In the dining-room at the Abbey, in her black robes, sat Mrs. Cray at the head of her table, her elbow resting on it, and a pouting expression on her pretty face. Mark was at the foot, gobbling down his dinner with what haste he could. He had been detained so long beyond the dinner hour that Mrs. Cray in despair had eaten hers; and when Mark at length entered he found a cold face and a cold cutlet. Mrs. Cray was beginning to tire of the irregularity.
"I can't help it, Carine," he said, looking at her in a pause of his eating. "My work has been nearly doubled, you know, since the doctor died."
"But it's very tiresome, Mark!"
"It is. I am nearly sick of it."
"It is notdoubled, your work."
"Well, no; one speaks at random. Some of the doctor's older patients have left me: they think, I suppose, I am not sufficiently experienced. But I have a great deal to do just now; more, in fact, than I can attend to properly."
Mark resumed his gobbling, and his wife watched him, her lips a little relaxing. Caroline Cray was one of those who must have all things go smoothly; she could not bear to be put out, even is trifles.
"Mr. Wheatley has been here, Mark," she presently said.
"What did he want?"
"Well, he wanted to see you. Something about the selling of my uncle's house."
"He is losing no time," observed Mark, acrimony in his tone. "I wonder he didn't begin about it yesterday when we were there, hearing the will read. But what have I do with it?"
"He wants us to take the house--to buy it, I think."
"I daresay he does," retorted Mark, after a pause of surprise. "Where's the money to come from?"
"There's that money of mine. He said it would be a good investment."
"Did he! I wonder what business it is of his! Carine, my dear, you and I are quite capable of managing our own affairs, without being dictated to."
"Of course we are!" answered Carine, rather firing at the absent Mr. Wheatley, as this new view was presented to her.
Mark said no more just then. He finished his dinner, and had the things taken away. Then, instead of sitting down to his wine, his usual custom, he stood up on the hearth-rug, as though he were cold--or restless. Mark Cray had been reared to extravagance in a petted home, and looked for his wine daily, as surely as any old alderman looks for it. Oswald Cray, reared without a home, and to schoolboy fare, adhered still, in a general way, to the water to which he had been trained. Oswald's plan was the most profitable, so far as the pocket was concerned, and the health too.
"I say, Carine, I want to go to London for a day."
"To London?" echoed Carine, turning her chair to the fire, and facing Mark.
"There's the grandest opening: there's the grandest opening for a fortune to be made there. And--Carine--I think I shall quit Hallingham." Mrs. Cray's violet eyes extended themselves in the extreme of wonder. She sat staring at him.
"Caroline, Ihatethe profession, and how I came ever to be such a fool as to go into it I cannot understand," said Mark, throwing himself on a chair as he plunged into confidence. "So long as the doctor lived I could not well say anything about it; I did not see my way clear to do so. But things have altered now, and I think I shall give up the medical life."
"But--good gracious, Mark!--I can't understand," exclaimed Caroline, in her bewilderment. "If you give up your profession, you give up our means of living. We can't starve."
"Starve!" laughed Mark. "Can't you trust me better than that? Look here, Caroline; let us come to figures. I don't suppose I should clear at first above eight hundred a-year, or so, by the practice----"
"O, Mark!"
"Well, say a thousand for argument's sake. Let us assume that I net it clear. It's a nice income, no doubt, but I shall make three times that, if I go into the thing in London."
Caroline, half doubting, half eager, all bewildered, sat waiting to hear more.
"There's a splendid opportunity offered me if I give up the medical profession and embark altogether in a new line of life. I--you have heard me speak of my old chum Barker, have you not?" he broke off to ask.
"Barker?" she repeated. "Yes, I think I remember the name. He got into some dreadful trouble, did he not, and was sent to prison?"
"Sent to prison! how you speak of things! All that's over and done with. His friends were wretched screws, doing him out of money that ought to have come to him, and the consequence was that Barker got into the Queen's Bench. Half the gentlemen of England have been there some time in their lives," added Mark, loftily, as if he were just then deeming the thing an honour. "Well, Caroline, that was over long ago, and Barker has now the most magnificent prospect before him that one can well imagine; he will be making his thousands and thousands a-year."
"How is he going to make it?" asked Caroline.
"And he has offered me a share in it," continued Mark, too eager to attend to irreverent questions. "He is one who knows how to stand by an old friend.Thousandsa-year, it will be."
"But, Mark, I ask you how he is going to make it?"
"It is connected with mines and pumping, and all that sort of thing," lucidly explained Mark.
"Mines and pumping!"
