by Ellen Wood
“It is already written. The mail has been gone a day or two.
O yes! it will be grievous news for Edward.”
The last two words were spoken in a tone of intense pain. She checked it, and began talking of her aunt, of Caroline, of anything; almost as if she doubted herself. She told him she had been out that day to see the two little boys. At length he rose to leave.
“Will you not stay and take some tea? I do not suppose my aunt will be long.”
He declined. He seemed to have grown more cold and formal. Until he took her hand in leaving, and then the tender tone of voice, the pleasant look of the eye shone out again.
“May Heaven be with you, Miss Davenal! — and render your future days happier than they can be just now. Fare you well! I hope to hear good news of you from time to time.”
Which was of course equivalent to saying that he should not be a visitor. She had not expected that he would be. He turned back ere he gained the door.
“If I can be of service to you at any time or in any way, I hope you will not hesitate to command me. Nothing would give me so much gratification as the being of use to you, should need arise.”
It was very polite, it was very kind, and at the same time very formal. Perhaps the strangest part throughout the interview to Sara’s ears was that when he had called her “Miss Davenal” for it presented so great a contrast to the past: the past which was at an end for ever.
He went out, shown through the hall by Jessy, and leaving his card on the standing waiter for Miss Davenal. All en règle. And Sara in the large drawing-room, so dreary now, remained on in her pain, alone.
CHAPTER XXXV.
MARK’S NEW PLANS.
IN the dining-room at the Abbey, in her black robes, sat Mrs. Cray at the head of her table, her elbow resting on it, and a pouting expression on her pretty face. Mark was at the foot, gobbling down his dinner with what haste he could. He had been detained so long beyond the dinner hour that Mrs. Cray in despair had eaten hers; and when Mark at length entered he found a cold face and a cold cutlet. Mrs. Cray was beginning to tire of the irregularity.
“I can’t help it, Carine,” he said, looking at her in a pause of his eating. “My work has been nearly doubled, you know, since the doctor died.”
“But it’s very tiresome, Mark!”
“It is. I am nearly sick of it.”
“It is not doubled, your work.”
“Well, no; one speaks at random. Some of the doctor’s older patients have left me: they think, I suppose, I am not sufficiently experienced. But I have a great deal to do just now; more, in fact, than I can attend to properly.”
Mark resumed his gobbling, and his wife watched him, her lips a little relaxing. Caroline Cray was one of those who must have all things go smoothly; she could not bear to be put out, even in trifles.
“Mr. Wheatley has been here, Mark,” she presently said.
“What did he want?”
“Well, he wanted to see you. Something about the selling of my uncle’s house.”
“He is losing no time,” observed Mark, acrimony in his tone. “I wonder he didn’t begin about it yesterday when we were there, hearing the will read. But what have I do with it?”
“He wants us to take the house — to buy it, I think.”‘
“I daresay he does,” retorted Mark, after a pause of surprise. “Where’s the money to come from?”
“There’s that money of mine. He said it would be a good investment.”
“Did he! I wonder what business it is of his! Carine, my dear, you and I are quite capable of managing our own affairs, without being dictated to.”
“Of course we are!” answered Carine, rather firing at the absent Mr. Wheatley, as this new view was presented to her.
Mark said no more just then. He finished his dinner, and had the things taken away. Then, instead of sitting down to his wine, his usual custom, he stood up on the hearth-rug, as though he were cold — or restless. Mark Cray had been reared to extravagance in a petted home, and looked for his wine daily, as surely as any old alderman looks for it. Oswald Cray, reared without a home, and to schoolboy fare, adhered still, in a general way, to the water to which he had been trained. Oswald’s plan was the most profitable, so far as the pocket was concerned, and the health too.
“I say, Carine, I want to go to London for a day.”
“To London?” echoed Carine, turning her chair to the fire, and facing Mark.
“There’s the grandest opening: there’s the grandest opening for a fortune to be made there. And — Carine — I think I shall quit Hallingham.”
