CHAPTER XXV.

COMPANY FOR MR. OSWALD CRAY.

For some days subsequent to the interview with Neal, and that valuable servant's startling communication, Mr. Oswald Cray remained in what may be called a sea of confusion. The unhappy circumstances attendant on Lady Oswald's death never left his mind, the strange suspicions first arising naturally, as they did arise, and then augmented by Neal's disclosure, seemed to be ever waging hot war within him, for they were entirely antagonistic to sober reason, to his life-long experience of Dr. Davenal.

It cannot be denied that Oswald Cray, calm of temperament though he was, sound of judgment, did fall into the snare that the web of events had woven around him; and, in the midnight watches, when things wear to our senses a weird, ghost-like hue, the disagreeable word murder suggested itself to him oftener than he would have cared to confess in broad matter-of-fact daylight. But as the days went on his senses came to him. Reason reasserted her empire, and he flung the dark doubt from him, as unworthy of himself and the present enlightened age. It was impossible to connect such a crime with Dr. Davenal.

But still, though he shook off the worst view, he could not shake off the circumstances and their suspicion. Perhaps it was next to impossible, knowing what he did know of the doctor's sentiments as to chloroform, hearing, as he had heard, Neal's account of the words spoken at the midnight interview, that he should shake them off. They turned and twisted themselves about in his mind in spite of his will; he would have given much to get rid of them, but he could not. Now taking one phase, now another, now looking dark, now light, there they were, like so many phantoms, ever springing up from different corners of his mind, and putting legitimate thoughts out of it. Up and in bed, at work or at rest, were those conflicting arguments ever dancing attendance on him, until, from sheer perplexity, his brain would seem to lose its subtle powers, and grow dull from very weariness. But the worst aspect of the affair gradually lost its impression, and reason drove away the high colours of imagination.

The conclusion to which he at length came, and in which he finally settled down, was that Dr. Davenal had been in a partial degree guilty. He _could not_ think that he had given that chloroform to Lady Oswald with the deliberate view of taking her life, as some of our worst criminals have taken lives: but he did believe there was some hidden culpability attached to it. Could it have been given in forgetfulness?--or by way of experiment?--or carelessly? Oswald Cray asked himself those questions ten times in a day. No, no, reason answered; Dr. Davenal was not a man to forget, or to experimentalise, or to do things carelessly. And then, with the answer, rose the one dark, awful doubt again, tormenting him not less with its shadows than with its preposterous absurdity.

What clung to his mind more than all the rest was, that he could see no solution, or chance of solution, to the question of why chloroform was administered, why even it was taken to the house. Had Dr. Davenal frankly answered him when questioned, "I thought, in spite of my conversation with you, that chloroform might be ventured upon with safety, that it would ease her sufferings, and was absolutely necessary to calm her state of excitement," why he could have had no more to say, however lamenting the fatal effects. But Dr. Davenal had answered nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he had been mysterious over it, and at length flatly refused to satisfy him at all. So far as Oswald Cray could see, there was no other solution, then or ever, that could be arrived at, save that the chloroform had been administered wilfully and deliberately. If so, then with what view had Dr. Davenal----

At this point Oswald Cray always pulled his thoughts up, or strove to do so, and plunged desperately into another phase of the affair as if he would run away from dangerous ground. Once he caught himself wondering whether, if the doctor had been deliberately guilty, it lay in his duty--his, Oswald Cray's--to bring him to account for it. No living being save himself, so far as he trusted, had been cognisant of Dr. Davenal's strong opinion of chloroform as applied to Lady Oswald. Ought he, then, not only in the obligation which lies upon all honest men to bring crime to light, but as a connection of Lady Oswald's, ought he to be the Nemesis, and denounce----

With a quicker beating of the heart, with a burning flush upon his brow, Oswald Cray started from the train of thought. Into what strange gulf was it carrying him? Ah, not though it had been his fate to see the crime committed, and to know that it was a crime, would _he_ be the one to bring it home to Richard Davenal! The man whom he had so respected; the father of her who possessed his best love, and who would possess it, in spite of his efforts to withdraw it, for all time? No; not against _him_ could his hand be raised in judgment.

