by Ellen Wood
“You can show her up.”
Mrs. Benn accomplished this process in a summary manner. Going down the stairs to the hall, where she had left the applicant, she briefly said to her, “You can go up. First door you come to that’s open” — and then left the lady to find her way. Had her husband, Benn, been at home, he would have asked her what she meant by introducing a visitor in that fashion to Mr. Oswald Cray; and he would probably have got for answer a sharp order to mind his own business. In point of fact, Mrs. Benn, on those two dark interludes of her weekly existence, cleaning days, had neither time nor temper to waste on superfluous ceremony.
Oswald Cray had bent over his paper again, attaching little importance to the advent of the visitor; he supposed it might be some messenger from one or other of the clerks. The footfall on the stairs was soft and light; Oswald’s back was to the door, and his lines and marks were absorbing his attention.
“Mr. Oswald Cray?”
It was a sweet and pleasant and sensible voice, with a Scotch accent very perceptible to English ears. It was the voice of a lady, and Oswald Cray started up hastily, pencil in hand.
A short, slight, very young-looking woman, with a fair face and blue eyes, stood before him. Strictly speaking, there was no beauty whatever in the face, but it was so fair, so frank, so honest, with its steady good sense and its calm blue eyes, that Oswald Cray warmed to it at once. She was dressed plainly in black, and she threw back her crape veil to speak — as most sensible women like to do. To Oswald’s eyes, seeing her by that light, she looked about one or two and twenty, as she had to Mrs. Benn: her light complexion, her small features, and her slight figure were all of that type that remain young a long while. In his surprise he did not for the moment speak, and she repeated the words, not as a question this time —
“You are Mr. Oswald Cray.”
“That is my name,” he answered, recovering his equanimity. “May I—”
“I come to you from my brother, Frank Allister,” she interrupted. “I am Jane Allister.”
She pronounced the name “Jean,” as she had in fact been christened, but it generally gets corrupted into Jane by English ears and English tongues. Oswald so interpreted it. His whole face lighted up with a smile of welcome; it may be said of recognition. He had heard so much of this good sister from his friend Frank Allister.
“I am so glad you have come to him!” he warmly exclaimed, taking her hand. “Frank has almost pined for you: but he did not expect you yet. I seem to know you quite well: he has talked to me of you so much.”
“Thank you; I’ll take it,” she said, in answer to the chair he offered. “And I will take off my fur,” she added, unwinding a boa from her neck, and untying her bonnet-strings. “Your room feels very warm to one coming in from the keen air outside.”
There was something in her frank manners that struck most pleasingly on the mind of Oswald. She sat there as confidingly in his room as though he had been her brother: a good, modest, single minded woman, whom even a bad man could not do otherwise than respect.
“Yes, I came before Frank expected me,” she said. “I did not think I could have come so soon; but my friends kindly released me. You know my situation — why I could not come to him before.”
“I know that you are” — Oswald hesitated for a moment, and then went bravely on. Before that clear eye of plain good sense there was no need to mince the matter, and pretend ignorance.
“I know that you are companion-attendant to a lady. And that you could not leave her.”
“I have been companion and maid to her all in one,” said Miss Allister. “When I and Frank had to go out into the world and do the best we could for ourselves, I was obliged to look out for what I was most fitted for. Our dead mother’s brother offered to help Frank, and he paid the premium with him to this house, and assisted him otherwise, and I was very glad it should he so—”
“You mean Mr. Brown?” interrupted Oswald.
“Yes. He lived in London. My mother was English born and reared. He was a good friend to us so long as he lived. It was necessary that I should go out; and a situation offered in a lady’s family, Mrs. Graham. She wanted some one who would be her companion, sit with her, read to her, some one well reared, of whom she might make an equal, but who would at the same time act as maid; and I took it But perhaps you have heard all this from Frank?”
“No, not these past details. Though he has talked of you very much. He has told me” — Oswald broke into a frank smile as he said it—” that his sister Jane was worth her weight in gold.”
