A smile stole across Sara's features at the wording of the letter, so unlike Dick, and she turned over the envelope.
"Yes, 'Miss Sara Davenal!' Dick has made a mistake in the address. It is written to you, Aunt Bettina?"
But Miss Bettina's eyes were glued to her own letter, which she hell open before her. Her lips had drawn themselves in ominously.
"Is it the holiday letter, Sara?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, papa: Richard's. But it is not written to me."
Dr. Davenal took up the letter. Its writing, almost as beautiful as copper-plate, was as easily read as a book: Master Richard must have taken the greatest pains with it. Miss Davenal's was not so easily read, for it seemed to have been dashed off with a skewer. She threw it on the table in considerable temper when she came to its end, and laid her hand solemnly upon it.
"Dr. Davenal, if you do not return this letter instantly to Dr. Keen, I shall. It is a disgrace to have come out of any respectable school."
"Who is it from?" questioned the doctor in surprise.
"Who is it from?--from that wicked nephew of yours--Dick. Andyouto encourage him!" she added, directing her severe glance at Sara. "It is meant, I suppose, for you." In point of fact, Master Dick Davenal had misdirected his letters, sending his holiday letter to Sara, and one intended exclusively for Sara's eyes to his aunt. Dr. Davenal, in some curiosity, drew towards him the offending letter.
"Dear Old Girl,
"We come home the end of next week hurray! old Keen was for keeping us till the week after and shouldn't we have turned rusty but its all fixed now, the 16th is the joyful day and on the 15th we mean to have a bonfire out of bounds and shouldnt we like to burn up all our books in it you cant think how sick we are of them. Jopper says hed give all Ime sure I would, I hate learning and that's the truth and I havent tried to get on a bit for I know its of no use trying, Greak's horrid, and our greak master is an awful stick and keeps us to it till we feel fit to bufett him its the most hateful bothering languidge you can imagine and I shall never master a line of it and if it werent for cribs I should get a caneing everyday, latin was bad enougff, but greak caps it. We all got into a row which I'll tell you about when I come home and we had our Wensday and saturday holidays stoped for three weeks, it was all threw the writing master a shokking sneek who comes four days a week and found out something and took and told Keen but we have served him out, we have had some good games this half taking things together and if we could berry our books and never do another lesson Keens house wouldnt be so bad, Leo and some more of us were trying to wrench open farmer Clupps stable to get at his poney when he ran a rusty nale into his thumb, old clupp was off to a cattle fair by rail and we knew hed be none the wiser if we exercised the poney up and down the common, and a jolly time of it I can tell you we had only we couldnt find the sadle, well leos thum got bad and he hasnt been abel to write for ever so long and hes uncomon glad of it now for it saves him his holiday letter, had to write mine five times over before it did and I nearly flung it in the fire before Keens face, I never was so sick of anything in my life, its going to aunt Bett this time Keen said it went to uncle Richard at midsummer, good buy till next week darling Sara love to Carry and mind you get a jolly lot of mince pies ready for us.
"Dick Davenal.
"p. s. hows old Betts deafness, its so cold we hope all the ponds will be froze to ice tomorrow."
Dr. Davenal burst into a fit of laughter. The contrast between the genuine letter of the boy and the formal one dictated by the master was so rich. Miss Davenal's brow wore its heaviest frown: the letter was bad enough altogether, but the insult to herself, the "old Bett," could not be forgiven.
"I'll have this letter sent back, Dr. Davenal."
"Tush, Bettina! Send it back, indeed! We were schoolboys and schoolgirls ourselves once. Why, what's this?--here's the postman coming in again! He must have omitted to leave all the letters." It was even so. The postman by inadvertence had carried away a letter addressed to the house, and had now come back with it.
But that mistake was a great piece of good luck for Neal; and in truth its occurring on this morning was a singular coincidence. You will agree with me in saying that it was quite a different sort of luck from any deserved by Neal. Poor Dick Davenal's "sneek" of a writing-master could not stand for honours beside the real sneak, Neal.
Neal had not been at Dr. Davenal's window when the postman came in the first time, as Sara had surmised; Neal was standing in his favourite corner outside, amid the shrubs, having a mind to give himself an airing. It was to this corner the postman had gone, and he delivered three letters into his hands. Neal carried them to his pantry and proceeded to examine the outside with his usual curiosity. Two of them were those he subsequently carried into the breakfast-room; on the third he saw the foreign postmark, and recognised the handwriting of Captain Davenal. And, as Neal turned this about in his hand, he became aware of a curious fact--that it was open. The envelope was not fastened down. The captain's seal was upon it in wax, but it did not serve to fasten it. Whether that young officer, who was given to carelessness, had sealed it in this insecure manner, or whether it had come open in the transit, was of no consequence: it was certainly not closed now.
The temptation proved too strong for Mr. Neal. It happened that he had a motive, a particular motive, apart from his ordinary curiosity, for wishing to see the contents of this letter. He had chanced to overhear a few words spoken between the doctor and his daughter some days previously--words which Neal could, as he expressed himself, make neither top nor tail of; but they referred to Captain Davenal, and created the strongest possible wish in Neal's mind to take a peep at the first letter that should arrive from the gallant officer. Neal had not seen his way to do this at all clear; but it appeared now that fortune had graciously dropped the means into his hands. And the temptation was too strong to be resisted.
Hastily reasoning within himself (the best of us are too prone to reason on our own side of the question, ignoring the other) that in all probability the breakfast-room had not seen or heard the postman, as the man had kept onhisside the garden, and had not rung the door-bell, Neal risked it, and carefully drew the letter from the envelope.
A small thin note, addressed to Miss Sara Davenal, dropped out of it. Neal was too busy to pick it up; his eyes were feasting on the opening words of Captain Davenal's letter to his father.
"Neal, are there no letters?"
The interrupting voice was the doctor's: and Neal, in an awful fluster, popped the open letter and the thin one under a dish-cover. There was no help for it; he might not delay; he dared not take the letter in open. So he carried in the other two in his hand, having looked in vain for his customary waiter.
It passed off well enough. Neal returned to the pantry, and finished the perusal of the captain's letter. Then he refolded it, placed the note, which he hadnotopened, inside as before, and amended the fastening with a modicum of sealing-wax, dropped artistically underneath the old seal.