_In spite of his efforts to withdraw his love?_ Had it come to that with Oswald Cray? Indeed it had. He could not fathom the affair, it remained to him utterly incomprehensible, but that Dr. Davenal was in some way or other compromised by it, terribly compromised, seemed as plain as the sun at noonday. And Mr. Oswald Cray, in his haughty spirit, his besetting pride, decided that he could no longer be on terms of friendship with him, and that Sara Davenal must be no wife of his.

What it cost him to come to this resolution of casting her adrift, none save Heaven knew. The struggle remained on his memory for years afterwards as the sorest pain life had ever brought him. It was the bitter turning-point which too many of us have to arrive at, and pass; the dividing link which dashes away the sunny meads, the flowery paths of life's young romance, and sends us stumbling and shivering down the stony road of reality. None knew, none ever would know, what that struggle was to Oswald Cray.

Not a struggle as to the course he should pursue--the breaking off intimacy with her: never for a single moment did he hesitate in that. The struggle lay with his feelings, with his own heart, where she was entwined with its every fibre, part and parcel of its very self. He strove to put her out thence, and she would not be put out. There she remained, and he was conscious that there she would remain for many a dreary year to come.

But for his overweening pride, how different things might have been! He was too just a man to include Sara in the doctor's--dare he say it?--crime. Although Neal had said that Miss Sara Davenal had been made cognisant of it, Oswald did not visit upon her one iota of blame. She was no more responsible for the doctor's acts than he was, neither could she help them. No, he did not cast a shadow of reproach upon her; she had done nothing to forfeit his love; but she was her father's daughter, and therefore no fit wife for him. One whose pride was less in the ascendant than Mr. Oswald Cray's, whose self-esteem was less sensitively fastidious, might have acted upon this consciousness of her immunity from blame, and set himself to see whether there was not a way out of the dilemma rather than have given her up, off-hand, at the very first onset. He might have gone in his candour to Dr. Davenal and said, "I love your daughter; I had wished to make her my wife; tell me confidentially, is there a reason why I, an honourable man, should not?" Not so Mr. Oswald Cray and his haughty pride. Without a single moment of hesitation he shook himself free from all future contact with the daughter of Dr. Davenal, just as he was trying to shake her from his heart. Never more, never more, might he look forward to the life of happiness he had been wont to picture.

It was a cruel struggle, cruel to him; and the red flush of shame mantled on his brow as he thought of the binding words he had spoken to her, and the dishonour that must accrue to him in breaking them. There was not a man on the face of the earth whose sense of honour was more keen than Oswald Cray's, who was less capable of wilfully doing aught to tarnish it; and yet that tarnishing was thrust upon him. Anyway, it seemed that a great stain must fall upon it. To take one to be his wife whose father was a suspected man would be a blot indeed; and to slip through the words he had spoken, never more to take notice of her or them, was scarcely less so. He felt it keenly; he, the man of unblemished conduct, and, it may be said, of unblemished heart.

But still he did not for a moment hesitate. Great as the pain was to himself, little as she, in her innocence, deserved that the slight should be inflicted on her, he never wavered in that which he knew must be. The only question that arose to him was, how it should be best done. Should he speak to her?--or should he gradually drop all intimacy and let the fact become known to her in that way? Which would be the kinder course? That the separation would be productive of the utmost pain to her as to him, that she loved him with all the fervour of a first and pure attachment, he knew; and he felt for her to his very heart's core. He hated himself for having to inflict this pain, and he heartily wished, as things had turned out, that he had never yielded to the pleasure of becoming intimate at Dr. Davenal's. Well, which should be his course? Oswald Cray sat over his fire one cold evening after business was over, and deliberated upon it. Some weeks had gone on then. He leaned his elbow on the arm of his chair, and bent his cheek on his hand, and gazed abstractedly on the blaze. He shrank from the very idea of speaking to her. No formal engagement existed between them: it had been implied more than spoken; and he would be scarcely justified in say to her, "I cannot marry you now," considering that he had never in so many words asked her to marry him at all. She might regard it as a gratuitous insult.