"Caroline, dear, you cannot be expected to understand these things.Enormousfortunes are being made at them," continued Mark, in a rapture. "Some of the mines yield fifty thousand pounds profit the first year of working. I declare when I first heard of Barker's prospects I was fit to eat my fingers off, feeling that I was tied down to be a paltry pitiful country surgeon. Folks go ahead nowadays, Caroline. And, as Barker has generously come forward with the offer that I should join him, I think I ought to accept it in justice to you. My share the first year would be about three thousand, he computes."
"But, Mark, do you mean to say that Mr. Barker has offered you three thousand a-year for nothing? I don't comprehend it at all."
"Not for nothing. I should give my services, and I should have to advance a certain sum at the onset. Talk about an investment for your money, Caroline, what investment would be equal to this?"
The words startled her for the moment. "I promised poor Uncle Richard that the money should be settled upon me, Mark. He said he urged it as much for your sake as mine."
"Of course," said Mark, with acquiescent suavity. "Where there's nothing better to do with money it always ought to be so settled. But only look at this opening! Were your uncle Richard in life, he would be the first to advise the investment of the money in it. Such chances don't happen every day. Caroline, I can't and I won't humdrum on here, buried alive and worked to death, when I may take my place in the London world, a wealthy man, looked up to by society. In your interest, I will not."
"Are the mines in London?" asked Caroline.
"Good gracious, no! But the office is, where all the money transactions are carried on."
"And it is quite a sure thing, Mark?"
"It's as sure as the Bank of England. It wants a little capital to set it going, that's all. And that capital can be supplied by your money, Caroline, if you will agree to it. Hundreds of people would jump at the chance."
An utter tyro in business matters, in the ways of a needy world, imbued with unbounded faith in her husband, Caroline Cray took all in with eager and credulous ears. Little more than a child, she could be as easily persuaded as one, and she became as anxious to realise the good luck as Mark.
"Yes, I should think it is what my uncle would advise were he alive," she said. "And where should we live, Mark?"
"We'd live at the West End, Carine; somewhere about Hyde Park. You should have your open and close carriages, and your saddle-horses and servants--everything as it ought to be. No end of good things may be enjoyed with three thousand a-year."
"Would it stop at three thousand, Mark?" she questioned, with sparkling eyes.
"I don't expect it would stop at twenty," coolly asserted Mark. "How far it would really go on to, I'm afraid to guess. In saying three thousand, I have taken quite the minimum of the first year's profits."
"O Mark! don't let it escape you. Write tonight and secure it. How do you know but Barker may be giving it to somebody else?"
She was growing more eager than he. In her inexperience, she knew nothing of those miserable calamities--failure, deceit, fruition deferred. Not that her husband was purposely deceiving her; he fully believed in the good luck he spoke of. Mark Cray's was one of those sanguine roving natures which see an immediate fortune in every new scheme brought to them--if it be only wild enough.
"How long have you known of this, Mark!"
"Oh, a month or two. But, as you see, I would not stir in it. I should like to run up to town for a day to meet Barker; and, on my return, we'd set about the arrangements for leaving. There will be no more lonely dinners for you, Carine, once we are away from here. I shall not have to be beating about, all hours and weathers, from one patient's door to another, or dancing attendance on that precious Infirmary, knowing that you are sitting at home waiting for me, and the meal getting cold."
"O Mark, how delightful it will be! And perhaps you would never have risen into note, as my uncle did."
"No, I never should. Dr. Davenal's heart was in his profession, mine--"
Mark Cray stopped abruptly. The avowal upon his lips had been, "mine recoils from it."
It was even so. He did literally recoil from his chosen profession. Unstable in all his ways, Mark had become heartily sick of the routine of a surgeon's life. And since the affair of Lady Oswald a conviction had been gradually taking possession of him that he was entirely unfitted for it; nay, that he was incompetent To betray his incompetency, would be to lose caste for ever in the medical world of Hallingham.
Mark Cray rose from his chair again, and stood on the rug as before, pushing back his hair from his brow incessantly in the restlessness that was upon him. He was always restless when he thought of that past night; or of the certainty that he might at any time be called upon to perform again what he had failed in then. It was not altogether his skill he doubted, for Mark Cray was a vain and self-sufficient man; but he felt that the very-present consciousness of having broken down before would induce a nervousness that might cause him to break down again. Had it been practicable, Mark Cray would have taken flight from Hallingham and the medical world that very hour, and hid himself away from it for ever.
"It has becomehatefulto me, Carine!"
The words burst from him in the fulness of his thoughts. Both had been silent for some minutes, and they sounded quite startling in their vehemence. Mrs. Cray looked up at him.
