Oliver Rane was in his bedchamber; a front apartment facing the road. It will be as well to give a word of description to this first floor, for it may prove needed as the tale goes on. It consisted of a large landing-place, its boards white and bare, with a spacious window looking to the side of the other house, as the dining-room beneath it did. Wide, low and curtainless was this window; giving, in conjunction with the bare floors and walls, a staring appearance to the place. Mrs. Cumberland's opposite landing (could you have seen it) presented a very different aspect, with its rich carpet, its statues, vases, bookcases, and its pretty window-drapery. Dr. Rane could not afford luxuries yet; or, indeed, superfluous furniture of any sort. The stairs led almost close to this window, so that in coming down from any of the bedrooms, or the upper floor, you had to face it.
To get into Dr. Rane's chamber--the best in the house--an ante-room had to be passed through, and its door was opposite the large window. Two chambers opened from the back of the landing: they faced the back lane that ran along beyond the garden wall. Above, in the roof, were two other rooms, both three-cornered. Phillis, the old serving-woman, slept on that floor in one of them, Dr. Rane on this: the house had no other inmates.
The ante-room had no furniture: unless some curious-looking articles lying on the floor could be called so. They seemed to consist chiefly of glass: jars covered in dust, a cylindrical glass-pump, and other things belonging to chemistry, of which science the doctor was fond. Certainly the architect had not made the most of this floor, or he would never have given so much space to the landing. But if this ante-room was not furnished, Dr. Rane's chamber was; and well furnished too. The walls were white and gold, the dressing-table and glass stood before the window and opposite the door. On the left was the fireplace; the handsome white Arabian bedstead was picked out with gold, and its hangings of green damask, matched the window drapery and the soft colours of the carpet.
Seated at the round table in the middle of the room, his hand raised to support his head, was Dr. Rane. He had only just come in, and it was now one o'clock--his usual dinner hour. It was that same morning mentioned in the last chapter, when he had quitted Mrs. Gass's house with that dangerous piece of paper weighing upon his pocket and his heart. He had been detained out. As he was entering the house of the sick man, Ketler, whom he had proceeded at once to see, a bustle in the street, and much wild running of women, warned him that something must have happened. Two men had fallen into the river at the back of the North Works; and excited people were shouting that they were drowned. Not quite: as Dr. Rane saw when he reached the spot: not beyond hope of restoration. Patiently the doctor persevered in his endeavours. He brought life into them at length; and stayed afterwards caring for them. After that, he had Ketler and other patients to see, and it was nearly one when he bent his steps towards home. In the morning he had said to himself that he would call at the Hall on his return; but he passed its gates; perhaps because it was his dinner hour, for one o'clock was striking.
Hanging up his hat in the small hall, leaving his cane in the corner--a pretty trifle with a gold stag for its handle--he was making straight for the stairs, when the servant, Phillis, came out of the kitchen. A little woman of some five-and-fifty years, with high shoulders, and her head carried forward. Her chin and nose were sharp now, but the once good-looking face was meek and mild, the sweet dark eyes were subdued, and the hair, peeping from beneath the close white cap, was grey. She wore a dark cotton gown and check apron. A tidy-looking, respectable woman, in spite of her unfashionable appearance.
"Is that you, sir? Them folks have been over from the brick-kilns, saying the woman's not so well to-day, if you'd please to go to her."
Dr. Rane nodded. He went on up the stairs and into his own room, the door of which he locked. Why? Phillis was not in the habit of intruding upon him, and there was no one else in the house. The first thing he did was to take the paper received from Mrs. Gass out of his pocketbook, and read it attentively twice over. Then he struck a match, set fire to it, and watched it consume away in the empty grate. A dangerous memento, whosesoever hand had penned it; and the physician did well, in the interests of humanity, to put it out of sight for ever. The task over, he leaned against the window-frame, and lapsed into thought. He was dwelling upon the death at Dallory Hall, and what it might bring forth.
Hepburn, the undertaker, was right. There was to be no inquest. So much Dr. Rane had learned from Richard North: who had hastened to the works on hearing of the accident to his men. The two Whitborough doctors had given the certificate of death: apoplexy, to which there had been a previous tendency, though immediately brought on by excitement: and nothing more was required by law. From a word spoken by Richard, Dr. Rane gathered that it was madam who had set her veto against an inquest. And quite right too; there was no necessity whatever for one, had been the comment made by Oliver Rane to Richard. But now--now when he was alone with himself and the naked truth: when there was no man at hand whose opinion it might be well to humour or deceive: no eye upon him save God's, he could not help acknowledging that had he been Mr. North, had it been his son who was thus cut off from life, he should have caused an inquest to be held. Ay, ten inquests, an' the law would have allowed them; if by that means he might have traced the letter home to its writer.
Quitting the window, he sat down at the table and bent his forehead upon his hand. Never in his whole life had anything so affected him as this death: and it was perhaps natural that he should set himself to see whether, or not, any sort of excuse might be found for the anonymous writer.
He began by putting himself in idea in the writer's place, and argued the point for him: for and against. Chieflyfor; it was on that side his bias leaned. It is very easy, as the world knows, to find a plea for those in whom we are interested or on whom misfortune falls; it is so natural to indulge for their sakes in a little sophistry. Such sophistry came now to the help of the physician.
"What need had Edmund North to fly into a furious passion?" ran the self-argument. "Only a madman might have been expected to do so. There was nothing in the letter that need have excited him, absolutely nothing. It was probably written with a very harmless intention; certainly the writer never could have dreamt that it might have the effect of destroying a life."
