by Ellen Wood
And this was the golden bait that had laid tempting hold on Mark. Perhaps to a man “under his present circumstances,” as Mr. Barker put it, it did look favourable. Estimating things by comparison, it looked more than well. That one present room he was in, the dinnerless days, the blue spectacles, and all the rest of the little disagreeables you have heard hints of, were things to be flown from with the fleetest wings, if they could be exchanged for the position of a flourishing doctor in Honfleur. Mark was on his exalted ropes again, and his wife seemed to have thrown off her sorrow and her ailments.
The first consideration was money. This desirable place could not be reached without some. Even sanguine Mark allowed that Just a little, to allow of their getting there, and a pound or so to pay for lodgings, and carry them on until his patients came in. He and his wife were deep in the difficulties of the matter when Sara interrupted them. She had Come to tell Caroline of her ill-success with Oswald Cray.
But Caroline was in no mood to listen to aught that savoured of non-success, and Sara’s news was overwhelmed with the other.
Barker’s letter was read to her, and Mark enlarged upon it in his sanguine strain.
“I knew something would turn up,” said he. “Barker’s a right good fellow not to keep it himself. Those continental towns are charming, if you can put up with the sameness: of course they get a little same after a time. Not all of them, though. We stopped three months in Boulogne once, before my father’s death, and were sorry to come away from it. Only think how this will set Carine up, after all the late bother.”
“I fear Honfleur is a small place to support a medical man,” observed Sara, who could look at the proposal more dispassionately than the other two.
“It’s a lovely place,” fired Mark. “Barker says so. It’s renowned in history. If the places he mentions are not of note, I’d like to know what are. History tells us that? Why, it was from Harfleur that the children of one of the kings set sail and were overtaken by a storm and drowned, and the poor old father never was seen to smile again. I’m sure I remember having to learn that in my history. Honfleur a small place! Not support a doctor! You must be saying it for the purpose, Sara!”
“Well, Mark, I don’t think it is large.; but what I meant was, support an English doctor. Are there enough English living there to do that?”
“Of course there are,” returned Mark, whose sanguine mood resented nothing more than a check. “Would Barker say there was an opening if there wasn’t?”
She could have retorted that Barker had no more judgment than Mark; but it was utterly useless, and she held her tongue. Besides, she did hope that Mark might pick up some practice, and any change seemed an improvement upon the present state of things.
It seemed that there was only Oswald to apply to in the difficulty, and Sara was asked to do it. She declined. Upon which Caroline, in a defiant spirit — for she was angry with her — said she would go to him herself.
She kept her resolution. At the dusk of evening, not before, Caroline Cray took her way to Parliament Street, her step quick, her mood defiant still; not defiant against anybody in particular, but against the whole world save herself and Mark.
But when she came in view of the house she slackened her pace, going on slowly and cautiously, as one who wishes to reconnoitre the ground beforehand. What was she afraid of? Of meeting any of the wrathful shareholders of the Great Wheal Bang? If so, it was surely a singular coincidence that one of them should at that very moment be at Oswald Cray’s door.
He was being shown out by a lady in an inverted bonnet, if the term may be held applicable — brim downwards, crown upwards. Caroline recognised him at once as a Major Pratt, rather an extensive shareholder. Some acquaintanceship had sprung up between him and Mark, and the Major had dined twice in Grosvenor Place. Mrs. Cray shrank into the shade, and drew her veil tighter over her face. He passed without seeing her, and Mrs. Benn, after taking a look out up and down the street, gave the door a bang after him.
Suffering a few moments to elapse, Caroline went to the door and knocked at it. Mrs. Benn had just reached her kitchen, and it went very much against the grain of that amiable lady’s temper to have to go up again. Flinging open the door, she confronted the applicant, opposition written in every line of her face, in every movement of her working arms, bared to the elbow.
“I want to see Mr. Oswald Cray.”
“You want to see Mr. Oswald Cray!” repeated Mrs. Benn, the tight and disguising veil completing her ire. “Well, that’s modest! When folks come here they ask if they can see him — and that’s pretty bold for young women. What might you want, pray?”
“I want him,” angrily returned Caroline. “Is he at home? If so, show me into his presence.”
Something in the refinement of the voice, in its tone of command, struck on the ear of Mrs. Benn. But she was at warfare with the world that evening, and her prejudices were unconquerable.
“I don’t know about that The other night a lady walked herself here, as bold as could be, and said she wanted to see Mr. Oswald Cray; and when I let her go in, it turned out that she had got some smuggled cambric handkechers to sell, and she kept worriting of him to buy for five-and-twenty minutes. ‘Mrs. Benn,’ says he to me afterwards in his quiet way, ‘I don’t want them sort of people showed in to me.’ But how be I to know one sort from —— —— Oh, so it is you, is it, Joe Benn? I wonder you come home at all, I do! You have been two mortal half-hours gone, and nothing but visitors a-tramping in and out Perhaps you’ll attend to ‘em.”
