by Ellen Wood
“Will you be kind enough to understand me once for all, Dr. Davenal?” he haughtily said. “Lady Oswald’s money, either before her death or after it, never was, nor could be, any concern of mine. I do not claim a right to give so much as an opinion upon her acts in regard to it; in fact I have no such right Had she chosen to fling the money into the sea, to benefit nobody, she might have done so, for any wish of mine upon the point I felt a passing sorrow for the Stephensons when I saw their disappointment, but I did not permit myself to judge so far as to say that Lady Oswald had done wrong. It was no affair of mine,” he emphatically added, “and I did not make it one.”
In spite of his impressive denial, Dr. Davenal did not believe him. Whence, else, the haughty resentment that shone forth from every line of his features? Whence, else, his studied absence from the house, his altogether slighting conduct? Dr. Davenal made one more effort at concession, at subduing his unfounded prejudices.
“I can assure you I resented the will — if I may so say it I resented it for the Stephensons’ sake, and felt myself a pitiful usurper. Nothing would have induced me to accept that money, Mr. Oswald Cray; and steps are being taken to refund it, every shilling, to the Stephensons.”
“Ah,” remarked Oswald, “I heard something of that Had it been willed to me I should have done the same.”
He held himself rigidly erect as he said it There was no unbending of the hard brow, there was no faint smile to break the haughty curve of the lip. That poisonous hint dropped by Neal — that the money was about to be restored through fear — was uncomfortably present to Oswald then. Dr. Davenal saw that the resentment, whatever its cause, was immovable, and he stepped into his carriage without shaking hands.
“Good-morning to you, Mr. Oswald Cray.”
And then the reaction set in in Oswald Cray’s mind, and he began to blush for his discourtesy. The careworn face, the feeble form, haunted him throughout the day, and he began to ask himself, what if all his premises were wrong — if appearances and Neal’s tale had been deceitful — if be bad done the doctor grievous ill in his heart? It was but the reaction, I say, the repentance arising from his own haughty discourtesy, which he felt had been more offensively palpable than it need have been; but it dung to him for hours, haunting him in all the business that he had to transact It was somewhat strange that just when this new feeling was upon him he should encounter Sara Davenal. They met in a lonely place — the once-famed graveyard at the back of the Abbey.
His business for the day over, Oswald Cray was going to pay a visit to Mark and his wife. He was nearer the back of the Abbey than the front, and, ignoring ceremony, intended to enter by the small grated door, a relic of the old Abbey, which divided the graveyard from one of the long Abbey passages. In passing the tombstone already mentioned, Oswald turned his eyes down upon it: in the bright moonlight — for never had the moon been brighter — he could almost trace the letters: the next moment a noise in front attracted his attention — the closing of the grated door. There stood Sara Davenal. She had stayed with Mrs. Cray later than she intended, and was hastening home to dinner: in leaving the Abbey by this back entrance a few minutes of the road were saved.
They met face to face. Sara’s heart stood still, and her countenance changed from white to red with emotion. And Oswald? — all the love that he had been endeavouring to suppress returned in its deepest force.
Ah, it is of no use! Try as we may, we cannot evade the laws of nature; we cannot bend them to our own will. In spite of the previous resolutions of weeks to forget her, Oswald Cray stood there knowing that he loved her above everything on earth.
“How are you, Sara?”
He put out his hand to her in all calm self-possession; he spoke the salutation with quiet equanimity; but as Sara looked in his face she knew that his agitation was not in reality less than hers. She said a few confused words in explanation of her being there at that hour, and alone. On calling that afternoon she had found Caroline not well, and had stayed with her to the last moment, as Mark was in the country.
Then for a whole minute there was a silence. Perhaps neither could speak. Sara put an end to it by turning towards the gate.
“You will let me see you home, as you are alone?”
“No, thank you,” she answered. “There is nothing to hurt me. It is as light as day.”
He did not press it He seemed half-paralysed with indecision. Sara wished him good night, and he responded to it, and once more shook hands, all mechanically.
But as she was going through the gate, she turned to speak, a question having occurred to her. One moment longer, and he had arrested her progress.
“There are two or three books at our house belonging to you,” she said. “What is to be done with them? Shall they be sent to the ‘Apple Tree?’”
He caught her hands; he drew her from the gate into the bright moonlight He could not let her go without a word of explanation; the cruelty of visiting upon her her father’s sin was very present to him then.
“Are we to part thus for ever, Sara?”
Surely that question was cruel! It was not she who had instituted the parting; it was himself She did not so much as know its cause.
“May we not meet once in a way, as friends?” he continued. “I dare not ask for more now.”
That he loved her still was all too evident And Sara took courage to gasp forth a question. In these moments of agitation the cold conventionalities of the world are sometimes set aside.
“What has been the matter? How have we offended you?”
“You have not offended me,” he answered, his agitation almost irrepressible. “I love you more than I ever did; this one moment of meeting has proved it to me. I could lay down my life for you, Sara; I could sacrifice all, save honour, for you. And you? You have not changed? — you love me still?”
“Yes,” she gasped, unable to deny the truth, too miserable to care to suppress it.