Destroying a man's life!A flush passed into Oliver Rane's face at the thought, dyeing neck and brow. And, with it, recurred the words of Hepburn--that the writer was a murderer and might come to be tried for it. A murderer! There is no other self-reproach under heaven that can bring home so much anguish to the conscience. But--could a man be justly called a murderer if he had never had thought or intention of doing anything of the kind?
"Halt here," said Dr. Rane, suddenly speaking aloud, as if he were a special pleader arguing in a law court. "Can a man be called a murderer who has never had the smallest intention of murdering--who would have flown in horror from the bare idea? Let us suppose it was--Mrs. North--who wrote the letter? Alexander suspects her, at any rate. Put it that she had some motive for writing it. It might have been a good motive--that of stopping Edward North in his downward career, as the letter intimated--and she fancied this might be best accomplished by letting his father hear of what he, in conjunction with Alexander, was doing. According to Alexander, she does not interfere openly between the young men and their father; it isn't her policy to do so: and she may have considered that the means she took were legitimate under the circumstances. Well, could she for a moment imagine that any terrible consequences would ensue? A rating from Mr. North to his son, and the matter would be over. Just so: she was innocent of any other thought. Then how could she be thought guilty?"
Dr. Rane paused. A book lay on the table: he turned its leaves backwards and forwards in abstraction, his mind revolving the subject. Presently he resumed.
"Or--take Alexander's view of the letter--that it was written to damage him with Mr. North and the neighbourhood generally. Madam--say again--had conceived a dislike to Alexander, wished him dismissed from the house, but had no plea for doing it, and so tookthatmeans of accomplishing her end. Could she suspect that the result would be fatal to Edmund North? Would she not have shrunk with abhorrence from writing the letter, had she foreseen it? Certainly. Then, under these circumstances, how can a man--I mean a woman--be responsible, legally or morally, for the death? It would be utterly unjust to charge her with it. Edmund North is alone to blame. Clearly so. The case is little better than one of unintentional suicide."
Having arrived at this view of the subject--so comforting for the unknown writer--Dr. Rane rose briskly, and began to wash his hands and brush his hair. He took a note-case from his pocket, in which he was in the habit of entering his daily engagements, to see at what hour he could most conveniently visit the brick-fields, in compliance with the message received. The sick woman was in no danger, as he knew, and he might choose his own time. In passing through the ante-room--a room, by the way, generally distinguished as the Drab Room, from the unusual colour of the hideous walls--he took up one of the glass jars, requiring it for some purpose downstairs. And then he noticed something that displeased him.
"Phillis!" he called, going out to the landing: "Phillis!" And the woman, a very active little body, came running up.
"You have been sweeping the Drab Room?"
"It was so dirty, sir."
"Now look here," he cried, angrily. "If you sweep out a room again, when I tell you it is not to be swept, I'll keep every place in the house locked up. Some of the glass here is valuable, and I won't run the risk of having it broken with your brooms and brushes."
Down went Phillis, taking the reproof in silence. As Dr. Rane crossed the landing to follow her, his eyes fell on his mother's house through the large window. The window opposite was being cleaned by one of the servants: at the window of the dining-room underneath, his mother was sitting. It reminded Dr. Rane that he had not been in to see her for nearly two days; not since Edmund North----
Suddenly a sense of the delusive nature of the sophistry he had been indulging, flashed into his brain, and the truth shone out distinct and bare. Edmund North was dead; had been killed by the anonymous letter. But for that fatal letter he had been alive and well now. A sickening sensation, as of some great oppression, came over Oliver Rane, and his nerveless fingers dropped the jar.
Out ran Phillis, lifting her hands at the crash of glittering particles lying in the passage. "He has broken one himself now," thought she, referring to the recent reproof.
"Sweep the pieces carefully into a dust-pan, and throw them away," said her master as he passed on. "The jar slipped out of my fingers."
Phillis stared a minute, exhausting her surprise, and then turned away for the dust-pan. The doctor went on to the front-door, instead of into the dining-room, as Phillis expected.
"Sir," she called out, hastening after him, "your dinner's waiting. Will you not take it now?"
But Dr. Rane passed on as though he had not heard her, and shut the door loudly.
He turned into his mother's house. Not by the open window; not by stepping over the slight fence; but he knocked at the front-door, and was admitted as an ordinary visitor. Whether it was from having lived apart for so many years of their lives, or that a certain cordiality was wanting in the disposition of each, certain it was that Dr. Rane and his mother observed more ceremony with each other than usually obtains between mother and son.
Mrs. Cumberland sat at the open dining-room window just as he had seen her from his staircase landing; a newspaper lay behind her on a small table, as if just put down. Ellen Adair, as might be heard, was at the piano in the drawing-room, playing, perhaps from unconscious association, and low and softly as it was her delight to play, the "Dead March in Saul." The dirge grated on the ears of Dr. Rane.
"What a melancholy performance!" he involuntarily exclaimed; and Mrs. Cumberland looked up, there was so much irritation in his tone.
He shook hands with his mother, but did not kiss her, which he was not accustomed to do, and stood back against the broad window, his face turned to it.
"You are a stranger, Oliver," she said. "What has kept you away?"
"I have been busy. To-day especially. They had an accident at the works--two men were nearly drowned--and I have been with them all the morning."
"I heard of it. Jelly brought me in the news; she seems to hear everything. How fortunate that you were at hand!"