He was at his wit's end how to convey the letter to the doctor, so that no suspicion might rest upon himself. Suppress it he dare not, for the postman could have testified to its delivery when inquiries were made. He was coming to the conclusion that the best way would be to put it amidst the shrubs, as if he or the postman had dropped it, and let somebody find it and convey it to Dr. Davenal, when the postman's knock at the hall door aroused him.
"I don't know how I came to overlook this," said the man, handing in a letter. "It had got slipped among the others somehow, and I didn't find it till I was ever so far down the street." If ever Neal believed in the descent of special favours from the clouds, he believed in it then. The letter brought back by the postman was directed to Watton. Neal carried it to his panty, deposited the other upon his silver waiter, and took it to the breakfast-room.
"How's this?" cried the doctor.
"The letter-man carried it away with him, sir, by some mistake, he says," answered Neal with a steady tongue and unflinching eye.
"Stupid fellow!" cried the doctor. But he spoke in a good-natured tone. None, save he, knew how welcome a sight was the handwriting of his son.
And when Neal carried down the breakfast-things he coolly told Watton there was a letter for her lying in his pantry, which had come by the morning post.
"You might have brought it down," was Watton's answer.
"So I might," civilly remarked Neal. "I laid it there and forgot it."
The dead of the winter passed. That is, Christmas was turned, and January had come in, and was drawing to a close.
Dr. Davenal's state of health was beginning to attract attention. It cannot be said that absolute fears were excited, but people said to each other and to him that he ought to take more care. Especial care of himself he certainly did not take, and he seemed to take cold upon cold. It must not be thought that Dr. Davenal was recklessly neglectful, supinely careless. It was not that at all. But he was one of the many who seemed to have an assured trust in their own constitution; almost believing their state of good health immutable. Other folks are liable to ailments, buttheyhave no fear of themselves. This is sometimes notably the case with those who have never experienced illness, who have passed an active life with neither an ache nor a pain.
As had Dr. Davenal. Of a naturally good constitution, temperate in his habits, taking a good deal of exercise one way or another, his mind always occupied, he did not know what it was to have a day's illness. The great blow which had fallen upon him in the death of his son told upon his mind more than upon his body. If it had bent his shoulders and left lines of care upon his face, it had not made him ill. It was reserved for the later calamity to do that--that terrible secret whose particulars none save the doctor knew.Thathad nearly prostrated him--it had re-acted on the body; and when the cold fastened on him the day he had to hasten from Mrs. Scott's hot room to the Infirmary, it laid hold of him for ever.
He could not shake it off. Miss Davenal told him somewhat crossly that he kept catching cold upon cold; but the doctor himself knew that it was that first cold hanging about him. He apprehended no real danger: he did not pay much attention to it. Had he possessed a mind at rest, he might have thought more of the body's ailments, but with that great burden of despair--and, in truth, it was little else--weighing him down, what in comparison was any sickness of body? As to lying by, he never so much as gave it a thought. So long as he could go about, he would go about. He thought of others before himself; he was one who strove hard to do his duty in the sight of God; and he would have deemed it little else than a sin selfishly to stop indoors to nurse himself, when there might be fellow-creatures dying for the want of his aid. It was very easy to say other doctors might attend for him; we all know how valuable in illness is the presence of the physician wetrust; and none in Hallingham was trusted as was Dr. Davenal.
And so, with his aching mind and his aching body, he went about his work. It is just possible that a fortnight or so's rest might have saved him but he did not take it. He went about his work as usual--nay, with more than his wonted activity, for it was a season of much sickness at Hallingham, as it was that winter in many other places. He bore on, never flagging; but he grew weaker day by day, and everybody remarked how poorly the doctor was looking. No fears for his state were aroused indoors. Sara attributed all she saw amiss in him to the burden of that great secret, of which she had had only partial cognisance; and Miss Davenal felt cross with him.
For Bettina Davenal suspected neither illness of body nor illness of mind. How should she connect the latter with the prosperous physician? She knew that he had been grieved at the going abroad of his son Edward, a grief in which she by no means joined, deeming that a little roughing it out in the world would be found of wholesome benefit to the indulged son and brave captain; and she rather despised the doctor for regretting him. He was silent, and thin, and worn; he had no appetite; his spirits seemed gone; she saw all this, but never supposed it was caused by anything but the departure of his son.
His not eating was made the worst grievance of by Miss Bettina. Once before, in an unusual season of sickness, the doctor had--not, perhaps, lost his appetite, but allowed himself no time for his meals. Miss Bettina believed that this was a similar case; that his patients were absorbing his appetite and his energies; and she gave him a good sound lecturing, as she might have given to Dick. Get what she would for the table, plain food or dainties, it seemed all one to the doctor: he would taste, perhaps, to please her, but he could not eat.
"I can't help it," he said to her one day. "I suppose I am worse than you think."
For the truth, or rather a suspicion of it, had at length dawned on Dr. Davenal--that he was more seriously ill than he had allowed himself to imagine. Unfavourable symptoms connected with his chest and lungs had forced themselves upon his notice on that very morning, and he asked himself what they meant, and what they boded. Had he neglected himself too long?
It was the 24th of January, a notable day in the doctor's household, for it was his birthday, and was always kept amongst themselves. Dick and Leo made the day a plea for the extension of their holidays. The school generally reopened about a week earlier, but of course, as they told their uncle, they could not go back with his birthday so near: they must stay to wish him many happy returns of it. Miss Davenal saw no reason in the plea, and was severe when the doctor allowed it--as he always did;shewould never keep boys at home a single hour after the school opened. But with Uncle Richard to back them, Dick and Leo did not care for Aunt Bettina.
Yes, it was on this morning that Dr. Davenal awoke to the serious state of his own health. If what he suspected was true, he feared he should not be long in this world.
He said nothing. He went out as usual in his close carriage, which he had latterly used, and forgot not a single call. But he said to himself that perhaps in a few days, when he should have brought through, if Heaven willed, one or two patients who were lying in extreme danger, he might make arrangements for stopping at home and nursing himself.
On this same day the doctor again saw Oswald Cray. He had occasion to give some directions to Mark, missed seeing him at the Infirmary, and told Roger to drive to the Abbey. Upon entering, he found not Mark but Oswald. Oswald, it appeared, had just called, and was waiting for Mrs. Cray to come down. Mark was out.