“And yet we must part! we must go forth on our separate paths, striving to forget But when our lives shall end, Sara, we shall neither of us have loved another as we love now.”
Her very heart seemed to shiver; the fiat was all too plainly expressed. But she stood there quietly, waiting for more, her hand in his.
“I would have forfeited half my future life, I would have given all its benefits to be able to call you mine. The blow upon me has been very bitter.”
“What blow?” she murmured.
“I cannot tell it you,” he cried, after a struggle. “Not to you can I speak of it.”
“But you must,” she rejoined, the words breaking from her in her agony. “You have said too much, or too little.”
“I have — Heaven help me! Can you not guess what it is that has caused this?”
“N — o,” she faltered. But even as the word left her lips there rose up before Her the secret of that dreadful night — with the suspicion that Oswald had in some unaccountable manner become cognisant of it.
“I loved you as I believe man never yet loved, Sara; I looked forward to years of happiness with you; I expected you to be my wife. And — and — I cannot go on!” he broke off, “I cannot speak of this to you.”
The tears were rolling down her pale face. “You must not leave me in suspense, Oswald. It may be better for us both that you should speak out freely.”
Yes, it might be better for them both; at any rate he felt that no choice was left to him now. He drew nearer to her and lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Is there no — Heaven pardon me for speaking the word to you, Sara! — disgraceful secret attaching now to — to your family? One which Would render it impossible for a man of honour to—”
He would not say more; he had said enough; and he felt the words to his heart’s core. Whatever pain they may have brought to her, they inflicted tenfold more upon him. With a low cry, she flung her hands before her face.
“Is it so, Sara?”
“It is. How did you hear of it?”
“No, no!” she broke forth in her pain. “It surely was not so bad as that They kept the details from me, Oswald; but it could not have been so bad as that.”
The words fell on his heart like an ice-bolt. Unconsciously to himself he had been hoping that she might disprove the tale. For that purpose he had whispered to her of the worst: but it seemed that she could not deny it. It was quite enough, and he quitted the subject abruptly.
“God bless you, my darling, for ever and for ever,” he said, taking her hands in his. “I do not respect or love you less; but I cannot — I cannot — you know what I would say. It is a cruel fate upon me, as upon you; and for the present, for both our sakes, it may be better that our paths in life should lie apart. After awhile we may meet again, as friends, and continue to be such throughout life.”
The tears had dried on her face, as it was lifted in the moonlight, its expression one living agony. But there was no resentment in it; on the contrary, she fully justified him. Her hands lingered in his with a farewell pressure, and she strove to re-echo the blessing he had given.
They parted, each going a different way. Oswald Cray, in no mood for the Abbey now, struck off towards the “Apple Tree;” Sara, drawing her veil over her face, went on to her home.
And so the dream was over. The dream which she had long been unconsciously cherishing of what a meeting between them might bring about, was over; and Sara Davenal had been rudely awakened to stem reality.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A SPECIAL FAVOUR FOR NEAL.
THE whole night subsequent to the meeting in the Abbey graveyard with Oswald Cray, did Sara lie awake, striving to battle with her pain. It was very sore to bear. She knew now the cause of his absenting himself; and she knew that they were lost to each other for ever. It is the worst pain that a woman can be called upon to endure; no subsequent tribulation in life can equal its keen anguish.
Ten times in the night she prayed for help — for strength to support, and live, through her mind’s trouble. She did not pray that it might be taken from her; that was hopeless; she knew that weeks and months must elapse before even the first brunt would lose its force; that years must roll on before tranquillity could come.
She did not blame Oswald Cray. She believed that that unhappy secret, of the precise nature of which she was yet in ignorance, had become known to him: how, she could not conjecture. Perhaps he knew it in all its terrible details — and that these were terrible, she doubted less now than ever. Were they not — ay, she fully believed it? — shortening her father’s life? What had been that awful word spoken by Oswald Cray? — though she could not believe it to be so bad as that. But she knew that it was something to bring disgrace and danger in its train; and she fully justified Oswald Cray in the step he had taken. Still she thought that he should have come to her in the first onset and plainly said, Such and such a thing has come to my knowledge, and therefore we must part. He had not done this; he had left her for weeks to the slow torture of suspense — and yet that very suspense was more tolerable than the certainty now arrived at. Oh, the dull dead pain that lay on her heart! — never for a long, long while to be lifted from it She strove to reason calmly with herself; she essayed to mark out what her future course should be. She knew that there was nothing at present but to bear her burden and hide it from the world’s eye; but she would do her duty all the same, Heaven helping her, in all the relations of life; she would strive nobly to take her full part in life’s battle, whatever the inward struggle.
There is no doubt that in that night of tribulation she looked at the future in its very darkest aspect It was well, perhaps, that it should be so, for the horizon might dear a little as she went on. That Mr. Oswald Cray would in time marry, she had no right to doubt — a word or two of his had almost seemed to hint at it: man forgets more easily than woman.
Towards morning she dropped into a heavy sleep, and had slept longer than usual. This caused her to be late in dressing, and brought upon her the reproof of punctual Miss Bettina. She looked at herself in the glass ere she went down; at her pale face, her heavy eyelids; hoping, trusting they would escape observation. What a happy thing it is that others cannot read our faces as we read them!
