to a better home.”
Still at cross-purposes. Sara’s hesitating avowal pointed to a different cause of mental pain from that assumed by Oswald Cray.
“Yes,” he at length said, abstractedly, for neither spoke for a few minutes, “it is a loss to Hallingham. This will be sad news to write to your brother.”