But, putting that aside, he did not see his way clear to speak to her. What reason could he give for his withdrawal He could not set it down to his own caprice; and he could not--no, he _could not_--put forth to her the plea of her father's misdoing. He began to think it might be better to maintain silence, and so let the past and its words die away. If----

He was aroused from his train of thought by the entrance of a woman--a woman in a black bonnet, and sleeves turned up to the elbow, with a rather crusty expression of face. This was Mrs. Benn the housekeeper, cleaner, cook of the house. It did not lie in Mrs. Benn's province to wait on Mr. Oswald Cray, or she would probably have attired herself more in accordance with her duty. It lay in her husband's, and he had been sent out this evening by Mr. Oswald Cray on business connected with the firm. On cleaning days--and they occurred twice in the week--Mrs. Benn was wont to descend in, the morning in the black bonnet, and keep it on until she went to bed. It was not worn as bonnets are worn usually; the crown behind and the brim before; but was perched right on the top of her head, brim downwards and Mrs. Benn was under a firm persuasion that this kept her hair and her cap free from the dust she was wont to raise in sweeping. She was about forty, but looked, fifty, and her face had got a patch of black-lead upon it, and a nail had torn a rent in her check apron.

"Wouldn't you like the things taken away, sir?" she asked in a tone as crusty as her look. "I'm waiting to wash 'em up."

This recalled Oswald Cray's notice to the fact that the remains of his dinner were yet upon the table. He believed he had rung for them to be taken away when he turned to the fire; and there he had sat with his back to them since, never noticing that nobody had come to do it. It was now a little past seven, and Mrs. Benn had grown angry and indignant at the waiting.

"I declare I thought they had gone away," he said. "I suppose the bell did not ring. I am sure I touched it."

"No bell have rung at all," returned Mrs. Benn resentfully. "I stood down there with my hands afore me till the clock had gone seven, and then I thought I'd come up and see what was keeping 'em. You haven't ate much this evening, sir," she added, looking at the dish of steak and the potatoes. "I don't think you have eat much lately. Don't you feel well?"

"Well! I am very well," he replied carelessly, rising from his chair and stretching himself. "Is Benn not back yet?"

"No, he is not back," she returned, her tone becoming rather an explosive one, boding no good for the absent Mr. Benn. "He don't seem to hurry himself, _he_ don't, though he knows if he didn't get back I should have to come up here: and very fit I be on my cleaning days to appear before a gentleman."

"Is it necessary to clean in a bonnet?" asked Oswald quietly.

"It's necessary to clean in something, sir, to protect one's head from the fluff and stuff that collects. One would wonder where it comes from, all in a week. I used to tie a apron over my cap, but it was always coming off, or else blowing its corners into the way of one's eyes."

Oswald laughed. He remembered the apron era, and the guy Mrs. Benn looked. For twelve years had she and her husband been the servants of that house. Formerly Mr. Bracknell, an old bachelor, had lived in it, and Benn and his wife waited on him, as they now did on Mr. Oswald Cray.

"Would you like tea this evening, sir?" she inquired. For sometimes Oswald took tea and sometimes he did not.

"Yes; if you bring it up directly. I am going out."

She went away with her tray of things. Down the first flight of stairs, past the offices, and down again to the kitchen. The ground floor of this house in Parliament Street was occupied by the offices of the firm, and partially so the floors above. Oswald Cray had two or three rooms for his own use; his sitting-room, not a very large one, being on the first floor.

His train of thought had been broken by the woman, and he did not recall it. He stepped into an adjoining apartment, lighted a shaded lamp, sat down, and began examining a drawing of some complicated plans. Pencil in hand, he was deep in the various mysteries pertaining to engineering, when he heard Mrs. Benn and the tea-tray. He finished marking off certain lines and strokes on a blank sheet of paper--which he did after a queer fashion, his eyes fixed on the drawing, and his fingers only appearing to guide the pencil--before he went in.

He had not hurried himself, and the tea must be getting cold. Mrs. Benn was in the habit of making it downstairs, so that he had no trouble. It was by no means a handsome tea equipage--party belonging, in fact, to Mrs. Benn herself. The black teapot had a chipped spout, and the black milk-jug had a fray on its handle, and the china tea-cup was cracked across. Oswald's china tea-service had been handsome once--or rather Mr. Bracknell's, for it was to that gentleman the things in the house belonged; but Mrs. Benn had what she herself called a "heavy hand at breakage," and two or three cups and saucers were all that remained. Oswald determined to buy himself a decent tea-set, but somehow he never thought of it, and the elegant equipage came up still.

