The Great Wheal Bang Mining Company had its offices in a commodious and irreproachable quarter of the city. If I give the familiar name Wheal Bang, instead of the difficult one Chwddyn, which can only be spelt from copy, letter by letter, and perhaps wrongly then, it is to save myself and my readers trouble. Not being Welsh, they might find a difficulty in arriving at the accurate pronunciation, just as I do at the spelling. The promoter of the Great Wheal Bang Mining Company, Mr. Barker, occupied sumptuous apartments in Piccadilly; and his copartner in the scheme, as Mark Cray was to all intents and purposes now, flourished in his mansion in Grosvenor Place.
The offices were undeniable in their appointments. Situation, width of staircase, size of rooms, decorations, furniture, attendants; all were of the first water. People who play with the money of others do not in general go to work sparingly; and speculative public schemes necessarily entail a large outlay. These schemes, springing up now and again in London, to the beguilement of the unwary--one in about every ten of which may succeed in the end--have been so well described by abler pens than mine, that I might hesitate even to touch upon them, were it not that the story cannot conveniently get on without my doing so, and that I have a true tale to tell. How many hearts have been made to ache from the misery entailed by these uncertain ventures, ushered in with so much pomp and flourish, so full a promise of prosperity; and how many heads unable to bear the weight of the final ruin, have been laid low in the grave, God alone will ever know. They have ruined thousands in body; they have ruined some in soul; and the public is not yet tired of them, and perhaps will not be to the end of time.
If you never had the chance of going to bed at night a poor man, and waking up in the morning with a larger fortune than could be counted, you might have it now. You had only to enter largely into the Great Wheal Bang Company, become the successful possessor of a number of its shares, and the thing was accomplished. For the world was running after it, and some of the applicants were successful in their request for allotments, and some were unsuccessful; and these last went away with a face as long as the Wheal Bang's own prospectus, growling out a prophecy of all manner of ill-fortune for it. Their grapes were sour. The shares were up in the market to a fabulous premium, and a man might take half a dozen into Capel Court, and come out of it with his pockets stuffed full of gold.
Mark Cray's money had effected wonders, or rather his wife's; for hers it was. A great many of these magnificent projects are nipped ignobly in the bud through want of a little ready money to set them fairly going. But for Mrs. Cray's thousands, Mr. Barker's mine of gold might never have been heard of by the world, and Mr. Barker's name had not attained to its enviable preeminence. These thousands did it all. They got up the company, they set the mine a-working, they paid for the costly offices, they dazzled the eyes of the public, they gave earnest of present wealth, they seemed to assure future success. Certainly, if any mine had ever a fair prospect of realising a golden fruition, it appeared to be the Great Wheal Bang. The working of it had begun most promisingly, and every success was fairly looked for. In calling it a gold mine just now, you of course understood that I was speaking metaphorically; for gold mines are not yet common among us, even in Wales. This very valuable mine (as it could but turn out to be) was not rich in gold, but in lead; and, as we all know, the one is speedily converted into the other. The previous autumn, in consequence of some trifling difficulty in London, Mr. Barker found it convenient to enter on a temporary sojourn at a distance; and he penetrated to a remote district of South Wales. While there, with the good luck which that gentleman believed he was born to and should some time realise, a vein of lead was discovered of a most promising nature. He contrived to secure a large interest in it, and undertook to get up a company for the working of it.
How he would lave accomplished this, or whether he ever would have accomplished it, is doubtful, had he not found a coadjutor in Mark Cray, and an aid in Mark's money. Mark resigned the control of the money to him, and Mr. Barker did not spare it. No earthly adjunct was wanting to ensure the success of the scheme, provided the mine only realised its present promises.
Has anybody who may happen to read this ever assisted in getting a newly-discovered mine into working order? If so, he may remember the money it cost. How it ran out of the hands like water that is poured through a broad-necked funnel, disappearing nobody knew where, and leaving little trace behind! How the pounds went, and the hundreds went, and the thousands went--if he was fortunate enough to possess thousands to go--he may not recollect without wincing, to this hour. Mark Cray's thousands went. But ere they had come quite to an end, the Great Wheal Bang Company was in full operation in London, the shareholders had answered to their calls, and the money was flowing in.
No lack of money to be feared then. And the operations at the mine were conducted on a much grander scale than heretofore, and the returns were certain to be without parallel, and Mr. Barker was in a glow of triumph, and Mark Cray in a state of ecstatic delight, and the lucky shareholders leaped up sixteen scales in the ladder of society. How many set up carriages on the strength of their future riches it is beyond my power to tell. The money flowed down to the mine, and the works went on beautifully, and the specimens of ore that came up to town were said to be more valuable than any ore ever was before. As to Mr. Barker and Mark, their expenses were not deemed worthy of a thought: with all that money going out weekly for the mine, personal expenditure was but as a drop of water in the ocean, and of course it was unnecessary to think of limiting it. Mrs. Cray, with her vanity and her love of display, was in the seventh heaven; while Mark looked back to his prosy life at Hallingham and wondered how he had endured it. He wondered how any of the doctors left there endured it, and pitied them from his heart. The thousand a-year or so he once thought to enter upon as successor to Dr. Davenal was recollected with contempt now.
This much must be said for the Great Wheal Bang Company--that its projectors were at least honest in their belief of its genuineness. In that they differed from some other companies we have heard of, which have turned out to be nothing but a swindle--if you will excuse the word--from the earliest commencement, the very first dawning dream of their projectors. Mr. Barker was of that strangely sanguine nature which sees a fortune in the wildest scheme, and plunges head and heart and creed into the most improbable speculation: Mark, an utter tyro in mines and all that concerns them, including companies, saw only with Barker's eyes. When Mr. Barker assured the entranced shareholders that one hundred pounds put into the Great Wheal Bang would multiply tenfold and tenfold, he spoke only the sanguine belief of his heart. When Mark Cray declared to his brother Oswald that a thousand pounds embarked in it by him would make him a rich man for life, he asserted the honest truth according to his conviction. No wonder the two gentlemen-promoters were eloquent.