He proceeded, rather volubly for him, to give particulars of the accident and of the process he adopted to recover the men. Mrs. Cumberland looked and listened with silent, warm affection; but that she was a particularly undemonstrative woman, she would have betrayed it in her manner. In her eyes, there was not so fine and handsome and estimable a man in all Dallory as this her only son.
"Oliver, what a dreadful thing this is about Edmund North! I have not seen you since. Why did you not come in and tell me the same night?"
He turned his eyes on her for a moment in surprise, and paused.
"I am not in the habit of coming in to tell you when called out to patients, mother. How was I to know you wished it?"
"Nonsense, Oliver! This is not an ordinary thing: the Norths were something to me once. I have had Edmund on my knee when he was a baby; and I should have liked you to pay me the attention of bringing in the news. It appears to be altogether a more romantic event than one meets with every day, and such things, you know, are of interest to lonely women."
Dr. Rane made no rejoinder, possibly not having sufficient excuse for his carelessness. He stood looking dreamily from a corner of the window. Phillis, as might be seen from there, was carrying away the fowl prepared for his dinner, and a tureen of sauce. Mrs. Cumberland probably thought he was watching with critical curiosity the movements of his handmaid. She resumed:
"They say, Oliver, there has been no hope of him from the first."
"There was very little. Of course, as it turns out, there could have been none."
"And who wrote the letter? With what motive was it written?" proceeded Mrs. Cumberland, her grey face bent slightly forward, as she waited for an answer.
"It is of no use to ask me, mother. Some people hold one opinion, some another; mine would go for little."
"They are beginning now to think that it was not written at all to injure Edmund, but Mr. Alexander."
"Who told you that?" he asked, a sharper accent discernible in his tone.
"Captain Bohun. He came in this morning to tell me of the death. Considering that I have no claim upon him, that a year ago I had never spoken to him, I must say that Arthur Bohun is very kind and attentive to me. He is one in a thousand."
Perhaps the temptation to say, "It's not for your sake he is so attentive," momentarily assailed Oliver Rane. But he was good-natured in the main, and he knew when to be silent, and when to speak: no man better. Besides, it was no business of his.
"I entertain a different opinion," he observed, referring to the point in discussion. "Of course it is all guess work as to the writer's motive: there can be no profit in discussing it, mother: and I must be going, for my dinner's waiting. Thank you for sending me the chicken."
"A moment yet, Oliver," she interposed, as he was moving away. "Have you heard that Alexander is going to leave?"
"Yes: he was talking to me about it this morning."
If ever a glow of light had been seen lately on Mrs. Cumberland's marble face, it was seen then. The tightly-drawn features had lost their grey tinge.
"Oliver, I could go down on my knees and thank Heaven for it. You don't know how grieved I have felt all through these past two years, to see you put into the shade by that man, and to know that it was I who had brought you here! It will be all right now. New houses are to be built, they say, at the other end of the Ham, and the practice will be worth a great deal. I shall sleep well to-night."
He smiled as he shook hands with her; partly in affection, partly at her unusual vehemence. In passing the drawing-room, Ellen Adair happened to be coming out of it, but he went on. She supposed he had not observed her, and spoke.
"Ah! how do you do, Miss Adair?" he said, turning back, and offering his hand. "Forgive my haste; I am busy to-day."
And before she had time to make any reply, he was gone; leaving an impression on her mind, she could not well have told why or wherefore, that he was ill at ease; that he had hastened away, not from pressure of work, but because he did not care to talk to her.
If that feeling was possessing Dr. Rane, and had reference to the world in general, and not to the young lady in particular, it might not have been agreeable to him to encounter an acquaintance as he turned out of his mother's house. Mr. Alexander was swiftly passing on his way towards home from the lower part of the Ham, and stopped.
"I wish I had never said a syllable about going away until I was off," cried he in his off-hand manner--a pleasanter and more sociable manner than Dr. Rane's. "The news has been noised abroad, and the whole place is upon me; asking this, that, and the other. One man comes and wants to know if I'll sell my furniture; another thinks he'd like the house as it stands. My patients are up in arms;--say I'm doing it to kill them. I shall have some of them in a fever before the day's over."
"Perhaps you won't go, after all," observed Dr. Rane.
"Not go! How can I help going? I'm elected to the post. Why, it's what I've been looking out for ever so long--almost ever since I came here. No, no, Rane: a short time, and Dallory Ham will have seen the last of me."
He hastened across the road to his house, like a man who has the world's work on his busy shoulders. Dr. Rane's thoughts, as he glanced after him, reverted to the mental argument he had held in his chamber, and he unconsciously resumed it, putting himself in the place of the unknown, unhappy writer, as before.
"It's almost keener than the death itself--if the motive was to injure Alexander in his profession, or drive him from the place--to know that he, or she--Mrs. North--might have spared her pains! Heavens! what remorse it must be!--to commit a crime, and then find there was no necessity for doing it!"
Dr. Rane passed his white handkerchief over his brow--the day was very warm--and turned into his house. Phillis once more placed the dinner on the table, and he sat down to it.
But not a mouthful could he swallow; his throat felt like so much dried-chip, and the food would not go down. Phillis, who was coming in for something or other, saw him leave his plate and rise from table.
"Is the fowl not tender, sir?"
"Tender?" he responded, as though the sense of the question had not reached him, and paused. "Oh, it's tender enough: but I must go off to a patient. Get your own dinner, Phillis."
"Surely you'll come back to yours, sir?"
"I've had as much as I want. Take the things away."
