They sat around the dinner-table; Dr. Davenal, Miss Bettina, Sara, and Caroline. It was an unusually silent table. Dr. Davenal could not digest the demand of Mr. Cray for Caroline; Caroline was conscious and timid; Sara scented something not altogether comfortable in the air, and did not raise her eyes from her plate; and it was one of the unusually deaf days of Miss Bettina.
Neal moved about noiselessly. Being a treasure of a servant, of course he always did move noiselessly. Quite an artistic performance was Neal's waiting; in his own person he did the waiting of three; and so tranquilly assiduous was his mode of accomplishing it so perfect indeed were Neal's ways in the household, that Miss Bettina rarely let a day pass without sounding his praise.
Strange to say, the doctor did not like him. Why it was, or how it was, he could not tell, but he had never taken heartily to Neal. So strong was the feeling, that it may almost be said he hated Neal; and yet the man fulfilled all his duties so well that there was no fault to be found with him, no excuse invented for discharging him. The doctor's last indoor man had not been anything like so efficient a servant as Neal, was not half so fine a gentleman, had ten faults where Neal did not appear to have one. But the doctor had likedhim, good rough honest old Giles, had kept him for many years, and only parted with him when he got too old to work. Then Neal presented himself. Neal had once lived with Lady Oswald; he had been groom of the chambers at Thorndyke in Sir John's time, and Lady Oswald kept him for a twelvemonth after Sir John's death, and nearly cried when she parted with him; but Neal refused point-blank to go out with the carriage, and Lady Oswald did not wish to keep on three men-servants. Neal found a place in London, and they lost sight of him for some years; but he made his appearance at Lady Oswald's again one day--having come down by the new railroad to see what change it had made in the old place, and to pay his respects to my lady. My lady was gratified by the attention, and inquired what he was doing. He had left his situation, he answered, and he had some thoughts of trying for one in the country; my lady was aware, no doubt, how close and smoky London was, and he found that it had told upon his health; if he could hear of a quiet place in the country he believed he might be induced to take it, however disadvantageous it might be to him in a pecuniary point of view. Did my lady happen to know of one? My lady did happen to know of one: Dr. Davenal's, who was then parting with old Giles. She thought it would be the very place for Neal; Neal the very man for the place; and in the propensity for managing other people's business, which was as strong upon Lady Oswald as it is upon many more of us, she ordered her carriage and drove to Dr. Davenal's, and never left him until he had promised Neal the situation.
In good truth, Dr. Davenal deemed that Neal would suit him very well, provided he could bring his notions down to the place; and that, as Lady Oswald said, Neal intended to do. But to be groom of the chambers to a nobleman who kept his score or so of servants (for that was understood in the town to have been Neal's situation), and to be sole indoor manservant to a doctor, keeping three maids only besides, and the coachman in the stables, would be a wide gulf of difference. Neal, however, accepted the place, and Dr. Davenal took him on the recommendation of Lady Oswald, without referring to the nobleman in town.
But even in the very preliminary interview when the engagement was made, Dr. Davenal felt a dislike steal over him for the man. Instinct would have prompted him to say, "You will not suit me;" reason overpowered it, and whispered, "He will prove an excellent servant;" and Dr. Davenal engaged him. That was just before Richard went out to Barbadoes, and ever since then the doctor had been saying to himself how full of prejudice was his dislike, considering the excellent servant that Neal proved to be. But he could not overget the prejudice.
Neal cleared the table when the dinner was over, and placed the dessert upon it. Dr. Davenal did not care for dessert; deemed it waste of time to sit at it; waste of eating to partake of it: but Miss Bettina, who favoured most of the customs and fashions of her girlhood, would as soon have thought of dispensing with her dinner. Dr. Davenal generally withdrew with the cloth; sometimes, if not busy, he stayed a few minutes to chat with his daughter and Caroline; but calls on his time and services were made after dinner as well as before it.
On this day he did not leave his place. He sat at the foot of the large table, Miss Davenal opposite him at its head, the young ladies between them, one on each side. Interrupted by Lady Oswald in the afternoon, he had not yet spoken to Caroline; and that he was preparing to do now.
He drew his chair near to her, and began in a low tone. Sara rose soon, and quitted the room; Miss Davenal was deaf; they were, so to say, alone.
"My dear, Mr. Cray is not the man I would have preferred to choose for you. Are you aware how very small is the income he derives from his partnership with me?"
Caroline caught up the glistening damask dessert napkin, and began pulling out the threads of its fringe. "His prospects are very fair, Uncle Richard."
"Fair enough, insomuch as that he may enjoy the whole of this practice in time. But that time may be long in coming, Caroline; twenty years hence, for all we know. I shall be but seventy then, and my father at seventy was as good a man as I am now."