Mark had made several visits to the scene of the mines, and he came back each time with (if possible) renewed assurance of the brilliant future; with increased ardour. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer obligingly made Mark an impromptu present of a hundred thousand pounds, Mark would have flung it broadcast into the mine, did the mine thirst for it. He did not understand these things in the least; and the perpetual bustle going on, the number of the miners, even the very money paid in wages and suchlike expenses, were to Mark only an earnest of the rich returns that were to come hereafter. Mark would go back to London in a glowing state, and send his friends the shareholders into a fever, longing to realise the prosperity that seemed so close at hand. The weekly reports overshadowed other weekly reports with envy, and created afurorein the speculating world. Some of the shareholders who understood mines, or thought they did, better than Mark, went down to the Principality, and examined into the state of things for themselves; they found them quite satisfactory, and came away as charmed as Mark. In point of fact, prospects did look well; the lead was of an unusually good quality, and there seemed no reason whatever to anticipate anything but success. Caroline had accompanied her husband once to the mines; but the stay there (putting prospects aside) did not please her: it was "rough," she told Mark, and it was very dull at the little inn; and she was glad to come away from it all ere the second day was over.
Perhaps the only person within the circle of Mark Cray's acquaintance not bitten by the Wheal Bang fever was Miss Davenal. Even Oswald Cray was to succumb at last. He would not become a shareholder; he was too cautious a man to enter upon possible future liabilities, the extent of which no human being could foretell: but he did feel inclined to put a thousand pounds into Mark's hands, and tell him to do the best with it. It may almost be said that Oswald was worried into doing this. Mark would not let him rest. At the onset of the affair, when the glorious prospects of the Wheal Bang were first astonishing the world, Mark had urged Oswald to become one of them; a director or at least a shareholder; but Oswald had turned a deaf ear. He felt greatly vexed at Mark's imprudence at abandoning Hallingham and his profession, leaving a certainty for an uncertainty: he felt more than vexed at the manner in which Mrs. Cray's money was disposed of, so entirely opposed to the dying injunction of Dr. Davenal, so opposed (Oswald deemed) to all wisdom and prudence; and he set his face resolutely against the Wheal Bang. But Oswald was but mortal. As the weeks and months went on, and the mines became to all appearance valuable, the company flourishing, and Mark, in conjunction with others, dinned for ever into his ear the fortune he might make at it, Oswald began to waver. He had a thousand pounds laid by, and he felt half inclined to risk it; Mark over-persuaded him; and his visit to the Messrs. Knollys's office the day he encountered Sara Davenal was for the purpose of making certain inquiries of those gentlemen relating to the Wheal Bang.
Not so with Miss Bettina Davenal She set her face resolutely against the Great Wheal Bang from the first, and nothing turned her. She had never forgiven Mark and his wife for quitting Hallingham, and her reproaches to them could not cease. The apparent prosperity of the Great Wheal Bang changed not her opinion in the least. Mark asked her once whether she would take shares in it, and produced a Wheal Bang prospectus to point to its merits. She angrily replied that she would as soon throw her money into the Thames, that it would not be a surer way of getting rid of it, and rang the bell for Mark and his prospectus to be shown out of her house.
Mark Cray sat in the board room at the city offices of the Great Wheal Bang. A noble room, the cloth on its long table of the freshest green and the finest texture. Mark leaned his elbow upon this cloth as he talked and laughed with some of the friends of the Great Wheal Bang, who were getting rich so easily. It was not a board day; but visitors were numerous at all times.
"I had a line from him this morning," said Mark, continuing the conversation. "Spirits? I should think he does write in spirits!--what are you talking of? They are getting up quantities of ore now. It will soon be ready for the market."
"And its quality does not deteriorate?" asked Mark's immediate listener, a middle-aged gentleman with wise-looking spectacles on his nose.
"Deteriorate!" repeated Mark. "But you shall see the letter." He began to turn over the pipers on the table, and the diamond ring on his little finger, a hundred-guinea investment of his, began to show out the colours of a prism in its glittering brilliancy.
"It is of no consequence," returned the gentleman, when Mark could not readily find it. "I can take your word. When does Barker come up again?"
"Today or tomorrow; I am not sure which. I should like you to have seen his letter, though it is but a line or two. The only motive for our fresh call upon the shareholders is to hasten the operations, and so speed the returns. With more capital afloat we can increase the workers at the mine, and bring the ore out more quickly."
"It was to have been in the market by this."
"One cannot calculate to a day. It won't be long now; and its richness, when it does come, will astonish the world. Do just as you like: take the shares or leave them. This gentleman would not have had them to dispose of but that he has urgent need of the money. He is over in Austria now, and has written to me: he is an old friend of mine."
"I'd not hesitate a moment to take them were it my own money; I wish I had more to embark in it. But this is money belonging to my wards; and their relatives are so anxious that I should choose a safe investment, one in which there can be no risk."
Mark Cray rose from his seat. The word "risk" offended his pride, and he could only wonder that any one could be idiot enough to use it in connection with the Great Wheal Bang Mine. But Mark had no need to solicit now the taking of shares: half London was ready to snap them up: and he was too great a man to permit his time to be wasted unnecessarily.
"Consider over it, if you please, until tomorrow morning, Mr. Gilham," he said, as he moved away. "You can see the secretary if you come in before ten. After that the shares will not be disposable."
There's no safer way to make a buyer eager, than for a seller to be indifferent; and Mr. Gilham and his spectacles went hastening after Mark, ready to close the bargain. But Mark was already the centre of an eager group, not to be got at again lightly. The next time Mr. Gilham caught sight of him, he was descending the wide staircase, surrounded as before by a crowd of attendant worshippers, who were unwilling to part with the great man and his widely-extending influence.