"I wonder what's come to him?" mused the woman as his quick steps receded from the house, and she was left with the rejected dishes. A consciousness came dimly penetrating to her hazy brain that there was some change upon him. What it was, or where it lay, she did not define. It was unusual for his strong firm fingers to drop a glass; it was still more unusual for him to explain cause and effect. "The jar slipped from my fingers." "I've had as much as I want. I must go off to a patient." It was quite out of the order of routine for Dr. Rane to be explanatory to his servant on any subject whatever: and perhaps it was his having been so in these two instances that impressed Phillis.
"How quick he must have eaten his dinner!"
Phillis nearly dropped the dish. The words were spoken close behind her, and she had believed herself alone in the house. Turning, she saw Jelly, standing half in, half out of the window.
"Well, I'm sure!" cried Phillis, in wrath. "You needn't come startling a body in that way, Mrs. Jelly. How did you know but the doctor might be at table?"
"I've just seen him go down the lane," returned Jelly, who had plenty of time for gossiping with her neighbours, and had come strolling over the fence now with no other object. "Has he had his dinner? It's but the other minute he was in at our house."
"He has had as much as he means to have," answered Phillis, her anger evaporating, for she liked a gossip also. "I'm sure it's not worth the trouble of serving meals, if they are to be left in this fashion. It was the same thing at breakfast."
Jelly recollected the scene at breakfast; the startled pallor on Dr. Rane's face, when told that Edmund North was dead: she supposed that had spoiled his appetite. Her inquisitive eyes turned unceremoniously to the fowl, and she saw that the merest slice off the wing was alone eaten.
"Perhaps he is not well to-day," said Jelly.
"I don't know about his being well; he's odder than I ever saw him," answered Phillis. "I shouldn't wonder but he has had his stomach turned over them two half-drowned men."
She carried the dinner-things across to the kitchen. Jelly, who assisted at the ceremony, as far as watching and talking went, was standing in the passage, when her quick eyes caught sight of two small pieces of glass. She stooped to pick them up.
"Look, Phillis! You have been breaking something. It's uncommonly careless to leave the bits about."
"Is it!" retorted Phillis. "Your eyes are in everything. I thought I took 'em all up," she added, looking on the ground.
"What did you break?"
"Nothing. It was the doctor. He dropped one of them dusty glass jars down the stairs. It did give me a start. You should have heard the smash."
"What made him drop it?" asked Jelly.
"Goodness knows," returned the older woman. "He's not a bit like himself to-day; it's just as if something had come to him."
She began her dinner as she spoke, standing, her usual mode of taking it. Jelly, following her free-and-easy habits, stood against the door-post, apparently interested in the progress of the meal. They presented a contrast, these two women, the one a thin, upright giantess, the other a dwarf stooping forward. Jelly, a lady's-maid, held herself of course altogether above Phillis, an ignorant (as Jelly would have described her) servant-of-all-work, though condescending to drop in for the sake of gossip.
"Did you happen to hear how the doctor found Ketler?"
"As if I should be likely to hear!" was Phillis's retort. "He'd not tell me, and I couldn't ask. My master's not one you can put questions to, Jelly."
A silence ensued. The gossip apparently flagged to-day. Phillis had it chiefly to herself, for Jelly vouchsafed only a brief remark now and again. She was engaged in the mental process of wondering whathadcome to Dr. Rane.
There must be a little retrospect to make things intelligible to the reader; and it may as well be given at once.
Mr. North, now of Dallory Sail, had got on entirely by his own industry. Of obscure, though in a certain way respectable, parentage, he had been placed as apprentice to a firm in Whitborough. It was a firm in extensive work, not confining itself to one branch. They took contracts for public buildings, small and large: did mechanical engineering; had planned one of the early railways. John North--plain Jack North he was known as, then--remained with the firm when he was out of his time, and got on in it. Steady and plodding, he rose from one step to another; and at length, in conjunction with one who had been in the same firm, he set up for himself. This other was Thomas Gass. Gass had not risen from the ranks as North had: his connections were good, and he had received a superior education; but his friends were poor. North and Gass, as the new firm called itself, began business near to Dallory; quietly at first--as all people, who really expect to get on, generally do begin. They rose rapidly. The narrow premises expanded; the small contracts grew into large ones. People said luck was with them--and in truth it seemed so. The Dallory works became noted in the county, employing quite a colony of people: the masters were respected and sought after. Both lived at Whitborough; Mr. North with his wife and family; Mr. Gass a bachelor.
Thomas Gass had one brother; a clergyman. Their only sister, Fanny, a very pretty girl, had her home with him in his rectory, but she came often to Whitborough on a visit to Thomas. Suddenly it was announced to the world that she had become engaged to marry a Captain Rane, entirely against the wish of her two brothers. She was under twenty. Captain Rane, a poor naval man on half-pay, was almost old enough to be her grandfather. Their objection lay not so much in this, as in himself. For some reason or other, neither of them liked him. The Reverend William Gass forbid his sister to think of him; Mr. Thomas Gass, a fiery man, swore he would never afterwards look upon her as a sister, if she persisted in thus throwing herself away.
Miss Gass did persist. She possessed the obstinate spirit of her brother Thomas, though without his fire. She chose to take her own way, and married Captain Rane. They sailed at once for Madras; Captain Rane having obtained some post there, connected with the Government ships.