“I should he sorry to think that most sisters are not worth as much as I am,” she gravely answered. “I have but done my duty, so far as I could do it, and the worst of us ought to do no less. When Frank found I acted as maid to Mrs. Graham he was very much put out, and wanted me to give up the situation and seek a different one. But I laughed at him for a proud boy, and I have stayed on until now. What am I the worse for it? I dressed her, and served her, and when of late years she got ill and helpless, I nursed and fed her. I had become so useful to her — I must say, so indispensable — that when news reached me of Frank’s illness, I could not quit her to come to him. I tried to see which way my duty lay; to leave her for my sick brother, or to leave my brother to strangers, and stay with my dying and helpless friend and mistress. Every week we expected would be her last; she has been slowly dying for these three months; and I felt that it would be wrong to abandon her. That, you see, is why I could not come to Frank.”
“Is she dead?” asked Oswald.
“O yes. This mourning that I am wearing is for her. And as soon as it was possible after the funeral I came away. We had a long and bad passage, two days, and I did not reach Frank until three o’clock this afternoon.”
“You should have come by land,” observed Oswald.
“Nay, but that would have cost more,” she simply answered. “And I knew that Frank was better, so as to be in no vital hurry for my presence. I have come to you, sir, this evening, to ask your opinion of his state. Will you be so kind as to give it me?”
“First of all will you permit me to invite you to take a cup of tea?” replied Oswald, turning round to look at the tray, which was on the opposite side of the table, next the door.
“No, I thank you,” she replied, “I gave Frank his tea before I came out, and took some with him. But will you let me pour out a cup for you? I saw that I interrupted you.”
Before Oswald could decline, she had taken her gloves off, and was round at the tray, putting it in order. That a bachelor had been doing the honours of the ceremony was only too apparent. The teapot was stuck on the side of the tray, spout forwards; the milk-jug was not on the tray at all, but ever so far away on the table. Jane Allister had put all this to rights in a twinkling, and was pouring the slop of cold tea out of his tea-cup into the basin.
“Not for me,” said Oswald, feeling as if he had known her for years. “You are very kind, but I have taken all I wish.”
“Nay, not kind at all,” she said, looking at him with some surprise. “I’d have been glad to do it for you.”
Oswald had risen, and she came back from the tea-tray, and stood by him on the hearth-rug. Her bonnet still untied, her gloves off, her face and attitude full of repose, she looked like one in her own home.
“You’ll tell me freely what you think of Frank?”
There was not the slightest shade of doubt in her voice; she evidently expected that he would tell it her; tell it her freely, as she asked for it She stood with her fair face raised, her candid blue eyes thrown full up to his.
Oswald drew her chair forward for her, and took his own, pausing before he spoke. In good truth, he scarcely now knew what was his opinion of Frank Allister. It was one of those cases where the patient seems at death’s door, and then, to the surprise of all, the disease takes a sudden turn, and appears to be almost gone. In the previous month, October, Oswald Cray had believed that a few days must see the end of Fr
ank Allister; this, the close of November, he was apparently getting well all one way.
“I do not quite know how to answer you,” Oswald began. “Five or six weeks ago Frank was so ill that I did not think there remained the least chance for him, but he has changed in a wonderful manner. But for the deceit fulness that is so characteristic of the disease, I should believe him to be getting well. Remembering that, I can only look upon it as a false improvement.”
Jane Allister paused. “I suppose there is no doubt that his symptoms are those of consumption?”
“None.”
“And consumption, if it does come on, is rarely if ever cured. Do you think it is?”
“Very rarely, I fear.”
“But again, I have known patients who have displayed every symptom of consumption, have suffered much, and who have eventually got strong and hearty, and continued so.”
“That is true,” he assented. “There have been such instances. I wish I could satisfy you better, but indeed I do not know what to think. Mr. Bracknell asked me a day or two ago how Allister was getting on, and I answered as I answer you — that I really could not ten him.”