"What do you mean, Mark? What has? The getting your meals so irregularly?"
"Yes;" said Mark, evasively. He did not choose to say that it was his profession which had become hateful to him, lest Mrs. Cray might inquire too closely why.
And, besides all this, had Mark been ever so successful in his practice, the vista opened to him of unlimited wealth (and he really so regarded it) might have turned a steadier head than his. His friend Barker had been Mark's "chum" (you are indebted to Mark for the epithet) at Guy's Hospital, and the intimacy had lasted longer than such formed intimacies generally do last. Mr. Barker was of the same stamp as Mark--hence, perhaps, the duration of the friendship; he had practised as a surgeon for a year or two, and then found it "too slow," and had tried his hand at something else. He had been trying his hand at something else and something else ever since, and somehow the things had dropped through one after the other with various degrees of failure, one degree of which had been to land Mr. Barker within the friendly walls of a debtor's prison. But he had come on his legs again; such men generally do; and he was now in high feather as the promoter of a grand mining company. It was this he had invited Mark to embark in; he wrote him the most glowing accounts of the fabulous sums of money to be realised at it; he believed in them himself; he was, I have said, exactly the same sort of man as Mark.
One little drawback had recently presented itself to Barker: a want of ready money. Mark, in his eagerness, offered the sum coming to his wife from the Chancery suit; they were expecting it to be paid over daily; and Mr. Barker was in raptures, and painted his pictures of the future in colours gorgeous as those of a Claude Lorraine. Caroline might have felt a little startled had she known Mark had already promised the money without so much as consulting her. But Mark had chosen to take his own time to consult her, and Mark was doing it now. Perhaps he had felt it might be more decent to let poor Dr. Davenal be put under the ground before he spoke of applying the money in a way so diametrically opposed to his last wishes.
He drew a letter from his pocket, one received that morning, and read out its glowing promises. Mr. Barker was evidently fervent in his belief of the future. Caroline listened as in a joyous dream. The imaginary scene then dancing before her eyes of their future greatness rivalled any of the scenes of fairyland.
"You see," said Mark, "Barker----who's that?"
The entrance of a visitor into the hall had caused the interruption. Caroline bent her ear to listen.
"It is Aunt Bettina!" she exclaimed. "I am sure it is her voice, Mark. Whatever brings her here tonight?"
Mark crunched the letter into his pocket again. "Mind, Caroline, not a word of this to her!" he exclaimed, laying his hand on his wife as she was rising. "It is not quite ready to be talked of yet." Miss Davenal entered at once upon the subject which had brought her--their quitting the Abbey for the other house. Mark understood she had come, as it were, officially; to fix time and place and means; and he had no resource but to tell her that he did not intend to enter upon it; did not intend to embark Caroline's money in any such purpose; did not, in fact, intend to remain in Hallingham.
There ensued a battle: it was nothing else. What with Miss Davenal's indignation and what with Miss Davenal's deafness, the wordy war that supervened could be called little else. Caroline sat pretty quiet at first, taking her husband's side now and then.
"You tell me you are going to leave Hallingham, and you won't tell me where you are going, or what you are going to do, Mark Cray!" reiterated Miss Davenal.
"I'll tell you more about it when I know more myself."
"But you can tell me what it is; you can tell me where it is. Is it at one of the London hospitals?"
"It is in London," was Mark's answer, allowing the hospital to be assumed.
"Then Mark Cray you are very wicked. And you"--turning to Caroline--"are foolish to uphold him in it. How can you think of giving up such a practice as this?"
"I am tired of Hallingham," avowed Mark with blunt truth, for he was getting vexed.
"You are--what?" cried Miss Davenal, not catching the words.
"Sick and tired of Hallingham. And I don't care who knows it."
Miss Davenal looked at him with some curiosity. "Is he gone out of his senses, Caroline?"
"I am tired of Hallingham, too, aunt," said Caroline, audaciously. "I want to live in London."
"And the long and the short of it is, that we mean to live in London, Miss Bettina," avowed Mark. "There. I don't care that my talents should be buried in a poking country place any longer."
She looked from one to the other of them; she could not take it in. Sharp anger was rendering her ears somewhat more open than usual.
"Buried!--a poking country place! And what of the twelve or fifteen hundred a-year practice that you would lightly throw away, Mark Cray?"
"Oh, I shall do better than that in London. I have got a post offered me worth double that."
She paused a few moments. "And what; are you to give for it?"
"Never mind that," said Mark.
"Yes, never mind that," rejoined Miss Bettina in a tone of bitter sarcasm. "When it comes to details, you can take refuge in 'never mind.' Do you suppose such posts are given away for nothing, Mark Cray? Who has been befooling you?"