Caroline turned instinctively to the respectable-looking man who approached the door. “I wish to see Mr. Oswald Cray. My business is of importance.”
“Certainly, ma’am. Is Mr. Oswald Cray alone?” he asked of his wife.
“Yes, he is alone. And I should think he’d like to remain alone, if only for a moment’s peace and quiet He can’t get no rest at his work, any more than I can at mine.”
She stood before Oswald with her veil thrown back, her face working with emotion, her hands clasped. The table was between them. Benn had closed the door after showing her in, and Oswald, who was busy over some tracings, rose and stared in very astonishment She gave a summary of her business in a rapid, breathless manner, as if fearing there would be no time left to tell it in. Mark had at length an opening of escape from the present misery, if he could only be helped to embrace it A surgeon was wanted at Honfleur, and the place was offered to him.
Oswald pressed her to a chair, sat down, and questioned her.
“Why does not Mark come forward and show himself?” he presently asked.
“Come forward and show himself!” she repeated. “What, and get put into prison?”
“He must come, sooner or later. He cannot remain a proscribed man all his life. What end has he in view by remaining concealed! What does he promise himself by it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But Mark ought to know. He must be aware that there’s an imperative necessity for his coming forward; that it is a thing there is no escaping. What does he wait for?”
“He says he wants the storm to blow over first.”
“The storm will not blow over. Were Mark to hide himself for ten years, and then appear, it would only raise itself again. The very best thing that he can do is to appear and face it.”
“Then he never will — at least, not yet awhile. And, Oswald, I don’t think you are a brother if you can wish him to do it But I did not come here to discuss that” she added. “I came to ask if you would lend me — me, not Mark — the trifle necessary to take us over the water. I will pay you back again if I have to save it up by sixpences.”
She betrayed more restlessness of manner than Oswald had ever observed. Since her entrance she had been incessantly taking off and putting on the left-hand glove. He thought her changed. Her face looked worn, her eyes anxious.
“It would be doing you no kindness, Mrs. Cray. Believe me, the only plan open to Mark is to come forwar
d and meet the company. His stopping away makes things worse. Major Pratt was here just before you came in, asking if I could give him news of Mark I am tempted to wish often that I had no connection with him. Tell him to face this.”
“I will not tell him,” she answered, her cheeks crimson, her violet-blue eyes shining with a purple light “If you will not advance me these poor few pounds that I plead to you for there’ll be nothing for us but to lie down and die. I have not” — she paused, struggling with her emotion—” I have not had a proper meal these three months; I feel often sick with want Sometimes I wish I was with Uncle Richard.”
Oswald hesitated, whether to ring at once for refreshment or to wait until her emotion had spent itself! He compassionated her with his whole heart “What would ten or twenty pounds be to you?” she resumed. “Ten might take us there; twenty would seem like a fortune. Won’t you give us a chance of life?”
“It is not the money I think of; it is not indeed, Mrs. Cray. But Mark ought not to go to Honfleur while these clouds are hanging over him.”
“Let me have the money,” she pleaded; “let me have it I don’t want you to give it me to-night, only to promise it to me. Uncle Richard would have done as much for you.”
What was he to do? What would you have done, my reader? Upright, honourable, just though he was, he did not resist those tearful eyes, those pleading hands, and he promised her the money that would carry Mark Cray farther and farther away from his creditors.
“And now what will you take?” he asked, ringing the bell.
“Nothing. I don’t think I am as strong as I was; and in moments of excitement I feel unable to touch bit or drop. Wine? no, I am not strong, I say; I am not used to wine now; only half a glass of it, and I should hardly walk home.”
He did not intend that she should walk, he told her; and he induced her to take a very little wine, but she could not eat. Then he gave her his arm down-stairs.
Mrs. Benn met them in the hall. Caroline hastily drew her veil over her face, but not before the woman had caught a glimpse of her features. Oswald let himself out at the door, and shut it after him, and Mrs. Benn backed against the wall to recover her amazement.
“Mrs. Cray! — his brother’s wife! them that are in hiding! And the last time she was here it was in a coach and four, as may be said, with her feathers in her bonnet and her satins on her back! What a world this is for change — and work! Yes she have just gone out, that there lady, Joe Benn, and the master with her. And you not up to open the door!”
CHAPTER LIII.
A NEW HOME.