Mrs. Cray’s violet eyes extended themselves in the extreme of wonder. She sat staring at him.
“Caroline, I hate the profession, and how I came ever to be such a fool as to go into it I cannot understand,” said Mark, throwing himself on a chair as he plunged into confidence. “So long as the doctor lived I could not well say anything about it; I did not see my way clear to do so. But things have altered now, and I think I shall give up the medical life.”
“But — good gracious, Mark! — I can’t understand,” exclaimed Caroline, in her bewilderment. “ If you give up your profession, you give up our means of living. We can’t starve.”
“Starve!” laughed Mark. “Can’t you trust me better than that? Look here, Caroline; let us come to figures. I don’t suppose I should clear at first above eight hundred a-year, or so, by the practice—”
“O, Mark!”
“Well, say a thousand for argument’s sake. Let us assume that I net it clear. It’s a nice income, no doubt, but I shall make three times that, if I go into the thing in London.”
Caroline, half doubting, half eager, all bewildered, sat waiting to hear more.
“There’s a splendid opportunity offered me if I give up the medical profession and embark altogether in a new line of life. I — you have heard me speak of my old chum Barker, have you not?” he broke off to ask.
“Barker?” she repeated. “ Yes, I think I remember the name. He got into some dreadful trouble, did he not, and was sent to prison?”
“Sent to prison! how you speak of things! All that’s over and done with. His friends were wretched screws, doing him out of money that ought to have come to him, and the consequence was that Barker got into the Queen’s Bench. Half the gentlemen of England have been there some time in their lives,” added Mark, loftily, as if he were just then deeming the thing an honour. “ Well, Caroline, that was over long ago, and Barker has now the most magnificent prospect before him that one can well imagine; he will be making his thousands and thousands a-year.”
“How is he going to make it?” asked Caroline.
“And he has offered me a share in it,” continued Mark, too eager to attend to irreverent questions. “He is one who knows how to stand by an old friend. Thousands a-year, it will be.”
“But, Mark, I ask you how he is going to make it?”
“It is connected with mines and pumping, and all that sort of thing,” lucidly explained Mark.
“Mines and pumping!”
“Caroline, dear, you cannot be expected to understand these things. Enormous fortunes are being made at them,” continued Mark, in a rapture. “Some of the mines yield fifty thousand pounds profit the first year of working. I declare when I first heard of Barker’s prospects I was fit to eat my fingers off, feeling that I was tied down to be a paltry pitiful country surgeon. Folks go ahead nowadays, Caroline. And, as Barker has generously come forward with the offer that I should join him, I think I ought to accept it in justice to you. My share the first year would be about three thousand, he computes.”
“But, Mark, do you mean to say that Mr. Barker has offered you three thousand a-year for nothing? I don’t comprehend it at all.”
“Not for nothing. I should give my services, and I should have to advance a certain sum at the onset. Talk about an investment for your money, Caroline, what investment would be equal to this?”
The words startled
her for the moment “I promised poor Uncle Richard that the money should be settled upon me, Mark. He said he urged it as much for your sake as mine.”
“Of course,” said Mark, with acquiescent suavity. “Where there’s nothing better to do with money it always ought to be so settled. But only look at this opening! Were your uncle Richard in life, he would be the first to advise the investment of the money in it. Such chances don’t happen every day. Caroline, I can’t and I won’t humdrum on here, buried alive and worked to death, when I may take my place in the London world, a wealthy man, looked up to by society. In your interest, I will not.”
“Are the mines in London?” asked Caroline.
“Good gracious, no! But the office is, where all the money transactions are carried on.”
“And it is quite a sure thing, Mark?”
“It’s as sure as the Bank of England. It wants a little capital to set it going, that’s all. And that capital can be supplied by your money, Caroline, if you will agree to it Hundreds of people would jump at the chance.”