But great men must dine as well as small, and Mr. Cray was hastening home to that necessary meal. He extricated himself from his friends, and stepped into his cab that waited at the door: a favourite vehicle of Mark's, built under his own superintendence, in which he generally went to and fro morning and evening, driving his blood horse himself. Glancing at his watch as he dashed along Cheapside, he found it was considerably later than he had thought, and urged the horse to a quicker pace.
For Mr. and Mrs. Cray were expecting friends to dinner that evening. Dr. Ford of Hallingham and his two daughters were making a short stay in town, and had been invited by Mark and his wife--neither of them loth to show off their new grandeur, and to send it to be talked about in Hallingham.
Suddenly Mark threw the horse nearly on his haunches by the violence with which he pulled him up. Oswald Cray was on the pavement. He advanced to Mark at the latter's sign.
"Hare you decided about the thousand pounds, Oswald?"
"Partially. I went down to Knollys's this morning, and they recommend the thing strongly. But I have worked hard for my money, Mark, and don't care to lose it."
"Lose it!" scornfully returned Mark. "The Great Wheal Bang won't be a losing concern. Look here, Oswald! I have but one motive in pressing the matter upon you: this mine of wealth has come flowing into my hands, and I do consider it a great pity that you, my only brother, should not reap some benefit from it. Others, strangers, are making their thousands and thousands--or will make them; and it's nothing but wilful blindness for you to let it slip through your fingers. It's obstinate folly, Oswald. Give me the thousand pounds, and I'll soon make you ten thousand."
"The fact is, Mark, I cannot feel so positively sure of its turning out well as you do."
"Oswald, I tell youthat it will. I and Barker have means of knowing facts connected with the mine that I don't speak of, even to you. As I assured you the other day, so I repeat it; your money cannot be lost. It is a perfectly sure and safe investment; I will answer for it with my life. Will you come home and dine with us?"
"I have dined."
"Dined!" echoed Mark, rather scornfully, for he was learning to despise any but the most fashionable hours--as many another newly-made great man has learnt before him. "Come round in the evening, then, and see old Ford of Hallingham. Barker will be there, I expect, and we can talk this over further."
Mark Cray touched his horse, and the cab and its freight bounded off. Mark did not draw rein again until Grosvenor Place was reached.
The house was blazing with light, every window bright with it. Mrs. Cray loved pomp and vanity in all their forms, and she generally caused her rooms to be lighted with the first glimmer of twilight. Mark Cray stepped into his handsome hall and was received by a couple of footmen. Flinging his hat to one, his gloves to another, he bounded upstairs to his dressing-room, conscious that he was keeping the dinner and his guests waiting.
Did Mark Cray ever cast a sigh of regret to the simple life at Hallingham, when he and his wife used to sit down to mutton cutlets and a pudding, and think the fare good enough? Didsheregret it at any odd moment? Not yet. Dress and dinners, with expense of other sorts, bring a fascination with them all too enthralling to the senses. How they pall upon the wearied spirit in time, how they deaden the heart and debase the intellect, let those answer who have become their slaves; but Mark Cray and his wife had not reached that period of weariness yet. You may be very sure, knowing what you do know of the world and the generality of people who populate it, that Mr. and Mrs. Cray wanted not for what is called society. The great projector of the great Wheal Bang Company, holding in his own hands the power to make others rich, was not likely to lack adulation in his private capacity any more than in his public one, and he and his wife drank their fill of it. Mark's mind was shallow, and his head tolerably empty, but he was sufficiently attractive in manners to win his way in society, even without the adjunct just mentioned. Mark was looked upon as of good connections also; for it had somehow got reported that he was a nephew of the proud Baronet of Thorndyke. Perhaps it may be forgiven to poor empty-headed Mark that he held his tongue from contradicting it, and suffered the world to think he was of the family of that great man. As to Caroline, people were in love with her beauty and her youth; and the costly extravagances of the house in Grosvenor Place bore their own charm. Altogether, more guests crowded the doors of Mr. and Mrs. Cray than the doors could always hold. Many satellites of the great world, of a position far above the real one of Mark Cray and his wife, flocked to pay them court; and neither of them was wise enough to see how unsuitable are extremes, or to discern that the acquaintance would never have been condescended to but that Mark was the Great Wheal Bang's powerful chieftain. Therefore it was nothing unusual for Mark Cray to receive dinner guests at his board; on the contrary, it would have been a marked circumstance now, had he and his wife dined alone.
Mark washed his hands and hurried on his coat, and in a few minutes was at his dinner-table, his guests on either side of him. One guest at it Mark could only regard with astonishment, and that was Miss Davenal. Not that Miss Davenal was not fitted to grace a dinner-table; no lady more so at her age in the three kingdoms; but she had so resolutely abstained from honouring Mark's house with her presence that he had never expected to see her in it again. Caroline said she should invite her and Sara to meet their old friends the Fords, and Mark had laughed when he heard it. "She'll never come," he said; "you might as well invite the lioness from the Zoological Gardens." However, here she was: she had chosen to come. She sat on Mark's left hand, her delicate features quite beautiful in their refinement; Miss Ford was on his right, a shrinking little woman of forty years; Miss Mary Ford and Sara Davenal were lower down; and the physician, a short, red-faced, shrivelled man, who talked incessantly and wore nankeen pantaloons, was next to Caroline. "Put a knife and fork for Mr. Barker," Mark had said to his servants: but Mr. Barker had not made his appearance yet. Those were all the guests.
