by Ellen Wood
“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, bard: 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 said Mark Cray, Aunt Bett,” repeated the doctor.
“Mark! He won’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 V 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 stem 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 disliking him. 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 would not oppose 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.
CHAPTER VII.
AN INTERRUPTION.
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 up-stairs 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 up-stairs 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 up-stairs 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 to-day?”
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 you will be 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. “That will do you no good, Richard.”
“Aren’t you deafer than before, Aunt Bett?”
“Am I what?” asked Miss Bettina. “ Barker! 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 b
e 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 fan. 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” —