Dr. Davenal cherished no resentment. He deemed that Oswald Cray had behaved to him badly, but he had never been of a retaliating spirit, and least of all was he inclined to it now.
The doctor pressed Oswald Cray's hand cordially as he shook it. The thought flashed over him that he would make one more effort towards a reconciliation. A few moments given to commonplace salutations, and then he spoke.
"This is my birthday, Mr. Oswald Cray. Mark and Caroline are coming to dine with us: will you join them?"
"You are very kind. But I must go up to London by the seven train."
Not a word of "wishing" he could come, or regret that he could not. The doctor noticed that; he noticed also that his tone was more polite than warm. But he did not yet give him up.
"It may be the last birthday I shall see. We shall be glad to welcome you."
"I hope you will see many yet; but I am obliged to return to town. Thank you all the same."
Coldly courteous still! Dr. Davenal, who would not wait, as Mark was out, again offered his hand in parting.
"Some estrangement has come between us which I do not understand, Mr. Oswald Cray. Remember what I say, should this be the last time we speak together, that it is you who have to answer for it, not I."
"One word, Dr. Davenal," for the doctor was turning away to regain his carriage. "Believe at least this much, that none can regret the estrangement more than I regret it."
"Is it explainable?"
"Not by me," replied Oswald, somewhat of his old hauteur coming upon him. He honestly believed in his heart that Dr. Davenal, in saying these few words, was but acting a part.
"Fare you well," said the doctor as he went out.
"Farewell," repeated Oswald. And they were the last words ever spoken between them.
It was a social family dinner that evening at Dr. Davenal's, and for some of its partakers a right merry one. Mark Cray and his wife were merry as heart could wish, the two boys boisterously so, Miss Davenal gracious. Sara was quiet, the doctor was ill, and a gentleman whom the doctor had invited after Oswald Cray declined, was grieving over the alteration so conspicuously visible in Dr. Davenal.
This was the Rev. John Stephenson. He was at Hallingham on business, had called that afternoon on Dr. Davenal, and the doctor had pressed him to stay dinner.
When the cloth was removed, and Mr. Stephenson had said grace, and Dick and Leo were up to their eyes in nuts and oranges, Mark Cray stood in his place and made a natty little speech. Mark was fond of making speeches they were a great deal more to his taste than surgical operations. His present effort lasted five minutes, and wound up with wishing the doctor many happy returns of the day.
"Hurrah!" shouted Dick. "Uncle Richard, I hope you'll have a hundred birthdays yet!"
"And plenty of good things for you to eat as they come round, eh, Dick?" rejoined the doctor with a smile.
"Oh, of course," cried Dick, his eyes sparkling. "It always does come in the Christmas holidays, you know."
The doctor slightly rose from his chair, leaning with both hands on the table. His manner was subdued, his voice inexpressibly gentle and loving.
"My dear friends, I thank you for your kindness; I thank you from my very heart. I am not well, and you must accept these few words in answer to Mark's more elaborate speech. It may be the last time I shall be here to receive your good wishes or to thank you for them. May God bless you!"--and he raised his hands slowly and solemnly--"May God bless and love you all when I shall be gone!"
The words took them utterly by surprise. Sara bent her head, and pressed her hands upon her bosom as if to press down the sudden sobs that seemed as if they would choke her; Dick and Leo stared; Miss Bettina complacently nodded her acknowledgments, she knew not why, for she had failed to hear; and Caroline looked up in wonder. Mark Cray was the first to speak.
"Do you feel ill, sir?"
"Not particularly; not much more so than I have felt lately. I don't think I am very well, Mark."
"You are overworked, sir. You must take some rest"
"Rest may be nearer for me than we think, Mark."
"O papa, don't!" wailed Sara. "Don't speak so, unless you would break my heart!"
Her emotion had become uncontrollable, and the anguish had spoken out. Never until that moment had the prospect of losing her father been brought palpably before Sara, and it was more than she well knew how to bear. In spite of her natural reticence of feeling, of the presence of a stranger, she quite shook with her hysterical sobs.
Miss Davenal was frightened, and somewhat indignant: she bent her head forward. "What on earth's the matter with Sara?"
"Hush, Aunt Bettina," called out Mrs. Cray. "Don't scold her. Uncle Richard has been talking gloomily. He says he is ill."
"Ill! of course he is ill," retorted Miss Bettina, who had contrived to hear. "He won't eat. He is out and about with his patients from morning till night, and then comes in too tired to eat anything. He has not swallowed a couple of ounces of meat all the last week. What can he expect but to be ill? But there's no cause for Sara to burst into a violent fit of crying over it. Will you be so kind as to excuse it, sir?" she added, in her stately courtesy, to the clergyman who was sitting at her right hand.
He bowed. A man who has known long-continued adversity can feel for sorrow, and his heart was aching for the grief of the child, and for the serious change he saw in the father, his benefactor. Mark turned to Miss Davenal.
"It is just what I say, Miss Bettina, that the doctor is overworked. He wants a week or two's rest."
"And what are you good for if you can't contrive that he should have it?" was her answer. "I think you might see his patients for him."
"So I could," answered Mark. "Only he won't let me."
Sara's emotion was subsiding: she sat very still now, her head a little bent, as if ashamed of having betrayed it; the tears dried upon her cheeks, but an uncontrollable sob broke from her now and then. Dr. Davenal had taken her hand under the table, for she sat next to him, and was holding it in his.
"You foolish child!" he fondly whispered.
"Papa, if--if anything were to happen to you--if you were to go and leave me here alone, I should die," was the answer, uttered passionately.
"Hush, hush! My darling, you and I are alike in the hands of a loving God."
She laid her fingers again upon her bosom. How violently it was beating, how difficult it was to still its throbs of pain, she alone knew.
"I met that gentleman this afternoon, the connection of Lady Oswald's whom I saw for the first time the day of the funeral," spoke up the clergyman, breaking the silence which had fallen upon the room. "Mr. Oswald Cray."
"I met him, too," said the doctor. "It was at your house, Mark. I asked him to come here today, but he declined."
"He is gone back to town, I think," said Mark.
"He said he was going."
"Did you ask him to dine here, Uncle Richard?" cried Leo.
"I did, my boy."
"And wouldn't he!" rejoined Mark.