"But it will not be given for nothing," cried Caroline, betrayed to the injudicious avowal by the partizanship of her husband. "The money that is coining to me will be devoted to it."
This was the climax. Miss Bettina Davenal was very wroth; wroth however, more in sorrow than in anger. In vain she strove to sift the affair to the bottom; Mark baffled her questions, baffled her indignant curiosity, and--it must be confessed--his wife helped him.
She--Miss Bettina--turned away in the midst of the storm. She took up her black gloves, the only article of attire that she had removed, and drew them on her trembling hands. In the shaking of the hands alone did Bettina Davenal ever betray emotion: those firm, white, rather bony hands, usually so still and self-possessed.
"Marcus Cray, as surely as that you are standing now before me, you will rue this work if you carry it out. When that day shall come, I beg you--I begyou, Caroline--to remember that I warned you of it."
She passed out without another word, and stalked down the lighted street, uncomfortably upright, Neal behind her with his ginger tread.
Midway between the Abbey and her own home--it was in the corner just before coining to the market-place--Miss Davenal encountered Mr. Oswald Cray.
"Is Mark in his senses?" was her abrupt greeting to him, as he lifted his hat.
"What is the matter with him?--What is he doing?" asked Oswald, all in wonder.
Miss Davenal paused. Either she did not hear the question or she took time to recover herself to reply to it. Her face was very pale, her cold grey eyes glittered like steel in the lamplight.
"My poor brother has died young, and left this valuable practice in Mark's hands. There are not many like unto it. The house is ready to be offered to him: altogether, the career spreading out before him is a fine one. And he is talking of throwing it up. He is going to fling it from him as a child flings a pebble away into the sea. He says he shall quit Hallingham."
"Quit Hallingham!" repeated Oswald Cray, the last words of what she said alone making their full impression on him in his bewildered surprise. "Mark says he shall quit Hallingham?"
"He has some wild-goose scheme in his head of setting up in practice in London," said Miss Davenal, speaking in accordance with the notion she had erroneously assumed. "It is something he is about to purchase. He is going to purchase it with that money of Caroline's. But he has as surely lost his senses as that we are here."
"I cannot understand it," said Oswald. "No man in his senses would abandon such a practice as this."
"Just so. But I tell you he is not in his senses: he cannot be. I do not understand it any more than you. Perhaps you will see him?"
"I will. I am going there now. I have been calling at your house, Miss Davenal. Now that I have met you, will you let me express my deep sympathy in your sorrow for the loss you have sustained."
"Thank you, sir. It has been the greatest blow I could have experienced, and if I have not shown it much outwardly--for it is not in my nature to show such--it has done its work on my heart There are few men who could not have been spared in Hallingham, whether to the town or to his family, better than Dr. Davenal."
"It is frequently the case," said Oswald, half abstractedly, "that those whom we think we could the least spare, are taken. Fare you well, Miss Davenal." Oswald Cray strode on to the Abbey, the strange news puzzling him much. He did not take Mark at a disadvantage, as Miss Davenal had done. When he entered, Mark was all cool and easy, having had time to collect his wits and resolve on his course of action. That course was, not to open his lips about the scheme on hand to any other living mortal until it was ripe and ready to be acted upon. Miss Davenal's communication to Oswald rendered this somewhat difficult, but Mark did not stand on an evasion or two.
He was exceedingly surprised to see Oswald, not knowing that he was at Hallingham, and Caroline gave a little scream when he came in, in her pretty and somewhat affected manner. Oswald explained that he had not come from London, but from another part of the country, and had alighted at Hallingham for two or three hours only as he passed through it. He then entered upon the strange news just communicated to him.
But Mark had his answer to it ready at hand. He talked in a mocking tone about "busybodies," he ridiculed Miss Davenal's deafness, saying that she generally heard things "double:" altogether, he contrived to blind Oswald, to convince him that the whole thing was a fable; or, rather, a mistake, partly arising from Miss Davenal's infirmity, partly from a desire on his own part to "chaff" her for her interference. How Mark Cray reconciled this to his sense of honour, let him answer.
And Oswald, perfectly truthful himself, never doubted his half-brother. But he did not wholly quit the topic. He spoke of the few words written to him by Dr. Davenal when he was dying, and their purport--that he, Oswald, should urge the settlement of Mrs. Cray's own money upon her. Though of course, Oswald added, there was no necessity for him to do so: Mark would naturally see for himself that it was the only thing to be done with it.
Of course he saw it, testily answered Mark, who was growing cross.