Whether Miss Gass repented her marriage, her brothers had no means of learning: for she, retaining her anger, never wrote to them during her husband's lifetime. It was a very short one. Barely a twelvemonth had elapsed after the knot was tied, when there came a pitiful letter from her. Captain Rane had died, just as her little son Oliver (named after a friend, she said) was born. Thomas Gass, to whom the letter had been specially written, gathered that she was left badly off; though she did not absolutely say so. He went into one of his angry moods, and tossed the epistle across the desk to his partner. "You must do something for her, Gass," said John North when he had read it. "I never will," hotly affirmed Mr. Gass. "Fanny knows what I promised if she married Rane--that I would never help her during my lifetime or after it. She knows another thing--that I am not one to go from my word. William may help her if he likes; he has not much to give away, but he can have her home to live with him." "Help the child, then," suggested Mr. North, knowing further remonstrance to be useless. "No," returned obstinate Thomas Gass; "I'll stick to the spirit of my promise as well as the letter." And Mr. North bent his head again--he was going over some estimates--feeling that the affair was none of his. "I don't mind putting the boy in the tontine, North," presently spoke the junior partner. "The tontine!" echoed John North in surprise, "what tontine?" "What tontine?" returned the hard man--though in truth he was not hard in general, "why, the one that you and others are getting up; the one you have just put your baby, Bessy, into; I know of no other tontine." "But that will not benefit the boy," urged Mr. North: "certainly not now; and the chances are ten to one against its ever benefiting him in the future." "Never mind; I'll put him into it," said Mr. Gass, whose obstinacy always came out well under opposition. "You want a tenth child to close the list, and I'll put him into it." So into the tontine Oliver Rane, unconscious infant, was put.
But Mrs. Rane did not further trouble either of her brothers; or, as things turned out, require assistance from them. She remained in India; and after a year married a Government chaplain there, the Reverend George Cumberland, who possessed some private property. Little, if any, communication took place afterwards between her and her brothers; she cherished resentment for old grievances, and would not write to them. And so the sister and the brothers seemed to fade away from each other from henceforth. We all know how relatives, parted by time and distance, become estranged, disappearing almost from memory.
Whilst the firm, North and Gass, was rising higher and higher in wealth and importance, the wife of its senior partner died. She left three children, Edmund, Richard, and Bessy. Subsequently, during a visit to London, chance drew Mr. North into a meeting with a handsome young woman, the widow of Major Bohun. She had not long returned from India, where she had buried her husband. A designing, attractive syren, who began forthwith to exercise her dangerous fascinations on plain, unsuspicious Mr. North. She had only a poor pittance; what money there was belonged to her only child, Arthur; a little lad: sent out of sight already to a preparatory school. Report had magnified Mr. North's wealth into something fabulous; and Mrs. Bohun did not cease her scheming until she had caught him in her toils and he had made her Mrs. North.
Men do things sometimes in a hurry, only to repent of them at leisure. That Mr. North had been in a hurry in this case was indisputable--it was just as though Mrs. Bohun had thrown a spell over him; whether he repented when he woke up and found himself with a wife, a stepmother for his children at home, was not so certain. He was a sufficiently wise man in those days to conceal what he did not want known.
Whom he had married, beyond the fact that she was the widow of Major Bohun, he did not know from Adam. For all she disclosed about her own family, in regard to whom she maintained an absolute reticence, she might have dropped from the moon, or "growed" like Topsy; but, from the airs and graces she assumed, Mr. North might have concluded they were dukes and duchesses at least. Her late husband's family were irreproachable, both in character and position. The head of it was Sir Nash Bohun, representative of an ancient baronetcy, and elder brother of the late major. Before the wedding tour was over, poor Mr. North found that his wife was a cold, imperious, extravagant woman, not to be questioned by any means if she so chose. When her fascinations were in full play (while she was only Mrs. Bohun) Mr. North had been ready to think her an angel. Where had all the amiability flown to? People do change after marriage somehow. At least, there have been instances known of it.
A little circumstance occurred one day that--to put it mildly--had surprised Mr. North. He had been given to understand by his wife that Major Bohun died suddenly of sunstroke; she had certainly told him so. In talking at a dinner-party at Sir Nash Bohun's with some gentlemen not long from India, he and Mr. North being side by side at the table after the ladies had retired, the subject of sunstrokes came up. "My wife's former husband, Major Bohun, died of one," innocently observed Mr. North. "Died ofwhat?" cried the other, putting down his claret-glass, which he was conveying to his mouth. "Of sunstroke," repeated Mr. North. "Bohun did not die of sunstroke," came the impulsive answer; "who told you he died of that?" "She did--my wife," was Mr. North's answer. "Oh!" said his friend; and took up his claret again. "Why, what did he die of, if it was not sunstroke?" asked Mr. North, with curiosity. "Well,--I--I don't know; I'd rather say no more about it," was the conclusive reply: "of course Mrs. North must know better than I." And nothing more would he say on the subject.
They were staying at this time at Sir Nash Bohun's. In passing through London after the Continental wedding trip on their way to Whitborough, Sir Nash had invited them to make his house their resting-place. Not until the day following his conversation at the dinner-table had Mr. North an opportunity of questioning his wife; but, that some false representation, intentionally or otherwise, had been made to him on the subject of her late husband's death, he felt certain. They were alone in her dressing-room. Mrs. North, who had a great deal of beautiful black hair, was standing before the glass, doing something to a portion of it, when her husband suddenly accosted her. He called her by her Christian name in those first married days. It was a very fine one.
"Amanda, you told me, I think, that Major Bohun died of sunstroke."
"Well?" she returned carelessly, occupied with her hair.
"But he did not die of sunstroke. He died of--of something else."
Mr. North had watched women's faces turn to pallor, but never in his whole life had he seen so livid a look of terror as now overspread his wife's. Her hair dropped from her nerveless hands.
