by Ellen Wood
“I have no right to the money, have I? It ought to have gone to you and your brother?”
“Well, sir — perhaps you had been led to expect it by Lady Oswald,” was the clergyman’s answer. Of a timid and refined nature, he could not, to Dr. Davenal’s face, express his sense of the wrong. With Dr. Davenal before him, cordial and open, he began to think the wrong less. That is, that it was not so much the doctor’s fault as he had been angrily deeming.
“No, she never led me to expect anything of the sort; and you cannot be more surprised than I am at its being left to me,” said the doctor. “When Mr. Wedderburn came to me with the news, I could not believe him. However, it appears to be the fact.”
“Yes,” meekly rejoined the clergyman; “it is.”
“And I have now come to inform you, that I shall not take the money, Mr. Stephenson. Not a stiver of it. The will, so far as it concerns me, may be regarded as a dead letter, for all practical use. I have desired Mr. Wedderburn to transfer the money to you and your brother; and if this may not legally be, if I must, despite myself, accept the money, I only take it to restore it to you. You will not be too proud to accept it from me?”
Was he listening to fact? — or was he in a dream? The words, to the minister’s ear, did not savour of reality. His pale face grew moist with emotion, his trembling hands entwined their thin fingers together. He did not dare to ask, Was it real? lest the answer should dissolve the spell, and prove it but illusion.
“I could not accept of this great sum to the prejudice of others who have a right to it,” resumed Dr. Davenal. “I should fear its proving something like ill-gotten gains, that bring evil with them, instead of good. The money shall be yours and your brother’s, Mr. Stephenson, just as surely as though it had been left to you by Lady Oswald. The diamond ring I shall keep and value, but not a shilling of the money. I thought I would come up and tell you this.”
The tears were welling into that poor gentleman’s eyes, as he rose and clasped the hand of Dr. Davenal. “If you could see what I have suffered; if you could only imagine the struggle life has been to me, you would know what I feel at this moment Heaven send its blessings on your generosity!”
The doctor quitted him. He had found a heavy heart, he left a glad one. He quitted him and went forth into the stillness of the autumn night He glanced towards the bright stars as he walked along, thinking of the future. And a prayer went up from his heart to the throne of heaven — that, if it was God’s will, his children might not feel hereafter the sacrifice he had made — that God would bless them and be merciful to them when he should be gone. The last few days had been sufficient to teach Dr. Davenal, had he never known it before, in how great need the apparently safest amongst us stand of this ever-loving mercy.
CHAPTER XXV.
COMPANY FOR MR. OSWALD CRAY.
FOR some days subsequent to the interview with Neal, and that valuable servant’s startling communication, Mr. Oswald Cray remained in what may be called a sea of confusion. The unhappy circumstances attendant on Lady Oswald’s death never left his mind, the strange suspicions first arising naturally, as they did arise, and then augmented by Neal’s disclosure, seemed to be ever waging hot war within him, for they were entirely antagonistic to sober reason, to his life-long experience of Dr. Davenal.
It cannot be denied that Oswald Cray, calm of temperament though he was, sound of judgment, did fall into the snare that the web of events had woven around him; and, in the midnight watches, when things wear to our senses a weird, ghost-like hue, the disagreeable word murder suggested itself to him oftener than he would have cared to confess in broad matter-of-fact daylight But as the days went on his senses came to him. Reason re-asserted her empire, and he flung the dark doubt from him, as unworthy of himself and the present enlightened age. It was impossible to connect such a crime with Dr. Davenal.
But still, though he shook off the worst view, he could not shake off the circumstances and their suspicion. Perhaps it was next to impossible, knowing what he did know of the doctors sentiments as to chloroform, hearing, as he had heard, Neal’s account of the words spoken at the midnight interview, that he should shake them off. They turned and twisted themselves about in his mind in spite of his will; he would have given much to get rid of them, but he could not. Now taking one phase, now another, now looking dark, now light, there they were, like so many phantoms, ever springing up from different comers of his mind, and putting legitimate thoughts out of it. Up and in bed, at work or at rest, were those conflicting arguments ever dancing attendance on him, until, from sheer perplexity, his brain would seem to lose its subtle powers, and grow dull from very weariness. But the worst aspect of the affair gradually lost its impression, and reason drove away the high colours of imagination.