There is something false about Caroline today. Look at her dress! It is white watered silk, gleaming with richness, as the dewdrops are gleaming in the white crape flowers in her hair; and it, the white silk, is elaborately trimmed with black ruchings and ribbons. That black, put on by her maid, taking the girl a whole afternoon to do it, has been added with a motive. Caroline, in her evening dress, has long put off the mourning for her good uncle, her more than father, dead though he has been but four months yet; but she is today a little ashamed of her haste, and she has assumed these black ribbons before these Hallingham friends and her aunt Bettina, to make believe that she still wears it. Her violet eyes are intensely bright, and her cheeks glow with their sweetest and softest carmine. Sara wears a black crape robe, a little edging of white net only on its low body and sleeves, and she wears no ornament, except the jet beads on her neck and arms. The two Miss Fords are in copper-coloured silks made high: when they saw Mrs. Cray's white silk, fit for the court of our gracious Queen, they felt uncomfortable, and attempted a sort of apology that they had brought no evening dress with them to town.
And the dinner is in accordance with Caroline's attire. Soup, and fish, andentrées, and roasts, and jellies, and sweets, and fal-lals; and more sorts of wine than the Miss Fords, simple and plain, could remember afterwards to count; and flowers, and plate, and servants in abundance: and grandeur enough altogether for the dining-room of England's Premier.
It was this state, this show, this expense, that so offended the good sense (very good always, though sometimes over severe) of Miss Bettina Davenal, and kept her aloof from Mr. and Mrs. Cray's house. If Mark really was making the vast amount of money (but it would have taken a wiser tongue than Mark's to convince her that that usually assumed fact was not a fallacy), then they ought to be putting it by, she argued: if they were not making it, if all this was but specious wealth, soon to pass away and leave only ashes and ruin behind it, then Mark and Caroline were fit only for a lunatic asylum. In any point of view, the luxurious appointments of the dinner she saw before her were entirely out of place for middle-class life: and Miss Bettina felt an irrepressible prevision that their folly would come home to them.
But she knew better than to mar the meeting with any unpleasant reproaches or forebodings then, and she was as cordial and chatty as her deafness allowed. It was a real pleasure to meet Hallingham friends, and Miss Bettina enjoyed herself more than she had ever done since the doctor's death.
The entertainment came to an end, and Caroline marshalled her guests to the glittering drawing-room: glittering with its mirrors, its chandeliers, and the many lights from its gilded girandoles. Dr. Ford and Mark followed shortly, and found them drinking coffee. Caroline and Sara were stealing a minute's private chat together: they had lived apart of late.
"Howdidyou get my aunt to come?" Caroline was asking. "We thought she never intended to honour us here."
"She came of her own accord. I did not say a word to press it. I have been so vexed this afternoon, Caroline," resumed Sara, turning to a different subject. "My aunt has told me finally that she will not have Dick and Leo up for their holidays."
Caroline shrugged her pretty shoulders; very much as if Dick and Leo and their holidays were perfectly indifferent to her. "I don't think I should, in Aunt Bettina's place. Boys are dreadfully troublesome animals; and now that--that poor Uncle Richard is not here to keep them in order--" another shrug finished the sentence.
"Oh, but that is one reason why I so wish them to come," said Sara, her voice somewhat tremulous. "I don't expect that they can be had always; that would be unreasonable; but to stay at school just this first time after poor papa's death!--it will seem so hard to them. Caroline, couldyounot have them up?"
"I!" returned Caroline, amazed at the proposition.
"You have a large house and plenty of servants. It would be an act of real kindness."
"Good gracious, Sara! I'd not have them: I'd not be worried with those two boys for six weeks if you paid me in gold and diamonds. They--who's this?"
The door had opened, and one of the servants was waiting to make an announcement:
"Mr. Oswald Cray."
Caroline ran to meet him. He looked rather surprised at her attire, and began apologising in a laughing sort of way for his own morning-coat. He had expected to meet only Barker and Dr. Ford. A greeting to the Hallingham people, and he went up and held out his hand to Miss Davenal.
"You are a great stranger, Mr. Oswald Cray. I did not suppose that the formal call you made upon me when I settled in town three months ago was to be your only one."
"I am a sadly busy man," was his answer. "Offending I fear some of my best friends through not visiting them. But I can scarcely dare to call my time my own."
"Out of town, do you say? Well, that is an excuse of course Sara, here's Mr. Oswald Cray: you used to know him in Hallingham."
The blushes tingled on her cheek as Mr. Oswald Cray touched her hand. Tingled at the thought that it was not the first time they had met that day.
"What have you been doing with yourself, Oswald, since I saw you before dinner!" called out Mark, who was pointing out the beauty of the paintings on his walls to the Miss Fords.
"I have been to Pimlico since then."
"To Pimlico! Oh, I know: to that friend of yours; It strikes me you go there pretty often."
"As often as I can spare time for," returned Oswald.
Mark laughed. Had he possessed that refined regard for the feelings of others, never wanting in the true gentleman, he had not so spoken. "I know. But you need not be so close over it, Oswald. That Miss Allister is a nice girl, is she not?"
"Very," was the emphatic reply.
"One to be esteemed. Eh?"
"As few can be esteemed by me." Oswald spoke in his coldest, most uncompromising tone: his haughty face turned almost defiantly on Mark. He was the last man to brook this sort of speech, and in that moment he despised Mark. Sara had a book in her hand, and she never raised her drooping eyelids from it. What was it to her now whom he esteemed? But sheheard:all too plainly.
There was a pause of silence; rather an unpleasant one. It was broken by Miss Mary Ford.
"I must not forget to ask after your old servant Watton, Miss Davenal. Does she like her place? I suppose you see her occasionally."
"Thank you, I don't like it at all," returned Miss Davenal, hearing wrongly, as usual. "What was Mark asking you, Mr. Oswald Cray?"
"Watton is quite well; I saw her this morning," interposed Sara, who perhaps did not care that Mark's choice of subject should again be brought forward. Mrs. Cray caught up the words.
"Saw Watton this morning, Sara! Where did you see her?"
And the very moment the unlucky admission had left Sara's lips she knew how thoughtless it was to have made it, and what an undesirable discussion it might involve.
"Where did you see Watton?" repeated Mrs. Cray.
