Works of Ellen Wood, page 533
Feeling half-hopeless, Sara sat down and considered what was to be done. Two thousand three hundred pounds certainly were not two thousand five hundred, and she had little expectation that Mr. Alfred King would be satisfied with it. An ordinary creditor, whose debt was a legitimate one, would of course not remit two hundred pounds: but this debt was different, for she had every reason to believe it was no legitimate debt, but money paid to purchase silence. Then a voice whispered her they would be all the less likely to remit it; they would hold out for it to to the last farthing. Whose silence she could not tell. But for the mysterious hint of Mr. Alfred King that others were interested in this business she might have thought it was his alone. The disagreeable impression left upon her mind by that interview had not in the least worn away: she greatly disliked Mr. Alfred King; she very greatly disliked the thought of visiting him again.
“Mark must help me,” she said. “He is rolling in wealth, and two hundred pounds will not be much to him. It will be my own money. His covenant with my dear papa was to pay me three hundred pounds yearly for five years, and he has not begun the payment yet.”
Quite true! Mr. Mark Cray had not yet handed over a shilling of the covenant money. Miss Davenal had pressed for some of it at the time of Mark’s quitting Hallingham, but Mark had declined. She had brought it under his notice since, and Mark had made excuses still. He was not bound to pay it until the expiry of the year subsequent to Dr. Davenal’s death, he said, and it would be most convenient to him to pay it then. Too proud to press the matter further for her niece, Miss Davenal contented herself with a dignified silence: but she did wonder whether it was that Mark would not or could not pay it. If he could not, why then how hollow, how false was all the show and luxury they had entered on in Grosvenor Place! The real truth of the matter was, Mark’s expenses of one kind or another were so great that he had no ready money to spare; on the contrary, he was often at positive fault for some. And Mark was not a willing paymaster at the best of times: these careless spendthrift men frequently are not Yet the Great Wheal Bang was flourishing: how flourishing its elated shareholders could tell you; and Oswald Cray, relying on the assurances of his brother, had embarked his thousand in it. That alarming dispatch, with its still more alarming news, had turned out to be more smoke than fire; and when Mr. Barker reached the mine, whither he had hurried with all speed, he found the danger over. There had been an irruption of water, but a very slight one; it did not transpire beyond the locality: and Barker and Mark kept the secret well from the shareholders.
Sara went to Mark. She told him, speaking very gravely, that she had urgent need of two hundred pounds to complete some arrangements of necessity left in her charge by her father. Mark’s answer was that he could not help her then; that it was not in his power. Perhaps he could not. They had not yet begun to realise, for that untoward accident, slight as it was, had served to retard the works, and there was no lead yet in the market. A short while, Mark said, and she might come to him for two thousand, and welcome, if it would be of any service to her. Large promises! But Mark had always dealt in such.
Sara had nowhere else to turn to for money in the wide world. Her aunt she knew could not help her; Miss Davenal’s income was of a certain extent only, and their living absorbed it. So she wrote to Mr. Alfred King, and he appointed a day to meet her in Essex Street, Once more, once more, she had to go forth to the unpleasant interview. All was unpleasant connected with it; the object, the journey, the very house, and Mr. Alfred King himself: but she was obeying the command of her dead father, she was seeking to save the reputation, perhaps the life, of her living brother; and Sara Davenal was not one to shrink on her own account from responsibilities such as these.
But surely the spirit of mischief was in it all? It seemed like an evil fate upon her — at least, so she thought in her vexation. For on this day, as on the other, she encountered Mr. Oswald Cray.
Not at the offices, but at the gate of the Temple garden. It occurred in this way. As before, she found she had to wait a considerable time before she could see Alfred King, and she wandered into the quiet courts of the Temple, and came to the larger garden.