"Why, what is the matter?" he exclaimed.
She murmured something about a spasm of the heart, to which she was subject: an excuse, as he saw. Another moment, and she had recovered her composure, and was busy with her hair again.
"You were asking me something, were you not, Mr. North?"
"About Major Bohun: what was it he died of---if it was not sunstroke?"
"But it was of sunstroke," she said, in a sharp, ringing accent, that would have required only a little more to be a scream. "What else should he die of suddenly in India's burning climate? He went out in the blazing midday sun, and was brought home dead!"
And nothing more, then or afterwards, did Mr. North learn. Her manner rendered it impossible to press the subject. He might have applied to Sir Nash for information, but an instinct prevented his doing so. After all, it did not matter to him what Major Bohun had died of, Mr. North said to himself and determined to forget the incident. But that some mystery must have attended Major Bohun's death, some painful circumstances which could blanch his wife's face with sickly terror, remained on Mr. North's mind as a fact not to be disputed.
Mrs. North effected changes. Almost the very day she was taken home to Whitborough, she let it be known that she should rule with an imperious will. Her husband became a very reed in her hands; yielding passively to her sway, as if all the spirit he had ever owned had gone out of him. Mrs. North professed to hate the very name of trade; that any one with whom she was so nearly connected should be in business, brought her a sense of degradation and a great deal of talk about it. The quiet, modest, comfortable home at Whitborough was at once given up for the more pretentious Manor Hall at Dallory Ham, which happened to be in the market. And they set up there in a style that might have more properly belonged to the lord-lieutenant of the county. Perhaps it was her assumption of grandeur indoors and out, combined with the imperious manner, the like of which had never before been seen in the simple neighbourhood, that caused people to call her "Madam." Or, it might have been to distinguish her from the first Mrs. North.
In proportion as Mrs. North made herself hated and feared by her husband, his children, and the household, so did she become popular with society. It sometimes happens that the more fascination a woman displays to the world, the more unbearable is she in her own house. It was the case here. Madam put on all her attractions when out-of-doors; she visited and dressed and dined; and gave fêtes again at Dallory Hall utterly regardless of expense. Little wonder that she swayed the neighbourhood.
Not the immediate neighbourhood. With the exception of the Dallory family (and they did not live there always), there was not a single person she would have visited. A few gentle-people resided at Dallory Ham; Mrs. North did not condescend to know any of them. People living at a greater distance she made friends with, but not those around her; and with as many of the county families as would make friends with her. The pleasantest times were those when she would betake herself off on long visits, to London or elsewhere: they grew to be looked forward to.
But the most decided raid made by Mrs. North was on her husband's business connections. Had Thomas Gass been a chimney-sweeper, she could not have treated him with more intense contempt. Thomas Gass had his share of sense, and pitied his partner far more than he would have done had that gentleman gone in for hanging instead of second marriage. Mr. Gass was a very wealthy man now; and had built himself a handsome and comfortable residence in Dallory.
But, as the years went on, he was doomed to furnish food himself to all the gossips within miles. Dallory rose from its couch one fine morning, to hear that Thomas Gass, the confirmed old bachelor, had married his housekeeper. Not one of your "lady-housekeepers," but a useful, good, hard-working damsel, who had passed the first bloom of youth, and had not much beauty to recommend her. It was a nine days' wonder. Of course, however much the neighbours might solace their feelings by ridiculing him and abusing her, they could not undo the marriage. All that remained to them was, to make the best of it; and by degrees they wisely did so. The new Mrs. Gass glided easily into her honours. She made an excellent wife to her ailing husband--for Thomas Gass's health had begun to fail before his marriage--she put on no airs of being superior to what she was; she turned out to be a thoroughly capable woman of business, giving much judicious advice to those about her: she was very good to the sick and suffering, caring for the poor, ready to give a helping hand wherever and whenever it might be needed. In spite of her fine dresses, which sat ludicrously upon her, and of her manner of talking, which she did not attempt to improve; above all, in spite of their own prejudices, Dallory grew to like and respect Mrs. Gass, and its small gentle-people admitted her to their houses on an equality.
And so time and years went on, Mr. North withdrawing himself more and more from personal attendance on the business, which seemed to have grown utterly distasteful to him. His sons had become young men. Edmund was a civil engineer: by profession at least, not much by practice. Never in strong health, given to expensive and idle habits, Edmund North was generally either in trouble abroad, or leading a lazy life at home, his time being much divided between going into needless passions and writing poetry. Richard was at the works, the mainspring of the business. Mr. Gass had become a confirmed invalid, and could not personally attend to it; Mr. North did not do so. There was only Richard--Dick, as they all called him; but he was a host in himself. Of far higher powers than Mr. North had ever possessed, cultivated in mind, he was a thorough man of business, and at the same time a finished gentleman. Energetic, persevering, firm in controlling, yet courteous and considerate to the very lowest, Richard North was loved and respected. He walked through life doing his duty by his fellow-men: striving to do it to God. He had been tried at home in many ways since his father's second marriage, and borne all with patient endurance: how much he was tried out of home, he alone knew.
