Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  This was the climax. Miss Bettina Davenal was very wroth; wroth however, more in sorrow than in anger. In vain she strove to sift the affair to the bottom; Mark baffled her questions, baffled her indignant curiosity, and — it must be confessed — his wife helped him.

  She — Miss Bettina — turned away in the midst of the storm. She took up her black gloves, the only article of attire that she had removed, and drew them on her trembling hands. In the shaking of the hands alone did Bettina Davenal ever betray emotion: those firm, white, rather bony hands, usually so still and self possessed.

  “Marcus Cray, as surely as that you are standing now before me, you will rue this work if you carry it out When that day shall come, I beg you — I beg you, Caroline — to remember that I warned you of it.”

  She passed out without another word, and stalked down the lighted street, uncomfortably upright, Neal behind her with his ginger tread.

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  IS MARK IN HIS SENSES?

  MIDWAY between the Abbey and her own home — it was in the corner just before coming to the market-place — Miss Davenal encountered Mr. Oswald Cray.

  “Is Mark in his senses?” was her abrupt greeting to him, as he lifted his hat.

  “What is the matter with him? — What is he doing?” asked, Oswald, all in wonder.

  Miss Davenal paused. Either she did not hear the questioner she took time to recover herself to reply to it Her face was very pale, her cold grey eyes glittered like steel in the lamplight.

  “My poor brother has died young, and left this valuable practice in Mark’s hands. There are not many like unto it The house is ready to be offered to him: altogether, the career spreading out before him is a fine one. And he is talking of throwing it up. He is going to fling it from him as a child flings a pebble away into the sea. He says he shall quit Hallingham.”

  “Quit Hallingham!” repeated Oswald Cray, the last words of what she said alone making their full impression on him in his bewildered surprise. “Mark says he shall quit Hallingham?”

  “He has some wild-goose scheme in his head of setting up in practice in London,” said Miss Davenal, speaking in accordance with the notion she had erroneously assumed. “It is something he is about to purchase. He is going to purchase it with that money of Caroline’s. But he has as surely lost his senses as that we are here.”

  “I cannot understand it,” said Oswald. “No man in his senses would abandon such a practice as this.”

  “Just so. But I tell you he is not in his senses: he cannot be. I do not understand it any more than you. Perhaps you will see him?”

  “I will. I am going there now. I have been calling at your house, Miss Davenal. Now that I have met you, will you let me express my deep sympathy in your sorrow for the loss you have sustained.”

  “Thank you, sir. It has been the greatest blow I could have experienced, and if I have not shown it much outwardly — for it is not in my nature to show such — it has done its work on my heart There are few men who could not have been spared in Hallingham, whether to the town or to his family, better than Dr. Davenal.”

  “It is frequently the case,” said Oswald, half abstractedly, “ that those whom we think we could the least spare, are taken. Fare you well, Miss Davenal.”

  Oswald Cray strode on to the Abbey, the strange news puzzling him much. He did not take Mark at a disadvantage, as Miss Davenal had done. When he entered, Mark was all cool and easy, having had time to collect his wits and resolve on his course of action. That course was, not to open his lips about the scheme on hand to any other living mortal until it was ripe and ready to be acted upon. Miss Davenal’s communication to Oswald rendered this somewhat difficult, but Mark did not stand on an evasion or two.

  He was exceedingly surprised to see Oswald, not knowing that he was at Hallingham, and Caroline gave a little scream when he came in, in her pretty and somewhat affected manner. Oswald explained that he had not come from London, but from another part of the country, and had alighted at Hallingham for two or three hours only as he passed through it. He then entered upon the strange news just communicated to him.

  But Mark had his answer to it ready at hand. He talked in a mocking tone about “busybodies,” he ridiculed Miss Davenal’s deafness, saying that she generally heard things “double altogether, he contrived to blind Oswald, to convince him that the whole thing was a fable; or, rather, a mistake, partly arising from Miss Davenal’s infirmity, partly from a desire on his own part to “chaff” her for her interference. How Mark Cray reconciled this to his sense of honour, let him answer.