The conclusion to which he at length came, and in which he finally settled down, was that Dr. Davenal had been in a partial degree guilty. He could not think that he had given that chloroform to Lady Oswald with the deliberate view of taking her life, as some of our worst criminals have taken lives: but he did believe there was some hidden culpability attached to it. Could it have been given in forgetfulness? — or by way of experiment? — or carelessly? Oswald Cray asked himself those questions ten times in a day. No, no, reason answered; Dr. Davenal was not a man to forget, or to experimentalise, or to do things carelessly. And then, with the answer, rose the one dark, awful doubt again, tormenting him not less with its shadows than with its preposterous absurdity.
What dung to his mind more than all the rest was, that he could see no solution, or chance of solution, to the question of why chloroform was administered, why even it was taken to the house. Had Dr. Davenal frankly answered him when questioned, “I thought, in spite of my conversation with you, that chloroform might be ventured upon with safety, that it would ease her sufferings, and was absolutely necessary to calm her state of excitement,” why he could have had no more to say, however lamenting the fatal effects. But Dr. Davenal had answered nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he had been mysterious over it, and at length flatly refused to satisfy him at all So far as Oswald Cray could see, there was no other solution, then or ever, that could be arrived at, save that the chloroform had been administered wilfully and deliberately. If so, then with what view had Dr. Davenal —
At this point Oswald Cray always pulled his thoughts up, or strove to do so, and plunged desperately into another phase of the affair, as if he would run away from dangerous ground. Once he caught himself wondering whether, if the doctor had been deliberately guilty, it lay in his duty — his, Oswald Cray’s — to bring him to account for it. No living being save himself, so far as he trusted, had been cognisant of Dr. Davenal’s strong opinion of chloroform as applied to Lady Oswald. Ought he, then, not only in the obligation which lies upon all honest men to bring crime to light, but as a connection of Lady Oswald’s, ought he to be the Nemesis, and denounce —
With a quicker beating of the heart, with a burning flush upon his brow, Oswald Cray started from the train of thought. Into what strange gulf was it carrying him? Ah, not though it had been his fate to see the crime committed, and to know that it was a crime, would he be the one to bring it home to Richard Davenal! The man whom he had so respected; the father of her who possessed his best love, and who would possess it, in spite of his efforts to withdraw it, for all time? No; not against him could his hand be raised in judgment In spite of his efforts to withdraw his love? Had it come to that with Oswald Cray? Indeed it had. He could not fathom the affair, it remained to him utterly incomprehensible, but that Dr. Davenal was in some way or other compromised by it, terribly compromised, seemed as plain as the sun at noonday. And Mr. Oswald Cray, in his haughty spirit, his besetting pride, decided that he could no longer be on terms of friendship with him, and that Sara Davenal must be no wife of his.
What it cost him to come to this resolution of casting her adrift, none save Heaven knew. The struggle remained on his memory for years afterwards as the sorest pain life had ever
brought him. It was the bitter turning-point which too many of us have to arrive at, and pass; the dividing link which dashes away the sunny meads, the flowery paths of life’s young romance, and sends us stumbling and shivering down the stony road of reality. None knew, none ever would know, what that struggle was to Oswald Cray.
Not a struggle as to the course he should pursue — the breaking off intimacy with her: never for a single moment did he hesitate in that The struggle lay with his feelings, with his own heart, where she was entwined with its every fibre, part and parcel of its very sell He strove to put her out thence, and she would not be put out. There she remained, and he was conscious that there she would remain for many a dreary year to come.