"No, he wouldn't. And, mind, I think hewouldn't; although Ac declined upon the plea of having to get back to town."
"My! what a stupid duff he was!" exclaimed Richard. "Did he know there was going to be a turkey and plum-pudding?"
"I didn't tell him that, Dick. My impression is, that he never means to enter our house again," the doctor added in a low tone to his daughter.
"But why?" exclaimed Caroline, who sat on the other side the doctor, and caught the words. "There must be something extraordinary at the bottom of all this."
"Never mind going into it now, Carine," whispered the doctor. "His grievance is connected with Lady Oswald's will, but we need not say so before Mr. Stephenson."
Sara looked up hastily, impulsive words rising to her lips; but she recollected herself, and bent her head again in silence. Not even to her father dared she to say that his conclusion was a mistaken one.
"Uncle Richard, now that I look at you, it does appear to me that you are changed for the worse," remarked Mrs. Cray. "You must nurse yourself, as Mark says. Hallingham would not understand your being ill, you know."
"True," laughed the doctor.
Caroline Cray, seeing her uncle daily, or nearly so, had not perceived the great change which had been gradually going on in him. But to Mr. Stephenson, who had not met him since the time of Lady Oswald's death, it was all too palpable; as it had been that day to Oswald Cray.
"We must not forget the captain today, doctor," spoke up Mark. "Have you heard from him again?"
"O yes."
"How does he like his Maltese quarters?"
"I am not sure that he has said. It is not of much consequence whether he liked them or not. The regiment was ordered on to India."
"To India!"
"Yes." It was impossible not to note the sad tone in which the monosyllable was spoken. Dr. Davenal had begun to know that he and his son should never again meet on earth: the son whom he so loved!
Somehow, what with one thing and another, that birthday evening was a sadder one than they had been accustomed to spend. Mark Cray, as he walked home with his wife afterwards, remarked that it was "slow." But nobody dreamt of anything like fear for the doctor, save his daughter and the Reverend Mr. Stephenson.
"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, sir," murmured the clergyman, as he was leaving. "Neither can my brother. You have done for us what I believe no other man living would have done. May Heaven reward you, and restore you to health and strength!"
"I did but my duty," answered the doctor. "The money belonged to you, not to me. I am only glad there were no vexatious legal obstacles brought up to obstruct the transfer. I shall always be glad to see you, remember, when you come to Hallingham."
Mr. Stephenson thanked him. But as he went out, the impression was strong upon his mind that the doctor himself would not long be in Hallingham.
And Sara? What must it have been for her! Her mind was one chaos of tumultuous emotion. She seemed to have accepted the fear as a certainty, to have been obliged to accept it. Oh, what would save him?--could not the whole faculty restorehisprecious life? She passed another night of anguish, like unto the one she had passed nearly two months before, after parting with Oswald Cray in the Abbey graveyard--like it, but more apprehensively painful; and she wondered how she got through it.
With the morning, things did not wear so intensely gloomy an aspect. The broad daylight, the avocations and bustle of daily life, are an antidote to gloom, and the worst prospect loses some of its darkness then. Sara tried to reason with herself that he could not have become so ill on a sudden as to be past recovery, she tried to say that it was foolish even to think it.
But her mind could not be at rest, her state of suspense was intolerable, and before entering the breakfast-room she knocked at her father's study-door, and entered. Dr. Davenal was closing the Bible.
"What is it, my dear?"
"O papa"--and the words came forth with a burst of pent-up anguish--"I cannot live in this suspense. What did you mean last night? What is it that is the matter with you?"
"I scarcely know, Sara. Only that I feel ill."
"But--you--cannot--be going to die?"
"Hush, my child! You must not agitate yourself in this way. Die? Well, no, I hope not," he added, quite in a joking manner. "I feel ten per cent better this morning than I did yesterday."
"Do you!" she eagerly cried. "But--what you said last night?----"
"Last night I felt gloomy--oppressed. Serious thoughts do intrude themselves sometimes on one's birthday. And I was really ill yesterday. I feel quite a different man today."
Her fears were growing wonderfully calmer. "You are sure, papa?"
"Sure of what? That I am better?--I am sure I feel so. I shall be all right, child, I hope."
"Won't you have advice, papa?" she imploringly said.
"Advice? That's a compliment to myself, young lady. Hallingham would tell you that there's no advice better than Dr. Davenal's own."
"But, papa--I mean different advice. I thought of the clever London doctors. You must have them down to see you."
"Some of the clever London doctors would be glad of the countryman Richard Davenal's advice. Seriously speaking, my dear, though I say it in all modesty, I don't believe there's a man in Europe more skilful than myself."
"But they might suggest remedies that you would not think of. O papa! if there's a necessity, do summon them."
"Be assured of one thing, Sara, and set your mind at rest. Should the necessity arise, I will not fail to seek any one or anything that I think may help me. My life has not of late been a happy one, but I am not quite tired of it; I wish I may live long, not only for your sake, but for--for other interests. There's a double necessity for it now."
"And you will not go out today, papa?"
"Today I must. I have not made arrangements to the contrary. But I do mean to give myself a rest, perhaps beginning with tomorrow. I feel a great deal better today--quite another man."
How the words lightened her heart! Dr. Davenal really did feel much better, and the saddened spirit, the almost ominous feeling, which had clung to him the night before, had vanished. But he spoke more lightly of his illness than he would have done had he not seen how it was affecting her.
Dick came drumming at the door, and then pushed it open with a bang.
"Breakfast's waiting, Uncle Richard. And Aunt Bett---- Why! are you there?" broke off the young gentleman as his eyes fell upon Sara. "I'm afraid you'll catch it. Aunt Bett thinks you are not down, and it's ten minutes past eight."
"Are you ready for school, Dick?" asked his uncle. "Elated at the prospect of returning?"
Dick pulled a long face. The two boys were going back that day. A sore trial to Dick, who it must be confessed, had been born with an innate antipathy to books.
"You'll have us home at Easter, Uncle Richard?" he pleaded in a piteous tone.
"Not if I know it, Dick. Holidays twice a-year were thought quite enough in my schooldays, and I see no reason for their not being thought enough now."
"Half the boys go home at Easter--and stop a fortnight: bemoaned Dick.
"Very likely. If half the boys have friends who prefer play to work for them, I'm only glad the other half set a better example. Dicky, boy, you'll enjoy your Midsummer holidays all the more keenly for having none at Easter."
