by Ellen Wood
She had looked for ruin, but not for criminal disgrace.
“And Mark can’t be found, you say?” she asked, her tone a shrill one.
“No.”
She sat down to the dinner-table, for the day had gone on to evening, despatching Neal for a fly while she ate a bit, and then she went out, taking Sara. “Grosvenor Place,” she said to Neal. And that observant domestic knew by the compressed lips, the clasped hands, the rigid head, how inwardly flurried was his mistress.
They found Caroline in a state of emotion, bordering upon hysteria. Fear, anger, perplexity, and despair, succeeding each other so rapidly that her mood may have been said to savour of the whole at once. Poor Caroline Cray knew nothing of either endurance or reticence; her anger against Mark was great at the present moment, and she gave way to it loudly.
“Where is he?” was the first pointed question of Miss Davenal.
“I don’t know where he is. He might have trusted me. It’s not his fault if the water has come into the mine, and he had no cause to go away; but if he had gone, he might have taken me. Barker has been down here in a dreadful passion, and says Mark was not a good fellow to steal a march on him and leave him alone all day to fight the battle with the shareholders. A hundred people, about, have been here after Mark, and it’s a shame that I should be left to hear all the remarks.”
“Is Oswald Cray with you?” asked Miss Bettina.
“Oh, my goodness, I don’t suppose he’ll come here again,” returned poor Caroline, half beside herself. “I thought him cold and queer in his manner to-day. Barker says he is vexed at losing his thousand pounds; and that Mark got two hundred more from him last night after he knew the mine had gone. Oswald said nothing to me, but of course he is incensed at it.”
Miss Davenal had been listening with her hand to her ear, and she heard pretty well. “Do you know the particulars of the calamity?” she asked. “Is the mine irretrievably ruined?”
“I don’t know anything, except that I’m fit to go mad,” she answered, beginning to sob like a petulant child.
In that one first moment of the blow Miss Davenal was generous enough to spare reproaches for all the folly of the past, though she had plenty at her tongue’s end. She had not sat down since she entered; she had stood rigid and upright; and when she went out to the fly she ordered it to Mr. Oswald Cray’s.
“Tell the man to drive quickly,” said Miss Bettina to Neal. “What do you say, Sara? Let you stop with Caroline? Caroline wants neither you nor me; I can see that There’ll be trouble over this.”
Mrs. Cray had not chosen an inapt word when she said Oswald must be incensed against Mark. It was precisely Oswald’s present state of feeling. He saw that the thousand pounds had been nothing but a stop-gap; not drawn from him for his own good and benefit as Mark so largely boasted, but for Mark’s own necessities. And as to the two hundred pounds of the previous night, the money of the firm — Oswald did boil over at the thought of that. Oh, why could not Mark have been upright and open I why could he not have gone to Oswald with the truth upon his lip, and said, Let me have this two hundred pounds in my dire necessity, and I will repay you when I can! Oswald was not the brother to refuse him.
Oswald had had a battle with himself. When he returned home after that scene in the city, feeling that his money, the twelve hundred pounds, was irretrievably lost, he sat down and thought. Should he cancel the offer made to Frank Allister to go out to Spain, and take the appointment himself, as at first intended? Was he justified in foregoing it, under this unexpected loss? The same considerations swayed him now as previously; his own interest versus Frank’s health, perhaps life; but how weighty a balance was now thrown into his own scale!
If ever Oswald had need of a better guidance than his own, he had need now. And he was conscious of it. He had many failings, as we all have; and his pride often stood in his way; but he had one great and good gift — a conscience that was ever prompting him on the upward way.
“No, I will not hesitate,” he said to himself. “ The necessity for Allister’s going remains the same, and he shall go. I must overget this other loss as I best can, though it may be years first, but I’ll not set my own interest against Allister’s life.”