The gate-keeper would not admit her to it at first; she had not the entrée, he said; but she told him her case: that she was a stranger, and had to wait an hour and a half to keep an appointment at a solicitor’s in Essex Street. Her sweet face and her plaintive tone — for the voice catches the mind’s sorrow — won him over, and, though he grumbled a little, he let her enter. It was peaceful there; shut in from the world’s turmoil: the grass was green, and the paths were smooth; and Sara sat on the bench alone, and watched the river steamers as they passed and repassed on the Thames.
It was in leaving the gardens that she encountered Mr. Oswald Cray. He had business that day with a barrister in chambers, and was passing the gate as she was leaving it. Sara shrank within the gate again, in the hope that he might not accost her.
It was a vain hope. Surprised to see her there, so far from home and alone, he inquired the reason in the moment’s impulse. The crimson blush, called into her face at the meeting, faded to paleness as she answered: “An appointment.” She could not say she was there for pleasure.
And, besides, that utter weariness of spirit, when we no longer struggle against fate, had grown to be hers. It seemed of little moment whether he knew her errand that day or not: a faintness of heart, not unlike despair, was weakening her energies.
“An appointment?” he repeated. “Not at the place where I saw you before? Not with Mr. Alfred King?”
“Yes, that is where I am going,” she replied, feeling she could not battle against the questions. “I was to have seen Mr. Alfred King at twelve; but I was late, and so I have to wait for him.”
“But it is not expedient that you should go there,” said Oswald.
“I must go there,” she answered, all too energetically in her desperation. “Were the interview to lead to — to my death, and I knew that it would, I should go.”
The words, so unlike her calm good sense; the tone so full of hopeless sorrow, told Oswald how full of grief must be the heart they came from. They had strolled, unconsciously perhaps, down the broad walk of the garden, and were now passing a bench. “Will you sit down for a minute,” he asked, “while I say a few words to you?”
“Yes: if I have time. My appointment is for two o’clock, and I wish to be there rather before than after it.”
He took out his watch and showed it to her. There was plenty of time to spare.
“Have you to keep these appointments often?”
“I never kept but the one you know of. I hope — I am not sure — but I hope that the one to-day will be all I shall have to keep. It is a singular chance — that you should meet me on both days!”
“I don’t think anything in the world happens by chance,” gravely observed Oswald. “Do you recollect the, interview I had with you at your house, just after your father’s death?” he resumed, after a pause.
Sara turned her face to him in her surprise. “O yes.”
“And do you remember,” he continued, his voice assuming its sincerest and tenderest tone, “what I said at that interview? — That nothing would give me so much pleasure as to be your friend, should you require one. — Sara — forgive me if I go back for a moment to our old familiar forms of speech — let me prove myself one now!”
“In what manner?” she asked, after some moments of hesitation.
“If I am able to understand anything of this business you need one. You seem to stand alone in it; no one to counsel you, no one to help.”
“It is true,” she said, “I have to stand in it alone. I must stand in it alone.”
“Suffer me to be, so far, your friend.”
She faintly shook her head. “You could not be.”
“It is true that — that — the period has not arrived, perhaps for either of us, when we had contemplated such a friendship might begin. But we must waive that: necessity alters cases. Sara, let me serve you! I ask it in the name of Dr. Davenal. Surely you can have no objection?”
Her eyes were swimming in tears as she looked straight before her on the gravel path. “In anything but this I should only be too thankful. Sometimes I feel that I am left without a friend in the wide world.”
“Why not in this?”
“Because it is a matter that I may not confide to any one. “It is” — she lowered her voice—” a secret.”
“I will be true as steel. No matter what dishonour may be in it, it shall be held sacred within my breast; never betrayed, never spoken of. I judge that it is not a pleasant secret; therefore I use the word dishonour. It is more fitting that I should be engaged in this matter than you.”
For a single moment the temptation came over her to tell him what it was: just as the temptation to tell him the secret connected with Lady Oswald’s death had once momentarily assailed Dr. Davenal. But it passed away almost with the thought. She could not speak of her brother’s fault; she could not Neither might she delegate to another the last directions left to her by her father. Safely grasped in her hand she held those sealed papers left by Dr. Davenal; how could she transfer them even to Oswald Cray?