"I cannot think how Miss Davenal could have misunderstood you as she did," proceeded Oswald. "She actually said that this money of Mrs. Cray's was to be applied to the purchase of the new thing in London in which you were proposing to embark."
"Did she!" returned Mark, in a tone that one impudent schoolboy retorts upon another. "I do wonder, Oswald, that you should listen to the rubbish picked up by a deaf woman!"
"The wonder is, how she could pick it up," returned Oswald. "But I am heartily glad it is not so. Miss Davenal assumed that you must be out of your senses, Mark," he added, a smile crossing his lips: "I fear I must have arrived at the same conclusion had you really been entertaining the notion of quitting Hallingham and throwing up such a practice as this."
"I wish to goodness people would mind their own business!" exclaimed Mark, who was losing his good manners in his vexation. The communication to his wife of his new scheme had been so smoothly accomplished, that the sudden interruption of Miss Davenal and now of Oswald Cray seemed all too like a checkmate; and Mark felt as a stag driven to bay. "I am old enough to regulate my own affairs without Miss Davenal," he continued, "and I want none of her interference."
Oswald did not speak.
"And, what's more, I won't stand it," resumed Mark; "either from her or from any one. There! And, Oswald, I hope you will excuse my saying it although you are my elder brother and may deem you have a right to dictate to me."
"The right to adviseas a friendonly, Mark," was the reply, somewhat pointedly spoken. "Never to dictate."
Mark growled.
"With Dr. Davenal's valuable practice before you, Mark, it may appear to you quite a superfluous precaution to secure the money to your wife and children," persisted Oswald. "But the chances and changes of life are so great, overwhelming families when least expected, that it behoves us all to guard those we love against them, as far as we have the power."
"Do you suppose I should not do the best for my wife that I can do?" asked Mark. "She knows I would. Be at ease, Oswald," he added in an easy tone, of which Oswald detected not the banter, "when Caroline's money shall be paid over, I'll send you notice of it. Talking of money, don't you think the doctor made a strange will?"
"I have not heard anything about his will," replied Oswald. "He has died very well off, I suppose?"
"We don't think that he has died well off," interposed Caroline. "I and Mark can't quite make it out, and they do not treat us with much confidence in the matter. Whatever there is, is left to Sara."
"To Sara?"
"Every stick and stone," returned Caroline, her cheeks assuming that lovely colour that excitement was apt to bring to them, and which, to a practised eye, might have suggested a suspicion of something not sound in the constitution. "All the property he died possessed of is to be sold, even to the household furniture; and the money realised from it goes to Sara."
"And the son--Captain Davenal?"
"There's nothing left to him; not a penny-piece. His name is not so much as mentioned in the will."
Oswald looked as though he could not believe it. He had thought that, of all men, Dr. Davenal would have been incapable of making an unjust will.
"Look here, Oswald," interrupted Mark, speaking in that half-whispered tone that is so suggestive of mystery, "there's something under all this that we can't fathom. Caroline overheard some words dropped by Miss Davenal to the effect that Sara was left dependent upon her, quite entirely dependent----"
"But how can that be?" interrupted Oswald. "Have you not just said that the whole property is willed to her?"
"True: but Miss Davenal did say it. It is all queer together," concluded Mark. "Why should he have willed it all to Sara, excluding Edward?--And why should Miss Davenal assert, as she did, that Sara would be penniless, and must have a home with herself? I am sure I and Caroline don't want their confidence," continued Mark, in a tone of resentment that was sufficient to betray he did want it. "But I say it's a queer will altogether. Nothing left to Edward, when it's well known the doctor loved him as the apple of his eye! Every sixpence that can be realised by the sales is to go to Sara; to be paid into her hands absolutely, without the security of trustees, or guardian, or anything. But as to his having died the wealthy man that he was thought to be, it is quite a mistake. So far as we can make out, there was no money laid by at all."
Oswald did not care to pursue the theme. The disposal of Dr. Davenal's property was nothing to him; and if he could not help a suspicion crossing his mind as to how the laid-by gains of years had been spent, it was certainly not his intention to enlighten his brother Marcus. Neal had hinted at hush-money months ago, and the hint was haunting Oswald now.
"Was it not a sudden death at the last?" exclaimed Caroline.
"Very," said Oswald, "It must have been a sad shock for you all. I am sure your cousin feels it much."
"Sara? Well, I don't know. I don't think she feels it more than I do. She seems as still and calm as a statue. She never shed a tear yesterday when the will was being read: and I am sure she listened to it.Inever heard a word for my sobs."