Her fingers pulled nervously at the fringe, and she did not raise her eyes. "I hope you will live much longer than that, Uncle Richard."
"So long as I live, Caroline, and retain my health and strength, so long shall I pursue my practice and take its largest share of profits. Mr. Cray understood that perfectly when I admitted him to a small share as a partner. I did it for his sake, to give him a standing. I had no intention of taking a partner: I wished only for an assistant; but out of regard to his prospects, to give him a footing, I say, I let him have a trifling share, suffered it to be known in Hallingham that he was made a partner of by Dr. Davenal. He has but two hundred a-year from me."
"It does not cost much to live," said Caroline. "We need not keep many servants."
Dr. Davenal paused, feeling that she was hopelessly inexperienced. "My dear, what do you suppose it costs us to live as we do?--here, in this house?"
"Ever so much," was Caroline's lucid answer.
"It costs me something like twelve hundred a-year, Caroline, and I have no house-rent to pay."
She did not answer. Miss Davenal's sharp eyes caught sight of Caroline's damaging fingers, and she called out to know what she was doing with the dessert napkin. Caroline laid it on the table beside her plate.
"I cannot afford to increase Mr. Cray's salary very much," continued Dr. Davenal. "To reduce my own style of living I do not feel inclined, and Edward draws largely upon me. Extravagant chaps are those young officers!" added the doctor, falling into abstraction. "There's not one of them, as I believe, Makes his pay suffice."
He paused. Caroline took up a biscuit and began crumbling it on her plate.
"The very utmost that I could afford to give him would be four hundred per annum," resumed Dr. Davenal "and I believe that I shall inconvenience myself to do this. But that's not it. There"----
"Oh, Uncle Richard, it is ample. Four hundred a-year! We could not spend it."
He shook his head at the impulsive interruption; at its unconscious ignorance. "Caroline, I was going to say that the mere income is not all the question. If you marry Mr. Cray, he can make no settlement upon you; more than that, he has no home, no furniture. I think he has been precipitate; inconsiderately so, few men would ask a young lady to be their wife until they had a house to take her to; or money in hand to procure one."
Caroline's eyes filled with tears. She had hard work to keep them from dropping.
"Carine," he said caressingly, "is it quiteirrevocable, this attachment?"
The tears went down on the crumbled biscuit. She murmured some words which the doctor but imperfectly caught; only just sufficiently so to gather that itwasirrevocable--or that at any rate the young lady thought so. He sighed.
"Listen to me, child. I should never attempt to oppose your inclinations; I should not think of forbidding any marriage that you had set your heart upon. If you have fixed on Mr. Cray, or he on you--it comes to the same--I will not set my will against it. But one thing I must urge upon you both--to wait."
"Do you dislike Mr. Cray, Uncle Richard?"
"Dislike him! no, child. Have I not made him my partner? I like him personally very much. I don't know whether he has much stability," continued the doctor, in a musing tone, as though he were debating the question with himself. "But let that pass. My objection to him for you, Caroline, is chiefly on a pecuniary score."
"I am sure we shall have enough," she answered, in a lower tone.
"If I give my consent, Carry, I shall give it under protest; and make a bargain with you at the same time."
Caroline lifted her eyes. His voice had turned to a jesting one.
"What protest?---what bargain?" she asked.
"That I give the consent in opposition to my better judgment. The bargain is, that when you find you have married imprudently and cannot make both ends meet, you don't turn round and blame me."
She bent her eyes with a smile and shook her head in answer, and began twisting the chain that lay upon her fair neck, the bracelets on her pretty arms. She wore the same rich dress that she had worn in the afternoon, as did Sara; but the high bodies had been exchanged for low ones, the custom for dinner at Dr. Davenal's.
"I will not withhold my consent. But," he added, his tone changing to the utmost seriousness, "I shall recommend you both to wait. To wait at least a year or two. You are very young, only twenty."
"I am twenty-one, Uncle Richard," she cried out. "It is Sara who is only twenty."
He smiled at the eagerness. One year seems so much to the young.
"Twenty-one, then: since last week, I believe. And Mark is three or four years older. You can well afford to wait. A year or two's time may make a wonderful difference in the position of affairs. Your share of that disputed property may have come to you, rendering a settlement upon you feasible; and Mark, if he chooses to be saving, may have got chairs and tables together. Perhaps I may increase his share at once to help him do it."
"Would you be so kind as enlighten me as to the topic of your conversation with Caroline, Dr. Davenal?"
