Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Caroline, I insist that the money be settled upon you. Were you and Mark to waste it in nonsense, it would be nothing less than a fraud upon your West Indian relatives from whom it is derived. You may tell Mark so from me. That money, Carine, secured to you, would at least keep the wolf from coming quite in, should he ever approach your door.”

  Caroline sat aghast, wondering whether the doctor had lost his senses. “The wolf at the door for us, Uncle Richard. As if that could ever be.”

  “Ah, Carine, I have lived to know that there is no permanent certainty in the brightest lot,” he answered with a sigh. “My dear, more experience has been forced upon me in the past year or two than I had learned in the whole course of my previous life. Understand me once for all, this money must be secured to you.”

  “Very well, Uncle Richard,” she answered with ready acquiescence. “It shall be so, as you seem so much to wish it. I’ll tell Mark all you say.”

  A few minutes longer, and Caroline rose. Dr. Davenal was surprised that she should be going again so very soon, and looked inquiringly at her. “Can’t you stay a little longer, Caroline?”

  “I wish I could; but I shall hardly get back to dinner, and we expect some friends to-day. Good-night, Uncle Richard.”

  He drew her face down to his, murmuring his farewell. Little did Caroline Cray think it would be his last.

  Sara went out with her cousin, and saw her depart with the servant who had waited for her. When she returned to the chamber, the doctor was in deep thought “I think you must bring the table near to me again, Sara,” he said. “There’s another word or two I should like to write.”

  “Yes, papa. Do you want Edward’s letter?”

  “No, no; it’s not to him. There. Dip the pen in the ink for me.”

  It was a tacit confession of weakness that she did not like to hear; and she saw that even in the short space of time that had elapsed since he wrote before his strength had visibly declined. He was scarcely able to guide the pen.

  “That will do,” when he had traced a few lines. “Sara, should you have occasion to send this, enclose it in a note from yourself, explaining my state when I penned it; that I was almost past writing. Will you remember?”

  “Yes, papa,” she answered, her heart beating painfully at the words.

  “Fold it for me.”

  Honourable in all her thoughts and actions, Sara folded the note with the writing turned from her. It is just possible some children might have been sufficiently actuated by curiosity to glance at least at the name at the commencement of the note. Not so Sara Davenal. She placed it in an envelope and fastened it down.

  “I think I can direct it, Sara. Just the name.”

  She gave him the pen, and he traced the name in uneven, doubtful letters. Sara noted it with surprise, and perhaps her pulses quickened. “ O. Oswald Cray, Esquire.”

  “Put it in my desk with Edward’s, my dear. If you have occasion to send the one, you will the other.”

  As she unlocked the desk again her tears were raining down fast In all that her father was saying and doing there seemed to be a foreshadowing in his own mind of his approaching death. She quitted the room for a few minutes that her emotion might spend itself, and in the interval Miss Davenal entered. The soft rustling of Miss Bettina’s sweeping silks aroused the doctor, who had fallen into a dose. She went up and took his hand.

  “Richard, how are you to-night?”

  “I hardly know. Middling.”

  “Sara is fancying you are not so well.”

  “Is she?”

  “But she always was given to fancies, you know. Is it right that you should sit up so long the first time of leaving your bed?”

  “Yes, I like the change. I was tired of bed. Sit down, Bettina. There are one or two things I want to say to you.”

  “Are you finding yourself worse?”

  “Bettina, I have not been better.”

  “The doctors have thought you so,” she said, after a pause.

  “Ay, but I know more of my own state than they can tell me. When the suffering and its signs passed, they leaped to the conclusion that the disease had left me. In a measure, so it has, but they should have remembered in how many of such cases the apparent improvement is all deceit, the forerunner of the end.”

  Bettina Davenal fully understood the words and what they implied. But she was not a demonstrative woman, and the rubbing together of her white and somewhat bony hands was the sole sign of the inward aching heart “And I am thankful for the improvement,” added the doctor. “It is not all who are permitted this freedom from pain in their dying hours.”