The doctor caught hold of the boy and wound his arm affectionately round him as they proceeded across the hall to the breakfast-room. Miss Davenal greeted Sara with one of her severest aspects, but before she could begin her lecture, Mark Cray had burst in upon them.
"Have you heard the news?" he exclaimed, in a state of excitement never yet witnessed in easy Mark Cray. "Doctor, have you had letters yet?"
"What news? What letters?" asked the doctor.
"Caroline has got her money."
"Caroline got her money?" repeated Dr. Davenal, understanding no better than the rest did.
"The Chancery case is decided," explained Mark. "Judgment was given yesterday, and it is in their favour. She'll get the money directly now."
"How do you know this, Mark?"
"It is in the evening papers--reported in full. I call for my letters sometimes if I am passing the post-office, and I did so this morning and got this paper. White, the lawyer, sent it, I expect, and we shall no doubt hear by this evening's post."
"Well, Mark, I am very glad. Justice lay on Caroline's side; therefore it is right that she should have it. You must settle it upon her as soon as you touch the money."
"Oh, of course," said Mark.
"I say, Neal, what sort of a place is St. Paul's Churchyard?"
The questioner was Watton. She sat in the servants' room near the window, against which the rain was pattering, some household sewing in her hand. Neal, who had entered to get a glass he wanted was rather taken with surprise, but he was not one to show it in his manner.
"Did you never see it?" he asked.
"I saw it in a picture once. I couldn't see it elseways; I've never been to London?"
"It is a large space of land with houses round it and the cathedral in the middle," explained Neal, who seemed always ready to oblige his fellow-servants, especially Watton. "It's a thoroughfare, you know; the road from Ludgate Hill to Cheapside winds round on each side the cathedral, between it and the houses."
"Is it very noisy?"
"Pretty well for that. But the London people don't seem to care for noise. I expect they are so used to it that they don't hear it."
"The houses round St. Paul's are warehouses, aren't they?"
"Warehouses and shops. The shops are mostly on one side and the warehouses on the other."
"Do you know a place called Cannon Street?"
"I should think I do! It leads down from St. Paul's to King William Street. Why do you ask?"
"Well," said Watton slowly, as if she mere deliberating something in her mind, "I am not sure but I am going to live there."
"To live in St. Paul's Churchyard?" repeated Neal.
"I have had a place offered me there, and it seems to me to be a very eligible one," said Watton. "It's to go as housekeeper in a house of business; some large wholesale place, by what I can understand. I should have two or three servants under me, and twenty-five pounds a-year. It seems good, doesn't it?"
"Capital," assented Neal. "Is it in St. Paul's Churchyard?"
"It's either in St. Paul's Churchyard or Cannon Street. She isn't quite sure which, she says. Anyway, it's close to St. Paul's."
"Who's 'she'?" questioned Neal.
"My sister. Her husband is in this establishment, a traveller, or something of that. He has got on well: he was only day assistant in a shop when she married him, fifteen years ago, and now he gets two or three hundred a year. When Miss Bettina told me I should have to leave, I wrote to my sister and asked her to look out for me, and she has sent me word of this."
"But can she get the place for you?" inquired Neal, who was prompt at weighing probabilities and improbabilities in his mind.
"It is in this way. The present housekeeper has been there a good while, and is much respected by the masters, and they have asked her to look out for somebody to take her place. My sister's intimate with her, and has spoken to her about me."
"Why is she going to leave, herself?" questioned Neal, liking to come to the bottom of everything.
Watton laughed. "She is going to begin life on her own score: she's about to be married. I think it's rather venturesome those middle-aged persons marrying: I wouldn't, I know."
"Wait until you are asked," returned Neal, not over gallantly.
"I have been asked more than once in my life," said Watton. "But I didn't see my way clear. It's all a venture. A good many risk it, and a few don't. I'd rather be one of the few. My goodness! how it rains!"
"When do you leave here?"
"When I get a comfortable place. Miss Bettina said I was not to hurry. It isn't as if I were leaving for any fault, or to make room for another.Shedoesn't like my leaving at all, you know."
Neal nodded. "I heard her grumbling to the doctor, like anything, about it. She talks loud, and one can't shut one's ears at will."
"She need not grumble to the doctor. It is not his fault. He spoke to me himself, saying how sorry he was to part with me, but he could not help it. 'He had had a severe loss of money,' he said, which rendered it necessary that he should alter the rate of his expenditure. I wonder," added Watton, musingly, "how he came to lose it?"
Neal coughed. "Perhaps some bank broke."
"Perhaps it did," answered Watton. "They are ticklish things, those banks. I say, Neal, there's the doctor's bell."
Neal heard the bell for himself, and quitted the room to answer it. Watton got up, put down her work, shook a few threads from her gown, opened a drawer and took out a letter.
She was going upstairs to Miss Bettina to show her the letter she had received, and to ask her advice upon the situation mentioned in it. She felt very much inclined to try for it; only she felt a shrinking doubt of London. Many persons do who have lived to middle age in the country.
Neal entered the room in answer to the ring. The doctor had been out that morning, but returned earlier than usual, for it was not much past twelve. It was the day subsequent to the departure for school of Dick and Leo.
"What a poor fire you have got here, Neal!" said the doctor. "Bring a few sticks and pile the coal on. I feel chilly."
"I hope you have not taken a fresh cold, sir," respectfully observed Neal, as he stirred up the fire preparatory to getting the sticks.
Whether Neal was right or not as to the fresh cold, certain it was, that before night unfavourable symptoms began to manifest themselves in Dr. Davenal. And they increased rapidly.
A few hours and the news went forth to the town--Dr. Davenal was in danger. The consternation it excited cannot well be described--and if described would scarcely be believed. Numbers upon numbers in that town looked upon Dr. Davenal in the light of a public benefactor: they honestly believed that his death would be one of the greatest calamities that could befall them; they believed that, if he went, nobody else could bringthemthrough danger, should it come upon them.
They hastened to the door with their anxious inquiries; they saw the medical men of Hallingham pouring in. What was the matter with him? they eagerly asked. How was he seized?
It was inflammation of the chest, or lungs, or both, they were told. It was in fact an increase of the cold which had been so long hanging upon him, andwhich he had neglected. Oh, only a cold! they repeated carelessly as they listened--what a mercy that it was nothing worse! And they went away reassured.