"I had a little business that way, and called upon her," replied Sara. She was obliged to speak: there was no help for it; and all the room seemed to be listening to her answer, which she had not time to weigh.
"Business down that way!" echoed Caroline. "Why, it is in the City! What business could you have there?"
"Not much: nothing of moment to you, Caroline;" and Sara, in her dismay and fear, turned and began talking rapidly to old Dr. Ford.
"Aunt Bettina," called out Mrs. Cray, in a slow distinct voice, "what business took Sara to the City this morning? I thought only gentlemen went there."
Aunt Bettina heard, and lifted her hand in momentary petulance, as if the subject angered her.
"You must not ask me. Sara has her own secrets and goes her own ways since your uncle's death. I am not allowed to know them."
Sara looked up to reply, perhaps to defend herself; but she remembered what was at stake, and forced herself to silence. Better that the blame should lie upon her! She had caught a momentary glimpse of Mr. Oswald Cray: he was leaning against a table in the distance, his eyes fixed upon her, reading every change in her countenance; his own face stern and impassive.
What more would have been said or asked was interrupted by the entrance of another guest. A middle-sized man of thirty, with radish hair and whiskers, a free manner and voluble tongue. Mark started forward with a shout of welcome, and introduced him to the strangers. It was Mr. Barker.
"I have brought up the grandest news, Cray," he exclaimed, in a state of excitement. "There's another lode found."
"No!" echoed Mark, his eyes sparkling. "Another lode?"
"Dutton came upon it yesterday afternoon after I wrote those few lines to you. By Jove, gentlemen"--throwing his looks round the room--"I am afraid to calculate what will be the riches of this mine! Mark, old fellow, I hope our success won't drive us into Bedlam--as the case has been with some millionaires."
Miss Bettina, who had contrived to hear, cleared her throat. "It's a great deal more likely to drive you into the union, sir."
It was an unexpected a check to Mr. Barker's enthusiasm that he could only stare in amazement at Miss Bettina. He had not met her before. "Never mind her," said Mark, in an undertone, "its only old Bett. And she's as deaf as a post."
But Mr. Barker did mind. "Why, ma'am," said he, going close to her, "what do you mean?"
"I can't forget a good old proverb that I learnt in my young days, sir," was her answer: "one that I have seen exemplified times upon times in my course through life. 'He that would be rich in twelve months is generally a beggar in six.' I know what good newly-discovered mines are apt to bring, sir, however promising they may look." Mr. Barker fairly turned his back upon her; he believed she must be little better than a lunatic; and gave his attention to Mark and the more sensible portion of the company.
"The people are up in arms down about there," he said. "Lots of them who wrote for shares in the new allotment have not succeeded in getting any, and I thought they'd have torn me to pieces.Ican't help it. It's a dear impossibility that the whole world can go in for being rich. If luck falls on one, it doesn't fall on another."
Dr. Ford, to whom Mr. Barker had seemed to appeal, nodded his head. "I hear great things of this mine, sir," said he.
"Great things!" repeated Mr. Barker, as if the words were not sufficiently expressive. "It is the very grandest thing that England has seen for many a day. The golden wealth of the Spanish Main is poor compared to it."
"I'm sure I hope it will answer."
"You--hope--it--will--answer!" echoed Mr. Barker, his red face going rather purple. "Why, sir, ithasanswered. Itisanswering. I could take my interest in it into the money market tomorrow, and sell it for half a million of money. Answer!"
Oswald Cray came nearer. "When shall you begin to realise?" he inquired.
"In about six weeks from this."
"Six weeks! Really to realise?"
"We might get some loads off before, if we chose, but we don't care to begin until the sales can go on uninterruptedly. The lead is coming up beautifully; vast quantities of it. You never saw such lead. It bangs all other in the locality into fits."
Mr. Barker in his joyous excitement was scarcely choice in his mode of speech. He was not particularly so at any time. He rubbed his hands--which looked as red as if they had been dining for ore--one against another.
"A fellow came up to the place--Lord What's-his-name's agent--and began handling the specimens. 'What sort of ore d'ye call this?' he asked. 'The best that ever was dug,' some of our men answered him. 'And so it is,' said he: 'we can't get such as this out of our pit.' No more they can: not an owner of 'em in all Wales."
"But you will not be selling freely in six weeks?" returned Oswald. "It is impossible."
"Impossible, is it?" retorted Mr. Barker. "It would be in most cases, I grant you; it's not in ours. You go and look at the thousands of men on the works. The Great Chwddyn mine doesn't deal in impossibilities."
"Would you be so good as tell me what you call that word, sir?" asked the physician, putting his hand to his ear. "We can't get at the pronunciation of it at Hallingham."
"And we can't here," returned easy Mr. Barker. "One calls it one thing and one another. As to trying to speak it like the natives, nobody can.Wecall it the Great Wheal Bang up here. Not that it's at all appropriate or correct to do so, but one can't be breaking one's teeth over the other. You see--Halloa! what's this? For me?"
One of Mark's servants had entered with a telegraphic dispatch. It was addressed to Mr. Barker.
"Your man has brought it round from Piccadilly, sir. He thought it might be of moment."
"Let's see. Where's it from?--Wales? Ay. Another lode discovered, I'll be bound!"
Mr. Barker carried the paper across the room, and opened it under the lights of a girandole. He stared at it more than read it; stared at the words as if unable to understand them: and a curious expression of puzzled bewilderment, half wonder, half dismay, struggled to his face. Mark Cray had come to his side, all eagerness; and Oswald was watching them from the distance.
"Isit another lode, Barker?"
"Hush! There has been a slight irruption of water," whispered Barker, thrusting the paper into his pocket. "Good heavens! that would floor us at once."
Mark Cray's mouth dropped. He stared as helplessly at Mr. Barker as the latter had stared at the dispatch. The sight of his face awoke Mr. Barker's caution.
"For goodness' sake, Cray, don't look like that! They'll see you, and suspect something.Thismust be kept dark, if possible. I daresay it's nothing. I'll go back again tonight."