And so Frank Allister and his sister received no countermand, and they proceeded to Mr. Oswald Cray’s that evening, to talk over arrangements, as it had been decided they should; and they never knew the sacrifice that had been made for them, or had the least suspicion that Mr. Oswald Cray had yielded up the appointment When Miss Davenal and Sara arrived, Mrs. Benn received them That errant husband of hers, and valued servant of the firm, was out again. This was not Mrs. Benn’s cleaning-day; but any little extra duty, though it was but the receiving a visitor at unusual hours, put her out excessively; and it was not usual for a levee of ladies to attend the house in an evening. She appeared at the door with the ordinary crusty face and a candle in her hand.
“Is Mr. Oswald Cray at home?” was Neal’s demand.
“Yes, he is,” returned Mrs, Benn, speaking as if the question injured her very much indeed.
Neal stepped back to the fly, and opened the door for the ladies to alight. Mrs. Benn stared at the proceedings with all her eyes.
“Well, if this don’t bang everything!” she ejaculated, partly to herself, partly to the street. “ If he was agoing to have a party tonight, he might have told me, I think. And that there Benn to go out, and never light the hall-lamp first! It cracks my arms to do it: a nasty, high, awk’ard thing! Will he be for ordering tea for ‘em, I wonder? when there ain’t nothing but a hot loaf in the house, and one pat o’ but—”
“Show me to Mr. Oswald Cray’s private rooms,” came the interrupting voice of Miss Davenal, as she entered.
“This way,” returned sulky Mrs. Benn; “there’s one of them there already.”
The “one of ‘em” must have applied to the assumed evening party, for in the sitting-room sat Jane Allister. Her bonnet was off, her shawl was unpinned; her fair face was serene and contented, as though she were in her own home. Miss Davenal bowed stiffly in her surprise, and the rebellious jealousy rose up in Sara’s heart.
“Is Mr. Oswald Cray not here?” asked Miss Davenal, halting on the threshold.
Jane Allister came forward with her good and candid face, and Miss Davenal’s reserved tone relaxed. “Mr. Oswald Cray is downstairs with my brother and another gentleman. They are settling some business together; I don’t think they will be long.”
Miss Davenal did not hear, but Sara repeated the words to her. They sat down; and Miss Allister, finding the elder lady was deaf, took her seat by Sara. —
“I came here to-night to settle particulars about our Spanish journey,” explained Jane Allister, as if in apology for being found there. “I am going to live in Spain.”
Sara heard it as one in a dream. Oswald Cray was going to Spain for a lengthened residence: he had told her so when she was in that room a fortnight ago. If Jane Allister was going with him, why then, it must be that they were going to be married immediately.
Her face flushed, her brow grew moist. In a sort of desperation in her eager wish to know the worst at once, she turned to Jane Allister.
“Are you going with Mr. Oswald Cray?”
“I am going with my brother.”
“With — your — brother! And not with Mr. Oswald Cray?”
“No, surely not How could I go with Mr. Oswald Cray? It would not be proper,” she simply added.
“I — I thought — I meant as his wife,” said poor Sara, all confused in her heart sickness. “I beg your pardon.”
“As his wife! — Mr. Oswald Cray’s! Nay, but that is an unlikely thing to fancy. I am not suitable to Mr. Oswald Cray. Do you know him?
“O yes.”
“Then you might have been sure he’d not cast his thoughts to a plain body like me. Why should he? I am not his equal in position. He has been a brother to Frank, and I reverence him beyond any one I know as a good
and true friend. That’s all.”
Why did her heart give a great bound of hope at the words, when she knew — when she knew that he was lost to her? Oswald Cray came bounding up the stairs, but a mist had gathered before Sara’s eyes, and she saw nothing clearly.
“Frank is waiting for you, Jane. He will not come up-stairs again.”
“Does he know about everything?”
“Everything, I think. We have discussed it all, and he will tell you. But he is coming again in the morning.”
Oswald had spoken as he shook hands with Miss Davenal. Another moment and they were alone together: the young Scotch lady had left the room.
“Mr. Oswald Cray, you must tell me all you know of this unhappy business, from beginning to end,” said Miss Davenal. “I have come to you for the information, and I beg you to conceal nothing. Is Mark Cray in danger?”
Oswald scarcely knew in what sense to take the word. He hesitated as he looked at Miss Davenal.