IT was an exquisite scene; one of the very prettiest in Normandie. The old town, with its aged and irregular buildings rising one over the other like hanging gardens; the large expanse of water, clear as a sheet of glass, bright with the early sun, stretching out underneath as far as the eye could see; the hills on the right, with their clustering trees and their winding road, leading to the nestling houses in the village of St Sauveur; Harfleur opposite, standing as a background to the plain of crystal, with its old castle (or what looks like one) conspicuous, and its gentle mounts green and picturesque; Havre lying next it almost side by side, with its immensity of buildings and its long harbour; — these were what may be called the prominent parts of the canvas, but were you looking at it you might find the minuter points of the filling-in even more interesting. The whole made a magnificent tableau, which, once seen, must rest upon the charmed mind for ever.
The Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, situated at one end of the town, was perhaps the best spot in all Honfleur for admiring this panorama — unless, indeed, you mounted the heights above. Standing in one of the end rooms of this hotel on the second floor, whose windows commanded two sides of view, the town and the water, was a gentleman whom you have met before. You could not have mistaken it for anything but a French room, with its bare floor, its tasty curtains, and its white-covered chairs. The tables had marble tops, hard and ugly, but the piano opposite to the fireplace was of tolerable tone.
It was the best of the two sitting-rooms in the hotel; better than the one on the first floor underneath, because these windows were low and cheerful, and those were high and grim. This room and a chamber into which it opened (whose intervening door could never be got to shut, and if shut couldn’t be got to open) looked right over to Harfleur. For the matter of that the room opened into two chambers, but the one was closed up just now, and we have nothing to do with it. Like most French rooms, it seemed made up of doors and windows.
The gentleman standing at the window was Mark Cray. Resident at Honfleur more than a month now, this was the first time he had been called in to see a patient. A traveller had been taken ill at the Cheval Blanc in the middle of the night, had asked if there was an English doctor in the place, and Mark was summoned.
It was rather a serious case, and Mark had not left him yet The door between the rooms was open, but Mark kept as still as a mouse; for the patient, he hoped, was dropping into a doze. Mark had occupation enough, looking out on the busy scene. It was high tide, and the harbour, close on which the hotel was built, was alive with bustle, Fishing-boats were making ready to go out; fishing-boats were tiding in, bearing their night’s haul. The short pier underneath had quite a crowd on it for that early hour; women with shrill tongues, men with gruff ones, who were waiting to tow in a merchant vessel drawing near; idlers only looking on, — their babel of voices came right up to Mark, and had he been rather more familiar with the Norman tongue he might have known what all the gabbling was about. A quiet wedding-party, three men and three women, were taking a walk on the pier, two and two, after the performance of the early ceremony; or perhaps it had been performed the previous day, and this one was the continuance of the holiday, — one never knows; the gala caps on the women’s heads — such caps as we may see in pictures — flapped out their extraordinary wings: a sober, middle-aged, well-conducted wedding-party of humble life. They probably came, Mark thought, from some few miles inland, where the water and the boats were not everyday objects, as at Honfleur, for their interest in these seemed intense. Every minute there was something new, as is sure to be the case with a full tide at early morning: now, an entanglement of boats at the entrance of the harbour; now, the snapping of a cord and deafening noise in consequence; and now a flat barge, heavily laden, went rounding off to the Seine, to toil up between its green banks as far as Rouen.
Suddenly a noise as of the waters being cut through arose, and Mark, who was watching the toiling barge and wondering what she was laden with, turned his head to the left. The steamer plying from Havre was coming in — had almost reached the port She had made a fine passage that morning: not twenty-five minutes yet had passed since she steamed out of Havre. The coming in, and the going out again of these steamers, twice each way in the summer days, is the great event in Honfleur life.
In she came to the harbour, swiftly and steadily, rounded the point under the hotel windows, and moored herself in her place opposite the hotel entrance. Mark Cray changed his window now.
Quitting that at which he had been standing, he quietly opened the one which faced the town and inner harbour, and leaned out to watch the disembarking of the steamer’s live freight “I wonder how many of them will be coming into the hotel to breakfast,” he murmured. “I wish—”
What he was about to wish was never known. A voice from the inner room interrupted him. And it was not by any means a feeble voice, but rather a loud one.
“Mr. Cray!”
Mark hastened in. To his surprise he saw his patient, whom he had left in hope of sleep, out of bed and dressing himself. Mark, as medical attendant, made a strong remonstrance.
“I feel a great deal better,” was the answer. “I can’t lie any longer. Is not that the boat come in?”
“Yes,” said Mark. “But—”
“Well, I told you I must go back by her to Havre, if I possibly could. Necessity has no choice.”
Mark could only look his amazement. The
boat would go out again almost directly, and the patient stood little chance of having time for breakfast. “You cannot go by this boat,” he said. “There’ll be another later in the day.”