But for the melancholy subject, Oswald would have smiled at Caroline's faith in her own depth of grief. She had yet to learn the signs of real sorrow.
"She is not demonstrative, I think," he observed, alluding to Sara.
"She never was," returned Caroline: "and therefore I argue that there can be no real feeling. I have gone into hysterics ten times since the death, only thinking of it, as Mark knows; and I question if anybody has so much as seen Sara cry. I said to her yesterday, 'How collected you are! how you seem to think of everything for the future!' 'Yes,' she answered in a dreamy sort of way, 'I have got work to do; I have got work to do.' I don't know why it should be," continued Mrs. Cray, after a pause, "but in the last few mouths Sara seems to have altered so much; to have turned grave before her time. It is as though all her youth had gone out of her."
Oswald rose: he believed his mission had been accomplished--that there was no doubt of Mark's investing his wife's money for her benefit, in accordance with the doctor's wishes. They pressed him to remain and take some tea, but he declined: he was returning to town that night. His last words to his half-brother proved how completely he was astray.
"Mark, it would be only kind of you to set Miss Davenal right. I am sure the misapprehension was causing her serious pain."
"I'll attend to her," rejoined Mark, with a careless laugh, as he went with him to the hall-door. "Goodnight, Oswald. A safe journey to you!"
Mark returned to his wife. He had not quite liked to use that deliberate deceit to Oswald Cray in her presence. But Mark was ingenious in sophistries, in that kind of logic which tends to "make the worse appear the better reason," and Caroline put full faith in him as she listened to his half-apology, half-explanation.
"It would never have done to enlightenhim," observed Mark. "What I have said, I said for your sake, Carine. Oswald is one who would rather let a man plod on for years on bread and cheese, than see him make a dash and raise himself at once to independence. He's a slow-going coach himself, and thinks everybody else ought to be!"
And, propping his back against the side of the mantelpiece, Mark Cray enlarged upon all the grandeur and glory of the prospect opening to him, painting its future scenes in colours so brilliant that his wife lost herself in a trance of admiration, and wished it could all be realised with the morning light.
For once London was bright. A glorious spring day late in March had gladdened the spirits of the metropolitan world, dreary with the fogs and rains of the passing winter, and as the street passengers looked up at the clear blue sky, the shining sun, they said to each other that the day was a foretaste of summer.
The sun drew to its setting, and its red rays fell on the terminus of the Great Western Railway at Paddington; on all the bustle and confusion of a train just in. Amidst the various vehicles driving out of the station with their freight, was a cab, containing two ladies dressed in deep mourning, one of whom, the elder, had not recovered from the pushing about to which she had been subjected in the confusion of arrival, and was protesting that she should not recover it, and that there ought to be arrangements made to protect lady travellers from such. On the box beside the driver was a--was he a gentleman, or was he a servant? If the latter, he was certainly a most superior one in looks, but the idle people standing about and casting their eyes up to the passing cabs were taking him no doubt for the former. The luggage piled up on the top of the cab and on the front seat of the inside, seemed to say that these travellers had come from a distance.
In point of fact they had come from Hallingham, for they were no other than Miss Davenal and her niece, and the gentleman on the box was Neal. Miss Davenal kept up her chorus of complaint. It had begun with the discomforts attendant on the arrival of a large train at the terminus, and it would be continued, there was little doubt, for ever and a day; for though Miss Bettina had come to London by her own free decision, she had come sorely against her will.
"Jostling! pushing! hustling! roaring! It is ashamethat ladies should be subjected to such. Why don't they manage things better?"
"But, Aunt Bettina, you need not have been in the bustle. If you had but seated yourself in the cab, as Neal suggested, and allowed him to see after the luggage--"
"Hold your tongue, Sara. What was one pair of eyes to look after all the luggage we have got? I chose to see to it as well as Neal; and I say that the way you get pushed about is shameful. My firm belief is, we have lost at least ten of the smaller packages."
"No, no, aunt, they are all here; I counted them as they were brought to the cab."
"Yes, that's about all you are good for!--counting the cabs! I'd spend my moments to a little more purpose. Good heavens! we shall be run down! If this is London. I wish I had never heard of it."
The cab threaded its way amidst the crowded streets and its inmates' terrors--for Sara was little less timid than her aunt--until it drew up before a small house in Pimlico; small as compared with their house at home. Miss Davenal looked up at it and gave a groan; and Neal opened the cab door.
"Isthisthe place, Neal? It is dreadfully small."
"I think you will find it convenient, ma'am. It is better inside than out."