  And Oswald, perfectly truthful himself, never doubted his half brother. But he did not wholly quit the topic. He spoke of the few words written to him by Dr. Davenal when he was dying, and their purport — that he, Oswald, should urge the settlement of Mrs. Cray’s own money upon her. Though of course, Oswald added, there was no necessity for him to do so: Mark would naturally see for himself that it was the only thing to be done with it Of course he saw it, testily answered Mark, who was growing cross.

  “I cannot think how Miss Davenal could have misunderstood you as she did,” proceeded Oswald. “ She actually said that this money of Mrs. Cray’s was to be applied to the purchase of the new thing in London in which you were proposing to embark.”

  “Did she!” returned Mark, in a tone that one impudent schoolboy retorts upon another. “I do wonder, Oswald, that you should listen to the rubbish picked up by a deaf woman!”

  “The wonder is, how she could pick it up,” returned Oswald. “But I am heartily glad it is not so. Miss Davenal assumed that you must be out of your senses, Mark,” he added, a smile crossing his lips: “I fear I must have arrived at the same conclusion had you really been entertaining the notion of quitting Hallingham and throwing up such a practice as this.”

  “I wish to goodness people would mind their own business!” exclaimed Mark, who was losing his good manners in his vexation. The communication to his wife of his new scheme had been so smoothly accomplished, that the sudden interruption of Miss Davenal and now of Oswald Cray seemed all too like a checkmate; and Mark felt as a stag driven to bay. “I am old enough to regulate my own affairs without Miss Davenal,” he continued, “and I want none of her interference.”

  Oswald did not speak.

  “And, what’s more, I won’t stand it,” resumed Mark; “either from her or from any one. There! And, Oswald, I hope you will excuse my saying it: although you are my elder brother and may deem you have a right to dictate to me.”

  “The right to advise as a friend only, Mark,” was the reply, somewhat pointedly spoken. “Never to dictate.”

  Mark growled.

  “With Dr. Davenal’s valuable practice before you, Mark, it may appear to you quite a superfluous precaution to secure the money to your wife and children,” persisted Oswald. “But the chances and changes of life are so great, overwhelming families when least expected, that it behoves us all to guard those we love against them, as far as we have the power.”

  “Do you suppose I should not do the best for my wife that I can do?” asked Mark. “She knows I would. Be at ease, Oswald,” he added in an easy tone, of which Oswald detected not the banter, “when Caroline’s money shall be paid over, I’ll send you notice of it Talking of money, don’t you think the doctor made a strange will?”

  “I have not heard anything about his will,” replied Oswald. “He has died very well off, I suppose?”

  “We don’t think that he has died well off,” interposed Caroline. “I and Mark can’t quite make it out and they do not treat us with much confidence in the matter. Whatever there is, is left to Sara.”

  “To Sara?”

  “Every stick and stone,” returned Caroline, her cheeks assuming that lovely colour that excitement was apt to bring to them, mid which, to a practised eye, might have suggested a suspicion of something not sound in the constitution. “All the property he died possessed of is to be sold, even to the household fur
niture; and the money realised from it goes to Sara.”

  “And the son — Captain Davenal?”

  “There’s nothing left to him; not a penny-piece. His name is not so much as mentioned in the will.”

  Oswald looked as though he could not believe it He had thought that, of all men, Dr. Davenal would have been incapable of making an unjust will.

  “Look here, Oswald,” interrupted Mark, speaking in that half-whispered tone that is so suggestive of mystery, “there’s something under all this that we can’t fathom. Caroline overheard some words dropped by Miss Davenal to the effect that Sara was left dependent upon her, quite entirely dependent—”

  “But how can that be?” interrupted Oswald. “Have you not just said that the whole property is willed to her?”

  “True: but Miss Davenal did say it. It is all queer together,” concluded Mark. “Why should he have willed it all to Sara, excluding Edward? — And why should Miss Davenal assert, as she did, that Sara would be penniless, and must have a home with herself? am sure I and Caroline don’t want their confidence,” continued Mark, in a tone of resentment that was sufficient to betray he did want it. “But I say it’s a queer will altogether. Nothing left to Edward, when it’s well known the doctor loved him as the apple of his eye! Every sixpence that can be realised by the sales is to go to Sara; to be paid into her hands absolutely, without the security of trustees, or guardian, or anything. But as to his having died the wealthy man that he was thought to be, it is quite a mistake. So far as we can make out, there was no money laid by at all.”