Miss Bettina was at the head of the breakfast-table. She was suffering from a cold; but, ill or well, she was sure to be at her poet; and Dr. Davenal stood at the fire, his elbow on the mantelpiece, his forehead leaning on his hand.
Sara went up to him, and he seemed to rouse himself from a reverie as he kissed her. She noticed how ill he looked.
“Papa, I am sure you are worse!”
“I don’t feel very well, child.”
“If you would but stay at home for a day or two and nurse yourself!”
“Ah! I have not time. There’s a great deal of sickness about, and my patients must not be neglected.”
“Mark Cray can attend to them.”
“To the light cases he could. Not the serious ones; I wouldn’t trust them to him.”
“Not trust them to him?” echoed Sara.
The surprised tone of the question aroused Dr. Davenal; he had spoken out too heedlessly his real thoughts. “People dangerously ill have naturally more confidence in me than in a young man,” he said, by way of doing away with the impression his avowal might make.
They took their places at the breakfast-table, neither of them able to eat; the doctor from sickness of body, for he was really ill; Sara from sickness of mind.
“Aunt Bettina, I tell papa he ought not to go out to-day.”
“Not going out to-day?” repeated Miss Bettina. “Why not? What’s he going to do, then?”
“I say he ought not to go out He is not well enough.”
Miss Bettina heard this time. She raised her eyes and gazed at the doctor. It was impossible not to see that he did look ill. “What’s the matter with you, Richard?”
“It is only my cold,” said the doctor. “It has settled here,” touching his chest “That’s just where mine is settling,” grimly returned Aunt Bettina.
“Papa’s eating nothing,” said Sara.
“As if I could eat, with the skin off my throat and chest!” retorted Miss Bettina, mistaking the words, as usual. “It seems that nobody’s eating this morning; you are not: we might as well not have had the breakfast laid. Toast was made to be eaten, Miss Sara Davenal, not to be wastefully crumbled into bits on the plate. I suppose you have not got a cold?”
Sara began to pick up the crumbs and the pieces, and to swallow them as she best could. Anything to escape particular observation.
“I wonder how Mrs. Cray is this morning?” she presently observed, having ransacked her brains for a subject to speak upon. Miss Bettina heard all awry.
“Oswald Cray! Why should you wonder how he is? Is he ill?”
“I said Mrs. Cray, aunt and she would have given much to hide the sharp bright blush that the other name brought to her face. “I told you last evening Caroline was not well. I think you always mistake what I say.”
“No, I don’t mistake. But you have got into a habit of speaking most indistinctly. My belief is, you did say Oswald Cray. He is in town,” fiercely added Miss Bettina, as if the fact strengthened her proposition.
“Yes, he is in town,” assented Sara, for her aunt was staring so very fixedly at her that she felt herself obliged to say something. “At least he was in town yesterday.”
“Where did you see him, Sara?” asked the doctor.
“I met him as I was leaving the Abbey last evening, papa,” she replied, not daring to look up as she said it.
“I met him yesterday also,” observed Dr. Davenal. “He was passing the gate here just as I was about to step into the carriage. He is a puzzle to me.”
Miss Bettina bent her ear. “What’s a puzzle to you, doctor?”
“Oswald Cray is. I had the very highest opinion of that man. I could have answered for his bei
ng the soul of honour, one entirely above the petty prejudices of the world in ordinary. But he has lost caste in my eyes: has gone down nearly cent per cent.”
“It’s his pride that’s in fault,” cried Miss Bettina. “He’s the proudest man living, old Sir Philip of Thorndyke excepted.”
“What has his pride to do with it?” returned the doctor. “I should say rather his selfishness. He has chosen to take umbrage at Lady Oswald’s having left her money to me; and very foolish it was of her, poor thing, to do it! But why he should visit his displeasure—”
“He has not taken umbrage at that, papa,” interrupted Sara.
“Yes, he has,” said Dr. Davenal. “I spoke to him yesterday of the will, and he declined in the most abrupt manner to hear anything of the matter. His tone in its haughty coldness was half insulting. Why he should have taken it up so cavalierly, I cannot conceive.”
Sara remained silent. She did not again dare to dissent, lest Dr. Davenal should question her more closely. Better let it rest at that; far better let it be thought that Mr. Oswald Cray had taken umbrage at the disposal of the property, than that the real truth should be known.
“I suppose Oswald Cray felt hurt at not being left executor to the will,” sagely remarked Miss Bettina. “As to the money, I never will believe that he, with his independent spirit, wanted that.”
“He wants his independent spirit shaken out of him, if it is to show itself in this offensive manner,” was the doctor’s severe remark. “What did he say to you, Sara?”
“Say — ?” she stammered, the remembrance of what had really been said between them occurring startlingly to her.
Dr. Davenal noted the hesitating words, he noted the crimsoned cheeks; and a doubt which had once before risen up within him, rose again now. But he let it pass in silence.
“Does he intend to come here again, Sara?” asked Miss Bettina.