The interruption come from Miss Bettina. Deaf as she was, it was impossible for her not to perceive that some subject of unusual moment was being discussed, and nothing annoyed her more than to fancy she was purposely kept in the dark. For the last five minutes she had sat ominously upright in her chair. Very upright she always did sit, at all times and seasons; but in moments of displeasure this stiff uprightness was unpleasantly perceptible. Dr. Davenal rose from his seat and walked towards her, bending his face a little. He had a dislike to talk to her on her very deaf days: it made him hoarse for hours afterwards.
"Caroline wants to be married, Bettina?"
Miss Bettina did catch the right words this time, but she doubted it. She had not yet learnt to look upon Caroline as aught but a child. Could the world have gone round in accordance with the ideas of Miss Bettina, nobody with any regard to propriety would have married in it until the age of thirty was past. Her cold grey eyes and her mouth gradually opened as she looked from her brother to her niece, from her niece to her brother.
"Wants to be what, did you say?"
"To be married, Aunt Bett," cried out the doctor. "It's the fashion, it seems, with the young folks nowadays! You were not in so great a hurry when you were young?"
The doctor spoke in no covert spirit of joking--as a stranger might have supposed, Miss Davenal being Miss Davenal still. Bettina Davenal had had her romance in life. In her young days, when she was not much older than Caroline, a poor curate had sought to make her his wife. She was greatly attached to him, but he was very, very poor, and prudence said, "Wait until better times shall come for him." Miss Bettina's father and mother were alive then; the latter a great invalid, and that also weighed with her, for in her duty and affection she did not like to leave her home. Ay, cold and unsympathising as she appeared to be now, Bettina Davenal had once been a warm, loving girl, an affectionate daughter. And so, by her own fiat, she waited and waited, and in her thirtieth year that poor curate, never promoted to be a richer one, had died--had died of bad air, and hard work, and poor nourishment. His duties were cast in the midst of one of our worst metropolitan localities; and they were heavy, and his stipend was small. From that time Bettina Davenal's disposition had changed; she grew cold, formal, hard: repentance, it was suspected, was ever upon her, that she had not risked the prudence and saved his life. Her own fortune added to what he earned, would at least have kept him from the ills of poverty.
"Who wants to marry her?" questioned Miss Davenal, when she could take her condemning eyes away from Caroline.
"Mark Cray."
The words seemed to mollify Miss Davenal in a slight degree, and her head relaxed a very little from its uprightness. "She might do worse, Richard. He is a good man, and I dare say he is making money. Those civil engineers get on well."
"I saidMarkCray, Aunt Bett," repeated the doctor.
"Mark!Hewon't do. He is only a boy. He has got neither house nor money."
"Just what I say," said the doctor. "I tell her they must wait."
"Mad! to be sure they must be mad, both of them," complaisantly acquiesced Miss Davenal.
"Wait, I said, Bettina," roared the doctor.
"You need not rave at me, Richard. I am not as deaf as a post. Who says anything about 'fate?' Fate, indeed! don't talk of fate to me. Where's your common-sense gone?"
"Wait, I said, Aunt Bett! Wa-a-a-it! I tell them they must wait."
"No," said Aunt Bett. "Better break it off."
"I don't think they will," returned the doctor.
Miss Bettina turned her eyes on Caroline. That young lady, left to herself, had pretty nearly done for the damask napkin. She dreaded but one person in the world, and that was stern Aunt Bettina. Miss Bettina rose in her slow stately fashion, and turned Caroline's drooping face towards her.
"What in the world has put it into your head to think of Mark Cray?"
"I didn't think of him before he thought of me," was poor Caroline's excuse, which, as a matter of course, Miss Davenal did not catch.
"Has it ever occurred to you to reflect, Caroline, how very serious a step is that of settlement in life?"
"We shall get along, Aunt Bettina."
"I'll not get along," exclaimed Miss Bettina, her face darkening. "I attempt to say a little word to you for your good, for your own interest, and you tell me 'to get along!' How dare you, Caroline Davenal?"
"Oh, Aunt Bettina! I said we should get along."
"I don't know that you would get along if you married Mark Cray. I don't like Mark Cray. I did not think"----
"Why don't you like him, aunt?"
"I don't know," replied Miss Bettina. "He is too light and careless. I did not think it a wise step of your uncle's to take him into partnership; but it was not my province to interfere. The Crays brought it to nothing, you know. Lived like princes for a few years, and when affairs came to be looked into on Mr. Cray's death, the money was gone."
"That was not Mark's fault," returned Caroline, indignantly. "It ought to be no reason for your dislikinghim, Aunt Bettina."
"It gives one prejudices, you see. He may be bringing it to the same in his own case before his life's over."
"You might as well say the same of Oswald," resentfully spoke Caroline.
"No; Oswald's different. He is worth a thousand of Mark. Don't think of Mark, Caroline. You might do so much better: better in all ways."