Better inside than out! It was new and fresh and pleasant-looking; but to poor Miss Davenal it appeared, as she had said, dreadfully small. Sara seemed less disagreeably impressed. She had not anticipated great things; and it was of very little consequence to her where she lived now. In reality, it was rather a nice house, of moderate size; but Miss Davenal was estimating it by comparison--as we all estimate things.
She turned herself about in the small passage in dismay. A door on the left led into the parlour, the room they would use for dining; about four such could have been put into the dining-room at Hallingham. The staircase would scarcely admit of two abreast; and in front of it, at the top, was the drawing-room, a light, cheerful apartment, with one large window. The furniture in these rooms was Miss Davenal's, and it crowded them inconveniently.
Dorcas, she who had lived at the Abbey with Mrs. Cray, stood there with a smiling face to receive them; and the landlady, a humble sort of person, in a green stuff gown, who had the pleasure of residing in the back kitchen and sleeping in some obscure attic, came forward also. The greater portion of the house had been taken unfurnished for Miss Davenal.
"About the bedrooms Dorcas?" inquired Miss Davenal, in a half-frightened tone. "Which is mine?"
"Which you please to choose, ma'am," was Dorcas's answer. "The two best chambers are the one behind the drawing-room, and the one over the drawing-room."
The room over the drawing-room was the largest and best, but Miss Davenal did not like so many stairs, and resigned it to Sara. She, Miss Davenal, turned herself about in the small back room as she had done in the passage; her own spacious chamber at home was all too present to her, and she wondered whether she should ever become reconciled to this.
Had any one told her a few short months before--nay, a few short weeks--that she should ever take up her abode in London, she had rejected the very idea as absurd, almost an impossibility. Yet here she was! come to it of her own decision, of her own accord, but in one sense terribly against her will.
Marcus Cray had carried out his plans. To the intense astonishment of Hallingham he had rejected the valuable practice which had become his by the death of Dr. Davenal, and his mode of relinquishing it had been a most foolish one. Whether he feared the remonstrances of his brother, the reproaches of Miss Davenal, or the interference of other friends of his wife, certain it is that Mark, in disposing of the practice, had gone unwisely to work. A practice such as Dr. Davenal's, if placed properly in the market, would have brought forth a host of men eager to be the purchasers and to offer a fair and just sum for it. But of this Mark Cray allowed no chance. He privately negotiated with a friend of his, a Mr. Berry, and sold him the goodwill for little more than an old song.
In vain Miss Davenal said cutting things to Mark; in vain Oswald Cray, when the real truth reached him, came hastening down from London, in doubt whether Mark had not really gone mad. They could not undo the contract. It was signed and sealed, and Mr. Berry had paid over the purchase-money.
Then Mark spoke out upon the subject of his London prospects; he enlarged upon their brilliancy until Miss Davenal herself was for the moment dazzled. She urged on Mark the justice of his resigning to Dr. Davenal's daughter part of this purchase-money; Mark evaded it. His agreement with Dr. Davenal, he said, was to pay to his daughter three hundred pounds per annum for five years; and provided he did pay it, it could be of no consequence whether he made it by doctoring or by other means: he should fulfil his bargain, and that was enough.
Mark had had it all his own way. The money expected by his wife had been paid over to him, and he kept it. It was a great deal less than was expected, for Chancery had secured its own slice out of the pie; but it was rather more than four thousand pounds. Mark was deaf to all suggestions, all entreaties; he completely ignored the last wishes of Dr. Davenal; turned round on Oswald, and flatly told him it was no business of his; and carried the money to London in his pocket, when he and Caroline quitted Hallingham.
They quitted it in haste and hurry, long before things were ripe and ready for them in London, Mark remarking to his wife that the sooner they were out of that hornet's nest the better--by which term he probably distinguished Miss Davenal and a few others who had considered themselves privileged to interfere, so far as remonstrance went. Caroline more than seconded all his wishes, all he did; Mark had imbued her with his own rose-coloured views of the future, and she was eager to enter on its brightness.
The next to look out for a home was Miss Bettina Davenal. Affairs of the sales and else had not been carried out so quickly and readily as Mr. Wheatley in his inexperience had anticipated, and there had been no immediate hurry for the house to be vacated. A surgeon in the town was in treaty for it, and the furniture would have to be sold by auction. Sara wondered that her aunt did not fix upon a residence, and she feared all would be scuffle and bustle when they came to leave.
But Miss Davenal had been fixing upon one in her own mind; at least, upon the locality for one--and that was London. Never, willingly, did Bettina Davenal forego a duty, however unpalatable it might be, and she did believe it to be her duty to follow the fortunes of Caroline, and not abandon her entirely to the mercy of her imprudent, thoughtless husband. To quit Hallingham, the home of her whole life, would be a cruel trial; but she thought she ought to do so. And she bestowed a few bitter words upon the absent Mark for inducing the necessity.