He turned away with a beaming face to the company, laughing merrily, talking gaily. They might have well deemed that two fresh lodes had been discovered instead of one. Mark, not quite so quick in recovering his equanimity, stayed where he was before the girandole, looking in it in an absent sort of manner, and pushing his hair back mechanically. Perhaps this was the first time that even thepossibilityof failure had come close to Mark, face to face.
Barker was the first of the guests to retire, and Mark left the room with him. As the latter was returning to it he met his brother, who was also departing.
"Not going yet, Oswald? What a one you are!--Afraid of being in the streets late, it's my belief. I say! when am I to have the thousand pounds?"
"My mind is not quite made up yet," was the answer, a rather unexpected one to Mark's ears. "Mark, did Barker get any bad news tonight?"
"Bad news!" repeated Mark, as if quite at a loss to know what could be meant.
"By that dispatch from Wales?"
"Not at all," returned Mr. Mark, volubly. "He had forgotten to leave some instructions behind him, so they telegraphed. What put your head upon bad news?"
"Barker's countenance as he read the dispatch; and yours also when you joined him. You both looked as though some great calamity had occurred."
Mark laughed blithely. "Oswald, old fellow, you were always inclined to be fanciful. The mine is a glorious mine, and you'll be a blind booby if you don't secure some benefit in it. I'll answer for the safety of the investment with--with--my life," concluded Mark, speaking rather strongly in his loss for a simile. "Can't you rely upon me?"
O Mark Cray! His protestations of the "safety" were excusable before, when he believed what he said: but they were not now. Since that ominous message arrived his very heart had been quaking within him. In the few confidential words he had just exchanged with Barker on going out the latter had said: "We must get all the money we can, for we shall want it. Water, no matter how slight the irruption, plays the very deuce with the costs of a mine." And Mark Cray, to avert, or help to avert, or to conceal the calamity, was quite ready to sacrifice his own good faith and the money of his brother.
You have heard and read of those false promises that keep faith to the eye and break it to the spirit, bringing a flood-tide of anguish in their train. As such may be described the realisation of the long-deferred hope--the money--so anxiously expected by Sara Davenal. It came in due course, after a little more waiting; that is, the order to receive it was sent to her: but it did not bring pleasure with it. For the sales had not realised so much as was anticipated. Do they ever realise as much? Dr. Davenal had expected there would be about three thousand pounds: five hundred over and above the sum owing. But the money fell short by two hundred pounds even of this sum: and there was not enough to pay Mr. Alfred King.
O it was a great burthen to be thrown upon this girl in her early years, in her solitary loneliness! When the news came, and the small sum of money stared her in the face in figures all black and white, she looked around her in despondency. She felt that she had no friend, save God.
Feeling half-hopeless, Sara sat down and considered what was to be done. Two thousand three hundred pounds certainly were not two thousand five hundred, and she had little expectation that Mr. Alfred King would be satisfied with it. An ordinary creditor, whose debt was a legitimate one, would of course not remit two hundred pounds: but this debt was different, for she had every reason to believe it was no legitimate debt, but money paid to purchase silence. Then a voice whispered her they would be all the less likely to remit it; they would hold out for it to to the last farthing.Whosesilence she could not tell. But for the mysterious hint of Mr. Alfred King that others were interested in this business she might have thought it was his alone. The disagreeable impression left upon her mind by that interview had not in the least worn away: she greatly disliked Mr. Alfred King; she very greatly disliked the thought of visiting him again.
"Mark must help me," she said. "He is rolling in wealth, and two hundred pounds will not be much to him. It will be my own money. His covenant with my dear papa was to pay me three hundred pounds yearly for five years, and he has not begun the payment yet." Quite true Mr. Mark Cray had not yet handed over a shilling of the covenant money. Miss Davenal had pressed for some of it at the time of Mark's quitting Hallingham, but Mark had declined. She had brought it under his notice since, and Mark had made excuses still. He was not bound to pay it until the expiry of the year subsequent to Dr. Davenal's death, he said, and it would be most convenient to him to pay it then. Too proud to press the matter further for her niece, Miss Davenal contented herself with a dignified silence: but she did wonder whether it was that Mark would not or could not pay it. If he could not, why then how hollow, how false was all the show and luxury they had entered on in Grosvenor Place! The real truth of the matter was, Mark's expenses of one kind or another were so great that he had no ready money to spare; on the contrary, he was often at positive fault for some. And Mark was not a willing paymaster at the best of times: these careless spendthrift men frequently are not.
Yet the Great Wheal Bang was flourishing: how flourishing its elated shareholders could tell you; and Oswald Cray, relying on the assurances of his brother, had embarked his thousand in it. That alarming dispatch, with its still more alarming news, had turned out to be more smoke than fire; and when Mr. Barker reached the mine, whither he had hurried with all speed, he found the danger over. There had been an irruption of water, but a very slight one; it did not transpire beyond the locality: and Barker and Mark kept the secret well from the shareholders.
Sara went to Mark. She told him, speaking very gravely, that she had urgent need of two hundred pounds to complete some arrangements of necessity left in her charge by her father. Mark's answer was that he could not help her then; that it was not in his power. Perhaps he could not. They had not yet begun to realise, for that untoward accident, slight as it was, had served to retard the works, and there was no lead yet in the market. A short while, Mark said, and she might come to him for two thousand, and welcome, if it would be of any service to her. Large promises! But Mark had always dealt in such.
Sara had nowhere else to turn to for money in the wide world. Her aunt she knew could not help her; Miss Davenal's income was of a certain extent only, and their living absorbed it. So she wrote to Mr. Alfred King, and he appointed a day to meet her in Essex Street.
Once more, once more, she had to go forth to the unpleasant interview. All was unpleasant connected with it; the object, the journey, the very house, and Mr. Alfred King himself: but she was obeying the command of her dead father, she was seeking to save the reputation, perhaps the life, of her living brother; and Sara Davenal was not one to shrink on her own account from responsibilities such as these.