  “O Richard! is there no hope?”

  “I fear not,” he gravely answered. “I am accustomed to impress upon my patients the great truth that while there is life there is hope, and I should be worse than a heathen to ignore it in my own case. But, all I can say is, I cannot trust to it.”

  She had laid one of her hands upon the folds of the dressing-gown, and the doctor could feel the twitching of the fingers. He had asked her to sit down, but she preferred to stand. Close to him, with her head bent, she could hear his low words without much misapprehension, so deliberately were they spoken between the panting breath. —

  “Bettina, I don’t go to my grave as I thought I should have gone, providing for my children. I have been obliged to sacrifice all I had put by. It was not a great deal, it’s true, for I am but what’s called a middle-aged man, and my expenses have been high. Could I have foreseen my early death, I should have lived at half the rate. And this sacrifice will not die with me. The house — I daresay I shall shock you, Bettina — is mortgaged; not, however, to its full value. I have directed in my will that it shall be sold; and the residue, after the mortgage is paid — can you hear me?” he broke off to ask.

  “Every word.”.

  “The residue and the proceeds of the furniture, and those two small cottages of mine, and other effects which will be likewise sold, will make a fair sure. There’s money owing to me in the town, too. Altogether I expect there will not be much less than three thousand pounds—”

  “Richard!” shrieked out Miss Bettina, in her emotion. “Three thousand! I thought you were worth ten at least.”

  “No, it was not so much as that altogether. I had four or five thousand put by. Never mind: I say I have had to sacrifice it. I feel how imprudent I have been, now that it is too late.”

  “To what have you had to sacrifice it?”

  The doctor paused before he replied. “A sudden claim came upon me of which I knew nothing: a claim for thousands. No, Bettina, I know what you wish to say — believe me, I could not resist it: to pay it was obligatory. The worst is, I could not pay it all: and the sum which the property will realise will have to be applied to liquidate it.”

  “But you can tell me what the claim was for?”

  “No, I cannot. It is not altogether my secret, Bettina, and you must not inquire into it. I need not have mentioned it at all to you, but for speaking of Sara. My poor children must suffer. Edward has his pay, and he will have to make it suffice: Sara has nothing. Bettina, you will give her a home?”

  “There’s no necessity for you to ask it,” was Bettina Davenal’s answer. But she spoke crossly; for the want of confidence in not intrusting to her the nature of this secret was hurting her feelings bitterly. “Should anything happen to you, Sara will naturally find a home with me — if she can put up with its plainness. I shall make her as welcome, and consider it as obligatory on me to do so, as though she were my own child.”

  The doctor lay back for a moment in his chair, panting. His fingers clasped themselves over hers in token of thanks.

  “Richard, surely you might place more confidence in me! If you have been called upon to pay this money in consequence of — of any bygone trouble or debt contracted in your youth — and I conclude it must be something of that sort — do you suppose I cannot be true and keep your counsel? I know what follies the young plunge in
to!”

  “Follies? Crimes, rather!” And the words broke from Dr. Davenal with a groan which told of the deepest mental anguish. It pained even the dull ear that was bent to it.

  “Bettina, I say that you must not ask me. If it concerned myself alone you should know as much as I do, but I could not tell you without betraying another; and — and there might be danger. Let it rest. Better for you that it should do so, for it would disturb your peace as it has disturbed mine.”

  “It’s a dreadful sum,” said Miss Bettina.

  “It is that. And my poor children must be left beggars. I have enjoined Mark Cray to pay three hundred pounds yearly to Sara for five years, out of the proceeds of the practice. He can well afford to do it: and if you will give her a home, this had better be invested for her, Bettina.”

  “Of course. But what’s three hundred for five years? You might make better terms with Mark Cray than that.”