“How has it all come about? Let me hear the whole of it; the best and the worst. His wife professes to know nothing, and it was of no use my asking her. The water has got into the mine.”
“It is said to be overflowing it; but particulars are not ascertained yet,” replied Oswald, as he proceeded to speak of what he knew. it was not much, for he was nearly as much in the dark as they were. Miss Davenal listened with compressed lips.
At the conclusion of the interview, Oswald took Miss Davenal out to the fly upon his arm, placed her in it, and turned to Sara.
“The last time I saw you I had a journey in my head,” he said in a low tone; “I told you I was going to Spain.”
“Yes.”
“I am not going now. I have given up the idea. We shall send out a gentleman instead; my friend, Frank Allister. Goodnight; good-night, Miss Davenal.”
Severely upright in the carriage sat Miss Davenal, her countenance one picture of condemnation for the absent Mark. Only once did she open her lips to Sara opposite to her, and that was as the carriage turned out of the glare and gas of the more populous streets to the quiet one which contained their home.
“What would your brother Edward say to this, were he at home?”
What would he say to something else? As the carriage drew up to the door, a female figure was slowly pacing before it, as if in waiting. And Sara shrank into the remotest corner of the carriage with a shiver of dread, for she recognised her for the stranger, Catherine Wentworth.
CHAPTER L.
HARD USAGE FOR DICK.
Do you remember the severe weather of the Christmas of 1860? How for once we had an old-fashioned Christmas day, when the icicles hung bright and frozen from the trees, and the ponds were alive with skaters, after the manner of the Christmases we read of, of the days gone by. It was indeed a bitter winter, that at the close of 1860, and an unusual number of the poor and friendless, the sick and ailing, passed from its biting sharpness to a better world.
In the mind of one it almost seemed as though he had held some mysterious prevision of it; and that was Oswald Cray. When deliberating, the previous autumn, whether he should go to Spain himself, times and again had the thought recurred to him — what if we have a sharp winter? — how will Allister weather it? And now that the sharp winter, more terribly sharp than even Oswald dreamt of, had indeed come, he was thankful to have sacrificed his own self interest. In that more southern climate Allister would not feel the cold of this; and it almost seemed as if the thought alone brought to Oswald his reward.
“Isn’t it stunning, Aunt Bett?”
You will probably recognise the words as likely to emanate from nobody’s lips but Mr. Dick Davenal’s. Mr. Dick had arrived for the holidays; rather against the inclination as well as the judgment of Miss Bettina, but she did not see her way in courtesy to exclude him. Leopold had been in town with her since October, she and Sara nursing him; so it would have been unkind to keep Dick at school alone for the holidays. Miss Bettina said London was a bad place for Dick; he would be getting into all sorts of mischief: perhaps get run over, perhaps get lost; it was uncertain what: but Sara, in her love for the boy, promised to keep him in order and out of harm. A rash undertaking.
What of the Great Wheal Bang? The Great Wheal Bang was gone for ever! It had passed out ignobly, never probably to be heard of as a mine again, except in name at certain law courts, to which some of its angry shareholders persisted in bringing it Mr. Barker was abroad, and did not come home to face the storm; it appeared there was no law to force him home, the matters of the Wheal Bang just escaped that; and he carried on a free-and-easy correspondence with some of the exasperated shareholders, who told him to his face in their answers that he deserved hanging.
And Mark Cray? Mark Cray was nowhere. The defunct company did their best to find him, but, try as they would, they could not discover his hiding-place. They assumed he was out of the country, most probably with Barker, and perhaps their home search was, through that very assumption, less minute than it might have been. A run from danger is always more formidable than a faced one; and if Mark Cray had only faced those shareholders he would no doubt have found their bite less hurtful than their bark. That they were loud and threatening and angry, was true; but Mark would have done well to meet the worst, and get it over. The luxurious house in Grosvenor Place had been long ago abandoned by Mark and his wife; and so temporarily had it been lived in, so fleeting had been the enjoyment of the carriages, the servants, the society, and all the rest of the accessories, that altogether that time seemed only like a dream.