For a long time past there had been trouble in the firm, ill-feeling between the two old partners; chiefly because Mr. North put no limit to the sums he drew out for his private account. Poor Mr. North at length confessed that he could not help it: the money was wanted by his wife: though how on earth she contrived to get rid of so much, even with all her extravagance, he could not conceive. Mr. Gass insisted on a separation: John North must withdraw from the firm; Richard might take his place. Poor Mr. North yielded meekly. "Don't let it get abroad," he only stipulated, speaking as if he were half heartbroken, which was nothing new; "I should not like the world to know that I was superseded." They respected his wishes, and the change was made privately: very few being aware that the senior partnership in the firm had passed into the hands of a young man. Thenceforth Mr. North ceased to have any control in the business; in fact, to have any actual connection with it. Dallory suspected it not: Mrs. North had not the faintest idea of it. Richard North signed the cheques as he had done before, "North and Gass:" and perhaps the bank at Whitborough alone knew that he signed them now as principal.
Richard was the scape-goat now. Mr. North's need of money, or rather his wife's, did not cease: the sum arranged to be paid to him as a retiring pension--a very liberal sum, and Mr. Gass grumbled at it--seemed to be as nothing; it melted in madam's hands like so much water. Richard was constantly appealed to by his father; and responded generously, though it crippled him.
The next change came in the shape of Mr. Gass's death. The bulk of his property was left to his wife; a small portion, comparatively speaking, to charities and servants; two thousand pounds to Richard North. He also bequeathed to his wife his interest in the business, which by the terms of the deed of partnership he had power to do. So that his share of the capital was not drawn out, and the firm remained, actually as well as virtually, North and Gass. People generally supposed that the "North" was Mr. North; and madam went into a world of indignation at her husband's name being placed in conjunction with "that woman's." In the years gone by, Mr. North had had a nice time of it, finding it a difficult matter to steer his course between his partner and madam, and give offence to neither. Madam had never condescended to notice Thomas Gass's wife in the least degree: she took to abusing her now, asking her husband how he could suffer himself to be associated with her. Mr. North, when goaded almost beyond endurance, had hard work to keep his tongue from retorting that it was not himself that was associated with her, but Richard.
Mrs. Gass showed her good sense in regard to the partnership, as she did in most things. She declined to interfere actively in the business. Richard North went to her house two or three times a-week to keep her cognizant of what was going on; he consulted her opinion on great matters, just as he had consulted her husband's. She knew she could trust to him. Ever and anon she would volunteer some advice to himself personally: and it was invariably good advice. It could not be concealed from her that large sums (exclusively Richard's) were ever finding their way to the Hall, and for this she took him to task. "Stop it, Mr. Richard," she said--always as respectful to him as she had been in her housekeeping days: "Stop it, sir. Their wants are like a cullender, the more water you pour into it the more you may. It's doing them no good. An end must come to it some time, or you'll be in the workhouse. The longer it goes on, the more difficult it will be to put an end to, and the harder it will be for them." But Richard, sorely tried between prudence and filial duty, could not bring himself to stop it so easily; and the thing went on.
We must now go back to Mrs. Cumberland. It was somewhat singular that, the very week Thomas Gass died, she should make her unexpected appearance at Dallory. But so it was. Again a widow, she had come home to settle near her brother Thomas. She arrived just in time to see him put into his coffin. The other brother, William, had been dead for years. Mrs. Gass, who knew all about the estrangement, received her with marked kindness, and heartily offered her a home for the future.
Yet that was declined. Mrs. Cumberland preferred to have a home of her own, possessing ample means to establish one in a moderate way. She gave a sketch of her past life to Mrs. Gass. After her marriage with the Reverend George Cumberland, they had remained for some time at his chaplaincy in the Madras presidency; but his health began to fail, and he exchanged to Australia. Subsequently to that, years later, he obtained a duty in Madeira. Upon his death, which occurred recently, she came to England. Her only son, Oliver Rane, had been sent home at the age of seven, and was placed with a tutor in London. When the time came for him to choose a profession he decided on the medical, and qualified himself for it, studying in London, Paris, and Vienna. He passed all the examinations with great credit, including that of the College of Physicians. He next paid a visit to Madeira, remaining three months with his mother and stepfather, and then came home and established himself in London, with money furnished by his mother. But practice does not always come quickly to young beginners, and Oliver Rane found his means lessening. He had a horror of debt, and wisely decided to keep out of it: taking a situation as assistant, and giving up the expensive house he had entered on. This had just been effected when Mrs. Cumberland returned. For the present she let her son remain as he was: Oliver had all a young man's pride and ambition, and she thought the discipline might do him good.
Mrs. Cumberland took on lease one of the two handsome gothic villas on the Ham, and established herself in it; with Jelly for a waiting-maid, and two other servants. This necessitated spending the whole of her income, which was a very fair one. A portion of it would die with her, the rest was willed to her son Oliver.
In the old days when she was Fanny Gass, and Mr. North, plain John North--Jack with his friends--they were intimate as elder brother and young sister. If Mrs. Cumberland expected this agreeable state of affairs to be resumed, she was destined to find herself mistaken. Madam set her scornful face utterly against Mrs. Cumberland: just as she had against others. It did not matter. Mrs. Cumberland simply pitied the underbred woman: her health was very delicate, and she did not intend to visit any one. The gentle-people of the neighbourhood called upon her; she returned the call, and there the acquaintance ended. When invitations first came in, she wrote a refusal, explaining clearly and courteously why she was obliged to do so--that her health did not allow her to visit. If she and Mr. North met each other, as by chance happened, they would linger in conversation, and be happy in the reminiscences of past days.