"I don't care to do better," was the rebellious answer. And then, half-frightened at it, repenting of its insolence, poor Caroline burst into tears. She felt very indignant at the disparagement of Mark. Fortunately for her, Miss Davenal mistook the words.
"We don't care that you should do better! Of course we care. What are you thinking of, child? Your uncle studies your interests as much as he would study Sara's."
"More!" impulsively interrupted the doctor, who was pacing the room, his hands under his coat-tails. "I might feel less scrupulous in opposing Sara's inclination."
"You hear, Caroline! The doctor opposes this inclination of yours!"
Caroline cast a look to him, a sort of helpless appeal: not only that he wouldnotoppose it, but that he would set right Miss Davenal.
"I don't oppose it, Bettina: I don't go so far as that. I recommend them to wait. In a year or two"----
A loud knock at the hall-door startled Dr. Davenal. Knocks there were pretty frequent--loud ones too; but this was loud and long as a peal of thunder. And it startled somebody besides the doctor.
That somebody was Neal. Neal's mind was by far too composed a one to be ruffled by any sort of shock, and Neal's nerves were in first-rate order. It happened, however, that Neal was rather unpleasantly near to the front door at that moment, and the sudden sound, so sharp and long, did make him start.
When Neal removed the dinner things, he placed his plate and glasses in the pantry, and carried the tray with the other articles down to the kitchen. In going upstairs again he was called to by Watton, the upper woman-servant of the family, who was as old as Neal himself, and had lived with them for some years. She was in the apartment opening from the kitchen, a boarded room with a piece of square carpet in the middle. It was called the housekeeper's room, and was used as a sitting-room by the servants when their kitchen work was over for the day. The servants' entrance to the house was on this lower floor; steps ascending from it to the outer door in the back garden.
"Did you call me?" asked Neal, looking in.
Watton had her hands busy papering some jars of jam. She turned round at the question, displaying a sallow face with quick dark eyes, and pointed with her elbow to a note lying on the table before her.
"A note for Miss Sara, Neal. It came five minutes ago."
"Jessy might have brought it up," remarked Neal. "Letters should never be delayed below."
"Jessy has stepped out," explained Watton. "And I want to get to an end with this jam; Miss Bettina expected it was done and put away this morning."
Neal carried the note upstairs to his pantry, and there examined it. But beyond the fact that it was superscribed "Miss Sara Davenal," Neal could gather no information to gratify his curiosity. The handwriting was not familiar to him; the envelope displayed neither crest nor coat-of-arms. He held it up, but not the most scrutinising eye could detect anything through it; he gingerly tried the fastening of the envelope, but it would not come apart without violence. As he was thus engaged he heard the dining-room door open, and he peeped out of his pantry.
It was Miss Sara. She was going upstairs to the drawing-room. Neal heard her enter it; and after the lapse of a minute or two, he followed her, bearing the note on a silver waiter. She had shut herself in. Somehow that conference in the dining-room was making her nervous.
"Who brought it, Neal?" she carelessly asked, taking the note from the waiter.
"I am unable to say, miss. It came when I was waiting at dinner."
Neal retired, closed the drawing-room door, and descended to his pantry. There he began making preparations for washing his dinner glasses, rather noisy ones for Neal. He put some water into a wooden bowl, rinsed the glasses in it, and turned them down to dry. Having advanced thus far, it probably struck Neal that a trifling interlude of recreation might be acceptable.
He stole cautiously along as far as the dining-room door, and there came to a halt, bending down his head and ear. Neal could calculate his chances as well as any living spy. He could not be disturbed unawares by Miss Sara from the drawing-room or the servants from the kitchen; and his sense of hearing was so acute, partly by nature, partly by exercise, that no one could approach to open the dining-room door from the inside without his getting ample warning. Neal had not played his favourite part for long years to be discovered at last.
There he had remained, listening to anything in the dining-room there might be to hear, until aroused by that strange knock--so loud, long, and near, that it startled even him. A noiseless glide back to his pantry, a slight clatter there with spoons and forks, and Neal came forth to answer the summons, with a far fleeter foot than Neal in general allowed his stately self to put forth, for the knocker had begun again and was knocking perpetually.
"Is all the town dying!" muttered Neal.
He pulled open the door, and there burst in two fine lads, sending their ringing shout of laughter through the house, and nearly upsetting the man in their wild haste, as they sprang past him into the dining-room, and on Dr. Davenal. Sara, alarmed at the unusual noise, came running down.
"You rogues!" exclaimed the doctor. "What brings you here today?"
They were too excited to explain very lucidly. One day extra in a schoolboy's holidays, especially at the commencement, will turn young heads crazy. The usher who was to take charge of such of the boys whose homes lay this way, had received news that morning of the illness of a relative, and had to leave a day sooner: so they left also.