He poured himself out a cup, stirred it, and then went for the sheet of paper on which he had been making the strokes and scrawls. Mrs. Benn knew her master well. He had said he was going out, but he was just as likely to remain over these strokes all the evening as to go out; perhaps, even, in forgetfulness keep her tea-things up until ten o'clock, or until she went for them. Oswald Cray was one whose heart was in his profession, and work was more pleasant to him than idleness.

He was busy still over this paper, neglecting his tea, when Mrs. Benn came in again. He thought she had come very soon for her tea-tray tonight. But she had not come for that.

"Here's company now, sir! A young lady wants to see you."

"A young lady!" repeated Oswald. "To see me?"

"Well, I suppose she's a young lady--from what one can see of her through her black veil; but she come to my kitchen bell only, when the knocker was a-staring her right in the face," returned Mrs. Benn. "She asked for you, sir. I said, was it any message I could take up, but she says she wants to speak to you herself."

"You can show her up."

Mrs. Benn accomplished this process in a summary manner. Going down the stairs to the hall, where she had left the applicant, she briefly said to her, "You can go up. First door you come to that's open"--and then left the lady to find her way. Had her husband, Benn, been at home, he would have asked her what she meant by introducing a visitor in that fashion to Mr. Oswald Cray; and he would probably have got for answer a sharp order to mind his own business. In point of fact, Mrs. Benn, on those two dark interludes of her weekly existence, cleaning days, had neither time nor temper to waste on superfluous ceremony.

Oswald Cray had bent over his paper again, attaching little importance to the advent of the visitor; he supposed it might be some messenger from one or other of the clerks. The footfall on the stairs was soft and light; Oswald's back was to the door, and his lines and marks were absorbing his attention.

"Mr. Oswald Cray?"

It was a sweet and pleasant and sensible voice, with a Scotch accent very perceptible to English ears. It was the voice of a lady, and Oswald Cray started up hastily, pencil in hand.

A short, slight, very young-looking woman, with a fair face and blue eyes, stood before him. Strictly speaking, there was no beauty whatever in the face, but it was so fair, so frank, so honest, with its steady good sense and its calm blue eyes, that Oswald Cray warmed to it at once. She was dressed plainly in black, and she threw back her crape veil to speak--as most sensible women like to do. To Oswald's eyes, seeing her by that light, she looked about one or two and twenty, as she had to Mrs. Benn: her light complexion, her small features, and her slight figure were all of that type that remain young a long while. In his surprise he did not for the moment speak, and she repeated the words, not as a question this time--

"You are Mr. Oswald Cray."

"That is my name," he answered, recovering his equanimity. "May I----"

"I come to you from my brother, Frank Allister," she interrupted. "I am Jane Allister."

She pronounced the name "Jean" as she had in fact been christened, but it generally gets corrupted into Jane by English ears and English tongues. Oswald so interpreted it. His whole face lighted up with a smile of welcome; it may be said of recognition. He had heard so much of this good sister from his friend Frank Allister.

"I am so glad you have come to him!" he warmly exclaimed, taking her hand. "Frank has almost pined for you: but he did not expect you yet. I seem to know you quite well: he has talked to me of you so much."

"Thank you; I'll take it," she said, in answer to the chair he offered. "And I will take off my fur," she added, unwinding a boa from her neck, and untying her bonnet-strings. "Your room feels very warm to one coming in from the keen air outside."

There was something in her frank manners that struck most pleasingly on the mind of Oswald. She sat there as confidingly in his room as though he had been her brother: a good, modest, single-minded woman, whom even a bad man could not do otherwise than respect.

"Yes, I came before Frank expected me;" she said. "I did not think I could have come so soon; but my friends kindly released me. You know my situation--why I could not come to him before."

"I know that you are"--Oswald hesitated for a moment, and then went bravely on. Before that clear eye of plain good sense there was no need to mince the matter, and pretend ignorance.

"I know that you are companion-attendant to a lady. And that you could not leave her."