Mrs. Cumberland had thus lived on in retirement for some time, when the medical man who had the practice of Dallory Ham, and some of that of Dallory, died suddenly. She saw what an excellent opportunity it would be for her son to establish himself, if he would but take up general practice, and she sent a summons for him. When Oliver arrived in answer to it, he entered into the prospect warmly; left his mother to make arrangements, and returned to London, to superintend his removal. Mrs. Cumberland went to Mr. North, and obtained his promise to do what he could to further Oliver's interests. It was equivalent to an assurance of success--for Dallory Hall swayed its neighbours--and Mrs. Cumberland did not hesitate to secure the gothic villa adjoining her own, which happened to be vacant, believing that the future practice would justify it. In a week's time Oliver Rane came down and took possession.
But fate was against him. Dr. Rane said treachery. A young fellow whom he knew in London had told a medical friend--a Mr. Alexander--of this excellent practice that had fallen in at Dallory, and that Rane was hoping to secure it for himself. What was Dr. Rane's mortification when, upon arriving at the week's end at Dallory Ham to take possession, he found another there before him. Mr. Alexander had arrived the previous day, was already established in an opposite house, and had called on every one. Dr. Rane went over and reproached him with treachery--they had not previously been personally acquainted. Mr. Alexander received the charge with surprise; he declared that the field was as open to him as to Dr. Rane--that if he had not thought so, nothing would have induced him to enter it. He spoke his true sentiments, for he was a straightforward man. An agent in Whitborough had also written up to tell him of this opening; he came to look at it, and decided to try it. The right to monopolize it, was no more Dr. Rane's, he urged, than it was his. Dr. Rane took a different view, and said so: but contention would not help the matter now, and he could only yield to circumstances. So each held to his right in apparent amicability, and Dallory had two doctors instead of one; secret rivals from henceforth.
Not for a moment did Oliver Rane think Mr. Alexander could long hold out against him, as he had secured, through his mother, the favour of Dallory Hall. Alas, a very short time showed him that this was a mistake; Dallory Hall turned round upon him, and was doing what it could to forward his rival. Mrs. Cumberland went to Mr. North, seeking an explanation. He could only avow the truth--his wife, who was both master and mistress, had set her face against Oliver, and was recommending Alexander. "John, you promised me," urged Mrs. Cumberland, "I know I did, and I'd keep to it if I could," was Mr. North's mournful answer; "but no one can hold out against her." "Why should she have taken this dislike to Oliver?" rejoined Mrs. Cumberland. "Heaven knows; a caprice, I suppose. She sets herself against people without reason: she has never taken to either Richard or Bessy; and only a little to Edmund. If I can do anything for Oliver under the rose, I'll do it. I have every desire to help him, Fanny, in remembrance of our friendship of the old days."
Mrs. Cumberland carried home news of her non-success to Oliver. As to madam, she simply ignored him, bestowing her patronage upon his rival. How bitterly the slight touched his heart, none but himself could tell. Mrs. Cumberland resented it; but ah, not as he did. A sense of wrong was ever weighing upon his spirit, and he thought Fate was against him. One puzzle remained on his mind unsolved--what he could have done to offend Mrs. North.
Mr. Alexander obtained a fair practice: Dr. Rane barely sufficient to keep himself. His wants and those of the old servant Phillis were few. Perhaps the entire fault did not lie with madam. Alexander had a more open manner and address than Dr. Rane, and they go a long way with people; he was also an older man, and a married man, and was supposed to have had more experience. A sense of injury rankled ever in Oliver Rane's heart; of injury inflicted by Alexander. Meanwhile he became engaged to Bessy Rane. During an absence from home of madam's, the doctor grew intimate at the Hall, and an attachment sprang up between him and Bessy. When madam returned, his visits had to cease, but he saw Bessy at Mrs. Gass's and elsewhere.
I think that is all the retrospect that need be gone into. It brings us down to the present time, the period of the anonymous letter and Edmund North's death. Exactly two years ago this same month, May, the rival doctors had appeared in Dallory Ham; and now one of them was about to leave it.
One incident must be told, bearing on something that has been related, and then the chapter shall close.
The summer of the past year had been a very hot one. A labouring man, working on Mr. North's grounds, suddenly fell; and died on the spot. Mr. Alexander, summoned hastily, thought it must have been sunstroke. "That is what my father died of," remarked Captain Bohun, who stood with the rest. Mr. North turned to him: "Do you say your father died of sunstroke, Arthur?" "Yes, sir, that is what he died of. Did you not know it?" was the ready reply. "You are sure of that?" continued Mr. North. "Quite sure, sir," repeated Arthur, turning his dreamy blue eyes full upon his stepfather, in all their proud truthfulness.
Mr. North knew that he spoke in the sincerity of belief. Arthur Bohun possessed in an eminent degree the pride of his father's race. That innate, self-conscious sense of superiority that is a sort of safeguard to those who possess it: thenoblesse obligefeeling that keeps them from wrong-doing. It is true, Arthur Bohun held an exalted view of his birth and family: in so far as that his pride in it equalled that of any man living or dead. He was truthful, generous, honourable; the very opposite in all respects to his mother. Her pride was an assumed pride; a despicable, false, contemptible pride, offensive to those with whom she came into contact. Arthur's was one that you admired in spite of yourself. Of a tarnish to his honour, he could almost have died; to bring disgrace on his own name or on his family, would have caused him to bury his head for ever. Sensitively regardful of other people's feelings, courteous in manner to all, he yet unmistakably held his own in the world. His father had been just the same; and in his day was called "Proud Bohun."
To have asserted that Major Bohun died of sunstroke, had any doubt of the fact lain on his mind, would have been simply impossible to Arthur Bohun. Therefore, Mr. North saw that, whatever the mystery might be, regarding the real cause of Major Bohun's death, Arthur was not cognizant of it.