CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE LAST MEETING.

The night's work told on Dr. Davenal. The soaking rain, the chilling wind, had struck inward the perspiration which Mrs. Scott's heated room had induced. On the next day he was visibly ill. Sara noticed it, and begged him not to go out.

"Not go out, child? I must go out."

"But you are not in a state for it. I am sure you are very ill."

"I caught cold last night; that's what it is. It will go off in a day or two."

"Yes if you will lie by and nurse yourself. Not if you go out to make it worse."

"I have never lain by in all my life, Sara. A doctor has no time for it. What would become of my patients?"

He went out to his carriage, then waiting for him. The close carriage. Bright as the day was--for the weather had changed--it was the close carriage that had been ordered round by the doctor.

"Is master ill, I wonder?" thought Roger, when he found it was only to pay the daily round of near visits.

As the doctor went out at the gate it happened that Oswald Cray was passing. And Mr. Oswald Cray quite started when he saw Dr. Davenal, the change in him was so great.

It was impossible for either of them to pass the other, had they so wished it, without being guilty of absolute rudeness, and they stopped simultaneously.

"You are ill, Dr. Davenal?" exclaimed Oswald, speaking impulsively.

"Middling. I have got a cold hanging about me. We have had some bad weather here."

It cannot be denied that Dr. Davenal's tone and manner betrayed a coldness never yet offered to Oswald Cray. Generous man though he was by nature, as little prone to take offence as most people, he did think that Oswald Cray's slighting conduct had been unjustifiable, and he could not help showing his sense of it.

They stood a moment in silence, Oswald marking the ravages illness or something else had made on the doctor's face and form. His figure was drooping now, his face was careworn; but the sickness looked to be of mind more than of body. Unfortunately those miserable suspicions instilled into Oswald Cray's brain arose now with redoubled force, and a question suggested itself--could anything save remorse change a man as he had changed, in the short space of time?

"You are a stranger now, Mr. Oswald Cray. What has kept you from us?"

"The last time I called you were all out," he answered, somewhat evasively.

"And you could not call again! As you please, of course," continued the doctor, as Oswald's feet, took a somewhat repellant turn, and the Oswald pride became rather too conspicuous. "I had wished to say a word or two to you with regard to the will made by Lady Oswald; but perhaps you do not care to hear it."

"Anything that you, or I, or any one else can say, will not alter the will, Dr. Davenal. And it does not in the least concern me."

"But I think you are resenting it in your heart, for all that."

Ah, what cross-purposes they were at! Oswald had not resented that; and all his fiery pride rose up to boiling heat at being accused of it. He had deemed that to make Dr. Davenal the inheritor was unjust to the nephews of Lady Oswald, and he had felt for them; but he had not _resented_ it, even at heart. He spoke the literal truth when he said it was a matter that did not concern him. If the heavy cloud of misapprehension between them could but have cleared itself away!

"Will you be kind enough to understand me once for all, Dr. Davenal?" he haughtily said. "Lady Oswald's money, either before her death or after it, never was, nor could be, any concern of mine. I do not claim a right to give so much as an opinion upon her acts in regard to it; in fact I have no such right. Had she chosen to fling the money into the sea, to benefit nobody, she might have done so, for any wish of mine upon the point. I felt a passing sorrow for the Stephensons when I saw their disappointment, but I did not permit myself to judge so far as to say that Lady Oswald had done wrong. It was no affair of mine," he emphatically added, "and I did not make it one."

In spite of his impressive denial, Dr. Davenal did not believe him. Whence, else, the haughty resentment that shone forth from every line of his features? Whence, else, his studied absence from the house, his altogether slighting conduct? Dr. Davenal made one more effort at concession, at subduing his unfounded prejudices.

"I can assure you I resented the will--if I may so say it. I resented it for the Stephensons' sake, and felt myself a pitiful usurper. Nothing would have induced me to accept that money, Mr. Oswald Cray; and steps are being taken to refund it, every shilling, to the Stephensons."

"Ah," remarked Oswald, "I heard something of that. Had it been willed to me I should have done the same."

He held himself rigidly erect as he said it. There was no unbending of the hard brow, there was no faint smile to break the haughty curve of the lip. That poisonous hint dropped by Neal--that the money was about to be restored through _fear_--was uncomfortably present to Oswald then. Dr. Davenal saw that the resentment, whatever its cause, was immovable, and he stepped into his carriage without shaking hands.

"Good-morning to you, Mr. Oswald Cray."

And then the reaction set in in Oswald Cray's mind, and he began to blush for his discourtesy. The careworn face, the feeble form, haunted him throughout the day, and he began to ask himself, what if all his premises were wrong--if appearances and Neal's tale had been deceitful--if he had done the doctor grievous ill in his heart I It was but the reaction, I say, the repentance arising from his own haughty discourtesy, which he felt had been more offensively palpable than it need have been; but it clung to him for hours, haunting him in all the business that he had to transact.

It was somewhat strange that just when this new feeling was upon him he should encounter Sara Davenal. They met in a lonely place--the once-famed graveyard at the back of the Abbey.

His business for the day over, Oswald Cray was going to pay a visit to Mark and his wife. He was nearer the back of the Abbey than the front, and, ignoring ceremony, intended to enter by the small grated door, a relic of the old Abbey, which divided the graveyard from one of the long Abbey passages. In passing the tombstone already mentioned, Oswald turned his eyes down upon it: in the bright moonlight---for never had the moon been brighter--he could almost trace the letters: the next moment a noise in front attracted his attention--the closing of the grated door. There stood Sara Davenal. She had stayed with Mrs. Cray later than she intended, and was hastening home to dinner: in leaving the Abbey by this back entrance a few minutes of the road were saved.