“Isn’t it stunning, Aunt Bett?”
Dick was standing at the dining-room window, his sparkling eyes devouring the ice in the streets, the tempting slides in the gutters A young gentleman who was coming to the house with a small tray of meat upon his back had just gone down one beautifully, and Dick longed to be behind him. Leo stepped to the window to look, and thought he should like it too; but Leo was not in strong health, as Dick was.
“Isn’t it what?” asked Aunt Bett, looking up quickly. “Raining?” —
“Stunning,” roared Dick.
“I wish you would learn to speak like a gentleman, Richard, and not use those expressions. If they do for school, they don’t do for home.”
“I have been oiling my skates this morning,” continued Dick. “They are rather short, but they’ll do.”
“Oiling what?”
“My skates.”
“What cakes?”
“Sk — a — tes, Aunt Bett Everything will bear to-day.”
“Nothing bears in London,” said Miss Bettina. “You must not try it, Richard. A great many boys are drowned every winter in the Serpentine.”
“What muffs they must be!” returned Dick; “Aunt Bett, the ponds would bear you, if you’d put on a pair of skates and try. They’d bear me a hundred times over.”
“Would they?” said Miss Bettina. She turned to Sara, who was busy at the table, and pointed with her finger to indicate Dick.
“I will not have him to go into this danger. Do you hear, Sara? You undertook to keep him out of harm, if he came to us; so see to it. Perhaps the best plan will be to lock up his skates. I don’t want to have him brought home drowned.”
Dick was resentful He might have broken into open rebellion but for fear of being sent back to enjoy his holidays at school He eat in a sullen sort of mood, on the edge of a chair, his hands in his pockets clicking their contents about, and his boots beating time restlessly on the carpet.
“How it’s all altered!” he exclaimed.
“How is what altered?” inquired Sara. They were alone then. Miss Bettina had gone from the room to give Leopold his eleven o’clock dose of strengthening medicine.
“Since Uncle Richard’s time. Why, he bought me those very skates last winter, when that frost came in November. That is, he sent word to school that I might have them. And then we had no more ice at all! and Uncle Richard kept wishing through the holidays there might be some for us! He’
d have let us skate.”
Sara was silent. Things had indeed altered since then.
“It’s an awful shame of Aunt Bett! The ice stunning thick, and a fellow can’t enjoy it! Drowned! She might get drowned herself perhaps, but I shouldn’t Uncle Richard would have let us skate in Hallingham!” added Dick, excessively resentful. “He wanted us to skate.”
“But I think it was a little different, Richard dear. Those ponds at Hallingham were not deep; and people do get drowned in the Serpentine. And there’s nobody to go with you.”
Dick tossed his head. “Perhaps you think I want somebody! You had better send a nursemaid. Fine holidays these are!”
A few minutes more of sitting still and Dick could stand it no longer. He darted into the passage and snatched his cap. Sara, quick as he, caught him with the street-door in his hand.
“Dick, it must not be. You know I have answered for you to Aunt Bettina.”
“All right, Sara. I’m not going near the Serpentine, or any other deep water.”
“You promise?”
“Yes; on my honour. There! Why, I have not got my skates. I’m going up and down the street-slides; that’s all. You can’t expect me to sit twirling my thumbs all day in Aunt Bett’s parlour, as Leo does.”
She had no fear then. If Dick once gave his honour, or if put upon his honour, he could but be a loyal knight Left to himself, no promise extracted from him, he would have decamped right off to the Serpentine, or to anything else mischievous and dangerous; but not now.
But Dick “took it out” — the words were his own — in street-slides. All the most attractive ruisseaux within a few miles of home Mr. Dick exercised his legs upon. It required a terrible amount of resolution to keep his promise not to “go near” the forbidden water; and how long Dick stood in envy, his nose frozen to the park railings as he watched the streams of people pouring towards the ice, he never knew. He was not in a good humour; the slides were very ignoble pastime indeed, only fit for street-boys; and he thought if there was one gentleman more ill-used than another that day in all Her Majesty’s dominions, that one was himself. —