"Nothing loth, I'll answer for it," cried Dr. Davenal; and the boys laughed.
He placed them both before him, and looked first at one, then at the other, regarding what alteration six months had made. There was a general likeness between them, as regarded eyes, hair, and complexion, but none in features. Richard, the eldest, generally called Dick, was a good-tempered, saucy-looking boy, with a turned-up nose; Leopold had more delicate features, and seemed less strong.
"You have both grown," said the doctor; "but Leo's thin. How do your studies get on, Dick?"
"Oh--middling," acknowledged Dick, a remarkably candid lad. "Uncle Richard, I'm the best cricketer in the whole school. There's not one of the fellows can come up to me."
"The best what, Richard?" said Miss Bettina, bending her ear to the lad.
"Cricketer, Aunt Bett," repeated Richard.
"Good boy! good boy!" said Miss Bettina approvingly. "Resolve to be the best scholar always, and youwillbe the best. You shall have a pot of fresh jam for tea, Dick."
Dick smothered his laughter. "I am not a good scholar at all, Aunt Bett. Leo is: but he's a muff at cricket."
"Not a good scholar!" repeated Miss Bettina, catching those words correctly. "Did you not tell me you were the best scholar?"
"No. I said I was the best cricketer," responded Dick.
"Oh," said Miss Bettina, her face resuming its severity. "Thatwill do you no good, Richard."
"Aren't you deafer than before, Aunt Bett?"
"Am I what?" asked Miss Bettina. "Darker!I never was dark yet. Not one of all the Davenal family had a skin as fair as mine. What put that fancy into your head, Master Richard?"
"I said deafer, Aunt Bett," repeated Richard. "I am sure you are just as deaf again as you were at Christmas! Uncle Richard, we had a boat-race yesterday. I was second oar."
"I don't like those boat-races," hastily interrupted Caroline.
"Girls never do," said Mr. Richard, loftily. "As if they'd like to blister their hands with the oars! Look at mine."
He extended his right hand, palm upwards, triumphant in blisters. Dr. Davenal spoke.
"I don't like boat-racing for you boys, either, Dick."
"Oh, it was prime, Uncle Richard! One of the boats tipped over, and the fellows got a ducking."
"That's just it," said Dr. Davenal. "Boats 'tip' over when you inexperienced young gentlemen least expect it. It has led to loss of life sometimes, Dick."
"Any muff can scramble out of the water, Uncle Richard. Some of us fellows can swim like an otter."
"And some can't swim at all, I suppose. What did Dr. Keen say when he heard of the boatful going over?"
Richard Davenal raised his honest, wide-open eyes to his uncle, some surprise in their depths. "It didn't get to Keen's ears, Uncle Richard! He knew nothing of the boat-race; we had it out of bounds. As if Keen wouldn't have stopped it for us, if he had known. He thought we were off to the cricket-field."
"Well, you must be a nice lot of boys!" cried Dr. Davenal, quaintly. "Does he give a prize for honour? You'd get it, Dick, if he did."
Dick laughed. "It's the same at all schools, Uncle Richard. If we let the masters into the secret of all our fun, mighty little of it should we get."
"I think they ought to be let into the fun that consists in going on the water. There's danger in that."
"Not a bit of it, Uncle Richard. It was the jolliest splash! The chief trouble was getting the dry things to put on. They had been laid up in the boxes ready to come home with us, and we had to put out no end of stratagem to get at them."
"A jolly splash, was it! Were you one of the immersed ones, Dick?"
"Not I," returned Dick, throwing back his head. "As if we second-desk fellows couldn't manage a boat better than that! Leo was."
"How many of you were drowned, Leo?"
Leo opened his eyes as wide as Dick had previously done. "Drowned, Uncle Richard! Not one. We scrambled out as easy as fun. There's no fear of our getting drowned."
"No fear at all, as it seems to me," returned the doctor. "But there's danger of it, Leo."
Leo made no reply. Perhaps he scarcely defined the distinction of the words. Dr. Davenal remained silent for a minute, lost in thought; then he sat down, and held the two lads in front of him.
"Did either of you ever observe a white house, lying back on a hill, just as you pass the next station to this--Hildon?"
"I know it," cried out Richard. "It is old Low's."
"Old Low's, if you choose to call him so, but he is not as old as I am, Master Dick. Some people in that neighbourhood called him Squire Low. He is Lady Oswald's landlord. A few years ago, boys, I was sent for to his house; that very house upon the hill. Mr. Low's mother was living with him then, and I found she was taken ill. I went for several days in succession: sometimes I saw Mr. Low's sons, three nice lads, but daring as you two are, and about your present age. One afternoon,--listen, both of you,--I had no sooner got home from Mr. Low's, than I was surprised to see one of his men riding up here at a fierce rate. The railway was not opened then. I feared old Mrs. Low might be worse, and I hastened out to the man myself. He had come galloping all the way, and he asked me to gallop back as quickly"----
"Old Mrs. Low was dead!" cried quick Dick.