“I wish I could tell it you!” she said in a tone of pain. “But I cannot; it is not possible. You will have guessed that this is not my own secret It is a charge that was left to me by my dear father when he was dying: and I am obliged to fulfil it He had no one to leave it to but me.”
“Your brother being away. I can understand so much. Suffer me to stand to you, in this, in your brother’s place. I am sure Captain Davenal would wish it.”
The faint colour of dread came into her cheeks as she thought how far he would be from wishing this discussed with Mr. Oswald Cray. “I can’t tell it,” she murmured.
Oswald turned his gaze upon her, his dark blue eyes never more earnest, more eager.
“Will you let me urge this according to the dictates of common-sense? Is it fit that you, being what you are, a lady — young, refined, inexperienced — should be dancing attendance at Jones and Green’s offices; men who do not bear too good a reputation in the legal world, to meet principally Mr. Alfred King, a man who bears a worse?”
The crimson shone in her cheeks. Put in this way it was anything but pleasant to the refinement of which he spoke. “I know, I know,” she said impulsively. “I felt terribly the going there the day you saw me; I feel it again now. But indeed I cannot help myself. It was a solemn charge left me by my father, and in going through with it I am but doing my duty. God is over me,” she simply added. “I have had a great deal to try me, a great deal to bear: but I am striving to do right under Him.”
Her lip quivered as she spoke, and she paused from emotion. It was too much for the stoic philosophy of Oswald Cray. All the old feelings pent up so long, buried only, not subdued, resumed their sway with uncontrollable force, like a torrent let loose down a mountain’s side. He caught her hands in his; he bent his face near to hers, its whole expression one of the deepest love; his persuasive voice, trembling with agitation, was sunk to the softest whisper.
“Sara, my dearest, I still love you better than anything on earth. Heaven knows how I have striven to forget you since that cloud fell upon us. It has been of no use. Bereft of you, life is but one long dreary path, growing more cruelly monotonous day by day.”
Her heart beat wildly, and for one brief interval a hope, sweeter than any earthly dream, stole into it like a golden ray of sunshine. Only for an instant: she knew that it was but so much deceit, for him as for her.
“Are there no means by which we may forget that cloud and return to the past?” he resumed; his voice hoarse with its emotion, and so low in tone that she could scarcely hear it “Better to sacrifice a little prejudice than to pass a whole life in dissatisfied pain. Let the dishonour — pardon me for thus alluding to it — rest with the dead: perhaps it has been wrong from the first to make it our sorrow.”
She looked at him, not quite understanding. He saw the doubt.
“Be my wife, Sara. I can then take these troubles upon me as my legal right. On my sacred word of honour, I will never cast a reproach to the past, so much as in thought. No! I will not let your hands go until you tell me by word of mouth what I know — that your heart is mine still; that we cannot be faithless one to the other.”
She felt faint with the moment’s pain. The dewdrops of emotion were gathering on her face, and he would not loose her hands that she might wipe them away.
“If we never were true to each other, let us be so now,” he went on. “It is too solemn a moment for equivocation: it is no time for us to pretend ignorance of our mutual love.”
It was indeed no time for equivocation or for doubt. Sara rose superior to it A reticence that might have been observed at another time was forgotten now in her emotion and pain.
“I have not been faithless: perhaps I never shall be. But we can never be more to each other than we are now. The dishonour clings to me, and always will cling.”
“Sara! don’t I say that I will forget it?”
“No; I would never bring the possibility of — of — of — I think you do not understand,” she broke off, lifting her white face to his. “It was not only dishonour.”
“What else?”
“Crime.”
A change passed over his countenance as he raised his head, which had been bent to catch the word. Soon it brightened again. Never perhaps had his besetting sin been so quiescent: but pride, even such pride as Oswald Cray’s, is a less strong passion than love. “It was not your crime, Sara. And it has passed away.”