  Oswald did not care to pursue the theme. The disposal of Dr. Davenal’s property was nothing to him; and if he could not help a suspicion crossing his mind as to how the laid-by gains of years had been spent, it was certainly not his intention to enlighten his brother Marcus. Neal had hinted at hush-money months ago, and the hint was haunting Oswald now.

  “Was it not a sudden death at the last?” exclaimed Caroline.

  “Very,” said Oswald. “It must have been a sad shock for you all. I am sure your cousin feels it much.”

  “Sara? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think she feels it more than I do. She seems as still and calm as a statue. She never shed a tear yesterday when the will was being read: and I am sure she listened to it. I never heard a word for my sobs.”

  But for the melancholy subject, Oswald would have smiled at Caroline’s faith in her own depth of grief. She had yet to learn the signs of real sorrow.

  “She is not demonstrative, I think,” he observed, alluding to Sara.

  “She never was,” returned Caroline: “and therefore I argue that there can be no real feeling. I have gone into hysterics ten times since the death, only thinking of it, as Mark knows; and I question if anybody has so much as seen Sara cry. I said to her yesterday, ‘How collected you are! how you seem to think of everything for the future!’ ‘Yes,’ she answered in a dreamy sort of way, ‘I have got work to do; I have got work to do.’ I don’t know why it should be,” continued Mrs. Cray, after a pause, “but in the last few months Sara seems to have altered so much; to have turned grave before her time. It is as though all her youth had gone out of her.”

  Oswald rose: he believed his mission had been accomplished — that there was no doubt of Mark’s investing his wife’s money for her benefit, in accordance with the doctor’s wishes. They pressed him to remain and take some tea, but he declined: he was returning to town that night His last words to his half-brother proved how completely he was astray.

  “Mark, it would be only kind of you to set Miss Davenal right I am sure the misapprehension was causing her serious pain.”

  “I’ll attend to her,” rejoined Mark, with a careless laugh, as he went with him to the hall-door. “Good-night, Oswald. A safe journey to you!”

  Mark returned to his wife. He had not quite liked to use that deliberate deceit to Oswald Cray in her presence. But Mark was ingenious in sophistries, in that kind of logic which tends to “make the worse appear the better reason,” and Caroline put full faith in him as she listened to his half-apology, half-explanation.

  “It would never have done to enlighten him,” observed Mark. “What I have said, I said for your sake, Carine. Oswald is one who would rather let a man plod on for years on bread and cheese, than see him make a dash and raise himself at once to independence. He’s a slow-going coach himself, and thinks everybody else ought to be!”

  And, propping his back against the side of the mantelpiece, Mark Cray enlarged upon all the grandeur and glory of the prospect opening to him, painting its future scenes in colours so brilliant that his wife lost herself in a trance of admiration, and wished it could all be realised with the morning light.

  PART THE SECOND.

  CHAPTER XXXVII.

  ENTERING ON NEW HOME.

  FOR once London was bright. A glorious spring day late in March had gladdened the spirits of the metropolitan world, dreary with the fogs and rains of the passing winter, and as the street passengers looked up at the clear blue sky, the shining sun, they said to each other that the day was a foretaste of summer.

  The sun drew to its setting, and its red rays fell on the terminus of the Great Western Railway at Paddington; on all the bustle and confusion of a train just in. Amidst the various vehicles driving out of the station with their freight, was a cab, containing two ladies dressed in deep mourning, one of whom, the elder, had not recovered from the pushing about to which she had been subjected in the confusion of arrival, and was protesting that she should not recover it, and that there ought to be arrangements made to protect lady travellers from such. On the box beside the driver was a — was he a gentleman, or was he a servant? If the latter, he was certainly a most superior one in looks, but the idle people standing about and casting their eyes up to the passing cabs were taking him no doubt for the former. The luggage piled up on the top of the cab and on the front seat of the inside, seemed to say that these travellers had come from a distance.