"No, sir, she was not dead. She was no worse than when I left her. Mr. Low's three sons had done just what you tell me you did yesterday. They went upon the river at Hildon in a rowing-boat, and the boat upset--tipped over, as you call it; and the poor boys had not found it so easy to scramble out as you, Leo, and your comrades did. One of them was out, the man said; he thought that the other two were not. So I mounted my own horse and hastened over."
"But what did they want with you, Uncle Richard? Were there no doctors near?"
"Yes. When I got there a doctor was over the lad: but Mr. Low had confidence in me, and in his distress he sent for me. It was the youngest who was saved--James."
"What! James Low, who goes about in that hand-chair."
"The very same, Dick. From that hour he has never had the proper use of his limbs. A species of rheumatic affection--we call it so for want of a better name--is upon him perpetually. When the illness and fever that supervened upon the accident were over, and which lasted some weeks, we found his strength did not return to him, and he has remained a confirmed invalid. And that was the result of one of those tips over which you deem so harmless."
"Will he never get well?" asked Leo.
"Never, I fear."
"And the two other boys, Uncle Richard? Did they scramble out at last?"
"No, Leo. They were drowned."
Leo remained silent; Dick also. Dr. Davenal resumed.
"Yes, they were drowned. I stood in the room where the coffins rested, side by side, the day before the funeral, Mr. Low with me. He told how generally obedient his poor boys were, save in that one particular, the going upon the water. He had had some contentions with them upon the point; he had a great dislike to the water for them--a dread of their venturing on it, for the river at Hildon is dangerous, and the boys were inexperienced. But they were daring-spirited boys who could see no danger in it, and--listen, Dick!--did not believe there was any. And they thought they'd just risk it for once, and they did so; and this was the result. I shall never forget their father's sobs as he told me this over the poor cold faces in the coffins."
The young Davenals had grown sober.
"My lads, I have told you this little incident--but I think you must have heard somewhat of it before, for it is known to all Hallingham just as well as it is to me--to prove to you that thereisdanger connected with the water, more particularly for inexperienced boys. Where does the school get the boats?"
"We hire them," answered Dick. "There's a boat association in the place; poor men who keep boats, and hire them out to anybody who'll pay."
"They should be forbidden to hire them to schoolboys of your age. I think I shall drop a hint to Dr. Keen." Dick Davenal grew frightened. "For goodness sake don't do that, Uncle Richard! If the school knew it got to Keen through you, they'd send me and Leo to Coventry."
"I'll take care you don't get sent to Coventry through me, Dick. But I cannot let you run the liability of this danger."
"I don't think I'll go on the water again at school, Uncle Richard," said Leo, who had sat down, and was nursing his leg thoughtfully.
"I don't much think you will," said the doctor.
Leo continued to nurse his leg. Dick, who had little thought about him, had thrown his arms around Sara's waist, and was whispering to her. Both the lads loved Sara. When they had arrived little strangers from the West Indies, new to the doctor's house and its inmates, new to everything else, they had taken wonderfully to Sara, and she to them. You do not need to be told that they were the lads whom poor Richard Davenal was to have escorted over; and when they came they brought his effects with them.
Meanwhile Mr. Oswald Cray had dined at his rustic inn, the "Apple Tree," and was on his way to pay an evening visit at Dr. Davenal's. In passing along New Street he encountered his half-brother, turning hastily out of his lodgings.
"Were you coming in, Oswald?" asked Marcus, as they shook hands. "I heard you were down."
"Not now," replied Oswald. "I am going on to Dr. Davenal's, and I go up again by the night train. My visit here today was to Lady Oswald. We are going to take a strip of her grounds for sheds, and she does not like it."
"Not like it!" echoed Mark. "It's worse than that. You should have seen the way she was in this afternoon. It won't hurt the grounds."
"Not at all. But she cannot be brought to see that it will not. In point of fact, the sound of it is worse than the reality will be. It does sound ill, I confess,--railway-sheds upon one's grounds! I was in hopes of being the first to break the news to her: so much lies in the telling of a thing; in the impression first imparted."
"She said this afternoon that it all lay with you. That you could spare her grounds if you would."
"I wish it did lie with me: I would do my best to find another spot and spare them. The company have fixed upon the site, Low has given his concurrence, and there's no more to be said or done. I am very sorry, but it has been no doing of mine. Will you go with me to the doctor's, Mark?"