But surely the spirit of mischief was in it all? It seemed like an evil fate upon her--at least, so she thought in her vexation. For on this day, as on the other, she encountered Mr. Oswald Cray.
Not at the offices, but at the gate of the Temple garden. It occurred in this way. As before, she found she had to wait a considerable time before she could see Alfred King, and she wandered into the quiet courts of the Temple, and came to the larger garden.
The gate-keeper would not admit her to it at first; she had not theentrée, he said; but she told him her case: that she was a stranger, and had to wait an hour and a half to keep an appointment at a solicitor's in Essex Street. Her sweet face and her plaintive tone--for the voice catches the mind's sorrow--won him over, and, though he grumbled a little, he let her enter. It was peaceful there; shut in from the world's turmoil: the grass was green, and the paths were smooth; and Sara sat on the bench alone, and watched the river steamers as they passed and repassed on the Thames.
It was in leaving the gardens that she encountered Mr. Oswald Cray. He had business that day with a barrister in chambers, and was passing the gate as she was leaving it. Sara shrank within the gate again, in the hope that he might not accost her.
It was a vain hope. Surprised to see her there, so far from home and alone, he inquired the reason in the moment's impulse. The crimson blush, called into her face at the meeting, faded to paleness as she answered: "An appointment." She could not say she was there for pleasure.
And, besides, that utter weariness of spirit, when we no longer struggle against fate, had grown to be hers. It seemed of little moment whether he knew her errand that day or not: a faintness of heart, not unlike despair, was weakening her energies.
"An appointment?" he repeated. "Not at the place where I saw you before? Not with Mr. Alfred King?"
"Yes, that is where I am going," she replied, feeling she could not battle against the questions. "I was to have seen Mr. Allred King at twelve; but I was late, and so I have to wait for him."
"But it is not expedient that you should go there," said Oswald.
"I must go there," she answered, all too energetically in her desperation. "Were the interview to lead to--to my death, and I knew that it would, I should go."
The words, so unlikehercalm good sense; the tone so full of hopeless sorrow, told Oswald how full of grief must be the heart they came from. They had strolled, unconsciously perhaps, down the broad walk of the garden, and were now passing a bench. "Will you sit down for a minute," he asked, "while I say a few words to you?"
"Yes: if I have time. My appointment is for two o'clock, and I wish to be there rather before than after it."
He took out his watch and showed it to her. There was plenty of time to spare.
"Have you to keep these appointments often?"
"I never kept but the one you know of. I hope--I am not sure--but I hope that the one today will be all I shall have to keep. It is a singular chance--that you should meet me on both days!"
"I don't think anything in the world happens by chance," gravely observed Oswald. "Do you recollect the interview I had with you at your house, just after your father's death?" he resumed, after a pause.
Sara turned her face to him in her surprise. "O yes."
"And do you remember," he continued, his voice assuming its sincerest and tenderest tone, "what I said at that interview?--That nothing would give me so much pleasure as to be yourfriend, should you require one. Sara--forgive me if I go back for a moment to our old familiar forms of speech--let me prove myself one now!"
"In what manner?" she asked, after some moments of hesitation.
"If I am able to understand anything of this business you need one. You seem to stand alone in it; no one to counsel you, no one to help."
"It is true," she said, "I have to stand in it alone. I must stand in it alone."
"Suffermeto be, so far, your friend."
She faintly shook her head. "You could not be."
"It is true that--that--the period has not arrived, perhaps for either of us, when we had contemplated such a friendship might begin. But we must waive that: necessity alters cases. Sara, let me serve you! I ask it in the name of Dr. Davenal. Surely you can have no objection?"
Her eyes were swimming in tears as she looked straight before her on the gravel path. "In anything but this I should only be too thankful. Sometimes I feel that I am left without a friend in the wide world."
"Why not in this?"
"Because it is a matter that I may not confide to any one. It is"--she lowered her voice--"a secret."
"I will be true as steel. No matter what dishonour may be in it, it shall be held sacred within my breast; never betrayed, never spoken of. I judge that it is not a pleasant secret; therefore I use the word dishonour. It is more fitting that I should be engaged in this matter than you."
For a single moment the temptation came over her to tell him what it was: just as the temptation to tell him the secret connected with Lady Oswald's death had once momentarily assailed Dr. Davenal. But it passed away almost with the thought. She could not speak of her brother's fault; shecould not. Neither might she delegate to another the last directions left to her by her father. Safely grasped in her hand she held those sealed papers left by Dr. Davenal; how could she transfer them even to Oswald Cray?
"I wish I could tell it you!" she said in a tone of pain. "But I cannot; it is not possible. You will have guessed that this is not my own secret. It is a charge that was left to me by my dear father when he was dying: and I am obliged to fulfil it. He had no one to leave it to but me."
"Your brother being away. I can understand so much. Suffer me to stand to you, in this, in your brother's place. I am sure Captain Davenal would wish it."
The faint colour of dread came into her cheeks as she thought how far he would be from wishing this discussed with Mr. Oswald Cray. "I can't tell it," she murmured.
Oswald turned his gaze upon her, his dark blue eyes never more earnest, more eager.
"Will you let me urge this according to the dictates of common-sense? Is it fit that you, being what you are, a lady--young, refined, inexperienced--should be dancing attendance at Jones and Green's offices; men who do not bear too good a reputation in the legal world, to meet principally Mr. Alfred King, a man who bears a worse?"
The crimson shone in her cheeks. Put in this way it was anything but pleasant to the refinement of which he spoke. "I know, I know," she said impulsively. "I felt terribly the going there the day you saw me; I feel it again now. But indeed I cannot help myself. It was a solemn charge left me by my father, and in going through with it I am but doing my duty. God is over me," she simply added. "I have had a great deal to try me, a great deal to bear! but I am striving to do right under Him."