They met face to face. Sara's heart stood still, and her countenance changed from white to red with emotion. And Oswald?--all the love that he had been endeavouring to suppress returned in its deepest force.

Ah, it is of no use! Try as we may, we cannot evade the laws of nature; we cannot bend them to our own will. In spite of the previous resolutions of weeks to forget her, Oswald Cray stood there knowing that he loved her above everything on earth.

"How are you, Sara?"

He put out his hand to her in all calm self-possession; he spoke the salutation with quiet equanimity; but as Sara looked in his face she knew that his agitation was not in reality less than hers. She said a few confused words in explanation of her being there at that hour, and alone. On calling that afternoon she had found Caroline not well, and had stayed with her to the last moment, as Mark was in the country.

Then for a whole minute there was a silence. Perhaps neither could speak. Sara put an end to it by turning towards the gate.

"You will let me see you home, as you are alone?"

"No, thank you," she answered. "There is nothing to hurt me. It is as light as day."

He did not press it. He seemed half-paralysed with indecision. Sara wished him good night, and he responded to it, and once more shook hands, all mechanically.

But as she was going through the gate, she turned to speak, a question having occurred to her. One moment longer, and he had arrested her progress.

"There are two or three books at our house belonging to you," she said. "What is to be done with them? Shall they be sent to the Apple Tree?"

He caught her hands; he drew her from the gate into the bright moonlight. He could not let her go without a word of explanation; the cruelty of visiting upon her her father's sin was very present to him then.

"Are we to part thus for ever, Sara?"

Surely that question was cruel! It was not she who had instituted the parting; it was himself. She did not so much as know its cause.

"May we not meet once in a way, as friends?" he continued. "I dare not ask for more now."

That he loved her still was all too evident. And Sara took courage to gasp forth a question. In these moments of agitation the cold conventionalities of the world are sometimes set aside.

"What has been the matter? How have we offended you?"

"_You_ have not offended me," he answered, his agitation almost irrepressible. "I love you more than I ever did; this one moment of meeting has proved it to me. I could lay down my life for you, Sara; I could sacrifice all, save honour, for you. And you? You have not changed?--you love me still?"

"Yes," she gasped, unable to deny the truth, too miserable to care to suppress it.

"And yet we must part! we must go forth on our separate paths, striving to forget. But when our lives shall end, Sara, we shall neither of us have loved another as we love now."

Her very heart seemed to shiver; the fiat was all too plainly expressed. But she stood there quietly, waiting for more, her hand in his.

"I would have forfeited half my future life, I would have given all its benefits to be able to call you mine. The blow upon me has been very bitter."

"What blow?" she murmured.

"I cannot tell it you," he cried, after a struggle. "Not to you can I speak of it."

"But you must," she rejoined, the words breaking from her in her agony. "You have said too much, or too little."

"I have--Heaven help me! Can you not guess what it is that has caused this?"

"N--o," she faltered. But even as the word left her lips there rose up before her the secret of that dreadful night--with the suspicion that Oswald had in some unaccountable manner become cognisant of it.

"I loved you as I believe man never yet loved, Sara; I looked forward to years of happiness with you; I expected you to be my wife. And--and--I cannot go on!" he broke off. "I cannot speak of this to you."

The tears were rolling down her pale face. "You must not leave me in suspense, Oswald. It may be better for us both that you should speak out freely."

Yes, it might be better for them both; at any rate he felt that no choice was left to him now. He drew nearer to her and lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Is there no--Heaven pardon me for speaking the word to you, Sara!--disgraceful secret attaching now to--to your family? One which would render it impossible for a man of honour to----"

He would not say more; he had said enough; and he felt the words to his heart's core. Whatever pain they may have brought to her, they inflicted tenfold more upon him. With a low cry, she flung her hands before her face.

"Is it so, Sara?"

"It is. How did you hear of it?"

"The whisper came to me. Some people might--might--call it murder."

"No, no!" she broke forth in her pain. "It surely was not so bad as that. They kept the details from me, Oswald; but it could not have been so bad as that."

The words fell on his heart like an ice-bolt. Unconsciously to himself he had been hoping that she might disprove the tale. For that purpose he had whispered to her of the worst: but it seemed that she could not deny it. It was quite enough, and he quitted the subject abruptly.

"God bless you, my darling, for ever and for ever," he said, taking her hands in his. "I do not respect or love you less; but I cannot--I cannot--you know what I would say. It is a cruel fate upon me, as upon you; and for the present, for both our sakes, it may be better that our paths in life should lie apart. After awhile we may meet again, as friends, and continue to be such throughout life."

The tears had dried on her face, as it was lifted in the moonlight, its expression one living agony. But there was no resentment in it; on the contrary, she fully justified him. Her hands lingered in his with a farewell pressure, and she strove to re-echo the blessing he had given.

They parted, each going a different way. Oswald Cray, in no mood for the Abbey now, struck off towards the "Apple Tree;" Sara, drawing her veil over her face, went on to her home.

And so the dream was over. The dream which she had long been unconsciously cherishing of what a meeting between them might bring about, was over; and Sara Davenal had been rudely awakened to stern reality.