An utter tyro in business matters, in the ways of a needy world, imbued with unbounded faith in her husband, Caroline Cray took all in with eager and credulous ears. Little more than a child, she could be as easily persuaded as one, and she became as anxious to realise the good luck as Mark.
“Yes, I should think it is what my uncle would advise were he alive,” she said. “And where should we live, Mark?”
“We’d live at the West End, Carine; somewhere about Hyde Park. You should have your open and close carriages, and your saddle-horses and servants — everything as it ought to be No end of good things may be enjoyed with three thousand a-year.”
“Would it stop at three thousand, Mark?” she questioned, with sparkling eyes.
“I don’t expect it would stop at twenty,” coolly asserted Mark. “How far it would really go on to, I’m afraid to guess. In saying three thousand, I have taken quite the minimum of the first year’s profits.”
“O Mark! don’t let it escape you. Write to-night and secure it How do you know but Barker may be giving it to somebody else?”
She was growing more eager than he. In her inexperience, she knew nothing of those miserable calamities — failure, deceit, fruition deferred. Not that her husband was purposely deceiving her; he fully believed in the good luck he spoke of. Mark Cray’s was one of those sanguine roving natures which see an immediate fortune in every new scheme brought to them — if it be only wild enough.
“How long have you known of this, Mark?”
“Oh, a month or two. But, as you see, I would not stir in it I should like to run up to town for a day to meet Barker; and, on my return, we’d set about the arrangements for leaving. There will be no more lonely dinners for you, Carine, once we are away from here. I shall not have to be beating about, all hours and weathers, from one patient’s door to another, or dancing attendance on that precious Infirmary, knowing that you are sitting at home waiting for me, and the meal getting cold.”
“O Mark, how delightful it will be! And perhaps you would never have risen into note, as my uncle did.”
“No, I never should. Dr. Davenal’s heart was in his profession, mine—”
Mark Cray stopped abruptly. The avowal upon his lips had been, “mine recoils from it.”
It was even so. He did literally recoil from his chosen profession. Unstable in all his ways, Mark had become heartily sick of the routine of a surgeon’s life. And since the affair of Lady Oswald a conviction had been gradually taking possession of him that he was entirely unfitted for it; nay, that he was incompetent To betray his incompetency, would be to lose caste for ever in the medical world of Hallingham.
Mark Cray rose from his chair again, and stood on the rug as before, pushing back his hair from his brow incessantly in the restlessness that was upon him. He was always restless when he thought of that past night; or of the certainty that he might at any time be called upon to perform again what he had failed in then. It was not altogether his skill he doubted, for Mark Cray was a vain and self-sufficient man; but he felt that the very-present consciousness of having broken down before would induce a nervousness that might cause him to break down again. Had it been practicable, Mark Cray would have taken flight from Hallingham and the medical world that very hour, and hid himself away from it for ever.
“It has become hateful to me, Carine!”
The words burst from him in the fulness of his thoughts. Both had been silent for some minutes, and they sounded quite startling in their vehemence. Mrs. Cray looked up at him.
“What do you mean, Mark? What has? The getting your meals so irregularly?”
“Yes,” said Mark, evasively. He did not choose to say that it was his profession which had become hateful to him, lest Mrs. Cray might inquire too closely why.
And, besides all this, had Mark been ever so successful in his practice, the vista opened to him of unlimited wealth (and he really so regarded it) might have turned a steadier head than his. His friend Barker had been Mark’s “chum” (you are indebted to Mark for the epithet) at Guy’s Hospital, and the intimacy had lasted longer than such formed intimacies generally do last. Mr. Barker was of the same stamp as Mark — hence, perhaps, the duration of the friendship; he had practised as a surgeon for a year or two, and then found it “too slow,” and had tried his hand at something else. He had been trying his hand at something else and something else ever since, and somehow the things had dropped through one after the other with various degrees of failure, one degree of which had been to land Mr. Barker within the friendly walls of a debtor’s prison. But he had come on his legs again; such men generally do; and he was now in high feather as the promoter of a grand mining company. It was this he had invited Mark to embark in; he wrote him the most glowing accounts of the fabulous sums of money to be realised at it; he believed in them himself; he was, I have said, exactly the same sort of man as Mark.