Marcus hesitated, and then said he had rather not call that evening.
"Why?" asked Oswald.
"Well--the fact is,--I don't see why I may not tell you,--I have been asking the doctor this afternoon for Caroline. He did not give me a positive answer, one way or the other; and I don't think it will look well to press a visit upon them just now."
Oswald Cray's was not a demonstrative countenance: a self-controlled man's rarely is: but certainly it exhibited marked surprise now, and he gazed at his brother inquiringly.
"You are surely not thinking of marrying?"
"Yes, I am. Why should I not think of it?"
"But what have you to marry upon? What means?"
"Oh--I must get Dr. Davenal to increase my share. By a word he dropped this afternoon when we were talking of it, I fancy he would do it: would increase it to four hundred a-year. We might manage upon that."
Oswald Cray made no immediate reply. He, the self-reliant man, would have felt both pain and shame at the very thought of marrying upon the help of others.
"You are thinking it's not enough, Oswald?"
"It might be enough for prudent people. But I don't think it would be found enough by you and Caroline Davenal. Mark, I fancy--I shall not offend you?--fancy you are not of a prudent turn."
"I don't know that I am. But any man can be prudent when there's a necessity that he should be."
"It has not always proved so."
"I see you think me a spendthrift," said Mark good-humouredly.
"Not exactly that. I think you could not live upon as small an income as some can. Dr. Davenal gives you, I believe, two hundred a-year, and you have been with him six months: my opinion is, Mark, that at the twelvemonth's end you will find the two hundred has nothing like kept you. You will be looking about for another hundred to pay debts."
"Are you so particularly saving yourself?" retorted Mark.
"That is not the question, Mark; I am not going to be married," answered Oswald, with a smile. "But I do save."
"If the doctor will give me four hundred a-year to begin with, there's no need to wait."
"You have no furniture."
"That's easily ordered," said Mark.
"Very easily indeed," laughed Oswald. "But there'll be the paying for it."
"It won't take so much. We shall not set up in a grand way. We can pay by instalments."
"A bad beginning, Mark."
Mark rather winced. "Are you going to turn against me, Oswald? To throw cold water on it?"
Oswald Cray looked very grave as he answered. Mark was not his own brother, and he could not urge him too much; but a conviction seated itself in his heart, perhaps not for the first time, that Mark had inherited their father's imprudence.
"These considerations are for you, Mark; not for me. If I speak of them to you, I do so only in your true interest. We have never been brothers, therefore I do not presume to give a brother's counsel,--you would deem I had no right to do it. Only be prudent, for your own sake and Caroline's. Good evening, if you will go back."
Neal admitted Mr. Oswald Cray, and Neal's face lighted up with the most apparent genuine pleasure at doing it. Neal was the quintessence of courteous respect to his betters, but an additional respect would show itself in his manner to Mr. Oswald Cray, from the fact possibly that he had served in the Oswald family at Thorndyke, and Mr. Oswald Cray was so near a connection of it.
Dr. Davenal was then in the garden-parlour with Sara. The noisy boys were regaling themselves with good things in the dining-room, under the presidentship of Miss Bettina. A few moments, and the doctor and Mr. Oswald Cray were deep in the discussion of the proposition that had so moved them; the doctor being the first to speak of it. Sara sat near the window, doing some light work. A fair picture she looked, in her evening dress; her cheeks somewhat flushed, her neck so fair and white, the gold chain lying on it; her pretty arms partially hidden by their white lace. Dr. Davenal stood in a musing attitude on the other side of the window, and Mr. Oswald Cray sat between them, a little back, his elbow on the centre table, his chin on his hand.
"Mark has just told me of it," he observed, in reply to Dr. Davenal. "I met him as I walked here. I was very much surprised."
"Not more surprised than I," returned the doctor.
"At least, surprised that he should have spoken to you so soon."
"What do you think of it?" asked the doctor, abruptly.
"Nay, sir, it is for you to think," was the reply of Oswald Cray, after a momentary pause.
"I know--in that sense. My opinion is, that it is exceedingly premature."
"Well--yes, I confess it appears so to me. I told Mark so. There's one thing, Dr. Davenal--some men get on all the better for marrying early."
"True: and some all the better for waiting. I like those men who have the courage and patience to wait, bearing steadily on to the right moment and working for it. I married very early in life myself, but my circumstances justified it. Where circumstances do not justify it, a man should wait. I don't mean waiting on to an unreasonable time, until the sear and yellow leaf's advancing; nothing of that: but there's a medium in all things. I am sure you would not rush into an imprudent marriage: you'd wait your time."
A smile parted Oswald Cray's lips. "I am obliged to wait, sir."
"That is, prudence obliges you?"
"Yes; that's it."