  “Mark has promised faithfully to do it I have been talking with him this afternoon about that and other things. I asked him what sum he would feel inclined to pay to Sara out of the business, and for what term. He said he thought he could give three hundred a-year, and would continue it for five years.”

  “Considering all things, it is not a very generous offer,” persisted Miss Bettina. “Had your life been spared, Mark could not have expected to step into the whole of the practice these twenty years.”

  “It is very fair, I think, Bettina. Mark must acquire experience, remember, must work his way up to the public confidence, before people trust him as they have trusted me. He will not have his rooms filled daily with patients at a guinea a head. This has come upon me suddenly, or all things might have been managed differently. I think it would be a good plan for Mark to leave the Abbey for this house; I have told him so; but he will be the best judge of that.”

  Miss Bettina quitted her stooping posture by the doctor and sat down, revolving all that had been said. She sat slowly rubbing her hands the one over the other, as was her habit when anything troubled her.

  “I cannot realise it,” she said, in a half whisper, “Richard, I cannot realise it Surely you are not going from us!”

  “I am but going to those who have preceded me, Bettina,” he answered. “My wife, and Richard, and others, who have gone on before, are waiting for me, and I in my turn shall wait for you. This fretting life is over. How poor! — how poor!” — he added more emphatically, as he clasped his hands—” do even its best interests now seem beside eternity!”

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  LAST HOURS.

  THE lamp was placed on a chest of drawers behind the chair of Dr. Davenal. It was getting on for ten o’clock. Quite time, as had been suggested to him, that he should be in bed; but he appeared unwilling to move. He felt easy, he said: and therefore he stayed on.

  The flickering light of the fire, now burning with a dull red heat, now bursting up into a blaze, threw its rays upon the chamber — destined, ere that night should close, to be a chamber of death, although they, the watchers, as yet suspected it not The light fell upon the simple bed at the far comer, destitute of hangings — for the doctor was a foe to curtains — upon the dwarf cabinet beside it, whose lower shelves enclosed a few choice books, upon the drawers, upon the dressing-table at the farther window, and upon the open space at this end where the fire was. The light fell on the doctor as he lay back in the gaudy dressing-gown, on the chair-pillow, one hand hanging down listlessly, the other fondly resting on the soft brown hair of his daughter.

  She sat on a footstool by his side, nestled close to him. Her head bowed down, for she had much ado to conceal and subdue her emotion, her hands clasped and laid upon his knee. The dread fear that he was dying rested on her heart; had come to it, as it seemed, by intuition. Not a word yet of this ominous dread had been spoken between them; each seemed to shrink from the task. But Sara strove to gather courage and strength, so that in his presence she might at least not give way.

  The doctor stretched out his disengaged hand and pointed to a china cup that stood on the table. Sara rose and brought it to him, and he took a few spoonfuls of the refreshment it contained.

  “Is not the fire getting low, my dear?” he asked, with a slight shiver.

  She rose and stirred it, brought forward the coal-box and put on fresh coal, and then took the hearth-brush and swept the bars and the hearth, making things comfortable.

  “Do you feel cold, papa?”

  “I think so,” he answered, with another shiver.

  “I am sure you would be better in bed. Shall I call Neal?”

  “Not yet Come and sit down again.”

  She took her place, nestling to him as before, and he fondly stroked her head with his feeble hand. It seemed to her that the hand grew feebler with every change, every fresh movement “I have a few things to say to you, my dear, and I had better say them now. I should not like to go to sleep with them unspoken.”

  Did he mean the sleep of death? Sara trembled inwardly: she hoped that she should retain sufficient strength, no matter at what cost to her feelings, not to tremble outwardly.

  “It was necessary that I should make a fresh will,” he began after a pause. “In the old will—”

  “O papa! surely you are not going from me!”

  Utterly unnerved, the words had broken from her in her misery. Dr. Davenal resumed in a tender, reasoning accent “I must have you brave, darling; just for a short while. Won’t you try and be so? You see I have only you to speak to, Edward being away. My strength may not last very long.”