But for his overweening pride, how different things might have been! He was too just a man to include Sara in the doctor’s — dare he say it? — crime. Although Neal had said that Miss Sara Davenal had been made cognisant of it, Oswald did not visit upon her one iota of blame. She was no more responsible for the doctor’s acts than he was, neither could she help them. N6, he did not cast a shadow of reproach upon her; she had done nothing to forfeit his love; but she was her father’s daughter, and therefore no fit wife for him. One whose pride was less in the ascendant than Mr. Oswald Cray’s, whose self-esteem was less sensitively fastidious, might have acted upon this consciousness of her immunity from blame, and set himself to see whether there was not a way out of the dilemma rather than have given her up, off-hand, at the very first onset. He might have gone in his candour to Dr. Davenal and said, “I love your daughter; I had wished to make her my wife; tell me confidentially, is there a reason why I, an honourable man, should not?” Not so Mr. Oswald Cray and his haughty pride. Without a single moment of hesitation he shook himself free from all future contact with the daughter of Dr. Davenal, just as he was trying to shake her from his heart Never more, never more, might he look forward to the life of happiness he had been wont to picture.
It was a cruel struggle, cruel to him; and the red flush of shame mantled on his brow as he thought of the binding words he had spoken to her, and the dishonour that must accrue to him in breaking them. There was not a man on the face of the earth whose sense of honour was more keen than Oswald Cray’s, who was less capable of wilfully doing aught to tarnish it; and yet that tarnishing was thrust upon him. Any way, it seemed that a great stain must fall upon it. To take one to be his wife whose father was a suspected man would be a blot indeed; and to slip through the words he had spoken, never more to take notice of her or them, was scarcely less so. He felt it keenly; he, the man of unblemished conduct, and, it may be said, of unblemished heart.
But still he did not for a moment hesitate. Great as the pain was to himself, little as she, in her innocence, deserved that the Blight should be inflicted on her, he never wavered in that which he knew must be. The only question that arose to him was, how it should be best done. Should he speak to her? — or should he gradually drop all intimacy and let the fact become known to her in that way! Which would be the kinder course? That the separation would be productive of the utmost pain to her as to him, that she loved him with all the fervour of a first and pure attachment, he knew; and he felt for her to his very heart’s core. He hated himself for having to inflict this pain, and he heartily wished, as things had turned out, that he had never yielded to the pleasure of becoming intimate at Dr. Davenal’s. Well, which should be his course? Oswald Cray sat over his fire one cold evening after business was over, and deliberated upon it. Some weeks had gone on then. He leaned his elbow on the arm of his chair, and bent his cheek on his hand, and gazed abstractedly on the blaze. He shrank from the very idea of speaking to her. No formal engagement existed between them: it had been implied more than spoken; and he would be scarcely justified in say to her, “I cannot marry you now,” considering that he had never in so many words asked her to marry him at all. She might regard it as a gratuitous insult But, putting that aside, he did not see his way clear to speak to her. What reason could he give for his withdrawal? He could not set it down to his own caprice; and he could not — no, he could not — put forth to her the plea of her father’s misdoing. He began to think it might be better to maintain silence, and so let the past and its words die away. If —
He was aroused from his train of thought by the entrance of a woman — a woman in a black bonnet, and sleeves turned up to the elbow, with a rather crusty expression of face. This was Mrs. Benn, the housekeeper, cleaner, cook of the house. It did not lie in Mrs. Benn’s province to wait on Mr. Oswald Cray, or she would probably have attired herself more in accordance with her duty. It lay in her husband’s, and he had been sent out this evening by Mr. Oswald Cray on business connected with the firm. On cleaning days — and they occurred twice in the week — Mrs. Benn was wont to descend in the morning in the black bonnet, and keep it on until she went to bed. It was not worn as bonnets are worn usually; the crown behind and the brim before; but was perched right on the top of her head, brim downwards: and Mrs. Benn was under a firm persuasion that this kept her hair and her cap free from the dust she was wont to raise in sweeping. She was about forty, but looked fifty, and her face had got a patch of black-lead upon it, and a nail had torn a rent in her check apron.
“Wouldn’t you like the things taken away, sir?” she asked in a tone as crusty as her look. “I’m waiting to wash ’em up.”
This recalled Oswald Cray’s notice to the fact that the remains of his dinner were yet upon the table. He believed he had rung for them to be taken away when he turned to the fire; and there he had sat with his back to them since, never noticing that nobody had come to do it. It was now a little past seven, and Mrs. Benn had grown angry and indignant at the waiting.