  In point of fact they had come from Hallingham, for they were no other than Miss Davenal and her niece, and the gentleman on the box was Neal. Miss Davenal kept up her chorus of complaint. It had begun with the discomforts attendant on the arrival of a large train at the terminus, and it would be continued, there was little doubt, for ever and a day; for though Miss Bettina had come to London by her own free decision, she had come sorely against her will.

  “Jostling! pushing! hustling! roaring! It is a shame that ladies should be subjected to such. Why don’t they manage things better?”

  “But, Aunt Bettina, you need not have been in the bustle. If you had but seated yourself in the cab, as Neal suggested, and allowed him to see after the luggage—”

  “Hold your tongue, Sara. What was one pair of eyes to look after all the luggage we have got? I chose to see to it as well as Neal; and I say that the way you get pushed about is shameful. My firm belief is, we have lost at least ten of the smaller packages.”

  “No, no, aunt, they are all here; I counted them as they were brought to the cab.”

  “Yes, that’s about all you are good for! — counting the cabs! I’d spend my moments to a little more purpose. Good heavens! we shall be run down! If this is London I wish I had never heard of it.”

  The cab threaded its way amidst the crowded streets and its inmates’ terrors — for Sara was little less timid than her aunt — until it drew up before a small house in Pimlico; small as compared with their house at home. Miss Davenal looked up at it and gave a groan; and Neal opened the cab door.

  “Is this the place, Neal? It is dreadfully small.”

  “I think you will find it convenient, ma’am. It is better inside than out.”

  Better inside than out! It was new and fresh and pleasant-looking; but to poor Miss Davenal it appeared, as she had said, dreadfully small. Sara seemed less disagreeably impressed. She had not anticipated great things; and it was of very little consequence to her where she lived now. In reality, it was rather
a nice house, of moderate size; but Miss Davenal was estimating it by comparison — as we all estimate things.

  She turned herself about in the small passage in dismay. A door on the left led into the parlour, the room they would use for dining; about four such could have been put into the dining-room at Hallingham. The staircase would scarcely admit of two abreast; and in front of it, at the top, was the drawing-room, a light, cheerful apartment, with one large window. The furniture in these rooms was Miss Davenal’s, and it crowded them inconveniently.

  Dorcas, she who had lived at the Abbey with Mrs. Cray, stood there with a smiling face to receive them; and the landlady, a humble sort of person, in a green stuff gown, who had the pleasure of residing in the back kitchen and sleeping in some obscure attic, came forward also. The greater portion of the house had been taken unfurnished for Miss Davenal.

  “About the bedrooms, Dorcas?” inquired Miss Davenal, in a half-frightened tone. “Which is mine?”

  “Which you please to choose, ma’am,” was Dorcas’s answer. “The two best chambers are the one behind the drawing-room, and the one over the drawing-room.”

  The room over the drawing-room was the largest and best, but Miss Davenal did not like so many stairs, and resigned it to Sara. She, Miss Davenal, turned herself about in the small back room as she had done in the passage; her own spacious chamber at home was all too present to her, and she wondered whether she should ever become reconciled to this.

  Had any one told her a few short months before — nay, a few short weeks — that she should ever take up her abode in London, she had rejected the very idea as absurd, almost an impossibility. Yet here she was! come to it of her own decision, of her own accord, but in one sense terribly against her will.

  Marcus Cray had carried out his plans. To the intense astonishment of Hallingham he had rejected the valuable practice which had become his by the death of Dr. Davenal, and his mode of relinquishing it had been a most foolish one. Whether he feared the remonstrances of his brother, the reproaches of Miss Davenal, or the interference of other friends of his wife, certain it is that Mark, in disposing of the practice, had gone unwisely to work. A practice such as Dr Davenal’s, if placed properly in the market, would have brought forth a host of men eager to be the purchasers and to offer a fair and just sum for it. But of this Mark Cray allowed, no chance. He privately negotiated with a friend of his, a Mr. Berry, and sold him the goodwill for little more than an old song.