“It has not passed.”
“Not passed!”
“Not yet There’s danger still.”
Oswald bit his lip. “Danger of what?”
“Of — of — exposure,” she faintly said. “Do not force me to say more. Only believe one thing — that I can never be your wife. Do you think if there were no insuperable barrier that I should have made one?” she added, her face flushing a hot crimson. “Forgive me: I scarcely know what I say: but you wished that we should speak without reserve.”
“Sara, let me fully understand. Do you imply that there exists any good and substantial reason stilly call it insuperable barrier if you will, why you ought not to become my wife? Wait a moment. Before you give an answer remember that to my heart it is fraught with either life or death.”
“I do not imply it; I fully state it. Oh, don’t visit it upon me!” she exclaimed, as his face seemed to be assuming its old haughtiness. “It is not my fault I did not work the disgrace.”
“No,” he answered, soothingly, “it is not your fault. Forgive me,” he softly whispered. “The blow to me is heavy.”
“It may pass for you. It will pass. You will form new friendships, new ties, and forget the old. Better that it should be so.”
“But never a new love! Never one who will be to me what the other has been.”
She rose from her seat. Oswald drew her down on it again.
“As I hinted just now, Sara, the time when we may mix freely as friends has not yet come; it would not do for either of us. But I must make a last appeal to you — suffer me to be your friend in this one strait. Is it not possible that I can act for you?”
“It is not possible. There are certain reasons why neither you nor anybody else can do this; and, putting these aside, there is the weighty one that it was the charge bequeathed to me, and to me alone, by my dying father. Thank you for all,” she whispered, as she suddenly rose and held out her hand, her soft dark eyes speaking their thanks to his.
He rose also. He did not release her hand, but placed it within his arm to lead her up the solitary path. If those grave, middle-aged counsel, deep in their briefs behind the dusty windows opposite, had glanced out at the interview, it probably reminded them of their own sweet spring-time.
Sara withdrew her hand at the garden-gate, but he walked by her side through the courts to Essex Street She halted there to say adieu.
“I suppose I must not ask to accompany you?”
She shook her head. “I must be alone.”
“Fare you well then,” he said. “May all good angels guard you!”
Mr. Alfred King was waiting for her. He was evidently not pleased at two hundred pounds of the sum being missing; but he turned it off upon the “other parties.” They would not accept it, he said, unless paid in full; and he hinted at consequences to Captain Davenal. He would not sign the receipt; told Sara it was useless to unseal it; but he did write a receipt for the present cheque paid. Altogether, it was a less satisfactory interview than even the former one had been, and Sara quitted him with a sinking heart She had not the remotest idea where to get the money; and a despairing foreboding was upon her that Edward must yet pay the sacrifice of his crime.
“How long will they wait?” she asked herself, as she went shivering up Essex Street “Suppose they send me word that they will not wait? — that Edward — oh, if I had but the means to—”
“Well? Is the thing happily over? You said this might be the last interview.”
It was Oswald Cray. He had waited for her. Her mind was preoccupied with its fears, almost bewildered, and she scarcely knew what she answered.
“No I it is not happily over. It is all unhappy, and I am frightened. The money I took them was — was—” She broke off with a start. Recollection had come to her.
“Was what?” he asked.
“I think I forgot myself,” she murmured, as a burning flush dyed her face. “My mind is full of trouble. Pray, pardon me, Mr. Oswald Cray.”
CHAPTER XLIII.
AN IRRUPTION ON MARK CRAY.
IF anything could exceed the prosperity of the Great Wheal Bang Mine itself, it was the prosperity of those immediately connected with it. There was only one little drawback — ready money ran short It had been short a long while, and the inconvenience was great in consequence; but the prolonged inconvenience was now approaching to such a height that even that sanguine spirit, Barker, even Mark Cray in his confiding carelessness, felt that something must be done to remedy it.