Her lip quivered as she spoke, and she paused from emotion. It was too much for the stoic philosophy of Oswald Cray. All the old feelings pent up so long, buried only, not subdued, resumed their sway with uncontrollable force, like a torrent let loose down a mountain's side. He caught her hands in his; he bent his face near to hers, its whole expression one of the deepest love; his persuasive voice, trembling with agitation, was sunk to the softest whisper.
"Sara, my dearest, I still love you better than anything on earth. Heaven knows how I have striven to forget you since that cloud fell upon us. It has been of no use. Bereft of you, life is but one long dreary path, growing more cruelly monotonous day by day."
Her heart beat wildly, and for one brief interval a hope, sweeter than any earthly dream, stole into it like a golden ray of sunshine. Only for an instant: she knew that it was but so much deceit, for him as for her.
"Are there no means by which we may forget that cloud and return to the past?" he resumed; his voice hoarse with its emotion, and so low in tone that she could scarcely hear it. "Better to sacrifice a little prejudice than to pass a whole life in dissatisfied pain. Let the dishonour--pardon me for thus alluding to it--rest with the dead: perhaps it has been wrong from the first to make it our sorrow."
She looked at him, not quite understanding. He saw the doubt.
"Be my wife, Sara. I can then take these troubles upon me as my legal right. On my sacred word of honour, I will never cast a reproach to the past, so much as in thought. No! I will not let your hands go until you tell me by word of mouth what Iknow--that your heart is mine still; that wecannotbe faithless one to the other."
She felt faint with the moment's pain. The dewdrops of emotion were gathering on her face, and he would not loose her hands that she might wipe them away.
"If we never were true to each other, let us be so now," he went on. "It is too solemn a moment for equivocation: it is no time for us to pretend ignorance of our mutual love."
It was indeed no time for equivocation or for doubt. Sara rose superior to it. A reticence that might have been observed at another time was forgotten now in her emotion and pain.
"I have not been faithless: perhaps I never shall be. But we can never be more to each other than we are now. The dishonour clings to me, and always will cling."
"Sara! don't I say that I will forget it?"
"No; I would never bring the possibility of--of--of--I think you do not understand," she broke off, lifting her white face to his. "It was not only dishonour."
"What else?"
"Crime." A change passed over his countenance as he raised his head, which had been bent to catch the word. Soon it brightened again. Never perhaps had his besetting sin been so quiescent: but pride, even such pride as Oswald Cray's, is a less strong passion than love.
"It was notyourcrime, Sara. And it has passed away."
"It has not passed."
"Not passed!"
"Not yet. There's danger still."
Oswald bit his lip. "Danger of what?"
"Of--of--exposure," she faintly said. "Do not force me to say more. Only believe one thing--that I can never be your wife. Do you think if there were no insuperable barrier thatIshould have made one?" she added, her face flushing a hot crimson. "Forgive me: I scarcely know what I say: but you wished that we should speak without reserve."
"Sara, let me fully understand. Do you imply that there exists any good and substantial reasonstill, call it insuperable barrier if you will, why you ought not to become my wife? Wait a moment. Before you give an answer remember that to my heart it is fraught with either life or death."
"I do not imply it; I fully state it. Oh, don't visit it upon me!" she exclaimed, as his face seemed to be assuming its old haughtiness. "It is not my fault. I did not work the disgrace."
"No," he answered, soothingly, "it is not your fault. Forgive me," he softly whispered. "The blow to me is heavy."
"It may pass for you. It will pass. You will form new friendships, new ties, and forget the old. Better that it should be so."
"But never a new love! Never one who will be to me what the other has been."
She rose from her seat. Oswald drew her down on it again.
"As I hinted just now, Sara, the time when we may mix freely as friends has not yet come; it would not do for either of us. But I must make a last appeal to you--suffer me to be your friend in this one strait. Is it notpossiblethat I can act for you?"
"It is not possible. There are certain reasons why neither you nor anybody else can do this; and, putting these aside, there is the weighty one that it was the charge bequeathed to me, and to me alone, by my dying father. Thank you for all," she whispered, as she suddenly rose and held out her hand, her soft dark eyes speaking their thanks to his.
He rose also. He did not release her hand, but placed it within his arm to lead her up the solitary path. If those grave, middle-aged counsel, deep in their briefs behind the dusty windows opposite, had glanced out at the interview, it probably reminded them of their own sweet spring-time.
Sara withdrew her hand at the garden-gate, but he walked by her side through the courts to Essex Street. She halted there to say adieu.
"I suppose I must not ask to accompany you?"
She shook her head. "I must be alone."
"Fare you well then," he said. "May all good angels guard you!"
Mr. Alfred King was waiting for her. He was evidently not pleased at two hundred pounds of the sum being missing; but he turned it off upon the "other parties." They would not accept it, he said, unless paid in full; and he hinted at consequences to Captain Davenal. He would not sign the receipt; told Sara it was useless to unseal it; but he did write a receipt for the present cheque paid. Altogether, it was a less satisfactory interview than even the former one had been, and Sara quitted him with a sinking heart. She had not the remotest idea where to get the money; and a despairing foreboding was upon her that Edward must yet pay the sacrifice of his crime.
"How long will they wait?" she asked herself, as she went shivering up Essex Street. "Suppose they send me word that they will not wait?--that Edward--oh, if I had but the means to--"
"Well? Is the thing happily over? You said this might be the last interview." It was Oswald Cray. He had waited for her. Her mind was preoccupied with its fears, almost bewildered, and she scarcely knew what she answered.
"No! it is not happily over. It is all unhappy, and I am frightened. The money I took them was--was--" She broke off with a start. Recollection had come to her.
"Was what?" he asked.
"I think I forgot myself;" she murmured, as a burning flush dyed her face. "My mind is full of trouble. Pray, pardon me, Mr. Oswald Cray."