A day or two, and there came down a physician from London in answer to a telegraphic dispatch. A day or two more and an ominous whisper went forth to the town--that hope was over. The saddened inhabitants paced to and fro, collected in groups about the door, and glanced up at the doctor's windows, fearing if perchance the blind should have been drawn since they last looked. They watched the medical men glide in and out; they saw a lawyer go in with a bustling step, and came to the conclusion that he went to make the will. Altogether Hallingham was in a fever of excitement.
But there occurred a change; contrary to even the most sanguine expectation a change seemed to take place for the better. Dr. Davenal rallied. The most painful symptoms left him, and some of those around him said he was getting well.
One evening at dusk Neal was observed to come out of the house with a quick movement and hasten up the street. As usual he was instantly surrounded, waylaid by anxious inquirers.
Yes, it was perfectly true, Neal answered, his master was so much better as to surprise all who saw him. The change took place early that morning, and he had been mending ever since. He was well enough to sit up: was sitting up then.
Then there was a hope that he'd recover? the questioners rejoined, scarcely daring to speak the joyful words.
O yes, there seemed every hope of it now. Mr. Cray, who had just gone out, remarked to him, Neal, that he looked upon his master as cured. But Neal couldn't stop to talk more with them then, he said; he was hastening to the chemist's for a draught which the doctor himself had sent him for.
Neal got the draught, imparted the news of the doctor's wonderful improvement to the crowd collecting at the chemist's, for no end of gossipers pressed into the shop when they saw Neal there--retraced the streets with his soft tread, and arrived at home. Entering the consulting-room, where the fire in the grate was getting low, he passed on to his master's bedchamber. Quite a bright chamber for an invalid's. The fire was blazing in the grate, and a handsome lamp, shining through the ornamental pink shade that covered its globe, stood on the small round table. The bed was at the far end of the room in a corner, and Dr. Davenal sat in an easy chair near the fire. He was dressed, all but his coat; in place of that he wore a warm quilted dressing-gown of soft rich silk; one of those rarely handsome dressing-gowns that seem made to be looked at, not to be worn.
He did not appear very ill. Wan and worn certainly, but not so ill as might have been expected. His breath and voice were the worst: both were painfully weak. The table had been drawn close to him, and he was writing at it. A tolerably long letter it looked like, covering three sides of large note-paper. Perhaps if the truth had been declared, he had got up purposely to write this letter.
Sara sat on the other side the fireplace, ready to wait upon him. How she had borne the agony of the last few days and beencalm, she did not know, she never would know: it was one of the sharp lessons learnt from life's necessities. "You may be with him," the physician in London bad said to her, "provided you can maintain composure in his presence. The witnessing of a child's grief is sometimes the worst agony that the dying have to bear. I cannot sanction your being in the room unless you can promise to be calm."
"I will promise it," replied Sara in a low tone; but that one expression "the dying" had turned her whole heart to sickness.
Yes, it was one of the lessons that must be learnt in the stern school of life--the maintaining a composed exterior when the heart is breaking. That she was given to reticence of feeling by nature, was of service to Sara Davenal then. But surely the trials that had latterly fallen upon her were very bitter; the battle just now was sharp and keen.
She sat there in her soft dress of violet merino, so quiet and unobtrusive in the sick-room, with its little white lace collar and the narrow lace cuffs turned up on the bands of the sleeves at the wrist. The first day of his illness she had on a silk dress rustling against the chairs and tables, and she had the good sense to go and change it. The chair she sat in was an elbow one, and her hot cheek rested on her fingers as she strove to drive back the inward question thatwouldintrude itself, whether this improvement was for good, or only a fallacious one. She sat perfectly still, her eyes following the motion of his feeble fingers, and it was thus that Neal interrupted them.
"The draught, sir," he said, laying it on the table.
"Set a wine-glass by it," said the doctor. "That will do."
So slowly and feebly! The voice seemed to come from deep down in his chest, and not to be the doctor's voice at all; Neal put the wine-glass as desired, and quitted the room; and the doctor wrote on.
Only for a minute or two: the letter was drawing to a close. Dr. Davenal pressed it with the blotting-paper, read it to himself slowly, and then folded it and put it in an envelope. In all this, his fingers seemed scarcely able to perform their office. He fastened it down, and wrote on the outside his son's name. Then he looked at Sara, touching the letter with his finger.
"My dear, when the next mail goes out, should you have occasion to write of me, let this be enclosed."
"To write of you, papa?" she repeated in a faltering tone. But she need not have asked the question--its meaning had only too surely penetrated to her.
"Should the worst have happened."
"Oh, but--papa--you are getting better!"
She checked the wailing tone; she remembered how necessary, as she had been warned, was calmness in that room; she remembered her promise to maintain it. She pressed her hands upon her bosom and remained still.
"I will take that draught now, Sara, if you will pour it out."
She rose from her seat, undid the paper, poured the contents of the small bottle into the glass, and handed it to him. The doctor drank it, and gave her back the glass with a smile.
"Not one of those clever fellows thought of ordering me this; yet it's the best thing for anybody suffering as I am. Ah! they have got something to learn yet. I don't know how they'll get on without me?"
"Papa, you may get well yet!" she interrupted; anti shecould notprevent the anguished sound with which the words were spoken.
He turned and looked at her; he seemed to have fallen into a momentary reverie. But he made no direct answer.
"Can you draw the table away, Sara? I don't want it so close now. Gently; take care of the lamp."
"Where shall I put this, papa?" she asked, referring to the letter.
"In my desk in the next room. You'll know where to find it in case of need. My keys are here, on the mantelpiece."
She stopped to ask one question which seemed to be wrung from her in her pain. "Is it to go all the same if you get better, papa?"
"No. Not if I get better."
Passing into the other room, which was lighted only by the fire, she drew the desk from underneath the table, knelt down, unlocked it, and put in the letter. It was addressed: "For my son, Edward Davenal." Sara was locking the desk again, when some one entered the room and came round the table to where she knelt.
"My goodness! are you saying your prayers?"
Wrapped in silks and ermine, her lovely face peeping out from a charming pink bonnet, was Mrs. Cray. The doctor had expressed a wish to Mark Cray that afternoon that Caroline would come to him, and Mark had delivered the message when he got home.