“When I reached my brother’s to-day and saw how well he appeared to be, so different from what I had expected to find him, I could not help expressing my surprise,” said Miss Allister. “Frank gaily told me that his illness and its supposed danger had been all a mistake, and he had taken a new lease of life. I did not know what to think, what to believe; and I determined to come here and ask your opinion. I could not, you know, ask you before him.”
“And I cannot give you a decisive one,” repeated Oswald. “I can only hope that this improvement may go on to a complete restoration: and I should think it, but fur the treacherous nature of the disease. Frank does certainly appear wonderfully strong and well Even the doctor cannot say that it will not end in recovery.”
“Frank wrote me word that you had caused him to see one of the great London physicians, and that the opinion was unfavourable. But that was when he was at the worst. You have been truly kind to him, Mr. Oswald Cray, and when I came here to-night I felt that I was coming to a friend.”
“I should like to be your friend always,” returned Oswald, in an unusual impulse. “I seem to have been so a long while, Frank has talked to me so much of you.”
“Do you come to see him daily?”
“Not daily; but as often as I can. It is some distance from here.”
“It is a long way. But I got misdirected.
“You surely did not walk?” exclaimed Oswald.
“To be sure I walked. How else should I come?”
“There are conveyances — cabs and omnibuses.”
“But they cost money,” she answered, with that frank, open plainness, which, in her, seemed so great a charm. “I am not come away to England devoid of means, but they will find plenty of outlets in necessary things, without being spent in superfluities. Anyway, they must be made to last both for me and Frank, until I can leave him and go out again. I’d not speak of these things to you, Mr. Oswald Cray, but that you must know all the particulars of our position.”
She had risen as she spoke, and was now tying her bonnet-strings. Oswald picked up a glove which she dropped.
“And now I’ll wish you good-night,” she continued) putting her hand frankly into his. “And I’d like to thank you with all my heart for what you have done for Frank; for the good friend you have been to him. You have brought to him help and comfort when there was nobody else in the world to bring it. I shall always thank you in my heart, Mr. Oswald Cray.”
Oswald laughed the words off, and attended her down-stairs, catching up his hat as he went through the hall. Mrs. Benn and her black bonnet came up the kitchen stairs.
“Good-night,” repeated Jane Allister.
“I am going with you,” said Oswald.
She resisted the suggestion at first, saying she could find her way back quite well; but Oswald quietly carried his point.
He closed the door behind him, and offered his arm. She took it at once, thanking him in a staid old-fashioned manner. Mrs. Benn drew the door open and looked after them.
“Arm-in-arm!” ejaculated that lady. “And he bending of his head down to her to talk! Who on earth can she be? — coming after him to his house — and stopping up there in the parlour — and keeping up of the tea-things! It looks uncommon like as if he had took on a sweetheart. Only — So it’s you at last, is it, Joe Benn!
And what do you mean by stopping out like this?”
The concluding sentences were addressed to a respectable-looking man who approached the door. It was Joseph Benn, her husband, and the faithful servant of the firm.
“I couldn’t make more haste,” he quietly answered.
“Not make more haste! Don’t tell me. Mr. Oswald Cray expected you were home an hour ago.”
“Mr. Oswald Cray will be quite satisfied that I have not wasted my time when I tell him where I’ve been. Is he up-stairs?”
“No, he is not,” she sharply answered. “Satisfied, indeed! Yes, he looked satisfied when he saw me going up to wait upon him in this guise, and to show in his company? And me waiting a good mortal hour for his dinner-things, which he forgot was up which couldn’t have happened if you’d been at your post to wait at table. You go and stop out again at his dinner-time, Joe Benn!” Joe Benn made no rejoinder; experience had taught him that it was best not. He passed her, and she shut the door with a bang
CHAPTER XXVI.
MORE INSTILLED DOUBT.