One little drawback had recently presented itself to Barker: a want of ready money. Mark, in his eagerness, offered the sum coming to his wife from the Chancery suit; they were expecting it to be paid over daily; and Mr. Barker was in raptures, and painted his pictures of the future in colours gorgeous as those of a Claude Lorraine. Caroline might have felt a little startled had she known Mark had already promised the money without so much as consulting her. But Mark had chosen to take his own time to consult her, and Mark was doing it now. Perhaps he had felt it might be more decent to let poor Dr. Davenal be put under the ground before he spoke of applying the money in a way so diametrically opposed to his last wishes.
He drew a letter from his pocket, one received that morning, and read out its glowing promises. Mr. Barker was evidently fervent in his belief of the future. Caroline listened as in a joyous dream: the imaginary scene then dancing before her eyes of their future greatness rivalled any of the scenes of fairyland.
“You see,” said Mark, “Barker — who’s that?”
The entrance of a visitor into the hall had caused the interruption. Caroline bent her ear to listen.
“It is Aunt Bettina!” she exclaimed. “I am sure it is her voice, Mark. Whatever brings her here to-night?”
Mark crunched the letter into his pocket again. “Mind, Caroline, not a word of this to her!” he exclaimed, laying his hand on his wife as she was rising. “It is not quite ready to be talked of yet.”
Miss Davenal entered at once upon the subject which had brought her — their quitting the Abbey for the other house. Mark understood she had come, as it were, officially; to fix time and place and means; and he had no resource but to tell her that he did not intend to enter upon it; did not intend to embark Caroline’s money in any such purpose; did not, in fact, intend to remain in Hallingham.
There ensued a battle: it was nothing else. What with Miss Davenal’s indignation and what with Miss Davenal’s deafness, the wordy war that supervened could be called little else. Caroline sat pretty quiet at first, taking her husband’s
side now and then.
“You tell me you are going to leave Hallingham, and you won’t tell me where you are going, or what you are going to do, Mark Cray!” reiterated Miss Davenal.
“I’ll tell you more about it when I know more myself.”
“But you can tell me what it is; you can tell me where it is. Is it at one of the London hospitals?”
“It is in London,” was Mark’s answer, allowing the hospital to be assumed.
“Then Mark Cray you are very wicked. And you” — turning to Caroline—” are foolish to uphold him in it. How can you think of giving up such a practice as this?”
“I am tired of Hallingham,” avowed Mark with blunt truth, for he was getting vexed.
“You are — what?” cried Miss Davenal, not catching the words.
“Sick and tired of Hallingham. And I don’t care who knows it.”
Miss Davenal looked at him with some curiosity. “Is he gone out of his senses, Caroline?”
“I am tired of Hallingham, too, aunt,” said Caroline, audaciously. “I want to live in London.”
“And the long and the short of it is, that we mean to live in London, Miss Bettina,” avowed Mark. “There. I don’t care that my talents should be buried in a poking country place any longer.”
She looked from one to the other of them; she could not take it in. Sharp anger was rendering her ears somewhat more open than usual.
“Buried! — a poking country place! And what of the twelve or fifteen hundred a-year practice that you would lightly throw away, Mark Cray?”
“Oh, I shall do better than that in London. I have got a post offered me worth double that.”
She paused a few momenta. “And what are you to give for it “Never mind that,” said Mark.
“Yes, never mind that,” rejoined Miss Bettina in a tone of bitter sarcasm. “When it comes to details, you can take refuge in ‘never mind.’ Do you suppose such posts are given away for nothing, Mark Cray? Who has been befooling you?’”
“But it will not be given for nothing,” cried Caroline, betrayed to the injudicious avowal by the partizanship of her husband. “The money that is coming to me will be devoted to it.”