"Mark says Uncle Richard wants to see me," she explained, "so I thought I'd run down at once. I can't stop; Berry and another friend or two are going to dine with us. I am so delighted to hear of the improvement in Uncle Richard! Mark says the danger is quite over."
"If I could but be sure it was!" was Sara's answer.
"There you are, with your doubts and fears! Never was anybody like you, Sara. Don't I tell you Mark says it is? Yes, I'll take my cloak off for the few minutes that I stop."
She threw off her bonnet, and let the cloak slip from her shoulders, displaying her evening attire, for she had dressed before she came out: a silk, so light as to look almost white, that stood on end with richness and rustled as she walked; the dazzling necklace, given by Captain Davenal, on her white neck; a dewdropped pink rose in her gleaming hair.
Utterly unaccordant looked she with the chamber of the dying, as she stepped into the other room. Dr. Davenal's eyes were fixed on her for a moment in simple wonder, as if he saw a vision. Then he recognised her, and held out his hand, a glad look pervading his countenance.
"Well, Uncle Richard! I am so rejoiced that you are getting better. You'll come and dance at our housewarming yet."
"Are you going to hold one?" asked the doctor, as he held her hand in his, and gazed up at her beauty.
"Mark and I are thinking of it. We can do everything, you know, now that that money's coming to me."
"Ah," said the doctor, "it's about that money I want to talk to you. Sit down, Caroline. How smart you are, my dear!"
"Nay, I think it's you who are smart uncle," she returned with a gay laugh. "So it has come into use at last!"
Caroline touched the dressing-gown as she spoke. There had always been a joke about this dressing-gown. A patient of the doctor's, as fanciful as Lady Oswald and nearly as old, had made it with her own hands and sent it to him. It had remained unused. For one thing, the doctor was too plain in his habits and too busy a man to require a dressing-gown at all; for another he had looked upon the garment as extravagantly fine.
"Yes," said he, in answer to Caroline's remark, "I have found it useful today. It is very warm and comfortable. Caroline, I have been talking again to Mark about the money."
"Well, uncle?"
"I don't know that it is well. Mark does not appear inclined to make me any promise that it shall be settled upon you when it comes. I urged it upon him very strongly this afternoon, and he answered me in his light careless manner, 'Of course. O yes doctor, I'll remember;' but he did not give a specific promise; whether by accident or design, I cannot say. So I told him to send you down to me."
"Yes, uncle," she said, thinking more of the weakness of the voice to which she was listening, than of the import of the words.
"This money must be settled upon you, Caroline, the instant that you touch it. It is essential that a married woman should, if possible, have some settlement. If I recover, I shall take care that this is so settled, but----"
"Ifyou recover!" she interrupted. "Why, Uncle Richard, you are getting well as fast as you can. Mark says so. You are sitting up!"
"True; I am sitting up; and I could not have sat up two or three days ago. Still, I am not sure about the getting well."
"But Mark says so; he says you are," reiterated Caroline.
"And Mark's opinion, as a medical man, must be infallible, you think?" rejoined the doctor, with a momentary look in his face that Caroline did not understand. "At any rate, my dear, it is well to remember all contingencies. 'Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst,' was one of your grandpapa Davenal's favourite maxims. You must have the money settled upon you----"
"But, Uncle Richard, are you quite sure that it would be for the best?" she interposed. "If the money is settled in that way, it would be all tied up, and do us no good after all."
"You would enjoy the interest."
"That's not over much," said Caroline slightingly. "I and Mark have been planning a hundred things that we might do with the money. Refurnish the Abbey splendidly for one."
"You and Mark are a couple of simpletons," retorted the doctor, regaining momentarily his energy of voice. But the effort was too much, and he lay panting for several minutes afterwards. Caroline sat gazing at him, her finger unconsciously raised to her neck, playing with the gleaming toy there. Which should she trust to, these signs of illness, or Mark's opinion?
"Caroline, I insist that the money be settled upon you. Were you and Mark to waste it in nonsense, it would be nothing less than a fraud upon your West Indian relatives from whom it is derived. You may tell Mark so from me. That money, Carine, secured to you, would at least keep the wolf from coming quite in, should he ever approach your door."
Caroline sat aghast, wondering whether the doctor had lost his senses. "The wolf at the door for us, Uncle Richard. As if that could ever be."
"Ah, Carine, I have lived to know that there is no permanent certainty in the brightest lot," he answered with a sigh. "My dear, more experience has been forced upon me in the past year or two than I had learned in the whole course of my previous life. Understand me once for all, this money must be secured to you."
"Very well, Uncle Richard," she answered with ready acquiescence. "It shall be so, as you seem so much to wish it. I'll tell Mark all you say."
A few minutes longer, and Caroline rose. Dr. Davenal was surprised that she should be going again so very soon, and looked inquiringly at her. "Can't you stay a little longer, Caroline?"
"I wish I could; but I shall hardly get back to dinner, and we expect some friends today. Goodnight, Uncle Richard."
He drew her face down to his, murmuring his farewell. Little did Caroline Cray think it would be his last.
Sara went out with her cousin, and saw her depart with the servant who had waited for her. When she returned to the chamber, the doctor was in deep thought.
"I think you must bring the table near to me again, Sara," he said. "There's another word or two I should like to write."
"Yes, papa. Do you want Edward's letter?"
"No, no; it's not to him. There. Dip the pen in the ink for me."
It was a tacit confession of weakness that she did not like to hear; and she saw that even in the short space of time that had elapsed since he wrote before his strength had visibly declined. He was scarcely able to guide the pen.
"That will do," when he had traced a few lines. "Sara, should you have occasion to send this, enclose it in a note from yourself, explaining my state when I penned it; that I was almost past writing. Will you remember?"
"Yes, papa," she answered, her heart beating painfully at the words.
"Fold it for me."
Honourable in all her thoughts and actions, Sara folded the note with the writing turned from her. It is just possible some children might have been sufficiently actuated by curiosity to glance at least at the name at the commencement of the note. Not so Sara Davenal. She placed it in an envelope and fastened it down.
"I think I can direct it, Sara. Just the name."
She gave him the pen, and he traced the name in uneven, doubtful letters. Sara noted it with surprise, and perhaps her pulses quickened. "O. Oswald Cray, Esquire."