"I have been companion and maid to her all in one," said Miss Allister. "When I and Frank had to go out into the world and do the best we could for ourselves, I was obliged to look out for what I was most fitted for. Our dead mother's brother offered to help Frank, and he paid the premium with him to this house, and assisted him otherwise, and I was very glad it should be so----"

"You mean Mr. Brown?" interrupted Oswald.

"Yes. He lived in London. My mother was English born and reared. He was a good friend to us so long as he lived. It was necessary that I should go out; and a situation offered in a lady's family, Mrs. Graham. She wanted some one who would be her companion, sit with her, read to her, some one well reared, of whom she might make an equal, but who would at the same time act as maid; and I took it. But perhaps you have heard all this from Frank?"

"No, not these past details. Though he has talked of you very much. He has told me"--Oswald broke into a frank smile as he said it--"that his sister Jane was worth her weight in gold."

"I should be sorry to think that most sisters are not worth as much as I am," she gravely answered. "I have but done my duty, so far as I could do it, and the worst of us ought to do no less. When Frank found I acted as maid to Mrs. Graham he was very much put out, and wanted me to give up the situation and seek a different one. But I laughed at him for a proud boy, and I have stayed on until now. What am I the worse for it? I dressed her, and served her, and when of late years she got ill and helpless, I nursed and fed her. I had become so useful to her--I must say, so indispensable--that when news reached me of Frank's illness, I could not quit her to come to him. I tried to see which way my duty lay; to leave her for my sick brother, or to leave my brother to strangers, and stay with my dying and helpless friend and mistress, Every week we expected would be her last; she has been slowly dying for these three months; and I felt that it would be wrong to abandon her. That, you see, is why I could not come to Frank."

"Is she dead?" asked Oswald.

"O yes. This mourning that I am wearing is for her. And as soon as it was possible after the funeral I came away. We had a long and bad passage, two days, and I did not reach Frank until three o'clock this afternoon."

"You should have come by land," observed Oswald.

"Nay, but that would have cost more," she simply answered. "And I know that Frank was better, so as to be in no vital hurry for my presence. I have come to you, sir, this evening, to ask your opinion of his state. Will you be so kind as to give it me?"

"First of all will you permit me to invite you to take a cup of tea?" replied Oswald, turning round to look at the tray, which was on the opposite side of the table, next the door.

"No, I thank you," she replied, "I gave Frank his tea before I came out, and took some with him. But will you let me pour out a cup for you? I saw that I interrupted you."

Before Oswald could decline, she had taken her gloves off, and was round at the tray, putting it in order. That a bachelor had been doing the honours of the ceremony was only too apparent. The teapot was stuck on the side of the tray, spout forwards; the milk-jug was not on the tray at all, but ever so far away on the table. Jane Allister had put all this to rights in a twinkling, and was pouring the slop of cold tea out of his tea-cup into the basin.

"Not for me," said Oswald, feeling as if he had known her for years. "You are very kind, but I have taken all I wish."

"Nay, not kind at all," she said, looking at him with some surprise. "I'd have been glad to do it for you."

Oswald had risen, and she came back from the tea-tray, and stood by him on the hearth-rug. Her bonnet still untied, her gloves off, her face and attitude full of repose, she looked like one in her own home.

"You'll tell me freely what you think of Frank?"

There was not the slightest shade of doubt in her voice; she evidently expected that he would tell it her; tell it her freely, as she asked for it. She stood with her fair face raised, her candid blue eyes thrown full up to his.

Oswald drew her chair forward for her, and took his own, pausing before he spoke. In good truth, he scarcely now knew what was his opinion of Frank Allister. It was one of those cases where the patient seems at death's door, and then, to the surprise of all, the disease takes a sudden turn, and appears to be almost gone. In the previous month, October, Oswald Cray had believed that a few days must see the end of Frank Allister; this, the close of November, he was apparently getting well all one way.

"I do not quite know how to answer you," Oswald began. "Five or six weeks ago Frank was so ill that I did not think there remained the least chance for him, but he has changed in a wonderful manner. But for the deceitfulness that is so characteristic of the disease, I should believe him to be getting well. Remembering that, I can only look upon it as a false improvement."