“I declare I thought they had gone away,” he said. “I suppose the bell did not ring. I am sure I touched it.”
“No bell have rung at all,” returned Mrs. Benn resentfully. “I stood down there with my hands afore me till the clock had gone seven, and then I thought I’d come up and see what was keeping ‘em. You haven’t ate much this evening, sir,” she added, looking at the dish of steak and the potatoes. “I don’t think you have eat much lately. Don’t you feel well?”
“Well! I am very well,” he replied carelessly, rising from his chair and stretching himself. “Is Benn not back yet?”
“No, he is not back,” she returned, her tone becoming rather an explosive one, boding no good for the absent Mr. Benn. “He don’t seem to hurry himself, he don’t, though he knows if he didn’t get back I should have to come up here: and very fit I be on my cleaning days to appear before a gentleman.”
“Is it necessary to clean in a bonnet?” asked Oswald quietly.
“It’s necessary to clean in something, sir, to protect one’s head from the fluff and stuff that collects. One would wonder where it comes from, all in a week. I used to tie a apron over my cap, but it was always coming off, or else blowing its comers into the way of one’s eyes.”
Oswald laughed. He remembered the apron era, and the guy Mrs. Benn looked. For twelve years had she and her husband been the servants of that house. Formerly Mr. Bracknell, an old bachelor, had lived in it, and Benn and his wife waited on him, as they now did on Mr. Oswald Cray.
“Would you like tea this evening, sir?” she inquired. For sometimes Oswald took tea and sometimes he did not.
“Yes; if you bring it up directly. I am going out.”
She went away with her tray of things. Down the first flight of stairs, past the offices, and down again to the kitchen. The ground floor of this house in Parliament Street was occupied by the offices of the firm, and partially so the floors above. Oswald Cray had two or three rooms for his own use; his sitting-room, not a very large one, being on the first floor.
His train of thought had been broken by the woman, and he did not recall it. He stepped into an adjoining apartment, lighted a shaded lamp, sat down, and began examining a drawing of some complicated plans. Pencil in hand, he was deep in the various
mysteries pertaining to engineering, when he heard Mrs. Benn and the tea-tray. He finished marking off certain lines and strokes on a blank sheet of paper — which he did after a queer fashion, his eyes fixed on the drawing, and his fingers only appearing to guide the pencil — before he went in.
He had not hurried himself, and the tea must be getting cold. Mrs. Benn was in the habit of making it down-stairs, so that he had no trouble. It was by no means a handsome tea equipage — partly belonging, in fact, to Mrs. Benn herself. The black teapot had a chipped spout, and the black milk-jug had a fray on its handle, and the china tea-cup was cracked across. Oswald’s china tea-service had been handsome once — or rather Mr. Bracknell’s, for it was to that gentleman the things in the house belonged; but Mrs. Benn had what she herself called a “heavy hand at breakage,” and two or three cups and saucers were all that remained. Oswald determined to buy himself a decent tea-set, but somehow he never thought of it, and the elegant equipage came up still.
He poured himself out a cup, stirred it, and then went for the sheet of paper on which he had been making the strokes and scrawls. Mrs. Benn knew her master well. He had said he was going out, but he was just as likely to remain over these strokes all the evening as to go out; perhaps, even, in forgetfulness keep her tea-things up until ten o’clock, or until she went for them. Oswald Cray was one whose heart was in his profession, and work was more pleasant to him than idleness.
He was busy still over this paper, neglecting his tea, when Mrs. Benn came in again. He thought she had come very soon for her tea-tray to-night But she had not come for that “Here’s company now, sir! A young lady wants to see you.”
“A young lady!” repeated Oswald. “To see me?”
“Well, I suppose she’s a young lady — from what one can see of her through her black veil; but she come to my kitchen bell only, when the knocker was a-staring her right in the face,” returned Mrs. Benn. “She asked for you, sir. I said, was it any message I could take up, but she says she wants to speak to you herself.”