Miss Bettina set about her plans. If there was one quality she was distinguishable for, above all others, it was obstinacy. Obstinate she was at all times, but in the cause of right or duty she could be unflinchingly so. Watton, their former upper-maid, was established in her new situation as housekeeper in the house of business in St. Paul's Churchyard, and Miss Davenal wrote to her and requested her to look out for a house or for a portion of one, and let her know about it. Mr. and Mrs. Cray had taken a house in Grosvenor Place, facing the Green Park, and Miss Davenal wished to be as near to them as her pocket would allow.
Watton attended to her commission. She thought that part of a handsome house would be more suitable to Miss Davenal's former position than the whole of an inferior one, and she did her best. Miss Davenal found it, as you have just seen, anything but handsome; but she had little notion of the prices asked in London, and she had limited Watton as to the house-rent she was to offer. Neal was sent up to London with the furniture, which had been warehoused for so many years; and when he returned to Hallingham Dorcas took his place in London. Discharged by Mrs. Cray, who had not chosen to take country servants with her, she had been re-engaged by Miss Davenal, whose modest household was henceforth to comprise only Dorcas and Neal. Miss Davenal would not part with Neal if she could help it; but she had been surprised at the man's ready agreement to stay in so reduced an establishment.
And so, before things were quite in readiness for them, Miss Davenal and Sara had come up. The furniture in the house at Hallingham was being prepared for public sale, and they hastened away, not to witness the desecration. How coldly and chilly this new home struck upon both, now that they had really entered upon it, they alone could tell. Neither slept through that first night, and they arose in the morning alike unrefreshed.
Breakfast over, Sara stood at the window. In their immediate situation all the houses were private ones, but from a proximate corner she could see the bustle of the highroad and the omnibuses passing up and down. The day was bright, as the previous one had been, giving to London its best aspect, and all the world was astir.
"And now for Mark Cray and Caroline," said Miss Bettina.
It had been Miss Davenal's pleasure that Mark Cray and his wife should be kept in ignorance of this emigration of hers to London. Neal, during his brief sojourn there, and Dorcas afterwards, had been enjoined to keep strictly clear of the vicinity of their house. Having no motive to disobey, they had complied with the orders; and Mr. and Mrs. Cray were yet in total ignorance that their relatives were so near.
She put on her things and went out, Neal, as usual in attendance. Neal was well acquainted with the geography of the place, and piloted his mistress to the house in a few minutes' time: a handsome house, with stone steps and pillars before the door. Miss Davenal gazed at it with drawn-in lips.
"It cannot be this, Neal."
"Yes, ma'am, it is. Shall I ring?"
Miss Davenal pushed forward and rang herself, an imperative peal. What right had they, she was mentally asking, to venture on so expensive a house as this must be? A footman flung open the door.
"Does Mr. Cray live here?"
"Yes," said the footman with a lofty air: as of course it was incumbent as him to put on to anybody so dead to good manners as to call at that early hour. "What might your business be?"
None could put down insolence more effectually than Bettina Davenal. She gave the man a look, and swept past him.
"Show me to your mistress, man."
And somehow the man was subdued to do as he was bid, and to ask quite humbly, "What name, ma'am?"
"Miss Davenal."
He opened the door of a room on the right, and Miss Davenal, never more haughty, never more stately, stepped into it. She saw it was of good proportions, she saw it was elegantly furnished; and Caroline, in a flutter of black ribbons on her pretty morning toilette, was sitting toying with a late breakfast.
She started up with a scream. Believing that the lady before her was safe at Hallingham, perhaps the scream was excusable.
"Aunt! Is it really you? Whatever brings you in London?"
Miss Bettina neglected the question to survey the room again. She had surveyed the hall as she came in; she caught a glimpse of another room at the back: all fitted up fit for a duke and duchess.
"Where's Mark Cray?" she cried.
"Mark has been gone out ages ago, aunt. He is deep in business now. The operations have begun."
"Who took this house?" grimly asked Miss Bettina.
"I and Mark."
"And what did the furniture cost?"
"Oh, I don't know. I don't think Mark has had the bills in yet. Why, aunt?"
"Why!" returned the indignant lady, in a blaze of anger. "You and your husband are one of two things, Caroline; swindlers or idiots. If you think that strong language, I cannot help it."
"Aunt Bettina!" echoed the startled girl, "what are you saying?"
"The truth," solemnly replied Miss Bettina.