Jane Allister paused. "I suppose there is no doubt that his symptoms are those of consumption?"

"None."

"And consumption, if it does come on, is rarely if ever cured. Do you think it is?"

"Very rarely, I fear."

"But again, I have known patients who have displayed every symptom of consumption, have suffered much, and who have eventually got strong and hearty, and continued so."

"That is true," he assented. "There have been such instances. I wish I could satisfy you better, but indeed I do not know what to think. Mr. Bracknell asked me a day or two ago how Allister was getting on, and I answered as I answer you--that I really could not tell him."

"When I reached my brother's today and saw how well he appeared to be, so different from what I had expected to find him, I could not help expressing my surprise," said Miss Allister. "Frank gaily told me that his illness and its supposed danger had been all a mistake, and he had taken a new lease of life. I did not know what to think, what to believe; and I determined to come here and ask your opinion. I could not, you know, ask you before him."

"And I cannot give you a decisive one," repeated Oswald. "I can only hope that this improvement may go on to a complete restoration: and I should think it, but for the treacherous nature of the disease. Frank does certainly appear wonderfully strong and well. Even the doctor cannot say that it will not end in recovery."

"Frank wrote me word that you had caused him to see one of the great London physicians, and that the opinion was unfavourable. But that was when he was at the worst. You have been truly kind to him, Mr. Oswald Cray, and when I came here tonight I felt that I was coming to a friend."

"I should like to be your friend always," returned Oswald, in an unusual impulse. "I seem to have been so a long while, Frank has talked to me so much of you."

"Do you come to see him daily?"

"Not daily; but as often as I can. It is some distance from here."

"It is a long way. But I got misdirected.

"You surely did not walk?" exclaimed Oswald.

"To be sure I walked. How else should I come?"

"There are conveyances--cabs and omnibuses."

"But they cost money," she answered, with that frank, open plainness, which, in her, seemed so great a charm. "I am not come away to England devoid of means, but they will find plenty of outlets in necessary things, without being spent in superfluities. Anyway, they must be made to last both for me and Frank, until I can leave him and go out again. I'd not speak of these things to you, Mr. Oswald Cray, but that you must know all the particulars of our position."

She had risen as she spoke, and was now tying her bonnet-strings. Oswald picked up a glove which she dropped.

"And now I'll wish you goodnight," she continued, putting her hand frankly into his. "And I'd like to thank you with all my heart for what you have done for Frank; for the good friend you have been to him. You have brought to him help and comfort when there was nobody else in the world to bring it. I shall always thank you in my heart, Mr. Oswald Cray."

Oswald laughed the words off, and attended her downstairs, catching up his hat as he went through the hall. Mrs. Benn and her black bonnet came up the kitchen stairs.

"Goodnight," repeated Jane Allister.

"I am going with you," said Oswald.

She resisted the suggestion at first, saying she could find her way back quite well; but Oswald quietly carried his point.

He closed the door behind him, and offered his arm. She took it at once, thanking him in a staid old-fashioned manner. Mrs. Benn drew the door open and looked after them.

"Arm-in-arm!" ejaculated that lady. "And he bending of his head down to her to talk! Who on earth can she be?--coming after him to his house--and stopping up there in the parlour--and keeping up of the tea-things! It looks uncommon like as if he had took on a sweetheart. Only----So it's you at last, is it, Joe Benn! And what do you mean by stopping out like this?"

The concluding sentences were addressed to a respectable-looking man who approached the door. It was Joseph Benn, her husband, and the faithful servant of the firm.

"I couldn't make more haste," he quietly answered.

"Not make more haste! Don't tell me. Mr. Oswald Cray expected you were home an hour ago."

"Mr. Oswald Cray will be quite satisfied that I have not wasted my time when I tell him where I've been. Is he upstairs?"

"No, he is not," she sharply answered. "Satisfied, indeed! Yes, he looked satisfied when he saw me going up to wait upon him in this guise, and to show in his company? And me waiting a good mortal hour for his dinner-things, which he forgot was up which couldn't have happened if you'd been at your post to wait at table. You go and stop out again at his dinner-time, Joe Benn."

Joe Benn made no rejoinder; experience had taught him that it was best not. He passed her, and she shut the door with a bang.