  She understood him: that his strength might not hold out if she hindered him by giving way to emotion. The precious time! not much of it might be left to them. With a mighty effort of will, with an anguished sigh to Heaven for help, Sara Davenal outwardly grew still and calm.

  “Tell me all you have to tell, papa. I will try and be to you what Edward would have been.”

  “In the old will, made subsequent to the death of Richard, the chief part of what I had to leave was divided equally between you and Edward. Caroline — but it matters not to speak of her. In this new will, made now since this illness, all I die possessed of is bequeathed to you.”

  “To me!” she echoed, the injustice of the thing striking on her mind in the first blush of the words.

  “Do you think, after what has happened, that Edward could have any right to it?”

  She was silent. The doctor lay still for a few moments to gather breath. His voice was so weak that she could barely catch some of the words.

  “When Edward brought that ill upon us, which has gone wellnigh to kill me — which I believe in a measure has killed me, in so far as that it rendered my state of mind and body such that I have been unable to fight against what might otherwise have proved but a slight disorder — when he brought it upon us, I say, I had only one way open to me — to sacrifice my property and save him. All fathers might not have done it, though most would: but I believe few fathers love their children as I have loved mine. But to save him, I had not only to sacrifice my property, but also in a measure to sacrifice you.”

  “Papa,” she said, lifting her head, “I wish I might ask you something.”

  “Well — do so.”

  “If you would but trust me more entirely. When Edward came that night and you called me down, I learnt he was in some dangerous trouble; but I learnt no further. Since then nothing but fears have haunted me.”

  “And have they not haunted me?” echoed the doctor in a strange tone of pain. “The night stands out in my memory like a frightful dream. Think what it was. When I was lingering in that front room there, full of the trouble brought to me by the death of Lady Oswald, not yet cold, there came a tapping at the window, and I looked out and saw Edward. Edward, my son! — disguised, as may almost be said, for he did not care to be recognised in Hallingham; and in truth recognition might have been dangerous. ‘ Let me in quietly, father,’ he said, ‘I am in danger. Sara, were I to live to be an old
man, I could not forget the effect those words had upon me. I was unnerved that evening: the recent death of Lady Oswald and — and — its unhappy circumstances were as vividly before me as though it was being enacted then, and I was unnerved to a degree not usual. He wore a cap on his head, — and a plaid scarf very much up about his neck, in fact just as any gentleman might travel, but I had not been accustomed to see Edward so dressed. His voice, too, was hushed to a warning tone. ‘Let me in quietly, father. I am in danger.’ In the first confused moment I declare I thought of some threatened danger in the street — that some wild animal was running loose: strange ideas do occur to one in these sudden moments. I let him in, and he began hurriedly to tell me that he did not want his visit to be known, for he was absent from quarters without leave; nay, in defiance of leave, which had been denied to him as inconvenient to be granted in the hurried period of the regiment’s departure. But he was compelled to see me, he continued, and — then — he told me all.”

  “Told you what, papa?” she whispered, when the doctor’s moan of reminiscence had died away.

  “Of the awful position into which his folly had plunged him. Of the crime that he had committed, and which, if not hushed up, bought up, one may say, would in a few days find him out Sara, Sara! men have been hung for that same crime in days not so long gone by.”

  He, the unhappy father, stopped to wipe from his face the dews that had gathered there. It was an awful tale for a father to tell; it was more awful for him to have heard it Sara shivered: she did not dare to interrupt by a single word.

  “My gallant son, of whom I had been so proud! Youth’s follies had been his in plenty; vanity, extravagance, expenditure, bringing debt in their train, which I had satisfied, more than once, over and above the handsome allowance I made him. But crime, never. Sara, when that night was over, I felt that I would rather die than live it over again, with its sudden lifting of the curtain to pain and shame.”