"Put it in my desk with Edward's, my dear. If you have occasion to send the one, you will the other." As she unlocked the desk again her tears were raining down fast. In all that her father was saying and doing there seemed to be a foreshadowing in his own mind of his approaching death. She quitted the room for a few minutes that her emotion might spend itself, and in the interval Miss Davenal entered. The soft rustling of Miss Bettina's sweeping silks aroused the doctor, who had fallen into a dose. She went up and took his hand.
"Richard, how are you tonight?"
"I hardly know. Middling."
"Sara is fancying you are not so well."
"Is she?"
"But she always was given to fancies, you know. Is it right that you should sit up so long the first time of leaving your bed?"
"Yes, I like the change. I was tired of bed. Sit down, Bettina. There are one or two things I want to say to you."
"Are you finding yourself worse?"
"Bettina, I have not been better."
"The doctors have thought you so," she said, after a pause.
"Ay, but I know more of my own state than they can tell me. When the suffering and its signs passed, they leaped to the conclusion that the disease had left me. In a measure, so it has, but they should have remembered in how many of such cases the apparent improvement is all deceit, the forerunner of the end."
Bettina Davenal fully understood the words and what they implied. But she was not a demonstrative woman, and the rubbing together of her white and somewhat bony hands was the sole sign of the inward aching heart.
"And I am thankful for the improvement," added the doctor. "It is not all who are permitted this freedom from pain in their dying hours."
"O Richard! is therenohope?"
"I fear not," he gravely answered. "I am accustomed to impress upon my patients the great truth that while there is life there is hope, and I should be worse than a heathen to ignore it in my own case. But, all I can say is, I cannot trust to it."
She had laid one of her hands upon the folds of the dressing-gown, and the doctor could feel the twitching of the fingers. He had asked her to sit down, but she preferred to stand. Close to him, with her head bent, she could hear his low words without much misapprehension, so deliberately were they spoken between the panting breath.
"Bettina, I don't go to my grave as I thought I should have gone, providing for my children. I have been obliged to sacrifice all I had put by. It was not a great deal, it's true, for I am but what's called a middle-aged man, and my expenses have been high. Could I have foreseen my early death, I should have lived at half the rate. And this sacrifice will not die with me. The house--I daresay I shall shock you, Bettina--is mortgaged; not, however, to its full value. I have directed in my will that it shall be sold; and the residue, after the mortgage is paid--can you hear me?" he broke off to ask.
"Every word."
"The residue and the proceeds of the furniture, and those two small cottages of mine, and other effects which will be likewise sold, will make a fair sum. There's money owing to me in the town, too. Altogether I expect there will not be much less than three thousand pounds----"
"Richard!" shrieked out Miss Bettina, in her emotion. "Threethousand! I thought you were worth ten at least."
"No, it was not so much as that altogether. I had four or five thousand put by. Never mind: I say I have had to sacrifice it. I feel how imprudent I have been, now that it is too late."
"To what have you had to sacrifice it?"
The doctor paused before he replied. "A sudden claim came upon me of which I knew nothing: a claim for thousands. No, Bettina, I know what you wish to say--believe me, Icould notresist it: to pay it was obligatory. The worst is, I could not pay it all: and the sum which the property will realise will have to be applied to liquidate it."
"But you can tell me what the claim was for?"
"No, I cannot. It is not altogether my secret, Bettina, and you must not inquire into it. I need not have mentioned it at all to you, but for speaking of Sara. My poor children must suffer. Edward has his day, and he will have to make it suffice: Sara has nothing. Bettina, you will give her a home?"
"There's no necessity for you to ask it," was Bettina Davenal's answer. But she spoke crossly; for the want of confidence in not intrusting to her the nature of this secret was hurting her feelings bitterly. "Should anything happen to you, Sara will naturally find a home with me--if she can put up with its plainness. I shall make her as welcome, and consider it as obligatory on me to do so, as though she were my own child."
The doctor lay back for a moment in his chair, panting. His fingers clasped themselves over hers in token of thanks.
"Richard, surely you might place more confidence in me! If you have been called upon to pay this money in consequence of--of any bygone trouble or debt contracted in your youth--and I conclude it must be something of that sort--do you suppose I cannot be true and keep your counsel? I know what follies the young plunge into!"
"Follies? Crimes, rather!" And the words broke from Dr. Davenal with a groan which told of the deepest mental anguish. It pained even the dull ear that was bent to it.
"Bettina, I say that you must not ask me. If it concerned myself alone you should know as much as I do, but I could not tell you without betraying another; and--and there might be danger. Let it rest. Better for you that it should do so, for it would disturb your peace as it has disturbed mine."
"It's a dreadful sum," said Miss Bettina.
"It is that. And my poor children must be left beggars. I have enjoined Mark Cray to pay three hundred pounds yearly to Sara for five years, out of the proceeds of the practice. He can well afford to do it: and if you will give her a home, this had better be invested for her, Bettina."
"Of course. But what's three hundred for five years? You might make better terms with Mark Cray than that."
"Mark has promised faithfully to do it. I have been talking with him this afternoon about that and other things. I asked him what sum he would feel inclined to pay to Sara out of the business, and for what term. He said he thought he could give three hundred a-year, and would continue it for five years."
"Considering all things, it is not a very generous offer," persisted Miss Bettina. "Had your life been spared, Mark could not have expected to step into the whole of the practice these twenty years."
"It is very fair, I think, Bettina. Mark must acquire experience, remember, must work his way up to the public confidence, before people trust him as they have trusted me. He will not have his rooms filled daily with patients at a guinea a head. This has come upon me suddenly, or all things might have been managed differently. I think it would be a good plan for Mark to leave the Abbey for this house; I have told him so; but he will be the best judge of that." Miss Bettina quitted her stooping posture by the doctor and sat down, revolving all that had been said. She sat slowly rubbing her hands the one over the other, as was her habit when anything troubled her.
"I cannot realise it," she said, in a half whisper, "Richard, Icannotrealise it. Surely you are not going from us!"
"I am but going to those who have preceded me, Bettina," he answered. "My wife, and Richard, and others, who have gone on before, are waiting for me, and I in my turn shall wait for you. This fretting life is over. How poor!--how poor!"--he added more emphatically, as he clasped his hands--"do even its best interests now seem beside eternity!"