"And I make no doubt your income is a good deal larger than the present one of Mark?"
"I believe it is."
Dr. Davenal stood in silence, twirling his watch chain. "Give me your advice," he said, turning to Mr. Oswald Cray.
"Dr. Davenal, may I tell you that I would prefer not to give it? By blood Mark is my half-brother; but you know the circumstances under which we were reared--that we are, in actual fact, little more than strangers; and I feel the greatest delicacy in interfering with him in anyway. I will do him any good that I can: but I will not give advice regarding him in so momentous a step as this?"
Dr. Davenal understood the feeling, it was a perfectly proper one. "Do you think he has much stability?--enough to steer him safely through life, clear of shoals and quicksands?"
Oswald Cray's opinion was that Mark possessed none. But he was not sure: he had had so little to do with him. "Indeed, I cannot speak with certainty," was his answer. "Mark is far more of a stranger to me than he is to you. Stability sometimes comes with years only; with time and experience."
"I cannot tell you how surprised I was," resumed the doctor, after a pause. "Had Mark come and proposed to marry Bettina, I could not have been more astonished. The fact is, I had somehow got upon the wrong scent."
"The wrong scent?" exclaimed Mr. Oswald Cray, looking up.
"I don't mind telling you, considering how different, as it has turned out, was the actual state of things," said Dr. Davenal, with a laugh. "I fancied you were inclined to like Caroline?"
Mr. Oswald Cray's deep-set blue eyes were opened wider than usual in his astonishment. "What caused you to fancy that?"
"Upon my word I don't know. Looking back, I think how foolish I must have been. But you see, that idea tended to obscure my view as to Mark."
Oswald Cray rose from his seat, and stood by Dr. Davenal, looking from the window.
"Had it been so, would you have objected to me?" he asked; and in his voice, jesting though it was, there rang a sound of deep meaning.
"No, I would not," replied Dr. Davenal. "I wish it had been so. Don't talk of it; it will put me out of conceit of Mark."
Mr. Oswald Cray laughed, and stole a glance at Sara. Her cheeks were crimson; her head was bent closer to her work than it need have been.
At that moment Dr. Davenal's carriage was heard coming up the side lane, Roger's head and shoulders just visible over the garden wall. Dr. Davenal gave the man a nod as he passed, as much as to say he should be out immediately, and retreated into the room. It had broken the thread of the discourse.
"You came down in answer to Lady Oswald's message?" he observed. "She said she had sent for you."
"Not in answer to the message. I came away before it reached London: at any rate before it reached me."
"Lady Oswald's in a fine way. I suppose nothing can be done?"
"Nothing at all. It is unfortunate that her grounds abut just on that part of the line."
"She will never stop in the house."
"You see, the worst is, that she has just entered upon the third term of her lease. She took it for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. I am not sure, however, that Mr. Low, under the circumstances, could oppose her depart"--
"Uncle Richard, the carriage is come round to the door. How are you, Mr. Oswald Cray?"
The interruption came from the boys. Both had rushed in without any regard to noise; or rather to the avoidance of it. Mr. Oswald Cray shook hands with them, and the doctor turned to shake hands withhim.
"I have to see a patient or two tonight. A poor countrywoman's son is ill, and I promised her to go over this evening if possible. Perhaps you'll be here when I return. Bettina and the girls will give you some tea."
He hurried out; and the boys after him, clamorously enough. During their holidays, Dr. Davenal could rarely get into his carriage without those two dancing attendance round it, like a bodyguard of jumping savages. Mr. Oswald Cray turned to Sara, who had risen also, and stood before her.
"Just one moment, Sara, for a single question. Didyoufall into the misapprehension that I was growing attached to your cousin?"
Her manner grew shrinkingly timid; her eyelashes were never raised from her hot cheeks. It seemed that she would have spoken, for her lips parted; but there came no sound from them.
"Nay, but you must answer me," he rejoined, some agitation distinguishable in his tone. "Did you do me the injustice to suppose I had any thought of Caroline?"
"No. O no."
He drew a deep breath, as if the words relieved him, took her hand in his, and laid his other hand upon it, very seriously.
"It was well to ask: but I did not think you could so have mistaken me. Sara! I am not an imprudent man, as I fear Mark is; I could not, in justice to the woman whom I wish to make my wife, ask her to leave her home of comfort until I can surround her with one somewhat equivalent to it. I think--I hope--that another year may accomplish this. Meanwhile--you will not misunderstand me, or the motives of my silence?"
She lifted her eyes to his face to speak: they were swimming in tears: lifted them in her earnestness.
"I shall never misunderstand you, Oswald."
And Mr. Oswald Cray, for the first time in his life, bent his lips on hers to seal the tacit bargain.