THE air was keen and frosty, and the flags of the streets were white and clean — not a common feature in November — as they walked forth. Oswald could but admire this straightforward Scotch girl, with her open speech and her plain good sense. She was so young in appearance that he could only think of her as a girl, though she had herself reminded him that she was older than Frank. This, as he knew, must bring her to a year or two past thirty: and in steadiness of manner and solid independence she was two-and-forty.
Reared in her Highland home, in every comfort for the earlier years of her life, she had since had to buffet with the world. Her mother, a widow since Frank was two years old, had enjoyed a good income, but it died with her. The Uncle in London took Frank, who was then a youth; and Jane had to seek a situation. It was not easy to find. For a governess she was not qualified, so many of what are called accomplishments are essential nowadays, and Jane Allister had not learnt them. She had received a good education, but a strictly plain one.
Waiting, and waiting! No situation offered itself; and when she heard of Mrs. Graham’s she was well-nigh wearied out with the worst of all weariness — that of long-continued disappointment, of hope deferred. But for that weariness she might not have accepted a place where she was to be personal attendant as well as companion. She took it, determined to do her duty in it, to make the very best of it; and when her brother Frank wrote to her in a commotion from his distant home in London, where he was then with Bracknell and Street, she began by making the very best of it to him, gaily and lightly. Frank had the letter yet, in which she had jokingly called him — as she had just related to Mr. Oswald Cray — a proud boy, and recommended him to “bring down” his notions. Frank Allister had never been reconciled to it yet. Jane had grown to like it; and she had remained there all these years, conscientiously doing her duty.
“Have you lost a friend lately?” she inquired, in allusion to the crape band on Oswald’s hat.
“Yes,” he briefly answered, wincing at the question, could Jane Allister have seen it All that past time of Lady Oswald’s death; and the events attending it, caused an inward shiver whenever they were brought to his mind.
“It is a grievous thing to lose relatives when they are dear to us,” remarked Jane. “There is an expression in your countenance at times that tells me you have some source of sorrow.”
Whatever the expression she had noticed on his countenance, she would have seen a very marked one n
ow, had they been, as before, face to face near a table-lamp. The old haughty pride came into it, and his brow flushed blood-red. Oswald Cray was one of the very last to tolerate that his secret feelings should be observed or commented upon. As she spoke it seemed to him as if the pain at his heart was read, his hopeless love for Sara Davenal laid bare.
“You are drawing a wrong inference, Miss Allister,” he coldly said. “The friend I lost was neither near nor very dear to me. She was an old lady; a connection of my mother’s family — Lady Oswald.”
Jane marked the changed tone. She concluded the loss was one of pain to him, though he did not choose to say so; and she gathered her deductions that he was a man of great reticence of feeling. That he was a brave man and a good man, one in every way worthy of trust, of esteem, she knew from Frank long ago.
“Why, Neal! Is it you?”
Mr. Oswald Cray came to an abrupt halt in his surprise. Turning out of the door of a house that they were passing, so quickly as nearly to brush against him, was Dr. Davenal’s man-servant. Neal did not appear in the least taken to. He touched his hat and stood still with just the same equanimity that he would have done had he been waiting there for the passing of Mr. Oswald Cray.
“What has brought you to London, Neal? You have surely not left Dr. Davenal?”
“O no, sir, I have not left A brother of mine, sir, has returned to England after an absence from it of many years, and a little property of ours, that couldn’t be touched while he was away, is now being divided. I spoke to Dr. Davenal, and he gave me leave to come.”
“Have you been up long?”
“Only three days, sir.”
“Are they all well at Hallingham?”
“Quite well, sir. Mr. Cray hurt his arm as he was getting out of the doctor’s carriage, and it was bound up for a week. But it is better.”
“How did he manage that?”
“I don’t think he knew, sir. His foot slipped as he was stepping out, and he swung round in some way, keeping hold of the carriage with his hand bent behind. It was rather a bad sprain.”